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Los Angeles-based audio post-production house Three Bird Sound specialises in creative sound design and mixing for some of the biggest names in the advertising and branded content space, including Apple, T-Mobile, Microsoft, Gatorade, the NFL, MLB, and more. When owner/mixer Mike Franklin wanted to upgrade his setup, he turned to Vintage King, looking for a monitoring solution that would serve his mixing and music-making needs.
The answer was a 5.1 immersive audio mixing rig powered by Barefoot Sound speakers, and Mike tells us he couldn’t be happier with how his setup sounds. Read on to find out what drew Mike to the Barefoot Sound monitors, what he likes about each model, what it was like working with Vintage King to put the rig together, and how the new setup has impacted his workflow the most.
Tell us a bit about your studio and the work you do.
We launched Three Bird Sound in 2019 as an audio post facility, mostly mixing commercials, but also working on some TV and film projects. It's been very successful, we’ve put in a lot of hours, and we've been happy.
What are some of your favorite recent projects?
We just finished the T-Mobile ‘MLB Best Network’ spot featuring Questlove. My buddy Boyd McDonnell at 21 South Music did a killer job with the composition! The spot was like a music piece, because of Questlove's drumming, but there were also sound effects over it, so it was really cool to work on, especially because I just got the Barefoot speakers, and the mix really shines through them. It was a fun mix to work on!
What inspired you to build an immersive setup for the studio?
Around 2019, and through the pandemic, I was working in a smaller room that was about 100 square feet, and I pretty much worked 10 hours a day, on average, five or six days a week. There's high demand in the commercial world to be available for a lot of hours, and after all the time spent working in a 100 square foot room, I started to get claustrophobic; I needed a little more space to spread my legs, have a better system, and more space for 5.1 mixing. So I turned the small room into a VO booth, and now I'm in a 400 square foot room, and I have more space for the Barefoot speakers to shine.
What drew you to the Barefoot Audio studio monitors for your immersive mixing rig?
I've been mixing for 20 years, and I’ve mixed on every speaker you can imagine, so I've heard all the speakers, and nothing ever really stood out to me as being off-the-wall amazing. There have been some good speakers over the years, but I started doing research on all the top high-end speakers available at this time because I knew I wanted to have the best I could possibly afford.
I really love the technology behind the Barefoot speakers, and I love the roundness [of the sound]. I'm a person who tends to prefer rounder-sounding speakers than very bright speakers. With speakers that have a lot of high frequencies, your ears get fried, especially when you’re working 15 to 17 hours a day like I am.
I went down to Vintage King, met with Patrick Carpenter, listened to a bunch of speakers, and the Barefoots just stood out. After hearing other speakers in the same price range, they just blew the competition away; I thought they were the best speakers.
Let’s dive deeper into your immersive mixing setup and what the role of each speaker is.
I'm running a 5.1 setup. For my mains—the left and right speakers—I’ve got the Barefoot MicroMain 26s; the Footprint03C for the center channel; a pair of the Footprint01s for the surround; and the LFE 15 subwoofer.
I also work on electronic music as a hobby, so I wanted to go with an LR pair that I could use for mixing theatrical projects and TV commercials, but also for banging out with bass-heavy music like drum and bass, or downtempo. That's why I chose the MicroMain26s for my main speaker pair.
The midrange and high frequencies are so clear on them, and the low end is also super tight. There is clarity in all the frequency bands, so whether you’re working on bass-heavy music or on a commercial, which is just VO and music, you really hear a lot of detail. I was just running some of my old tracks into the MicroMain26s, and I hear them completely differently! It’s mind-blowing how different the music sounds through them. I’ve got some other speakers in here, but the clarity of the Barefoots is so unique.
On some other speakers, I feel like you don't hear a lot of the low-end information—there are some that are too low without enough mids and highs, while others have a very flat response, so you don't get a lot of mid to low frequency information. Each speaker has its own characteristics, and I just love the way the Barefoots sound.
The Footprint 01s are my surround speakers. I've been watching a lot of movies here, actually, and it's really cool because when I sit in the back of the room, I can hear the transition between the MicroMain26s to the 01s. The clarity is just amazing; they translate the sound field really well, and they fit nicely in the room.
When you're doing something in 5.1 and something bass-heavy goes from front to back, you can really feel it on the 01s, which is cool. The bass really travels nicely, whereas on some other speakers I've worked with in surround, if you're not on a stage or if you’re in a smaller room, sometimes the bass doesn’t travel. You hear the high frequencies in the back of the room, but you’re not really getting the low to mid frequencies there. With the Footprint01s, you're hearing the low-end going from front to back, and it has a different feel and sound.
The Footprint03C was a necessity because it's a horizontal speaker, so it’s good in the space. The clarity on it is great, and it matches the 26s pretty well. I was a little concerned it wouldn't have enough SPL, but I was able to tune the room to get a really good sound out of it.
