I gather Paul P that she was using a 58. The thing about 58's are they are live PA vocal mics first and foremost. They work really well when you are literally on top of them ie touching them. They have lousy sensitivity so as soon as you start to back off ie like she may have done eg even a foot or so you get virtually no signal out of them so then you have to crank the gain to get the record level back up to a decent level. Problem then is that you are picking up lots of room at the same time. 

Paul P


Jeff, you (and Danny) obviously know what you're talking about so I'll take you on your word even though it doesn't seem intuitively obvious to me. I can most definitely hear the room in my daughter's recordings but I'll see what kind of difference I can get if I tell her to eat her SM58.

I don't see how you can prevent modes affecting the pressure right at the microphone when they're affecting the air everywhere else.

Honest Paul, with the right mic on the right voice at close range, you seriously have to have a problem in that room to literally hear it messing up a voice on a recording. You have to be 4 ft or more away from that mic to hear room reflections that would literally mess up a vocal in my opinion. As a matter of fact, that's how I do my back-up vocal tracks...4-6 feet away...sometimes further. The room actually does a great job with them...even if it's bad. Back-up vocals sound their best when they are flawed. Seriously...I know that sounds like the wrong thing to say in a recording situation, but it's true.
 
When you listen to a gospel group....a large one...they usually sound 15 ms off from the music at all times. This is a flaw, but a good one. How much reflection can we really get out of a carpeted bedroom? How much gain was used on the pre-amp your daughter used...and was it cheap? Did she use a real pre-amp at all? 
 
These are the things that can make a difference. Ever try to crank a mic through a stock soundcard? You gotta jack the gain so much, you pick up noise and the room because it's literally driving the signal. You will not get that when using a good mic as well as a good front end to push it. See, I don't have to eat the mics I use here. I can sing into them lightly and achieve -6 dB without breaking a sweat. The less signal I need, the more "voice" I get. If you have to push a signal, it can wreak havoc in a bad way. 
 
Again, you've heard my video stuff right? I'm 4 inches away from an Equitek CAD E-200 with a pop filter in a regular room with no bells, whistles or acoustic treatment. You don't hear any room in that sound. If I were to sing, that is the exact mic I use in the exact position in which I sing. A CAD is way more sensitive than a 58...so if my room were coming into play (and I'm certainly not whispering on that video...at times I get excited and talk loud) you'd hear it. The videos were recorded at 16/44 then bounced to 320 mp3 within the video software editing.
 
Trust me, I'm not disagreeing with that you are saying, I just don't find that to be the case in all my experiences with room reflections. In a warehouse, up close with a good mic and the right stuff, you're STILL not going to hear much room come into play unless you solo the track. And even there...the amount of room you will hear will not be enough to ruin it to where you're making cuts and notching stuff out. Honest. You'd have to be in a gymnasium or bathroom to hear anything remotely close that would possibly affect the recording in a bad way and you'd need to be a few feet away from the mic in order for that to even come into the mix.
 
-Danny

I have that filter and it's not that effective by itself because you still have to deal with ceiling and floor bounce in a small space. In conjunction with some other treatment it can be useful but it is no replacement for a vocal booth. If you need to reject reflections from one direction only, then it does its job. Money spent on this can get you:

A DBX 160x
A Voiceworks Plus unit
A used TC electronics verb/delay
Dinner for 9 at the Cheesecake factory.

I going to chime in on this one and say, When I bought an SE filter and thoroughly checked it out for 15min, I couldn't get back to the guitar center fast enough to get my $300 back. I was hoping to get some super dry vocals, I tested with short loud phrases to see the difference in the room and it wasn't much difference at all on how much room I could still hear on certain words. I have a decently treated room, but I was going for a very dry sound, something like voice over work. Now I just find the driest spot in the room and record fairly close to the mic as mentioned earlier.

joeb1cannoli


  Make sure that you have a strong mic stand. The SE is heavy. There is tip from Sound on Sound on setting it up differently from SE's instructions. This method helps it to balance on the stand better.

+1
 
My room sound sucks, I would have a hard time doing any vocals without my reflection filter.  Not to mention VO work

The weird thing is that for $300 you could buy quite a lot of absorbing panels and maybe a bass trap. Place the panels carefully and you could change the whole sound of your space for the better if it is not so good. That seems like a better alternative to me than having a poorer sounding room with a reflection filter over in the corner.

Something that has worked for me for years is having two baffles reasonably high for moving around doing various things. They are nice and absorbent on the sides. The obvious thing of course is to use them to separate musicians for better spill during tracking and they work great. They are just below head height so musicians have still got eye contact.

