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Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Publication Director Stewart Woodhill stewart@alchemedia.com.au Art Direction & Design Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au
Regular Contributors Martin Walker Michael Stavrou Paul Tingen Graeme Hague Guy Harrison Greg Walker James Roche Greg Simmons Tom Flint Robin Gist Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Andrew Bencina Jason Fernandez Brent Heber Gareth Stuckey
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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.
All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2014 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process with out 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. 05/03/2015.
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COVER STORY
Console Shootout: Midas M32 vs Allen & Heath Qu-32
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Good Vision: Barnesy’s 30:30 Hindsight
26
The Toughest Gig in Town: Les Miserable Lavs
16
22
Timeless Pop: 5SOS Producer John Feldmann
32
Studio Focus: Burwood Music Centre
iZotope RX4 Toolkit
46
Dynacord PM502 Powered Mixer
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NEWS
1
NAMM: MICROPHONY EPIPHANY
Røde Microphones: www.rode.com/ntr
Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
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Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au
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Yes, finally, a Røde ribbon mic! The NTR 1 is designed so that the ribbon is separate to the mic’s frame and body, thereby minimising resonance and allowing for the best possible acoustic transparency around the element. Featuring a high output, low noise, low impedance transformer and a ribbon element that has been designed completely from scratch, using laser cut aluminium that is only 1.8 microns thick (one of the thinnest ribbons ever used in a mic). Surrounding the ribbon is the same all-metal mesh that’s used on the SMR pop shield. Two new versions of Røde’s popular NTG shotgun microphones have also been announced, the NTG4 and NTG4+. The mics feature a newly designed capsule, with lower noise and higher sensitivity, and on-board digital switching controlling a 75Hz high-pass filter, 10dB pad and a high frequency boost that compensates for any high frequency attenuation when using a DeadCat windshield. Røde has equipped the mics with an internal rechargeable lithium battery, that will provide up to 150 hours of operating time, and can be charged via any USB port using a MicroUSB cable. NTR (price: $799), NTG4 (price: $449), NTG4+ (price: $499). Audio-Technica’s new AT5045 2 is a two-element version of the ambitious four-element AT5040 and a notable addition to the flagship 50 Series range. Hand crafted in Japan, the AT5045 is a ‘pencil-type’ largediaphragm, electret, side-address, condenser instrument microphone with a cardioid polar pattern that captures audio with ‘profound realism and depth’. Available separately or as a stereo pair, this mic’s characteristics include fast transient response, low noise, the ability to handle high sound pressure levels (149dB SPL), and one of the widest dynamic range specs available (141dB) — an ideal instrument mic, perfect for overheads, percussion, acoustic guitar, strings and other acoustic instruments in professional studio applications. Price: $1999 or $3499 for a matched pair. Shure’s Motiv 3 is a plug-and-play range of microphones specifically designed for iOS devices and includes four Apple MFi (made for iOS) Certified devices, three of which are plug and play condenser mics, with a fourth audio
interface that connects directly into any iOS device without additional adapters or connection kits. Also released is a new free iOS app, to use with the new products. Select models automatically adjust the audio processing by setting gain, EQ, and compression. While all models capture audio at 24-bit/48k and feature a variety of DSP modes, such as speech, singing, flat, acoustic instrument, and loud. Check our site for more on each device in the range. Sennheiser has launched its evolution wireless D1 4 , an easy-to-use wireless range that operates in the 2.4GHz chunk of spectrum. It’s aimed at bands that don’t want to worry about suitable frequency bands but need rocksolid stability and top-quality sound. D1 employs its aptX Live codec that ensures excellent audio quality and wide dynamics for vocals, speech and instruments over the entire audio frequency range. Overall latency is a low 3.9ms (not bad for the 2.4GHz range and fast enough for IEM use). D1 transmitters can be powered by either standard batteries or rechargeable ‘accupacks’ that are available as accessories. Telefunken has followed up the release of its first non-vacuum tube, FET-based solid-state condenser microphone 5 – the M60 at last year’s AES with something to excite the tube freaks — three new models of its Black Diamond Vacuum Tubes line, produced in partnership with JJ Tubes from the Carpathian Mountains, in Slovakia. Each of the new tubes have been cryogenically treated for durability, and subjected to an extended burn-in period. There’s the 6V6-TK (the 6V6 was originally released in 1937 by RCA and found in amps such as the Fender Champ, Princeton Reverb, and Deluxe Reverb); the ECC82-TK (a new rendition of the classic ECC82/12AU7as used in low-noise line amplifiers, drivers, and as a phase inverter in push-pull amplifier circuits); and the KT88-TK (a replica of the legendary original introduced by GEC in 1956 as competition to the American-made 6550, but with a higher plate voltage of up to 800V).
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au AT 8
Sennheiser Australia: www.sennheiser.com.au
4
Telefunken: telefunken-elektroakustik. com/products/tubes/
5
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
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NEWS
NAMM: THE PULL OF OUTBOARD
1
Manley Labs: www.manleylab.com
ATT Audio Controls: (03) 9379 1511 or info@attaudiocontrols.com
2
3
Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au
4
Manley Labs’ Force 1 is a four-channel highvoltage vacuum tube microphone preamplifier carrying a retail price of a reasonable US$2500. Force borrows the same ‘Manley Iron’ mic input transformers from its Core channel strip along with a 12AX7 vacuum tube amplifying stage operating from ‘don’t stick your screwdriver here’ 300V rails. Each channel includes a high-impedance, 1/4-inch instrument input as well as an XLR microphone input. On the front, each channel features a 120Hz HPF, variable inputlevel pad, phase invert, selectable +48V phantom power, and a high/low gain switch. As with all Manley gear, each unit is hand-wired using silver solder and audiophile-grade components, and hand-built in Cali. Rupert Neve Designs has two new products: the RNDI Active Transformer Direct Interface 2 , and the R6 Six Space 500 Series Rack 3 . The RNDI is a new interface device, featuring a custom RND transformer and a class-A biased discrete FET amplifier, offering high input headroom of +21.5dBU. The interface is capable of handling professional, line level sources without a pad and in speaker mode to the full output of a 1000W power amplifier (92V RMS). Meanwhile, the R6 rack has more than double the required current for a six-space chassis and is equipped with LED current metering, and doubleshielding on the internal power supply. With eight interchangeable (in any combination) channels of I/O options, including DB25, XLR and TRS, users can take the R6 to another environment where you’re unsure of the cables available. dbx has jumped aboard the 500 series band wagon introducing five models: 4 The dbx 560A Compressor/Limiter provides flexible control of dynamics including threshold, compression ratio and output gain. The 530 is based on the classic dbx 905 featuring a three-band parametric EQ with selectable bell or shelf-type filters on the low- and high-
frequency bands, and adjustable Q on each band. The dbx 580 mic pre designed to deliver pristine audio quality with exceptional clarity, nuance and presence. The dbx 520 De-Esser is for removal of sibilance from vocals, taking its heritage from the dbx 902. The dbx 510 Sub Harmonic Synth enhances recordings with deep, powerful bass an octave lower than the original signal. The 560 will be the first module out of the blocks in April, priced at US$399. Warm Audio’s EQP-WA 5 is a re-creation of the legendary Pultec EQP-1A tube EQ. Not only does the look and feel of the EQP-WA match the classic Pultec units, but apparently the sonic quality has been carefully considered by using topend components such as CineMag transformers and premium tubes. According to Warm Audio, this fully discrete tube EQ can pull “euphoric sonics from any track and bring a brilliance and lustre to mixes that’s nearly impossible to achieve inside-the-box”. A-Designs Audio has two new instrument preamps: the KGB-II and KGB-Itf 6 . Both are single-ended, high input impedance, discrete audio preamps designed for high impedance, unbalanced outputs such as guitar, bass guitar, and electronic keyboards. The KGB Series contains high voltage, discrete op-amps with balanced output transformers by Cinemag. The KGB-II is a two-channel, solid state unit that allows use of both channels for stereo recordings or live performances. The KGB-Itf (Tone Filters) is a mono unit. Price: ~US$750. Everyone’s favourite kiwi audio designer, Buzz Audio, has released the DBC-20 diode bridge compressor 7 . The DBC-20 is a new take on a vintage technique utilising a gain reduction element of silicon diodes in a balanced bridge arrangement. The diode bridge is coupled via a ‘radio steel’ laminated transformer of a Buzz design. This element produces a desirable compression character that Buzz describes as “tight, colourful and rich with harmonics”. The DBC-20 incorporates a self-adjusting ratio whereby the compression ratio is automatically increased with deepening gain reduction. This feature allows for the control of very dynamic signals (such as vocals) in a seamless fashion.
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au AT 10
Warm Audio: www.warmaudio.com
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6
A-Designs Audio: www.adesignsaudio.com
7
Buzz Audio: www.buzzaudio.com
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NEWS
SOFTWARE & PRODUCTION
1
Avid: www.avid.com
Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
2
It’s hard to decide which Avid news out of NAMM is bigger. But a free version of Pro Tools, called Pro Tools First, has got to be up there. It’s part of the Avid Everywhere rollout, and a big move for a company that had a wired hardware/software stranglehold over its customers for years, and has been loosening the chains ever since. How hobbled is Pro Tools First? Well, it’s really quite generous. You can record up to 16 tracks, four simultaneously; it includes the Xpand2 synth; Elastic Pitch and Time; 20 effects including D-Verb, EQ III, Dynamics III and Mod Delay II; as well as some introductory cloud storage. Avid’s other big announcement, is the unveiling of Pro Tools 12 1 . Key to v12 are the Cloud Collaboration features. Basically, you store your sessions in the cloud and invite others to collaborate; they can make edits, record new parts, adjust automation, or change the mix. Pro Tools automatically keeps track of all the contributor and version changes for your approval, with the promise of a whole new metadata system so you don’t lose or miscommunicate anything. You can also text or video chat with your collaborators from inside ’Tools, which keeps the number of open programs down. Waves has covered all bases at NAMM. There’s the emulation of a classic — the dbx 160; a modern take on a classic effect — the H-Reverb; a signature series from a well-known producer — Butch Vig; and a whole new multi-track recording system — Tracks Live 2 . The H-Reverb is based on Finite Impulse Response (FIR) reverberation. It’s convolutionlevel realism without getting stuck in the same box. Butch Vig’s first signature series plug-in looks like the innards of a steampunk Big Ben; all gears, dials and rusty colourways. Its designed for vocals with an onboard de-esser, controls like Air and Focus, and levers for balancing between tube-like or solid state-style harmonics. Tracks Live is 192k-capable multi-track recording software designed for live performance capture.
With its dual band operation, Softube’s Transient Shaper 3 allows the user to set the Transient Shaper to affect only the treble or bass portion of a sound — separately for the Sustain and Punch parameters — and leave the rest untouched. This opens up plenty of post possibilities. Transient Shaper is priced at US$99. It’s been more than five years since Novation released the Launchpad, now we have the new ‘Pro’ version 4 , which will go head-to-head with Ableton’s Push. Featuring a similar gridbased design to the original, but with enhanced functionality such as RGB LED feedback, and pads that are both velocity and pressure-sensitive. Launchpad Pro integrates seamlessly with Live but will also converse happily with other DAWs. Universal Audio is touting its Apollo Expanded 5 as the biggest evolution for the Apollo interface since its introduction in 2012. Apollo Expanded provides Mac users ‘mix and match’ operation between Thunderbolt-equipped Apollo audio interfaces — Quad, Duo and Twin can now harness up to four Apollos and six total UAD-2 devices. What’s more, Thunderbolt-equipped Apollo users can now let their work flow with Console 2.0. Benefits include: new high-resolution/ Retina-compatible 64-bit software interface for Apollo Thunderbolt systems; Channel Strip presets let you see your signal chain in one window and more. Finally, the release of Apollo Expanded coincides with a range of new plug-ins focused on real-time processing features. They include: Sound Machine Wood Works, Distortion Essentials Bundle and the Friedman Amplifiers Plug-In Collection.
