I’ve talked about acoustic treatment a lot here on Home Studio Corner. Why? Because it’s one of the most important components of your home studio (if not the most important).
Everything you do in a studio is centered around audio waves, right? We’re in the business of capturing, manipulating, and reproducing audio waves.
While we audio cowboys are in the process of wrangling in these unruly audio waves, they’re bouncing all around our room. The more reflective surfaces your studio has, the more unwieldy the audio becomes.
Acoustic treatment is like Ritalin™ for your studio. Audio waves have ADD. They bounce around the room like crazy until they finally run out of energy…then they do it again.
Okay. Enough analogies.
An Undercover EQ
Regardless of your involvement in audio, whether your a casual hobbyist or a full-time professional, your music has a slim chance of sounding decent if you don’t have acoustic treatment.
As you’ve heard countless times, your room plays an important role in how good your recordings are going to sound.
Got a bad-sounding room? Your recordings will sound bad.
Got a bad-sounding room? Your mixes will sound bad.
You can certainly do lots of things to combat a bad-sounding room, and no room is perfect, but what if your room was destined to sound bad? What if the mere dimensions of the room were all it takes to make a room unfit for studio work?
A while back I had the pleasure of attending a seminar given by Gavin Haverstick
of Haverstick Designs. The topic of the seminar was how to measure the acoustic issues of your room. He talked about various measurement techniques and devices.
All of this was very interesting, but the most fascinating part for me was during the question-and-answer section at the end. Someone in the audience asked Gavin to give his opinion on digital room correction.
Let me take a step back and explain what I mean by “digital room correction.” There are several products on the market now that can tune studio monitors to the room they are in. For example, if the room is causing a boost at 200 Hz, these products will use a digital EQ to attenuate 200 Hz. The end result is (ideally) a flat frequency response.
We’ve look at how important it is to record a quality instrument and to really know what that instrument sounds like. Next? Microphones, right?
Hold on there, cowboy. There’s another HUGE variable that comes into play. Before you ever set up the microphone, you need to have a good understanding of what’s happening to the sound BEFORE it hits the mic.
The first step is the instrument itself. The second step is the room.
Here’s a quick video for you. (I haven’t posted a video since before 31 Days to Better Recordings!)
If you’re reading this before November 14th, 2010, be sure to sign up for the Understanding Your Room live classes. This is a one-time live webinar series that will knock your socks off. Join today at the special discounted rate. Click here to check it out.
Acoustic treatment can be a ridiculously confusing topic.
If you’re just starting out with recording, acoustic treatment might be the last thing on your mind. After all, you’re trying to figure out microphones, interfaces, EQ, compression, etc.
Speaking from personal experience, I wish I had gotten acoustic treatment for my studio much sooner than I did. Recording and mixing without acoustic treatment is similar to playing golf with really cheap clubs. You might be able to put together a decent round, but you’re constantly limited by the capabilities of your equipment.
Without acoustic treatment, you’re constantly limited by the capabilities of your room. (More on this below.)
It would be a grave injustice for me to talk about getting better recordings and not dedicate a day to acoustic treatment.
Acoustic treatment is probably one of the least “fun” items you’ll add to your studio, but the benefits FAR outweigh any potential inconveniences. Whether you decide to buy or build your acoustic treatment, this is absolutely one of those must-have items.
I’d guess that 98% of you have home studios in some sort of spare room in your house. In other words, the room wasn’t built specifically to be a studio.
Chances are there are a lot of bare walls and parallel surfaces and right angles. While very common in houses, these things can wreak havoc on the sound of the room.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last several days, you’ve probably heard about the massive amounts of rain and flooding going on in Middle Tennessee. There has been so much flooding here in Nashville. They’re calling it a “500-year flood,” whatever that means.
It will be a long time before this area fully recovers. Many have lost their homes and businesses. Thankfully, my wife and I are safe and dry. (If you’d like to donate to the flood relief, you can do so at the Nashville Red Cross website.)
Before I go any further, I want you to know that I don’t mean to make light of the devastation that’s going on in this area. However, I did actually have a recording session on Saturday, during the torrential downpour, and I thought I’d share some of the experience with you.
I’ve talked about acoustic treatment a lot here on Home Studio Corner. Why? Because it’s one of the most important components of your home studio (if not the most important).
As you’ve heard countless times, your room plays an important role in how good your recordings are going to sound.
It would be a grave injustice for me to talk about getting better recordings and not dedicate a day to acoustic treatment.
