Recording studios will typically be live end dead end with the dead end and any diffusion panels at the back and sides. The front end is normally the live end and the speakers will be flush with the front wall. Many times if it is not a remote studio you have a large tilted window to see into the studio on that front wall. As long as the speakers are flush mounted you don't have any front wall reflections to worry about.
It really depends on the recording technique as to if it will sound better with or without listening room reverberation. It also depends on the nature of the listening room's reverberation character.
So there really is no hard answer, but the listening position at the critical distance with the loudspeakers aimed for the listeners' ears will probably work well for most listeners.
Now for my systems where speech intelligibility is the primary concern, I generally want no one past twice the critical distance.
The other issue is that in small rooms you don't have a reverberant field and thus no classical critical distance. Generally you want the room to be seven wavelengths long for the lowest frequency you are trying to carry. So a typical small room will cut off below about 500 hertz.
PS. A LEDE control room has the dead end where the loudspeakers are located to prevent comb filtering and the live end at the back wall to allow more perceived spaciousness. It is the opposite of what is normally assumed.
So there really is no hard answer, but the listening position at the critical distance with the loudspeakers aimed for the listeners' ears will probably work well for most listeners.
Now for my systems where speech intelligibility is the primary concern, I generally want no one past twice the critical distance.
The other issue is that in small rooms you don't have a reverberant field and thus no classical critical distance. Generally you want the room to be seven wavelengths long for the lowest frequency you are trying to carry. So a typical small room will cut off below about 500 hertz.
PS. A LEDE control room has the dead end where the loudspeakers are located to prevent comb filtering and the live end at the back wall to allow more perceived spaciousness. It is the opposite of what is normally assumed.
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Ed,
How can a control room with soffit mounted speakers with a large viewing window just below be considered the dead end? That is what I have seen in the control rooms I have been in. In the better rooms there are reflective panels to break up the waves off the back wall along with highly absorbent wall treatment.
How can a control room with soffit mounted speakers with a large viewing window just below be considered the dead end? That is what I have seen in the control rooms I have been in. In the better rooms there are reflective panels to break up the waves off the back wall along with highly absorbent wall treatment.
Nothing to be compared with a control room, but in my apartment in Paris, my settee was against the wall and the speaker at the opposite wall. So i thought i had not to fear reflections from the close back wall, and dumped the front wall. Was surprised how well it worked, with very precise spacial localisation and the feeling the room was much bigger. than it was.
Are-you sure ? Most of the control rooms i had worked-in were LEDE with the back wall heavily dumped (Soft pannels, diffusers, bass traps in the back corners).
https://www.google.com/search?q=LED...oTCJq46bjzi8YCFQRdFAodc-cAZA&biw=1280&bih=663
I don't know why, but it is very tiring to stay long times in such an acoustic environment. A little like in anechoic chambers.
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Thanks Christophe,
I have not been in a studio where the front wall with the monitors was not the live side and the dead side was behind the console. I'm not saying it can't be the reverse but that I have never seen it done that way. In a blind control room control room things could be different I suppose.
I have not been in a studio where the front wall with the monitors was not the live side and the dead side was behind the console. I'm not saying it can't be the reverse but that I have never seen it done that way. In a blind control room control room things could be different I suppose.
Exactly. In big post-production studios, we use the room for several purposes. Record foleys and dubbing dialogues, mixing sound tracks in a volume close to the one of a movie theater (If possible). So many of them don't have any control room, and the mixing desk is directly in the back of the > 100m² room. Producers and directors usually sit on the front of the mixing desk (here, what happens on the screen is important). Here too, I used to dump the front in the studios i was in charge of.
Not to forget the 5+1 configurations. (Oh, Lord, I hate that ;-)
In the rare occasion where i was both in charge of the music mixing and the movie sound track, I re-discovered my own music mixages, made in classical LEDE music control rooms, once in the big movie studio. Nothing to compare. Basses are living in the space like all other instruments, while is is a compressive heavy sound in control rooms. On an other point of view, you don't focus on details like in the control room. You are closer to a live performance.
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HEARING DOUBLE
Northward Acoustics - About
"When Matthew Gray is mastering in his new studio, he’ll hear a different room to what his speakers do. It’s all from the mind of next-gen acoustician/studio designer Thomas Jouanjean.
