Mixing location question

OK, we've finished tracking the current project. It's time to get the mix finalized. We have some fair rough mixes, but I feel like they still need quite a bit of work. They sound great in my home studio room through the ADAM A7s, but when I listen to them in the car they sound muddled and on portable CD players the mids seem pretty boomy.

Right now I'm mixing in a 10x10' room with an 8' ceiling, carpeted floor. Auralex treatment on the walls to kill the early reflections, and some LENRD foam in the corners to do a little bass trapping (but not NEARLY enough, and I only got them because they were ridiculously cheap due to a price mistake - they don't really do much to the real low end, it seems). I have two 8-piece bales of 24"x3.5"x8' Ultratouch cotton insulation that I'm planning on using for bass traps in the new studio after I get it built. At this point, between work and ongoing projects, it's looking like I'll have time to do that sometime in 2015.

But we have a shop building that we haven't finished inside yet, so it's not yet in use. 50'x60' with a roof that starts at 12' at the sides and peaks around 16' in the center. Concrete floor; metal walls with vinyl-backed insulation inside. Obviously there are a LOT of reflections inside. But I'm wondering if I'd be better off moving a small setup into that building and mixing there, since we're not using it for business yet. It would of course need some work, but as I mentioned, I have sixteen pieces of that cotton insulation that I could use to make some temporary treatment to kill early reflections and do a little corner trapping ... although honestly, I mix at a low enough level that I'm not sure I'd need to do a lot more than put something on the floor to keep from getting too much reflected off the concrete. According to ModeCalc, it looks like the worst of my problems would be 80-150Hz, but the points are much closer together than the graph for the room I'm in now which should make it easier to treat. However, most of the points for the room I'm in now seem to be around the 200-450Hz area, and it's a little easier to absorb that frequency range as compared to the stuff around and below 100Hz, right? So I'm not really sure if I'd be gaining anything or not.

Does this sound like a horrible idea? I feel like the biggest thing holding my mixes back right now is the room, since I just can't seem to get a real accurate picture of the mix in that tiny space, but I admit that I haven't run a frequency analysis of the room or anything like that. It wouldn't take too much effort to move a small mixing rig into the shop space and copy sessions onto a portable drive to take over there, and the shop is only about 150 yards from my house. I'd be moving from an 800 ft^3 room to an approximately 14,000 ft^3 room.

Is it worth trying, or would it be about a day's worth of work for little purpose?

I might be better off just renting some time at a local studio, carrying my mixing rig over there, and plugging into their monitors, huh? Instead of doing something temporary like this.

Auralex hates me saying this, but I've carefully measured their LENRDs and MegaLENRDs and the former do nearly nothing down in the frequencies you need to attenuate. The MegaLENRDs, on the other hand, work surprisingly well.

Terry D.

That UltraTouch kicks ass. I'd try building some bass traps with that stuff, first.

That's exactly why I got it, actually, to use in the new building when I put it up. But I think I'm going to go ahead and make a few traps for the room I'm in now, and see if that helps. Can't really hurt, can it?

Not at all. Design them for use in the new space, use them in the current one.

I built some combo trap/diffuser units in the last place I lived. UltraTouch in them really tightened the room up, and my drums were solid in there.

Ultra touch is just cotton fiber. What are you going to do with it in order to make bass traps?

And you shouldn't be surprised that mode calculators don't exactly predict the response of your room, they're just ballpark numbers.

Terry D.

Ultra touch is just cotton fiber. What are you going to do with it in order to make bass traps?

I'm going to use it just like other people use rigid fiberglass. Ought to work just fine.

And it does work just fine. In fact, I feel it works better than fibreglass, with the possible exception of 703.

The combo units I built have two layers of the 4" thickness compressed and covered with hardware cloth, on the bottom third. The kick drum was nicely consumed.

Sometimes, the best answer is the simplest.

I hadn't really heard much about the UltraTouch stuff, so I went and looked at some websites. I don't know how effective it is, because there isn't a ton of acoustical test measurement data listed... but from what I did see, I don't see any significant advantages to it over using mineral wool, which has had a ton of testing done on it and is known to work very well, and is also relatively environmentally friendly and safe to handle, has a higher fire rating - and from what I can tell, is significantly less expensive than the UltraTouch.

There isn't any significant advantage other than that I found a supplier of Ultratouch before I found a supplier for rigid fiberglass or mineral wool (although I have since found a local place where I can get rigid fiberglass, so, oh well). It's floppy instead of rigid, so it's more difficult to use, I'd say. But it seemed interesting so I thought I'd try some out. I figure worst case scenario is it doesn't work all that well and I wind up with some rather expensive insulation to use in the walls in the new building after I get it up. Although I hope it doesn't come to that.

Of course, at the rate I'm getting anything done on this building, it'll be sometime in 2015 before I'm ready to even think about actually putting any acoustic treatment in it...

