small area recording room. any key tips on the setup?

[jibberish]

thanks to jake, i have gutted my music area. it is about 13' x 18' in total. it has a fireplace and brickwork all across one 13' end[dont use the fireplace, so it COULD be blocked, but it looks nice and idk yet if i want to], doorway6-8' in on one long side near fireplace end. the room is actually w/e 50' long total so i could cheat a few more feet if i need to. the hearth is a 12" wide slab of sandstone. damn if it isnt too narrow for turntables, that would have been a nice place for them. it is too narrow for any stereo gear, which is really too bad becasue two stacks of stereo on either side of the firelace would have looked nice

ok i know i want an area to set up shit to jam/record/practice. it would be nice to be able to conveniently hit "record" on the gear table/shelf/whatever and then play the music all right there.

i also want to be able to listen to my big stereo which is basically separate from the pc/nearfield speaker setup. so there will be a chair somewhere opposite the big stereo speaker stacks.

i looked at a bunch of small studio layout ideas online and most are pics of someone's kludge they made. i didnt sense any standard things that everyone does.  about the biggest detail was nearfields should point straight at your ears. some people were just shoehorned into a small sideroom or dormer room and they had no options so their clusterfuck of stuff layout was useless.  some were small "large" studios. well i dont have a small gym.


the big studios have the main desk, nearfields, then big monitors and often a screen out in front a ways. seems like space in front of the main desk for recording on some, some just look like post production where the desk is right near the screen and big monitors. im sure there were remote recording booths for the big $ places which you wouldnt see in a main room shot. i did notice that there was a super comfy couch in the back of all the nice places.  that's about the only thing i have locked down lol.


So my problem is ergonomic layout that still permits the stuff to be used like it should be. anyone have problems with 20' speaker cable and signal cable runs? i instinctively like to keep those cables as short as possible, but maybe main stereo stack goes att way other end of room from speaker stack. it would be nice to sort of run the whole show from the main desk so to speak, which would be the recording setup and the main stereo.

i am as far as the 2 main stereo speaker stacks are on either side of the fireplace.

main desk(6' library table in real life lol) a secondary gear table(filing cabinet in real life) are just floating around the room.
help?   heh

[Lumpy]

Check out the recording forums at Gearslutz.com. Loads of info there. Your room is relatively big compared to some other home recordists. You should be able to do a lot with that space.

As in other gear nerd threads (and especially in the audio world) there will be people who tell you that "you can't _____ unless you _______ !!!" (otherwise, oh the horrors). In other words, a lot of rules that 'must' be followed whereas in the real world, people are ignoring "the rules" and still getting perfectly acceptable results. So if somebody tells you that you can't possibly get good results unless you totally remove your fireplace (or whatever) you should feel free to disregard their advice, and record your music anyway.

[RAGER]

Yer gonna have to remove the fireplace cuz all your 3.5khz is gonna go right up the chimney.   I've seen it happen time and again

[Lumpy]

I was gonna say the chimney might be a good bass trap. Who knows?

[jibberish]

haha, ya that frequency sucking is bad juju. i actually have been eyeing the woodboxes to be turned into sub cabinets. they are brick, slightly smaller than 2x2x4 and surrounded by more brick on 2.5 sides(woodbox sticks out further than fireplace) so i could get extreme on cabinet volume by going taller.   not much flex to bricks = god's own tight bass...anyway..just a dream stage there...

i was eyeing the fireplace as a turntable cabinet. maybe get one of those double extender drawer slide assemblies and slide the TT in there.  The isolation would be phenomenal, EXCEPT an occasional drip gets down the flue and i dont like excessive moisture near mah gear, so fireplace will just remain unused and closed up.

i really was looking for any known tricks to do or traps to avoid. i know the "whatever does what you need it to do is the correct setup" is the easy, and actually a good answer, but maybe signal/speaker cable lengths are an issue(only thing i can think of so i keep using that example) or as i have noticed, nearfields should be aimed straight to the listener. or are there any chronic reflection issues in most little rectangular studio attempts? or whatever?
definitely checking out that link and general googleizing continues...

but thx for pitching in. heh, those frequency sucking masonry demons are a real deal breaker for a lot of people.
then FAA starts nosin' around radio-active chimblies and it all just goes to hell in a handbasket

[Lumpy]

Your monitors are supposed to form a triangle (equidistant triangle I think they call it) so the distance between each monitor is the same distance to a monitor and your head. But actually, the triangle forms slightly behind your head. Cheat your head forward slightly in the layout. Your monitors are ideally at ear level, and on top of something solid, probably not your desktop. In a rectangular room, your desk and monitors should be on a short wall, facing into the room the long way. You'll probably want sound-absorbing material on the brick wall, and probably other places too.

