Porches Building 9 Installation

Our mission at Parsons Audio is to provide solutions that help engineers, educators, musicians, studio and venue owners realize their goals.

When the owners of “The Porches” approached us to design a live sound venue with full multimedia and recording studio capabilities, realizing their vision provided a challenge. 

“The Studio at Porches Inn” is an energy-neutral, multi-function facility, located at Mass MoCA in western Massachusetts. The design implements a Meyer Constellation system, a Planar 4k capable video wall, a Yamaha CL3 digital mixing console with Rio-3224-D2, and a high-end Pro Tools based mobile recording studio.

The versatile patching and state of the art Meyer Constellation™ system contribute greatly to the overall multi-function capabilities. The Constellation enables the acoustical properties of the room to be altered to suit the hosted event, (such as a social gathering, corporate conferencing or musical performances). The system has been engineered to fit the client’s needs, from how the venue can be utilized, to the ease of configuring and re-configuring the set-ups.

A Crestron processor controls the 40 speaker Meyer Constellation™ system, and the Parsons team ensured that every parameter can be optimized for any event. By adjusting the menu settings, room ambience can be enhanced for speech intelligibility of one person in a conference meeting, or many at social breakfast and dining events. The same for one musical instrument, or an entire ensemble. The options are endless!

Adding to the stunning Meyer system and the truly beautiful aesthetics of the room, we built a high-end, high channel count, mobile recording system, utilizing a powerful Mac Mini running an AVID Pro Tools HDX system outfitted with an AVID MTRX interface and AVID S3/Dock Control Surface. All components are installed in a single, dual-sided, roll-around case that can be patched-in anywhere in the building, or anywhere else for that matter!

The Analog front end of the recording rig features 16 API Audio 512V preamps, as well as the switchable microphone preamps in the MTRX interface. With 34 analog inputs (all mic/line selectable), engineers have the flexibility to patch in as they see fit, from anywhere in the building, with or without a rack of analog processors. The mobile recording system also includes a Discrete 24 Channel, Dante enabled, Cue Mixing system, featuring a Digital Audio Labs LIVEMIX16 base-station, mated to 9 CS-SOLO Remote Mixers. This set-up allows artists total control of monitoring for recordings and overdubs.

Any audio engineer can feel ultra-confident monitoring back the microphone inputs, using the MTRX’s super high-quality DAC module. Speaker switching is handled by DADman software using the AVID Dock/Ipad Control layout for Pro Tools. This lets the engineer switch between 4 sets of speakers, or a very accurate Little Labs Monotor Headphone amplifier. Audio monitors include Genelec 8030C’s and Meyer Amie speakers, but a third stereo output can easily be ported into the Meyer Constellation™ system.

The complement of microphones includes (among others) offerings from Shure, Sennheiser, Royer Labs, DPA, Audio Technica, Neumann, Earthworks and Ear Trumpet Labs. The rig is ready to deploy for any style of performance. Teamed up with the Meyer Constellation™ system, the results are nothing short of startling.

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