It’s the end of an era for this legendary studio.
Earlier today, audio engineer Les Claypool III (no relation to the Primus frontman) announced that he’s closing the Magnitude 8 Post recording studio. He noted financial difficulties in the current market as the primary reason for the closure.
Claypool posted the following to his Facebook account:
After well over a thousand episodes, trailers, games, movies, etc., the time has come to close the studio doors for good. It’s simply not feasible to work three times as hard for one third the money and survive. In this era of a few pieces of foam and an M-box being called a studio, floated floors and walls, isolated electrical, tuned rooms, etc., have gone from necessity to luxury. Since I refuse to illegally 1099 engineers and stick them with self-employment tax, try to talk actors out of their hard earned minimums, and have unpaid interns do the work clients are paying me to do, all in order to meet budgets that are smaller than they were in my garage 25 years ago, I will simply close.
I’ve met a lot of great people, had some great adventures, and worked on some really cool stuff. Akira, Appleseed, Big O, Blackjack, Castle of Cagliostro (twice!), Code Geass, Cowboy Bebop, Defiance, Devil May Cry, Drive, Final Fantasy, Giant Robo, Ghost in the Shell (movies and TV series), Gundam, Guyver, Macross Plus, Ninja Scroll, Orguss, Resident Evil 5, Tri-Gun, Wings of Honneamise, Wolf’s Rain, and so many more.
I’ve designed and built or supervised the build of studios in LA, Las Vegas, and Costa Rica. Helped design a workflow to marry facial mo-cap with Pro Tools ADR, and recently had someone approach me at an autograph session and tell me that he became an audio engineer because of me and uses my Macross Plus mixes to show people how dialog is supposed to be mixed.
Not bad for a movie loving guitar player from Pacoima I reckon.
Magnitude 8 Post was based in Arieta, California. Their first known anime projects included Macross II and Orguss, which were both released in in 1992.
The studio also handled a number of video games, including Silent Hill 3, Suikoden V, and the Xenosaga series.
Source: Facebook (Les Claypool III)
