In this article, a continuation of our series of articles looking at the development of our team’s studios over the last ten or so years, we see how the studio of New York based producer and mixer Nathaniel Reichman has developed from a bedroom in a Queens apartment to a well appointed Atmos mix room.
2004
The first few years of my career, I was living in a Queens apartment in New York City, using this second bedroom as my studio. I usually commuted to a few good studios in Manhattan, but as time went on and projects got more elaborate, I spent more time in this room, doing rough mixes, music editing and sound design. I never imagined I would ever share this picture on an industry website! But here it is. During this time, Pro Tools became my primary DAW, and Logic took a backseat (although there were a couple of projects where I wheeled a Sonic Solutions system into this tiny room to use NoNoise).
Out of the frame to the right was a closet with sliding doors, which acted as a very cheap machine room. The Power Mac 9600, Power Mac G3, G4 and assorted SCSI drives made a terrible racket, and the closet pushed that noise down at least 20db. I have lots of memories of epic all-nighters in this room, working on advertising and the scores to television shows. There was one session where I had the artist and an arranger in here for a few days on an album project (crazy, I know). The Baby HUI control surface on the left gave me my first taste of what a reasonably good control surface could do for me. And I’m a firm believer in dedicated video playback when working to picture, so you have something to look at without the clutter of a computer OS when mixing or scoring.
Looking back, there were lots of problems, but the two biggest problems with this room were that the speakers were too close, and I didn’t have a subwoofer.
2020
Fast forward to 2020, where I have an addition for my studio, with a much larger volume of space and better ergonomics. I had upgraded to 5.1 in 2012 to satisfy my needs as a re-recording mixer for television shows and indie films. And then in 2020, I upgraded again to Dolby Atmos 7.1.4. Note that the speakers are now nearly six feet away from my ears (huge improvement in listening accuracy). And it’s hard to see in the picture, but I have my trusty JBL 4312 subwoofer under the standing desk.
In early 2022, I moved from the trashcan Mac Pro 6,1 (which served me well for seven years) to a Mac Studio Ultra which I’m very pleased with. If I have any advice it is this: build the studio for the work you have. The old adage “Build it and they will come” sadly isn’t true. Over the years, I’ve seen colleagues build enormously expensive, over-specced palace-like studios with gear and real estate that never gets used, and I’ve also seen colleagues struggling to mix a film on a laptop and headphones. It’s hard to get the balance right. And if you are on a laptop and headphones, don’t feel bad. Keep working! But rent or build a bigger studio as needed when your projects demand it.
One of the more notable things about Nathaniel’s Atmos studio is his innovative use of Metric Halo hardware to create a low cost Dolby Atmos monitor controller. If you’ve ever wondered why people who use Metric Halo gear rate it so highly this is essential reading for insight into just how powerful these interfaces are click the link or image above.