Is this room treated?

Branshen

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5gAZxfghEi/

The vocals recorded in this home studio sound good. Granted he's not exactly belting, so reflections would not be much of a problem. But still, any ideas about the room treatment in this room? 

https://scontent.fkul15-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/26233417_1488797297882382_4486332863010714080_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ohc=NiDOSJi1n3QAQk_RmRc7rSdP-B3v_fcph2xMVJBkMqPe7Dw5OoBZQnvpQ&_nc_ht=scontent.fkul15-1.fna&oh=a998e0ca44510731902133f187d1b585&oe=5E400A02

P.S. Can't figure out how to embed an instagram post on this forum.. I've seen it done before...

Stuckfast

Is that Jacob Collier?

You can see some panels in the photo -- large ones on the wall to the right and smaller ones above the computer. So it's treated to some extent. The real challenge with acoustic treatment is usually the low end, but that's not much of an issue when recording tenor vocals anyway.

Branshen

Stuckfast said:

Is that Jacob Collier?

You can see some panels in the photo -- large ones on the wall to the right and smaller ones above the computer. So it's treated to some extent. The real challenge with acoustic treatment is usually the low end, but that's not much of an issue when recording tenor vocals anyway.

It is indeed! If you check out the instagram post (which I tried but failed to embed!). You can hear him tracking vocals and the final result in the second post after that..

I don't know if his treatment is optimised for recording, but it sure sounds great! Room treatment is such a confusing mystery...

Stuckfast

You can definitely hear the room on the first video (which I guess is camera audio?). It's more lively and smaller than a good studio live room, but there's obviously enough treatment to take out any really nasty honks and so on. He's also working the mic pretty close so I'd expect the end result to be pretty good.

Branshen

Stuckfast said:

You can definitely hear the room on the first video (which I guess is camera audio?). It's more lively and smaller than a good studio live room, but there's obviously enough treatment to take out any really nasty honks and so on. He's also working the mic pretty close so I'd expect the end result to be pretty good.

Thanks for the input! 

Musicwolf

There's an article about him in this month's Sound on Sound magazine.  Here's a clip, you'll need a subscription to read the full article else go out an purchase this excellent publication.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/jacob-collier

Branshen

Musicwolf said:

There's an article about him in this month's Sound on Sound magazine.  Here's a clip, you'll need a subscription to read the full article else go out an purchase this excellent publication.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/jacob-collier

Thanks! will be purchasing it!

Danny1969

The amount of room treatment depends needed depends on what the walls are made of, what instrument your recording and what type of mic your using plus how much compression your going to need. Also how much PFL level the singer has in terms of vocal gain. Loads of good vocals have been done over the years with dynamic mics and untreated rooms from singers with powerful voices but get a quiet-ish singer in an untreated room with a condenser mic and the reflections from the room can be nasty and made nastier by post compression and EQ. Plasterboard in particular sounds ugly as it reflects back in an nonlinear fashion, so does glass. We had loads of problems over the years recording audio for games and podcasts which we eventually solved by building a wheel-able vocal booth

Branshen

Danny1969 said:

The amount of room treatment depends needed depends on what the walls are made of, what instrument your recording and what type of mic your using plus how much compression your going to need. Also how much PFL level the singer has in terms of vocal gain. Loads of good vocals have been done over the years with dynamic mics and untreated rooms from singers with powerful voices but get a quiet-ish singer in an untreated room with a condenser mic and the reflections from the room can be nasty and made nastier by post compression and EQ. Plasterboard in particular sounds ugly as it reflects back in an nonlinear fashion, so does glass. We had loads of problems over the years recording audio for games and podcasts which we eventually solved by building a wheel-able vocal booth

The main problem is that my room is really irregular shaped (it is a living room with attached kitchen, so very long) and I cannot drill or install sound panels. On top of this, I live in a high rise, so neighbours (particularly above) and kids in the playground and pool do make a significant amount of noise. 

A dynamic mic seems to be a good idea.. hmm. Any pictures of this wheel-able vocal booth btw? If that's cheaper than an SM7B, I may consider it. I've tried making a recording booth by enclosing my vocalist within 3 mattresses. It seemed to work decently, but is far from convenient.

Musicwolf

A starting point could be to place the vocalist in the corner facing towards the middle of the room and to suspend duvets behind said vocalist (you can use a couple of boom mic stands raised up with the arms horizontal to form a 'T' shape).  Have the duvets spaced away from the wall, a couple of feet at least.

Branshen

Musicwolf said:

A starting point could be to place the vocalist in the corner facing towards the middle of the room and to suspend duvets behind said vocalist (you can use a couple of boom mic stands raised up with the arms horizontal to form a 'T' shape).  Have the duvets spaced away from the wall, a couple of feet at least.

have tried this with a mattress (may not be as good as a duvet). the vocal track came out ok (though the singing on this wasn't very loud)...

Danny1969

Branshen said:

Danny1969 said:

The amount of room treatment depends needed depends on what the walls are made of, what instrument your recording and what type of mic your using plus how much compression your going to need. Also how much PFL level the singer has in terms of vocal gain. Loads of good vocals have been done over the years with dynamic mics and untreated rooms from singers with powerful voices but get a quiet-ish singer in an untreated room with a condenser mic and the reflections from the room can be nasty and made nastier by post compression and EQ. Plasterboard in particular sounds ugly as it reflects back in an nonlinear fashion, so does glass. We had loads of problems over the years recording audio for games and podcasts which we eventually solved by building a wheel-able vocal booth

The main problem is that my room is really irregular shaped (it is a living room with attached kitchen, so very long) and I cannot drill or install sound panels. On top of this, I live in a high rise, so neighbours (particularly above) and kids in the playground and pool do make a significant amount of noise. 

A dynamic mic seems to be a good idea.. hmm. Any pictures of this wheel-able vocal booth btw? If that's cheaper than an SM7B, I may consider it. I've tried making a recording booth by enclosing my vocalist within 3 mattresses. It seemed to work decently, but is far from convenient.

This is it being built ...we just made wooden panels covered in rockwool and then lined that with black material. The rockwool inside the booth is 50mm thick ... too thin and you can get chest hump where lower mids aren't attenuated enough


Building it 



In use tracking vocals 






It cost very little in material but we did loads of professional recordings with it. We needed it cos this was our live room  



Also built by us from scratch 

Branshen

@Danny1969 That looks great. Very impressed but that looks like too much trouble to make and certainly too big to store in my small condo.

If only those portable microphone screens worked...

octatonic

So he uses the same monitors as I do, Kii Three’s.
The idea with them is they use active cardioid bass via DSP to have less room interference than you get with regular monitors.
They work remarkably well.

He has a bit of room treatment, not enough but with the Kii’s you can get away with less.

Branshen

@octatonic shame that they cost so bloody much! 

Branshen

Musicwolf said:

There's an article about him in this month's Sound on Sound magazine.  Here's a clip, you'll need a subscription to read the full article else go out an purchase this excellent publication.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/jacob-collier

Thanks for the tip off. Just finished the article. Lots of great gems in it regarding his production.