PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Home studio baffling

The guy who does my mixdowns has his studio in a bedroom and he has a whole lot of wall treatment, particularly in the corners of the room. I get the concept of cutting down on the natural room echo and stuff, but my question is this.

Everything I do is recorded at line level. I have never recorded a guitar or bass or keyboards by putting a mic in front of an amp. It's all direct input line-level recording. So why do I need to care about my room? I am not recording anything with live mics outside of singing, and when I do that I am in a foam lined enclosure that is a 180 degree hood wide enough to step into and be completely inside it, and it is all lined with foam. My vocals are completely dead in there, and what effects I may want to add will be put in digitally.

What do you guys think about this topic when put into the context of never recording open mics? Seems like I should not have to be concerned with wall treatment.

Do you sit in the same room and listen to live speakers? These also incorporate 'room' and could affect a mix.
Just a thought

Somewhat, Harv, at low levels and the monitors are 30 inches from me. I have the wall opposing the speakers, otherwise stated the wall that is behind me, covered in a blanket because it is also an alcove, but other than that I have nothing. My bigger problem is that my Wharfedale monitors tend to be "bass light" so I add bass to sound right through them. Anywhere else I listen then the bass is too hot, so I have to approximate. I listen through the studio monitors, my office computer speakers, my living room sound bar, and my car stereo, and compare. Who was it, Phil Spector who had a car radio speaker in his mixdown room so he could hear what it would sound like in those 1960s cars?

I also believe that in 1982, Quincy Jones wanted to hear tracks he worked on during the production of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" Album on a 6-transistor radio speaker. He said that the mix needed to sound OK on that too, not just what he could listen to in the studio.

Hey Video Track,

I have found that, generally speaking, if I mix on the cheapest pair of speakers I have it usually sounds great on everything else.

Meh. Quincy Jones. Now who's HE? LOL!!!

I mostly record acoustic instruments so room sound is quite important to me. Unfortunately my room is untreated (ha, ha). I do DI any electric guitar and bass stuff, though.

By the way, most foam based vocal enclosures don't do much with reflections for frequencies under 1khz. They just can't absorb those frequencies (http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/how-effective-are-portable-vocal-booths ).

As you know I often discussed your overly reverb-y vocals on your early recordings that I heard. Since you said you didn't add reverb, it was all unwanted room reverb.

Eddie, if you aren't doing your own mixdowns using speakers in your space (as I interpret your post), then your room is pretty much removed from the situation since you aren't doing any microphone recording.

Yep, exactly what I was going to say. Sounds like you have the best possible workaround, though, Eddie -- listening on multiple systems is key.

While you might have recorded everything direct and "in the box", you are listening in a room.

The room you listen in will affect what you hear. As a result, what started as line level quickly morphs into the results of the room's acoustic characteristics. Is the room live or dead or somewhere in between? Are there nulls or hot-spots and at what frequencies....AND... are they occurring at the place where you are setting to do your mixing? All of that and more affect the mix you make in that room. Any time you put sound into a space, there are reflections and the sound waves will be in and out of phase depending on the frequency, and the location and the reflectivity or absorption of the surfaces.

This can result in mixes that are so far off, it's not even funny. Rooms should be tested and treated if you really want to get consistently good results with your mixes.

Using a transistor radio to check a mix is fine, but using the cheapest speakers possible to mix and thinking you're going to get superb mixes every time as a result is just wrong thinking. If, no, let me correct that right here..... the cheap speakers WILL have a bias...lets say they have a poor low end response and a rolled off high end response due to small cones and cheap or no tweeters, you will produce mixes that tend to be bass heavy and brittle on the high end when played on a decent consumer system. Now, factor in what the room does to the sound and you generally end up "chasing" the mix. Test it in the car, the home stereo, your buddy's car, your iPod,,,, and they all sound different and most sound bad in one way or another.

Ideally, you want to use good speakers in a treated room.

Of course, it's not always possible to have a treated room so we do have to accept the inherent compromises of reality. That's how most of us work. We learn the room, and mix accordingly. Test with cans and test with other players in other rooms and eventually get to the point where we can produce decent mixes that work well in most situations. Treating a room is not simply a matter of buying some sound absorbing things and hanging them on the walls and ceiling. Although that's what most folks do. There's science and physics behind the proper placement of sound absorbers and reflective surfaces in a studio.

Another option regarding treated rooms is to use technology and use something like ARC. http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/arc/ Advanced Room Correction software. It has a calibrated mic and the software to analyze the room and automatically correct the sound coming out of the speakers so that what you hear in your mixing position/chair, is as accurate as your speakers can make it. Essentially, it claims to remove the room from the equation. I use this and I know several other studio owners who use this on all of their mixes. It seems to work fairly well but in and of itself, it's not a replacement for using proper treatment.

