Studio Functions

So let's take a deep breath, get calm again, and look for a second at what you are actually trying to do in a control room, other than enhancing the market share of the electronics industry.

First, and most important, you are trying to make music come out of loudspeakers. To do this, you are listening to the loudspeakers (imagine that!). If you cannot hear the loudspeakers well, via both direct and reflected paths, then you are wasting your time.

Second, you are trying to play synths and/or operate mixing consoles while you are listening to your-music-under-construction coming out of loudspeakers. Along with this, you are probably also operating recorders, computers, and outboard equipment, mostly not exactly while you are listening to your-music-under-construction, but usually you feel it would be nice to be able to hear exactly what you are tweaking when you are tweaking it.

Third, you are trying to document your-music-under-construction while you are constructing it.

Fourth, you are trying to do all of this to a very high level of resolution (er, quality), often while you are very, very tired.

Monitoring Needs

You need easy sight lines to all of your monitors. Further, you need easy sight lines to the lateral early reflection paths from all the monitors, and you need to avoid having large objects in the room that interfere with such sight lines or add major asymmetrical reflected paths (such as a big rack on one side wall and a curtain on the other).

You also need to have a low noise floor, hopefully at least 50 dB below your nominal mix level.

Hardware Needs

You need to have all the hardware close at hand (or at least remote controls), where you can see it, use it, and still hear the loudspeakers from on the median plane. The stuff that can be most easily remoted are the analog multitracks, thanks to their well-developed remote controls (those guys learned their lesson!). On the other hand, the console and the keyboard(s) simply cannot be placed away from your optimum listening situation.

Operational Needs

A big part of your problem is that you need to be able to get at an absurdly large number of different controls and also see said absurdly large number of controls. These include everything on the console surface, synths, outboard pieces, tape recorder controls, test equipment, computer keyboard, computer mouse/pad, computer monitor, patch bay, et sucking fetera! You also need places to set food and drink without jeopardizing your investment (banning food and drink from control rooms simply does not work as an enlightened social practice).

Bottom line, you need to be comfortable, you need to be able to see as well as hear, you need to be able to do paperwork on an ongoing, but intermittent basis, you need to be able to converse with others comfortably, you need to be able to eat and drink, and you need to be able to do all of the above for extended periods of time, often when you are absurdly tired.

I tried to keep all of these things in mind when I designed my desk.