ff studio Recording Studio

Asked about his earliest memories of sound, Tso recalls being an only child who often spent time alone and recorded his own voice on a cassette recorder. He began buying music in junior high school and collected records avidly in high school, during the recording industry’s golden age. He then brought out a cassette that still means a great deal to him:‘I have loved Michael Jackson since junior high. I cleared out many things when I moved, but somehow kept History—and I bought the CD as well.’ At the time, many homes had a compact stereo that played both CDs and cassettes.

Tso began in a primary-school music programme with piano as his principal instrument. After transferring to a regular class, he remained the strongest pianist in the class.He laughs: ‘I was a terrible singer, so right through high school I accompanied every choir competition.’ Once, a teacher asked him to buy blank cassettes with class funds, record the choir accompaniment and duplicate it for every classmate. That was when he discovered how difficult it was to play an entire take without a wrong note.

Tso is also a violinist. That experience helps when recording students preparing for overseas competitions or conservatoire auditions: ‘I completely understand the position and state of mind of both the performer and the recording engineer.’ In concert, the performer communicates with an audience and can recover from a small mistake by becoming more focused. In the studio, the challenge is the knowledge that every mistake will remain on the recording.

‘On stage, you hope the audience will forget a mistake a moment later. On a recording, if the note is wrong, it is wrong every one of the thousand times you replay it,’ Tso says.That makes the pressure of recording particularly uncomfortable. ‘Especially in classical repertoire, the way you have encountered music determines how you approach it.’ Even musicians trained on different instruments listen for different things.

‘The energy changes when an audience enters.’ Tso describes working with world-renowned harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï. During rehearsal and recording, Hantaï would voice his self-reminders and reactions in French or English—‘Focus’, ‘No more mistakes’, ‘Damn it’. Yet musicians often become even more focused once the audience arrives. Recording engineers witness these private moments; Tso jokes that a compilation of such self-talk would make a fascinating album bonus.

Looking back over his recording sessions, Tso observes:‘Every collaboration reveals a side of the performer that audiences rarely see. Some fine musicians are simply less suited to recording: they became celebrated through live performance, not through a recording process that filters for repeatable perfection.’Conversely, musicians who cannot adapt to live performance may never be heard in competitions or concert halls, so audiences may never know they exist.

There are, of course, singular exceptions in art. ‘Glenn Gould stopped giving concerts in his thirties and turned toward recording and other forms,’ Tso notes.Beyond technical command of an instrument, musicians must understand the space: its acoustics, air, humidity and even the changes caused by an audience. Performance technique must respond to all the factors that affect how sound travels.

Demand for remote recording rose after the pandemic. Overseas schools and competitions that once required every round in person moved auditions online, sometimes including the final round. This forced institutions to solve new technical problems and prompted debate among alumni, while European and international competitions also developed workable online processes.

‘I cannot guarantee a candidate’s level or performance, but I can help the recording represent it fairly.’ Video should follow the same principle as audio: balanced lighting and colour temperature, without distracting camera movement or stylised grading.‘My job is to present the performance accurately. Whether something looks or sounds strange still comes down to aesthetic judgement.’ Tso acknowledges that every engineer has blind spots, but experience with a wider range of clients steadily reduces them.

Different collaborators reveal different concerns: orchestration with a conductor, or the sense of acoustic space with a jazz musician, while comparing alternate productions of the same material.Tso sums it up simply: ‘Recording is not ultimately about technique. The real technique lies in the way you think and in your aesthetic judgement.’We look forward to hearing more outstanding work from ff studio.

Musicians record for critical practice, communication, auditions and competitions, demos, album production and concert documentation. The pandemic changed both the arts industry and audience habits. Alongside the return of live performance, online lessons, remote auditions and streamed concerts expanded the range of performance formats—and increased the need for high-quality recording and mixing.

‘Musicians today benefit from a broader skill set. Music and audio engineering are distinct disciplines, but they meet in the final presentation,’ says Tso. ‘The more technologies you understand, the more capable you become. A recording engineer who understands no music cannot do the job; it is equally valuable for musicians to understand recording.’

In episode three of the online music-learning series, ff studio director Tso Hsing—who produced MIT Saxophone Ensemble’s 2018 self-titled debut album—explains recording and mixing from an engineer’s perspective and discusses challenges performers commonly encounter in the studio.

Tso first explained the distinction between recording and mixing.

Tracking is the process of capturing sound through microphones and recording equipment. In a modern digital workflow, the captured signal is stored as digital audio.

Mixing is comparable to developing film in a darkroom: one or many recorded tracks are balanced and shaped with EQ, dynamics and effects to form the finished presentation. ‘Like cooking or visual design, every person arrives at a different result.’

