CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - MARCH 2008: Since opening I.V. Lab Studios two-and-a-half years ago, owner Manny Sanchez has been looking for a mixing console with character at a price that makes sense for a facility catering to local bands and small indie labels. When API launched the 1608 at the AES Convention last year Sanchez knew he’d found his console, and is now the proud owner of a 32-input version, the first to be installed in Chicago - or anywhere else for that matter.

“Ever since I opened, “I’ve been looking for the right console at the right price,” confirms Sanchez, whose I.V. Lab is located in an old 3,500 sq.-ft. bank building on the north side of Chicago. Sanchez has installed the 16-channel 1608 with a 16-channel expander in the studio’s main room, which is in the former bank vault and features three-feet-thick cement walls.

“I got it in my head that I definitely did not want to get a console that didn’t have a sound,” explains Sanchez. “I use a 1970s Ampex MM1200 16-track tape machine, so I have no desire to make something sound clean.” When he heard about the new 1608, “I said, wow, this might be within the price range that I can afford and, with it being an all-discrete console, still have a really good amount of character to it,” he says.

The API 1608 incorporates the company’s discrete electronics topology and is built to the same exacting standards as the flagship Vision and Legacy Series consoles. The standard 1608, with sixteen input channels, eight buses, eight aux sends, eight reverb returns and full center section facilities, includes a dozen 550A three-band equalizers and four 560 10-band graphic EQ modules with space available for eight additional 500 Series modules, a feature that Sanchez considers a definite advantage. “I just added two API 550B four-band EQs, two API 525 compressors, and a couple of other EQs,” he reports. “I love the idea of the 1608 being a modular console that third party people can develop things for. I can put as much of that interesting stuff in it as I can and have two channels of this character, two channels of another character, and be able to choose the path that I want.”

Sanchez says that he didn’t even have to audition the console before putting a deposit down on one: “I had API mic pres, two 3124s, that I use religiously; those are the mic pres on the console. All my experience with all the API equipment that I’ve used has been really good.”

Starting out as an intern with chief engineer Chris Shepard at the biggest studio in town, Chicago Recording Company, Sanchez then met Smashing Pumpkins main man Billy Corgan, for whom he worked for a couple of years before getting the idea to open his own studio. Bruce Breckenfeld, the chief technician at CRC, was brought in to design the rooms and wiring schemes at I.V. Lab. “He’s a genius with acoustics,” says Sanchez, adding, “Now I’m building a B room with a full-on control room and a nice sized booth. We’ve done it all the right way, we didn’t cut any corners.”

Installing the new API console now allows Sanchez to keep mix projects in-house, as his previous console wasn’t up to the task, he reports. He is currently working on his fifth album with Chicago-based Umphrey’s McGee, who are looking forward to mixing at I.V. Lab for the first time: “They’re really excited because we’d been mixing their albums elsewhere and now we can do this one here. That’s going to be a really fun thing for everyone.”

Having maintained competitive pricing since opening, I.V. Lab has attracted a growing client base that also includes artists such as The Plain White T’s, Rachael Yamagata, The Hush Sound, Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy), Bound Stems, Cameron McGill, Ike Reilly, Dr. Manhattan and The Sapiens. “When we first opened up, it was $500 for a 12-hour day with me engineering. I’m not raising my rate. I don’t think you can beat us on price point or quality,” he says.

He continues, “Before we even got the console we’d been booked solid at least two, two-and-a-half months in advance.” That has now increased to over three months as clients have rushed to book mix time on the API. “There’s no studio that I’ve ever worked at that has ever been this busy. And lots of my business is repeat business - another thing I didn’t see a lot of at my previous studios. It’s shaping up to be a great year.”

Automated Processes, Inc. remains the leader in analog recording gear, with the Vision surround production and Legacy Series recording consoles, the DSM Series rack-mounted mixers, and the classic line of modular signal processing equipment.

Grammy-Nominated Engineer Opens New Mastering Studio with Dangerous Music Equipment at its Center

Edmeston, NY - March 27, 2008 - Grammy-Nominated mastering engineer David Kutch has opened The Mastering Palace, a new mastering studio in New York City. In only a few short months of opening, Kutch has already mastered a range of top artist releases from The Roots, Natasha Bedingfield, Erykah Badu, Estelle, to classic Al Green. At the core of his new studio setup are two key pieces of analog equipment: the Dangerous Master and the Dangerous Monitor. These Dangerous Music components allow Kutch to be assured of the quality of his analog signal path, where he spends most of his time bringing out the best in a piece of recorded music.

Over the past two decades, many mastering studios and engineers have become familiar with Dangerous Music through Chris Muth. Kutch explains his own connection, “The entire professional mastering community knows Chris Muth. I’m sorry - ‘Relies’ on Chris Muth. If your 1630 [tape] machine needed alignment you called Chris Muth. If your Neumann cutting lathe was acting up, you called Chris Muth. If you had a technical need where the equipment to complete a task did not exist yet, the first thing anyone did was call Chris Muth. Chris tweaked, repaired or invented mastering equipment better than anyone else, period! Dangerous Music and its products are far from being new players in the pro audio gear world. It has all been evolving in Chris’ brain and in mastering studios for over 20 years. He truly is a Mad Genius!”

