AudioTechnology App Issue 18 by Alchemedia Publishing

AT 1

POWER TO PLAY

ALL NEW PASSIVE AND POWERED LOUDSPEAKERS

Powered Loudspeakers

Passive Loudspeakers

DBR Series DBR10 DBR12 DBR15

CBR Series CBR10 CBR12 CBR15

AT 2

DBR & CBR Features Custom Designed Transducer

Rugged, Highly Portable Cabinet

Rigging Points for Installations Applications

Smart Enclosure Design for Floor Monitoring

DBR Only Features High-Efficiency 1000W Class-D Amplifiers (DBR10 – 700Watt)

Easy-to-use Onboard 2-Channel Mixer INPUT

MIC/ LINE

DSP

LINE

OUTPUT

CH1 THRU

CH1

CH1+2 MIX

CH1

CH2

The new DBR Series harnesses the same state-of-the-art Yamaha DSP, amplifier and speaker technologies developed for the professional DSR Series and DXR Series line-ups, ensuring high-resolution sound at any output level. Comprised of 10", 12" and 15" models, each loudspeaker is housed in a newly designed, durable, lightweight cabinet optimized for FOH sound, floor-monitoring and even rigged applications. The new CBR series offer a passive version of the DBR series loudspeakers, for applications that require external amplification. Whether you’re powering your band’s live performance, DJ-ing a party, or MC-ing an event, be prepared for DBR and CBR Series speakers to take your performance to the next level.

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK facebook.com/yamahabackstagepass

EVENTS AND PROMOTIONS yamahabackstage.com.au

WATCH VIDEOS youtube.com/yamahaaustralia AT 3

AUSTRALIA’S LEADING SUPPLIERS OF PROFESSIONAL AUDIO EQUIPMENT SINCE 1976 BEST PRICES • BEST SERVICE • BEST ADVICE • LARGEST STOCK • NATIONAL DELIVERY EDUCATION SPECIALISTS – TERTIARY, SECONDARY & STUDENT PRICING AVAILABLE ONLINE STORE www.turramusic.com.au/shop

PRO TOOLS HD: Full range of high quality Avid HD interfaces available – enquire now for expert advice on you Pro Tools set up

Software

PC OR MAC NOW AVAILABLE: Steinberg Cubase NEW version 8, Cubase Artist NEW version 8, Steinberg Nuendo, NEW Wavelab 8.5, Cubase Elements 6, Propellerhead Reason, Ableton Live 9, Digital Performer (mac only) and NEW Avid Pro tools Upgrade your old pro tools now at new low pricing and get the free Avid support plan for 12 months.

Audio Interfaces & Control Surfaces THE MOST POWERFUL AUDIO COMPUTER INTERFACES ON THE MARKET ANTELOPE / APOGEE / AVID / METRIC HALO / M-AUDIO / MOTU / PRESONUS / ROLAND / RME / TC / YAMAHA FOCUSRITE SAFFIRE AND SCARLETT INTERFACES AVAILABLE

NEW

Virtual Synth Heaven NOW authorised Australian Dealer for East West” - US pricing for most titles. Best Service

ARTURIA / BFD / D16 / EAST WEST / FL STUDIO / MOOG / MOTU / NATIVE INSTRUMENTS INCLUDING NEW KOMPLETE 10 & KOMPLETE 10 ULTIMATE / SPECTRASONICS /STEINBERG / TOONTRACK / UVI / VIENNA INSTRUMENTS / AND MANY MORE…

NEW Avid S3 – Compact, 16-Fader, EUCON-enabled, ergonomic desktop control surface that offers a streamlined yet versatile mixing solution. HDX – when only the best will do. Unrivalled DSP power

RME FIREFACE UFX

UNIVERSAL AUDIO APOLLO QUAD

limited qty available with free thunderbolt card – be quick

KOMPLETE 10 AND KOMPLETE 10 ULTIMATE

SPECTRASONICS OMNISPHERE

ANTELOPE ORION 32 (Zen also available)

AVID / CELEMONY MELODYNE / IZOTOPE / LEXICON / MCDSP / METRIC HALO / SOFTUBE / SONNOX / SOUND TOYS / TC ELECTRONIC / WAVES & MORE…

Plug-ins SOFTUBE CONSOLE 1

PRO TOOLS / MBOX PRO bundle offers incredible value: industry-standard Pro Tools and a best-in-class desktop hardware interface

Limited stock available

NEW

PCIe and Thunderbolt versions available with choice of high quality Avid professional interface

HOT STEINBERG UR44

DSP Power UAD Satellite now available with Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt HD native available enquire now

THE COMPLETE PRO TOOLS PROFESSIONAL STUDIO

Bundle includes: C24 console, 8x8x8, AD8, HDX card and all cables. Requires qualified computer for operation. Contact Ron for details.

APOGEE SYMPHONY NEW

SSL ALPHA AX

UAD-2 OCTO CARD More DSP power and Includes Analogue Classic Bundle

Studio Microphones MACKIE MCU-PRO 9 Alps touch-sensitive faders, a full-sized backlit LCD and V-Pots for fast tweaking – the ultimate in hands-on command. AT 4

AEA / AKG / AUDIO-TECHNICA / BEYER / BEESNEEZ / BLUE / DPA / EARTHWORKS / MOJAVE / NEUMANN / RØDE / ROYER RIBBON / SENNHEISER / SHURE / TELEFUNKEN & MORE

AKG C414XL11

RODE NT USB NEW

TURRAMURRA PROFESSIONAL STUDIO DIVISION 1263 PACIFIC HIGHWAY, TURRAMURRA, NSW. TEL: (02) 9449 8487 FAX: (02) 9449 3293 WEB: www.turramusic.com.au EMAIL: hitech_sales@turramusic.com.au

Keyboards & Sound Modules AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST STOCKIST OF KEYBOARDS ACCESS VIRUS, AKAI PRO, ALESIS, CME, DAVE SMITH INSTRUMENTS, EDIROL, KORG, KURZWEIL, M-AUDIO, MOOG, NORD, NOVATION, ROLAND, WALDORF, YAMAHA MINI MOOG VOYAGER ALUMINIUM SPECIAL EDITION

Studio Outboard Processors & Effects WE NOW STOCK THE BEST OF THE BEST ART / AVALON / BEHRINGER / DRAWMER / DBX / EMPERICAL LABS / FOCUSRITE / JOE MEEK / KUSH / LEXICON / MANLEY / NEVE / PRESONUS / SMART RESEARCH / SSL / TC ELECTRONICS / UNIVERSAL AUDIO / TOFT / GRACE DESIGNS / DANGEROUS / RUPERT NEVE PORTICO / PLUS MANY MORE! UA 4710 SPECIAL DEALS AVAILABLE NOW ON ALL UA AUDIO

Studio Monitors

KORG KRONOS X88

HUGE RANGE IN STOCK AND ON SHOW! GENELEC / FOCAL / DYNAUDIO / MACKIE / M AUDIO/ TANNOY / ADAM / YAMAHA / KRK / FOSTEX / ATC / EVENT / ALESIS / BEHRINGER /

FULL RANGE OF 500 SERIES STUDIO PROCESSORS AVAILABLE YAMAHA MX49 & MX61

Analogue & Digital Mixers FULL RANGE OF MACKIE MIXERS / ALLEN & HEATH / SOUNDCRAFT / TASCAM / MIDAS YAMAHA DIGITAL 01V96i, 02R96, DM1000 & DM2000, LS9, M7CL, MPG / BEHRINGER / TOFT ATB24 WE CARRY A RANGE OF USB + FIREWIRE MIXERS THAT INTERFACE DIRECTLY TO YOUR COMPUTER. YAMAHA QL MIXERS Flagship CL features in a smaller package. QL5 (64 mono + 8 stereo) and QL1 (32 mono + 8 stereo) both pack 16 mix and 8 matrix output busses plus local rack I/O.

GENELEC 8040 SPEAKERS

EVENT OPAL

NEW YAMAHA MOXF8

YAMAHA MGP16X Also avaliable: MGP12X, MGP24X & MGP32X

NEW

YAMAHA HS5,HS7, H8 & H8S

YAMAHA 01V96i

Digital Media Recorders

ZOOM H1, H2N, H4N, H5, H6, Q2HD & Q4 / MARANTZ PMDs / FOSTEX FR2LE / ROLAND R-05 / BOSS MICRO BR / YAMAHA PR7 / TASCAM. MANY MORE, ALL AT NEW LOWER PRICES. COMPACT FLASH RANGE + MANY MORE.

NEW AIRA range DSI PROPHET 12 KEYBOARD

AVAILABLE NOW SYSTEM-1: PLUG-OUT SYNTHESIZER

NORD ELECTRO 4D

FOSTEX FR 2LE SPECIAL PRICING NORMALLY $899, NOW $549

The SYSTEM-1 breaks new ground with remarkable flexibility and access to a vast palette of tones with bold, unmistakable character.

TB-3: TOUCH BASSLINE

The TB-3 Touch Bassline is a performance-ready bass synthesizer with authentic sound and intuitive controls engineered to play.

TR-8: RHYTHM PERFORMER

The TR-8 is a performance rhythm machine that melds the legendary sound and vibe of the TR-808 and TR-909 with features and functions for the modern age.

$2299

NEW ZOOM H5

POCKETRAK PR7

ROLAND FA08 Taking the Work Out of the Music Workstation. FA-06 (61-keys) Available.

VT-3: VOICE TRANSFORMER

With the VT-3, you can smoothly alter pitch and formant in real time to introduce heavily processed vocal sounds into your studio tracks and stage performances.

AT 5

REGULARS

ED SPACE On the Automatic Production Line Editorial: Mark Davie

Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Art Director Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au Graphic Designer Daniel Howard daniel@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au

How far is too far when it comes to automatic music production? I’ve come across two programs lately that are on the sliding scale somewhere between carving your own instrument from bamboo with an axe, and mind-reading AI picanobots — that’s not a mistype, it’s a futuristic, nutty-sounding instrument I just made up. One of the two programs is WavesDNA’s Liquid Rhythm, which according to WavesDNA affiliate Jason ‘DJ Shine’ Spanu is a “molecular interpretation of MIDI forms.” Basically, it organises MIDI notes into clusters you might expect to use in a composition, for example, a triplet. So one click gets you three notes. Splendid! But it goes deeper by pre-creating rhythmic subdivisions within bars that are outside a standard time signature — you know, groove. It’s like pre-defining the molecule before joining the atoms together. The other program is as yet unreleased, and all we really have to go on is a splash site and a ‘wow factor’ demo video — it’s Score Music Interactive’s Xhail program. It’s essentially a multitrack scoring system where you feed it keywords related to your video or film, and it will spit out a piece of music tailored to your choices. Don’t like the sound of that flute? Just cycle to the next option, or delete that part altogether. It’s scoring music by algorithms. On the face of it, this could potentially be a game changer for videographers, dependent on pricing and how good the compositions are behind the scenes. But is it too far? Digital has supplanted analogue in the main, but has mostly been a replacement diet. Replications, recreations, emulations of known gear and processes. But there’s a lot of creative programmers out there trying to think of the next ‘big thing’ in music creation. And like the difference between Liquid Rhythm and Xhail, there are a few directions they could take. Drums have been one area streaking ahead of the rest when it comes to music automation. The LinnDrum unearthed the potential for replacing a musician and a station wagon full of gear with just one unit. And we’ve never looked back since. When the automatic drummer in Logic Pro X came as part of the DAW, no one even batted an eye. Your virtual-Chad Smith, or Buddy Rich, in a plug-in waiting to do your bidding. ‘Play a bit louder here, I want more groove there’ — all set out before you on a sliding scale. Drummer listens, drummer does. Of AT 6

course, ‘you can’t replace the real thing’, you say, but how far off are we really? Keyboards are starting to lean in that direction too. It hasn’t been as easy a shift, but these days you don’t have to have a pianist to bang out a chord progression, you can do it on a Push. Even lock out any bum notes in a scale. Now NI’s Kontrol has tuned up the light-up key ‘press this note’ concept even further by doing the same on a keyboard — locking out those bum notes. It’s Autotune for the keyboard world, without so much as a raised eyebrow. The bit that gets me is not the baby steps or giant moon leaps towards a musical ease, it’s the pantomime of originality. I for one, love Liquid Rhythm, it’s the sweet spot between automation and enhancing creativity. I find more interesting and complex rhythms with it then I do looping a section and jamming or plugging in individual notes. And preset scales? More power to you, anything to get you off the black keys. But the selling point of Xhail is its ‘fingerprint’. The video alludes to Xhail ID’ing your exact tune and never again, for all time, will that algorithm reproduce it exactly. But what gives a song its individual identity? Does the odd shifted note here or there constitute originality? It speaks to where we’re at with this concept. The videographer checking a few boxes and sliding some faders to get a piece of music knows he or she did nothing to actually create the music, but still feels better about the whole thing if there’s some kind of bogus stamp of originality. Which brings up other questions, who owns the song when you automate? At the moment, Xhail is offering a 50/50 split with the myriad composers and session musicians who might have added parts to your tune. So an algorithm generator now owns the rights to songs? If Apple could prove you used its automated drummer, shouldn’t it have a claim to the performance royalties on your song? After all, it’s Apple’s algorithm, not your creativity, that defined that beat. In Last Word this issue, Dave Clark talks about how he doesn’t think electronic music creation is even close to the refinement of the analogue domain. We’ve only been mucking about on computers for 40 years, and violins have been around for centuries. One day, he reckons, we’ll be able to virtually model our creative thoughts direct from our synapses. But will we kill our originality muddling about in the meantime?

Subscriptions Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au Proofreading Andrew Bencina Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark James Dampney Andrew Bencina Brent Heber Anthony Garvin

Distribution by: Network Distribution Company. AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628). Contact (Advertising, Subscriptions) T: +61 2 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia. Contact (Editorial) T: +61 3 5331 4949 PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia. E: info@alchemedia.com.au W: www.audiotechnology.com.au

All material in this magazine is copyright © 2014 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 4/11/2014.

COVER STORY

How Flume, Frank Ocean, Broken Bells & The Kite String Tangle Dodge Disaster on Stage

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

Sheppard’s Hand: ARIA-Nominated Producer Stuart Stuart Follows his Heart 22

Grand Theft Audio: Sound from the Streets of GTA V

Tony Bennett’s Son Mixes an Album of Duets with Lady Gaga

SSL XL Console Preview

RME Fireface 802: How Fast is It?

PC Audio

QSC Touchmix 16 Mixing Console

NI Komplete Kontrol & Komplete 10

Last Word: Dave Clarke

AT 7

AT 8

NEWS

NAMM: CONSOLE ROUND UP & DOWN

National Audio Systems: (03) 8756 2300 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au

While most manufacturers were busy down-sizing their live consoles into smaller fader counts and rack units, Presonus opted to go the expansion route by strapping its consoles together. The 1 StudioLive 48 and 64 AI Mix Systems continue Presonus’ bent on every channel having a fader. No nested input fader banks; got an input, it’s got a channel. So in order to get more channels, you can now just buy two 24- or 32-channel StudioLives and literally bolt them together. There’s obviously a discount for buying two consoles at once, and you get a joining bracket to lock the two consoles together, a PRM1 measurement microphone, a custom dust cover, and the Presonus StudioLive software library, which includes Capture live recording software, Studio One Artist, VSL-AI with Smaart measurement tech, plus a gaggle of iOS software. Like the X32 before it, Midas’ M32 console has begun to spawn miniature clones. The 2 M32R 19-inch rackmountable console knocks the fader count down to 17, but most of the M32 proper’s feature-set remains: 40-bit floating point processing, 192k conversion, Midas Pro preamps and faders, eight DCAs, and a 32 x 32-channel USB audio interface. The main cutbacks other than fader count are the screen shrinking from seven inches to five, the onboard input count halved, and it’s lost a bunch of assignable buttons and encoders. The 3 M32C core gets rid of the faders altogether. It’s basically got all the same brain as as the M32 in a 1U rackmount. It loses the main analogue I/O, but has two AES50 connections capable of 96 I/O (it can still only process 40 inputs at the moment), and it has an expansion slot for

an array of other digital connectivity. You can, of course, control it courtesy of the M32 mixing apps for iPad, and monitor mixers for iOS and Android. Allen & Heath has its own take on the ‘stagebox’ mixer, introducing 4 Qu-Pac, with its built-in touchscreen and iPad control app. You only have to look at the bent steel form factor to instantly

comprehend that this is fundamentally a Qu-16 in a box, with its 16 mono inputs, three stereo inputs and 12 mix outputs on the rear panel; expandable to 38-in/28-out by connecting to Allen & Heath’s family of remote AudioRacks over Cat5. Unlike rackmount mixers which wholly rely on tablet control, Qu-Pac’s full-colour five-inch touchscreen (as found on its other Qu mixers) gives easy access to all functions, providing a simple interface for day-to-day operation and a backup in the event of any wi-fi snafus. A fully customisable Qu-Control screen can be set up with ‘widgets’ for channel levels, mutes and assignment switches, arranged to suit the application and the experience of the user. Fifteen softkeys allow further customisation, while different levels of user access can be set up and password protected. A no-brainer for bands mixing their own sound or pubs/schools, etc. Soundcraft needed to respond, and it has. Parent company, Harman, acquired Australian innovators SM Pro Audio and immediately released the proposed UMix range as the 5 Ui Series; Soundcraft’s take on the ‘stagebox’ remote mixing revolution. The Ui12 (eight mic amps) and Ui16 (12 mic amps) each feature an integrated, onboard wi-fi router and can be controlled via a tablet, PC or smartphone. The Ui Series mixers feature cross-platform compatibility with iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux devices, and can respond to 10 control devices simultaneously. In addition, both feature built-in signal processing from Harman’s stable — dbx, Digitech and Lexicon, fully recallable and remote-controlled mic gain and phantom power, along with four-band parametric EQ, high-pass filter, compressor, de-esser and noise gate on input channels. Both mixers offer 31-band graphic EQ, noise gate and compressor on all outputs, plus an RTA on inputs and outputs. The Ui Series mixers feature full Show/Snapshot recallability with channel recall safes, while security lockout features allow customisation of device access to only specific functions and mixes if needed. Both mixers also offer independent network interfaces on board for simultaneous control by Wi-Fi and Ethernet, plus a floor-ready rugged chassis for live applications.

Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or tag.com.au

Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or jands.com.au

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au AT 9

NEWS

NAMM: ANALOGUE UPRISING

CMi Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au

Analogue synths have been making a comeback, opening the door for some of the categories early luminaries to step back into the limelight. Korg has partnered with ARP co-founder David Friend, to resurrect the ARP Odyssey 1 . The revised Odyssey includes three filter circuits, a Type 1 12dB/Octave VCF that Friend never really liked, but was a solution to Moog’s patent infringement claim on the ARP 2600 24dB/Oct VCF originally used. It has a much sharper, punchier sound. The Type II and III filters were a return to 24dB/Oct filters with the final iteration having more stability when the resonance is raised. You can also switch between the portamento behaviours of each revision. In another Korg-only move, the Odyssey has been downsized to 86% of its original stature, just like the MS-20 Mini. Added features include USB-MIDI and balanced XLR outputs. You also get a hardcase, and you can choose a limited edition early Odyssey revision skin too. Speaking of the MS-20, Korg has released a new version of its erect-a-set MS-20 Kit, the MS-20M Kit 2 . You still have to bolt it together, but the new desktop version has a few tweaks including oscillator sync, FM, two filters (pre and post), and PWM, and some modified CV jacks to help it play better with other gear. This kit also comes with SQ-1 2 x 8 step sequencer. Dave Smith has also been given the keys back to the Sequential Circuits name by Yamaha and its president, Takuya Nakata. Roland’s founder, Ikutaro Kakehashi, personally recommended the gesture of goodwill, which has turned into a synthesiser community love in. Kakehashi-san felt it was symbolic of Smith’s introduction of MIDI to the Japanese synth manufacturers. The first synth to reappear under the Sequential name is the sixvoice Prophet-6 3 , which takes the best analogue qualities of the polyphonic Prophet-5 — true VCOs and VCAs, and a four-pole,

resonant low-pass filter per voice — and adds effects including distortion, a 64-step polyphonic step sequencer, 1000 program memory, arpeggiator and more to make it worthy of its legacy and Dave Smith’s recent past. While analogue synths are riding high, Tom Oberheim is taking the opportunity to resurrect the Two-Voice synthesiser 4 . It coupled two SEM single-voice modules with a keyboard, to create a polyphonic synth. It was the early days of compact polyphonic synthesis, so for the re-introduction, Oberheim has spiced it up with sequence memory, which can be edited, chained into songs and a synced to MIDI clock. There are 56 patch points that cover both SEM modules, the sequencer and keyboard. Oberheim has also added pan and mod wheels, a separate vibrato LFO and a headphone out if you just want to jam away in peace. Not to be outdone, Moog went ahead and just dove straight back into the vault to resurrect three of its Moog Modular systems — the System 55 5 , System 35 6 and Model 15 7 . There will only be limited runs of each, with expectedly high prices. But far from being a purely nostalgic episode, Moog reckons this re-release is of the time. Moog’s contention is that back when the Moog Modular went out of production, synthesis was still in its relative infancy and artists were only just starting to come to grips with the possibilities on hand. Now, 30 years on, artists have a lot more history on their side, and will be able to exploit the Modular system fully. That’s the contention anyway. You’ll have to be a pretty cashed up synthesiser nerd to find out with only 55 units of the System 55 with a price tag of $35,000; there’ll be 35 of the System 35 for $22,000; and 150 Model 15s for $10,000. These reincarnations aren’t the only new analogue synth releases. There’s some new kids

Audio Chocolate: (03) 9315 5877 or sales@audiochocolate.com.au

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au AT 10

Awave: (03) 9315 5877 or www.awave.com.au

Audio Chocolate: (03) 9315 5877 or sales@audiochocolate.com.au

5 6

Electric Factory: (03) 9480 5988 or www.elfa.com.au

Roland: (02) 9982 8266 or www.rolandcorp.com.au

on the block too. Akai has released the Tom Cat 8 analogue drum machine, which follows the same basic template as its Rhythm Wolf forebear with a few flavour profile changes. The Percussion voice has been replaced by a Clap, and the Bass Synth has made way for tunable Disco Toms. Of course, being a Tom Cat, not a Wolf, the noise/distortion effect is called Maul, not Howl. The Timbre Wolf 9 is a four-voice polyphonic analogue synth that you can split into four individually-tailorable mono synths if you choose. It’s got 25 keys, a 32step sequencer for each voice, and can be triggered externally. Getting in on this analogue renaissance is Roland. Though the new JD-Xi synth 10 hedges its bets somewhat by being half digital. You can either go monophonic analogue, or embrace the two digital synth sections and be spoilt with 128-voice polyphony and Roland’s SuperNatural synth sounds. There’s also rhythm sounds onboard, a four-track pattern sequencer and an included gooseneck for vocoding and auto-pitch vocals. Keeping up with the modern mode, there’s also an effects section with Bit Crusher, Slicer and Ring Mod settings, which can be turned on or off per synth section, including the analogue monosyth. It’s also computer-friendly, with a USB output for audio/MIDI communication with your DAW. As you might expect, everyone’s favourite boutique purveyor of synthesis, Teenage Engineering, has gone in a completely different direction. Pocket Operators 11 is a new line of three pocket-sized synths. All three models’ components and artwork are visible directly on the printed circuit board, though you can add a silicone case that will make each Operator look like a calculator. The 2x AAA battery-powered Pocket Operators also come with a segment LCD screen, built-in speaker, alarm clock and a stand made from bent wire. Each model has its own set

of effects such as filters, bit-crushing, delay, stutter and many more. PO-12 Rhythm is a drum machine with a 16step sequencer with 16 different synth/ sampled sounds. PO-14 Sub is a bass line-driven synthesizer. It packs a 16step sequencer with 16 sounds and 16 effects/playing styles. PO-16 Factory is a melody/lead synth-oriented machine with a 16-step sequencer, 16 sounds and 16 effects/playing styles. You can pick them up online for US$59 each. Sledge V2.0 12 is a total rework of Studio Logic’s synth. Studiologic and Waldorf Labs (working as a team) have made Sledge 2.0 more flexible as a pure synthesiser, adding the ability to play in Dual Mode two programs at the same time, load samples and mix post processing effects in a never ending sound creation. At its core, Sledge is a three-oscillator (plus noise) synth with Waldorf filters. Nothing polite about Sledge.Price: $1799. Arturia’s BeatStep Pro 13 features 16 touchsensitive knobs for control of pitch, gate, velocity amounts, and timing shifts per step. In addition to two independent (colour-coded) monophonic step sequencers, each with dedicated displays that show playback position and bank length. Sequencer 1 and Sequencer 2 have been expanded with up to 64 steps per sequence, 16 sequences per project, and 16 projects. Each sequencer has its own 1V/ Oct CV (Control Voltage) and (10V) Gate outputs for connect to equipped analogue monosynths, such as Arturia’s MiniBrute or MicroBrute, together with a separate Velo (Velocity) output for extra options when working with a modular synth system setup. An additional Drum sequencer allows for 16 separate tracks of sequencing and eight Drum Gates (to send gate outputs from the corresponding pads for triggering external devices). Record in real time via the 16 pressure sensitive pads or use the 16 step buttons for a drum machine workflow.

MORE INFO www.teenageengineering. com/products/po

Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or www.innovativemusic.com.au

CMI: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

AT 11

NEWS

NAMM: NAME THAT INTERFACE

CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au

Electric Factory: (03) 9480 5988 or www.elfa.com.au

Probably the most pre-hyped product award for NAMM 2015 would go to Arturia’s Audiofuse interface 1 . It was billed as the desktop audio interface done right. At its core, it’s an expandable two-channel interface that eschews the oneknob control and breakout cables of its rivals. Instead, you’ve got an individual knob and button for every function, and a host of I/O on the back. And somehow it still looks good. Arturia has done a number on it, even including a stereo phono input for DJs, inserts, multiple MIDI connections, ADAT, S/PDIF, Word Clock, combo inputs, and dual monitor outputs. It features 24-bit/192k conversion, has a lid for carting it around, and comes in three colourways to suit your style. US$599. Focusrite’s Clarett 2 range of interfaces is a bit more expansive than Arturia’s, although you can only get it in one colour — Focusrite Red. The big jump here is the move to Thunderbolt, reducing latency down to under 1ms. There are four 24-bit/192k units in the range; the 10-in/4out 2Pre and 18-in/8out 4Pre desktop interfaces, the 1U 18-in/20-out 8Pre, and the 2U 26-in/28-out 8PreX, which doubles the optical ADAT count and adds hardware controls for 48V, high-pass filter, and phase flip. All of the units have MIDI in and out, and both 8Pre units have an onboard power supply. The Clarett preamps are supposedly new and model the ISA range, with an EIN of -128dB. They also come with Focusrite’s new Red 2 and Red 3 plug-in suite. Unfortunately, none of the Clarett interfaces has a Thunderbolt pass through, which is becoming common in many Thunderbolt releases. Focusrite also added to its RedNet 3 series of Dante-connected interfaces, with the MP8R eight-channel remote-controlled mic pre, the D16R 16-channel AES/EBU interface, the HD32R 32-channel bridge for Pro Tools HD, and the D64R 64-channel MADIDante bridge. It takes the total RedNet interface count to 11.

Expanding MOTU’s new range of Thunderbolt devices is the 112D 4 ; a digital audio interface, router, format converter and mixer. It’s the seventh in the new series, offering 24 channels of AES/ EBU (on three D-subs), 24 channels of ADAT optical and 64 channels of MADI (AES10) for a total of 112 simultaneous digital I/O channels, all in a single rack space. The 112D can operate on its own or as a component of a MOTU AVB network system. Users can connect all their MADI, AES/EBU and optically-equipped gear, plus their computer, mixing console, and AVB network, then route channels from anywhere to anywhere else. With a few finger taps on their iPad screen, users can convert any format to any other. The onboard DSP delivers large console-style mixing with 48 channels, 12 stereo buses, and 32-bit floating point effects processing, including modelled analogue EQ, vintage compression and classic reverb. Users can also mix audio from any and all sources: the local digital inputs, computer audio channels and other devices on the AVB network. Price: US$1495. Also on the Thunderbolt bandwagon is the M-Audio Deltabolt 1212 5 12-channel audio interface. Other than reducing latency, M-Audio is making use of Thunderbolt’s bandwidth by implementing 32-bit/192k DACs, though not on the input side, so it’s about hearing the full effect of that floating point bit depth in your DAW. And rather than simply slapping on an ADAT expansion afterthought, the 1212 provides eight analogue I/O on DB-25 connectors to complement the pair of Octane-X mic/line/instrument preamps. There are monitor and headphone outputs, S/PDIF and word clock, rounding out this professionalfeatured desktop interface. Also, adding 32-bit/192k DACS to its interface is Roland, with the Super UA 6 interface. Although, Roland has taken it one step further and added 1-bit/2.8MHz DSD to the equation. It’s unclear at the moment whether Roland automatically switches on the DSD conversion, or if it’s just natively supported. Unlike Arturia’s Audiofuse, Roland has stuck with the multi-function knob and breakout box setup, which

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au AT 12

Network Audio Services: 1300 30 66 70 or www.networkaudio.com.au

Pro Audio Group: (02) 9521 4844 or www.proaudiogroup.com.au

Roland: (02) 9982 8266 or www.rolandcorp.com.au

BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE

Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or sales@sound-music.com

Sound Distribution: (02) 8007 3327 or info@sounddistribution.com.au

Galactic Music: (03) 8813 0241 or sales@galacticmusic.com.au

adds two mic preamps and a pair of line outputs to the unit’s I/O count. The Super UA is built using diecast metal, with a large central LED meter. One of the more interesting interfaces to hit the market is a little rig from IK Multimedia. The iRig UA 7 digital guitar effects processor interface is one of the first dedicated real-time Android interfaces we’ve seen. IK Multimedia reckons it’s cracked the Android code, reducing latency enough to make playing guitar through a mobile effects processor app possible. Whether or not this yields a major leap forward in Android audiorelated apps is yet to be seen, but for now at least you can strum along with Amplitube and not feel forever behind your iOS buddies. On the mobile front, but with a bit more of a serious bent, Apogee has released an ultra portable USB DAC for your Mac or PC 8 . It’s an aluminium unit that looks like a super-sized iPhone in-line volume control. It’s USB-powered and can supply your cans with a 24-bit/192k feed via the same ESS Sabre DACs found in Apogee’s top-flight converters. There are actually four DACs per channel in what Apogee’s calling a Quad Sum DAC design to achieve a high dynamic range and low distortion. It’s unclear why Apogee is doing this, but perhaps it’s to compensate for a passive current to voltage conversion at the output. Other useful technologies including Constant Current Drive which ‘moulds’ the output voltage to the impedance of your headphones and asynchronous clocking. The standard colour is black, but there are gold and silver 30th anniversary options too. It’s not just the live world that’s benefitting from Music Group umbrella cooperation. Behringer’s new U-Phoria 9 audio interfaces also have Midasdesigned preamps onboard. There are four new USB interfaces — all under the US$200 mark — including the 24-bit/96k, 18 x 20 I/O UMC1820 with eight onboard preamps, S/PDIF, ADAT and S/ MUX digital formats for 96k expansion. The other three cheaper units have one up on the flagship model, stretching the A/D to 192k sampling.

Supercharge your desktop DAW system Ultra-low latency Lightning quick 10Gb/s Thunderbolt transfer rate 2 x great-sounding preamps Full metering Auto gain feature Pro-grade converters

Zoom TAC-2 Thunderbolt Interface

ZoomAustralia

dynamicmusic.com.au

AT 13

AT 14

QUICK MIX

The

with

John Kerns Interview: Neil Gray

Who have you been touring with/mixing recently? This was my 13th year on tour with the Big Day Out as the FOH System Engineer. Can you name some other bands you’ve worked with? No Doubt, Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, Bruce Springsteen, Shania Twain and many others. How long have you been doing live sound and how did you get started? A little over 30 years now. I started like many others did by being in a band, then we bought a PA, then went and spent some time in studios, and now here we are! What is your favourite console and why? After going around in circles, I keep coming back to the Midas XL4. There is nothing out there that sounds even close to me. I get that it’s not the most convenient and easy to lug around, but nothing comes close sonically. Favourite microphone or any other piece of kit? I’m a bit of a compressor nut, although I tend to use them for their individual characters as opposed to just squishing away. Having said that I really like my JLM LA500s and FET compressors. I also like Buzz Audio comps, my Elysias and TK Audios get used all the time as well. As far as microphones, I’m a bit partial to Audio-Technica and Telefunken stuff, everything those guys make sounds great and are reliable. Most memorable gig or career highlight? Mixing the Pope for about 800,000 people in Colorado for World Youth Day was pretty big! I’ve had some favourite shows with just about every artist I’ve mixed. Any tips/words of wisdom for someone starting out? Ask questions, pay attention, work hard. Learn how a system goes up… from scratch. Learn what it does in a room. I’ve run into many an engineer, and without a doubt, the better ones are the ones that understand the system and how it works with a room. How has your mixing setup changed in the last 15 years or so? Besides the PAs being much more accurate and efficient (and quite a bit lighter and smaller), the use of digital consoles has streamlined FOH a bit over the years. Having said that, if I can justify bringing out an XL4 then there would be very little difference!

Mixing the Pope for about 800,000 people in Colorado for World Youth Day was pretty big!

What are three mixing techniques you regularly employ that you’ve learnt in the last 15 years? I’ve been using the parallel compression thing forever. It comes from my studio days long ago, although it seems to be one of the live ‘buzz words’ in the last couple of years. Really, it’s all about creating the correct space for each individual input. I rarely have anything more than Kick, Snare, Bass and Lead Vocal panned centre. Use your high and low pass filters. In the last 15 years, what are three pieces of gear or features that have come out and been game changers for you? Other than Joe Malone making incredibly great compressors I would say the Dolby Lake Processor has been the biggest thing. It gave you a very, very flexible great sounding crossover/EQ that is reliable and compact. Hard to find many systems that aren’t using this technology in some way. Digital consoles have probably changed the game in the biggest way for everybody though. Although I’m not sure the fact that they have made it all a bit easier has really made anything sound better! How have your working methods changed over the last 15 years? Not a lot in reality. You still have to go into each gig prepared and use common sense. I still tune systems with the same 5-6 songs. You need to spend a bit of time with your PAs now as well. They will just do what you tell them to do, so you need to do your homework and take the time to properly set them up.

AT 15

FEATURE

AT 16

Will Morton and Craig Connor have left the GTA V safe house to cruise the streets towing a giant-killing CV. The duo has clocked up over 30 man-years of experience creating sound, dialogue and music content for renowned developer, Rockstar Games. So that giant-killing CV sports titles like Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, Max Payne 3, Manhunt, and of course, Grand Theft Auto. It’s an impressive track record, especially given the ever-growing world of GTA. Catching the duo as they contemplate life after Rockstar is a perfect and rare opportunity to discover what it’s like working on iconic titles for the world’s most famed developer. Both are naturally immensely proud of the company’s achievements. “It was fantastic to work with such amazing talent in such high concentration, with everybody on the same page, focused on the same goal, and making the impossible, possible,” said Conner. “People would be blown away by what another department had managed to do and it just gave everyone the thirst to push themselves and the game further. Always asking yourself, ‘How can I give the player more?’ “Working at Rockstar Games wasn’t just a career, it was a way of life — most of my colleagues are still my best friends today. We achieved success through passion, dedication, talent and time. Working on large projects like the GTA games is certainly made easier by the fact I’m obsessed with sound. But as well as having an eye for detail, you also have to see the bigger picture. In fact, I’d bet that on a lot of projects it’s the audio team who know most about the game as a whole. Dealing with sound means you need to know everything that’s in the game!” Will Morton concurs: “I learned a hell of a lot at Rockstar — it’s really true that if you work with good people, you’ll learn good habits. There’s never any room for complacency — there’s always something new to learn, and as technology changes constantly, our skills should develop too. Probably something that people don’t really think of as being important when starting out in game development is how vital your organisational skills and discipline will be — especially when you’re working with hundreds of thousands of assets, across different time zones and multiple locations. “Naturally, aspiring audio people are invariably creatives and may be shielded from anything ‘nonartistic’ when working on their own projects. And managing to hit deadlines while you’re doing the impossible isn’t a skill you envisage needing while studying sound production at college. But there’s no way we would have been able to do what we did with the audio for the GTA series without being absolutely precise in our planning and organisation. Latterly, managing dialogue from start to finish became my sole responsibility. To get a sense of the scope, consider how the dialogue requirements grew — for instance GTA IV HAD ABOUT 80,000 LINES OF IN-GAME DIALOGUE BUT GTA V (ON THE SAME HARDWARE) HAD OVER 150,000 LINES.

“As well as being fortunate to have worked at such a level on so many high profile games for so long, it’s been amazing to have seen the developments from the PS2/XBox days through PS3/XBox360, and onto the current gen. I can’t wait to see what the end of this videogame hardware generation is going to look and sound like!”

RAGE calculates and tracks about a thousand virtual sounds or voices at any one time, 96 of which will be rendered in the mix

TUNING IN

As the name implies, much of Grand Theft Auto’s gameplay is spent hopping from one hot car to the next. But cruising downtown in a boosted four-door coupe isn’t quite the same without some East Coast rap on the stereo. One of GTA’s most popular audio features is the virtual in-car entertainment. There are 17 radio stations players can flick between, so they can bob along with their homies to N.W.A’s Appetite for Destruction, or wind the windows down and have a gang sing-along to Queen’s Radio Ga Ga. There’s even talkback radio, spoof DJs, advertisements, jingles and phone-in guests. Some of the stations are curated by artists, and Flying Lotus is so into it, he’s updating his FlyLo FM station with more exclusive game-only tracks for the reissue. It’s a rich musical environment in itself, but there’s also an adaptive non-linear, interactive score — equivalent to about 12 albums’ worth of music — created by German electronic music group, Tangerine Dream, that underpins the entire game. Conner: “We’ve always been fans of the band and having licensed a few of their album tracks on previous games, we knew their sound would complement our vision for GTA V. When we approached them to work with us on an interactive score, we gave Edgar Froese a demo of the game and he loved it. Both he and wife and artist, Bianca Acquaye, visited us at the Rockstar North studio a few times to discuss the scoring process — it was so important they had a true experience of the game, and got a real feel for it, before starting work. Edgar heard a prototype interactive score track we had working on a few GTA missions and knew exactly what to do from there. The man is a legend and bringing his sound into this new interactive technology was very exciting. It helped that Edgar has already scored

countless films, so he knew exactly how to convey the emotion for each mission.” With a mind-boggling amount of both licensed and original music in play, mastering the music was always set to be a significant challenge, as Conner explains: “Levelling off so many different styles of music with hundreds of tracks that can literally flick from one to another anytime the player decides, is no easy feat. I’ve been mastering music for over 20 years so I’ve learned a trick or two, but GTA V did pose a challenge for a number of reasons. “Every licensed track pre-1999 was easy; everything after 2008 was a volume-war. I had to de-master tracks as they were already crushed to the limit. I deliberately processed the radio content a lot more than on previous games in the series so players could hear a clear difference between the score and the radio. “As far as consistency on the radio goes, this time round the DJ dialogue turned out to be the biggest job. We recorded them in so many different locations; we even recorded one actor in their own home. To complicate things even more, a number of different mics were used, which meant each recording sounded different. “I really wanted the DJs to sound mega-bassy, like real radio, but I had to pull back on that in the mix because it was taking over. I couldn’t allow the DJs to have more punch than an explosion, so it was all about giving the radio and score its own place in the mix. As GTA V has multiple sounds in a huge, living world, I had to pull out some frequencies in the music across the board, in order to give the player a good overall sound and eliminate ear fatigue.” COUNTING VOICES

Talking about talking, recording GTA V’s dialogue is a mammoth production in itself. With not only 150,000 lines of script to record, but 700 actors voicing them, it’s probably the longest line of credits you’ll ever see. Morton: “The process starts very early in development and continues right to the end. Really, you could write a book about it, but in summary, the game city demographics are looked at and the ‘virtual’ population decided on — which types of people are needed, the areas they live in, and so on. Models are made for the ‘peds’ (pedestrians) and then we set about planning voices. Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar will come up with a minicharacter brief and backstory for each one, which then goes to the ped writing team who create a bespoke script for each one — about 200 lines of dialogue on average. The actors are cast, and recording time booked. Dealing with about 700 actors means recording peds has to begin months before the game is complete. And there are often revisions as game features continually evolve during development. “We ran several large recording sessions throughout production, often recording 100 peds

AT 17

Working at Rockstar Games wasn’t just a career, it was a way of life

CRAIG CONNER

Craig’s career in videogame audio spans over 20 years. Since composing the soundtrack for the original Grand Theft Auto in 1997, Craig (former Music Director for Rockstar North) worked closely with Sam Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games, on the critically acclaimed soundtracks for the entire GTA series. More recently, they produced the interactive score for the recordbreaking Grand Theft Auto V. During his career, Craig has worked with stellar composers such as Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream on GTA V and BAFTA soundtrack award winners Andrew and Simon Hale on L. A. Noire.

