Also how big is the need of a vocal booth when recording vocals when the acoustics of the garage is good?
Sorry for throwing so many stupid question..
Thanks for all the help
Ivan-
Studio Dimensions
Moderators: Aaronw, kendale, John Sayers
-
xP.SeifeR
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2003 5:00 pm
Studio Dimensions
Hey, Im about to build a garage studio and I was thinking. Now I'm planning on putting a drum set in the garage and I'm really tight with budget. The drums wont be for recording just for playing it but my question is would it be cheaper to just build a control room and a vocal/drum booth or two separate booths? Also with a big booth would the drum sound be isolated or would the vocal recording sound worse in a bigger booth?
Also how big is the need of a vocal booth when recording vocals when the acoustics of the garage is good?
Sorry for throwing so many stupid question..
Thanks for all the help
Ivan-
Also how big is the need of a vocal booth when recording vocals when the acoustics of the garage is good?
Sorry for throwing so many stupid question..
Thanks for all the help
Ivan-
-
knightfly
- Senior Member
- Posts: 6976
- Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2003 11:11 am
- Location: West Coast, USA
Some GENERAL guidelines -
Isolating drums is MUCH harder than isolating vocals, unless the vocalist can sing the bottom C note on a piano at 110 decibels. Bass is several times harder to stop than mids/highs.
Almost NOTHING sounds BETTER in a small room vs a large room - booths are built to ISOLATE. Most of the time, this causes you to have to add electronic reverb to make up for the small room. It also causes you to have to put a lot of absorbent material in the room to kill all the artifacts that small rooms cause.
Unless you have a door that's wide enough to roll an entire drum riser in and out, using a drum booth for a vocal booth isn't practical. Your voice will excite at least one of the percussion "toys" in the room, which isn't the best thing, if you sing in the room with the drums and try to record it. Taking the drums out of the booth to record vocals sucks, unless you have more time than sense. This is why people build separate drum booths, separate vocal booths, etc -
If you're tight for money, some of the above disadvantages have to be lived with. It can be a really hard decision, but shouldn't be decided without having as much background as possible.
If you're just looking for good sound for recording and don't need to keep sound either IN or OUT, don't build ANYTHING til you see what your room sounds like. This can take some time to discover, but there are a few simple methods that can help. One that is mentioned frequently by Ethan is playing incremental low tones and walking around the room. This will identify problem areas. If you have access to an actual SWEEP generator, you can set it to sweep from 20 hZ to about 4-500 hZ, and SLOWLY move about the room (at different ALTITUDES, as well as x-y coordinates) - the areas you find that have the LEAST loudness variation at different frequencies, should be marked, and that's where either your head and/or your monitor speakers should go if it's possible.
If you need serious sound PROOFing because of drums vs. neighbors, I'd just plan on a careful re-do of the entire room first, and then if there's money left after you aren't disturbing neighbors you could consider a vocal booth... Steve
Isolating drums is MUCH harder than isolating vocals, unless the vocalist can sing the bottom C note on a piano at 110 decibels. Bass is several times harder to stop than mids/highs.
Almost NOTHING sounds BETTER in a small room vs a large room - booths are built to ISOLATE. Most of the time, this causes you to have to add electronic reverb to make up for the small room. It also causes you to have to put a lot of absorbent material in the room to kill all the artifacts that small rooms cause.
Unless you have a door that's wide enough to roll an entire drum riser in and out, using a drum booth for a vocal booth isn't practical. Your voice will excite at least one of the percussion "toys" in the room, which isn't the best thing, if you sing in the room with the drums and try to record it. Taking the drums out of the booth to record vocals sucks, unless you have more time than sense. This is why people build separate drum booths, separate vocal booths, etc -
If you're tight for money, some of the above disadvantages have to be lived with. It can be a really hard decision, but shouldn't be decided without having as much background as possible.
If you're just looking for good sound for recording and don't need to keep sound either IN or OUT, don't build ANYTHING til you see what your room sounds like. This can take some time to discover, but there are a few simple methods that can help. One that is mentioned frequently by Ethan is playing incremental low tones and walking around the room. This will identify problem areas. If you have access to an actual SWEEP generator, you can set it to sweep from 20 hZ to about 4-500 hZ, and SLOWLY move about the room (at different ALTITUDES, as well as x-y coordinates) - the areas you find that have the LEAST loudness variation at different frequencies, should be marked, and that's where either your head and/or your monitor speakers should go if it's possible.
If you need serious sound PROOFing because of drums vs. neighbors, I'd just plan on a careful re-do of the entire room first, and then if there's money left after you aren't disturbing neighbors you could consider a vocal booth... Steve
Soooo, when a Musician dies, do they hear the white noise at the end of the tunnel??!? Hmmmm...
