Tokyo Speirs Music

About

About me:

I’m David “Tokyo” Speirs, a fluently bilingual audio mixing engineer and music producer from Toronto and Gatineau, with a 4.0 Honours Graduate Diploma from Music Industry Arts, Fanshawe. I won the Best Audio Product and Best Songwriting awards for my year (2011), as well as the Indaba SummerHits contest for my own song “The Giant of Easter Island,” and have my music placed with publishing companies like Indaba and Music Bed. 

I worked in Toronto’s Mushroom Studios under John Wozniak (Marcy Playground), Matthew Wagner (Crystal Castles and USS), and Omar Riad (The Weeknd, Ariana Grande) and assisted as engineer for Classified, DZ Deathrays, PUP, periodically performed live rigs in the summer of 2014 with Jully Black, and other random goings-on.

My uniquely creative sound and audio manipulation skills have gained me respect in terms of both a music producer and mixer, but most importantly, a friendly engineer (friendgineer?) who encourages intimate performances out of musicians and voice talent, rather than a plastic performance that is difficult to deliver to a client. I also like long walks on the beach, and hate sand in my sandwiches.

The following is my nerdy tech experience (in no particular order):

Console / Desk experience:

  • 32-track analog SonyMXP3000 consoles
  • Neve 1176 and 1184 consoles
  • 48-track SSL Duality consoles
  • 8-track, 16-track and 32-track DigiControl surfaces.

DAW experience:

  • Protools 11 and below
  • Logic Pro X and below
  • FL Studio 8 XXL
  • Ableton Live 9

Microphone experience:

  • Rode Nt-5, Nt-1A
  • Sennheiser MD-421U and handheld series
  • Shure Sm57, Sm58, Sm7B, Beta57, D112, “Green Bullet,” 520DX
  • AKG Perception 120, 820, C214, C400B, C-12 tube, C-414B-ULS, D-12E
  • AT 3030, 3035, 4035, 4040, AT25
  • ATM825 (stereo), VP88 (Stereo), 250DE, 87R
  • Blue Audio Snowball, Bluebird, 
  • Neumann TLM 49, U87, U47, KM-84
  • Electro-Voice RE-15, RE-20
  • Beyer MC-713 
  • Coles 4038 ribbon mics
  • Fairchild AU-7A
  • MILAB CL-4
  • RCA: 44BX ribbon, KU4 ribbon, 77DX ribbon
  • Realistic PZM mic
  • Schoepps/Telefunken: 221b tube, U47 tube

Hardware Equalizer Experience:

  • API 550A, 560
  • GML 8200
  • Pultec EQP1-A, MEQ-5
  • Furman PQ-3
  • Massive Passive

Hardware Compressor Experience:

  • Altec 436B/438A tube limiters
  • DBX 160
  • EAR 660 tube limiters (w/stereo link)
  • Fairchild 660
  • Neve 2254A
  • Neve 2264
  • RCA BA-6A tube limiters
  • SSL G384 Master Bus Comp
  • LA-2A tube original
  • Urei LA-3A
  • UA 1176LN (w/stereo link)
  • EL8 Distressor
  • Summit Audio TLA-100
  • Avalon 2044
  • Ashley CL52E
  • Ashley SC50
  • Summit TLA50

Main Plugin Experience:

  • Izotope Ozone 4
  • McDSP HD (Ie: ML4000 ML4, MC2000), Retro)
  • Universal Audio plugins (with Card)
  • Melodyne DNA (and previous version(s))
  • all Native Instruments from Komplete 3-6
  • Waves 9 XXL  bundle (Including Signature Series) 
  • most Flux plugins (except for IRCAM tools) 
  • all Logic & ProTools Instruments including extensive knowledge of Boom, Xpand, Vacuum, MiniGrand, EXS24 sampler and Sculpture. Some knowledge of Strike.
  • API EQ’s 
  • Brainworx bundles
  • Soundtoys FX bundle
  • Softube bundle

*Because there are so many plugins and plugin formats today, a complete list of plugins I have used would be irrelevant. I have only stated more common plugins. By the time you read this it may already be out of date!

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