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au AT 12
3
Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
4
Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or www.innovativemusic.com.au
CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au
5
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REVIEW
ARTURIA iPROPHET Prophet wasn’t the saviour Sequential needed it to be, but now it’s been resurrected by Arturia you can touch it again. Review: Brad Watts
I’ve only ever seen a Sequential Circuits Prophet VS once in my life, and it was a rack version. I spent an hour or so with it but was largely unimpressed; yet it wasn’t the sound that had me balking. Quite a contrast to the analogue-style synths I was using at the time, the sonics were stark, crystalline and glassy and the joystick thing allowed you to meander amongst four different oscillator waveforms. What turned me away from it was the rather cranky editing system. Any relevant information was relayed via a tiny dual-line LCD display, plus the whole machine felt like it could literally fall apart at any given moment. Still, that didn’t preclude the instrument becoming favoured with film and soundtrack composers. In a world of fuzzy analogue the Prophet VS was still a better proposition than attempting to edit a Yamaha DX7. The Prophet VS used 12-bit samples and Curtis chips for the filters and envelopes. It was quite an amalgam. But what set it apart was the ‘vector’ synthesis. Movements recorded between the four oscillators were known as vectors — it was a revolutionary style of modulation. Add this to the traditional modulation possibilities of the Prophet VS and you’ve got one hell of an AT 14
instrument. Shame Sequential was bought out by Yamaha. Arturia, known for reincarnating vintage monoliths, has shoehorned the Prophet VS into iPad form. With the amenity of a touchscreen and more processing power than anyone could dream of in the 1980s, Arturia has released iProphet — a Prophet VS for everyone — for a mere 13 bucks. iProphet is a staggering leap forward in terms of programmability compared with the original. With the app open in front of me it’s hard to understand why the original was such a wrestle in the first place. Editing amplitude and filter envelopes now has the advantage of a dedicated depiction across the entire iPad screen, as does the modulation matrix, with eight sources and 15 destinations. Unlike the original, Arturia has added delay, chorus, and distortion effects to the mix, along with a huge library of patches (650 or so). Plus, patches can be interchanged with Arturia’s desktop version of Prophet V. One feature slated for the original machine was oscillator sync. Sadly this never made the final production models. Arturia remedied this ommision and included the feature in iProphet. Being of the iPad persuasion, iProphet will lock
in with Apple’s Inter-app audio for integration with GarageBand and similar applications. It offers Audiobus support, and unites with the latest answer to iOS integration, Tabletop — which works extremely well I can assure you. Sonically, the iProphet will come in handy for anyone with their ear tuned to vintage electronica — think Vince Clarke, Japan, Jean Michel Jarre et al. It’s more than capable of emulating a Prophet 5, an Oberheim, a PPG, or indeed a Jupiter 8. If you really must, the iProphet can even do an impromptu stand-in for the Yamaha DX7. While you’re considering the options, bear in mind the many other instruments Prophet VS gave rise to. When Yamaha swooped in to buy the ailing Sequential Circuits, the company was quick to jump onto the vector bandwagon with synths such as the SY-22 all the way through to the SY-77. Even the Korg Wavestation owes its genesis to the Prophet VS. If it’s dark and irksome, clear as crystal, or hard hitting punch-through-the-mix bass, the $13 iProphet will provide. $12.99 on the App Store www.arturia.com
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FEATURE
5 Seconds of Summer is a band, and is also roughly how long pop mastermind John Feldmann has to write, produce, record and mix a hit for them. He lets us in on the ‘timeless’ world of pop production. Story: Mark Davie
AT 16
If you’ve ever wondered how a lyric like Rebecca Black’s It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday comes to fruition, you only have to sit in the position of someone like John Feldmann. It’s the job of producers and songwriters like Feldmann to spend hours staring deep into the eyes of popstars. Which sounds like a decent way to earn a buck, but when the objective is to dig into their subconscious for a memory or deeply hidden desire that will kickstart a lyric… um, sometimes it can be disappointingly light-on for detail. So what do you do when you’ve only got six of those, now very short, hours to pump out a song with lyrics relevant to that particular pop star? You go with whatever’s on your mind if there’s nothing on theirs. ‘What am I doing this weekend? It’s Friday, Friday…’ Brilliant, the one thing common to anyone with a life — counting down the days to the weekend. Now why didn’t you think of that? Feldmann himself works with a higher class of client than the Rebecca Blacks of this world, but every now and again he finds himself in exactly that position. “It can be frustrating,” said Feldmann. “Especially in the singles-driven world we live in. With pop artists, we’ve got to write the best song of their career, and we’ve got five hours to do it because they’ve got a second session that starts at 6pm.” And no two artists are the same: one band might be a well-oiled machine, and another might be a manufactured mess that behaves like a dysfunctional family. Likewise, solo artists may be majorly talented and happy with the guide track Feldmann has just laboured over, while others may “take two days to get one lead vocal, or come in and say, ‘I don’t like any of the top line.’” At which point, he’s got to rewrite the entire song on the fly. Most of the time, Feldmann has developed longstanding relationship with the artists he works with so he’s prepared for their quirks. And he’s not always so time-poor. But all these challenges are exactly why Feldmann loves what he does. “A lot of times it takes an artist a week or two to open up and tell me their darkest secrets and sordid past so we can really get that song to matter to them. Other times an artist will come in and just tell me one story and we’ll nail it in two hours,” he said. “That’s the great thing about what we do as artists, there isn’t a rhyme or reason to it. It’s why the nine-tofive lifestyle never worked for me and why I failed miserably at school. Because the structure of my brain is different to the structure of other humans that can clock-on and have their day planned out.” These days, Feldmann’s ‘nine to five’ is spent mostly in the car. When we catch up, Feldmann is stuck on a scorching hot LA freeway, his kids are watching movies in the back while he strains to hear rough mixes over his car air conditioning. It’s not a monitoring preference, it’s just life when you have to navigate the 10 million resident-wide sprawl of the LA county area. Feldmann has basically defined the sound of pop-rock since the turn of the century; writing for, producing, and mixing everything from the more emo releases of The Used, Story of the Year, and Papa
Roach, to Good Charlotte, the more glam-tinged songs of Panic! at the Disco and Foxy Shazam, and the tweeny tunes of Hillary Duff and Ashlee Simpson. His latest hits have come via Australian pop-rock group 5 Seconds of Summer. Love or hate the artists he works with, Feldmann has nailed more power pop songs than you could imagine. RECORD STARS
Feldmann started messing around recording local bands in 1994 on an Akai 12-track that used Beta-style tapes. By 1996, he’d self-produced his band Goldfinger’s debut record. “Back then we would have the studio locked out for two or three months because we had real record budgets and albums would sell,” said Feldmann. “At the time, a mediocre record selling three or four hundred thousand albums would be considered a failure.” In those first years, Feldmann would agonise over guitar cabinet sweet spots, moving the microphone around millimetre by millimetre. These days, he solely focuses on lyrics, melody, arrangement, keys and tempo — everything else he leaves to his two engineers because “helping create a melody or lyric uses a different side of your brain than editing and looking at waveforms.” It’s a working arrangement necessitated by time. In an ideal world, Feldmann would take, “one day to write it, one day to record it, one day to edit it, and one day to mix it.” But even that short turnaround can get truncated, leaving Feldmann to find time in the early hours. There’s no way of escaping the influence of Feldmann and his peers on pop rock. Engineers the world over mimic his style of hard-hitting drum sounds and layered guitars — a process that’s only become easier with drum samples and amp simulators. Feldmann himself still prefers recording real instruments. His main studio is at his house, and he pegs it somewhere between ‘more than basic’, but not quite Ocean Way (where he was recently for a week of songwriting with 5 Seconds of Summer). Feldmann recalls sitting in front of the milliondollar Neve console, surrounded by classic Fairchild compressors and every piece of gear he could ever want, and all they ended up using was a Neumann U47 in the control room to record guitar into his ProTools rig. There were thousands of dollars worth of beautiful toys on hand, and by his estimation they didn’t even use 10 percent of it the whole time he was there. When he’s working with 5 Seconds of Summer, it’s all, “go go go!” They’re young and have the energy to continually tour, so song-writing sessions are usually the length of a tweet between promo tour stops. Over the course of a typical 12-hour pit stop, Feldmann will spend eight of those hours building on their latest hook. As the band spews out lines, he’ll funnel all the good melodies and lyrics into his laptop and piece together a song, adding his own ideas into the mix. In the last couple of hours, everyone focuses on making sure he walks out of the studio with four or five really good vocal takes. Once he has all the bits and pieces, Feldmann
With pop artists, we’ve got to write the best song of their career, and we’ve got five hours to do it because they’ve got a second session that starts at 6pm
polishes off the demo at home; programming drums, playing guitar and singing harmonies. The boys then listen to the finished arrangement and make their own alterations. So when their next stop allows, they’ll come in, add or take a bar here and there, and replace the programming with their own playing. It’s a maniacal pace, which is why Feldmann’s own studio is so workman-like when compared to Ocean Way. His two engineers work around the clock, so if he needs a session edited overnight in time for a vocal take the next day, he’ll have one of his guys stay up to finish it. Everything he uses is about getting the sound he needs, and getting it quickly. He’s been producing long enough to know what gear combinations work to get specific sounds, so his instrument selections and studio design have been whittled down over the years: A single-octave keyboard for bass lines, a regular five-octave keyboard for everything else, a good selection of guitars and amps, and a drum room built specifically for the way he likes to record drums — a tight snare sound with an open room and massive kick drum. TUNNEL VISION
His custom-made kit is modelled after a ’60s Gretsch style, with a Ludwig Black Beauty as his go-to snare. He sets it up at one end of a deep live room, with his room mics at the other end, either a mono Telefunken ELAM 251 tube mic, or a stereo pair of Coles ribbons. “For most bands I’m recording, I want a big room sound,” explains Feldmann. “So I’ve got the room mic as far away as I can.” Sometimes he puts the mono room mic 10 feet from the kit, if he’s after a “raw John Bonham thing”. The room is a big element of his drum sound, so even when he replaces a kick or a snare, he’ll keep the overhead and room performances. Or if things get really dire and he has to replace the performance (a very rare occurrence), he uses Superior Drummer to build a big room sound. Feldmann is nothing if not pragmatic. He’s always seen tools as a way of achieving an end goal, and he’ll use whatever is required to travel the journey efficiently. So it’s interesting to hear that replacing drums or programming performances is his last port of call, not first: “I love using whatever I can, but for the most part it’s really hard to replicate a dynamic room or overhead performance AT 17
John Feldmann in his home studio, cranking out the hits in no time flat.
unless you’re spending a full day drawing-in the MIDI velocity. For me, it’s all about live drums.” His kick drum sound is made up of two parts. He places a Shure SM7 inside the kick to capture the attack, and a Beta 52 inside a long tunnel, just over four feet away from the resonant head. “The dad of one of my old engineers worked in aerodynamics, and he built it for me,” said Feldmann. “There’s a mathematical equation I use to time align the outside kick to the inside mic. The tunnel keeps it super isolated and it’s really punchy. “I love my kick drum sound, it took me about three years to perfect — it’s really open but punchy enough to hit you in the chest through the NS10s, which is when I know I’m in the sweet spot. Then I check it on the Genelec 1031s with a sub to really scrutinise the outer kick combo.” Feldmann diverges only slightly from the standard Shure SM57 on snare by selecting a Beta 56, its posable head allowing him to point the diaphragm directly down at the snare head. Underneath, he plants a Blue Mouse condenser microphone for the sound of its upper mid range. AT 18
At one point he used Telefunken mics on overheads, but got bored and switched it up to Shure Beta 181 condensers about 18 months ago. He likes the way the ring of the drums doesn’t interfere with his vocals when using this pair, and he typically places them in a spaced pair configuration, measured to be equidistant from the snare, and moves them closer when he wants to tighten up the sound. Sennheiser MD421 dynamics are mounted on each of his two toms. And his secret sauce mic is a Shure Green Bullet harp mic, its ¼-inch jack patched straight into his desk. He calls it the ‘butt mic’, because that’s where it sits, right behind the drummer’s rear end. “It sounds so good for those filtered, telephone-sounding, distorted drum sounds,” said Feldmann. “Say the inside kick is zeroed out, I’ve probably got the butt mic at -25dB, and then I’ll boost it up 15dB for a loopy feel to a second verse intro, for instance. It’s really for effect. It’s so distorted that if you’re rocking a chorus on the crash it sounds like a trashcan which is really great once in a while, but for the most part
It’s really hard to replicate a dynamic room or overhead performance unless you’re spending a full day drawing in the MIDI velocity. For me, it’s all about live drums
Feldmann stares deep into the eyes of 5SOS’s Luke Hemmings seraching for a lyric. ‘What’s that? Pizza?’
