Tutorial: Nick Franklin

TRANSITIONING

As soon as you think you ​might​ be able to make ends meet recording and mixing bands and nothing else, you will want to. We have a bizarre pride complex about employment in Australia, and especially in the audio industry. At dinner parties when asked what it is that we ‘do’, it’s natural to want to answer with “I’m a music producer!”, as though those words will trigger the arrival of a mariachi band, confetti cannons and pats on the back from everyone in attendance. On the other hand, if your answer was “I’m working on starting a small business recording music but in the meantime I’m working in hospitality and teaching guitar to fill the void”, the sniggers and whispers around the dinner table would be just deafening, wouldn’t they?

When I began my freelance career as a music producer I was ​terrible​ at business. The extent of my preparedness for becoming a ‘sole trader’ was that I had my enthusiasm and an ABN (Australian Business Number). My first mistake was to recklessly quit my day job the moment I decided I had enough audio work to pay the rent for a couple of weeks. I had some annual leave and a fortnight’s pay accrued at my day job which kept me afloat for some weeks, but before long my bank account was drier than the Tanami. I wish someone had told me to stay a little longer in full-time work, or cut down to part-time or casual, and use that time to develop the business.

The reality is that the first couple of years for most small businesses are tough, and even more so in our industry. Quitting your day job on a whim and a prayer is going to be extremely challenging in even the best case scenario. Worst case? It could ruin your personal relationships and put you in a financial position you can’t get out of without going back to a day job and setting your audio career back by years. My advice is to use the time prior to leaving your day job to get all of your business ducks in a row.

COMPLIANCE

The reality of making money in Australia is that the government want their cut of it in the form of taxation, and they’ll find a way to get it from you regardless of how sneaky you are. The upside is that for sole traders, complying with your taxation and small business obligations is incredibly simple. The consequences of doing the right thing are completely manageable, but the consequences of ignoring your obligations can be financially and emotionally devastating.

I was no saint when it came to doing the right thing by the tax office. During the first three years of running my business I was earning a reasonable income but didn’t submit a single tax return or pay a cent of tax, and the reason I’ve become so in tune with the ins and outs of small business and tax is because I ​never​ want to be in that position again.

A significant portion of the people reading this have probably just experienced a familiar pain in the middle of their gut associated with the guilt of having ignored their tax obligations for too long. To those readers I say fear not: getting up to date with your income tax is not only easy, but it will lift that Steinway-sized weight off your shoulders, too. Book an appointment with an accountant, discuss your business situation with them, and follow their advice to prepare and submit your tax returns. While we’re being honest about money, I almost guarantee that one of the reasons you’ve avoided doing your tax is the fear that you’ll owe more than you have. That’s okay, too; the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will put you on a payment plan that you can afford. It will get them off your back, take that Steinway-sized weight off your shoulders, and ease that pain in your gut.

To those of you who have managed to stay up to date with your tax returns I say “Congratulations, but don’t tune out yet!” There are many ways you can improve how you keep your records for tax purposes and swing them to your advantage. Tax is great and important. It pays for our roads and hospitals, but I reckon freelance audio professionals working hard to ​just​ make a living should not be taxed a cent more than they have to be. Watertight record keeping and solid systems is how you make that happen.

To start getting all of your business ducks in a row and begin your life as a freelance production guru, you’re going to need to register an ABN (if you don’t already have one) and then set up a completely separate business bank account. There are a number of banks that offer these free, so there’s no excuse for having your business money land in your personal bank account. Have all your clients pay you into that account, and use the card linked to that account only to make business related purchases. You can then pay yourself out of that account. If your business ever gets audited by the ATO, your life is going to be a lot easier if you can produce bank statements with only business-related transactions on them. The next step is to keep good records of your income and expenditure…

GOLD RECORDS

Tech savvy audio engineers and producers have never lived in a better time for keeping accurate and useful records. Really cool (come on, you know you’re a nerd just like me) bookkeeping software is abundant, cheap or even free, and it will change ​everything​ about the way you see your business. It also provides a fast and convenient way of issuing invoices that make you look like a real pro. For those of you who aren’t already running your audio business, an invoice is the document you provide to a client that indicates how much they owe you and when you expect to be paid. Prompt professional invoicing can make the difference between having the money in your bank when you need it, or endlessly chasing late payments and wasting valuable time that you could be using in your studio. If you can operate a DAW, you can operate a piece of bookkeeping software.

