Dangerous Music Users :

"Count" Gets Dangerous on DJ Shadow Release
Grammy-nominated SF Bay Area producer & engineer uses D-Box on multiple albums

EDMESTON, NY — January 5, 2012 — Following up on his Grammy-nominated mixes for Trombone Shorty which still reigns the Billboard charts with singles "For True" and "Backtown," San Francisco Bay Area producer and engineer Count (aka Mikael Eldridge) just finished the new DJ Shadow album titled "The Less You Know the Better." Using his Dangerous Music D-Box with analog summing and monitor control as he did on Trombone Shorty's release, Count is very pleased with the mixes he's been getting this year, and excited to have his studio working and sounding just the way he'd like. In addition to being a producer and mix engineer, Count is also a musician and remixer and has wide ranging credits from Radiohead, Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra and New Order, to No Doubt, Lyrics Born, and Blackalicious. During 2011 Count also completed tracks fore Zoe Keating and Tycho - both high on the iTunes charts - and five new albums due out next year from The Revivalists, Galactic, Roberto Fonseca, Ryan Montbleau and Inu - all mixed with the Dangerous D-Box.

"Everything that I've done this year, 2011, has been on the D-Box and it's certainly helped on a lot of levels," states Count. "When I plugged in the D-Box and did the first mix on the Trombone Shorty record, everything seemed a little different. It was changing how I was mixing. It allowed me to push things harder within Pro Tools, I could boost some highs or get some nastier, more present upper-mids on a vocal without them getting harsh. I could boost the lows on the kick further than I would normally be able to do before they started to sound un-clear, undefined and muddy. I was able to push things harder and further and still maintain the clarity. That was first thing I noticed about the D-Box just starting a track, EQ-ing, I thought: 'Wow! Ok! That's no joke. I notice a difference there.'"

Count has been refining his Mac and Pro Tools-based studio over the past few years and finally feels everything is working and sounding just like what he's always imagined, "There are a few things that have come together in the past year or two so that I now have my way of working that allows me to get the results that top mixers used to have to spend a ton of time and money and effort using huge, elaborate setups: consoles and outboard gear that needed to get repaired and got really noisy. The critical elements for me were Dangerous Music hardware along with a few amazing companies like PSP and Sound Toys that started coming out with plugins that did what I needed them to do. The combination of those plug-ins and switching to the D-Box plus building my own control room instead of working in other studios, those were the three keys."

But his studio is not complete quite yet, Counts is planning to expand some of his Dangerous Music gear, "My nature is to streamline things and be absolutely minimalist even if it means choosing between a piece of gear that I already own, like a Distressor, and using the plug-in version, I opt for ultimate streamline. So it's sort of going against my nature, but I want to expand upon the D-Box and add a Dangerous 2-Bus for 16 more channels of analog summing early next year."

On the monitoring control side of the D-Box for his older Genelec 1030's, Count points out that it really matters when you are doing professional work, "I had an inexpensive monitor system before the D-Box. It was supposed to be a passive box that didn't color the sound, but it wasn't quite happening [laughs] it just wasn't a comparable piece of gear. I encourage people to take the next step because, really, the difference between the entry level monitoring gear and the D-Box is pretty significant. I think that's where the D-Box sort of nailed it because it's not in that price range where it's just out of the reach of most people. The D-box is affordable to the average engineer, yet it's not a compromise in quality like those other pieces of gear I tried before this. With the D-Box I know what my mixes really sound like."

"I think I'm a good person to talk to about gear because I'm not an engineer, meaning I don't know what goes on inside the gear that I use," says Count. "I know what sounds good, and I have good ears. All I know is what I hear. I'm not one of those people that's going to think 'Oh the plug-in version doesn't sound as good as the real one' - if sounds good I'll use it."

Remembering mixing with the D-Box for the first time, Count recalls, "One of the things that was very unexpected, and that I had never really considered before - with my mix in Pro Tools, summed internally,  I can max out at a certain level - but when I hit the D-Box I instantly gain like 6dB just by running it through the D-Box's the analog summing and then back into Pro Tools - because I can hit it harder. It's just something I hadn't really considered. And I'm not one of those guys that's all about loudness: I actually wish everyone would just pull back a few dB on their mixes and the mastering."

