CPS Mastering Equipment Detail
Additional info on our equipment for the geeks out there.
ATC SCM-100 ASL
The real MVP of the studio (along side 2 panel trucks full of acoustic treatment) These are simlply the best monitors we could dream of and ask for. ATC was founded in 1974 By Billy Woodman with a commitment to providing speakers with very high dynamic range, flat frequency response, and low distortion.
They are a 3 way speaker based around ATC house designed and manufactured midrange and woofer. The midrange is a feat of engineering, a 3 inch soft dome mid (think of it as a giant tweeter) featuring a nearly 20 pound magnet (enough to give most woofers "magnet envy"), it is capable of producing 380- 3800 Hz with a very smooth frequency response, high power handling and great dynamic range. They mate this to a 12” paper cone woofer with an equally impressive magnet system, equipped with their “super-linear magnet technology” which counteracts the effects of magnetic hysteresis and lowers harmonic distortion by 10-15db. These are driven by built in active amplification, running in class A till 2/3 of output power and fed by active crossovers with phase adjustment for all drivers. The active crossovers allow for careful matching of amps to drivers, better performance over a wide range of SPL and temperature and lowered intermodulation distortion by 15-20dB compared to a traditional passive crossover system.
I could talk about these speakers forever, So ill stop myself here, if you want to read more about what makes ATC different/special check out the founders white paper here http://www.transaudiogroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ATCWhitepaper.pdf
The bottom line is that the ATC’s give us the insight we need to get your tracks sounding the best they can
http://www.atcloudspeakers.co.uk/
Knif ETIP Passive - Tube Mastering Equalizer "Serial Numero Uno"
We are proud owners of serial “Numero Uno” (of only 4 ever made) of this hand built piece of audio art from Finnish designer Jonte Knif, a passive filter network, made with film caps and inductors that are hand wound by Jonte Knif and encased in mu-metal shielding. The input and output transformers have local-relay switching to provide a mid/side matrix without adding a single component to the signal path. Combine all that with a great tube makeup amp, featuring my favourite vacuum tube of all time, the amazing C3G tube designed by amplifier engineers for the german post.
http://www.jacmusic.com/techcorner/ARTICLES/English-neu/Portraits/C3g/C3g-C3m-info.html
These tubes feed a huge pair of amorphous core output transformers made by Lundahl of Sweden.
All this is powered by an massive power supply, complete with choke filtering and connected with silver/copper/teflon "mil-spec" wire and with only solder joints (no connectors!) in the signal path.
Its an incredible shaping tool, and imparts a clean but wonderful colour to the signal path.
Knif Vari-Mu II - Tube Mastering Compressor "Serial Numero Uno"
There perfect mate to our serial “Numero Uno” ETIP eq is the serial “Numero Uno” of this incredible mastering compressor, 10 tubes and again, a massive power supply, this puppy gets HOT.
Here is a short list of the great things this compressor has going for it:
A mid/side matrix featuring local switching and no added components (and a variable width control)
Lundahl's largest line transformers, with the massive amorphous core output transformers.
A variable stereo link for tonnes of control over linking and image
Side chain high pass filter
Built in signal generator for alignment/calibration
A super sexy dual needle gain reduction meter
Compression bypass switches to use it as a line stage only
Some very neat attack/release linking (the attack is a percentage or ratio of the release time)
It is a very elegant and flexible design with a ton of headroom, great for adding a little touch of glue and dimension before recapturing in the AD, or adding some girth to a thinner sounding recording or mix.
KNIF EKSA-Discrete EQ
(if you haven’t figured it out yet, we kinda like Knif gear)
Ive used most of my own words for all the equipment section so far, but for this one, Im going to let Jonte do the talking, save to say this is the most outrageous eq i have ever heard, it just does EKSActly what you tell it to, no less, no more. And to say that ours was a special order, with added filters and super-discrete jfet gain section. (this thing shoves out jsut about as much heat as the 12 tubed Vari-mu, so you know its good. Jonte Knif's words follow.
“Eksa is an exercise in ultimate purity of sound, and unlike all other Knif products, it is not tube based, but uses in-house designed and produced class A discrete OP amps. It is also the perfect companion to Soma, which excels in the beauty of sound and has an enhancing nature, whereas Eksa gives precision, wide Q value range and much more frequencies.
The topology is derived from Sontec, but the Q circuit is heavily modified and much more complex to attain independent behavior of noise and whole range gain, not depending on Q setting. You can read more about this from the manual.
There are 24 discrete operational amplifiers in Eksa. They use jfet inputs and outputs, and always work in class A. There are 2 op amps for the basic signal route, and 2 op amps for each band per channel. There are also DC servos for each band and the basic amps. The servos are tuned very low, so that their effect on audio range would be minimal. The time constants are more than one minute, and the servos use high quality OP amps and polypropylene caps to further improve the situation. And like always in Knif gear, there are no potentiometers, just Elma rotary switches.
The sound is very, very transparent. Like nothing else. Accurate but not harsh. That is why Eksa got its name from the word exact.”
Magic Death Eye-Stereo Compressor
I mean.... its called a magic death eye, do you need to know any more?
