AudioTechnology App Issue 20

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

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Software

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NEW

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

NEW Avid S3 – Compact, 16-Fader, EUCON-enabled, ergonomic desktop control surface that offers a streamlined yet versatile mixing solution.

HDX – when only the best will do.

Unrivalled DSP power

RME FIREFACE UFX

UNIVERSAL AUDIO APOLLO QUAD

limited qty available with free thunderbolt card – be quick

KOMPLETE 10 AND KOMPLETE 10 ULTIMATE

SPECTRASONICS OMNISPHERE

ANTELOPE ORION 32 (Zen also available)

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Plug-ins SOFTUBE CONSOLE 1

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Limited stock available

NEW

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HOT STEINBERG UR44

DSP Power UAD Satellite now available with Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt HD native available enquire now

THE COMPLETE PRO TOOLS PROFESSIONAL STUDIO

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

Contact Ron for details.

APOGEE SYMPHONY NEW

SSL ALPHA AX

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

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

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AKG C414XL11

RODE NT USB NEW

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

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Studio Monitors

KORG KRONOS X88

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GENELEC 8040 SPEAKERS

EVENT OPAL

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NEW

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YAMAHA 01V96i

Digital Media Recorders

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NEW AIRA range DSI PROPHET 12 KEYBOARD

AVAILABLE NOW SYSTEM-1: PLUG-OUT SYNTHESIZER

NORD ELECTRO 4D

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

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

TB-3: TOUCH BASSLINE

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

TR-8: RHYTHM PERFORMER

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

$2299

NEW ZOOM H5

POCKETRAK PR7

ROLAND FA08 Taking the Work Out of the Music Workstation.

FA-06 (61-keys) Available.

VT-3: VOICE TRANSFORMER

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

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REGULARS

ED SPACE Split Personalities Column: Christopher Holder

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

This issue, AT editorial director Chris Holder and I took a couple of similarly-priced, similarly spec’d live mixing consoles out for a test drive. On the face of it, what seemed like a simple head-to-head — where a purely spec-by-spec comparison would tip the scales in the favour of one — was nothing of the sort.

Unfortunately, there’s this irritatingly diverse species, called humans, who tend to operate these things. And no two are exactly alike: fat, thin, organised, fast, tall, short, dopey, sleepy… [okay, where to I fit into that spectrum… fat ’n’ dopey? – CH.] A simple pros and cons wouldn’t suffice, there’s psychology here. We had to dig deep, get out our CSI outfits on and start profiling. And here are just a few live ones: Loquacious Luddite: You’re anal about analogue, and proud of it. Doesn’t matter if it’s hard to use, or the format is harder to source than a sack of ‘cup of excellence’ coffee.

You’ll still use it. If anyone so much as leans towards ones and zeros, they’ll be put in their place. After all, you have some big words on your side that no one can easily define, like euphonic. When have you ever heard that used to describe a digital system? Case closed.

Your Pick: If it ain’t an XL4, you’re not playing.

Digitally Distracted: You don’t have the money, but you do have the time. So you save one and waste the other by chewing up every free plug-in that pops up on KVR. You have triplicates of every plug-in type out there, and your list of dynamics plugs alone takes half a song to scroll through.

Your Pick: Whichever comes with the most analogueemulated plug-ins.

Cheap & Cheery: You’re fine with budget buys, and happy to let everyone know how they’re exactly like the real thing. But that noise floor is quickly creeping up on you in a whoosh of white noise.

Your Pick: Chinese copies of Chinese-made gear, because it’s ‘out of the same factory anyway’.

Best Buy: Only the best will do. Even if it means not doing anything until you’ve got what you ‘need’; you’re willing to pay the price.

Your Pick: The latest ‘flagship’ model.

Of course, none of these are helpful at all. They don’t in any way speak to what we actually need, just our wants.

We each have our preferences, but our natural leanings AT 4

don’t help us quantify their relative importance. For instance, when you’re going to spend week-in and week-out touching faders, should their accuracy, speed, and feel of the plastic on your fingertips, outweigh the faithfulness of a plug-in’s GUI? Should the size of a knob be congruous to your particularly chubby digits and esoteric tastes, or is the smoothness of its rotation more significant?

The first question we should be asking ourselves is, do I need it? Unfortunately, the answer is always, ‘Of course!’

You’re no help. So we have to rely on a few extra questions here to override your needy impulses. Part 1: Do you even have a job to do? Part 2: Do you really need it to do the job, I mean, really can’t function without it? Part 3: Repeat those two parts over and over again while looking at your old gear, number of gigs you had in the last year and your bank account statement, till you either feel silly, definitely sure it’s the right thing to do, or your want has stubbornly mutated into a right to possess the gear.

Perhaps the second point you’d expect to see on here is price. But price is the impatient version of budget. Budget is a much better way of framing something, because it not only has a component of ‘how much cash do I have to spend?’ but a time factor too. For instance, if there’s a pressing need, your budget is, in fact, how much cash you have on hand. But if it’s more of a long-term want or upgrade, then you can ‘budget’ for it. Let’s leave price at the end of the line, when the only sense you’re relying on is a nose for a bargain.

Then profile the people you’re buying it for. Because if it’s a school, production company, theatre, church, pub, government organisation, then there are other people involved, and plenty of other people that need to work on it. Somehow, you’ve got to hit the sweet spot of all those preferences.

And, of course, you need to think about the people you’re going to be mixing for, and what they should be hearing.

In between all of those will be a list of features that marries up with needs, budget, and profiles. The knobs and faders will take care of themselves. Because that’s what a lot of manufacturers are doing. They’re trying to hit a sweet spot of a particular type of user. Why? Because if they go too broad, they’ll likely not please anyone. So you have to figure out who you are first, before you find the gear that suits you.

Proofreading Andrew Bencina Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark James Dampney Andrew Bencina Brent Heber Anthony Garvin Cover Image Richard Ecclestone Distribution by: Network Distribution Company.

AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628).

Contact (Advertising, Subscriptions) T: +61 2 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia.

Contact (Editorial) T: +61 3 5331 4949 PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia.

E: info@alchemedia.com.au W: www.audiotechnology.com.au

All material in this magazine is copyright © 2014 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process 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. 20/4/2015.

Introducing the new NTR active ribbon microphone from RĂ˜DE The finest ribbon microphone ever made.

Hear it for yourself at rode.com/ntr

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COVER STORY

Wrench in the Works: David Wrench Mixes Jungle, FKA twigs & Caribou

ISSUE 20 CONTENTS

Broad Church: Making of Further/Deeper

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EV 4-EV-A: Biggest EV Mic Collection in the Country

32

DIY: Keep Overheads Low ‘Don’t Be A Tool’ Says Zammuto

38

Avid Pro Tools S6 Control Surface

Korg Electribe

PC Audio AT 6

20

52

56

Heritage Audio 500 Series Neve Clones

Studio Focus: A Sharp

46

Apple Notes

48

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47

BE D1 TO COME TO TOWN

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D1 BE ON LY AND

D1

www.sennheiser-D1.com AT 7

GENERAL NEWS

KORG REINVENTS TUBE Korg is set to revolutionise vacuum tubes, with the help of Japanese tech firm Noritake, making them smaller and more affordable to run. The companies have joined forces to develop a new miniaturised and high performance vacuum tube – the Nutube 6P1.

For the last 50 years, the vacuum tube has largely remained the same, most manufacturers stopped producing them in the ’70s and since then, supply has been unpredictable and little to no research has been done to improve their performance or make them relevant to today’s digital technology.

All of that is set to change, with the Nutube bringing the vintage sound of vacuum tubes into the new millennium. The newly-developed Nutube is small, it’s less than 30% of the size of conventional vacuum tubes. The smaller size allows it to be directly mounted to circuit boards, without the need for a socket. It uses much less power, reportedly only 2% of the power needed for conventional vacuum tubes and it offers (up to) 30,000 hours of continuous operating life.

Meaning battery operation will be less costly and they won’t need to be replaced as often. The

re-designed tube operates as a complete triode, constructed using an anode, grid, and filament and will also feature the Noritake vacuum fluorescent displays. Production of the new tubes will take place at Noritake’s state-of-the-art Japanese production facility, which Korg says will significantly raise the product quality.

“As an electronic component, a vacuum tube has the disadvantages of being larger than a transistor, having a shorter lifespan, and a higher power consumption, and although many people like the sound of a vacuum tube, historically they have been more difficult to deal with,” stated Fumio Mieda, Korg’s longstanding developer who was involved in creating the MS-20 synthesiser from the late ’70s. “The Nutube sets us free from these many limitations, making it possible for us to think about using it in new products.”

The 6P1 has been tuned especially for Korg products, and the company says a number of new products featuring it are currently in development, with announcements expected later this year.

PRESONUS 192 TAKES COMMAND The Studio 192 is not just a USB 3.0 audio interface.

Thanks to some nifty console ‘centre section’ features, Presonus likes to think of it as a Studio Command Centre. The new 26 x 32 interface records at up to 192k and combines eight digitally controlled XMax Class A solid-state mic preamps and BurrBrown converters (for 118dB of dynamic range) with StudioLive Fat Channel signal processing. The command centre features are in its ability to manage speaker switching and talkback (with onboard condenser microphone), featuring main mix mute, mono, and dim. PreSonus’ remote controllable XMAX solid-state preamps use the same circuitry as the

StudioLive AI consoles, but add a separate digital volume-control circuit for digital recall without affecting the sound quality.

The Studio 192 I/O includes: two front-panel mic/ instrument inputs and six rear-panel mic/line inputs; 16-channel ADAT optical in and out (eight channels at 88.1 or 96k); coaxial, stereo S/PDIF I/O; and BNC wordclock I/O. You get eight balanced TRS outputs, balanced stereo main outputs, and two headphone amplifiers with independent outputs and level controls.

Australian Distribution: National Audio Systems 1800 441 440 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au

ROLAND’S FOUNDER RETURNS Atelier Vision Corporation (ATV) will be exhibiting for the first time internationally at the 2015 Frankfurt Musikmesse/Pro Light & Sound exhibition. So what, you might say. This is no ordinary start-up, not when Ikutaro Kakehashi is behind it, who many will know as Roland Corporation’s founder.

ATV’s audio and video product lines will be focusing on applications in the broadcast, entertainment, networking, corporate AV, events, installation, and digital signage markets internationally — pretty darn broad. For the MI arm of the business, the company will

focus on electronic products in the drums, percussion, keyboards, and guitar segments.

Atelier Vision’s production and twin R&D departments have been located in Japan from the company’s inception (the Hamamatsu R&D centre handles MI products, while the Matsumoto centre looks after AV), but from the first, a European office was planned to handle sales and marketing for the EMEA region, headed by Paulo Caius, former President of Roland Iberia.

Atelier Vision Europe: www.ateliervisioneurope.com

SSL DELTA? BRAVO SSL is busting out the authentic Greek wiggly lower case delta for this release (δ) but for everyone’s sanity we’ll stick with the English alphabet. Introducing Solid State Logic’s new Duality Delta and AWS Delta consoles. The Delta version features an innovative new automation system that will more elegantly marry your DAW to the the best of SSL analogue. Here’s how it works: At the heart of D-Ctrl is a native AAX/RTAS/ AU/VST/VST3 plug-in that allows automation of the console as if it were a DAW plug-in. The automation system in the DAW is used to record and playback control data from the faders and switches on the console as an alternative to the SSL legacy console automation system. The D-Ctrl plug-in is inserted into a DAW mixer audio channel. The plug-in then receives and

sends control data from an assigned console channel, VCA or Master fader via a high-speed Ethernet Network connection. Audio on the DAW track passes through the plug-in slot unprocessed so the plug-in can be combined with other DAW plug-ins. The console Fader, mutes and relevant switches are represented as plug-in parameters in a D-Ctrl plug-in GUI and their automation data is recorded to the automation lane of the selected DAW channel. In playback the plug-in converts the stored automation data from the DAW into D-Ctrl messages and routes these back to the console via the SSL Logictivity Network connection.

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

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LIVE NEWS

AVID VENUE S6L LANDS Just when Avid’s Venue live consoles have been getting a bit long in tooth, first we see the S3L-X and now the large-format, flagship S6L. There’s plenty of processing – with over 300 processing channels — thanks to a chunky engine, combined with a very modern touchscreen-based UI. Highlights include: high-performance preamps running at high sample rates; integrated, on-board plug-ins from Avid and our development partners; Pro Tools capabilities, including Virtual Soundcheck, over Ethernet AVB and Thunderbolt with no interface required; share I/O across multiple networked systems with advanced gain tracking; and instant access to most important functions through hires touchscreens and OLED displays.

A complete Venue S6L System includes the following control surface, engine, and I/O components: Control surface (available in three configurations):

JUST SPOTTED: MEYER LEOPARD Leopard and the 900-LFC join Meyer Sound’s flagship Leo Family as its smallest and most versatile members.

Boasting “tremendous power-to-size ratio with ultra-low distortion”, the Leopard line array loudspeaker and the 900-LFC sub element promises to serve up plenty of clarity, power, precision, and ease of use. Leopard and 900-LFC are designed to create an “exceptional listening experience” across a wide variety of applications from rental to install and rock ‘n’ roll to classical.

The system boasts: greater phase coherence and seamless, uniform coverage; “10 times less distortion” with significantly more power than similar products in the same class; newly designed and highly efficient class-D amplifiers that “virtually eliminate distortion” while consuming less power and generating less heat; Leopard can both anchor a main system in a mediumsized venue or integrate with Lyon in down- and out-fill systems; six Leopard and two 900-LFC loudspeakers can be flown using a half-ton motor; 900-LFC offers “exceptional low frequency, clarity and impact” inherited from its big brother, the 1100-LFC. Meyer Sound: meyersound.com/product/leopard/ AT 10

• S6L-32D: 32 + 2 faders, 96 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen, 3 integrated Channel Touch Modules • S6L-24D: 24 + 2 faders, 64 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen, 2 integrated Channel Touch Modules • S6L-24: 24 + 2 faders, 64 assignable knobs, 1 integrated Master Touchscreen E6L engine (available in two configurations): • E6L-192: 192 processing channels, 96 mix busses + LCR • E6L-144: 144 processing channels, 64 mix busses + LCR Stage 64 I/O rack: you can use multiple Stage 64 racks with Venue S6L to meet their I/O needs, with a choice of analog, digital, and networking options.

PRESONUS: MOVING FADERS! Traditionalists might well be shaking their heads: what’s the best accessory for the latest rackmount digital mixer? Knobs and faders. Introducing the StudioLive CS18AI mix controller from PreSonus. It’s a control surface for StudioLive RM-series rackmount, Active Integration digital mixers and PreSonus’ Studio One DAW. Networking with StudioLive RM32AI and RM16AI mixers via AVB Ethernet and PreSonus UCNET technology, the StudioLive CS18AI offers touch-sensitive motorised faders (a first for Presonus’ mixers) and enables complete hardware control of all mixer features, managing up to 64 channels. The new controller also makes it even easier to do virtual soundcheck, live recording, and studio mixdown with PreSonus’ Studio One DAW and Capture recording

software. PreSonus Senior Product Manager Ray Tantzen makes some sense of the apparent absurdity of optioning-up your mixer with a controller. “With a StudioLive RM as the mix core, you can choose to work with physical motorised faders, portable wireless iPad, a large Windows 8 touchscreen, or a combination of them all.”

The 19-inch, rack-mountable StudioLive CS18AI has the same footprint as a StudioLive 16.4.2AI console and features a 16-channel scribble-strip display and a 4.3-inch colour touchscreen. Available in June for around US$2000.

Australian Distribution: 1800 441 440 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au

d&b MAX2 WEDGE MAX2 is the new stage monitor from d&b audiotechnik.

More than a wedge, the passive unit can be pole mounted on a d&b subwoofer and used as a small full range system or perform stage monitoring duties as originally intended. Whatever the deployment, the MAX2’s high feedback stability and sound pressure level capabilities are combined with a “remarkable vocal presence and sonic consistency”. Small and light, the MAX2 still provides a broad frequency response extending from 55Hz to 18kHz with a conical dispersion of 75°. In a marine plywood enclosure and protected by a rigid metal grille, the 15-inch neodymium LF driver and the coaxially mounted 1.4-inch compression driver share the same magnet structure which allows for a compact and unobtrusive cabinet design. The MAX2 can be driven by d&b amplifiers using the MAX2 setup or by any other high-quality amp.

2U amplifier: the D20. The D20 amplifier has four independent 1600W channels, each with two 16-band equalisers which feature parametric, notch, shelving and asymmetric filters and up to 10 seconds of delay. The digital signal processing (DSP) power of the D20 means that external system processors are not required, reducing the equipment in the signal chain. The amp’s UI has a colour touchscreen along with a rotary encoder.

It is enabled with an integrated web interface for use with a browser and can be controlled using the d&b R1 Remote control software V2. R1 provides enhanced equalization functionalities, enabling users to freely define and manipulate EQ using a touchscreen or mouse and keyboard. Four amplifier channels in a 2RU lightweight package minimises the rack space required in installations as well as mobile applications and reduces transport costs.

d&b audiotechnik has also released a four-channel,

National Audio Systems: 1800 441 440 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au AT 11

SOFTWARE NEWS

STRUM SHOWS PLUCK Applied Acoustics Systems has released a new version of its popular guitar track production plug-in, Strum GS‐2. The plug-in acts as a virtual acoustic guitar reproducing the sound and playing techniques of guitarists, when using a keyboard controller or DAW. Its chord recognition function will automatically voice chords played on a keyboard in the way a guitarist uses a fretboard. The plug features an auto-strum function and special strumming keys for picking. Rhythm figures are available from a variety of included MIDI loops, that also act as a compliment for chord progression.

The new version also comes with a revamped factory library, comprising a good number of nylon and steel acoustic guitars, both in natural and production-ready configurations. According to AAS, it’s completely redesigned the new version of Strum, with a total overhaul to its synthesis and strumming engines.

New features include a streamlined interface, a new equaliser and compressor module, a new multi-effect processor, and native 64-bit operation on Mac OSX and Windows.

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

APPLE GETS THE HUMP? Nothing like a good Apple rumour, and this one involves the (now defunct) Camel Audio. It was first reported by MacRumors, based on info it discovered on a corporate registry site. The papers show Camel’s address has now been changed to that of Apple’s UK HQ and lists the company sole director as Heather Joy Morrison – one of Apple’s corporate lawyers and senior counsel for iTunes, suggesting that Apple is

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now the sole owner of the company. Alchemy, Camel’s flagship product, had included more than 5.5GB of samples and speculation is that Apple plans to beef up GarageBand with the Camel IP and sounds, or add more softsynth offerings to Logic ProX. Regardless, it’d be good see that Alchemy hasn’t gone the way of the dodo.

