Written By: Dan O'Donnell
Fred Ling devoted his childhood in China to learning to be an electrical engineer, to becoming a world class table tennis player and to making sound reproduction as lifelike as possible. He currently holds a masters degree in electrical engineering and robotics, plays friendly games of table tennis with players from the Chinese national team (despite his assertion that he could not compete head to head
with them), and has been building a custom recording system to produce the most life-like sound recordings possible.
“I made my first speaker in middle school,” Ling said, though noting that materials in China were not plentiful then. “I have no clue how I did that, I had no f@cking tools whatsoever.”
“I made my first speaker in middle school,” Ling said, though noting that materials in China were not plentiful then. “I have no clue how I did that, I had no f@cking tools whatsoever.”
Ling, from East Brunswick, NJ, does not like the idea of most typical recording techniques because, he says, they shortchange the listener.
“The human hearing is roughly equivalent to the dog’s sense of smell,” Ling said. “You're very in tune to differences in time, in phase, in amplitude of the sounds, as well as complex harmonics from each instrument and the room.”
Because of the complexities of interconnecting sounds during a live show, Ling said, the mechanics of track recording change the experience of listening to music.
"Each recording engineer has his own approach. Let's say you close-mic a bass and your microphone is a foot away from the bass, versus someone who hears that from ten feet away,”Ling said. “He hears all the instruments at the same time, all the differences in distance, room size, harmonics, and in stereo. The perception of the bass from ten feet away would be totally different from a foot away.”
While admitting that in small rooms or acoustically difficult ones the need for using DI-boxes and close microphones is preferable, Ling says that preserving the sound of the room and the listener’s experience is the key to reproducing hi-fidelity sound quality.
“No one I know enjoys sticking his head next to a bass or drum to hear it,” Ling said. “People listen to music in a natural setting. It is a recording engineer’s job to recreate that musical experience faithfully.”
Ling, 40, examined the structure of the human head as part of his search to find the most realistic reproduction method he could. It turns out, the human head is transparent to low frequencies, because of their long wavelengths. But it also blocks out high-end frequencies, so the ear mainly hears the higher frequencies on the side facing the instruments.
“The human head plays a very real role in how sound is processed by the ears,” Ling said. To achieve that “headprint” on his recordings, Ling uses what’s called a Jaeklin disc, a disc of material that simulates the head’s acoustical properties usually held vertically between microphones, allowing mainly low bands through.
In addition to big name microphones, Ling ordered two custom made microphones from a fellow audiophile who builds only for professional sound engineers. They’re very good microphones—they sound similar to $2,000 microphones used in concert halls, Ling said. Hand made, internally suspended, the microphones add no background noise, and provide a warm, transparent sound, according to Ling.
He attached them 15” apart on the disc, to provide for stereo separation, then puts the disc (and microphones) above a seat, where it captures the room acoustics, as well as the dynamics of all the instruments playing together.
Ling, who primarily records intimate classical, jazz and blues performances with a Metric Halo system connected to two or more microphones, says that he uses the Metric Halo gear because while expensive, it is “very transparent. It adds nothing, it takes nothing away.”
Metric Halo is the recorder used at Universal Studios, as well as on many Grammy award winning recordings.
The Metric Halo system is something that was a life changer for Ling, as it has been for others who use it. “Many sound engineers, when they start using Metric Halo, think there’s something wrong with their previous equipment, because suddenly there’s a whole world of sound that they never heard before,” Ling said.
That sound has come in handy when Ling was remixing performances from Carnegie Hall to Rutgers University’s Nicholas Music Center. He has also recorded at area churches and smaller performance venues.
Because Ling is a software engineer whose lines of code drive hundreds of millions’ of dollars worth of trades on Wall Street each day, he says he is free to pursue the perfect sound for the love of the music.
“This is not a necessity, this is something that grew out of a hobby,” Ling said. “This is a pursuit of something that I enjoy enormously, bringing music to peoples’ homes, in the best way possible. I don’t care about making a lot of money. I enjoy meeting the musicians, I enjoy giving them very high quality recordings even when they haven’t necessarily been able to afford the best in the past.”
WHO: Truewave, LLC
WHAT: On-location sound recording for jazz, blues and classical groups providing as lifelike a reproduction as possible of each event
WHERE: 28 Fresh Ponds Road, East Brunswick, NJ
HOURS: Weekends
RATES: (recording only, output extra): $50 per hour, 2 hour minimum on location. Remixing, mastering $25 per hour (rates can vary depending on range and scope of project)
PHONE: 609.619.1338
Email: recording@truewave.us
Source
localmusicgear.com
Dan
Posted 01/2012
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