I want the drums clean. If we’re trying to focus on the vocal or the hook of the song, I don’t want a trashcan sound sucking the vocal.” THE MODEL WORKFLOW
For drum preamps, Feldmann is a bit of a 1073 fanatic, using a batch of Vintech and AMS Neve reissues to capture his main mics, a couple of channels of his True Systems Precision Eight solidstate rack of preamps for toms, and a Manley stereo preamp for overheads. Once in a while he’ll patch in his dual 1176 to compress his room mics, but he primarily processes in the digital domain, tracking overheads through a UAD Neve 33609 compressor on the way into ’Tools, and using PSP’s tape modelling to give that extra bit of ‘cave’ compression for his kick drums. He also uses the Slate tape modeller on his toms. There’s so much tape modelling, you’d almost think he’d consider tracking to tape. But Feldmann’s got no time for that: “I’ve been in L.A. since 1987, I’m 47 years old and still in a band. So I feel connected to the roots of where I started as an
artist and a songwriter. When I hear about Dave Grohl making a record on tape with Butch Vig, I understand the idea of committing to tape with all its mistakes and its glory. But for a guy like me who works with young bands that are used to a certain flow, comping multiple takes, being able to experiment with sounds on-the-fly, and never committing until the mix — ProTools is really the only way for me to go. “I remember touring when my first metal band got signed in 1989. We went to One On One Studios in Burbank and Metallica were making the black album. I remember walking into a control room and I literally saw a hundred little pieces of two-inch tape stuck to the walls around the room. It was all the remnants from when THEY WOULD CUT OUT THE KICK DRUM IF IT WAS A LITTLE BIT EARLY, AND SHIFT IT BACK A FEW MILLIMETRES TO MAKE IT BEHIND THE BEAT. THAT’S HOW THEY WOULD EDIT BACK IN THE DAY ON TWO-INCH TAPE.
People would probably take a week to edit one three-minute song on drums, so if the drummer changed his mind…”
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Flexibility is key to his process, but it’s more than just workflow, it’s a mindset. Feldmann can’t afford to hold out for that elusive ‘perfect take’, there’s just no time. While the songwriting and demo-ing stages may sound frantic, the train doesn’t slow down at all when it comes to final takes. There’s no time for artists to spend a week perfecting full takes of the song, they just have to learn it on the fly. So Feldmann will usually shoot for a section at a time, say a 16-bar verse, then he’ll drop them into the pre-chorus. For the most part, the musicians he’s working with are talented enough to alter their performance when asked, like laying off cymbals. He has tried the Dave Kahne/Sugar Ray trick of recording the drums and overdubbing cymbals later. But again, it takes practise, which takes time, a luxury not readily available at chez Feldmann. He also has no qualms with using Autotune. Not as a means of fixing up an entire performance, but in order to keep the best one. Again, it’s a time issue. “I find there’s a lot of heartfelt vibe in the first pass, AT 19
compared to when they’ve been singing it for a year,” said Feldmann. “I’d much rather tune a great performance than have them go over and over until they get the pitch. I really try to use tools for the artist’s benefit, not as a way to be lazy or mask some untalented performer. At this point in my career I’m only working with artists I believe in and have talent. That way I’m not killing my engineers with a 10-hour shift overnight tuning one verse. That’s a horrific job! I wouldn’t want to do that to anybody.” He also typically records guitars before he commits to a bass track, for two reasons. One is tuning, he can more easily fix slight tuning issues of a single-note part than a six-string chord. And the other is because “McCartney would always record his part last, to tweak the melodic bass parts he did with The Beatles,” reasoned Feldmann. ALWAYS MIXING
Feldmann usually starts the mix with his SSL XLogic analogue bus compressor already engaged. “I tried maybe 30 modelled bus compressors,” said Feldmann. “And for some reason it’s got punch and glue I haven’t been able to find from any plug-in. There’s probably some colouring happening when I go outside of ProTools and back in that I like too.” He kicks each mix off with the inside kick, bringing a sample in second if there is one, and then he’ll add the outside kick to taste. From there he works his way outwards by bringing in top snare, bottom snare, then overheads, and then the room. After he’s got the basic mix, he’ll bring up the toms to taste and the butt mic, for a touch of attitude back there. After an initial balance he then just listens to the drums “for probably 15 to 20 minutes,” said AT 20
Feldmann, going through all his monitoring options on hand. “I’ll listen on my NS10s, on my Genelecs, on my Dynaudios, I’ll plug in my little Apple ear buds, I’ll check it in mono on my Auratone. I’ll make sure that the drums sound big and beefy and there’s enough room and overheads in there.” Once the drums are bedded down, he then adds the stereo guitar or the bass, depending on the song. Feldmann: “For a pop-punk band, the guitar tracks will often have stereo rhythm parts, with the sustained part on the left. I’ll use two different heads, but with the same cabinet and same three microphones on it — a Shure Beta 57, a regular SM57 and a Shure KSM32 condenser. I’ll also record another clean Hiwatt stereo rhythm track just to get the actual notes, and sometimes I’ll use a Waves S1 widener on it, even though some people don’t like the phasiness. I’ve usually got one mono track rhythm in the centre, but the mix is primarily driven by the stereo rhythm from the two different heads. I used to use Vocalign on guitars, but it got really phasey. I did it on The Used record though, and I still like the way that sounds. “By the time I’ve added everything in the beginning stages of my rock mix — if I’ve got the drums big — I’ve got my threshold set so I’m hitting about 4dB compression on the master bus and I’m backing off the master fader probably 6 to 8dB to stop it going over the top. “Now vocals are always last, and by the time I add them there’s too much competition between either my rhythm guitars or the overheads, and I have to rebalance. But I don’t really ever start over, I’ve got a pretty good understanding of what my system does and what I want to hear on a final mix, and in my car. I’LL ALSO BOUNCE DOWN ON MP3 TO MY
IPHONE AND LISTEN ON THE ONE SPEAKER, THE WAY 98% OF KIDS WILL DO. IT’S RIDICULOUS, BUT IT’S JUST THE REALITY OF OUR DAY.
“On vocals, I love that Softtube FET compressor that’s modelled after the 1176. All buttons in and limited so you can hear every little nuance — the closing of the mouth, lip-smacking — I’m a singer so I want to hear all of it. I’m gaining down every breath by 12dB because I’m slamming it. “I use the Softtube active EQ on vocals a lot too, and lately I’ve been using the UAD ATR ½-inch tape modeller to make them a little less crispy because I’ve got so much compression. “I still love Revibe for effects, and I usually have a short and long Echoboy delay on vocals. In the chorus I’ll bring in the quarter-note echo, and in the verses it’ll be the sixteenth-note triplet just to double it a little bit. It’s not what I do in every song, but as a general rule I like to have my verses tight and choruses really open up. “Because I’m kind of mixing as I’m writing, a lot of times I’ll put in the effect on the actual vocal track itself and won’t bother to use an aux send. But if I’m really setting a mix and I’ve got a full two days for a song, I’ll send all my background vocals to the same reverb, and all my lead vocals have a different reverb. “There isn’t a rhyme and reason to the mix because it’s all about workflow for me and timeline. If we’ve got to get the track written and mixed in two days, I’m not going to be as organised as when I’ve got a guy setting up a mix for me over a couple of days.” And that’s the life of the pop-rock producer.
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FEATURE
Three hours of non-stop fader throwing, eight performances a week and audiences hanging on every word. Is Les Miserables the toughest live gig in town? Photo: Matt Murphy
Story: Christopher Holder Photos: James Brereton
Mixing top-draw musical theatre requires meticulous preparation and an OCD attention to performance detail. You may have as many as 40 omnidirectional miniature mics open on stage at once. What’s more you will have dozens of mics open in the orchestra pit. There’s a lot that could go crazy-wrong. I caught up with Les Mis head of sound Al Lugger and associate sound designer, System Sound’s Shelly Lee. Al has been mixing the current Australian incarnation, while Les Mis is part of Shelly’s DNA having mixed the show for years in its previous Australian run. I wanted to get a sense of the ‘day-in-the-life’ demands of mixing musical theatre. I discovered that the mix engineer not only needs to fastidiously, without fail, ensure every word uttered on stage is conveyed to a knowledgeable audience; but more than that, he or she needs to ride the tumultuous emotion of the performance. It’s not unlike requiring a micro-surgeon to recite tear-jerking AT 22
poetry while re-attaching someone’s finger. The intensity is only matched by the regularity. There are eight performances a week. Al tag teams with Evan Drill on mixing duties. Both engineers attend every performance as there’s plenty to be done other than having your mixing fingers ready come curtain rise. Having two mix engineers may be essential to avoid burnout (as well as having some builtin dual-human-redundancy) but the need for consistency reigns supreme and it makes it difficult to guarantee a daily near-as-dammit-toa-benchmark performance, month in, month out; year in, year out. Shelly Lee: As we prepared for this run, I said to Al, if you can mix Les Mis, you can mix anything. Not because it’s necessarily the most complex show (although it has its moments) but because it’s so intense — three hours of 100% mental dedication. So apart from the demands of the technical preparations, the show itself is very draining.
Al Lugger: The orchestra never stops: there’s virtually no dialogue, it’s all sung. So if you switch off during Les Mis everyone in the audience hears that. And that’s the tough part about the show: maintaining consistency. If you vague out for five minutes, or if you miss a cue then it’s very difficult to catch up. Shelly Lee: Most shows afford you the chance to have a moment of repose after a number. Press ‘stop’, wait for the applause to die down, cue up the next scene and switch on again. That doesn’t happen on Les Mis. It’s constant. Even when people are applauding there’s something going on underneath — there’s not that opportunity to take just a two-second breather and go, “Okay, where am I?” Al Lugger: For example, the end of Act One is very tricky. There’s eight to 10 minutes of constant fader throwing, constant orchestra moves and you’ve really got to be on your game.
ORCHESTRA PIT “We have 27 mics on percussion alone and around 65 all up. All the strings are bugged and we also have a DPA as an ambient mic (DPA 4011C) above so there’s what we call a String High and a String Low. All the DPA bugs are 4061s, which are exactly the same mics the cast wears, and they just bridge-clip onto the instrument. Then the microphone above tends to feed the dozens of d&b E Series ‘surround’ speakers.” — Al Lugger
Head of Sound, Al Lugger, at FOH with his Digico SD7T.
TWO PACKS
There are nine principals and each is double-packed (Sennheiser SK5212 transmitter with a DPA 4061 mic). The SD7 allows easy ‘Alt Input’ access to either pack without physically switching over. So we use the SD7 ALT input as a macro to, say, use Javier Main or Javier Backup.
