As far as compression, Ladanyi uses it sparsely to tighten up the track, unless it is a signature sound such as Lowell George’s guitar work on Browne’s Your Bright Baby Blues on “The Pretender” (1976). Ladanyi feels that compression is used excessively nowadays, to make a record louder, which results in the listener losing the experience of how musicians feel the music dynamically.
Ladanyi, now a Nuendo user, sees the DAW changing his style somewhat, especially in reference to the abundance of tracks giving him the ability to save a lot more of what he records. However, he still relies on getting the sound right as he makes it, using an abundance of gear from Groove Tubes and Tube-Tech at the front end to achieve this rather than relying entirely on the processing “in the box.” When needed though, he uses various plug-ins from Universal Audio and others that emulate vintage gear like the LA-2A, Fairchild and more. For more information, visit Ladanyi’s Website at www.tidalwaveent.com.
