Black Monolith Studio

Black Monolith Studio is a purpose built space with a clean neutral natural sound.
I based my studio around the Katz design, with the mastering rack in a slanted vertical units to minimise horizontal surfaces at the listening position. Usually mastering desks are large flat surfaces angled towards the engineer and present a big surface area where comb filtering can take place.
My method completely reduces this, giving me a clear path between the speakers and my ears, which allows quick sonic immersion and less changes with change of head position.

For this studio I have gone with a hybrid model, utilising digital software where it is at its best…. fast, clean, lookahead limiting, precision clean EQ, and exotic multiband processing. For hardware I decided to focus on boutique units known for adding highly desirable character and colour. Each unit is legendary for adding mojo, and are all connected to an old skool mastering style XLR Patch bay allowing me to completely change the signal path through these highly dynamic, reactive pieces of gear.

Here is a list of key gear.

Bespoke Stereo Pultec EQ with additional preamp stage based on EMI Redd47.
Bespoke EMI/Abby Road RS124 VariMu with modifications.
SPL Tube Exciter/Dynamic EQ
SKNote Vastaso 2 Saturating stereo compressor
IGS Audio Multicore Multiband Compressor
TKAudio TK-Lizer Mid/Side Baxandall EQ Ltd Edition
Cranborne Audio Carnaby HE2 Harmonic EQ
Custom Audio Germnay HDE-250A Revision C
IGS Audio Zen Compressor
Antelope Audio Converters
Barefoot Sound MM27 Main Monitors.
Neumann Headphones