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Old 08-23-2012, 12:10 AM   #1
fatfro
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Default The importance of room acoustics

I really only have one room available to do my recording, editing, mixing, and mastering in. I still consider myself a beginner, but I have a few things under my belt. I have come to understand the importance of the room for recording and mixing. I am convinced that I should properly treat my room to get the best sound I can. It seems to me that most people make their mixing rooms less lively than their recording rooms. Am I right? In my situation where my room is forced to be both a recording space and mixing room, should I be aiming somewhere in the middle? Or should I just deaden the room? Does any one have a similar situation? Come on you know you do.
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Old 08-23-2012, 12:45 AM   #2
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I've been really lazy to do anything about the room, used both for recording and mixing. Partly because doing anything about 0-150hz really takes so much space. Low end is most difficult to get rid of resonances.

I don't see your point about making recording space less treated. I want it all as dead as possible - not having conflicting ambience to treat in the mix.

My focus right now is to decide about better monitors, with good abilities to adjust to room. Active nearfield monitors with many switches to adjust placement and narrow sweetspot making room less important.

Just as important is your listening position in the room. If in the node or trough in the low end. So some calculations on wavelength and stuff can help out. Just moving around in the room helps too.

I find books really well worth the money. One that really takes a large part talking about listening situation and environment is "Mixing secrets for the small studio" by Mike Senior. Really, really good.
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Old 08-23-2012, 01:32 AM   #3
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A well acoustically treated room does not mean a 'dead' room.

Done properly it is a 'Controlled' room.

My new control room is a RFZ design ... that includes plenty of treatment, including corner traps, wall absorption, and ceiling clouds.

It is the single BEST thing that I could have done.

Of course, I had a top professional design it for me.

Even though I still have additional 'tweaking' to do, the workability, and translation to the outside world [without having to guess], is nothing short of spectacular ... and very enjoyable !

Again, a 'dead' room could easily be considered a poorly treated one.
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Old 08-23-2012, 07:37 AM   #4
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Unless the room has an inviting ambience and sounds really good in itself I would err on the side of dead instead of lively. In my experience it's the lesser evil. Leave some reflecting surfaces though, it should not feel claustrophobic.
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Old 08-23-2012, 08:03 AM   #5
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I would agree to lean on a slightly dead room, rather than too lively sound. Especially when the room is used for recording, as you cannot remove the sound of the room from the recording.

Note that the two most perceptual characteristics of a room are: 1) bass response as dictated by the room dimensions, placement of the listener, speaker and/or microphone. 2) Reverberation times. Ideally you want to control the reverberation times in a linear fashion across the audible bandwidth. Low frequencies are difficult to control. Most people end up over absorbing frequencies from about 500 Hz. and up, and do not address the frequencies below.
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Old 08-23-2012, 09:16 AM   #6
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Live music normally happens in "rooms" doesn't it?
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Old 08-23-2012, 09:36 AM   #7
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Live music normally happens in "rooms" doesn't it?
Yeah but usually not in a 8' tall small bedroom! ; )

Clap your hands in a small bedroom and you can usually hear that ringing noise...that's part of what needs to be corrected.
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Old 08-23-2012, 11:09 AM   #8
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Hey Nip, thanks for the suggestion on that book; I'll check it out. Looks good. I've noticed some people will opt to go for a completely dead room but most go with a not completely dead attitude. I can't really say where I fall in until I can experiment with each, but just putting two and two together it makes sense to me not to go completely dead. Then again as someone mentioned here if you don't like the sound of the room, then going completely dead might be a viable option. I know I need to treat my room to control frequencies especially the low ones (no surprise there), but I don't want to start the project until I know what I'm doing.

My room's dimensions: L 13' W 9' H 8'
I have a bed in my room, twin size, but that's really about it.
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Old 08-24-2012, 05:25 AM   #9
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A dead room could be acceptble for a live room if that is what you want. Certain instruments (eg an acoustic guitar) would sound odd without room ambience or any reflections. You may have to use tricks like placing a plywood or hardboard sheet under the player's chair for some reflections and you almost certainly would have to add artificial room reverb or ambience onto it during mixing.

The problem is that it is no use just deadening the higher frequencies and mids and not the bottom five octaves as you might end up just accentuating the rooms LF problems -once you've dried it out, they're there for all to hear. Ideally deal with the room's bass issues, then it's relatively easy to dry stuff out with baffles and screens.


