Written by Shan Zhi Liu 15/04/2024
Here we go again folks! Week 2 of your favourite audio engineers (hopefully), going all out describing what works best for their surgical, crisp, fantasmic mixing processes. I hope you'll enjoy reading all about what makes the music in South Bound truly unique.
The man of many talents and big brain Project Leader Amadeus Anggaraksa is here to learn ya, his inspired taste in music is sure to translate in his audio work.
His favourite plugins without any hesitation include the Plugin Alliance Purple Audio MC77! He describes it as a nice characterful compressor just like the real thing, great for mono and stereo busses as well as parallel processing. FabFilter ProQ3 is his go-to clean up EQ, it is just such a great and precise EQ that can do a bit of everything. Finally, Vertigo VSC-2 is his most used bus comp and is pretty much always on his mix bus.
That's the glue to my mixes.
As he describes it, he does sort of a hybrid "middle-out" mixing workflow. First, every track/instrument is bussed and plugins go on each bus & main mix bus. After that he'll mess around and tune the individual tracks if they need attention. Middle-Out truly has become the way of South Bound in some form or another. Perhaps bus mixing should become our middle name.
Last but not least of all for this two week round-up, Artist Liaison Manager Julian Tjahja has so much to show you all!
His favourite plugins in quickfire succession: Fabfilter ProQ3, the tried and tested for all EQ's, Fabfilter ProMB, surgical and amazing multiband compression, Fabfilter L2, limiting with attitude!
For some character and colour, the UAD LA-2A and 1176LN are a legendary powerhouse combo for his vocal chain, the UAD Distressor is perfect for his kicks and snares, the API 2500 is a legendary drum bus compressor, and some form of Pultec adds the perfect amount of warmth on his master bus!
Notable mentions must also go to the Soundtoys Decapitator, saturation at its finest, and the Sonnox Oxford Inflator! The UAD Lexicon 224 and the UAD Hitsville Chamber round out his mixes with the perfect spaces and width, filling in the gaps of a crazy round of all-time favourite plug-ins and processing!
Julian also went very in-depth describing his workflow, more food for the crowd! First, organise track names, colour (he colours the tracks based on roygbiv!), and order. Second, organise routing and sends to auxes. Third, perform upon all tracks gain staging, subtractive eq, compression if needed, saturation/colouration, a bit of reverb and delay here and there to blend it all.
I always check on a phone speaker!
So far as the only person within South Bound, Julian doesn’t really do any top down mixing! He still believes that unwanted noises must be checked/eliminated, before amplifying/putting effects on stuff. Solidarity and workflow be damned, Julian's mixes come out regardless and they sound fantastic. Any and all workflows that works for anyone will always be the correct workflow. No mistakes are to be made here!
Making use of the tools we all have in many versatile situations and across several styles of music is really important to our mission for increasing the quality of and increased representation of musical freedoms and ideas! Please consider following us on our website and socials for all the updates regarding our upcoming songs: the album is releasing this upcoming Friday!! Save the date, April 19th 2024, and visit our Releases Page to get those presaves!!!!
As always, inviting you down South. 🇦🇺
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