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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 18, 2019 21:43:44 GMT -6
I came across this article by Ethan Winer: realtraps.com/art_booth.htm I'm potentially moving to LA with some musicians and would plan to set up a home-recording space. The 3 of us would find a 4BR house and use the masterBR as the studio. In my current home, I record vocals in a fully treated 5'x8' walk-in closet that has been stuffed with over a foot of R-30 on all sides, covered with an additional 2" of 703. It is DEAD, but I often find that vocals recorded in pro studios are easier to mix than what I'm recording. Ethan says that a 1500 cubic ft room is about the smallest you'd want to record vocals in to avoid comb filtering. This would take up an extra bedroom to do properly, which we wouldn't have. If I move, I'd like to have this recording issue alleviated in the new set-up. Ethan recommends just putting up some gobos in the control room and calling it a day. If I were in a soundproofed studio, I wouldn't mind. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to build that and can't be canceling sessions because my neighbor is mowing the lawn. Any thoughts?? |
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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 18, 2019 22:23:39 GMT -6
I just did some math... if I were to build a booth with 8' vertical, I would have to make it 16'x12' to accommodate that volume. That's a HUGE booth! Is this really necessary? I can't make a 8'x8' pentagon shaped booth?
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Post by Tbone81 on Jun 18, 2019 22:47:28 GMT -6
Dude...you're way over thinking this. Put up some gobo's in the control room/main studio space. Make a little "closet" out of them. Make them mobile so you can move them around as needed. Done.
And don't worry about your neighbors lawn mower, thats going a ruin a take, booth or no booth.
edit: your biggest problem is going to be paying the $3000+ rent on a 4br house  |
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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 18, 2019 23:01:56 GMT -6
edit: your biggest problem is going to be paying the $3000+ rent on a 4br house Bartending class, here i come!! |
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Post by drbill on Jun 18, 2019 23:17:56 GMT -6
There was another thread about this exact topic. How small can a voice booth be. Wasn't too long ago.
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Post by sirthought on Jun 19, 2019 0:58:09 GMT -6
You are seriously overthinking this. You don't even have a space yet. In your main space focus on the essentials for tracking the rhythm section and getting the bones down as clean as is possible. If you need to do vocals during those takes, just set up a basic mic setup and don't worry about that being the final take. I have used one of those Monoprice vocal iso shield thingys successfully, but that depends on how loud the group is. And when you're ready to track a vocal take just do it in the main space.
If you have a room that can accomodate large gobos, great. But in most living room studio situations you're not going to want a huge booth sitting about the majority of the time.
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Post by jeremygillespie on Jun 19, 2019 9:36:08 GMT -6
I’d just add that a completely dead room isn’t great for vocals IME
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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 19, 2019 11:23:02 GMT -6
You are seriously overthinking this. You don't even have a space yet. In your main space focus on the essentials for tracking the rhythm section and getting the bones down as clean as is possible. If you have a room that can accomodate large gobos, great. But in most living room studio situations you're not going to want a huge booth sitting about the majority of the time. Yes, I don't have a space yet. This is why I need to be thinking about this now. I'd rather have a vision of what I want/need, and then find a place that can accommodate the vision. If I move in somewhere and feel trapped from an engineering standpoint, then the whole pilgrimage becomes a bust and I'm not gonna be able to comfortably start a business. I should add that we aren't tracking anything at home except electric guitars/bass and vocals for Hip-Hop inspired soul/blues music (saying Hip-Hop always makes me feel like a black sheep on RGO). I 100% intend to book a studio if we need drums, although Slate Drums and my Roland electric kit are REALLY killing it for the convenience. Aside: I've found that layering sampled kicks and snares on top of Slate is a great way to get an articulate hi-hat/crash sound at home while retaining the grit I need to be convincing within the genre. We are a collection of Dilla freaks and the swing my Roland kit allows for when programming is unparalleled In regards to the gobos, it would certainly be easier to do this than building a wooden room. That said, a booth offers a prestige factor that could be handy in such a competitive recording scene. I love it when people come into my current Chicago studio and say "wow, this is more than a home studio." Also, no matter how well I treat the control room, it would kill my professionalism to say "we need to re-track because kids were playing outside." I'm repeatedly getting the comment that I'm "overthinking" but don't understand how isolation isn't an incredibly valid concern |
