The other day a reader posted a comment regarding my lack of acoustic treatment in my studio and he wanted to know how I got my mixes to sound “good” despite the bare walls. His question leads to an important part of recording well in your home studio that I want to briefly explain today. No matter how much acoustic treatment you have (or don’t have), in order to get great recordings and mixes at home you need to “learn” your studio.
Via Trevor Cox Flickr
Not Quite The Truth
If you aren’t yet satisfied with your recordings in the home studio then pay attention. The biggest thing that can hinder your progress is not being able to hear your tracks properly. Your studio room and monitors are probably giving you a misrepresentation of how your audio is actually sounding. Talk about frustrating. That is why you hear the “big boys” of recording telling you to invest in quality acoustic treatment, great monitors and converters, or even to ditch the home studio and just record in a pro studio.
In one sense they are right. Those things will go a long way to ensuring that what you hear is what you are actually getting in your DAW. But sometimes those are not options to use “small guys”. Money is tight. And more importantly (to me anyways), those things aren’t necessary. There is a perfectly good alternative: simply take the time to learn your studio’s shortcomings and quirks. Than you can compensate for them and come out just fine.
An Example
For many of us, we have typical drywall in our rooms. Without much absorption or diffusion materials to make a difference, any sound coming from our speakers (or guitars, vocals, drums, etc) will simply bounce off the walls a bunch of times and then come back to our ears (or our microphones) with a much higher frequencey response. In essence this tricks our ears to thinking things sound “brighter” than they are. This can affect our microphone placement technique, as well as how we EQ in the mix.
Then we take the mix out to the car, or on our iPod, and we notice that everything sounds a bit muffled. Where did all that high end go? It was only present in that room! So unless you can get all your fans and listeners to only listen to your mixes in your studio then they won’t get the full effect. Not a good plan.
Instead, in this example, we could learn from our first few mistakes, and know to boost the highs a bit, mix a bit brighter than we would like, and adjust mic placement accordingly. We would do this all while knowing that in the “real world” it will sound just perfect. If this seems like an annoying extra step right now, don’t worry. Your room usually stays the same so it won’t be long before you’ve learned how it “sounds” and can figure out how to adjust accordingly.
Acoustic Treatment Is Not Your Answer
There is nothing wrong with acoustic treatment in your studio. In fact it will help tremendously. Kind of a no brainer. What I’m saying, however, is that if the budget and the landlord prohibit you from going that direction don’t think that you’ve somehow missed out and that you can’t do this. Acoustic treatment is not the solution to great recordings or mixes. You are. Learning your studio so you can make better tracking and mixing decisions is the key.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Treating a room with acoustic panels and bass traps is expensive and time-consuming. If you don’t have the justification, the time, or the budget, buy a nice pair of headphones instead. A $400 pair of headphones will probably outperform a $1000 pair of speakers plus $1000 worth of acoustic panels.
Learning the space is critical too, especially for tracking. There is no substitute for direct experience and experimentation.
But at mix time, a great pair of (familiar) headphones will bypass a lot of the shortcomings of your monitoring environment.
A great pair of studio headphones can definitely help. And as with learning your room, learning those headphones goes a long way to great recordings. Thanks for the comment Matt.
Acoustic treatment does not have to be expensive or time consuming. At our previous house I killed flutter echos, tamed some wacky modal response and added a little diffusion to the rear of the listening position entirely using materials I already had: blankets, pillows, cardboard, etc. And I did most of it in half a day. It only gets expensive when you need it to look nice and approach ideal measurements. Acoustical improvements can be cheap, quick and effective.
Everyone needs to understand how their repro system and acoustics translate generally. Even in the best of circumstances (maybe more so) you need to know how things sound everywhere else. These two goals — acoustical improvement and knowing how audio translates outside your room — are not mutually exclusive.
Headphones are problematic for several reasons, including: they fatigue the ears quickly, they tend to be uncomfortable and they create a greater sense of space than speakers because they lack crosstalk. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t check mixes on headphones, but for me, there is no substitute for speakers.
Great points Randy, as always. Again, it all comes down to learning your room’s strengths and weaknesses and and adjusting accordingly.
I completely disagree. This is wrong.
