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Matthew Furci
Lesson two in the studio was about studio design and monitors. Stephen and I went through the chapter in the workbook and the text book and he explained to me a lot of interesting things. For example, he explained to me how an acoustic engineer would stand in the studio space with pink noise playing through the monitors - aiding in determining the key spots in the studio to put an assortment of reflective materials, dampening materials, etc. He then demonstrated to me how pink noise can also determine the missing frequencies that needed to be added. as well as frequencies that may need to be cut down. At this point he showed me the room equalizer and showed me the difference in sounds if he were to adjust the room eq, and how sound would alter depending on where he would place the sound dampening/reflective materials. We discussed his choice of studio design based on certain issues he had. For example, the studio - instead of running lenght wise, had been set up to run width wise; this reason was due to the fact that there was a structural pole placed near the center of the room, and it compromised the sound more than it would going width wise. Also, this method allowed for producers to have a better line of sight to the artist during their recordings - the 3 pane glass at one side of the room was stationed with a "producers" desk, with microphones connected to either the artists headphones or the speakers located in the sound room.
After this, we looked at how he had the wiring done. He stressed the fact that you should never have audio lines running on top of electrical lines due to magnetic and frequency fields. He then explained that in all studios, there are dedicated power lines that are specially grounded - these lines are specifically labelled, and in most cases, the wire will be a distinctive orange color.
A very interesting fact that I recorded was on monitor speakers. Certain monitors, for example, can have a frequency range from 20H - 18000H, however, unless the room itself can produce those frequencies, they will not be heard! I have a pair of KRK rocket 5 monitors that have a great range in sound, however, when I put the music I produce on a DAW system in my spectrogram meter, it shows me that there are frequencies present that even when I alter, I do not hear a difference (mainly in the low ends, between 10-50H). Stephen then showed me how sound can "vanish" when removing certain panels from that walls, such as bass traps and reflective materials. This made it clear to me that I should not be on a hunt to find new and more powerful speakers, but I should work on the acoustic aspect of my sound room to hear the frequencies that my speakers can already produce.
This was an incredible lesson that made a lot clear to me. Also, this weeks internship of 3 days was great again, and I got to work with some very cool people. Next weekend I am interning with Stephen for a female artist who wants to produce an album. I am very excited!
Matthew F.
