Where did you go to school?
I went to the University of Washington, majoring in Physics. I got my degree in 1955.
Were there classes in acoustics and how did you find out about them?
I investigated the Physics Department at the University of Washington and I found out that Professor Kenworthy was an acoustician. I read a couple of the papers he had written for the Acoustical Society of the American Journal, and I thought he was a really sharp guy. I was offered a scholarship at Wazzu (Washington State University) for their Physics Department, but they didn't have any acoustics guy and they didn't have any Acoustics curriculum either. It wasn't that expensive to go to school in those days and I lived on Queen Anne Hill with my folks... Dr. Kenworthy was my advisor.
What was your first job?
The first real job that I had after I graduated was at the Boeing Company. I had hoped to be able to get a job in their Acoustics Lab, but they were not hiring anybody at the time. However, right next door to it was the Vibration Lab, in the same building (this was at the old Plant 1 building Boeing facility), so I took a job in the Vibration Lab. They had an opening in the Tape Room, which is where they did Data Analysis (handling all the data that has been recorded on tapes. Mostly data from accelerometers and velocity probes and occasionally microphones). I liked that — I knew how tape recorders worked. I stayed there for about 8 years. When I left there (Boeing), I was in charge of Instrumentation for their Environmental Test Lab.
Why did you leave your first job?
I left my first job to become the first sound engineer at the Seattle Center, the location of the Seattle World's Fair of 1962. That's the first I had heard of Paul Veneklasen, who was doing the acoustics at the Opera House. The Opera House was going to look for a sound engineer to work with Veneklasen, to do some more acoustical changes at the Seattle Center and also to be in charge for sound reinforcement for the entire Seattle Center.
Who was Paul Veneklasen?
He was an acoustician who lived in Santa Monica, and he studied at UCLA. He had been a student of Vern Knudsen, who was the relatively well-known acoustician that had worked with Harvey Fletcher [of Fletcher-Munson fame]. Paul Veneklasen and I had a nice relationship because we seemed to speak the same language and we seemed to think the same way — I learned a tremendous amount about acoustics from him. He was really my mentor in architectural acoustics. Kenworthy was a theoretician, and I got all the theory and all the rigor from him, but as far as practical acoustics was concerned Veneklasen is where I really learned that.
What effect did working with Paul Veneklasen have on you?
It taught me a tremendous amount about auditorium acoustics. Also about the politics of dealing with architects, which was (and still is) a real problem with a lot acousticians. Mostly he was my mentor.
How long did you work at the Seattle Center? What was your most significant experience there?
I was there for five years [1963-1968]. The most memorable experience was when I was doing the sound for The Beatles in 1964 in the Seattle Center Coliseum. The Beatles sent two guys from New York ahead of them. They asked me about the sound system, and they said, "Can you augment the system to make it just as loud as possible. Getting the music over the noise of the audience is going to be really difficult." And I said, "Well yeah, we have quite a bit of equipment around here, so we can add to the system." All of our amplifiers in those days were 80 watt tube amplifiers. So I added three Altec/Lansing 300 Hz two cell horns (model 203, on 288 C Altec drivers). I put two of those, one on top of the other, facing one of them back to cover the far end of the auditorium, the other one facing down a little bit to cover the far end of the main floor. Then we had some 800 Hz horns, also Altecs. They were 805s, two rows of four cells each, and I had one of them pointed right down on the stage so that The Beatles could hear themselves and also cover the audience close to the stage. I had to scrounge amplifiers from other locations around the Seattle Center and put them in there. Each of those horns was driven by its own 80 watt amplifier and the woofers were JBL 15" woofers.
How did you overcome all that screaming?
We didn't. During the screaming, the sound system was inaudible... It was a big wave of screaming and then that would die down until they could hear a few words and then there came another wave of screaming and so on for the entire twenty-two minutes The Beatles were on stage. I used EV655C microphones for the four performers. I used one mic for Ringo and his drums. Those are omni directional dynamic microphones. Very good quality dynamic microphones. The Beatles were really intrigued by that. They said, "These microphones are so small. How come they're so small?" I said, "They're small because they sound better when they're small." "Oh is that so, really? No kidding!" Ringo tapped the mic with his drum stick! He'd say, "Is this really working?"
How did you deal with the hysteria?
I just put in ear plugs and tolerated it.
Did you do sound for any Northwest bands?
