Hermit Style (Recording deep in the woods!)

Hi everyone, I've been lurking on this forum for a couple weeks now, reading as many posts as I can. Let me first say WOW, what a great resource! A big *thank you* to all who have posted throughout the years. Reading through the entire forum all at once is definitely overwhelm, but I can see that this place is a gold mine. I'd like to bounce a couple of ideas off of you, if I may. Here's my situation. A couple years back I built this log home, in the middle of nowhere, out on the side of a mountain in Vermont: One of the reasons I built deep in the woods like this is that I'm a bassist. I play in a few different metal bands, and when we rehearse together, we do it here, and it's very loud. At this remote location we can have full dress rehearsals for our upcoming gigs, at club volume, and it disturbs nobody. So isolation is definitely not a concern for me. Now as luck would have it, the main room of my house happens to be a great place for tracking drums. This happened entirely by chance (I did not build the house with recording in mind.) Here is the main room that we've been recording in. The ceiling is 19' at the peak; walls are solid pine logs. We basically set the drums up where you see that coffee table: The last album that I tracked here was through API 312's for all drum mics; we took the raw recordings to a commercial mix studio (who I was surprised to see is actually listed on this site! http://www.johnlsayers.com/Studio/Mainpage/MP-Egan.htm) and their engineers confirmed that the recorded sound was excellent. They were really digging the room. So I would like to continue tracking here as long as I can (having random metal bands take over the first floor of the house is kind of intrusive, but if it ain't broke...) Now, you'll notice that the first pic shows a detached 2-car garage (it is 24'x24', unfinished interior). I'd like to convert that entire space into a control room (I see there is more than enough information on this site describing how this can be done, so that's not my question). But I'd like to pick your brains about something at higher level first. (I'm not sure if this is realistic or not, but it sure would be convenient if it is). The garage is roughly 40 feet from the house; *if* I were to build a dedicated control room in it, would it be possible/realistic to run a set of mic cables underground from the house (live room) out to the garage (control room)? That would be soooo much nicer than being *in* the live room the whole time like I am now. Perhaps a closed circuit TV or something like that could make it so that we can all still see each other. I'm wondering if anyone has ever tracked under similar conditions, and what their experience was like. I also just have this gut feeling that if I attempt to build a "live room" in the garage as well, I'll go through all the time/money/expense only to end up wishing I were still back in the big room. But maybe I'm wrong on that; I don't have enough experience tracking in smaller rooms to know. Thoughts? Your input at this stage is critical, as it will affect the direction I go with the garage. Thanks much in advance... - H

Great place! Of course it's possible, Think of it as an auditorium with a control room tuck in the basement 40ft away. High quality cable will be a must, maybe even look at using a digital multicore? The cabling will be cheaper but the send/receive units them self are pretty hefty. Cameras will work fine, you work out the process after a few takes. A PA system so the band can hear you might work better than only relying on headphone mixes. lil

lilith_envy wrote:

Great place! Of course it's possible, Think of it as an auditorium with a control room tuck in the basement 40ft away. High quality cable will be a must, maybe even look at using a digital multicore? The cabling will be cheaper but the send/receive units them self are pretty hefty. Cameras will work fine, you work out the process after a few takes. A PA system so the band can hear you might work better than only relying on headphone mixes. lil

Sweet, thanks for the fast response. Do you have any suggestions for manufacturers of these "hefty send/receive units"? So far I've only used standard XLR cables going from the mic into the pre; not sure what kind of special gear I'm looking at for longer runs like this. Thanks!

How many channels of audio do you need running in each direction? I saw these guys at a trade show a couple of years back. They have what you need: http://www.lightviper.com/ It's pretty pricey, though!!! There are other manufacturers too, but that's the first one that came to mind. - Stuart -

A 40' cable run is no problem, I wouldn't bother with anything special other than using a good quality cable -- you'll probably end up with a total cable length of 100' or less... up to a few hundred feet is pretty standard with no ill effects.