SHOW TIME CHECKLIST
MINDING P’S & CUES
AT: How many cues are there? Al Lugger: Around 120. We’ve got a QLab show control system which fires the Digico SD7 console. Shelly Lee: Getting out of one scene and into the next is tricky. You’re often transitioning from one mood into another very different mood, so you’re required to seamlessly crossfade out of something that might be hard and loud into something small and delicate. Trying to get that absolute balance as you work through those scene changes to effect those mood changes… well, it requires constant focus. AT: How long does it take to feel like you’re ‘all over’ the mix? Al Lugger: We did two weeks of technical rehearsals and then 10 previews and I didn’t feel confident until probably the fifteenth show. So even through Press Night I was still very edgy and you’re really holding on for dear life because
you don’t want to drop a line — people have paid good money and there’s a technical team around you that are expecting great things, so you really do try and keep your head down, to really live and breathe Les Mis. Shelly Lee: You simply can’t drop lines; the faders have got to be up, you’ve gotta be in the right cue. All those things have got to happen. But more than that, you’ve gotta feel it. You’ve got to ride the ebbs and flows of emotion coming from stage. In my experience there was a three-month period after which the show becomes part of your DNA and from there you discover and explore more of the emotion. AT: What are some of the biggest dangers to a mix blowing up? Al Lugger: There’s one big production number where 20 ensemble guys are on stage doing a ‘woo-hoo’ drinking-buddy song — Master of the House it’s called, for those who know the show. Every show is different and you never know
-2:00hr Full system and pit check: Ensure all lines are going back to the consoles (Digico SD7 at FOH and an unmanned SD8 at monitors, which feeds lines to Aviom mixers in the pit). All 40 radio mics are checked. –1:30hr Radio mic quality check: All the sets are given to radio technician, Que Nguyen, who takes them on stage and checks them for quality control. —1:00hr Mics fitted: Que fits the lavs to the principals. One person does the job for consistency’s sake. The nonmixing engineer then fits the others to the ensemble. Wig department will get involved where necessary, and chaperones will get involved when children are concerned. Will take 30-40 minutes for all the lavs to be fitted. —0:05hr Five-minute call: Performers clock in for another mic check to ensure the FOH mixer is happy: lav positioned okay? The right pack is on the right person? Is the wig covering the mic? Another five-minute call also happens prior to second act. Without final signoff of the engineer, the show won’t start. AT 23
when someone is going to sing straight at someone else’s head.
You simply can’t drop lines; the faders have got to be up, you’ve gotta be in the right cue. But more than that, you’ve gotta feel it
AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, IF YOU BELLOW INTO SOMEONE ELSE’S LAVALIER MIC THAT WILL POP OUT OF THE MIX. So we
rely on a good communication with our directorial team and they’ll provide direction at rehearsals, “Hey guys, you maintain consistency here.” AT: Have directors’ attitudes to audio changed much as these stage shows get bigger and more ambitious? Al Lugger: Audio has traditionally not been high priority in the lead up to a show but it’s the first thing they’ll comment on come opening night. Shelly Lee: Sound isn’t tangible. People find it
very hard to get their head around it, including us at times. It is not uncommon to have unexpected parameters enter into the equation because of the nature of the environment and all the variables that exist. Also translating the interpretation of the director’s vision into something technical is a challenge unto itself. Taking on sound engineering as a career is not for the faint hearted and will be constantly challenging as it is rewarding.
LAV CENTRAL The rubber sleeve, called Hellerman, is placed over the mic capsule as shown via a specialist Hellerman tool. For the principal’s double miking, the darker lav sits just in the hairline while the flesh-toned lav is one capsule length underneath on the forehead. The heavy sweaters get more layers of Hellerman, to raise the capsule from the actor’s skin a little more. The lav cable is then run up and over the middle of the actor’s head (men mostly use toupee clips while the ladies’ cable clip directly to the stocking cap of their wigs) then taped to the back of their neck with Blenderm surgical tape.
LAV SWEAT OUT Sweat is the single biggest enemy of the lavalier mic. On a show like this where there’s quite a lot of activity, running from scene to scene, and plenty of hat changes, sweat can be a big problem. “Sometimes a mic can get stuck under the lace of a wig. Sometimes we might get holes put through the wig to prevent the mic getting sweated out. Sometimes if there’s a generous portion of fringe you can tuck the mic up in the fringe to prevent that happening.” — Al Lugger
SWEAT COUNTERMEASURES Spray-on shoe leather protector (may void warranty!). Place mic in the fringe of a wig rather than in the lace of a wig. Lavs do sometimes come back to life — you can dry them out by putting them away with silica satchets for a while. Unfortunately after they dry out a film of salt can collect on the diaphragm, which quickly soaks up moisture again. Que Nguyen: “I’ll use gaff to clean the grille. It can help to extract makeup and other buildup.”
TELLTALE SIGNS OF A LAV THAT’S SWEATED OUT? Al Lugger: We test and hear a lot of lavs every day, so it takes us a split second to diagnose a problem. They sound thin, with a loss of frequencies between 300 and 600Hz. Saying that, we’ve only lost three lavs in the three months since opening and that’s pretty phenomenal. Shelly Lee: Normally we lose a heap in the production period because the performers are tense and they’re not used to the physicality of the show, so they sweat a lot more. Hats (and wigs) off to DPA! AT 24
LAV POSITION Top of the forehead: centred and one capsule length down from hair line. For double-packed principals the backup lav sits slightly higher than the primary. From there, Que Nguyen, the radio mic technician will disguise the cable in the back of the head so it’s all-but invisible. Keep the position consistent. If everyone’s in the same position, then the team knows it’s easier to reproduce it 40 times than it is to remember the individual idiosyncracies of performers’ hair, wig, hats and costuming.
LAV GOTCHAS Hairspray: “Fit the lav once hair and wigs have been fixed.” Vapour from smoke machines: “Unavoidable on some shows.” Makeup: “Seems to get into the capsule, around the diaphragm and they never sound the same.” Boozy After-Parties: “If performers are backing up after a big night, the alcohol sweating through the system can be a killer. You can always tell who the big drinkers are by how many microphones they lose!”
AT 25
FEATURE
LOOKING BACK WITH HINDSIGHT
Barnesy celebrated his 30th anniversary as a working class solo artist by getting a bunch of mates together at his house and jamming on his hits. Producer Kevin ‘The Caveman’ Shirley reflects with pristine 30:30 Hindsight. Story: Mark Davie Photos: Stephanie Barnes & Scott Hull
Artist: Jimmy Barnes Album: 30:30 Hindsight AT 26
There are two occasions where you’ll find an Aussie bloke screaming his lungs out and hugging other blokes — at the footy, and any time Khe Sanh comes on the radio. Barnesy has been the pied piper of Aussie rock sing-a-longs for decades. Even today, 30-something years after Cold Chisel recorded the song, you’ll still find pockets of boozed-up yocals arm in arm singing ‘the last plane out of Sydney’s aawwlmost gone’. When Barnesy’s hoarse rebel yell is tearing off like a Mack truck, blokes who usually wouldn’t mutter more than a couple of words get behind him like he’s the pub rock William Wallace. It’s why an album like 30:30 Hindsight makes sense. It really doesn’t have to exist; for one, there’s no new songs on it. But if Barnesy was ever going to celebrate a 30th anniversary of any kind — this one to mark his solo debut — it was sure as hell gonna have a bunch of sing-a-longs. Being a top fella with an enduring working class spirit, Barnesy has a lot of mates, and they’ve all joined in to rework some of his classics. The list of musical friends includes Keith Urban, The Living End, Journey, Shihad, Tina Arena, Steven Van Zandt, Bernard Fanning, and of course, pickings from his abundant family tree. His daughter Mahalia, who quite possibly could have a bigger voice than her father; son David Campbell, a musical theatre star; and his brother-in-law Diesel. HOUSING ISSUES
Barnesy’s Freight Train Studios is in his house, which technically makes it a home studio. But like everything Barnesy does, the whopping analogue Quad Eight Coronado console at its helm was larger than life. In the lead up to recording 30:30 Hindsight, Barnesy realised there were two things that needed reworking if he was going to house a parade of musicians. Firstly, he needed more space, and secondly, the console had to go. The Quad Eight wasn’t really the right fit for Barnesy. He’d picked it up from BJB Studios when it closed down. Sonically, it was the right choice, but it wasn’t the sort of console you could flick on at 3am to get an idea down, which is the kind of workflow you want when you have a studio in your downstairs living room. And with recording sessions bound to be a patchwork of whoever was available at any time, recall was a must. Jean-Paul Fung had engineered plenty of sessions at BJB on the Quad Eight, and had unintentionally followed the console to Freight Train. Barnesy’s daughter Mahalia had asked Fung to record her album Mahalia Barnes + The Soul Mates, Volume 2 at Barnesy’s studio. The clan liked how Fung went about his work, so ever since he’s been a part of the Barnes extended family; their ‘in-house’ engineer. Fung is used to carrying his mobile rig to sessions, and knows what flexibility requires, having engineered sessions with Eric J on The Voice. So when Freight Train needed a makeover, he brought that experience to bear. And despite his affiliation with the gorgeous Quad Eight, he knew it had to go. “It’s a beautiful machine and it’s great on everything,” said Fung. “It just didn’t make sense
in this situation. The old setup was very analogue based, with an old tape machine too. All beautiful pieces of equipment, but he doesn’t want to have to hire a full-time tech. From what I hear it’s going to a safe home where it will get many more years of love.” Another Barnesy associate, producer Kev ‘The Caveman’ Shirley, was called in to wrangle the sessions, and both he and Fung agreed they needed a more flexible, recallable system. Shirley’s only real stipulation was that it had to be ProTools. His current preference being version 8, but Fung managed to coax him into using version 11 because it was going to make turnarounds a lot faster. The setup is still evolving, lately they’ve been working out how to integrate anyone’s laptop that might be running a different DAW. Barnesy has a few UAD Apollo interfaces, and they’ve been using those to bring external computers into the mix. As it stands, it’s a hybrid system, still with plenty of analogue gear, but centred around an Avid C24 console and a new Mac Pro with ProTools HDX. Fung admits the computing power was a little overkill, “but we just wanted everything to be as fast, reliable and easy to use as possible. Especially with people coming in to write songs, the Mac Pro comes into its own if we have lots of virtual instruments.” The system is a pretty close replica of Shirley’s own tracking setup in his Malibu studio. “They didn’t need it to be a mixing facility because that’s a whole different kettle of fish,” said Shirley. “You don’t even need a console when you’re tracking as long as you’ve got good mic pres and a clean signal path from microphone to storage, whether it’s analogue or digital. And what you hear is what you’re recording because you’re monitoring through the converter all the time — no surprises. “I didn’t see the point in spending $350,000 on a console when you’re going to have other people mix your stuff somewhere else. At the end of the day, an average album takes you about maybe 10 days to mix and three months to record, depending on how deep you want to get into it. But if you’re going to spend $1500 a day in the studio to mix it, you’d have to spend a long time mixing to make that back on the console. And that doesn’t include all the outboard gear, the maintenance, speakers, acoustic treatments and what-not. “I made Joe Bonamassa’s last record on analogue. People who romanticise analogue, as I do, tend to forget there’s special characteristics with analogue you have to contend with: leaving aside the editing for a moment, if you’re recording to tape, you have to listen to tape playback and adjust accordingly because tape compression will take the top end away or make the bottom end a little fuzzy. On the other hand, when you’re listening to what the converter is doing, I would venture to suggest you’re getting a much more accurate representation of the sound you’re looking for than analogue.” To offset any analogue losses, Fung spec’d a 24 I/O Burl Audio Mothership AD/DA system as the front end for ProTools, with a couple of additional Avid interfaces to make sure they never ran out of inputs.
