AudioTechnology App Issue 31

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Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Editorial Assistant Preshan John preshan@alchemedia.com.au Art Director Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au

Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark Andrew Bencina Brent Heber Anthony Garvin Ewan McDonald

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

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.

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All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2016 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. 14/07/2016.

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COVER STORY

Stereo Masterclass with Classical Legend, Tony Faulkner

Elvis: Orchestrating The King’s Recoronation

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Rockwiz Live!

The Touring Pub Crawl

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Allen & Heath dLive Live Console

Waves Nx Virtual Mix Room Plug-in AT 6

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ISSUE 31 CONTENTS

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Hilltop Hoods’ DIY Orchestral Mix

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Presonus CS18AI Control Surface

EAW Redline Powered Speakers

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REGULARS

Ed Space No One Way to String a Cat Column: Mark Davie

Ah orchestras, such beautiful yet complex beasts.

In this issue, we have three stories centred around the process of orchestral recording and mixing. Which will either turn you off — Decca Tree, yada, yada, yada — or have you turning down your B&O hi-fi and reaching for the La-Z-Boy’s upright position. Rest assured, it’s going to be a diverse ride, with three completely different approaches to capturing the beast.

First up, there’s the zen master of stereo, Tony Faulkner, who’s been around the block, oh, thousands of times! He’s done it all: won Grammys, recorded for all the major classical labels, put mics up in front of 70 orchestras and counting, and even had stereo techniques named after him without his consent. He’s like an orchestra recording superhero with a utility belt of stereo miking techniques to get him out of any sticky situation.

We caught up with him at the Sydney Opera House, where he was recording Beethoven’s 9th using a handful of Rode prototype mics, including some new omnis pointed up into the roof. But an omni captures sound from all around, you say, why point them up? Tony has the answer.

Then there was the revivalist crew, who — for his 80th birthday — gifted The King a session with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Of course, Elvis hasn’t been around for a while (or has he?), so it required high-level skilled surgery to extract his original vocals, and further intense editing to marry them with the new material recorded at Abbey Road. Australian engineer, Peter Cobbin — who won two Grammies for the Lord of the Rings soundtracks — recorded the orchestra in the drier confines of Studio 2 (aka The Beatles’ studio) to control the orchestra bloom. Being at Abbey Road, he opted to only use period microphones, including the rare EMI RM-1B ribbon made by Alan Blumlein in the 1930s. It was no easy ride, the whole thing required some dramatic conforming to the original phrasing to get it to sound right.

Lastly, we caught up with DJ Debris of the Hilltop Hoods after he’d mixed his first orchestral recording for Drinking from the Sun/Walking Under Stars: Restrung. It was the group’s second crack at ‘re-stringing’ selections from their oeuvre. Last time, Neville Clark miked up the

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orchestra in sections as well as with his modified Decca Tree. This time the Hoods were intent on capturing each instrument with its own mic because the final outcome required shoehorning an orchestra into an already full mix. You can’t exactly put a composer’s General MIDI Sibelius output into a track and hear the end product.

In just these three stories, the mic choices varied from 1930s period ribbons to unreleased Rode prototypes; the placements encompassed everything from Faulkner’s phased array stereo techniques to individual spot miking; and the edits ranged from single takes to heavily conformed edits in order to align with decades-old phrasing.

It goes to show that even in orchestral recording — with its century-long history of technique development — there’s no one way to string a cat.

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GENERAL NEWS

SCARLETT, ROUND TWO The second generation of Focusrite’s USB 2.0 Scarlett family of interfaces improves on the well-received features of the original lineup. While I/O options haven’t changed, the models have had a slight cosmetic makeover. Gain controls are made of metal and the red chassis has been face-lifted. There’s been some work under the hood too. Roundtrip latency is now said to be just 2.74ms (96k, 32 sample buffer), and maximum operating sample rate goes up to 192k. The mic

preamps have a more even gain structure and increased headroom, instrument inputs also have more headroom, and surge protection circuitry has been added. On the software side, any purchase of a Scarlett interface includes the stripped-down Pro Tools | First DAW, Ableton Live Lite, Softube Time and Tone bundle, Focusrite’s Red plug-ins, Eleven Lite, Tape Echo, and 2GB of loops.

Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or www.elfa.com.au

LEVEL UP YOUR SKILLS iZotope has jumped into the audio education world by creating Pro Audio Essentials, a free gamebased course for music producers to practise and improve their audio skills. The web-based experience is pretty unique in its concept. Pro Audio Essentials offers a combination of audio games, ear training, and instructional videos which iZotope says caters to beginner and experienced audio engineers alike. “For us, it’s all about helping music makers succeed, and we know that stronger skills lead to better-sounding tracks,” added Claire

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Harding Hollenbeck, iZotope’s Vice President of Education and Content Marketing. “It’s a thrill to hear back from participants who feel they are improving, and that they’re eager to come back for more practice. We invite everyone to give us their feedback and comments, which will help us further develop Pro Audio Essentials as the go-to tool for audio education.”

Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or www.elfa.com.au

RECORDING THE MASTERS RMGI has undergone a rebrand, with its line-up of high-quality tapes now under the name Recording The Masters. The reason for the rebrand is unclear, although this isn’t the first time. The product lines keep the same labels — the SM900 high output tape, SM911 and SM468 standard bias tapes, and LPR long play tapes. All the pro SM-series tapes are available as 1/4-inch, 1/2-inch, one-inch, or two-inch reels. Semi-pro tapes come in 1/4-inch

size only. Recording The Masters is set to introduce some new products too, including a new long play run tape that’s based on the SM900 formula, and a reference Mix Master to record full masters for production of vinyl. The Recording The Masters tapes are yet to be ‘officially’ released, so stay tuned for pricing and availability.

Totally Technical: (07) 3270 1111 or www.totallytechnical.com.au

ANTELOPE EMULATES EMULATION Would you call emulating a clone, flattery on steroids, or just plain silly? Antelope Audio has been putting the onboard DSP in its interfaces to good use by releasing some neat powered plugins. But the latest partnership with BAE Audio has them modelling the BAE 1073… itself a clone of the classic Neve 1073. Marcel James, Director of US Sales for Antelope Audio, says, “We believe that BAE Audio has created the very best modern version of the vintage 1073. Therefore BAE was the obvious choice for us to partner with on this and

other upcoming products based on their established pedigree.” Sure, but this seems like one branding exercise too far, especially considering Antelope’s already released house-branded models of other vintage gear. At least the models have passed by Brent’s ears, who’s as familiar with the internals and sound of a 1073 as anyone these days. Either way, it’s good news for Antelope Audio customers, who just got a Neve clone free of charge.

Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au

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LIVE NEWS

AMPHE-DANTE ADAPTERS The Dante networking protocol has made audio over ethernet widely accessible, with a range of manufacturers supporting it and no specialist networking required. Amphenol’s latest gadgets — AmpheDante adapters — are going to make it even easier. The unassuming mini-cables serve as Dante-to-analogue converters, with an Ethernet port at one end and a male XLR connector at the other. The adapter receives Dante audio channels

and emits low-latency analogue audio, doing all the conversion in its small form factor. That means it’s super easy to distribute analogue outputs on a Dante network — speakers, amplifiers, headphone amps, hardware recorders, interfaces, etc. At the moment, the Amphe-Dante products are available in a single- or two-channel option.

National Audio Systems: (03) 8756 2600 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au

BOSE F1 GOES PASSIVE Bose has released a passive version of its F1 Model 812 flexible array loudspeaker system. As with the active Model 812, the big deal about the F1 speaker is its ability to be configured into four different vertical throw patterns, giving you more control over how you focus sound to target listening areas.

The F1 passive loudspeaker is ideal for permanent installations, for venues like clubs, schools, houses of worship, and other small to medium size spaces.

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Each speaker features eight of Bose’s proprietary 2.25-inch drivers, 100° horizontal waveguides, a 12-inch woofer, and a lower crossover point. It comes in a rugged enclosure with six M8 threaded insert points and there are a heap of optional mounting accessories including pan and tilt, yoke, and U-brackets.

Bose: (02) 8737 9999 or info@bose.com.au

MACKIE PRODX Mackie’s got a new line of compact digital mixers called the ProDX Series. You won’t find any faders on the ProDX models — it’s app control all the way, and both iOS and Android users can get in on the fun. The line-up features two models; the fourchannel ProDX4 and the eight-channel ProDX8.

Both feature wireless streaming and control, processing, and come with a control app for iOS and Android. Designed for solo performers, small bands, venues, and commercial applications, the Wide-Z preamps can apparently handle a mic or

guitar with no gain adjustment, and you can play music back through Bluetooth. Processing options include the usual three-band EQ, compression on each channel, a graphic EQ on all outputs, and ReadyFX with 16 effects. Wireless-based control means you don’t have to maintain line-of-sight to stay in touch with the mixer. Full mix recall is also available — handy for quick setup.

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

PRESONUS PUTS AIR IN LINEUP Presonus has released the new DSP-equipped Air loudspeaker family which includes 10-inch, 12-inch and 15-inch full-range models, and two subwoofers (15-inch and 18-inch). The speakers are an active two-way design with a Class D amplifier for the LF driver and Class AB for HF, providing 1200W of dynamic power in a moulded plastic enclosure.

Nominal dispersion for all three boxes is 90° x 60°.

The new StudioLive AR mixers come in eight-, 14and 16-channel versions, and offer a stripped-down yet capable feature set from its bigger StudioLive

siblings. Stepping up the DSP power and input count, the StudioLive RML rack-mount mixers have an abundance of control over each channel.

You also get two reverb processors, two delays, 15 dedicated 31-band graphic EQs, and parametric EQs on every bus. AVB audio networking is included, or you can choose the optional SL-Dante-MIX card with 52x34 channels of networked audio.

Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au

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SOFTWARE NEWS

SOFTWARE DISTRESSOR 20 years ago, Empirical Labs releases its first compressor that made a definitive mark on the industry — the Distressor. Since those early days, the company has received persistent requests for a plug-in version for those working in the box.

UAD released the Fatso emulation in partnership with Empirical Labs, but the Distressor remained hardware only. Enter the Arouser — the first ever compressor plug-in direct from Empirical Labs, designed to bring that classic knee compression to your DAW. Empirical Labs says the toughest part in the development of the plug was minimising

common digital artefacts — something that was made even more challenging due to the non-linear characteristics of the device. A few of Arousor’s distinguishing features include controllable broadband saturator, AtMod attack modification control, high-pass and low-pass sidechain EQ, Blend control to mix the compressed/dry signals, and 20 presets to get you started. Arousor is available in all major plug-in formats.

Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au

MORE REASONS TO LIKE REASON Reason 9 is coming soon, and it’d seem Propellerhead wants to make it easier than ever to create cool tunes without needing a music degree.

The main new feature introduced in v9 is a new type of rack device called Players. One of the Player devices, Scale & Chords, rules out any ‘wrong’ notes when playing MIDI instruments. Dual Arpeggio has two parallel arpeggiators for creating unique patterns. Note Echo is similar to a delay effect

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that allows for alterations to repeated notes, again opening up some original possibilities. That’s not all, Reason 9 has an improved Pitch Edit workflow while making full use of Reason’s time-stretch feature too. Audio to MIDI conversion lets you sing your melodies or hum your bass lines and export it to MIDI data with a click. And of course, you get more sounds — 1000 new patches, as well as a collection of sounds from professional sound designers.

CONSOLE 1 GETS MORE BRIT GRIT Softube’s latest channel strip plug-in for Console 1, British Class A, is inspired by British consoles from the ’60s and early ’70s. The company has prioritised flexibility over authenticity, with some extra functionality included in the channel strip that wouldn’t have been possible with the original hardware. For example, the EQ takes its inspiration from several original hardware pieces and offers two mid bands instead of one. The Drive section models a transformer-coupled input stage with

the harmonic distortion typical of vintage British consoles. The gate is also a transformer-based Class A design and a sidechain input gives you keying capabilities. There’s both a limiter and compressor to keep your levels in check. Most of all, Softube reckons British Class A will impart loads of console character to your tracks, even if it’s not working hard.

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

OUTPUT GENERATES MOVEMENT Movement is the latest software release from Output, creators of the unique virtual instruments Rev, Signal and Exhale. It’s an effects engine that’s built to add rhythms to any instrument, synth, raw sound or full track. Designed both for studio use and live performance, Movement’s workflow is simple, yet powerful in capability. Dial in a rhythm from one of 300+ presets or build from scratch using Flux, Sidechain, LFO or Step Sequencer rhythm modulation, then use the XY pad to tweak

up to 152 parameters in real time. Perform live with it, automate it in your DAW or just find the perfect blend of the original input and the rhythms.

Output founder Gregg Lehrman says, “Movement is not only powerful but also incredibly musical.

Whether you’re slowly bringing in and out subtle motion or adding insane movement, you’ll find that each and every rhythm combination is first and foremost musical.”

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FEATURE

O E R E ST S S A L C R E T S MA Multi-Grammy winning classical engineer Tony Faulkner dishes on the development of a secret RĂ˜DE microphone prototype, stereo techniques for different occasions and recording Beethoven’s 9th at the Sydney Opera House.

Interview: Greg Simmons

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AudioTechnology: What brings you to Australia, Tony?

Tony Faulkner: I’m here to finalise work I’ve been doing with Røde on some new microphone models.

I worked for quite a long time with Peter Freedman [Røde founder] on the NTR ribbon, and I’ve always had a fascination with valve omnis like Neumann’s M50. Røde saw it as a challenge to come up with a microphone that had similar characteristics — the characteristics that most of us like about those old microphones — but without the grief associated with using them.

