David Bascombe is a mix engineer who would find it easy to name drop if that’s what he wanted to do. From the biggest and most well-established pop outfits including Depeche Mode, The Manic Street Preachers and Bon Jovi to rising stars Goldfrapp, White Rose Movement and Komakino, his finely-tuned ear and magic touch have helped many in their progression along the road of stardom.

Committed to testing boundaries and creating mixes that have won the direct admiration of his peers, as well as the purchasing support of the public, Dave has found himself increasingly using Sony Oxford plug-ins in his mixes.

‘I’m a big fan of their products,’ he says. ‘So far, I’ve used most of the plug-ins but I’ve yet to lay my hands on the Reverb, which I’m keen to hear. I do use the Oxford EQ a lot in my mixes, and I’m very happy with it. But I’m particularly fond of the GML option, and these days I tend to use it in preference to the hardware version.

‘The advantage with the plug-in is that you don’t get the analogue noise, and you can recall the individual settings really easily, which saves a lot of time in the studio.’

Dave has also discovered interesting uses for another one of Oxford’s mainstays, the Inflator, which he uses to get his mixes sounding as ripe as possible.

‘I’ve been using the Inflator like a compressor,’ he says. ‘I’ve found that it’s great for getting a nice, warm, vintage-type sound without pushing the mid-range out too much.

‘When I’m mixing, I’m known to use a lot of different compressors chained together, tweaking them individually to elicit the particular sound I want. However, on the new Wheatus single just recorded I used the Inflator, and it did a fine job by itself. I ran it across the mix and it livened everything up without pumping the way some compressors do when you push them too hard – I wanted to get away from that sound.’

And does he have any idea how the Inflator achieves this end where other bits of gear, outboard or otherwise, might struggle? ‘Not really. The Inflator is vaguely mysterious. It makes everything sound that much bigger; it’s certainly a loudness thing but there’s more to it than that.’

In a brief attempt to try to fathom the Inflator’s deeper functions, Dave took a look at the waveform of a mix passed through it to see if there was a clue to its secret there.

‘It does seem to normalise and limit a little,’ he tells of his findings, ‘but not in an obvious way and not all the way through. The Inflator certainly does something substantial to the mix but without any annoying artefacts. Exactly how it does it though, I couldn’t say.

‘What I can say is that I used it on stereo guitars in the Wheatus mix as well as on the overall mix and the results were superb.’ Also tightening up Dave’s mixes is the Trans Mod, which he uses mainly on drums and loops.

I find the Trans Mod really useful for shaping rhythms. If I’ve got a snare with too much attack, or too long a tail, then I can easily modify those facets.’

So in this way, the Trans Mod takes the sonic facts and turns them into variables?

‘Yes, but it’s also good for gating sounds without messing around with the threshold. And you can use it for adjusting the perceived size of a room by dampening down the ambient sounds or making them longer.

‘Where I’ve found it particularly useful is on loops. You can completely change the nature of a loop by ducking a snare out, for example, or pulling other percussive elements out to create something completely new.’

‘Overall, I think that the Oxford plug-ins are standout. There’s a lot of stuff on the market, so many things to try out and so much to choose from, but the plug-ins I’ve mentioned have become standards in my work today.’

Interview and editorial provided by Matthew Pigott Public Relations. +44 (0)7903 723898

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