Since then I have totally changed my tune and become a fan. I have a Aston Stealth in my studio and I was one of the people who contributed to the focus group research for the Aston Element (I have one and it’s a mic that I love very much and which has become my go-to mic for tracking vocals – and some final recordings too).

I have a wish list of other Aston mics I would like to buy (the Aston Spirit is probably next) – and now that list has a new item on it in the form of the Aston Apex.
Not content with shaking up the studio recording microphone market they have now developed new hand held live vocal mics.
As you might expect from Aston they have a very striking appearance.

Hand held live mics tend to be dynamic – so the Apex is dynamic or passive – but this being Aston it can also be Active with phantom power. In addition – using the technology developed for the Aston Stealth – the mic has a choice of 2 voices with an on-board preamp which, via phantom power, provides an additional 20 dB gain boost.

The unusual head of the mic – no traditional basket here – is aerodynamically tuned to enhance on-axis focus of the sound source. You can also choose from 3 finishes on the body including chrome (Aston call it glass), black (Void) and grey (Storm)

As a musician who provides backing vocals at live gigs I can’t wait to try one of these out – I want one – a Void – but as far as I can tell they are not available for retail yet and no inducation on price.
How frustrating!

I hope to review an Aston Apex in the not too distant future.

You can find out more here on the Aston Website

The original article I read is here – on the Audio Technology website

Chris Radley – Dvoicebox studio

Butch has set up his studio in a lovingly converted quite large former stable block.

It is large with a spacious live room and looks great with lovely oak walls, nice rugs and large separate zones for guitar, piano and keys, bass and drums. It’s the kind of place you might expect of someone who is successful in the music industry.
However I did not really understand the magnitude and quality of what I was looking at until about half way through the video tour when Butch gets down to talking about microphones (always my favourite part).

He is in the studio isolation room. There is a drum kit and a piano. Butch points out a mic that he uses as a mono close mic on the drum kit which can also swing round on the stand to double as a vocal mic for someone playing piano. It’s a mic I didn’t know that well – so I looked up Redd 47 – It’s a Chandler Redd 47 valve mic based on a classic EMI mic from Abbey Road – currently retailing for 6 grand! A serious mic in anyone’s book: he’s got my attention!

Next he goes back into the spacious live room and goes to the other drum kit he has set up. Both kits have the same mic set-up and he can switch from recording one to the other at the patch bay at the mixing console.

For drum mics Butch has industry standard Sennheiser MD 421s. These mics are often used to catch out new sound engineers because they look like they should be side address mics but actually are end address – the test is to see if you set them up correctly.  These retail around £300-400 a piece so just about in my ball park – if I was buying 1 but Butch has 4!

For overheads he has some small diaphragm condensers I wasn’t sure of – initially I thought Neumann KM 184s but it turns out they are hand made Russian Soyuz 013s. They retail for around £1300 for the pair and he has a pair on the kit in the live room and another pair in the drum room. He also has an AEA R88 ribbon mic set up as a room mic for the live room kit (about £2.5 grand). I’m viewing a “home studio” about a million leagues above most!

By now I’m googling every new mic he mentions. His kick drum mic is a Soyuz 017 FET – about 2.4 grand – and he’s got one for each kit (of course he has). He’s also got another Soyuz 017 in a section of the live room set aside for singing and acoustic guitar. Also on the kick drum on the beater side he’s got an AKG C414 (around £1000) set in figure of 8 to pick up the kick and the bottom of the snare. Above the snare he’s using a vintage Calrec 1050C (about £400) – he’s got 2.
When he goes back into the drum isolation room it turns out he also has a Leslie Rotary speaker in there for that Hammond organ sound – with “a couple of Coles 4038s” on it. That’s a vintage design ribbon mic that retails at around £1200 – and he’s got a pair.

Butch continues explaining what he uses in the studio – I’m amazed at how matter of fact he is with all this kit that mostly has high end price tags. Towards the end he moves to the mixing console area (he doesn’t like having a control room as it’s too isolating).