WILL MORTON

With 12 years’ experience in videogame audio production, including Dialogue Supervisor & Senior Sound Designer for Rockstar North, Will has been responsible for the award-winning dialogue and sound design for many high-profile games, most notably the Grand Theft Auto series. As well as being an experienced music producer, Will has also enjoyed success creating sound for the film industry. AT 18

in a week (most only take an hour). We had three studios working simultaneously; each one with a director from Rockstar present plus an audio person like me to ensure what’s recorded is exactly what’s needed. As well as getting actors in and out on time, the producers make sure everything runs smoothly. After recording comes ‘take’ selection, and then the lines are edited, each voice mastered and the lines added to the game. It’s kinda manic sometimes, but Rockstar has been building huge scale games for years and the New York production team is expert at this stuff.” Central to the believability of GTA’s dialogue is its street cred. Not many script writers can grasp the slang of one gang, let alone an entire population as diverse as Los Santos, San Andreas — so Rockstar just hired the real deal. Morton: “Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth and Rupert Humphries wrote GTA V. There’s always a huge amount of detail put into the characters from the main players through to the pedestrians that walk the street. Dan has always gone to great lengths to make sure that populations are as varied as they are in real life, and that even the smallest character amounts to more than just a ‘random guy on the street’. When we recorded the gang peds, some of the actors would actually be gang members in real life and would let us know when lines in their script were things they wouldn’t say. We always ended up with fantastic results when guys like that would take the script and make it their own.

“We’ve found, in general, whether it’s for a game or for a movie, you’ll get far better results when you treat your actors like humans — they are assets rather than tools. Actors can often bring things to roles you haven’t anticipated, and while as director you have the final say, you’ll often get nuggets of ‘performance gold’ by working with actors rather than just commanding them. After all, they want to do their job well.” Conner: “For the main player characters in GTA V, we used a great deal of motion capture — the actors would physically play out the scene together and their movements, facial expressions, and dialogue would all be recorded together. When you can capture an ensemble performance with the right actors you get incredible results — far more detailed than recording everything separately. It’s obviously a lot more resource-heavy than the old way where we didn’t capture that data, but definitely worth it. Ned Luke, Steven Ogg and Shawn Fonteno’s performances really brought their characters to life.” ALL THE RAGE

In a game like Grand Theft Auto, most everything you see makes a sound — people on the street, birds in the sky, cars in the distance… the coffee cup hitting the floor as a man flees a gunfight. The mix and 3D positions of these sounds relative to the player’s orientation must be continually calculated frame by frame to determine a correct and immersive aural experience for the player. Add

CRAIG & WILL’S MUST-HAVE STUDIO GEAR

Grand Theft Auto features a style of game-play affectionately known as ‘sandbox’ play, where the player can roam freely in an exquisitely detailed virtual world — discovering, exploring and interacting with thousands of characters, objects and vehicles in between undertaking specific story-driven missions.

Morton’s main weapon of choice for the soundtrack to GTA I and Manhunt. These days it’s mostly just another piece of vintage furniture.

that to the dialogue and music handling and you have quite a technical headache. Playback priorities must be carefully managed to create a viable runtime mix balance — you can’t replay everything, nor should you. Enter RAGE, the audio engine governing the lot: it provides replay logic controls, culling of sounds according to distance and priority weighting, and providing the team a virtual digital surround mixing system. Conner: “RAGE Audio was designed and built by our in-house team, meaning it’s perfectly suited to these sorts of games. IT CALCULATES AND TRACKS

close up. It’s a great system for prioritising sounds automatically and working out what is, and isn’t important to the player. “Many sounds are created in real-time from tiny components rather than using a single pre-built sound effect. The benefits are zero memorywastage, and it also gives the sound designers flexibility because the sound variation is created as it’s triggered. “We included some real-time synthesis in GTA V by using AMP — a modular ‘connect-the-cables’type interface, fully integrated with RAGE Audio.

ABOUT A THOUSAND VIRTUAL SOUNDS OR VOICES AT ANY

INFINITELY VARIABLE SOUNDS. SOUNDS THAT WOULD

ONE TIME, 96 OF WHICH WILL BE RENDERED IN THE MIX.

NORMALLY BE QUITE STATIC, IF REPRESENTED BY RECORDED

When sounds are added, the volume of each file is calculated. The engine then uses that information in conjunction with what else is happening in-game to work out which sounds/voices should be heard. For instance, a loud sound happening miles away may not be heard over a quieter sound happening

EFFECTS, SUDDENLY HAVE LIFE BREATHED INTO THEM, AND

THE BENEFIT OF SYNTHESIS OVER SAMPLES IS CREATING

Monitoring: Dynaudio Air 6, Yamaha NS10, Genelec 8040A Preamps: API 3124, Avalon M5 Microphones: Neumann U87, Rode Classic II, various shotgun mics Software: ProTools HD Plug-ins: Sonnox, Waves Platinum, TC Works, NI Komplete, Focusrite d2 & d3, IK Multimedia T-Racks Deluxe, Audio Ease Speakerphone, Izotope RX4, SynchroArts Revoice Pro, Camel Audio Alchemy, U-He Zebra, LennarDigital Sylenth1, and Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, Atmosphere and Trilogy. Morton: “Craig is at home with ProTools, whereas I like a combination of Reaper for editing and manipulation, and Renoise for composition. I know that Renoise’s tracker interface is a bit cryptic to anyone used to the ‘traditional’ DAW, but as someone who uses both styles of software I know that certain tasks can be done in Renoise twice as fast as anything else — entering data in a tracker comes as naturally as writing my own name. Between ProTools, Reaper and Renoise we have all bases covered, whether it’s creativity or productivity.” Ancient Outboard Gear: Korg Mono/Poly — Conner: “I wrote GTA 1 and Manhunt using mainly this keyboard, but it’s just a piece of furniture now, I will have to get rid of the old dog eventually.” Roland Alpha Juno — Morton: “I’m an old raver, and the Alpha Juno was one of the first pieces of kit I bought in the early ’90s and was key to ‘my sound’ back then. I know it inside out and back to front.”

Levelling off so many different styles of music that can literally flick from one to another anytime the player decides, is no easy feat

THEIR BEHAVIOUR APPEARS MORE REALISTIC. It’s also

very memory efficient. You can do a lot with noise and filters, for instance, creating the sound of air conditioning units. “AMP is also used for DSP. In GTA V you can switch between three characters AT 19

during missions. They’re often talking to each other via headsets so the voices heard through an earpiece need to be changed on-the-fly as the player switches roles. We designed a headset effect chain to process the voices at run-time as required.” Morton: “Vehicle sounds are obviously a big deal — from the huge array of cars and trucks through to aeroplanes. The sounds of the cars are again made of tiny components recorded with a multiple-microphone setup. The vehicles sound different close-up than at distance — as they would in real life, and there are other details such as the sound of an engine cooling down after you’ve been thrashing your vehicle and so on. It also meant we could use the components of one vehicle as part of other vehicles. The engine recordings are processed with a granular playback engine so that as the car speeds up or slows down, the sound is perfectly in sync with the vehicle and follows the behaviour of the player. It was a massive step up in quality and realism from the old-school game method of pitching loops or just using static recordings.” LEAVING THE ROCKSTAR LIFE

As they enthuse about Grand Theft Auto, it’s abundantly clear that working on such a notable world-class game series has been an amazing adventure for the duo. But they’ve since left Rockstar, and now they’re bringing all that expertise to bear in a new venture, Solid Audioworks — the production company they recently co-founded to provide a full audio service; including dialogue, sound effects and score, as well as movie post-production. But surely leaving Rockstar-dom can’t have been an easy decision. Conner: “For me, after almost 20 years working on the GTA series, seeing the process travel from generation to generation, post-‘V’ seemed like the perfect moment to depart, go out on a high, re-charge the creative batteries and try something completely new. There are so many other games/ films I want to work on and tick off the bucket list. Morton: “Leaving certainly wasn’t a decision made lightly. For me, leaving the Rockstar family was about being able to work from my own studio, closer to my own family, and expand my horizons project-wise. There are lots of interesting games being developed — both indie and AAA — I really wanted to try something different. First of all, I fell into doing film work, which led to bumping into Craig at a pre-shoot meeting. We started discussing working more together, and that subsequently led to us setting up Solid Audioworks. As to what’s next, we will be busy on some film post production until the end of the year, after that we’re very much looking forward to getting back into what we love — games and game audio. Watch this space.”

AT 20

We’ve found, in general, whether it’s for a game or for a movie, you’ll get far better results when you treat your actors like humans

Compact Control Powerhouse A Compact Control Powerhouse For only $149!

• • •

Capable of triggering clips in Ableton and other software applications 16 step sequencer for all computers, synthesizers and drum machines Connects to computers, iPads and devices with CV/gate, MIDI or USB

More info: www.cmi.com.au/arturia-news#beatstep |

Arturia’s Beatstep offers a new degree of functionality and performance for a portable pad controller. BeatStep is highly versatile, capable of triggering clips in such applications as Ableton Live, playing drums in conjunction with such applications as BFD or EZDrummer. But BeatStep is also a 16-step analog sequencer for creating all kinds of musical phrases to be sent to

www.facebook.com/CMIMusicAudio

analog synthesizers, MIDI drum machines, MIDI keyboard devices, or computer programs. Its vast connectivity allows you to connect the BeatStep to a computer or iPAD using USB, a drum module using MIDI or an analog synthesizer equipped with CV/GATE. BeatStep is truly flexible and opens up new avenues of hands-on creative control for the contemporary musician.

Legendary analog sound on your desktop. • Record with stunning 24/192 kHz conversion • Plug-in to a world of vintage UAD tones • Mic preamp emulations, powered by Unison™ • High-speed Thunderbolt connection to your Mac

uaudio.com/twin *Apollo Twin includes the “Realtime Analog Classics” UAD plug-in bundle. All other plug-ins are sold separately at www.uaudio.com. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Requires Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or 10.9 Mavericks. Thunderbolt cable sold separately.

Find a dealer: www.cmi.com.au/universal-audio-dealers www.facebook.com/CMIMusicAudio

AT 21

FEATURE

Producer Stuart Stuart has guided Sheppard into commercial success by taking it one song at a time. Story: Mark Davie

Artist: Sheppard Album: Bombs Away youtu.be/ozsmSlvGHv4 AT 22

I wish I still had copies of the unsolicited music newsletter producer Stuart Stuart used to foist on his spam list. It was entertaining music industry click bait: confidence inspiring lists, Top 10s, and dos and don’ts if you want to succeed in this fickle industry. Key to its attractiveness was the correspondence’s air of confidence buoyed by the national success of pop stars The Veronicas; Stuart Stuart’s own biggest break to that point. Unlike most studio emails offering healthy rates, formidable gear collections or expiring EP deals, Stuart Stuart was selling himself. His big idea, the tidbit of helpful industry knowledge gift-wrapped in a few hundred words or dot points, was just the lead-up to his offer: a price per song not per hour; pre-production a must; accommodation inclusive; and a producer that actually cares. It was touchy-feely stuff; even his studio name, Analog Heart, seems more skewed towards tenderness than a fascination with gear. But it wasn’t just a marketing ploy, Stuart has stuck to the formula since day dot. He’s never seen the point in going about producing music any other way, even 15 years ago when he was charging $300 a song and still doing the same hours. “I actually had a Business degree, but obviously my accounting knowledge completely failed me because the business model I was working on made no sense!” said Stuart. “Frankly, the work I was doing in the beginning was quite bad. But I still didn’t want to be limited to the mindset of only having an hour to record a lead vocal because it’s all they can afford.” By the same token, he didn’t want to be “one of those guys all coked up in a 24-hour studio lockout.” The financials have caught up as his skills have increased, and things are looking relatively healthy at Analog Heart. He’s had a few other decent hits since The Veronicas. Brisbane band Small Mercies signed to Sony and threatened to break through in 2007, and boy band Boystar’s cover of Lover Boy [that’s some focused branding – Ed] was a Top 10 single. But the bulk of his work has been trying to live up to his promise of delivering unsigned artists onto a bigger stage. And though a few of them have garnered some industry praise and songwriting awards, even he was starting to get cynical about his ability to control the success or reach of anything he worked on. By the time his work with Brisbane band Sheppard kicked off, it had reached the point of ultimatums. “After we’d finished the first few songs,” recalled Stuart. “I thought, if we have any kind of music industry left, decimated as it is, this is a band somebody is going to like and do something with… or I might as well give up.” Thankfully for Stuart, Sheppard has become a raging success, with the first single Let Me Down Easy sparking the fires a year or so ago and the latest song Geronimo off their album Bombs Away holding down No. 1 spot for three weeks and selling four times platinum.

PARKED IN THE LAST SPOT

INDEPENDENT VIEW

Sheppard’s core is built around the Sheppard siblings — George, Amy and Emma — with guitarists Jay Bovino and Michael Butler, and drummer Dean Gordon rounding out the band. One of Yothu Yindi’s members used to teach the kids music where they grew up in Papua New Guinea. So when things started getting serious, and an album was essentially in the can, industry heavyweight and Yothu Yindi associate Michael Chugg was given a call. But everything really fell into place when the one thing Stuart doubted was ever possible anymore happened — commercial radio picked up the first single. “I was just shocked at the time,” said Stuart. “I still don’t know why they did. I mean we had a great song, but I’ve had plenty of people with good songs, and commercial radio just laughed them off, ‘Of course we can’t play it, we don’t know who you are!’ “Somebody explained to me years ago that commercial radio has four parking spots every week where they can play new songs. Three of them are going to be filled with Nicki Minaj, Flo Rida and Pink and maybe there’s one last spot open at best. I don’t know why they chose to give this particular band the level of support they did. It started everything.” Sheppard has signed to Decca Records for their international release, played on every TV show going this winter, and Stuart Stuart picked up an ARIA nomination for Producer of the Year. It’s all happening for the Sheppard camp. And for Stuart, it’s re-instilled faith in his approach. In fact, the whole reason Sheppard got on so well with Stuart was because his process was exactly the opposite of the cookie-cutter approach their last producer took. By Stuart’s count they’d blown about 30 grand on a record they had little input into, weren’t happy with and has never seen the light of day. “They’d had such a bad experience that they were thrilled about having any creative input at all,” said Stuart. It was re-energising for Stuart too, having become a little jaded with the industry he’d stopped listening to new music and “stagnated a little bit,” said Stuart. “They came to me at a good time, when I was ready to inject some new influences and get back in touch with why I love this job. They brought in a bunch of new music I hadn’t been listening to, which inspired me to update my tastes. I started to feel I really do like a lot of music that’s out right now. And I can make it.” On rotation at Analog Heart Studios was a steady roll of American indie darlings to soak up their aesthetics: acts like The National, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Lana del Rey, The Black Keys and Bon Iver. But Sheppard’s stock and trade is pop hooks. “Those guys can’t write a song without a great melody,” insists Stuart. The combination meant the 11 tracks on Bombs Away all have a “pop structure and classic songwriting but with a lot of sounds that come from contemporary alternative,” said Stuart. “It comes with a certain credibility because of that.”

Coming at that broad American indie genre with fresh ears put Stuart in a unique position to evaluate exactly what makes up the sound of those records. The first big call was to dismantle the drum kit, mostly programming beats with big orchestral toms out of the Drums of War sample pack and using anything but a straight snare drum, then overdubbing live drums and injecting loads of handclaps, percussion and generally more roomy sounds. Which was also the next identifiable element — more room… in everything. “Everything I’d been doing sounded very dead,” said Stuart. “Whereas you can hear the space all that music was recorded in, or at least hear a big room somewhere, whether it’s in the percussion or vocals.” Thirdly, there was to be no distorted guitars. And filters became shorthand for tweaking a sound. “It was a little bit unusual,” said Stuart. “There’s plenty of records where you hear the top end taken off backing vocals. But using filters in more of a dance music way and letting vocal parts, drum parts and acoustic guitars filter up was a little different. “For instance, on the song Pebble Road I put a filter on the acoustic guitar and gradually swooped it up and down through the song and it created this background morphing texture, which helped create space and warmth.”

There are certainly going to be some purists who say you’re a cowboy if you’re mastering in-thebox, but I’m getting the results I’m happy with.

KITCHEN SINK TEMPLATE

Keeping every option open demands a workflow that is equally immediate. So rather than building up each session as he goes, Stuart begins with a giant Cubase template comprising almost every channel permutation he can think of, ready and routed. Stuart: “I have eight lead vocal effects that are always there. I probably should be tweaking my short plate and longer reverb more often than I do, but I like them both. And then I have a quarternote delay, eighth-note, doubler, all that stuff. I pretty much have those same effects for backing vocals, with maybe some bigger ’verbs. “Then I’ve got about 16 sends of other effects, that are mostly delays and reverbs. And my different groups like acoustic guitar, electric guitar,

AT 23

and snares are already routed to different effects. I do change that from time to time, but it gives me something immediately workable. For instance, I’ve already got 16 tracks labelled ‘Oooh’ because quite likely I’m going to have a part featuring something of that nature. “Lately I’ve been inserting more effects into the channel rather than using sends. I was often finding George would ask for a particular reverb on certain parts and I was never getting it wet enough, even with my biggest ’verb maxing out the send. It took me a while to realise I need to insert that reverb, then bring up the mix as we want the part and put a compressor after it. I DON’T KNOW WHY IT TOOK ME

Somebody explained to me years ago that commercial radio has four parking spots every week where they can play new songs. Three of them are going to be filled with Nicki Minaj, Flo Rida and Pink and maybe there’s one last spot open at best

SO LONG TO TWIG TO THAT. I THINK I WAS JUST HARDWIRED ONTO THE IDEA THAT A REVERB AND DELAY MUST ALWAYS BE ON A SEND.

“The recording process with Sheppard has helped me develop some much more interesting sounds. Just by virtue of constantly being asked to do something and never quite being able to deliver it in the way I’d done it before, which meant having to get out of my pattern.” Another example of how he revised the way he was mixing, was to cut down on the number of group stages he was using. Stuart: “I used to mix through multiple groups, say an acoustic guitar would go into an ‘all acoustic guitar’ group, then into an ‘all guitar’ group, and another group called ‘instrumentals’ before hitting the master chain. All so I could bounce out stems or turn down all the guitars at once, but I never did that anyway. And I recently had someone tell me sub-mixing kills tone, so I decided to change it all around and go shortest path to the mastering chain for every channel. I still group 16 tracks of backing vocals together because I want to compress them all together, but I just skip AT 24

all the unnecessary stages after that now. It could just all be in my head, or I could just be getting better at what I’m doing, but everything’s sounding punchier and clearer to me.” It’s not just his new workflow that has been having a sonic payoff, IK Multimedia’s ARC (Advanced Room Correction) plug-in has also brought up the consistency of his mixes. Stuart: “I’ve got a bare minimum of acoustic treatment in my room — some mid and bass traps — because my attitude was to not do much if I don’t really know what I’m doing. But once I got ARC, suddenly the bottom end in my room evened out — the difference is incredible. The EQ curve it made is quite radical, but everything I’ve done since translates really well. I’m never shocked when I hear my mix on anything.”

GERONIMO DRUMS Stuart: “We only used one kick on Geronimo, whereas we layered two or three kicks on a lot of the other songs. During the mix, I got used to the sound of the guys tapping on my coffee table in the studio, so I miked them up! We tried miking it up from a distance but then realised they had to tap at a certain quiet intensity, so we had to close mic it. There was another sound where we recorded George and Jay slapping on their knees, and it became a big part of the sound. And then the toms came out of this sample pack called Drums of War. We’ve got lots of handclaps, and a programmed big-sounding snare from BFD. “After all that, we couldn’t just slap live drums on top, because we had a delicate balance of percussion, instruments and vocals by that stage. So I just used the room mics for the first half of the song. Later on I open up just the snare channels, and, near the end, the overhead channels open up. I never really used the whole kit, and I don’t think we used the live kick in any song.” VOCALS Stuart: “I used a Rode Classic mic for almost all the vocals. I’m sure at one point early in the process I put up a few different mics to see what would work on George’s voice. But since 2011, we settled on the Rode Classic, and out of pure convenience I don’t know if I ever swapped the mic out because Amy would jump in and do her parts on that mic as well. “It was always running through a Joe Meek preamp which I know the sound of really well. His voice wasn’t something I wanted to mess with much. There’s a little bit of EQ here but we never got into distorting it or going too far with any radical EQ. Whereas you start recording other voices and immediately know you’re going to have to radically shape it. “When you put George on the mic it sounds basically like it does on the record. And when it comes to tuning vocals, I’ve got a little slave screen set up in the vocal booth, so we can comp takes and tune them while he’s in there. He’s looking at Melodyne telling me to push a note up, or if I’ve pushed it too far and he can hear the tuning. So that part of it is very collaborative. “We’d always get tight lead parts and harmony parts that were nicely tuned. But then for the chorus, I’d set up a stereo mic pair in the rumpus room and get them all to sing along. We’d track that tons of times to get a big group vocal sound. Luckily I’d upgraded my computer before we started, because my old one simply wouldn’t have handled it. “I’d play around a bit with varying levels of ‘liveliness’. Sometimes I’d get people to open the door of the vocal booth to let in some ambience for a part, or I’d get them to step outside the door and yell it from the outside. On the demo, the ‘bombs away’ line was only in the song once, but it was the best part. So we put it in there a bunch more times, and it’s just Amy tripletracked. We tried more ambient parts on it, but in the end it just sounded better upfront. I put a big delay on it with the top end rolled off so it echoes out. “When it comes to automating vocals I could pull the song up a hundred times fresh and still want to change the vocal automation. I literally automate every word in a mix.

