ChrisMM
Member
Hello all, I've been a lurker for awhile who has learned a lot here and very much appreciate this place. I'm a generally happy guy who tries to keep an outlook of gratitude whenever possible. So, the rant that follows is not characteristic of the vast majority of posts I plan to make here.
I just don't get it. Acoustics is what separates pro studios from "home" studios. Proper acoustic treatment is the single greatest investment one can make towards improving the sound of a home studio, and it doesn't even cost that much compared to other gear. Even a few gobos around the instrument can make a world of difference in an otherwise-untreated room. And, it's a one-time investment that pays off every time you use the room. Ever since I discovered for myself how much better my own work sounded with acoustic treatment, I've been shouting this from the rooftops now for decades to all my musician and home recordist friends. And... Absolutely no one cares. It's starting to drive me insane. I'm starting to wonder if they're all somehow right and I'm the crazy misinformed one.
Some people do music for fun. They don't care about treating their rooms because they aren't in it for professional recording results. Others do care about treating their rooms, but haven't had the time or budget to do it yet. These are not the people I'm ranting about. I'm ranting about those who are in it for pro reasons, and expect pro results, yet refuse to invest in room treatment.
I've been in at least two home studios where the owners went to great efforts to construct a nice-looking room with beautiful flooring and paint and wonderful finishing in general. Of those two, one had carpeting hung over half of the walls in the tracking area and zero treatment in the control room, and the other had zero treatment anywhere (and was the size of a closet). Both of these guys (unrelated to each other) were very serious about turning their recording into a business. The carpet-treated room sounded so unbalanced it almost made you feel sick to be in there, like the air was being sucked out of your ears or something. In both cases, these guys struggled to get the level of sound quality they were after (gosh, why could that be?). I recommended to both of them to consider at least adding bass traps and fiberglass panels to their mixing rooms, and explained what a huge difference that makes and why, explaining how every pro studio has acoustic treatment for a reason, etc. All I got from them was a deer-in-headlights look. It just never even occurred to them to think about acoustics in the first place.
A third guy, friend of mine, paid me to write up a budget-conscious plan for how he could treat his home tracking room. I assessed his room and sent him a document describing exactly which panels he could buy and where to place them, while staying within his budget. He then proceeded to completely ignore all of my advice (for which he paid me money), opting instead to cover his room with zero acoustic treatment of any kind. He routinely struggles to get a decent sound in his room (well shit, I wonder why?). He calls me over to help him find that magical mic placement that'll make it sound good. I've told him 500 times by now some version of "the room is coloring your sound for the worse, you need acoustic treatment to really fix this", and it just goes in one ear and out the other every time. I tell him acoustic treatment would save him the trouble of hunting and pecking for that magical mic location that somehow lands in a tonally-okay part of the room, that he doesn't need to waste hours repositioning mics until he finds it. I tell him it would save him a ton of time and headaches if he would set up gobos (if only he had any!) around his instrument, and that this would give him massively better results even if his mic placement isn't optimal. Does he ever try it? No! He comes back to me and complains that he "can't hear enough of my instrument" and decides the solution is to spend more time hunting for that just-right mic location. This is someone who is a perfectionist about his sound quality, who regularly records songs and releases them.
Friends, why?? Why do people do this to themselves?? What am I missing here?
Not that this is a productive thing to think about, but I couldn't help coming up with some possible reasons. One is that acoustics is just too hard a concept for some people, and they figure if they personally don't understand it, then it must not be that important. A kind of self-centered magical thinking. Or maybe just a case of succumbing to an unknown unknown. Another is that acoustic treatment is not sexy enough, and some people are in this game to impress the opposite sex more than anything else...or they just fall for the marketing and only buy the things that are shiny and sexy. (I explain to these types that the sexiest thing about a studio is being able to release top-quality recordings, but somehow this concept never lands with them...maybe I am in fact wrong about this being the sexiest thing about a studio...)