He adds, "When I go to master, that's really where I am going to be maximizing my output. I hadn't really considered that I'd be capturing that level in my mix before mastering. It's just so much easier now with the D-Box to get things sounding like tracks that I'm referencing, like the Roots if I'm working on a hip-hop track for example. I used to struggle to get things as loud and gigantic, now it's just a lot easier, I'm starting 5 or 6dB louder to begin with and I really don't have to do that much when I'm mastering anymore. I didn't expect that from using the D-Box summing."

Count uses the fastest Mac Pro he can get along with Avid Pro Tools. The computers are so powerful now they handle all he can throw at them, "It's taken so many years to get to this point where we are now, where I do a mix and I don't have to worry about running out of processing. This is the first time that it ever happened. This is a golden era for mixers, where finally we have all the choices of plug-ins that we would ever want to have, and we don't run out of processing. I mostly use RTAS plug-ins now, these are the first Mac Pros that have enough processing power. In order to get the sound that I wanted to get, I have to layer tons of plug-ins to sort of approximate what analog gear is doing." Combine that power with the Dangerous analog summing and you have a hit.

As a musician, Count recorded with various engineers but never to his ultimate satisfaction,  "I wanted to be in control of my sound, I didn't want to be a producer that wasn't also the mixer, because it just frustrated the hell out of me when engineers didn't come up with the sound that I was looking for. I realized that I was going to have to learn all the technical aspects of mixing to get the sound that I wanted.  It's nice that finally after all those years I have a setup that works for me."

With the abundance of independent artists wanting to record and mix albums, Count says, "It's more important now that people are able to get the results that we used to get in the past on big expensive outboard gear, but without the cost. It's as important as the sonic excellence that people strive for."

Looking back and comparing his work today reveals one of Count's secrets, the D-Box. "Ten years ago I was pushing everybody to do mixes inside the box. And people were laughing at me. When I plugged the D-Box in the first time I was very skeptical.  I really just didn't want to deal with re-setting up and configuring my control room to include a new piece of gear. But I did recognize I was struggling to achieve that upper 5 to10 percent for the mix. You can get your mix 80-90 percent there, but then to get it 100-percent there, where it really stands out and sounds better than anything else that other people are doing, that part was taking me so long. Getting mixes to100-percent was a struggle, and I had a love-hate relationship with mixing where I really didn't enjoy it necessarily, it was a little painful, but after I mixed that Trombone Shorty record with the Dangerous D-Box, it just changed my whole outlook, I realized I was not stressed and I just enjoyed the process." And then Count's mixes on Trombone Shorty's album were nominated for the "Best Contemporary Jazz Album" Grammy(r) Award for 2010.

For more information on Count visit: http://www.vertebraeproductions.com

Teddy Riley Gets Dangerous
Seminal Producer and Songwriter Sets up Dangerous Music Rigs for Worldwide Use

EDMESTON, NY - December 13, 2011 - Some producers follow artists to their home towns or favorite recording studios.  Seminal R&B and hip-hop producer/songwriter Teddy Riley has seen it all during his illustrious career and now finds himself in the middle of a whole new wave of styling in Korea with "K Pop" - a unique variety of music emerging from South Korea. Having produced some music that zoomed up the Korean music charts, he decided to go there and set up a production company. However, his secret weapon in creating beats and mixing and monitoring had to part of the equation: Dangerous Music 2-Bus LT analog summing for mixing and the Dangerous Monitor ST for monitor control and source switching. When in Korea, he set up just such a recording system. And for the 2011 Blackstreet concert tour Riley added the Dangerous Music D-Box compact 1U rackspace integrated 8-channel summing and monitor control to his portable setup so he can keep working on productions and have his 'sound' while traveling.

