Munro Acoustics create mastering room for URM Audio

Studio design company Munro Acoustics has transformed a 19th century coach house in Suffolk into an editing and mastering facility.
The new studio now forms the main production headquarters of URM Audio, a company that specialises in recording and producing all forms of acoustic music, from folk and jazz, to choral and small-scale classical.
URM Audio, headed by engineer Eric James, records on location at various venues around the UK and releases the majority of its CDs on its own label, URM Audio Recordings. The company also handles projects for other record labels.
Until July 2003, URM Audio was based in Hong Kong where it has a strong reputation for the high quality of its work.
URM Audio’s relocation to the UK soon revealed a need for a studio base. James explained: “We needed an editing and mastering facility where we could carry out all our audio post production. The coach house, which forms part of my own property, had great potential for this purpose. When mastering classical music, room acoustics and monitoring have to be 100% accurate, so we called in Munro Acoustics because we knew they had the necessary expertise to get the room sounding right. Andy Munro, in particular, was a great help. He gave us lots of advice on the general set-up of the room and, after measuring the acoustics, was able to tame its bumpier aspects with various acoustic treatments. The end result is extremely pleasing. Although it’s a long, thin space, he has managed to reduce acoustic reflections and get rid of all the monsters. It now sounds far more accurate.”
Andy Munro added: “Mastering rooms are always a challenge because there is such a fine dividing line between ‘natural’ and ‘uncontrolled’ when it comes to acoustics. Freestanding monitors tend to be more difficult to control as they depend on room ‘loading’ to produce a flat power response. It’s easy to make any speaker flat on axis but that is only a tiny fraction of the total radiated energy and the rest feeds the room. That’s why speakers with identical ‘frequency response’ sound so different. With Eric’s room I worked with the modules and the speakers to create a final tuning that was almost perfectly flat with a well-balanced sound stage. Eric was a great help because he knew his recordings so well he could give me feedback as I was tuning. With a really good amplifier set up the end result just oozes aural transparency. I look forward to some stunning albums!”
URM Audio’s studio is equipped with SADiE mastering equipment, Wilson Benesch monitors and Nagra and Mark Levinson amplifiers. As most of the company’s projects involve high-resolution recording, URM insists on employing the highest standards possible for digital mixing, editing, and CD mastering and to this end its outboard equipment chain includes equipment from t.c. electronic, Weiss Engineering and uses dCS conversion throughout.
(GB)