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That moment 3 years ago when I recorded vocals in a closet and thought it was pro quality

Three years ago I set up my first mic in a walk-in closet with a bunch of moving blankets pinned to the walls. I thought I was a genius until I played it back on actual speakers last week. Man, that room ring was brutal, sounded like I was singing inside a coffee can. Anyone else look back at their early recordings and cringe at what they thought was good enough?

2 comments

2 Comments

finleyk875d ago

I used to think recording quality was all about the gear you had, not where you recorded. Then I spent six hours mixing a vocal take from my own closet and realized I couldn't fix the weird echo no matter what plugins I threw at it. It was like trying to polish a turd, the room sound was baked right in. That coffee can comparison is spot on, I had this hollow boxy thing going on that made everything sound tiny. Now I record in the living room with a duvet over a mic stand and it is somehow way cleaner. Buying a few cheap acoustic panels was the best $40 I ever spent on music.

henryreed4d ago

Is it really that serious though? I mean, yeah, a bad room can mess things up, but I've heard people get great takes in a car with nothing but a laptop mic. Spend six hours fighting a closet echo and maybe the problem isn't just the room, you know? Sometimes we blame the space when we're just not working fast enough or picking the wrong performance. And $40 on foam panels probably helped, but I bet you could've gotten 80% of the way there by just hanging a blanket behind you and calling it a day. Not saying the duvet trick doesn't work, just that most of us overthink this stuff way more than we need to.