Studio & Recording
When I mixed the Crimes of Passion album, it was with a Mac running MOTU Digital Performer for all audio tracks and MIDI tracks, with most of the Effects being external analogue devices. Mixing was done through a pair of Neumann KH 310 A Studio Monitors. I used a Grace Design M905 as the heart of the studio, with a range of vintage digital reverbs and effects including the following:
- DBX 160 A Compressor
- Empirical Labs FATSO Compressor/Tape Saturator
- Eventide H8000 Digital Multi-Effects
- Lexicon MPX1 Digital Reverb
- Roland SRV-330 Digital Reverb
- Roland SRV-2000 Digital Reverb
- Sony DPS-V77 Digital Multi-Effects
- Sony MU-R201 Digital Reverb
- Warm Audio EQP-WA Pultec Equaliser
- Yamaha REV5 Digital Reverb
I mixed everything through a TL Audio Summing Mixer and then into a Cartec Audio THC which was a compressor/equaliser tone monster with parallel blending etc. It was a nightmare of a device which is a story for another day, but it did its job for the Crimes of Passion album, just. Final mixes were recorded onto a Fostex DV40 Master DVD Recorder. The stereo mixes were sent to Ordio Mastering to get the final sheen added.
After I finished the album, I foolishly sold ALL of the gear and have regretted it ever since as I had some amazingly good gear. I did however find a solution to the quest to find a great analogue sound in the mixes, (which is what I was chasing with all the outboard gear) and that was to switch to Harrison Mixbus 32C DAW instead of using MOTU Digital Performer which by comparison sounds cold and dare I say it, ‘digital’. Harrison’s Mixbus 22C DAW is simply brilliant, from the moment you start using it you hear it, that true analogue mixing desk sound.
Having moved over to Mixbus 32 C, (and a PC running Windows 10) I started mixing more songs, in particular the Lucinda’s Eyes EP. I had bought another Sony MU-R201 Digital Reverb to use for the snare reverb as I find it to be the best for that purpose. But all of the songs were mixed totally in the box using plugins, unlike the Crimes of Passion album. The new Everything & More album will once again be mixed entirely in the box as I now have Impulse Responses for the Sony MU-R201 Digital Reverb.
Below are a series of images of the various iterations of the effects rack used for the Crimes of Passion album.
