Burbank, CA (November 1, 2017) — When your clients include major Hollywood studios from 20th Century Fox to Sony Pictures, from Netflix to DreamWorks Animation, you can’t allow any product you deliver to have less than stellar sound. Such is a day in the life of New Wave Entertainment, an employee-owned marketing firm that’s responsible for many of the promotional TV spots, online trailers, and social media campaigns for your favorite films and television shows. Recently, Mark Rodrigues, Chief Engineer/Senior Mixer of their in-house finishing department (a state-of-the-art, multi-room post-production facility), took the time to tell us why he just chose ADAM Audio’s new flagship S Series S2V studio monitors as well as a SUB12 subwoofer for a new room, after being a longtime fan of the brand.
“We have eight rooms in total now, with a pair of S2V and a SUB12 subwoofer in the new one — that’s a stereo room,” Mark details. “Our other rooms are still running the ADAM S2.5As, the original series still, also paired with SUB12s. In one of our surround rooms, I’m still even using a set of S1As!”
“We actually made the first decision to switch to ADAM quite a number of years ago, back in 2004,” he recalls. “We really liked the original ADAM S2.5A speakers that we had. Then we came to a point this year that we actually needed to build out a new room. Those speakers are no longer available, of course, so we started looking at alternatives from ADAM, to try to keep all of our room sounding the same. Stepping into the S2V speakers, we were hoping they’d sound like a somewhat newer S2.5A, and they really were a very nice match. Pairing them with the Sub-12 subwoofer was a great fit. It’s a little bit smaller room so a little bit smaller speaker was ideal, actually.”
This sort of consistency of sound is of prime importance to New Wave’s business, as Mark explains: “In the work we do, we need to move projects from room to room. We could have three or four different mix engineers all working on, say, the same movie campaign. We have a number of rooms, and any might be dedicated to a certain project for a time, but the fact is, any room can pick up any work at any time. All those mixes need to sound as similar as possible so that clients won’t hear a difference if something switches rooms. ADAM speakers have really helped us in that way.”
ADAM monitors have a great reputation in music production, but what drew Rodrigues and NWE to them for sound-to-picture work was their performance on spoken dialogue: “Dialogue is very important to what we do,” he says. “We were really impressed with the X-ART tweeter on the original ADAM monitors that we had, the way that the dialogue would come through them has been a plus for us. On the new S Series, the tweeter was tweaked a little to become the S-ART —it’s similar, but even better. Now, all of my mix engineers are very happy with that room — they like to get in there whenever they can and use that whole package!”
Another challenge of working in broadcast is that you lose a certain amount of control over your mix once it leaves your beautiful studio to be delivered through broadcast and cable pipelines.
“For us, the true test is when we can hear the product back via broadcast, when it’s been sent through the entire chain of how signals are compressed and put into their proper broadcasting form,” he explains. “We did make a couple of adjustments early on, but from that point, found it to be true to what we’d been hearing through the ADAMs during mixing. The final product didn’t have any false representation; it held true to frequencies we know are in the range. It didn’t feel exaggerated or compensated-for. We also find the ADAMs really help us hear compression styles, so we can compress in a way that gives our spots an early loudness advantage, even though loudness is regulated down the chain.”
A final point of unpredictability for audio quality is the consumer listening system. Rodrigues finishes with why he feels the ADAM S2Vs (and their predecessors) make that situation as good as one could hope: “What we’re fighting now are things like flat-panel TVs that may have one-inch speakers, which sometimes are pointing towards the wall behind the TV. Or, when we’re doing social media spots, where things might not even be played back on a sound bar — they’re coming through phones, tablets, and ear pods. You don’t know who has a high-quality sound system hooked up to their TV. So we can’t compensate for everything, but you’re always trying to find that happy medium. Again, we’ve found that overall what we’re hearing in the studio through the ADAMs is translating very well through the chain of cable providers, internet providers, and all the areas in which we’re delivering both domestically and internationally.”
About New Wave Entertainment
New Wave Entertainment, an employee-owned company, is a premier media company encompassing 3 distinct brands of marketing. New Wave Finishing is renowned for producing the highest quality content in post-production and finishing services. Our dedicated staff and state-of-the-art facilities have upheld our reputation as reliable partners to major studios and networks for over 25 years. Project X A/V is a skilled artisan in the world of entertainment marketing, specializing in motion picture, television and video game trailers. Hi5 Agency is a full service creative agency that takes a fan-first approach to digital, social and mobile campaigns.
About ADAM Audio
ADAM Audio monitors have had a reputation for sonic excellence and unrivaled quality ever since the company was founded in 1999. With the development of the X-ART and S-ART tweeters, which are characterized by an extended frequency range up to 50 kHz and a higher efficiency compared to dome tweeters, this unique tweeter design has become the embodiment of a transparent, highly defined and authentic sound that is the most defining development of ADAM's proprietary designs today. Being made and tested painstakingly by hand in the Berlin factory, ADAM’s high frequency driver is a rare exception in these days of automated mass production. ADAM Audio is represented worldwide through a network of distributors and dealers in more than 75 countries. ADAM also has offices in Nashville, London and Beijing.
