What Makes a Good Studio for Making Music?
When we imagine a good music studio, we often think about the equipment first. Great speakers, amps, microphones, a beautiful mixing desk or the latest DJ decks.
But after designing the Plug The Jack studios and spending years watching thousands of musicians, singers, bands, producers and DJs use them, I’ve come to a different conclusion: a good studio isn’t simply a room filled with good equipment.
It’s an environment designed around what you actually want to do there. And above all, an environment that removes enough friction to let you focus on what really matters: making music.
Before the equipment, there is the room
When I started designing Plug The Jack, soundproofing was one of my first priorities.
The most obvious reason is being able to make music without disturbing the neighbours. But there was another reason that was almost as important to me: being able to walk into a room and shut out part of what is happening around you.
Making music requires attention. When a conversation in the corridor, noise from another room or something happening outside constantly interrupts that attention, something gets lost. Soundproofing also helps create a kind of bubble where you can play freely and focus on what you came there to do.
But soundproofing a room and giving it good acoustics are two different things.
Soundproofing and acoustics solve different problems
Soundproofing is mainly about limiting the transfer of sound between the studio and the outside world. Acoustic treatment is about what happens to the sound once it is inside the room.
And that’s where things get interesting.
I’m a singer myself, and I’ve played in many different bands and line-ups. I’ve been in plenty of rehearsal rooms where the singer eventually became the one person who couldn’t hear themselves.
An acoustic drum kit naturally produces a lot of energy. The bass player turns up to find their place. The guitarist does the same. The singer then tries to rise above everything else, but a voice and a PA system both have their limits. And the louder everyone gets, the less everyone can actually hear.
At that point, volume is no longer the only problem. Sound reflects off the walls, certain frequencies build up and the room can eventually turn into a kind of sonic mud where it becomes difficult to distinguish the individual instruments.
That’s one of the reasons why our rehearsal studios are acoustically treated. The goal isn’t simply for them to “sound good”. Musicians need to be able to hear each other well enough to genuinely play together.
There is no single ideal acoustic for every studio
This is probably one of the most important things I’ve learned from designing different types of studios: good acoustics are not an absolute.
They depend on what you want to do in the room.
In a rehearsal studio, several instruments have to coexist. Drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals occupy different parts of the frequency spectrum. The room needs to be treated so that each of them can find its place without reflections and resonances turning everything into a blur.
In a recording and production studio, the requirements are different.
When recording vocals, for example, you may want a very controlled sound with as little room coloration as possible, giving you clean material to work with afterwards. Reverb, delay and other effects can then be added during production.
The monitoring space follows another logic again. When you’re working on a track, you need to be able to trust what you hear. If the room exaggerates certain frequencies or masks others, you risk making decisions to compensate for the room instead of actually improving the music.
And in a DJ studio, the experience changes again. A DJ needs to physically feel the music, particularly the power of the low end, while still maintaining enough clarity in the mids and highs to work properly on a set.
So the question isn’t simply: “Does this room have good acoustics?”
The real question is: “Do its acoustics match what I want to do here?”
You don’t just hear a studio: you see and feel it too
We could stop at the physics of sound. But that would ignore a large part of what makes us want to stay in a room and create there.
A studio is also a visual environment.
A completely white room flooded with bright, cold light can be technically functional without necessarily making you want to spend several hours there searching for an idea, rehearsing a song or building a set.
Materials, colours, wood, textures and lighting all contribute to the atmosphere of a space. I like the idea that a studio should create a kind of bubble: somewhere you feel comfortable enough to become fully available to the music.
That’s also why adjustable lighting matters. You don’t necessarily want the same atmosphere when you’re rehearsing energetically with a band, working alone on a production or searching for a musical idea late in the evening.
Music is about emotion. The space in which we create it also influences the emotional state we bring to it.
A good studio also needs to breathe
Comfort seems secondary until it disappears.
You need to be able to move around, put your things somewhere, play with several people without constantly getting in each other’s way, and stay in the room long enough without wanting to leave simply because there isn’t enough space or fresh air.
Ventilation is actually an interesting challenge when designing a studio: on the one hand, you want to acoustically isolate the room; on the other, you need to renew the air inside it. Those are two requirements that have to coexist.
The person using the studio shouldn’t have to think about any of this when they walk in. That is precisely the point. When a space is well designed, much of its design becomes invisible.
The best equipment is sometimes the equipment you no longer have to think about
Musicians love gear. So do I.
A guitar, an amp, a microphone, a pair of monitors or a mixer can even become part of someone’s musical identity. So this certainly isn’t about saying that equipment doesn’t matter.
But equipment can also become a source of friction.
If a two-hour session starts with an hour of moving equipment, connecting cables, finding missing leads, adjusting settings and solving technical problems, some of the time – and sometimes some of the creative energy – has already disappeared before the first note is played.
For me, a studio designed for everyday music-making should therefore be almost plug and play.
The drums are there. The amplifiers are installed. The microphones and sound system are ready. In a production studio, the interface and monitoring are set up. In a DJ studio, the decks and mixer are waiting for the DJ.
The equipment needs to be good enough not to limit your musical expression, but it shouldn’t be so complex that it becomes the focus of the session itself.
That idea is actually where the name Plug The Jack came from: in an ideal world, you walk in, plug in your instrument and make music.
The ideal studio also depends on where you are in your project
That doesn’t mean that a simple, immediately accessible environment can replace every specialised studio.
Your needs change as a project evolves.
For writing, experimenting, rehearsing, producing, developing a set or simply playing regularly, I tend to prefer a space where I feel comfortable and can get started quickly.
That is where a large part of the real work of making music happens.
But when a project reaches another stage, the priorities can change. The song exists, the musicians know exactly where they want to take it, and the goal is now to push a recording or production as far as possible. At that point, a highly specialised studio, specific equipment and the technical expertise that comes with it can make a real difference.
So there isn’t one perfect studio for every moment. There is the right environment for what you are trying to achieve right now.
And even in a fully equipped studio, everyone should be able to keep the things that are part of their own identity. A guitarist may want their own guitar, pedals or particular sound. A musician’s relationship with certain instruments or pieces of equipment can go far beyond what is written on a specification sheet.
And then I realised that the studio doesn’t end at the studio door
This is probably one of the things I anticipated least when we started building Plug The Jack.
At first, we thought mainly about the studios themselves: their soundproofing, acoustics, equipment, lighting and comfort.
Then we watched how people actually used them.
And we realised that what happens around the studio matters too.
A two-hour rehearsal doesn’t necessarily mean four people playing continuously for two hours. You take a break. You talk about a song. You step outside for some air. You have a drink. You meet another musician. A conversation starts. Then you go back into the studio.
Those moments aren’t necessarily time taken away from the music. They can be part of the music too.
That gradually led us to see Plug The Jack not only as a network of studios, but as places where different musical practices can meet. That dimension is now part of the way we think about Plug The Jack.
So what really makes a good music studio?
After all these years, my answer wouldn’t be: the best speakers, the best soundproofing or the most expensive equipment.
I would start by asking: what do you want to do in this room?
Rehearse with a band? Produce? Record vocals? Work on a DJ set? Explore ideas on your own? Finish a project?
From there, the acoustics, soundproofing, equipment, space, lighting and comfort can all be designed around that use.
Because ultimately, the best studio may not be the one that draws the most attention to itself.
It’s the one that fades into the background enough to let you make music.
Damien
Founder of Plug The Jack