FL STUDIO 12 RESIZES Image-Line Software has released FL Studio 12, with the ‘biggest change to the application in 10 years’ – a ‘vectorial’ user interface. FL Studio 12 can take full advantage of hi-res displays (up to 8K), meaning you can scale-up/down pin-sharp windows in a fully customisable way. For example, the Mixer can be dragged to any size. What’s more, there are six selectable layout styles plus features that dynamically adjust to the vertical height.

Multi-touch has also been taken to the next level.

The mixer and main UI can be rescaled to fit human fingers. No more fiddling about with tiny controls on a touchscreen. The larger the touch display, the bigger users can make the interface and controls. Swap between Windows Multi-touch and FL Studio Multitouch modes for enhanced touch functions.

Get on the FL Studio website for the usual juicy array of v12 plug-in updates etc.

Network Audio Services: 1300 306 670 or networkaudio.com.au

UAD EXPANDED Universal Audio’s UAD v8.0 packs the addition of much anticipated Apollo Expanded, which allows users of the Apollo Twin, Apollo Duo, Apollo Quad, and Apollo 16 to combine up to four Apollo audio interfaces via Thunderbolt and a total of six UAD-2 devices, meaning you can add extra DSP and I/O as your studio needs change and evolve. Apollo Expanded also brings with it new dynamic workflow options in the form of Console 2.0 (which is like a super-low-latency monitor section of split mixing console). Currently, Console 2.0 only works

with Thunderbolt-equipped work machines and devices, however, UA has promised a Firewire update. Other additions to v8.0 include a number of new powered plugin categories and compatibility with Yosemite. Sound Machine Wood Works Plug-In, UA Distortion Essentials Plug-In Bundle, and Friedman Amplifiers Plug-In Collection by Brainworx.

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

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STUDIO FOCUS: A SHARP

Everything about A Sharp Studios has changed… except Jeff. The studio was sold, then closed for four months for a $500k+ refit. Everything was stripped out and rebuilt (including the studio room floor). Acoustics and architectural design by David Spargo of Praxis Acoustics, audio wiring by Greg Cameron of Amandala Music Technologies; the control room houses a new Solid State Logic AWS 948 centred around a HDX rig running Pro Tools 11 — a true hybrid analogue/digital setup. Not content with the cosmetic and acoustic refit, the studio also boasts major new additions to the existing microphone collection (Royer, Coles, Neumann, Telefunken, Manley), high-end outboard and the addition of an editing/mixing suite featuring a second Pro Tools HD rig and the new ROLI Seaboard (a

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mind-blowing 21st century reimagination of a piano keyboard). A flutter-free wall from RPG was supplied by GSM Acoustics in Melbourne thanks to Gordon Rosario. As mentioned, former owner Jeff Cripps has been retained as head engineer. Jeff is joined by a new-line up of engineers, notably fellow Australian Richard Jack Guy (INXS, Sugababes) who has just returned from London, and Englishman Richard Lake, owner of mixingAudioPros.com.

A Sharp will also provide unattended mixing with the help of US engineer Cedrick Courtois (Beyonce, Destiny’s Child, Earshot, Ludacris, SoundHaus) and German Engineer Lukas Rimbach (Wallpaper-Hesher, Banjoory, Blessed Child, Kairo Kingdom). Oh, and the grand piano stayed as well.

A Sharp Recording Studio: www.asharp.com.au

“ Spatial detail without loosing the big picture.”

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REVIEW

V COLLECTION GROWS BY 4

Merely a couple of months after taking advantage of a deal on Arturia’s V-Collection 3, the company has released an upgrade to the vintage suite with an additional four instruments — taking the collection to 13 instruments and 6000 keyboard sounds. Such is progress.

Joining the suite are three new vintage instruments and the Spark 2 rhythm programmer. Spark 2 is phenomenal, as I pointed out in a review on the standalone product in AT 103. Not only are the sounds superb, the library covers all the classic drum machines of yesteryear, along with a healthy swag of acoustic kits.

Adding to the instrument count are some excellent keyboard and synth plug-ins. For those chasing the synth dragon, the Matrix-12 V is an excellent reincarnation of Oberheim’s classic Matrix-12, named because of its enormous modulation matrix.

The Matrix-12 was known as one of the fattest synths of the 1980s, offering 15 LFO types and VCAs — not just globally but over each AT 16

of its 12 voices. I’ve only had my mitts on the cut down Matrix-6 version and that itself was a formidable synth. Think; Iggy Pop Endless Sea. In more of a keyboard vibe are the Solina V and Vox V. The Solina brings along that swishy string synth sound made famous in 1970s disco. Vox V is a software Vox Continental organ — the red one with the black keys. This is particularly cool, and includes bass pedals, dual keyboards, and the option to flick the sound via various guitar amp simulations with alternate mics, or a Leslie cabinet emulation. There’s even some foot-pedals for chorus, flanging, and phasing. Think: The Monkees, I’m a Believer.

The V-Collection 4 is a vast amount of vintage virtual variety — if you’re in the running for discount pricing I’d upgrade simply for the Matrix-12 V. — Brad Watts CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

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REVIEW

LINDELL PLUGS ITSELF IN

AT 18 Untitled-1 1

Lindell Audio put out some very useable and affordable 500 series kit not so long ago, and in a surprising twist, has emulated its own gear as plug-ins! …with a couple of notable enhancements, mind you.

6X-500 — A simple 'preamp' channel that incorporates independent or linked I/O gain and stripped back treble and bass boost at a total of six set frequencies. When driven hard the input gain delivers some rather filthy preamp overload tones which can be very handy on the right source but won’t be to everyone’s tastes. A real highlight are the super flexible high and low pass filters.

PEX-500 — The left hand panel of this plug-in is a faithful reproduction of Lindell’s two-band Pultec-style EQ with typical boost and attenuation controls at selected bass and treble frequencies incorporating variable bandwidth. The sound is subtly sweet and musical, but things get interesting with the input pad and Mid/Side

switching on the right. The PEX-500 offers independently settable mid and side EQs that stay in its memory when the EQ is toggled back to normal mode. Great for mastering, trouble shooting and creative effects on stereo sources! Score one for digital.

7X-500 — A compressor plug that offers three set ratios, a two-step high pass filter side-chain circuit and switchable slow/medium/fast attack and release settings that can be finetuned using the continuously variable controls over on the right of the plug.

Another mastering-grade feature here is the variable stereo link mode allowing fine-tuning of dynamics crosstalk on stereo sources.

And pulling all this processing into one powerful channel strip is the ChannelX plug-in. Available in all the major types for both Windows and Mac, you can grab the suite for $249 from Federal Audio. — Greg Walker www.federalaudio.com.au

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FEATURE

Welsh mix engineer David Wrench appeals to artists with a difference. Jungle, FKA twigs, Caribou; they’ve all gravitated to Wrench to tighten up their albums, and it’s bringing the format back.

Story: Paul Tingen Portrait: Richard Ecclestone

AT 20

“I got into engineering a bit late,” says David Wrench, with some understatement. The Welshman’s unusual career trajectory has led him to become, at the tender age of 42, one of the UK’s hippest and most in-demand mixers. This year alone several albums that he mixed, most notably Jungle’s Jungle and FKA twigs’ LP1, made big splashes and have been creeping up the international charts all over the planet. Both albums have a strong electronic music vibe with an experimental edge. With the critics raving — and Jungle and FKA twigs both being young, up and coming British acts — their respective debut albums also have an immense amount of street cred.

At his garage studio in Bangor, north-west Wales, sheltered from the music industry Joneses, David Wrench muses on how he has arrived at his current enviable position, after having spent “many years trying to work out what to do with my life.”

Wrench set his first tentative steps in a recording studio as a teenager when Gorwel Owen, his high school teacher — who later produced Welsh bands Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci — took Wrench into his studio and showed him “how stuff worked.” Following this, Wrench focused on a music career of his own, singing and playing keyboards, and releasing three solo albums.

The world’s relative indifference to Wrench’s solo releases triggered some soul-searching, which was resolved in his late twenties when he landed a job as an engineer at Bryn Derwen studio, six miles from Bangor. “I didn’t really know much about engineering,” recalls Wrench, “so I taught myself.

I put lots of microphones on things and found out what worked and didn’t. I worked with local bands for six months, and then did my first proper record with an amazing songwriter called Jackie Leven. The first album we did together was Defending Ancient Springs (2000) and I ended up doing 14 albums with him!” Wrench continued to work at Bryn Derwen for several more years, gaining a reputation as one of the foremost producers of Welsh-language music, which earned him the BBC Welsh radio Producer of the Year award in 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. He also occasionally mixed projects, and it was his mix of the award-winning Caribou album Swim (2010) in particular that earned Wrench a reputation as a top-level mixer.

FROM LEFT FIELD TO JUNGLE

Since mixing Caribou’s Swim, the amount of mix work Wrench has been doing has risen sharply.

In addition to his Jungle and FKA twigs mixes, Wrench has this year also mixed Caribou’s Our Love, four songs on Owen Pallett’s In Conflict, Fanfarlo’s Let’s Go Extinct, Radiohead drummer Phil Selway’s Weatherhouse, the debut album of the British band Glass Animals Zaba, which was a near top 10 in Australia earlier this year, as well as Oz acts Seekae and Jack Ladder. The common thread on all these releases is a willingness of the artists in question to experiment and push the limit. Given that Wrench’s own artistic output is as left field as it gets — his recent album Spades & Hoes & Plows features what he calls “anti-recording” and his early noughties singles had titles like Superhorny

and Fuck You And Your War on Terror — run-ofthe-mill, hit-parade fodder clearly isn’t his cup of tea. Wrench himself calls his tastes “eclectic” and qualifies this by adding that he, in fact, quite likes some pop music. Nonetheless, given Wrench’s track record of working with left-field artists, he is predominantly hired for his eclectic tastes, and, one presumes, eclectic approach to mixing.

“Yes, I think this is the case,” confirms Wrench.

“I’m not into polishing things and making them sound as smooth as possible. I like stuff that leaps out in the mix. I like things to be exciting. I don’t like mixes that are too tasteful. I like things that sound a tiny bit unbalanced in the mix, with things not necessarily wrong, but set at a volume or placed in a position where you would not instinctively put them, or EQ-ed brighter than you would imagine.

I like things to rub a little in the mix, and I guess it is why people come to me. But the Jungle and FKA twigs material has been A-listed on Radio 1 [the UK’s mainstream, youth-orientated pop station], so it’s not so weird that it won’t get on the radio. Both artists make music that is very distinctive, even though underneath it contains pop songs. They are just very deconstructed pop songs!”

While Wrench’s musical tastes and mix approach are eclectic, his actual mix tools at his garage studio, which he calls Tŵr Yr Uncorn (Welsh for The Unicorn’s Tower), are entirely mainstream.

No endless racks of esoteric hardware in his case, just a Pro Tools 11 system with an Omni interface, Adam A7X monitors with a Focal CMS5 sub, and a few bits and pieces, one of the main pieces being a Presonus Central Station. In addition, explains Wrench, “I also have Yamaha MSP5 monitors, and a Pure stereo radio that I also monitor through. I swear by my Beyer DT880 Pro headphones, and have a Radial Duplex DI, a Radial PRO RMP for reamping, and a Lehle splitter for separating signals to various amps, plus a few mics for when I go out recording. Finally, I occasionally send signals to my old Aria stereo spring reverb.”

Wrench clearly conducts virtually all his mix weirdness in-the-box, even though, he recalls, “I started working on tape at Bryn Derwen. The studio had a Soundtracks 24-track, and then changed to an Otari MX80. Learning on tape was brilliant. One of the things I’ve noticed that’s different between engineers who started on tape and those that didn’t is those that did are much more careful about gain structure, making sure it’s right all the way through. It’s still the first thing I do when I get a Pro Tools session in to mix; make sure the gain structure is right from start to end, because it gives you a lot more headroom to work with.

You don’t end up with such enormous problems in digital if your gain structure is wrong, but being rigorous about it does make a difference.

“I stopped working at Bryn Derwen a few years ago because I was getting more and more mix work, and it made sense to do it in my own studio.

There are no longer the budgets to spend lots of time mixing in a commercial studio, and also, being in-the-box I am entirely flexible, and can switch between projects easily. At the end of most projects I go to Strongroom studios in London for a few days,

just to finish off. I like to mix with a sub, because I want to know what’s happening in the low end, particularly when working with dance music, and the overall frequency balance at Strongroom is very comparable to that in my studio, so it allows me to verify exactly what’s going on. Also, when working on the recent Caribou album Dan [Snaith] and I spent a week together at the end of the project. We would go into a nightclub every evening just before the people came in to blast the mixes through the club system and make sure it sounded great. Music is played on so many systems these days, in clubs, cars, on iPods, hi-fi stereo systems, radio, and laptop speakers, you need to put in quite a bit of effort to make sure it works on all of them. The low end of bass-driven music can disappear on small speakers, so I often end up boosting the low mids, or if they’re not there I distort the bass line to get some harmonics, then roll off the low end and mix that back in with the bass to make sure the bass line has enough definition on systems with smaller speakers.”

TWIGGING TO IT

In-the-box flexibility was of crucial importance for Wrench when mixing the Jungle and FKA twigs albums, as he mixed both, as well as Caribou’s Our Love, in the same time period. “It was a bit of a crazy time,” recalls Wrench. “I began with Jungle,

“I don’t like mixes that are too tasteful. I like things to rub a little in the mix, and I guess it is why people come to me”

and then a week later I started on twigs. The Jungle mixes were more straightforward, because they sounded good when they arrived, and the balances were right, so there were less creative decisions to be made. It was about getting their mixes sounding better, bigger and clearer. Josh [Lloyd-Watson] and Tom [McFarland] recorded and played everything themselves and did all the production themselves. I came into it as an outside person, which meant the main challenge in the beginning was to establish trust. I did a trial mix for the album, in fact I did the same for the FKA twigs album. I mixed just one track in each case to show them the direction I would take. In both instances I apparently got it right and finished the entire album.”

According to Wrench, mixing the FKA twigs album was far more difficult, in part because of the plethora of co-writers and producers involved, including Emile Haynie, Arca, Joel Compass, Clams Casino and the ubiquitous Paul Epworth.

Wrench: “The sessions came in all sorts of different AT 21

sample rates, formats, levels of organisation, and musical directions. There was a unifying element, but it wasn’t obvious to start with. Part of the challenge was to get all the tracks to sit together as an album, and yet make sure they all remained distinctive. Twigs has really strong ideas of what she wants things to sound like. She knows every single detail of each song, even things that are really buried in the mix or even muted, and where she wants them placed in the mix. Much of it has to do with the way she dances, and how she feels the rhythm and the movement of the song. She does a lot of the drum programming herself, using the Dave Smith Tempest, and she works very quickly and instinctively, which gives her music a kind of confrontational punk feel, even though it’s mostly programmed. This was another reason why quite a few things needed sorting out in the mix, with me putting things in some sort of order, while also keeping the edge and energy that typifies her music.

“Organising a session is generally the first thing I do when I get a mix in. I go through it and make sure it’s something I can work with, putting things in the right order, getting rid of clicks and other noises, making sure the gain structure is OK, and so on. I then work very quickly and really instinctively, however big the session is. I like to go through and get a basic balance as fast as I can. I tend to first work on the drums and bass, or whatever is the main body of the music, and then I get to the main chordal information, and then the lead vocals, and finally all the effects and interesting little bits and pieces, and the backing vocals. So I initially get the track to the point where I have a feel for it, where it excites me and moves me, and after that I go into all the details. I also always keep the rough mix at the top of the session, and send that out to a different pair of outputs, using the Presonus Central Station to be able to flick back and forth between the rough and what I’m doing, and reference the rough, allowing me to check whether I’m improving on it, and not making it worse.”

ALBUM ON TRACK

Time is the fourth single from Jungle’s debut album, released in September 2014. It’s the highestcharting Jungle single, at a meagre 94 in the UK. FKA twigs’ highest charting single in the UK, Two Weeks, only reached number 200, meaning both Jungle and FKA twigs are newly arrived exponents of a beast that’s been all but declared extinct: the album. Wrench agrees that the success of both albums without any high-charting singles is “very unusual,” while at the same time pointing out he mixes many complete albums these days, which, he says, “makes sense when the label wants a distinctive, unifying sound across an entire album.

It also makes economic sense to have one mixer do an entire album, rather than have a different mixer for each track.”

In other words, the album may have a future after all, and the Jungle and FKA twigs albums are living proof. Many reviewers have commented on the cohesiveness and singularity of vision of both the FKA twigs and Jungle albums. It’s quite an achievement, and has a lot to do with Wrench tightening the screws on these debuts.

AT 22

JUNGLE’S TIME SESSION The music on Jungle fits loosely in the neo-soul category, featuring strong influences from 1970s soul and disco music, updated for the 21st century, with big bass, shiny high end, falsetto vocals, and multi-layered musique concrète-like real life samples adding to the excitement.

Wrench recalls, “When I first met Tom and Josh we talked about music a lot and we connected over our mutual like of Shuggie Otis. But they also listen to bands like Can and other things, so they incorporate a great variety of influences. They have a very defined idea of how they want their music to sound. My main concern in the beginning was that their rough mixes were a bit muddy, and I made things too bright and clear on Busy Earnin’, the first track I mixed. So they asked me to pull that back a bit again. A lot of the bass on the album has a chorus effect on it, so it had a kind of watery warmth, and sounded a bit as if someone had thrown a blanket over the mixes. For me it was a matter of getting more clarity and punch, while retaining that warmth.

“The song Time was the last mix I did for the album, which made it a bit easier, because by then we had worked out the general approach. This meant the sessions I received were also closer to what the finished mixes would sound like. After I mixed Time they felt something was still missing, so they went back to their studio and added a few additional bits and pieces for it, like the guitar that enters in the second verse, and there’s a bit of extra excitement at the end, like the synthesiser flourishes. The main thing about this track was to get it to sound punchy with driving drums, and to get the vocals sounding clear, using automation to make sure things are leaping out and exciting in certain places.

“In fact, almost all the vocals on the album went through a Leslie effect, even though I would occasionally add in a clean vocal for a bit more clarity.

But the Leslie effect on the vocals was the sound it had, just like they’d stuck the bass through a chorus.

