Producers Carson Slovak and Grant McFarland
began working together in 2012, initially opening Atrium Audio in Lancaster,
PA, and focusing on rock and metal. They later relocated and ran York, PA-based
Think Loud Studios, owned by multi-platinum rock band Live, before embarking on
a ground-up build-out of their new facility at Rock Lititz. Atrium Audio’s new
location features a large, high-ceilinged live room encircled by three control
rooms, including a Dolby Atmos mix suite.
Slovak believes that he and McFarland are
doing much better work because of the ORIGIN: “We spent a lot of time making
sure this room was laid out correctly. We got an acoustician to design the
studio, so the environment’s really good. I feel like having the console and
working through it has leveled our game up in a lot of ways.”
For instance, he says, simply running a
project through the ORIGIN brought a noticeable improvement to his mixes. “I
revisited a few older sessions, took all the plug-ins off the mix bus and
summed them through the SSL. It’s crazy, the night-and-day difference it made
in the overall punch, the feel and the headroom. I have one of the SSL Fusion
units as well, and ORIGIN and the Fusion have now basically replaced all my mix
bus plug-ins.”
As for the ORIGIN’s equalizer section, he
adds, “The EQ is great. It’s very smooth. I feel like I can do more EQ without
anything distorting.”
A 0 dB switch on both paths through each
input channel individually bypasses the large and small faders and sets the
level to unity gain, enabling DAW outputs to be routed and summed through the ORIGIN.
“I’m doing all my automation in Pro Tools, so it makes everything a lot more
recallable and easier, workflow-wise. You can hit that 0 dB button and sum
through the console and use the Bus Compressor. I used a plug-in emulation of
that compressor on all my mixes for years, so having the real thing is
fantastic.”
The partners typically work simultaneously
on any given project from separate control rooms. “Over the past few years,
we’ve worked out an interesting workflow where we’ll co-produce everything.
Grant will basically focus only on vocals, and I will focus only on the
instruments and the mixing. We’ve got two rooms here at the studio that are
mirror images of each other so while I’m in here recording, say, guitars, he’ll
be in the other room recording vocals at the same time.”
The pair have worked with a long list of
diverse artists over the years, including August Burns Red, Polaris, Erra, Like
Moths To Flames, Black Crown Initiate, Rivers of Nihil, Silverstein, Everclear,
Candlebox, Live, From Ashes To New, Phinehas, Wolves at the Gate, Hollow Front,
KillRobBailey, The Last Ten Seconds of Life, Carousel Kings, Don’t Sleep, Texas
In July, This or the Apocalypse, Lorna Shore, Signs of the Swarm, I The
Breather and many more.
Atrium Audio’s new campus location
potentially offers opportunities to grow that client list. Rock Lititz is home
to touring production specialists Clair Global, TAIT, Rock-It Global and Tour
Supply, and additionally offers rehearsal facilities, production design
services and on-site amenities including a hotel. “It’s just a great location
because we’ve got this community of people who are all in the music industry
and helping each other out,” Slovak says. “One of the first sessions we had in
here was Justin Bieber. He was next door rehearsing for a tour, so they booked
the studio out for a couple of weeks.”
