Anybody involved with the making of music or music recordings routinely asks themself the question, "Does it sound good?" You know what I mean. "Does the guitar sound good?" "Does the edit sound good?" "Does the room sound good?" It goes on and on and on.

As a loudspeaker and studio designer, the question has always loomed large for me. As a designer, I have to ask, "What does 'sound good' mean, physically and psychologically?" Once I've got a handle on that, then I've got to answer the question, "What can I build that will make OTHER people will say, "It sounds good."? (Actually, I prefer it when they say "It sounds totally f___ing awesome!") Seriously, if I'm about to spend a great deal of my client's money building a recording facility that he or she expects to rent out on a regular basis to serious and solvent producers and artists, the studio damn well better "sound good!" Equally important, the finished recorded product that leaves that studio had better "sound good" elsewhere in the known universe as well, at least if I wish to continue to work in said universe.

The control room that most recently came out of my "sounds good" quest was pictured on the cover of the August, 1999 issue of Mix. Yes, I invented, designed and built those weird looking speakers and I created the oval shaped room to put them in. What I did with that room, combined with how "good" the room sounded when we fired it up, interested the folks at Mix enough for them to ask me to write this article for you. This is NOT another "How To Build A Home Studio" or "The Basics Of Acoustics" article. This is more like "Zen And The Art Control Rooms." Let's talk.