Episode 81 - Cian Riordan
Show Notes
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 81
Feb 1, 2022
w/ Cian Riordan - Week 3
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Cian recently went to the (now defunct) Barefoot Recording studio as it was closing and captured impulse responses of every room and echo chamber in the building; and he’s shared them with the Discord server.
What makes a good tracking room?
Cian:
The first thing that I look for is the ability to change scenes quickly. Flexibility in the acoustics.
There’s a lot of times that having a big room for a drum set doesn’t work, and having the ability to quickly changes the acoustics to something tighter or dryer is important.
Sometimes there’s an advantage to having to record in sub-par spaces and with sub-par gear because you will have to hunt and experiment to see what sounds you can get, and that will teach you a lot; versus coming up in a high-end studio like East West Studios where it’s practically impossible to get a poor sound.
Matt:
I’m wary of rooms that have weird build-ups and frequency ranges.
Cian:
I’ve never been in a situation where there was a “recording booth” that sounded good. The tiny spaces are usually just treated as utility spaces. The booth has never been the best sounding option.
I will always opt to record an instrument or vocals in the biggest room I have access to, over a small booth.
Q: What is your personal mix room like?
Cian:
Mine is a converted garage next to my house with 16’ high apex ceilings.
The first step in converting it was to soundproof the unit from the outside because I’m in a residential area. I hired some contractors and had them build the walls and place as much mass in them as possible to isolate the exterior from the noise inside.
I consciously didn’t hire studio builders at this point because the markup would have been far higher.
After they framed up the walls I put as much rock wool into them as I could manage.
Once the walls were up I hired the Unfuck Your Studio guys to help tune the room and solve my studio’s needs.
They have a very good, holistic, approach.
Ruairi was blunt about the fact that my low-end was going to be terrible unless I did something about it, so they designed some limp-mass absorbers to target the low frequencies.
I then rehired the contractor guys to build the absorbers using the Unfuck guys’ plans.
Then Ruairi and Spider came to fine-tune my speakers
This probably took 2-3 months.
I doubled my budget in the process of this entire project. I started with a budget of $20k. By the end of it I had spent $55k to build everything, plus a deck and some studio furniture.
Monitoring is the most important part of the mixing process.
Now that everything is tuned, I am far more confident in the work that I do.
I no longer have to do a car test or listen on alternate systems.
The bass sounds even at every point in the studio. This is rare, even in professional studios.
Monitors
Cian:
I came up using NS10’s, but I’ve reached the limit of what I could do using those and I’ve grown tired of them.
I’m now using a pair of ATC25’s.
Matt:
If you’re going to buy a pair of speakers, don’t underestimate the importance of taking them home and trying to do some work on them before you commit to buying them.
Cian:
I have a pair of Rhythmik 15” subwoofers.
I come from the Eric Valentine school of “have more low-end than you need” in the amplifiers.
The downside to using them is that their crossover doesn’t integrate as cleanly with my ATC’s because the crossover slopes are mismatched, so it’s an not ideal marriage.
My issue when trying out PMC’s is that the high-end was much more than I was used to hearing.
Getting paid by clients
Cian:
I have management, and right now I’m working on a mix of label clients and indie artists.
It doesn’t get easier to get paid once you start working with major labels. In fact, it gets harder. You have to have a team working for you that are good at tracking people down and being mean with them on the phone or email on your behalf.
Any leverage that you can keep will help you get paid.
If they run off with your hi-res finals then you won’t have any leverage.
Until I get paid the only files I’m sending out are .mp3s because they won’t take that to mastering and will pay you to get the final bounces.
My goal in having a manager was to deal with the money stuff less and have other people negotiating on my behalf so that I didn’t have to have those hard discussions with the artists I’m working with.
It’s so much better and easier to do things this way.
Matt:
There are many people I work with where I do not deliver files or start work until the agreement is paid and signed, or the money has been delivered. These are problems that you’re going to deal with forever.
