ACOUSTIC DESIGN

OF A MUSIC OR SPEECH RECORDING STUDIO

ACOUSTICS II
BUILDING SCIENCES AND SERVICES

AMMANI NAIR A.2022.2008 | BHAVIKA AGGARWAL A.2004.2008

SPA DELHI IIIRD YEAR SECTION ‘A’
Frequency
It is the measurement of the number of times that a repeated event occurs per
unit time. All sound waves are travelling at about the same speed. In the case of
sound waves, the number of wave peaks that goes by per unit time is the
frequency or pitch.

Wavelength
Sound is actually "compression" waves in a medium. When something makes a
sound, the air is compressed or rarified in waves that travel out from that source
in all directions. The wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a
wave pattern.

Short Wavelength
High Frequency

Long Wavelength
Low Frequency
Absorption Sound waves
In acoustics, the reduction in sound pressure from source
levels through the conversion of sound energy
to heat, captured within an acoustic attenuator.
The opposite of reflection. Some energy
absorbed
attenuate :
to reduce in strength
Some energy
transmitted
Reflection
As relates to sound, a return of residual sound,
after striking a surface within a room or space. Some energy
The opposite of absorption. reflected
Reverberation
The persistence of sound in a particular space
after the original sound is removed.
or
The repetition of a sound resulting from
reflection of the sound waves.
 typical loudest
A reverberation, or reverb, is created crescendo of orchestra
100db
when a sound is produced in an enclosed
space causing a large number of echoes 60db drop used to
to build up and then slowly decay as the define the standard
sound is absorbed by the walls and air. reverberation time

The length of this sound decay is the 40db

reverberation time.
In a more reflective room, it will take
longer for the sound to die away.
In a very absorbent room, the sound will
die away quickly.
But the time for reverberation to
completely die away will depend upon
•how loud the sound was to begin with
•the acuity of the hearing of the observer.
typical room
background level
Standard reverberation time, RT60
The time required for reflections of
a direct sound to decay by 60 dB
below the level of the direct sound.
or
The time for the sound to die away
to a level 60 decibels below its
original level.
Calculation of RT60
Sabine equation

RT60 = 0.163 x V/A

where
V= volume of the room
and
A= effective absorbing area
= α x S (surface area)

The fractional loss of sound waves due to absorption and

transmittance is characterized by an absorption coefficient α,
which can take values between 0 and 1, 1 being a perfect absorber.
 Optimum
Reverberation Time 8.5s. Notre Dame.

5.5s. Muddy, severe loss of articulation, can’t understand speech

3.5s. Fuller, richer musical sound, some loss of articulation

1.5 to 2.5s. General purpose: both speech and music

1s. Clearer articulation of speech, loss of richness and fullness

0.3s. Difficulty hearing in the back, difficulty hearing the bass

0s. No reverberation.
 Recording Studio
an assemblage of equipment,
spaces and persons such that
a performance in sound may
be created and recorded
onto a medium for later
reproduction. containing the
equipment for
recording, editing
Control room and mixing music

Recording room
where or studio high-volume
the instruments like
musicians drums are played
perform Machine room to separate their
sounds from those
the microphones
in the main room
are picking up
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.

The fundamental wavelength for each of these

modes is half the dimension.

For example, a 6m wide room will have a fundamental

mode wavelength of 3m and so a fundamental mode
frequency of 14Hz. Even though this creates many
little resonant peaks in the response, the peaks are
close together, so the average response is fairly flat.

Larger the dimension, smaller the frequency.

Hence, larger rooms are better acoustically than
smaller rooms because the modes are spaced
more closely, yielding an overall flatter
response.
Another important factor in the design of studios and
listening rooms is the ratio between the length, width,
and height.

The worst shape is a cube having all three dimensions

the same. A cube has the fewest number of peaks, and
therefore the greatest distance between peaks, because
all three dimensions resonate at the same frequencies.

In an ideal room, each dimension will contribute peaks

at different frequencies, thus creating more peaks
having a smaller distance between them.

