[Jonathan[_5_]]

On Sep 7, 12:48*pm, (hank alrich) wrote:
Jonathan wrote:
On Sep 6, 12:57 pm, (hank alrich) wrote:

In fact, given a poor room and s single mic I will choose either
hpercardioid, like a Sennheiser MD441, or a Fig. 8 ribbon, like AEA's
R84. Judicious placement of baffling, which could be a stuffed chair or
two, can help tremendously. One can get good results with appropriately
selected directional mics in the situation presented, depending, of
course, on the balance of the two sources, vocal and guitar.

Thanks for the advice, Hank!
The R84 looks pretty cool.

A few more questions if you don't mind...

Being new at this, I'm not really sure whether my room needs
acoustical treatment.

Almost every room needs some kind of treatment. Small, weirdly-shaped
highly reflective rooms need it badly.

There is a wealth of information about room treatment at these two
sites:

http://www.realtraps.com

http://ethanwiner.com

Note that while Ethan is the proprietor of RealTraps, he also offers at
his site plans for DIY traps. He is also a regular and valuable
contributor to this newsgroup.

It's a bonus room over the garage, "L" shaped with some diagonal
surfaces that trace the contour of the roof, so I guess it probably
has some weird sound reflections, etc., but I don't know.

Your guess is correct.

Should I try to close off the "wing" of the room I'm not recording in
with a curtain or something to prevent sound from getting in there?

Curtain makes little difference unless it is the very heavy type used in
theaters. Without knowing how you intend to position yourself and the
mic(s) in the room I can't sensibly suggest you do or do not bother with
closing off the wing. I suspect there are other more significant
problems to be dealt with before worrying about that one.

What are the approximate dimensions of the room?

What would I be listening for in my recordings to tell me that my room
needed treatment?

Small live rooms reflect way too much sound way too soon back into the
mics. The overall effect depends on dimensions and surfaces, but in
general the result is an unfortunate destruction of the purity of the
original signal, whether it's a pristine acosutic instrument, or a
raging punker electric guitar.

The goal of traps, with the better ones offering both absorption and
diffusion, is to make the room appear larger by reducing the level of
early reflections. Often in small rooms all the reflections are early,
so it is very difficult to achieve a natural sounding ambience. Then a
lot of broadband absorption helps.

Is there a sample recording on the internet somewhere that illustrates
the artifacts introduced by a poorly treated room?

I don't know. But that's a great idea and I can't think of anyone better
positioned to offer that than Ethan.

My recording studio is also my practice room, and I've got four
additional acoustic guitars on stands in there.
Is this going to adversely affect my recordings (do I need to put
these instruments in their cases while I'm recording)?

If you get the room to the point that you can hear them resonating
off-set, so to speak, then you could decide what to do about it. Just
damping the strings with a cloth might be sufficient. However, having
them in there now might offer a subtle parameter by which to observe the
performance of the room. If you get it to the point that you can hear
them resonating in the background your room will be in pretty good
shape.

--
ha
Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam

Hank,

I have read the information on Ethan Winer's site on how to treat a
room, and I am a little overwhelmed with all the information

Assuming I choose to record the vocals and guitar into the same
microphone,
do you think this might be a "quick and dirty" solution:

http://www.realtraps.com/p_pvb.htm

I assume if I sing and play directly into this gizmo, I'm killing the
"first reflection point," right?
Is it possible that that would do the trick?
Again, both the vocals and guitar playing will both be very soft.

Thanks,
Jonathan