RICK CARSON: The Les Paul vs. Strat Gear Analogy, Why Monitors Trump Preamps, Ending the Loudness War

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the URM Podcast. Today we have Rick Carson on. Rick has been on the podcast before. He is a multi Grammy nominated engineer, if you're not familiar with him. Also the owner and founder of Make Believe Studios and Plugin Company. They've got some really, really fantastic stuff and make some great sounding tools. Rick is also probably one of the smartest people in this entire business when it comes to gear and equipment and things like that. He's absolutely brilliant, incredibly talented. So I'm going to jump right into it. We had a really, really excellent conversation with Rick.

Speaker 2 (00:00:32):

Welcome back. Good

Speaker 1 (00:00:34):

To see you guys.

Speaker 2 (00:00:35):

Good to see you too.

Speaker 1 (00:00:37):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:00:38):

When's the last time I saw you? Was that when we were in Florida in that back room?

Speaker 3 (00:00:44):

Yeah. Yeah, in the safety

Speaker 2 (00:00:45):

Room, and we got high and did a podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:00:48):

Yes, absolutely. We're getting safe in Florida.

Speaker 2 (00:00:51):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:00:52):

Yep. And I'm in Safety Harbor, Florida right now, so it's fitting.

Speaker 2 (00:00:56):

You're in Florida?

Speaker 3 (00:00:58):

I am.

Speaker 2 (00:00:59):

Do you live there?

Speaker 3 (00:01:01):

No. No, but Metro is located here in a place called Safety Harbor, which is an interesting spot. It's right on the other side of the Tampa Bay, and it's surrounded by Clearwater on all three sides.

Speaker 2 (00:01:14):

Okay. Is it safe?

Speaker 3 (00:01:16):

Yeah, it is relatively safe.

Speaker 2 (00:01:18):

Okay, good, good. Just making sure we strive for accuracy here.

Speaker 3 (00:01:23):

Yeah, it's picturesque Florida, to be honest. You've got Scientology everywhere. You go outside of here, and then there's this one mile long main street and it's got three diners and four ice cream shops and a candy store, just beautiful Florida.

Speaker 2 (00:01:41):

You know what? You have the longest podcast we've ever done.

Speaker 3 (00:01:49):

That's cool. I still have people hit me up about it saying that they love listening to it. So thank you for doing that with

Speaker 2 (00:01:54):

Me. Joel, take a guess how long, because he's been on twice. Take a guess how long.

Speaker 1 (00:02:00):

Well, did you ask him about the history of the A DR complex or not?

Speaker 2 (00:02:03):

Dude, I don't remember, but just take a guess how fucking long that episode was.

Speaker 1 (00:02:09):

I would say three hours and 26 minutes and

Speaker 2 (00:02:12):

Four hours plus.

Speaker 1 (00:02:14):

Do I won an award? It was a good afternoon.

Speaker 2 (00:02:18):

It was a good episode. Yeah, it was a good episode. Holy shit. So you have the award for the longest URM podcast in history, and I cannot believe that it's four hours long, but that said, since then and since the last time we met up, you've been up to a lot, man. You have, I remember last time I saw you, you were just getting the plugin thing kind of, it was more of a thought than reality, and I believe that you had just gotten the studio. Am I correct?

Speaker 3 (00:03:06):

No, no, no. Make believe it existed for a while by that point, but you're correct. On the whole side of the plugin thing, it was definitely

(00:03:14):

At the impetus of the plugin. And don't get me wrong, I had wanted to be in the plugin business probably since about 2015. That's the first time that I really did something in earnest, and I won't go into that, but it was with another audio company and they wanted to make a piece of software that did eventually end up going into the market, but I would be heavily investing into it and it wouldn't be my own thing. So it's not the route that I went down. And then from there, I was definitely putting my ducks in a row to start doing this. And that was the last time I saw you where I was like, like, what are you doing next? I was like, oh, plug and company. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:03:56):

You know what I think is really awesome, I just wanted to congratulate you, is for actually doing it and not just doing it, but doing it. Well,

Speaker 4 (00:04:08):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:04:09):

It is one thing to just put stuff out. I mean, that's hard enough, right? Going from nothing to something is hard enough, but to actually come out with plugins that people actually love and to have actually made it a real thing that's successful in a pretty short amount of time, man, it hasn't been that long, so congratulations for pulling it off. It's awesome to see

Speaker 1 (00:04:39):

Also.

Speaker 3 (00:04:39):

Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Thanks, Kevin. It's been wonderful because it's a really fulfilling thing. Not only do I get to work with people that I love to work with and work with, things that I love to work with. I get to know gear better than most people could ever imagine. Even people are using this stuff every day just by the process of what we're doing. I have to get pretty deep into this stuff. And from there, it really transforms into the ability that the stuff that I love and appreciate, now, there's thousands of people that can love and appreciate it and all of the music that it gets used on. I mean, that's probably one of the biggest joys out of life right now is you wake up and you see these things and it's like, oh, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are at the top of the charts, and you're just like, that's cool. Those guys need our stuff. And it's so interesting to just be a very, very small part, but still feel like you're contributing to the thing that you love most in the world, which is recorded music.

Speaker 2 (00:05:55):

I mean, making the tools that people actually use to create is pretty awesome. Hey, everybody, I want to take a quick break from this episode to talk to you about URM Academy now. So if you're new here, URM Academy is the best online school for metal and rock producers and musicians. When you join, you get a whole access to a range of content. There's nail the mix, which I'm guessing most of, and that's where we bring on a different artist and a different mixer every month to walk through a mix and give you the raw multi-tracks. And we've had on mixers like Will Putney, Jens Borin, Tom Lord, algae with Artists, bring Me the Horizon, Shuga, periphery, opec, even Nickelback and Tons more. If it's under the Heavy Music umbrella as I like to call it, we cover it. You also get our Mix Lab tutorials, which are little bite size tutorials about very specific topics.

(00:06:57):

We have over a hundred of those now. So if you don't have the time for a Nail to mix session or an entire course, you just want to find one tidbit of info to help solve a problem. That's what Mix Labs are for. We also have exclusive members, only Facebook and Discord groups where you can make friends with and talk to thousands of people from all over the world who do the exact same thing as you. And what's super awesome about our community is that it's troll free. We kick trolls out. It's like an Oasis online, and also our instructors are part of the community and they interact with everybody. So you can not only make friends, but you can I guess socialize and learn from the best. Also, we have URM Enhanced, which is our more advanced membership tier. The main focus of that is our Fast Track library, which are some very, very, very detailed courses on everything from editing drums to post-production effects, automation, creating impulse responses, working with low tune guitars and more. We have over 70 of these. It's actually insane how deep and comprehensive the fast tracks are. And when you join Nail the Mix or URM Enhanced, you also get access to Riff Hard. Our online school for metal guitarists with hundreds of lessons from artists such as Animals as Leaders, spirit Box, arks, Byer, Jason Richardson, and many more. So go to URM Academy. Let's get back into this episode.

Speaker 1 (00:08:27):

So how did you get hooked up with Metro? I feel like you guys have had a great partnership and given that you're in Metro klos building right now,

Speaker 3 (00:08:38):

I initially became a fan of Metro klo. I think the same way that a lot of people become a fan of Metric, which is serving I was

Speaker 2 (00:08:49):

Andy Sleep for me.

