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A.R.T. Studios was the private music studio of music producer Michael Cretu, located in his mansion in the hills of Ibiza, Spain. In May 2009 the mansion together with the studio were demolished. The studio itself was used by Cretu until 2005, when he moved to a mobile computerized system "Alchemist" and from 2010 a new system named "Merlin".
This studio was designed and built by Gunter Wagner and Bernd Steber (Sydney/Australia) and was used in the recording of all of Cretu's productions (Enigma, Sandra, Trance Atlantic Air Waves).
Bernd Steber came up with the idea of hiding all acoustical trapping behind a full-size piece of canvas which could be stretched from one side of the room to the other and painted like a picture. The artist painted a night sky with thousands of stars and some very close star nebulas, similar as seen on images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. The walls are built with blocks of open porous sandstone and they seem to break in an irregular line just under the ceiling. The big monitor speakers and the outboard equipment racks are built into these sandstone walls and the entrance into the room is through two big Arabic sandstone arcs in the back. The floor is covered with a wall-to-wall carpet which was printed with a reproduction of the Moon's surface. There is a huge arc-shaped window in the front of the room with a view down the hill to the sea.
All external equipment is wired to a large digital mixing console which was custom built by AMEK and the German Company Mega Audio according to Michael Cretu's preferred working procedures. This console is physically small but it has 160 inputs to collect most signals coming from any midi source, computer or microphone without the need of any patch bay. This is possible because all active components are located outside in some huge racks in the machine room. This keeps all noise and unnecessary heat out of the control room and reduces physical size.
All recording is done on a Pro Tools system hardware and Emagic's latest version of Logic Audio Platinum software. Software samplers as Samplecell, Steinberg's Halion and the PC-based StudioSampler are all linked and sync-ed together on demand. There are several racks full of external MIDI modules and hardware samplers as well as a selection of reverb systems as the Lexicon 480 and 960 as well as some more exotic reverbs like the vintage Yamaha REV1, REV7 and REV9, the Eventide DRP9000 and the Dynacord DRP20. Integrated is Michael's old Waveframe 1000. This was the machine that made Enigma happening in the first place in 1990. It was the first real fully professional digital "Studio-in-a-box". Its constant sampling rate system is brilliant and the sample editing and archiving feature is still unmatched. The monitoring system was especially designed and built by Quested Acoustics.
From the credits of various albums, it is known that Michael Cretu uses or has used the Waveframe 1000, Audioframe Workstation, MiniMoog, PPG System, Korg M1, C-Lab Notator, Takamine 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars, Tom Anderson electric guitars, Otari DTR-900, Akai S900, Linn 9000, Sequential Circuits Prophet 2000, Oberheim Xpander, EMS Vocoder, Yamaha DX-7, Roland MKS-80 Super Jupiter, Roland V-Synth, Korg OASYS, Korg Karma. [1]
A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing (DSP) techniques to make musical sounds. This in contrast to older analog synthesizers, which produce music using analog electronics, and samplers, which play back digital recordings of acoustic, electric, or electronic instruments. Some digital synthesizers emulate analog synthesizers; others include sampling capability in addition to digital synthesis.
Digital music technology encompasses the use of digital instruments, computers, electronic effects units, software, or digital audio equipment by a performer, composer, sound engineer, DJ, or record producer to produce, perform or record music. The term refers to electronic devices, instruments, computer hardware, and software used in performance, playback, recording, composition, mixing, analysis, and editing of music.
A music workstation is an electronic musical instrument providing the facilities of:
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument that records and plays back samples. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sound effects or longer portions of music.
Enigma is a German musical project founded in 1990 by Romanian-German musician and producer Michael Cretu. Cretu had released several solo records, collaborated with various artists, and produced albums for his then-wife, German pop singer Sandra, before he conceived the idea of a new-age, worldbeat project. He recorded the first Enigma studio album, MCMXC a.D. (1990), with contributions from David Fairstein and Frank Peterson. The album remains Enigma's most successful, helped by the international hit single "Sadeness ", which sold twelve million units alone. According to Cretu, the inspiration for the creation of the project came from his desire to make a kind of music that did not obey "the old rules and habits" and presented a new form of artistic expression with mystic and experimental components.
mLAN, short for Music Local Area Network, is a protocol for synchronized transmission and management of multi-channel digital audio, video, control signals and multi-port MIDI over a network.
