Acousticians

[Cape]

Have you ever used one? and did you learn from it other than you found a new hole in ya pocket.

[Steve Smith]

I have used them regularily ( live performance venue construction mostly) I generally spend alot of time listening, and try and get in a couple "freebie" questions per visit.. very valuable learning times!

Remember, there is a reason that folks have to l spend that much time in school just top make things sound "good"




On a funny kind of side note, who has ever met a acoustician who was also a great mixer ( live or otherwise)?

[Cape]

Hit the nail on the flat bit. How can I afford to pay some bloke I've never met, to tell me what reverb in the room is good reverb, flub off. It's the same for my clients but at least they can listen to something.

To me it's the same as those interior decorators, some are really good,but some are con artists.

[pounce]

i've seen many good technicians tef out the room and so forth. i suppose "the best" acousticians can do a bit more than that especially if consulted _before_ the construction phase, where their input could be most valuable.

if the room is already built and the system is already in place, they have less ability to help. and frankly at that point using tef or spectra foo and measuring the room might be all you can do. add absorption and diffusion materials as needed and get back to work. if you have a contruction budget and are ready to put the materials and measurements and so forth into place based upon their recomendations, you might be able to avoid problematic room issues.

i presume a few of them are good, and many of them know very little more than me (or me and my technical buddies). then it gets to be about having the money to follow through on acoustics in your mix room. it's important, but never as sexy buying gobo's as buying a shit hot preamp. i haven't used an acoustician before, but everyone i know at least runs spectra foo or a similar decent analyzer program, so we are at least aware of what's going on in any room.

[Cape]

True true, I built two rooms and it has flaws ( joke could come), commonsense is paramount though, I never believe in a true flat response room due to the fact it's a mastering houses job to have that and a living area or kitchen etc is in two extremes so a room that soakes and reflects at the same time is cool, done right.

We will probably raise the celing infront of main monitors if landlord agrees to sell the whole block, rather than having flat to the back kinda ceiling. Dream dream...dream dream dream.

[pounce]

too dead a room would be disconcerting to track in, so i happen to prefer a little "liveness" to at least the tracking rooms, and then a LEDE setup in the control area. shit, even well placed couches and so forth can make a control room pleasant to be in. just watch for standing waves and other room anomolies and you will be set.

[littledog]

I hired Michael Blackmer (yes, same family - and a great guy) to draw me up a "do-it-yourself" plan for fixing my control/mix room acoustics. (Which is in my living room - rectangular, eight foot ceilings, ugh!). I knew deep in my heart, painful as was to admit, that some acoustic fixing would probably give me a greater quantum leap in the improvement of my studio (dollar for dollar) than buying any equivalent amount of gear. (Yeah, I know, I know...)

And while I have some vague knowledge of room modes, I was realistic enough to admit that if there was anything I knew less about than audio engineering, it ws probably acoustics. Up until that point my acoustic "treatment" consisted of throwing up some bass traps in the rear corners, and putting some egg crate type acoustic foam from Markertek on the walls around the mix position.

So Michael came over and measured every dimension of my room, and mailed me some detailed blueprints with text instructions for slanting my ceiling, splaying my walls, etc.

Ironically, while i deeply believe the results will more than justify the very reasonable cost, it's been over a year and I still haven't implemented the plans, because I can't seem to motivate myself to shut down the studio (and the cash flow), unplug a thousand connectors, move out all the gear, and do the construction work!

But they're real nice looking plans!

Sigh...

[Jules]

Mine sorted out the wall coverings & removable accoustics in my live area and designed a cockpit style bass traps in the control room.

He was like Kung Fu!

He walked to the job and brought no tools (used my carpenters), ran frequency sweeps through the mains to hear the room issues (with my gear), then designed (and with my carpenter, built) some decent looking bass traps, covered the walls and bass traps expertly with fabrick.... then walked off!

Fritz

One cool dude!

