Malvicino Design Group

DAVID WEISS interviews a group of studio designers to get their view on what design trends are currently taking shape.

Among the bigger myths circulating about the world of sound has been the death of the recording studio. Articles in mass media no less prestigious than the New York Times predicted last year that the increased capabilities of the computer-based home studio would soon make dedicated audio facilities obsolete. Could it really be true?
The fact is, of course, that today the vast majority of music and sound made to make money is created whole-scale, or at least partly, in a professionally designed space put together exclusively for that purpose. Recording studios, mixing and mastering rooms, and post facilities that are well constructed have acoustical and ergonomic advantages, which make them more dependable, efficient and creatively inspiring places to record than a basement with a maxed out DAW.

Bussiness is good

Audio Media decided to check in on the state of the art of studio design, and found that while the scale and budget of new projects are definitely smaller than they used to be, the experts we talked to have as many orders on their plates as ever. "I keep hearing and reading about the demise of the recording studio - but our clients haven't heard about that," says Russ Berger, president of the Addison, Texas-based Russ Berger Design Group. "In terms of building for commercial recording, there's now more of a passion than ever for recording and doing it right. I understand the chaos currently associated with commercial distribution, but there's still a demand for product."
"Last year was kind of slow for everyone, even before September 11," adds Peter Grueneisen of the Los Angeles-based firm bau:ton."But we can see there is demand to catch up. Starting in January, things have picked up and I think it will pick up more."
"A common thread among our clients right now is that most of them have a fairly large percentage of their production work spoken for already, before they build it," says John Storyk of Walters-Storyk Design Group in Highland, New York. "Another reason construction is up is that we're not being held hostage by equipment prices anymore. You don't have to spend a million dollars. Some of these studios are being put together at a near world-class level for under $250,000 - that's not a lot, and that allows people to have a studio."
With relatively inexpensive DAWs growing in efficiency, power and popularity, engineers, producers and post houses are finding it easier to afford building their own studio or adding/upgrading a room. "Overall, the trend to smaller consoles has been going on for some years and is continuing," says Grueneisen. "More high-quality equipment is available that's smaller, cheaper and better. We are still seeing people buying large consoles as well as a large amount of computer-based workstations. Each equipment configuration demands a different approach to designing the acoustics and the ergonomics of a room. In addition to consoles, the format of the audio, such as stereo or surround, and the demand for picture make a big difference."

Working in a daw world

When asked to build a control room around a DAW instead of the traditional large-format console, Grueneisen points out that designers can find themselves in a dilemma "You can make it smaller because the equipment is smaller. On the other hand, due to the acoustical aspects of the whole thing, you cannot make it indefinitely smaller, so you have to find the balance between the raw spaces you can put the equipment in and the acoustical characteristics. You can make a control room smaller, but it will have an impact on the sound as well."
Horacio Malvicino of Miami's Malvicino Design Group agrees that DAW-based control rooms change the equation in more ways than one. "My mentor, Glenn Phoenix of Westlake Audio, once told me the perfect sounding room would be one without a console, which is true. It's a big object that generates reflections. The fact is that now we're dealing with smaller units, and we're still concerned about reflections, but it's a lot easier to locate in a sweet spot when you get a controller that's not as big and bulky. It also helps because wiring troughs and conduits on the floor are smaller now, with less wiring. With a smaller console, you also have the ability to work in a better eye contact situation across the room, especially with Foley or ADR rooms. "The big drawback is that there are a lot more visual displays, like monitors, that come with that. Sometimes I tell people you can get an extender and a switch and work off one monitor, but people don't like that. With up to four monitors for a Mackie d8b console, one for the Pro Tools, one for locking to picture, and then one for the computer that handles MIDI, that becomes a pain in the neck. You get reflections and lose all of the things you gained by not having a big control surface."
For Martin Pilchner, principle partner of Toronto-based Pilchner Schoustal International, the changes in room design wrought by DAWs appear in subtle and sometimes unpredictable ways. "Not in terms of room size as might be imagined," he says, "which still seems to be derived by the surround requirements of the monitoring system and room occupancy. It has changed our approach to cable management as we now have to accommodate a workstation or a large console, or in some cases both. We have had a number of rooms start with a workstation and then switch to a large-format console after the fact, and vice versa." Outside the control room, the ever-increasing use of MIDI means designers are being asked more often to create rooms specifically for that purpose. "If they're acquiring samples, a more dry environment is often appropriate, but if you have a studio that will only do that, you've painted yourself into a box," says Berger. "So ask, 'what's the longevity of a studio? Are you going to book projects for the next five years or the next 20 years?' Look at the approach and budget, and for the percentage of time that you're really tracking, maybe you need two rooms. "I can't say there's a trend. There are a lot more people that want little dead boxes to acquire signals out of. Those are easy to build, but doing a room with acoustical character and resonance that's pleasing - that's more challenging."
"Most of the time in a small studio situation, people have a tendency to sacrifice acoustics for MIDI," notes Malvicino. "I think it's wrong. I believe smaller facilities need to be treated with the same approach and quality as a big facility. When you think about small rooms and large rooms, I do believe variable acoustics are the way to go. When you're dealing with a dead room, it's dead no matter what, but a live room can be treated to become a dead room."

Room for discussion

While everyone agreed that variable acoustics can help to maximize the functionality of a live room, there were varied opinions on how deeply they should be engineered into a facility. "The key is always to focus on what a space is going to be used for - a specific purpose, more across the board or maybe variable acoustics to accommodate different aspects of the same room," says Grueneisen.
Grueneisen reports that client requests for variable acoustics have remained pretty consistent. "It's still not a very popular thing, for several reasons. It does cost more, and it requires a whole new level of learning by the users to really learn how to use it. What we've tried to do is keep it as low-tech as possible, for example, something that can be changed very easily by someone in the room like pulling a curtain, versus a very highly complex system - people just don't use them if they're too complicated.
"The problem is that the people who use the rooms have so much to think about. On the one hand we want to give them as much flexibility as possible, on the other hand, we have to be aware that it's just another layer of difficulty that they have to deal with."
To Berger, its applicability is a topic that's always worth discussing. "For many years, the issue of variable acoustics has been misunderstood in that there has been much confusion regarding large room versus small room acoustics," he says. "Variable acoustics are not as effective or dramatic in small rooms as they are in large rooms. Because of the physical size of a small room, you can't change the ambient decay like you could in a large room. Say you've got this fuzzy panel that you can swing open, now you're more reflective, but it's only five feet away from the artist. What does that sound like? You haven't added reverberation, just a close reflection, and that creates an anomaly, not really an ambience. There is a technique we've developed called loosely coupled space, so you can get perceptually long reverb in a small room if you have enough ceiling height, but you do need considerable ceiling height to do it in a small area."

