Recording studio

What is a recording studio?

A recording studio is a facility for recording and processing sound events. These can be music of all kinds, speech and sounds for radio and television broadcasts, film sound or sound creations for computer games, for example. A recording studio usually consists of a recording room in which the sound events to be recorded are produced by artists or actors. Sound engineers, sound engineers, directors or recording managers have a room in which they can work. The room is acoustically separated, but you can see into it through a pane of glass. There is a mixing console and particularly precise studio loudspeakers (monitors). The digital recording equipment is in its own room.

In a recording studio, a variety of activities are carried out as part of a music production is carried out. These include recording musical instruments and vocal tracks, sound design for films and television programs, mixing and mastering soundtracks and creating unique sound effects. Collaboration between music producers, sound engineers and performers plays a crucial role in the creation of high-quality recordings. A high-quality recording studio provides the necessary technical equipment and a controlled acoustic environment for a professional production.

Recording studio – the link between creativity and commerce

Recording studios play a crucial role in the music industry’s value chain. After all, they are the basis for us all being able to enjoy so many different sound carriers carriers. They create the finished master or mother tapes that we can then buy in the stores. And the demo tapes with which artists present themselves to record companies are also often produced in recording studios. It was therefore an obvious decision for some record companies to set up their own recording studios. This is also how music history began. In addition to these company-owned studios, independent recording studios were later established.

While company-owned recording studios usually work exclusively for the respective record companies, independent studios rely on commissioned productions. As a result, an interface has developed between sound technology, creative ideas and commercial skills – the music producer. the music producer . In independent recording studios, the bottleneck is often raising capital, while in-house studios are under pressure to control their fixed costs. Both types of studios are constantly monitoring developments in recording technology in order to provide their clients with the latest technology.

History of recording studios

The history of recording studios began with the pianist Frederick William “Fred” Gaisberg, who opened the world’s first recording studio in Philadelphia in early 1897. He worked closely with Emil Berliner who concentrated on playback techniques such as the gramophone. The studio served to improve the preliminary stages of playback technology and to enable the industrial production of sound carriers. Gaisberg, himself a pianist, was heavily involved in the recordings and also discovered talent for record production.

In July 1898, Gaisberg and Joe Sanders founded the first European recording studio in London’s Cockburn Hotel. The first studio recordings in Europe were made there, including recordings with famous artists such as Enrico Caruso. In the following years, recording studios were set up in New York and other cities to meet the growing demand for records records. As record sales increased, so did the demands on recording studios, leading to technological advances and new production methods.

The development of radio in the 1920s also contributed to the further development of recording studios. The BBC introduced new production methods, including the separation of the control room from the recording room and the mixing of different sound sources. In the 1930s, the cutting of records and the establishment of recording studios became standard. The first independent commercial recording studio was founded in Chicago in 1933.

In Germany, various venues such as concert halls and churches were initially used for recordings before special recording studios were set up. Deutsche Grammophon AG set up its own studios early on, where famous recordings were made. The introduction of the magnetophone in the 1940s revolutionized recording technology and replaced the direct cut method. The direct cut method remained relevant until the introduction of digital recording technology.

Structure and premises of a recording studio

Classic recording studios for music recordings, especially studios for large ensembles (such as orchestras, choirs and big bands), usually consist of several rooms or room sections. On the one hand, these are well protected from outside noise and, on the other, are equipped with suitable sound-absorbing room elements that ensure the desired acoustics.

Control room

At least one control room is required, also known as a control room in radio studios, in which one or more people (e.g. inactive musicians, sound engineers, sound engineers or a specialized recording manager) sit and coordinate the recording. From here, the recorded sound material is played back via studio monitors (loudspeaker boxes) and later mixed and edited accordingly. This is where most of the technology is located, such as mixing consoles, sound generators, effects units, tape recorders, computers and analog-to-digital converters. The musicians and singers are also supplied with sound material from here.