I love the low ego that’s involved in a situation like that. When you’re going into commercial studios in LA there’s always someone famous in the room next door A new Furman HDS-16 headphone system was also put in place, which had eight mono and four stereo channels so the musicians could sculpt their cans mix on the fly. Fung also had the chance to try out a bunch of new gear, and ended up buying some Chandler TG2 and LTD-1 preamps and a Manley Reference Cardioid microphone, which worked a treat on Barnesy’s voice. “It’s super clear, but not overly bright. It’s got warmth and body, and it can also handle Jimmy’s very loud levels. That worked quite well going in to the Chandler TG preamps and a Tube-Tech compressor.” But according to Fung, Barnesy wasn’t the loudest. Farnham had his moments, and Mahalia definitely had the pad on with a very low gain setting to make sure the compressor and ProTools had plenty of headroom. With so many guests, it was inevitable some of the contributions would be phoned in. Tina Arena recorded her vocals in France; Bernard Fanning hooked up with Nick Didia at 301 in Byron Bay for his parts; Keith Urban and Journey recorded their songs in LA; and Fung carted the Manley mic down with him to Melbourne for a session with John Farnham. With all that happening, they could often work on several songs a day, and the new system didn’t miss a beat the whole project. FREIGHT TRAIN LOUNGE
The other major change was working out how to fit everybody in. It wasn’t Band Aid Christmas carol-cramped, but it could get busy at times. Freight Train has grown over the years courtesy of a gradual space-shifting regime. The studio now occupies about a third of his house. Initially there was a control room, a larger live room and a couple of booths — all isolated. To get a bit more space, everything was reshuffled. The control room became another booth, the live room became the control room, and the lounge became the new live room. There were a couple of adjustments to the new control room — a storage box skirting the room was resonating, so they got rid of it, and carpet was laid down to take a bit of the liveliness out of it and help tame the speakers. The lounge still functions as a lounge, so no major facelift there. The major addition was a big box built to isolate guitar amps. It didn’t entirely AT 27
‘Happy 30th!’ — Barnesy having a laugh with producer Kevin Shirley and brother-in-law Diesel in his lounge room come live room.
negate the spill, but it brought the level of the amps down in the drum mics, while still keeping a little bit of interplay. Overall, everyone was happy with the way the lounge sounded. Fung reckons Barnesy’s lounge room makes for the best drum room in the country. Fung: “One half of the live room, where the couches usually go, has a really low ceiling maybe a bit more than two metres high. We put the drums there and captured a really tight, close sound and utilised the other half of the room with its seven metre-high ceilings for the big, roomy sound. I made sure to put enough room mics around the place to try and capture that as much as possible and it really added to the energy of the recordings.” It’s a working environment Shirley is comfortable with too. “As a guy who owns his own studio, it’s fantastic,” he said. “I love the low ego that’s involved in a situation like that. When you’re going into commercial studios in LA there’s always someone famous in the room next door. Whereas there’s no pressure on us at all. When it comes around to eight o’clock, Jane [Jimmy’s wife] walks in with a glass of wine in her hand and says, ‘you should go take a break for dinner.’ That’s really nice.” GET IN EARLY
Fung engineered 30:30 Hindsight, with Shirley giving him a loose rein to get sounds. It was as much about necessity as Shirley’s way of working. Each day there could be an entirely new artist, with a different setup, so each night Fung and his assistant would prepare for the next day, line check everything and be ready to push record as soon as the artist landed. Fung: “Once the sounds were pulled and AT 28
everything was working then Kevin would come in and work over the arrangement with the artist. We’d do a few takes, but not many, because we were going for a very raw, organic sound and all the artists that came in could definitely play. So it made our life and job a lot easier. Once everything sounded good, we had a few takes and had done a little bit of editing, we’d just wrap it up and start getting ready for the next band.” It’s Shirley’s MO, even if he has a lot to do, he won’t get sucked into long days. He’s always viewed producing and engineering as a job that shouldn’t require overtime. It also means there’s no timewasting when Shirley’s on the clock. “He likes to move really quickly and we ended up working shorter days than I normally would,” said Fung. “When you’re working with bands of that calibre you don’t really need to mull over those little details to get it right. We got more done by squeezing more quality into a short amount of time as opposed to dragging it out and people getting tired.” Shirley: “There’s no reason to work quickly, but there’s no point in losing the performance. So one of the things I was on at JP about was to make sure you’re running, because it doesn’t cost you to have the machine running. You’d be surprised at how many times you get an inspired performance early on. Once people get to know the songs, they settle in and become a little more rote. Happy accidents are the things that give bands and music the character. “Anyone can do a record like the Foo Fighters and ProTool or Auto-Tune it to death and put samples on everything. But that’s not something that a) I enjoy or b) want to be part of. I love when instruments go backwards and forwards and nothing has to be super tight.
“We’re human beings and we have an emotional response to the way music is performed. That’s really what I’m about, it’s got nothing to do with haste or speed. Sometimes when I’m cutting a track with Joe Bonamassa, the consummate studio musician, we’ll cut a track all day long and at the end of the day he’ll say, ‘Look, I’m sorry. People’s hands are bleeding and we’re just not getting there.’ So it’s not about haste, it’s about getting to the place where the song has some emotional integrity you can feel will transmit beyond the medium of the mix.” GAIN, SET, MATCH
With so many artists coming through, rather than trying to get the perfect gain setting for each new band or singer, Fung just tried to find a happy medium. Fung: “As soon as the band hits the first chord or sings the first note, Kevin wants to be able to use it. So it doesn’t give me a whole lot of time to make sure levels are right. If the singer is going to randomly burst out into a louder part halfway through the verse, I don’t want that to be clipping. So we generally went with a pretty safe level for everyone. Not out of laziness but purely because we just didn’t have much time and wanted to be able to use every little bit.” Fung is a perfectionist by nature, so not drilling down to the exact click on the gain knob could sometimes be frustrating. Any time he was tempted to lean over and give it one more turn, Shirley reminded him, “It doesn’t matter if the gain could be one click better. At the end of the day that’s not going to make the performance of the song better, and if that is the wrong click it could ruin the vibe or the take. Just go with the music,
Clockwise from top left: The low overhead of one half of Barnesy’s lounge room provided a controlled drum sound; The Living End’s Scott Owen; Barnesy letting rip into a Neumann; engineer JP Fung at the helm of the Avid C24.
SIGNAL CHAINS Jimmy Barnes Vocals: Manley Reference Cardioid into Chandler TG Channel and Tube-Tech CL1b compressor. Guitars: TUL G12 into Chandler TG2 or LTD-1 preamps. Drums: “Mostly Vintech preamps with a touch of EQ. The Burl convertors made a big difference,” said Fung. Drum Rooms: Coles 4038 into Mercury M72 preamps Greg Cameron: Technical Support Zachary Miller: Assistant Engineer
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the vibe of the situation and embrace it.” With vocalists often nailing it in the first three takes, Shirley’s wisdom prevailed. Everyone also had a crack with the Manley mic, except for Mahalia, who used a Neumann U67. Fung’s reasoning was he wanted the album to have as much continuity as possible, and because the Manley mic was so clear, he didn’t want to have to try and match Barnesy with duet performances on other mics from verse to verse. CAVEMAN GUITAR SOUND
For the most part, Shirley was happy for Fung to do what he liked as far as his mic placements. But he’s particular about how he mics his guitars. Shirley was involved with a South African microphone company called TUL, helping develop the G12 microphone to his tastes. It’s essentially a combination of his two favourite mics for guitar cabinets — a Shure SM57 and a Beyerdynamic M201. “His previous go-to guitar setup was those two microphones at 90 degrees,” said Fung. “This microphone is basically those combined, so we had one of those on hand and had to get the other two mics out for the other cab or guitarist. Having recorded so many heavy rock bands, he’s pretty picky about making sure the phase between the two mics is as close as possible. It sounds good in the end.” “Tully McCullagh, who makes those microphones, said to me he really liked the guitar
sound I was getting, particularly on Bonamassa’s The Ballad of John Henry album,” recounted Shirley. “He asked me what my technique was for recording them, which is a combination of microphones. So he took the miking system I had and put pink and white noise through an amplifier to get the readout of it. Then he built the microphone by tuning the diaphragm himself and manipulating the electronics until he got the same readout as we got using the two microphones. He’s a really obtuse genius. It’s quite amazing the microphone. It’s got an SPL level that’s super high; you can hit it as hard as you like and get no distortion. “It sounds amazing on a guitar amplifier when you put it next to the cone, though it doesn’t sound so good on anything else. But he’s got a whole host of other microphones that he’s developed and they’re all brilliant.” LONG TERM TENURE
McCullagh was actually one of Shirley’s earliest mentors; the owner of the studio in South Africa from which he started his career. Shirley has a knack for long haul artistic relationships like that. He talks regularly with Joe Bonamassa, having made an album almost every year with the guitarist since 2006. He’s still Iron Maiden’s go-to producer, and he first met Barnesy back in 1998 when he mixed Chisel’s The Last Wave of Summer. “It’s a really tough industry where people expect to see immediate returns,” said Shirley. “The trouble
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is the only business model that operates that way is one of instant gratification, where you can go down as quickly as you go up. And that’s long been the motive of the singles-driven record companies where their budgets are determined by the quick profits they make. I’m interested in longevity.” Having worked with both Chisel and Barnesy in solo mode, he sees them as completely separate entities where Barnesy plays different roles. “When I look at Cold Chisel, whether anyone likes to say it or not, I see a ship that really has Don Walker at the helm,” said Shirley. “Even to the point where he makes sure to get input from everyone, but he could easily write the entire album himself. “As a solo artist, Jimmy doesn’t have the constraints of fitting into a genre with one group of musicians. He really manages to access all of the intricacies of so many different genres, from country music, to rockabilly, to rock ’n’ roll, to soul, to blues, to funk. He’s done it all. He and Mahalia did Stand Up on 30:30 and it was funky as you could get. They’ve taken what was essentially a rocker and turned it into a really funky sound and it didn’t take any work. Then Love and Hate with Shihad is so f**king heavy it’s ridiculous. It’s just what Jimmy can do.” And that’s why 30:30 Hindsight works, rather than just a covers album, it’s about hearing the different spins and interpretations Barnesy’s mates take on his classic hits, without missing out on that Mack truck scream.
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BURWOOD MUSIC CENTRE At the last White Night festival in Melbourne — when the whole city stays up to watch projected visuals, eat out of restaurant food vans and explore the city’s arts precincts for odd performances — you could go and catch a bona fide Rachmaninoff performance all night at Hamer Hall. Of course, the famously stretch-fingered pianist died during World War II, so how was this possible? Well, he recorded about 35 piano rolls for the American Piano Company, on the company’s souped up pianola. The performance was played back on a restored 1920s Mason & Hamlin grand reproducing piano, which was the most expensive piano in the world when it was built. It was a beautiful performance that was spooky for its life-likeness. By comparison, the Live Performance LX replay mechanism installed on the Hamburg Steinway Model D concert grand piano at Burwood Music Centre is a Mac Pro to the Mason & Hamlin’s Commodore 64. It’s capable of reproducing 1020 dynamic levels, 256 pedal positions, and 800 samples per second — it would have blown Rachmaninoff away. It’s not just for show and tell either, studio owner and long-time engineer Allan Neuendorf is pressing it into service for any engineers out there who don’t happen to have a Model D in their live room. While you won’t get all the intermediate AT 32
positions of the LX system, you can send Allan a MIDI file, and for a small fee, he’ll mic up the piano using his collection of Schoeps and Neumann microphones, plug them into his Millennia mic preamps, and record an incredible rendition of your playing on a nine-foot Steinway in a real live room. Samplers eat your heart out. This isn’t just any off-the-showroom-floor Model D either. It took Neuendorf years to track down a pristine condition, vintage Model D, because you just can’t beat the quality of an aged soundboard. The control room is equipped with a ProTools HD rig, and Manger studio monitors employing a bending metal plate HF transducer that are well worth a listen. The overall theme of the Music Centre is high fidelity. The Audiophile Reference Recordings record bar is run by vinyl specialist Charles Lee,
and stocks formats including vinyl, CD, SACD, DVD and Blu-ray. It’s the place to go for your hi-fi fix, because after you’ve picked out your favourite Miles Davis joint, you can head into the HeadFi consultation room and get fitted for a pair of top-flight, wood veneer cans, and match them to your preferred stereo DAC. Burwood Music Centre was recently appounted the exclusive Victorian retailer of the Benchmark converter range, so the quality is up there. If headphones aren’t your thing, you can get a taste of the latest development in hi-fi speakers, playback devices and amps in the intimate performance space/showroom called the Maven Room. The theatrette can seat 32 in luxury, and is available for performances, launches, or anything that could benefit from a controlled acoustic and a Yamaha C7 grand piano — that’s right, two grand pianos under one roof.
