Joe Satriani with ATC SCM25A Loudspeakers
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 2015: Engineer John Cuniberti’s first professional highlight was a gig mixing monitors for Stevie Wonder in the late 1970s. After that, he pivoted to the studio and has since recorded, mixed, and mastered hundreds of major- and indie-label artists, including The Dead Kennedys, Tracy Chapman, Thomas Dolby, and the Grateful Dead. Cuniberti worked with legendary guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani to record his first professional studio album, Not Of This Earth, in 1986, and the two have been a productive team ever since. Most recently, they traveled to Skywalker Sound and 25th Street Recording (Oakland, California) to cut tracks for Satriani’s forthcoming album, Shockwave Supernova. Given the tremendous success they had had with ATC SCM25A three-way active monitors in Satriani’s home studio, they rented a pair at both Skywalker and 25th Street.
“A little while back, Joe expressed growing frustration with the nearfields he had in his studio at the time,” said Cuniberti. “He felt like the mid-range was too forward and aggressive, and that led him to make decisions that didn’t translate outside of the studio. I recommended the ATC SCM25As, and he immediately fell in love with their musicality and the way the decisions he made in the studio translated elsewhere.” When Cuniberti arrived at Skywalker, he didn’t find any nearfields that he felt comfortable using, so he arranged to rent a pair of ATC SCM25As for the two weeks they had booked. Then the same thing happened at 25th Street Recording. “25th Street had massive ATC SCM300ASL and SCM150ASL soffit-mounted loudspeakers, which sounded great, but again… no nearfields I wanted to use,” he said. “Again, we rented SCM25As. Finally Joe decided to buy a pair from Sweetwater for himself.”
“Working with the ATC SCM25As at Skywalker Sound, at 25th Street Recording, and at my home studio has been a wonderful experience,” said Satriani. “In all three environments, the sessions stayed accurate with imaging I could trust, and the individual tracks always came up clear, punchy, and transparent. The SCM25As are powerful yet precise sounding speakers, without the ear fatigue. Most importantly, it’s fun to create music on them!”
Cuniberti agreed: “We were able to spend time between the SCM25As all day, day after day, without getting stressed out. They sound great loud and have an impressive low-frequency response. Importantly, now that we’re listening back at home, everything we tracked at Skywalker and 25th Street sounds like I expected it to sound. There are no surprises. I think that’s the mark of an effective studio monitor. I think the industry has evolved to this point. You can go back to the NS-10 craze, which I think happened because everyone was so hungry for a stable reference point. Then some more truly transparent models started emerging, but the evolution of those modeled tended toward hype on the high end and hype on the low end. Sure, that makes a mix sound ‘good,’ but it burns the engineer out and leads to mixes that are flat and lifeless on other systems. In contrast, ATC’s professional division has remained committed to building monitors that will allow an engineer to work long hours without fatigue and with the confidence that the music will sound right everywhere else.”
For further information on ATC Professional Products in the U.S. contact Transaudio Group.
www.transaudiogroup.com
With three Grammy wins and one Latin Grammy win already to his name, renowned mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen has been nominated for yet another Grammy Award this year in the category Best Engineered Album for mastering The Way I’m Livin’ by country music singer Lee Ann Womack (which is also up for Best Country Album). He shares the nomination with fellow Grammy-winner Chuck Ainlay, who recorded and mixed the album using ATC SCM25A active three-way near-field monitors. When the project moved to Lurssen’s L.A.-based studio, his beefy ATC SCM150ASL active three-way mid-field monitors took over and guaranteed that Lurssen’s practiced ears would direct the tweaks and tucks so that Womack’s beautiful melodies would entrance listeners on everything from ear buds to expensive home theaters.
Ainlay installed ATC’s biggest soffit-mounted professional monitors, the SCM300ASLs, at his BackStage Studio around the turn of the century. “ATCs possess tremendous accuracy throughout the vocal range, and the levels I get on ATCs always seem to translate to any other environment” he said. “Since Lee Ann Womack is among the greatest female country music singers ever, I obviously had to make sure that her vocals shined on the new album. It’s also a very dynamic album that comes from the heart; it’s not just about radio hits.” Though happily accustomed to his SCM300ASLs, Ainlay had long been at the mercy of whatever loudspeakers were present whenever he worked away from BackStage. “I heard the relatively new ATC SCM25As at AES a while back and I knew I had to have them,” he said. “I bought the floor models!” Thanks to that purchase, Ainlay was able to record and mix The Way I’m Livin’ at Sound Stage Studios and still rely on his ATC SCM25As’ honesty.
“Chuck gave me some direction, but mainly he wanted me to do what I do,” said Lurssen, who is well known for delivering masters that retain an organic “chunkiness” that conveys life and dimension even on today’s ubiquitous, and often lossy, digital formats. “I strive to retain and accentuate the depth of field and lower midrange support that ultimately supports the high-end image. The clarity of ATC’s midrange is exceptional and allows me to really hear exactly what I’m doing. Of course, Chuck wanted me to produce a competitive master, but we were both in agreement that it should not be over-slammed or over-cooked.” In part to help ground his vision for the recording with Ainlay’s, Lurssen often flipped back and forth between his larger ATC SCM150ASLs to his pair of smaller ATC SCM25As – the same model that Ainlay had used. “You can never have too much information in these matters,” he laughed.
Although much of Lurssen’s magic is beyond the ability of words to describe, he was able to articulate a few of the critical components that he listened for on The Way I’m Livin’ and why their success helped the recording as a whole. “Lee Ann’s melodic structures simply had to shine,” he said. “In each instance, I had to make sure that the song was really ‘let out,’ and the vocals were usually the critical leverage point. When that melodic structure is presenting itself, it’s important to hear two aspects of the mid range. The first is the upper part, where the song is really going to jump out of the speakers. The second is the lower part that supports that upper part. Determining exactly where those two parts meet is critical for getting the right depth of field, balance, and support. The ATC’s let me zero in on that aspect so that I was sure everything was perfect. Because that balance is correct, Lee Ann’s voice and melody seem to leap from the loudspeakers.”
