How Manny Sanchez transformed his studio with Focusrite RedNet and Dolby Atmos
Manny Sanchez began his audio journey at the turn of the millennium, honing his skills on analog tape machines and mixing consoles. Reluctant at first to embrace the digital realm, Manny now finds himself, nearly 25 years later, with a state-of-the-art home studio designed for 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos® immersive mixing. His setup is powered by an AoIP infrastructure built on the rock-solid reliability of Focusrite RedNet Dante®-networked converters, interfaces, and controllers.
“I started out on analog; I learned tape machines, I cut tape. Those things were second nature to me, so I went kicking and screaming into my first Pro Tools experience in the ‘90s,” Manny recalls. “Getting to this point, where I've got audio-over-IP and Dante, if you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have said there’s no way I’m doing that. I was such a brat about it all. But with just a little maturity and a little more knowledge, it’s come to make my workflow just so much easier and so much more solid.”
Manny began his career as an intern at Chicago Recording Company (CRC), eventually founding his own I.V. Lab Studios, where he collaborated with top producers and engineers, and worked with artists like Billy Corgan and Fall Out Boy. A few years later, Manny made the move to L.A., transitioning from the demanding world of music production to the steadier pace of broadcast and audio post-production. In 2019, he became the director of audio production at WGN America (now News Nation), later freelancing for Hulu and FOX. Today, Manny is the senior audio engineer at Paramount+, working from his home studio.
Manny began by installing a Focusrite Red 8Line interface in his personal studio, utilizing its built-in monitor control for formats up to 7.1. As he considered upgrading his space for immersive audio work, he started crunching the numbers.“Atmos was around, but it wasn’t on the forefront of everybody’s mind yet, like it is now. The great thing about my relationship with Focusrite is that as soon as I started to see that the upgrade might be a real possibility, I could see it wasn’t going to break the bank. Ultimately, I just had to add a couple more pieces of equipment from Focusrite to make it all work well. It’s just perfect, and RedNet is so easy to use.”
To set up his room for Dolby Atmos work, Manny upgraded to the Red 16Line and added a RedNet D16R MkII 16-channel AES3 I/O, along with a RedNet R1 desktop monitor controller. The D16R, with its 16 channels of AES3 I/O, played a crucial role in optimizing his monitor speaker setup, ensuring his system was perfectly dialed in for immersive mixing. “If I’m really going to trust what I’m hearing with what I’m delivering to Paramount, I need to make sure the monitoring is right. I wanted to do 7.1.4 and to have room correction so I bought the Trinnov D-MON, which is 12 channels. And the easiest way to integrate that with my Focusrite setup was to get the D16R, because it has AES, and I could go AES into the Trinnov”.
Now, he says of his mix room, “I love my setup. I hate having to go elsewhere to work. It sounds so good in here, and I know exactly how something is going to sound when it leaves here. I wish I could take this setup wherever I go.” He has appreciated Focusrite’s support as he’s made the transition to an AoIP workflow. “They have been absolutely great to work with. There isn’t another company that I work with that I have such personal relationships with. That is a key driver of my continuing to explore and use their technology.”
Even after a decade immersed in audio post, Manny hasn't left the world of music behind. Since 2014, he's been mixing live broadcast audio from the Sahara Tent at the Coachella music festival, working with Springboard Productions and its president, Hank Neuberger, a former boss from his CRC days. Chris Shepard, chief engineer and owner of American Mobile Studio—and another CRC alumnus—oversees the festival’s other stages for broadcast. Manny operates out of a truck provided by Media Stream Wave, run by Azuolas Sinkevicius, yet another CRC engineer.
At Coachella 2023, Manny made a small but impactful upgrade to his mixing setup in the truck, incorporating RedNet 6 and RedNet D64R units into his workflow for the Sahara Tent. In previous years, he explains, he would take a MADI input from the Sahara stage’s front-of-house or monitor console into his mixing setup. However, the live sound consoles provided by the production team defaulted to a sample rate of 48 kHz, while Manny’s Avid mixing rig operates at 96 kHz. “In order to maintain sync we had to ask someone at the front-of-house console or at monitor world to change the setting for each artist,” he says.
Feeding MADI from the stage to the truck also involved a long run of coax cable for sync, he continues. “It’s a live broadcast and to have that anxiety of not knowing if we’re going to lose sync, or if I’m going to get clicks and pops or have it drop out completely, just became too much.” “It’s a high-pressure gig”, he adds, with the Sahara stage featuring major artists such as Post Malone, Mac Miller, Kid Cudi, Blackpink and, the historic reunion of Blink-182’s classic lineup.
Working closely with Focusrite and Chris Shepard, Manny helped design a new system centered around the RedNet D64R. “We built a whole new system based around the RedNet D64R. We took MADI from the live sound console into the D64R and converted it into Dante, getting rid of MADI altogether, and then ran everything off a Dante network. We ran an Ethernet line from monitor world to our truck and it was solid. We never had any issues or audio dropouts. As long as Dante clocks to the MADI, you’re fine. It was the most successful technical experience at Coachella that we’ve ever had.”