New Console Installation at The Music Lab

[Musiclab]

Some of you know I was replacing my hot rodded AMR console. Well thanks to Lance at Mazo Audio, I got an Otari Concept One. This particular has 40 dual inputs so it's 80 in's in mix mode and has moving fader automation. Thanks to Tom Eaton I contacted Paul Savasta at Odyssey Pro Sound and he hooked up the shipping for me. The console got here safe and sound and for over a month there's been wiring going on offsite so I could keep working at the studio. Last Monday we started the official rip down. Today we finished the final wiring tweaks. so rather than a drawn out thread, as I edit the pics I'll get them up. The first 2 pics are of the room before we started tearing down. The third is the beginning of the rip down

[Musiclab]

A few rip down pics. BTW my intern Brandon was great thru this whole extravaganza

[Musiclab]

more rip down pics and now the room's basically empty. We did this in a day, a loooonnnng day. On tuesday we tore up the carpet and my friend Sean installed a new floor with carpet tiles. I went with carpet tile because I felt it would be easier to replace than have to rip down a room with an 800lb console in it. No carpet tile install pics though

[Musiclab]

My Otari Concept One and Tom Maguire making it ready to into the studio from my garage

[Musiclab]

Sean putting a big hole in the wall at the bottom of the stairs for the console to go thru since it was too big to make the turn into the control room

[Musiclab]

The console goes in! taking it out of the garage and down the stairs into the studio. Featuring Sean and Brandon hamming it up for the camera

[Musiclab]

The console is in the control room and Tom is putting on the legs or we dropped the console on him I forget which it is. and lastly the console is up and the slapped together.
Next comes wiring and putting the room back

[Snatchman]

Hey MusicLab.. Congrats...!.. Nice looking console..So, other than the automation, how does the Otari differ sonically than the AMR..?

[Musiclab]

It's too early for me to say yet, first off keep in mind my amr was hot rodded, the automation on the Otari is more sophisticated than megamix was on the amr. And having 80 automated moving faders is fun. I have a client that I swapped studio time for doing my website that has 3 tunes to mix so in 2 weeks I'll have a better idea.

[Musiclab]

Here's some pics of the wiring installation, we used all Canare snakes. Featuring my friends, Randy and Justin

[Musiclab]

Today everything is totally in. We cleaned up and I can do sessions except that my macpro died sunday night. It should be back up tomorrow, apparently it was the video card, which seems to be a rampant problem, there is another thread here about it.
What's left is just to tidy up the cable dressing, and I need to decide whether to leave the
shelp for the speakers natural and just poly it which will go with my racks or paint it the color of my producers desk which is one of the consoles colors. Anyway here are some pics of the room basically done other than the final dressing .

[pan60]

Awesome and congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The MPCist]

congrats on the console.

[dbbubba]

Man... console moving/installation is such a big job!
No wonder no-one wants to use them except us dedicated folks!

Your place looks clean and orderly compared to when we moved my MCI JH-538C from the studio where it was to my place.
We were beat and filthy by the time we had the frame at my house and set up.

[Musiclab]

thanks Pan 60 and MPCist,
Yep Danny you got that right. As far as the dirt, there was plenty, and this is the condensed version of what happened since most of the time I was working and not taking pics. But I'm glad I got to document this at least a little. The one pic I didn't get was when they delivered my console and half of if was hanging off the lift gate

[dbbubba]

I can never get anyone interested in moving studio stuff.

When I drug home my Sphere in '80 I had my then 16 year-old nephew help.
The studio had been re-designed and a door was moved about two inches.
I was there when the thing went in back in '77 and thought there would be no issues...
THANK GOD i was able to un-bolt the producer's desk from the console itself because it let it "bend" a bit.
The patchbay was in the producer's desk section, so there were HUGE bundles of cables going between the two sections.
It BARELY turned the corner.
We were so relieved to get it through the door that hefting it up into my pickup was the easy part!

