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Javier Melendez
This week’s chapter covered acoustics and monitoring. My mentor and I started off the review day by going over the chapter quiz and discussing the answers in more detail. Being that we normally hold our review day in a studio, there were plenty of examples of acoustic treatment available to use as a visual. Luis pointed out the different types of acoustic materials around the room, such as diffusers, absorbers, and bass traps. There actually happened to be a corner in the back of the room with no bass trap, and you could hear the constructive interference caused by the buildup of low frequency. I’m sure the buildup of low frequencies would be more noticeable in a room with no acoustic treatment, but there was enough of an audible differenence when I was standing close to the corner in the room with no bass trap, compared to when standing by the mix position. After spending a decent amount of time talking about the different acoustic treatment in that studio, Luis opened a signal generator on Pro Tools and went over the concept of room modes and beat frequency. Although the studio has all kinds of acoustic treatment in it, we were able to find a bit of a room mode at around 48Hz. After that, Luis created two sine wave signals, with one being just a few Hertz higher in frequency, and demonstrated what a beat frequency sounded like. I had actually heard examples of this before, and just never realized what it was called. Both of these examples were really helpful to see and hear, because now the concept is really clear and engraved in my memory.
The next thing we spent time on was a side project Luis assigned to me, focused on creating a hypothetical studio. For this project, I will have a $250,000 budget to fully equip a startup recording studio. I will keep track of the equipment needed and prices on a spreadsheet that Luis provided me. Thanks to some guidance from Luis, I have been focusing on the websites Sweetwater.com and vintageking.com to find professional audio equipment and have been finding everything I could possibly need. With so much amazing audio gear available, I think the hardest part of this project will be limiting myself to the essentials needed to start a studio and not buying everything that catches my attention.
Jam Of The Day: WAYLON JENNINGS-OUTLAW SH*T
