MIX 582 - June 2025

MUSIC

12 Book Review: ‘Buzz Me In—Inside the Record Plant Studios’ BY ANTHONY SAVONA

16 News & Notes: Synth Artist Opens Dual-Immersive Studio; 2200 Studios ‘Reopens’ Studio A

On the Cover: Owned by producer/ engineer Bill Jabr, Violet Isle opened in Atlanta, Ga., in February 2025. Studio designer Will Brown led a WSDG team that included John Storyk, Joshua Morris, Alan Machado and Judy Elliot Brown. Photo: Bill Jabr/Violet Isle.

LIVE SOUND

18 Book Excerpt: ‘Loud and Clear—The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection’ BY CLIVE YOUNG

22 News & Notes: Janet Jumps Into Immersive for Las Vegas Residency; Pink Floyd Tribute at Oxford Town Hall; The Bassement Club Gets an Audio Boost

24 The Class of 2025: 20 of the Year’s Top New Studios, From Some of the World’s Leading Studio Designers BY THE MIX EDITORS

34 HotWax Delivers a ‘Hot Shock’: UK Trio Captures the Live Energy at RAK Studios BY LILY MOAYERI

TECHNOLOGY

36 Review: Peluso P-24 Stereo Large-Diaphragm Condenser Tube Microphone BY BARRY RUDOLPH

38 Review: Dreamtonics Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro BY MIKE LEVINE

DEPARTMENTS

08 From the Editor: Talkin’ ‘Bout My (Next) Generation

10 Current: Producer Roy Thomas Baker Passes at 78

42 Open Channel: Are We Having Fun Yet? BY CRAIG ANDERTON

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Current

From the Editor

Talkin’ ‘Bout My (Next) Generation

I look forward to putting together the June issue of Mix each year, with its emphasis on studio design and lots of pages devoted to the year’s top new studios. And normally in this note I would be talking about my love of architecture and my fascination with physics, or about how much I get a kick out of walking into a new facility for the first time, observing how the look and feel of studios changes over the years.

But not this month. As I sit at my laptop late on a Wednesday night in mid-May, the rest of the issue in the can and ready to send to the printer, and my clothes packed for tomorrow’s flight to Nashville, my brain keeps spinning with thoughts about how we learn. About how we, as human beings, learn, and about how we in the pro audio community learn. More particularly, how we learn about immersive audio. Over the past month, in putting together the final panels and programming for the third annual Mix Nashville: Immersive Music Production event, all those thoughts have been amplified way past 10. Let me explain.

In two days, I’ll be welcoming 250-plus attendees to the event and then sitting down at the front of the room to moderate the opening Keynote Conversation. Three weeks ago, I didn’t have one keynote speaker, let alone two so we could have a conversation. I was starting to get nervous. I started pacing. I’m a pacer.

Then it hit me: Why don’t we turn the idea of a keynote on its head? Instead of featuring veteran, talented, credit-rich producers and engineers, why don’t we ask the next generation to talk about their experience and experimentation with immersive music production? It would be different, for sure. There’s a reason that our heroes deliver the opening remarks. Music is an aspirational career, filled with passion, where young talent dreams of someday becoming major talent.

But immersive music is different, I told myself, for a number of reasons. This will work. This is the right thing to do. So I started making calls, and soon I had three young, talented Nashville engineers—Maddie Harmon, Trent Woodman and Hayden Tumlin—each on the verge of taking the next step in their career, signed up and thrilled to be asked to speak to an industry audience. I came up with a new title and sent it to marketing. It would now be titled, “Emerging Engineers…And What They Can Teach Us About Immersive Music Production.” All systems go.

And then I hit Pause. This is supposed to be a panel about how we learn, about sharing knowledge between generations. I’m a journalist. I’ve never worked in a studio or served as a runner. I need help! I need a veteran, a legend, a hero. An award-winning producer and engineer who has a history

of training assistants. It wouldn’t hurt if they were also a studio owner, product designer, inventor and longtime educator. So I called George Massenburg, and before I could finish my rambling pitch, he was in.

I can list countless reasons for why I think that we as an industry need to spend more time listening to, and learning from, up-and-coming engineers, but they all boil down to two fundamental beliefs when talking about immersive music.

First, it’s not stereo. It’s not quad, 5.1 or 7.1, all of which exist in a two-dimensional field. Immersive has pitch, roll and yaw! There are no channels, in the traditional sense; there are objects and beds, a method of controlling digital data that comes directly from the videogame industry. And there is no 70-year history of immersive music, no generations yet to pass on the knowledge and experience. In one sense, up-and-coming or award-winning, we’re all in this together.

And second, anybody under the age of 35 can be considered a “digital native.” They’ve never seen a phone with a wire, and most have never put a CD into a tray. They downloaded from Napster before they were teens, and today they buy vinyl as a choice, not because it’s the only option. By the time they entered college, nearly any song they wanted to hear was available at their fingertips. And much to the consternation of audio old-timers, unless they work in the music industry or have a fondness for quality sound, most have never sat down and listened to music in front of two speakers. Most young engineers would love to mix in a nice, tuned 7.1.4 room, but few can afford it. Necessity being the mother of invention, they’re more comfortable working in headphones, in binaural, maybe renting a proper studio later to check their mixes.

None of that should be considered a detriment. It’s simply the way the world works. And we don’t have to look too far back to see the parallels in the mono-to-stereo conversion. It took a long time and a lot of experimentation before there was mainstream acceptance. And then along came a handful of young, hungry rock and roll engineers in the early to mid-1960s—from London, New York and L.A.—who didn’t really think about the rules, and they ended up blowing the lid off the joint and changing the sound of recorded music forever. Like I said, it’s time to talk to the next generation. ■

Tom Kenny, Co-Editor

Current // news & notes

Legendary Producer Roy Thomas Baker, Dead at 78

By Clive Young

Lake Havasu City, Ariz.—Producer/engineer/ A&R executive Roy Thomas Baker died April 12, 2025, at home in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. The cause of death was undetermined at press time; he was 78. Baker’s passing brought to a close an incredible career that saw him help create many of rock’s greatest moments, including Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong” and The Cars’ eponymous first album.

The list of names that Baker worked with across a 50-plus-year career is astonishing; beyond Queen, T-Rex and The Cars, his discography includes classic rock staples like Free, Journey, Foreigner, Cheap Trick and Alice Cooper; metal maestros like Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe and Metallica; one-hit-wonders like T’Pau and Local H; punk pioneers like Devo and the Stranglers; adult contemporary artists like Dusty Springfield and Chris de Burgh; and countless others. Whether producing, engineering or signing acts, Baker had a direct impact on the sound and feel of Album Oriented Rock’s glory days, always bringing to bear an ear for razor-sharp production and a keen insight as to what the public wanted to hear.

Baker explained his production philosophy to Mix in a 1999 interview, offering, “Bands need an identifiable sound. When your song is being played on the radio, people should know who that is, even without the DJ mentioning who it is. That’s true with all the great bands, even ones that have been around for hundreds of years like the Stones—even though they have had a lot of different changes of sound, you can hear who it is instantly. That rule applies for every great band of the last 30 years. There are thousands of bands out there with

these really smooth, great, generic-sounding records that nobody gives a toss about. Then somebody like Beck comes along, hits a can and sings about being a loser, and he gets a Number One, and who knows what that was recorded on? And who cares? I loved it.”

Born in Hampstead, London, on November 10, 1946, Baker entered the music business at 14, working at Decca Records where he made his way up to second engineer for the likes of Tony Visconti and Gus Dudgeon. While there, he was involved in recordings by The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Moody Blues, Dr. John, Yes and David Bowie, among others. Taking on the role of chief engineer in 1971, he further recorded Free’s “Alright Now” and “Bang A Gong” by T. Rex, before eventually moving to Trident Studios, where he co-founded the studio’s own record company, Neptune, and began working with the fledgling Queen. It was a fruitful working relationship that would see Baker produce the band’s first four albums—Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack and A Night at the Opera—in two and a half years, before later reuniting with the group for 1978’s Jazz

On the heels of signing a production deal with CBS in the late 1970s, Baker moved to the U.S., setting up offices for RTB Audio Visual

Productions in both New York City and Los Angeles, and producing the likes of Journey, Ian Hunter, Ronnie Wood and Reggie Knighton of The Grass Roots. During this time, he was asked to check out a young Boston band whose demo had received airplay on the city’s rock radio powerhouse WBCN; catching the act playing a school gym, Baker signed on to produce the group, and the four albums they recorded together—The Cars, Candy-O, Panorama and Shake It Up—went a combined 13x platinum.

As SVP of A&R at Elektra Records—home to both Queen and The Cars in the U.S.—Baker produced or executive produced albums by Lindsey Buckingham, Dokken, Mötley Crüe and Joe Lynn Turner during that era. Also during his time in that position, Elektra signed the likes of Metallica, Simply Red, Yello and 10,000 Maniacs. As time went on, he variously worked with Guns N’ Roses, produced 2000s-era albums for The Darkness and Smashing Pumpkins, and closed out his production career with Yes’ 2014 album Heaven & Earth

Baker is survived by his wife, Tere Livrano Baker, and brother, Alan Baker. Additionally, he leaves Eva Ashley, his aunt, Tere’s nephews Dominic Ledesma and Julian Ledesma, as well as sisters-in-law Lezlee, Lori and Lyn Livrano. ■

Across a 50-plus year career, Roy Thomas Baker captured some of rock’s most incredible performances by its biggest names.

PHOTO: Jimmy Steinfeldt

Current // news & notes

Clair Acquires Ampco Flashlight Group

Lititz, Penn.—Clair Global has acquired Utrecht, Netherlands-based event and touring production provider Ampco Flashlight Group.

As a European provider of audio, lighting, rigging and motion solutions for decades, AFG consists of a collection of 10 brands, each with its own area of expertise. Variously they tackle projects across live entertainment, theater, broadcast and events in the Netherlands and internationally.

AFG’s roles and services will continue as currently offered, according to the companies—clients will continue to work with the same people and receive the same level of service, though they will be able to draw from a larger pool of resources worldwide as part of Clair Global’s network of companies.

Ampco Flashlight Group and its sister companies will continue to operate under its own name and leadership, with CEO Dick van Berkum and the existing team at the helm. Day-to-day operations

PAMA Says ‘Hearing Rocks’

Lemoyne, Penn.—The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance has taken on a new challenge—fighting hearing loss—with the launch of its Hearing Rocks initiative.

“PAMA is on a mission to protect and preserve the most critical tool for audio professionals— their hearing,” said new PAMA president Yvonne Ho. “We’re championing awareness, education and actionable solutions to ensure the longevity and well-being of our industry.”

The initiative includes a dedicated page on pamalliance.com aggregating resources for hearing health, including how to protect your hearing; awareness and early detection guidance; hearing support and correction; and links to WHO global standards for safe listening venues and events. ■

will remain the same, now serving customers of both Ampco Flashlight Group and Clair Global.