You can’t learn your room if you’re constantly being lied to by it. Why even waste your time GUESSING?!
Acoustic treatment was the single most cost effective and beneficial improvement to my studio and quality of my work. All my gear sounded better and I could finally hear what I was doing!
Everything you record and everything you hear in a treated room sounds better.
I spent $200 on materials and about 6 hours across 2 days to treat my room with 96sqFt of rigid fiberglass broadband panels. Hey it even looks nice.
That’s less than the cost of a decent mic. It made all my mics sound better, it made my inexpensive monitors at the time sound better.
Audiogeek. No question acoustic treatment will make things easier. If you re-read the post you’ll notice I mention that a few times. But the point is two fold: 1) you don’t NEED acoustic treatment to get great recordings or mixes. Period. 2) You still have to “learn” your studio when it’s treated seeing as how your “great monitors” don’t sound like iPod earbuds or car stereos. It’s always smart to reference check on other systems until you know what your studio sounds like. Hope that clears things up!
Good points on learning your space – being aware of fundamental issues and how they may be impacting your sound IS key to becoming better at this craft. However, I’d disagree that completely disregarding any attempt at accoustic treatment and relying on “guessing” where you should compensate for your rooms’ deficiency is not entirely sound (heh) advice.
As Randy pointed out – knowing the shortcomings of your space and improving accoustic treatment are not mutually exclusive. Accoustic treatment does not have to be expensive – actually can be less than the $400 headphones suggested above. Accoustic treatment does not HAVE to be expensive, pretty or a permanent fixture on walls – there are so many cheap and non-destructive methods to tame reflections and other audio oddities Ignoring fixing your room accoustics starts to point to just being lazy.
Unless you’re mixing the exact same kind of thing – indefinitely – then, you’re never going to get that confidence that you “know” when your room is lying to you or not. Different styles, instrumentation and mixing techniques come into play. You will not want to have the same sound for a jazz trio versus a metal band versus a singer/songwriter. Different techniques will be used, different elements will need to be boosted/cut, etc – I see it as virtually impossible to “pre-know” how you’ll need to compensate with different variables coming into play every time.
Having to reference your mixes on different systems is definitely a solid checkpoint in the process, but having to rely on that to constantly make (major) mixing decisions gets to be a very inefficient way of working.
The goal of accoustic treatment in a room is to have the confidence that what you’re hearing is as close to what’s intended to be heard directly from the sound source.
Graham I think you could argue that you don’t truly NEED anything. But the cost to benefit ratio of acoustical treatment is so low that everyone should consider it an option. Even renters. Even the cost conscious. I’ve setup temporary acoustic treatment for location recording that took less than an hour but made a critical difference in our ability to judge what we were recording. We couldn’t leave any of that stuff setup after the session, and we were an a very tight budget. In my opinion there is virtually no circumstance where thinking about acoustics is not important, or should be considered less important.
Perhaps to your original point, it isn’t really a matter of “how much” acoustical manipulation you attempt, but listening for changes that improve what you are able to hear. Lining the walls with foam is no guarantee for success. But neither is trying to listen past all of the imperfections in space without attempting to address them.
Great points.
Headphones: not for real mixing. The spatial depth of headphones is utterly unlike any real-world listening situation (except other pairs of headphones :)) Mixing in headphones (even high end ones) results in very unpredictable results once played back on speakers. They are useful for spot-checking details, but can be so misleading. I once used them to do delicate manual tuning of a vocal — thinking headphones would really let me hear the detail in them. I got them perfectly tuned in the headphones, went back to speakers, and was SHOCKED at things that sounded fine in headphones but horrible in speakers.
Agree wholeheartedly with the comments that say even basic, cheap, DIY acoustical treatment can help a room that has issues. Taming the worst reflections is one of the best things you can do for your listening environment, along with getting as close as possible to the sweet spot equilateral triangle, and moving speakers away from the wall (which distorts bass response).
And the bottom line is, even after you’ve got things positioned as well as you can and addressed the most glaring acoustical issues, the #1 most important thing is to LEARN THE ROOM for yourself. Learn how to mix in it. Take your mixes elsewhere (iPod, car, other consumer playback devices) and make sure they translate. Come back and tweak some more. A/B mixes against other known good mixes. Then it begins to become second nature. And you can do this all with cheap acoustical treatment and sub-$1000 studio monitors too.