Integrating Dangerous Music gear into his own studios has been an easy choice, according to Kutch, “While at Masterdisk [famed NY mastering studio] I had been using a Muth Audio Designs Mastering Console and Monitor box (the big black one). The gear never breaks down and is very transparent. When I moved to Sony Music Studios [former 54th Street headquarters] they built me a brand new mastering room. When they asked what type of Mastering console I wanted, the answer was a no-brainer: ‘Anything from Chris!’ - which by this point was the Dangerous Master because he was no longer making the ‘MAD’ console.”

In his new studio, The Mastering Palace, Kutch explains how he centers his outboard connections around Dangerous Music designs. “The Dangerous Master brings all of my analog processing gear together in one place. The stereo signal comes in, gets left and right adjustments if need be, then hits my 3 inserts. One of the things that most attracted me to the Dangerous Master is that there are only 3 inserts. More inserts equals more noise. In this scenario: LESS IS BETTER! At this stage I can insert any of my analog equalizers or compressors as needed. I can also insert an EQ or de-esser into the ‘S&M’ or Mid-Side circuit [of the Master] so I can process the mono and stereo program material independently, as well as increase or decrease the stereo width without messing with the phase. I’ve tried other devices that claim to do this but they do not even come close.”

“My Dangerous Monitor lets me have control over speaker volume as well as listening to my different analog and digital signal inputs. The best feature is the onboard D-to-A converter. It switches from one AES input to another without any pops, glitches or latency - again, a rare feature. This way I can compare pre- and post- processing with the same D-to-A conversion on both sources,” added Kutch.

Asked of his experiences dealing with artists in his studio while mastering with Dangerous Music equipment, Kutch concludes, “I’ve had Erykah Badu here as well as Questlove from the The Roots. Besides having my system sound as good as it can, the gear just does not break down when the client is present. Since the Dangerous Music equipment is what ties my all of my gear together it has to work ALL the time. If it went down, the session would be dead. I’ve been using equipment designed by Chris [Muth] for 11 years and I’ve never had a piece break. It just works!”

In addition to the Dangerous Master and the Dangerous Monitor, Kutch of course has a host of other mastering equipment. For playback, The Mastering Palace studio is based around a Studer A820 half-inch analog tape machine and a Digidesign Pro Tools HD system. As an editor, Kutch uses Magix’s Sequoia DAW. Along with a host of boutique analog compressors, other key ingredients are his Prism Sound stereo converters and Maselec EQ, and for digital processing the TC Electronic System 6000. Critical listening depends on Kutch’s Focal Solo 6 monitors, and Legacy Focus monitors.

David Kutch Credits

Kutch began his career in recording with some of New York’s finest producers, ranging from Phil Ramone to Puff Daddy. In 1997 Kutch helped build the legendary Powers House of Sound Mastering Studios with Herb Powers Jr. There he worked on albums for Biggie, Puff Daddy, Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, and Missy Elliot. In 2002, Kutch was nominated for a prestigious Grammy in the category of ‘Album of the Year’ for mastering Outkasts’ “Stankonia” LP that included the hits “Miss Jackson” and “So Fresh, So Clean.” Some of the tracks and albums Kutch mastered at his studio within the famed New York 54th Street Sony Mastering Studios, were for Kanye West, The Roots, Jamie Foxx, DMX, and Sarah McLaughlan. He has also completed DVD mastering for Rod Stewart, Angie Stone, Iron Maiden and Anthrax releases. Right before opening The Mastering Palace, Kutch spent the summer of 2007 mastering Alicia Keys’ “As I Am” album at her studio on Long Island, as well as other artists’ projects.

Contact David Kutch and The Mastering Palace at 1-(212) 665-2200 or visit the website at: http://www.themasteringpalace.com

About Dangerous Music, Inc.

Dangerous Music, Inc. designs and builds products that are indispensable to any DAW-based recording environment. Dangerous Music co-owner and electronics designer Chris Muth has spent over 20 years working in, and designing custom equipment for, top recording and mastering studios. Muth and his partner Bob Muller pioneered the concept of the dedicated analog summing buss for digital audio workstations with the Dangerous 2-Bus in 2001. Today the company offers a wide range of products for recording, mastering, mixing and post-production facilities, all designed by Chris Muth and built with mastering-quality standards and a practical aesthetic. Key products include the Dangerous 2-Bus and 2-Bus LT, Dangerous Monitor ST-SR and its Additional Switching System expansion units, Dangerous D-Box, Dangerous Master, Dangerous S&M, Dangerous Monitor and Dangerous MQ.

For more information visit http://www.dangerousmusic.com phone 607-965-8011 or email: info@dangerousmusic.com