I'd certainly recommend against having a too dry room for mixing in as you will tend to overcompensate with artificial reverberation to make your recording sound more natural (this can also happen when mixing with headphones). You need ambience, but it needs to be frequency-balanced. Ambience with minimum resonance and cancellations (eigentones and comb-filtering) is the ideal.


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Old 08-24-2012, 05:31 AM   #10
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Remember LEDE rooms?

A FWIW. I recorded some demo tracks in the home studio of a Well Known Rockstar years ago and he had the two worst things I have ever experienced.

JBL midfield monitors (YUK) and a room that was pretty close to being an anechoic chamber.

Fortunately he also had a handy chapel one floor down which was great for drums and later the guitar amps and the vocals.

The mixes we walked away with were horrendous, mostly due to the shite performance of the JBLs. Ended up SO bass heavy.
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Old 08-24-2012, 05:34 AM   #11
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Best things I ever did for my productions and they are all acoustic related..

1.Put the monitors on concrete blocks
2.Did as much acoustic treatment as I could muster..which pretty much amounted to putting all my furniture in the studio.And hanging some absorbtion above my head
3.Got a set of small pc speakers to check my mixes on at the flick of a switch

Since doing these things..my mixes have improved exponentially..and I havent bought a single piece of equipment beyond what I started with.
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Old 08-24-2012, 05:37 AM   #12
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Anechoic rooms have their uses but it's not for aesthetic recordings

They took me in the one at Salford Uni when I had my admission interviews and it's not a pleasant acoustic space


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Old 08-24-2012, 07:56 AM   #13
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in space, no one can hear you scream... dave
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Old 08-24-2012, 08:42 AM   #14
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Yeah - had a little schmooze in an anechoic chamber and I have never felt so claustrophobic in my life!

An experience I don't care to repeat.
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Old 08-24-2012, 08:45 AM   #15
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I'd love to go into one of them chambers..mad I'd say
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Old 08-24-2012, 09:41 AM   #16
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I haven't been in an actual chamber but when I got my ears tested it was in a special soundproof booth that gave me that claustrophobic feeling - creepy!
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Old 08-24-2012, 12:33 PM   #17
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Quote:
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The problem is that it is no use just deadening the higher frequencies and mids and not the bottom five octaves as you might end up just accentuating the rooms LF problems -once you've dried it out, they're there for all to hear. Ideally deal with the room's bass issues, then it's relatively easy to dry stuff out with baffles and screens.

>
I think I'm on the same page as your are on this. The more I record and learn to listen the more I realize how tremendously important the low end frequencies are. I'm starting to get the attitude that bass comes first, then deal with everything else.
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Old 08-24-2012, 12:38 PM   #18
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3.Got a set of small pc speakers to check my mixes on at the flick of a switch
I would like to do this. Where can I get a "switch"? Thanks
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Old 08-24-2012, 01:37 PM   #19
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I would like to do this. Where can I get a "switch"? Thanks

You need a monitor controller.

Mackie "Big Knob" and Presonus "Monitor /station" are examples...


>
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Old 08-24-2012, 03:13 PM   #20
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I would like to do this. Where can I get a "switch"? Thanks
I use the mpatch 2, works and sounds absolutely fine and is not too expensive;

http://www.thomann.de/gb/sm_pro_audio_mpatch_2.htm
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Old 08-24-2012, 06:58 PM   #21
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People who whine on about room acoustics being important are in a well paid position or just have too much money

we are nearly at the end of 2012 and guess what, a good song is still more important than a room acoustics or mix
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Old 08-24-2012, 07:53 PM   #22
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People who whine on about room acoustics being important are in a well paid position or just have too much money

we are nearly at the end of 2012 and guess what, a good song is still more important than a room acoustics or mix
Ooooooo good one.
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Old 08-24-2012, 09:17 PM   #23
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People who whine on about room acoustics being important are in a well paid position or just have too much money

we are nearly at the end of 2012 and guess what, a good song is still more important than a room acoustics or mix
I'm not well paid. (Who in audio is anyway, except for a few real bigshots?) But I will argue to my death that the benefits of accoustic treatment overshadows almost anything else when it comes down to actually making things work in the studio.