“This feels like a very natural step,” said van Berkum. “We’ve experienced significant growth in recent years, and this partnership allows us to take the next leap forward.” With the acquisition, Clair Global is now a collective of 26 brands spanning 35 geographic locations worldwide. ■

Ampco Flashlight Group’s headquarters in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Music

Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios

New book provides a behind-the-scenes perspective, going inside one of the world’s greatest studios during its heyday.

By Anthony Savona

Mix readers are likely aware that all three locations of Record Plant Studios—New York, Los Angeles and Sausalito, Calif.—played an integral part in some of the best-selling albums of all time. Throughout the 1970s, artists were recording their seminal works at these facilities with young producers and engineers who would soon become icons in the recording industry.

In the new book Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios by Martin Porter and David Goggin (Thames & Hudson; June 2025), we get the full story of the famed studio, from the moment co-founders Chris Stone and Gary Kellgren met in the late 1960s to the unraveling of the relationship in the late ’70s.

Sandwiched in between are tales of inspired performances, visionary engineering, needlessly destroyed equipment, pranks, drugs, government surveillance, fights, romance, sex and drugs. Yes, drugs are listed twice; there are a lot of drugs, with the Plants having concierge suppliers that would get charged back to the record company.

The book is meticulously put together by Porter and Goggin, two longtime industry pundits. Porter was a reporter for Rolling Stone and GQ and had editor roles on Pro Sound News, EQ and Surround Professional, which he also founded. Goggin has been featured in Rolling Stone and The New York Times and is a prominent pro audio industry publicist. For years, his column “Lunching With Bonzai” appeared in Mix before he moved to

EQ magazine to write the “Bonzai Beat.” [Full disclosure: I have worked closely with both authors during my career in journalism.]

Buzz Me In is divided into six chronological sections, with each section subdivided into numerous “Tapes,” which are cleverly started with a graphic that looks like the legend on a master tape box, listing the recording sessions covered in those pages.

ORIGIN STORIES

The DNA of Record Plant Studios came from Kellgren, an exceptionally talented engineer who had a ton of music industry connections, and Stone, who was working for Revlon when the two met and quickly became the money man for the

PHOTO: Jay Good, courtesy Frank White Photo Agency

Gary Kellgren with Jimi Hendrix at the Datamix console in the original Studio A at Record Plant NY, August 22, 1968.

assets. The original plan was to build a unique, living-room-style studio in New York City where Jimi Hendrix would take up residence, which is exactly what transpired. Hendrix loved the Plant so much that he eventually decided to apply that concept to his own studio, Electric Lady.

The Record Plant is not the only origin story shared, however, as we are introduced to the young engineering talent who would grow into studio legends and the nascent technologies that moved audio production into the future.

On the talent front, it may be hard to imagine the likes of Jack Douglas and Jimmy “Shoes” Iovine (no spoilers on the origin of the nickname) working as janitors, but that was the way in at the Record Plant, and both did. As a young engineer, Douglas formed a bond with John Lennon, who was a regular at The Plant in NYC (with a stint in the L.A. studio during his famed “Lost Weekend”), while Iovine, the future founder of Interscope Records and Beats headphones, found success working with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on the career-defining Born to Run

Training these newbies was a ton of top talent, as Record Plant attracted the best in the business on both sides of the console. The book drops names at a rapid pace, including the likes of Roy Cicala, Bob Ezrin, Phil Spector, Shelly Yakus, Bill Szymczyk, Ken Caillat, Al Kooper and many others.

In terms of gear, the studios’ technological sophistication grew with the channel counts. The following passage highlights the “you-are-there” feel of how Buzz Me In takes you back in time:

“Racks of new equipment were now stacked to the ceilings in each of the control rooms, enabling the engineers to expand, compress, distort, or delay the audio signals. A new limiter from Hendrix’s effects wizard, Roger Mayer, created a sound that made a hit out of ‘Go All the Way’ for the Raspberries. Down in the basement, the Record Plant maintenance staff were testing a prototype from a digital start-up

called Eventide that emulated Gary Kellgren’s famed phasing sound with a push of the button.”

The authors also present a deep dive into TONTO, a physically room-filling synthesizer created by Malcolm Cecil and his partner, Bob Margouleff. Stevie Wonder was captivated by the instrument, and the trio took up residence in Record Plant L.A. Studio B, where they created a ton of songs that led to the legendary LPs Music and Songs in the Key of

Not content with merely stationary audio innovations, Record Plant was an innovator in mobile recording, and Buzz Me In presents the history of the famous White Truck that parked itself outside of hundreds of live shows and recorded them for posterity—and huge album sales—including Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden and the Concert for Bangladesh, which was the recording vehicle’s baptism by fire.

THE TALENT

Buzz Me In features a who’s who of ’70s rock ’n’ roll, with appearances from Frank Zappa, Hendrix, Sly Stone, The Velvet Underground, KISS, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Cocker, Billy Joel…the list goes on and on.

It is not surprising that artists and their producers sought out Record Plant—it had a well-earned reputation for having top-notch gear and expert studio personnel to run it. It was also focused heavily on artist relations, which included doing everything possible to make an artist feel welcome, whether that meant designing their own unique studio space, as was done in Sausalito for Sly Stone, or making sure there was access to the drug of choice that day.

While access to drugs may have made it pleasant for the artists, it caused trouble for the producers and engineers. One of the clearest examples of this is when Szymczyk headed to Studio C in Los Angeles with The Eagles to record Hotel California The authors write, quoting Szymczyk:

“I made a rule after it got a little unruly at first. I said, ‘All right, guys, we have to get in here at two o’clock in the afternoon and we’ve got to get work done until six o’clock, so I don’t want any ingestion of anything other than coffee. At six o’clock, you can get your beer, get your this or that, go to whatever you like. That worked for a few weeks, but then, in the middle of doing takes, they’re all out in the studio and I’m changing reels or something like that in the control room, and I started hearing them muttering things like, ‘Is it six yet?’ Followed by, ‘It had better be.’”

Steven Tyler at Record Plant NY during a 1974 recording session for Aerosmith’s ‘Get Your Wings.’ Engineers Jack Douglas and Jay Messina went to great lengths to get a live sound out of the out-ofvogue Hidley studio acoustics, including laying down sheets of plywood.

Still, with the number of hits recorded there over the decade, you can’t say the methodology was ineffective, although there are times when you will feel grateful your favorite album came out the way it did.

TALE OF THE TAPE

With projects as famous as these, you have likely heard some of the stories before. In fact, Buzz Me In pulls in excerpts from autobiographies by the likes of Al Kooper and Ken Callait and others who have worked there or covered the industry, including several passages from Mix. But those are accounts of individual projects without the context of what was happening in the studio next door (or the hallway outside the studio, the rooftop of the studio…).

Buzz Me In provides the full picture of all that happened within the walls of each of the Record Plant’s studios. In a few key instances, such as the fire in L.A. Studio C and a police raid, it cleverly offers a Rashomon-style narrative that tells of the event from several different perspectives.

The title of the book comes from the reception area in Record Plant L.A., which put a locked door/ buzzer system in place to keep the police out. Visitors would say, “Buzz me in,” to gain access. It is no surprise that Porter and Goggin chose to name the book after the phrase, as from the moment you open the cover, you are brought back to the 1970s and are sitting shotgun in the control room for some of the greatest sessions in music history. ■

Music // news & notes

Synth Artist, Engineer Opens Dual-Immersive Studio

7.1.4 monitoring system in the mix area, with quadraphonic playback for tracking

Composer, synth expert and modular synthesis educator Chris Meyer has unveiled his purpose-built 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos studio, which is subdivided into two distinct spaces.

The new 670-square-foot personal studio, with expansive windows and storage, took over a year to plan and build in Meyer’s Pueblo-style home in New Mexico and was designed for Atmos. The 7.1.4 mixing area features Focal Solo6 monitors for LCR, Alpha 65 Evo speakers for the surrounds and height channels, and a Focal Sub6 subwoofer. The rehearsal and tracking area utilizes a quadraphonic arrangement of Alpha 80 Evo monitors, mirroring Meyer’s preferred live performance setup.

Meyer’s mastering engineer, who was using Focal Solo6 speakers, suggested that he try them out. “I was hearing details I had never heard in my music before. I was instantly sold that there is indeed a difference when you go upscale in speakers,” Meyer says.

“What I love about the Focal monitors is that they’re neutral. They don’t have any falsely hyped bass. They don’t have any harsh highs in the name of being bright. They’re just a neutral, truthful monitor that I can trust. I hear details in the Solo6s I’ve never heard from other speakers. And that really helps me when I’m programming new sounds from scratch on synthesizers to make sure that I’m getting the blend of harmonic content that I really want.”

The immersive monitor systems are controlled with an Audient ORIA that allows Meyer’s Sonarworks SoundID studio calibration software tables to be downloaded directly into the controller unit.

Meyer grew up wanting to play music but instead became an engineer and entered the music industry, helping design and build iconic synthesizers at Sequential Circuits. He took over from the company’s founder, Dave Smith, in developing the MIDI specification, and invented Vector Synthesis. Today he records and performs original synth music as Chris Meyer’s Alias Zone and has released three albums. He is now working on an Atmos immersive release in his new studio.

Immersive music is the future, Meyer feels, especially for synthesizers, “I’m definitely thinking about the spatial mix when I’m working on music, partially because I found that working in spatial audio adds a lot of clarity

to the mix… Separating the sound out among multiple speakers—or multiple points in space—just helps add a clarity to multi-layered music that you can’t get out of stereo.” ■

The mix area features a Focal 7.1.4 monitoring system.

Studio owner and synth artist/educator Chris Meyer.

Music // news & notes

Bay Area’s 2200 Studios Unveils Studio A

The San Francisco Bay Area’s 2200 Studios, which originally opened in 1972 as the Record Plant Sausalito, later operating as The Plant, then Plant Studios, recently unveiled Studio A, the facility’s flagship room.

The facility, which once hosted classic album sessions by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac and Sly Stone, reopened in early 2025 after coming under new ownership about four years ago. Studio A now features an SSL Origin 32-channel analog in-line mixing console.

Change is a constant at the complex, especially for Studio A, according to Grammy Award-winning mix engineer and producer Damien Lewis, the facility’s director of operations and chief engineer, whose credits include Justin Timberlake, Lizzo, Rhianna, Beyoncé and others. “About every 10 years this room gets remodeled,” he reports. Under Lewis’ guidance, the facility is being restored to full operation, with all-new technology and renovated interiors.

Over the decades, Studio A featured mixing consoles from a variety of manufacturers. But for Lewis, there was only one brand to consider: “I’m an SSL guy,” he states. “I’ve always loved them and the SSL workflow. The

Origin made a lot of sense to me because it incorporates the best of SSL up to this point. We make records differently now, and the Origin has the modern features that we require for today’s music, down to the 0 dB summing mixer mode. It sounds amazing, it’s versatile and it reflects the modern hybrid workflow, and with its footprint and low power consumption—I love the auto sleep mode—offers a lot of bang for the buck.”

Lewis has a 500 Series rack currently installed in Origin’s center section but “drops in” an SSL UF8 controller if additional faders are needed for automation duties.

