Welcome to StudioPedia™ -- The Studio Encyclopedia
  Click Images Below to View Videos

    

Our Mission:
Provide consumers with faster, easier access to the information, products and services they want.

We search the major search engines and remove the duplicates, the advertising sites, the pop-up ads, and anything that might harm your computer. Then we include all the related products and services in this easy-to-remember place where you spend less time searching, and more time finding what you want.

Film and Cinema Studio News Links:
Galaxy of Luminaries Expected at "Celebrating a Greener New York" Spring Gala...
16 May 2012 at 10:09am
NEW YORK, May 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- A galaxy of luminaries from the worlds of philanthropy, co...
MobileBits kündigt Pringo Media für iPhone und Android an
16 May 2012 at 7:52am
- Pringo Media bietet Unternehmen schlüsselfertige Live- & Video-auf-Abruf-Lösungen LOS ANGELES, ...
Montblanc Presents THE 24 HOUR PLAYS: Los Angeles
16 May 2012 at 7:44am

LOS ANGELES, May 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Montblanc and Urban Arts Partnership announced today th...

OceanGate Inc., a Deep-Sea Exploration Venture, Expands Operations
16 May 2012 at 6:30am

SEATTLE, May 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- OceanGate Inc., a Seattle-based ocean exploration venture p...

MobileBits annonce le lancement de Pringo Media pour iPhone et Android
16 May 2012 at 6:27am
- Pringo Media offre une solution clés en main de vidéo en direct et sur demande à l'intention de...

Powered by MediaPedia™

Music Studio News Links:

Powered by MediaPedia™

Photography Studio News Links:

Powered by MediaPedia™

Radio Studio News Links:
Online Radio - Free Internet Radio Stations - AOL Radio
15 May 2012 at 2:35am
Free online radio at AOL Radio offers over 350 Internet radio stations with song skipping and inc...
Pandora Internet Radio - Listen to Free Music You'll Love
16 May 2012 at 6:54pm
Pandora is free, personalized radio that plays music you'll love. Discover new music and enjoy ol...
Live365 Internet Radio Network - Listen to Free Music, Online Radio
15 May 2012 at 4:54pm
Listen to thousands of internet radio stations featuring online music in every style, including h...
Seattle Radio - Listen Online
16 May 2012 at 5:54am
Seattle Radio - listen online to music and talk radio.
Radio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
15 May 2012 at 7:17pm
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by electromagnetic waves with frequencies...

Powered by MediaPedia™

Television Studio News Links:
RRsat Reports First Quarter 2012 Adjusted Net Income Increases by 10.2% Over ...
17 May 2012 at 3:51am
AIRPORT CITY BUSINESS PARK, Israel, May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- 2012 First Quarter Highlights ...
Marcus Lemonis, Chairman & CEO Of Camping World & Good Sam To Be Featured On ...
17 May 2012 at 2:00am
CHICAGO, May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Camping World and Good Sam have announced today that Chairm...
MundoFox Anuncia Programación Inicial en Evento con Presencia de Talento Estelar
16 May 2012 at 6:11pm

NEW YORK, 16 de mayo de 2012 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- MundoFox, la nueva cadena de televi...

Rolando Nichols Se Une al Equipo de Noticias de MundoFox
16 May 2012 at 5:27pm

NEW YORK, 16 de mayo de 2012 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Fox International Channels (FIC) y ...

Spanish Broadcasting System, nombra a Albert Rodríguez Principal Oficial de O...
16 May 2012 at 3:53pm

MIAMI, 16 de mayo de 2012 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/--- Spanish Broadcasting System Inc., (SBS...

Powered by MediaPedia™

Studio:
A studio is a artist's or worker's workroom, or an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery (ceramics), sculpture, photography, graphic design, cinematography, animation, radio or television broadcasting or the making of music.

The etymology for the word "studio" is derived from the Italian word, from Latin studium, from studere, meaning to study or zeal.

The French term for studio, atelier, in addition to designating an artist's studio is used to characterize the studio of a fashion designer. Atelier also has the connotation of being the home of an alchemist or wizard.

