Studio Upgrades: Sweet Sounds — Bringing Up The “Broadway” & “Crosby Rooms

One thing we’ve always liked about the SoHo studio Sweet Sounds, since we first wrote about them in late 2012, is that they’re like Lowe’s: never stop improving.

The forward-thinking facility has just unveiled makeovers for both their Broadway Room and their Crosby Room. The producer-centric Broadway Room was tended to first, including brand new Legacy Signature speakers, and a new Sterling Modular desk setup, optimizing it further for tracking, mixing, and mastering.

Then they went further. Following an acoustic analysis, they decided to make a speaker adjustment from an elevated position to ground level – a sound-enhancing crowd-pleaser for tracking, mixing and mastering.

Things were a little more subtle in the Studio A Crosby Room. With a sharp Neve 5088 and one of the best live room views in New York City, the edits were dual Universal Audio 1176LN Classic Limiting Amplifiers and a pair of classic DBX 160’s.

Studio manager Andrew Travis breaks down the upgrade:

First Stage: Time for a change!

Before: The Broadway Room was set up as more of a general purpose vocal tracking and overdubs room.

Before in “Broadway” — suspended speakers and a spread-out desk. (click to enlarge)

Our studio business has continued to evolve over the past two years in our new space. Our client base has grown and clients are now seeing us as more of a one stop shop studio service – we can offer tracking, production, mixing and even mastering (for digital releases) all in one place. The room was setup more for a workflow for in-house engineers.

After: The Broadway Room is now much more focused on tracking, production and also mixing and mastering.

The outboard gear selection has significantly improved including a brand new Apogee Symphony (upgrade from a Rosetta), the SPL MixDream for summing, Universal Audio LA-2A, new 500 series units including the Elysia Stereo EQ, Heritage Audio Jr. 1073 and a pair of API 512c’s.

Our most recent addition and repositioning of our mains on the ground is now a custom-made pair of Legacy Signature’s (Cherry finish). This has instantly transformed the listening experience in the room and has expanded our ability to work with a wider range of clientele and freelance engineers.

We have also streamlined our console and given our desk a new look with a modification from Sterling Modular. This works better with our new monitoring setup by taking less space and also offers a more modern workflow, which fulfills the requirements in our current environment.

The room still has our collection of analog keys, including our Moog and Juno keyboards and our various vintage amps which are shared with our A room. We are now able to incorporate a lot of different elements into mixing “out of the box”- and adding lots of warmth with classic analog outboard.

The better and expanded converters offer a higher resolution and 16 channels of mixdown.   The new monitoring offers more accuracy and low end detail. We had been envisioning this over the past five months, but actual implementation started to happen over the past three.

…and after. Legacy Signature monitors are situated on the floor, with a straight-ahead Sterling Modular desk.

In the Crosby Room:

We recently added a pair of Universal Audio 1176LN compressors and pair of classic DBX 160’s!

Our demand in Crosby has focused on drum tracking and work with bands, and the small additions have been helpful. With our senior engineer Josh Giunta being an in-demand professional drummer, we have also added additional drum kits, percussion and vintage snares.

Second Stage: In with the New

As our business has evolved, we have been developing a steady roster of freelance engineers. This in conjunction with our own client growth, required us to add certain additions that would elevate the experience of the room on multiple levels. The feedback has been excellent, and we have taken great lengths to talk to our clientele and understand their needs.

We have been very hands on in all areas of the changes taking place. Sonically our mixes are coming out sounding fuller, deeper and more evolved. The signal flow has transformed along with the monitoring and acoustic footprint of the room. The Broadway room is now an “out of the box” studio more so than it’s ever been!!

Third Stage: Plan In Advance

Some new audio candy has been bestowed upon the Neve 5088-equipped “Crosby” Room as well. (click to enlarge)

We have been fortunate enough to have a very knowledgeable and versatile tech Jay Wu Jun Yow. He has been instrumental in the art of making numerous big changes very manageable.

We also had a number of detailed planning meetings, which helped a great deal, where we got the input and feedback of our engineering staff throughout the process.

Over the past three months, the installation process has been fairly consistent. By working alongside myself, each new installation typically would get taken care of in no more than a couple of hours from start to finish, and never interfered with the studio day-to-day.

Fourth Stage: Getting Tuned In

We continued to evolve the speaker positioning, and measuring the room to find the sweet spot for the biggest sounding mixes. We have now found the right placement of our mains and we also moved around our mids and reference speakers in the process.

Our staff engineers got to get a good feel of the outboard gear and give us feedback on minor tweaks which were able to correct along the way.

Fifth Stage: Sound Decisions

We have found that it’s not about filling out your entire room with a wall of fancy electronics and overly flashy furniture.

We feel that’s it’s about bringing the right pieces of gear together with an understanding of their application and how they fit the engineers, the clientele and the room. We want to contribute to the intimate boutique studio experience in the heart of this major studio market – NYC.

Every decision, every upgrade, every change and every detail has been for our clients and is also based on our personal tastes. – This what brings our “Mojo” to SweetSounds.

— Andrew Travis, Studio Manager

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