VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[tombrom]

Hi Guys,
I just invested in a MKH416 and a Trident 414 pre amp.
Getting pretty good results, although I'm a little confused by the compressor and EQ thingy.

Anyway to cut a long story short I decided to hand hold my 416 whilst I played with the dials outside the room and noticed that the sound in my "corridor" or main room seemed so much livelier than in my walk in closet.

I'm guessing that this is because the clothes are absorbing too much sound and that the corridor is getting a tiny bit of reverb/sound reflection.

So my question is - can you have too much sound absorption?

Should I "come out of the closet?"........and move to San Fransisco?
Only kidding......can I call on your collective wisdom?

Many Thanks
Thomas Bromhead
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Thomas Bromhead
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tombrom@gmail.com

[Deirdre]

"Can a room be too dead?"

"Yes."
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[Lance Blair]

I hated my 416 in my small closet...actually I hated all my mics in my small boxy closet (4'x5'). Besides, you can't breath in a space like that unless you've got an excellent ventilation system. Now I'm in a 6'x11' space that has some nice shape to it and it sounds so much better.

Get out into the open, even if you need to go with a dynamic mic. A good dynamic in an open space sounds better than a good condenser in a tubby boxy space.

Take a U87 or a 416 under your bed covers...sounds not so great all of a sudden.
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[imaginator]

absolutely spot on. you'll note the photos of snazzy studios have a variety of shapes and surfaces in their recording area. some even have swing-out panels to expose or cover hard-surface areas in order to sculpt the sound to suit the project.

i cringe at the memory of the mic booth my college friend and i put together for my first studio experience. we managed to build a great double-pane window, complete with an angled interior surface...but everything else was covered in shag carpet!!!! we had to dig through it to find the door knob!

in fact, if we could have figured out a way to get a shag-carpeted mic stand and window pane we probably would've done that too.

now THAT was a dead-sounding room!
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rowell gormon
www.voices2go.com
"Mr. Warm & Friendly Voice...with Character!"
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[Jeffrey Kafer]

I'd love to hear a sample of a too-dead room.
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
Voice-overload Web comic: http://voice-overload.com

[Bill Campbell]

During the course of your day, you speak and listen to people in
all kinds of rooms and spaces. Almost never do you talk to someone in a
"dead room". That's why a room with no space or natural reverberation
doesn't sound natural.
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[Jeffrey Kafer]

right, but you also want to be able control the "effects" of the room and by adding them in post (albeit artificially) you have that control. Record some VO with unwanted room noise and you're hosed.
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[Gp]

[tombrom]

Thanks Guys.
I think I will record out of the closet now!

Luckily I didn't spend all my money on one of those fancy pants whisper rooms.

Thanks
Thomas
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Thomas Bromhead
www.tombrom.com
tombrom@gmail.com

[Lance Blair]

A room shouldn't be too live and shouldn't be affecting the response, but record in a overly dead room where half of your frequencies are getting scooped out and you're doubly hosed.
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[Mike Sommer]

I prefer a little action in the room, a flat or dead room will strip your voice and performance of any life and itwill just lay there like a fish. You need the reverberation to allow your voice to bloom.

You just need to move about in your studio and clap your hands sharply, if there is any "ringing" it's to "bright." and you'll need to add some foam or book-shelfs and knick knacks, until the ringing is gone.

That's how Sam Phillips tuned Sun Studios in the 50's. Sam was able to tune the studio so well that the louder it got in the studio, it actually developed it's own compression.
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Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[Eddie Eagle]

Closets that are small tend to develop a pressure gradient in them. More space lets the sound flow. You might try opening the closet door a bit to let the pressure out. You can always put a baffle (a large piece of foam like one you would sleep on when camping) in front of the open door on the outside also or leave the door open and hang some material like a baja or heavy material outside a few inches to a foot away from the open doorway.

[Bruce]

It all depends on what sound you want. For instance, I recorded scratch tracks for Fox Animation when they were in town and they had a room that was so sound proofed and quiet you could feel it sucking up every bit of sound out of you, but in a film you don't want anything to suggest you're not in the space that you're shown to be...you can add it in post. I can't tell you how much it bugs me, especially in older films now, where they do ADR (dialogue replacement) for an outdoor scene or in a big room and you can hear the metal music stand they're reading the script from, or the tight booth or the glass window to the control room in everything they say.

Conversely, in a commercial or narration you may want to sound like you're in the same room with the listener so a little bounce off the walls can be a good thing. My room is about "2/3rds" sound proofed. You can't hear it all in soft reads and just a bit in stronger reads.

All said and done, I'd prefer a totally sound proof room but that's expensive for a 10' x 12' space like mine.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

[ccpetersen]

You don't want it overly anechoic.

Back when I was in graduate school we took a tour of a place where some special instruments were being built for the Hubble Space Telescope. They do every test you can think of to stuff that's going into space, including a sound test. So, the room they use is this big anechoic chamber that has soundproofing that is WAY beyond Sonex. It's also outfitted with these speakers that (if fully engaged and blasting out sound) can put out signals loud and strong enough to break things.

So, we stepped into the room and the tour guide closed the door. It was DEAD in there. I mean, even if you yelled, it just sucked the sound out of you.

You don't want that dead of a room.


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[chuckweis]

Back to the original poster.....I can't see how the walk-in closet would give you a "too dead" sound. I do believe that you CAN have such a thing, but not from a typical walk-in closet. If you have sweaters affixed to your ceiling and covering every square inch of your closet, then ignore this, but the make-up of most people's closets will be clothing hanging all around, clothing up on the shelving, and then some un-treated areas (ceiling in particular of course.) You're going to get good sound absorption (from the clothing) AND still get some "liveliness" due to the untreated surfaces. Without being there to see it, I can't imagine how you would be better off recording in a "corridor" over your closet space.