History

Mid/Side microphone recording is hardly a new concept. It was devised by EMI engineer Alan Blumlein, an early pioneer of stereophonic and surround sound. Blumlein patented the technique in 1933 and used it on some of the earliest stereophonic recordings.

The M/S microphone recording technique is used extensively in broadcast, largely because properly recorded M/S tracks are always mono-compatible. M/S is also a popular technique for studio recording, and its convenience and flexibility make it a good choice for live recording as well.

Why Mid/Side?

The main weakness of the XY microphone technique is the fact that you're stuck with what you've recorded — as well as its stereo image. And in some cases, collapsing those tracks to mono can result in some phase cancellation.

The M/S technique gives you more control over the width of the stereo spread than other microphone recording techniques, and allows you to make adjustments at any time after the recording is finished.

What You Need

While XY recording requires a matched pair of microphones to create a consistent image, M/S recording often uses two completely different mics, or uses similar microphones set to different pickup patterns.

The "Mid" microphone is set up facing the center of the sound source. Typically, this mic would be a cardioid or hypercardioid pattern (although some variations of the technique use an omni or figure-8 pattern). The "Side" mic must be a figure-8 pattern. This mic is aimed 90 degrees off-axis from the sound source. Both mic capsules should be placed as closely as possible, typically one above the other.

How it Works

At its most basic, the M/S recording technique is actually not all that complicated. The concept is that the Mid microphone acts as a center channel, while the Side microphone's channel creates ambience and directionality by adding or subtracting information from either side.

The Side mic's figure-8 pattern, aimed at 90 degrees from the source, picks up ambient and reverberant sound coming from the sides of the sound stage. Since it's a figure-8 pattern, the two sides are 180 degrees out of phase. In other words, a positive charge to one side of the mic's diaphragm creates an equal negative charge to the other side. The front of the mic, which represents the plus (+) side, is usually pointed to the left of the sound stage, while the rear, or minus (-) side, is pointed to the right.

How to Do It

The signal from each microphone is then recorded to its own track. However, to hear a proper stereo image when listening to the recording, the tracks need to be matrixed and decoded.

Although you have recorded only two channels of audio (the Mid and Side), the next step is to split the Side signal into two separate channels. This can be done either in your DAW software or hardware mixer by bringing the Side signal up on two channels and reversing the phase of one of them. Pan one side hard left, the other hard right. The resulting two channels represent both sides of what your figure-8 Side mic is hearing.

Now you've got three channels of recorded audio — the Mid center channel and two Side channels — which must be balanced to recreate a stereo image.

Now, if you listen to just the Mid channel, you get a mono signal. Bring up the two side channels and you'll hear a stereo spread. Here's the really cool part — the width of the stereo field can be varied by the amount of Side channel in the mix!

Why It Works

An instrument at dead center (0 degrees) creates a sound that enters the Mid microphone directly on-axis. But that same sound hits the null spot of the Side figure-8 microphone. The resulting signal is sent equally to the left and right mixer buses and speakers, resulting in a centered image. An instrument positioned 45 degrees to the left creates a sound that hits the Mid microphone and one side of the Side figure-8 microphone.

Because the front of the Side mic is facing left, the sound causes a positive polarity. That positive polarity combines with the positive polarity from the Mid mic in the left channel, resulting in an increased level on the left side of the sound field.

Meanwhile, on the right channel of the Side mic, that same signal causes an out-of-phase negative polarity. That negative polarity combines with the Mid mic in the right channel, resulting in a reduced level on the right side. An instrument positioned 45 degrees to the right creates exactly the opposite effect, increasing the signal to the right side while decreasing it to the left.

What's the Advantage?

One of the biggest advantages of M/S recording is flexibility. Since the stereo imaging is directly dependent on the amount of signal coming to the side channels, raising or lowering the ratio of Mid to Side channels will create a wider or narrower stereo field. The result is that you can change the sound of your stereo recording after it's already been recorded, something that would be impossible using the traditional XY microphone recording arrangement.

Try some experimenting with this—listen to just the Mid channel, and you'll hear a direct, monophonic signal. Now lower the level of the Mid channel while raising the two Side channels. As the Side signals increase and the Mid decreases, you'll notice the stereo image gets wider, while the center moves further away. (Removing the Mid channel completely results in a signal that's mostly ambient room sound, with very little directionality — useful for effect, but not much else.) By starting with the direct Mid sound and mixing in the Side channels, you can create just the right stereo imaging for the track.

Another great benefit of M/S miking is that it provides true mono compatibility. Since the two Side channels cancel each other out when you switch the mix to mono, only the center Mid channel remains, giving you a perfect monaural signal. And since the Side channels also contain much of the room ambience, collapsing the mix to mono eliminates that sound, resulting in a more direct mix with increased clarity.

Other Variations

While most M/S recording is done with a cardioid mic for the Mid channel, varying the Mid mic can create some interesting effects. Try an omni mic pattern on the Mid channel for dramatically increased spaciousness and an extended low frequency response.

Experimenting with different combinations of mics can also make a difference. For the most part, both mics should be fairly similar in sound. This is particularly true when the sound source is large, like a piano or choir, because the channels are sharing panning information; otherwise the tone quality will vary across the stereo field. For smaller sources with a narrower stereo field, like an acoustic guitar, it's easier to experiment with mismatched mics. For example, try a brighter sounding side mic to color the stereo image and make it more spacious.

As you can see, there's a lot more to the M/S microphone technique than meets the ear, so give it a try. You'll find it to be an incredibly useful method to attain ultimate control of the stereo field in your recordings.

Here are some drum loops made with Mid/Side microphone recording. The mics were about 5 feet in front of the kit, head height with the drummer in a small room. If you have a DAW, you can download the Mid and Side WAV files separately and set up the sum-and-difference matrix yourself.

The Century Tube Channel Strip plug-in for UAD-2 hardware and UA interfaces is built to capture creativity the moment it strikes. With its organic tube mic preamp, transparent dynamics control, and intuitively voiced EQ, the Century Tube Channel Strip is perfect for desktop UA audio interface users — allowing you to stay in the creative zone, helping you capture first-take magic with stunning results.

Getting great acoustic guitar and vocal sounds using affordable microphones is usually a struggle. In this video, Universal Audio’s Ben Lindell shows singer/songwriter Marty O’Reilly how to easily track his acoustic guitar and vocals through the Century Tube Channel Strip with minimal hassle, getting inspired sonics quickly. In addition to demonstrating how to set proper levels, compression, and EQ, you also learn how saturation and proper gain-staging will help enhance the overall emotion of a track.

This video is a must-watch for singer/songwriters looking to capture timeless tones, fast.

Creating solid guitar and bass tones with just a DI can be challenging However, with some basic mixing tricks and an intuitive plug-in like Century Tube Channel Strip, musicians and producers can quickly find sounds that can range from warm and clean, to totally saturated and punchy.

In this video, Ben Lindell from Universal Audio shows you how to craft unique tones, fast, using the Century Tube Channel Strip. Learn how a professional engineer sculpts a full, clear, and punchy bass tone — as well as more dangerous, edge-of-destruction sounds as he explores the saturation and distortion colors of Century’s tube mic preamp.

Watch the full video and learn how the Century Tube Channel Strip allows you to stay in the creative zone and capture first-take magic with stunning results.

Looking for more tips about Century Tube Channel Strip? Watch this UAD 5-Min Tip video focusing on recording vocals and acoustic guitar.

In a general sense, what makes the Universal Audio 4-710d a go-to for recording drums?

Chris Dugan: Well, if you’re in the business of going aggressive with sounds on drums, the 4-710d preamps are entirely capable of going in that direction, in a creative and tasteful way. But that’s just the beginning: these four preamps are really more like at least eight, or more if you consider all the blending possibilities. There are so many combinations of tube and solid-state flavors you can create. It’s very versatile.

Jacknife Lee: Useability and color is what I’m always looking for. The 4-710d sounds great, there are no hidden menus, there are jacks right on the front, and so I want to play it, do you know what I mean?

Anton Fig: For me it means that when I do drum tracks remotely for people, in my own home studio, with the 4-710d I have the option of sending them either a punchy and clean, multi-miked sound that they can then color as they like, or I can try something a bit edgier that already has loads of character built into it. It gives me all those options.

What’s a particularly good way of sending drum mics to a single 4‑710d?

JL: If I’m using the 4-710d for drums, I might try to use as few mics as possible: AKG 414s for the rooms, Shure Beta 52-A for the kick; Sennheiser 421 for toms; and the snare top is a Shure SM57 or sometimes an SM7. I don’t generally use an under-snare. I use various ribbon mics for the overheads, including the Cascade Fat Head and VIN-Jet mics, but I’ll usually mix all those down to a stereo pair, so it becomes more like a composite of all the mics.

Although if there’s a very important element in the song, like a tom, I may mic that individually. I’ll typically lean toward the tube setting on the 4-710d: I’m not that concerned with the idea of “speed” with mic pres, this idea of how fast they pick up the transients. I mainly want something inspiring in the drum tone, and if I feel there’s a frequency or a quality that I’m missing, I’ll find a way to add it.

I use various types of mics around the drum room, all of which go through the 4-710d, especially overheads and rooms, while the kick may go through my UA Solo 610. And from there they’ll go to hardware 1176s, Distressors, or Fatsos.

AF: Although I like having one kit in my home studio that’s miked the conventional way — with every drum miked individually along with overheads — it’s great to have one kit that’s miked a little differently, perhaps just kick, snare, floor tom, and overhead, something like the classic Glyn Johns setup, a great roomy, compressed sound. And the 4-710d is something you can entirely dedicate to a setup like that.

I use a Telefunken kick drum mic for the outside kick; a Shure SM57 for the snare; and a pair of Earthworks small diaphragm mics for the overheads, where I’ll generally roll off a little bit of bass. The 1176-style compression in the 4-710d is also great for throwing on a room mic, and getting the maximum compression out of it for a really squashed sound that you can blend into the overall drum mix.

CD: One sweet recipe that I’m using now is this: inside kick mic, outside kick mic, snare top, and a mono overhead, and I’m blending the 4-710d’s cleaner transistor sound with the crunchier tube sound. The inside kick mic is completely clean, on the very transparent solid-state-style side. On the outside kick mic, I’m hitting the tube side of the 4-710 pretty hard, and I did much the same with the snare top, but only a bit of gain of snare. The mono overhead is also exploiting the tube side, and has about as much gain and is as dirty as I could get it, which works really well with a ribbon mic.

