Home
SOUND ADVICE
Welcome to the blog of Czhed (pronounced “shed”) Media Studios. The media studio’s name “Czhed” is a unique spelling of the word “shed”.
Why name the studio “Czhed” ( pronoucnced “shed”)?
While in the Suburbs most band practiced and do their first recordings in either basements or garages. And in the city, abandon buildings and rented practice rooms serve the purpose. In the country (especially in the south) barns and sheds are where the magic happens.
I have experienced all of these environments and have found that those little country sheds provide the best natural acoustics. After spending over a year and a half building my studio to highest level of acoustic excellence, I found the most fitting name for my new media studio was the “Czhed” (pronounced the “shed”).
One of my favorite incidents as it relates to acoustic design of a room, happen while in the mist of building my recording studio . It Happen about 9 months in to its construction. We were looking for a structural contractor to finish some work on a family room at the house. Five contractors were bidding on the job. One of them had happen to build some of the recording studios in Western Washington. Most notably a recording studio for a local rap act, that charted #1 some years back and who’s song is still very popular to this day. Like the others contractors bidding on the job, I brought him to the backyard to show him the recording studio I was constructing. And like the others contractors after seeing the structure, he offer to fix all the building mistakes I had made for “X” amount of dollars.
As with the others, I politely ask him what in his expert opinion, I had done wrong? In his opinion, the two most glaring mistakes I had made in my construction were: I had not made the walls square; and the ceiling was not parallel to the floor. His comments match those of the other four contractors. And like the other contractors, I didn’t heed his advise. Nor did I hire him or any of the others to finish my recording studio.
Why not?
Though all five were more than competent as structural contractors; and one, as I stated had experience building high-end recording studios; another also had a background as a sound engineer; and still another was a musician, yet none of them knew the first thing about constructing an acoustically fit recording studio.
How can I say that?
Simple put, if they knew anything at all about acoustic design of rooms, they would know that walls should not be perfectly parallel to each other and the ceiling should never be parallel to the floor, because that design is the main cause of flutter echo.
FYI-If you have a big enough budget any room can be made into acoustic room. That is what happens in most of the best recording studios, they spend big money in building their facilities. And then they reach deep in their pockets for “top-of-the-line” acoustic merchandise to correct the acoustic flaws in the original room design of their studios.
Let’s not forget those very expense microphones which wind-up being extra compensation to improve the recording quality of their studios. Just think how much money could be saved and how much better recording those expense microphone would deliver if these studios were original design with acoustics in mind.
I still get a charge out of first time visitors to my studio’s “live room.” The normal assumption made: “Oh well, here I’m getting ready to view another one of these home studio” (Instead of the reality of visiting an acoustically designed “live room,” which just happens to be located in a studio built at someone’s home.) They walk though the outside door and then though the inside door of the double door setup. Once the inside door closes behind them, their ears strain to hear noise, but all they are greeted with is quite, for some it is their first experience of real quite in a “live room.”
Through this blog, I hope to impart some of the over 3 decades of knowledge I have gain in studying literature on the subject of acoustics, building, designing and trouble shooting. Plus what I have learned through hands on trial and error in making rooms acoustically fit . Through the interactions with the readers of this weekly blog, I look forward to acquiring an even larger knowledge base on the subject.