RIP Larry Swist – Remembering a World-Class Studio and Monitor Designer

SonicScoop was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Larry Swist. A highly accomplished audio facility designer and studio monitor inventor, he passed away on December 28 following a short battle with cancer.

Larry Swist was passionate about all things artistic and audio.

Over the course of his career, Swist designed dozens of recording studios, production suites and post-production facilities worldwide. In addition to their acoustic excellence, Swist’s designs were distinguished by a highly appealing visual aesthetic and advanced ergonomics.

Just a few of his notable clients include the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, NY), State University of New York at Fredonia, Terminus Recording Studios (formerly Tainted Blue), Universal Music (Santa Monica), and Olympic Recording Studios in London.

In New York City, Swist’s imprint can be found in particular on floor after floor at the notable address of 723 7th Avenue, which arguably holds the highest concentration of competing world-class recording facilities in Manhattan. In addition to his outstanding control room for Terminus, Swist designed multiple rooms for Premier Recording Studios and Quad Recording Studios.

As frequently happens with studio designers, Swist – who was also an excellent recording/mix engineer, musician, and painter — extended his expertise to the creation of monitoring systems. In 2010 he partnered with his longtime friend and collaborator Mick Guzauski to launch Guzauski-Swist Audio Systems, debuting the GS-3a active studio monitor soon after. Since its introduction, the GS-3a has become a favorite for elite producers, mixers, and studios that were drawn to its innovative design, extreme accuracy, and highly musical performance (see SonicScoop’s April, 2011, interview with Swist about the company’s evolution here).

The company will continue to manufacture the GS-3a, as well as introduce new systems based on Swist’s most recent design.

Guzauski, the six-time GRAMMY-award winning engineer who recently recorded and mixed Daft Punk’s #1 record Random Access Memories, first met Swist when the pair were both teenagers experimenting with audio in the Rochester, NY area. “Aside from being a studio designer, Larry was a great artist,” says Guzauski. “He was a really good architect, a really good acoustician, and he had a terrific visual sense – he could make a beautiful room that really sounded right and you wanted to work in.

“When it came to creating our monitors,” Guzauski continues, “we both have the same taste in sound, and wanted to achieve the same goals. It didn’t start out as a commercial project at all – as Larry said, it was a science project. Then people started liking the speakers.”

Over and above his technical achievements, everyone with the good fortune to know Larry Swist would agree that his warm personality was his most appealing trait. He was as affectionate as he was intellectual, melding a vibrant love of all things artistic with a uniquely soothing demeanor. His colleagues and clients almost invariably became his friends. Time with Lawrence P. Swist was always time well spent.

— David Weiss

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