His monitors “are just some that people were raving about”. So he tried them out and loved them so much he just bought them there and then. I google them – they are PCM 6-2s and a pair will set you back nearly 10 grand. He also goes on to discuss the analogue mixer console which is an API 2448 – I just googled it. No change out of £103,000 for one of those!

There is more too with 20 or so guitars including quite a few Gibsons in the electric section and a Martin or 2 in the acoustic section. In addition there are quite a few desirable items in the racks around the mixer including the UA OX top box (around £1000) plus quite a number of keyboards and synths too plus stacks of speakers and guitar heads and amps.

In the end I am overwhelmed by his set up – and more than a little bit jealous too. It may seem that I’m fixated on the prices and I am a bit because once I started looking things up as he mentioned them I just could not believe that everything you looked at is a high end premium price of kit.  I’ve added a few mics to my wish list (which was already quite extensive) I’d just love the luxury to be able to choose the right piece of kit you need without being concerned about the price of it.

The studio has a lovely live room with lots of space and a natural but not obtrusive acoustic and Butch has mountains of gear including loads of pretty expensive stuff. However in the end what comes across is that everything there is the right tool for the job – an ethos I can understand.
Butch has been involved in a considerable amount of success over the years which has allowed him the resources to create this great space for making music and to fill it with some high quality kit. He knows what he’s doing with all of it and has used it to make hit records so I can’t really begrudge him his success or studio and he really does have some great kit – especially the mics.
But – although it seems he does actually live there – I’m not sure it really is a “home studio”.

You can see the video on YouTube

Chris Radley – dVoiceBox studio

The result was that for quite a number of years the dVoiceBox studio saw a succession of actors based at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford dropping in to do an ISDN voice over session linking up with a London studio for TV ads, radio ads and corporate narrations.  It was much more convenient than them having to travel down to London.

In the last couple of years before Covid  these sessions were becoming fewer in number as online services became more readily available and other studios located in Stratford were able to offer online instead of ISDN connections to London for thesps at the RST.

In 2021 – despite much more remote recording taking place during the pandemic I realised that the ISDN line was no longer paying for itself even with my own voice over work.  So I ended the contract and a short while ago we got set up with Source Connect.

It is well established and widely used throughout the industry. In addition for engineer and voice talent it operates in a way that is similar to traditional ISDN so feels familiar  and – even better – it costs rather less for better quality!

The quality over the internet should be fine but I do still take a safety recording for each session as I always did for ISDN (as it could be temperamental) – old habits die hard.

If you need a studio quality remote directed recording session email studio@dvoicebox.com or call 01926 431535 or 07866 784925  and we’ll get it set up.

Chris Radley

dVoiceBox

I’ve worked with Duncan on lots of musical projects over the years both in the studio and also at live events.  I’ve worked with singer Amie Boyd many times too when I’ve been sound engineering live events with Duncan.

Duncan and Amie released a song for Christmas 2020 and now they are back with a second self penned composition “Crazy You Crazy Me.  Its a song Duncan wrote a few years ago and I heard it back then when we were working on some songwriting together.
As I recall he originally planned it to be an uptempo pop number – but as you can hear Amie has taken it into a more current direction with more than a hint of a Billie Eilish influence.

The song has been recorded and produced in Duncan’s studio.  You can buy “Crazy You Crazy Me” as a download or stream on Spotify – or just check it out here https://crazyyou.me/

But it can be hard to know where to start – even if you have a great idea for a podcast – recordings made in an office or other work or home environment almost certainly won’t sound very professional or be that easy on the ear.

As ever increasing numbers of people consume podcasts it becomes much more and more important for a their producers to apply the same kind of high production values as the best professionally produced radio shows. You need a good quality listening experience to set your podcast apart form the ones produced on a laptop in a kitchen with someone using a USB mic.

The way people listen to podcasts is intimate – often on headphones or earbuds – and so you don’t want any imperfections in the quality of the production to irritate. You certainly don’t want distracting background noises like traffic, slamming doors or dogs barking. Voice levels and dynamic range need to be consistent and voices and other content to need to be well recorded and produced without any harshness or lack of clarity that might impede the listeners understanding.

