When is a room too small?

[deuce42]

Hi Friends

I have a question. When is a room too small to be of any real "natural live" use and its simply better to deaded everything possible and use electronic reverbs/delays to get a sense of space and "life" in the recordings?

My room is 15ft long by 11ft wide and 7.5ft high with carpet in it. I am thinking of removing the carpet and putting acoustic treatment in it but I am wondering whether its too small to be useful and the expense of treating the room may be pointless. I am hoping to record acoustic guitar, electric guitar and violin. For vocals I already have a real traps PVB.

So my question is, what size is a room too small to bother with nice room tones and one should simply deaden everything possible and use reverbs/delays ITB to get a sense of space?

[avare]

You asked a good question in a clear manner that has no clear answer.

With your size room I would go with a dead ceiling, and adjustable wall units.

sorry, but vaguely.
Andre

[tchristen]

Generally a room smaller than 3000 cubic feet is considered a small room for recording. Or so I was told.

[andrebrito]

For me a small room is up to 200 m3 = 7000 ft3. Maybe even a bit higher...

When is a room too small to be of any real "natural live" use and its simply better to deaded everything possible and use electronic reverbs/delays to get a sense of space and "life" in the recordings?

That is a hard question to reply !! I agree with Avare, in my humble opinion rooms under 100 m3 should be dry

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by deuce42

what size is a room too small to bother with nice room tones and one should simply deaden everything possible and use reverbs/delays ITB to get a sense of space?

You got the right answers, and I'd go even farther and say that real reverb of the Good Kind is not possible even in 3000 cubic feet. My own home studio is larger than 6,000 cubic feet, and live sounding, but distant miking does not give a big sound such as you'd get in a church.

--Ethan

[Wes Lachot]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

You got the right answers, and I'd go even farther and say that real reverb of the Good Kind is not possible even in 3000 cubic feet. My own home studio is larger than 6,000 cubic feet, and live sounding, but distant miking does not give a big sound such as you'd get in a church.

--Ethan

Hey, Ethan,

Check it out. It is possible to get good sounding reverb from a room of even as little as 2000 cu. ft. The trick is too use a "coupled space", a concept that Russ Berger has been talking up recently. It really works. The easiest way to think of it is you have, say, a 10' x 12' room with a 16' ceiling. (This would be a 1920 s.f. room.) You deaden the lower half of the room (the walls up to 8') and leave the upper walls live; hopefully the walls are not parallel as well. What you get with a mic in the lower part of the room is a dry direct sound along with a nice, reasonably long reverb tail that has been pre-delayed due to the lower walls being dead. A beautiful sound and totally usable.

It's also worth noting that many of the classic reverb chambers that we all know and love from the 60s were between 2000 and 3000 cu. ft. Of course, these had extremely hard surfaces and weren't meant for tracking, just for re-recording reverb tails.

--Wes

[deuce42]

Thanks for your advice guys but now and even more dumb question....if the room is too small and should be deadened, how do I do so?

Should it be with acoustic panels and bass traps and stuff, or should I just literally leave the carpet on the floor and put up thick fabric over the walls?

My understanding of the panels/bass traps idea was the leave the room still feeling live and spacious and having a nice room tone whilst removing reflections getting into your microphone. If the room is too small for a nice bright sound, is it simply better to deaden everything with fabrics or should I go for proper treatment?

Am I missing something obvious and wasting everyones times with dumb questions??

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

Hey, Ethan,

Check it out. It is possible to get good sounding reverb from a room of even as little as 2000 cu. ft. The trick is too use a "coupled space", a concept that Russ Berger has been talking up recently. It really works. The easiest way to think of it is you have, say, a 10' x 12' room with a 16' ceiling. (This would be a 1920 s.f. room.) You deaden the lower half of the room (the walls up to 8') and leave the upper walls live; hopefully the walls are not parallel as well. What you get with a mic in the lower part of the room is a dry direct sound along with a nice, reasonably long reverb tail that has been pre-delayed due to the lower walls being dead. A beautiful sound and totally usable.

It's also worth noting that many of the classic reverb chambers that we all know and love from the 60s were between 2000 and 3000 cu. ft. Of course, these had extremely hard surfaces and weren't meant for tracking, just for re-recording reverb tails.

--Wes

Would it work the same if you had a 16x21 room with 8' ceiling but just made one side of the room "dead" and the other half of the room "alive"?

Glenn

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

You deaden the lower half of the room (the walls up to 8') and leave the upper walls live

Yes, I've heard of that but never tried it. Where do you put the room microphones? Above the divider? I'll be interested to hear your response to Glenn's question too.

It's also worth noting that many of the classic reverb chambers that we all know and love from the 60s were between 2000 and 3000 cu. ft. Of course, these had extremely hard surfaces and weren't meant for tracking, just for re-recording reverb tails.

Right, and even a tiny bathroom can have reverb if all the surfaces are highly reflective.

Thanks Wes. And great to see you here!

--Ethan

[jwl]

Originally Posted by deuce42

Thanks for your advice guys but now and even more dumb question....if the room is too small and should be deadened, how do I do so?

Should it be with acoustic panels and bass traps and stuff, or should I just literally leave the carpet on the floor and put up thick fabric over the walls?

My understanding of the panels/bass traps idea was the leave the room still feeling live and spacious and having a nice room tone whilst removing reflections getting into your microphone. If the room is too small for a nice bright sound, is it simply better to deaden everything with fabrics or should I go for proper treatment?

You definitely DON'T want to *only* put thick fabric on the walls. A room that size is going to have some bass issues, you definitely want to get bass trapping in there. Dead and boomy is not much better than live and boomy.

