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California-based data scientist and musician John Akred creates and records music in a unique space – an 1879 log cabin made of old-growth Redwoods, which give the space a rich acoustic quality. When he decided to upgrade his console recently, he opted for the iconic warm and punchy API sound that he loves.
Read on to learn what drew John to the API 2448 console, how the Avid MTRX II interface fits into his workflow, why he went with BURL Audio Mothership as his converters of choice, and what it’s been like working with Vintage King.
How did you get started in music?
I’ve been playing guitar since I was ten years old. When I was around fourteen, I got a 4-track cassette recorder, and since then I’ve always invested in my ability to record the music I worked on.
In the ‘90s, right after college, I played in indie rock bands in Chicago; and played a lot of shows with bands like Wilco, Urge Overkill, Fruit Bats, and many others. I eventually bought a building in Chicago and cobbled together a classic indie rock band studio, with an old TAC Matchless board that we found. In 2005, the studio had a fire, and that derailed my space for recording music for a while.
Back in the day, making Pro Tools work with 24 tracks at 16-bit and 44.1k was a tricky thing to do; you needed to be pretty fancy with how you did it. It turns out that those skills are highly useful in Computer Science, for high-end computational data problems – in particular, what became known as machine learning, which is what all the kids are calling AI now. [Laughs] So while I was working on music, the math-y part of my brain took what I'd learned about data architecture and I wound up doing it in Silicon Valley. That’s how I ended up in California, ultimately working for Apple.
Throughout that time, I’d been a songwriter working with other songwriters and musicians, recording in small bedrooms for a while, using a Shadow Hills Equinox. When I moved into the place I’m in now, I got an API Box because I had a little bit more room.
I decided to focus on making music for the love of it with people I liked doing it with, and not trying to put commercial requirements on that because I realized I would spend a lot of time on music I didn’t love. Some people are able to do that and engage with it, but for me, it’s always been more about me and my friends’ expressions and the rest of it is secondary. So my friends and I make and record things together and put out a lot of it, never burdened by commercial concerns or commercial success. [Laughs] We also do living room shows, where we’ll actually have 30 or 40 people here while we’re playing something, and it’s fun to be able to record that live.
What inspired you to upgrade to the 32-channel API 2448 console?
I live in a very unique place that, when I found it, I was like, “Dear God, the acoustics of this place are amazing and the people selling it have no idea!” [Laughs] It’s not a recording space, it’s a log cabin that was built in 1879, which makes it ancient in terms of anything on the peninsula, or in California, for that matter. It has survived all the earthquakes. [Laughs]
It was the hunting lodge of a California Supreme Court Justice that they moved down in 1900, with horses, to its current site. A 25-foot ladder was not tall enough to get to the peak of the ceiling, so it’s somewhere north of 25 feet at its apex. It’s all post and beam construction and the walls are three feet thick and full of wood – it’s like being on the inside of a guitar or something; the sound of it is exquisite. I’ve got a couple of Earthworks measurement mics on the rafters to get the sound of the room.
However, I was married to a woman who was not a recording studio enthusiast, and then I wasn’t, so there was no one to stop me from pursuing my passion for recording in terms of both financial arguments and space allocation. [Laughs] Being freed of those constraints gave me the ability to think about a real console.
I was already comfortable with the Box, which had a brilliant form factor for being crammed into, essentially, a second-bedroom kind of space, and the 2448 is obviously a lot more complex, but I love the API sound so it was both a logical extension and the best fit for what I want to do.
How does the console integrate with your workflow?
I’m one of those people who wants everything set up and ready to record with the push of a button, so it’s essentially supporting a room that is arranged so that whether you want to put a keyboard part down, a guitar part down, whatever it is… there are amps with mics in front of them; you’re not having to patch anything in, you’re basically just lighting something up, and then you hit record.
The 2448 is really great for that kind of workflow, so it seemed to make the most sense given that I’m trying to do what seems like a dying art – I'm almost maniacally focused on capturing live performances in an acoustic space. We don’t do everything live religiously, but even something like harmonies – we can do two of them at once and it’s way more fun to play that way.
