Archive by Simon Cote

Engineer Ian Boxill Mixes an Urban Sound with FOCAL Monitors

Simon Cote January 22nd, 2009

January 21st, 2009 — Engineer Ian Boxill recently installed Focal Solo 6 Be monitors in his personal studio, and has begun mixing a top-secret project. With the past three Prince albums behind him, and a 2008 Grammy for “Best Male Vocal” on the Prince penned song Future Baby Mama, Boxill is primed for new and great things. Deciding to upgrade his studio with new monitors, Boxill chose Focal and is loving the sound, “Focal speakers have the rare quality of being very musical sounding, while maintaining clarity and detail. Not a very easy feat to pull off. While listening to my favorite recordings on a pair of Focal Solo 6 Be’s I heard instruments and parts that I had not heard before. Wow. Well done Focal, well done.”

Known for his deft touch with powerful R&B and Urban vocal artists such as Tupac Shakur, Janet Jackson, P. Diddy, Aaron Neville, K Ci, Jo Jo, Christina Milian, and Prince, among many others, over the past 15 years Boxill has divided his time between working in his personal studio and studios that artists choose. Now with his own personal studio upgraded with Focal monitors he’s embarked on a mixing project that will be revealed in early 2009.

“I’m working on some new mixes everyday on the Focals in my personal studio. I can’t talk about what the project is until it’s out in a few months.” Hinting that the project is another urban masterpiece in the making, Boxill notes, “There’s a lot of low-end and low-mids in urban music so the Focals work really great for that. They have much more low-end than the Yamaha NS10s that I have mostly used. And you can turn the Focals down and they still maintain their balance. On some speakers, either the low end falls off or the high end. With Focals you can turn down low and they still sound full: you still get your low-end and you still get your high-end. Focals don’t fatigue my ears at all, I can basically listen to these speakers all day.”

It’s the music and the ears that matter, he adds, “When I talk about Focal monitors being ‘musical sounding’ I mean being able to listen to your favorite records and being able to enjoy them. The music sounds very real, in the room. You get an intimacy, it doesn’t seem like you’re listening out of speakers, the music fills the room. They give a full spectrum; you can imagine a band in front of you. It doesn’t seem like there are speakers between you and what you’re listening to. Very few speakers do that.”

When taking his mixes from the studio out into an everyday listening environment, Boxill is pleased with the sonic translation, “So far the experiences that I’ve had, the Solo 6 Be’s were pretty much spot-on with the way they translated to real-world sound systems. What I like about them is that the highs aren’t too over-hyped, not too brittle. So I can listen at low volumes and still get a picture of the whole sound. I find that when I listen at that low level and I take it out of the room, it’s very close to what I hear in my own studio.”

Continuing with the thought, Boxill also likes the sound of the Twin 6 Be powered monitors and how they also translate to other listening environments. Including working in his own studio with the Solo 6s, Boxill says, “I’ve worked in three different rooms with Focal monitors, two had the Twin 6 Be models. I found with the Focals they sound great in the mix room, but when you take the mix out of the room it sounds just as good.”

Obviously after mixing three major records with Prince Boxill has a close connection. On working with Prince recently at one of his recording and listening locations, Boxill says, “I haven’t mixed any Prince on the Focals yet, but he has a pair of the Twin 6 Be monitors. He’s only had them for a few months. We just did some rough mixes at his studio, but they sounded good in the room.”

Discussing being in the studio for hours on end, Boxill wants to talk about how the monitors fit into his studio environment, “I also want compliment Focal on their aesthetics of design. I think the color combination is really good, it’s easy on the eyes and fits into the control room, and that’s kind of important. They obviously spent some time on the aesthetics, they are very classy looking.”

Contact Ian Boxill directly, via phone 310-766-2303, or email ianb007@mac.com

About Focal-JMlab

Since its foundation, Focal-JMlab has grown to become one of the world main hi-fi loudspeaker companies. Headquartered in Saint-Etienne, France, it is now internationally recognized as a world leader in the design and manufacture of specialist drive units for hi-fi loudspeakers. It is also pre-eminent in the design and manufacture of specialist loudspeaker drive units for car-audio and pro-audio; and in the creation of highly advanced, complete hi-fi loudspeaker enclosures priced from 125 euros to 70,000 euros and 99 euros to 2750 euros for car-audio. Market-leader in France, it exports over 73% of its output mainly in Europe, North America and Southeast Asia. The company key strength is its complete integration and quality control of the loudspeaker manufacturing process, from the design of drive units, cabinets and crossovers, to the assembly of the finished product. Focal-JMlab maintains an intense, continual programme of research and development into drive-unit technologies. Five patents have been registered since 2003. Focal-JMlab currently employs over 200 people in modern facilities of 12 500m2 (134 550 ft2 ), that concentrate production, R&D and management in the same site. The strengthened turnover of the Focal Audio Group reached 29.6 million of Euros in 2007. Please visit their website at: http://www.focalprofessional.com

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Mixer Jeff Juliano Chooses FOCAL Monitors

Simon Cote December 10th, 2008

Twin 6 Be Powered Monitors with Sub6 are now his Main Measure of a Mix

St-Etienne, France – December 5th, 2008 — Mixer Jeff Juliano has used a lot of different speakers, and in the past 10 years he’s relied on the supposed ‘industry standard’ Yamaha NS10. But no more. Juliano recently tried the Focal Twin 6 Be powered monitors at his New York mixing studio and has now made them his number one choice. Having mixed a host of platinum-selling albums for artists such as Jason Mraz, Josh Kelly and Lifehouse, as well as John Mayer, who won a 2003 Grammy for his album “Room for Squares” which he mixed, Juliano has a great ear for sound, but was ready for the change.

