How would you set up this room if was yours?

[fiatcoupe432]

Hi guys I will have to turn this room into a studio

How would you set it up if it was yours for best sound possible?

Desk position?

Here is what have available

12 acoustic panels 1200x600x25

3 bass traps panels 100 x600x 50 

Super large rug Iranian 363cm x 238

Another 2 m x1. 30 m hemp rug

Help and advice welcome

I know this room is not the best option but it will have to do,also next to the desk there is a big boiler

Thank you

Edited October 19, 2020 by fiatcoupe432

[fiatcoupe432]

[fiatcoupe432]

It's a rented unit so I can't really do any major changes

Edited October 19, 2020 by fiatcoupe432

[Woodinblack]

Well, I am not an expert at these things, but I would put the rug on the floor

[fiatcoupe432]

1 hour ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

It's a rented unit so I can't really do any major changes

Thank you mate 😂😂😂

[Bobthedog]

Not sure I can help with the sound issue, but I would love to see the stool used to play the tall keys in the far right corner of the first pic. 

[lurksalot]

I reckon that is a complete ‘suck it and see’ type experiment setting that room up .

It looks like a roof space, so for one if you are recording you will pick up the weather/wind/rain noise fairly easily.

If the walls and floors aren’t solid you may pick up any neighbours as well . 
Apart from making those allowances , the noise will  travel out to your neighbours as well ! 
May be also some hard hats for those at the thin end 😉

[fiatcoupe432]

9 hours ago, lurksalot said:

I reckon that is a complete ‘suck it and see’ type experiment setting that room up .

It looks like a roof space, so for one if you are recording you will pick up the weather/wind/rain noise fairly easily.

If the walls and floors aren’t solid you may pick up any neighbours as well . 
Apart from making those allowances , the noise will  travel out to your neighbours as well ! 
May be also some hard hats for those at the thin end 😉

You exactly right my friend

It is a roof space but has its good side to it

So for me my biggest concern come when creating a space for mixing that sounds good (not perfect but good!)

As it's a roof space I do pick rain, not wind tho and as for the neighbours, we'll I don't have any as I'm on tge corner and I rent the unit on the other side too so all good there. Also being an industrial estate, closes its doors at 5pm after thst I'm always on my own, notice not an issue.

Regarding outside noise

This is the smaller room in the unit and the room next to it it's slightly bigger and I Tought of setting up a little vocal booth, so when it rains I can still record vocals and guitars.

So where would place the desk? Higher wall? Will the slanted wall kill tge sound gradually?  I remember reading an article where they always reccomend Ed using the higher wall to set your monitors but can't remember if that it's really what I actually read 😂😂

[TwoTimesBass]

My 2 cents:

• Bass traps in the three corners that don't have the boiler.
• Panels round the walls at playing/singing height, portrait orientation. You can leave a bit of a gap between them of a couple of inches without too much of a problem. You're trying to avoid reflections from parallel walls mostly.
• Keep a couple of panels free and suspend them at the same angle as the roof above the desk/mix position. Just above the light looks about right
• Rugs on the floor 😀 But you might want to leave an uncovered area as acoustic guitar sometimes benefits from a bit of floor reflection when recording.

Have fun, and if it doesn't work just move things until it sounds better 😀

[BigRedX]

It really depends on the standard of recordings you are after. However, if it was me, for any recording for public consumption, I'd be doing the final mixing at a commercial studio with a properly treated control room.

[TwoTimesBass]

To be honest if I had the money I'd do the tracking in a commercial studio with good room acoustics, plenty of space and expensive mics/preamps/engineer, then do the mix at home using all the same plugins etc that everyone has at their disposal.

Too many 'commercial' studios are converted storage units with some acoustic panels and well read copies of Sound on Sound anyway. Sadly most mid-range commercial studios have gone to the wall over the last 20 years as space becomes more expensive and the technology has become within the price range of home recordists.

Plenty of currently available music has been recorded in home studios, probably quite a large proportion in reality.

I would spend the cash having a track/album commercially mastered though...

[fiatcoupe432]

SO would you put the desk and monitor on the shorter side of the wall with tall wall in the back or other way around?

