LEDE – Live End, Dead End

LEDE is a trademarked term for a particular acoustic design. In an LEDE studio, the area around the monitors is deadened, or made absorbent acoustically. The remainder of the room (behind the listener) is made “live” or reflective. The main principle is that the arrival of reflections at the console is in a specific order: 1. direct sound from the monitors; 2. First studio reflection (from the recording room, through the mics and monitors); 3. First control room reflection (off the back wall, assuming it is 10 feet or so behind the engineer). The idea is that by staggering these arrivals, the control room reflections don’t interfere with monitoring recorded studio acoustics.