The Jungle guys work in Logic, so they’d stem out their Logic sessions for me, which I imported into Pro Tools. Normally I take plug-ins and effects off when I start mixing, but because so many of their effects were intrinsic to their sound, I preferred to keep their effects. For me to have spent time to try to recreate their effects would have been daft. If it sounds good, it sounds good. So they rendered me both dry and wet stems, and I would sometimes go back and ask for entirely wet stems. In a couple of cases I might have sent a clean vocal stem back to them after I had taken out clicks and things, so they could run it through their effect chains again.”

The Time session is nothing if not intricate, with 70-odd audio tracks. From top to bottom there’s the rough mix, drums and percussion (including things

like ‘sandcrunch,’ ‘coins,’ ‘bath tub’), bass and incidental sounds (named things like ‘restaurant,’ ‘crackle’ ‘gym FX’), guitars, synths, organs, pianos, trumpet, more guitars, and vocals, and finally the master mix track.

Wrench explained: “All the drums in the session are programmed by Josh and Tom, using their own samples and sounds, just like with the synths and all the incidental sounds. It’s almost like musique concrète in places! They have many background noises going on that are not immediately obvious, but if you take them out, the tracks would not sound anywhere near as exciting. There’s a track with record crackle that just adds a bit of atmosphere in the background that you don’t notice, but when it’s not there the song sounds dry. The Gym FX tracks are people playing basketball in a gym hall, you can hear the squeaks of the shoes and the ball bouncing.

All these sounds create an atmosphere and subliminal narrative to the song.

“I had very few effects on the drums, just the Pro Tools EQ3 on the kick and snare, and Waves Puigchild 670 and Valhalla Vintage reverb on the toms, a room just to make sure it’s not entirely dry and give it a bit of a stereo feel. The Valhalla is my main reverb.

I also use the 1 Pro Tools EQ3 a lot. Most of my EQ is subtractive, doing little cuts here and there of frequencies that I find conflicting or that are clogging things up, and I like the fact the EQ3 is not particularly characterful, which makes it ideal to do these cuts with. I have the Waves CLA 1176 compressor on the bass, and then the Puigchild 670 on the extra guitar, which was added later on, because it needed some more character. The Prophet synth also has the 670, as well as a Mondomod. Two of the organ tracks have the S1 imager for some more width.

“The balance between Josh and Tom’s vocals is very delicate and the key to mixing them and getting them both to sit right together. One of them sings falsetto, the other doesn’t, and they have quite different voices. If one leads too much, they both sound wrong.

They wanted their vocals to be quite dry. We tried reverb on a few tracks, and it does appear here and there, but the Leslie effect on their vocals is the key to their sound. I grouped all vocals to Aux 4 on which I had the 2 C4 multi-band compressor. I am a big fan of multi-band compression. If you EQ high end out of a vocal in one place because it sounds too harsh, it can sound dull in other places, and I find that multiband compression can really control that. In the case of this song the C4 would have been there to control the high and low mids. The vocals were either getting a bit boomy or a bit aggressive, and the C4 just controls the bits where it gets too much and pulls them down. I also had the 3 Puigchild 670 on each of the vocals tracks, for more overall compression.

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The session screenshot for Jungle’s Time including layers of musiqueconcrète-like samples; and a typical vocal chain on the project.

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AT 23

FKA TWIGS’ TWO WEEKS SESSION The main emphasis of the 80-odd track Two Weeks session is the extraordinarily large vocal section, consisting of 40 audio tracks. The fact that many of the vocal tracks are almost black because of numerous edits indicates how much detailed work went into the vocal arrangement and mix.

Wrench had the lowdown: “I mixed Two Weeks as part of the whole body of the album, but we always knew it was going to be the main single, so there was a bit of extra pressure. It’s also a big track, and needed lots of work. With twigs, mixing took probably one and a half to two days per song, because all the sessions were very complicated. There was a lot of cleaning up to do on these tracks before I could begin mixing, in part because of all the different producers she’d been working with. One of the briefs I got from twigs when these sessions came to me was she wanted the beats to sound really hard, with a hip-hop lowend and R&B crunch and bite. She didn’t want things to sound soft at all. She also wanted the vocals to be proper pop vocals, right up there, with the harmonies, with an R&B slickness to them. I don’t think there was ever any danger of her sounding bland, because her performance on it is so good and the melodies and the words are so arresting. So I didn’t worry about blanding-out the vocal.

“The first thing I did on Two Weeks, after getting a vague balance, was to really clean up the vocals.

Some of them were quite compressed, with very loud AT 24

breaths and lots of clicks, and because there were so many vocals, it felt quite messy. So I cleaned each vocal track up, and because the vocals had to be really slick and tight, I then made sure all the backing vocals were absolutely in time with each other. All the black lines show where I cut the wave forms and shifted them around by hand to get them to be really tight. I was shifting them around as if they were samples, so they were absolutely spot on. I can never get Vocalign to work properly, but I did what that’s supposed to do, just by hand. Her main vocal doesn’t have many cuts in it because the timing was great.

“The session came in at 96k and remained at that.

I cleaned it up, changed the structure so it was easier for me to work with and stripped it of most plug-ins. At the top is the rough mix, as usual for me, and immediately below it is my master track. I don’t have a definite place where I put it, but it usually is at the top or the bottom. Below that are the drums, with most of them coming from twig’s Tempest. An amazing producer called Arca also worked on the track, well as Emile Haynie, so I don’t know who did what, but I do know that twig did a large part of the production on this song.

“The 808 drop is a big, heavy sound that appears only four times, but that is quite a big feature in a club, where it really hits you in the stomach. I had the Pro Tools D3 CL compressor/limiter on that, and a very sharp low-pass filter at 400Hz. Beat 1 has a

snare and a bass drum, and because of this I’m using the C4 multiband compressor to control the level of the snare. The Tempest only has stereo out, so all twigs’ drum tracks came as stereo pairs. She gets the craziest sounds out of that machine; she’s really mastered it. Beat Sub is an effect channel with the Spring Reverb and an EchoBoy eighth-note delay, only 10-20% wet, and I use it on the claps and several of the more incidental samples below, like FX Scream and Sonorhits. Below that are the Toms, and then the SnareHelp, which thickens up the snare from the Beat 1 track. Beat 2 has a bassdrum-like sound on which I put a strong EchoBoy repeat echo, which you can clearly hear in the track. Like the Choruskick below, it has a spring reverb, though the Choruskick is not really a kick, it functions more like a percussion element. Reverses is a reverse snare, and the Sonor sounds are like submarine sounds.

“Below the drums are several atmospheric samples, and then the main bass track, which has a C4 to keep it in place, and below that six yellow-coloured synth tracks, that also operate in the low end and all have a similar sound. The MainSynth has an S1 Imager to widen it, and the MainSynth 2 has a Microshift, which is automated and comes in at certain sections. I also have a Mondomod on one of the ChorusSynths, again to widen it. You can also see that I have volume automation on another ChorusSynth, increasing its level in each chorus to help the choruses build.

6

Wrench’s typical master bus chain; and some of the vocal effects on twigs in Two Weeks.

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7 5

1

3

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Further down are five green Bridge Synth tracks, and it was quite tricky to get them to sit right, as they are all panning around a bit, which is why I have two instances of the Mondomod going on, to help with the width and the sense of movement these parts needed. The Microshift plug-in does some widening and some delay and pitch shifting. Again you can see how the volume increases during the bridge section, helping to build tension.

“The vocals start with the pink coloured verse backing vocal tracks, which had quite a lot of background noise, which is why they are chopped so much between each line. VerseLV11Fb is the verse lead vocal, which is quite natural. I brought some of the breaths down, lifted the occasional word and compressed it quite a bit, using the PuigChild 660. There is also automated EQ from the EQ3, coming in on some words only. This is also why there’s a DeEsser, which is essential if you use serious compression — I use the Waves Renaissance DeEsser. VBVT11F01 has just one word on it, ‘high,’ which has a big, long reverb from the 1 ValhallaShimmer and an 2 EchoBoy delay. All this send’s bus tracks are automated and come in for different sections. There’s a hell of a lot of automation on that vocal!

“BrdAdLbC1, aka Bridge Ad Lib, contains just one word, ‘hah’, and has a whole bunch of plug-ins on it, seven inserts and two sends. I think there originally was more on this track, but in the end we whittled

it down to just one word. Below it are several other bridge vocals, again with loads of automation and again cut heavily and moved around, to make them sound like one instrument, and sent to the Bridgebus aux track below the two Lowbridge vocals, with an EQ3 and the PuigChild 670. The two Lowbridge tracks contain just a phrase at the end of the bridge, which is pitch shifted and has spring reverb. Then there are four more Bridge vocal tracks, which actually sound in the chorus, and go to the Aux 4, on which I have the EQ3, Waves CLA 1176, Renaissance DeEsser, another EQ3, and an 3 Echoboy.

“Below the Aux 4 track are the chorus lead vocals, which go to the Tape LV Bus aux track, on which I have the SSL EQ, Waves Q4 EQ and the Renaissance DeEsser. Below this are two chorus backing vocals, which go to the Chorus Stack Bus Aux track, which has the same plug-ins on the insert as the lead vocals, plus an Echoboy delay, and five sends! There are also two BridgeAdLibCT tracks, which contain the phrase ‘Higher than a motherfucker’ in the chorus, which we had to remove for the clean version. For BBC Radio 1 we couldn’t even use the word ‘thighs’! This line again has two instances of the EQ3 7-band, the Renaissance DeEsser, and the PuigChild 670 compressor, plus several buses on the sends, and further down are the Hivoxbounce and OctDPrint tracks, which are just a few words in the choruses, but have tons of effects on the Sends, which result in long tails that

make them sound quite angelic. There’s a LowOct track which you can hear right at the beginning of the song, which is pitch shifted and sounds like an underwater vocal. The EnOvPrint track has a PanMan for a kind of left-right tremolo effect, sounding right at the end, and adding another layer.

Two Worlds has an extraordinarily complicated vocal mix, and Wrench laughed when it was suggested he may have set a world record for the amount of per-word effects. “You’re right, it really is a very complicated vocal arrangement and because of the way I treated it, a very complicated mix as well! The whole album was like this. And twigs knew every single detail and how she wanted to hear it. It was really inspiring to work with someone like that.”

“I always have similar plug-ins on the master track. I first go through an 4 SSL EQ, for some very gentle EQ, and then through the 5 SSL bus compressor (I used to use the Smart C1 when I still used outboard), and I will have that set on a slow-ish attack and a fast release and a 2:1 ratio. I will often automate the make-up gain on that for various sections of the song, because after that it goes into the 6 Linear Multiband compressor, and I will drive the choruses of the song a bit harder than the other bits. It may just be 1-2dB, but lifting the song in some sections is part of creating excitement. Then there’s another 7 EQ3, just touching things very slightly.”

AT 25

FEATURE

BROAD CHURCH Even with a new guitarist, their 25th studio album Further/Deeper sees The Church acting and sounding Church-ier than ever.

Story: Mark Davie Photos: Malcolm Viles

Artist: The Church Album: Further/Deeper AT 26

Tim Powles, drummer of The Church, can talk. He enthusiastically rambles about their latest record, not really sure where the conversation’s heading, pausing every now and again to go back and flesh out the detail. It’s really similar to how The Church makes records. There’s no pre-cognitive vision, no grand concept for the album; it’s just five guys in a room, loosening the screws on their consciousness and picking out the cherries that rise to the top.

Being a producer for the band means you have to just be willing to go with the flow — rock up, write songs on the fly, record in chunks and piece it all together as you go. Luckily Powles, who doubles as the band’s main producer, is along for the ride anyway. “We don’t plan a lot, we don’t sit around and pre-conceive things with any of the records,” said Powles. “And the only difference with the current record was Marty Wilson Piper decided he wouldn’t be involved.”

Which is a big change in such a musically democratic band. For some fans, it was devastating, but for Powles, who’d been hearing Piper in his left ear for years, it was like altering half the stereo field of his performance life. He had no idea if what exPowderfinger guitarist, Ian Haug, was going to send spiralling down his left cochlear would balance his image of The Church.

The record is Further/Deeper, their 25th studio album. And it shows the improvised jamming methodology still works. If anything, it cuts down the possibility of the contrived song craft that can plague established bands.

After a couple of years of being “at each other’s throats” — with Piper leaving the band and Kilbey threatening to call it quits in the fallout — heading back into Powles’ smallish Spacejunk studio seemed like a bad idea; too claustrophobic. For a change of scenery, Powles rang Rancom St Studios’ owner Garth Porter and engineer Ted Howard to see if they’d be willing to house The Church in a couple of blocks over four weeks.

STAGE 1: JAMMING IT ALL IN

“The initial plan was to jam some songs, then come back and cut them properly,” said Howard. “But it was pretty apparent by the end of the first day that we were keeping everything — jamming and tracking being one process. It was very different.

I’m used to people coming in with demos to play to a session band, or charts, or bands that come in rehearsed, because it’s expensive. These guys coming in and starting a song with a riff, groove or even just a sound, was fascinating.”

“We’re getting these jams down with a view that retrospectively any could become the bed for a song,” said Powles. “And that they then need to be mixed to a point worthy of critical ears. For the engineer, it’s all happening at once, you’re racing around trying to get mix-worthy sounds while people are changing them on you, or shifting amps, or playing an entirely different instrument.”

It was a tough engineering gig; everything had to be set up and running at all times. Powles brought a monster of a custom-made Mapex kit comprising five toms, two kicks, a kick trigger, a

couple of snares including his prized Sonor five and 3/4-inch steel snare, plenty of Meinl cymbals, and a Roland SPD-SX trigger/sampler; Koppes and Haug were switching up guitars and sounds with regularity; Kilbey moved between four-string basses and a Fender Bass VI, and dropped guide vocals at will; and there were three keys setups spread around the space.

They toyed with the idea of partitioning everyone off in the live room with a few baffles, but eventually settled on housing just the drums in there, placing the amps in isolation and everyone else in the control room. “It was nearly a two-day setup,” said Howard. “I really enjoyed it, but it was really challenging. I had 32 inputs of A/D going into Pro Tools, and every one was being used.

I even had to bounce toms down to two tracks, which I hadn’t done since the analogue days. And Tim plays the toms as a main part of his grooves, not just fills, so I had to make sure the balances were okay going to a stereo pair. There were lots of quirky mics like the ceiling mic. And Tim’s talkback mic — a Turner S22D high impedance dynamic harp mic — got used quite a lot in my mixes as a pre-fade reverb send.”

According to Powles there were “TWO SETS OF ROOM MICS — A STEREO ROOM AT AROUND MID-DISTANCE, AND WHAT TED CALLS ‘THE ROOF’ — AND AN AEA RIBBON UP THE FRONT AS WELL.”

Also, under Powles piano bench drum stool sat a 30W Ashton dual concentric drum machine amplifier that he ran some of the samples from his Roland SPD-SX through — either triggered from the pad, the external kick pedal trigger, and some from both snares and kicks via physical triggers.

On Pride Before a Fall the verses use Snare 1 with electronic kick, recorded via the Shure SM7 overthe-shoulder mic, which is a standard at Powles’ Spacejunk studio. Then the choruses switch to Snare 2 and the 24-inch kick with a trigger in the background — there was a lot of flexibility in his kit setup.

Howard: “Sometimes we tracked the drums to ¼-inch Revox tape. I don’t like compressing the close mics too much on the way in, though I had some of the room mics slammed. I had a dbx 160VU on one of the kick mics, and I like to track with an ELI Distressor on the snare top mic, using a slow attack and fast release, more for the sound than to control the dynamic. I just approached it like any other kit, making sure I had good definition on the close mics as well as having all the ‘glue mics’ there.”

HAUG’S INDOCTRINATION

With no pre-production, Day One of the session was Haug’s first musical interaction as a member of The Church, and he wasn’t exactly sure what gear he should bring. So Powles suggested he check out the Strymon Big Sky reverb pedal, which landed at Rancom St on the opening day of recording and became a big part of his sound.

“In some of those earlier tracks he hadn’t really discovered the unit, but it was slapped on there,” said Powles. “We ended up having a bit of trouble when it came time to mix because everything

was so far away through the Strymon reverb wall.

But it was certainly really inspirational from a melodic, creative and sonic point of view. What Ian was bringing back into the band was a little bit of goth, and space, in a different way. He hung back a bit more, leaving more room for beats.”

Which was perfect for Powles, feeling a freedom to swing grooves he hadn’t felt since taking over from Richard Ploog: “There’s a bit more swing, we’ve got a track in 7/8 that goes into 14 and 16 later, it’s great!”

Howard: “Peter Koppes splits his guitar signal across different amps — he had a Black Star, a Vox AC30, and an old Danelectro. Traditionally the Danelectro has been an effected amp, but we tended to use that for the tone and its beautiful vibrato. He’s also got his rack units a Digitech Harmonizer, and Roland DEP-5 and Sony DPS-V55 effects processors which act like a string machine, it sounds like a swirly, washy pad. I had probably five lines for Peter. I had two amps going for Haugy. I generally like to record both with tube preamps for a little bit of drive, but clarity you tend to get.”

But it was pretty apparent by the end of the first day that we were keeping everything — jamming and tracking being one process

At one time Kilbey used a bass amp (Kruger head and Ampeg box) but somewhere in the late ’90s the idea of touring with that and Koppes’ Leslie cabinet seemed like overkill. Ever since, Kilbey has used an original Sansamp, and always tracks a split of it alongside any amp signals. He plays either a Fender Jazz or Fender VI, with six strings, which he’s used for big chunks of the band’s career. “It’s got a different kind of emphasis,” reckons Powles. “Plus you can play chords and you’ve got the vibrato arm.”

On a handful of the tracks, Kilbey played bass lines on keyboards. Powles: “We did a bit of bass on my Yamaha E-tone organ. Sometimes he just played ambient Eno-esque gothic pads, and two or three of the tracks ended up with organ pedal bass. So it’s a real spread.” Also on hand was a piano, a Roland RS-202 string synth, and a Suzuki Q-Chord.

The main sessions were finished by the end of 2013, but in January, Kilbey was doing a show at the Coogee Surf Club with a string section and asked Powles to come up and play it. So he threw a 26-inch jazz bass drum, a couple of snares, and a floor tom into his car and went to the gig. When he rolled up to Rancom St the next day to listen back to some takes with Howard, he realised he wanted to redo the drums on Miami, Laurel Canyon, Delirious and one other song. The kit was AT 27

The two tracking sheets show two completely different drum setups, with the second detailing Powles’ less excessive overdub kit. Pictured is the full kit, with triggers, SPX sampler, and the Ashton drum amp under his piano stool.

still in his car, so he set up a whole new kit, which was essentially kick, snare, floor, and a 12 x 7-inch snare drum (with the snares turned off) which was used as a rack tom. Howard used a different mic setup to capture the stripped back kit, including an AKG D19 on the kick beater, a mono overhead, AKG414s on toms and a plate mic as a sympathetic resonator on the floor behind the kit.

