Vintage King Equips GRAMMY-Winning Engineer Todd Robinson With Focal Trio6 Studio Monitors

Over the past decade and a half, Los Angeles-based Todd Robinson has built a solid discography, working with artists including DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Chloe x Halle, Roddy Ricch, DJ Snake, and many more. At the 2024 GRAMMY Awards, Todd took home not one but two trophies – ‘Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical’ and ‘Best R&B Album’ – for his work on Victoria Monét’s acclaimed Jaguar II. 

We recently sat down with Todd to talk about his work, his favorite plug-ins, and his new Focal Trio6 studio monitors, which fit the bill for what great critical-listening monitors should be. Read on to find out more.

Congratulations on the GRAMMY wins! The ‘Best Engineered Album’ award must have been extra special.

Thank you very much! That was really special. Just being involved in the GRAMMYs at all is such an honor, so being a part of that was really cool. I’m still kind of coming down from it! [Laughs] It was hard work and a lot of luck, I guess. I feel really blessed to be a part of that project.

Tell us a bit about the work that you do. What kind of artists are you drawn to?

I work in pop, R&B, and hip-hop, mostly as a tracking engineer and a mixing engineer. I've done some sound editing and dialogue work for television as well, but most of my work is still in music. I’ve been doing this for about 15 years, so I’ve been in the game for a long time – I’m one of the old guys now. [Laughs]

I've always been drawn to working with vocalists – I do work with a lot of producers as well, but I started out in music as a singer, so my background is in vocals. I think one of the reasons I got along so well with Victoria is because my focus is on vocals. I wouldn't say there's a particular kind of artist that I'm drawn to, though. I'm kind of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to music because I have a deep love for music in general – all genres and all styles.

What drew you to the Focal Trio6 Studio Monitors?

When you're going to buy a new pair of studio monitors, there's a lot of listening that goes into it and I've gone through that process a few times in my career when it was time for new monitors. You don't just pull something off the shelf and go, “Yeah, we're going to try that”.

This ties into the whole purchasing process for me with Vintage King. They have a really good listening setup at the Vintage King Los Angeles Showroom in Burbank, so you're listening to all sorts of different monitors.

For me, it comes down to hearing songs that I know through and through – songs that I've worked on or that I've listened to thousands of times – knowing what they’re supposed to sound like and then being able to hear that on the different monitors. I need to have the full frequency spectrum recreated there. 

It's this special, unique thing where you just know when it sounds right, sounds authentic, and sounds honest. So that's the process for me, and I think the Focal Trio6s were one of the best options available when it came to the pureness of the sound, the speed of the transients, and all that kind of stuff. 

Do you have a go-to song that you pull up when you’re auditioning monitors?

I have a few, including one song that Josh Gudwin mixed for Dua Lipa – “Don’t Start Now”.  It kind of depends on the mood I'm in, I guess, but that's definitely one of them. It obviously needs to be something that has a lot of low end, because in the genres that I work – pop, R&B, and hip-hop – low end is a really important aspect, so it needs to be tight. That's part of the reason why I go for that Dua Lipa record – the kick and the bass relationship that Josh created in his mix is kind of perfect in my mind.

What do you think of the low-end response of the Focal Trio6 monitors?

I love it! I think it's rare to get a monitor that actually captures as much as the Trio6 does. It goes down incredibly well, so when it comes to the 808, the sub-bass, and the kick – all these things that I'm really focusing on in my mixes – it does an amazing job. 

How do mixes on the Focal Trio6 monitors translate to other systems?

Incredibly well. One of the most important things for me with monitors is being able to trust what I'm hearing. I've had these for about two months now, and it was incredible how quickly I adapted to them. Usually, there's a certain amount of time it takes to learn what you're hearing and learn how to change the workflow, but with the Trio6s I felt like I was off to the races within a matter of days; it’s a really refreshing thing.

Once you get into gear from the high-end category, it's really about the small things. The sound is the main thing, obviously, and there are a lot of other great brands in the category, but the way that I could hear what I needed to hear on these monitors really changed the game for me.

Also, the option of being able to change between a vertical and horizontal orientation is a really big deal for me. I like that because you don't quite know how a monitor is going to work in your space. Bringing them home, I immediately knew I needed to have them sideways, so that's a really cool feature of the Trio6s to me.

I might be moving studios in the next year or two, so I have the option to re-format what I need to do in the room. It's about the all-round quality – the build quality, the relationship I was able to develop with the people at Focal… it's a great brand and one that I'm really happy with. 

How have the monitors impacted your workflow in the studio?

They’ve impacted speed, which comes from being able to trust the decisions that you're making and knowing that the sound is going to translate to other systems. You don't want to have to hear a mix on one set of speakers, test it on another set, and then have to change things. So I think that's the biggest thing – being able to trust what you're hearing, which translates to speed. It means when I send out a mix, it’s right.

