SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Originally released by the New Zealand rapper Savage in 2005 as his first solo single, Swing started out big and has only gotten bigger. Shortly after its release, “Swing” peaked at #1 on the New Zealand singles chart. In 2008, its U.S. release was accompanied by versions featuring Soulja Boy and Pitbull, and the song inspired covers by the bands Miss May I and Drop Dead, Gorgeous. But the story doesn’t end there: Australian producer Joel Fletcher remixed the song in 2013, and that version surpassed the original’s stature in Australia, reaching way up to #2 down under. Australia’s largest dance label, Ministry of Sound, hired pro audio mercenary Klaus Hill to freshen up Fletcher’s remix for release on its compilation album, The Annual 2014. That version of “Swing” achieved 4x-platinum sales in Australia and won the 2015 Best Dance Record of the Year award from Australia’s APRA/AMCOS professional society, extending Savage’s original genius into a full decade of excited buzz!

For its latest incarnation, Hill used a Metric Halo 2882 interface to mix the vocal and to perform stem mastering for “Swing”.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Maximilian Jaeger is a producer, recording and mix engineer based out of Los Angeles who has worked with Kanye West, Jhené Aiko, Common, No I.D., Ariana Grande, NAS, and John Legend, among others. Most recently, he engineered Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise, which peaked at the #1 position on Billboard’s R&B Albums, The Billboard 200, Top Digital Albums, and Top Rap Albums. With more than its fair share of tight deadlines and all-night sessions, the project owes part of its success to Jaeger’s masterful use of Metric Halo Production Bundle plug-ins, which give him a fast workflow, consistent & great-sounding results, and an appealing visual interface that inspires the right decisions… even as the sun comes up on an all-nighter.

“Big Sean’s album freestyle, “Me, Myself & I”, dropped right before the album’s release, and I was given just one night to mix it,” Jaeger said. “Big Sean was in New York, and I was in L.A., so there wasn’t a lot of room to get multiple revisions. The production came in with some good sounds, but in order to get that punch, it needed some help. I pulled up Metric Halo’s TransientControl and got the kick and the rest of the drums to pop quickly. It usually doesn’t take much. Its transient modeling is very consistent and works great on kick drums that support 808’s. The ‘warm’ preset on Metric Halo’s ChannelStrip always helps to smooth out the vocals and in this case brought them to the front of the mix, without popping out too much. Metric Halo’s Character signal path modeling plug-in gave the backing pads the right flavor. I love the options on that plugin. I usually don’t distort pads, so having the ability to dial in a decent amount of saturation, whether it’s tube, solid state, or tape distortion without destroying the original sound is definitely a great help.

I love being able to rely on Metric Halo plug-ins because they prevent things from getting out of sonic pocket when the night wears on and my ears get tired. Unlike most other plug-ins, I know mixes won’t disappoint when I wake up the next day and give my mix a fresh listen, since Metric Halo’s plugins are very consistent.”

Those three plug-ins form the cornerstone not just of Jaeger’s mixes, but also of his front-end production. “Hip-hop and dance artists these days aren’t interested in passive engineers,” he said. “They want an engineer who will take an active role in shaping the sound of a song from the start. So when I got files from Sean, he always asked, ‘will these sounds work?’ We don’t want to get further into the process only to be disappointed. So when I got new drum sounds, I always ran them through Metric Halo TransientControl. While other plug-ins of that type give me frustratingly inconsistent results – some hits jump out and others stick back – Metric Halo’s version always gives me a nice, round, and consistent knock. If a drum sound doesn’t knock right through TransientControl, I know we need to figure out something else long before we get to mixing.”

Metric Halo ChannelStrip and Character find their way onto most of Jaeger’s tracks. “ChannelStrip’s dynamics section is one of the best I’ve ever heard,” he said. “I tend to use the ‘warm’ setting a lot, or I’ll use the ‘fast’ setting on vocals in order to even them out without making the compression obvious. I use it on kicks and snares with a medium attack and a fast release, which gives me the right dynamics while still keeping the sound natural. Like all Metric Halo plug-ins, all of the settings give predictable, consistent results, which can’t be said of most other plug-ins. Character is an awesome plug-in, especially these days, when it’s all about degrading and distorting your tracks or mix. Beyond that, I turn to Character any time I have a track that isn’t quite as present as I’d like it to be. With the track in the mix, I flip through the different modeling types until the track sits right.”

