MONITORING IN MIXLAND

Ernster conducts all his mixes in his Mixland studio in LA. At this point one would expect a straightforward description of his studio, but for some reason his mix environment changes continuously. Early in the pandemic he could be found mixing in an Airbnb with sea view, using a laptop and a headset. He later on mixed ‘Woman’ in his bedroom. He has also moved house several times in recent years, which means that he has built several incarnations of Mixland.

In addition, the studio’s design itself is rather out of the ordinary, with Ernster preferring to mix with a keyboard and track pad in his lap, so he does not have to deal with the reflections that come from an office desk. He also has built tons of tube traps, to create close to dead acoustics around his monitors, while the rear of his current studio is treated with less absorption, resulting in a live-end-dead-end room.

“I built all of these big, 27 inch diameter absorption tubes,” explains Ernster. “They are copies of the Isothermal ASC Attack Wall tube traps, with a vented design where they take the sound in, and convert the energy into heat so it just dissipates. It leaves the room very accurate. I built them for my previous studio, and when we moved house I just brought all the tubes to this place. I want the area around the speakers to be completely anechoic, just loaded into the wall, with no resonance. It is like I am sitting in a hi-fi room, just me and the speakers and the power amps on the floor. It is incredible for translation. I hear exactly what clients send me.”

“I have a PDF guide for anybody who is interested in making these tube traps on my Mixland website, on which we also offer plugins, and other nerdy stuff. Right now we’re working on a DIY guide for Yamaha NS10 modification. The NS10 modification consists of updated crossovers, which cost about $70 per pair. The mod is a more thoughtful design with better components and a better placed crossover.”

“The cheap crossover they originally put in results in a horrendous overlap and a big bump around 1.6kHz. This mod alleviates that, but the speakers still sound like NS10s: fast with great micro-dynamics. They are just a little more useful without that snarly, harsh mid-range. The mod also extends the top and the low end. When I place the NS10s closer together, they go down to 40Hz, because the low end couples. These days, a lot of cats working with NS10s use them in a boombox configuration, i.e. very closely together.”

“I mixed ‘Woman,’ on un-modded NS10s in a temporary studio within a tiny bedroom, with some acoustic treatment. I currently still mix on NS10s, and also on my Strauss SE‑MF‑4 monitors. I now have 16 NS10s in my studio, because I am building an Atmos setup! I have an old Apogee Symphony as my I/O, and hope to upgrade to the Symphony Mk II soon. I also have the Grace M905 monitor controller and a whole bunch of other gear that I don’t use when I mix. When I did the ‘Woman’ mix in my bedroom I was using the Crane Song Solaris DAC.”

SESSION PREP

Ernster mixed ‘Woman’ in May 2021, and explains that his process involves one of his two assistants prepping the sessions. “I had an assistant, Noah ‘Mix Giant’ Glassman, who played a large role in helping to prep this song. He has experienced a lot of success from working on this. In general, the assistant will make a new session with my template, and then he imports all the session data from the session that is sent to us.”

“With ‘Woman,’ we retained their settings, master bus, and I/O, everything, and my template lives in there just in case I need it. I have a bunch of  auxiliaries that give me really quick options, like if I need a slapback on the vocal I can really quickly reach for it. So I used most of what they had, added my own treatments, and I built my own master bus.”

“My assistant’s job is to colour code and lay everything out in the session, and he also lines up the reference mix, using the ADPTR Metric AB plugin, and listens measure by measure, section by section, all the way through the song, to ensure that the song in the session is playing back exactly the same as the approved reference bounce. If anything sounds remotely different, we call the engineer or producer and we politely request correct files. But in this scenario everything sounded great and was perfect.”

NO SOLO

Unusually, Ernster mixed ‘Woman’ with his assistant virtually looking over his shoulder. “He was present via Zoom and AudioMovers, because pandemic numbers were high. Generally, I mix on my own, but in this scenario, because it was a big mix and a big opportunity, and he was trying to absorb as much information as possible, he watched me mix and of course commented sometimes. It was fun to have a co-pilot.”

“My mix process is primarily comprised of listening to everything at the same time. I will solo when I really need to focus on something, but in this day and age mixes are very loud and glued together at the mix bus, and when you are hearing the kick in the mix, you are not hearing the way it is EQ-ed, you hearing the kick rub against everything else, grinding into saturation plug-ins, with several decibels of gain reduction and clipping and limiting. There is a chemistry of distortion happening that is not represented when you are in solo, so for most of the time I work with everything in.”