Art Studio:
The studio of a successful artist, especially from the 15th to the 19th centuries, characterized all the assistants, thus the designation of paintings as "from the workshop of..." or "studio of..." An art studio is sometimes called an atelier, especially in earlier eras. In contemporary, English language use, "atelier" can also refer to the Atelier Method, a training method for artists that usually takes place in a professional artist's studio.

Studio pottery is made by an individual potter working on his own in his studio, rather than in a ceramics factory (although there may be a design studio within a larger manufacturing site).

The term atelier also refers to a printmaking studio, where master printmakers, work collaboratively with painters & sculpters who want to make limited editions of their art using printing presses, such as lithography, gravure and screen printing.

Production Studios:
Production studios are those studios which act as centres for the production in any of the arts; alternatively they can also be the financial and commercial entity behind such endeavours. In Radio & TV the Production Studio is the place where programs and commercial advertising is recorded for further emission.

Movie Studio:
A movie studio is a company which develops, equips and maintains a controlled environment for the making of a film. This environment may be interior (sound stage), exterior (backlot) or both.

A movie studio (aka film studio) is, in the established sense of the term, a company that distributes films. Literally, however, the term denotes a controlled environment for the making of a motion picture. This environment may be interior (sound stage), exterior (backlot), or both. In general parlance, the term is synonymous with "major film production company," due largely to the fact that the leading production companies of Hollywood's "Golden Age"—stretching from the late 1920s to the late 1940s—owned their own studio facilities, as do a few today. However, worldwide (and even in the United States) the majority of production companies have never owned their own studios, but have had to rent space at independently owned facilities that, in many cases, never produce a film of their own.

Beginnings:
In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. Other studio operations followed in New Jersey, New York City, and Chicago.

In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California, because of the good weather and longer days. Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Early movie producers also relocated to Southern California to escape Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production at the time. The distance from New Jersey made it more difficult for Edison to enforce his patents.

The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios, opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley. In the same year, another fifteen independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such as Culver City, Burbank, and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.

The "Majors":

The Big 5:
By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy film industry conglomerates that owned their own studios, distribution divisions, and theaters, and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel, led to the sometimes confusing equation of "studio" with "production company" in industry slang. Five large companies, 20th Century-FOX, RKO, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Loews (MGM) came to be known as the "Big Five," the "majors," or "the Studios" in trade publications such as Variety, and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as the "studio system."

The Little 3:
Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized "major studios". United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during the Golden Age, had an often tenuous hold on the title of "major" and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films.

The Minors:
Smaller studios operated simultaneously with "the majors." These included operations such as Republic Pictures, active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures, which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand for B-movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row.

The Independents:
The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, and Walter Wanger. In 1948 the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly. This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age".

Film to Television:
Midway through the 1950s, with television proving to be a profitable enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon -- as many in the film industry had once hoped -- movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsized film companies, such as Republic Pictures, eventually sold their studios to TV production concerns.

Today:
With the breakup of domination by "the Studios" and the continued incursion of television into the cinematic audience, the major production companies gradually transformed into management structures that simply put together artistic teams on a project-by-project basis and made what studio spaces they retained available for rental, which remains the norm today.

Temperature Control:
It is common for some of the larger studio soundstages today to seem cold and drafty. The cooler temperatures were originally intended to compensate for the intense heat generated by the abundance of high wattage incandescent lighting equipment. In modern times, the newer lighting systems (Like Fluorescent, HMI, & even LED) generate far less heat. As many studio's are moving into the high definition era, the wider screen ratio's imply the need for broader areas of illumination. The Irony is, that even with more light required, a growing need is emerging for heating as well as cooling controls for the comfort of the stage crews & talent.

