Located in the the Flatiron district of New York City, boutique audio post house Bronx Audio Post – known as Mr Bronx since its inception in 2011 under founder and senior mixer David Wolfe – has pursued an alternative approach to audio post in the Big Apple. Recently, Mr Bronx has made Genelec its studio monitor of choice.
Offering a comprehensive suite of services encompassing mixing, sound design, ADR, voiceover recording and casting, Mr Bronx has become a go-to destination for audio. Work includes notable campaigns for Adidas, Coca-Cola, American Express, LG, Sephora, Kia and the ACLU. Additionally, the studio has contributed to all of Beyoncé’s musical films since Lemonade in 2016.
With a staff that includes some of the most talented and progressive sound designers and mixers on the scene, the facility has garnered accolades for the producing captivating soundscapes across ad campaigns, feature films, television series, immersive installations and even theme park attractions.
Occupying 12,500sq-ft, the facility boasts 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos rooms with Genelec Active Monitors, a 160-inch projection screen (Studio A) and a spacious 145sq-ft ADR stage, which all three studios are connected to via a Dante network.
‘I actually started off in the music industry working for Sony BMG and eventually took an apprenticeship at an audio post house, where I gave up recording music and went headlong into television and film,’ Wolfe says. ‘The post house I was apprenticing at had speakers from another manufacturer that I really did not like working on. So I went on a bit of a journey to find the speakers that worked for my ears. I ended up borrowing a pair of [Genelec] 8030s from a friend to put in the small studio at that old space, and kind of fell in love with them. They helped me cut dialogue better than anything else that I had been working on.’
Mr Bronx has three creative rooms (two large and one smaller space), all equipped with Genelec. ‘Studio C is our smallest room. It’s 5.1 and it’s connected to our ADR booth. It’s built for an engineer, a director and a producer to sit comfortably and calmly to direct the talent or actors in general. It’s our most mild room,’ Wolfe says. ‘Studio B is an Atmos room, with a much lighter colour scheme built for our commercial clients. It’s very friendly and inviting. A little less aggressive than A, which we built as our theatre room. In our old space we kept winning these TV shows and films, and then when it came time to final mix, we needed to up our game a bit. So we built A to do just that. And it’s a brilliant space. It’s a ‘knock-your-socks-off’ room…’
Studio C has Genelec 8240As for LCR, 8330As for LR surrounds and a 7060B subwoofer. Studio B is an Atmos room with Genelec 8351Bs for LCR, four 8040Bs for side and rear surrounds, four 8030Cs for height and a 7380A subwoofer. Additionally, there is a pair of 1030As for stereo playback. Studio A is also an Atmos room and employs S360As for LCR, 8351Bs for LR side surrounds, four 8341As for height and a 7382A subwoofer. The ADR stage has a pair of Genelec 8030Cs. Additional equipment includes Avid S1 Control Surfaces, John Hardy M-1 preamps into Empirical Labs Distressors, a Dante network for talkback at three different control room positions (front of room, producer’s desk and mix position), and Focusrite RedNet interfaces. The design of the studios enables clients to swiftly connect a laptop audio to the loudspeaker system, with wired and wireless talkback remotes and microphones located at all three listening positions in the control rooms.
‘As a whole, Bronx Audio Post is about 80 per cent commercial work and half a dozen documentaries and narrative films a year,’ Wolfe says. ‘We probably crank out about 1,000 commercials a year at least. And we work with everything and everyone from Pepsi to Nike, Adidas to Lay’s to Supercell’s Clash of Clans game. We’re doing everything from sound design to mixing for broadcast/web/cinema to VO to podcasting and, obviously, immersive. It’s really a wide variety of work, and that’s why our monitoring environment is so important. But I never have to think twice, because of Genelec, and that’s one less thing for me to worry about.’
More: www.genelec.com
