Anybody Got Their Own Echo Chamber?

[thebes]

Saw on the news tonight that the primary reason for that full sound coming from Capitol Records recordings is that they have a special echo chamber built under the recording studio.

Here's the link to the report:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/31/eveningnews/main4312355.shtml

I just knew my system was missing something so I got out a shovel and I'm about ten feet down. One minor problem is that I've either hit groundwater or a sewer pipe 'cause everything's muddy and it sure does smell. Once I correct that minor problem out I've got two or three bags of concrete I'll pour in the hole and then run the wiring. Can't decide if Heresy's would fit the bill or if I need something larger down there, like maybe Cornwalls

Anybody got one of these built in their house and, if so, what speakers are you running?

[Daddy Dee]

Marty,

Thanks for the link. That is most interesting.

I guess that's reverb, the old fashioned way.

[oldenough]

Yes... very interesting. Thanks Marty, now get back to the digging.

[Mallette]

Hey Marty, let me show you how to make a great one from an old garden hose, a speaker, two funnels, and a mike...

It's a great weekend project requiring only the above materials and a couple of six packs, no shovels needed.

Dave

[Daddy Dee]

Three six packs would render even better results.

[fenderbender]

I say start with a keg....drain it and then you can make a nice micro chamber out of that.......

[JJkizak]

Fisher used to make an old electronic reverb unit.

JJK

[WS65711]

I saw this report on the CBS news this morning. Also, Studio In the Country in Bogalusa, LA has a similar echo chamber. However the chamber at Bogalusa is an above-ground concrete stucture, but set up the same way as the one a Capitol in the CBS report. I've been inside the chamber at Studio in the Country. For Kansas fans, this is the studio where many of their albums were recorded.

Edit: Too bad there's no video link to the CBS report. It was very interesting to see . . .

[jacksonbart]

I own a chamber pot, it makes an echo.

[oldbuckster]

Fisher used to make an old electronic reverb unit.

JJK

Had a SANSUI Reverb Unit ........... used it for years, I believe it gave me 2 Tape Monitor Circuits, instead of one ..........

[Mallette]

On a serious note, many radio stations had these chambers in days of old. Virtually EVERY radio station in the 60's had a spring unit that was way used too much. Had one mounted under the desk at KTFS in Texarkana I used to hit with my knee constantly and make nasty noises...

First "stereo" in our cars then was by way of Cathedral Sound, a rear speaker with spring built in at, as I recall, about 12.00. Under dash adjustable units came later.

Then, thankfully, all went away.

Dave

[WS65711]

On a serious note, many radio stations had these chambers in days of old.........................

Are you sure? Did you see the CBS report? This is a reverb room (like a cave) that the sound was piped in to to physically reflect off the wall, then be picked up by microphones and sent back to the studio. This was not a spring loaded or other type of electronic reverb. I wish I could find the video online.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/03/news.culture1

[Mallette]

I recall at least two. One was the old KWKH in the Washington Youree Hotel in Shreveport. The room had a series of channels with mikes at several points depending on the amount desired. This station also had transcription turntables poured of concrete as part of the structure. Very stable indeed, and where I got the idea for my original rock-filled table base.

These chambers were features of the bigger, richer stations. I did not mean to suggest they were everywhere...

Dave

[Guest srobak]

Now they all use electronic means... exciters and whatnot. Have been for a few decades.

[picky]

Some of you might find it interesting to know that an old haunt of several Michigan artists such as Bob Seger and Ted Nugent used a similar principal to achieve their unique sound, albeit on a MUCH lesser scale:

I do not know if the place still exists, but I remember visiting A-Squared Studio one day with Verna back around 1979 or 1980 while serving for a studio for the band I was in ("Roze") to record at. It was located on a farm just south of Ann Arbor, Michigan at the end of a long gravel road and backed-up to U.S. Highway 23. There was an actual farm house on the site and next to it was a large, one-story building that looked like a Quonset hut that had undergone several expansions over the years. I was told the building was originally a tractor barn for the farmer's tractors and agricultural implements. Now, it had been transformed into a recording studio that Ted Nugent used to record final mixes in. The guest house next door had lots of Polaroid snapshots held on the fridge with magnets of "Terrible Ted" acting "crazy" in and around the grounds of the studio and there were also a few snaps of Ted with his beautiful wife Shemane and numerous other folks. So, enough about name-dropping:

I found the studio to be extremely well equipped and it had many unique features. Most striking was the fact that the drum kit area of the floor had a 2-1/2" concrete sewer tile placed on the floor in from of a kick drum. A large element microphone was placed strategically inside of the sewer tile. The engineer told me the setup really fattens up the kick drum a lot. In the room behind the control room, there was a very large wooden crate that was about 12 ft long and 5 feet tall. I was told that it contained the studio's plate echo unit. The engineer opened an access door and showed me how he could swap out the audio pickups and also how the gear-and-cable mechanism moved the pickups in an X-Y manner to achieve different types of echoes.