In the near future it is likely that podcasts will be streamed like music is now in which case your podcasts need to sound as good as, or better than, the others it is listed alongside on the streaming service. These quality concerns are similar to those of audiobook production of which I also have experience.

Content is key – it is important to plan and script so that you know where the podcast is heading from the start and what ground is going to be covered.  A script might actually turn out to be more of a series of bullet points rather than something to be read out verbatim – that generally doesn’t work well with those inexperienced at voice presentation.

We can help with structuring the podcast episode if needs be – or we can just focus on the technical aspects while you deliver the content! Of course I will take care of editing and post production after the recording session is finished – this might include adding music or other audio elements like intros and outros.

Using more than one presenter can make the podcast more interesting and we have space in our live room for at least 3 seated contributors so if you want a double or triple header  – or maybe an interview – it’s no problem.

Radio production experience is important when producing effective podcasts – it helps to know the ways that audio can be produced to make the podcast flow in a way that works well for the listener – keeping them informed, interested and entertained.

At dVoiceBox I already produce podcasts with people like former BBC Radio 2 presenter Frank Renton – his podcast Still Listening to the Band gives his listeners an insight into the world of brass band music. I’ve been producing that for the last couple of years.

My previous experience also includes 22 years in radio which included several years producing award winning (New York Radio Festival) social action broadcasting content in the days when commercial local radio still did speech based content. My studio specialises in spoken word projects and so I know how to record voices and produce voice based audio that sounds great and which listeners will want to listen to.

Got an idea for a podcast? Give me a call and lets get started!

Contact 07866 784925

Chris Radley

dVoiceBox Studio

Back then I was running lots of hardware samplers, sound modules and synths and I needed to be able to mix them all at the same time. At first the studio had them all hard wired in. These days if I do music projects it’s all done “in the box” – in the computer using Logic so I wouldn’t really need 32 channels.

Nevertheless I have no plans to get rid of this desk – it’s great for tracking sessions – I love the pre-amps on voices and recently I’ve also been loving them for drums.  There is also the other thing that when a client comes in to record for the first time – they walk in the door and instantly what they see visually says “professional recording studio” – it puts their mind at ease.

Because I don’t plan to get rid of the Ghost I had to decide what to do recently when the rack mounted power supply for it appeared to be on the way out: it was buzzing very ominously.  I went onto ebay to look for a replacement as I know they come up from time to time.

While searching Soundcraft Ghost power supplies I found the studio systems website (edit May 2025 – this website is no longer on-line use Tim’s Facebook page to contact) – run by Tim Jones.
I discovered that Tim is an analogue mixing desk guru who refurbishes and repairs all kinds of wonderful analogue conoles.  But even better than that as far as I was concerned – Tim builds replacement power supplies for analogue desks under the Blue Dog Power Supply brand name.

Tim told me that he’d built lots of power supplies for Ghosts.  I decided it would be better to have brand new power unit rather then buy a secondhand Soundcraft unit which might be ageing (and buzzing) like my existing one.

I ordered a Blue Dog power supply and it arrived within a few days,  I put it in the rack yesterday, connected it up and fired up the Ghost. Tim claims his power supplies give a much lower noise floor on the mix buss.
I’d seen lots of people reporting this too but wondered how a new power supply could make such a  difference.  All I can say – it does! The noise floor is loads lower.

So far I’m very happy with the Blue Dog – Tim was very helpful and answered all my questions, the unit came quickly and it works just the way I want – Thanks Tim!

You can find out more about Tim Jones on his Facebook page

Chris Radley

dVoice Box Studio

The acoustic music gig is raising funds for Myton Hospice and will take place on Saturday the 19th of October 2019.

As it’s a charity gig we are proving technical support for free. It should not be too much like hard work as both Mick and myself have played many events in the Napton hall and provided lights and sound many times (I was there most recently in the summer lighting the acoustic stage at the Napton Festival).

