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.
“Studio 9 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 room’s acoustical properties to be altered to suit the hosted event, (such as a social gathering, corporate conferencing, or musical performance). 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 ambiance can be enhanced for the 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 switchable microphone preamps in the MTRX interface. With 34 analog inputs (all mic/line selectable), engineers can 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 setup 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 Monitor 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.
