Shadow Hills Mastering Comp vs Fairchilds

((For a 2 buss chain, I would not recommend the Looptrotter Sat2rates at least, it's VERY finicky to set in a stereo setting. A solution to its unmatchable nature is to use it in mid side.))

But yeah, the Stamchild mk2 is incredible. I does its thing super fast on my 2buss now, and before it in the chain I have a SSL type (or two in a row sometimes, that share the small GR, but both add the sonic excitment of their signal paths) and the two SSL style comp do a complementary work, slow and unobtrusive, needle barely moving.

It sounds like you’re buying one of these expensive compressors in the hope it will get you clients. Clients will come for the quality of your work not which compressor you are using. In my experience clients generally don’t care what gear you’re using as long as they like the results.
when my mixes go to mastering I never look at what gear that engineer is using,  the only thing I care about is how the finished master sounds.
Maybe this compressor will improve the sound of your masters maybe not. What are you currently using? Is mastering a brand new venture for you or do you already have a client base?

After doing studio/music for almost 40 years thru every paradigm of work during that time period, I can honestly say that gear has never pulled a client in the door that I have seen. Of course, you need to have enough gear to do the job - that's a given, but beyond that the top 3 things that I've seen bring in consistent work are :

- a good attitude and fun person to be cooped up in close contact with
- experience / credits / and the skills to prove it
- client amenities (if you have clients at the studio during production)

Everything else falls a distant runner up.....including sporting a vintage Fairchild or EMI console.

PS - I actually made it this far NEVER using either a Fairchild or a Shadow Hills MC. Go figure.... Dumb luck I guess. LOL

I had SHMC # 002 a while back.lots of NOS stuff inside.it fell apart and was replaced by a new version which was pretty bare internally although it sounded pretty good.I liked the vca section.the opto didn't get a lot of use.nothing remotely Fairchild about them.
I was using a real 670 a lot t my friends place.
had the unfairchild after, nice but no Fairchild.
there's also a dramastic obsidian in the console that kinda never gets used
currently got Vacuvoxes and they are pretty insane.from super large hifi to dirty pump and everything in between.
oddly don't miss the hardware but I do use the plug in SHMC sometimes for ITB bus work

Do you recall which version of the Unfairchild that you had? I've read comments on here made in the past saying they didn't think it did much and to get the Vacuvox. I've only heard clips of that from MixBussTv and it sounded insane like you're saying. Unfortunately, it's cost prohibitive for me unless it shows up at some place with long financing. The new Unfairchild still decimates the UAD plugin though. What I'm trying to discern is what of these top of the line compressors I'd make my centerpiece if I can only choose one. If the Looptrotter Monster 2 can equal a real 670, then it'd make more sense to focus on an Alpha or SHMC. But that depends on how accurate and/or truthful Sylvia Massey was in that clip. Paul from Audio Animals just told me that the SHMC and Alpha don't make the other redundant, but that he thinks the Alpha is better. Could come down to price if I can snag a demo SHMC for 3k cheaper than an Alpha. That would leave me room for a Black Box. 


I'm just looking for things that can add to what the Fusion already does. I love to mix with the Black Box MS on busses. Could replace that with the hardware. Use the hardware again in mastering instead of Vintage Drive. Replace the SPL PQ plugin with the Buzz Req 2.2. Replace various plugin compressors with SHMC and/or something else. Use the Monster 2 in conjunction with the SHMC. Too bad I probably won't have the budget for a Portico II. Could use that to replace Satin. But if I had enough revenue coming in, can pick one up from Reverb later. 


Is there any kind of Dolby Type A hardware out there that I could use instead of Overloud Dopamine? 

For Dolby A in hardware you can use an actual Dolby unit with the card mod or Standard Audio makes the Stretch 500 series module

You say mastering is new to you. Hardware can in some cases be better than plugins but can you make a good master with the SHMC plugin? because if you can't you probably won't be able to with the hardware either. As its new to you do you already have a good sounding room and monitoring? that is in my opinion a more important area to throw money at for mastering purposes.
If it were me I certainly wouldn't be buying compressors on finance until I had a steady client base...Monitors or acoustic treatment maybe as hearing is everything but even then I would probably try to save or just buy what I can afford...thats just me though, some folks love finace!

The last video I saw of Massey was three weeks ago, a video where she and her studio buddy were removing a Looptrotter limiter from a rack close to the desk, to put in its place the Stamchild mk2 lol.

She must be evaluating it right now.

Yeah, but, but, but....I read on the internet they were really good, and bobby and joey use em and can't recommend them enough.  Of course, I've never used or even seen them in person, but I know they would be awesome and people will flock to me if I had them so....

Yes - the mastering rooms I like here feel like a set of headphones when you're in the sweet spot. Both have Duntech Sovereign with pretty massive amps. You can always hear all kinds of details you can't hear anywhere else. The processing gear comes and goes over time.

