HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: Prolific recording and mixing engineer and guitarist Sean Gould works with some of the greatest up-and-coming and established acts in the music industry through his close association with renowned production team S*A*M and Sluggo. His most recent projects have included We The Kings Smile Kid, Metro Station “Shake It,” Train Save Me, San Francisco, Boys Like Girls Love Drunk, and Uncle Kracker Happy Hour. The list would resonate loudly in any hipster’s soul – and it goes on and on and on! Gould relies heavily on Metric Halo ChannelStrip, a multi-platform plug-in that combines equalization, dynamics, and precision delay, to turn out stellar results on short deadlines.

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: The proverb states that nothing succeeds like success, and prolific mix engineer Serban Ghenea is living proof of its truth. After some years sharpening his musical intuition as a player in the jazz, funk and R&B worlds, Ghenea discovered he had a natural aptitude for creating compelling mixes. Over fifteen years, he has developed that aptitude into a flawless genius that has the music industry’s A-list artists lined up at the door to work with him. In the last two years alone, Ghenea has mixed over twenty number one songs for artists such as Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, and Kelly Clarkson. Metric Halo’s ChannelStrip plug-in is Ghenea’s go-to solution for all equalization and dynamics adjustments. And every mix that has left his studio in the last six years, chart-topping or otherwise, has benefitted from multiple instances of ChannelStrip.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK: Philip J. Harvey from PilotLight Audio Inc. was hired by the White Stripes to mix front-of-house sound and multi-track record their tenth anniversary tour of 2007 in forty channels of high-resolution digital audio. Harvey put together a Metric Halo rig consisting of five MIO 2882+DSP interfaces passing 24-bit/96kHz audio into his MacBook Pro laptop computer. This endeavor led to the recording and mixing of two songs that were released as B-sides on the White Stripes’ “You Don't Know What Love Is” EP.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA: Rich Breen’s quick and early ascension to the upper strata of professional recording a quarter-century ago was not owing to a flashy style or a voguish sound, but rather a well-considered, well-rounded approach to sound recording that was, and continues to be, in equal measures scientific and artistic. He holds a degree in electrical engineering and has studied music, a synergism that has contributed to his roster of clients and recordings that include the Yellowjackets, Charlie Haden, Dianne Reeves, Herbie Hancock, Norah Jones, members of the Rolling Stones, and Ramsey Lewis. Breen has been nominated for the Non-Classical Engineering Grammy, and dozens of his recordings have been nominated or won Grammy Awards in various categories over the years. Last year he won a Latin Grammy for the Ivan Lins/Metropolis Orchestra Recording. In recent years, Breen has become an avid user of the Metric Halo ULN-8 interface, which delivers eight channels of AD/DA conversion, together with eight world-class mic pres, powerful digital processing, and flexible routing.

CONGERS, NEW YORK: Soundkeeper Recordings is a beautiful amalgamation of old and new. Veteran recording, mixing, and mastering engineer Barry Diament (Bob Marley, Pete Townshend, Led Zeppelin and on and on and on) founded the fledgling record label and expertly handles all of its technical tasks. On the one hand, Diament reaches back more than half a century, to a time when sound engineers viewed their art as the capturing of what were, first and foremost, live events. Diament records the artists on Soundkeeper Recordings’ roster in beautiful acoustic spaces using only a pair of microphones. Described as “recording without a net,” the musicians, with direction from producer Diament, determine every aspect of the “mix” as they play, with no hope for a technical save in the form of a punch-in or overdub. On the other hand, Diament relies on state-of-the-art equipment to accurately render the recordings and preserve the sonic cues that help “bring the listener to the musical event, with the feeling of being in the space in which it occurred.” The critical tool in his approach is a Metric Halo ULN-8 Mobile I/O interface, which captures his stereo signal with unprecedented transparency.

After reading this story, every FOH mixer will be begging for his or her own personal Doug Lemke/SpectraFoo combo for the Holidays. In a nutshell, Lemke’s recent outing with enduring 80s pop-rock legend Tears For Fears epitomized the challenge that FOH engineers are forced to confront over and over again – as if in a bad dream! – different venues and different PAs from night to night conspired to threaten the repeatability of veteran engineer JB Blot’s otherwise studio-worthy mix. But Lemke provided a robust solution to this timeless trial. He used the power and nuance of Metric Halo’s SpectraFoo audio analysis software to tune each disparate system to match the sonic fingerprint of Blot’s reference Genelec nearfield monitors.

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: Skid Row produced a string of iconic hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including “18 and Life,” “Youth Gone Wild,” and “I Remember You,” that now help define the era. In fact, a chapter of the new book, Full Metal Jackie Certified: The 50 Most Influential Heavy Metal Songs of the '80s and the True Stories Behind Their Lyrics, is devoted to dissecting the origins and cultural impact of “18 and Life.” Today, the band maintains a busy schedule of fly-in dates throughout the country and around the world, performing both their classics and new songs from Revolutions Per Minute (2006). They use house or rental equipment so that they can travel light, and veteran FOH and monitor engineer Mike Thompson relies on Metric Halo’s SpectraFoo sound analysis software to deliver consistent sound night after night across disparate sound systems.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The capabilities of digital audio have brought about a paradigm shift in motion picture location sound recording over the past decade, away from traditional analog hardware to more versatile software-based solutions. As production mixer Paul Ledford, C.A.S. recently discovered, a digital audio solution such as Metric Halo's ULN-8 interface can also handle the increasingly more complex demands of a modern-day film shoot, and may well herald the next step in the evolution of location sound.

HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: Founder of 1980s English progressive rock sensation, It Bites, Francis Dunnery has maintained a busy schedule of solo work, production, and engineering in the nearly two decades since It Bites dissolved. Regular touring and recording with Robert Plant Lauryn Hill, Ian Brown, Carlos Santana and the creation of his own Aquarian Nation record label to “help support and maintain artistic integrity” have cemented Dunnery’s position as a venerated member of the musical intelligencia, in both the UK and America. His recently released album, “There’s a Whole New World Out There,” is a clever reworking of his favorite material from his early years. Like everything Dunnery has worked on in the past two years, the new album was recorded entirely through a Metric Halo 2882 converter and interface. Metric Halo has a sound that he has never been able to capture with anything else.

Although they work independently, France's Benoît Gilg and Alain Français meet frequently to ensure that their gear and techniques stay at industry's cutting edge. Their works are numerous and often prestigious. For example, Gilg runs broadcast sound for several of the headlining acts at France's massive Jazz Sous Les Pommiers and Vieilles Charrues Festivals and at Germany's Hurricane Festival.