Are you always using compression when you mix? Where are you using it?
Well, I'm using compressors, but I'm not always using compression. I use compressors a lot more as a form of tone than waiting for it to slam. Because of that, I have different chains where I use compression. I divide up my mix into combinations of four sub- groups, with a fifth uncompressed. The SSL 9000 gives me the ability to do that.
That's with the A, B, C and D stereo busses?
Yes. It has those four dedicated stereo busses and it has the master stereo bus. All four busses are processed differently. I use B for my bottom end, A for the top end of the record and I'll use C for the center of the record. Like guitars. Bus A goes to my Neve 33609 and then goes to a couple of Pultec EQs. They've both been modified and they sound fantastic. This is an early 33609, but it had the cards changed in it, so it's really warm. My Distressors and Avalon EQs are across the B bus for drums and bass. C went to a JoeMeek 1.05 until recently. It was a model that John Travis turned me onto. He said they're great on guitars and there's no other model of the JoeMeek that he liked as much as this. So I got it and I really liked across the guitar bus. Then I started playing around with the Pendulum compressors, the ES-8 and the 8610. The 8610 has a Fairchild tube with kind of darker sound. The ES-8 has a different tube which is a little bit more vibrant, brighter. I mixed a record using the Joe Meek [Tape Op #100] and when I was done with the mix, I set up the two Pendulum compressors identically to the way I set up my JoeMeek. I did three mix passes onto my Tascam hard drive [MX2424] with each setup. I brought them up and listened without knowing which was which and the one that just stood out, jumped out, was the ES-8. It's what had been in my head. I'd been wanting a certain sound, different than what the JoeMeek was offering me. So that's how things change for me. I usually stay very consistent with what A, B, C and D is going to be. D goes to a pair of Vac Rac, custom-made limiters and it's for when I want that extra warmth. What gets sent to D can be any combination of the first three busses, or sometimes I just send a track to it alone. If I want to warm up some strings for example, I would send it to D. Or I may send the vocals to both A and D. If it's giving me a better tone, then I'm going to send it to that.
Is your setup the same for every mix?
Always exactly the same initial setup.
Which is the one bus with nothing on it?
That's the stereo.
So you choose to send something to any of the A, B, C and D busses or to the stereo bus.
Yeah. Or, I can choose A, B, C, D and the stereo, if I want. You can use any combination.
What type of compression settings are you usually using? You said you don't always have a lot of compression going on. Is that from high thresholds or low ratios?
Each one is different. Each one I've chosen something I like. It depends on the record. If I want the bottom end to be really snappy and have almost that 1176 sound, I'll put the mod in on the Distressors. With the mod I leave it at 6:1. I look at everything all the time to see how hard it's working. If anything is working really hard, it might be the Distressor. But it's happening so fast, it's working hard on the transients, it's not staying on. The Pendulum is on its first preset which are based on the 670 stereo Fairchild presets. It opens up the image and when the guitars come through there, they're just more vibrant.
Is there a return level control for the A, B, C, D bus?
Yes, but I line up everything using 1 k, 100 and 10 kHz.
So that the levels come back even?
I'll start off with zero on the stereo. Then I'll take it out of the stereo bus and I'll go to A and A will probably read around +1 on 1 kHz. Then, I look at 100 Hz. If I don't have the Pultec in the path, it reads zero with no compression going on. Then I choose 100 Hz on the Pultec and I'll move it up until it's reading about 1 or 1-1/2.
Is the Pultec before or after the Neve?
Everything is post-compression. Then I switch to 10 kHz with my Pultec set on 8 kHz and I'll boost that about a dB and a half. Or, if the record's already really bright, then I'll turn that way down. It depends on what I'm getting. Generally that works, because it's so smooth. It's really based on the frequencies, more than the overall volume. On the Distressors, I do the same thing, except now I dig in a little bit deeper. I play around with a 3 kHz tone. Then 10 k, 12 k, 100 Hz and 50 Hz. I'm creating a different picture and setting it up with the frequencies from the SSL oscillator. I'm looking for certain peaks within the drums and the overall bottom end of the record. It's kind of a preset and once I put the drums through it, I tend to like it.
Do you end up getting level changes if you run something through more than one bus?
Yeah, it's twice as much. But understand, I don't double-bus it later.
What do you mean by double-bus it?
Well, if I'm going to bus B and bus D, I'm double- bussing, so you've got twice as much level. I'll make that decision before I bring the fader up. If I want the sound of these two busses and I'll bring up the fader with that sound already incorporated. Then there are times when the mix is really, really jamming and it feels great, but the bass drum or the snare just doesn't have enough pop to it. Bringing it up isn't really going to be the answer, because I've got the compressors working just the way I like it If I start adding more, I'm not going to get the punch, because I'm causing the compressor to work harder. If I back off the compression, then it's going to affect the other things that it really sounds good on. That's when I'll assign that track to the stereo bus. Now I have compression going on with no compression. And it's free. The frequencies are just coming out naturally and you get this combination of the two. If it's too loud, then I bring that fader down a little bit.
