Content area
Full Text
It was a dream come true for a guy like me: Not only would I design the acoustics for a major player's personal mix room, but I'd be working in a dream location - a wooded hillside in Ojai, Calif.
My first visit to Paul Massey's future film mixing room revealed only a 40x22foot concrete slab and a partial course or two of Perform Wall blocks that would comprise the walls of the studio-to-be. (For information on Perform Wall, see the sidebar "Perform WaU- What the Heck is That?") My goals were simple: I wanted a neutral room so the mixes that Massey heard would match what he was recording. And because he normally mixes in the Gary Grant Theatre at Sony Pictures Entertainment (Culver City, Calif.), it was imperative that mixes from his new studio translate to that room.
Step One: The Shell Game
Usually, I'm presented with the dimensions of a shell in an existing building. On this project, I could optimize the room size. The best acoustic performance starts with proper room dimensions - get them right, and the room modes will be well-distributed in the frequency domain, thus avoiding a lot of problems.
The room's width was set - literally - in concrete, but I could adjust the height and length by adjusting the ceiling elevation and the rear-wall position. Using a spreadsheet designed to calculate room modes, I plugged in initial dimensions and calculated the modes. Like all first iterations, the modes weren't distributed very well. I adjusted the ceiling elevation and the rear wall position by a few inches until the modes were evenly distributed. With a decent idea of what the room would do in the LF region, Massey and the architect were notified of the changes and the contractor finished the shell to these specs.
It is commonly thought that non-parallel walls and a canted ceiling are the way to go in a sonically sensitive room, but I disagree. Flat, plumb and square can be good. In a rectangular room, you have a better idea of what performance to expect You can predict the room modes and their location, and they won't be distorted by varying dimensions. This makes controlling bass response easier, and as listeners...