The Recording Studio and Its Importance

Recording Studio Stuff

The easiest way to see why a recording studio matters is to look at one famous studio and ask what it actually contributed. Abbey Road, in London, is a good case study, partly because it has been written about so much and partly because it was built for the job.

This post draws on Wikipedia’s article on Abbey Road Studios and a January 1992 Sound On Sound history of the studio (reproduced on the Muzines archive site). Both are secondhand histories, so treat the details as “as reported” rather than as my own research.

A building designed to be a studio

According to Wikipedia, the Gramophone Company bought the site in 1929. The old Georgian townhouse at 3 Abbey Road had a large garden behind it, which allowed a much bigger building at the rear. The architects were asked to convert the property into a recording studio, which Wikipedia calls an unusual request at the time. Three purpose-built studios were constructed, and the house became offices. The studios opened in November 1931 with Edward Elgar conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

A white three-storey building with a front door at the top of steps and cars parked in front

Image: The front of Abbey Road Studios, London (2025) by Alvis Jean, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1992 Sound On Sound article gives the sizes: Studio 1, built for orchestras, was 94 by 55 by 42 feet high and could hold 150 musicians, and Studio 2 was 58 by 37 by 28 feet. A studio designed as rooms, not adapted from spare space, is the first thing a studio can give you.

Building its own technology

The same article says electrical recording was protected by patents held by Western Electric. EMI decided to develop its own system to avoid paying large royalties, and Alan Blumlein’s microphone system was installed and stayed in full use until 1948. Wikipedia adds that Blumlein recorded Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony at the studios in 1934, and lists Ken Townsend, who later became the studio’s general manager, as the inventor of the studio effect called automatic double tracking (ADT).

Add the 1931 echo chamber that Wikipedia mentions, and you can see the pattern. A well-run studio can solve its own sound problems, and the solutions become part of its sound.

When the room did not behave

Even a purpose-built hall needed fixing. The 1992 article says Studio 1’s acoustics were troublesome, because with a large orchestra the absorption dried up the mid and top-end reverb time, leaving an imbalance against the bass. In 1958 the research division designed magnetic delay drums with 100 loudspeakers fitted to the four walls, intending to adjust the acoustics for different setups. The article says the results were only partially successful.

I find that reassuring. The most famous classical studio in Britain still had to experiment with its room.

Rules, routine and the Beatles

The 1992 article describes a formal workplace. Engineers wore shirts and ties and white coats at all times, which once prompted Winston Churchill to remark, in the article’s words, “It looks like a hospital!” Sessions ran in three-hour blocks, 10am to 1pm, 2pm to 5pm and 7pm to 10pm, and the normal practice for pop work was to record four songs in a session.

The article says the arrival of the Beatles changed all that. Wikipedia says the group recorded almost all of their albums and hits there between 1962 and 1970, using the four-track REDD mixing console, and that Studio Two was the venue for many of the innovative techniques they adopted through the 1960s.

A four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder with two large reels and a row of buttons below them

Image: A four-track tape recorder from 1964 to 1972 on display at Abbey Road Studios by Josephenus P. Riley, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1992 article also notes the REDD desk could take an EQ box with settings marked “pop” and “classical”, on the assumption that orchestras reached a higher top end than pop records could. The article’s comment on that is that many of the EMI research division’s assumptions were either disproved or ignored by innovative recordists.

What a studio is really for

Pulling this together, here is what I take from the case study. These are my own conclusions, not claims from the sources.

  • A studio is a set of rooms that sound good on purpose. Abbey Road’s buildings were designed for recording and then tuned.
  • It is a team. The names Wikipedia lists, from producers to mastering engineers, are people whose skills shaped the work.
  • It changes with the artists using it. The three-hour, four-songs-per-session routine ended because a band demanded something else, and the studio adapted.
  • Its identity can be a brand. Wikipedia says that after Townsend became general manager in 1974 he set out to capitalize on the Beatles connection, and the name changed from EMI Studios to Abbey Road Studios in 1976, which also encouraged non-EMI acts to book there.

You do not need Abbey Road to make a good recording, and the series post Home Recording Studio Basics: The Big Picture explains what a more modest setup can do. But the case shows what the people and rooms of a good studio add.

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