Mixing on headphones: Some folks do. I have done this as well. I guess it really comes down to.... you gotta do what you gotta do. However, mixing with cans is not the ideal way. So many of the less expensive cans are consumer oriented and therefore are made with a built in bias on the sound they produce. If you mix in cans, be sure to double check the mix and triple check it too, on other systems with speakers to be sure it's not coming across as an unbalanced mix. It's really easy to get an "ear-candy" headphone mix that sounds like crap in a good stereo.

So yes, the room is really critical to the finished mix.

BTW: a really, really, really good book to read on this topic, for a much deeper understanding of rooms and acoustics is called Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio by Mike Senior. The first few chapters cover speakers and sound laying a critical base upon which to build an understanding. If you don't have this book, buy it and study it. If you do have it, pull it off the shelf, dust it off, and read/study it again.

EDIT: I'm in the process of building/rehabbing a small 16x16 building into my future music studio. All of the things I have said in this and more are coming into play for me as I move through the building process. Currently, the building is insulated, rough inspected, and ready to start with the sheet rock and wood on the walls. Room treatment is on the top of my mind.

Thanks for the good thread. Interesting reading.

Great insight, Herb. When I get to the first "I think I am done cooking" place, I listen on my Wharfedale monitors, on my Logitech computer speakers in another smaller room, on a Samsung soundbar in the living room, in my car from a thumb drive, on a laptop, through headphones, and again through the Wharfedales with my back turned 180 degrees. I make notes, and tweak level and a touch of EQ on the vocal track, and do it all again. THEN, when I am happy with the sound across the board, I dump it all to wav files and it waits for me to finish the rest of the songs and then they all go over to my mixing engineer pal, who won some kind of award in Ohio for his work and is really outstanding. He knows EQ and compression WAY better than I do, particularly in the area of where to use it. I find spending time on playing with compression and such as a distraction and a waste of my time because his ear is better than mine, and his bank of knowledge in the field is far deeper.

So yeah, I listen in a lot of different forums. I am going to buy that book. I know who Mike Senior is and have heard him speak on various web shows. I always wanted to ask him if he has a son named Mike. Mike Senior junior.

Eddie -

When I saw your subject line, what went through my head was, "well, yeah, my home studio is pretty baffling, too".

Thanks for the chuckle.

Wow that's a lot of work. The thing I try to remember is that the pro's generally mix on one set of speakers and might give one of the interns the job of cross checking it on something else.... but they trust the speakers they know.

I try to do the same thing with mine. I listen on my MP3 player to see if I need fixes to the song structure.

I listen on multiple systems in multiple places also. I also compare my mixes to Professional or good sounding mixes of similar styles or at least similar genres.
I was looking at Acoustic Ceiling tiles at Home Depot the other day. The kind that fit in a T-Bar drop ceiling. They are 23 1/2 inch X 47 1/2 inch. About the size of a movie poster on the wall at a movie theatre. They say "55%" sound reduction. I put them in a tent shape and stuck my head inside and it felt like my brain got sucked out through my ears. Drastic difference in a noisy and echo-ie environment. $20 for 3 sheets. $35 for 6 sheets.
I think these would make a big difference if I hung a few spaced out on my ceiling and walls with a 1/2" to 1" air gap behind them. They are very light weight and easy to cut. So, I might make some 24 X 24 to fit some areas. Might even try fitting them into poster frames from the 99 cents only store or a thrift store to give them a clean edge look.
But, for now I gotta work on my Christmas party songs. Maybe in January. Just an idea.

Best drum recordings I ever got were in a room with this type of ceiling (with nothing but insulated floor space above that).
Helped separate the drums yet kept the cymbals crystal clear. I actually used the T frame to loop mic cords over and hang mics to get them just where I wanted them without so many intrusive stands..

I have pictures around here somewhere .. I still own the room.
Just haven't recorded drums here in a while, since everything got moved to the nicer (and purpose built) room down the street. Wife's happier .. it was our bedroom. Lots of fluffy dead surfaces and one small warm reflective area (brick). We'd have drum sets in there for weeks at a time .. my kids thought it was cool, wife not so much.

Found one (probably 10-12 years ago looking at it <grin>)
Apparently I used washcloths to help dampen things when I moved ceiling tiles.
I'm surprised she stayed with me. Our bedroom set is just out of view to the right ..

Nice mixer stand also. Is that the box on the left that your brand new CRT monitor came in? And, why is there Comet in a room made of pine with a brick fire place? Does that stuff help to get clean takes or something?

Hey, I said it was "(probably 10-12 years ago .. "

maybe more
but yes, having comet around does improve the takes
and the mixer stand was quite comfy

You added the comet when you wanted the guitar to have a little more grit?

I've used talcum powder on my fretting hand to make playing a little smoother.
I'll have to try the Comet technique to see what that does.
Hey, new invention. Lets put it in smaller bottles and sell it as automatic string and fret board cleaner.