The recording booth is somewhere talent spends a lot of time. In this article Damian Kearns asks “Can These Things Make Your Talent More Comfortable and Productive?” We’re willing to bet your talent will think so.

The Booth

When we dug out the basement of our house, I knew we were going to put a studio and booth down here. I actually had the builders add about 2 metres (6.5 feet) of basement onto the end of my house, not attached to the main structure in any meaningful way, with a concrete roof and then a floating back deck 1 metre (3.5 feet) above it so that nothing and no one would ever run across my ceiling in the midst of a critical record take. After all the treatment and raised floor was completed I ended up with a 4.5 metre (14.8 feet) long, 1.75 (5.75 feet) metre wide, 2.19 metre (7.18 feet) high booth. This lovely little space has served me well for 6 years now. 

It’s not perfect by any means. The city of Toronto is right outside my door so even with a decent amount of separation, there’s still something here and there that penetrates the room and leaks in a little. That’s okay because most of my recording is done with an MKH 416 or through the Townsend Labs Sphere L22 Mic Modelling System so I can really focus my microphone on the talent without worrying. 

Years of Insight

I’ve worked a lot of recording sessions over the past 27 years and it has been my general observation that the majority of the recording booths I’ve encountered do not adequately take talent comfort and modern technology into account. I’ve witnessed people overheating, feeling confined, having issues communicating with control rooms and in some cases performers were unable to achieve enough gain in their cans (aka headphones). I’ve recorded some very elderly people (one died a month after he was carried into my booth by two people and plonked in the chair. Nothing to do with the session though!) and some very young people and seen firsthand the issues that even a simple seating choice can raise. 

And then there are the mountains of paper I would rather not see left behind each time someone has something to read. I am sometimes shocked by the amount of paper a host, myself, and 2-3 other people in the room can waste on a documentary record, which I collect afterwards or the recycling bin. So unnecessary and not very 21st century.

There must be a better way to work. Over the years, I devised some solutions. I’ll share some of them for this article.

Don’t Throw It Away

When my old iMac’s monitor hinge snapped, I scrambled to buy a replacement computer ASAP because I was mid-session and couldn’t afford weeks of downtime. The assumption by the people around me was I would trade in the broken one for whatever pennies on the dollar Apple might be willing to cough up. Instead, I took it to a local reseller/refurbisher, MacDoc, and they mended the monitor hinge so the computer was perfectly usable again. This repair happened after I had bought my current iMac Pro as a replacement.  

The old iMac made it into my booth for overflow audio editing work, ably completed by my new assistant, Ben. Computers can offer a range of solutions to a host of problems and as it stands, Covid-19 presents new workflow problems. So sometimes, that old iMac has other uses.

New Life For Old Gear

Returning to the studio build for a moment, for isolation, I had a sliding wall installed between the control room and the booth when we initially built this space. This means talent can come in through the side entrance and head downstairs into the booth without ever being in the same room as me. The booth has an outside air intake to keep the talent from overheating, which I have witnessed before in iso-booth installations. Fresh air for fresh talent. Stale air is for, well, you know…

The broken iMac I had revived now had a second fundamental use. I have the control room and booth computers connected via a single CAT6 ethernet cable and am able to remote in at any point to add and manipulate files on the old iMac or lock it to my iMac Pro rig using the Pro Tools Satellite function.

With regards to Screen Sharing, I do this between Macs using Apple’s hidden Screen Sharing app. If you look at your Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications folder, you should see it. In your System Preferences/Sharing preference pane (System Preferences is easily accessible through the Apple Menu at the top left of your Mac’s screen) you just have to enable screen sharing on both computers and mark down the information in the middle of your screen on the booth computer to manually input the access information to your control room. I believe this can be done over WIFI as well, though nothing beats a hard ethernet connection for moving a lot of data quickly. I also like the idea of not running any more FM signal in the booth than I have to. Here’s more information on Screen Sharing to help you.

There are a variety of ways to screen share with PC’s or between PC’s, including by using TeamViewer or Zoom or Google Docs. I have the booth iMac set up to do this as well, in case clients prefer to use the booth iMac’s camera to link to talent.