“I love the modularity, and I love that someone was smart enough to move the EQ section down so you can reach it without having to stand up and reach over the aux sends,” he says. “And the routing matrix being located in the center section is also fantastic.”

The studio purchased the new Origin as a turnkey package, including wiring looms and patchbays, from Sweetwater sales tech Michael Grebe. “He flew out and worked with our tech to do the install,” Lewis says. “The process was seamless, and we had it up and running in about two days.” ■

Radial Engineering provides world-class audio equipment to help you create music and mixes that are truly inspiring, support your success as recording technology evolves, and enable you to capture the subtleties of every take whenever and wherever you record.

Live

PRESENTED BY

Writing on the Wall of Sound

By Clive Young

Many bands have biographies written about them, but there’s only one whose P.A. has its own biography, too—Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection (St. Martin’s Press), which hits bookstores this month. Over the course of nearly 400 pages, author Brian Anderson traces the legendary loudspeaker system from its nascent roots at San Francisco “acid tests” in the late 1960s to its fullflowering as the audio behemoth that graced Grateful Dead stages in 1973 and ’74.

Developed by sound guru/LSD chemist Owsley “Bear” Stanley with boutique bass guitar/audio manufacturer Alembic and a looseknit team of pros, the Wall of Sound was an actual physical wall of speakers—a collection of six separate P.A.s, ground-stacked within scaffolding and placed onstage behind the band to act as a simultaneous monitor and house system. The band’s instruments had their own dedicated speaker columns within the wall, so each performer naturally stood in front of his own section to hear himself. Vocal mic feedback and stage bleed were solved by placing two outof-phase condenser mics at each mic position; one was sung into while the other captured stage ambiance, so summing them together canceled out everything but the vocal. While the system was groundbreaking for its time, its production costs eventually grew as large and unwieldy as the P.A. itself, until finally the Wall came down for good in October 1974.

“One of the things I try to illuminate in the book is that the Wall of Sound didn’t just drop out of the clear blue sky fully formed one day,” says Anderson, speaking from his home in Chicago. “It was the logical culmination of a progression that started at the beginning of the band. So many

Phil Lesh cuts loose in front of the Wall of Sound.

people from so many walks of life were involved in actualizing the ideas behind it, and this whole crazy cast of characters is super-fascinating in its own right. All of the drama and interpersonal relationships, the machinations and the grind of the road, make for a really compelling story that ultimately is about obsession.”

Anderson was raised as a second-generation Deadhead—his earliest memory is attending a late-’80s Dead show as a toddler while his father worked as a local stagehand—and he’s heard about the P.A. since he was a child. “On long road trips, my parents would talk about seeing the band in the early Seventies with a massive mountain of speakers on stage called the Wall of Sound and how it would blow your mind—so the

thing has always captivated me,” he says. Anderson first wrote about the P.A. for Vice in 2015 but continued to research it and interview key figures from the Wall’s history in the years that followed. Then, when a Wall speaker came up for sale at a Sotheby’s auction in 2021, he placed a last-minute bid and, much to his surprise, won. The speaker’s presence inspired him as he scraped away decades of myth and hearsay to write the definitive Wall of Sound story, but Anderson sees it as far more than a mere motivational tool.

“I’m looking at it now, here in my home office,” he says, “and knowing that it touched hundreds of thousands of people, and both my parents received the sound waves flowing out of it, makes it really special to have this thing.” ■

March 23, 1974: The Sound Test

By Brian Anderson

Excerpted from Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection by Brian Anderson © 2025 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press.

The Dead’s yearslong pursuit of audio perfection had come to this moment. The band was set for the second of the “2 sound experimentation gigs,” at the Cow Palace, outside San Francisco. The Saturday night event was simply billed “The Sound Test.”

The crew had arrived at the 16,500-capacity venue the day before the gig to construct the imposing mass of equipment, which had swelled in cost to over $350,000—some $2.3 million today. “We attacked it like a group of killer bees,” Candelario recalled. There were now a dozen-plus columns of variously sized speakers, 480 in all, held in place by scaffolding bolted to the custom staging. Combined, Garcia and Weir had thirty cabinets; Lesh had sixteen a side. The very tallest columns rose forty-five feet above the stage. The system essentially beamed nearly fifty-foot-tall notes over the band and into the soundfield. Despite so much air being moved above the musicians’ heads, they weren’t immediately overwhelmed by all that power, meaning onstage sound pressure levels for the Wall sometimes measured lower than out in the hall. Yet even in the crowd, one could hold a normal conversation. The sound was that

inoffensive.

For the first time, too, an indoor venue physically accommodated the Dead’s load. “That was my real sound experiment, for everything,” Parish later told me of the Cow Palace show. “I felt that was where we really had the elbow room and the space to do it.”

Twenty heads had been present at yet another band meeting on March 14, ahead of the Sound Test. “Not ready to say yet what the final setup will be,” read minutes, giving an update on modularization. “There will be a shape of center clusters, movable stacks, and the packaging will be different making it easier to setup.” But Raizene, Healy, and others needed a little more time to complete that job, so the middle vocal rig for Daly City was still composed of individual speaker stacks. At that meeting, under “Gigs,” the assembled talked additionally about how, save the New Riders, “the PA isn’t compatible for other groups.” They discussed “ways to get around that (interfacing setup, 2 stages, etc.).”

Then, the following afternoon, a “Mike” called the Dead’s office and left a message regarding “soundsystem—Palo Alto” for “Ron.” It’s unclear if that meant Rakow, or, as likely, Wickersham. But the point remains: The sound was at the top of their groupmind. Money was, too, which always tied back to the Dead’s PA. On March 13, another call had come into Dead HQ, from a Bank of Boston representative. That year, the

bank used the term “cult” to describe the Dead, when the financial institution registered that the band’s dedicated listenership meant the Dead and their in-house record distribution were a sound business bet. Yet the rep “wanted to discuss problems” and left a message for Rakow. That month, while recording Mars Hotel, tensions were also building between band members. “But much of this comes from the

Brian Anderson’s Wall of Sound speaker cabinet.

Courtesy of Brian Anderson

Scully said, which involved flying to record pressing plants to ensure quality control, “and not seeing each other—not practicing that much.”

They worked in a San Francisco studio with the capacity to sync up two 16-tracks. “As the band’s soundsystem seemed to be testing the mid-seventies attitude of ‘more might be nice,’” said Steve Brown, who was present at these sessions, “it was not surprising to find them filling up almost all thirty tracks with something.” But the Dead always struggled in controlled environments, in contrast to the full sonic spectrum they could now cover live with their Wall. “We can play down to the level of a whisper, and we can play as loud as twenty jet airplanes,” Garcia said that year. “So the expressiveness of our music is limited by recording.”

In the meantime, even he and his bandmates were on weekly stipends. “The Dead have kept themselves poor from the beginning by putting money into sound,” Wickersham told local reporter John L. Wasserman in a piece titled “The Dead: Committed to Sound Perfection” that was pegged to the Sound Test. “This project has been underway for about seven years,” Wickersham said. “I’ve only been into it for about five and it’s not finished yet. It’s an ongoing study. Each performance is not only a musical performance but a sound performance.”

The Sound Test drew in a cross-section of Deadworld. Shuttles went to and from the Dead’s office and the Cow Palace. Guest lists ran to a combined 150-some-odd names. The core “Band and Crew” list noted twenty individuals (and plus-ones). A separate “Employees and Wives—Automatic Backstage & Special Seating” list accounted for dozens more, including familiar faces from earlier in the Dead’s sonic journey like Laird Grant, the band’s first-ever roadie and equipment manager. Also listed was Sue Swanson, who experienced the young band’s wall-rattling sound and would later serve as the Dead’s chief technology officer and webmaster, when the band’s legacy moneymaking blossomed online. Cardinalli, the Alembic/Quality Control carpenter, got in too. Turner and Wickersham also were listed (with a plus-one and -two, respectively). The gig was not one to miss.

For a month, the Dead had run ads for the show on the local Top 40 radio station, overselling the event. When the band took the stage, the musicians passed through a dummy Wall speaker

into the space in front of the solid backline. But as the gig started, seconds into “U.S. Blues,” from Mars Hotel, the Wall balked. Garcia’s guitar volume dropped suddenly after his first few notes. Is there anything more Dead-like “than their stateof-the-art, astronomically expensive soundsystem immediately screwing up and Garcia’s guitar going missing during the opening song of the night?” said Ray Robertson, author of a micro history of the band in fifty shows.

The quick-acting crew had the issue sorted before long, and the band proceeded into a

lengthy first set. “With speakers that reach as high as a three-story house, even in as uninviting a concert venue as the Cow Palace,” which primarily still hosted livestock conventions and sports, “the music is loud and clear and rich,” wrote Robertson, who did not attend the gig. And “not just to the audience, but to the band, an indispensable ingredient if the goal is symbiotic playing.”

Moments in set two were less than symbiotic. When the band false started “Playing in the Band,” something was off with Weir’s vocals, an

(L-R) Bill Kreutzmann, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh perform on May 25, 1974, at Santa Barbara Stadium in Santa Barbara, California, with the Wall of Sound.

issue because he sang lead on that song. A minute or so in, as the tune fell apart, Garcia played the ominous theme from Chopin’s “Funeral March.”

“Wait a minute,” Lesh said. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

With no monitors in front of them, they were totally exposed—a direct line back to the Acid Tests, where no boundary existed between band and crowd. Everybody was in the soundfield, along for the ride. “The Wall was a very concrete manifestation of the idea that the band and the audience were the same,” Steve Silberman, the Deadhead science writer, told me. “It was cosmic democracy.”

Yet the band had broken what for so many groups is the number-one rule of live performing. “Even the most-novice garage band knows that if something goes wrong on stage—speaker or microphone malfunction, a busted instrument, whatever—you’re never supposed to stop playing,” Robertson said. But doing precisely that, and having the crowd cheer them on until the problem got resolved, was just like the Dead.

“How ’bout it,” Weir said as his mic came back on. “Ah, there it is. A thousand pardons, folks. We’ll try it one more time.”

The rest of the Sound Test went off without incident. The Dead “plays on and on, like they can’t get enough of their brand-new toy,” Robertson wrote. Firsthand accounts speak of an acoustic environment with no dead zones— anywhere in the audience, the sound was “just exactly perfect,” as Weir and others used to say. “Had no idea what I was looking at,” recalled one head, whose friend shouted “Look at that soundsystem” repeatedly. “It was definitely an impressive event.”

Another head remembered sitting crosslegged on the floor for that entire show, tripping on LSD. “No one tripped over me or was bothered by my non-verticality,” the attendee said. And fortunately, “the soundsystem was amazing! The music came from every direction with pinpoint clarity. It was everywhere and anywhere all at once.” When the show ended and Graham ordered the house lights turned on, the seated fan realized they had spent the whole evening facing the rear wall, with their back to the stage. “It didn’t really matter where you were inside the Palace or what you did that night or what you saw. There was audible musical magic in the universe.”