“I’VE GOT A HARDWIRED LEVEL IN MY BRAIN OF WHERE THE VOCAL SHOULD BE AT ALL TIMES, AND WHATEVER THE

wanted it bigger and louder, but it was blowing out my bottom end.”

MUSIC IS DOING THE VOCAL SHOULD STILL BE SITTING AT EXACTLY WHERE THAT LEVEL IS IN MY BRAIN. Sometimes

its hard to fight that instinct when I have the odd indie band who want the vocal lower. “I run a bit of compression on the way in through the Joe Meek, and then it runs through the UAD LA2A and 1176 plug-ins, and usually Waves’ Vocal Rider as well. Even after all that I still want to automate it like crazy! “When I listen to good records, you never lose the vocal and it never comes out and overwhelms the music. I’m really conscious when a vocal pops out too loud and suddenly my music doesn’t sound powerful anymore.” BASS Stuart: “The bass came from some weird, dubsteppy synth on the original demo they’d made at home. We added a saw wave-y Omnisphere patch on top of that called ‘Stuck in the ’80s’. We got another sub rumble sound out of Omnisphere. That was a real challenge to mix, because the guys loved that sound and always

GUITARS Stuart: “My fear was we were never going to get the acoustic guitar part sounding tight because it’s so fast, but we managed to get there in the end. It was recorded twice with a spaced pair of Rode NT2s, then I hard-panned one mic from the first take, and put the other mic from the second performance on the opposite side. We did that a lot when we were recording with a stereo pair. “A lot of people think one of the electric guitar parts is a banjo, but it’s just direct in through a Boss pedal. Other than that, there’s a reversed ambient part with heaps of reverb and delay that adds a lot of mood. And this is probably one of the only songs where we ever did anything approaching a rock guitar, which comes in towards the end. Jay never wanted any distortion on any guitar. If anything started to get too gainy he’d immediately play some Metallica riff to take the piss out of it.”

AT 25

YOUR OWN MASTER

If you go online and search for Geronimo on YouTube, you’ll come across two distinct versions of the single. One is a vaguely OK GO-ish video designed to punch through into the international market, and the other a cute Les Mis/Frankenstein narrative featuring a cardboard monster, glitter grenades for weapons and love conquering the divide. On first listen, I thought my hearing was being affected by the visuals, because the hi-vis international version sounded brighter and punchier, rendering the sepia-tinged domestic version dull by comparison. Stuart is still kicking himself over it. The original master that ended up on the domestic version was done in the US. Whereas the more forward master for the international version was his. Funnily enough, it’s the US master — which according to Stuart is “dull and about 3dB off everything else” — that has been doing the rounds on Australian radio. “It’s muddier and it’s my own fault because when we got this master back from the U.S. I just rubber stamped it without referencing anything else,” admitted Stuart. “I just thought THOSE GUYS ARE SO WELLKNOWN AND HAVE MASTERED ALL OF MY FAVOURITE RECORDS SO THEY MUST KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING. WHEN I STARTED HEARING IT ON RADIO I THOUGHT, ‘WHY ARE WE SO QUIET?’

“I’d always assumed the radio station’s limiter would sort out the level of everything, but it doesn’t at all. I was really surprised by that. Geronimo has been the most played song on Australian radio this year and I kept hassling management to sub in the better master but they’re all of the mind, ‘well if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Stuart wasn’t in the habit of mastering his own material, but ever since that episode he masters as he mixes. Stuart: “These days you’re getting your mix together as you record. It’s certainly not like it used to be, having to pull all the faders down to zero and start again. When the mix is starting to really shape up, I’ll turn on my mastering chain and start listening to how it will influence things. “To me, it never made sense to do a mix then send it off to a guy who’s going to put it through some other equipment and see how it reacts to what my mix is doing. It just didn’t make sense to have that as a two-stage process. “Part of it is that once I turn on that mastering chain, suddenly I’ll notice something subby that’s sucking all my headroom down. It’s also a great time for me to start referencing other mixes I really like, and I might realise I’ve become used to a quiet kick. Or when you’re putting on that final top-end boost and suddenly the hi-hats are burning your ears but your vocals are sounding good. That’s when you go, ‘hang on, my vocals need more top end.’ It really helps your mixing, SUDDENLY I’M FINDING I DON’T NEED TO COMPRESS OR AUTOMATE A PARTICULAR THING AS MUCH AS I THOUGHT BECAUSE IT’S GETTING GLUED TOGETHER BY MY SSL BUS COMPRESSOR.

“There are certainly going to be some purists who say you’re a cowboy if you’re mastering in-the-box, but I’m getting the results I’m happy with. I managed to chance on a mastering chain that was giving me really good level without too much suck. For level, it’s just an SSL doing a little bit, into a Waves L3 doing a little bit, into a Sonnox Inflator doing a little bit. If I’m not getting level easily then something in the mix is sucking all of my level and it’s almost always the bass. If there’s any secret, it’s not letting any one thing do too much work. If you’ve got 8dB of gain reduction on an L3, something’s gone wrong.” PRODUCES PASSION

Working with Sheppard has been a reinvigorating process for Stuart Stuart. It’s again demonstrated that his one-song-at-a-time method works, even though some songs on the album took much longer. But more than anything, the injection of new references and positive results has reinvigorated his passion. “THE IDEA OF BEING CHAINED TO A CHAIR, RECORDING ANY OLD BAND FOR HOURS AND HOURS UNTIL THEIR BUDGET RUNS OUT, I’D RATHER DO ANYTHING THAN THAT,” said Stuart. “Engineering is

not my passion, and I wouldn’t say producing is my passion, it’s music that’s my passion. ”

AT 26

Musos Corner o

90 Studio Showroom

Try it in our studio before you use it in yours Australia’s FIRST complete studio showroom.

MICROPHONES AKG C12VR x 2 AKG C414 XL-II x 2 AKG C414 XL-S x 2 AKG C451B 60TH Anniversary Edition x 2 AKG D12 VR AKG Perception 820 Audio Technica AT5040 Audio Technica AT4050 Audio Technica AT4080 Audio Technica AT4081 x 2 Audio Technica ATM250DE Blue Reactor x 2 Neumann M 149 Neumann U87ai x 2 Neumann TLM107 Neumann TLM102 Neumann TLM103 Neuman KM184 Rode Classic II Sennheiser e901 Sennheiser e902 Sennheiser e602-II Sennheiser e904 x 4 Sennheiser e906 x 2

Sennheiser e914 x 2 Sennheiser e935 Sennheiser e614 Sennheiser MK4 Sennheiser 600 Series Drum Mic Kit Sennheiser MD421 x 3 Sennheiser MD441 x 2 Shure SM57 Shure SM58 MIC PRES API 3124+ Focusrite ISA828 Focusrite Liquid Channel SSL VHD x 4 SSL M Pre x 4 Universal Audio 4-710D Universal Audio Solo 610 DI Avalon U5 Clark-Teknik KT100 INTERFACE Yamaha AIC128-D

DYNAMICS API 527 x 2 SSL 611DYN x 2 SSL Bus Compressor Universal Audio LA 610 MKII x 2 Universal Audio 1176 LN Universal Audio LA-2A Universal Audio 2-1176 EQ API 550A x 2 HARRISON EQ SSL 611EQ x 2 SUMMING MIXER SSL Master Bus Section SSL 4 Channel Input Module ENCLOSURES AND POWER SUPPLIES RADIAL Workhorse SSL X-RACK SSL Mynx INSTRUMENT PRE-AMPS Ampeg B-1 Markbass Studio Pre

MONITORS Eve SC208 x 2 Eve SC105 x 2 KRK VXT 4,6,8 series x 2 Mackie HR 624 x2 Mackie HR 824 x 2 Neumann KH 120 x 2 Neumann KH310 x 2 Neumann KH 810 Quested S8 x 2 Yamaha MSP5 x 2 Yamaha MSP7 x 2 Yamaha SW10 Sub x 2 PERSONAL MONITORING Behringer P16-D Behringer P16-M x 4 SOFTWARE Ableton Live Cubase Nuendo Native Instruments Protools Universal Audio Waves

CONTROL SURFACE Yamaha Nuage – Master and Fader Section DSP Universal Audio UAD2 Quad STUDIO FURNITURE Argosy Mirage Ultimate MS MkII DIGITAL MIXING CONSOLE Behringer X32 Core Yamaha QL1 INSTRUMENT EFFECTS Kemper Profiling Amp Rack Line6 POD HD PRO ACOUSTIC TREATMENT Primacoustic AD-DA CONVERTERS Focusrite Rednet 4 Focusrite RED 2 Focusrite RED 4 Yamaha RIO1608D x 2 Yamaha Nuage 8A8D Yamaha Nuage 16A16D x 2

90 Degree Studio Inside Musos Corner. 1 National Park St Newcastle West NSW 2302 02 4929 2829 www.90deg.com.au | www.musoscorner.com.au AT 27

FEATURE

BENNETT & GAGA: CHEEK TO CHEEK Tony Bennett’s son Dae took up the reins from Phil Ramone on his father’s latest album of duets, this time with just the one (surprise) guest, Lady Gaga. Story: Paul Tingen Main Photo: Steven Klein

AT 28

“What I find with everything I record like this is that spill is a crucial element,” said Dae Bennett — engineer, mixer, producer, and son of the legendary American singer Tony Bennett. And when the junior Bennett says, ‘record like this,’ he’s referring to the live tracking and producing approach of Cheek To Cheek, the senior Bennett’s latest album of duets with the inimitable Lady Gaga. He continues: “There’s no other way to achieve that sound. There is no ProTools plug-in, no piece of racked gear, that can do it. There is something about the resulting live sound that’s a little scary and unpredictable, and that is exactly the point. For me, it makes for exciting records. I see people who beat tracks to death, endlessly editing and treating them and fitting them to a grid, and these tracks are dead on arrival. They just sonically lay there all the time, lifeless, without any movement. I like it when things are a little different, unsettling, with some things jutting out more than others.” For both Bennetts, the album delivered their second American number one and Australian top 10 — the first number one came in 2011 on the back of the Duets II album, itself a follow-up to Duets: An American Classic, which was released to celebrate Bennett’s 80th birthday. That first batch saw him singing a selection from the Great American Songbook with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Celine Dion, accompanied by a jazz quartet, supplemented with a big band or orchestra. Five years later Bennett did the same again, this time sparring with Amy Winehouse (her last recording), k.d. lang, Aretha Franklin, Sheryl Crow, Natalie Cole, Michael Bublé and most strikingly, a surprisingly energetic and natural sounding partnership with Lady Gaga on the song The Lady Is A Tramp. Lady Gaga isn’t the sort of gal you’d expect to see duking it out on the mic with crooning royalty. While she does pull a few vocal tricks out of the bag live, and has tried to establish herself more in the line of Warhol. Most of what the public knows of Gaga is her p…p…pokerface and that she often wears outrageous outfits, while at other times, hardly anything at all. Her vehicle to date has been pop music, performances heavy on the burlesque, and videos designed to shock you to attention, giving skeptics plenty of leeway to critique her work as entirely surface-level theatricality with little-tono substance. The bigger the target, the easier to hit, and Gaga’s dos can be quite voluminous. Yet here she was, on The Lady Is A Tramp putting in a stellar jazz vocal performance. It showed an entirely different side of Gaga, and took many by surprise, especially in the context of how both Duets albums were made: with the singers and Tony Bennett’s quartet all recorded live at the same time in the same room, without vocal booths or drum iso booths. The recording approach’s tsunami of spill gave engineer and mixer Dae Bennett very few, if any, options for tuning and timing manipulations. In other words, Gaga’s performance was the real deal. AT 29

GAGA’S TRAMP STAMP

Lady Gaga’s revelatory performance on The Lady Is A Tramp greatly added to her credibility as a singer. Moreover, in the song’s video the chemistry between Bennett and her almost literally sparks off the screen. But staking an entire album on this chemistry was a big move for both artists. For Bennett, he was forsaking the collective star power of his previous albums, and for Gaga, it was becoming more than a dalliance, but a real mark on her style. In a way, it’s hats off to Gaga, for not only doing something different, but potentially dragging her fanbase into unfamiliar, yet important musical territory. Cheek To Cheek sees the duo croon, vocalise, and in Gaga’s case occasionally belt, their way through a selection of classic songs, ranging from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes to Duke Ellington and Irving Mills’ It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing). In line with the ‘don’t change a winning formula’ adage, the two singers were once again accompanied by Bennett’s quartet regularly augmented by a big band or orchestra, and captured for posterity by the same production team. The only changes are the occasional appearance of Lady Gaga’s quintet, and the absence of Phil Ramone, who sadly died in 2013. Ramone had produced Duets: An American Classic, coproduced Duets II with Dae Bennett, and Ramone’s passing meant Dae was all on his own producing Cheek To Cheek. The winning formula on Duets: An American Classic, Duets II and Cheek By Cheek was established by Dae Bennett in 2006, when his brother Danny, their father’s manager, approached him with the idea of Tony making a duets album. At first, Dae wasn’t too excited about the suggestion, because “this type of record often sounds so canned and artificial, with singers not performing live with each other, and usually singing to a backing track. I suggested instead that we made a feature out of recording entirely live in the studio. This was pretty much how we have always recorded Tony, and the best way to capture him. IF YOU WANT TO KILL A TAKE OF TONY SINGING, PUT SOME HEADPHONES ON HIM. IT’S NOT HIS THING. HE IS A PERFORMER AND HE LIKES SPONTANEITY. SO HE SINGS WITH TANNOY LITTLE RED MONITORS OFF TO HIS SIDE, INTRODUCING YET MORE SPILL. After recording

the vocalists with the quartet I comped various takes of each song together, and once these comps AT 30

were approved they went off to the arrangers for additional orchestral or big-band arrangements.” While the vocalists/quartet sessions had all the spontaneity favoured by the Bennetts, organising the sessions themselves wasn’t exactly spontaneous, with Dae and Danny having a hard time getting the two exceptionally busy main protagonists in the studio at the same time. This eventually happened for seven days of recording at the beginning of 2014, at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Astoria, New York — the neighbourhood Tony was born in. During pre-production Tony, Dae and Gaga decided on the songs and the interpretation of each; including tempo, key, and who was to sing what. Bennett’s quartet — Gray Sargent on guitar, Mike Renzi on piano, Marshall Wood on double bass, and Harold Jones on drums — together with the producer, also spent time working out the arrangements. “It was a true collaboration between Tony and Gaga,” explained Dae. “We were aware that people may have heard these standards a gazillion times, but they really wanted to bring these songs forward, so they could reach a new audience. We then made sure we had a roadmap for each song, because you want to have things sketched out before you start recording. The moment you’re getting takes is not the time to be working on arrangements. We were tracking two to three songs a day during those sessions, which was great. It’s a speed I like to work at, because it keeps everyone fresh. I did not want anyone bogged down doing 20 takes. If we felt that a particular song wasn’t happening after a couple of takes, we would move on to another one and come back to the earlier song on another day. In general we did three to four takes of each song, and moved on to the next one. The room at Astoria was also set up for a video shoot, and many of the videos you can find online of Tony and Gaga performing were compiled from these sessions.” SPILL IT

One of the hardest engineering accomplishments in the Cheek To Cheek sessions was dealing with both singers’ relentless motion. The pair were seemingly oblivious to the presence of the mics during their performance, and there was no containing their enthusiasm with taped ‘X’s or a handspan measurement from the mic. With all the leakage that was seeping everywhere, the lower off-mic vocal levels when the singers

moved away must have been a nightmare to deal with. While the producer in him enjoyed the spontaneity and liveliness, the engineer in him had a job on his hands. Dae explained how he went about combining the different hats he was wearing: “They were moving about quite a bit while singing, which did make editing and mixing a little bit of a challenge in some places. There were some moments when they were totally off-mic and I had to dig deep during the edits later on to get a matching sound. But I didn’t want to put any constraints on them while they were singing. I would rather deal with any issues after the sessions. If everybody’s having a good time and we’re getting great takes, I’m not going to say, ‘do everything you’re doing, but please stand still and face the mic.’ That would be bad direction. I’d rather have them be loose and having fun. But yes, being an engineer as well as a producer can be tricky. You have to take the shit with the glory. You have to be both the good guy and the bad guy. That comes with the territory. But it was tough to lay down the law with those two! WHAT I DID DO WAS EDIT THE EVENING AFTER EACH SESSION, AND IF THERE WAS AN ISSUE I’D PLAY THE EDIT TO THEM THE NEXT DAY SO THEY COULD HEAR AND SEE THEMSELVES WHAT WAS NEEDED, OR WHAT DIRECTION THEY COULD EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH. We

were getting really good results that way. “On this album I used a Neumann U47 to record both my father and Gaga, going through a Neve 1073 and a Urei 1176 into ProTools at 24-bit/96k. During sessions later in the year at Avatar, I tried that studio’s beautiful RCA 77-DX ribbon on her, and really fell in love with the sound of that mic on her voice. So I started running it in conjunction with the 47. You will see both mics side by side in some of the videos. If I had figured out earlier how much I liked that mic on her voice, I WOULD HAVE

USED IT FOR ALL THE SESSIONS. SHE HAS A VERY POWERFUL VOICE, AND I FIND THAT SOME OF THE MODERN NEUMANNS CAN BE ALMOST TOO ACCURATE. THE MODERN M149 IS A BEAUTIFUL MICROPHONE WHEN YOU USE IT ON AN OPERA SINGER 10 FEET AWAY, BUT PUT IT UP CLOSE ON A FEMALE VOCALIST AND IT BOTHERS MY EARS. IT’S A LITTLE TOO DETAILED. By contrast, the 77 sweetened her voice in a way that was a perfect match. The 77 is used on the songs I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Let’s Face The Music And Dance, and Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye. “On the quartet, my drum mics were pretty standard with a Neumann FET 47 on the kick, a

Shure SM57 on the snare, Audio-Technica 4080 ribbons as overheads, a Neumann KM184 on the hi-hat and Sennheiser 421s on the toms. I PLACED ALL MICS VERY CLOSE TO CUT DOWN ON SPILL AND HAVE AT LEAST SOME DEGREE OF SEPARATION. The double bass

was DI’d from a Fishman Circle pickup, and miked with a Neumann U47 going into a Neve 1073 and a Teletronix LA2A. The piano had two AKG C414 mics under the lid — we kept it closed to limit leakage — and the guitar cabinet was recorded with a Coles 4038 ribbon right on the speaker. Once again these mics went through Neve 1073 mic pres, of which I’m a big fan. “We recorded another four or five songs during the sessions in August with Gaga’s quintet, and for these I used the same setup on the drums and bass, while the B3 had two Shure SM58s on the top and an SM58 on the bottom of the Leslie, the sax a Neumann U47, and the trumpet an RCA 44. Her band’s arrangements were something Tony wasn’t used to, so I had the band lay down some preliminary tracks with rough vocals by another singer, so Tony could familiarise himself with the direction they were taking. That helped tremendously. In any case, to have another band in there provided a different texture and a really nice contrast within the album, and it was fun and exciting for me.”

ORCHESTRAL GAP-FILLER

The Tony Bennett quartet sessions at KAS happened at the beginning of 2014, and the four days of recording with Lady Gaga’s quintet at

Avatar were in August. These bookended the recording stage of Cheek to Cheek, with the big band and the orchestra recording sessions taking place in between. “The orchestra arrangements were done by Jorge Calandreili and the big band arrangements by Marion Evans,” said Dae. “The orchestral recordings took place at Manhattan Centre Studios a couple of months after the quartet sessions, with a 60-piece orchestra, and we later had another orchestra session with 25 musicians at Avatar for the song Don’t Wait Too Long. 90%

TECHNICA 4080 RIBBON MICS OVERHEAD, WHICH SOUND PHENOMENAL. I PLACE THEM AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE, BEHIND THE CONDUCTOR, ABOUT 30-40 FEET APART, WITH THE MIC ON THE LEFT POINTING TO THE RIGHT AND VICE VERSA.

