AF: Yeah definitely, if you have more dynamics, that’s better.
Eisen: I hate compression. If I can avoid it, I prefer to avoid the compression. Especially side-chain compression.
AF: It’s good to hear that, because you know, more and more people just compress and over-compress…
Eisen: I don’t understand why. They forget about the music. Where is the music? But then again, it’s a matter of taste. Everybody does what feels better to them.
AF: So do you mix everything in Cubase?
Eisen: Yes, we do, we mix everything in Cubase. We are actually spreading the channels on the RME AES32 mixer, so we do the sounding over there in a way. I think it sounds better, and then we record the two outputs to two inputs of another soundcard, the Prism Sound.
AF: What are your preferred virtual synths?
Eisen: I used to say lots of stuff but I think these days, Omnisphere. It’s absolutely amazing, and we also have Trilian, which is really really good. We bought the whole Native Instruments pack, for example, and I want to say Massive – it is an amazing synth, but it doesn’t work on Cubase properly.
AF: You mean it crashes?
Eisen: Always crashes. Sometimes when we really want to have a different sound, we use Massive on another computers stand alone, sadly. I think these are the best VSTs. I don’t think there is anything else that can compare to the Spectrasonics stuff, in terms of everything. And we also have for strings the Vienna Symphonic Library, the plug-in VSL.
AF: In one of your songs there is a violin, playing really like a violin, is that what you use?
Eisen: Yes. That is what we use.
AF: I thought it was a real one.
Eisen: It’s expensive, the Vienna, really expensive, but nothing compares to it. It sounds so realistic. And if you write it in the right way, it’s unbelievable. The Vienna is amazing. Even the built-in Cubase 5 plug-ins are sounding really good. The synths themselves, the sound quality is good.
AF: Now what about the hardware gear you use mostly when you play live?
Eisen: Well it’s very simple. As a synth, I use only the Motif XS6. Controlling it with the Edirol PCR-800. It’s pretty good. I control the cutoff with the Boss Volume pedal. For a mixer we use the Yamaha 01V96 version 2. Which is great, in the live show we just push the button and 99 percent of the soundcheck is done. The only thing I have left to do is just final EQ for the system, and that’s it.
AF: Very practical.
Eisen: I’m also controlling the mixer from my midi controller from the Edirol keyboard. So if I need more guitars I don’t need to approach the mixer, I just push more guitars… I have everything controlled from the keyboard. Everything is really quick in the live show, because I am doing the mixing for the live.