Yet another awed attendee similarly glimpsed the rig afterward. “That’s when I first saw the

magnitude of the ‘Wall of Sound.’ It truly went from wall to wall and to the ceiling,” they recalled. “The speakers went right into the cloud of hazy smoke.” Still others in the crowd that night called the Wall “absolutely historic,” and said its qualities were “embedded in my soul” and had “shaped my life.” As one Deadhead explained, “the Sound Test did such amazing things to my blown-out head I almost forgot I was an oiled sardine.”

Weeks after the gig, a friend of David Gans, with whom he had also attended the Sound Test, acquired a tape of that show. At the gig, “it was just incredible how great the sound was,” Gans, the future Grateful Dead Hour host, told me. Notably, during “China Cat Sunflower,” “when they get to the bridge and they hit this giant E chord, Phil hit a note that caused the entire room to rattle.” Gans then sat at his friend’s place and listened back to the audience recording, and “when they got to that note in ‘China Cat’ it caused distortion on the tape too. That’s a memory that just sticks out in my head.”

The Test was a turning point in Gans’s own collecting and trading of Dead tapes and also in the life of the soundsystem’s moniker. In the days following the Cow Palace, the San Francisco Chronicle, alongside a black-and-white photo of the rig, printed the first known reference to the Dead’s “Wall of Sound.” It remains unclear if one of the crew, perhaps, was overheard using that nickname in Daly City, or if the Chronicle’s photo editor can be credited. It didn’t stick immediately—but it would, given enough time.

Years later, the Sound Test was released as Dick’s Picks Volume 24. Dick Latvala, who likewise first got heavily into collecting tapes in 1974, tapped Bear to write liner notes about the Wall. “I told them before we began I was sure it could be done, the technology was available, but I was also sure they would not like it once they were locked into using it,” Bear said. Yet the system represented “the first successful use of line arrays in large-scale sound reproduction. All of our lines were mounted tightly together as a single unbroken wall.” Modern line arrays, by contrast, “are hung in isolation as two single, separated, multi-element line arrays. This arrangement will not radiate a cylindrical wave. Our only multi-element arrays were multipleline clusters.” The Wall was precisely that: “a radiating wall. The entire surface was working, the lines and clusters combining to produce a kind of sound no modern system can duplicate.”

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Steve Brown, Grateful Dead Records

Bill “Kidd” Candelario, roadie

Sal Cardinalli, Alembic [bass/audio manufacturer]

John Curl, Alembic

Jerry Garcia, lead guitar

Bill Graham, concert promoter

Dan Healy, mixer

Bob Matthews, equipment manager/ roadie

“Big” Steve Parish, roadie

Mark “Sparky” Raizene, carpenter/ roadie

Ron Rakow, management

Rock Scully, management

Owsley “Bear” Stanley, Alembic

Bob Weir, rhythm guitar

Ron Wickersham, Alembic

The differential vocal microphones, featuring pairs of B&K instrumentation mics, for that matter, “caused a loss of low frequencies in the voice,” Bear admitted, “but it did limit spill quite nicely.” Had the differential design been pushed further, they might well have “eliminated” that tinny sound that came from losses in the low frequencies. But each musician now had control over their instrument levels, and could likewise dial in their own vocal settings. “It was a system which needed no sound man,” said Bear.

Besides Healy, Bear was synonymous with “sound man”—and long insistent on that being his role. But in “realizing this system,” Bear shouted out Wickersham, Curl, John Meyer, Matthews, and Healy for their technical expertise, and also said that “virtually everyone in the crew had some part in constructing this monster.” The Wall, Bear claimed, “was arguably the best large venue system for amplified music ever.”

The first show post-Sound Test was supposed to then take place at the University of California, Davis, only a familiar problem arose. The band was “unable to fit its new soundsystem on stage,” the California Aggie, the campus paper, reported. So the Dead again did something they hadn’t done yet. They stacked the full system outside. ■

Live // news & notes //

Janet Jumps Into Immersive for Residency

Las Vegas, Nev.—Janet Jackson just finished her Las Vegas residency at Resorts World Theatre, which gave fans the chance to hear her perform through the permanently installed L-Acoustics L-ISA P.A. rig.

Los Angeles-based producer and FOH engineer Caram Costanzo handled the house mix for Jackson’s residency, a role he assumed in May 2024, before her 94-show Together Again tour. Will Foley, who joined her audio crew at the same time, reprised his duties as systems engineer for the production.

“When I learned about Janet’s Resorts World residency, I immediately embraced using L-ISA’s full capabilities,” Costanzo recalled. “I quickly worked with David Brooks from L-Acoustics to arrange learning time with the technology. At the L-ISA Studio in Westlake Village, with James Rudder, we built the show template, stepping back from my left-right tour mix to fully explore the immersive surround sound capabilities. Janet’s music is perfect for L-ISA—her stellar, high-powered studio productions demanded we create that same standard within the L-ISA environment.”

Although many of the songs from the Together Again tour were carried over, some featured new arrangements. “The staging and production are redesigned for the massive 152-foot-wide stage. The show is an over-the-

top Las Vegas performance, and the criteria was to create a sight-andsound spectacle for the entire audience,” he said.

Costanzo mixed the show on a DiGiCo Quantum338 console and said he “loves its clarity; you can really create your own sound with it.” He added, “The L-ISA software is very intuitive and well-crafted. We feed 64 inputs to the L-ISA Processor II through individual channels and groups.”

He continued, “The theater’s seven frontal arrays allow me to create a template within the seven-array soundscape and then add instrumentation and effects on a song-by-song basis. I then incorporate the rear surrounds or effects, mults and especially adding more sonic intensity when appropriately called for.

“Everyone has been very positive comment-wise within Janet’s camp, and Janet is happy with what she’s hearing out front and the feedback she’s been given,” he concluded. “Audience response has been overwhelmingly positive, as well. I give credit to the entire audio crew—including systems engineer Will Foley and Brandon Andreasen, the venue’s head of audio—as well as everyone I’ve worked with at L-Acoustics.” ■

Oxford Town Hall Show Recalls Pink Floyd

Oxford, U.K.—Any time a major band decides to call it quits, there’s a tribute act waiting in the wings to give fans the nostalgic live shows they crave. Some do it better than others, but when the right players and behind-the-scenes pros come together, the experience can be magical. That’s certainly what fans of tribute act The Delicate Sound of Pink Floyd look forward to when they catch the 11-piece lineup live.

The U.K. band, based on the 1988-89 ‘A Delicate Sound of Thunder’ touring band, often takes things to the next level by performing in architecturally impressive venues—such as the group’s recent show inside Oxford Town Hall, a Grade II-listed, late 19th century building. Adding to the show’s aura was the use of lighting, lasers and a Nexo P.A. and monitor system, provided by Oxford-based Event Production Services.

“We’re using a Nexo Geo M12 front-of-house system,’ said EPS managing director Robert Nisbet. “It’s very quick to rig, it sounds fantastic and its directivity keeps things well-controlled within these types of buildings where there’s often hard surfaces everywhere. We’re using Nexo Geo M6 as delays, chosen primarily because they’re so closely voiced to the rest of the Geo M Series, and then we have our stage monitor package which is all based around Nexo’s P+ range. We have a number of P12s on stage and they are just fantastically well controlled. The directivity works well and gives us lots of separation on stage—and there’s so much headroom. They’re clear, they’re loud and they do it without problems with feedback.”

FOH Engineer Asa Holbrook was satisfied with the selection, noting,

“Mixing on Nexo has been really good; it’s got the throw and highs that we need, and also a nice tight low end.”

Speaking for the band, bass player and lead vocalist James Winnicott said, “After the first show we did, we got about 150 very complimentary emails, with so many people saying the sound was crystal clear. The Nexo gear has been absolutely faultless. The sound is second to none.”

“We’ve bought quite heavily into Nexo” said Nisbet in conclusion. “The voicing across the range is so consistent. It gives us the opportunity to provide high-quality coverage to a variety of events, from the smallest scale corporate events right through to larger rock and roll shows like this.” ■

FOH engineer Caram Costanzo with the Resorts World Theatre’s L-Acoustics L-ISA P.A. rig.

Tribute act The Delicate Sound of Pink Floyd recently played Oxford Town Hall with the help of Event Production Services and a sizable Nexo Geo P.A.

Live // news & notes //

Madrid’s Bassement Club Aims High

MADRID, SPAIN—Madrid’s The Bassement Club gives the people what they want—lots of room to get down and move—as it features 1,000 square meters of floor space divided into two areas. Covering all that room and all those people is a new audio system, recently upgraded to handle the venue’s multifaceted needs.

Much of the system is built around an Allen & Heath dLive C1500 control surface with a DM0 MixRack fitted with Dante and DX Link networking cards, three DX168 and two DX012 Expander units and a Dante-equipped AHM-64 Audio Matrix Processor.

The AHM-64 is a 64×64 matrix audio processor for installation, featuring 12 x 12 local analog I/O and network audio I/O port up to 128 x 128. It uses a 96 kHz FPGA core and features 64 configurable processing outputs, mono/stereo zones or loudspeaker processing.

The DX012 is an audio expander with 12 XLR outputs and AES functionality for dLive and SQ Series. It connects via Cat5e cable to a dLive surface, a dLive MixRack, an SQ mixer. Meanwhile, the DX168 is

an expander for adding remote I/O to dLive S-Class and C-Class systems, with 16 microphone preamps with independent phantom power indicators and eight line outputs via XLR connections. Elsewhere, the DM0 is dLive’s most compact MixRack and is aimed at distributed audio and digital split applications.

According to Adriano Masián, technical director of the club and responsible for the installation, “We are very happy with the result; the systems work very well and are really stable. The console is easy to use and very intuitive and the DX stage boxes have worked perfectly for us; in all the live performances I’ve had with various musicians, they have fulfilled their function perfectly.”

Madrid’s The Bassement Club has a massive audio system centered around an Allen & Heath dLive C1500 control surface.

ClTheass of2025

Mix selects 20 of the top studios in the world— from some of the world’s leading studio designers—to open their doors in the past year.

Violet Isle | Atlanta, Ga.

WSDG

Bill Jabr-owned Violet Isle in downtown Atlanta harkens back to the classic, full-service recording studio and was designed by the WSDG team of Will Brown, John Storyk, Joshua Morris, Alan Machado and Judy Elliot Brown. Central to the A Suite’s 450-square-foot control room is a vintage SSL 4056 G console, commissioned by Bruce Millet for Desk Doctor, along with custom in-wall mains built by Pavel Maslowiec of Hear Pro Monitoring. The city’s skyline is visible through the 525-square-foot live room, with sightlines also into the 150-squarefoot iso booth. There is a private lounge with a full kitchen, bathroom and shower. Lowe Consulting Engineering (HVAC, plumbing), Hoskins Engineering (electrical), SP Sound Design and Trace Audio also participated in the project.

