CRC senior post engineer Eric Cauwels with Tannoy Reveal monitors
Independent studio Chicago Recording Company (CRC) outfitted six of its post rooms with Tannoy Reveal 501 and 601 near-field monitors. Founded in 1975, CRC has nine full post-production suites and a list of clients including Jennifer Hudson, Vince Vaughn and Oprah Winfrey, as well as corporations such as Kawasaki, SC Johnson, Sears, Miller, Coors, and Philip Morris. Its film credits include Black Swan and Pixar’s Toy Story franchise.
In all, 40 Reveal monitors are employed in the post department as mains, as well as in full 5.1 and Precision configurations. All are used for projects ranging from radio and television spots to dialog replacement for high-profile film projects.
“We like the Tannoy Reveal as part of our CRC standard,” says general manager Chris Shepard, who has been with CRC for 24 years. “It’s all about being able to make creative decisions quickly. That’s why we chose them.”
In studio one, the system comprises three Tannoy Reveal 601s for front LCR, two Tannoy Reveal 501s as surrounds, and a single Tannoy subwoofer. “I use them for my surround sound and as my near field monitors,” says senior post engineer Eric Cauwels. “What I like about them is they really translate well to the end format. One of the biggest challenges of being a mixing engineer for television and radio is that ultimately your work is played on a variety of speakers. My job is to make it sound as good on TV as it did in here. Then I know that my speakers are doing a good job, and that’s the case with the Reveals. I also like that you can tailor them to a specific room using the EQ adjustment on the back. That’s definitely an attractive feature.
“I’ll see my work at least once a night watching TV,” Cauwels adds, “and that doesn’t count other rooms producing national spots on a daily basis here.”
“When folks have a project on the line and their name is going on it,” Shepard says, “they want to work with talented people who’ll work to their timeline. We tested a bunch of speakers. But what CRC has done in the last few years is to standardize our rooms and the Tannoy Reveals are a part of our template. We not only picked Tannoy as our monitors, we picked them as the reference for our company.”
