The typical recording studio is no longer a place exemplified by the acoustics of the performance spaces. It is a digital processing centre where performances are invented from a mixture of real and virtual sources. Of course there are exceptions, especially in classical music and jazz, but popular music has sold its soul. There are more studios in universities and colleges now than there are in the commercial recording industry itself.

Many of these are built by general contractors as part of a large project with minimal regard for the qualities that make a studio work. Poor sound insulation and indifferent acoustics are commonplace and the wishes and requirements of the teaching staff are often ignored if favour of cost driven decisions by bureaucrats with student numbers their prime focus.

Part of the problem is the way studio acoustics has developed over the years with the emphasis placed on interior design, rather than solid engineering principles.  There is a place for both, but good isolation is so fundamental that it beggars belief that so many leave it to chance and end up in expensive remedial situations. Technology allows massive compromises in acoustic performance, with plugins galore that fix everything from background noise to singing out of time and tune but each fix takes something away, if there was anything of worth to begin with!

Cynics claim musical ability has largely been replaced by technical agility and the awesome power of the computer. The reduction in cost of advanced digital signal processing and storage systems has made the most humble of studios capable of feats of sound manipulation undreamed of in past decades.  There is still a market for the highest level of recording skill but this now entails both acoustic and electronic excellence to achieve truly natural or faithful reproduction of the original performance. Many studio skills are being lost or eroded, partly due to inferior digital substitutes but mainly just lack of skill with the tools available. To quote Neil Young:

“People started hearing much less of the original sound, and all of the universe of sounds available to the ear and to the brain to analyse and to feel were all gone and those are the very things that stimulate the body into reacting and feeling and enjoying music and its therapeutic effects.

“It’s all reduced, it’s a surface sham, it’s not the real thing. It’s like digital cameras, when you take a picture of a field full of cows you take the same picture with a Kodachrome camera with a film in it and you look at the film picture take a magnifying glass and go way in and you look at the cows and it still looks like a cow and you go to the digital picture and you go in with a magnifying glass and all you see is like three or four little black squares where the cow was. That’s what’s happening to your ears and your heart and your brain when you listen to digital music.”

And this is what Dylan biographer Michael Gray has to say, talking about the changes effected by recordings of the last two decades:

“The deleterious effect applies all round but especially in what happens to his vocals. Listen to the way the voice is recorded on any track on the first four albums, and it’s right there: you hear the detail of the voice vividly, as it chisels out each crystalline syllable; you hear every intake of breath, and you hear how each exhalation is distributed along the lines he sings. You register every nuance, feelevery surface, receive all that close-up intelligence of communication, the infinitely variable, fluid expressiveness of it. This is how it should be.”

The poor resolution that Young bemoans is to a large extent a red herring and great recordings of the past do survive the process of digital transfer at today’s standards. What is missing is a more fundamental capture of the essence of a musical sound and that has more to do with acoustics than most people realise. As Gray preaches, this is how it should be. So where did we go wrong?

In a cost driven business there is an asymptotic limit to the rate a studio can charge, regardless of the capital cost involved in providing the service. This sets the realistic framework by which all technical improvements must now be judged. There is a capital cost ratio of about one hundred to one between the upper and lower limits of multi-track recording facilities. There is a point on the cost-revenue curve beyond which no extra reward will be obtained. At the lower level there is a cost at which the home studio environment is so cost effective that a commercial facility cannot begin to compete, unless some form of added value can be provided.

Between these limits there are many types of studio, most of which have specialised to a degree necessary to survive or remain justifiable in the commercial sense. There is the ‘super studio’ that offers all things to all people, at a premium rate. These exist mainly in major cities and rely on every facet of the entertainment industry for their prosperity. Abbey Road and AIR Lyndhurst typify this level of facility and both were developed as part of larger corporations with deep pockets. It remains to be seen how each of these fares in the current corporate culture.

There are several, independent, bespoke studios, which offer luxury and technical know-how to a very discerning clientele. Such people demand and expect exceptional services, at a price. Pinewood-Shepperton with its many film-dubbing theatres, British Grove and Sphere for music, and multi media complexes around Soho (and some other major cities) all occupy an ever consolidating space in the commercial spectrum.

Other studios offer rural locations or large acoustic spaces to attract business. Some have a brilliant grasp of digital technology or mastering techniques. Some provide every day services to television broadcasters and others fall into the broad category of ‘project studio’.

What exactly constitutes a project is debatable. Any body of work with a beginning and an end can be described thus and so the definition can be refined to include work done independently of ‘for hire’ commercial studios.  Anyone prepared to tackle the learning curve of Pro Tools and invest in some half decent analogue transducer technology, coupled to good converters and accurate monitoring, can take this route. There is a danger that the skills required might be too daunting and the lack of commercial disciplines too diluting to ever achieve truly great results. There are always exceptions and some artist/owners become brilliant producers and even technicians but this is a rare combination of aptitude and determination, which few will master.

The recording industry needs specialists and facilities that show music as it really is. There is a danger that compromised technology with inferior means to judge it will lower expectations and thresholds of quality will gradually dissipate. Small wonder that many Hi Fi system demonstrators still rely on thirty-year-old recordings for ‘authentic’ sound and so much modern work is insipid by comparison. It may be no coincidence that the UK’s share of the American music market had fallen from 30 per cent in the 1970s to ‘off the scale’ in recent years. The project studio belongs at the bottom of the audio food chain but that is an essential breeding place for both talent and technique. It remains to be seen who swims to the top.

So here are a few rules for any aspirant studio owner to follow in order to at least start with an advantage:

Firstly, ensure the recording rooms will be adequately isolated and this means defining the degree of separation in advance. Ask for ‘DnTw’ values between rooms and background noise levels with all ventilation running. This means employing an acoustic consultant with Institute of Acoustics (IOA) membership as well as studio design experience. This means all calculations and testing will be done to ISO140 standards and if not you can sue.

Next, the rooms must be acoustically treated in such a way as to reduce standing waves and interfering reflections to a smoothly diffused sound-field. This ensures any reverberation that exists will blend with the original instruments (recording room) or monitor system (mixing room). Apart from Dolby in the film industry very few standards have been agreed for this but they do exist. Insist that they are specified in advance with limits as to what variation will be tolerated. Again a consultant will appropriate experience will do this as a matter of protocol. If they won’t put it in writing they probably can’t.

Monitoring is a thorny subject and way too big for this article but do try to consider what is best for your situation, not just what you read in a magazine ad. When I co-founded Dynaudio Acoustics in 1990 there were a half dozen manufacturers making decent drive units. Now there are hundreds of brands, buying from anonymous driver factories and there is a pitiful dirth of real performance data. I would say this is the most disappointing aspect of most studio setups these days with no real consistency in the setting up, measurement and calibration of monitor systems. When was the last time yours were tuned? The best way to do this is with a FFT analyser that can check phase and impulse response data as this gives the total room response or transfer function. Think of it as an MOT for your ears.