Recording drums - why recording studios all sound different

Recording drums tests a recording studio to extremes. And while half the musicians inthe country now have their own recording set up few have access to a great soundingroom that can really make their music shine. That's why when we first decided to buildCircle Recording Studios in Birmingham, we knew it had to be different.

You see over the last 20 years the music industry has changed beyond all recognition.When our chief engineer, Trev, was just starting out (rumour has it he went to schoolwith Noah) the world was a very different place. Records were made in buildings wereincredibly expensive to build, equip and run. As a result, there were far fewer aroundand, for most unsigned bands, recording in a studio was just a dream. They were thepreserve of bands who had been signed to a recording contract, or 'record deal' as theyare often called. When bands got 'signed' their label would 'advance' them funds to maketheir record and to tour it. While that was a bit of a gamble for the label, they couldafford to do it because the contract would give them about 80% of the profits from recordsales. But, because the returns could be very high, if a band were looking like a good betlabels would be willing to 'advance' very significant piles of cash indeed. As a result evenrecently signed bands could afford to record in what were very expensive institutions.And because they were paid decent rates thosee studios were, in turn, able to invest inthe very best of buildings and to buy the best of equipment and maintain it well. Thedigital revolution changed all of that. Studios have closed. Experienced engineers havelost their jobs. And in many studios, even those who in the past have an excellentheritage, maintenance is a long forgotten art.

On the positive side of course, the very same digital revolution brought recordingequipment into the hands of many. Suddenly most bands could afford to buy a smallrecording rig and DIY. But there was also a downside. Because Joe Public quickly realisedthat digital music was very easy to steal. As a result, the profits record labels madedropped very significantly. And because their profits were down they looked at all sorts ofways to reduce their costs. They signed fewer bands because they weren't willing to takea gamble. They expected that the bands would do more of the legwork that labels used tohelp with than ever before. The bands they did sign received far lower advances. And thewhole supply chain slowly declined with music institutions like Olympic Studios inChiswick closing down and the ones that survived cutting back on equiment purchases,staff and, crucially, equipment maintenance. The impact of the 'digital revolution is stillbeing felt though, for the music loving public, the negative impact is probably mostobviously seen in the lower quality of music which can be heard in the charts today.

Of course amongst all that, because the price of recording equipment had dropped somuch and there were many engineers who found themselves out of work, there was arush to open smaller, cheaper studios. But virtually none of them could afford amaintenance engineer on tap. And while equipment was now much cheaper to come by itwas neither cheap nor easy to rebuild the studios of yore, with their large rooms andtuned acoustics. And how a room is built and treated significantly affects how it sounds.In fact, when you get right down to it, the sonic signature of a room probably comesdown to just 4 factors: the size of the room, the shape of the room, the materials theroom is made from, and the amount of acoustic treatment in the room. And how quiet itis depends on its construction. In acoustical terms then, small rooms don't tend to soundso good, square rooms don't tend to sound so good, and rooms with carpet and foam onthe walls don't tend to sound so good. But because drums are spread right across thestereo field on your record, the room they are recorded in has a very significant impacton the overall sound of the finished product. If you record in a dark sounding room, yourrecord will sound dark. It follows that if you record in a boxy sounding room, your recordwill sound boxy. And if you record in a toilet, your record will sound like... well you getthe message.

So as I said above, we set out to build a studio complex to buck that trend. And shortlyafterwards we set about building not one but five live rooms; and every studio has it'sown sound and vibe. The main phase of the build was completed 18 months ago. Andwe've had an incredible response with bands like Manowar coming all the way from theUS to record here. But we've been wondering for a while how we can get across how verydifferent our rooms sound. Ultimately we decided to create a video to show exactly howdifferent the same drummer, using the same equipment, with the same microphones thesame distance away would sound in different rooms. The idea was that by watching thevideo you could see and hear how each room sounded side by side. We thought thismight both educate young bands what to look, and listen, for when they were checkingout places and trying to decide where to go but also could help bands that were thinkingof booking us to work our which room would best suit the vibe they were shooting for ontheir own record.