If you’re anything like me you probably put off all of those annoying little studio tasks, like editing and comping, for as long as you can. I’ve never once woken up and thought “Yes! I can’t wait to get stuck into comping that terrible vocal!”, or “I’m glad I’ve got eight tracks of drums to edit today!” I avoid those types of things until they literally can’t be left any longer, at which point I’m under stress and time constraints to get them done. Likewise, if you make keeping track of your income and expenses in any way annoying or hard you ​will​ put it off until the end of the financial year, at which point it’s going to be a very big and unpleasant task indeed. You can keep records in a spreadsheet, of course, but good bookkeeping software takes all the pain out of record keeping and makes you ​want​ to do it as you go. It also gives you back some of what most producers and engineers I know are desperately lacking: time! Someone should invent equivalent software for automatically editing and comping that singer you recorded last week, whose concept of timing and tuning seems to be more abstract than grounded in reality.

WORKFLOW

Here’s how I keep my records. I’m ​not​ a financial advisor so take my advice with a grain of salt, but it’s worked for me so far. I use an application called ‘Rounded’ so the examples I’m about to give are based on that, but you could also use Quickbooks, Xero or any of the multitude of applications available. I’m sure they all work in similar ways, so check them out and choose one that works for you.

To invoice a client for work I’ve done for them, I simply select from my common invoicing tasks such as ‘One Day Studio Recording’ or ‘Mastering One Song’ and hit send from my phone or in the web browser. Rounded notifies me when the client has opened the email, so there’s no more “I didn’t get the invoice” excuses. If the client hasn’t paid by the due date, Rounded will automatically send reminders at an interval I specify. Keep the heat on them! When their money hits my bank account I mark the invoice as paid, and Rounded adds the payment to my income report and sends the client a receipt.

Every time I buy something for the business it takes less than 30 seconds on my mobile phone to enter the amount, date and category into Rounded. I also snap a photo of the receipt, which is added to the record in Rounded. I never miss a single tax-deductible opportunity, and I don’t have to worry about the receipts fading away to blank paper in a shoebox under my bed!

When my BAS (Business Activity Statement) is due I tell Rounded to export my income and expenses as a spreadsheet and email it to my accountant. That’s it. Within a week (usually) my documents have been lodged and my tax obligations for the period are met.

Sounds pretty easy, right? It is. Next issue I’ll talk about the longer term benefits of using bookkeeping software, describe my three-tiered system for ensuring my business continues to grow, and how I am planning for retirement with superannuation. In the meantime, get yourself some good bookkeeping software and start using it. Don’t wait any longer.

Many years ago I had a grand to blow on a pair of nearfield monitors. I’d come to the realisation that my mixes weren’t translating well; I simply couldn’t nail it. The out-the-back-of-a-white-van home stereo speakers I’d repurposed were utter garbage. Mixing 101, I know, but I was at the beginning of my mixing journey. It was time to sink some money into monitoring rather than sequencers, synths and MIDI cables.

Back then the nearfield monitoring options at the sub-$1000 mark were thin on the ground. After traipsing around the usual Sydney instrument stores auditioning various contenders, scrutinising pages of specifications and absorbing everything remarked upon in audio mags, the choice came down to a measly three candidates… and they were all passive so I needed to buy an amplifier as well. The candidates were a two-way pair of Tannoys, the venerable Yamaha NS-10s, or JBL’s early foray into the home-studio market: the 4206. All three were from respectable manufacturers. Surely I couldn’t go too far wrong?

Down the track I learned I’d completely made the wrong decision, jumping on the JBLs when I should have gone with the NS-10s. At the time the NS-10 sound reminded me of poor old Nipper, the His Master’s Voice pooch, sitting in front of the gramophone cursing the excruciatingly uninspiring reproduction of his favourite 78s. In comparison, the JBLs projected a way fruitier bottom-end, and I was producing electronica. Please sir, take my money.