As for the 1176-style compression, I used the fast setting for the overhead, which really brought out the character and all the detail in the toms in the ribbon mic. I used the fast setting also on the outside kick mic, which I’m not always a fan of, but it worked great on this very open, resonant kick we were using. I also played with backing off the levels and the gain on the snare and the overhead, and got some cool combinations that way, too. The 4-710d can get pretty dirty, which is a lot of fun; it’s one of the things I love about it.

How does the 4-710d integrate with, say, the plug-ins you’ll use once you’ve captured your basic drum sound, or how it fits into your audio chain in general?

CD: At the Green Day rehearsal space, we’re literally running everything through the 4-710d. So, the first thing I did with the 4-710d’s ADAT optical was connect it to my Apollo Twin, and that made for a great portable setup, which I quickly integrated into our rehearsal studio. I just moved some mics around and there it was: it was totally seamless.

I’ve also been totally selling the fact that the 4-710d has these inserts on every channel to my friends who are looking for a great way to buff out their project studios; there’s a million ways you could exploit these, including adding extra compression or EQ, or whatever you want. Already I can hook one of thee up to my Apollo Twin and record six mics.

In terms of effects, when it comes to drums, I always reach for the UAD Chandler Limited Zener Limiter, and I’ll add that on the drum bus. And to add even more warmth and vibe I’ll usually add a UAD Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Recorder to the drum bus as well, or the Oxide Tape Recorder plug-in, which I love — anything to add more mustard and relish to the sound! I typically add an SSL E Series Channel Strip to the individual drum channels as well, which gets me to where I need to go really fast in terms of punch and clarity.

AF: I suppose I’m fortunate that I’ve also got a Universal LA-610 Mk II hardware unit, which is a great unit to use along with the 4-710d, especially if I want to throw up a mono room mic to be really uber-compressed. But once the sound is in the box, I really like both the UAD EMT 140 Plate Reverberator and the EMT 250 Electronic Reverb for drum sounds, as well as the Neve 88RS Channel Strip, which is really incredible sounding.

JL: The 4-710d is constantly used in my studio. It’s hard-wired into my live room, but I also use it for keyboards and analog drum machines. Right now, I’ve got a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 plugged into it, in stereo, and an Arturia DrumBrute going into a Knas Ekdahl Moisturizer before it hits the 4-710d. This is in addition to the fact that the Universal Audio Solo 610 is kind of my signal entryway for nearly every instrument in the studio environment; stuff almost always passes through a UA device before it gets to my computer.

What are the qualities or timbres of the 4-710d’s Tone-Blending preamps that you gravitate to?

JL: I use the distortion on the 4-710d as a tone quite a lot, especially on drum machines and basses, and things like that. The distortion is lovely, and honestly, I just like distortion. I have clean mic pres that don’t do anything, but I don’t like transparency in a mic pre. People talk about it all the time, “Oh, that preamp is so transparent.” If it’s transparent, then what’s the point?

I care about bringing out the character of the instruments. Things don’t exist in isolation; they exist in series, from the player to the listener and all the bits in between. So, I want every element to leave something of itself in the recording, otherwise I don’t see the point in having it. Distortion is the best thing we have: it adds all kinds of harmonics, squares off the sound, adds compression, and makes you feel good.

CD: It’s hard to say. I mean, the solid-state side of it is super transparent, maybe more of an SSL sound than an API. The tube side of it definitely has its own character. I’ve always been looking for tube preamps that can get really dirty, something that can go completely overboard, and that’s one thing I like about the 4-710d. You can be perfectly clean on the solid-state side, or really dirty on the tube side of the equation, or you can blend them together. That’s really cool.

AF: Although I really just play around with the controls until it sounds good to me, I’d say I lean a bit toward the tube side of the blend, for a more “retro” sound. You have the option with the 4-710d of going for loads of character by cranking the gain on the tube side of the preamps and engaging that great compression. That said, the 4-710d is really good if you want a fairly pure sound, using the solid-state side of the blend, moderate compression, and going for great transparency. It can do it all, really.

Preparing For The Session

Haydn Bendall: Recording a singer is a very private affair. It’s almost like a confessional. The artist is basically naked in front of you. Unmasked. And for that to be comfortable, there has to be a real element of trust.

Ultimately, it’s about being aware and being sensitive to everyone around you, and not only the singers, but to the musicians and studio staff. You must have eyes and ears everywhere, all at the same time.

Justin Meldal-Johnsen: When you start an album project, you’re “learning” how the singer feels about singing: Is it a job? Is it an enjoyable, natural act for them, or is it an overwrought collection of worries and insecurities? I’m in the mindset of getting the singer to optimize their approach to the album much earlier than when they’re standing in front of the mic and the “red light is on.”

I want people to have all their ducks in a row before they walk in there. So they can focus less on the mechanics and more on having fun and being in the moment with the song, and in the mind of the character behind the song. My job is to create the straightest line to that point.

Louis Bell: Knowing the key of the song, and what sweet spots are available vocally, is an extremely important part of vocal pre-production that doesn’t get enough attention. Everyone has favorite keys they like writing in or playing in, but that can also result in being a slave to the limitations of your musical abilities. If you can only get around the guitar or piano in a couple of keys, well, the quality and timbre of your voice is going to be at the mercy of that key, which may not be the most flattering for your voice or the song.

Setting Up The Vocal Mic

HB: Some singers come in wanting to record with a particular mic: a Neumann U 67, perhaps, or a Telefunken 251. But I often suggest that there are other mics that may suit their voice as well, so I set those all up and we’ll shoot them out and choose one. You just have to reassure them that this is a quick job, and you can make a decision after even just a few seconds of them singing into each mic. Then the artist is involved in the decisions about the sound they’re getting. They’re not just a piece of meat being dragged into the studio and being told, “Sing into this.” They’re really part of the team now, so this is important both sonically and psychologically.

JMJ: The whole process with a singer is predicated on physical and psychic comfort. The microphone setup follows those choices: it could be a hand-held mic on the couch in the control room, or a really pristine tube mic with the lights dimmed with lots of isolation in a booth.

There’s also the famous Bono trick. Allegedly, in the control room with playback pretty loud, he’ll use a Beta 58 while standing relatively equidistant between the speakers. Then one speaker is flipped out of phase to minimize bleed. But really, I’ll try any setup. I don’t worry about bleed. I’ll just cut it out later, once I have my comp. I did the vocals with Paramore with Hayley Williams sitting on the couch, holding an SM7. Point being, if that’s what it takes to get the singer feeling relaxed and ready to sing, I don’t care about having the perfect acoustic environment.

Dialing In The Headphone Mix

LB: When the singer hears themselves as close to a finished vocal production as possible, it has a huge effect on their performance. They have the confidence that they’re going to sound great, and that frees them to get way more into every take. If you take the “raw vocal sound” approach, I think that singers are always wondering if they’re going to sound any good in the finished song. They’ll often say, “Are you going to fix this?” You’ve got to prove to them what it’s going to sound like in the end. This also allows the collective vision of the project to be much clearer to everyone working on the session. It’s not like the producer/mixer is holding out on you.

HB: Some artists like a more finished sound, but I normally try to avoid that. I find it too dangerous. Many people ask for a bit of the EMT 140 Plate in their headphones or the Galaxy Tape Echo, so I’ll use those. That said, I prefer recording vocals with no reverb in the singer’s cans at all. Mind you, I’ll have a reverb in the chain if they ask for it, so it’s all set up. I also record with quite a bit of EQ, but I never compress or limit on the way in.

JMJ: Everyone’s different. Emily Haines from Metric wants her vocals dry as a bone, very present and very exposed while she’s singing. Other people, like Anthony Gonzalez from M83, will be most productive singing in glorious clouds of long reverb and delay — so you have to be ready for anything. I don’t want to be didactic about recording principles with these people, that’s boring. I want them to tell me what it’ll take for them to have fun and sing well.

Peaks And Valleys

JMJ: I use some transparent limiting at least 90% of the time, about 3dB of gain reduction, unless the singer’s mic technique is so good or the performance itself just has less dynamics. Another thing that can work to keep peaks to a minimum is to have the singer stand two, three, or even four feet away from the mic, and listen to it that way. Especially if they’re really powerful singers who are sort of blowing up the capsule, you can say, “Try backing up a bit,” and you find that at two feet, it can sound really good. I’ll add a touch of gain to the mic, and keep going.

HB: If you’re concerned about peaking, turn the microphone down! That’s what the gain knob is for. Once you’ve compressed on the way in, you can never undo that. You may lose the greatest performance of that artist’s career. If the artist asks for compression in their headphones, I’ll offer them a thousand reasons why that’s a bad idea.

Mainly, I’ll tell them they’re more likely to sing naturally if they’re not fighting the compression. You’re much better off concentrating on the singer’s mic technique, and involve them in the recording instead: encourage them to move around a bit in the booth to find the mic’s sweet spots.

LB: I’m kind of my own compressor. When the singer is in the booth, I actually have my left hand on the Apollo Twin controlling the input gain and I just ride their wave; if they’re singing very softly, I’ll turn the input up, and vice versa. So it’s a good system for tracking very quickly, having my vocal chain all set up.

Sure, there are moments where they catch me off guard with a vocal, we get a peak, and we might do that line again if it’s not a keeper. But for the most part I can sense where they’re going, especially if I already know the melody. I can adjust as we track. I think it helps the final product be more consistent.

Guiding the Performance

LB: Usually we start with a very basic musical idea, just the drums and bass or drums and a chord progression — and I’ll loop that for about 15 minutes. And generally, within that 15 minutes, as Post Malone freestyles, we’ll have the entire song together melodically and phonetically. I have a talkback mic so we can throw ideas back and forth and suggest tweaking this note or that. It’s like he’s the one riding the surfboard, but I’m on an earpiece helping him ride the wave. That first pass, that first listen, is so important, because you can only be surprised by a piece of music once. While the singer or rapper is still in that zone, on that melodic high, you’re just there to give them the proper adjustments.

HB: I will go into depth with the singer about phrasing, and the lengths of notes, where the breaths should be, which words want to get more weight, and which are less important. When I’m engineering, I’m also producing at the same time, and part of that is finding the emotional content of the words. With vocals, there’s often not much of a difference in the manner in which you do it. It’s obviously great if the singer is the songwriter as well, because then you can really ask if that lyric is as powerful as the melody that goes with it. Or, perhaps there’s a lack of connection between the lyric and the melody there, and they can make edits.

