A Survey Study of Today’s Monitoring Conditions

When speakers are put in a room all sorts of acoustical interactions occur. The criteria that define the performance and quality of a speaker are completely different from those defining the acoustical behavior of a room and both must be taken into consideration when setting up speakers. After all, you cannot stop listening to the room effect with its reverberation time and diffuse reflections, or ignore any large dip in the speaker/room response at a specific frequency. The interaction of the speakers and the room are responsible for the overall monitoring condition and ultimately determine the quality of the recording process. That is why a vital part of Genelec’s customer service is to provide on-site measurements and worldwide calibration of our large active monitor systems. Over the years Genelec has built a large database from this service. To get a detailed picture of current control room trends and quality, we analyzed measurements taken between 1997 and 2000 in 30 different countries. Focusing on 3-way systems we took a sample of 164 control rooms representing large recording studios, post-production houses, broadcast studios, private music composing studios and mobiles. All data analyzed were the speaker/room responses after the speakers had been calibrated and best possible results obtained. As monitoring quality is becoming more and more critical, when multichannel materials become widely available and the number of channels increase, this study reveals that room acoustics still need improvement particularly in small rooms.