“I’m not sure if there could have been a more demanding and precise studio owner than Bill Jabr, but the design and construction journey we all traveled on was most certainly worth the time and effort,” says John Storyk, WSDG Founding Partner. “If there was a theme throughout this adventure, I would think that Bill’s dream was to have our WSDG team create a studio environment that respected traditional studio styles and techniques, while paying tribute to new Atlanta—its skyline, its musicians and its culture. And at the same time introduce the most advanced acoustic, recording and monitoring technology available. Add some style and some ‘Southern comfort,’ and I welcome you to Violet Isle.”

Deadmau5 Modular Lab |

Campbellville, Ontario

Pilchner Schoustal International

When Deadmau5 ran out of space for the extensive synth collection in his main Atmos control room, he engaged Martin Pilchner and Rick Schoustal to design a separate studio for his modular systems. Musical elements created on the modular synth modules are sent to the main room, where his integrated synth collection still resides. The acoustic design of the new Modular Lab accommodates the integrated synth modules, which have been ergonomically positioned for flexibility and ease of use. Monitoring is via a prototype pair of custommade Telegrapher Rhino nearfield speakers with no correction, thanks to 12-inch-thick sound absorption in the front ceiling and a walnut sound diffusor—similar to that used in the main control room—in the rear ceiling. Full-depth, wide-band sound absorption in the front wall is combined with custom-made, angular sound absorption modules manufactured by Technature on the upper side and rear wall surfaces.

Five Spot East |

Rüschlikon, Switzerland

Haverstick Designs

Gavin Haverstick, Oscar Otero and Tracy Roberts of Haverstick Designs worked with studio owner, composer and intermedia artist Virgil Moorefield on the interior acoustical treatment for his new underground studio in Switzerland. Designed to accommodate recording sessions by Moorefield’s band and for live performances, the 1,625-square-foot live room, with 13-foot ceilings, features two unique iso rooms formed by hinged walls that fold out and seal airtight. A stepped riser doubles as a ported bass trap. The control room, elevated above the tracking space, houses a 32-channel API 2448 with ATC, ADAM and Yamaha stereo monitors. Acoustical treatment includes custom stretchfabric elements, diffusors from Vicoustic and acoustical panels from Acoustical Fulfillment.

ALU Architekten’s Markus Zehner, Martin Larcher and Kathleen Quitcongo, plus Roman Beeler of Beeler Holzbau, also consulted, along with Sweetwater’s Paul Allen, who brought Haverstick Designs into the project.

Pinch Recording | Long Island City, N.Y.

Wes Lachot Design Group

Pinch Recording, owned and operated by recording engineer E. Scott Lindner, opened in the New York metro area in January 2025. Designed by Wes Lachot, the control room features a true Reflection Free Zone design employing ATC monitors, while the spacious live room, housing a Yamaha C7X grand piano, features two iso booths and a dedicated amp room. An automated 32-channel API 2448 console anchors the control room, alongside analog tape machines, a Pro Tools rig and racks of outboard. All acoustic treatments for the project were built and installed by Tony Brett and his team at Brett Acoustics. Canova Audio installed the audio and technical wiring and grounding, and power design was by Howard Hoyt of Pro Audio Engineering. Aaron Kelley shared in the acoustic design and handled drafting, modeling and project management.

SoundStudio412 | Candler, N.C.

Steven Durr Designs

SoundStudio412, founded by Garrett N. Derhofer, originally opened in January 2017 and then reopened in late 2024 with improvements implemented by Steve Durr of Steven Durr Designs and builder Justin Autrey. Built for musicians by musicians, the studio offers an acoustically neutral 715-squarefoot live room with a 130-squarefoot iso booth. The 260-square-foot control room houses a 48-channel Calrec S2 console and a “Voice of the Theater”style monitor system incorporating Altec Lansing and Pioneer TAD components driven by Bryston amps. Bass traps, broadband absorbers and ceiling clouds ensure a flat and true control room listening environment. An extensive wiring infrastructure connecting hallways and an upstairs deck supports a variety of tracking options. A multi-camera video setup is available and is also used for remote sessions.

PHOTO: Wes Lachot

The Living Room Studios | Athens, Greece

Jeff Hedback, HdAcoustics

After a yearslong search and design process involving owner Pat Mavromatis and Jeff Hedback of HdAcoustics, The Living Room Studios in Athens, Greece, has unveiled its new Dolby Atmos control room, which is also one of only eight Auro-3D mix-certified studios globally. Room acoustics encompass an HdAcoustics custom-designed rear wall acoustical slat system with large in-room bass trapping soffits across the side and rear walls. A 48-channel D&R Cinemix II 5.1-surround analog console forms the centerpiece, with Kali Audio Atmos/Auro3D immersive monitoring, plus a Barefoot Sound stereo pair. The immersive speaker layout, modeled by HdAcoustics, includes two subwoofers on the 13-foot ceiling at modal null locations.

Hivari Studios |

Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico

Malvicino Design Group

Malvicino Design Group’s acoustic designer Horacio Malvicino, interior designer Fabiola Mena Alvarez and system integrator Federico Petrone were the core team behind this new residential film post-production facility on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico. The immersive mix room features a 60-input Neve 88R console with a Meyer Sound 7.1.4 monitor system. The Atmos-certified theatrical mix suite combines AMS-Neve DFC and Avid S6 control with a JBL Cinema Series immersive monitoring setup. Malvicino Design Group also provided all the customized acoustic treatments.

Q Division Studios, Studio B |

Cambridge, Mass.

Sonic-Space, Lou Clark

Designed primarily as a stereo and Atmos mix room, centered on an SSL XL Desk, Avid converters and a MTRX Studio, Studio B also features a small vocal and instrumental overdub booth. Sonic-Space’s Lou Clark worked with acoustic contractor Eric Pierce of Soundwall Construction and building architect Edrich VanBeuzekom of EvB Design on the project. The stereo (Neumann and Fulcrum) and Atmos (Neumann) monitors are hidden behind removable access panels. A custom upper-wall plywood panel system helps maintain sound energy in the room and scatter it off ceiling diffusion without reflecting energy back to the mix position. A couple of dozen tuned absorbers, including above the mix position, control room resonances below 150 Hz. The lounge houses a customized instrument storage system designed by Eric Pearce of Soundwall Construction.

Faro House | Jose Ignacio, Uruguay

WSDG

Musician, engineer and philanthropist Rodolfo Klenik opened Faro House, a high-end destination recording studio in picturesque Jose Ignacio, Uruguay, at the beginning of 2025. WSDG’s David Molho and the WSDG team—Sergio Molho, Silvia Molho, Leandro Kirjner, Federico Paez, Nahuel Zaccagnino, Martin Greco, Estefania Pontirolli and Jonathan Bickoff— utilized REDI Acoustics’ NIRO advanced acoustic prediction and modeling software for acoustic optimization of the space. At the center of the high-ceilinged, 365-square-foot control room is an Avid S1 controller with ATC main monitors and a Neumann immersive speaker system supporting Dolby Atmos, a first in Uruguay. Two large windows in the 670-square-foot live room, which holds up to eight people, provide views of the surrounding natural environment, or can be covered with motorized theatrical curtains.

mixManor Studios |

Los Angeles, Calif.

Carl Tatz Design

Multi-platinum and Grammy-winning mix engineer Richard Furch’s minimalist mixManor Studios combines several signature features from Carl Tatz of Carl Tatz Design. The 9.1.4 PhantomFocus Dolby Atmos MixRoom features 13 CTD PFM Master Reference Monitors, including 11 PFM UHD-1000p Mk II passive monitors for surround and height channels, with two PFM UHD-1000a Mk II active monitors carrying the left and right channels. A motorized center monitor lift enables seamless transitions between stereo and Atmos mixing modes at the push of a button. Completed at Furch’s Los Angeles home in September 2024, the room also features Tatz’s Axial Mode Absorber, PhantomFocus eChair, PF monitor stands and CTD custom acoustic modules by Auralex. CTD’s Acoustic Lens modules on either side of the mix position allow natural light to flood in from one side, mirroring it on the other side to provide acoustic diffusion/absorption and visual symmetry.

The Sesmet | Charlottesville, Va.

IPDG (The Intellectual Phase Design Group)

A new ground-up build, opened in February 2025, the Sesmet encompasses a control room, treated entry iso booth, and tracking room with decoupled concrete slabs, floating walls and spring-isolated ceilings—all in 800 square feet. After the owner requested a switch to immersive capabilities mid-project, IDPG principal designer Mathias John went through the Dolby Atmos Room Tuning training at Dolby HQ in L.A. to get the ATC 7.1.4 monitor system tuned and dialed in. The control room offers a fully in-the-box workflow with an extensive routing network designed and implemented by system designer/integrator Mike Rhodes at SkinnyFish Audio; it also features video post-production capabilities. Vibey interior elements include lots of natural light, vaulted ceiling, brickwork and exposed ducting in the live room, with acoustical clouds placed in a nonsymmetrical manner.

Evan Blair Studio | Los Angeles, Calif.

F.C. Owens, Chris Owens

Designed and built by F.C. Owens for Evan Blair, producer and songwriter of Benson Boone’s breakout hit “Beautiful Things,” this room is an example of today’s modern pop music studio, with no console and no live room, or even a booth. The design brief called for an intimate, inspiring and highly efficient, minimalist approach that merged the worlds of acoustic performance, technical A/V integration and architectural detail. Owens created what he calls a “nearly non-environment” space, maintaining a higher degree of 3 kHz and up ambience than traditional non-environment control rooms, without inducing flutter echo or the comb filtering fields associated with QRD diffusion. Audio, video, data and power connections are integrated into hidden panels at each end of the custom seating.

The Mastering Palace North | White Plains, N.Y.

Pilchner Schoustal International

Designed by Pilchner Schoustal International for Dolby Atmos and outfitted with a custom Northward Systems mastering console Type S, the Mastering Palace’s room dimensions were specifically laid out to both accommodate the Kali Audio immersive monitor positions and achieve good standing-wave characteristics for the ATC main stereo speakers. Pro Audio Design’s Dave Malekpour provided gear integration. The room’s outer shell minimizes modal resonances while the inner shell provides specular absorption and LF damping for all the mid-field speaker positions. Construction was by Chris Harmaty. Overall, the design meets the requirement for uniform energy decay characteristics and excellent specular reflection suppression to provide the smooth and neutral listening conditions critical to a mastering environment. The unique rear wall features a quadratic residence sequenced record shelf—repurposed from a previous build—with full-depth, wide-band absorbers positioned above, below and behind to provide mid/high band diffusion.

Bnyx Studio | Los Angeles, Calif.

Sunset Audio Solutions & Carl Yanchar

Rich Avrach of Sunset Audio Solutions, working with Carl Yanchar, completed a two-room studio for hip-hop producer and songwriter Bnyx (Benny X) at the end of 2024, providing overall studio design with an emphasis on acoustics. Sunset Audio custom-designed and built nearly all acoustic treatments, including the invisible STC door and clouds, to go with ACS Tube Traps in the corners and custom-printed panels on the rear wall. Acoustic treatment also includes perforated wall panels with insulation behind and a large bass trap at the front of the room; Sunset designed and built the keyboard wall. Main monitoring in the control room is a pair of speakers from German manufacturer Geithain. The second space doubles as a producer room and live room.

