Project Description
Overview
Sunshine Music has provided the Austrian music community with impeccable creative mastering and recording services since 1995. Outgrowing their original single-room in 2001, studio principals Mischa Janisch and Georg Tomandl upgraded to a two-room SSL 6056-equipped recording and mixing facility. The studio continued to attract quality-conscience local artists and producers primarily for mixdowns. The duo’s increasing skills soon made the studio Vienna’s number one spot for many pop and rock mixes.
Because indigenous mastering options were limited, local clients took their productions to London or New York for that final tweaking step. Fueled by demands for high quality mixdowns, Sunshine’s mastering skills and technical capabilities began to grow.
Eventually word-of-mouth began to drive an increasing number of pure mastering projects to the studio. The “mastered by Sunshine” label became a mark of quality.
Concurrent to this influx of work, Janisch and Tomandl were also developing a formidable post production and audio book business in the smaller production room which lent itself perfectly to voice recordings.
Today, in a move to better serve their growing client base Sunshine has just completed a major new studio buildout in the heart of Vienna. After extensive research into local and global architectural/acoustical design firms, Janisch and Tomandl found the best of both worlds in the Walters-Storyk Design Group www.wsdg.com, an international firm with an office in Basel, Switzerland. With Dirk Noy and Gabriel Hauser in WSDG’s Swiss office they found local experts who bridge the gap between innovative international acoustic design and local construction standards.
The new mastering studio is located in an upcoming district of Vienna which is attracting many emerging ad agencies, studios and artists. Supporting this hip new demographic is a wide range of nearby bars and restaurants. And, Vienna’s coolest shopping district is a short walk from Sunshine.
Describing their workflow, Janisch and Tomandl explain,: “We achieve 90% of a track’s sound and vibe with analog equipment. Our digital equalizers are mainly used to correct technical problems and for achieving competitive loudness levels. Our workstations are mostly used as tape machines – to capture and replay the material – and for final assembly (edits, fades, cuts, track codes and creating the DDP files).”
“The majority of our clients prefer attended sessions – mainly the local artists and producers. This segment has continued to grow since the opening of the new facility. Catalog work sessions – specifically for the local offices of major record labels – are normally unattended. With the launch of the new studio we aim to increase our online work. A simple and secure system for up- and downloads purposefully named “emastering” went online in May.”
Janisch (a drummer who recorded his first album at Sunshine Music in 1995 and stayed on) and Tomandl (a keyboard player since 1984 and a studio owner since 1989) are confident that the art of mixing and mastering will never be obsolete. “Economics are driving the production process now, but the quality of budget conscious recordings is often compromised,” Tomandl says. “In addition to an objective creative perspective, clients benefit from the critical ‘final steps’ of professional mixing and mastering. A high quality audio monitoring chain and perfectly tuned room can not be duplicated in a home or project studio environment.”
“We couldn’t be more pleased with the results of the WSDG studio design/construction project, Dirk Noy and Gabriel Hauser did an extraordinary job in designing and fine tuning the rooms, ” Janisch comments: “Day after day (and often night after night) it is a great experience to work in the new rooms or just go in and listen to some CDs. Clients are amazed by the tonal details, spacious staging and the accurate and powerful low end. Some find it difficult to believe that the Mastering Room is “just” a stereo room – it just sounds so spacey and surrounding. I am especially pleased with having created rooms that sound differentiated and transparent, yet the emotional component and the sheer fun of listening to music does not get lost. Even clients who up to now were not particularly keen on sitting in on the mastering step now like to come by and attend sessions.”
Since the opening of the new facility at the end of April we’ve been constantly busy. Some selected reference artists and clients include: Falco, Christina Stürmer, Supermax, Andre Heller, Count Basic, Lifeball, Red Bull, Random House, Waldeck.
Equipment
- ATC SCM25A Pro
- ATC SCM45A Pro
- ATC SCM50ASL Pro
- ATC SCD100ASL Pro
- Manley Mastering Backbone, for analog routing and switching, MS and Gain Control (brand new product with serial number #001), in Sterling Modular console
- B&W Nautilus 801 audio monitoring system, powered by Classé Amplifiers
- Converters from Lavry Engineering
- Crane Song Avocet Monitor Controller
- Studer A 820 Analog Playback
- Prism Sound / Maselec MEA 2 Mastering EQ
- Manley Massive Passive
- Manley Vari Mu
- Focusrite 230
- Maselec MPL 2 Mastering De-Esser