Perhaps, ideally, our listening rooms would be precisely the same acoustically as the mastering room. But this would mean a listening space would only sound its best when playing recordings made in one mastering space.
Yes, I think aiming for the sound of a good mastering room is a very good idea. But I don’t think you need to worry that you will optimize for specific recordings produced in a specific room. Good mastering rooms, in general, are going to be far more consistent and predictable from room to room than typical domestic rooms. In fact, conformity is considered a very good thing in mastering and control rooms.
Engineers often need to travel between studios for their work. It’s just a fact of the business. For example, we have a customer who is a very prominent record producer. He has a gorgeous studio of his own. But he’s about to work on the soundtrack of a major Hollywood feature film. Therefore, he will be spending a couple of months in a studio in LA, because that’s where the film makers reside. And they want all the action happening within their reach.
So conformity and predictability are important factors in what defines a good room. If you can manage to get your home listening room anywhere within this camp, then you will have gone very far towards best hearing what the record producers have intended.
Btw, a typical mixing or mastering room will shoot for a diffuse sound field and a reverberation time in the range of 0.2- 0.4 seconds. Fairly dead. Also much easier said than done, especially the “diffuse sound field” part of the equation. But there you are.
Cheers,
Thomas
Thomas Barefoot, President/CTO, Barefoot Sound (manufacturer)