Since commercials are technically what I work on most, it's really important to hear the dialogue and the VO because, essentially, the dialogue in a commercial is the information they're trying to get across. So now, between the balance of the MicroMain26s and the Footprint03C, if, say, a commercial has some dirty dialogue, I'm able to hear a lot more of it and clean it up, so it's a great addition to the system itself.
The LFE15 Subwoofer has been great! It sounds good, it’s got a lot of low end, and it’s not muddy at all. And then, since we threw in the Dangerous Music MONITOR ST/SR, it's really cool because I can be in 5.1, but if I want to jump over to my Avatones or JBLs, I can add the sub in, or if I'm in stereo mode on the Barefoots, I can add the sub in. It’s been a very nice feature to be able to QC mixes in so many different ways with the Dangerous Music controller. I'm mixing in 5.1, in stereo, for Innovid, for the web, and for broadcast stereo, so with this unit, I can bounce through all my different mixes, and it's been great.
What has your experience been like mixing with the new rig?
Well, first and foremost, moving from a 100 square foot room to a 400 square foot room has been great! I have a couch now, and I can sit there while I’m waiting for client notes. [Laughs] No, but seriously, it’s been a pleasure working on the Barefoots. Like I said, they're very full-range speakers, and I like the warmth of the sound.
I’m doing 10-hour-plus days, and I’m not fatigued at the end of the day, so that’s been the biggest bonus, besides the couch, of course. [Laughs] I remember working with other speakers, and after a 15-hour day, the top frequencies of my ears started folding in—I started losing the high frequencies.
Before, I was definitely getting burnt out on mixing because I worked so much in a small room, so coming into this room with these new speakers, I feel fresh, and I'm excited. I wake up in the morning, get my coffee, bring my two dogs in, and we get going!
How have the speakers impacted your workflow?
It’s made my workflow smoother and given me—I wouldn't say a new lease on life—but it’s made me want to come in to work more and listen to and learn the new speakers. And I'm so excited! I was always excited to work, but now I’m more excited because of these great new speakers. Then, if I’ve got some downtime between the mix, say I’m waiting for notes, I'll pull up some music and just listen.
It's nice, listening to music and movies, just listening to different things and learning; it's almost like a whole new learning experience. When you have a new speaker and you hear something differently, your brain starts to perceive things differently, and you want to mix things differently, so it's been fun.
What was it like working with Patrick Carpenter and Vintage King to select the monitors?
The whole process was really great. I explained to Patrick that I'm building my dream room, so let's look at the best of the best to design the system.
He was really good with me. We went through the speakers and some other gear as well; he took the time to explain why this piece of gear is better than that piece of gear, so that was great. And then, my boy Dan Lerner over at Rock-it Science Engineering, who I've worked with for years, helped me design the wiring and the patch bay, do the acoustic treatment design, and get everything wired in, and it's been great! Without a team of people, it's hard to get things done, and between Vintage King and Rock-it Science Engineering, I'm very happy with the room and the way everything turned out.
What are some of your favorite pieces of outboard gear?
I can't say enough about the Dangerous Music MONITOR ST/SR; I love that!
For mastering, Patrick suggested the WesAudio ngBusComp, which is a digitally controlled analog master bus compressor, and I’ve been loving it! I can dial in my compression, close the session if it’s a late night, and it opens back up the same in the morning. We’ve all had MIDI controllers and whatnot, and you wake up the next morning, turn it back on, and it might not sound the same, so that's been a really cool addition to the new studio.
I’ve got the Carnaby HE2 EQ from Craneborne Audio, which is really great. Between that and the WesAudio bus compressor, it's what I’ve got for my mastering section. I'm still learning them, but man, they sound amazing! It’s taken some of my old tracks—that I mastered in software where they sounded kind of flat—and you run them through this signal chain, and it just really opens up the whole mix and allows you to tweak stuff and do some cool processing. It's been a game-changer for me, musically.
What's a typical day in the studio like for you?
The typical day is, I wake up, get some coffee and breakfast, bring my dogs, Taco and Bear out (they’ve become the new studio dogs), and start my day at the studio, roughly around 10 a.m. I work until 10 p.m. or midnight, and I'm usually bouncing around between different spots. I’ve got anywhere from three to seven spots a day that I'm trying to mix. Some are in stereo, some in 5.1, and it's been great to be able to bounce back and forth quickly.
With the commercial business, it's fast and blazing. So it's like, “Mix a spot, get it out, mix another spot, get it out, get the other version out”. We’re doing English, Spanish, radio… just a plethora of different mixes that we’ve got to get out. Everything's got a deadline in our business, and deadlines are usually the same day you start mixing, so it's pretty crazy.
Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to talk about?
I mentioned the T-Mobile spot, but we mix so many spots; we’re averaging four different campaigns a week that we're delivering, so there's so much work, and I love it all. I love everything I mix!
I just wrapped up a feature film last month, which was interesting, but I can't really talk about that. I also love documentaries, so I’m looking forward to working on some where we can challenge these Barefoots in 5.1 and see what they can really do.
