Nashville, TN: “Damn you Carl Tatz” was the subject line of the email from Kyle Lehning to Carl Tatz after he implemented Lehning’s Dynaudio M3 main monitors with his widely heralded PhantomFocus™ System (PFS) monitor tuning protocol. “You made the Dyns sound so amazing, the consensus here is that we need you to PhantomFocus the ATC near fields now!”
Lehning, a multiple GRAMMY® winner, has been producer and engineer for country music icon Randy Travis throughout his career, with multiple gold and platinum awards to his credit. The head of Asylum Records through the 90s, he has continued to produce and record many artists over the years, including acts as varied as Little Richard, George Jones and Restless Heart, and shows no sign of slowing down. He finished new CDs for icons Johnny Mathis and Jimmy Webb this year and is in the process of completing a new CD for Kenny Rogers and emerging artist James Dupré.
The Lehning dynasty poses a quadruple threat in the new Nashville music scene, as Kyle’s three sons have apparently inherited their dad’s chops. Jason Lehning, also a multi-GRAMMY winner, is working with two younger artists, Matt Wertz and Mat Kearney, while the other brothers, engineer/producer/songwriter Jordan and singer/songwriter/actor/screenwriter Eric, have been awarded Best Picture and Best soundtrack for their film “Make Out with Violence” by the Nashville Film Festival. As if this were not impressive enough, a fourth Lehning son, Ryan (not pictured) whom Kyle describes as “the only one of us with a REAL job,” is Senior Consul for the copyright collection agency SoundExchange in Washington, DC. Kyle notes, “…he likes the way the speakers sound too…”
In the testimonial section of the PFS brochure on the Carl Tatz Design website (http://www.carltatzdesign.com), Kyle states, “Carl Tatz and his PhantomFocus System have managed to create a full-range, accurate, musical listening environment that gives us confidence that our mixes are going to sound the way we intend, no matter the destination. He’s done two systems for us and we love them both.”
About the PhantomFocus™ System
Once the basic acoustic treatment has been accomplished, Carl Tatz Design’s proprietary PhantomFocus™ Monitor System offers clients a unique opportunity to have a truly world-class monitoring experience in their room, no matter how modest they may perceive it to be. The PhantomFocus System allows their monitors of choice to perform accurately at a full 20Hz-to-20KHz frequency response with pinpoint imaging in an almost holographic sweet spot — this enables their mixes to travel anywhere with a new level of sonic accuracy. There are approximately fifty steps in the proprietary PhantomFocus System implementation protocol, some of which may include phase and laser alignment, damping, isolation mounts, careful assessment of engineer/speaker placement relative to their room’s primary axial modes, proprietary speaker distance and angle, crossover points for pass filtering, and finally parametric equalization. Hardware can include monitor stands, concrete, sorbothane and other isolation materials, custom floating plenum mounts, subwoofer system, custom crossover, parametric equalizers and the monitors themselves (passive or active). The evaluation and implementation is a full two-day process and can be applied to near-fields, mid-fields, and large soffit mounted monitors, regardless of manufacturer. Carl Tatz Design can install the PhantomFocus System in existing control rooms or in studios that are designed and built from the ground up by CTD. The result is like the aural equivalent of HD TV. Once you experience a PhantomFocus System, you can’t go back. |