Of course the song, performance, vibe, etc is paramount. No one I know of is claiming anything else - well paid or not. Still, musicians and producers actually care about the way their stuff is presented.

Recorded music is an artform. Art is an estethic practice, and so the presentation is really important. There is no way of getting around this.

I have never encountered a musician that did not care about the sound of the final recordning. If I ever did I would consider it a pose :-).
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Old 08-24-2012, 11:23 PM   #24
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A good song is a good song
A bad mix CAN NOT make a good song bad
A bad recording CAN NOT make a good song bad
Bad acoustics CAN NOT make a good song bad
A good mix CAN NOT make a bad song good
A good recording CAN NOT make a bad song good
Good acoustics CAN NOT make a bad song good

The math of that is pretty simple, if it is a good song who gives a shit ?

(Lets be clear here, monitoring in a room one is used to will lead to decent enough mixing and treating the room will give minimal results, recording in an untreated room is easy enough to get around by using DIY blockers and dynamic mics, in fact unless like i said , you are making a lot of money , then stop wasting your time and energy worrying about acoustics and write some good songs)
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Old 08-24-2012, 11:28 PM   #25
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Oh and on top of that, get in an IRC channel with a bunch of self minded idiots, when you do a mix send it out, if something is wrong it will be pulled out almost immediately by all those people on various different systems in various different rooms, and guess what, that is about 12 billion times more accurate than the best treated room you will ever have at home (Yes at home, nobody in the best rooms at Abbey or Nashville are using Reaper hahahaha)
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Old 08-24-2012, 11:35 PM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gpunk_w View Post
A good song is a good song
A bad mix CAN NOT make a good song bad
A bad recording CAN NOT make a good song bad
Bad acoustics CAN NOT make a good song bad
A good mix CAN NOT make a bad song good
A good recording CAN NOT make a bad song good
Good acoustics CAN NOT make a bad song good
You forgot a few ... such as

A good recording and good mix CAN make a good song BETTER!!

Quote:
The math of that is pretty simple, if it is a good song who gives a shit ?
So you're not emotionally affected by 'sound' itself, only by the music/arrangement? I feel a little bad for you if so Not to mention that actually, it's folly to try and separate the 'sound' of something from the 'musical content' of something ... imo. It's all intertwined, all important.
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Old 08-25-2012, 02:50 AM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fatfro View Post
I would like to do this. Where can I get a "switch"? Thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by planetnine View Post
You need a monitor controller.

Mackie "Big Knob" and Presonus "Monitor /station" are examples...


>
For once,and it pains me,but I have to contradict Mr.Nine here.I dont have a controller as much as I would like and surely desreve one..what I did was this..

On my soundcard I have 2 1/4" TRS outputs-monitors and headphones..what I did was buy a stereo Y splitter and split the headphone channel.

On my headphone output I have ..my cans obviously and my pc speakers..I have set up a second stereo output from Reaper..identical to the main 2 buss and I have a keyboard shortcut set up to toggle between my main mix and my headphone mix.My headphone mix for tracking is identical to wahtever the main mix is only lower in volume..so when it come to mixing I just swith on the pc speakers..and by toggling the keyboard shortcut I can hop between both effortlessy.

Cost..€5
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Old 08-25-2012, 03:03 AM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gpunk_w View Post
A good song is a good song
A bad mix CAN NOT make a good song bad
A bad recording CAN NOT make a good song bad
Bad acoustics CAN NOT make a good song bad
A good mix CAN NOT make a bad song good
A good recording CAN NOT make a bad song good
Good acoustics CAN NOT make a bad song good

The math of that is pretty simple, if it is a good song who gives a shit ?

