GERARD BARRETTO: Hello. My name is Gerard Barretto. We’re here at my studio in Milquetoast Sounds, and I’m going to describe to you what we have done here. I kind of like put together whatever we can find kind of operation. You know, we use what we have to that’s because we don’t have ton of gear but what we do have, you know, we try to definitely use it really well.

I guess the best piece of gear we have and what we mainly use and try to use it all the time is we have a Portico, which is the Rupert Neve design series. So, it’s essentially a dual-channel Neve pre modeled exactly off of -- I forgot which exactly. I believe it’s the 5012 model, so it’s really, it’s a beautiful mic. Like I said, we tried to use it on everything but it’s only two channels but luckily with, you know, multitrack, you know, we can afford to just use that for the money, you know. You can spend upwards at $7,000 on one channel of a Neve mic pre and for like under two grand you can get two channels that sound really amazing. It’s fairly affordable and for Neve at least, because --

So, we use it on vocals all the time in combination with the Studio Projects C1 microphone which is in my opinion like one of the better large condenser microphones for under $400. Actually I think it’s maybe $300 but for a large diaphragm mic that’s not, you know, like, you know we don’t have a million of them but it’s a great mic and it’s awesome for -- I use it for vocals. I use it for anything, vocals, kick, bass. I’ve been using it. On the latest record I finished with Roommate, which is we intended to -- scheduled to come out on April, I used it on vocals, kick, bass, overhead, you know, whatever.

It’s like anything it’s a matter of mic placement and, you know, mic placement, getting it, putting it in a room somewhere. You know, you could have one microphone but make it sound like, you know, 20 different ways just by where you’re having it. I usually do with vocals. I don’t use a pop filter. I do an off axis mic’ing technique where I would set up a dummy microphone in front of a singer just like 57, it’s not plugged in, and put the condenser microphone about let’s say like, maybe like kind of I know what degrees, 45 degrees off axis but pointing right towards the mouth, right towards the mouth too, and you pick up I feel that’s a very natural sound for vocals and you get a natural roll-off for the highs which I find, you know, some, if you’re doing vocals, especially if there’s like a lot of dynamics that you get pretty harsh in the high ends and then sort of dealing with EQ, you know. Everyone’s doing EQ as a last resort.