WSDG-designed recording studio Rue Boyer announced as finalist for 2024 NAMM TEC Awards. The flagship recording studio of Mix with the Masters has been nominated in Outstanding Creative Achievements in Studio Design Project category.

Architectural acoustic consulting and A/V systems design firm WSDG (Walters-Storyk Design Group) have announced that Rue Boyer – the flagship Paris recording studio they designed for Mix with the Masters – is a finalist for the 2024 NAMM TEC Awards in the Outstanding Creative Achievements – Studio Design Project category. The TEC Awards – a yearly celebration of achievements in pro audio technology and sound production, as well as the audio professionals behind these achievements – will be presented as the highlight of the NAMM Show in Anaheim, California on January 27, 2024.

Envisioned as a destination studio for world-class artists, Rue Boyer was designed to the highest standards of acoustic, technical, and ergonomic excellence.In addition to operating as a working studio, Rue Boyer also serves as a central production hub for founders Maxime Le Guil and Victor Lévy-Lasne’s Mix with the Master’s educational workshops and prodigious video content creation division. Early clients have included Grammy-winning producers, engineers, and artists including Eddie Kramer, Jack Antonoff, and Taylor Swift.

Studio A is 48m2 / 517 SF and serves as the primary teaching area and control room. In its control room configuration, the studio seats up to twenty attendees with excellent listening positions anywhere within the control room and is also set up for Dolby Atmos production and video projection. The main stereo monitoring for the control room is Symphonic Acoustics Dual 15V monitors with custom-designed 18” subwoofers. WSDG designed a modal system utilizing REDIacoustics’ NIROTM process, using three additional subwoofers at ceiling height to smoothen out the modal response of the room allowing for a high sonic uniformity to the entire control room. Studio A can also be converted into a live room by way of a custom-designed motorized platform that can lower the studio’s vintage 48-channel E-Series SSL 4000 console into a vault beneath the floor.

Studio B is 19.5m2 / 204 SF and is designed to serve as a video editing suite as well as an alternate control room for Studio A when in live room configuration. One of the challenges in Studio B was the limited ceiling height given by the existing levels above. To achieve a superb sonic quality, a combination of porous and membrane absorbers was used at the ceiling and the upper wall areas. Both studios share access to a 15m2 drum room, a pair of ISO booths, and Rue Boyer’s glass-lined lounge.

Interview here:

All photos courtesy of Mix with the Masters

The post Recording Studio Rue Boyer Announced As Finalist for 2024 TEC Awards appeared first on Audio Media International.

Audiomovers allows people to come together, wherever they are, and start making music, tracking the changes and creating the hit songs that will define the next decade. It’s studio technology for the home, full scale studio or on-the-go sessions and finally lifts the barriers that have faced musicians and studio pros for years.

And remote collaboration is just part of the recording revolution that is Audiomovers.

Born in Ukraine and owned by Abbey Road Studios, Audiomovers lives on the cutting edge of the future of music production.

And what better place to talk about the creative process and breaking down barriers of communication and sessions than in the heart of Nashville which, in 2023, features an explosion of musical genres, talent and a revolving door of new arrivals to the scene.

Today, Audiomovers launch a fascinating ‘Off The Record’ series, looking at artists, producers and engineers at the very top of their game, starting in Nashville. It’s essential viewing for anyone making music and covers the stories behind the hits, the horror stories, mix tips, advice on studio building and, of course, some good old-fashioned nerding out around studio gear.

Each guest uses Audiomovers in the heart of their process so they can get on with the business of making music and more of it. From working with artists such as Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert and Dire Straits to Jack White, Kesha and Miley Cyrus, each pro has a personal story to tell and spills the behind-the-scenes details that studios rarely share.

7 x GRAMMY winner Vance Powell (Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Buddy Guy) says: “Tennessee Whiskey is a cover of a George Jones song but it was so different to the George Jones version. We had a session called ‘jams’ with Chris Stapleton. I walked in and the band were playing but not recording. I said ‘that’s cool, hit record’ and then we cut it and that’s the master. One take, the whole thing is live. The crazy thing is we thought ok, that’s cool, that’s it, next song. Then we played it for some industry friends and they all freaked out!”

4 x GRAMMY winner Chuck Ainlay (Dire Straits, Miranda Lambert, Taylor Swift) shares: “We have great professionals here which can be a hinderance and times, you know what I mean? It can get too good! but the musicianship is incredible, that’s why I love being here because of the crazy good musicians. Music is about collaboration and now you can collaborate with everyone in the world with Audiomovers”

5 X GRAMMY winner F. Reid Shippen (Steven Tyler, Shania Twain, Death Cab For Cutie) says: “If you don’t have a song, nothing else matters so the fact that there’s so many amazing songwriters here makes Nashville a really special place”

Jeff Balding (Eagles, Dan+Shay, Jelly Roll) Shares: “The energy that’s here right now in the industry is amazing. I think that encourages creativity and competition”

Paulie Simmons (Legendary Shack Shakers, Reverend Horton Heat, Black Oak Arkansas) says: “I was asked ‘can you play drums for Gene Simmons?’ This is nuts! Of course, are you kidding? I played 10 shows which turned into many more. My first gig with Gene, we played Parasite and I was a 12 year old kid again. It’s Gene Simmons from KISS. I was pinching myself”

The first episode covers many guests of the series on Monday September 18th and then, every week, a new episode will be released on the Audiomovers YouTube channel featuring…

• Vance Powell
• Chuck Ainlay
• John McBride
• Pete Lyman
• F. Reid Shippen
• Jeff Braun
• Jeff Balding
• Paulie Simmons
• Nathan Dantzier

To sign up for early access to each episode, visit www.audiomovers.com.

The post Audiomovers launch ‘Off The Record’ studio series with the hitmakers appeared first on Audio Media International.

What’s your dream recording project or client?

I don’t think that we have a dream project or client, we love working with artists and producers of different styles and size to help make what they’re doing better in any way we can! There’s genuinely no greater feeling than seeing people come in to the studio, get comfortable, find their confidence and create awesome things. To be involved and facilitate that is what we love doing.

Gear list:

Microphones

Condensers
Schoeps CMC6 x 2
Neumann u47 FET
Neumann u87 x 3
Neumann KMS 105
Neumann TLM 103
Aston Spirit x 3
Aston Origin x 2
Shure BETA 98
Shure BETA 91A
Sennheiser e901

Valve Condensers
Flea Vintage 47
Telefunken ELA M260 x 2
Neumann u67

Ribbons
Coles 4038 x 2
Royer 121 x 2
AEA R88a
Dynamics
Shure BETA 52A
Shure SM57 x 3
Shure SM58 x 2
Shure BETA 58 x 1
Shure SM7B x 2
Sennheiser MD421 x 3
Sennheiser MD441 x 2
Sennheiser E904 x 2
Electrovoice RE20
AKG D90

Plus many more (enquire for further details).

