It's been a packed day on the floor of the NAMM show here in Anaheim. As I'm resting up before the evening's entertainment, here's a quick run down of what grabbed me.

Firstly, things generally seem more subdued than in previous years. There seem to be fewer people (the weekend is always busier, but I'm always here on day one and it's usually busier than this). Also noticeable was that less money had been spent on booths across the board; I was immediately struck by the size of the Waves booth, which in previous years has been huge and dominant near the entrance, and this year is very small and tucked between others.

Another obvious trend is that software is winning. iPads were in full force today; nearly everyone had some kind of application or interface or other tenous link to the iPad. Spectrasonics have made an iPad remote for Omnisphere (and are to be credited for not calling it iOmnisphere - it's Omni TR). There were a whole host of new and fairly pedestrain looking products called iSomething from most vendors. Full marks for effort however go to IK Multimedia, who have made the iKlip to clip your iPad to a mic stand, and Amplitube and iRig Mic for the iPad for your guitarist and vocalist repectively.

Whilst the technology here is certainly amazing, I have to admit it makes me quite sad to imagine future bands lining up on stage with nothing more than iPads.

Korg's new Kronos workstation is very impressive. It really is a beast of a keyboard and not only sounds incredible, but has more features than one person could probably explore in a single lifetime.

I had a nice chat with the guys at Soundtoys and saw the new Juice plugin - still not shipping, but seems like we're close. I'm a big fan of their Decapitator saturation plugin so looking forward to this one.

Most impressive demo today though was from Kemper Amps, a spin-off from Access Music, creators of the wonderful Virus range of keyboards. The Kemper Profiling Amp is truly remarkable. In looks, it's exactly like Access Music made a guitar head. What it actually does is profile the sound of an existing guitar amp setup, in a process that takes about 40 seconds and simply involves creating a loop between the Kemper and the mic'ed up cabinet. It's akin to creating an Impulse Repsonse, but goes way beyond, making a playable copy of the amp setup in every detail. The result was practically indistinguishable in sound and response from the orginal. It's shipping in a few months and is definitely one to watch out for.

Tonight I'm going to a release party for iZotope's new Stutter Edit audio slicer, presented by BT and Richard Devine. Looks interesting, and it's about time I headed out now.

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If you read various music recording and production forums, over time you'll notice that certain arguments are played out more frequently and with more passion than others. Does analog sound better that digital? Is recording at 192KHz really any better than 44.1? Are major labels worth your time any more? Actually that last one isn't much of an argument.

Another perennial favourite is whether or not your should process your mix bus. In other words, should you put EQ, compression etc. across your entire mix, or should you leave that for the mastering engineer? And if you do process the mix bus, should you do it while you're mixing or add it in at the end?

This is one of those ones that really just comes down to the way you work. There seem to be more people in the "dry" camp, who believe you should put nothing across the mix bus, and that any problem you are trying to fix by doing that should be achieved by working with the individual tracks instead. I actually fall into the smaller camp. In fact, I mix into a compressor and EQ right from the start, and I can't actually remember the last time I changed the settings on my EQ, so it's permanently set to the same curve.

Why do I do this? Well, I actually think it makes mixing quicker and easier, especially if you're mixing an entire album. I think mixing into a little compression (and we really are talking a little here - 1.5:1 ratio with no more than 2db or reduction) just helps to glue things together a little and stops you over compressing individual tracks. And mixing into the same EQ curve just helps to tie the mixes together a little, like a common running theme. My mix bus EQ is an API 5500, which is essentially a pair of 550Bs, but with an added "Range" control that lets you set the boost or cut in 0.5db increments (unlike the fixed 2db of the 550B). My curve looks like this:

Lo: +2db @ 50Hz

Lo-mid: -1db @ 500Hz

Hi-mid: flat

Hi: +2db @ 15KHz

Because I always mix into this curve (with rare exceptions), I know exactly what it sounds like on my source material. Of course, you could argue that this same curve could equally be applied during mastering, and I'm making changes that can't be undone later. Why do it early on in the process when it could just be added later if it needs it?

I think that's actually the whole point. I still believe that you should commit to sounds early on - make decisions early in the process. Back in the day, you spent a lot of time getting the sound right at source, because after it was committed to tape there really wasn't much you could do to fix it. Now we have so much incredible technology at our disposal that it can be overwhelming, and you can spend the rest of your life tweaking a mix or master, during all of which time no-one is listening to your music.

I'm not going to argue the point - it's just personal preference and neither way is wrong. But this is what works for me.

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Anyone who's ever talked to me about music production knows I'm not a big fan of computers and plugins in the studio. It's a difficult argument these days - the convenience of recording straight to hard disk and instantly sending files across the ether is undeniable, and the sound of plugins in some cases is meeting what you can achieve with hardware, with the added bonus that you can have multiple instance across all of your tracks (one physical API 500B: $1000. Waves native API bundle - which sounds almost indistinguishable in the mix: ~$750 for unlimited instances, and that's not including the 550A, 560 and 2500 that are also included).

For me though, there are two things that still make hardware much more attractive than software. The first is maintenance. Yes, hardware might require a service now and then, but for the most part it will always just work whenever you need it to. With plugins you have to deal with compatibility issues, crashes, relicensing when moving to a new computer etc. There's always something that isn't working right and is waiting on the next software revision to address it, which will invariably break something else.

