The Recording Room as an Instrument

One of my personal pet peeves are "Orchestra open airs". As much as the atmosphere of enjoying an orchestra outdoors on a warm summer night is desirable (even more so after the last year), the acoustics of such an event are usually horrible. This is usually not the fault  of the sound crew but the lack of the room around the orchestra is the most problematic factor. 

There are a few outdoor locations that provide at least some acoustic reflections and there are a few ways how to get a more cohesive overall sound out of the miced signals (that almost always need to be amplified when you play open air) but it always is a considerably compromised sound compared to an indoor, unamplified acoustic situation.

I generally like to view the room that the orchestra is playing in as an instrument on its own and since having a bit more freedom and experience when planning my own orchestral sessions, I always put a lot of thought into which room/studio I want to record in and how the orchestra should be seated in there.

This is of course a highly subjective view and there are different views on this but for a large orchestra, my personal benchmark is the sound of Abbey Road Studio 1:

Still, I wouldn't record ANY large orchestral music in there even if I had the budget. For example if it was a detailed comedy action score with lots of flourishes, I would way more prefer a smaller scoring stage with shorter reverb time. Many composers like the sound of Air Lyndhurst which is even more reverby than Abbey Road and really sounds huge with the right material but a chamber sized recording in that space just sounds very "lonely".

But it is not only the size of the room but also the other acoustic properties. Some rooms have a very distinctive sound. For instance you can almost instantly hear the MGM/Sony Scoring Stage for its very specific sound character.

I quite often record in Prague where the lack of studio alternatives almost always forces me to record in Smecky Studios.

As you can see, this studio is considerably smaller than the ones I've shown before. And in spite of the fact that it has enough surface area to accomodate a large orchestra, its almost non existant reverb time makes it very tricky for a large line-up to sound "big" and the brass when playing loud always dominate the room. The early reflections of the close walls in the room very quickly lead to an acoustic overload of the room.

In comparison when I was recording at Abbey Road a few years ago, I was astounded how much the brass melts into the overall sound even when they play really loud so the space really defines the sound of the recording.

Yet, for small and intimate line-ups, as well as soft and detailed orchestration, Smecky is a great sounding space.

For a project about two years ago, I didn't have the budget to go anywhere else but Prague but had enough budget to check other alternatives in Prague so I decided to record at the Dvorak Concert Hall in Prague:

I really needed a larger sound than Smecky for this project and acoustically speaking, this location was the complete opposite to Smecky with an excessive reverb time. As I knew about this already, I decided to not record any percussion patterns in that hall but add them as samples as they would have just drowned out everything else in a wave of reverb. Still, it was a great decision to go there as I got a considerably bigger sized sound than in Smecky.

I very often read the argument of: "Just record in a small room and create size in sound by artificial reverb". This only works to a very small extent. Early reflections from nearby walls in a small studio can not be hidden in a reverb but will always sound like a small studio with reverb. Similarly, you cannot rebalance the dominating brass in a small studio to sound like they do in a large studio.

So with all these examples, what do we need to take into consideration when picking a room?

There are 5 main factors that influence the sound of the room. Volume, Ceiling Height, Wall Material, Shape and Musician Seating.

A large room alone doesn't make a large sound but a very important factor is ceiling height. Rooms with low ceilings (as we can often see in rehearsal spaces) are acoustically very problematic and create weird room resonances and unattractive room reflections. Similarly, is a concrete wall near the musicians acoustically way more problematic than wood panels or more diffusing materials. The shape of a room is not as problematic when recording than in a concert space as long as it is not completely oddly shaped as you can usually always find a spot for the microphones where they sound good. But generally, we can say that most recording studios are "shoebox shaped". The seating of the musicians in the room plays a big factor in the sound. Usually they have a standard seating in these rooms that have been tested and optimized for years regarding orientation of the orchestra, mic placement and also actual seating of the individual musicians. But it can create very specific sound qualities to divert from these standards. All these parameters are only the big factors. There are rooms that objectively should sound great but don't and vice versa. So these factors are only rules of thumb. It definitely helps to know the room and having heard it before to make an informed choice, especially when you want to go to the level of specific micing or seating choices.

As I said already, which way to go is highly subjective but it is essential to really factor in the space that you record in.  And depending on what music you write and what budget options you have available, you should put a lot of thought into your choice of recording room.

Coming back to the beginning, I had the unfortunate "pleasure" a few times in my career to write orchestral music for open air events and they always ended up with me being really frustrated by the performance and sound. Not only is the sound problematic in such a context but there is also a problem of the musicians not hearing each other properly which compromises the performance even further.

Let me finish this post by showing you an excerpt of a piece that I wrote for an open air event to demonstrate what the lack of room causes to an orchestra. Fasten your seatbelts:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/i-love-open-air-orchestras/s-dcHgS9rIryv