NerdingOut Archives | Audiomovers

Today, we are joined by the Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum-selling mix engineer Jeff Braun (Jason Aldean, Elle King, Nelly) as he shows us his current must-have pieces of kit and the plugins that never leave his chain.

From the Fearn VT7 Compressor and its ability to effortlessly unclog nasty mid-range frequency build-up to the Kirchhoff EQ, a natural, more musical sounding EQ that is an integral part of Jeff’s mixing workflow.

#NerdingOut is where we visit studios around the globe to ask producers, engineers and artists about their favorite tools of the trade.

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TRANSCRIPT

My favorite pieces of gear right now are the Fearn stuff, I’ve got the VT7 and then the VT5 is coming. They’re building it right now.

It’s like this intangible 3-5% percent that just feels like it kind of unclogs some like nasty mid range buildup effortlessly. You don’t have to do anything. It just, by nature of the tubes, it’s just kind of what happens.

So you get things to sit nicer together. It feels like things kind of have a little bit more depth and they’re not all in the same plane. So things just settle into like their own pockets and you don’t have to do anything. You just buy it and then run it through it. So that’s why I love it. I love pieces that make my life easier.

Other than that, I’m pretty much all in the box. So I would say the Kirchhoff EQ has got to be a big tool in my toolbox right now. If you A/B it to any similar EQs, it’s more musical, more natural, sounds tighter, not as bloated in the bottom.

You don’t hear as much ringing or resonance that can kind of get nasty in the top when you really start opening things up. It’s got a bunch of curve shapes that are super musical. And you have attack and release control on the dynamics section. It sounds incredible.
In today’s episode of #NerdingOut, Grammy-nominated mastering engineer and owner of Infrasonic Mastering, Pete Lyman (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile) discusses the intricate process of AAA – or all-analog – mastering.

For Pete there is nothing more rewarding than the process of cutting a record this way, with some of his favorite mastering projects having been reissues where Pete masters and cuts the lacquer straight from the tape with no digital counterpart throughout the process.

#NerdingOut is where we visit studios around the globe to ask producers, engineers and artists about their favorite tools of the trade.

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TRANSCRIPT

To me there’s nothing more rewarding than cutting a project all analog and cutting it to lacquer.

One of the things that I love doing is what we call AAA, all analog vinyl mastering.

I do a lot of projects where I get a box of tapes and they’re mixes from the band and I do a lot of like, I’ll do historical reissues where I’m going through old tapes and I have to EQ those masters and cut vinyl straight from the tape and there’s not even a digital counterpart.

You forget how much time it takes to fast forward and rewind tapes and to load tapes and you know with a DAW you can just hit space bar and return to zero immediately.

It’s crazy how much time during the day is just eaten up by loading tapes and playing through tapes.

Those are really fun, very expensive to do because they’re very time consuming, but when it’s done right, to me there’s nothing more rewarding.
Ahead of launching MIDI streaming and MIDI Time Code generation within LISTENTO, we asked Abbey Road Studios’ Senior Recording Engineer Andrew Dudman for his take on the possibilities of this new technology for running large scale sessions in the iconic Studio One.

From working with MIDI synthesizers and sound modules, to managing remote MIDI control surfaces and synchronizing remote DAWs with transmitted or newly generated MTC timecodes –

The options are only limited by your imagination.

All LISTENTO Pro subscribers can take advantage right now, you just need to download the latest versions of the plugin and the app from Audiomovers.com.

You can get a free one-month trial of LISTENTO Pro with the code TRYMIDI.

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#NerdingOut is where we uncover the “tools of the pros” — the sacred plugins, gear and instruments that are essential to the process of award-winning producers, mixers and engineers.

Learn how acclaimed Producer and Recording Engineer Matt Genovese found and recapped an original 1960s Scully 280 tape machine.

This famously versatile piece of hardware has been used on records like ‘Led Zeppelin II’ and ‘III’ and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’.

Matt utilizes it in various ways, including printing on individual tracks to mixing with it.

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TRANSCRIPT

Clients are always impressed about, you know, just seeing a tape machine in the room is cool, but when you record a song onto it, it’s a pretty big difference.

Most of the records that I love were all done on tape machines. A few months ago, I found a Scully 280 machine, which is from the sixties.

It was the same machine that they had in, uh, Stax Records and Motown. Records like Led Zeppelin two and three were done on it, Jimmy Hendrix’s Little Wing was done on it.

So it’s a very famous machine. I found it. I recapped it and got it working a hundred percent.

Again, I print individual tracks to it. Sometimes if I want that sound on a whole recording.

I’ll just send something to a compressor, I can insert the tape machine as a hardware insert, and then I also mix to it. So I mix with it in input record.

So I’m monitoring it through the electronics as I mix, and then when I’m done, I flip it to playback and I record it to tape, and so it runs straight outta my console, straight into the tape machine and outta the tape machine back into my computer where I print the final mix.

When you ab it with and without the tape, specifically with the Scully 280, it’s a big difference.