Ulrich Wild

A Symphony that Rocks...Hard.

Interview with Ulrich Wild
Los Angeles, CA - May 4, 2007

Sitting in his attic studio atop his 1907 craftsman house in Silver Lake, California, with a well-developed list of credits after his 1995 Grammy Nomination for White Zombie’s “Astro-Creep: 2000”, life for Hard Rock Producer and Engineer Ulrich Wild is good. And with his recently installed Apogee Symphony System, life at home just got better.

While most noted for his work on records like Static-X, Breaking Benjamin, Pantera, and the Deftones’ “Around The Fur” album, Wild has recently achieved stellar results from his new Symphony System on projects for Project 86 and DethKlok. The former Pro Tools user was so impressed with the performance and sound quality of the Symphony System that he converted his entire studio to Native, and now mixes nearly all of his projects in Logic using Apogee’s Symphony System. He says, “The Symphony System finally brings near zero latency to native recording, and the new converters (AD/DA-16Xs) sound absolutely fantastic.” Wild explains below why he made that transition and the benefits he has already received from the switch.

Q. What specifically about Symphony was appealing to you and made you want to make the crossover to fully commit to a Native DAW?

A. “Native DAWs finally have enough processing power to allow me to work in a comfort zone. I’m running up to 110 tracks of audio, each with a compressor and EQ plug-in – many with several more. I always have three reverbs, three delay lines, a stereo chorus, a stereo flanger, a stereo phaser, a stereo pitch shifter, distortion, and various other effects permanently set up. That’s how I used to work on the large analog consoles for the better part of twenty years.”

Q. With near zero latency, in what ways can you now work in your Native environment that you could not before?

A. “I like to use a lot of outboard gear instead of plug-ins to keep things interesting. The Symphony System allows me to do this in real time without slowing down the whole mixing process.”

Q. What is your exact Symphony System configuration and workstation setup?

* 1 AD-16X 1 DA-16X
* 1 Symphony PCI-e card
* 2 X-Symphony cards
* 1 Mac Pro Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz 2GB
* 1 Universal Audio UAD-PCI-e card
* 1 Mackie Control Universal
* 2 Dynaudio Acoustics BM6A

Q. What recent projects have you been working on? Have they been using your new Symphony System?

A. “I’m currently mixing Dethklok, a cartoon Death Metal band on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network). I’m also finishing the mix on Project 86. Next up is Sleeper Cell and Depswa. All these projects are being mixed in Logic with the Symphony System. Prior to installing the new rig I worked with Opiate For The Masses, OneSideZero and SOiL.”

For more information, please visit Ulrich's web site www.ulrichwild.com