Look at Gearslutz.com, there is a lot of info there.

[everdrone]

ideally a bigger room is better. with pro monitors, and acoustic treating and getting to know your room and speakers it should be pretty good.

if money was no object, I would get these for a room:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar09/articles/krkergo.htm

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/primacoustic-london-12a-room-kit-for-10x12-room   (you really need to treat your room and have basstraps, the ergo is secondary)

[jibberish]

nice, the info is piling up.   

the side walls are bright since they are smooth panelling. tile floor is bright.
ceiling panels are hi frq bright. they are long 12' x 4' flexible panels with a 2" thick fiberglass , i dont want to say foam, more like dense batting? backing for support with a soft plastic facing. they eat bass pretty well. (i think i kind of lucked out with these)  my stereo is tight even with the extra boom from the cerwin-vega ports loaded into the brick corners.  Now i'm thinking side treatment will tighten up the image from the stereo too. so i like that idea for sure.

the back of the room will be some kind of hanging cloth or w/e since there is still like 30' more of the room behind the curtain.

i have an RTA and a calibrated test mic, so i can see resonant peaks once i get the stuff rigged and snoop around with the white noise generator. i probably will superimpose the room curves onto the direct test speaker out curve and see what got skewed where(easier to just subtract the speaker than try to eq that too)

[mutantcolors]

Here's a shot of mine. Don't let anyone tell you you can't do this or that.

[jibberish]

^ \m/  and i will keep the thought in mind.   "make it so it works for me"   

so this has been fun getting all the crap sorted.  i decided to just do the semi-annual thorough basement cleaning since i have moved everything anyway, and it was easy. 

i will take a "before" video i think just for posterior (snicker)

i found 3 various rolling racks: a tv stand, a general cart similar to tv stand, an old sanyo rack system rack.  i still can't figure out where the sanyo rack came from. i have never owned sanyo anything lol.

i am meditating on logistics, like what will we be doing mostly:
1) production type stuff all at the pc
2) single person recording with access to pc
3) small group things, just need to hit rec and stop
4) small group needs to be by the big speakers since we jam to songs or backing tracks. works better if the speakers are as loud as the instruments (my 10 channels of audio with 800watts running it can wreck your hearing no problem heh)  <--btw, jucifer and i both know that a ton of speakers all running smooth is huge sound vs 1 speaker dimed
5)enough room for a kit(probly monkey see monkey do jakes big fuzzy carpet deal)
6)pull the time windows down and set them up for critical listening(need 8' triangle). rest of the time they are stacked just for volume with the rest

[jibberish]

getting ready to do some black friday damage

i need phuckingheadFones, extension cords. i think i have enough stereo parts to supply headphone amps, like a broken cassette deck=mint headphone amp, blown op channel receiver = mint headphone amp, etc...

i need mics. my son grabbed  areal nice rhode that i can borrow if need be. so i will probly get another 57 and a 58, get him a kick mic for xmas..
my pal has 2 mics he got at GC for $100 total, like a 57 and a 58 deal, so thats what we have been using when we use 3/4 mics for w/e we are doing...need my own...

and i pray to crom that i don't get sidetracked by a hawt guitar whilst taking care of business.......

[lordfinesse]

Yer gonna have to remove the fireplace cuz all your 3.5khz is gonna go right up the chimney.   I've seen it happen time and again

That is fucking on point with some of the ridiculous responses you may find. Most are helpful and realistic, but some are quite silly. I mean like "you must trap the whole room, and unless you're using a SSL desk with LA-2As, Fairchilds, and Pultecs, hitting a Studer A80 2" tape deck, don't even bother trying to record music" kind of shit.

If you're looking for a cheap pair of condenser mics, by most accounts these are totally decent:
http://www.karmamics.com/shop/K-Micro-Matched-Pair.html

[jibberish]

well since I had to replace my pc, the stable of mics will have to wait now. the headphone issue is still the most important.
as of wed before TG I finally got my main stereo set up again and the radio can fuck itself for the next 10 years.

