Surrey, January 2009 - On a beautiful bright day in Surrey at The Farm studio, the spiritual home of Genesis, we find Nick Davis, long time engineer and producer for Genesis, back behind the desk and in full flow on a new project.
Although a few years have passed since the last Genesis studio album, Nick has spent a lot of time recently at The Farm working on 5.1 mixes for the entire back catalogue of Genesis studio albums for SACD release, using Audient’s ASP510 Surround Sound Controller to monitor the mixes.
Of the process, Nick comments, “I used it on all of the back catalogue, all 14 studio albums. It made this SSL desk (4000E) usable in 5.1 and it worked fantastically, transforming the desk. It’s great because this desk has quad outputs so you can generate your front left and right and your rear left and right, then just with a couple of extra sub groups for centre and sub and I was there. It worked really well.”
Intrigued by the use of the sub channel, Luke Baldry of Audient asked, “Did you put much in the sub channel? I know many producers avoid that altogether”.
Nick replied with the enthusiasm that every Genesis fan will relate to, “Er yes, the bass pedals, that’s the good thing about Genesis for 5.1, also the bass drum, a bit of bass, that was it.”
Of the final mixing stage Luke probed further, “Were you mixing to a DAW?”
Nick replied assuredly, “No I was mixing to Sonoma, which is the Sony DSD, so SACD format. The Sonoma was plugged into the PLAYB input on the ASP510, the set up was really good”.
For more information about Nick, please visit http://www.nickdavis.org.uk