"I came out to Korea because there was a song that was released that I produced," says Riley. "The company didn't tell my team what was going on with the song, so I wound up taking a trip there, and it turned into a two-month visit. The first three weeks we were in the apartment making beats. Then we met a friend who became a partner in our company, TRX, Teddy Riley Xperience. He showed us the ropes in Korea and connected us to all the major companies, including SM Entertainment, the largest record company in Korea, maybe in all of Asia."

"SM Entertainment told us 'Why don't you guys stay a week, make some music, we'd like to hear what you've got, we want to do business with you,'" Riley continues. "That turned into me wanting to get gear out here because if I'm going to make music I want my sound out here. I already had my computer, but I wanted 'the force' behind me, which is the Dangerous Music sound!"

Just what does the sound of the Dangerous Music gear mean to him? Riley states, "I can only say that the Dangerous 2-Bus is the closest thing to the analog SSL I used back in the day. That's a real strong and prominent sound for me. Using the Dangerous gear has gotten me into that sonic landscape. The Dangerous gear is 'Warm' - I can make anything have 'punch' in the box, but I can't make it sound warm, and that's the thing that I get with Dangerous gear. I can also get a 'grimy' sound with Dangerous, and I get 'presence' as well. It takes me back to Dolby SR with tape where you feel the warmness of it."

As Riley is making up beats and working on songs, he is always listening through the Monitor ST and the 2-Bus comparing the sound. He likes hearing the benefit of the 2-Bus analog summing while he's working. "I have to have that," he says. "What I like about the Monitor ST is that the remote is very easy to use and the system gives me the ability to listen back to what the music sounds like from the actual mix in the 2-Bus and after the converter captures the mix through my Apogee - you can AB both sides."

Revealing more of his work in South Korea he says, "My goal was to get the music done, go back to America and do my tour with my band Blackstreet, and then come right back to Korea. We'd had a second single come out called 'Demon' by the Korean artist Jay Park, he's like the Justin Timberlake of Korea. He sings in English, and in fact the single is in English. The name of this music in the movement is called 'K Pop' - a lot of people follow this sound. That's another reason why I'm here -  because my music and my style happens to fit in. We have a few more singles coming out pretty soon, I can't wait for everyone to hear them!"

"Everything I do I mix through the Dangerous gear. I've been working with an incredible engineer in Korea, Mr. Yoo Youn Jin, who's also a producer and singer. I wanted to learn from the people who know the sound in Korea.  He's one of the greatest mixers I've ever worked with. I've never had my music sound so warm. He uses a bunch of outboard gear and mixes through the Dangerous 2-Bus."

Riley uses MOTU and Apogee converters in his computer-based recording set up along with a pair of 2-Bus LT's and a Monitor ST. "It's been fantastic. When my equipment setup started getting smaller and more compact, and my formula started getting smaller and 'in-the-box" - I said 'I've got to have something that's going to give me the analog sound' - I started working on the posthumous Michael Jackson album titled Michael and I wanted something to give me the feel of an SSL board. So I decided I wanted to check out the Dangerous gear.  I had heard that DeVante  from Jodeci was using it, and Jean-Marie Horvat told me about it too.  I said 'I've got to get it' because those are the people I respect when it comes to gear. I did a lot of the Michael Jackson mixes on this system, and I did the new Blackstreet album on it too."

Describing his rig, he explains, "From the output of the laptop I go into a MOTU interface which connects straight to the two linked 2-Bus LT's, giving me 32 channels. The stereo monitor output of the second LT goes to the Monitor ST input 1 - my "A" listening channel. The main 2-Bus outputs go to my Apogee Rosetta A-to-D, which goes back into the MOTU interface. Then I can monitor the output of the mix through the Monitor ST using the Apogee analog outputs on ST input 2 - my "B" listening channel. "A" will be the actual mix from the 2-Bus, "B" will be what's coming back post A/D conversion and after any mix buss processing."

"I never had the opportunity to write anything with Michael Jackson but what I was able to do was, as a friend, take on the Michael project, mixing other people's productions. I took the project to the finish line. The album was a success, selling millions of copies around the world. I'm very proud of it," says Riley.