Malvicino is a little more blunt about the potential hazards of variable acoustics. "They're a great tool in the hands of people who know how to handle them, but in a home studio they're like a weapon. It goes back to square one: How many people that record in their house have no background in recording?"

Building outside the United States

Although Malvicino has been doing his share of smaller, home-based studios, his extensive international portfolio and contacts sees him working outside the United States on much larger projects. Recent builds for him have included a thorough upgrade of the Arab Media Corporation facilities in Cairo, the big DEMK studios in Mexico and the huge ABSCBN TV facility in the Philippines, with 17 control rooms and 18 studios. While the logistics of constructing these giant places in a foreign country may seem daunting, Malvicino explains that there are reasons why these jobs are actually easier.
"I'm lucky that I'm building so much overseas," he states. "These are the Last of the Mohicans. I love building big studios; it's a real thrill. The good thing about a big company is that you're dealing with an engineering staff that is the end user - not one person. I ask them what their intended use is, do a CAD design, go back and forth, and from there on it's a locked situation and will be built as projected.
"With small studios, those situations are prone to a lot of change. Home studio users often have an inability to project into a finished product, and you have to be patient and explain things. To me, it's a lot harder to build a small studio than a big studio. It takes a lot more pampering and hand holding."
While things have been holding relatively steady in the United States and many international zones, Malvicino notes that the once-booming South American scene has lost momentum. "The whole South America situation has been bad for two years," he says. "I have an office in Argentina, and business in South America is at a complete standstill. Not only is the economy bad, but everything is so unstable, so unpredictable - that's what makes it difficult. Brazil is still doing well though. They're isolated from the world economy: they have their own vibe, 140 million people, and a very strong music market."
Grueneisen, whose firm just finished 25 studios for Sony Music Entertainment in Japan (a project that took three years and measures 70,000 square feet), points out that with the right planning and the overall improvement in communication of the last few years, working overseas doesn't have to be overly stressful. "The logistics are important, and to know what can be done locally and what should be done from a distance is important to a job. It's so much easier to do these projects across the world than it was five years ago, and cheaper too."

A material world

As budgets shrink, studio builders are on the lookout for more affordable materials that can serve as attractive and effective surface treatments, as well as serve isolation and enclosure duties. "We're always trying to find less expensive materials that are unique," says Berger. "Budget is always an issue, but that's the fun part of our job, because the guys I work with are very creative about using materials to get a good look and keep costs down. Budgets are always forcing you to pay attention to materials."

"It has always been our philosophy to use materials in an innovative way and perhaps get more out of them than you would expect from their cost," says Grueneisen. "It has been proven time and again that the main factor in achieving a good sounding and good looking facility is not really the cost of the materials, but the fact that someone is actively thinking about their application.

"In the last few years we've found some innovative things, like aluminum products that can absorb sound. There are other things like felt products, also for absorption, and acoustical plaster materials that are very effective and fairly new." Then again, if you can't find the materials you want, you can always just come up with new ones yourself. "If there is no product available that we are looking for, we will find a way to develop it," Pilchner says. "Our interests are in using normal materials and combining them in interesting ways to achieve the acoustic performance and look required. We are not big on fake finishes, which tend to be gimmicky and date themselves rather quickly. Budget is always a concern regarding finishes, so using common materials in interesting ways tends to stretch farther then using cost prohibitive specialties."

Whatever they use to put together the next magic room within a room, the most important resource that studio designers are working with is a love for their craft and the music that results from it. "It is exciting to see all the new opportunities afforded by new technology, new formats and new equipment," says Peter Grueneisen. "At the same time, it is nice to know that the real basics - acoustics and architecture - are alive and well. The challenge is to keep up with the developments and to find the right expression for whatever is happening." "The more people who have studios, the better it is for us of course, but as a music lover it means there's more content," adds John Storyk. "It's about the music, not the equipment or the studio design. So if someone builds a studio in a garage and some interesting content comes out of there, then that's fine, too."

And hey, a little of that aforementioned passion doesn't hurt. "Studio design is so satisfying: You're creating something, expressing yourself," says Russ Berger. "People say, 'Haven't they built all the studios they're going to build?' Well, haven't they written all the songs and all the books, too? No, of course not. Everyone always has some excuse for why it's not a good time to build, but the question is: Do you love it?"

© Audiomedia Magazine. All rights reserved.

When one thinks of Brazil, images of carnivals, golden beaches, and a fabulous soccer team usually come to mind. But do you think of high-end professional audio facilities on a par with any in the world? Probably not. Audio Media Editor ROBERT ALEXANDER flew to Brazil to find out for himself about the business in South America's largest country.

Think of Brazil. What comes to your mind? Carnival? Coffee? Long golden beaches? Or, perhaps, a world-beating soccer team, current holders of the soccer World Cup? Did you imagine that in this, the largest country in South America, with a population of over 150 million and a land mass only slightly smaller than that of the United States, there would be professional audio facilities to match those found anywhere in the world? Probably not. The surprise is that Brazil, despite its recent problems with corruption, and a crippling economy that has forced many to deal in foreign exchange far away from its financial centers, is a country that has a huge wealthy populous. Of course the country also has an enormous poor population who live in the infamous slum areas of Brazil's cities known as the 'Favelas'. Away from the economic and social problems that face this predominantly Portuguese-speaking nation, there is a feeling that recent times have seen a move away from this distinctive 'third- world' past. Indeed, as many of the people told me during my recent visit, 'Brazil is a third- world country with first-world tendencies'.

