Genelec's The Ones & Look Inside Metropolis Studio A - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

[Music] hello everybody hope you're doing marvelously well in this episode I travelled to Metropolis we went there was my wife and I to see an unveiling of a new Genelec speaker well speakers you're going to get to see all about it plus of course we did a little bit of a tour of Metropolis so without further ado this check out the video Alex what room is this so welcome to studio a metropolis this whole building top street is built and opened around 1989 and one of our first and biggest clients here was Queen and they came came in and recorded parts of innuendo here huge exciting thing for us and a lot of the fans loved it yes it's Queen no they're only my favorite band alright you can also see Yemen the video per head long was shot in this studio you can see the control room and the live room which is all blacked up and a lot of the building son was shot in that in that video fantastic so what do we have in this room we have a 9000 J yes yeah this 9,000 J this has been here for a while lovely console we've got mostly SSL's in the building seeing a lot of lot of various records great records kind of record on this most recently Adele that we did piano I think the piano for 225 hello was recorded in this room lovely hands so yeah it's seen a lot of history great outboard here I see we got some gym early cues yeah [Music] yeah prison stuff we also got the EQ piece and to be the mid-range versions well the Emmy cues as well which are quite cool to be able to have both those and then on the other side we've got some de-stresses 1176 ears some of the summit style pull Tech's dbx is al smart that's the c1 a belief bass style compressor but American clients come through they love the space yep you know it's kind of it's quite neutral but they like the kind of big open space they have a lot of people in here you know they'd like to listen big on big monitors most of the time and so yeah throughout the summer we've had future here Travis Scott young thug most of most of the big big us urban guys coming through the door which has been great wonderful so the tech shop various bits of gear here all kind of waiting to to be repaired or wait to go back in this moment Nev VR console up in studio C's getting quite a lot of work and a couple of channels here ready to go back in the console one of our tech guys Jake is currently and taking all the channels apart and they're all getting cleaned to recap you know new pots being put on getting is getting a full work over so it's you know the lovely console great mixing consoles but they do suffer from overheating and components kind of boning out and deteriorating quite quickly so they need a lot of mates of maintenance the the Neves sound great and yeah couple couple from the the G Series and the K series that we've got upstairs as well and yeah various other bits and pieces og+ and you have a k LJ LJ and in the new fear anything no sir the nice selection yeah yeah you know always interested in kind of expanding a bit so we might swap one of them out in a few years time also doing an you know in the works of a refurb of Studio a in partnership with Genelec so I'll be going ahead facelift which would be great wonderful hasn't seen obviously since it opened in 1989 great Studio B was referred and general Atkins thought we installed there there mains in there a couple years ago and that had a whole new reef fabric and and so these guys really they keep the kind of building going between before recording studios and the five mastering rooms is a lot of equipment to be serviced there are lots of stuff that needs to be looked at you know it's a full-time job pretty much garlic yeah well that's great it's great you have tips yes yeah not not many places have full context of no and it's you know it's a bit of a luxury but it really makes a difference to how we operate Andy how are you very well good good we've been listening to this you have been loving it tell us about it ok so we're here at metropolis today and this is kind of a continuation in addition to our ones family so the ones came about oh four or three or four years ago with the 83 51 and now we've done an update for the 83 51b and we've got a smaller family including 83 40 180 331 so generally what we try and do is provide monitoring systems that will work in any environment small rooms or to much bigger rooms depending on listening distance room volume all that kind of thing mouths what we got going on here the not subwoofers so they're not not subwoofer so in addition to the ones the concept with the w3 seven one is to extend what the ones give you so in the ones we've got phenomenal ability to kind of give you a solid stereo image both on axis off axis and also dealing with a point source so point source technology essentially having the tweeter mid-range and the drivers already in hitting you at the same time so you get a very coherent image now with the woofer stand we can extend that right down so we've got a full frequency system that's freestanding and there's also kind of some clever technology in there via DSP that allows it to adapt to the room and give you a system that is efficient and does a huge kind of a great job of getting audio to you okay here at Moana I think well what everybody is loving about it and there's I think the main thing I'm taking away from it is the fact that there's not this sort of disconnected sub and you know mains feel like oh that my maiden is my sub and everybody sort of claims to try and do that I suppose I mean there's the purpose of a