To get everything sounding just so, Lurssen employs an unusually large number of hardware compressors, limiters, and equalizers. “I’m trying to do as little as possible while still having the greatest impact possible,” he said. “I use a lot of gear, but I use each piece very subtly. A bit of each of the best works way better than a lot of any single piece, no matter how good it is. When everything is said and done, it needs to sound like I was never there – there can be no veil between the artist and the listener.”
Lurssen first heard ATC monitors years ago when a fellow engineer insisted that their team use a pair of ATC SCM50ASLs for a Pink Floyd project. “The rest of us made a fuss because we all had some other speakers that we were already used to,” he said. “But he set them up and within literally three seconds, I knew that I had to have my own pair. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind, which is a rare thing for anyone, I think. That certainty never went away, and so when I set out on my own a few years later, I started with ATC monitors and then built everything else around them. I’ve found that when I get a master sounding right on my ATCs, the master will successfully translate to any other system, pro or consumer.”
Lurssen Mastering
ATC are excited to announce the release of a brand new professional monitor, the SCM45A Pro.
The SCM45A Pro is a completely new design, yet shares many features with its smaller sibling, the highly-successful SCM25A Pro three-way, compact active loudspeaker. As a mid-size, three-way design that can be used in near- or mid-field positions, the SCM45A Pro perfectly fills a gap in ATC’s high-performance, professional active studio monitoring loudspeaker range. It has high output and delivers extended low frequency for its size — and all without compromising the overall balance for which ATC is so well known.
The product will start shipping on February 16th.
Check out the product page here for more info.
After an intensive listening test, Showtek brothers Wouter and Sjoerd Janssen decided to choose ATC for their main monitor system. It was love at first sight. Not only did the SCM50ASL Pro offer far higher sound quality than what they were used to listen to, the monitor also gave them much more useful information to base their decisions on. The active powered SCM50A SL’s are fed from a Grace Design m905 monitor controller.
Sjoerd: Our new ATC’s really sound super. No matter whether you play them on high or low volume, the energy of the high, mids and lows is so much more balanced now. Over here we produce club- as well as pop mixes and for both music styles the ATC work wonders. With our previous monitors it was quite hard to get the vocals placed well into the mix. That is so much easier now.
Wouter: “If your mix sounds good on the ATC’s, that track sounds good on any system”.
Sjoerd: There’s no need to play loud if you want to mix right. Which is a blessing for your ears. Especially when you’re making long studio hours like we do. And they look extremely cool, of course. The SCM50A SL is like an Audi RS6. A “muscle car” that doesn’t attract much attention at first. But once you step on the gas, it takes of like a rocket.
GILBERT, ARIZONA – NOVEMBER 2014: The Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences – or “CRAS” as it is more affectionately known – is a top-tier technical school dedicated to placing its well-trained students in entry-level positions in the music, game audio, live sound, broadcast, and post-production industries. Unlike most similar programs, CRAS obligates its students to obtain internships in order to graduate, and it has a excellent record of helping students obtain their first paying gig. Part of its success, which has resulted in literally hundreds of CRAS grads working on literally hundreds of Grammy Award-winning projects, is exposing students to high-end professional tools. Thus, when CRAS recently expanded its facilities with the addition of control rooms F and G, it put ATC SCM25A Pro reference monitors – among the industry’s most-trusted tools – in both.
“Our rooms reflect reality in the industry,” said Tony Nunes, music production instructor and manufacture liaison at CRAS. Nunes, together with Mike Jones, director of education, travels to trade shows, recording studios, and post-production facilities around the country to keep CRAS’s facilities and instruction in perfect synchrony with the latest (and enduring) industry standards. “We sculpt our technology and instruction to remain always at the current standards in the industry,” he continued. “Two years ago at AES in New York City, we visited a lot of the big studios in town, like Stadium Red and Electric Ladyland, and talked with our grads who worked there. A consistent theme that studio managers/staff stressed was the persistent requests they received for ATC monitors; so persistent, in fact, that most studios invested in their own ATCs.” CRAS’s ATC SCM25A Pros join Pro Tools HDX rigs with Apogee converters, [soundBlade HD] rigs with Mytek converters, and SSL AWS 948 combined console and control surfaces.
“The ATCs are certainly the most transparent monitors we have at CRAS,” said Nunes. “Students don’t get to studios F and G until they are a little ways into the program. By that time, they can really appreciate the details that the ATCs reveal. For example, when we’re tracking in those control rooms, students will notice the smallest details, like fret buzz on the bass. One time we had a vocalist who was struggling with an allergy and sinus problem. After he rested and had some tea, he came back and all the students could really hear the physicality of the difference. One student said it was like he could see the vocal cords in the ATCs. They’re a really great tool.”
Because students use the ATC SCM25A Pros later in the program, they get an opportunity to scrutinize their earlier projects. “They know so much more six months later, and now they’ve got these great monitors that reveal so much; it can often be a painful experience,” said Nunes. “But we bravely turn it into a learning experience. We find and analyze the mistakes, and then students may remix their projects. Every time, they come back happy with the results. Because the new mixes pass the test on the ATCs, they translate everywhere else, like students’ cars, apartments and computers.”
Although CRAS is explicit in stating that it does not teach students to be mastering engineers per se – which necessarily requires skills that can only be acquired through years of experience – it most definitely teaches its students about the mastering process and about the technical details that mastering engineers will expect of their work. There again, the ATC SCM25A Pros, which are mastering-grade reference monitors, benefit CRAS students.
Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences
Transaudio Group
SCM25A Pro
“The main reason that led me to getting ATCs was the need for a relatable second pair of monitors. I was working in a studio in Northern California where the mains were ATC SCM300ASL Pros. I got accustomed to them and then I got back to my studio and found them to be really true. So when I was told that ATC was starting to make passive two- way monitors I had to try them and now I have a pair of SCM20PSL Pros. They are great!”
