Studio Essentials: Matthias Meyer

Matthias Meyer has spent the past decade becoming a mainstay amongst Berlin’s most elite musical club talents, releasing on well respected labels like Watergate Records, Anjunadeep, and Bedrock Records in the process.

Now a label owner himself, Matthias returns to his Strangely Enough imprint for the second release from the label, this time dropping his new ‘The Choir’ EP, which combines two of his originals in ‘The Choir’ and ‘Touch Of Magic’.

He marks the release with a contribution to our own Studio Essentials series, where he highlights some of the most important pieces that live in his studio. From soft synths and audio effects, to speakers and an analogue poly synth, get the full list, including words from Matthias Meyer, below.

Suter Ohlhorst Speaker

Speakers and acoustic treatment are the most important ‘tools’ in a studio. A few years ago, I got these speakers from a small company in Switzerland. They use very expensive parts (the same as ATC) for their speakers, and the best thing about them is that they are modular.

I have the 3-way version which are already huge but if you want more power, you can buy the bass model and stack it, so the speakers get bigger. They also come with a high-end converter and a DSP system which can correct the room, and model other speaker systems. Now I have an almost flat room. Best investment ever!

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2

I think almost every track I made in the last 10 years had some orchestral touch, I just love the intense and dramatic feeling. So, it didn’t take me long to discover Spectrasonics Omnisphere. It’s a soft synth with an extensive sound library that has with more than 50 GB of strings, pads, pianos, vintage synthesizers, string machines, and even analog mono synths and lots of atmospheres and textures. You can layer and combine them all within the plugin. I use this one on every track!

Cableguys Volume Shaper

It’s not the sexiest tool but I use this one on almost every channel in a project. It’s a multichannel envelope shaper which works like a side chain compressor without compression (the new volume shaper 6 adds a compressor as well).

It is amazing for creating grooves and rhythms. What I love about it is you can edit lows / mid / highs separately, meaning it’s perfect for sampling. Let’s say you want to sample a kick drum. You can cut the highs / attack of a kick, make it really short, and leave the long low-end at the same time.

I just bought the Shaperbox 2 which is a collection of the volume shaper, a width shaper, pan shaper, time shaper, and much more in one single plugin. You can combine them all together. This Is next level for creating amazing rhythmic effects.

Sequential Pro Prophet 6

The Prophet 6 is one of a few synthesizers I really own and use. When I started producing like 10-15 years ago, I actually used the Arturia clone plugin quite a lot. So, when the new analog one came out, I had to buy it.

With the Prophet 6 you can work on amazing, lush pads, deep and warm basslines, organ sounds, beautiful leads, and also experimental stuff. Plus, it has really nice studio-quality effects, a polyphonic step sequencer, an arpeggiator, and much more. It’s the best all-round synthesizer, and it also looks great.

Output Plugins

Yes, more plugins. When I started making music, I didn’t have any money for big synthesizers, so I started with cracked plugins. A few years later when some money came in, I bought more and more analog stuff, but after some time I realized that I didn’t really use them much. So I sold a lot and kept only a few. I use way more plugins nowadays.

I really love the Output bundle; I use one of these plugins in almost every track. ‘Analog Strings’ (yes, I love strings) is a very unique sampler plugin. It’s very rhythmic and has lots of effects built in. You can’t really recognise if these are still strings. ‘Exhale’ is a modern vocal engine I use a lot for choir sounds, I made ‘Touch Of Magic’ (from my new ‘The Choir’ EP) with this one. I also love ‘Movement’ for moving rhythmic effects!

Find more Studio Essentials HERE.

Matthias Meyer – The Choir EP is out now on his own Strangely Enough imprint.