Bringing a bit more pop sensibility to the centre is Bradshaw Music Productions. Run by producer Lee Bradshaw and marketing strategist/singersongwriter Kate Finkelstein, the pair provide fullservice artist development. Bradshaw has his own production studio running Logic, with a UA Apollo and Genelec monitors. And if tracks need to get stepped up a notch, he’s always got the main studio and the Steinway to play with. Burwood Music Centre: (03) 8683 9910 or www.burwoodmusiccentre.com.au www.audiophilereferencerecordings.com.au www.bradshawmusicproductions.com
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REVIEW
ALLEN & HEATH QU-32 Vs MIDAS M32 AT’s editorial team takes two new, value-for-money, 32-channel digital mixing consoles for a spin. Review: Mark Davie & Christopher Holder
IN THE M32 CORNER
Chris Holder, AudioTechnology Editorial Director Daily Drive: Midas Pro1 Midas M32 Lowdown: The game-changing Behringer X32 was (and is) advertised as ‘Powered by Midas’, while the M32 is Midas. That said, you can think of the M32 as an X32 with Midas preamps and faders.
MIDAS M32 NEED TO KNOW
The digital console market is in an interesting place right now. Long gone are the days where you had two choices: out-of-reach pro consoles, or severely hobbled compact digital consoles with unworkable latency, arcane user interfaces, tiny monochrome LCDs and serious reliability issues. Currently, there seems to be three main thrusts to digital console design: 1. Cheaper Pro Consoles: Here’s a market that’s chewing up inputs as quickly as manufacturers are adding them to stage boxes. There’s a pressing need for ‘unlimited’ routing flexibility, and having the DSP to chuck processing and EQ at any signal at any time. New consoles, such as A&H GLD, Yamaha QL, Midas Pro series, and others demonstrate you can meet this demand for as low as $30k. 2. ‘Stage Box’ Mixers: Mackie started it all with the DL1608 and now Presonus, Behringer, SM Pro (and inevitably others) are following. The idea is to place the console hardware on stage (like a stage box) and mix via your own device. 3. Competent Analogue Drop-ins: This relatively new breed of digital console has lots of faders, lots of preamps, and very little need to relearn the craft. The price of the DSP, the motorised faders and the preamps have come down to the point where you can have your digital console looking remarkably like your traditional analogue console.
Price $7999
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Contact National Audio Systems 1800 441 440 sales@nationalaudio.com.au
Pros Midas top-shelf preamps Classy fader units Powerful assignable section I/O Card slot Great metering & digital labels
Cons TFT display not a touchscreen & can be cluttered
Summary Feels like a Midas, sounds like a Midas, all with a Behringer X32 layout. The cheapest way of getting into a Midas digital console, with very little sacrifice in features and expandability.
Contact Technical Audio Group (02) 9419 0900 info@tag.com.au
Pros 32 channel faders Touchscreen interface Qu Drive USB stick recording
Cons No freely assignable knobs
A&H QU-32 NEED TO KNOW
Price $6499
Summary A fall-off-a-log drop-in replacement for any analogue console. So easy to use, with plenty of sophistication and expandability available for those wanting it.
IN THE QU-32 CORNER
RECORDING
Qu-32: Qu’s built-in interface streams multitrack audio to your Mac or PC via a customisable patching system. The returns from the computer can be assigned to the input channels. There’s also a multitrack USB recorder, providing 18 channels of 24-bit/48k recording and playback straight to/from your USB hard drive or stick. M32: You can record 32 tracks of live audio directly to your computer via the pre-installed USB2.0 card.
Mark Davie, AudioTechnology Editor Daily Drive: Digico SD9 Allen & Heath Qu-32 Lowdown: The Allen & Heath Qu-32 is a 32-channel version of the outrageously successful Qu-16.
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M32 I/O: The M32’s I/O is a little more Pro Series in its approach with what looks like a complement of freely assignable inputs and outputs. (Thankfully they’re pre-assigned.) The M32 has eight auxiliary ins and outs along with the 32 mic inputs. The mic amps are intended to handle line level, but we found them unprepared for the hot input from a Fostex CD player/recorder. So best use the aux inputs for hot playback sources. The I/O slot is pre-installed with a USB2.0 card but can take optional MADI, Dante, or ADAT cards.
And here’s where our review begins. Two 32-channel digital mixing consoles that can be considered as drop-in replacements for analogue equivalents. Pull the copper multicore out of your old console, pop it into one of these and off you go. FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Chris: I’ll put my cards on the table and admit that I’m about the only person I know who doesn’t own an X32! Behringer has sold squillions. So I’m coming in to this shootout without a thousand hours of X32 driving under my belt. But immediately the M32 looks way more ‘pro’ than the X32. It’s stealthy. I could imagine the M32 flying deep behind enemy lines without troubling radar. Mark: Thanks for ’fessing up Chris and I have my own admission to make. This is my first proper look at the A&H Qu platform. If the X32 has been the most popular sub five grand console around then the Qu-16 can’t be that far behind. It’s been AT 36
a belter for Allen & Heath. It’s easy to see why. I love the bent steel, single angle form factor. There’s also an instant clarity and friendliness about the layout — if the M32 is Darth Vader then the Qu-32 is Obi-Wan. THE LAYOUT
Mark: Both consoles do the ‘Fat Channel’ thing, with the gain, EQ and dynamics sitting up and to the left of the LCD. 1 I like the fact the Qu-32 has separate Gain/Frequency/Q knobs for each of the four bands. It also uses the console real estate thriftily. What takes the M32 half of its top panel, is only a quarter of the QU-32’s top strip, leaving plenty of room for an iPad rest to the side. Chris: Agreed, that’s nice. The M32 may require you to toggle through its four bands of parametric EQ, but unlike the Qu-32 my console has LED skirts around the EQ pots which provides some valuable visual feedback without recourse to the LCD. We should add there’s a separate HPF knob on each console. I’d like to say a word, well two, here about the M32’s scribble strip displays. 2 They’re amazing. Great detail, bright… only bettered by the assignable knob sections where there’s even more resolution. What’s your scribble strip like? Mark: Ha ha. Old school. ‘Chinagraph and masking tape’ old school, in fact. Chris: Right! So you make the big leap out of the analogue domain and you’re still actually scribbling? Mark: I can still name the channels, it’s just not permanently and digitally lit up above the faders. It’s there on the LCD when you select the channel.
Chris: Uh-huh. Metering Mark? Mark: The metering is very ‘compact analogue’ as well. The age-old three-LED ‘cold, warm, too hot!’ input metering and a 12-step output metering that doubles as PFL solo meters. There’s a separate metering page on the LCD with inputs on one page and outputs on another. Chris: All sounds a bit miserable compared to my six-LED metering on every channel, plus a gate and comp on/off light. The M32 also has the classic main 24-bar meter, with separate mono solo and stereo main output meters. The TFT display has separate pages for input, output, aux and FX metering, along with a kitchen sink page with everything including P16 output monitoring. Faders? Mark: They’re your classic ultra-light long-throw Allen & Heath fader. Love them or hate them, A&H are never going to change them. They snap into position extremely quickly in automation. Chris: Personally I’m a fan of those units after many years on an A&H GL analogue mixer. But saying that, the Midas units are really quite luxurious. They’re one of the key differences between the M32 and the X32. Mark: Getting back to the channel strip, do you like the way your bus send section is set up? Chris: Not especially. I know it adheres to the tradition of having your aux send knobs in the channel strip, but in this regard I think this is where the advantages of digital simply have to override any ‘keeping it old school’ worthy intentions. The M32 has 16 bus sends accessible via four knobs. 3 It works fine but I prefer the Qu-32 approach. Mark: Which is to have a pushbutton for each
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bus/mix send to the right of the master fader. 4 Hit the appropriate button and it shows each channel’s contribution to that send on the faders. You can also toggle between two main fader states — all your inputs or all your outputs, with predetermined LED colour and name switching, easy! Chris: Exactly. It’s so easy and visually makes so much more sense to me. Admittedly that’s the way the Midas Pro1 does it and that’s what I’m most used to. I should also point out that the M32 has a Fader Flip button that allows you to mix bus sends on the eight centre section faders. So I can get there in the end, but it’s another button you have to press. Mark: I’m glad you’re so enthusiastic about my console’s approach but I must reluctantly point out one failing: without recourse to the routing page, you can be tricked into thinking you might be sending signal from the vocal channel to the reverb — the send fader is up — when in fact it’s not turned on in the routing page. I found this a little frustrating. And before we move on, am I the only one who finds it odd that the fat channel is to the left of the LCD and not the other way around? This is true of both consoles: as a right hander my natural inclination is to think it’d be more ergonomic not to have to reach across my body to grab the gain knob while looking at the LCD. Chris: How do you feel otherwise about general ergonomics? Mark: I feel good. The flat angled surface of the whole console means it’s relatively comfortable for anyone standing at any height. Sitting works too. Chris: I’m yet to be totally sold on the M32’s angle on the top panel. The console has to be around
belly button height to be comfortable for anyone standing to mix, which would be a little higher than most road cases — although, admittedly I’m 190cm. And when I’m standing at the console, I’m finding myself using my thumb to press buttons on the top panel — which I don’t think is the designers’ intention. I’d suggest the layout has the sedentary engineer in mind more than someone who prefers to stand.
Qu-32 I/O: Here’s a back panel recognisable to any live sound engineer from the last 40 years. 32 mic/line inputs on XLR and TRS jacks. No direct outs or inserts required here, that’s all covered internally with the USB recording and onboard gates and compressors. Local monitoring outputs are on TRS with a volume pot near the phones output.
THE DISPLAY
Mark: I win. I have a touchscreen gem. And because it’s a touchscreen the graphics are designed to be big and easy to read at a glance. 5 The layout is coloured to draw your attention to different key elements: red knob for gain, then across the top of the screen is a level meter and gate meter, a relatively large EQ graph you can easily use, and then a comp graph with a knee diagram, with separate gain reduction and output meters. There’s no real-time bouncing dot tracking the input curve but that’d be my only negative observation. Like I said, the Qu-32 screen wins. Chris: I tend to agree. This is one aspect of the M32 that gets on my goat. The quality of the display is great, but I feel the level of detail is more deserving of its own separate computer screen with a mouse. And any time I see up/down left/ right (or let’s call it a NSEW – north, south, east, west) buttons I instantly blanch… this thing needs a mouse or trackball. Mark: Here’s where the difference between the two consoles are at their most stark I reckon. I have a Home screen with EQ and dynamics on it, and regardless of whether I’m making changes to the hi-
mids EQ or the gate, the signal path stays in view — there’s no detailed ‘blown up’ version, just tabs on the lower half to access different parameters. Chris: While I have to press the View button of the EQ or the compressor, or whatever it is I’m tweaking, to see it on screen. There’s plenty of detail — that’s fantastic — but the screen has the six pots under it that, in the case of the EQ, say, replicate what it already has dedicated knobs for. My question is: Why? When you’re relying on the screen to change an effects unit or mess about with automation, that’s when it gets tweaky and awkward. The side to side buttons take you up and down at times, and there can be two levels of parameters at the bottom of the screen, which makes things confusing. Mark: A&H’s approach is about as intuitive as you can get. Press on the screen, and tweak with the single rotary encoder. Chris: Right, but don’t get too self-satisfied, because the M32 has a secret weapon: its Assignable section. 6 The TFT GUI might be a pain but just about all is forgiven because of these four assignable pots AT 37
QU-32 SUPER STRIP
A&H calls its ‘fat’ channel a SuperStrip and includes trim, polarity, HPF, gate, insert, four-band parametric EQ, compressor and delay. The main LR and the Mono mixes have controls for Insert, 1/3-octave GEQ, compressor and delay. The stereo mixes provide Insert, four-band parametric EQ, compressor, delay and balance control. The desk houses five cores of ARM processing, with dedicated ARM cores running the touchscreen display and surface, USB streaming, Qu-Drive multi-channel USB recording/playback, Ethernet and fader automation. The DSP architecture employs varied bit depths, tailored to specific algorithms, with 48 bits on critical EQ functions and a 56-bit accumulator on the mix bus.