Thomas Jouanjaen’s studio design philosophy is relatively simple: Make two rooms in one. Okay, it sounds simple.
Mull on this: If you could design a space where you were absolutely sure every sound emanating from your speakers was exactly as their designer intended, what would that room look like? There would be no outside noises to contend with for one, and no surfaces to reflect the initial sound back into that room. It would look like boundary-less space, without the vacuum. Dead as a doornail.
But plop your ears in the same situation, and you’ll go batty in minutes. Walk down the corridors of a concert hall, or strap two pieces of foam an inch from your ears if you’re having trouble conjuring up the image. It’s disorienting to be in an environment that dead. Your brain feels uneasy when it’s not receiving feedback your body is actually in the room, like a horseman with his head cut off.
We feel most comfortable in environments somewhere between acoustically dead and riotously loud. For instance, a loungeroom has a combination of hard surfaces, bookshelves lined with gloriously diffusing literature, and sound absorbing sofas covered in throw pillows. You can easily hold a conversation without feeling like you’re in a padded cell, you might even have a nice B&O stereo… but it’s useless for critical listening.
Thomas’ contention is, to get the best performance out of the speakers and the engineer, they each need to effectively ‘see’, or hear, different rooms. His Front To Back (FTB) mastering suites and control rooms are the outworking of this philosophy."
Dan.
Northward Acoustics - About
"When Matthew Gray is mastering in his new studio, he’ll hear a different room to what his speakers do. It’s all from the mind of next-gen acoustician/studio designer Thomas Jouanjean.
Thomas Jouanjaen’s studio design philosophy is relatively simple: Make two rooms in one. Okay, it sounds simple.
Mull on this: If you could design a space where you were absolutely sure every sound emanating from your speakers was exactly as their designer intended, what would that room look like? There would be no outside noises to contend with for one, and no surfaces to reflect the initial sound back into that room. It would look like boundary-less space, without the vacuum. Dead as a doornail.
But plop your ears in the same situation, and you’ll go batty in minutes. Walk down the corridors of a concert hall, or strap two pieces of foam an inch from your ears if you’re having trouble conjuring up the image. It’s disorienting to be in an environment that dead. Your brain feels uneasy when it’s not receiving feedback your body is actually in the room, like a horseman with his head cut off.
We feel most comfortable in environments somewhere between acoustically dead and riotously loud. For instance, a loungeroom has a combination of hard surfaces, bookshelves lined with gloriously diffusing literature, and sound absorbing sofas covered in throw pillows. You can easily hold a conversation without feeling like you’re in a padded cell, you might even have a nice B&O stereo… but it’s useless for critical listening.
Thomas’ contention is, to get the best performance out of the speakers and the engineer, they each need to effectively ‘see’, or hear, different rooms. His Front To Back (FTB) mastering suites and control rooms are the outworking of this philosophy."
Dan.
There's a lot to be said for acoustic comfort in a room. We probably all know it instinctively, but some rooms just make it easy to be in. Whether for conversations, concerts, replay of recorded material, or recording. Most rooms contribute enormously to psychoacoustics, eg fatigue, and what makes them comfortable is much overlooked IMO. Certainly not 'dead' or 'live', but I think we all feel it even if it's ignored or not recognised.
I think acoustic attenuation in air and by absorbtion at boundaries is minimum phase, and superposition of reflections certainly is. Anyone know for certain ?
After I posted my comment, i thought about it. It's clearly nothing to do with latency or GD.
In filters that show pre and post ringing to an impulse stimulus, I think this is caused by the HF components propagating through the filter faster than the LF components. This has nothing to do with electrical properties of course, but the mathematical processes. Thus, causality is preserved.
It is reassuring, while it does not change anything for me ;-)
(En Français: "Ça me fait une belle jambe")
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Thanks Waly
May be this is the mechanism behind my inability to hear any detrimental effect (if there is one) from the steep roll-off subsonic filter (I tried again from no filter , to 6dB/oct , to 12 and up to 48dB/oct).
George
- An Acoustics Primer : Recording Magazine -
For a discussion of control rooms and a bit about LEDE.
For a discussion of control rooms and a bit about LEDE.
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