'The Man of Steel' makes his long-awaited return to the big screen with more than a little help from Klein + Hummel. Casey Stone mixed the original soundtrack for "Superman Returns," composed by John Ottman, in 5.1 on the Klein + Hummel monitor setup that he has been using for over two years.

"I'm using the O 300Ds for left-centre-right, and an O 800 subwoofer," explains Stone, a busy scoring mixer who, at just 35 years of age, already boasts an enviable list of film score credits. "I'm using some two-way O 110 near-fields for the surrounds," he adds.

Stone initially started out with just the three K+H O 300Ds at the end of 2003. "Surprisingly enough, I bought them without ever hearing them!" he reveals. "The company was not very well known, but they had an ad in MIX magazine, a close-up of the O 300. I could see that it was a compact speaker with a tri-amped, three-way design, which is kind of unique. I saw that nice, bulbous mid-range dome and I just knew the speaker was going to sound good.

"As it turned out, Stone's intuition was right on the money. "They sound like they look...beautiful," he reports. "They are accurate. Not in the sense that there's any gold standard for what a speaker should sound like, I just mean that you can hear the details of your mix. The speaker doesn't obscure things."

He elaborates, "The clarity of the K+H monitors helps me 'zoom in' on any little thing that is bothering me in the mix. When I pop the mix up to some other speakers, the problems are farther away and harder to diagnose. Plus, the 0330s really put out a good amount of bass for a cabinet that size."

Stone, who uses the 5.1 K+H monitor system in a home listening room when not using it on the mix stage, has collaborated extensively with John Ottman since first working with the film composer in 1998 on "Halloween H20." Recent titles have included "Fantastic Four," "House of Wax," "Hide and Seek," "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," and "X2: X-Men United."

Stone also works extensively with Christophe Beck, including work on his scores for the movies, "The Pink Panther," "The Perfect Man," "Ice Princess," "Elektra," and "Taxi."