A.R.T. Studios
Encyclopedia
A.R.T. Studios was the private music studio of music producer Michael Cretu
, located in his mansion in the hills of Ibiza
, Spain
. In May 2008 the mansion together with the studio were demolished. The studio itself was used by Cretu until 2005, when he moved to a mobile computerized system "Alchemist" and from 2010 a new system named "Merlin".
This studio was designed and built by Gunter Wagner and Bernd Steber (Sydney/Australia) and is used in the recording of all of Cretu's productions (Enigma
, Sandra, Trance Atlantic Air Waves
).
Space Telescope.
The walls are built with blocks of open porous sandstone and they seem to break in an irregular line just under the ceiling. The big monitor speakers and the outboard equipment racks are built into these sandstone walls and the entrance into the room is through two big Arabic sandstone arcs in the back.
The floor is covered with a wall-to-wall carpet which was printed with a reproduction of the moon's surface.
There is a huge arc-shaped window in the front of the room with a view down the hill to the sea.
which was custom built by AMEK and the German Company Mega Audio according to Michael Cretu's preferred working procedures. This console is physically small but it has 160 inputs to collect most signals coming from any midi source, computer or microphone without the need of any patch bay.
This is possible because all active components are located outside in some huge racks in the machine room. This keeps all noise and unnecessary heat out of the control room and reduces physical size.
All recording is done on a Protools system hardware and Emagic
's latest version of Logic Audio Platinum software. Software samplers as Samplecell, Steinberg
's Halion and the PC-based StudioSampler are all linked and sync-ed together on demand. There are several racks full of external Midi modules and hardware samplers as well as a selection of reverb systems as the Lexicon 480 and 960 as well as some more exotic reverbs like the vintage Yamaha
REV1, REV7 and REV9, the Eventide DRP9000 and the Dynacord DRP20. Integrated is Michael's old Waveframe 1000. This was the machine that made Enigma happening in the first place in 1990. It was the first real fully professional digital "Studio-in-a-box". Its constant sampling rate system is brilliant and the sample editing and archiving feature is still unmatched. The monitoring system was especially designed and built by Quested Acoustics.
From the credits of various albums, it is known that Michael Cretu uses or has used the Waveframe 1000, Audi Frame Workstation, MIDIMoog, PPG System, Korg M1, C-Lab Notator, Takamine 6 and 12 String, Tom Anderson Electric Guitars, Otari DTR-900, Akai 900, Linn 9000, Prophet 2002, X-Pander, EMS Vocoder, DX-7, and Roland MKS-80 "Super Jupiter", Roland V-Synth, Korg OASYS
, Korg Karma
.
Michael Cretu
Michael Cretu is a Romanian musician. He is known also as Curly, MC or Curly M.C. because of his fair curled hair . His peak musical activity was with the Enigma project, which was mainly based in Germany....
, located in his mansion in the hills of Ibiza
Ibiza
Ibiza or Eivissa is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea 79 km off the coast of the city of Valencia in Spain. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. With Formentera, it is one of the two Pine Islands or Pityuses. Its largest cities are Ibiza...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. In May 2008 the mansion together with the studio were demolished. The studio itself was used by Cretu until 2005, when he moved to a mobile computerized system "Alchemist" and from 2010 a new system named "Merlin".
This studio was designed and built by Gunter Wagner and Bernd Steber (Sydney/Australia) and is used in the recording of all of Cretu's productions (Enigma
Enigma (musical project)
Enigma is an electronic musical project founded in Germany by Michael Cretu, David Fairstein and Frank Peterson in 1990. The Romanian-born Cretu conceived the Enigma project while working in Germany, but has based his recording studio A.R.T. Studios in Ibiza, Spain, since the early 1990s until May...
, Sandra, Trance Atlantic Air Waves
Trance Atlantic Air Waves
Trance Atlantic Air Waves , is a side project from Enigma's Michael Cretu. He had previously worked with Jens Gad on Enigma's 1996 release Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! and they once again teamed up for this side project. Only one studio album was released, The Energy of Sound under Virgin Records...
