Edit/Mix Room
This is situated in our large basement (48m sq. with 3.4m high ceiling) of our Rome apartment & has been acoustically treated (although I think the evenness of the bass is just as due to the fact that almost a 3rd of the area has been converted into a walk in wardrobe – how may of you have a 3 m x 3 m x 2 m bass trap!).
I initially set this area up mainly as an editing area for comping tracks that I’d recorded in commercial studios or on location, then finishing most mixes at commercial studios. The space works well & I have found I do most of my mixing here these days. Although it’s a very humble Pro Tools Native set up it serves me well. I also do the odd overdub here, acoustic guitars in particular sound great in this space, especially with an ambient mic at the top of the (hardwood) spiral staircase.
Pro Tools
Pro Tools 12 running on a iMac Quad Core 3.08 GHz / 16 gig ram.
Apogee Quartet desktop interface.
Avid S3 Control surface.
Benchmark DAC1 D/A converter.
Universal Audio UAD2 Satellite quad core
Like everybody, I love the UA stuff, some of the best emulations on the market. Helios, Harrison, Neve eq get a lot of use as does the DBX 160 comp & SPL Transient Designer. The 1176 & LA2A are a toss up between UA and Bomb Factory on a case by case basis. I love the EMT plate as well, having used a real one on a daily basis at Straylight Studios it tends to be my go to vocal reverb.
Other plug ins
Too numerous to mention but include the Waves Gold bundle & Abbey Road bundles, McDSP, Soundtoys, Antares Autotune 8.
Analogue processing
For projects I have recorded myself I tend to rarely use much analogue processing while mixing as I have already used anything I need while tracking. I do not like to get bogged down in mixes & often work on two or three at the same time as a way of maintaining perspective & therefore I like to mix within Pro Tools (although with a control surface, mixing with a mouse has never cut it for me) so I can have total recall. If a project comes in for mixing I may use anything I have (see Sidecars & Outboard page) if I feel it is needed but record the processed version back into Pro Tools once I’m happy so I can continue to use my normal mixing workflow.
Monitoring
Dynaudio M1 – getting quite old hat now but I’ve been using them since Simaen Skofield showed me a prototype pair he was testing back in the early ’90s – brutally honest….
Blue Sky Exo 2.1 – another, more hi-fi, type perspective & the sub fills in the very bottom octave that the M1s lack.
Bose Computer MusicMonitor – fantastic quality for the size & I use them to get a more lo-fi perspective on the mixes.