Recording - October 2014 - 46

I do all my EQing before compression, an EAR tube EQ first, then a discrete GML
EQ. The GML is also wrapped through my Mid-Side network and can go either
Left/Right or M/S. Steve Firlotte from Inward Connections built me a modified EMI
spreader control, that's in the chain. I have two different elliptical filters for summing
to mono, and a Maselec limiter. For an SSL-style compressor, the repeatability, the infallibility, and just the clean gain you can get out of the thing is astounding. I love it.
How is this all tied together? What is your mastering console?
It's all housed in an Argosy desk and the center section is custom built by Steve Firlotte
from Inward, I would say it's his version of Avocet or Dangerous, though this design
actually predates both pieces. He's also done all my mods. All the gear is [wired] pointto-point with no patch bay. There's one main XLR patch point to get into the front of the
desk and there's one to get out of the desk. Anything that needs to be bypassed has
switchable relay bypasses, and there are VU meters on the front end, VUs on the back
end, and then VUs on the main program. So I can monitor pretty much anything that's
going on in the studio, from any position.
Most of the desk runs on DC; there are a couple of pieces where the power supplies
are still in the units, the Burl converter mainly. Everything else has been remoted, just
to keep it clean and most of the power supplies sit in another area. It keeps the room
really cool; we run on almost no air conditioning here.
We do have a Studer and an Ampex, and if the analog decks are cranking doing transfers it gets a little warm. But it gets a little warmer any time we flip on technology from 1976!

The only other piece of analog gear I should mention, which has just been added
to the desk, is an [elysia] xfilter.
I just reviewed that a few months ago, in our July 2014 issue.
I didn't have a device really for filtering low frequency rumble. If it's PCM work I
can do it in the box, but if it's DSD I do not have the ability to process that whatsoever once I've captured it. I'm still learning what it can do, what its strengths and its
weaknesses are, but it's fun.
So what do you capture back to?
If it's PCM I capture back to Pro Tools, if it's DSD I capture to the Merging
Technologies Pyramix.
Let's talk plug-ins...
I'm pretty old-school when it comes to plug-ins. I still use a Waves L2 on occasion.
Gasp! This interview is over! [both laugh]
I get most of the gain that I need from my desk through gain staging and transformers, so I really use it just to keep from getting overs. I'm using like six- or seventenths of a dB, which is typical of the way I used the hardware.
I had a hardware L2 in my desk for years, back when it first came out like in 1999
or 2000, and as the level wars really kicked in, we started getting 2 and 3, sometimes
46

RECORDING October 2014

up to 4 dB out of it. That's just too much;
you start to suck all of the dimension out of
the song. Not that it's a fault of the plug-in,
it's just that's what it has to do to give you
level for free, basically. Now we're back to
using it very minimally, and it works in that
capacity. I also have a couple of other plugins I've used from Massey and iZotope, and
I have the elysia alpha compressor.
I use that one, it's really gentle for a
plug-in compressor.
I am still experimenting with it. I have
trouble knowing how far to turn the knobs
on a plug-in. I can turn the knob on a piece
of analog gear and hear it directly, but a lot
of times the plug-in will have functions or

buttons that I don't inherently know what
they do. It's a lift button, or it's a shunt button, or it's a floor button...
On hardware, when I adjust a lowcut filter
and roll off bottom end, I understand that it's
pushing up one peak by making dips around
it. I don't have that shorthand with plug-ins in
many cases. So I don't know how far to turn
things, and I have to experiment a lot.
What's your monitoring chain? Do you
just work with one set of monitors or
do you have multiple sets?
I have three. I have PMC mains, IB1s, that
I've had for a long time, with a pair of Bryston
7BST amps. I have a set of PreSonus Sceptres
that we use as midfields, and I also have a set
of Avantone Mixcubes. Basically, I'm spending 80% of my time on the PMCs.
Mixcubes in a mastering room? Usually I
see those in mixing rooms.

Recording - October 2014

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