sub woofer yes is to just kind of add yeah that's missing but what generally happens is you go in Rome which what everybody's experiencing this is you basically here your mains only Hill up just hit 20 and 40 going on down there and and it's nice you turn it on and off this feels like it's just continuing the full range absolutely so you music well in post-production for example you would see 5.1 or you'd have a single element that's looking after all that Rumble all the effects explosions I can't send sure if you try and achieve that in music you will get an element that is added to the main system so I kick drum special terms and even those subwoofers a omnidirectional in their nature I guarantee you'll hear the knock of a kick drum and if that's sub isn't in the center or off to one side you will be pulled to that so generally we would we would try and accommodate for the music the music production a pair of subs so you get a nice bounce system you still get that that experience of sub holds in the frequency response main speakers so what this system does is we've got the ability to cross over at any points from 500 Hertz all the way down as we've gone it so we've got the ability to adapt this woofer system to the mains to have a seamless coherent system so it's just a pure extension of that law and energy so excellent imaging excellent law and extension that's the kind of crux of it so should we bring in Giles to explain how absolutely hey Josh hey how are you so how did you do this well maybe start where we came from starting off with a research project actually into room responses we're looking at lots of data from the existing auto Cal function and we realized there's a big problem of normally having notches around about 80 to 150 Hertz in the rooms so it's led us to dig into you know the source of these problems where they come from numerous tests simulations building room models and things like that and we came up to determining where they come from and the idea was to make a a loudspeaker unit to reduce the problem of the room and these heavy notches in most cases so this is where we came up with the adaptive woofer system the idea is that it adapts to the room to minimize the inference of the room at your listener position so as to maintain ologies behind it the first is the complimentary mode so we measure the individual responses of the drivers look at the responses determine how we should best use the drivers individually to ensure that you get the best response of the list in position so it's relying on the fact that we have the two drivers in different positions they give the different response we can work with them the other modes of operation are the directivity control so we use active directive 'ti control to shape how the directivity part of it you know in the lot of our speakers we do a lot of work with the directivity guides to ensure we get a decent controlled directivity but once you go down low and frequencies you lose that directivity control unless you have a massive battle or unless you drive you so in this case we've uses active cancellation basically so we use different filter sets to manipulate the directivity of the speaker we have a continued directivity which means that we can take the directivity from the main monster and continue it right down to about 50 other so we can control the directivity using both drivers in the overlap region from about 50 to 250 Hertz and then we have a number of null operation modes so we can focus nulls like quieter zones towards the direction of the main reflections in the room get back wall floor side wall fantastic I mean the end result is for anybody here watching this frankly is it sort of just makes the sound like I said we were talked about earlier feel connected um one of the things when you were talking about like in a 5-1 situation like everybody but most people have experienced that they've gone to either movie theaters obviously or they have a home theater environment is it's great for movies and stuff to have that extended low end but there it doesn't feel like real life there it is this sort of hyper real you know sort of coloration what was interesting is when we went to one of the mix rooms we so load them and listen to them and that was actually quite revealing because most of the times when I'm soloing subs I'm just doing you know and which is all well and good but it felt very very connected when you pulled them in an out it just felt like it was can I wish there was the right worst because complementary is the obvious thing to say which is obviously what they're designed to do but it gets rid of that idea we were talking about earlier of just sort of pushing the sub on and off to impress the client yes it actually feels like a tool that I could use in a mix as opposed to just something to go hey you wanna you want to fill the 808 you know I don't really know it's such a naive way I'm explaining it but I understand what you're trying to do it's what you've you've got it fills it fills in well it extends the frequency response of this but also what Charles touched upon is the nulls that you experienced showroom and typically they'll be around 100 Hertz 200 fish on it snare drums that's the big thing losing that impact and that weight and a sense of authority with a truck with a system like this you get that punch that car here and see that see I wasn't sensor I want to hear mixer stillness hmm because when we were in the mixer I'm listening to some great mixers and a couple of things that I knew one of the things I found was like I'm thinking to myself I wonder if you know whoever mix