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Apogee: Apogee Users: Mike Fennel and Stan Malveaux

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Apogee Users: Mike Fennel and Stan Malveaux
Universal Music Group Goes Native
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Tucked away in a suite just a stone's throw east of the 405 Freeway in West LA, you'll find Universal Music Publishing Group's studio, where all the latest Universal signings come through to record their material. Centerpiece of the attractive and well-designed control room and adjacent recording space is the studio's API Legacy console, but right next to it is the facility's comprehensive 40-channel Nuendo system, with two screens and a rackful of associated hardware, headed by Apogee AD-16 and DA-16 16-channel converters.

Chief engineer Mike Fennel (above left) has worked at the facility for 16 years. They've had Nuendo for almost two years, and rapidly became masters of the system. We talked to Mike and his colleague, fellow engineer Stan Malveaux (above right).

"It's a PC-based system, with a 1.9 GHz Pentium 4 processor," says Fennel. "We built the computer ourselves, around an Intel motherboard." The computer is in the rack along with the converters and synchronization hardware: a Rosendahl Nanosync, Steinberg Timelink Pro, three standard 8-channel Nuendo I/O units and, of course, the Apogee AD-16 and DA-16. "We have 40 channels of I/O," says Malveaux. "Most sessions we do here use at least 110-120 tracks, and often a lot more." At the moment, they're working on new signing, Relax to Paris, and the session on the screen has 123 tracks, including stereo submixes laid back from analog through the Apogees.


"We generally mix analog through the API," Fennel notes, "and then to CD-R or DAT. We're intending to get a Trak2 to handle the mix A/D conversion and UV22HR to 16-bit - and we're looking forward to using the mic preamps."

"Some people come into the studio expecting to see some other DAW," Fennel goes on. "But once they've touched Nuendo, it's different. We've turned around a lot of people." Now some of Universal's clients are using the NativeTools combination of Apogee and Nuendo too.

"The Apogees capture the highs, the detail and the warmth of the performance, and there's something about Nuendo that sounds 'special' - the Nuendo mix engine, for example, just seems to sound better, too."
- Mike Fennel and Stan Malveaux -
Universal Music Publishing
" Apogee AD-16 and DA-16 with Nuendo - it's a great combination," says Malveaux. "The Apogees capture the highs, the detail and the warmth of the performance, and there's something about Nuendo that sounds 'special' - the Nuendo mix engine, for example, just seems to sound better, too."

Fennel, Malveaux and their colleagues record everything through the Apogees. "There's a definite difference," says Fennel.
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