Pacific Northwest – April 23, 2024

Nick Squire (L) and Shawn Murphy (R), in their control room at Boston Symphony hall shortly before addressing the PNW Section on recording the BSO, via Zoom, April 2024. Photo courtesy Nick Squire.

Meeting Topic: Recording the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Speaker Name: Shawn Murphy – Recording Engineer & Consultant and Nick Squire – BSO Recording Engineer

Meeting Location: Zoom, Boston and Seattle

Summary

PNW Section held its April 2024 meeting on Zoom, and was fortunate to have engineer/producer (and AES Fellow) Shawn Murphy and Boston Symphony Orchestra recording engineer Nick Squire describe in depth how they record the orchestra. Shawn previously presented to the PNW Section in 2010 on film score recording, and graciously agreed to arrange this presentation with Nick and the BSO. They spoke from their control room at Symphony Hall in Boston. Around 116 persons attended from around the globe, with about 46 being AES members.

After introductions from PNW Chair Dan Mortensen and PNW Committeeperson Micah Hayes, Shawn and Nick continued with a slide show showing their recording equipment, the hall, how they set up mics and some representative mic placements. They showed a spreadsheet of each mic and every detail about its setup that they used for the music samples they would later play.

Live concert performances provide the sources for the recordings, making noise reduction editing necessary. Patch sessions could be called to fix performance problems, but they are troublesome and used only when absolutely necessary.

They have an extensive Merging Technologies recording setup with its Ravenna digital protocol, and the recording facilities are mainly the result of extensive infrastructure upgrades done in 2015. Their new control room was part of this upgrade, but is still known as “the DG Room” after the space’s historic use by Deutsche Grammophon at one time. B&W 802 Series II speakers were used, along with Avid control surfaces and other gear, capable of Dolby Atmos.

Many questions were answered after the slides, then some excerpts of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 15 recording were played. Shawn played the multitrack and did some soloing and muting to show what various mics sounded like.

After another round of questions, more slides were shown from the BSO archives, with many historic sessions showing how the BSO had been recorded in the past.

Many more questions were asked, until well past midnight Boston time and Nick and Shawn needed to leave to be ready for the next day. However, the remaining participants were welcomed to stay on Zoom and continue to talk audio.

Media from this event will be made available on the PNW Section archive website;
https://www.aes-media.org/sections/pnw/pnwrecaps/
Note that since Zoom recordings are mono, the music playbacks were replaced with a high-quality stereo version of what was played.

Our Presenters:
Shawn Murphy has recorded and mixed over four hundred-fifty feature films during a forty+ year career. With degrees from San Francisco State University (B.A.) and Stanford University (M.F.A.) Mr. Murphy has worked variously in Live Sound Production and Mixing, Radio, Television, and Theatrical Sound and Technical Direction. Additionally, Mr. Murphy acts as consultant for the Pacific Symphony, Boston Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Chicago Symphony Orchestras in the areas of audio recording, production and reinforcement. He has received an Academy Award, Grammy Awards and Emmy Award for his work in sound production and recording.

Nick Squire is a Grammy award-winning recording engineer based in Boston, MA. In his current position as the Lead Recording Engineer at the Boston Symphony, he works with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, and Boston Symphony Chamber Players, among others. He earned his Bachelor of Music in percussion performance at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and his Master of Music in sound recording at McGill University. When not at Symphony Hall or Tanglewood, Mr. Squire can be found working with independent musical groups around Boston, cycling, or reading up on the latest NASA news.