Dixon Avenue Basement Jams

Adam Audio S2X

Perhaps the most important thing in our studio (in anyone’s studio really) is our monitor speakers. It’s fairly subjective, but we really feel comfortable with the Adam Audio S2x’s.

They are probably the most precise monitors we’ve used (having previously used Genelec 8030’s, Neumann KH120 and KRK VXT’s). They offer a super flat response with corrugated ribbon tweeters which give you really accurate high and mid-range coverage with a stiff Kevlar 7” woofer which means even at louder volumes they won’t buckle on the lower frequencies. We are big fans of Adam Audio! In fact, we also have a set of the smaller A5x monitors in our other studio.

Allen & Heath Qu-24

After your speakers, the second most important thing has to be your audio interface. Having just moved on from the Focusrite Clarett 8 PreX, and before that the UAD Apollo Quad [plus a shit ton of patch bays] we wanted something that would give us a similar quality with regards to sound but would give us more hands-on options and negate the need for using as many patch bays. So we went for the Allen & Heath QU-24: a really powerful mixing desk great for studio and live, with a built-in 24-bit audio interface offering 24 analogue inputs [plus room for expansion over ADAT] and loads of outs, etc. Pretty much perfect for us and means we have all our hardware kit streaming straight into Ableton Live 10 Suite at any time we wish. It’s really easy to have more than one setting saved and recalled at the touch of a button. A real “game-changer” in our set up [hate that term!] 🙂

ER-M Multiclock

Another “utility” in our studio but just as important as the speakers and interface… in-fact without this piece of kit, we would have definitely smashed up the studio in anger by now! It’s fairly straight forward… you take an audio output from your interface and run a VST in your DAW that gives out really tight audio rate clock, plug that into the audio input of the ER-M Multiclock and in turn, it spits out a rock solid midi clock to all your external instruments so they all play nice and in time with yer DAW [Ableton in our case] – MAGIC! 🙂

Cyclone TT-303 V1

This little Acid box doesn’t actually get used as much as it used to, but it is still much loved! Having previously owned two original 303’s and sold them on many moons ago, this Cyclone TT-303 does the job perfectly to our ears. This one still has the same form factor of the original Rolands [before Cyclone had to change to the uglier mk2’s] but with the choice of syncing over standard MIDI rather than Din Sync… It’s never let us down and we’re perfectly happy with how it sounds… a few purists out there may say otherwise… but who cares… 🙂

Arturia Buchla Easel V

This, the Buchla Easel from Arturia is based on the classic Music Easel and is hands down the best software synth we have ever used. It sounds so raw and unlike anything else we have ever heard coming from a VST plugin.

They have done such a great job of replicating every last detail… even down to what may be described as the unwanted audio artefacts of the hardware version. We love it, and are so happy they made this as we could never afford the real version! We have used this on a few tracks recently including CYT and a couple of soon to be released DABJ tracks.

KORG MS-20

The Korg MS-20, a classic semi-modular bass synth with what has to be the sickest sounding filter around. Also great for processing other instruments. This was a kit Dan built himself a few years back.

Modular Synths

This is a work in progress… we are in the process of migrating from a portable rig into this new case. It’s just awaiting a Eurorack mixer and another sequencer. When it’s running it’s just a great way of coming up with sounds and patterns that we’d maybe not come up with from a fixed architecture synth or any software. The Winter Modular Eloquencer sequencer is just amazing for controlled “randomness”…

Hardware Synths

Here are few more hardware synths …

Moog DFAM

The Drummer from Another Mother!

The Similing Buddha

Often late at night after listening to the same segment of a track for hours on end we find ourselves asking: “What would Buddha do?”

Vinyl Collection

Our vinyl collection