Notable Movie Studios:
The American Film Company (Los Angeles)
Bright Shadow Films(Shanghai China)
AB Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden)
Angelika Pictures (USA)
Annapurna Studios(India)
Ardmore Studios (Ireland)
AVM Productions (India)
Babelsberg Studios (Germany)
Barrandov Studios (Czech Republic)
Biograph Studios (USA)
Buena Vista Pictures (USA)
Bridge Studios (British Columbia, Canada)
Christie Film Company (USA)
Demented Dog Studios (USA)
DreamWorks (USA)
Edison Studios (USA)
Edison's Black Maria (USA)
Elstree Film Studios (UK)
Famous Players Film Company (USA)
Fox Film Corporation (USA)
Fox Studios Australia (Australia)
Gaumont Film Company (France)
Goldwyn Picture Corporation (USA)
Gorky Film Studio (Russia)
iMG Recordings & Film Studio (USA)
Jadran Film, (Croatia)
Kanteerava Studios (Bangalore, India)
Kalem Company (USA)
Keystone Studios (USA)
Korda Studios (Hungary)
Lenfilm (Russia)
Lubin Studios (USA)
Marwah Films & Video Studio (India)
Medallion Movies (USA)
Méliès Films (France)
Melnitsa Animation Studio (Russia)
Miramax (USA)
Mosfilm (Soviet Union [now Russia])
MTD Studios (USA)
Mutual Film Corporation (USA)
National Film Board (Canada)
Nestor Studios (USA)
New Line Cinema (USA)
Nordisk Film (Denmark)
Panther Pictures (USA)
Paramount Studios lot (USA)
Pathé Frères (France)
Pinewood Studios (UK)
Premium Picture Productions (USA)
Ramanaidu Studios(India)
Ramoji Film City (Hyderabad, India)
Russian World Studios (Russia)
Se-ma-for (Poland)
Selig Polyscope Company (USA)
Shepperton Studios (UK)
Solax Studios (USA)
Sony Pictures Entertainment (USA)
Soyuzmultfilm (Russia)
Sverdlovsk Film Studio (Russia)
Thanhouser Company (USA)
Three Mills Studios (UK)
Toho (Japan)
Touchstone Pictures (USA)
Triangle Film Corporation (USA)
Twickenham Film Studios (UK)
Universal Studios (USA)
Victor Studios (USA)
The Vitagraph Company (USA)
Walt Disney Pictures (USA & UK)
Warner Bros. (USA)
Wingnut Films (NZ)
Village Roadshow (Australia)

Major Film Studio:
A major film studio is a movie production and distribution company that releases a substantial number of films annually and consistently commands a significant share of box-office revenues in a given market. In the North American, Western, and global markets, the major film studios, often simply known as the majors, are commonly regarded as the six diversified media conglomerates whose various movie production and distribution subsidiaries command approximately 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian box office. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary movie business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate. The "Big Six" majors, whose movie operations are based in or around Hollywood, are all centered in film studios active during Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s. In three cases—20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., and Paramount—the studios were one of the "Big Five" majors during that era as well. In two cases—Columbia and Universal—the studios were also considered majors, but in the next tier down, part of the "Little Three." In the sixth case, Walt Disney Studios was an independent production company during the Golden Age; it was an important Hollywood entity, but not a major.

Most of today's Big Six also include formerly independent companies that have been acquired and brought in under the corporate umbrella—for instance, Time Warner's New Line Cinema. The majors have also established a variety of specialty divisions to concentrate on arthouse pictures (e.g., Paramount Vantage) or genre films (e.g., Fox Atomic). The six major movie studios are contrasted with smaller movie production and/or distribution companies, which are known as independentsor "indies." The leading independent producer/distributors—Lionsgate, Summit Entertainment, and former major studio MGM—are sometimes referred to as "mini-majors," along with fledgling studio Overture Films and the fading Weinstein Company. From 1998 through 2005, DreamWorks SKG commanded a large enough market share to arguably qualify it as a seventh major, despite its relatively small output and frequent reliance on outside distributors. In 2006, DreamWorks was acquired by Viacom, Paramount's corporate parent; in autumn 2008, it once again became an independent production company, with its films to be distributed by Universal.

The major studios are today primarily backers and distributors of films whose actual production is largely handled by independent companies—either long-running entities or ones created for and dedicated to the making of a specific film. The specialty divisions often simply acquire distribution rights to pictures with which the studio has had no prior involvement. While the majors do a modicum of true production, their activities are focused more in the areas of development, financing, marketing, and merchandising.

The 6 Major Studios:
1. Warner Bros:
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.) is one of the world's largest producers of film and television entertainment.