OK fine. Ours is the first publicly released version of this new design (the official first one is Ian, the designers, personal unit)
It is two fully ganged but completely mono compressor circuits with some tasty extras designed and tweaked specifically for mastering. The power supply has separate high voltage and heater regulation for each side to minimize cross talk.
It’s got 16 tubes, 6 custom hand wound audio transformers (wound by Ian in his garage), an external power transformer that weighs as much as my head, and all the vibe you could possibly cram into a 40 pound box. This new version has an added EQ section with two (boost only) bands with two frequency selections each. This EQ exists INSIDE the compression circuit, not before, not after, but within, it is inductor based and has super wide curves which Ian the designer spent a long long time massaging and shaping the curves and component selections of this beast. We've never heard anything that sounds anything like it.
Crane Song Solaris
The main DAC feeding our analog goodies here at CPS. It's a 5th generation converter design by the wizard Dave Hill at Crane Song. The new “Quantum” series DAC uses 32 bit converters and ASRC for jitter reduction upsampling incoming audio to 211KHz. Combine with with the ludicrous reference clock which has less then 1pS jitter and a proprietary reconstruction filter for accurate time domain response.The clock's jitter measured from 10Hz to 20KHz is typically 0.045pS…. Hold on, you may say, what on earth is a pS anyways. A picosecond is 0.000 000 000 001 seconds. That is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second. Put another way, a picosecond is to one second, as one second is to approximately 31,689 years. essentially, it’s very very good at keeping time.
Crane Song Avocet IIA
The fanciest volume control we could get our hands on, and has the same dac from the solaris above. So many inputs, so many outputs, and they can all be trimmed up and down to level match on the fly. Class A where it counts, and all sorts of clicky relays for a super minimal and precise single path. Wasn't a fan of the nuclear vomit green knob so swapped it for my favourite knob of all time, the vintage GenRad KNS series. #knobnerd
dCS 902 A/D Converter
dCS is one of those companies you either haven’t heard of, or are in love with. A company started by expert electronics system designers in Cambridge UK, they began designing ADC’s and DAC’s for the telecom, aerospace and military industry, yeah, they made converters for space! Hand manufacturing converters with unrivalled performance, linearity and reliability. As the recording industry moved to primarily digital media, DCS changed its focus to the pro audio (and later the hi fi market) continuing its reputation for making some of the highest performance converters available. Incorporating proprietary innovations, and all sorts space tricks* (*I dont know if there are any space tricks, but im assuming there are) Simply put, it’s an innovative converter design that results in a VERY detailed and accurate sound with incredibly low noise and distortion. It also allows control over the anti aliasing filters, enabling the engineer to find the optimal balance between phase/time domain response and aliasing. A great sounding A/D to capture all our analog goodness here at CPS.
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/
Weiss DS1-MK3 Digital Mastering Compressor
The Weiss DS-1 MK3 is THE digital mastering compressor, combining a very well thought out transparent and flexible single band compressor algorithm with incredible ergonomics. This makes dialling in sounds easier, and faster. It runs at 88.2 or 96khz internally on a whopping 5-40 bit floating point SHARC chips (the same chips the UAD cards run on, the weiss has a 5 core processing centers for ONE “plugin”) Useful for all sorts of dynamic frequency related problems. as well as a catching the odd peak with its “safety limiter”. It is an incredibly flexible box, and really showcases what a well designed digital algorithm is capable of.
This is also now available as a “line for line code port” to a daw based plugin by soft tube, Ive got it, but the gloriousness of the knobs and interface is not to be overlooked, and the hardware won’t go anywhere anytime soon.
Junger D-01 Digital Dynamics Processor
An Incredible and very unique box, Its simple interface belies the cleverness of whats inside, which is simply the finest parallel (or in their words "multi-loop") algorithm I've ever heard. Very few options, but when it works on a mix, its an incredible thing, bringing up subtle detail while maintaining musical balance and upper level dynamics.
Rosson Audio Design Rad-0 Headphones
Alex Rosson (formerly of Audeze fame) started this company to make outrageously gorgeous handcrafted planar dynamic headphones. We actually have 2 pairs of these, both from the "first run" of sub #100 serials. I love working on planar headphones and these are the best I've heard in terms of tonality and translation. Plus they look INCREDIBLE
http://www.rossonaudiodesign.com
Focal Clear Pro
In our opinion this is one of the best dynamic driver headphones in existence, Dynamics and detail are nearly hilarious, and with a great monitor kind of curve. Plus they are comfy as all hell.
https://www.focal.com/en/pro-audio/monitoring-speakers/professional-headphones/clear-professional
Digital Stuff!
Main mastering software is Wavelab 10 Pro. with plugins from a ton (tonne?) of companies. DMG, Izotope, Plugin alliance, Softtube, SIR audio, Sonnox, Sienda, Fabfilter, DDMF, and probably a bunch of others were forgetting. we've found what works for us, and will probably find more over time, but we like keeping things simple, Use the tools you've got and learn to use every last ounce they have in em, buying another plugin probably isn't going to solve any of your problems...
More questions or want to talk about anything at all (especially how amazing and magical transformers are?) Contact Us we love to talk