Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson (aka Funktwons) are a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop and R&B production duo. Together with their longtime engineer Andy Haller, they have worked with some of the biggest artists in the music industry, including Michael Jackson, Ludacris, Dr. Dre, Nas, Usher, and Beyonce.

14 years after Boyz II Men’s platinum-selling album, II, Tim & Bob reunited with Andy Haller to work on Boyz II Men’s latest album, Twenty — a double CD comprised of 8 remastered hits and 13 new compositions. Here Haller explains how they were able to craft the silky smooth R&B jam, “So Amazing,” using UAD Powered Plug-Ins.

The goal for this session was to get that old school vintage R&B sound but with a modern feel. First, let’s take a listen to the song. If you can, listen on studio reference monitors or headphones so you can hear all the nuances in the recording.

Getting the Drums Right

Most of the drums sounds you hear in our mixes were processed with UAD Powered Plug-Ins. We used the LA-2A Classic Leveler to give Tim’s kick samples a little rounded punch and to tighten up the bottom end to lock in with the bass. It added some upper harmonic distortion which was a nice bonus as well.

Settings for the Teletronix LA-2A Classic Leveler Plug-In on drums.

After that I used the Neve 1081 Classic Console EQ Plug-In. I gave the kick a little bump at about 200 Hz and a dip at 390 Hz for a fat roundness that won’t get in the way of the bass.

Settings for the Neve 1081 Classic Console EQ Plug-In on drums.

Take a listen to the kick before UAD Plug-Ins:

And here’s the kick after UAD Plug-Ins. Again, make sure to listen to these sound examples on studio headphones or monitors so you can really hear the effect:

As for the claps, we used the dbx® 160 Compressor / Limiter Plug-In. I didn’t want to squash it too much — just enough to where the peak of the transient is pulled back 1 or 2 dB. The threshold was about 2 o’clock and the compression was set to about 2 or 3.

For drum ambience, I used a combo of different reverbs to create a depth of field. My favorites for this task are the EMT 250 Electronic Reverb and the EMT 140 Plate Reverb. I set the EMT 250 to about 1 to 2 seconds with no pre-delay to add a bit of body and extend the drum tone.

Making the Background Vocals Shine

Needless to say, the background vocals really needed to be transparent and crystal clear. I’m a big fan of subtractive EQing. To me, it’s more logical to remove extraneous frequencies before boosting anything that can cause phase shift (I learned that from Ed Cherney). I started out by filtering out low room/unwanted rumble at about 50 to 60 Hz with a moderate slope. Then I pulled out anywhere from 300 to 450 Hz on each individual track where needed and added a bump of 1 or 2 dBs of 8 kHz.

As for compression, the 1176 Classic Limiter really made the background vocals sit nicely while retaining their dynamics and adding a bit of top sparkle that minimizes EQing. I started with the stock settings, which are pretty good, then played with the attack and release time so it was more in time with the tempo of the tune. Those tracks were then bussed to an Aux that had the Precision EQ Plug-In.

Settings for the 1176 Classic Limiter for background vocals.

Precision EQ Plug-In settings for background vocals.

I also used the Precision De-Esser Plug-In at the end of the subgroup to tame any extra sibilance. I usually start at 5 or 6 kHz and play with the threshold until it smoothes out the "Ess" but still sounds natural.

Settings for the Precision De-Esser Plug-In for background vocals.

The result is subtle, but effective. Here's the hook before UAD Plug-Ins:

And after:

Creating a Musical Low-End

For the low-end bass, most of the time the processing is minimal. I usually add a little EQ and little limiting with the LA-2A — just enough to pull it back a couple dB. We used the Neve 1081 to add a touch of bass around 100 Hz and you could really hear it grab — it’s very musical and a little goes along way.

Occasionally I will use the Fairchild 670 Compressor Plug-In on bass with great results. I really like the Ocean Way preset as a starting point with a couple dB of gain reduction. Tim’s also a big fan of the Manley Massive Passive EQ Plug-In, so once I find the fundamental frequency of the particular bass that’s being used, I’ll use that to give the bass a little bump with a fairly narrow bandwidth and pull out some of the frequencies above and below. I find it’s really natural-sounding and doesn’t interfere with the kick.

Shaping the Acoustic Guitar Tone

Bob is a great guitar player and that’s a huge benefit. I really like the Harrison® 32C Channel EQ Plug-In on guitars — the tone captured with the software emulation makes my job easier by having to EQ less. I just notched back a little rumble using the highpass filter, added a little gain at 4 kHz, and that was it. The plug–in really helped shape the tone.

Harrison 32C Channel EQ Plug-In settings for acoustic guitar.

Here’s Bob’s acoustic guitar before the Harrison EQ:

And after:

Universal Audio really made my job a lot easier by making the greatest emulations of some of the best hardware processors ever built.  In an everchanging music industry, it’s good to know these great tools are available and affordable to everyone.

Mix engineers today are asked to do far more than simply mix the song. In fact, it’s now expected that they clean the tracks, eliminate pops and clicks, adjust the track timing, and replace or augment some of the sounds as well. Another job that falls to many mix engineers today is correcting the pitch of any track that needs it. This process is faster and easier than ever, but like anything else, you still need good fundamental technique to seamlessly pull it off. Here are some tips and tricks for correcting the pitch of any vocal or instrument, as outlined in my latest edition of The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook.

Some History

While it’s easy to believe that pitch correction only became possible with the introduction of Antares’ breakthrough plug-in, Auto-Tune, in 1997, the process has been around since the 1970’s, starting with the first Eventide H910 Harmonizer. Primitive as it was, the H910 did allow for slight pitch corrections, although the digital artifacts that it imposed on the sound were quite substantial the farther you strayed from the original pitch. As newer versions of the Harmonizer (and later the French Publison Infernal Machine) were released, engineers could get a wider range of correction before the digital artifacts became noticeable, but the bulk of the work was still all done manually.