Because many participants were new to recording and mixing, the session began with one of the most important—and frequently overlooked—requirements for learning to mix:an accurate monitoring environment. Monitoring directly affects an engineer’s judgement and therefore every mix decision. Students sometimes ask how experienced mixers can obtain excellent results on modest equipment. Does that mean equipment does not matter?

Tso explains that musical performance and mixing both require a well-developed listening reference. A master pianist may draw a beautiful sound from a poor piano or difficult room because years of playing excellent instruments and performing in many spaces provide a dependable internal reference. Without that foundation, adapting to compromised conditions is far harder.

Likewise, accomplished recording and mixing engineers have worked in excellent rooms and on accurate monitors. That experience helps them recognize patterns and make sound decisions under less-than-ideal conditions. ‘No great engineer developed their ears using only a basic pair of speakers.’

Tso then outlined the breadth of audio work—from nature recordings and film sound effects to classical, jazz, metal, hip-hop and rock—and the four main stages of music production:

• Tracking: recording each source to its own audio track;
• Editing: selecting and assembling the best takes, cleaning noise, correcting timing and, where appropriate, tuning pitch;
• Mixing: balancing and shaping the recorded tracks into a coherent musical presentation;
• Mastering: preparing the final master for release.

The engineer’s role may extend further, at times resembling that of a music director: following the score, listening critically and offering musical feedback to performers. This reinforces the central point:‘A recording engineer must understand music.’Tso has extensive classical-recording experience, but classical work itself ranges from traditional repertoire to crossover projects, electric instruments and symphonic production. Each purpose demands a different approach, making every session a new challenge.

During the pandemic, Tso recorded many students applying to overseas universities, competitions and domestic scholarships. Because the submission rules prohibited editing and post-production, he observed the process from both an engineer’s and a musician’s perspective.

‘Most performers find recording more stressful than a live concert.’

In concert, a musician can recover from an error through the next note or phrase and win the audience back. A recording preserves the mistake permanently. Worrying about perfection divides attention; once emotion and limited stamina are affected, later takes often deteriorate.

Why can a piece feel secure in practice yet fall apart in the studio?

‘It is similar to stage fright. People focus on trying not to feel nervous, but that reaction cannot simply be controlled. The fundamental solution is to change the way you practise.’

Many musicians stop and repeat only the bar where a mistake occurs, then move on as soon as it happens to work once. Sectional practice is essential, but it must be followed by complete run-throughs so the whole work becomes internalised: deconstruct, then reconstruct.

‘Anyone learning an instrument should never listen only to music written for that instrument.’

Tso recalls a student asking a masterclass teacher which albums and concerts the teacher listened to. Saxophonists, for example, perform many transcriptions and should hear music written for other instruments. Great teachers usually explain a passage in musical terms rather than only through instrumental technique. Broad and attentive listening expands the imagination and range of expression.

He recommends listening widely to voice, piano and orchestra. Vocal music carries language and cultural history; the piano reveals complete harmony; orchestral music brings together many parts and makes a composer’s orchestration and large-scale thinking audible. Cultural distance may affect immediate identification with Western vocal repertoire, but need not prevent appreciation.

‘Listening is the most important thing.’

The students also used the opportunity to ask practical questions about recording winds.

On audible breaths, Tso considers them a normal and often desirable part of a wind performance. If they become distracting, the performer should examine breathing technique, while the engineer should review the room, microphone choice and placement distance.

For home recording, furniture can provide useful absorption: wardrobes, bookshelves, sofas, beds, rugs and curtains all help. By absorbing low-frequency energy and reducing problematic behaviour in a small room, they can create a more controlled recording environment.

Tso recommends making recording part of daily practice, even with modest equipment: record, listen, adjust and record again. Recording and mixing can begin a musician’s development, improve the practice process and document the finished performance.

From the opening question about whether modern musicians should learn recording and mixing to the final discussion of wind technique and room treatment, every topic returns to that advice: listen carefully to what you record.

Tso Hsing studied psychology at university, then pursued violin and chamber music at a French conservatoire, earning advanced performance diplomas. After returning to Taiwan, he taught violin for a time. His unconventional path gave him a distinct perspective, while years of concert recording convinced him that he could capture live musical sound beautifully himself.

Tso and his wife operate ff studio, one of Taiwan’s most highly specified professional recording facilities. Its six-metre ceiling and multi-angled reflective surfaces were designed by internationally renowned studio designer John Sayers, allowing music to breathe beyond the conventional studio frame with the response of a fine concert hall.

Tso notes that recording only recently emerged as an independent academic discipline. Before 2000, and even in the late 1990s, tape remained standard and many historic recordings were not made by formally trained recording engineers. After 2000, digital technology transformed recording as rapidly and dramatically as consumer electronics transformed daily life.

Equipment advanced faster than the musical education of engineers. Behind every sound lies a deeper question—what is music? Technical training alone cannot teach every aspect of musical taste or make those details audible.

