Introduction

In many countries of Europe the title ‘engineer’ carries a degree of respect. Indeed, it is equivalent to a university degree. Recording companies in these countries are reluctant to call what in English would be called recording engineers by the equivalent in their own languages, but tend to use words that translate as ‘technician’. This can be a little confusing when translated back into English, as ‘technician’ suggests more the role of a maintenance engineer. The companies are reluctant to verbally elevate the ‘technicians’ to ‘engineers’ partly because they fear demands for an engineer’s wage. Frequently, the maintenance people are paid more than the recording staff because they are seen to have more recognisable ‘qualifications’.

The reason why I begin here is that it serves well to highlight the way in which a modern industry has developed from its earliest days. When recording began, it was very much in the hands of scientists and engineers, and the studios were usually staffed, literally, by ‘men in white coats’, all highly specialised in their respective areas of work. These were the people who dictated almost absolutely how a studio should look, sound and operate. These people were engineers, in the full and true sense of the word, but they were frequently detested by the musicians, who often complained bitterly that their needs were not understood.

It was during these times that the term ‘recording engineer’, or its equivalent in other languages, was coined, and as the industry grew, the title remained. It has, in more recent times, largely been inherited by what frequently used to be referred to as ‘balance engineers’ – the people with their hands on the mixing consoles. In fact they were in many instances the only people with their hands on the mixing consoles, as trades union demarcation policies usually prohibited any other person from operating the console. It was all a very technical process, with musicians rarely entering control rooms. The artistic side of the work was normally confined to the other side of the control room window, with only a producer representing the musical side of the process in the control room itself. Musicians played, engineers recorded, and, all too frequently, a considerable gap existed in the understanding of each other’s needs.

Gradually, this gap was closed, usually by some of the engineers with a greater musical feel being more warmly received by the musicians. Comfortable musicians usually performed better than uncomfortable ones. Starting in the 1950s, but developing more in the 1960s, there emerged a breed of ‘name’ recording (balance) engineers, who built up strong rapports with their artistes, and worked for them on a very personal basis. At times this proved difficult, as most recording studios still prohibited recording by engineers who were not part of the permanent staff, but there were always ‘compliant’ studios, where these new relationships could develop. Finding compliant studios with good rooms was another problem, as almost all studios were designed by architects and engineers, and complaints were often heard from the musicians that they were not adequately consulted. Almost everything in a studio was a result of technical requirements, and it was not until the late 1960s that studios built for, or by, musicians were anything other than rare exceptions.

Unfortunately, however, many of the studios built for the musicians’ comfort were not well received by the engineers, who were mainly brainwashed into believing that certain technical requirements were paramount. The happy compromise was still the exception rather than the rule. By somewhere around 1980, when recording technology and musical instrument technology began to blur, the role of recording engineer frequently became usurped by people who were primarily musicians, or who certainly had considerable musical ability. At last the cultural divide between recording engineers and musicians began to dissolve, but this new generation was normally more electronically competent than acoustically competent. Music recording was entering a world of electronics, computers and digital signal processing. A great proportion of musicians and recording staff alike were drawn into this new domain, and for a time, acoustic recording spaces almost fell by the wayside, except for orchestral recording, film scoring and a few die-hards in other areas.

Studio design has rarely been a comfortable companion to the recording processes, with either outdated attitudes or more advanced technology always seeming to thwart a comfortable evolutionary process. Of course, throughout all this, there have been the small number of people with the perception, skill and foresight to turn adversity into advantage, or to be able to select the most appropriate facilities for each recording. The music industry, however, is now far too important in terms of employment and many national economics for it to continue to rely on the special few for its continued existence. Especially now, as we are beginning to emerge from a period where many people thought that electronic processing would provide the answers for all acoustic problems, a wider understanding of recording accoustics is badly needed. We need more good acoustic spaces, and these need to be built before too much of the art is lost.

The aim of this book is to discuss some of the concepts of recording room acoustics; why they are needed, how they are achieved, and the bearing that they have both on musical performance and recording techniques. However, the first chapter will deal with the sound isolation shells, or ‘soundproofing’ in everyday language. As we will see, the soundproofing and internal acoustics regimes overlap to some degree, but it seems that no matter how much time passes, the two get very much confused. In June 1990, in the UK publication Home and Studio Recording, I wrote an article entitled ‘The Great Egg-Box Fallacy’, in which I tried to point out that sticking a few acoustic panels on the wall (or egg-boxes in the old days) will do absolutely nothing to stop the sound of a drum kit from penetrating from one room to the next. Slowly and surely, and with many people writing articles making the same point, the message is beginning to get across to the multitude of ‘home studio’ operators, but outside professional recording circles (and of course those of academic acousticians), the full differentiation between sound proofing and internal acoustics regimes is still frequently missed.