It is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York City. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Games, Kids' WB, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, TheWB.com, and DC Comics. Warner owns half of The CW Television Network.

Founded in 1918 by Jewish immigrants from Poland, Warner Bros. is the third-oldest American movie studio in continuous operation, after Paramount Pictures, founded in 1912 as Famous Players, and Universal Studios, also founded in 1912.

2. Paramount Pictures:
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and distribution company, located on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California. Founded in 1912, it is the oldest running movie studio in Hollywood, beating Universal Studios by a month. Paramount is owned by media conglomerate Viacom.

3. Walt Disney Pictures:
Walt Disney Pictures refers to several different entities associated with The Walt Disney Company:

Walt Disney Pictures, the film banner, was established as a designation in 1983, prior to which Disney films since the death of Walt Disney were released under the name of the parent company, then named Walt Disney Productions. Another label, Touchstone Pictures, was created in 1984 to enable Disney to release films with a more mature content than what was associated with the Disney name.

Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studio Entertainment and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney Studios, acquires and produces output that are released under the Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures banners. Their most commercially successful production partners in later years has been Jerry Bruckheimer, Spyglass Entertainment, Walden Media and Yash Raj Films.

Animated features produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios are usually released by Walt Disney Pictures. Exceptions include Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Nightmare Before Christmas which were originally released by Touchstone Pictures.

4. Columbis Pictures:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (CPII) is an American film production and distribution company. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Today, as part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group—owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony—it is one of the leading film companies in the world, a member of the so-called Big Six. It has no connection with CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System).

The studio, founded in 1919 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt, released its first feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924 and went public two years later. In its early years a minor player in Hollywood, Columbia began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra.

With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant (who was shared with RKO Pictures). In the 1940s, Rosalind Russell, Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, and William Holden became major stars at the studio.

In 1982, the studio was purchased by Coca-Cola; that same year it launched Tri-Star Pictures as a joint venture with HBO and CBS. Five years later, Coca-Cola divested Columbia, which merged with Tri-Star. After a brief period of independence, the combined studio was acquired by Sony in 1989.

5. Universal Studios:
Universal Studios (sometimes called Universal Pictures or Universal City Studios), a subsidiary of NBC Universal, is a major Global American motion picture company. Its production studios are located at 100 Universal City Plaza Drive in Universal City, California. Distribution and other corporate offices are based in New York City. Universal Pictures is the World's second longest-lived American studio in San Fernando Valley (Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures is the oldest by a month).

6. 20th Century Fox:
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (spelled from 1935 to 1985 as Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation), also known as 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, or simply Fox, is one of the six major American film studios. Located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills, the studio is a subsidiary of News Corporation, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch. The company was founded in 1935, as the result of a merger of two entities, Fox Film Corporation founded by William Fox in 1915, and Twentieth Century Pictures, begun in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck, Raymond Griffith and William Goetz. Some of 20th Century Fox's most popular movie franchises include the Star Wars, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, There's Something About Mary, Big Momma's House, Me Myself and Irene, Die Hard, Ice Age, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Revenge of the Nerds, X-Men (film series), Alien and Predator series.

The "Mini-Major Studios":
Lions Gate Entertainment, which moved in 2006 from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Santa Monica, California, was the most successful North American movie studio based outside of the Los Angeles metropolitan area before its relocation. Now known as Lionsgate, it traces its roots back to the production company Lion's Gate Films, founded by director Robert Altman in the 1970s. The studio controls the highly profitable Saw franchise.

Summit Entertainment, founded as an independent production and overseas sales company in 1996, was reconstituted as a full-fledged studio ten years later. It saw its first major success with Twilight in autumn 2008. Though it is based in Universal City and has a deal with Universal Studios for the distribution of home entertainment media,[3] Summit's ownership and theatrical distribution operation are fully independent.

MGM, after decades as a major studio, continues to distribute motion pictures and television content as a minor, privately held media company. In April 2005, it was purchased from Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corporation by a consortium including Sony, cable company Comcast, Providence Equity Partners, and three other private investment firms. While Sony continues to hold a minority equity stake in the company, MGM has a deal with 20th Century Fox for the distribution of home video and overseas theatrical product. MGM is also the majority shareholder of the latest incarnation of United Artists, whose other lead owners are Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner. Via its original 1981 merger with UA, MGM controls the rights to the James Bond franchise. Columbia codistributed the first two Bond films starring Daniel Craig after the 2005 purchase, but MGM will resume sole distribution control with the next film in the series.

