Customer Spotlight: The Beehive LA / Halsey's Vocal Rack
Can you please tell us who you are, and a bit about yourself?
My name is Jeffrey Jerome Kubiak, friends call me “Rome”. I am a playback tech / vocal engineer professionally, and a songwriter & multi instrumentalist in my personal life.
How about the Beehive? What goes on over there?
The Beehive is a community where anyone can gain access to studios / rehearsal / production / musical directing / design and a multitude of some of the most talented crew/ up and comers in the industry.
How did you first hear about Rupert Neve Designs, and what was the first piece you personally tried?
I’ve personally known about Rupert Neve gear for a long time seeing the consoles in studios when I used to record and tour in a band. Used RND professionally with a few artists, mainly preamps / DIs and PSEs [5045: Primary Source Enhancers]; live however the first piece I personally owned I had purchased during the Covid lockdown…it was a 500 Series 535 Diode Bridge Compressor, which i still use every single day.
What RND gear is over at the Beehive these days, and how does it help you do what you do?
We use a ton of RND gear at The Beehive on a day to day basis, raging from DI boxes [RNDI & RNDI-S] to the RMP-D8s. We are running Shelford Channels and MBCs and MBPs in almost every set up we do. RND is a staple in the quality of creative services we provide.
How about this Halsey rack in particular? How did it come about?
Live streaming was a huge part of surviving Covid; I had gone down the rabbit hole in my home studio using the MBC as my conversion and quickly followed suit adding the Shelford Channels to it. That was so instrumental and monumental in leveling up my game for both my personal projects and professionally that I decided to implement them with Artist’s live streams. I was being tasked to run playback and autotune for many folks and budgets were tight so starting with the best possible source was paramount. The rack shown in this video here made its debut in Miami for a TiK Tok live stream with the insanely talented Troye Sivan…it made such an enormous difference sonically that it became our standard for most projects including Halsey throughout 2022.
Do you have any advice for an aspiring live sound engineer, playback or otherwise?
My advice for anyone entering our industry is to work hard and don’t wait for opportunity – create opportunity. Every piece of expensive gear we have in our daily routine we purchased ourselves, and did so knowing that we were pursuing a path we could be proud of, delivering a level of service that would define us.
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LOOKING FOR YOUR OWN SPOTLIGHT?
If you think your love of RND gear deserves a feature like this one, please email spotlight@rupertneve.com. We can’t guarantee you’ll be featured, but we’re always happy to hear from you!
