Tommy Lee's The Atrium

malfunction · **Posted:** Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:59 am

I just checked out Tommy Lee's personal studio The Atrium http://theatriumstudio.com/ and all I see are parallel walls with very little acoustic treatment. There are traps in the corners and some additional diffusion and bass traps but mostly the wall and ceiling surface seems hard and parallel in all the rooms. I'd like to hear your oppinion on this. Or if someone has better info about the structural design of the place I'd be very intrested in hearing more.

Is this all about room ratios?

Tomi

Soundman2020 · **Posted:** Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:33 am

I don't know the studio at all, but I think you'll likely find that those aren't all solid walls: they are most likely acoustic cloth which is hiding the REAL acoustic treatment behind it.

Ratios are interesting, but choosing a good ratio alone will not make your room sound good. It will only prevent it from sounding terrible. You'll still need some kind of treatment in there, no matter how fantastic your ratio is.

malfunction · **Posted:** Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:43 am

I know the ratios alone won't make your room sound great. But I'm just wondering the construction as in the CR the whole left side is reflective with some stone and huge windows and all the other walls have been acoustically treated...
The engineer(I think it's Chris Baseford) who's been involved in putting the studio together is registered at the gearslutz and I actually posted a question to him about the construction.

It's just because we have a similar place to work with and I'd like to know how it has been done. My thread is here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13707

malfunction · **Posted:** Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:53 am

I just got a reply from Chris:

"You are correct. All the rooms are rectangular with non-permanent treatment. The concept behind The Atrium Studio was to have vibe and comfort take precedence over perfect acoustics. Keeping in mind that the studio is in Tommy's main residence, we didn't want to have the studio look or feel out of place from the rest of the house, so we decided to keep the shell pretty basic when it came to shape and simply treat it after the fact with acoustic materials as needed. The actual construction is far from basic residential. All the rooms are a "room-within-a-room" construction with floating floors in the live rooms and custom built acoustic doors. The sound-proofing is top-notch throughout the studio and although not theoretically perfect, the results we're getting in the studio speak for themselves!

We are in the process of adding some custom-designed diffusion in the drum-room to tame it slightly (it's very reflective as you can imagine), but still keep it sounding big and lively!

Tommy's had the opportunity to work in some of the best purpose built studios in the world and if you gave him the choice between a rectangular room that felt great, looked cool and was comfortable vs. an angular, weird looking, cramped room that had perfect acoustics... I'd bet he'd pick the former 10 out of 10 times. Keep in mind some of the best sounding (and selling) albums of all time have been recorded in less than acoustically ideal environments (houses, hotels, castles, basements, guest houses, etc.).

C."

So floating but no permanent acoustic treatment...

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Tommy Lee's The Atrium

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