R-e/p: When you say Robbie, you are talking about…
RF: Robbie Robertson, guitar, The Band.
RF: There was no producer on this record. Everybody was the producer. Robbie is the one who gives a lot of direction, although they all have something to say about the music, and are all really involved.
DL: He seems to be the one that has the most knowledge as far as engineering is concerned. He has tremendous knowledge about what equipment can do, what a board can and can’t do.
R-e/p: Let’s get back to the room. You told us that studio B was used for the album. What is it about this room that made it attractive?
RF: For one thing, you can work in here for hours and hours and not get fatigued. And you can turn this room up very loud and it won’t hurt. Numerous people have commented on that.
R-e/p: What kind of monitors are you using?
RF: The room was conceived by me and designed by George Augspurger, and the monitors are custom-built using JBL components and custom crossovers. Each enclosure has two 15-inch 2220 woofers, which are thin-cone units. They’re also efficient, so our amplifiers aren’t working so hard on the low end.
It gives us a punchier bottom than a 2215, with a different coloration. The 2215 has a more rubbery sound. While the curve of our room might look like another room, it has a certain character. The 2405 tweeters are also part of the picture. I just really like the way they sound in this installation. The overall system has a very low fatigue factor, or whatever you’d call it.
R-e/p: What kind of a curve does the room actually have?
RF: Well, it was originally flat, but we tailored the high end a little differently. I found that having a flat monitor system was a terrible hype.
The way we finally decided on the curve was that I went to a lot of studios and to a lot of people’s homes and played music on different systems. I took notes and gathered the information.
R-e/p: Since the room is equalized, you could probably have achieved similar frequency response with other speakers. Was there another factor involved in the choice of these particular speakers?
RF: Well, I like 604’s with the Mastering Lab crossover. But they still have a beaming effect. That’s one thing you just can’t get away from, and that was the reason we decided to switch to units with better dispersion.
R-e/p: Without the beaming, what kind of coverage do you get? Where is the best sound in the control room?
RF: Realistically, the working area is the length of the console. You can sit at the producer’s desk and hear well, although there is some difference from behind the console. As far as quad sound, it’s surprisingly good for a small room. It sounds very large and open in here.