JMJ: Keep in mind that the singer may be following their muse, and something may be going down that’s really good, something that you may never get again, and you want to help that direction unfold. So you need to have your technical shit together, but stay out of the way, don’t interrupt the flow, and get it in as few takes as possible.

You do a disservice to the singer/lyricist by demanding an intimate breakdown of the meaning and intent behind every lyric while you track, especially if they’re flowing. Once the lyrics are on the page, the time has passed for extensive analysis. It’s now about being just technically adept enough, on both sides of the glass, to get the desired result.

What To Do When Confidence Wanes

JMJ: If I need another take or two, I just need to read the person, and either be a full-on cheerleader, or be subtly and quietly encouraging. They don’t always need someone being all “rah-rah!” about it. This is more about paying attention to the nuances of human behavior than following a script. You have to respect the viewpoint of the singer, and depending on the song, that can be anywhere from super weighty and deeply considered to a singer who just wants to casually throw it out there, y’know, “let’s just sing the damn thing!”

HB: What I won’t do is have them carry on until their voice gets tired, which is pointless. I’ll reassure them that it’s not about being lazy; we can carry on until 3 o’clock in the morning, but I promise you, we’ll get nothing. If you take a break now, even for a half an hour, or maybe till tomorrow, you’ll come back stronger mentally and physically, and you’ll sing it better.

And the thing is, even if the takes aren’t great, you’ve still learned a lot from doing it. You’ve invariably made great progress with the phrasing, you’ve gotten used to the balance in the cans, you’ve connected with the song in different ways, and now everyone in the studio understands what it is that we’re all after. It’s a balancing act — for some people it could cause a real confidence crisis if you don’t put it in the right words.

Keeping Track of the Takes

JMJ: You really need to keep detailed notes. I have an Excel spreadsheet, which I customize on a song-by-song basis, with all these different cells, and across the top I have the take numbers, 1-10, or whatever, and on the left I have rows of lyrics, of lines of the song, broken out as succinctly as I can. These can be up to four pages long, and I’ll print them out and put in symbols for various things, like the best takes, fix a word, whatever, and maybe an asterisk for specific notes about each line.

HB: I’ve got the lyrics, or the lyrics and music, printed out. And I take lots of careful notes about which takes are the good ones, what may need to be fixed, etc. And this isn’t just for me; it’s a big confidence boost for the singer if they know you’re really on top of it and taking careful, very accurate notes. If you’re able to say that singer, with the notes to back it up, “I promise you, I guarantee you we’ve got this.” And then say, “Now that we’ve got this, let’s try a few more and see what happens.”

Mind you, I’d never tell them “we’ve got it” if we haven’t got it. But for me, one of the most damaging things a producer can say is, “Give me one more like that.” What’s the point if you’ve already got one like that? There needs to be a good reason to do it again, and you need to communicate that to the artist.

Playing it Back For the Singer

JMJ: If a singer is prone to self-criticism, I might dress up the vocal comp so it sounds a bit more finished before I play it back for them. Perhaps I’ll spend a few minutes on some clever effects design and do more dynamic control, rather than just using simple verb they were listening to in the cans.

In getting to know the singer, I’m going to want to learn how sensitive they are when they hear themselves back. And if they have insecurities, it may be better for them not having to imagine what it could sound like with a good mix, but to hear it in a 75% finished state.

HB: For continuity, I like the final comp to have big chunks of the original takes, rather than a word-by-word edit. But certainly if I have a great line, but something like the end of a particular word is irksome, I will go in and do that more surgical edit. I care very much about tuning, but I very rarely use Melodyne or Auto-Tune, or any of those things.

I’d rather spend five hours with the singer getting the takes we need, than a half-hour with the singer and five hours trying to tweak Auto-Tune. It just requires more direction. You can spend weeks if you want tuning and timing a vocal, and it doesn’t make the vocal any better! It only makes a bad singer sound more in time and in tune, but it has no emotional gravitas at all.

LB: You’ve got to believe in the lead vocal. You don’t want to do too much trickery to it. You can lose some of its personality if you start subtracting too much with EQ or dressing it up too many with effects.

The worst is when a singer says, “Let me take this home and listen to it.” That’s the worst. You really don’t want a singer taking a rough mix home and listening to it a million times, because they’re only doing that in order to find something wrong with it. And they will. There has literally never been a time when a singer went looking for something wrong and came back saying, “You know what? It’s perfect!” Never.

Listening to your work with Flume, I’m impressed by your ability to create space in a mix that has a lot of moving parts.

Well, creating space for everything can be a challenge, especially with an artist like Flume, because all of the parts are so cool, and the arrangements are really well done. So you want to be able to hear all of the details.

Do you have a guiding principle when you sit down to mix a dense electronic arrangement?

My goal is always to direct the listener to whatever is the most important thing that’s happening at any given moment in the mix. I try to emphasize moments, especially since electronic music can be kind of repetitive and linear and stacked. When several parts are all playing at the same time, I ask myself, “how do I make room for everything while pointing the listener to what’s really carrying the message of the song at that moment?”

What are some techniques you use to make space at the right time in a track?

I like to create as much drama and movement as possible in a mix, so there’s a lot of intricate volume automation. Just as importantly, though, I also pay attention to all the frequencies, for every instrument, and I listen for certain things like overlap and buildup.

I like to build a really strong foundation with the low end, because if it’s established and feeling good, and occupying the right part of the spectrum, you can really do whatever you want on top. You feel like everything’s grounded. That’s the basis for a good mix. I also use side-chain compression and dynamic EQ to duck things that are getting in the way of each other.

For example, a lot of times the kick drum and the bass will occupy roughly the same frequency range, but if you pay attention, you’ll hear that each track has a particular frequency that’s leading the low end.

Mixing hip-hop and rock records would seem to be quite different than a lot of the layered, expansive-sounding electronic stuff you do now.

There are frequencies in electronic music that I basically didn’t know existed back when I was mainly doing rock. I’m always trying to negotiate that whole extra octave on the low end. Plus, in this day and age, we’re also trying to make sure that everything sounds huge on so many different mediums: an iPhone, MacBook speakers, earbuds, and also on a big festival system.

I really like all that extra subharmonic information, and I want it to translate well regardless of the environment. As a result, I’m pretty obsessed with the low end. Even if you can’t hear that stuff on your earbuds, it affects the overall compression on the mix bus, and it can create movement in your mix in a cool way.

Talk a bit more about this low end sculpting that you do: your low end material very rarely smears into the mids at all — and the ear candy never sounds at all bloated or woofy.

Well, just like a rock mix, I’m absolutely cutting lowend from anything that doesn’t absolutely need it, because I know that I need to constantly be aware of leaving headroom. So I aggressively filter low end from synths, for example.

Electronic music offers lots of low end challenges, since you may have as many as six kick drums all hitting at the same time, and three or four different bass sounds, from an 808 bass to a synth bass. And of course, the 808 can have an attack component that can belong as much to the drum frequencies as the bass.

So what do you do to wrangle all of that bass information?

There’s a lot of EQ sculpting that needs to happen all the time. Because of this, I’ll use transient designers, perhaps just focusing on the front of an 808 sound. Sometimes I’ll split the kick and the bass into different components of the envelope — for example, maybe I’ll emphasize the midrange of the attack on one, and the low end of the decay on another. Honestly, I never dealt with these kinds of low end challenges before mixing electronic music. I also use distortion and saturation to add upper harmonics.

There has definitely been a learning curve. But I spend so much time doing it these days that it has become very natural. I spend the vast majority of the early part of the mix process just on the kicks and basses. That alone can take hours.

I suppose with this idea of creating space comes the idea of imaging, and your mixes give a strong sense of a soundstage, with distances between the objects in the mix.

I always like to think of mixes as existing in three dimensions: I think about the panning, which is your “left to right.” I think of it from a frequency standpoint, which you might call “top to bottom.” There are so many frequencies you can play with, particularly in electronic music. Thirdly, I tend to do a lot of stuff with reverb and delay, basically placing things from “front to back.” That really helps with electronic stuff, too.

To create separation, I can put some synths a bit “further back” to create depth. If everything is right there in your face, you lose that quality.

I like mixes to be an immersive experience. A good mix should envelop the listener; it’s not just about having everything on 10 the whole time. I want you to feel like you’re inside the mix, so I like to carve out room for everything if I can. Especially with an artist like Flume; he’s really good at using silence as an element in his music, which is an effective way to create contrast, and that’s what I’m trying to create as I mix. Contrast. A sound is always going to feel louder if there’s nothing right before it. Any “hit” is going to feel huge if it’s preceded by silence.

There’s a school of thought that one should always be “judicious” with reverb, but you use plenty.

Well, I’m not very judicious with reverb. I grew up in the ’80s — I love reverb! It has become one of my trademarks, I guess. When I started doing these records, reverb wasn’t thought of as being especially cool, but it does seem like it’s getting cooler again. I use a lot of different reverbs, and I do EQ the reverb returns, for sure. Now, every reverb has a different character, and this is one place where UAD plug-ins have been really helpful. I like to use the EMT 140 Plate Reverb, as well as the EMT 250 Electronic Reverb, which I use a lot on synthesizers — also the chorus effect on the 250 is amazing for vocals.

So you’ll cast multiple different reverbs in a track?

On any given song, I’ll use anywhere from five to ten different reverbs on buses, and this allows me to bring a lot of different kinds of character to the sound. This is what I love about UAD plug-ins; they may be software, but you still get that great analog vibe from them. I love the AKG BX 20 Spring Reverb, that’s just incredible. And the Ocean Way Studios plug-in is great for putting things into a different space.

The AMS RMX16 was huge for me when UA released it. I use the RMX16 a lot on drums. What can I say? I just really love the non-linear reverb thing, man. Honestly, I’ve probably used the RMX16 far more than I should have, but there’s just nothing better than that. I’ve used the EMT 250 on a lot of the Flume stuff, in fact, a lot of the Future Classic stuff, along with the Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb plug‑in.

Are there any interesting ways you like to exploit reverb?

Well, there’s an old trick Arif Mardin taught me, where you put a vocal into, say, a canyon reverb, but you set it so that you can barely hear the reverb for much of the song, but then just for a few moments, you automate the reverb return way up, so that you suddenly have this incredibly dramatic moment that happens. Now, that reverb’s been there the whole time, but only very, very subtly, and that adds to the drama when it suddenly opens up.

Reverbs are so good for creating drama in a mix. You can completely change the perception of where an instrument is, or where a vocalist is standing, just by automating reverb.

