Tommy Byrnes

These last promotions let me finish off the UAD plugins I wanted: DBX160, Fairchild Collection, 1176 Collection, Century Channel Strip, V76 and the Korg SDD-3000. I've got the 480L so the 224 doesn't hold interest for me and I now have all the Unison Pres I wanted. This has been a great promotion! The $50 coupons with the $25 ones have made me blow my studio budget for the next few months but well worth it in the end.

It's PA's Special Purpose.

This just made my wife's day!

Yay! The update last week made the CPU go bonkers. I reverted back to the previous version. I figured SSL would fix it but that was pretty quick!

I also got in on the $29 Sweetwater deal a while back. This is a really good verb and the controller is a lot of fun!

I have no intention of leaving Cakewalk/Sonar/Bandlab. I have way too many years invested. Everything I do in it is muscle memory. Customized key bindings, customized plugin layouts (the plugin manager is one of my favorite features. My layouts are pretty extensive), Screensets, templates, etc. The idea of having to redo all of this in another DAW is unpleasant. I briefly moved to Studio One when Gibson Sonar folded but I found myself spending too much time trying to get it set up so I could use it efficiently. Way too much down time involved for my clients and me. I occasionally mess about with MixBus (latest version) but it doesn't speak to me the way CbB/Sonar does. And, I love this software. I have been more than happy with it over the last 16 years of using it every day professionally. I feel like Noel and the rest of the Bakers are a main reason to stay with the software. Not many companies I've dealt with have their main folks often on the forums answering questions and helping out. Plus, they're in Boston, so I'll always be wicked loyal to my fellow Bay-Staters 🙂 I use the software professionally and won't mind paying for the next iteration. I don't think it makes sense for me to spend money on another DAW and not spend money on Sonar.

I stopped producing my music on CD a number of years ago. Unless you play 150 shows a year and your audience is over 40 it's a waste of resources. I always used CD Baby and DiscMakers both for replication and digital distribution for my clients and me but for the last couple of years I've used DistroKid. $30 p/year for full unlimited digital distribution. Each release through CD baby is an individual charge. If they no longer make CDs I wish them luck.

Monoprice cables from Amazon are also good. I have a bunch of their cable snakes for connecting gear to patchbays. Decent quality and a good price.

I've used stuff from Seismic for years. They're great. I use their mic cables in the studio and I use their snakes as breakout boxes in the tracking room. Excellent quality.

That's good to know, Jim.

I recently had the opportunity to do some major upgrades to my studio, including a new computer build and a new main interface. For the last 8 or 9 years my rig has run through a UAD Apollo Firewire and while everything was still working, I knew it was coming to the end as the primary interface. I was unwilling to give up the Unison preamps and the associated plugins in the Apollo so I was leaning towards one of the newer units. But, as a PC user I was skeptical of moving over to Thunderbolt for a number of reasons, the least of which is that since its inception there have been a slew of versions, many of which have completely different connectors. UA’s commitment to Windows has been uneven over the years to say the least (Luna for Windows?) so I was worried about the driver compatibility and TB with Windows in general. That, along with my general dislike of Apple, who own the TB technology, made me look for a different solution. My Sweetwater guy, Drake, suggested the new flagship RME UFX 3, even before it was released. My qualifications for a new interface were: 1) Have a future-proof connection type (the RME is USB3), (2) have outstanding conversion, (3) have a really good word clock and (4) have very efficient drivers. The RME hit them all with a sledge-hammer. The Apollo is still connected to the system via firewire, as is a firewire UAD Satellite, both of which can be used as SHARK-powered UAD plugin hosts, even with the RME ASIO drivers as the drivers in use. But the Apollo and an older Octo Pre Dynamic are connected to the UFX3 via ADAT and then slaved to the word clock of the RME. So, I can use the old Apollo’s Unison Preamps and the I/Os of both the Apollo and the Octo are available through the RME. This is a great solution for someone moving away from the UAD ecosystem while retaining the ability to use the Unison pres and the UAD plugins, which are about the best in the industry, in my opinion. I’ve read and heard many complaints about the TotalMix FX software that is integrated into all RME interfaces. All I can say is it’s the most useful software mixer/router I’ve ever used. Tremendously powerful and allows me to access everything in the studio, set custom headphone and cue mixes with reverb, apply EQ and compression on all tracks during tracking, use loopback features and lots more. It’s a great piece of software. I spent some time to get to know it and now I can’t imagine working without it. I even can control it with my Behringer X-Touch control surface, which is very handy, indeed. I am absolutely over the moon about the RME! I love walking into the studio, flip on the equipment and computer and start working with no issues. Everything just syncs and ready to go. It is a delight to work with in every way, from the ubiquitous USB3 connection to the amazing number of I/Os to efficient drivers with absurdly low latency. The mic pres are really good, very clean. It’s wicked expensive but I’ve found in using it full-speed-ahead for about a month now that I could not have spent my money more wisely.

I've had mine forever and use it all the time.

I finally grabbed this a few months ago during another sale. It is a true "desert island" plugin I use now in every production at some point, fromtaming harsh, brittle guitars to evening out vocals.

That's what I do.

