About Control Rooms

By Tom Hidley

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How would you define an ‘honest’ control room?

These days mixes must 'travel' - they're compatible whether you come from a small room that's well designed or a large room that's well designed. You'll perceive a difference in the cubic volume of the room, because of the reverb time differentials, with extremely large rooms versus extremely small rooms, but good rooms won’t change your perception of the mix. That’s ultimately what you want from a control room: an honest reference.

Simply put, a control room should be an analytical and accurate environment that allows you to correctly and intelligently make tonal and spatial judgements because your monitoring reference to the room, to your ears, to your brain processing, is an accurate entity and combination. It begins with correct room design and correct monitor selection for the room.

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