Lafayette, CA (March 7, 2024)—The San Francisco Bay Area, the East Bay to be precise, boasts a new Dolby Atmos-certified recording facility with the opening of Shiny Eyes Studio, featuring a Rupert Neve Designs 5088 analog console, PMC monitoring and Sommer Cable wiring throughout.
Headed by founder Leonard Bertolami, and designed by Alex Otto of Otto System Works, the studio offers multiple isolation booths and a full range of top microphones, audio interfaces and musical instruments.
The studio’s name was inspired by conductor Benjamin Zander, musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, who in a talk on the transformative power of classical music tells the story of realizing that his role as a conductor was to awaken possibility in other people. He could tell if he was succeeding by looking in their eyes.
Bertolami, a musician and a professional building engineer, created the new studio for both rising artists and established professionals to bring their sonic visions to life with the latest technology for tracking, mixing and mastering.
“I have learned from the knowledge and expertise of Alex and his OSW team to choose which products to use,” Bertolami says. “To that end, Sommer cabling throughout was chosen for its incredible sonic qualities. I had the pleasure of pulling the Sommer’s special SC-Elephant Robust SPM840 cables, and for the robust size they were much easier to manipulate than I expected. The feel and coiling ease of the cables is exceptional, and actually handling the cabling reinforced my feelings of quality.”
Studio designer Otto adds: “Sommer’s SC-Mistral cable was chosen for all the panels, racks, consoles, and loudspeakers in all the line level duties, both analog and digital. The main factor is, of course, sound quality. Sommer cable sounds extraordinary and is incredibly quiet. When it’s used to wire an entire facility following established best practices, Sommer-equipped studios are dead-quiet.”
