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?
