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Acoustics for the 21st Century

Having been through the studio expansion/upgrade wars for years, I can assure you this is ground to be tread upon lightly. How much do you need to spend? Where is the best place to spend it? What is important, and what is not? What are the hidden costs, such as downtime? Whom do I trust to tell me the truth? These are just the first questions that come to mind when you cannot put off any longer the need to improve the sound of your facility to satisfy your own ears and your clients’ requirements, and /or to keep up with the competition.

Getting that certain level of acoustic acceptability for you and your clients is no longer a totally subjective matter. In the past, acoustic recording environments that sounded totally different to even the untrained ear could all be commercially successful. That's yesterday, not today, unless you are satisfied with demo quality. Now, with 96-Hz/24-bit digital quality available and DVD audio having emerged as a new format of choice, there are specific response requirements with ever more severe parameters that are the minimum level acceptable for a master track recorded in an acoustic environment. It has to be honest and sound the same wherever or however you listen to it, almost anywhere in the world. That's right, the world. Studios are the same almost everywhere on our planet. Same problems, same equipment, same varying prices, and same levels of quality. Same acoustic designers for the top of the line.

When we started to build the first Record Plant studio in 1967, my partner Gary Kellgren, one of the great audio engineers, knew in his head how a control room or the studio should sound. With a great deal of trial and error (such as putting up and tearing down walls several times after drawing the dimensions of the control room or the isolation booths on the floor with chalk), he finally got the rooms to sound the way he wanted. And then we cranked out the hits. In the beginning, Record Plant had a lot of flexibility from the clients to “fix it in the mix.”

Then we we walked into TTG studios in L.A. one night in 1968 and heard this incredible playback from the monitors in a control room designed by a tech maintenance guy by the name of Tom Hidley. We had been turned on to the studio by Jimi Hendrix, who had done some overdubs there during the recording of Electric Ladyland and had told Kellgren about the superior sound of the room. Suddenly the acoustic world changed for us. Hidley joined our staff as the third musketeer, and we proudly set out to provide a new standard for the clarity and depth of sound quality. We wanted superior sound, recorded in a true acoustically controlled environment, that could be played back on a professional tape machine in almost any listening environment with equally astounding results. Quite a quest.

What about today? Where do you fit in? What pleases you, and what do you demand of a control room or acoustic studio sound in order to be satisfied that the quality of the music meets your standards? Whom do you have to please? What do your clients expect from your room(s)? How do you acoustically satisfy these needs and wants with your studio budget and space limitations? Get professional help. Today there are a number of excellent acoustical designers in the world who are qualified to answer those questions. The need to upgrade is something studio owners think about all the time. To put it all in perspective, I consulted with three of the top acoustic designers in the world: Neil Grant, Tom Hidley, and John Storyk.

These top designers are all very knowledgeable, and even though they're incredibly competitive, they agree on the basics of how to help a potential or present recording studio owner best use the acoustical design services that they have to offer, whether for a new room or an acoustical update, whether the budget is millions or thousands. All have international reputations and have been building studios for many years. Their collective advice was surprisingly interchangeable.

All agreed that the control room was the place to spend first and most. Expressing the individuality of the owner and function of the facility was what helped to distinguish the studio from the competition. How much of the work you want to do yourself must be your first up-front decision. Then, each of the players knows his or her role and responsibility for the success of the project.

Tom Hidley, who has designed and built more than 600 control rooms and studios, including the $25 million BOP complex in Southern Africa, Capri Digital Studios in Italy, and the Crawford Postproduction facility in Atlanta, expressed it very simply: “Your control room must be honest. That means the music should sound the same there as it does in your car, or at home, or out on the street. The street is the neutral zone. That is where the buyer /critic listens and determines the buying quotient of the particular performance. A control room that does not tell the truth (that is, the music does not sound the same as when you hear it in a different common listening environment) cannot succeed in the long term. The control room is the environment for critical analysis of how it will sound on the street; the studio itself is an effects room designed for a musical performance.” What that means to me is that if you and your clients think your control room is honest, you don't need to change it, except to occasionally update its cosmetics. If that is not the case, even a $25,000 investment in changing the room geometry and sonic traps can make the honesty of the room improve logarithmically. That is what makes it your best investment, according to Tom.

John Storyk had some very practical advice for us all. Being a renowned architect and a member of the AIA, and having designed hundreds of studios over many years, John feels that everyone contemplating building or upgrading should call in an expert, if only as insurance against making “giant mistakes.” John says his experience shows that a project studio can get his services as a consultant on a fixed fee basis for around $5000–$10,000, depending on the particular acoustical situation. This includes preacquisition site analysis to keep you from picking the wrong location or building, room geometry guidelines, and a host of other sound advice. The rest you can do yourself, if you so desire and if your budget is limited.