Before there were pitch correction plug-ins there were hardware
harmonizers like the French Publison Infernal Machine.

To give you an idea what “manually” actually meant, the engineer would locate the point in the track that needed correction, set the Harmonizer to the correct pitch, rewind the tape, play it through the Harmonizer, then either record it on to another track or a different tape machine, which then had to be recorded back onto the master in sync. Needless to say, it was a tedious process to correct even a single note. Of course, studio owners back then loved to hear that a project decided to tune vocals since the bill for studio time would expand substantially.

Today things are obviously much easier, thanks to plug-ins that would simply astound any engineer transported in time from back then.

Graphical interfaces — like the one in Celemony's Melodyne pitch
correction plug-in — make tuning vocals and instruments a breeze.

Getting Started With Pitch Correction Plug-Ins

Two of the most popular track-tuning programs commonly in use today are Antares Auto-Tune and Celemony Melodyne, but there are many others to choose from as well. Be aware that all tuning plug-ins impart their own sound on the audio that you’re tuning — and it might not always be pleasing. Many engineers typically own several different ones so they can compare which sounds better in a particular situation.

Except for the occasional case where you really want it to be obvious — like Cher and T-Pain — you’ll want the listener (and sometimes the artist) to be totally unaware that the pitch has been manipulated. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Use the performance itself first. Before you apply pitch correction, try to find other parts to use in the performance to keep any correction as natural-sounding as possible. These including vocal comping and copy and pasting phrases, words, or syllables from other parts of the song.
• A little goes a long way. The fewer notes you correct, the more natural your performance will sound. You’re much better off just correcting a few notes than attempting to correct a large portion of the entire performance. If it’s that far off, you should try to get that part recorded again.
• Use the most precise mode. Auto-correct modes may be designed to make things turnkey, but they’re often not precise enough for most applications. As a result you may get audible fluctuations that make the track sound artificial — which is usually not what you’re after. If the plug-in has one, use the graphical mode to achieve the most precise tuning with the least amount of audible artifacts.
• Don’t worry about perfectly tuned vocals. Even the best vocalists are never precisely on pitch — that’s what makes them unique. Getting the pitch within a few cents will sound more like the real thing, since it’s the variations and inaccuracies that make a human voice sound human.
• Print the pitch correction. Instead of leaving the pitch correction patched in as a plug-in, you’re better off printing a corrected pass and using that track instead. This saves precious system resources and also eliminates any problems that might occur if the session is moved to a different DAW.

A Few More Tips

Here are a few tricks often used when correcting the pitch of a mix element. As always, don’t be afraid to experiment, since slight variations might fit better on a particular mix.

• Experiment with harmonic resonance. Sometimes raising the formants (the harmonic resonance) of a voice can make the vocal sound a bit more exciting or breathier. It doesn’t actually change the pitch — just the placement of the voice’s harmonics.
• If the vocal is off enough that the pitch correction sounds robotic, try this trick. Copy the vocal to two additional tracks and spread them left and right. Tune one of the vocals up by 2 to 8 cents; tune the other down by 2 to 8 cents. This will smooth out an out-of-tune vocal and make it sound a lot thicker at the same time.
• Try adding some reverb. Tuned vocals almost always sound better with a least a touch of reverb or delay on them.
• Be gentle with lead vocals. Generally, background vocals can get away with much more pitch correction than lead vocals before any artifacts are heard.

Depending upon how much of a purist you are, pitch correction is either the worst thing to ever happen or a godsend. Regardless of how you come down on the issue, it’s at the very least a necessary and powerful tool in today’s music. Use it wisely!
 
Bobby Owsinski is a producer and music technology consultant who is the author of 18 books about recording and the music business, including the most recent 3rd edition of The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook. Read his music marketing blog at Music 3.0 music industry blog, and his production blog at the Big Picture production blog. You can read about his books at bobbyowsinski.com, or follow him on Twitter for daily blog updates.

The TwinTube combines two essential tube effects — Saturation and Harmonics — in a single processor. Its two fully independent stages — which can be run together or separately — provides an exceptionally wide-ranging palette of sonic shaping, from smooth and creamy overdrive to deep, growling saturation, with a range of harmonic overtones to add warmth. It’s a sound that simply can’t be achieved using typical EQ.

Luckily, SPL has brought the distinctive features, sound, and character of the original TwinTube hardware to the UAD Powered Plug-Ins platform. Here’s some tips and tricks on how to get started with the SPL TwinTube Plug-In.

Learning The Controls

The Harmonics section adds a special circuit for overtone processing that reacts dynamically to the incoming signal. Using the Harmonics control, you can adjust and enrich the overtone processing intensity across four frequency settings (2, 3, 6, and 10 kHz) as well as the overall effect. The result is an intensified presence that adds a sense of “air” and space to your sound — bringing a vocal or instrument forward in a mix.

Saturation Control
In the hardware version of TwinTube, saturation is created by pushing the tube beyond its normal limits. This causes a gradual building of harmonic distortion, accompanied by limiting that has been compared to analog tape distortion. It can be employed to subtly fatten sounds when applied sparingly, and to add warm overdrive coloration when cranked up.

Much faster than with the usual save and recall presets dialogs, settings can be stored and recalled by just one click. Settings A, B, C, and D can be included into the automation of host applications to apply different sounds to different parts of a song or project.

In Use

Adding the SPL TwinTube plug-in to the master channel will enhance the overall warmth of the mix and give it a feeling similar to nice tape compression. Adding just a touch of harmonics will give the mix some air and enrich the high frequencies.

You can also use the TwinTube on individual tracks to help shape and place the track in the mix. This is a popular approach and where the TwinTube really shines.

