YOUNGSTOWN, OH – Bass player James LoMenzo outfits both his tour and home studio with Audient iD22 audio interface, eight-channel mic pre ASP880, and iD14.
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“For me, it’s all about the way it sounds,” says self-professed ‘journeyman’ bass player, James LoMenzo of his growing collection of Audient gear. In between his busy touring schedule with John Fogerty, LoMenzo spends his time in his compact home studio setup, which along with his a large collection of bass guitars, also includes iD22 audio interface, eight-channel mic pre ASP880 and – most recently – iD14.
“Since 90% of the work I do is either providing bass tracks to clients, mixing/mastering and composing to picture, it’s all the space I need to get things done,” he says, again citing ‘tone’ as his main factor in choosing an audio interface. “When I discovered the iD22, I was amazed at how close it brought me to the professional studio experience that I had become familiar with throughout my years recording at some of the world’s great studios. Depth, clarity, imaging, punch, all at a very high bar level – all this in MY home studio, and for a seemingly ridiculously low cash outlay.
“When you combine that with easy universal connectivity and a crazy good set of monitoring features, it boggles the mind that there doesn’t seem to be a compromise between cost, sound and features,” he says. The smaller 10in/4out audio interface, iD14 was his latest addition which he bought to travel with, to save him from “…unpatching and disrupting my main studio setup. I was so pleased with the performance of the iD14 as I’d become so accustomed to the iD22. I don’t feel that I’m sacrificing anything sonically with the iD14.”
In The Definitive Guide to Recording Bass video series – the first of which is available on the Audient website now, LoMenzo talks through many technical points he’s accrued over his nearly three decades in the music business, which as well as his work in the studio, has included playing with Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne and Slash’s Snakepit among others. He’s particularly proud of “the fact that I managed to keep on staying musically relevant after my big ‘Hair Band’ success in the 80s,” recollecting his time playing with White Lion, and citing confidence together with preparation as the most important things to think about when trying to make it in the world of performance.
Despite his many accomplishments, LoMenzo remains delightfully humble. “I can’t believe I still get to do this! I’ve gotten to play all my dream places with most of my dream artists, Madison Square Garden, The Greek Theater, a muddy field with several thousand of my closest Indian friends. Honestly, any gig is potentially the best gig I’ve ever played. I’m sure it’s always been that way for me.”
As for the recording gear every musician needs? “The big three things for me would be the monitor speakers, then a great microphone and the interface,” he says, pointing out that it really does depend on the individual musician’s taste. “There’s a lot of great low budget gear out there,” he continues. “These days there’s really nothing to hold you back from creating great sounding stuff with the minimal amount of gear. For quality sound it always goes to the interface and its converters. You can’t make great sounding music if you can’t get an honest perception of what you’re recording.”
We are very happy that Audient provides James exactly what he’s after.