OF THE ORCHESTRAL SOUND COMES FROM TWO AUDIO-

Jorge loved the sound of those mics. “In addition I had spot mics on the strings, with quite a few stereo pairs of KM184s on the string and viola sections and the cellos each had an individual 47FET, while French horns were recorded with 421s at the bell, oboe and bassoon with Neumann U87 mics in front, about one foot away, the flutes had KM184s close-up and for the

band behind the vocals at the same time. “You can see the amount of spill on the vocal mics in the screen shots! The band did not play to a click track, everything was free, so if I wanted to do a vocal edit and tempos were not close enough, I couldn’t do it. It may sound challenging, but I’m used to cutting tape, so for me, cutting wave forms in ProTools is easier and more flexible. Of course, these are fantastic musicians, which is the key. Without that, making a record like this would be next to impossible, or at least, it would take three times as long. “You can also see that I would mute, or at least reduce the level of one vocal track while the other was singing, and vice versa, so the spill level always stays more or less the same. This may sound tedious and time-consuming, and that was exactly what it was!

When they’re both singing I had more spill, but the track was usually louder at those points, so I could get away with that. When I do those vocal-with-band cuts, a lot of the time you listen to each instrument individually to make sure the edits work well at each point, and sometimes you have to stagger the band edits. Maybe Tony sang a brief pickup just before an edit point, so I would have to open his vocal edit sooner than the band. In other cases I may need to let the vocal hang over a little bit longer, going into the incoming quartet edit. You can see these edits as horizontal lines in the screen shots, with the band on top; then my father and then Gaga; and below that the big band or orchestra edits, which were done separately and independently, as they were overdubbed to the edited band-with-vocals tracks.”

EDITING LIVE TAKES

Dae’s home studio setup, just north-west of New York, comprises a 12-core Mac Pro with 48GB of RAM, running ProTools HD Native 10, and a whole range of plug-ins by Universal Audio, Izotope, Waves, Sound Toys, Celemony, Antares and IK Multimedia. The hardware in his studio consists of the Avid 16x6 analogue HD/IO, Avid Artist Mix fader pack, Focusrite ISA 428 mic pres, Bryston 2B amp, and Genelec 1031A, Yamaha NS10M, and Avatone Mix Cubes monitors. It’s here that he locked himself away to edit together the final takes of Cheek To Cheek. Dae: “For me editing already starts during recording. I have a grid box on all the lyrics sheets, on which I quickly mark the scores as things are going down. This also allows me to make sure I have enough recorded material to create a good edit from. After we finished the first set of recordings in January at KAS, I locked myself in my room for two weeks to edit everything, and I then sent things out for approval. It’s just about edits at this point, I don’t really go for effects or other mix treatments; even though I set up a quick rough mix in ProTools for a general balance and to get a clear idea of what I have. My prime focus during this stage is editing the vocals, and I take care of all the moments when the singers were off-centre and so on. But because of the spill I need to edit the

AT 31

If everybody’s having a good time and we’re getting great takes, I’m not going to say, ‘d o everything you’re doing, but please stand still and face the mic

harp I used two KM184s, one pointed at the side and one wrapped in foam and shoved in the back hole. The big band sessions were recorded at Avatar Studio C, and I had Coles 4038s on the trumpets, Neumann TLM103s on the trombones, and Neumann U87s on the saxophones. The trombone and trumpet mics went through the Neve VR mic pres, and the sax mics through the studio’s Neve 1031s. We also overdubbed Paul Horn’s flute and Joe Lovano’s saxophone solos at Avatar, and I used a U47/1073/1176 chain on each.” MIXING IN HALVES

Shortly after the big band overdubs at Avatar Studio C, Dae began the final mix at the same studio, a process that would take him nearly three weeks for a total of 18 songs. Bennett was working with what he called a ‘hybrid’ mix setup, using both ProTools and the Neve VR console automation. However, before he began the mix, he first engaged in what he called the ‘premix’, i.e. editing his recordings. Given the “unpredictable” nature of the live-inthe-studio recordings, the editing stage is crucial, and time-consuming. In fact, Bennett spent a lot of the time at his home, between the two vocalistswith-band sessions in KAS and Avatar, editing the recorded material. Dae explained that he tried to take care of the ‘editing minutiae’ before he started on the final mix because the two processes require a totally different state of mind. “When you’re dealing with all these editing details you’re less focused on the overall picture, whereas when mixing I like to spread everything out over the desk, and my aim is to get the entire song to sound exciting and musical. At this point I use the desk, and ProTools, more like a musical instrument. I HAD A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT MIX CONFIGURATIONS ON THE ALBUM, ONE FOR TONY’S QUARTET WITH BIG BAND, ONE FOR TONY’S QUARTET WITH ORCHESTRA, ONE FOR JUST TONY’S QUARTET, ONE FOR GAGA’S BAND, AND ONE FOR HER BAND WITH ORCHESTRA. IN EACH CASE, ONCE I HAD SET UP A CONFIGURATION, I WOULD MIX ALL THE SONGS I HAD IN THAT CONFIGURATION,

AT 32

SO I DIDN’T HAVE TO GO BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THEM.

I mixed Anything Goes first — which is quartet and big band — because it was to be the first single, released while I was still mixing. “When I first put up a configuration, I generally started with the rhythm section, and then I worked my way through, incorporating the piano, the guitar and then the big band or the orchestra. I added the vocals last. I like to get the track to the point where I enjoy listening to it without vocals. If I can get it to sound great like that, the vocals are the icing on the cake. But I do spend most of my time with everything up, and get a feel for levels and panning. I do these moves mainly on the desk. All tracks from the ProTools sessions are individually broken out to the Neve console, apart from the orchestra tracks, which I had bussed to the desk as first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, French horns, woodwinds and harp. I run the Neve VR with the automation active, and work mainly on that. “I love the sound of the VR! I use a few plug-ins in ProTools, and some outboard, and a little bit of EQ, to touch up the occasional instrument, and mainly to cut some low end on the orchestra, but overall I’m big on getting things to sound right at the source, and recording them the way I want. So I don’t need to change things that much during mixing. SIMILARLY, THE SOUNDS OF THE ROOMS WHERE WE RECORDED WERE VERY IMPORTANT, AND MOST OF THE SPACE AND REVERB YOU HEAR ON THE ALBUM COMES FROM THEM. I LIKE THE RANDOMNESS OF JUST HAVING THE ROOM TONE IN THE RECORDINGS.” To supplement the room Bennett treated a number of instruments with a few global effects, and injected some specific nostalgic effects to taste. “All I had on the most of the instruments, as well as the vocals, was maybe a little bit of additional reverb, and very occasional EQ on the desk,” said Dae. “I set up two plug-in reverbs for the entire project, the UA EMT140 and UA Lexicon 224, which came up as effect channels on the desk. I occasionally pushed the 140 on the horn stabs played by Gaga’s

quintet for a bit of a late 1950s vibe. In addition, I used an outboard Lexicon 480L if I wanted a longer reverb on some of the ballads, and I really dipped into that for Paul Horn’s flute solo on Nature Boy. Paul unfortunately died three months after I recorded him. He was an amazing player who made a lot of new age-y recordings I loved the sound of. So I ended up tweaking the 480L to mimic the timbre and length of the sound on his records as a personal tribute to him, and it ended up working great in the mix, so I kept it. “There was very little compression on individual channels on the album. The only time I used it was on the solos, some of the vocals and the bass. I recorded the vocals via the Universal Audio 1176, but more as a catchall, because they go from a whisper to a canon shot in a matter of seconds. I ran the 1176 on them again during the mix, this time as a textural thing. I also spent a while making sure the bass cut through more than it normally would on a traditional jazz record, using a Teletronix LA2A on the DI as well as the mic signals. But it wasn’t so much about compression as it was about finding a better balance between the DI and the mic, and a little bit of EQ. These are traditional songs in a traditional format, but I didn’t feel that the end result needed to be wholly traditional, in part because we wanted this album to also appeal to Lady Gaga fans — we wanted to give them something they can sonically relate to. Did this mean that I brought a rock sensibility to the album? I don’t know. I grew up hanging around band stands and hearing a big band playing live, it hits me with the level and power of a rock band does. So when I mix a big band, I mix it like that, because it’s the way it sounds to me. And a song like Let’s Face The Music is all about the drums and bass! I don’t think records have to come with a certificate of authenticity. If it feels and sounds good, and everybody involved loves what’s happening, then that’s where I am at.”

federalaudio.com.au sales@federalaudio.com.au

The new EQ2 from The 500 series EQ2 is a no compromise one ® channel, 2 band equaliser with AIR BAND , Low Mid Frequency (LMF) bell boost from SUB to 1.4 kHz, and an INPUT ATTN to control down to –12.5 dB of attenuation

AT 33

TUTORIAL

AT 34

Formula One pit stops are pretty much where the race happens these days. Whether or not a team is gambling on a one-stop, two-stop or really trying to keep tyres fresh with a three-stop strategy is mostly what the BBC commentators bang on about for the entirety of the race. It’s so predictable that the only differential between drivers is how many points of a second the pit crew faffs about in a pit stop. One second longer than normal is a total disaster. And if a tyre wrangler drops a nut, it’s race over and you may as well drive into the wall at the exit of pit lane. Amazingly though, some musicians have no idea how long it would take them to get their show back on track if everything went pear-shaped. They’re gambling with their livelihoods every day. I’m talking about DJs, producers, bands, solo artists, anyone who uses a computer in their live setup. Even mix engineers to a certain extent, who are using computers to trigger events or add processing power to their rig. There’s a growing population of artists who run their entire show off one computer, completely unprepared for when it all goes bad. So, let’s get redundant, baby! To help save us from the inevitable doomsday scenarios, I talked to application specialist Jason ‘DJ Shine’ Spanu, a Canadian techno DJ who has toured the globe setting up systems and running playback for Nelly Furtado, Drake, Frank Ocean, Broken Bells, and many more artists; Lynden Gare, production manager for Flume’s Infinity Prism tour was also kind enough to fill us in on how Flume’s MIDI is managed; and Danny Harley, the one-man show that is The Kite String Tangle, walked me through his journey to figuring out how to get redundant. So if you’re walking the high-wire without a safety net, here’s some practical measure to land softly when things go to hell in a handbasket. SHINING EXAMPLE

Technically speaking, Jason ‘DJ Shine’ Spanu is on the Broken Bells tour as we speak. Except he’s not. He’s at home, having sent a sub to cover for him on the last two weeks while he looked after a family member. He also got a call to set up an interactive iPad jamming station for a kids science event. It was a month’s worth of touring for a day’s work that came at exactly the right time. Spanu’s life is anything but normal. Whether he’s on the road or not, he’s still the guy you call if you’ve got a problem, at any time of the night. As well as putting together and running the playback systems for touring bands, he also consults for others. “My phone rings at stupid times of the morning,” he explained. “And it’ll be the guys from Metric calling me or some other weirdo indie band asking, “How do you do the thing with the…?” At which point he’s already put them on speakerphone and logged onto their desktop with TeamViewer. Which saves him yelling, ‘No, click that button!’ down the line thousands of times. Spanu is a Toronto techno DJ who sort of fell into his current role as playback master. He moved in next door to where Nelly Furtado’s band

rehearsed by fluke. The band got to know him as “the guy that used that f**ked up program Ableton Live,” and his roommate soon became their pot hookup. Spanu’s in with the band took a bit longer to eventuate — Furtado’s boyfriend also happened to be her DJ, thwarting any chance he had of cracking his way onstage with them. So Spanu got on with making techno, and about three years later, they came back to him and asked him to show them that ‘f**ked up program’ again. Up to that point, they’d been using ProTools for playback, and the bass player/band leader was having trouble following Furtado when she wanted to stray outside of the bounds of a linear timeline. So the ability to time-stretch songs in one session, and loop and edit on the fly, had them in raptures. They were hooked, and asked him to join the circus at the height of her career in 2006. “On Day One we did every TV show on earth,” recalled Spanu. “All the different late night David Letterman-type shows. They had a variety show in Europe where they bring in all these international acts, and I realised I was the only one using Ableton, everyone else was using Digital Performer, ProTools or Logic. These days I don’t feel special anymore, they’re all playing Ableton.” Spanu picked up Ableton at version five, and much of what he does stems from what he could do with markers back then. Depending on the job, Spanu switches between the Arrange mode and Session mode. If he’s DJ’ing, it’s Session mode, but if he’s just playing backing tracks, he sets up markers in the Arrange timeline at likely loop points, so he basically just has to hit a forward or back key at any time during the set. He uses the Arranger view because bands primarily know what note follows another, which part goes next, and the form generally stays the same. If he tried to get fancy by triggering sections in Session view, he’d likely stuff it up, or he’d have to program follow actions to progress to the next loop set… far too much hassle. COMPUTERS ARE THE DEVIL

When Spanu first started out, the general consensus was that “computers were the devil, and you better hide that s**t. Don’t put it anywhere even near the stage!” Regardless of whether they made a dance album, and everyone knew where the sounds were really coming from, you wanted to look at the “hot chick, not the guy looking at a computer.” For some artists, like Frank Ocean, the whole band is under the stage, whether they’re tethered to a computer or not. Artists tend to see Spanu more as ‘Wizard of Oz’ than DJ, so his ego has taken “more hits than it can handle”. It took years for him to finally make it up on stage with Furtado’s band. So when he got the opportunity, he carted his full DJ rig — two Novation Launchpads, an Ableton Push and two giant touchscreens — up onstage with him. Even then, for a show in Ibiza they still had a guy posing as the DJ onstage right next to him… At the end of the day, he gets paid the same whether he’s on stage or off. For other bands, its clear what his role is. For instance, said Spanu, “Broken Bells came to me and

said, ‘We need you to do this’. They’re not asking for ‘and be awesome’. They’ve got awesome covered.” OCEANS APART

One of Spanu’s current clients is Frank Ocean, and the rig had to be scalable as required, but generally portable and fit for shipping. The rig comprises Ableton Live at its core, running on two MacBook Pros, with two portable MOTU Ultralite interfaces and a Radial SW8 eight-channel switcher between the two. He uses the seven-year old Ultralites because they fit in his hand, have 10 stereo line outputs — enough for any artist he’s working with — and are Firewire bus-powered. Which makes power supplies one less thing to worry about losing or going on the fritz. When he first started buying gear for artists with a budget, he thought bigger would be better; more processing power would mean more stability. So he packed a MacPro tower into a foam-lined, touring rack so he could run 24 backing tracks. They went to play a show down in Mexico where the subs were plugged into the same generator supplying his computer. As soon as the sub kicked in he lost all power and his computer crashed. He soon realised it was dumb. “Who needs 24 tracks anyway,” said Spanu. “You might as well not show up.” Plus, when you’ve already got a 64-channel stage plot, no festival or TV show is going to give you 24 more lines to send to the computer guy. From there it became, “What else can I erase from the equation?” Now the MacBook Pro runs itself and the interface from its internal battery. If everything else goes pear-shaped, he can still hit the next marker and get audio. With eight tracks to play with, he usually divides his percussion up into frequency specific areas, so a stem of kicks, a stem of snares and other mid-heavy elements, and hi-hat loops on their own stem. Then it’s typically vocals and music separated onto their own stereo outputs, and two separate click tracks. One click goes to the drummer for the entire song, and the other one typically just gives the band a ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ count in. From there the drummer takes over, unless there’s a drum-less chorus breakdown or bridge. Once he has the main markers in place, he then uses his experience to inform where other markers might be a good failsafe; places he knows he can loop if the artist decides to diverge into a 10-minute Kanye West-style monologue. “Be aware that every time you put a marker down, you’re spending about a megabyte of preloading RAM,” said Spanu. “So when you’ve got 50 songs, averaging about 20 channels, and I put 10 markers into each song. Bang, I just spent some RAM. So I try to be a little sparing, but also not terrified about it, because it’s generally fine.” Another thing he never does is upgrade straight away. “Live 8 came out and I didn’t even touch it,” said Spanu. “It was seven forever. When six came out I was like, five works, I’m not changing this.” A WEB OF MIDI

Once the audio interfaces are synced up, there’s the issue of syncing MIDI. Depending on the artist, he AT 35

might set up an eight I/O MIDI patchbay. If a band has keyboard controllers all over the stage, he’ll build a MIDI web that does all the control changes for the different synths from his computer. Spanu: “As soon as I hit Play on a new song, the sounds are all ready. And in the middle you can take the keyboard player’s sound and do another solo with an arpeggiator, and it becomes this massive ballet of MIDI. “The next level is adding in video. That’s usually a word that scares a lot of people, but it’s pretty simple. All you’ve got to do is run some SMPTE timecode. Live doesn’t natively produce SMPTE, but you can just record the audio file of it, run it as a separate output and shoot that to the lighting console so everything comes together.” HITTING THE BUTTON

WALKING UP TO THE COMPUTER AND YANKING OUT THE

radioactive crap… Fukushima. Any of those things interfere with my ability to make a network a foot away, even via a simple connection — it’s stupid! I’ve got 100,000 people in front of me, and I can’t do any of it. “The new version, TouchAble 3, will finally have a connection from the phone jack. So I intend to split the workload up between things I know are simple and stable, and things that are awesome and fun. TouchAble lets me adjust every parameter on the fly really quickly without messing with a mouse. But it’s all going through digital wonky wi-fi so it may go out at any moment. If I put a filter effect on each of the vocal tracks and control it from my iPad it better be a very stable connection, because if I pull it all down then go back up, and it doesn’t go back up… disaster! “It happened to me the other day in a small theatre with 400 people. Everything was fine and all of a sudden the connection went bad. It’s all fresh gear, a new iPad Mini, but something is freaking it out. In-between sets I had to reprogram it all. Luckily, I always bring a hard-patched MIDI device with me — something with knobs. If I was hiding behind a curtain I wouldn’t care. Just hit spacebar and f**k off, but on stage I want to interact and not be the guy faking it. I’m of the generation that doesn’t do jumping jacks when I perform. “I generate my own network, because generally you need a really high-powered transmitter to rise above everything. The problem is all those phones’ default channel is the same channel I’m using, so there’s all this crosstalk and inter-modulation frequencies shooting around. And if I go to a lower channel it doesn’t have enough power. The wi-fi world is a pain in the arse. “Generally I’ll do things like mixing, sends, throws, and any automation that I want to have control over. I’m not doing too much, but if I want it, I know it’s there. I’ve simplified my interface because WE’RE ALL SMART, BUT WHEN SOMETHING GOES

FIREWIRE CABLE. HE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE IT SWITCH, IT

WRONG ON STAGE OUR IQS DROP TO SINGLE FIGURES.

WAS AMAZING.”

YOU’VE GOT TO BUILD YOUR SYSTEM TO BE RUN BY A BABY

For Spanu, there’s no point in having redundancy if the changeover isn’t automated. Realistically, he says, if anything actually does go pear-shaped, it’s going to take him a second or two to notice, react and hit the ‘Oh s**t!’button. So he feeds one of the inputs to the Radial switcher with a separate VST test tone oscillator plug-in, set up in Ableton to continually emit tone whether he’s stopped a session or not. If the Radial stops seeing that tone at any time, it automatically switches to the inputs from the alternate audio interface. The other issue is syncing his MIDI between the two sessions running on different computers. But rather than syncing MIDI timecode or having the computers talk to each other, he instead relies on control. One of his associates, Matt Davis, who Spanu handed the Drake gig over to, programmed a mirrored Max 4 Live patch that allows one Launchpad to follow the other over MIDI. The Max patch waits to hear what button was pressed on the triggering Launchpad, tells the other Launchpad, and they both pass that information onto Live. It means that if the session stuffs up, the first Launchpad can still trigger cues to the second, allowing time for Spanu to shuffle over to the other system. Spanu: “A simpler way of doing things is to get a MIDI splitter and a MIDI keyboard, map the names to certain notes, and by hitting that note it will split to both machines at the same time. You don’t want sync. Because sync relies on a relationship and if one of those things goes away, then what happens? There’s no point getting anal about phase, because at the time you have to switch between one and the other, whether or not it was on by a frog hair is not going to make any difference. “I made a bunch of how-to videos with the Metric guys, and ONE OF THEM WAS LITERALLY

TOUCHUP ON DEVICES

Spanu also DJs on stage for Toronto R’n’B artist Julie Black. He has a lot of fun with, four iPads running a TouchOSC patch, Lemur and TouchAble. But his problem is always the network. “It’s the radiation soup of signals floating around us all the time,” reckons Spanu. “Cell phones, AT 36

WHO JUST GOT RAN OVER.”

64-BIT, BUT NOT 24

When most people start using computers live, they’re petrified to do anything more than hit the space bar. “It’s shut up and hit Play, because everyone is still terrified and thinking we’re running it on a Commodore 64.”

