Michael Brauer has enjoyed an illustrious 30-year music career, mixing chart-topping albums by renowned artists including Coldplay, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones. Last month he nabbed the coveted Best Engineered Album Grammy® Award for John Mayer’s Battle Studies, the latest in a long line of accolades for this A-list mixer. Long revered for the storied sonic approach he calls “BRAUERIZE”, Brauer holds court over an amperage-busting, NASA-like collection of vintage outboard gear at New York’s Electric Lady Studios. But even with access to some of the world’s most prized electronics, Brauer delegates a large portion of his signal processing duties these days to Universal Audio's UAD-2 Powered Plug-Ins. “They have the sound I’m looking for,” he says. “And for me, it’s all about sound.”