When it comes to monitoring, I'm just going to use VSX. Enough credible people have validated their use and the software is only getting better. My ITB stuff done on VSX has always sounded balanced, just lacking things only hardware can do. It's like a lot of those plugin vs hardware videos where the plugin just sounds anemic. Fusion rectified some of this. Listening on the Aurora N made it much more obvious that the Fusion could use some help. That thing is so revealing that I noticed a big difference between setting Gooddither to low or optimum. Maybe it's because I have Satin all over my mixes, but any setting above low just ate into my headroom in a way I didn't like. No noise shaping either.


So, I've spent a lot of time listening to hardware and deducing what would provide what I wanted. I have had to consider what is possible with a DAW and hardware when you don't have tape. Some modern albums sound thin and flat even when listening to a DR11 needledrop. Like the new Megadeth. Others sound tremendous and rival the classic stuff like Rave in Fire-Sons of a Lie. I'm supposed to chat with Jonjo one of these days and see what he did to get that sound. Their behind the scenes video shows a very big transformation in sound.


Tracking is not something I plan to do a lot of. Though I've certainly located enough evidence to suggest the SHMC is useful for this too. Maybe it's something I could get into at some point. It's true that people can do their own mixing, but usually those types are doing it out of necessity, right? And if they are, they're doing it with plugins. One reason I started learning was because what I wanted to do as a client would take a lot more time than I could afford at a studio. Now, if there were studios with top flight gear offering to master my stuff at $40 or even $100 a song or $200 for a mix, I'd have just done that. As it stood, I'd have had to pay hundreds of dollars a day to some local place whose samples were just barebones style production almost indistinguishable from the previous studio I checked out. And I thought, "well, it can't be that hard to pull that off".

Tracking at some other studio using some of my gear could be an option, though I don't have much experience doing things like mic placement where you can run into serious phase issues and all if not done right. Maybe a legit studio would already have stuff setup in a way where I wouldn't have to worry about that? I can certainly track vocals and anything else that's viable to track with an SM7b in a non-treated space. The Aurora N is portable too and that may end up being useful, but again, I have no real experience with onsite recording. But I do still have some contacts with local music who have done live sound and things like that. I've just never tried to heavily advertise myself as I wanted a stronger brand and more time before really putting myself out there.


There are a lot of studios that have results, sure. I'm not looking to do what the typical studio is doing though. If clients go to me, it'll be because they want something different as I am not trying to beat traditional studios at their own game. Clients on limited budgets may actually do that if I am offering them more for their money. Or if they have their stems or finished mixes and weren't happy with who they sent them to before. I've definitely read more than one story where a client paid a bigger name place and the work came back so shoddy that they came up with something better on their own. I guess there are cases where very competent people do shoddy work because the client didn't have the funds to pay for enough time for a good result. For years, I've been teaching myself through a lot of trial and error how to get a balanced-sounding mix with minimal resources and time. Ultimately, the market will decide if it's worth anything. My overhead is going to basically be just the cost of the hardware, so, I can take the time necessary with a client. Though we'll see about deadlines. My hope is that good hardware speeds things up significantly. If it's just some local band who doesn't need to rush, they'll probably appreciate the attention to their work. My philosophy is to never take shortcuts and damage my brand with a lessor effort. I'd rather work a regular job before I start passing off unfinished work as finished.

There are some Mpressor sound files I have to listen to. jcoutu1, I appreciate the offer and I may send something to you soon. Thanks for offering.

I'm not gonna finance so many things that I end up badly leveraged. If it doesn't work, I resell or I can pay the $350-$500 a month with income from a regular job if I want to keep them for myself. I'm not a huge risk-taker. First, we'll see if I can even finance stuff as easily as my sales guy claims. I may get stuck only being able to use a VK credit card and that'll mean 36 months for the SHMC and paying the rest in cash as I haven't found a 36+ month credit card option for the Alpha, Fairchild clones, or Buzz Req 2.2. There's some 48 month financing for the Tubecore that makes it something like $67 a month. Dangerous is all on 36 months if I recall.

Yeah... you've kinda lost me too.

Heres the thing when it comes to business & pulling in work. Especially mastering.

Your potential client base isn't artists. It's other professionals & peers. Producers & mix engineers. Guys like me.

Artists and especially the 'home tools' crowd? You'll starve because they may only release one thing every three years. Hook a pro producer or mix cat and they could feed you a half dozen or more projects a year.

The rub is that time thing. You gotta be able to turn stuff around & deliver. And it's gotta sound good too. No excuses. Either you rock or you suck. There's no real middle ground.

One mastering dude I've been with for about a decade? Think he bugged me for a while... had talked a few times then one day I had an emergency. Someone else dropped the ball... we're past deadline & over budget. Ok kid here's your shot and we need it yesterday.

Completely nailed it. Booyakasha! And so a few weeks later... yo! I got another one for you. 

Now you can do whatever ya want, say you've got some other gameplan but what you're really telling us is that maybe your not serious... which means you won't get the serious people with budgets. And then before long you might well end up as one of the bottom feeders you were unhappy with in the first place.