Zach Foty Music | Minneapolis, Minn. HdAcoustics, Jeff Hedback

Opened in June 2024, this 750-square-foot new build was a collaboration between the client, independent music producer Zach Foty, Jeff Hedback of HdAcoustics, and CityDesk Studios, which handled the building and exterior designs, with lead builder Josh Freitas. Form follows function, with the design focused on Foty’s main requirement for visually connected control and live rooms, which, combined with his wish for lots of natural light, dictated the careful positioning and angling of the access doors, control room sidewall windows and the live room window to work with Hedback’s acoustical systems. The acoustical slat wall pattern, a Hedback signature feature, is a dominant visual theme and is the facing of a variety of porous broadband and low-frequency tuned devices sized and shaped for function throughout the audio spectrum. These systems are finished with natural wood tones and light fabric.

BrightFrame Studios | New Orleans, La.

Ceephis

with RSPE Audio Solutions

BrightFrame Studios opened a new, multi-room, networked facility in New Orleans in November 2024 (the company also operates a Los Angeles studio) that features a 9.1.4 Atmos room powered by PMC speakers and Avid technology, including an S6 console. RSPE Audio Solutions provided studio design, working with facility owner Erick Bardales, as well as integration. The complex also hosts comprehensive broadcast capabilities, with three TV filming sets for news, talk shows and other needs, complete with an LED wall and networked audio, video and lighting, and up to four podcast filming sets. The studio’s facilities are connected to a broadcast room housing Avid, Allen & Heath and Blackmagic Design technologies.

Siren Studios NYC | New York City

Malekpour

Design Partners

Siren Studios NYC, opened in late 2024 in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, was designed by Dave Malekpour and Michael Bashkangi of Malekpour Design Partners, together with Pro Audio Design’s John Songdahl (system engineer), Ken Simon (systems integration and installation) and Atrain Taveras (project manager). The second studio created by the team with owner Chris Sanders, it is centered around a dual Slate Raven MTX system and massive Augspurger Quattro 415-Sub218 monitors, framed by a custom front wall that features wooden slats backed with thick felt, balancing absorption and diffusion. Jocavi wall-traps and light wall-traps provide broadband absorption and bass trapping. In the back of the room, Jocavi Squary diffusors, made from hollow porcelain, add natural diffusion to smooth reflections and expand the stereo image.

Harmony Recording Studio | Nosara, Costa Rica

Steven Durr Designs

Available at a daily rate for guests of the Harmony Hotel in Costa Rica, this private studio—designed by Danish record producer, songwriter and composer Rasmus Bille Bähncke and Steven Durr Designs—is in a newly renovated bungalow just steps from the Pacific Ocean. The studio’s console houses an API The Box with PMC monitors and outboard gear, and offers views of a private outdoor terrace and native plants through the control room window. The 380-square-foot control room and adjoining vocal booth are acoustically treated while also embracing the hotel’s low-key, high-style aesthetic. Architectural design was by Loop Design Studio with Pauline Steenkamer of Nosara Design handling interior design.

Pressburger Theatre, Pinewood Studios | Iver, England

Munro Acoustics

A request to upgrade the Pressburger Theatre dubbing stage at the 85-year-old Pinewood Studios, just outside of London, for Dolby Atmos mixes provided Munro Acoustics, who last rebuilt the room in 2004, to refurbish the entire studio. Munro provided the redesign, building work and finishes while Pinewood handled the technical installation. Mindful of not changing the sound of the iconic room—Munro took detailed acoustic measurements before, during and after the work—the refurb retained some of the base acoustic treatments, but all surface treatments and finishes were replaced, with extensive use of wood. The room now features a dual-operator, 2 x 24-fader Avid M40 S6 control surface and a 48-speaker JBL Custom Cinema screen and surround monitoring system driven by Crown amps that handles Atmos Theatrical and Home Entertainment, as well as IMAX 12.0 and other formats.

Wondersmith Audio | Acton, Mass.

Designed by owner Daniel Fox

Wondersmith Audio, owned and operated by producer, engineer and educator Daniel Fox, is a production and mixing studio housed in a restored 1830 post-and-beam saltbox barn. It also functions as an educational hub and a working showroom for the pro audio brands represented by Wondersmith Audio’s sales division. The open-concept room, designed and built by Ben Dryer of Woodcat LLC using oldgrowth and reclaimed wood, features 20-foot ceilings, with the original hayloft creating a unique architectural and acoustic feature. Matthew Azevedo of Acentech designed the custom acoustic treatments, consisting of tuned bass traps and broadband absorption, which were constructed by Eric Pearce of Soundwall Construction. System integration was by Joe Ziemba and Gavin Paddock.

HOTWAX DELIVERS A ‘HOT’ SHOCK

PHOTO: Jude Harrison

An electric full-length debut, recorded at RAK Studios, captures the UK trio’s intentionally raw, unpolished, live-performance energy.

By Lily Moayeri

HotWax is in its element when playing live. The UK trio—vocalist/guitarist Tallulah Sim-Savage, bassist Lola Sam and drummer Alfie Sayers—released its debut album, Hot Shock, earlier this year and the group’s live energy is captured on every song.

Hot Shock was guided by a trio of producers that included multiple Grammy-winner Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Wolf Alice) and Steph Marziano (Hayley Williams, Let’s Eat Grandma), who worked together on the album at London’s RAK Studios, and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa, who recorded two of the album’s tracks at her studios in Joshua Tree, California.

Marks saw HotWax perform in the summer of 2023 at Third Man Records’ The Blue Basement in London. That show, she says, was “the inspiration for the album. It was the tiniest gig venue I’ve ever been to. It was the hottest day of summer. We were crammed in, and everyone was trying to vie for the air conditioning unit. Sweat was dripping from the walls. You couldn’t really see them, but the performance was so amazing. The sound was incredible. I wanted to hear that on record.”

Marziano had the opposite experience. She originally met the group in songwriting sessions, and “Hard Goodbye,” one of the first songs they wrote together, is a sonic departure from the rest of Hot Shock. Marziano saw HotWax perform a week later, and her reaction was, “Why didn’t you tell me?” she recalls. “We would have probably never written ‘Hard Goodbye’ had I seen them live.”

‘HOT’ SHOCK

Marks’ alternative leanings and Marziano’s pop background provide a strong combination for HotWax, pulling the group in unpredictable directions. The songs were written prior to recording, in preparation for a week of preproduction at a London rehearsal studio. During that time, while the band played through the songs, Marks and Marziano dissected each one, deciding what tweaks to make.

GETTING READY FOR RAK

“Pre-production made [HotWax] really wellrehearsed,” explains Marks. “When they were in the studio recording, it was muscle memory.

They could focus on performance rather than their parts. Also, it helped us focus on the way we were going to record it—what kind of tones, snare drum and hi-hats we were going to use, what pedals. It became this electric experience.”

“It was also nice to hear the band in the most bare-bones, bad-sounding way in an untreated room,” Marziano adds. “We listened to the parts and the arrangements, made changes, and gave the band time to practice. By the time recording happened, it was really seamless. We didn’t have loads of days at RAK, so we needed to go in very prepared.”

The pre-production sessions were recorded in Voice Memos. In between pre-production and recording, HotWax had two weeks to listen to the recordings, live with the arrangements, and make any final decisions about the songs.

“In the past, we have had productions where the guitar is super-layered up and the drums are super-quantized, and everything is perfect and so massive,” shares HotWax’s Sam, “but we realized that isn’t us, and that’s not our sound. Coming into the studio this time, we didn’t want more than three guitar tracks playing at any time. That’s because, one, it’s not realistic for us to play live, and two, it all starts to blur. We kept this very pure and even kept mistakes in.”

The recording at RAK’s Studio 2 was completed in 10 days. Studio 2’s control room is on the mezzanine level, above the live room, which has double-height ceilings. There are no booths, and, other than baffling the drums, HotWax came very close to replicating its live performance setup.

Says Marks, “Having the bass amp resonating, and the way it reacts to a room mic compressor, can add glue to a performance and sonics, as well as capturing the drums.”

ROCKING AND RECORDING

“We would start by tracking drums with live guitar and bass, often not to a click,” Sam notes. “I was nervous at first, but it ended up being the only way that would’ve felt right. We recorded most of the effects—especially vocal reverbs and distortion—through the desk. It felt superanalog, and then the monitor mixes are pretty

much exactly where we wanted, so it felt organic and raw. That was the whole aim of the album. Catherine and Steph really made that happen.”

“I come from the world of wanting to go to click,” Marziano says. “Catherine was the one convincing me not to. By the end of the record, we’d swapped places.”

“They were so tight as a unit, you couldn’t tell if they were live with a click or not,” says Marks. “That’s why we decided to tempo map their performance rather than put it to a grid. There was a natural push and pull in between sections we wanted to maintain instead of sucking the life out of it.”

One of Marks’ key production approaches is to add live processing, mainly to stimulate inspiration. She finds that running distortion, delay, reverb or using pedals—specifically Audio Kitchen’s The Big Trees and The Flying Squirrel, which had a big impact in shaping the sound of Hot Shock—create different sonic reactions and provide something more granular and exciting in the artists’ headphones.

This gelled with the work HotWax did with Mogzawa in Joshua Tree. Says Sam, “Stella is an amazing drummer with so much feel and so easy to jam with. She also has an impressive drum machine and vintage gear collection. We wrote ‘Lights On’ there with her on drums. The main thing in that song is the bass sound that sounds like a synth. It came from this bass she had with flat wounds through a vintage chorus effect processor and Tallulah’s [Boss PS-6] Harmonist pedal. I love when sounds influence the writing of a song and the feel. Omar, her engineer, was great as well. He got everything sounding so organic and clear in such a subtle way; it fit the two songs we recorded so well.”

TRACKING ‘MAD’ DRUMS

Coming from a drumming background, Marziano is particular about that aspect of any artist’s sound and in Sayers, she found the ultimate drummer. Plus, having worked as an engineer at RAK for years, she knows its studios well.

“I have weird drum-miking things,” she admits. “One of them I take from Sylvia Massy, where you have two [very thin Earthworks] microphones at the end of a hose [one close, one far], and another, a little Fisher Price, which we sent to the Eventide H3000 on the ‘circle’ preset. It did this mad thing to the drums! Some songs it would be terrible; other songs, the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. It worked if we had baffles on the drum kit and a really tight snare, with a weird spacey thing in the background. The tightness of the room meant that we could do fun stuff because everything else was tight.”

The choice of microphones and placement allowed for creative experimentation. There are three smash microphones the producers namecheck: the Fisher Price (the ’70s version) on the drums; what Marziano called the “hot lips” microphone—a phone in the shape of lips—which would get moved around; and a harmonica microphone placed near the floor tom, above the kick drum. These three would not always get used, but they were able to build a drum sound around these esoteric choices.