Cool, thanks for responding to this. I would say that 16 inputs and 4 returns would be plenty. So if I got this right, it looks like I basically just need a wall box that everything plugs into; multicore cable then goes out through an underground pipe of some kind; then it comes into the control room it breaks apart and plugs into my mic pre's. The length will definitely be under 100'. Stuart- Thanks for that link.. it looks overkill for this scenario though (but I'm reading it anyway, fun stuff for sure!)

H, indeed that place should be great for tracking drums. Here are some potential issues re: idea of converting the garage to a dedicated Control Room - the big picture during tracking is communication between the two sides of the glass window (artists in the live room and engineer/producer in the Control Room). When your studio is detached and that far away and you're only looking at TV monitors to communicate - it may get challenging to get a point across. this I believe is the single biggest potential issue. - are you going to be recording to digital, using a DAW? What are the potential latency issues? Especially if musicians are going to be multi-tracked and laying instruments one at a time. That long cable run going into the DAW and back to artist headphones could cause monitoring problems. - Other potential challenges due to the distance are: - if there's a technical glitch you'd have to run up, do the fix and go back, but if the fix wasn't it... ruun up again.... - during set-up, when listening in for best mic placement... you'd ahve to go up and down adjusting mic positions... I'm sure you are aware of these potential issues already, I just thought to reinforce those concerns. All the best! And I really envy your drum tracking room, with API preamps at that... I sure hope you're checking out ribbon mics for the ROOM sound.

Sound-Weavers.com wrote:

H, indeed that place should be great for tracking drums.

Thanks! The downside is that it's really intrusive. I have to move furniture etc., make arrangements for my two dogs to be somewhere else for the day... but it does work well.

Sound-Weavers.com wrote:

Here are some potential issues re: idea of converting the garage to a dedicated Control Room - the big picture during tracking is communication between the two sides of the glass window (artists in the live room and engineer/producer in the Control Room). When your studio is detached and that far away and you're only looking at TV monitors to communicate - it may get challenging to get a point across. this I believe is the single biggest potential issue.

I hear you on that! This is why I'm wondering if anyone on here actually tracks via TV screen like this, and if they find it to be super annoying, or if it works OK

Sound-Weavers.com wrote:

- are you going to be recording to digital, using a DAW? What are the potential latency issues? Especially if musicians are going to be multi-tracked and laying instruments one at a time. That long cable run going into the DAW and back to artist headphones could cause monitoring problems.

I'm tracking to a DM-4800/MX2424 (connected via TDIF), clocked to an Antelope OCX. Then I usually dump it into DP5 for editing. I should point out that it would only be drum tracks that would be cut with this "remote" setup. Usually we have a guitar player going off to a scratch track so the drummer has something to listen to... I would think that in this new setup that guitar player would be in the control room with me. I'm definitely no expert on how cable lengths relate to latency. When we're all in the same room (shorter cables) it works fine; from what I've gather so far, runs of under 100' shouldn't cause any problems. BUT I could totally be wrong! Anyone know for sure? Before I installed anything permanent I'd definitely try it out by running the cables just out through a window and across the grass for a test run. I assume at some point cable lengths just become too long and problems start to happen... am curious to find out more about what kinds of problems can occur and how big venues/studios deal with ultra long cable runs.

Sound-Weavers.com wrote:

- Other potential challenges due to the distance are: - if there's a technical glitch you'd have to run up, do the fix and go back, but if the fix wasn't it... ruun up again.... - during set-up, when listening in for best mic placement... you'd ahve to go up and down adjusting mic positions...

Definitely good points. Major pain in the :cen: But hey get enough business and I won't need a gym membership anymore :shot: Or, at least I could have an assistant hanging out inside to move things around..

Sound-Weavers.com wrote:

I'm sure you are aware of these potential issues already, I just thought to reinforce those concerns. All the best! And I really envy your drum tracking room, with API preamps at that... I sure hope you're checking out ribbon mics for the ROOM sound.

Thanks... oh yeah, I'm definitely down with the ribbons.

