Typical open offices are active spaces, and many people have difficulty concentrating in these noisy spaces. Many coworking spaces provide “privacy pods,” or partially open seating areas to focus and have quiet conversation. Proper acoustic design and material selection for privacy pods is essential, and also a golden opportunity for collaboration between architects, interior designers, and acousticians.

Providing quiet areas where members can take private phone calls is also essential. These areas must be fully enclosed to ensure adequate speech privacy, and so proper sound isolation design is key.

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The post New Audio Editing Suite for Colorado College Music Department appeared first on Soundpost Acoustics.

Design and installation of new recording equipment is complete at Packard Hall for the Colorado College Music Department, just in time for their annual Summer Music Festival!

The new system features adjustable microphones on servoreelers, preamps and monitor control from Grace Design, and a Dante network for distribution of audio signals to other spaces in the building.

All this in addition to upgraded room acoustics finishes, improved sound isolation to the hall, and noise control improvements in the recording booth!

Here’s an audio sample we recorded on 16 June 2016:

Dvořák – String Sextet in A Major, Op. 48; I. Allegro moderato

Equipment List

Microphones

• (4) DPA 4011C (on servoreelers)
• (2) Sennheiser MKH8050 (stereo pair on servoreeler)
• (2) AKG 414

Microphone Preamplifiers

• Grace Design m201 with ADC
• Grace Design m802 with Dante card

Recording Interface/DAW

• RME Fireface UFX
• iMac/ProTools 12
• Allen & Heath ICE16 backup recorder

Monitoring

• Grace Design m920
• Genelec 8030B

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Appropriate space layouts for recording, control, and equipment rooms are essential. Room acoustics, sound isolation, and noise control are design issues which are often overlooked, but which still have a tremendous impact on the overall operation of the facility. In particular, sound isolation and HVAC noise control should be considered at the outset of a facility design since retrofitting these improvements is difficult and costly.

Some music schools have multiple venues for different uses, such as a concert hall for large ensembles and a recital hall for soloists and small ensembles. In situations where a room must be shared between different ensembles, however, variable acoustics allow the room acoustics of the space to be adapted and changed to the needs of each ensemble. While variable acoustics are traditionally implemented with adjustable curtains, moveable panels, and reversible hinged baffles, one emerging trend is to vary acoustics with electronic enhancement systems.

While variable acoustics are traditionally implemented with adjustable curtains, moveable panels, and reversible hinged baffles, one emerging trend is to vary acoustics with electronic enhancement systems.

Since these systems change the acoustic response of the room itself, electronic variable acoustics can provide some interesting possibilities and alternatives for recording engineers accustomed to recording with software reverb plug-ins. Electronic acoustic enhancement technology is developing and improving quickly, notably by companies including Acoustic Control Systems, b.v. and Yamaha Pro Audio.

Control room acoustic treatments are no less important to the successful operation of recording facilities in music schools and may also be easier to retrofit than sound isolation or noise control upgrades. Since many music schools also include courses in audio production, some control rooms must function also as classrooms with seating for both instructors and students. Carefully considered selection and placement of monitor loudspeakers, sound absorbers, and sound diffusers can help to broaden the optimal listening area in control rooms. Listen Audio has recently developed a new line of sound diffusers which are quite useful for this application.

Network-based audio distribution is opening new doors for audio recording in music schools, by offering more flexible routing between rooms with good audio quality and high reliability while reducing infrastructure costs.

Audio routing and signal flow between rooms sometimes separated by large physical distances must be carefully considered. In the recent past, routing analog signals between rooms was commonplace. This approach typically requires large patchbays and relatively expensive wire pulls which are prone to audio problems. The signal routing complexity of these systems can also quickly become a major impediment for students and other less experienced engineers to make audio recordings. Audio distribution via Dante networks, in particular, is opening new doors for audio recording in music schools, by offering more flexible routing between rooms with good audio quality and high reliability while reducing infrastructure costs. Dante is an audio networking protocol developed by Audinate and is seeing increasing support from a wide variety of audio equipment manufacturers, including Focusrite and Grace Design.