– Val Garay, 2014 (Grammy® award-winning producer/engineer)
TOPANGA CANYON, CALIFORNIA, USA: specialist British loudspeaker drive unit and complete sound reproduction system manufacturer ATC is proud to announce that Grammy® award-winning producer/ engineer extraordinaire Val Garay has installed a pair of SCM20PSL Pro compact, high-performance passive two-way studio monitors in The Barn Studio, his current state-of-the-art recording facility nestled in the heart of Topanga Canyon, California…
With an accomplished career spanning four decades, during which he has garnered over 100 Gold and Platinum status records for a lengthy list of renowned recording artists with combined sales totalling over 125-million units worldwide, multiple Grammy® award-winning producer/engineer Val Garay is truly a music industry legend in his own right — one who surely needs little in the way of introduction to any audio aficionado who has laid ears on those truly ear-expanding productions, yet is worthy, without doubt, of one all the same. This talented and iconic individual can claim to have worked with anyone who’s anyone with a recording roster spanning Kim Carnes, Mr Big, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Burdon, Dolly Parton, Queensrÿche, Neil Diamond, Ringo Starr, Linda Rondstadt, Sarah Brightman, Kenny Rogers, Santana, and Joan Armatrading, to list but a few notable names from rock ’n’ roll’s historic hall of fame. For Garay helped to create and define the legendary ‘LA Sound’ that’s still reverberating around the world today, thanks in no small part to his proven production prowess — think memorable hits like the ‘We Are The World’ charity single from star-studded supergroup USA For Africa, Toto’s ‘Rosanna’, Don Henley’s ‘The Boys Of Summer’, and you’ll soon be on a roll.
Starting out as a performer and songwriter, Garay soon stepped offstage and set the console controls for the heart of the charts when Dave Hassinger, owner/operator of the illustrious Sound Factory Studio in Hollywood, took him under his wing to teach the finer points of crafting carefully engineered productions. Within a year Garay had refined his own technique, perfecting a punchy bottom-end and guitar blend with a mixing approach that has distinguished his work ever since. Indeed, it was the 1981 release of Kim Carnes’ Mistaken Identity album that truly cemented Garay’s well-earned reputation as a well-oiled one-man hit-making machine. Its attendant stratospheric-selling single ‘Betty Davis Eyes’ went on to top the charts in no fewer than 31 countries earning Garay a Record Of The Year Grammy® in the process and coinciding with a move into his own state-of-the-art recording studio.
“I owned Record One, a huge state-of-the-art studio built to my own exacting standards back in 1980,” notes its former owner. “It’s still in operation today, but the original cost to build it back then was 3.5-million dollars. Today you can put together a state-of-the-art studio for a tenth of that cost because of the technology that’s now available. When I sold that studio I bounced around for seven or eight years until I got tired of fighting for time in the studios I liked and decided to put together my own facility here in Topanga where I live — hence The Barn Studio.”
Comfortably ensconced in the more cost-effective though no less state-of the-art environs of The Barn Studio, Garay’s achievements as a super-successful and still-sought-after producer/engineer speak volumes — clearly he has no need to prove anything to anyone. Arguably this makes it all the more amazing that he has opted to post some exceedingly enlightening and eminently enjoyable engineering and production tips and tricks on the blog page of his website (www.valgaray.com). “Sharing my techniques is something I’ve always done over the years,” he says. “Some engineers are very secretive about ‘their process’, but my thoughts are: if I teach you exactly what I do and how I do it — which I’ve done with all the engineers I’ve taught in the past that have all gone on to become notable engineers — then I find they will never sound the same as myself. And even if they did then it wouldn’t matter as I’m always on to something new anyway.”
Like new monitors, for example, augmenting his tried-and-tested working relationship with a beloved pair of Bryston 4BST-powered vintage Tannoy SGN10Bs acting as mains alongside a pair of heavily-customised Yamaha NS-10 nearfields with a pair of ATC’s relatively recently-released SCM20PSL Pro compact, high-performance passive two-way studio monitors while ‘retiring’ a Genelec 1030A and 1092A active combo in the process: “The Genelecs were powered and I’ve never really loved powered speakers, but the main reason that led me to getting ATCs was the need for a relatable second pair of monitors. I was working a lot in a studio in Northern California where the mains were ATC SCM300ASL Pros. I got accustomed to them and then I got back to my studio and found them to be really true. So when I was told that ATC was starting to make passive two-way monitors I had to try them and now I have a pair of SCM20PSL Pros. I guess, in the final analysis, I like UK monitors!”
Asked how his new SCM20PSL Pros paired up with a favoured old faithful Phase Linear 700B amp are shaping up in terms of contributing to his present-day production workflow, Garay’s generous and no-nonsense response sums it up perfectly (and is perfectly in keeping with his blogged “Trust your ears and believe in yourself…” working mantra): “They are great!”
Val Garay www.valgaray.com
Transaudio Group (ATC US Distribution) www.transaudiogroup.com
AUSTIN, TEXAS – NOVEMBER 2014: “Legendary guitarist” is justifiably the most common two-word description given of Eric Johnson, whose six-string prowess has earned him a Grammy win, several Grammy nominations, a Platinum album, and residency on practically every “Top X Guitarists of All Time” list ever made. He’s regularly played and recorded with fellow guitar greats Chet Atkins, Steve Vai, and Joe S…atriani, and Eric Clapton selected Johnson for his 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival. Most recently, Johnson collaborated with jazz guitar great Mike Stern on the album Eclectic, which the two recorded and mixed at Johnson’s Austin-based studio with the help of Johnson’s accomplished recording and mix engineer Kelly Donnelly. Although Johnson is known mainly for his prodigious talent as a guitarist, he is also comfortable playing numerous other instruments, including piano, lap steel, bass, and voice. He is an accomplished songwriter and, in more recent years, has plied his skills over the years as a producer and assisting his recording engineers. The common frustration of mixing a song to seeming perfection, only to find obvious mistakes when he played it on other systems, drove Johnson to find the perfect near-field monitors. He found them in a pair of ATC SCM25As, which deliver the undecorated truth so that Johnson’s mixes sound beautiful and balanced on any system, from wee computer speakers to the biggest home theaters.
