My Visit to the Studio

A while back I received a phone call from Stacey Dodd. Stacey has a company in LA called Red Room. He is an audio engineer that also installs high-end studios for some high end LA cliental. Stacy received a call from Oscar Ramirez. Oscar has recorded some of the biggest recording stars in the biz such as Dr. Dre, Janet Jackson and a host of others. He was helping to source the right gear for Christina Aguilera’s new home studio. Upon hearing this, I decided to bring up the monitors myself. They wanted to check out the Q15s. So I loaded a pair into the back of the Explorer and off I went.

90210 … a very familiar zip code. As it turns out, Christina bought Ozzy Osbourne’s old house. The one from his reality TV show. She recently had her baby Max and had decided to build a great studio on site, keeping her close to home. Anyway, I pulled up to the gate and pushed the button. “I’m from Equator.” “Oh you’ve got the speakers. We’ll be right out.” MMMM the gate opens and I pull in. Bentleys and other exotic cars fill the driveway. As their crew starts to unload the Q15s, up pulls a double-decker tour bus right outside the gate. “And this is Christina Aguilera’s house. It used to be owned by Ozzy Osbourne. You may recognize it from his reality TV show. Oh aren’t we lucky the gate is open. Maybe we’ll get a chance to see Christina.” I leaned over to one of the guys helping unload and said “Are you kidding me?” He said “This goes on all day long seven days a week.” Ah, to be a celebrity and to be on the Hollywood tour.

The onsite studio was incomplete but the control room did have an SSL, a high-end Pro Tools system, some competing monitoring systems and some other outboard gear. The room is very Ozzy: red wall coverings, a mirror ball chandelier & black door knobs with gold crosses in the middle. Oscar and Stacey were there to help set up our system. Initially they wanted to check the speakers out flat without any software compensation. I encourage that as I believe the room analysis software is really icing on the cake. The physics of a monitor has to be right out of the box and ours are.

Oscar fired up some of Christina’s music from her last record Back to Basics. He took the Q15s to extreme volume levels. I mean, it was really loud. He hit stop, turned to me and said enthusiastically “I like them! I want to check out your Q18 sub." I said “ No problem." A week later I went back with a Q18 subwoofer.

We configured it and fired up the system. He played more songs from Back to Basics. Again at extreme levels. When you add a Q18 to a pair of Q15 satellites you improve the overall efficiency of the system and increase the SPL output by about 4dB. It was now playing really, really loud. Oscar hit stop and turned to me to say “we’re on to something. I’d like to check out a second sub.” I said "Wow! No problem." A week later we went back with a second Q18 sub.

The control room is an odd shape and fairly small. The two subs were placed in the back 2 corners of the room with the Q15s behind the SSL console. Adding a second Q18 sub increases the SPL by an additional 4dB or so. This was the first time we had placed 2 Q18s in a single system.

Oscar fired it up. Ouch! The volume was excruciating. It was so loud that when Oscar hit stop, I started laughing and said “You can’t possibly work at that volume.” His response was “I work with some crazy *$!@ing people.” He then monitored at various listening levels from very soft to medium and again loud. He commented on how well they held together at any level. He told me he plays it loud for the producers and the artists but that he generally works at moderate sound levels.

When we ran our room analysis software we discovered a slight problem. Because of the odd shape of the room, alcoves and various furniture placements, along with the fact that we were using 2 subs; the software had difficulty locating the exact placement of the second Q18 sub. That caused an imperfect phase condition in the extreme low end. We had found a bug. Our software guys went to work on it. The following week we had a fix and converged on Christina’s studio once again. This time when we ran the software it located both subs correctly and made the proper adjustment.

At this point, Oscar decided that we we're ready to play the system for Jordan. Jordan is Christina’s husband and would make the final decision. He had been in multiple times with their baby Max and the dogs but he had yet to actually listen. Oscar wanted to hold off until he heard what he wanted to hear first ... now it was time to call Jordan in. He came in and Oscar fired up some tunes from Back to Basics. Once again, really loud. Jordan listened without any response. I wasn't sure if he liked them. But when the baritone sax came in on the track Still Dirty he turned to Oscar and smiled. That was the moment in which I knew that he heard " it." We then listened to other tunes and he was sold. Ain’t No Other Man kicked. In fact, the entire album kicked.

I really wasn't that familiar with Christina's music. I have a ritual of taking my nieces, Thalia, Stephanie and Dora out to the music store to buy CDs whenever I make it back to Detroit. Thalia is a huge fan of Christina and had lots of her music. On our music store trips, we bought Christina CD’s and would listen in the car. That and the radio play was the extent of my familiarity. I now have a much greater appreciation for Christina’s music. I bought “Back to Basics” and I love it. I’m proud that they’ve chosen Equator monitors for their studio.

Ted Keffalo
President of Equator Audio