Speaker 3 (00:08:51):

Awesome, awesome strip channel strip. And I'll never forget when I first came into the game, it was an old article by this point, but there was a ancient Digi zine article. Have you ever heard of the Digi Zine?

(00:09:10):

Yep. So back when Avid was Digi Design, they had an online blog called Digi Z, and there was an article there that had Serbin talking about metro K's channel strip. And then from there I saw Metro K's website and I went on there and there was more information about Seban and his use of Metro KLO channel strip. And it was one of the first pieces of third party software that I ever purchased was Channel Strip. And then from there, when I first started independently recording stuff on my own, I had a Digi oh oh two and I went and I got a metric KLO 2 8 8 2 to utilize for the extra eight inputs that I could get through eight at. So I had a 16 channel rig and half of it was Metric klo and everything that I would consider an important track, I would try and run through the metric KLO stuff.

(00:10:08):

So snare overheads all went through the metric. And then anything else that I would have to spare extra room mics and stuff would go through the double oh two. But yeah, it just grew from there. For a while I wasn't using Metric KLO interfaces and I was mostly just using their software. But then what ended up happening is they reached out to me and they were doing more some artist outreach stuff where they wanted to talk about people and the work that they were doing. And one thing that they were noticing is that there were a lot of random purchases that would actually end up being tied to a random I lock account. But the emails were all coming back to me and what it was was me going from studio to studio in Los Angeles and being like, yeah, dude, this studio's cool, but we got to get channel strip. So it was me buying channel strip to put in all these rigs in the rooms I was working at in Los Angeles with a bunch of people. And from there we did an article which is still up on the metro website for all of URM fans. If you want to dig deep, this is the most embarrassing photo I've ever took in my life. I don't know how it happened and it's the only time it's ever happened, I swear. But I have a man bun in the photo. You should go see it. It's awful.

Speaker 1 (00:11:40):

We're going to have him edited onto this just to slight you because we love you.

Speaker 3 (00:11:46):

I know what's happening. I look somewhere between Teen Wolf and a yoga instructor, teen Wolf, you just bought

Speaker 5 (00:11:54):

Card.

Speaker 3 (00:11:55):

I got a big beard. He stuff, it's awful. I'm busy. I'll tell you this, a funny story. So where we were in LA was on Sunset Strip and Sunset Strip has a pretty gnarly homeless problem. And one day I went into IHOP right on Sunset Strip and I had a whole studio order worth of food and it was like the middle of the night. There were no runners at this point. So I was like, I'll go get some food, I want some. So I had five people's worth of food and I went in there and I made this big order and then I realized, oh, I left my wallet at the studio. Let me just run over to the studio and I'll come back and pay for this. Feel free to not get it started, but I want to order. This is the food. Remember this order, I'm just going to go get my wallet. And this woman looked at me, she's like, what's up with homeless people coming in here and ordering food they're not going to pay for? I was just like, oh, I should shake.

Speaker 2 (00:13:03):

I mean I fucking California. That's all

Speaker 3 (00:13:08):

I can say. Fucking

Speaker 2 (00:13:09):

California.

Speaker 3 (00:13:10):

Absolutely. I was offended. That's how you should treat people in the first floor.

Speaker 1 (00:13:15):

I mean, working in the studio, you might as well just live on the floor because I feel like none of us ever leave it.

Speaker 3 (00:13:24):

And during that time period, I was very much living on the floor sessions, were going very, very late and then starting very, very early as far as general session maintenance to get ready for the next day.

Speaker 2 (00:13:36):

So a couple questions. Metric Halo in my perception, and I think it's changed a little, but when I first found out about Metric Halo was like I said, from Andy sne, he would post about channel strip and it kind of became one of those if you know plugins, it was not like the wave stuff or something that everyone was using, but for the people who wanted better or something, I'm not knocking waves or anything, but just the perception was if you want the best channel strip you can buy, it's this one. And then the people who were really sick at mixing all had it and that kind of just went on through the years and for a long time it seemed like that was the only thing people knew was Channel Strip and it's awesome channel strip and it's awesome. But it seems like in recent years, the brand, the name has definitely started to expand and become more, I don't want to say mainstream in recording, but known throughout the mixing world and not just something that a few Olympic athlete mixers use, which no. Have you noticed that or am I just crazy?

Speaker 3 (00:15:11):

No, no, I don't think that you're crazy at all. I've always associated it as, and this is not dislike anyone, but I've associated it with professionals, the people who love Channel Strip went to bat where people like Sleep and JJP and serving and never talked about anything else besides Channel Strip. And it's always been one of those things that's been in my world every day because I decided when I started working heavily back in the day that I was going to get very used to one analog channel strip and one digital channel strip and set my mind on the SSL and Metro Killer Channel strip. And as a creature of habit, I've tried tons of other stuff, but it's not something that I'm willing to give up. I mean even equalizer that I designed MBQ has can trace its lineage directly to the channel shipping queue. I'll also use channel shipping queue sometimes particularly because there's a lot of other fun things to do in channels strip, but it's interesting because to their own fault, their tools, you need to have care when you're using them.

Speaker 2 (00:16:29):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:16:30):

Any of the metrical tools that you can utilize or that they make in the production bundle, you can get some really, really great sounds out of them, but they're not what I would consider something that you can just start with. If you've never come in contact with a DSR before, if you've never seen a DSR or know the concept of dsr, you're going to need to spend some time with the manual to get the most out of these things. And a lot of people nowadays, they're not doing that. So I'll say that when it comes to metric halo tools, one thing that's been great is all of the wonderful artist presets that have been coming out. I think that has really opened up a lot of people's world just to the metric halo side of software, not including the make-believe stuff at all, but seeing dudes like Austin Coop who you guys had on here recently and Bob Horn and really great mix engineers contributing some awesome presets to, I mean Joel has contributed some awesome presets to these products and I think that every single one of those goes a step forward towards making it more accessible because yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:17:47):

Totally.

Speaker 3 (00:17:49):

We love you guys. We love the work that you do, Joel, we love the work that Bob does. We love the work that Lassie does and Seth does and there's a lot of other engineers who look up to your guys' work too, and when they can find something that inspires them, it's great and it's a great starting point for them to go and hopefully maybe grab a knob or a point in an equalizer and turn some stuff and pretty soon they're coming up with their own sounds and utilizing these tools in ways that seem more familiar to them than just looking at them as a blank page.

