Bob Hodas worked his magic on Counting Crows’ guitarist Dave Bryson’s home Pro Tools studio. Dave basically found himself in the situation described in this month’s main feature (“Fix Your Mix”), even though he had quite a bit of recording experience prior to co-founding the band with Adam Duritz in 1991.
“I had started doing my own recordings long ago, first on a 4-track, and eventually putting together my own 16-track studio where I actually cut some records. Then, during all my years in Counting Crows, I ended up on the other side of the glass, performing.
Dave Bryson at work in his home studio.
Not too long ago, I decided I wanted to get back into recording, so I decided to learn Pro Tools. Of course, the only way to do that is to just buy a system, put it in your house, turn it on, and start recording. I took a small bedroom that is about 9’ x 9’ and put the computer and monitors in there, using a closet for all the gear that makes noise. The adjoining room is my home gym, which is about the same size, so I also use that to record acoustic guitar, vocals, and even squeeze in a drum kit from time to time.
Like a lot of other people, I just stuck up a few foam panels around the room and hoped for the best. My real interest was in learning how to mix inside Pro Tools. To do that, you must be able to hear behind the music, the depth, the stereo positioning, the reverb tails, etc. I had decided to purchase a very expensive set of monitors, but found myself resorting to headphones to really hear anything.
It was quite frustrating. In fact, I felt like I got a better idea of what the mix actually sounded like in my car than in my studio! I was mentioning this to my friend, Jeff Briss at Cutting Edge Audio Group in San Francisco – where I buy most of my gear – and he suggested getting in touch with Bob.
I spoke with Bob and he agreed to see what might help improve my situation. We made a date for him to spend a day here. He started by measuring what was going on in my room and then we would move the speaker stands and the speakers to a different position and re-measure the room’s response. We did this about 20 times, each time trying to improve on the results.
The whole time, I’m observing the process and Bob is explaining to me just what we are seeing. He’d say, “See that spike here? That’s an early reflection that we’ve got to deal with.” Bob also suggested I bring in a subwoofer for that day, which gave us way more control over the bass frequencies heard in the room.
To sum up the experience, in one day, I went from a pretty funky sounding room to a very acceptable monitoring environment – one that I can rely on to translate very well. The proof was when I took my first mix out to the car after Bob was here and it sounded exactly the same as it had in the control room. I wasn’t really interested in tearing apart my room and making structural changes. To add any non parallel walls in the small room would pretty much leave me with almost no space to work. Bob understood that and used his experience and tools to precisely figure out how to make my room workable.” [Insert Fig 5]
Paul Stubblebine at work in his home studio.
At the other end of the spectrum is veteran mastering engineer Paul Stubblebine, who with more than three decades of experience – and many gold and platinum albums to his credit – insists on absolute sonic integrity in his mastering rooms.
“Bob has been tuning rooms for me now for more than 15 years. He’s smart and methodical. Plus, his experience as a recording engineer, live sound mixer, and musician give him a wealth of knowledge of what will work in any given situation.
First and foremost, a good mastering room must be designed to be a careful listening environment. That means we have to be able to immediately hear what needs work and how much adjustment is needed. That’s why acoustics are really at the top of my list when it comes to my rooms.
When I set out to design and build a mastering facility that would offer the absolute best acoustical performance, I asked Bob to consult from the first drawings up through final acoustical treatments. I brought him back in at each stage of construction, when a wall would go up and we’d measure the room and decide if any adjustments needed to be made. After the shells were built, we measured again and tried different wall treatments to see what would give us the most accurate room.
As a result, I’m proud to say we have great listening rooms. You may have weeks to pore over a mix in the studio, but we have to hear it all today, and make decisions about the sound of your record that will ensure the very best performance comes through. Our two mastering suites are everything I could have hoped for and we owe a good deal of that to Bob’s expertise.”
