I have been finishing up mixes on a couple of albums, testing out the midnight software for both mixing and mastering. 



I have to say that I am extremely impressed. I don't say this lightly...The plugins are everything I have come to expect from (and love about) Focusrite tools, but have been missing for a while.



It was Focusrite Red comp plugins that actually intrigued me to move to digital mixing back in the early days and since moving to Logic I was unable to find any other plugin that captured that unique and lovely sound... a rolling thick high mid and full rich bottom. It's incomparable to any other processor. Pure, beautiful Focusrite.



The Midnight comp and EQ both convey those subtleties of tone handling that I loved before. Just inserting them on the track imparted a character to the sound that- I would say- is clear and accurate...not in the modern digital sense that many people speak about in contemporary "uncolored" processors (which to me is a misnomer). To me the model of fidelity is the human ear and the color of the Focusrite plugins has that "ear" quality... a gentle clarity inside the round halo of tone. Just the way the human ear experiences music...with a natural compression and frequency attenuation.



I am not one of those engineers that is going to complain that the vu meter is a fraction of a db off or that sort of thing. I don't rely on testing instruments or my eyes. I just listen to what the tools sound like and what they do to and for the music and my ears honestly had no complaints. I really liked what I heard and I was able to do anything I wanted to do with both tools.



I used the plugs on a hard-edged acoustic singer songwriter... a sort of punk rock troubadour. The tracks were recorded in mono; single takes with the guitar and voice being captured by the same microphone. A very forceful delivery put a lot of pressure on the setup and the singer has a little harsh edge in the upper midst but the Midnight comp alone pushed everything into a very pleasing spatial landscape. Using the Midnight combination I was able to dial in what I feel is an incredibly aggressive pure recording that has an intense power for being recorded the way the artist and myself decided to approach the project.



I also used the Midnight combo as a bus compressor on another record that includes both acoustic instruments and samples played live via midi. The singer has a very large harmonic footprint producing a bit of sibilance in the 5 -7 Hz range as well as quite a bit of energy way down at 50.  Again, strapping the Midnights on the bus thickened the sound, gluing it together along with creating (bringing out) some really intriguing three-dimensional attributes that were in the mix but were being masked (or at least not being done justice) by other plugins.



Currently I am recording some spoken word books and poetry... it is still early in the project but the Midnights are again truly holding their position as a powerful tool to add a glorious thick shimmering halo that makes listening to a single voice talking in your ear for long periods of time a very pleasing experience.