STAGE 2: BEDDING DOWN

The pace was fairly fast, with 18 beds tracked in the first eight-day stint. By the end of the tracking sessions, there were 26 beds in numbered Pro Tools sessions, and the next stage was to start editing them into songs. Howard would pull a verse, a chorus and some solid sections, and try to patch together an edit to show the band. Without a click track, it meant timing discrepancies would sometimes put parts out of contention. Though only occasionally would he stray from making full band edits, “because we wanted to keep the spark,” said Howard. “But other times I’d have to cut and paste bits from an outtake.”

Once there were a body of rough cuts to work with, the team split in two. Howard used the control room to track guitar overdubs with Koppes and Haug, while Kilbey and Powles set up a control room in the live room; shifting in a couch, monitors, and Powles’ Apogee Symphony interface.

They re-commissioned a “little room off the back of that which Ted calls ‘Madagascar’,” said Powles.

Just big enough to squeeze a drum kit in, it was AT 28

plenty roomy for a vocal booth. Kilbey’s vocal chain was a Phoenix Audio preamp and one of the beta Mojave mics Dave Royer made before he started mass-producing them.

As well as recording vocals, the pair fined-tuned the arrangements in Logic, which Howard later replicated in Pro Tools. “On average, Steve and I were working on two songs a day,” said Powles. “We work off the beds and put some shape into things (if they didn’t already have the right shape), then have a guess at what bits might be a chorus, or even if the song was going to have choruses.”

Probably the most impressive element of The Church’s writing process is Kilbey’s ability to so effortlessly write and record the sort of lyrics and melodies arts students spend years dissecting in universities and online forums. “Steve just hangs on the couch and listens two or three times through, gets his lyric brain into gear, and at some point says, ‘Yep, gimme a go,’” said Powles. “I mean, that’s a generalisation, but often the very first thing he sings out loud will become the vocal and we may never better it.

“Other times there’s some reinvention, but they come very quickly. He’s particularly intuitive, and it’s very instinctive. On this one, I did push harder on that point, so we had a few battles. We had a great time doing this after we’d cleared the air between us. We had a lot of stuff go on in the band that wasn’t good, but somewhere in the first two or three weeks of making the album Steve and I had a fantastic dialogue going where we were utterly

honest straight away, about everything. It was very a successful verbal push and pull. I think it’s the best we’ve ever been.

“Back when he was struggling with consuming stuff that was bad for him, his interests lay elsewhere. It was a weird relationship, a bit like somebody falling asleep in the backseat, waking up every now and then shouting out directions.

It wasn’t always a happy ship and this time we’ve got the best out of the both of us. His ability to retrospectively create something that sounds like it was there in the first place is incredible.”

Howard concurred: “The thing that struck me was how quickly Steve came up with the lyrics. He’s genuinely an artist in that sense, and an original songwriter.

“I like the way those guys lose themselves in the studio, there’s nothing self-conscious about the way they approach it. They’re very at home in that environment. It was a good place to go every day.”

STAGE 3: MIXED BAG

If the tracking environment wasn’t democratic enough, the mixing process was like pulling together a United Nations summit. At first, the band were thinking of commissioning the go-to mixers of the moment; either Tchad Blake or David Fridmann. Bob Clearmountain’s name — he’d mixed their second record — was also thrown into the mix. But then they realised, “We’ve generally been DIY, so why should we suddenly change because we feel we need to?” recalled Powles. “Do

I like the way those guys lose themselves in the studio, there’s nothing self-conscious about the way they approach it. It was a good place to go every day

we suddenly behave like a major label A&R guy and just grab at the latest person, or do we stick with what we’ve got and do it ourselves?

“Steve and I spoke a lot through this whole process. We both had different ideas on who should mix what. In the end we felt that in this day and age — when anyone can jump online, source a mixer and send their stuff overseas — it’s harder for local people to wave the flag and easier for them to be passed over than it was before.”

So they assembled a team of past and present mixers for The Church, including David Trumpmanis, who mixed their Opera House show and their 2006 record Uninvited Like The Clouds; Simon Polinksi, who’d made records with The Church and Kilbey for years; Tim Whitten mixed the opening track; and both Howard and Powles ended up contributing a few mixes themselves.

Powles: “Essentially the record’s mixed mostly in-the-box. My stuff all came out in four or five stereo pairs and was sometimes run through an SPL Transient Designer. Trumpy was largely in the box; Simon was totally in the box but some of the stems got taken out and mixed; and Ted uses the MCI console at Rancom St a bit.

POWLES’ MIX

Powles: “On the tracks I mixed, I used a lot of the Rancom St room mics. I made an old school parallel send and return system where I’d chuck Valley People Dynamite plug-ins or analogue compressors across the various rooms. Then I’d gate them and

key the gate off an auxiliary send of the close mics, and play with the range and time. Effectively I’m duplicating what we used to do in the ’80s with the Kepex gate on a densely recorded room.

“I USED A LITTLE PLUG-IN CALLED SASQUATCH KICK MACHINE BY BOZ DIGITAL LABS. IT’S BASICALLY A TONE-

“I printed my mixes through a tape machine too.

I’ve got an MCI JH-24 but it’s got a 16-track block on it. Ted lined it up so I had a couple of tracks lined up hot and a couple lined up straight. I ended up vari-speeding in two or three of those as well.”

GENERATOR, LIKE A FINELY DEVELOPED SIMMONS DRUM

COMING UP TRUMPS

MODULE, BECAUSE IT’S NOT PLAYING A SAMPLE. It’s generating noises and tones, and there’s three resonances and a great detection circuit. It’s fantastic on kicks, snares, toms, you name it. I used that and sent a link through to Ted and Trumpy who both used it as well.

“The other plug-in I discovered and used a lot was by a guy called Joey Sturgis who’s created this plug-in called Gain Reduction. It’s only $45 and it just smashes; the first knob in it is called Slay. It’s got a really cool-looking old interface on it with a piece of masking tape and a lo-fi switch and it’s just incredible for a bit of attitude, tone and vibe.

“On my refrain vocal on Pride Before a Fall, I used a combination of Fabfilter echo and filter plug-ins, as well as a tremolo, long delay and a narrow EQ. The refrain is all just jammed, written and recorded on the spot into my laptop mic one night after a few drinks around 3am. So much for high fidelity.

“There were plenty of random elements too. Ted’s son found an old piano by the road and recorded himself moving bits of the frame and strings on his phone. I flew it in as ambience at crucial spots in Globe Spinning.

By his reckoning, Trumpy has been a part of almost every Church release for the last 15 years. But his last outing was a mix for their Sydney Opera House live show CD and DVD. It was a completely different kettle of fish — 24 songs, 5.1 releases, an orchestra with an extra harp and double bass. This album he mixed five tracks, one of which Howard finished off.

Trumpy: “We chatted about the individual tracks, and I referred to the rough mixes a lot, because there were texture in there Tim really liked, or parts I hadn’t heard.

“It’s a lush and dense record, with a lot of tracks, so you need to find some definition and clarity in there, otherwise it just becomes a washed out mess.

The drums provide a sense of grounding and focus for this record, with everything else washing around it. Even the vocals are quite effected on this record.

“On many of the tracks Tim printed out wet, effected vocals alongside the dry ones. I generally start with a de-esser, because Steve is quite sibilant, then a bit of EQ, rolling off a lot of bottom end up to 2-300Hz. I used the Waves CLA-76 compressor plug-in and followed it with the R-Comp, and quite often used the Air plug-ins for chorusing and

flanging to help the vocals float above the mix.

“SOMETIMES I USED THE SOUNDTOYS DEVIL-LOC TO ADD

“IT WAS ALL REALLY WELL RECORDED. THERE WAS A SLIGHT TONAL DARKNESS TO IT ALL. I’M NOT SURE IF THAT

how many masters they have, whether or not they send everything to auxiliaries and EQ there or at the source channel.

MID-RANGE PRESENCE TO THE VOCALS AND HELP THEM CUT

WAS THE STUDIO OR TED’S INFLUENCE. I ADDED A BIT MORE

THROUGH. TIM FOUND THE GAIN REDUCTION PLUG-IN TOO,

SHARPNESS AND ATTACK TO THE DRUMS TO COMBAT THAT

“I WAS AWARE THERE HAD TO BE COHESION ACROSS

WHICH IS JUST A VARIATION ON THAT IDEA OF HAVING A

AT POINTS. ON MY MIX BUS I BOOSTED AT 16KHZ, AND HERE

THE RECORD, SO THERE WERE TIMES WHEN SOMETHING I

COMBINATION OF DIRT AND COMPRESSION, WITH A SLIGHT

AND THERE AT 2-3KHZ.

WAS DOING WAS TOO WET OR NOT WET ENOUGH. BUT IT

EQ AS WELL.

“I generally like to mix several songs at once so I can open and close sessions, and come back to them with a little bit of perspective. It took a lot of time to mix these tracks, probably about six weeks.

There was a lot of back and forth, and there were some long songs too, which obviously adds to the length of time you work on them. You always do it for the love of it with The Church.”

WAS ALSO ABOUT HEARING SOMETHING GOOD AND BEING

These type of harmonic overdrive/compression plug-ins have become a staple on his mixes.

Trumpy: “For bass I find the Digi Lo-Fi is good because it keeps the bottom end there, even adding a little. The Sansamp track has a little bit of tonal colour like a slightly driven amp, but never overdriven or distorted.”

For reverb, one of Trumpy’s favourites is Altiverb, using some of the EMT plate and spring reverb convolutions. “I used a combination of everything, there’s D-Verbs on there and Softube’s Tsar-1 reverb. For drums I typically use room reverbs, and I’d use the room mics in different ways for different songs, even sections. Some songs I didn’t use the rooms at all.

“On a few of these songs I started pulling all the guitars out, then they slowly got added back in. I started mixing Toy Head, and it had piano, great orchestral timpanis, but eventually the band brought the rock guitars back in there.

“On the tracks I had, Ian ended up playing more guitar than Pete. He’s obviously a very different player to Marty, but he ended up playing some similarly-styled arpeggiated picking and 12-string parts. He had lots of great parts.

AT 30

HOWARD’S MIX

Howard ended up mixing a couple of the tracks himself, using Simon Polinski’s stems as a launching pad. He also “mixed one of the tracks by accident. It was meant for one of the other guys, but I was mucking around with it one day preparing the files and they ended up thinking it sounded pretty close and going with mine.

“It can be quite frightening and intimidating when you’re mixing an album with three other guys. You hear their work and think, ‘oh man, that sounds so good. How am I going to get mine to sound that good?’ But it was good. On Volkano I even finished off Trumpy’s mix using his session, because he’d run out of time. I love opening other engineer’s sessions, you always learn stuff. The way different people split their mixes, if they use VCAs,

INSPIRED TO TRY IT TOO.”

STAGE 4: WILLING TRACKS TOGETHER

With four main mixers working on the record, the mastering job was always going to be a task of bringing a level of cohesion to the album. William Bowden was that guy: “The sound of the mixes differed; Tim’s had gone to tape and he favours a slightly more sepia-toned sound, Ted’s were much clearer and punchier, and Dave Trump was really more experimental — big bottom end and things that pushed the envelope. I had to try and get all the stuff on the same page.

“Generally with mastering you’ve got to work out where you’re going with it. And often the tracks will tell you. There’s a track called Lightning White that had very big toms that came in at the end, and it was also very dynamic. I did that first because it was so different to the others and I wanted to see how far I could take it. I mastered that track three times before sending it to Tim. It helped me get underway, and from then I sent Tim a first draft of most of the mixes, and he came back with a few changes and asked me to turn it all down by about a dB, which I did. I’d actually had it quieter and

boosted it a little with Ozone at the end, which changed things tonally but I kind of liked it.

“There were long songs, and lots of them, so it was a fairly big job. There were things to do tonally, spatially, with EQ and compression. On the song Toy Head, it started off very quietly and ended in a mass of distortion. It had such a huge dynamic range that I had to go in and re-write a lot of the volumes to get it on the same page as the other songs.

“I took the approach that I’d try and make each track sound as good as possible in and of itself, but the overall volume and roughly the overall brightness and bottom end would be related to its fellows. If you try and make everything sound the same, it’s very boring — it’s not always a linear and sensible process. And now because I’m working by myself a lot of the time Bowden’s studio is now in Hobart I’m a bit freer to experiment with things.

Because when you have a client sitting in front of you, they want results fast and to make them happy on the spot. Whereas sometimes it’s a bit like songwriting, you try a few different chords, that doesn’t work, so you try something else and then suddenly the song comes together.

“THERE WAS ONE SONG TIM SENT TO ME SAYING THEY’D MIXED THE VOCAL A LITTLE BACK BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T LIKE A VOCAL EDIT. I BROUGHT THE VOCAL BACK UP, BECAUSE TO ME THAT’S COMPLETELY NONSENSICAL TO CARRY THAT KIND OF BAGGAGE AND COME

executive decisions and then offered them back to Tim, Ted and Trumpy, then they’d go back to the committee and we’d inch forward.

“From ‘go to whoa’, the whole thing was wrapped up in about four weeks, which was quite a long time, because I was getting mixes throughout the process and mix revisions too.

“The signal path I used involved a Fairman TMC tube compressor, which is like a Fairchild tribute, in MS. I used an Anamod Audio ATS-1 tape saturation simulator, a Z-Sys digital EQ, the Weiss compressor, and had Lavry Gold conversion all round.

“I was sent all stereo files, and maybe had to overlay some reverb on certain things. Many years ago I thought stem mastering would be the new thing, but I almost exclusively work in stereo.

“I was very pleased to work on it, I considered it an honour and took it very seriously… unlike my usual flippant self where I just turn the volume up, ‘boom, tish’! It was an important milestone for the band, and an important album because it was a little controversial Marty not playing with the band.

There was a lot of expectations. I actually think they’ve ended up with an album that’s very Churchlike, which I think is a good thing.”

That seems to be the sentiment from everyone involved, that even with new guitarist Ian Haug, Further/Deeper still sounds exactly like The Church.

Clockwise from opposite: Powles produces Koppes’ keyboard performance, “darker, gothic… more black keys”; No one needs to tell Koppes how to play guitar on a Church record, out comes the trusty 12-string; Kilbey and Haug in the Rancom St control room jamming out some beds; and Powles in his element.

In the end we felt that in this day and age — when anyone can jump online, source a mixer and send their stuff overseas — it’s harder for local people to wave the flag and easier for them to be passed over than it was before

UP WITH SOMETHING NORMAL PEOPLE LISTEN TO AND CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT HE’S SAYING. I made some AT 31

FEATURE

Self-sufficient DIY musician, Nick Zammuto, built his house, his studio, and a catapult, but not his music gear. Why? He wanted to use tools, not be one.

Story: Mark Davie

Artist: Zammuto Album: Anchor AT 32

Taking in Nick Zammuto’s surroundings is enough to realise DIY isn’t merely a penchant, or even just a necessity, but a way of life. Nick, his wife Molly and their three boys are homesteaders in the sparsely populated state of Vermont, just south of the Canadian border in the US’s New England region. Eight years ago, he and Molly moved into a shack on the property while he slowly built a house to accommodate their growing family.

It was a new chapter in their lives, and the mortgage on the barely-liveable property was cheaper than renting Molly’s barely-liveable Brooklyn apartment.

The general rule for budgeting the build was ‘no contractors’. If they couldn’t build it themselves, it wouldn’t get built. So with copies of Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and Scot Simpson’s Complete Book of Framing under his arm, Nick taught himself how to build a staircase and guesstimate the angles of a multi-faceted roofline.

Now, well and truly settled, Molly’s veggie garden sustains the clan, and Nick makes music under the Zammuto moniker out of a converted tractor garage a short walk from the house.

NOT BY THE BOOKS

Art imitates life pretty consistently for Nick. Like his out-of-the-way home, his music is also a little bit off-centre. So working in a big studio was “never really a possibility,” he says. It’s never really phased Nick, though, he loves getting his hands dirty, figuring out how to create things from scratch. He’ll wax lyrical about a new saw blade ripping wood like a knife through butter as eagerly as he’ll detail his sound design hobby of scratching beats in a record’s locked groove. He just has an innate sense for DIY. Previously one half of the critically-acclaimed sampling duo The Books, Nick would dig into the archives for sounds like a snuffling pig unearthing truffles with the dirt still attached. He was an analytical chemist in an art conservation lab, so giving old material a new lease on life was a specialty. They would create digital collages using the euphonic juice from old vinyl, VHS and audio tapes to give their sampled creations more flavour. Because each sample came with its own sense of space and time attached, the records were essentially mixed ‘dry’.

Zammuto’s latest record Anchor is the next step in Nick’s development as a producer. It’s his second full-length album since starting the solo project, with one of the main differences to The Books being he samples himself more than other sources.

It’s meant he’s had to re-educate himself on how to give his recordings their own character — ‘dry’ wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

“I eschewed reverb for so long because I didn’t want the music to sound like it was in another room or in another space,” said Nick. “I really wanted an immediate, crisp surface to things. But I think that’s only because I never really had access to good reverbs. I WAS ALWAYS WORKING WITH THESE CRAPPY DIGITAL REVERBS THAT DIDN’T SOUND VERY GOOD. NOW THAT I HAVE ACCESS TO SOME BEAUTIFUL OLD SPRING

REVERBS – THEY’RE INSTRUMENTS IN THEMSELVES.”

He’s been collecting a handful of reverb units over the years, starting with the Lexicon PCM81: “I love the old 16-bit effects units. It’s just got that classic sound and if you put it on an aux channel it never gets in the way. It’s always in the correct position.”

One of his more prized pieces is a rack-mounted Tube Works RT-921 Real Tube Stereo Reverb: “It’s got six springs on each side. You can drive the preamp tubes as hard as you want, and that feeds the reverb. Then you can control the colour of the reverb afterwards with a three-band EQ. It’s an amazing sound. I tried to use the spring reverb in my guitar amp for a while, but it always added that guitar amp colour.”

For mono sources, he often turns to his Vermona Retroverb Lancet: “It’s basically a threespring reverb inside of a little desktop unit that’s got a multimode filter attached to it. It’s just perfect on kick drums to give it that vintage awesomeness and any kind of guitar or bass sounds amazing through it.”

Although the reverb obsession is a relatively recent career development, he’s always been interested in the minutiae of sounds. It’s a byproduct of staring down a microscope much of your life — you get obsessed with the details. So when he buys gear, he buys it for those kinds of reasons. For instance, he uses his Kush Audio Elektra analogue stereo EQ not just because he believes it sounds superior to digital EQ, but because he can turn up needle-shaped parametric mid-bands and pull out different transients on the left and right to really widen his drums out in the stereo field.

