charlie_hurst's Electronic Studio Setup

Just a really incredibly good interface, that has remained in my studio since it came out. Preamps are clean and neutral, and the AD/DA stages still hold up nicely. TotalMix FX and the drivers are an invaluable set of professional tools that give this unit wonderful versatility. The provision of DuRec for recording your IO is also a major win, and was probably the tipping point for my initial purchase, before I realised the benefits of its other features.

The relatively recent introduction of TotalMix FX for iOS make the interface a great portable mixer and recorder in conjunction with an iPad.

This is a great DA Stereo monitoring controller. Lots of great tools at the touch of a button. The DA is top quality and the overall sound is superb. It would be great if it had a set of analogue inputs too, but it accepts ADAT, SPDIF and AES so you can use it with pretty much any audio interface that has one of those, including basic PC motherboard cards that have optical SPDIF outputs.

Shame they discontinued it. These can be picked up for a very reasonable price second hand.

I always wanted a studio with a big console to mix through. It’s the dream every budding mix engineer is sold by the glossy magazines and studio tours on YouTube…

The room for my studio is one of the smallest in the house. It took a while to work out whether Console 1 would be the right fit for me, but after trying a number of Softube’s other plugins and hearing their qualities I made the jump.

What a revelation. Being able to mix with my ears much more thanks to the tactile dials and buttons is great. Also the sound the various strips impart on the sound is supremely satisfying.

The SSL sounds like one, the British Class A sounds like a Neve, American Class A is an API. It’s great.

Swapping other modules into the channel strips is also really cool. Want some more vibe in your SSL? Pop in some Pultec EQ. Want a different sound in your Brit Class A? Stick in a Trident A Range.

It is a system that benefits from owning many more of Softube or UA’s plugins, but it’s well worth the investment. The controller alone is fantastic,a ND really nicely made.

I have 4 channel strips for this system and could never imagine having space for any single mixer emulated there in my studio for the foreseeable future.

After a home studio downsize I had to get something smaller than my old 3 way Genelec S30NF's. These came out top of all the reviews I read, and now I've had them for nearly a year I can safely say they suit a small studio space perfectly. They really fit the bill nicely for a professional studio monitor.

I use mine predominantly for dialogue editing and the occasional music mix and would honestly recommend them all over the place. Perfect for a small OB truck too, and definitely worth considering for smaller 5.1 and surround mixing environments.

They can also be DSP corrected in conjunction with the KH 750 DSP Sub, which is something I'd very much like to add if/when I start doing any more film mixing.

One downside is that the power supply circuit is on the same board as the audio circuitry. So if the power supply goes bad you have to replace the whole board, which is expensive...