HEDD Type07 at StarMount Studio

StarMount Studio is really fortunate to be one of the few to experience the first things that reaches our shore (Malaysia)
Dennis Tan of  Roland Asia Pacific (RAP) offered us a trial to listen out to new speakers and without much hesitation and with great pleasure we got a pair of Heinz Electro Dynamic Design HEDD Type 07 active monitor speakers in the studio.

 1:1 box for the HEDD Type07

To be honest, this pair is not a show stopper. It appeared to be under powered when it was fired up alongside with ATC SC25, Solitaire 6a (which sounded very close to ATC SC25 at a fraction of the price) or even Axis Voicebox S passive ribbon speakers. We are used to a more open sounding, class A amps rather than enclosed bass reflex active speakers. Thus the underpowered impression was made when they were lined up together.

We always believe in 2nd chance, so we took great length into sweeping frequencies, adjusting speaker angle, and finding the best distance from the wall and to the sweet spot etc.

Here are some things we figured. The speakers sounded best in the studio when its about 1ft away from the wall, spaced in between is around 5m and about 3m to listening spot. The speakers are very directional, and we manage to widened the listening sweet spot with this arrangement. And listening to 78dB is quite comfortable as well. The mids and highs are very well presented without much hype or in your face especially on those sensitive 7k, 10k region. Its not muffled but much more comfortable to use and encourages explorations on the high frequency regions in tone sculpting.

Axis VoiceBox S Loudspeaker @StarMount Studio

We are delighted to have a pair of Axis VoiceBox S in the studio, and it could never be any better to be able to meet the designer/ founder John Reilly from Australia.

The ones we've got are piano black in gloss finishing. These are passive speakers and they housed interesting vertical ribbon tweeters paired with 5 inch driver. 

Peace x Shane @StarMount Studio

Male x male duet is quite a rarity in the pop music scene, more so for a love song. Through Universal Music Malaysia & Singapore, Peace and Shane came together for a duet " You, Its You".

Alex Tan, the producer for this project got Dennis Law of A9 Strings for music arrangement, "Sotong" on drums, AJ Popshuvit on Bass, Dennis on the keys and Alex"the lion" Koh on guitars. 

Its also the debut recording for our new addition, Canopus Yaiba Groove Kit. We spent a nice 6 hours on recording the drums. There are 4 different snare tunings throughout the song, 2 different OH microphones on the first half and 2nd half of the song, and also we used 3 different snares for tone as well. The tones from the Canopus drums were so musical, easy to tune and sounds great recorded. The signals were all patched into Audient Zen Console mic pres and into Horus audio interface.

The bass went direct into Tree Audio Branch. Loved the tone especially cranking it through the opto compressors, the sound was almost complete into the mix.

Guitars were layered with multiple electric guitars and pickups. It provides a subtle but important support throughout the song. Hybrid processing of GTR and real pedalboard effects, combining DI and amped signals, especially for distortion powerchords towards the last chorus of the song.

JZ 11 was surprisingly fitting for the vocals in this song. We alternate JZ 11 into Chandler and Portico compressor for the chorus and JZ 11 into The Branch during the verse parts. Shane was using mainly Gemini MK2 while Peace was having a good mixture of both JZ and Gemini microphones.

Here's the music video and behind the scenes for the song:

                                      

《给它一个家》Awareness Campaign for the Abandoned Companions

The studio was star studded for 3 full days consecutively. We had 22 Malaysian artistes lending voice and their kindness towards the awareness of abandoned pets, especially the strays on the streets.

Its such a great experience where the the studio was charged up with positive vibes, seeing artistes from various labels getting together for a good cause. The crews were working tirelessly taking footages as we were recording. It was exciting and challenging at the same time, as we had back to back schedules to fit and we had to get the best tone in such a short time frame.
2 mics, sE Gemini Mk2 and JZ v11 were put to the tasks. We had an all tube setup and a transformer charged channel to handle different tones and projections from the artistes.

The sE Gemini was paired with Tree Audio Branch, and JZ v11 went through Chandler TG2 with Neve Portico 5043 Comp. This was an interesting pairing where the sE GeminiMK2 gave a crisps presence, only set back was the limitation of SPL handling. On the other hand, JZv11 through the transformer chain gave a warm, big sound which fits perfectly for the powerhouse vocals.

We had over 120 vocal tracks in the end, and the Pyramix DAW was handling well without any glitches or any signs of latency albeit having a few plugins on each channels. This was a first for us to put the DAW to test and we were very happy with its performances.


StarMount Studio is grateful to be given such opportunity to host the recording of this project. Heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Bocai and team for bringing such heart warming campaign into Malaysia!

Here's the artistes rosters, and the official music video of the theme song, launched recently on the 17th Oct.




张祖诚，Jaclyn Victor，林德荣，罗忆诗，Beeman @ Manhand，Alvin鍾瑾桦，谢婉婷，林健辉，Geraldine颜慧萍，方炯嘉，Apple 邱诗凌，刘界辉，龚柯允 ，Alycia ，Ribbon黄若熙，Jin薛炳进，Juwei Teoh，马嘉轩，王明丽，赵洁莹，Von @Manhand，Zen 俊倩