Outboard
Mic Pres / Channels
SSL Dual Mic Pre SuperAnalogue VHD x 24
RND Shelford Channels x 2
API 3124v x 3
Tree Audio The Branch
Retro Instruments Powerstrip
Manley SLAM! x 2
BAE 1073 x 3
AML 1081 x 2
AML ez1081-500 x 2
RND 511 x 2
AMS Neve 1073LB x 2
Millenia HV-3D x 8
Glensound MX6/2/148 BBC x 6
Midas XL4 x 8
Altec 1591a
Audient ASP800

Dynamics
SSL G Series Bus Comp
24 SSL Channel Comp 24 SSL Channel Expander/Gate 
RND Portico 2 Master Bus Processor 
Universal Audio 1176LN
Empirical Labs Distressor EL8X-S w/Brit Mod x2 
Thermionic Culture Phoenix SB 
Retro Instruments 176
Teletronix LA-2A
BAE 10DCF x 2
Avalon AD2044
Dbx 160A x 2
BSS DPR-402
Drawmer 1960

EQ
24 SSL E/G Series Channel EQ 
API 5500 
Chandler Curve Bender
The Swift
A Designs HM2
Manley EQP1A

Effects
Eventide H9000
Thermionic Culture Vulture Super15
WEM Copicat
Vast range of stomp boxes from Earthquaker Devices, Carlsbro, Line 6, Boss, Malekko plus many more.

Monitoring
ATC 110SCMA
ATC SCM25A
PMC 6-2
Yamaha NS-10 + Quad 405-2
Trinnov ST2 Pro 
Beyer Dynamic DT770 Pro x6 
Behringer Powerplay P16 Foldback System

DAWs
Pro Tools Ultimate
Logic Pro X
Ableton Live 11
UA LUNA

Plugins
A comprehensive list of expected plug-ins including but not limited to; FabFilter, Universal Audio, Soundtoys, Waves, Output, Native Instruments, Valhalla, Eventide, Baby Audio, Spectrosonics, Arturia plus many more (enquire for full list).

Conversion – Apogee Symphony I/O MK2 32×32 x 2
Universal Audio Apollo X16

Computers
Mac Studio – Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU, 48-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine, 128gb RAM
iMac Pro 27″ Retina xeon 3 Ghz, 32gb RAM

Instruments
Extensive list of drums, basses, guitars, keyboards, synthesisers and amps including Moog One, Sequential Prophet Rev-2, Leslie Cabinet, Marshall, Orange, Hammond.

The post Studio Profile: The Mill appeared first on Audio Media International.

Producer/engineer Paul “Willie Green” Womack shapes the sounds of the most original thinkers in alternative hip-hop. We learn how his focus on authenticity—and willingness to take risks—has made him a standout in the genre.

Paul Womack has always done things his own way. Growing up in a musical family, his passion for music led him to sneak into clubs as a teenager to perform in his uncle’s reggae band. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2003, Womack eschewed the traditional apprentice path, fast-tracking straight to opening his own studio.

In 2007, he moved to New York, securing a gig at Right Track studios and building a list of blockbuster credits spanning hip hop, gospel, and R&B. Today, he runs The Greenhouse Recording Co. in Brooklyn, where he provides recording, mixing, and mastering services for both indie and major label artists.

With a discography showcasing projects with Wiz Khalifa, The Roots, Open Mike Eagle, The Alchemist, L’Orange, Ella Mae Flossie, Donnie McClurkin, and Valerie Simpson, Womack has made a name for himself as a top producer in both mainstream and independent urban music.

An educator and advocate in the pro audio community, he is a former governor of the Audio Engineering Society and a member of the Recording Academy, and lectures at conferences and schools across the country.

But Womack is most in his element when things get weird. One of the leading sonic architects of Art Rap, along other forms of alternative hip hop, he’s collaborated with the genre’s most original thinkers and creators, from ELUCID to billy woods; and released two albums of his own.

We sat down with Womack to find out how he harnesses technology to fuel experimentation and empowers artists to be their most authentic selves and create with confidence.

AMI:  You recently built a new studio in Brooklyn?

Yes. I’m in a very nice part of Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens. About a year and a half ago, I moved in here when I was re-emerging from the pandemic. I’m part of a bigger facility, which is nice because what I realized I missed when we were all in quarantine was the bumping into people in the lobby of a studio. That’s something I missed from the Right Track days, just being around a lot of different music. The place I’m in now is called Brooklyn Recording Paradise. It’s two rooms: my room in the front, and then a tracking room in the back where I’ll record bands.

AMI:  You’re a Cubase guy. Do you have a hybrid set up?

I am hybrid. I’ve got a lot of really nice plug-ins, but there’s something about turning knobs and making something happen; it feels good and it sounds good to me still. I would say I’m mostly in the box, but I’ve got a Neve summing mixer. Then, my favorite thing: I’m running into the Handsome Audio Zulu. It’s this passive tape emulator; you don’t even plug it in. It’s just circuitry and you can just push it, and it sounds amazing. That’s most of my mix bus. I mix with a lot of distortion, so I like to be able to run out to weird, funky boxes or old compressors here and there. I’m trying to mix for sound and character more than being super surgical.

AMI: Do you have go-to vocal chains?

I use the Softube Console 1 a lot. I use that on all my channels, and that’s the hub, in conjunction with Cubase. I’m usually using one of their channel strips for compression, EQ, and saturation. I’ve got a couple other things lying around that I like: I’ve got this really cool USB-controlled analog compressor from WesAudio called the Rhea, it’s a vari-vu design. I’ve been trying to use fewer plug-ins. I’ve got a lot of stuff that I like, but once I start getting chains that are six, seven plug-ins long, I’m like, “Am I just undoing the things that I did three plug-ins ago?” I’m trying to make conscious decisions and really mold the shape of sounds, rather than, like I said, getting too surgical, because I can get really lost in notching frequencies, but I’m not really being musical at that point.

AMI:  How do you approach leveraging technology as a creative tool?

I’ve always been a technology nerd, but I want it to be seamless. When technology gets in the way, that’s when it gets really frustrating to me. There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of a great mix and then some plug-in glitches or something like that and you’re spending an hour trying to figure out why it crashed.

I was born in the ’80s so I have a relatively healthy fear of artificial intelligence, but the idea of technology being able to anticipate what I want and make it easier to facilitate is really exciting to me. I love all the modelled old vintage compressors, but what really excites me are plug-ins that are doing something brand new that nobody has done yet.

I find that kind of stuff really exciting because I don’t want to make the same music that everybody else makes. That’s what their music is for. You can listen to them. If you’re listening to something I’m doing, from an artistic standpoint, I want it to be something unique. From a work standpoint, if you want that sound, you have to hire Willie Green. That keeps the phone ringing and that part is important, too.

AMI:  I want to ask you about collaborating with artists. One of my favourite quotes of yours is, “No one likes apologetic music.”

Yeah. If you don’t love your song, why should I? If you don’t believe, why should I?

AMI:  That calls for artists to be vulnerable. How do you gain their trust and get them out of their comfort zone to create something with conviction?

A big part of it is patience. The scariest place in the world is in front of the vocal mic, getting ready to sing or rap or perform something that you wrote from the heart for the first time. In the studio, I’m the first one to hear that, and so I need to take care of people when they’re in this position. Whether it’s a very emotional singer or the hardest rapper, somewhere in there, there’s a person about to perform something for the first time, and you have to make space for that and approach it like you care.