But more than user error, the times Spanu has seen everything go wrong is when artists ask too much of a system. Like running 118 tracks, or insisting the tracks have to be in 24-bit. “I’m like dude, we’re not performing at a DVD authoring factory,” laughed Spanu. “We’re out in this gross s**thole and I’m one of 60 tracks on stage. It doesn’t matter if I don’t have the depth of a 24-bit dynamic range. Let’s pull back all those numbers and be cool.” Other times, he just can’t explain what’s wrong. The Broken Bells session is pretty elaborate, they

UNTANGLING THE MESS

When Danny Harley (aka The Kite String Tangle) first thought about making his live system redundant, he really struggled to find any information on how other artists were going about it. Eventually he was given a leg up by Rufus, who in turn pinched their main ideas from Cut Copy’s stage setup. “Laptops freak me out, I never liked performing with a laptop because I was scared it was going to screw up, that’s why I desperately wanted the redundancies. I moved completely over to hardware for a little while and then moved back again.” That’s right, to get around his fears of running a laptop, Harley carted around all his hardware synths and samplers. “It was a lot harder because you had to bounce everything over to the samplers and make instruments. It ended up taking too much time because if I wanted to tweak anything in my live set I had to re-bounce.” After frustrating himself for too long, he eventually moved back to the laptop and vowed to figure out a redundant system. In the end he ended up with a similar system to Jason Spanu’s — two laptops, two MOTU Ultralight interfaces and a Radial SW8 switcher. He also uses a MOTU MIDI Splitter fed by the outs of a MIDI XT to connect his MIDI instruments to both computers, but steers clear of any auto-mapping features. “The stuff that throws me off the most is when a parameter will be auto-mapped and you spend an hour trying to undo something that’s supposed to be intuitive. Everything is mapped from scratch, it leaves less margin for error.” Also like Spanu, Harley doesn’t clock anything from the laptop, relying instead on the MIDI event triggers to keep both sessions in sync. It was a bit of work for Harley to get his system together, but now he’s got a svelte, racked, flyable setup that was worth every penny. “It was expensive,” said Harley. “Because you have to double up on some stuff and your switcher but for me the peace of mind was worth it.”

No tangles here — Harley’s rig is controlled by a Livid Ohm controller, Akai MPK49 keyboard and MPD pad controller, and Edirol keyboard. His effects chain includes a Line6 DL4 delay, an Electro Harmonix Cathedral reverb, and a TC EMA_AT102_[Press}.pdf 1 10/06/14 11:40 AM Helicon Voicelive.

“My EMA In Ears sound awesome and have never let me down over the last 10 years” - Shannon Noll

Custom Moulded and Generic Fit In-Ear Monitors

Ear Monitors Australia® 38 Hall Road, South Warrandyte VIC 3134 T: 03 9844 2524 www.earmonitorsaustralia.com

EMA Supporting Australian Touring Artists AUSTRALIA WIDE & INTL SERVICE

AT 37

FLUME: THE MIDI FILES Lynden Gare has been Flume’s (Harley Streten) production manager ever since he took off a couple of years ago. Back then, Streten was touring the world, running Ableton Live out of his MacBook Pro through the measly 3.5mm minijack, into a DI. His sole backup was a spare cable in his Sportsgirl kit bag. Since then, the production has moved through sitting a spare laptop under his main one, to having a second laptop networked with the first with the same show file running. They’ve got it down to about a 10-second changeover time, before Flume is back into a fullyfeatured show. The reason the changeover isn’t instantaneous is sort of a redundancy issue in itself. With every piece of gear comes an extra point of failure, so a fully redundant system has to be replicated or triplicated. But Flume’s workbench isn’t off stage, it’s his trademark ‘Infinity Prism’, which isn’t really big enough to hold pigeon-pairs of every controller he uses to run his show. As well as the laptops and soundcards, he’s got two Novation Launchpads, a keyboard and an Akai APC40 running via USB, and a Roland SPD effects pad outputting MIDI to the soundcard. It’s a full deck. All the USB items are running into a server-grade USB KVM switch, which basically lets Gare switch all the USB inputs from one computer to the other. Once the big red button is hit, Gare does an encoder pickup on the APC40 because the backup computer doesn’t know where the faders are in relation to their range, so you have to manually move them through

AT 38

their range so Ableton can pick them up. It’s not ideal in the sense of two systems talking to each other, but because most pieces are running over USB, Gare would have to convert the signal to MIDI, then MIDI back to USB on the other end to keep every controller in sync. And that would be a lot of MIDI flying around. Streten doesn’t have to sync up with anyone else, so the team figured simple is best. It’s a choice related to the type of act Flume is. Flume is one guy, so it’s not about having him control absolutely everything at once in his session, he’s usually only playing or manipulating one instrument or effect at a time. The attention is on what he’s doing, not what he isn’t. “We didn’t want to try and replicate the full-featured show,” said Gare. “We just wanted a back up. The analogy I use is likeWHEN YOU’RE IN A MOTORBOAT AND THE MOTOR CUTS OUT, AT LEAST IF YOU’VE GOT A SAIL YOU CAN STILL GET TO YOUR DESTINATION.

That’s what we’ve gone with, rather than try to have a secondary motor that’s going to add time, risk and other points of failure.” The complete failsafe is returning back to Flume MkI — the 3.5mm jack into a DI already plumbed into front of house. To cover any gaps, Streten has strategically placed stretched-out transitions in his session that he can trigger at any time. At the end of the day, if he has a session on a working computer, people are still going to have a good time, and it buys the team enough time to get the main system up and running again.

There is a third audio laptop offstage, said Gare, “In case the roof opens up and 10 litres of water fall onto the stage and destroy both laptops.” Like Spanu, any failures are likely going to be caused by heat. Gare: “In the sun, the MacBook reduces the amount of processing available to try and restrict damage to the computer itself. So we had a couple of shows where CPU usage shot through the roof and we got pretty close to using the backup. But we ditched it at the last minute and put a little sunshade over it.” All in all, the show carries nine laser-cut, foam-lined Pelican cases with six MacBook Pros to run audio, video and the Infinity Prism. It all stems from the single session running on Streten’s main computer, with the others providing the processing grunt. Like everything else about the Flume show, the cases are a big upgrade from Streten’s ‘Sportsgirl backline’. Once, to get out to a show on an island off Corsica, THE TRANSPORT BOAT STOPPED 10 METRES SHY OF THE SHORE, FORCING THEM TO FLOAT THE WATERPROOF PELICAN CASES OUT TO THE BOAT. NEEDLESS TO SAY, THEY PAID FOR THEMSELVES RIGHT THEN.

While Gare has put a lot of effort into making sure the Flume show runs seamlessly, Ableton whiz Alex Alexander has now joined the team, and Gare reckons he’s been instrumental in ensuring the stability and security of the system, especially through the upgrade from Live 8 32-bit to Live 9 64-bit.

have four keyboards on stage all running internal Ableton soft synths in the one session, with lots of tracks playing as well. But they’re running it at 64-bit with 16GB of RAM, on solid state drives, using UA Apollo Quad interfaces with 16 outputs. The system is completely stable, but for some reason, one file is causing the whole session to “eat a dick in one spot that we can never fix no matter what we do.” Other than the odd voodoo moment, it’s mostly “buffer overruns or disk overload messages where I’m trying to pull too many things at once, or fighting for RAM allocation with drivers,” said Spanu. “That’s why I tend to stick with what works. I don’t know what a Focusrite Saffire will add into my equation until I’ve had a couple of weeks personal experience running the thing. “THE LAST TIME I DID A MASSIVE UPGRADE, I STAYED HOME FOR A WEEK AND JUST LEFT EVERYTHING RUNNING FOR 12 HOURS. I LOOPED THIS MASSIVE TWO-HOUR SHOW SIX TIMES WHILE ANOTHER MACHINE WAS RECORDING WHAT WAS HAPPENING. Once it passed that test, then

it was alright to go out.” AN APPLE A DAY

Spanu always has the artists buy the kit needed to run the show, rather than operating on a loan-hire system. It’s part of the redundancy package; he doesn’t want the whole show to go down even if he decides to call it quits. But before he buys anything, he picks through what they already own, because “a lot of these bands have a courtyard worth of crap you could put together,” said Spanu. “Once you’ve picked up random cases and other bits and pieces,

you budget it out and let them go to town. “I like to buy three of everything in case one goes down, so it’s a redundant system. I try to roll like an Apple store as well and bring a couple of all the connectors you need. I also try to keep my spare systems small enough to carry them on. I don’t mind shipping the big rig, but if the plane crashes and I get out, I’m grabbing that bag and we’ve still got a show. I’M THAT STEALTH DUDE WHO NINJAS AROUND AIRPORTS. I TAKE UP LIKE NINE BINS, AND PUT A 60-POUND BAG IN THE OVERHEAD — IF THAT FALLS OUT IT WILL KILL SOMEONE.

“Everyone else can just get a guitar and plug it in, or a keyboard and find some stupid sound and play it and you’ve got a show. But if the computer guy has lost his Mr. Wizard box, then you’re crying.” COOL IT

Spanu: “There’s been four times when I’ve had issues running Ableton and all four times were to do with one issue. I was on this big tour with Nelly and it was heat. Heat is a bitch. Computers do not like heat! “We played in a hot steamy Parisian club and towards the end of the show the computer just went to grey screen. It was the first time I’d hit the ‘Oh s**t!’ button in two years. “The next time was in New Jersey, again in a hot steamy club. I was like, “Yo Apple Store, fix my s**t, Nelly Furtado, let’s go right?’ And then the next time was in Denver. Same thing, hot sweaty club and by now someone else is like, ‘Dude, it’s the heat!’ “The last gig we had was in Las Vegas at 8pm,

which means soundcheck at four in the blistering sun. We got industrial-strength fans and I ducttaped them to my computer at both ends and turned them to stun. Towards the end, one of them died. By then it was like, I’m just gonna use laptops and keep it simple.” Why laptops? Not because they don’t get affected by heat, but because they’re mobile. You can move them to a cooler spot if you really need to. He’s seen people use computer gel packs to cool down their machines before, but Spanu puts beating the heat down to two things — circulation and decoupling. To get his computer off the deck, and keep air all around it, he wads up a few gaffer tape balls and sits his laptop on those. The tape balls also help minimise vibrations getting at your hard drive (less important these days with SSDs) and your audio interface connections. He was DJ’ING FOR HIP HOP ARTIST SOCRATES ONE DAY, AND WHEN THE FIRST BEAT DROPPED AT FULL VOLUME, THE COMPUTER CRASHED AND THE AUDIO INTERFACE GOT STUCK ON THE LAST NUMBER IT WAS MAKING… AT FULL VOLUME.

Thinking about redundancy amounts mostly to common sense, before getting on stage. Because when you’re up there, if anything goes wrong, the only thing you’ll be able to do is hit the ‘Oh s**t’ button and hope for the best. As Spanu puts it: “You’ve really got to plan for the worst and expect the best. Somewhere in the middle you’ll have a good show.”

Play your way

A CONTROLLER BURSTING WITH INSPIRATION

• 25 or 49 key controller for all major DAW /sequencer software • Velocity sensitive trigger pads, switches and sliders • Unique Touch pad for synth or computer control • MIDI, USB and other pedal connections • Comes with software synths including Korg M1Le, EZDrummer and more For more info visit: www.korg.com |

www.facebook.com/korgaus AT 39

REGULARS

PC Audio Buying a powerful new PC so you can sell off all your audio hardware and do everything in-the-box? Don’t be so sure! Column: Martin Walker

I recently volunteered to take a look at a good friend’s vintage Maestro Echoplex EP-3. This 40-year old delay effect (using a continuous loop tape cartridge and a sliding playback head to adjust the delay time) had returned from a mechanical repair working well, apart from very low echo replay volume. I’d never seen an Echoplex before, although I’d owned a Watkins Copicat myself in the dim and distant past and guessed it wouldn’t be too complex inside; thankfully, I was correct. I tracked down a service manual online, and sure enough the entire circuit contained just six transistors and one FET (for the high impedance guitar input), along with a handful of resistors, capacitors and diodes. A few minutes with a voltmeter showed the circuits still seemed to be working fine, so I gave it a good clean with special attention to the tape path, demagnetised its heads and other metalwork, and then followed the service manual recalibration advice: first adjusting the playback and record head azimuth (basically twisting each head very slightly with pliers to maximise the playback level of a high frequency sine wave tone); followed by adjusting the record head bias oscillator level preset to ensure maximum undistorted output (the amount of bias required can vary markedly between different tape formulations used in the continuous loop tape cartridge). Collectively this did the trick, and the echo volume was now sufficient to achieve feedback mayhem once the echo sustain knob was set above about halfway. My friend was overjoyed that I’d managed to ‘raise his machine from the dead’ because he claimed it once again produced sounds he’d yet to hear from software plug-ins. Now, this episode got me thinking on two levels (and here’s where we return to our usual topic of PC Audio). First, this Echoplex was a 40-year old device that I essentially managed to repair with a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and a little elbow grease. Contrast this with today’s PCs, which many of us routinely put out to pasture at the ripe old age of three or four years old. Ironically, many of these computers still work perfectly well with the software that was first installed on them, but seem sluggish with the latest software, simply because this expects a more powerful machine. But what a waste of hardware to simply scrap it! AT 40

Second, the imperfections of this somewhat crude tape-based delay did indeed result in warm, rich and full-bodied sounds with loads of ‘life’ — along with wow, flutter, and a little hum and hiss — while setting the echo sustain level close to feedback produced wonderful runaway effects that I couldn’t reproduce with a string of software plugins across a month of Sundays. So what practical PC advice can we glean from this somewhat circuitous tale? Well, quite a lot actually! The reason this Echoplex could still be resurrected was because no-one had attempted to upgrade it along the way with a succession of non-standard parts, whereas we tend to keep upgrading our PCs to go faster and faster until they fall over, and then completely replace them. Sometimes this makes perfect sense, but there’s often a hidden sting in the tail with this approach, and that’s compatibility of your new PC with your existing audio hardware toys. I’m thinking particularly of PCI soundcards (I still have three, though few of the latest PC motherboards have even a single PCI slot to plug them into), and Firewire audio interfaces (after a lot of popularity the Firewire port is fast disappearing from modern computers, and compatibility problems are on the increase even if you plug in a dedicated Firewire card to add a suitable port). I come across a lot of musicians complaining in forums that they bought a new PC only to find they can no longer get their much-loved audio interface to work — either because there isn’t a suitable slot/port for it, or because its manufacturer hasn’t written suitable Windows 7/8 drivers for it (or are no longer in business at all). And there are also quite a few older ‘legacy’ devices with plenty still to offer that can’t be plugged into the latest PCs. Examples include Yamaha’s popular SW1000XG soundcard (essentially an MU100R synth on a PCI card with additional audio recording/playback facilities and five 24-bit effect busses), the Yamaha DS2416 DSP Factory card (which provides hard disk recording facilities but also contains the inner functions of a Yamaha 02R digital mixer), and the Lexicon Studio (which uses exactly the same core processing engine as the famous PCM90 reverb, taken out of its original rack housing and

grafted on to a PCI soundcard). So, if you do have such devices, consider hanging on to your older PC so you can continue to run them, rather than declaring it obsolete. The second important advice after buying a new and stunningly powerful PC that finally enables you to create tracks totally In-The-Box, is don’t immediately dispose of your outboard effects, guitar pedals and the like. While many software plug-ins are now stunningly good, there’s still something to be said for the real-world magic of analogue hardware effects, which can add an indefinable ‘something’ to a mix. I’ve lost count of the number of musicians who have flogged their audio hardware and subsequently regretted it, spending months and sometimes even years tracking down their old favourites for repurchase on the second-hand market. This is particularly true of analogue synths, which just like guitars have a tangible charm that software emulations rarely match. Yes, you can automate the software variety and put multiple instances of them in your mixes, but they rarely feel exactly the same as playing ‘the real thing’. Now don’t get me wrong, PCs can do incredible things and nowadays, for so many different reasons, I could never make music without one. A few years ago I created an album entirely In-The-Box with my new PC, and was very pleased with it, but just like many others I’m now reincorporating external hardware into my music regime. The PC still gets used for all the very clever digital stuff — creating and replaying the many sounds it excels at, and giving me wonderful visual arrange pages that help me perfect my mixes — while acoustic and analogue electronic instruments and effects add a real-world patina to the proceedings and give the final sound an ‘edge’. All power to your PC, but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater!

hŶǀĞŝů ǇŽƵƌ ŵƵƐŝĐ ǁŝƚŚ WƌŝƐŵ ^ŽƵŶĚ ĐŽŶǀĞƌƚĞƌƐ Titan ŵƵůƟĐŚĂŶŶĞů h^ audio interface with a MDIO expansion slot for ŽƉƟŽŶĂů ĚŝŐŝƚĂů ŇĞǆŝďŝůŝƚǇ such as Pro Tools | HDX, AES and more.

10% OFF

For a 10% discount to readers by visiting our site and purchasing through our online CDA store

P522HO8ZEUE9 www.cda-proaudio.com

sales@cda-proaudio.com

Sydney, Australia

Perth, Australia

Auckland, New Zealand

Unit 5, 79 Bourke Road. ALEXANDRIA NSW 2015 T: + 61 2 9330 1750 F: + 61 2 8338 9001

Unit 4, 17 Welshpool Rd. ST JAMES WA 6102 T: + 61 8 9470 2211 F: + 61 8 9472 3617

5E, 14 Waikumete Road Glen Eden 0602 T: 0800 443 346 F: + 64 09 813 0874 AT 41

PREVIEW

SMART, DUMB OR JUST PURE SSL? SSL’s new XL analogue console has all the trappings of a real SSL.

NEED TO KNOW

Preview: Mark Davie

PRICE Pricing on the unloaded XL desk is $24,999, but SSL has some options with 16 pre-loaded SSL EQs too.

AT 42

CONTACT Amber Technology: 1800 251 367 or sales@ambertech.com.au

SSL has dubbed its new XL desk the ‘smart, dumb’ console; which is a ‘clever, stupid’ way of putting it. On the one hand, SSL is right, it’s a particularly well-thought out smallish analogue console. The sort of console where you ask a question of it and it’s ready to spit the answer out at you on a DB25. But it’s ‘dumb’ because it’s analogue, so they say. The only digital provision on it is a ‘dumb’ piece of plastic serving as an iPad mount. It’s a positioning issue for SSL, wanting to kill those ‘but will it interface with?’ questions before they hit the forums. What I feel SSL missed by doing that is exactly what makes this console smart in the first place — it’s the mini-SSL you’ve never been able to get your hands on. Let me explain: SSL’s reputation began and skyrocketed with the 4000 series console. Big, clean mixes; an EQ that was undeniably musical; super flexible routing; and a bus compressor that became an instant classic.

But it was as big and expensive as it sounded — strictly the preserve of big studios. SSL continued this trend with more extravagant installations of its 9000 series consoles, before breaking down its consoles into modules and letting smaller studios get their hands on the SSL sound one channel at a time. But it was still nothing like the big desks. Since then, there’s been the digital broadcast desks, the small-format DAW controller/ summing mixers, and a re-shaping at the top end with the Duality. But the closest you could get to an analogue SSL console at the lowest end was the AWS 924, and that’s still a large outlay for a smaller studio. Throughout this time, while Neve had a lock on broad buzzwords like transformer saturated harmonic colour, SSL’s signature sound was being defined by the elevation of certain gear, happy accidents, and some good friends’ techniques. And this small, relatively affordable XL desk pays tribute to them all. COMPRESSED HISTORY

The SSL bus compressor is probably the most copied in history — both in hardware and software. It’s the glue of the SSL sound, and it comes pre-patched into the master bus of the XL. This is the 500 series form factor version, which SSL has souped up to coincide with the XL release, adding a sidechain hi-pass filter to the unit. Underpinning the sound of any SSL console is its punch and clarity. Basically, super clean and plenty of transient detail. SSL has dubbed the circuitry behind that pursuit Super Analogue, and all SSL desks meet this fundamental criteria, including the XL. The SSL EQ is also world renowned, it was a huge part of what made the 4000 console so attractive. Along the top of the XL desk are 18 x 500 series slots. A pair come pre-loaded with the bus compressor, leaving one slot for each of the 16 channels. Here, for a premium, you can opt to get the slots filled with SSL 500 series EQs, choosing between the brown or black variants of the E series EQ. One of the more famous proponents of SSL consoles is mixer Michael Brauer. He developed his Brauerizing technique based around the multiple buses on his SSL. These days he uses four buses on a 9000 console, each set up with different compressors, so he can send different instruments to different buses and mix into the compression. It all folds back into the master bus of course. The XL does all the legwork for you with its A, B, C, D bus structure. You can assign any channel to whichever bus you like, and with the flick of a button each bus can borrow a pair of 500 series slots from channels 9 to 16. An instant miniBrauerizing machine. The last little bit of history is the listen mic compressor. One of the most famous happy accidents in audio history saw Phil Collins playing drums while his producer and engineer struggled to get it sounding how they wanted. They took a break and the assistant flicked on the listen mic, with its high ratio, low threshold compressor smashing the drums. The producer came back in, couldn’t believe how good it sounded and had the compressor custom patched into the desk for good. The guy who did the patch, Chris Jenkins, is still with SSL and so is the listen mic compressor. It’s now patched into the desk just like Phil Collins’ setup, so you can access it any time on one of the miscellaneous I/O.