The Weinstein Company was founded in late 2005 by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein after their departure from Miramax, which they had founded in 1979. In 1993, they sold control of Miramax to the Walt Disney Company, continuing to run the studio in quasi-independent fashion under the Disney umbrella. When the Weinsteins left Disney, they retained the right to the Dimension Films brand, which is used by The Weinstein Company (as it was by Miramax) for genre films. The studio has not had a hit since 1408, released in June 2007. It experienced several high-level executive defections in 2008, and announced major layoffs in November. Overture Films, whose primary equity holder is Liberty Media, was founded in the fall of 2006. It released its first movie in January 2008; by year's end it had surpassed The Weinstein Company's share of the domestic box office gross.

DreamWorks SKG was founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. Once again independent after two-and-half years under the Viacom/Paramount corporate umbrella, it is now backed by India's Reliance ADA Group. DreamWorks will not be a full-service studio—it will produce and finance films, but as it did for most its first era as an independent, it will arrange distribution through the majors. In October 2008, DreamWorks struck such a deal with Universal, though Paramount will continue to release the DreamWorks pictures developed there through the end of 2009. DreamWorks Animation, now a totally separate business, maintains a close-knit distribution deal with Paramount that runs through 2012.

In 2007, Lionsgate and MGM/UA were virtually tied for the position of most successful mini-major in terms of market share, each with 3.8%. In 2006, Lionsgate had a 3.6% market share, The Weinstein Company had a 2.5% market share, and MGM/UA had a 1.8% market share. The next most successful independent was the Yari Film Group, with 0.4%. In 2005, the still independent DreamWorks SKG had 5.7% and Lionsgate had 3.2%. Of MGM/UA's four significant money-earners during 2005, it released three before its acquisition by the Sony-led consortium; MGM/UA's total market share for the year was 2.1%. The Weinstein Company, in its first three months of operation, gained 0.5% of the year's total market share. The next most successful independent was IMAX, with 0.2%. In 2004, DreamWorks SKG had 10.0% (more than the Paramount Motion Pictures Group), Newmarket had 4.3% (due almost entirely to The Passion of the Christ), Lionsgate had 3.2%, and MGM/UA had 2.1%. The next most successful independent was Giant Screen Films, a distributor of IMAX-format movies, with 0.2%.

Animation Studio:
Animation studios, like movie studios, may be production facilities, or financial entities. In some cases, especially in Anime they continue the tradition of a studio where a Master or group of talented individuals oversee the work of lesser artists and crafts persons in realising their vision.

Comics Studio:
Artists, predominantly those producing comics, still employ small studios of staff to assist in the creation of a comic strip, comic book or graphic novel. In the early days of Dan Dare, Frank Hampson employed a number of staff at his studio to help with the production of the strip. Eddie Campbell is another creator who has assembled a small studio of colleagues to help him in his art, and the comic book industry of the United States has based its production methods upon the studio system employed at its beginnings.

Recording Studio:
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording which generally consists of at least two rooms: the studio or live room, and the control room, where the sound from the studio is recorded and manipulated. They are designed so that they have good acoustics and that there is good isolation between the rooms.

A recording studio is a facility for sound recording. Ideally, the space is specially designed by an acoustician to achieve the desired acoustic properties (sound diffusion, low level of reflections, adequate reverberation time for the size of the ambient, etc.). Different types of studios record bands and artists, voiceovers and music for television shows, movies, cartoons, and commercials, and/or even record a full orchestra. The typical recording studio consists of a room called the "studio", where instrumentalists and vocalists perform; and the "control room", which houses the equipment for recording, routing and manipulating the sound. Often, there will be smaller rooms called "isolation booths" present to accommodate loud instruments such as drums or electric guitar, to keep these sounds from being audible to the microphones that are capturing the sounds from other instruments or vocalists.

