From L to R: Engineers Justin Luffman, Aaron Bowlin and Craig White pose with Curb Studios’ new ATR/Aria analog deck.
A new ATR-102 equipped with Aria electronics is now transferring vintage tapes to digital and recording new project mixes at Curb Studios in Nashville.
‘It’s a great sounding unit,” says Curb Studio engineer, Craig White. “We A-B’d several machines and the ATR with Aria won every time.”
The Aria Reference Series electronics are a class-A, all discrete design by David Hill, and replace the stock Ampex electronics in the signal path. The Aria package and the refurbished ATR transport were supplied by ATR Service of York, Pa. with the transaction facilitated through Rob Dennis of Nashville’s Rack ‘n Roll sales and rental company. Curb’s new machine is set up for record and playback using interchangeable quarter-inch and half-inch headblocks.
One of the first assignments for White was transferring more than one hundred vintage catalog master tapes recently purchased by Curb Records president Mike Curb from Tower/Capitol Records. “Many of Curb’s physical assets are on some type of tape, and we want to use equipment of the highest quality to reproduce and preserve these assets for future use,” says White.
When not assigned to transfer and archiving duties, the new ATR/Aria is quickly converted to the half-inch format for use as a mixdown/mastering deck on current projects at the studio.
For more information on the ATR/Aria, visit www.atrservice.com.