Are you saying that when you assign stuff to the A, B, C and D bus, they start out only going just to those buses and not to the stereo buss?
That's right.
So the stereo's just as much of a choice as any of those busses.
But I save it for later in the day, because I don't want to back myself up against a wall. This is my out [from too much compression].
That's a great solution.
I started this when the SSL 6000 first came out. I'd been mixing the Aretha Franklin Freeway to Love record, and the producer was going, "I want more bottom end, I want more bottom end." The more I tried to put out, the more it hit the compressors and the more it squashed the vocal. I was backed up against the wall. For years it was fine, because there wasn't that kind of huge bottom or top end that was needed. Once the bottom end started getting more important, I found that I was being backed up against the wall with nowhere to go. More level was no answer. I started thinking about it how to change it. The 6000 had an A, B and C bus for film. I decided to spread some stuff across A and B, and C can be my out. So I came up with this thing where I would send A and B to C. Across the C insert was the Vitalizer. I had that and would leave it off until I had the mix feeling great. That's when I would bring this into the mix and it would pop the midrange out. It was just amazing the things it would do to the record. It didn't hurt the ear, just tickled the ear. I did that for years with the Toad the Wet Sprocket and Fishbone records. But, once again, I had other ideas of things I really wanted to do. Eventually I went to Sony and they had the SSL 8000. That was the early four-bus concept. It had its limitations and it was kind of a lemon, but for me it was perfect. Again, it was a post-production or film console and nobody was using it this way. I really wanted every part of this record to pump on its own. The whole point of this is to compress on its own and not affect other things that are going on. Like the drums. I don't want the drums to affect how the guitars work in the middle of the record or how the vocals work. I don't want to add a little bit more EQ to the bass and affect the overall compression. All this is meant to be how it shapes it, not how badly I can level it out.
So the A, B, C, D busses are like their own master sections with their own sound.
So you know if you send something to one bus it's going to give you one sound and if you send to another it will give you a different sound. And, you've preset this all with choices to highlight the bottom, the middle and the top.
And, along the way, I have a lot of returns of different compressors. Let's take the bass — I can send the bass to B. But I can also send it to a compressor. I'll start with the EAR on the bass and then I've that going to an equalizer. So I'm already controlling it so that some notes don't jump out. Then I'll send it to B along with the drums. Now it gets molded into a whole bass and drums thing. Then if I want more power coming out of it and I don't want it to affect the compression of the drums, I have a Federal compressor I'll send it to. So now, I have my volume, my tone and my sound just by sending it to another compressor and that compressor is just slamming. But I'm not slamming the sound, I'm sending it to a slamming compressor.
Do you bring that back on its own channel?
Yeah, the return is on its own channel and that's going to the stereo.
Are you routing it through a regular bus like you bus a track to tape?
Yes. Busses 1-24 are assigned to compressors and I have 25 -48 routed to effects. Everything is already set up so that when I walk in, I don't have to do any additional patching.
Do the guitars ever go to B or is that limited to drums and bass? What if they need to be heavier in the low end?
They might if I want to see what it sounds like. But generally not.
What about vocals?
Vocals are a completely different animal. They don't pay attention to A, B, C or D.
What about things like pianos and keyboards? Where do they go in the subgroups?
They either go to A or D or A and D. That's my starting point. If I don't like what I hear I'll try something different.
What about channel compression or inserts? Do you tend to compress every instrument?
I'll put equalizers across the drums. If I'm mixing off Pro Tools, I may put the cymbals into the FATSO as a starting point, because that tends to smooth Pro Tools-recorded cymbals.
Right.
Bass is going to go through something, but it depends what was done to the bass before it got to me. Guitars these days are so compressed that what's the point of doing any more compression? It doesn't do anything. If anything I'll put equalizers across them. It just depends on what state and what kind of guitar sounds am I starting with.
How do you make those decisions? That's got to be one of the earliest things you do.
Yeah, that decision is based on my putting the track up and listening to what kind of rock guitar it is or — again, it just depends, are they rock guitars or are they clean electric guitars and how do they sit in the track, when I just put them up?
So you're going to throw up all the faders first and immediately start with compression decisions?
I'm going to put up the track and see what needs to be done. I don't want to put anything across it for the sake of putting it across. A lot of the stuff I get just needs help on distinguishing the sounds from one to the other. The engineering simply isn't what it was years ago. Some things they're better at and other things, they're not quite as consistent at. A lot of projects that come to me are not fitting well together sonically.
What situations do you find yourself looking for an insert compressor on a kick drum for instance? What are you likely to want to use and how?
I don't. I'll never put a compressor across an insert. If I use a compressor across a bass drum or a snare I do that by returning them to two separate channels.
Why?
