Snarky Puppy’s latest album, Somni, is far more than a musical release—it is the culmination of an 18-year relationship between the genre-blurring ensemble and Audio-Technica, a partnership rooted in trust, technical innovation, and a shared belief that great sound begins with great engineering. The project was recorded over three nights in January 2025 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where the band reunited with the Metropole Orkest under conductor Jules Buckley. Rather than rely on a conventional studio environment, they transformed a nightclub-style venue into a fully functional recording space, creating a hybrid setting that fused live energy with studio-grade precision.
More than 300 audience members were seated directly among the musicians and, in an unconventional but highly intentional choice, each listener was given a pair of Audio-Technica headphones fed by wireless RF packs delivering a custom live mix from front-of-house engineer Michael Harrison. The absence of a PA created a remarkably controlled sonic environment while preserving every nuance of the performance. As engineer Nic Hard explains, “The idea is that the audience provides energy for the band. That excitement translates into the recordings, keeping the performances fresh and alive.” To make the room viable for such an experiment, the team fully carpeted and draped the venue, installed acoustic treatment and reflection-control fabric, and fed more than 200 audio channels into four synchronized Pro Tools systems running at 96 kHz.
Audio-Technica’s involvement was woven into every stage of the production. The band monitored on ATH-M50x Limited Edition Ice Blue headphones, the Metropole Orkest on ATH-M50x White, and the audience on ATH-M20x Black. The microphone array spanned nearly every corner of the catalog: the newly introduced ATM355VF clip-on condenser for violinist Zach Brock, AT4081 bidirectional ribbons on horns, AT5047 condensers on vocals and woodwinds, AT5045 condensers in the percussion setup, AT4033a units on the Hammond organ, PRO35s across the string section, and a fleet of AT4050s used throughout percussion—with Hard frequently switching between cardioid, omni, and figure-eight patterns to match the demands of each composition. “For horns, I paired AT4081 ribbons with other condensers, using both for redundancy and to compare bleed,” he notes. “The ribbons sounded fantastic; in the mix I kept about a 50/50 blend of the two.”
Roxanne Ricks, Audio-Technica’s Artist Relations Manager, recalls the scale of the undertaking with awe. “Over 300 people seated among the orchestra, every single person wearing A-T headphones with their own personal mix. It was overwhelming in the best possible way. You weren’t just watching a recording session; you were immersed in an incredible experience and part of history.” That sentiment is echoed by Metropole Orkest staff engineer and technical producer Dirk Overeem, who helped design the enormous patch list required for the session and handled monitoring for the musicians. “We needed over 400 headphones for the audience, orchestra, and band,” he says. “Since then, we’ve used them on every gig. I even mix in them now, since I know them so well.”
After the Utrecht sessions concluded, Hard returned to his home studio in Spain, where he mixed the album entirely in the box—no small task considering each song contained more than 200 tracks. Once the stereo mixes were complete, he constructed a Dolby Atmos® version of Somni, positioning instruments around the listener to emphasize the album’s dream-state character. “I wanted to make it as fun as possible without being distracting,” he says. “The four-drummer trading section moves seamlessly around the listener, it’s completely immersive.”
The result is a project that could only have emerged from a long-standing creative alliance. From their earliest tours to their 2014 collaboration on Sylva and now Somni, Snarky Puppy and Audio-Technica have continually expanded what is possible in a live recording environment. As Overeem summarizes, “Audio-Technica provided us with the flexibility and reliability we needed to make such a complex production work. From microphones to monitoring headphones, everything delivered.” Ricks puts it even more succinctly: “To be in that room, surrounded by sound and energy, was something I’ll never forget.”
