The average layman knows nothing about music studios except the few clips seen on entertainment channels. There is equipment, there is soundproofing, there is a microphone… and that’s about it.

Clearly, there is a lot that laymen don’t know.

A music studio is a place where music can be created, recorded, processed, edited and then mastered. Today, all the editing is usually done with the help of electronic and digital equipment – mixers and monitors, hooked up to a powerful computer. Creating the sound, too, can happen either by acoustic or electronic means.

Music studios must have a minimum of two rooms, which should ideally allow visual contact between them. These two rooms are the “studio”, where performances and recordings take place, and the “control room”, where the sound is recorded and processed.

Acoustic instruments require sophisticated recording equipment, so that the quality of the sound is captured into the finished track as well as possible, without letting the sound of one instrument leak or bleed into the sound of another. Each instrument is given a separate input channel into the mixer, so that its sound can be processed and edited separately from all the others. As a result, sound leakage between instruments should always be minimized for optimal sound clarity in the final product.

Apart from separating the sounds of acoustic instruments, the studio also has to ensure that the sound does not reflect or reverberate to levels that can be caught by a microphone. Reverberation can be artificially introduced later on if required. Even more crucially, the studio must not allow sound from the outside to enter its space – therefore, proper soundproofing is imperative.

Studio-recorded sound is always much clearer than a home recording, especially where vocals, drums and other acoustic instruments are involved. Therefore, a good studio space is crucial for making a mark in the musical industry.