EDMESTON, NY - September 30, 2011 - Renowned recording artist and composer Duncan Sheik has outfitted his Upstate NY studio with Dangerous Music's analog summing, monitor control and DAC, installing the Dangerous 2-Bus, Monitor ST and DAC ST. Sheik and his long-time engineer Michael Tudor now get all the key ingredients of an exceptional analog signal path, but without the constant console maintenance, thrills of surprise downtime, unknown noises and creativity-ending problems often associated with older analog console-based studios.  Now it's all about clean, clear signal where they can control the sonic flavors with choices of mics and outboard gear. Through careful design and the ease of use of Dangerous Music equipment, Sheik's studio is always, and instantly, ready to record a new song, or music for a Broadway-bound musical, and always at the highest quality.

"Using the Dangerous Music setup is cleaner and faster - a lot less to do, and a lot less worry," says Sheik comparing his former vintage analog console. "You turn the Dangerous gear on and it sounds great. In a certain way it's a simpler and nicer world."

Most recently Sheik released Covers 80s with acoustic rearrangements of Sheik's favorite synth-oriented hits from the 1980s. "The entire album was recorded with the Dangerous Music equipment and it was a 'friction-free' experience!" says Sheik with a laugh. His 1996 self-titled album on Atlantic Records spawned the hit "Barely Breathing" and his composing led to success with the award-winning Broadway musical Spring Awakening. Sheik continues to release critically acclaimed albums and compose for the theater, with an electronic music score for the stage version of American Psycho, and an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, The Nightingale, both in production.

Sheik's talents as a producer have accelerated with joining Global Positioning Services, a producer management firm based in New York and Los Angeles. He has produced albums for Holly Brook (aka Skylar Grey), Samantha Ronson, Chris Garneau, as well as many of his own records. The Spring Awakening cast album that Sheik produced won a Grammy(r) for 'Best Musical Show Album' in 2008. He continues to seek outside production projects.

"The Monitor ST with the DAC ST is my standard for listening now," adds Sheik. "It's a really smart and well-configured piece of equipment where I can go between the Focal speakers and the NS-10s and whatever else we want to put up there. The Monitor ST is very fast and the levels are always matched. It's another great way of making sure that mixes are what they should be."

Sheik has worked with engineer Michael Tudor for over 13 years, and at Tudor's own studio in Woodstock, NY he utilizes the Dangerous Monitor ST as well. "Having the Monitor ST to integrate all the elements of my rig gives me great peace of mind. With the ST I am confident that I am hearing the true output of the system. The ST is accurate, transparent and dependable. In addition, the agility of the ST's control surface is a pleasure to experience," says Tudor.

When Sheik had sold his loft and studio in NY, the large analog console had to go into storage while he was building a new studio in upstate NY.  He was living temporarily in a smaller apartment, but had to continue to work, "I needed something with a small footprint to work with my Apogee and Logic system, so I got the Dangerous D-Box -which sounded great and worked great," he says.

"When I moved upstate and the studio was finished, the Calrec console, tragically, was stolen-this 2,000 pound object was completely gone!-so we decided to continue on and use the Dangerous Music equipment, and we got the Dangerous Monitor ST speaker switching set up with the DAC ST and the Dangerous 2-Bus analog summing-the whole setup. Now I have the console in a rack, and I don't need this huge board with this giant footprint. Since having the Dangerous Music rig, I haven't missed having the console at all. It's a very new world out there when you're set up this way. It's efficient, clean, and really nice."

Sheik's engineer, Tudor concurs, "When I introduced the Dangerous gear in to Duncan's studio, it created a commonality between our two studios. The Dangerous designs are a new standard of excellence and performance. Even though I am running an old school analogue console in my studio, Duncan's 2-Bus will replicate the analog summing, so that I can bring projects back and forth and not loose anything in translation. This is a huge time saver. Dangerous gear has an impressive list of design aspects and useful functionality. Perhaps most impressive is that it all works flawlessly, it's trustworthy."