John also has recently done major international world-class studio complexes such as the Ex'pression Center for New Media in the S.F. Bay Area and Synchrosound in Malaysia. His rules of thumb are: “Cosmetic updates (new carpet, fabric, and paint) can be done for about $30-35 per square foot. Major facilities to be constructed in existing shells could cost about $175-200 per square foot for non-union work. Add about 30 percent for union jobs and an additional 10 percent if the job is in New York City.” Very large facilities are slightly less, and small custom facilities are higher in cost per square foot, according to John.

Neil Grant, who has designed facilities such as Hit Factory in New York City, the Hitokuchi-zaka upgrade in Tokyo, and Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in England, echoes the above advice. He says: “The success of companies such as ours over the last ten years has been based on the realization that the investment, whether first time around or as a refit package, in the recording, listening, and monitoring environments, in the development of spaces that are light and simple, a pleasure to use and occupy, is the key fundamental to a successful and profitable business.” He believes, rightfully, I think, that anyone can purchase the same hardware, whereas it takes a level of artistic creativity to design and implement the proper acoustic environment for the individual needs of the particular client in a preexisting building shell. The financial success of many of his clients attests to this philosophy.

THE SEMINAR FOR ACOUSTICALLY KEEPING UP

OK. So that gives us our foundation. What about the hidden costs of accomplishing these dreams? How much revenue will be lost from the downtime and construction dirt and noise from this upgrade/expansion you are planning? Lots! I can remember having the construction crew work from 3 AM until noon to allow us to continue with sessions and also minimize noise and dust. Unfortunately, that only helps a little.

How are you going to pay for this adventure? Contractors want cash, not promises. Can you convince the people who finance you that the upgrade/expansion will pay for itself with additional revenue? Can you schedule this construction project tightly enough to maintain your normal cash flow? Do you really have to do this major surgery now, or can you afford to wait until you have more cash and fewer butterflies in your stomach?

A safe recipe for projecting the real cost of such a venture, with you taking as much of the responsibility yourself as possible, is as follows: do your due diligence by talking with clients, your equipment vendors, noncompetitor studios in other parts of the country, and your financial advisors. Pick the acoustical consultant you will use, whether simply as a consultant or as a designer and /or turnkey contractor. Budget your building and audio equipment costs, and project the amount of business you will lose from the downtime. Now double the building cost and the time you think it will take, and add in the additional amount of lost business you will experience from the additional downtime. Then, cut in half the amount of additional revenue you projected you will initially receive when the project is complete (normally it will take from six months to a year to see maximum additional cash flow from the new facility). My experience after building 38 studios is that you will be plus or minus 5 percent of your final cost and time when you complete this formula.

Some of our experts agreed with my above formula, and others took immediate exception. Having assembled this impressive panel, I asked them some difficult questions and got some impressive answers. I have combined and summarized their opinions, for simplicity.

Q: What advice would you give to someone about to enter our industry as to the proper questions to ask a potential studio designer, so that the client would know quickly what was involved with his or her project (whatever type) and what it would cost?

A: Most important is: Where can I go to hear three or four of your recent rooms and speak to the owners about their satisfaction on all levels with your work? All levels means: Did the job come in on time and on budget? Were there any problems with the design meeting local building codes? What is the sonic performance compared to what was promised? How do the rooms “feel”? Are the clients comfortable and happy with the recorded results in this designer's signature environment, no matter where they play them back?

Second, know what you want and what you can afford to pay for building your studio and control room. This enables the designer to respond to the major query: “How long will it take and how much will it cost?” Key questions: What are the space limitations (if you already are locked into a piece of real estate)? If it is a new facility, it is best to engage the acoustical designer before you commit to your space, because he is an expert in what can be accomplished in a given space. If you have several potential locations, make a video and send it to your potential designer to save their time and your money. How many musicians do you want to record in your room? What is the budget for the list of equipment you have decided on for your control room? This will help to determine the minimum room size required. What are the amenities you must provide, such as lounges, a kitchen, accommodations, and so on? All of these require space and integration with the studio design. If you know what you want in these areas before the designer puts pencil to paper, you save time and money. The designer sells his or her time just as you sell studio time. Being presented with changes is just like listening to a finished mix and realizing that you have to do it over again because it just is not right. By the time you realize it, you can't afford the time or the money.

Q: What are the economics of studio design and construction? What has been the experience of your firm, expressed in dollars per square foot, to design, build and decorate: ground up, new construction in an existing space, and reconstruction of an existing studio for all levels of facility budgets? And, by the way, can you guarantee me that the job will come in on time and on budget?

A: Asking how much a studio will cost to build or rebuild is a little like asking how much a car will cost. That might mean going to the used car lot to find something for a few hundred dollars or a custom-designed Formula One racer for a million dollars or two. Or it might mean buying a new set of tires for the car you already own and running it through the car wash. What's important is that you spend your money wisely, which means balancing the desired results against the budget it takes to get there. The key word is: compromise. There is no magic number. The more you can afford, the better it is going to sound, assuming you have enough real estate to be flexible.

