Eclectica Studio in Nashville, owned by Tim Dolbear, who also serves as the chief audio engineer, recently upgraded to an Audient Nero monitor controller.
“We wanted something that was reliable in both sound reproduction and longevity, and the Nero fits perfectly into that,” says Dolbear, explaining that he saw a ‘null test’ online that compared the difference between Nero and a straight-line cable. “They completely nulled out, which really intrigued me,” he notes.
Dolbear has been in the studio business for more than two decades as a producer, mixing, mastering and recording engineer and has worked with Grammy winners to indie artists. Clients include Tony Harnell (TNT, Starbreaker, West world, Skid Row), Jamie Oldaker (Eric Clapton, Frampton), Larry Thompson (James Brown, Otis Redding), and many others.
“On the music side, which is where most of the gear that you see in pictures of our studio get used, we use preamps from Great River, Manley, SSL, and of course, Audient,” he explains. “I work exclusively in a Sequoia DAW and have since 2002 and we mix in the box.
“Our mix bus then leaves the computer and travels through our analogue mix bus processing that contains Mytek converters feeding a Great River MAQ-2NV mastering equalizer, into a Manley Mastering Edition Variable Mu compressor with TBar Mod, into our modified MCI JH110B quarter-inch tape machine that has API 2520 OpAmps on the ins and outs. We print to quarter-inch ATR Tape at 15IPS.
He emphasizes that the monitoring system at Eclectic Studio starts with a professionally designed room, noting it’s “the most important part. Stereo D/A conversion is all done by Mytek converters feeding our Nero controller, which handles all of our different routing needs for the many different monitoring setups we have. Nero also handles the various talkback and talent talkback duties.
“We basically use the Nero as a seven output monitor controller with multiple inputs,” he concludes. “We have the normal stereo signal from the Main Mytec D/A feeding our Neumann monitoring, as well as our midfield mains, it also feeds our Crimson Audio headphone amp and some Bose computer speakers. Nero also sends our talkback mic signal to various places that we need it to go. We also have our talent talkback mic from the live room coming in on a different input and going out to a separate set of speakers on their own volume control via HP out 2.”
