Mother Church of Country Music Relies On Carl Tatz Design PhantomFocus™ System and Dynaudio M1s With Bryston 4B SST Amplification for Control Room Monitoring

Ryman Auditorium Chooses Carl Tatz Design’s Highly Praised Monitor Tuning Enhancement Protocol For Critical Broadcast And Concert Recording Events

Nashville, TN: As one of the more iconic venues in the world, the Ryman Auditorium stays consistently booked with concert acts ranging from the Grand Old Opry broadcasts to top-name acts in multiple genres from pop to country to jazz to stand-up comedy. “After auditioning a Carl Tatz Design (CTD) PhantomFocus™ System at one of the Rascal Flatts studios that Carl designed, Steve Gibson [musical director for the Grand Old Opry] and I agreed that no speaker choice or acoustic design alone was going to deliver that kind of performance, so it was a no-brainer decision for us to go with the PFS for the Ryman control room,” says Ryman chief broadcast engineer King Williams. “We also specified the Dynaudio M1, Bryston 4B combination that we heard.” House engineer Kevin Reinen states, “Everyone who uses the control room is blown away by our PhantomFocus System’s amazingly detailed imaging and accurate tight bottom down to 20Hz. They just don’t expect to hear that kind of performance in such a small room.” Recent recorded events include the Americana Awards and The Nashville Flood Relief Concert featuring top country performers Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Ricky Skaggs and Keith Urban.


About the PhantomFocus™ System
Once the basic acoustic treatment has been accomplished, Carl Tatz Design’s proprietary PhantomFocus™ Monitor System offers clients a unique opportunity to have a truly world-class monitoring experience in their room, no matter how modest they may perceive it to be. The PhantomFocus System allows their monitors of choice to perform accurately at a full 20Hz-to-20KHz frequency response with pinpoint imaging in an almost holographic sweet spot — this enables their mixes to travel anywhere with a new level of sonic accuracy. There are approximately fifty steps in the proprietary PhantomFocus System implementation protocol, some of which may include phase and laser alignment, damping, isolation mounts, careful assessment of engineer/speaker placement relative to their room’s primary axial modes, proprietary speaker distance and angle, crossover points for pass filtering, and finally parametric equalization. Hardware can include monitor stands, concrete, sorbothane and other isolation materials, custom floating plenum mounts, subwoofer system, custom crossover, parametric equalizers and the monitors themselves (passive or active). The evaluation and implementation is a full two-day process and can be applied to near-fields, mid-fields, and large soffit mounted monitors, regardless of manufacturer. Carl Tatz Design can install the PhantomFocus System in existing control rooms or in studios that are designed and built from the ground up by CTD. The result is like the aural equivalent of HD TV. Once you experience a PhantomFocus System, you can’t go back.

Pictured L-R: Ryman Engineer Steve Marcantonio, Chief Broadcast Engineer King Williams and Carl Tatz.