Your videos are stuffed with information and presented in a concise, clear, and QUICKLY DEMONSTRATED way. They are fantastic, and I can't believe you don't have 10x as many subscribers!
I think #2 is my favorite -- the room echo isn't too much, you get tons of low end but also kick definition, and there's just enough presence, decay and HF content to make the drums sound really exciting. Anything beyond that and it starts to suck the air out of the room...which, to be fair, is great for anything that needs to be super tight!
The best thing about this video is that it clearly shows you what is possible with very little. And as ever there is no 'right' I always go for what the song / style needs. Flexibility and adaptability really are the most powerful tool in our box. Thanks once again.
With all the pannels and stuff it sounded the best , you can hear clearly every drum element in the mix. When it comes to acoustics i think we are talking more about science of sound. There is a good reason why expensive studios hire acoustitions and "lose" at least 20% of bare volume (in 3d space) on treatment (and lots of money). Usualy every inch of space has lots of lower freq absorbers The general idea is to tame and balance bass and lower mid freq and then bring back (with wood,stone and other materials) lost higher freq. The bare example sounded almost as a room mic. Maybe opening a door of a small adjacent room, micing it (like amp room or vocal booth) and filling the rooms with lots of wood panells , could give you that splashy room sound. Thanks for the demonstration
I personally prefer clean mics and insert verb and room noise post. Anyway a good starting point to basement recordings is using/building a riser. You wouldn't believe the change in just elevating the drums off of the floor. It's great. Try it sometime if you have extra wood lying around. Just a foot high will do. It also works great for cabs especially bass cabs. I do that with milk crates on all cabs. Doesn't make a difference really if your sticking your mic right up on the speaker, but for guitars when you use a room mic or a mic about 1-10ft away it makes a difference in the mix. You'll notice everything is easier to mix by doing this simple step. It's also somewhat cheap. It's not gonna be a fix all with no soundproofing in the rest of the room though! And if you want that verby basement sound later in the mix you can just throw up a room mic when recording and mix that in. And if you don't have enough mics to include a room mic, simply bring whatever you want a room sound on up to level then play it back on your monitors and mic your monitors! Viola! That's a cool trick I learned when I started off recording on a 8mic interface and the drums had all the mics. So afterwards I wanted room sound but had no way of getting it. A colleague suggested this method and it worked perfectly!
I actually loved the totally 'live' room sound. If I recorded at this environment, I would've gone crazy experimenting with room mics, trying things like delaying them by 10-20 ms and compressing the heck out of 'em, then blending them with the rest of the mics. Really curious what the turnout would be. And it's unbelievable how much of a difference absorption on the back wall makes.
great example of how room control can tighten up a drum set! the fact that the big room sounds good already is what makes this control work so well. you are just taming the room for a more concise focused drum sound. #1 would be best for laid back led zeppelin, where as #6 would maintain clarity for fast punk/rock.
Honestly, recordings from a well recorded room are much much easier to mix than an untreated one. The bare walls could work in some mixes, but not all. Untreated rooms make sound decisions for you, while treated rooms give you full flexibility and creative freedom.
Exceptional info here Dude! Thanks for this video. I've listened to many podcasts and RU-vid videos on this subject. I must say that you've always stayed true to your name "creative". I could go on... It was artistic, Creative, informative, technically accurate, and best of all simple. WOW!!
Quality videos bro, i love people like you that aren't lazy to make these in depth videos, i really really appreciate your time and effort bro. Thank you, 👌💯👌💯👌
Sure thing man! There are a lot of people making mix "Videos" and they don't even own a camera. It's all a screen recording, and they sit in a chair the entire time.
true bro, keep up the great work, this video made me second guess my room treatment, i have a bunch of oc703 4' thick panels in my drum room and i think i am sucking all the life out of the drums, i loved the examples you did hear really learned something, maybe now ill try less panels to make the drums more lively.
Great video. The bare walls sounded pretty sweet. There didn't seem to be any flutter echo. It was interesting to see the change in sound with the treatment. Thanks for doing this!
Yeah, I was shocked at how good the bare walls sound. I might try to so some diffusion on those calls using plywood and adding angles to make sure there's no flutters.
