This roundup features a range of articles to help you understand room acoustics and how acoustic treatment can be used to improve the response and overall sound quality of recording studio spaces. We have also included some monitoring and speaker calibration articles as these topics go hand in hand with acoustic treatment solutions.
Are you dissatisfied with the sound of your studio? Take the first steps in improving the acoustic properties of your studio by checking out these articles:
In this article Julian considers why, however effective the traditional solutions for acoustically treating mixing spaces might be, they are out of step with much of the audio industry as it exists today. Is there a better way?
All good quality monitors are commendably flat when tested on axis in an anechoic chamber. All of that goes out of the window when that monitor is placed in an actual studio. Studios ruin monitors. We all know this but actually solving the acoustic challenges a room introduces can seem overwhelming. In this article Marcel Schecter from Genelec shares his advice.
Scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed an active sound absorber which can absorb frequencies down to 20Hz and whose thickness at 17mm is only 1000th the wavelength of the audio being absorbed.
It seems many people are frustrated with their studio monitoring and for a multitude of reasons. This article aims to help on a variety of levels to give you greater monitoring confidence.
With the help of a video in which acoustic panels are brought into a room while the presenter is speaking, in this article Julian suggests that off the shelf panels sometimes get blamed for not fixing problems they were never intended for.
Getting great sounding and balanced mixes is made much harder if your studio is not properly acoustically treated. In this article acoustician, Omer Karni presents a practical step-by-step guide for acoustically treating your home studio for better mixes.
It’s an unavoidable truth that monitoring through loudspeakers gets complicated. Here is our advice on how to get the best from your monitors, starting with where they are positioned in the room.
In this article, Julian Rodgers looks at ceiling clouds and asks whether we think too horizontally when thinking about acoustics.
Russ recently wrote an article on the importance of your room acoustics. Multiple Grammy winner Stephen Lipson adds his thoughts.
As a freelance dubbing mixer, Graham Kirkman works from home a lot, and like a lot of us, his home studio is just that - a studio in his house. This article is Graham’s story of how he moved his Luminol Audio studio from the loft into a purpose-built, Dolby Atmos equipped, garden studio.
In the article, Dan Cooper explains how he recognised a problem within his monitoring setup, how he tweaked the placement of his monitors to improve the frequency response and how he fixed an artificial sound caused by the Sonarworks Reference correction process by way of a new studio subwoofer.
In this series over the extended Christmas holiday, we are featuring 5 interviews from our growing archive of interviews, all of which you can find on our Interviews page.Back in December 2012, Russ Hughes had an extended chat with Andy Munro from Munro Acoustics and they talk about Shure, The Rolling Stones, the early days of home recording, plus of course lots of discussion around studio acoustics.
In this article, we weigh up three Pros & Cons of Speaker Calibration software. If you are considering introducing Speaker Calibration into your workflow then this article aims to help you make an informed decision.
In this post, Pro Tools Expert Team Member Julian Rodgers explores the world of active acoustics - using electronics to augment the natural acoustic in a performance space. He looks at the history of this idea and then examines the operating principle behind the three most common ways of achieving an enhanced acoustic space for different performances.
In all honesty, I was quite skeptical watching this video but I was pleasantly surprised when the before and after comparison was presented. Obviously, these DIY panels don't compare in broadband performance typical of professionally designed studio acoustics but for home studio guys on a budget that need cheap acoustic absorption solutions... this is definitely worth a punt.
A few weeks ago we posted a news article reporting new research into sound absorbers which suggested that it was no longer the case that acoustic treatment which could adequately absorb low frequencies had to be impractically thick. French Researchers published results which, while not ready for any products to be produced, did offer the strong possibility that thin, full range, passive bass trapping could soon be a practical proposition.
A while back we asked you to submit your studio design and build stories. Well, community member Artur Rakhmatulin has submitted his story, it took a lot longer than expected. In part 1 of a 3 part series, Artur walked us through the options, his study, and the theory behind his chosen design. In part 2, we looked at the structure, the detail design and implementation of the floor, ceiling, interior walls, and the layered back wall. Now in part 3, we will be looking at the additional treatment including broadband porous absorbers, doors, air conditioning, ventilation, power supply, lighting, studio equipment, and speaker stands. Over to you Artur...
Anyone who has studied acoustics will know when it comes to low-frequency sound, traditional sound-absorbing materials tend to be bulky, heavy or thick to do the job, but maybe that will no longer be the case.
A while back we asked you to submit your studio design and build stories. Well, community member Artur Rakhmatulin has submitted his story, it took a lot longer than expected. In part 1 of a 3 part series, Artur walked us through the options, his study, and the theory behind his chosen design. In part 2, we look at the structure, the detail design and implementation of the floor, ceiling, interior walls, and the layered back wall.
A while back we asked you to submit your studio design and build stories. Well, community member Artur Rakhmatulin emailed recently apologising for the delay in submitting his studio design and build story. He explained that it had taken much longer to accomplish it than expected, but during this process, he shifted his paradigm several times and so came out differently from what he first intended. This is Artur's story and experiences spread over 3 parts, the theory, structure and additional treatment.
However tempting this may be, if you are not careful adding a sub to your home monitoring system may do more harm than good. Here are some things you need to consider if you are tempted to add a sub to your home monitor system.
In this video, Pro Tools Expert Deputy Editor Dan Cooper asks a question to the Pro Tools Expert Community - What are you current or past recording studio acoustics & soundproofing nightmare stories? and then shows what he is doing with his new temporary studio.
Welcome to a new Pro Tools Expert series called Pros & Cons where we weigh up three benefits against three negatives within everyday recording studio workflows and studio gear choices. In this first article, we discuss the pros and cons of pre-built acoustic treatment panels such as bass traps and ceiling clouds
In this Myths Of Modern Recording article I will argue that just using foam tiles as acoustic treatment does little to improve problematic room acoustics.
Our friends at Sonarworks tested the acoustic properties of a studio similar in design to an everyday home studio with five very different sets of studio monitors. Sonarworks wanted to prove that the frequency response of a room determines the majority of the studio sound rather than specific models of studio monitor.
Both products clearly fall under the same category of "room correction software" with both companies taking totally different approaches in design and usability. The two solutions are separated by quite a large price gap, that for now we will put aside so that we can compare what the main differences are between them.
In part 2 of this series on DIY studio acoustics we got deep into spreadsheets and calculators to help us get a balanced acoustic treatment that didn't favour one or more frequency bands over any other. In this part we will take a look at how I handled the difficult issue of ventilation and cooling.
In the first part in this series I started to share how my current studio was designed and built, learning from previous mistakes. In this article we are going to delve into the maths of acoustics and get deep into spreadsheets.
Dan wrote a brilliant article outlining the basics of acoustic treatment and sharing his story and experiences with his various studios. Following on from Dan's article, I am going to share my experiences and the techniques I have used for my current studio starting with the floor and ceiling.
Some members of our community own or work in top recording studios or are producers who have the benefit of working in amazing recording spaces. We also have many who work in their bedroom, office, cellar, in spaces they may double-up for other uses. In this scenarios being able to create permanent isolation is costly and hard. Here are our top 5 ways to try and create a much quieter space to record in, that won't break the bank or trouble the your family.
We talk a lot about gear, production techniques, the industry and workflows on Pro Tools Expert so it’s about time we have a discussion about our choices in acoustic treatment. Acoustic treatment is the method and implementation of materials to help control the reflections of sound within a space in the pursuit of a great sounding, well balanced space in which to record and mix in.