Sound Mixer Frank Marrone Uses Bag End
Bag End Single 18 Subwoofer Used by Award-Winning Sound Mixer Frank Marrone
May 2012 – by PSW Staff
Frank Morrone’s studio is the high-quality professional recording space you would expect to see used by an award-winning recording mixer for film, television or sound mixing.
Designed by Anthony Grimani and tuned by Dolby, the space is equipped with only superior mixing equipment, from a Euphonix control surface and Pro Tools 10 with two HDX cards to AVID I/O and Westlake BBSM6s for 5.1 Dolby mixing.
And carrying the low end that Morrone insists is essential to great mixing is the Bag End Single 18-inch subwoofer.
“It’s a compact space,” he points out, “only 12 by 15 feet. There were a few little nodes at the low end that other subs couldn’t fill, and I need that low end to be especially complete and tight. Only the Bag End was able to give me that.”
In a long and distinguished career, Morrone says he had tried as many as 20 subs, and until he heard the Bag Ends he was not impressed. When he did, it was a “Wow” moment. Now, when the composers and producers he works with who hear their work in the studio after a mix, like composer Amin Bhatia, often comment on the low end first.
“At first, I thought Bag End was doing something with the harmonics in the processor to get that sound quality,” he says, “but they told me, ‘No you’re just hearing what’s there.’ ”
The first project Marrone mixed using the new Bag End subwoofer was a 5.1 re-mix of Bhatia’s famous “Interstellar Suite,” originally created using only analog synthesizers, for its 25th anniversary release.