Mixer/producer/coach Yamil Martinez (Luis Fonsi, Alex Campos, Ana Gabriel, Ricky Martin, Tommy Torres) deployed a Waves eMotion LV1 live mixer and Waves plugins for the recent live recording of “El Pulso” by Puerto Rican reggaetón artist Don Omar at The White Palace in Miami.
It commemorates 2.8 billion streamed songs for Omar at Pandora. No overdubs were done on top of the live recording captured at the event. Omar, a.k.a. “El Rey Del Reggaetón” (The King of Reggaetón), has won 32 awards, being one of the most successful artists of the genre. He is the recipient of three Latin GRAMMY Awards, 16 Latin Billboard Music Awards, one Billboard Music Award, three Lo Nuestro Awards, eight Viña del Mar International Song Festival Awards and a Guinness Record for event attendance.
Martinez explains, “My home base is Puerto Rico, and the LV1 allows me to take it with me anywhere (for this project, Miami). I can get the job done anywhere without compromising a bit of sound quality. The eMotion LV1’s sound quality is second to none! In addition, in this particular case, the most important thing about the LV1 is the scalability and flexibility to adapt to different setups and requirements determined by each individual project.
“The LV1’s multicasting capacity allows the system to be shared by multiple hosts (software consoles), giving the system the ability of monitoring the different returns from the recorders in real time,” he continues. “For this project, the LV1 was the master console for a reference mix for video. Waves SoundGrid Studio was used to monitor the return of two of the three software recorder DAWs.”
The live mix transferred easily to the video production, he adds: “That very same live mix was used by the video director, Marcelo Gama, and the editor during most of the editing process. The reference mix needed to be as full and as detailed as possible for them to perceive and match audio and video with absolute precision. With those criteria as a goal, mixing with the LV1 was a major advantage that reflected even in the final mix. During post-production, a lot of the reference mix plugin chains and the setting used during tracking were retained for the final mix, making the post-production more efficient, no matter which DAW was being used.”
The general audio setup consisted of three separate audio “worlds,” including front of house, monitor and recording. For the multitrack recording, a Waves LV1 console was used. Martinez’ LV1 system consisted of a MacBook Pro, two Mac Mini, two DSPRO StageGrid 4000, two DSPRO StageGrid 1000, two Waves Extreme SoundGrid Servers, a Waves Axis Scope and three DAWs.
“Waves plugins were extensively used for the reference mixes during tracking,” he notes. “I used InPhase for aligning and combining dual input sources like drums, top and bottom mic into a single channel. I used the Primary Source Expander (PSE) on every single vocal channel. The PSE external side chain detection allows extreme precision, no matter where it is placed in the chain. The F6 Floating Band Dynamic EQ served as a zero-latency surgical EQ, plus filtering and dynamics, used to control or remove rumbles, noises and resonances with a very adaptative behavior at different levels. I used the Scheps Omni Channel as a zero-latency chameleonic channel strip, used after all the surgical correction was done to achieve the desired color.
“Smack Attack was used for recovering the transient on drums and percussion and to achieve a sound with lots of attack, even after they were heavily compressed. The eMo D5 Dynamics plugin, an extensive dynamic control with zero latency and very low CPU impact, was used on every strip of the LV1 console. Waves Tunes Real-Time performed pitch correction in real time (shared with the FOH). GTR Stomps Reverb, since it is a very effective and efficient reverb, it was used on a large count of the individual channel. And the Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain was used for final processing at the master bus, it glues and colors everything, making it sound more polished.”
