Recording and Production in the News

Producer Mick Glossop chooses a Prism Sound digital converter for his new studio

London - March 2007Producer Mick Glossop has invested in a Prism Sound Dream DA-2 converter, which he has installed in his new studio in Shepherds Bush, London.

For more than 30 years Mick Glossop has been producing, engineering and mixing in commercial recording facilities, but in 2006 he took the decision to transform the basement of his home into his own studio. Given his long-held personal endeavour to keep abreast of technical advances in sound production and processing techniques, he was determined that his own studio would be equally as good as any he had previously worked in.

"Building the studio has been a major project," he explains. "I employed a specialist company to excavate our existing cellar to create sufficient height and to make the building structurally sound. Then I commissioned Munro Acoustics to design the studio so that it was properly soundproofed and as acoustically accurate as any commercial facility. I now have such a well-insulated control room and a drum booth that I can make as much noise as I like without upsetting the neighbours."

The completed studio, which is equipped with a Pro Tools HD Accel 3 system including Pro Control, is already being used for a variety of projects, including albums that Glossop is producing for two singer-songwriters, Rachelle van Zanten and Talitha MacKenzie.

"The decision to invest in a Dream DA-2 converter was an easy one to make as I consider Prism Sound's digital to analogue converters to be the best in the world," Glossop says. "I am using my DA-2 in conjunction with my Pro Tools system to sum in stereo. It requires a certain amount of experience and confidence to do this but I am achieving really great results. However, to get those great results it was imperative that I had the right converter. If you are working in stereo and mixing in the box, then the converter is as critical as the monitors because it is integral to the chain. I am delighted with my DA-2 - it doesn't colour the sound in any way and it really has been worth every penny I've spent on it."

Mick Glossop's production career began in the 1970s with new wave and punk bands such as Magazine, Public Image Ltd, Penetration and The Ruts. He also had huge success collaborating with many other artists, including The Waterboys, Furniture, The Wonder Stuff, Frank Zappa, Ian Gillan, John Lee Hooker and Lloyd Cole. At the beginning of the 1980s he began an association with Van Morrison that persists to this day. In recent years he has extensively mixed Van's archive material, as well as live performances from the Montreux Jazz Festival, in 5.1 surround sound, for release on DVD.

Glossop is renowned for his forward-looking attitude to sound production and processing techniques. Since the early 1980's he has worked with MIDI programming, digital samplers, and computer-based mixing systems, and in 1994, invested in his first Digidesign Pro Tools hard disk recording and editing system. This was updated first to Mix Plus status, and most recently to HD Accel 3. These have been major tools in his work over the past 12 years. Although, like many of his contemporaries, his work has traditionally encompassed the analogue domain, he has fully embraced the latest developments in digital technology.

A developing interest in film sound has led to Glossop's involvement in many projects involving sound design and film post-production; one of the most recent being the role of music editor and music mixer for "The 51st State" starring Samuel L. Jackson & Robert Carlyle. Further film work has included sound design and mixing for several independent films.