If I care, they’ll care more. Things like, I ask them about the song. I had a client and we were getting ready to record and I said, “All right, so what’s the song about?” He said, “Nobody has ever asked me that before in the studio.” I was like, “Damn.” That felt like such a sad statement. You come in to record these songs, they’re probably personal, and nobody ever asked you about them.

AMI:  That can also feel transactional.

It feels transactional, and yeah, I do this for a job, but I don’t do it for the money, if that makes sense. I like to make good music. I like to make music that matters to somebody. A lot of vocal production is just therapy, listening to people. If I’m engineering, I’m just trying to make space for people to perform. If I’m producing the vocal, I’m sitting down and saying, “Let’s talk about the song. Let’s talk about where you were mentally when you wrote it, because we need to get back there.” There have been times when it’s painful for people, but when they’re done, they always thank me for taking care of them through that whole difficult situation.

AMI:  You bring a range of perspectives as a co-writer, producer, and engineer. Do you take a holistic approach when you’re collaborating with artists, or do you shift roles?

I really try to check in with what they want. So many artists now are doing a lot of their own production, whether it’s making their own beats or recording themselves at home. I’ve never been the kind of producer or engineer who’s like, “I need to do everything or you can’t work with me.”

I’m going to give my opinion. I make bold choices when I work, especially when I mix, but I always check in. If the client doesn’t like it, it’s, “All right, I guess we’re not doing that thing today.” The more label money that’s involved, the more people are involved, the more opinions there are, and really, it’s the artist’s control that gets squeezed. So I’ll give my opinions, but I want the artist to have control over how their stuff sounds.

AMI:  When you work with big label projects, do you walk a line between stretching yourself creatively versus having the label over your shoulder?

I don’t do as much major label stuff. The major label stuff I’ve done has been cool, but I don’t feel the license to be able to experiment because of the amount of people involved. It’s like, “All right, record this clean vocal, send that thing in, and call it a day. Let’s not play too many games here.” What’s great about working with indie labels, especially with Backwoodz, is, they come to me and they know, “Okay, Green’s going to do what he’s going to do.” I always take the client’s input, but I’ve got free rein.

With indie clients, when you hire me, one of the things I want to ask up front is, “What of my music have you heard? Are you familiar with how I work?” and make sure that we’re all on the same page. If you want just a clean pop thing, I can do that. I can tone it down, but generally with Backwoodz releases, I have more free rein, and that’s where I prefer to be. I listen to more indie music than I do mainstream, so I make the music that I would be listening to anyway.

AMI: Tell me about your Press Play exhibition at New York’s Massey Klein Gallery, in which you “sampled” paintings and textiles from the gallery and created an album of sonic interpretations of each work.

I enjoy museums, and I like art; I’m really into landscapes in particular. When I mix, I always think visually, think spatially, and I like big, bold, very deep mixes—just like the landscape paintings that I like, like the Hudson River School, these very Americana, very big, epic scenes. That’s what I like my mixes to sound like. Then I had the idea of, “How can I put them together?”

I’ve sampled a million records, so if I knew that if there’s software that can turn images to sound, I can sample them. I worked with these images, and some good friends of mine had a gallery and they were really open to the idea of sampling their paintings. I had free rein, so I just dove in and developed the process as I went.

Gallery patrons listened to recordings stationed next to each work. It was interesting to listen and also look at the paintings, and it made people look at the paintings for longer. If you listen to a three-minute song and stare at something, you realise how long three minutes is.

It’s actually a really long time, but you’re there in front of the painting, tethered by the headphone cord, so you’re looking deeper at the painting, you’re getting more details. And some of those details might have been what inspired some of the writing, because as I was making the beats, I would have an image of the painting up.

AMI:  It’s interesting in that it invites this deeper engagement with a piece of visual art which is, I think, what we’re always trying to do with music.

Yeah, I work on a lot of pretty complex music, with lyrics where you really are supposed to catch all of the words. There’s nothing wrong with party anthems, but there’s a time and place for everything. The time and place for the music that I make are when you’re ready to sit down and really try to hear everything that’s in there. Go back and there’s more in there.

AMI:  Are you embracing machine learning and AI in other ways?

I’m trying to more. In some ways, as a tool, yes, especially when it comes to noise reduction. I get all kinds of crazy sounds and samples and vocals recorded in all kinds of weird places. Machine learning in that way, as far as restoration, has been super helpful with RX 10 and SpectraLayers, and those kinds of tools.

From a creative standpoint, I haven’t dug in too much. Using AI to write yourself a song, I think, is a real corny way to use that kind of technology. But using it to create a cool sound that I could then chop up and sample and turn into something else, that sounds more interesting to me.

Look, computers can do all kinds of things, but there’s a point where artistic intent matters. If a human creates something, and does it on purpose, and that intent elicits feeling in another person, then that’s art. I don’t think it’s so bad if you enjoy AI art. I follow AI art accounts on Instagram. I’m very sorry to all my painter friends, but I like it, so I follow it. I like your stuff, too. It’s a thin line between technology and humanity in the art world, but at the end of the day, doesn’t it come down to, well, do I like the thing or not?

AMI: It sounds like throughout your career you’ve taken risks and just gone for it, and that’s worked out for you. What would you tell the younger version of you?

I would tell younger me to be more confident in the chances, and appreciate the ride and enjoy the moment. When I get going with something, I’m fretting about doing it wrong, so a lot of times I want it to be over, because at least that way it’s done and I didn’t screw it up. But I’m not enjoying any of the actual doing the thing that I like. That’s not a good way to approach things. Be confident and enjoy things, and just generally just be happier.

Welcome to issue 7 of Audio Media International

The post Paul Womack interview: from Wiz Khalifia to The Roots appeared first on Audio Media International.

Having worked with legendary artists from Johnny Cash and Prince, to Tom Petty, The Smashing Pumpkins and Tool, Sylvia Massy has built up a body of work that has secured her place in history as one of the world’s greatest producers and engineers.

Like many Californian music legends, Massy’s music business story starts in San Francisco. It was here in the ‘80s where she was involved in the music scene playing in punk, ska and metal bands and learned how to record her own projects.

“I knew how to use the equipment from working in a radio production house, but people who heard the work I did for my own band’s projects liked it enough to hire me to work on their stuff too,” says Massy.

“Their music seemed to turn out better than mine, so I eventually put aside my own projects and started to do other people’s musical recordings full time, as much as full time was.”

With no online retailers at that time, or the abundance of affordable and mobile recording equipment we have access to today, Massy explains that there weren’t really any ‘home studios’ to learn in and the established ones that were in San Francisco were “kind of exclusive”.

What this meant however, was that she was learning how to produce and record on high-end equipment right from the start.“There were studios like Different Fur and Russian Hill; several professional studios with gear like API and Sound Workshop consoles,” she says.

“I’m very lucky to have learned on Studer machines and API consoles. And I think that has really made a difference today in what I do and the equipment that I choose, because I’m familiar with that sound and maybe that sound is what feels comfortable to me today.”

The more production work Massy did for bands in the local music scene, the more work she was offered by the city’s top studios, who would hire her to produce the projects of artists that were coming in to use their facilities. One of those projects was called The Sea Hags, a San Francisco band that was working with an incredibly talented guitarist called Kirk Hammett on co-production duties. Hammett had been playing in another band that Massy had worked with called Exodus and his other project was of course Metallica.