that song would have made you know different choices because one of the things obviously that these have a reputation for is an increase front to back there's more depth in them you know I love 10:32 as I've been using them since blubbered blur you know it's 92 something and the great thing about them is you know I mean we the revolutionary for the time yeah powered speaker like the first high quality bad speaker but when these came out and they first brought them open for me to listen I was like this is a very modern speaker because the way everybody regardless of the loudness Wars whether we want to talk about everybody's slamming louder and louder more virtual instruments are being used now than ever before and those are all already eq'd and compressed unlimited so that when you play the sound the sound is just there yeah and a speaker we've increased depth is a good idea because it allows us now to go okay I've got all these really heavily EQ and compressed tracks how do I actually put them in a spectrum so that I can actually feel that my music is more than just anyway I'm waffling on but I'm definitely impressed and I think the the big thing Eric was talking about there and I'm sure you guys touch on as well is the idea that you can move these from room to room and reproduce the results it's a big part of what we walk we're about being able to have performance in a room that allows you to make positive decisions beyond the front foot and then have that translator so the idea of going in the car going in the kitchen checking references to try and minimalize that as much as possible so that your mix time is moving the project forward rather than guessing for sure forward and also if you're moving from room to room carrying that reference with you if you've got reference tracks you calibrate the system and you are in a familiar place and then from that point you can then be decisions about the room decisions about kick-drum treatments what compressors you're using eq's all that kind of thing to make you feel at home and confident in the creative decisions that you're making I think that's the crux of what we're talking about here with all of these systems the ability to exist in the real world and exist from room to room you know it's interesting growing up like everybody in the business pretty much on a pair of a those tents you you made music in spite of the speakers yes you know you knew there was like what 7 dB at 1.5 K yeah huge spy use it using that as a referent okay so I know I'm hearing this but got a bear in mind yeah for me it's a snare drums offensive and the electric guitars were ripping my ears off I knew it was going to sound good and the the thing is we're moving you know where is moving towards speakers that are accurate yeah and I am going to be intrigued as like some of the some of the best mixes in the world start mixing you know on these systems to see the kind of decisions that are going to be able to make yeah it's it's interesting kind of sophisticated choices in terms of panning Jonathon front to back yeah reverb tales these kinds of monitors allow you to make those decisions and I like ear candy so that you want to kind of push in there and really make things dance you can really get an insight on that we can go forensic with these we can kind of make them sound warm vibey we can accentuate certain parts of the system or in give you something this is completely accurate that will translate so that's it's it's flexibility I think is very okay though I doubt they'll get into the different rooms you still want the same to be in there this adaptive worthless system takes that thought minimizes the difference between runes to ensure them you stick this in a room nearly anywhere it's much more flexible in placement than normal speakers you'll get the same response Erik horsemen how are you my friend good nice to meet you good to meet you too we just had a little demonstration of the immersive capabilities of the jeddak's in this room and it's actually been a couple of immersive rooms and you're using a little less speakers but I didn't really quite frankly feel that limited it's pretty amazing it was a great demo but I want to ask you a little bit before we talk about new immersive setup I want to ask you a little bit about yourself because I know that you came up using immersive hence why you're you've got this role of genic I have quite a background in the whole immersive technology because I was I was responsible for the first German Dolby Atmos mixing stage a theatrical mixing stage that we've built in in a studio south of Berlin in pasta and it was in 2012 so basically that's yeah quite quite a long time ago that I got involved into the whole immersive world of Dolby Atmos and it actually just yeah took my attention immediately and since then I'm working yeah in in everything that's related to immersive technology it's not only post but also now getting more and more into music applications gaming it's very interesting topic for immersive stuff yeah still live I love it because it's amazing it's really really cool well it was a great demo I really appreciate it um we had a recording that was done in a church we have a jazz ensemble which was which was fantastic we do we had a little bit of a film and TV in there bit of movie of course which was great the thing I've enjoyed about Atmos and I've been in a couple of rooms now once you've heard you can't really unhear it I'll tell you that anybody that's had that experience now look obviously it's not a cheap solution it's not like you know buy a pair of speakers and you've got it but once you've