Prince is crowned with PMC


 

Date: 2008-10

 

"I believe in making music without compromise.” - Prince

The musical phenomenon Prince has earned an enviable reputation for creating exciting, enveloping music. So when the chance came to upgrade a playback system, the musician/singer/songwriter looked no further than PMC, The Professional Monitor Company.....

A full-featured two-channel BB5-XBD-A Large-Scale Reference Monitoring System was recently purchased for Prince’s Los Angeles-based Composing Facility.

Prince has released several hundred songs both under his own name and with other artists, winning a total of six Grammy Awards® and an Oscar® for Best Music, Original Song Score for Purple Rain; in 2004 the prolific artist was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Eventually the BB5-XBD-A system will make its way back to the artist’s state-of-the-art Paisley Park recording complex in Minneapolis.

According to sources close to the creative genius behind such international hits as Future Baby Mama, Raspberry Beret, Little Red Corvette, I Wanna Be Your Lover, Gett Off, 1999 and more, Prince was looking for a system that is powerful and, above all, had the ability to translate his music without compromise. He first heard the BB5-XBD-A system at Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ Flyte Time Studios in Santa Monica, and was so impressed that he wanted to give it his own test. After contacting Maurice Patist, PMC USA’s President of Sales & Marketing, arrangements were made to install a BB5-XBD-A system.

Patist completed the installation himself, simply to ensure that Prince would be happy with the results. “I checked and double-checked everything,” the executive recalls, “so that everything was perfect.” After working with the PMC reference system, the singer/songwriter/producer was said to be highly enthusiastic about its sonic performance, offering that the BB5-XBD-A was exactly what he’d had been looking for but never found. Rather tongue-in-cheek, Prince offered that he always wanted his sound in the studio to be as loud and clear as when he plays live gigs.

Prince’s LA-based facility includes a number of custom-designed systems that can be used to create a portable recording environment. “We need to be versatile and offer the ability to create whatever setting Prince needs to work in,” offers Dave Hampton, the producer’s long-time technical consultant. “Many recording situations today do not resemble the traditional custom facility.”

“The studio is based around a [Digidesign] Pro Tools|HD3 digital audio workstation,” says session engineer Ian Boxill. “Because we use the space for basic tracking of demos and remixing, so high-precision monitoring is essential. The BB5-XBD-A system is perfect for our needs.”

“We are very pleased with the new PMC BB5-XBD-A system,” Hampton states, “because of three main factors. Firstly, the BB5 sounds wonderful! Secondly, it doesn’t hype the sound – frequency the response is ultra-flat across the entire frequency spectrum. And, thirdly, the BB5-XBD-A system produces a full, large sound – just the way we like to work while tracking and mixing. When you're supporting the creative efforts of an artist like Prince, it is crucial that you have a monitoring system that can give you consistent results. PMC gives us that and more.”