What are some of your favorite pieces of outboard gear?

Most of my mixing is in the box now, so I'm primarily using outboard gear for vocal tracking and for that, I’m one of the classics guys – a main vocal chain of a Neve pre and Tube-Tech CL 1B. I would call them standard pieces of outboard gear that everybody has, so those are what I go to. If I had to pick one favorite piece of gear, that would be it.

That was actually a question we had for you – do you have a go-to signal chain for recording, or do you use something different every time?

For pop, R&B, and hip-hop vocals, I'm almost always on a Neve 1073 and a CL 1B. Depending on the vocalist and depending on the style, that might change. I might swap out the compressor for either a Blackface 1176, or sometimes an LA-2A even, for more pop vocals. But most of the time, I just really like the simplicity of a CL 1B: I know what it sounds like and I use it very cleanly without really changing the sound too much, so I kind of stick to it.

Which microphones do you find yourself using most often?

Mics are really particular to the vocalists themselves, so I always go for the microphone that matches with the vocalist. I use a lot of Neumanns, which I guess is the most generic answer you’re going to get because that's what everybody uses. [Laughs]

The U 47, U 87, and U 67s are my main go-tos, but again, it really depends on the vocalist. I like testing out a lot of microphones on different vocalists to see what the best sound is when we first start working, and then we can change depending on the song and the style that we're going for.

Victoria Monét’s vocals are delicate and intimate, but she also has a lot of power – how do you record someone like her?

Victoria really can, like you mentioned, get very intimate with the vocal so when you're tracking somebody with a dynamic range like that – which goes from fairly quiet to fairly loud quickly – it really comes down to dialing in your gain on the way in.

As far as technique goes, you have to be ready for anything with most vocalists like that. Victoria has a dynamic voice and such a great way of performing in the studio, so I just try to do my best to capture what she's doing.

How do you feel about plug-ins?

Oh man, plug-ins are everything nowadays! There are so many great companies and the quality has gone through the roof. I utilize so many plug-ins, so it’s hard to narrow down what I’m using, but I'm always trying to see how something can help my workflow, speed things up, or change the sound of what I'm working on.

As for my mainstays – on the recording and mixing side, I still use a lot of plug-ins from Waves, FabFilter, Plugin Alliance, Brainworx, and, of course, Auto-Tune. Also, shoutout to Goodhertz for sure, because I use them a lot too. On the production side, which I do as well, there are a million different synths and sound generators that I use, like Native Instruments, for one… the list goes on and on.

Honestly, some of the stuff that I'm using the most nowadays is some of the most boring. [Laughs] There’s a plug-in called dpMeter that I started using after watching this guy called Baphometrix on YouTube who talks about the way he does his gain staging. He uses the normalizing gain function in conjunction with some clipping to get the most out of each of his tracks, so that's something I'm using on almost every track now. What it does is not necessarily a crazy change to the sound but, from a gain staging perspective, it’s really helpful to me.

It’s interesting to see how workflow changes over time. Certain plug-ins appear and all of a sudden, you're like, “I love this!” and you use it a lot. Then, over the years, I’ll find a different way of doing things. I'm always trying to learn. I'm reading and I’m on YouTube watching videos about other people's processes, because it's so fascinating how many different ways there are to do this. There's no right or wrong answer; everything's kind of subjective, and people have a lot of cool ways they’ve invented to get the most out of their songs, which is an interesting thing.

What's a typical day like for you?

Some days I'm at home, mixing, editing, or writing in my home studio. If I'm with an artist at a studio, it can vary but usually, we're either writing or recording, so I'll go in with the production team and create some ideas for the artist or the vocalist to catch a vibe to.

Sometimes that can take an hour, and sometimes it can take a day; it just depends on how the creative juices are flowing and how everybody's feeling. Once the artist finds a vibe that they really like, they will pop into the vocal booth, and then, boom! A song is born. So that's kind of a typical day in the studio – it depends on what the goals are. 

Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to talk about? 

There's definitely some stuff I can't talk about! [Laughs] Over the course of the last few months, we've got the ball rolling on Victoria’s next project. I don't know for sure how those releases are going to come out – she might drop some singles or she might drop a whole project. I think she's really challenged herself to take it to the next level, so I'm really excited about what's coming out of those sessions.

I've also been working on some television projects that I can't really go into too much detail about, but I'm excited for that part of my career to continue to grow. I’m working in the podcast space as well to put out a few new shows, so I’m doing a little bit of everything right now…it’s exciting!

If you’re interested in purchasing a pair of Trio6 monitors for your studio or have any questions about other Focal products, contact a Vintage King Audio Consultant via email or by phone at 866.644.0160.