Years in the making, Johnson slowly constructed the ideal project studio in his Austin, Texas home, and he only declared it finished six years ago. “I always wanted a great rehearsal space, and it seemed natural to make it a recording studio as well,” he said. “I took my time because I wanted to do it right. I like to think about the tools I use the same way I think about guitars. When I find the right guitar, it facilitates my playing. It’s like I can feel the push of the polarity, the wind’s at my back, and soon I’m not paying any attention to the guitar itself… I’m just making music. It’s the same with the studio and all the equipment and processes in the studio. At their best, they fall away and I’m just making music.”
Most of the engineering duties at Johnson’s project studio fall to Donnelly. “Kelly and I often found ourselves second-guessing our mixes,” said Johnson. “We’d take a mix that sounded perfect in the studio and notice huge bumps or holes when we played it other places. It’d be like, ‘we must have overlooked that in the studio!’ But then we’d go back to the studio and those bumps or holes wouldn’t be there. So there was a lot of back and forth, which wasted time, energy, and inspiration. I became very interested in finding a near field system that would ensure our mixes translated outside of the studio, especially as we drew close to working on Eclectic. People with ears I trust told me that ATC is the way to go.”
After performing due diligence with trials of numerous top-end reference monitor manufacturers, Johnson arrived at the same conclusion. He purchased a pair of ATC SCM25As, which feature a three-way active design starting with a seven-inch low-frequency driver. “The ATCs have a great vibe and they’re fun to mix on,” said Johnson. “The imaging is solid and in-phase, and the top end is natural – not glitchy or peaky or spikey. They’re pleasant at whisper volume or blaring, and the response seems pretty linear across that range. I’ve also noticed that we can monitor at high volumes on the ATCs as long as we like and they never become fatiguing. So the in-studio experience on the ATCs is great. Beyond that however, the mixes we’ve done on the ATCs translate beautifully, and we don’t have to second-guess ourselves anymore.”
Part of the Concord Music Group, instrumental music label Heads Up International released Eclectic, and thus sent it to Concord’s multiple Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer Paul Blakemore. For years now, Blakemore has been mastering on ATC SCM150ASL monitors. “The ATC monitors are the most accurate loudspeakers I have ever heard, and I can’t imagine using anything else,” he said. “They work equally well on any genre of music, which is very unusual and particularly important for Eclectic. As the name promises, Eclectic is eclectic! It runs from rock, to jazz, to blues, to R&B, and to everything in between. The ATCs were critical for getting the high end correct and consistent across all those styles. Similarly, the ATCs were critical for making sure the low end was true and in the pocket from song to song. Once I get things right on the ATCs, I’m confident that the final product will translate to any other system in the world.”
In November 2014 and January and February 2015, Johnson and Stern are taking their otherworldly chops on the road for an extended U.S. engagement.
(PHOTO CREDIT: © 2014 Max Crace)
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – AUGUST 2014: Puss n Boots is a three-piece, all-female, alt-country band led by singer-songwriter Norah Jones and backed by accomplished vocalists Sasha Dobson and Catherine Popper. All three women learned new instruments for five years before recording their debut album with engineer/musician/producer Joel Hamilton (Tom Waits, Black Keys, Sparklehorse, Elvis Costello) at Studio G Brooklyn. Titled No Fools, No Fun, the album was recently released on Blue Note Records. As co-owner of Studio G Brooklyn with Tony Maimone, Hamilton installed ATC SCM25A three-way reference monitors and ATC SCM0.1-15 subwoofers in Studio A, a change that happily coincided with his first Grammy nomination (Pretty Lights, A Color Map of the Sun), a Latin Grammy nomination (Bomba Estereo, Elegancia Tropical), and a Latin Grammy win (Gaby Moreno, Postales). The ATCs were purchased from Audio Power Tools in New York.
“The ATCs have changed the way I work and improved the quality of my work,” said Hamilton. “I’m lucky to have a nicely tuned control room with an SSL and plenty of vintage outboard gear, and with the ATCs, I’m suddenly able to make decisions that are smaller – and yet more critical – than I have ever been able to make before. I have the ability to resolve a finer shade of the colors I’m hurling at the end-listener, and it’s been a revelation. It’s not a small thing, and that’s why I’m reaching for dramatic words like that. It’s tectonic. The entire continent has shifted.”
The glorious harmonies delivered by Jones, Dobson and Popper are a huge part of Puss n Boots’ magic. They form the emotional foreground. “The balance of those harmonies is crucial,” said Hamilton. “You’ve got these three gorgeous women with gorgeous voices, and they’re all coming at you like gangbusters because they can all project. We recorded everything live to analog tape, including the vocals. That gives a particular nuance to how the instruments sit against the vocals. You can feel the beat push and pull so beautifully. I needed to make sure that all of that nuance would come shining through for the listener. Striking the right midrange balance of those harmonies is critical, and I had to make sure all of that beauty would be immediately apparent to, say, my mom!”
While Norah Jones’ existing albums might safely be described as “polished” and most classic country albums might safely be described as “rough,” Hamilton had to walk the line between those extremes. “The balance is deliberately raw, which is perhaps unexpected by traditional Norah Jones standards, but it also has to be informed,” he said. “We were shooting for a tiny bulls eye, but we also had to make sure that everything felt unfettered and natural; just on the edge of scratchy so that it felt rough but didn’t actually hurt people. With the ATCs, I could find that line and make adjustments with confidence. I could tell where I was overcooking it on purpose. I could dial in just the right amount of ‘road house.'”
