New York, NY (November 26, 2014)—“I have Metric Halo SpectraFoo in front of me every minute of my work day,” says mastering engineer Herb Powers, Jr., who also uses a Metric Halo ULN-2.
“I used to have a nice hardware metering system, but it eventually died. [W]hen I realized I could get SpectraFoo along with a dedicated 11-inch Apple MacBook Air for less than the cost of another hardware system, I went for it. I still ultimately rely on my ears, but I constantly reference SpectraFoo’s RTA and stereoscope. For less than the price of a hardware analyzer, I got better tools, better real estate and a perfectly customized experience,” he says.
Powers uses his Metric Halo ULN-2 to capture signal in front of the processing for comparison in SpectraFoo and, more critically, as the AD converter in front of his dedicated record computer, which runs Sonic Studio SoundBlade mastering software. “I have a lot of nice analog gear, and I’m super comfortable using it,” he says. “Because I always go analog, good conversion is important, and the Metric Halo ULN-2 sounds totally transparent. It works solidly even at 24 bit/96 kHz.”
Despite Powers’ reliance on analog gear, he’s happy to incorporate more plug-ins. “A lot of times, I’ll hear an issue that stands apart from the usual balancing that I use my analog gear for,” he says. “I use Metric Halo TransientControl, ChannelStrip and Multiband Dynamics to correct it in the playback machine. Then I can go out of the playback machine and make the usual sorts of corrections I make with the hardware. The Metric Halo plug-ins sound great and they’re very fast to use. I can always pull up a factory preset that gets me most of the way there; I just have to adjust a ratio or a threshold and it’s good. Since everything these days is on a tight deadline, that speed is important.”
Metric Halo
www.mhlabs.com