Speaker 2 (00:18:29):

Totally. I want to zero in on something you said said that you wanted to focus or really prioritize one analog channel strip and one plugin channel strip. However, I know you as I consider you to have one of the most encyclopedic knowledges of gear out of anyone I've ever met in my entire life. So a lot more than just one channel strip analog and one digital channel strip. And I'm going somewhere with this. We have say you only work with plugins these days. We have so many options for what we can choose to work with that I think it leads to a lot of analysis paralysis and some of the very best mixers that I know. Also, the same is true with musicians. They they cut out all the noise and they'll pick the things that they're going to work with. This is their tool set. It's not that they have a narrow mind and won't try new things, but they're going to get really great with this thing and own it, own their abilities with that. However, most of those people I wouldn't say are walking encyclopedias of gear. So how do you reconcile those two things? Because a lot more than just one analog channel strip and one digital channel strip. How, I'm trying to understand what you mean because

Speaker 3 (00:20:21):

They go hand,

Speaker 2 (00:20:22):

You look at gear encyclopedia,

Speaker 3 (00:20:24):

They go hand in hand. I wouldn't be able to know those other pieces of gear if I didn't have the intimate knowledge that sets the baseline with what I decided on that day. I know that my TIC is softer and has a bigger bottom end than my SSL equalizer because I know my SSL equalizer so well. I know that the two 20 on a knee sounds thicker and you can saturate it in a different way than two 20 on the SSL, but I also know that the top end on a knee can get pretty aggressive pretty fast, and I can push my SSLA little bit further than I can push a knee at 12 K. So these things, and you throw in things like the ec, which is so incredibly soft in left field compared to these things that are very hard hitting that I would only know how soft that was because I know how aggressive something else is. And for me, I think that the SSL and channel strip were perfect because Channel Strip gave me a very clean palette to work from and the SSL is not clean. It's got distortions in ways that are very, very musically pleasing and sometimes they're so hidden because they become part of the music that you really need to spend years learning what they are and how they're operating. And I still find cool stuff to do on my desk every single time as I'm assuming Joel does on his, they're living breathing machines in that way. And I wouldn't know exactly how much interaction the XSL actually plays with audio if I didn't know how Clean Channel Strip was. And then from

Speaker 2 (00:22:35):

There, so like you have a frame, it's almost like a frame of reference.

Speaker 1 (00:22:41):

They're like complimentary sounds. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:22:45):

And it's almost like controls for me in a scientific experiment

Speaker 2 (00:22:52):

That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 (00:22:55):

And from there I've been able to go and listen to, I mean it's very interesting and you see this as well. You hang something off the insert of your SSL and you start driving your EQ into it and it's a totally different thing than hanging it off pro tools and just listening to it and what I would consider an isolated context. So it's given me the ability to really hone in on what I love and appreciate about analog while also keeping one foot firmly grounded on what I think is the best digital in the world. And that has nothing to do with the plugins that we're making now, but everything to do with how we end up where we are when we're doing

Speaker 1 (00:23:40):

That. You said something interesting that I think is worth reaffirming because sometimes I see this online all the time, people come in and they're like, I want to buy, for example, a mic preamp, or I want to buy my first hardware bus compressor or an EQ or something. And you're running blind, meaning people just say, oh, this is badass, go get it. And then you sit there and you go down some rabbit hole on the internet as we've all done watching people do 400 pages of fist fights in the streets on a certain website over which Neve is the best, Neve or whatever, which clone is the best clone of a clone of a clone and it gets pretty crazy. But one thing that really helped me a lot, and you mentioned this is thinking about sound in terms of softness and hardness and the tone of equipment. Sometimes if it softens a sound or makes it harder sounding, are there any other adjectives you might point somebody getting into it? Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:24:38):

Absolutely, and I love going down this conversation and it's a really great one to have because I got the best analogies for all the kids at URM. I love this shit. Everything is bright and dark and the best way to think of it is everything is a Les Paul or a Stratocaster. Everything U 47 is a Les Paul, C 12 is a Stratocaster, a fucking SSL is a Stratocaster, an eve is a Les Paul. All of them fall into this category of even when you get even closer, you can break it down further. And 1176 is a stratocaster in a 1 76 is a less all. You can go down any of these things and you can start saying what's brighter and what's darker. And even in the same family of things, if you look at something, a lot of people may know about a KG microphones and they may know about a KG small diaphragm microphones and they may know that a KG makes a 4 51 and they make a 4 56, but how do you actually end up with an opinion on what's better, the 4 51 or the four 60?

(00:25:48):

And when I think of those microphones, it's like Walls four fifty one is a stratocaster, it's bright, it's a little bit thin on the low end, so it never ends up muddy and it's really, really great if you're trying to capture symbols. A four 60 is on the darker side. It will need a top end boost. Bob Rock, Bob Clear Mountain, those guys are famous for using four sixties with pol text boosting 10 K to get the high end machine out of their overhead microphones. And it's a great sound because the low end capture sugar that microphone is able to pick up is wonderful. It makes the drum sound robust and you're getting more than just the symbols when you use that microphone. And if you know that it's a dark microphone and you know that it takes eq, well then you've got a really nice last

Speaker 1 (00:26:39):

Pole. Right. I love that analogy actually. It makes a lot of sense. I've never thought of things in, is it a less polar or a stratocaster? But you're right. Yeah. If you can break it down to,

Speaker 2 (00:26:50):

It's a great analogy because you don't have to get technical with it. I think that lots of the problems with describing things as is warm, boxy, all those words is maybe some people mean the same thing by them, but you don't actually know that when one person says one of those words that the other person they're speaking to understands it the way that the person means it, it's so subjective. However, Les Paul or Strat, even though how you feel about him is subjective. Anyone who has listened to music or played guitar or been around guitars or any, which is most engineers these days know the difference. They know the difference and you don't even have to try to describe the difference. It's like such a well-known difference that all you have to do is say it's this or it's that, and people already know objectively what that means to some degree. This is a great analogy,

Speaker 3 (00:28:10):

Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I break everything and audio down into is it brighter or darker than baselines? And really it'll come down to for me, because as you said, there's an encyclopedia going on up here of things that I love. I'm closer to the point where I'm saying, okay, the 4 51 is clearly brighter than the four 60, but if you were to go and give me a list of 10 of what I would consider the most popular small diaphragm condenser microphones or the 10 most popular large diaphragm condenser microphones, I can break all of those down into where they fall in that shade of brightness with the CA 800 at the top. And it depends on how dark you want to get, but there's some dark microphones. So

Speaker 2 (00:29:10):

It's almost like ales Paul to Strat Spectrum.

Speaker 3 (00:29:14):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:29:15):

And I guess A GNL would be in the middle would be based on

Speaker 3 (00:29:20):

Yeah. Well, yeah, A GNL and the Syntec pre amplifier, even to their own merits. They do have, I mean's one thing that's wonderful about there is a slight distortion to those circuits still, but they're incredibly clean. Some of the circuits that are what I would consider newer that are built on ics that are hyper clean, there's some very, very clean audio circuits reference quality circuits out there where the small bits of distortion or shift that happens in a very, very high fidelity audio circuit that is still utilized in our world currently. They tend to do something that's musical and in a sense magical.

Speaker 2 (00:30:08):

I wanted to ask you about how, since we're on the topic of explaining things to people with metaphors, something that I have struggled with a lot in trying to get people to understand this is when they're talking about preamps for instance, and say APIs and they read somewhere that running them hard is good, the distortion cool on them, cool on drama shells or whatever. I've personally experienced this and I agree, but what I've noticed is that when you hear about that from someone who's at the top of their field and can really hear all the nuances and they're talking about this distortion that you get from certain pieces of gear and how it adds to the music, someone who's never used that kind of gear will read that and their frame of reference might be a guitar amp when you're talking about distortion or might be clipping the shit out of something and really distorting really, really audible distortion and the level of nuance.

