Skol303

Doesn't make sense to me either, probably because that's not what I'm saying. Download a 30Hz test tone and play it through your bass amp or over headphones. Does it sound musical? Can you even hear much at all? 30-40Hz can certainly add a lot of weight to a bass instrument, but it doesn't add much to the 'musicality' of it. If you play that low 31Hz B-string then it sounds fat because the lowest fundamental is helping to underpin the overall sound, but much of what you're hearing is the harmonics above that. And you can roll of a lot of that 31Hz fundamental without affecting the overall tone or 'fatness'. Try it. Maybe with a compressor In a live gig setting, I'd be very wary of doing anything around 30-40Hz other than dialing it back due to the chaotic acoustics in most venues. If you're recording DI in a studio, it's a very different kettle of fish because the room is taken out of the picture and you can tweak to taste post-recording.

^ Another +1 to this. Even the best high-pass filter won't completely cut out the fundamental frequencies below where you set it: some of that energy will still get through. 'Attenuate' is probably a better and far more pretentious word to use than 'cut', which suggests something absolute 30-40Hz is just noise anyway. Not much more than rumble; certainly on a bass guitar. You won't have anything musical going on down there, unless you're playing tuned 808 kick drum sounds in a room with immaculate acoustics. Which would be a very dull gig. And bear in mind that tone is hugely susceptible to 'taste drift' - i.e. what sounds great one day might sound less so the next, even in the same room with the same settings on your guitar and amp. Our perception of what 'sounds good' is not static; it's influenced by all sorts of psycho-acoustic flimflam (something that anyone familiar with mixing will attest to). It's partly why many of us spend our lives chasing the Holy Grail of tone, suffering from GAS, endless swapping guitars and amps in and out in search of nirvana... only to one day pick up an old bass, set everything flat on the amp and suddenly: "Wow! That sounds amazing!" (there was a thread on here just like that only recently). Taste drift. I'm convinced it's behind a good 50% of persistent GAS!

No s***! Wow... you're a dark horse, Mr Smalls

What, you mean like this 'female'...? I don't think sexualisation is limited to women in music.

As a DJ in the mid-90s, I was due to go on tour with 'Megadog', who at the time were one of the big super club/ stadium rave organisers. Would have earned me some good money and certainly lifted me out of the small clubs I was otherwise playing in Manchester at the time. My friend who arranged the gig split with her boyfriend - the boss of Megadog! - two weeks before the tour started, which put the kibosh on my best-laid plans, as he then hired someone else to take my place. This was the moment when I realised the music industry is just too much of a greasy pole for my taste, and so I gave up and became a music journalist instead (later quitting that too to get a 'proper job'). Was great fun though

^ Definitely this. Soundproofing a big undertaking and not to be approached lightly. I converted our own garage in such a way that it could very easily be used as a second lounge or utility room (or whatever) - i.e. no actual soundproofing, floating floor, etc, just acoustic treatment that could be removed at any time (OVER MY DEAD BODY!).

Got it, that makes perfect sense!

"The One And Only" by Chesney Hawkes. Mostly because my wife loves it for nostalgic reasons and so it features in our lives from time to time, meaning I can never truly escape it. Like my own nightmarish version of M. R. James' Whistle And I'll Come To You. Oh and 'Frog Song' by Paul McCartney. What a travesty. I kept shouting that at him from the front row, whilst very drunk, during breaks between songs of his Glastonbury performance (can't remember when...), until I nearly got my head kicked in by some of his more militant fans. Ah, happy days

Hard to answer this question unless you’re someone who’s moved about a lot... most folks will only know the pros and cons of their own yard. Common sense would suggest to me any of the bigger cities. More people usually = more opportunities. The music is industry is itself very London-centric. And I hear the streets there are also paved with gold

I’d opt for whichever will result in you having the largest room. Bigger really is better when it comes to acoustics. And that will make all the difference if you plan on using the space for recording and/or mixing. If it's solely for rehearsals, plump for whichever is going to annoy the fewest people Also worth considering that an integral garage will be a) easier to heat/power; b) more secure than an outbuilding and c) possibly cheaper to convert. PS: some info in this thread on my own man cave, which is a converted single garage (set up as a mix room).