AT: Such as?

TF: Well… There’s the price of replacement tubes if they go wrong. Also, the power supplies are a pain in the neck and so are the connectors — those old Tuchel connectors and things like them don’t last; you only have to stand on them once or tug on them once and they fail. Modern microphones are much more sensible for a practical engineer. Leave the vintage microphones for the collectors.

AT: As part of the process of finalising the work on these new microphones, you’re using them to record a concert at the Sydney Opera House. What are you recording?

TF: It’s Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which, for a lot of people, is the greatest symphony ever written.

It has inspired so many people, and the message in the words and in the poetry is just… Well, it’s a great work.

AT: Who are the performers?

TF: It’s an orchestra called Anima Eterna Brugge, from Flanders, Belgium. They perform on period instruments and try to recreate an authentic experience, as it would have been performed when the pieces were composed. The conductor is Jos van Immerseel, and there are soloists from Norway, Sweden, Australia, America and Flanders.

The Australian Brandenburg Choir is performing choral duties. It’s a musical United Nations!

Apparently if you translate the conductor’s name from the old Flemish, ‘immer’ means ‘forever’ and ‘seel’ means spirit or soul. If you then translate that into Latin you end up with ‘Anima Eterna’ — ‘Eternal Spirit’ — which is a nice little play on words, but also very appropriate because there is an eternal spirit in the Beethoven piece we’re recording tonight.

AT: What microphones are you using to record it?

TF: The main mics for this recording are the prototype tube mics — the temporary working title is the TFM50 but that’s just an internal bit of a laugh!

AT: Are they like the classic M50s with the diaphragm mounted on a sphere?

TF: Yep, so the effect of the sphere is that they’re omnidirectional at the lowest frequencies — probably 15 to 20 Hertz — but as you go up in frequency they become more directional; they’re cardioid-ish somewhere around 1kHz, and then they go hypercardioid above that. That means they have ‘reach’.

AT: So an instrument that is further away but on axis, such as a clarinet in an orchestra, will be captured with roughly the same tonal balance as an instrument that is closer but off-axis, such as the first violin?

TF: Yes. My understanding is that the original

M50 was designed to be a single omnidirectional microphone to stick over a conductor’s head that would cover the whole orchestra in a typical German broadcast studio. That’s quite a nice way to work. It means you don’t have to put lots of mics out and mix them. Of course, back in the days when the original M50 came out they didn’t have consoles like we have now, so the idea of just sticking up one stand with one microphone on it was a very elegant and easy way to work.

AT: You’re using two…

TF: That’s because we’re in stereo!

AT: Of course! You’ve placed them about a metre behind the conductor. How far apart are they?

TF: I have a starting point of 67cm; that gives fairly decent in-phase coherent information from the centre of the image and gives a wide enough ambience that it sounds believable on its own. As it turns out, the main pair are forward of where the soloists are, so they also capture a believable stereo image of the soloists that doesn’t become unstable. I quite like that idea.

AT: You’ve got spot mics on the soloists as well.

TF: Yes. The soloists’ words wouldn’t be quite clear enough in the main pair for people who are used to listening to CDs of Beethoven’s 9th, so we’ve got some spot mics to cope.

AT: We’ll come back to the spot mics shortly.

You’ve started with a pair of TFM50s, 67cm apart, somewhere behind the conductor. How high up are they?

TF: I would guess they’re about 3m.

AT: Do you place them relative to where the conductor’s head is?

TF: Yes, I’m terribly empirical. It’s my background: my earliest recordings were all of Renaissance polyphony, so MY IDEAL RECORDING APPROACH IS TO JUST HAVE A PAIR OF MICROPHONES ON A STAND BEHIND THE CONDUCTOR AND PUT IT UP UNTIL IT SOUNDS NICE.

AT: Effectively treating the conductor as the balance engineer?

TF: Yes. That’s the conductor’s job; the conductor is really the balance engineer. Quite a lot of conductors, particularly the older style ones, don’t like the idea of someone sitting in a control room pushing faders up and down because they feel that’s their job. If they decide they want the violas

A guy who wrote a book on microphone techniques referred to the two bidirectionals as the ‘Faulkner Technique’.

The first I knew of it was when the book came out

to sound a certain volume to make a particular texture, they don’t want someone else sitting in a control room pushing up a fader and thinking, ‘Oh gosh, the violas aren’t loud enough, turn them up!’

If you use something simple, like a main pair, then you tend to keep the conductors off your back.

I like to have a main pair doing the bulk of the work. The main pair might not be the complete finished article — I use spot mics to fill in what’s missing — but musically it’s got to be balanced and it’s got to have some perspective. Also, it’s got to have some bottom end, which the TFM50s have really got. It’s like a train going past!

AT: They sounded pretty big to me!

TF: Yes, indeed. They’ve got the sphere behind the diaphragm, they’ve got the tube circuit, they’ve got a custom-made Røde transformer, they produce a big sound and they’re reliable because they’re a modern design. I used them for some recordings late last year with the London Philharmonic and with the European Union Chamber Orchestra and I was very happy with the results, so when Peter invited me here to record this concert with them I couldn’t possibly turn it down.

AT: You mentioned filling in the missing parts with spot mics, and I noticed quite a few on the stage.

What are you using?

TF: It’s quite an eccentric set up. They’re all ribbons, all NTRs. They are wonderful. I’m a great AT 17

I’ve always had a fascination with valve omnis like Neumann’s M50. RØDE saw it as a challenge to come up with a microphone that had similar characteristics but without the grief associated with using them

very helpfully because he knew what was possible using the existing cabling.

AT: You’re known for a couple of specific microphone techniques that you’re not using on this recording. One of those is two forward-facing bidirectional microphones spaced 20cm apart.

It’s often referred to as the ‘Faulkner Technique’.

What do you call it?

TF: I call it a ‘phased array’. One of my best friends when I was a student was a guy called Granville Cooper who worked on background radar for a living, and loved recording on the side.

I TOLD HIM ABOUT THIS FUNNY TECHNIQUE I’D USED WITH A COUPLE OF FIGURE-OF-EIGHTS ABOUT A FOOT OR SO APART, AND THAT IT WORKED FOR STEREO. AFTER TAKING A

ribbon fan; I have a collection of Coles, RCAs, Beyers, Royers and Rødes, and I love them all.

But the Røde NTR is a lot cleaner and brighter than most, and appears to have more bandwidth without sounding EQ’d… and it has ‘reach’. It’s quite dry as a spot microphone, which is what you want, but it doesn’t sound ugly like a lot of small diaphragm cardioids that sort of screech at you.

AT: Where are you using them?

TF: I’ve got one for each of the four soloists, and there’s a pair for the choir and a pair for the woodwind.

