Indoor Acoustics

Principles of Sound and Acoustics

What Is SoundSound is the result of shifting air pressure over a period of time; it’s a mechanical energy in the form of pressure within an elastic medium. According to (http://computermusicresource.com/what.is.sound.html), ‘Changes in air pressure (air being a propagating medium) can be represented by a WAVEFORM, which is a graphic representation of a sound. In reality, sound waves propagate through the air in LONGITITUDAL WAVES (and not TRANSVERSE WAVES)’AcousticsAcoustics is the science/discipline of sound. There is a large variety of different kinds of sounds and each one affects our lives in different ways. Sound is our key and most common form of communication, and acoustics are significant for creating and performing musical instruments in concert halls, for surround sound stereo and hearing aids. (Following statement found on, http://www.exploresound.org/home/what-is-acoustics/)‘Sound is also used to find oil and gas, to study earthquakes and climate change, and to make sure that the baby in a mother's womb is healthy. Some animals, like bats and dolphins, use sound to find their food’.

Magazine Article

Studio Based Acoustics

A majority of recording studios always suffer the issue of having impressive and expensive instruments and devices, but not having a good (silent enough) recording studio to record high quality productions, as it’s hard to remember to focus on buying an acoustic environment (room), that won’t cause issues such as sound leakage, disruptive monitoring viewpoint, or disturbing recordings from and by neighbours, and generally affecting the quality of the production from a listener point of view, when purchasing a recording studio on a budget. Within the subject matter of recording studios, recording within a controlled environment/room, that has been built and designed correctly is likely to produce sound that is more accurate, without using too many special effects or devices to enhance the recording quality.

Live RoomA recording studio typically consists of a live room (a.k.a studio), this is the room in which live instrumentals and vocalists perform. This room is the most soundproof room in the recording studio, as other sound doesn’t leak through or out without the demand of the control room (This is the room in which the equipment and electronic devices and controls are kept. There are also smaller rooms called isolation booths, which mainly accommodate loud instrumentals such as, electric guitars and drums.

Dead room Dead rooms are referred to as dead rooms for the fact that they have very little or no reverberation/echo of their own, these rooms are in almost complete silence, which is why their referred to as ‘Dead Rooms’, dead rooms may be perceived as a room that consist of in beats and no interruptions in the background, dead rooms are best used by vocal artists as they can capture the clearest and best sound as it doesn’t consist of any interruptive sounds (echo and reverberation).

Surface typesStudio walls have odd patterns to make it harder for the sound to travel through, its important, that sound cannot travel through walls, as it cause sound leaking, disruption of recording etc. this can be tricky as sound waves travel frequently, they eventually hit obstacles, the percentage of the sound is reflected and the rest is absorbed, and passed through whatever the material is. An echo or reproduction of the sound can be heard if the sound reflects off a smooth flat surface, this is why. It is designed for the sound to be captured and absorbed in.

ReverberationReverberation is the perseverance of sound in a particular area or space a period after the original sound has been produced. Reverberation is caused by sound being produced in a bounded space or area, resulting to a large number of echoes to compile up and then slowly decease due to the walls or air absorbing the sound.

Sound proofingThere are numerous and simple approaches to reducing sound for whatever reason, these include:

Increasing the distance between source and receiver, Using noise barriers to reflect or absorb the energy of the sound waves, using damping assemblies such as sound baffles

Outdoor Acoustics

Sound bites

Often incorrectly referred to as sound-bytes, sound bites are short clips of speech or music extracted or trimmed from a longer piece of audio, often used to advertise or exemplify the full length piece.

Background Atmosphere

It is extremely important to know exactly where you need to record depending on what exactly it is you would like to record. For example, if you want to record a scene within a café you cannot record in the woods as the background atmosphere is different as there are different noises.

Unwanted Noise

Unwanted noise is the noise in the background of a recording or audio track, that shouldn’t be there, for example vocals recorded on the street may be occasionally interrupted by noisy individuals or moving transport, unwanted noise can be avoided by recording in a controlled and extremely silent room.

Unwanted Ambience

Similar to unwanted noise, unwanted ambience is background sounds, which should not be in a certain recording, unwanted ambience is most likely in the busiest environments such as bars, clubs or motorways.

Wind noise

When recording with a microphone (especially outdoors) the using a wind shield is a key method to avoiding wind interruptions, the majority of microphones that are specially built for this are called boom microphones.