“They had just finished recording Master Of Puppets when we co-produced The Sea Hags,” explains Massy. “He was young and we collaborated on ideas for the recording and it came out really good. The album actually did so well for the band that they got a major label deal out of it.

“Instead of hiring me or Kirk for the major label recording, they went to LA and hired Mike Clink and I was really disappointed, because I thought this was my big break and this was my first big major label project, but they ran away to LA.” It was at that point that Massy says she decided to move to Los Angeles to try be a producer and within a year had “hit the streets of LA”, where she realised that getting a studio job was not as easy as she thought it was going to be.

“I had already been working in studios and had plenty of projects under my belt,” she says. “I met with the managers at Capitol Studios, Ocean Way, A&M Studios and all these big places in LA.

“These were all big facilities, but no one really wanted to hire me. You basically start from scratch when you move to LA and I think it’s still true today. It just takes time.  I wound up working at a retail store called Tower Records and that gave me enough time to study production.

“I would listen to music in the store and I actually went through the vinyl and looked at the back of every record and made a database of my own of every producer and the music they made just to get a real understanding of where I wanted to be and who I needed to meet.”

Massy cites the stint working at Tower Records as “a really important time” for her, with a number of co-workers going on to become famous music industry figures in their own right.

“The Tower Video across the street was where Slash and Axl Rose used to work before they hit with Guns & Roses,” she recalls. “And in my store there were several musicians that went on to do big projects.”

The big one for Massy was, as she explains “a ridiculously silly band” named Green Jellö from Buffalo, New York, and they hired her to do a recording for them in “someone’s garage”.

The eight-track recording was good enough to get the band a deal with a label called Zoo Entertainment.  “When we went to record the Zoo release, they gave us a budget for a studio,” recalls Massy. “I wanted to work at Sound City because I had heard all the good things about it, especially the fact they were really inexpensive. They had great equipment, but it was cheap enough for us noisy rockers to get in and do a good record.

“One of the drummers in Green Jellö was in Tool and since we had the drums set up for Green Jellö we thought, Why don’t we just record Tool at the same time and save some money? That’s when we did the original recording for Tool. They had been playing in the local Hollywood scene for about a year and I really liked them. They were exciting and had a new sound and I’d never really heard anything like it, so I was really into what they were doing.”

Part of Tool’s debut EP Opiate was recorded at Sound City with Massy, with the other part recorded during a live performance at a Green Jellö New Year’s party, for which they hired a remote truck with an API console.

“That [became] the other half of the Tool record, with some embellishments actually,” says Massy. “I had to cut between studio takes and live takes to really make it convincing and to get rid of a few mistakes. They won’t tell you that, but I’ll tell you that!”

Although she was recording bands when she could while she was working at Tower Records, she was still knocking on doors throughout LA trying get a full-time studio job. The hope was to work with one of the top producers she looked up, to like Brian Eno or Steve Lillywhite, or as she calls them, one of “the untouchables”.

“That was my goal,” she says. “It happened quickly when I did get that job at a place called Lion Share, where Phil Ramone was recording Barbara Streisand. One day I was working at the customer counter at Tower Records and the next day I was working with Phil Ramone at Lion Share Studios. It was a big shift when I finally got that job.”

Not long after that Massy jumped over to Larrabee Sound Studios where she was able to work with “several of her heroes” as an assistant and learned a lot from working with the likes of Prince, Tom Lord-Alge and Rick Rubin. “That was when I connected with Rick on several projects and he helped me make the jump from working at Larrabee to being an independent engineer and producer in Los Angeles,” she explains.

“Rick Rubin was very interested in The Sea Hags project that Kirk and I had co-produced. So we had something to talk about immediately because we both loved that band. Rick had several projects going on, but the first one that I assisted on with David Bianco engineering was a band called Trouble.”

Through meeting Rubin, Massy went on to work on projects by the likes of Danzig (Lucifuge II) and The Black Crowes (Shake Your Money Maker), produced by Rubin’s friend George Drakoulias, and released on Rubin’ s Def Amercian label. “As I went independent Rick would hire me to do projects and most of the time we would work at Sound City because we were both really familiar with that room and really loved the sound of the old Neve there,” she explains.

“I worked on System Of A Down there and the Johnny Cash Unchained album project was also really special. Rick had arranged to have Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers as Johnny’s backup band, so you can imagine the star power in the room for that. Plus Marty Stuart, who was a great country star came in to be part of the band too. As far as engineering goes, I had to be on my best game.” Massy says that it was at Sound City where she learned how important it is to be as prepared as possible when you start a session, even before the artist walks in the room.

“If you are working with someone like Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, and they sit down and they plug in and you don’t record that first take or if the recording’s not great, they are only going to play it once,” says Massy. “They might play it a second time, but not because you want them to, they just don’t screw up.” After 15 years in LA and finding success in the studio, Massy says she decided to “do something else for a while outside of the city” and bought a 50-acre ranch in California close to a little town called Weed.

“I spent about a year out there with horses and stuff, got extremely bored and at the same time the System Of A Down record was hitting really big. My manager in LA was giving me offers for jobs and the money was really good, and I was sitting there feeding the horses and thinking to myself, What am I doing?

“I started commuting to Los Angeles again because I love producing. I love studio life and I missed it, but after living in a hotel for six months, I decided it was time to move my rig up north. I had all the equipment that was in Studio B at Sound City. I had the other Neve console, an 8038, which is basically the same thing that was in the A room that Dave Grohl bought later.”

Massy arranged to have the Neve console moved to Northern California and found a space in the town of Weed where she founded the now-legendary RadioStar Studio.

“It was an old theatre and was abandoned at the time. I moved the Neve console straight in. I didn’t do any additional wall treatments. It was just a big open room with a Neve console in it and some great recording equipment. I started recording and the place thrived for 15 years and grew.

“It was the strangest thing because the town of Weed only has 3,000 people in it, but these clients were coming from all over the world to work in this tiny California town. I think the name of Weed probably attracted a lot of musicians at the time. We went from the one room in the theatre to five studios in total. “It really was just kicking ass for 15 years, and then I had a divorce and everything kind of had to change so that ended, but for those 15 years RadioStar was in existence, I think we had 300 projects go through there. We had an amazing time and we had some big hits.”

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From Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9, we take a look at the ten best spatial audio music albums and why you need to listen to them.

Tears for Fears – The Tipping Point 

The seventh studio album from the prog pop rock duo, since 2004’s Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, proves to be a stunning showcase for Dolby Atmos, and a great jumping on point for anyone interested in the art of spatial audio. Mixed by Steve Wilson, founder of Porcupine Tree, it’s at times disorientating and intense, then stripped back and expansive. Standout Atmos tracks include My Demons, with its soaring synths, and the final surround swirl that is Rivers of Mercy. At times The Tipping Point recalls the giddy heights of Trevor Horn and Yes, and then it opens the door to somewhere new entirely.  

Def Leppard – Diamond Star Halos 

While some spatial mixes assume the listener wants to stand shoulder to shoulder with the musicians, others opt for a more conventional front-of-stage approach – and that’s what we have here: this is unapologetic rock and roll, and the resulting soundstage is huge and enveloping.  

