Recording studio

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Music studio
)

Tec de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus
An audio production facility at An-Najah National University

A recording studio is a specialized facility for

acoustician or audio engineer to achieve optimum acoustic properties (acoustic isolation or diffusion or absorption of reflected sound echoes
that could otherwise interfere with the sound heard by the listener).

Recording studios may be used to record singers, instrumental musicians (e.g., electric guitar, piano, saxophone, or ensembles such as orchestras),

dialogue replacement in film, television, or animation, Foley, or to record their accompanying musical soundtracks. The typical recording studio consists of a room called the "studio" or "live room" equipped with microphones and mic stands, where instrumentalists and vocalists perform; and the "control room", where audio engineers, sometimes with record producers, as well, operate professional audio mixing consoles, effects units, or computers with specialized software suites to mix, manipulate (e.g., by adjusting the equalization and adding effects) and route the sound for analog or digital recording. The engineers and producers listen to the live music and the recorded "tracks" on high-quality monitor speakers or headphones
.

Often, there will be smaller rooms called isolation booths to accommodate loud instruments such as drums or electric guitar amplifiers and speakers, to keep these sounds from being audible to the microphones that are capturing the sounds from other instruments or voices, or to provide "drier" rooms for recording vocals or quieter acoustic instruments such as an acoustic guitar or a

.

Design and equipment

son jarocho
singer recording tracks at the Tec de Monterrey studios

Layout

Recording studios generally consist of three or more rooms:

Even though sound isolation is a key goal, the musicians, singers, audio engineers and record producers still need to be able to see each other, to see cue gestures and conducting by a bandleader. As such, the live room, isolation booths, vocal booths and control room typically have windows.

Neve VR60, a multitrack mixing console. Above the console are a range of studio monitor speakers.

Recording studios are carefully designed around the principles of

diffusion
materials on the surfaces inside the room. To control the amount of reverberation, rooms in a recording studio may have a reconfigurable combination of reflective and non-reflective surfaces. Soundproofing provides sonic isolation between rooms and prevents sound from entering or leaving the property. A Recording studio in an urban environment must be soundproofed on its outer shell to prevent noises from the surrounding streets and roads from being picked up by microphones inside.

Engineers and producers watch a trumpet player from a window in the control room during a recording session.

Equipment

Equipment found in a recording studio commonly includes:

  • A professional-grade mixing console
  • Additional small mixing consoles for adding more channels (e.g., if a drum kit needs to be miked and all of the channels of the large console are in use, an additional 16 channel mixer would enable the engineers to mix the mics for the kit)
  • Microphone preamplifiers
  • Multitrack recorder or digital audio workstation
  • Computers
  • A wide selection of
    microphones
    typical for different types of instruments
  • DI unit boxes
  • Microphone stands to enable engineers to place microphones at the desired locations in front of singers, instrumentalists or ensembles
  • Studio monitors designed for listening to recorded mixes or tracks
  • Studio monitoring headphones (typically closed-shell, to prevent sound from "leaking" out into the microphones)
  • "On Air" or "Recording" lighted signs to remind other studio users to be quiet
  • Outboard
    compressors, reverbs, or equalizers
  • Music stands

Instruments

grand piano

Not all music studios are equipped with musical instruments. Some smaller studios do not have instruments, and bands and artists are expected to bring their own instruments, amplifiers, and speakers. However, major recording studios often have a selection of instruments in their live room, typically instruments, amplifiers and speaker cabinets that are large, heavy, and difficult to transport (e.g., a

grand piano
) to hire for a single recording session. Having musical instruments and equipment in the studio creates additional costs for a studio, as pianos have to be tuned and instruments and associated equipment needs to be maintained.

Digital audio workstations

Music production using a digital audio workstation (DAW) with multi-monitor set-up

General-purpose computers rapidly assumed a large role in the recording process. With software, a powerful, good quality computer with a fast processor can replace the mixing consoles, multitrack recording equipment, synthesizers, samplers and effects unit (reverb, echo, compression, etc.) that a recording studio required in the 1980s and 1990s. A computer thus outfitted is called a digital audio workstation, or DAW.

While

Apple Macintosh is used for most studio work,[citation needed] there is a breadth of software available for Microsoft Windows and Linux
.

If no mixing console is used and all mixing is done using only a keyboard and mouse, this is referred to as mixing in the box (ITB). OTB describes mixing with other hardware and not just the PC software.

Project studios

Allen & Heath GS3000 analog mixing console in a home studio

A small,

direct to disk recording
products.

Recording drums and amplified electric guitar in a home studio is challenging because they are usually the loudest instruments. Acoustic drums require sound isolation in this scenario, unlike electronic or sampled drums. Getting an authentic electric guitar amp sound including power-tube distortion requires a power attenuator or an isolation cabinet, or booth. A convenient compromise is amplifier modeling, whether a modeling amp, preamp/processor, or software-based guitar amp simulator. Sometimes, musicians replace loud, inconvenient instruments such as drums, with keyboards, which today often provide somewhat realistic sampling.

