Press release
28.10.2011 - Sennheiser UK
Steve Levine Sounds Out The Neumann KH 120
Perhaps best known these days for his work on various radio series, Grammy-winning producer Steve Levine has worked with many of the biggest rock and pop artists and is regarded as having ‘some of the best ears in the business’. When it comes to studio monitors he is, as you would expect very discerning, but Neumann’s new KH 120 has helped him to end a long-running search.
Steve has worked in the recording industry for 36 years, winning numerous awards. He does much of his current work at home. However, this is not your standard home situation, with Steve recording in a highly-specified studio. Finding a mid-sized monitor has always been an issue for him, but with the Neumann KH 120 his quest has finally ended.
“When you are mixing at home, you have to get the balance right between having something that gives you a true sense of the low end and speakers being gigantic,” he says. “With the radio shows - especially The Record Producers for Radio 2 - I do a lot of editing on computer. For that I had been searching for several years for a smaller monitor which had the right sound, but which isn’t fatiguing on the ears, as many monitors of that kind of size are.”
Having tried literally every brand, when Steve heard about the KH 120s, he wanted to try them. As one would expect, he knows exactly how his studio sounds and that, acoustically, it is very accurate. So it was something of a ‘Eureka moment’ when he realised that Neumann had produced exactly what he has been looking for.
“Like everybody does, when I first set them up in the studio I put a CD through them and the clarity was breath taking - I could hear the layers of things, everything, it was just an amazing revelation,” he says. “It was music I’d known for a long time and, all of a sudden, something I knew so well became incredibly transparent and clear.
“My immediate reaction was ‘Oh, finally! Monitors that sounds like I want them to sound’. From the start I was very impressed.”
Steve mixed the most recent episode of The Record Producers featuring Pink Floyd – broadcast on 3rd October on BBC Radio Two, with an exclusive, extended 90-minute version on BBC Radio 6 Music on 7th October – on the KH 120s and the Neumann monitors proved more than up to the task.
“It was probably one of the hardest shows I’ve ever done in terms of mixing and really listening to the fine detail,” he concludes, “but the KH 120s made it a pleasurable experience and we had an unbelievable reaction response from the Radio 6 Music audience in particular, with many of them commenting on how good it sounded.”
A hi res image is available for download here.
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