all-in-one studio design

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:11 am

Folks,
I have a small basement (11ft x 17ft) and a small rig (korg d3200), but I want a big sound. I know I am shooting for the stars, but does anyone have a recommendation on using one room for both tracking and mixing.

If using a room for tracking and mixing, should the room be "live" or "dead"? I will have a vocal booth, but my drums will be in the main room.

I guess what I'm asking is, has anyone succesfully combined a "live room" and "control room" into one room, and if so, what approach should I take.

Thanks for your time,
Brackin

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:05 pm

Brackin,

> does anyone have a recommendation on using one room for both tracking and mixing. <

Sure, that's exactly what I do, and a lot of other people these days too. If you record mostly yourself it's much more convenient. Even more important, it's much better to have one room large enough to have a decent low frequency response, rather than two rooms each too small to sound good.

Even if you record others occasionally it's not necessarily bad to be in one room. I do that all the time. We all use headphones while tracking. No big deal.

In the old days it was common to sub-mix drum mikes, so maybe eight mikes would be recorded onto four tracks with the kick and snare separate, and all else pre-mixed on the other two tracks in stereo. In that case it's useful to be in a separate room to hear accurately, because you can't change the balance later. These days most people use DAWs with unlimited tracks, so once you know your room and drum set etc you can put each mike on its own track and sort out the balances later. Heck, these days a lot of people with home studios use MIDI samplers for drums! Like me. Very Happy

Further, with separate rooms in a home setting you still won't have true isolation. The kick and electric bass always bleed through the walls. So you can't really trust the balance you think you're hearing anyway.

--Ethan

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:31 pm

I'm in a 12x17 basement space myself. I used Ethan's articles to get my room treated without crushing my bank account and am very happy with the sound I get. Rather than building a vocal booth I've found that a large condensor with a figure 8 pickup patern works well in my space.

As for drums, I'm heading out today to purchase a couple sets of high isolation headphones. These are literally over-the-ear hearing protection like you would use at a gun range with speakers built in. My drummer will be in on Sunday so we'll see how well these work.

Actually, now that I think about it a set of ear buds with the hearing protection over the top would work just as well for tracking.

This topic sponsored by: