Combatting shrinking recording budgets, a veteran sound engineer offers an all-in package, from vintage hardware to digital distribution. Mike Clarkreports
AFTER MANY years working in studios and on live events in Italy and abroad, veteran Italian sound engineer, producer and musician Marco Lecci has launched a recording and mastering facility in his home city of Rome. To meet new studio
parameters, due to changes in
record production economics, Lecci’s Fast and Furious is based on a mastering suite format that takes digital signal management to new levels, with the perfect sync of the Apogee Rosetta 800 and Nuendo DD8 converters being ensured by the latest generation of master clock
generators: the Antelope Trinity. Lecci explains the choice of
hardware: “Nowadays, projects frequently begin in producers’ home studios and arrive as files or stems, so there’s less need to handle a large number of analogue channels, eliminating the need for a large main desk.”
Marco Lecci in the mastering suite
In fact, the room features a
speaker switcher, precision parametric EQ, stereo mic preamp and summing mix unit, all of which are hand-built custom units by Livio Argentini, founder of Audio Line, a Rome- based high-end pro-audio and broadcast hardware designer. The rest is mainly vintage gear: a Harrison channel strip, MCI channel strip, Aerovox passive EQ, Neve comp, SSL bus compressor (Logic FX G384), Universal Audio preamps and compressor, UAD powered plug-ins, and more. Pro Tools 10 and Nuendo 5
are used for production and editing, and Magix Sequoia software for mastering. Monitors used in the lounge-
like mastering control room are ultra-compact Focal Performance Solo6 Be with relative Sub6 subwoofers, Yamaha NS10M and Crown DC 300A powered vintage Auratone enclosures. The adjacent Overlook
recording studio, with a 70sqm recording room and 50sqm control room, is based on Pro Tools 10 HD with Avid HD I/O interfaces and ProControl desk; plug-ins include Waves and UAD tools. Here too the Antelope Trinity master clock plays a key role, as does a Maselec STM 822 stem mixer. Outboards include Audio Line AL-111 and Universal Audio preamps, eight channels of transformer-less preamp custom- built by Sandro Passarella, Api 512C preamp, Neve 33609J limiter/compressor, SSL bus comp and Aerovox passive EQ. The monitors are Focal SM9, Adam S3A and Dynaudio BM 6A.
The rooms were designed by Lecci and a team from Rome’s RCA recording studios. He explains: “We decided not to use large main monitors, so didn’t carry out acoustic correction in the entire control room, but limited the work to ensuring top-grade sound for whoever’s at the console, enabling our initial investments to be kept down.” The studios have private
parking (a godsend in Rome), WiFi and light catering – as Lecci says: “Just like the big boys, but with a craftsman’s touch!” Another key feature of Lecci’s modus operandi is the new business format adopted, basing studio rates on the clients’ possibilities and their desire to take the business risk together after analysing aspects such as finance, rights, royalties, etc. His quality production can thus become a partnership with artists that continues after the actual recording. Lecci, whose studio’s motto is ‘Connecting artists with the real world’, explains, in conclusion: “I recently inked an agreement with a ‘young’ company specialised in promo-marketing on a digitals store called Limited Music, thanks to which we have direct access to distribution with iTunes, Believe Digital and over 100 other digital stores. I like to describe the service we provide as ‘multitasking’, since we offer artists the possibility of a partnership that takes their projects from the initial idea, through production; distribution and promotion to live events.” n www.fastandfuriousproductions.com