With a stunning main studio, a full-service mastering suite, and the only Dolby-certified Atmos room in St. Louis, it’s no surprise that Midtown Sound House is one of the area’s top choices for large recording sessions, indie artists, film sound professionals, podcasters, and audio post-production teams alike.
With the addition of a brand new Neve Genesys Black G32 16-channel 32-fader console with G3D to their Atmos room, they’re all set to dive deeper into the world of immersive audio and all the creative possibilities it brings.
Studio founder Dr. Coles L’Hommedieu sat down with us recently to tell us about the latest upgrade, how the Neve Genesys Black console has elevated the studio's workflow, and why Ex Machina Quasars are the monitors of choice in the mastering suite.
Tell us a bit about Midtown Sound House and the work you do.
I've always been that guy in bands that ended up working on the technical aspect of sound, and I’ve run studios over the years; it’s not my primary career, but I’ve had a big interest in it, and I went from making indie records in my basement with four microphones and an electronic drum kit to the true commercial studio that we have now.
I had leased a very small studio space in St. Louis and put some equipment in there for a couple of years, but it became pretty clear that not being able to own or control my own space wasn't ideal, so towards the end of 2017, I started looking for a new space, and I found this facility, which was already built as a studio with an upstairs apartment. It came on the market in foreclosure, so we bought it, and then, over the course of two or three years, we rehabbed the building.
The structure was fantastic – since it was purpose-built as a studio – but the equipment and things like acoustic treatments weren't necessarily in place, and we spent a good bit of time getting that part of it squared away.
The facility has three spaces: the main A room, that you would think of as a traditional large-format studio. It has the API 1608-II console that we got from Vintage King, a lot of great outboard gear, a large live room, about 1000 square feet with ceiling heights ranging from 12 to 20 feet, two isolation booths with direct sight lines, and lots of natural light.
Then there’s our B room, which includes the new Neve console. We built that room intentionally with the idea of doing immersive audio; it’s also set up for overdub work and recording small to medium-sized groups, with an isolation booth that's about the size of a regular bedroom.
We had Dolby come in and certify the room for Atmos – I think it’s still the only certified room in the state of Missouri – and that’s what led to us purchasing the Neve console. The idea was that the new G3D upgrade for the Neve Genesys Black console would allow us to mix on the surface in addition to having the ability to recall our mixes, which is important. Also, it was about the sonics of having a Neve console, since our other console is the API, which is very different.
One of the interesting things we've been able to do is wire the A room and the B room together in the patchbay so that we can use the Neve console as 16 complete Neve channel strips. So, say we want to do a drum tracking session in the A room and get the big live room sound with a large number of microphones, we can still use the Neve console in that room with all the conveniences of the API and the separate cue mixes with the Hearback PRO headphone system.
It's something we've been able to expand upon even in the A room, and it makes it very, very reasonable to get the console. If you look at pricing out 16 channels of Neve outboard gear, EQ and compression – just a full channel strip in the console – and even if that's all we did with it, it would probably be a good idea financially.
Could you elaborate on that setup a little more?
We have several patchbays in the A room because we have so much outboard gear, so we ran some 50 ft DB25 cables – 16 channels each way for input and output – and we can just tie in on the patchbay and put that into whatever console channel we want. Likewise, if we want to do that in the B room, we can patch in the API console or any of the A room outboard gear we might want to use, whether it’s for mastering, reverb, or what have you.
The GenesysControl plug-in allows us to do some pretty slick things over the network that we probably couldn't do otherwise. In the A room, we have a large tablet, and you can basically run a remote session from that; you don't even have to have an engineer in the B room because everything is done digitally. Say if one of the engineers said, “I would really love to have access to the Neve preamps”, it's certainly easy to dial it in if someone's sitting here – they can be on an intercom, or we could have a cue mix station from A and have them dial it in manually – but it's really slick to be able to do it remotely.
What drew you to the Neve Genesys Black G32 16-Channel 32-Fader console?
