You can't do both at the same time.

Lots of people are building control room/studios. Where your control room is the studio and the studio is the control room. A room with good acoustics is a room with good acoustics. Hey, if it's good enough for Sir George Martin & Bruce Swedein, shouldn't it be adequate for you? You're not going to be tracking with the speakers on. You'll be using headphones. You mix with the speakers.

Problems? Well, if it's in your bedroom, it may pose some problems ? If you're talking about a much larger space like your entire basement, you're likely to get better results. If you are a good engineer with good chops, you'll end up with quality recordings. If you have a crappy sounding room and your engineering techniques sucks? Guess what you get? A turdley sound.

So yeah, if the room has a lousy resonance to it, you've got bad acoustics. So you'll have to fix that. The buildup? No. No buildup. And I've had no problems in tracking in the same room I have to mix in. Remember, you're not check your mix on more than just your control room speakers. If you're coming up with crappy mixes? Then you need to take a better look at what you're doing.

I'm just really surprised to see that smaller basement studios go to all the problems of building a separate control room from the studio. It's only important if you like your control room monitors blaring while tracking, that you need a separate control room from the studio. Of course you can't be jumping around because of the noise that would create.

Recording & mixing anywhere
Ms. Remy Ann David

that's good news. Perhaps I read the information wrong.

I would say the room is adequate. Perhaps a bit dry, but reasonably large and well proportioned for a project studio (13 x16.5 x7'), and diffuse. It sounds good with no real bad spots.

7 foot ceilings?

Ouch!

That's quite a limitation on your acoustics.

jm2 wrote: ....is there an inherent problem tracking and mixing in the same room?

only if the problem is the room

Todzilla wrote: 7 foot ceilings?

Ouch!

That's quite a limitation on your acoustics.

Uh, yeah... slightly.

There's always the possibility to get decent tracks... it'll be a real challenge and not one I'd be willing to tackle. (Then again, I'm still whacking away at dragons here.)

btw... Good to see ya's around again T'zilla!

Gimme a shout bro... You gotta make the pilgrimage out of the Neuse basin up here to the Cape Fear basin... this beast is gettin' pretty tweaked!
(I promise not to hand you a mud bucket and a trowel.)

Todzilla wrote:
7 foot ceilings?

Ouch!

That's quite a limitation on your acoustics.

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Hmmm, I do not think it is that bad. Many project studios are in home, and most homes have just 8ft. ceilings. Actually, mine is 7’2” to the low density drop ceiling and 8ft to the sub floor, which is high for a basement.

I had cunningly stored scores of boxes in between the joists before appropriating the room for a studio, and I think the obstacles and joists are acting as low frequency diffraction. While the room is dry, it is very well balanced, diffuse, and without obvious hot spots from point to point. Sure, I would rather record in a 14th century Bavarian Castle, but I have heard worse rooms than mine.

However, the comments got me thinking about an idea. I am not sure if it will work, but right beside my studio is my shop, which is larger and more live, with all hard surfaces. I am going to mic the room and feed the spill over into that room back into my studio. Any thoughts about this idea?

jm2 wrote: I had cunningly stored scores of boxes in between the joists before appropriating the room for a studio, and I think the obstacles and joists are acting as low frequency diffraction. While the room is dry, it is very well balanced, diffuse, and without obvious hot spots from point to point.

You don't think it's the drop ceiling tile? Cunning or not, low frequency ain't scared a no boxes :) Neither is a 3 alarm fire with your 2 best friends on the 1 night you had zero to do!!!

Hmmm... I do not quite understand your reply, but perhaps I should have mentioned that the boxes are not emtpy :wink: . In fact, they are filled with all kinds of dense shop related stuff I do not use from one year to the next, and I am confident that the combination of packed boxes and joists would have an effect on some portion of low frequencies, not unlike a large QRD, albeit without the ordered periodicity.

And of course I was just making fun in regard to my cunning nature, seeing as I stored the goods long before I decided to turn the room into a pseudo studio.