(Lets be clear here, monitoring in a room one is used to will lead to decent enough mixing and treating the room will give minimal results, recording in an untreated room is easy enough to get around by using DIY blockers and dynamic mics, in fact unless like i said , you are making a lot of money , then stop wasting your time and energy worrying about acoustics and write some good songs)
Your maths is bang on and I agree that mixing in an enviroment you've become accustomed to will go a long way towards getting the sound there,but poo pooing any form of acoustic treatment is naive.
I'm as broke as they come but I'm doing it bit by bit..I can testify that it does indeed make it easier to mix in a room with more controlled acoustics.
I would just tweak your final sentence by saying..by all means concentrate on writing some decent songs..but also..do some research(of the google kind) and you will learn about a whole heap of things you can do to improve your room acoustics for free.EG..I moved almost the entire contents of my house into my studio..beds..furniture..everything..and I can now mix bass like a champ.
Its surely a waste of time and money investing in any of this when you're starting out..I was 2 years mixing before I realized its importance..but it isnt a waste of time then.
And besides..you cant just write round the clock..well I can..but I dont..its fun and educational and will only benefit your craft to learn as much as you possibly can about every single aspect of music production...so that what I do in my spare time...well spares the wrong word.I have none of that.Leisure time lets call it.
Beats watching the telly.
(I count loitering on this forum as research too)
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Old 08-25-2012, 04:24 AM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gpunk_w View Post
A good song is a good song
A bad mix CAN NOT make a good song bad
A bad recording CAN NOT make a good song bad
Bad acoustics CAN NOT make a good song bad
A good mix CAN NOT make a bad song good
A good recording CAN NOT make a bad song good
Good acoustics CAN NOT make a bad song good

The math of that is pretty simple, if it is a good song who gives a shit ?

(Lets be clear here, monitoring in a room one is used to will lead to decent enough mixing and treating the room will give minimal results, recording in an untreated room is easy enough to get around by using DIY blockers and dynamic mics, in fact unless like i said , you are making a lot of money , then stop wasting your time and energy worrying about acoustics and write some good songs)
Well, it's always better to be rich and healthy - than poor and sick.

So disregarding the recording and the mix, the mix room and the rest is kind of off topic. The topic here is the mixing room.

But otherwise the musical content is the most important part - I agree fully.

My aim is to write songs - and possibly do as good demos on those as possible and see where it leads - possibly getting an artist interested in recording it. The last link of the song to the listener is the mix so it's important - getting as balanced for various monitors and listening devices as possible. Don't forget that. But a good arrangement is probably more important - then the mix is just about setting faders to 0dB and you are done. Nothing competes over the same frequency space.
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Old 08-25-2012, 04:33 AM   #30
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my room has no acoustical treatment but is a large room 30'x35 with commercial carpeting. Other than than, nothing and because I do so much direct, I can get pro quality recordings without the artifacts of a bad room. I would not want to mic up a bass guitar in here but for micing vocals, and acoustic guitars I have no problems.
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Old 08-25-2012, 05:42 AM   #31
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Hello, in my 4m x 3.5m room I have only got speaker cloth on the ceiling and 12" of insulation up in the loft (no plaster boards) How useful do you think this is?? Very low (if any) ceiling reflections. I couldn't do a before and after test but will be able to check resonance soon. carpet on floor and soft cover settee and 2 chairs. dave
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Old 08-25-2012, 01:48 PM   #32
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Hello, in my 4m x 3.5m room I have only got speaker cloth on the ceiling and 12" of insulation up in the loft (no plaster boards) How useful do you think this is?? Very low (if any) ceiling reflections. I couldn't do a before and after test but will be able to check resonance soon. carpet on floor and soft cover settee and 2 chairs. dave
This is probably a decent solution in a small room. I would definitely try to throw together a couple of panels for the first wall reflections (l & r) as well, and possibly treat the back wall if there is room to do so.
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Old 08-25-2012, 05:34 PM   #33
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For once,and it pains me,but I have to contradict Mr.Nine here.I dont have a controller as much as I would like and surely desreve one..what I did was this..

On my soundcard I have 2 1/4" TRS outputs-monitors and headphones..what I did was buy a stereo Y splitter and split the headphone channel.

On my headphone output I have ..my cans obviously and my pc speakers..I have set up a second stereo output from Reaper..identical to the main 2 buss and I have a keyboard shortcut set up to toggle between my main mix and my headphone mix.My headphone mix for tracking is identical to wahtever the main mix is only lower in volume..so when it come to mixing I just swith on the pc speakers..and by toggling the keyboard shortcut I can hop between both effortlessy.

Cost..€5

That is (effectively) a hardware monitor controller. You have readily reachable, analogue volume control independent of DAW output level


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Old 08-25-2012, 08:16 PM   #34
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Live music normally happens in "rooms" doesn't it?
ya, and sounds like ass as compared to a mastered track done in a studio.
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Old 08-25-2012, 08:24 PM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gpunk_w View Post
A good song is a good song
A bad mix CAN NOT make a good song bad
A bad recording CAN NOT make a good song bad
Bad acoustics CAN NOT make a good song bad
A good mix CAN NOT make a bad song good
A good recording CAN NOT make a bad song good
Good acoustics CAN NOT make a bad song good

The math of that is pretty simple, if it is a good song who gives a shit ?

