Mixing and mastering engineer Nick “Squids” Squillante, who began his career alongside seven-time GRAMMY Award-winning mixer Michael Brauer at Electric Lady Studios and is now a seasoned professional in immersive mixing, employs NUGEN Audio plugins in his private Dolby Atmos studio in Brooklyn where he’s working on projects that include the motion picture “The Retaliators.”
About the NUGEN Halo Upmix plugin, he explains, “I tried out the demo and immediately thought ‘this is a game changer.’ Halo Upmix provides an entirely new way to think about mixing in Atmos. Without this plug-in, my approach used to be going through each stem and picking out the pieces I felt I could accentuate without ruining the mix.
“What Halo Upmix did for me is life-changing. Let’s say I have a drum stem; I’ll run it through Halo Upmix and, boom, my drums are immediately filling the speakers in a perfect way. The presets also provide such a great starting point ― I don’t have to adjust much.
“After experimenting more, this plugin became my go-to tool, especially for this soundtrack,” he continues. “It helped me decide what was going to sit in the beds, be constant and help the listener stick with the tune the whole way. It also supported the other little things. For instance, if I have a synth arpeggio, maybe I’ll wrap that around your head, move it left or right, or put it above you in the Atmos spectrum. But, all the while, the drums are still smashing the right way and the bass is chugging along, holding down the bedrock of the mix.”
Squillante employs a NUGEN Paragon convolution plugin. “Just like with Halo Upmix, the Paragon plugin offers a new level of flexibility. I love starting with presets and adjusting from there, and the NUGEN ones are unmatched,” he concludes. “I just feel like, in this day and age, you should be able to move fast with confidence ― good presets help make that possible.”