Design and Equipment:
Recording studios generally consist of three rooms: the studio itself, where the sound for the recording is created (often referred to as the "live room"), the control room, where the sound from the studio is recorded and manipulated, and the machine room, where noisier equipment that may interfere with the recording process is kept. Recording studios are carefully designed around the principles of room acoustics to create a set of spaces with the acoustical properties required for recording sound with precision and accuracy. This will consist of both room treatment (through the use of absorption and diffusion materials on the surfaces of the room, and also consideration of the physical dimensions of the room itself in order to make the room respond to sound in a desired way) and soundproofing (to provide sonic isolation between the rooms). A recording studio may also include additional rooms, such as a vocal booth - a small room designed for voice recording, as well as one or more extra control rooms.

Equipment found in a recording studio commonly includes:
Mixing console
Multitrack recorder
Microphones
Reference monitors, which are loudspeakers with a flat frequency response.

Equipment may also include:
Digital Audio Workstation
Music Workstation
Outboard Effects, such as compressors, reverbs, or equalizers.

Digital Audio Workstations:
General purpose computers have rapidly assumed a large role in the recording process, being able to replace the mixing consoles, recorders, synthesizers, samplers and sound effects devices. A computer thus outfitted is called a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW. Popular audio-recording software includes Digidesign Pro Tools, The industry standard for most studios. Cubase and Nuendo both by Steinberg, MOTU Digital Performer, the standard for MIDI. Ableton Live, Cakewalk SONAR, ACID Pro and Apple Logic Pro.Cool Edit Pro also known as Audition (after bought out by Adobe), Audacity, And ardour on Linux.

Current software applications are more reliant on the audio recording hardware than the computer they are running on, therefore typical high-end computer hardware is less of a priority. While Apple Macintosh is common for studio work, there is a breadth of software available for Microsoft Windows and Linux. A sizeable portion of both commercial and home studios can be seen running PC-based multitrack audio software.

If no mixing console is used and all mixing is done using only a keyboard and mouse, this is referred to as mixing in the box. There are also dedicated machines which integrate a recorder, preamps, effects, and a mixing console; these devices are frequently referred to as DAW's, generally in advertising.

Control Surfaces:
Digidesign control surfaces attempt to bridge the gap between old style analogue desks and modern DAWs by providing physical controls for the Pro Tools software. The latest control surface is the C|24, successor to the Control|24, a 24 fader control surface with 16 built in Focusrite "A" Class Mic Preamps. A fairly new addition to the range is the ICON: Integrated Console Environment, combining a tactile control surface and a Pro Tools|HD Accel system in one unit. VENUE, a similar system, was released for live sound applications. These large control surfaces use an Ethernet connection to the host computer, but for Pro Tools users with smaller needs, the Command|8 is a small eight fader control surface which connects via USB.

Project Studios:
A small, personal recording studio is sometimes called a project studio or home studio. Such studios often cater to specific needs of an individual artist, or are used as a non-commercial hobby. The first modern project studios came into being during the mid 1980s, with the advent of affordable multitrack recorders, synthesizers and microphones. The phenomenon has flourished with falling prices of MIDI equipment and accessories, as well as inexpensive digital hard-disk recording products.

Recording drums and electric guitar in a home studio is challenging, because they are usually the loudest instruments. Conventional drums require soundproofing in this scenario, unlike electronic or sampled drums. Getting an authentic electric guitar amp sound including power-tube distortion requires a power attenuator (either power-soak or power-supply based) or an isolation box or booth. A convenient compromise is amp simulation, whether a modelling amp, preamp/processor, or software-based guitar amp simulator. Sometimes, musicians replace loud, inconvenient instruments such as drums, with keyboards, which today often provide somewhat realistic sampling.

Isolation Booth:
An isolation booth is a standard small room in a recording studio, which is both soundproofed to keep out external sounds and keep in the internal sounds and like all the other recording rooms in sound industry it is designed for having a lesser amount of diffused reflections from walls to make a good sounding room. A drummer, vocalist, or guitar speaker cabinet, along with microphones, is acoustically isolated in the room. A professional recording studio has a control room, a large live room, and one or more small isolation booths. All rooms are soundproofed such as with double-layer walls with dead space and insulation in-between the two walls, forming a room-within-a-room.

