should a control room be dead or alive?

[wes480]

I still havn't gotten good answers on this and why...

I would think the point of a control room would be for it to be dead...so, you are only hearing what is coming out of your speakers...and mixing according to that.

But lots of things I have read heard say the best control room is alive...has wood floors and such...

Anyone have anymore comments on this?

Also, in terms of size of the control room, for nearfield monitors...how important is it to have a lot of space? Again I figure since all you want to do is listen to what is coming out of the speakers....a small room would be just fine...

thoughts, please!

-Wes

 

[Brian01]

From what I have been reading, you dont want it dead, or your mixes will all be too bright, and too live will give you muddy mixes. You want something in between. This link has some good info:


http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html

 

[Guernica]

yup, what he said...... good link too, thanks

 

[wes480]

i see....well then, I just need to determine the perfect RT-60 time and try to achieve that for the room.

 

[vox]

You might find this interesting

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/1997_articles/jan97/controlrooms.html

 

[MacAver]

Hi!

I have a simple drawing of a radio studio. This is issued 1986 on the Sound And Vision fair in Stockholm 1986 but it is used as a base for many builders of demo studios. It shows the studio and the control room and how the walls should be built. Soft/hard walls. This is how all the Swedish National Radio studios are built. They are not perfectly fit for demo studios but a good base to start from.
The text is in Swedish and the drawing is on the last page of the pdf document. If anyone is interested, send me a mail and I will try to translate the draft text into English.

http://w1.836.telia.com/~u83603377/Vision86Studio_kontrollrum.pdf

The black wall parts describes the soft zones on the drawing and it is built like room-in-room.

 

[wes480]

hmmm, thats a pretty cool diagram - too bad its in german

 

[wes480]

vox - thanks a lot for that article..

really gave me the perspective on this thing that I was missing...

Not sure on the exact specifics yet...but, I am going to read that one more time and basically get to work...

I think I can come up with a pretty cool control room...

In the end, I think thats more important than how the room is for recording. There is so much you can do with mic placement and such.

Mixing is what will kill ya. Glad I am not going to do a tiny little room inside of a room now, also.

 

[frequency_]

hi

when you re mixing music you need to concider that the music is going to be played in places like a living room, a car, the kitchen, hopefully a bar etc. all these places are live and reverberant. if you re mixing in a dead control room you might end up adding more reverb than you should, or if you re mixing in a very live control room you might add less reverb than you should... anyway it is said that a control should have a reverb of 0.3 to 0.5 seconds. hope that helped

 

[Pinachi]

What is this , make my self feel better because i have a crapy mix room thread?

 

[Gorty]

What is this , make my self feel better because i have a crapy mix room thread?

At least you haven't got the Dork tweaking all your knobs and pan settings when you turn your back!

 

[Pinachi]

At least you haven't got the Dork tweaking all your knobs and pan settings when you turn your back!

next time he tries to tweak the knobs,kick him back under the mixing desk

Oh dont trust him with the reverb and delay..but you probably allready know that,ha ha ha ha oh yeah he is learning how to pan now,but since you dont teach him,he calls here.Oh BTW he said he likes your studio better,talking about some kind of expensive gear??? You better not spoil him,i sent him to you to get the inside scoop on mixing but you cant keep him!

 

[Gorty]

next time he tries to tweak the knobs,kick him back under the mixing desk

Oh dont trust him with the reverb and delay..but you probably allready know that,ha ha ha ha oh yeah he is learning how to pan now,but since you dont teach him,he calls here.Oh BTW he said he likes your studio better,talking about some kind of expensive gear??? You better not spoil him,i sent him to you to get the inside scoop on mixing but you cant keep him!

Yer I have given him a few tips on reverb and delay but he doesn't listen to me! He really likes playing with the panning knobs! Did you say I CAN'T keep him?

I relistened to a mix I did the other night and the bloody Dork has now started friggin around with my compressor settings............the funny thing is he actually did a good job!........shit...did I just say that?

He actually said that you taught him all about compression!..Thanx Pinachi!
He's been asking about you and he says he misses you and is wondering what you have got him for Christmas!

I didn't think that I would ever say this but I think I am starting to like the Dork!

 

[TexRoadkill]

i see....well then, I just need to determine the perfect RT-60 time and try to achieve that for the room.

I've been told a RT60 of about 1/4-1/2 a second is desirable. The trick with absorption is to keep the room balanced so you have the same decay across the whole frequency spectrum.