Bill Schnee: Schwerky, Raumzy and the VTRC
- 23.10.2019
- Jörg Nawra
- VTRC
- Raumzeitmaschine
- Schwerkraftmaschine
Who Bill Schnee Is
Bill Schnee is an icon amongst music producers. In his more than four decades lasting career, the American musician, producer and audio engineer mixed and produced countless albums for top-class artists.
Musicians like Ringo Starr, Barbra Streisand, Art Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, The Jacksons, Blood, Sweat & Tears or Whitney Houston belong to the list of artists he produced. Schnee’s work was awarded with various Grammys, an Emmy as well as a Dove award.
For his productions, Bill Schnee uses the VTRC, the Schwerkraftmaschine as well as the Raumzeitmaschine. For the last two, he invented the nicknames „Schwerky“ and „Raumzy“.
Bill Schnee on the VTRC, Schwerkraftmaschine and Raumzeitmaschine
"Analog hardware digitally controlled from your DAW plugin ... an absolutely brilliant idea!" Bill Schnee
"With EMT plates and a large variety of digital reverbs at my disposal, the Raumzeitmaschine does what no other reverb does. It's a sound that can't be described...it must be experienced!" Bill Schnee
"I do all my work in the top studios around the country, but I recommend the VTRC to all my musician friends with home studios. It is absolutely the best one box solution for home recording!" Bill Schnee
The Three Units Behind the Nicknames
The Vari Tube Recording Channel is the channel strip Bill Schnee means by "one box solution": a tube microphone preamp whose character can be shifted from clean and direct to fat vintage via the gain control, a passive Pultec-style equalizer with a high band up to 24 kHz, and two compressors that can be combined – opto and vari-µ. A line input with its own transformer makes it usable for already recorded tracks as well, and two units can be linked for stereo.
"Schwerky", the Schwerkraftmaschine, is our remote-controllable vari-mu mastering and bus compressor: per channel the signal passes through three transformers and four triodes, and control comes from a digitally generated side chain with eleven compression modes. "Raumzy", the Raumzeitmaschine, is our tube reverb unit – a processor calculates the space, while two double triodes per channel and transformers give it the analog sound – Schnee, who owns EMT plates and a variety of digital reverbs, says it does what no other reverb does.
"Analog Hardware, Digitally Controlled" – What's Behind It
Schwerkraftmaschine and Raumzeitmaschine sit on servo motors: every control can be operated on the unit, via the built-in web server or through the DAW plug-in (AU, AAX, VST), and both sides stay in sync. Save the song with the plug-in and the settings are saved with it; load it again and every knob is back where it was. The connection is Ethernet; the Schwerkraftmaschine fetches the necessary network settings itself via DHCP. Why we chose Ethernet rather than USB is explained in "Why Ethernet? Remote-Controlled Hardware Explained".
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Related: Wake Me Up: Vocals with VTRC & Schwerkraftmaschine · Schwerkraftmaschine Multi-Band Complex Explained · Snow Owl Interview: Bass, Dune and Hans Zimmer
