Studio Monitor, by Christopher Walsh

D.I.Y. WITH DAW: Contemporary audio production being what it is, recording professionals and facilities are adapting and evolving to suit modern needs and techniques. In lower Manhattan, a newly expanded facility is aiming to meet the diverse requirements of independent producers and recording engineers.

Located at the corner of Lafayette and Canal Streets and straddling New York's Soho and Chinatown communities, Engine Room Audio offers traditional mastering and duplication services, the former in a comfortable, recently completed suite designed by John Storyk of the Walters-Storyk Design Group. An interesting and imaginative addition to this mix, however, is the existence of six private audio suites coupled with two live rooms, all tied together via ELCO connections.

Each personal studio is an acoustically tuned and treated room with floating floor, along with phone lines and a DSL connection. Each is occupied by an audio professional and based around that individual's digital audio workstation (DAW) of choice, usually Digidesign's Pro Tools.

"When I first built it, I was unsure," Engine Room Audio owner/lead engineer Mark Christensen says. "It looked to me like this was what the market needed. I knew that that's what I felt like I would need, if I was looking for a place. So, at first, you're never quite sure what will happen, but once word of what we've got going on here got out, everyone moved in.

"Hardly anyone wanted to move out; we've got a 15-person waiting list," he continues. "A lot of my industry friends are telling me I should just raise the rent, but I don't want to be that way. I want it to be a community vibe. I do screen people-it's not like we let anyone move in when there is a free room. We try to get people that mesh with the existing people."

Across the hall from the edit/mix suites are two live rooms, complete with PA, amplifiers, and instruments, including a drum kit and keyboards. Each private room can record audio from the live rooms, which resemble rehearsal studios, albeit clean, bright, and well-equipped and maintained ones. Clients, Christensen says, have recognized the live rooms' suitability to rehearsal/ensemble playing and in some situations are granted such use.

The final component of Engine Room Audio's services is the recently completed mastering studio, the acoustical design and installation completed by Storyk following original construction consultation by Chris Bowman of CHBO. The room is based around a SADiE DAW, supplemented by outboard hardware from TubeTech, Manley, Universal Audio, Ampex, Avalon, Waves, and Crane Song. The room also features the first New York installation of Tobakustik absorptive wood panels, made in Europe and distributed in the U.S. by RPG Diffusor Systems. Projects mastered in the room include a J. Mascis-produced album by Tony Jarvis, the upcoming Goat album produced by Tony Mangurian, and several classical albums for Museovitch Productions.

Audio professionals can now track, mix, master, and replicate a project at Engine Room Audio, or any combination thereof. The diversity of services is critical to a facility's long term survival, especially in an environment weathering a national recession and the lingering effects of last Sept. 11, particularly acute in Engine Room Audio's downtown Manhattan locale.

"I talk to people at the [replication] plant and competitors," Christensen confides. "None of us has ever quite been the same since [Sept. 11]. Obviously, immediately there was a total drop-off in the business for us, because we're right down there. Then people were forcibly 'getting back to normal,' but, not unlike the economy as a whole, there's been a recession. But we have been seeing a shift in that whole market anyway, because of the whole CD-R thing, now that everyone has a burner at home. We have definitely seen a shift from a lot of smaller jobs into more heavy-duty replication with silk-screening and offset printing. We've been moving more into that market."