A mastering engineer who has worked on Grammy nominated projects, Mike Monseur and mix engineer Webster Tileston have become more familiar with the immersive audio format over the course of the last year, the pair has come to appreciate its potential and have subsequently launched their own music mixing and mastering facility, Axis Audio. The new world-class mixing and mastering facility is outfitted with no less than 14 Neumann KH Series speakers in an immersive 7.1.4 monitor layout.
The spacious Axis Audio mixing and mastering room features three Neumann KH 420 three-way powered monitors, each atop a KH 870 subwoofer, that handle the LCR and LFE channels. Four KH 310 three-way powered speakers on stands provide the surround information while four KH 120 bi-amped monitors on Neumann mounting hardware deliver the overhead zones. All the KH series speakers are located in an eight-foot radius from the listening position except the overheads, which are slightly delayed.
An Avid Pro Tools Ultimate system running on a Mac Pro 3.2GHz 16-core machine drives the system into a multi-channel interface that also provides monitor management and switching between speaker configurations. A variety of outboard processing is housed in a pair of outboard racks, one to either side of the standing desk. JB Wood Design of Nashville custom made the desk and racks to Monseur and Tileston’s specifications.
Diving into immersive audio with Neumann
After a lackluster immersive presentation at a trade show in late 2019, Tileston says, “Mike and I walked out and said, this is pointless; no one’s going to listen to this. No one is going to have the budget for this type of setup. And even if they do, they’re going to set it up wrong.” But after watching a video from the 2020 NAMM Show on rendering mixes in binaural, Tileston began to see the immersive format’s potential. “If there’s a way that this can transfer to headphones, that means it has some more value for consumers,” he says.
At the time, Tileston had a pair of KH 120s at his studio and he acquired a second pair to create a surround system with his existing stereo setup. He subsequently added bookshelf speakers as overheads as he took a deeper dive into the possibilities of Dolby Atmos mixing during the months that followed. But it wasn’t until Monseur brought over his personal pair of KH 420s to create an all-Neumann KH series setup at Tileston’s studio that everything started to fall into place.
After Tileston and Monseur found their new studio location in early 2020, they set up a 5.1 system before moving in any equipment or acoustically treating the space. “We had added some KH 310s at that point, so we had 420s, 310s and 120s,” Monseur says. “It really felt right, so I said, okay, I’m on board; this is going to work.”
Unmatched midrange response and a ‘clear voice’
Monseur has been using KH 420s since 2015. “I was looking for new mastering monitors and got to demo the 420s,” he says, “and I didn’t send them back.” The dome midrange was probably the biggest factor in wanting to own a pair of Neumann speakers, he says. “They have punch and a great transient response but they’re still engaging and warm. They have a distinct voice that’s pleasant to listen to. And those 420s have been on every single day since 2015 without a problem.”
Then there is the KH 420’s full-range bass response, Monseur says. “The 420 by itself goes down to 26 Hz. Adding the 870, it goes down to 18 Hz. With the 870s, any infrasonic information, like mic stand hits that you wouldn’t pick up normally, mud or DC offset, is all pretty clear.”
In Axis Audio’s new room, Monseur says, “The 870s are running full range with the 420s, effectively turning them into four-way boxes. The 870s also handle the LFE; they have multiple inputs that allow you to do that.”
