Having navigated New York City’s rent and zoning regulations in search of the perfect location in 2006, Cutting Room recording studios owner David Crafa had found a near-perfect location on West 4th Street (SoHo). However, the shift from commercial to residential in this iconic building, which once housed the famed Tower Records store, compelled the studio to change its focus away from music in favour of production for film and television, as well as podcasts and voiceovers.
Meanwhile, Crafa’s search for a new location where music could reign unfettered led to the opening, in 2020, of The Cutting Room Control Room 1, on West 24th Street in the Chelsea neighbourhood. Both locations now are thriving, sharing Crafa’s relentless pursuit of the right location – and with the choice of monitors from Genelec in every studio across both locations.
The original studio is kitted out with Genelec 1031A monitors in each of its three rooms. When needed, the 1031As are rounded up and reconfigured for 5.1 surround mixing in one of the studios, and they are mainstays in Tony Gillis’ mastering suite there. And at Control Room 1, The Cutting Room’s premier mixing facility, the soffited Genelec 1234A Smart Active Monitors loom above the 32-channel Solid State Logic Origin console, buttressed by a 7382A Smart Active Subwoofer and a pair of Genelec 8030Bmonitors.
‘Everything actually worked out very well,’ says General Manager, David MacLeod. ‘The zoning and noise issues that arose at the SoHo location compelled us to pivot to other types of productions, such as film and television and podcasts, with a more nine-to-five-type schedule, just as Covid was putting a huge new emphasis on those markets. In a way, the timing couldn’t have been better, and the 1031As are an extremely versatile and flexible speaker that lets us cover a lot of production ground easily. It’s interesting: at West 4th Street, the Roc-A-Fella and Interscope gold records came off the wall and were replaced with Netflix and Hulu posters,’ he says. ‘The 1031As made the transition easily.’
Across town, the massive 1234As are delivering the punch that The Cutting Room’s hip-hop clients demand with the transparency needed for critical monitoring for the Broadway cast recordings and other various types of projects the new facility is becoming known for.
‘We’re branding Control Room 1 as a hybrid type of studio able to deliver the volume and the gut punch that contemporary music production needs with the transparency and precision that film and other media sound require,’ he explains. ‘The Genelec 1234As and the 7382A sub are the only combination that can do both. When Lil Baby comes in and wants the music to hit him in the chest, we can do that, and when the music calls for more nuance – everything from Broadway to the Park Avenue Synagogue recording religious music – it’s all there, too. Genelec lets us cover all the bases.’
More: www.genelec.com