Here Dolby Atmos is used to emphasise space, giving more air to Joe Elliott’s vocals and a sharper edge to the riffing axes of Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell. The opener, Take What You Want may be vintage pop rock Leppard, but the spatial audio mix has the band sounding fresher than ever. 

The Porcupine Tree – Closure / Continuation 

A mulch of clanging riffs, soaring choirs and propulsive rhythms, Closure / Continuation is an exciting, exhaustive, exhilarating listen.  It’s prog for the spatial generation. Tracks that demand to be demo’d in Dolby Atmos include the dynamic Harridan, and the epic Chimera’s Wreck,  a spatial tour de force that delights with guitar arpeggios and bludgeoning rhythms. Fans have waited more than a decade for this, the band’s eleventh studio album, but they’re sure to feel it was worth the wait. 

The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  

This radical 3D redux was masterminded by producer Giles Martin at Abbey Road (where the original was recorded), utilising the original four track master tapes from the studio sessions. First released in mono, with the stereo iteration a bit of a throwaway, this latest iteration of the legendary album shouldn’t work – yet somehow it does. 

The original recording didn’t have a lot of bass, but Martin has used elements of the kick drum to add weight. His spatial mix places you at the heart of the concept. The result is endlessly fascinating. 

Tom Petty – Live at the Fillmore 1997 

Oozing atmosphere, this Dolby Atmos mix of Tom Petty’s legendary Fillmore residency sounds as live as they come. Crowd noise is omnipresent in the mix, but held apart and aloft from Petty and the band. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue sits you between Petty’s dancing licks, with drums just behind your head, while I won’t back Down, is gloriously immersive; the crowd whooping and singing along to the rear and up high. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Original Score 

Original soundtracks are natural candidates for Dolby Atmos music release, but few are as sonically inventive as Ludwig Goransson’s score for this Marvel sequel. The album opener, Nyana Wam, presents tribal chants and rhythms, courtesy of vocalist Baaba Maal and drummer Massamba Diop, in a three dimensional wrapper which then blooms into poignant orchestration, while the Namor theme drops such a heavy subterranean bass beat from on high you’ll stagger under its weight. 

The latter track adds reverb to create a sense of space and grandeur, while pipes and other Mayan musical instruments add authenticity.   

There’s even some propulsive dance tracks in the mix: listen to They want it, but No (by Tobe and Fat Nwigwa), here given a cinematic sheen, and Rihanna’s end credit offering Lift me Up, which appears to be a direct instruction to the mix room. 

REM – Automatic for the People 

One of the first 3D remixes of a recognised rock classic remains one of the genre’s most entertaining. Reimagined by engineer Mike Mills, along with original producer Scott Litt and producer Clif Norrell, this spatial mix from 2017 has been hailed by some as the definitive way to enjoy this album – and we’re not going to argue. From the pirouetting piano of Nightswimming, with Stipes slightly croaky vocal swamped by a tide of strings, through to an almost ethereal presentation of Man on the Moon, the album invites clinical analysis, with every aspect of its recording identifiable for discussion.  

Kraftwerk – 3-D the catalogue 

This Grammy award-winning electro-dance concert album was tailor made for Dolby Atmos. Mixed by Tom Ammermann, it features live (but not so much that you would notice) versions of many the band’s crowd-pleasers, so there’s plenty to enjoy. If you went to a disco in The Matrix it would probably sound like this.  

Radio Stars makes full use of the Dolby Atmos platform, with bleeps and pulses orbiting your head space, while Trans Europe Express directs its synth train right to left, arcing high.  

Moanin’ – Art Blackey and the Jazz Messengers 

Time travel is possible – at least it is if you shut your eyes and let this remarkable remix of this 1958 Blue Note recording wash over you. Dolby Atmos isn’t just about engulfing audio. Here it’s stripped back and used primarily to create dimensionality when there was precious little to begin with.  

As the titular jazz drummer provides a perfect backbeat to saxophonist Benny Golson, you can sense the physicality of the recording venue in the mix. There’s room to bop between trumpet and piano, but the separation never sounds gimmicky. The 3D presentation is always restrained and artful.  

Ozzy Osbourne – Patient Number 9 

Spatial audio isn’t just about Dolby Atmos, there’s also Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, and it can be every bit as immersive. While we wait for the Black Sabbath back catalogue to get a 3D long overdue remix, this new album ticks all our metal boxes. The title track, with its ear candy hook, is a dimensional treat, from the opening madhouse cacophony, to the crunching Jeff Beck riff, it occupies every available inch of 3D space. For a real whiff of Sabbath gone spatial, try Degradation Rules, in which Ozzy reunites with Tony Iommi. Binaural audio benefits headbanging, who knew? 

The post Top Ten Spatial Audio Music Albums appeared first on Audio Media International.

We speak to Kristian “Kohle” Bonifer, Founder of Kohlekeller Studio, Germany about the set up of his studio – specialists in recording metal bands – and his other projects.

How long have you been running and why was your space set up?

I started Kohlekeller Studio in 1999 in the same building where it still is today. I basically turned the sleeping room of my house into a control room back then. I had two Alesis ADATs and a Tascam 24 channel analog mixing console which was the perfect setup to start recording a bunch of local metal bands. From there on the studio grew over time and more and more rooms of the house were turned into either control or live rooms. In 2010 we added another building with our big live room. Today the studio consists of two main control rooms, an editing suite, a vocal booth and the live room.

Who helped you build, tune or upgrade your space?

The live room was designed by Thomas Jouanjean from Northward Acoustics who has designed a bunch of very famous mastering studios (like Sterling Sound Nashville) and has a very interesting concept with no high frequency absorption at all. The main control room has a DIY acoustic concept and was improved over the years and sounds great. The second control room was designed by Fritz Fey, a well-known German studio designer who is also the founder of the German “Studio Magazin“.

What artists, presenters or other creators pass through your doors?

We mainly do heavy guitar music here at Kohlekeller. Recording, producing, mixing and Mastering. This covers a wide variety of styles. Power Metal bands like “Powerwolf” over Modern Metal bands like “Electric Callboy” up to very extreme Death Metal with bands like “Aborted” have come to Kohlekeller over the years.

What’s your USP as a studio based on feedback from artists and completed sessions?

It’s about being passionate. I think it is how we treat our clients and how much we care about the product! I’m sure you wouldn’t find many bands we have worked with in 20+ years that would say we didn’t give everything to make the recording, mixing or master as good as we possibly could.

Who’s on the team?

It’s me (Kristian Kohle) and my two colleagues Kai Stahlenberg and Daniel Claar. We do all kinds of jobs here – from editing drums to mixing and mastering.

Studios have experienced massive change in the last few years and there are many different types – where do you fit in?

It’s the same for us. We hardly do full productions anymore like we did back in the day. Bands mostly come here to record drums, mix / master their records or because they want my creative input as a producer. Typically we start with recording the drums here and continue with re-amping the (home-recorded) guitar and bass DI tracks later before doing the final mix.

How would you describe the overall vibe of the studio and what’s the balance between creating a great sound vs a great vibe – can they exist hand in hand without compromise?

