Mixing Music - in the Box - Analog Mixer - or Both !

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Mixing Music - in the Box - Analog Mixer - or Both !

Here at The Coolest Recording Studio in South London - we get a lot of different clients with a lot of different needs.
Might be a folk group, jazz quartet or classic rock band that want to record everything live - possibly to tape - usually to hard drive as tape costs are a bit high.
Those guys usually want a minimal amount of editing so generally come into the studio after playing a few gigs to get them super tight.
Usually we'll track all the audio through our mammoth collection of analog preamps, equalisers & compressors, plus we'll send sets of audio to our selection of transformers for a bit of extra zing & juice - because we collect transformers (the black art of recording & Music Production) & have probably the largest collection in London Town !

Music Producing 

After all that - it's mixing time.
Analog equipment does odd & beautiful things to audio - it's to do with a lot of things - buffering - transformers - & the physics of analog equalisation.
In short - there are no rules - some expensive bit of gear may sound crap - while some cheap bit of home build mayhem may for some reason sound superb - you just gotta dive in - spread a few dollars around & keep what appeals to your sense of good audio.
We like to use These Alice mixers:
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alice mixer
They have really tasty Belclere (as found in Neve desks) transformers - a musical equaliser section - & a monumentally gorgeous compressor / limiter section at the output - which just sits all the audio in its' right place. Drums especially sound phenomenal mixed through this desk, plus the limiters are superb on vocals.

Glensound Broadcast Mixer 


This is a super high end mixer - folks (me included) think the mic preamps are as good as vintage API pre's - & just running audio through it adds a beautiful 3d'ness to the mix - so we tend to use it as part of the mix buss when either mixing or mastering.

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BBC Mixer

This is our wall mounted D&R Stylyx mixer - great sounding 80's desk - the channel strips have added transformer options (bottom left of mixer) & are amazing on vocals, drums, bass & guitar - the parametric equalisers are literal audio magic!!
The transformers add a whole bunch of weight & saturation to whatever audio is run through them - we either use them in the desk - or solo using the DAW in/out widgit.

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And last but not least - this!
A hand built analog mixer - maybe not the highest quality - but boy you can overdrive it so it sings like a banshee!!

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You can see the studio HERE:

www.shrunkenheadsstudios.com
recording studio south london

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