AT: I also noticed a couple over the string sections.

TF: They’re safety mics. There’s a couple of them lurking around in case we need them, because this is a live concert. If this was a recording session I could say, ‘Oh guys, can we take a short break while I put out a couple of more mics?’ but when you’re in a public concert there’s no doing that, so you put out a few other things in case you need them.

AT: Because you’ve only got one chance to capture it.

TF: Yes. And the music is the most important thing. It’s all very well saying, ‘let’s do it with just two mics’, as we talked about earlier, but if it isn’t working then it’s not doing the music or the performers any favours. With a concert you’re limited to where you can put microphones; you don’t have complete free rein because there’s an audience there. Say I wanted to put microphones in the front row of the audience… a few people might be upset!

AT: Unless you could hang them from the ceiling.

TF: Yes. Actually, we’ve got two ‘thinking man’s reverb’ mics hanging from the ceiling for this recording. THEY ARE ALSO PROTOTYPES FROM RØDE — OMNIS. THEY LOOK REMARKABLY LIKE NT5S WITH OMNI CAPSULES, BUT THESE ARE REVISED CAPSULES AND ELECTRONICS AND THEY’VE GOT A FLAT BLACK FINISH, WHICH IS NICE FOR TELEVISION.

AT: They are end-address microphones and yet you have them pointed upwards, vertically. That shouldn’t make any difference with an omni, in theory, but in practice most omnis become a bit duller off axis.

TF: Yeah. Bizarre, isn’t it? Most people think I’m an idiot when I do that sort of thing but it’s particularly useful if you’re in a dead hall. Quite a lot of modern concert halls have got a short AT 18

reverb time, maybe 0.7s or 0.8s, and that makes it quite hard to make a big string sound. When the producer or somebody says they want to hear more strings, they don’t really want to hear individual players shrieking on the E string, they just want a ‘bigger’ sound. That often means more reverb. For example, I did a cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies with the BBC Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis; they wanted a lusher string sound in the slow movements so I twisted the M50 outriggers back to front.

AT: So they were pointing at the back of the hall instead of at the strings?

TF: Yes. You still get the same ‘weight’ coming from the strings but it’s more blended and smoother, and it’s more effective than turning on some kind of reverb box. There’s less detail from individual players, but if it’s a slow movement of a Vaughan Williams symphony that’s the sort of sound you want. It wouldn’t work for a finale because when the brass gets going it’s going to sound like an echo return!

AT: What did you think of the prototype microphones in that ‘thinking man’s reverb’ configuration?

TF: I’m very impressed with them, and I can use more of them than I had expected to. Sometimes, if you use some particular single diaphragm omni pencil mics for this purpose, you can’t add enough because it starts sounding phasey, but these prototypes from Røde seem very coherent with each other as a pair. They will give us a lot of control over the reverberation time, which is what we want when we’re recording a concert and we don’t know how big the audience will be or how much they will affect the venue’s reverb time.

AT: On the topic of sounding ‘phasey’, how far apart are they?

TF: For me, outriggers would be typically 1.8m either side of the conductor and in line with the main rig. In an ideal world, one would like to be able to adjust the spacing until it sounded appropriately de-correlated, but in the real world they end up rather loosely set up as defined by holes in the ceiling or anchor-points on the lighting rig for dropping cables. In the case of this recording we used the existing cable cradles that the concert hall had hanging from above, so it was a bit empirical. Jason Blackwell [Sydney Opera House recording engineer] sorted it out

LISTEN HE SAID, ‘THIS IS AMAZING. YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS, DON’T YOU? IT’S A PHASED ARRAY.’

AT: Right, he was drawing an analogy with using an array of side-by-side antennas to increase directionality and focus in broadcast and radar applications, also called a ‘phased array’. So as a microphone array it should work well at longer distances?

TF: Yes. The main thing that interested me about it — apart from the fact that it gives you useful stereo — is that if you’re in a place with a rather oppressive or overwhelming acoustic that you’d prefer to have less of, the null of the figure-ofeight pattern gets rid of reflections from the ceiling, floor and sides.

AT: When did you come up with that approach?

TF: The first time I used it in anger was in early 1981 at St Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead, London. It’s a huge acoustic — a beautiful acoustic — but with a very long reverb time, and I was trying to record Monteverdi trios with a small consort of strings. It was beautiful music, but whatever I did it sounded like I was in the Taj Mahal. That’s lovely if that’s what you want, but it wasn’t of commercial viability. In desperation I tried crossed figure-of-eights but it was still too wet, and I tried moving in closer but then it was too wide. So I thought, ‘let’s have a go at this, I’ve got nothing to lose’, and it sounded lovely. It works very well with the Røde NTRs, by the way.

AT: So you were just trying to solve a problem?

TF: Yep. It’s a problem solver for someone like me who is always on the road. I don’t usually have the luxury of working in a studio or hall with controlled acoustics. I could be in a church or in a works canteen, all sorts of places, and it’s nice to have techniques that can help you get rid of too much acoustic.

About five years ago somebody wanted me to go and record four hands piano, Schubert’s Three Marches Militaires, in a small chapel near Bordeaux. Lovely job to have, and lovely wine around there, but THE CHAPEL’S REVERB WAS ABOUT 4.8S LONG WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE IN THE ROOM. WITH FOUR HANDS ON A PIANO PLAYING THREE MARCHES MILITAIRES IT JUST SOUNDED RIDICULOUS; LIKE I’D GOT A REVERB FOR CHRISTMAS AND WAS PUTTING IT ON EVERYTHING! I ended up using a pair of ribbons,

and found a local recording studio that lent me some of those semi-circular things to place behind microphones for getting rid of the room

67cm centre-to-centre

Faulkner Phased Array using two forward-facing bidirectional microphones Front

Diaphragms

Rear

20cm centre-to-centre

Faulkner ‘4-way’ Phased Array using central cardioids with flanking omnis 41cm 67cm

sound if you’re recording in a bedroom or similar. It looked bizarre but it worked, and it sounded lovely.

AT: I’m assuming the chapel sounded fine with an audience in it?

TF: It did indeed. We had an audience on the last day for the concert and they added a lot of absorption. With 120 people in there the reverb time came down to something much more manageable.

AT: You played me a lovely recording you did with that method just recently.

TF: Yes, Voice Trio, an English group of three young ladies. That was recorded in a small stone leper’s chapel, about 4m x 5m x 5m and with quite a ‘slappy’ reverberant quality.

AT: A rough stone finish?

TF: No, quite shiny and harsh; but it sounded beautiful to them when they were singing, which was the main reason we were there. As a problem solver I recorded it with a pair of NTRs in a phased array. I’m very pleased with it, and so are they. But there are quite a few orthodox people who would certify me for using such a funny microphone technique!

AT: If they knew what you did!

TF: Yeah! If they don’t know it doesn’t matter, does it?

