Skambra Studios’ Jørgen Manke“The S3Hs are just unparalleled.”

Let’s say you’re a musician. You’ve just won the lottery or landed the major deal of a lifetime.

You’ve got unlimited funds to produce an album and you’re starting with a blank page. Where would you write, record and produce your album? Abbey Road? Capitol Studios? Maybe. Or you’d search the globe looking for a venue that feels more like, well, home.

The stunningly beautiful town of Stavanger, Norway, is home to Skambra Studios. Flooded with natural light, the 40 m² control room is adjoined by an opulent 100 m² live room. “This is a great creative space filled to the brim with creative energy,” explains Skambra’s owner Jørgen Manke in a recent interview with ADAM Audio. “My studio is all about the great and inspiring atmosphere.”

This is a place where musicians and engineers alike can work for long periods without distraction. And it’s a quality that Jørgen demands of his monitor speakers: Extreme accuracy paired with a pleasant listening experience that lets you work for long stretches. “Due to the high-resolution ART tweeter, mixing for 15 hours straight is easily doable without getting ear fatigue, which is nothing less than amazing,” Jørgen explains.

ADAM Audio monitors, he finds, all share a feature that makes them indispensable to his work. “It’s the amazing mid-range control that they all seem to have. The new S Series have the best mid-range clarity I have ever experienced first-hand. On the S2Vs it’s amazingly good, but the S3H‘s are just unparalleled.”

“The ADAMs simply take the guesswork out of the whole mixing process. […] And the mix translates very well to any system.”

When Jørgen is mixing, he focuses on a few key areas of his mix. “The most important thing is being able to define what is happening in that important mid-range, where everything seems to culminate no matter the genre of music,” comments Jørgen. “The ADAMs simply take the guesswork out of the whole mixing process. What you hear is how it really sounds. And the mix translates very well to any system.”
His clients seem to agree. After his mix is complete, he often invites his clients to the studio to listen back to the finished product. “There have not been more than 2-3 instances that a client has not talked about how good the sound is from the ADAMs,” he recalls. His setup is completed with a Sub15 subwoofer.

Photos by Angelica Manke