Audio Theory

Audio Theory



Audio Theory

Introduction/statement

A recording studio is a room equipped with apparatus specially made for the making and chronicling of audio performances so that they may be kept for replications and reproductions at a later time. There are different kinds of studios in which recordings can be made. Some of which are home studios which are of course built in a person's house and professional studios which have different specialties like pre-production, sampling and mixing down.

The recording studio design for a commercial studio would depend highly on its field of concentration. Pre-production recording studios deal with, of course pre-recording. Studios that focus on sampling, on the other hand, would handle manipulating of complete musical scores with the use of a sampler. As for mix-down studios, these are the ones designed for the remixing, or making new versions, of already finished audio tracks. This could be done with the use of different tools that help in the synchronization of different beats and recorders that would put all of these together. Other types of professional studios are Sound to Picture studios, Radio, Speech and Drama studios, and Cutting studios. The first would deal with putting audio to edited video like movies and commercials. The second is made specifically for recording interviews and dramas. While the third is specified for the relocation of material from a variety of sources to the final master disks.

Floor plan with supporting analysis

One of the most important properties of a room is its modes, or natural resonant frequencies which are related to its length, width, and height. More often than not the room you use for a studio or home theater has already been built, so knowing the modes and other permanent properties of the room is academic at best. After all, what's the point in calculating the modes if you can't do anything about them? And since all listening rooms need treatment at all low frequencies, knowing the modes doesn't even help you determine what type of bass traps you need. Perhaps you are lucky enough to have the luxury of designing an audio room and controlling its size and shape before it is built. In that case you can make a meaningful difference in the room's acoustic qualities by carefully choosing proper dimensions. If not, there's still plenty you can do to make an existing room as good as it can be.

The size and shape of a room determines its natural resonances - often called room modes. Every rectangular room has three sets of primary modes, with one each for the length, width, and height. If you have an irregular room shape or angled walls, you can average the dimensions to get a rough idea of the mode frequencies. That is, if the length wall is angled, making the width 10 feet at one end and 12 feet at the other, you can use 11 as the average for the width dimension. Rooms with irregular shapes, such as an alcove, have more than three sets of ...