AT: There’s another technique that has been attributed to you, using two omnis and two cardioids on the same stereo bar.

TF: The four-way phased array… all mounted on a wide stereo bar, 66.7cm apart for the omnis on the outside with a pair of cardioids in between.

AT: How do you configure the cardioids?

TF: I started out with ORTF and subsequently NOS, but those spacings didn’t work in the array because I wanted it to deliver ‘reach’. KEEPING THE ANGLE BETWEEN THE MICS AT 90°, AS FOR NOS, I TRIED DIVIDING MY 66.7CM OMNI SPACING BY THE GOLDEN RATIO NUMBER OF 1.618 AND ARRIVED AT 41.2CM, AND THERE IT HAS STUCK!

AT: I doubt anyone is going to fuss over those fractions of millimeters!

TF: They’re starting points. Setting the spacings and angles in stone with a microscope is not the best idea because much in sound and stereo is about time as well as distance, and the speed of sound varies with altitude,

AudioTechnology_H-Half_[128x192].indd 1

AT 19 26/04/2016 11:07 am

temperature, etc., which affects the time and phase relationship between microphones. Halls sound different depending on the time of day, the temperature, the humidity, and so on. WATFORD TOWN HALL, FOR EXAMPLE, USED TO BE KNOWN FOR SOUNDING DIFFERENT IN THE AFTERNOON THAN IN THE MORNING, AND ENGINEERS WOULD MOVE THEIR MICS UP IN THE AFTERNOON TO FIND MORE SENSE OF SPACE.

AT: When do you use the four-way array?

TF: I do a lot of work for video companies where I’ve got to record an orchestra but I’ve only got half an hour to set up, so I’ll stick one stand up with a crossbar on it and four mics — Røde NT6s or whatever — and that will give me the whole orchestra. That’s really quite handy because most of my colleagues would stick out at least 15 microphones, sometimes up to 50 on a symphony orchestra in a place like the Barbican. Everybody is pleased to see me if I just stick one stand up and run one multiway cable and do it all in less than 10 minutes.

AT: And where do you place that?

TF: About a metre or so behind and above the conductor. The omnis are usually a bit too fat and ‘puddingy’ and the cardioids are usually a bit too thin and scratchy, so you’ve got a choice. Blend it all together when you get home.

There are other people who use four-way arrays, and I must give them credit. There’s a guy called Huw Thomas at BBC Wales. I had a job at St Davids Hall in Cardiff and the BBC was covering the same concert. I put up my mics and one of their guys said, “Huw, you’ve got to come out here; this guy’s a nutter like you!” He had a similar concept except he was using four omnis. A bit different but he did it for the same reason — he wanted the sound that he liked from his omnis, but he wanted it to reach in a bit further rather than just being the front desks and everybody else sounding a bit up and out. Even though they’re omnis, you still get the forward gain because they’re in an array. The late Onno Scholze from Philips also had a concept of four omnis in a row, slightly wider spacing, but still using arrival time differences — phase differences — to help your hearing sort out what is going on.

Engineers who use four-way arrays for recording live concerts are quite enthusiastic about it. They’re the same as me; often they walk into a place and they’ve got very little time to set up. Let’s say it’s the Messiah; the concert’s sold out, there’s nowhere on stage to put microphones and you haven’t got time to hang anything. Well, you’ve got to do something!

The four-way array is a good solution. It doesn’t function at its best with close recordings, but it is not intended to do so.

AT: I’ve seen arguments on forums over what the ‘Faulkner Technique’ is. Some argue that it is the two bidirectionals, others argue that it is the four mics on the bar. You call both of them ‘phased arrays’.

TF: Yes, I do. By the way, I never called either of them the ‘Faulkner Technique’. A guy who wrote a book on microphone techniques referred to the two bidirectionals as the ‘Faulkner Technique’. The first I knew of it was when the book came out.

AT 20

AT: You may as well embrace it!

TF: Of course!

AT: We started this interview talking about your development work with Røde and using its prototype microphones to record tonight’s concert.

I think it would be appropriate to end this interview by asking how your involvement with Røde began?

TF: My first connection with Røde was via the NT6 omnis. I was having problems with the mics I normally use and had sent them back to be fixed.

Out of the blue a job came up to record a concert, and it required a four-way array with relatively small microphones. I asked around to find out if the NT6s were any good; I did not know much about Røde at that time except they were not overpriced and many of my musician friends loved them for their home studios. I ended up buying four NT6s plus two omni capsules, and — shock, horror — I liked them!

When I got my other mics back I did a doubleblind shootout and found the NT6 with omni capsule to be at least a match for my other mics, and a very fine mic in its own right. It is more

‘omni’ than some of the more expensive mics and has more bass extension than some of them as well, which is good for me. I contacted Røde to tell them what I thought about the NT6, and the rest is history.

I’ve worked with Røde on numerous concepts and prototypes since then. I like the company’s attitude to quality, enthusiasm for innovation, and — most especially — lack of bullshit. When I first started using Røde mics some snobs turned their noses up or thought I had lost it, but thank goodness there is no problem like that any more.

I never leave home without at least a pair of Røde mics in my kit — except when I came to Sydney this time, of course, because I knew in advance there would be some here for me to record this concert.

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AT 21

FEATURE

Orchestrating The King s Recoronation

Elvis doesn’t need orchestral backing, but Priscilla Presley reckons it would have been a ‘dream come true’ for The King. AT talked to the team that made that dream a reality by using the best of old and new technology to draw two worlds together.

Feature: Paul Tingen

AT 22

On first hearing it, the concept of releasing an album of original Elvis recordings with new orchestra overdubs seems a dreadful idea. The legacies of quite a few great musicians who’ve kicked the bucket have been soiled by ill-judged albums of material reworked after their passing.

Witness much-derided releases like Hendrix’s Crash Landing, Jeff Buckley’s Songs To No-One 1991-92, and Michael Jackson’s Michael.

Accusations of skulduggery and grave-robbery are always a risk with posthumous releases, and defacing some of The King’s greatest recordings with schmaltzy Hollywood strings seems an obvious act of gluttonous desecration.

However, as we all know but keep forgetting, first impressions can be deceptive. Even on first listen, it’s clear If I Can Dream — credited to ‘Elvis Presley with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’ — sounds downright spectacular. The opener, the up-tempo Burning Love, starts with the orchestra in mono, then pans out to stereo, like a period movie starting in black and white and then fading into full-colour, and continues to rock along for another three minutes, with a remarkably in-your-face and tightsounding orchestra playing perfectly in time with the band. Nothing syrupy about these strings. The band and orchestra wonderfully complement Elvis’s vocal, which sounds as if it was recorded yesterday, not in 1972.