The Ensoniq Mirage is one of the earliest affordable sampler-synths, introduced in 1984 as Ensoniq's first product. Introduced at a list price of $1,695 with features previously only found on more expensive samplers like the Fairlight CMI, the Mirage sold nearly 8,000 units in its first year - more than the combined unit sales of all other samplers at that time. The Mirage sold over 30,000 units during its availability.
The Roland D-50 is a synthesizer produced by Roland and released in April of 1987. Its features include digital sample-based subtractive synthesis, on-board effects, a joystick for data manipulation, and an analog synthesis-styled layout design. The external Roland PG-1000 (1987) programmer could also be attached to the D-50 for more complex manipulation of its sounds. It was also produced in a rack-mount variant design, the D-550, with almost 450 user-adjustable parameters.
Michael Cretu is a Romanian-born German musician, composer and record producer. He gained worldwide fame as the founder and musician behind the musical project Enigma, which he formed in 1990.
The Korg Triton is a music workstation synthesizer, featuring digital sampling and sequencing, released in 1999. It uses Korg's "HI Synthesis" system and was eventually available in several model variants with numerous upgrade options. The Triton became renowned as a benchmark of keyboard technology, and has been widely featured in music videos and live concerts. At the NAMM Show in 2007, Korg announced the Korg M3 as its successor.
A sound module is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a piano-style musical keyboard. Sound modules have to be operated using an externally connected device, which is often a MIDI controller, of which the most common type is the musical keyboard. Another common way of controlling a sound module is through a sequencer, which is computer hardware or software designed to record and playback control information for sound-generating hardware. Connections between sound modules, controllers, and sequencers are generally made with MIDI, which is a standardized interface designed for this purpose.
The Yamaha RM1x is a groovebox manufactured by Yamaha from 1999 to 2002. It integrates several, commonly separate, pieces of music composition and performance hardware into a single unit: a step-programmable drum machine, a synthesizer, a music sequencer, and a control surface.
The Korg Wavestation is a vector synthesis synthesizer first produced in the early 1990s and later re-released as a software synthesizer in 2004. Its primary innovation was Wave Sequencing, a method of multi-timbral sound generation in which different PCM waveform data are played successively, resulting in continuously evolving sounds. The Wavestation's "Advanced Vector Synthesis" sound architecture resembled early vector synths such as the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS.
A Posteriori is the sixth studio album by German musical project Enigma, released on 22 September 2006 by Virgin Records. In December 2006, the album was nominated for Best New Age Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards.
Poland - The Warsaw Concert is the twenty-fourth major release and fifth live album by Tangerine Dream. It spent one week on the UK Albums Chart at number 90.
The Roland MKS-80 Super Jupiter is a rack mount sound module version of the Roland Jupiter-6 and the Roland Jupiter-8 synthesizers. It is an 8-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer that was manufactured by Roland between 1984 and 1987. It is the only one of the MKS series of synthesizers to have analogue voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) instead of analogue digitally-controlled oscillators (DCOs). The voice architecture is almost identical to the Jupiter-6 synthesizer. The service manual states that "The module board of MKS-80 features the following in addition to that of JP-6, its brother module. 1) HPF. 2) Low boost circuit in the 2nd VCA. 3) DC supply current boost circuit (IC50)."
The Prophet 2000 is a sampler keyboard manufactured by Dave Smith's Sequential Circuits (SCI) and released in 1985. It was the company's first sampler, and, despite its low audio fidelity and technical limitations by modern standards, marked a shift toward affordable samplers with better audio quality than its predecessors. It is also considered to be one of the earliest multitimbral samplers.
The Fall of a Rebel Angel is the eighth studio album by the German musical project Enigma, released on 11 November 2016 by Republic Records. The first studio album since Seven Lives Many Faces (2008), it is a concept album that tells the story of a protagonist's journey of development and change to find a new, fulfilling life. The album was developed by Enigma's founder, producer, and principal composer, Michael Cretu and German lyricist and librettist Michael Kunze. Its artwork was designed by Wolfgang Beltracchi.
The Korg DRM-1 is a drum machine manufactured by Korg from 1987. Introduced at the 1987 NAMM Convention, it is a 1U rack-mount unit featuring expansion card slots and a 5000-note drum sequencer.
Michael Cretu worked in the A.R.T. Studios only on his first five Enigma albums. For the sixth and seventh album he used "Alchemist", an all in one computed mobile studio. And for the eighth album he will use "Merlin", the successor of "Alchemist".