I also like to automate pre-delay quite a bit, because you can really change where the singer is perceived to be standing in relation to the listener. I don’t like for sounds to get lost, so I’ll change the time of the pre-delay over the course of a track — by automating the pre-delay, you can create the difference between a singer standing in the middle of a big room, or suddenly standing right in front of you in a big room; same room sound, but very different placement and perception.

What would you say is the mixing technique that really defines your approach to the art?

A lot of what I do is based around parallel compression, and it all comes down to the transients. How do you keep the transients, but — especially with electronic music — still make things hit really hard? As we all know, if you compress everything too much, you’re getting rid of all your transients. That’s why there’s a ton of parallel compression on all of these songs; to the extent that I really don’t need to do much compression at all on the mix bus.

I do use the SSL 4000 G Bus Compressor on the mix bus, but the needle barely moves, maybe just 2dB of gain reduction. And I’m talking about songs that you’d absolutely assume had tons of compression on the mix bus. That’s because I’m compressing everything earlier in the process, with several different parallel channels that might include things like a Pultec EQP-1A, a DBX 160, the Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, Empirical Labs Fatso Jr., and more.

I have to say, when the SSL 4000 G Bus Compressor Collection came out with the side-chain filter, it was the greatest thing ever for me. Before that I was using the Manley Variable Mu Limiter Compressor, because I wanted to be able to let the bass through. But when G Bus came out with the side-chain filter, that was like a gift to me, because that’s exactly what I do. I’m almost never compressing the low end; I always let the low end through.

Are you a perfectionist? The clarity and balance of the mixes would seem to point to a “yes” on that!

I am definitely a perfectionist, and I will often tell artists, “That’s good for you and bad for me.” I’m obsessed with this stuff, and I hear everything, especially all the problems. A big part of it for me is getting rid of the problems. Anything that gets in the way of the message of the song, and of the sound, is a problem to be solved. And look, that might mean you amplify the crazy frequencies to help carry a certain jarring message in the song. But for sure you need to make enough space between the instruments that the listener feels they’re inside the song.

Y’know, I just pay a lot of attention to detail, and it's very methodical approach, but I just want every moment to be as clear as it can be. The UAD stuff has really helped me do that, and it’s amazing to be able to bring an analog vibe to these sampled and electronic sounds that have been largely created on a laptop. UAD plug-ins give extra life and three-dimensionality to sounds that have never existed in the real world.

What makes the UAD Pure Plate Reverb a great choice?

It sounds great, and it has everything that you need in a plate reverb. Remember that an actual plate reverb doesn’t have a lot of parameters. Some may have a low cut, but there’s no pre-delay or EQ, it’s just the reverb time you can control, so the Pure Plate actually has way more bells and whistles than the device it’s emulating.

On your “Vocal” preset, explain how the “Wet Solo” and “Mix” controls interact?

The Wet Solo button basically overrides the Mix control, and gives you 100% wet, which is how you’ll want to run it if you’re using it on an aux send, which is always how I use it.

I don’t recommend using any reverb on an insert, but the idea there is that if you were to insert it, you’d switch the Wet Solo to off, and you’d then tweak the Mix control on the plug-in to your liking. But really, you’re going to get the best result having it on its own aux return and working the aux fader.

I notice that you’ve got the plug-in’s Pre Delay control at 87ms; you’re basically keeping a little distance between the vocal and the reverb coming back, so the vocal still sounds present and clear?

Yeah, and that’s why you’ll notice on most of my Pure Plate presets I tend to always use some Pre Delay, so instead of clouding the sound, it adds warmth.

See, the difference between no Pre Delay and the right amount of Pre Delay is the difference between “muddy” and “warm.” That 87ms is just a suggestion, however: I’ll often start exploring around 70ms, and end up turning the Pre Delay all the way up. Between 80ms and 180ms is where I usually like it. The idea is that even in a fairly dense mix, you can really hear the reverb because it’s more behind the main sound, and doesn’t wash that sound out.

Also, by using Pure Plate’s Pre Delay control, you don’t need huge decay times — like six seconds — to get that long tail. You can keep the decay time to, say, 2.5 seconds, and increase the Pre Delay to get that big space.

The Pure Plate plug-in has a Low Cut selector, and a Bass and Treble knob. How do you use them here?

Here’s one way to look at the Bass and Treble controls. Say the reverb time is around 2.5 seconds. If you turn down the Treble control a fair amount, the apparent reverb time on the higher frequencies is reduced to around, say, one second, or approaching zero if you turn it all the way down.

Obviously this is dependent on the song or singer you’re working with — but there’s a low-frequency aspect to most vocals, because of proximity effect, or if the singer is too close to the mic. That tends to blow up the reverb. You don’t want that reverb muddiness in your mix.

Sometimes I’ll increase that Low Cut to the maximum of 180Hz and bring the Treble up even more. That’s one thing I really like about Pure Plate: you’ve just got Bass, Treble, and Low Cut, so you can quickly dial the EQ in just right.

That’s also something you want to execute while listening to your whole mix, not in Solo, so you can hear how it’s all interacting. That combination of using Pre Delay and exploiting the simple EQ options to roll off low end and low mids allows me to enjoy the warmth of a plate reverb while also dialing out the muddiness that can come with it. So, don’t be shy about using those EQ controls. Turn those suckers up or down until you get the sound you want. They’re good, simple tools.

You have the Balance control in the center, which is typical for a lead vocal, but talk about instances where you might want to pan the reverb.

Yeah, the beauty of the Pure Plate, as opposed to a real plate reverb, is that you can run thirty instances of it if you want, so you can use it in so many different ways. With a real plate, you’re kind of compromised. You may want the plate to be left/right stereo for the vocal, but you might want to pan it for the guitars. I’ll generally do that kind of panning with the actual aux return channels in my DAW rather than use the Pure Plate’s Balance control, and I’ll just push it a little bit to one side. I do that all the time. Generally I don’t do that on the main lead vocal, but 75% of the time I’ll do it on guitars — if I have a guitar on the left, I’ll lean the reverb a little to the right.

It’s worth noting that plate reverb is one of the few reverb types that really works well that way. It has so much character, and it really retains it even in a small space. Emulations of many digital reverbs may sound amazing in full-blown stereo, but don’t work as well when you pan them to one side. Plate reverbs have a warmth and character that lives well in its own space in the mix, and that will complement the sound of whatever source you’re effecting.

Also keep in mind that, because doing stereo with a plate also means you’re doubling the potential for muddiness, panning it can free up a lot more space in your mix. And remember, generally, unless you’re doing a slower ballad, just a little plate reverb goes a long way, and that pre-delay control will help it sit in the mix just right.

Why set the reverb/decay time to 2.7s, in particular?

It’s where I like to start, and it works well with the amount of Pre Delay I’m using. You can go a lot lower and increase the Pre Delay — that’s also a cool sound. If you’re looking for more of a ballad-type wash, you can decrease the pre-delay and increase the reverb time. It’s hard to get a bad sound. Also, that 2.5s setting is sort of the classic plate sound, at least the way I hear it.

Remember, most real plate reverbs in studios are hidden away somewhere. At Avatar/Power Station they’re in the basement. Some studios have them in a loft above the studio; they’re never in the control room, and there’s rarely a remote control adjustment. So you’re stuck with whatever the reverb time is of that unit, unless you can persuade the unfortunate assistant engineer to go climb into some dingy basement and adjust it for you on the mechanical wheel! But generally, around 2.5 seconds is the reverb time you’re going to get on a mechanical plate. And that’s the classic plate decay time for a vocal.

What other UAD plug-ins might you pair with the UAD Pure Plate?

One thing I like to do is to send a slapback or short delay to the Pure Plate aux return. I have a separate aux return for the delay, I adjust that to taste, and then do an aux send from the delay return to the plate’s aux channel.

So I often use the the EP-34 Tape Echo for a slapback, with its Bass control rolled back, because the plate has plenty of low end already.

For a pop mix, I like the UAD Precision Delay Mod, with a little bit of modulation on the repeats, in stereo left/right, and you can pick your delay interval of choice, say, an eighth note on the left, and a dotted eighth on the right. Or depending on the tempo, maybe a dotted eighth on the left and a quarter note on the right. And both of those returns feed the Pure Plate.

In that case, you’d probably use a little bit less Pure Plate than you would otherwise. You’re basically exciting the delay, and making it sound more expensive! It also helps lengthen the ending of a vocal phrase. The modulation of the delay has an interesting sound when it hits the reverb, too, and makes the wobbliness of the modulation more audible at a low level.

Ampeg bass amps are so universally revered, it’s hard to imagine a time when they weren’t synonymous with electric bass amplifiers. But what started from a modest idea — literally, an “amplified peg” that would install into an upright bass — in Everett Hull’s modest shop in Midtown Manhattan in the 1930s, has become a towering name in the world of bass amplification.

The three Brainworx-developed Ampeg bass amp plug-ins available exclusively for UAD hardware and UA interfaces are the bedrock of the thundering Ampeg legacy and nearly every bass amp that came afterward. Each of these amps remain a staple in studios and stages around the world — with the UAD Ampeg plug-ins delivering spot-on results — and they each give you a different flavor of classic Ampeg bass tone.

Here, we decode what makes each of these iconic tone machines tick, and delve into the different components that contribute to each amp’s distinct, glorious rumble.

1960. Ampeg B-15

Forever associated with Motown bass legend James Jamerson, as well as Stax low-end kingpin Donald “Duck” Dunn, the Ampeg B-15 Portaflex (short for “portable reflex cabinet”) features a distinctive “flip-top” 30-watt all-tube head, complete with classic two-band Baxandall EQ, that could live inside the double-baffled 1x15 cabinet (typically a Jensen P15N speaker) while travelling, and flip upright to sit atop the cabinet during recording or gigs.

With its clever “tube cage,” the amp’s pair of 6L6 power tubes and three 6SL7 preamp tubes are kept out of harm’s way while the head was inside the cabinet. More importantly, the B15 sounds warm, round, and resonant — as suitable for jazz and soul players as it was for the growing army of rock and garage band aficionados.

Ampeg’s Heritage Series B-15N added a few key twists to this legendary design, notably the introduction of two separate preamp sections: one modeled after the spongier, quicker-to-distort 1964 preamp, a 25-watt cathode-based circuit; and the other the slightly cleaner and midrange-forward 1966 version, built around a 30-watt, fixed bias design. What’s more, each preamp’s selectable bias mode can be used with either preamp, allowing for even more subtle tone shaping.

