which of these two rooms would you prefer to record in?
 

Hi guys,

I have two rooms I can set up and record in. Assuming the same signal chain and treatments, which would you prefer?

Room 1: 10.5' x 11.5' x 8'. Hardwood floors, drywall walls, furnished. Clap test sounds pretty terrible without treatments. This is the room I usualy record in.

Room 2: 12.5' x 21' x 9'. Open on one long side to large 2 story atrium. Hardwood floors, drywall walls, sparsely furnished. Clap test sounds better than room 1.

Opinions?

Whichever one sounds better. ;)

But in general the second room will be better, and you can hear that right off. The first room is pretty much exactly my "studio" which is awful without a bunch of treatment--small and close to cubical. Reflections come right back at the mic with no chance to dissipate, and a square shape means the same frequencies get emphasized everywhere.

Rule of thumb is rectangular or irregularly shaped is better than square, and bigger is better than smaller.

Whichever room inspires you more is the correct room.

On a ton of my favorite records ever the snare drum sounds like a box of Special K, and some of the strummed acoustic guitars sound like a hi-hat. The acoustic intro to Street Fighting Man by the Stones is a tone that we would all reject outright, but Keef liked it so there it is.

All I can say is, if you can't do treatment, go for clutter.

My studio room has two full walls of open shelves crammed with stuff, one wall with a big, full clothes closet (door slid open) and OC 703 treatment floor to ceiling, and a back wall that's got a big futon couch and OC 703 above that. That room sound dead and dry but really good.

My wife's got a space for her jewelry business that's mostly open-shelf storage plus a big workbench area. Cottage cheese ceiling. It's not "cluttered," really, but there's a lot of random stuff everywhere. No acoustic treatment. That room sounds better than my studio room.

I don't do the pretty, two-mics-on-solo-acoustic thing that a lot of people here are into. But I can post links that will give a pretty good idea of how it sounds if you'd like.

My old studio room was a shade smaller than yoru room 1. I had 6 2'x4'x4" traps, small corner 'superchunks' in the rear corners and 2 3" thick cloud traps over my mixing area, and 'pink stuff' insulation crammed into all the ceiling edges above the dropped ceiling. Plus carpet, furniture, books, shelves, etc. Absorb enough of the reflections and a cubicle room can be used.

Does either of the rooms have a well stocked bar?.

Thanks for the responses guys!

LOL. Made me think of the Faces when they had a bar on stage during tours.

So I recorded the same piece of music with same guitar with the same mic settings and position in each room. Both rooms are untreated.

Room 1:



Room 2:



Opinions?

Room 2 much less reflections picked up. Room 1 a little warmer sound.
Room 2 probably more potential for effective post recording tweaking.

There's two things to consider, though, in a one-room situation. The first is the recorded sound in the room. The second is the accuracy of playback in the room. I think you could maybe get away with recording in either of them, assuming that most of what you do is similar to the examples you linked to. I don't think could mix, or even properly assess, in either of them.

Your recordings indicate the mics were placed close to your guitar in each room.

Suggestion: Record in both rooms again. However, do so with the mics further away from the guitar, say 3' to 4'. That way, you will hear more of each room in the recordings and less of the direct guitar. This will help in evaluating the "room sound" of each room.

From looking at just the dimensions, I would opt for room 2 ..
Generally (not always ) but generally the further away you can get from a small square box (shape wise) the better

This for record only or record and mix ?

Thanks for all the responses guys!

Tracking only.

Room 2 wins that, hands down. Unpleasant reflections are all over the Room 1 recording.

I agree.

With room 1, I feel that I can hear the room.

With room 2 I feel I'm hearing more a a pure sound of your guitar.

(And the sound of your guitar does not seem to be getting muffled by your space - we made the mistake of over-dampening a space in our basement for recording a few years back, and the recordings were dull and almost muffled sounding compared to the much nicer sound we were getting in our living room that was just cluttered with furniture and shelving and such.)

Hearing the space is not always a bad thing (e.g. recording in a church with great acoustics comes to mind), but I'm not sure that hearing the room is a good thing in this case (it doesn't sound awful by any means, but Room 1 is not striking me as a pretty sounding room).

Personally, from my only semi-experienced perspective, I like room 2 better. And with a nice clean sounding recording like that you can add a little bit of nice room sound in pretty easily in post processing.