I am curious about speaker placement in larger control rooms, such as Studio A at EA, specifically as it relates to minimizing differences between what the engineer is hearing and what the band is hearing on the couch behind the desk.

So much of the literature I read on speaker placement is focused on optimizing sound for the one person sitting in the prime position. But if the band is, say, 8 feet or more behind the engineer, then wouldn't I be cutting them out pretty oddly by using an equilateral triangle setup?

Are there tips about the layout or angling of speakers that would address this? From what I can tell of the pictures at Electrical, the Matrix 805 speakers aren't spread super wide, at least relative to the size of the room. Would these be used for critical playback with the band, or are they primarily just for the engineer and then if the band is listening back you'd switch to the three-ways?

I recognize the acoustics of the room play a big part in this, but I thought I would focus just on the speaker setup to try to keep the topic narrower. However, if I'm simply chasing an unreal acoustic scenario where band and engineer hear a near-identical mix, are there things I can do with my own workflow or communication with the band that can help avoid any problems that arise from everyone in the room listening from a different position? I prefer to involve the band as much as possible with all the mixing work, so I'd like to set up my control room with that as one of the guiding principles. My space is roughly 30'x18' so I have some wiggle room with how I lay things out.

Many thanks for any feedback!

I am not EA or other larger control rooms (I.A.N.E.A.O.O.L.C.R.) but:

Studios with larger control rooms will have nearfield monitors for the engineers as well as larger soffit-mounted monitors for those outside the mix position. In Electrical Audio Studio A these are three-way Westlakes, according to the studio page.

In smaller rooms where everyone is "sharing" the nearfields, probably best not to do the thing where you angle the monitors in towards your ears. I don't know how drastically it would affect things in your space either way, but I think it makes intuitive sense not to skew the stereo image badly to suit one person. (It also looks dumb when people angle them, though that might be a "me" problem.)

EDIT: sorry for overlooking that you referenced the three-ways in your post. I'll add that the Studio A page also mentions "separate nearfield monitors for rear sofa."

not uncommon to see a second set of nearfields on the coffee table back by the couch that are delayed to be in time with the Main mix monitors. Usually a second set of the same monitors at Mix position. Not sure that EA has these, but I've seen it a lot.

I also know that EA DOES have multiple earbud stations all around the studio where you can test the mix through little white earbuds and in the kitchen you can listen over the speaker in an old iPhone 6, since this is exactly how people listen to music these days. I heard they are replacing the Westlakes with 2 Echo Dots in order to give people an honest listening environment. Pro gear, pro attitude.

It's not pie-in-the-sky at all. Drivers have varying amounts of dispersion/ directivity, and enclosure design will also impact it, and it's an important consideration when you outfit speakers/ monitors for your environment.

I would add that room modalities will always play a role in what someone hears. In CR B, the client seating is very near the rear wall, and in that position, low frequencies are considerably more prominent than they are in the mix position. It's not ideal, clearly a compromise that was made to fit client seating into the control room at all. But you can work around it by simply inviting the client/ band to sit in the rolling chairs in a less modally-impacted place. The flattest position that I could find in the room, was about 5 feet back from the monitors, three or so feet back from the console. So I try to scoot back off the console to assess a mix, scoot in and work, scoot out to assess, and repeat.

Soffit monitors are generally bigger and can fill the room more, but their design principle has more to do with eliminating the reflection point from behind the speaker, which is accompanied by modal issues. If you place the speaker inside the wall, with the drivers flush with the wall, there is no distance from the speaker to the wall, so there are no corresponding modalities. Soffit monitors may also be higher dispersion/ lower directivity, but it's not part-and-parcel of the design.

We do have a second set of monitors in CR A on the rear coffee table, they are NS-10Ms, not a match with the B&W 805s we use as nearfields.

And sorry to disappoint, but we don't have earbud stations in the studio. We have a boombox that we can patch in to get a sense of how something will sound on a "low-fi" system, and you can also plug earbuds into the headphone amps in the control rooms, or the headphone distribution boxes in the playing rooms.

We have no plans to replace the Westlakes. I have no sense of humor.

Thanks for the interesting responses; all that info is quite useful. In terms of the distance between the two speakers, is it fair to say I'm overthinking the effect of where each band member is seated within the stereo image? Put another way: Are the room modalities going to have a large enough impact on what everyone is hearing in different seats that it's not worth worrying about the angling or width between left and right speakers?

I'd certainly like to minimize the acoustic differences between what engineer and band are hearing on playback, but I'm also concerned with how best to communicate those things to the band. Is it worth pointing out that bass response and stereo imaging are a bit varied in different seating positions, or do you think that's getting lost in the mixing weeds to a degree that it hurts the session and focuses the band's attention in the wrong places?

are modalities modes? would george carlin approve?

I don't think you're overthinking it, but a compromise is necessary.

Once you have more than one listener, at least one person is in a non-ideal listening position because they are shifted in the stereo field, and in the near/ far dimension relative to the speakers. Speakers with wider dispersion will certainly help, but just know that you always have to compromise. We often default to thinking there are technological solutions to non-technological problems, but in this case it's equally important to work on the interpersonal dimension- figure out how important it is to the client that they're hearing the best representation of the audio they can (often you as the engineer will care way more about this than they will, and you have a better window into what accuracy is in your regular working environment), and how much time you can and should allocate to giving them the best "window" into the recording you can. In a tracking session with a tight timetable that's working against you- no chance I'd do this. In a mix session where things are much more spread out, probably.

Not to say you shouldn't seek out wider-dispersion monitors, they will reduce that difference between what people are hearing. But it's not going to completely resolve the entanglement of issues at play.

Modes will change what someone hears in any position in a room, but usually you can treat their harmonics so that they only impact the bass range. Or you can mix in a huge fucking room and not have to deal with any of this. I say that unironically- there are a lot of studios that have their control rooms integrated into their large playing areas so that modes are much less of an issue.

Thanks so much for the insight. That was awesome and exactly what I was curious about. I also appreciate your note at the end about the extra large control room mitigating some of these effects. I'm in a rural setting so I have a very large building to play with. I've definitely considered integrating the control room into the live room, and while I know that's probably a much larger topic with other pros and cons, it's interesting to think about specifically from the perspective of room modes and playback. Thanks again for the generous response.