I also use them to make a vocal booth. I put them on little stands to raise them up above head height. I bring them close together to form the two sides of a vocal booth. I set them up against a large bookcase full of books. (Fantastic for breaking up and dispersing sound very well.) Then complete the set-up with a nice absorbent panel on the top as the roof. So it is like a temporary vocal booth with one side open. I put a music stand and a light in there. Sounds very nice in there. Dead as and very little interference from the outside world. Can't even hear my computer or anything in there. This is way better than the reflection filter concept.

To cap this off I record the mic through my Yamaha digital mixer which has a nice Mic Pre in it but I can insert a dynamic effect over the input signal. I choose a downward expander which drops the gain down a further 15 db or so in between any spoken or sung words. It is totally transparent and you cannot hear it working if you set it up correctly. End result is a perfect vocal sound that is totally silent in between every word. (no editing required later to remove unwanted sounds because they are just not there!) Sounds like you are now inside the ultimate vocal booth. Expander opens even on the slightest sound so everything is still captured. You don't hear any room tone behind when the signal is present because it is masked seriously by a very loud signal.

The panels can be taken apart of course and used for their more normal lowering spill tasks and you no longer have a vocal booth taking up valuable space. The panels can be stored against the wall so they too disappear and you get all your room space again for other situations when that is needed.

I've had the original Reflexion Filter for years and years, and to me it totally does what it says on the tin. But it is very expensive considering that with a little effort, you can get the same result using heavy blankets or similar. However, it's looks cool and is quick to set up. It's also very convenient for bringing with you to location recordings. 

My room is well damped in the mid/highs, but the filter does tighten up the sound considerably without causing an overdamped, voice-in-the-head, type of sound. So in my room, I don't use any extra blankets/duvets when recording vocals. 

If I was starting over, I would probably get one of the cheaper, lighter products though. 


Sven

Jeff Evans


The weird thing is that for $300 you could buy quite a lot of absorbing panels and maybe a bass trap. Place the panels carefully and you could change the whole sound of your space for the better if it is not so good. That seems like a better alternative to me than having a poorer sounding room with a reflection filter over in the corner. 

To me, room treatment does not really compete with these products. Reflection filters do nothing in the low-mids/lows, so a bass trap achives a wholly different goal. Also, to treat a room with auralex foam to the point where the damping would be comparable to close-in damping like the filters do, your room would end up being totally overdamped for other purposes. 

Here's the version I bought bundled with the SE X1 mic and the SoS review.

For my needs it's a perfect and tidy solution.  It doesnt have the weight issues of the other one.  It still cost me about £150 but for me it was worth it. 

Of course there are other free alternatives blankets etc, but for those that don't have the luxury of being able to spend a lot of money on hi end preamps and Mics, it's a great alternative.

http://www.soundonsound.c.../articles/x1bundle.htm

Danny Danzi
Honest Paul, with the right mic on the right voice at close range, you seriously have to have a problem in that room to literally hear it messing up a voice on a recording.

I may be coming at this from a different direction, but I have to respectfully disagree.


First, you'd be surprised at how bad some rooms are. People record in really bad spaces. As someone that grew up working in purpose built studios I find it disturbing, but that's a different topic. As someone that has designed a few studios (some of which even worked), and been asked to help correct quite a few studios (both critical listening and recording spaces), I can tell you there are some really bad rooms out there, and $300 is not a lot to spend to fix them!


The problems can be mitigated for less, but some folks do not wish to spend the time building gobos, or even draping moving blankets on mic stands. To each their own.


For the record, but not directly OT, I don't really like the sound of most of the reflection filter type designs. You have to know quite a bit about selection and placement to get them to sound good - and if you know all that stuff you may not need one<G>!


I have a space right now that is pretty bad - not awful, but bad enough that I do have to think about it. I use a music stand covered with old Sonex panels to provide some noise reduction and isolation. It's a real poor man's gobo<G>!


Second - you might be surprised at how many folks do not have the microphone they need to record their voices. Microphones, good microphones anyway, are still not cheap. And that makes it a bit tricky! My microphone locker is modest, but I can usually find something that can works. When I can't then I rent what I really want<G>!


All this to say that you aren't wrong - the key to recording is the proper microphone in the proper spot. With these two dragons bested you minimize the need for compression or filters. (All this assumes that you have a good performance to record<G>!)


But, by the same token I'm not sure I think it is good advice to dismiss, out of hand, something like the SE Reflexion Filter. It is a tool, and in the proper hands, used properly, it can be a really good tool.


That's all...