Alberto Vaz
Live & Recording Engineer
Sheryl Crow
“Dictator which is on all the vocals and I want I just wanted something that would be really smooth to kind of glue all those vocals together. We have a lot of background vocals during the show and this kind of brings everybody together. It adds a little presents, softens everything. It does what a vari-mu is supposed to do and it’s it sounds incredible. It’s been you know as soon as I put it on, it just it’s like oh yeah, there there it is that’s the magic I needed.
Empress, so I chose this to use on the guitars. I wanted to have a little bit of EQ control to the group. We have two electric guitars, mostly what I’m doing here is I have a 2dB Boost of low end at 100, doing nothing to the mids and I have a 2dB boost of 8K and I have the tube boost engaged. It has just made the guitar sound huge, lots of low-end, really pretty tight big sounding guitars.”
Balázs Altsach
Record Engineer
Church Studios, London
Balázs Altsach began his career as a sound engineer in Hungary, where he worked with several notable artists, including Carson Coma. Driven by a passion to deepen his expertise, he later moved to London to study music production and engineering. He began his training under Adrian Bushby (known for his work with Foo Fighters and Muse), then joined the team at Miloco Studios, where he had the opportunity to learn from renowned producers such as Ben Hillier, James Ford, and Marta Salogni. Currently, he works as an engineer at Paul Epworth’s world-renowned Church Studios in London — one of the leading recording studios globally. As a producer and mixing engineer, his debut releases in 2025 have already earned critical acclaim, featured on year-end best-of lists and BBC playlists alike.
“The Bishops have pretty much become glued to my workflow these past months – whether I’m engineering or producing, a pair always travels with me. They just sound insanely musical. The signal chain is so well designed that I can print something that feels already mixed, which frees me up to focus on the fun, creative stuff. On vocals, the dual-slope comp is wild – just 1–2 dB and it’s locked in, giving the singer even more confidence. In stereo, nothing beats them on acoustic instruments. The air band plus the smooth dual compression just makes everything come alive, and in no time I’ve got a finished sound. Only downside? I wanna use them on everything, so I keep repatching them all the time 😅”
Bob Strakele
FOH Engineer
Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold
Chris Rakestraw
Record Producer/Monitor Engineer
Megadeth
“I only had to hear the Empress for about 1 minute to know this thing wasn’t ever leaving my mix bus. This thing is that good!! A new standard for mix eq.”
Chris Rakestraw has been a music professional for over 25 years. Recording engineer, mixing engineer, and producing records since the early 2000’s. Additionally, Chris Rakestraw is the currently touring the world as the monitor engineer for the band Megadeth. When Rakestraw is not touring, he’s producing records out of Nashville, TN.
In His Rig: Empress
David Gnozzi
Mix & Mastering Engineer
MixbusTv Host
Jamie Pollock
FOH Engineer – NINE INCH NAILS
“Dictator: Vari-mu compression. I have it on my vocal bus. It just kind of rounds everything out with all the background vocals and Trent’s vocal. So I kind of like that. It’s worked really well for me in that application.
Governor: Really cool way of how you can be controlling the slope here, which I really like quite a bit. So you can get different, I have this on bass, and you know it’s sitting in compression at one point, and then when he plays more finger-harder stuff, I can kind of control that differently. So that kind of works really nice on bass for me.
Empress: I’ve always liked Pultec on, you know, with on drums, and to me that gives a little bit of the tube kind of boost, and the tube gain works quite nice. And honestly it’s just a little final EQ on the drums that, yeah, it’s a good place for it.”
Jonathan Jarell
FOH Engineer - LORNA SHORE
Kenny Kaiser
Resident Audio Engineer
Working Title Recording Studios
FOH engineer - The Killers
In His Rig: Governor
Kevin Rudolf
Artist, Producer, Songwriter
In His Rig: Bishop
Mad Steex
Audio Engineer,
Content Creator
Matt Blakely
FOH Engineer
Billy Talent
Michael Spiess
FOH Engineer Helloween
“Dictator: Gainlab Dictator, which is a very new compressor with pentode tubes, and I like this device. I heard about it from other colleagues, and I had to try it because I was using it in the master bus before in my classic SSL bus-style compressor. Its distinct behavior is very different than the SSL, with a very smooth compression, and even with a gain reduction of 4 dB, 3, 4, even 5, you cannot hear it—still transparent but dynamic reduction. So I use this compressor in fast attack and a very fast release and in high comp mode. So it really gives me the things: it holds it in place and prevents several things from jumping out. And it also rounds out the transients a little bit. You know, it’s not killing the transients, but it makes some pokey stuff or very spiky stuff, helps a little bit, makes it round and smooth.
Empress: After the Dictator in my master bus, I have in series the Empress, which is a Pultec-style EQ with very interesting features which I like. When you boost, for example, in a Pultec, you have very wide curves—yeah, let’s say you boost from 60 Hz, then the curve goes up to 500 Hz. And when you attenuate at the same time, Gainlab gives them here a very interesting feature called Boost Shift, which gets the curve closer back to the center frequency. I use this to give me a little more clarity in the high 8k, a little bit of shine over the top, and it depends on the situation day by day. Sometimes I boost also in the low end a little bit at 60 Hz, as I described, with a little boost and a little cut to even it out a bit.”
Minjohn Lin
Audio Engineer, Professor
Beijing Contemporary Music Academy
“Personally, I love using the Governor on the main vocal. Before the Governor was released, I often used two compressors in series for vocal processing to maintain consistent program levels with highly dynamic sources. The Governor resolved this by dual slope design in a single unit. Its Tube Boost in “Air” mode further enhance the harmonic content, emphasizing breathiness and high-frequency texture in the signal. And when a more forward, ‘in-your-face’ vocal presentation is required, engaging the Tube boost in “Full” mode immediately shifts the vocal image without introducing unwanted artifacts.
On the PA master bus, I rely on both the Dictator and the Empress. For stereo compression, I prefer operating with the Dictator Dual Mono Vari-u, as it provides greater control and stereo image stability. With the Empress, the three-band stepped EQ (low, mid, high) follows a Pultec-style topology, but with carefully chosen frequency points that are directly useful in live reinforcement. The stepped controls allow precise and repeatable adjustments, while the Tube Boost circuit contributes harmonic weight and transient impact to the master bus, consistently improving mix density and perceived loudness.
Most importantly, all three units are true tube designs, and are fully capable of handling the headroom demands of live concert sound reinforcement. Their sonic signature not only translates reliably through large PA systems but also elevates the overall listening experience.”
Rory Doherty
FOH Engineer, Monitor Engineer, Production Manager
Bleed from Within
“Using the Dictator and Empress on my Master Bus instantly led me to the sound I had been trying to achieve with plugins for so long. Right from the get-go, there was a warmth, along with an all-too familiar saturation and glue that reminded me of how I had previously felt mixing into some rare and sought after analogue summing matrices.