Barefoot

At the recent AES show, the self-effacing man behind the popular and much-praised MicroMain reference monitors, Thomas Barefoot, graciously gave Gearwire a guided tour of the interior of his speakers. Quite literally, there's a lot going on in there.  

Jeff Ehrenberg, engineer and co-owner of Infrasonic Sound in LA, owns a covetous collection of recording gear. His reference monitors of choice are a pair of Barefoot MM27s, active monitors with an side-mounted, resonance-neutral woofer design that makes it totally OK that they're sitting atop a pricey Rupert Neve Designs console.  

It's not any easy task getting seasoned engineers to part with tradition, but Doug McBride explains why Gravity Studios in Chicago made the switch to the decidedly unorthodox Barefoot MicroMain27 reference monitors, and why he thinks that they're the only monitors an engineer at Gravity really needs.  

Barefoot's MicroMain 27 is the center of attention in this Gearwire demo video, blurring the lines between nearfield, mastering and main monitors. It sports a 1" soft dome tweeter, dual 5" midbass drivers and dual 10" subs,...