Recording - November 2016 - 23

the warehouse, fence, walls of the neighboring buildings, awnings, and
outdoor lighting.
We had to rebuild the plumbing and sanitation facilities, adding a new
small kitchen and restroom with a shower. The outside garden was renovated and remodeled (Photo 5); we added new plants to the existing
trees, which not only provide shade on hot days but also tangerines in the
winter and figs in the summer. Naturally all the electrical work needed to
be redone for safety, good audio quality, and energy efficiency!
Choosing the function for each room
Since demolishing the building was not an option, we had to pay
close attention while picking the rooms for each purpose. We used
impulse responses to determine the reverbation time (RT60) of each
room, as well as a basic pink noise tone with metering microphones,
in order to get an idea of what we had and what we could achieve.
Moreover, since we noticed the rooms' strong low-end response, we
based our insulating approach on reducing some bass, before even starting to treat the rooms acoustically. I was determined to achieve clear
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sound without any muddiness, while retaining the liveliness of the room:
size, volume, orientation, and dimensions were the key factors for that.
We also had to take into consideration the final volume and size of each
room, after installing the insulation and acoustic treatment that we had
already planned to do. Photo 6 shows the five rooms (plus a utility room).
Control Room 1: we chose the room with the longest depth to width
ratio, for obvious acoustic reasons. Even though the other rooms have
some common and uncommon acoustic design, we wanted to do
Control Room 1 as "by the book" as possible.
Live Room A: this room was the original candidate for Control
Room 1. After we demolished a small part of its roof, we discovered
that the height of that particular room was inclined from 5.0 to 5.5
meters tall! (Photo 7) We decided that this was going to be the main
Live Room / Drum Room.
Live Room B: this room was a very good fit for the secondary live
room, adjacent to the main one. It's a perfect space for isolating voices,
small drum kits, acoustic instruments, and amps, without using a booth.
Control Room B: the choice in this case was very easy. We needed
a small room for editing, voiceovers, tuning, programming, and some
post production work. In simple words, this room chose itself!
Live Room C: this is the live room which communicates directly with
Control Room B. It's a very cozy and versatile all-purpose room.
Acoustic design, room by room
When designing the acoustics and the insulation of the studio, we
were guided by my personal preference and how I like things to
sound in a live room and in a mix. There is a certain style and attitude that I wanted the studio to have when recording.
I am a big fan of sculpting the sounds during the recording phase.
Everything I do, such as miking, EQing, compressing, and leveling, is
done right there on the spot, during the actual tracking. I prefer not to
leave anything to be corrected or addressed during the mix. If the
band has the correct sound while recording, the vibe and feeling that
they want to give is the best you can get. You cannot expect a band
to perform with bad sounds, and you cannot keep on saying, "We
will fix that in the mix." Even if you think you can do it, you are compromising the result. This is the reason why the rooms were tailormade to sound the way I want them to during a session. I wanted the

mids and the highs to sing and be airy while the low
end would be tamed and tight yet awe-inspiring.
Here's how we did wall treatment. The outermost layer
is the big stone wall of the building. Then, with a small
air gap, we have rockwool and a single layer of gypsum
board. This one is for absorption of low frequencies trying to travel to or from the room. Then another double
layer of rockwool, followed by a double layer of gypsum
board with offset panels. The double gypsum board
gives the beautiful mid and high end of the rooms, while
letting the low end through to be absorbed by the second
layer while maintaining its "attack". It was an experiment
that turned out great for us! (Photo 8)
For Control Room A, we followed classic and tested
ways to make sure that it would sound its best. I like to
have a neutral room, but as soon as I get used to it and
the way it translates, I am good to go. Three diferent
types of perforated acoustic gypsum board were
used-one for the room sides, one for the front and
back walls, and one for the ceiling and the bass traps.
Each type has different characteristics.
Behind the perforated acoustic gypsum boards, we
used rockwool of varying densities. For the bass traps
we used 150 density rockwool, hardpacked and cut in
triangles, in order to fit exactly into the bass traps. For
the ceiling we used stonewool (a lighter form of rockwool) in varying densities and multiple layers; two layers at the front, one layer in the middle, and four layers
at the back. At the back top corners we used rolled-up
rockwool, in order to create a couple of high-density
areas that would address the buildup at the back end
of the room.
The height of the control room was 4 meters, and I
really wanted to take advantage of this in order to
absorb low end. For this purpose, above the
stonewool layers, we put another single layer of gypsum board, followed by rockwool and a 1.5 meter air
gap, followed by another single layer of gypsum
board and rockwool layer at the top of the roof.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2016
