NEW YORK, USA: specialist British loudspeaker drive unit and complete sound reproduction system manufacturer ATC is proud to announce that GRAMMY award-winning mix engineer extraordinaire Tom Elmhirst — already an advocate of ATC’s professional loudspeakers — has supplemented his second setup at Studio C within New York City’s legendary Electric Lady Studios with a pair of SCM45A Pro mid-size, high performance, active three-way studio monitors…
Tom Elmhirst at his Neve VR with ATC SCM50ASL Pro. Photo by Drew Wiedemann. www.drewwiedemann.com
“Tom Elmhirst is a mix engineer based at Electric Lady Studios in NYC.” So reads the somewhat humble homepage for the talented individual in question. Yet the British-born specialist music producer and mix engineer’s many achievements at the helm of large-scale console — currently a Neve VR-72, about which he is on record as stating, “It’s a luxury… I can do ten things at once, but with a mouse I can only do one…” — speak louder than words. While most of the many millions of listeners who have heard the results of his sterling work with several of the biggest-selling recording artists around today will not know a Neve from an SSL, the man with the Midas mixing touch clearly knows what he is doing and must be doing something right with that mission-critical mixing and ATC monitoring setup aiding his course of action time and again.
As of June 2016, British singer/songwriter Adele’s third studio album, 25 — mostly mixed by Tom Elmhirst, has sold some 20 million copies, having become the world’s best-selling album of 2015. He has also manned the faders for Adele’s critically-acclaimed and commerciallysuccessful debut long-player 19 in 2008 and its 2011-released multiple GRAMMY award-winning follow up, 21, the longest-running number one album by a female solo artist in the history of the UK and US album charts. Credits in-between and beyond include Irish rockers U2’s thirteenth studio album Songs Of Innocence (2014) — famed for being announced at an Apple launch event and released on that same day to all 500-million iTunes Store customers at no cost — and 2016’s Blackstar, the twenty-fifth and final studio album by British singer/songwriter David Bowie — the iconic artist’s first and only album to top the Billboard chart in the US in the wake of his death — to name but a notable few.
But between those noted successes, Tom Elmhirst successfully transplanted himself and his sought-after services to Electric Lady Studios, the oldest working and thriving recording studio in New York City, founded back in 1970 by American guitar hero Jimi Hendrix. “I moved here about four years ago for both life and work reasons,” he reasons. “I wanted a change, having mixed in the same room in London for nearly 10 years. You can’t beat being part of an iconic studio based in the heart of Greenwich Village, so when Lee Foster — manager at Electric Lady Studios — showed me the only vacant room I jumped at the chance to set up home there!”
Tom Elmhirst in his studio at Electic Lady. Photo by Drew Wiedemann. www.drewwiedemann.com
The tremendous workload of the time dictated that Tom Elmhirst had to hit the hallowed ground running, so speedily furnished his new ‘home’ with the aforesaid Neve VR-72 console while monitoring came courtesy of ATC, a new and enjoyable experience for the mix engineer extraordinaire: “I’d used monitors from another manufacturer for years, but they stopped making the drivers, so it became increasingly difficult to replace one if it blew. A friend of mine lent me a pair of SCM25A Pros for a few days when I first moved to New York and I enjoyed the experience so much I went ahead and got myself a pair of SCM50ASL Pros. The sub and the speakers are tuned to the room using an XTA DP44 DSP-based audio processor, so everything is balanced as a three-way system rather than just adding low end. Having the sub allows the woofers on the SCM50ASL Pros to work more efficiently as well. In the years that I’ve owned this system, I’ve found the ATCs to be invaluable and the majority of artists that I work for also enjoy the listening experience.”
‘A-list’ artists like Adele. “I was mixing ‘Skyfall’ right around the time that I got my ATCs,” adds Tom Elmhirst. “The accuracy of the SCM50ASL Pros proved invaluable for mixing such a complex song with so much orchestration.”
Obviously Tom Elmhirst knows what he likes and likes what he hears — so much so that he has augmented his ATC setup still further: “The addition of SCM45A Pros perfectly supplement my second rig to bring it in line with my main control room monitoring setup. It’s important that both rigs can speak the same language so I can work and my assistants can work in both places comfortably and confidently.”
Chances are we won’t have to wait long to hear another chart-topping mix making its musical way out of Electric Lady’s Studio C. But by then Tom Elmhirst and his assistants will likely be enjoying the experience of working with those ATC professional loudspeakers on another one!
