Acoustics All the rooms for recording and mixing at Martian are entirely ‘floating’. It’s not just the floor, but also the walls and ceiling which are completely isolated from the outside structure. This ‘room within a room’ principle, combined with a high degree of acoustic isolation in between the inner and outer shells, has resulted in a very very noise-free environment. The studio buildings are converted barns, built in the traditional Cornish way, from Cornish stone, at some points the walls are four foot thick! Inside, the acoustics have been modeled by Marcel van Limbeek to meet the latest specifications in acoustical engineering. Instead of using the ‘live-end, dead-end’ method, he opted for a room design that diverts any unwanted direct reflections of the walls and ceiling into large, two-way quadratic, horizontal diffusers at the back of the rooms. There are also various quadratic omnifusors against the walls and ceiling. This, as well as the room design which incorporates no parallel surfaces, creates a very natural sounding acoustic and kills any unwanted effects like standing waves and resonance. Additional full-range absorbers are used to maintain a decay time that is well within the limits for both classical and contemporary recordings. Despite its large size, the sonic characteristics are consistent throughout the entire room. As opposed to many other control rooms, there is no specific “sweet spot” at which a sound must be judged . The recording rooms have the added facility of adding or removing various mobile diffusers and absorbers in order to change its characteristics according to taste. Through its innovative design, our control room has a completely neutral sound and has, in every way, been engineered for both stereo and surround sound mixes.