Say Somethin'

Hidden in the sleepy little town of Lyons Colorado is an unassuming building without the benefit of a sign or any indication of what’s inside. It’s the home of Animal Lane, one of the world’s few 32 track Sonoma recording studios. During a week in December 2020, musicians Gabe, Tom, Seth, and Alejandro got together with Octave producer, Giselle Collazo, and recording engineer, Steve Vidaic to lay down some tunes and tracks. The session was basically live and captured without overdubs on the Sonoma pure DSD recording system, then later mixed through a vintage Euphonix analog board, then back again through Sonoma to put all the pieces together. What resulted was one of the most beautifully recorded jazz works yet and Octave Records is proud to have captured Gabriel Mervine’s music for all time. Gabriel’s trumpet was recorded using a combination of a Neumann M49 Cardioid and a Royer 122 Ribbon microphone into a Grace preamp. The mics were about 12” from the instrument’s bell. In the final mix, both the Neuman and ribbon were used with the ribbon more prominent. For the piano, a pair of DPA 4009 Omni stereo pair amplified with a Grace preamplifier were used along with a vintage RCA 44BX ribbon, amplified through a Forsell microphone preamplifier. Engineer Steve Vidaic placed the mics at the edge of the piano soundboard, lid low, to keep out the drum bleed and used mostly the vintage RCA in the mix, with a little DPA for stereo spread and air. For the bass, a Neumann U47 was placed close to the instrument’s bridge (6” out) and a Royer 122 Ribbon on the neck. Steve then added a Teletronix LA2A Limiter to the 122 and for the Neuman a Warm Audio WA76 Limiter through a dbx 160 for fast transients, and the lightest of touch with a Urie LA3A limiter for body control. Forsell preamplifiers were employed for both microphones. To record the drums Steve used a Soundelux iFET 7 and Grace preamplifier for the bass drum, a Sennheiser 421 connected through a Grace preamplifier about 6” to 8” from the front head snare, and for the brushes and overheads a rare Tim de Paravacini stereo AKG C24 vacuum tube microphone (on loan from Dan Schwartz) into a Forsell preamplifier. The C24 was placed about 18” to 24” above the drum kit. For the ambient room microphones, a custom pair of Rode stereo omnis through a Forsell preamplifier were employed. Captured in pure DSD on the Sonoma Recording System.

Download the recording booklet

• One pressing Austrian gold pressed dual-layer SACD
• Pure DSD + PROMastered CD layers
• Bonus needle drop from metal masters
• One pressing two-disc virgin vinyl 45 rpm master discs
• Pure DSD mastered by Gus Skinas on the Sonoma mastering system
• DSD64, DSDDirect Mastered 192kHz 24 bit, 96kHz 24 bit, 44.1kHz 16 bit PCM download
• No compression in the mastering process
• CD layer of SACD playable on any CD player
• Mastering monitored through the PS Audio DirectStream DAC
• All tracks hand curated on the Infinity IRSV in PS Audio's Music Room Two
• Limited edition one-pressing physical media