26 l September 2012
www.prosoundnewseurope.com
studioreport UNITED KINGDOM Pope glory and KMR Audio’s Stefan Pope describes a day at the north London store…
STEFAN POPE has been sales manager at KMR Audio since October 2008. Formerly a manager at Digital Village Barnet (1998-2001) he has over 16 years experience of supplying music technology equipment. Pope’s knowledge of audio equipment stems from a variety of experiences; as a classically trained musician he then crossed over to rock, pop, funk and jazz, he worked in ‘event support’ installing power, lights and sound, and as a live engineer for music and conference events. He’s been a recording engineer, drum machine programmer, electronic music producer and owner/operator of several studios. He knows his stuff, then. We asked him to tell us about a typical working day at KMR.
9:00 Get to work in Whetstone, N20 – it’s a short commute from my house in Crouch End. Check emails. Make coffee. Turn on the gear – and allow myself a few seconds to tune into the glorious hum of computer and power supply fans as well as dozens of relays springing into action. Sometimes the natural sound of gear can be quite inspiring, let alone its processing abilities.
10:00 Open for business. Phones ring. We get a few calls from clients checking to see if stuff ordered the previous day has been dispatched. Everyone should get an automated email with tracking details on, but I think people want to be reassured by speaking to a human. After all, our clients’ working day can be affected by the presence of the gear we’ve supplied. KMR staff are always careful to take this responsibility seriously. We’re not just dealing with hobbyists who can wait for their equipment, no: we’re supplying working professionals who rely on us.
11:00 First demo of the day. A customer from west London wants to check out speakers in the range of £2k-£3k. We play
him a selection in our listening room and leave him to it. He’s listening to Klein & Hummel 0300s, PMC TB2SAs, Focal Twins and Event Opals. We’ve set up some Barefoot MM35s as well just for fun. Return to my desk while he switches between monitors.
14:00 Chap from Birmingham arrives to look at consoles. We show him the SSL AWS 948 and the Trident Series 32. (We have this brilliant two-channel ‘sliver’ console. It has all the facilities of the bigger versions but it’s properly portable. If someone wants to hear the EQ, pres, or
Stefan Pope: “Sometimes the natural sound of gear can be quite inspiring”
done from Pro Tools but you’re tracking, and monitoring off tape. Suitably impressed.
It can still be tricky for customers to make up their minds, even with a high-spec demo facility
11:30 The customer can’t make up his mind between two pairs (the Twins or the 0300s). We decide to loan him the two pairs so he can check them in his room. It really is the only way to be absolutely sure.
12:00 Electronica musicmaker superstar James Blake arrives to discuss mics and mic pres. We chat about his sound for a while and narrow down his choices. We’re thinking AP or Neve mic pre, maybe a Brauner mic. Plenty of options and he’ll definitely need to try a few combinations. We also talk about summing mixers. James leaves with a few mics, mic pres and a Thermionic Fat Bustard to check out for a couple of days.
13:00 Someone’s brought me a sandwich back from Waitrose. Cheers! I’ll eat that at some point. More emails. Phone a supplier who’s failed to deliver the goods they said they would.
Endless Analog’s CLASP
16:00 A supplier rep turns up to show us some newly arrived products. I pretend to listen but I’m actually answering emails. At one point I take a phone call and he continues as if he has my undivided attention. I feel for reps – it’s a lonely existence and they’re under lots of pressure to sell. It’s just odd that manufacturers and distributors employ blokes (see earlier gender remark) who really don’t do much with their time other than drink a lot of tea. Still, having said that, I do recognise there are plenty of well (over?) qualified reps out there that genuinely love their trade and without whom, we’d find our jobs much more difficult.
The new Bettermaker EQ
check out the routing they can. Fantastic thing this – all console manufacturers should make one). Birmingham man is opening a facility in a few months and is just starting to equip while the build is finished. He likes both the consoles – but he can’t take those away (well, maybe the Trident, though we’d miss it). Think he’ll swing the way of the Trident because of the extra busses and groups and Series 80 EQ. We also discuss DAWs and
converters. We show him the Prism ADA8XR and the Apogee Symphony I/O. There’s plenty of high-quality DACs and ADCs out there from the likes of Lavry, Benchmark, Crane Song, Mytek etc, but
few genuinely high-quality multichannel systems for live studio recording.
15:30 Two guys (where are the women in this industry!?) arrive to check out Endless Analog’s CLASP. We set them up downstairs with Pro Tools and they make some recordings to see how invisible CLASP (and therefore a tape machine) really is. While most people will be using this with 24-track Studers or Otaris we manage to demo it successfully with a Shure SM58 and an Akai MPC. Just to show how quickly and seemlessly it records through the tape machine, without ever having to bother it. Everything’s
17:00 Decide to check out the new Bettermaker EQ, just for fun. I set it up upstairs and run the plug-in on Logic. I draw in some automation from the screen and run the track back and watch the analogue outboard EQ follow the automation. A real world-class sounding analogue unit, being controlled from a plug-in. This is the best of both worlds and must be the way the industry is going.
17:30 Eat sandwich.
18:00 Phones are off and the shutters come down. Must make sure no-one is still in the listening room. They’re not. Spend the next hour catching up on emails and powering down the showroom. Lots to do tomorrow. n
www.kmraudio.com
Barefoot MM35
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