This article on the state of acoustics first appeared in Recording Magazine in 2022. I reprint and update it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk! PS: you may find affiliate links in this post and I may get a commission if you buy something. 🙂
Acoustics is a big science; how musicians deal with it is only part of the picture. But even within our sphere, plenty has changed – and plenty remains locked in. We’ve seen drastic changes in how we listen to, make, and monetize music.
So, we (I?) thought it would be good to look at the state of acoustics in 2022 2025 – what’s changed, what hasn’t, and a little of what may come.
Not Changed: Acoustics Matter
There’s a lot of new technology to make up for deficiencies in room acoustics – room correction, room emulation, AI mixing – but none of them renders room acoustic treatment obsolete.
It’s still important to capture great sources and treat live spaces and control rooms as best you can, even in a home studio. What’s different is now you have more room for error. Take a bedroom studio with less-than-ideal measurements and a fixed budget. With smart treatment and strategic use of room correction software, you can create a room that you would trust for any mix.
When it comes to recording spaces, not as much has changed. There are a lot of mix correction options, and some are smarter than ever, but they’re no substitute for capturing a source that sounds great with no processing. Not to mention, if you’re using samples, say drum loops ala Loop Loft, someone has to record them, and those rooms need tight acoustic treatment.
Recent Changes: Room Correction and Emulation
You can’t spend four minutes online without hearing about Slate’s VSX modeling headphones. If you don’t know, these cans come with emulation software that allows you to experience the acoustic environment of famous control rooms and other spaces (like cars). This means (in theory), you can monitor in a professionally treated studio in your headphones, rendering acoustic treatment in your room unnecessary. Some people swear by VSX and similar products and some can’t stomach it.
UPDATE: I got VSX last year and I f**** love it. My last record, Happy Bappy Murder Ballads, was mixed partly and mastered totally in VSX and I think it’s my best sounding record so far.
Room emulation isn’t relegated just to headphone systems. In academic settings, at least, impulse responses (IRs) are being used in loudspeakers to transform the acoustic experience of one room into another. Understandably, this is much more complicated than doing it in headphones, so don’t look for this technology to hit the market as “transform your studio into Abbey Road for $200!” anytime soon.
Of course, emulation is kind of an extension of room correction. Room and headphone correction software like Sonarworks, IK Multimedia’s ARC System 3, or Waves TRACT System Calibration is no longer novel or new. Some people are even using free plugins and measurement software to create room correction IRs on their own. Again, this doesn’t mean people aren’t treating rooms – it just means the results are improved.
UPDATE 2: I reviewed IK Multimedia’s ARC Studio for Recording Magazine last year, and it’s become another staple in my studio. It’s on always for tracking, mixing, whatever. It’s really cool too.
UPDATE 3: For a few years now, I’ve been working with David Brancato at Meridian Soundworks to build correction filters and I still use them too. The process has changed a lot but I did do a video about the original set of filters we made for my room.
This is all part and parcel of major changes seen across the recording industry – improvements in technology allow more people with lower budgets to create high-quality recordings. This means the culture around acoustics has changed. No longer do we insist on expensive, structural solutions that are only accessible to the few. Now, when we advise musicians about acoustics, we consider myriad situations recordists may be in – from multi-million-dollar facilities to bedroom edit suites tucked into apartment buildings.
Room correction, headphone calibration, and room emulation software are some of the main drivers of this new equity, where even Joe Shmo from Nowhereville can achieve a professional mix.
Big Changes: Spatial and Binaural Audio
In talking to a few academics about cutting-edge audio research, one thing stands out, and that’s how we think about sound. As mentioned, the physics of sound doesn’t change, and we’ve long understood a great deal about it. But in music, we’ve mostly thought about sound in a simplified way.
To be specific, we tend to think of sound linearly – especially when we talk about treating spaces. For example, we can predict early reflections in the sweet spot of a mix room by using mirrors. In this instance, we’re thinking about sound like rays.