That style of recording is what also pushed me to finally bite the bullet on Pro Tools. I’ve used it plenty over the years, but ponying up to be able to monitor everything in real-time and not have to think about it was another big driver. The console just seemed like the right choice to support that kind of workflow, while having the sound I like.
What are some of your favorite features of the 2448?
Final Touch Automation. God, that’s fun! It’s like the best video game ever, if you’re me. [Laughs] It really supports the routing and flexibility.
I do a lot of Mid/Side stuff with a Josephson C700S stereo microphone – it’s a work of art – and I do not know why everybody doesn’t use that on the drum overhead. It sounds incredible when you run it through a Manley Variable MU with the Mid/Side mod, and then through a Massive Passive EQ.
I’m taking two mid elements (that I’ve got to mix) and one side element, and then I send them to the Manley to get it decoded. I want to print it as individual elements because you can move the stereo field by how you mix those first two. So I’m using a bus to mix the first two together and get it all back in a way that I can still send it out to headphones – the drummer can hear a stereo image – and that’s the kind of stuff that the 2448 is set up to do really well.
How did you customize the console for your needs?
I got the DAW bucket in the middle. Perhaps because I work for Apple, and I can get it at a discount, I have a beautiful, super high res, 32-inch monitor sitting in that bucket, within half an inch of the tolerances. It is a thing of beauty, the way it just feels built-in.
There’s no built-in trough for cabling in the back of the console, and I wanted to be able to have additional monitors to work with, so I took two old Sound Anchors speaker stands and built what amounts to a combination monitor stand and cable trough. It’s hard to describe, but it’s quite a contraption and it allows me to have two more of those lovely Apple monitors sitting on top of the console. I like the ability to have that kind of screen real estate to work with while editing or tracking, but they’re both on swivel mounts so that I can move them out of the acoustical way when I want because it totally messes with the stereo image unless you’re sitting in exactly the right spot.
What was it like working with Vintage King during the purchase of the console?
It was a great experience. It was a long project because I’ve had intermittent health issues to deal with during this time, and everybody has been very patient and understanding around that.
I have been in a lot of studios but I have not worked in anybody else’s studio in the last 15 years, so how the cool kids are doing things these days is a considerable blind spot for me. [Laughs] A lot of the value that Cedric and Frank added was helping me think through the ways of doing the wiring, with things that I wouldn’t have thought of just because I've always had an XLR patch bay for my mic runs because I didn’t have that many.
They are used to people who are doing things in professional studios where everything is underfloor and super clean, but my place is a landmark and we can't cut holes in the floor, so a lot of the stuff runs around the periphery in ways you can’t see. We built mic panels into end tables, for example, which works really well functionally, and actually fits into this rustic space elegantly without getting in trouble with the Landmark Commission because this is a historic landmark and I can’t mess with it too much.
So working with Vintage King was a really good experience, and I say that not because it was a perfect, easy thing to accomplish – there was some learning and growing pains – but they were really patient and constructive.
Tell us about the Avid MTRX II interface and why you chose it.
Basically, I was so tired of spending my mental energy figuring out how to do the cue mix for this setup. If I’m recording a full band, I want all the cues and then suddenly I don’t want any of them because I want to be able to have a subtle mix and it’s like, “If I was in a Dante world, this would get so much easier”. I wanted to get to where I could work quickly and intuitively; to exist in a real-time monitoring world because it’s all about capturing live performance and the MTRX II was able to get me there.
I’ve also got an Allen & Heath live PA that speaks Dante, which is what the live mics would run through and that becomes the headphone mix. Sometimes you’re putting it through PA speakers, because you’re just playing live or rehearsing in the room and you want to record it too, and sometimes you mute the speakers because you’re tracking, and you want to go from one to the other because you just rehearsed live and you want to hear everything and then you want to go and record. That’s the kind of workflow I think I can create elegantly with the MTRX – being able to operate quickly and effectively, or else the idea is gone.
Inspiration can disappear very quickly if you have to stop to set up gear.
Exactly. I have a very complicated relationship with guitar pedals because of this. Because, say one time out of ten, I go to play guitar and nothing comes out! It’s somewhere in the pedalboard. [Laughs] So you come up with ways of pulling things out of the chain really quickly to get to playing.
