experience that more closely resembled what was actually being played by the musicians and vocalists in the studio .
This historical tangent into vinyl records hopefully helps to illustrate what we ’ re up to when approaching how to best ‘ tune ’ a room that contains microphones and a mixing console and PA amplifiers and speakers which all have their own sonic tendencies . The room is on one side of the equation while the playback system is on the other . If the room accentuates low frequencies , it may be desirable to attenuate those same low frequencies within the console and / or PA components to account for this effect . In this sense , tuning the room is akin to applying an RIAA curve to the playback of a vinyl record .
WHAT IS THE GOAL ? In the example of the RIAA equalization curve , the specific frequencies that we were dealing with are fairly obvious and straightforward . If we measure the difference between a recorded session within Pro Tools or Logic ( played back digitally through nice studio monitors in a treated room ) and what we ’ d get out of a record player ’ s output without an RIAA curve , the ‘ problem ’ areas are quite obvious . In a complex acoustic space like a modern church , the sorts of problem areas and frequencies starts to become much more complex . Not only do we have differences in frequencies ( a room that amplifies low frequencies and attenuates high frequencies for example ), but we also have different reflections and temporal factors to deal with . It can also be the case that under a particular architectural feature in the performance space low frequencies are amplified while in other parts of the room those same frequencies are attenuated . In short , the plot quickly thickens when we move from a simple closed system like a record player output to an entire room with multiple speakers and complex angles and various reflective surfaces .
I think the important question here ( especially since this article isn ’ t intended to be a ‘ howto ’ guide for room tuning ) is to whether we are aiming to model or create an RIAA-style equalization curve for our physical space that completely gets us back to ‘ zero ’ or whether we want to build in some sort of a ‘ sound ’ to a room ? This ties back to another lively discussion from the CMS presentation — do we want to have a sense of ‘ space ’ in our experience of a worship service when all of the variables are added together … or do we want to have a more ‘ sterile ’ and accurate ‘ dry ’ recreation of the source sounds that essentially just directly amplifies them ? Do we want to have a ‘ sound ’ to the mix or is the goal to just make all of the
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