Feature: Back to the future

When rumours surfaced some years back of a recording complex to be built from the ground up in Shibuya, near to NHK’s broadcasting centre and overlooking the green expanses of Yoyogi Park, a wave of interest rolled out across the global pro audio community.

In 2018, following a decade of overall planning and development including a three-year build, Studio Tanta opened for business. And it was with no small sense of excitement that Pro AVL Asia visited in November 2018. We’d been hearing about Tanta for the past three years, and a member of our team had already dropped by, donning a hard hat to view what was then a building site. Following a grand opening last June, Tanta is now proving to be a valuable addition to Tokyo’s music, film and broadcast scene.

Expense has clearly been no obstacle in constructing this temple to creativity. Preferring to remain anonymous, Tanta’s music and audiophile investor, whose dream it was to build an exceptional studio, had clear ideas when it came to style. Accordingly, acoustic design and installation specialist Nihon Onkyo sourced an assortment of Japanese stone, hardwood and metal, including Okinawa limestone, to ensure the two main studios and live rehearsal room were treated in accordance with the brief. When it came to specifying the technical components, however, it was acknowledged that an expert in the field would be a strong asset. Enter Tomoyuki Fukuda, whose involvement with Tanta goes back to 2008 when he was approached to see if he’d be interested in helping with the studio once the time was right.

At this point, Fukuda was working at EMI’s studios in Tokyo, having built up a lengthy career as a respected audio engineer. Starting out as a live recording engineer in 1984, he joined Studio Sedic five years later as an assistant engineer before transferring to EMI, where he remained for two decades.

The intriguing offer remained on the back burner until everything aligned in 2013, when EMI Music Japan closed its studio following the company’s absorption into Universal Music. By this stage, a suitable plot of land had finally been sourced and a temporary office set up down the street from the building site. He began overseeing all the technical aspects of the project, managing the design and installation of the studios and providing valuable insight when it came to acoustics.

‘It’s easy to be nostalgic when remembering the big studios of the eighties, but we didn’t want to recreate the dead spaces that characterised them,’ he explains. ‘We opted for an RT of 0.6s, offering a tiny amount of reverberation to give the studios a little life and character. I recall the Rolling Stones rehearsing some acoustic tracks for a session at EMI over 10 years ago. Ultimately, three of the tracks from that session made it onto the final cut as the engineer Ed Churney really liked the acoustics of Studio Three there. I suppose this thinking provided some inspiration in the design of Tanta.’

Fukuda was instrumental in selecting equipment for the studios, and this is when discussions with the manufacturers began. Among those to come onboard was API, whose Japanese distributor, Mixwave, has supplied Tanta with Legacy AXS and 1608 consoles. The vintage character of these desks sets the tone of each control room. Combined with the natural wood floors, panels and studio furniture, muted fabrics and wall tapestries, the golden era of recording is beautifully evoked. Down in the basement, two DiGiCo SD10s have been installed into a third studio, designed as a rehearsal space for bands preparing to go on tour.

Discussions between API and Tanta began around three years ago, when Fukuda, together with two acoustic engineers from Nihon Onkyo, attended the AES New York as part of a research trip to visit some classic American recording facilities. The US manufacturer escorted them to studios in Nashville and North Carolina. This was the first time that Fukuda had encountered these consoles.

‘Tokyo’s main studios are primarily fitted with Neve or SSL boards, but I was looking for something different to characterise and distinguish Tanta,’ he says. ‘I was fortunate enough to meet many famous engineers in the US who introduced me to API’s legendary analogue sound, and from there I made contact with the factory near Baltimore. It’s encouraging to see artists in the US still preferring the warmth and depth of analogue audio. I listened to the sound and found the signal-to-noise ratio to be very good, and I also felt that the great analogue tone would match our studios. This was key as I had a strong vision for them, one of the concepts being that they should be able to record a good acoustic sound.’

While a number of API 1608s are installed in Japan, as well as two 64-channel API Vision consoles at neighbouring national broadcaster, NHK, the Legacy AXS at Tanta is the first large-format API console to be installed into a commercial Japanese studio. While this would provide Tanta with a valid USP, it was also slightly risky. ‘It’s going to be a challenge for us because Japanese engineers are not used to working on API,’ continues Fukuda. ‘However, we wanted something different and were prepared to go with the challenge.’