[Thermionic]

Biggest breakthrough I ever made in my personal-productions came from properly treating the control-room. Up until that point I was under the impression my mixing-abilities just weren't that great...Treatment made my mixes interface with the outside-world...

The sound you put to tape is the inverse of what you hear. If there's a mode at say, 250Hz, even with prior knowledge and "compensation" (if you use NS-10s you're gonna be used to "compensation"..), you're never going to achieve satisfactory results/cohesion in that region, not to mention the "sympathetic" resonances that could occur in related-frequencies...

If I had the option of only being able to use either my most useful piece of outboard (probably the DSP7000), or, a treated control-room, I'd go with the room every time. JM.2C

[Cape]

I do believe you learn to hear a room, which tends to happen when you play a mix back on your BW's at home (which are cheap muthers compared to whats at studio), and then on another system etc. Then go back to studio and learn, however a room that does the average without adjustment is the baby.

Most of the time its cool, I have 1031's and 1037B's, now these chickens don't sound the same in the same room (problemos!!). Obviously the larger wooers and added mid cone help confuse the issue.

The fact that I've soffited the larger of the two into a pretend wall which should really have some weight and be sealed from the control room, this doesn't help (time ya know what I mean). I have a triangler 6' deep bass trap to the rear of the room, however it hasn't been finished, so it's soaking up no serious bass. It needs Hermotzalla style sorting.

Someone was dead on the button when they said a studio never gets finished.

Room sounds fine at mo but know it can sound better.

If anyone's got the number of a chap in the UK who doesn't try to sell you loadsa shit on top and rip you off I'll pay, but I'm not up for the people who think studio owners have lots of money, so why not rip em off. A guy like Jules dude sounds sweet.

[Roland]

A friend of mine had his room "tuned" by Andy Munro. Its just a home basement studio, but the results are fantastic I would thoroughly recommend Andy on that basis alone.

Regards


Roland

[Berolzheimer]

"On a funny kind of side note, who has ever met a acoustician who was also a great mixer ( live or otherwise)?"

Yep, I know one. The guy's been in sound since the late 60's, knows more about sound than anyone else I've met in my 24 years in audio, and still has great ears too.

[StuartMac]

Roland, any contact details for Andy Munro?

[Roland]

Originally posted by StuartMac
Roland, any contact details for Andy Munro?

Yep!

Munro Associates
0207 7403 3808

Contact Andy Munro.

Regards


Roland

[Fletcher]

IMNTLBFHO... control rooms are designed, recording spaces occur. A controlled monitoring environment is of paramount importance for understanding what you're hearing as the tracks are going down, and when you're balancing the final product.

Recording environments should have a signature and character to them. Things that are not necessarily "correct" will lead to the things we find special in the overall tone and texture of a recording.

If your recording environment has a specific problem or two... then it's worth it to "fix" those problems. If it doesn't have a specific problem [and by "specific problem" I mean like a lower midrange buildup that kinda puts a blanket over everything] then I would highly recommend the room be left alone to create it's own signature to the things recorded there.

Many of the "famous" control room designers can do a good job if left to their own devices [though there are a couple of "famous" control room designers that are total ****ing hacks with a great 'interior design' team... the rooms tend to look great, but sound like total ass], many people who are building "real" control rooms want to get involved in the process.

This will often lead to the rooms not sounding as good as they could have. A good designer will often tell the client to go to hell when they have a dumbass request... though some excellent designers will indeed allow the client to get in the way of their designs.

[7rojo7]

I recently did a design for someone here and the first thing they showed me was an Aquarium and then told me where they wanted to put it. I've found that a lot of engineers that have had formal training (college) or that have just been around and have helped build studios already know a lot about it and a lot of studios get built and changed little by little by assistants and or artists looking to barter for time. Otherwise the big places use the big names because they gots the big bucks and the reputation to keep up. Do it yourself is not out of the question, huh.
Control room has to always sound the same, recording rooms have to be able to change depending on the source material. keep it simple.