Lesson Two – Studio Design and Monitors - Posted on 2013-09-17 by Danielle Jardine

Studio design and Monitor placement is very important. If you are planning on building or remodeling your own studio there are some things that are good to think about.You want to be able to create a studio that will sound good no matter what kind of music you record in the space. In a studio everything is important; the shape and size of the room, the angles of the room, to the types of material that are used for each aspect of the studio.
When building a studio from the ground up you should think about everything from the materials to the decorations. Everything in your studio will affect the sound that the room produces. You need to focus on what kind of material your wall studs will be, what you will used for insulation in the walls, floor, and ground and whether the control window will be single or double pained, and whether you will include a sound lock room in your studio design. There is a lot to think about when building a studio which is why it is better to apply as much effort and thought into providing the best sounding rooms in which to record because you want to avoid having to make up for poor sound quality by using excessive equalization to minimize phase and smear in your final mix. Everything that is put into your studio to make the sound better will be in your favor when you are mixing your projects.

Here are a few things to think about and possibly include in your studio design: acoustic isolation, symmetry in the control room/monitor design, frequency balance, absorption, reflection, and reverberation. The amount of isolation between the control room and the studio should be in equal comparison to the amount of isolation between the studio and the outside. A sound lock room is a good room to incorporate in your deign because it will increase the isolation in the studio. It is a room with two doors between the control room and the studio or the outside area’s.

Monitor design and placement is a huge factor in how the sound in your control room is because this is how you hear what you are recording or mixing. Its imperative that you are able to hear accurately so as to decide on the correct EQ choices, blending, levels, and overall mix. If the speakers are not places properly or properly tuned themselves then the mix your hearing won’t be an accurate representation of whats being recorded or mixed. Each person will like a different monitor speakers. When looking for monitor speakers try and find ones that reproduce an even response (no big tips or peaks of frequencies) they should also have a wide frequency response.