Part 3: Studio acoustics and design

Part 3: Studio acoustics and design

Probably the most important consideration when building a studio is the acoustics and sound design of the recording studio.  

A good studio must have acoustic isolation: This prevents noises from transmitting through the structure of the building into the studio environment.  

Frequency balance: The frequency components of a room shouldn't adversely affect the acoustic balance of an instrument.  and/or the speakers.

Acoustic separation:  The acoustic environment should not interfere with any of the other acoustic environments.  

Reverberation:  The control of sonic reflections within a space is important for maximizing intelligibility of a sound.  

Studio Types

Although the basic function is the same in all of the types of music studios, differences will often follow the form, function, and budgets of the task at hand.  Some of the most common types of studio types include:

Professional music studios

Audio-for-visual production studios

project studios

Portable studios

All of these studios will vary in size and function 

The Project studio

The majority of production studios fall into this category. The function is usually for an artist to have a personal production studio.  Generally, a production studio is boult into an artist's home.

Part 2 addendum 

Reverberation

I feel that it is important to talk about reverberation as it is key to all of sound.  Reverb is when a wave bounces off of a solid surface  and hits our ear multiple times.  simply, it looks like this:

see all of the reflected arrows on the top of the diagram?  that is the reverberated sound.  and the observer will hear those reflected sound waves at a different time than the initial sound wave labeled "direct sound. 

Part 2: Sound and hearing

Part 2: Sound and hearing

The Basics of Sound

Sound arrives at the ear in form of periodic variations in atmospheric pressure called sound-pressure waves.  When these waves hit your eardrum, the signal travels to your brain where it is then interpreted as sound.

All waves have seven characteristics.  These characteristics are:
•Amplitude
•Frequency
•Velocity
•Wavelength
•Phase
•Harmonic content
•Envelope

Amplitude

Amplitude can be described as how loud a sound is.  In technical terms, this is how far away from zero a wave travels.  In this example of a sine wave, the bold line that travels through the wave is zero decibels.  The amplitude, Frequency, and Wavelength are labeled in this example.  Amplitude is the distance above and below the centerline of the waveform.  

Frequency

Frequency is how often the waveform repeats.  You can see that for simplicity, I have labeled the peaks of the wave.  Every time that a peak occurs, is one wavelength (one can measure wavelength from any point on the waveform.  But for simplicity, I have chosen the peaks of the waveform.  The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch.   

Velocity

Velocity is how fast a wave travels through a medium (such as air).  Many experiments have been done, and we know that sound travels through air at approximately 1130 feet per second.  The temperature of the air and medium affects greatly the speed of a wave.  A wave will travel through cold air slower than it will through warm air.  

Wavelength 

The wavelength of a waveform (represented by the greek lambda λ)  is the physical distance in a medium between the beginning and end of one cycle.  

It is calculated using:

λ=V

     f

Where V is the velocity and f is frequency

Phase

Because a cycle can begin at any point on a waveform, it follows that whenever two or more waveforms are involved, their relative amplitudes can, and often will be different at any one point in time.    In this case, the two waveforms will be added to each other to create a louder sound than originally.   

Notice that the two waves on the right are perfectly in phase with each other, thus their amplitudes are added to each other making the overall wave twice as loud.  On the right, however, the two waves are perfectly out of phase with each other, thus the resulting wave is nothing.  This is extremely difficult to do in nature 

Harmonic content

Up to this point, all we have discussed was the sine wave, which is a pure tone without harmonic content.  The sine wave is made up of a single frequency that produces sound at a specific pitch.  Musical instruments create what are called harmonics that give it its unique sound as an instrument.  For example, a guitar has different harmonic content from an oboe, or a violin.  

Envelope

Each noise has what is called an envelope.  An envelope is defined as a unique difference in amplitude from onset to release of a noise.  Each sound has four distinct stages in the envelope.  These stages are: 

•Attach

•Decay

•Sustain

•Release

Part 1: Introduction

Part 1:  Introduction

The Recording Studio

A commercial studio is made up of one or more acoustic spaces to ensure the best possible capture of sound for each instrument.  There may be separate rooms for each instrument in some higher end studios.  This is to ensure the best quality recording possible.

For example, the room that best suits the recording of a guitar is not the room that best suits the recording of a piano.

The control room
Ideally the studio's control room is acoustically isolated from the studio.  As well as the surrounding areas.
The console (or board) can be thought of as the recording artist's canvas for the recording engineer.  This room also houses the recording, effects, and control equipment.

Live/On-Location Recording
Unlike the traditional multitrack recording environment where overdubs are often used, in on-location recording is created in realtime.

The recording Process
The recording process is as follows:
1. Preparation
2. Recording
3. Overdubbing
4. Mixdown
5. Mastering
6. Product Manufacture


In the Preparation Phase these are the the following must be addressed:
•What is the goal?
•What is the budget?
•What is the estimated studio costs?
•Do we have enough money?
•How much will it cost to manufacture CDs?
What are the advertising costs?
•How will we sell our music and to whom?
•Have we practiced enough?
•Are our instruments, voices and heads ready for the task ahead?
•are there any legal issues to consider?

Recording
The first phase in the multitrack production process is recording.  This is where one or more sound sources is picked up by a microphone and recorded to a device (weather that be a reel to reel machine, or computer).

Reel to Reel

ProTools

In general, audio recording looks like this:

And that is a general overview of audio engineering.

New series!

Soon I will undertake a new series.  In this new series, I will be teaching audio engineering, and all of the technical side of music production.  Stay tuned!

Apologies

I do apologize for the infrequency of updates during the past few months.  School takes precedence over everything.   Now that the semester is over, I plan on posting more often.