– Edit / Mix –

Edit/Mix Room Edit / MixThis 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.

Pro Tools

Pro Tools 12 running on a iMac Quad Core 3.08 GHz / 16 gig ram

Digi 002 interface/control surface

Avid S3 Control surface

Benchmark DAC1 D/A converter

The Digi 002 is probably one of the best pieces of kit I’ve ever bought in terms of value for money & usage and for many years I found it hard to justify the large expense I’d have to make to have a significant improvement in quality/functionality. Eight motorised faders, 4 reasonable mic amps, 8 analogue in/out, 8 digital Adat in/out, a proper transport control & studio/headphone monitoring all in one rugged package & the ability to record 10 simultaneous tracks (with my TwinTrak Pro) at 24/96 or 18 at 24/48 with an Adat equipped octo mic pre when I’m on location; marvellous! It has now been augmented with an Avid S3 control surface and a Benchmark DAC1 D/A convertor

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 tend to prefer Bomb Factory versions but that’s probably just because I’ve been using them forever & have just got used to how they sound! 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 Complete Production Toolkit, Waves Gold bundle, McDSP EQ & compressors, 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.