SAFETY HARBOR, FLORIDA: Gamers and indie music fans alike are eagerly awaiting the release of Rockstar Games’ Max Payne 3. Gamers are excited because Max Payne 3 represents the latest in the tremendously popular series, which has sold over 7.5 million copies and garnered numerous awards. Indie music fans are excited because Rockstar Games contracted Los Angeles’ groundbreaking noise pop band HEALTH to craft its original score. Individuals who count themselves in both categories are, of course, watching the game’s May release date very closely, as are the members of HEALTH, who are presently blessed and cursed with the soaring creative frenzies that tight deadlines tend to inspire. As a useful tool in capturing the magic of those frenzies, HEALTH has chosen to rely on a Metric Halo ULN-2 interface for much of the tracking and all of the mixing and monitoring.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK: A casual listen to Santigold’s pop-friendly, genre-defying music pegs it as favorably simple, with hooks that fly under the radar to secretly steal your heart… a theft of which you are only made aware hours later when you find her songs creeping around your brain on endless loop! But to the careful listener, it is apparent that Santigold’s songs take their straightforward form from the complex interrelationships of sonic textures and instrumentation that complement the larger structure. In other words, there’s a lot going on in a Santigold song! To create those textures and to imbue them with the urgency and immediacy worthy of a great live show, drummer/programmer Ian Longwell and guitarist/music director Ray Brady work hard to define a universe of samples that they then play live, relying on a Metric Halo 2882 interface to deliver those sounds more

MAGNOLIA, TEXAS: In early 2012, Wrenn House Studios in Magnolia, Texas rounded out its collection of API gear with a 16-channel 1608 console. From the beginning, the studio was a self-described “API House,” with racks of API processors, 7600 channel strips, an 8200 summing mixer, the 7800 master module and two API 2500 stereo compressors.

“Clay and I have been working with music our whole lives,” explained John Morton, Wrenn House’s chief engineer and partner with the studio owner Clayton Wrenn. “Years ago, I had the opportunity to hear an API preamp in an equipment demonstration, and I was struck by how different the API sounded compared to everything else. It had a sonic quality that’s hard to describe – a richness and fullness. I knew it was what I was after.”

A clear need for a professional analog console encouraged Wrenn House to invest in the 1608, and news of the studio’s high-end API gear spread. Local acts and other area production facilities began asking if they could make their recordings at Wrenn House.

“There was clearly some pent-up demand for an API rig in Houston,” Morton said. “Folks go to Austin when they want the API sound. As far as I know, we are the only API 1608 shop south of Austin at this time. I anticipate a lot of interest from local music and video producers. API has never let us down.”

ABOUT API (AUTOMATED PROCESSES, INC.) Established more than 40 years ago, Automated Processes, Inc. is the leader in analog recording gear with the Vision, Legacy Series and 1608 recording consoles, as well as its classic line of modular signal processing equipment.

www.apiaudio.com