The capability of digital recording introduced by ADAT and its comparatively low cost, originally introduced at $3995, were largely responsible for the rise of project studios in the 1990s.[2] Today's project studios are built around software-based DAWs running on standard PC hardware.

Isolation booth

An isolation booth is either a partially enclosed area in the live room[a][citation needed] or a completely separate small room built adjacent to the live room that is both soundproofed to keep out external sounds and keep in the internal sounds. Like all the other recording rooms in sound industry, isolation booths designed for having a lesser amount of diffused reflections from walls to make a good-sounding room. A drummer, vocalist, or guitar speaker cabinet, along with microphones, is acoustically isolated in the isolation booth. A typical professional recording studio today has a control room, a large live room, and one or more small isolation booths.

All rooms are soundproofed by varying methods, including but not limited to, double-layer 5/8" sheetrock with the seams offset from layer to layer on both sides of the wall that is filled with foam, batten insulation, a double wall, which is an insulated wall built next to another insulated wall with an air gap in-between, by adding foam to the interior walls and corners, and by using two panes of thick glass with an air gap between them. The surface densities of common building materials determines the transmission loss of various frequencies through materials.[3]

Thomas A. Watson invented, but did not patent, the soundproof booth for use in demonstrating the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell in 1877.

acrylic glass see-through gobo panels placed around it to deflect the sound and keep it from bleeding into the other microphones, allowing better independent control of each instrument channel at the mixing console
.

In animation, vocal performances are normally recorded in individual sessions, and the actors have to imagine (with the help of the director or a reader) they are involved in dialogue.[5] Animated films often evolve rapidly during both development and production, so keeping vocal tracks from bleeding into each other is essential to preserving the ability to fine-tune lines up to the last minute. Sometimes, if the rapport between the lead actors is strong enough and the animation studio can afford it, the producers may use a recording studio configured with multiple isolation booths in which the actors can see each another and the director. This enables the actors to react to one another in real time as if they were on a regular stage or film set.

History

1890s to 1930s

In the era of acoustical recordings (prior to the introduction of microphones, electrical recording and amplification), the earliest recording studios were very basic facilities, being essentially soundproof rooms that isolated the performers from outside noise. During this era it was not uncommon for recordings to be made in any available location, such as a local ballroom, using portable acoustic recording equipment. In this period, master recordings were made by cutting a rotating cylinder (later disc) made from wax. Performers were typically grouped around a large acoustic horn (an enlarged version of the familiar

gramophone horn). The acoustic energy from the voices or instruments was channeled through the horn to a diaphragm to a mechanical cutting lathe
, which inscribed the signal as a modulated groove directly onto the surface of the master.

1930s to 1970s

The Siemens Studio for Electronic Music c. 1956.

Electrical recording was common by the early 1930s, and

backup singers), rather than separating them, and placing the performers and the microphones strategically to capture the complex acoustic and harmonic interplay that emerged during the performance. In the 2000s, modern sound stages still sometimes use this approach for large film scoring
projects that use large orchestras.

Halls and churches

Because of their superb acoustics, many of the larger studios were converted churches. Examples include

studio in New York.

Facilities like the Columbia Records 30th Street Studio in New York and Abbey Road Studios in London were renowned for their identifiable sound—which was (and still is) easily identifiable by audio professionals—and for the skill of their staff engineers. As the need to transfer audio material between different studios grew, there was an increasing demand for standardization in studio design across the recording industry, and Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood was highly influential in the 1970s in the development of standardized acoustic design.[7]

In New York City,

Liederkranz Hall at 111 East 58th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues (a building built by and formerly belonging to a German cultural and musical society, The Liederkranz Club and Society),[8][9] and one of their earliest recording studios, Studio A at 799 Seventh Avenue.[6]

Technologies and techniques

Donna Summer wearing headphones during a recording session in 1977
Danny Knicely records with Furnace Mountain Band
Danny Knicely records with Furnace Mountain Band in Virginia (2012)

Electric recording studios in the mid-20th century often lacked isolation booths, sound baffles, and sometimes even speakers. A major reason that isolation was not used was that recordings in this period were typically made as live ensemble takes and all the performers needed to be able to see each other and the ensemble leader while playing. The recording engineers who trained in this period learned to take advantage of the complex acoustic effects that could be created through leakage between different microphones and groups of instruments, and these technicians became extremely skilled at capturing the unique acoustic properties of their studios and the musicians in performance. It was not until the 1960s, with the introduction of the high-fidelity headphones that it became common practice for performers to use these to monitor their performance during recording and listen to playbacks.

The use of different kinds of microphones and their placement around the studio is a crucial part of the recording process, and particular brands of microphones are used by engineers for their specific audio characteristics. The smooth-toned ribbon microphones developed by the

Beatles recordings "Good Morning Good Morning" and "Lady Madonna" were achieved by having the saxophone players position their instruments so that microphones were virtually inside the mouth of the horn.[citation needed
]

The unique sonic characteristics of the major studios imparted a special character to many of the most famous popular recordings of the 1950s and 1960s, and the recording companies jealously guarded these facilities. According to sound historian David Simons, after Columbia took over the 30th Street Studios in the late 1940s and

had tweaked it to perfection, Miller issued a standing order that the drapes and other fittings were not to be touched, and the cleaners had specific orders never to mop the bare wooden floor for fear it might alter the acoustic properties of the hall. There were several other features of studios in this period that contributed to their unique sonic signatures.