Additionally, Sony microphones were placed around the room, high up, with varying levels of

Drummer Alfie Sayers

compression applied. Marks likes having these microphones floating, moving them depending on the song’s needs. A pair of Neumann U87s were also moved around on a song-by-song basis.

“We were recording a lot of microphones,” Marks says, “but not using all of them. The speed we were working at, having everything set up and a big palette to work from, we could make our choices as the songs were going down rather than waiting for something to be set up.”

A TOUCH OF HOTWAX LIVE

After a week of recording in this fashion, Marks and Marziano arranged for HotWax to perform to an audience in RAK’s larger Studio 1, with the intention of capturing the energy for Hot Shock

“I was thinking, ‘How do 20 people change the sound of a room?’’’ Marks recalls. “What was so amazing about that Blue Basement gig was you

Mix engineer Neil Comber

PHOTO: Patrick Scally

PHOTO: Patrick Scally

have bodies absorbing the sound. There’s less reflection. What does that do? Also, what does that bring to the energy of the performance?”

The recording of the live performance in Studio 1 was set up as close as possible to how they were arranged in Studio 2, bar the drums, which were in their stage format rather than in the round. The audio was captured in one large session. This gave Marziano a better idea of what the album should sound like.

“We were halfway through, and at that point, you slightly lose the vision of the album,” she says. “The band having a gig in the middle of it, you understand, ‘This is the album. This is how people are perceiving it.’ A couple of the songs’ recordings were based on how they went down live.”

Marks has extensive mixing credits, but Hot Shock was handed to Neil Comber (M.I.A., Charli XCX) to mix. Comber was given roughs, which Marks points to as the blueprint. In general, she avoids reference mixes. “If I have to say it should sound like this, then I don’t think I’ve done my job,” she says.

Comber also was able to attend the Hot Shock live recording in RAK’s Studio 1, which helped him understand what he needed to do with his mix.

“I’m a big fan of live-sounding records, so this was right in my wheelhouse,” says Comber. “The gig they performed for the live recordings for the album at RAK gave me such an insight into what the band and Catherine and Steph were making. There is something about the way a live room compresses the sound and pushes it into your ears that is really hard to replicate in a 2-mix— but after seeing them play, that stuck in my head as the feeling the mixes needed to have.”

Comber found the rough mixes he was given to be very detail-oriented, with the riding of the room mics coming through strongly. This gave the sections different feelings and weight, according to Comber, who followed the producers’ push and pull of room mics, with a focus on keeping the sonic energy even across Hot Shock

AN ‘UNPOLISHED’ MIX

“There were real tape delays and great plug-ins printed for vocal effects,” Comber says. “I really enjoyed swapping between those for different sections, having them all in but making one or

the other more prominent in different spots. Being a three-piece band, the bass ends up part of the guitar sound a lot. I would use the different microphones on the bass to have the bottom end and midrange as almost two separate instruments.”

For HotWax’s unique combination of pop and heavy guitars, Comber focused on finding the balance between the two. For this, he had the classic UAD SSL 4000 G Buss Compressor across the mix and SSL plug-ins for the EQ. For compression on the guitar, he used Waves’ CLA-76 compressor/limiter, noting, “Hitting the compressors pretty hard and winding lots of bottom end and 3 kiloHertz punch into the guitars—those are my heavier guitar go-tos.”

Also on the mix bus were the L3 Multimaximizer and FabFilter Pro-L 2. On the all-vocal group, Comber used the DynOne3 Dynamics plug-in. “These are things I would typically use for more hip-hop/pop mixes,” he explains, “but they worked great in bringing out some of the punch of the drums and letting the vocal really shine through on this album.”

“I grew up on records that weren’t polished,” Marks adds. “It was the humanness and the imperfections that made me feel something. I’m always encouraging artists to track live, to play together, to play off each other. If you’re a band, the way you play together is what makes you unique. Just being able to capture that, you are part of something special. I think we were part of something really special with HotWax.”

Says Sam, in summation, “There’s nothing exciting about perfect music because you can’t take it anywhere. It has nowhere to go and nothing to build from. This album is far from perfect—and that’s what makes it exciting.” ■

Vocalist/guitarist Tallulah Sim-Savage, kneeling, with bassist Lola Sam in RAK Studios Studio 2.

Co-producers Catherine Marks, right, and Steph Marziano at the console in RAK Studios’ Studio 2 control room.

Tech

Peluso P-24 Microphone

Stereo, Tube Large-Diaphragm Condenser

By Barry Rudolph

The Peluso P-24 is the result of a twoyear collaboration to design and build a large-diaphragm, stereo microphone that closely follows the design philosophies of AKG’s legendary C24. For those who dig deep, the P-24 uses two gold, edge-terminated, dualdiaphragm 32mm P-CK-12 capsules that are historically accurate and interchangeable with the vintage AKG CK12 brass capsule.

Same as the vintage C24, the P-24 uses a single dual-triode 6072AM with one triode section for each capsule. Sourced from EI NOS or Svetlana, the 6072A is a military-grade version of a 12AY7 but with matched triode halves and a lower noise specification. There are no solid-state output buffer/amps used, and the internal circuit board is hand-wired in-house. There are two T14/1 output transformers, made by Tamura, and both are enclosed in a mu-metal can with a shielddivider between them to reduce crosstalk.

The two capsule assemblies are positioned one above the other, same as the C24. The upper capsule can be rotated in 15-degree increments up to 180 degrees, relative to the fixed, bottom capsule. The upper capsule turns on a hollow, vertical, axial tube that routes the connecting wires to the capsule. The Peluso logo at the base of the mic marks the front of the mic and when the upper capsule is rotated to 0 degrees, it is physically aligned with the bottom capsule, both facing front.

The P-24 weighs 2.3 pounds and measures an impressive 10.6 inches long. The kit includes a 16-foot, multi-core connecting cable, shockmount, power supply and a large, foam-lined carrying/travel case. The power supply has a pair of nine-position polar pattern switches for remotely selecting the patterns individually for the upper and lower capsules, called Output 1

and Output 2.

Any polar pattern from omni-directional to figure-eight can be set for the top and bottom capsules individually. In this way, any stereo microphone technique is possible. You may use it as mid/side with a front-facing cardioid and a side-facing figure-eight, an X-Y coincident pair with the two cardioids set to any angle, or as a Blumlein pair using two crossed figure-8 patterns.

STARTING OFF WITH GUITAR

My first use of the P-24 was to record an acoustic guitar in a small iso booth using the Blumlein technique. The P-24 is a big and heavy mic, so I brought in a large floor stand and boom with sandbags placed on the base. I positioned it about 1 meter (39 inches) in front of the guitar, right where the neck joins the body.

I used a pair of Wolff Audio S1P “Tutti” mic preamps set to about 35 dB of gain and fed two mono audio tracks (not a single stereo track) into Pro Tools. This produces a wide and expansive sound in a realistic and spatial presentation. Moving the P-24 closer in and slightly reducing the mic pre gain did increase the bottom end (due to proximity) and close down the stereo width. I liked the focus.

I also liked the P-24 for recording acoustic guitar with vocal at the same time. I used the X/Y stereo pattern

on a Martin D-28, adding another X/Y for the vocal. The guitar’s low frequencies were present and dynamic. However, recording vocals with a stereo mic can be problematic if your singer moves about in front of the mic. I could hear timbral changes of the voice in the stereo field—especially on headphones. Having the facility to change polar patterns quickly proves invaluable for experimenting with different stereo techniques when recording everything from orchestral instruments to ensembles to drum kits.

REALISTIC, POWERFUL DRUM SOUND

For drums, I placed the P-24 overhead and centered equidistant between the snare and the floor tom, in front of and just above the drummer’s head. I tried X/Y cardioids first, then Mid/Side when I wanted control over the stereo spread later on, and also the super-wide Blumlein technique. All three worked wonderfully, and there was no clipping heard, even when my drummer played hard and loud.

While configured in an X/Y coincident pair

and with the drummer playing, I changed the patterns from two cardioids to two figure-8 patterns. I did this in real time, right on the downbeat of a chorus. I just loved the widening out of the stereo drum imaging. In Blumlein, the imaging greatly changed with more specific localization and detail of the kit’s components—toms, L/R cymbals, hi-hat, etc.

I was only able to do this “cowboy” trick because there were no pops, clicks or gaps heard when changing the pattern rotary switches. If the multi-core mic cable were longer, the power supply could be located in the control room to

PRODUCT SUMMARY

COMPANY: Peluso Microphone Lab

PRODUCT: P-24 Stereo Large Diaphragm

Condenser Tube Microphone

WEB: www.pelusomicrophonelab.com

PRICE: $3,999 USD MSRP

PROS: Big-sounding, large-diaphragm stereo microphone useful for many sources.

CONS: It’s a bit heavy.

do this from behind the console. A longer cable could also be useful for orchestra miking and/or hanging from the studio’s ceiling. (A custom-length cable up to 100 meters long can be ordered.)

While placed horizontally over the kit, it can sometimes be hard to tell where the capsules are aimed. I started by turning the whole mic in the shock-mount so that the bottom half was aimed as I wanted. Then I used the white pointer/cursor on the side of the top capsule assembly to rotate it to where I wanted—but I confirmed the capsules by having my assistant “snap” the upper and lower capsules. Works great!

AND, OF COURSE, VOCALS

Recording lead vocals affords the opportunity to use both capsules at the same time with both set to cardioid. I fed their outputs to separate signal chains. Again, I used the S1P for capsule 1, followed by a single channel of an API 529 stereo limiter compressor. Capsule 2 was connected to a Retro Instruments (all-tube) Powerstrip Channel.

I had clean limiting/compression from capsule 1 for the verses, and the Retro Power Strip gave me a mellow tube compression for the much louder-sung chouses. Because the singer was very quiet in the verses, this worked out well. While mixing, I managed to make the transition (from verse to chorus and back) sound seamless.

The Peluso P-24 makes it easy to experiment with any of the classic stereo recording techniques using a single microphone. There’s no worry about phase and levels, as you might get when using two separate mics, and your recordings will take on a three-dimensional quality immediately. Recommended highly. ■

The P-24 comes in a large, foamlined carrying case that also holds its power supply, shock-mount and more.

The upper capsule of the P-24 can be roated in 15-degree increments up to 180 degrees, relative to the fixed, bottom capsule.

Tech

// reviews

Dreamtonics Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro

AI Singing Voices at Your Fingertips, Controllable Via MIDI

By Mike Levine

Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro isn’t a synth in the traditional sense. It’s a vocal synthesizer that uses MIDI sequence data to trigger AI-controlled voices created from recordings of real singers, with modes for singing and rapping.

A purchase includes a standalone application and plug-in version. Either functions as a MIDI host, and the sequences you create or import drive the AI-controlled vocals. A sequence can have multiple tracks and be edited using a Piano Roll editor with multiple editable and automatable parameters.

The advantage of using the plug-in is that you can sync it to a DAW. The limitation is that your DAW controls the transport of the plug-in, but not vice versa—unless you’re an FL Studio, Studio One 5, Cubase 12, Reaper 6, Cakewalk or Ability5 Pro user.

