Bigglewade, UK (March 18, 2015)—UK singer Rebecca Ferguson has reportedly become the first artist anywhere to record an album using the new PMC QB1-A reference loudspeakers and then also have the album mixed and mastered on PMC monitors.
Ferguson, who rose to fame in the 2010 series of The X Factor, recording her third album Lady Sings the Blues at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. The facility had recently upgraded its world-famous Studios A and B to incorporate PMC’s QB1-A reference monitors.
Musician and producer Troy Miller, who has worked with a host of artists including Laura Mvula, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Omar and John Newman, chose to record at Capitol Studios because it is one of the few remaining studios that was around in the 1950s when Billie Holiday was recording. Holiday recorded there, along with a host of others including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole.
“Capitol has had lots of gear thrown at it over the years, but Steve Genewick, who engineered the session for me, didn’t hide the fact that they had rejected all other offers of monitoring and assured me that the PMC QB1-A’s were ‘the one,’” says Miller. “What struck me was that the PMC QB1-As sounded exactly the same when I cranked them up—still the same level of detail and depth. Sometimes I feel you lose that detail when you pump it up on other speakers. I often had the overwhelming feeling that the speakers were not there and I was listening to the ‘feeling’ I got from them. That’s a great sign I think.”
Once the recording was completed, Miller brought the project back to London where Peter Beckmann, owner and founder of TechnologyWorks Mastering, was booked to master the album. Beckmann’s facility is equipped with a pair of PMC IB1S monitors, powered by a Bryston amplifier.
