Seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer, mixer and engineer Darrell Thorp first experienced the ISO Series speaker stands when adjusting his reference monitors to ear height at Los Angeles facility, 101 Recording. “I remember thinking how clear and punchy my speakers sounded,” says Thorp.
On that occasion, Thorp, who has been recognized with Grammy Awards for his work with artists such as Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, Switchfoot, Molotov and Beck, never had the opportunity to compare his speakers’ performance on and off the ISO Series stands. “I didn’t think too much about it,” he says. “It wasn’t until I was in another recording studio and I was working on my Acoustic Energy AE1 monitors that I remembered the IsoAcoustics stands. I set them up on the mixing console meter bridge and set my speakers on top.” The improvement was immediately obvious to Thorp.
I had to look at my assistant and say, I’m not crazy here, right? He said, ‘No, you’re not crazy.’
Starting out on his engineering career at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Arizona, his home state, Thorp worked his way up from runner to assistant engineer at some of the top studios in Los Angeles, including Track Record, Conway and, finally, Ocean Way (now United) Recording, before becoming a full-time independent engineer. Over more than two decades he has added numerous multi-platinum records to his discography, including Beck’s “Morning Phase,” for which he received three Grammy Awards, Radiohead’s “Hail to The Thief” and Paul McCartney’s “Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard.”
With so much experience under his belt, Thorp is very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the typical recording facility. “In a lot of situations, in your favorite studio, in your favorite control room, there’s some issue going on sonically, especially in the low end. But because the IsoAcoustics ISO Series stands help decouple the low end and it feels like, suddenly, the speaker is functioning properly. The sound is automatically tight and responsive—which is music to my ears,” he says.
“The new ISO stand is a must for every speaker and every studio,” says Thorp, who has recently also started using Focal’s new Shape 65 studio monitors. “The ISO stands works for me, that’s for sure. It sounds amazing.”
Record release dates are very carefully managed by artists and labels these days, so Thorp is mum about many of the high-profile projects that he has worked on most recently. But one project that recently saw the light of day was “Play,” a two-part mini-documentary, directed by Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl. The film includes a 23-minute piece of instrumental music on which Grohl performs all seven parts, each in a single live take. Thorp recorded the project over several days at EastWest Studios in Hollywood.
The IsoAcoustics ISO Series stands help decouple the low end and it feels like, suddenly, the speaker is functioning properly. The sound is automatically tight and responsive—which is music to my ears.
IsoAcoustics new line of ISO stands provide a very aesthetically pleasing and cost-effective means to markedly enhance the sound clarity and transparency of studio monitors and subwoofers, using the company’s patented design that decouples the speakers from their supporting surfaces.