(00:31:27):

I mean I realize you can definitely drive stuff into the red and here some serious distortion, but oftentimes when people are talking about the distortion that this gear adds, they're talking about stuff that most engineers wouldn't even hear. Like intermediate level engineers might not even be able to hear it yet. It is pretty subtle. I mean definitely if you drive it more, you'll hear it more, but overall, when I've watched some top tier people record drums where some stuff is through an API some's through a Neve and the level of distortion that they're talking about is barely audible to the lay person or to the intermediate level engineering. So when they read about this stuff on the internet and they hear about, oh, I got to get this because the distortion is really nice, like the really good harmonics and it's going to make the drum sound a certain way, how do we get them to understand that while that might be true, you might be focusing on the wrong things just because it's so subtle that until you actually know how to mic drums properly and EQ properly and tune properly and record drums properly, getting to that level of nuance is not going to make any difference in the world.

(00:32:57):

It makes a huge difference. Once you have all that stuff, all that stuff taken care of and you're going for that last 2%, then it really starts to make a massive difference. And I find that a lot of people put the cart before the horse, but they read about these things and they sound so cool when you read about 'em that they think, oh, well that's the answer to getting these drums to sound like Dave Grohl drums on Queens of Stone Age or something. That's how I'm going to get these crunchy ass drums or something. And in my experience, that's not the answer. My experience, those decisions of which preamps you use, when that should come after you already know how to record drums and get good sounds from the get-go. What do you think? What are your thoughts? Am I full of shit or

Speaker 3 (00:33:57):

No?

Speaker 2 (00:33:58):

Where are you at with this?

Speaker 3 (00:34:00):

What most people need to realize is that a lot of the great audio circuits, they were designed to have as minimal distortion as possible. So when people talk about things like tube circuits and they're like, oh, you got to get Tube to really have some vibe. Have you ever used a Paul Tech? Have you ever used a Universal Audio six 10? Not no offense to the John Henson recreations that were done later, but an original Universal Audio six 10 that's ran at its proper voltage. These are high head room, very crystal clear designs. And the reason why is because everything is fucking backwards, guys. Back then the medium that we recorded to was dirty. So you wanted everything to be as crystal clear as possible, the U 47 and the C 800 and all these things that were made to originally go to record to a tape machine because that was in Vogue, C 800 is probably at the ass end of that. They were reporting to dashes and 33 40 eights, but analog was still the king then. That medium had a sound to it. So you, you're trying to go to it as clean as possible, where nowadays our medium is crystal clear

(00:35:14):

Pro Tools logic, A DAW is the ultimate tape machine outside of the laws of physics of what you could accomplish on an actual tape. And now everyone says, well, I want to have vibe. And what it comes down to is that the gear that people designed then was utilizing the tools that they had at the time. They were putting transformers in things because that was the best way to balance a circuit. It didn't have anything to do so much with the fact that it sounded great. They just needed to make sure that their circuit was balanced and what they put in there needed to sound awesome. And it just so happens that great records were made on this stuff and people started to cherish it, and now it's gotten to the point where now there's still great records being made on it because people have decided to pull that stuff forward with them through history.

(00:36:17):

And I think that that's very, very exciting. I think something like what we just did for the MBSI, that's very, very exciting to me because everybody knows about the 10 73, but there were 40 or 50 number one records made in one room in Miami that had a console that you couldn't find anywhere else in the world, and that console's for sale for a million and a half dollars. So now for me to be able to go and put my hands on it, spend time with it and bring it to everybody else, I never had access to that before and now I do. And I think that is so cool to be able to go and say, this is what's special about this piece of gear. And it's all the same stuff. Most classic audio circuits that people love have discreet amplifiers in them, they have transformers in them or they're really high quality made transformerless designs that tend to be on the faster side of things. But it's interesting because there's a lot of people nowadays who have gone even to the further side of that where they're saying, you look at dudes like Mac DeMarco who's recording with a lot of what you would consider interesting choices for equipment. There's a lot of people who are using tapco mixers and old Taca mixers with the, what are they, the 34 80 eights with the little three 80 eights with the eight track tape machine like they did.

Speaker 2 (00:37:58):

I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:38:00):

For the BC boys back in the day, and they're using these things because they can imprint a sonic signature to their recording. That is interesting. And the wild thing to me is that a lot of our favorite pro audio circuits, they live in this area of between less than a percent and 2% THD, where their total harmonic distortion is a very small part of their signal, but it is a big thing that makes them gratifying and pleasing. And it's so far off from a guitar amplifier where those things are mostly THD and people hear the word I posted on my Facebook recently about a story about how when I got my first mixer or I would have to push all the failures up and everything sounded quiet and shitty because I was afraid to turn the game knob up because gain on a guitar amplifier, which I had at that point was a crate, GFX and gain made the guitar amp sound shittier.

(00:39:09):

So I didn't turn it up on my mackey and everything sounded shitty. And I was playing at a middle school graduation party. I'll never forget it, this girl was graduating from eighth grade, I was in seventh grade and I had my little four channel s back there, and this guy came over and pulled the faders down and turned the game up on the vocals. And I was like, I would never do that. Gain makes shit sound terrible. He's like, no, this is gain on a mixer is different than gain on a guitar amplifier. And he told me to read the manual.

Speaker 2 (00:39:40):

I guess different, it sounds like on a mixer or on a preamp, it's more like that distortion is like the seasoning, whereas on a guitar amp, it's the meal or it's the dish, it is the meat or the impossible burger, whereas, yeah, but that's such a profound difference and that distortion to be clear, it does make a difference. It makes a hell of a difference, but I think you need to be at a level with your skill to take advantage of that difference. And otherwise, it's almost like a bad investment or a bad investment in time if your skills and your ear is not yet. And I'm not trying to gatekeep either. People want to get gear, get gear, but the benefit that I think they're going to get from it might not be, they might not get the benefit they're reading about if their skills are not yet at the place to be able to understand and appreciate it and they'd be better served, in my opinion, working on the core fundamentals and then adding that kind of gear when they're ready for that 2%. However, when is that? When is it that you don't, it's not like,

Speaker 1 (00:41:14):

Oh, I got this,

Speaker 2 (00:41:15):

Got this. It's subjective.

Speaker 1 (00:41:16):

Yeah. Oh, I got that. I also have a tip on how to hear this. Go ahead, Rick. Well, it,

Speaker 3 (00:41:20):

It's not about how to hear it, but I think that his question was going to, when is the time to do that? When is the time to say that, oh, we should be spending money on that. And how I feel about it is that there's definitely an order of operations to how you should be doing things as far as spending and investing into this stuff. The number one thing that I think that you should be spending money into is first off would be your listening environment, particularly your monitoring. And I'm not saying you need to go and spend $10,000 on this, but you should at least try and get something better than the cheapest D to A and the cheapest set of monitors that you can get. You should try and get a converter that does a good job representing the stuff that's actually coming out of the computer, and you should try and get monitors that work well for your space.

