CSO invests in Horus

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s record label CSO Resound has enhanced its recording capabilities with Merging’s Pyramix/Horus combination. CSO Resound has recorded with Pyramix for many years. The fact that Horus offered another level of improvement and also combined mic preamps and converters in the single unit allowed a simplification of the signal path.

The new equipment was installed in time to record the CSO’s September and October concerts that were conducted by its music director Riccardo Muti for eventual radio broadcast and commercial release. It also was used to transmit a livestream worldwide webcast of a performance of Verdi’s Requiem on 10 October. As of 14 October, 61,000 people saw the performance.

The three Horus units are RAVENNA networked which offers operational advantages, allowing remote control of the mic pres and routing of all digital signal paths. The new recording system was planned and designed by engineers Shawn Murphy and Tim Martyn who, along with engineer Charlie Post were also the recording team on these sessions. The audio producer credit belongs to David Frost. The CSO engaged John Storyk, from the studio design firm Walters/Storyk Design Group, to design a new control room. Marc Geelhoed, who heads up CSO Resound, oversaw the project.

Martyn offered this comment on the CSO installation: "We normally record at 24/96 resolution and we have been extremely impressed with how Horus sounds compared with our other top quality mic pres and converters, but another key reason we decided to go with Horus is because of the flexibility of digital I/O which the unit affords us. We can run all of the microphone connections via RAVENNA, but still take double-MADI out of the system to run into our Yamaha DM2000 console for the monitor mix. Then we can quickly turn around and do an in-the-box mix for post-production, using the DM2000 as a Pyramix controller.”

"The CSO has used Pyramix DAWs for many years, not only because of overall better sonics, but also because of the superior editing and mixing tools available,” noted Geelhoed. “This, along with Horus’ superior mic preamps and converters, made moving forward to the new generation of Merging hardware a relatively easy decision."

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