Just a quick note to add: a couple of years ago we have installed plastic laminate flooring on the main floor of our house. It works fine looks and durability wize, but the acoustics is terrible, even though we used high quality underlayment. There is a lot of sound reflection, making everything more muffled: the TV has to be turned way louder than before just to be heard 12 feet in front, and yet in the rest of the house the TV sound is way to loud. The same with the music.

I would suggest that any smooth surface floors should be covered for better acoustics. It won't matter if all you are doing is recording yourself play directly from the keyboard, but if you are using any sort of a microphone, either for vocals, or acoustic instruments, the acoustics will make at least some difference.

Regards,
Alex

High quality, super-cardiod and hyper-cardiod mics have a very short range. And, as such, they usually cannot pick up any sounds more than a few inches from the mic head, and those sounds must be fired directly into the face of the mid. Sound such as echoes from within the room would not be picked up, mainly because they would be primarily coming from the sides of the mic. The face of the mic is blocked by the singer's head.

The test is very simple. Place a high quality mic on a mic stand, point the mic directly at your mouth, sing directly into the mic's face, then using the same vocal volume, sing into the side of the mic--what a diffence. The fall-off is astronomical with a top-quality mic. If you're using an inexpensive mic, the fall-off is not nearly as significant.

Good luck on whatever decission you make,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Naturally, listening to music in a room is going to be reflected by the acoustics..The question had to do with recording Bill's Tyros/3000...
Sure mixing is at it's best in a controlled enviroment.. Mix should also conform to the media it is intended...car radio, home stereo etc...I don't think $4000 monitors and a $10,000 prepared[sound ] studio is necessary for this media...

Why do Studios spend big bucks on the room...because they want to charge the customer big bucks to use the facility.

If you are going to record vocals you need to start with as dead a room as possible. Extra reverb on a vocal that is embedded in the source material is practically impossible to process out and can be very noticable. You can get this even with the most directional microphone.