I have to agree with the “headphone Camp” I’ve always mixed better with cans. but I do have a pair og BBehringer Ms 40’s and I also use my dads hand me down sony home theatre in a box at my mix position. For detail, and isolation I use cans, For translation I use the behringers and Sony. I’m a bit different and both for and against room treatment. It may sound way out of left field, but for my type of music, which is like Dada/Garage/ experimental, The occasional stray sound and leak and dog bark and all that captures for me a moment that won’t happen again. I tend to improve over a basic chord/melody/lyric structure when i record, and record 1 track of say vocals and guitar to give the skeleton from beginning to end, no click tracks, I think Autotune and the like are Pure evil, I allow the tempo to drift, I’m rarely at say 120 bpm, it’s usually like somewhere between say 94.3 to 96, on an average song slightly more vivace than andante.. I love Dynamics, I love Rubato, I love wrong notes micro tones, I try to stay fairly rock and roll, but with in the context of free atonality, or even aleatory . so a treated room is wonderful for a great clean sound, but when I treat my Garage studio, I use all kinds of blankets, Foam, Plexiglass, etc. I once used an old TV sattelite dish to bounce the sound from the speaker off of at an angle to the mic, separated by cardboard, foam and plexiglass.. Odd, Odd sounds… But that’s my taste.. I would kill to be able to record in an expensive “proper” recording studio any day as well..
Randy and David. I agree. Great points. The idea is that many people who are releatively new to recording get fed advice from the whole audio world that they this interface and that microphone and this type of acoustic treatment. So they purchase this stuff cause they know it’s important but they never get to the heart of it all, recording is an art that takes time to learn and perfect. I’m still working on it myself!
i also think that using reference material a lot can be really useful for beginners or for mixing in a new room or new apartment. I know some guys listen to reference mixes as much as the song they are working on while they are mixing. While thats pretty extreme and maybe unnecessary, its definitely something that helps me trust that im not crazy. Thats not to undermine anything said here thus far… but it does help for knowing your room.
@Graham: Yeah, often people forget that great music can be made with a cassette recorder. Granted, there is an art to production and mixing, and those things can all make it better, but it’s folly to think that if I don’t buy the right preamp or the right acoustic treatment or interface, that it’s going to be the magical thing that’s going to make everything right (or that if I don’t, everything will be wrong).
I’d rather hear the Beatles making music with GarageBand, than hear a lazy untalented hack with PT HD at 192KHz with thousands of dollars of pre’s and mics around him. I think the Beatles proved that sometimes it’s the limitations that actually heighten creativity.
Having said that, do buy decent mics and pre’s. 🙂 Just don’t think that they by themselves are the key to making great music.
Whole-heartedly agree that it’s an art and a continual learning process, however, accoustic treatment is a simple and low-cost tool that gives a recording or mixing engineer one less hurdle to have to deal with that will help towards focusing on mixing and recording.
Sure, having to overcome problems, learning through mistakes and training your ears are all valuable parts of the process, but would you not rather start with a room that you’re not second-guessing than one that forces you to question yourself all the time?
It’s cheap, it’s effective and in the end saves time. Does it need to be perfect? After re-reading the post a couple more times, I know you’re not advocating that accoustic treatment isn’t necessary, but I think what folks are inferring from your text (“No matter how much acoustic treatment you have (or don’t have), in order to get great recordings and mixes at home you need to “learn” your studio.” and “Acoustic treatment is not the solution to great recordings or mixes. You are.”) is that accoustic treatment is a “nice to have” and all you have to do is figure out the formula to compensate for your room.
I think the message should be that accoustic treatment is simple and cost effective. It will not get things perfect (there is no magic bullet to producing great (good) mixes), and it won’t guarantee good mixes but the cost/benefit to what you hear, the decisions that you make and learning opportunities will pay-back sooner than later.