I love UAD the company and struggled to leave their ecosystem as my main interface but I wanted the best drivers, clock and converters I could get in a single unit so I chose RME. No real life experience with their equipment but their reputation and long conversations with other studio owners convinced me. Knowing that I can still use the Apollo firewire as essentially a preamp and plugin host, connect my other ADAT pres and sync them all to the RME clock made the choice pretty easy. I got the inside info on the new converters and clock for the UFXIII from my Sweetwater guy, who is a studio geek whom I trust.

I have to admit, I'm not that interested in UAD at this point other than for the Unison preamps in my Apollo. I use them to track with all the time but there are so many native alternatives to most of their other plugins, and at a much more friendly price, that unless it's a useful Unison plugin or truly unique I don't feel compelled to pick up more of their plugins. I've recently built a new main studio computer and I'm going to get the new RME UFX III USB 3 when it comes out. I'll connect the Apollo via ADAT and clock it to the REM. I should then be able to run just about any session natively without any real sacrifices any more regarding CPU management. UAD's commitment to Thunderbolt and their treatment of Windows users as a second thought (uh, where is Luna for Windows?) kept me from going with a newer Apollo instead of the RME. I figured USB has been around and will be around forever and RME's drivers are second to none. We've had 4 iterations of TB already and since Apple owns the tech I don't have much faith in the future of it. Firewire is now obsolete but not too long ago it was going to replace USB.

I just completed a build with this case and I love it! It is really, really quiet and the airflow is fantastic.

I almost always track electric guitar cabs miked through the UAD Helios plugin (That and the HLS are emulations of the Olympic Studios Helios console) and use the HLS during mix. EQ-wise it's like fishing with dynamite but they have this great very colored sound that makes guitars and bass growl. The preamp gain is where the magic is. Gain stage with the fader.

No new Pro Channel. The upgrade was free for me. Be sure to be logged into your account.

I love the Cakewalk Plugin Manager because I can easily make various plugin lists, such as Essentials. The number of plugins installed and the space they take up isn't a reall issue any more with 1+TB SSDs. I have all samples installed on their own drive and backed up on an external drive, as are all the plugins and their installers. So, if I need a stripped down, uncluttered plugin list I can just use a custom plugin list in the Manager. It's an illusion as the plugins are still installed but it does help a bit. 🙂

I think the reason so many of us lean towards emulation plugins like 2As and 3As and 1176s and Fairchilds is because they have been essential studio tools for decades. The behavior and sound character is so well known and those "sounds" have been an integral part of recorded music for so long that results from their use is a known commodity and easily gets folded into one's mix strategy. Opto, FET, VCA, tube, etc. all have various attack/release times and ratios and the type of sound being compressed informs us on which might be best suited to the program material. For instance, an LA2A has no adjustable ratio (it's set at around 3:1) and the attack is about 10ms. But what makes it so desirable is the multi-stage release. The initial release is around 60ms or so for the first 50% and then the last 50% of the release takes from around 500ms to 5 seconds, depending on the source. This allows the signal to "sit" in the compressor at all times, with a couple of dBs of reduction as a constant. Louder parts of the signal will then be attenuated more but since the comp is already engaged the compression will be very smooth and buttery, which is why it's a perfect vocal comp. Very hard to get a standard digital comp to do this. Plus, being a tube-driven compressor the non-linearities of tubes colors the signal in a pleasing way. One could certainly use a distortion plugin to try to emulate the sound but it's not like the organic part of the 2A's sound. Each piece of hardware (and its plugin emulations) has its own personality. Knowing which one to use is part of being an informed engineer and can greatly improve one's craft.

I grabbed this primaraly for the 3A. This is a really good plugin! Being able to M/S is a great feature.

I concentrate these days on primarily the Unison stuff and have all the ones I want at the moment. Being able to track through the plugins is what led me to UAD 8 years ago. Native plugins have come so far that they rival a lot of the UAD plugins, though being able to off-load CPU cycles to the UA hardware is very helpful as well. The real magic is with the Apollo pre/Unison plugin signal chain. For instance, I usually track electric guitars by miking cabs through the Helios console in a Unison slot, followed by the UAD Distressor. Sublime. It got me back into committing the sound "to tape" like the old days as opposed to trying to fix stuff downstream. The Neve 1084 is wonderful (I like it better than the 1073. The upper mids sound smoother and less spiky to me), the Avalon VT-737 and the Manley VoxBox are go-tos on vocals (the VoxBox is also great on a bass DI), the SSL 4000 gets used for tracking almost everything, as does the API Vision. The plain Neve and API preamps alone do wonders to an incoming signal. The Helios, though, is a secret weapon. It's about as surgical as a grenade but push it a bit and it sounds amazing. To be sure, it's a sizable investment to enter into the UAD world but it's helped me make better, more inspired recordings from the very first day.

True, I did not demo it, just based my snark on the audio examples.

The other two in the Studio Series (Fame and Sunset Sound) are super versatile and one or the other is on just about every project to put things in a room together. I don't think I'd want to run my stems through what will make them sound like they were recorded in an aircraft hanger. This would be great for "that" sound but I doubt I would use it enough to grab it. I love this idea, though and hope other great sounding rooms make it to this series. Putting different stems through the Fame verb with subtle pre-delay, along with the various positions available in the plugin makes me think I'm mixing tracks recorded in a really great sounding room. My tracking room is small and tight so sometimes I'll use Sunset Sounds, which has a bigger, more "rock n roll" sound to it to open the sound up. The Farm Stone verb seems less versatile to me.