The B-15N boasts a powerful twin-6L6 power section, three 12AX7 preamps, and a 5AR4 tube rectifier, along with an Eminence 15” speaker. The B-15N’s distinctive “double-baffle” porting is especially worthy of note, as it’s a revolutionary porting system that originated in 1960, and would be used for almost two decades of the combo’s stunning initial run, and is still used in Ampeg’s more recent Heritage B-15N reissues.

Listen to the Ampeg B-15N Bass Amplifier plug-in for UAD-2 and UA interfaces and dig how it perfectly emulates the classic thump of this coveted amp.

1969. Ampeg SVT-VR

As guitar amplifiers were getting bigger and louder toward the end of the ’60s, Ampeg — best known for compact amps with lots of clean headroom — jumped into the fray, debuting a massive new amp at the 1969 NAMM show, designed by Bill Hughes, that would become their best recognized, flagship bass amp for years to come: the 85lb, 300-watt RMS behemoth known as the Super Vacuum Tube, or SVT, which was designed to be paired with — not one — but two gigantic 8x10 Ampeg cabinets. Indeed, the SVT’s unprecedented power output raised concerns at the time about Ampeg’s legal liability, leading the company to ship SVTs with an ominous warning label: “This amp is capable of delivering sound pressure levels that may cause permanent hearing damage.”

As Ampeg’s Roger Cox has said of the beast, “We were going to build the biggest, nastiest bass amplifier the world had ever seen.” Ironically, though it’s now recognized as the essential big-venue bass amp, and was certainly designed as a bass amp, it wasn’t until 1974 that Ampeg officially listed the SVT specifically as a “bass amplifier.” Indeed, the Rolling Stones arguably put the SVT on the map in 1969 by taking a fleet of them on the road — paired with a variety of cabinets, including 4x12s and 2x15s — as both guitar and bass rigs for their world tour of that year.

Thus, what began as a slightly eccentric, even dangerous deviation from Ampeg’s more sober product line became the signature workhorse of the Ampeg brand, with a sound — fleshy, full of midrange growl and deep, resonant lows — that fills out rock and reggae mixes like nothing else.

The original SVTs from the late ’60s and ’70s were two-channel affairs, using a grand total of fourteen tubes, requiring a filament transistor and a cooling fan to keep the heat at manageable levels. These included six 6550 power tubes along with 12DW7 preamp tubes (eventually changed to 12AX7s). The SVT-VR (for “Vintage Reissue) retains most of the 70s classic’s feature set and styling — including two-channel operation, both bright and normal inputs, “Ultra Hi,” “Ultra Lo” and, for Channel 1, a “Bass Cut” switch and a midrange frequency select switch that allows users to craft their midrange timbre around either 220Hz, 800Hz or 3k center frequency. That combination of sheer power, timbral richness, and tonal control is why players from Roger Waters and Bootsy Collins to Tony Levin and Chris Squire leaned on the classic SVT live and in the studio.

Hear how the Ampeg SVT-VR Bass Amplifier plug-in for UAD-2 and UA interfaces not only captures the beastly roar and rock solid tone of the most popular bass amp ever, it also expands on it with various cabinet choices.

The ’80s & Beyond. Ampeg SVT-3 Pro

With its single channel, hybrid solid-state power amp and tube preamp sections, rackmount design, and onboard 9-band graphic EQ, the SVT-3 Pro, designed by Dave Pepmiller, is an entirely different kind of SVT. Still, with up to 450 watts of RMS power output and the same type of low and high boosts that make the SVT-VR such a workhorse, it offers much the same sonic boom — and arguably a tighter sound, more conducive to soloing, modern rock and metal, and brighter, funkier parts — at less than a third of the overall weight and about half the size of the all-tube SVT.

Jettisoning one channel of the older SVT allowed the SVT-3 Pro (inspired and designed in the mold of the earlier SVT-II) to add a footswitchable graphic EQ, along with an expanded 5-position midrange control — with a choice of center frequencies at 220Hz, 450Hz, 800Hz, 1.6kHz, and 3kHz — for even more surgical timbral crafting.

Perhaps the SVT-3 Pro’s two coolest features, though, are the Gain and the Tube Gain controls. Gain varies the amount of signal driving the preamp, allowing for effortless introduction of rich harmonic saturation from the amp’s phalanx of four 12AX7 preamp tubes. Tube Gain, meanwhile, varies the high voltage to the preamp tubes, for a more compressed and thicker sound at low levels, to an explosive, highly dynamic tone at the upper end — especially if you crank the amp’s power section at the same time.

The Tube Gain control is super useful for virtually any genre, really letting those nuances of your playing shine, but it’s surely not for the faint of heart. Which is perhaps why guys like Metallica’s Robert Trujillo and Primus’ Les Claypool swear by the SVT-3 PRO.

Check out how the Ampeg SVT-3 PRO Bass Amplifier plug-in emulates this modern rackmount classic to a “T,” elegantly modeling the wide array of tone sculpting controls, as well as its hybrid power section.

In this Apollo X Tech Talk, Universal Audio’s Senior Product Manager, Gannon Kashiwa dives deep into the key features, specs, and development behind the latest generation of Apollo audio interfaces. Learn about the cutting edge technology that makes Apollo X interfaces the clear choice for professional engineers, producers, and musicians in both the music and film industry.

Get an in-depth look at what sets the Apollo X apart from the previous generations – including Apollo X’s all-new, elite-class A/D and D/A conversion, HEXA DSP delivering 50% more onboard UAD power, and ultra-low jitter Dual-Crystal clocking.

Apollo X also includes many new features that cater to the needs of audio industry professionals, including a switchable +24dBu headroom control for out-of-the-box compatibility with professional mixing consoles and other high-end pro audio equipment, a front-panel Talkback mic, and up to 7.1 surround sound monitoring.

And with its Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, users of any Thunderbolt-equipped Apollo Twin or Apollo rackmount audio interface can easily combine up to four Apollos and six total UAD-2 devices — adding fast, high-bandwidth I/O and DSP as your studio grows.

The EL8 Distressor compressor is revered in studios all over the world as a “must-have” compressor. Versatile, super fast, and offering tons of color, the Distressor is a modern classic compressor, heard on thousands of hit records.

In this video, watch as Universal Audio's Ben Lindell shows you how to harness this powerful tool, on drums, acoustic guitar and vocals, creating exciting textures and colors that will make your mix "pop."

First, Lindell straps the Distressor on the drum bus, showing you how to create slamming, natural-sounding grooves. Secondly, he shows you how to dial in the Distressor's Attack and Release controls to "lift" an acoustic guitar track, giving it more body and depth. Finally, Lindell shares his fail-safe vocal settings to give a lead vocal an organic, dynamic sound tone that oozes character.

Watch the full UAD 5-Min Tip video and learn how the EL8 Distressor compressor can transform your mixes into something truly special.

Tell me about the genesis of your songs. They feel very free, neither as stubbornly structured as guitar rock can be, nor as open-ended as many dance tracks.

Most of the time, Glass Animals' music begins on a rubbish nylon string Spanish guitar I picked up at a flea market when I was really young. I just sit down with that and start noodling about; maybe I’ll have a little nugget of a lyric, or a bit of melody to go with it, or I’ll just mess around with some chords until I find something nice.

Then, I’ll try to roughly sketch out the song with just guitar and voice. That said, I very rarely write a whole song start to finish with just guitar and voice. What happens is that if I get stuck anywhere along the way, I’ll play what I’m doing into Ableton Live, and start developing it from there. Maybe I just have the chorus on guitar and voice, but once it’s in Ableton, I can start messing around with some sounds, some verse idea will come, and that will typically inspire the direction for the rest of it.

How do you usually combine samples with live drums and percussion on your productions?

I do use a lot of drum samples, but they tend to be homemade. Now, when I’m producing other people, especially bands, of course we’re doing live drums a lot. My reference point and ideal live drum sound is Jaki Liebezeit of the German band, Can; I think their drum sounds were just incredible, and that’s what I aim for.

But in Glass Animals, all the percussion stuff I’m using tends to be samples, but even those are usually things that I’ve actually recorded myself. Whenever I’m in the studio, I’ve always, at all times, got a variety of mics switched on in the room. I’ve even got a hand-held recorder so that I can chuck down vocal ideas whenever something comes to me, as quickly as possible, as well as a Neumann U67 that’s always armed for recording.

If I hear anything in the studio that I think could make a good percussive noise, I’ll go hit it. Or if I have an idea for a percussive sound in my head, I’ll run around the studio in my house trying to find just the right cooking pot or whatever to match the sound in my head. I almost think of percussion as just another melodic instrument, which is where a lot of the tonal drum stuff comes from: percussion, and even a drum beat, almost needs to be a hook in itself. Sure, sometimes you need something that’s purely functional, but yeah, I like it when a drum beat is, y’know, catchy.

How does your guitar fit into this interesting picture? They’re not typical tones.

Since things start on guitar, sometimes those parts get left behind or recast as the production develops. But I do keep the original parts, too. A good example of that is the song “Youth,” where the guitar was actually recorded into the mic on my laptop, and because it was recorded so badly, I just really messed with it in the computer until it began to strange and not quite like a guitar at all. I do that sort of thing a lot, probably because when I’m recording I tend to be rushing a lot!

Do you have any go-to tricks when searching for uncommon guitar tones?

I like to use a lot of wah-wah pedals — I have a whole collection of them. But I don’t pump the pedal at all — I use them more as bandpass filters, to create a little EQ notch on every part and filter them down. I also like to use chorus on all my guitars, which blurs them a bit and makes them more diffuse-sounding — it pushes them back a little so they’re not dominating. I rarely make the guitars a main feature.

Tell me about the UA gear you’re using in your studio these days.

Well, I’ve got a UA 6176 Vintage Channel Strip, and an outboard 1176 Compressor; the guitars are usually going through an outboard Neve 1073 then the 1176, then into the computer, and I use the 6176 for bass — it’s an amazing bass guitar channel.

I have the UAD Satellite OCTO at home, and whenever I’m working in someone else’s studio, I always request an Apollo audio interface; they’re so straightforward, and so reliable, and of course, all my UAD plug-ins will work with it.

Which UAD plug-ins have you been leaning on lately?

I’ve been really enjoying all the amp simulators. I find it really cool to play with lots of different possibilities for amp sounds. If I’m working with a guitar band, for example, I might just plug straight in, through a DI, and then mess about in the box with guitar amps.