The rest of the album contains similar highpoints, including classic tracks like Love Me Tender (1956), Fever (1960), and Bridge Over Troubled Water (1976), with old and new ingredients seamlessly blended in larger-than-life panoramas. If there is dissonance, it’s that some of the orchestral arrangements are overblown (You Lost That Loving Feeling) while some of the songs are, to modern ears at least, dated and/or of dubious quality. The melody of It’s Now Or Never, for example, has the effect on this writer of the proverbial fingernails scratching the blackboard.

But obviously, the makers of If I Can Dream can hardly be blamed for this.

THE DREAM A REALITY

So what happened? How did an artistically and morally dubious idea turn into an artistic triumph, as well as a commercial success? Elvis’s 80th birthday present sold more than a million copies in the UK, and has gone platinum in Australia.

It turns out these feats are not only due to the apparent good taste and great technical skills of the makers, but also to the fact that some of those involved had direct links to Elvis.

The participation and public endorsement of Elvis’s ex-wife Priscilla Presley, who executive produced If I Can Dream and called it “a dream come true for Elvis,” has been widely covered. But the very first seeds for the project were planted

by Don Reedman, an Australian producer and composer who moved to the UK in 1969, and soon afterwards found himself working for Carlin Music, the publishing company of the legendary Freddy Bienstock. At the time every song pitched to Elvis had to go through Bienstock, and Reedman was amongst those at the company tasked with finding

Elvis songs. One of the songs he unearthed was Clive Westlake’s It’s A Matter Of Time, which was released in 1972 as a double A-side single with Burning Love.

“I never got to know Elvis personally,” recalled Reedman, “but I knew many of the people around him. I was part of finding songs for Elvis to sing, demoing them in the way we thought he wanted to record them. Elvis picked the ones he liked, and usually went along with the direction of the demos, but when we got the final recordings back, it always really hit us: this is Elvis Presley! He just had a phenomenal voice. However, I often felt many of his songs were underproduced, largely because of budgetary restraints, and could do with much bigger accompaniments and orchestrations.

“Elvis’s phenomenal voice always stayed with me, and I long wanted to give something back to it in terms of record production. Retain the spirit and feel of the original recordings, but build on that by putting a full symphony orchestra behind him on the right songs. My vision was to create a new, fresh Elvis album, that would showcase Elvis’s amazing vocal scope; from rock ‘n roll, to gospel, to rhythm ’n’ blues, to operatic ballads, and so on.

It took a long time for me to convince people to do this. Thanks to the latest development in digital audio technology, and the amazing knowledge of the people we worked with, I think we managed to make a much better record than could have been made even five years ago.”

lot of spill and many of his vocals were recorded with reverb all over them. For all those reasons we had to embrace what was there, and the challenge of seamlessly mixing the old with the new kept growing. We really didn’t want it to sound like a 1968 recording patched together with a 2014 orchestra. The connection to the original music, and the way it coexisted with the new recordings was absolutely crucial to the artistic success of the project. It became a very emotional project, and an enormous technically forensic project.”

HITTING THE BEATLES’ STUDIO

Reedman and Patrick’s first step was to take stock of the Pro Tools sessions with the original Elvis recordings, edit them, strip them of what they didn’t need, create tempo maps, sometimes altering the structure to make space for the orchestral arrangement, and then commission orchestral arrangements from the likes of Nick Ingman, Robin Smith, and Steve Sidwell. The two producers also began adding new material, like drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, and backing vocals, recorded by Pete Schwier. The next call they made was to Peter Cobbin, another Australian, who moved to the UK in 1995 and — as Abbey Road Studio’s Director of Engineering — has worked on scores of householdname orchestral, film score, and pop projects, and won two Grammies for his contributions to the Lord Of The Rings soundtrack albums.

FROM 3-TRACK TO NOW

Reedman’s co-producer was Nick Patrick, a British Grammy Award-winning engineer, mixer, arranger and producer, who started out working with world music acts in the 1980s, but who has increasingly become involved in classical music crossover projects this century. From his Shine Studios in South-West England, he explained, “The whole thing started as a symphonic album project. That has different connotations for different people, but for us it was always clear that it wasn’t just going to be an orchestral backing with Elvis’s voice on top. WE COULDN’T JUST DO A WHOLESALE REMAKE AND

On Burning Love she did 400 tiny edits on the new drums alone to make them fit exactly with the original drum track!

REPLACE THE EXISTING BACKING TRACKS. THAT WOULD DRAW THE SOUL OF OUT HIM. WE KNEW WE HAD TO REIMAGINE THE ORIGINAL BACKING TRACKS TO RETAIN THE SPIRIT OF WHAT MADE HIM SOUND GREAT.

“Once we received the original multi-tracks from Sony, transferred flat into Pro Tools sessions, it became clearer what exactly it was about the backing tracks that made Elvis sound so good.

We likened what we aimed to do to restoring the Sistine Chapel. We would have to strip away parts only to rebuild them using the same materials made in our time. As this idea unfolded in practice, it became a bigger and bigger task. One issue was we had material dating from 1956 to 1972, ranging from three-track to 16-track. That shift in technology had an enormous impact on the way records sounded.

“Also, none of the songs had been recorded to click track, and the changes in tempo could occasionally be quite extreme. Elvis was also always in the room with the musicians, so there was a

Cobbin agreed to get involved, and booked the first orchestral recording session on December 10, 2013 to record strings on four songs: Bridge Over Troubled Water, Love Me Tender, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, and Burning Love. Unusually, but explaining a lot about the direct and tight orchestral sound, the session took place in the smaller Abbey Road Studio 2, also known as The Beatles’ studio, and not in Studio 1, Abbey Road’s normal venue for orchestral sessions. It was not the only unusual thing about the orchestral sessions for the Elvis project.

“I called Don a few times to ask what they wanted and whether they wanted the orchestra to sound modern or not,” remembered Cobbin. “I suggested the idea of creating a sound that’s nice and full, but also authentic to the period of the tunes they were working on. Don and Nick liked that idea. I decided to record in Studio 2, which gives a dryer, warmer, more intimate sound than AT 23

BURNING LOVE SCREEN SHOTS Comments by Kirsty Whalley The (blue) original tracks are arranged at the top of the session, along with the Abbey Road Studio 2 monitor mix and an old original mix. The original tracks are also scattered through the rest of the session where they are being used as part of the main mix. The blue tracks here are not part of the mix but monitored as a separate external source.

The original backing vocals, new backing vocals, backing vocals combined, and original drums in green/yellow. You can see the new drum comps with tons of edits.

The connection to the original music, and the way it coexisted with the new recordings was absolutely crucial. It became a very emotional project, and an enormous technically forensic project

All the new heavily-edited drum comps in brown-green, plus the drum bus tracks, tambourine, and original guitars Original piano, orchestra tracks in green, this is orchestra pass one; low strings.

In red is the orchestra pass two; high strings. As this was a very rhythmic track they were recorded separately to allow for more flexibility when editing for tightness.

