Doctor Waiting Rooms: Recording Engineer Hell

[Bob Womack]

This morning I took my wife in for a small surgery where I would have to be present and then drive her home. While we waited to be called into the prep room we sat in the waiting room. The staff had an oldies music network on the muzak system and, simultaneously, a TV on some cable food network - both at the same loudness level and rather loud. Add onto that comments and questions from the front desk and intermittent discussion with my wife. Hearing is an interesting thing: we focus our hearing with our minds, and a recording engineer learns to focus his hearing acutely, hearing past the foreground and into the background.

However, that business of focusing is a fatiguing thing to do with multiple sources, all at the same level and all going at once. So there I was with four sources going at once, two interesting and two important but intermittent. Every time an oldie came on I had to tune out the TV and front desk and focus on the intro to identify it. To follow the recipe' on TV, I had to tune out the front desk and music and focus on the TV. I did NOT tune out my wife. After forty minutes of this it became clear that if I had to sit through that hash for several hours I would be worn out by the end of the day.

And then a nurse came and ushered my wife and myself into a private waiting room where I waited alone for the surgery to be completed. Oh joy. Oh rapture. Peace and quiet. So the balance of my four hours was spent in peace, quiet, and comfort.

Bob