EP25 - Studio Desk Enterprise Unboxing by OLLO Audio
Studio monitoring and studio desk choices are connected.
There are three options for studio monitoring.
1. You can use speakers,
2. headphones or
3. both
Depending on the type of work you do, you just might be able to get away with only using headphones and small speakers and avoid any room treatment costs. Modern productions are mostly made in the box. Even recording guitars, bass, or piano can be completely silent, so there's less and less need to own your studio and have it acoustically treated. It's possible to just rent a local studio for vocal sessions, acoustic drums, etc, and then process it all in the box, using headphones alone. The costs and lack of flexibility of having your own studio versus the costs of renting it when you need one are clearly on the renting side. Acoustic treatment will easily cost 30-50 thousand Euros or Dollars for a small studio. Renting a studio for a few hours or even a day can be from 100 to about 600 for a very very fancy one. It is a no-brainer for producers that mostly mix in the box.
The studio desk Enterprise costs are just shy of 2000 Euros and can accommodate 5 rack units, a pull-out for a piano, speaker stands, and a cart, and if you wish you can have it electric for a stand-up working position.
The OLLO media studio is there to test our studio headphones against competitors. It's also used in video editing and sound design for our OLLO life series. As there are not recording sessions, the minimal setup of small Genelec speakers and headphones works nicely.
The interface used is Motu Monitor 8, which gives exact same signal to 8 different headphones, so testing is swift and accurate. If recording is required, we use RME UCX II or RME UFX II, depending on complexity. All recordings are purely for testing our gear. It's not possible to rent our studio nor to order any jobs with us. We're not mixing or producing for a living anymore.
You'll see the importance of reading the manual in the second half, when Rok skipped a step and was then unable to mount the speaker shelves to the desk.
The solution he comes up with is a simple, garage-style fix.
You can check the studio desk offerings here: Enterprise Desk - StudioDesk