Photos by Drew Wiedemann.
Buddy Miller in his studio with his ATC SCM45A Pro Monitors.
When he’s not on the road, Miller spends some of his days working out of his home studio with his wife, the talented singer-songwriter Julie Miller, who long complained that the studio monitors they used sounded unpleasant – until at last Miller found ATC monitors. The ATCs combine the accuracy and detail needed for mission-critical audio work with the joyful listening experience craved by lovers of great music. Building on three years’ success with ATC SCM25As, Miller recently upgraded to ATC SCM45As, which deliver greater bass response via two low-end drivers and greater high-end clarity with ATC’s made-in-house SH25-76S tweeter.
“Every link in the recording chain is important and it all adds up incrementally to the finished work,” Miller said. “But the monitors are the final link and the only window into what’s going on with all the other links. So I’ve long felt that the monitors have to be as good as they can possibly be. But at the same time, a lot of monitors are hard to listen to all day long. Julie is especially sensitive to the unpleasantness of most monitors. There were many times when we quit working because she just couldn’t take it any more.” Consequently, Miller spent over 25 years moving from one monitoring system to the next, trying to find something that was accurate enough to ensure consistent translation and yet truly pleasurable to listen to.
In the meantime, Miller built out the other components of his home studio, which is now centered on a vintage 28×24 Trident B-Range analog console, an MCI two-inch sixteen-track tape machine, Pro Tools HDX, tons of outboard gear (thirty-two channels of mic pres including a bunch of Telefunken V76 preamps, new and old Urei 1176s, a Fairchild 670, BAE1073s, DBX 160s, a Universal Audio LA-2A, a Manley Massive Passive, et al.) and a fantastic microphone collection. He even has a plate reverb system in his basement! His long, long search for accurate, but pleasant-sounding, monitors ended three years ago when he was working in another studio that had ATC near fields.
“When I heard the ATCs, I thought, ‘Whoa! This has everything!’,” he said. Miller purchased a pair of ATC SCM25A near field monitors, and he and Julie relished their inspiring (and yet still very detailed) sound. “The ATCs are so incredibly detailed in the midrange,” he said. “I can hear all of the reverb tails and delays – really everything that’s going on in a recording. The imaging is stunning. As a result, my recordings translate on any other system. They’re totally solid. And best of all, Julie loves to listen to them, so we get more work done and we get it done more enjoyably.”
These days, Miller likes to record with the entire band in the control room (sometimes even including the drums!) and with the singer in an adjoining room that has good line of sight to the control room. He’s had ample opportunity to perfect that technique: he served as Executive Music Producer for ABC’s drama Nashville for the past three seasons, which required producing and recording sixty to eighty songs per season, each with three recorded versions (a stripped-down songwriting version, a “live” version for the scene, and a polished studio version). In addition, Buddy hosts an ongoing weekly Sirius XM radio show that combines live recordings of artists with conversations.
Recently, Buddy upgraded their ATC SCM25As to ATC SCM45As. Both monitors are three-way designs, but the SCM45A adds as second 6.5-inch woofer for greater bass output. “I prefer not to work with subwoofers, but I wanted a little bit more bass from the monitoring system – not because it would affect my mixes so much, but because it would be more fun,” he said. “So when ATC released the SCM45A – which is essentially the monitor we had fallen in love with plus more bass – I jumped at the opportunity. They sound awesome, and they have so much output and low end that I got rid of my bigs. I have all the client-impressing-bigness I need from the SCM45As!” In addition, Miller is enchanted with the new ATC SH25-76S tweeters, which are now stock in the SCM45As. “The new tweeter is great!” he said. “The high end is beautiful and gives me even greater clarity and detail so I can get lost in the music.”
Transaudio Group – ATC US Distribution
Bishop traveled to Atlanta’s Woodruff Symphony Hall – a space where he has recorded nearly one hundred times – to create the world-premier recording of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Zohar. Although he’s never been one to create “documentary-style” recordings, Bishop is riding the leading edge of the wave that is moving traditional classical recordings in the direction of movie soundtracks. “There’s a lot more activity on the engineer’s part,” he said. “The audience is expecting more detail and color, and modern composers are writing pieces that really require the microphone technique needed to capture all of the details, actions, and interactions.”
