I bought 'The Sound Studio' by Alec Nisbett in the hope that it could be used as a text book in our studio for our trainee programme. I was totally disappointed.

The cover features a close-up of a vintage SSL mixing desk. That is about as modern as the book gets.

The are five pages on how to cut tape, half a page on digital recording, no mention of DASH, RADAR and ProTools, but two pages on how to make an audience laugh at the right time. No tables of the various types of dB scales such as dB-Phon or dBV etc. He writes such pearls as "Phons are the same as decibels at 1000 Hz." and devotes ONE ENTIRE PAGE out of nearly 400 to multitrack recording without mentioning simu-sync recording or playback. A complete waste of 40 Pounds! I used to have 'The Recording Studio Handbook' by John Woram, but somebody pinched it.

And before somebody accuses me of not being in a position to criticise Mr. Nisbett, I have owned and managed two German recording studios and have written technical and general articles for Studio Sound, Pro Sound News, TV-Technology, Broadcast Systems Engineering, Broadcast International, Production Solutions, Television Europe, Media International, One-to-One, Broadcast, CGI Magazine and a whole lot more that I cannot remember at the moment. I have taught audio engineering for the US Airforce and today I own and manage a 48-track recording studio and a television production company in the Highlands of Scotland called The Byre.

What this book does do, is to reveal why the BBC (Nisbett is a former director-producer at the BBC) has never understood popular music. The words soul, rock, funk, hip-hop, country etc. are never used, but according to Mr. Nisbett, pop music is only recorded in acoustically dead rooms. (So you see, George Martin must have been wrong all that time!)

The four pages on compression had me laughing out loud. Compressors are only there, says Mr. Nisbett, to prevent over modulation. Admittedly, this book was first written in 1962, but it was revised in 1995, so Mr. Nisbett must have heard of such techniques as side chaining and auto panning by now! I built my first compressor (using a light bulb and a light-variable resistor) in 1966 - yes, I really am that old! I used it to 'fatten' the sound of a drum set as we used to call them then. But the news of such methods has yet to reach the pages of 'The Sound Studio.'

There is no mention of modern methods such as sampling, looping and the updating of the original book seems to have been done in a patchwork fashion. Some mention of synthesizers is made (white noise is just a function on a synthesizer - pink noise does not get a mention) but how they work must remain a mystery. Attack, decay, sustain, release? Sorry, wrong book!

We are given half a page on how to make the sound of horses hooves by using two half coconut shells. Oh Star Wars, eat your heart out!

But if you want to know how to cue reel-to-reel tape recorders (I last used one 10 years ago) or gramophone records using a Telefunken transcription player, there are eight pages for you. Unfortunately, no mention is made of more modern turntables (i.e. post 1970) such as direct drive 1210's and the use of slipmats.

One gets the impression that Mr. Nisbett does not really approve of big mixing desks and multitrack recording. If he would have left it in its original 1962 form, it would have made an interesting historical document. As it is, it is a sad reflection of how and why the men at the BBC have never understood modern music and how to record it.