• SONAR
  • Recording In a Small Room
2013/10/06 13:33:17
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?
2013/10/06 13:53:26
pbandit
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
 
2013/10/06 14:02:10
clintmartin
There has been a lot on this subject. Search for Sound proofing or acoustic tiles. The techniques forum is where I went to ask. A good place to start...http://www.atsacoustics.com/cat--ATS-Acoustic-Panels--100.html 
2013/10/06 20:29:47
jimusic
Consider the option of making your own as well for reduced costs.
2013/10/06 20:32:55
clintmartin
...or Ik Multimedia's ARC 2.
2013/10/06 20:39:43
mudgel
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.
2013/10/06 22:46:47
Paul P
Hang out here for a short while and you'll learn everything that you can do, but in a small room it'll never be great.  If you're handy with tools you can do everything yourself.
 
What you don't want is thin wall coverings that'll just kill the high end, taking all the life out of your sound, while leaving all the lower-end garbage.  For low frequencies, you need thick, like 6-12" (or you can use expensive damped metal sheets).
 
If your small room has a large closet that you can take the doors off, that can be turned into a huge bass trap.
 
2013/10/06 22:59:53
Sycraft
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.
2013/10/06 23:18:33
Rimshot
If a small room is all you have (like me) then go for it!  Learn to treat the walls and use your ears.  Play back number 1 hits on your system to get to know what your speakers are telling you.  They probably are lying.  Test your mixes in your car and on your cheap earbuds.  Learn to use what you have if that's all you got!  Go for it.
 
Rimshot
 
2013/10/07 05:02:19
Bristol_Jonesey
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
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