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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hey, and welcome to the Pro Audio Suite.
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Yeah, starring Robert Marshall.
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Funky dude with him.
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That's ridiculous.
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Like my carpeting is starting to shag out.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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You're, you're tough to groove.
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Exactly.
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My shirt is now puffy with hair.
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We need a laugh right now.
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Yeah, exactly.
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That'll make you smile.
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And we should thank our sponsors, Austrian audio,
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making passion heard and tribe booth.
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Don't forget the code T R I P
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a P 200 to get $200 off your
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tribe booth.
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They're talking about booths.
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Um, there's a few bits and pieces of
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popped up online.
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One in particular I saw this morning, uh,
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visually it looked absolutely awful, but according to
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Robo, it sounded really good.
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Um, so what is the key to a
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booth and what makes it work?
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Well, according to us, it sounds really good
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because the person we're talking about has actually
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been on the show, but you know, I
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think it's pretty obvious really, isn't it?
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Zero reflections and as little noise as you
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can possibly let into a recording.
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And a good spot in the house.
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That's going to give you the best possibility
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of doing that.
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You know, like I think today's booth is,
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is in the middle of the house.
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It's in a walk-in wardrobe.
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So it's away from open windows and, and
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all the rest of it.
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And probably the noisest noisiest spot is going
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to be whatever comes in through the roof,
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through the plasterboard in the ceiling.
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Um, or if you may, my wife talking
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in the background while I'm recording the podcast
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as well, that will do it.
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I actually built one.
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It was a temporary thing I put together
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when we're traveling.
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And by all accounts, it should not have
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worked.
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It should have been awful, but it sounded
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really good.
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And it was like a, a cupboard in
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a, an apartment in Rome.
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When Rome is very noisy, but it was
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like tucked in the middle of the apartment.
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It had a bunch of shelves with a
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few blankets and bits and bobs on, I
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popped on the shelf, the Porter booth.
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Then on to my side, there was like
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a clothes rack, which I threw another blanket
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over and someone was hanging some stuff off
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the back of the door from memory.
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Anyway, it sounded amazing.
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It was what perfectly looked like shit, but
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sounded good.
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So two questions about it.
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How big was the space and how parallel
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were the hard surfaces?
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The surfaces were parallel.
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The ceiling was probably 12 foot ceiling in
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there.
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Uh, and then there were shelves where I
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sort of put the Porter booth on the
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shelf, but there were, there's all sorts of
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other bits and pieces in there to my
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left was the clothes rack that I put
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a blanket over.
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Then behind me was the door, which had
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stuff hanging off the back of it, but
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to the right, there was no treatment at
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all.
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It was just plasterboard.
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And how far back was the door behind
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you?
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Was it?
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Well, it was a rectangle.
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So it was probably a meter wide and
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probably depth would be two and a half
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meters, I guess.
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So pretty good depth.
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The, the width wasn't awesome, but the depth
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was pretty good because I, I think that
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a lot of what makes booths, like the
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first thing is it's got to be dead.
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And then once it's like, you know, not,
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not considering how loud or noise isolated it
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is, but just the sound of the booth
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itself.
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The first thing is you got to deaden
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everything and people don't realize what it takes
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to do that properly.
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It takes thick, like, you know, not, not
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really thin absorption because a lot of the
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thin absorption lets all those low frequencies through.
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So it's got to have some thicker absorption.
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And the smaller the booth, the thicker the
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treatment you need.
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So it's, it works against you.
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So as it gets smaller, it gets smaller.
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Yeah.
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You lose more space basically.
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But if the booth is big, the sound
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becomes much more neutral because the nodes don't
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get as intertwined and as amplified as well,
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especially in the, in those lower frequencies that
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really get up into the voice range.
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So a booth that has a good volume
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of air and is dead, I think will
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sound better than any small booth.
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And then if you can't have a good
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volume of air, the next thing that can
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help is non-parallel surfaces can kind of
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fake a bigger volume, you know, it can
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create more, what's the word oblique reflections I
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think is, is that the word George?
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So yeah, it's size matters.
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Yeah.
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Well, I mean, having angled walls and stuff,
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the thing that's a difficult about the angle
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wall thing is it's not predictable.
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So you may end up getting really lucky
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or really unlucky.
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And then if it doesn't sound great, it
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can bounce it right back in the mic
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and with the wrong angle, right?
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Yeah, that's right.
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And sometimes they, so they create more, they're
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harder to model.
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Meaning like you, it's harder to take like
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a pentagonal floor plan or something with more
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sides and shove that into, you know, a
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computer and say, tell me what frequencies I
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have to worry about.
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It's, it's much harder.
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So then it just becomes a lot more,
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exponentially gets more complex.
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Yeah.
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So, I mean, I mean, a lot of
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people have a very haphazard way of treating
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their booths anyway.
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It's a lot of trial and error to
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begin with.
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That's, you know, when you see product booths,
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like the one we're talking about and so
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many other home booths is they didn't map
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out the room then by blankets, mattresses, and
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foam.
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They just sort of eventually get to a
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point where it sounds good.
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It's almost never a, well, I bought all
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this stuff and stuck it up.
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And Oh, wow.
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It sounds good.
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It usually takes time and adding and tweaking.
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So when you have a non-square or
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non-rectangular floor plan, that just is harder
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to do.
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Um, but yeah, it's, it's not hard if
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the room is larger because larger rooms.
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Yeah.
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As Robert was saying, they don't build up
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such standing waves.
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These are called room modes.
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Those are the things that make you sound
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like you are in a box or in
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a tube.
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If those big spaces don't have them, they
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really only have reverb, which is that long
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tail.
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And then if you deaden all the walls
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up, you don't have the reverb.
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You don't have the long.
