Beedster

I don't think it's anywhere collapse, there's just an ongoing shift towards digital, and as is the case with so many other sectors such as business and education, COVID has simply accelerated that shift. There will always be a market for new music, I think what we're seeing at present is an increased blurring of the old and traditional line between live music and recorded music, it's a blurring enabled by digital, and as the result the gear that musicians need to do their jobs is having to change. But the core tools - the musical instruments and the expertise required to play them - are still there, so I see the present as far less worrying than I did the mid-80s when we genuinely thought that synths were going to not only replace all instruments but eventually all performers

Yep, it's really dd but I was thinking about that very post yesterday - because it seemed to resonate with so much that I'm seeing on YouTube at present - and was wondering in which thread I'd find it, and then, as if by magic, someone posted a reply in the very thread

The trend for small prices for big boxes started well before COVID

Hey TwoTimesBass Many thanks, that's really helpful. Firstly the booth is very dead and I like that for voiceover but as you suggest, it presents problems trying to mimic that ambience outside of the room. I use an SE reflection screen around the mic at my desk, and because I'm facing into the room I have absorber panels directly behind me, so I'm less affected by screen than might otherwise be the case. It's a wooden cabin so I've just installed some cloud absorbers above my desk also, and I'm going to test this today (I have some bass traps coming from EQ Acoustics which I suspect are going to also help a lot, I think I've been a little bit naive in assuming that in recording the human voice dealing with bass frequencies in the room isn't really an issue). I think you've answered my main question, which is that the balance of absorbers and diffusers is probably important, and I'm therefore going to do some trial and error. Whilst it sounds odd, and also flies in the face of most of the thinking on this, I'm going to try a diffuser in the booth also (it's 1.8 x 1.8 m so actually quite big, whilst I had it built for voiceover work, I was also keeping a keen eye on recording double bass, acoustic guitar and fiddle in there, and it's amazing how much space you actually need to play those properly). I'll post my findings when I have some findings

Yep, £125 is about as low as you'll get for a decent service from the US

I think this was the best BC post of 2020. Might be early with my vote, but confident none the less

Brilliant

Lost some subtlety in translation

Tech is great isn’t it, rise of the machines and all that, The other day when my laptop again told me politely that I do not have permission to do whatever it was I wanted to do, I literally shouted ‘I own your flipping derrière you flipping piece of stinky poo womble machine, what do you mean I don’t have flipping permission.........’

Lovely

I've had this, it's becoming a joke, in my case I had to type letters that were completely illegible, and when I hit the 'speak the letters' link, it took me to a magical place where even single letters spoken deliberately are completely incomprehensible, I was in fact introduced to seven new letters in the now 33-letter alphabet. I genuinely believe that the people setting up these systems hate their employers/clients so much that they purposefully make the captcha thing impassible on occasion

That's what should be the case but doesn't appear to be. Might be a local sound problem so I've sent him a decent mic to use. Belts and braces re zencastr on this as we're recording three interviews and I want a back up in terms of both potential poor quality and - as has luckily only happened once with zencastr in six months of quite high use - loss of interviewee audio file.

Yes, it's really not very good sound quality on a poor internet connection however

Yeh, I know, but we tried that and it sounded really dead. The conversation is one in which we challenge each other on a few things and it just didn't work multi-tracked

That is of course the deep flaw in my argument

Absolutely, treat the room and your gear as you would instruments, get to know their strengths and weakness and learn to accommodate them. We recorded an album in what is now my eldest daughter's bedroom, a roof room like the O/P's with no chance of acoustic control. Most people who listen to the stuff we recorded there prefer it to the stuff we recorded in a professional studio, lots of imperfections, but a sense of a band in and using the space as opposed to a band controlling the space with post production ambience. I still recommend a vocal booth though

"Amazing isn't it love, a population of 8,500, and more rare Wal basses than the UK, USA and EU put together"

Happy birthday Mickey

I've done gigs where a certain % of the band thought I sucked and told me so in uncertain terms

Ah the Scottish Highlands, a geographical area recognised for the highest rate of Wal ownership per head of population worldwide. I must buy this one, I see no risks whatsoever Why have eBay not removed it, I assume the guy that made the final listing you linked must have reported it?

Agreed, it was perhaps the turning point for the thread Without that style of comment, most BC threads end up regressing to the mean, that is a balance is achieved and we all agree to a point. But as soon as someone opts for meta-comment, then the thread is always polarised and often just descends into "I'm right/you're wrong". There's just no point.

You're going to need some duvets! Some good points already. Plenty of decent recordings have been made in what would be considered very poor rooms in pure acoustic terms, but if you want to record anything acoustically in the space in question, trial and error is going to be your best bet. As above, external noise is however likely to be a challenge, so a vocal booth is a great idea, it also allows you to record a dead voice track on which you can control all acoustic effects in the mix (it's always easier to add desirable acoustic effects to a vocal than to try and hide undesirable ones). Re panels, you don't have a lot of space as it is, and you're going to need at least some of them away from walls so you might find that you do a lot of work and lose a lot of space for no real gain. You probably need to decide whether you need to control the acoustics for recording or for mixing. The latter you have a chance, the former, perhaps less so, and putting panels around a space doesn't necessarily improve things Please keep us posted, I love threads like this Chris PS it looks like your window might also act as an impromptu diffuser

That summarise my view to be honest. This is a music forum, we all care about music or we wouldn't be here. The piece in question divided opinion. But it was recorded to be placed on an internet platform on which it's going to attract comment and divide opinion, so this was not a personal performance that was being unfairly targeted. And this is the internet, not a venue, and that makes a very big difference, but it's a difference that all involved in the piece in question are no doubt aware of. My view - not shared by everyone I accept - is that the majority of real in the flesh live musical performances are intended as entertainment, whilst the majority of these types of performances on You Tube are self-promotion. There's nothing wrong with that, but in this context, our discussion arguably helped the artists/producers achieve exactly what they set out to do, get people talking about it and draw attention to them. I guess we all draw lines in different places, I saw them as fair game because of the above, whereas if for example it had been a film of something equally not to my liking that someone other than the band had recorded and uploaded - which has also happened on this forum - I'd have been less inclined to wade in with negative comment. But to me this was a very self conscious act of self promotion by all involved and is absolutely 100% open to criticism on that basis. And yes, I buy the 'it's hard for musicians at the moment' idea, but there's been some amazing music produced during lockdown, so that argument is largely a distraction.