I recommend using TwinTube as one of the first plug-ins in your signal chain as it has a great influence on the dynamics of the track. Think about the frequencies you wish to enhance and then turn the Harmonics knob up until you like the sound. Once you feel a noticeable difference in the sound and its presence, play around with the Harmonic frequency switches in order to find out whether your initial choice stills sounds the best to you.

Next, start dialing in the Saturation and feel what it does to the sound. With vocals, find that spot where the voice starts to sound warm, full, present, and has that feel of slight tube compression. This quality creates a dynamic vocal that is easy to fit in the mix.

Make sure to check your gain from time to time. If applied correctly, the difference in gain between the unprocessed channel and the processed channel should be negligible. While the Harmonics control will definitely change the perceived loudness of your mix, the actual volume will remain the same. The Saturation control is a different beast, however. At the most extreme level, output level may increase by approximately 6 dB, so if you use a lot of saturation, you may actually have to adjust the output gain.

Vocals (Click to expand)

Guitar (Click to expand)

Final mix (Click to expand)

Mixing Tips for TwinTube

In mixing, there is no truth — only taste — so the following mixing tips should be treated as guidelines rather than actual rules. They reflect my personal experience and taste, with settings that correspond to specific tracks and sounds, so feel free to use these settings as a jumping off point for your own sound.

TwinTube works wonders on vocals. When done correctly, further EQing oftentimes is not even needed to get the vocals to the front of the mix.

For female vocals, make sure the Harmonics switches are set to 10 kHz, and dial the Harmonics control in to about 2 o’clock, with the Saturation at about 8 o’clock. Listen and tweak the Harmonics settings to find out what complements your specific voice the best. For most female vocals, setting the Harmonics switches at 10 kHz should be the ticket, but if the voice is slightly deeper, try going for 6 kHz. For male vocals, try a 2, 3, or 6 kHz setting, depending on the character of the voice.

The Harmonics controls are especially good for enhancing any picking sounds, while the Saturation helps with compression, warmth, and limiting. Start with the Harmonics switches at 6 kHz, carefully dial in some Saturation to the 1 o’clock position, and add some Harmonics to around 1 o’clock as well.

It’s amazing what the TwinTube can do on a kick drum, especially in conjunction with the SPL Transient Designer Plug-In. In addition to increasing body and warmth, the Saturation acts as a compressor, making the kick punchy and present. The Harmonics will give the drum that click you sometimes need in a tight groove.

To bring air and analog warmth to your final mix, slap the TwinTube on the final mix bus, dial the Harmonics switches to 6 or 10 kHz, and dial the Harmonics control to around 2 o’clock. Then slowly (really slowly) bring up the Saturation and feel out the level you like.

There are a multitude of applications for the SPL TwinTube plug-in, and neither this article nor any one single person can cover it all. But one rule of thumb is always useful — experiment as much as possible, be open-minded, and mix, mix, mix!


 

Universal Audio’s latest UAD Software v7.0 provides some notable enhancements to Apollo’s workflow and expandability. Among these enhancements is multi-unit cascading, letting you combine two Apollo 16 interfaces (for 32 x 32 analog I/O) or two Apollo interfaces (for 16 x 16 analog I/O) into a single integrated system via FireWire or Thunderbolt.*

The boost in Apollo connectivity is navigated via a redesigned Console application, providing better visual feedback, a new PT Mode which simplifies outboard hardware integration with Pro Tools, and a new Virtual I/O feature that allows you to process DAW tracks and virtual instruments in real time with UAD Powered Plug-Ins.

New Apollo Audio Interface Features In Software v7.0

• Multi-Unit Cascading of two Apollo units or two Apollo 16 units*
• New Virtual I/O feature for Realtime UAD Processing of virtual instruments and DAW tracks
• New PT Mode for easy insertion of outboard analog hardware in Pro Tools
• Enhanced Apollo Console software with better visual feedback

  *Note: Combining Apollo with Apollo 16 is an unsupported configuration.

Watch the new Apollo features in action in the video below. Download UAD Software v7.0 here.

Musikmesse 2013 Video — Apollo Console Update Overview

In the mid-70s, Bill Putnam Sr. of Universal Audio caught wind of “this kid” who had finagled his way into buying up some surplus gear from his UREI factory at fire sale prices. The story was that he had been selling some of it off at a handsome profit, and using the rest to help build a remarkable home studio right off the beach in nearby Santa Monica, CA.

After a brief meeting in his office, Bill Sr. decided to pay a visit, and took his son along for the ride. Bill Jr., just twelve years old at the time, remembers that day vividly, “We drove out in my dad's Lincoln Continental, walked around the back of the house and into the garage, and there was this huge speaker system right in front of us. It seemed like it was ten feet tall. And when he played us a bunch of stuff that he had recorded, my dad's jaw just dropped.”

Bill Putnam Sr. and Bing Crosby.

That young studio owner, barely out of high school himself, had started to build a reputation by recording bands straight to two-track and installing hi-fi systems in the homes of musicians and label execs around town. He'd even once landed a summer job as a runner at Putnam's Western Recorders, but their paths hadn’t crossed much. He was sharp and outgoing, with a great ear, a shrewd business sense, and deep understanding of sound and audio gear. His name was Allen Sides.

By all accounts, Bill Sr. was “stunned” by what Allen had already achieved. It wasn't just the home and studio speaker systems that Allen had been putting together – which were practically unprecedented at the time – but the sounds that he was able to capture and make those speakers reproduce. A few of the recordings they heard that first day in the studio together were ones that Allen had made as a teenager, but they put the work of some long-time pros to shame.

The two hit it off immediately. Sides and Putnam shared a die-hard work ethic, an entrepreneurial streak, and a tinkerer's passion for circuits and for sound. It was a relationship that would endure throughout their careers, and helped preserve the continuity of a pair of legendary recording spaces that have been longtime favorites of Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, The Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Beck, Whitney Houston, Green Day, Sheryl Crow, Kanye West and Radiohead.

