Hidden in a unremarkable back alley, EMI Publishing Studios is part of London’s best established recording facilities. Rrecently updated, the studios house two UAD-2 powered Pro Tools mixing rooms, which surround an intimate live room. The consoles are flanked by a selection of outboard effects, assorted in-house guitars, amps, drums and a classic Moog Little Phatty. However, as well stocked as these studios were, welcoming the biggest producers and artists in the world, the monitoring wasn’t up to scratch.
EMI Engineer Scott McCormick called in Source Distribution to help out: ‘We’ve always struggled a touch with the acoustics in our studios here, but the Genelecs that Source allowed us to trial made a massive improvement,’ McCormick says. ‘We now have the 8240s in Studio B and a set of 8250s in Studio A. Both studios can be acoustically difficult but the Genelecs were a massive help, they just work.’
Genelec’s 8240A bi-amplified monitoring system provides a compact yet powerful set-up that is well suited to a space such as EMI’s Studio B, and able to out-perform many larger systems. The DSP function helps the monitors adjust to the room.
‘We are getting great levels of bass out of them comparable to our big, flush mounted three-ways and they are worth three grand and are twice the size,’ McCormick reports. ‘Even with the DSP on, we aren’t getting any fatigue, the frequencies are full and it makes mixing easy, we are now able to fully trust in what we are listening to.’
With a high turnover of producers workin in the studios, it was important for McCormick to find a monitoring system that was both accessible and could deliver on performance. A big draw for producers when working with calibrated 8240 monitors is their accuracy. In a multi-user environment such as EMI, this accuracy is not to be underestimated: ‘It’s a huge concern with a lot of the producers we work with,’ he says. ‘If they work on a really bassy set-up, for example, when they play their tracks on an outside system it sounds terrible. A great thing about the DSP on these is that it doesn’t flatter the sound. We know that when we export tracks recorded here, the sound that is produced will be accurate to the recording.’
Equally happy with the trial of the 8250As in the Studio A, McCormick welcomed the ability to jack straight from Pro Tools into the monitors. ‘Being able to bypass the desk in this way means we get the purest path possible. Mixing like this allows us to establish a direct mixing chain and a more analogue chain for vibing, tracking and writing.
‘In this studio they do a better job than any set of speakers we’ve ever used.’
More: www.genelec.com
