Is the modern big studio dead or is there just a thinning going on where only the strong will survive?
Well, the large studio's usually live, not dead.
[laughs] That's true, but in the seventies they were dead. All of them.
Yes, unfortunately they were. But we were — actually the counterpart of that would be that Electric Lady Studios was actually a pretty live studio which was the complete opposite of what the studios were in the early seventies. We made some technical errors, but we corrected them with very heavy screens and that. There was some flutter and stuff that we fixed. It was a hardwood floor with carpet on the walls and quite a few reflective surfaces with a fairly high ceiling. But it had a nice, live, feel to it. And it still sounds great today, so we did something right there. But, going back to your question, it is a fact that most of the big studios are hurtin' bad.
Here in the Northwest you can get a lockout with a 2-inch room for about $400, $350.
That's frightening because those prices don't really reflect what the person has invested in the studio. And when you look at what, for instance, The Hit Factory has Criteria down in Miami. There must be $15 or $20 million into that place. I don't know how on earth they're gonna make that money back. I mean, they'd have to run all the studios 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next 10 years. I don't see it, but hey, whatever.
Have you noticed though, that there is a real downslide right now in terms of rooms having trouble getting top dollar and really squeezing for their rent?
Yes, there is because it's the Pro Tools revolution that has been upon us for the last four, five years and it shows no sign of abating. Unfortunately I'm forced into the position of having to use it. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I mean, I love it from the point of view that you can do amazing things with editing and all the autotuning and all the plug-ins, though I hate the plug-ins because I think they sound like crap. I mean, quite frankly the whole Pro Tools thing doesn't sound that great to me. And in the way that most top twenty record producers are working today, they are going analog first, in order to retain some of the warmth, and it's such an ironic thing. I bring this out in my lecture that ironically here we are in the year 2001 with these multimillion-dollar consoles, you know SSL 9000 for $900,000, digital machines and all the rest of it. And what is the first thing a producer does, he pulls out the tube mic, the tube preamp, the tube equalizer, the tube limiter, to make the digital sound better. So that's saying something, that we haven't advanced that much. However, there is a dividing line, and I think that dividing line is we are now at the stage where 24-bit 96 k is very good, and what's even better is the 192 k. And there we are very close, I would say, to reproducing exactly what's coming out of the console. Now, on the other side of that coin, you still need to warm the sound up. So the sound of tube amps, the sound of tube mic pres, the sound of tube mics- it is an integral part.
It's still a viable front-end...
I mean, digital just doesn't sound good when you hit it hard. It just goes ppllht (you can do what you want with that sound). The current joke now is, "Hey guys," (it's the producer talking) "That really sucked, come in, we'll make it work." And make it work in Pro Tools because who cares how bad it is. We'll throw it in and that horrible old phrase "We'll fix it in the mix" is even more prevalent because you can...
Now it's truly terrifying when someone says that because they sort of can.
It's terrifying. I mean, I really rue the day that this system came on board. And it seems to be taking the life out of these bands. And you listen, yeah, the record sounds great, it's perfect, but where's the feeling, you know? I use the Pro Tools thing and, like I said, I hate it but I know that at some point I have to use the damn thing. And I'm cutting 16-track 15 ips Dolby SR, dumping it over to Pro Tools, which is basically what we're going to do here this week. We're going to be cutting 16- track, unfortunately no Dolby SR but we'll just hit the tape hard and then we'll dump it over to this new Tascam digital machine [MX 2424] and we'll keep working in that mode. So, the two worlds can live together. I just hope that studios just don't throw out all their analog gear. Analog tapes were proven in the fact that here we are 30 years later, and we'll talk about Hendrix — I'm pulling tapes out of the library that are over 30 years old and sound great! No dropouts, maybe a little bit of the top end is going a little bit, but I can make up for that. But at least the basic signal is still there.
Will analog recording last 10 more years with one machine manufacturer and two tape manufacturers?
It has to. We don't have a choice. I mean, there's guys out there buying up Studers and reconditioning them. Or old Ampex machines or whatever they can find. Otaris.
I'm one of those, Ampex MM1100.
