Jason Dufour
Juno Award-Winning Mix Engineer
As Heard On ...
For the full conversation , listen to the Sept . 28 , 2021 episode
PS : You mentioned that you like to constantly mess around and try new sounds … If you ’ re working on a full record , and I ’ m assuming in most cases this [ directive ] will come from the label or the band ; but in your mind , when would you decide to give each song its own unique mix versus the whole record sounding uniform ?
Dufour : Well , I think it all depends on what the album is , who worked on it , and what the goal is . Is it an album , or is it a collection of songs , you know ? Some albums these days , you listen to it and it sounds like a collection of songs ; and some albums sound like an album . I think I just listen to everything and I kind of know how I want it to go , even if it ’ s a “ collection of songs ” type of album . I still like to have some uniformity to it .
I could be one mix engineer mixing a whole album that came from seven different producers . Well , they ’ re all going to sound different , but at least I ’ ve got the same vocal chain for the most part . I think my approach to that is , obviously every song is gonna be different , but will have some kind of equality to all the sonic ups and downs throughout the whole thing ; like the top and bottom end dialled across the board .
And then , if I ’ m working on something that ’ s [ more cohesive ], it ’ s like ‘ Yeah , I want these songs to completely swim into each other .’ This one album I ’ m mixing right now , some of the songs are stripped down , so I ’ ve got a sound for that . Some of the songs are very alive ; full-band , hard-hitting stuff , and I ’ ve got a sound for that . And then some of the songs are in between , where it ’ s very soft drums with vocals and instruments that are a little bit stripped back . So , I ’ ll have three different sounds for those , but always make sure they have the same vibe .
As I ’ m mixing , I ’ m listening to the other songs I ’ m working on , not just flying blind and mixing the first song , sending it , ‘ approved , cool !’, mixing the second song , ‘ approved ;’ just being mindful of if one song ’ s distorted and one song is super dynamic , I try to find an equilibrium between all of it and try to make sure it all lines up , so when the mastering engineer gets it and is listening to my pre-master stuff , and then the stuff that I had my limiter on , they can get a sense of , ‘ Okay , this is how it should sound .’
Brock McGinnis , CTS
VP of Sales + Operations , Nationwide Audio Visual
For the full conversation , listen to the Sept . 21 , 2021 episode
PS : From the integration side , how are you approaching a hospital , for example , in terms of audio considerations versus other types of integrations ? What are the actual audio considerations in a hospital ?
McGinnis : A modern hospital has huge auditoria . They have extensive training facilities because they have technical professionals whose technology is changing as quickly as in our industry , and they need to constantly be trained , and they ’ re trained remotely . Some of their training is on site , but at Cortellucci Vaughn [ Hospital ], I think we probably have 60 rooms that have video conferencing systems in them . Sixty . Some of the patient rooms require audio monitoring , and we have that capability .
Medicine these days is fuelled by information , and the ability to move information , which includes audio and video , around that building is complicated . Even at CAMH , there ’ s a pristine , lovely little lecture theatre and performance / presentation space , and there ’ s everything from donor events to political events to large format education events . And I think with many of their clients there are some entertainment events , and that has a full performance sound system .
The technology is the same , but the application is different and the software is a little more complex , because you ’ re having to deal with a higher degree of security and the capability of interfacing and interacting with many more electronic systems … Right now , we ’ re building the new West Park hospital , and I think there are more than 4,000 loudspeakers in that building ; and some of that is sound masking , some of that is paging , and some of it is communication / presentation , et cetera .
So , this is a combination of Dante and AVB throughout a big building on six floors plus two sub-basements ; so that ’ s eight floors and two wings , with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of audio channels .
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PROFESSIONAL SOUND 17