Amazingly, Bishop mixed all 28 microphones on stage down to a stereo mix live in the moment that he recorded using DSD technology at 11.2MHz, or 256 times greater than the benchmark CD rate (44.1kHz x 256 = 11,200kHz!!!). As always, he brought his ATC SCM150ASL monitors. “The ATCs play a crucial role,” he said. “I’m making all of my recording, mixing, and mastering decisions right there, and it is thus paramount that I have an accurate image of every detail. Moreover, the 150s have the size and presence to give the producer and conductor a true impression of the recorded piece, which closes the feedback loop and gets us to a winning take with all due speed.” At a session cost of $300 per minute for the orchestra, that’s obviously important. Direct-to-stereo mixes have always been a hallmark of Bishop’s work over the past few decades so that it’s second nature.
“With ATCs, I’m able to make, say, a one-inch change in the angle of a microphone and really hear its effect,” Bishop said. “Most monitors gloss over that kind of detail, but those Eighth Blackbird are the details that add up to a great recording. Moreover, every ATC loudspeaker, from the 20s to the 300s, provides that same consistent level of detail.” Indeed, Bishop tracked on ATC SCM25A nearfield monitors at IV Lab Studios in Chicago, where he recently recorded the Chicago-based avant-garde ensemble Eighth Blackbird performing pieces written by five different contemporary composers for their Hand-Eye release on Cedille Records. “Eighth Blackbird was closer to a modern studio session, with the backbones of songs laid down, and followed by overdubs and manipulations of the recorded material as dictated by the composers.”
Bishop and longtime collaborator and former Telarc producer Elaine Martone were under pressure to work quickly. “The detail revealed by the ATCs greatly aided our decision making process and enabled us to make good decisions on the spot. With any recording session, there are a million things to worry about and manage,” he said. “ATC’s consistency and truth remove one of the most potentially damaging variables – we’re confident that what we’re hearing is the truth. That puts Elaine in a comfortable place and lets her focus on the musical aspects. She doesn’t have to question what she’s hearing.”
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra commissioned pop artist Pharrell Williams to compose a piece that he called “Rules of the Game” that also involves dance, sculpture, and video. Bishop crammed into the pit with a 28-piece chamber orchestra augmented by a hip-hop rhythm section, triggered samples, and an unusually heavy dose of percussion instruments. Of the session’s 72 tracks, 24 were devoted to percussion! Arranger and composer David Campbell, who has done similar work with Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, and others, led the effort.
“Working in the pit is the pits,” Bishop laughed. “We were jammed in there, and I had to mic everything very closely. Everyone was on in-ear monitors so that they could stay in time with pre-recorded samples. It was pretty uncomfortable.” Back in the friendlier environs of the Five/Four studio, Bishop is mixing the performance on his 5.1 set of ATC SCM150ASLs. “The turnaround is tight because the dance company needs the recording for performances without a live orchestra,” he explained. “As always, the ATCs make it easy to mix and know that my work will translate to any system whatsoever. Since moving to ATC seventeen years ago, I’ve never been surprised by what a mix sounds like on a different system.”
Transaudio Group – ATC US Distribution
Paul Rabbering, July 2016.
Most people know Paul Rabbering as a DJ, presenting a two hour daily show on the Dutch national radio station, 3FM. He’s also a well-known voice-over artist on Dutch television. If that doesn’t ring a bell, alongside two other DJ’s, Paul presented Serious Request 2015, a 6 day live radio show from a Glass House in the centre of the city Heerlen, raising over 7 million Euro to help children in war zones.
But this versatile media man has yet another, lesser known quality. Paul owns a private studio where he transforms his creative ideas into concrete music productions. Some weeks ago when Paul visited the Dutch ATC distributor Helios, he got infected with the, “ATC Bug”. Fortunately there is a cure for this illness. After the purchase of a pair of SCM45A Pro’s, the fever vanished like snow in the sun!
“I’m very happy with the service of Helios. Ulmt was extremely patient and gave me the opportunity to listen to various songs on many different monitor brands and models before making a decision. The SCM45A took away the last bit of doubt I might have had. I will never forget the moment when we played Deadmau5 – some chords at a rather hefty volume, the transparency, deep bass, speed, that big sound. I was totally convinced. It feels good having nothing left to desire.”
Paul Rabbering, July 2016.