Like a DAW, Synthesizer V features an Arrangement Panel that houses tracks and lets you cut up and rearrange them. In version 2, Dreamtonics has made splitting full tracks into independently editable groups easier.

For note-by-note editing, or working with selections of notes or groups, there’s a Piano Roll editor, where you can select, cut and paste notes or groups of notes, change their pitch and duration, edit the pitch curves, draw in new notes, and so forth. It’s also where you enter and edit lyrics.

NOTES GOING IN

Synthesizer V offers several ways to create or import a vocal part. One is to record into its sequencer directly from a MIDI controller. Another is the ability to import audio tracks into the timeline—an invaluable feature. Manual note entry is available by clickingand-dragging in the Piano Roll or with a dedicated drawing tool. Another option is to import standard MIDI files.

Yet another way to go is to import an audio track of a vocal and then use the Extract Notes from Audio command. Synthesizer V converts the notes to MIDI in seconds, transcribes the words and automatically places everything on a track in the Piano Roll.

This feature worked flawlessly most of the time, although inevitably there were some corrections to make after the fact. The cleaner the performance on the audio track, in terms of pitch and pronunciation, the more accurate the conversion and

transcription. If you’re importing a vocal track, you might want to pitch-correct it in your DAW first. Whichever entry method you use, notes appear in the Piano Roll with “la” as the default lyric (changeable in Settings). To enter lyrics, click on a note and type in the word.

Alternatively, the Insert Lyrics feature facilitates bulk entry. First, you select a group of notes and type lyrics for them into a dialog box. Then hit OK, and Synthesizer V inserts them in the sequence on the appropriate notes.

The AI Voices generally pronounce words correctly, but not always. When a word sounds wrong, phonetic spellings usually work. The introduction of Phoneme Timing in Version 2 lets you lengthen, shorten and change the level of the phonemes in the lyrics. For example, if you’re not getting enough of a consonant sound at the beginning of a word, you can emphasize it more.

THE VOICES

The most crucial aspect to assembling a vocal track is the quality of the singers. Fortunately, Dreamtonics has done an excellent job creating the various AI “Voices,” basing them on recordings of real singers. The dozen or so available Voices differ in gender, sound and

The Piano Roll Panel, in the center of the screen, is where most of the editing occurs.

style, and they can be customized using various adjustable parameters. A purchase comes with only one, however, and you’re going to want more; you can add others through the software’s Product Manager Panel, or on the Dreamtonics site. Users have full rights to any vocal parts they produce.

I often used the Voice named Liam (they all have first names) because it has a gruff sound suitable for rock and Americana, which fits my projects. For the review, I was given access to several others, both male and female. Most seemed suited for R&B, pop and EDM.

Once you’ve selected a singer in the Voice Panel—a vertical window on the right—you can make adjustments with the Vocal Mode parameter knobs. Each singer has a different selection of Vocal Mode adjustments.

For example, Liam has knobs for Bright, Heavy, Rounded, Whispery, Soft and Hoarse. Natalie 2, meanwhile, offers Bold, Soft, Soulful, Steady and Warm. Within each parameter, Version 2 has added the ability to open three subparameters for even finer control. You can save Vocal Mode settings as presets for each singer.

Below the Vocal Mode knobs are sliders for Loudness, Tension, Breathiness, Gender and Tone Shift, which are the same in every Voice. The Tension parameter is especially useful because it adds intensity to the performance. If you split a track into Groups, you can have different Vocal Mode settings for each—perhaps raising the Tension in the choruses only. The Gender parameter changes the timbre; I could only dial in a slight deviation in either direction before it started sounding unnatural.

The Parameter Panel, which sits below the Piano Roll, accesses fields for drawing in

automation curves for any editable parameter, allowing for adjustments beyond what’s in the Voice Panel.

TAKE 2

What used to be called the Notes Properties Panel is now the Notes Mode Panel. This is where you access a feature called AI Retakes, whereby Synthesizer V creates minor variations of the notes based on Timing, Pitch, Timbre or all three, as if a singer had done multiple takes. You can create AI Retakes for full tracks, smaller selections, Track Groups or even single notes. Comping is extremely easy.

The new Expression Pad is similar to an XY pad but offers four additional performance-related properties—Vibrant, Refined, Rigid and Raw— that can be added, singly or in combination, for everything from individual note to full tracks.

The Notes Mode Panel is also where you can switch from Sing Mode to Rap Mode. The latter is tailored to spoken-word performances

PRODUCT SUMMARY

COMPANY: Dreamtonics

PRODUCT: Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro

WEBSITE: dreamtonics.com

PRICE: $99

PROS: Authentic-sounding vocal performances controlled by MIDI data. Full-featured render section. AI Retakes. Adjustable phoneme timing. Lots of automatable, editable parameters. Multiple Voices available.

CONS: Only one Voice included. No global pitch correction. Grid lines don’t match grid snap settings. ARA Bridge plug-in only supported in some DAWs.

and emphasizes rhythmic aspects more than melodic. You can apply it to an entire track, selection or track group. You can even create hybrid sung/spoken tracks.

Once you’re ready to export your part or parts, the fully featured and easy-to-use Render section lets you specify which tracks to bounce. It even offers the option of splitting out the “Aspirations” (breaths and other voice noises) and rendering them onto a separate track, giving you more control over them in your DAW mix.

You can bounce tracks in mono or stereo, 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit float resolution with 44.1, 48 or 96kHz sampling rates. Dreamtonics says it has increased rendering speed by 300 percent in version 2.

FEEL THE POWER

I got up and running on the basics quickly with Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro, but grasping the nuances of its features required significantly more time. It didn’t help that parts of the manual were confusing and/or outdated.

I was also a bit perplexed by the Piano Roll’s option in the snap-to-grid feature. The grid lines don’t match the snap values. For example, if you set the grid to 1/1, instead of one grid line per measure, you see four, and the snapping is quarter notes. If you set it to 1/2, it snaps to eighth-notes, etc. Dreamtonics says that it’s a tradition in vocal synth software to count in quarter-notes, not measures, and they’re considering a change for a future version. To me, it’s a no-brainer: Change it!

I was also surprised to discover no global pitch correction feature. Because converted audio tracks often need pitch massaging, a correction algorithm with scale-conforming options would be helpful.

That aside, I’m highly impressed with the power and depth of the software. I used it to create vocals from scratch using MIDI input. I also had the software “re-sing” previously recorded vocal tracks, importing them through the Extract Notes from Audio feature. Some projects required lots of editing inside the Piano Roll, and others not as much. Either way, the results sounded like an actual singer recorded them.

Some may not like the idea of vocals created using AI, but Synthesizer V Studio 2 Pro incorporates it into its workflow while keeping the creativity in the hands of the user. That’s the way it should be. ■

A close-up of the Arrangement Panel, which sits above the Piano Roll and houses MIDI and audio tracks.

Open Channel

Are We Having Fun Yet?

By Craig Anderton

According to Mikey Shulman, Suno’s CEO, we’re not having fun. On a recent podcast, he said, “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music.”

Suno is a site where people can type in prompts and AI generates a song. The site says it’s “building a future where anyone can make great music. Whether you’re a shower singer or a charting artist, we break barriers between you and the song you dream of making. No instrument needed, just imagination. From your mind to music.” The site also says, “From idea to hit.”

We can discuss overpromising and underdelivering some other time, but how did Mr. Shulman conclude that people don’t enjoy the time they spend making music? Maybe it’s projection—“I find this learning music thing difficult, so probably everybody does.”

But this won’t be a “musician dumps on people who play with AI music” column. Many people don’t have the time or discipline to become musically proficient, yet they want to do more than just listen to music—now they can. That’s great. And, AI is quite good at creating one-off novelty songs.

can only re-package the past), and siphons potential royalties from artists who hope for some income. A separate haystack…er, platform, for AI songs is one solution, but that’s another topic for another time.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER FUN?

The second troubling aspect is scarier: promoting the idea that learning to be a musician isn’t enjoyable, so you want machines to do it.

For me, there’s nothing like the satisfaction of recording a song that touches someone’s soul. Some people absolutely love my music, some don’t, but neither one matters. My reward is a journey of emotional expression, personal improvement and pleasure. While there’s little scientific proof that recording music creates beneficial changes in your brain and body, I’m convinced that it’s only a matter of time before science proves that exercising musical creativity is as beneficial as exercising your body.

And above all, being a musician is fun. Sorry, Mr. Shulman, you just don’t get it. The journey is more important than the destination. Climbing Half Dome in Yosemite National Park is a triumph of overcoming insanely difficult conditions to attain something rare and beautiful. Having a helicopter drop you off on the top of Half Dome…well, you get the same view, and, hey, you can take a selfie! But it’s not the same process.

Climbing Half Dome in Yosemite National Park is a triumph of overcoming insanely difficult conditions to attain something rare and beautiful. Having a helicopter drop you off on the top of Half Dome…

Feed in the prompt “create a new age-style composition about violent flatulence set to a blues progression with heavy metal ukuleles and sung like Billie Eilish,” then stand back. The occasional novelty song can be hilarious.

But “from idea to hit?” Seriously? I listened to every song on Suno’s home page. I wouldn’t listen to any of them again. They weren’t “bad;” they just weren’t compelling or interesting. Watching some rando catch a baseball simply isn’t as exciting as watching the Dodgers play the Yankees. I’m always glad when people can have fun with music, regardless of expertise, but consider two troubling aspects.

THE TIDE THAT SINKS ALL BOATS

According to an article from Reuters, “Deezer said more than 20,000 AIgenerated tracks are uploaded on its platform each day, which is nearly twice the number reported four months ago. ‘AI-generated content continues to flood streaming platforms like Deezer and we see no sign of it slowing down,’ said Aurelien Herault, the company’s innovation chief.”

If uploading music was a needle in a haystack, now it’s a needle on Jupiter, if Jupiter was a haystack. Those AI vanity uploads make it harder for listeners to find what they want, perpetuates a lack of originality (AI

Nor must you be a virtuoso to enjoy creating your own music.

I know a DJ who learned bass because “bass loops suck.” Is he Jaco Pastorious? No. Does he play parts that fit perfectly with the music? Yes. Does he have fun playing bass? Absolutely.

AND IF YOU GET BORED…

Talking Heads’ song “Found a Job” describes a couple who can’t find anything worth watching on TV. Their solution is to make their own shows:

“Judy’s in the bedroom, inventing situations / Bob is on the street today, scouting up locations…. If they ever watch TV again, it’d be too soon for them / Bob never yells about the picture now, he’s having too much fun… So think about this little scene, apply it to your life / If your work isn’t what you love, then something isn’t right / Just think of Bob and Judy, they’re happy as can be / Inventing situations, putting them on TV.”

It’s easy to create something. Whether people use AI, or paste samples while a soulless algorithm vomits chord progressions, is, in fact, creating music. And microwaving a frozen dinner is creating food.

But I don’t find either one enjoyable. The next time you’re playing with music and technology, ask yourself, “Are we having fun yet?” Algorithms don’t have fun. ■