Recording Studio

recording studio

A recording studio is a specialized facility for the recording and mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances and other sounds. It ranges in size from a small in-home project studio capable of recording only one singer-guitarist, to an entire building that can accommodate the largest orchestral recordings. In all cases, the acoustic properties of the rooms used for both the recording and listening are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum sound quality.

Recording studios are usually divided into two spaces: the live room (where musicians perform) and the control room. In professional studios, there may also be smaller rooms called isolation booths for vocal recordings or louder instruments such as electric guitar amplifiers and speakers, to prevent their sounds from interfering with the microphones capturing other voices and instruments. A machine room where noisier equipment, such as racks of fan-cooled computers and power amplifiers, is kept separate from the main rooms, is another common feature.

In the past, a full-fledged “old school” analog recording studio might have required a few hundred square feet and cost a couple hundred thousand dollars (1990’s price tag). Nowadays, digital audio has made such high-quality, affordable and portable gear available that the same functions once performed only in large, expensive facilities can be accomplished with a computer, an inexpensive USB MIDI keyboard/controller or even a laptop and free or inexpensive music creation software. This accessibility has resulted in a number of new genres of music that would not have been possible with the old-school equipment used in classic recording studios.