Paul Rabbering – Facebook Paul Rabbering – Wiki Paul Rabbering – 3FM
Although he is still best known for his work on over 120 films such as National Treasure, Remember The Titans, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Armageddon, Twister, Bourne Supremacy, and Training Day, veteran recording and mix engineer Steve Kempster has, as of late, turned his prodigious talents to the burgeoning world of high-end audio for gaming. Indeed, this year composer Austin Wintory won the ASCAP Composers Choice Award for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and composer Gareth Coker won the Game Audio Network Guild Awards for Ori and the Blind Forest in the categories of Audio of the Year, Best Mix, Best Instrumental Track, and Rookie of the Year. Kempster mixed both scores at his private mix room, relying on his ATC SCM100ASL LCR midfield monitors and his ATC SCM25A LCR near-field monitors to ensure that the full emotional impact and intention of the composers’ works translate to gamers around the world, regardless of the sound systems they listen on.
“I’ve done most of Austin’s games and movies in the last few years,” Kempster said. “I helped him record the original ideas for Assassin’s Creed here in LA, and we were able to get very specific about the feeling and timbre we were after. He wanted a real tactile feeling so that the gamer would feel like the music was right there, not far off in the distance. Our early conversations and work held the project together, and so my mix was a natural extension of that.” Wintory introduced Kempster to Gareth Coker, which led to his work on Ori and the Blind Forest. Kempster is also working on new games with award-winning composer, Mikolai Stroinski.
Back in the late 1970s, Kempster got into the music business as a singer-songwriter. “I learned engineering so that I could get the right sound for the stories I wanted to tell,” he said. “I was inspired to do that because I found that if the engineer understood what I was up to, the song’s intention came through. But if he didn’t, it fell flat. It was an important place to get it right, so I trained myself on how to record and mix and worked with musicians on my own material. They said I had a better sound coming out of my garage than they were getting at the nice studios, so they started asking me to come work with them there. I think it’s helpful to keep the songwriter’s perspective as an engineer. I look at my job from a storytelling point of view first and foremost.”
Kempster explains that the biggest difference between mixing for records or movies and mixing for games is the inherent non-linearity of games. “Depending on the design of the game, the player will hear different things depending on their play,” he said. “If a player engages in a battle and loses, the game may reset to an earlier point. There can be a million different paths and outcomes, as compared to a record or movie with just a single linear arc. The music has to be composed so that it walks hand-in-hand with the action without becoming repetitious. It’s an amazing art that Wintory and Coker are adept at navigating. They build in different levels of the same cue. Those levels seamlessly transmute, and I have to be very careful that my mix works across all of those levels. That’s no easy trick.”
Kempster has two ATC setups: he has his LCR system of ATC SCM25As permanently installed in his home mix room and a large, but mobile LCR system of ATC SCM100ASLs paired with an ATC SCM0.1/15ASL subwoofer for use at different facilities around town. “My ATCs are the most important thing I own, and I own a lot of gear,” Kempster laughed. “With the 100s, I’m kind of like a mobile MASH unit. I’m pretty good at arranging them and working with the subwoofer’s cutoff and volume to get a nice even response. I have a few pieces of music that I listen to that help me calibrate things. Once they sound right, I know whatever I record or mix will translate.”
“All mixing is like sculpting,” he continued.” I chip away and remove the things I don’t want until I hear what I want to hear. With all the levels of a game’s mix, the details can add up in unexpected ways, and I rely on my ATC’s incredible clarity to alert me to any potential issues. When I have the mix right, the imaging on the ATCs is breathtaking and the mix sounds correct across all the volume levels. By relying on ATCs, my mixes translate to postproduction and consumer systems. If I couldn’t get that right, someone later in the production chain would have to do it for me. It’s great that there are talented people who can do that, but I certainly don’t want to be the engineer whose mix needs saving! Career longevity doesn’t come out of that equation!” (Spoken by an engineer who has been delivering spot on mixes for nearly forty years…).
Photo © 2016 Larry Mah
Transaudio Group (ATC U.S. Professional Product Distribution)
After working on audio monitors of a well known brand for over 12 years, Ulmt of Helios suggested to have a listen at ATC. After short deliberation the SCM45A Pro looked like the best option, so he brought a pair over to my studio. After all, it is best to check a monitor system in your own, familiar environment.
We played several CD tracks as well as some of my own recordings from a Pro Tools HD system. I “clicked” with the loudspeakers immediately, though I didn’t dare to say it out loud just yet! Ulmt suggested to keep the monitors in my studio for a while. “I’ll call you up in about a week to hear what you think of them”, he said. Two days later I made the call and told him I couldn’t do without them anymore.