As well as the inherent sound of the large recording rooms, many of the best studios incorporated specially-designed echo chambers, purpose-built rooms which were often built beneath the main studio. These were typically long, low rectangular spaces constructed from hard, sound-reflective materials like concrete, fitted with a loudspeaker at one end and one or more microphones at the other. During a recording session, a signal from one or more of the microphones in the studio could be routed to the loudspeaker in the echo chamber; the sound from the speaker reverberated through the chamber and the enhanced signal was picked up by the microphone at the other end. This echo-enhanced signal, which was often used to sweeten the sound of vocals, could then be blended in with the primary signal from the microphone in the studio and mixed into the track as the master recording was being made.

Special equipment was another notable feature of the classic recording studio. The biggest studios were owned and operated by large media companies like RCA, Columbia and EMI, who typically had their own electronics research and development divisions that designed and built custom-made recording equipment and mixing consoles for their studios. Likewise, the smaller independent studios were often owned by skilled electronics engineers who designed and built their own desks and other equipment. A good example of this is Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, the site of many famous American pop recordings of the 1960s. Co-owner David S. Gold built the studio's main mixing desk and many additional pieces of equipment and he also designed the studio's unique trapezoidal echo chambers.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the sound of pop recordings was further defined by the introduction of proprietary sound processing devices such as equalizers and compressors, which were manufactured by specialist electronics companies. One of the best known of these was the Pultec equalizer which was used by almost all the major commercial studios of the time.

Multi-track recording

With the introduction of

multi-track recording, it became possible to record instruments and singers separately and at different times on different tracks on tape. In the mid-20th century, recordings were analog, made on 14-inch or 12-inch magnetic tape, or, more rarely, on 35 mm magnetic film, with multitrack recording
reaching 8 tracks in the 1950s, 16 in 1968, and 32 in the 1970s. The commonest such tape is the 2-inch analog, capable of containing up to 24 individual tracks. Throughout the 1960s many pop classics were still recorded live in a single take. In the 1970s the large recording companies began to adopt multi-track recording and the emphasis shifted to isolation and sound-proofing, with treatments like echo and reverberation added separately during the mixing process, rather than being blended in during the recording. Generally, after an audio mix is set up on a 24-track tape machine, the tracks are played back together, mixed and sent to a different machine, which records the combined signals (called printing) to a 12-inch two-track stereo tape, called a master.

Before digital recording, the total number of available tracks onto which one could record was measured in multiples of 24, based on the number of 24-track tape machines being used. Most recording studios now use digital recording equipment, which limits the number of available tracks only on the basis of the mixing console's or computer hardware interface's capacity and the ability of the hardware to cope with processing demands. Analog tape machines are still used in some cases for their unique sonic characteristics.

Radio studios

The studio at Ridge Radio in Caterham, England

Radio studios are very similar to recording studios, particularly in the case of production studios which are not normally used on-air, such as studios where interviews are taped for later broadcast. This type of studio would normally have all of the same equipment that any other audio recording studio would have, particularly if it is at a large station, or at a combined facility that houses a station group, but is also designed for groups of people to work collaboratively in a live-to-air situation.[10]

Broadcast studios also use many of the same principles such as sound isolation, with adaptations suited to the live on-air nature of their use. Such equipment would commonly include a

alarm for detecting unexpected silence, and a broadcast delay for dropping anything from coughs to profanity. In the U.S., stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also must have an Emergency Alert System
decoder (typically in the studio), and in the case of full-power stations, an encoder that can interrupt programming on all channels which a station transmits to broadcast urgent warnings.

podcasting
.

Notes

  1. ^ Partitions can be set up in a variety of ways, whether to achieve complete or partial separation. Isolation booths set up with partitions are usually temporary and can be taken apart, then used other ways for different sessions.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Watkinson, David (12 May 2015). "Studio Acoustics: Treat Recording and Live Rooms". Acoustical Solutions. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
  2. ^ George Petersen, "In Memoriam: Keith Barr 1949–2010", Mix Magazine Online, Aug 2010, "In Memoriam-Keith Barr 1949-2010". Archived from the original on 29 August 2010. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  3. .
  4. .
  5. .
  6. ^ .
  7. . Retrieved 14 January 2017.
  8. ^ "History of The Liederkranz of the City of New York" Archived 27 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine – The Liederkranz of the City of New York website. The Liederkranz Club put up a building in 1881 at 111–119 East 58th Street, east of Park Avenue.
  9. ^ Kahn, Ashley, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, Da Capo Press, 2001. Cf. p.75
  10. ^ Ahern, S (ed), Making Radio, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2011. Studio Chapter

Further reading

  • Cogan, Jim; Clark, William. Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003.
  • Horning, Susan Schmidt. Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
  • Ramone, Phil; Granata, Charles L. Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music. New York: Hyperion, 2007.

External links