BOOST YOUR IMAGE Introducing the 3 Series Powered Studio Monitors, the first to incorporate JBL's groundbreaking Image Control Waveguide. Matched with high-performance JBL transducers, the patent-pending Image Control Waveguide lets you hear detail and depth like you've never heard before. The micro-dynamics in reverb tails, and the subtleties of mic placement are clearly revealed. A realistic soundstage creates the tangible sense that there is a centre channel speaker. 3 Series’ broad, room-friendly sweet spot means everyone in the room hears the same level of dimension and transparency. And the sound stage is so realistic it creates a tangible sense of a center channel. A broad, room-friendly sweet spot means everyone in the room hears the same level of dimension and transparency in your music. Adopting technology developed for our flagship M2 Master Reference Monitors, the 3 Series are surprisingly affordable, so you can hook up a pair and boost the image in your studio. Learn more at www.jands.com.au/jbl3series

Distributed by

www.jands.com.au

AT 43

All the hallmarks of SSL’s sound are in this 24-channel (16 mono/four stereo) analogue console. But how about all those smart features? Here are a few: SSL has tested over 35 500 series units for compatibility with its slots. In the XL desk there are two power supplies, one for the console and a separate one to supply the 18 500 series slots, with it easily meeting the standard API specs. When you use a doublewide mono unit that takes up two slots, you don’t lose the insert for the unused channel — it’s still accessible on the rear.

Summing is the other big drawcard of the XL, and SSL has managed to squeeze 40 channels of summing into the unit, with the possibility to find over 50 in a pinch. Each of the 16 main fader channels has a cue send for tracking that can double as an alternate input for summing. When you add stereo returns and insert sum functions, that’s how you pass the half century. The rear panel is flush with DB25 connectors that pretty much let you route anything anywhere. Each channel has two inserts, access to the 500 series I/O, and can be switched between mic/line and DAW input. There are also 36 direct outputs for printing stems if you’re mixing and think some recall might be in order. Pretty smart for a dumb console.

AT 44

The first eight channels have SSL’s incredibly diverse Variable Harmonic Drive preamps. With VHD, you can lean towards warm, tubey second order or edgy transistor-style third order harmonic distortion, or you can blend a mix of the two. The preamps have a whopping 75dB of gain, and with the -∞ to +10dB trim control you can drive the VHD circuit as much or as little as you like for creative tone shaping. You can also pad down the input to run line level back into the preamps for some drive at mixdown. The VHD preamps have all the other trappings too — two input impedance settings, phase flip, and phantom power. There are no hipass filters — more incentive to get those SSL EQs racked.

There are three monitor outputs with an intelligent sub output. What does that mean? Well, even though there’s only one sub button, the XL desk remembers your setting for each monitor output and engages or disengages the crossover and sub.

You can even sum the send of each bus with its main signal, allowing you to parallel compress each bus if you desire.

All the professional monitoring smarts are included too, making this a formidable centrepiece to any studio: Source select, front panel mini-jack for comparing with a track on your phone, two built-in foldback circuits, talkback, headphone outputs, listen mic, dim control and switch, cut switch, mono switch, and solo safe for soloing tracks during mixdown without ruining the print.

AT 45

REVIEW

NI KOMPLETE KONTROL S49 CONTROLLER & KOMPLETE 10 While Kontrol’s berserk LED Light Guide and ribbon controllers might seem gimmicky, there’s method to the madness behind NI’s first keyboard controller.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Brad Watts

PRICE (Expect to pay) Kontrol S25: $699 Kontrol S49: $849 Kontrol S61: $999 Komplete 10: $699 Komplete Ultimate: $1399

AT 46

CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

PROS Great Fatar keybed. Light Guide is not just cool, but useful. Ribbon controller modulation a step forward. Fast & friendly composition. Huge array of sounds, synthesis, real instruments & effects in the one package.

CONS Not inexpensive. Bound to appear on dozens of EDM film clips.

SUMMARY NI has a knack for delivering full-service, immersive products. Charged with controlling the expansive eco-system of Komplete, Kontrol’s Light Guide and ribbon controllers provide creative ways to navigate the ever-growing collection of software instruments and effects.

I honestly thought I’d seen everything there was to see in the world of controller keyboards, but Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol controllers have relieved me of that claim. With the various sized Kontrol S-Series keyboards, NI has gone utterly berserk with LED lighting — this thing lights up like the Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year’s Eve. The Komplete Kontrol keyboards sport this crazy feature called ‘Light Guide’. Every key on the keyboard has a multiple colour LED situated at the rear of each key. Upon boot-up this array of lights goes through a Las Vegas display, pulsating every colour the system allows, blue, red, green, purple, yellow, orange etc, before settling into a subtle blueish hue. Absolutely fantastic look, and perfectly suited to a dimly lit studio atmosphere. If sci-fi aesthetics are your thing the Komplete Kontrol keyboards are the only keyboard worth owning. Much sensation indeed! However there’s more to ‘Light Guide’ than whiz-bang lighting effects, and I’ll expand on those features a bit later, in the meantime, let’s look at the more traditional features of the Komplete Kontrol series. KOMPLETE KONTROL INDEED

out supplying keyboards to electronic organ manufacturers. It’s the pinnacle of keybeds — with a duty cycle of three million key presses per key. The semi-weighted keybed is quite firm to the press, with a solid stop at the bottom end of the key’s travel. It also transmits channel pressure. It’s a great feeling keybed, and one that will probably outlast the electronics surrounding it. Centrally located on the upper panel are eight continuously variable pots which can be freely assigned within the Komplete 10 software instruments to activate or adjust all manner of parameters. Below each variable pot is a display to represent what each pot is assigned to, and a level display. These displays seem to be of the OLED variety, and are invisible until turned on. When switched off (or unassigned) they disappear beneath the black translucent panel. What’s even cooler is the pots are sensitive to capacitance, so the slightest touch of a knob immediately alters the display to reflect the numeric or text status of the assigned parameter. To the immediate left of the rotary controllers are two buttons to scroll through additional sets of assigned parameters, so you’re not limited to eight parameter controllers per patch. NI refers to this controller mapping system as ‘Native Map’, and there are thousands of patches across the Komplete range of instruments which have been mapped to suit the Kontrol keyboard. Off to the left again are transport buttons, backlit of course. These link with whichever DAW platform you’re using, with support for Ableton Live 9.1.4, Cubase 7.5.1, Nuendo 6.0.7, and Logic X 10.0.7. Ableton requires some tweaking for complete integration, but NI provides explicit instructions for the setup on its website – I’m sure Ableton users are easily up to the task of installing a few extra files here and there. I ran the unit alongside Logic X and the integration was utterly seamless, and extremely responsive. Speaking of responsiveness, below the octave +/- buttons are two vertically-oriented ribbon controllers. These replace the more traditional pitchbend and modulation wheels. My initial scepticism was that it was a cost cutting measure, but in use I found these to be very acceptable. Both ribbons have OLED indicators flanking their sides, and these represent where the ‘virtual controller wheel’ is set. In the case of the pitchbend controller, the lights remain at middle position until the ribbon is touched, with zero ‘null-point’ anomalies as you’d normally experience with a mechanical pitchbend wheel or stick. The modulation controller has some extra tricks up its sleeve. From within software (i.e. any Komplete instrument’s preferences), the modulation controller ribbon can be set to ‘ball’ mode. In this setting, the virtual mod wheel

Beyond the initial frivolity and sci-fi chic aesthetic, there are a number of benefits to NI’s Light Guide other than it looking ace in the dark.

The Komplete Kontrol keyboards come in three typical keybed sizes: 25, 49, or 61 key models, dubbed S25, S49, and S61 respectively. For review purposes I received the 49-key, S-49 model. In terms of sound generation, the S-series are strictly controller keyboards, and are designed to helm the Komplete suite of virtual instruments and sample players. Included in the review setup was a Komplete 10 software package which, in itself, is a formidable sonic arsenal, but again, more on that later. The S49 presents as quite an attractive piece of hardware — it’s a very impressive effort when you consider this is Native Instruments’ first crack at a keyboard, but then remember, NI has put some pretty sturdy runs on the board with Traktor and Maschine. With the overall finish a glossy mirror black it looks every bit the modern studio accoutrement (and all those pretty lights… ooh la la!). Bear in mind the keyboard requires power — no USB power-only option — no doubt due to the plethora of LEDs. The unit includes sustain and expression pedal inputs, and sports real MIDI DINplugs for MIDI in and out. These are, however, only accessible when the keyboard is connected to a computer via USB and you instigate the Controller Editor software. So remain aware that this keyboard only functions with a computer attached. The actual keybed is manufactured by Fatar, long-time manufacturers of primo electronic keybeds. The Italian company has been in the business since the mid 1950s, having started

will ‘bounce’ back and forth — ping-ponging between zero and full modulation. The speed at which this change occurs depends on what speed you run your finger along the ribbon controller. Additional ‘gravity’ and ‘friction’ control levels let you adjust the ballistics of this behaviour, and defeating the ‘Walls’ setting renders the modulation to scroll from zero through to full in a continual cycle. It’s a whole new slant on the modulation wheel and will invariably reveal new and exciting performance methods. My only quandary is not being able to alter this setting on a per-patch basis — it’s a global parameter that applies only to the hardware unfortunately. Moving on to a bit of note-modulation, the Kontrol keyboards feature a very nice arpeggiator function with control over rhythm divisions including dotted and triplet timing, swing, dynamics and gating, direction and so forth. And while I found it an excellent, traditional-style arpeggiator, I couldn’t find a way to record the arpeggiated notes within Logic. After wading through the 244-page manual I concluded it to be impossible. This really annoyed me as it seemed to render the arpeggiator useless in a DAW scenario, which is where this system unequivocally resides. Then, assuming the function was missing, I changed tracks in my DAW, instanced another Komplete Kontrol instrument, and the arpeggiator on the previous instrument kept going! How do they do that?! I stand here undeniably impressed. BROWSE KOMPLETELY

The major integration factor with the Komplete Kontrol keyboards and the Komplete software suite is an additional layer of software between the controller and the software. Komplete Kontrol is a separate application which presents the entire Komplete sound library and range of instrument plug-ins. You can either use the standalone version of Komplete Kontrol, or instigate the VST or AU plug-in within your DAW. Once either of these are running, a quick prod of the ‘Browse’ button on the controller brings up a browsing window. This floats entirely above your DAW windows and sets out a hierarchy of patch choices, beginning with your choice of plug-in instrument, then differing library styles. This is then broken down into categories such as bass, strings, horns etc (in the case of a synth-style plug-in), and then on to the actual presets. Unlike other similarly integrated systems, you must choose your instrument plug-in first, rather than selecting from a list of patches and the software instigating the relevant plug-in. This may seem restrictive to those who may not have a handle on what each of the 26 plug-ins actually do, but a little play-time with each will get you in the picture pretty quickly. Once the Komplete Kontrol window is open, all navigation is via the keyboard controller — there’s no functionality available via mouse-click. That said, scrolling through plug-in instruments, categories and patches using the keyboard controller’s browse button and notched data entry knob is super intuitive. You simply scroll through the options using the knob, then press the knob down to instance the patch. There are also N, S, E, AT 47

West navigation buttons and preset up and down buttons if you want to just march through the available presets. Incidentally, when the Komplete Kontrol browser window is closed, those N, S, E, West buttons also provide navigation within your DAW. Nice! LIGHTS, ACTION!

Now, about these lights. As mentioned, NI’s coup de grâce with these S-series controllers is ‘Light Guide’. Light Guide encompasses multicolour LEDs for each keyboard key. I initially considered this to be a gimmick, with throwbacks to the days of the Thomas Organ Company’s ‘Color-Glo’ organ training system (Google that one — the keys lit up with the note names on them — it was pretty lame). Beyond the initial frivolity and sci-fi chic aesthetic, there are a number of benefits to NI’s Light Guide other than it looking ace in the dark. For starters, the LEDs show a different colour depending on the plug-in creating the sound: blue for most of the synths such as Absynth, Massive, and the Retro Machines instruments, and green or various shades of purple for others. Not a game changer, but a nice touch. What’s more interesting is in the case of using mapped instruments such as drumkits — instruments such as Battery, Kontakt, and the drumkit specific instruments such as Abbey Road ’60s Drummer. Pull up one of these style instruments and the Light Guide LEDs map out your keymaps according to colour. Kicks will be red, snares orange, hi-hats are sky-blue, cymbals are green, and so forth. This is extremely useful. The visual sensory cue as to where your sounds are placed really does make a difference, especially in a heat-of-the-moment recording, or indeed moreso, on a dimly lit stage. Yet another Light Guide system application is relevant to the controller’s ‘Scale’ feature. Hitting the ‘Scale’ button on the controller instigates a mode whereby the keyboard’s LEDs highlight the notes across the keyboard applicable to your selected scale. To remain in your chosen key all you need to do is follow the lights. This can be further idiot-proofed by a function where notes not used within your chosen scale are defeated — they’ll no longer produce a sound. Absolutely brilliant if you’re one to ‘stick to the black keys’ and attempt to compose every single composition in Gb major. Those scales can also be set for various modes such as blues, major and minor pentatonic, diminished, etc, 14 types in all. While in Scale mode, you can also set the controller to play chords from a single key, and choose the style of chord and inversion. Like the arpeggiator, these chords are stored with your instrument choice as you skip to the next track in your DAW.

players, Absynth, Massive, FM8, and Reaktor. These instruments are available as ‘normal’ instrument plug-ins – they appear in your plug-in list. The remaining 20 instruments are only available via the Komplete Kontrol browser plug-in. That said, many of the newer instruments I found to be excellent sources of inspiration. Here’s a few of my favourites: Abbey Road ’60s drummer: Offering a Ludwig-looking kit on a nice parquetry floor. This kit provides four variations of the drumkit, with infinitesimal adjustment of room and overhead microphone levels, kick beater type, velocity curves, along with a bunch of grooves which can be altered according to groove, speed, tightness, etc. The mixer for the kit even incorporates an SSL G-series channel strip for each drum which includes transient augmentation, compression, EQ and tape emulation. Drumlab: A drum workshop with all the bits you need to create nasty loop-style grooves. This includes mapping for various electronic kits so I instantly fell in love with triggering this from my Roland kit. Monark: Looks like a Minimoog. Sounds like one too!

Polyplex: Utterly brilliant. Polyplex maps eight complex hit sounds wherever you like across the keyboard. Those sounds you hear at the opening of a cinema release promo, an advertising agency showreel, or littered throughout forensic cop shows, sci-fi movies and foreboding psychological thrillers. This is where you get them. And if the presets aren’t quite what you’re after, each of the eight sound slots has a variable randomisation feature to quickly spit out another option. If soundtracks are your game you must own this. Definitely one of my faves. Prism: Physical modelling out the proverbial, with the simplest opening interface ever. Open the additional views for access to six-point envelope generators for modulation and the exciter/filter. Pads, pads, and even more pads.

THE SOFT BITS

It’d be remiss of me not to mention some details regarding the Komplete software instrument package. As mentioned, the review system came with a copy of Komplete 10, but the S-series controllers will also work with Komplete 9. Dyedin-the-wool NI advocates would be aware of the star players such as the Battery and Kontakt sample AT 48

Kontour: More physical modelling based on phase modulation, only this instrument has a knob for ‘drama’.

Retro Machines Mk2: Juicy Roland-style analogue synthesis. Includes a very programmable arpeggiator. You know what to do.

Rounds: A combination of subtractive analogue and frequency modulation synthesis with some insane modulation possibilities. Another must-have for the soundtrack people. Spark: Fizzy filters and ring modulation. Driven by Reaktor. Then there are a number of real-world-style instruments such as Session Strings, Session Horns, Studio Drummer, Scarbee Vintage Keys, Vintage Organs, along with a number of real piano instruments. It’s possibly the most comprehensive instrument suite available. I’ll also mention the excellent processing plug-ins included in Komplete 10. These are supplied courtesy of Softube and include SSL-style bus compression, dynamics, and EQ switchable between G and E-series EQ designs. There’s also NI’s Supercharger for stonking compression duties and Guitar Rig 5 for amplifier/ cabinet/pedal emulation. There’s a lot to this package. As far as the instrumentation and effects go this could be the only ‘outboard’ software you’ll ever need. Combine this with your favoured DAW and an S-series controller and you’ll be sitting pretty for years to come. Compatibility extends to OS X 10.8 and 10.9 on Intel Core 2 Duo machines, and Windows 7 or 8 on an Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD AthlonTM 64 X2. Be prepared to install 13 DVDs of material. I remain suitably impressed with the S49 controller. Not only is the keybed a fantastic player, the cutting edge features like the arpeggiator and scale rendering, along with those excellent Light Guide LEDs really sets this keyboard apart from the pack. For fast, vast and varied composition I’d honestly look no further.

New Generation Monitors. Same Amazing Price.

• Lightweight, glass aramid composite woofer delivers clear midrange and tight bass • Bi-amped, class A/B amplifier offering maximum headroom with minimal distortion • Soft-dome tweeter provides clarity and extended response up to 35kHz • Proprietary waveguide technology optimised for superior stereo imaging

NOW AVAILABLE

gibsonami.comAT 49

REVIEW

RME FIREFACE 802 AUDIO INTERFACE With this shiny new update to a modern classic RME has taken a few steps back to move forward. Review: Andrew Bencina

While hardware updates are commonplace for some audio manufacturers, RME has traditionally elected to keep moving forward, maintaining a fully-supported line of legacy devices for every possible requirement. While there’s no question it’s worked, it has produced a catalogue capable of confounding prospective customers with small feature variations and sometimes elusive component and design iterations. With the Fireface 802, RME is not trying to reinvent the wheel; just improve it a little. NO SOUND IS GOOD SOUND

NEED TO KNOW

RME’s official company line is that its products aim to have no sound; capturing sources with a neutral accuracy that maintains integrity

PRICE $2799 CONTACT Innovative Music: 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au

AT 50

rather than imparting flavour. While it’s clear from all the public product statements that the Fireface 802 incorporates significant technical improvements over the preceding Fireface 800, and therefore sounds better (and it does!), any RME forum discussion regarding differences between current models, like the UFX, UCX, Babyface or 802, will be met swiftly with official comment discouraging circuit design chit or chipset chat and promoting a pragmatic and sensible focus on feature set and application. To this end the Fireface 802 is simply best understood as the new Fireface 800, with an extra headphone output, AES/EBU I/O, USB 2.0 interface and Firewire 400 rather than 800; although a 1394b connector is still provided for convenience. Even this curious change,

PROS Industry leading low-latency, stability & driver support. Improved looks & sound bring a classic into the now. TotalMix FX endures as a benchmark monitor mix controller & channel distributor. Class-compliant USB 2.0 support maintains iPad compatibility.

CONS Limited front panel controls. No Android App or OSC implementation in official iOS App. No DSP mixing & routing between multiple units. Shipped without Firewire cables & only one Toslink optical cable.

considering the name, is explained away as the removal of an interface no longer required for performance, due to the capabilities of the USB option, and inefficient from a cost standpoint. Four combo instrument/preamp channels owe their design heritage to the OctaMic II while the latest low latency A/D D/A converters operate at sample rates up to 192k, achieving 118dBA dynamic range on playback and 116dBA signal-to-noise ratio on the way in. The rest is as you’d expect from a Fireface. Dual ADAT I/O; supporting S/MUX2, S/MUX4 and SPDIF; word clock I/O; MIDI I/O; SteadyClock; stand-alone operation; and support for RME’s Advanced Remote Control (ARC). The most notable difference comes on the outside with the slick new aluminium face

SUMMARY With the Fireface 802, RME has updated its most successful interface after a decade of valuable service. While its strictly-stated sound policy avows neutrality, the 802 compares favourably with alternatives identifying with vintage design and analog warmth. Unparalleled driver stability and TotalMix FX DSP make the 802 a powerful and reliable hub for any studio or audio installation. The Fireface 800 looked forward and remains a viable studio solution even now. Only time will tell if this remake enjoys the same longevity.

With the Fireface 800 series hardware update, RME also replaced the original Fireface mixer with the newer Totalmix FX control software. And with RME’s Totalmix FX-4-All update program, now all RME devices can access the new software.

and chassis. The trademark RME blue remains, although more sparingly applied, while simple black pots cap off the restrained elegance of the redesign — and feel great too. All of the TRS jacks and pots are board mounted which irks me every time, but I’ve been using RME for years and never had a problem. I noted one forum post bemoaning the less than perfect alignment of the knob indicator lines and this was indeed the case with one channel in particular on the test unit. INTERFACE VALUE

Much of the flexibility of current generation Firefaces comes from the TotalMix FX DSP mixer/ matrix. I’ve covered TotalMix FX in some detail previously, on the release of the Babyface (Issue 78) and Fireface UFX (Issue 80), so I’ll try not to dwell too long here in description. TotalMix allows for the creation of as many different mixes of input sources and software outputs as you have available hardware outputs. In the case of the Fireface 802 this would be a maximum of 15 possible stereo cue mixes at 48k sample rate (with all digital outputs assigned). This is complemented by a patching matrix supporting signal splitting, bussing and configuration as an ADAT converter, and a detailed master section with tailored features like talkback, dim, mono, preset level recall, external input monitor, A/B speaker switching, mute/solo/fader groups, and mixer layouts and snapshots. TotalMix even makes it possible to loopback one output of your DAW into another input, or to interconnect different audio applications. Without too much trouble I was able to patch a recorded audio track from Sonar X3 out through TotalMix into AudioMulch for some granular processing, and then back into Sonar without the need for ReWire support or any third-party tools or cabling.

