Tracking vocals in the Sound
Recording Studio live room
out from the VFX Studio, a few shoots in
the Photography Studio, and on top of all
of that, he was troubleshooting with one of
his outboard pieces from the audio control
room.
“No matter how much you think you
know about any of these things, it just feels
like there’s always something new to learn,”
he says with a chuckle.
The Sound Recording Studio was still
under construction when Johnson joined
the fold. At that point, studio designer and
consultant Martin Pilchner of Toronto-based
firm Pilchner Schoustal International Inc.
had been tapped to revisit certain aspects
of the space to better suit its intended uses
while Joe Dunphy, Amanda Pearl, and their
team at Revolution Custom Shop had been
commissioned to procure and integrate the
equipment and solidify the wiring infrastruc-
ture for the control and live rooms in addition
to the VFX and Photography Studios.
Johnson interfaced with both as their
work progressed, and says their collective
efforts and interactions were anchored by
Artscape Daniels Launchpad’s mission state-
ment. “It’s not just recording for recording’s
sake,” he says about the audio components.
“It’s part of the larger mission of educating
and developing talent and helping people
market their crafts. We’re a social enterprise
with a social mandate, but also need to gen-
erate revenue to sustain ourselves, so we’re
always navigating those intersections.”
Pilchner explains that his firm was en-
A Top-Tier Testimonial
“I’ve been extremely grateful for
the space. It has allowed me and
my team to create multiple projects
with little to no limitations on our
creativity. With even more ambitious
projects on the horizon going into
2020, I am already looking forward
to booking and using the space.”
-Sean Leon, Acclaimed Recording
Artist/Producer
gaged to reengineer aspects of the original
design to better tailor the space to its evolv-
ing needs. Specifically,
that pertained to im-
proving and maximiz-
ing the sound isolation
between the control
room, live room, and
adjacent spaces while
enhancing their re-
spective acoustic char-
acteristics.
“This is meant to
be a step up for people
working at home or in
other places that want
professional-level acoustics, sound isolation,
and equipment to improve the quality of
their work; at the same time, we needed it
to be able to host some very accomplished
engineers and producers, either for work-
shops and the like or for their own projects,”
he states as his guiding principle for the
project.
That extended to equipment selection.
“Joe and Revolution work with us quite ex-
tensively, so we brought him in to execute
the physical wiring of everything, and then
partnered in the equipment selection,” Pilch-
ner says. “He’s our go-to guy and does an
awesome job.”
Dunphy takes over, first returning some
praise for Pilchner: “It’s always great working
with Martin; he has a remarkable vision and it’s
a pleasure to bring it all together with him.”
He notes that their work at Launchpad
was “a real balancing act” in terms of both
complexity and cost. “We needed to make
it as flexible as possible, where an experi-
enced engineer could comfortably work at
a high level, but also make sure that anyone
used to working with just a laptop and an
interface could come in and do whatever
they might want to do without being over-
whelmed.”
As such, they had to keep their budget
top-of-mind at every stage of the process,
deciding how to distribute resources to sat-
isfy the technical requirements of the Sound
Recording Studio and adjacent spaces in
the Digital Media Lab.
Dunphy is a co-owner of and engineer
at the venerable Revolution Recording, one of
the city’s top studio destinations, which offers
him unique perspective when it comes to
choosing and integrating technologies.
“There’s some really nice equipment in
there,” he says, pointing to high-end staples
like the two AMS Neve 1073 DPX preamp/
EQs and Empirical Labs EL-8 distressors. “As
a studio owner, I have a bit of a philosophy.
It’s about owning a few of the classic piec-
es, and then when you have more money,
buying a few more, but keeping everything
simple. Neve, SSL, API – those just never
go out of style, but I’ve got a graveyard at
Revolution of stuff that does go out of style
[laughs]. The classics are more expensive,
but pay off in the long run.”
Speaking to the choice of the Solid
State Logic (SSL) XL-Desk analog console
anchoring the control room, he says that,
in his experience, console choice is a very
personal consideration – especially when it
comes to the more complex functionalities
PROFESSIONAL SOUND 31