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At his Dolby Atmos-approved Nashville studio, i65sound, Brent Barcus records, mixes, and designs sound and music for some of the biggest names in entertainment, including FOX Sports, NASCAR, Comedy Central, Verizon, and Warner Bros., to name a few.
When he steps out from behind the desk, it’s for another high-profile gig: live guitarist and music director for superstar Shania Twain, whom he’s worked with since her first ever concert tour back in 1998, when he was handpicked by Twain and producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange to be part of her original touring band.
Ahead of a busy summer with production and mixing gigs, and prepping for Shania’s North America tour, Brent sat down with us to talk about the variety in his audio work, why he chose to make his studio Dolby Atmos compatible, and why the Apogee Symphony Studio 2x12 audio interface fits seamlessly into his workflow to capture and deliver pristine audio for his A-list clients.
Tell us about i65sound and the work that you do.
We are a boutique audio studio and we do everything from film and TV mixing, sound design, music, to production. I mix singles and records in anything from stereo to Dolby Atmos, across genres and types of content from short form, advertising, film and TV, to music.
Have there been any projects that were particularly memorable for you?
It's so fun and every day is different. I really like working in sports for TV and we just finished a new NASCAR series on Netflix. It's a 12-part docuseries about the racing and the drivers, and it has very elaborate sound design, with all the sounds of the car races and the pits. It’s a large audio post-production team and I got to be a part of that, so that was fun.
What inspired you to make your studio geared for Dolby Atmos mixes?
A few years ago, I saw the Atmos trend happening in music—it had already been in film and TV for a while—and when I saw the music industry changing and some of the streaming services starting to promote and embrace it, I thought it would be a good time to explore it. I always try to keep one foot in the future with my work, so I was really fascinated with it.
I think it was around COVID that I started really studying and learning about it, and I thought I'd take the plunge and get into it early on so that I could be an early adopter and start to build my client base around it. I'm really excited to be doing it.
Were there any particular challenges or anything about Atmos mixing that surprised you?
Yeah, absolutely, there are a lot of challenges—we still call it the Wild Wild West. [Laughs] There is a learning curve with the placement of different objects and where to put things in the mix.
Also, a lot of clients want us to be true to the stereo mix, so it's not always as exploratory. They say, “We want it to sound immersive, but we still want it to sound like the stereo mix”, which is always interesting. So it’s about finding the balance—having a fun new take on a song or project, but not going too deep on the immersive side and being too different from the stereo mix. Especially if it’s a classic song that everybody knows already, you don't want it to be too different. Every producer or mixer has a different approach, so it's still a bit of trial and error to see what works best.
What drew you to the Apogee Symphony Studio 2x12 audio interface?
Originally, I had the Symphony Mk II and I loved it, but at that time, I was doing mostly mixing and not much recording through my interface in the studio. Over time, I was starting to record more and getting clients who wanted me to do production on some of their tracks as well.
Now, on my Symphony Mk II, I didn't have any analog inputs and mic pres and things like that, so when the Symphony Studio came out, I thought, “Man, this is perfect for me!” It gives me my outputs for Atmos, and it gets me two analog ins for mics and overdubs for vocal and guitar, so it was the best of both worlds for me.
It’s a little more low profile, as a single rack unit, and I knew it was plug-and-play because I already had the Symphony Mk II, so I thought it was the perfect device for my studio for recording as well as Atmos mixing.
How easy or difficult was it to set up?
Super easy! Thankfully, the Symphony Mk II was already in my studio, so that was already dialed in, and Dolby had tuned my room, so it was really just about bringing the new device in and connecting it to my Mac computer. I also use the Apogee Control Remote, and it’s been great, I love it!
What are the specific features of the Symphony Studio interface that you find particularly impactful on your sound?
The overall sonic quality of it is stellar; I'm very impressed by the AD/DA conversion. I've always believed in Apogee products and I love the sound of them, so I knew that getting the Symphony Studio was a no-brainer.
The routing is easy, the bass management and speaker calibration have been great as well, and I just love the plug-and-play simplicity of it. The latency has been stellar too—it's hardly noticeable.