(00:42:21):

A lot of people get monitors that are either too big or too small for their spaces. And I personally believe that getting a set of monitors that you work with is more important than investing all of your money right off the bat into acoustic treatment. And a lot of people will think that it should be the opposite way that you should get the room right. And then your monitors Chris Lord Algae, he did an article with Music Connection, which most people don't subscribe to, but it's a little known publication in the music industry. And he said one of the most profound things in this article, he said that he believed that an engineer's career was a 30 year journey with their monitoring system. And I fully believe that your monitors, they may go from room to room, they may be in the same room every day, and that room may be less than ideal, but if you get used to the speakers and you're happier with them and you understand what they do and they can translate well for you, then you're in a great place. And for me personally, I set it back then, and it's still the same today. I'm still using NS tens with ProAct Wolfers in my same rope, and I've had those monitors now since I was 17 or 18 years old, and don't intend to change them soon. Don't get me wrong, I have been working on something pretty cool with my buddy Dan physics at X mina, but whatever I would do, it's a good

Speaker 2 (00:44:00):

Last name.

Speaker 3 (00:44:01):

Oh yeah, Dan is awesome.

Speaker 1 (00:44:04):

He's a great guy.

Speaker 3 (00:44:06):

Yeah. For me, if I'm going to make that jump, I'm going to be happy in the decision that I'm making because I'm not going to do it again. And the only reason why I would do it is because the NS 10 has been unsupported now for almost 40 years, I believe at least 30 years. So Joey

Speaker 2 (00:44:28):

Sturgis, man, Joey Sturgis is a perfect example. Everybody listening to this knows of someone who did that, never did treatment. Though I think that's a bit extreme. That's a bit extreme, but still point being, he learned his monitors. He didn't even use great monitors,

Speaker 1 (00:44:50):

A seven Xs.

Speaker 2 (00:44:53):

They're good, but they're not like, we're not talking about $10,000 speakers or something, right?

Speaker 3 (00:44:59):

No, but that's a perfect example though. They're not the cheapest things that you could get.

Speaker 2 (00:45:03):

No, they're not bad. They're not bad either,

Speaker 3 (00:45:06):

But they're not bad. And there's a bunch of great monitors, there's monitors in my life, the Ns tens are my monitors and Ns tens nowadays, they're cheap. One of the cheaper options out there, you can kind bear em for like four 50 bucks, but I'm using Ns tens. And then another set of monitors that we rely on in a completely different subset of our work is the Mackey, the A 20 fours. And they're not very expensive monitors, but they've been used by great engineers like Chuck Ain Lee and tons of wonderful dudes. So it's like if you can find a set of speakers that works well for you, then spend your life with it. I think that I've always found funny when monitors become cyclical and people jump from brand to brand to brand thinking that they're getting better monitors and their mixes kind of stay the same because learning to monitor pretty much every year, that seems like that would be incredibly hard to me. For me, monitoring is a very, very delicate thing in the sense that I am an asshole about anyone changing anything in my room when it comes to monitoring, but that's also why I put my room far away from people in the fingers touching stuff. I want my speakers to be the exact same level, the exact same speakers every day. I know if the kit drum's too quiet because the kit drum's too quiet because the speaker level didn't change ever.

(00:46:34):

So just get

Speaker 1 (00:46:34):

10 30 ones Rick and solve all your monitoring problems.

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):

So alright, so order of operations monitors first, then

Speaker 3 (00:46:42):

What? Yeah, well you're monitoring chain so you can grit a good set of monitors and you're listening to 'em through a focus, right? You're still doing yourself. What I would consider a disservice, and don't get me wrong, D to a converters have come very, very far since the days of the oh oh two and the oh oh three, but there's still marked improvement to be had even by going and spending a thousand dollars, you can get something that is literally what I would consider light years above and world class for the time period when I came into the industry.

Speaker 1 (00:47:17):

It's like taking a blanket off the speakers. That's the best way to explain it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:21):

Absolutely. And it really lets you hear what's actually happened, even if, I mean it's going to make your monitors, which you may feel like you didn't spend enough money on, sound better, and you're going to not only hear better, but you're going to make better decisions. I can't even imagine pulling up the sessions from when I was a kid and I was queuing my way out of a double oh two, let alone the fact that I had to EQ on the front end because of the crappy sounds that I was recording through its converters, but then also trying to make those things sound good coming out of a less than ideal D to a system. So yeah, it would be your monitoring system first and foremost, and then your room treatment fix, anything that's egregious. I don't think that you need to go as crazy as someplace like make believe unless you're trying to be a professional facility. But look at what Joel's got going on over there. I can tell that he's got a base trap going on in the back corner or fix standing, waving his.

Speaker 1 (00:48:25):

I just hang and run dude and learn my room. There's no rhyme or reason to mine.

Speaker 3 (00:48:30):

And I can see that he's got some absorption there on the wall to take care of the first reflections coming off the speakers. And sure, is there an acoustician in there that would call, come in and tell Joel that his rooms a pile of shit and there's this absolutely abso fucking literally. And to be real, I know enough to do it, but it doesn't matter. It makes no difference at all. If Joel is comfortable there and he's able to complete the work, it's great. And I've been in some rooms with some of the best engineers in the world. Some of them are at homes and they're doing great great work. And some of them are in studios that are 40 years old that have been converted into their mixed rooms. And to be real, even those rooms, those old hidley rooms and those rooms that were built in Los Angeles back in the day, they have their own acoustic anomalies. Just because Westlake is beautiful doesn't mean that they don't hang a big curtain across the whole front wall when they're mixing because of reflections. Go look in the photo of that line,

Speaker 2 (00:49:32):

Man, I've been in so many control rooms now all over the world, so many beautiful rooms ranging from, like you said, something in somebody's house thrown together to rooms that people spent over a million dollars on. And I still have never been in a perfect room. Like every room has something about it that you got to get used to.

Speaker 3 (00:50:01):

Well, here's the thing is I don't think that there is a room you could walk into that would ever be perfect. I think that there's a room that you could spend five minutes in and get acclimated to very, very quickly and finding incredibly pleasing to be in. I think there's rooms that you can walk into and they'll rip your head off all day that will tell you more about what's happening than those other rooms. So it's really about what you're most comfortable to be in. I've seen some dudes whose rooms to me sound less than ideal and harsh, and those motherfuckers work loud and fast and they get it done because it's almost like they're fighting themselves trying to even be in there, but they turn out great results. And I've been in rooms that sound like butter popcorn to me that you could turn up all day and it would just sound incredibly pleasing to be in. And some stuff from there is exactly the way that it should be because they spend all of their time in that room. Some stuff from there isn't the way that it should be because the people who did it are only in there for a weekend

Speaker 2 (00:51:28):

Buttered popcorn. That's kind of funny. That's a great way to put it. Yeah, I think moral of the story is that if you can't trust what you're hearing, what are you even doing? Absolutely. At the end of the day, that's what it comes down to is

Speaker 3 (00:51:51):

You

Speaker 2 (00:51:51):

Need a situation where you know what you're hearing.

