Dave Johnson

Coffee, Community and Compressors

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It’s a couple of days late, let’s blame that on the Jet-Lag, but here’s the October Playlist.

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Normally it takes a little while to pull together the monthly playlist but having just come back from Greenman festival it’s been pretty easy. So many interesting artists. I’ve picked 2 tracks from 10 different artists. 

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I’m a big fan of the Zac Brown Band there currently album “Welcome Home” blew me away when I listened to it the other day so imagine my surprise when while searching YouTube I came across this cover of Adele’s “He Won’t Go”. Mesmerising.

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It’s been a couple of weeks since I was down in Wales mixing the Walled Gaden stage at Greenman Festival 2017 and during a bored moment a couple of days ago I came across these two performances online. I really recommend the Aldous Harding one (one of my highlights to mix) and the Big Thief performance shows it was a bit more than just acoustic acts.

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It’s time for another playlist and it’s a mixture of very mainstream pop of Charli XCX and Dua Lipa to the Go-Go Beat of RDGLDGRN and funky soul of Terrence Wildë. Enjoy

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So proud of the guys from Wild Front - here’s a little video from The Great Escape Festival back in May. Was great to mix their live sound that day*.

* - And it’s mostly my mix you’re hearing

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Michael League is one my bass playing heroes. How he does so much with so few pedals is astonishing.

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“I like that cadaver” - Google Translate doing its best with Ed Sheeran. Simply astonishing.

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Anyone for a quick trip around our universe?

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It’s been a little while since I’ve put together a playlist to share with the world. Here’s July - it’s a good one.

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England: A beginners guide. One of the funniest videos I’ve seen in a little while. It’s a bit NSFW but it’s very funny.

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May: A Playlist

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Rarely have I seen such a raw and emotional interview. Exceptional work from Zane Lowe interviewing Paramore about the process of creating “After Laughter” and the struggles of being a modern day pop star. 

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April: A Playlist

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A guide to Waves MultiRack — Is it all worth it?

So, I thought this was just going to be four parts. I realised, however, that it means nothing without looking at the costs.

It’s worth saying that there are always sales on at waves.com so that’s the first port of call and 90% of my plugins I’ve bought that way.

For live engineers looking to get started you obviously need the MultiRack app at the very reasonable price of $149 (that’s a huge saving, it used to be $649). That’s what gets you up and running.

That, sadly, doesn’t include any plugins so here’s the basics that I’d recommend;

C1 — $99 — I think that C1 is one of the most powerful, yet underrated, plugins that Waves currently sell. The compressor side of things is pretty standard but the gate side of things, especially once you introduce side chains, just blows everything else away. I don’t believe any current desk gate could match this.

H-Series — $599 — You may be sat there thinking $599 for a plugin? Well, no. This is the suite of waves Hybrid series and is made up of four plugins. H-EQ, H-Comp, H-Reverb and H-Delay. I own three out of the four. H-Reverb and H-Delay are my go to effects. H-Comp will easily do those 1176 and 3A compressor emulations. While I’ve not used H-EQ just yet there’s no reason to expect it wouldn’t sound great.

C6 — $299 — Yes, it’s expensive but it’s incredibly powerful. Maybe don’t just take my word for it, here’s a little video from David Stagl at Northpoint Community Church

If you got all these plugins when there was no sale on you’d be spending $1149 and that doesn’t sound like it’s great value until you compare it to other out the box solutions. A small external rack to upgrade the effects in an X32 could easily cost $1000. And a solution similar to my every day waves session could easily cost $8000 and take greater power and truck space.

However, as I mentioned at the start there are a LOT of Waves sales and ways to save money on plugins. As I write the cheapest way to get C6 is with Dave Audé EMP toolbox at an incredible $129 (18/03/2017) and that also includes H-Delay.

Get a demo and give some bits a try.

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A Guide To Waves MultiRack — Explanation & My Setup

I’ve decided to write this post as a quick response to a conversation that broke out on one of my Facebook pictures over Christmas

As an end of 2016 treat to myself I purchased Wave’s H-Reverb and duly posted a picture on social media. It started a conversation with a fellow FoH sound engineer. He was curious as to both using Waves in Apple’s Logic X digital audio workstation and in a live sense using Wave’s MultiRack application.

And it got me thinking I’ve been really lucky professionally in having some great people help get me up and running with both MultiRack and it’s more powerful brother, MultiRack SoundGrid, which offloads audio processing to a bespoke server. And I just wanted to give back a little to help and inspire others

I, mostly, use MultiRack in it’s beefed up SoundGrid version on a Yamaha M7 using two Yamaha WSG-Y16 cards allowing for a total of 32 bi-directional channels. These link to a regular gigabit network switch which also has a SoundGrid server and regular computer connected.

NOTE 1: The regular computer can be Mac OR Windows and acts ONLY as a Graphical Interface. No audio passes through it. Having said that it ONLY works with the MultiRackSG app open. Think of it as your insert cables.

There is some digital patching that you have to do both in the app and on the desk. Similar to below. With that done you get audio flowing both ways.

NOTE 2: You have to think about processing order just a little bit. In my situation all the bands monitors are mixed from the same desk as I mix Front of House from and I don’t want my house eq or compression going to monitors

I then use the MultiRackSG app in three different ways:

Inserts

Effects

Direct Outs

I don’t want to give everyone one really long post so I’m going to break it out in to a further three. One covering inserts, one covering sends and direct outs and one covering other systems using the regular MultiRack app.

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March: A Playlist