How to capture a great sounding room

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GussyLoveridge
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How to capture a great sounding room

Post by GussyLoveridge » Mon Feb 29, 2016 7:58 am

Hey Folks -

Perhaps this isn't in the correct space. Please feel free to move it if necessary.

There is a club in the town that I live in, that to my ears, has the best sounding acoustics of any place I've ever been. It's my favourite place to sing, strum a guitar, or even listen to a bottle smash. It's wonderful.

I want to know if there is a way to capture and then recreate the sound of this room.

I'd like to have the ability to apply its sound to recordings I make elsewhere. I worry that eventually I'll no longer be able to go to that room and listen to things.

So my questions are:

Is this possible?

Will it cost a zillion dollars?

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Mon Feb 29, 2016 8:39 am

Convolution reverbs let you sample spaces and make your own reverbs. I do this all the time with the Waves IR reverb. Lots of others work too.

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=ch ... b+samples+

I mixed a record last year that was tracked in a ballroom in Bergsdorf Germany. It was mostly distant miced and made good use of the room ambiance. We decided that the sound of the room should be the only reverb used. The only problem is that I didn't always have everything I needed in the raw tracks, the studio/ballroom closed up shop midway through the mixing and I'm in Canada not Germany. Sampling the room solved all these problems and let me use the room as a plug-in. The combination was pretty seamless. A year later I can't really tell what's room mics and what's the plug-in.

You can see the space and hear some of the record here -
https://youtu.be/w7QXcpNLlX4

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GussyLoveridge
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Post by GussyLoveridge » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:46 am

That's what I'm talking about.

Thanks!

jimjazzdad
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Post by jimjazzdad » Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:42 am

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:Convolution reverbs let you sample spaces and make your own reverbs. I do this all the time with the Waves IR reverb. Lots of others work too.

https://www.google.ca/webhp?sourceid=ch ... b+samples+

I mixed a record last year that was tracked in a ballroom in Bergsdorf Germany. It was mostly distant miced and made good use of the room ambiance. We decided that the sound of the room should be the only reverb used. The only problem is that I didn't always have everything I needed in the raw tracks, the studio/ballroom closed up shop midway through the mixing and I'm in Canada not Germany. Sampling the room solved all these problems and let me use the room as a plug-in. The combination was pretty seamless. A year later I can't really tell what's room mics and what's the plug-in.

You can see the space and hear some of the record here -
https://youtu.be/w7QXcpNLlX4
Thanks for sharing that - really enjoyed it. Yes convolution reverb is a powerful tool.
Jim Legere
Halifax, NS
Canada

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I'm Painting Again
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Post by I'm Painting Again » Tue Mar 22, 2016 7:54 am

It's a club so they might have an unused space just sitting the during the day..maybe you can rent it to do yr recordings in? Or barter for recording shows to give/sell to the musicians as part of their service?

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