Studio Outdoors?

More of an idea than reality, but...a studio with out walls and ceiling to get in the way of sound travel/vibration...would it not be ideal?(sound wise.....) maybe just make large tent to keep out rain (tho,humidity+electric..???no good,)...who konws, could be a temporary 1 month get an album done type of thing...theres really ony 1 thing i need to know...........How loud is a 100w 4x12 guitar setup/drum kit/ bass rig, and how much area/space before the db drops to 60db?....now it may be a joke, but, if its possible to get a large peice of land plug in and record, i'll seriously do it., from 8am to 10pm under 60db at the outer border of your property is legal..AND yea, im crazy enough to haul gear in/out if a storm/weather is coming, i dont care...jjust have to build a control room for the comp...1hrs setup and 1hr break down.-including mics etc.

Specially on drums, most of the sound comes from the room reflections. it adds character and a good sounding room improves a good sounding drum. However, recording outdoors would sound like crap, no life, absolutely dry. Yeah you wouldnt care about isolation anymore, but you'll get bad results

yeah your right.....it's just real hard for me to get an idea of what I want to do witha studio, I am currently in a 16x 33l x 9h room,concrete floor, rubber matts on the floor, (thick mats, >1/2in, 50lbs each) typical block build, drywall..no isolation room......I was thinking of basing the studio off something like 20x40lx 12h, but i hear dividable dimensions are no good.....is there anysort of basis for a minimal 3peice drums/guitar/bass dimensions/space wise?-yea dumb question but, I need to know the size that isn't going to creat issues at full volume, and it's very hard to know, when you don't know how loud you are. Anyone here have experience with this?

A live rock concert can sound great in an open space, the more "open" the better, because you get no reflections coming back to haunt you. All you get is direct sound. You get exactly 1 Sabin of absorption per square foot of any imaginary boundary you can imagine around the concert, right across the entire spectrum, which is perfect absorption. No resonance, no reverberation, no reflections, no diffusion. Nothing better! For a live rock concert, that is. But not for a live room. Maybe even for a control room it might be thinkable for some people, although it would be too dead for most. It would be pretty much like an anechoic chamber, and that's actually not very nice to mix in. Most people don't like mixing in a dead space: it sounds unnatural. And certainly not for a live room. Like Javier said, you actually do want some "character" in your live room, something to reflect sound selectively, color it a bit, give it some life. make music sound "natural", not "dead". There's more than one reason why it's called a "live" room. If you place it in an anechoic environment, it will be a "dead" room. Lousy for recording, like Javier said. The other major issue with an open-air studio would be nature. If you can persuade all of God's little and big creatures to not make a single sound while you are recording, an also convince the wind and the rain not to show up on during recording sessions, then you would be fine. But animals, insects and birds have a habit of moving around in the world freely, and it's really hard to talk the wind down to zero knots, and keep all other natural phenomena at bay. I'd hate to think what the wide variations in temperature and humidity would do to your instruments and equipment, too. To be honest, I very much doubt it would work. In fact, even for some kinds of concert, doing it outdoors sounds unnatural. I went to a recital of classical music a few years ago, where the performance was in the garden behind the municipality, with a small sound reinforcement system due to the size of the audience. The strings sounded very unnatural without reverb. The piano was loud enough, but muffled. The percussion was "dry". Part way through the second piece they played, the sound engineer got a bright idea, and dialed in just a touch of reverb on the main speakers, and all of a sudden it sounded much better, almost they way you expect it to. It still wasn't concert hall quality, but just that little bit of reverb gave it enough "life" to make it an enjoyably experience, when it had been dead and lifeless before, through no fault of the musicians! I think I'd stick with a tried and proven design. - Stuart -

yea, all sounds right, i thought about just adding reverb to make up for the lack of it, though unnatural-reverb...hmmm, sounded like a good idea at first for us *starving* musicians out there.... ..and how much of the sound has to do with good equip vs. room? such as mics/pre's....could lack of one be made up with from the other, or sound=only as good as weakest link.? ..any others to voice their opinion/experiences?

For studio gear questions I'd suggest to go to www.gearslutz.com. there is plenty of info about those questions. But basically, yes, everything is important

..and how much of the sound has to do with good equip vs. room? such as mics/pre's....could lack of one be made up with from the other, or sound=only as good as weakest link.?

The latter, unfortunately: "only as good as weakest link.". A great mic in a lousy studio will capture every last tiny nuance.... of the lousy acoustics! A lousy mic in a great studio will miss the tiny nuances.... of the performance! Sure, you can make up for deficient acoustics and deficient mics / pre's with a fantastic DAW... but only to a certain extent, and only if you are very skilled in critical listening, and also in knowing what to do with the fantastic gear in order to minimize the "lousiness" factor introduced by substandard mics / pre's / studio acoustics. Of course, even then you won't be able to do that if you don't have a great control room to do it in.... If your control room acoustics / speakers / treatment is not good too, then even the greatest DAW in the world, combined with the very best mixing skills won't help much. If you have lousy speakers in a lousy space, then even the best engineer won't be able to hear enough to understand what is wrong so that he can fix it. And of course, mixing only on headphones won't work either.... There really aren't many shortcuts that work in pro audio, unfortunately. If there were, then you can bet that the folks who own and operate all those world-class studios would be saving themselves whole boatloads of cash, by using them. The fact that those kinds of don't try to cut corners should tell you something.... - Stuart -