(Lets be clear here, monitoring in a room one is used to will lead to decent enough mixing and treating the room will give minimal results, recording in an untreated room is easy enough to get around by using DIY blockers and dynamic mics, in fact unless like i said , you are making a lot of money , then stop wasting your time and energy worrying about acoustics and write some good songs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OxWD...feature=relmfu

personally, i find these songs suck ass. the lyrics are horrible. the melodies are very generic, or ripped off from other popular melodies, the voice is crap. but the production is awesome.

production can't make a shit song become a good one, but it certainly can create the illusion that a crap song is good.

i mean, this is artistically crap, imo, but as a professional crafstman way is very good.

there are worse songs i know, but worse ones with such high production value will be tough to find.

an awesome song recorded badly will still sound ok, but will give the illusion to people that it sucks.

alot of people are tricked by illusion.

alot of people.

sometimes just putting a price tag more expensive, people want it more. sometimes telling people what everyone else buys makes them want it.

if something looks like it is successful, people will assume it is good, and vice versa, in general.

but you can work your way up, and in some cases sounding like garbage, can actually help you out, like say a grunge style like nirvana starting out, where money and polish is more kind of despised. i mean i know they had great engineers on their albums, but sounding amateur for that sort of music is not such a big deal. those youtube videos i posted, if it was some amateur producing the exact same thing, it would be much more apparently shit imo.
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Old 08-27-2012, 08:41 AM   #36
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Default 'good' is so tentative

If (or once) you have a good song ...
what can be done
to make it better,
or to make its performance better,
or to make its recording better?
Those are good (better) questions, aren't they?
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Old 08-27-2012, 04:14 PM   #37
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People who whine on about room acoustics being important are in a well paid position or just have too much money

we are nearly at the end of 2012 and guess what, a good song is still more important than a room acoustics or mix


There is nothing worse than a horribly mixed song. Room acoustics can make it VERY difficult to get a clear representation of the mix. Even good songs can suffer from this. With the software available to tune your rooms and measure them to see where it is you need help, its never been easier to get your room tuned. Not just ARC, but stuff like REW as well.
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Old 08-28-2012, 07:21 AM   #38
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Howzabout a horribly mixed horrible song?
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Old 08-28-2012, 07:23 AM   #39
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Howzabout a horribly mixed horrible song?
A Number One!
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Old 08-28-2012, 10:43 AM   #40
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A good song is a good song
A bad mix CAN NOT make a good song bad
A bad recording CAN NOT make a good song bad
Bad acoustics CAN NOT make a good song bad
A good mix CAN NOT make a bad song good
A good recording CAN NOT make a bad song good
Good acoustics CAN NOT make a bad song good

The math of that is pretty simple, if it is a good song who gives a shit ?

(Lets be clear here, monitoring in a room one is used to will lead to decent enough mixing and treating the room will give minimal results, recording in an untreated room is easy enough to get around by using DIY blockers and dynamic mics, in fact unless like i said , you are making a lot of money , then stop wasting your time and energy worrying about acoustics and write some good songs)
You might consider that the world is a bit larger than the sandbox where you play. There are many musicians and recordists who perform and record songs that they didn't compose. We're talking the whole classical world, the whole world of folk music. Not everyone is a wanna be popstar, ya see.

Then there are plenty of folks who perform and compose in genre where the sound quality is a big part of the emotional impact of the material. Well played solo fingerstyle guitar with a shrill or muddy tone and cheap small room early reflections just doesn't work as well as a rich and compelling representation.

Recording in a room with decent treatment is also a lot easier. A small room with no treatment is a maze of standing waves, cancelling and reinforcing various frequencies in wildly unpredictable patterns, so that moving the mic or source a few inches results in boomy or thin sound. Trying to capture a consistent sound in those conditions is a miserable experience.

Having attempted to solve my recording problems by buying mics, preamps, interfaces, DAW software, and plugins vs room treatment, I'd much rather have room treatment and decent consumer gear than an untreated room and any high end gadget you can offer.

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