The Cleveland Institute of Music’s director of audio services AlanBise, who also serves on the faculty, has been part of a project toupgrade the Institute’s new recital all, which is scheduled to becompleted in 2006. The new facility will embody top-of-the-linerecording and sound reinforcement equipment, including 24-bit/96kHz PCMand DSD capability. Among the gear on the assembled purchased list is acomplete ATC (Acoustic Transducer Company) Loudspeaker 5.1 surroundsystem. Unwilling to wait three years to begin using ATC monitors, Biseand his staff recently purchased a pair of ATC SCM100-ASL Proloudspeakers for use in their control room.
“Working at CIM is a real pleasure,” said Bise. “With 37 members ofthe Cleveland Orchestra serving on the CIM faculty and 33 CIM alumnicurrently holding positions in the orchestra, there is a very closerelationship between the two institutions. The quality of theperformances we hear on a daily basis is quite phenomenal.
“Performances in Kulas Hall, CIM’s main primary venue, span anenormous range in terms of the number of forces and the styles ofmusic. While we record roughly 65 performances a year, most of thoseare student performances, ranging from solo classical guitar to a110-piece orchestra. Our professional audio engineering staff includesmyself and Jennifer Shope, along with 30 or so work-studystudents.”
Bise said that his decision to purchase a pair of ATC loudspeakersfor CIM was “a simple choice. I’d been aware of these monitors sinceBruce Leek, noted recording engineer, mentioned them to me severalyears ago. Then Telarc purchased a full set of ATCs a year or two ago.Since Telarc is only about 20 minutes away from us, I went down thereand listened extensively to them. By the way, Jack Renner, a multipleGrammy Award-winning engineer at Telarc, is an adjunct faculty memberat CIM.
“I immediately noticed that the ATCs were amazingly accurate anddetailed. Since we installed them at our Kulas Hall location, they’veforced us to work harder on our microphone positioning. We use veryhigh-quality microphones and mic preamps. With the ATCs, there is nodoubt whether a microphone move of an inch makes a difference. Ratherthan make our recordings sound pretty, the ATCs reveal both the goodand the bad. What you hear is exactly what you’ve captured. I do nothave to make any compensation. We have no excuses to make poorrecordings, and that’s good!”
Recordings at Kulas Hall are done using a Ramsa WRS-4416 consolethat was custom-modified by John Windt. “The board was installed a bitbefore my time, but I know that John Windt redid the power supply andreplaced many of the electronics in the board. Other gear we useincludes Millennia Media mic preamps and Apogee converters, along withhigh-end microphones from B&K, Schoeps, Sennheiser, Neumann andAudio Technica. We try to keep our front-end very high in quality, andright now we’re catching up on our data resolution while auditioningconverters, microphones and DAWs to complete the system. When the newrecital hall is completed, our recording equipment will bestate-of-the-art. The one item we won’t have to replace is our ATCmonitors. They’re gorgeous, and we’re looking forward to working with acomplete 5.1 system from ATC.”
For more information on the monitors, visit its distributor,Transamerica Audio Group, at www.transaudiogroup.com. For more information onthe Cleveland Institute of Music, visit www.cim.edu.