I'm not having to use the room correction feature yet because what's great about Dolby Atmos is that they'll come down here once every year and retune my room. The Mk II didn't have those features, so I'll probably end up using some of those room correction features from the Symphony Studio once they come back out to tune it again. Right now, we use external software to do some of the speaker delay compensation, and I'm looking forward to putting that back into the box, which I haven't had a chance to do yet.
Having the monitor switching workflows inside the software is great too, and it works so well with the Dolby Renderer. They work really well together and I can listen to my 5.1, 7.1, and stereo downmixes too.
What is the biggest difference you've noticed in your workflow since upgrading to the Symphony Studio interface?
On one input, I’ve got a Manley mic—my go-to for vocals—that I've got plugged in all the time. I've got the other mic input on the interface set up for a guitar and amp, so it's quicker for me to be recording into the device, now that I’ve got everything ready to go. I don’t have to figure out how I'm going to record that day; everything is hardwired and ready. I love the ease of use and the speed that comes with having those two microphones ready to go.
It’s terrible when you’re feeling inspired and have to spend time setting up before putting your idea down.
Yeah, exactly! It makes you lose the inspiration and the creativity of the idea you have. Now that I have the inputs, they're hardwired and ready to go, and it’s been beautiful.
What was it like working with Cody Angel and Vintage King to purchase the interface?
It was so easy! I have a relationship with Apogee through the years, from my projects and working with different artists, so when they asked me to contact Vintage King, I was like, “Absolutely!”
When we got on the phone, it was super quick and low-hassle. It got shipped out really quick and they made it super easy. The follow-up has been great too, I’m really looking forward to working with VK in the future for different products.
What are some of your favorite pieces of outboard gear at your studio?
Hardware-wise, I don't have a lot of outboard gear because I try to stay remote, but I've got a black Manley Reference mic that is just stellar. Mutt turned me on to that—he was using it on Shania and I just fell in love with the sound. Of course, I have tons of guitars and amps that I love.
I travel a lot, so I always try to keep as much as I can in the box because, for example, if I'm on the road with Shania and she wants to work on something, it’s easier for me to work in the box. When I'm traveling, I have a little remote studio: I use a UA Apollo interface, which I really like, and I love the plug-ins that I get with those. I'm a huge plug-in fan! I like a lot of the Waves plug-ins, and the plug-ins from Steven Slate as well.
What monitors are you using in the studio?
I have Kali Audio monitors and a couple of other stereo pairs that I sometimes hook up. I really like some old KRK V1s, but honestly, the Kalis have been so great for my 7.1.4 system and I've gotten so used to them for my Atmos mixes, that I'm using those for my stereo mix as well.
I also have several great pairs of headphones—Ultrasones and some Sonys—and then, of course, I use my car to check mixes.
Do you have a go-to signal chain for recording, or do you use something different every time?
Typically, I use the Manley mic for vocals, and an SM57 for guitars if I'm using an amp. I do like a lot of amp sims. UA makes some simulation pedals that sound really great and I use those direct if I need to; I've been using those on the road a lot.
I use the Avalon VT-737SP mic pre, EQ and compressor, and then sometimes I’ll use a 1073 mic pre, but most of that's in the box. I used to have the hardware units, but I just got so comfortable with the plug-ins that I thought, since I'm traveling a lot, it's easier to have them in the box.
What's a typical day in the studio like for you?
What's so great is that it's so different! Right now, because I'm going out with Shania on tour this summer, there's a lot of music direction work. I'm prepping the musicians, sending them stems so they can learn their parts, so it’s a lot of opening up Pro Tools, getting their parts ready, and bouncing arrangements for them to learn.
On the film and TV side, it could be sound design for trailers, or mixing and sound design for something like the NASCAR project. I also work for other clients like Warner Bros. and Paramount, for whom we're doing short-form content, like commercials and promo pieces.
