Recording - June 2011 - 2

PUBLISHER: Thomas Hawley ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Brent Heintz

EDITOR: Lorenz Rychner ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Mike Metlay MÚSICO PRO EDITOR: Fernando Curiel

EDITORIAL

Go to your room That’s what we were told when we didn’t behave. But what about that room of yours— does it behave? Can you trust what you hear from your monitors? Do your mixes hold up when played back in other rooms, in the car, on earbuds? This month we go to quite some lengths to investigate what can go wrong in your room, and what can fix it. The available tools are now more varied than ever. The days of the egg cartons are long gone. They sure looked groovy, especially if spray-painted with psychedelic colors and motifs, but they didn’t really work too well. Maybe a little bit of help with dispersion and “splashing” was the best you could expect from them, and hope and faith, lots of it, was needed in the event that there would ever be a fire... But they “gave good client” back in the day. That was then, this is now: New materials, old materials with new treatment, and software are in, egg cartons are out. Scott Dorsey provides an overview of the problems and solutions. Hands-on guy that he is (you read his many DIY pieces, didn’t you? Quite a few are at www.recordingmag .com/resources/54.html) he suggests using stacks of broken random equipment (only he would have stacks...) and other types of junk to help with diffusion. Books, unevenly distributed on shelves, are always good for that, too. If ever you get to visit our frequent contributor Dave Martin in his Java Jive studio near Nashville, you’ll see a huge wall of bookshelves doing a fine job in his A room. Acoustic treatment and room correction can start small, as with the Auralex MudGuard that simply provides an acoustic baffle behind and around a microphone. Much of the sound arriving at the mic is prevented from also bouncing around and arriving at the mic as reflections, mostly from the sides and from behind, which is known as “room” sound. Too much of that and your recorded sound can get “muddy”—hence the name of the product. A similar principle is employed with the Primacoustic FlexiBooth panels, which open out from your studio wall to create a little iso booth for a vocalist, and fold away again when not needed. If bass buildup is your problem, one solution is the line of MegaTraps from RealTraps. Bass means heft—both in the size of the waveforms, and in the requisite size of bass traps if they are to be effective in sucking up those waveforms. We’ve seen a number of software-based room correction systems over the years; a mic records playback in your room, software analyzes what’s being captured, and corrections are applied to the signal chain that feeds your monitors. JBL has brought the price point down with the MSC1, which also serves as a handy switcher and controller for your speakers. In a way these are all work-arounds. If you have your druthers, you might as well do it right during construction, even if that construction is a retrofit to an existing room. Much sweat equity went into the two projects we’re reporting on, one by Brian Tarquin who built a friend’s studio from scratch in a neutral big space, the other from Otso Pakarinen who shares in great detail how he managed to soundproof a flimsy office space. Flimsy no more—now he does what he does in his studio and the secretary in the next room over doesn’t even know if he’s in or out today! Just to put everything in perspective, we bring you a personal opinion, a word to the wise, from Brian Gadson, musician and studio designer/acoustician, who points out that there are rooms where more effort at acoustic treatment actually amounts to less success... a common-sense message that may save some of us a few bills that would have been wasteful expenditure. Marc Urselli again attended SXSW, that madcap music-and-everything-else week in Austin, and he tells us why it is, in his opinion, mandatory to attend if making contacts and promoting your talent is on your agenda. And there are more product reviews, updates, and sound legal advice to round out this issue. Spring has sprung... don’t forget to come out of your studio hibernation and smell the new flowers, so you can be refreshed and go back to— Happy Recording.

CONTRIBUTORS Otso Pakarinen, Paul Vnuk Jr., Scott Dorsey, Brian Tarquin, Marc Urselli, Michael Nickolas, Todd Gascon, Bruce Kaphan, Marty Peters, Brian Gadson
ART DIRECTOR: Scott Simmonds PRODUCTION MANAGER: Colin Courtney WEB GOALIE: Colin Courtney

ART & PRODUCTION

EDITOR/PRODUCER:

PLAYBACK PLATINUM SERIES Lorenz Rychner CIRCULATION Tiffany Sepe

CIRCULATION MANAGER:

ADVERTISING SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR: Brent Heintz CLASSIFIEDS MANAGER: Stephanie King
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE:

ADMINISTRATION Stephanie King

PRESIDENT: Thomas Hawley VICE PRESIDENT: Brent Heintz

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

SUBSCRIPTIONS/ADDRESS CHANGES: 1-800-582-8326 832-886-1126 ADVERTISING/CLASSIFIEDS/MAIN OFFICE: (303) 516-9118 RECORDING MAGAZINE (ISSN 1078-8352; USPS 002-298) is published monthly, 12 times per year, by Music Maker Publications, Inc., 5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301-3523. Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 email: info@recordingmag.com
Periodicals Postage is paid at Boulder, CO and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RECORDING, Subscriber Services, P.O. Box 334, Stafford, TX, 77497. Tel: 1-800-582-8326 or 832-886-1126. Subscription rate: $19.95 per year. All material is subject to worldwide copyright protection, and reproduction or imitation in whole or in part is expressly forbidden without written consent from the publishers. All reasonable care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of the magazine, but Music Maker Publications, Inc. cannot be held legally responsible for its contents. The publishers cannot assume responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or materials. All trademarked names, whether indicated as such or not, are owned by their respective companies. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #41491032. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

RECORDING JUNE 2011

http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/54.html http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/54.html

Recording - June 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - June 2011