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| Apogee: Apogee Users: Rafa Sardina |  |
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Apogee Users: Rara Sardina
Discerning Apogee Owner Today, the village of Guernica, in the Basque Country of Northern Spain, is still perhaps best known for the events of 1937 that inspired the famous mural by Pablo Picasso. This small town near Bilbao was also the birthplace of engineer/mixer/producer Rafa Sardina. Now based in LA - in Woodland Hills, to be precise - Sardina has come a long way in a short time. His musical life began playing guitar at the age of 14, and it was in his cousin's band that he had his first studio recording experience. Later he went on to handle live sound in Northern Spain and beyond, and then working, "by mistake," he says, in the studios of Bilbao (notably Tio Pete, where he was initially involved in maintenance and installation). Sardina is still a guitarist and bass player - and proud of it, but he admits that he has little time for playing now. Instead, he says, "I'm working more on arrangements, and not so much on my own compositions." Most of the time, he's busy engineering and producing an eclectic range of artists, including Macy Gray, Dru Hill, Mariah Carey, Luis Miguel, Juan Gabriel, Angie Stone and Soul Coughing. He recorded and mixed music for the Oliver Stone film Any Given Sunday and the IMAX movie Michael Jordan - To The MAX, and he has been involved in a number of TV movie projects for HBO. He has received two Grammy® awards, and you are as likely to find Rafa in a world-class studios like Record Plant or Abbey Road as you are to find him at home in his studio, packed to the gills with outboard gear - which is where we talked to him recently.
"I used to rent AD-8000s," he goes on, "and when I decided to put together my own Pro Tools rig, I had to have them." Today, Sardina owns five AD-8000 Special Editions, having started with the standard versions and then upgrading. "I must really like them," he says, "Or maybe I'm crazy!" He also owns a Trak2. "I love the Trak2," he says. "Not just the converters, but also the mic pre. I really like the Quick Keys too, that's pretty smart. When you're in the studio, you need quick access to the functions." Being such a discerning Apogee user, it's easy for him to say why he likes the sound of Apogee converters. "It's the clarity," he says. Sardina works on a very eclectic range of material, from solo classical guitar or piano to jazz and rock, and that affects how he uses his equipment, and particularly the Apogees. "When I'm doing my own projects, I mix in Pro Tools. I have a lot of outboard gear," Sardina notes, and points to his extensive racks of equipment that occupy a whole wall of the room (see photo below). "Usually, in here, I use the Apogees for inserts, to hook up all those outboard units. In the studio, though, we use them for I/O. They make a huge difference." In the studio, too, Sardina prefers to mix analog. "On a recent project, " he says, "we had 72 outputs. I was using all five of my AD-8000SEs, plus Trak2s with the 8-channel D/A converter cards." Rafa Sardina notes the very different ways of working that characterize mixing in Pro Tools versus mixing analog. "Everything has its advantages and disadvantages," he says. "It's all about having options. You need to move fast, be more creative... especially when a project grows in complexity." There are considerations with analog, for example the choice of tape heads on the master recorder - like whether you want the special extended bass response heads on the ATR or not. Some people just use them anyway, but I find that while they may sound good on classical music or on a jazz recording, the low-end hump just doesn't work with rock music." Very often, Sardina will choose the recording an mixing technique to suit the material. "I might record solo classical piano direct to analog," he says, "but I also like to master both digitally and to 1/2 inch analog," he notes. Always keeping his options. There are other challenges too. "When you're working analog, it's hard to automate everything," he comments. "In Pro Tools, though, you can for example automate a guitar part and then never have to worry about it. You can keep a full picture of where things are going - as long as the session is well-planned." Session planning is something Sardina prides himself on, and we talk about making decisions in the studio. In the old days, you would end up with just a couple of tracks to record a lead vocal, and you hade to make a decision: which one do we keep? Today, all too often, those choices are not made. Sardina notes that sometimes a project will come in that has literally hundreds of tracks. "Nobody knows where everything is: the notes that were taken may not be complete, and so sometimes you don't even get to hear some of the recording," he says. "I have no problem erasing tracks," Sardina goes on. "That's something i learned from analog. But some people freak out at the thought of losing something. They don't want to make decisions." As a result, sessions can get out of hand. "You can end up with so many tracks that you run out of effects, and DSP power - even a powerful system can't handle everything that's going on," he says. Perhaps he needs more power for that kind of session: Is he going to upgrade to Pro Tools HD?, I ask. "I've thought about it," he says. "I haven't had many requests for higher sample rates, and I do think that 192 kHz sampling is mainly hype," he goes on. "But if I come to upgrade, I will make comparisons again. I know that my existing AD-8000SEs sound very good with the new HD system. And I have heard a lot about using the AD-16 and DA-16 with the 192 Digital I/O," he says. "I'm certainly staying with Apogee," he concludes. |
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