JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser.
Stock up on studio essentials before your next session. Explore top selling gear from the best brands.
Checkout using your account
This form is protected by reCAPTCHA - the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Checkout as a new customer
Creating an account has many benefits:
There were a lot of great moments at the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards. One thing you may have missed amongst all of the excitement; Peter Gabriel's album i/o took home two of the most coveted awards (for audio nerds, at least): Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical) and Best Immersive Audio Album.
Released in December 2023, i/o is Peter Gabriel’s first new studio album in more than 20 years. In a way that only a ‘70s prog rock legend like Gabriel can pull off, i/o transforms a relatively simple concept (input and output), into a multifaceted musical journey exploring “Birth and death, with sex in the middle” (according to the artist). Across 12 intricately and superbly produced tracks; i/o touches on themes of connectedness, joy, aging, technology, and justice; all while delivering plenty of memorable hooks and unexpected sounds.
In another unorthodox move that only someone like Peter Gabriel could pull off, the album received three separate mixes: a “Bright-Side Mix” by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, a “Dark-Side Mix” by Tchad Blake, and an “In-Side Mix” in Dolby Atmos by Hans-Martin Buff. Working with the same raw material—expertly engineered by the staff of Gabriel’s Real World Studios—these three mixers created three unique interpretations that each bring out different qualities in the music.
i/o may have flown under the radar during the GRAMMYs due to being nominated in a technical category (and eclipsed by the mainstream pop spectacles onstage), but we believe this adventurous, boundary-pushing album deserves a closer look.
Some of the songs on i/o began life in the mid-1990s, during the writing process for Gabiel’s 2002 album Up. With more than 120 songs left over after the release, Gabriel announced his intention to complete a follow-up by 2004. But instead, his focus shifted back to touring and his studio efforts were dedicated to a series of cover albums, soundtrack work, and various collaborations. In 2019, he took a hiatus to see his wife through cancer treatment.
It wasn’t until 2021 that Gabriel officially revived the i/o project, starting with writing and recording sessions at Real World with bassist Tony Levin, guitarist David Rhodes, and percussionist Manu Katché. These sessions were engineered by Real World Studios Head Engineer Katie May, former Head Engineer Oli Jacobs, and Gabriel’s keyboard tech Dom Shaw. Other contributions included synths and percussion by Brian Eno, orchestral arrangements by John Metcalfe, vocals by Gabriel’s daughter Melanie, and collaborations with about two dozen more musicians and five other studios.
Starting in January 2023, Gabriel began releasing songs from the record on each full moon, accompanied by “Full Moon Update” vlogs on his YouTube channel. These videos provide a tantalizing inside look at the making of i/o via B-roll and time-lapse footage from the band sessions. In these sessions, Gabriel holds court from his personal workstation in the center of “The Big Room” with his engineers behind him, Levin and Rhodes on either side, and Katché directly across from him. “I think the first time it was played with a lot of energy was in the band session,” Gabriel says in the first update.
Gabriel’s station includes his trusty Korg Kronos keyboard, a Sony C800-G vocal mic, and a pair of Neumann KH80 nearfield monitors. The engineers are ensconced behind the studio’s wrap-around SSL 9000K console and racks of outboard gear, including a Roland Space Echo stacked atop a fully loaded API 500VPR and a custom rack of vintage Neve 33122 preamp/EQ modules.
On the drums, we can see a spaced pair of Neumann U 87 overheads, a Shure SM57 on the snare, and AKG C 414s on the toms. The piano appears to be miked with Schoeps CMC 6 condensers, of which the studio has a whopping 28 available on request. To capture the Big Room’s controlled natural reverb, there’s a Neumann KU100 binaural “dummy head” planted right in the middle of the band. The videos also show orchestra sessions at British Grove Studios, which is equipped with a 96-channel Neve 88RS and a dizzying array of Neumanns.
The decision to issue multiple mixes ties into the binary/trinary theme of the album, but it could just as well be chalked up to Gabriel’s appreciation for different mixing styles. "I'm lucky to have two of the world's best mix engineers; Tchad Blake and Mark 'Spike' Stent, working with me on the music from i/o," Gabriel said in a message to fans in 2023. "Rather than choosing only one of their mixes to release, I have decided that people should be able to hear all the great work that they are both doing."
Stent’s Bright-Side mixes are noticeably brighter-sounding, especially in the tone of the vocals, percussion, and acoustic instruments. Blake’s Dark-Side mixes aren’t lacking in high-end, but they definitely lean a bit heavier on the bass, feature murkier-sounding reverbs, and plenty of gritty distortion and compression. Both versions of the album are expertly mixed, but certain tracks seem to favor one mix or the other (we’ll let you be the judge).
“I think Tchad’s very much a sculptor,” Gabriel explained in a video leading up to the album’s release. “The way he builds the journey with sound and drama, and I think maybe his has a darker narrative to it. Spike, I think, loves sound and balancing and assembling these sort of ‘pictures.’ It’s almost like he’s more of a painter and Tchad’s more of a sculptor.”
