"No control room." Looking for tips on getting sou

[Ryan Silva]

33x18 no separation.

I have done some drums like this, with moderate success, but I think I just got lucky.

I am building a new studio and just don?t have the room, for two partitions. Has anyone ever got comfortable with this kind of setup? And how?


Thanks

[tonewoods]

32' x 16' here, and I prefer the "out of control" room....

Better interaction with the musicians, lots of good bleed, and more of "playroom" feel instead of the segmented boxes are some of the reasons I prefer it...

You gotta know your mics really well, though...

[E.Bennett]

My studio has a control room-less setup. Most of the time I really like it, but it can be difficult at times. I set up open partitions with large baffle walls. They take some of the edge off of the drums while you're tracking in the same room. Trial and error is always present. We do quite a few test takes, but that usually happens with full isolation as well. I usually end up moving mics to get sounds rather than reaching for the eq. It's tough to make eq decisions while wearing headphones, so the open room forces you to get it right at the mic.

[philbo]

I like one big room. Mine is about 22 x 28 feet or so.

When getting sounds, I just put the mic where it sounds good to my ear, most of the time. Once in a while, I'll put on earphones and listen to those while tweaking mic position. I don't really care for it, it doesn't sound 'real' - but sometimes it's the right thing to do.
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Asian xxx

[I'm Painting Again]

isolation phones have helped me in my one room setup..

[RodC]

For drum sounds I turn the latency of my DAW up so there is a delay, (and monitor through it instead of my live monitor setup), have the drummer hit the tom (Snare kick or whatever) and wait a for the playback to be a 1/2 second or so behind. I like to use nearfields + sub for this.

For guitars I find where the amp sounds the best and then go to about 1/2 volume to work on mic placement, I set across the room with headphones while one of my assistants (AKA sons LOL) move the mics around. This will get you pretty close then you can do some test recordings. I also do a lot of Re-Amping so I can do this when nobody is there to rush things.

[Ryan Silva]

For drum sounds I turn the latency of my DAW up so there is a delay, (and monitor through it instead of my live monitor setup), have the drummer hit the tom (Snare kick or whatever) and wait a for the playback to be a 1/2 second or so behind. I like to use nearfields + sub for this.

Brilliant, never thought to do that; I will surely try that.

[I'm Painting Again]

For drum sounds I turn the latency of my DAW up so there is a delay, (and monitor through it instead of my live monitor setup), have the drummer hit the tom (Snare kick or whatever) and wait a for the playback to be a 1/2 second or so behind. I like to use nearfields + sub for this.

Brilliant, never thought to do that; I will surely try that.

yeah totally brilliant..that is one of the most creative tricks I've ever heard..

[I'm Painting Again]

that reads sarcastic maybe..don';t mean it thayt way..

[RodC]

Yep I figured that one out by mistake, I had an old slow DAW that I would crank the latency way up on and I accidently had the "echo" in sonar on. It gives you a clear picture of the whole signal chain. I'm sure someone else has done it before.

Its sorta like the day I though I invented reamping. I was testing a tube amp one day and had the brilliant idea to mic it... But low and behold I was about 20 years late to the game LOL!

[Mark Alan Miller]

That latency trick is pretty cool.

Another thing to do, if you're the eq-and/or-compress-as-you-track type, is to print the output of the mic/pre flat as a test recording, then play it back, tweaking it to your liking on your monitors, then insert that processing into your tracking chain...

[sparrowhawk]

For drum sounds I turn the latency of my DAW up so there is a delay, (and monitor through it instead of my live monitor setup), have the drummer hit the tom (Snare kick or whatever) and wait a for the playback to be a 1/2 second or so behind. I like to use nearfields + sub for this.

Sorry to be dumb but can someone explain this technique to me in more detai? I have a one room basement setup and I'm always looking for new ways to get better results.

[RodC]

For drum sounds I turn the latency of my DAW up so there is a delay, (and monitor through it instead of my live monitor setup), have the drummer hit the tom (Snare kick or whatever) and wait a for the playback to be a 1/2 second or so behind. I like to use nearfields + sub for this.

Sorry to be dumb but can someone explain this technique to me in more detai? I have a one room basement setup and I'm always looking for new ways to get better results.

Normaly I use hardware to monitor so the signal does not have to go through any sofware plugins and I can run rather High Latency. Generaly the higer the latency the safer you are, it gives your cpu time to do more work before it has to write to the hard disk. Just do some searching for latency.

Basicly if you monitor through your whole signal chain Mic - Pre - Computer interface - DAW sofware - there will be some Latency. I use Sonar and it gives you the option to increase this latency to make things safer. If you monitor a track with high latency its like having a Delay on, but it will be a perfect delay. The signal is just produced in the headphones/monitors a few miliseconds later. In Cakewalk to monitor a track I turn on the "Echo" just for that track and route it so it ends up in my monitors. Like any amplifier watch out for Feedback.

So, the drummer hits the tom/snare/kick whatever and a few seconds what will be recorded will be heard through your monitors. Its pretty cool because you get instant compairison to the live sound you just heard.

It would probably help if you post what DAW software and interface you are using, someone could prob help you set it up.

[Brian Brock]

That's cool - basically, you've automated the process of recording and then listening back to it. It seems to me that you could do this with a typical delay too, as long as you understand what it does to the sound.

b

[RodC]

That's cool - basically, you've automated the process of recording and then listening back to it. It seems to me that you could do this with a typical delay too, as long as you understand what it does to the sound.

b

I guess you could use a normal delay, this way you hear the actual sound through the whole chain.