Nimrod Productions - Sound for Games

Rich Aitken and Marc Canham are the managing directors behind the highly successful Nimrod Productions. Whereas most producer/engineers work alone, Nimrod is a powerhouse of productivity with six team members helping to produce polished orchestrations for some of the best-selling computer games around today. Nimrod was recently nominated for an MTV music award for Driver Parallel Lines, as well as a BAFTA for its 1960s and 1970s-sounding music themes for Reservoir Dogs. Contributing to the benchmark sound they've created are, as Richard points out, three of Sony Oxford's most established plugins.

"Around a year ago we started to look for plugins that would give us a clean sound," says Richard. "There were hundreds on the market that promised to do the opposite - saturate, distort, deconstruct and grunge, but there wasn't much in the way of good clean EQ and compression. And when it comes to much of Nimrod's productions that's ultimately what we're looking for. We want a crisp sound plus the ability to scoop out or put back unwanted frequencies with surgical precision."

As Richard soon discovered, Sony Oxford already had a surprisingly sweet solution to his problem. "The Oxford EQ is fantastic for getting an incisive sound and finishing off orchestral projects,' he says. 'But it's also great for tweaking the initial recording. The thing I love is that the EQ is capable of really boosting the highs without producing distortion. It also has this uncanny way of brightening the room instead of the direct source audio. It's something that works on a subconscious level and is more to do with feeling than hearing. It's hard to explain but to my ears it sounds as though the brightness in the recording is part of the room in which the instruments were recorded, not something tagged on as an afterthought. The only other thing that gets this kind of result is my Massenburg 8200."

Rich also likes to use the Reverb on his mixes, partially crediting it with Nimrod's nomination for one of the film/TV/game industry's most prestigious awards.

"This has got to be the best reverb I've heard for Pro Tools. In some ways it even competes with my TC System 6000. I used it on Reservoir Dogs, for which the soundtrack was nominated for a BAFTA. We used the Sony Oxford Reverb with lots of other gear to get really cool sixties and seventies-sounding theme tunes."

"I now rely on the Sony Oxford Reverb as my first core reverb," he adds. "I use it all the time. I have an EMT 140, and the plate on the Oxford Reverb gets very, very close to that. It's also pretty good on drum groups and other percussive sounds. I've actually found that its real strength is on the shorter reverbs; in the industry, people are always banging on about great sounding long reverbs, but it's in the realm of short reverbs that you hear the real difference between a good product and an average one. With the Oxford Reverb you get the wonderful intimacy of realistic small spaces and I think this is one of the most impressive characteristics of the plug-in."

From plumping up orchestral scores with the Sony Oxford EQ to enhancing drums with the Reverb, Nimrod have used Sony Oxford plug-ins all over their mixes. But another ace in the pack comes in the form of the Oxford Dynamics, which they use for its warm compression and super-smooth gates.

Says Richard, "The gates on the Dynamics are the best I've heard on any plug-in. I prefer to use the Dynamics to outboard compressors, partly because they sound so good, but also for convenience. Now, running the Oxford Dynamics in Pro Tools, I can pull files ahead of the mix with the advance key."

And are there any other plug-ins he hopes to use in the future?

"The EQ, Dynamics and Reverb are pretty much it for me. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to production and engineering and I think that, when it comes to sound production, the tools that take care of the most basic jobs are the most important ones to get right. Sony has got them right and succeeded in setting a new benchmark in plug-ins that will be hard to equal.
One thing I do hope to see from Sony is a good delay, but we'll have to wait and see if they come out with one.'

Interview and editorial provided by Matthew Pigott Public Relations. +44 (0)7903 723898. matt@mp-pr.co.uk

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