British & Irish Institute of Modern Music (BIMM) student Laura Drezewski was recommended to Kazbar Systems via her tutor Neil Pickles (mastering engineer at Reveal Sound). Having tutored and mentored Laura, Neil was keen to make sure that when she started planning her own recording and mixing facility, serious thought was given to the best hardware options to get the best sounding and most versatile solutions for her budget.
Although Laura’s original equipment specification was high quality, both Neil and Gavin from Kazbar System felt she was channelling large sums of her budget into areas which were not such a priority, such as a high end, expensive fader controller but then having a low end mic preamp but with an expensive, high end microphone.
By removing the costly fader controller from the quotation, we freed up a large proportion of her budget to make way for a far better preamp, a more versatile audio interface, a better all round microphone (which was better value than her original choice) and higher end monitor speakers too.
The core of the studio is a top specked Apple iMac 27” running Laura’s preferred DAW, Logic Pro X. To compliment Logic, various audio interfaces were given due consideration, the Apollo Twin MKII was chosen due to it’s excellent sound quality, zero latency monitoring, onboard DSP processing along with talkback features too.
Laura also required an excellent recording chain for her studio, many options were discussed but the Universal Audio 6176 was the choice due the 6176’s excellent preamp coupled to legendary 1176 Limiting Amplifier. This is a truly excellent vocal/instrument channel.
We recently arranged a loan of the Telefunken AK47mkII Valve Condenser Microphone to Neil for a recording session. The results of the session were highly positive with Neil being impressed with the excellent detail and sensitivity of the recording. The AK47mkII coupled with 6176 offers true recording versatility.
Laura has worked with many makes and models of monitor speakers both during her time at BIMM but other studios too and required a set of monitor speakers which would offer clarity and detail within her studio both at low and higher volume.
Laura had worked with Focal many times before and her natural choice was the Focal twin 6BE’s placed on Argosy 420i Speaker Stands which include IsoAcoustic speaker isolators.
Laura has had recent song placements on BBC3 and has recently worked with the producer of the Pet Shop Boys Pete Gleadall along with Robert Harder and Mike Marsh.
For further information please visit the studio website: https://www.musikalchemix.co.uk/studio