I think the key to the whole studio setup is going to be able to work from the libary tabl...er "main console" ya ya that's it, IF I set it up so I can work from either side of it.

wires are going to be an issue. I need to be clever as hell regarding cable organizing and making runs clean

[everdrone]

ya everyone in the end just presses "record" and uses what they have!  my room is untreated and speakers are in a corner, but I know my setup and just compare recordings to other recordings and listen in my car or on other sound systems and headphones! 

I would like to have a treated room one day for a great reference though...

[eyeprod]

I have all of my band equipment set up in my living room and we've been doing some basic recording in there, mainly capturing live jams. I keep it super simple, but my goal is not a high end recording. I only want something reasonably decent.

My idea of simple starts with very few mics. Right now I'm using two to mic the drums, bass, guitar, and keys. One mic for the drums and guitar. One for the bass and keys. It works pretty good if you set up the mics a certain way. I put the one pretty low, near the top of the kick, so it doesn't get too much snare or cymbals. This is also a perfect height to mic the guitar cab. This mic is not pointing at either the drum or cab, but in between the two (it's a small room and everything is pretty close together).  Second mike is set up in a similar way, but between the bass and keyboard speaker, and further proximity than how I place the first mic. The final key being that guitar/drum mic is not picking up the bass/keys, and vice versa. This gives me a fairly useable 2 tracks; drums are mainly low end with some high end sparkle and the guitar is in the mids so it doesn't step on the drum frequencies, the bass doesn't interfere with the keys range. I can use compression and eq to "mix" the tracks.

I've only got a two input interface for my laptop, so this is about all I can do with two tracks. It took me awhile to figure out how to eq things right, but I'm happy with the results. It's nothing like having 4 or more tracks to work with, but that can also be a pan in the ass to mix. If you like it raw, simple, or have minimal equipment, I recommend trying to work with only two mics in a room and see what you can come up with.

[jibberish]

thx guys the ideas are great

I have 2 decent mics for my own single recording.  I have been making my buddy bring his 2 mics for when we do stuff. he plays trombone and sings and 2 mics just for him is way handy.  I just want to have a set so I can mic even a kit without borrowing..so until later..borrowing will continue heh

room treatment will be the second last consideration before lighting.  I have discovered that my stereo stack sounds better jammed close to the corners. te bass whomp fills in a pretty dry sound when they were out from the corners. the resonant peak dead between the stacks is gnarly, like a car stereo heh, so i'll stay out of there.  it tightens up much more nicely further down the room and sounds heavenly way at the far back of the whole room.

behind the couch nook, (at the midway point of the entire room) for décor, I will have several layers of cloth as a curtain type room divider to stifle rear reflection. that and the couch will be a dead spot.  I also have a big like 6X10 Persian rug for the floor.  if I don't have any really hot peaks when I RTA it, I will probably just finish decorating and go with it until I have some resonance problems actually doing something..

I am so stoked to get this rockin already


have to meditate on keyboard and turntable logistics and also what do I really use and what can get put on the shelf for now.

one rolling rack is going to be the "amp rack" it looks like. 4 receivers and a power amp+pre amp looks pretty cool. the speaker wire bundles are righteous from all that lol.

rack 2 will be the "source rack": cd players, cassettes, TT and w/e else.

rack 3 is the music gear rack for like the drum machine, midi synth modules, effects, compressor, etc,

the main console will have the 2 mixers, the computers and my 2 mission 2-ways as nearfields.  I will eq them with the noise generator then give them their own dedicated and marked for flat eq since I have an extra 15x2 eq

regarding headphone amps..i think with 4 receivers, 2 cassette decks and a pre amp, I am set for headphone amps for anything I could think of

[Submarine]

I am building a small recording studio now in my friends garage.  There is plenty of stuff online about room treatment,  I would read several different articles and see what the common threads are.  Everyone has an opinion on this.  You can get acoustic foam on ebay fairly cheap.  I would also get the Primacoustic Vox Guard which does a really good job of cutting down room sound on vocals, acoustic and electric guitars.  You can get those for about $100.  Keep in mind a bit of reflection/reverberation may be a good thing.  Don't deaden everything.

As for monitors since you are not in a million dollar studio with $50k monitors get any decent pair of monitors and listen to how some great sounding recordings sound on those speakers in your room ( i use AC/DC back in black as a reference).  I would also buy a pair of headphones so you can compare your mix between different speakers.