With the introduction of the ATCs, gone too is the need to translate for the client how a mix will sound outside of the studio. “After spending a lot of time in front of other monitors, I could tell when certain things would sound bad in the studio but fine outside of the studio,” Hamilton said. “The challenge beyond that, however, was convincing the client that those bad things would be fine later on, which is just one more thing to heap onto the already-skittish nature of an attended mix session. And so clients would ask, ‘why don’t you just get monitors that sound like it will sound like?’ It seems so simple, but of course it’s not.”
Hamilton used to switch between a number of monitors and loudspeakers all day long, but now he just hangs out on the ATCs. Depending on the task at hand, he can turn the ATC subwoofer on or not. “With the sub on and the volume cracked, the ATCs rock and serve as ‘mains,'” he said. “When I’m listening closely and resolving small moves, the ATCs are my nearfields. Either way, I now have complete confidence in what I’m hearing and doing. When a mix sounds good on the ATCs, I know it will sound good everywhere else. With Puss n Boots, we were able to make solid decisions that stuck. We totally avoided the hell of endless revisions!”
“We all came to these monitors from different paths — writing, mixing, and mastering, which I think is testament to their versatility as a range.”
– Stephen Barton (Composer, Titanfall)
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, USA: specialist British loudspeaker drive unit and complete sound reproduction system manufacturer ATC is proud to announce that film and video games composer Stephen Barton, music scoring mixing engineer extraordinaire Alan Meyerson, and Grammy® award-winning mastering engineer Gavin Lurssen professionally pooled their formidable resources and talents to complete the recently released Titanfall original soundtrack album using an all-ATC selection of reference monitors… Titanfall is the latest gaming blockbuster from one of the co-creators of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare, which has spectacularly sold over 14-million copies to date. Crucially, it, too, benefits from another superlative score from film and video games composer Stephen Barton, a British émigré who headed for the Hollywood Hills back in 2002 to work as an assistant to fellow Brit composer Harry Gregson-Williams, who has won numerous awards as well as receiving widespread critical acclaim for his film and video game scores, including The Chronicles Of Narnia, the Shrek movies, and the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
Today Barton works out of his own well-stocked studio setup in a leased room within Lurssen Mastering, a full-service mastering studio on the famous Hollywood Center Studio lot, a location steeped in over 80 years of entertainment history, which, of course, is precisely where the Titanfall composition success story began, skilfully and sympathetically mocked up on an all-singing, all-dancing DAW. Here he hears exactly what he needs to, thanks to a revealing pair of ATC SCM50ASL Pro three-way active monitors. “The ATCs are nothing short of phenomenal,” Barton begins, before continuing: “There’s nothing out there that equals them to my mind in terms of clarity, lack of fatigue over long-term listening, and truthfulness, which is the most important quality of any studio monitor. I’ve been using them for nearly seven ears now, so, when I started working out of Lurssen Mastering a few years ago, the fact that Gavin Lurssen was using the bigger brothers to hose in my setup was actually a big influence, and a great indication that we were like-minded in our listening approach.”
Cue Gavin Lurssen, Chief Mastering Engineer at Lurssen Mastering, whose sought-after skill-set brought the Titanfall original soundtrack production to its natural conclusion: “I have a strong relationship with Stephen Barton, who wanted me to do what we do to his music that was being released on Titanfall. When you’re also dealing with some orchestral music — beautiful stuff like this that was done in Abbey Road, it clearly falls into the high standards and practices of what we normally do — creating a total spectrum of balance that’s going to translate into all consumer listening environments, which includes mobile devices with little earbuds all the way through to audiophile listening environments.”
Sited within that historic Hollywood building — formerly used to fashion movie sets, Lurssen’s listening environment is naturally second to none with larger ATC SCM150ASL Pro three-way active and smaller ATC SCM25A Pro three-way compact active monitors at its heart: “The way that I ended up with ATC was that I was working at another mastering facility and a client came in with a pair of ATCs so that they could complete a project. Within seconds of hearing them I knew that something magical was happening and also knew that when the time came to open my own place then that’s where I’d turn to. So when that happened eight years ago their US distributor hooked me up with the 150s and I’ve used them ever since. There’s no doubt in my mind that they’re the only thing that I can use to create my audio balances. They’re smooth and not fatiguing, and, somehow, make digital sound like analogue. I can sit in a room all day long and not burn out.”
Outside the mastering and compositional confines of the Titanfall soundtrack-spawning Lurssen Mastering building, those epic-sounding orchestral music scoring mixing sessions at London’s legendary Abbey Road Studios fell upon the seasoned shoulders and exemplary ears of Alan Meyerson, one of Hollywood’s top scoring engineers, with extensive credits including the majority of Hans Zimmer’s movie music. “Alan also uses ATCs, and it’s just been a case of coincidence that this amazingly huge project was done down the line on these speakers,” summarises Lurssen.
Coincidence or otherwise, in this case, there’s no doubting the benefits of an all-ATC reference monitoring experience in Barton’s finelytuned musical mind: “The translation across the entire range made the entire workflow incredibly smooth. On mix down there were maybe two or three cues out of 30 or 40 for the IMC (Interstellar Mining Corporation) — one of the two factions in the game — that needed small tweaks. The majority of them were perfect straight out of the gate. Obviously a major part of this is down to awesome mix talent, but I think the fact that we weren’t adjusting to an entirely new monitoring approach meant that it was a much more cohesive process without any of those ‘I didn’t think that sounded like that’ moments. That’s especially true in important aspects of the frequency spectrum for a game like this, which is generally in the low end. Crucially, the translation to the game is superb. We did a direct shootout between the 25s and 150s whilst mastering Titanfall and it was stunning how consistent the sound was. All of these monitors simply tell you what’s there, and that’s a rare quality that’s vital, whether composing, mixing, or mastering.”
For more information on the products mentioned above, visit the product page for the SCM25A Pro, SCM50ASL Pro or the SCM150ASL Pro.
