| Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #28718] |
Fri, 12 November 2004 21:13  |
 andyg
Messages: 30
Registered: November 2004 |
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Just stumbled onto this site, and it seems like a pretty cool place to hang, as well as being a nice alternative to Gearslutz. My question is this...
I have a project studio in my basement, and adjacent to the control room is a decent sized crawl space. The walls are concrete, tile covering the floor and several steel support beams(unfortunately the ceilings are only about four feet high). Aside from being a receptacle for excess house stuff, I thought it might be cool to rig up some kind of echo/reverb room. Does anyone have any experience setting up an echo chamber? If so, is it worth the effort or should I just stick with plug-ins???...Also any suggestions on how to best set up this type of system would be much appreciated...
I posted the same query on the Gearslutz board (Low End Theory Forum), no takers...
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #28908 is a reply to message #28718 ] |
Sun, 14 November 2004 14:49  |
Buzz
Messages: 717
Registered: April 2004 |
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I used to use my kitchen in my old house as an echo/reverb chamber , it sounded GOOD we would place the mic's in different spots to change the sound of the chamber , moving 1 mic closer to the speaker/source will shorten up the FX and work like a tap , you can also run 3-4 mics at different points and setup 3-4 tap points !!!
An old friend of mine owned part of a studio in Hollywood that had an echo chamber built in under the floor of the tracking room 40-60' thay had 12 mics in that space , he would record all of his reverbs then take them with him to mix !! very nice some of the best vocals verbs I've ever heard I think they were used on Manhattan Transfers album with the song New York City ???
LAter
Buzz
http://www.machineband.com
http://www.myspace.com/machineband
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #28928 is a reply to message #28718 ] |
Sun, 14 November 2004 17:56 |
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| andyg wrote on Fri, 12 November 2004 23:13 |
...unfortunately the ceilings are only about four feet high....
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Besides the 4 foot high ceiling what are your floor dimensions?
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #28933 is a reply to message #28928 ] |
Sun, 14 November 2004 18:47 |
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This is the one I use, pretty killer!
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #28936 is a reply to message #28718 ] |
Sun, 14 November 2004 20:04 |
jeeper
Messages: 17
Registered: May 2004 |
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Intresting to hear someone wants to use a real chamber still. Brings to mind one of the first small studios I ever head work from, Robin Hood Brians Studio. In this interview he talks about many of his early ways of doing things Robin Hood Interview. Notice the part:
"That’s how it used to be. The engineer really had to innovate. I built my first delay unit. I took a 40 foot pipe, put a speaker in one end and a mic in the other and put it in the attic, and baby, we had delay. And I had what must have been the first live echo chamber in Texas. We had two mics in one end, and a speaker in the other. Man, it sounded great. I’m using it for storage now, but I plan to put that back in operation.
Modeled and simulated effects still just don’t sound like the real thing. I had a guy call me the other day. He’s remixing a song we recorded here years ago. He asks me, “where did you mix that song?” I told him we mixed it here. He’s surprised, and he asks, “what kind of reverb did you use? We need to get that sound for the remix, and nothing we have sounds like it.” I told him it was a live chamber. He puts his hand over the phone and yells, “Hey Hank, I told you that was a live chamber.” He knew immediately that he was screwed - he could call up and rent just about any old reverb unit ever made - but he couldn’t reproduce my reverb room. It just sounds different. It’s real, it isn’t a model, and you can hear the difference."
Also read what he said about the diferences in studios' sound in the early 60's or so when he started up his operation and how he could tell the differences listening to the recordings.
Play with that space a lot you might make something out of it and it just may have several sounds when you move the source and the mics around. I'd also mark each try with masking tape or the like so it can be reproduced at will.
Fletcher's ideas about the steel beam may well be right on for one sound because I'd bet Robin Hoods pipe wasn't plastic when he built it in the 60's because that was probably before plastic pipe was in use except in rare cases.
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #29463 is a reply to message #28936 ] |
Thu, 18 November 2004 05:13 |
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Hey you can also try doubling the speed the sound you want verb on, say from 48k to 96k, playing it into the chamber and recording it back in, then slowing the verb down. Its an interesting way to get double the verb time if you only have a small room.
Of course its even easier/better sounding if you have an MTR of some kind.
Best of luck and dont be shy to post some recordings if you get any youre happy with!
M
This supports my pet theory that weird, purple jellyfish are behind everything peculiar that ever happens anywhere.
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #32995 is a reply to message #28718 ] |
Thu, 09 December 2004 22:01 |
DFunis
Messages: 4
Registered: December 2004 |
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<<Does anyone have any experience setting up an echo chamber? If so, is it worth the effort or should I just stick with plug-ins???...>>
I built a live chamber off my basement studio about a year ago (and no, you shouldn't settle for plug-ins). How long is your space? Mine measures about 15' with 8' foot ceilings, though it's only about 4' wide. However, if you do it right, you can get echo in any size space. RCA in New York used to have a little cubbyhole for echo that was about the size of a large dog-house (really)
The key is making sure the surfaces are really solid (so you don't have any standing sound waves) and very smooth. I just used a corner of my concrete basement, so I already had a good start--I also coated the whole thing with Portland plaster (a standard plaster mixture cut with some cement & lime) then topped it with several coats of high-gloss paint to make it really reflective. (Rounded corners help, too.) I've tried various speaker/mic configurations, but ended up using an old pair of little speakers at one end facing the corners, and one or two SM-57s at the opposite end. Finally (and most importantly), I send the return through a delay, which gives it that old chamber characteristic and helps stretch out the decay a bit (on its own it rings for about 3 secs or so). I also EQ both the send & return, as needed.
It took me a while to get it right (and I'm still learning), but in all honesty, it makes digi-verb sound like the true shite it really is...it's a beautiful thing.
One minor drawback---to get the best sound out of the chambers you really have to drive the piss out of them, which can present some sound-proofing issues. Still, even at lower volume, it works just fine.
I'm kinda nuts about this topic (in case you couldn't tell)--feel free to ask any Q's you might have, I'm happy to pass along any info, FWIW.
--Dave
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| Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber [message #34238 is a reply to message #28718 ] |
Fri, 17 December 2004 00:39 |
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In my commercial studio, there were two "echo chambers" upstairs, that for all the years I've been there were just used to store old, unused equipment. Recently I cleaned one of them out, and decided to try it for reverb....WOW....I have all the plug-ins & Dig units, 4 EMT plates, and even an EMT 250 robot....but nothing sounded as good as this, even with my very first speaker choice, mic choice, and placement. In fact, I've just left it all where it was...a KRK yellow-cone speaker, 2 Beyer 101's. Nothing compares with REAL.
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Re: Home made echo/reverb chamber