Despite the fact the mixes I made on my previous monitors still hold their ground, the ATC’s give me much more detailed and accurate information, especially when it concerns layers of instruments, placement and depth of field. After experiencing this, there simply was no way back. But the most important thing for me was that, while so much more information was presented to me, the overall sound appeared more relaxing to my ears. It caused, so to say, less confusion in my head. The positive result of this is that it leaves more room for creativity in my mind. Making mix decisions is now so much easier! Music is a story to be told and when mixing, all the track information needs to be brought into balance, giving each and everything the right dynamics. The SCM45A Pro’s are a great support accomplishing this.
Peter van Tilburg, Studiobizz, Oss
Like The Beatles, Madonna, and Nirvana, you’ve undoubtedly heard the music of Devin Powers, but you probably didn’t know it. Powers is arguably the world’s most prolific recording artist turned composer for modern television. He’s written, performed, and recorded literally tens-of-thousands of songs in every genre and style imaginable for all manner of TV shows. His clients include the pioneering reality show Blind Date, The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, The Biggest Loser, The Amazing Race, and Naked & Afraid, the ground breaking #1 survival show for Discovery along with others for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The History Channel, MTV, A&E, and more. In fact, Powers has had music in over four hundred TV shows over the last seventeen years. He’s earned numerous awards from ASCAP, including “Most Performed Television Underscore” in 2006. The three keys to his success are a limitless wellspring of musical inspiration, the capacity to perform every aspect of his compositions, and the professional tools to nail the sound of the target genre and deliver a perfect mix on deadline. For the last two years, Powers has relied on ATC SCM25A active near-field monitors to craft those perfect mixes in an enjoyable, non-fatiguing way, day-in and day-out.
Powers didn’t start out aiming to be top dog in the world of television underscores. Instead, he was a bona fide rocker; an ace on guitar and vocals, with plenty of chops to spare on everything else. He wrote for and led the Universal Records band The Vents in the 1990s. With top-10 radio hits saturating the airwaves, The Vents toured the USA, opening up for bands like Smashmouth, Matchbox 20, Radiohead, Foo Fighters, and Wilco. Clearly, Powers had arrived. But alas, the vicissitudes of corporate mergers and steely boardroom decisions saw The Vents dropped from the label despite radio hits and an undeniably ascending trajectory.
It was a blessing in disguise. “My goal had never been to be a rock star, per se,” Powers said. “I live and breathe music. It oozes out of my pores. My goal was always to make a living making music. I started producing for younger bands when I met up with an industry friend who was looking for an authentic rock guy to write songs for a ‘reality TV show.’ This was back in 1998, and no one knew what a ‘reality TV show’ was! He explained the concept, and I thought it sounded like a fun opportunity to sit in one place and write punk, funk, rock, R&B, metal, you name it. I signed on, and it was way more rewarding in many ways than working in the rock world with no touring! In Blind Date’s first season, Powers wrote and recorded over 1,500 tracks, and at the end of five seasons, he had 7,000 tracks.
Now eighteen years later, Powers has a group of writers working under him, but his main focus is still on writing, recording, and mixing music for his biggest clients. And he has amassed the resources to be a true master of tone. He has all the guitars, amps, drums, keyboards, microphones, vintage outboard gear, and all the deep know-how to pick and choose among that massive arsenal of tools to get just the right sound for a piece. And he does it at a breakneck pace, often starting with nothing in the morning and leaving eight hours later with several completed mixes of songs he wrote and recorded that day!
“Only the biggest primetime scripted shows master or sweeten the music tracks before they’re incorporated into the show. On unscripted shows it’s on the composer to make sure everything is absolutely perfect before it goes out the door,” Powers said. “I have found that my ATC 25s reveal everything that’s going on in my mix, and they do so at any volume. Their midrange is fantastic, and overall, they have the right combination of rock, detail, and punch. And I can listen to them all day and not leave feeling fatigued.”
Powers notes that there are a few differences between mixing for traditional music outlets and for television. First, there’s no unity volume in TV, so Powers typically mixes in the green, leaving more room for dynamics than you might guess. Second, the effects of low volume on sustained sounds (e.g. synth pads) versus transients (e.g. drums) can wreak havoc with a mix. Although he doesn’t want to give away too many secrets, Powers always checks his mixes at low volume on Auratone Sound Cubes. “I listen carefully to the transients,” he said. “My mixes have to work well and translate at all volumes.”