Gavin Lurssen – Lurssen Mastering
Stephen Barton – Afterlight Inc.
ATC is proud to announce the release of two new high performance reference nearfield monitors — the active SCM20ASL Pro (V2) and passive SCM20PSL Pro.
As implied by name, the active model replaces the previous-generation SCM20ASL Pro, while the passive model is an allnew affair, providing an entry point into ATC studio monitoring at a lower price point, albeit without compromising component quality over features.
Both models feature ATC’s renowned drive units, hand built in its UK facility. Of particular note is the new SH-25-76S 25mm/one-inch soft dome tweeter, the first to be designed and built by ATC, and the result of six years of research and development by Managing Director Billy Woodman and R&D Engineer Richard Newman. “The tweeter is designed and built with the same no-compromise philosophy as all other ATC drive units,” notes Newman, before continuing: “The design takes notes from the highly-regarded ATC midrange dome by utilising a dual-suspension design, negating the requirement for Ferro-fluid, and avoiding the detrimental effects of this drying out over time, a feature considered to be of utmost importance for longterm consistency.” The massive neodymium motor with heat-treated top plate is optimised to ensure an extended frequency response (-6dB @ 26kHz) and low non-linear distortion. The geometry of the waveguide is designed for optimum dispersion and made from a precision-machined alloy so that the entire structure is extremely rigid and free from resonances.
The bass/mid driver used in both loudspeakers is ATC’s proprietary 150mm/six-inch Super Linear device. Constructed with a 75mm/three-inch voice coil and a short-coil, long-gap topology, it combines the high-power handling and low-power compression usually only found in large, high-efficiency systems with the fine resolution and balance of modern high-fidelity systems. Unique to the drive unit is ATC’s Super Linear technology, which, by employing specialist materials in the magnetic circuit, reduces third harmonic distortion in the lower midrange.
The electronics in the active design have also had considerable development time invested in them, resulting in reduced noise and distortion (a further -10dB @ 10kHz) and a reduced operating temperature for improved reliability. The amplifier design is a revised version of ATC’s discrete MOSFET Class A/B design with 200W and 50W continuous power available for the bass and high frequency sections, respectively. The user controls have also been improved over the previous generation with more flexible input sensitivity controls and a revised low frequency shelf control to help achieve good balance in difficult acoustic conditions. The amplifier includes protection circuits for both DC offset and thermal overload.
The cabinet has been restyled to more closely follow the larger monitors in ATC’s professional range and is constructed from heavily-braced MDF. Highly damped, elastometric panels are bonded and stapled to the cabinet’s inner walls to suppress cabinet panel resonances, while the enclosure’s front panel is heavily radiused to reduce cabinet diffraction, improving the frequency response and imaging. The loudspeaker can be wall mounted via a K&M 24120 Wall Mount (available separately). Note that the cabinet requires modification to accept the ‘top-hat’ mount.
Ideally suited to critical nearfield listening applications in all control rooms, LCR surround monitoring in small-to-medium control rooms, and surround channels in medium-to-large control rooms, anyone looking to seriously improve their reference nearfield monitoring experience surely owe it to themselves and their studio setup to take a listen to the SCM20ASL Pro (V2) and/or the SCM20PSL Pro in action? EQ, balance, and edit faster, with more consistent results and reduced listening fatigue using the latest reference nearfields from ATC.
The SCM20PSL Pro passive high-performance loudspeakers carry a UK RRP of £2,083.00 GBP (plus VAT) per pair; the SCM20ASL Pro (V2) active high-performance loudspeakers carry a UK RRP of £3,647.00 GBP (plus VAT) per pair.
“The biggest strength of the ATCs are their ability to present the midrange at its best, which helps me a lot in terms of evaluating the mix and deciding what to do with it.”
– Sangwook ‘Sunny’ Nam (Owner, Jacob’s Well Mastering)
WEST LEBANON, NH, USA: specialist British loudspeaker drive unit and complete sound reproduction system manufacturer ATC is proud to announce that Grammy®-nominated mastering engineer Sangwook ‘Sunny’ Nam has installed a pair of custom SCM150ASL PRO three-way active loudspeakers at his unique Jacob’s Well Mastering facility founded in 2012…
“The reason I decided to go with ATC is that I had used ATC speakers during my time at The Mastering Lab.” So states Sangwook ‘Sunny’ Nam, a protégé of mastering legend Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab in Hollywood (and, later, Ojai, California) from July 2005 until flying solo, setting up shop towards the Eastern Seaboard at a scenic riverside location in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. How, why, and when Korean native Nam needed to seek out a mastering mentor before becoming an internationally sought-after mastering engineer in his own right makes for fascinating reading.
“I began my career as a recording engineer in 1998,” Nam begins. “Establishing myself as a top producer for classical music recordings and as an engineer for audiophile recordings in Korea, I worked with well-known musicians, such as Myungwha Chung, Daejin Kim, and Yeol Eum Son, and also a range of orchestras, including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Polish National Radio Symphony, and Nashville Symphony. I also got involved in the mastering process to preserve the quality of my audiophile recordings, but then I was able to enjoy mastering recordings produced by other people. Even though my interest in mastering stemmed from classical music, I mastered many musical styles, ranging from hip-hop to heavy metal. My passion to become a better mastering engineer drove me to e-mail Doug Sax, asking him to be my mentor. Doug generously allowed me to work with him and I also had the honour of working with great engineers like Al Schmitt, Bill Schnee, James Guthrie, and Don Murray when I joined The Mastering Lab.”
By the time of Nam’s noteworthy tenure, The Mastering Lab (TML) was equipped with ATC loudspeakers, which speaks volumes about their perceived quality when considering the unique transfer system employed there. “TML has a very unique signal chain,” notes Nam. “While it’s a commonly held belief that one has to have the cleanest signal path to be of service as a top-quality mastering studio, this is easier said than done. TML has ploughed its efforts into realising this simple but demanding belief since 1967, designing and building equipment in-house to achieve the cleanest possible signal path. A lot of elements in the signal chain there are quite unconventional, requiring extra effort from mastering engineers — unlike using modern equipment in other mastering setups. So the most important thing that I learned at TML is how to evaluate the elements of the signal chain that can serve to implement the best transfer system.”