Putnam had originally named this studio “United Recording” when he first opened it in 1957. When Allen took over operation in the 1980s, he renamed the complex after that first home studio of his, down by the beach in Santa Monica, calling it “Ocean Way.” But aside from the name change, Sides took pains to preserve the sound of these iconic spaces as they were from the beginning. And they sound just as good as when Putnam left them 30-some years ago.

The Creation of United Recording — Bill Putnam’s Perfect Rooms

Bill Putnam Sr. was something of a pioneer when it came to room ambience, both real and simulated. He's often credited with the first commercial use of an artificial reverb in the US, when he created a makeshift echo chamber using a speaker, a microphone and a tile bathroom to add a huge, ever-shifting ambience to the Harmonicats #1 single “Peg Of My Heart” in 1947. On that recording, the listener's perspective morphs constantly as the reverb signal is blended in and out of the track in a way that still sounds unexpectedly novel today.

Of course, Putnam's experiments didn't end there. He essentially invented – and perfected – the auxiliary sends we take for granted whenever we call up effects. He was also instrumental in the invention of the Cooper Time Cube — one of the first-ever practical delays that didn't rely on magnetic tape — and he worked hard to try and perfect the early oil-can delays and reverbs of the 60s.

But as much as he was driven to toy around with extreme and sometimes otherworldly reverbs, Putnam clearly understood that the most important thing to get right was the natural ambience of a real recording space.

Ocean Way Studio B, as it is today.

To that end, he spared no expense in the pursuit of creating perfect-sounding recording rooms. He tuned his studios in part by ear, in part with some help from the most advanced measurement techniques available at the time. He'd built more than a dozen of them by the time he retired, and always considered the rooms at Ocean Way to be among his greatest achievements.

Bill Putnam Jr. says that whether you're after something realistic or extreme, one of the main goals in designing any reverb is to have it build up a very dense set of uncorrelated reflections as quickly and as evenly as possible: “That speaks to things like lush tails and warm open sounds, and the avoidance of slaps, combs and flutters. These rooms do that.”

Bill Jr. says that his father managed to do it all “by ear and with much less sophisticated measurement equipment than I have access to now. I think he just had a gift in dialing these rooms in.”

“From a musician's perspective, Studio B at Ocean Way is like a small concert hall,” says Allen Sides. “The reflections are crisp and even, and they're smooth right down to the bottom.”

“There's enough low frequency absorption in there that you can bring in a whole symphony orchestra and still have control. It's a very musical room, and I don't think there's a single parallel wall in the entire space. I've worked in a lot of studios over the years and when it comes to sound, to architecture – I just don't think I've heard or seen anything else like it.”

These characteristics have made Ocean Way's Studio B into one of the most legendary recording rooms in the world. But its success is far more than historic, and it remains a favorite of busy producers like Nigel Godrich and Jon Brion to this day. In fact, modern masterpieces like Beck's Sea Change and Radiohead's Hail To The Thief owe a portion of their unique character to the space, and artists as varied as Green Day, Eric Clapton, BB King, Avril Lavigne and Kanye West have all recorded there in recent years.

The Bill Putnam-designed Studio A.

Ocean Way's Studio A has fans all its own, and it's been responsible for some truly enormous-sounding recordings from pop legends like Frank Sinatra, Lionel Ritchie, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Sheryl Crow. In contrast to Studio B's exceptionally clear and open reflections, Ocean Way's A room is just a bit darker and warmer, while still remaining exceptionally smooth. It has a slightly longer decay time than B, with a little more weight and roundness from 400Hz on down.

From United Recording to Ocean Way Studios

Like so many of his clients, Allen Sides fell in love with the sound of Studios A and B at United Recording. When a prior lease was finally set to expire for Studio B, Sides approached his friend about taking it over for himself, and Bill Sr. offered him a “sweetheart deal” on the space.

Allen quickly rebuilt the Studio B control room and moved all his equipment in, but left the astounding acoustic space of the live room alone. Out of all the rooms that he had designed and built, Bill Sr. considered this his favorite, and was thrilled to have his protégé carry on the tradition. Sides' early sessions in Studio B ranged from Frank Zappa and Chick Corea to Neil Diamond and Bette Midler.

In 1982, Bill Sr. decided to lease Studio A to Allen as well. Once again, Sides made a few changes to the control room, but left the main acoustics of the room more or less untouched. One of the first projects to come through its doors was Lionel Ritchie’s Can’t Slow Down, which would go on to sell 25 million copies. A couple of years later, Bill Sr. sold the entirety of the United Western Recorders complex to Allen, at which time Bill Putnam’s United Recording became known as Allen Sides' Ocean Way Studios.

It was also during this time Sides began buying almost a thousand rare tube microphones from overseas. European studio owners and broadcasters had begun dumping loads of “antiquated” tube microphones for brand-new phantom-powered transistor mics. A master of salvaging audio gems, Sides carefully went through every microphone, adding the best of the best to his own collection and selling off the rest. Before long, Ocean Way had amassed one of the largest collections of tube microphones in the world.

The Sides Sound

“I think the word that sticks in my mind when I think of Allen's work is 'impressive’,” says Bill Putnam Jr. “His stuff is big and wide, but so crisp. He gets a really great fundamental mix – his rhythm sections are just so tight – and then he gets a lot of stereo spread. He puts you in an amazing soundfield, but nothing is mushy.”

A young Allen Sides.

Although his sound may be no accident, to hear Allen Sides tell it, he got into audio engineering through something of a sideways path.

“I was a speaker designer at first,” he says. “That was my main thing. I came into recording — to a certain degree — because I was looking for impressive-sounding material to play on my speakers. When I built my first studio it was hard to find a lot of stuff that would make you go 'Wow'! There was just a very finite amount of material where the sound could really shock you.”

