Ilkka Ruutu: Music Maker

Hugely experienced in the world of live sound, both as live engineer, the audio rental house market, and as bassist in Finnish supergroup, Sunrise Avenue, Ilkka Ruutu is now adding another string to his bow: record production.

Ilkka Ruutu's studio is located just outside of Helsinki, and it's where Sunrise Avenue's latest record was mixed. "I have bought all of this kit over the last seven or eight years, just because I've always had an interest in this kind of workflow, so all I really had to buy was all the cables and connectors, so it was kind of easy to do in that sense," Ilkka smiles. The core setup is an Avid controller, and two sets of Genelec monitors: a pair of 8351s as nearfields, and the sizeable 1238s at the back.

"I got the 8351s first," Ilkka explains."I had already listened to the demos (of the 8351s) when I had a pair of Genelec 8050s. Myself and a couple of friends were listening in the room, and the sound difference between the two was pretty huge, so I just had to get a pair". "The 1238s, I invested in around six months ago. I first became interested in them when I was in Stockholm at what was X Level studios. It was our first session for our new album."

Read the whole article in Headliner Magazine Issue 22, 2017: Read here!