“I’ve been going through so many speakers in my time mixing, I was an NS10 guy for so many years, and started to believe that was the only speaker in the world that mattered. The Focal Twin 6 Be monitors are the best that I’ve used in terms of studio-to-consumer listening translation for car stereos, clock radios — iPod ear buds, you name it. They really translate: what I hear in the studio is what the outside world hears, in my experience. When I go to the car and check a mix, it’s what I hear in the studio. That’s the end-all, that’s what matters,” stated Juliano.

Past experiences were not great for Juliano with powered monitors, but all that changed with Focal, “I’ve used a ton of powered monitors and at the end of the day I was afraid of them because all the other powered monitors had a dip around 1K to make them less fatiguing, and they have a high-end boost. The Focal Twin 6 is the first powered monitor that I’ve heard that you don’t have to be afraid of hearing the mid-range. You get the mids really kicking and it’s fine. On other powered monitors when you take that mix anywhere else you’re going to have a harsh mid-range. With the Focal they’re real flat and extremely truthful. These things just tell you how it is.”

One of the key differences Juliano noticed when he started using the Focal monitors was how much more he could hear in earlier mixes he’d done on NS 10s, and how easily he adapted to what he heard now on Focal monitors. “Listening back to mixes I’ve done on the NS10s through the Focals, it kind of scares me because I hear top-end distortion that I wasn’t hearing in the NS10s, I was so used to using them, I thought I knew them. With the Focals there wasn’t a learning curve, it actually spooked me at first. ‘This sounds good, this sounds bad,’ it wasn’t because it was on this speaker. The Focal monitors were just that truthful, sonically.”

Juliano notices the sonic transparency in the Focals, “Anything that’s wrong, it says ‘hey, wait, here I am’ — if there is something in the low-end, the mid range or the top end it really comes through. You hear so much more air in the top end of these speakers. Distortion comes through much clearer: I find a lot of mistakes now in people’s tracking. It’s that full-range and open, you hear every bit of detail, like the reverb trails, things I didn’t really hear in the NS10s. They would come screaming out in a car stereo at you. The translation from my mixes to the real-world is beautiful on these.”

Having more confidence in his mixes before sending to a mastering engineer has been a boost for Juliano too, his latest project for PARAMORE, mixing a live DVD and dual live CD, garnered a startling comment, “The A&R guy at Atlantic loved my mixes for the PARAMORE record, they said ‘lets get it mastered’ — there were no recall mixes in all the 18 songs. That makes my day happy,” said Juliano.

He also received very positive comments from Sterling Mastering (NY), “My guy at Sterling Sound said I made his job easy! That was music to my ears, because at the end of the day it’s my job to get it to be the best it can be at that stage, right before that guy masters it. When that guy, who I respect, tells me I make his job easier, that’s a great day for me.”

Describing his use of the Focal Sub6, which he uses with the Twin 6 Be monitors, Juliano said, “That Sub6 is extremely versatile because of the way you can dial it in, you can make it work in any environment or any shape of room you have to work in. You can find a place for that sub and dial it in perfectly. I’ve used a number of subs in my time, this one’s got a variable phase, a crossover, a low-pass, a level control, it’s ridiculous!”

“I kind of grew up on a subwoofer in terms of mixing and engineering so I’m used to having one. At the same time the Twin 6 is the only speaker I’ve used where I don’t need a sub, I’m just one of those guys that likes to feel a little bit of the kick and the bass when I’m mixing at louder volumes. When I go to low volumes, I turn the sub off. But when I do turn it off I can still hear the bass in the Twin 6s. With the Sub6, you push the bass up to where it sounds good to you, and you get in the car and listen and it’s perfect. That’s a security blanket and a comfort.”

His new Focal monitors also allow Juliano to get the most from his outboard gear as well, he says, “It makes me proud of my investment in outboard gear, because I feel like fifteen years later I’m finally using my outboard gear properly and to its full potential because I can hear everything so much better through the Focal monitors. You’ve got to hear it right or it doesn’t matter what outboard gear you have. I can honestly say that I have never been happier with any one purchase for my studio.”

In the end Juliano quickly learned to trust the Focal monitors and that saved him time, “It didn’t take me a long time to learn the speakers, once I started listening to mixes in other spots: my car, my home stereo, the iPod. You hear your mixes back and you say ‘I mixed that song really fast and it came out really good’— and that saves time, any time I can shave a couple hours off my day of work I’m happy! And that was definitely due to the gear.”

Juliano’s extensive credits include John Mayer “Room For Squares” (Columbia/Sony) Mixer, RIAA Certified 4X Platinum (GRAMMY WINNER 2003); James Blunt “Live Tracks” (Atlantic Records); Jason Mraz “Waiting for My Rocket to Come” Mixer, RIAA Certified Platinum; O.A.R. “Live From Madison Square Garden” CD/DVD Mixer - 5.1 Surround Sound (Lava/Atlantic/Everfine Records); Josh Kelley “Special Company” (DNK Records); John Butler Solo “Live Tracks” (Atlantic Records); John Mayer “Any Given Thursday” CD/DVD Mixer; Lifehouse “Lifehouse” Mixer, RIAA Certified Gold; Eight Dave Mathews records as Mixer including “Live In Central Park” RIAA Certified Platinum; Bruce Hornsby, Ben Folds, Robert Randolph, PARAMORE “The Final Riot” (Fueled by Ramen); My Favorite Highway (Virgin Records); Green River Ordinance (Virgin Records), and many other artists and recordings.