Good Times

All good things will come to an end. And we have been honored to be work with so many wonderful and talented music souls in the studio. All the hard work was translated well with our carefully selected gears and equipment throughout the years and they have been very well respected and had a very special place in the studio and also in our hearts.

There is one particular brand that has really helped us grow throughout the years and we couldn't thank them for making such good and robust equipment, innovative nonetheless and always hit the right spot where music making( or audio) concerns. All the way from Hampshire, England- the guys that makes Audient. (although we didn't really have any contacts, but the support from our local dealer-Soundbuz was superb )

Audient ASP 008
It all started with a purchase of a 8 channel pristine, clean mic pre-ASP008 with AES/EBU option. Paired with our then Digidesign 003, it opened our horizon to take on larger track counts in live recording ( which is still what we do best). The mic pres are amazing on almost everything we put them through, and they were one of the few that has impedance matching that means a lot to us in getting the best signal into our recordings. Operation wise is easy and rock solid. Never had any issue with the clock, either with ADAT or AES/EBU. Just a flick of a switch and press of a button, it'll lock onto any sources given or taken from other units.
This unit was never replaced throughout times of studio upgrades and they always hold a place in our rack.

Audient Centro
With the confidence we had with the ASP 008, we then took a step up into getting the  Audient Centro, a really good monitor controller that has all the things we look for, clean signal, unhyped sound, multiple analog and digital sources (DA is surprisingly good). It has mute, remote controlled talk back. This made the studio more complete in our monitoring end. (bye bye extra aux for talk back)

This too serves us well, giving us more opportunities in learning especially when AB-ing speakers, converters, comparing mixes/ sound sources.. we had learnt and grown a lot since the arrival of the Centro. Better recordings, translated to better mixes hence more jobs and better value gigs were all coming in and finally one day, our dear friend Ganz from Soundbuz drop us news about the Audient Black Series.

Audient Black
The mic pres (love their led meter), offering a vast palate of sound shaping, thanks to their amazing HMX that you can have it clean without or crank it all up to have a rich and colorful tone, and it supercharged everything that has been put through it. Then we paired it with the Black EQ that has all the bells and whistles of high pass and low pass filters, their own "air" control which we love it so much when you need the sound to shine in the big lots of sounds in the mix, and the possibility is endless!
Comes our favorite fet dynamic leveler, which has fast response on attack and release," smooth "and "overcomp" feature which we find when engaged all it can give us the "thrust" character that is so much loved in tracking guitars, drums and forward vocals. To top it all, the illuminated VU meters are accurate and we can just stare on the moving needles the whole day.
To complete the box, we had the black ADC with master clock, which are instrumental in giving us additional 4 more AD into our working environment.
The Black Series Casing is robust and comes with a 2 U  Power Supply. As we know for similar 500 series lunch boxes, the power supply is the most important to all and Audient has got it covered!

Audient Zen
We were all excited with the Audient line of products and once the Zen Mixing Console was out, we were the first one in Malaysia to get them into our studio! Nonetheless, it looks good and fits right into our audio habitat, improving our workflow instantly. Finally we were able to do real analog mixing and summing on the board, with all the input and output options available, beautiful calibrated led meters on all channels including group busses too. The stereo buss compressor we called "magic button" made wonders to our mix buss. All the glue and width that we once longed for was right at our fingertips. Paired with HUI controllers from PTHD, 16 moving faders with full recall of automation can be done in real time for track preps and mix downs. The sheer joy of touching the responsive and well made faders brings wide grin on the face every single day.


As much as we love all the gears, it has come to the time that we have to let go these precious working tools.

Audient ASP 008                                            RM 3000 (approx. 750USD)
Audient Centro                                               RM 2500 (approx. 600USD)
Audient Black Series                                      RM 8000 ( approx. 1930 USD)
Audient Zen 16 channels mixing console       RM 30000 ( approx. 7220 USD)

We felt that this configuration will definitely help others, especially startup studio to have a total peace of mind to have a complete setup, hopefully learn and grow much faster in the field.
Feel free to drop us an email at info@starmountstudio.com. All are still in pristine working conditions and you can hear them in action and them home.

RABPIT AUDIO KIMBERLITE @StarMount Studio

R.P.T  Kimberlite Power Cord from Rabpit Audio is currently in StarMount Studio. Courtesy of Ganz Lim of SoundBuz we are able to experience and find out how much difference does a well done power cord compared to stock/ the common ones that came with the equipments.

The unit came with a nicely packed black box, and it was heavy and shouting luxury on every inch of the package. The Kimberlite power cord was nicely coiled and placed in the centre and the sight was  We first got it into Audient Zen Mixing Console. While playing back, the first thing that everyone in the room felt was the extra headroom and depth from our usual listening experience. Its slightly softer when we had the normal power cord but the reproduction of sound was more refine and less noise. 

As for the inputs from the Audient Zen mic pres, we noticed less noise as we approach maximum gain, and the sound texture had more definition. The difference was more significant when we had that on Tree Audio Branch channel strip, where much lower noise floor was achieved and the tone and texture were much more velvety and smoother in a very pleasant way. We were quite excited to this finding as the difference was the most significant.

We were told that it works best on the AD/DA converters, so it was then powering the premium AD/DA converters of Horus. We could hardly hear any significant differences as when it was on the other equipments. 

Electricity is definitely the most crucial and overlooked element in most of the studio environment. Clean electricity is like clean blood to maintain a healthy body. And yes, this cable does help us to hear and work better. The truth is, one unit would not be enough and it will cost a lot of money for this 'invisible investment'.

Moment of Truth.

HeyMun and Chern Hui @StarMount Studio

The talented singer songwriter is based in Sydney Australia, coming back to KL for a short trip. So it was supposed to be a drop by and say hi trip, but we were all excited to try out some microphones-Telefunken AR-51, JZ V67 and JZ J1 (thanks to Soundbuz for their high standards and relentless support), and a new DAW-Pyramix.

We have heard how Pyramix are known for their superior sonic quality, just that its not as widely used by the commercial studios. Thanks to Stagetec Asia and Merging Technologies, we got the Horus with premium ADDA to try out along with Pyramix Masscore system.

This is an impromptu session and the duo liked the idea. Without much delay, HeyMun had her Taylor acoustic guitar tuned while Chern Hwei was already on the resin for his violin.

We had the duo in the same room, 6 ft away from each other. We used the Telefunken AR51 on the vocals, and V67 for acoustic guitar. The violin was done with our favorite sE RT1 Tube Ribbon (great cinematic strings tone with the mic)

So, that was the first studio session for "Hail", a new original from Heymun about friendship. The performance was magical and we're very happy to be able to capture the moment. Pyramix is amazing, and its true that the sonic quality is of very high fidelity and natural. And we're liking it every second we're on it.(not a good sign)

The whole session was done in a default setting:192khz set at 32 bit. And only going through the Horus micpre and AD. We were amazed by how balanced and natural the mic pres could produce, and the headroom was huge.

Everyone was excited and with much delight to hear what was being recorded. We were using the Lavry Blue all this while and the Horus got the upper hand with a huge margin in terms of clarity, fullness and headroom.

Again, it opens up the discussion about recording/ operating beyond 96kHz. To us, listening is believing and we were impressed by this new system from Merging Technologies. Drop by the studio for your own AB comparison. We would like to have more ears to tell us that we're not "hearing things" in the studio or its the "new gear hype" that we are going through right now.

HeyMun 

Chern Hwei

Beautiful Duet