Every day I wake up and see which client needs work on which project, and it's fun! It’s kind of a Swiss Army knife type of work where you don't know if it's going to be sound design or composing or music direction work or being on the road playing shows. [Laughs]
It's fun for me to not be doing the same thing every day. I know a lot of guys who are so great at mixing, and they have tons of mixing clients, but I like to change it up, work on different projects, and have different roles depending on what part of the team I'm working with.
Speaking of different roles, tell us about being music director for Shania Twain. It’s so great because you’re not an outsider who has come in to work on these songs—you were part of her first touring band, and you experienced how her songs were prepared for live performance right at the start of her touring career.
Thank you, it's been so much fun to be back! I love the new role and I was honored that she even asked me. She was in a different stage of her career where she had the Vegas residency, and was doing live festivals and dates overseas in Europe.
We had reconnected to catch up on life and kids, and then she called and said, “Hey, would you come back as music director?” It’s a great experience and another level of responsibility to take this iconic music and help bring that forth with a new band that didn't get to experience the education that we went through with Mutt and Shania to get this launched. It’s great to be able to share that experience of what it takes to produce that music on a live stage. It’s a lot of fun, and a lot of hard work.
I met with Shania, got direction from her, and she knew I'd been through the months and months of rehearsals back in the day, and I was going to pass that on. She gave me lead time to prep the stems, get all the original masters ready, and then pass out the parts that needed to be played by all the new musicians.
It’s been a lot of fun to see them go through similar training with me and for me to try to put on the Mutt hat in rehearsals. [Laughs] I don't take any credit or consider myself anywhere near that level, but to share what I learned from him and be able to pass that on to younger musicians about what it takes to produce and perform that type of music is great.
It’s a fine balance to strike between staying true to the original songs while still bringing a contemporary sound to them.
Yeah, a lot of the parts are so iconic, so we don't drift much from that, except in certain sections of the show where there's a little bit more creative liberty, like on a vamp or a solo. Most of the parts are so well arranged that we want to play true to those original parts, but what's cool is that every musician approaches music differently, just by how they play their instrument. So it's almost that it sometimes comes out a little different in the flair of how a musician approaches the part, just how they touch their instrument, the attack and dynamics… They might be playing it at a different part of the neck of the guitar or bass, and we have to make sure that it's still true to what was originally recorded, but then it’s about them putting their own spin on the part, which is fun.
Sometimes, if a part on the record was really clean, we might make the sound a little edgier so that it comes off better in a live environment, so maybe the tone or the sound of the guitar is a little different.
It’s a little trickier because we have a smaller band right now, so we’re having to use different tones, like something that really cuts through that makes the band sound fuller. It fills out the arrangement a little better if the sound is a little bigger because there are not as many people playing. In the original days, we had nine musicians and the sounds couldn’t be too big because then they kind of cloud the whole picture. That was always the genius of Mutt’s parts—each part could be smaller because there's so much going on. Right now, there are fewer musicians, so we can fill out the sounds of each part because there's more space.
Is there any gear that is key to your role as music director?
On the two guitar player spots, we're using the Fractal Axe-FX IIIs. Everything needs to be direct for what we're doing—we're not using any speaker cabinets for bass or guitars—so I got to pre-program all of the sounds for the show ahead of time in my studio.
It took months to do this. I went through each song and programmed both guitar player sounds, so when we got into rehearsal, all those parts and sounds were already pre-programmed, and then we could tweak the sounds during rehearsals. I would say that's a big key to the sound—just really dialing in the actual tones of the guitars ahead of time with direct emulation. It’s been great!
Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to talk about?
Well, I'm excited about the summer! It’s always fun to go out and play for the fans, and I get to enjoy being with Shania this summer.
Studio-wise, we just finished the NASCAR series. I have some things with FOX Sports coming up for TV that I'm excited about, but I can't really say anything. [Laughs]
We also do some post-production projects with Fender as well, like mixing for their artist spotlight features that showcase new endorsers. I'm on the post-production team, and being a guitar player, I'm excited about that.
You never know, we’ll see what's coming! But my focus right now is music direction for Shania’s summer show. I'm excited!
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