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Post by johneppstein on Jun 19, 2019 11:42:44 GMT -6
I came across this article by Ethan Winer: realtraps.com/art_booth.htm I'm potentially moving to LA with some musicians and would plan to set up a home-recording space. The 3 of us would find a 4BR house and use the masterBR as the studio. In my current home, I record vocals in a fully treated 5'x8' walk-in closet that has been stuffed with over a foot of R-30 on all sides, covered with an additional 2" of 703. It is DEAD, but I often find that vocals recorded in pro studios are easier to mix than what I'm recording. Ethan says that a 1500 cubic ft room is about the smallest you'd want to record vocals in to avoid comb filtering. This would take up an extra bedroom to do properly, which we wouldn't have. If I move, I'd like to have this recording issue alleviated in the new set-up. Ethan recommends just putting up some gobos in the control room and calling it a day. If I were in a soundproofed studio, I wouldn't mind. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to build that and can't be canceling sessions because my neighbor is mowing the lawn. Any thoughts?? First thought is don't ever believe anything Ethan says without at least triple checking it with sources that are actually reliable.
Second thought is that we have a 3 bedroom house. Master bedroom is the control room (where my lead guitarist/music partner also sleeps), living room is the studio live room. I tend to use the "hall" area outside the control room as a vocal booth. It's not exactly "hall shaped" though - more like an irregular polygon with the 3 bedrooms and a small bathroom, plus the mic closet and stairs opening off it.
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Post by Tbone81 on Jun 19, 2019 13:13:23 GMT -6
In regards to the gobos, it would certainly be easier to do this than building a wooden room. That said, a booth offers a prestige factor that could be handy in such a competitive recording scene. I love it when people come into my current Chicago studio and say "wow, this is more than a home studio." Also, no matter how well I treat the control room, it would kill my professionalism to say "we need to re-track because kids were playing outside." I'm repeatedly getting the comment that I'm "overthinking" but don't understand how isolation isn't an incredibly valid concern So I say this as an LA native for 36 years who had a really nice home studio built out of a 2 car garage. (By "really nice" I mean everyone was impressed with how it looked when they walked in the door).
For sound isolation the best single thing you can do is find a house on a quiet suburban street. Away from Busses, Airports, Trains etc. Those are the things that are going to kill your recordings. Lawn mowers are annoying, but you're neighbors are predictable people who have gardners come at the same time every week (usually waay too early in the morning). It's a relatively easy thing to work around. One thing thats not easy to work around is noise from the A/C. That can be really detrimental. Try and find a house where the master bedroom isn't right next to the outdoor condenser/fan. Those vibrations are impossible to kill and they easily travel to near by bedrooms. Don't underestimate how much you're going to be running the A/C. LA has two seasons: Hot and less Hot.
As far as prestige is concerned...I think your better off (sonically and financially) spending the money on really nice acoustic treatment and pro studio furniture. If it weren't a rental you'd be able to builld something nice, but unfortunately you're going to be greatly constrained by that fact.
Also, if you're looking to make a legit business of this in LA, and not a hobby, go into this with your eyes open. I don't want to discourage you but you need to have a realistic outlook if you want to succeed. LA is a tough place to live, in all respects. The music scene basically sucks balls. Add to that that there are a million home studios, and pro studios, and million more wanna-be producers and engineers, and 20 million rude, angry, stressed out people who do not care about you and you'll see that LA is very unforgiving place. You may know all this already, and again, not trying to bum you out or discourage you but if you truly want to make it a business in LA you need to know what you're up against.
As an alternative you may want to look into renting a nicer lockout rehearsal studio and use it for recording. Its not without its pitfalls but I've seen it done nice. You'll have to put your name on a waiting list to get into somewhere good but I can recommend some places if you PM me.
Best of luck.