The JBLs skewed my mixes in yet another wrong direction, and I eventually moved on. In their defence they did instigate my phobia of metal dome tweeters — they tore my hearing to shreds, making long sessions feel even longer. I still use them for domestic background duties, all the while surreptitiously reminding me of the NS-10s I almost owned.

WHAT’S NEW?

These days the landscape is quite different; it’s awash with affordable nearfield monitors. There’s a minefield of nearfields, if you will, from Adam Audio, Behringer, Dynaudio, EVE, Genelec, IK Multimedia, JBL, KRK, Mackie, PreSonus, Tannoy, Yamaha, some crew called Monkey Banana, and others kicking around, with many scraping in at less than $500 a pair. Unlike my choices from years ago, they’re all powered. Winning.

So what’s brought all this about? The primary factors are advances in Class-D amplification and switch mode power supplies. Class-D amps are extremely efficient and run relatively cool, whereas linear design amps are less efficient and run hotter because they dissipate the wasted energy as heat. There’s also an advantage using switch mode power supplies as the unit can be powered via multiple international AC standards, which undoubtedly aids manufacturing and shipping costs. The upshot is an amp that is light and comparatively small – there’s no need for heavy heatsinks, so the amp can be housed in less space than an analogue design. Combine these factors with advanced front baffle and waveguide designs, add some clever DSP, and the results are both inexpensive and far more sophisticated than 25 years ago.

So, marvel of marvels, I have two pairs of inexpensive monitors to compare. The first from KRK, an established monitor manufacturer, and the second from Presonus, a relative newcomer to the monitor market.

KRK ROKIT RP7 G4

First up we’ll look at KRK’s Rokit RP7 G4. The G4 series is the fourth generation of KRK’s Rokit lineage and is a complete redesign utilising trickled-down technology from the company’s V Series. Pertinent is the use of a Kevlar tweeter rather than a soft-dome driver as found in the earlier G3 series. Also unlike the G3 series, the G4 series uses class-D amplification and DSP equalisation. This is really quite neat. KRK has integrated an LCD into the rear of the G4s to visualise settings and simplify setup, with adjustment made via a single stepped potentiometer that also acts as a push-button switch to cycle through parameters. This keeps the rear panel uncluttered, with the remaining features being a combo TRS/XLR input jack and the power switch.

When it comes to massaging that on-board DSP EQ, KRK provides a free iOS and Android app called ‘KRK Audio Tools’ which provides a spectrum analyser, level meter and phase checker. It also includes an excellent tool for adjusting the alignment of your monitors; sit your phone on top of a monitor, select whether you’re altering the alignment of the left or right monitor, then align it until the display reads 30°. Genius! More important is the EQ suggestion feature. This plays pink noise while you adjust the positioning of your phone at ear-height at your listening position. After 20 seconds or so the app will suggest the EQ preset options to select from the rear panel of the monitors. Super genius! I’m sceptical of the accuracy, but it’s an excellent toy. It’s a freebie so grab it whether you use KRK G4 monitors or otherwise; at the least you can align your monitor angles symmetrically.

This is clever tech for monitors at this price point. For under $800 you can get a pair of Rokit RP7 G4s with a seven-inch low-end driver. For a couple of hundred less you could opt for the cheaper Rokit RP5 G4 with a five-inch low-end driver, or, if you’ve got the room, stump up for the eight-inch driver version (Rokit RP8 G4) at still less than a grand.

PRESONUS ERIS E8 XT

Looking at the monitors they have on offer, I get the impression that Presonus are trying various monitor designs until they get their head around what sticks. With forays into single-point dual-concentric drivers (Sceptre series), through to ribbon tweeters (R series) and D’Appolito designs (Eris E44, E66), the company isn’t afraid to discover what it does best. There’s nothing wrong with that, and the results aren’t to be sniffed at. Following the company’s previous Eris E8, the re-imagined Eris E8 XTs sitting on my stands retain the ‘woven composite’ low-end driver of the previous E8 but include the addition of a waveguide surrounding the 1.25-inch silk-dome tweeter. Presonus say the waveguide widens the sweet-spot, which it does.

