A little goes a long way when he’s using Fusion to add tonal character, weight and space to his stereo stems or final mix. “Vintage Drive is great for adding that little bit of saturation. The Transformer button is very subtle, but you can hear a bit of crunch, especially in the low end. The ‘hidden’ compressor feature, the Listen Mic Compressor, is really great and adds a nice punch when it’s just kissing the source,” he says. He typically dials in just a modest amount of Space and Width in the Stereo Image section, too. “It seems like very little, but you can really hear the difference.” In fact, he says, “You don’t have to move any of the knobs too much to hear something.”
Dikiciyan uses his SiX, which can accommodate up to 12 inputs, to route his analogue tabletop synths and drum machines, including Malekko Heavy Industry’s Manther, Black Corporation’s Deckard’s Dream, Nonlinear Labs’ C15 and Elektron’s Model:Samples and Model:Cycles grooveboxes, to a separate outboard summing mixer and into Cubase. “The SiX EQ is great. And if I can reduce the noise as much as I can and get pristine sound from everything, that is my goal, because I can always dirty it up,” he says. “The Manther has a lot of noise and lacks a little on the low end. But when I first put it through the SiX and tested it, I said, are you kidding? This is amazing!”
Telling the story with SSL
On any video game project, whether it is a story-driven or multiplayer game, he says, “Because I’m mainly an electronic guy, not an orchestra guy, my main approach has always been soundscapes” Plus, because Dikiciyan has been a gamer since the ‘80s, when he started out playing on Atari and Commodore machines, he knows exactly what other gamers expect of the soundtrack, he says: “I always tell the developers, don’t hire a movie guy, because they don’t know the sensibilities of the gamers.”
But whatever the project, he says, “I want to do something that nobody has heard before. My approach has always been to sound unique. I always tell the audio director, I have my own voice.”
