Carl Tatz Design

By Russ Long

Ten years ago, if you heard Carl Tatz's name mentioned, it was likely in regards to Recording Arts — the world-class Nashville studio he owned and operated for nearly 20 years. I did the 5.1 mix of Allison Moorer's concert DVD there in 2003, and I fell in love with the place. Unfortunately, it was only weeks before the studio changed hands and it became a private facility, so I was never fortunate enough to work there again.

It was during his Recording Arts tenure that Tatz began to develop the critically acclaimed PhantomFocus™ System (PFS). "Having been a studio owner, engineer and producer for 18 years at Recording Arts, I gradually was pushed away from the console as more engineers booked the studio," recalls Tatz. "I always had a passion for speakers, and this gave me the time to tweak the monitoring. I needed something to match the 'wow' of the new-at-the-time SSL G+; I installed Dynaudio M3s after considering several other choices. As great as those speakers are, it became obvious that the room had an obvious effect on their performance. So I became obsessed with making them sound the way I wanted them to, and this was the beginning of my research."Read more

The finest home theaters and recording studios have one thing in common: they have been carefully tuned to provide the best sound your equipment can produce. Many people do not realize that the largest single contributing factor in what you hear from your audio equipment, comes from the room itself. Sound waves are very reflective; they bounce off room surfaces, interfering with each other, and this results in "muddy" sound. The size of the room, the shape of the room, and the furniture and fixtures in the room greatly influence what you hear.

There are many ways to make a room sound great, but the best (but not the cheapest) is to hire a professional audio designer that is well-versed in the art and science of "tuning" a room. You can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on audio equipment but in a "bad" room (one with many reflections) it will not sound good. Conversely, you can spend less than $1000 on fairly mediocre equipment and in a "good" room it will sound better than the more expensive equipment in a "bad" room. Many professional audio designers stay quite busy fixing sound not only in home theaters, but in recording studios as well. As you may surmise, recording studio owners are much more demanding because that is where the original music is created.Read more