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“How does it look?” she asked me, a little bit apprehensive.

Rachael West is an Emmy award winning voice talent, actor, host, and model. She approaches her work with dynamic enthusiasm and an obvious passion for quality, and this project to upgrade her ISDN recording facilities was no different.

We had been working together for a few months to develop plans for a new vocal isolation booth, and truth be told, there had been a few setbacks along the way. But despite the challenges, Rachael remained committed to the project, insisting that the acoustics not be compromised.

As it turned out, the acoustics measurements on the custom isolation booth from Noise Barriers, LLC turned out even better than expected. The new level of sound isolation will allow her to focus on her voiceover work free from the distraction of outside noise. Absorption panels carefully fitted to the interior walls control sound inside the booth, and a heavy duty door with dual seals helps to keep noise out.

Only the outside remains to be painted – with a purple racing stripe, naturally!

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We are pleased to have been part of the design team for the renovation of Manning Middle School for Jeffco Schools. The project included asbestos abatement, new ceilings and lighting in classrooms, noise control in the cafeteria, and lighting and acoustics upgrades to the auditorium, all completed on a tight budget!

The auditorium improvements include new lightweight fabric reflectors, custom sidewall panels, and sound-absorbing finishes on the rear wall. These upgrades have enhanced natural sound projection from the stage and eliminated problematic flutter echoes, while retaining a lively acoustic for the choir and band.

School is back in session, and the room is filled with music again!

Project team included The Abo Group (architect), JCM Inc. (General Contractor), and Jeffco Public Schools (Project Manager)

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Good acoustics is one of the most important – and often overlooked or misunderstood – aspects of a worship space. Opinions abound about “standing waves,” “dead spots,” “too much echo,” or “not enough echo.” When designing acoustics for a new church, or when planning a renovation of an existing worship space, the most important first step is focusing on the worship and music style to determine what kind of acoustical environment is needed.

Consider these images of two different churches:

These two spaces sound very, very different from each other, but both have “good acoustics” for their particular uses. The upper one has plenty of sound absorption to control reverberation for the amplified praise band.  The lower one has a tall volume with mostly hard surfaces that develop supportive reverberation for choir, organ, and congregational singing. However, if these two congregations switched churches, there would surely be complaints about “terrible” acoustics!

“Good” acoustics for a church depends on how the space is used

“Good” acoustics for a church depends on how the space is used and on the music and worship style of the congregation . Most churches fall somewhere in between the spectrum of possibilities outlined by these two examples.

Despite their different acoustical needs for music, nearly all churches need to provide intelligible speech for their congregation members. Even in an acoustical environment that is friendly to amplification, this can be a challenge considering the wide variety of people – many untrained in public speaking – who may participate in a typical church worship service. Fortunately, loudspeaker technology and digital audio processing have improved in recent years to make good speech intelligibility a reality in even the most reverberant church environments.

Churches are remarkable acoustic design challenges given their diversity of worship styles and architecture. The first job for an acoustics or sound system consultant is to work closely with you to determine what good acoustics means for you. After that, we work with passion and enthusiasm to help you get there.

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From previous experience in these small spaces we suspected that low frequency room modes might be involved. Room modes cause variations in sound pressure level – sometimes extreme variations – as you move through a space. When untreated, they also cause the sound to “ring” or resonate at particular frequencies that correspond to the room dimensions. In the case of Jordan’s voiceover booth, we used EASERA to measure some strong room modes in the 80-120Hz range illustrated clearly in the spectrogram plot below.

These room modes occur in the same frequency range responsible for the “boomy” sound in the booth… We are working now to help Jordan find suitable treatments to tame these low frequencies and transform the sound of his voiceover recordings!

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In November, we along with other volunteers from Denver School of the Arts and UC Denver Recording Arts enjoyed an afternoon helping to rebuild some of the acoustics finishes in the studio space that were damaged in the flood.

We look forward to seeing this project through to completion so that the Grace Design studio will be back up and running soon!

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