Carlos Castro (Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Shawn Colvin)

Carlos Castro is an LA-based music producer, mixer, and audio engineer. During his thirty years of working in the music industry, he has won dozens of awards and recognitions from major international music organizations, including thirteen Grammy nominations. Castro is the owner of Watersound Studios (located in Studio City), a state-of-the-art vintage analog recording studio. His credits include Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Shawn Colvin, and Luis Miguel.

Tell us about your studio setup.

My set-up is hybrid, with a good balance between analog and digital tools. My two main analog desks are a customized 64-input analog console with 990 amplifiers offering a very clear and fast sounding signal path with flying faders automation; and the second desk is a vintage Neve BCM-10 featuring 1073 EQ and Pre-Amp modules including two 2254b compressors on the master section.

My DAW is a Pro Tools system featuring EMM Labs A-D and D-A Converters.

My main monitors were custom designed by Dan Wallin; these are three-way, powered by a Crown Studio Reference 1. The monitor section on the console features two single 990-am custom-designed amplifiers by Beno May from Bernie Grundman Mastering for the highest possible resolution in playback.

I am a big fan of vintage WSW equipment and own a nice balance of WSW 811 301 tube mic pre’s, 601 432B mono compressors, and 436512 Universalentzerrer Equalizers.

As far as plugins go, the universe is quite vast! Some of the plugins I tend to use regularly are MDW EQ6, Celemony’s Melodyne 5 (for vocal tuning), Oeksound Soothe2, and Metric Halo Channel Strip, just to name a few.

Lastly, Chris Pelonis designed the acoustics of my studio with additional consulting by Peter D’ Antonio. Sometimes studio acoustics in both control rooms and live rooms are overlooked. Without accurate acoustics and monitoring, we are inevitably looking at a sonically moving target.

Having worked on so many songs over the past few years, how do you stay fresh and excited about mixing music these days?

Every project is different and every artist expresses and performs their music in a very specific way. We’re all unique individuals and part of my job is to go and look for hidden golden nuggets of artistic expression and be able to amplify them in the music and the projects that I get to mix.

Musical styles and songs are always evolving. It is important as a mixer to find ways to expand on the sound of the tracks that make up a song and build a strong foundation that supports the vocal or instrumental performance of the artist.

Good music and a committed artist will always keep me fresh, excited, and inspired.

How do you typically approach the mixing of a song?

I see myself as a sonic tailor. As such, every project requires a unique approach (and a unique set of tools) in order to truly bring out the musical and artistic qualities of it.

I don’t use mix templates when mixing in-the-box and I don’t have analog equipment pre-patched in my console.

When I begin a mix, I tend to start from scratch. I do a flat and quick mix in order to hear how things are balancing themselves: verify that there are no conflicts with the musical arrangement, verify that there are no technical issues such as polarity conflicts of tracks being out of phase, and verify that the intonation of both the vocalist and the instruments is copacetic.

If there are issues that are notable, I will discuss them with the artist. If the issues are minimal, I will go ahead and take care of them without bothering the artist.

Once everything is checked, I tend to initially mix dry, with no effects and I constantly check my mix in mono to hear how frequencies are stacking up against each other.

I listen on several sources: main speakers, headphones, and also a small set of rack-mounted speakers that came from an Ampex ATR-100 tape machine with its original amplifier as iPhone speakers.

I tend to only do AB comparisons with unmastered projects that I’ve previously worked on in order to see how the current project is translating. This is especially true on the low end.

I find that if a mix lacks good support (and representation) of low frequencies, this is when someone gets in trouble.

Low end is always challenging to make sit correctly on a mix, so this is where accurate monitoring and an accurate control room come into play. During the dry mix process, I tend to add processing (both EQ and Compression) as I go along.

Finally, I am not a mixer that relies on stereo buss processing. All processing is done internally within the mix. I personally think that by doing this, there is better translation of the mix to the outside world.