and eight buttons. Combine them with highly detailed scribble displays and you have a very powerful combo. Thanks to the Assignable section you can easily take care of a bunch of otherwise fiddly tasks — like real-time FX tweaks… ramp up a decay time, mute a reverb etc. What’s more, there are three banks available, so you can potentially have 12 assignable pots and 24 buttons. Performing arts centres and theatres will love this Assignable section where they’re working on automation-heavy productions and you don’t want to hunt and peck for parameters. The Assignable section works with the scene automation, so each song, act, or band change can have a different set of assignable parameters as you move through the scene changes. Yes, it requires some programming but the rewards are worth it. Mark: That’s all very impressive. In the Qu-32’s defence it does have 10 SoftKeys for user-assignable functions such as Mute Groups, Tap Tempo, scene navigation or PAFL Clear. Chris: The M32 has six of its own dedicated mute group buttons in addition to all the other assignable knobbage. And getting back to that, the M32’s LCR routing will also catch the eye of theatres as well. It took me a minute to figure out what the Main Bus pot was for (at the right of the fat channel) but, yes, you have easy independent routing to a mono centre channel.
Chris: From an individual channel perspective, there are plenty of M32 factory channel settings: drums, vocals, guitars… and of course you can store your own. Intriguingly there are some ‘signature’ channel presets — ‘Moshe’, ‘Whiskey’, ‘BBM’ — guest engineers lending an ear to my signal path. It’s cool to see someone else’s kick drum EQ but some settings could get a novice into deep water. For example, ‘BBM’ has decided to put a great hacking noise gate on a Female Vocal preset that wreaked havoc. And perhaps ‘Whiskey’s’ 158Hz hi-pass filter and low-mid tonal slaughter is the only way to get a good sound at Whisky A-GoGo on the Sunset Strip! Not sure. Mark: Similar deal here without the oddball celebrity presets. By hitting either the gate/EQ/ comp sections, you can recall either a global channel setting for the library or a specific setting for that processor. You can also tell it whether you want to recall the preamp setting too. There are only three factory presets for vocal, drum and bass. You can also store and recall effects settings with separate file structures for User and Factory. Nothing fancy; but very serviceable. Chris: Looks like both consoles have a similar approach to snapshot automation, where you can lockout certain functions or channels. Saying that, the M32 has dedicated Next and Previous buttons for riffling through the automation pack.
AUTOMATION
Mark: Both consoles have real-time analysers. The Qu-32’s RTA is specifically designed to red flag problem frequency bands. It’s a global RTA that
Mark: We touched on automation. We should probably go into some more detail. AT 38
REAL TIME ANALYSERS
M32 CHANNEL STRIP
The M32 DSP features 40-bit floating point processing with 40 input channels (32 input channels, six aux and a stereo USB input) and 25 mix buses (16 internal, six matrix and LCR). The 32 input channels have access to all DSP sections and are very well featured. First up is Gain (-12 to +60dB), polarity, channel delay (up to 500ms max), adjustable high-pass filter, and gate/ducker. An insert point is included next which can be set before or after the compressor/expander and EQ (four-band parametric) block. This insert can be routed to the internal effects or physical I/O for external processing. Gates and compressors feature key inputs with filters (hi-pass, lo-pass and band-pass) these can be driven from any channel, aux, effects return or mix bus. The signal path continues through mute, fader and pan (L/R or LCR depending on pan mode). From there, signal can be routed to any of the 16 analogue output buses. The six TRS aux inputs and USB inputs feature a somewhat reduced signal path losing the Gate (gate/ducker) and Dynamics (compressor/expander) sections. The internal effects are simpler again with just mute, fader, pan and bus routing. The main output (L/R, LCR) and buses feature more powerful EQ (six-band parametric), plus a compressor/expander.
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responds to whatever is PFL’d on the input side, not the output. It’s a stereo RTA and presented in bargraphs — 31 bands from 20Hz-20kHz… although curiously the GEQ bands and fader layout only range from 31Hz-16kHz in 28 bands. Chris: I like the M32’s RTA. It’s always there to be consulted on every input and 100-band resolution provides some very hi-res insight. I regularly work with a headset presenter with some complex sibilance issues and it was good to have some RTA visual feedback when you make some deep hi-Q HF notches. It’s worth noting that neither console is trying to replace Smaart. Although there’s nothing stopping you from plugging in a measurement mic and taking a measurement of the PA in the room.
REMOTE MIXING
THE SOUND
Chris: I have one word for you Mark: XL4 preamps. Mark: That’s two words, but I know where you’re going with that. So are they the exact same units? Chris: Apparently. They certainly sound the same as the Pro1 — whisper quiet, plenty of clarity, plenty of panning resolution… lovely. Mark: The Allen & Heath AnalogIQ preamp is a padless design with loads of gain. It’s a lovely sounding preamp. Admittedly without the fabled Midas euphonic distortion characteristics. Chris: Yes, thanks for bringing that up Mark. They’re preamps that love to be driven hard for some pleasing fur on the sound. The more expensive Pro1 allows you to drive the analogue gain and then, if necessary, back things off with a digital trim (while retaining the distortion you’re after). The M32 doesn’t immediately make that available – it’s not on the channel strip – which is more of a pain when setting up pre-fade mixes or driving a compressor. However, if you dig a little, there is a page where you can adjust digital trim (it’s primarily designed as a feature that allows more AT 40
than one surface to ‘gain share’ with the same stage box), it just takes a little more faffing to make it happen. Regardless, these are great preamps and, I would suggest, the single biggest reason why anyone would prefer the M32 to the X32. Any thoughts about the sound of the EQ or the effects? Mark: The EQ sounds excellent. Ringing out a wedge or adding some body to an acoustic guitar; it all comes easily. I’m also blown away by the breadth of choice of the effects and processors. It would take me months to form an opinion about them all but it’s certainly a mouth watering prospect marrying your sources to your favourite effects. Chris: Pultec, UREI, BBE, Lexicon… there are some great effects, EQ and processors in the M32 virtual rack as well. There’s actually more choice than on the Pro1. Many of the FX have been physically modelled. This is all on top of the channel EQ and compression of course.
Both the Midas M32 and Allen & Heath Qu-32 have extremely competent iPad/iPod control. Chris: If I have a complaint about the M32 , it’s with the user friendliness of its seven-inch display. My iPad however, delivers a pitch perfect rebuttal. The M32-Mix iPad app is brilliantly laid out and very easy to manipulate. The faders are absolutely lag-free, silky smooth and feel great. The iPad interface is more than ‘convenient’ or a nice ‘value add’ it supercharges the console. You’ll be using it to set up a mix, naming channels, taking care of gain, EQ and dynamics; setting monitor levels, as a second screen for monitoring RTAs/levels. Utterly compelling. Mark: A&H might have been one of the last to get onto the ‘more me’ personal monitoring band wagon, but they’re one of the first to realise all the hardware you need is right in the pocket of most musicians already. The Qu-You (above) has a ‘Four Wheel Drive’ view presenting chunky thumbwheel level controls for four groups of sources, plus a master mute and output level control. Double tapping on a group gives access to individual channel metering, send levels and stereo pan. Groups can be named for instant recognition and channels can be assigned to groups via simple checkboxes, allowing the user to create their perfect custom mix. How cool is that?! The Qu-Pad (above left) is excellent as well. It’s well laid out; everything is ‘touch’-able with no virtual knobs, and the interface is all the better and more intuitive for it. For example, grabbing EQ nodes, pulling them and pinching them to get the desired EQ shape is a doddle, as is working with the comp/gate.
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CONCLUSIONS
The Allen & Heath Qu-32 and Midas M32 go head to head during Mark and Chris’s AT’s road test.
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Mark: From the top, one of our biggest review criterion was how successful our console is as an analogue drop-in replacement. I’d suggest the Qu-32 wins on that front. If ‘analogue-ness’ is important to you then the Qu-32 is a winner. Yes, there some hidden digital-console depths but anyone can hop on and drive this mixer. Chris: I’d agree with that. On the other hand, the M32 is an intriguing beast. It’s a hybrid. Music Group (the parent company of Midas and Behringer) has filled a gap in the market, and I’ve no doubt the M32 will win plenty of hearts and minds; but not necessarily of those who are accustomed to Midas digital consoles — this is something different. As far as lineage, the M32 is a Behringer digital console. Thanks to the preamps it sounds like a Midas. Thanks to the faders, it feels like a Midas. But there’s no familial resemblance to any other digital Midas console. This isn’t a criticism, simply an observation. Mark: There’s something about the Qu-32 that really feels right. For starters, it’s a 32-channel console with 32 faders. Chris: Ah. Very subtle. While the M32 has 24? That’s true. But the M32 is without question more ‘pro’. For example, if you’re spec’ing a console for a performing arts centre where your bread and butter is weekly/daily changeovers with automation-heavy musical theatre, school groups and eisteddfods, then the M32 wins the day. There’s more pro features: better metering, deeper automation, better channel legending. Otherwise I believe the consoles are neck and neck when it comes to the amount of DSP available — what you can throw at each channel; the effects capabilities, etc. Mark: And both consoles are very capable with their approach to recording and expandability. And let’s not forget the Qu-32 is cheaper.
Chris: Right. In fact, the Qu-32 is doubtlessly stealing customers from the more affordable X32. Mark: At this more budget end of the market, do you think there’s much in the name on the badge: Allen & Heath versus Midas? Chris: They’re both hugely respected names with decades of pedigree. But live sound engineers have made careers out of the Midas preamp. So that’s still not to be underestimated. Mark: I’m really impressed with the Qu approach. Powerful, uncluttered, easy to use… I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone as a no-brainer drop-in replacement for an analogue console. Everyone from rental companies to schools, churches, AV production companies… this is a console in the best traditions of Allen & Heath — an everyman’s mixer that I’ve no doubt will just run and run. Chris: I have a few reservations about the user interface but can a gazillion X32 sales be wrong? There’s no doubting that this is a powerful, featurerich console with top spec preamps and faders. And the M32 will certainly reward an owner/ operator’s investment of time. Make the M32 your own and you really do have a console that’s worth twice the price.
FURTHER READING
AT91 for X32 review – Guy Harrison AT97 for Qu-16 review – Mark Woods Both reviews can be read on the AT website.
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AT 42
AT 43
REVIEW
DYNACORD PM502 POWERED MIXER The humble Besser block of yore may be long gone, but the powered mixer still has plenty of appeal. Review: Christopher Holder
MONO
Five mic preamps with three-band EQ, a pre-fade aux send and a post-fade FX send.
STEREO
Three channels shared by two pair of RCA inputs, two L/R jack inputs and the front panel USB input.
MIC PROCESSING Compression, ducking and effects.
7-BAND EQ
Three independent settings can be strapped across each mix output.
LCD
NEED TO KNOW
Easy enough to dive in and tweak the system settings via the LCD — FX, processing, GEQ, routing and more.
PRICE $1695 CONTACT Bosch: (02) 9683 4752 boschcomms@au.bosch.com
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PROS Three independent outputs. Routing flexibility with the amp channels. 100V line ‘Direct Drive’ mode.
CONS No per-channel on/off button. Limited metering.
