Musician, producer and mixing engineer Jyrki ‘Speedy’ Saarinen installed an Audient ASP4816 mixing desk in his Mediagents studio last summer as part of a renovation designed to advance the Helsinki facility’s work in TV and recording for independent labels.
Saarinen splits his time equally between his studio and working for Finnish National Broadcasting Company, YLE. Here he has mixed and recorded hundreds of different events for them over the years – everything from music festivals to sport events, for broadcast on TV and radio. He even mixed for the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki – the first surround sound broadcast in Eurovision history.
When choosing gear for his own studio, he had a very clear idea of what he wanted: ‘We needed an analogue console for recording and especially for mixing,’ he explains. ‘We searched the market for the alternatives and noticed that ASP4816 fitted our needs well.
‘The Audient signal chain, including EQ, has turned out to be very useful. They don’t add noise or any other unwanted character. You can run the mixes quite hot and it sounds good.’
Mediagents is a hybrid studio working with both digital and analogue gear. Using Pro Tools as the main DAW, all mixes go through the analogue summing in the ASP4816, with the addition of traditional outboard gear as well as a variety of plug-ins. ‘The bus compression is also used quite often. I find mixing in the analogue domain faster than working just ‘in the box’,’ Saarinen says.
A long and diverse career in the audio industry began immediately after Saarinen’s audio recording education in the 1980s. Having impressed 90m Eurovision viewers in 2007, he freelanced as a music producer and worked for 16 years as a monitor engineer on the main stage at the Pori Jazz festival – one of the oldest in Europe.
When the ASP4816 came to the attention of local audio school Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, they came to Saarinen. ‘Metropolia asked for my opinion and I was happy to recommend it. ASP4816 is a nice console, especially for its size and price.
‘I’m very lucky to have enjoyed such a varied career. I’m very thankful for YLE that it’s been possible for me to do a lot of different things,’ he says.
More: http://mediagents.fi
