Engineer Chris Prinzivalli on the Focal Twin6 BE Monitors for TV Production
Engineer Chris Prinzivalli with Focal Twin 6Engineer Chris Prinzivalli on the Focal Twin6 BE Monitors for TV Production
These days engineer Chris Prinzivalli and his Focal Twin6 BE monitors go everywhere together. His specialty is live music recording and mixing, and he is working on a lot of music for TV. He has mixed live music projects for TV with artists such as Cyndi Lauper, Julio Iglesias, Huey Lewis & The News and many others. When at Kaufman Astoria Studios to mix the Sesame Street Workshop music, he brings in his Twin6 monitors. Prinzivalli honed his live mixing and recording techniques from behind the desk at countless shows, festivals and television specials. Along the way he has worked with Record Plant Remote, MTV Networks and ABC Television. These days, when he gets the call to record and mix in a TV studio or remote truck, he brings along his Focal Twin6 monitors. A sound he can trust.
A friend of Prinzivalli’s and distributor for Focal Professional who always offers him new gear to try out, told him about the Twin6 BE monitors, he got to try them and liked what he heard. Remembering the first time he tried the monitors Prinzavali said, “My friend always calls me up and says ‘Hey I just got a new piece of gear, I want you to check it out, I want your opinion.’ Focal had released a new series of monitor, so I grabbed the Twin6s from him and they were absolutely fabulous. They sound great and they look great.”
“I put them up on an API mixing console at ABC. We usually use a pair of Genelecs and KRKs, we replaced the Genelecs with the Focals and everyone loved them.” And even today Prinzivalli adds, “Everyone that sits in front of them is astounded. I bring the Twin6 monitors to the studio and put them up and people exclaim ‘Wow these things are immaculate!’ I have not heard any criticism about them at all. Which to me is pretty amazing, because when you think of Genelec and Adam, everyone has something to say about them ‘They’re a little bit too sharp, a little bit too polished or whatever.’ These Focals, I put them up and everyone exclaims ‘Wow those things are great!’ I’ve never heard one negative thing about them, it’s pretty wild.”
Prinzivalli also likes that the Twin6s are active powered monitors so every time he listens he gets a consistent sound. On Focal’s built-in amplifiers, he says, “It’s one less piece of gear I have to lug to a gig, it’s one less thing I’ve got to worry about. If I’m using a pair of passive monitors, they’re going to sound different on every amp I put them on. The amplifiers in the Focals are tone matched, their impedance curves are matched, they work efficiently, I don’t have to worry about them sounding different. It’s the same every single time.”
And he likes the form factor of the Twin6 monitors — one that seems to fit in those tight post-production audio environments like mobile trucks, either vertically or horizontally. And with the reflex ports out front, they can be sofit-mounted, or placed right up against a wall. “I love the shape of the Twin6s, you can fit them just about anywhere,” he adds.
During one particular live television broadcast for a Good Morning America weekend show, Prinzivalli remembers what sealed his use of the Focals for good. “The turning point for me was mixing something for Cyndi Lauper, one of her acoustic things, where she had a dulcimer, a viola and a cello, she was doing a new rendition of one of her pop hits. Typically I switch between monitors constantly just to get a balance, and I hadn’t realized until the end of the day when the broadcast was done, after the show was over, that I only used the Focals. I turned around to the producer and the other audio guy in the booth and said ‘That went really good, it was really smooth; I loved the arrangement.’ Everybody was happy, high-fives all around. Once the producer left, the other audio guy said ‘You know what? You didn’t flip your monitors at all today!’ I said what do you mean? and he said ‘Usually you’re bouncing between the Genelecs and the KRKs and you can’t seem to decide what the mix sounds accurate on. Today you didn’t flip at all!’ From then on those Focals came with me to every gig I work on.”
At Times Square Studios, studios he mixed Mary Mary, a gospel Christmas act, for a Good Morning America television special on the Twin6 monitors; he’s used them to mix a live Julio Iglesias TV event, and he uses them on Sesame Street. He’s one of three engineers on Sesame Street doing audio for the production, he does all the music for the show, all the Pro Tools editing and playback. “We take the music tracks from the recording studio and we add all the Muppet vocals to them,” says Prinzivalli. “I’ve got a small vocal booth there with a nice tube mic. And I work with a vocal producer. There is a preproduction team that does all the arrangements, all the composing; and then there’s a post production team that does all the sweetening and special effects.”
“The Muppeteers come in the first thing in the morning and lay down some tracks, they record their vocals to whatever song it is. During the course of the day I’ll edit the vocals and music, sweeten them a bit and play them back for the production. Nine out of ten times the Muppets aren’t singing live, they’re just miming to what I am providing them with. We’ll mix to in-ears or blend the vocals together for the director. Two weeks ago we did a parody of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man!”
Discussing how the Twin6 BE monitors translate in an audio post environment, Prinzivalli recalled one gig for MTV Live, a series of live concerts at the Hard Rock Café in New York, where he worked in one of the CSP Mobile Productions trucks. “I was the production audio mixer and I brought the Twin6 monitors with me. I took a music stem from the music truck and then added my own camera mics, the audience mics and all of the other mics, the host and the backstage mics. When I mix for a TV production, there is a satellite return that we can listen to or audition — that’s probably the closest it comes for a TV production mixer to see how a mix translates to the broadcast medium. And in that case it was pretty close. The Focals are honest and truthful monitors. I’m pretty amazed about how accurate they are. I’ve been very satisfied as far as translation goes.”
Commenting on the difference between a music recording gig and television post, Prinzivalli concludes, “The people that hire me, the producers of the TV show, don’t care what kind of equipment we use. Whereas in the recording studio, musicians are going to want an RCA microphone or a Leslie cabinet or a Marshall, they’ve got to have a certain sound. The TV guys don’t care, so when they call me I’ve got to use the simplest, the most consistent thing that I can bring to it. With the Focals, it’s plug-and-play, I know what they sound like. I trust what they sound like. They are going to give me just what I give to them, it’s a matter of honesty and I’ll use them on every show.”
To contact Chris Prinzivalli visit his website at: http://www.chrisprinz.com
For more on Focal monitors please visit: www.focal-fr.com (choose the ‘Focal Professional’ link)