Artists on the night include The Unlikely (pictured) as well as Tyburn, Under The Influence and Away with the Fairies with MC Dave Fry.  Tickets are available from Colin Sullivan on 07773 398617 or on the door – the event starts at 7.30

In June 2019 I was asked to mix a new single from Bury based band Suave Martyrs.
Full disclosure – I was not their first choice but the person that was had let them down with just a few days to the single release date. I had previously recorded drummer “Biscuit” when he was with another band and he contacted me to see if I could help them out.

The song was Party Man.  The Suave Martyrs had been gifted some studio time with a young trainee engineer and had been able to record a couple of passes of the song. They had all the files from the tracking session. Subsequently the band had also recorded some lead vocals and backing vocals in an improvised home setting using SM58 mics.

Once it was agreed that I should do the mix and mastering for the track the band sent me all the files and I began the slow process of identifying each instrument/ mic etc and assigning them to tracks in Logic. Luckily the engineer had followed a pretty clear protocol and this was more straight forward than I had feared.

All the files started at 00 on the timeline so it was relatively easy to synch everything up. My main difficulty was not knowing the band and their music and not having done the actual recording – so I was stuck with some of the choices the engineer had made in the tracking session. For example there were several guitar parts and each had 2 different mics set close to the amp plus at least 2 room mics set further away.
All the guitar parts were recorded with the live sound that included distortion and reverb – I usually like to take a clean feed off the guitar in addition to the mic feed so that I can have more control in the mix – maybe introducing different effects and reverbs.

Also I guess there was time pressure because with some of the room mics the sound was not that great – not really adding anything useful so I guess there was not time to finesse positions of those mics.

I’m a bit traditional with band mixes and always start with the drums – than add bass then guitars etc and build the mix that way.

The drums were well recorded  with 2 mics on the bass drum – one inside and one outside the drum and a mic top and bottom on the snare plus a mic on each tom and a pair of overheads. I was able to get a pretty solid sound as the basis of the kit pretty quickly. The band had referenced some Led Zep and Stones tracks from the 70’s for the drum sound so I kept it all pretty open and live sounding – sticking with the natural resonances of the kit where I could – keeping it all pretty dry too. Biscuit likes his drum fills so that fitted the retro references well too.

Unlike their previous single Man About Town – which had quite a 90’s “baggy” vibe – for this song the band referenced some 60s songs for the bass and so I duly worked on that round slightly thuddy sound that’s a characteristic of quite a lot of 60s music – again the tracking engineer had used two different mics on the bass amp plus some room mics so I had a bit of scope to tweak the sound.

I had loads of guitar tracks to work with as there were different parts for verses, choruses and bridges plus a solo section at the end which needed an Oasis – Columbia type of sound. Each guitar part had a mix of amp mics and room mics – I don’t know what specific mics were used but the file names reference at least one ribbon mic. In the end I found I was losing some of the room mics as they did not seem to be adding anything useful to the overall guitar sound. The song has quite an acoustic vibe for the verses with a more rock feel (in a retro way) in the choruses.

The vocals had been recorded after the original tracking session . I lined the files up with the first lot of files and set about getting a good vocal sound. The song is unusual in that there are two lead vocal parts singing different lines against each other. This was where, not having been at the tracking session, I didn’t know quite how the vocal parts fitted the song. When I sent the preliminary mix the band said – it sounds great but the vocals are out of place. It turned out the files from the vocal recording session started on bar one and not 00 as I had assumed.
The band referenced some Crosby Stills and Nash songs for the verse and a recent Black Keys song for the reverb in the chorus – quite an eclectic collection of music references!

After mixing I also mastered the song using dynamic mastering (as advocated for many years by mastering guru Ian Shepherd).

In this approach the sound is optimised to work well on streaming services – you certainly don’t master as loud as you possibly can (like we have done for the last 20 odd years or so) – because if you do that the track gets turned down on Spotify and other streaming providers and often sounds flat and lifeless – but if you mix and master it dynamically it just sounds more lively – as Sam from the band said – “the drums really pop on this mix”.

