“Our aural palette is indeed quite diverse,” Newton (who hails from the UK as well) says with an air of English understatement. “I found long ago that getting each song to sound like the real thing – what the fans want and expect, in other words – requires its own snapshot. Each is so unique that if I loaded the one I’ve created for the song ‘A View To a Kill’ for another like ‘Girls on Film,’ it would sound like a bomb going off in the arena.”
First developed back when he was on an Avid VENUE Profile, the snapshots evolved into a collection of 75 in total, representing songs that the band had, at one point or another, played live. When the time came to transition to his current VENUE | S6L, Newton could’ve easily transferred everything he’d done over to the new platform, but chose to start from scratch instead.
“I was running a lot of Waves plugins on the Profile,” he explains. “And the S6L doesn’t run them. That’s one of the main reasons I chose to start anew, and in retrospect, it was a wise decision. My snapshots had become like an old tree with branches rambling and winding in every direction.
“I realized that I’d be better off cutting it down and starting with a new one. In the end I was pleased with the results. I’ve found myself not missing Waves as the desk is so good sounding.”
Neither Newton nor Bradley were out of inputs on their old Profiles, but the latter had maxed out his outputs and was resorting to all kinds of desperate measures to boost his capacity. When it was announced that the S6L was available, Bradley was right on it, and the first day the band heard the new board in their ear mixes they were sold.
Newton followed suit, and spent a couple of weeks at home with his new desk building session files using a multitrack recording and gain settings established by Bradley during an arena tour.
A Bit Of The Old
Despite the presence of 300 processing channels on the S6L, Newton still maintains a collection of outboard gear. An avowed fan of Universal Audio plugins, he subscribes to the notion that you can’t do a Duran show without RMX16s on drums, and to that end the authentic RMX16 digital emulation developed by AMS Neve and Universal Audio as a plugin found its way into the UA Apollo interfaces he keeps in his rack.
A Lexicon emulation is also kept at hand for lead singer Simon Le Bon’s vocals, while an Eventide Harmonizer emulation stands in with effects on bass guitar and certain songs.
A DBMax broadcast level maximizer from TC Electronic adds further dimension to Newton’s sound, serving as a five-band limiting device additionally loaded with dynamic EQ.
“The thing I’ve found while working within the digital world for so long,” Newton confides, “is that the nicer and cleaner it gets, the more I want to sneak in a bit of old analog sound.”
Eclecticism is the rule when it comes to stage inputs, with offerings spread about from Sennheiser, AKG, and Shure. Vocal mics across the board at three positions including center stage are wireless BETA 58As. A BETA 98A captures saxophone, while Shure wireless is the choice on guitar and bass. With drums, pretty much everything is miked from within—with snare being one exception. (“This way, you can throw the toms into a ridiculous state of reverb without getting spills from the cymbals,” Newton contends).
Starting at the bottom with kick drum, a classic BETA 52/91 combination resides behind the drum head. Sennheiser 604s can be found inside the toms. Snare top is indeed miked outside at the top with a BETA 56, but at the bottom inside you’ll find an AKG C418 condenser. AKG C414s ride overhead, and on hi-hat there’s a Crown CM310 mounted underhead.