Even Harmonics

A nerd’s tale. By Rogan Kelsey

…and the time had finally come to build my first mastering studio. It was the first step toward fulfilling my dream to become a mastering engineer. I started by doing the two things I was told by a mentor, “get the best pair of monitors you can afford and then spend the same amount on your room as you spend on the speakers”. That room wasn’t great. It didn’t take long to discovered diffusers. Fueled by enthusiam, and armed with F. Alton Evertest’s great, work I moved house and built another room full of QRDs. That room was also not great.

Then in 2007 I built another, but this one was a much better balance of absorption and diffusion, and a fair bit larger than the first two I’d built. And when I say ‘I’, what I mean is me, good friends and family too. This one sounded pretty good. Once it was built though, when my mastering clients walked through the door they’d often say how relaxing it was to be there, how good the monitors I had sounded in the room, and a few of them asked me if I’d build a room for them. The process had unearthed a treasure – making acoustics every bit as rewarding as mastering was for me, and I quickly dog-eared everything I could get my paws on to read.

I’d studied electronics after school because my parents wanted me to ‘have something to fall back on’. I’d dragged myself through it with some chagrin. But a few years later I found myself incredibly grateful because, as it turns out, when acoustics was first taught in universities, it was taught as ‘electro-acoustics’ because of the many acoustics principles mirrored in electrical circuits. Also, it didn’t hurt to understand polarity when my first hand-built boutique EQ arrived miss-wired and phase-inverted. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.

I’ve been creating spaces in pursuit of the perfect sound since 2004. Techniques refined by the constraints of living on the southern tip of Africa for most of my life have given me an in-depth knowledge of acoustic materials, how to turn them into products, and how and where to use them. Figuring out how to make them beautiful to their new owners is easy, because while I’m definitely squarely nerd, I can recognise and appreciate a thing of beauty.

22 years later, and with around 2 billion streams of my masters egging me on, the pilgrimage continues here in England. I hope one day to be invited to yours to nerd-out over all things audio.