Veteran producer Brad Wood recently upgraded his Seagrass Studio in Los Angeles — which he utilizes for work with artists such as Liz Phair and Skating Polly — with a Dolby Atmos 9.1.4 system that utilizes PMC loudspeakers and three 704D Dante Connect Series amplifiers from LEA Professional.
Originally from Chicago, Wood has been a record producer for more than 30 years and built his first studio in that city in 1989 before moving to LA in 2000 and building a Seagrass in his backyard in Valley Village. It includes a fully-equipped control room joined by a live room.
“This was my first time using LEA Professional amplifiers, and the architecture of the amplifier was state of the art; you can tell that the team building these amps have a lot of experience,” he says.
The Dante capability of the LEA amplifiers was required to work in conjunction with the DADman software, part of the Avid MTRX studio environment. “The 704Ds are powerful, and having good, clean, consistent power in a small footprint like this is great,” Woods adds. “They make almost no noise, and they run very efficiently, which is perfect for a studio application.”
As Seagrass Studio was originally a residential guest house, some of those elements remain, meaning he needed to ensure he was using his space efficiently. The LEA Cloud platform helped in this regard, allowing him to maximize his space.
“The location of the rack is toward the front of my room, but they’re in an alcove that was built when the guest house was built, so it means that access to the back of the amplifiers is very restricted unless I pull the entire rack out,” he explains. “So having control over all those amp functions via the computer is ideal because I don’t have to bother with pulling the rack out to make any changes; it’s really fantastic.”
Wood did the entire installation and configuration of the amplifiers himself with help from PMC, and he’s looking at a busy couple of months ahead, with the studio booked up well into next year. “The amplifiers sound fantastic, and I don’t have any complaints,” he concludes. “What I want out of a power amp is consistency, no colorization, and to just work. I wanted amplifiers that would just be there and be pumping out lots of power, and that’s exactly what LEA amplifiers do.”