Hi. I hope you're still here to answer questions. I've recently gotten into audio recording but it's very hard for me. We currently have 2 mics for the drums, a vocal mic for the guitar and we use the kick drum mic for the keyboard. What I find hard is actually making a good quality recording. It's hard to get everything recorded without clipping most of the time my tracks end up clipping. There's a ton of stuff I wish I could explain to you better but I'm not sure how. Anyway, keep up the great work your videos are fantastic. And thanks a ton if you can help me out. You seem like a guy who really knows his stuff.
Hey Alvaro, Yep I see every comment and I answer as many as I can. Usually I record at about -20, so your waves on the computer should look kind of wimpy. That's ok, just make sure that your recording at 24 bit. Any sample rate such as 44100 is fine or above. Remember to always try placing the mic in different spots and use the room to help flavor your recording with a unique sound. Always focus on the mid frequencies, and the highs and lows will come later. Mids are the most important. There is nothing special about my room, it's just a matter of adding some rugs or packing blankets to the room to help shape the sound.
Thank you for making this video, it is very useful! For my taste, 1 (no absorption) sounded best, and I also learned, that I have a very dampened rehearsal room right now :) So thank you!
Great video as always. Just listening to the snare in each case is enough to hear how the room changes. By the end it's far too dark (for my ears at least).
1 is the best .ALl the rest eats the attack greatly, it turns into some muddy stuff. Spec for overheads it seems important to havve quite a bright picture with active attacks
Wowow, thanks man! I needed to move the stuff back into the live room anyhow. I figured before I moved those diffusers back in, I would record a few samples. That lead to the video.
I'm an aspiring sound engineer and I really like the aproach that you have to a lot of things, I really have learnt a lot since I'm suscribed to your channel hahaha cheers man
Could you do this with brighter overheads? The ribbon you have is lovely but it might be colouring the sound to favour the open reflective sound. Would love to hear your room with panels in the corners only and more diffusion. The diffusion made a big difference to my ears.
Thanks for this! Awesome as always Ryan... My favorite was with carpet and panels. I couldn't tell after that cause the diffusors imo ruined the sound in this case.
Yeah, it really took a lot out of the room in the low end. I'm shocked at how much it changed and not just in the high end diffusion - Mostly low end with having that huge mass out from the wall.
Your room sounds really nice, but I'm always amazed how much bass response acoustic treatment adds. The toms especially sound a lot nicer with treatment IMO
Haha, yeah it's amazing that my bare walls actually work. If you try to use room mics there would be way too much cymbals in them. Also consider that you are listening to the OH, so #5 may be a little dark, which is good as it's for the image of the kit, but for a room mic it will be brighter and more like #2 or #3.
Creative Sound Lab ah I didn't take into consideration the fact that once you added a room + close mics that you'd get the brighter tone from the snare, toms and cymbals. (chimier attack) and #6 to me sounds lo fi is cause most home studios have carpeted floor with a small drum room
Creative Sound Lab thanks man. I really appreciate your videos. much more into the technical aspects of the recording process and not strictly the DAW based mixing/mastering processes.
That is something to think about as far as being the Engineer and thinking about how live the room is or should be. I often do that all the time because I do mobile recording and I've recorded in a few good places and not so good places.
Really interesting comparisons between the two extremes. Listening on my studio monitors, it seems like up until the fourth example, the room is making your kick drum resonate at what sounds like a C# (I think) every time you hit it. As the examples progress, that begins to dissipate. There is definitely more focus when more absorption is added, to the point where it almost sounds like the kit is close-mic'ed even though it's still just the overhead. Having the room acoustically treated through calculations would create a balanced room, but some great studio live rooms were happy accidents... namely Sound City.
I think I generally prefer erring on the drier sound, because it can be made 'wetter' - something that may be not so good/impossible the other way around. But I think my main reason is the way the location of the sound source is more defined in your examples, although I guess you could argue that it would be panned to where you want it in the mix anyway. Thanks. A useful vid. I hope you do an update later! :-)
Thanks! Yeah, I think that showing a room mic that gives people the room sound that they crave would be good, that way the OH will be clear in the st image.
great vid. the dimensions and shape of your room and the location of the kit in it must be fairly spot on to start with. good sounding room bare but really cool to hear the back to back comparisons. imagine all the diffusion from your amp shelf and piano etc really help not like its an empty box room. can you post the dimensions of your room too? cheers
I'm glad you made sure we knew the panels were white, blue panels sound way different.What color was the rug? Sounds pretty green to me, but I'm not listening through my black headphones.