Knowing that objects (including sound waves) bounce off flat surfaces at the same angle they approach, we draw early reflections using straight lines. Especially at high frequencies, we can successfully think of sound waves this way to plan most of the treatment we’d need to create, say, a reflection-free zone at the mix position.
Combined with an understanding of how various materials absorb or reflect sound, we’ve got everything we need to do what we do in acoustic treatment. This isn’t particularly complicated, although it can ratchet up when you get back to thinking about sound as waves (comb filtering, etc.). Even then though, we still talk about them as if they travel in one, linear direction.
But this is not how sound works. Sound is more accurately thought of as a spherical phenomenon. Take a sound source (like your face) and picture a spherical wavefront expanding outward in all directions at once, ever-expanding.
This is no new discovery. But this way of thinking underpins many of the exciting new things happening in audio. Eerily accurate instrument modeling, spatial audio, and fancy soundbars that can emulate surround sound.
This part of acoustics is leading to a lot of cool stuff, like room emulations ala Slate VSX – which also may affect how we treat rooms.
Coming Soon? More Spatial Immersion
Surround sound isn’t new. Movies have been coming out in 5.1 since before many of our readers were born. And music is sometimes mixed for that format, but it’s not particularly common. Some readers may remember when labels started releasing popular albums in 5.1 surround, but it didn’t replace stereo. Music is still coming out in 5.1, but it’s a minuscule percentage of the 40,000ish tracks released daily.
This is partly because earbuds are the primary way most people listen. But new formats are emerging using spatial and binaural audio – Dolby Atmos being the major player – that can be reproduced in headphones. This means mixers will have more reason to mix for these immersive formats. After all, if any Tom, Dick, and Harry can experience your immersive spatial mix in a pair of enhanced AirPods, there’s a real market, and we’re already seeing this.
Not to mention, virtual reality is also an immersive format, relying on headphones for the audio component. And while most VR mixes are still stereo, some are done binaurally. With Meta aggressively campaigning to launch the Metaverse, immersive audio could have more and more reason to exist.
This means how we build studios may shift, especially for mixers who will never mix in headphones. The way we traditionally treat control rooms is specifically for stereo mixing. When you’re considering a three-dimensional array of sound, you need to treat the room differently.
Still, don’t count on bleeding-edge audio formats to replace stereo as music’s bread and butter. Fancy dancy formats have a history of fizzling out. If you’re doing well mixing in stereo and you don’t care about creating immersive experiences, you don’t need to tear down your studio. But if you’re fascinated, there are plenty of opportunities to create binaural mixes and take advantage of Dolby Atmos now -people can hear it, and you’ll be positioned to take advantage of new and exciting possibilities later.
UPDATE 4: Dolby Atmos is here to stay now. It’s not replacing stereo, but most major acts are releasing Atmos mixes now, and it’s starting to get accessible – I just upgraded my copy of Mixbus which now includes the ability to encode Atmos mixes.
Fundamentals Still Lead the Way
At the end of the day, how we use acoustic science in music is changing – but mostly by expanding. Stereo is not going away, and you’ll always still need to check your mixes in mono. This means well-built stereo mix rooms are still relevant and will remain so. And while we may be tapping into more of what we know about sound, nothing that we’ve been using is wrong now.
Probably the most exciting thing right now is that anyone can achieve a professional mix with enough education and diligence, and there are more ways than ever to skin that cat. Treat a room and fix shortcomings with room correction. Use room emulation in headphones. Or just save money and record at Abby Road. Whatever cooks your goose.
But watch over the next decade or so. We may be on the cusp of some amazing new ways to make and experience recorded music – all thanks to the continued evolution of acoustic science.
I was the least sciency member of the class of 2006 in Stanford’s famed CCRMA program in Music, Science and Technology. I’ve treated many rooms and would love to talk about it on socialz @AaronJTrumm.