CHAPTER 22

Human Factors

When designing recording studios, what must always be borne in mind is that the studios exist to capture artistic performances, and anything that the studios can positively contribute to those performances is desirable. The recording equipment is a product of the technology, which is in turn a result of the application of the relevant sciences. What makes studio design so fascinating is that it involves art, technology and science in such a way that they can harmonise to produce fabulous music. In the final analysis, however, it will be the subjective assessment of a recording studio, and of the recordings and mixes that it produces, which will determine whether any design is successful, or not.

22.1 The Ambiance of the Occasion

In general, if the objective aspects of a studio design are not up to standard, it is unlikely that the studio will satisfy its subjective requirements. As discussed in Chapter 1, there are cases where some very objectively poor studios can make successful recordings, but the successes are likely to be idiosyncratic and limited in scope. However, no studio, no matter how well designed, can be all things to all people.

For example, many musicians need an intimate feel in a studio. Perhaps they can only perform in a small room with little lighting, and do not wish to be stared at by the recording personnel. They prefer that their presence should be more or less ignored, and that only their music should be apparent. Conversely, there are artistes who need a big stage in order to perform at all. For them, the small studio lacks the majesty that their performances require. A big studio gives them a sense of occasion, and a group of onlookers in the control room only adds to their sense of importance. There is no right or wrong, or better or worse approach. They are equally appropriate to the personalities of the performers in question, and somewhat surprisingly, the stage persona of an artiste does not always allow one to guess what type of studio would suit them best.

There are musicians who arrive at a studio dressed very casually, and there are musicians who arrive at a studio in their full stage regalia. Some people often think that the latter case is rather pretentious, but it should be remembered that during much of the twentieth century the BBC required its radio newsreaders to wear evening dress, because it was considered to add to the sense of occasion and tended to make the presentation more formal. As the BBC was seeking to present an authoritative voice, the evening dress was considered to contribute to that goal. Similarly, if a musician needs to feel outgoing and important in order to perform, then whatever dress aids the achievement of the sensation is a valid recording accessory.

Recording engineers and producers are also artistes, so anything that makes their working lives easier will contribute, by allowing them to spend more time in a relaxed mood, and thus concentrating more on the music rather than on the equipment. By contrast, there are the ‘techno’ types whose level of creativity rises in proportion to the number of knobs, bells and whistles within easy reach, and who feel that they cannot perform on equipment ‘below’ their presumed status. No problem with that, either, if it goes towards improving the recorded results. Studio design, therefore, contains a considerable degree of psychology, like the design of a new football stadium, which can make a team feel at their best and play accordingly.

22.2 The Subjectivity of Monitoring

Ultimately, a recording engineer will choose to work on whatever loudspeakers and in whatever conditions are conducive to achieving the desired results. This may seem like a strange statement to make after 21 chapters on some of the finer aspects of studio and control room monitoring design, however, familiarity, culture, peer pressure, training, the success or failure of prior recordings and many other factors, all have a bearing on personal choice. A person who has spent many successful years working on one type of monitor system may be very reluctant to change their point of reference, even when confronted with a monitor system whose performance is demonstrably superior. This was clearly highlighted in Section 19.10.

There is also a widespread tendency for many very experienced recording personnel to use different loudspeakers for recording, mixing and listening at home. Atypical pattern would be to use large, full frequency range, high-resolution monitors for recording, a not too good small loudspeaker for mixing, and something pleasant to listen to at home. At least that is a trend in the pop/rock music world. In the classical recording world there is usually much less use of the lower quality mixing loudspeakers, and the large loudspeakers do not need to be used to ‘give a buzz’ to the musicians, because the musicians are normally much less involved in the decision-making in the control room. The producers, engineers and conductors are also tending to look for classical sounds, so synthetic processing for creating special effects is generally eschewed. However, as we shall discuss later, classical recording is also not free from controversy.