These days the vibe has become more and more important. Great sounding rooms and fancy gear are still crucial for great sounding productions, but home recording has come a long way. That means that studios need to find additional reasons to convince clients to book them. A great vibe and a creative atmosphere really help here! Artists will only book your studio if they believe they can perform better compared to any other place out there. Kohlekeller Studio sits in a beautiful landscape, offers daylight and a very cozy atmosphere. Many bands tell us that it feels like coming home. And we’re also working hard to not only offer great sound but also our creative input and ideas. That’s the other reason so many artists want to work here.

How do you feel about remote collaboration in your studio with apps such as Audiomovers, do you embrace it or does it change the magic in the room?

We work together with a lot of other studios these days but haven’t used any of those apps yet. This is something we still have to check out.

Can you share a list of the gear you have and the room types and dimensions?

We do have a nice combination of analog and digital gear in all control rooms. Outboard from API, Cranborne, Chandler, Crane Song, Heritage and many others. We also have a pretty big mic collection of mics from Neumann, AKG, Austrian, Gefell, sE Electronics including many ribbon and dynamic mics especially for recording guitars.  We work with Steinberg’s Cubase and use SSL MX4 audio interfaces. We mainly use monitors from Eve Audio and Amphion.

We also have a large collection of drums, cymbals and guitar tube amps and cabinets. We strongly believe that it’s more important to get things right at the source, so for example, we have always preferred to invest in good cymbals instead of a good EQ to fix it later. Many guitarists and drummers like to work here because they know they have a big collection of great instruments and gear to choose from and this is is more important to them than the studio gear.

Can artists stay at your studio and if so what’s the set up?

Yes. We have a little apartment where musicians can live during the production. It includes everything they need. Feels like home!

Talk us through your rooms and why they are designed in the way they are.

Since the rooms are a part of a normal house and they weren’t built as a music studio we had to deal with the dimensions that we’ve got. We worked hard on making all rooms sound as linear as possible in the low end, but from what our clients tell us all rooms have a great translation to the real world. The only room that was designed from scratch is our live room. It was designed with drums in mind. We avoided any high frequency absorption to give it an open and aggressive sound that is great for rock and metal drums. Thomas mainly used angled walls, diffusion and some bass traps to get that kind of sound. Drummers love to hit their drums hard in that room!

What’s your dream recording project or client?

My dream would be to travel back in time to witness how rock and metal was produced back in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. I believe we can learn a lot from those days before the digital revolution.

Do you have any other projects going on?

Oh yes! I have just launched my own recording, mixing and mastering academy called Kohle Audio Kult! I’m doing this together with Warren Huart from Produce like a Pro and this is the Heavy Metal version of it. It’s not only me teaching as part of the Kult – there are many other world-class producers (like Jens Bogren, Erin Hamidovic or Bob Marlette) there too. So if you wanna learn how to produce heavy music people should check out: kohleaudiokult.com

The post Studio Profile: Kohlekeller Studio, Germany appeared first on Audio Media International.

From immersive product demos, in-depth masterclasses and a raft of eye-popping new gear peppering the corridors, booths and studios, the return of Miloco’s gear showcase at their jaw-dropping London HQ brought sights and sounds to remember…

First held back in 2017 at their SE1 studio complex, Miloco’s Gear Showcase was on the way to becoming a bright new fixture in the calendars of the UK’s music technology industry. With the pandemic sadly putting pay to the event in recent years, the re-launch was met with a high degree of enthusiasm from attendees, exhibitors and industry pros alike.

Having evolved into one of the world’s biggest studio and production-related companies, Miloco currently oversees 170 studios across the globe, as well as offering studio construction via Miloco Builds, a huge array of gear via Miloco Gear and a bespoke sample library outlet via Drumdrops. Connecting with the industry is essential to Miloco’s ethos, making the return of the open-door Gear Showcase something that had clearly been expertly planned.

Upon entering, our first port of call was the central live room of The Pool studio. Within, the likes of Sony, KMR, Trinnov, Flare Audio, Chandler, Help Musicians and Source Distribution were eagerly presenting their latest wares…

The Pool and The Vault

Flare Audio’s E-Prototype and Calmer distortion-reducing earphones were the first products to take our interest. The E-Prototype in-ear ‘phones boldly claim to change the internal shape of the ear canal so sound quality heard by users is dramatically increased. This ‘Mirror Image’ sound technology is startlingly innovative. “What we’ve discovered is that we’re able to create two flat surfaces inside the earphone, a bit like a periscope, and we can produce a mirror image of the impulse and the driver onto the surface of the eardrum. It’s unlocked a whole new world of sound quality.” Flare explained to us. Calmer, Flare’s initial foray into in-ear technology, uses a similar ear-canal-adjusting philosophy to reduce stress-inducing, peaky sounds that people might hear in their day-to-day lives. They’ve become a big seller.

Sony’s brand new entry-level C80 microphone took a central position in the space (and would later be road-tested in The Bridge studio). Alongside its legendary brothers, the C-100 and C-800, the microphone features a two-part metallic anti-vibrational body structure, dual-diaphragm and Noise Elimination Construction which minimises vibration.

Up in a separate vocal booth, Source Distribution had a plethora of astounding synths set-up and ready to play, including the Moog Matriarch, Arturia’s analog polysynth the PolyBrute and ASM Hydrasynth. This gave us our first chance to explore the Polybrute’s new in-built multi-axis MPE performance controller, the Morphée, allowing X, Y and Z axis navigation of sounds. We might have spent a little too long getting lost in its five dimensional universe…

KMR Audio presented a multitude of wares. From outboard, microphones to some choice speakers – namely the jaw-dropping NNNN Comium 30 speakers. Sporting a distinctive, fan-like appearance, these full range 2-way monitors harness your room’s boundaries, turning them into an amplifier to generate higher SPL. It also does away with back wall reflections. Elsewhere, choice hardware from Gainlab Audio, Universal Audio, Cranborne Audio and an always-staggering Shadow Hills mastering compressor stocked the racks, while a Townsend Sphere L22 microphone could be modelled to any other microphone voicing at will.

In the Pool’s Control Room, a pair of Genelec’s state-of-the-art 8351Bs were wowing ears via their incredible, precise power. This latest addition to ‘The One’ family, delivers exemplary point-source monitoring. With newly elevated SPL, room calibration and further-reaching high frequency response.

In the smaller Vault area, Audient’s ASP 4816 Heritage Edition desk was being demonstrated. This in-line, completely analogue mix console brings large-format multi-channel dexterity with a much smaller footprint. Audient were keen to explain the range of clever things the 48 input console is capable of; “This is available in two configurations, there’s the Standard Edition and the Heritage Edition. It contains the recording and monitor paths in just one channel strip, this halves the space required yet has the same functionality as a larger desk.”

The Bridge and The Red Room

One of the most fun parts of the evening came when Sony demonstrated the new C80 mic with a live vocalist. “The C800 was a classic in the studio world, but very hard to get hold of in Europe and the UK.” Sony explained to a studio-full of enthusiasts. “What we did about ten years ago was bring out the C100 as a new flagship studio mic. As of yesterday, when they arrived in the country, we’ve now got the C80. Sony’s first studio mic that’s less than £500.”