“For some reason I feel language is like a full frontal attack on my cortex, and it never really gets through,” explains Nick. “I think that’s true about a lot of introverted people, the direct approach is blocked off. So I’m trying to make music where the centre is this kind of mystery, but the periphery is really the way in. So a good sound to me is when you hear the crackle of the recording as much as you hear the subject of the record. It can transport you to this magical place when it’s done well. That’s the quality I’m looking for, something that makes a sound un-nameably… interesting.”

OVER SAMPLING

The way Nick works is to create a sample library of his own playing from which he can pull the best elements in a similar curatorial process to the one he’s been using for years. “WHEN I RECORD AN INSTRUMENT, I’M SAMPLING IT IN A WAY, BECAUSE POST-PRODUCTION USUALLY COMPLETELY CHANGES THE INTENTION OF THE ORIGINAL RECORDING,” he explained. “I

over-record everything. I have about an hour-long take for every three seconds that ends up on the record. So there’s a lot of fine tuning that goes into pulling the right moment out of a recording session.”

One of those libraries he’s built up is made of beats created by scratching notches into the locked groove of records. He divides the circular groove into beat divisions, using a protractor to mark the record’s label: 90 or 45 degrees makes 4/4, and other divisions of 360 degrees result in different

time signatures. Then by scratching with different implements he can get different percussive sounds — a thumb tack renders a bassy thump, a razor blade more of a snap, and sand paper gives an effect like maracas. Scratch inwards and the sound pops up on the left, scratch out and it’s on the right. He’s made hundreds of these one-time beats, and used one of his favourites, a 9/8 loop at the beginning of the song Great Equator.

My goal is to use tools without becoming a tool.

I love the idea that a tool designed for a particular purpose, can be used for something completely different

Other times he’ll sample a real life drummer, mostly Sean Dixon, the skins player for Zammuto.

The two nerd out on polyrhythms, and Sean will often play for an extended period, while Nick moves noisemakers around the kits, like splashes on the snare and nut-shells on the floor tom. He’ll also tweak delays and reverbs on the fly, looking for gnarly intersections of feedback and drums looping on themselves that he can sample later. He records it all to multi-track generally using two AKG C414s as overheads in the Recorderman configuration, with an Audix D6 on the kick, a Sennheiser e604 on the snare top, and Audix i5 on the bottom, with another e604 on the floor tom.

“I’d always just sampled drums,” said Nick.

“I’d never tried to play them or record them on my own. So when I first got a drum kit, my early recordings sounded like crap — they were all phasey and weird, and had no power. I was like, “How do they do that?” And started doing some research on that. That’s where I came across the Recorderman setup — trying to figure out how to get really close-mic’ed drums that didn’t have phase issues on the snare.

“I’ve always liked Stewart Copeland’s drum sound, really loud in the mix and still have it work.

He has a clean, clicky style where the hi-hat is way louder than it should be.

“I LOVE THAT TRICK WITH THE SNARE WHERE IF YOU RECORD THE TOP AND BOTTOM THEN EQ THE RECORDINGS OF THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM AS CLOSE AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN AND PAN THEM HARD LEFT AND RIGHT, YOU GET THIS REALLY, AMAZINGLY VIVID SNARE SOUND.”

HURLING THE HP

Nick still uses Sony Acid as his DAW. It was the first program he used, and the cheapest one at Guitar Centre at the time. Having used it for so AT 33

Inside Nick’s sometimes snow-covered tractor shed studio he’s fashioned the ergonomics into something akin to an Apollo space capsule — Kush Audio EQ in the middle of his stereo field, the Real Tube spring unit at the bottom of the rack to his right, and the Retroverb Lancet to his left.

THE STUDIO

Zammuto has made music his living by keeping his overheads low. Building not only his house, but his studio, means he can make music without a budget.

The converted tractor shed studio’s low ceilings don’t afford the grand ambience of other studios, but then that’s what he has all his reverb units for. Before its conversion, the shed had cheaply framed walls and a dirt floor. So the first thing he did was build a floor and cover the walls in a sound-insulating fibreboard made by Homasote. It’s comfortable, easy to heat, and just big enough to house his four-piece band for rehearsals before a tour.

A few years ago, he came to the realisation he was more likely to use a piece of gear if it was already plugged in. So any time he devises a more ergonomic way to position his gear, he just builds a new rack or attachment. Nick: “It looks like an Apollo mission. I can reach about 400 different knobs from where I’m sitting.” It’s resulted in racks everywhere, including above his head: “I really love stereo, so I put all the essential trimmings right in the middle of the stereo field so I could hear what I was doing.”

AT 34

BASS PROJECTOR

Nick’s Bass Projector musical sculpture is the clearest intersection of his wood-working/ handyman skills and his musically artistic nature. A simple wooden frame houses a mini-subwoofer connected to a flexible mirror.

Pointed at the mirror is a laser projecting a square of dots. When you plug in a music source, the sub vibrates the mirror causing it to bend all kinds of ways, turning those dots into dancing green squiggles on your roof.

long, he just “thinks and stuff happens in Acid, the interface just completely disappears. And it sounds like PCs look in a lot of ways — boxier and edgy.

I find that Ableton sounds more like Macs look — things get rounded a little bit and glossy.” But the real feature that keeps him coming back is the ease in which you can re-pitch tracks in the timeline.

“You can cut out one note in the middle of that guitar take and then press the plus and minus keys to re-pitch it by semitones. It’s tremendously useful to be able to work really fast in a melodic way. I’m generating a lot of interesting melodies by taking a single note, making several copies and re-pitching it right there.”

For the music video to IO — a catchy offkilter, ’80s-tinged pop single from Anchor about getting catapulted into shit jobs, inhibiting self-actualisation — Nick built a huge catapult.

Technically’s it’s actually a trebuchet, which is “even better for flinging shit,” he says. On the video, one of the feature pieces hurled from the trebuchet was an ageing HP desktop. It had been the brains behind much of The Books’ catalogue but had reached the end of its life. So he did the one thing we all dream of doing when our computers die, he catapulted it. Nick: “There was something really cathartic seeing that fly hundreds of feet up in the air.”

I’m trying to make music where the centre is this kind of mystery, but the periphery is really the way in

His relationship with computers isn’t as strained as it might seem, but he keeps them at more of an arm’s length then he did with The Books. “I think of them as having perfect memory. They’re a great extension to my own memory which, having three sons, is a little bit patchy sometimes. SO IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR THAT CRISP, CLEAN PERFECTION, THEY DO THE JOB EVERY SINGLE TIME. THEY’RE NOT PARTICULARLY GOOD AT CONTROLLED CHAOS WHICH IS ANOTHER BIG ELEMENT OF WHAT I’M INTERESTED IN. So I like having the best of both worlds, to be able to take this analogue world, crystallise and fine tune it, and if needs be,

send it back out into the wires and work with it some more.”

One of his tricks that uses this digital/analogue dichotomy to advantage is when he processes time-stretched sounds back through his analogue reverbs. Nick: “I like the idea that time in a DAW is arbitrary. If you take a sound and speed it up an octave so it sounds like a chipmunk; send that through the reverb of your choice; take that recording and pitch it back down the same amount you pitched it up before… then the vocal will still be there in its original pitch but the decay tail is buttery, twice as long, and takes forever to work itself out. Plus, you lose the top octave of the high end in that process, so it really brings out the dark, broody character of a reverb tail. I find it works particularly well on spring reverb because there’s this weird pulsing chaos in those tails.”

Once he’s done this external pass, he often recombines it with the original vocal to preserve the top end. He also uses different pitch intervals, and sends the vocal in reverse. Once it’s back in the computer, he might even re-pitch the reverb tail again… anything goes with Zammuto, including hard panning bass. It’s generally perceived as an engineering no-no, inherited from the days of vinyl where errant low end could throw the needle out of the groove. It didn’t stop him doing it on Need

AT 35

Nothing says DIY more than a selfie press shot in front of a geodesic dome, or using a music video as an excuse to build a full-size trebuchet, then hurling your stuffed PC into the air and getting the satisfaction of watching it crash back down to earth.

Some Sun, and the vinyl pressing still managed to cope. “The vinyl pressing of that track sounds really good,” said Nick. “Even though there’s very different bass on the left and right channel, somehow the needle is equally confused in both directions. It sits there nicely.”

NO DIY TOOLS

Nick is a DIY handy man, and an exceptional one at that — as the house, the studio, the farm, and his laser Bass Projector musical sculptures attest [see sidebar]. But he draws the line at building his own audio gear; even though DIY electronics would seem to sit more comfortably in the playground of someone with a university science degree than a drop saw and a hammer. He’s got a phrase for it: “‘Don’t be a tool’ — my goal is to use tools without becoming a tool. Building my house was all about the tools. Like getting a decent saw that can actually do the job you want it to do.

Working with lousy tools, it’s kind of a ‘shit in, shit out’ situation. There’s something beautiful about a brand new saw blade, just the way it turns wood into butter. Certain pieces of sonic gear have that same feeling — everything you put through them becomes magical.

“I love the idea that a tool designed for a particular purpose, can be used for something

Audio Brands Australia

AT 36 dPg_AudioTech_Jun14-out.indd 1

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completely different. Whether you’re building a weird-shaped house or trying to work on music that’s a little bit left of centre. It’s that sense of endless possibilities you get, particularly from analogue gear.”

His synths include a Dave Smith Instruments Polyevolver, a Nord and a Moog Slim Phatty. He also uses an Electrix Filter Factory, which allows him to do stereo filter sweeps, which he uses with an LFO to create swishiness in his cymbals, as well as a cheesy Mo’FX unit, which has a tremolo you can control via MIDI for some funky shapechanging in real-time.

It’s his sonic playground, completely distanced from the music industry machine both ideologically and geographically. The DIY route is paying off for this musician. When he’s not on tour he’s around his kids, his studio is away from the house so he doesn’t wake anyone up at night, and he’s not paying rent on an apartment anymore, let alone a studio in the city. He’s well and truly anchored, and he couldn’t imagine it any other way: “It really allows me to keep my overheads low which means I can make the records I want to make and keep going along this weird path in Vermont.”

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FEATURE

EV 4-EV-A

An EV die-hard walks us through his vintage mic collection — from the war to JFK to Broadway.

Story: Mark Davie

Phill Webb has been enthusiastically following the EV trail since the ’70s, and metamorphosed from unwitting EV advocate to brand aficionado along the way. In 1980, Phill moved to Sydney and began working part time for CS-Trilogy (The PA People).

One day, when he was asked to do sound for a conference that involved a children’s choir, the hire manager gave Phill four ‘amazing’ choir microphones and threw in four ‘ordinary’ EV rock ’n’ roll mics, saying it was all that was left on the shelf. During the gig Phill monitored the microphones on headphones and agreed there were four fantastic mics and four ordinary ones. It was only during pack up when he realised the top performing units he was hearing were

T45

Webb: “Lou Burroughs submitted this lip microphone design to the US Marine Corp for evaluation in 1942.

The company had five employees at the time, and Burroughs had 50 units in stock with a build capacity of 25 per day. The military ordered 5000 pieces with a further order for another 5000 in the works for the following week, and EV went from five employees in 1942 to 500 in 1945. The Pentagon used to send a B29 bomber to South Bend just to pick up microphones.

After the war, Lou received a citation from the Pentagon for services to the war effort and was told the Allied assault on Guadalcanal was held up three weeks waiting for microphones for the landing craft.

It was said this microphone improved the audibility under battlefield conditions by 70%.”

AT 38

664

the ‘bog standard’ EV mics. So when he got back to the shop Phill put on a demo of the two different mics for the business owner who was equally impressed. Consequently, the business changed its sales strategy and went from a small EV microphone account to one of the largest in the country.

Phill started selling EV mics, and just like EV co-founder Lou Burroughs made a habit of abusing EV mics to prove their hardiness, developed his own destructive demos. A favourite tactic of his was to hurl mics across the room, chase them down, plug them in and prove they still worked. On one occasion a mic landed at the feet of the EV sales manager who’d just happened to walk in the door.

He was so impressed with the demo he offered to fix the mic at no charge if it ever broke. Over the next 10 years, the mic broke only twice, even though it was thrown on average 10 times a week.

These days, Phill works for Bosch, the distributor for EV in Australia, and he’s got one of the biggest personal vintage EV mic collections in the world.

He took the time to walk us through some of them, giving a potted history along the way.

Webb: “This was the world’s first Variable D microphone. Designed by Lou Burroughs and released in 1954, it is to EV what the 55SH is to Shure. It’s the ancestor of the venerable RE20, and by far EV’s most iconic microphone. It was one of EV’s first balanced, low impedance microphones, and the original ‘Buchanan Hammer’ [Buchanan being the home town of EV]. Lou Burroughs would demonstrate the 664 by hammering a three-inch nail into a piece of wood with the mic while it was plugged into a sound system!

“It’s often been suggested the EV 635A is the Buchanan Hammer, even EV’s site says so. But if you’ve ever picked up a 664 you can understand how Lou could get a three-inch nail into a plank with it, it’s heavy! Trying to do the same with a 635A would take you forever. You could do it, it’s certainly hardy

enough, but the real Buchanan Hammer was the 664. I think over the years confusion has arisen due to the fact the 635a is the only 600 series mic still current (it was released in ’63), and people forget about the older 664.

“EV lore says the only time the microphone ever failed was during a demonstration in Chicago that had a Shure Brothers employee present — perfect.

During the ’50s and ’60s, the 664 was by far EV’s best selling public address microphone and was OEM’d to a number of other manufacturers. It’s featured in movies like the Ray Charles and Johnny Cash biopics, as well as Jersey Boys. In fact, a set of 664s are featured on the main Jersey Boys poster for both Broadway and Australia theatre runs.”

665

Webb: “The microphone that really put EV on the map in broadcast circles and dominated TV on-air audio for 20 years. It was released in 1952 and featured in Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. It was also the microphone Johnny O’Keefe used at Sydney Stadium.

An omni-directional noted for its flat and predictable response, prior to the release of the 635a this was EV’s standard ENG microphone. If you watch the documentaries on the JFK assassination all the interviews in 1963 immediately after the event use 665s, yet 12 months later when the Congressional report came out everyone was using 635as. Most of the microphones in the Beatles press conference when they landed in America are 655s. In fact, there are only two microphones in the picture that are not EVs.”

666

Webb: “A spec’d up version of the 664 designed for broadcast applications and was fitted with a Cannon UA connector that was the predecessor of today’s XLR connector (twice the size and a slightly different shape). It was designed for both recording and on air broadcast, and served as a chronicler of JFK’s presidency: JFK used it for the Cuban Missile Crisis speech; Marilyn Monroe returned the favour with ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’; and Walter Cronkite was sitting behind a 666 when he announced the JFK assassination on air.

This microphone was also widely used in recording and to record all Motown vocals up until 1968.”

667a/668

Webb: “The success of the 666 led to the 668 (variable roll off, variable impedance) and 667a (identical to the 668 but without the variable roll off) which became a standard in film/TV production. EV has a letter from Glenn Glenn studios in Hollywood thanking them for the release of the 667a. The letter says everything the studio had produced between 1963 and 1966 had been recorded with either a 667a or 668. This included a whole raft of iconic American sitcoms (Bewitched, Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, etc). The very first RE20s produced were engraved and personally delivered by Burroughs to Glenn Glenn studios.”

AT 39

642 on the Ed Sullivan set.

EV is the only microphone company that can claim it has sent microphones to the Moon.

642

Webb: “EV’s first Cardiline microphone (line gradient shotgun) released in the 1950s, and was the first product to receive an Academy Award for services to the motion picture industry in 1963. All those John Wayne westerns of the ’50s were recorded with 642s. Above is a picture of the Ed Sullivan Show using 642 microphone as an overhead boom.”

AT 40

643

Webb: “This Super Cardiline microphone was built on the basis of the 642 with a very tight 5° pickup pattern. Only 100 were made (with only two in Australia), and the U.S. military was the prime user, listening for North Korean movements over the DMZ. It was also used at JFK press conferences as he had received so much hearing damage during the war he had trouble hearing questions during white house question time. They used a 643 to record the press questions to check whether they were answered correctly in case a correction had to be issued before the paper went to print.” If only they had one of these at after-match press conferences.

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www.krksys.com AT 41

QUICK MIX

The

with

Eric Loux Interview: Neil Gray

Who have you been touring with/mixing recently?

I have spent the last couple years working primarily with American soul singer Allen Stone. I am his FOH Engineer as well as tour manager.

Allen and his band keep me busy (they easily play 200+ shows per year), but in 2014 I also had the pleasure of working with Kelis, A Great Big World, Parachute, Karmin and Falling in Reverse, to name a few.

Can you name some other bands that you have worked with?

In the past I’ve worked with Tyrone Wells, Stephen Kellogg, Action Item, Nevershoutnever, Allstar Weekend, Spacehog and countless others as FOH, tour manager, monitors and/or production manager. I have also been a house engineer at many Connecticut and New York City venues, including the legendary Toads Place in New Haven, which is celebrating its 40th year of continuous operation!

How long have you been mixing and how did you get started?

I have been an audio professional for 15 years or so and touring about a decade of that time. I first got into live sound back when I was just a kid with a garage band and a crappy PA. That interest led me to study Music Production and Technology at The University of Hartford, Connecticut. From there I worked in various recording studios, moonlighting as a live mixer at small venues. My first touring experience came via a call from a college buddy who’d put together a Connecticut-based ‘super group’ of sorts. After just one week on the road with them, I knew I’d found my calling and never went home!

How do you feel about the current state of technology in live sound?

Live sound and the technology we employ is growing in leaps and bounds. Every month there’s a new speaker box with some advances in DSP, a console update or some new plug-in promising to change the face of the game. While important in their own right, it can be daunting trying to get your head around it all. I always remind myself the average audience member has no idea how ‘awesome’ this new plug-in sounds versus another, or how perfect the show looks on Smaart. All they care about is hearing their favourite artists play their favourite songs, and it’s our job to give them that experience as best we can with the tools best suited for the job.

What’s your favourite console and why?

I’ve always been a fan of the Avid family. They’re easy to use, readily available (everywhere in the world) and support a wide variety of my favourite plug-ins and show setups. I also had the pleasure of taking a Soundcraft Vi1 out with me on the last Allen Stone tour — it was a fine piece of equipment that required little work to yield great results.