This is an additional orchestral pass with high and low strings playing together, used as an additional sweetener to the other orchestral passes.

AT 24

[left] Kirsty Whalley and Peter Cobbin at the Penthouse mix suite in Abbey Road. [above] The Abbey Road session recording setup.

the full-blown large symphonic sound of Studio 1.

“I ALSO DECIDED TO RECORD THE ORCHESTRA WITH PERIOD MICROPHONES, MOSTLY VALVE CONDENSERS AND RIBBONS [SUCH AS NEUMANN M47, M50, KM54, KM56, U67, AKG C12, STC COLES 4038, AND MORE], INCLUDING AN OLD AND VERY RARE RIBBON MIC; THE EMI RM-1B, MADE BY ALAN BLUMLEIN IN THE 1930S. I used the latter for the

beginning of Burning Love. I then added a little bit of a convolution reverb of Studio 1 made with the Sony DRE-S777. This allowed me to control the amount of bloom added to the orchestra. I recorded the orchestra to a click taken from Nick’s tempo map and in separate orchestral sections, partly because Studio 2 is a smaller room and partly because we wanted to have separation between the strings and the brass.

“Creating an orchestra sound that wasn’t unnaturally big and sounded appropriate for Elvis’s voice was the first step. At this stage I was getting more details of the kind of album Don and Nick were envisioning, and realised they were also adding drums and bass and other instrumentation.

Because of my experience working on the Beatles’ Anthology and Yellow Submarine Songtrack albums, and with Yoko Ono on some of John Lennon’s catalogue, I suggested we go deeper into restoring, renovating, and editing Elvis’s voice and the original backing tracks. That’s when I offered to get Kirsty involved, who is an expert in these things.”

MATCHING TEMPO WITH TIMELESSNESS

Kirsty Whalley — a Guildford University Tonmeister graduate who now works as a freelance editor, engineer and mixer and has collaborated extensively with Cobbin — began work on the original Elvis recordings in her suite at Abbey Road. “I did some research and laid the Pro Tools sessions out in such a way that we could instantly listen to all the original tracks and mixes and reference them,” she noted. “It made it easier for us to make decisions on what to use and not use. I also did a lot of audio restoration work. The sessions were of variable quality, not only because they came from such a wide time period, but also because

some of the tracks had been recorded live.

“I removed a lot of tape hiss using iZotope’s RX Denoiser plug-in, and I tried to tidy up as much of the spill as I could. I spent the most time on the lead and backing vocals, because they would be in front of the final mixes and needed to be really clean. There was quite a lot of spectral repair to do on pops and clicks using RX, and dropouts and level drops I needed to correct. I also did a tiny bit of overall tuning adjustment, but the lead vocal was really in tune with a wonderful feel. The songs that needed the most attention were the ballads, like Love Me Tender, and Can’t Help But Falling In Love, because the lead vocal in them is very exposed. IN SOME CASES I USED ZYNAPTIC UNVEIL TO DRY UP THE MONO REVERB ON THE LEAD VOCALS SO WE COULD REPLACE THE REVERB WITH A SIMILAR PLATE REVERB, BUT IN STEREO.”

Cobbin added that Whalley and he also used an SPL Transient Designer and the old hardware Behringer Denoiser SNR2000 during the restoration process, finding they “could never use one tool for even a whole section of a song. There was no one preset or technique that would always work; we could use one tool for one line then had to use another for the next line. We were trying to restore Elvis’s voice to the most pristine condition we could and use effects they would have used at the time. However much work that was, the editing was even more challenging because of the natural fluctuations in tempo and accents from people playing 40 years ago.

“We tried using only the original drums, but they weren’t wide and large enough to match the big orchestral sound. We tried using just the new drums, but they didn’t always fit with the sound and feel of the vocals in quite the same way. We tried using new and old drums together, but of course, the new drums didn’t quite match the groove and feel of something played 40-50 years ago. EVENTUALLY WE DECIDED TO EDIT THE NEW STEREO DRUM KIT TO FIT THE OLD ONE, TO GET A REALLY GOOD GROOVE AND FEEL WITH SPACE AND WARMTH TO THE SOUND. IT BECAME THE BLUEPRINT OF HOW WE DID ALL THE RHYTHM TRACKS, BUT MAKING IT FIT WASN’T EASY. ON

BURNING LOVE, FOR EXAMPLE, SHE DID 400 TINY EDITS ON THE NEW DRUMS ALONE TO MAKE THEM FIT EXACTLY WITH THE ORIGINAL DRUM TRACK! We did the same editing

process with many other instruments and the backing vocals.

“There was a lovely ebb and flow to the rhythm sections Elvis had, so where possible we gave preference to the original feel, but sometimes — for timing reasons or to fit a new arrangement — we worked the other way around. Sometimes we’d have to edit the orchestra and/or other new recordings to fit what we already had. It was a process of going round the houses, one way or the other, to work out what sounded best. The editing process was often two steps forward and one step back. We’d initially recorded a different arrangement of Fever, then after Michael Bublé was confirmed to sing on it, we changed the arrangement to suit his voice and the key he likes to sing in.”

HEARING THINGS ANEW

According to Cobbin and Whalley, they took the restoration and editing process further than had been foreseen, and Cobbin also did some final mixes at The Penthouse mix suite at Abbey Road, to present what they had done in the best light possible. Patrick and Reedman, delighted by the results, in turn presented the results to Priscilla Presley and Sony, “who could not believe what they were hearing.” The rest of the album continued on the same basis. Patrick, Reedman, and Schwier recorded more overdubs at RAK Studios, The Bunker in London, and Patrick’s Shine Studios. Then there was a second orchestral session in April 2014, followed by further editing and mixing sessions conducted by Whalley and Cobbin at Abbey Road over the summer. After all that, there was even more recording and another two month mix period at Shine with Patrick, Reedman and Schwier.

One of the final hurdles was determining how modern the album should sound. Cobbin: “Kirsty’s studio — then at Abbey Road — was state of the art, with similar gear as The Penthouse. It gave AT 25

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us a great sense of compatibility, and meant I didn’t need to keep printing mix bounces. We could simply send our work to each other using the studio’s network. I was going through the room’s Neve DFC Gemini desk, but had an analogue mix bus chain with a Manley Variable Mu limiter/compressor, Chandler EMI TG12345 Curve Bender EQ (which I helped design), and a Massenburg 8200 EQ. THESE DAYS WE LISTEN TO THINGS IN MORE DETAIL, BRIGHTER AND WITH MORE COMPRESSION. WHEN WE MIXED THROUGH THIS MASTERING CHAIN SOMETIMES ALL SORTS OF UNWANTED NOISES WE’D NEVER HEARD CAME TO THE FORE AGAIN. KIRSTY HAD TO DO MORE CLEANUP WORK, AND I HAD TO ADJUST MY MIX. It was

akin with the process of making the album, which was a constant working and reworking.

