March 2003

Silverdown Studio has installed a complete 5.1 Genelec monitoring system featuring 1034B, 1031A and the new 7073A sub-woofers, to cope with the heavy demand it has been experiencing for 5.1 work.

The Hertfordshire studio is owned by Jeff Calvert, who has had a string of hits over the years, starting with a massive no1 Barbados which he wrote, followed quickly by Starship Trooper. Calvert, who started at Morgan Studios in the 70’s, left to set up Silverdown, which was originally located in London. After many successful years, he decided get out of 'the smoke' and re-locate to the gently, rolling countryside of Hertfordshire.

Jeff’s production partner Chaz (Dabat) Kkoshi says: 'We have just completed the intro music for a new PlayStation game in 5.1 called Dance Flight, a new album by Mona for the record company TLC, and we are in negotiations to start re-mixing Bob Marley’s greatest hits in DVDa. All this work was and willl be in 5.1, so there was no choice we had to have the best, and as far as we could see the best is Genelec.'

 

Says Calvert: 'Genelec are used in most of the major studios in the world, so there was a sense of commonality in my choice, but the major reason for going with the Finnish solution was the incredible clarity and having a system which could be worked on for hours without tiring.'

Completing the re-fit Jeff found a unique Neve VR with flying faders that came from Sony Music in Tokyo. This desk had already been modified by adding quad outputs, so it was almost 5.1 ready.