Can your room make a huge difference?

I am totally unhappy with the recordings I have been putting out lately. My equipment is pretty good. I use RME FireFace 800 for converters, I have preamps from Presonus and Mackie, I use decent mics, I use Sonar 6 Producer etc...

But my recordings are dull and boomy. EQ doesn't fix it to the level I would like. I have a feeling that my room is too dead and the low bass frequencies in the room are smeared and over-represented.

If my room had nice hardwood and bass traps etc..., do you think I would see a significant change in my recordings?

I am in this room temporarily until I find a new place. I know my mixing area is horrible too. A few years ago I feel I produced better recordings with less equipment.

But I need to narrow it down for sure, because it costs a lot to treat a room properly. What do you guys think?

Well, it is kind of seperate but not totally. The room is a converted garage that was originally setup as a band practice room. There is a band that still practices there once a week. So it is really padded down with all kinds or crap.

I would guess that it is about 18'X20" and then there is a little alcove about 6'X4' that I have my gear setup in. I may be off on my dementions because I have never actually measured it and I am not there right now.

I rent the place for very cheap but I have to share it with the band. My original studio was a real studio but the owner wanted to tear down the building and build something else so my lease was ended.

I am desperate to keep my business going so I rent this converted garage for now, but things are sounding so bad that I am starting to lose confidence in myself, doubting my abilities.

I have been hear for a couple of years and I do feel the recording in the other place were better, but i still feel like I should be able to pull something decent from the place I am in now. But it just isn't happening.

I talked with the owner of the garage and he will allow me to treat the room, but I am wondering if that will really help, or maybe I have just lost my touch.

Oh, the ceiling is probably 8' high.

You left treating the room out of the list :-) So maybe stick that in there at 0. But yeh, getting the room right, which allows you to to both record better and to mix it better once it's on disk, is a big one. Is the alcove like a little separate room with just a door opening into the larger space, or is it basically completely open to the larger space? It's so small that if you tried to really fully treat it with bass traps, there'd be nowhere left to put anything. So I'm assuming it's mostly open to the larger space and that treating that will cover you fairly well for both since that large space would be represent the room overall, even for the mixing area, but that's just a guess.

For the recording space, fully treating it could be a bit costly. One way to do it would be to build a second wall, in a couple inches from the actual wall. It could be made of 1x4 studs from floor to ceiling, 4' apart, with a cross piece at 4' height. Cover it like thin chicken wire on the back. Buy boxes of 703 insulation and place them into the wall sections. They are 2x4' and you need two of them to get the 4" you need for good absorption, so you would get 8 of them in each of those 4x4' wall areas. Just stand them up on end and stick them into the cell. Then just put a cloth covering over the inside part of the wall. You can just staple it up.

It would take like 7" away on each wall, but that would almost completely decouple your practice space from the room walls, and since the faux wall is out a few inches from the real wall, it would give excellent bass absorption all around. The wood and nails probably wouldn't cost very mcuh at all. The 703 would cost you a bit, but you'd be buying enough that you should be able to go to a commercial seller and get it, since it would be enough that they'd bother to deal with you. Not sure how much that would cost you. I assume if you are buying that much insulation that you could get 8 of them for around $50 or $60 bucks or something like that maybe? But you'd avoid the expense of buying trap bags for the insulation and just build it into the fairly inexpensive faux wall.

I dunno, that's my idea for a home grown solution. It would probably make for a nice tight sounding room, but I could be wrong, not being an accoustician. If it's too expensive, maybe start with the wall that the band plays towards, then do the side walls next, and then the wall behind them.

my two cents

get: akg k501 and $500 creek headphone amp.

practice mixing on it. mix 300 more songs and you will begin to improve.

everything else - spend the rest of your life practicing.

have fun!

Can your room make a huge difference?

Yes.

Broadband bass trapping. You can never have too much.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: Sylvan

I may be off on my dementions

Very siggable material. Just FYI it's 'dimensions', but I agree this is much, much funnier. Keep headbangin'.

Thank you all very much for sharing your thoughts and ideas. I feel that the biggest problems are that there is not enough high end and too much low end in the room. I may be wrong, but this is my "gut feeling".

I think I will try adding some hardwood patches here and there on the walls and getting some bass traps from Real Traps. Also, I am totally on board with the cabling suggestions. I am going to buy a roll of Mogami cable and make my own cables.

The headphone mixing is a great idea too, even if only comparing between the monitors and phones, learning how it all translates to other playback systems.

CJ's suggerstion for monitors is something I want to look into as well. Right now I am unsing KRK V8's.

I will be looking into the rest of the suggestions as well.

At the tracking point is where I think most of the problem lies. I spend time on mic placement, but no matter what it seems lifless and boomy. It has to be the room. I am hoping it is because if it is not then I have lost me ear, my abilities, and the love of my life (audio engineering).

Thank you again,
-Charles

Bitflipper offers good advice. Forget about diffusion/reflection treatments in a small residential room. Just trap bass. Doesn't have to be fancy or pretty or expensive to be effective.

cheers.

ORIGINAL: droddey
You left treating the room out of the list :-) So maybe stick that in there at 0.

well it was my own personal list, and i haven't treated my room. but if i had it would have been number 1 for sure. when i get a house, when i get a house...

Great that everyone chimed in but don't get distracted from the main point.

Check out my friend's Kymata Studios website for cheap & easy bass trap building.

Thanks CJ. I actually have a total of 12 x 2" panels. I'll use 4 of those to make two 4" bass traps for the wall and that will leave me with 8 singles that I plan to use on the ceiling above my mixing position, angled above and on the wall behind my mixing station, on the side early reflection zones and maybe 2 that I have left over sitting in the window kinda behind my speakers directly in front of my mixing desk.

What's limiting me to just 2 x 4" bass traps is the fact that I purchased some bags to put the 703 in and I only have 2 bags that can hold 4". I have the 4 LENRD bass traps and was just thinking that I'll put the 4" 703 at the top of the ceiling on the same wall that my mixing desk is on. Then, I'll use the LENRD traps at the bottom. I have 4 so I'll probably just stack 2 of them on the floor at each of those corners.

Sound like a plan??

Cool. I use the 703's and they work great. I didnt even need to double them up to get a semi flat frequency responce. I made my own also and wrapped them in red burlap. Isnt it so much cheaper to make your own...
Cj

You might do better with fewer 4" ones than more 2" ones, because 2" really don't absorb down very low, and it's the lowest frequencies that are the most problematic.

I've got 4 6" ones in place now (the Ready bags), one in each corner behind the speakers and one on the wall/ceiling corners to either side. I have 3 more 4" ones coming in tuesday. They will go on the sides at the first reflection points and on the wall/ceilling behind the speakers.

After that I hope to get three more when I afford it and I should have pretty good coverage. Two one above my head, and I'm probably going to hang a couple behind the listening position a few feet back, because I can't put them on the wall behind me. That would help soak up stuff coming back at me from the back wall (and going outwards towards the back wall as well.)

you can have too much if the traps also absorb high frequencies (which can easily add to the mud factor). one option is to add a layer of plastic under the cloth of the front of the absorber to reflect some highs back into the room. adding corner traps as already described will g oa long ways to controlling the serious room modes, adding thinner absorbers at key reflection points on the side and overhead of the mix desk will cut down on the highs and mids that can confuse the mix... move the equipment out of the small alcove and put it on a wall where the front-to-back portion of the room is longest and symmetrical...

I just have some issues with a blanket statment that you can't have too much broadband bass trapping. Granted most home studios probably don't have enough bass trapping but that logic doesn't apply to every room.