Last month SCV were honoured to be granted an audience with one of the most formidable forces in modern music.
Whether you know him as a member of Porcupine Tree, from his hugely successful solo career, or as the man single-handedly rebuilding and remixing some of the world’s greatest rock albums into immersive audio – if you’ve enjoyed rock music in the past decade or so, then there is more than an outside chance Steven Wilson has had a hand in it.
Artists that have worked with Wilson are as diverse as Elton John, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull and Kiss, while his remixing credits include such landmark works as Tears For Fears’ 'Songs From the Big Chair', King Crimson’s 'In The Court Of The Crimson King’ and Roxy Music’s self-titled debut. Predictably, a full list of Steven's credits is far beyond the scope of this blog so for further information we invite you to marvel at his comprehensive Discogs profile.
Steven has spoken previously with the likes of SoundOnSound on the role played by studio equipment in his creative and mixing processes and so we were delighted to be given the opportunity to discuss one of his most recent studio acquisitions - the Focal Trio 6 Be studio monitors.
They sound great - good at low volumes, high volumes, medium volumes – that’s what you need really. SCV left these with me and after I’d listened to them for a couple of weeks, I never wanted to go back.
Stepping into Steven’s studio is akin to entering a beautifully crafted cave. The home workspace where Wilson produces the bulk of his work is furnished with guitars, synths, a selection of carefully chosen outboard and – in pride of place – a set of vertically oriented Focal Trio 6 studio mains.
I was working someone on a previous album who was absolutely raving about them, and as I spend so much of my time listening to music, I felt it was time to go to the next level.
Talking more about his recent switch to the Trios, Steven remarks on the balance that Focal strikes between listenability and audio trustworthiness:
Going back to the 90s when I started out, everyone was listening in the studio on NS10s. They weren’t exactly pleasant to listen to but you could trust what you were hearing. Which was kind of the point, depending on the speakers you could either get a flattering sound or a believable one.
What’s great about the Trio 6s is that I find I get the best of both worlds. My ears aren't fatigued after listening to [Trios] for very long periods of time, and I don’t find they flatter or mislead me about the music either.
Delving further, Steven also touches on the adeptness of the Trios to provide consistent and translatable results between a range of different music systems:
I can do a mix, take it next door to my listening room, put it on and it still sounds the way I want and expect it to sound.
That’s the one thing with monitoring - you want it to be something that’s going to give you a good idea of what people are going to hear when they put it on their HiFi or their car stereo, but at the same time you want it to give you the detail and the insight into everything that’s going on in the mix – and they just seem to do that!
Steven’s latest solo work The Future Bites is available to enjoy now on all major streaming platforms. For more information including tour dates, check out the official Steven Wilson site here.
For info on Trio 6 and Focal's full range of professional monitoring products, get in touch with the SCV pro audio team.