There isn't a damn thing you can to in a 10x 10x 8 room except torture small animals... you certainly aren't going to make the damn thing useful with any of the "acoustic crap" that comes out of a box.

If you can move to the 50x 60x 12 to 16 ft. room... do it!! Never mind spending a bunch of money... throw down a floor rug and build some "walls" with blankets hanging from mic stands [though something tells me you probably don't have any that'll go up 10+ ft] or build some frames with wood and suspend the blankets in those [i dunno... maybe $40 worth of wood and some screws?... get the blankets on the cheap somewhere... Salvation Army perhaps].

Don't worry about "bass trapping"... just try to get it so the reverb time is a little less than a week at the mix position and you should be fine. Don't worry about running "analysis" of the room... just set your {censored} up in the middle and get to work.

With all due respect... there is a lot of "over thinking" and at times a lack of general knowledge of principles on these forums [all of them... not just HC]. With the kind of room you're talking about your main problem will be trying to tell what's real reverb [from the room] and the reverb you're using that comes out of a box. Knock down the "room verb" and you should be fine... no analysis required.

Best of luck with it!!!

Peace.

I do have a few mic stands that will go higher than that (the new building will have 12' ceilings at the wall, peaking at 16' in the center).

For a mix session all I'd need to move into the large building would be a small portable rack with my Digi002R and Rosetta 200 that I use to drive the monitors, the monitors (ADAM A7s with a Sub8), the PC and the related equipment - two 22" monitors, keyboard and mouse, and the Command 8 control surface.

I think I might grab a large area rug and give it a shot. At the most I'll be out an hour or so of moving stuff around, and it will certainly give us a LOT more room - my little studio room gets awfully crowded sometimes with just me in it, so when there are two or three of us in there listening to mixes it's pretty cramped.

I just want to finish this project up the right way. I'm even thinking about sending the project off to be mixed by a professional, because I think we have some killer songs with some very good recordings. I don't want to kill the project by trying to mix in my tiny room, y'know? I'd feel differently if my mixes seemed to be translating well, but when I take a mix from the studio and listen in, for example, my truck, all the highs are gone and some of the low mids are way out of whack. Some very good musicians have played on this, and I have some pretty decent recording gear - good enough that several guys have told me they haven't been in any studio south of Nashville that had anything as nice. Mics ranging from SM-57s to Microtech-Gefell condensors (well, only one M-G so far, but I'll be getting some more next year, if all goes to plan). Preamps by FMR, Groove Tubes, API, Great River, etc. Amps by Fender, Orange, etc. Quality instruments with talented players and some really nice performances.

I'm moderately competent when it comes to tracking. I just don't want a bad mix to destroy an otherwise great project. I'm probably overreacting to the whole thing and overthinking things, but I want to finish strong as we've put too much time and effort into this thing to screw it up now.

I mix in my second bedroom, a 10x9 room with a 9' ceiling. I have RealTraps. They work. I mix quietly. I get great mixes. Sure, it's possible.

But if I could mix in a 50x60 room, I wouldn't even have to think about it. What a freakin' blessing that would be. I wouldn't have to fight the room.

I was formerly mixing in a large 3-car garage that had been completely converted to a room. I don't know, maybe 30x30? What a huge difference all that space makes. And as a bonus, i could wash my clothes while mixing...

Make the move and don't look back.

I mix in my second bedroom, a 10x9 room with a 9' ceiling. I have RealTraps. They work. I mix quietly. I get great mixes. Sure, it's possible. But if I could mix in a 50x60 room, I wouldn't even have to think about it. What a freakin' blessing that would be. I wouldn't have to fight the room. I was formerly mixing in a large 3-car garage that had been completely converted to a room. I don't know, maybe 30x30? What a huge difference all that space makes. And as a bonus, i could wash my clothes while mixing... Make the move and don't look back.

The only downside to moving into the larger building would be that it would have to be temporary, as after the first of the year I'm hoping to frame up the new offices in the shop, get the jib crane set up, and start using it for business. But that won't be until the end of January at the earliest, so I could use it for a month at least.

Yeah, I think tonight I'm going to move the mixing gear into the shop and see what I can do. I'll grab a large area rug to go under everything (concrete floor), and some sleeping bags or blankets to hang in spots, and go from there.

If nothing else it should be something fun to try.

Gotcha.

I have no idea. I wouldn't want to move all my crap for only a month, but I'm lazy that way.

I have four RealTraps in my tiny little room, Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizers, and some diffusion, but it's not ideal. I get really great mixes, but I feel like I still have to work at it harder than I used to when I had the considerably larger room.

Well, I won't be moving everything - just the mixing gear. The computer, monitors and stands, control surface, Mackie Big Knob, and I'll pull the Apogee Rosetta 200 and Digi002 Rack out of the big rack in the studio and move them to a smaller, portable rack. It'll probably take me about an hour to move it all and get it set up, not counting time to hang some blankets in the shop.