There are variations of the same concept, including a portable standalone isolation booth, a compact guitar speaker isolation cabinet, or a larger guitar speaker cabinet isolation box.

A gobo panel achieves the same idea to a much more moderate extent; for example, a drum kit that is too loud in the live room or on stage can have acrylic glass see-through gobo panels placed around it to deflect the sound and keep it from bleeding into the other microphones, allowing more independent control of each instrument channel at the mixing board.

All rooms in a recording studio may have a reconfigurable combination of reflective and non-reflective surfaces, to control the amount of reverberation.

Radio Studios:
Radio studios are very similar to recording studios, particularly in the case of production studios which are not normally used on-air. This type of studio would normally have all of the same equipment that any other audio recording studio would have, particularly if it is at a large station, or at a combined facility that houses a station group.

Broadcast studios also use many of the same principles such as sound isolation, with adaptations suited to the live on-air nature of their use. Such equipment would commonly include a telephone hybrid for putting telephone calls on the air, a POTS codec for receiving remote broadcasts, a dead air alarm for detecting unexpected silence, and a broadcast delay for dropping anything from coughs to profanity. In the U.S., FCC-licensed stations also must have an Emergency Alert System decoder (typically in the studio), and in the case of full-power stations, an encoder that can interrupt programming on all channels which a station transmits in order to broadcast urgent warnings.

Computers are also used for playing ads, jingles, bumpers, soundbites, phone calls, sound effects, traffic and weather reports, and now full broadcast automation when nobody is around. For talk shows, a producer and/or assistant in a control room runs the show, including screening calls and entering the callers' names and subject into a queue, which the show's host can see and make a proper introduction with. Radio contest winners can also be edited on the fly and put on the air within a minute or two after they have been recorded accepting their prize.

Additionally, digital mixing consoles can be interconnected via audio over Ethernet, or split into two parts, with inputs and outputs wired to a rackmount audio engine, and one or more control surfaces (mixing boards) and/or computers connected via serial port, allowing the producer or the talent to control the show from either point. With Ethernet and audio over IP (live) or FTP (recorded), this also allows remote access, so that DJs can do shows from a home studio via ISDN or Internet. Additional outside audio connections are required for the studio/transmitter link for over-the-air stations, satellite dishes for sending and receiving shows, and for webcasting or podcasting.

Television Studio:
A television studio is an installation in which television or video productions take place, either for live television, for recording live to tape, or for the acquisition of raw footage for postproduction. The design of a studio is similar to, and derived from, movie studios, with a few amendments for the special requirements of television production. A professional television studio generally has several rooms, which are kept separate for noise and practicality reasons. These rooms are connected via intercom, and personnel will be divided among these workplaces.

Photographic Studio:
A photographic studio is both a workspace and a corporate body. As a workspace it is much like an artist’s studio, but providing space to take, develop, print and duplicate photographs. Photographic training and the display of finished photographs may also be accommodated in a photographic studio. Accordingly, the workspace may possess a darkroom, storage space, a studio proper - where photographs are taken, and a display room, as well as space for other related work.

As a corporate entity, a photographic studio is a business owned and represented by one or more photographers, possibly accompanied by assistants and pupils, who create and sell their own and sometimes others’ photographs.

Since the early years of the 20th century the corporate functions of a photographic studio have increasingly been called a “photographic agency,” leaving the term “photographic studio” to refer almost exclusively to the workspace.

Mastering Studio:
An audio/video recording studio specialized in the post-production stage for musical and/or video recordings (After the initial, first/rough draft or mix recording is complete). Tasks may include but not be limited to: editing, mixing, video post-production and audio mastering, to produce a finished version ready for broadcast, replication and digital distribution. In music applications, a mastering studio may use different types of equipment and tools than the traditional production studios like: a frequency spectrum analyzer for accurate frequency band measurement, a phase scope to gauge stereo depth, etc.

Instructional Studio:
Many universities are creating studio settings for courses outside the artist's realm. There are several different projects along these lines, most notably the SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs) initiated at NC State.

If you have information or links that you would like included in StudioPedia™, please email us at: