Mix Magazine Hollas At Buffalo
Whenever Buffalo gets some international recognition for something other than snow, it gives me a warm feeling inside. It shows the country that we have something more than just bad winters. Mix Magazine just gave Buffalo props for the number of great studios in the WNY region. Featured on the cover was Inner Machine - the studio where the Goo Goo Dolls were just a couple of gofers that has now been transformed into a great studio space by the band members. It is located right here in Buffalo. The other studio that made their list of top 16 is located in nearby Orchard Park. California Road Studios opened in September of 2007 and is already considered one of the great studios. If that wasn't flattering enough, coming from a magazine that is delivered in 94 countries, HSBC Arena was also named as one of the top 7 hot new venues. With their new audio system, the arena is now capable of some great sound.
The original text mentioning the studios and HSBC arena is below:
The Class of 2008
Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM
ON THE COVER: INNER MACHINE
Inner Machine (Buffalo, N.Y.) is enjoying a second life thanks to a couple of former studio gofers, Robby Tacak and John Rzeznik — now better known as Goo Goo Dolls. Twenty years ago, Tacak and Rzeznik were working for then-owner Alan Baumgardner and his commercial clients. They recently purchased the studio, and with the help of the original designer, John Storyk and wife/partner Beth Walters, founders of Walters-Storyk Design Group, they've made the rooms over to support their own projects.
“I first designed this studio, then called Trackmasters, over 30 years ago,” Storyk says. “Obviously, it needed to be renovated. The equipment was tired, they needed a new mechanical room — but the main acoustic need for Johnny [Rzeznik] was to completely change the acoustic signature of the live room, creating an enhanced reverb time, capable of recording drums and other session work, specifically for the group.”
WSDG added a vocal booth and spec'd new surface treatments in all of the rooms. “The curved soffits on the [tracking room] ceiling were refilled and resurfaced,” he explains. “We changed all of the original fabric to wood membranes with specific finishes. There are two different wood thicknesses to give a variety of membrane absorption characteristics at low frequencies. We introduced a variable-acoustic panel system on the walls, due to the need to deaden the room from time to time. The default RT60 for the room is close to 1.0 seconds and smooth through the entire frequency domain.“
The owners worked with WSDG system engineer Judy Brown to integrate an API Legacy console, new main monitors and a large collection of vintage outboard gear. A full-range Augspurger monitor system will soon be installed under the guidance of Professional Audio Design. The control room photo shows that two racks (far right) are detached from the rest; these racks on rollers house Rzeznik's favorite pieces of gear (Groove Tubes Vipre mic pre's and Glory Comp compressors; Mercury EQ-P1s, M76ms and M72s; RCA BA 6A; Chandler Limited TG2 and others) and can be moved all the way forward to the mix position.
“I'm proud of the fact that this room that we built 30 years ago, whose infrastructure is still sound, could be reborn to accept totally different acoustic requirements,” Storyk says. “Often when a studio's purpose ends, the studio dies, but this studio is now rebuilt to serve a new purpose that's consistent with what artists and bands are doing in the 21st century.”
CALIFORNIA ROAD STUDIOS
Situated in Orchard Park, N.Y., is California Road Studios, a multipurpose tracking/mixing facility by Lawrence P. Swist Designs. The studio opened in September '07, and features an 800-square-foot tracking room and a 120-square-foot iso booth. Designer Larry Swist reports that the large room has a 1.6-second reverb time optimized for drum tracking; reverb times can also be adjusted down to accommodate a variety of production requirements. Featured equipment includes Pro Tools HD3, a Digidesign D-Command console, Avalon and Focusrite mic pre's, and Dynaudio 5.1 monitoring.
The Other Class of 2008
Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Sarah Benzuly
HSBC ARENA
Home to the NHL's Buffalo Sabres and the Buffalo Bandits lacrosse team, as well as hosting a slew of music concerts, ice shows and other entertainment, the 20,000-seater HSBC Arena (Buffalo, N.Y.) sports a new audio system, thanks to Clair Bros. Audio Systems, which finished the project in just nine-and-a-half weeks while the arena was in use. The company installed six Dolby Lake processors to control the zoned and distributed JBL VLA speaker system (six clusters, each containing 10 VLA901 190-degree line array elements), driven by QSC PowerLight 3 Series and CM16a amps; a Yamaha M7CL-32 digital console sits in the mix booth. The existing upper-delay ring speakers were reused with new amps and processing. A complement of Shure UR24D/Beta 87A handheld mic systems are available, as are a PSM600 in-ear monitoring system and assorted wireless mics. The “ice” area has been updated with JBL PD5212 cabs underhung from the center-ice scoreboard.
Picture with this post is of Inner Machine
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BuffaloBloviator
With all of that technology, I still sound best in the shower.
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nickatnite
I never really knew that we had some state of the art studios around. Unfortuantly all I ever hear about in Buffalo lately is cover-bands. I'm sick of em. Come on Buffalo, where's all the original talent??
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doc
The way things are going in this city we won't have to swoon from the occasional international attention. It will become rather commonplace and won't that be a day! As for the snow...it's what keeps us in the news. Hell in Dubai UAE they're making snow so people can ski in the desert. Wait until the Weather Museum opens. People will come from all over the planet to be in a blizzard in July.
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GraphicRage
If you don't see any local talent in Buffalo, then you are not paying attention. Fortunately for these bands that are out on tour at the moment making waves for themselves and the scene in Buffalo (and these are just the ones off the top of my head) folks in other cities are paying attention. Johnny Nobody, La Cacahouette, Handome Jack, Displaced, As Summer Dies, A Hotel Nourishing, Needle Up, The Rabies... And those are just the ones I can thinking of that are doing the road warrior thing at the moment, I could fill up the page with amazing local talent right here, every weekend, doing their thing. Tune into WBFO for Live in Allen Hall or download some WBFO Exponential Podcasts. Or better yet, pay attention right here on Buffalo Rising where several of the bands just mentioned have been featured over the past few months. Buffalo has really great original bands in just about every genre right now.
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