From mixing monitors for Stevie Wonder in the late 1970s, John Cuniberti relocated to the studio and has since recorded, mixed and mastered artists including Tracy Chapman, Thomas Dolby and the Grateful Dead. He worked with guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani on his first studio album in 1986, and the two have been a team since.
Recently, they travelled to Skywalker Sound and 25th Street Recording (Oakland, California) to cut tracks for Satriani’s forthcoming album, Shockwave Supernova. Given the success they have had with ATC SCM25A monitors in Satriani’s home studio, they rented a pair at both studios.
‘A little while back, Joe expressed growing frustration with the close-fields he had in his studio at the time,’ Cuniberti says. ‘I recommended ATC SCM25As, and he fell in love with their musicality and the way the decisions he made in the studio translated elsewhere.’
When Cuniberti arrived at Skywalker, he didn’t find any close-fields that he felt comfortable using, so he rented a pair of ATC SCM25As for the two weeks they had booked. The same thing happened at 25th Street Recording. ‘25th Street had massive ATC SCM300ASL and SCM150ASL soffit-mounted loudspeakers, which sounded great, but again, no close-fields I wanted to use,’ he says. ‘Again, we rented SCM25As. Finally Joe decided to buy a pair from Sweetwater for himself.’
‘Working with the ATC SCM25As at Skywalker Sound, at 25th Street Recoding, and at my home studio has been a wonderful experience,’ says Satriani. ‘In all three environments, the sessions stayed accurate with imaging I could trust, and the individual tracks always came up clear, punchy, and transparent. The SCM25As are powerful yet precise sounding speakers, without the ear fatigue. Most importantly, it’s fun to create music on them.’
‘We were able to spend time between the SCM25As all day, day after day, without getting stressed out,’ Cuniberti agrees. ‘They sound great loud and have an impressive low-frequency response. Importantly, now that we’re listening back at home, everything we tracked sounds like I expected it to sound. There are no surprises. I think that’s the mark of an effective studio monitor. I think the industry has evolved to this point. You can go back to the NS10 craze, which I think happened because everyone was so hungry for a stable reference point.
‘Then some more truly transparent models started emerging, but the evolution of those modelled tended toward hype on the high end and hype on the low end. Sure, that makes a mix sound good, but it burns the engineer out and leads to mixes that are flat and lifeless on other systems. In contrast, ATC’s professional division has remained committed to building monitors that will allow an engineer to work long hours without fatigue and with the confidence that the music will sound right everywhere else.’