heard it it's pretty hard to unhear it it makes stereo feel a little that lacks lack should we say I suppose yeah because it gives you that real-world experience you're being surrounded by sound just like you what I have read a second of your day with the new stuff that you guys are brought out what have you in this room in particular Warren what have you got going I don't see the subsystem is it here the subsystems just behind the console okay so we're using two subwoofers here and there yeah in that particular pop-ups okay yeah that room has not been designed to be be an immersive room but it's a temporary merciful we're using two 15 inch subwoofer 7380 models yeah and the front we're using the just a brand new 51 be versions three-way coaxial speakers and the small one forty ones on the on the ceiling level so it's basically it's a seven point one point four speaker layout that we wonderful the quick quick questions so I have heard these but these have been upgraded what what have they been changed these have been upgraded so we added basically the whole interior has to change we kept the outside cover we have new amplifiers a new woofers inside a new coaxial mid and high frequency driver that well that gives us more hetero more SPL less Distortion and we increased also the capabilities in terms of the room correction capabilities that we have in all our DSP based Sam speakers the 8350 1b version they're just brand new version in the middle you can see the I yeah yeah which the Clone Wars I kind of thing which is the the mid and high range Twitter yep behind the openings on the bottom and on the top there are two over woofers behind them so all of the woofers are built in-house in finland and all of the speakers also AM built by hand in our factory and he saw me in Finland and we're using recycled aluminium for the enclosure so we're sustainability is a very big topic for Genelec since since the beginning so the yeah that's why all our products are basically built with a sustainability idea in mind I we were in the mastering room and we'll probably go back there and do it there as well we were in the mastering room and what I like about this system and I and it's obvious at least it's obvious to me and I'm sure to many people what you're doing is you're getting and this is a wrong term analogy but you're you're you're you're getting rid of that sort of idea of separation of sound because when I go to even Marshall HD yes I feel like I've got 20 to 40 Hertz sub and then everything else yeah you know that's Nova simplification but you tend to there's no there's no connectivity in the sound and what I liked about their mastering room about that experience you know it was only in stereo was the fact that I just felt like I was hearing one thing exactly I wasn't hearing this separated oh my god you've got a really nice sub you know it it was pretty remarkable that's exactly the idea we had the concept actually to just to use or to give the impression that it's one speaker that extends the frequency range to the deepest octave basically that's the idea and what when paul stewart from Genelec in america first brought these over he was the B's that EIU sorry inspector the one thing that I think is quite remarkable is the depth yes you've got the biggest front to back I know any speakers at the moment which I really really enjoy and I think is actually very modern because this be honest everything is printed loud and proud these days so even even though apparently loudness wars are over it's still reality that everybody is limiting everything to try and get more more things forward and the problem is when everything being forward you know you just don't know where you're doing and a lot of speakers that were designed to Bri produce volume and especially high mids mean that you know you just can't see where you're placing strip so I'd say these have had the highest amount of depth and I know it's very very detailed reproduction yeah even also at low volume and that's also something that's critical to some of some speakers I mean we all used to hear loud yeah and some speakers you have to drive them loud in order to get the full picture right you can't drive them low volume and with that principle especially with the coax system we get there pretty well I think I want to hear things mixed on these speakers yeah that's what I want to hear because when we got to hear all of the the range with the with a system I'm you know paraphrasing is that the the rig because we were starting to listen to some classic mixes and I play some stuff that I'm familiar with classic things some of the some of the best mixing of all the time and you start to realize that's not how you're used to hearing those mixes I would love to have a Bob Clare Mountain hmm mix through these somebody who I respect and I know you know a spike stent a Marc endo you know one of the great great mixes of our time because the detail is there and the depth is there I want to see what they can do with that yeah do you know Tamim yeah absolutely I've something filigree that's something I know you were talking off-camera about ideas and stuff that's something I would probably push I mean there yeah I mean we have a pair of the 51's down here and still you'll be and Studio a is just about to be refurbished in Metropolis yeah and they're gonna get coax as a near-field system as well right so a lot of stuff coming out here but yeah definitely so we'll see how it affects people's decision making yeah I think I think there's one one benefit of that system that can help during the mix process then you have a very very wide sweet