Music artist Steve J Brown has been using his recently acquired Audient ASP4816 at his northern England studio in working on a collaboration with English singer/songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae and drummer Myke Wilson, both getting that record ready for mixing as well as developing other ongoing projects.
Brown describes his studio as a “creative workshop environment” comprising a hybrid front end that feeds into either 16-track tape or digital — or both — with the new Audient mixing desk functioning as a hub for routing in tandem with a patchbay.
“I was looking for a mixer which could integrate the hardware so there’s less patching needed,” he explains, recalling his old setup, which needed everything patching individually. “It was super-flexible, but in practice it meant I would opt against experimenting in the flow of a tracking session.”
Now he uses the 16-way bus routing system of the ASP4816 to route to a choice of hardwired chains of outboard EQ and compression: “I can track the chain and a clean, pre-processed direct out (via a track’s insert send) simultaneously. So I can really overcook the outboard knowing the pre-processed track is there if I went too far. This is helping me get to know the more extreme reaches of my gear in a real session environment.
“I love the flexibility of that routing. It’s just a button push to throw a track or group of tracks into a hardware chain and it comes up on its own fader and normals to a soundcard input. Routing via chains of outboard allows me to bring up a vibrant sound on first playback. The players can hear their performance with some extra flavor,” he concludes. “If you can keep the energy rising on playback it’s a virtuous cycle. We can be surprised how good something sounds and bring that confidence into the next performance.”
Go here for further details about Brown’s workflow.
