Can a room be too dead/treated?

barredowl

Before and after Science
I am thinking some of the sense of reverberant space is created by reflections in the room creating natural reverb. While in an extremly well damped room it would be easier to control standing waves, suckouts, etc, would it also sound too dead and non spacious?

I am taking a sound engineering class and my proff railed against over treated vocal booths and got me to thinking along these lines.

I do believe in using an RTA and EQ to equalize for room anomalies is a good idea, and I know I should try some bass traps most likely, but how much is enough?
 
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Have you ever listened to music in an anechoic chamber? Yes, a room can definitely be too dead.

How much is enough? Well, that depends on the room, the speakers, and you. As I recall, a good T60 to shoot for is about half a second. Recording studios tend to be shorter, maybe as little as .2s and concert halls tend to be longer. That's from memory of my acoustics training which was ...egad, almost 20 years ago.
 
I am thinking some of the sense of reverberant space is created by reflections in the room creating natural reverb. While an extremly well damped room would be easier to control standing waves, suckouts, etc, would it also sound too dead and non spacious?

I am taking a sound engineering class and my proff railed against over treated vocal booths and got me to thinking along these lines.

I do believe in using an RTA and EQ to equalize for room anomalies is a good idea, and I know I should try some bass traps most likely, but how much is enough?
One of the more interesting aspects of playing with Surround receivers. Being able to adjust how "lively" the output is. Drove me nuts grasping the different settings, but boy when things fall into place it's pretty cool. Mostly I found it better for "live" stuff rather than studio stuff. For everything other than live I usually defeat the surround running strictly stereo.

I think that is one of the reasons I like my L88's better than my Mach Ones. The horns tend to blare in my HT room which is all hardwood floors, very little damping on the walls and no acoustic ceiling so reverb is too much.

I'm not sure I agree with the EQ, for a lively room, I think a reverb unit that can put some delay on the mids would be more effective, I think.
 
The EQ is to compensate for room anomalies and the Fetcher Munson hearing curve Copa.
 
I was recently in a recording room where they do voice-over work for animated movies, like Shrek, etc...it was DEAD. It was kind of creepy talking in that room, as your voice just kind of went away into thin air, and sounded really different. The playback room was similar and while it sounded better than a lot of rooms in high fi dealerships, it was not what I would call great for music. Just kind of dead and clinical, all you really heard was the monitors (by design). But I've been in other fairly dead playback rooms that sounded great, so I'm sure that the room wasn't the only variable.
 
The EQ is to compensate for room anomalies and the Fetcher Munson hearing curve Copa.
Are we talking a 10-band type EQ? I like using them, but I've never felt like they helped much with a rooms livelyness, unless it was the type of EQ?
 
From a studio perspective:

For me, I would rather (at least) mix in a room that was dead as possible. Really it's based on preference, the deader the room, the easier it is for me to accurately dial in reverb/delay/envelope settings on instruments. Some people may find it "disconcerting" but really technically it's the only way to hear the detail that's crucial for accurate mixing IMO. Extra reflections that are not going to be part of a mix do nothing to assist in fine-tuning a mix but to cover up problem areas (the same way you use reverb to smooth out crappy sounding instruments in a mix). That does no-one justice but the engineer's ego. Another way to look at it would be to ask yourself if you would mix with an extra room reverb on the master buss, and then turn it off before doing a final bounce. That's what happens with any room when you mix...

EQ systems like IK ARC do help with room issues but they are much more precise than can be done with any 10-band eq (graphic or parametric).
 
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Are we talking a 10-band type EQ? I like using them, but I've never felt like they helped much with a rooms livelyness, unless it was the type of EQ?

A 10-band EQ is pretty much useless for room correction. 30 or 31-band starts to be helpful, but you really need parametric EQ, and you need to adjust separately for the two channels.
 
I've found that rooms tend to be speaker dependant on how "dead" sounding they should be. I had a pair of dq10's that sounded terrible in a somewhat lively room but great in a dead room. I've found just the opposite applies for a big pair of polks that I have. I've also found that moving just one piece of furniture in the listening area can also have a big effect also. Dammit it sucks that listening rooms have to double as living spaces to but those are the breaks I guess in the real world.
 
Deader, the better. If you are short of imaging in a dead room, your gear isn't fast enough or dark enough to reveal inner details and nuances that IMO are an essential part of imaging. Speed applies to SS, tubes work differently and yield even better imaging.
 
I am thinking some of the sense of reverberant space is created by reflections in the room creating natural reverb. While in an extremly well damped room it would be easier to control standing waves, suckouts, etc, would it also sound too dead and non spacious?

I am taking a sound engineering class and my proff railed against over treated vocal booths and got me to thinking along these lines.

