He's been a loyal Focusrite user for much of his career, "I've used Focusrite gear for ages. I trust the sound, and I know it's not going to let me down", so when an opportunity arose to record Jasper Høiby's jazz trio Phronesis (www.jasperhoiby.com) live at The Forge in Camden, London, he immediately thought of Focusrite.

To record the gig, Matt wanted two completely independent recording setups, to provide redundancy in case a laptop or hard drive were to fail. For the front end to both systems, he chose an OctoPre MkII and an OctoPre MkII Dynamic, giving him 16 channels of Focusrite preamplification, and eight Red 3-derived VCA compressors. Because the twin ADAT outputs of both OctoPres are mirrored when running at 44.1kHz or 48kHz, he was able to route the digital signals from the preamps to two completely separate recording systems. His master rig was a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56, connected to a Laptop running Logic.

"The OctoPres give me 16 mic pres in a really compact package, and I've also got the option of using another eight mic pres on the Liquid Saffire 56. The OctoPres also have two totally independent sets of ADAT outputs, which means I can record to two totally separate record rigs. If one of my two laptops goes down, there's nothing tying the two together. For me, that's a massive advantage to have that kind of functionality in such a compact package."

To find out more about Matt Robertson, visit www.onesevenfive.com