New York, NY, November 21, 2024 — EastSide Sound, the second-longest-running recording studio in New York City after Electric Lady, has installed one of the first Harrison 32Classic analog mixing consoles anywhere in the world. The studio, established on Manhattan’s Lower East Side by Lou Holtzman in 1972, featured a Harrison SeriesTenB for more than three decades and over the years has regularly hosted clients such as John Zorn, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Lurie, Les Paul, the late producer Hal Willner plus many, many other A-list artists.
The longstanding relationship with Harrison Audio, which includes Holtzman’s participation in the development of the brand’s Series12 console, was certainly a factor in the decision to purchase the new 32Classic from the company, according to Andres Pollak, a producer, engineer and musician who acquired ownership of EastSide Sound in late 2022. Lou Holtzman continues to work at the facility as Senior engineer alongside Grammy-winning Marc Urselli Engineer/producer as Chief engineer. “Harrison has been a very important part of the studio,” Pollak says. But more importantly, “This console has an inline architecture that is based around the modern type of work we all do now. Some of the other consoles we were considering didn't have that option.”
Harrison 32Classic: Great Expectations
Pollak visited the Harrison factory in Nashville to test drive the 32Classic. “We have some of the mic pre’s at EastSide, so I know that they are really good,” he reports, “but I had never worked with the EQ before.” The four-band parametric EQ of the new 32Classic builds on the design of Harrison’s classic 32C console of the 1970s. “We brought some tracks with us, and I tried to push the EQ very hard to see when it was going to crack. It never did, and it sounded smooth and very musical.”
When recording, he comments, “We don't want to color the pure sound that's coming from the microphone unnecessarily. We don't want it to sound thin, but we don't want to have excessive color, because you can always add color. So, thinking about that, I was very pleased with how the console sounded. The master 2bus has a Jensen transformer that can be engaged and add some extra color."
Pollak and his son Nicolas “Nico” Pollak, who is also an engineer and musician, have a largely private facility in their native Chile that features an SSL AWS console. The studio is configured for hybrid and remote workflows since few clients visit, he says. “But in a studio focused primarily on tracking, where you have clients coming in and out, we decided the 32Classic was the right choice” it ticked all the boxes, he says.
A flexible cornerstone for tracking
“We needed a very flexible tracking console, because we want to have our clients come in, record with no problems and go. Everybody's very busy and they don't want to spend much more than they need to. Not every studio can track, because you need a very good system with all the interfacing and peripherals, a flawless patchbay and cables, a good room with ISO booths and instruments, and fast engineers. You’ve got to be prepared, and you’ve got to work fast,” Pollak says. “Another ingredient that is very important for us is that it has a modern power supply with no fans. The console is so efficient that it barely even gets warm.”
“When you see it, it looks like a powerful console, but it has all the new features you would like to have and all the efficiency,” Nico Pollak adds. “We looked at many consoles but none of them had that feeling of a big analog console. That was one of the biggest selling points about the Harrison console.”
Inline monitoring, an innovative signal flow first made commercially available in a mixing console by company founder Dave Harrison, allows the engineer, while recording, to introduce both an input source and the return from the DAW or tape machine through a single channel module, across the board. Andres Pollak elaborates, “We record to Pro Tools, so we want to monitor that. This console has Dante built into it; you press a button, and, through Dante, you can make all 32 modules become inline modules.”
Unparalled hybrid integration and routing
The Harrison 32Classic uniquely features integrated onboard professional grade A/D and D/A converters along with a Dante interface to connect over a single ethernet cable to the DAW. Pressing the INLINE button on any input module selects the associated Dante input to that channel’s monitor path.
He continues, “It surprises me that many people are going into Pro Tools but they're only monitoring the 2-bus. We don't work like that. We have all the tracks laid out. Then you can give the client a nice mix to take home to listen to later or use. It can make stems very fast, so we can also give them stems. We have a lot of outboard here and, if I were a client, I certainly would want to have the pure tracks and also have some stems going through a Shadow Hills or Rupert Neve Designs compressor.”
“The thing about Dante is that you can integrate many things,” Nico Pollak also comments. “For instance, we do videos at the studio and we could use Dante to clock all the sources. That avoids a tremendous amount of work you otherwise would have to manually do some other way. That's a game changer for the future.” The Dante network can also be used to introduce a 12-wide (7.1.4) Atmos feed into the console’s monitor section. “We want the meat and potatoes of analog for tracking, because it's really the main thing we do, but we also want to expand our mixing capabilities,” he says.
To further enhance the mixing capabilities of the room, the team at EastSide has additionally integrated two Solid State Logic controllers, a UF1 DAW control center and a UF8 eight-fader advanced DAW controller, which sit on the 32Classic’s deep front bolster. The UF1 provides transport control of Pro Tools, Andres Pollak says. “And if you want to mix something in Pro Tools with more than a few faders you can just grab the UF8 faders. It also has macros; it’s a very comprehensive unit.”
With the 32Classic now installed, Pollak is working to advance a project to create a hub for New York’s community of Latin American musicians at EastSide Sound. “I'm working with some local New York Chilean artists right now. I'm half Israeli and we also have a very close connection with the Israeli musicians in New York. Nico and I are both musicians. We speak Spanish, Hebrew and English and we love sound and music. We’re not just some gear nuts; having this studio is a cultural project.”