Whether on the road or in the studio, Rick Sheppard, longtime chiefengineer and programmer for producer Dallas Austin and DARPProductions, regularly chooses Lucid Audio for the company’sAD/DA conversion needs.
Pictured: Rick Sheppard (left) and Dallas Austin
DARP Studios, an expansive Atlanta-based facility boasting two SSLconsoles, a Sony Oxford and several writing/production suites, containstwo Lucid SSG192 Studio Sync Generators, two AESx4 AES/EBU DistributionAmps, three CLKx6 Audio Clock Distribution Amps, six ADA 8824 8-channelAD/DA units, a pair of SRC9624 sample rate converters, and a few DA9624 and AD 9624s stereo D/A and A/D converters. Sheppard adds that herecently added a GENx6 word/super clock to the Lucid rack.
Austin and Sheppard travel with about 55 road cases of MIDI,computers and recording gear. Their production style requires that allMIDI instruments, as well as a large GigaStudio rig, run virtuallyuntil the end of the project when all those sounds are finalized andactually recorded. Lucid gear and Emagic’s Logic Audio software runningon Digidesign’s Pro Tools process cards all come into play.
“Realistically, since we need to be portable for traveling and alsowork on so many different songs/projects at the same time, the idea ofsetting up and recalling the console and song every time we change isludicrous,” said Austin. “Both Dallas and I each use a DA 9624 [DAC]fed from the AESx4 distribution amp. That unit gets an AES/EBU stereopair digitally from one of the ADA 8824s. We both have our ownheadphone and speaker level controls using these boxes. I mixinternally and monitor through this same path.”
Austin, whose credit list includes work with ABC (Another BadCreation), Boys II Men, TLC, Pink, Madonna and Michael Jackson, to namea few, most recently wrapped up a few tracks for Janet Jackson’sforthcoming album, Damita Jo, and is currently working on a soloproject for No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani and new tracks for Latinasensation Shakira.
For more information, please visit www.symetrixaudio.com.