An unstable past - A Brighter Future

With any so-called third-world nation that wishes to deal with so-called first-world countries in order to import goods and equipment to improve its circumstances, the condition of the currency in which you deal is paramount to establishing a sense of trust and a good business relationship. Brazil, unfortunately, has had no record in its recent past of having a stable currency. Indeed, since 1990, Brazil's currency has actually changed no less than 3 three times: from Cruzeiro to Cruzeiro-Real and, in July 1994, from Cruzeiro-Real to plain Real (which means 'real' or 'true').
The new currency was part of an enormous plan instigated by the current President of the country, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, when he was Finance Minister, designed to modernize the entire infrastructure of the nation. Its value was introduced by the central banks in Brazil at an exchange rate of R$0.85 to one US Dollar. The astonishing thing (in Brazilian terms) is that in 1997, four years after its introduction, the Real exchanges at a rate very close to 1:1 with the US Dollar —a testimony to the astonishing financial and sociological achievements of the current government in Brazil.
This new-found stability has meant that, for the first time in decades, businesses in Brazil are able to trade freely outside the country and are able to purchase the much needed technology that can raise a nation above its poverty and its debt-ridden past. As always, however, there is a catch. Most foreign companies will expect pre-payment in US Dollars or another well recognized currency, which must usually be held in an off-shore bank and, as if that wasn't bad enough, for most high-technology items such as professional audio equipment— there is a 70 percent import duty enforced by the government. This single crippling factor is responsible for much of the delay in getting Brazil's trade economy back on its feet and is, more often than not, the sole reason why other countries find trade with Brazil so daunting. That aside, trade does exist and is growing at an enormous rate, fuelled by the new feeling of economic and social stability in the country. I witnessed this at first hand, having friends in Rio de Janeiro who candidly explained to me the current state of national pride in the achievements of the last few years, bearing in mind the country's somewhat shady past.

Professional Facilities

I was, I have to confess, surprised by the impressive quality of the professional audio facilities I visited in Brazil. Having tried to banish any preconceptions of what I was likely to find, I was totally taken aback by the number and quality of those that I did see. I visited the two largest cities in Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, with a population of around 12 million, and Sao Paulo, the world's second largest city (after Mexico City) with a sprawling 18.5 million people.
In Rio I went to see recording studios, dubbing studios, television studios, record companies and met a host of audio professionals from engineers and technicians to studio owners, A&R men, DJs and mixing engineers —in fact the full spectrum of personnel that make up this industry.

Mega Studios

In the heart of Humaitá, a wealthy suburb of Rio, is the most impressive of Brazil's recording studio facilities, Mega Estudios. Opened in June 1996, this expanding facility is quite enormous in size, and is comparable in square meters to London's Abbey Road or New York's Right Track studios. The owners, brothers Alvaro and Luiz Alfonso Otero, are bankers who financed the project with the intention, from the outset, of becoming the country's leading recording, post production and multimedia studio.
The building itself occupies a site which —according to Liber Gadelha, Head of the music recording facilities and pant owner of Indie records, a local label— "has still not satisfied the Otero Brothers' passion for expansion, despite its already not-inconsiderable size. With that in mind they decided to buy the remainder of the entire hill on which the studio is built —including the residential properties of our near neighbors— who will, presumably, all have to move out in the near future as the builders move in."
Mega Estudios was named 'Mega' not because of its size but because of the millions (the literal meaning of 'mega') of facilities they offer. The studios are spread over several floors in the existing building and are interconnected with an extraordinary elevator system, each floor of which has brushed stainless steel doors reminiscent of a huge bank vault.
On the first floor are the post production studios where an SSL Omnimix system is currently housed in the sound production room —the first such system to be installed in South America— and the on-line video post room houses a Quantel Henry. A multimedia composing room is under development with Pro Tools, and plans are being drawn up to increase this side of the business dramatically once the complex is completed.
Philippe Neiva, Head of the post production department and a very successful jingles composer in Brazil, told me: "We have plans here at Mega Estudios to develop the post production side of our business over the next few years to compete for work that is currently being done by much smaller, less well equipped facilities. We bought the Omnimix in 1996 for just that purpose and, coupled with the Quantel Henry for post production and the Pro Tools systems which we use in our music rooms, we have made a pretty impressive start."

Only the best will do

On the second and third floors of the building are the two main music recording studios. The two control rooms are exactly the same size as each other, although the live area on floor three is some 30 percent larger than that of the floor below it. Large enough in size to cater for medium-sized orchestras, both studios have massive ten-ton air conditioning systems capable of keeping even the hottest Brazilian day at bay. At the far end of each recording room are retractable panels which reveal windows looking out over Rio de Janeiro's rooftops towards the beaches.

The control rooms are excellently equipped, with an SSL SL 4064 G+ with Total Recall™ and Ultimation™ on the third floor, and a Neve VR60-channel console with Flying Faders™ on the second floor. Monitoring is by Westlake BBSM15s, with Genelec nearfields and, in addition, Yamaha and Tannoys. The outboard (which was practically duplicated in each room) consisted of an Amek 9098 single channel EQ, JoeMeek VC1, two Lexicon 480Ls + LARC, a PCM80 and PCM90, as well as the new MPX1; processors as well as two Urei 1176s; a Focusrite Red 3 and Amek 9098 single-channel mic pre-amps; TC Electronic 2290s, M5000s and M2000s; Eventide H3000S/E and H4000 harmonizers; Panasonic SV3700 DATs and Tascam 232 cassette decks —all in all very impressive.
Philippe Neiva again: "Since opening our doors last year we have had consistently high bookings in both the studios, with Studio Two (SSL 4064) booked out four months advance. Part of the reason we have got to so much effort or expense —buying these top-of-the-line consoles— is that our national artists had, in the past, always had to go to the United States for these kind of facilities. Now they can come here instead. Not only that, but we can now attract international acts and producers to come to Brazil because our rates are very competitive compared with New York or Los Angeles."