We had been using an Avid C24 control surface in this room, and it was clearly both end-of-life and also wasn't up to what we wanted to accomplish. I had mentioned to the engineers that I’d seen some information at Vintage King about the G3D upgrade coming to life, and they had been nagging me to think about a Neve console for this room for a while anyway [laughs], so it just really made sense.
It integrates really well with regard to the size of the room and what we already have set up; it really feels like we slid the control surface out, put in the console with a control surface built into it, and that made it really seamless. We suddenly inherited a fantastic analog console, an additional control surface, and we can do Atmos mixing without leaving the mixing position, which is great.
What are some of your favorite features of the console?
We're just getting used to the console because we've only had it up and running for a very short time, but the recall is fantastic! For example, if we're going to do an overdub session, an audiobook, or a podcast, we can be up and running with preset sessions, so we have mic preamps dialed in pretty closely, cue mixes done, and things like that. Once you get that set up, it's a matter of going into the console, pointing and clicking. You can certainly do a lot of those things within a DAW setup, but it's so much easier to do it in the console and then, with any future changes that might be necessary, we can go in and do those very much in an analog format.
The recall is pretty smooth; honestly, it's a pretty quick maneuver to just match up the knob position with the touch screen surface, hit plus or minus until you get it just right, and then move on to the next one.
I was going to ask what the first project was that you worked on using the Neve console, but you mentioned that it's fairly new, so tell us a bit about how you’ve used it in the studio so far.
Yeah, it’s really, really new, and the G3D upgrade is on its way, but what each engineer has done is come in and basically do a remix of projects to get a feel for the differences in what the console does internally, the levels you can push within the console to get a little bit of saturation out of the transformers, and also just get a feel for the difference in mix feel between the API and the Neve. It’s been a good experience, and it’s very interesting to be able to really appreciate that difference in consoles with just 20 to 30 feet between rooms.
What was it like working with Alex St. Cin and Vintage King to purchase the console?
I didn't even know that Alex was with Vintage King initially; he came to my studio years ago, and we just started talking. He has a little studio of his own, about an hour away from here, so obviously, he’s a guy who understands the things that he's representing and selling.
He actually showed up the day of the Neve delivery and install and did some heavy lifting, both physically as well as emotionally! He’s a great support; I can text him any time, whether it's about checking in with Neve on the G3D upgrade or answering questions about anything else. He's just super easy to deal with, a nice guy, and he’s been great!
What made you choose the Ex Machina Quasar monitors for your mastering suite?
The Ex Machina monitors are set up in our C room, which is designed to be either an analog or in-the-box mastering suite, with a full Dangerous Music mastering system in there. One of the reasons we got the Ex Machinas is that they get loud, but they're really, really precise. Our chief engineer is not particularly a big fan of using a subwoofer (because of the phasing issues and all the other stuff that comes along with that), and the precise low end on the Ex Machinas completely eliminates the need for that. They don't really distort until you're at brutally loud volumes, so you can just keep cranking them and the bass gets louder and louder without distortion. They're really reliable to mix on, translate well, and are really fun to use.
We do a lot in that room – we've connected it with a video camera to the isolation booth of our B room, so that's where we’ll record a ton of indie artists or a lot of hip hop stuff, just because if you want to really crank a mix in that particular genre of music, those speakers can allow for it. We've been using it for that, and everybody's very happy with them.
Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to tell us about?
I wouldn't mention anything specific, but we have really been pushing Atmos mixing opportunities, including some remix projects of prior stereo recordings. Recently, a couple of major motion picture releases were filmed in St. Louis, and we were able to provide ADR services for them, so we're also looking at doing a lot more film work in the future.
We've recently done an audiobook with Chris Pronger, who's a Hall of Fame hockey player from here in St. Louis, and we continue to add more and more podcasting sessions.
We also have a bunch of full album projects in the works; for example, we did a full album for Anita Jackson, who's a local jazz star who came back home from New York City, and that has gotten some nice accolades.
We’re enjoying doing a lot of very different stuff!
Learn more about Midtown Sound House studios on their website.
