Learning, still, as life is like water, never seize to flow.

Alright, it's been another while since I've written anything, not much has changed besides the knowledge of wealth. But current events is brought me here and there, and it's always up to me to interpret my way of life. The question would always be - was it worth the trip?

(Spot me if you can haha, I'm in the front row)

SO, where do I begin? I'm in Taiwan of Asia, and at this moment of writing, I am in one of the most prestigious studio known to Asia (without pride, also world class famous), they have no need of advertisement as their reputation precedes them already. Many known Chinese pop stars have made their appearance within the studio, however not limiting to Asian vocalists but world class pop stars as well. One of the more famous appearance was Micheal Jackson (RIP) unfortunately his trip to this studio was canceled due to his illness during his tour in Malaysia. But despite the the level of fame to the studio, the real value is within its resources and people.

More about this studio: the recording studio is called Platinum Recording Studio, you will find better results if you copy and paste onto a search bar with "白金錄音室", this studio has been in business 40+ years and there is more than just a reason - rather, it is several defining factors surround this business.

Business:
Let's talk about business, I won't go into detailed structure (since I don't understand as much) but the jist of the business is their services personnel, and equipment & designated space rental. However the recording services is strictly recording, that includes vocals, instruments, or live performance (within the studio of course). While equipment rental is limited to mixing and mastering, and not external rentals. Besides the engineers, there are assistants that are responsible to everyday maintenance of the entire floor and equipment. They are paid by the hour and weekly, and are the most important personnel to the whole business layout. They are considered as interns, since they will be promoted to a specific engineering position.


Structure Layout:
The whole studio is consist of one entire floor (over the years they focused from different floors into just the 2nd floor of the building). There are 4 recording rooms and 4 control rooms, each of various sizes for different purpose. Most of the rooms are interconnected, so it is possible to reach different rooms with 2 entrances and exits. Since the studio is located within an office building of the city, their structure has several important factors embedded into the overall construction.
1.)Soundproofing, both internally and externally. The external soundproofing starting with the out most layer is the building wall, then about a foot and a half of empty space for air flow and soundproofing, and then another foot of soundproofing material surrounding the whole floor and top and bottom as well.  Internally, each control room and recording room has about an average of 2 feet of soundproofing material surrounding each room. Each of the control rooms and recording has at least one (some rooms have 2) 3~4 inch thick door weighting about 500 pounds and they are all construct of steel and other unspecified materials both effective in soundproofing and extremely heavy.

(Those are very very heavy doors. HEAVY!!!)

2.) Quake Resistant, yes equipment such as a professional CD player are as sensitive to a temporarily lost of  the ability to playback with a slight bump applies the principle of no momentum abuse to the rest of the expensive collection of equipment. Therefore the whole floor as the manager stated is a "hanging box", because the space surrounding the entire building with special padding between the first floor and the second would serve as a pendulum. Basically while the whole building is shaking, the whole floor remains intact.

(You can see there alot of expensive equipment, there are 4 of those rooms)

3.) Data Lost Prevention System, while the earthquakes are pretty common, power lost is even more common in the Formosa Island. So naturally the whole studio power is equipped with industrial duty serge protector and clean power converters, along with UPS that allows system backup during power outages.

Equipment:

Well, what good is a recording studio without the equipment? There are way too many to list, but I will list a few categories and few specifics:

1.)Microphones, way too many to specifically list, loads of dynamic mics, for instruments (drums, guitars, amps, all that good stuff), but more importantly tube and condenser microphones are the most important tools of the trade. Two of the most memorable microphones are noted below. Of course there are much more not listed (since there are more than 100 mics), but hopefully you can understand the scale and the importance.

(The Neumann U 87 Ai, around $4,000, there are about 7~8 of those in the studio)

(This is the Sony C800G look up the price if you don't believe me, round $10,000 and there are two of those in the studio)

2.)Headphones, although there isn't any jacks for the studio console/board mixer to use, it is essential for the recording artist to hear the instrumental without being recorded into the microphone. There are basically 3 different headphone monitors, AKG K240 and Sony MDR series (CD900, CD900ST...) In fact

(The headphone amp on the right shows a bit of the Sony MDR series headphones)

3.) Console, yup, normally I thought they use a larger than life board mixer, but nope. This large analog mixer is actually a console and computer all in one, and the it is digitally hooked up to function with pro tools with a mac pro. It all looks like this:

So basically I'm here to learn. The engineers are often referred to as teachers, since they are the ones responsible to teach/guide us. But overall there's much I didn't mention but for now, those pictures shall be the common place between me and my readers.