Help!! Problems with my sound!!

[CA Fan]

One thing that I can hear just using my ears is that when I had too much absorption my acoustic guitar would sound uneven in the low end. When I used a capo it was even worse. This was because I had put up too much absorption and too much of my high end was being absorbed so what was left was bass heavy even though I had bass traps.
I can already tell a huge improvement in the sound of my acoustic guitars since I just left the absorption in the corners and put up diffusors on the flat parallel walls. If I diffuse until my acoustic guitars sound very even in tone from the low end to the high end will this be a good indicator that I've used enough diffusion?? I'm wondering if this simple method will get me a nice sounding recording room.

[HarBal]

I believe it would and your ears seem to be telling you that too. I think it is generally accepted that rooms for recording (as opposed to rooms for monitoring) should be relatively live, not only from the perspective of making the instruments sounds better but also helping the artists playing them perform better (ie. if it sounds crap while you play you won't enjoy it and won't play well). The only real downside with a live recording room is spill from one mic to another if you are recording multiple parts at the same time.

The one other down side of trying to make a room too dead is that whilst you may be able to easily control anything above about 800Hz anything below is generally much harder to control. That has the effect of generally making bass trapping issues worse. Hence its usually better to let the room breath a bit instead of trying to suffocate it.

Cheers,


Paavo.