Oakland, CA (August 4, 2023)―Nick Bassett has been working in 5.1 a lot recently, whether composing for the upcoming AMC series Thick Skin or mixing audio for the Blu-ray reissue of the 1990 spoof, Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout. While both projects were wildly different, as it turns out, Bassett used some of the same tools for both, including Nugen Audio’s Halo Upmix plug-in.
The Halo Upmix plug-in was reportedly crucial for remixing Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout, allowing Bassett to take the original tracks from the film and upmix them to 5.1 for the Blu-ray release. “I had all the stems from the original tape machines, which were kind of messy because they were old tapes,” he explains. “I was able to take the stereo printout from the overall audio of it and draw Halo Upmix on there to bring it to modern specs. In about four clicks, I took it from a stereo track to a 5.1 mix, and it instantly was usable.”
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The upmixer also came in handy while Bassett was composing for Thick Skin, as it enabled him to create prototype mixes for himself. “I created mock stereo 5.1 bounces, which allowed me to hear how some of the music or the dialogue was going to sound as I was composing the music for the mix engineer, as opposed to just stereo mixing it,” he says.
The Halo Upmix dialogue isolation is among Bassett’s favorite features. “It’s a built-in algorithm that was really useful―not only for these projects, but others as well,” he says. “For the horror film, I was able to click on the track and Halo Upmix focused the dialogue in a way that brings the audio forward and makes it clearer when played against all the other after effects. I’ve never seen that feature on any other plug-in before.”
