Alongside its collaboration with ECM Records and other international labels and artists, Artesuono Studios is Italy’s best-known venue for recording jazz and acoustic music. Among its activities, location recording all around Europe is an important part of the operation.
The studio’s recent acquisition of a Merging Technologies’ Horus Networked Audio Interface fitted with 32 input channels has simultaneously improved the portability of the mobile rig and improving the end recordings. Stefano Amerio, Artesuono’s owner and principal sound engineer, chose Horus for the quality of the microphone preamplifiers, converters and the ease with which it connects to his existing Avid Pro Tools HDX and HD3 Accel systems.
Artesuono Studios CEO, Igor Fiorini, is used to location recording work and was able to specify a system to meet Amerio’s requirements – not a causal consideration, given the 1,500 albums he has recorded and the 600-plus artists visiting the studio each year. Unsurprisingly, Stefano Amerio is constantly searching for the best equipment to capture live performances in world famous locations. Recent recordings made at the Musikverein in Vienna with bass clarinettist Ulrich Dreshler and pianist Stefano Battaglia returned the first results of the Horus/Pro Tools partnership. The ability to use a Horus in a travelling case connected via a Cat6 cable to a MacBook Pro allows high-sample-rate recording using the CoreAudio driver, with the easiest possible installation and extreme portability.
The search for the ideal converter to use on the road had taken some time, as it needed to be portable, offer sufficient inputs and ‘no-compromise’ audio performance. All the microphones used in the recordings deliver superlative results, a ‘warm and precise sound’ with sufficient headroom to manage the dynamics of the music.
After completing a number of location sessions, Stefano Amerio wanted to use Horus in the studio as well: ‘Amazing sounds,’ he reports. ‘Natural and dynamically perfect. Incredible and impossible to go back. Horus will be my main recording system far into the future.’
The Horus was supplied by VDM Distribution, part of the VDM group, official Merging distributors for Italy.
More: www.artesuono.it
More: www.merging.com