They’re a solidly built cabinet with a ‘no bells and whistles’ approach to design. Instead of class-D amplification, Presonus has stuck to an AB amplifier design, although they use class-D amplification in their more expensive monitor offerings. Like the KRK Rokits reviewed above, and pretty much all nearfields hitting the market these days, porting ejects from the front baffle.

Inputs are provided for anything line-level: XLR, TRS and RCA. Above these input connectors are three continuously variable knobs with centre-detents. One adjusts gain, while the remaining two allow up to ±6dB adjustment of mids (1kHz) and high frequencies (10kHz). There are also ‘Acoustic Space’ settings (flat, -2dB or -4dB at 800Hz) to compensate for placement close to walls or corners, and a high-pass filter switch with three options: off, 80Hz or 100Hz. With continuously variable pots for the mid and high EQ adjustments, getting them aligned precisely in stereo will take a lot of measurement and effort. In all honesty, I’d be leaving the mid and high pots set flat, and maybe instigating the room setting switches if things weren’t translating so well. With all the adjustments set to flat I wasn’t disappointed by the Eris E8 XTs. Imaging was perfectly acceptable and midrange detail was forward and amply detailed. If you hustled around, I reckon you’d get a pair for $800.

CONCLUSION

The unavoidable conclusion here is that you get a lot of bang for your buck when it comes to monitoring these days, even at the cheaper end of the market. But regardless of how far the technology has come (and it’s come a very long way), there’s no substitute for auditioning monitors in your own space. You should still do your homework. Read the reviews and peruse the forums, and seek out what will suit your requirements. Don’t use eight-inch drivers if you’re working in a 3.6sqm bedroom because you’ll just end up shaking the house about and annoying the locals. Most importantly, look out for the balderdash and gibberish. As with both the monitors mentioned here, there are features that may not add up to what the manufacturer claims, and/or may be inconsequential to you. Only your room, your ears, and how the mix translates will tell you the truth.

SAMPLE STORAGE

The ELZ-1 has internal memory for storing samples, system data and memories.

The large variety of synthesis types available, plus the ability to sample and import new audio data, coupled with an ample selection of filters and effects gives the user enormous scope in sound production and experimentation. The ELZ’s ability to work as a USB host or device provides expansion possibilities in any sized setup, especially with many of the available synth/sequencer/drum machine products mentioned in the sync/clock examples.

Sonicware is a new company from Japan, with an ability to develop and incorporate new ideas into its product, and also quickly learn and adapt to their market. Their initial slogan for the ELZ-1 was ‘synthesizer reinvention laboratory’, which I mentioned in the introduction. That description initially sounds like an awkward translation, but after using this product for a few weeks and considering its price tag, it certainly packs a lot of experimentation into a small footprint.

With three software updates already released, I see a great future for this product.

LIKE A BOSS

JM: Along with the Boss HM-2, another important element in the ‘Sunlight’ sound is the use of the mid-range frequencies. Is there any specific approach you use to achieve this?

TS: Sometimes I work with the midrange frequencies very much, and sometimes not so much – it all depends on the music. I am not a sound engineer; I am a producer, and the studio is just a tool. I don’t know much about the exact frequencies or the amounts of them. I’m not much into the technical terms or approaches, I am more about tweaking the knobs and listening. I don’t care about whether it’s supposed to be like ‘this’ or like ‘that’; the important thing is that it sounds good. Many times when I work with engineers it is very cool for me because I can focus only on the sound and what’s happening with the musicians, and let the engineer handle all of that tech stuff.

JM: Tell us about the console in Sunlight’s control room…

TS: It’s an old ‘80s desk and the EQ on it helps me very much in creating that sound. Because of this, I don’t want to change equipment.