One of the things I love about recording studios, which is actually something I have in common with my software engineering world, is that the software systems are online, real-time systems that can’t ever be broken, just like real recording studios are run so that if you’re the artist, nothing is ever broken; and if something is, it’s replaced within seconds. I can’t quite do that at home but I can try to get close to a relatively low-friction world where we can hit record and get going. The older I get, the more I optimize for reliability over complexity.
What converters are you using?
I’ve got the BURL Audio Mothership with 32 I/O going into the HDX. I have a B2 Bomber for my D/A conversion and I have the Rupert Neve Designs Master Buss Converter in the other direction.
The people who do what I do, which is the live band thing, are all using BURLs. The silly way I phrase it sometimes is, “What would Dave Grohl do?” [Laughs] I really like the sound of the BURLs – you can hit them in a way that feels like tape.
I’ve always invested in converters. I had the Lucid converters way back in the ancient times, and they sounded really good. I had a lot of inferior gear going on but I really think the converter is a place that makes a difference in terms of the sound.
I will have 16 of the MTRX for auxiliary stuff, like effects sends, monitor sends, and things like that. I could always A/B them and be eating my words pretty quickly and be adding to the MTRX. [Laughs] But I think the BURL for me is the epitome if you’re working in digital. I’d love to have a tape deck, but the only way I’d do that is by becoming an actual tape deck repair person. The BURL is the closest I’ll get to that world because there’s still a lot of iron involved. The converters are very, very good.
How do you feel about plug-ins?
I’ve always been a big fan of the UAD plug-ins. I haven’t messed with any of the native ones yet because I’ve already paid for the full ones and I have plenty of processing power, so why would I? In particular, I like the compressors, the tape, and the delays. They sound very good and as close as one is going to get to analog representation in the digital domain.
I’ve got a lot of hardware now, and I don’t need to rely on it nearly as much as I used to. Plug-ins are very useful for surgical EQing and corrective stuff like that.
Do you have a go-to signal chain for recording, or do you use something different every time?
I really like Tree Audio products.
For my voice, I use either the RCA 44 BX mic (the anniversary edition one with a switchable EQ mod), or the Neumann U 67 reissue. For the other singer that I work with a lot, the Neumann M 149 works really well, going into either an Avalon 737 or the Tree Audio, and then typically Distressors in the mix on the way out.
But I think the most interesting thing I do, from a chain perspective, is the drum overheads, like I said earlier. It’s the C700S from Josephson, into the Earlybird from Thermionic Culture as a preamp, and then that gets printed uncompressed but is also monitored and mixed through the Manley Vari Mu with the Mid/Side mod into a Massive Passive EQ.
Then it’s getting mixed into a kit that’s probably going to have an overall drum bus compression on it. That stereo mic mixed only with a Telefunken M80 on the kick is compelling. You don’t need tom mics or a snare mic; you don’t need anything because the image is so vivid. It’s one of the things that is key to how I get that drum sound.
What’s a typical day in the studio for you?
Typically, there are weeks when there are a bunch of people in town and we do some tracking, and then in between those are periods of overdubbing, mixing, writing, and things like that. It’s really fun because we sort of push the world away when everybody gathers around here. It’s a nice place to hang out; the backyard is designed as a lounge; we’re in California, so there are things being cooked on the grill and we eat late but we eat well. There’s space for visiting folks to sleep, so it’s a place that will get filled up full of musicians and become a destination recording studio of sorts.
Are you working on any exciting projects that you’re able to talk about?
I’m working on three main things right now. There’s a solo record by an artist called Mikey Manville; we’ve done five or six records together at this point. We’ve got 14 songs in the can – one needs a little bit of work, but the rest are ready to mix.
Then there’s a fellow from London called Johnny Howell who I've been writing and playing with. It turns out he also plays the saxophone and was holding out on me. [Laughs] He’s great at guitar and piano, so it didn’t occur to me to ask if he was actually gifted on other instruments as well, but it turns out he’s a musical prodigy type. He’s a very gifted songwriter, and he pushes us in a more 4-note jazz chord direction, which is much more interesting. Finally, I occasionally do my own stuff as well [laughs], and I expect to release my record early next year.
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