Mixing w/ Analog Heat [AH]

Elektron Gear Analog Heat
#1

Got an Analog Heat mkI in last week to help with finalizing an album.

The album is an electronic rock and roll folk thing recorded over the course of two years, lots of different gear scenarios and a few locations.

Looking for some pre-mastering color and a little cohesiveness amongst the tracks— nothing destructive, but rather enhancement.

I’m running a Babyface Pro into Logic. Thus far, I haven’t been able to get Overbridge working without crashing Logic, so I may just run stems through the Heat from a portable setup to a Mac mini.

What methods and tactics have emerged over the years as you’ve worked with Heat? Open to experimentation!

Thanks!

#2

Treat the AH as you would use a channelstrip with pre amp for individual channels and/or busses. Broad band eq, filter and some colour aka distortion setting to taste. A tiny lfo or envelope follower on the drive or filterdirt as destination, just to create some movement and barely noticable earcandy. It all will sum up. Final track another bounce with just a tiny bit of boost. Be careful with the wet/dry setting on the device it self because it can introduce fase cancellation. Better to hold back with drive settings and use full wet or listen carefully. Good luck

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#3

Excellent! Good call on the envelope follower— could see that being valuable on drums and percussion especially, like hitting tape in a pleasing, overdriven way.

Thanks!

#4

…once ur ready for mixdown, dedicate a stereo pair inputs of ur interface to heats inputs…
and get right back into ur interface with it’s outs…

run the heat on pure first boost circuit…wet gain on three o clock…dry/wet ratio above one o clock at least…drive also at least around one o clock…and see where it takes u…

final gain approach for recording back in should leave some headroom left for proper brickwall limiting the final premaster recording…

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#5

…for solid premastering, i suggest to switch off the filter (both knobs pressed at once, so whole filter section is off) and leave lfo/enveloper modulations out of the equasion…they’re great for anything else, from single elements to sub stems, but for plain solid premastering, all u want and need is it’s unique and famous to those who know truu analog glue/warmth/boost addition, like an old big analog mixing desk would do…

just drive it in boost circuit as hot to ur taste, adjust low and hi end eq to ur taste, but jsut a little, and ur finished premaster will have all the hi fi magic of the good old days, which is always a great thing, even on modern techno whatsoever tunes…

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#6

This preset I created works great in the studio as well :slight_smile:

Video on how to set such a preset up:

You can apply the technique to stems as well to “warm” them up, add subtle glue compression and/or soft clipping.

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#7

Thank you both! I’ll have time this weekend to fully implement your suggestions. I’ll follow up afterwards with findings!

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