OK, this was some piece of luck, I will give you that.
With a 60 points lead over 2nd place itĀ very probably didnt matter much who produced that track and what gear they used.
But it’s still a good feeling and we are happy as fish in the water.
For all you gearslutz out there, here is a selection of the stuff used on the track nevertheless:
Preamps were mostly Aurora. We used a GTP8 as well as some 4 units of GTQ2’s for tracking, giving us a total of 16 Aurora Pre’s.
EQ’ing on tracking was mostly done with 3 units of GT4-2s.
So the naked recording had all the Aurora colour one could possibly have.
It gave us that big cinemascope sound that we were striving for, talking of vintage James Bond theme songs.
Some Tonelux MP1s were also used, like for overheads to my memory (we were shooting for some very clear and more modern sounding cymbals as well as contour on that recording).
Mics used were a couple of Neumanns like one does, though again overheads and cymbals were recorded with Charter Oak S600s as well as M900T, for sheer clarity and detail.We really like these S600s and as said before – there was a big focus on cymbals here, its a very orchestral arrangement.
Our trusted age old AKG Siemens C12 would show up here there and everywhere, like it usually does. We usually refer to it as “the helper”.
Vocal was a 60 year old U47 btw, it just seemed to grab Conchita’s vocals best – she’s a boy after all š
Would have loved to hear her voice on the all new Charter Oak H1000, but we still dont have it – but we’ll certainly try on future tracks.
Mixdown was a big affair, will post some pics later on.
We used three different summing stages: There was a moddified Tonelux OTB16 doing all the drums and percussionsĀ with loads of Tonelux EQs and Comps to go with it, then there was a vintage Neve that we used to premix all guitars and other stuff. It then all came together on an SSL AWS9oo that we used not for sound but mainly for automation. Couldnt have mixed the song without Auto, too much stuff going on.
Outboard used was a bit decadent I guess, it had a bit of everything, whatever was in that room, we used it. Manleys, API’s, a battered old Compex, Avalons… (I think it was the Avalon 747 on them Strings, not 100% sure … a lot of it was the VSL EQ PlugIn EQ though… well done, VSL!!)
On Conchita’s voice we used a Tube Tech CL1B (sorry Universal Audio, the LA2a was no competition this time round), with the A-Designs PEQ strapped behind. It delivered the most beautiful 10k out there I swear. What a great piece of gear!! Bit the sh… out of all other EQ’s we tried.
Master Bus had the Aurora GTC2 Compressor.
With so many flavours going on it needed something with character to bring it all together – also we were sure gonna have that same colour at the end of the chain that we used for front end.
Well done, Aurora.
You rule!!!