A recent review of the single (14th July 2019) on thatbloggermusic.com said:

“Having listened to the song over the last week or so it definitely has that 70’s Kinks kind of feel to it, nice harmonies, simple riffs, I’d say near enough 5 minutes of Soft rock n roll at its finest.
In contrast to their other tune (Man About Town) where it hits you straight away that these guys were big into the Monday’s and the Roses and it’s as though they’re about to have a Britpop duel with Blur and Oasis, which is funny as the band supported ex oasis employer Alan McGee’s Alias Kid at Manchester’s super cool Deaf Institute earlier this year, which saw a packed out crowd witness first-hand how talented the band actually are.”

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

Chris Radley

Dvoicebox/Dmusic Studio

Chris is available for event recording, studio recording and mixing and also live PA sound engineering

Additional note on mastering

I actually did 2 masters for the band – one for use on digital services and the other for radio and other situations where they might be head to head with recordings mastered with the traditional “loud as possible” brick wall limiter – and where the dynamic mix I’d produced might sound quiet and weak.

I’ve followed Ian Shepherd for a number of years as he has railed against the so-called Loudness Wars – basically music compressed in mastering to sound as loud as possible – but with the side effect of lost dynamics and reduced musical interest for the listener.  It’s now become clear the Spotify and other streaming services are using a normalising algorithm for their services where, to give a unified experience to the listener, they turn quiet tracks up and loud tracks down. The very useful Loudness Penalty Website shows this very clearly.

This image shows how much the “traditional” master would have got turned down by on digital streaming services.

And this is the result for the master I provided for digital streaming.

You can find out more about dynamic mastering on Ian Shepherd’s website productionadvice.co.uk

I agreed to do the recording and CD production and set about planning my approach to recording a 100 strong choir in St Mary’s Church in Leamington.  I met with Bruce to find out if there were any soloists or musical instruments for accompaniment involved as this would  influence how I approached the technical aspects of the recording.
I learned that there were no soloists and all of the programme on the night was to be a capella. This was good news for me as it simplified the technical side quite considerably.

I planned to use a stereo pair of condensers to record the whole choir – and to give me more to play with in the mix I decided to use an additional spaced pair on either side of the choir.

I decided to use my Rode NT5 condensers – initially I thought in an XY configuration – but then decided to  go for a near coincident set up in the ORTF configuration. In the event I was unable to use this – for ORTF the mics are pointing away from each other at an angle of around 110 degrees and the capsules should be 17cms apart. On my stereo bar this was impossible – the leads from the mics got in the way of each other and meant the mics were not at the right angle or distance.

In the event I went from a French stereo recording technique to a Dutch one. I decided to use the NOS stereo recording technique – this puts the mics at 90 degrees to each other with the capsules 30cms apart – perfect on my stereo bar (I usually use XY which was why I hadn’t thought about the problems with ORTF).  I also wanted to use a pair of AT4033 mics as a spaced pair.  I used the 3:1 rule to space them in relation to the stereo pair, the choir and each other.  In theory this avoids phase issues but in reality you have to put the mics up and then tweak things around to see what sounds best in your headphones.

I borrowed a Yamaha AW1600 hard disk recorder that I’ve used before for this kind of recording. Its not new but it is surprisingly well specified for a device of its vintage – you can record 24 bit if you wish (I didn’t) and you get 8 inputs on XLR with phantom power – its also very robust and reliable. I used an M Audio Duo preamp for the NT5s as I find the level of these mics too low without – but the AT4033’s went straight in.

I set up while the choir were rehearsing in the afternoon.  The church is originally Victorian but the interior has been recently modernised. They have removed the traditional pews and laid carpet throughout which makes it nice and comfortable and also tames considerably the natural reverberation I would have expected in a building of this age.
I set up my mics in front of the choir on tall boom stands set to their full extent and ran long leads to a point in a side aisle where I could monitor the performance without getting in the way.  I did some test recordings as the choir rehearsed their songs.

I moved the mics around to get the best sound and strongest signal. However there was one thing that later caught me out – I had placed my mics at the appropriate distance from the front of the choir during rehearsal but in performance they stood much further forward than in the afternoon. I had to make some hasty adjustments before the first number.

