Operation: Studio G Brooklyn CHAMBER

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

elbows
alignin' 24-trk
Posts: 50
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2009 11:36 pm
Location: Ossining, NY
Contact:

Post by elbows » Thu Jun 17, 2010 7:27 pm

Pesticides age like wine.

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by joel hamilton » Thu Jun 17, 2010 7:48 pm

roscoenyc wrote:paint the brick with Plaster Weld
It will cover and seal the brick.

Even if you have a couple coats of regular paint on there you want to coat it with plaster weld then paint it.
Nice one. We will FULLY use this on a couple of the walls that are particularly textured. I skimmed it with some crazy stuff they had at Klenosky's, and that worked really well, but it would be great to get some plaster up on the walls for sound purposes.
Thanks Roscoe. I was looking for something like this and I wound up doing the skimming of the really fucked areas by hand. It will be awesome to go ovr those spots with some plaster weld.

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by joel hamilton » Thu Jun 17, 2010 7:49 pm

Labozza wrote:Pesticides age like wine.
Matt, clearly you are a pesticide connoisseur. You dug right into that dungeon. Nice work, man.

cgarges
zen recordist
Posts: 10890
Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2003 1:26 am
Location: Charlotte, NC
Contact:

Post by cgarges » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:06 pm

Very cool, Joel!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

User avatar
roscoenyc
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1530
Joined: Sun Jun 03, 2007 5:56 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by roscoenyc » Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:59 am

joel hamilton wrote:
roscoenyc wrote:paint the brick with Plaster Weld
It will cover and seal the brick.

Even if you have a couple coats of regular paint on there you want to coat it with plaster weld then paint it.
Nice one. We will FULLY use this on a couple of the walls that are particularly textured. I skimmed it with some crazy stuff they had at Klenosky's, and that worked really well, but it would be great to get some plaster up on the walls for sound purposes.
Thanks Roscoe. I was looking for something like this and I wound up doing the skimming of the really fucked areas by hand. It will be awesome to go ovr those spots with some plaster weld.
Sure thing Joel.
I think of Plaster Weld as "extreme primer"

It's easy to get too.

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by joel hamilton » Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:49 am

This chamber now has an official name:

the DRUMGEON.

[crickets].

I laughed anyway....
More work after I finish the dub trio record this tuesday.

User avatar
Jon Nolan
tinnitus
Posts: 1085
Joined: Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:28 pm
Location: New Hampshire
Contact:

Post by Jon Nolan » Fri Jun 18, 2010 7:19 am

joel hamilton wrote:This chamber now has an official name:

the DRUMGEON.

[crickets].

I laughed anyway....
More work after I finish the dub trio record this tuesday.
huffing humor? ;)

ps - i thought it was funny, but effing crickets follow me around everywhere, just waiting for me to crack a joke...

User avatar
Gregg Juke
cryogenically thawing
Posts: 3544
Joined: Fri Jun 11, 2010 10:35 pm
Location: Buffalo, NY, USA
Contact:

Re: Operation: Studio G Brooklyn CHAMBER

Post by Gregg Juke » Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:39 pm

Just a crazy thought (also from a non-acoustician, and someone with a lot less experience than you at making/using live reverb chambers):

Have you considered using some "outdoor" speakers? The kind they make for home audio enthusiasts to post in the backyard and leave out all year long? You mentioned the damp/humid conditions; I wonder if something like that might prove a little more hearty...

http://alloutdoorspeaker.com/

http://www.amazon.com/JBL-Control-Indoo ... B000U2G6OW

http://www.buy.com/prod/bose-31763-outd ... 12581.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-82290031

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/5 ... Pair_.html#

GJ

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Re: Operation: Studio G Brooklyn CHAMBER

Post by joel hamilton » Sun Jun 20, 2010 8:09 am

Gregg Juke wrote:Just a crazy thought (also from a non-acoustician, and someone with a lot less experience than you at making/using live reverb chambers):

Have you considered using some "outdoor" speakers? The kind they make for home audio enthusiasts to post in the backyard and leave out all year long? You mentioned the damp/humid conditions; I wonder if something like that might prove a little more hearty...

http://alloutdoorspeaker.com/

http://www.amazon.com/JBL-Control-Indoo ... B000U2G6OW

http://www.buy.com/prod/bose-31763-outd ... 12581.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-82290031

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/5 ... Pair_.html#

GJ
I did think about it, yes. Most of them are too small to provide good sound at good sond levels to get up over the noise floor of a chamber in the city.
The ground is constantly kind of rumbling in NYC, no matter what you do. The stairway chamber at avatar has 2 15" and a horn ALTEC 603 (big reds) in there, moving a LOT of air when you have the send cranked up. I was printing it on a project, and we still had to reprint a couple because of a siren in one song, and some street noise from construction in another. That sort of thing happens here.
If I was in a more rural setting, or even suburban, I could probably get away with speakers like that. The one I chose is inexpensive, sounds pretty damn good, and moves a LOT of air.
Considering there will almost always be corrective EQ on the send, I just need it to move a bunch of air down there and get us as much S/N as possible.

