Firehouse Studios (Pasadena, Calif.) recently installed the first surround monitoring system in Southern California to incorporate Meyer Sound’s X-10 Linear-Control Room Monitors, after gutting the old building’s outer shell and rebuilding from the ground up.
Firehouse chief engineer Les Cooper chose the X-10 monitors after consulting with Tena Clark, founder and CEO of Disc Marketing, the multifaceted media production and marketing firm of which Firehouse Studios is the newest division.
“George Newburn of Studio 440, who designed the studios, said we might want to give the X-10s a listen,” said Cooper. “I’ve been Tena’s engineer for years, both when she was a songwriter and later as a producer. Over the years, we’ve heard a lot of different systems. We were not overly pleased with many of them, so we were anxious to hear something new and different.”
Clark and Cooper flew to Northern California and heard the X-10s at both Ex’pression Center For New Media (Emeryville) and at Meyer Sound’s headquarters in neighboring Berkeley. For the auditions, they brought along a stack of CDs, both of Disc Marketing’s own productions and some by well-known artists who might be potential clients. “We came away very much impressed with the X-10s,” Cooper said, “both installed at the studio and simply free-standing in the Meyer demo room. They have a clarity that never turns harsh. You don’t feel like you need to back away from them when they get loud.”
System consultant Bob Hodas supervised the installation of the new monitoring systems and also performed final room tuning. The system in Studio A ‘s control room comprises three X-10s for front left, center and right; two companion X-800 Studio Subwoofers for supplemental deep bass and LFE; and an X-01 Crossover Module for signal division and bass management. Four UPA-1P Compact Wide-Coverage loudspeakers supply left and right split surrounds, with six CP-10S Complementary-Phase Parametric Equalizers installed for system tuning.
The smaller Studio B control room also features an all-Meyer 5.1 surround system, utilizing HD-1 High-Definition Audio Monitors for left, center and right, with a pair UPM-1P Ultra-Compact Wide-Coverage Loudspeakers for rear surround monitoring and three CP-10S Equalizers for system tuning.
For more information on Firehouse Studios, visit the studio’s Website at www.firehouserecordingstudios.com or read about them in the upcoming August issue of Mix in “Coast to Coast.”
