A question about room sizes and ratios.

[Rod Gervais]

Originally Posted by Rockenberry

Question to the professionals. If you were approached by a client who gave you room dimensions of say (just off the top of my head), 3(W)x4(L)x2.5(H), who informed you that he or she wanted to create a control room out of it for mixing and critical listening, would you turn down the work considering the room is too small? Or would you be able to turn it in to a decent control room?

Well you would have to qualify the statement in a few respects.......

1. Are the dimensions based on simply a desire of the client or is this the absolute dimension available after the development of an isolation system meeting the client's needs?

2. I assume the dimensions noted above are in meters? Is that correct?

In Rod Gervais' book in chapter 10, I noticed that the control room design is rather small, in fact very small when looking at the dimensions of the room.

I also know that no where in the book does Rod state that that particular control room is going to be a world class control room and it is a book for home recording, I know this. So in no way am I criticising the design!

Understood - the examples I gave in the book were intended to provide the reader with the concepts they have to include in their thought process rather then an actual design I was promoting.

When working with small spaces - and clients who insist on multiple rooms as opposed to a multipurpose room - I will always sacrifice the control room to an extent in order to have a functional tracking space.

You can learn (even in a bad control room) what you have to do to make your mixes translate into the "real world" - but you cannot do anything to make the recorded material sound good (even in a stellar mixing room) if the recorded material itself sucks...........

So my question is: can that control room considering it's size, become a good control room for mixing, if one followed the instructions Rod has given?

Small rooms (to a degree) can absolutely be turned into decent mixing rooms. A room that small would certainly be challenging - but it could be a decent room if treated properly. Not a great room mind you - but a decent room for sure.

Here in London, there are many many recording/mixing studios and while some are big (coinciding with the advice given here), most are small and yet they are in business and have been for many years.

This is all about music - I have said for years (and believe I probably even mentioned in the book) that there have been some very good mixes that have come out of some very bad rooms........

The difference between large very well designed control rooms and very small (even poorly designed) control rooms is not necessarily the end result of the product - but more so the ease by which that product is developed.

Any great engineer can produce great results in pretty much any mixing room given good gear - however they will do it a hell of a lot quicker and easier if the room they are in is a great room.

I hope that helped,

Rod

[avare]

Adding to Rod's great post, there is Boggy's wonderful MyRoom design for small rooms. The signifcant question is if the client is prepared to have a very small critical listening area. Possibly so small that even one person would be restricted in movement to keep their ears in the critical listening area.

A pragmatic consideration is that the cost for treaing such a room is expensive and if the client can afford the treatment, a cost analysis would probably show a larger room would be cheaper in the long run. Be it acquiring a larger space or knocking down walls to create one.

Well sized,
Andre

[Rockenberry]

Rod and Andre,

Thank you both for your quick replies.

Answering your questions:

1. The scenario would be absolute dimensions. I guess that if a client had the opportunity to make the room bigger he would.

2. Yes, the measurements are in metres.

I guess I ask as my control room is going to be small and I refuse to want to accept that my room is going to end up sounding rubbish, especially when I see recording and mixing studios making money on rooms that are not only much bigger (if that), but haven't followed the basic guidelines on a CR room (such as making symmetrical).

I'm going to try my best in making it sound as good as I can get it to sound.

Thanks for your input guys,

Regards,

Rock.