In Podcast 241 we asked if you would send in articles and pictures describing your own studio builds and to highlight the choices and decisions you made along the way so that the whole community could benefit from your idea, experiences and solutions. Community member and Sonnox Community award winner Bertrand Grichting has been in touch with his thoughts to get this series going. Over to you Bertrand....
My studio is in a rather small room in my house. I have one room for the control room and another room which I mostly use to record singers or instrumentalists. However the recording room is also small so I cannot record several people or a band. When I need to do this I have to go to a larger recording studio. But as I mainly do mix jobs it’s ok for the moment.
I decided to treat the control room with some proper acoustics, but I didn’t want to spend a small fortune on the acoustic consultant coming to my space, analysing and planning. In my research I came across Auralex and their Room Analysis-Kit. which they describe like this...
The Kit includes an omni-directional microphone and a link to step-by-step instructions and frequency sweep files. This recorded sweep will be sent back to Auralex via e-mail for further analysis.
Along with the recorded audio files I provided a floor plan of the room and several photos showing every wall and corner of the room. Gavin Haverstick from Auralex analysed the recorded files and then provided a detailed plan of where to put each kind of product from Auralex.
I was astonished by the number of absorption and diffusion that Gavin selected for such a small room, but I have to say the result was worth it. Gavin suggested a LEDE (Live-End, Dead-End) design for my room, with absorption at the front where I sit and diffusion in the back. There were also lots of bass-traps in the corners and also panels on the ceiling.
One problem I have is that on one side of the listening position there is a window. Gavin proposed that I should use a thick curtain to put in front of this window, which I did, but this also made the room a lot darker. As Russ will agree there is no substitute for daylight and I changed the heavy curtain for a lighter curtain that still absorbs sound well enough. Added to the fact that I sit very close to the monitors the stereo image is really stable and defined. So all in all, this works for me.
In conclusion I have to say I am really happy to have spent the money to optimize my room, it was the best overall investment in my studio and made such a huge difference.
This Could Be You?
If you would like to the chance to have your studio design published on Pro Tools Expert and to win an iLok3 prize bundle then please send in your article with hi-res image files via our Contact Us page. Please include details or your thought processes, why you chose what you chose, and what you would do differently if you did it again.