One school of thought seems to believe that this situation is a result of the failure of the electroacoustics industry to produce a definitively accurate loudspeaker, but careful conversation with very experienced recording engineers and producers soon reveals that this is not the case. The situation is somewhat similar to a photographer having different lenses to choose from, calling variously for panoramic views, close-ups, or special effects lenses, depending upon perceived requirements. In rock recording, the big picture is needed during the recording phase. If a multi-track recording can be made such that each track has been well scrutinised for noises, distortions and tonal balance, then the mixing phase can be made much easier. During the mixing, however, it is often in the mid range where many instruments may be fighting for the same space. In such cases, a loudspeaker with a prominent mid-range can be useful to draw attention to, and to expose, the critical mid-range where vocals, lead instruments, and reverberation and effects may all require careful balancing.

Admittedly, it could be argued that a better or more controlled musical arrangement should have ensured that the conflicts never arose in the first instance, but that is not the reality of recording. Recording is a very human process, and it is surprising how many recording engineers and producers have almost no interest in how or why a given loudspeaker works. They only want to know if it works for them at any stage of a recording process. There is also a noticeable tendency for many people to have loudspeakers at home that are very different from those that they work on. At home, they want to hear the shine and the polish, not the nit-picking detail that they spend their working days trying to resolve. Conversely, there are hi-fi enthusiasts who wish to use recording monitors so that they can hear all the minor problems that the recording staff would rather that they did not hear, and did not intend that other people should hear.

So much of this boils down to what each individual wishes to hear from a recording, so we are very much in an area of subjective choice, and not only objective standardisation. People want to hear what they want to hear, for their own purposes. This can create a difficult situation, because the imposition of a ‘perfect standard monitor’, even if it were achievable, would not be enforceable. Ostensibly, a process of refinement is always in progress, and it is clear that the general upper level of monitoring was better in 2002 than it was in 1982. Nevertheless, looking at the recording industry as a whole, the same cannot be said. The 20 year reign of the NS10M would not have been possible as a de facto reference if the general trend was leaving it behind.

Improved loudspeaker/amplifier systems have appeared with corresponding increases in prices, which completely buck the trend of the reducing real cost of much recording equipment. The human response in the lower and middle echelons of the recording industry has usually been to scale the costs of the monitor systems to the costs of the whole recording set up. This situation has not led to a general improvement in monitoring quality, even when it is technically feasible to move several paces forward from what was previously in use. The fact is that the majority of loudspeaker manufacturers now begin with a price for a loudspeaker which they think that they can market, and then design a loudspeaker around that price.

Quite seriously, sound quality may be number four or five on the list of priorities, following price, appearance, lightness (for cheaper shipping), or features of competing models. Such things are then sold as monitor loudspeakers, which is a travesty, but a reality nonetheless. This situation cannot really be said to be encouraging.

22.3 Conditioning and Expectations

Toole and Olive have stated that:

It turns out that much, if not most, of the variability on commonplace opinions can be traced to differences in the listening experiences that led to the opinions. When these nuisance variables are controlled … it is remarkable how consistent, and how similar, human listeners can be. We can be very good measuring instruments.¹

The problem faced by most studio designers is that they are often confronted by clients of very limited breadth of listening experience, and which has not been well controlled. Even some very experienced producers and engineers openly admit to dreading the necessity of changing from their usual monitor loudspeakers, even though there may be no objectively based reasons why their chosen monitors should be used as a reference.

The recording industry is a working entity which has to survive the onslaught of fierce (and often ‘unfair’) competition, financial constraints, shareholders’ profit expectations and the demands of newly successful artistes, whose new found power may be totally disproportional to their knowledge and experience of the recording process. Perhaps above all, the industry has to face the barrage of sometimes quite ruthless advertising campaigns. The majority of people working in the industry are also trying to survive; they need to make a living. They are trying to do their own jobs in the middle of a fashionable and rather unstable business, where the ultimate paymasters, the consumers, are usually buying the products for purely nebulous reasons. Relatively few people in the industry are prepared to fight the avalanche of subjective opinion that drives so much of the decision-making, because they have families to support.

