BERKELEY, CA, JANUARY 4, 2024 ― Born and raised in Argentina, Nahuel Bronzini is a two-time GRAMMY® Award-winning music producer, arranger and mixing engineer. Now thriving in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bronzini is known as a hidden gem, working with the best and brightest in the Bay. From folk and rock, to R&B, orchestral arrangements and synth-heavy pop, Bronzini approaches each project as an artistic piece beyond its genre, creating fluid mixes that elevate production and serve the music and artistic intent of each song he works on. To create the world-class sound for which he is known, Bronzini uses a wide array of audio tools, including a selection of plug-ins from NUGEN Audio.
The brand’s solutions played a vital role in his recent, co-produced rock single, “I Am Not Terrified,” by Cigarbox Man. As one of the darkest singles on the rock band’s album, Bronzini’s goal was to emphasize that feeling, and he did so using NUGEN’s Stereoplacer, an advanced fine-tune parametric balancing control. “With Stereoplacer, I placed parts of the spectrum in different places of the stereo field,” he says. “For this song, I manipulated the mids more to the left and the highs more to the right, so it opened the stereo field. Without Stereoplacer, there is more of a typical doubling, with two guitars doing the same thing, double-tracked, but with the plug-in, I could create more separation and even a little bit of motion, too.”
The brand’s Paragon immersive reverb and ISL Limiter were also essential on this project as they provided context and control for Bronzini. “I had a lead vocal that’s kind of above the track and sort of small and in the center,” Bronzini explains. “I wanted it up front, but I didn’t want it to jump or get out of context. With these two NUGEN solutions, I was able to do that. Limiting with ISL at the end of my chain, I can color everything and provide an upper, mid-range tint that makes the song cut a little deeper, which I really like.”
In addition to his work on “I Am Not Terrified,” Bronzini has incorporated ISL and even more NUGEN solutions into a wide range of other musical projects, including the brand’s Monofilter and MasterCheck plug-ins. While engineering on Fantastic Negrito’s GRAMMY-winning “Please Don’t Be Dead” album, Bronzini says, “ISL was a necessity on this record as it helped me achieve an even transient shape across the song to keep the vocal controlled; and it did that in a really transparent and musical way.
“I’ve enjoyed using NUGEN’s Monofilter and MasterCheck plug-ins as well,” he adds. “Monofilter is a wonderful tool that brings focus to the low-end. For the Fantastic Negrito record, there were a lot of drum tracks or programmed loops that had a lot of the character and punch in the groove, which came in as a stereo print. In some cases, the low-end was a little problematic when mixed together with the bass and other low-end-heavy elements, like kicks and stomps, so EQ’ing the low-end wasn’t the answer. I needed that low-end, but in a more controlled, focused way. NUGEN’s Monofilter was perfect for that; I love the interface and the flexibility of the width control tool.”
For the final mixdown, Bronzini came back to a print track in Pro Tools, where he monitored levels with the MasterCheck plug-in as the audio was recorded. “Sometimes it feels good to mix a little louder, other times it doesn’t—it all depends on the song and the processing that’s involved,” he says. “Some pieces of gear like to be pushed, and then a little more level is needed. NUGEN’s MasterCheck is great for getting a real-time assessment of how loud my mix is coming back and how dynamic it really is, both instantaneously and within the context of the song. The NUGEN software helps me get where I want to be.”
As an experienced NUGEN user, Bronzini credits much of the creative freedom and implementation of tone throughout his workflow on these projects to the brand’s solutions, and looks forward to using them again in the future.
For more information about NUGEN Audio products, visit: https://nugenaudio.com.