Up until a few weeks ago the inclusion of TotalMix FX with the 802 would have been a source of great envy for current Fireface 800 users, who were constrained to using the Hammerfall/Fireface mixer. But thanks to RME’s TotalMix FX-4-All update, all devices released after 2001 now employ the current user interface and many of the new features. You’ll still need the DSP power available in the UFX and 802 to enjoy per-channel threeband parametric EQ, HPF, Compressor/Expander and Auto Level, along with an auxiliary Reverb/ Echo channel. In tests the 802 managed 36 mono channels of activated EQ, HPF and compression when running at 48k, while this processing capacity was reduced by approximately 50% each time the sample rate was doubled. For those recording regularly at 96k, TotalMix should have enough DSP power to handle most applications but it might have been nice to include a little more processing headroom as future-proofing. Effects can be recorded via a global switch in the driver dialog but they’re included primarily for the creation of monitor mixes and serve this purpose well. Using TotalMix to monitor live inputs also ensures the lowest possible monitoring latency, regardless of changes to the buffer size (0.69ms@48k, 0.32ms@96k). It’s worth noting that THIS IS THE BEST PERFORMANCE I’VE YET RECORDED AND AS CLOSE TO ZERO LATENCY MONITORING AS YOU COULD HOPE FOR.

To harness this mix potential, TotalMix supports both MIDI and OSC for external control, while iPad owners can use the TotalMix FX App. Curiously RME is still to implement OSC support within this app and I would consider both this and a full port to Android as a valuable development moving forward. As it happens I had no problem configuring the Android app OSC Commander for the task, thanks to its included TotalMix profile.

With TotalMix supporting up to four external OSC devices you could easily opt for a cheap Android tablet solution to your headphone mixing needs and forget that Aviom system altogether. With the Fireface 802 lacking front panel controls for TotalMix these mobile solutions become even more valuable. RME’s ARC can provide rapid access to a large number of important controls via its large master jog wheel and programmable function buttons but the $299 price tag and 5m cable may be a significant turn-off for some in comparison with a mobile wireless device they already own. THE DRIVING FORCE

The increased prevalence of ‘zero-latency’ monitoring options has served as a valuable form of misdirection for interface manufacturers. With many achieving round trip latencies in the vicinity of 2ms (at 48k) the imperative to really stress systems with lower buffer settings has been minimised. However, anyone playing live or relying on software instruments will still need to pay close attention to real world latency stats. In these situations, stable operation with low buffers remains a priority. This has always been a strength of RME devices and the Fireface 802 is able to capitalise on over a decade of development in this area. Numbers will vary here, based on your OS and choice of either Firewire or USB. See the table (over page) extract for a sample of some measured round trip latency values. The improvement in results from the original is clear with the 802’s USB implementation significantly reducing latency in comparison to its predecessor on OSX. In my opinion, anything below 8ms is a desirable result although in certain circumstances people will tolerate a monitoring delay of up to 12ms. While latency figures can help AT 51

iPad owners can tap into the RME-built Totalmix FX app to control the software from their tablet. Andriod users aren’t completely left out in the dark though. Totalmix FX profiles come with OSC Commander’s Android app. A great option for controlling Totalmix FX away from your desktop.

RME FF802 USB (WIN)

RME FF802 USB (OSX)

RME HDSP 9652 PCI/ ADI8 DS ADAT (WIN)

RME HDSP 9652 PCI/ FF802 ADAT (WIN)

MOTU Ultralite Mk 3 USB (WIN)

RME FF802 FW800 (WIN)

RME FF802 FW800 (OSX)

RME FF800 FW800 (OSX)

UA Apollo FW800 (WIN)

48kHz, 64 buffers (ms)

4.08

4.5

5.29

4.35

7.29

4.63

5.27

6.25

7.02

48kHz, 128 buffers (ms)

6.75

7.17

7.96

7.02

11.21

7.29

7.96

8.92

9.69

96kHz, 128 buffers (ms)

3.79

4.2

4.85

3.84

6.75

4.3

4.97

5.47

5.95

96kHz, 256 buffers (ms)

6.46

6.86

7.52

6.51

10.5

6.97

7.64

8.14

8.61

in assessing the quality of an interface they need to be evaluated in concert with audio stability at the same settings. As processing loads increase so does the risk of dropouts and glitches. This risk becomes even greater at the lowest buffer settings with performance steeply falling away (between 32-96 samples depending on the device and sample rate). Not only did the Fireface 802 perform well in a range of stability tests — consistently second only to my RME PCI interface — but its low latency values meant that often buffers could be increased without significantly compromising the monitoring experience. Best performance was achieved on both Windows and OSX using a USB 2.0 connection. While the 802 features only a Firewire 400 implementation I still found the compatibility of mainboard chipsets had a significant bearing on performance. On Windows, a Texas Instrumentsequipped Firewire 800 PCI card delivered AT 52

performance consistently matching and sometime beating the USB 2.0 ,while an Apple Thunderboltto-Firewire adapter provided solid performance only just off the USB pace. By contrast, the onboard Windows FW 400 connection was less stable while an early generation onboard NEC USB 3.0 controller performed well at most buffer settings but fell away more steeply at the lowest. RELIABLE PATH

When you combine rock-solid driver performance with unique features like driver-based varispeed controls — great for pitching tracks to wonky old instruments — and the type of ongoing company support that continues to deliver significant driver and software updates more than 12 years after some customers have spent their last dollar, you’ve got a product you can feel comfortable investing that little bit more in.

I’ve recently been testing a number of audio interfaces in the hope of developing a clearer picture of performance across a range of installations and applications. As part of these experiments, blind comparisons were made between the ADC, DAC and preamp/DI channels of the Fireface 802 and the UA Apollo using a series of split recordings and listening tests. A number of participants were involved in a few different studio spaces. Differences were noted fairly consistently between listeners, however, in all cases, even when a preference was expressed, the sonic variations were deemed insufficient to conclusively determine a product choice without further evaluation of feature set and driver performance. While Apollo has the run on tracking with ‘vintage’ effects, the RME-way continues to be a very reliable path to take.

AT 53

REVIEW

PROPELLERHEAD REASON 8 The Reason Rack Extension ecosphere has exploded, and now the GUI can keep up.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Christopher Holder

PRICE $399 (serial) $449 (boxed) CONTACT Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or sales@elfa.com.au

AT 54

PROS Improved workflow. Easier auditioning of sounds. New amps from Softube.

CONS Light on the flashy inducements to upgrade.

SUMMARY The v8 enhancements, in and of themselves, wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be the reason why fence sitters jump on the Reason horse, but the workflow improvements are significant. Old hands will gobble up the improved functionality wondering how they ever lived without them.

JUST BROWSING The new Browser makes more sense of all your sounds, FX, hits, Combinator patches, loops and more. The source of the sound becomes less important than the sound itself. Audition the sound in the Browser and drag it over into the Mixer, Rack or Sequencer windows.

When non-studio people inevitably ask me ‘how long did it take’ to produce a track, I answer them somewhat cryptically: “I get it 80% done in four hours, about 95% there in four days, and 99% complete in four weeks” (as we all know, a track is never entirely finished, only abandoned). Naturally, they look at me blankly. What I’m talking about is workflow. It doesn’t take long to figure out if you’re onto something: drums, bass, a lead line… if things click, you bash away frantically until you’ve got all the constituent dramatis personae stacked and racked, and maybe already loosely arranged. Four hours… ish. From there you’re sufficiently in love with the track to spend a day on the build up, a couple of hours on the drum fills, and another couple exploring some more interesting chord inversions on your pad sound. Four days… ish. By this stage you could pat your track on the bum and release it into the world. But you’ve got pride and (deadlines notwithstanding) you keep your track in the background, return to it periodically, give it a polish, fine tune the compression and EQ, and some of the internal mastering plugs. I’m not saying you work on it solidly for four weeks but it stays in your orbit that long.

sample library yet, so I’m guessing a few of you may have already drifted off. “If this bloke says ‘workflow’ one more time, someone please put me into an induced coma.” So it’s with a certain amount of bravery that Propellerhead reveals version 8 of its flagship Reason DAW, leading with workflow improvements and not an ‘Odin’ synth or ‘Valhalla’ sample library. And I’ll admit I’m one of those who met the news with shoulders involuntarily slumped. One thing’s for sure I didn’t set my alarm early to be the first to download the update. But I have, and I’m glad I did. The short review of Reason 8 is that it makes those first four hours of track building I was talking about far more productive. There is far more of that easy ‘throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks’ required to more quickly pull something together I’m excited by. Arguably, the improvements don’t do a heck of a lot for the following ‘four days’ or ‘four weeks’ but Reason 8 encourages me to jump into a supercreative mindset more readily. EXTENSION TENSION

If you’re a Reason user you’ll almost certainly have already looked at Propellerhead’s promo material. You know that Reason’s new centre of gravity is

the Browser. The Browser stays with you regardless of which of the three (Mixer, Rack, Sequencer) windows you’re in — like a guiding pole star over Scandinavian skies. And rather than right-clicking to instantiate a synth or plug, you simply drag it over. It’s amazing how quickly you get used to this new MO, and in practice it works very smoothly. For example, one bugbear for me has always been swapping synths out. If you’re happy with a bassline, for example, but you’d like to hear Maelstrom play it rather than Thor… well that’s traditionally been a pain in the butt. You have to copy/paste the part, you can’t simply/easily audition that part with another synth. Now you can. Let’s not forget, only a few short years ago Reason had a couple of synths and a dozen or so effects and utilities. Now you might have 10 or more synths at your disposal along with dozens of effects, thanks to the Rack Extension universe exploding in the way that it has. In other words, Propellerhead needed to respond, by allowing users to better mediate that enormous palette with improved workflow. You’ll be glad it did.

LETTING IT FLOW

Again, what I’m talking about here is workflow. In those frantic first few hours you don’t want any obstacles in your way. Something sounds good? Get it down. Don’t overthink it. You really need your DAW to keep up. And here’s a big reason why Ableton’s Live has won so many friends. When people saw they could simply drag loops into the Arrange page and not worry about tempo or key… it really was like throwing paint at the wall — very different to the dominant tape-operator or pianoroll approach of the time. Okay, I’m about 300 words into this review and I’ve not mentioned a new synth engine, or a 300GB

SOFTUBE GOODNESS I’ve mentioned that there isn’t the usual tasty array of headlining upgrade inducements in Reason 8, but guitarists and bassists might disagree with the inclusion of Softube Amp. Amp gives you four modelled guitar amplifiers and four guitar cabinets. The cabinets include models of the studio mics used and studio room emulations for an authentic sound. You can easily combine any amp and cabinet for a rich variety of tones. It’s a

similar deal for Softube’s Bass Amp: two modelled bass amplifiers on offer (Modern for clarity and punch, and Vintage some grit/attitude) and three different speaker cabinets (Dark, Bright and Room), plus the mic and room emulations for a variety of tones. Softube is right at the top of the tree in this regard and the models sound first class. You can purchase the Amp separately for US$69 or make the Version 8 upgrade.

AT 55

PREVIEW

QSC TOUCHMIX16 QSCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little baby does more than touch the insides.

NEED TO KNOW

Preview: Christopher Holder

PRICE TouchMix-8 ($1499) and TouchMix-16 ($2199)

AT 56

CONTACT Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au

We’ve had the much-anticipated QSC TouchMix16 in the office for a few days prior to our print deadline and without the time to give this baby a thorough field test (like we normally would), we wanted to at least provide some first impressions this issue. First up: Wot, no faders? I’ll ’fess up to my prejudices about mixing consoles without faders. How’s it possible to mix without them in a live context? Increasingly the answer is: via touchscreens and iPads. My reaction to this is: only if I really, really have to. Turns out Touchmix almost has a fader, only it’s disguised as a continuously variable pot. The big, fat encoder really runs the show and feels great. The idea is you make your selection on the touchscreen with your left hand and tweak with your right hand — coarse (1dB increments in the case of fader moves) in normal operation and fine (0.1dB) when pressed and turned. You’d be a bit daft to try and mix with the virtual faders. My second impression of Touchmix is: it’s tiny! It really is about the size of an iPad with enough extra real estate for I/O. The size is reduced because there aren’t any customary ‘fat channel’ controls. Most small-format digital mixers will have a Select button per channel which opens up the world of EQ, routing and processing with attendant knobs and switches. TouchMix does something similar via a Select button on screen which opens up a tabbed display that allows you to move to pages dedicated to EQ, Gate, Compressor, FX and more. So the success and failure of the mixer is really

dependent on the touchscreen and what it’s like to use. It’s big enough and it’s responsive enough. I won’t go the next step and tell you it’s outstanding — there are times where you could swear you pressed the right spot without luck and there are times where there’s a split second wait-time which, although not a deal-breaker, can be unsettling. My third impression of TouchMix is: They’ve thought of everything! This mixer really is packed with every conceivable feature any live sound mixer could want in a compact device. In no particular order you can tick these boxes: four FX engines, gate and comp on every input, 35-band graphics on every output, talkback section with dedicated momentary switch, mute groups, scene memories, eight auxiliaries, including two stereo auxes for IEM… TouchMix truly is a pocket powerhouse. My fourth impression of TouchMix is: It can do what?! There’s a full-blown recording/playback section. Plug in a (FAT32-formatted) USB stick (or external drive), arm the channels you want to record, and then hit Record. Upon playback you can choose which recorded channel you’d like to hear. It’s not quite a multichannel ‘virtual soundcheck’ but it’s close and certainly a lot more sophisticated than a digital tap off the L/R outputs. Filling the other USB input is a supplied dongle which allows you to control TouchMix via an iPad — which is kinda de rigueur these days. Download the app, and then set up TouchMix to discover your wifi network. The app looks and operates like the

touchscreen. But, usefully, it doesn’t override the touchscreen, so you can be tweaking the foldback graphics on stage, while your compadre can simultaneously be doing a line check at FOH. There are a couple of aspects to TouchMix that gave me cause to go ‘hmm’. The power supply is a cord lump to keep the control surface weight down, but the console end has an oddball proprietary power input that on one hand is pretty sturdy, but on the other, difficult to replace. I also found myself scratching my head at times getting around the UI. There were moments when I wanted to hit a button again to toggle between two pages rather than having to hit the ‘Home’ button and then Setup again. Ditto with the jog wheel. I found myself wanting to press the wheel in to open up a channel Setup rather than having to press the magic spot on the touchscreen. If enough people agree with me then perhaps QSC might make a few alterations in the next firmware. To round out my first impressions: TouchMix is a genuine live sound mixing console. It’s not a ‘near enough’ mixer, it packs a full complement of pro features. With that in mind, it’s simply about how you get on with the interface. I think QSC has done a creditable job balancing usability and portability. Like I mentioned I found a few aspects of the workflow a bit irritating but that’s in no way a sleight on the sound or functionality — TouchMix goes remarkably deep for something you can slip into your laptop bag.

Pro Tools | Duet Pro Tools | Quartet Mac & PC

Available at the following resellers NSW Guitar Factory 02 9635 5552 Mall Music 02 9905 6966 Sounds Easy 02 8213 0202 Store DJ 02 9993 0758 Turramurra Music 02 9449 8487

Sound-Distributions_AVID_AT105.indd 1

QLD Gallins 1800 425 5467 Store DJ 07 3099 6916 ACT Better Music 02 6282 3199

distributed by

VIC Allans Billy Hyde 1300 255 267 Factory Sound 03 9690 8344 Mannys 03 9486 8555 Soundcorp 03 9694 2600 Store DJ 03 9912 2858

WA Concept Music 08 9381 2277 Store DJ 08 6454 6199 SA Derringers Music 08 8371 1884

www.sounddistribution.com.au

3/11/14 3:39 PM

AT 57

REGULARS

LAST WORD with

Dave Clarke

The legendary UK radio DJ, John Peel, dubbed Dave Clarke the Baron of Techno. For 25 years Dave has been at the forefront of the techno and electro scenes, producing, remixing and DJ’ing. Dave’s White Noise radio show is beamed to 80+ stations around the world (get on iTunes to subscribe to the podcast). Dave has also curated a Waves EDM plug-in suite.

AT 58

My first EP came out in 1990. I recall the sense of frustration when I took my gear into the studio for the final mixdown. My Ensoniq sampler only had a stereo output, so to individually EQ and process the parts we needed to dump them, one at a time, onto a 16-track tape with all the other parts muted. To keep these passes in sync you’d need to stripe the last track of the tape with SMPTE timecode and have that talking to an Emagic Unitor device. Trouble was, the engineer couldn’t get it to work — the 16th track of the tape wasn’t striping, and we wasted a whole day on this. From then on I was determined to have an indepth understanding of all the processes in the studio so I wouldn’t feel out of control and waste my time again. I would get to know everything from thermal recalibration of a hard drive to aligning tape azimuth. In retrospect, I’m thinking: ‘what a waste of time!’. Sure, it’s important to understand, but not to the nth degree. And, yes, we had to overcome technical problems back then and now we don’t. Moving from 32-bit to 64bit was the last set of problems we had to overcome. Now it’s about pure creativity. There are no hard and fast rules. For example, technically, is there any point in having five different EQs on one channel? Well yes, there could be. I might like the way the Brainworx dynamic EQ plug-in allows me to bridge it in mono and move the bass frequencies from left to right, that’s fun. Then I can add a Tonelux Tilt EQ from UAD or maybe an API EQ because I’m after a quick broadbrush tonal fix. Then I’ll add some Maag EQ4… but oh, shit, that’s a bit too clinical, so I’ll shove a Softube Trident EQ on top. It doesn’t matter. It’s simply about what it sounds like. Of course, you need massive processing power to be completely free and I’ve got a 24-core Hackintosh. F**k it… I’ve got 150 plug-ins active and the DSP is only just ticking over, I’ll throw a little more at it, ’cos I can — it might add something. All the tools in the world won’t make your productions sound better. You need to use your ears and your instincts — these are your ultimate instruments. And that journey takes years. Listen to the music you enjoy; work out what it is that you really like about it — what touches you — take it all in and channel it into your own music. The days of constantly wrestling with technical challenges may be over, but I’m still totally OCD with

what makes the grade in my studio. It preoccupies me like nothing else. I recall visiting friends in Japan who gave me a prototype power cable. I actually bought a special case that allowed me to take it on board — there was no way I was going to put this thing in the airplane’s hold! It was thicker than a hose pipe wrapped in carbon fibre, with palladium connectors and medical-grade silver inside (apparently the molecules were all lined up going one way, if you believe in that stuff). I couldn’t sleep for those nine hours back from Tokyo, I was just lying awake thinking about that cable in my studio. I was imagining it supplying pure electrical goodness to my Furman. (Admittedly I haven’t gone as far as Wendy Carlos and enclosed my whole studio in a Faraday cage, but I’m well on the way!) Saying that, I also have a Punk-f**k-it ethos as well, which says, I’ll have five EQs on this channel ’cos I can. I like to remind people that we’re only about 40 years into the digital music revolution. And that’s off the back of hundreds of years of musical instrument evolution that brought us Stradavarius violins and Steinway pianos. In the grand scheme of things, we’re at the ‘penny flute’ beginnings of digital. WE’RE NOT AT THE ‘GORGEOUSLYREFINED, MULTITIMBRAL, 120-PIECE ORCHESTRA’ END OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION. WE DON’T HAVE THAT DEPTH OF COMPLEXITY AND EMOTION AT OUR DISPOSAL JUST YET.

When quantum computing comes on line I’d love to see us spunk that power into making music. I’d love to see us emulating emotion; to virtually model how music can tap into the pleasure centres of our brain and recreate that… draw it into our production: “paint in ‘tortured, poverty-stricken childhood’ then segue into ‘first time on a skateboard’ or ‘freedom in a half pipe’.” Do you know what I mean!? That’s going to be interesting when overlaid on a techno beat… some serious algorithm shit going on there.

AT 59

The new

NT-USB

Everything you need for studio recording.

Studio-quality condenser capsule. Perfect for vocals, instruments and voiceover. Zero-latency stereo headphone monitoring with direct mix control. Hear everything and give the perfect performance. USB powered, compatible with Mac OS, Windows and iPad*. Anywhere, anytime without additional recording interfaces.

Your studio in a box. AT 60

6m Mic clip

Tripod

Wind shield

USB cable