Room acoustics

Now, if we talk about studio technique versus home setups, there's no hard rule that an expensive console makes a track sound better.

It really comes down to room acoustics.

A small treated space can yield cleaner mic captures than a big echo chamber with cheap mics.

So before you chase gear, test your acoustic environment and adjust placement.

There's very few things that I disagree on.

But I do like the fact that you, room acoustics, it feels like is an important thing for you.

You, you, you, I mean, quite rightly, you, you feel it's a big part of any system.

Uh, and the fact that you like diffusion rather than excessive amounts of, of, of absorption.

Yeah.

Which kind of brings us to a system synergy conversation, which I guess is super important and probably...

Is it as important as the room acoustics? I still feel like the room acoustics, and we don't want to go on about it because everyone is, but I've got...

So I've got a couple of questions, and there was the one about the technicians.

What are some practical steps that the build community could make on a home like that

yeah there's two things to be like really clear on and I often have to like add this as a disclaimer so I'm glad you brought it up which is that soundproofing and room acoustics are two completely different things but they're kind of cousins which is why they get confused a lot so Let's use that client as your example.

He had two things going on.

One was the reverberation of sound in the rooms on the materials of the rooms, which that's room acoustics.

That's sound bouncing off and in the room, but not coming in or exiting it.

Soundproofing is keeping sound in or out of a room.

so it's the transfer of the barrier that's the difference so sound proofing which i've kind of built my whole career on we we do room acoustics as well for our clients you can see behind me like i've got these acoustic panels and they're above me i have a acoustic cloud so From a recording studio standpoint, that's totally normal.

And what that does is it reduces reflections in the room.

Other than just having a good old bookcase or a big rack of records is kind of a nice looking diffuser.

But so I always feel that Harvath's kind of... meld rather nicely with typical lounge room acoustics.

Is that part of

the recipe? Yes, I think so.

But, I mean, it's not just the fact that your acoustics change because of the amount of people in the room, but the reality is if you've got some resonant peak or something in the room and you pull that down in the response that's been driven, you know, the curve that's been driven into the speaker.

Yeah.

It does take the energy out of that frequency, but it doesn't change the room acoustics.

The problem absolutely remains, of course.