After 15 years as a staff engineer at San Francisco’s One Union Recording Studios and two-and-a-half partering at advertising audio house Handsome Sound, Eben Carr has opened Tone11 Inc, his new production and mixing facility in the city’s Ice House Alley neighbourhood.
Housed near Levi’s Plaza in a building that is part of one of the largest and oldest masonry constructions in the Bay Area, Tone11 boasts a sound that is as modern as it gets, usng Genelec monitoring that Carr reckons will help keep San Francisco a hub for advertising audio.
‘Our target market is a combination of large and small agencies representing tech firms and others, but all of which need great sound for every type of platform, from television to iPhones,’ he says, noting work he’s done for local companies LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Logitech, as well as agencies like Duncan Channon, BarrettSF, Funworks and Venables Bell & Partners. As the latest development in a career that has included stints at Russian Hill Recording Studios (assisting on film and music projects with Robin Williams, Sofia Coppola and Geoff Muldaur) and Crescendo Studios (one of San Francisco’s original boutique recording studios catering to the advertising community), Carr says, ‘It was a good time to go out on my own. The opportunities are there.’
And so are Genelec monitors, which he says offer him a familiar monitoring environment and his clients the kind of sound that translates perfectly across multiple playback media. This is configured to comply with the Dolby Atmos format three 8351B Smart Active Monitors compose the front wall’s LCR array; four 8340A Smart Active Monitors are used as left-right and left-right rear channels, with four 8340As as the overhead array. The immersive system is completed by a pair of 7370A Smart Active Subwoofers. The system was installed and tuned using Genelec’s GLM 4 and AutoCal 2 software.
‘I’ve always used Genelec monitoring and technology everywhere I’ve worked, so it made sense to stay with Genelec for Tone11,’ Carr says. ‘They fit well with the rationale for opening a new studio in San Francisco at a moment like this – it’s about the value of having a real studio to bring new life to the collaborative spirit that made San Francisco such a creative place in the first place. I’m banking on people sharing that value. Genelec speakers make it easy to give everyone a great, accurate listening experience and to make people feel good about the way audio sounds, which is so important.’
