TEL AVIV, Israel — James Dunkley, FOH engineer for Anthrax, Fun Lovin’ Criminals and Amon Amarth, is one of a number of up-and-coming live engineers turning to live tools from Waves Audio. The plug-in provider recently provided this account of how Dunkley is leveraging its products.
More details from Waves (http://www.waves.com/):
Dunkley notes, “All of my effects are Waves. On the last run with Anthrax, I came to rely on the Waves V-EQ4 Vintage Equalizer and the CLA-76 on the lead vocal. Joey [Belladonna, Anthrax lead vocalist] is particularly loud, so I like to use a nice but aggressive compressor on him so that I can rein him in into the mix when he’s really going for it. The V-EQ4 is just a nice, musical EQ in that it brings out the characteristic of his voice without sounding too ‘surgical.’ I also use the CLA-76 on backup vocals.”
He continues, describing his workflow: “I am currently running three separate instances of Waves Renaissance Reverb – one at about 1.6 seconds for the snare, another at 2.4 seconds for the toms (to make them sound massive, as obviously they’re not played as much as the snare, so when they come in I want them in like a ton of bricks!), and the last one at about 3 seconds as a sort of vocal wash. I also buss the lead vocal out to a Waves H-Delay, switching it in and out on the channel sends. The H-Delay was actually a massive surprise, because you do end up thinking, ‘How different can one delay be from another?,’ but sonically, the H-Delay is something else. I have a stereo group for the drum kit (apart from the kick and snare), and I put a Waves H-Comp across as kind of a parallel bus compressor in two busses. It tightens up the kit nicely, and it makes sure I have more consistency on fast tom rolls while ensuring each drum punches through the guitars. I also run a Waves C4 over a stereo guitar bus that all my guitars go through. I am almost using this as an overall EQ, as I can cut the extreme lows, bring up the sparkle in the top end and tighten up the low mid on the typically Anthrax ‘chuggy’-sound parts. The compression on the drum and guitar busses just really tightens things up and makes sure everything stays in its place within the mix so my vocal can ride on top. Basically my mix is pretty much Waves-dependent and just adds the character and control I need to mix a band like Anthrax on a digital console.”