Wow, lovely looking room! Nice job. My only comment would be to rip out those foam panels and get some proper acoustic treatment in there. But you probably don’t want to hear that Seriously though, that's a great space you've got there. For anyone considering building their own rehearsal room/studio, it pays to include acoustic treatment as part of the build - i.e. factor in mineral wool-filled frames, ideally 12" thick or more, stuffed with low density fibre. Even just one wall, treated like that from floor to ceiling, will make a huge difference. It's almost impossible to retro-fit this kind of treatment in a typical domestic space, but it'll result in great acoustics if you're able to build from scratch.

Nearly always fingers for me. I’m just way too clumsy with a pick; but that’s down to lack of practice. I do love the pick sound on some tracks though. When you need that attack, nothing else will do.

^ Thanks bud! Acoustics is a big subject and I didn’t really know where to start or what to aim for when I set out... so hopefully some of the detail above might be useful to other noobs. But yeah, it took quite a lot of faffing around - probably more than the industry standard recommendation for faffing around! - but it was also strangely enjoyable. ...I clearly need to get out more.

So how good are these results? My room now has a well-controlled frequency response that meets "pro" standards. Its decay/ reverberation measurements are also in good shape, but they don't meet professional standards - and they never will. It's just not possible in a room of this size. Perhaps most crucially, the room sounds good to my ears. My reference material has a new lease of life: clear, punchy lows and smooth highs that don’t have anywhere near the harsh/brittleness that I was experiencing before. The soundstage appears wider and I can hear a lot more detail. Everything just sounds better. And my old mixes sound quite flat and lifeless by comparison… so I’m looking forward to putting this newfound clarity to good use. Ok, but how does it compare to a professional studio? Very few pro studios publish their acoustic measurements for obvious reasons - i.e. they’re typically not as pretty as they’d like! So it's difficult to find any data to compare against. But as an example, here’s a measurement from Sunny Side Studios, a professional recording, mixing and mastering facility in Belgium (taken from the article in the link above). This is the low end frequency response from 20-200Hz, which is typically the most difficult section of the frequency response to get right. The measurement from Sunny Side Studios shows a variation of around +/- 5dB (10dB from highest peak to lowest dip). And here’s the same frequency plot at the same scale from my room… a converted garage in sunny Manchester… which also shows a variation of just +/- 5dB across the same range (well, at least down to 30Hz). Not too shabby at all. Of course this doesn't mean that my room acoustics in any way measure up to those of a high-end studio like Sunny Side. They are leagues apart. But it hopefully shows that with the right amount of stubborn, methodical persistence, you can get very usable acoustics in a small room. Job done. Time to make some music...

Reverberation time Reverberation is measured by the time taken for sound to decay by 60dB from its initial level (known as RT60). In a professional control room, the reverberation time should be between 0.2 - 0.4s from 200Hz - 4kHz in order to meet industry standards. Based on the size of my room, the recommended reverb times are much quicker as follows: Recommended average of 0.1 - 0.2s from 200Hz - 4kHz. My result: 0.11s Recommended <0.46s at 63Hz. My result: 0.32s (NB: you can calculate the recommended RT60 time for your own room here). So my room has a much quicker reverberation time than the industry standard, but it's within the recommendations for a room of its size. It's interesting to note that the recommendations for small rooms basically result in what's called a "dead room" (i.e. very short reverberation). This makes sense for two reasons: 1) Small rooms need a lot of acoustic treatment to control low frequencies, and the more treatment you add the shorter the reverb times will be; 2) Small room reverberation nearly always sounds terrible! So don't be put off by the term "dead room". Unless you have a large space with a nice, natural reverberation, dead is exactly what you want... resulting in what some call “Big Headphones” - i.e. a room with minimal reverberation. I'd argue this applies to recording rooms as much as it does mix rooms. Better to record dry and add high quality reverb using software (or re-amping in a nice big room), rather than printing crappy, small room reverb all over your tracks.