I have a friend who helps me with some of the electronic things, and there was this one time where he helped me run a little bit more electricity into the desk. I told him, ‘it will sound like how I want it to sound’. But he checked it and said, ‘oh no, there’s too much electricity going into the desk now, so I have to change it’. And he did. But I thought, ‘no, it’s not the same desk anymore’, so I made him change it back. He told me that because there was too much electricity going into it, he was worried that one day it might explode! So I treat it like an old car, I just don’t touch it. Maybe it’s magic or hocus pocus, but I do feel it is something that is good for the sound.

JM: Though your stock-in-trade is primarily death metal, you’re open to working with non-metal styled bands – especially those in a punk and rock vein. Do you use a similar approach when recording these types of bands?

TS: It’s not the same approach, but it’s the same thinking for me because I don’t like mainstream music; it’s all down the middle. I like music from the left side and right sides of mainstream, so I always try to do some things in the sound to make it different. For example, with The Backyard Babies we did the album ‘Total 13’ originally with much more of a punky sound, but the record company didn’t like it. So we had to redo the album a lot more softer and polished. I remember skipping over some songs and the record label called me really angrily and said, ‘how could you skip that song?’ I knew we had to make ‘hit songs’ but I wasn’t thinking that way. I was thinking more in a punk way.

STUDIO QUIRKS

JM: One of the unique qualities of Sunlight Studios is the fact it is still an ‘all analogue’ recording studio…

TS: My background comes from the analogue world, but these days you have to work within the digital world because there are no technicians who can fix the analogue tape recorders. I still have and use one of the first versions of Logic [DAW] that came out in 1995, but I don’t like the digital sound at all. Sometimes I have to use pedals and things going into it to try to make the computer sound like analogue.

Around the time of getting the Logic program I worked with a band that had recorded their vocals in another place; they came in with a computer and asked if I could fix the vocals that were recorded on it. I spent a week working on it and, although I eventually understood how it worked, I was angry by the end of it. People keep saying, ‘you should try Pro Tools’ but my answer is always “No, this is the thing I am going to use now.” I’ve learnt to use Logic and that is it; I’ve used it ever since.

JM: Any plans to upgrade or go completely digital?

TS: Sometimes I see new stuff advertised in a magazine that will make me interested in trying it out, but in the end I can see and hear that it is not the big thing they say it is in the magazine. Many years ago I read an article about a new piece of gear saying that it would change your life forever. Not so. Sometimes I will have a bass guitarist or guitarist say to me, ‘if you get this piece of equipment it will make your sound’, but it is never like that. I am too old to think in that way now.

IMMERSED IN MUSIC

JM: Next to the studio is a small cottage where those recording at Sunlight can reside for the duration of their recording period. With most modern luxuries forgone, it provides the perfect atmosphere for creating and focusing on nothing but music. Do you think this setting influences the overall recording process as well?

TS: Maybe it does not influence the sound directly, but it definitely affects the recording approach and ‘softness’ to the work because you are in a country place with more of a relaxed atmosphere. I worked in Stockholm for about 15 years and it was more stressful because of the big city and everything else that came with it. I prefer to work in a much ‘softer’ and relaxed place.

JM: From a producer and engineering point of view, how important is it to have an open mind regardless of the style of music you’re working with?

TS: It’s very important to me to listen to different kinds of music, and not have a closed mind to any form of music. One of my favourite producers is Rick Rubin. He’s worked with many different kinds of music and musicians, and he does it very well; always finding a good approach for each album. His approach to the Johnny Cash albums he made was very analogue and very acoustic in the sound, and I think that is the point with that music; to keep that dirtiness inside the frame and not to clean up too much, so you can feel the room. Sometimes if the guitar is a little bit shouting, like feeding back, save it for the moment. Don’t clean it up.

THE WHITE ALBUM…

Some good justifications were given for remixing Sgt. Pepper’s. One wonders what justifications Giles and Okell had for remixing The White Album, and how they compare with remixing Sgt. Pepper’s.

“Some of the songs on The White Album were recorded on a four-track Studer J37, others on an eight-track Studer 3M” replies Okell. “But there were far fewer overdubs on that album, so there were fewer bounces, which made the whole process easier than Sgt. Pepper’s. It was mixed in stereo and mono, but the differences between those mixes were not as pronounced as they were with Sgt. Pepper’s.”

