Studio Design William S. Evans, working with Tom Hidley of Westlake Audio, Los Angeles, CA took six years to design Studio in the Country, starting at age 16. After majoring in Physics at UCLA and BYU, Evans was up to the challenge. Acoustics were the deciding factor in every step of the design and led to the choice of a country location, minimizing earth vibrations. In addition to this, each room of the studio complex floats on its own eighteen inch sandwich of nylon and concrete to further screen out vibration. British craftsman Ron Balmer was brought in on the project to insure the finest construction. The result can be seen, but most important, it can be heard. Studio in the Country contains no right angles or parallel surfaces. Even the walls are offset from five to seven degrees to cancel standing waves in the room which might cause acoustic phase cancellation. The entire ceiling of the studio is a network of variable frequency sound traps and baffles which can be arranged to produce a complete change in room acoustics. In addition to the ceiling traps, there are specific traps for drums, piano, guitar, and organ. Variable room traps are available for any instrument or frequency. Every surface in the studio was chosen with acoustics in mind. Materials range from solid pecan wood to cork tree bark to Mexican mosaic tile. The studio has a range of sound qualities from the tightest rock to the brightest concert sounds. Control Room The goal of a perfect control room is to reproduce in sound exactly what is on tape. The reproduction you hear at Studio in the Country is a true representation of each asset that exist on tape. Westlake Audio TM-1 Monitors are used exclusively (as the large monitor system, many other speaker systems are used to create a mix that will sound true in a car or a great sound environment). Each TM-1 consists of the following: two JBL 2215 Bass Speakers, 1 JBL 375 Midrange Driver coupled with the Westlake solid walnut dispersion horn, and one LE-85 JBL High Frequency Speaker. Each speaker is bi-amplified with the base crossover at 600 cycles. This crossover occurs in the system ahead of the Crown DC 300A which powers each speaker. A tri-frequency crossover occurs after the Crown within the speaker itself. One side of the Crown drives the frequencies below 600 cycles and the other side drives the frequencies above that level. The control room is totally quadraphonic. All four speakers are voiced to one-sixth octave intervals and focus at the mixer's ear. Special traps were built into the unusually large control room to control low frequencies. With these traps, there is less than 1.5 DB change in any speaker from console end to console end. The ceiling of the control room is solid pecan wood and drops to 6' 10" at the console to focus all output at the mixer's ear level. Studio Atmospheric Control Special consideration was given to controlling temperature and humidity. A change in temperature or humidity could cause a severe tuning problem, not to mention discomfort to musicians. Another important consideration was that the system must be felt and not heard. Enlarged air handlers were fabricated for the studio and control room. One eighth pound per square inch is the maximum air handler pressure. All fiberglass duck work is approximately four times normal size. All these changes coupled with humidifiers complete a system that moves large volumes of air at low velocity. The result is a massive, silent, humidity controlled system. Air handlers operate constantly and total air transfer takes place every nine minutes. All moving mechanical parts are housed in a separate floating building to insure that no impact vibrations reach the studio. The mechanical building contains 3000 cubic feet of noise reducing traps to further reduce air flow noise Have your home acoustics, home theater, or studio designed by Bleu Evans
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