One of the few producers at the time who made those kind of recordings was Phil Ramone, who he considers “a mentor from a sonic standpoint.”

“He was one of those guys who set a new standard for what things could sound like. Some of his straight to two-track audiophile stuff was just ridiculous. That's what I always wanted to hear. When the artist comes in, I want them to be speechless.”

In pursuit of that goal, there's no part of the chain that's outside his purview. Bill Jr. describes Allen as being “incredibly obsessed” with everything — from tracking down high-performance transducers and building great-sounding consoles, to getting the room and speakers tuned just right. For him, so much of the battle is won before a single mic even goes up on the stand.

When he does get to recording, Allen generally prefers to work quickly, relying on decades of experience placing great mics in the rooms he knows so well. Rather than fiddle around too much, his primary goal is to make sure he can get a great sound without ever wasting a musician's time. Also paramount is ensuring that the rough mixes the band hears always sound like a finished record, every step of the way – even when they're just listening through headphones on the cutting room floor.

Allen Sides, at the helm of Ocean Way
Studios for 30 years. 

Aside from that, it can be hard to pin down Allen's technical approach much further. “Ultimately,” he says, “all that matters is the end result. That comes from listening and from taste. How you get there is irrelevant.”

In recording, just as in music, it's less about knowing any one trick and more about knowing your instrument and what it's capable doing. In Allen's case, that “instrument” includes the microphone, the signal path, and the room itself. According to Sides, in order to make a great recording, you have to understand how the room reacts to the instrument, and how the mic reacts to the sound within the room.

Recreating Ocean Way Studios for the UAD Platform

Over the years, the relationship between Allen and the Putnam family has remained close, and that's perhaps no better exemplified than with the development of the Ocean Way Studios Plug-In for the UAD Powered Plug-Ins Platform.

After Universal Audio was re-founded in 1998, they sought to bring their critically-acclaimed digital emulation expertise to the realm of room modeling, and starting with the iconic rooms their father himself designed seemed an obvious choice.

Sides likens to working in an ongoing collaboration with two generations of Putnams. Bill Sr. designed the space, Allen learned how to make it sing, and Bill Jr. figured out how to make its legendary sound accessible to producers and engineers who might never be able to set a foot inside a studio so well-designed.

When recreating these rooms for the Ocean Way Studios plug-in, Bill Jr. was reminded of just how far ahead of its time his father's work was:

Bill Putnam Jr. at Ocean Way, during the capturing
phase of the Ocean Way Studios Plug-In project. 

“We can test and measure these things much more accurately now,” he says, “and when I shared our room analysis with some researchers, they were amazed at how quickly the reverb tails fall off into those kind of random, almost noise-like reflections, which is the ideal. So in the process we rediscovered that even from a mathematical standpoint these rooms are pretty spectacular.”

But the goal of the project was not to take a clinical measurement of the room and make it available to other engineers. Instead, Allen and Bill Jr. joined forces to capture these rooms as they sound in a recording.

Rather than put up a couple of sterile measurement mics and call it a day, they instead broke out some of the best pairs from Allen Sides' personal vintage microphone collection — mics like the Neumann U47, U67, and M50, the AKG C12, the RCA 44, and even the incredibly rare RCA 10001 — a microphone best known in the film-scoring world as one of the best ribbons ever made.

From there, each of these hand-selected mic pairs was placed in a variety of positions based on Allen's decades of experience placing these very mics in these very rooms. As Sides puts it, they “not just modeled the room, but the experience,” right down to the mics used and the engineer's informed aesthetic choices.

The behavior of specific instruments within the space were also recreated for the Ocean Way Studios plug-in, as different sources often sound their best in different parts of a room. On top of this, each class of instrument has its own unique dispersion pattern and excites specific frequency ranges that aren’t typically accounted for in a conventional impulse-response reverb.

In this way, to hear the sound of the Ocean Way Studios Plug-In is not only to hear a taste of Studios A and B, but also to hear many variations of these two great rooms. And with the ability to move three simultaneous mic pairs dynamically, it's also possible to conjure up sounds never before imagined.

From the archives — a drawing of ideal instrument
placements for Studio A.

When all was said and done, the final results of the plug-in surprised even Sides himself, who is by no means the target customer for an emulation of a studio that he already owns. “This is something I would use,” he says. “To put up all these microphones and begin to re-mic a signal would take maybe six hours. But to have it right there at your fingertips during the mix? That's just incredible.”

It seems that even after spending countless hours putting together an authoritative model of his favorite rooms, Sides has still managed to win yet another battle in his endless quest to get a great sound without wasting too much session time.

The Next Evolution of Ocean Way

Now, after nearly 30 years under Allen Sides, these legendary studios have changed hands once again. The nearby Sunset Gower Soundstage acquired the rooms and all their equipment, forming a strategic alliance between the recording space and their 100-year-old film and TV studios.

The original recording spaces have stayed true to Putnam’s designs since the beginning, and fortunately, they are set to remain that way for the forseeable future. Under the new owners, everything that is truly important about these historic studios will be left untouched — from top staff and key equipment, right on down to the name (which they've licensed to use). As Allen Sides moves on, the indelible legacy that he and Bill Putnam Sr. built will no doubt carry on into the 21st century, with a new generation of hit-makers coming to work within the storied halls of Ocean Way.

Few bands in the last decade have risen from the underground with the unstoppable momentum of Vampire Weekend, a group wryly described by its songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij as “one of the last New York bands still standing.”

“Still standing” is quite an understatement, in fact. Vampire Weekend’s joyful melding of indie rock, Afro pop, and beyond has lifted the band to international A-level status, keeping them touring constantly and landing chart-topping accolades. Their newest album, Modern Vampires of the City, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart with rave reviews — four stars from The Guardian, while the Los Angeles Times describes it as “a captivating record worthy of both repetition and obsession.”

