Irvine, California, December 11, 2024 — Having guided breakout Mexican music star Peso Pluma to the top of the charts, a Grammy Award, 12 Billboard Latin Music Awards and a sold-out arena tour in just two years, George Prajin, CEO of Prajin Music Group, has turned his attention to expanding his company’s music production capabilities. The group’s Prajin Parlay Studioz in Southern California recently took delivery of the first Harrison 32Classic analog mixing console to come off the production line, on the West Coast, for a tracking room that will become fully operational in early 2025.
Grammy Award-winning engineer, mixer and producer Ernesto “Neto” Fernández reports that the new Harrison console is deceptively simple. “At first sight, it looks like your traditional analog console,” he says. “But where I see the power is with the whole Dante setup and the routing capabilities. It's like a big interface for your computer and is really impressive. Plus, the preamps and EQ sound fantastic.” Fernández won two Grammy Awards in February 2024, for his work on Peso Pluma’s Génesis album as well as Chiquis Rivera’s Diamantes album, which also won a 2024 Latin Grammy Award in November.
The Harrison 32Classic, which offers inline monitoring, is the first studio console to feature integrated high-performance A/D and D/A converters coupled to a Dante AoIP interface, enabling it to connect to the DAW over a single ethernet cable. Pressing the INLINE button on any input channel module selects the associated Dante input to that channel’s monitor path. The unique Dante interface also provides a simple but powerful 12 wide monitor source for feeding a 7.1.4 speaker array while working on Dolby Atmos projects without the necessity of an external wide monitoring solution.
Deep Harrison roots
The decision to install a Harrison 32Classic was driven by Pluma’s co-manager, Herminio Morales, whose brother, Jessie, professionally known as El Original de la Sierra, is also signed to Prajin. “Herminio went to school for audio engineering and was taught on a Harrison board; I believe it was an original 32C,” Fernández says. Introduced in 1975, the 32C was Harrison’s first console to offer company founder Dave Harrison’s innovative inline design concept and was the world’s first desk with 32 multitrack buses. “I also had experience with Harrison because where I learned, back in the ‘90s, had a Harrison MR4. So when the 32Classic came up it was nostalgic, you could say, and Herminio ended up purchasing it.”
Prajin signed Pluma to his company at the end of 2021 and in 2023 the pair partnered to launch a new label, Double P Records. Consumption of Mexican regional music, such as corridos, banda, ranchera, norteño, mariachi and sierreño, reportedly increased by over 40% in the U.S. during 2023. The Pajin group now represents numerous rising stars of Mexican music, including Santa Fe Klan, Código FN, Jasiel Nuñez, Tito Double P, Dareyes de la Sierra and Raul Vega. Some of them, like Pluma and his corridos, combine traditional Mexican music and instrumentation — accordion, tenor horns, trombone, acoustic guitars and upright bass — with elements of hip-hop, trap and reggaeton.
The ultimate 'classic' console for the modern studio
George Prajin, whose firm offers management, record label, and music production services, opened Prajin Parlay Studioz in Anaheim in 2021. The facility features a recording and mixing room plus a producers’ room — where the 32Classic has now been installed — that was initially designed for basic in-the-box production with a DAW and an interface. The new Harrison console was supplied by Southern California-based David Anthony of Professional Audio Design, which is headquartered in Massachusetts, who has been working with Prajin’s companies on studio acoustic and technical design for several years.
Fernández, recently honored as Producer of the Year at Billboard’s 2024 Latin Music Awards, has been working with George Prajin, who personally manages Peso Pluma and was honored as Billboard's 2024 Latin Power Players Executive of the Year, on and off since about 2000. He came fully onboard with the organization in 2018, just as streaming began to help revive the record industry’s fortunes, and these days also mixes in Dolby Atmos for the immersive music platforms.
Realizing great potential with Harrison
Fernández, who is nominated for a 2025 Grammy for his involvement in Peso Pluma’s current album, ÉXODO, which was streamed 29 million times on Spotify in its first 24 hours after its release on June 20, is looking forward to working with the firm’s artists in the newly reconfigured room. “That's where I see big potential for the Harrison board,” he says. “It's got a lot of power, and it sounds great. There's going to be great work done in this room.”
Fernández has wired the new Harrison console directly to a live space that is shared between the two control rooms, also linking to it via video. “It’s a separate room where we can record drums, accordions, guitars, vocals and all that,” he says. Twelve analogue lines run from the booth into the 32Classic’s DB25 input connectors. “Those pop up on the channels, and then I route those into Dante and into Pro Tools. The workflow is direct and fast.”
As the Prajin Music Group racks up one success after another, the firm is working on further expanding its Southern California music production facilities, Fernández reports: “We have another studio in Tustin and we're building two new studios in Irvine, at the main office.” The current plan is to work with the label’s artists at the company’s headquarters, he says, and make the Anaheim facility available for outside work.