Hey Hey folks, its been a while!
Over the last few months I've been living in Edmonton and I've been meeting a lot of musicians and been involved with a couple of studios in the area. Its been very interesting seeing the different views on music and Pro Audio. For a while now, I've only really been talking to this small group of engineers and getting to work with a couple of different Engineers in the last little while has been pretty enlightening. One studio owner I've become really great friends with and he actually plays bass in my band is all about "Consoles". For the most part I just brushed it off my shoulders because like me, the man has got some serious G.A.S. But over the last couple weeks I started asking questions about his set up and how a console is used, I had an idea of the signal flow but I asked to get some assurance. The biggest question I had was "Why do you have a console if you have all these outboard preamps?" I figured the whole point of a console was to use the preamps and he said he rarely ever uses them to tape because its not a really high end console. He went on to talk about how a console actually has a sound and how he just enjoys the work flow so much more rather than a bunch of pulgins and scrolling around with a mouse constantly. All and all I learned a lot about the concept over the few late night Q&A's we had.
So my question to you guys is why do you guys work in the box? I assume its because of the large investment. I'm sure Malcolm, Andrew and Al have all had their hands on a few great consoles, (Have you Matt?) Was there anything you guys liked so much about the work flow that you wish it would be feasible to make the investment? I'm not really sure of your set up and outreach Andrew, For all I know you may have a console to work on.