As a longtime music director and guitarist for Post Malone, Taylor Swift, Rita Ora and numerous others, Jonas Jalhay never really paid much attention to reference monitors and room acoustics. But as he increasingly became involved in production, engineering and mixing, including with Jason Mraz and Meghan Trainor, he began to understand their importance, gravitating to Amphion speakers and learning about acoustic treatment as he worked on developing his optimum home studio environment. Jalhay, who grew up in Belgium, lived and worked in the U.K. for 13 years then moved to Los Angeles, bought his Amphion One15 monitors around 2016. “I had a studio in the U.K. where we had a bunch of different speakers,” he recalls. “But I wasn't mixing a lot back then, I was more in the production world. I wasn't that interested in speakers, and I didn't really understand acoustics.”
Everything started to click during the pandemic, when Jalhay, who was head engineer at Dubway Studios West in L.A. at the time, had to start working out of his house. “I got an ASC AttackWall in 2020,” a freestanding, configurable acoustic treatment system, he recalls. “The Amphions with that system suddenly came alive. I still remember the first time I set it up. It was quite a special moment, like listening to your favorite records all over again.” It was almost like listening on headphones, he says, “Because you've got that tightness in the detail, but you have the comfort of working on speakers.”
