question about sound

[nathan28]

Hey guys I just recently moved my entire rig into my jam room. I have been working on this room for a month and its pretty sweet but I have a problem, there is a a echo in the room and when im playing i dont have the low end im used to having, when i turn the bass up it just make my tone messy. Im guessing its the acoustics of the room. Do you guys know what i can do to fix this?

 

[dmt]

buy some acoustic foam and experiement with placement. invest in some bass traps that will tighten your low end

 

[mrd]

You can buy fibre-glass acoustic treatment panels that will help to diffuse the sound and reduce echos and sound-coloring reflections.

Keep this in mind: Every room has a natural resonance, which is based on the room size and shape. Low frequencies have long and powerful wavelengths. High frequencies have short and weak wavelengths. What does this mean? It means that low frequencies will tap into the room's natural resonance easier than high ones, so if you do some experimentation with the location of your rig, you might be able to re-enforce your sound with the resonance of the room.

Another thing is that rooms have sound nodes which are areas in the room where groups of frequencies will match up in phase and create an area of interest. Sometimes the nodes sound like ****, sometimes they sound good. You can hear this by moving around while you play. Ever notice that sometimes your guitar sounds just fucking great, but if you move your head even a few inches, that sound is gone? That's a good node. Also, ever notice that if you play some chunky rhythm stuff in a corner or near a wall, the bass seems to be louder than usual? Again, a node. Same thing that can make the amp extremely harsh when you stand right in front of it, you're in a node of high-frequencies.

So, what I'm saying is, invest in some paneling to diffuse your sound and reduce echoes and colouration, and experiment with the placement of your cabs to nail in a good node. Also, if you're doing recording here, be mindful of these nodes too, remember that your ear is the best tool.

 

[MF]

^

whoa, i had no idea the extent to which positioning can effect tone quality.

i just spent a few hours in my jam space tweaking my settings because i wasn't happy with the harshness when i stood directly in front of my amp. because of the room design (and the support beam in the middle of it!) i'm usually off to the side a bit so i hadn't noticed until i was up there by myself without the rest of the guys.

is that normal for there to be a real lousy spot directly in front of the amp? i was playing with the volume at about midnight on my dual rec and was standing 10-12 ft in front of it and it was just sounding awful.

 

[mrd]

Standing in front of the amp will give you the most harshness, yeah. That's normal. It's because the high-frequencies that normally die off before they reach your ears when you are standing away to the side are now blasting directly at you.

Also, I forgot to mention before: low frequencies have a large area of effect, and become more and more uni-directional the lower they go. This is why bass can be heard everywhere, and is felt as "omni-present". Loud bass is hard to source, because it just feels like it is enveloping the entire room, which isn't far from the truth. High-frequencies operate in the opposite way... the higher they go, the more focused they are. The highest over-tones and harmonics that your amp produces will only be heard if you are right in front of your amp. Some see this as harshness, which it can be if your presence is too high, but a good balance is generally considered to be pleasing and part of the package.

A little background info: when you hit your string, the string will produce the fundamental tone (which is the note you hit), as well as a whole series of notes above it called the natural harmonic series. As the series goes higher and higher, the volume slowly dies down, so in effect the overtones close to the fundamental are louder and the overtones way high up are barely audible. When you amp your guitar, the amp picks up all these little guys and raises the volume by many, many, many times. It also raises the fundamental too, which will become compressed beyond a certain point. If you crank the volume even further, then the entire harmonic spectrum will become compressed into a mush of ****, which is why sometimes turning your amp up too loud is a bad idea, because you lose all clarity and harmonic "relativeness", so to speak, and everything just sounds like a jar of noise.

EDIT: Cranking the volume and compressing the sound like this is sometimes desirable for lead sounds, where you want a nice, thick, creamy lead sound (read: a ****-load of harmonic overtones that are almost as loud or as loud as the fundamental tone). But for rhythm or anything involving more than 1 or 2 notes at a time, it's usually a bad idea, because you will lose clarity like I said, and tonality and chord-voicings can be lost in this.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is this: lower your presence, try it at around 12 or 1o'clock. Also, know that treble and presence are linked. If you don't want your presence that low, lower the treble. Also remember that lowering the treble will allow more bass & mids back into the mix, so you will have to adjust there.