There are many reasons why people require a level of air tightness and soundproofing in their building, from the legal compliance requirements necessitating passing an air tightness test, to the added privacy and lowered heating costs.
One of the biggest uses for soundproofing technology, however, is in the world of sound recording, and often the facilities at the cutting edge of soundproofing technology are found in audio studios, which need to provide appropriate acoustics whilst cutting out external noise.
Early audio recordings, particularly those prior to the era of electrical amplification, were low fidelity, so, for the most part, were recorded anywhere where a large acoustic horn could be set up, which is the reason why early audio recordings have a lot of crackling feedback and noise.
By the 1930s, when electrical recording had become the standard, this limitation became a stylistic choice, in part because it allowed entire orchestras and live bands to play together in one take and encouraged playing as loud as possible in an age before amplification was the norm.
This meant that for decades the most popular recording studios were repurposed concert halls and churches, with the focus on channelling the acoustics deliberately through purpose-built echo chambers.
This led to major record labels boasting specific types of acoustics in their music, such as the echo chambers of Capital Tower, the converted church 30th Street Studio of Columbia Records, RCA Studio B and Abbey Road, the studio base of EMI Records.
The latter’s most famous residents arguably inspired a fundamental change away from shaped acoustics and duplicating the ambience of a live concert and towards soundproofing and noise
isolation.
The Beatles recorded nearly all of their studio tracks at Abbey Road, but they made an exception when Trident Studios in Soho, London opened, as it employed noise reduction technology from Dolby and had an eight-track recording deck as opposed to the standard four.
This allowed for even more experimental artists such as David Bowie, Elton John and Queen to record music there, lured by the prospect of high fidelity and no noise.
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