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The Padded Room.
Sep. 5th, 2011 07:21 pmI do my recording in a padded room.
There are two schools of thought on this--one is that you should use a room with a nice ambiance, a warm, alive sound, that makes your voice and instruments sound good and you should just record there and not mess with the sound much after that.
The other, older, school, is that you should record in as dead a space as possible--a space that doesn't bounce any sound back from the walls and floor, so the mic picks up only the direct sound from your voice, your instruments, to which you can then add what ever frequency boosts (EQ) and reverb you like. Because you can always add reverb or whatever, but if the "live" room had too much, you can't take it away.. To get a dead space, (also known as "dry") you use a room with surfaces that don't reflect sound, meaning foam (often egg crate foam) on the walls and floor. I refer to this as the padded room.
I started recording in a time, and with people, where the older school of thought was prominent, and that's what I'm comfortable with. I would certainly be willing to give the other method a try, but right now the quiet place I have to record is a padded room--and the room with wooden walls in my house, while giving rise to a pleasing sound, doesn't screen out the noise of the cars on the road, the bugs in the bushes (there's one that starts singing in the fall that chimes like jingle bells) and especially not the train whistles.
So, the padded room it is. Maybe it's the best place for me anyway, especially when I'm recording.
( Getting ready for the padded room-- )
There are two schools of thought on this--one is that you should use a room with a nice ambiance, a warm, alive sound, that makes your voice and instruments sound good and you should just record there and not mess with the sound much after that.
The other, older, school, is that you should record in as dead a space as possible--a space that doesn't bounce any sound back from the walls and floor, so the mic picks up only the direct sound from your voice, your instruments, to which you can then add what ever frequency boosts (EQ) and reverb you like. Because you can always add reverb or whatever, but if the "live" room had too much, you can't take it away.. To get a dead space, (also known as "dry") you use a room with surfaces that don't reflect sound, meaning foam (often egg crate foam) on the walls and floor. I refer to this as the padded room.
I started recording in a time, and with people, where the older school of thought was prominent, and that's what I'm comfortable with. I would certainly be willing to give the other method a try, but right now the quiet place I have to record is a padded room--and the room with wooden walls in my house, while giving rise to a pleasing sound, doesn't screen out the noise of the cars on the road, the bugs in the bushes (there's one that starts singing in the fall that chimes like jingle bells) and especially not the train whistles.
So, the padded room it is. Maybe it's the best place for me anyway, especially when I'm recording.
( Getting ready for the padded room-- )
