Control Room
The object of a properly designed control room is to create a neutral listening environment that has sufficient ambient control to allow you to make critical decisions such a mic placement during tracking and precisely positioning the instrument’s depth or width during the final mix stage.
Professional control room designs incorporate many different elements to create the whole. These elements begin at the construction phase where you need to consider isolation and soundproofing. Floating floors, offset-stud walls, double doors, and double windows are all tools that help keep sound and vibrations out of the control room and keep whatever is going on inside from disrupting the recording process or the neighbors next door.
Layout is also an important element to consider before the construction phase. Optimal control room designs utilize angled walls as reducing the number of parallel surfaces in the room minimizes acoustic problems such as standing waves. Perfectly square rooms are the most difficult spaces to treat as they are prone to every acoustical issue. Small rooms are also problematic because of the close proximity of the reflective wall surfaces to the listening position and the inability for the bass to fully develop. Smaller rooms with close reflection points generally require a greater percentage of acoustic treatment. This brings to mind the many forms of acoustic treatment that you can employ: absorption, diffusion, clouds…
As a manufacturer of acoustic products, we can make recommendations based on common practices, but to optimize your room design, there is no substitute for experience. There are all kinds of terrific studio designers that can help you bring your dream to reality and plenty of resources on the web to draw from. We encourage you to use them along side this web site as you nurture your passion for recording.
Optimal Room Design
As described above, the optimum control room is one that avoids parallel wall surfaces. This eliminates standing waves that cause certain frequencies to resonate as they echo back and forth between two walls or between the ceiling and floor.
By introducing angles to the walls, side-to-side (1) or front-to-back (2) sound waves cannot sustain themselves. Angling the ceiling or breaking it up by introducing a soffit also helps tremendously. These angled walls create opportunities to introduce large bass traps (3) into the design and because the size gradually changes, they naturally deliver broadband absorption.
You then need to look at the various hot spots (4, 5, 6) and determine how you would like to treat them. This can be in the form of absorptive panels, diffusers or a combination of the two.
This of course opens up discussions based on various design philosophies. Some folks are advocates of the LEDE concept that was originated by Chips Davis. Today, most studio designers employ variants of a LEDE room whereby a greater degree of absorption is applied to one end, while the other is treated with devices such as diffusers to break up energy without over deadening the room. There are alternate schools of through that incorporate a high degree of diffusion or employ a reverse LEDE by diffusing at the source end of the room.
Ultimately it comes down to creating a comfortable working space that is frequency balanced so as not to introduce ‘color' to the recording. A neutral room will allow the recording to translate better or play back on other audio systems and sound the way you intended whether you are in a friend's living room, your car or listening to your recording on a box radio.
Balancing the response of the room is no different than balancing the output of a loud speaker. You need to treat the highs, mids and lows so that the final rendering will be broad band.
Determining Coverage
To determine the coverage, we have created a series of easy-to-use tables that enable you to choose between various degrees of treatment depending on your budget and the desired outcome. Most facilities find that a ‘light’ level of treatment provides sufficient sound abatement while keeping the budget in check. If budgets are tight, start with minimal treatment and then add more panels as funds become available.
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