The Studio SOS Book

Book excerpt: Professional studio design is a specialized science, with more than a touch of "black magic" thrown in. Over the past few years, Sound on Sound magazine has made one trip each month to a reader’s studio. These visits have demonstrated that it is fairly simple to make a huge improvement to an untreated project-studio room, without spending a fortune. However, they’ve also proven that beginners’ attempts at DIY acoustic treatments often cause more problems than they solve. Utilizing knowledge from dozens of visits to readers’ home and project studios, the SOS team imparts easy-to-understand, organized troubleshooting advice. Learn how to rid yourself of monitoring problems and get an accurate monitoring system, how to enhance the sound of your recording space, and how to perfect your instrumental and vocal recordings. Decrease the time you spend re-recording and mixing, simply by improving your room with advice from the guys who have seen it all when it comes to make-do small studios. Contains: A structured look at the problems that most often plague small studios, with individual studio case studies addressing each issue Real solutions that you can both afford and implement; no thousand-dollar investments or idealized studio designs that don’t work with your space! Case studies that look at small studios’ specific problems, with additional break-outs tips that address quick fixes to common problems