Singing a two minute section of a song, the guest vocalist, Sophia, put Sony’s world-class family of mics to the test. While differences were detected between all three during the shootout, the overall quality bar was extraordinary, particularly for the ultra-affordable C80.

Elsewhere, numerous other engaging experiences were on offer, with an Atmos Demo in the Red Room, revealing the full scope of the space’s Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 setup. Harnessing the power of the ATC SCM45A as the left, front and right speakers, four ATC SCM25A’s overhead and dual Augspurger subs, the Atmos experience in this gold-standard mixing studio is nothing short of mind-blowing.

Later at The Red Room came the event that many people had been waiting for, a production masterclass with the acclaimed Charlie Hugall. The producer and mix engineer’s credits included Ed Sheeran, Florence and the Machine and Celeste. Hugall was talking us through his approach to the arrangement of Tom Grennan’s huge hit, Found What I’ve Been Looking For. “I thought I’d talk through this tune because basically, a lot of it was done on a bit of a shoestring budget, and it’s really the sum of the parts. Some of those parts are a bit ropey, but that’s part of the charm.” The MPG-award winner explained. “Tom came in with this amazing, gravelly, gritty voice. So one of the main things that I believe in with production is to just try and support the vocal, and facilitate its feeling.”

Opening up his original Pro Tools project, Charlie divulged how he had taken the original demo and gone away and added instrumental and rhythmical life to it, experimenting with quite freeform ideas (including some ‘obnoxious’ piano and ‘dodgy’ strings). He told the attendees how some of those basic recordings wound up in the final mix. “When I opened the project up after five years, I was like ‘Oh my God, what was I doing?’” Laughed Charlie, “But I wasn’t thinking about the solo’d tracks as individual things when I was arranging it, if things felt good for the song overall. They stayed.”

While the packed studio looked on in awe, Hugall isolated each of the huge-sounding track’s constituent parts, and explained that when it comes to production, often questing for things that sound too ‘perfect’ in isolation can be detrimental to the feel of the song. Once a vision is secured, Charlie told us that he needs to inhabit that song’s world “I wanted to create a feeling where the listener felt like there was too much going on. It was an intentional kind of thing. It informs my conduct on a personal level as a producer too. I’m not going to be sitting back being low-key. If I want the track to be lively, I’m going to be up on my feet, hyping up the artist. I want to match the energy of the artist and bring energy to a session that I want to get in the track.” It was a fascinating and inspiring masterclass.

It’s fair to say that those in attendance at Miloco’s Pro Audio Gear Showcase gained much from the evening. Whether by testing out mouth-watering pro-end gear, learning from the wisdom of seasoned pros, or just taking in the incredible surroundings of Miloco’s extremely cool HQ. Next year’s event can’t come soon enough.

Check out milocostudios.com for more information, and stay tuned for information about next year’s event.

Welcome to issue 7 of Audio Media International

The post Inside The Miloco Pro Audio Gear Showcase 2022 appeared first on Audio Media International.

There are two things that are vital when it comes to teaching the next generation of audio engineers the skills they need for their future careers. The first is exceptional teachers who really understand the subject and can impart their knowledge; the second is access to exceptional facilities that are kitted out with the type of equipment students will encounter in the commercial world. Tackling the second part of this equation is the reason why dBs Institute of Sound & Digital Technologies has installed two new Dolby Atmos Music studios at its Manchester and Bristol campuses, and why it has equipped both rooms with exception products including monitoring systems from UK manufacturer and immersive audio industry leader PMC.

dBs Institute, which also has a campus in Plymouth, offers degree and master’s programmes across a range of music production, audio technology, games development and digital technology disciplines. The new Dolby Atmos studios will be used by all students, including those working in Game Development, Game Sound and Sound Design.

“We are always striving to be at the forefront of all technologies, as our facilities demonstrate,” says Nige Burt, dBs Institute’s Director of HE. “As such, it is vital that we provide Atmos facilities for students to access as it is becoming increasingly commonplace in the industry.”

Matt Bernard, Head of Operations at dBs, adds: “We spent a lot of time researching Dolby Atmos setups and received a lot of support from Dolby and our acoustic designer, Miloco Builds. It became clear from the research that PMC is an industry standard for Atmos studios, and we wanted to make sure our students were working with the same kit that they will find in commercial environments.  Also, the fact they sound incredible helps!”

Originally founded in 1998, dBs Institute believes sound is a powerful force, and one that should be leveraged for good. This philosophy informs everything it does, including how it approaches audio technology education. Students are given personalised attention and support and are encouraged to foster enduring relationships with each other, with staff and with the local community.

With the centres in Plymouth and Bristol well established, dBs turned its attention north to Manchester for its newest campus. Often nicknamed the ‘Gateway to the North’, Manchester has a rich musical heritage and a strong reputation in the creative world for its media, sound and gaming scene, so it was the ideal place for dBs Institute to focus its expansion plans.

“Manchester is such a thriving city for the creative industries that we felt we could really help in improving that development further,” Nige Burt says. “It’s vitally important in our provision that we have great links with top employers in the area and with Manchester being such a hotbed, it made sense for us to set up in that environment.”

Further impetus was given by the redevelopment of Manchester’s New Century Hall, which is where the new dBs Manchester campus is based. Dating back to the 1960s, this iconic venue has played host to artists such as Jimi Hendrix, The Hollies, Jerry Lee Lewis and The Kinks, as well as being the venue for the legendary all night Acid House parties of the 1980s MADchester era.

“We had the opportunity to be part of New Century’s redevelopment and we saw it as an amazing opportunity,” Nige Burt says. “The venue is absolutely incredible and our involvement with it means that dBs Institute’s Live Sound students can gain practical experience in a real working environment. The venue also links down to our studios, providing endless opportunities for exciting projects.”

dBs Institute Manchester opened in September 2022 and has already welcomed its first cohort of degree students. In terms of technical facilities, it has one 7.2.4 Atmos studio with 11 x PMC 6s and 2x PMC Sub 8-2 monitors. It also has a large control room with an AMS Neve Genesys Black console and three more production studios, all of which are equipped with PMC result6 monitors. There is a large live room and two separate recording booths which can be patched to any space via analogue and Dante tie-lines.  In addition, there is a 40-seat lecture theatre with a 2.1 monitoring system comprising PMC 6 and Sub 8 monitors.

“PMC’s new SoundAlign software was really helpful when we were setting up the lecture theatre as it allowed us to easily calibrate the monitors in the room,” Matt Bernard says.

This year’s upgrade to the facilities at dBs Institute Bristol have also been significant. Alongside the installation of a new Dolby Atmos studio, dBs installed a Games suite, made improvements to the common spaces at its Mitchell Lane campus and invested in more d&b T Series speakers so that it can provide a full line array for small festival stages.

“When we decided to install an Atmos studio in Bristol we faced some particular challenges with the allocated space,” Matt Bernard says. “To ensure we met the height requirements for the overhead speakers we needed a thin speaker, so we opted for PMC Ci65s because they were perfect for this.  Similarly, the Atmos studio also has to accommodate a number of students, so we wanted side and rear speakers that did not protrude too far into the room. The Ci40 speakers were the answer as they worked within Dolby requirements for the sides, while PMC Ci65s gave the required SPL for the rears.”