Horacio Malvicino Design

The entire Mega Estudios complex was designed by Miami-based company Malvicino Design Group, headed by Horacio Malvicino. Horacio who happened to be in Brazil during my visit to oversee the completion of the first building of Mega Estudios, and to put forward his ideas for the second stage of the building (which commenced on June 30) has made quite a name for himself in South America as a designer of first-class facilities.
Horacio told me that, despite having designed studios all over North America, he felt at home here in the South, even if the methods of construction and finishing left him a touch baffled: "I have been down here to Brazil many many times now. The job at Mega Estudios is a massive undertaking and is going to be occupying me for the best part of the next two years I would imagine.
"I was really keen to get the design aspects of this place just right and it has taken a long time and a lot of effort on my part to get just the right feel to this place, but I believe that it has been worth it. The rooms all have independent air conditioning units which vary from three-ton units to ten-ton units in the big rooms. The windows at the back of the rooms posed a particular problem because not only are they dreadful for soundproofing but, of course, they let a lot of heat and light into the area. So l designed these screens with draw-back across the glass to enclose the room, keep out heat, and soundproof the room at the same time.

"As we are in Brazil, we used a lot of wood. There were particular problems associated with that. You would imagine that the wood itself would be quite easy to get hold of and, indeed, choosing the right woods —even the rarer ones— was surprisingly easy to do; unlike working in somewhere like Los Angeles or New York, for example, where there are certain restrictions on importing rare woods.
"The problem, would you believe it, was the level of craftsmanship among the carpenters themselves! I have had all types of problems explaining to them that the floorboards, for example, must fit together accurately —that there must be no gaps between the boards. For some reason they find this a hard concept to grasp— that it is so important to the look and feel of a facility like this to get things like that right."
Even though they only opened their doors just over a year ago, Mega Estudios have already attracted some of the premiere acts in Brazil, including renowned artists like Lulu Santos, Marina, Marisa Monte, Carlinhos Brown, Fernanda Abreu, Milton Nascimento and producers such as Russ Titelman and Liminha. Several of the records that have been recorded and mixed there have already sold platinum and, with the post production and multimedia facilities now fully operational, the likelihood of more success is guaranteed.

TV Globo and the need for soap

With a population of 150 million, Brazil has, potentially, a very large television audience which can, if won-over with the right programming, offer an advertiser enormous returns on their investment. For this reason television in Brazil is very big business. In fact the largest communication company, Globo, not only offers television programs, but newspapers and radio as well. TV Globo, the division that deals with the production of television programs, is the third largest television production company in the world after CBS and NBC, and is a testimony to the avid Brazilian audiences that devour 'telenovelas', or soap operas.
These situation dramas run hourly, day and night, with varying degrees of loyalty from the populous. The premiere telenovela, broadcast at 9pm, commands an audience in excess of 75 million every night of the week. CBS and NBC would fall all over themselves to get ratings like that! Moreover, such is the degree of intense loyalty that these story lines generate, that the entire country can be whipped into a frenzy of anguish, excitement, sorrow or joy based entirely on the daily saga of the soap actors or actresses.
TV Globo are not the only television company producing soaps in Brazil, they are just the largest. From what I saw on TV, everybody seems to be producing a soap opera and, when a story line in a particularly well-liked soap comes to an end, the entire nation goes into mourning for the loss of a dear friend!

Producing the telenovelas

The TV Globo facility is quite enormous. There are two sites: one in Ipanema at the Jardim Botanica (Botanical Gardens), with the other, Teatro Fenix ('The Station'), three blocks away. Outside the city itself, a newer network production center, called Projac, is some 25 miles to the south in an area known as Jacarepagua. The Ipanema site was built in the 1960s and used to be an island of buildings on the edge of the (then) quite small suburb of Rio. Since those days the city has grown up around TV Globo and the facility now sits amid a sprawl of modern everyday congested city life Nevertheless, it is here that much of the filming of the most popular of TV Globo's programs is done, including the continent's most lively variety show Domingão do Faustão and children's Saturday shows hosted by Brazil's most popular (and wealthiest) artist Xuxa (pronounced 'Shoosha').
The production center at the Teatro Fenix site has a large main studio area, the control room for which has just undergone a massive redesign, completed in an amazingly short six-week period between December 1996 and January 1997. The audio rooms at the control center were also designed by Horacio Malvicino and now boast facilities among the very best for television in Brazil. The audio feeds from the studio —and there may be as many as 96 of them at any one time— are routed into two small (I would even say cramped) audio control rooms adjacent to the main video control room. In these are found two further SSL consoles, an SL 8040 GB and an SL 8056 GB, each of which are the most customized desks of their type yet, both constructed by SSL.
When you see the size of the studio that this small audio control center serves, you begin to realize, as I did, the miracle of organization and building that enabled the entire operation to be up and running again —without a hitch (so far)— in just six weeks. The control room is still sparsely fitted out with outboard, having only a set of Tannoy monitors and the ubiquitous Yamaha NS10s' a Panasonic and Sony DAT machine, various CDs and a Minidisc, a couple of drawmer dynamics units and a Yamaha Rev 5 reverb. More outboard is planned for the future but, for now, the thing that struck me the most was the talkback button in the master section of the SSL SL 8056 GB that is directly connected to the TV studio director; SSL had this especially screened for TV Globo—it reads VOlCE OF GOD!

Projac

A 25-mile drive south of the center of Rio is the second site of the TV Globo empire, Projac. This two-phase project has been designed to incorporate every need of an independent television production facility in one enclosed area. All the studios, dubbing studios, production facilities, audio recording studios, a scene-building plant, outside broadcast transport storage areas, costume production buildings and, of course, administration buildings, are on a site that currently covers roughly half a square mile.
The current phase, which was only completed in October 1995, has four studios, each of which is 1000 square meters. The entire Projac site currently employs 2000 to 2500 people, set to rise to 5000 employees by the time phase two is completed in 1998. A staggering US$250 million has already been invested in the Projac site alone, with an additional US$ 106 million set aside for phase two.
Inside the Projac facility, which is guarded and protected with the very latest computer controlled electronic access systems, you are faced with up to several miles of walking to get from studio to studio and the various sets which are built on-site and located at the rear of the main buildings. To get around, then, most people use electric golf-cart-like buggies —which was great fun.
Inside the main studio complex I was introduced to Carlos Ronconi, Audio Assessor for the entire TV Globo organization and considered to be something of an audio guru by many Brazilian audio professionals. He is known as Dr. Goodsound within the Projac facility and also happens to be the Head of AES Brazil: "Projac has been designed to absorb and to put into practice the latest communications technologies such as digital and advanced TV. It is, if you like, a dream factory for television programs that this country —and, of course, others— thrive on.

