Moving the studio was a good idea

[solarbird]

I should've done this a while ago.

I've been learning to record via a little studio setup I've been assembling in the library/office/server room at Murkworks North. I've solved a lot of problems since starting, but at the same time, doing anything new has been a big problem, just due to space or lack thereof. Plus, recording in that room means shutting up and baffling the server closet, which - particularly in the summer - means overheating servers, which is no good for anybody. (Particularly not all the users at murkworks.net!) We haven't had any meltdowns yet, but it's been unpleasant.

Plus I can't use the room after 9pm, plus the floor in that room squeeks, plus it gets really hot in the morning (summers, again), plus there's road noise, plus the birds (on the same level) sometimes get into recordings. I have workarounds, but they're kind of a pain in the ass.

At the same time, I've had another couple of small projects ongoing: 1) sorting through the storage/guest room on the top level, fixing up the room, and getting rid of a bunch of stuff we've been keeping for no good reason, and 2) the same, but for the server closet.

Over the last week or so, I've combined all of these problems into one giant clusterproject - and to my surprise, instead of the expected implosion of fail, everything has come together rather nicely! I still have a bunch of stuff to ditch, but I've ditched a lot of things already. The server room still needs a lot of work but is vastly improved, and the servers are running cooler, even in this heat wave. The library/office/studio is now mostly a library and much less crowded. The storage room still has storage (in a closet) but is also a studio that can still be converted into a guest room with a little warning.


New Studio! (Formerly storeroom)
I did my first test recordings this afternoon. I've had one big surprise already: in the library/office/studio, I was essentially unable to record what I hear out of my mandolin. I've come closer over time, with new microphones and a lot of eq work and some filtering, but all that has costs. And the noise floor wasn't really where I wanted it to be.

My first test recording in the former storeroom, recorded flat (mic straight to recording track, no eq, no filters, etc) is better than the best I was able to do in the library studio. I have very little idea why, but I checked with Anna, and it's not just me. The noise floor is a lot lower with a lot less work, too, but that's not the cause.

I'm really, really surprised. I didn't expect this to happen. I thought I was solving some specific issues - and I guess I was - but I didn't know that would happen. Recording is so odd.

It's weird, this project now having a separate room. I wonder if it'll get a name. Criminal Studios?

Anyway, long entry is long. Have another couple of pictures under the cut:


The guest futon, as a couch, with instruments


Monitor Frog is Monitoring

Comments

[hubbit]

The futon is a good idea; its blanketage will help absorb unwanted sounds.

And yes, recording is very odd. Simply moving the microphone can make or break what you pick up. You can't tell this yourself because you are blessed with binaural hearing and a brain that discriminates and filters your sensory input, but very often the microphone (with its single pickup and its lack of sensory compensation) will hear not only your voice or instrument, but also any reverberation of that sound. If the reverberation happens to be out of phase, as is often the case, the reverberation and the original sound will cancel each other out.

I liken it to photography, which is somewhat easier for people to understand. It used to be common for people to register disappointment as they opened their prints and discovered that they were tinted green, or blue, or grey. The level of sunlight affects the visible spectrum quite widely; our human brains filter this information and automatically "correct" it for us, so that we do not perceive the disparity. Film lacks such a brain, and will thus pick up variances in color temperature that we won't notice.

I hate it when I go all scientific. :D

[solarbird]

Oh, I'm familiar with the theory - just the practice is a huge bundle of omgwhat. ^_^ I'm finally going to build the second sound baffle I've had planned, too - this one will be for the window wall. (It was going to be for the window wall in the library, but I had lots of other issues with that...) So that'll help with cancellation as well.

I think this incident has pushed me towards the "dead room" school of recording.

[hubbit]

I may have told you that I am a huge proponent of the "dead room" school of recording.

I had a book on the history of the recording industry up to the 1960s that questioned the wisdom of imposing the acoustic characteristics of one room upon another - say, bringing the concert hall into one's living room - and suggested that since musicians playing in one's living room would not be bringing concert-hall reverberation with them, their recordings should be as "dead" in that respect as their live playing would be in person. I found it hard to argue against that.

It was not until I actually started recording that I understood how reflections could play a part in actual sonic degradation. I have a story that actually blew me away when it happened; today I use it as a lesson for others.

I worked for a local radio program for four years. The studio itself was small; reverberations were tamed with big blocks of soundproofing but they were still there in small amounts. One of our features was a cooking show, in which the presenter would be assisted by an announcer. This announcer also recorded the program, and since it was for AM radio he recorded it with his mic and the host's mic directly mixed to mono. However, he always had to re-record his parts after they were finished, because his own voice was nearly inaudible. Every time. No one could figure it out.

When this announcer left, I took over his spot on this show. I had an ironclad policy of recording each mic on a separate track without mixing, so that I could digitally silence the track recorded from each mic when not in use, to make for a cleaner mono mixdown. It wasn't until I took this cooking show over that I realized why this announcer couldn't record himself: his microphone picked up his voice, but the host's microphone picked up a reflection of the announcer's voice out of phase. When both inputs were mixed together, they canceled each other out.

Sound is a funny, funny thing.

[solarbird]

I also worked at an AM station, one that still played music omgwhat. Anyway, there were some songs we couldn't play for the same reason - the mono mixdown would cancel out some instruments and lead vocals entirely that had been mixed out-of-phase. The book I have on recording says to test on mono-mixdown regularly. I'm not as good about that as I should be, but I do it.

[hubbit]

I used this to my advantage once. It was fun! We had an advertiser that was a national publication. They were advertising themselves in different markets and had assigned different toll-free numbers to different markets so they knew where their ad worked.

I was handed the MP3 of their commercial with the following challenge: I had to mimic the announcer and read a different 800 number from that on the tag. An undubbed version of the bed music was, inexplicably, not available. Could I do it?

I had it done in ten minutes. I took the tag portion, inverted the phase of one channel, and mixed it to mono. Voila, instant announcer removal.

I told my boss how I did it, but asked him NOT to tell the producers of the commercial. If they couldn't figure that one out, they had no business doing audio production. :P

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

it's the Evil Lair. All criminals and Forces of Evil have a Lair.

(yay low noise floor!)

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Sometimes acoustics can be very strange.

How about 'Sweet Ears Studio'?

[solarbird]

I don't get it

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

'sweet ears' is an audio engineer nickname for someone with exceptionally good hearing (and taste) running the sound-boards.

I wanted to become an audio engineer, but the damn school was too expensive. So I fix computers for a living. Still want to do sound stuff, though...

[solarbird]

oi_c_ - yeah, you totally overestimate my abilities here. ^_^ I have no idea what I'm doing. It's all stumble-around-in-the-dark-and-flail! I'm surprised I haven't been eaten by a grue. Or the CHUDs in the crawlspace.

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

Very cool! "I love it when a plan comes together!"

Cathy

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

Recording is odd. Unless you build a room specifically for recording, you will find all kinds of "dead spots" or places where the sound waves bounce off the wall in an ugly way.

Or you may walk into a new room and find it has perfect acoustics.

I'm thankful that, as a drummer, I don't have to worry too much about that stuff, (though there are exceptions.)

[solarbird]

Yeah, srsly. The library sounded good to my ears - but not so much to the microphones. Strange!