Speaker 3 (00:51:55):

And when we get into something like a microphone pre amplifier one, if you haven't invested into the things that we just spoke about, cleaning up anything egregious in your monitoring situation and then at least getting above the basic level so that you have something nice to listen to when you're monitoring, then you're not going to hear the differences between 0.8 percentt HD and 0.9% THD, which is the difference between a 10 73 and a 5 58. And there's other things that go into these things. The way they interact with other geared beans wise, they're slew rate going through the whining air transformer, whether they're fast or slow as far as audio circuits go, what actually distorts in them when it comes to boosting the equalizers? There's all of these things that you at least have to be able to hear to be able to judge. And then from there, if you've invested into a nicer monitoring situation on your D to a side, typically you have a better A to D side in that same box, which is going to put you in a position where you're actually going to be able to tell a difference when it comes to something like a microphone pre amplifier.

(00:53:13):

And for me, when it comes to people trying to make something great, microphone preap, amplifiers are typically further on down the chain of things. I think that microphones are far more important than a microphone pre amplifier.

Speaker 1 (00:53:31):

Agreed. It's like guitar heads versus cabs. It's like you switch the speaker out. I mean that is a radical change to eq, curve response, et cetera. And then you go from a 51 50 block letter to a 65 0 5 plus, it's like there's a difference. But if you're going through a V 30 and you've got the mic in the same spot, it's not the same as taking that V 30 and putting a green back in. I mean, that's just night and day.

Speaker 3 (00:53:58):

Absolutely. And I made this example, but we put a video out there recently where we shot out, we have an amplifier that we call the unicorn G, which is a rev G that's like 10 and zero number away from Westmoreland's original rev G for limp bizkit. And it sounds awesome. And we picked up a rev F and we did a shootout, and there's quite a few people who want to believe that the rev F is better. A lot of people who want to believe that the rev G is better, but through the same cabinet, they sound so similar that everybody is mistaken and that the Remo verb is hands down the best dual rec fire and we'll show you guys, so don't worry about

Speaker 1 (00:54:40):

That. I mean FB G, but carry on.

Speaker 3 (00:54:45):

But to get to what Joel was saying is that if we were to change out the Mesa cab on the G versus a jcm 900 cab full of GT 1275, totally a way bigger jump, a much more dramatic jump than the actual changing of a rev F to a rev G, which is the conversation that everybody's having right now. And what's wild to me is Kent, does the GT 1275 sound better? And everyone will say No, vintage thirties are the thing that you use with a rev G. And it's like, well, actually the GT 1270 fives can sound absolutely amazing, but you can't have the knobs set up anywhere near the fucking Zane. If you try to plug that amplifier straight into that cabinet, it's just going to sound like dookie butter. You got to roll the bass all the way up. Or I roll the bass all the way off and stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:55:43):

I had this experience once where the band cold chamber was recording at my drum room. I wasn't recording them, but their session was going long, and I had a band coming in and the band I had coming in drove all the way from California to Florida so I couldn't delay them. But then also cold chamber had to finish their shit. So what do we do? We couldn't set up another drum set and take down the bikes. So cold chamber were cool and we all agreed that the drummer for the second band would use the exact same drum kit, same setup, nothing changed. That was the rule. We can use the cold chamber setup, but no mics can move, nothing can change at all. The drum sounds were radically different, radically different, didn't sound like the same drum set at all or the same room or whatever. It was so much more drastic than if we had decided to switch from an API to a Neve on the preamps that were running the Toms through. It was unbelievably different and literally zero difference in the gear selection. So I, I've looked at it in order of a priority and yeah, I've always seen the preamps is further down from the mics

(00:57:25):

That has the

Speaker 3 (00:57:26):

Drummer. And the thing is, I look at it as the source, and you're absolutely right, the source is the human. The further you get away from the source to less of a priority, it's a great drummer on a crappy drum set is better than a crappy drummer on a great drum set. So you got a great drummer. Okay, so a great drummer on a good drum set is better than a good drummer on a crappy drum set. Okay, so you put a good drummer on a good drum set. Okay, well, a great drummer on a good drum set under all 50 sevens is better than a crappy drummer on a great drum set under great microphones. So you get the great drummer, you get the great drum set, and then you put 'em under the 50 sevens because that's all you can afford because you spent your budget on the musician like a great producer should.

Speaker 2 (00:58:13):

Yep.

Speaker 1 (00:58:14):

I got a

Speaker 2 (00:58:15):

Absolutely

Speaker 1 (00:58:15):

Little tip here. So this helped me a lot when I was starting. I remember when I saved up for six months to buy a 10 73 cl and it was like my first real preamp and then I saved up another seven or eight months and bought a two channel API three 12 from Brett Avril. And I was so excited. I'm like, oh, this is going to be night and day. And I plugged him in and I'm like, holy shit, this is so what helped me learn to hear that difference and where I like it or don't like it was recording the same thing, meaning multiple sources, meaning where it accumulates. So when you're sitting there at home and trying to figure out, does my preamp on my interface sound better than this new one I bought? Yes or no? Or where do I like it? Record a bunch of sources, the same song, all things being equal where it can accumulate over a bunch of different sources.

(00:59:04):

So for example, say you've got quad track guitars, you've got a bass, maybe go and sample a kick drum and a snare drum in the other room and then maybe do a pair of symbols or something and then do some vocals and then repeat the exact same riff, the exact same setup, the exact same everything, but now track everything on the other preamp and then get things balanced. And then just listen to the tonal change and how it stacks up. And you might find that you over time start learning the sound and the tone of things and you kind of start memorizing it and then you're like, oh, this would be good here. This would be good here. I like this here. I think this compliments this. So that helped me a lot when I was starting to engineer to figure out what my tastes were, if that makes sense. What do you guys think?

Speaker 3 (00:59:49):

Oh no, I 100% agree. And that comes back to me in the conversation of light versus dark. And every sound source that I hear, I can hear pretty much a baseline of where it is in the light versus dark spectrum. And some of these you can just imagine guitars are relatively bright for the most part, unless they're not. But for rock guitars, some people nowadays are trying to go for what I would consider a less bright guitar than they were even three or four years ago. And they're trying to make up for that in other ways as far as brightness goes, something like symbols incredibly bright, we know that's bright and you would think like, okay, well if symbols are bright, I'm going to tend to try and go for something dark to even these things out. And I actually go the exact opposite way in my world.

(01:00:41):

For me, I use bright microphones and I use incredibly fast pre amplifiers on symbols. One, I feel like if there's tons of transformers and stuff in the way, it tends to slow down that sound and make it a was heat than I want to be so fast. Microphone preem fires and fast microphones tend to represent that high frequency information in a much more natural and pleasing way to me. And then also if I record them bright enough at the source with the microphone, then I don't have to go and start flopping on a ton of EQ onto them, which is where you tend to find what I would consider some of the more ugly anomalies that happen in symbols. All symbols ring. All symbols sound like trashcan lids. It's just how great of trash can lids, can you make 'em sell?

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):

Yep, that makes sense. So we're starting to run short on time. There's two things I want to make sure we get to. Yeah, of course. So first of all, let's talk about make believe plugins some because we didn't really talk about 'em. What's the latest thing that you're excited about?

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):

Oh man, we made this knob. I was telling Joel about it before we got on here, but we made this knob, dude, and it's going to make everybody so happy and so upset. It's got all the trigger words. Joel hasn't seen me. Is there any way we could make sure that this is on Joel's face when we watch the video?