In total three PMC6-2s were installed, along with six Ci65s, two Ci140s and two PMC8-2 subs. The studio, which also had an Avid MTRX, is now fully operational while the Atmos room in Manchester will be ready for students to use in January 2023.

Staying at the forefront of emerging technologies in the creative and technical arena and providing students with both the practical and personal skills they require to succeed in the audio industry are key tenets of dBs Institute’s philosophy. Alongside regular staff, the Institute also brings in guest lecturers whose experience of the real world is vital for student learning and development. PMC will be supporting these efforts by organising workshops in Bristol and Manchester so that students can learn tips and techniques from audio professionals who are already mixing Dolby Atmos projects.

“The ability to be innovative requires that the students have the freedom to be so but also access to innovative teaching concepts and the facilities to push the limits of what exists at present,” Nige Burt adds. “That has been a major aim of the dBs Institute for the past 25 years and remains so.”

For more information about dBs Institute of Sound & Digital Technologies, you can visit: www.dbsinstitute.ac.uk

The post dBs Institute Installs PMC Equipped Studios To Teach Students About Atmos appeared first on Audio Media International.

Decamping to Tileyard’s Dolby Atmos Studio, Neumann presented their fresh spin on a microphone legend, and wowed the ears of attendees with their Atmos-tailored KH monitoring setup

Revered by those within the audio industry – and a name of some repute for those beyond, Neumann’s heritage is a major factor as to why their position at the upper tier of the microphone sector is still held to this day. While other manufacturers might bandy around terms like ‘legacy’ and ‘prestige’, the Berlin-based company’s story is one of the music technology world’s foundational pillars. Since launching the very first commercially sold condenser microphone – the famous bottle-shaped CMV 3 back in the late 1920s – Neumann subsequently developed numerous era-defining, industry-standards including the hailed U 47, widely used by Frank Sinatra and The Beatles, amongst others. In 1991, the company joined the Sennheiser family of brands.

On November 16th, Neumann invited us to Tileyard’s new TYX studio complex, to learn more about their evolution, as well as allowing us to hear the company’s latest monitoring solutions in a breathtaking Atmos context, within Tileyard’s own Atmos Studio. We also got a chance to test out their acclaimed range of microphone offerings. These included the U 47 FET and the brand new M 49 V.

Attendees included journalists and artists, such as A1pha Romeo, who was on the lookout particularly for a microphone that saved him time in the studio later. He told us, “I’m looking for something to help me get more efficient, and get the best out of the experience I enjoy. Especially working in a place that isn’t professionally treated.”

MONITORS
Firstly, we were given a presentation in Tileyard’s 7.2.4 Atmos room, which is already equipped with Neumann’s KH420 midfield monitors, KH 870 subwoofers and KH 120 nearfields. “All of our monitors can be used in Atmos configurations” Jonas Næsby, Sennheiser’s Pro Audio Technical Application Engineer explained to attendees, “It’s also most likely one of the cheapest options out there. People think Neumann is expensive, but that’s really not the case in the monitoring world.”

With the acquisition of Klein and Hummel by Neumann’s parent Sennheiser back in 2009, Neumann engaged with the innovative company’s design philosophy to craft the K&H series, it’s name a cap-doff to the speaker pioneers who were held in supremely high esteem. “[Klein and Hummel] used to do PA speakers, and column speakers and things like that. There are plenty of other people doing that so we didn’t pursue it, but their studio monitor philosophy absolutely excelled. Now branded as Neumann, their brilliance is now revealed to a global audience.” Jonas said.

A chief ambition of the day was in demonstrating the standalone power and precision of the newly released KH150 monitors. These DSP-driven low-end heavyweights seriously wowed when put through their paces– particularly when Jonas revealed that the room’s KH870 subwoofer was deactivated, and the room-shaking rumble was emanating solely from deep within the pair of 150s, which sport a bass response extending down to 39 Hz. Jonas also stressed that the solely Berlin-based construction, testing and fine-tuning can take time, only ending when the quest for perfection is met. “We would have loved to release that speaker three years ago, but then it wouldn’t have been as good as it now is.”

Built around a 6.5 inch woofer, the KH150 is nothing short of a masterclass in monitor design. Its 20 litre bass reflex cabinet, highly precise drivers and MMD waveguide are impressive enough, but once you factor in DSP room calibration the true extent of KH150s studio monitoring prowess becomes apparent.

Jonas demonstrated how Neumann’s proprietary MA 1 Automatic Monitor Alignment microphone and software is used to scale their response to the room. While all Neumann’s monitors have DIP switches, the precision of the DSP reigns things in on a whole different level. Jonas stressed that DSP alignment shouldn’t replace acoustic treatment, but that it certainly helps to tame untreated rooms.

Jonas illustrated the MMD waveguide around each of the KH series tweeters, which controls its dispersion across the frequency range; he also demonstrated how the build quality of the monitors tamed harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion. “Basically, what we wanted to do was build a speaker that makes your life easier. We want it to be as accurate as possible, and be the best measurement device. Which means you can make good mixing decisions.”

ATMOS
The day’s most exciting moment came when we got to hear the KH-kitted Atmos Suite at Tileyard in all its glory. “Mixing in Atmos requires you to think in terms of objects, wherever you place the sound object in the Atmos mix, the appropriate speakers will render it as good as possible. The more speakers, the better the localisation” Said Jonas, before allowing us to listen to a choice playlist of Atmos-mixed tracks. Ranging from Tiesto to Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, the various mix elements circled, swooped and teleported themselves astoundingly around the room.

As Jonas explained, “We also make monitoring plugins which means you can build a large Atmos system, just like this one, on a pair of headphones. We can virtualise a speaker configuration, and our software knows how to make a headphone sound as close to a control room as possible. That means you don’t necessarily need a large room like this to mix in Atmos, you could even be in a hotel room.”

MICROPHONES AND HEADPHONES
Next on the agenda was to take a look – and a listen – to Neumann’s hallowed microphone range, recently joined by the M 49 V. This re-birth of the original M 49 valve microphone (first released in 1951) maintains the original specifications of the classic original, including its continuously variable polar pattern, while also bringing new adjustments to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range.

The M49 V was situated alongside fellow Neumann heavyweights, the TLM 103 cardioid condenser, the legendary U 47 FET, and the M 149. Vocalist Etoile Marley tested the various mics vocal capabilities and allowed us to listen to the isolated stems she recorded with each. The M 49 V was particularly impressive, bringing pinpoint clarity of vocal reproduction and something we could only define as ‘sparkle’, while the mighty U 47 FET brought depth and warmth to Marley’s vocal take.

Listening back to tracks using Neumann’s new headphones, the closed-back NDH 20s and open-backed NDH 30s, gave us the chance to dip our ears into the company’s latest diversification. Both headphones bring extreme isolation and detail, as well as that all-important comfort factor. It’s highly likely this branch of the company will continue to grow, however cards were being held close to the chest on what further additions to the headphone line might entail.

The day comprehensively underscored Neumann’s continuing brilliance in making some of the best music technology on the market today. It also revealed how being part of the Sennheiser family has broadened the company’s scope, and how this nearly century-old company is leading the charge into the future, with some of the most mind-blowing – and affordable – Atmos-ready monitors around.

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