Recording - March 2014 - 40

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Fender Passport Studio

Until now, that is. Someone (whoever it
is, I'd like to buy them a pizza) must have
been loading their near-fields into the
back of their car and cursing over accidentally putting a thumb through a tweeter when someone else came trundling
down the street with a Passport setup in
hand... and put two and two together.
Why shouldn't it be possible to build a
pair of really good-quality near-field studio monitors, ones you could track and
mix on with confidence, into a portable
enclosure like that? Show up with a little
briefcase in hand, open it up, set it up,
get to work, and neatly pack it up when
you're done. Brilliant!
From idea to execution, there are many
places to drop the ball, but Fender made a
very good choice in getting the Passport
Studio off the ground. Fender has partnered with Focal, makers of well-respected
studio monitors like the Twin 6 Be
(reviewed July 2008) and the CMS 65
(reviewed July 2009), to put the best possible drivers and electronics into the
Passport Studio. The result is a pair of small

Ever wished you could take a set of quality monitors with you? Now you can
While one could argue that there's nothing really new under the sun, Fender's new
Passport Studio represents a novel and
well-executed solution to a common problem in the workflow of many recording
engineers, and I think it's going to appeal
to a lot of folks. I was sent a pair before the
world even knew they officially existed,
and I'm pleased and proud to bring you the
first review of these fascinating monitors.
So what's the big deal? Check this out...
The question(s)
In today's world of small home and project
studios, journeyman engineers may have to
track and mix reliably in unusual settings-at
gigs in a back room set aside for a "mobile
unit", in someone's home, in a rehearsal
space. That leads to a question: "How do I
know what I'm hearing when I'm not in my
own room with my own speakers?"
Obviously there's no way you can bring
your own room with you. However, you
could bring your own speakers with you if
you wanted to, and for decades, many
engineers have done just that, mounting a
pair of near-field monitors of their own
atop the desk at the room where they were
hired in, to compare against the studio's
big soffited far-field or mid-field monitors.
40

RECORDING March 2014

In the bad old days, it was a badge of
honor to work that way: putting a pair of
heavy speakers in the back of your car,
arranging them so they wouldn't get hurt
(or investing in road cases for them, a
practice still seen today on some speakers
like the recently-reviewed Neumann KH
310), possibly adding a power amp and
proper cabling for them, and then getting
to the venue early enough to reverse the
process and set them up where they were
needed. But while this often led to more
accurate and reproducible results, it also
led to another question: "Shouldn't there
be an easier way to do this?"
The answer
For years, Fender has been known for
the Passport line of portable PA systems.
We've all seen them: a pair of passive
speakers and a powered mixer with a variety of inputs, all clipping together neatly to
make a portable self-contained "suitcase"
that can be easily toted around and set up
quickly. They're affordable, reliable, and
rugged, and as PA systems for outdoor use
they acquit themselves well, but I don't
think the makers of high-end studio monitors have been losing sleep over their
sound quality being a threat.

monitors that sit nicely at a price point
between "budget" and "high-end" with the
added benefit of being highly portable.
But how do they sound? We'll get to
that. First let's set them up.
Open them up
The Passport Studio is essentially an
active master/passive slave monitor system
in a portable enclosure. The enclosure's
two halves are held together with a rubber
clip that attaches to the carry handle.
First make sure you have a proper
placement for the speakers-tweeters at
ear level, stands or platforms that are free
of vibrations, preferably located so there
won't be any nasty bounce from nearby
walls or off the top of your console. (These
monitors are portable, but they don't let
you bypass the laws of acoustics.) Then
you remove the rubber clip and separate
and place the two speakers.
Once they're in place, you remove the
magnetically-attached doors on the back
of each speaker. On the back of the Left
(active) speaker, you'll find a heat sink
and all the connections for the system.
Inside the back of the Right speaker is a
storage cabinet for cables, a place to
store the rubber clip (not trivial-it's the

Recording - March 2014

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