TV2 was ok, there was some height...heavy black velour drapes controlled the walls but peeling them back helped. TV13 was pretty dark. I produced a lot of live recording in TV17 - one 1997 Erykah Badu segment recorded simultaneously to ProTools and mixed in AS1 by Hesh Yarmark (4 seasons, Peter Paul and Mary) on a Neve VR/Studer 827 to digital VTR - sounded fabulous. The live board mix was a disaster, it just wasn't their thing. Please pardon the misspellings and occassional insane word substitution I'm on an iPhone > On Sep 18, 2014, at 3:12 PM, "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> On 2014-09-18 1:48 PM, Tom Fine wrote: >> One more point about recording booths. I think some of what we like >> about the more primatively-recorded blues, hillbilly and other "folk" >> musics recorded in the 30s and 40s is a result of the highly damped >> small recording spaces often used. I've read accounts of Paramount >> artists talking about a small studio so blanketed and damped that they >> could barely hear themselves or their instrument. > > When I was at ABC-TV in the late 1970s, the ABC morning show invited the choir of men and boys from St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue to perform a short segment. I had been recording the choir for a while and became good friends with the late Dr. Gerre Hancock, the director. > > When Gerre returned from the gig (which I had no involvement in) the next time he saw me, he asked "Richard, why do you make these studios sound like pillow factories?" > > He was most displeased with the sound to no one's surprise. I think this took place in TV-2 which was half of what used to be a horseback riding arena and went between 66th and 67th Streets, but it might have been TV-13 in the then new Seven Lincoln Square building--a project I did work on, but not for acoustics--that was 8,000 square feet (let's say 240,000 cubic feet and highly padded. > > Dr. Hancock was used to conducing in a stone church of about 2,200,000 cubic feet according to my friend David L. Klepper's 1995-07/08 JAES article. > > Just to point out the other extreme of the continuum of acoustical space influence. > > Cheers, > > Richard > -- > Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask] > Aurora, Ontario, Canada 647 479 2800 > http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm > Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.