From the time I started at Motown in 1963, we had a mastering "closet" set up at Hitsville on West Grand Blvd. But early 1968 Motown bought a 10 story office building in Downtown Detroit abnd we were to move into new headquarters.
At Hitsville the room was very small with a lot of things crammed into it. Because there were so many things to disperse the sound, acoustics was not a big issue. We sat about 7 feet away from the speaker (the room had mono monitoring.
The new area downtown was twice the size and was at one time a room that a bunch of counselors sat in. The empty sound of that bigger room was not something that I wanted interfering with the sound I was hearing to master.
I used cardboard boxes to ship master discs to the pressing plants. These cartons were about 15 x 15 broken down. I ordered a 3 year supply of these suckers and used them as acoustical material to tune the room. I took a corner of the room and set up the masstering rack with the speakers feeding the room with the walls acting like a horn to project out the sound. I moved the operator to about 5" away from the speakers.
Behind the operator, the stacks of carboard boxes made sure that no ugly empty sound boubnced back to the operator's ears.
We call this "seat of the pants" acvoustic treatment, something that always seems to work out well.
Here's a drawing:
Take Care
bob
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