HOW A BEATLES PRODUCER IS HELPING SONOS REIMAGINE THE WAY WE HEAR MUSIC
Rick Rubin is not pleased. The famed and famously hirsute record producer and cofounder of Def Jam Records is sitting in his Malibu home with Giles Martin, a fellow producer best known for carrying the torch passed on by his father, George, the man who produced every album recorded by the Beatles. Rubin leans forward on his leather sofa, listening intently.
"It doesn’t sound very soulful," Rubin complains.
"It’s interesting that you’re saying that," says Martin. "Do you mean around about the vocal range?"
The two men go back and forth about various frequency ranges and the sonic details they’re hearing, throwing around adjectives like "warm" and "crunchy." Their dialogue sounds very much like what it is: Two top-shelf sound experts picking apart music in their native jargon. But contrary to how this conversation might sound, Martin and Rubin are not mixing and mastering songs. Today, they’re focused on how music sounds, not as it emanates from recording studio monitors, but at the opposite end of its creative life cycle: The way it sounds when we press the play button at home.
Instead of listening back on an $80,000 professional audio setup, as the Rubins and Martins of the world often do, they’re staring into the grill of a speaker that could easily fit on your kitchen counter: The Play:5. It's the newest high-fidelity wireless speaker being developed by Sonos, at the company's headquarters in Santa Barbara, California. The overhauled Play:5, along with a new room-measuring audio enhancement software feature called TruePlay, is set to ship later this fall. But first, the sound must be exactly right.
By: John Paul Titlow
Source: Fast Company
