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[VHTStark]

Congrats on the new amp and great review! Also interesting how you mentioned low frequencies can be doubled, so to speak. I seem to have trouble with excessively "boomy" home or band recordings. The issue is obviously exacerbated as the volume goes up! Haha!

 

[bodia]

Oh, not to worry about off-topic! Yes, the studio is in the house.

The panels don't soundproof at all, and they aren't there to reduce noise leakage outside the room. They are bass traps, first reflection point absorbers, and diffusers. They're designed only to control the inevitable room modes and comb filtering cancellations caused by sound bouncing around inside a room, so I can get a more accurate picture of what I'm mixing than I'd be able to in an untreated room.

You probably know this, but as the sound bounces around in a room, some of it is in phase, and some of the bounces are out of phase. This cancels out certain frequencies (works the same way a humbucking pickup does to cancel out hum and noise), and doubles other frequencies, and it's a particular problem with bass frequencies because of their long wavelengths. Higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths and decay much faster, so they don't cause as much of a problem with the audio, although the bounces interfere with accurate imaging, etc.

In any case, if I don't know whether the low end is accurate while I'm working, I'm in trouble. The best monitors in the world won't solve the problem of room modes, even with equalization.

When the clients take my mix to a postproduction studio for final mix to picture, and it shows up on a TV spot, it needs to sound like what I heard at my place when working on it. If it doesn't, then they get very unhappy.

Soundproofing is a whole different animal. It would require ripping apart the room and rebuilding it from the ground up. As it is I've tried to put as much mass as possible between the studio and the rest of the house, including insulation in the ceiling and extra-heavy sound blocking ceiling tiles, but sound is like water, and it will escape through adjacent walls, doors, and windows unless sufficient mass and sufficient isolation is in place. Which in my little studio's case, it isn't.

Fortunately, my wife is happy when she hears the studio noise, because she knows I'm making a buck! :top:

Thanks, I appreciate the response. I'd stick with age old mantra of "if it's too loud, you're too old," but I seem to be the crotchety old man telling the neighborhood kids to turn their bass heavy car stereos down. Man, I hate that!

 

[shinksma]

Thanks, I appreciate the response. I'd stick with age old mantra of "if it's too loud, you're too old," but I seem to be the crotchety old man telling the neighborhood kids to turn their bass heavy car stereos down. Man, I hate that!

I wouldn't mind the bass-heavy car stereos if two things were also true:

1. The bass and the rest of the music was reproduced cleanly. Too many times the so-called subwoofer is crackling along, and/or the rest of the rusted out Honda / Mitsubishi is buzzing along.

2. The played actual music, not a simple drum "beat" with a sample of someone else's music looped endlessly, with mindless gangsta so-called lyrics shouted out with occasional auto-tune crap to "help out".

And it's not like I don't like extreme music. I like all the variants of metal (death metal, black metal, heavy metal, pop metal, core metal, etc), hip hop, trip hop, ska, both types of music: country and western (classic stuff and the new pop-rock-country), prog rock, symphonic rock, art rock, pop, rock'n'roll, industrial, classical (everything from Haydn to modern pieces), R&B, soul, Celtic, Traditional/Old Time, Folk, New Age / Ambient, Kraut Rock, Gregorian Chant, whatever. Not to say I like everything made in all those genres, but I like something from each of them. But it has to actually have something musical going on, and not be an excuse for stupid words over a lousy loop that some "producer" slapped together for you.

I think, for me, how it works is if the music can't stand on its own (no lyrics), and the lyrics can't stand on their own (with a melody to be sung a capella or perhaps read as a poem), then I have no use for that "song". A good bit of music with mindless lyrics, yeah I can get lost in that and have fun. A poignant poem set to a mediocre piece of music may also be acceptable. Ideally both music and lyrics are worthy.

 

[László]

A few years ago I was tasked by a tire company's ad agency to write and produce a bunch of rap/hip-hop ads for their ads and promotions that were aimed at young men who were their principal customers for a particular product. I rolled my eyes, thinking this was going to be a really boring and sucky experience. I was wrong. It was fun. And I mean, big fun!

Background: For many years, I've been present when voice-over talent was in a postproduction studio, reading the script over one of my tracks. Contrary to most folks' imagination, it's really voice acting, not just some person with a nice voice reading. Some VO people are amazing at what they can get out of a simple script, especially in terms of different emotions, different vibes, etc.

But I didn't equate that to rap music. I wrote some stuff, and the creative team wrote some lyrics, and we had some of the usual commercial music talent in to rap, and it absolutely sucked. I mean, it was horrible. It wasn't cool, it wasn't vibey, it was disappointing in every way.

But...I'm in Detroit, which is a hotbed of hip-hop and rap production.

So I called a friend who produced rap artists, and convinced him to lend me one of his artists to do this lyric. The guy came in, and looked at the lyric, that was perfectly rhymed and you'd think it'd be fine, and immediately rewrote it. All of a sudden, it was good. I mean, really good. Much more fun, much more in the vibe.

Then he went into the recording booth (I had one at my old studio) and started interpreting the lyric several different ways. A lightbulb went off in my head -- this was truly voice acting, exactly the way a very talented VO talent does that, only this was rhythmic and very, very musical. We finished within an hour of his arrival.

I was so blown away. When he came out of the booth I was beaming, the clients were thrilled, the session became a year-long campaign with the rapper getting a contract to appear live at auto races and perform!!

Sometimes what seems simple, isn't. It was a very good lesson for me.

Thanks, I appreciate the response. I'd stick with age old mantra of "if it's too loud, you're too old," but I seem to be the crotchety old man telling the neighborhood kids to turn their bass heavy car stereos down. Man, I hate that!

I'm too old regardless of how loud it is.