You have a small room, so you aren't going to get a big room sound no matter how you go. But you can get a nice-sounding room. The key is to get adequate bass trapping, and then think about what happens to sound as it is reflected through the room.

I'd probably recommend some moveable panels (ie, on stands), so that you can put your panels in useful locations for each task that you will do (ie, when listening/mixing make a RFZ, when recording arrange them around the performer, etc).

Once you have bass trapping in the room, and a good strategy to deal with reflections, you can add some icing-on-the-cake treatments such as diffusion, though your room is a bit on the small side for diffusion.

[peeder]

My understanding is that you can only get true reverb in relatively enormous spaces unlikely to be found in any home, and not often found in studios either. What you're getting in smaller spaces is considered early reflections/ambience. At least that is what I was tolded.

And btw a room is too small when you can't fit in it.

[Wes Lachot]

Originally Posted by Glenn Kuras

Would it work the same if you had a 16x21 room with 8' ceiling but just made one side of the room "dead" and the other half of the room "alive"?

Glenn

Glenn (and Ethan),

Yes, but it's trickier and requires more micing skill/knowledge. This is because with the dead walls down low and the live walls up high, it's sort of idiot -proof, meaning there will always be more than 20 ms of pre-delay between the dry sound and the ambiant return. And if the mics are down low, the direct sound will always predominate, then you just back off the mic to get more ambiance.

Hey Peeder, you can't believe everything you are told. But you should always believe what you actually hear. I was just doing an acoustics consult for a small college music department, and their roughly 30,000 cu. ft. recital hall had a reverb time of roughly 1.5 sec. Pretty short, and not that great for music recitals. When I visited the men's room in the lobby area, I noticed that this room had about a 2.5 sec. "reverb time", and the room was maybe 5% the cubic vulume of the recital hall. Now, you can call it anything you want - ambiance, early reflections, whatever. What you call it doesn't change the fact that what you hear is a smooth "reverb" tail of 2.5 sec. or so. So I just ignore the experts and go ahead and call it what it sound like, which is reverb.

--Wes

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

Glenn (and Ethan),

Yes, but it's trickier and requires more micing skill/knowledge. This is because with the dead walls down low and the live walls up high, it's sort of idiot -proof, meaning there will always be more than 20 ms of pre-delay between the dry sound and the ambiant return. And if the mics are down low, the direct sound will always predominate, then you just back off the mic to get more ambiance.

Hey Peeder, you can't believe everything you are told. But you should always believe what you actually hear.

--Wes

Wes,
Good deal Wes, I am going to give this a try and see how it works out.

Glenn

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

When I visited the men's room in the lobby area, I noticed that this room had about a 2.5 sec. "reverb time", and the room was maybe 5% the cubic vulume of the recital hall. Now, you can call it anything you want - ambiance, early reflections, whatever. What you call it doesn't change the fact that what you hear is a smooth "reverb" tail of 2.5 sec. or so.

That's a great point Wes, and I'm equally guilty of spreading the myth that reverb is "impossible" in small rooms. It's not impossible, as you point out, but it's rare in normal rooms in a house having normal domestic furnishings. Something - even if just carpet or a couch - usually absorbs enough to prevent repeat reflections from building into what I'd call reverb.

However, it seems to me that the reverb in small and/or poorly proportioned live rooms will be more frequency-selective than in a large space. Or will have unwanted resonances such as flutter echo. Ya think?

--Ethan

[Wes Lachot]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

That's a great point Wes, and I'm equally guilty of spreading the myth that reverb is "impossible" in small rooms. It's not impossible, as you point out, but it's rare in normal rooms in a house having normal domestic furnishings. Something - even if just carpet or a couch - usually absorbs enough to prevent repeat reflections from building into what I'd call reverb.

However, it seems to me that the reverb in small and/or poorly proportioned live rooms will be more frequency-selective than in a large space. Or will have unwanted resonances such as flutter echo. Ya think?

--Ethan

Ethan,

Yeah, most often it's something to be avoided. But Berger is right - especially if you do the live up high dead down low thing, it works pretty well and keeps you out of trouble. Having the walls non-parallel is the key to turning what would be nasty flutter echo into a smooth reverb tail. It doubles or triples the percieved volume of a very live room.

--Wes

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Wes Lachot

Berger is right - especially if you do the live up high dead down low thing, it works pretty well

I can see that. But on a practical matter, how many people have small rooms that are 16 feet high?

--Ethan

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

I can see that. But on a practical matter, how many people have small rooms that are 16 feet high?

--Ethan

people that have racket ball courts in there homes. Thats who.

Glenn

[EricF]

Hmmm...the thought of a dead/live mic combination has me thinking...

The stairwell (narrow, high ceiling, untreated walls) in the top right of the pic below is full of reflections. Would it make sense to put a mic in there while recording guitars in the heavily treated mixing area?

[fross]

Originally Posted by EricF

Hmmm...the thought of a dead/live mic combination has me thinking...

The stairwell (narrow, high ceiling, untreated walls) in the top right of the pic below is full of reflections. Would it make sense to put a mic in there while recording guitars in the heavily treated mixing area?

Try it and let us know.

And it's true, 16' ceilings are hard to come by in most residents.
Does it make more sense to perhaps deaden the room (Bass traps etc,) and use digital reverbs for subtle ambience?

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by fross

Does it make more sense to perhaps deaden the room (Bass traps etc,) and use digital reverbs for subtle ambience?

Yes, especially with very small rooms like vocal booths.

--Ethan