“I will generally listen to the record twice, to get an idea of what is going on, and I’ll run around the session, also observing gain staging and the way things are behaving. When I get stems I might start with clip gaining every single track down in the session, but that was not the case with this session. In my head I make a priority list of what I think prevents the song from really working, and what needs doing to improve it.”

“Once I finish this process, I will gain stage the mix and set up my mix bus based on what the kick is doing. Generally, the kick peaks will be digging most in the mix bus, and I need my mix to be as loud as the reference. So I will get the mix bus going early. You could call that a top-down approach, but what I do on the mix bus is pretty minimal. Once I have added the mix bus I will jump into the session, and get down to the nitty-gritty.”

Review: Graeme Hague

On the other hand, if your usual recording session involves a dozen mono tracks, maybe a few stereo channels, and chucking in two or three VST instruments, it can all be time-consuming, and that’s when these templates will be handy. My recommendation is to use the templates sparingly until you have a good understanding of creating the different kinds of tracks individually, then you shouldn’t fall into any resource-hungry traps.

The Arrange Window, the heart of every DAW, has by default a utilitarian look of neutral greys and white. You can customise this as much as you want, adding colours to your wave files and tracks, and you can take your preferences a step further by saving your setup into a Workspace. It’s probably not something you’ll do right off the bat, but as you gain familiarity and workflow habits, creating your own default appearance is a real time-saver.

Speaking of appearances, Cubase 12 continues a modern theme of working in the digital medium. Icons, controls and menus are clear and sharp, with most of the icons being self-explanatory although hovering a mouse will pop up a description anyway. The array of menus on the upper taskbar is another testament to Cubase’s long evolution and some functions will be a little bewildering to new users (and many seasoned ones) but be assured everything on offer is the result from years of development. As your skills improve, these functions become useful.

DIVE INTO THE POOL

Something that hasn’t changed much is the Pool Window — and that’s a good thing, because it works and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. A constant problem for new DAW users is how they unwittingly amass a glut of unwanted takes and wave file fragments that choke your computer. Even musicians well-versed with digital recording can regard good file management practises like doing their tax returns (with all those cash gigs you’ve … ahem … declared, right?). The Cubase Pool window keeps things simple and easy for everyone to understand. Nothing fancy and everything clearly labelled.

MIXING IT UP

When I say that Cubase ‘looks’ digital, this is very apparent in the Mixer Window. In other words, aside from the fader knobs, Cubase doesn’t try to emulate an analogue console in appearance or operation. Of course, the layout does have a certain traditional form and function, but while some DAWs try to recreate coffee-ring stains and cigarette ash on virtual mixers, the Cubase 12 Mixer Window is all business, and very 21st century. For experienced engineers, this can shift you outside a comfort zone — old habits die hard — until it becomes obvious how the Cubase Mixer provides clear functions and a simpler, well-thought-out design that allows the most novice of users to quickly put together a basic mix. Important numeric values are displayed large, and good-sized thumbnails represent any tweaks to EQ and Panning. To dig deeper, an Edit button on every channel opens a more detailed window, or double-clicking will provide something similar.

When you want to get really into the art of mixing, Cubase 12 comes with a comprehensive selection of plug-ins. You get everything you need, including a few that follow the trend of providing a complete set of tools, such as the Pitch Correction plug-in, and the VST Amp Rack and VST Bass Amp, the latter two providing enough guitar effect simulation to have shredders and pickers alike happily fiddling with knobs all day. Again, some of the plug-ins will be too specialised for beginners, but like the more esoteric Menu functions they do have a purpose which can make that crucial difference.

YOU CAN DUMP THE BAND

Cubase 12 comes with a variety of VST instruments — and they’re all you’re ever likely to need. The HALion Sonic SE3 is actually the lite version of Steinberg’s flagship VSTi that regardless of the ‘lite’ tag comes loaded with a huge array of orchestral, strings, brass, synths, pianos… you name it, you’ll doubtlessly find something, and the sample quality is excellent. Then you have Padshop, which offers the full palette of synth-based pads, and Retrologue, which is a virtual analogue synthesiser providing those cutting, Moog-like sounds which only analogue circuitry can do so well. Verve is a new piano VSTi that takes piano sounds to the next level. Last to be mentioned here, and definitely not least, is Groove Agent, a drums and percussion VSTi that gives Cubase 12 an edge over the competition because not all DAWs come with such excellent virtual drums. Groove Agent is one of those VST instruments that, the more you dig around, the more you’ll find it can do. All the above, paired with audio plug-ins like the Amp Racks, means there are no gaps in your recording choices. Whereas before, things like good guitar amp emulations and virtual drums would need third-party software, Cubase 12 has it all.