I'll need to grab a heater for the shop, too - it's well insulated, but not heated yet since we've not finished the inside. I'll probably call a buddy over to help me move stuff.

Yes, but adding more bass traps will surely help. No more wall-wall corners? Ceiling corners work well too, as do traps flat on the front and rear walls.

And with all due respect to Fletcher who knows a lot about recording, he's way off base when it comes to bass traps in small rooms. Not only will bass traps make an enormous improvement in a 10 by 10 room (assuming you have enough of them), that is the only viable solution.

Fetcher, next time you're in my area please swing by for a visit and I'll try to show and explain better in person.

--Ethan

Ethan: I had talked to you before, and i believe you had mentioned that ideally I should use something like eight RealTraps. I only have four, and two of them are not even quite ideally placed anymore. I had a fire in 2006, and have never bothered re-mounting two of them above the monitors where the ceiling meets the back wall, which was an effective location. Part of this was because I was overwhelmed with getting my life back in order after the fire, but part of it was because I now move the two RealTraps out to the living room when I am tracking drums now, so I like them to be mobile.

What I am trying to say is that my particular set-up is not ideal at all. It could use some work. However, the things that I mentioned, including the RealTraps, have helped quite a bit already. When you are working in a room as small as mine, it's insane not to have some sort of acoustic treatment, as it goes a looooong way towards helping.

The RealTraps and a bunch of heavy packing blankets really helped my last drum session, btw. Huuuuuge difference.

Exactly. I'm sure you can get a 10x10 room sounding quite good, but it's so much easier and better with a really large room, in my opinion. There's got to be a reason why commercial recording studios don't have 10x10 control rooms!

It's a separate business. I'm an electrical engineer, and we have a family business dealing mostly with industrial power systems. We put up the building to use as a shop, in the hopes of getting some valve work and adding some mechanical work to our electrical stuff. It will also house our offices, etc. Basically we're moving from being a home business to a home business with a shop.

The studio is not a business at all at this point. It's something I do purely for the enjoyment I get from working with music. I've been playing and writing music since I was a kid, and I have several friends that are the same way. I wanted to be able to record demos of my own ideas, so I started putting together a little ProTools LE studio. Over time that's grown to wanting to be able to record my band and work on projects with friends, so the gear collection has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years. It's an expensive hobby, but I love it.

Right now we record at my place. I have the drums set up in the living room, and pretty much everything else gets recorded in the aforementioned 10x10 studio room (which is of course a converted spare bedroom).

The studio building, when I put it up, will be a lot smaller than the 50'x60' shop due to budget constraints (and that's assuming we have enough business coming in next year for me to still be able to afford doing it at all in these moderately lousy economic times) - most likely it will be 24x24' with an average roof height of 14'. The interior will be divided into one 15x24' tracking room, two 6x9' storage rooms, and one 12x9' control room. The control room may actually not be divided from the main room - it might just be a 12x9' "nook" attached to the side of the main room, so it would really be a big 24x24' room with two corners enclosed as 6'x9' storage rooms. That would help avoid some of my present small room problems. I haven't finalized the internal design yet, though. The 24x24' building is pretty much as big as I can afford, though. I don't make any money with this stuff. Not right now, anyway, although we're hopeful we can do something with this CD.

You're recording in the 10x10 room? Guitar and bass amps and so forth? Okay, now that's a bit more challenging.

I'd say 90% of the guitar work was done in there, about the same for bass (mostly DI), and about half of the drum work. Almost all of the vocals.

And honestly, after killing some of the highs, it's a pretty decent tracking room. It's a dead enough room that an amp pretty much sounds like the amp, which makes it a lot easier to dial in the proper sounds for a close mic. A guitar amp in an untreated room sounds a LOT brighter than the amps in my little studio room, generally speaking.

For drums, though, capturing a good sound got a bit easier when I moved them into the larger living room/kitchen area, which is probably about 16'x25' and has a ceiling that goes from 8' at the edges to around 10' in the center. But that's because with drums I wanted more of a live room sound, while with guitar amps and such I go for more of a close mic sound with very little room sound.

Most of the guitars were recorded with either an SM-57, a Shinybox 46MXC ribbon, or a Cascade Fathead II ribbon with Lundahl transformer, or an SM-7b about two or three inches off the front of the cab, sometimes on axis, sometimes off axis. Then that was run into either a Groove Tubes "The Brick," an FMR RNP, or a Great River MP-500NV preamp (and a couple of tracks were recorded through a Focusrite ISA-428 preamp). The Apogee Rosetta 200 converter was normally used, and a few were done with the converter card in the Focusrite preamp, which has surprisingly decent converters.

Acoustic guitars were recorded with either Rode NT5 small diaphragm condensors, or a ribbon, or one of the large-diaphragm condensors, or a combination of any of the above. It just depended on who was playing, what kind of sound we were going for on the track, etc.

Of course, but often that's all someone has to work with! So then what, tell them to just give up and go work at McDonald's?

--Ethan