Which was exactly what Nam took with him when family commitments compelled a cross-continental move: “My wife was hired by one of the Ivy League colleges and wanted to take our kids with her. I sort of commuted for about a year before deciding to stay with my family. It was pretty hard for me to leave TML and Doug, but my priority lies with my family.”
Far from the madding crowd, Nam chose to build his own biblically-named Jacob’s Well Mastering facility close to his newfound family home: “My studio sits on a riverbank of the Connecticut. It was originally a big storage unit attached to a small office building, so I built the studio inside it from the ground up. My room is designed by Rick Ruggieri, who designed TML’s room in Ojai — basically, it’s the same design, but scaled a bit differently because my room is built for stereo channel mastering only. The uniqueness of my room lies in the placement of the equipment rack behind the engineer. To achieve the cleanest signal path possible, putting nothing between yourself and the speakers is pretty obvious. This makes it much harder for the engineer to work, but both TML and myself don’t mind going the extra mile to maintain our philosophy at every stage of the signal path, and, actually, once you’re used to that placement, it’s not that hard to work in that way.”
Specifying SCM150ASL PRO three-way active loudspeakers for Nam’s new room at Jacob’s Well Mastering may not have been a hard choice for its driven owner, but fulfilling the order was far from standard practice for manufacturer ATC since soffit mounting was the order of the day. Concedes Nam: “This is quite rare in mastering studios, but this setup works for me, and Rick did wonderful work to mitigate the problems that could come out of the soffit design. Also this enabled me to put in a big window through which I can enjoy the beautiful view of the Connecticut river without affecting the room acoustic. ATC handled all my requests for a custom wood enclosure and different placement of the mid and tweeter units with grace. The amp pack was also sent separately to JCF Audio, who built all of my custom transfer system, for modification to suit my needs.”
As for the finished result, Nam is clearly happy with his room and the custom SCM150ASL PRO setup within: “With the design of the room, the ATCs translate the sound that I’m getting into other speaker systems very well. When it comes to speakers, most of the time people talk about bass and high frequencies, but, for me, midrange is most important, because that’s where most of the music is. The biggest strength of the ATCs are their ability to present the midrange at its best, which helps me a lot in terms of evaluating the mix and deciding what to do with it.”
For quite a few years now Dave Clarke, DJ, producer and radio presenter, has been based in Amsterdam. During his long standing career, Clarke has remixed many of electronic music’s biggest names, including the Chemical Brothers, Leftfield, Moby, Underworld, New Order and Depeche Mode.
Dave Clarke has also become a key player of the annual Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE). He is a regular DJ presence at top global clubs such as Fabric in London, Berghain in Berlin, and Fuse in Brussels. He has also played a wide range of festivals including Glastonbury, Pukkelpop, and I Love Techno and hosts his own successful stage at Tomorrowland in Belgium since 2012.
It’s an understatement to say Dave’s floating studio is well equipped. He is the type a person that always keeps an open eye and ear for cutting edge technology. Along with the ever increasing audio quality of his studio equipment, Dave realized his existing monitor system no longer met his requirements.
Several audio monitors passed in review and to cut a long story short, the ATC SCM-25A turned out to be Dave’s favorite choice. Their detailed and distortion free sound was what appealed to him most.
Dave: “Though not super abundant in the low-end the SCM-25A produced an exact and very tight image of bass pulses and bass lines. Extremely important when producing low frequency dependent club music. The mid range reveals lots of detail but is never obtrusive, the detail you can hear in the reverb tails in complicated mixes was a complete surprise and highs are frosty & crisp but never harsh or edgy. This is a monitor that tells it like it is but doesn’t bring about any listening fatigue. In fact, it is a real pleasure to listen to them and finally hear everything in the mix even if it is a complicated one.”
The ATC SCM-25A monitors where supplied and installed by Helios Pro Audio Solutions.
Next week we’ll be making our annual trip to Frankfurt to attend Musikmesse 2014.
You can find us on the S.E.A. Vertreib stand in Hall 5.1. The stand number is C79.
We’ll be showing SCM100ASL Pro, SCM25A Pro and a the new SCM20ASL Pro Mk2 which is due for offical launch in May.
“They encourage me to work in a way that I like, and I’m very happy to be supporting ATC — a British company that
works hard to make good speakers.”
– Matt Colton (MPG Mastering Engineer of the Year)
LONDON, UK: specialist British loudspeaker drive unit and complete sound reproduction system
manufacturer ATC is proud to announce that MPG Mastering Engineer of the Year Award-winner
Matt Colton has installed a pair of SCM150ASL PRO three-way active loudspeakers for critical
listening in his room at Alchemy Mastering in West London…
Thanks to an always-widening array of ear-bending analogue and digital technologies, the mastering process is far from simple. Mastering means bringing well-honed listening skills to the table and for Matt Colton — named Mastering Engineer of the Year at last year’s MPG Awards — mastering is where his heart has been for quite some time. Indeed, time well spent mastering his craft with several tenures across London — including Porky’s Mastering, Optimum Mastering, Alchemy Mastering, and AIR Studios — led to the sought-after, award-winning mastering engineer relaunching Alchemy Mastering with original owners Barry Grint and Phil Kinrade at a new Hammersmith facility where he has succeeded in becoming a master of his own destiny with his own well-stocked mastering room to boot. Here he continues to build on his growing
reputation, mastering for the likes of Coldplay, James Blake, Gary Numan, and Metronomy. Like his career, Colton’s mastering CV is a long and accomplished affair.
