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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Recording engineer Dylan Dresdow is a big fan of A Designs Audio products, using the company's MP-2 tube mic preamp, REDDI tube direct box, EQ-1 tube equalizer, and ATTY passive audio level controller on almost every project. "They're filling a niche in the industry," according
to Dresdow, who was nominated for three Grammys and two TEC Awards for his
engineering work on Black Eyed Peas' "Elephunk" album.
At the start of a project, he says, he will typically line up a minimum of
five major microphones - such as Sony, Neumann, and AKG - and have the
vocalist sing through each of them. "A lot of people don't understand that
different microphones can affect mic pres in different ways. The mic itself
is a load on the pre and influences the character of the mic pre. Whenever I
use the MP-2 I really notice a dramatic change in the tone of the mics, and
that's really important for me."
Dresdow reports that he used the MP-2 tube preamp for all of the vocals on
new albums by R&B artist, Tweet, and electro-pop trio, The Lovemakers. "It's
pretty much the kind of unit where, whatever mic you're using, you just find
the sweet spot, dial it in, and - bam!"
"The MP-2 is very clean sounding," he continues. "But one of
the things that
I really like about it is that you can overdrive it very slightly and it's
got this really good, milky distortion that you can get out of it on certain
vocal tracks. A lot of the tube pres that are out there have a good
coloration but there's a lot of noise that you get along with that."
"By overdriving the MP-2 you can dial in the amount of distortion that
you
want, and that's where the A Designs ATTY comes in handy," he says. "One
of
the tricks that you can do with the MP-2 is adding the ATTY unit before or
after the pre. You can drive the input really, really loud, then attenuate
the level down so that when you're recording to tape or a DAW your levels
aren't crazy."
"The inexpensive ATTY is a utility device that every studio should own,"
he
says. "It's great if you're running long lines, or even just as a mute
switch. I have a drummer that I used it on who wanted to be able to open and
close his talkback mic as he was playing, rather than needing to lean over
and talk into his snare drum mic when we needed to communicate. It's just a
simple passive attenuator that's really useful in a lot of studio
situations."
"On a project in Miami," says Dresdow, he lined the REDDI tube direct
box up
against about twenty other DIs. Immediately it sounded better than most of
the pack, but there were about three DIs that at the time still had certain
areas where they performed better. A Designs made some tweaks at his
recommendation," he says, "and they just nailed it. Now the REDDI
is my
favorite DI and definitely my go-to on bass."
"For a long time I didn't really understand how important a DI was,"
he
reveals, "Then I noticed a lot of stuff getting lost when I used whatever
DI
was just lying around. I wasn't getting the deep tone of my sustain. With a
tube DI I get the pluck and a nice punchy attack, and when the notes hang
out they sound very musical.
"It's got probably an extra two octaves of range on the top and an octave
on
the bottom compared to other DIs on the market - that's just phenomenal. And
with the higher sampling rates, that's essential."
"The A Designs EQ-1 tube equalizer is reminiscent of the Pultec,"
says
Dresdow. "But it's impossible to make it sound harsh. Whenever I put an
older EQ across an insert in a DAW, the way that the D-to-As are calibrated,
there's too much level into the units, so I hear all this distortion. You
have to trim them down. The EQ-1 has a lot of headroom, and even with the
knobs cranked at full blast it's very hard to make it sound harsh.
"It's got power, and a great, milky smoothness to it. It also has more
functionality than the older Pultec. One of the things I really like doing
is being able to independently cut one frequency but then boost it on the
low end, which is something you could never do on the old unit. It's a great
unit for bass stuff, and I've used it a lot on horns. It's great on the
mid-range, between 3 kHz and 6 kHz."
TransAudio Group, founded by industry veteran Brad Lunde, has quickly become
the premier U.S. importer/distributor and/or U.S. sales and marketing
representative for high-end audio. Success hinges on TransAudio providing
dealers and end users with a higher standard of product expertise and
support far beyond the norm. TransAudio Group's product lines include: A
Designs Audio (USA), AEA (USA), ATC (UK), Brauner (Germany), Daking (USA),
Drawmer (UK), George Massenburg Labs (USA), Mercury (USA), Mission Pro (UK),
Soundelux (USA), SoundField (UK), and Z-Systems (USA).
