Carl Tatz Design Goes to the Head of the Class as Mix Magazine Honors CTD with Two "Class of 2011" Studio Design Awards

- Nashville's The Blue Grotto and Red Door personal studios, both featuring CTD Dual PhantomFocusTMSystems are chosen as two of the hottest new studios for Mix's annual "Class Of" Studio Design Issue –

Nashville, TN: South African engineer/producer, Sean Spence (The Blue Grotto) and veteran engineer/producer and Middle Tennessee State University recording program professor, John Merchant (Red Door) have had their Carl Tatz Design (CTD) personal studios selected to be included in Mix Magazine’s prestigious annual “Class Of” studio designer issue. “It’s always an honor to be recognized by Mix in these issues” says Tatz. “It’s like being appreciated twice – once by my clients and then again by the industry.”

The Blue Grotto features an intimate control room with a Dual PhantomFocus System (PFS) optimizing Dynaudio M1 near fields and M3 mains both driven with custom 220 Volt Bryston 4B and 7B amps respectively, and a PFS custom subwoofer system utilizing 12-inch NHTengines. Although the PhantomFocus System is notably successful in any room with any speakers, acoustic imaging is enhanced and the apparent size of the control room, both acoustically and visually, is enlarged by implementation of mirrored CTD, PFS Acoustic LensTMmodules, which line the mix position.

Red Door showcases its Dual PhantomFocus System with a pair of massive custom TEC:ton Engineering monitors with double 15-inch TAD woofers with Sony compression drivers, bi-amped with a full array of Bryston 7B amps that also drive the pair of custom TEC:ton 15-inch TAD subwoofers. The near fields areEvent Opal monitors that share the same subwoofer system that, like The Blue Groto’s Dual PFS, allows both sets of monitors to achieve the same frequency response down to 0 at 20Hz. This very large control room shell, designed by Studio Bau:ton with build, fit and finish by CTD, will be used by Merchant for his advanced master mix classes.

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: The Blue Grotto Control Room

Pictured: The Blue Grotto Control Room Rear

Pictured: The Blue Grotto Tracking Room

Pictured: Red Door Control Room -
Side View

Pictured: Red Door Control Room - Front View