With the variety of high-end desks on the market today it’s hard to pick a true favourite. I believe it’s always best to be comfortable AT 42

and fluent with the desk you choose. Even if a console has all the latest gadgets, it’s of little use if you can’t find your away around it to conjure ‘your sound’.

Favourite microphone or any other piece of kit?

If I had to choose, my favourite microphone would be the Telefunken M80, it’s a fantastic vocal mic and I use it for Allen and his band (along with its sister mic the M81). It has a clean sound, tight pickup pattern and an extended high end (more commonly found with condensers) that really sets it apart from other mics in the class. When I first started using them I had to ‘undo’ my brain from the SM58 way of thinking and EQ’ing, but the quality of sound and the mix results I’ve achieved since have been well worth the change.

Other mics of note in my pack would be the Telefunken M82, the Beyer M201, the Shure B91a and the sE X1 R — a budget ribbon microphone that sounds amazing, but is durable and cheap enough to take on the road.

The most important piece of gear I have is my ears. Use them, train them, protect them and trust them. Some gigs I have all the gear and toys that money can buy, other gigs I have little more than an empty show file and my ears.

Most memorable gig or career highlight?

I’ve mixed in many incredible venues around the world — Red Rocks, The Hollywood Bowl, Rock Am Ring in Germany, Byron Bay Blues Fest — but probably the most memorable would be the Roman Amphitheatre in Lyon, France. The venue is built on (and over) the ruins of an ancient Roman Amphitheatre that was constructed around 15BC. It holds 17,000 people who sit and watch the show from the same seats of the original structure. The views are astounding and the aura and history about the place is palpable. Allen had the honoor of opening for his hero, Stevie Wonder. It was a throw-and-go fly date for us so we had to make the most of what we were given, but to open for such a prestigious artist in that ancient setting is something I won’t soon forget.

How has your mixing setup changed in the last 15 years or so?

I’m largely self-taught, and countless years of study, practice and training have all played a roll in the evolution of my mixing practice and setup. Early on I used every trick or toy I’d hear about. You name it I’d

try it… and usually all at once! In hindsight it’s somewhat of a shame, but every failure is also a success. I learned how each of these things worked and why, and that gave me better understanding and insight on when to use them and how to employ them properly. Today I spend as much time as possible (if possible) working with the artists to achieve great sounds at the source; great sound in equals great sound out.

I also draw from my past as a studio engineer with a ‘cut only’ mentality when working with EQ. THE FIRST INSTINCT IN LIVE SOUND IS TO TURN IT UP OR BOOST FREQUENCIES TO FIND WHAT IS MISSING, WHEN MORE OFTEN THAN NOT WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS ALREADY THERE. A strategic cut

on another instrument is often all it takes to make a space for the sound you’re missing, all without loss of headroom or clarity across the mix. I also focus on the mix as a whole instead of individual elements; a collection of great sounds doesn’t always yield a great mix. It’s important to identify what needs to sit up front, and what can reside in the rear. There is a finite spectrum in which the human ear can perceive sound, and it’s our job to use that space wisely to achieve maximum results.

These days I am more often than not working without my ideal complement of gear. In a sense this is a freeing concept because I no longer feel defined by any one piece of gear or set of processes.

By understanding the basics, drawing on my past experiences (both failure and success) and having a plan/goal for my mix, I am able to work with most any setup and still achieve optimum results.

What are three mixing techniques that you regularly employ that you’ve learnt in the past 15 years?

Sit the vocal on the mix! I can’t stress this enough. Elementary as it may seem I rarely hear it employed to an extent that benefits the artists on stage. Most of the audience can’t play an instrument, but everyone can and wants to sing along. Putting the vocals on top is an instant way to garner praise, and it will also force you to improve your mixing abilities. To get that vocal settled back down into the mix (on

your out feeds or board tape for example) you will need to learn how to use EQ to carve out space in other instruments for the vocal to reside in. Your compression techniques will adapt to enhance and balance the sounds you manipulate instead of squash them into oblivion. Your effects will become subtler, and by default tastier, as you strive to sit that vocal above all the noise. The end result of these efforts will be a clean and balanced mix that will translate to any medium you send it to, along with a room full of happy people.

I go easy on compression and effects. Nothing makes me cringe like hearing a show remain the same relative volume (usually too loud) for an entire set, or listen to an engineer dial in the perfect delay while the lead vocal or snare drum is in dire need of attention. I prefer to ride the faders as much as I can before I go looking for a plug-in. Instead of compress and forget, I learn the songs, the show flow and the players’ musical tendencies, and then for lack of a better word ‘perform’ along with the artist. I’ll keep a finger on the lead vocal to accent the hooks, I use pans to bring solos to the centre instead of boosting the channel, and I’ll even ride the master fader (gently) to create a show-long sense of dynamic progression. The end goal is allowing the show to breathe while keeping the audience excited and captivated by the music. The same idea stands for effects. As time has progressed I find myself using FX less for ‘effect’ and more to create space and colour inside of the mix. The truly great mixers are the ones who leave no obvious trace of their presence.

Proper microphone selection, placement and employment can mean everything to your mix and the sounds you are trying to attain. We all have our favourites, but I personally feel there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ mic, only poor selection and improper use. Take some time to learn AT 43

Be happy! How cool is our profession?‌!

Sure things will get tough at times, but there are plenty enough disgruntled sound guys out here already

the technical details of different mics and use that knowledge to pick proper candidates. Put an ear next to the sound source (at safe volumes) to help determine the best placement (trial and error is key).

Observe the surroundings to see if different polar patterns or null spots can be used to your advantage, and don’t forget the 3-to-1 rule!

Finally, if at all possible include each player in the process, working with them to find the right combinations that produce the sounds they are after. If this is all done properly you should be able to walk out front, push up the faders and have great sounds and a solid base mix before you even touch a knob. This means less of the console’s power is needed for fixing, and more of it can be dedicated to mixing!

In the last 15 years what are three pieces of gear, or features, that have come out and been game changers for you?

IEMs: The introduction of quality in-ear monitoring for artists on stage is in my opinion one of the greatest advancements in our field. They give the artist an exponentially better sound experience on stage, deck space is no longer eaten up by huge wedges, feedback is all but eliminated and massive amounts of cabling, amps and boxes can be left in the shop.

In terms of the FOH mix, my stage volume is drastically decreased which eliminates bleed and phasing, I can employ microphones and techniques which may not have been possible on a noisy stage and the performance from the musicians is (usually) noticeably better. A key element of a great mix is a great performance. Not to mention the comfort of having a reliable set of reference monitors with you at all times that fit nicely into your front pocket!

Digital consoles: I came up during the final days of analogue, mixing on huge desks with tons of outboard gear and more patching than I ever care to do again. While I miss some of the analogue ‘sound’ and the tangible feel of knobs and faders, it’s hard to deny how far digital consoles have come. Saved show files, preloaded channel strips, digital patch bays, tablet control, plug-ins, digital snake runs, the list of pros is epic. Their sound continues to improve and they give us the control to really push audio to the next level. The ability to walk out to a console with little or no sound check, yet feel confident that the first down beat will sound great (or at least close) is a relief we used to only dream of. I recently mixed a large rock festival in Belgium on a Midas 3000 complete with the best outboard gear. Despite no sound check part of me was stoked to put my old friends into action. But after three stressful and sweaty songs’ worth of dialling in gains, setting EQs, chasing down sub-mixed hiss channels, pleading with the system tech to re-patch inserts and dancing back and forth in front of the console (the band was mixed on channels 1-20, but the outboard was way out yonder past channel 64!), I realised it was time to move past my analogue crush.

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Smartphones: What the heck do smartphones have to do with audio?

Besides communications and Eventric’s Master Tour, I now have a wealth of knowledge, information, apps and contacts at my fingertips 24 hours a day. Any manual, book or article can be found on the web; notes and emails are readily available; knowledgeable friends can be contacted any time for help; apps exist to help train our ears and run our consoles/systems remotely; and music can be played back, recorded and manipulated. So much power in our pockets!

How have your working methods changed over the past 15 years?

I am somewhat of a ‘free thinker’ when it comes to audio. My friends sometimes call me reckless, because at times I use whatever mics are available, decline sound checks (someone still runs a line check) at festivals to help dial in monitors or start from a clean template if I don’t have a decent show file (also at festivals, having board ops label channels and assign outputs only). I also sound check song performances instead of individual channels and tune rooms from my mix instead of playback. However, that ‘reckless abandon’ is part of the method I have cultivated from many years of creating a workflow, honing my skills and chasing my perfect mix. I know microphone specs and how to use them to my advantage. I know that if the band has a great monitor mix, they will give a great performance. I know that the great tones we have built on stage will allow me to push the faders up into a solid base mix and that less is more in terms of channel strip processing. I ALSO KNOW THAT A GREAT MIX IS THE SUM OF ITS PARTS AND THAT THE BEST WAY TO TUNE A ROOM IS WITH FAMILIAR MUSIC, AND WHAT COULD BE MORE FAMILIAR THAN MY OWN MIX. All of these things, working

in conjunction with conventional thought and traditional work ethics, have helped me continue to improve on my craft and always present the highest quality show I can provide.

Any tips/words of wisdom for someone starting out?

Never stop learning. Read everything you can and ask questions of anyone willing to talk with you, especially experienced mixers.

Acknowledge your weaknesses and focus on strengthening them.

Never stop working hard to improve your game.

Label everything. I name, number and colour code every cable and connection on my stage. A few minutes of prep can save precious time when something decides to stop working. Nobody wants to be that guy chasing down cable while an audience watches and waits.

But most importantly… be happy! How cool is our profession?‌! Sure things will get tough at times, but there are plenty enough disgruntled sound guys out here already. Stay positive and be fun to work with.

A great mix can get you on the road, but a great demeanour will keep you there.

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REGULARS

PC Audio Is your PC tuned up and ready for some holiday music making?

Here are some free utilities that should help.

Column: Martin Walker

Well here we are, mid-holiday, which for some of us will mean new music tech toys to play with, and some extra time to spend making music. Ironically, it’s sometimes the simplest things that can end up wasting time that could be better spent being creative, so with this in mind here are some handy utilities that you can use ahead of time, to ensure your PC is performing at its best.

Despite their apparent simplicity, USB devices can be a great source of frustration at times.

Plugged into my PC currently are a USB 1.1 eLicenser dongle, MIDI keyboard, data keyboard, an undefined USB printer, plus a USB 2.0 iLok dongle and 1GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive. Also, in the past I’ve plugged in various other USB flash drives from manufacturers including SanDisk and Kingston. How do I know all this? Well, I occasionally run a great little donationware utility named USBDeview (www.nirsoft.net). I’ve used it to highlight and uninstall unwanted drivers for USB devices that haven’t been plugged in for years, as well as to eradicate duplicate driver installs resulting from previously plugging in the same device into different USB ports. USBDeview will spot USB sticks that studio clients may have plugged into your PC at some point without your knowledge, as well as the date/time that device was added (handy if your PC gets a virus infection and you’re trying to track down possible causes), and you can also use it to selectively enable or disable specific USB devices at will, or to spot dongles that are plugged in but not recognised due to a dodgy USB port.

DEFRAG DRAG

A Disk Defragmenter utility is already built into Windows, and regular defragging can improve hard drive performance, especially when it’s getting rather full. By default, this somewhat basic Microsoft utility runs automatically to a predefined schedule (typically once a week at 1am on Wednesday morning). I always turn off such scheduled tasks, as I might well be in the middle of a session at 1am, but I do periodically run an alternate defragmenter on demand when I’m sure its activity won’t interrupt a vital activity.

My choice is Piriform’s freeware and the rather more elegant Defraggler (www.piriform.com/ defraggler), a handy utility that not only defrags AT 46

entire drives/partitions, but can also be used to defrag individual files. For instance, I recently spotted a dozen downloaded 1GB sample files that had each ended up split into over 15,000 fragments — these were well worth defragging to speed up their loading times! Defraggler also provides a handy set of extra functions including a Health readout for each of your drives, displaying their operating temperature (anything below 50 degrees Centigrade is fine), and any read/write errors that have occurred in the past, to hopefully give you some warning of drives that might go belly-up in the future. Just make sure you un-tick the ‘Install Google Chrome as my default browser’ during Defraggler installation (don’t you hate it when developers try to sneak in unwanted extras?).

Another handy disk utility is the free version of HD Tune (www.hdtune.com), which also incorporates a similar set of health readouts, although I primarily use this to check the sustained transfer rate performance of my various internal and external hard drives, SSDs, USB flash drives and other memory sticks, using its built-in benchmark test. For mechanical hard drives, I use this to double check that their drivers have been correctly set up, so I achieve the maximum possible number of simultaneous audio tracks during recordings and playback. Once you’ve clicked on the HD Tune Start button, you may find results that vary widely or stay relatively steady during the course of the benchmark. However, the most important figure to note is Average Transfer Rate, and typical results for modern mechanical hard drives should be between 100Mb and 200Mb/s, and between 300Mb and 400Mb/s for an SSD. Particularly interesting may be some of those USB flash drives — mine vary between 25Mb/s (a SanDisk Cruzer 8GB model) to an elderly one given to me at a trade show that managed just 1.1Mb/s and went straight in the bin after the test.

Don’t discard slow SD cards — I’ve got one for my Zoom H4n portable digital recorder and another for my digital camera that both measure a pitiful transfer rate of just 0.7Mb/s, but this is perfectly adequate for four-channel recording and taking photographs. It’s worth noting, the main factor that can scupper hard drive performance is not having DMA (Direct Memory Access) enabled for each and every drive, so if you get any HD Tune results

that seem significantly slower than expected, check this by launching Device Manager, expanding its ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers’ section, and then double-clicking on each of the entries. On its Advanced Settings tabs, the ‘Enable DMA’ box should always be ticked.

REALTIME CHECKUP

Finally, if you really want to find out just how well your PC is currently set up for real-time audio, try running Resplendence’s LatencyMon (www. resplendence.com). Now up to version 6.00, this splendid utility monitors how long it takes to execute a host of behind-the-scenes routines, recording the timings of those that take the longest. It’s an incredibly easy test to run (just click on the Start button and leave it running as long as you like while you run your audio software), and if the message ‘Your system appears to be suitable for handling real-time audio and other tasks without dropouts’ subsequently appears then you’re good to go. However, if not, or if you want to interpret the highest reported execution times in more depth, you will have to put in some effort.

In essence, even if one task takes a significantly higher time to execute than the others, this will make it more likely that your audio exhibits occasional clicks and pops.

The secret to being able to run your audio interface with lower buffer sizes (and hence lower latency) is having well-written audio drivers in the first place (and here you’re at the mercy of the interface manufacturers themselves), but also avoiding any other device drivers on your PC that occasionally hang onto the CPU for longer than normal. One notorious culprit is the wi-fi adaptor, and in this particular case, disabling wi-fi and receiving your Internet feed more directly via an Ethernet cable may be the only cure (although in the case of some laptops this may not be possible, making it a poor choice for an audio PC). Overall, it’s well worth running LatencyMon to give you the reassurance your system is up to scratch, and if you do find a timing issue then Resplendence itself offers loads of helpful advice on its web site.

Here’s hoping you get lots of music written, and no PC worries!

REGULARS

Apple Notes Should you steer clear of that built-in output?

Column: Anthony Garvin

I’ve used Macs for many years, initially with PCI audio interfaces, then Firewire, then PCIe, then USB, but more recently I’ve found I’m often deferring to the built-in audio output on my Macbook Pro. Which is probably entirely lazy, but for trying to compose and mix quickly, the built-in output has got me by. But is getting by good enough? After all, my choice hasn’t been based on anything more scientific than a gut-feeling. So I decided to put in some more rigorous testing and find out the answer to: Is the built-in output good enough as a monitor DAC?

detecting a theme here) into the Lyra 2, I was able to measure the frequency response, and noise floor of the device in the same way.

I nearly fell of my chair when I saw the results.

There is less than 0.4dB of variation between 20Hz and 30kHz! It wasn’t exactly ruler flat like the Lyra’s response plot, but hey, the sweat was starting to dry off a bit after seeing that. Beyond 30kHz the frequency response drops off quite sharply, which I’d expect anyway. Measuring the noise floor, the same output is at -82.5dB — which is lower compared to the Lyra, but still, not too bad.

FUZZY SETUP

I used FuzzMeasure Pro 3 as my virtual test bench setup. It’s an audio and acoustical measurement application for Mac, handy for doing room plots and testing the frequency response of equipment.

As an input device, I used a PrismSound Lyra 2 audio interface, which is arguably one of the best converters available at the moment.

To create a benchmark for my ‘built-in’ candidates, I did a 24-bit/96k frequency response sweep of the Lyra 2’s line input and outputs. It performed impeccably — less than 0.2dB variation from well below 20Hz all the way up to 35kHz, with only a 1dB dip at 45kHz! I was starting to sweat a bit on those Mac tests.

As far as noise floor goes, TT Dynamic Range put the Lyra 2 down at -94dB, with output connected straight to input. While it may not be the published spec, power supplies and other ‘real life’ issues will affect the noise floor — all in all, -94dB ain't bad at all.

FIRST STOP, LAPTOP

By connecting the built-in output of my 2013 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro (running on battery power because I was too lazy to get the PSU…

A measurement of the noise floor came in at about -87dB.

Interestingly, running the same tests on my iPad 2, it was more or less flat from 20Hz–17kHz, with only a -0.2dB drop down at 20kHz. Again, these numbers are tiny, with no real-world adverse implications in my opinion. The noise floor, again, was about -87dB. It should be noted that the level coming out of the iPad and iPhone were both about 3dB quieter, but that won't have a significant effect on ‘quality’, just reducing the noise floor a slight amount.

APPLES WITH APPLES

So then it got me thinking. What about my iPhone?

And my iPad? If using my built-in output on my Mac seems to be fine for reference purposes, what about these devices?

After doing some research, it appears the iPhone and iPad don’t support audio playback higher than 16-bit/44.1k, which is a bit of a disappointment in itself and a whole other conversation. So to compare Apples with Apples, I did a quick test of my Macbook Pro at 16-bit/44.1k. It returned slightly different frequency response results compared to 24-bit/96k, but less than 0.2dB difference across the 20Hz–20kHz range, so rather negligible. And the noise floor remained the same.

Using FuzzMeasure’s ‘Export Stimulus’ and ‘Import Field Recording’ features, I was able to export a 16-bit/44.1k sweep and play that through the Music app on my iPhone 5S. Again, another ‘falling-off-chair’ moment — the frequency response of my iPhone is actually better than that of my Macbook Pro! It was within 0.2dB from 20Hz–20kHz. Albeit, there’s only 1dB difference in tolerance between the Macbook Pro and the iPhone, so the real-world difference is not much.

