Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties (acoustic isolation or diffusion or absorption of reflected sound that could otherwise interfere with the sound heard by the listener). Recording studios may be used by record musicians, voice over artists for advertisements or dialogue replacement in film, television or animation, foley, or to record their accompanying musical soundtracks. The typical recording studio consists of a room called the "studio" or "live room", where instrumentalists and vocalists perform; and the "control room", where sound engineers operate professional audio for analogue or digital recording to route and manipulate the sound. Often, there will be smaller rooms called "isolation booths" present to accommodate loud instruments such as drums or electric guitar, to keep these sounds from being audible to the microphones that are capturing the sounds from other instruments, or to provide "drier" rooms for recording vocals or quieter acoustic instruments. Recording studios generally consist of three rooms: the studio itself, where the sound for the recording is created (often referred to as the "live room"), the control room, where the sound from the studio is recorded and manipulated, and the machine room, where noisier equipment that may interfere with the recording process is kept. Recording studios are carefully designed around the principles of room acoustics to create a set of spaces with the acoustical properties required for recording sound with precision and accuracy. This will consist of both r
om treatment (through the use of absorption and diffusion materials on the surfaces of the room, and also consideration of the physical dimensions of the room itself in order to make the room respond to sound in a desired way) and soundproofing (to provide sonic isolation between the rooms). A recording studio may include additional rooms, such as a vocal booth - a small room designed for voice recording, as well as one or more extra control rooms.General purpose computers have rapidly assumed a large role in the recording process, being able to replace the mixing consoles, recorders, synthesizers, Samplers and sound effects devices. A computer thus outfitted is called a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW. Popular audio-recording software includes Apple Logic Pro, Digidesign's Pro Tools— near standard for most professional studios—Cubase and Nuendo both by Steinberg, MOTU Digital Performer—popular for MIDI. Other software applications include Ableton Live, Cakewalk Sonar, ACID Pro, FL Studio, Adobe Audition, Audacity, Ardour, and Pro Tools. Current software applications are more reliant on the audio recording hardware than the computer they are running on, therefore typical high-end computer hardware is less of a priority unless midi is involved. While Apple Macintosh is used for studio work, there is a breadth of software available for Microsoft Windows and Linux. The majority of both commercial and home studios can be seen running PC-based multitrack audio software. If no mixing console is used and all mixing is done using only a keyboard and mouse, this is referred to as mixing in the box ("ITB"). "OTB" is used when mixing with other hardware not just the PC software.