Jump to content


Please note: You can easily log in to MPN using your Facebook account!

echo chamber - how to build one


Recommended Posts



  • Replies 11
  • Created
  • Last Reply
The echo chamber my band used in the 60's was a solid concrete room about 20 feet square with a microphone hanging in the middle of it. I think your question is impossible to answer since an echo chamber can be any hard surface room or structure. The drums for "Bridge over troubled water" were recorded in an elevator shaft. Do you realy want to build an elevator shaft? How much echo do you want? The problem with an echo chamber is the echo is pretty much fixed. With the quality of todays reverb units, it is rare to see an echo chamber being built. The cost is prohibitive. As stated above, use a bathroom, an empty room, a hallway, a warehouse, a grain elevator, whatever you need to get the sound you want.

Mark G.

"A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame others" -- John Burroughs

 

"I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man." -- Thomas Jefferson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I sort of agree with Mark and sort of disagree. I agree with him that it's impossible to give a generic recipe for an echo chamber. I've never seen any two alike, they all have different characters depending what kind of sound you're going for. It's also true that there are echo chambers you build specifically for the purpose, and echo chambers that are simply natural spaces (elevator shafts, stairwells, storage rooms, bathrooms) that have good reverberant qualities so you stick a microphone and speaker in there and have at it. So from that perspective, an echo chamber CAN be prohibitively expensive, or it can be much cheaper than a quality digital reverb. The question is whether you have the space of course. I disagree with Mark that an echo chamber's characteristics are necessarily fixed. You can treat each wall of the chamber with different surfaces, which may have more or less reflections, and move the mike and/or speaker to point at different surfaces depending on the sound you want. The distance between mic and speaker also affects the reverb tail. For a very short reverb in a large chamber you can even use gobos to reduce the reflections. And of course you use EQ to shape the send and return. You really have quite a lot of flexibility with these things. I also disagree that the quality of today's reverbs is such that a chamber isn't worth it. That's wishful thinking. :) I have yet to hear a digital reverb that really does sound as good as a good echo chamber. Just doesn't have the depth. Of course, a good chamber IS really expensive unless you luck into a suitable space, but I think for a commercial studio it's still a good idea to build one. I would. For a home studio a bathroom or garage or similar space can do just fine as a chamber. If you have the real estate and really want to build one, they CAN be built relatively cheaply if you make a few compromises. I participated in building one at a studio where I worked, on limited real estate, and it was like a "tunnel" about 4 feet high and wide and 25 feet long. There were levers you could use to position the mic and speaker - they could be moved closer together or pointed at different angles. Each wall was treated differently - as I recall, one was hardwood, one steel, one tile, and I can't remember what else. The walls were not parallel and some diffusers were involved too. It wasn't cheap but as I recall, not too expensive either. Also, you probably know about this already but Bob (The Mix Fix) has plans for building your own plate reverb, and that puppy is cheap! You can bet I intend to build one! --Lee
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote]Originally posted by carne_de_res: [b]cool.i normally do on location recordings so i frequently find myself in unusual (and higly reverberating) recordtry to use this spaces as echo chambers...any suggestions on miking techniques? [/b][/quote]Not really. Move 'em around till they sound good. You don't have to have use a great mic, unless you really WANT a lot of obnoxious high frequency content. Most of the reverb content you'll want will be in the midrange anyway - say 600Hz to 6K or even 4-5K - unless it's a VERY special room acoustically. So an SM57 will do just fine. If the room is of decent size you might use 2 mics to get a stereo return. In that case of course you want to be aware of comb filters, move one mic in relation to the other until the combination pleases you. You can also move the mics in relation to the speaker to get different sized reverbs, as I mentioned. It's more important for the speaker to be of decent quality than the mics, so that the verb gets the full range of the source music. If you do location recordings, you can have a field day (pun intended :D ) experimenting with different spaces as echo chambers! Try it, it's a blast! --Lee
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...