Macklemore and Ryan Lewis take Metric Halo on the road

While touring for their critically acclaimed album, The Heist, rapper Macklemore and producer Ryan Lewis have been demoing new material using a Metric Halo ULN-2 interface.

“The ULN-2 is a pretty unique interface,” comments Ryan Lewis. “It has two good-quality pre-amps and yet it’s small enough to fit into a carry-on. It also acts as a great interface for Pro Tools, or any other audio program that I use. Macklemore and I have used it countless times on the road.”

After using the ULN-2 for a short while, Lewis added the Metric Halo Production Bundle to his set-up. The Bundle is a collection of seven plug-ins that includes Character, a plug-in that models the sonic signature of a wide range of classic and contemporary audio gear; HaloVerb reverb; Precision DeEsser; and the TransientControl dynamics processor.

“Character is great when I’m not exactly sure what I want to do with something that doesn’t have the right texture,” Lewis said. “It can pull out different pieces that weren’t there before.

"I love HaloVerb and use it all the time. It has a good variety of feelings and a full range of spring and hall sounds that work well on vocals and instruments.”

Some of Lewis’ uses are particular to rap and hip-hop: “Rap vocals have a lot of punch and can get very sibilant. The Precision DeEsser does a great job of cleaning that up. Finally, I didn’t expect the fairly simple TransientControl plug-in to be as useful as it turned out to be. Now it’s one of my favorite plug-ins because it can capture the accents in a recording. For instance, when I have a break beat and I really want the snare and kick to pop, but I’d like to lose everything else in the recording, I use TransientControl.”

Photo by John Keatley 

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