Silence

The shoemaker's children go barefoot. In my case, that was exceptionally true up until today. I’m an acoustician, which means I have devoted my life to improving the world by improving sound quality. That’s why I have been so embarrassed by my own personal living environment. We had in our kitchen one of those old kitchen cupboard FTX ventilation units including a kitchen fan with the suction power of an asthmatic sucking air through a straw. But that’s not even close to the real problem: The noise. The old unit produced an earth-shattering 42 dBA and 62 (!) dBC in our kitchen. Throughout my whole career, I have never come across anything worse in any dwelling. It was up until today the literal definition of how to NOT practice what you preach.

AcousticsRikard ÖqvistSeptember 26, 2022acoustics, ventilation, sound quality, noise, health, sleep, annoyanceComment

Designing the ultimate home studio

When designing a room, you need to balance and prioritize certain aspects against each other. For a home studio, I consider the following three to be the most important: 1) Acoustics, 2) Aesthetics and 3) Functionality. I am currently building my fourth home studio in my garage. Each iteration has had a different priority order and the results have varied accordingly. As with any project, you need to write down the purpose of the room, to understand how the parameters should be rank ordered. In this article, I will describe what I have learned from my different home studios.

Acoustics, Art, Habits, MusicRikard ÖqvistOctober 10, 2020acoustics, home studio, recording, habits, discipline, consistency, creativity, architecture, studio, sound, sound quality, beauty, function, functionality, sound absorbersComment