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[blueboy]

I'm thinking about setting up an impromptu echo chamber in my house to add a bit of richness and warmth to some of my recordings.

I record vocals and guitar in a room that is fairly dead, and I find that the tracks lack fullness and depth as they don't have a "soundstage", so I was thinking that this echo chamber idea may help.

The room that I am thinking of using is a fairly large combined kitchen and dining area. It has a lot of reflective wood surfaces (hardwood floors, wood cabinets, wood furniture, wooden window blinds etc.), and it sounds great when playing my acoustic in there. It also has a large opening into the livingroom area and a hallway that gives a nice subtle "slapback" effect.

As I only have one decent mic and pre (Rode K2 and GT Brick), I will have to make do with those. I also have an extra set of decent sounding mid sized bookshelf speakers to use. The plan would be to send the recorded tracks through the chamber one at a time and record the room sound to a new track.

The mono room track would then be very subtly mixed with the original (and possibly panned to the opposite channel of a hard panned guitar track). I'd love to have stereo, and I guess I could try recording 2 ambience tracks with different mic positioning, but I don't know if that would work too well.

Does anyone have any guidelines regarding speaker and mic positioning, or any other tips to setting this type of thing up? I realize there are no rules, but any general feedback (including whether or not it is worth it) from people that have tried this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

JL

[hargerst]

Other than 1ms of delay = 1 foot, all I can say is experiment.  A good starting point is 15 to 25ms of delay, which means you need about 15 to 25 feet between the speaker and the mic.  Roll off the low end below 200 - 300 Hz, and experiment with rolling off stuff above 15K, 10K, and 5 Khzz - which ever sounds best.

[maxim]

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/m/157908/7735/?sr ch=chamber#msg_157908

[David Ballenger]

Perfect.  Do your performance in that room.  Try the the variable pattern and dial toward figure 8 and do the voice and acoustic at the same time.  Find the right place in the room.  Probably not to close to a wall and probably not dead center either.  Practice the distance for the right level with direct sound /ambience  / proximity effect / tone and of course the balance between the voice and guitar.  Hopefully you can silence everything in the environment enough to not have it be a problem.  That's probably the hardest part.  If it's digital remember to record with safe levels.  You'll be better off gaining it later in mix.  You can check the balances with headphones then discard if desired.

I get much better results like that with a nice environment.

Something to try.

[David Ballenger]

Also I'd suggest in an area with the wood floor since you want live ambience, everything else should act for nice diffusion.

[David Ballenger]

Actually on rereading your post you may have a different goal.  Disregard this if necessary.

[Buzz]

I used to use my kitchen as my reverb/echo chamber and got GOOD sounds from it ( we miced the corners mic's facing in to get the best effect ) with sm57's of all things.

Later
Buzz

[blueboy]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I tried a few things out today and so far it sounds pretty good if mixed at a low level relative to the source.

It definitely sounds better than early reflections made using convolution techniques. The overall sound is really enhanced when using the natural room sound in combination with a convolution plate reverb.

I haven't tried it in the context of a mix yet, but I think it may just give me that little extra I was looking for.

JL

[blueboy]

For anyone interested in setting up their own...

I finally found the link again that got me thinking about trying this.

Bob Clearmountains's live chambers.

JL

[Tidewater]

Thanks for the link!


M

[maxim]

now, bob's secret is finally revealed:

he's got oompa-loompas working for him!


btw, do you put the speakers in the null point of the mics?

coz you want to hear the room, right?