Recording In a Small Room

I think experienced producers would say forget it - you don't get professional
results. I have also a small room and put a carpet on the floor and blanket on
the wall. It's getting better but I was not happy. Since last week I spend
money for an Auralex MudGuard. Now the result is Ok for me and my budget
 

Consider the option of making your own as well for reduced costs.

If you can't treat your room ARC is an excellent compromise. Notice I said compromise. Nothing beats proper room treatment but the smaller a room the bigger the battle to really control the quality of the audio produced in that room.

I've used ARC since it's original release and find it works really well. If you can also do some room treatment to tame low end boom and unwanted reflections then your ARC experience will be even better. BUT I've used ARC in a completely untreated nearly cube room and was blown away by the results from ARC.

As others have said, room correction software can help a lot. Personally I use Audyssey in a Denon receiver to do it, hence my somewhat odd soundcard choice. I do HDMI out to the receiver, it handles the room EQing and does an amazingly good job. ARC is Audyssey as a plugin. If you just need it on two channels and in a DAW, it is a cheap and easy way to get it. If you need surround, or want it on all sources, then you have to get a receiver with it and use HDMI. That is pricey, expect to spend $700 at least for one with MultEQ, and more like $2000 to get one with MultEQ XT32 like ARC has. Audyssey is worth it though, it is the first and only room correction I've heard that I really think does a good job. If you want to go the receiver route, look at Denon, they use Audyssey, have good hardware, and allow you to select a flat curve, as well as a re-EQ for cinema (some receivers only do a cinema curve).
 
Past that, acoustic treatment helps a lot depending on how much you are willing to do. The Foam Factory is a good place for fairly economical wall stuff. Maybe not quite as good as Auralex, but good enough and pretty cheap. Only thing it doesn't handle is bass.
 
Bass is, of course, the really difficult thing to deal with. Multiple subwoofers help (not for volume but for uniformity) as does bass trapping. However, to work well, bass trapping needs to be huge. GIK makes some of what you really want: Big traps you stick in the corners, floor to ceiling. That will do more to smooth out bass response than anything else. Pricey though, and of course they dominate the corners.
 
If you go nuts and bass trap all the corners, coat the walls with foam and diffusors, have a thick carpet or rubber (like you find in a gym) flooring, and then do some room EQ, you can make things pretty good (though not perfect). Of course doing all that will be a few grand at least. I'm in the process of redoing a room in to my computer/studio room and it won't be cheap.

I don't think anyone has said this yet, but forget about egg crates!!!
 
All they'll do is kill your high end and do nothing about the other 80% of the audio spectrum

clintmartin
...or Ik Multimedia's ARC 2.

That's just for monitoring though isn't it, i.e. it wouldn't help with recording (??)
 
For my monitors/bedroom, I created my own 'ARC 2' and saved myself £185:
 

 
That's a stack of 3x Parametrics and I'm using channel tools for a bit of make-up gain.  Gives me a pretty flat response for monitoring.  There's a couple of massive room modes at ~140Hz and ~220Hz.  The whole room rings like a nasty bell in the upper frequencies too hence the broader cut centered about 4KHz.  There's still a tiny bit of correction to be made around the tricky 85Hz region, but I can't do anything else with the EQs else they start ringing.  The above is in an FX Chain which I load into the master bus then forget about it.
 
It's made a world of difference to my mixing, my mixes finally translate well to other playback situations (hifi, laptop headphones at work etc.)
 
 

You need to spend some time in this forum at Gearslutz: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/
Lots of good information there.
 
Watch lots of videos on Youtube as well: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=accoustic+treatment&oq=accousti&gs_l=youtube.3.0.35i39j0i10l9.79.1154.0.3154.7.7.0.0.0.0.172.707.4j3.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.Q0VdNWJIyQI
 
You are better off informing yourself before you spend any money. Don't waste your money on foam, you are better off buying some Rockwool and/or OC 703 and wrapping with breathable cloth. You can start with a few pieces of DIY treatment and add more as you go.
 

BMOG
For the more experience producers in this forum, if you record in a small room do you have any wall treatments to help take away some of reflections of sound off the wall?  If so what do you use, I have always wondered if Egg crate foam would work as a cheap work around?

I used "Real Traps". Room originaly sounded like an echo chamber and usuable as a music room. After the installation of the Real Traps it was like night and day!
 
Walt

WallyG
 
 
I used "Real Traps". Room originaly sounded like an echo chamber and usuable as a music room. After the installation of the Real Traps it was like night and day!
 
Walt

Nice place. Futurism + Accordion!

ston

clintmartin
...or Ik Multimedia's ARC 2.

That's just for monitoring though isn't it, i.e. it wouldn't help with recording (??)
 
For my monitors/bedroom, I created my own 'ARC 2' and saved myself £185:
 

 
That's a stack of 3x Parametrics and I'm using channel tools for a bit of make-up gain.  Gives me a pretty flat response for monitoring.  There's a couple of massive room modes at ~140Hz and ~220Hz.  The whole room rings like a nasty bell in the upper frequencies too hence the broader cut centered about 4KHz.  There's still a tiny bit of correction to be made around the tricky 85Hz region, but I can't do anything else with the EQs else they start ringing.  The above is in an FX Chain which I load into the master bus then forget about it.
 
It's made a world of difference to my mixing, my mixes finally translate well to other playback situations (hifi, laptop headphones at work etc.)
 
 

If you feel the need to add any more treatment, these guys are pretty cheap, and they sell a wide variety of foam-based solutions, all the way up to 100MM (4")


 http://www.acoustic-foam.co.uk/