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Corea Builds High-Res Studios

by Janice Brown

For his 60th birthday, jazz pianist Chick Corea held an unprecedented three-week concert at the Blue Note in NYC, in which he brought together a variety of world-renowned musicians who performed jazz classics and Corea originals. The unique series of concerts, held in December of 2001, featured performances from over a dozen of Corea's friends and colleagues, including artists like Roy Hanes and Gary Burton, Joshua Redman, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Jeff Ballard, and Avishai Cohen. Knowing what an impressive line-up of jazz greats he'd booked, Corea prepared to well-document the performances for later release on his own Stretch Records.

Rendezvous in New York is a two-disk CD/SACD hybrid release, which is the edited-down version of 60 hours of DSD recordings from the three-week run at the Blue Note. Engineer Clark Germain recorded the Blue Note performances on two Pyramix 8-track DSD recorders, and Corea's longtime engineer Bernie Kirsch mixed the recordings at Media Hyperium in Los Angeles, on an API 1604 console for the SACD, which was released this past April. In addition to offering a much more comprehensive subscription series of nine CDs and DVDs of the shows (each of the nine bands getting an album's worth), Corea also plans on broadcasting documentaries of the shows in HDTV.

To handle mixing the music for nine individual CDs in 5.1 surround sound, converting the DSD recordings to PCM, Corea and longtime engineer Bernie Kirsch set up two state-of-the-art studios in Corea's home. Looking ahead, Corea wanted the home studios to serve his projects well into the future, and brought Boston/Miami-based Audio One and founder David Frangioni in on the project to design, install, and wire a prolific set-up in a large section of his western Florida home. Kirsch and Corea decided to set up the studio for mixing at 96/24k instead of DSD so that the studio would be more immediately versatile, and could eventually make the progression to DSD accommodation when the technology advances.

"In order to mix in DSD you have to do one of two things--either stay in a DSD mixing system like a Pyramix, or mix in analog," says Kirsch. "And, while the plug-ins available in Pyramix are good, we decided to set up for mixing in high-res 24/96 for reasons of future use of the studio, due to the state of DSD right now."

Having built a home studio for Corea in Los Angeles, in 1990, Frangioni was in tune with the artist's meticulous work and drive for perfection, and handled the tall order in a tight three-week schedule. Frangioni and Audio One chief engineer Michael Adams worked with Corea, Kirsch, and studio manager Bob Cetti, to develop designs and equipment lay out for one main control room for tracking and mixing (Studio A) and one production/writing suite (Studio B). In the main control room, Audio One installed a Digidesign Pro Tools HD3 system with Studio Network Solutions fiber drives and two Yamaha O2R 96s, and a Digi 002 system with Emagic's Logic Audio went into the production suite. Both studios were networked using copper fiber for drive storage and Ethernet for file transfers and Internet access, and feature PMC loudspeakers.

Frangioni notes that Corea and Kirsch wanted an easy-to-use studio, but one in which they'd be able to accomplish a great deal of mixing quickly, as well as record future projects. "For this series of recordings, it only made sense for Chick to have his own studio, and it needed to be extremely high quality, because mixing all the DSD recordings was not going to make a lot of sense if it wasn't done at a very high bit rate and high sample rate," comments Frangioni. "From a production standpoint, looking at the long-term plan for the studio, we decided that it made sense for Chick to go with a Pro Tools HD system."

Within the studio space is a fairly large recording space, which was another must for Corea, who records all live music played by live musicians. "The whole essence of the technology and his set-up is to capture live music," adds Frangioni. "Ironically, in these days of infinite racks of equipment, capturing live music that's played by musicians of this quality is very hard to do. Bernie's an amazing engineer and that's certainly part of it, but a decent recording space and great high-quality equipment and installation allows for very high-resolution recording."

Frangioni was the primary consultant on what kind of gear to install, what combination of equipment, and how to configure it all with the utmost efficiency in mind. For writing and production, Corea uses Logic Audio in Studio B, while Kirsch operates the Pro Tools HD, with a TC Electronics System 6000 as the main effects processor, and Waves and MacDSP plug-ins, among others. Kirsch has been mixing on the Yamaha O2R 96s. The fiber network allows for an easy work-flow.

"If Chick is working in Studio B and he's writing and recording some tracks, and it's to be mixed in Studio A, Kirsch needs only to open the session," Frangioni points out. "The studio's easy to use and the network creates an even more efficient environment."

In addition to the studios, Audio One installed a front projection home theater system in an adjacent room, which consists of a Runco projector and Marantz surround system complemented by PMC loudspeakers.