spot yeah so you can actually even judge things being outside of the sweet spot yeah I mean of course your stereo perception and it's gone basically but you you don't have coloration and sound and this is something that's also important when you work with client you probably know best people are walking around the console or behind the sitting on the couch somebody no lazy flying around they never they will experience no change in coloration wherever they are depending on behind the speakers and there's something that's pretty interesting as well there are other concepts with other manufactures to have this very narrow very minimal sweet spot but once you move out like five or ten centimeters the whole picture is gone and this is different here and this is something I really like with that and obviously we take that principle especially in immersive formats to cover the room basic because that is a thing of the speakers that really helps us to create this immersive dome around around the audience I think I'd think it was worth mentioning that was in the first part of the presentation is the fact that this system is trying to help take away some of the coloration yes at first an oversimplified way of explaining it you know I've been in rooms are a bit of code chambers but I've also been in rooms that are really really flat from a perspective of you know being a mastering studio but even then there is coloration and most importantly even ten supposedly really well designed acoustic rooms you take his speakers from one room to another to another they all sound different it might not work yes I mean I've never met an acoustic engineer that actually agrees with another one of you have you ever whenever I do an interview of an acoustic engineer there's another acoustic engineer commenting that he's not right and I wanted to be that guy and another guy I mean everybody has his own opinion on this yeah yeah but therefore I mean the more important is that actually to have a speaker that adapts to the acoustic environment sure or that actually can be calibrated to the acoustic environment and then you can actually take it from room to room and you will get nearly the same right feeling and the same world as long as they're robots rather certainly professional rooms obviously yeah yep actually even in a bedroom really you can I mean you cannot take away everything from showroom but you can make it usable although always knowing that room is not ideal I mean in a in a bathroom you will never get something not a proper sound but if you're sitting in the direct field and half your room and your speaker calibrated you're at least closer to linearity a closest very wide the description I've been so but that actually helps calibrating speakers always helps no matter where you are even the best room you need to calibrate the speakers that's fantastic well thanks very very really appreciate you're welcome thank you thank you very much see you Matt thank you so much thank you very much for coming thank you for having us it's a lot of thank you very much do you have you enjoyed it do you think it's been wonderful it has been really good you know we have been of course you have been doing a lot of work or people that excellent fortune and for doing all eldest in organizing - it was it was excellent those who were invited they were they they were here and they were so enthusiastic to listen to what we are offering it was wonderful we we really enjoyed it we loved this whole idea of the woofer not going to call this up and it does the job that it's as described because that great thanks everyone for watching I hope you had a marvelous time thanks for gentle liqu for doing this I was talking to them about about this earlier I feel like there's a responsibility with all of us in the music industry especially on the on the gear side and though there was like myself that have like channels to talk to people that it's not always just about you know doing products that coming up with things that are pushing the envelope a little bit and I think this works really fantastically well the fact that is adaptive to each room is adapted to the speakers and how these speakers respond in the room and what it needs to do to make that sound you know flat and accurate and every room we were in was totally different in every room that we're in sounded good so it's great stuff it's not inexpensive it's not about that but it's definitely about forward-thinking especially with the immersive stuff that was actually one of the rooms you know when we're talking to Eric that we were most impressed with because even though immersive is not tomorrow not every brain is going to have an immersive room in their house of course not but the idea of it and where we're going and the mean of the world of virtual reality an immersive sound is only going to keep growing at the moment it's a little tiny thing in its infancy but it's the future so it's great to see companies such as Genelec you know embracing this and thinking about the future so we have a great time thank you metropolis great studio great space a lot of the people that we're friends with have do a lot of stuff here and Lou it's of course great company have quite a presence here and this is just a wonderful thing so thanks y'all thanks metropolis have a marvelous time recording and mixing [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 33,103

Rating: 4.8716216 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, Metropolis Studio A, Genelec, 8351B, 8351A, 8341A, 8331A, W371A, The ones

Id: gdqK0AS6WC8

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019