sE Egg Monitor at Sphere Recording Studios London
Friday 13th January 2012
Francesco Cameli and the new sE Munro Egg 150 Monitoring System at Sphere Studios
sE Egg Monitor News: Francesco Cameli is an accomplished producer, recording and mix engineer based at Sphere Studios.
The sE Munro Egg 150 Monitoring System now takes pride of place in Studio One at this world class recording studio in central London.
- sE Endorsee: Francesco Cameli
- Occupation: Producer, Recording and Mix Engineer
- Artists: Little Mix, Westlife, Ronan Keating, Gary Moore, New Model Army, Nine Inch Nails, Tesseract, Rooster, Nadine Coyle and many more...
- Monitors: sE Munro Egg 150 Monitoring System
Key Quotes:
“The Egg 150’s sound astonishingly close in performance to the far more expensive M4 system and easily outperform anything of comparable size and price… not to mention the fact that I can take the Eggs with me everywhere I go!”
“…a very tight, well-balanced sound in a package that does not flatter the material, but rather enables you to hear clearly and accurately what is going on… you simply hear exactly what’s there”
“The Eggs are a very well built, revolutionary monitoring system that sounds exactly the way great monitors should. Focused, balanced and incredibly revealing without any smoke and mirrors"
Francesco Cameli Interview with sE Electronics' James Ishmaev-Young (December 2011)
Francesco Cameli started playing music at the age of 4 when his mother thrust a violin into his hands “…quite a cruel thing to do, as violins sound bloody awful until you get really rather good!”.
His father was a jazz trumpet player in his spare time and so the house was always full of Coltrane, Parker, Davis and Chet Baker. Between that and his "amazing elderly Violin teacher" his love for music was ignited even though “…the Violin playing never got beyond hugely irritating".
The drums and trumpet, with which Franc not only irritated his parents but also the entire neighbourhood, followed the Violin, but he finally settled on the bass guitar and attended Berklee College of Music where he honed his playing skills. Whilst working as a session bass player, Franc discovered the love of being in the studio and decided to start learning to engineer as well.
“Over the last 12 years I have worked incessantly on my engineering and production, working with for the likes of Westlife, Ronan Keating, Gary Moore, New Model Army, Nine Inch Nails, Tesseract, Rooster and Nadine Coyle to name but a few.”
Franc has engineering credits for a number one and a number two single as well as a number one jazz album under his belt.
“I love to work with bands and over the time I have crafted my skills I have been lucky enough to learn under the watchful eyes of masters such as Glyn Johns (The Who, The Eagles, The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zepplin), Chris Kimsey (The Stones, Marillion, Duran Duran, The Cult) and Don Gilmore (Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, Pearl Jam).”
It’s this background that makes Franc a truly well-rounded recording engineer who embraces both old and new techniques when making records. ”In the age of laptops and home recording, the art of correct mic choice and placement is being lost, so I like to think of myself and others like me as assets to the music industry”.
Franc is currently based at Sphere Studios in London where he is Chief Engineer and has the choice of a Neve 88R and two SSL G+ consoles, preferring to track on the Neve but happy mixing on either. He uses Avid Pro Tools and wherever possible when tracking uses CLASP, which enables him to track everything through tape before it hits the DAW.
“I find it (CLASP) just removes the harshness you can sometimes still get with digital. I am a big fan of analogue outboard, so I tend to use plugins to deal with problems or create effects and do most of the musical EQ-ing and compression outside the box. Don’t get me wrong, I love my plugins but, I’ve also built up a nice array of new and vintage outboard which has so much character that I just can’t live purely in the DAW.”
Sphere Studios have recently taken delivery of the brand new sE Munro Egg 150 Monitoring System, which Franc has started using alongside his faithful Yamaha NS10s and Barefoots.
“The more monitors you can check your work on the better you can gauge how your work will translate outside the studio environment. The entire studio I am based at was built by Andy Munro and all our main monitoring is taken care of by his critically acclaimed Dynaudio M4 Passive Monitors so, I wanted something that would go on the meter bridge for nearfield work, but which would give me the same character as the M4s… a tall order considering the M4’s are a £20,000 system. The sE Egg 150’s sound astonishingly close in performance to the far more expensive M4 system and easily outperform anything of comparable size and price… not to mention the fact that I can take the Eggs with me everywhere I go!”
“After a couple of days of running in, the eggs have slotted right in with my other monitors and give me exactly what I’ve come to expect and love about monitors designed by Andy Munro and his team… a very tight, well-balanced sound in a package that does not flatter the material, but rather enables you to hear clearly and accurately what is going on without lulling you into the false sense of security like certain other monitors do. You simply hear exactly what’s there".
“The sE Egg Monitors have already been used on two tracking sessions so far in the first week. The first, Sunday Recovery, a Prog Rock outfit from Rome that have completely reworked the classic ‘Karma Police’ to make it something very different indeed… I’m very excited to get that mixed in the next few days! The second was 8 tracks for a Jazz album by Grant Windsor, Neville Malcolm and Richard Spaven, which we recorded live without headphones. After I mix the Radiohead cover, I’m off to Sarm with Producer Pete Martin to do Drums, Vocals and Piano so no doubt the Eggs will make an appearance there also… they are already proving to be an invaluable part of my set up, and being able to get a big system sound on a set of nearfields means, for the first time, I can be mobile and still get a really accurate picture when tracking and mixing.”
“The Eggs are a very well built, revolutionary monitoring system that sounds exactly the way great monitors should. Focused, balanced and incredibly revealing without any smoke and mirrors to fool the listener into thinking things sound better than they actually do. Well done sE and Andy, you’ve cracked it…!”.
sE Munro Egg 150 Monitoring System
sE Egg Monitor News: WIN a sE Munro Egg 150 Monitoring System with Sound On Sound.
