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 Mike choose RSPE and the Digidesign D-Command for his studio.
"RSPE is really a comfort to have… Dave is great, RSPE is great, I’m very loyal to them and they’re very loyal to me."
By Jennifer Kae Sound designer, mixer and effects editor, Mike Babcock talks about the integration of Digidesign’s D-Command with Pro Tools and why he chose RSPE. Mike has been working in the film and television sound business for over a decade. Eleven years ago he graduated from the University of Miami with a music engineering degree and a jazz saxophone degree. Right out of college, Todd AO hired him to be the sound effects editor on the television show, Melrose Place. “It was a relatively easy show to start learning things, and from there it went pretty fast, a lot of T.V. shows for a few years and then got more into features,” Mike said. Currently, Mike is working on a movie called Leatherheads, directed by George Clooney. Soon he will be starting sound design and mixing on a DreamWorks movie called A Tale of Two Sisters. What led you to choosing Digidesign’s D-Command and how has it improved your workflow? “What I do is I’m a sound designer and re-recording mixer and something that Pro Tools does, and starting to do very well, is this whole virtual mixing thing. I bought the D-Command because it’s really a great way to work… It’s really integral to how I work everyday as a sound designer using it as a creative tool, along with just a plain old straight forward mixing tool.” Mike explains that the resources of RSPE are a real comfort to have, since he’s working on his own and doesn’t have the luxury of an on-site technician. He felt at ease choosing RSPE to provide the D-Command because he knew that if anything went down or there was some kind of emergency, he could call RSPE for support. I understand that when Pro Tools 7.2 was released, mixers were really impressed with all the new mixing features. Can you elaborate on that? “It was a real step in the right direction. What they’re doing is turning a console like this [the D-Command] and the much larger ICON to basically a laid out [mixer]. To a mixer that’s been doing this for 20, 30 years, maybe even 40 if they can still hear, 7.2 really turned this situation into something that is more comfortable. Makes a lot of sense but it’s also really powerful… Now the software has made it so it’s just a really powerful tool for the price and a powerful way of working.” You’ve worked on many films as a sound designer, sound effects editor, and sound mixer. Are there certain plug ins in Pro Tools that you always seem to use? “I use a lot of the Digidesign stuff simply because it lays out on this board.” According to Mike, Digidesign has really designed their compressors and EQs for applications such as his. He uses a lot of the Waves and Soundtoys plug ins. He comments on Audio Ease’s Altiverb. “I’m a huge, huge, huge fan of Altiverb, it’s a very powerful sound design tool, and just a very powerful plain old reverb... I can’t say enough about it, it’s a tool that I couldn’t go without.” Do you use any sound libraries? If so, which ones? “I use a lot of my own, I do a lot of recording for films trying to make things original instead of sounding like a bunch of people with widgets or putting the same sound effect in, so a lot of my own I use, and a lot of things that other people have recorded like Richard King and John Fasal. A lot of the foley sound libraries I find very useful, because even though we have great foley, sometimes things need to be augmented.” Mike uses The Works and the Evil Effects libraries by Hollywood Edge. Tell me more about you recording your own unique sounds. “I just recently bought from RSPE a Sound Devices 722, which is a two channel hard disk, very robust recording system. Basically it’s a 40 gig hard drive that can record up to 192kHz 24 bit sound and has an especially clean mic preamp, really nice sounding, very useful and easy to use box that is also a very creative tool… But also with that device being able to record 192kHz, you can take a lot of really normal sounds and make them really interesting. Like taking a coke can and crushing it and because it’s recorded at such a high sample rate, slowing it way down and it sounds like a giant twisting metal thing. It’s part of a sound designers thing, is we have all these cool plug ins that we can do things with now but it’s still about trying to think of something you can record to do something with.” Mike’s favorite microphone when recording these sounds, is the Neumann RSM191 handheld microphone. He really likes the sound of it, its high fidelity and versatility makes it his primary microphone. “It’s easy to go from recording mono to stereo, you can decode it and easily go from recording a loud thing, to a door that doesn’t necessarily have to be this giant stereo thing, to an ambience; birds, water, that kind of thing.” What are your preferred speakers? “For my main speakers I actually really like these Mackie HR626s, the sub I have, which I just bought from RSPE, is a 12” Genelec. I really like these Mackies, they’re certainly not the most expensive speaker on the market, but for what I do, I love them. They seem to translate really well in this kind of environment to a big mixing stage where they have giant two and three way cinema systems… I really like the sound of them, and they work.” You’ve been working with Dave at RSPE for a while, what do you like about working with him and RSPE? “[Dave] has experience, he has his own creative pursuits in the business and so when I call him up about something as simple as a hard drive or hard drive enclosure, he understands where I’m coming from. Concerning a hard drive, anyone can go into Office Depot or Costco, and buy a big hard drive that can work for storing information or putting word files on, but does it necessarily work in our audio video world where we’re pretty rough on hard drives and when they go down can be a very big deal especially if in the middle of a film dub. He understands that, he understands technology, he understands what I’m trying to do creatively… It’s a great relationship to have. He’s not trying to sell me the latest, greatest thing… He understands all the feedback that he gets from me and from his other clients and his own personal experience why he could recommend something, I can recommend something to him and that experience is a big a reason to go there but also that peace of mind that I talked about earlier is a big deal. Dave is great, RSPE is great, I’m very loyal and they’re very loyal to me. And on top of all that, we’re talking about prices that are comparable to any other way of getting this gear that is available in multiple places. For me it’s a no-brainer.” |
