• Techniques
  • How do you all reduce reverb and make good recordings?
2015/12/18 00:20:22
DragonBlood
I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.
2015/12/18 01:26:02
sharke
I guess some rooms sound great without treatment. Close miking may also be a factor. 
 
An alternative to treating the room would be to buy something like this: http://realtraps.com/p_pvb.htm
 
Or these: http://www.clearsonic.com/
 
 
2015/12/18 02:21:24
DragonBlood
I was thinking about and looking at one of those foam acoustic shield thingies.
Guess I'll have to try doing close mic until I can get one. Try to get that nice and clear narrator voice.
2015/12/18 02:41:29
mettelus
For vocals, a good dynamic microphone is something to strongly consider. The primary advantage of them is for near-field recording to reduce the environmental noise.
2015/12/18 10:36:46
bitflipper
In traditional studios, you have separate rooms for tracking and mixing, and each has very different acoustical requirements. Main rooms typically have minimal absorption and are designed to be reverberant, with movable gobos (absorbent panels) for spot treatment where needed. Control rooms, OTOH, need to be tight across all frequencies so that you're hearing the tracking room and not the mixing room.
 
Unfortunately, we bedroom producers and garage recordists don't usually have that luxury. We track instruments and vocals, and mix and master all in the same room. Those rooms are often too small, badly-shaped and overly resonant. You really don't want to hear those rooms at all in your recordings, because they have nothing pleasant to add.
 
The solution: make the room as dead as possible and rely on reverberation plugins to restore some life. It can be expensive to fully treat a room, so you may want to concentrate on a small part of the room. Start with the mix position, putting as much absorption as you can around that area so that whatever reverb you're hearing while mixing is in the recording, not being added as you mix.
 
Second most important is a dry space for recording vocals. Those microphone shields are not a solution. A finishing touch perhaps, but they shouldn't be your primary strategy. For the price of one of those, you can buy enough rigid fiberglass to construct an entire vocal booth that covers more than just the backside of the mike. You'll be amazed at the difference that'll make!
 
If you're tight on space and/or money, you can kill both of those birds with one solution: movable absorbers that can be place next to your desk while mixing, or placed around the singer or guitar amp while recording. 
2015/12/18 10:40:59
bitflipper
Oh yeh, and +1 to mettelus' suggestion about dynamic microphones if you're not already using them. For acoustically-compromised rooms you may get much better results with a decent $100 handheld dynamic than with a fancy $1000 condenser. (At least for vocals. If you're doing acoustic guitar that's another can o' worms. They're just pretty much gonna suck in a bad-sounding room, and dynamic mikes won't help.)
 
2015/12/18 10:53:02
batsbrew
DragonBlood
I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.


could you actually post some of these 'good recordings' that folks do in hotels, so we can hear just exactly where the bar is you want to set?
 
i personally have not heard any road recordings that i would deem as 'good' myself.
2015/12/18 15:30:30
DragonBlood
batsbrew
DragonBlood
I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.


could you actually post some of these 'good recordings' that folks do in hotels, so we can hear just exactly where the bar is you want to set?
 
i personally have not heard any road recordings that i would deem as 'good' myself.


It's a major artist. I don't know if I can exactly post it here with the amount of hoes, drugs and cursing in the video.
I can't find it anyway.
 
edit: In google type "Wiz Khalifa Smoking Weed 31" and then go to the 10 minute mark.
2015/12/20 08:54:26
Guitarhacker
DragonBlood
I notice some music artists record in hotels on the road in completely unpadded rooms and I was wondering if anybody else knows how they make such good recordings without even treating the room.
 
I'm about to tear my hair with the Acon Digital plugins and finding a way to edit a recording with so much reverb.




First and foremost.... TALENT.  You have really good pickers and singers, and they have their engineers with them in many cases....
 
Jackson Brown:  Nothing but time : from the Running on Empty album..... recorded in the tour bus as it was running down the road. You can hear the bus engine in the recording.  I think a few of the other songs were motel room recordings as well.
 
A good engineer, with talented musicians, can use less than optimal gear, in less than optimal settings, and still get a superb recording out of the deal.
 
2015/12/20 12:41:20
lawajava
I agree with the concept for a low cost approach:
1. Talent
2. Even if you don't have enough of that, a dynamic microphone and singing close to it can help.
 
I struggled with the same issue, and I prefer a condenser microphone, which picks up wall reverberations.  I also did not want to set up permanent wall hangings.
 
This is my solution.  It's a modular sound booth.  I can set it up or take it down and store it in the closet in about 10 mins either way.  I have removed the reverberations issue with this setup. The roof portion really seals the deal in terms of getting rid of the reverberations that reach the mic.  I had never thought of doing something like this until I learned the technique from bitflipper.
 

 

 
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