For anyone who lives to make music and pines for a soulmate, it would be hard not to envy Irish folk vocalist Cara Dillon and her husband Sam Lakeman. The two met in the band Equation and quickly left to walk a sure and steady path to artistic, commercial, and familial success.

Winning dozens of awards and countless accolades, Dillon’s otherworldly voice takes the spotlight, and the duo have created and produced four solid albums on Rough Trade Records and, now, their own Charcoal Records.

Lakeman serves as the recording engineer in their second floor home studio. Tired of cobbling together equipment and re-jiggering routing on menu-heavy digital boxes, Lakeman purchased the powerful Metric Halo ULN-8 combination mic pre, converter and DSP.

Their previous studio setup centered on a digital console of early 2000s vintage and a now-discontinued high-end AD/DA converter, together with an admirable collection of vintage Neve, Avalon, and Chandler mic pres.

“I got fed up with having to navigate the digital console for really menial tasks and I came to realize that I disliked the sound of everything through that old converter,” said Lakeman. “So I started looking for an alternative.”

“It was apparent early on that there is a very committed core of Metric Halo users who are vehemently dedicated to these products and have been users for years.”

“I was also impressed with the level of feedback encouraged by Metric Halo and the obvious importance they place on implementing changes in line with evolving technology and user needs.”

“Ultimately, the main selling points for me were the on-board DSP and the almost non-existent latency, which meant I could ditch my console and still process tracks via DSP and outboard hardware without significant latency or CPU drain.”