Bad Racket Recording Studio Layout

Live Rooms

The studio layout is typically divided into several sections. The main recording room is often called the live room. This is the largest room containing all the cabling and equipment where a band can set up. It is useful to have headphones for each musician that each have an independent mix. For example, the drummer might want to hear more of the singer’s voice, or more of his kick drum. Typically in a professional studio, each musician has their own mix for their own headphones.

Isolation Room or Booth

Studios often have several other rooms where either a singer can be isolated from the drums in a vocal booth, or amplifiers can be separated from the drums. This makes sure that all the different elements stay separate and the engineer is able to carefully adjust each element independent of the others. It is paramount that these separations are in place, for any amount of bleeding from one instrument to another’s track will create a sloppy “ghost noise” and fuck up the mix. By separating out the different elements into isolation booths, the bleeding is easily contained and the result is a cleaner, crisper mix.

Pictured Left: Neumann U87 Recording Microphone in theRecording Booth ready for Vocals

Control Room

All the cords and cables and wires run into the main control room with the engineer. The control room is the part of the studio where all the different signals are routed to their respective destination. The engineer uses speakers to listen to the performance and evaluate how the recording is going as well as adjust the levels to begin to create the perfect mix.

Tracking Guitar in the Control Room