Has anyone out there actually built a reverb chamber?

[stuntbutt]

I'm thinking of building one. I've found some info on the web. I'm just wondering if anyone on here as actually built one and how did it turn out?

[squizo]

i didn't build one but my laundry room which also doubles as my "live" room has some modified pzm's on the wall .....i use my EV GOLD PA TOWERS from the other room pointing in....and run stuff through the room....you wouldn't believe what you can come up with....plus you can "customize" reverbs for people instead of reaching for an f/x box or a dreaded plug-in (yuck)

[joeysimms]

I'm thinking of building one. I've found some info on the web. I'm just wondering if anyone on here as actually built one and how did it turn out?

I haven't but someday hope to. You need a large space to really get busy. Have you come across an article by Malcolm Chisholm online? I can post it if not. He goes into a fair amount of detail on the construction of chambers.

[stuntbutt]

I haven't come across the Malcolm Chisholm article. I would love to read it. I have been doing a similar technique as squizo and I the results are great. I have the space and I think it would be great to have a chamber that I could use in real time instead of getting an FX balance and then recording it.

[vvv]

RIP, he died in 2003:
http://www.ears-chicago.org/eardrum/2003.07.shtml

His stuff is posted by his son at:
http://pages.ripco.net/~chisholm/rsdp/INDEX.HTM

[stuntbutt]

Great ariticle! Thanks.

[Professor]

Indeed that is a great article, though very specific towards the traditional purpose built chamber. I've been thinking about using more chamber styled reverbs in recording sessions and must say that I'm rather uniquely situated for such activity. Many of my ideas for here won't directly translate but could give you some ideas to play with.

The school studio sits on the top floor of a six floor building with lots of potential chamber spaces, and since the building is of commercial construction and fairly well empties out by around midnight, the possibilities really expand.
I already have tie-lines run from when the space was built that connect the control room to 10 other rooms in the building including a couple classrooms, large rehearsal rooms and even two performance halls. I also have plenty of available speakers and microphones to take care of the signal paths.
The beauty of using chambers is, as mentioned in the article, that acoustic reverb IS natural and so it SOUNDS natural. It is also infinitely adjustable since you can equalize the signal going to and from the chamber, you can adjust the dampening of the walls, you can reposition microphones, etc.
Many of the rooms in the school building are quite noisy with the building's ventilation system, but a few are ideal choices, ranging from a roughly 40x60x18' rehearsal room to a 100-seat recital hall, to a 15x20x9 classroom. I have rooms with carpet and seating, and rooms with tiled floors and brick walls, and even the lobby is a potential source with the stone floor, glass and smooth wood all around.
I anticipate experimenting a little over the summer to see what sort of interesting effects are available with the obvious spaces, and then also the more special effects spaces like the larger, bright sounding bathrooms, the 6 storey concrete stairwell, and the 85' long hallway outside the studio door.

I'm sure if you look around there are spaces in your home that could work for a chamber already, like larger bathrooms, smaller dens, or the basement. If the space is naturally quiet then try it out. Adjust speaker and mic placement to get something that works for you. Of course, an obvious source is the live room you already use to track the instruments. If you are really going to build a specific chamber, you might build panels on top of the walls that can be reversed or angled to give you both reflected and absorbtive surfaces so you can really custom tailor the sounds you want. Maybe a reversible panel that is hard tile on one side and soft wood on the other, and then hang a heavy curtain on a runner on the wall so you can pull an absorbtive surface out when needed. All sorts of possibilities when you use your imagination a bit.

I'll let you know when school is out and I start experimenting with echoing snaredrum hits down two floors of the stairwell.

-Jeremy

[Current Resistance]

i had malcolm as a teacher at columbia college.

i wonder if he ever got a chance to experience the new reverb chamber at columbia. the audio department moved into a new building last year and aquired an old bank vault that they made into a reverb chamber....

not only does it LOOK badass, it IS badass.

[joeysimms]

Interesting as well was the article in the TO issue before last with the Abbey road engineer, who talked about taping the chamber mic into a corner, or to the wall, in order to minimize early reflections. Similar I suppose to albini taping the drum room mics to the floor. Anyone do this?

[joel hamilton]

Yes.

Micing the reflection, or "boundary mic'ing" has been done for a long time, even pre-albini.

The reason is because micing a reflection makes you hear the distance of the mic to the "boundary" (floor,wall, glass, whatever) rather than the distance from the mic to the source.

This is how PZM's work as well. They simpl;y have the "boundary" built right in, in the form of a little wall, and the gap between the diaphragm and the "little wall" is doing what engineers have done since sound existed, mic the reflection.

[@?,*???&?]

Never 'built' one, but have set up many temporaries in various locations. Get to know the Blumlein method of miking and you'll get great results.

[jajjguy]

when deciding how big the room needs to be, you should decide how low (frequency-wise) you want the reverb to go smoothly. for this you need "modal density", which will always be fine at higher freqs, but you need a big room to get good modal density at low freqs. there's a simple equation i can dig up for you if you want me to.

say you have good modal density down to 500Hz, but not below. then you could either EQ out everything below 500Hz, or you could leave it in and accept some coloration of the sound (peaks and dips at different freqs). that kind of coloration might be fine with you, but if it's on all your tracks, it could cause mix problems.

[joeysimms]

Yes.

Micing the reflection, or "boundary mic'ing" has been done for a long time, even pre-albini.

The reason is because micing a reflection makes you hear the distance of the mic to the "boundary" (floor,wall, glass, whatever) rather than the distance from the mic to the source.

This is how PZM's work as well. They simpl;y have the "boundary" built right in, in the form of a little wall, and the gap between the diaphragm and the "little wall" is doing what engineers have done since sound existed, mic the reflection.

Nice, but I had never seen an actual reference to doing that with echo chamber mics until the Abbey road article. Even when i had read stuff about echo chambers and the various mic / speaker used inside, there was no mention of taping the mic to the wall or corner.

[I'm Painting Again]

there is this bathroom in the mall near me that has the most beautiful reverb,,really amazing,,its got a 2ish second delay and it sounds otherworldly..one day i would like to recreate it..its all marble though..sorry for the tangent..

[jajjguy]

there is this bathroom in the mall near me that has the most beautiful reverb,,really amazing,,its got a 2ish second delay and it sounds otherworldly..one day i would like to recreate it..its all marble though..sorry for the tangent..

quick and dirty way to do this: go down there with your DAT (or minidisc, whatever) and wait til the room is empty and record a really good, strong handclap. take it home, load it into the computer and trim it to include just the handclap and the full decay. then CONVOLVE this signal with your vocal track (CoolEdit will do convolution), and bam, you got singin in the bathroom! this is a really crude, simplified version of what Altiverb does.