After over 30 years of service, the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology (OIART) has replaced two ageing mixing consoles with Audient ASP8024 Heritage Edition desks. As part of a facility-wide upgrade, the consoles were chosen to support the teaching curriculum and hit the desired price point.
Head of Audio Production curriculum, Dean Nelson was pleasantly surprised when he first heard the new British consoles: ‘The first thing that jumped out was the tone,’ he explains. ‘I’d read the specs, was aware of the Stereo Bus 990C Mix Amps with the switchable Retro Iron transformers and Dave Dearden’s design history, but hearing is believing.
‘The Heritages have a nice clarity and punch, but when you want you can drive the preamps and it saturates quite nicely; the stereo bus has great headroom as well, it does not cave in. I love tone, but as an educator and learning institution, unfortunately, tone didn’t lead the list for requirements, it was form and function.
‘The routing and signal flow is/was the most important for selection, and in that area it wasn’t as much of a surprise, but still excited at the ease of bring up a mic, to setting up parallel chains during a mix,’ he continues. ‘The EQ section is very smooth, you can boost liberally and don’t get any weird phase issues or harshness. One more thing: visually they have a sharp look.’
A term since the consoles’ arrival, Nelson has been rewarded with mid-term exam results that he describes as ‘very solid, above average from past years’.
‘I believe that the students picked up signal flow at an accelerated rate,’ he says. ‘The old desks had a few more attributes that made sense for when they were designed, but they caused signal flow to be more complicated than it needed to be for those just starting to learn. The Heritages reflect what’s needed for recording and mixing for today’s standards; they’re simple, intuitive and quite flexible. The first test run I did after the desk was installed and Studio 2 revamped, was with some great artists – Jenny Berkel & Ryan Boldt of The Deep Dark Woods, honouring Leonard Cohen’s 83rd birthday, with a cover of ‘True Love Leaves No Traces’.’
Nelson sees OIART’s Music Production department as an umbrella covering many different disciplines: ‘I teach basic music theory, classic music production – demo to mastering – the DNA of a song, building it up through the recording process, the tech side of engineering, mixing, Pro Tools and Ableton. This amalgamation of specialty areas reflects more of the current industry,’ he says.