The MCI required taking out TWO walls at the place it was living in since '78.
The first half of the day was demolition of sheet rock and 2x4s and the second half was getting the console out through the old bathroom, into a hall and out into the truck.
Again.... it BARELY turned the corner.

I swore that I would NEVER put a console in a confined space again.
I can walk all the walk all the way around the MCI where it sits.
I will NEVER have stuff pushed against the wall again.
(I say that, but of course as more stuff arrives....)

You know... I was the winning bid on an auctioned OTARI film mix console out of Saul Zaentz Film Studios in Oakland, CA a few years back ('06?)
It was a seventy two input monstrosity.
I let another bidder have it in the end.
It didn't have a decent stereo, 2-mix buss and was really only set up for film mixing.
It was too much of a hassle to go get it, de-commission it, drag it to Texas and then put it to use.
I won the auction on it for $2500!!!!
I was really bidding on two Neve 33609Js, but bid on the OTARI for the hell of it.

[Musiclab]

well I paid a few people who helped, others I swapped time for strength and skill.
As far a where it lives, it's the only place it could go. I wanted a console with a lot of automated faders, this gives me 80 moving faders, as far as the sound it sounds pretty good so far but I've only been fuffing around with the console, in the coming week the session start and I'll get a real idea of what it sounds like. To be honest I wasn't that worried about the sound, from what I heard the MO was it was a clean bland console, I have lots of outboard for color, and if the 2 buss needs some work, Tom Maguire is a genius with hot rodding the 2 buss, so I'm covered

[NYMo]

Hi Lou,

Interested how you fixed the hole in the studio wall and if there was any compromise to the isolation ??

Cheers

John NYMO Nyman

[Musiclab]

patched and calked the hole with the same sheetrock. It doesn't go into the live room, it goes to the entrance, there's 4 layers of 5/8's sheetrock a ton of insulation inside, a few inches of 703 outside and a huge rack in front. I think it will be OK

[David-Morpheus]

Congrats on the console!!! When I was in the market for a console I was eyeballing the otari concept as well, can you tell me something more about it ? routing, EQ, overall sound ?
I finally chose the D&R orion and I am 100% satisfied, it's exactly a year and I can say that mixing on the console was a huge improvement either in sound quality and workflow.
Wish you all the best with your new console

[Musiclab]

I've been working now with this console since we installed in september, In some ways this console is very similar to the Cinemix which was the other console I was looking at.
Like the Cinemix, each path has it's own 4 band eq, with sweep able mids a a switch to adjust the q on each of the mid bands and the lo and top have switchable center frequencies. the routing is good , the only downside is you cant share the auxes, so if say you've assigned
the channel 1 on the mix path [lower faders] to aux one and two, you can't assign channel one on the line path to the same auxes. Also this is an all input console so there are NO aux returns. This particular console has 80 inputs so I'm not that worried with running out of inputs. I also really like mixing with moving faders, that visual feed back is great.

One other really cool thing, I have 48 channels of hard disk I/O and a 2" 24 track,
the way we normalled the console was to have 1-24 of the 2" on the 1-24 of the mix path and 1-24 of the DAW outputs on the line path, then 25-40 of the daw is on the
mix path and 41-48 is on the line path. If I have to switch from a integrated session with 2" and Daw to an all DAW session you can easily switch the inputs so that the daw appears on the lower path and the tape goes to the upper path. You can store snap shots that do all of the routing and aux assigns so switching sessions is a keystroke which is killer.

As far as the sound, it's an open, neutral sounding console. As far as the eq, sometimes its fine but not anything special, I'm very happy I have 32 channels of outboard eq. I've done a pile of mixes on it now and I have no complaints about the way that this thing sounds

We've had some maintenance issues, apparently the console had been sitting unused for a few years, we've recapped the 2 audio supplies and we will be recapping the mover fader supplies. The scariest thing about this console is there is NO support from Otari and that it runs on a 486 pc running dos. I've managed to buy a spare Otari 486 with the hovernet card and a spare master controller module known as the Dimm. I also got 4 spare channels with moving faders. What I would like to get at some point is a spare audio master module, and if I could find the win 95/Eagle hovernet I could maybe get into a semi more modern computer system for this.

