Hi all,
First off, that place looks really tremendous and obviously erring on the side of too much attention to detail is way better than the opposite. I was wondering, though, if they thought the studio sounded better when the boat was in fresh, brackish or salt water. (There's a reason so many antennae are in the Meadowlands...)
Long ago, when I was a green assistant, I f-ed up and lied to cover my butt (a bad trait I quickly outgrew, btw). The engineer, known as a hi-fi guy, "old school", well respected in engineering circles and justifiably so, had just completed a shootout of different isolating cones under a stereo buss compressor. Back and forth, I swapped those cones ten times. He was sure that one set sounded better, and waxed on about it to the client.
Returning to his mix, he focused on one particular track, asking me, "do we have the compressor before or after the eq?". I said, "It's before". He told me to switch it, but when I went to move the patch around, I realized that I had got it wrong. Instead of admitting my mistake, I just pretended to move the cables around, pulling them out and putting them back the same way. He listened intently and turned to me, decisively saying, "much better".
But then, showing the client that you really care is not for nothing.
Noah