The other thing is the feel of using hardware. Cuing up a tape, turning a dial, plugging straight in and making music. By the time I've booted up my DAW, loaded up plugins, selected my settings, and clicked on various icons to get a sound out, staring at the screen has pretty much sucked all the inspiration out of me.

All of which is a roundabout way of introducing one of my favorite bits of gear in the studio: one that successfully marries the world of computerized convenience with the magic of hardware. The SSL X-Patch.

I first learned of it just before Winter NAMM 2010 and got a demo from SSL at their booth at the show. My pre-order was in the next day.

The X-Patch is basically a patchbay, which is nothing new, but instead of lots of patch cables it sports an Ethernet port and an internal 16x16 routing matrix. What this allows you to do is patch eight hardware boxes into your desk inserts, and then be able to move them around to any channel and create chains on the fly, instantly, just by using a very simple software remote on your computer desktop. There's even an iPhone remote to use when you're away from the machine in a live room.

The convenience of this is amazing. Although it does nothing you can't achieve with a conventional patchbay, dozens of cables and a lot of patience, this is one instance where the latter is actually the one capable of sucking out inspiration. A single click to create a hardware chain vs. pulling and plugging a fistful of patch cords.

In my studio, I have the X-Patch connected to my Wi-Fi network via an Apple Airport Express, which means I can control it from anywhere I have a wireless connection. Plumbed into it are various EQs and compressors all of which are now able to be instantly and silently moved around, alone or in chains, to any channel on my desk.

Technology isn't so bad after all.

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Latest addition to the studio is the brand new Alta Moda Hippo stereo compressor. It's a double-wide 500 series module that I have slotted into an API 500VPR frame.

I bought this to use as a mix bus compressor; since I gave up on mixing inside the box and started bringing everything back out to an SSL X-Desk, a hardware bus compressor has been conspicuously missing. So I've plumbed it into the mix bus inserts at the front of the chain, which now looks like this:

  Alta Moda Hippo -> Thermionic Culture Vulture (mastering version) -> API 5500 - > Korg MR-2000S

The Hippo is VCA-based and very transparent sounding, though it does have a Warmth function to add some harmonic distortion and beef things up a little. At lower settings this is very subtle, but cranked all the way up it adds some definite thump. I'll probably leave the Warmth function disengaged most of the time since the output goes straight into the Culture Vulture (and there's such a thing as too warm), but this feature could be very useful to anyone using the Hippo on a drum sub.

Other controls are fairly standard: ratio goes from 1.5 to 20 in stepped increments. There is an auto release setting, a high pass filter on the side chain that goes from 60-300Hz to help with bass-heavy material, and a Wet/Dry blend control - something that's become very popular on this type of compressor over the past couple of years. It allows for very simple control of parallel compression effects - again a very useful feature for drum subs to quickly get the "New York" sound.

Another welcome and less common feature is found on the stereo link control - here you have the option to have a Soft or Hard interaction between the left and right channels - in Hard mode, the detectors are linked so that the dynamics on one side will affect the other equally, but in Soft mode the detectors exert less control over each other even though they are linked. There is also an option to unlink them entirely and have it act in Dual mono mode.

Unlike EQ, compression is one thing that I think still can't be modeled quite well enough in software yet (distortion is another). There are some plugins that have come very close for me (SSL Duende Bus Compressor and Waves API 2500 to name a couple of examples), but they still don't quite compare to the real thing.

So overall, the Hippo is a very welcome addition to the studio and one I'm looking forward to using on all future mixes.

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My main DAW is Logic Pro 9 and I love it dearly. I've been a Logic user since the early Emagic days, and despite some a rough start when Apple first took over (Logic 7.0 ... shudder) it's progressed well to the point where Logic Pro 9 is really very stable and has a great workflow.

Can you feel the "but..." coming?

BUT - Logic 9 has a very nasty "feature" that I believe Apple have implemented to dumb it down a bit and ease the transition from GarageBand, and it causes terrible problems if you work with direct ins and outs on a desk and expect audio to be routed out to the same channel it came in on.

Specifically, Outputs 1 and 2 are essentially permanently reserved as a stereo pair. Not only can you not rename "Stereo Output," but you can't actually separate the channels - it looks like you can, but the audio doesn't get routed as you would expect. So if you want to work in mono on those first two channels, you're pretty much screwed. There is a workaround by messing with the environment (details on request) but it's very easily overwritten by creating a new track assigned to Stereo Output.

I've had to resolve this by just not using outputs 1-8 at all. Luckily I have an SSL MADI/AlphaLink setup with plenty of channels, so I now have channels 9-16 plumbed into channels 1-8 of my desk, and channels 17-24 into my summing box. I've adjusted all the I/O labels in Logic and now I'm free of the "Stereo Output" tyranny. The cost being that I am wasting 8 channels of conversion.

I really hope Apple address this in a future release; I'm not really sure it dumbs things down in a useful way, and this is supposed to be "Pro" software. Do it in Express if you want to, but in Pro let me route my audio how I want it.

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I'm starting to track a new Earth Calling Angela song tonight. Usually these are guitar driven, but I'm starting with a keyboard pad sound this time, amped up through a Marshall. I'm mic'ing the cabinet with a Blue Kiwi through an Avedis MA5 preamp and a Distressor. The keyboard is a Korg Trinity playing a home-grown string patch.

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