Right now I especially like the Fender ’55 Tweed Deluxe plug-in — I use it all the time. The funny thing is, Fender tweed amps are what Glass Animals use live, so we’ve got like six of them hanging about. And I think the UAD plug-in version sounds great even compared with the real ones.

Do you use any UAD bass amps?

Yes. I like to re-amp all my low-end information, like bass and sub synths, through an Ampeg B-15 bass amp and a Thermionic Culture Vulture hardware. But now I have them both as UAD plug-ins! So much easier. It makes the signal warmer and heavier, and it’s a way to add a lot of harmonic content while still sounding organic, even if it's a soft synth. That’s quite hard to do with most digital distortion plug-ins, but I find it works really well with the UAD versions.

Do you rely on any UAD channel strips?

Yes, I also use the SSL 4000 E Channel Strip all the time — it’s actually my go-to for almost every channel. I use it on vocals a lot — I find its EQ so versatile. You can really cut or push certain frequencies, and it still sounds musical and pleasing. Conversely, with most digital EQs, if you were to push up 15 dB around 500Hz on a guitar sound, it would probably sound pretty terrible, but somehow the UAD SSL Channel Strip makes it sound good!

In fact, whenever I have a sound that seems to be missing something, I’ll put the SSL E Channel Strip on it, choose two random frequencies, dial up the Q, boost them, and then fine-tune those frequencies until the sound really has something. It almost always works, and it always gives things a bit more edge. And of course, the SSL Buss Compressor — I mean, that’s just on my mix buss all the time. Standard glue.

I also use the UAD Moog Multimode Filter XL plug-in a lot, especially on toms and tracks with rolling drums. You can hear it on a song called “Life Itself.” That’s filled with toms that are filtered down with that Moog Filter. It’s perfect for keeping the amount of gritty and gnarly that you want, while still filtering much of the high end, which I think is the unique quality of that plug-in. It just makes toms bite — really slap — when they hit.

It seems that while certain elements in a Glass Animals mix have a bit of reverb, the new album is a fairly clean, dry soundscape.

Yeah, I do lean toward having everything really dry, which may come from the fact that I grew up listening to a lot of '90s hip-hop — Dr. Dre’s drum sounds, for instance, are really dry, as are The Neptunes’ drums.

I follow the school of thought that drums should just hit you in the face. So, my kick and snare are generally super dry all the time, especially on the latest record. The first record had loads of reverb on it, probably too much, so this new one is deliberately very dry. It was by design to record everything dry. I put all these baffles around the room just so that everything I recorded had zero room sound and reverb. A few times I’d add a little reverb in the box, and when it came back from the mixers, in some cases the mixers had added a bit of reverb, and generally I quite liked it, but I just wanted the baseline to be dry and punchy.

What is your ideal or frame of reference for your vocal sound?

My ideal vocal sound for Glass Animals, the standard I shoot for, is D’Angelo’s Voodoo era. I copy that chain a lot. I’ve found a couple of mics that help me achieve that sound. There’s an AKG C12 I’m using that sounds particularly good. I used that a lot on the first album, partly because it just layers really well, so I can do huge stacks of vocals, maybe even 12 tracks of a single vocal, and it sounds really good and thick.

Do you have any tricks for tracking multiple voices?

Yes. I’ll often use a few different mics at once to try to introduce different harmonics into the vocal sound. Another thing I do is this thing we call the “Crack Choir,” where I’ll sing the same part with slightly different voices or vocal characters. A good example is the chorus of the song “Gooey,” which has huge vocal stacks of me doing all these strange voices behind the main line; like trying to sound like a really “big dude,” and trying to sing high like a little kid. Individually they sound pretty weird, but layered the effect is of a really big and diverse group of people singing really loud, with lots of frequency range.

You've had major success producing yourself, but what have you learned from producing other artists and collaborating with them?

I love learning about the way other people work and, especially, the way they write. And I really like having other people help with making creative decisions, and then helping them get the sound that they want. I mean, sometimes people don’t know at first what kind of sound they really want, and the adventure of helping them figure that out can be really fun, too. I also like the co-writing element of producing — the “relationship” side of it, if you will, which honestly, I was quite scared to do initially, but which I really see the power of now.

What about the collaborative process scared you?

You’re thrown into a room with someone, and you have to create something emotional. Be that emotion sadness, anger, or excitement, or whatever really. Normally, you wouldn’t really push and express those emotions unless you were very, very comfortable around that person. But if you’re making a record, you have to sort of make friends very quickly, and make someone feel comfortable even if they aren’t.

Ultimately, you need to try to have fun. I think that’s the main thing — just enjoy yourself. And if everyone in the room enjoys themselves, then you end up with something really good in the end.

Not too long ago, the field of immersive audio was referred by the home and pro-audio communities as “surround sound,” usually involving 5.1 and more recently 7.1 multi-channel audio that would come at you from the left, right, center, side and rear speakers, and the ".1" — the subwoofer.

The idea behind such production and playback setups is to create a “you are there” aspect to movies, video games, TV shows, and music making everything bigger, Better, MORE!

And although surround has been embraced by the film, tv, and gaming communities to such an extent that it has become an integral part of their respective experience, music has had its struggles with surround sound over the years and is now primarily a selling feature for high-end classical and special edition Blu Ray sets — until recently.

Listening to a killer electronic, rock or experimental piece in surround where all of the speakers are going “full out” can be truly a wonder to behold.

A large part of the audio community has never expressed an interest in immersive audio. This is mostly because they haven’t had any experience with surround production, or have even heard a project in 5.1, 7.1 or — let’s get crazy — and add height speakers for 9.1.

Of course, the only way to begin to understand immersive is to sit down and listen to a killer mix, either in the studio or on a home theater system. Quite literally, the emotional connection that immersive audio can give to a mix can’t be overstated.

Live and VR

Additionally, the concept of performing in an immersive live environment is becoming more and more of a reality. Many top rock bands and even more electronic artists are beginning to do performances in 4.0 (Quad), 5.1, and even 8.0 (Quad at ear level and another quad set in the height channels). Many DAWS, such as Ableton Live, give you creative routing over a multitude of channels in ways that can create performance soundscapes that literally must be heard to be believed.

Why Should You Know About Immersive Audio?

Bottom line as to why you should be at least open to the idea of producing, post, or mixing in multi-channel — your pocketbook and your professional skill set.

For example, say a band that you worked with just broke and a production company needs a 5.1 mix of the single for an upcoming movie or for use in a video game. Would you rather say, “Sure I can do that!” or “Sorry, I don’t do surround sound." It’s the difference between getting the gig or passing it on to someone else with the chops.

Personally, I got into immersive audio for one reason — I loved it! The experience you get from breaking the rules and creating a bold mix that few would ever attempt is simply thrilling.

The Two Faces of Immersive

Discrete Multi-channel Audio: This is the more traditional (if there is such a thing), use of surround, in that speakers are set up within the production/playback environment using multiple speakers in a 5.1 or 7.1 configuration.

In very special production environments, the use of height speakers will be added in a 9.1, 10.1 and/or Dolby Atmos environment. In movies and video, the use of height channels allow airplanes to sonically fly over your head or let us hear birds chirping up in the trees. In music, height can be used to extend the spaciousness and panning possibilities of a mix in ways that can add excitement and new dimensions to the mix.

2-Channel Immersive Audio: This method is totally a horse of a different color, and one that I’ll dive deeper into in a later article, as there's too much to properly cover here. In a nutshell, 2-channel immersive audio makes use of our natural human ability to discern 360° directionality, delivering an immersive mix over traditional stereo headphones.

We’re in the Wild West Baby!

Although this technology is deep, the true art and techniques of immersive audio is almost totally devoid of production rules. This is the great part! Some producers might create a conservative mix that is basically stereo with a bit of center speakers and some reverb in the rear speakers, while others might place instruments, effects and reverbs in ALL corners of the soundscape, so as to put you smack in the middle of the action. The tools, techniques and art of this medium is simply an open field, so don’t worry about it. Paint that canvas the way that you, the artist, or the producer wants. Seriously, just have fun and forge your own path!

Make sure and stay tuned for Part II to learn how to setup your surround sound system!

The Apollo X Debut Recording Session

In this Apollo Artist Session, watch producer/engineer Jacknife Lee (The Killers, U2) record Two Door Cinema Club and the London Metropolitan Orchestra through Apollo X interfaces and Unison^™-enabled UAD Powered Plug-Ins as they perform the track, “Sun", at legendary AIR Studios in London.

For anyone who has an interest in sound and post-production for film, TV, gaming, and music, one of the skill sets that you’ll definitely need to have is an understanding of discrete surround sound audio.

By discrete, I mean the use of a setup that works in a multi-speaker listening or mixing environment. This could include a 5.1, 7.1 and even up to a 9.1 Auro or Dolby Atmos configuration with added height speakers.

Most of the visual and gaming media have embraced multi-channel audio to such an extent that it’s become an integral part of the overall experience — and you’ll need the knowledge, skills, and tools to work in this environment.

The Room

The most logical starting point for upgrading to a surround environment is to step back and see how the extra speakers will integrate into your room. In my opinion, it’s best to get into the surround game is by starting with a basic 5.1 system. And before you begin moving things around, try envisioning where you will place your center and rear speakers.

For example: if your existing L/R speakers are resting on a desk, is there a place where you can put the center speaker without obstructing or being obstructed by your video and/or computer monitor? If you put your rear speakers on floor stands, will they constantly be in the way of foot traffic?

Personally, the way that I got around all of this was to hang my speakers from the ceiling (some speakers actually have rear screw-points that makes such mounting easy). My ceiling height is high enough that the center speaker rests above the video monitor and the rears are just above my head height, pointing slightly downwards towards the mix position. Obviously, every setup will be different. Take the time to think things through in a way that works best for you and your room.

The Speakers Front & Center

The next big consideration rests with your choice of speakers. Hopefully, you’re currently working with a set of L/R speakers that you like or are at least are used to. If not, this might be your chance to start fresh!

Let’s assume that you love your stereo pair and want to stay with them. It’s important to note that although you could start out with a different center speaker that’s close in sound and design to your existing L/R pair, however, it would be much better to use the same size and model across all of the L/C/R front speakers. This will improve imagery and to keep the overall sound consistent along the entire front soundfield.

Consistency in placement is also important. For example, if the L/R pair is placed higher up and the center speaker is laying flat under the video monitor, reflections and other considerations could easily color the imagery and sound balance between the L/R and the center speakers.

