Mick Sawaguchi and Horus make for a winning combination at Professional Music Recording Awards of Japan
Published: ASIA
JAPAN: Mick (Masaki) Sawaguchi was recently recognised by the Professional Music Recording Awards of Japan in the category of ‘best high resolution recording of 2013’ for his album, Reime, which was the first recording in the country to use Merging Technologies’ Horus.
‘I am proud of this award, as to win, you must use the right equipment,’ commented Mr Sawaguchi. ‘Merging has always provided that for me, and Horus is the latest addition to make my task easier, providing more accuracy to faithfully record these wonderful musicians.’
Meanwhile, Mr Sawaguchi’s latest recording named Afterglow was the first to use Horus with Madi and features two different mixes for the piano microphones. The first uses a pair of Sanken CO-100K mics with a Mojave Audio MA-301 FET and a Vovox cable, and the second uses Audio Technica AT-4081/AT-4080 ribbon mics. The surround mics are identical, both being omnidirectional AT 4050 Urushi. This time, the resolution is 192kHz/24 bit and in surround.
This recording was made in the Onkio Haus Studio in Tokyo and features pianist Eriko Shimizu and Strings 4. It is also released on Mr Sawaguchi’s own music label, Unamas.
The equipment list includes products from RME, Schoeps, Neumann with monitors from Tad Pro, with the SSL 9000J used as a monitor mixer. The recording, which was also mixed and mastered by Mr Sawaguchi, caught the attention of Morten Lindberg of 2L: ‘It sounds great,’ he enthused. ‘I really love that the strings and piano sound warm yet brilliant.’
Ms Shimizu was also impressed when listening to the final mix: ‘Most impressive is that I feel air between the piano phrases.’
Mr Sawaguchi uses Pyramix Native on a laptop with a compact RME Fireface UC which achieves 192kHz recording and mixing with low latency. Reime was performed by Jun Fukamachi, and was recorded in 96kHz/24 bit.