. my friends are saying "that's gonna completely ruin it" and i've been worried
Hardly. EVERY object in a room INFLUENCES what a mic or your ears hear. Whether or not you could tell the difference depends on many factors. However, your question was regarding this influence of the column on the "modes", which is low frequency. IF, you had a mic positioned adjacent to the column in such a way as it would pick up short path "comb filter" effects, you might hear it on your monitors, which is the whole point of having a reflection free zone and a TDG(time delay gap) in the control room engineering position, that is LONGER than in the STUDIO. Masking of comb filtering effects by control room early reflections is why most HR enthusiasts can not hear them while monitoring. This is only posible though, when you have a seperate control room with a TDG greater than that of the studio. It is this TDG in the studio that you need to hear in the control room to determine its effect on the recording, good or bad. At least from my understanding.
As to ruining the acoustics in your room, hardly. If anything, it might break up specular reflection off the entire wall, although it would be frequency dependent, and very small if any noticeable diffusion at all. Actually, large geometrical protrudences like this are INTENTIONALLY built in LARGE pro studios to diffuse large wall/ceiling specular reflections, but still, they are only as good as the wavelength/size relationship. Other types of diffuser designs such as QUADRATIC RESIDUE SEQUENCE or prime number devices, function by RANDOM time shift of reflections by using wells of varying depths and widths, which is exactly what the column would do, but at what frequency who knows. A reflection off the column face may introduce a phase shift of some kind at some frequency, but thats diffusion for you.
If anything, you could incorporate this column as a series of wells that just might help LOW FREQUENCY diffusion if the room were large enough and the wall long enough. It would have to be included in the well depth and width calculations though, to maximize the randomness of the diffusion effect. Of course, there is a school of thought that says ....simply using a random pattern of geometrical offsets in depth and width may acheive a diffusion of sorts better than a specular reflection off a long wall. And THEN, there is the school of thought that says FORGET the geometrical device concept.. A good start at diffusion can be had by simply use PATCHWORK pattern of small absorption panels around the room, like a checkerboard. And then there is a school of thought that says a diffuse sound field in SMALL rooms can NOT exist anyway, as RT-60 decay rates of differnt frequency bands vary significantly. Thats why ABSORPTION is your friend in small rooms.
There is lots of information on these subjects here. Much more than a little post by me could give anyway. Hahahahaha!
http://forum.studiotips.com/index.php
Well, hope this helps a bit more. My disclaimer is in full force here though...ie...I'm NO expert.
fitZ