Therefore, whilst the comments of Toole and Olive are doubtless very factual, the chances of getting an industry to form any reasonable sort of consensus about such things as monitoring are perhaps too remote to be hoped for. Indeed, Toole and Olive themselves published a paper entitled ‘Hearing is believing vs believing is hearing’. It related to the difference in results from tests on the same loudspeakers depending upon whether they were carried out blind or sighted. They also wrote, ‘Judges of wine, and the like, are willing to put their reputations on the line in blind evaluations; it is time for the audio industry to do likewise’.² Again, whilst it is very hard to fault Toole and Olive’s reasoning, it must be remembered that the audio and recording industries in general are not particularly logic or reason based. Peer pressure and marketing work to such an extent that many people convince themselves that they are hearing what they think that they are expected to hear from a given piece of equipment.

A recording studio designer therefore must take these aspects of human subjective variability very seriously, because they cannot effectively be changed when an industry is based on such fragile foundations. They must also be taken seriously because, even though they may be unreasonable in the context of what perhaps ought to be a more professional industry, the reputation of the designers may nevertheless stand or fall according to the effect of prior expectations. A potentially great studio may even develop a bad reputation due to the incompetence of its staff and owners.

The majority of reputable professional studio designers are experienced and knowledgeable people, and they usually have a considerable degree of influence over the wishes of their clients. However, when clients require designs that are too subjectively based, with too much disregard for the principles of good electroacoustic design, it would be foolhardy for the designer to go along too far with the wishes of the client. Unfortunately, and at times despicably, there are other people with vested interests who will readily remind all who are willing to listen to them about the nonsense committed by designers who have bent too far to clients’ irrationalities, implying that bad design was due to the designer’s ignorance. It can be remarkably difficult to shake off the bad reputation due to one imprudent design, even though a designer may have been in considerable disagreement with the client’s ideas. Such errors of judgement can stick like glue, so it is usually wiser for a designer to refuse a commission, no matter how apparently lucrative, if it is considered to stray too far from his or her beliefs about how a studio should perform.

22.4 Lack of Reference Points in Human Judgements

Of course, it is well known that pop/rock recording personnel have a wide range of opinions about which monitor loudspeakers to use. This is not too surprising when one considers that so many sounds are so stylised that no obvious or natural reference exists, but the classical music world does not appear to have clear-cut judgements, either, despite the rather obvious and even ubiquitous existence of the ‘real sound’ for reference. The plethora of ‘preferred’ microphone techniques bears this out. Considering that they all would produce different sounding recordings of the same orchestra if used simultaneously, there must be some disagreement about which technique would be most ‘right’. People can, and do, argue at length about this, and the views of Stanley Lipshitz on this subject can be found in Section 16.10.The obvious consequence of this is that if people cannot decide upon which type of microphone arrangement is right, then how can they be expected to decide upon which loudspeaker system is right?

Therefore, as different loudspeakers can tend to suit different microphone techniques (and vice versa), we begin to run into the ‘chicken and egg’ paradox, where one microphone technique can tend to make a person prefer a certain type of loudspeaker, or where one type of loudspeaker can lead a person to choose a certain microphone technique. This problem is not easily solvable, and a much more disciplined approach to subjective/objective evaluation would be necessary before the problem could even be reduced. Toole and Olive have stated:

We make accurate technical measurements that we have difficulty in correlating with listener evaluations, and then compound the problem by making subjective evaluations that are unreliable. Would any serious engineer make a voltage measurement with an unreliable voltmeter? Not likely!… If this industry is to be thoroughly professional we must put as much effort and intellectual investment into subjective measurements as we do into their technical counterparts.¹

Given the way that this industry is developing, however, such investment seems unlikely.

22.5 Studios and Control Rooms

That the design of the recording rooms is an art form is in little doubt. The rooms in which the musicians play are instruments, or at the very least they are extensions of the instruments being played, because often the originally intended tonal character of the instruments took into account a degree of ambient sound. If the rooms feel good to the musician and sound good when recordings are made via microphones, then the rooms are good. Of course, a degree of understanding of the scientific principles involved goes a long way to achieving a successful design, but the same also applies to instrument designers and manufacturers. Few people would expect that they could work at weekends in their garden sheds and produce an electric guitar like a Les Paul or a Fender Telecaster. These were the products of highly talented and experienced designers.

