In audio, as in the rest of life, the basics rule. For example, you can spend all the money in the world on great gear, but if your room is bad, you're just going to end up with a great recording of a bad room. On the other hand, if you improve the room, everything else will sound much better. (This is a very useful heuristic: For "room", substitute at will other basics such as "singer", "actor", "song", "script", etc.)
But sometimes you can't improve the room, either because your housemate won't let you or because you're just visiting. One very clever solution: the Reflexion Filter, by SE Electronics. It's essentially a miniature, curved gobo that mounts on a mic stand.
I recently bought an RF to help deal with the very tricky acoustics of my project studio, which happens to be round. You want strange reflections and phase interference? Try a round room with hard surfaces. I got it more or less under control for writing, arranging and editing by putting a carpet on the floor and mounting ASC Tube Traps behind the monitors.
But recording was still a problem: too much room ambience, featuring wide variations of tone with small changes of position. I don't do enough serious recording in this room to warrant treating the whole space, so when I came across the RF I thought it might be just what I need. And I can report that it has definitely helped, though I would warn prospective buyers not to expect miracles.
Below are links to MP3 samples that demonstrate the before and after results I got - not a thorough, scientific test, but I think a useful quick reference. You'll probably want to use headphone in order to hear the differences clearly. In each case I used a Rode NT1 condenser mic going into a TC Electronic Gold Channel preamp/a-d converter. The mic was mounted in the recommended position with its capsule flush with the forward edges of the RF. I tried the setup both in my nearly-adequate studio and in a reverberant hallway.
| 1) Without RF, studio 2) With RF, studio |
3) Without RF, hallway 4) With RF, hallway |
I used a close mic position of about 8 inches. (I tried distant miking, but found that the RF made little useful difference in that case.) With the RF and a close mic position, there is noticeably less ambience, and the sound becomes more focused and full, no doubt because there's less smearing caused by phase interference from reflections. The RF does impose some color of its own, as would any barrier placed near a mic, but I found the trade-off acceptable for my purposes.
If I have a complaint about the RF, it's that it's so clunky. It weighs so much that my regular mic stand couldn't support it reliably: the boom would droop and/or dip to the left or right. I ended up buying an Atlas PB15E boom, which has a heavier-duty mount and a 3.25 pound counter-weight.
Also, I should point out that there is a DIY solution that would cost a lot less than the $295 I spent on my RF, not to mention the $49.97 for the Atlas boom: Harlan Hogan's portable booth made from a collapsible storage crate. (Thanks to David Battino for pointing this out to me.) The RF was designed by audio engineers (the same ones behind the well regarded SE microphones) and features six layers of specialized materials, so I'd expect it to give better results. But I'd love to hear a before and after with the crate.
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Audio
Comments (4)
Read More Entries by Spencer Critchley.
Great tips!
That will perfectly fit in my home studio.
Thanks!
This is extremely helpful info. Thanks.
thanks for these nt1a samples, in my opinion they all sound good, and you have a good voice.
Thanks for sharing that, Spencer. Another alternative I just learned about is RealTraps’ Portable Vocal Booth. It’s about four times the size of the Reflexion Filter, which probably provides better isolation but less portability.
I also liked Harlan Hogan’s story about building vocal booths out of couch cushions until his wife started grumbling.