When producer and live engineer Ben Capp isn’t travelling the world with acclaimed jazz trio Mammal Hands, he’s tucked away in his Hampshire countryside studio — mixing, mastering and making sense of a busy recording schedule that includes Around About Dusk, Mammal Hands, Edward Chilvers and more.
In between sessions at Giant Wafer Studios and life on the road, Ben recently upgraded from iD44 to the new flagship desktop interface, iD48. He hasn’t looked back.
From expanding his input count and insert options, to keeping his desk space clean and flexible, iD48 fits seamlessly into Ben’s hybrid workflow — both at home and on location.
Here’s Ben with the full story…
The recent session at Giant Wafer studios went great. It was with a band called Around About Dusk featuring some of Bristol’s finest jazz and folk musicians, lead by singer and songwriter Rachel Lawrence, for their debut originals album. This one was the second recording I’ve done at Giant Wafer this year, after tracking the new Mammal Hands album a few months back.
I’m mixing both albums at my home studio which is how I love to work: tracking with some nice preamps and outboard in nicely treated spaces, and mixing (sometimes mastering) at home where I’m able to be a little more flexible with my time – in a space I’m very familiar with. I’ll soon be adding another album to the schedule which will be for Edward Chilvers’ new works: highly accomplished piano music using multitempo techniques. We’ll have all three albums out in early 2026, with a plan for some Around About Dusk singles at the end of this year. This will work around my live sound work.
I’ve been lucky enough, especially since the COVID years, to juggle live and studio which has served me well. The industry has been greatly impacted and I believe we’re yet to see the scale of it, but Mammal Hands were well established before 2020 and as a result, I’ve been fortunate in my work and my choices.
Those years did make me re-evaluate various aspects of my life though, as I’m sure was the case for many people. For me, it meant moving away from Bristol and eventually giving up my studio space there. The running costs of a studio had become a bit of a burden. Not great when we – those working in music – want to remain creative and allow our energy to flow into projects we really care about. This is where I’m at.
Having my home studio in the Hampshire countryside (not too far from the Audient HQ!) means I get the best of both worlds. I can travel the world with Mammal Hands and then be at home around nature which offers me the physical and mental perspective to approach the projects. This is so important to me and, I think, more widely to human beings. And this is why Giant Wafer has been extremely valuable too, being a residential studio in the Welsh countryside.
The idea behind getting hold of the new iD48 and upgrading from the iD44 MKII was based on a number of reasons. Firstly, as much as I love the format of the iD44 MKII – and especially its iD knob function – as a desktop and portable interface, it also meant a fairly cluttered desk space, especially when you’re using all sorts of outboard, fx and inserts.
One of the great things about the iD48 is just how neat it is. It sits directly in front of my mixing position anyway, clears my space and is there only when I need it. With a fairly recent addition of the nOb Control, I have a dedicated (and weighted) single knob controller for precision use with virtual faders and automation and also easily adjusting EQ width and plugin parameters. This thing is brilliant and I’ve tried a bunch of different larger controllers which for me are over the top or don’t match my workflow. And that’s speaking as a live engineer as well; for me you either want all the faders or otherwise it’s about keeping it focussed. You can get pretty close to a nOb controller with the iD desktop series options though too, and the iD44ii was what inspired this for me.
Secondly, the iD48 has just built on the features that the iD range started – and so now having the option of choosing your ADC path for each of the 8-channels is great, with the option to insert outboard onto every channel should you want to. It’s then upped my potential input count to 24 should I ever need it at my home set up, and more likely for mobile recordings. This time round, at Giant Wafer, I used the in-house Antelope/MADI setup which worked great and allowed an easier integration of preamps and outboard with it being installed and ready to go, but it’s great to know the iD48 (alongside ADAT equipped preamps) could get you similar functionality and results.
The overall potential of the iD48 means that I’m in no way limited for my needs. It can do everything I throw at it; tracking with console-grade mic pre’s, mixing with outboard and good monitoring and even swapping over to playing a vinyl through it, or just playing some guitar. I do that via a lovely Tone King Imperial II preamp pedal directly into the iD48, all with a choice of ADC path options. It has the pro functionality without overcomplicating things. And it looks neat without any unnecessary lights and distractions from the screen or, more importantly, the sound stage.
For these reasons I had no real need to keep hold of the iD44 and I hope that’s now found a good home. If I were doing lots of mobile recording, maybe I’d want a smaller, desktop solution as well, but for now having my main interface bolted in above my SSL Fusion works great for me.
Thanks for sharing, Ben!
