Maintaining its reputation as being at the forefront of sound design technology, leading Australian mixing facility Soundfirm Australia has installed a Harrison MPC4-D console in its Sydney mixing theatre.
Alongside the Harrison is a SmartAV Tango controller that usually takes care of the Pyramix sessions that come in from the studio’s sister facility Soundfirm Beijing. These sessions are often 200 tracks wide, with the automation in these sessions easily handled by the Tango’s eight faders. The Madi outputs from the Merging Masscore engine is directly connected to the Harrison’s Madi inputs.
The installation of the Harrison MPC4-D, coupled with a Barco DP 100 2k digital projector, reinforces Soundfirm’s reputation as having Australia’s most technically advanced mixing room.
The Harrison MPC4-D is used by some of the biggest studios in Hollywood such as Sony Pictures, and has long been the desk of choice for Universal Studios’ world-famous Hitchcock Theatre sound mixing facility. The first film to be mixed on the new console at Soundfirm Sydney is Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s latest film, The Flowers of War – official entry for the 2012 Academy Awards.
Zhang Yimou’s association with Soundfirm goes back over 15 years. Previous Zhang Yimou films mixed at Soundfirm Australia include Curse of The Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers, Hero, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles and The Road Home.
Soundfirm Australia’s MPC4-D is configured for two-person operation, and has 72 faders, 16 remote faders, two assignable joystick panners and 64 channels of PEC/DIR monitor switching. The surface controls an expanded digital engine that currently contains 224 fully featured inputs, 56 remote faders, 32 bus limiters and eight channels of Harrison’s DTC plug-in processing. Detailed mix information, including audio waveforms, is displayed on 11 high-resolution TFT screens. An expansion of up to 320 channels is planned for mid 2012.
The latest version of MPC IKIS software contains a new user profile and monitoring sweet spot function that allows mixers to create an unlimited number of channel layouts right in front of them. Additionally mixers can create libraries of settings for panning, EQ, dynamics and DTC plug-ins that can be copied and pasted to any other channel or exported to any project.
A new Linux-based host computer speeds automation and filing operations, allowing the entire console to be recalled in as little as 15s. The console is also equipped with an environmentally friendly power management system, whereby the console will put itself to sleep after a preset period of inactivity.
More: www.soundfirm.com
More: www.harrisonconsoles.com