Low frequency decay (waterfall graph) This shows how long it takes sounds to decay (reduce in energy) across the low frequency range from 20-200Hz. Notice the longer decay times below 50Hz, partly caused by a room mode (peak) at 32Hz and general background noise. You can spot some other modal frequencies between 150-200Hz: they're the spiky bits sticking out of the graph, showing frequencies that are 'ringing out' for longer than others. It's difficult to control the very low frequency decay times (below 50Hz) in such a small space without using excessive amounts of fibre and/or pressure-based bass traps, which I just don’t have sufficient space for. If your own room has long decay times in the more audible range above 50Hz, then you might want to think about trying to fix them… otherwise they can lead to frequency masking and ‘one note bass’ problems.

And here are the results... I’ve included some notes to help make sense of the different graphs for anyone new to acoustics… Frequency response The first graph shows the full range frequency response from 20Hz - 20kHz with 1/24th octave smoothing (pretty much “warts and all”). The second graph is the low end from 20-200Hz with no smoothing at all. Notice that the dip around 60-70Hz has been greatly reduced. The frequency response below 200Hz is now within +/- 5dB right down to 30Hz… that’s quite an achievement for a room this size, if I do say so myself! (+/- 10dB is generally regarded as “good”; +/- 5dB as “excellent” and +/- 3dB as being highest professional spec… and very rare, even in the best studios). In fact the response is now within +/- 5 or 6dB across much of the frequency range, not counting the sharp dip of around -10dB between 600-700Hz caused by a desk reflection (nothing I can do about that without changing the desk). Thankfully, steep nulls of this type - and at that frequency - aren't too problematic, as one's brain mostly 'fills in the gap' when listening. Clever brain!

So how did I go about improving the acoustics of this room? I added more acoustic treatment and specifically bass traps. As a rule of thumb, you want to cover ~20% of the room surface area (minus the floor) with acoustic treatment in order to achieve a significant difference. This often makes it difficult to sufficiently treat rooms that aren’t dedicated as studios, because it’s difficult to fit that amount of acoustic treatment into a lounge, bedroom, etc, around other furniture. Well, not without really annoying anyone you may be living with. My room is now somewhere around 37% treated and it feels like a padded cell. But just do what you can. And forget worrying about creating a “dead room” with too much acoustic treatment (more on that below). If your room is small, you can never have too much treatment if you want any chance of controlling the low end. So go nuts with it. I moved my speakers and desk towards the front wall, as close as possible. Unless you have gigantic rear-ported woofers, forget whatever advice is printed in your speaker manual and get those cabinets within millimeters of the wall. Same applies to the 38% rule for optimum listening position - forget it. In most small spaces, the 38% rule will place you close to the middle of the room, where you’ll find one of the strongest room modes (frequency dips) there is. Move forwards away from it. Moving my speakers and listening position had the biggest impact on that gnarly 60-70Hz null, lessening it by around +12 dB, and it didn’t cost me a penny. I angled my desk forwards by around 5 degrees using a split fencepost as wooden ‘shims’. This noticeably reduced the comb filtering caused by high frequencies reflecting off my desk. Another cheap yet effective solution. I installed a subwoofer. As you’d expect, the sub added a lot of low frequency energy that helped to 1) fill in the null at 60-70Hz by a further +5 dB and 2) smooth out the low end more generally, giving me a flat frequency response down to 30Hz (with digital EQ applied), where previously the response was very weak. Bass in the place. A word of caution: I would strongly advise against using a sub in a small room if you’re not also using room EQ software (or some other form of DSP) to shape the resulting frequency curve. You’ll just end up with loads of boomy low end, without any of the benefits. Best options for room EQ software that I’ve tried are Sonarworks and Dirac Live. Room EQ Wizard (REW) software, which is free, can also be used to calculate a corrective frequency curve. Well worth trying. Lastly, as mentioned above, I used room correction software (digital EQ) for finishing touches. This included: 1) leveling out the low end boost caused by the sub and close proximity of my monitors to the wall; 2) setting a target curve for the frequency response so that it’s not actually ‘flat’ (which would make the high frequencies very harsh) but instead more natural-sounding. For this I used the classic Bruel & Kjaer frequency curve, which has stood the test of time since the 1970s and is used by many studios today (Sennheiser HD-650 headphones, a popular choice amongst mix engineers, also follow this curve very closely). The idea is that the curve approximates the majority of “typical listening environments”, so that if your mixes sound good using the B&K curve then they’re more likely to translate well to other rooms/ environments. It’s loosely characterised by a downward slope of around 6dB from low to high end. If you have room correction software, you can try it for yourself using the following settings: 0dB 30Hz +3dB 100Hz 0dB 2K -3dB 10K -6dB 15K