HOLE IN THE STORY

Of course, despite these relatively impressive specs, all these Apple devices have one major caveat — the ⅛-inch stereo output jack. Whilst the DAC in all these devices may be quite impressive, the simple fact that they all connect to this dinky connection is inevitably going to be a problem in real-world, pro environments. These tests obviously aren’t exhaustive, but I’ll rest a little easier knowing that referencing through the built-in DAC isn’t really all that bad.

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REVIEW

HERITAGE AUDIO ’73 JR & ’73EQ JR 500 Series Clones These baby 1073 clones from Heritage Audio might not have all the right cards, but they’ve got all the right sound.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Mark Davie

Price ’73 Jr: $1099 ’73EQ Jr: $1199

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Contact Soundtown: (08) 9242 8055 or sales@soundtown.com.au

Pros 1073 split into single lunchbox spaces Preamp includes DI & hi-pass filter Selectable high frequencies added to EQ Build quality & attention to detail

Cons Not an exact 1073 replica, if that’s what you’re after No detent at 0dB on EQ line level trim Numbering a little close to knobs

Summary Heritage Audio has split the 1073 down the guts to fit the preamp and EQ into separate 500 series slots. The preamp has gained a DI input and hi-pass filter, while the EQ still carries the same line level preamp of the 1073. A great pathway to get into real 1073 tone without investing in 80 series enclosures.

It’s a weird feeling squeezing a 1073, clone or not, into a 500 series rack. Over the years, clones have popped up in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the recognisable ‘look’ of the 1073 is still the 80 series console-format version, with red to grey to blue Marconi knobs stacked one on top of the other, and its long body requiring custom rack mounting.

When Heritage Audio — a company dedicated to cloning the original Neve modules the equal of anybody — first turned its hand to cloning the 1073 for the 500 series form factor, it took up a total of three spaces. Forget double wide, this was half a lunchbox for just one module; exactly the sort of unwieldy presence the 1073 deserved.

CALLING CARD

The portly stature of Heritage’s lunchbox edition can be attributed to accuracy. Like most gear built in the ’70s, 1073s were made to be easily serviceable. The 1073 has five individuallypopulated cards onboard, so if a module goes down, the offending card can relatively easily be swapped out. And when purists are measuring the width of solder trace with a micrometer, replicating the card structure is the only way to satisfy Neve die-hards.

Heritage Audio’s chief engineer, Peter Rodriguez, is a stickler for details when it comes to his clones. So after tracing the transformer windings back to Carnhill, sourcing Marconi-style knobs, and matching the colour code for Neve grey, he knocked out his own PCBs to match the vintage cards, solder trace for solder trace.

The resulting clone looked the part, had everything in its proper place, and sounded as good as AMS Neve and BAE could do, all at a cheaper price. So when Peter first reformatted the 1073 for the 500 series layout, he was loath to change any internals — he wanted it to be the purest purist conversion. He kept all the original cards, transformers, knob and button sizes, and rearranged them into a 500 series chassis. Having purposefully not redesigned the cards to fit into the form factor, it naturally ate up more space than it would if he’d rejigged it. But the message was clear, it was the 1073 rearranged in a 500 series rack, not a redesign.

MOD HISTORY

While Heritage Audio mostly designs accurate clones, Rodriguez is partial to the odd mod. The custom 6673 module is a combination of a 1073 with three more notches on its EQ, and the midband of the 1066 added for extra control. Then there’s the 8173, which mashes up the four-band EQ of the 1081, with the Class A output stage of the 1073.

His latest mod does what he never dared do before; abandon the 1073’s standard card design, and split it in half — separating the preamp from the EQ and creating two new single-space 500 series units called the ’73 Jr (preamp) and ’73EQ Jr. While it means these can’t be retrofitted with 1073 cards, it’s still essentially the same stuff — same transformers, same components, and

importantly, the same specs — just rearranged to fit more neatly into 500 series chassis.

Given he’d already jumped away from the form factor both externally and internally, Peter took the chance to add a few mods of his own. First, let’s look at what’s dropped out on the preamp side. When AMS Neve released its lunchbox 1073 preamp, it just ported a single channel of its 1073DPA. When you compare it with Heritage’s offering, AMS misses the boat a little when it comes to the flexibility of the 500 series format.

The extras on Heritage’s ’73 Jr include an ultrahigh impedance, class A J-FET DI on its front panel, with an auto-sensing input and a green LED indicator to let you know it’s taken over the input stage. The input is placed before the input transformer, so you’re not missing out on anything in the preamp chain.

The ’73 Jr also includes one of the hi-pass filters from the 1073 — an 18dB/octave filter at 80Hz — it’s the most common sense, useful option, with the others being at 50, 160 and 300Hz. I like this move, it means Heritage’s ’73 Jr side is a fully usable preamp, without having to add the EQ section to get the filter.

The other common features of 1073 products are all there too: A switchable input impedance — 300Ω or 1200Ω — with an increase in impedance at higher gains, a phase flip, a line input selector, and a +48V phantom switch.

GAIN ADVANTAGE

One important difference between this model and most other 1073 versions — vintage or modern — is the way the gain is set out. It still has a full 80dB of gain, just like a normal 1073, it’s just arranged in a slightly different way. On a standard 1073, mic and line levels are on the same knob; 80dB of mic gain at the top end, back through to Off, then a range of +10dB to -20dB line level gain below that.

On the ’73 Jr, the gain knob goes from +25dB to +80dB, and there’s a 20dB pad to drop the input level before it hits the transformer, which makes the unit even more flexible, and cleaner on loud sources. On the flipside, when combined with the output level, you can essentially choose how hard you want to drive the transformers with a wider range of input sources. You can pad down the input and drive the gain to add that little bit extra harmonic content on the way in.

The line level gain has also received a boost, with up to 50dB of gain. Just don’t click past 50dB. It’s tempting to think you can add harmonics and roll off the level using the output control, but it just clips.

Speaking of the output control, it has no markings, but it goes from 0dB, when fully clockwise, to -∞ at its opposite position. What does all this amount to? Well, you can pretty much drive this mini-1073 in even more flexible ways than the original — from super clean to the maximum saturation allowable.

THE DOWN LOW

While the preamp side gained a hi-pass filter, the ’73EQ Jr lost it. It’s a bit of a shame, because

HERITAGE VS AMS SECOND OPINION

I own two much-loved and well-used 500 series AMS Neve 1073 preamps, so I was very excited to plug in the Heritage units side by side and see how they compare. The Heritage units sounded great, but interestingly, noticeably different to the Neves. Running a variety of sources through the Heritage preamp, I found the high end, in particular, was more rounded than on my Neves.

The smoother sound immediately reminded of the company moniker. With a name like ‘Heritage’ they are definitely sticking firm to the tried and true rock ’n’ roll adage, “I like your old stuff better than your new stuff”. The Heritage preamp sound struck me as having more of a tape-like, dare I say it, ‘vintage’ rounded quality than the AMS Neve.

The gain structure and feel of the lower and mid frequencies felt almost identical between the two brands. That mid range thickness and bite, which is such a big part of the classic Neve tone, remains intact in the Heritage preamp.

The Heritage ’73 EQ Jr shares the same kind of layout as the original Neve console. It has an adjustable high shelf, mid range and lows, with the same frequency increments and fixed Q as you would expect to see. Boosting the highs only slightly immediately added a genuine sparkle without an ounce of harshness, nicely counterbalancing the slight high end roll-off that naturally comes with the Heritage pre. In fact, the pre and the EQ worked superbly well in tandem. The subtractive abilities of the mids to perfectly clear out the muck in my ’70s Wurlitzer electric piano tone were of particular note, achieved once again without having to turn the knob too far. Be careful, this EQ is surprisingly powerful and is capable of seriously shifting your sounds around, so it’s to be used with a delicate touch to achieve the best gently coloured results.

I found the combination of the Heritage Audio ’73 Jr and ’73 EQ Jr to be a highly impressive recreation of a 1073 Neve. Not just any ol’ sterile channel but one that has had some serious rock ’n’ roll juice poured into it for generations, well primed and ready to give you some classic tone, steeped in history. — Henry Wagons

the low-cut filter combined with a low boost can provide some really outstanding results for bringing out the body of instruments without the boom.

But as a standalone EQ, in my mind it makes more sense to have a flexible three-band EQ anyway, than include filters if they don’t fit. The EQ features the same smooth Baxandall high shelving, with added 10, 16, and 20kHz options around the previously fixed frequency of 12kHz. The 1073 EQ low shelf and dual inductor mid band are also there.

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Probably the key point to note is it has the same type of transformer-coupled line level preamp with the same Class A transformer-balanced output stage as the 1073, with a range of -20dB to +6dB. So you don’t have to buy the ’73 Jr to get the full 1073 tone if you’re just after the EQ. LUNCHTIME

I put both units into an SM Pro Juicerack 8, and fired it up. They both only use less than 90mA at ±16VDC, which is well within the VPR alliance spec. The Juicerack makes hooking up units designed to flow together simple. You just choose the two slots you want to link and Feed one into the other.

The first thing I plugged in was a Fender Precision bass straight into the DI input. I’d been using a DI into another Neve pre, but the EQ on the way in really helped immediately dial in the sound I was after. Once we hit on the sound, the bass player stayed around longer than he’d planned to make sure we’d finished the last track because he liked it so much. I wasn’t losing anything in the DI stage, there was plenty of low end. And even though boosting at either end of the spectrum is more-ish, a couple of dB at 110Hz and some high-mid boost was all that was required. You can definitely overcook things with too much bass — a good problem to have.

On electric guitar, the ’73 Jr delivered a

confidence in the lower mids and balance up high that just represented the Vox/Tele lightly crunchy combination really well.

My impression of the Heritage ’73 Jr, and just in general, 1073 preamps, is they’re not necessarily the premier choice for every source. But that they do sound the best or equal to the best on a lot of them, and never sound bad. Most noticeably the way it treats the high end; I wouldn’t say it’s the breathiest preamp going, but it doesn’t round off highs or give vocals a hyped edge. A bit of high-shelf boost of the ’73EQ Jr gave a broad airiness to the take, and cutting some lower mids showed how powerful the EQ can be, just a little scoop was all it took to clear out the mud.

On snare, it was the perfect match with the standard SM57. Knocking the impedance back down to 300Ω, the snare had plenty of body and you could hear both the crack and snare wires come through in good balance.

Build quality is pretty special on these.

Internally, you can see the Carnhill transformers in a neat, condensed layout, and all the switches feel like they’re built to last. The only issue I have is the frequency readings below the knobs are so close to the knobs’ perimeter, they’re almost hidden. But you tend to work by feel after a while anyway, just listening to the results. The knobs on the EQ are also mounted to a board, so there’s a tiny bit of wiggle room, and they all wiggle

Free & Easy

together. Knob markings all line up though, and you get a nice solid click on the outer concentric frequency selectors and preamp input gain pot.

However, there’s no centre detent at 0dB on the line level input control on the EQ, which would have been nice.

SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE

It’s hard to compare the ’73 Jr and ’73EQ Jr to the 1073, because by splitting the two, you’re creating two distinct beasts. Here’s my logic on it: If you’ve got a 500 series rack and you want the 1073 sound, the Heritage Audio 1073/500 is the most accurate 1073 clone you’re going to get for the format. It’s got all the sound, including the combination of high-pass filter and low shelf, which is a handy tonal device. If however you’re after the most versatile 1073-inspired preamp for your 500 series rack without the EQ, the ’73 Jr with the addition of its DI input and hi-pass filter is the best one out there. And for those that just want really sweet, simple three-band EQ for broad but effective tonal shaping, the ’73EQ Jr will give you that control without sacrificing the 1073 signal path.

These two little junior boxes are a worthy addition to the broad 1073 lineage, giving more people, and perhaps younger, junior generations, access to a classic sound. It’s still not cheap, but worthwhile.

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REVIEW

AVID PRO TOOLS S6 CONTROL SURFACE While the S6 killed off Avid’s own Icon control surfaces, the company’s complete embrace of Eucon sees it go DAW-agnostic.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Brad Watts

Price M10 systems: starting at $26,399 M40 systems: starting at $74,099

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Contact Avid Australia: 1300 734 454 or www.avid.com

Pros Completely scalable Attentioning & colourcoding make brilliant ergonomics Up to 8 DAWs at once Fast

Cons Start saving or speak to your accountant Was the catalyst for killing Icon .

Summary With cross-module colour-coding, the ability to call a channel to the central unit, and waveform displays that mirror your arrangement pane, this Eucon control surface isn’t just for cashed-up ’Tools die-hards, but any pro DAW user looking for serious control.

Many moons ago I was afforded the privilege of penning the first review of the Euphonix System 5 mixing console. At the time there was nothing that came close to the console’s incredible feature set and vast reserves of DSP power. The System 5 interfaced with pretty much every ‘professional’ DAW available, and went on to become the darling of many high-end broadcast and mixing facilities. Australia’s Opera House installed dozens of the things, where they were used for both tracking and mix duties. What made the system so versatile was its use of standard TCP/ IP protocols and connectivity, which, at the time was quite a new approach to console interconnectivity.

Come late 2010, and Euphonix was absorbed

by Avid. The acquisition would allow Avid to build upon an already extremely capable platform, alongside its already well-established Icon mixing surface range. Icon joined the ranks of the discontinued in September 2013, but support is slated to continue through to 2018. Of course, there was a swathe of technology held in Euphonix that has become integrated into Avid’s own product offerings — a culmination of the two well developed control surface platforms; Icon and System 5. Part of that technology is Euphonix’s EuCon controller protocol, and it’s at the core of Avid’s most recent control surface, the S6.

BLACK ON BLACK

Before jumping into the technological features, we’ll have a look around at some of the physical aspects of the S6. In a break from both the Icon and System 5, the S6 is unapologetically black.

Black upon black, with a black leather-ish padded arm-rest. Adding further to the blackness is the use of OLED displays across the modules. These are incredibly inconspicuous until information is displayed, then it’s as if the information appears from behind what looks like black polished glass — extremely discreet and exceedingly legible, even from extreme angles. When opting for the more capable M40 engine-driven S6 systems (as opposed to the lighter-on M10 engine), the console includes TFT screens which sit across the ‘meter bridge’ section of the console. These display metering amongst other visual feedback, and actually utilise built-in processing in their own right; but more on these later.

CHOOSE YOUR ENGINE

First, a bit more on those two S6 base variants. M10 systems are aimed at the budgetary and spaceconstrained installations, and can only be built up to 24 faders, and five knobs per channel strip. The M10 systems also don’t support the use of display modules (the TFT visual monitoring displays mentioned earlier). These are predominantly preconfigured systems with limited avenues for customisation. Where the more powerful M40 systems are required, the entire gamut of bespoke customisation options is possible, such as: TFT monitors, nine knobs per channel strip, up to 72 faders, and the ability to simultaneously access up to eight DAWs, as opposed to the M10 system’s

1 ability to access only two DAWs simultaneously.

That said, standard base configurations with as little as eight faders and five knobs per channel can be ordered straight off the shelf starting at around the $26k mark. Step into M40 waters and 16 faders, five encoders per channel, and two display modules, will set you back around $74k.

The unit I was entrusted with for a time was an M40 system with TFT displays, and incorporated 24 faders across three fader modules, with a 25th master fader housed in the central master module. With this module layout the system sits at approximately 126cm in width, and 93cm deep — pretty much the size you’d expect with a professional 24-fader console. Of course, this configuration isn’t set in stone as you can preconfigure an S6 to your requirements with up to nine fader modules for a 72-fader span of 2.74m.

The system also scales vertically, with the option to include sets of five or nine knobs per channel. A bespoke ‘Producer’s Desk’ is available to support the console, along with specialty leg assemblies to suit the configuration you settle on. It really is a case of rolling your own setup with the M40 lineage, in much the same fashion as the Euphonix System 5 could be configured to the umpteenth degree.

There’s also a swag of accoutrements you can add to the surface such as blank module panels, VESA arms to mount displays, sliding keyboard and script trays, even a speaker bridge mounting system for perching your nearfields on. It’s a far more comprehensive package than previous Avid control surfaces.

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MODULARISE TO SIZE

When it comes to stringing together a bespoke S6 system, there are a variety of individual modules that can be integrated into a complete control surface. The mainstay module of all systems is the Master Module. This is the central nerve centre of any S6 setup, and includes the main processing engine of the controller. It runs on the Windows 8 operating system with appropriately scaled processors for the M10 and M40 style units, the M40 being an i5 processor as opposed to the M10’s Celeron (remember the M40 can access a far greater number of modules). Both Master Module types incorporate a vertically mounted and tiltable 12.1-inch multipoint touchscreen. The screen will accept up to 10 touchpoints so it’s amenable to your (assumed) complete quota of 10 digits. Via this

2 screen you can access various mix parameters such as which tracks are represented across the physical channel faders, metering options, solo and mute of tracks, record enable, with all the same track colours from the Pro Tools session reflected via the touchscreen. This track overview is extremely intuitive, and enables swift organisation of which tracks correspond with the physical faders. A quick touch selection of particular tracks in the touchscreen’s overview assigns them across the S6’s faders. Focussing on an individual track reveals an exploded view of all its parameters. It’s fast and ultra intuitive.

Processing functions can also be accessed and edited via the touchscreen. To the left and right sides of the touchscreen are four encoders (eight in total) which can take on any processing parameter you choose. When assigning a processing parameter to an encoder, the touch sensitive encoder will take on an associated colour: blue for panning, magenta for EQ, and orange for sends for example. These colours are dyed into the operating system by the way, so panning will always be blue, regardless of which S6 system you’re working from.

This functionality becomes greatly expanded within the exploded track overviews. Here you can drag ’n’ drop parameters from the track’s entire processing arsenal and assign individual parameters to any of the eight encoders. It’s simply a matter of touching on the parameter you want to adjust, and then touching an encoder. The right side could be EQ, with dynamics on the left, or sends on two encoders and compression ratio and gain on another two, with the rest assigned to EQ. The permutations are as numerous as you require, and all without the debilitating constraints of a mouse and menus.

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AUTO MOTIONS

Below the main touchscreen and encoders is a further space for the inclusion of an Automation Module. This module is included on all preconfigured systems but is an option when configuring a bespoke system. However, as Avid point out, you’ll want this module included regardless as it incorporates a master fader, transport controls, and a rather weighty jog/shuttle wheel. This can be assigned to a host of other functions such as vertical and horizontal scrolling of your Pro Tools edit window, page scrolling, and the ability to move selected clips. The transport AT 53

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5

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buttons are eager for a good whacking, and feel definite and solid, and an OLED counter display reads out SMPTE, beat/bars or time according to your choice.

