Professional control room designs range from dead to highly diffuse.

Evidence

Professionally designed control rooms embrace almost the entire spectrum of acoustical possibilities. At one extreme is the “non-room” approach that attempts to eliminate all first reflections (Newell, 2003; Walker, 1988; D’Antonio and Konnert, 1984). In the middle is the “live-end, dead-end” approach in which the front half of the room is acoustically absorbing and the rear end is treated with reflectors and diffusers (Davis and Davis, 1980). At the other extreme is one that has all walls and the ceiling covered with highly effective, deep, diffusers: Blackbird, Studio C, designed by Peter D’Antonio and George Massenburg (see Section 12.5.3). The listening experiences in these rooms cannot be the same, yet they all have, or had, their supporters. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 327

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the three main schools of control room acoustic design: non-room, live-end/dead-end, and all-diffuse.
• XREF: The ‘non-room’ vs ‘live-end dead-end’ spectruum connects to domestic listening room treatment debates.