The control room requires unobtrusive acoustics that are as neutral as possible. The reverberation time should not exceed approx. 0.3 seconds across the entire frequency spectrum to make it easier to assess the recording and the subsequent mix. A common set-up concept for control rooms is the Live End Dead End (LEDE) principle, in which the front area of the control room is highly absorbent, while diffusors and reflectors dominate the rear area.

Recording room

In recording studios, there is a room in which speech, vocals, musical instruments or sounds are recorded – the recording room. There are also special rooms for drummers. The rooms can be designed differently. Classical musicians and big bands need large rooms with supporting acoustics. Bands and speakers need rather low-reflection acoustics. The reverberation time should be between 0.1 and 0.8 seconds so that you can perform optimally. It should also be possible to edit the surround sound electronically afterwards. There are various recording methods. Musicians and instruments can be recorded individually or as an ensemble. Depending on requirements, more or less room acoustics is used. In the past, echo chambers were used in some recording studios.

Technical room

In large recording studios, the machine or equipment room is a small room, usually directly adjacent to the control room, in which the technical equipment is housed that would otherwise disturb the monitoring situation in the control room due to fan noise or other mechanical noises. This includes analog tape machines, power amplifiers, computers and hard disks. The equipment room should have adequate cooling. Small studios or home studios usually do not have their own machine room. Instead, noise-reduced PC-based workstations ( DAW = Digital Audio Workstation ) are often used in the control room.

Sound insulation

Soundproofing prevents noise from penetrating from outside to inside or from inside to outside. Only in this way can recordings be made at any time of day without being affected by traffic noise or other disturbances or having to take into account quiet times in residential areas or noise protection regulations. This is achieved, for example, by constructing double-shell wall systems (room-in-room concept) with insulating materials in between, whereby the walls must not touch in order to achieve the lowest possible acoustic coupling. This creates an interior space with an additional outer shell.

The floor is also softly supported in such an arrangement, e.g. floating screed on impact sound insulation mats. It is in the nature of things that when sound passes through a medium, high frequencies in the range of the wall thickness or below are generally better attenuated. Overall, thick and heavy materials have a higher insulating effect.

Acoustic concepts

Acoustic concepts ensure that the reflections of the sound signals occurring within the acoustically active room are controlled in a suitable manner. This ranges from supporting individual frequency ranges to enhance the musical effect, to setting a homogeneous frequency and delay curve for mixing and evaluation, to completely canceling out the sound for artificial outdoor recordings. This is achieved using mobile partitions or permanently installed acoustic elements such as absorbers, resonators and diffusers made of acoustically inert composite materials, multi-layer film systems and foams.

Soft materials such as curtains, soft foam absorbers and carpets primarily act as absorbers of high-frequency waves from approx. 1 kHz upwards. Harder foams, wood and plastic elements, but also furniture, for example, reflect some of the high frequencies and have a broader-band effect overall.

A mixture of resonator and integrated damping can also be used to create effective sound absorbers, so-called bass traps, in the bass range. A number of diffusers are often found behind the monitor loudspeakers and especially on the rear wall of the control room as well as in parts of the recording rooms. These consist of uneven surface structures that do not reflect the incident waves as a whole, but split them up and thus prevent standing waves, flutter echoes or one-sided overemphasis of individual frequencies.

Staggered, unevenly laid bricks have a similar effect, preventing a flat wall during the construction of the building. Often you will also find angled wall orientations where the four walls are not at a 90-degree angle to each other. There are also concepts for actively suppressing reflections through anti-noise.

Equipment for a recording studio

A high-quality recording studio requires careful selection of equipment to ensure first-class sound quality. For both professional studios and home recording, choosing the right equipment is crucial. Professional studios require a variety of products, including microphones instruments and peripherals to enable a wide range of recordings. In a home studio, on the other hand, a few devices such as microphones are often sufficient, audio interfaces and instruments, depending on what recordings are planned.

Every recording studio needs at least six pieces of equipment that are essential for good recordings: One or more microphones, an audio interface, a mixing console, good studio headphones, active speakers and, of course, lots of accessories. The more professionally equipped the recording studio is, the greater the selection of microphones, connections and other hardware. The choice of equipment depends on the specific requirements and application scenarios. The right choice and configuration of equipment is crucial for maximum recording quality and optimum operation of the recording studio or home recording studio.

