Somethin Else are a team of three sound engineers and the largest independent radio producers in the UK. The multi-award winning team are also radio partners with the Brit Awards

We broadcast the show live around the world and provide interviews with all artists and performers, says Senior Engineer Barry Gardner. The ceremony is massively popular internationally, and for 2007's ceremony we syndicated the audio rights out to over 20 countries worldwide!

The team are always striving for excellent results using SADiE, Cubase and Pro Tools recording systems. They are also big sE fans and own a pair of sE1As, an sE2200a and an sE Mini.

Being keen sound engineers, Gardner continues, we have our own mic collections and set-ups at home. From our experience with sE mics in the past, we were confident that they could do a great job for us.And that confidence was well placed as the team have now recorded a huge range of artists with the sE mics including Mika, Billy Cobham, The Long Blondes, Paolo Nutini and the one and only Amy Winehouse. They use the Mini and 2200a for speech recordings for radio and the sE1As and 2200a for music

For band sessions, says Gardner, we've used the sE1s for pretty much everything: drum overheads for Billy Cobham, guitar mics for Amy Winehouse's guitarist, violins, even guitar amps on occasion when we have a very crowded studio! We're also very happy with the 2200a for vocals, and have used it to record Radio 2 and Hit40uk sessions for artists such as Mika, Amy Winehouse, Amp Fiddler and many more.

There's a really pleasing amount of body to the 2200a and we often don't put any EQ on it at all it often doesn't need any! We also find it works well on double basses and cellos.

Radio recording is about getting good results quickly and production budgets are also often tight, continues Gardner. For this reason we looked for the best possible balance between cost and quality and think the sE mics represent excellent value-for-money, are reliable and also (crucially) sound great.

They have also enabled us to be more versatile in our mic choice because the mics themselves are so versatile, particularly the sE1As. Because the sound is so immediately usable it's also increased our workflow, and any increase in workflow matters a lot in radio! The speed at which it's possible to get good results is the best feature of all the mics.

Somethin' Else are currently beginning a move to new studios and a much larger building. It has a much larger live room and brand new, state of the art radio production facilities.

Hopefully we'll be able to expand our sE mic collection too!

Somethin Else's recording philosophyWe record straight to stereo for most band sessions so it's important to have the ability to judge a mix quickly and objectively if you make a mistake when going to stereo there's no undo' button! We take great pride in our output and like getting the most out of the equipment we use.