John Smerek is a producer and engineer at Detroit's White Room Studio, which boasts nearly seven thousand feet of space, two studios, plus 24-track analog and Pro Tools. White Room's high ceilings and hardwood floors combined with a variety of sound control options make White Room a versatile recording space, and the equipment list includes the same type of Helios mixing console used to record early Hendrix and Rolling Stones records. Gearwire's Joe Wallace interviewed John Smerek about White Room and recording in general.

Gearwire: For those not familar with White Room, describe your studio and who you're best equipped to handle in terms of band size, recording needs, etc.

John Smerek: The A room is a full-service studio with 24-track analog and Pro Tools with the capability of tracking any size group short of a full orchestra. The B room has one room for tracking plus a booth. Its outfitted with Pro Tools and is for finishing projects that have been started in the A room or for budget minded projects that are completed start to finish in there.

Though the studio was intended as the perfect place to record rock bands, Iíve done a number of jazz and world music records with great success. Itís really a studio for any type of live music. Wood floors, high ceilings, its a really comfortable place to make great music.

White Room is advertised as being able to accommodate a variety of needs--the big Led Zep sounds and the close, intimate Al Green styles, etc. How do you modify the room to make it work for such extremes?

What is really nice about the design is all of the different rooms that orbit around the control room. At any given time I have access to 6 different rooms plus two booths, and that's just studio A. The two main rooms can be opened up to each other to work as one for larger tracking sessions, or left separate if greater isolation is needed to track a rock band. Of the two main rooms, the larger is wide open with an even dispersion.

Distant, near-distant and close-mic techniques all blend nicely together in this room, which acts as a drum amplifier when you get a kit in there. The smaller room has considerable diffusion and absorbsion properties designed to give a balanced, present sound without giving the feeling of being in a vacuum that you generally get with a booth.

Let's talk about the design of White Room. Explain how you are configured, what gear you have, what you prefer.

The studio was designed first and foremost as a tracking room. Right now like most studios were running two inch along with pro tools. The console is a Helios circa 1970's with 24 onboard pres, which is augmented by Neve 1084s, 1081s, Neumann V76s. The mic list is dominated by rare tube mics, Telefunken U47, AKG C12As & C61s, Sony C37As, Neumann U64s, Scheops 221s.

With the exception of the must haves in Mike Nehra's (studio owner) mic cabinet and list of outboard, the gear collection is ever changing and evolving. One of the coolest things about The White Room is that its owned by the owners of Vintage King Audio, so there's always a new piece of gear or microphone to try out.

A band branching out from home studio recording might not understand the concept of a fully equipped studio--or they might be especially finicky about using their gear. What's typical? Can the band show up with just the instruments and effects rigs?

The microphones don't lie, the band's sound is the band's sound. The question is do they like their sound or do they have something else in mind? I did a session with a well known indie band that wanted their new album to sound like a Weezer record. They wanted to use all of their own gear, which was in shambles from touring, and to play the whole record in the same room live. A fantastic concept if the goal is a sweaty recording of naked aggression wrought with mistakes... but realize, if you're after a particular sound you have to record a particular way. If you have a sound in mind that is not your own, you have to make concessions in order to achieve it.

As for effects, I'm often asked about printing them verses recreating them in the mix. If the effects are you're sound and that sound is coming from a pedal board than use it. I'll have a dozen flangers, phasers, choruses, etc. I can set up but they're not going to sound like the MXR or Lovetone pedal you're running. That said, their are instances where you may get a sense of what someone is going for but theyíre not quite pulling it off. The effect may not fit with the track or it may just sound cheesy.

In that case I will suggest alternate routes to get the same effect but in a more pleasing manner. The caveat with printing effects is that you are of course committed to the sound and now have to build the tracks mood around what's given.

Any trial and error issues with compressors, DAWs or other gear where you had to find what worked best and ditch the rest?

I'd be hard pressed to name gear that I've tried in the past couple years that wasn't cool in some respect. Your always going to have the 'go with what you know' gear that works in most instances but early on I found myself in situations where I've had to change up my thinking simply because there weren't enough Neves for that 18 piece drum kit, or a particular set of compressors or limiters are not sitting a track the way you were expecting. You can never be 100% sure of how gear is going to blend particular tracks until you hear it.

Every limiter or compressor is going to react to peaks and valleys differently and along with pre-amps and eqís, every piece of gear is going to color the sound before you even start adjusting the knobs. The trick is to figure out where those colors fit best. If you know how the gear is going to effect individual sounds and realize its cumulative, you can start to tailor your mix as your patching and make a drastic difference in the clarity and punch right from the start.

Do you like plugins?

I generally still like to use as much gear out of the box as I can. Mixes that come right from the computer sound sterile and two dimensional to me. It seems that the very slight phase anomalies youíll find from channel to channel on a console or from one piece of gear to another helps things to pop in a way that they otherwise don't when staying within a DAW. I use plugins when I've exhausted all of my outboard or need something on a secondary track thatís not all that important. I still do many records a year that I cut on two inch and when you A/B with tracks on pro tools there's no comparison.

Gary Numan told me about his own studio setup, using very simple gear setups to achieve his results, but the best thing he said was that half his new album was sung through an old sock wrapped around an SM58. Do you have any "spit and baling wire" stories about making do in a tough recording situation and being successful with the workaround?

I have the most fun when I can afford the time to experiment but I don't have any go to tricks per se. Some guys like to build mic chains and algorithms but I really like to mess with mic placement. That's where it's at for me. There is an infinite palate in mic selection and placement and if you think about it in terms of creation, that's where the records sound is born. That's where its soul is.

Every step after that is building on the vibe of the groundwork I've laid. Creating a mood that inspires, a mood that is what the artist had in mind when they wrote the songs. My interpretation of what the artist is getting across to me is my art at its core.

When you are getting a band set up to record, what kind of technical arrangements do you like to make for recording guitar tone? When miking cabinets, what gear do you like to use and why? What kinds of mics work best for you at White Room?

It really depends on what the genre of music is and what role the guitar has. If we use a rock band as an example, I'll know what range the vocalist is in and will already have a drum tone in mind and will know where the snare will sit in the mix. I'll also know whether were going for a low rumbly bass or a trebly music man through an SVT sort of sound. I can then switch out amps and guitars and fine tune until I have a sound that will compliment that framework.

I tend to start with a small assortment of dynamic mics for the body of the sound and fill out the top with a large diaphragm condenser. If I need more girth, I'll add a Coles 4038 keeping in mind to watch the placement so as not to blow the ribbon. You also have to duck quite a bit of low mid to get some of the mud out. Once I fine-tune the ratio of all of the mics combined, I'll bus them to a single track so I don't have to worry about recreating the sound later. I'll rarely use any dynamic processing on guitars since the signal is already smashed by the amp itself and I find more often than not that the tone loses texture when compressed.