The NT5s picked up the whole ensemble while the spaced pair allowed me to pick up the baritones on the left as I faced them and the sopranos on the right.  I was pleased with how the afternoon recordings sounded – but for some reason didn’t keep them – I don’t know why exactly as in the studio I usually keep everything. This was a shame as one song in particular was brilliant in the rehearsal and didn’t quite work so well on the night.

I know from live sound engineering how much of a difference the introduction of the audience into a space can make to it’s ambient sound and natural reverberation – even so I was surprised at the big difference in the sound in the room on this occasion when around 300 people came in to watch the performance. The choir were not using any PA or sound reinforcement – just the natural sound in the church.

In the afternoon the sound on the recordings sounded exactly like the sound in the room: with a nice not overloud natural reverb. However  in the evening the sound in the room was very different from the recording that I could hear in my headphones – much flatter and generally muddier in the church (all those bodies soak up a lot of the high frequencies) while the recording still had great natural reverb. I realised that the mics were pointing towards the apse behind the altar – its the only part of the church not modernised or carpeted – so they were picking up the natural reverb from the stone walls and floors there. It may mean that the recording I produced for the CD actually doesn’t sound quite like it did to the audience in the church on the night – although I hope it sounds better!

After the event I took the recording back to my studio and dumped all the audio files into Logic.  I had decided that this was not a recording that needed any compression or additional reverb – I wanted to keep it as close to what I’d actually recorded.  As a result I used very little EQ – I shelved everything out below 30Hz on all 4 mic channels and the mix bus to remove any rumbles and just gave a very broad boost on the mix bus of 1dbB centered around 500Hz just to give a bit more weight to the middle frequencies.

I also used a gain insert on the mic channels so I could switch the polarity – the choir moving its position seemed to throw up some phase issues compared to the rehearsal recording – so I played around until I go the overall mix sounding full (and hopefully in phase!)

I did use a little automation to bring up certain vocal sections where they needed to come across more clearly and I also went into the wav forms to tame some of the audience applause – there nearly always seems to be someone at these sorts of concerts who has a very loud hand clap and is always very close to the microphones!

I used HOFA mastering software which is new to me – I can’t report on all of its functionality at this point as I only used it on this occasion to place the tracks in the right places for the correct spacing between songs on the CD duplication master.

70 CDs were produced (duplicated by Noisegate while I did the artwork and cover production) and were sold to raise further funds for WaterAid.

It was an interesting and enjoyable job and I was glad to have had the opportunity to record the concert.

Chris Radley – dVoiceBox

Chris is available for event recording, studio recording and mixing and also live PA sound engineering

You can find out more about Songlines on this website

As you may know in early 2018 the BBC decided to pull the plug on the long running BBC Radio 2 show “Listening To The Band”. The programme had been broadcast for more than 50 years and Frank Renton had been its presenter since 1994 but it fell foul of the BBC’s bid to freshen up the schedule on Radio 2.

Luckily for Frank – and me too – the Brasspass.tv on-line platform has taken up the baton and allowed Frank to continue to present a regular podcast showcasing the music he loves. The production team still includes long standing producer Terry Carter – so in essence the fortnightly podcast is a very much a continuation of the radio show – but with the potential to reach a much wider audience on-line.

We have just recorded Episode 12 of “Still Listening to the Band” and so I’m just taking a moment to reflect on how much I’ve enjoyed recording these shows so far.  Before this year I was not familiar with much brass band music and probably had some negative preconceived notions about what it’s like – but these shows have opened my eyes (and ears) to the amazing range of music that is available as played by brass bands. In addition I’ve discovered, there are excellent brass bands all over the world including in many countries that do not have an historical tradition of brass banding.

Also, for me personally, it’s great to work with people with a radio background – right from the first recording session I have felt I’m working with people on the same “wavelength” in terms of how the show should be put together and what it should finally sound like.

You can hear all the episodes to date on the brasspass.tv website – you can also download them as podcasts.

(Edit – Nov 2019 – we have now recorded 41 episodes of Frank’s podcast.)

Chris Radley – dVoiceBox