Los Angeles, CA (August 4, 2023)—Larrabee Studios has installed a Meyer Sound in Studio 3, the exclusive domain of studio owner Manny Marroquin, who estimates he has created more than 200 Dolby Atmos mixes in the room.
Anchored in the front LCR channels by Meyer Sound’s Bluehorn System full-bandwidth monitoring, the new immersive environment has been used exclusively by Marroquin for immersive mixes of songs from artists including Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone, Fitz and the Tantrums, Portugal. The Man and Lizzo, notably her “About Damn Time,” recipient of the 2023 Grammy for Record of the Year.
The recipient of 17 Grammy Awards, Marroquin has credits on dozens of hit recordings by artists ranging from Kanye West and Alicia Keys to John Mayer, Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran. When the Dolby Atmos Music format was introduced, Marroquin saw it as an opportunity for music creators to move forward into, literally, a new dimension.
“The idea of immersive music had always been intriguing to me, but it never was executed correctly to my mind,” Marroquin says. “When Dolby started reaching out to creators like me, and shortly after that Apple put it on their platform, it was clear this would be a real progression in audio technology. So, we went all-in on Atmos.”
Manny Marroquin Ties Into Flock
At about that time, Marroquin was building Verse, an adjoining restaurant and bar, that morphs nightly into a live music recording venue, which integrates a Constellation acoustic system by Meyer Sound.
“I flew up to [Meyer Sound headquarters in] Berkeley [California] a couple of times regarding Constellation, and on one trip [company funder], John Meyer took me to the Bear’s Lab studio and introduced me to Bluehorn. He played a Michael Jackson track, and I heard things in that song I had never heard before. I thought it would be amazing if somehow I could get Bluehorn into one of my rooms at Larrabee. Now it’s here, and it just sounds incredible.”
An integrated system comprising three drivers in two cabinets along with proprietary digital processing, the complete Meyer Sound installation in Studio 3 also comprises three X-400C cinema subwoofers, six Ultra-X20XP and four Ultra-X23XP loudspeakers for lateral and overhead surrounds, and four USW-112XP compact subwoofers for surround bass management.
To describe how he feels working with the Bluehorn System, Marroquin uses a car analogy. “You can drive a new Honda and it will reliably get you from point A to point B just fine, but if you move up to a Mercedes S Class, you get there in luxury and you almost feel safer. With Meyer Sound, I have the Mercedes—maybe the Ferrari—of monitors. Whenever I play something, I can adapt to it immediately because the monitors give me exactly what I want to hear. I had that confidence from the moment I first heard them.”