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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 19, 2019 15:49:32 GMT -6
So I say this as an LA native for 36 years who had a really nice home studio built out of a 2 car garage. (By "really nice" I mean everyone was impressed with how it looked when they walked in the door).
For sound isolation the best single thing you can do is find a house on a quiet suburban street. Away from Busses, Airports, Trains etc. Those are the things that are going to kill your recordings. Lawn mowers are annoying, but you're neighbors are predictable people who have gardners come at the same time every week (usually waay too early in the morning). It's a relatively easy thing to work around. One thing thats not easy to work around is noise from the A/C. That can be really detrimental. Try and find a house where the master bedroom isn't right next to the outdoor condenser/fan. Those vibrations are impossible to kill and they easily travel to near by bedrooms. Don't underestimate how much you're going to be running the A/C. LA has two seasons: Hot and less Hot.
As far as prestige is concerned...I think your better off (sonically and financially) spending the money on really nice acoustic treatment and pro studio furniture. If it weren't a rental you'd be able to builld something nice, but unfortunately you're going to be greatly constrained by that fact.
Also, if you're looking to make a legit business of this in LA, and not a hobby, go into this with your eyes open. I don't want to discourage you but you need to have a realistic outlook if you want to succeed. LA is a tough place to live, in all respects. The music scene basically sucks balls. Add to that that there are a million home studios, and pro studios, and million more wanna-be producers and engineers, and 20 million rude, angry, stressed out people who do not care about you and you'll see that LA is very unforgiving place. You may know all this already, and again, not trying to bum you out or discourage you but if you truly want to make it a business in LA you need to know what you're up against.
As an alternative you may want to look into renting a nicer lockout rehearsal studio and use it for recording. Its not without its pitfalls but I've seen it done nice. You'll have to put your name on a waiting list to get into somewhere good but I can recommend some places if you PM me.
Best of luck.
Thank you for taking the time to write this! There's a ton of good stuff in here that I hadn't considered. |
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Post by brenta on Jun 21, 2019 6:57:07 GMT -6
I think the biggest consideration should be the differences in workflow. I’ve had a 1 room studio and studios with live rooms/booths, and the way they require you to work is completely different. There are some engineers who prefer the one room setup, Sylvia Massy is one that comes to mind.
The positives to a one room studio is how much easier it makes it to communicate with the artist. The negatives are that it makes it more difficult to get tones and tweak EQs and compressors.
With the one room studio, especially with drums, I typically record several bars, then have the artist stop playing so we can listen back, make mic and processor adjustments, then repeat until we are happy with tones. With a live room or booth obviously you can make adjustments listening through the monitors while the artist is playing live. You also need to be careful of feedback in a one room setup, which means unrecord enabling tracks every time you want to listen to something on the monitors.
I’m surprised you would be getting problematic resonances with a vocalist in a booth with 14” of broadband absorption. Is the ceiling treated too?
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Post by johneppstein on Jun 22, 2019 19:50:54 GMT -6
I’d just add that a completely dead room isn’t great for vocals IME I'd take it a step further and say that a completely dead room sucks dog balls for nearly anything and is totally wrong for vocals.
Totally dead rooms are really difficult to work in and really screw up an artist's perceptions.
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Post by chessparov on Jun 23, 2019 2:24:42 GMT -6
I’d just add that a completely dead room isn’t great for vocals IME No converting Funeral Homes, to recording studios then! Chris |
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Post by MorEQsThanAnswers on Jun 23, 2019 12:16:35 GMT -6
I’m surprised you would be getting problematic resonances with a vocalist in a booth with 14” of broadband absorption. Is the ceiling treated too? Yea the ceiling was treated too. It was basically an "acoustic cave" for lack of a better explanation. Like John was suggesting, it probably had more to do with me killing the life of the room than dealing with phase anomalies. I was in my head (for a change...) and over-treated it. Something I noticed about working with those recordings is that I was using a lot more "slap delay" than I was used to. Lesson learned: Even when you are going for dry, reflections aren't to be taken for kryptonite. A love-hate relationship with them will make you a more complete (and relaxed) recordist. |
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