Rafa Sardina Achieves “Magical Balance” with Augspurger® Duo 8 MiniMain System

There are revelations in one’s career that come unexpected. Discovering the magical balance of the Augspurger® Duo 8 monitors has allowed me to work on so many different styles of music with a single speaker reference,

~Rafa Sardina, 13-time Grammy® winner, Afterhours Studio, Los Angeles. 

A close look at Rafa Sardina’s “Tiger Maple” Augspurger® Duo 8  Sub 12 System at Afterhours in Los Angeles. The modest-footprint monitors provide Sardina with 2500 watts of pure Augspurger® power and unequalled performance. Duo-8’s width and depth of soundstage is essential for Sardina’s work in a wide diversity of styles.

Rafael “Rafa” Sardina just might be the busiest man in the music business. At the very least the 13-time Grammy® & Latin Grammy® Award Winning Producer/Mixer/Engineer is in high demand.  When he’s not mixing orchestral tracks for film at his LA-based Afterhours Studio, he’s jetting around the world to engineer international superstars like Yanni, Placido Domingo and Luis Miguel. The Spanish-born Sardina’s list of credits is as impressive as it is diverse, filled with eye-popping names like Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Elvis Costello. In the Spanish-speaking music world, Sardina is a superestrella himself, having won more than a half-dozen Latin Grammys® for his work with the likes of Thalía, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Carina Ricco and Antonio Orozco. As Sardina himself likes to say, “I go where the music takes me.”

In his constant pursuit of sonic perfection, Sardina decided it was time to elevate the quality of his mixing monitors at Afterhours. After a couple of chance meetings with Augspurger’s® Dave Malekpour, Sardina agreed to try out a Duo 8 Sub 12 MiniMain system. As it turned out, it was the perfect solution. Sardina needs to be able to work on everything from hard rock to string ensembles, so a monitor that gives him a powerful and detailed soundstage of any type of source is a must. Additionally, the system’s deep DSP tuning capability ensures the monitors will be flat and accurate when coupled with Afterhours’ space-challenged environment. After giving the Duo 8’s a good couple of weeks of testing with his platinum ears, Sardina concluded that the Augspurger® system was the best main monitor he had worked on, and the right fit for his studio. Sardinia’s opinion that the Duo 8’s would improve his ability to hear and mix music is no small thing, given his reputation as one of the world’s best mixers. After all, his name goes on every project he does.

But he wasn’t done yet. When you are Rafa Sardina, It’s essential to have a comfortable yet energizing vibe for your clients and yourself to get creative. Sardina is about mojo. That is why he chose a pair of Duo 8’s with a highly figured flame-maple front baffle and horn, finished in a hi-gloss, rich red oak lacquer. You could say the wood is as textured as Sardina’s mixes.

Not surprisingly, Sardina’s Afterhours Studio was named a “Class of 2017” studio by Mix Magazine.