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – JANUARY 2016: Adding to the two Grammy nominations already to his credit for Bomba Estereo’s Elegancia Tropical (Best Alternative Music Album at the 2013 Latin Grammys) and Pretty Lights’ (Best Dance/Electronica Album at the 2014 Grammys), Brooklyn-based producer, engineer, and musician Joel Hamilton now has two more Grammy nominations. Both are related to Highly Suspect’s first full-length album, Mister Asylum, which Hamilton produced, recorded, and mixed at his three-room facility, Studio G Brooklyn. The album is up for Best Rock Album, and its single “Lydia” is up for Best Rock Song. Not coincidentally, all of Hamilton’s Grammy nominations are for works he produced and engineered after outfitting all three control rooms at Studio G with ATC SCM25A Pro nearfield reference monitors, which he relies on at every stage of every project in which he involves himself.
“I came up in the punk rock world, playing at CBGB and listening to really gritty records,” Hamilton said. “There was the right kind of wrong on every record I loved. It was the like the technology wasn’t up to capturing so huge an event, and the sound of the technology failing adds excitement to the recording. You can feel that same effect when you’re really rocking out in your friend’s car on a road trip: you crank the stereo up just below the point at which it’s going to completely fail and shout along with the music!”
He continued, “What’s amazing is that we now are pretty close to being able to capture sound with virtually zero noise or distortion. We thought that was the goal, but it turns out to be boring for most genres of music. And it also turns out that there’s a huge range of boring at the bottom, a tiny window of beautiful distortion near the top, and a huge range of distracting distortion above that. The goal – and it’s not easy – is to hit that small sweet spot so that a recording sounds exciting at any volume without being fatiguing. That’s what I’m shooting for.”
Hamilton finds that window recording the basic tracks to a 24-track Studer analog tape machine. “With my ATC monitors, I’m able to see that tiny perfect window, where the grit is just right, during recording,” he said. “That’s critical, because I’m committing to it. There’s no undo key. Now that I have ATC’s legendary midrange clarity, I realize that I used to be half-guessing on other monitors. These days, my intention reads more clearly in the end result.” Music fans, some of whom are on the Grammy nominating committee, would seem to agree with Hamilton’s assessment!
Hamilton cites the singles from Pretty Lights and Highly Suspect as great examples of “the right kind of wrong.” Although electronic, Pretty Lights’ “Around the Block” has a deep, growly, dirty sound that gives it an organic personality that aligns beautifully with the concept of the song. If Hamilton hadn’t hit the tape as hard, the song would have had a much less engaging presence. “When the chorus kicks in on Highly Suspect’s single, “Lydia,” the whole song surrounds you,” he said. “It’s like it pours out of the speakers and floods the room. You can’t get that kind of sound if everything’s clean and safe, but if you overdo it, it turns into a mess.”
All three of Studio G’s rooms have ATC SCM25As on the meter bridge that, in addition to being convenient for Hamilton, are a welcomed asset for all of the studio’s outside clients. “Strange to say, but I feel like I got a home when I discovered ATC monitors,” he said. “It’s the sound I want in every room, and I don’t have to explain anything away when I tell prospective clients that we have ATC monitors. They’re like, ‘oh, perfect’ and there’s no need for further discussion on that point. When I’m working with musicians or other producers, the ATCs provide an accurate reflection of what I’m trying to do. There’s no need to try to explain my intensions… they can just hear them.”
ABOUT TRANSAUDIO GROUP
TransAudio Group, founded by industry veteran Brad Lunde, has quickly become the premier U.S. importer/distributor and/or U.S. sales and marketing representative for high-end audio. Success hinges on TransAudio providing dealers and end users with a higher standard of product expertise and support far beyond the norm. TransAudio Group are the official U.S. importer for ATC’s professional product line.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 2015: John Rodd snuck out of the house. The year was 1977, long before he would become a prominent music recording, mixing and mastering engineer in the film, gaming, and music industries, with credits including Breaking Bad, Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Lincoln Lawyer, World of Warcraft, Elysium, Batman: Bad Blood, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed; and Eric Clapton among countless others.