For Colton, though, there’s more to mastering than simply having access to the latest and greatest ear-bending analogue and digital technologies: “The thing about kit is that the things that are really important are the acoustics, speakers, amps, convertors, power supplies, and the wiring that connects them all together — anything that affects the sound in the room. You cannot get around that. So I would rather have a great-sounding room and a workstation with a couple of plug-ins than every piece of hardware ever made and a poor-sounding room, because — no matter how much you say you understand the room — we all react to what’s coming out of the speakers and make our judgements based on how it sounds in the room. If the room is too bassy then the recording is going to be bass light — even if we know the room is too bassy, so that’s fundamental.”
Fundamental to Colton’s current way of working is a pair of SCM150ASL PRO three-way active loudspeakers: “Having worked at AIR on a really lovely pair of hi-fi speakers, I felt I wanted to go back to studio monitoring and have something that maybe sounded a bit less polished in terms of the actual sound that’s coming out of the speaker. So I’m working on a pair of SCM150ASL PROs. I’d previously worked on a pair of SCM200s many years ago, which I loved, but I think the 150 is a great speaker.”
An unconventional demonstration convinced Colton that the SCM150ASL PRO patently met his critical listening criteria: “I did a lecture at Westminster University in Harrow to over 100 people in a really big lecture hall with a massive ceiling height of 50 feet or so. Ben Lilly of ATC brought along a pair of SCM150s and I played some James Blake records with really low sub-bass — down at around 35Hz, and they just sounded glorious. It was a wonderful experience to hear those records played in that room only on a pair of speakers. So, on that basis, I’ve got the 150s in my mastering room — sadly, not quite as big as that lecture hall!”
With well-honed listening skills par excellence, Colton is perfectly positioned to provide honest insight into the stunningsounding SCM150ASL PRO in action at Alchemy Mastering: “They’re a direct and honest pair of speakers. If the mix sounds good, then it sounds good here; if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. There’s no flattery on the part of the speakers, though they can be wonderful to listen to when you get it right. I’m enjoying working on them. They encourage me to work in a way that I like, and I’m very happy to be supporting ATC — a British company that works hard to make good speakers.”
“They give a really great image of everything that’s going on, whether I’m tracking a live band or working on something with a massive 808 kick drum.”
– Mark Ronson (record producer, DJ, musician)
LONDON, UK: specialist British loudspeaker drive unit and complete sound reproduction system manufacturer ATC is pleased to announce that genre-hopping, Grammy Award-winning record producer, DJ, and musician Mark Ronson has installed a pair of SCM25A PRO three-way compact active loudspeakers in his new Munro Acoustics and Steve Durr designed studio space at London’s Tileyard Studios complex…
“I was looking for a place around here,” he says, having first established himself as a diverse DJ on the New York club scene in 1993, before moving into record production in 2001 with American singer Nikka Costa’s first US album release, Everybody Got Their Something. A string of high-profile pop production and performance credits quickly followed for the likes of Lily Allen, Robbie Williams, Nas, Adele, Bruno Mars, and, most notably, Amy Winehouse, with whom Ronson bagged no fewer than three Grammys in 2008 — Producer Of The Year, Record Of The Year, and Best Pop Vocal Album. Ronson soon stormed the charts in his own right with his second solo album, Version, hitting the number 2 spot in the UK and earning him a BRIT Award for Best Male Solo Artist in 2008. Ronson repeated the feat in 2010, reaching number 2 with a third studio album, Record Collection, credited to Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.
“I haven’t had my own studio since I left New York about four years ago,” continues Ronson. “I looked at some other prebuilt studios being sold, but then it came up that all these rooms were being built at Tileyard.”
With over 50 permanent recording studios to its notable name, Tileyard Studios, situated in London’s Kings Cross Central, bills itself as being the newest and most creative hub in Europe. Little wonder, then, that the super-successful Ronson was happy to put down his recording roots there: “Building my own place from scratch meant that I could incorporate some of my favourite things from all the studios that I’ve loved working at during the last four years, like the analogue aspect of Daptone in Brooklyn, where we recorded the Amy stuff, as well as the MIDI and computer aspect.”
Inspired by a visit to a new Nashville studio built for The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ronson recruited the studio designer responsible, Steve Durr, to collaborate with London-based consultant Chris Walls of Munro Acoustics to build something similar at Tileyard: “It just had a great vibe — kind of like one of those old RCA studios in Nashville, so my live room is, likewise, really well designed, with a no-frills vibe — like walking into any old studio from the ’60s.”
While Ronson may well have sought inspiration from the past for his live room, selecting suitable monitoring for his control room was a different proposition entirely with ATC’s SCM25A PRO three way compact active loudspeakers quickly catching his ear: “I was walking around other studios with Chris Walls from Munro so he could get a sense of what I liked. We went to British Grove, and I just couldn’t believe how amazing they sounded — so much punch, bite, and growl, then this really pristine top end. It was kind of a revelation, and I just thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to get any other speakers other than those when I get into my space.’ I was sold on first listen. I then had another chance to use the speakers when, Audio Power Tools, Brooklyn let me borrow a pair to test them out when I was at Avatar in New York, tracking some stuff for Paul McCartney’s new album.”
With Ronson duly sold on what he had heard, London-based Funky Junk, Europe’s largest stockists of new and used professional audio equipment, made the sale. Says Ronson, “They were very cool and easy to work with.”
Now that the super-sounding SCM25A PROs are happily nestling on the meter bridge of Ronson’s beloved vintage MCI 500 Series console at his super-sounding studio space at Tileyard, the results clearly speak volumes, as is borne out by their super-satisfied owner’s super-supportive closing comments: “When I was starting out, I used whatever monitors I could afford, then I worked my way up to things like Genelecs and KRKs — all really nice, but they’ve got nothing on the ATCs, as far as I’m concerned. For the most part, I spend most of my time on the ATCs now. They give a great image of everything that’s going on, whether I’m tracking a live band or working on something with a massive 808 kick drum.”
Audio Power Tools, Brooklyn, USA
Funky Junk, London, England
