Audio Technology - Issue 15
Room to move Today is an odd time for me. Right now I'm still in my old King Cross-based studio, but by this time tomorrow I'll have moved into my new studio, and, what's always weird about writing for a magazine, by the time you read this I will be working away on somebody's record in my new studio.

This new studio is in a new multi-million dollar facility in Camperdown, Sydney. It's not my facility but my business will occupy some studios within it. I have built a ground up 5.1 mastering room. It has cost me a lot, a real lot. Like the rest of the facility no pebble has been left unturned in trying to do it right... this place is truly amazing. It is without doubt - in terms of gyprock, metal, air and wood - the best built studio complex I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few. A renowned acoustic architect designed all the rooms throughout the facility, and the actual acoustic architectural detail is astounding. Everybody who has come though who knows anything at all about building things (and many who don't), have had the same response. They walk up to the walls, touch them, put their hands inside the yet to be finished windows, run their fingers over the internal cavities between the totally isolated walls, and everyone of them has just smiled, then they say something like, "this must have cost a fortune", or, "jeez they're really going for it", or, like me, "shit, these guys must be mad!".

Architectural and structural build quality are very easy to assess. There are thousands of qualified builders who can put up your house or extend your patio or even knock up a bit of sound proofing to stop the neighbours complaining. In this new place it's amazing how they have obviously gone way above the normal run-of-the-mill construction -it's plain to see.

Of course, the sound of these lovingly constructed rooms is another thing entirely. For some reason this has been something that isn't so easy to assess. Which leads me to write about something that has had me amused, befuddled, and in the last couple of days, quite pissed me off. People don't seem to know what a good room sounds like. And I'm not talking about all the naive 'friends of a friend' who have milled through the facility to see the new studios being built, no, it's the sound engineers, the producers, the general type of folk who read this mag. I am astounded at how little the average walk-through sound engineer understands about what is going on. I can not believe the ignorance or plain abuse of acoustic folklore I have heard spouted by the dozens of sound tourists who are trying to impress whoever they're with.

I didn't know or didn't want to believe that most sound guys have no idea how to assess the actual sound of a room. As far as this new facility goes, I have spent many hours in most of the rooms as they near completion, and they all sound good to me. It's easy for me to tell, but it seems my way of figuring things out is a fair bit different to most of the passing circus.

The guy that I tip my hat to is the acoustic architect, he has drawn all these rooms from his head onto paper, computed what he figures is a desirable acoustic result for the applications of each room. And when I mean 'desirable', I mean that each room is different, each has its own purpose -some are for recording, some are for mixing, some are for little overdubs, some are for huge drum sounds... mine is for mastering. Anyways, this guy, the architect, figured out on paper, what they would sound like, specified the materials and construction and left it to the very efficient owner to actually make sure the plans were followed to the letter. He described to me over a cup of coffee how each room would sound and then baffled me with a dozen or so Egyptian looking equations to prove his point. I failed maths at school, but I had the highest mark in the state for music, so I just smiled and figured I would wait and see.


How do you test the sound of a room? How do you know when it's good, how do you know when it's true? Well, it seems that most engineers simply clap their hands a couple of times, listen for the flutter echoes and then proclaim the room to be good, or bad, live or dead, and then nine times out of ten give a feeble airy-fairy description of the sound. There is another set of dweebs who are a little more cautious and they don't want to proclaim a room as being worthy of recorded sound until they do some electronic testing - some kind of acoustic measurement system - these ones piss me off and they'd better steer clear of me because I'm not at all into that kind of electronic acoustic proof. I've seen enough charts and plots to realise that you can interpret them to say anything. Thanks to charts today's perfect room becomes tomorrow's blunder and next decade's joke. Remember the 'perfect' dead rooms of the 70s, or the live end/dead end ones that fixed that 'perfection' in the '80s, or the diffused ones that fixed that in the '90s? Well, it seems arrogant to proclaim that the emperor's new clothes fit any better today then they did in 1960. For me there is only one way to assess the acoustic property of a room, it seems blindingly obvious, but I am constantly astounded at how people ignore the obvious. What about this for an idea? You wait until the room is complete - not just an empty shell, but the whole story with the lounges, the desks, the knobs, and screen, and computer, and guitars - then when all of the equipment is in, you do something radical... you listen to the room! You use your ears for the purpose for which they were created, use some speakers, a familiar CD and compare it to the sounds and thoughts in your head, "hmm, this sounds better than it does at my place", or perhaps, "check out the bottom end, cool". (If you are not sure what sounds right, then you might want to have a think about how cut out you are for this audio engineering thing!) It is very easy to tell the sound of a good room. It sounds good. A good sounding room sounds nice for humans to interact with other humans in. When you talk to your mate, listen to the sound of the words from their mouth. If they sound a little weirder than usual, a little louder or quieter, boomer or brighter, then things are going astray.

