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Nashville-based record label and recording studio South x Sea recently added a new immersive mixing room with a 7.1.4 HEDD Audio monitor system to its East Nashville facility. Before opening the new room to clients, South x Sea invited GRAMMY-nominated producer and engineer Bobby Holland to put the system through its paces by mixing a song from an upcoming project.
Having built multiple immersive mixing rigs at his own Pentavarit Studios, helped set up rooms at other studios, and even designed his own studio monitors, Holland was the ideal person to evaluate the new system. After the session, we hooked up with Holland to get his thoughts on mixing in an unfamiliar environment, how he makes mixing in Atmos feel as natural as stereo, and how the HEDD Type 30 MK2 and Type 20 MK2 helped him hear the subtleties of reverb, vocals, and acoustic instruments in an intricate mix.
Can you start by telling us a little about the song you mixed and the room you mixed it in?
I mixed a song called “The Fixer” for a band called Barnaby Bright, an absolutely mind-blowing trio from Kansas City. Honestly, they're one of my favorite bands of all time, and I'm super lucky to be working with them. I produced their upcoming full-length at Pentavarit in March, and I'm in the mix process right now.
I mixed it in a new Atmos room over at South x Sea Studios, which is owned by a dear friend of mine named Brandon Metcalf, who's also a phenomenal producer. It’s brand-new, and I may have been the first person to mix in there. HEDD and Grace Design made this into a really fantastic Atmos room, and I felt completely at home.
What type of monitor system does the new room have?
It's a 7.1.4 system with HEDD Type 30 and Type 20 MK2s, and then they have one subwoofer for bass management and a separate one for LFE. It's a medium-sized room that's a Carl Tatz design, so it's professionally treated, and it sounds really good in there. It's a pretty sweet system, and it's kind of the perfect-sized monitor for that room.
Before we get into the mix itself, what is it like for you to step into a new room with monitors you haven’t used before?
It's nerve-wracking, to say the least. I'm very lucky to have one of the best-sounding rooms that I've ever set foot in, so I always get nervous mixing in other rooms, but I walked in, and it just sounded like I expected. There were no questions; it was just right.
The top-end on the HEDD monitors is a bit soft for my personal taste, so I would probably voice my DSP to brighten them just a little bit, but I didn't change it for the session, and there was never a single moment where I questioned what I was hearing. I checked on my headphones, and it translated perfectly; then I listened after I left, and I'm pretty happy with it. I don't even know exactly what I'll change.
Do you tend to like your monitors as linear as possible, or do you prefer a little bit of character to the voicing?
I mostly want flat, but I voice all of my own systems and the ones I set up for others by ear. I'll measure after I'm done just to see if I missed anything, but I think at this point I've done it enough that I know what my "curve taste" is. If I had to guess, I might like a little more of a bump on the bottom, but not much. There might be a little dip in the upper mids, around 3 to 5 kHz. I'm pretty sensitive in that range, so sometimes I'll soften those frequencies a little bit.
How do you evaluate studio monitors? What are you listening for?
These days, with the existence of DSP and monitor control systems like the Grace m908, you can easily change the frequency balance of your speakers, so I'm listening for things that are inseparable from component quality that you can't change with DSP. I'm listening for things like imaging. I love a good, tight phantom center where it sounds like things are coming out of the center speaker, but they're not. Hearing front-to-back in the mix is very important to me, so I'm listening a lot for clarity and depth, especially detail in the reverb tails.
And when I say clarity, I don't mean top-end. I just mean detail throughout the entire frequency spectrum. Even in the bottom end, it's really important to me to be able to clearly hear the difference between something like a kick drum and a synth bass in the same frequency range.
Since you were mixing something that you also produced, you've already heard the tracks in your own studio. Did they sound any different when you took them over to South x Sea?
I walked in, and it sounded exactly like what I wanted. The room has a little too much of a sub bump for me, so I turned the subwoofer down manually, and that's it. That was all I did. There was just a little bit too much below 80 Hz for my personal taste, but other than that, everything else was EQ'ed with confidence.
How do you approach an Atmos mix? Are you a traditionalist who always starts in stereo, or do you jump right into the immersive mix and check stereo compatibility as you go?
I probably spend 70 or 75% of the time listening to the stereo re-render, but once I get comfy and I feel like it's a good balance and I'm not really asking myself any questions, then I just switch over to 7.1.4 on my monitor controller. While I'm not doing the standard thing of mixing stereo first and then mixing Atmos, it's all happening at once.
Stereo has been around for so long, and we all learned how to mix that way, so it's important to me that mixing in stereo and Atmos feel the same. I've spent years developing a routing setup that enables it to just feel like a normal mix so that I’m the same level of emotionally connected to the music and I don't have to think about the routing as much.
I know a lot of people are using Object Beds, which I am too, but the way I do the Object Bed may be a little bit different. I'm monitoring in 7.1.4, but I’m actually mixing in 9.1.6, and I have a 9.1.6 “mix bus.” A lot of people don't have an Atmos mix bus, but I've created a 9.1.6 bus that feeds the Object Bed from the mix bus as opposed to vice versa.
Also, I don't charge extra for Atmos. I believe it's my job to keep up with the technology and the requirements of my artists—especially independent artists who can barely afford to mix their record once, much less twice. I want them to have as many opportunities as possible for playlisting and everything that comes along with having an immersive mix, so I spent years developing a process that really doesn't take me that much extra time.
“The Fixer” is one of those songs that sounds pretty simple at first, but there’s actually a lot going on. What can you tell us about the arrangement and the mix?