There's a pretty straightforward calculation you can use to determine the latency your mic cable will add to the signal path. This isn't 100% accurate in extreme cases, but it's close enough for almost all real world uses. Note that you'll need to double the result for a round-trip: AL = (L*G)/C1 * (P/T) * C2 where AL = latency L = length of your cable in meters G = gauge of wire C1 = constant number 1, which is 7.48 assuming you're working in meters, pascals, and degrees celsius P = air pressure T = temperature in the interior of the cable (in a pinch you can use the surrounding air temperature although this won't be strictly accurate) C2 = constant number 2, which is always zero, since there will never be latency in an analog cable run until you're running your cable a distance that's significant relative to the speed of light.... ;)

dfeiszli- thanks for that formula!

Sure! And on a serious note, good luck with the space, it looks like you have some great potential there.

Nice one dfeiszli :lol: (Do you think they got the joke???)

Thanks...! Not sure.... :D

I think "air pressure" was the giveaway! :)

Hey, it could be a factor.... :? Well, maybe not. But who doesn't like a good math joke, anyway? For anyone who's interested, I believe the real formula would be: L = D/186 where L = latency in milliseconds and D is the cable run in miles That's right -- run 186 miles of cable and you'll get a latency of 1ms... so, really, that first formula is just as good most of the time. Anyway, my apologies for the interruption!

The "give away" was the variable C2 which is zero. Anything times zero stays zero :)

Like this one "running your cable a distance that's significant relative to the speed of light" wasn't enough ;)

Quick follow up (assuming my control room is <186 miles away!) So far I am leaning towards a simple control room as shown in this article: http://www.weslachot.com/new/articles_eq.html Knowing that I don't care about Isolation, I have a couple questions: 1. Would it matter (acoustically speaking) if I framed my traps inside the wall itself, so as to make them flush with the wall surface? I'd like to do that instead of hanging them if possible. The reason is totally aesthetic. 2. I assume T&G pine would be fine for paneling (instead of drywall). Correct? 3. For the ceiling, it would like to insulate it and stretch cloth over the whole thing. I assume this will help with bass control by letting more sound into the space up above the rafters. But do I need to first hang traps up in there as well? The articles I've read so far all mention a hard ceiling of some sort... would like to avoid that if possible.

Hey Hotmetal. It sounds like your best shot would be to build your walls and ceiling "inside out", meaning that you put your drywall for your inner leaf on the "other" side of the studs, not the "room" side of the studs. So your studs, and the spaces between them, are now exposed to the room, where you can fill them with treatment to your heart's content! Ethan has an example on his website of a ceiling built like that, where the space between the joists is stuffed full of isolation. There are also many examples of inside-out walls on the forum, if you look around for them: It's kind of John's "trademark", so to speaker! Doing it that way you can accomplish what you want: hidden treatment. You can stretch acoustic cloth over the studs where needed, or build slot resonators on the studs, or whatever you want. It also makes better use of floor space, since the treatment goes in between the studs, instead of on top of the finished drywall. I'm not sure if I would want to use T&G pine instead of drywall, though: Pretty much all of the studios here are done with ordinary gypsum drywall, which is cheap, massive, and easy to work with. It is a known quantity. The resonant frequencies and acoustic properties for various drywall construction methods are well known and available on the Internet, but I don't know how much you'll fine on pine paneling. If you are concerned about aesthetics, then you could use pine slats for your slot resonators, decorative framing around bass traps, etc. But I think I'd stick with drywall as the actual leaf, especially given that it won't ever be seen if you build your wall inside-out. That's just my $0.02. - Stuart -

That works for me! I could do whatever pattern/colors I want with the cloth on the reversed walls. About the ceiling, do I actually need one? I'm thinking I could probably just insulate between the rafters and cover that as well, which would let the sound travel all the way up to the actual roof of the garage (as opposed to only 8' where a drywall ceiling would be). That would be better, no?

Well, if you have the space, and isolation is not important at all for you, then I don't see why not! Make the most of the space you have. More space is usually better than less. - Stuart -