What about if the sound of the music coming out of the speakers changes as you move around the room? Don't worry, that is completely normal. That is what happens in the outside world, that's what happens in your lounge room or your car, in a cafe or in a club, that's the actual physics and reality of sound. I have been listening to dozens of people (who should know better) tell each other that the rooms 'sound flat', as they go around clapping their hands they say "see, no flutter". Flutter is easy to get rid add or take out of a room. Getting a fairly even reverb time, where the bass and the treble die away at the same time is harder. And getting the same acoustic response in all zones of the room is pure fantasy.

If you want to find out if your studio will translate into the real world (I'm assuming you know how to mix) try this simple little test. Sit in the mix position - the spot you have been trying to get acoustically correct -and have a conversation with somebody. Listen to their voice. If it is easy to hear, doesn't ring or squawk, doesn't sound dull or bright, bingo!, you are as close to a good sounding room as I've ever heard. Humans love rooms that sound good - we put our lounges in them, stick in our televisions and chat to each other, we drive to work and chat to each other, go to a cafe and chat to each other - humans love to sit where it is easy to talk, where our message gets understood. And it's in these places that we also put our stereo systems - they're almost always in areas where it's comfortable to sit and talk. That's the great common denominator. When you are trying to make your music translate to the outside world, it will sound best in a room that is easy to talk in, and the idea of clapping twice to ascertain a room's qualities is just some three card trick to impress the tourists. Listen to the humans in your environment, because you can be assured of this essential ingredient: we don't put stereos in rooms that are no fun to talk in if we can possibly help it. Oh yeah, if we do, like when you stick a sound system into a big echoy club, inevitably they sound horrendous. But there again, try going back into that club to get the DJ to turn the sound off and ask for a refund. I bet the club owner wouldn't understand a word of what you're trying to say over the racket and his bouncers will ask you to 'step outside for a chat'!

So, if you want to test a room, all you need is your vocal chords, the human voice has a large enough range to do the job. Sure it will never tell you exactly what's going on in the lower bass or the super highs, but that's really not the game. By saying a room sounds good, I'm not saying the room is acoustically flat. Acoustically flat' has nothing to do with anything, the world is not flat, it's round - your lounge room is not flat, your speakers are not flat, St. Paul's cathedral in London is not flat - you don't need a room to be acoustically flat. You will figure out the other intricacies of a room as you listen to your chosen speakers and how they interact with the environment over time and experience. The bass will either be true or not, the tops will either be bright or not and you will learn to cope or not. But the mids, the vocal range, the place were all the humans in the world are predesignated to react to, that's the stuff to listen to when you first walk into a room. You don't have to clap or shout, walk around with your eyes closed or turn the music up really really loud, just ask yourself about the tone of your friend's voice. How is it different to their voice in your favourite listening room? If you're lucky, you might find it sounds much, much nicer, sweeter and with a softer, yet airier tone - that's my sound, that's what I'm looking for. I can't wait to put my equipment in the room tomorrow and have a chat with someone! If I'm by myself, well that's okay, I'm renowned for liking the sound of my own voice... I guess I talk a lot.

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