SHIMMR
STUDIOS
We take a tour inside one of the highly personalized studio spaces that follow
international and futuristic specs. Ashwin Vinayagamoorthy talks about recording,
production and more.
About SHIMMR Studios
Shimmr Studios is a state of the art recording and music
production facility located in Chennai. Inaugurated in November
2013, it was a dream come true for Ashwin Vinayagamoorthy, a
passionate Music Producer who completed his academics from
the Full Sail University, Florida.
Setting up the Studio
According to Ashwin, the room is a creator’s vital weapon,
second to his ears and brain. So the room designing and acoustic
treatments were done with extreme care. “We hired some of the
best studio designers and acousticians in the US with the help of
my instructors in Full Sail. The quality of people on board was
fascinating. We never met in person. All our meetings, ideas, and
submissions happened online”.
He wanted the room to be as musical as possible so the floors and
walls were done with solid wood; as wood has a natural ability
to shape the room sound. “I wanted a very natural, musical and
cohesive frequency response so my sound could be enjoyed in
an emotion-filled environment rather than a room fitted with
carpets that sucked the life out of a performance”. It took almost
one year to complete construction and acoustics. Most of the
materials for the acoustics are custom made and imported from
the UK. The room sounds live with the right amount of diffusion
and absorption. He avoided using glass in the recording space and
went with a CCTV camera system instead.
Equipment Used:
The studio is a perfect hybrid setup. It utilizes the best of both
analog and digital worlds to give creators and engineers a wide
range of choices to work with. The studio does not have something
like a single SSL or NEVE console sitting at its heart. Instead,
it uses a variety of preamps and saturation units to give a wide
variety of colors. The Digidesign D-Command sits in the center for
control and metering.
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The studio runs Protools 11 HD with 2 Avid HD I/O’s at its heart
for conversion. The Focal SM9’s are the primary speakers in
the studio. The studio also features the classic Yamaha NS10’s.
The NS10’s have a huge reputation for accurate midrange
and translatability. They are driven by an amplifier made by
Chennai based brand Torvin. There is also a pair of Unity Audio
Rock MK2’s for programming and production. All the speakers
run through the XMON monitor controller. The Digidesign
D-Command control surface integrates seamlessly with the
Protools system to provide a very cohesive
work environment.
Moving onto outboard gear - Dynamic range processors include
a range of compressors of every type. The iconic API 2500 takes
the role of VCA style compressor. Although it works best for
rock, Its an extremely versatile compressor. Perfect for Drum
bus, Mix bus, and synths. The Slate Pro Dragon is the studio’s
FET compressor. It is a 1176 clone with added features for
character and tone shaping. It gets used extensively for tracking
drums and Indian percussion. For Opto based compressors,
there’s the Shadow Hills Optograph and the Retro Sta-Level with
custom tubes. Both work very well with vocals and bass. For
bus compression the studio uses 2 major pieces, the Dramatic
Audio Obsidian, which is an SSL G-Bus Clone and the Rupert
Neve designs Portico MBP. The MBP is also an excellent piece for
mastering scenarios. It features a compressor and limiter along
with a Stereo Field Editor in addition to the iconic silk circuitry.
For EQ, there’s a mix of very clean and transparent EQ’s like the
Kush Electra’s and the Dangerous BAX EQ to ones that impart a
ton of color like the Chandler Little Devil 500 series EQ.
Saturation and distortion can add a lot of vibe to a mix. This is
one department where software still has a long way to match
their hardware counterparts. At Shimmr studios, there’s a piece
for every kind of distortion. There’s the UBK Kush mod of the
iconic Empirical Labs Fatso. It is primarily a compressor which
saturates signal in relation to how much it's being driven. It can
add a lot of excitement to boring keys/synth parts.