This video breaks down some of the basic techniques for setting up a recording room.
“Live room” is commonly understood to be a room where recordings are made. The term comes from “live performance,” though it has also taken on an additional meaning of a room with more reverb, which would have a “live” sound.
So a live room can actually be many things, largely dependent on what’s being recorded in it. A voiceover artist will have very different needs from a drummer, a horn player, a pianist, or a commercial facility that has to sound good for whatever the next client brings in.
So no matter how we tailor the sound of a particular room to suit its purpose, all live rooms should have a starting point of neutrality, where a performance can be reliably and faithfully captured with minimal ambience, since we can always add more ambience in post production or mixdown. If we need to tailor the space for more or less ambience (or for variability) we have the flexibility to do so.
In a household-sized recording room, some familiar strategies will help us out a lot: we want a good mix of bass trapping, absorption, and diffusion. The balance of these will be where we can tailor the sound to a more specific type of recording as needed.
Early reflections will greatly affect the recorded sound. It’s the same concept as in a listening room but instead of reflections between speakers and our ears, the reflections are between the instrument and the microphones. Treatments at these reflection points clean up the recordings quite a bit, almost like bringing the tracks “into focus.”
If you know the pickup pattern of your microphones you can position them so that only one instrument is in the pickup pattern with the other sounds in the mic’s nulls, where the mic is much less sensitive. We can use freestanding panels placed strategically in these paths for even better isolation.
There are 3 main ways to control bleed in a recording. First is placement of instruments in the room. Second is mic technique, or the placement of the mics and the pickup patterns. Third is to use freestanding gobos. All three strategies are closely related.
GIK has many options to help isolate your instruments and maximize flexibility, including our PIB and Freestand panels. Our Alpha panels are particularly useful with a freestanding option because then they are reversible: you can have the plates facing into the room for their wonderful blend of absorption & diffusion, or you can spin them around so the rear absorber faces in to get a drier sound with more absorption and no diffusion.
Bass trapping also benefits recording rooms. This will be less critical for recording high frequency instruments than something like jazz bass or a drum kit, but even the low E on a guitar string is 82Hz, around the same range as voice fundamentals. Thicker bass traps help more for the really low stuff, but even 4” thick bass traps like our 244s help down to this range.
These principles of controlling for the full spectrum of your instruments as well as absorbing early reflections will help you get started and will make an immediate improvement to your recordings.
Make sure you Experiment with your placements for the best result. And if you’d like to fine-tune your strategy to your needs and budget, you can always fill out our free advice form on the website and consult with one of our expert GIK designers.
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244 Bass Trap with FlexRange Technology:
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PIB (Portable Isolation Booth):
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Alpha Series:
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