New York’s Stadium Red it’s all about the Team and the Equipment; A Dangerous combination. With in-house Grammy-winning team members like ‘Classical Producer of the Year’ winner David Frost, ‘Best Classical Album’ winner, mix engineer Tom Lazarus, along with ‘Best Rap Album’ winner, producer Just Blaze, Stadium Red has an amazing breadth of talent and capabilities at their New York studio location. The A and C4 studios are outfitted with a range of Dangerous Music hardware including the Dangerous Monitor ST and the Monitor ST/SR customized for 7.1 surround, the Dangerous 2-Bus LT analog summing, and the new Dangerous BAX EQ.
“There were 4 projects done at Stadium Red that won Grammy’s this year,” says Claude Zdanow, Founder and CEO of Stadium Red. “Three of the Grammys were in the Classical world and one in Hip Hop. Total, we were nominated for 11 Grammys in 9 different categories. We won Best Rap Album for Eminem’s “Recovery” with Just Blaze. He produced on the album and also did some mixing out of the A room, where he was using the Dangerous Monitor ST. Three of the five projects that made David Frost ‘Classical Producer of the Year’ were done here in our Studio A at Stadium Red using the Monitor ST/SR monitoring system. All our engineers, producers and mixers love the Dangerous Music gear. It’s gear we can trust on all our work.”
Zdanow continues, “The engineer that works out of Studio C4 is Ariel Borujow, (Black Eyed Peas, P-Diddy, TI), he was the first person to say ‘Listen we need the Dangerous summing’ — he tried it out, and now he won’t mix without it. He’s primarily an in-the-box guy, but his chain is always: out to the Dangerous 2-Bus LT summing, to two tracks to an SSL compressor, then to the Dangerous BAX EQ. He swears by it, he won’t mix any other way.”
“Originally we had a different monitoring system in the A room,” recalls Zdanow about the studio with the SSL, “but it never came up to snuff. Once we plugged in the Dangerous Monitor ST, the difference was unreal. We could hear the difference in space and clarity — the Dangerous products are just musical and clean. I’ve done a few mixes using the Dangerous 2-Bus LT summing to the Dangerous BAX EQ and it’s just so smooth, not harsh at all. With the BAX EQ you boost the highs or the Lows and everything is just so natural sounding. The Dangerous Music equipment is some of the best we’ve used — compared to all the other stuff we’ve tried. It’s not coloring the sound, it’s very clear.” Zdanow also noted, “We wanted to bring the sound, feel and headroom of an analog console to Studio C4, and the 2-Bus LT gave all that to us.”
With the release of the long-awaited debut album from Hip Hop artist Saigon, Stadium Red continues to turn out top albums that go straight to the charts. “We just finished a project done across the whole facility; the new Saigon album. It’s a Hip Hop project called ‘The Greatest Story Never Told.’ That album was recorded, produced, mixed and mastered at Stadium Red. A good part of the album was mixed in the C4 room on the Dangerous 2-Bus and the BAX EQ using the Dangerous Monitor ST. It was the Number 1 Hip Hop album on iTunes, and it hit number 7 on Billboard Magazine’s Hip Hop album charts,” adds Zdanow.
Discussing his use of the custom 7.1 Monitor ST/SR system, Zdanow says, “The A room is always set up in 5.1, and when we have 7.1 projects we just switch up the room. One of the big 7.1 projects we did was for the San Francisco Symphony, it was a Blu-Ray filmed project that was recorded live in San Francisco. It was recorded on-site by Tom Lazarus and then brought back to Stadium Red in our A room where it was mixed in 7.1 and 5.1 surround, and stereo.”
Besides being one of the founders at Stadium Red, Zdanow is also a mix engineer, focusing on the electronic music: house, dance, pop, etc. and recently mixed an Usher and Justin Beiber project produced by Mysto & Pizzi from Ultra Records for the American Cancer Society to raise awareness about the foundation. Offering a final word on the Dangerous Monitor ST/SR, Zdanow reveals his own perspective, “One of the great things about the Monitor ST is that you know you’re not distorting on input or output. It’s basically built in such a way that whatever is coming out of your converters is what you are hearing. That is the amazing thing about it, being able to really trust what we were hearing out of our converters is something we can never really go back on.”
For more information on Stadium Red visit their website at: http://www.stadiumredny.com