The Rear

Rear speaker choice and placement is a slightly different matter. Although they should be close in design and overall sound to your front speaker, it is possible to have a bit of variation. For example, if you have speakers with 8” bass drivers along your front and the same manufacturer has the same model with 6” drivers, this smaller speaker could be used in the rears without encountering too many problems. That said, if you can match the speakers all the way around as closely as possible, it’s always best.

Finally, I tend to favor placing the rear speakers in a 130° arc behind the mix position, with the high-frequency drivers being angled outwards. This will provide for the greatest degree of rear high-frequency localization. You might want to experiment to see if this works for you, as well.

The LFE and your Subwoofer

The LFE, or Low Frequency Effects channel, is the audio track that specifically handles all of the super deep, low end information ranging from 3-120 Hz. Typically this channel is sent to your subwoofer.

While the LFE — which is the ".1" in 5.1, 7.1, etc. — is “band limited” to below 120Hz, it’s a common misconception that this track is intended to act as the lone source of bass content to be sent to your subwoofer. It's not. It was originally designed to give an extra low-end "push," for extreme, sub-sonic, earth-shaking vibrations and effects in a theater during an earthquake, explosion, etc.

So use the LFE track to add extra support to sources such as a kick drum, bass, or synth track, but it’s never wise to rely on the LFE as inaccurate system setups (and even your own playback setup) can easily introduce low-end level problems into a mix.

Be warned, Murphy’s Law just loves to creep up into the LFE channel. Watch the levels of this track very carefully. Personally, I set the LFE levels at around -10dB relative to the overall levels, as having the LFE at full mix level can bring about a bass BOOM that could easily shatter your mix. Just remember, there are no rules, just guidelines, and experience is the best teacher.

The DAW

Unlike within stereo production, with regards to working in 5.1, 7.1, 9.1 and higher, all DAWs are definitely not created equal. Some DAWs will only work in stereo, while others can deal with surround but might offer up resistance when the going gets even slightly tough. A few, on the other hand, are very surround/immersive friendly in a way that can make your job much easier.

I won’t name names, but even a quick Google search into the multi-channel mix capabilities of a DAW will quickly tell you if it's a friend or foe during even the simplest surround mix. It’s always best to talk to your peers, read the literature and reviews, and then give your current DAW a try before you buy something new.

The Interface

As with your choice of DAW, not all audio interfaces are created equal when it comes to surround. You can completely rule out the use of a 2-channel interface and even most multi-channel interfaces as it’s likely that they will not provide a linked surround level control.

Without a single, ganged volume control that can adjust all of your surround output channels simultaneously, there will be no way to vary your overall monitor level without using a seperate surround monitor control — which can be even more costly than your interface. Many professional audio interfaces offer surround sound capabilities, including Universal Audio's Apollo X, with full surround sound support up to 7.1.

How to Setup your System

Lastly, as with a stereo speaker system, it’s important to make sure that all the speakers in a surround system are set to their proper reference levels at the listener’s position. This is done by generating pink noise in your DAW and playing it back at equal levels over each of your output channels. Obviously, it’s a good idea to save this special calibration session for use again at a later time.

Personally, I get my trusty tripod out, and place an SPL (sound pressure level) meter on the stand at the listener’s position and begin playing back the pink noise at levels around 80 to 85dB SPL. Then, while playing one track at a time, you can go about setting your output levels on each speaker (or on your interface, if it has provisions for individual surround speaker trims like the Apollo X audio interfaces) so that they’ll equally match on the SPL meter.

Setting up levels for the LFE differ from the other full-band speakers, in that the levels should be set to +4dB SPL above the other reference levels. Once all speaker levels have been calibrated, you can then get down to the process of mixing in surround.

Finally, I highly recommend The Recording Academy’s (the Grammy folks) in-depth guidelines on setting up a professional surround system. It’s not the easiest of reads, but you’ll certainly learn a lot from the best in the surround sound biz.

Make sure and stay tuned for Part III as we dive deeper into your surround sound system!

Released in 1986, the Lexicon 480L Digital Effects System is renowned for its spacious reverb and vivid effects textures that have helped shape thousands of chart-topping tracks to this day.

In this "5-Minute UAD Tips" video, Universal Audio's Ben Lindell shows you how to inject space and dimension to lead vocals and guitars, as well as unique effects on background vocals using the Lexicon 480L Digital Reverb & Effects plug-in's "Plate," "Ambience," "Hall," and "Room" algorithms.

Watch the full UAD 5-Min Tip video and learn how the UAD Lexicon 480L Digital Reverb & Effects plug-in can transform your mixes with its iconic textures.

What a way to get thrown into the world of Apollo X — a massive band and orchestra session at AIR Studios. Talk about trial by fire!

Absolutely. This Apollo Artist Session was an eye-opener for me. I had used Apollo before, but never with the Console app. I couldn’t understand why you’d want to work with two mixers. It just seemed unnecessarily complex.

At first, going between two screens — the DAW and Console — I couldn’t figure out where I was working. But once I got going with Console, I found it to be a very intuitive, almost invisible system even. Plus, there’s no front-end latency, which is amazing. It was like discovering an upstairs to your house you didn’t know was there.

What advantages did you find to working with Console in a tracking session of this size?

One of the handy things about Console is that you can audition things in real time. You can’t really do that the same way in the hardware world, because you can’t quickly A/B between two different settings on the same piece of hardware — you’ll never return to the exact setting.

With Console, I can listen to a few minutes of the band tracking with a given mic preamp or compression setting, change it to something else mid-stream, and then change it back to exactly the same setting.

That's a huge creative pay off.

For sure. I often find that when I’m in the studio and I’m using hardware, I just don’t get the time to play with it as much as I’d like.

Console also enables me to experiment with a huge variety of mic pres, on the front end, that I simply wouldn’t have access to otherwise, and then learn the differences between them. I suppose that applies to most UAD plug-ins — they have the side-benefit of teaching you how better to use the actual hardware.

Are you a "commit to tape" kind of guy?

Oh yes, and for this Apollo Artist Session I followed my usual method of “destructive” recording and committed to sounds up front, whether from hardware or Unison plug-ins. In fact, there wasn’t anything that didn’t go through some kind of processing in Console. I mean, if I’m going to go through the Thermionic Culture Vulture, I’m not concerned about going back and tweaking that sound later. I’m committing. It just speeds the whole process up.

What struck you about Apollo X while you were tracking?

Well, one thing that makes Apollo X really special is how reliable it is. I had a very bad experience with a recording system that, while I really liked the way it worked, it was simply unreliable. Believe me, I’m not the guy who’s going to mess with a successful system. But, if I’m the producer, and a piece of gear isn’t working, that puts me in a really difficult situation.

It should be said that UA support is excellent, but the equipment also just always works, and you can’t underestimate how important that is. But in addition to being reliable and working beautifully, Apollo X also really expanded my capabilities. A lot of the interfaces are just that: interfaces. That’s it, and that’s what I was used to. Apollo X with Unison technology and the Console app is much more than that.

You’re used to working in your own space, and I know you have mixed feelings about “big studios.”

When I go into “proper” studios these days, I’m often reminded of how laborious the recording process can be, and why artists often shut down in big studios. Everything just takes ages — even for someone to just play something off their iPhone can take an hour to connect.

But once we got into AIR Studios, it was refreshing that I didn’t need to rely on their control room equipment — with Apollo X, it was easy to make connections and get sounds very quickly without having to ask someone at the studio to do it for us.

Maybe you're more inclined to experiment when you don't have to ask someone to patch hardware in and out.

Exactly. Sometimes I’ll do something radical, like split the whole track to different buses with hardcore compression, and parallel those with some extra plug-ins on the master bus. There’s no "one way."

Sometimes I put, say, a slapback echo on the master bus, just to see what happens. Generally, if someone in the band is in the room with me and I put something crazy on the master, they all get excited because suddenly it sounds so different.

Do you find by doing that you keep the artists engaged?

Well, in the old days, it was understood that everything would take a big sonic leap in the mixing stage, but people are more impatient now. As a producer, don’t assume the artist knows it’s going to sound great later. Do not assume that, especially in an age when everyone sort of expects the track to sound as good as a finished master right out of the gate.

In what other ways did the song transform in the process of doing this recording?

On the original version of “Sun” there are very few keyboards — I think only a Wurlitzer. For this version we figured we’d try a few different things, including synthesizers, like a MiniMoog, and drum machines, including a Korg KR-55 Pro and a Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer. Once we had laid the drum machine in, nudged it a bit to work with the original click, and created a very minimalist map of the song, then the band went into the room and played with it live in Studio 1.

It didn't seem like you used a ton of microphones.

A couple of mics on the bass — plus the UAD Ampeg B-15 plug-in, a couple for the Wurlitzer, a couple for the guitar, and of course the drums. We really didn’t use a lot of mics. It was a pretty straightforward band recording, in a fairly lively room, so we didn’t feel the need for a lot of ambient mics. Alex (Trimble, Two Door Cinema Club vocalist) recorded his vocals in the control room, with a Shure SM7 through a UAD Neve 1073 Preamp & EQ and 1176 and Distressor compressors.

Is it safe to say that you hear a difference after tracking with Apollo X?

The strange thing is that I didn’t think I was going to hear any difference, sonically, with Apollo X. I really didn’t. But suddenly, almost imperceptibly, my recordings began to sound more unified. I found that, somehow, recordings tracked with Apollo X blended better together. They sound richer, extremely natural — just better.

From must-own albums by Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd, to Bob Marley and the Wailers, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, and more, the Helios Type 69 console delivered fat, unmistakable attitude, with punchy midrange and an assertive growl.

In this video, Universal Audio's Ben Lindell shows you how to harness this iconic British tone shaper at the center of hundreds of iconic albums from rock’s “Golden Age,” and how to shape drums using its colorful inductor-based three-band EQ and uniquely voiced low-frequency boost and cut filters.

Watch the full UAD 5-Minute Tip video and learn how the Helios Type 69 Preamp & EQ plug-in can transform your recordings into something legendary.

Built for modern sequencer-based music, the Moog Multimode Filter Collection plug-in borrows from various incarnations of Moog designs, nailing the essential Moog filter character unlike any software emulation in history.

In this video, learn how to easily add movement and texture to a synth part using the Moog Multimode Filter Collection's intuitive, infinitely variable four-lane step sequencer, and how the Drive, LFO, and Envelope controls can help you add motion and interest to a static beat.

Watch the full UAD 5-Minute Tip video and learn how the incredibly rich and rythmic sounds of the Moog Multimode Filter Collection plug-in can be harnessed on nearly any source, giving you a powerful tone-shaping tool.