"I am an audio consultant for the entire TV Globo organization and, as such, am responsible for assessing audio developments for our studios, dubbing theaters, outside broadcast facilities and the like, so l have to be broadly aware of all the developments that are going on in the audio world in order to report to the TV Globo organization. We invested in two SSL ScreenSounds five years ago which are used exclusively for the International Department to recreate from scratch the M7E track for the telenovelas for export, including extensive music editing. One of the ScreenSounds is used in a Foley, effects and music recording/editing room, with the other one in the mixing room. SoundNet, the networking system from SSL, ties it all together and enables us to do off-line back-up and move the work from room to room. "We invested in the ScreenSounds because, at the time, they were the best option for TV Globo —a tried and tested system that could easily integrate with our resources and our engineering staff. We have relied heavily on them since they arrived with these rooms working around the clock for six days a week, producing all manner of television programs although mostly, of course, we work on the telenovelas. Currently TV Globo has the number one soap in Brazil which is shown every night at 9pm and is watched by nearly half the people in the country.

"This means that we have to get it right every time, there is no margin for error or breakdown with the system—and, so far, it hasn't let us down. In fact, we have managed to save 3O to 40 percent on work time thanks to the ScreenSounds. The ScreenSound is a very reliable tool for us here.

" This opinion was seconded by Ney Simones da Costa, International Division Manager, who is responsible for the overseeing of the department which has the ScreenSounds and which produces the television programs that TV Globo set around the world: "Despite the fact that none of our engineers had worked with a ScreenSound before they were installed, we found that, after the initial SSL training sessions were completed, we all took to working with the system very quickly. It is an extremely simple and reliable system to work with and has really been punished by us here at TV Globo as we drive these two units around the clock. "We have very little margin, if any at all, for a breakdown but thankfully, despite the MO and Exabyte drives getting a bit old and worn now, we have had few, if any, problems with either system and I am very pleased with them."

Soap Sets - Projac backlot

As I was shown around the sets of the various soap operas being filmed on the backlot at Projac, I realized that here was a production facility to rival any in the world. Having spent some time, as I have, at both Pinewood Studios and Elstree Studios in England, and having been on the lots of Fox and Universal studios in Los Angeles —all of which are responsible for film as well as television (and consequently have larger budgets)— it became very apparent that Projac is very well situated and equipped indeed.
By pure coincidence, the soap that they happened to be producing on the afternoon that I arrived is set in a village called 'Greenville'— based on a totally English background, right down to the red telephone boxes! Filming had just stopped when I arrived, and the crews were preparing for the evening shots —waiting for the sun to set. The building constructions themselves rival any I have seen in England or Hollywood with detail of the highest caliber. The main action indoors in Greenville seems to take place around an 'English' pub with most of the actors meeting there at very regular intervals in the series. Nearly ail the microphones that I saw being used were Sennheisers, a variety that included K6s, MD441 s & MD421 s; there were also the odd ElectroVoice RE20 and a couple of Neumann TLM170s dotted around the studios.

TV Globo and Projac have plans to expand even further with foreign language productions planned for 1998 and, of course, further soaps which, being in Portuguese, sell very well in Portugal and are often dubbed into English and other languages for sale around the world. Whichever way you look at it, the Globo Organization is a major force in the broadcasting world —and is sure to continue growing.

© Audiomedia Magazine. All rights reserved.

The luxurious International DEMK facility opens in Monterrey.
International DEMK, a luxurious three-studio recording facility located north of Monterrey, Mexico, recently opened its doors, but only after much thought was put into the facility's acoustic design.
One of the facility's designers, Horacio Malvicino of the Malvicino Design Group, was first called in about two years ago to simply execute the vision of a facility. "We only had existing concrete shells and partitions to use as a starting point," says Malvicino. "We were stuck with all the existing wiring troughs, which were buried in concrete about a foot under the actual floors."
There were also several acoustical challenges that added to the obstacles presented by the physical infrastructure. "The big problem was the large main live room," explains Malvicino. The ceiling is about 24 feet high with a glass-floored mezzanine. For a room that size, it's difficult to control reverberation time, plus they wanted a very light room. So we put movable diffusers on the wall and designed modules that look like tri-fussers.
One solution that Malvicino found would work perfectly with the new studio was the use of Westlake monitors. "Glenn Phoenix [Westlake owner] is a mentor to me," comments Malvicino "I've been using Westlake monitors for the last seven years."
Any design project presents its share of unique requirements, and International DEMK, was no exception. "Obviously, most people want to optimize space," says Malvicino. "There are different proportions you can use to design a room. There is a certain zone I try to stay in. I have all my proportions for the various zones I use in a spreadsheet with a graph that lets me see how I'm doing immediately after I put the data. I have something that looks like the green of a golf course. If you don't hit the green, you know you are in trouble."
Malvicino also noted that the ceiling height proposed a challenge for implementing surround sound monitors. "In the control rooms, we had usually high ceilings, so we had to bring down the surround," he says. "We also had to comply with the European Broadcast Union standard." In addition to the facility's BBSM-20 monitors – three-way, medium-power monitors with an internal high-level crossover – International DEMK choose Westlake's BBSM-15. Designed for soffit mounting, the BBSM-15 can also be used in a freestanding application with optional stands.
Jaime Cavazos [house engineer at International DEMK] comments on the choice of monitors: Everybody knows about them. I've used them at other studios in the area, specially the Westlake 10s and 15s. They're known for achieving great results. They have very good definition in the mids, and the attention to every little detail is so great that it allows you to make small differences during the mix.