The microphone: the basic equipment in the recording studio

Whether speech, music, vocals or individual instruments: Microphones are used to record practically all sound sources. Different microphone types are suitable for different recordings. Good recording studios, including home recording studios, therefore have a large selection of different microphones. Dynamic microphones and condenser microphones are widely used.

The design, diaphragm size and many other factors play an important role in choosing the right microphone. Studio microphones typically have a large diaphragm and work according to the condenser principle. However, a dynamic microphone with a small diaphragm also belongs in every well-stocked recording studio. The manufacturers Rode, Audio Technica, Shure and Sennheiser are suitable for beginners.

The audio interface: The heart of every studio

Even if you wouldn’t expect it: The audio interface is the heart of every recording studio. But beginners in particular often have problems with it. This device is responsible for bringing together various peripheral devices and sending them to the recording computer. In particular, the conversion of analog to digital signals and the provision of phantom power is a core task of this device class.

When buying an audio interface, the user should pay particular attention to the inputs and outputs. Different recording scenarios require different peripheral devices. Phantom power for operating condenser microphones should also be available. The quality of the preamps and the technical features of the interface are also crucial. Well-known brands for beginners are Focusrite and Steinberg.

The mixing console: editing and refining tracks

All studio equipment such as monitors, microphones and effects units are connected to the mixing console, which is the central unit of the studio. From here, the playback mixes for the musicians, the intermediate results for monitoring in the control room and the final sound mix are created as the end product. The mixing console can also be purely virtual; in most cases there are controllers that can be used to remotely control the computer-simulated mixing console.

Virtual mixing consoles in digital devices such as sound cards and recording devices as well as in PC software have the advantage that virtual devices, so-called plug-ins, are much easier and more direct to integrate. They are also considerably cheaper, but cannot always be controlled easily and precisely using a mouse or MIDI controller. In professional studios, large mixing consoles, so-called digital consoles, are therefore generally used. Purely analog mixing consoles are also still in use.

As with the audio interface, the number of inputs is also important for the mixing console. If there are not enough inputs available, it is often not possible to make certain recordings. The features and quality of the equalizers (EQs for short) determine the usability and sound quality of the mixing console.

Studio headphones: monitoring at the highest level

If you want to mix and master your own recordings properly, you often face a problem when listening to the recordings: conventional hi-fi headphones are often far too bass-heavy, which distorts the sound character. Studio headphones have a balanced sound that can realistically reproduce all facets of the sound. Depending on the design, different models are suitable for the home studio.

The design of the headphones is particularly important: closed headphones offer good sound insulation, but the sound quality and richness of detail do not come close to open headphones. Semi-open headphones offer a good alternative here and a healthy middle ground. The manufacturers Beyerdynamic, AKG and Sony offer inexpensive and high-quality products for home studios and professional recording studios.

Studio monitors: Crystal clear sound

Studio monitors have many names: Near-field monitors or active loudspeakers are just a few of them. Similar to studio headphones, these special speakers are designed for true-to-life and unadulterated reproduction of your own recordings. The particularly narrow dispersion characteristics ensure that the user perceives every detail of the sound and that the entire room is not filled with sound.

In contrast to conventional speakers, studio monitors are characterized by a clear and neutral sound. The built-in amplifiers enable precise reproduction without distortion. These studio speakers often offer additional functions such as an equalizer or special connections. Inexpensive models for the home studio are available from Presonus or Marantz, for example, while expensive professional products for the recording studio often cost four-figure sums.

Teamwork in the recording studio

The music producer, the sound engineers and sound technicians as well as the performers, possibly a backing choir and studio musicians are present during sound recordings. These are musicians who are more or less closely associated with the recording studio and usually take part in the recording sessions of various artists. The arranger and composer may also be present. composer /lyricist may also be present to make any necessary changes to the work during the recording.