Dear ‘Rec Forum folk, my room treatment is now finally finished. Thank ****! Long, waffly post ahoy! And to be honest it’s probably of no interest or relevance to many of you… so don’t go thinking that you need to do any of what I’m describing below. None of this is crucial for enjoying making music at home and producing great-sounding mixes. I previously had no room myself and worked on a laptop with headphones. So if you’re new to this forum, this isn’t the place to start. But if you do already have a small studio at home and are looking to squeeze every last decibel of acoustics out of it, then there may be a few nuggets of info here that can help. DISCLAIMER: I am not an acoustician! Far from it. I'm just a DIY acoustics nerd who's pieced together knowledge from forums (notably www.gearslutz.com); books (Rod Gervais' 'Home Recording Studio' is recommended); and by chatting with real acousticians online, who are mostly a very friendly and helpful bunch. So don't take any of my advice as Gospel... but hopefully I've managed to explain some of the basic principles in ways that other newbies can understand. If not, feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to help. As a quick recap, here’s where I started out… The graph below is the frequency response of my room before I set about trying to make improvements (acoustic measurements taken using FuzzMeasure). Bear in mind that the room already had a fair amount of acoustic treatment at this stage: front/rear corner bass traps; side and ceiling broadband panels; rear wall treatment. All of the basics covered. Looks a bit wiggly, innit? But looks can be deceiving… and even with a response as uneven as this, the room was still good to work in; I just had to spend more time referencing my mixes to ensure they translated outside of the room. So if you measure your own room and get a reading like the one above, don’t despair. It’s perfectly normal for a home studio (great article here for reference) and there are lots of ways you can improve it, as we’ll get on to below. Some points to note at this stage: The big ol’ Grand Canyon of a dip around 60-70Hz… all -30dB of it! That’s caused by a double-whammy of having a room mode around 65Hz (caused by the dimensions the room) and a boundary reflection (caused by the distance from my speakers to the front wall). Every home studio will have a dip of this kind somewhere between 50-100Hz or so. You can test your own room by playing a low frequency sweep (sine wave) and listening to the point at which the sound seems to disappear. Congratulations, you’ve found your low frequency null! Also known as low end “suck out”. It’s one of the trickier problems to fix in a small room. Note also the jaggedy response in the higher frequencies. In my case, that’s mostly caused by reflections off my desk… I like a big desk and I cannot lie. Smaller desks = fewer reflections but more ‘floor bounce’ (peaks and dips caused by low frequencies rebounding off the floor). Acoustics is full of compromises! I stuck with the large desk cos’ I like having lots of stuff within easy reach. But generally speaking, smaller desks are probably the wiser choice.

It’s weird though innit… and I think guitar bands get undue flak in this respect… because in other genres, daft names are commonplace and even perceived as cool. Here’s the list of pseudonyms used by Apex Twin, for example: AFX, Blue Calx, Bradley Strider, The Universal Indicator, Brian Tregaskin, Caustic Window, Smojphace, GAK, Karen Tregaskin, Martin Tressider, PBoD (Phonic Boy on Dope), Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, Dice Man, The Tuss, and Soit-P.P. I think Electric Craddock fits right in, to be honest.

I like it!

That's not a bad idea...!

"That's not a bass it's got five strings!" Derp... I am of course joking; I play five-strings myself. Nice artwork. I like it's simplicity and it doesn't give too many preconceptions of what the album sounds like, which I think is often a good thing. But to answer your question, no, mostly because I've never created any album/CD artwork on which to feature!

I must admit to finding most pub bands names off-putting. But them I'm an irascible snob Comedy chuckle name? Naff! Serious ambition name? Naff! Sounds a bit like a famous band name? Naff! Obviously based on an in-joke name? Naff! I don’t know what the solution is. But it’s probably along the lines of “feck it, that’ll do!”

Mornats’ vote came in after last orders had been called. Such is life