Blake reportedly worked on the Dark-Side mixes in the Big Room at Real World, one of his primary workspaces since he moved to the UK in 2001 while mixing Up. The Big Room features multiple sets of monitors, including a custom 9.1.4 Exigy system (with overheads only visible in more recent videos). Stereo reference monitors include ATC SCM25As, Yamaha NS-10s, and Mackie HR824s. A 2023 Instagram post indicated that Blake did at least some mixing at his own Full Mongrel Studio as well.
Stent works primarily out of his two Mix Suite studios: one in the UK and one in Los Angeles (located in EastWest Studios). Stent is an official KRK Artist and a longtime user of the (discontinued) KRK 9000B, but he has been known to use at least three sets of monitors at any given time, including the Genelec 1036A, Barefoot Sound MicroMain, Pioneer RM-07, and Yamaha NS-10.
Always excited by the artistic possibilities of new technology, Gabriel was keen on commissioning an immersive Dolby Atmos mix of i/o in addition to the stereo mixes. “I had a sort of immersive audio fantasy,” he said in the video above, adding that he “Spoke to one of the Sennheiser bosses who was very helpful and said, ‘If you want to do any of this stuff and take it seriously, you should be talking to [Hans-Martin] Buff.’”
Buff created the In-Side Mixes in the Red Room at Real World and at his own studio, Aural Majority Pad. The Red Room features a 7.1.4 ATC monitor system with SCM45 three-way monitors in the front (LCR) positions, two-way SCM12s in the surround and overhead positions, and an SCM 0.1-15 subwoofer. Monitor control is handled by the Grace Design M908, and an SSL X-Desk enables hybrid mixing and analog summing.
According to a review by Jonathan Cornell on Immersive Audio Album, “The ‘In-Side Mix’ is a completely unique interpretation of the album, not modeled after either stereo mix. It even includes unique instrumentation recorded explicitly for the purpose of enhancing the immersive experience, such as additional acoustic guitars in ‘Panopticom’ and extra percussion in ‘The Court’.”
“3D music, as presented in Dolby Atmos, is so much more than moving sounds all over the place,” Buff is quoted saying on petergabriel.com. “It’s not just a new way of mixing, it’s a way of making music that’s bigger and more rewarding than anything that came before. Peter gets it. To him, stereo and 3D versions don’t have to match, they just ‘both have to be great,’ and to me, that is a creative dream come true.”
In 2025, a record like i/o could never hope to compete for Album of the Year with the likes of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, but when it comes to the technical category, it’s hard to beat the creativity and innovation on display. Here are the details on the two GRAMMYs i/o took home this year.
The GRAMMY Award for Best Engineered Album recognizes the recording, mixing, and mastering engineers behind the winning album, rather than the actual artist. Past winners in the Non-Classical include Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, The Flaming Lips’ At War With the Mystics, Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color, David Bowie’s Blackstar, and Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?—high standards to meet, and those are just from this century.
This year, i/o was up against albums by Sabrina Carpenter, Kacey Musgraves, and Willow (among others).
Legendary mixing engineer Bob Clearmountain presented the award to recording engineers Oli Jacobs, Katie May, and Dom Shaw, along with mastering engineer Matt Colton (Blake and Stent were absent, presumably at their homes in the UK).
In his acceptance speech, Jacobs said of Gabriel, “The trust that he puts in his engineers is amazing. He will record anything, from the coffee mug in front of him to his dog barking, and he will try his best to turn that into an instrument—which might explain why this record took 20 years to make.”
Formerly known as the GRAMMY Award for Best Surround Sound Album, this award was officially renamed in 2019 following the music industry’s growing adoption of immersive formats like Dolby Atmos. Previous winning albums include Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms (20th Anniversary Edition), the Beatles remix album Love, Beyoncé’s 2013 self-titled album, and two Alicia Keys records.
The award goes to the artist as well as the engineers and producers directly involved in the immersive mix. For i/o, the team included Peter Gabriel, longtime collaborator Brian Eno, Atmos mixer Hans-Martin Buff, and producer Richard Russell. The album was nominated alongside immersive remixes of Avalon by Roxy Music and Genius Loves Company by Ray Charles, as well as two orchestral albums mixed by Morton Lindberg.
Accepting the award on behalf of the team, Buff said, “This is a huge recognition for immersive music that isn’t a remake of something else, but something special. It’s a huge musical adventure, so I want to thank my fellow adventurers; most of all Mr. Peter Gabriel, who’s the biggest pirate I’ve ever met.” Buff also thanked his late mentor, Prince, with whom he started his career as a studio tech at Paisley Park in 1995.
The fact that such an unorthodox album won GRAMMYs for engineering and immersive audio offers some hope the music industry is open to new ways of thinking, especially when it comes to mixing. Peter Gabriel didn’t care that i/o’s streaming numbers would be split between the Bright-Side and Dark-Side tracks, nor that the Atmos mixes differ noticeably from the stereo mixes—he simply appreciates different ways of experiencing art and trusted his collaborators to interpret his music through their own lenses.
When it comes to immersive audio, i/o shows us that music created specifically for the format can deliver a much more powerful experience than simply adapting a stereo mix or remixing stems of old music. If you haven’t listened to i/o yet, dig into all three versions and let them change the way you think about sound forever.
* Required Fields
exclamation-circle
