Ken Candelas Does It All With Nugen Audio

Ken Candelas is a busy professional musician and audio engineer with an extensive resume exemplifying his great success in all areas of the music and sound industries.

A previous member of the audio team for Good Morning America, Candelas later went on to work on live and broadcast performances with some of today's most celebrated performers, such as Wyclef Jean, Lady Gaga, Jason Mraz, Rascal Flatts and Cardi B. He is also the co-founder of Metal Mastermind, a course-based educational resource for metal musicians, as well as an adjunct professor of audio engineering and music production at LaGuardia Community College, The City College of New York and SAE Institute.

A jack of all trades, Candelas can clearly say he's done it all, but recently, his schedule has largely been occupied with what he flags as his ‘pride and joy’ — a cinematic metal project, Homerik. Candelas' many roles on the project consist of composer, drummer, vocalist, orchestrator, arranger and recording and mixing engineer. His latest undertaking with Homerik has been to create Dolby Atmos mixes for the project’s new cinematic metal opera adaptation of 'Dante's Inferno'. This includes the release of a new album coming in September 2024 and an audio novel due for release October 2024, along with visual aspects, such as a narrative film-style music video. Candelas says NUGEN Audio Halo Upmix, VisLM and ISL plug-ins played an essential role to his success on this project.

"Halo Upmix is especially helpful when taking stereo analog recordings and putting them into Atmos-capable, immersive sound," he said. "I especially like the plug-in for ambient sounding reverbs and delays. Halo Upmix provides me with complete control and the ability to dictate how much reverb I want in the heights. Also, the differential in-phase that I can appropriate between heights, forwards, backwards and sides is so valuable. I feel that Upmix particularly enhances my workflow. I love my analog gear, so it’s nice to be able to not have to forego that when working in Atmos. I can use my stems and work with those."

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