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Well, not only that, but when you're bigger,
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when you have a big room, the deadening
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of the walls is much simpler because it's
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really just covering large amounts of area with
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soft material.
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It's when the room gets smaller and smaller,
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you can't just put blankets or foam on
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the walls anymore because you need much thicker,
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denser material or really thicker to trap low
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frequencies.
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So it gets trickier and trickier as a,
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as it gets smaller and smaller and ends
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up being the panels out to be thicker
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and thicker.
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One studio I went into this years ago
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and it was, they just built a new
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studio and they had like a foot in
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diameter tubes that stood on their ends and
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in the corners.
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Yeah.
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They're called tube traps.
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Were they on their own stand?
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They were, they were basically like on their
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own mic stand and they're just like around.
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Well, they were floor to ceiling basically.
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Yeah.
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Oh wow.
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Those are interesting.
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The tube traps are really great products, but
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what's interesting about them is that they have
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a reflective side and an absorbing side and
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part of their trick is to diffuse and
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scatter the sound or to absorb it.
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And it depends on how you arrange them.
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One of the chamber reverbs at Abbey Road
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has columns in it for exactly the opposite
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reason.
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It's got like sort of concrete pillars and
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stuff.
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So you can mic around them and get
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all sorts of different sort of room verby
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sounds.
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Create bounces.
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Yeah.
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Create different bounces and stuff.
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Create reflections.
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For exactly the opposite reason.
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But yeah, it's very cool.
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Yeah.
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I've seen and been in some rooms with
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tube traps.
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Well, I mean, an interesting type of diffuser
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is the curved.
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Yeah.
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I mean, they work really well too.
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Like one diffuser that everyone's really used to
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is the one that's like different depths of
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squares that are at different depths.
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And those are usually referred to basically usually
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as quadratic diffusers.
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But the other one is just a curved
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surface and that has a bunch of different
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levels that the sound can bounce off of
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and go into different directions and cheap, easy
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way to make diffusion.
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Yeah.
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I've been some great.
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It's curved convex, not concave.
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Curves have to be convex.
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Yeah, that's really important.
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So the curves have to be protruding outward
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toward you, not inward away from you.
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That's those those are much more of a
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problem.
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So you don't want those curves to focus
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sound in a parabolic way, like a dish
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antenna for a satellite.
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You know, those are designed to focus.
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George, have you ever been to the the
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museum here in Chicago?
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There's the Museum of Science and Industry, and
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there's a display that has.
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I mean, you're like 50 feet away from
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each other, but you're standing in the perfect
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focal point of two 50 feet away to
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like parabolic disks.
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And you can whisper to each other and
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there can be 50 people in between you
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and you can talk to each other.
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It's crazy.
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Yeah, it's really cool.
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Up the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, you'll
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get the same thing.
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You got the whispering sort of wall up
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there, the whispering dome.
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Oh, I love that.
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Yeah, yeah, that's really neat.
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Even in a I don't know if you've
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been to many planetariums.
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It's really cool in a planetarium.
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Well, maybe not cool, but sometimes you'll be
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able to eavesdrop in on a conversation on
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the other side of the planetarium.
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I mean, you just hear.
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Because it just bounces around the curve of
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the outside wall.
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Yeah.
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And then you'll be you'll hear a voice.
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It's the more close to the edge you're
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sitting, the better.
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So like your way towards the back or
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the edge.
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It's like crazy.
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You'll hear a conversation like almost like they're
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sitting next to you and they're all the
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way on the other side.
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It's pretty trippy.
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It's really interesting.
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Because like what what the diffuser, what the
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convex part diffuses, the concave part focuses.
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So make sure your current diffusers, if you're
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going that way, are convex.
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You guys want to troubleshoot Austin Keyes's studio
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on the show?
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Sure, we can continue from today.
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Let's let's dive in.
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Well, he says I can't record as I
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want.
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I can't record his 416, right?
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He's texting me right now.
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He can't use his 416, so he doesn't
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know what to do.
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Oh, my God.
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But I left him working.
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So Robert graciously took an emergency call for
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this client of mine this morning.
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Paul was in a meeting and he just
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doesn't know the topology of the studio and
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has no idea what's there.
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And he tried his best, but the client
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didn't didn't tell Robert I have a Mackie
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mixer in my booth also.
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So so to wrap up that conversation, I
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would say the best way to wrap that
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up would be.
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It's not how it looks and how it
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sounds, and we are we all know what
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it's supposed to sound like.
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And if you don't know, let us know,
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because we spend our days day in, day
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out listening to all of your studios.
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And, you know, as long as you're not
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appearing on camera for like an animation gig,
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because here in the States, definitely like in
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a lot of people are doing remotely directed
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animation and they're on Zoom calls all the
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time.
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And you may not want it to look
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too bad.
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But remember, it only has to look good
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in the frame of your Zoom, of your
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webcam.
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So if the whole place is a mess,
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but you have a really pretty, you know,
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tapestry on the wall behind you, then you're
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good.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, true.
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The illusion, the illusion.
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And if not for the for the lowest
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fee possible, George, the tech will send you
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a background that you can use as a
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fake background for a studio in your Zoom
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meeting.
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Right.
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With GTT on it.
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Yes.
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And the walls.
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Every GTT room looks the same, but they
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sound different.
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And that'd be fun.
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Yes, that's right.
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Well, that was fun.
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Is it over?
00:12:19
The Pro Audio Suite.
00:12:21
With thanks to Triboo and Austrian Audio.
00:12:24
Recorded using Source Connect.
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Edited by Andrew Peters.
00:12:27
And Mixed by Robbo.
00:12:28
Got your own audio issues?
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Just ask Robbo dot com.
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With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
00:12:34
Don't forget to subscribe to the show and
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