Beyond those cornerstones, Jaeger is expanding his palette to include Metric Halo’s Thump, HaloVerb, and Dirty Delay plug-ins. Thump is absolutely free to anyone and generates percussive sub-harmonic content. Jaeger uses it to beef up beats created by artists who tend to use bass-heavy headphones for their creations, a practice which has the unfortunate side-effect of making those beats anemic. Thump injects musical low-end content that is (again) consistent. About HaloVerb and Dirty Delay, Jaeger said, “they both sound really, really good!” He also appreciates that Metric Halo separately built presets that are specifically designed for either instruments alone or aux sends. “Metric Halo presets get me in the ballpark right away,” he said. “It’s very easy to get great sounding results fast, which is critical in this business.”

“As plugins go, you'll find it hard to beat the quality and ease of use of these plugins.”

- Paul Drew, Pro Tools Expert

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: Howard Audio is the public face of musician and all-around Renaissance man Adam Howard, who is among South Africa’s most sought-after composers, producers, arrangers, audio engineers, and sound designers. Trained at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Howard was the principal trumpet player for the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra before devoting all of his time to his business. His advertising work has earned him Clio and Silver Loerie Awards, and his client list includes Volkswagen, Toyota, Discovery, and Mercedes-Benz, among many others. His work with South Africa’s top artists runs the spectrum from performing musician to producer, and everything in between. Howard regularly conducts the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra, serves as the musical director for avant-garde artist William Kentridge, orchestrated music for the film White Lion (2010), and is the founding musical director of the Johannesburg Big Band. In short, Adam Howard is multi-talented and driven to contribute those talents across a huge range of projects.

ANYWHERE, USA: Although fluid in its details, SongCraft Presents is solid in its premise: partners Ben Arthur, Mike Crehore, Al Houghton, Matthew Hendershot, and Rob Reinhart work with an established singer-songwriter to compose and record a great song in the span of just three short hours. More often than not, the all-consuming dominance of that time constraint naturally inspires the artist in collaboration with Ben Arthur – an accomplished singer-songwriter in his own right – to create something fresh and unencumbered. Matthew Hendershot captures the entire process, which is later edited to highlight the occasional frustration and frequent magic of the creative process under pressure. The recordings find outlets on the Internet and on Acoustic Café, a weekly two-hour radio program hosted by Rob Reinhart that reaches nearly three million listeners on over ninety stations around the country and on Voice of America.

Although sometimes recorded at Houghton’s Dubway Studios in New York City, most SongCraft Presents sessions take place on location, using front porches or living rooms as makeshift studios. For those sessions, co-producers and engineers Crehore and Houghton rely on the transcendent sound and bulletproof operation of Metric Halo ULN-8 and ULN-2 interfaces, which handle all of the microphone pre-amplification, conversion, and front-end processing for the sessions.

“Ben is a fantastic singer-songwriter, and he has an amazing knack for inspiring other artists to not only write something great, but to finish something great,” said Crehore. “That’s obviously very important for SongCraft Presents! Ben and the artist usually start with the lyric, get that right, and then build the song to serve the lyric. While they’re writing, Al and I are working on the fly to get a sound that will complement the song. If it’s a band, such as a recent session we did with Britain’s Turin Brakes, we want to make a recording that will be consistent with that band’s established sound. If it’s a solo artist, such as Ben Ottewell (from Gomez), we’re trying to get as intimate and honest a sound as we can.”

SAFETY HARBOR, FLORIDA: In addition to being a prolific editing, mixing, and mastering engineer, Ukraine-based Oleg “Yorshoff” Yershov is an audio software beta-tester and a translator of pro audio books, manuals, and technical documents from English to Russian. He works mainly with rock and metal artists from Ukraine specifically and Europe and Russia generally, and he enthusiastically shares his talents by way of online video tutorials on creating, mixing, and mastering music. Yorshoff is also an ardent user of Metric Halo plug-ins, which help him create the musical and inspired mixes that have earned him a loyal crowd of clients… and which also make it easy for him to visually and aurally demonstrate audio concepts in his video tutorials.

