Friday, December 05, 2003

Portland, ME -- In June 2003 Gateway Mastering & DVD completed a major renovation of Bob Ludwig’s mastering studio.  This state of the art facility opened in 1993 and continues to be the benchmark design for mastering studios around the world.  The recent improvements will make Gateway the premiere mastering facility for 2-channel and multi-channel music formats for many years to come. 

The centerpiece of the upgrades is a custom designed analog 8-channel mastering console and insert switcher from SPL.  To handle new high resolution digital formats like DVD-A and SACD Gateway Mastering also added a brand new digital routing and storage system.  The new components required thousands of feet of additional cable which presented an opportunity for Gateway to reevaluate all of the cables in the studio.  Bob Ludwig recalls, "When we built the studio in 1993 we used the best cables from Transparent Audio but over the years they have made some significant improvements.  In 2000 I got their new OPUS MM cables and was completely blown away!  I couldn’t believe the improvements they made over my older Transparent cables.  Since that day I’ve wanted to upgrade the rest of my cables to Transparent’s OPUS MM Technology."

The renovations were extensive.  The entire mastering station and all of the equipment racks had to be completely rebuilt to handle the additional components necessary for multi-channel mastering.  The floors were ripped up and new cable troughs were built to handle hundreds of analog and digital cables.  All analog signal paths were updated with Transparent’s OPUS MM Technology cables and all the critical digital paths were wired with Transparent’s best 110 Ohm digital cables.

After several sessions with his new system Ludwig says, "The difference the cables made was amazing.  Obviously cables can’t make the source signal better, but they almost always make it worse!  Cables are a source of noise and other very audible distortions.  They can limit resolution, dynamic range and distort the tonal balance.  Transparent Audio makes fantastic cables because they understand how to eliminate the noise problems and create a neutral cable."