).
Control Room
Bernd Steber came up with the idea of hiding all acoustical trapping behind a full-size piece of canvas which could be stretched from one side of the room to the other and painted like a picture. The artist painted a night sky with thousands of stars and some very close star nebulas, similar as seen on images taken from the HubbleHubble
Hubble is a surname and may refer to:* Brian Hubble , American painter and illustrator* Eddie Hubble , American Jazz trombonist* Edwin Hubble , American astronomer* Jack Hubble , English cricketer...
Space Telescope.
The walls are built with blocks of open porous sandstone and they seem to break in an irregular line just under the ceiling. The big monitor speakers and the outboard equipment racks are built into these sandstone walls and the entrance into the room is through two big Arabic sandstone arcs in the back.
The floor is covered with a wall-to-wall carpet which was printed with a reproduction of the moon's surface.
There is a huge arc-shaped window in the front of the room with a view down the hill to the sea.
Technical Details
All external equipment is wired to a large digital mixing consoleDigital mixing console
In professional audio, a Digital Mixing Console , is an electronic device for combining, routing, and changing the dynamics of digital audio samples. The digital audio samples are summed to produce a combined output. A professional digital mixing console is a dedicated desk or control surface...
which was custom built by AMEK and the German Company Mega Audio according to Michael Cretu's preferred working procedures. This console is physically small but it has 160 inputs to collect most signals coming from any midi source, computer or microphone without the need of any patch bay.
This is possible because all active components are located outside in some huge racks in the machine room. This keeps all noise and unnecessary heat out of the control room and reduces physical size.
All recording is done on a Protools system hardware and Emagic
Emagic
Emagic was a music software and hardware company based in Rellingen, Germany and a satellite office in Grass Valley, CA. On July 1, 2002 Emagic was bought by Apple Computer. Emagic's Windows-based product offerings were discontinued on September 30, 2002....
's latest version of Logic Audio Platinum software. Software samplers as Samplecell, Steinberg
Steinberg
Steinberg GmbH is a German musical software and equipment company based in Hamburg. It mainly produces music recording, arranging and editing software as used in digital audio workstations and VSTi software synthesizers.- History :...
's Halion and the PC-based StudioSampler are all linked and sync-ed together on demand. There are several racks full of external Midi modules and hardware samplers as well as a selection of reverb systems as the Lexicon 480 and 960 as well as some more exotic reverbs like the vintage Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...
REV1, REV7 and REV9, the Eventide DRP9000 and the Dynacord DRP20. Integrated is Michael's old Waveframe 1000. This was the machine that made Enigma happening in the first place in 1990. It was the first real fully professional digital "Studio-in-a-box". Its constant sampling rate system is brilliant and the sample editing and archiving feature is still unmatched. The monitoring system was especially designed and built by Quested Acoustics.
From the credits of various albums, it is known that Michael Cretu uses or has used the Waveframe 1000, Audi Frame Workstation, MIDIMoog, PPG System, Korg M1, C-Lab Notator, Takamine 6 and 12 String, Tom Anderson Electric Guitars, Otari DTR-900, Akai 900, Linn 9000, Prophet 2002, X-Pander, EMS Vocoder, DX-7, and Roland MKS-80 "Super Jupiter", Roland V-Synth, Korg OASYS
Korg OASYS
The Korg OASYS was a workstation synthesizer released in early 2005, 1 year after the successful Korg Triton Extreme. Unlike the Triton series, the OASYS was implemented on a custom Linux operating system and was designed to be arbitrarily expandable via software updates, with its functionality...
, Korg Karma
Korg KARMA
The Korg KARMA music workstation was released in 2001 as a specialised member of the Korg Triton family.Unlike most other Korg workstation names, the KARMA name is rendered in capitals as an acronym for the Kay Algorithmic Realtime Music Architecture...
.
External links
- A.R.T. Studio tour from EnigmaMusic.com
- Interview with Gunter Wagner, engineer and designer of A.R.T. Studios