The original ASP8024 I had was probably over 10 years ago
and I bought it for its footprint
because its physical size was small enough
for me to put in the flght case and to take around
and I used to record bands in houses,
in big mansions which was good fun.
We recorded New Order in a mansion near Bath.
We recorded Manson and various other bands.
The Audient allowed me to be able
to patch an un-patch, within
two hours, the whole studio
because of it's
integral patchbay at the back
everything's on XLRs and jacks,
very easy to move
so we were able to go into a house quite quickly
set up and we usually be set up within a day
to be able to record a band where we would
be there maybe two or three months at a time
recording albums.
I then had another Audient with Stephen Street
in Olympic studios which we recorded
Graham Coxon and Kaiser Chiefs and
all sorts of bands and I started mixing in there.
I mixed some early Editors
and Snow Patrol on that console.
We've recently upgraded to this console
because it's basically the same same console
as far as I'm aware except for modifications to
the mix bus and it looks a lot nicer.
So we were
tempted and we took the plunge and
we've had a few months now and it's amazing.
It has two roles, it's our tracking room so
when anybody comes to track here
we record pianos, drum, strings,
voiceovers we do.
We have a few clients who tend to use this a lot and
like the sound of the console
and like the sound of the room.
We've recently been working on Ed Sheeran's album
which was great, we had good fun with that,
he's a fan which is great.
A fan of Decoy.
All our reamping is done through
this console and I tend to use the
the microphone preamplifiers on the channels
because they sound fantastic
and the EQ for guitars is perfect.
When we come to mix,
we will tend to sum through this console
the automation is done in Pro Tools.
We will sum through a number of channels of this and
use the mix bus, which
has a few tasty little transformers in there to
to colour the sound for us nicely
and we have the option of using those or not
and 9 times out of 10 I'd say all the buttons are in
because it sounds great.
The reasons why we bought this console was
first of all for its simplicity,
it's sound,
the fact that there are an enormous
amount of features for a console of this footprint
it's packed with all the features
one would get from a half a million pound SSL
without the automation
but with the bits that you actually need
and it sounds great, it has two inserts,
it has an insert on the large faders
an insert on the small fader.
I don't know another console that does that and
I know it sounds overkill but it's
actually very useful because if I bring in
external mic pres if I want to use a Neve or something
I can bring it into the insert return on the small fader,
send it to buses, and it's
integrated seamlessly I don't have to patch anything
I don't have to fart about.
That insert can stay in here forever and it won't
upset the signal flow of the large faders.
When we use this console for tracking
basically all the buses are hardwired to,
very old-school as if they were going to a tape machine
So basically if I plug in a kick drum microphone into
Tie Line 1, it will appear
on Small Fader 1
of my console where I can insert
a compressor or a gate or anything I want to do
before it goes to the bus
which is hard wired directly to the Pro Tools.
Very old-school, the way it's always been done
but it means that we can integrate hardware
whether it's compressors or EQs
very quickly, we have total control over it
of where it goes, where it's sent
I can EQ on individual channels or I can
EQ on buses depending on on how we decide to do it
but it means that the whole band, the whole session
can remain plugged in for weeks on end
pianos, drums, guitars, vocals,
whatever you like and
the band, or musician, or the artist can
choose what they want to do at any time
and it's all plugged in, it's ready to go.