Sorry, and should have had you on the hook earlier. Noticing on the side panel placement it is highish - as if to cover mids - that is what I heard most. Letting the kick (low) live in that hard wall reverb love? Has anyone approached a high snare slap material that responds like the wall to the kick, and the panels to the mids. And a what height should that be placed?..
I've always thought of the reflections going into the mics. So if you are trying to make it the best for the overhead mics, then think about where on the wall they would be getting reflections from. That would put them kinda high up on the wall. Usually about waste and up. For low placed room mics, it might be a factor of that rug on the floor. The low end more comes from treating the corners which I have yet to do.
Thank you, just learned my second and last thing today. I limit myself to two ;) I guess where I am ultimately going is and where I was riffing on was the materials. Panels (toms), walls(kick), _____ (snare)?.. Maybe a metal material in the right place ironically, or differing harder foam composite. That is where my head goes without testing in a controlled environment.
It's interesting. When you play 1 and 6 back to back you can hear a big difference. But when you go through the whole sequence, it becomes really hard to differentiate how much the room is being deadened from clip to clip. Also, could you do a demo of that acoustic amp in the corner of the room with a few different mics on it? I'm an acoustic fanboy and there aren't so many videos on a lot of the acoustic amps.
I always thought that diffusors should not be placed around a drum. But in every vid I see, I see diffusors behind them. Is there a rule or something ?
Have you ever used the curved diffusers? If so, what do you think? I hear they're supposed to be "phase coherent". So I guess less frequencies cancel out on the rebound. Maybe that would result in more low end.. Love your channel by the way. Interesting topics, and good vibes all around!
If it was my room I would use much thicker absorbtion (2feet but less dense, fluffy stuff) and probably cover all the walls to get very tight and detailed low end. Then I would hide it for instance with plywood or cheaper to get some life in the mids and highs. Then bring back the diffusion and thin absorbtion to taste... Actually I think that's the thing which will make a big step up in your recordings
last time my band recorded the producer was in an average sized room, not huge but not cramped and he put a mic into the bathroom next door which made the room sound a lot bigger when mixed in as it was pretty much just reverb with no transience
hey there!!! I was thinking of something like this!! my "recording room" is really small and have no acoustic panels, plus the only rug is under the drumset, i have a lot of problems for the stereo image and lots of bleed thru the rest of the microphones (i gues having 5 toms and two snares is way too much hahaha) anyways, I think that another cool experiment with the acoustics may be moving the kit around the room... dont know how many feet are from the back wall to the drumset, face the drumset to your left wall (where the panels are) anyways, thanks for the info I really enjoy watching you videos!! Saludos desde Mexico!
I love your channel, I learn a lot from your videos. I have a studio too and I want to treat my live room to track mostly drums, acoustic guitars, and some times a full band. I have a bunch of absorption panels that I plan to put on the walls and celling but I’ve read a lot about difusión and I want to try it. I see that you have difusión behind the drums. I’ve read about placing difusión above the drums. Do you have any thoughts on where is the most effective spot to place diffusers in a live room?
I'm in a similar situation. I am currently building a home studio and am thinking about how to treat the tracking room which is small and has a shed roof. I found something that might help on Ethan Winer's website. Along with a lot of bass traps, he recommends a reflective floor and absorptive ceiling. Here's the link: ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html#live%20or%20dead If you want to see some really interesting DIY diffusion I would recommend this website: arqen.com/
Thanks for your cool videos Ryan. I like your drum playing. Do you record drum parts for songs? If so, I am interested in that. Do you have a fixed price a song? Also, what camera do you use for your videos? Keep up the awesome work. Cheers from Argentina
hi men good job i jast want to add that there is no low freq tretment in this test so the low freq sound "bad" and make alot of the Higher freq bad too and that 2d diffusion actually also absorb
The more you add, the more you kill the snare... Do you know the Funnel Tunnel? It's some kind of bleed protector and sound compressor you put over the kick mic. I personally would go with setup 2 and the funneltunnel.se
you need some treatment at minimum to tame some frequency issues. thats a given. without a touch of treatment at some level, you will never experience a vibey roomy sound at all, cause you have too much smear and tight low end dissapears. high frequency splash gets too nasally. So you will always need 'some'.
very much depends. if it sounds good without treatment then it doesn't need it but it may still be too live for some people ;) if it sounds bad, then it definitely is bad. Try a full band in an untreated room and the results aren't as good as a soloist.