SCORE!

Likewise, scoring and notation within a DAW used to be the remit of dedicated, expensive software and it’s only within the last decade or so that ‘normal’ DAWs started including a high-spec Score display. Cubase 12 has a full Score feature, and it’s very impressive to my musically untrained eye, but I do know it’s never been a perfect science in any DAW, including those dedicated programs of yore, so if your focus is strong on the Scoring functions, do your homework. Scoring in Cubase 12 provides a great visual reference, and it’s a clever tool for people who work best with notation. However, for composing from scratch, that’s not really its purpose.

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

Longstanding DAWs can suffer from feature bloat (where features cumulate over years and years of updates) making them daunting for newcomers. Which is why, even now, we’re seeing new DAWs enter the market — often to be more ‘lean and mean’. Cubase isn’t daunting. It’s designed to satisfy rusted-on users and be attractive to first-timers. That said, rusted-on users may lament the phasing out of a few long-time plug-ins and VST Instruments.

If you’re looking at Cubase as your first serious DAW, being a significant update, this Cubase 12 is an excellent release for stepping into the Cubase world. There will be a learning curve, sometimes steep, but just remind yourself that curve comes from 33 years of doing what Cubase has done so well — record and mix music of all genres, by people of all ages and musical backgrounds.

MORE OR LESS

Perhaps less striking but still quite significant is the three-position gain switch. The middle position is neutral or you can opt to cut or boost gain to the capsule by 10dB. The cut is a fairly standard feature on many mics but the boost is much more unusual and allows the user to not only boost low output sources but also to push the input circuitry of the preamp downstream. More gain structure options means more ability to shape a source’s character and the gain boost allows for some interesting saturation and distortion possibilities. Combining the voicing and gain switching capabilities of the Atlantis means a great many tonal effects are available, and experimentation can lead to wonderful and quite unique results not readily available via other microphones.

FIRST BASS

The Atlantis had not long been out of its box when I roped it into some session work on a singer-songwriter project. Its first job was actually one of the most challenging applications to be found in my studio, namely recording my old double bass. This is a slightly banged up but beautiful instrument left to me by a friend who sadly passed away and, despite a tone that is annoyingly hard to capture in recordings, it will continue to be my instrument of choice. It sounds good in the room but when recorded lacks clarity, especially in the upper frequencies. I’ve used absolutely every mic and mic placement under the sun to try and get this bass to shine, including very expensive, through to very cheap condensers, ribbons and dynamics and many combinations of the above. In every case I’ve ended up with a tone that is warm but lacks presence and often ends up needing a lot of EQ and compression to help it along. I plugged the Atlantis into my go-to preamp, the Retro Powerstrip, placed it about four feet out in front of the bass pointing around where the neck meets the body, set it to omni in Forward mode (to capture more of that elusive definition) with no gain modification, said a quick prayer and hit record. Listening back, my jaw nearly hit the floor as I finally heard the sound I’d been chasing all this time. Nice chunky bottom end and lower midrange complemented by a clear and defined top end. The sound had a cohesion and integrity to it that I’d never heard from this instrument in this room before… hallelujah! 

TESTING TIMES

From this experience I immediately understood that the Atlantis FC-387 was something that could reach into sonic corners where other mics perhaps couldn’t and I was very keen to hear it on more sources. This ability was later confirmed for me when the Atlantis also delivered excellent results on my two other ‘problem’ instruments: the high-strung arch-top guitar and the Chinese violin. 

Over the following days and weeks the Atlantis and I covered a lot of ground. Could it do a nice earthy piano sound? Tick. Could it capture the energy and the subtleties of a valve amp played at volume? Tick. Male and female lead and backing vocals? Tick, tick. Acoustic guitar? Percussion? Strings? Tick, tick, tick. Okay, you get the picture. Everything I tried it on came up really nicely and I always felt that I was being given something extremely usable with a consistently pleasing sonic signature centred around a sweet lower midrange, whether that be ‘wood’ in an acoustic guitar, or percussive thump in that old double bass.

