Mix engineer, producer and guitarist Mike Butler, who has credits that include work with The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, The Doobie Brothers, The Pretenders, Eminem, Phoebe Bridgers and many others, recently upgraded his home studio in Southern California with an EVO Expanded System.
Butler had long employed a small setup suitable for mixing and simple overdubs, but his longer term goal was to cultivate the space to be able to record a full band live. This year an opportunity arose to produce an album with English artist Elaine Palmer and he moved forward in reaching that goal.
“I wanted to record at least Elaine and the drummer and bassist together. Elaine would be playing guitar and singing, so that means drums, bass, guitar and a vocal simultaneously,” he explains, noting that his setup included a Universal Audio dual-channel interface. “It only has two built- in mic pre’s, and the only way to expand it is via a single ADAT input.
“Having enough inputs and mic preamps was the biggest and seemingly most expensive hurdle to figure out,” he says. “My saviour came with the release of a brand new line of recording gear by a smaller, but well trusted and reputable company, Audient.”
Butler adds that he initially saw the EVO audio interfaces as simply a “no frills, budget friendly option,” but following more research, he found that the flagship EVO 16 is a recording interface with eight internal mic preamps, a monitor section with two independent headphone outputs and it’s expandable via ADAT to 24 channels.
He continues, “It’s as simple as it gets. It has combination jacks for inputs that accept 1/4-inch TRS or XLR connectors. It doesn’t have external phase switches, high-pass filters, pads or any other bells and whistles you might typically find on multi-channel mic pre/interface. They use a single switch to select phantom power per channel instead of having them on each track. It doesn’t even come with rack ears (though you can buy them cheaply). The whole thing is designed to be as streamlined as possible with as few external knobs or buttons as they can get away with. It is actually a great idea. By eliminating the costs of adding all the extra doodads, they could spend the money on the things that matter most: preamps and converters.”
The new EVO 16 forms the hub of his now multi-channel home studio. “But eight channels wasn’t going to be enough to get me there, and wouldn’t you know it, they’d thought of that too.” Adding EVO SP8, the stand-alone 8-channel mic pre to his setup means he now has a 16-channel recording studio. “Same mic pre’s, same layout – all for just over $1000. And, if I find that isn’t enough (it is), I can add another SP8 down the road for a full 24 channels.
“I am truly blown away by this setup, especially for the price,” he says of the EVO Expanded System: EVO 16 and SP8 together. “When you factor the cost per channel for an all-in-one solution, you’d be hard pressed to find any cheaper option, and as I found out, especially one that sounds as good. The mic pres sound great, have enough gain and clean headroom, and are very quiet. They don’t give you any ‘vibe’ per se. They are clean and sound like the source they are recording. They aren’t going to bring any colouration to the table, but honestly, the magic should come from the source, not your preamps.”
