Gremlins....

[ArcCirDude]

Cool. My new Thermionic Culture Phoenix mastering limited edition (quite the mouthful...) arrives and I strap her across the inserts of my Nucleus, fire her up and WOW, I get thrown right into the traps on the left wall.... 6db discrepancy between the right and left channel on input. Sigh... E-mail to ThermCult. An hour later, Kevin Walker from Unity Audio joins my quest to slay the dreaded Gremlin biting and clawing at my new Phoenix. On his suggestion I open her up and swap the input valves to troubleshoot. 12db discrepancy! Hmm.. Closing in on the bæstard... Switch 'em back. 0 discrepancy... Gremlin slain! Kevin "Kevlar" Walker slated for gearslut knighthood!

So, ThermCultPheoMastLimEd in place, I then plugged in my TubeTech SMC 2b to do some comparisons between the two on a mix I'm working on. What the....! There's a hole in the mix the size of Rerun and my head is blowing up like a balloon! Bass is gone and lead vocals are on the sidelines. It sounds like I muted the mids on a M/S processor. But the SMC 2b isn't a M/S compressor. It's stereo multiband. I turn it off. I turn it on. It blows its fuse. Sigh...

Fæckin' Gremlins....