He was eleven years old at the time, and the occasion was arguably worthy of so great an infraction: the original Star Wars film was playing in the theater and he wasn’t going to be the only kid in class to miss it! Now, decades later, Rodd is a part of the Star Wars universe by mixing and mastering Gordy Haab’s original score for EA Star Wars: Battlefront™. Like many of the scores he records, mixes and masters, Rodd relied on his ATC SCM150ASL Pro reference monitors to inform his decisions with transparency and truthfulness
Players of EA Star Wars: Battlefront™ hear Haab’s original score throughout most of the game, but the game also segues in and out of parts of John Williams’ legendary Star Wars film scores. Rodd had to make sure that Gordy’s original score would fit with the older film scores from both a technical standpoint and, more importantly, from an emotional standpoint. “To fit within the Star Wars universe, Gordy’s music had to sound lush and huge, exciting and dramatic,” Rodd said. “The recordings took place at Abbey Road’s largest studio, and part of my task was always striking the perfect balance between the room mics and the spot mics. If only the room mics were utilized then the music would sound too far away. The spot mics add presence and detail, but if they become too loud, the recording loses its grandeur and falls out of balance. It loses its depth.”
Rodd emphasized that his cinematic and gaming work takes a different mindset compared with that of a classical recording that is meant to stand on its own. It has to effectively coexist with dialog and sound effects, which require different considerations. “I had to think about the big picture for EA Star Wars: Battlefront™,” he said. “Clarity is paramount. A lot of my work involves tiny surgical adjustments to clear away frequencies that are masking or diminishing important elements. Getting the right balance of clarity and size is difficult, and it requires profoundly accurate monitoring.”
He continued, “I find that my ATC 150s are very revealing and honest. ATC is legendary for its midrange quality, and I rely on my ATC 150s to help make all the tiny sonic decisions that add up to a compelling mix. They’re brutally honest, which is a good thing! If something actually sounds glorious, then it will sound glorious on my 150s. If something is slightly amiss, it will sound wrong on my 150s. There’s no guessing; ATC gives me the whole picture. Moreover, that truthfulness guarantees that a great sound in my studio will translate well to any other system. As a result, I’m able to work with 100% confidence.”
ABOUT TRANSAUDIO GROUP
TransAudio Group, founded by industry veteran Brad Lunde, has quickly become the premier U.S. importer/distributor and/or U.S. sales and marketing representative for high-end audio. Success hinges on TransAudio providing dealers and end users with a higher standard of product expertise and support far beyond the norm.
“The ATC SCM 50’s and an ATC SCM 1-15 subwoofer have been my main monitoring for three years now. They’re the best I’ve had.” Tom Elmhirst, SonicScoop, December 2015.
Read the feature in full here at sonicscoop.
According to his official website, Omar Hakim is: “Widely acclaimed for his versatility, technical prowess, and groove [and] is one of the most successful session drummers of the past forty years.” Yet the acclaimed American jazz, jazz fusion, and pop music drummer, producer, arranger, and composer certainly needs not blow his own trumpet too loudly, so-to-speak, for his association with top-tier acts as varied as Miles Davis, Marcus Miller, Weather Report, Sting, Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Kate Bush, Dire Straits, and Journey surely speaks louder than words.
When ever-present US rock band Journey’s longtime drummer, Dean Castronovo, was arrested during their 2015 North American summer tour they turned to Omar Hakim to capably walk in his percussive shoes at arguably the shortest notice in high-flying touring history — less than 24 hours! However, when reclusive English singer-songwriter, musician, composer, dancer, and record producer Kate Bush ventured out on stage as a headliner late last year for the first time in 35 years for a sold-out string of no fewer than 22 ‘intimate’ theatrical shows at London’s Eventim Apollo theatre — the admired, albeit renamed venue where her only concert CD to date, Live At Hammersmith Odeon, was recorded way back in 1979, it was with Omar Hakim holding down the perfect beat throughout those career-spanning shows… shows that indirectly led the demonstrably in-demand drummer to ATC, as it happens.
“I didn’t become aware of ATC until I began working with Kate Bush,” begins Omar Hakim himself, before adding: “Her engineer was the great producer/engineer Greg Walsh, who set up a control room space at the rehearsal location during pre-production for the London shows. That’s where I heard ATCs for the first time — SCM100ASL Pros, I believe. I was immediately blown away with
what I was hearing. That was the first time that I had ever heard a speaker reproduce audio like that! Then I had the pleasure of doing some show prep at Kate’s personal studio, where I think she had SCM150ASL Pros — fantastic!”
