***The Official Home Recording Studio Thread***
- Thread starter easyrider
- Start date
Soldato
Looking good easyrider.
I wish I had the space to record live drums.
I wish I had the space to record live drums.
Associate
I'm (more than) slightly embarrassed to post this, but here goes 
It looks such a mess, and this is our living room
luckily its quite big, and somehow does not look as bad in the flesh. The main problem is I can only do stuff when the house is empty of kids and the wife, unless I'm doing some stuff on the keyboards with headphones on. Roll on house move and a space of my own - preferably in an outbuilding, where I can lock myself away
BTW I'm sure this is a great example of how NOT to do things
It looks such a mess, and this is our living room
luckily its quite big, and somehow does not look as bad in the flesh. The main problem is I can only do stuff when the house is empty of kids and the wife, unless I'm doing some stuff on the keyboards with headphones on. Roll on house move and a space of my own - preferably in an outbuilding, where I can lock myself away
BTW I'm sure this is a great example of how NOT to do things
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Looking good easyrider.
I wish I had the space to record live drums.
Cheers...Just sorting the mics out now
I'm (more than) slightly embarrassed to post this, but here goes
It looks such a mess, and this is our living room
I like it...Its got a old vibe mixed with new
Associate
I like it...Its got a old vibe mixed with new
You're too kind
I'm sure it an acoustic disaster, but I somehow get stuff done.
Soldato
Yeah, I'm a bit of a PMC fan hah, and I'm lucky enough to have a really great relationship with them. They're incredibly supportive and make some great products. Unfortunately said products do rather spoil you though, once you get used to working with them not much else lives up to them! There's nothing worse than going home and listening to something 'normal' after using them all day. Cost me a fortune in the end, had to buy some for home haha!
All of the above really - primarily I'm a sound engineer, but do produce stuff now and then. I work best adding to someone else's creativity, so really enjoy the mix down and mastering stage. That said we had some new mics in over the summer which I've been really been enjoying, the AEA ribbons. You can see the R88 in the pics of the first studio's live room. That thing is rapidly becoming one of my 'go to' mics for nearly anything!
Famous people? We're not really a commercial outfit - we're a University - so whilst there's been a few people through the doors it's not something that happens all that often. Probably the most famous person that's been in is Ken Scott. Absolutely lovely guy, hope we can get him back in at some point.
Does the rooms have acoustic treatment?.. in the walls perhaps, as it looks a bit live? Do you not have reverb and boom issues?
Loving the PMC's
Soldato
Does the rooms have acoustic treatment?.. in the walls perhaps, as it looks a bit live? Do you not have reverb and boom issues?
Loving the PMC's
Whilst it doesn't show it, every single green wall is actually an acoustic panel and there are cloud absorbers in the ceiling too. If anything it's a little too dead unless you're used to it. The walls as a result are nearly 3ft thick!
Treating the space is something I need to do....Building a recording space is complicated!
Soldato
Well, therein lies an issue. I'm guessing you have one room in which you're looking to do all of this. Ideally you need several rooms, each being treated in a slightly different way since they'll have differing tasks. I'm talking very generally here and looking at it with my multipurpose hat on...
First off the Live/recording space. Typically you'll want to be able to adjust the acoustics depending on what you're recording. Very heavy thick 'theatre' drapes/curtains are ideal, since they take out a lot of the high frequency sting (remember not to mount them flush with the wall, allow a gap of around 20cm if possible).
Second, the control room. This is where the console and monitoring live. Ideally you want this fairly dead, so that the room doesn't overly influence the sound coming from your monitors. You can either go with trying to deaden everything with lots of panels (avoid the cheap foam ones, they're next to useless really and imho look horrid) or possibly use diffusers to break up the initial reflections off the walls. How dead you go is personal choice though, after all if you learn how your monitors interact with the room it's possible to mix virtually anywhere.
Beyond that you can look to 'booth' areas which will be typically for specific jobs and treated to suit. Vocals for example are usually recorded in as dead a space as possible, same for amp rooms etc as well unless a specific 'vibe' is required. These booths are small (typically just big enough for the person required and the mics).
Another thing which I can't recommend enough is to get hold of a Radial SGI. These things are amazing.
http://www.radialeng.com/sgi.php
It lets you put your amp somewhere else, use a huge long balanced cable to connect your guitar to it, and you don't lose any tone at all. Ideal for recording because it means you can sit in the control room and play, whilst having the amps somewhere else. The other real benefit is that you hear what's actually being recorded rather than hearing the amp itself. This way your intonation etc can be modified so as to give the best sound possible. Cracking bit of kit.
Soldato
Thanks for the explanation and follow up.... all makes sense now
As you may seen some time back my listening room is treated
On the flip side is there not some times a "benefit" in recording in a space that has some life and reverb, and everyone playing together, giving that live feel?
Often recorded music sounds dead and sterile...almost to perfect?
Yep...Its one room roughly 6m x 5m so splitting it is not really an option...
Soldato
Thanks for the explanation and follow up.... all makes sense now
As you may seen some time back my listening room is treated
On the flip side is there not some times a "benefit" in recording in a space that has some life and reverb, and everyone playing together, giving that live feel?
Often recorded music sounds dead and sterile...almost to perfect?
It's not uncommon for a control room (i.e engineer's room rather than where the instrumentalists will actually record) to be fairly dead. Recording spaces are typically a little more 'live', but if it's too live you end up with recordings that can start to get a little muddy. It's very difficult to remove natural reverb from a recording, especially without it leaving audible artefacts. So with that in mind it can be 'better' to record in a dead space and then add artificial reverb in after.
Recording all together can be a blessing and a curse. You sometimes get more cohesion as a group playing this way, but there's much more chance of getting bleed into mics (i.e a guitar mic picking up drums etc) which can make it more difficult to mix. There's also the issue of if one person cocks up, everyone has to go again. This can get tiresome unless the band are really tight.
Sort of studio/ pc room, not had to much time to do anything this year with a heavy workload and doing up the house
How do you find those krks mate ?
I find them excellent i really do, you hear things that you didn't before say on normal hifi speakers,took a good month to run in properly, i like them that much i am going to upgrade these to the Rokit 8 Gen 3
i don't think you can get a better monitor bang for buck as these.I find them excellent i really do, you hear things that you didn't before say on normal hifi speakers,took a good month to run in properly, i like them that much i am going to upgrade these to the Rokit 8 Gen 3
OK cheers
Are they Gen 3 you have ?
Soldato
Spook - re. monitor placement. Do you not feel like you're wearing headphones and you're missing a huge chunk of phantom centre?
No not really but know what you mean by that, i did have these infront me in my old flat due to space which did sound very good, once they are cranked up they are excellent