Recording and Production in the News

Chartmakers Mastering stocks up on Prism Sound kit

Cambridge, UK. October 28, 2014: High profile Finnish mastering studio, Chartmakers Mastering, recently bought both a Prism Sound Dream AD-2 A/D converter and an MEA-2 EQ for its state-of-the-art facility in the Töölö district of the nation's capital, Helsinki.

Henkka Niemistö at Chartmakers Mastering (photo: Christoffer Relander)

Established by Svante Forsbäck together with long-term associate Henkka Niemistö, the studio is celebrating its tenth birthday this year and is as dedicated to high-quality audio mastering services as ever.

"All music styles are more than welcome to use our services," says Niemistö. "I usually work with pop, dance, hip-hop and electronic music and some metal and rock groups. My clients are mainly Finnish bands and include Husky Rescue, Pepe Deluxe, Sofi De La Torre, Machinae Supremacy and many more."

Chartmakers currently runs three studios in Helsinki itself and a satellite about 20 minutes to the west in Espoo. Niemistö is a firm believer that the simplest mastering chain of very high-grade equipment delivers the best results. As such, he says that the AD-2 and the MEA-2 have both been on his mind for a long time.

"It was time to finally give them a go," he says. "Svante and I have gone through pretty much everything on the mastering market, and Prism Sound was, for me, the last largely untested equipment to try."

The kit was supplied by Finnish distributor Qualitron and Niemistö says that as soon as the converter and the EQ were connected he felt right at home with them.

"They are a joy to use. The converter continues to surprise me, almost every day," he says. "The EQ has some strange way of adding a sort of 'glue' to the master sound - I can't really explain it. They both definitely bring the game to the next level."

Niemistö adds that he particularly likes the fact that the converter can drive two different sample rates to different AES/EBU outputs. "The clock also sounds very nice," he says. "Since I do a lot of bassy electronic music I love the fact that the EQ goes down to 19Hz and up to 27k."

Niemistö is using his Prism Sound equipment on all of his current projects where it meshes well into his existing set-up.

"I personally use three Amphion Two18 speakers and two One18s in the back for full surround, and I have a Maselec MTC-2 mastering console," he explains.

And there might well be more Prism Sound kit added into the Chartmasters slate in the near future.

Niemistö says: "We just got the Prism Sound [Maselec MLA-2] compressor in to test, and we might have to get that one as well…"