Producer, engineer and musician Stefan Dinkel recently installed a classic ASP4816 in his private studio, where he’s been starting to use a more hybrid approach. “I’ve been using the console for a few months now and I’m absolutely happy with it. It’s an amazing board – I love it!”
ASP4816 – “It’s an amazing board – I love it!”
Stefan had always worked in-the-box until a few years ago, when he started to build DIY hardware modules and integrate them into this setup. This quickly became confusing, as he explains: “I was looking for better ways to organise my increasingly hybrid setup.” That’s when he found Audient.
Stefan continues, “I looked at a few mixers in my price range and thought about how I could build my setup around each one. It quickly became clear to me that an inline concept would best meet my desire for a central, analogue hub. And the ASP4816 is a perfect fit for this.
Stefan Dinkel: “I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I can now do directly at the desk”
“Most of the analogue signals from my recording room go directly into the console’s 16 mic inputs. All line inputs, inserts and aux paths run on a patchbay, which is then used to integrate analogue hardware. Additional inputs are then added to the console, also flexibly via the patchbay directly via the converters into the DAW, or via the returns of the group channels into the console.
“On the way back from the DAW, 16 channels run directly into the console. Additional analogue channels can then be routed via the patchbay into the returns of the groups or into the short fader channels. This gives me a lot of flexibility to be able to react quickly and easily to all requirements without losing sight of the routing of the signals.”
Stefan tends to record his own projects, or bands he’s actually playing in, so he relies on a fixed setup at the desk. He makes sure the most important tracks and buses run back to the long faders and are processed on the desk with inserts, EQ and FX.
“Corrective single-track processing of the bus stems is then carried out digitally in the DAW. Since my mixing tends to work from top to bottom, I can do a large part of the mix on the desk and only have to intervene on a few individual tracks in the digital plane.” Using the ASP4816 has started to change the way he works! “I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I can now do directly at the desk and how little ultimately happens in the DAW.
“totally amazed at how well the console adapts to my way of working”
“Due to the extensive routing options on the ASP4816, it is very easy and fast to record all stems back to the DAW in one go after editing. In this way, I also have a kind of ‘total recall’ that is sufficient for my purposes. I’ve only been using the console for a few months and I’m still totally amazed at how well the console adapts to my way of working and, above all, how good it sounds. It’s just a lot of fun to work with!”
To find out more about projects Stefan is working on, check out these links on Facebook and Instagram.
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