Danish Focus on Jazz

Saqib Hassan speaks to Sony Oxford from Focus Recording Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“So many times I’ve had people come to me with material that has not been recorded well, so the tools I use for mixing are very important. A good EQ, for example, does half the work.

When I started engineering, I was trained on SSL consoles, and really learned to use my ears. Now in the digital domain, I have totally fallen in love with the plug-ins from Sony Oxford. I have used the Sony Oxford EQ and Inflator for some time now and both plug-ins are ‘need-to-have’ tools, when you are mixing professional audio.

One of the most important projects for us here recently was the debut album of a new young Danish jazz talent, Karina Kappel, whose music is extremely organic. The approach to mixing this album needed to be taken with a modern but light (un-processed) feeling.
I have until now, used the Inflator on my final master as this is perfect for RnB and Hip-Hop, because is can make the sound a little bit ‘dirty’, but in a cool way. But with the Karina Kappel album, as it was jazz and had an acoustic feel, I didn’t want to over process. Also the low frequencies gave me a problem, so it came to what I thought would be a trade off between ‘high output’ vs ‘good sound’.

Luckily the Sony Oxford Limiter had just been launched and really rescued me, allowing high output whilst retaining the organic feeling of modern jazz music.

I have great respect for Sony Oxford after mastering Karina Kappel's album with their plug-ins.

My next project was mixing the band ‘Outlandish’ (Hip Hop/RnB) and here too Sony Oxford plug-ins were my choice for professional mixing.

See www.focusrecording.dk for more information.

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