© Audiomedia Magazine. All rights reserved.

DOUG MITCHELL talks with designers and engineers about aesthetics and technical elements that go into the production of multi-channel audio. Multi-channel music production is becoming an ever more popular issue in professional audio. In order to get a grasp on what it takes to outfit a studio to record and monitor in 5.1, I spoke with a number of professionals to get their input. The aim of this article is not only to discuss the design of the studio and the monitoring, but also the aesthetics elements that contribute to multi-channel mixes.

5.1 from the ground up

First of all, what does it takes to design a 5.1 surround sound? I spoke with Michael Cronin of Michael Cronin of Acoustic Construction, Horacio Malvicino of Malvicino Design Group, Peter Grueneisen of Studio Bau:ton and Russ Berger Of Russ Berger Design Group to get their input.

According to Michael Cronin: "First of all, I think the main thing is the size -the dimension of the room- that's really the main consideration. If you're looking to build from the ground up or to retrofit, those are two different animals. The ground up idea is always the best way to go, however this is also the most unlikely considering existing facilities. When you go ground up, you can build exactly to the specifications that are required for 5.1 mixing. You have a lot more control over proper dimension and low-frequency response. Whichever way you look at it, the main consideration for today, however is the stereo is still the best part of every studio and will be for many years to come. I'm still making that the main emphasis. A room that is versatile can be good, but even if you have the best sounding 5.1 room, how often you get to use it is another view."

With regard the monitoring in a 5.1 environment, Peter Grueneisen commented: "Now I think the main problem is fitting more stuff in the same amount of space you have had, pretty much all along, for the control room in particular. There is a lit of competing interest for the same room. Now all of a sudden you have video monitors and a lot in the same place. Typically, the more you can build in the right place, the better. What we have done is try to have the same type of speakers in all of the rooms."
Size and ergonomics are also a consideration as indicated by Horacio Malvicino: "Sometimes I'm able to work with the room geometry, but always we have to compromise on the position of the surrounds. Usually it means they wind up over a door or are in the way. Also, there are physical space considerations. Many of my clients who ask me to design rooms for 5.1 will ask me, Why the room have to be shaped like this? Why can't we use some of this space for a lounge or something like that? I have to tell them it is all based on physics and what is going to sound good.

Retrofitting for 5.1

The other consideration is the possibility of retrofitting a room that was originally designed for stereo. Redesigning a room that was originally designed for stereo can present many problems, according to Michael Cronin: "When you are retrofitting a room, I think the biggest mistake people make is not taking into consideration the dimension of the room -what they are actually to produce at the end of the day. You have to consider how the room will load up. You have to consider the sound pressure level the room was originally designed for and what you're trying to recreate now. They are obviously two different things."

On the same subject, Peter Grueneisen commented: "Now you have sound firing from all directions. You have to consider the reflections not only from the back walls, but also from the front walls. So it does change thighs a lot. All of our rooms have all been kinds of hybrids -they were never originally designed to handle 5.1. For example, there's a classic way of designing rooms with a live end and dead end, with sound focused only in one direction- right toward the recording engineer. With 5.1 monitoring, this does change our perspective. We have had a reflection-free zone for stereo that will not exist for 5.1 automatically. So, it's definitely a concern when we can not go from ground up. In the new studios that we set up from ground zero, we can make changes, we have to check for a wider range of things than we have for a stereo room."
Other studio designers have faced the same situation of retrofitting rooms originally designed for stereo. Russ Berger recently redesigned Downstream Sound in Portland Oregon. He commented: " The original studios have 'good bones', an excellent HVAC system and quality infrastructure. The only compromise in the studio's original construction came in the form of final finishes driven by budget constraints. To improve low-frequency performance from the new 5.1 monitor system in the control rooms, a soffit was added and the trapping at the rear of the rooms was reworked. A center channel speaker and mount was added to the front walls along with provision for left and right surround speaker arrays."