Batmanglij shares co-production and co-mixing credits on the album with Ariel Rechstaid, whose production resume includes the likes of Usher, Major Lazer, and Charli XCX. Rather than setting up residence for six months in a posh studio to hash out the album, the Vampire Weekend team adopted a more spontaneous approach — recording, producing, and mixing in vintage recording studios and Brooklyn apartments, lounges and backyards — a mobile strategy largely made possible by their adoption of the Universal Audio Apollo and UAD Powered Plug-Ins.

Here’s what the duo had to say about summoning the melodies of urban vampires, and the cutting-edge UA technology they used to do it.

How did the co-production and co-mixing go down?

Rostam Batmanglij: Ariel and I put together identical UAD, Pro Tools, and other plug-in setups on both of our individual computers and that let us open each other’s sessions. We had hard drives that we were syncing every few days and that led us to maximize our workflow and our ability to do work, both when we were together and when he was in Los Angeles and I was in New York.

When we were together, there’d be times when I would set up in one room with my laptop and UAD-2 Satellite FireWire card and he would be in another room with the Apollo. If we were in Los Angeles at Ariel's studio, he would have his computer with UAD cards in his tower, and I'd have my laptop with the Satellite.

About halfway through, I got a new computer with a solid state drive that makes everything so much faster. Even though it’s a laptop, it runs Pro Tools with more stability and more quickly than any other computer I’ve used. Ariel started using a laptop with solid state as well, we began exchanging hard drives and synchronizing them so we could open each other’s sessions.

When did Apollo enter the recording and mixing process?

Ariel Rechtshaid: I had a UAD-2 QUAD PCIe DSP Accelerator Card inside my tower at my studio in Los Angeles, and there was always at least a Satellite involved in this project. There was a lot of back and forth between Los Angeles and New York on this album and I started traveling with the Apollo. It became my rig away from home. I spent so much time working with it in New York that I got very comfortable with it and realized how useful it was.

What about it resonated?

AR: Obviously, the portability. It powers the UAD Powered Plug-Ins, which are essential to my process. Also, the headroom is great, direct recording is great, and the preamp is transparent and works well with the color of the plug-ins. Once I got the Thunderbolt option, it was even better. It took my laptop recording to the next level. Midway through recording this album, I actually moved to strictly laptop recording, rather than desktop. That became possible with the Apollo, and also with Thunderbolt technology.

"If, at the end of the day, all you do is have strong ideas about which songs
are good, which are bad, what a song needs, if a song is finished or not —
those are the things that are essential to production."

How did you use the Apollo on the album?

AR: A lot of times, we’d use guitars direct with some plug-ins, or sometimes just dry.

RB: One of the last things that we recorded on the album was a guitar outro that I wrote and played for “Don’t Lie.” We just plugged a Les Paul guitar into the DI of the Apollo. I got really used to using a combination of Avid SansAmp and the ATR-102 Mastering Tape Recorder Plug-in — just those two with some AltiVerb Reverb. That gave us a scrappy sound that I’m very fond of.

AR: For vocals, if we had a nice Neve mic pre around, I’d use it, but if not, I’d plug straight into the Apollo and dial up the Neve® 1073 / Classic Console EQ Plug-In, which mirrors the 1073 hardware at my studio. Then we’d put the 1176 Classic Limiter plug-in on.

What was the vocal chain?

RB: We used Soundelux U99 microphones. I have one and Ariel has two, and at the time, I was renting an 1176 from the ’70s, so that was the signal path. When I was recording at my apartment in Brooklyn, I also liked to just move the vocal mic over and record piano with it as well. I have an upright piano that’s in the key of B, so if you listen to the record, you’ll hear a lot of songs in B, and that’s why. [Laughs.]

What about the computers you used?

AR: One of the essential parts of the process for me and Rostam was that upgrade to solid state hard drives in our laptops. It made the whole thing possible. We were able to have full high-definition, large track count sessions with tons of virtual instruments without any problems. A lot of times, if I ran out of Thunderbolt ports, I would use a USB hard drive, and that wasn’t even a limitation because the whole session got loaded into the cache. Pretty incredible. The liberation of being able to travel and work so freely and not be bogged down by a desktop computer is priceless.

"The ATR-102 Mastering Tape Plug-In was one of the last things that I needed to really help me achieve the vintage sounds that I heard in my head." — Rostam Batmanglij

How exactly did you have the Apollo set up?

AR: I had the laptop plugged into my Thunderbolt monitor display. Then out of the display, it went into one of the Thunderbolt ports of the Apollo. The second Thunderbolt port on the Apollo would go into a rugged, portable LaCie hard drive that’s bus powered — and there you go. The Apollo and monitor are the only two things I have plugged into the wall, and I have plenty of hubs to do everything I needed.

How many times did you swap hard drives back and forth?

AR: A lot. Thousands of times. We’re both pretty enthusiastic and full of ideas, and none of us were in a rush to finish. We wanted the album to be as good as possible so there was a lot of revising. As much as I’m all for recording a record in a week, I’m also for trying everything until you feel like you’ve tried it every different way and are comfortable with how you’re presenting it.

How did you know when a song was done?

RB: We didn’t, oftentimes. We had to sit with them a little bit. Several songs we opened back up and revised quite a bit — the end of “Ya Hey,” “Finger Back,” and “Don’t Lie” were all revised after our initial two-month period of working in Los Angeles. It’s just important to sit with something for a while, and then you know.

Rechsthaid collaborating with Batmanglij at his home studio in Los Angeles.

Did the two of you ever really disagree on something?

AR: That aspect of it was never tumultuous. There would be moments when something wasn’t quite right and we had to go back and change it, but between me and Rostam, it just felt like we were elevating ideas back and forth. Every time, it got a little better.     

