Founded in 1999, Baton Rouge’s Sockit Studio was flooded with more than three feet of water in August 2016. While most of the equipment was saved, it was during the rebuilding that owner and Head Engineer Devon Kirkpatrick took the opportunity to reimagine the studio’s look, feel, and workflow. He decided he wanted the ‘best both worlds’ with an analogue and digital console, and began looking at API’s 1608 console.

‘I’ve been researching analogue consoles for years, looking at vintage as well as new from all the major manufactures,’ Kirkpatrick says. ‘I needed a console with a solid analogue front end as well as expanded analogue summing and mixing features. A lot of our clients have digitised tracks and analogue summing would allow them another choice of production styles. The API 1608-II was the only logical choice.

‘Expandable, 100 per cent analogue, fantastic preamps, and top-of-the-line summing and mixing options were all things that were missing before we got our 1608-II. The console is definitely designed for a high-end hybrid workflow and has excellent signal flow options. The sound, in a word, is fantastic. Every client has heard a difference between just playing a two-track song through the API vs the digital console. The headroom is enormous and the transient response is phenomenal. The analogue saturation value when mixing through the 1608-II is a full factor level of wow; now it sounds like a record.’

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