Height Width Length

1.00 1.14 1.39
1.00 1.28 1.54
1.00 1.60 2.33

A few "ideal" ratios of room height, width, and

length that professional studio designers agree
should be used if possible.
Standing Waves
It is a wave characterized by lack of vibration at certain points. When sound
waves bounce off the surrounding walls and create a pressure front that makes
them "stand still" within the space itself, they are called standing waves. It
occurs when your loudspeakers play a sustained bass tone.

STANDING
SOUND WAVES
SOUND
SOURCE
WAVES

WALLS

Studios should ideally have no parallel walls, as these create standing waves
in the space inside. It is also always better to create angles and chamfers
instead of rights angled corners.
 Acoustic Insulation
SOUND
WAVES The reduction of the sound transmission from
one space to another especially significant
through walls and floors between separate
buildings and from external sources.

OUTSIDE INSIDE

Acoustic Treatment
The use of sound-absorbing materials to give
a room a desired degree of freedom from echo
and reverberation.

SOUND-
ABSORBING
MATERIAL
Acoustic insulation or reduction due to
sound transmission and leakage is
accommodated for in construction by:
•using thick massive walls
•isolating the building structures, generally
by floating the walls and floors
•hanging the ceilings with shock mounts.

Basement studios are preferred, because

they are inherently insulated.

Walls can be insulated with glass wool and

than covered with canvas cloth. Ceilings are
tiled with bhusa board, which have both
insulation and acoustic properties.

Floating floors and floating ceilings are often

employed because the air gap insulates the
room. They are also used to variably change
the dimensions of the room.
Doors and windows also act as leaks and
it is important to insulate these openings.

Doors are a minimum of 80mm thick,

wood, sandwiched with foam in between.

Normally studio designers employ a

sound lock, that is, a double door system.

The door frame also has a rubber beading

running the entire length.

External windows are avoided. Internal

windows, like the one between the
recording room and the control room, are
carefully designed so as to minimize
sound loss. Double panes with an
insulating air gap are preferred.
Why do we need acoustic treatment?
All rooms sound differently, both in their
amount of sound wave reflection and their
frequency response. A mix that sounds good
in the room it was created in (which has its
own particular frequency response) is likely
to sound very different in other rooms.

Therefore, the only practical solution is to

make the room as accurate as possible so
any variation others experience is due solely
to the response of their room.
There are four primary goals of acoustic treatment:
• To prevent standing waves and acoustic
interference from affecting the frequency
response of recording studios and listening
rooms
• To reduce modal ringing in small rooms and
lower the reverb time in larger studios,
churches, and auditoriums
• to absorb or diffuse sound in the room to avoid
ringing and flutter echoes, and improve stereo
imaging
• to keep sound from leaking into or out of a
room. That is, to prevent your music from
disturbing the neighbours, and to keep the
sound of passing trucks from getting into your
microphones.
 Acoustic
Treatment

Absorbers Diffusers

Controls midrange
Bass trap, is mainly
and high frequency
for low frequencies
reflections
Live Room
A live room is a room with little sound absorption
and a lot of reflectivity. It has a long RT-60. A live
room is generally where the recording happens,
but the “liveliness” or reflectivity changes from
studio to studio.

Dead Room
A dead room is a room with very thick sound
absorbers, causing a very dull sound with no
reverberation. It ensure there is no reflection and
the sound heard is only direct sound wave. The
control room is required to be a dead room. It is
impossible to make a completely dead room

“Live" and "dead" as described here concern only the mid and upper
frequencies. Separate low frequency treatment is required.
A dead room is good for solo vocal tracks but not for
instrumental because that produces an eerie and unnatural
sound. A hard (reflective) floor gives a nice ambience when
miking drums, guitar amps, and acoustic instruments.
Reflective floor helps achieve a natural sound when recording
acoustic instruments.

The acoustics of the room should be a combination of both,

absorption and reflection. The amount of each will determine
how live the room is.

There is no one correct way to treat every room because

different engineers prefer a different amount of liveness,
though smaller rooms require more absorptive surfaces while
large studios can have all reflective surfaces.

