Apogee Symphony I/O with Nathan Chapman and Joe West
Posted on: January 27, 2011
Posted in: Artists, GarageBand, Logic Pro, Logic Studio, Maestro, MainStage, Symphony, Symphony I/O, Video
del.icio.us
blinklist
digg
Facebook
Furl
ma.gnolia
Newsvine
Pownce
reddit
StumbleUpon
Technorati
Twitter
A few months ago, two of Nashville’s top producer/songwriters Nathan Chapman and Joe West got together at Sony Tree Studio to put Apogee’s newest interface, Symphony I/O, through its paces and A/B it. As you will see in the video, both were really amazed by its performance, and even more telling of their impression is that both Nathan and Joe now have Symphony I/O in their personal studios.
Nathan Chapman has produced, written, and engineered records with artists such as Taylor Swift, Sara Evans, The Band Perry, Jewel, and K’Jon. Joe West has produced, written, and engineered with Warren Zevon, Emmylou Harris, Toby Keith, and Keith Urban.
Video Transcription:
NC: A couple of months ago, Joe West and I got to get together and do a shootout at Sony Studios here in Nashville.
JW: The way we had the desk arranged was that we had the two mics just coming in, just the two raw inputs, the mic pres, and then we had the Symphony I/O, a 192, and we had an AD-16X.
NC: We recorded piano and we recorded guitars… and we recorded everything simultaneously through all the different interfaces and then we were able to play back simultaneously and sit there and A/B all the different interfaces that we were going through.
JW: What I loved about it was it was a clear, concise difference.
NC: We were astounded at the Symphony I/O. The depth, the 3D characteristic to it which is kind of an intangible thing that you can’t explain. You feel it. There was a feeling of more of that openness and the air around everything and the detail and the 3D quality that is what we all really hope for when we are trying to record music.
JW: You know, coming in, being asked to come in and listen to that in an environment that you don’t know, on monitors that you don’t know, it’s always sort of like, well, am I really going to be able to tell the difference? But, man, it was just as clear as day.
NC: The stereo piano really came through, even a mono acoustic guitar… you could tell that there was a place you could point at in the speakers where the guitar was.
JW: What I noticed primarily was that the 192 and 16-X both sounded good, but I’d always want to EQ them.. let me just get this frequency out of there, let me get that out of there. But with the Symphony I/O, I didn’t want to EQ it.
NC: It’s been astounding, the difference. I had an artist, that was sitting on the couch, the first day that I turned that on and we had been working for a few days, and one of the days in to the week we were working together, I plugged the Symphony I/O in and didn’t say anything and the artist immediately sat up on the couch. And they were like, what did you do to the song? Did you do something last night? I was like, No, it’s just this new interface.
That to me is a big deal because it’s not that, when an artist or an average listener or somebody who is not really listening critically, like engineers, I mean we are all pretty nerdy about it. But when someone who is more artistic about it notices a chance in the engineering, just with something as simple as plugging in a different interface, to me that is something that we -as nerdy engineers who love the gear- we should take note when someone who isn’t obsessed like we are, notices something better, that’s a good sign, and maybe even a better sign than someone like myself or Joe geeking out on it.
###