Monitoring the mix

Now, once a room is designed and built, the most important thing of course is to monitor the mixes correctly and do so in a way that will translate to the end user. To get a handle on what it takes to accurately monitor a 5.1 mix, I talked with a number of engineers who work in the 5.1 realm. Chuck Ainlay has done a number of mixes for the DTS Entertainment Label including Vince Gill and Trisha Yearwood. Ainlay commented: "Obviously I went through a lot of temporary setups doing the initial things I did for DTS when no one had studios or facilities set up for doing 5.1. That's what encouraged me to get involved in a studio. Interestingly, I never had any real ambition to be studio owner, but I also thought there was necessity for facilities that were set up to handle 5.1. That's why I became a partner with Soundstage in the Backstage room in Nashville."
The choice of how to monitor a mix in 5.1 is rather complex. There are no firm standards for how this should be accomplished. However, many of the people I spoke with had their own biases as to how it is best accomplished. Ainlay indicated his preference for midfield monitoring: "I'm a firm believer in midfield monitoring for 5.1 -I think soffit-mounted 5.1 monitoring would have its place, kind of the way soffit monitors have their place in any studio as more of a hype situation than anything. But real world is not that. With bass management included in the 5.1 specification, midfield monitoring is really sufficient, especially if your rooms is of adequate size and there are not to many reflective surfaces and so forth. Really, the big thing is finding the room that works for 5.1. Not all control rooms work really well." Toby Wright just finished mixing a new 5.1 release of Alice in Chains, which will come out this fall. His preference for monitoring was to simulate a real-world environment: "For the Alice in Chain upcoming 5.1 release I used Yamaha NS-10s all around. I didn't use any bass management -I actually don't believe in it. The systems in people' homes take care of bass management; I don't have to do it in the studio. However, I do use the LFE channel to supplement things like kick and toms and so forth. Initially, when mixing the release I was experimenting with the way bass would be handled. So, in the process of mixing, I burned a DTS disc of the material I was working on and brought it to my house, and it was boomy as all get out. I guess in that respect I have been using the subwoofer like they do in the movies. I didn't think it would play on any system in the world, and it sounded horrible on mine. So I backed off of that.
With respect to whether or not midfield or soffit-mounted monitors should be used in a 5.1 environment, Peter Grueneisen commented: "We've done both types of design. We don't have a preference in general. For example, at Sony in Japan, we did rooms with both type of systems. The big mix room has soffit-mounted speakers with large boxes. But the mastering room, which is also 5.1, utilizes freestanding midfields. I think it really depends upon the application. If you have a big mix room with a lot of equipment in it and really big speakers, then freestanding midfields take up a lot of room.
That creates an acoustical and ergonomic problem. On the other hand, with freestanding midfields, you have a lot more flexibility with respect to positioning. People can come in and change where the speakers are located. Obviously, that is not possible with built-in speakers, but they are out of the way if they're built in. I think a good compromise is to have a big, nice built-in system permanently, and then also have the ability to bring in near or midfield monitors and place them where you want. This way the engineer can go back and forth between systems to check the mix."
Not everyone agrees that 5.1 is even a good music mixing format. Horacio Malvicino commented: "My experience with surround has been kind of awkward because a monitoring environment for music, to me, still sounds kind of weird. When my friend called me to listen to his mix of Celine Dion about a year ago at the hit factory at the Hit Factory in Miami, the room was not set up for 5.1. Unfortunately, when they were playing the mixes back, I thought it sounded really weird. You know, this whole thing about using the center channel and what goes there and what goes to the surrounds, it all doesn't seems to make sense for music. It works for film certainly, but I don't think it works for music. There is not really a standard for speaker placement. Some people subscribe to the convention of having your main left and right at plus and minus 30 degrees and the surrounds at plus and minus 110 degrees. That is the ITU recommendation. To me 5.1 doesn't seem like a music mixing format. It sound great when you listen to it in a movie environment, but I just don't find it working well for music."
Perhaps as indicated earlier by Toby Wright, bass management is essential in doing 5.1 monitoring. Dave Amlen of Sound on Sound Recording in New York further emphasized this: "When we designed the room we set it up with large main monitors that are configured for stereo work. We actually bounced around the idea of setting up matching surround monitors, but everyone and their brother seems to have an opinion as to where to place the speakers, so we said, 'oh, this is going to be great. We'll put these large wonderful monitors in the wall and people are going to say they shouldn't be here'. I said, 'you know, nobody really knows what they're doing on this, so let them figure it out. In the meantime, this is how we're going to do it'. There was a leaning curve in using the room, but once everyone figured out what was going on, it was pretty much great. Every room has its own unique sonic imprint and, until you've actually been in the room for a while and have gotten used to it, you're never quite sure what it's doing. You know what you're hearing, but you don't actually know how that's going to sound in the real world. Every room in the world is like this. Very few rooms are identical. And the three rooms I have are substantially different in geometry."

Production standards

The other question concerning 5.1 mixing and monitoring is what standards should be followed for the production of the track. Certainly some of these standards have been adopted from the film sound community. Veteran re-recording mixer Gary Summer commented: "At Skywalker we have been recording multi-channel orchestral recordings and scores for motion pictures since mixing has become the buzz in the industry. It seems a lot of people are asking what the standards, specifications and rules are for 5.1 mixing. My response to that is there are no rules. Maybe there are a specification or there may be a standard setup, but as they know, even for music recording they just get the best, most accurate monitor system they're comfortable and familiar with and mix the music against that. They can't replicate the average home theater system anyway. So it's all a guess. What you do is put a system together that you're comfortable with, that is accurate and reproduces what you're recording and mixing. Listen to that! In the cinema we have it a little better because there are established standards -THX motion picture monitoring in the theater, for instance. And even though this standards may not be perfectly adhered to in the real world, they are somewhat replicated in the field. Therefore, we are able to have a basic standard. But for music, I think it's a little different- who knows whether they're going to come up with a standard or whether everyone is just going to do it on their own. Artistically, I say there are no rules for 5.1 mixing for film. You know, some people have said never put anything discrete in the surround. Well I say the picture, movie or artistic material dictates what you do, not any kind of rule or technical thing. From a music standpoint, you don't have an image unless you're doing a video. The image becomes the acoustic space you want to create. They've been doing this in stereo for some time. I don't know all the controversy is about as far as what to put in the center channel and what to put in the surrounds. My feeling is that engineers just need to start mixing in 5.1 and do so from an artistic standpoint rather than a technical standpoint.

Speaking of guidelines, there is the additional concern for the physical placement for the surround speakers in the room. This issue was addressed by Michael Cronin: "I think most people are following the Dolby specifications, however, I think if you ask any number of engineers you get different answers. Chuck Ainlay will say one thing about what he likes and George Massenburg will say another. I think a lot of it becomes a preference. It's all within reason and, if it's your room, what makes it comfortable for you is the key. This are all the guidelines actually, but nothing is set in stone."
Additional problems are presented when attempting to do 5.1 recordings live. Grammy Award- winning producer and engineer John Earle related: "Most of the actual recordings that we do when we're laying down tracks for an eventual 5.1 mix are monitored in stereo at the session. All I do is that early in the game during the playback or during a break time, my assistant and I will go back and check a portion of each track we haven't monitored already just to make sure nothing funny is going on. An then we just sort of forget about it for the rest of the take. The producers I deal with have become so stereo imbued over the years that anything new like this just kind of throws them for a loop. Now the only place where we monitor in surround sound routinely up at Skywalker Ranch. We do a lot of recording up there on the big scoring stage. That control room is really wired for film work, which means you can monitor in 5.1 on multiple loudspeakers, which gives you really spacious sound."

Conclusion

It should be apparent that there is little agreement as to an approach for monitoring and mixing in 5.1. However, as indicated earlier by Gary summers, there are no rules, and as Michael Cronin stated, nothing is carved in stone, bur don't let that deter your creative endeavors for working in this emerging format.

© Audiomedia Magazine. All rights reserved.

Monterrey, Mexico - A studio design project two years on the making was recently completed with the 2001 opening of International DEMK, a luxurious, three-studio recording facility located in the north Mexico town of Monterrey. International DEMK boast a full inventory of state-of-the-art recording gear, with Westlake audio BBSM-10 and BBSM-15 monitors providing high quality reference listening and playback.