“Editing music is very important for a great finished product, but mixing is more interesting, intriguing, and fun for me,” Yorshoff explained. “I love experimenting with my mixes because I love making music that is unique and unexpected. I have a bunch of great plug-ins from different manufacturers, and I use them a lot. But if you ask me what package of plug-ins I simply cannot do without, I say Metric Halo –especially for the price! Why Metric Halo? The Metric Halo Production Bundle has all of the basic (and not so basic) tools that I need to complete a mix, and they have a consistent and solid sound that combines well.”

SAFETY HARBOR, FLORIDA: Andrés Millán has a lot going on! From his home base in Bogotá, Colombia, Millán serves as the director for both Diffusion Magazine – the most popular sound engineering website in Latin America – and Boutique Pro Audio – a high-end pro audio representation and distribution firm with service in Colombia and neighboring countries. He is the Chair for Colombia’s section of the Audio Engineering Society, and, by dint of dedication and long hours, Millán manages to maintain an active freelance business recording, mixing, and live sound for classical, jazz, rock and popular music. Millán is an avid user of Metric Halo interfaces, plug-ins, and SpectraFoo analysis software, and Boutique Pro Audio distributes Metric Halo products in Colombia.

“I visited Metric Halo headquarters in Safety Harbor, Florida this summer to get to know the team of professionals behind the design and construction of these amazing products,” Millán said. “I saw how the company works. It’s basically a family business. Everyone is friendly and working toward a common goal, and the company has been growing over time on the merit of the products they create.”

Given Millán’s deep interest – bordering on affection – for professional audio equipment, he took notice of Metric Halo, a company that has been producing pathbreaking pro audio interfaces and software since the late 1990s. “Metric Halo products are extremely solid, and they offer a complete catalogue of products,” he said. “The company has been a pioneer in several aspects of both the analog and digital audio domains. They were the first manufacturer to support FireWire, to offer interfaces with a software console and DSP, and to devise analog-sounding digital algorithms that their competitors are still trying to replicate. And unlike almost every other company in existence, Metric Halo offers their customers true future-proofing. Metric Halo owners are never left holding hardware that won’t work with current Apple hardware and software!”

"It is indeed a fine bundle of processors, priced way too low (at least for right now) and delivering way more than expected or promised."

- Rob Tavaglione
Pro Audio Review / Pro Sound News

SAFETY HARBOR, FLORIDA: Led by three-time Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep, Ricki and the Flash is the tale of an aging rocker coming to terms with the family she left behind decades prior to pursue a life of music. Guitar virtuoso and guitar instructor to the stars Neil Citron joined the casting team early in the film’s development to help select the actors who would play Streep’s band mates. One thing led to another, which led to another, which led to another, and Citron – also an accomplished producer and engineer – eventually found himself editing and mixing all of the film’s live music, both for the movie itself and for the soundtrack. As has been his protocol since he first acquired his Metric Halo ULN-2 converter/interface twelve years ago, Citron relied on Metric Halo’s musical, well-balanced conversion technology to give Ricki and the Flash its authentic, bar room sound.

SAFETY HARBOR, FLORIDA: “I was raised as a Christian, and I was taught to model my life after Jesus Christ, but I’ve since converted to a different religion… the religion of Miles.” So says the multi-talented Hiroaki Honshuku, who now models his life after the legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. “Miles taught us that music has to be fun, and that we should not play meaningless notes,” he said. “And he also taught us not to play the old s**t! Don’t play what’s been done before!” True to that advice, Honshuku, a graduate with distinctions of both Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory, has carved out a unique niche in the world of music. In addition to moving traditional jazz and classical music forward with various groups and alliances inside the New York/Boston corridor, he is melding improvisational jazz with Brazilian grooves in a band called Racha Fora. The band’s latest release, Racha S’Miles, is a brilliant re-imagining of Miles Davis classics, with a heavy emphasis on “re-imagining.” It’s definitely not the old s**t!

In addition to being a gifted and practiced wind instrumentalist, Honshuku is a technophile and intuitive recording and mixing engineer. The band rented Dreamworld Studios in Lynn, Massachusetts to record Racha S’Miles, and Honshuku brought in his impressive collection of Metric Halo interfaces to handle all of the pre-amplification and conversion. “No other equipment records as cleanly as Metric Halo,” he said. “Everything I do with my Metric Halo gear sounds so realistic and detailed.”