Studio Tour - Neil Parfitt

Not every studio we tour is open to the public. Today we're looking at the home office/studio of local tv composer/synthesist/tech-head/wearer-of-many-hats Neil Parfitt.

Nestled in the heart of East Toronto is Neil's house where, from the minute you walk in you're aware you're about to experience something a bit different. Being greeted by Mr. Pickles upon entry (his very friendly and affectionate house cat), you immediately are treated to an Interesting array of curios, one-of-a-kind furniture and decorations that are... everywhere. It draws you in wanting to discover more.

Upstairs in the actual Studio the story continues. As you can see from the pictures below, this is a huge amount of equipment that upon further inspection other than a number of personal items, is not at all overkill. Everything has a specific purpose and seems to be the exactly correct thing embedded into the network of computers, instruments, monitor controllers, pro level streaming cameras for client interaction and communication, and various gadgets assisting workflow. When I say 'integrated' I'm not kidding. It's like one gigantic mechanical beast that has evolved over time to grow exactly the right number of limbs and sub-brains to allow

creativity to flow and flourish.

The first thing you notice is his massive Eurorack modular synth system used for sound design that frankly dwarfs most music store keyboard departments. His collection of interesting and in some cases rare oscillators, filters, and utility modules is laid out in such a way to benefit synth patch workflow. Very impressive to the experienced and overwhelming to the uninitiated. Need to monitor it before it goes into the recording? No problem a secondary monitoring system consists of a table and headphone amp system for just-where-you-need-it access.

His writing and recording system consists of triple-monitor system and multiple Stream Decks preprogrammed for specific tasks in banks depending whether he's working in Logic, Pro Tools, or whatever other program needs accessing. He's using an HDX/Avid MTRX Studio that route everything here and there as needed. Output can be routed as Surround, Atmos, Stereo, to multiple busses including a stereo feed that can blend along with HD Video and streamed in an instant to a client for their approval and sign off before printing and producing deliverables. Very impressive.

The speaker system is a Genelec Atmos 7.1.4 layout that is perectly suited for the room in size and layout. All being routed through a Trinnov room correction monitoring system.

And Instruments? Sheesh. In addition to a Moog Model D, Roland CR-67 AND CR-78, Roland SH-1000, a Wurlitzer, and plenty of other vintage machines, he has an entire cabinet full of small toy electronic keyboards from all over including a Soviet built one. The above were collected over several years for various types of sound design in numerous projects.

I've been through major post-production houses and seen less efficient setups.

While visiting, I had a few questions for Neil:

You did a major overhaul of your studio a few years ago, switching to the Avid MTRX Studio What was involved in that and how did that benefit/change your system?

So there's double MTRX story here - 

In 2020 I was looking at a way to integrate all my I/O from RME MADI Cards, HDX3 with multiple MADI HD, AD/DA from multiple Systems into a single solution.  This ended up being the AVID MTRX with a stack of expansion cards.  To be honest,  the migration over to this was one of the smoothest deployments I've ever had!   Hats off to Digital Audio Denmark for designing the MTRX (an AX32 with digilink) and DADman.    Once the MTRX was in place,  it was just a matter of patching my various workflows in their routing software, and it was done!  It was approx 16U of AVID MADI, format converters and AD/DA smooshed all down into just the 2U MTRX.  Awesome!

At the beginning of 2025,  I made the decision to eliminate all rackmount synths and 99% of the analogue outboard (except for a few pre-amps and my Overstayer).  The Modular system and a 'monosynth library' remain. 

I also had an ulterior motive:  If working remotely,  I wouldn't be tied to any analogue gear to complete the job.   

This free'd up a significant amount of I/O so I decided to sidegrade to the smaller MTRX Studio. Like before, it was a smooth transition with the familiar and simple to setup DADman.  The overall benefit is everything being in the same ecosystem:  Logic, Pro Tools, Decoding, Routing between everything,  monitoring paths/submixes/folds etc.   