The experts agreed and came up with a rule of thumb of $50-$200 per square foot, with one instance of over $400! Our experts were rightfully nervous about answering this one, because it depends on geographic location, the cost of labor and materials, the building codes to which you must conform, the sonic performance and “noise floor” you demand, and your time constraints (another reason you should pick your acoustic designer as early in the project-planning phase as possible).

As an example, Tom Hidley has been known to buy all of the building materials for a particular project (down to the last nail and roll of speaker cloth) in the U.S., and then load them into a 747 cargo jet, and fly them to the remote location where the studio is to be built. This is one very good reason why dollar cost per square foot varies. Another is the fact that sometimes “smaller is not better.” Smaller can be more expensive per square foot because of isolation requirements and the ergonomics that require much more concentrated design efforts and installation requirements to make it work right. Is your wife going to put up with you working in the basement if it wakes the kids up every night?

All agreed that “ground up” is the best because you can build in flexibility for future needs. Most of us dream of ground up and have to settle for budget compromise. You know the cost of equipment up front, but the cost of construction always changes because there is inevitably something you want to add or change, and there is no way you could have known about it when you approved the plans and accepted the bid. Believe me, I have been there.

Q: Clients expect recording studios to continually make cosmetic and acoustical improvements to keep their facilities up to date. What advice would you give to studio owners about how to do this most efficiently? The importance of this question was emphasized to me recently in a discussion with producer/engineer Ed Cherney. As a client who has to work almost anywhere his world-famous artists decide, he said: “If the studio isn't clean and taken care of cosmetically, then you have to immediately wonder and get nervous about the reliability of the equipment.” We all know how sad it is when the beauty queen turns into a bag lady.

A: It's the tricks of the trade that boil down to “planning ahead.” Many times, simple cosmetic upgrades can be coupled with minor acoustical changes that will be perceived as major improvements by a studio's clientele. Flexibility. Downtime is very expensive. The amount of time it takes to upgrade your studio can be your most expensive cost factor.

Cosmetic changes make the place look new without construction. New carpet, paint, fabric on traps and walls. This is a good reason for using acoustic treatment techniques that involve removability. Three years down the road it's a lot easier to stretch new fabric on removable panels than on those that are glued or permanently installed.

Acoustic changes should only be made if there is a demanding reason. Technology and changing studio marketing niche agendas will naturally force modifications to take place. It could be a new console, changing from pure audio to audio-for-video, converting a control room into a workstation suite, or discovering a need for different monitors. For flexibility, use wire troughs and raceways rather than conduits because studio wiring requirements are changing quite rapidly. Make electrical as flexible as possible, because it is expensive and time-consuming to change. Now, desktop computers and ancillary equipment that can have special power requirements are going to come and go as the shareout of production formats continues. In addition, new air-conditioning noise reduction requirements dictated by different equipment configurations and acoustic parameters can become impossible to accomplish unless you already have the excess electrical power available.

Q: In what direction do you feel the art of studio design will be moving between now and the year 2010? How can today's studio owners economically prepare for what you see as the acoustic design trends?

A: Many studios are moving toward more diversity in their services, such as offering multimedia production, adding film and digital video postproduction, and considering virtual reality capabilities. With the ever-increasing resolution in the digital domain, such as 96-Hz/24-bit, if we add +6-dB dynamic range for every bit increase, we have to lower the residual ambient noise level in studio acoustic areas—which could increase construction cost. Because of increased competition between studios, we must find methods and materials to reduce that cost. That is our immediate challenge.

Another of our experts adds: New acoustic materials embodying what may be called the “scattering coefficient” now give the industry much more accurate information as to how materials influence propagated sound. This information enables us to make fewer mistakes and get better results at a lower cost. This allows the “look” and “feel” of a studio environment to be dictated with more freedom by the owners and the clients as the equipment becomes more transparent. The answer is again for you, the studio owner, to be as flexible as possible in your requirements and in your ability to change quickly and inexpensively. Such an approach will allow you to go in whatever direction and seek whatever niche you and the industry dictate in the future. This is what will make you better and quicker than your competitors, who will have to spend more time and more money just to keep up acoustically.

So, Mr. or Ms. Entrepreneur, go for it. Taking a deep breath and praying for survival is part of the excitement of our studio industry. It has cost a lot more than you thought it would, but it's important to appear “forever young.” Our clients, the studio time buyers, expect their acoustic recording environments to always be fresh looking and sonically up to date. What's important to the owner is the comfort of knowing that the studio has that contemporary feel, the sonic clarity everybody demands today, a competitive price, and the proper equipment. Once they are assured of that, they can get on with the important business of making the music. They are secure that it will sound “right” to almost anyone, almost anywhere it is played back. These are the major incentives that keep those clients coming back to your studio—the studio they have adopted as their second home. Give that to them, and you will prosper.