Darth Fader, Author at Sound Pro Live

Waves dbx 160 Plug In—Studio and Live

Posted by Darth Fader | Jul 30, 2015 | Gear |

STUDIO BY DARTH FADER Back in the days when I was an Audio Padawan, every studio between here and Walin’or had dbx compressors in the control room. Some had the 165, others the 162 but the main one was the 160, which is now often referred to as the 160 VU to identify the presence of a VU meter, and distinguish it from the dbx 160x/160A/160XT (which are rather different animals). Some of the semi-pro studios had the dbx 161. It looked like the 160 VU but had RCA jacks for the input and output and was (at the...

Gear Review: Waves dbx 160 Plug-In

Posted by Darth Fader | Jun 26, 2015 | Gear |

(ED. NOTE: Lord Fader looked at this new offering from Waves in a studio setting, for the live take, see Erik “E-Rock” Rogers’ review from a few weeks ago.) Back in the days when I was an Audio Padawan, every studio between here and Walin’or had dbx compressors in the control room. Some had the 165, others the 162 but the main one was the 160, which is now often referred to as the 160 VU to identify the presence of a VU meter, and distinguish it from the dbx 160x/160A/160XT (which are rather different animals). Some of the...

Automatic Delay Compensation Explained

Posted by Darth Fader | Jun 4, 2015 | Gear |

Imagine that you are mixing a session, and all of your audio tracks are racing to the mix bus. When there are no plug-ins inserted on any of the audio tracks, they all reach the mix bus at the same time. It’s a multi-way tie. Now imagine that you need a compressor plug-in on the lead vocal. We don’t realize it, but plugin processing takes a certain amount of time (usually milliseconds). So the lead vocal track now goes through the compressor plugin on its way to the mix bus. It loses the race because the compressor plugin postpones...

Living the Dream…

Posted by Darth Fader | Mar 5, 2015 | Archive, Blog |

It was a Saturday, a day like any other day that we’d get up at 3:00 AM, fly across the country (with a connection of course) and then drive two hours to a gig. Then back home the next AM, a typical fly date/kamikaze mission. Except we didn’t realize that there was bad weather moving through the lower part of the country. When we arrived in Atlanta I had a message from the promoter asking me to call him ASAP. “You guys aren’t flying through Dallas, are you?” We weren’t. “That’s good because (insert name of National Co-Headliner Act...

10 Sith-Worthy Products From the 2015 Winter NAMM Show

Posted by Darth Fader | Feb 17, 2015 | Archive, Story |

Moments after I got my TIE fighter back from the mechanic (he made some custom mods to the Twin Ion Engines), I jumped in and headed for Anaheim to visit the Winter NAMM Show. It was great to run into old friends like Palpatine and all those Rebel Rogues I don’t like to mention (…you thought I had no friends), but the real reason I went was to check out the gear. Of course there was plenty. Here are 10 highlights… AKG announced their new DMS800 Wireless Microphone System. Designed for live sound, theater and touring applications the DMS800...