Live room design strategy

brandondrury · Post by **brandondrury** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 2:04 pm

Hello all,

I think I understand the basics to getting a control room in great acoustical shape. The journey may be a pain in the rear torso, but I think it's acheivable. I've ordered test software, a test microphone, a bajillion sq feet of 4" 4lb Rockwool, and I'm ready to work.

The live room is a different can of worms, it seams and I'm not sure if the same concepts are important (but I'm assuming they are).

My live room is much much smaller than I would like it to be, but it will have to suffice until I can upgrade to a larger building.

The room is rectangle and measures 11x15x9. Obviously this is way too small for high quality major label drums. The comb filtering is a nitemare (I'm assuming at the moment and will test when my tools come in). It just seams like a bad thing when a snare's early reflection is about 6 ms.

My plans are to finish the floor in parquet hardwood and cover it with polyurethane. The ceiling is a drop ceiling. However, where drums will usually be placed, I considered the idea of having the dead end of a live end / dead end system. Basically, the thoughts were to kill mega short early reflections as much as I can with a stupid amount of Rockwool. However, I was thinking of going with diffusion on any areas that have a slightly longer first reflection.

I'm not sure if an early reflection that is 20 ms (10 feet down and 10 feet back) is acceptable either, but it certainly seams more pleasing than wall being 2 feet from a crash cymbol.

Is my live end / dead end idea logical?

Should I just kill the whole room?

It's important to note that this live room is hooked to an open kitchen with the only divider being a counter. (Open kitchen being defined as basically the same room with a 6 foot counter partioning the two rooms) I intend to leave this open as this nearly doubles the cubic footage of the room. I could draw it if necessary. My thoughts are that it would be nearly impossible to predict what this kitchen would do acoustically to the rectangle room that I intend to use as a live room. For all practical purposes, I think we could consider the live room and the kitchen to be one larger room. The kitchen has cabinets that are at all sorts of angles and the fridge and oven seam to throw off things quite a bit as well.

I hope this makes sense. I wish I was a little more educated on the subject (I'm getting there). My general thoughts are 2 foot reflections are bad....30 foot reflections are not so bad ...in most cases.

I'm not sure how "live" this room should be. I'll be doing drums, guitar overdubs, and vocal overdubs in it. I've left my previous rooms how they were in the past and generally found certain instruments to be horrid... mainly cymbals and cranked electric guitar. If it's going to be live, it needs to be live and pleasing. Otherwise, I'll just take my chances with cursing reverb plugins.

Brandon Drury

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 1:40 am

Dont fool yourself. You can get a GREAT drum sound from a room of that size. I;ve got people loving the drum sound I am getting from my itty bitty 10x12x8 room.

you have more volume so you will get an even bigger sound.

All the same principles apply just in different ways. Angled walls are still needed.

Matter of fact my room hase 2 walls with angled surfaces, 2 walls with absorptive surfaces, a dry ceiling and of course a hardwood (wet/live) floor.

Nice even balances, Great snare sound. That wood on the walls really brings out the bigness of the snre.

Of course I chin and grin cuz micing drums is Quick and fast. I Love my tom sound. Big and tight

Bryan Giles

brandondrury · Post by **brandondrury** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 11:50 am

This is great news! I'll work hard on my testing and acoustic work to get a great room. The fact that I know it "can" sound good is motivation enough for me to work my ass off to achieve the great sound.

It seams my biggest issues were with cymbals. They sounded like crap in the room. Always harsh and overly midrangy. When I hear nearly any professional recording from any era I hear nice, sweet cymbals. Mine always seam to be just wrong.

I'm using a pair of Oktava MC012 small condensors. Soon I'll have another AKG 414 which I would assume to be a stepup in most cases, but I think the room was a larger culprit than the mics.

Brandon

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 11:29 pm

I have always found the 414 useful on Cymbals. Contrary to many a user I despise them on Vocals. But then again that is MY personal taste.

Anyway, due to the neutralization of the room, the cymbals sound much more alive than they did before. I can actually do a nice jazz mic setup now and get a nice clean 4 mic drum setup.

The over heads really do a nice job of capturing the cymbals and the character of the toms.

Bryan Giles

brandondrury · Post by **brandondrury** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 12:48 am

The over heads really do a nice job of capturing the cymbals and the character of the toms

Regardless of the room, this is only true if you have a drummer who can balance their kit properly while playing.

Once again, great on the cymbals. I'm excited to get my room in order.