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):

I'm sure they could edit that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):

Okay. I'm just going to describe the knob to you. You can turn it all the way up now.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):

I'm happy. That's great.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):

Yeah, so we're very, very excited about this knob and

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):

Circular.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):

Yeah, it's like a semi-circle right now. We're probably going to make it look like a different knob in the knob that it looks like right now, but seriously,

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):

But you can turn it all the way up.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):

Does it go to 11 though? I mean it goes to zero loves.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):

Okay, now I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):

And I mean, it produces almost no distortion. It's one of those things where we all had spent time up there trying to do lots of things and there's not too many things where you can take a mix at negative six and then put this after the limiter and just turn it up to negative two, not feel like you're low end, got eight and up, or that two to seven K turned into a fucking calculator. This thing you're going to like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):

Yeah, I mean, I've actually come back a little bit on my master level in the last year, but that being said, it's never too late to win the loudness war.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):

Well, here's the, that's great. Never give up.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):

Here's

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):

The thing that's great about it, even if you're living back at negative eight where you should be, because that's where I, yeah, that's where I, what's minus eight I, well, I feel like personally, that's where musicality goes away from density. When you get towards negative six, you get so dense that there's something that changes in the songs. And don't get me wrong, music is

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):

You producing the records that you're mixing. Yeah. Which is, well, that's why you can get away with negative eight. Man. I can't imagine turning in a negative, anything higher, less, more than negative five. It's like if it's negative six, what's this crap? What are you doing, man? I'm like, we can't turn this in. The artist is going to think it sucks.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):

That's definitely a rock music thing because there's definitely music that coming out at way more than that. Yeah. Need No, no. I mean, there was a huge pop song the other day that just came out at negative 11, the New Lady Gaga song.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):

I mean, it happens. Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):

It happens. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):

It happened.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):

Yeah. But I mean, don't get me wrong. There's definitely people who are living up there, and it's nice to have a knob where you don't have to use a limiter to crush the crap out of your mix to get to negative six in negative five. This,

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):

I just want to be minus zero full-time, short term, just all day every day.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):

I'm almost positive I haven't tried it yet because I've just been so impressed with the one. But if you put two of 'em together, I'm pretty sure you could have positive Ls.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):

What about if you use good math on it,

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):

Putting good math after? It would absolutely give you positive loss. There's a few people who have been testing it right now who have been putting good math before it. Currently, I've been kind of testing it in isolation, but it's very exciting. I have been excited about all the things that we've made. This is completely new, just like the NBSI compressor was completely new and I was excited about that. This is a design that's never existed before and it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):

Can you get that over to me immediately and imported to Windows, please?

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):

Yeah. Yeah. That's the whole thing is if you are on a Mac and you could do it right now, we'd be talking about how cool it is. But

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):

I just want to send Kevin a mix.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):

I could send it to him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):

A Mac Justin do right now. So you could

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):

Want me to, I'm not on a Mac right now, but I will be later and I could check it out later.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):

Yeah, it It's pretty incredible. I could get a

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):

Print re here with my laptop.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):

Yeah, well, I mean, dude, you don't have to go that far. It will be on a Windows before it's ready to release. I mean, it's existed for 30 hours at this point, but we have spent the whole past week getting ready to where we are now. And that included doing a lot of things. Like we added Oversampling to all of our plugins so everybody on the internet can finally sleep or something. And then

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):

YouTube is going to be really pleased with you, Rick. It has Oversampling now you've passed all the YouTube. They're ready. They're very excited about that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):

They'll find something.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):

Oh, absolutely. Which is totally fine, but really the only reason why we made Oversampling is because for the thing that we're working on this week, we need it. So we decided to take care of that. And then that led us into where we are now. And now, I mean, I don't think that there's going to be a revision too. What happened yesterday was perfect. So now, oh, I'm getting a phone call right now. Here. Let's do this. Watch, watch this. This is David s who everybody knows on URM, David, David. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You are live with me and AAL Joel on the URM podcast right now, and I just, oh, he can't hear you because I have the air, but, but AAL just said, hi. Hey, what's up? Hey Joel. They said, what's up so they can hear you. And I have just unveiled the fact that the knob exists, so they're going to hear your first impressions right now. That's why I was shushing you is because I didn't want you to give him away. David has got the knob, but he just used it for the first time. I have not heard what he's had to say at all. Say what you're going to say to me,

Speaker 5 (01:08:15):

Dude, you're going to get so many people off. My goodness. I'm sitting here with my intern. I was like, Hey, yo, I need to check out this plenty of real quick that my buddy sent over. I'm really excited to check it out. I loaded it up on, already mastered mix from one of my friends who is this thing's already at negative five, and I threw this thing on and I'm just turning it up. I'm like, is it doing anything? And then I turn it off. That got loud as hell and then I ed it versus a Lance Prince mix.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):

Yeah, I mean it's truly,

Speaker 5 (01:08:48):

I love Lance. I love, love his stuff. This isn't, this isn't a dig. This is pretty crazy. He's my reference for loudness.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):

Oh, I totally get it. And I feel like it's a very wild statement to say, and I feel very confident this could be towards the end of the loudness war because now everyone will be egregiously loud if they want to. It's literally a knob, guys. It's one knob,

Speaker 5 (01:09:17):

But not one. As soon as I pulled it up, I laughed. I was like, this why I love them.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):

Well, I'm so happy to be here. I'll give you a call back when I'm done with this podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:09:25):

Yeah, sure thing. Thank

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):

You.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):

Peace out.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):

That was amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):

I paid him.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):

No, no, that's completely real.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):

Yeah, no, that's great. Now I really want it. I want to hear it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):

It's super good. Guys. I'm going to call Thrasher and be like, minus two lts in your box right now, bro. No artifacts. And he's going to be like, yes,

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):

You could do that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):

You could

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):

Do that. Dude,

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):

I don't,

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):

Can I check it out?

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):

Literally telling you it's

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):

Going to happen. Am I allowed to check it out? I have something awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):

I'm going to call and be like, man, I'm getting my mixes louder than your masters, bro. You got to step it up. He's like, oh man, I got this custom thing, this and this and that. Yeah, I'm louder.

Speaker 3 (01:10:10):

I'm going to send it to Myer tonight so he can be the loudest person in Los Angeles for right now. Damn

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):

It.

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):

What's wild is he

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):

Kind of already is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):

I sent it to my buddy in Nashville and he's like, I'm the loudest person in Nashville.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):

Well, we're going to be the loudest people in Wisconsin. So

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):

Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):

Fight us.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):

Well, I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):

And it was just completely happenstance. We were going after a certain design goal and just completely, totally far exceeded it. BJ over here at Metro Klo is a genius in my opinion. And I don't say that lightly. He's very, very intelligent and the conversations that we have, it's one of those things where he can speak to me in the way You said something that I found profound a long time, Al, which is you said that I do a good job of being able to take what's probably a pretty heavy concept when it comes to pro audio and break it down in a way that's relatively easy to understand. For most people who may not be trying to read a whole book about this shit where I can speak to him about that and he's read the fucking book, he can take what I say and look at it in a way that I think most people can't interpret, and it just works out really, really well.

