Recording studio

A recording studio is a specialized facility for recording and mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enough to record a single singer-guitarist, to a large building with space for a full orchestra of 100 or more musicians. Ideally, both the recording and monitoring (listening and mixing) spaces are specially designed by an acoustician or audio engineer to achieve optimum acoustic properties (acoustic isolation or diffusion or absorption of reflected sound reverberation that could otherwise interfere with the sound heard by the listener).

Recording studios may be used to record singers, instrumental musicians (e.g., electric guitar, piano, saxophone, or ensembles such as orchestras), voice-over artists for advertisements or dialogue replacement in film, television, or animation, Foley, or to record their accompanying musical soundtracks. The typical recording studio consists of a room called the "studio" or "live room" equipped with microphones and mic stands, where instrumentalists and vocalists perform; and the "control room", where audio engineers, sometimes with record producers, as well, operate professional audio mixing consoles, effects units, or computers with specialized software suites to mix, manipulate (e.g., by adjusting the equalization and adding effects) and route the sound for analog or digital recording. The engineers and producers listen to the live music and the recorded "tracks" on high-quality monitor speakers or headphones.

Often, there will be smaller rooms called isolation booths to accommodate loud instruments such as drums or electric guitar amplifiers and speakers, to keep these sounds from being audible to the microphones that are capturing the sounds from other instruments or voices, or to provide "drier" rooms for recording vocals or quieter acoustic instruments such as an acoustic guitar or a fiddle. Major recording studios typically have a range of large, heavy, and hard-to-transport instruments and music equipment in the studio, such as a grand piano, Hammond organ, electric piano, harp, and drums.

Recording studios generally consist of three or more rooms:

Even though sound isolation is a key goal, the musicians, singers, audio engineers and record producers still need to be able to see each other, to see cue gestures and conducting by a bandleader. As such, the live room, isolation booths, vocal booths and control room typically have windows.

Amplified instruments, like electric guitars, synthesizers, drum machines and keyboards, may be connected directly to the recording console using DI units and performance recorded in the control room. This greatly enhances the communication between the producer and engineer with the player, as studio mics, headphones and talkback are unnecessary.

Recording studios are carefully designed around the principles of room acoustics to create a set of spaces with the acoustical properties required for recording sound with accuracy. Architectural acoustics includes acoustical treatment and soundproofing and also the consideration of the physical dimensions of the room itself to make the room respond to sound in the desired way. Acoustical treatment includes and the use of absorption and diffusion materials on the surfaces inside the room. To control the amount of reverberation, rooms in a recording studio may have a reconfigurable combination of reflective and non-reflective surfaces. Soundproofing provides sonic isolation between rooms and prevents sound from entering or leaving the property. A Recording studio in an urban environment must be soundproofed on its outer shell to prevent noises from the surrounding streets and roads from being picked up by microphones inside.

A recording studio is typically equipped with a range of professional tools designed to capture, mix, and refine audio. At the heart of the studio is a professional-grade mixing console, which serves as the central hub for managing audio signals. To accommodate additional input sources, such as when miking a full drum kit and all channels on the main console are occupied, smaller auxiliary mixing consoles may be used to expand channel capacity.