This project is very interesting because there's a lot of experimentation with instruments you might not expect in this genre, and also instruments that you may not have even heard of before. Mostly it's just three different acoustic guitars: two of them are straight doubles playing this very repetitive ostinato kind of part, and then the other one comes in and out, and it's strummed. The piano doubles the acoustic for part of the song, and it kind of creates this nice, warm bed that the whole song sits on top of.
One kind of abnormal thing we did was that we had an upright bass and an electric bass. The electric is an old Univox hollowbody that Jackson Eppley played, and it does the old Western tic-tac thing. Then we had another guy named Craig Aiken playing upright. For the most part, they play the same part, but the electric plays a little bit more at times. So that was an interesting challenge in the mix, trying to make room for both basses to be heard. I ended up putting the electric out in the center, which I don't think I've ever done, but that was really cool. Even the way it renders in stereo, there's a lot more clarity between the two basses.
We also used a very cool instrument that I had never heard of before. There are a lot of multi-instrumentalists in this world, but Nathan Bliss is next-level, and he plays an instrument called the mbira. It's an ancient instrument from Zimbabwe that has historically been used in ceremonies where multiple people are playing the mbira in a circle, so I recorded it with a Soyuz 013A Ambisonic mic and rotated it per part. It's four completely different mbira parts that come in after the first chorus, and it stays in through the second verse. To me, it kind of sounds like raindrops or something. It's just really, really cool.
Another interesting thing about this song is the instrumental section after the second chorus. Nathan played saxophone, clarinet, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, Mellotron, and two different octaves on my felt piano, and it just kind of creates this wall of melody that's mostly led by the saxophone. In immersive, that's really cool because I could take each of those elements and put them out a different speaker. It doesn't really distract you; it’s just meant to kind of engulf you, and I feel like it translated well.
Given how immersive this mix is, I actually mixed the drums in mono to give them their own space. I had stereo mics up, but I muted them. I did use the Ambisonic mic as a room mic too, but it's predominantly mono drums. I didn't pan the toms or the cymbals or any of that.
How about effects? Did you use much besides some basic reverb?
This is an Americana song, so I'm not going very much into modulation or choruses, but I have five or so reverbs, and four of them are on the vocal. On a few elements in the mix, I've got a big, warm, very long immersive plate from FabFilter Pro-R2 on a 9.1.6 return. It's super beautiful sounding. I love that plug-in.
The mind-blowing thing about this band is that all three of them are incredible singers, so they sing everything at the same time in the same room. I used the Pro-R2 immersive reverb to just sort of accentuate the fact that they're in the same room, but for the main vocal, I used [Soundtoys] SuperPlate a little bit in the front, kind of longer and darker with some modulation. I used [Universal Audio] Capitol Chambers in the rear, not quite as dark, but still fairly warm.
And then my favorite thing is I use a mono send to two mono returns and I pan them hard left and hard right out the sides. The left side surround has a different mono Capitol Chambers setting, and then the right side has Waves Magma Springs—this really thick-sounding, super colorful spring. None of the reverbs are more prominent than the other; they just kind of all add up to be this really nice glove around the vocals. So that was a fun thing about this mix.
Reverb can be a tricky thing to judge on certain speakers. Was there any part of the mix that you thought the HEDD monitors helped you hear more clearly?
Yeah, balance was super easy. With vocal levels, on a lot of speakers, you have to go listen in a car or on headphones or whatever and compensate. With this system, everything sat exactly where I thought it should sit. I listened to it in another environment after I left the studio, and there was nothing that felt like I missed the mark on. Vocal levels were great; reverb levels were great.
My favorite part of mixing on those speakers in that room was the separation around the whole room. Placement was super easy in immersive. It folded down to stereo perfectly, and I just felt very confident as I mixed. As I made those choices to put something out the sides, rear surrounds, or heights, or whatever, it sounded very clear to me when I moved it. But also, when I switched over to 2.0, it still felt exactly the same. So I really had no questions as I mixed on those speakers in that room.
One thing that's unique about those monitors is the Air Motion Transformer tweeters, which you mentioned had a bit of a softer top-end. How does that affect your mixing?
The tweeters are definitely unique. It takes a second to get used to, but again, I didn't have any questions. I didn't feel like I had to crank the top-end EQ; it still ended up feeling totally right. As a listener, I questioned it at first, but as a mixer, it was no problem at all.
I know for a fact that a lot of other companies will choose components based on meeting a target cost, so if they want a speaker to be cheaper, they'll use a cheaper tweeter. HEDD uses the exact same tweeter in every single one of their models, and I think the amplifiers are all the same as well, so you'll have the exact same experience, and the top-end will be identical for all the speakers.
One beautiful thing about the Air Motion Transformers is that there’s no fatigue. It's very pleasant for a long day. Especially for recording or writing sessions when you pull long hours, and people in the room want it to be cranked up really loud the whole time, I can imagine these being just the best speakers ever.
And for mixing, I was surprised. I thought, “Well, they're a little bit softer sounding, so I'm going to miss some top-end,” but the way my mix came out, I didn't feel that way at all. I was very happy and confident, and it was totally fine. So that was really cool. I say “soft,” but “pleasant” might be a better word.
Who would you recommend these monitors to?
I think my first recommendation would be as a primary mixing speaker in a medium-sized room. I imagine in a smaller room, they'd sound really big. Their frequency response is really good, so they were very pleasant to mix on, and they translated perfectly, which was surprising to me given the fact that I was nervous to go in and mix in a room I've never worked in on speakers I've never worked on, but it came out great. Again, they’d be amazing in a tracking environment because of how pleasant and non-fatiguing they are. They were just very easy to work on.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Everybody in Nashville, book South x Sea for your next immersive session!