According to Jaime Cavazos, house engineer at International DEMK, the monitors' reputation preceded them. "Everybody knows about them," he says. "I've used them at others studios in the area, especially the Westlake 10s and 15s. They're known for letting you mix and get great results. They have very good definition in the mids, and the attention to every little detail in the monitors is so great that it allows you to make small differences during the mix." Cavazos notes that the design of the monitors fits in well with the studio setup since, "they are perfectly symmetrical," he notes. "It is a leas room, with a light-ended end. Basically, we have diffusers in the back, and the entire front of the studio is fully absorbent." It's no surprise the equipment is meshing well with the studio design. One of the facility designers, Horacio Malvicino of the Malvicino Design Group, was first called two years ago to simple execute the vision of the facility, with little more than that to work with. "We really only had existing concrete shells and partitions to use as a starting point," Malvicino explains. "We were stuck with all the wiring troughs that they did, which were buried in concrete about a foot under the actual floors, and we had to run all the wiring through pipes there."

There were also several acoustical challenges that added to the obstacles presented by the physical infrastructure. "The big problem was the large main live room," Malvicino says. "The ceiling is about 24-feet high, with a glass floored mezzanine. For a room that size, it's difficult to control reverberation time and keep it useful, plus they wanted a very light room. So we put movable diffusers on the wall and designed modules that looks like tri-fusers. One is flat-facing or reflective, the other one has molding like flutter-free molding and the other side is absorbent. There are 24 of those in the main room, motor controlled." One solution that Malvicino found would work perfectly with the new studio was the use of Westlake monitors. "Glenn Phoenix [Westlake owner] is a mentor to me," he reveals. "I've been using Westlake monitors for the last seven years. I like them, because they're very true."

© Prosound News Magazine. All rights reserved.

Mega is a fitting title for Rio de Janeiro's newest studio complex. This five-story facility offers two large recording studios, audio post-production and audio/video duplicating, as well as personal amenities such as catering, lounge areas and the sights of Rio.
Mega was designed by Horacio Malvicino of Malvicino Design Group. Malvicino's background includes work as a maintenance engineer in a number of top NYC facilities, and later, design of numerous studios in the US and Latin America. He says that pro audio in Latin America is exciting right now because he believes that, though the US is fairly maxed out as far as new studio construction, there's plenty of space and money in South America for new rooms. "Also," he says, "real estate is not that expensive down there, so I can get to build. Where I would build one studio here in the states for the money, down there I could build three, with big live rooms and big control rooms. Here, people just seem to need meeting rooms so they can make money."
Money certainly doesn't seem to have been in short supply for the creators of Studio Mega. The facility is owned by a lending institution called Nortep, in conjunction with Phillipe Neiva, a successful Brazilian jingle writer; and producer Liber Gadhelia, who also serves as studio manager. "Originally, it was going to be for their own productions," Malvicino explains, "they were going to build one MIDI room and one Neve room. But it became a full-fledged commercial thing, and it's already very successful.
Mega is situated in a residential area, on a steep hillside. The existing structure, when Malvicino first visited the property, was an old house, which was retained and converted to business office/catering use. But the studios are all new construction. "It was an ideal situation, because the owners let me work on my own pretty much," says Malvicino. "They hired a Brazilian architect, Indio da Costa Architetura, who designed the building. He would get plans from me and redesign things and we used fax and modem to send things back and forth for four or five months."
The ground floor of the main studio building contains reception, offices and some parking. On the first floor, there is a dedicated post-production studio, an SSL OmniMix room that was scheduled to go online within two weeks of press time. This studio offers surround monitoring from Westlake Audio (Westlake provided all of the main monitors for Mega), a Foley room and a duplicating room capable of handling a range of video formats. There's also an online editing room, Henry Quantel Online Editing, and a private lounge. "Each floor is about 4,000 square feet,' says Malvicino, ''with its own reception and its own elevator."
On the second floor, there's a Neve tracking/mixing room. The control room is treated with a cluster of diffusion devices designed by Malvicino and built by design builder Eduardo Bergallo of Acusti-k. It is fitted with a V-2 console, two Studer 827 tape machines, a range of new and vintage outboard gear and mics, and near-field speakers from KRK, Yamaha, Genelec and others. Main monitors are Westlake Audio's passive, bi-amped BBSM15s. The studio space is large and live, with variable acoustics via movable panels, and automatic curtains that reveal the studio's view of downtown Rio and the coast beyond.
The third floor of the building houses a machine room that feeds power to the independent air conditioning units in each studio. The top floor is the SSL room; it is identical to the Neve studio, except that the console is a 4064 G Plus —same tape machines, monitors, outboard gear, etc. "And we have some equipment floaters, too," Malvicino says, "a Sony 3348, 32 tracks of ADAT, 32 tracks of DA-88. Anything you want can be used in either studio."
The most challenging thing about getting this studio built, Malvicino says, was the physical limitations of doing construction on the steep hillside. "You have to understand, we are building uphill," he explains. "We are up on a mountain, and the foundation is stone, so we had to use explosives, and we are in a residential area, so you have to be careful about that. But the biggest problem was getting materials uphill. Like a console: If it rained, we'd have the console come from a plane from England, and then they come in a truck to the bottom of the hill. Now, getting a truck to go up the hill with an SSL, which weighs about a ton... we had to wait about a week, because we had a week of rain."
Now that the main studio complex is completed, the partners are going ahead with phase 2: "Next door, we are building another building the same size as this building," Malvicino says, "which is going to have ground-floor parking. It's going to have a screening room, production offices, pre-production offices and a meeting room. One floor will have off-line editing on the Avid MU1000 plus one Quantel edit box (online editing), Sonic Solutions for mastering and a conference/audiovisual room. There will also be one MIDI room with a Soundcraft console and ADATs."
At press time, Mega was hosting sessions with a number of Brazilian artists! including dance artist Lulu Santos, and upcoming work included a Russ Titelman production project and, possibly. a Bruce Swedien mixing project. "The first two rooms opened in late June," says Malvicino, "and they're booked solid until the end of the year. We're talking lockout."

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