[TER]

Hey Lou-

Nice pics! The DMM (Digital master module) seems pretty durable... I had a spare for some time and actually sold it. I do have two or three spare AMMs (analog master modules) here in the event of an emergency. I'm glad you got a spare computer, that really is the weak point.

I still love my Concept Elite (you can hotrod the master section... shoot me an e-mail) and think the automation is pretty much the best of any console out there... mostly because the entire console was built around the auto, it was not a third party afterthought. The "touch update" mode is so intuitive and easy to work with.

I wonder how different the EQs sound on your versus mine... the Elites have swept hi/lo shelves and two mid parametrics per input... I tend to agree about the utility-ness of the eqs, but they can sound very good on certain things. I still have to find someone to help me widen the Q of the parametrics at the widest setting... I think that would make me a lot happier. What's the Q of the mid bands on the standard Concept?

Anyway... looks great! Be in touch when you can-

tom

[Musiclab]

I wound up picking up a spare analog master and a few spare faders and a spare quad processor card, I'd love to get into Eagle, Diskmix really isn't too bad except for writing mutes which is a lot dumber than it needs to be. I spoke to Sorren Wittrup who apparently is THE man when it comes to tech matters with these, he explained to me what it would take to upgrade to eagle, apparently in addition, to a new CPU, with a new hovernet card, and I would need to change out the hovernet card that is in the console. It's a little pricey for me right now as I had to do a fair amount of work on the console with re-capping the power supplies, but hopefully in the future. BTW the eq on the C1 has switches that change the Q on the mid bands, depressed [narrow] they are .25, narrow they are .8. I'm glad I have a fair amount of outboard, but I'd have that no matter what console I owned

[Musiclab]

Originally Posted by dbbubba

I can never get anyone interested in moving studio stuff.

When I drug home my Sphere in '80 I had my then 16 year-old nephew help.
The studio had been re-designed and a door was moved about two inches.
I was there when the thing went in back in '77 and thought there would be no issues...
THANK GOD i was able to un-bolt the producer's desk from the console itself because it let it "bend" a bit.
The patchbay was in the producer's desk section, so there were HUGE bundles of cables going between the two sections.
It BARELY turned the corner.
We were so relieved to get it through the door that hefting it up into my pickup was the easy part!

The MCI required taking out TWO walls at the place it was living in since '78.
The first half of the day was demolition of sheet rock and 2x4s and the second half was getting the console out through the old bathroom, into a hall and out into the truck.
Again.... it BARELY turned the corner.

I swore that I would NEVER put a console in a confined space again.
I can walk all the walk all the way around the MCI where it sits.
I will NEVER have stuff pushed against the wall again.
(I say that, but of course as more stuff arrives....)

You know... I was the winning bid on an auctioned OTARI film mix console out of Saul Zaentz Film Studios in Oakland, CA a few years back ('06?)
It was a seventy two input monstrosity.
I let another bidder have it in the end.
It didn't have a decent stereo, 2-mix buss and was really only set up for film mixing.
It was too much of a hassle to go get it, de-commission it, drag it to Texas and then put it to use.
I won the auction on it for $2500!!!!
I was really bidding on two Neve 33609Js, but bid on the OTARI for the hell of it.

I wish my control room was big enough that I can walk around my console, but it aint so I have to deal with that, which isn't fun when you move an 800lb console around.
BTW did you actually hear the 2 buss on that board? I'm pretty sure The Doors movie was mixed on that console, I'm not a doors fan but I seem to recall it sounded pretty good, I think the 2 buss sounds good on my C1 although I will be looking into seeing what can be done to make it better now that I have a spare master, and if you check out this thread Show me your studio 2010 - no setup too small! you can hear and see for yourself what this sounds like