Sound and silence

Didier Weiss is a name people in the sound industry recognise instantly. He is French, and lives in Pondicherry. He developed an unusually keen ear and passion for sound as a schoolboy, and that led him to a career in sound engineering.

African musicians who visited his studio in Paris used to call him ‘the magician’. He made his first recording in the days of vinyl, and when he was just 14. The regular sound engineer didn’t turn up, and 40 musicians were sitting around wondering what to do when someone suggested he try his hand at the console. He did, and the results stunned everyone.

A time came when he had to choose between Africa and India. His heart chose India, and he set up his consultancy here in 1999. Didier specialises in audio design. It’s not just film and music recording studios that require audio consultancy. Auditoriums and shrines are among his clients.

I had the opportunity of meeting Didier last week, and will tell you a fascinating story I heard from him. Among the studios Didier helped design is one in Chennai owned by A R Rahman. Music buffs may know little about what goes into the production of a good recording. Some of the back-end things that go into it, besides musicianship, are room dimensions, interior design, gear, the sound engineer’s knowledge, ability and intuition.

Rahman’s studio, it turns out, had superb insulation. Studios are insulated so that outside sounds don’t spoil what’s being recorded, and also because you don’t want the neighbours hollering at you… it’s possible they can’t stand your music, or you’re doing your takes at a time when the rest of the world is asleep.

When the certification experts came into Rahman’s studio, they said, “Ah, this is very very silent… a bit too silent.” You see, it was so dead (Didier prefers ‘dry’ to ‘dead’!) that the experts believed the music would get mastered at a volume too low, and the score would get lost when played at the movie halls, the quietest of which can’t avoid ambient sound.

And so the designers went back to add some sound to the quietness. They pumped up the volume on some speakers so that the hiss would fill up the room.

It was wonderfully educative to hear Didier talk. And the lesson for me was a little paradox: Perfect may be useless.