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by joel hamilton » Wed Jun 23, 2010 4:14 pm

We got one of the 3X3 pieces of cold rolled sheet steel mounted and tensioned down there today. its a PITA to get that stuff tensioned to the point that it actually sounds like something. Its really easy to get LF info happening, so thats cool, but to get any top end in a piece of steel that size seems to require serious tension.
Everything I know about making a plate, which is minimal and not from experience, is about choosing the right materials, and I dont have the right sheet stock... BUT: thiis is just for sympathetic "ring" that sounds good acoustically, so I am happy with it. Even just for some reflection it is good. With the re-pointed brick and now fully cured hi-gloss paint, we have just about a 1 second reverb time that is very pleasing when you clap in there. I am already super psyched about it as a drum/snare chamber. It needs a bit more decay time to really get useful for guitars or vocals, but it is really sounding balanced and quite good in there even right now. The metal we put up and tensioned seemed to extend the frequency response of the room more than add decay time... like adding more LF decay time so it sounds "warmer." (ugh I hate that word).
But for real, it does. More low mids in the decay makes it more musical. Happy about it.
Next step is wiring up the speaker and the mics. I am also going to wire up a freaky experiment mic, just in mono. A super cheap condenser epoxy'd to a piece of super thin sheet steel... like a PZM with a resonant boundary, basically. Using a cardioid so it still grabs some of the chamber but with the resonant boundary "afterglow."
Thats the theory, and I am going to at least try it. If it sucks, I will just go back to the other idea of putting the mono mic on a remote control car and being able to move it that way without a remote servo motor and boom.....
which may happen anyway. Like a 360 degree motor with a boom on it, and a single SDC on the end. ust to move the mic around for different sounds in mono, or WITH the stereo X/Y bar SDC's that we will tone and find the "best" spot for in the chamber and then mount them there permanently.
You can bet there will be EQ on the send... ;)

User avatar
sonicmook56
steve albini likes it
Posts: 357
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 3:05 pm
Location: Echo Park

Post by sonicmook56 » Thu Jun 24, 2010 8:00 pm

This is rad, Joel.

andris
gettin' sounds
Posts: 143
Joined: Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:57 pm
Location: oneonta, n.y.
Contact:

Post by andris » Thu Jun 24, 2010 8:17 pm

remote control car, fuckin love it.
dryhill studios
oneonta ny

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by joel hamilton » Fri Jun 25, 2010 5:53 am

UPS brought the speaker, waiting on the cheapo SDC's to start testing: in the middle of a record.The record i am working on is just so conducive to this sort of thing that I wanna have it happening, even if the tile isnt on the floor yet, just to send some sounds and start to see what we get... even if it is just EQ'd like crazy to make it work, the chamber will BE ON THIS RECORD. ;)

User avatar
JohnDavisNYC
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3035
Joined: Fri Oct 03, 2003 2:43 pm
Location: crooklyn, ny
Contact:

Post by JohnDavisNYC » Fri Jun 25, 2010 5:54 am

i'm gonna swing by after my session... i want to check it out!

john
i like to make music with music and stuff and things.

http://www.thebunkerstudio.com/

joel hamilton
zen recordist
Posts: 8876
Joined: Mon May 19, 2003 12:10 pm
Location: NYC/Brooklyn
Contact:

Post by joel hamilton » Wed Jun 30, 2010 7:11 pm

UPDATE:

So today we finally had a minute, so we got the ugliest tile, which was also the cheapest, at a home center type store. the stuff looks like amish-desert-triscuit nightmare, but who cares. its tile. Glazed, industrial, 12"x12" tiles. We put the tiles down on the floor just laying there. Not going to do any grouting at all. We are just laying a ton of tile down, including a second layer of very very shiny tile soon, maybe tomorrow.
After doing the sympathetic plate, and laying the tile on the floor, we did the wiring. Luckily I had run like 16 extra sends out to the live room in groups of 8 in some old snakes, and the pass through is actually in the chamber where it goes back up into the control room from the live room. I pulled 8 of the spare lines back down through and connected the speaker and microphone sends. It felt really good to be doing something normal like WIRE type stuff instead of high gloss stinky paint stuff or whatever..
Anyway, before I get into how it sounds now with all this stuff going on, I wanna say something:
Tensioning sheet metal is really fucking difficult. To get the sympathetic plate sheets to resonate at anything above 300 hz is going to require more tension than I can put on the current frame and corner reinforcements. I am going to build more structural supports to the frame we are using and then get a new piece of stainless steel and have corner reinforcements welded on, THEN, we will be able to put 2 turnbuckles per corner, applying more tension all around and hopefully getting some meaningful resonance up to like 500 or 800 hz. I hope so...
anyway, How does it sound? Incredible.
I really think it is going to be the drum chamber I have always wanted. RT-60 is roughly 1 full second. 1.5 total, but the 1 second tail is incredibly balanced right now with the tile on the floor, the metal stuff hanging, some plexiglass and glass surfaces to focus some reflections (as suggested in a few different books/blogs/info sheets) and the super high gloss paint.
I bet if we did some more plastering and smoothing of the brick wall, along with yet ANOTHER coat of paint we could get the RT up to 2.5 or more.
Sealing up a few places where the reflections leave the room? probably even more useable RT...
But for right now, I am super excited about the short chamber TONE that we have going on. 1 second of seriously balanced, really killer sounding verb/slap/diffusion.
the 1 second/ 1.5 second tail was what I was gunning for, and with more tension on the sympathetic plate, I think it will be an even better sound for voice.
I cant wait to hear a snare drum....
we are putting up the mics on a stereo bar tomorrow morning... updates soon after this thing is ROCKING!!!
new picture and more blabbing on the blog with the first chunks of tile on the floor....
http://www.joelhamiltonlivesloud.blogspot.com/

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 74 guests