RED DOOR

Mix Magazine Class of 2011 Award Winner — Middle Tennessee State University recording school professor John Merchant’s new Red Door Studio just outside of Nashville in Murfreesboro, TN houses one of the largest control rooms in Music City where he will be teaching advanced master classes. John, a Grammy winning producer/engineer has worked with a dizzying array of iconic artists and producers including Barbara Streisand, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Barry Gibb, David Foster, Arif Mardin and Phil Ramone to name only a few.

The studio designed by Studio Bau:ton with build, fit, and finish by Carl Tatz Design, showcases a large CTD Dual PhantomFocus System (PFS) implementing a pair of custom TEC:ton Engineering large mains with double 15-inch TAD woofers and Sony compression drivers all driven with multiple Bryston 7B SST mono block amplifiers, and a pair of Event Opal near fields (that Merchant had a hand in designing). Massive bass trapping in walls and soffits, diffusive stone front monitor wall and louvered monitor ceiling comprise the acoustic features of the room.

Of note, The Opals, which share the same pair of custom 15-inch corner loaded TAD subwoofers as the mains in this Dual PFS, remarkably have the same frequency response curve as the mains but are more intimate and detailed as a only near fields and dome tweeters can provide.