When you first got started doing scoring for TV, what was your initial setup like, and how has it evolved over the years in terms of workflow?

My first true 'scoring' setup was in 2004:  It was a PC running Logic 7, another running Gigastudio and a bunch of Roland modules and an AKAI S5000 sampler.  Interfaces at the time were the Echo Layla24 (Logic) and Gina24 (Giga) and all the synths were hardwired into dedicated inputs.  MIDI Interfacing was an Emagic Unitor8 and MT4 on the Giga Side for 64ch.  Monitoring was a pair of Genelec 1030A's.  Effects were UAD, SSL Duende and Waves Gold.  VI's were some of NI's early offerings - i think it was Kontakt 2, FM7 - and stuff like IK SampleTank XL! 

Evolution in the scoring setup was first,  slimming down the number of computers to do it (I went from 4 at the peak to 1 currently) and methods to create final deliverables easier and FAST,  without compromise... as this is one of the biggest time vampires in Scoring.   I've found Pro Tools chasing Logic to record final mixes on a synchronized timeline is still the fastest way (been doing this since 2009).   Especially in cartoons where I may have 30-60 pieces of music to deal with per episode.   It's much faster hearing it go down compared to the tedium of offline rendering, reimporting, checking it for glitches and re-spotting each cue in Pro Tools.    The added bonus is I can hear everything in context across the episode,  as sometimes it takes many different Logic sessions and different templates to compose all the different stylistics.   

So the evolution is:   computer power exponentially goes up... requiring less of them (and less system management)... supporting outside equipment shrinks...  time efficiency goes up.  

The Result:  more time to have a life or sleep or write etc.

Has installing your Atmos system forced you to change the way you work?

No not really,  but from an ergonomic standpoint it had some significant challenges.  This isn't just a mix room - it's a creative writing & sound design space - so with all these speakers everywhere it posed many challenges positioning music gear where I wanted it.   The three solutions that really helped me:

1) Putting the Modular Synth cabinets on castered stands.  I can roll them into position when working or push them completely out of the way to the side wall if not in use... without disconnecting them.

2) I have a low height trolly that can tuck away under my desk - I can roll it out if i want something else at hand like Laptop, paperwork, additional MIDI controllers etc

3) Instead of all synths connected at all times,   I opted to change this to a 'Library' wall where I just grab what I need, plonk it on the table, patch in and get to work.  

You strike me as the kind of guy that would rather find a tech solution to a problem than a simple solution. Am I getting warm?

OK OK I'm a tech head ...  buuuuuuut...    If deployed properly these are one and the same:  The underlying tech should always be invisible while working on the job! :)   

Everything has been carefully considered and configured so I can flip the entire studio to the job at hand very quickly:   Tracking, Scoring, Mix, Synthwork, remote Client review & Teaching with cameras etc.   I'm definitely an advocate for 'black box' hardware that does a specific job and does it invisibly and perfectly.  The Appsys MVR-64mkII is a good example of this.  Anything studio critical: format conversion, video routing and switching are all hardware solutions.  Mainly because there is ZERO system overhead or reliance on the computer.  OS's are such a moving target of reliability with every update.  It just needs to work with zero fiddling, glitching or computer fuss.  So based on everything I do, hardware solutions are still a necessity (hopefully not forever though!)

What's the one piece of gear in your Studio you can't live without?

This might sound silly in a space like this - but my Wurlitzer.  Sometimes staring into screens is so soul sucking.  With the Wurli,  I can play it whenever I want to 'reset' - regardless of the studio being up or off.

Any other major changes planned for the Studio in the future?

From the supporting hardware side - actually - nothing.  I love it where it's at.  From the computer side - eventually I'll change the rack to the Mac Studio as it's such a tremendously smaller thing and easy to travel with.  But,  as the current Mac Pro is such a beast in power,  there's no reason to change it anytime soon (unless it dies).

Neil Parfitt Website

Neil Parfitt IMDB