Now days, a completely dead room is also adequate since

computer softwares can be used to create an ambience, but a
good „base‟ track with ambient sounds is always preferred and
is considered better.
Diffusers are used to reduce or eliminate
repetitive echoes that occur in rooms having
parallel walls and a flat ceiling.

Diffusion is often used in addition to absorption to

tame sound reflections. Such treatment is universally
accepted as better than making the room completely
dead by covering all of the walls with absorbent
material.

The simplest type of diffuser is one or more

sheets of plywood attached to a wall at a slight
angle, to prevent sound from bouncing
repeatedly between the same two walls.
Alternatively, the plywood can be bent into a
curved shape.

For diffusion to be effective, you need to treat

more than just a few small areas. When walls
are parallel, adding diffusion to only a small
percentage of the surface area will not reduce
objectionable echoes as well as treating one or
both walls more completely.
 Like diffusion, midrange and high frequency
absorption helps minimize echoes and ringing.
But unlike diffusion, absorption also reduces a
room's reverb time.

The most effective absorber for midrange and

high frequencies is rigid fiberglass.

Rigid fiberglass is not really rigid like a piece

of wood or hard plastic. Rigid fiberglass is
made of the same material as regular
fiberglass, but it is woven and compressed to
reduce its size and increase its density, i.e. It
is more rigid than the fiberglass used for home
insulation.

As with all absorbent materials, the thicker it

is, lower the frequency it will absorb to.
or
If fiberglass one inch thick absorbs reasonably
well down to 500 Hz, when two inches thick, it
is equally absorbent down to 250 Hz.
Acoustic interference occurs inside a room when sound waves bounce off
the floor, walls, and ceiling, and collide with each other and with waves still
coming from the loudspeaker or other sound source. Left untreated, this
creates severe peaks and dips in the frequency response that change as
you move around in the room.

The only way to get rid of these is to avoid or reduce the reflections that
cause them. This is done by applying treatment that absorbs low
frequencies to the corners, walls, and other surfaces so the surfaces do
not reflect the waves back into the room. A device that absorbs low
frequencies is called a bass trap.

Bass traps are also used to reduce modal ringing, that causes some bass
notes to sustain longer than others

point of
collision

original reflected
There are a number of ways to create a
bass trap. The simplest and least
expensive is to install a large amount of
thick rigid fiberglass, spacing it well away
from the wall or ceiling. When the rigid
fiberglass is mounted in a corner like this,
the large air gap helps it absorb to fairly
low frequencies.

A bass trap fixed onto a corner

In plan
Quaternote, Shivalik, New Delhi
Basement studio
Wood paneled doors Glass wool covered
with foam insulation with canvas cloth
inside and rubber panels on all walls. In
beading along the some places dado
Lobby edges. wood on bottom half
Door Thickness: 80mm of wall.
Sound lock

Carpeted flooring with

wooden floor beneath
in both the recording
and control room.

The window between

Control Recording
the control recording
Room Room room consists of 2
layers of double glazed
glass tilted towards the
inside. The vacuum gap
has a layer of stones
with silica below.
Fender Music Academy, Shahpur Jat, New Delhi

The studio is only

acoustically treated, not
insulated.
Machine
Room Recording Many bass traps and
Room diffusers hang on the
wall. The floors are
carpeted.

Windows and doors act

as major leaks.

diffusers

Control
Room

bass traps
Bibliography:
• Acoustic Treatment and Design for Recording Studios and Listening
Rooms, Ethan Winer
www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.htm
• Reverberation time
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/acoustic/revtim.html#c2
• An Introduction to Recording Studio Design
http://www.ahisee.com/content/rsdpart1.html#TOC16
•The Architecture Of Sound: Designing Places Of Assembly; Peter Lord,
Duncan Templeton; Architectural Press, 1986

Case studies:
• Quaternote, Shivalik, New Delhi
• Fender Music Academy, Shahpur Jat, New Delhi

Special thanks to Gaurav and Nikhil for showing us around their studios, and
to Akshay for helping us with the technical bits.

Reverberation graphic: www.acousticalsurfaces.com/acoustic_IOI/101_6.htm

Rigid fiberglass photograph by Ethan Winer.
All other photographs and drawings by authors.