Date: 2010-08
Recently opened independent mastering facility Stardelta, based in Devon in the UK, chose custom-built PMC MB2 speakers as their main reference monitors on the recommendation of acoustic design consultant John Goldstraw, who has installed PMCs in many mastering studios, including Metropolis Mastering. Says Stardelta´s Lewis Hopkin: "The detail is phenomenal.
Stardelta Mastering, which is based in Devon in the UK and opened earlier this year, is making a name for itself as an affordable, high-quality independent mastering facility. The studio, run by engineers Lewis Hopkin and Aidan Wallwork, offers high-quality analogue processing coupled with the ability to receive and deliver digital or analogue formats (including vinyl, cut on the premises with Stardelta´s Neumann VMS-82 lathe) as required. Such a studio demands precision reference monitoring, and at Stardelta the speakers of choice are twin custom PMC MB2s, driven by Bryston 7BSST2 amplifiers and installed on the recommendation of respected studio design consultant John Goldstraw of Hathor Audio, known for his contributions to studios at Metropolis and AIR.
Once the sole preserve of major record companies due to the high cost of the equipment involved, audio mastering is increasingly becoming the work of independent engineers. In the UK, following the closure of many of the dedicated mastering departments at record labels and studios in West London over the past 20 years, many engineers have now set up on their own in cheaper provincial premises, able to offer bespoke services tailored to recording artists´ specific requirements at costs considerably lower than those of their erstwhile employers.
Stardelta is one such facility, aiming to offer traditional mastering services like vinyl cutting affordably, using the finest analogue equipment available in a room purpose-designed for mastering, rather than resorting to cheap digital plug-in technology. "We use a SADiE workstation to play back mixes clients send us, but almost as soon as we start work on them, we play them out through our Prism AD8 converters into the analogue domain to do the processing," explains Lewis Hopkin. "We´re not fans of plug-ins for mastering: we have Maselec processing for a very transparent sound, and Manley EQ and compression for those who prefer their mastering to have more of a warm, valve-like tone — and let´s face it, no 99-dollar plug-in is going to come close to what those boxes can achieve. We recapture the results in our second SADiE system via the Prism converters for clients that want digital files — we´re always careful to capture and output the files via the A-Ds and D-As at the same resolution and bit depth so there are no sample-rate conversions happening on the sly — or we can send mastered audio to our lathe for cutting to vinyl. Mind you, we always cut from a dedicated vinyl master when tracks are going to lacquer. The requirements are totally different than they are for digital audio, really."
Just as exacting in their choice of monitors as they are about their mastering signal path, Wallwork and Hopkin have been delighted with their passive PMC MB2 monitors since Stardelta opened. "It´s been so interesting having a room we can trust, after years of having to compromise in one way or another — and the detail the PMCs give us is phenomenal." comments Hopkin. "But that´s what you need in a place like this — the mastering stage is the one where you need to be able to hear what colour the drummer´s underpants were. And that´s what we get from the MB2s." Yet it turns out that the PMCs weren´t their first choice of monitor. "I´d heard PMCs in lots of mastering studios before, and I always liked the controlled sound of the low end, but I´d felt they sounded a bit cold and hard at the top end," continues Hopkin, "so we were planning on putting some other speakers in here. However, our design consultant John Goldstraw said he would guarantee us that in a properly designed room, the PMCs would give us a level of detail beyond what the others could deliver. I told him about my experiences, and he asked me in some detail where I´d heard PMCs in the past. He then explained why the speakers sounded like that in those particular rooms, with reference to the design choices of those particular studios. He promised us that with the design he proposed, the speakers would sound completely different.
"It was a bit of a leap of faith, really, because John was effectively saying that we needed to complete our room before we could really hear how good these speakers could sound. But his track record convinced us. You only have to listen to the rooms he helped to design at Metropolis, really. And the guys at PMC, when we contacted them, were so responsive, we decided to go with them.
"We came to trust John completely — there are very few people in the industry who have his attitude and passion for what he does. He helped us source and then virtually rebuild our Neumann cutting lathe, as there were make-or-break issues with it, and they are serious pieces of engineering. But John was a match for it — he sourced all the schematics for it, worked out what was present and what was missing, and figured out a way to get what we had working. He´s an engineer through and through, and an absolute legend."
Following discussions between Goldstraw and PMC´s design team, Stardelta took delivery of some custom-built passive MB2 speakers, but built into active cabinets. "They are passive speakers — we use them with Bryston 7BSST amps," explains Hopkin, "but the custom design gives a more detailed sound, and will also allow us to make them fully active in the future if we want to go that route. I find it hard to imagine that they could sound any better than they do at the moment, though!"
John Goldstraw gives his side of the story. "Lewis and Aidan wanted a room and a mastering chain with no sonic compromises all the way from their unmastered mixes to their cutting lathe, in the space they had available.
"When you´re mastering, you want a mixing and production environment that doesn´t introduce distortion by accident. If you choose to introduce distortion because your client wants it that way, for creative purposes, that´s fine, but you don´t want it to happen accidentally. You want a level playing field in which you can hear what´s happening in the music you´re mastering. I suggested that they could achieve that with PMC´s speakers, and they were kind enough to trust me!
"There certainly are very few compromises in that room; it offers an excellent balance between cost and efficiency. And with the custom MB2s, there´s a bit of future-proofing in there, so they can go to fully active monitors later if budget allows and they want to take that step."
Lewis Hopkin noticed the effect of Goldstraw´s acoustic design as soon as the MB2s were installed. "There was none of that hardness, and the stereo imaging was like nothing I´ve ever heard. Where you notice it is not in the extremes — most speakers can give you a good sense of hard right and hard left. It´s in the centre that you notice the detail. If you´re listening to something stereophonically complex, like a jazz recording in stereo with strings with percussion and a mono vocal in the middle, the vocal sounds almost like a projected image in the centre. It´s phenomenally good. I´ve had some almost religious experiences with those speakers since we opened!
"The other thing I love is how warm and smooth the bottom end is, without being forced. We do a lot of work with club music and drum and bass, so we really need to know what´s going on, down about an octave lower than most speakers go. We like to go out and listen to the club records we cut on big systems when we´ve finished, and there´s not a decision I´ve made in that room with those speakers that´s proved to be wrong."
"I think what they´ve ended up with is what they asked for — no compromises," concludes John Goldstraw. "Certainly, I´m confident that any mastering engineer from the best facilities in London could be parachuted into that room and feel happy to work there within three or four minutes."
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