Finally, I myself am absolutely not an expert in acoustics. I only know and accept the basics of what it takes to make a room sound decent for tracking and mixing.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest!
Chris
I just don't get it. Acoustics is what separates pro studios from "home" studios. Proper acoustic treatment is the single greatest investment one can make towards improving the sound of a home studio, and it doesn't even cost that much compared to other gear. Even a few gobos around the instrument can make a world of difference in an otherwise-untreated room. And, it's a one-time investment that pays off every time you use the room. Ever since I discovered for myself how much better my own work sounded with acoustic treatment, I've been shouting this from the rooftops now for decades to all my musician and home recordist friends. And... Absolutely no one cares. It's starting to drive me insane. I'm starting to wonder if they're all somehow right and I'm the crazy misinformed one.
Some people do music for fun. They don't care about treating their rooms because they aren't in it for professional recording results. Others do care about treating their rooms, but haven't had the time or budget to do it yet. These are not the people I'm ranting about. I'm ranting about those who are in it for pro reasons, and expect pro results, yet refuse to invest in room treatment.
I've been in at least two home studios where the owners went to great efforts to construct a nice-looking room with beautiful flooring and paint and wonderful finishing in general. Of those two, one had carpeting hung over half of the walls in the tracking area and zero treatment in the control room, and the other had zero treatment anywhere (and was the size of a closet). Both of these guys (unrelated to each other) were very serious about turning their recording into a business. The carpet-treated room sounded so unbalanced it almost made you feel sick to be in there, like the air was being sucked out of your ears or something. In both cases, these guys struggled to get the level of sound quality they were after (gosh, why could that be?). I recommended to both of them to consider at least adding bass traps and fiberglass panels to their mixing rooms, and explained what a huge difference that makes and why, explaining how every pro studio has acoustic treatment for a reason, etc. All I got from them was a deer-in-headlights look. It just never even occurred to them to think about acoustics in the first place.
A third guy, friend of mine, paid me to write up a budget-conscious plan for how he could treat his home tracking room. I assessed his room and sent him a document describing exactly which panels he could buy and where to place them, while staying within his budget. He then proceeded to completely ignore all of my advice (for which he paid me money), opting instead to cover his room with zero acoustic treatment of any kind. He routinely struggles to get a decent sound in his room (well shit, I wonder why?). He calls me over to help him find that magical mic placement that'll make it sound good. I've told him 500 times by now some version of "the room is coloring your sound for the worse, you need acoustic treatment to really fix this", and it just goes in one ear and out the other every time. I tell him acoustic treatment would save him the trouble of hunting and pecking for that magical mic location that somehow lands in a tonally-okay part of the room, that he doesn't need to waste hours repositioning mics until he finds it. I tell him it would save him a ton of time and headaches if he would set up gobos (if only he had any!) around his instrument, and that this would give him massively better results even if his mic placement isn't optimal. Does he ever try it? No! He comes back to me and complains that he "can't hear enough of my instrument" and decides the solution is to spend more time hunting for that just-right mic location. This is someone who is a perfectionist about his sound quality, who regularly records songs and releases them.
Friends, why?? Why do people do this to themselves?? What am I missing here?
Not that this is a productive thing to think about, but I couldn't help coming up with some possible reasons. One is that acoustics is just too hard a concept for some people, and they figure if they personally don't understand it, then it must not be that important. A kind of self-centered magical thinking. Or maybe just a case of succumbing to an unknown unknown. Another is that acoustic treatment is not sexy enough, and some people are in this game to impress the opposite sex more than anything else...or they just fall for the marketing and only buy the things that are shiny and sexy. (I explain to these types that the sexiest thing about a studio is being able to release top-quality recordings, but somehow this concept never lands with them...maybe I am in fact wrong about this being the sexiest thing about a studio...)
Finally, I myself am absolutely not an expert in acoustics. I only know and accept the basics of what it takes to make a room sound decent for tracking and mixing.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest!
Chris
It turns out that there was a real piano playing in an adjoining room. 