At the studio, Tso compared several recordings to show whether an engineer understood musical structure, instrumental performance and even arrangement. Some harmonic choices were plainly unbalanced. An engineer does not necessarily need to read every score, but must possess a strong musical ear and aesthetic judgement.

The recording market was once sharply divided by genre. Pop and classical studios worked very differently, and some engineers lacked even basic editing skills. Digital workflows changed client expectations, making it harder for specialists to adapt as crossover ensembles and repertoire became more common.

As both producer and violinist, Tso has performed in many crossover settings and understands how recording methods must change with style and instrumentation. The author recalls hearing ff studio’s Hamburg-built Steinway grand, valued at more than NT$4 million: the control-room and live-room perspectives differed naturally, yet the acoustic result surpassed many conventional recital halls.

Tso argues that many engineers focus only on what happens after the microphone, while crucial decisions occur before it—including the arrangement itself. If an arranger lacks an understanding of harmony, the central problem lies in the music before recording quality is even considered.

After composition and arrangement comes performance. How much key noise, fingernail noise or other mechanical sound belongs in a recording? Without understanding how an instrument produces sound—and without broad listening experience—an engineer cannot judge these noises musically. Merely changing equipment or restricting a performer’s technique is not a musical solution.

A recording engineer needs a wide range of skills. Like a director or editor-in-chief, every engineer has strengths, while unfamiliar genres are naturally harder to guide.

Ultimately, the work returns to music itself. Taste and aesthetic judgement are decisive. Recording is a medium; technology and equipment will keep changing. Without sustained ear training and musical nourishment, an engineer cannot create recordings with depth and character.

The name ff studio reflects this conviction. It comes from fortissimo, the classical marking for ‘very loud’, while the paired f’s recall the symmetrical f-holes of string instruments and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, the ‘Pastoral’, a favourite of the studio’s engineers.

That clear identity has led to collaborations with outstanding musicians including Tchaikovsky Competition silver medallist Yu-Chien Tseng, Queen Elisabeth Competition laureate Tatsuki Narita, flute virtuoso János Bálint, pianist Chin-Chuan Chang, cellist Chao-Lun Lu and trumpeter Tzu-Chi Nieh. Work has also crossed into film, games and television: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin received the 2015 Cannes Soundtrack Award, and an album project was nominated at the 30th Golden Melody Awards. These honours affirm the quality of the recordings themselves.

Such results come from an engineer who is also a musician and holds an uncompromising standard for musical beauty. Even as the record industry contracts, ff studio’s fortissimo character promises more high-level recording work ahead.

Located on Shida Road in Taipei, ff studio was Taiwan’s first professional recording studio with a six-metre ceiling. International studio designer John Sayers, whose work spans 14 countries, designed the room and acoustics. The Live Room’s height and angled geometry reduce the need for the heavy absorption common in traditional studios, giving sound a natural, spacious response similar to a small concert hall. The Control Room preserves extended high-frequency response for accurate, natural monitoring, and the equipment is selected to professional standards throughout.

To serve demanding recording sessions, ff studio acquired a Hamburg-built Steinway & Sons concert grand valued at more than NT$4 million. Since 1853, Steinway pianos have represented a benchmark for tone, touch, craftsmanship and long-term value, and are chosen by leading concert artists, pianists, composers and performers worldwide.

The studio is operated by a young married couple, both musicians who studied in France. Director Tso Hsing teaches in the Department of Music at Fu Jen Catholic University. He began piano at four and violin at six, studied psychology at university, then pursued violin and chamber music at a French conservatoire, earning advanced performance diplomas before becoming a recording engineer and producer. His musical and instrumental knowledge supports deeper listening and clearer communication with artists. His commitment to sound quality led the couple to make a major investment in building the studio.

Within its first years, ff studio attracted leading Taiwanese musicians including Tchaikovsky Competition silver medallist Yu-Chien Tseng, pianist Chin-Chuan Chang, cellist Chao-Lun Lu and trumpeter Tzu-Chi Nieh. International visitors such as Russian pianist Nicolai Saratovsky, Italian pianist Enrico Pompili and French trombonist Nicolas Moutier have also recorded here and praised the results.

The studio is equally active outside classical music. Artists connected with Final Fantasy XV, the film The Tenants Downstairs, television drama Prince of Lan Ling, Indigenous singer Ara Kimbo and KAON drummer Benoit Bourlet have praised its recordings. Rock band The Old Cat Detective Agency recorded drums here for an album that won Best Rock Album at the 8th Golden Indie Music Awards. ff studio also recorded music for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2017 Taipei Universiade.

Despite a difficult record market and the growth of low-cost home recording, ff studio continues to compete through uncompromising quality—making ‘good’ the operating principle for a new generation.