Los Angeles, CA (October 12, 2021)—Los Angeles-based producer Brad Wood (Liz Phair, Skating Polly) has been building his own studios ever since he started out in Chicago back in the late 1980s. Based these days in Valley Village, he recently built Seagrass Studio out of a former residential guest house, outfitting it with a live room and now a fully-equipped control room that can tackle Dolby Atmos immersive work.
Up until the pandemic, Wood had been using a traditional stereo system, but seeing the changes happening in the industry and not wanting to be left behind, he purchased a Dolby Atmos 9.1.4 system with PMC speakers and three 704D Dante Connect Series amplifiers from LEA Professional.
“This was my first time using LEA Professional amplifiers, and the architecture of the amplifier was state of the art; you can tell that the team building these amps have a lot of experience,” commented Wood.
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He needed the LEA amplifiers’ Dante capability to work in conjunction with the DADman software, part of the control room’s Avid MTRX studio environment. “The location of the rack is toward the front of my room, but they’re in an alcove that was built when the guest house was built, so it means that access to the back of the amplifiers is very restricted unless I pull the entire rack out,” said Wood. “So having control over all those amp functions via the computer is ideal because I don’t have to bother with pulling the rack out to make any changes.”
Wood did the installation and configuration of the amplifiers himself with help from PMC speakers: “It wasn’t very challenging at all. There’s a quick-start guide that comes with each amp, and it was extremely easy to get up and running; there really weren’t any issues.”
With installation complete, the studio booked up well into next year. “The amplifiers sound fantastic, and I don’t have any complaints. What I want out of a power amp is consistency, no colorization, and to just work,” added Wood.