Project Description
Overview
The Royal College of Music, Stockholm is the oldest institution of higher education in music in Sweden. Initially founded in 1771, it has trained some of Sweden’s most celebrated composers and performers for more than two hundred and fifty years. After an extensive renovation of its recording and production facilities, the college brought on WSDG to ensure that its new studio control rooms would meet the highest possible standards of acoustic and technological excellence.
Program
The initial design of the three existing control rooms, dubbed Blue, Red, and Lime, had extensive issues with Left/Right imaging, lack of sonic accuracy, poor audibility in the student area as well as a buildup of low-end frequencies in the mixing area. The WSDG design team had to correct these issues within the given acoustical isolation structure but by replacing basically all internal room acoustical treatments. The main design goal, an accurate sonic representation of the sound field throughout the entire room, was well achieved.
Design
Based on the acoustical site measurements of the control rooms, the WSDG team utilized NIRO to give guidelines of where the most problematic low-end hot spots were. Once this was done the team created an entirely new design package that optimized the acoustics of the studios through the use of an arrangement of low frequency absorbers made of perforated plywood, porous fabric covered mid-high frequency absorption and diffusive surfaces where required. The work on the newly designed rooms was completed by local builders Studio Byggarna working from the WSDG design package.