Producer Gary Bromham offers an insight into Liquid Mix with Pro Tools

[Jeremy Lumsden]

Gary Bromham has written with, engineered and produced some of the biggest names in music including Björk, George Michael, Tina Turner and Sheryl Crow. He is currently working at Olympic Studios with two Pro Tools systems. He says: “I use a big HD 4 system with a Mac G5 and I also work from home with a MacBook Pro and Pro Tools LE.”
Bromham first came across Focusrite’s Liquid Mix after being introduced to it by Cenzo Townshend (Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol, New Order) and has been discovering its joys, particularly with his Pro Tools LE system. Unlike HD, Pro Tools LE doesn’t include plug-in delay compensation but it’s not a problem as Gary employs a quick and easy solution.

“A lot of people moan about the delay compensation problems they encounter with Pro Tools LE and 3rd party products and plug‐ins,” he says, “but it is relatively easy to get round this problem with Liquid Mix – indeed there are several ways. By command clicking the volume indicator in either the arrange or mixer area we can view the amount of delay incurred by inserting a plug‐in. There is a myth that Pro Tools doesn’t report the delay induced by inserting a plug‐in. But in the case of Liquid Mix this is reported back exactly as the documentation says it will be, namely twice the buffer size setting + 8 samples. Armed with this information we use the Time Adjuster plug‐in in Pro Tools LE to delay all tracks not using Liquid Mix.” You can then hold Alt and drag the time adjuster plug-in to all tracks not using Liquid Mix so that they are all in time.

And as if that’s not easy enough, Gary has also discovered another simple solution: “I could set up two Aux tracks, one with Time Adjuster, one without and simply route all Liquid Mix tracks to the one without Time Adjuster and all others to the one without. I prefer to insert and copy a Time Adjuster to all tracks in my session at the start and then simply make them inactive (CTRL + Command) when I insert a Liquid Mix plug‐in. Please note it is not enough to simply bypass the time Adjuster plug as this will in itself incur a delay – not what we want!”

And as for Liquid Mix’s sound quality, Gary has nothing but praise. “The quality of the effects in Liquid Mix are simply stunning,” he says. “I already knew from having used a Liquid Channel that they would be pretty damn good but not this realistic! Bear in mind I have at least half of the hardware which this box is emulating right in front of me in my studio! So when my API 550A EQ let me down one day I was pleasantly surprised by the result of copying the settings and inserting the plug‐in over my guitar track in Pro Tools! No stock plug‐ins in either Pro Tools or my other DAW of choice, Logic Pro, could emulate that feat! I love this [Liquid Mix] and not to mention the fact that it puts less strain on the computer due to its on-board DSP!”

Gary’s typical set-up and favourite emulations;
“I use a strictly Mac set-up,” he says. “I use Logic for writing and programming, Pro Tools for mixing. I use HD preferably but am quite comfortable in LE, particularly with Liquid Mix. My favourite compressor emulation for mix down is the Alan Smart‐Grinder and favourite EQ emulation for vocals is the API‐Trany 3.”