(01:11:34):

That relationship is one that I love very much because the work that we're doing is stuff that I think that these are the questions about pro audio that have been asked forever. It's like you, what's above zero? And can you make things negative too without a clipping? Can you make an equalizer that sounds just as good in the digital world as in the analog hardware world. And it's like we've come in my opinion, and other people may have differing opinions, but probably as far as most people at this point in history. And I think that some of the work that we have set out to do on our plate now will hopefully push bounds even further forward. And that's exciting to me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):

That is exciting. That's awesome. I am stoked to hear this and also love that mission. Alright, like

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):

Shall we rapid fire?

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):

Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):

Alright. I'm going to drill you with the hardest questions you've ever gotten in your life and whatever comes to your mind first, keep 'em short and concise and get ready. I've got some I've been preparing for

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):

You. Make sure you say why. So answer the question, but give your why.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):

Okay, I'm ready. Let's go. I've got it built into a couple of these. Alright Rick, we've been starting this thing at URM in these chats and having fun. What is the full Canadian technique?

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):

I can't tell it you. And why is because there's people who are going to be watching this who are not Canadian. To be honest, I am not Canadian and I shouldn't even know. I love it. Okay, if you had to pick one set of rumor, I want to just say I just have a Canadian dad, which people don't know I love him very much. David Penda. So there we go.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):

So you can disclose full Canadian.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):

Well, no, I mean I can't disclose full Canadian, but just that I've got a Canadian father now, so I know because yep.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):

Lums tricks will stay behind the gate. Okay. If you had to pick one set of room mics.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):

Ooh, me personally, if I had to pick one set of room mics SM 50 sevens.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):

Okay, why

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):

Brendan O'Brien? Because they're actually great. They do a really good job of capturing what I would consider a vibing drum room. They're not crystal clear, but when you start adding top into 'em, which they need because they're not particularly bright microphones, they're a little bit on the grungier side side of microphones for that purpose. So they sound cool, have an interesting vibe, and the symbols are diffused in them so they don't sound like you're ripping your head off. And you can actually get away with adding more top end to 50 sevens as broom mics than you can with a lot of other room mics. And the trick, in my opinion, the Brennan O'Brien trick that I found is point 'em away from the drums. So you're getting all these not first order reflections and they sound very cool. I mean, listen, you guys don't like raid against the machine.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):

Dude, I've done this back in my old drum room, exactly what you're saying. And I concur. They get you closer to that nasty sound you're going for. You don't have to take extra steps. It's already closer to that nasty room sound that everybody loves. Alright, cool. Alright next.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):

Alright, next question. Since we can't give away the full Canadian drum technique, what is one cooling engineering trick you are willing to give away? What do you got?

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):

One cool engineering trick that I am willing to give away. I think that this is one thing that has really gotten lost the more that people have been relying on wet and dry knobs, but parallel processing. Parallel processing. And that was one of the first things that I did was make the parallel process plugins to try and boil down some tricks that I thought were a little bit obtuse to even explain on the phone to talented engineers. You and I talked about some of those tricks that ended up being parallel process plugins. That is not what I would consider what separates the children from the adults when it comes to engineering. But back in the day, it definitely was when people started doing New York compression and Bob Clearmont was, oh, you're doing parallel compression on drugs and stuff. People took notice. And being able to fully wrap your head around what happens when something runs side by side and they're mixed back together in the phase interaction, what happens between those two signals? That's different than using a Oh, wed right up. It really is in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):

Okay. Next question. What do you recommend for people that are new to engineering, anything that they should focus on? Where should they start? What do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:16:29):

Yeah, the number one thing that I think that people need to do when they are new is figure out what the fuck you like. That's the number one most important thing that people get fucked up about. And it has nothing to do with what other people like. Don't get fucked up about that. Dial in what you like and what you appreciate. Try and figure out what you're trying to achieve. The only way to obtain that goal is to have it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):

Okay. And then the last one, and try to be concise on this one. I know you could go off for 30 minutes, but you have a really freaking cool way of recalling your console, or I should say not recalling it. You want to explain how you use your SSL with no recall?

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):

Yeah. So what I like to do is I work in a weird mode, which I use record mode with Mitsubishi to input or to monitor and channel input flip, which what that allows me to do is that allows me to come in, send the line input at the top of my desk and come out of the direct output from the small faders. So I'm ignoring my VCAs and I'm just using the small faders. And that means that the channel path lives on those small faders. And what I'm able to do is I can go through and utilize my EQs and my compressors and my inserts, which are all my outboard gear and my racks, and I insert those from line input to direct output individually. Just like I would a standard piece of outboard gear, like I had API five 50 and a 500 series rack, and I'm going to go out channel three from Pro Tools into the five 50 back into Pro Tools.

(01:18:12):

With my SSL particularly. That's actually Channel 17 is where my five 50 is and it goes through a compressor as well. And if I insert Channel 17, output 17, well it's literally insert 17 in Pro Tools. It will go through that whole channel, but I can do that through the whole desk. So when I get a mix, I start with the 24 basic tracks that make up the majority of the mix, primarily the drums, the bass, and then main rhythm guitars, and typically the lead vocals. And I'll go in and I can mix the song on my console so I can go and get balances. I can change the EQs, I can change my outboard gear. I'm not stuck to leaving it in a static position, which is how a lot of people use consoles nowadays where they don't change anything and they use it more like a big summing mixer or a summing mixer with equalizers on the channels.

(01:19:06):

I can mix the song, I can get new balances and then I commit all of those straight back into pro tools as individual files. So they get instantly committed, the desk goes away, and then the whole stereo bus from pre VCA into post VCA out, the whole stereo bus of the SSL is inserted just like an outboard SSL bus compressor would be across the mix in Pro Tools. Technically I'm doing summing inside of Pro Tools, but I'm summing through the same thing that my mix would be summed through either way. And I've already committed all of the SSL channels, so if I ever need to recall a mix, the only thing that I ever have to recall is one of two things, which is the engage button on the SSL bus compressor and then whether my release time was on auto or 0.1. Besides that, nothing never changes.

(01:19:57):

So yeah, it's become very, very easy. And after years of owning the SSLI was a guy who started with the SSL on the computer computer and was saving to the computer. And then from there I decided to get rid of my computer and I was doing paper recalls from things that I thought were truly important and that was a pain in the ass. And then I got to the point where my SSL was like a lot of people were, it was pretty static. And I was doing a little bit of high end here and a little bit of low end there at places that I liked and kicking and snare and stuff. And then using it pretty much. And at that point I was inserting my outboard gear into Pro tools so I could print it and then just sum through the desk. And then I got to the point where I was like, I really want to actually mix on the console. I want to use my faders, I want to use my gear. I just never want to recall this thing. And that's where I'm at now. If someone calls me and they're like, Hey man, we love that mix. Turn the high hat up, A DEB, which hopefully never happens, that's nightmare shit. But if that happens, I literally pull back up the session, turn on the bus compressor, and then turn up the high headed DB and move on one by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):

Brilliant. Well, Rick, amazing. Thank you. It's been a pleasure having you on. Again.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):

Thank you so much. And

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):

Catching up.