It can also be said that if a control room leads the recording personnel to achieve great mixes, then it too must be good, irrespective of its measured performance, but the situation here is somewhat different. Notwithstanding what has been discussed in the previous sections, there is still an implicit need for a control room to be a room of general neutrality, which allows the listeners to hear the recording. Unlike in the studio, where the ambience can affect the performance and the recording, in a control room the ambience is a property of listening in that room, and that room alone, and this can be further complicated by any non-uniformity or non-linearity of the monitor system response.

The fact that some exceptional and gifted people, such as those mentioned in Section 19.10, can make high-quality mixes on a pair of NS10Ms does not mean that a pair of these loudspeakers in any room will justify the title of ‘a monitor system’. These people are working with a great deal of experience, and often have the luxury of beginning a mix from a very high-quality multi-track master, made by skilled engineers in good rooms and with excellent musicians, instruments and recording equipment. This is a long way from a pair of NS10Ms in a poorly treated room where budget priced equipment is used to record non-virtuoso musicians with good, but not excellent instruments. In these cases, excellent monitoring conditions could often make the difference between a mediocre recording and a very good one. The more true information that the monitoring can pass to the recordists, the easier will be their task. Unfortunately, this is often difficult to explain because poor rooms defeat many of the subtle characteristics of the better monitor systems. Laying on its side a loudspeaker which was designed to stand upright (see Figure 18.5) may not make any difference to the sound in a room that is already a chaotic mass of reflexions. Only when better basic acoustic conditions exist can many such important subtleties be detected. However, until a person has heard the benefit of the differences, their virtues can be difficult to explain.

Studio designers know this, but the industry is now largely in the hands of people for whom ignorance is bliss. However, quality has a tendency to rise to the surface and to be noticed. Although they are now only a small proportion of the total number of studios, the well-designed ones still form the backbone of the industry, and they will surely continue to do so. Nevertheless, it is also probable that human perceptions and misconceptions will also continue to rock the boat.

22.6 Summary

Studios exist to capture artistic performances. Anything in the studio environment that helps the artistic ambience is a positive contribution to the whole event.

Different characters and personalities respond differently to different environments.

Many recording personnel who work in various studios may use a familiar set of loudspeakers in the close-field in order to have a rather more fixed point of reference.

The choices of such loudspeakers can be very personal, and are often made instinctively rather than logically.

In the whole recording industry and its peripherals, above all, many people are trying to earn a living. It should therefore not be considered that all ‘professional’ decisions would be altruistically based for the benefit of better recording. Many decisions will in fact be based on how to make more money for the supplier of the service or product. This is the way of the world, but its repercussions should still be considered seriously in any decision-making processes.

No studio is, in itself, good. How it performs will be very dependent on the skill, experience and personalities of its staff.

It may be unwise for designers to undertake jobs which their experience tells them are too heavily compromised. The bad reputation which they may get from the results may be difficult to lose.

It is perhaps surprising that classical recordists, who invariably have a live sound source as a reference, choose to work with some very different loudspeakers which they each consider most ‘right’.

Judges of wine, and the like, are ‘willing to put their reputations on the line in blind evaluations; it is time for the audio industry to do likewise’.²

It can be difficult to demonstrate the advantages of monitoring via excellent loudspeakers if the room in which they are auditioned is limiting their performance. Bad rooms often tend to lead people to use poor monitor loudspeakers, because the benefits of the better ones are often difficult to perceive in bad rooms.

Well-designed studios still form the backbone of the recording industry.

References

1  Toole, Floyd E. and Olive, Sean E., ‘Subjective Evaluation’, in: Borwick, John (ed.) The Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook, 3rd Edn, Chapter 13, Focal Press, Oxford, UK (2001)

2  Toole, Floyd E. and Olive, Sean E., ‘Hearing is Believing vs Believing is Hearing: Blind vs Sighted Listening Tests and Other Interesting Things’, 97th Audio Engineering Society Convention, Preprint No. 3894 (November 1994)