Records and Recording: Why Does It Sound Like That? (Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan/Feb 1977)

Editor's Note: This column will be mainly the bailiwick of our genial Associate Editor, Max Wilcox, although we all intend to get in our two cents worth from time to time. We have known Max for quite a few years and have followed with solicitude his evolution from Establishment producer at RCA to maverick free-lancer experimenting with unconventional recording techniques and equipment. ( Like the B&K 4133 calibrated condenser mike, the same insanely expensive instrument we use for measuring loudspeakers.)

Some of the leading RCA artists, such as Rubinstein and Peter Serkin, are still recording with him even though he is now an independent. We consider his production (and let him blush with modesty) of Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" (RCA ARLI-1567) to be as accurate a reproduction of a small chamber group as we know of. Put that in your pipe, all you RCA denigrators, and smoke it. (We put it on our turntable and used it as one of the reference records in our preamp survey.) Max will be doing record reviews from the sonic point of view, but first he wants to get some general observations off his chest.

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You put one record on and it sounds warm, spacious and natural. The next one sounds shrill and restricted in dynamics.

Yet another sounds overly '"'engineered" with artificial balances and instrumental timbres.

With some recordings you can sit back and enjoy the music (which hopefully was what everyone involved in the production of the recording had in mind), and yet with others the sound seems to intrude between you and the performers.

Why can't we all make equally great sounding recordings? Surely (a record buyer must think) recording equipment is relatively standardized throughout the world (Ampex and Studer tape machines, Neumann, AKG and Schoeps microphones, Scotch and Agfa tape), and it has been demonstrated that superb results can be achieved with that equipment.

Why, then, do recordings vary so much in sound and quality? As an active producer in the classical record industry, I certainly have my own technical and musical prejudices. Still, within the limits of my own knowledge and with what I hope is an open mind, I'd like to discuss why they sound like that.

Since this is not a minor topic to be disposed of in a few hundred words, I'd like to cover a variety of subjects in the next few issues: performers, producers, engineers, halls and studios, microphones, consoles-all the elements that determine the quality of a recording. Let's begin by talking about the people who are responsible for a recording, their functions in a production, and how their responsibilities are different in America and Europe.

The main personalities who determine the technical character of a recording are the producer and the engineer. They control the choice of acoustical site, microphones, micro phone placement, style of recorded balance and perspective, and the final editing and mixing.

The producer and engineer are responsible to the listener for reproducing the performance, and the final impression that performance makes will certainly be affected by their skill.

Let's see what their specific responsibilities are.

First, let's examine how producer-engineer teams operate in Europe. It's quite different from how it happens in America. At English Decca ( London), Philips and Deutsche Grammophon, a recording engineer is a Tonmeister. The technical areas of the recording are completely his responsibility, and he is the one who determines and blends the elements that produce the final sound. These engineers are usually men with musical as well as technical training, and many of them read scores and schematics with equal ease. They are rather a formidable group, and such men as K. E. Wilkinson at Decca and Gunter Hermanns at DGG have achieved well-deserved independent fame.

It was the efforts of Chief Engineer Arthur Haddy and K. E. Wilkinson that produced Decca's ffrr technique in the last days of the 78-RPM era, and "Wilkie" is still going strong today. It is through the efforts of such men that London records have a consistent, recognizable quality. There certainly is a London *'sound," and it can be heard in their recordings made at any locale. Much the same can be said for the recordings of Deutsche Grammophon, Philips and, to a lesser extent, those of EMI (Angel and HMV).

In Europe the producer is responsible for the musical aspects of the recording. He collaborates with the engineer on the instrumental balances and works closely with the performers to insure that a technically correct and musically satisfying performance is achieved during the sessions. The musicians and producer work out the details of editing that result in the finished performance, and the producer usually supervises that editing. The final mix is again a collaboration between the engineer and producer.

This European approach to record-production responsibilities is based more on established procedure than on production team personalities, and it has led to a technical consistency in the quality of recordings made by the major European labels. Theirs is a subtle, evolutionary approach with no sudden, drastic changes in general style. There is solid evidence over the years of a stable philosophy of musical sound which is not dependent on single corporate personalities. A DGG record from the 1960's bears a clear family resemblance to their latest recordings, and this is also true of English Decca and Philips.

This brings us to the shores of America, where things are quite different. Here it is the producer who is in clear control, and the engineering department is generally expected to produce a recording to the specifications of the producer.

Many American recording engineers, through no fault of their own, lack the solid technical and musical background possessed by their European counterparts.

The European engineers are carefully trained for their clearly defined responsibilities and are supported by well-established engineering administrations. In America, engineering is considered a 'service' organization whose chief function is the implementation of the producer's concept. The engineers and their administrative superiors have usually not had serious musical training.

In the unionized structure of the engineering department of a large American record company, one becomes a studio mixing engineer by seniority. This means one begins as a technician testing lacquers, making tape-to tape duplicates, running tape machines at recording sessions, etc. These are all necessary and worthwhile jobs, but they do not necessarily provide the background and knowledge needed by a first-class classical mixing engineer. A young American musician or electrical engineer who aspires to classical engineering has little chance of attaining his goal without spending years performing relatively unrelated tasks.

This is not antiunion bias on my part but simply a statement that the present system is not really designed to produce mixing engineers. The fact that it has produced some excellent ones, like RCA's late great Lewis Layton (who engineered the great Reiner/Chicago Symphony records) is a tribute to the tenacity of talented people against large odds.

Why, since I am one of the people who use the authority given to American producers, do I seem to be complaining about the system? Would I really want it to change for my own productions? Well, that's a very good question.

I've had the opportunity to record with some of the notable European engineers and, because of the different roles we fill in our own countries, these collaborations have sometimes produced a few conflicts. They have also produced some very good recordings and have been very educational for me.

To step away from the personal aspect, a good case can be made that American record ings tend to reflect the taste of each producer, and a major American company may issue quite different-sounding recordings supervised by their individual producers. Sometimes this is good, and sometimes it's not so good. In any case, it makes the general technical level of American recordings vary a good deal more than those from Europe.

The American system has also produced a power syndrome that I feel is not especially healthy for classical music. Too often multichannel recording techniques have taken the balance and sound of the performance out of the hands of the performer and left them up to the talent and taste of the producer. Many American producers make the decisions about what sounds good, what will attract the attention of the buying public, and what new recorded forms a piece of music can be given.

An example is surround-sound quadraphonics, my objections to which were well documented by John Rockwell in an article on the subject in The New York Times. To me, surround-sound is a prime example of the medium manipulating the message, of producers deciding on how music should sound. Innovative, adventurous, provocative? Perhaps, but not to me. | find it an enormous challenge to properly and faithfully record anything from flute solos to orchestral-choral combinations in a normal acoustic setting, and trombones playing from a rear channel in a Brahms symphony is not something I am anxious to capture.

I don't mean to characterize all American producers as manipulators of the art of music.

Many are not, and certainly a welcome contrast is Lincoln Mayorga of Sheffield Labs. I had the pleasure of meeting Lincoln in New York a few days before writing this article, and he gave me his new Harry James record, The King James Version. It had been recorded with one AKG C-24 stereo microphone plus two helper microphones for the bass and piano. It sounds great. It may even inspire me to cut down the number of microphones on my sessions! Of course, all American recordings are not gimmick-ridden any more than all European recordings are superlatively well-made. But the styles are different, and the difference between producer and engineer responsibilities is one of the major factors contributing to the varying results.

By Max Wilcox

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[adapted from TAC, Vol.1, No.1 ]

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