There are serious advantages to this workflow, beyond saving paper and ink. When I work with talent, I have their screen on my second monitor so we both read from the same copy of the script. I even scroll it for talent and can make changes later in the script, ‘on the fly’ if needed, before they even read what was written. We can both manipulate the script which means, at the end of the session, the revised script can be used by production for transcription, archive, or to produce any onscreen text that might be added to the picture down the road. The producer can also tell us what to change and we can type it in so she/he doesn’t have to. And since the booth iMac monitor swivels, the talent can adjust the viewing angle to suit their posture or viewing position. 

For musicians, this idea might also eliminate the need for a music stand (not that there’s anything wrong with music stands!). 

Lift Me Up!

Line of sight, back problems and performance optimization are the next issues to tackle which can all be dealt with by implementing one ergonomic wonder, the adjustable Sit-Stand Desk.

After determining the ideal dimensions, much looking around and reading various reviews, I settled on this desk from Motionwise. It also comes in white.

I like the 4 height preset storage buttons, the option to power USB devices, and of course, the motorized height adjustment itself. I mean sure it can hold 350 lbs, but I’m not planning on lying on top of it with my gear. It was the weight of the actual table I was after. It had to be heavy enough not to rattle the gear on top of it when trucks go by or my subwoofer blows out a bit of loud bass. At 92.6 lbs, it’s not going anywhere, anytime.

I’m extremely happy with this purchase. It’s wide enough I can put a couple of people at it if I need and also, as you can see from other pictures, it makes an excellent audio editing station. One word of caution with adjustable desks: Make sure all your cables can stretch to the full height! Slack is good. I work with one person, let’s call her Erica, who simply must play with the buttons every time she sits down. This is when extra cable saves money!

An option here would be to attach a boom arm to the desk so that your mic position never really changes. I’ve been looking into this a little but I still haven’t found the exact right product. I do however have an adjustable reading lamp fixed to the side of the desk in case someone finds the booth’s track lighting to be insubstantial. 

Sit Comfortably, the Show’s About to Start

Seating is the most overlooked, least understood piece of studio hardware. Why do I know this? Years ago, I developed a repetitive stress injury (RSI) from sitting in chairs that were too low for me and provided little back support for a person of my height. My employers, fearing further injury, hired an ergonomist who helped me understand the issues I had and advised my bosses to buy me a chair that was more suited to a taller employee. The RSI went away quickly with the right chair underneath me.

Booth chairs, besides being comfortable, need to be chosen with an ear to one more potential issue: Noise. When I bought my studio chairs, I sat in over 50 chairs until I found comfortable ones that made no sounds when I was shifting around in them. The place I went to was called ‘Modern Furniture Knock-Off’ and offered the widest assortment of chairs I’ve ever seen. Even if you don’t live here, their site is excellent and full of great seating ideas. I think a pro tip is find out where set decorators rent/buy their prop furniture and then check the place out. That’s how I heard about this place.

Quiet chairs tend to be one piece, or few pieces, with no springs or hinges. In my studio I offer some traditional comfortable seats but also this excellent stool that is rigid, comfortable and looks nice. I asked around town to other ergo-conscious studio owners and also to clients who had tasteful offices. They turned me on to article.com and after days of looking elsewhere, I found what I wanted in a few minutes. 

The chair is rigid but comfortable. That’s what I wanted. Between my two chair offerings, the adjustable desk and computer screen, I could now deal with any talent, any height, any position from sitting low to standing tall.

The Wrap-Up

There must be a million ways to achieve what I’ve done and I’m not suggesting that my purchases are the gold standard for booth comfort or style. What I’ve found, over the years, is that all too often very little thought is put into comfort and that comfort and utility need not be opposing concepts.

Since I put this system in place, every single actor I’ve had in my booth has told me that this is the way they wish they could work everywhere; that they feel I care about them and their performances. What’s more, one of the actors has brought me a lot of work as a direct result of her comfort level. Let’s call her Erica and she likes making desks go up and down.

Bonus Material

If you really want to give your talent the ultimate experience, have a volume control box for their headphones right in front of them. Even the cheap ones like mine make for very happy sessions.