There were a lot of local groups too. One group I liked was Paul Revere & the Raiders. I think they were from Portland. Their drummer [Michael "Smitty" Smith, RIP, 1942-2001] was terrific. We [also] had the Wailers.
Why did you decide to leave the Seattle Center?
I was offered a job by Bill Bergsma, the director of the Music School at the University of Washington, to become the University Acoustician. Also, I would have an instructor's position in the Arts & Sciences department. I would teach a course in Electronic Music and Recording and Reproduction of Music and Musical Acoustics. So I thought, 'Wow that's good, I would like to do that', so I quit the [Seattle] Center, and went to the University. I was there for thirteen years. That was a very good job — I really enjoyed working with the kids.
How did you come to meet Kearney Barton of Audio Recording, Inc.?
Well he was around for a long, long time. When I was in school he was around. I don't remember how I met him. I knew when he moved his studio from downtown up to 5th Avenue about Cedar St [2227 5th Ave]. He rented some space in there and he called me and wanted me to look at the space to see if he could put a studio in there.
What were recording studios like in the '60s in Seattle?
There was a lot of two channel stuff around, but Kearney wanted three channels and he wanted me to build him a console. My assistant at the Seattle Center was an excellent electronics technician, Ken Heidt. Ken and I built a console for Kearney in 1965 [which he still owns and uses!]. It is a total custom job. The console uses all Langevin pots and passive graphic equalizers. It's only three channels and everything is interconnected by patch cords, which I thought was a good idea.
What made Kearney's place so special? What was significant about it?
The console sounds very good. It has those Langevin preamps, which are push-pull from the input to the output. It's two channels in parallel on every preamp — they are very quiet and sound really good. They hardly overload, but if you do overload them they smoothly overload — they don't sound bad when you do that. The line amps were also Langevin and a very good design. I thought they were quite a bit better than the Altec designs at that time. I think the electronics in there were good. For tape recorders he had Ampex 351-2[track] and he also bought a 3-track Ampex MR70, a half-inch machine. He didn't use that very much because nobody wanted 3-track. Kearney still has that machine at his present studio and he converted it to 4-track, and he took out that 3-track head assembly, which is still almost brand new.
What about the room?
We had to use the room at the size that it was. It was fairly decent sized [750-800 square feet]. We built a control room adjacent to it, not very deep but it was wide — space was limited. It sounded all right. We put some fiberglass on the walls at various locations to get rid of echoes and stuff. The cement slab went from his studio to the neighbor to the south who had a woodworking shop and all of his tools sitting on the concrete floor. His machinery would transmit vibration though the floor and into Kearney's studio. We built another wall right across in front of the existing wall, and isolated that. Kearney finally got the neighbor to put cork pads under his equipment to lower the vibration from them.
Were there any other obstacles that needed to be overcome?
The place was not very sound proof. Aircraft noise was a problem. Once in a while a loud airplane could be heard in the studio. Kearney used [Altec] A-7s for monitors in there, three of them. I thought they sounded awful, but he was used to them.
How many reverb chambers did Kearney have?
There were three. They were similar in size, but with different shapes, so they had different characteristics. They didn't sound all the same but they weren't drastically different. If you wanted stereo reverb, Kearney decided that that he wanted three-channel reverb (use one for each channel on his three channel system). The problem is, since they were different shapes, the reverbs didn't sound identical. It's much better off putting three mics in one of them and spacing the mics out.
What are some basic principles of acoustics to remember when designing and/or building a recording studio?
In general, a recording studio should be as big as you can afford to make it. There is no such thing as a recording studio that is too big, but there are lots of them that are too small. If it's small then it has to be really dead. Otherwise, the room mode resonances of the place will interact with the music. It's the boundary reflections and to a lesser extent the reverberation of the room that gives it its acoustic and musical character. If you get rid of that by making it completely dead you might as well perform out in the middle of the desert, you don't get sound coming back. A lot of people make mistakes in the ceilings in recording studios. The ceiling should be a diffuser, or a relatively good absorber, because you don't want a specular reflection off the ceiling. I have been in lots and lots of studios that had just plane surface ceilings, even if angled, if it is a plane surface, it's not good.
Do you have to spend lots of money to get good acoustics?
Lots of money is a relative term depending on who you are talking to. [laughs] It depends on the requirements. If you have a sound isolation problem then it is going to be a lot more expensive to control that. You have to take special pains to isolate the noise sources from the studio and control room. That requires multiple walls and it requires special treatment of those walls, etc...
