Studio Communication

How we talk through walls at Jackpot! Recording Studio. -by Larry Crane

It seems every film or TV show where there’s an artist in a recording studio involves a scene where the engineer or producer presses a button and talks into a microphone in order to communicate with the artist who is wearing headphones in a different room and on the other side of a large glass window. This control room/live room scenario is typical of most studios, and Jackpot! is no exception. We use a Dangerous Monitor ST system to control our speakers and inputs in the control room, and it also offers up a talkback (TB) button and built-in microphone in order to pipe our voices to the clients via headphones.

TB = talkback.

Press this button to talk!

We also have a sustain pedal that we can use to engage the talkback function via our feet. This is super handy when using Pro Tools as we seem to spend a lot of time creating new tracks and such on the computer.

Stomp and talk. Shoes sold separately.

I’d been thinking of setting up a foot switch like this for years when I did a session at Tucker Martine’s Flora Recording & Playback and he had already set one up. I found it so handy I made some cables for this right away. I’d already made a pushbutton remote for producers to use so they didn’t have to count on engineers to hit the talkback button every time they wished to communicate with the artists.

Weirdly it took multiple tries to find an actual switch that survived the vigorous plunging these producers put the poor device through. Some will hold it and talk into it even though it’s just a switch and the mic is in the rack-mounted Monitor ST unit.

It’s all about making the communication easy here at Jackpot! Join us next week to find out how we can listen in on the artists in the live room, something not all studios have set up like we do.