Liking the clean, clear sound of the Dangerous Music equipment, Sheik offers his take on coloring a mix, "I know there are people who like to have an intensely strong color on everything and maybe they want to use a super old NEVE broadcast board or whatever, because it has a very particular sound, but for me it's safer to have something that's very clean like the Dangerous 2-Bus, and then I can do the coloring of the sound using mic pres or compressors or microphones on the front end. So if I'm trying to get something to sound like the 1940's or 50's or whatever it is, then I'll try to do that in the initial part of the chain as opposed to the output."

Tudor comes to Sheik's upstate NY studio and records and also mixes there with the Dangerous 2-Bus, Monitor ST and DAC ST. Because the Dangerous Music equipment is so integrated with the computer-and easily recallable-their production process is streamlined, "We have a good 'short hand' at this point in terms of how we work and what we do," says Sheik. "Michael did a great job setting up this particular configuration of the studio. It's really evolved over the last ten or eleven years since I was in my Tribeca studio. Now it's at this place where you kind of turn on one switch (laughs) and you boot up Logic and every synthesizer, an acoustic guitar microphone, a pair of piano microphones and a vocal microphone and we are ready to go. And that's really brilliant because, there's not that thing of 'Oh, I want to record this song' and then three hours later you start. It's like: 'I want to record this song' and three minutes later you start and that's a huge difference - the Dangerous gear makes it possible."

Visit  Duncan Sheik's website at: http://www.duncansheik.com <http://www.duncansheik.com/>  and Sneaky Studios at: http://www.duncansheik.com/sneakystudios/

Engineer George Seara Builds a Dangerous Studio
Toronto Mix Studio Features Analog Summing, Metering, Monitor Control, DAC and EQ all from Dangerous Music

EDMESTON, NY — August 1, 2011 — Award-winning Canadian mix engineer George Seara has created a complete Dangerous Music equipped studio featuring Dangerous 2-Bus analog summing, Monitor ST/SR stereo and surround monitor control, DAC ST for playback of digital sources, and the new Dangerous BAX EQ for tone shaping on featured tracks or the mix buss. “Put it this way: Before the Dangerous Music gear, it would mean I would be doing everything in a large studio,” states Seara. “It’s only with the advent of the Dangerous 2-Bus and the Monitor ST/SR that I’ve finally felt that the level and quality, plus the speed and efficiency with all things surrounding my workflow have come to a point where I can say confidently that I’ve raised the bar, and the quality of my work has improved. Dangerous equipment, simply put, has stellar sound and build quality. I’ve been spoiled with this gear.”

At his Toronto studio he’s currently mixing a jazz record with out the producer there, “I’m mixing jazz singer Holly Cole’s latest album unattended by the producer, Greg Cohen (Tom Waits, Nora Jones, Elvis Costello) the producer is away in Europe, and I’m able to make revisions and post mixes to encompass the producer’s notes, recall is a snap with the Dangerous Music setup and the sound is warm and wide!”

When designing his personal mix studio, Seara had three main considerations for the gear, “I needed to have stellar sound quality — it needed to be mastering quality so I chose Dangerous Music equipment. Number two, it needed to be ergonomic — which I find the Dangerous gear to be; and three, I needed speed and rock-solid recall-ability — which are strong points of the Dangerous Music design philosophy.”

Mixing it Up: In his new studio Seara now has all the gear he needs to complete his mix projects and is able to meet deadlines and last minute changes effectively and efficiently. In doing so, he uses a well thought out collection of Dangerous Music equipment along with new and vintage outboard gear. “Basically I own one of everything Dangerous Music makes. Chris Muth, Dangerous Music’s head designer, was Technical Director at Sterling Sound so all of the gear is mastering-quality. My studio setup is tuned towards mixing rather than mastering,” says Seara. “I am very meticulous and detail-oriented when it comes to my mix work and selecting gear. I look for equipment that is going to be versatile, yet mastering quality — if it’s good for mastering then it certainly should be good for mixing. The sound quality of the Monitor ST/SR for example, is musical and yet very transparent.”