Since we had the laptops mirrored and traded songs back and forth, we liked to make bounces every time we finished an idea so that we could always reference where we were three versions ago. If we missed something or went in a wrong direction, it was usually easy to reference an older bounce, date it accordingly, and go back to that session to see what was going on.

When it came to the sound of the record, what were some of your goals?

AR: Even though we recorded a lot to tape at Vox Studios, a great old studio from the 1920s in Los Angeles, our goal wasn’t to make an old-sounding record. Rather, we wanted to draw from references that we loved and the technology we have today to make a futuristic record, something that didn’t sound like anything you’ve heard before. That’s my objective in general with production, and I think that Vampire Weekend felt the same way.

That’s one of the things that brought us together — the quest for something new and different. The band liked that I wasn’t super familiar with their older material and that I wasn’t interested in trying to recreate anything from their past. I was just into trying to make the freshest sounding recording possible, so it was a matter of experimenting. If we stumbled on something bizarre and new-sounding, and if it made us feel a little uncomfortable, that was probably a good thing.

"I really liked the 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-In Collection — I used it on vocals all over the record. We were basically mixing as we went along, and those compressors sounded fantastic." — Ariel Rechtshaid

What’s a good example?

RB: On “Finger Back,” one of the things we did was record a lot of the drum parts separate from each other at Vox Studios. We had our drummer, Chris Tomson, play each kick pattern, then play each high-hat pattern, and then we overdubbed crashes. That gave us the flexibility to change the arrangement later on when we were back in New York.

How did you change it?

RB: There was an earlier version of the song that was just relentless, with the drums at full blast the whole time. For the middle section, I decided to try to take the kick track and run it through the SPL Transient Designer and maximize the decay. What happens is that the natural hiss from the tape is being sucked upwards by the SPL and it creates a very modern, sort of French house effect, but it’s doing it using pretty old-school techniques — recording drums to tape and using the SPL Transient Designer. But we were pushing it to an extreme that I don’t think most people would be ready to do. We were somehow able to make it work, and were lucky that we recorded the parts separate for that song.

What I love about that kick is that it makes the whole track bounce. That’s something that I learned on this record — when people talk about big or bouncy bass, so much of it is perceptual. In fact, it’s when you have high frequencies that are getting pushed down by bass elements that you start to feel the suction, pumping, and bouncing of the track that you want.

What are some of the other UAD plug-ins you used?

RB: On the song “Don’t Lie,” I put the Fairchild® 670 Compressor Plug-In on all the vocals, and on “Obvious Bicycle,” we had the Fairchild on lead vocals. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it just makes them sound buttery.

"I was just into trying to make the freshest sounding
recording possible...If we stumbled on something
bizarre and new-sounding...that was a good thing."

AR: I really liked the 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-In Collection — I used it on vocals all over the record. We were basically mixing as we went along, and those compressors sounded fantastic. We also used the EMT 140 Plate Reverb Plug-In a lot, sometimes with very short settings to give sounds some depth. I haven’t encountered anything like it in other plug-ins.

RB: There are also certain sounds that came about from the ATR-102 — especially the wow and flutter — that we used quite a lot. I’ve actually sought out some guitar pedals to emulate how that wow and flutter work for live performances. It’s a pretty special thing.

For me as a producer, and I think Ariel would agree, I want to feel like we cover every era of recording as far as the sound we are able to achieve. Previously, I had always had plug-ins that had been able to let me achieve certain sounds I’d heard in my head, but the one thing that was missing was wow and flutter of tape. On this record, we recorded pretty much all of the drums, and a lot of bass, to real analog tape. There were other elements that we wanted to record digitally and blend into that world and, to be honest, to have an almost cartoon-y tape quality — just like a caricature of something that was recorded to tape.

How do you mean?

RB: Things that were recorded to tape in the old days weren’t just recorded one time. They were getting bounced over and over again, and that contributed to the quality that we love when we listen to a Kinks record, for example. The way that acoustic guitar sounds is due not just to one compressor pass going to tape, but multiple passes with multiple levels of compression and multiple room mics picking up the acoustic guitar, not just the mic that was originally intended for the it. Then there’s the hiss, which was another important element of that sound. The ATR-102 plug-in was one of the last things that I needed to really help me achieve the vintage sounds that I heard in my head.

"[Apollo] powers UAD Powered Plug-Ins, which are essential to my process. Also, the headroom is great, direct recording is great, and the preamp is transparent and works well with the color of the plug-ins. Once I got the Thunderbolt Option Card, it was even better. It took my laptop recording to the next level." — Ariel Rechtshaid

How specifically did you use it on the album?

RB: Ariel and I like to do things a little differently each time, so we’d just open up a plug-in and start adjusting parameters as we saw fit. A lot of times, the ATR-102 plug-in started at a default setting and then we’d adjust the wow and flutter. In other cases, we started with the Sunbaked Cassette preset, which is totally extreme. It would be very hard to put that preset on any sort of recording, but since we used it as a starting point and dialed things back down from it, we got to a nice middle ground.

AR: We were mixing as we went along, building the tracks, and I used a ton of the ATR-102 plug-in for coloration everywhere and, at times, to create sounds. We would experiment with an old keyboard, guitar, or even just a plain sine wave, putting the ATR plug on there and playing with the wow and flutter and different gain stages, and the EQ using the bias feature. That helped make things that might have sounded a little anemic really come to life.

Above that, we created sounds that were new altogether by recklessly using features on the plug-ins. The organ sound on “Everlasting Arms” modulates all over the place, and that’s a key characteristic of the plug-in.

Do you have any advice for people who want to follow in your footsteps?