Two smaller OLED screens above the transport section are flanked by 24 configurable soft keys.

These keys are initially configured to access automation procedures and setups, but can of course be assigned to anything. Then they can be set to reflect groups of differing editing functions.

As of the more recent 1.3 firmware, macro-style sets of DAW keyboard commands can also be assigned to these keys. To the right of these are control room monitoring controls, with facility for multiple sets of monitors, talkback, monitor level dimming, and, wouldn’t you know it? Monitoring level. Monitoring functions will require the additional installation of an appropriate Avid interface.

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FADING ATTENTION SPAN

Next up in the hierarchy of import is undoubtedly the Fader Module. This module consists of eight motorised faders along with tri-colour LED metering for both levels and gain reduction running parallel to each fader. The faders themselves are super-fast, and feel incredibly smooth and precise — without the slightest hint of stepping. The immediate impression with these faders is that they’re borrowed from the Euphonix System 5 — only they’re better! Smooth, silent, and staggeringly fast.

Above each fader is an ‘Attention’ button.

‘Attentioning’ a fader brings that track’s parameters into full view on the central 12.1-inch touchscreen, along with delegating that track’s control to the master fader on the centrally located Automation Module. This is a perfect feature for pulling a track’s parameters and controls to the operator’s primary position. Superbly ergonomic. It reminds me of the Smart AV system of allocating a focussed track to an immediately available fader. Yet, in the case of the S6, Attentioning brings that focus to a regularly used master fader at a central position of the surface rather than any chosen fader. Attentioning a channel strip/fader is also possible via the master module’s touchscreen.

Above the Action buttons are Trim mode and Automation mode buttons, dedicated mute and solo, along with dedicated record enable buttons.

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Above the menu buttons are the previously mentioned OLED displays which relate the track name and number, automation status, input and record status. Being OLED, these displays are easily read, even at extreme angles.

Heading down to the base of the faders you’ll notice a button which alters its colour to reflect the track colour within Pro Tools. This feature is brilliant as, for example, grouped tracks will take on the same colour, providing instant and intuitive confirmation of your fader assignments. By the time you’re 10 per cent of the way into a mix the particular track colours are already committed to memory. These buttons also double as modifier keys for DAW operation, so in the case of Pro Tools, option/alt and a record enable button will throw all tracks into record. In other words, total control from the S6 surface rather than flitting back to the mouse and DAW keyboard.

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HOB KNOBBING ABOUT

As mentioned, there are a couple of options for adding rotary encoders to the S6. The greater of which is affectionately known as the ‘Knob Module’, the other being the ‘Process Module’, which I’ll get to shortly. The Knob Module provides four rotary encoders along with four associated OLED displays. The knobs themselves change colour according to the assigned parameter, and stick to colour regimes as I mentioned before; blue for pan, magenta for EQ etc... These knobs alter their colour courtesy of RGB LEDs. They’re quite incredible, at least I thought so. The thing is, the colours really do provide immediate recognition of the assigned parameter — such an effective, yet simple method of interfacing with the user. And, they’re shaped like real knobs — not some Dr Whostyle mushroom shaped thingamajig. The OLED displays inform you of the knob’s position and the parameter it’s adjusting clearly and precisely, and most importantly, swiftly. Alongside each knob are two LEDs signifying whether the knob is reading automation, in write automation mode, or when both LEDs are unlit, automation is set to off.

5 With the M40 systems, two Knob Modules are installable for a total of eight knobs per channel.

That figure comes to nine knobs per channel strip with the standard inclusion of the Process Module,

which itself incorporates a single encoder. Process and Knob modules work hand-in-hand, as the Process Module allows assignment of functions to the Knob Module, toggle them in and out, and control a single parameter from its knob section. By default the Process Module’s knob is set to pan, but can of course take on all other available parameters.

Intrinsic to the Process Module are dedicated buttons for instigating EQ, dynamics, sends, pan, and a user-selected processor. Grouping procedures and inserts are also instigated via this module.

Remarkably, editing of audio tracks and clips can be attacked via the Process Module too. With audio tracks, clip gain, move, trim back, trim front, fade out, fade in, nudge amount, undo and redo all accessible, while instrument and MIDI tracks can be edited with move, trim back, trim front, nudge amount, undo and redo commands. Sure you can do all this via your DAW’s screen, keyboard and mouse or trackpad, but the beauty of the S6 is just how far you can drag yourself away from that DAW monitor, which is where the Display Modules come well and truly into play.

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TO THE BRIDGE

The S6 Display Modules are a sight to behold.

These eight-channel, high-resolution TFT displays mount across the bridge section of the S6 and provide scads of visual feedback, including audio metering, channel names, routing, groups, the affiliation with a particular DAW (remember the S6 can integrate with multiple DAWs), and most impressively, waveform and clip displays. This is where editing tracks and clips in combination with the Process Module negates the need for referring to the DAW’s software interface for many mix-intrinsic functions — crossfade, splicing, no problems. What’s impressive is how the clip information is a direct representation of the information within the DAW. The Display Modules incorporate their own processors to assimilate this information, and unlike similar systems from the likes of MCI and SSL, don’t require a pass through to glean this waveform info. It’s all created via the display information from the DAW so is therefore immediate — what you edit via the S6 is reflected in the DAW and vice-versa.

Various display modes are possible, including large meters, large waveforms, meters and

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waveforms, meters and function, waveforms and function, waveforms and dual function, and waveforms and dual function plus routing. Each display layout shows the track name, input, and automation status at the bottom. As with all the S6 functionality, Pro Tools track colours are mirrored in the display module. In the ‘large waveforms’ and ‘waveforms and function’ modes, a single meter displays the track’s maximum channel level. All other display layouts can show 7.1-channel meters.

As mentioned, Display Modules are only compatible with M40 systems. But as the Avid folk who installed the rig for me pointed out, once you see these displays you’ll gladly stump up for an M40 S6. They’re simply that good.

INTEGRATION ÜBER ALLES

Because of the Eucon underpinnings of the S6, multiple DAWs can be accessed via the S6. M40 systems can simultaneously access up to eight individual DAWs, while M10 systems can access only two. What this means is a session can incorporate tracks from various DAWs into the one cohesive mix session.

You could incorporate a Pro Tools session with a composer’s Logic Pro session and bring both session’s tracks up on the S6 side by side. Being Eucon, there is a huge range of compatible DAW platforms including Pro Tools HD 9 through to 11, Media Composer, Adobe Audition, Apogee Maestro, Apple’s Final Cut Pro 7, Logic Pro and Express 9 upwards and Soundtrack Pro, Sonar X1 onwards, Magix’s Sequioia, Merging’s Pyramix, MOTU’s Digital Performer 7 and up, and Steinberg’s Cubase and Nuendo platforms. That’s pretty much the entire pro audio editing and composition field sewn up — there’s not much left that can’t play with the S6, and if it can’t, it isn’t a professional product.

In use? Frankly I’ve not come across a controller that left so little needing to be referenced via the DAW’s main user interface. The use of colour coding seems such a simple interfacing feature that it’s a wonder no manufacturer has done this before. But then again, without the relatively recent technology behind electrical components such as RGB LEDs, this concept simply wasn’t possible. The other tantalising aspect of the S6 is how quickly it operates. Booting up a session in Pro Tools has the S6 ready to mix in six-10 seconds with everything online and ready to roll. Add to this the ability to run concurrent sessions from multiple audio workstations side by side on the same control surface and it’s difficult to imagine a facility opting for anything other than the S6. Truly remarkable and definitely a marked evolution in control surface technology.

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REVIEW

Korg Electribe Korg’s analogue modelled, drums ’n’ synth music production workstation returns. Good times.

Review: Christopher Holder

Flood Gates: With the Gate Arpeggiator use the XY pad to trigger the sequencer with gate speed on one axis and length of sound on the other.

A great real-time performance tool.

Filtered Choices: A selection of filters includes an MS20, Oberheim, ‘Acid’ and more. If squealing self oscillation is your bag, look no further.

Cut the Chord: This little button will turn any sound into a polyphonic chord you can play in the scale you preset. Easy, instant inspiration.

Stack of Sync Jacks: It’s easy to sync with the Volcas via dedicated sync jacks or any other device via MIDI.

NEED TO KNOW

Korg has cornered the ‘fun’ market. I’m not saying it entirely owns the groove box market — Roland’s AIRA gear has been met with considerable sales and acclaim — but no one does fun like Korg: Monotribe, Monotron, Volca… even the more ‘serious’ MS20 reissue, Korg has an array of funky little boxes of fun.

And now it has the Electribe.

Actually, correction, it’s had the Electribe since last century. I should know, I bought the EA-1 and ER-1 way back when.

This was in the comparatively early days of analogue modelling. The monophonic Korg Prophecy was still around, Roland had only just

Price $549 (Expect to pay)

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Contact (03) 9315 2244 info@cmi.com.au

released the JP8000 and the Nord Lead was still one of the most desirable synths in the world.

So my most immediate attraction to Electribe was having access to Korg’s modelled analogue sounds in an affordable box. But I soon fell in love with the format.

Here was a fun series of modelled analogue boxes that channelled the spirit of the classic bass synth/drum synth of the analogue heyday (think: Roland TR606 Drumatix and the TB303 Bassline combo). Sync them up with a DIN cable and let rip. Instant fun.

I got my money’s worth out of my Electribes, but most of it was spent jamming rather than

Pros Intuitive interface Up to date contemporary dance sound Fun to use

Cons Odd MIDI socket The ‘boy racer’ LED skirt won’t please everyone

incorporating them into many finished tracks.

The beauty of them was being able to bang greatsounding loops together. Their effectiveness was diminished if you were to address them like another passive MIDI synth. It would invariably mean sending MIDI program changes from your sequencer to trigger patterns on the Electribe. Technically, not a big deal, but, still, the Electribes always felt like they were operating a little in parallel with the rest of your studio.

QUICK OFF THE LIGHTS

I thought I’d dust off the ol’ Electribes in celebration of the arrival of the latest hipster upstart.

Summary Self-contained dancefloor filler with more than enough tweakability. Rewards experimentation.

Korg keeps its King of Fun crown.

Skirt Gets a Lift: Out of the box, the latest Electribe is sleek and relatively unadorned. Switch it on and it’s like a Tokyo Drift hot hatch – all LED skirts and halos. Trés schmick. (Right) The young buck hangs with the author’s original EA-1 and ER-1.

Out of the box, the latest Electribe is sleek and relatively unadorned. Switch it on and it’s like a Tokyo Drift hot hatch. All LED skirts and halos.

Trés schmick.

The factory preset loops are impressive. The sound is instantly contemporary, exploring all the various latest strands of EDM — dub step, trap, main floor, along with traditional dancefloor favourites like trance, house and techno — and demonstrate how you can build variations and fills.

It’s all very impressive, and not in a “yeah, but it needs some kind of polysynth for this loop to sound any good” kind of way — straight out of the box, the Electribe feels like a fully-formed floor filler.

Here’s why: there’s plenty of polyphonic grunt.

The Electribe packs drums and synthesis in the same box and, all up, there’s a maximum of 24 simultaneous voices possible. And to bump up the depth, you can convert any sound you like into a chord — just hit the Chord button to use the keypad to trigger chords according to which scale mode you’re set to. Of course, you can do it the old fashioned way and simply hit multiple buttons on the keypad in Keyboard mode. The point is, with this amount of polyphony, really quite rich productions are possible.

GOING THROUGH MOTION

That sort of rich palette of sounds and textures is a good thing, but only if it doesn’t come at the expense of usability, and in my view for a music production station such as Electribe, simplicity of use is just about the single most important feature.

To its credit, Electribe is fall-off-a-log easy. The manual is only 15 pages long, for goodness sake!

This all belies the fact there’s enormous scope for fashioning something that’s truly your own.

Motion Sequencing, for example, makes a welcome reappearance in this manifestation of Electribe. It’s a feature that allows you to record your knob tweaking and save it as part of that pattern. Nifty.

Motion sequencing may have been my favourite feature of the old-school Electribes but I think the gate arpeggiator is probably my new best friend.

It allows you to use the XY pad to trigger the sequencer with gate speed on one axis and length of sound on the other. A great real-time performance tool, and, yes, you can record that too.

There are a couple of other features that mean you’ll want to take Electribe with you on stage.

For example, there’s no need to scroll through patterns, you can assign them to the keypads for easier triggering and you can return to the XY pad for some real-time sonic wig outs with the Touch Scale button.

FILTER FREAK

Sonically, Electribe is everything you’d expect from a Korg analogue modelling synth. There is a selection of the latest and greatest filters on board — MS20, Oberheim, ‘Acid’ and more — and if squealing self oscillation is your bag, you’ve come to the right place.

A big chunk of an Electribe sound is down to its effects and Korg provides more than enough flexibility on this front. Not only do you have a master effect, you can apply an insert effect.

The effects themselves are monstrous. The first FX patches point the way (a distortion and a

bit crusher-style effect) and, along with delays, modulation effects etc, they’re all programmed to be cranked to the point of absurdity.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

The success of the Electribe is down to the right combination of big sound, and ease of use. The interface has just enough buttons to ensure you can spend 90 percent of your time playing without recourse to the LCD. Great. But there’s enough sophistication and grunt to ensure you can produce loops that stand on their own two feet.

Saying that, if you were to make the Electribe part of your stage setup, it needs to be a team player. Korg makes it easy to sync with its analogue Volcas via dedicated sync jacks or indeed any other device via MIDI (peculiarly MIDI I/O is via a jack socket that needs a special, supplied, jack-to-DIN lead you wouldn’t want to lose or forget to take to the gig).

Back in the day of the original Electribes no one had the nerve to take anything other than an Akai MPC on stage and Ableton was still just another product Applied Acoustics made. I wouldn’t hesitate making today’s Electribe a key part of my stage setup. A sound that’s totally up to date, in a fun package you can’t help but reach out and make your own.

As for my ‘legacy’ Electribes? Well, they’re not going to be inducted into a synth hall of fame anytime soon or allow me to retire on the resale proceeds. That’s okay. I enjoyed my years with the EA-1 and ER-1 and I have no hesitation in predicting the same future for the 2014 Electribe — fun and inspiring.

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REGULARS

LAST WORD with

Kev ‘The Caveman’ Shirley

The Caveman doesn’t hibernate much. The South African has spent much of his career producing and mixing in Australia and the US, and was just at the North Pole.

With a nose for hard rock, the Caveman has credits ranging from Silverchair’s Frogstomp to Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden.

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I started my career at Tully McCullagh’s studio in Cape Town. He’s the one who taught me about recording techniques; pretty specific ones because we worked on a lot of homemade equipment. At the time you could only record out of the left channel and play back on the right channel. So I learnt how to develop a song instrument by instrument.

It wasn’t until I got to work with Mike Chapman on the Baby Animals that I saw how another producer really captured the energy of the live performance.

The family had moved to Australia from South Africa — my parents, brothers and sisters. I was 19 at the time, so the Australian Government didn’t let me come along because they determined I was too old to be part of the family unit.

I had to stay in South Africa and start my career off until I had enough credentials to warrant me a pass to Australia.

I went to live in Newcastle and did a few records with local bands like Vegemite Reggae until I managed to get some sort of interest in Sydney.

The Baby Animals album was a big hit — I think four times platinum in Australia — and I got asked to do some work in The States. I worked with a bunch of people — Bon Jovi, Rush, Billy Squier, all sorts of people. But it wasn’t very easy and I moved back to Australia in ’92.

When I came back from the US, Australia was very much trying to be like The States; especially with the equipment being used. But Aussies were much more exciting than Americans. The States was pretty f**king boring — everything was ‘OMG’ and ‘love, love, love.’

I made the first Silverchair record, and that blew up all over the world. And then everybody wanted me back in The States.

I did Journey, Aerosmith, The Black Crowes, Dream Theater… One of the bands that really liked the Silverchair record was Iron Maiden. Their record sales had been declining, and they asked me to make their new record Brave New World in 1999, which took them back up to the top of the charts, pretty much where they’ve been ever since.

I went the other way round. I started off as a producer. I used to mix stuff, but I was never really into it until I ended up paying a lot of money for Michael Brauer to mix a Lime Spiders record. He’s actually a good friend of mine now, but he mixed the Lime Spiders record and I hated the mix so much.

We’d recorded it at the old Rhinoceros Studio in Sydney, and then I went to L.A. to mix it with Michael.

He’d just done The Rolling Stones Steel Wheels album, so we couldn’t really get out of it at that point. And when he started mixing, I was hating everything about it compared with what the rough mixes sounded like. So in a roundabout way he got me into mixing because I never

wanted to be that disappointed in a mix again.

It’s a different animal and entirely different energy output as well. When you’re a producer you’re a bit of a cheerleader, as well as a school teacher, a big brother, concert master, all those things. And when you become a mix guy it’s an entirely different hat. You have to leave your ego out of it a lot more.

I’m good at mixing hard rock, because it’s just the way I hear it. You can put two people with the same equipment behind a console and the results are going to come out slightly differently. I just finished the new Iron Maiden record. I do a rough mix on the way in and come back a couple of weeks later to mix for real. I A/B it with the mix, and sometimes I’m struggling to hear the difference between them. Just the ears on your head; you hear something a certain way.

There are people that make much better sounding records than me. I aspire to make records sound like Bob Clearmountain makes them sound, but he’s just in another league to me.

I don’t know why I’m blowing smoke up his arse! I mean he’s friendly, but he’s never been really nice to me. I still think he’s f**king awesome!

I produce each guitarist differently depending on how well I know them. I know when Joe’s [Bonamassa] getting lazy and when he’s getting formulaic. So I do different things to try and get him out of is comfort zone, whether it’s change his guitars on him or sometimes I’m much more specific.

He’s got an encyclopaedic understanding of genres for guitar. Depending on which side of the bed he got out of, he might want to do a very fast and fluid jazz fusion solo, and I have to wheel him in and say, ‘let’s get back to the pentatonic on this one.’ Once he gets his Eric Johnson phrases flowing I know he’s getting lazy because he pulls them out to impress the punters. I have to make him dig a little deeper.

For the up-and-coming producer, do what you love.

Don’t try and be anyone else. There’s a lot of amazing talent out there and a lot of young people making good records.

When you think back, some of the best rock ’n’ roll records in the world were done by young people who had an absolute love for it.

There’s no need to compromise what you do. Just love it.

And don’t get bogged down by the technicalities of it, go the heart and soul route.

Every time we go into a project, we try and respect that every time someone goes out and spends even $1 on a song, that it’s going to be spent on something valuable. The music we put together and the sound of the records, it’s a lot of work; there’s no short cuts.

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