Acoustics And Monitoring - Posted on 2014-06-01 by Jin Huang

Oh my god, this is a long chapter filled with terminologies… but you can't imagine how I appreciated that Lionel gave me such a fantastic lesson based on his own experience of building up the studio. If you want to talk about Trench Recordings, the first thing you need to know is that almost everything you see in the studio was hand made by Lionel and his brother Dave. That’s impressive! Create, that is the only way to do something when there is nothing, and that is the only way to make everything suits you the best. That’s impressive!

Date of Session: May 16, 2014

Time in: 14:00

Time out: 16:30

Lesson 18: Acoustics And Monitoring

I didn’t know why this chapter was here near the end of the book, among all the other software lessons, neither did Lionel. This probably should be one of the very first lesson, or at least before all the other Pro Tools lessons. Never mind, in this chapter, we are talking about studio constructions and sound monitoring. Here we go.

Lionel told me that the key of studio construction is to get frequency balanced. I’ve talked about soundproofing as one of my questions asked in previous lessons, so now let’s talk about room design and tuning. Just remember, soundproofing is a matter of mass and distance; the more you can do with the two, the better soundproofing result you will be able to achieve. Building a control room is different from building a live room. A control room needs to be tuned as close to linear frequency response as possible so that the room can translate mixes well. However, if a live room is built the same way, tracking sessions will be boring; we want to record the unique sound characteristics of each tracking space, so as long as the sound is still under control, we expect the frequency responses in different live rooms are different.

When constructing a recording studio, room mode is the first thing that comes into consideration. Each material will have its own resonate frequency, and the dimension of the room will also effect which frequencies are resonating. Resonating frequencies will make the original sound louder so that the engineer may EQ heavily on the certain frequencies, which results in the fact that when the same mix is played in a different room, certain frequencies are missing. By saying this, the room doesn't have a good translation. A room that does have a good translation must be acoustically tuned with almost linear frequency response, which is the same principle as how we choose studio monitors and headphones. One solution is to use different materials to construct a weird shaped room. At the same time, we will apply acoustic treatments such as absorbers, diffusers, bass traps, etc. to tune the room. Generate frequencies at different herts and record to a real time spectrum to analyze until all the frequencies are balanced.

Professional recording studios often have different sets of monitors because even the same mix will come out differently from different speakers. With sets of near field monitors for mixing and referencing, far field speakers for turning loud and playing back for the clients, the engineer get a clear idea of the sound they will achieve with the speakers and how it will sound in other environments. An interesting fact is that the YAMAHA NS-10s Studio is widely used in recordings studios, but they are still consumer grade speakers; it says it’s studio only because all the studios buy it for referencing. Lionel also likes the result that the NS-10s can achieve.

Now it’s the right time to talk about how important it is to have my own playlist. Lionel told me it’s a great idea to have my own playlist because these are my favourite songs, and these are the songs that I’m the most familiar with. Lionel said the playlist should travel with me because this is the best way to get used to a new environment. For example, if I’m going to mix in a different recording studio, listening to my own playlist is the quickest way to find out the differences between the new mixing place. Once I know how the mix is translated form my room to the new spot, I know how to mix properly. By the way, having my own playlist is also good for relaxing, searching for ideas and learning how to mix, isn't it?

Yeah, I’m constantly mixing the same song and trying to get the point where I want it to be. This is the fifth version of Once, which I haven’t posted yet. Lionel said this version was definitely better than the one he heard last week. Everything is more balanced and more details are coming out. Lionel told me the best thing I can do is to improve the ingredients — either record with some better sounding equipment, or get better performance, or both. Listen to each individual track, and if I think I can make it better, then do it. All these little things will bring up the quality of the mix automatically. Wow. This is absolutely the key; however, it may probably take quite a long time for me to be able to make it. I’ll see how it works, yeah.

Another thing that Lionel suddenly reminds me is to learn to defend my own music. Listen to other people’s opinions and think about them. If you think they are right, then do it; if not, defend your music. Yes! Love my music; improve my music; defend my music; that’s my music.