Mackie Designs’ new HR626 Studio Monitors were chosen to help produce the soundtrack for The Matrix Reloaded, the second installment in The Matrix. The Mackie speakers are now a permanent fixture at Danetracks Inc., the West Hollywood sound editorial facility that was hired by the Wachowski Brothers and Joel Silver to complete sound editorial and design on The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.
Dane Davis, who founded Danetracks in 1986, has served as supervising sound editor/sound designer for such film as 8 Mile, Treasure Planet, Thirteen Ghosts, Red Planet, Boogie Nights and many others. “While sounding even and good to me, I trust the Mackies to tell me a truth that gets revealed on the final mix stage,” said Davis. “The worst thing for me is to hear details and harmonics in my own sound design studio environment that completely disappear when they project from the big theater speakers and have other layers superimposed onto them. I have yet to be surprised by harmonics or textures of my sounds on the dubbing stage that I did not hear previously in my studio from the Mackies. They are a great ‘preview’ speaker to work through.
“A big part of making sound effects that will ‘read’ when incorporated into a mix with hundreds of other sounds and musical instruments is knowing how much ‘cut through’ each sound has, meaning that its acoustic essence won’t easily be masked out. On a soundtrack as dense and complex as The Matrix movies, we need to hear all of our elements accurately ahead of time. Any clarity and definition we hear in our own rooms that is illusory by the standards of the final mix stage actually works against us. The Mackie HR626s, because they are a great near-field approximation of a movie theater, help us make sounds that will realistically add to the whole of the soundtrack.”
Eric Lindemann, sound effects designer at Danetracks, also played a key role in the current Matrix film. Lindemann is currently working with Dane on Matrix Revolutions. “This is one of the most challenging projects of my career, and the accuracy of the new 626s has played a major role in translating my work to the big screen,” Lindemann said. “I designed a large part of the effects including the guns, graphic displays and titles. I’m using five 626s in a classic equidistant 5.1-channel surround orientation with the Mackie HRS150 handling the LFE channel, and they sounded very accurate and did not over-emphasize any one part of the mix.”
For more information, visit Mackie online at www.mackie.com.