Strategic, musical use of plate reverb adds undeniable gloss and dimension to your mixes. The Pure Plate Reverb plug-in provides UA's revolutionary plate reverb emulation in a simple, affordable package — with all of the essential features.

In this video, Universal Audio's Ben Lindell shows you how to add size weight and dimension to drums, lushness on guitars, space around vocals, and more. Learn how to use Pure Plate’s pre-delay and tone controls to dial in the perfect vibe and depth to your tracks.

Watch the full UAD 5-Minute Tip video and learn how Pure Plate gives all of your sources a rich satisfying space that will elevate your mixes.

As a rock fan, I’ve got to start by asking you about the process of making those sensational Rival Sons records, including the recent Feral Roots which you produced here.

Well, the earlier records, like [2011’s] Pressure & Time, we did in maybe 12 days or so, really starting from basically nothing. Sure, [guitarist] Scott Holiday would have some riffs on deck, and we’d just start writing all together, here in the studio. [Rival Sons singer] Jay Buchanan’s is obviously a great lyricist, so we’d get the music together, and then he’d go write the lyrics, and then we’d cut it. Done. I mean, that’s the way it used to be, right?

I suppose that style of record making requires a pretty dialed-in band and writers, ones that are able to perform at the level necessary to make magic happen on the spot.

Well, one thing I’m really into is the first-take. Sometimes in the whole demo process, you find that the first time you sing a particular chorus is the best you’re ever going to sing it. The first time you play that signature riff — that’s often the best you’re ever going to play it. After that, you kinda miss a certain energy.

Are you anti demo?

I’m personally not into demos at all, and I’m not into pre-production. I kinda hate it. I know that goes against the grain. But for the most part, it’s evil. You work out all this stuff for the demo, and by the time you get in the studio, you’ve forgotten it.

What gets forgotten in the pre-production process?

You’ve forgotten the nuances in that bassline you worked on, you’ve forgotten what made the groove work, or you can’t quite get the groove exactly where it was on the demo. Still, you keep going back to listen to the demo and try to beat it, and I think that’s a frustrating thing to do, so that’s why I’m not into pre-production.

Also, why not track the band live? To me, it’s a lot harder to start using a click track, and then do the drums until they’re “perfect,” and then overdub the bass, and then do the guitar... I mean, by the time you get to the vocals, the singer doesn’t even want to sing anymore!

So, what’s your answer to that way of working?

Well, I always go for vocals live with the band tracking live with the singer. Sure, sometimes I’ll put the singer in a booth for isolation, but more often in the same room with the members of the band. Look, if the lyrics are done, I’ll definitely have them track in the room with everybody. If there are still spaces in the lyrics to fill, I’ll have the singer in a booth, and then punch in what we need later.

But what happens when the singer is standing there singing live in performance with the band is that, well, when the singer sings loud, the band comes up, and when the singer sings quietly, the band comes down. It’s a reactive process.

In my experience, if you do it the other way, recording the vocals after all the instrumental tracks have been laid down, it’s difficult to find a place in the mix where the vocals really sit properly. You’re always fighting it. But in a live situation, bands always react to the singer, and they just make space by backing off, muting a bit, you name it.

So it's the old adage that it's "All about the vocals," right?

Yeah, it's more about the singer than anything else. It’s also the interaction between human beings that makes music special. The “assembly line” method of recording that has been very popular for the last 30 years is crazy to me.

The thing people listen to the most on a recording is the singer, but it’s the thing you record last. That’s crazy. By the time you’ve worked for two or three weeks on the instrumental tracks, and you finally get to the singer, as a band you’re kind of over the song, yet the singer is expected to walk in there and deliver the most important element of it? For me, capturing the singer performing with the band is everything.

Did Brandi Carlile’s track live with the band on By the Way, I Forgive You?

For all of the performances, she was in the big room tracking her vocals with the band, and in fact, I don’t think we ever put her in a booth at all. I mean, she’s that caliber of singer, of course, which makes a huge difference. If memory serves, I think me and my engineer Eddie Spear had her singing though a Shure SM7 into a hardware Neve 1073 preamp into a Universal Audio 1176 compressor. It was pretty simple, in fact, I’m not sure there was really any EQ going down on tape.

It’s worth noting the drums were in the drum booth, so the volumes weren’t that loud where she was singing. The bass is going direct, so there’s no problem there. But yeah, that record is cut live. So, if we wanted another vocal performance, well, we did another full take! It wasn’t that hard. We might have punched here and there, but for the most part, it was totally live.

Do you have a favorite compressor for vocals?

The UA 1176 hardware compressor has been my staple compressor since day one. And I love using the UAD 1176 LN plug-in on mixes. Truth be told, in some ways, I feel like I didn’t understand compression in the studio for many years.

How so?

I think my generation had the misfortune of not having enough of the “studio apprentice” thing in our lives. It used to be that in order to be an engineer or producer, you first had to work in a big studio, running errands, grabbing coffee, splicing tape, and in the process, you would learn the craft from someone who really knew what they were doing.

Honestly, I really did not know what I was doing for many years. But the UA 1176, I kind of understood. There’s an input and an output, plus two knobs — Attack and Release, though I really did not understand what those were all about either! I would just twist them until they made sense!

Early on someone showed me the “All-Buttons-In” trick on the 1176, and man, for the first ten years of my career, I think every vocal I did used that setting. It just sounded exciting, largely because the singer would react to it, so it was part of the performance. I’m not quite so aggressive with it now, but you definitely can get it to intensify everything. It’s my desert island compressor.

You've also been a big user of the UA 610 Tube Preamp for years?

Yes. They just sound good — period. You have volume, and very limited EQ, and for years I would just set the “Hi” and “Lo” all the way up, just leave them cranked, and it sounds really exciting. It ends up sounding like those old records because that’s what they used to make those records!

Are UA 610s part of the “Dave Cobb” sound?

Well, I went through a long phase where I was using only 610s — with ribbon mics especially. A lot of RCA 77-Ds and 44s. For instance, the Brandi Carlile record, By the Way, I Forgive You, that’s UA 610s on the drums and the bass, and pretty much everything. It’s just a rich, pillowy sound, like you hear on those old records.

Listen to “Hit the Road, Jack,” by Ray Charles, it’s very much that kind of sound; puffy, cool, and exciting. The drums on Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke” were also recorded with UA 610s. And that’s just four mics — stereo overheads, kick, and snare.

Your productions are refreshing in that, they're not especially compression-heavy and there is plenty of air around everything.

Well, one of my cheats is that a lot of time I’ll track stuff with no compression, and then when I have time, I’ll come back and play with compressors, run it through different gear and see if I can better it.

And, it’s interesting: there are plug-ins “in the box” that are easy to access and start using and that I actually prefer to the analog stuff. Like the UAD Empirical Labs EL-7 Fatso Jr., which works great on a parallel channel. I’ll give Vance Powell credit for telling me about that one! It helps to sit instruments in the right place.

What do you tend to gravitate to on your stereo output bus?

Something that’s been on my stereo bus forever is the UAD Chandler Limited Curve Bender Mastering EQ. For me, it’s the best stereo bus EQ. I generally use it for adding a little air on top, and even a little midrange, as older records tend to have a lot of midrange, and modern records tend to scoop them out a lot. So, I like that air and that midrange, and I’ll often boost up around 70Hz on the bottom as well. The Chandler Curve Bender plug-in has really become my thing. It’s incredible.

How do you typically track bass guitars?

Another plug-in I really love, that winds up on bass guitar on almost every record, is the UAD Teletronix LA-2A Leveler. I don’t even really touch the parameters much — it just goes on the bass and the guitar and does its magic.

I also love the Ampeg B-15N Bass Amplifier plug-in. I’ll record the bass all DI, and run it through the UAD B-15N Bass Amplifier when mixing, and I’m totally done. In fact, I don’t even mess with bass amps anymore, because of that plug‑in.

And it’s fun because, if the B-15N isn’t working out, there’s the Ampeg SVT-VR to play with! On a record I’m doing this week, I’m actually using the UAD Gallien-Kruger 800RB Bass Amp plug-in a lot, because I want it to sound like that particular period in music. The UAD bass amp plug-ins have really changed the game for me. They’re fantastic.

As a guitarist, I'm struck by how natural your electric guitars sound, especially how much noticeable, natural air seem to envelop them.

I suppose I stole my guitar recording philosophy from Jimmy Page — It’s all about room mics. As a kid, I would read books about how he always used the room quite a bit while recording. Y’know, take a mic, and wander around the room — preferably a really good-sounding room — with the mic in your hand until it sounds really good in conjunction with the close mic, and there’s your depth. Then pan those on opposite sides.

I've seen pictures of Glyn Johns and Jimmy Page's setups, where the mic is three or four feet away from the amp, and they’re not even getting a direct hit.

So you may not even use a mic right up on the speaker?

I’ve never put my head right up next to a speaker and yet that’s what people usually do with a microphone — right against the speaker, which makes no sense. There’s something about having some air on a guitar amp that, to me, makes it sound like a guitar amp should.

So, wherever you would generally stand when listening to a guitar amp, I’ll put mics there. In fact, sometimes that’s the only mic I’ll use on a guitar cabinet.

What else helps gives guitars that kind of dimension and authenticity?

I use a lot of plate reverb on guitars, in particular the UAD EMT 140 Classic Plate Reverberator. I feel it was the first truly great-sounding plug-in plate, and I’ve used that a ton on records. Just a ton. That’s been an absolute staple for me.

Now, I’ve even got a couple of great vintage plate reverbs — including an old EMT at RCA Studio A, but especially if I’m doing any keyboards or Mellotron, I actually prefer the way those sit with the UAD EMT 140 Plate Reverberator better.

You clearly prioritize the interaction between musicians, what else would say is vitally important when you begin tracking a project?

I was talking to John Prine, who I worked with here, and we were talking about Sam Philips, one of my heroes, the guy who started Sun Studios. John told me that while he was working with Sam, well, Sam literally didn’t care about the lyrics until the groove was right. He wouldn’t even listen to them. And John Prine is a lyrical genius, at the highest level you can get, right? I think I’m the same way with my priorities — foremost for me when we start the song is establishing the groove and the feel.

You can always tailor the lyrics around the groove, but if the groove isn’t right, you don’t even want to hear the lyrics. So, it’s all one: you want the rhythm and the groove to feel right, and the lyrics to really resonate. But it’s the foundation of that groove that brings you into what the lyrics have to say.