Meet Seb, the founder of Sebatron Audio.
In 2009, when I moved back to Melbourne – the city where I was raised – I was reunited, by an incredible coincidence, with old friend Sebastian from my university days. Over the years, Seb had built himself into a high-end designer, producer, and international seller of Class A valve recording equipment.
We recently caught up at one of our favourite coffee spots in Northcote. We talk for hours from music to life and back to music. He agreed to answer five key questions for my blog readers – offering insight into what has made his gear and business the independent success it is today. T-Bone Tunes studio houses his dual valve preamplifiers from 2009 that gets used on a regular basis for that clean yet warm characterful tone.
Seb, your gear is often described as having a strong sonic character—when artists plug into a Sebatron unit, what kind of emotional or creative response are you hoping to inspire in their performances?
Naturally the aim is to get the artist to feel as comfortable and confident as possible so that the performance that is captured is closest to what the artist has envisioned. Once this is established the channels of creativity should be unobstructed so that the flow of ideas is unhindered. At no point should the sonics of the performance be a concern to the artist as that should all be taken care of with the gear.
When you’re developing a new piece of gear, how much do you think about the artist’s experience in the moment of recording, as opposed to the engineer shaping the sound afterward?
During product development it is important for me to maintain an objective approach with design so that the product can have a wide application. In regard to the artist we try to make the layout of the designs as user friendly and straightforward as possible to minimise any decision making that could slow down their work.
Our preamps have direct inputs on the front panel and all parameters easily accessible for quick adjustments. With the preamps the primary idea is to apply some mild colouration during tracking so that less processing is required in the mixdown and mastering stages.
By careful design and trimming the parameters so that the most musical settings are set closest to ‘default’ when the unit is used we get close. By this I mean adjusting the ranges of the relevant parameters so that it is difficult to make things sound ‘bad’…
Many artists talk about chasing a feeling in a single take. How do Sebatron designs aim to help capture something authentic and immediate, rather than something overly polished?
As mentioned, applying some mild colouration during the tracking process is part of the key. The average digital recording system has a dynamic range of around 90 to 120 db yet after real world adjustments and ambient noise the listening environment only facilitates around 60 to 80 db. That means that subtleties and sounds of articulation often get lost because of masking or simply drop out.
In earlier days when recording to tape one could rely on tape compression to knock down peaks so that the dynamic range could fit. Nowadays the tendency with digital recording is to squash it in mastering. By applying some mild colouration during tracking we can mitigate the amount of compression used during mastering which makes the sound more natural and authentic.
Seb, tell us do you involve musicians or producers during your development process? If so, can you share an example where artist feedback directly changed the direction of a product?
Where appropriate we try to include as much external feedback and input as possible. That involves getting prototypes out to various producers or engineers and making adjustments if necessary to suit their requirements. It also involves deep conversation about details in sound and sound manipulation.
In one example a producer mentioned the requirement of separate side-chain inputs for the compressors so that he could ‘duck’ vocal tracks when certain instruments were active. That made sense so we included them.
Some artists want gear that disappears, while others want it to add colour. How do you approach designing equipment that can support different artistic identities without getting in the way of the performance?
Moderation is important and a set of aesthetics that define the sonic strategy of the design have to be established early on. Generally speaking the two main categories that the artists usually fall into are experimental and non-experimental.
If we are designing for the experimental then something that can overly manipulate the sounds is encouraged. Rules can be broken in design and what passes through may have little resemblance to what was sent in. On the other hand , a non-experimental approach means sticking to the rules and referring to classic formats. By evaluating all these perspectives and approaches we get the Sebatron design.
