Last month we caught up with Michalis Michael – better known by his trade name MsM - the professional mixing engineer revered for his work with top tier names such as BoyBetterKnow, Skepta, Rick Ross, slowthai, Wiley, Professor Green to name but a few.
SCV was thrilled to play a part in furnishing MsM with a new key piece of mastering technology for his North London studio, hailing from the laboratories of SPL Germany.
I had been after an insert switcher for a while. I liked the idea of a mastering approach to mixing and hardware, being able to audition my gear and print stems and also - easy recall. My room bounces between production sessions, mixing sessions and occasionally recording so recall is a thing still.
The tool MsM selected for this duty was the HERMES Mastering Router featuring SPL’s dual parallel mix. The HERMES can handle up to eight stereo processors along with rerouting, custom preset settings and on-the-fly sample comparison all easily accessible on a single click.
It's really nice to come in everyday and not have to look down at my patch bay and check that everything's still where it should be. I just press a few buttons and we're back in business. It's peace of mind and also a learning tool as it's allowed me to switch gear in different orders and compare chains. Even some of the more old school mastering desk/insert switchers didn't have this. You could insert hardware but changing the order and the chains? Thats not been possible for me so far. Not this fast. One button.
MsM also touched on one of SPL’s favourite advantages of the HERMES Matrix – the room to rediscover talents of outboard studio processors. SPL proudly maintain that by quickly and efficiently reordering signal chains to achieve new sounds, HERMES can help engineers to get the very most out of their existing tools without the necessity to invest in new effects...
It's made me love my gear again. I've learnt a lot about the order of my chains - and I can't imagine how I would have done that before. Having two parallel blends on stepped pots is super useful. I've got an Avalon 747 and I love the EQ but it can be hard to recall because the EQ is on sliders... so now I just set the Avalon how I like - adding some of the mids and tops that Avalon does so well and then use the Hermes to dial how much of that I want. No more messing around on each song to try get the right amount and struggle with recall. Also, just from an aesthetic standpoint, it's built so well and feels good to use. Out of the box I was so impressed. I'm into that stuff. Companies who care about how a unit looks and feels as much as sounds.
Be sure to check out Michalis Michael’s personal site, Twitter and Instagram channels for information on all projects and upcoming releases (including the upcoming album from slowthai coming Februrary 5th, every song of which features the HERMES in action!)
For more info on HERMES and SPL: Sound Performance Lab, check out our product pages or drop a line to SCV’s Pro Audio Sales team.