Thanks,
Brandon Drury

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 1:45 am

I agree to a point. I have had the pleasure of working with some great drummers and a bad reverbarant room always tends to cloud the sound field being picked up by the OH mics. So when mix time comes I wind up doing more EQ'ing than necessary to give a nice open sound to what they have picked up.

When I have had the pleasure of working in "corrected" rooms in the past (Same drummer(s)) I thoroughly enjoyed the ease of which I was able to get a great sound with minimal effort.

Even in my present "converted" location, before the build, OH's were cloudy Toms a tad muddy, after the build Nice and open and transparent as it were.

I was able to enjoy the kit (as it were)

Bryan Giles

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 11:20 am

Brandon, "Always harsh and overly midrangy" - exactly how/where were your overheads set, distance from ceiling, from each other, from cymbals, etc - and, did the kit sound that bad when you were in the room with it? ... Steve

brandondrury · Post by **brandondrury** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 4:08 pm

Maybe this isn't a great example in the purist community, but I've always found the sound of the Metallica Load cymbals and hihats to be especially pleasing. I'm going to assume that this is a standard for pleasant cymbal sounds.

Take the reciprocal of those and you'll come closer to what I hear with cymbals. I've had one project where the cymbals were better and that was simply do to the fact that the drummer went very easy on the cymbals compared to the original bashers. Obviously, different drummers and drumsets all sound different. However, there is a common character to all of them and it is seldom what I'm looking for.

To answer your question about what I hear in the room with my own ears, the cymbals are raging and rude. That's the best way I can describe them. There is something in the low mids that makes the overall drum sound dull and unpolished, but there is something in the 1k-3k range that is very tough to pull out that usually blows as well.

Tonight, I finished about 2/3 the room in parquet hardwood flooring. I can already tell a big difference in acoustics. I have a monitoring system in the adjacent room with a large walkway. The sound of the music on the monitors was much different. Something was more pleasing about it. Obviously, I'm not done but I can see how finishing the floor, covering my ceiling in rockwool, and placing absorbers in the right places could make a huge difference in the end.

Overall, I think the drums sound so bad because it's a small room with no treatment. That seams to seldom work.

Brandon

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 9:19 pm

Now You are feeling us

Wehn you calm down all those freq's from bouncing as much and all the phase cancellation you are hearing 9were?) then you will hear your drums in a much better light.

Back in my guerilla recording days I had to walk a room to find the null point and then i'd set the drums up in that point of the room and record. THANK GOD I dont have to do that anymore.

But it worked...As best as was possible....

Bryan Giles

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Thu Jul 15, 2004 2:00 am

You're right about the untreated room - however, the CR also sounds like it may have a problem, otherwise you should have heard the same crap there as you did in the room with the drums -

The other part of my question (un-answered yet) was about mic placement - close to the ceiling, or further away? Tight X-Y pattern with the pair of Oktava's, or spread apart? Are these a matched pair, or just two off the shelf (you can get them either way, but matched pairs cost a bit more; these particular mics aren't known for their uniformity unless bought in matched pairs)

When micing drums, even with a tight X-Y pattern you can get phasing problems (at higher frequencies) with as little as 1/4" distance between mic capsules (and it's impossible to get them even that close) so that's one area where problems can arise. Placing the mics away from each other can bring the phasing problem down to even lower frequencies. The more mics you add to the kit, the worse these problems can sound if not compensated for with positioning, both of the kit within the room and of each individual mic, ad nauseum...

However, your comments about the sound of the kit within the room tells me that no amount of mic placement will fix things til the room sounds better, so I'd have to say "rock on", and see how much improvement the treatments you're doing can give - once you can hear a good sound in the room, then's the time for all the nit-picky stuff I mentioned earlier... Steve

fucanay · Post by **fucanay** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 5:05 pm

Well this thread describes my problems exactly. Now the problem is, what to do about it?

The comments about rude cymbals and impossible mid range and muddy all around, is exactly the problem I'm having.

And the worst thing is, is that I can't find 703 for a decent price around here. (Bay Area, Ca) The place that was listed on Homerecording.com wanted $1.92 sq/ft for 2". That is a bit steep for me right now, as I have a feeling, I really need a good amount of it to treat this room.

Thanks for the info though.

If you all wouldn't mind, could you look at this thread to give me an idea of where I would place the 703/814/rockwool, if I did manage to get some.

fucanay

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 1:39 am

Well for us frugal minded folk, I used semi-rigid Rockwool and covered it in cloth as I need to. With fabric running me 1.49/yard for broad cloth and 1.99/yd for muslin, it worked out well for me

Bryan Giles