Page 11 - 2013 Spring

Fig. 2 An example of a garage studio
plan for the main studio and control booth. Since most of the composition work is done at a keyboard with small digital mix boards, the traditional con- trol room layout was not used. Instead, three work stations, each with a key- board, a mix board and a computer, were arrayed along the front and side walls of the control room. Each could be used simultaneously during record- ing and mixing sessions. The main composing station was designed around the users’ equipment. Since lis- tening is done via small near-field loudspeakers, there was no need for large stereo monitors and no need for a large loudspeaker bridge above the main window. This arrangement freed up the center of the room for a client couch and social area instead of being dominated by a massive mixing con- sole.
Hum studio consists of several rooms accessed from a small foyer sep- arating the studio from the control room. Foyers can sometimes be used as isolation rooms particularly if there is a need for feedback such as with an elec- tric guitar. Two isolation booths, with sliding glass doors, are available for individual instruments such as a piano or vocals. The walls and ceiling are constructed of multiple layers of dry- wall with a wood panel finish on the ceiling. Square quilted absorbers are hung from hooks on the walls and can be removed or folded to reduce their area. The mid-frequency reverberation time is about 1.2 sec and flat with fre- quency. Figure 4 shows the range of reverberation times appropriate for a sound studio.
Bass trapping is done using the return-air plenum built above the ceil- ing as illustrated in Fig. 5. Flexible ducts in this area make the space into a bass absorbing plenum. The area is filled with fiberglass insulation. Low frequency energy can enter via the dif- fusers and break out of the ducts into the treated volume. The segmented ceiling requires surface-applied wood diffusers to control flutter echo. The control room is designed to be much deader than the studio, about 0.5 sec at mid-frequencies. The walls are faced with 2” (52 mm) cloth-wrapped fiber- glass panels. The ceiling is hard—two
Fig. 3 Hum Studio A, Santa Monica, California, USA (Acoustician: Marshall Long Acoustics, Architect: Walter Meyer Associates)
10 Acoustics Today, April 2013