Los Angeles, CA (February 4, 2022)—Portia Street Studios in L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood recently upgraded its main control room with an 11-speaker Neumann KH series monitor system to enable the mixing of back catalog material and new projects into the Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio formats.
The new 7.1.4 immersive setup comprises seven Neumann KH 310 tri-amped near field monitors for the front, side and rear zones with four KH 120 bi-amped near field speakers delivering height information. The new speakers have been integrated with two existing 18-inch subwoofers in the room.
According to producer and mixer Dylan Ely, who founded Portia Street Studios in 2017 with Don Andes, “Once we got the Neumann system dialed in, it was amazing — I couldn’t stop listening. Everything we listened to, even in stereo, not just immersive, translated really well from stuff I had mixed on other speakers.”
A veteran of nearly 25 years in the music industry, Ely previously worked for extended periods on staff at major studios in Chicago and New York with a long and diverse list of artists that includes Linkin Park, Jennifer Lopez, Ministry and Ludacris. “Overall, I’m really happy with the speakers,” he says of his facility’s new Neumann KH series system. “I think they’re in between a nice, transparent speaker and something that has a little edge to it, which I like. I like to have something that I can dig into a little bit, and the Neumanns work really well for that.”
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Neumann’s compact KH 310 incorporates a specially designed fabric midrange dome driver that has been tailored for precise work with speech, vocals, guitars and other instruments with a midrange emphasis. “They have a presence in that range,” says Ely. “But it translates, and it isn’t hyped in any way. It gives some more detail to the mid-range and keeps everything smooth and transparent.”
The seven KH 310 speakers in the horizontal plane work well with the four overhead KH 120 models, he says: “It’s a seamless transition between the 310s and the height speakers. I don’t feel like there’s a disconnect between the two models of speaker and their frequency responses.”
Despite having so many speakers aimed at the listening position, Ely adds, “Another thing that stands out to me is that you can listen for a long time on them. I’m not cranking them up super-loud, but I don’t feel fatigued after listening to them, especially considering there are 11 of them blasting at my head.”
