The Vancouver studio of Grammy-nominated producer/songwriter Brian Howes is outfitted with a variety of Focusrite gear, including dual Thunderbolt 3 Red 16Line interfaces, an ISA 828 MkII microphone preamp, and a RedNet A16R MkII 16-channel analog I/O interface.
Howes, who’s also the recipient of BMI, SOCAN, Juno, and Dove awards, has a portfolio that includes producing Nickelback’s multi-platinum album Here And Now, including the singles “Trying Not To Love You” and “Lullaby”; co-writing Daughtry hits including “Over You” and “What I Want” from his multi-platinum debut album; co-writing and producing Hinder’s number-one single “Lips Of An Angel”; co-writing and producing on all seven of Canadian pop/rock outfit Hedley’s albums, which garnered him multiple wins as Juno Producer Of The Year and Best Pop Album; as well as additional projects with Boys Like Girls, Taylor Swift, Mother Mother, Chris Cornell and numerous others.
The studio was designed by Ron “Obvious” Vermeulen, whose designs for personal studios include Bryan Adams’ The Warehouse and Jim Vallance’s Armoury Studios. Howes describes it as “a nice basement, with the best gear in the world!”
A 64-in/64-out Pro Tools | HD works with the dual Thunderbolt 3 Red 16Line, which is the studio’s main interface. The ISA 828 MkII incorporates eight mic preamps with Lundahl LL1538 transformers on every input, and the RedNet A16R MkII 16-channel analog I/O interface is the hub for a future expansion of Dante networking, utilizing cabling that the designer planned and provided for.
“The Focusrite products are very easy to work with,” says Howes, who played in the British Columbia-based band Young Guns and later fronted the group DDT that blended punk, ska, and rap; and then formed the alternative rock band Closure in 2002 before moving full time into music production. “I tend to be a big-picture-type producer. I listen to the song and the artist. I understand the basics of the technology, but my approach has more to do with the feel and the vibe and the sound than technical wizardry. I have a great engineer I work with, Karl Dicaire, who handles the technical aspects, and that lets me focus on the creative elements. What I love hearing is music through the Focusrite converters. They work wonderfully on every type of music.
“I’m working on projects that range from rock to pop to country to hip-hop, and I’ve got different flavors of gear that help me do that,” he concludes. “But the Focusrite units are one of the big consistent things across all of that, as well as into the future, with the Dante connectivity the A16R provides. The Focusrite gear makes all the difference.”
