A Tale of Two Studios: Part One
Two studios, one on each coast of the USA. Each has a 5088 in their main room, but each needed a second setup to accommodate their growing workload. What to do for their second room?
PART ONE: NEW YORK CITY
For No Shame, an indie electronic/pop/experimental record label based in NYC, their 5088 just wasn’t enough.
It’s not that it didn’t do what they wanted, or that they were unhappy with the sound, or that it wasn’t durable enough (a sound cloud fell on the console and nothing broke). “With only one studio, it’s hard to squeeze in all the work!” says Alex Brouwer, No Shame’s Head of A&R.
A few years ago, when they purchased their 32-channel 5088 from Sonic Circus, there was time enough for Alex to get into the studio by himself fairly often. But as the label has grown – now with two engineers, eight artists, and an unexpected amount of commercial project bookings – Alex was compelled to find another solution for his own work. This solution turned out to be the 5060 Centerpiece.
He wanted “something that would give the sound of the master section, the 2-buss”, and since they do “a lot of hybrid mixing” and have plans for multiple rooms in the future, they wanted “something they can move anywhere and maintain the sound.”
“It adds a whole new dimension to being ‘on-the-go’, and what your possibilities are. Right now I love New York, but so much of the industry, so many artists moved to LA…I’m tempted to do that. If I do end up leaving New York, I need to have a system that I can just pack up into a trailer.”
For his home setup, Alex has tried to maintain as much of the studio’s signal path as possible. With Focal monitors, much of the same outboard gear, and the same cabling in both locations, the entire path is extremely similar, but much more compact. The 5060′s monitor section (identical to that in the 5088) was crucial to this philosophy.
“The 5060 is exactly what it sets out to be: the centerpiece of my home studio. It’s the mini-me to the 5088.”
Click here to read Part Two of this story: San Francisco.
Click here for more information about 5059 and 5060-based mix systems.
