Pro Techniques from WIN Media Studios

By Randy Alberts

If Glen Robinson and crew at WIN Media Studios heard too much of "Living in the U.S.A," "Jungle Love," and "The Joker" by the time they wrapped their double live Steve Miller CD production, it sure doesn't show. In fact, no one at this busy Manhattan, New York, studio, where the venerable 29-year-old weekly King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show has been produced the past three years, could get quite enough of transferring, recording, sweetening, remixing, and mastering every one of Miller's early nuggets for The Steve Miller Band: On Tour 1973–1976.

"King Biscuit [Entertainment] is one of our biggest clients, so we address the huge need to preserve over 15,000 live classic rock masters, the largest collection in the world," says Robinson, producer, engineer, and vice president at WIN Media. His other recent projects include Dave Grohl's new metal side project (Probot) and the recording and mixing of Ringo Starr & His New All Starr Band 2001 DVD/CD with Ian Hunter, Roger Hodgson, Sheila E., and Greg Lake in the band. "Currently, everything is in the analog domain, but with Pro Tools|HD we feel confident that what's on the analog tapes will be well-preserved for years to come for artists like the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Who, U2, and on and on."

DigiZine happened to speak with Robinson just as the first Steve Miller CDs arrived at WIN. After a too-brief pause to admire the fruits of his labor, this helpful New Yorker took some time to explain a useful SoundReplacer tip and a basic, yet often overlooked, AudioSuite reminder. Robinson later went into more detail about how he used Pro Tools and Waves plug-ins to sweeten and master The Steve Miller Band: On Tour 1973–1976 at WIN Studios.

Pro Technique 1 —
"New school" SoundReplacer for live recordings
"That's my Swiss army knife plug-in," Robinson says about his oft-used Digidesign SoundReplacer. "I use it not only to add or replace drum samples but also to create dynamic consistency in the drummer's playing in live situations, especially like when Ringo and Sheila E. played at the same time on several different tracks (Ringo Starr & His New All Starr Band 2001). I just used SoundReplacer to trigger snare ambience from a distant room mic and some ambience I recorded at Hit Factory's A3 Studio with a few of my [Ludwig] Black Beauty snare drums. Quickly blending this ambience into the drum mix with SoundReplacer makes for some fine drum tones."

Robinson compares the ease and time savings of using SoundReplacer over what he calls "inefficient old school" sample replacement. Looking back to his "days of running a Studer A-800 in an SSL room," Robinson described his previous process as such: First I would run an A-800's sync head output through the machine's second output and delay it. Then, I would trigger the replacement samples using an AMS or Eventide sample program while lining everything up with the original drum hit using a [Jeanius] Russian Dragon timing accuracy meter or a separate two-track tape machine. Using SoundReplacer instead, and without all the sensitive hardware, he had this to say as well: "No longer do I have to go through this long, inefficient process any more," sighs Robinson. "Using SoundReplacer in Pro Tools lets me audition samples and change their intensity and slide the timing in no time at all."

Pro Technique 2 —
Leaning on AudioSuite to lighten the TDM load
"One tends to forget the level of non-destructive data processing in Pro Tools when stacking up plug-ins in a session," says Robinson. "This is a sure way to lose TDM DSP power. Using more AudioSuite plug-ins to process selected audio files ahead of time frees up so much DSP in a session. Sometimes I'll find myself using seven or eight plug-ins per track, especially with vocals where I typically might end up with some kind of mic modeling, de-essing, EQ, compression, limiting, and other effects. If I process each of those plug-ins one at a time with AudioSuite, then I have so much more DSP leftover to allocate to my other plug-ins for the mix.

Pro Technique 3 —
Using EQ, compression, and maximization to "Fly Like An Eagle" again
With Steve Miller on the West Coast during production, Robinson made only slight changes to his remixes of the On Tour 1973–1976 concerts in order to keep the natural live dynamics fully intact. Using Waves' Renaissance EQ plug-in, he started with a high pass filter set at 31 Hz with a Q setting of .71 to begin sweetening the Miller classic "Fly Like an Eagle."

"That plug-in completely opens up the whole mix and there are no surprises in the low end once outside the studio," says Robinson. "The song was recorded in 1976 at the Beacon Theatre in New York City and the groove is huge! I then took the song into the Waves C4 Multiband Parametric Processor where I used a fair amount of the stereo ambience tracks because the bottom end of that room sounded so good."

Robinson went on to explain the C4's use on the classic Miller song in more detail. Using the preset "Bass Comp/High Freq Limit," he then lowered the threshold of the high frequency to -3 dB while reducing the gain by 1 dB, as well. He suggests a good place to start is by slowly bringing in the stereo source until the C4 begins to respond and the desired amount of gain reduction is attained, then putting the channel's fader back to zero and adjusting the parameters until the desired sound is reached.

"The transparency of the C4's 48 kHz double precision bit path is stellar," Robinson says. "For more dynamic enhancement, I also used a second C4 in ‘Multi Opto' mode for this song to very slightly boost, or ‘feather' the mid and high bands. In ‘Fly Like an Eagle,' the extended solo section is so dynamic because the middle of it is the loudest part of the entire CD and yet the end is the softest, so I set the threshold for 1 dB of gain reduction in the loudest parts of the solo. Steve's performance is so dynamic and his guitar playing, his groove, and his tone and intensity were something not to be changed from the original recording."

Robinson's final stage for sweetening and mastering The Steve Miller Band: On Tour 1973–1976 was Waves' L2 Ultramaximizer, with which he used the "Hi Res CD Master" preset with output ceiling set to -1 and the threshold varied between -4.7 to -3. "The sonic quality of this plug-in is pure and outstanding," Robinson concludes, "and the stereo image and so-called air is so very pleasing to the ear."

The Steve Miller Band: On Tour 1973–1976 will be available in stores July 2002, and Ringo Starr & His New All Starr Band 2001 is scheduled for release this summer.