Vienna, November 2009 – Audient’s Black Series was central to the set-up used to record a narration of The Nativity according to Luke, by Pater Karl Wallner, a Cistercian monk from the Heiligenkreuz Abbey, who was recently awarded the German pop industry prize ECHO for the production of Gregorian Chants.
“We decided to do the recording in the Abbey itself, to get an authentic sound and capture the spirit and atmosphere there,” explains Marco Nola of Seven Rays Music, the company who handled the mobile recording and subsequent mixing of the reading. Based in Bremen, his studio is some 1000 km away from the quiet forests of Wienerwald, where the oldest, continuously active Cistercian monastery in the world is situated.
“For this job, I took a BB4 with two Black Pres and two Black Comps with me. The BB4 is a perfect solution for mobile recording,” he explains.
The BB4 can accommodate up to four Black Series modules, making them very portable and ideal for use outside of the studio. The integrated rear connector panel allows the modules to be freely installed in a sequence to suit the user’s needs and the four slots can accommodate analogue modules or four Black ADC analogue to digital converter modules. Power to the Black Rack is provided by an integrated PSU.
“I get the exceptional sound quality from the Black Series preamps and the neutral, yet refined sound leaves me open to lots of possibilities for mixing in my studio,” continues Nola. “I mix with the help of the amazing flexibility of the Audient Black Series mic pres, EQs and compressors.”
As well as his role as on-site engineer, Nola is composing, recording and mixing all further music, soundtrack and interludes for this CD production, using classical female vocals coupled with a viola and oboe. “Back in the studio, I still record and mix everything with the Black Series, this time with the help of Universal Audio UAD plug-in library. Black Series and UAD are an outstanding team for anything, even for the post production.”
Designed as a modular rack system, Black Series combines uncoloured audio path normally associated with Audient with an extremely varied palette of tonal colours provided by discrete and transformer-coupled circuitry. The full range includes a mic pre, EQ, compressor, ADC and word clock generator.
Nola concludes, “Audient Black Series is a really perfect solution for anything I have to do - tracking, mixing and post production. The modular system allows me to do anything, anywhere - whatever job I have to do!"
The CD of “The Nativity Story – from Pater Karl Wallner” is being released on 20th November on the Deutsche Grammophon label.
Marco Nola has also produced film and radio play music for ARD, NDR, SAT1 as well as audio books for Universal Music Family Entertainment, Galileo Mystery. To find out more about Seven Rays Music, please visit www.seven-rays-music.com
Information about the Cistercian Monks can also be found online at http://www.stift-heiligenkreuz.org/English.kinder-und-jugendfuehrungen.0...