CHARACTER WITNESS

The Atlantis is not a transparent mic nor does it aspire to be one. It definitely has its own colouration and tonal signature in all three voicings. The sound of the Atlantis FC-387 is thick, rich, gutsy and characterful and there’s none of that metallic zing that plagues the sonics of many a cheaper condenser on the market. There’s a realism that the Atlantis delivers which, to my ears, makes the whole process of recording very satisfying. Where you need that realism, the Neutral setting and a gentle gain structure deliver a lovely meaty tone with full-spectrum detail but no harshness. Where you need old-school body and depth, you can roll things off a little via the Gentle setting and get some ribbon-like smoothness. If you need crunch and attitude, the Forward and +10dB settings really take you there. 

The mic takes EQ and compression well and multiple overdubs stack very nicely without any exaggerated tonal build-ups. I really like the omni polar pattern on this mic too. It seemed to represent my room in a very flattering way while the cardioid kept things fairly tight and focussed. The figure-8 delivered excellent side-lobe rejection and a more noticeable proximity effect which can be handy on certain sources. 

On vocals the choices available for tuning the mic to the singer worked really well and I could as easily record a soft indie-folk male singer as I could a sassy female soul voice. Another big tick in the box is this mic’s ability in drum room applications. I captured a fantastically energetic sound with all the stops out (Forward tone, +10dB gain) using the omni polar pattern and just needed a little kick and snare to get a great overall drum sound that sat perfectly in the mix. 

DESERT ISLAND MIC?

Lauten has done much more than offer a viable alternative or update to older FET designs. It’s basically re-invented the large diaphragm FET condenser as a super versatile studio beast, replete with some extremely handy tone-shaping features that give the Atlantis FC-387 tremendous range as a recording tool. While it is a great all-rounder, its characterful tones are really enhanced in context with other contrasting mics such as valve condensers and dynamics. I’m extremely reluctant to return the review mic as it’s very quickly become a favourite here, and time and again has proved to be the archetypal ‘tool I didn’t know I needed’. The fact is that the Lauten Audio Atlantis FC-387 is a genuinely great-sounding microphone that, with its robust tones and versatility, is perfectly adapted to 21st century digital recording. 

WAITING FOR THE DROP

Lemondrop looks cute but don’t let that fool you; it’s a full-blown four-voice granular synth.

My experience with granular synthesis has primarily been with the Grain soft synth in Reason. Yours might be Granular in Live. 

Lemondrop is more than the equal of those instruments. For starters, each Lemondrop sound is comprised of three ‘oscillators’ — two granulators and one conventional oscillator. Immediately, you have scope for a more sophisticated sound, thanks to the manner in which you can tweak each of the oscillators and the way they interact.

There are some sample editing parameters that are entirely expected — such as pitch (±2 octaves), level, grain density and size — while there are others that really mess with sound, either imbuing some random characteristics or, if you prefer, locking it to a clock source and giving your sound an almost wave-sequenced strong rhythmic quality.

The home screen provides you with easy access to the Filter and Envelope section, along with an LFO and FX. There are two main effects engines. FX1 for modulation effects and FX2 for delay and reverb. 

The presets are often dripping in effects, and why not. They sound good and many of the sounds lend themselves to long verbs, big delays and fat choruses.

For real-time tweaking, an X/Y Kaoss Pad-style interface is only a single button press away.

WITH THE GRAIN

If you like other-worldly samples for creating unique sound beds, then granular synthesis is for you. You can even load in your own samples into Lemondrop and create patches from scratch. The Nanobox range relies on cheap and easily-accessible Micro SD cards for memory, so the sky’s the limit on what you can sample. 

Alternatively, if you’re after instant sonic gratification and a wide assortment of sounds, then granular synthesis and the Lemondrop won’t be your bag of chips.

What’s more, it’s worth noting that Lemondrop (and other Nanoboxes) are designed for supreme portability and immediate ‘fun factor’ rather than being a sound designer’s best friend — the UI doesn’t lend itself to prolonged, deep-dive editing.

Where it’s a total bullseye: highly-individual granular synthesis sonics, that will occupy a role in your productions that other synths can’t hope to emulate. Have a listen to the demo and you’ll instantly know whether this is the droid you’ve been looking for. 

But buyer beware: you may not be able to stop at one Nanobox!