I’m not seeing a lot of disagreement here. I think acoustic treatment is another tool that needs to be put on the list and prioritized. I know I’ll be getting some sort of treatment before I install an SSL desk (jk), but will I get it before I spring for a small diaphram condenser? Haven’t decided. I think the point is that you need to be aware and just keep going with your work. Don’t wait on the SSL…
Steve
Steve, you don’t have to spend a dime on acoustic treatment if you make good use of materials you already have. Just relocating your speakers / listening position can make a huge improvement – totally free. Make the best use of everything you have, even before you get that SDC. Even after you get that SSL.
And if the SSL doesn’t help your music sound better, feel free to pass it off to me, and I’ll help you with the acoustic treatment.
I have had this very problem since the word go. I need to do everything on headphones but couldn’t get a decent mix still due the extreme directness on headphones.
About a month ago I was in need of an upgrade in sound card and after some investigating i came across the focusrite saffire pro 24 DSP. Focusrite came up with some dsp algorithms to emulate 3 different environments with several different speakers. After some time with getting used to the different environments my mixes started sounding great.
Although i’m not suggesting people to go out and buy a new piece of equipment for the heck of it but if your in need of a new sound card or you really need a more cost effective solution might be worth checking out.
@Glenn S.: Not to disrespect your comments/experience in any way, but I feel naturally leery of artificial DSP that’s made to mimic things as unpredictably diverse as listening environments. My instinct is to say I’d rather have one acceptable environment that I can work that I know really well (flaws and all), rather than a simulation of different rooms. When I know my one environment really well, I have confidence that when I mix there, the mixes will translate well to any other room (within reason).
Not to discount your experience…maybe Focusrite did an excellent job of simulating different rooms…but I’d rather know my one environment well, then take my mixes to other (real) rooms just to double-check.
I’m in agreement with David. I in fact do use the Focusrite interface that Glen refers to and although it’s pretty fun to play around with the algorithms, I’ve not made any mixing decisions with them. Glen, if it works for you, then, fantastic, but to me, the simulations weren’t all that convincing, nor did I feel that they gave me anything better than speakers in a real space.
However, remember that Todd Rundgren just produced his last album, Arena, with Sony headphones and a laptop…and he’s used the best studios in the world to produce some of the greatest artists. Just thought I’d throw that out there and play devil’s advocate. There’s the rule…and there’s always the exception.
I say this as someone who mixes in an untreated room currently, and I don’t use headphones much. I do a lot of A/B with pro mixes, however, to pinpoint weak areas, and I often have to go back to a mix after the “car stereo test.” I DO, however, want to add treatments and will eventually…because I’m not Todd Rundgren. 😀
I definitely believe it’s learning how to use what you got. Probably about 2 yeares ago I wouldn’t be saying this. I was all about making sure I got in the closet and recorded. Now don’t get me wrong, my recordings was pretty good then. But once I understood mic placement and learning what area of my room had a drier sound, I was able to get out my closet. A good friend of mine, Justin Houston, records everything and every artist right in his living room. No acoustic treatment whatsoever! Mixes in his living room…! His recordings sound just as good as anything you would hear on the radio. And it’s all acappella so you think you would be able to hear everything in the room, right? Check him out…www.myspace.com/justinhoustonmusic and tell me what you think! 🙂
Please don’t miss understand me, it is always good to purchase acoustic treatment if you can afford it. Will it make your sound even better and tighter, probably so. But the question is do you necessarily “NEED” it. From my experience….I don’t think so.
one thing i know that works ( for me )…..simply watch your volume..use your hands on the table or work surface to feel the bass…if you cant hear it but can feel it then its there and maybe too much…at low volumes you will get the best out of a crappy sounding room..this however is my point of view for mixing.. tracking however is a totally different game altogether , i would suggest not trying to get a dead sound but trying to kill any slaps/reflections that may be a hindrance to the mix process , there are many temporary things you can do to change your room from a tracking environment to a mixing one..youtube must be full of idears by now,.
i love this place graham… thanks for your inspiration
cheers
tony
My apologies if I’m repeating posts here. since I didn’t read all comments..
My top priority HAS to include a new “deck style” raised floor and my custom made sound treatment panels since I’ll be using the same space for acoustic recordings as well. Recording your materials obviously still requires a sound treated room.
Try ARC, Advanced room correction system, IK Multi media.
Not perfect but works great.
You still have to have good ears.
Hector Junior.