Grammy award winner Guy Massey has recently equipped his home studio with a Universal Audio UAD-2 Quad Satellite FireWire plug-in system designed to emulate classic studio equipment,
An ex-Abbey Road engineer, Massey has worked on high profile projects such as The Beatles Remastered and Radiohead’s The Bends, as well as other big-name acts including The Coral, Spiritualized and The Bees.
Commenting on the UAD-2 Quad Satellite FireWire plug-in system, Massey said: “I'm using the UAD constantly on my latest projects (mixing albums for Bill Fay and Ultrasound) - they're my go-to mixing plug-ins. I often run things through the Neve 1073 plug-in and it sounds a hell of a lot better, even if you're not using the EQ."
Massey is still happy working with tape when a project requires it, tracking the Bill Fay album onto a 2” Otari MX-80 at Snap Studios. When audio comes in for a project that hasn't been tracked to tape, Massey again opts for the UAD-2, which has emulations of both Studer A800 and an ATR-102 tape machines:
“... I was mixing a track today with some Mellotron on it, and it didn’t sound quite ‘old and wobbly’ enough. So I put it through the ATR-102 plug-in, and used a preset on there called “Sunbaked Cassette” - it's really cool. I've tweaked that, and now it's turned a really good sample of a Mellotron into something that sounds like a real Mellotron to me.”
Massey was also interested in the prospect of using the plug-ins during tracking. He commented: “Some engineers say that they wouldn't want to record through plug-ins, but since you're using them in mixing and because they sound good, there's no reason not to use them when recording too. I suppose when you're recording you're more likely to have the original hardware available - and with budgets shrinking, money is being spent on the recording rather than the mix - but if the hardware wasn't to hand and I wanted an LA-2A or something I'd definitely try it out,” he concluded.
Full article courtesy of Audio Pro International here.
