Evan Jones’ passion for live recording was born in the nineties and was the inspiration for his start-up business, Jones Mobile Recording. He has spent the past two decades honing his skills and steadily growing his set-up. Today, he is Creative Media Director at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and FOH audio engineer for Arlington’s live venue, Levitt Pavilion.
A drummer as well as a sound engineer, Jones’ work background also encompasses videography and graphic design, having developed the Pro Tools mixing templates and signature voice treatments on Japanese anime television series, Dragon Ball Z and other American anime titles.
It was a request from a friend to record a dozen or so songs that was the impetus to get his ‘ultimate’ rig sorted out. ‘After tons of research, I landed on the Audient Evo 16,’ he explains. ‘It checked all the boxes when it came to mic preamps as well as inputs and outputs.
‘So far, I’ve done on-site vocal auditions, violin auditions, a West African Christian praise team, some festival stuff, live band recording, a double LP mastering for Teen Cancer America, Pro Tools Training and so much more – all in the first four months of owning the rig.’
According to Jones, his Audient Evo 16 was the final piece in his ‘dream mobile recording studio’. ‘The Evo 16 and its software is at the heart of this whole system,’ he says. ‘The mic preamps have great sound and gain, the headphones sound great and the Evo software that sits on top of Pro Tools is rock solid.’
Evo 16 is a 24-input/24-output audio interface with advanced converter technology and eight Evo preamps that can set their own levels using their Smartgain feature. ‘I’m tracking drums for Gary Devlin’s project so the Smartgain just blew my mind.’
With Smartgain, Jones sets up his mics, presses the Smartgain button, starts drumming and he is almost immediately ready to record. Powered by the Evo 16 algorithm, Smartgain uses peak analysis to automatically analyse, adjust and optimise gains in less than 20s.
With Evo 16 at the heart of his recording, Jones is currently using external preamps via Adat to give him 16 additional inputs.
‘I also have some TLA tube preamps to choose from on the front end. For monitoring I’ve got a Mackie 4 channel headphone amp using four outputs from Pro Tools and the Evo 16 for six independent headphones mixes. I even wired in my old Alesis NanoVerb. It is a full top notch mobile recording rig.’
He is now about to order the recently released Audient Evo SP8 8-channel mic preamp, which will provide further Smartgain channels.
‘The first quarter of 2023 is booked up recording Gospel groups, string ensembles and vocal groups,’ he reports. ‘I’m working on some really cool field recording stuff based around this awesome gear. I’m so glad I picked the Evo 16 as the brain of my rig.’
More: www.audient.com