“The thing about The White Album is that the tracks are all so different. It’s far less of a production album than Sgt. Pepper’s, or Abbey Road for that matter. The concept of remixing Sgt. Pepper’s was neat and valid and easy to explain, but with The White Album it was a song-by-song thing. We were just trying to keep the character of each song, with the entire album being a collection of them.”

ABBEY ROAD

In contrast to Sgt. Pepper’s and The White Album, Abbey Road was the first Beatles album that was recorded entirely on eight-track, and for which no mono mixes were done. Moreover, the recordings, the production, and the stereo mixes were top class, making the album sound almost like a modern record. Of the three anniversary editions, the notion of remixing Abbey Road would have to come the closest to the notion of repainting the Sistine Chapel and raises the question: why?

“The original album does sound great,” agrees Okell. “The stereo positioning is pretty modern, with most lead vocals in the centre, for example, and there were no major technical issues that needed fixing. After we had remixed Sgt. Pepper’s and The White Album, Apple Records [the Beatle’s record label] was indeed concerned about whether it would be worthwhile remixing Abbey Road. So Giles and I had a go to see what would happen, and whether it was justified. We ended up making changes that are far more subtle than those that you hear on Sgt. Pepper’s, but we felt that they were valid. There are many subtle changes in the balances and positioning, and we expanded on many of the mono sources that are hard panned and hard positioned, in order to try to create a more cohesive stereo image.”

TRANSFERRING ABBEY ROAD

As with the other albums, the first step of the remixing process for Abbey Road was to transfer all the original analogue tapes to Pro Tools. “All tapes were running at 15ips, which means each tape can contain about 28 minutes of material,” explains Okell. “Each tape has successions of different takes including the initial takes, the take that was used for the final mix, and numerous overdubs and bounces. We also had two different test tapes — CCIR and MRL — to align the tape machines; one sounding slightly brighter than the other. So we did numerous transfers from each tape. The first transfers were of the entire tapes, which gave us all the bounces, alternative takes and so on to refer to and perhaps even use – allowing us to go back a generation or two as we did with Sgt. Pepper’s and The White Album.”

The next transfers were a little more complicated, as Okell explains: “The speed those old tape machines run at depends on the fluctuating voltage of their power supplies; one day they would run a tiny bit faster or slower than another day. These were tiny fluctuations, not like with Sgt. Pepper’s where there were sometimes differences of a semitone. For speed references we decided to use the earlier 2009 remasters of Abbey Road, that I’d been involved in making, because our idea for the 50th anniversary version was the same as our idea for the 2009 version: we wanted to get as close as possible to what it sounded like at the time in terms of speed and pitch. So for these transfers we created a Pro Tools session for each song, and at the top of that session we loaded in the 2009 stereo remaster of that song as a sync reference. Then we’d go through the original tapes, find the take that the final mix for that song was built from, and transfer that into the session in sync with the 2009 remaster.”

“Because Abbey Road was all recorded on eight-track they were able to do a lot of bouncing of tracks internally on to that one tape. In many cases they then deleted the original tracks to make room for more tracks, which meant that we could not go back a generation. In some cases they worked with two eight-track recorders, or a combination of an eight-track and a four-track recorder, bouncing from one tape to another, and those tapes did enable us to go back a generation to get separate tracks, like we did with Sgt. Pepper’s.”

REMIXING ABBEY ROAD

After all the tapes were transferred into Pro Tools, Giles and Okell tried to approximate the original mix of each song as closely as possible in terms of levels, panning, EQ, compression, delays, reverbs and other effects. This involved many hours of close listening and comparing. When they did the Sgt. Pepper’s remixes they used a lot of the same outboard gear that was used for the original mixes, including the classic REDD valve mixer that was used at the time, along with some some choice plugins. According to Okell, things were different for the Abbey Road remixes.