A small, ceramic-tiled bathroom adjacent the main studio floor was said to also serve as a "live booth" for vocals and guitar solos.

Finally, I asked what the strange slats in the middle of the studio's parquet floor were. "An old grease pit", the engineer said with pride. He said they used to pull the tractors over it to change the oil and grease the fittings. Now it's used as an echo chamber. "A what?" I said. Yep, the same principal as what Capitol Records has used for years. The studio placed a full-range speaker at one end of the 30-foot long pit and several microphones at various intervals along the pit and it actually worked quite well with filtering. Good ole' Yankee ingenuity! - Glenn

[WS65711]

Now they all use electronic means... exciters and whatnot. Have been for a few decades.

Yeah, and Bose !!!

Did you even read any of the articles ???

You can't get Klipschorn sound from a Bose cube, and you can't get the sound of one of these chambers from electronics.

[JackDalton]

I used to work not far from the Capital Records building in Hollywood. Another forum member, VideoGuy, was telling me about those echo chambers a while back - they are so good that their clients pipe audio in/out from around the world. Larry (VideoGuy), with a background in audio production, has also worked on those plate reverbs mentioned, changing transducers, etc.. Now he just collects Klipsch speakers. Lots of them. He's an eBay Power Buyer.

I worked at what was originally Metromedia Square, a large television production facility. It had a small echo chamber in the basement. There was an unmarked door in a hallway that led to a small room. The room was completely detached from the rest of the building, sitting on huge springs and all on a separate little foundation. Inside the room was a speaker and a microphone. The audio control rooms had trunks down to the mic and speaker in the echo chamber on their patchbays.

The facility eventually became Fox Television Center, the birthplace of the network. After Fox moved the whole facility was torn down.

[Cal Blacksmith]

Wow, I have driven by that building for decades and never knew. It goes to show you that you learn somthing every day!

I always loved how that building looked like a stack of records, ready to drop onto a platter. Cool building.

[Arkytype]

Thebes, et al

I had heard that Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Waters used a stairwell for the reverb effects. Here's an excerpt from an interview with recording injuneer Fred Catero as told to Mix Magazine by a few years back.

For reverb, Catero used popular plates from companies such as EMT, but he also recorded in Columbia’s seven-story echo chamber fashioned from a stone fireproof stairwell that was used for emergency evacuations. “They put a speaker on the seventh floor and on each floor was a microphone. You could mix all these great decays together from the mics,” he says. “The huge explosion you hear in Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is that chamber.

While EMT plates and other electro-mechanical devices have been used over the years used to simulate a reverberant acoustic space, none IMHO came close. Since I haven't done any serrous studio recording since the early '80s, I would imagine the electronic versions that evolved since then have come pretty close.

In the mid-'60s I worked with a studio owner who modified a Magnecord recorder (old timers will remember the name) with one record head and maybe six playback heads spaced a few inches apart. The recording tape was an endless loop and he could pick off any or all the playback head preamps and mix the signal with the dry sound. It was a neat effect.

His main recorder was a mono tube-based Magnecord which must have had a one horse power motor because that thing would rewind a 10 1/2" reel in mere seconds. Pity the trainee (me) who didn't properly lock the reels in place!! If you hit Stop while the thing was going at warp 9, the tempermental brakes would sometimes stretch the Scotch tape a foot or more before stopping!

Lee

[thebes]

Cool! Looks like I hit upon a subject that evokes lot o f memories and comments. I'll try to do worse next time.

Hey Lee, sounds like you did what every intern ever did, which is screw things up and eventually learned something. Very cool story.

Now I've never been so much as within a mile of a recording studio that I know of, but it seems that there is an art and passion that goes into making music. Which is good because the good stuff is very good indeed. I guess if you took a moment to think about it while you were singing in the shower, the acoustics of where you are singing lend a distinct cast to what emerges on tape.

But, I digress. Back to my project. I'm sort of like that Pete Seeger song about the Vietnam War and LBJ, "Six foot deep and rising".

Still haven't' solved the water problem. Got pumps running and shoring in. I'm down about one story with six more to go. I'm halfway through a case of beer and my arms are getting tired. The Twins walked in, took one whiff of the air, and immediately de-camped for some West Coast town I've never heard of called "Hollywood"

Well of course she would!