Malcolm Toft gives a fascinating insight into his career, from building his first mixing desk at age 17, being part of the team at the launch of the iconic Trident Studios, where he recorded Elton John, Queen and David Bowie, to setting up his own recording studio in Devon where he continues to design and manufacture music equipment.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:25 - First Encounters With Recording Equipment
04:12 - Getting A Recording Studio Job
07:46 - The Launch Of Trident Studios
17:48 - Designing And Building Trident Consoles
25:41 - Setting Up Malcolm Toft Associates
30:29 - A New Studio And Working With Jo Meek
33:28 - Designing The Toft Audio Console for PMI
36:52 - Ocean Audio And The Punishr
40:57 - Current Projects

#punishr #micmix

Malcolm Toft Biog
Professor Malcolm Toft is a legendary recording engineer and console designer with over 50 years experience in the recording industry. Malcolm joined Trident Studios in 1967, first as an Engineer, becoming the Studio Manager in 1971. He recorded David Bowie’s Space Oddity album and mixed The Beatles’ single Hey Jude. He also recorded James Taylors' first album, plus three albums with T-Rex.

In 1973 he founded renowned console manufacturer Trident Audio Developments, which became a leading company in the recording industry supplying top recording studios across the world. His consoles are still widely used and are highly regarded for their depth of sound and warmth.

In recent years Malcolm has designed and built a range of replacement energy-efficient power supplies for SSL and Neve consoles under his Mpower systems brand.

https://www.malcolmtoft.com/

Paul White Biog
Paul White initially trained in electronics at The Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern then went on to work with Malvern Instruments, a company specialising in laser analysis equipment, before moving into technical writing.

He joined the Sound On Sound team in 1991 where he became Editor In Chief, a position he held for many years before recently becoming Executive Editor. Paul has written more than 20 recording and music technology textbooks, the latest being The Producer’s Manual.

Having established his own multitrack home studio in the 1980s he’s worked with many notable names including Bert Jansch and Gordon Giltrap. He’s played in various bands over the years and currently collaborates with Malvern musician Mark Soden, under the name of Cydonia Collective. Paul still performs live claiming that as he has suffered for his music he doesn’t see why everyone else shouldn’t too!

http://www.cydoniacollective.co.uk/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Dave McCracken talks to Kevin Paul about his impressive career as a songwriter and Producer, from his early years at Sarm Studios with Trevor Horn, where he worked with Ian Brown and Depeche Mode, before being signed to Roc Nation, where he recorded with various Hip Hop artists and co-wrote two tracks that were recorded by Beyoncé.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:26 - Helping New Bands
04:53 - Working With Goldie
08:47 - Sarm Studios And Ian Brown
09:52 - The Role Of The Producer
12:11 - Achieving Realism With MIDI
14:45 - Learning Through Experience
17:57 - Working With Beyoncé
20:14 - Getting Bands To Relax In The Studio
22:01 - Contributing To Lyrics
23:16 - Favourite Plug-ins
26:29 - Having An End Destination For A Track In Mind

Dave McCracken Biog
Dave McCracken is a songwriter and producer who launched his career at Sarm West studios. He's worked on four Ian Brown solo albums - Golden Greats, Music Of The Spheres, Solarized and My Way.

Later he was signed to Roc Nation as a producer, where he worked with various Hip Hop artists. His songwriting collaboration with Amanda Ghost resulted in two songs being placed on the Beyoncé album "I Am... Sasha Fierce". He has also worked with Kanye West, Mr Hudson, Depeche Mode, Seal, Chrissie Hynde, Hugo, Ohland, Swimdeep, Sports Team, Pip Blom and Sebastian Schub.

More recently Dave has started to assist in the development of new, upcoming bands.

https://www.instagram.com/mccracken23/

Kevin Paul Biog
Kevin Paul started his career as a DJ but quickly found his passion was sound engineering. His first audio job was at Soho Studios in 1991, moving to Konk Studios six months later, where he worked alongside successful producers and engineers such as Bob Clearmountain, Adam Mosley, Pascal Gabriel and Gil Norton, as well as bands such as The Kinks, Galliano, Terrorvision, UFO and Elastica.

After working on archiving the Depeche Mode back catalogue in 1994, he was offered an engineering role at Mute Records’ in-house studio, which eventually lead to a position as Head Engineer, which gave him access to the entire Mute Records roster. Highlights include mixing Goldfrapp’s “Felt Mountain”, David Bowie’s “Hours” and Nick Cave’s “No More Shall We Part”. He also worked in 5:1, mixing Moby’s “Hotel”, Goldfrapp’s “Black Cherry“ and more for DVD.

In 2004 Kevin went freelance and re-mixed the entire Depeche Mode and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds back catalogues for SACD/DVD. Since 2008, Kevin Paul has been in charge of mixing and remixing performances at the iTunes Festivals in the UK and Germany. He has mixed over 100 artists to date, including Adele, Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The XX, Calvin Harris, Foo Fighters, Jack White, Linkin Park, Florence & The Machine, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Jessie J., Norah Jones, Oasis, Mumford & Sons, N.E.R.D., Lykke Li, James Blunt, KT Tunstall, Hot Chip, Paul Weller and many more.

He continues to record, engineer, produce and mix many projects in music and film, runs the mixing and surround mixing modules for the Masters Degree course at UK’s Westminster University and divides his time between London and Berlin. Recent works include the International selling new album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and mixing the latest album of Denmark’s “Dúné” with the first single premiering at the Danish Music Awards, plus the latest iTunes Music Festival.

http://www.kevin-paul.com/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Simon Cross, Chief Product Officer at Native Instruments, chats to Sam Inglis ahead of NAMM 2025, going into detail on the company history, philosophy and offering hints of future product releases at Native Instruments.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:18 - The History Of NI
01:41 - Grouping Of Brands
03:11 - Supporting Other Manufacturers
05:04 - The Kontakt Sound Libraries
06:16 - Choosing Which Sound Libraries To Include
07:07 - Musical Differences Across Territories
08:48 - Collaborating Across Different Timezones
09:51 - The Company Structure
10:45 - Subscription and Perpetual Options
13:40 - Incorporating AI Technology To Manage Sounds
17:05 - Kontakt 8 / Offering Synthesis And Sampling
18:55 - Utilising User And Developer Feedback For Kontakt
20:44 - Partnerships With Other Developers
23:52 - Native Kontrol Standard (NKS)
26:44 - Extending The MIDI Spec
28:25 - The Intergration Of Hardware And Software
29:22 - The Future Of NI And The Industry In General

Native Instruments Biog
Native Instruments was founded in Berlin in 1996 and for over 25 years they have been at the forefront of musical innovation, creating software and hardware products for music producers, audio engineers and DJs. Their portfolio contains industry leading products such as Komplete, Kontakt, Maschine and Traktor.

In June 2023, iZotope, Brainworx and Plugin Alliance became part of the Native Instruments family, providing them with increased engineering capabilities across integrated software and hardware, AI and machine learning, cloud and more. Today, Native Instruments have offices in Berlin, Langenfeld, London, Paris, Boston, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Shenzhen.

https://www.native-instruments.com

Sam Inglis Biog
Editor In Chief Sam Inglis has been with Sound On Sound for more than 20 years. He is a recording engineer, producer, songwriter and folk musician who studies the traditional songs of England and Scotland, and the author of Neil Young's Harvest (Bloomsbury, 2003) and Teach Yourself Songwriting (Hodder, 2006).

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts