I got an email from a friend today that included this photo of Albert Einstein’s office when he passed away.

Here is a quote from the man himself that ties in well.

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”

– Albert Einstein

I think there is a legitimate justification for clutter and chaos. An empty room will sound different than a room full of furniture. Arguably better. Especially if the empty room is acoustically unflattering. I like neat and organized as much as the next person but neat and organized isn’t necessarily superior sonically. With our measurement rigs, this sort of thing is scientifically provable. How? Setup your measurement rig and send some pink noise into the room. Save a trace of the impulse / frequency / phase response. Now clear out the room and remeasure. Compare the results. I would venture to guess that the impulse response will now be much worse (lots of secondary reflections) and the frequency and phase response will have changed noticeably.

Even without a measurement rig, our ears are well equipped to detect ugly reflections. Simple. Clap your hands together in the space and turn around as you clap. Your ears will be provided with a sonic imprint of the acoustic space. The clap is exciting the space in the most important frequency range (the mid range) and you can hear what happens when you load the room with sound. This approach is no substitute for actual measurements but it is a good start. The first thing I do when I arrive in a new venue is clap my hands as I walk around to get an idea of what I’ve come up against. Standing on stage and clapping out into the house is a good test. Standing at FOH and clapping is another good test.

In the case of my office, I tend to let things back up and pile up. I am in the process of organizing right now so before I start the cleansing process I will take some before and after measurements. In the meantime, here are some pictures of what I have done to create some acoustic chaos in the room without just deadening it.

Prior to the added chaos and clutter, my office had an ugly & very short reverb tail. With the added white ceiling and wall treatment, it’s relatively free of reflections now. Things I record in my office are very neutral. In case you’re wondering what all those white things are on the ceiling and walls, it is packing material from a Meyer Sound speaker installation. The squares with round holes in the middle are packing material from some non Meyer speakers. I paid $0 for this acoustic treatment and I would argue that it is superior to a lot of what is available professionally because:

A. It’s completely random
B. It was completely free
C. I kept the materials out of the landfill

Sometimes chaos is a good thing. The desk you see in one of the photos is behind my mix position. There is no doubt that there is little if any reflections off that surface:)