On the sound of the Dangerous 2-Bus analog summing amplifier, Seara says, “The biggest point is, it’s clean as a whistle, it has no noise, and yet super high-headroom: like a straight wire with gain. It allows me to mix confidently without having to deal with any gain-management issues, intermittent noises, hiss or any down time. I’d describe the sound as big, open and wide — the sound quality is fantastic and the mix is always true to my original tracks.”

Often Seara will insert a compressor or EQ on a track by patching it between the interface D/A output and the input channel of the Dangerous 2-Bus. “All of my outputs from my workstation are normalled to the 2-Bus on a patchbay. I can easily patch in any piece of outboard gear after a track output and then to the Dangerous 2-Bus. Basically it’s a very short signal path, and it all lends itself to wonderful overall sound.” Between the stereo analog output of the Dangerous 2-Bus and his JCF Audio A to D, Seara selects from a number of outboard pieces including his Dangerous BAX EQ. “I have a Millenia NS-EQ2 with the Fred Forssell mod, a Crane Song STC-8, a gray-face SSL G-384 buss compressor and the Dangerous BAX EQ.”

In Seara’s studio he has a variety of converters including Apogee DA-16X for D-to-A, and JCF Audio A-to-D converters for printing mixes. Seara also uses the JCF D/A converters for the lead vocal or a main instrument into the 2-Bus, “But for listening to the mix from the DAW I use the Dangerous DAC ST,” states Seara. “If I were listening to an analog mix in my room, that would be on one return of the Monitor ST and if I was listening to the printed digital mix, I would be listening through the Dangerous DAC ST. The DAC ST is very neutral and ultra transparent and that’s what I like about it most. Actually that’s what I like about all of my Dangerous gear!”

Dangerous Music EQ – Enter BAX: On using the Dangerous BAX EQ Seara notes, “I sometimes have the BAX EQ on the mix buss, and then it replaces the Millenia NS-EQ2, and if it’s not on the mix buss, I put the BAX EQ on the main instrument in the song. So if it were a lead vocal or a nylon guitar or any featured instrument — I put the BAX EQ on the money channel! What I love about the BAX is its ability to sound punchy in the low end, without being muddy. The hi-pass filters are awesome as well and sometimes I use them in conjunction with a boost in the bottom end.”

Monitoring Choices from Stereo to Surround: Choosing the Dangerous Music Monitor ST “was an easy decision” says Seara. “I have a great relationship with Chris Athens, who is senior mastering engineer at Sterling Sound. Having mastered literally hundreds of my projects at Sterling over the years, it was a natural to check out the Dangerous Music gear when creating my own studio.”

Seara uses the studio-standard Yamaha NS-10s with matching sub for stereo as well as Tannoy Ellipse 8 for both stereo and surround, but his mains are Energy Veritas 2.8. “George Marino at Sterling Sound uses Energy Veritas 2.8 as mastering speakers,” reveals Seara. “Over the years I have had a strong interest in mastering, and learning more about mixing and my craft through mastering.”

“When I bought the Monitor ST, I knew at the time that I was going to need the SR surround module immediately thereafter, so I had the SR in mind already. When I was looking at the Monitor ST I was comparing it to the Dangerous Monitor, which is what a number of mastering engineers have in their racks. I ended up going with the Monitor ST because I loved the remote control. I am all about ergonomics so I thought the remote control being very slick and close at hand was very cool, and then I knew I needed the SR for Surround. The ST/SR instantly seemed like the right fit for my studio.”

“The reason I went with the SR, is that while I am doing a number of album projects, it’s more and more common that I am working on DVD or Blu-Ray projects as well. I worked on an album with Jesse Cook, Latin / Flamenco guitarist, and right after we completed mixing his album “The Rhumba Foundation,” we followed immediately with a live convert DVD and we mixed that at my studio as well. It was captured live and entirely in HD, both video and audio, at a jazz festival with an outdoor audience of 60,000 people. I mixed in surround and stereo in high resolution. The Dangerous gear worked flawlessly and actually made the process of mixing in both surround and stereo seamless.”

