I've actually been working on this studio for years. I've treated my work in the recording industry as training, as part of the development of my musical craft, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about sound and about the kind of music I want to make. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about the facilities I need and/or want to make such music.

The studio I've been looking for, though I hadn't thought it through very clearly and certainly never articulated it like this until I decided to quit Berklee and get serious about it, might best be described as "a substantial acoustical work space." Intuitively, I want it to be capable of supporting low frequencies, which means dimensions of at least 25 feet in at least one direction. It should also be both quiet and capable of supporting something like a true 80 dB dynamic playback range. Further, I think it would be nice if it met the criteria for a first-rate home theater.

The work I want to do comes in several flavors:

1. Composing, sampling and synthesizing stereophonic music;
2. Studying and measuring loudspeakers and listeners, as well as the effect of reverberance on them;
3. Engineering and producing location recordings, both stereo and multitrack, with in-house mixing, editing and postproduction;
4. Composing and synthesizing "surround" music, whatever that means - someday I may discuss it, but not now;
5. Writing about all of the above.
6. Producing educational recordings, such as the Golden Ears Audio Ear Training series.

To do this, I feel I need a big, quiet control room with excellent and variable monitoring and acoustics. I need the space and wiring harness to permit me to set up a wide range of equipment on an occasional basis (for testing and recording) quickly and easily. I don't feel the need for an acoustic recording room.