I do believe in using an RTA and EQ to equalize for room anomalies is a good idea, and I know I should try some bass traps most likely, but how much is enough?

Good, good, good! Good for him and good for you. I very much think along the same lines as your prof. Most listening rooms need very little if anything other than the furniture and carpets. I have been in so many listening rooms where the owner has panels and voodoo covering every wall and parts of the ceiling and it is horrible. The music stays "over there" in the speakers and not out in the room where the listener is. In 45 years of this hobby I have never "treated" any room. The room I have now is killer. The sound stage is huge and dimensional. Not too bright, not too boomy.

Listen to your instructor.
 
I use dipole speakers. I wouldn't think deader is better with them. Certainly they need to be placed carefully and some attention paid to what's behind them and how far away they are from walls.
 
I'm in the "deader is better" camp. I want to hear the recording not the room. The liver the space the more reflections there are mucking things up.
 
I think you have to find a balance. Too dead is simply too dead, not natural, and it is true that too many reflections will degrade the focus. Each room is different. Some rooms are simply very difficult to tame, and require a heavy hand. Others are best not messed with because they sound great, or have great synergy with the equipment.

I used to be a pro sound guy and I am very good with a 31 band EQ, but for hifi work I prefer to leave the signal as untouched as possible as consumer grade EQ introduces a tremendous amount of distortion.

One way to approach the problem is to add absorption till the room starts to lose it's energy or liveliness. First reflections are a good starting point. Behind the speakers and the corners close to the speakers are good places too. Then use various shaped hard surfaces to achieve diffusion, break up standing waves etc.
 
I am taking a sound engineering class and my proff railed against over treated vocal booths and got me to thinking along these lines.

Sounds like this guy has an ax to grind. The only reason you wouldn't want a vocal booth to be an anechoic chamber is if you want extra room reverb in the final recording as an "effect". It's an artistic choice and that's all. The very fact that you say he "railed" against over treated vocal booths would lead me to suggest you find another professor to learn sound engineering from. :no:

Having a "perfectly" dead recording booth is pretty critical if you are doing ADR or voice-overs where the character is going to be "placed" in a completely different type of setting. Consider an animated scene where the character is outside. Would you want short decay room reverb to be apparent in this case? Hell no you wouldn't (and that's an easy hallmark of cheaper b-list productions to pick up on - when you can hear the inherent reverb/echo of the where the voice-over was recorded in the case it doesn't fit the scene).

Good, good, good! Good for him and good for you...Most listening rooms need very little if anything other than the furniture and carpets. I have been in so many listening rooms where the owner has panels and voodoo covering every wall and parts of the ceiling and it is horrible.

Listen to your instructor.

No, not good for him. His instructor was not talking about listening rooms. He was talking about vocal booths. Those are worlds apart in form and function unfortunately.

The fact that reverb of any type whatsoever serves to smear time-domain response of source material should be granted. If you like a "live" room, that's certainly up to your preference. If you're talking about dead accuracy, that's another thing entirely.

I used to be a pro sound guy and I am very good with a 31 band EQ, but for hifi work I prefer to leave the signal as untouched as possible as consumer grade EQ introduces a tremendous amount of distortion.

Really depends on what you are defining as "consumer grade eq".
 
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Wow lots of good responses.

First I would agree you want to mix a recording in a dead room to just here the recording without smearing or added reverb. But recording itself I agree with the proff a completely dry vocal sound is unnatural, and artificial reverb is not as complex and organic if you will, as natural reflections so it can't really be wholly added back in IMO. A listening room for non mixing applications sounds better a little wet to add a sense of space IMO, one can argue that is an effect added to the recording, so be it, IMO it's a pleasant warm effect.

I add EQ on my downstairs system with 31 band graphic EQ plugin on Mac and upstairs unfortunately with a 10 band iTunes plugin, the plugins being in the digital realm it ought not effect the sound quality assuming the alogrhthm is competent.

Anyone know of a good freeware EQ plugin for Win 7?
 
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I am definitely a live sounding room and musicians playing together proponent BTW, IMO few modern recordings are as good as the Columbia 6 eye recordings made in the 50s with musicians playing together in superb spaces, and I prefer listening to them in digital, iconoclast to all ideologies. :) The loss of leakage control is more than made up for by the spacious sound and chemistry of musicians playing together. The Cowboy junkies Trinity Session would be a modern example as is Dead Can Dance's Toward the Within. Whatever you think of the music (I like it) these are superb recordings IMO.

Fortunately I think I will specialize in mixing live sound so this won't be a problem. :)
 
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A dead booth would of course be required for voice overs placed in a new context Rifftrax, that's not work I am very interested in doing and if I have to do it in the future I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. :)
 
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