Having the Dangerous Music mastering quality gear in his mixing environment has changed Seara’s tolerance for quality wherever he is recording or mixing, “Now if I am working in a commercial studio and I am mixing on an old SSL or an old Neve, sometimes I’ll be playing with a monitor pot and it’ll be a little scratchy, some buttons on the desk will be a little intermittent, and I’ve got some hiss coming out of the speakers, and it’s hard to pinpoint where it’s coming from, but I know it’s not my speakers. Before, that was ‘The Status Quo’ – that’s what you’ve come to accept, it’s an old desk. Owning Dangerous Music gear, besides raising the bar on my work, has also challenged what I will accept as ‘The Status Quo’ — because I have mastering quality monitoring in my own studio. When I go to a commercial studio now, I demand that level of quality — and it’s hard to achieve!”

What’s Up With Metering? Without a large format console and all the extras that come with it Seara spent time assembling his own collection of audio mixing extras with Dangerous Music gear, starting with the analog summing of the 2-Bus and building from there. “The reason I chose the Dangerous MQ is for VU and digital metering,” explains Seara. “I think one of the reasons people growing up in the digital age mixing music have problems mixing, and the mastering engineers have a tough time with their mixes, is possibly they are not using VU meters. And they are mixing entirely in the box, and watching basic software meters in the DAW until they bounce to the very top.”

“VU meters are a far more musical way to look at your levels when you are mixing. Why not let the mastering engineer do what they do best and let them worry about the overall loudness? What you’ll find if you are using high quality VU meters like on the Dangerous MQ— and you have your system set up properly and you decide what headroom you want — you’ll be able to mix without ever having to worry about clipping. Dangerous Music has everything well thought out, and together all of their gear handles summing, metering, and critical listening for me.”

Stems and Recall: “I grew up working on large format analogue desks, whether it was a Neve, an API or an SSL, and that’s what I was always most comfortable with,” says Seara. “As clients’ needs and work demands are ever-changing, and technology has improved, I think it’s opened up a great realm of possibilities.”

“Even if I mixed a project in a large studio with a large format desk nowadays, I am almost always printing stems. For example, if it were a pop project I might print drums as a stereo pass, bass, piano, guitar, horns, strings — the reason being is that down the line, when we need to do another version, another language, or a new vocal or feature, we don’t have to be at the mercy of the studio availability where it was mixed. I’d have to book the room, recall the SSL, etc. I’m now able to put the mix together from my room with the Dangerous 2-Bus, when the client needs it done. Quite often I am also asked to prep and deliver stems and alt passes for live shows. For example, artists need backing tracks and it’s no problem for me to put things together for them from my room, without any need to go here or there and try and piece things back together. It’s all very seamless with the Dangerous equipment.”

Seara also notes that he would need about 20 pieces of vintage outboard gear to recall a pop mix in a large studio just to put in a new vocal, and the recall would be plus or minus one or two dB in a large studio situation – sometimes not acceptable, “If I’m playing back stems from my room with the Dangerous 2-Bus, I can tell you with confidence that the recall is going to be precise to my original mix and sound amazing,” he concludes.

George Seara is one of Toronto’s leading mix and recording engineers, he was the chief engineer at Phase One Studios, one of Toronto’s legendary studios around since the 1970s. He works in all genres of music and recent clients include Rihanna, Drake, Mos Def, 50 Cent, Sting, Herbie Hancock and Finger Eleven among many others. His clients know Seara for his great musical ear, his astute attention to detail — and he is musician and lifelong recording enthusiast. At the 2010 Juno Awards Seara was nominated for 5 awards and won for Contemporary Christian / Gospel Album of The Year for mixing Greg Sczebel’s “Love & The Lack Thereof.” The other four nominations were R&B Soul Recording Of The Year and Dance Recording Of The Year for artist Keshia Chante, World Music Album Of The Year for Jesse Cook, and Vocal Jazz Album Of The Year for Laila Biali.

Contact George Seara through his website at: http://www.georgeseara.com