History
I started working on acoustic designs in 1971 at the Rainbow Theatre in London.
The building was designed originally for music hall unamplified performances
and so had a natural acoustic reverb time of 2.9 seconds. This made
amplified rock music almost unintelligible.
We started with The WHO for a week and realised we had to do something quickly about that reverb.
We built a machine to manufacture folded acoustic panels of the correct
wavelength to absorb the troublesome frequencies and placed these panels under material
at strategic surfaces all over the stalls and circle – the result was astounding.
From being a noisy 3,500 seater box the sound was controlled and became – quite
good, really.
Since then I have designed and helped to build about 20 sound studios. Four of
these have been for my own use, and the rest for commercial ventures in the UK,
Sweden, USA
and Australia.
The principles haven’t changed much over the years, but the materials have and
so has the style required. Gone are the days of maximum damping, dead spaces, ultra-heavy
bass traps. While there is still a need to have some dead areas in a studio complex,
varieties of live areas are also very useful, especially since the trend has been
increasingly to realism in many genres.
And in a listening space it’s important to consider who will be the dominant
listening public, and where and on what and where will they hear your music?
TV – MP3 – CD –Theatre - game consol?
In the car – on a train – in a club - at home - these are all factors to be taken into
consideration when designing an acoustic working space for recording or mixing.
Everybody has different needs in this respect and I’m happy to listen to yours
if were going to get the job right for your special needs.
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