“We had some mix notes, but for the most part we had to recreate the original mixes using our ears. We did the Abbey Road mixes in-the-box, and treatments tended to be more plugin-based than analogue-based because we were not looking for a lot of extreme processing. We often used plugin approximations of vintage gear. What we had with this album were good sounding recordings; when we simply played back the basic sessions we got a pretty good representation of the final mix. So what we had to do for Abbey Road was more subtle than Sgt. Pepper’s or The White Album: how can we improve the tonal qualities of some of the sounds, and how can we improve the stereo sound stage? These subtle changes could, for the most part, be achieved by using plugins.”

Two years earlier, when remixing Sgt. Pepper’s, Martin and Okell relied heavily on vintage goodies like EMI’s RS124 compressor and RS127 Brilliance Control, Fairchild’s 660 compressor, EMT’s 140 plate, and the studio’s REDD desk. They also used a process called ADT (Artificial Double Tracking) – a technique devised by Abbey Road engineer Ken Townsend that involved two tape recorders playing back two identical signals, with the varispeed of one of them used to vary the playback speed by a few milliseconds to create a phasing or ‘wobble’ effect (depending on how much varispeed is applied). For the Abbey Road remixes the only hardware Giles and Okell used were an EMT 140 plate, the tape recorders required to recreate the ADT effect, and the REDD desk – the latter because the original Abbey Road sound engineer, Geoff Emerick, felt that the transistorized TG12345 desk had a less punchy sound, contributing to a “kinder, gentler” feel.

According to Okell, “Geoff has said that he couldn’t get quite the same sound with the TG desk as with the REDD desk. The TG is a very good desk; it’s cleaner, but it does not overdrive in the same way as the REDD desk does. The REDD also has a different approach to EQ, with just a high shelf and a low shelf, and you tend to max these out and get this big ‘smiley face’ EQ curve. So for many of the songs on Abbey Road we ran individual parts through the REDD desk, sometimes EQing and sometimes overdriving them to different degrees to get some of that character that might have been missing in the original mixes of Abbey Road due to being mixed through the TG. That was quite effective.”

“On Sgt. Pepper’s they were into using the ADT for the phasing effect, most famously on John’s vocal in ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.’ For Abbey Road they were more in love with the wobble effect, for example on the Moog synth sounds. There is no real plugin equivalent for ADT. There’s Waves’ Reel ADT plug-in, which is fine for when you want a general phasey sound but it is too much of a sledgehammer if you want to do very detailed stuff, such as vary a very small amount of delay. If you do ADT with analogue tape machines you can control it as you print it, and if something does not sound right you can go back and do it again. It’s amazing that the tools they had at the time, apart from EQ and compression, were all tape-based – from simple tape delays to the psychedelic comb filtering effect that you get with very close ADT.”

“Vocals were an important part of our focus during all of these remixes. The lead vocal for ‘Here Comes The Sun’ is fuller and louder than in the original, and we think it sounded better. We did the same thing on ‘Something,’ pushing the lead vocal to be decidedly louder – it seemed oddly quiet on the original. And on ‘Oh Darling’ we did quite a bit of work with FabFilter’s ProQ to make Lennon’s lead vocal less harsh. It makes the song more attractive.“

“All mixes for all the songs were sent to the Stereo Process aux, which is the master track. The signal chain was Waves Redd 37/51, UAD Chandler Abbey Road Curve Bender Mastering EQ, a Kush Audio UBK1, FabFilter Pro-Q2, Waves SSL Bus compressor, Waves Abbey Road TG12345 channel strip, UAD Studer A800 emulation and a UAD Fairchild 660, with the settings tweaked per song. I printed each mix at the top of the session and sent it to Miles Showell, who mastered the album with Giles present. We weren’t too bothered about the mixes needing to be loud in general, or being louder than the 2009 master. When you compare our remixes to any contemporary stuff, they are way quieter. It is not about loudness!”

Instead, as Giles Martin had noted earlier, the remixes were about “improving the mixes for modern ears.” Whether any of the “trying to break some new ground” approaches taken on the Abbey Road remixes will meet with universal approval, or finally have the purists up in arms about ‘repainting the Sistine Chapel’, will be clear by the time you read this…