Universal Audio Plug Ins

I have had the pleasure recently to dive into the high fidelity world of Universal Audio Plug Ins. These cutting edge plug ins use the components of a dedicated hardware interface to replicate the circuitry of top shelf (or top rack rather) vintage studio equipment. The lines begins to blur ever more and the digital realm is engineering methods to pass even the most scrupulous listening tests.

The UAD plug ins engage the Apollo interface rack (and console) and based on the precision of voltage and circuitry measuring of name brands like Fairchild, Manely, Solid State Logic and even Ampex vintage tape machines, the circuitry is able to replicate the sound of the very transistors and capacitors that give these units their character analogue sounds.

I was most impressed by the UAD Ampeg tape machine plug in. Not only can you select the IPS or inches per second to get a more signature tape saturated sound, you can also choose the brand of tape. These choices are great, but what really impresses me is the sonic accuracy of this plug in. Ampex and Studer tape machines are notoriously difficult to repair and maintain and of course tape is very expensive. I have tried out many plug ins that attempt to emulate the tape sound by branding the plug in as a "vintage warmer" but nothing comes close to touching this plug in, it literally sounds like you went through the strenuous trouble of doing a tape pass through. You could buy this plug in 5 times over for what it would cost to get a studio engineer to bounce an 4 track EP on tape and back into the mix for that tape sound.

I use this pulg in on every band I produce and every beat I make as "glue" that holds everything together giving it that mastered sound quality that we are so used to hearing on our favourite records, most of which used the actually Ampex machine, the most popular mastering tool in the history of music.

Best of all, Ampex actually endorses this plug in claiming that Universal Audio nailed it.. and yes, no more fighting with spools of expensive tape or taking apart the multiple thousands of pieces for a repair. All you gotta do is get the Apollo and start plugging away! The plug in itself is about $200.00.

So much session guitar work lately!

The holidays were a great time to focus on running the Media Hub production studio that I have now grown so fond of. It is really amazing running a recording studio because the time that we are not in session with clients, is a time to work on crafting personal production skills.

Recently I have been lending my guitar playing skills to several electronic artists that have come through the studio, which has actually kept me quite busy just making "custom samples" as we like to call it. I realized that songwriting with a good friend of mine and client of the studio local poet and MC Pucona is an endeavour that enjoys a lot of productivity and fresh new ideas during every session. I have added many riffs to his new upcoming EP and we were discussing the possibility of starting a band together with our electronic producer collaborator Felipe. Pucona came up with the name Circus Familiah for the group and we started writing some live and studio material for the sound collective.

As I was working on some beats of my own in the studio, Pucona grabbed a mic in the vocal booth and just started absolutely slaying rhymes over the dubstep beat I was laying down, which was really great. We decided that with the collaborations that we have together to take the songs originally written by each artist and release the collection independently as our own EP's and then converge on all the new tracks. It looks as though I will be release my first solo EP at the end of February under the dubstep producer moniker AxCalibre.

I am really excited about this new EP release and I can't wait for my new tunes to hit the decks of DJ's spinning around town and abroad. I chose the name because I wanted to represent the fact that I write all my music on guitar and then I transfer it over to powerhouse synthesizers like Massive, Albino, Razor and Zebra. I leave alot of the raw guitar tracks in the mix using spatial imagers and many other processors to make the guitars sound fat and out of the rock n roll context. I will post some audio teasers on this blog before I drop this beast of an EP. Cheers