So when it came to upgrading the main monitoring at The OH-Zone, his own personal studio back home across the pond in New Jersey, it was an ATC done deal as far as Omar Hakim was concerned: “I was thinking of getting SCM25A Pros — until I heard the SCM50ASL Pros at the ATC factory, having had the pleasure of getting a factory tour and sitting with Managing Director Billy
Woodman to audition several ATC models. I decided to go with the SCM50ASL Pros because I could hear the difference in the low-end response. I also knew that for my purpose of tracking live drums and small rhythm sections they were the right choice for me! To finally be able to monitor music with this level of accuracy and detail is an incredible experience for me. The SCM50ASL
Pros are definitely taking my work to the next level.”
Not that Omar Hakim has ever been short of session work, mind — most recently recording drums for the Grammy® award-winning Random Access Memories album by breakthrough French electronic duo Daft Punk, as well as recording, mixing, and producing his third critically-acclaimed solo album, We Are One, at The OH-Zone. The Trio of OZ, the band he formed with wife Rachel Z in 2010, are currently working on their second album, all set for release on his OZmosis Media Group label in 2016: “I’ve recorded and mixed three albums there, and I also do lots of sessions for clients around the world that send me tracks to put drums on.”
Omar Hakim has plans to build a new home and studio, so his beloved SCM50ASL Pros will definitely be making the move, too: “I’ve always had a deep appreciation for technology and the thought, ingenuity, and commitment needed to bring it to the world. Billy Woodman and the crew at ATC are craftsman of the highest order. From the beautiful wood cabinetry to the speaker components and electronics, ATC speakers are simply amazing!”
The winners will be determined by online voting via Mix, Pro Sound News, Pro Audio Review, and Electronic Musician and via professional audio and sound production organizations. The winners will be announced at the 2016 Winter NAMM show, held from 21st – 24th January 2016 at the Anaheim Convention Centre, California.
For more information: TEC Awards NAMMSINGAPORE: Reflecting a growth in market share and demand for the brands it represents, ATC distributor CDA Pro-Audio has moved its Singapore-based showroom to a larger 140 sq-m facility based at Bendemeer Road, #01-01. The showroom has been designed to encourage both audio professionals and and Hi-Fi enthusiasts to relax and audition new products in a comfortable yet professional environment.
Representing brands including ATC, CEDAR, Prism Sound, Maselec, Trident, Tonelux, Penny & Giles, SADiE, and MicW amongst others, CDA-Pro Audio already has dedicated offices across Australia and Asia. The new Singapore facility, located in a central business district is only minutes’ walk from the Boon Keng MRT station. Having been purpose-designed, the showroom offers high floor-to-ceiling windows for an abundance of natural light plus a modular-style layout for maximum flexibility.
According to Joel Chia, CDA-Pro Audio Singapore general manager, the concept for the facility was to have the demo area, “feel like a living room or lounge where people can freely relax and not be intimidated by aggressive sales people. We try to relate to customers discover what solutions suit the customers’ needs, rather than simply push product”.
Full contact details for the new showroom are: Luzerne 70 Bendemeer Road, #01-01, Singapore, 339940. Tel: +65 6252 9983 Email: singapore@cda-proaudio.com Web: www.cda-proaudio.com
When Paul Power, owner of Power Sound Studio in Amsterdam , heard the new ATC SCM45A in Helios’ demo room in Haarlem, he knew there was no turning back. This audio monitor proved such a big step forward that Paul found the change to be simply unavoidable. A week later Paul placed the order and three weeks later received delivery and now the control room is equipped with a 5.1 monitor system where many only dream of.
Soon a personal response from Paul Power….
ATC Professional products are distributed in the Netherlands and Belgium by Helios Pro Audio Solutions
For more information on Paul Power’s Power Sound Studios please take a look at their website
Our CA2/P1 pre/power combination has been very favourably reviewed in this months Hi-Fi Choice magazine.
Reviewer, David Price concluded:
“An excellent performer, this is a true slice of affordable esoterica – you get a taste of what a really top-flight high-end pre-power amplifier will do, without having to remortgage your house in the process.”
The magazine is available now. Alternatively, you can click the photo or text below to access a PDF of the review.
ATC CA2 & P1 Review, Hi-Fi Choice, April 2015
