South California, USA; April 2024 – When pro mix engineer, guitarist and producer Mike Butler (Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, etc) was given the opportunity to record a band live on location last month, he was keen to try out his EVO Expanded System for the job. Mike had been asked by singer, songwriter and ‘genre-bending’ musician, The White Buffalo to record a two-night stint at the world-famous Belly Up in Solana Beach and make a double live album. A big fan, Mike was “absolutely thrilled” to work on this record.
He used his EVO 16 interface and two SP8 8-channel mic pre units along with his 2020 13” MacBook Pro (M1) running ProTools, which he decided would be “robust and powerful enough to handle recording the shows.”
Mike first discovered EVO Expanded System last year, when he was upgrading his home recording setup. EVO 16 is a full recording interface with eight internal mic preamps, a monitor section with two independent headphone outputs and it is expandable via ADAT to 24 channels.
He already had one EVO SP8, as he explains: “I had used a 16 channel version of this setup to record a full album project in my house last year with great results, so expanding the system to 24 channels for this seemed to be a no-brainer.”
When showtime came around, Mike made sure everything was set up correctly. “The band did a full soundcheck, running through various songs and I set all my mic levels from the EVO’s. The ability to save all these settings using the EVO software meant that I knew everything would be consistent the following night. All I had to do was open the project and all my levels were exactly the same.
“I can’t tell you what a luxury it was to be able to walk into the venue the next night and have everything set up exactly as we had left it,” he says.
So how did it go? “In the end, the EVO Expanded System worked exactly as I hoped it would. It is an intuitive, easy to use, great sounding and reliable system that is equally at home in the studio and on location, and the fact that the system is so affordable blows me away. I can’t think of any other system at this price point that would even come close to the quality.”
Mike is still in the midst of turning nearly five hours and 50 performances into a cohesive, 20 song live album. He’s clearly enjoying it. “I’m really looking forward to getting to the mixing stage in the coming weeks because I know I’ll have no issue with the sound quality of the tracks.”
Looking further ahead, he comments, “There are already plans in the works for more location recordings with other artists and the Audient EVO Expanded System will be with me every step of the way.”
To read Mike’s full experience of recording The White Buffalo over those two nights – as well as the trial run a few weeks earlier – his exclusive story is available on the Audient News page. To read all Mike’s home studio diaries, check out his Substack blog which documents his whole journey to date.
About Audient
Audient’s mission is to make professional audio quality available to everyone through the power of technology. Driven to find the balance between audio excellence and user experience, Audient is continuously innovating; designing audio recording products that both empower creativity and simplify the recording process.
A dedication to designing products that balance quality and simplicity, including analogue recording consoles, audio interfaces, mic pres and monitor controllers, has seen Audient build a strong community of music makers in professional and home studios across the globe.
Audient also operates its sub-brand, EVO which aims to make recording both easy and accessible to creatives.
Audient was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in the UK.
