Ignacio 'Nacho' Molino (Ruben Blades, Carlos Vives)

Producer and mix engineer Ignacio Molino has won three Grammys and five Latin Grammys, his first in 2015 for his work on Ruben Blades’ album Son de Panama. Having started as an active member of the Panamanian rock scene, over the past 18 years Nacho has worked with artists such as CJ Ramone, Ruben Blades, Carlos Vives, Gente de Zona, Pacific Broders, Pedro Arroyo, Luis Enrique, Angel Lopez, and Rod Richards from Rare Earth.

Tell us about your studio setup.

I'm using Pro Tools Ultimate with an Avid HD IO out to a Vintage Maker Summing Mixer with Lawo DV975 amp going into a Manley Vari Mu into an SSL G Comp. Monitoring is Egglestonworks The Nine SE with a Bryston 4b SST2 amplifier for mastering and Dynaudio BM15 for mixing.

Plugins I regularly use are Waves EV2, SSL Channel, SSL Comp, Fab Filter Pro Q3, Pro MB, Pro L2, UAD Vari Mu, Lexicon 480, Capitol Chambers, Acustica Titanium3, and Sand3.

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

I regularly work with a lot of genres, so I guess it's easier for me to stay fresh than an engineer who focuses on one or two genres. For me, every day is a different challenge with a completely different song, which makes it very interesting and exciting.

How do you typically approach the mixing of a song: what's your process for setting the song up? How do you A/B test the mix?

Organization is the key.

First of all, you have to organize your session with the tracks in the order you like. For me, it's usually Drums, Bass, GTRs, Keys, Vocals, or a very similar track order if it's another genre.

On a Salsa song, it would be Percussion, Bass, Piano, Brass, Main Vocal, and Backing Vocals.

After this is all organized, color-coded, and sent to their folder or Aux tracks to be managed as groups of instruments when group processing is needed, then I import my Ambience FX template which is the only template I use.

I never save presets for compression or EQ. Every recording and every song are different and will need different treatments unless it's a whole album that contains the same genre of music and absolutely nothing changes in between songs as far as musicians, instrumentation, and place where the instruments were recorded.

In such a case, I will mix the first song then import the settings to the other ones and start from there.

Using reference tracks is usually not my thing since I am not trying to imitate another song. All my often used plugins are saved in the favorites on Pro Tools, so I don't have to search for them too much.

After all the organization is taken care of, it's easier for me to mix because I can focus on the song and not on opening plugins. I do A/B to the rough mix the artist sends because the key to how the mix should be is always in it.