When dealing with audio production everyone is trying to get the best sound. But what exactly does that mean. In reality, everyone is trying to get the audio to sound the best. When recording audio, most people can agree that the best recording is the one that captures the sound as close as possible to the original. And when mixing or playing audio, most people can agree that the best playback is when the sound is as neutral as possible to represent what was recorded along with any processing applied.
Therefore, when recording and playing back audio it is best to do so in an environment which has been acoustically treated. Now, sound treating a "Live Room" for recording audio and a "Mix Room" for listening to audio should be done differently. The idea is that a "Live Room" should not be a dead space because the instruments or audio being recorded would sound weird. It is true that if you were to record a sound source in an anechoic chamber (a room with no reflections), you would capture the exact sound from the source, but you would not capture the sound from the source as we normally hear it. Normally, we would hear a sound source inside a room or a space which has surfaces where the sound can reflect and that is what we are accustomed to. If there are no reflections (or very little reflections) in a recording, we would perceived that sound as weird. Many studios tend to record ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) in a sound booth that has very little reflections. But this is done in order to record the dialogue with no reflections or space identity but the sound editor understands that the recording needs to be treated with some sort of echo to mimic the space where the original audio was recorded. Even so, when space is available most engineers prefer to record ADR in a room that is not completely dead and one that is larger than a sound booth. When recording for music, again, it is mostly preferred to be in a larger room which is not completely dead, which is called a "Live Room".
Although a "Live Room" is not meant to be dead of reflections, it also has to have control. Meaning, you don't want to be in a room where the slap back reflections get recorded and confused with the sound source. Therefore, some absorption is desired but also diffusion. Absorption prevents the sound from reflecting, where diffusion allows the sound to bounce back into the room, but disperses it in a way that it prevents the sound from being confused with the original source. This is something that naturally happens in larger rooms. Hence, introducing diffusion in a room gives it a sense of the room being a larger one. At SiniSound, we have taken great care to have a great balance between absorption and diffusion in our "Live Room" in order to create a space which produces incredible recordings which sound terrific as if they were recorded in a much larger room, without introducing undesired echo/reflections.
A "Control Room" on the other hand, is slightly different. You spend as much as you can on your Speaker Monitors because they are the ones that will reproduce the sound that you recorded. You want the best you can afford, which are very neutral and do not introduce anything to the sound that is not there. But if the room you have them is has a lot of reflections, then certain frequencies will be boosted over other. This will cause you to make poor decisions and boost or cut frequencies based on what you are listening, and not necessarily what is there. It's the equivalent of driving while blindfolded. You could purchase the best speakers, but if the room is not great, the speakers will not be reproducing sound accurately. In a "Control Room", you'll want more absorption than in a "Live Room" to block reflections back to the mixing position, while also introducing some diffusion on the back wall to disperse the sound in order to not cause unwanted reflections. The Surround Sound Control Room at SiniSound has been carefully calibrated to make sure both absorption and diffusion have been introduced in the proper amounts so that the mix position has a very detailed and accurate sound.
Finally, one thing that must be mentioned when dealing with sound treatment is low frequencies. Unless you are mixing in a very very large room, the most egregious problem that you will have to deal with is low frequency buildup. Because the physical nature and the length of low frequency waves, smaller rooms tend to create a buildup of these low frequencies in different areas of the room. This creates havoc in those frequencies and makes it very difficult to mix the low end in a neutral way that can translate to other environment consistently. The solution for this is having absorption elements in the room that can handle low frequencies. This kind of treatment usually requires tremendous amounts of space and surface area. Most smaller rooms are unable to provide enough low end treatment with conventional methods. One solution we have found is a different technology. One that uses active carbon inside an absorption panel. The active carbon is a very porous material and therefore it's surface are per volume is incredibly large. This added surface are is the one that is able to trap much lower frequencies with less depth as standard fibrous solutions. At SiniSound, we found a company that uses this technology and we believe produces some of the best (if not the best) sound absorption panels in the world. Acoustic Fields is the company, and we invested heavily into their panels and are able to solve the low frequency dilemma both in our "Control Room" and our "Live Room". Their 10" thick panels are set on casters which allows us to customize the space to fit the exact needs of either the recording or the mixing that will be performed in our studio. Come hear the difference and the tight definition on the low frequencies that is possible at our facilities.
