does anybody know how to apply the opposite of the reverb affect?? Im recording in my bedroom and i get this echo effect (sound like im in a big empty room) what’s the best way to remedy that?
It’s practically impossible to remove natural reverberation from a recording, so you need to do it phyisically by manipulating the environment you are recording in.The smartest thing to do is to record in a different room - something small and well insulated or soundproofed. This may be troublesome if you don’t have extension cords or a remote way to access the computer. Another solution would be to put up soundproofing in your bedroom. This can be simple, such as blankets, egg cartons or spongey styrofoam. Monitor your microphone through the headphones while recording to see if you can hear the reverb. Add more blankets or soundproofing as needed.
Of course, if you want to spend money, there is professional soundproofing material that can be purchased from many audio equipment retailers. Good luck.
in general, if you want less “room sound” in your recordings, use “close mic’ing”… or at least try getting a little closer to the source so you can bring down the preamp gain a bit. personally, i stick blankets on the walls and try to mic as closely as a can get away with… then i try to re-simulate the room sound with reverbs, etc… gives you a little more control.
if you want complete control over the NATRUAL reverb, record two tracks (two seperate mics) when recording a single instrument. mic one: “up close” to the source, mic two: “at a distance”… somewhere else in the room, down the hall, etc. to get the reverb. then once you’ve got those down as seperate tracks, mix to taste.
Got a walk in closet? Record in there. Closets are great for isolation booths. YOu already have all the sound treatment you could want from coats and clothing.
Couple of issues ago in “Electronic Musician” there was an article on recording on the road. They suggested using onhand stuff for acoustic insulation like pizza boxes, mattresses, blankets hung over mic stands, etc.
thanks alot!, im using my walking in closet i guess i have to hang more clothes in blankets
Put down a carpet too if you have wood floors. Also, follow the on axis path of the mic and find the surface it will be picking up the most reflections from and treat that area especially. EX:
Mic Wall
–O |
^
Put treatment in from of the wall to knock down reflectins heading directly towards the mic. Also think about bleed. A cardiod mic pickups up in a half sphere like pattern. If you have to compromise, treat the areas that will reflect into this half sphere and not the places that woul drefelct in to the dead spot of the mic. Make sense or did I just babble?
PZM mics do better too, but good ones (old RS versions made by Crown and no longer sold) are hard to find or are expensive for the real Crown’s which are still available. I don’t know if the new little ones are any good so I’m not suggesting those. I suspect they aren’t up to the specs old big ones (and the little ones aren’t balanced low-Z either - they have an 1/8" plug). These are specialty things and not everything sounds good recorded with them, though you do get a true representation of how whatever you are recording sounds like to your ears right where the mic is.
mate if yer got a nasty room all gotta do is sample a bit o’
tail of end of vocal phrase n stor as noise print.
forge can b used fer then usin the noise print ta apply to vocal track, 
Limey, are you talking about making an impulse of the room, and then using SIR or something to cut it out? I was thinking that, but it is a difficult prospect. Theoretically possible, though…
He’s talking about sampling just a trailing part of the reverb – the part that fades with no direct sound – and using that as the sample of what to remove using Sound Forge’s or Audition’s Noise Reduction function, or any other app that lets you sample a section for use this way. It’s normally used to remove tape hiss and things like surface noise from records and background sounds.
The down side is that any reverb in the trails may be so prevalent in the direct sound that removing the reverb this way may screw up the sound too much. Hiss and things like that are usually so low in volume that they are masked by normal levels, but reverb is intentionally loud enough to be heard while the music plays so lots of tweaking may be in order to get satisfactory results.
It’s worth a try though. That’s for sure.
phoo matey, i aint talkin bout drastik like noise reducn levels–
talkin bout weentsy nse redn settins. n wot yer can also do is
sample bit o’ room sound n use frequency display ta show frequencies o’ tha room sound like sound engine got this
type o’ display n cool 96 n gobs o’ other softwares.
then wot yer can do is special selectiv filterin usin a eq filter.
i aint talkin filterin or nse redn ta tha max, but blinkin carefull mild stuff. forgot ow ta do me smileys. now i’m appy.
That’s sort of what I’m getting at. The default setting want to get rid of all the stuff in the sample. That would be way to heavy handed. A very light touch of reduction might do the trick, but part of the trick is getting the right bit of sample to start with.
u r blinkin rite phoo matey gettin the smple proper like is the trik of it