In a welcome bid to extend undertanding of the recording process and recording studios, Munich’s Dorian Gray Studios is ready to host the first event in PMC’s Making Waves tour in July.

The UK loudspeaker manufacturer it to conduct a series of studio-based educational critical listening events ‘designed to give a better understanding of professional audio recording and production processes to select groups of retailers in audiophile consumer markets across the world’.

The first event in the Making Waves: From Studio To Home tour brings together recording, mixing and mastering engineers with performing musicians, acousticians and PMC's designers of loudspeakers in critical listening environments, where they can directly address equipment suppliers to the consumer market. The event – scheduled for 25-26 July – will be staged in the main control room of one of northern Europe’s most technically advanced professional recording studios. Dorian Gray handles music recording, production and manufacture, and all aspects of the process will be covered, from miking, capturing and mixing a musical performance to pressing it to CD.

‘PMC occupies a rare position amongst loudspeaker manufacturers,’ says Marketing Manager, Keith Tonge. ‘We are closely involved with music makers and producers through our designs for the pro-audio market, and through our role in the Specialist Systems Group, we work with acousticians and design specialists on all kinds of critical listening environments. Our pro speakers are widely used as a critical listening reference when performances are being recorded, mixed and mastered, and unlike the offerings of some other speaker manufacturers, our consumer speakers use the same design concepts to recreate those performances in the home. So when we say to listeners in the consumer world that our products are designed to present music as it was when it was first made and recorded, we really mean it.

‘We’re inviting our hi-fi dealers and retail partners to find out more about what music-making is like at the recording and production stage, to see how our devotion to the sound of the original performance is maintained all the way through the recording and manufacturing process, right through to the listener in their music room.’

Beginning on the afternoon of Wednesday, 25 July, attendees at the Dorian Gray event will meet the musicians, engineers and other specialists, and be given an insight into the acoustics and construction of a pro studio environment by Jochen Veith of JV Acoustics. A key player in the Specialist Systems Group of design and construction experts begun by PMC, Veith designed the control room at Dorian Gray studios, which features PMC MB2-XBD Active monitors in a surround‑capable 5.1 array.

With the help of a quartet of musicians, Dorian Gray Chief Engineer, Gerhard Wölfle, will then devote the rest of the day to explaining how bands are miked up and performances are recorded. The second day will be devoted to mixing and mastering the performance at DG Studios for pressing to CD, with attendees given an understanding of how to apply EQ and effects, how to mix for stereo and surround (including film score mixing), and the role of mastering prior to CD manufacture.

The two-day event is the first confirmed date in a tour of similar sessions PMC is planning around the world. Follow-up events are already in preparation in London and in the US and Canada, and will be announced in the near future.

More: www.pmc-speakers.com
More: www.doriangraystudios.com