Edited October 29, 2020 by fiatcoupe432

[Beedster]

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  

[BigRedX]

On 20/10/2020 at 18:21, TwoTimesBass said:

To be honest if I had the money I'd do the tracking in a commercial studio with good room acoustics, plenty of space and expensive mics/preamps/engineer, then do the mix at home using all the same plugins etc that everyone has at their disposal.

Too many 'commercial' studios are converted storage units with some acoustic panels and well read copies of Sound on Sound anyway. Sadly most mid-range commercial studios have gone to the wall over the last 20 years as space becomes more expensive and the technology has become within the price range of home recordists.

Plenty of currently available music has been recorded in home studios, probably quite a large proportion in reality.

I would spend the cash having a track/album commercially mastered though...

Interesting. From personal experience I've only ever done tracking in a "proper" studio if I either wanted to capture a live performance from the whole band or if I was recording something that made proper use of the space it is being recorded in like acoustic drums.

Most instruments these days are either DI'd or close-mic'd (I'm including vocals here) so the space they are recorded in has minimal effect on their sound.

I take your point about the poor acoustic treatment of a lot of budget studios, but again from personal experience, the engineer at the studio is generally the most important part of the mixing process, and the ones still working are the ones with a good set of ears and know the characteristics of the space they are mixing in, which is far more important than the equipment they are using.

The vast majority of "classic" recordings were done with considerably less, and less capable, equipment than is available to the typical home-recordist. What makes them great are the performance(s) and the skill of the engineers and producers at capturing and manipulating these performance.

[Beedster]

3 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

The vast majority of "classic" recordings were done with considerably less, and less capable, equipment than is available to the typical home-recordist. What makes them great are the performance(s) and the skill of the engineers and producers at capturing and manipulating these performance.

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

[BigRedX]

And which is why I dismantled my "home studio" and sold all my very expensive recording equipment. 

A couple of outings to decent recording studios with The Terrortones proved to me that weak link in my own recordings was not the room or the equipment, but the fact that I had reached the limit of my abilities as an engineer, and it wasn't a sufficiently good standard for me to be happy with my recordings.

It's a pity because, since my very first band in the mid 70s I've always been an enthusiastic home-recordist, but on reviewing the various recordings I have made over the years the ones I enjoy the most are the ones recorded and mixed by someone who wasn't me.

[TwoTimesBass]

11 hours ago, BigRedX said:

I was recording something that made proper use of the space it is being recorded in like acoustic drums.

Most instruments these days are either DI'd or close-mic'd (I'm including vocals here) so the space they are recorded in has minimal effect on their sound.

I take your point about the poor acoustic treatment of a lot of budget studios, but again from personal experience, the engineer at the studio is generally the most important part of the mixing process, and the ones still working are the ones with a good set of ears and know the characteristics of the space they are mixing in, which is far more important than the equipment they are using.

Yeah, I agree with your take on things BigRedX, it was particularly drums I was thinking of when talking about tracking in a studio. Getting a good room for drums is hard for home recordists given the space needed to get anything other than a close-mic sound. Likewise piano or acoustic instruments that need a bit of space, depending on style of music of course.

Absolutely the house engineer can be what sells a studio... I've seen ££££ wasted on state-of-the-art kit by someone who doesn't know how to deploy it, but also recordings that naturally went down track by track with no effort or fuss using a couple of quality but carefully chosen mics...

[fiatcoupe432]

21 hours ago, Beedster said:

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  

Thank you!!! Studio is coming up nicely....

My only concern was the desk positioning

As recording live instrument, voice, guitar I use the room next to it as it has no window and it is half the size, so it's much easier controlled.

I recorded vocal before in tge little room, microphone at tge center of the room and room has no echo reverberation and managed to get great recordings in there 

. My main issue is the larger room as its been set up for mixing really

What I'm gonna do next is put few panels up on the reflection point of the speakers and perhaps few above the monitor. Room doesn't sound to bad but woth a spectrum analyzer I realised there is a bit of reverberation which need to be killed and that's why I ve the 1200x600x25.

Where would you  necessarily put the duvets?

Regards

Tony

Edited October 30, 2020 by fiatcoupe432

[BigRedX]

The point of using duvets is that they are easily repositioned when you are experimenting with the room acoustics. Once you have found the best place for them they should be replaced with proper acoustic treatment panels.