RB: When you’re a producer, sometimes you’re treated like a king and sometimes like a servant, but what I love about producing is that it’s nebulous, and I’m okay with that. It’s been widely said that Rick Rubin doesn’t touch knobs, but I don’t think that makes him any less of a producer whatsoever. If, at the end of the day, all you do is have strong ideas about which songs are good, which are bad, what a song needs, if a song is finished or not — those are the things that are essential to production. At the end of the day, production is about getting something across the finish line.

Photography by Ana Gibert. 

The Ocean Way Studios Plug-In rewrites the book on what’s possible with acoustic space emulation. By combining elements of room, microphone, and source modeling, Ocean Way Studios moves far beyond standard impulse response players and reverbs — giving you an authentic dynamic replication of one of the world’s most famous recording studios. In this article, I’ll be providing a few tips and tricks to get started with this powerful room emulation plug-in.

Learning Re-Mic Mode

First off, it’s important to know how and when to use the two different modes of operation — Re-Mic and Reverb. These modes process signals in fundamentally different ways. When Ocean Way Studios is in Re-Mic mode, the original signal itself is completely replaced. The processed sound inherits the sonic characteristics of Ocean Way's acoustics, source dispersion patterns, and microphones with more accuracy and realism than is possible with typical reverb processing.

The concept is similar to that of guitar reamping, where previously recorded guitar tracks are routed out of the DAW, into a guitar amplifier, and then re-recorded using a microphone. The original guitar track is then replaced in the DAW with the new track, inheriting the sonic characteristics of the amp, room and mic. 

Re-Mic mode replaces your dry
audio signal with the sound
of Ocean Way Studios.

You should note that Mic proximity and bleed will be much more present when using Re-Mic mode, and that using the multiple mic pairs (Near/Mid/Far) requires more attention to possible phase issues — just like it would with actual multi-mic recordings. Experiment with the Mic Distance encoders and the Polarity buttons to shape your optimal sound and avoid phase issues. 

Tracks processed with Re-Mic mode should be set up as an individual insert, or as an auxiliary group if you are processing multiple signals.

Using Reverb Mode

In Reverb mode, the Ocean Way Studios plug-in behaves like most artificial reverb processors — such as the EMT 140 or Lexicon 224 — where the "direct" source-to-mic signal component is not actually part of the processed signal. During mixing, this processed ambience is then blended with the dry sound. Fantastic results can be obtained with this method, and it may be exactly the sound you're looking for. Reverb mode should be set up as a traditional send/return effect or as a dedicated insert on an individual track. I recommend the former, as it gives you the ability to apply many sources to just one instance of the plug-in. We recommend using Reverb mode when recording in real time through Apollo audio interfaces.

A more in-depth video on the difference between Re-Mic and Reverb modes can be found here:

Experiment with Different Audio Sources

The Source menu sets the optimum
placement of the source within the room.

A variety of audio sources (dispersion patterns) were modeled for Ocean Way Studios. The Source menu sets the optimum placement of the source within the room, as determined by Allen Sides, who was at the helm of Ocean Way Studios for more than two decades.

Each source placement is optimized for their respective labeled instrument (drums, strings, etc.). For example, the guitar cabinet sources are perfect for adding room depth and speaker color to your afterhours, bedroom-recorded DI electric guitars. But any type of audio source can be used with any Source selection, so feel free to experiment!

Adding Room Mic Compression For Extra Punch

Compressing room mics is a tried-and-true trick that can give outstanding results by adding increased energy and room depth to your mix. Compression can be applied in the same way with the Ocean Way Studios plug-in. As a rule, the further the mic is from the source, the “bigger” the sound. 

Check out these drum sounds examples to get an idea of what a big difference a little compression can make.

Here’s the original drum overhead source:

Then, here’s the same drum overhead sample re-miced with Ocean Way Studio B:

And finally, here’s the previous re-miced example with added compression courtesy of the 1176 Classic Limiting Amplifier Plug-In and its famous “all-buttons-in” mode:

Handy Shortcuts and Key Commands

The Ocean Way Studios plug-in has built-in key commands and label buttons that can save you some time:

• Shift+Click can preserve mic distances. Once you've heard Allen Sides' favorite mic selections in their default positions, you may want to swap in a different mic pair. To do this, simply Shift+Click on the new mics in the pulldown menu.

• Quickly cycle through different mic pairs. Rather than using the menu to audition new mic pairs, you can simply click on the mic icons to cycle through the options. The above Shift+Click shortcut works with Mic Select Cycle as well.

• Shift+Click can also preserve your current mics. Say you like your current source and mic selections, but want to try your setup in the other studio. Shift+Click on either Studio A or B from the pulldown menu to bring your favorite mics with you.

• Get back to home base with the RTZ (Return to Zero) and RTD (Return to Default) buttons. Certain parameters’ associated labels will work as RTZ or RTD buttons. Clicking the distance labels will place the mics back to the default positions, clicking the balance labels will re-center the knobs, and clicking the Gain labels on the Master EQ or the "0" labels for the Gain faders will return the gain to 0dB.

Removing Mic Distance Delay

When recording a sound source with a microphone, there’s an inherent delay between the source and the microphone. The farther the distance is from the source to the mic, the longer the delay time — approximately 1ms per foot.

Clicking the Distance Knob
removes the distance delay. 

By clicking the Distance knob, the microphone pair(s) in Ocean Way Studios can be set to “aligned."  This removes the inherent delay between the source and the mic. The setting is useful when source audio signals need to remain time-aligned, for example. 

Keep in mind, however, that inherent source-to-mic delays provide subtle yet important auditory cues that listeners use to interpret the acoustic space. So the most realistic room emulations will be achieved when “aligned” is switched off.

This is just the beginning of what Ocean Way Studios can do. For a deep dive, check out the Ocean Way Studios UAD Plug-Ins Manual. And of course, have fun simply exploring the space of these virtual studios on your own.