This challenge has been supported by Hiro Saika, director of Mixwave and API’s distributor since 2007. Saika, who has been instrumental in establishing several key pro audio brands in Japan including Genelec during his time at Otaritec in the 1980s, is optimistic that the Tanta sale is influencing the Japanese market. ‘The next console to be installed is a 64-channel Legacy AXS for Tokyo Music University, and I think that was helped by Tanta,’ he says, mentioning another order that is currently protected by an NDA.

The 48-channel Legacy AXS at Tanta has been installed into the control room of the third-floor Studio A. This provides an all-analogue signal path with dual input capability and access to two API 200 Series module slots, while the traditional 1.5-inch module width allows API 500 Series equalisers to be used on a per-channel basis. A complete central section includes six automated stereo echo returns with motorised faders, 5.1 surround monitoring and a built-in 2500C stereo bus compressor.

Matching the vintage analogue aesthetic of the desk is an L-C-R Augspurger dual 15-inch main monitor system. The glossy black finish of these custom-built speakers mirrors the Steinway grand piano in the 64m² room; in addition to being large enough to accommodate an orchestra, there are also four spacious booths. Nearfield monitoring is provided by a pair of Amphion One18s, while Avid MTRX converters interface between the Pro Tools HDX system and the console. Studio A also offers an extensive selection of outboard equipment including Neve 1081 and 1073 combined mic/line preamp/equalisers, a dbx 160SL compressor limiter, a Manley Massive Passive stereo equaliser, a Tube-Tech CL1B optical mono compressor and a GML 2032 mic preamp.

‘When you are looking for that certain something for vocals or instruments, there’s something for every application in the racks,’ explains studio division supervisor, Yu Sasaki. A graduate of the Berklee College of music in Boston, he reveals that the studio is already establishing itself in the world of film scoring, having hosted several orchestral sessions. The team has also undertaken a number of album projects for Japanese bands. ‘I hope this will take people back to a different era of recording, where bands can play together in one studio rather than record instruments separately,’ continues Sasaki, who came onboard before Tanta opened to help out in the final construction phase, assisting in the selection and installation of some of the equipment.

One satisfied customer is multiple Grammy award-winning producer and mix engineer, Goh Hotoda, who started his career in Chicago in 1980 and recently completed a session at Tanta with Japanese singer, Yumi Matsutoya. ‘When I first walked into the studio, I instantly knew it wasn’t an ordinary Japanese commercial facility that would sound almost the same as the others,’ he comments. ‘With the combination of the API Legacy AXS console and Augspurger monitoring, the studio ambience was very familiar to me from the time I have spent in American and European facilities.’

Hotoda’s first-ever studio session back in 1980 just happened to involve an API console. ‘My fingers remember how to set the EQ and mic preamps,’ he says. ‘But the new Legacy AXS didn’t give me the same impression I had 40+ years ago. The headroom is much higher for today’s high sample rate recording, while the simple in-line design is a must for multi-microphone input sessions and the monitoring requirements of musicians, engineers and producers.’

Two levels above the main studio, the 32-channel API 1608 takes pride of place in the spacious control room of Studio B. This studio is installed with a smaller but similar inventory of monitoring, outboard, microphone and instrument equipment to Studio A, and has a 21m² live room with three adjacent isolation booths.

Down in the basement is a rehearsal room known as Studio C. This expansive space is equipped with an automated 8.6m-wide stage riser designed for live performances and has been installed with two DiGiCo SD10 consoles for monitoring and FOH mixing, respectively, and a Nexo PS15 and Coda Audio ViRAY three-way speaker systems. The lighting truss is controlled from an Avolites Arena console. Everything, then, that a band could possibly need, from initial track laying through to tour preparation, though it’s finding other uses too: on the day that Pro AVL Asia visited, it was being used for motion-capture for a VR project.

An impressive selection of vintage microphones is on hand throughout the facility, including Neumann U47s, U67s and U87s together with AKG C414EB and C451B standards, an Electro-Voice RE-20 and a selection of Microtech Gefell condenser cardioids including the larger UM930 and the smaller M300 diaphragms. And while guitarists can select from an arsenal of backline speakers, keyboard players have such icons as the Hammond B3 organ, Steinway D-274 concert grand and Fender Rhodes at their disposal.

Other facilities at Studio Tanta include a fine-dining restaurant with private room, a main artists’ lounge and two private suites offering secluded, self-contained areas overlooking the park in which to relax.

The bold investment in Studio Tanta sends a clear message to the Japanese music industry. The thorough research and planning conducted during its lengthy gestation period has created the exceptional recording facility its owner had long dreamed of. The global wave of interest looks set to build even higher.