SUMMARY The best compact powered mixer on the market? Thanks to the PM502’s DSP, routing flexibility, Direct Drive 100V line mode and portability… the answer is yes.
My, how the humble powered ‘brick’ has grown up! Prior to lightweight Class D amplification coming of age, the portable powered mixer adhered to a very familiar form factor: 19-inch wide, normally about 4U high, a humble array of basic EQ, knobbage and metering, and heavy enough to suck passing comets into its orbit. These unglamorous workhorses would be in every PA rental inventory (let’s not forget that powered PA boxes were until this millennia something only Meyer Sound really considered worth the hassle and Meyer never did anything portable), and in most pubs and clubs. When not in use they would prop doors open, and keep corrugated iron roofs from blowing away in the cyclone season. Powered PAs have eroded the ‘brick’s’ market, making way for more highly featured small format (‘unpowered’) consoles with better EQ, more auxes, and even some basic effects. The brick has had its day. Or has it? Dynacord has identified a market for a smallformat powered mixer that is largely unmet by the current crop of products. The new PM502 is that product and it’s really rather good. LIGHTS ON
When I first pulled the PM502 out of its box I involuntarily threw the unit up over my head like an Armenian weightlifter. I couldn’t believe how light (4.9kg) and compact it was. The layout is easy and uncluttered — you don’t need fingers like knitting needles to operate the channel EQ. Plug in a mic and turn up the gain, you’re underway. There are three stereo inputs (including two pairs of RCA), which is more than customary on a compact mixer but is right for the market (think: iPods, DJs, the AM/FM receiver). What’s more you can plug in a USB stick and the PM502 will read and play back music via the LCD. For the purposes of this review I plugged the Speakon connectors into a couple of passive Bose foldback monitors. Talking into an AKG D880 dynamic mic there was plenty of clean level — whisper quiet even when cranking the 65dB of gain (there’s a global phantom power switch for condenser mics). The amp is rated at 2 x 450W (max. @ 1kHz) into 4Ω, which is perfectly adequate for a 12+horn box in most general purpose applications. No one is contending the PM502’s amplification will set the dancefloor alight or shake the chandeliers, but there’s more than enough welly for any portable application. I then connected the Master B outputs into a pair of 15+horn active FBT loudspeakers. It was a neat combination. There’s some routing flexibility that means I could send the Aux foldback output to the Speakons rather than the default Master A output. It demonstrated to me how the PM502 can happily jump into any passive/active loudspeaker combo. After plugging my iPod into a pair of RCA sockets I was able to test some of the bingo call/ DJ/aerobic instructor features. The PM502 features a very capable ducker called Talk Over. There are four presets that provide various levels of music attenuation and shape of the ducker’s ADSR envelope.
The compressor is also quite well spec’ed and easy to use. I guess you’d call it ‘master bus’ compression — you can’t switch it in on a perchannel basis. You can select from a handful of presets, everything from brickwall limiting to the more gentle Uplift Soft setting, and then, if you so desire, dig in and make changes to the threshold, attack, release, and ratio via the LCD. Rounding out the master section features is an effects engine. As you’d expect, every channel (mono and stereo) has a post-fade FX pot, while the master section has FX send and FX return master pots. There’s a handy smorgasbord of reverbs, delays and modulation effects to choose from. What’s more, you can use the footswitch input to turn the effect on/off (handy for mix-ityourself musicians).
NIFTY FEATURES Master B control can be delayed: You can set the delay in feet, metres or milliseconds (up to 145.8ms) — which is great for setting up delay stacks in a pub or indeed just setting your main PA to align with guitar amps on stage or your subs. Multiple levels of lockout: Essential for certain installs to stop prying hands from accidentally (or maliciously) tweaking system settings. USB interface: take a 16-bit digital tap from the desk straight to your PC without any additional hardware.
DISPLAY
The PM502’s LCD takes care of all housekeeping duties. It’s a familiar ‘one pushbutton pot’ affair. Anyone who’s used an iPod won’t have any trouble getting around the UI. There are plenty of rewards for those who take the time to jump in. For example, at first glance you might assume the seven-band graphic EQ is set to work across the main stereo output, but you’ll discover you can have a different, independent GEQ set up for all three. You’ll also discover a somewhat arcane LPN page. The so-called low-pass notch filters are a proprietary Dynacord feature designed to squeeze some more low-end impact out of a smaller system. It’s a little like the ‘bass boost’ button on your old ghetto blaster, although it’s more dynamic than a simple EQ contour. THE DIRECT APPROACH
There’s plenty to like about the PM502 package. Combining a traditional rackmount mixer interface with a very serviceable array of digital processing, it will slot into plenty of installs which require more mixing features than a basic zone mixer. I won’t pretend that it’s a FOH engineer’s mixing board of choice: the tone controls are broadbrush
and the metering is quite rudimentary. Rather, the PM502 is built for ease of use on the front end. Installers will get a real kick out of the the 100V Direct Drive mode, so you can plug in your constant voltage speakers via the Euroblock connectors on the back panel. This is a fantastic, out-of-the-box boon for venues with multi-speaker, distributed systems or where distance is a factor. Installers will also love the three-stage, four-digit, password-protected lockout mode. ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL
The brick is dead, long live the brick… albeit a featherweight, DSP-turbo-charged ‘brick’ with some very 21st century features. If your work doesn’t require you to mix so much as ‘set levels’, then the PM502 is a sophisticated and powerful solution with some professional installfriendly features. My final observation and something that instils considerable confidence, is the fact that Dynacord didn’t contrive a way of expressing the Class D amp power as 2 x 500W (rather than 450W) thus pushing it over the combined magical ‘1000W’ marketing threshold. Thank you Dynacord. Thank you for being so scrupulously German.
POWERED OUT
The powered outputs are on Speakon connectors. Use the Euroblock connectors as stand-in binding posts if needs be.
USB
The PM502 is also an audio interface. Plug directly into your PC for a two-channel desk mix.
AT 45
REVIEW
IZOTOPE RX4 iZotope is well and truly established as a noise reduction force. Now it’s trying to entice RX users further into its standalone app by laying out some new treats.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Brent Heber
PRICE RX4: $369 (boxed), $349 (serial) RX4 Advanced: $1199 Upgrade prices from $149 CONTACT Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or sales@elfa.com.au
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PROS New Connect workflow. Clip gain, Leveler & loudness plug-in working in concert. Easier EQ matching. New time-saving Advanced plug-ins.
CONS New workflow means a small learning curve.
SUMMARY The upgrade to RX4 is well worth it for Advanced users, despite V3 being so ‘young’. Izotope is attempting to get its users to migrate towards the standalone app, and has made the transition pretty seamless.
If you go back a few years, the major names in noise reduction were Sonic Solutions and Cedar. But the price of admission was up there, often north of $5000 and stayed there for years. There were always a few cheaper options from Waves and the like, but none seemed to ‘cut through the noise’ until iZotope debuted its RX suite. When RX came onto the scene with a price tag around $500, the first impression when comparing it to the big names was it didn’t seem to be 90% worse. Far from it, RX produced solid results and soon gathered a massive following. The latest incarnation, RX4 is a suite of diverse plug-ins and a standalone app, but the relationship between the two has changed with this update. CONNECTING THE DOTS
Key to the version four release is a fairly dramatic change in workflow. Although a standalone app has been available for several versions now, many ProTools operators preferred to use Audiosuite inside their DAW for rendering fixes, storing presets with sessions and templates, and preventing yet another application from chewing up processing on an older ‘tired’ computer. RX4 changes all that with its new Connect system that encourages users to migrate to the standalone app, while still linking into their DAW of choice. I assume this means iZotope will, over time, minimise its host based plug-ins, making RX’s ongoing development simpler. The first big sign of this is the removal of the flagship Spectral Repair Audiosuite plug-in for ProTools from V4. It’s now only available inside the standalone app (although if you are upgrading from an earlier version you can choose to keep that installed alongside RX4 and still access the older Audiosuite plug-ins). In ProTools, two new plug-ins make this link with the standalone app possible: an Audiosuite Connect plug-in to send files between the DAW and the standalone app, and a real-time AAX Connect plug-in which provides Rewire-style monitoring of the standalone app inside your mixer, typically on an aux going straight to your speakers. There are similar Connect plug-ins for linking the standalone app with most other major DAWs too. As a long term RX user and ProTools boffin I really wasn’t interested in changing the way I work but a few other aspects of the V4 release enticed me in and I must say I now totally dig the new workflow. If I need to clean something up I hate mousing around for plug-ins so I tend to have a windows configuration for repair, which opens about six plug-ins with settings for common problems in that session. The problem with this workflow is every time I recall that configuration each plug-in polls the iLok for authentication, taking a little bit of time to open, multiplied by six and it really slows me down. Using the Connect system, I simply click the Send button and switch to the RX standalone app. It can have a stack of RX plug-ins and Audio Unit plug-ins open on screen without needing to re-authenticate each time, making it much faster to
switch between. Also it can go full screen so I can use Spaces in Mac OS X to move from ProTools to RX and back very easily, maximising screen real estate. The only trick on sending files back and forth is that your selection must be the same length on returning to ProTools and you don’t have the advantage of Audiosuite handles introduced in PT10, so be sure to grab a bit of surrounding audio before processing if needed. NEW TOOLS
The standard version of RX4 also received a new plug-in called the Dialogue Denoiser which was originally introduced to the Advanced version of RX3 only. This is a great plug-in I use in most of my TV work for just a bit of noise reduction, as it runs real-time with minimal system delay and automatically adjusts to shifting noise floors without needing to learn via a selection. I’m a big fan of real-time noise reduction to speed up my mix and between automating this and Waves’ W43/WNS noise reduction plug-ins, I rarely have to render passes in Audiosuite and break the flow of my edit or mix. Both versions of RX4 also incorporate a ‘clip gain’ workflow very similar to host DAWs. It allows easy gain balancing between breakpoints within a clip, and is rendered on export back to your host. For RX4 Advanced users, some very attractive tools were introduced in this version. The Leveler uses RMS and peak detection to generate clip gain that smoothes out longer selections of dialogue, and further tweaking for best results specific to the program in front of you is easy. It’s fast and quite workable for smoothing out some of the worst gain structure problems on quick turnaround material, saving quite a bit of time and without any noticeable pumping/compression issues. iZotope Insight arrived with Advanced V3, and it’s my go-to loudness meter. RX4 Advanced now includes a loudness plug-in that measures within the standalone app and then facilitates quick gain adjustment to meet delivery requirements. It’s very useful when combined with the Leveler tool. Another handy tool helps minimise the time spent searching for matching room tone to connect and cover picture edits when you’re trying to clean up dialogue for film and TV. Advanced now provides a plug-in specifically for this, which seems to be very similar to using the older Denoising plug-in to identify consistent noise in a clip, isolate it and generate a file without the offending dialogue in it. It’s much faster than trying to find gaps in people talking that match the lengths you need. Lastly, iZotope Ozone has had EQ matching tools for some time, but the process of learning an EQ curve and then applying it to a clip has been simplified in both flavours of RX4. A GAMBLE WORTH TAKING
Overall, I was very cautious about altering my workflow to accommodate to the new RX Connect paradigm, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised and really started to enjoy it within a few hours of work. Being able to select much larger and longer
iZotope RX4 now uses plug-ins to connect you with its standalone app. The Spectral Repair plugin is also missing from the Audiosuite list, so you’ll need to use Connect.
pieces of audio for treatment in the standalone app compared to Audiosuite has sped up my work and the new plug-ins in Advanced are intuitive and produce very useful results, particularly in the world of reality TV where production audio is often lacklustre and turnaround times on audio post are shrinking every project. Of course, using OS X spaces to flick your screen back and forth between double screens of your host DAW and double screens of RX is quite impressive and leaves your client thinking you clearly know what you’re doing, which is a bonus that can’t be quantified! Electric Factory is matching the US retail prices in Aussie dollars, making RX4 cheaper in Oz at the moment. AT 47
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