“The whole recording and editing process took a long time,” added Patrick. “We just kept chipping away at it until it fell into place. We mixed about five tracks at The Penthouse with Peter Cobbin, but that studio was too expensive for us to work in for a prolonged period of time.

After 10 days Don, Pete Schwier and I reconvened at my studio, and there was a period of recording additional overdubs, tinkering with the drums sound, and so on. All the things that are part of finishing off a record. The final mixing process was cumulative, chipping away things bit by bit. I HAVE A 32-CHANNEL, 64-INPUT NEVE GENESYS DESK AND PRO TOOLS HD, THE USUAL STUFF; BUT WE USED THE DESK PURELY AS A BIG SUMMING BUS, WITH EVERYTHING SET TO ZERO. ALL THE MIXING AND PROCESSING WAS DONE INSIDE OF PRO TOOLS, WHICH MEANT THAT WE COULD SWITCH BETWEEN TRACKS INSTANTLY.

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AT 26

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“Jochum van der Saag also did some sound design and the final mix of Fever, and we tried to improve Peter Cobbin’s mix of Burning Love but couldn’t as it already sounded great.

“We tend to remember records from the past as larger than life, but that often bears little relation to reality. This album fulfils those larger-than-life memories of what those old records sounded like. You hear it’s not the original, but think it’s not that different either. However, if you were to compare the two different versions of a song side by side, the difference is shocking. The other reason the record sounds contemporary is because there is no disconnect between the vocal and the music. It sounds like one, as if Elvis had been there with us during the sessions.”

In listening to If I Can Dream it is possible, for a moment, to imagine that Elvis is still alive after all.

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FEATURE

Sometimes the only way to learn something new is by giving it a crack. The Hilltop Hoods mix all their regular albums, so why not tackle an orchestral one?

Story: Mark Davie

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An entire class of Silicon Valley ‘unicorns’ exist to try and solve the Hilltop Hoods’ problem. Namely, cutting down the mountain of progress-tracking emails that plagues every project team’s inbox. Somehow I don’t think taking on the task of personally answering every email concern is high on their list of solutions, yet it’s effectively the role DJ Debris chose to occupy on their latest album Drinking from the Sun/Walking Under Stars: Restrung.

This is the second time the hip hop group has ‘restrung’ existing material with an infusion of orchestral arrangements. Their virgin effort was mixed by Chris Thompson, their own live engineer and ABC live recording legend, who’s recorded and mixed WASO and other symphony orchestras around Australia.

The three Hoods — Debris, and MCs Suffa and Pressure — backseat drove the process with hundreds of dot pointed emails listing minute changes. This time, they thought it might be easier to mix it themselves.

The Hilltop Hoods are no strangers to DIY, in fact, they seek it out. They started their own record label, Golden Era, with the intention of releasing their own material while opening up that same support infrastructure to some talented friends as a side bonus. However, some of those friends didn’t have management, and they were still training up an operations manager. The downside of that particular DIY effort was loads of paperwork and a desk job they’d always been trying to avoid.

They’ve never let the ugly side of DIY keep them down though. Golden Era soon got on its feet and let the Hoods get back to music with some A&R on the side. Likewise, Debris has mixed most of the group’s regular output since day one and has always embraced the opportunity to learn something new.

Last time we talked to Debris (Issue 88) he’d just finished their sixth album, Drinking from the Sun. It was the first time he’d recorded and mixed a string quartet, but with some friendly advice and hired mics, he simply got on with it.

That’s the rule of mixing.

Every action has a reaction, but it’s tenfold when you mix two genres that are foreign to each other

INDIVIDUAL APPROACH

Debris hasn’t quite made the leap from recording a string quartet to a full orchestra, but he did have a few ideas for how it should be done after the first ‘restrung’ album. “We got Neville Clark, our mastering engineer, to record it,” said Debris. “Last time we recorded everything in sections. This time we spot miked everything, so we had 40 stems of orchestra. It gave us more ability to remove something and not have spill affect the mix. Last time, if someone was out of tune or we didn’t like that part of the arrangement, you could clearly hear them in the background.”

Clarke also had a Decca Tree in place [see sidebar] but it was only used on the two singles.

Both were written late in the process and only featured string sections. “We chopped and changed the arrangement for those after the fact,” said Debris. “We took a bit of a hip hop approach to it, treating them like samples at times and chopping parts to make them fit the beat.”

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra were contracted again, as was local composer and arranger Jamie Messenger. “It’s a hometown pride thing,” said Debris, “and obviously the most logistically sensible option. We had a great experience with them last time. Their facility, Grainger Studio, is

a surprisingly nice acoustic space, considering it’s on Hindley Street. Imagine a studio in the middle of Kings Cross, and you get the idea; it’s amazing the sound doesn’t come in. Neville Clark has a great relationship with the orchestra, as does Jamie, so it was a natural synergy for us to work with them again.”

For the tour though, the Hilltop Hoods are engaging the major symphony orchestras from each city. “I can’t imagine what the flights would cost if we toured with the ASO,” mused Debris.

“Considering their cellos and basses take up a seat as well. We used to tour with a quartet years ago, and the amount of times you’d hear over the intercom, ‘Paging Mr Cello, could you please put your hand up if you’re onboard.’ They haven’t got a scan of the ticket coming onboard and can’t figure out whether to take the luggage off for Mr Cello!”

CLICKING INTO THE GROOVE

Before anything can be recorded, Messenger has to compose the arrangements. “We went in with the attitude of not simply adding an orchestra to an old song,” said Debris. “We wanted to take the songs somewhere new and for it to be consistent across the two albums.” Debris broke down each of the songs into somewhere between five to eight stems, allowing Messenger to pull out conflicting parts or replace them with orchestral score.

“We just go back and forth if he needs anything else,” said Debris. “Like a tambourine removed from the drum stem. For me, the hardest part of the process was listening to Sibelius’ Casio keyboarding-sounding General MIDI implementation of virtual instruments. It made it hard to envision the end product.”

Hip hop is dead in the water without groove, but coordinating an extra 40 players so they interpret a song’s groove can be elusive. Do you send the orchestra a click, a beat, or nothing at all and just let the conductor take the lead? Even after this session, the Hoods didn’t feel as though they nailed it.

AT 29

STRINGING PIECES TOGETHER Neville Clark, mastering engineer/location recorder and general jack of all audio trades, from Disk Edits in Adelaide, assisted the Hilltop Hoods by recording the orchestra for the album.

Typically Clark would rely on his Decca Tree to capture the orchestra blend, with only a handful of spot mics. This time, the Hilltop Hoods wanted more control over the final balance, so Clark individually miked all 30-odd instrument as well as putting up his tree. “In the end, I think it made their mix job easier,” said Clark. “Last time round we had mics on sections, so if somebody was out in that group it was very hard to massage or hide that.”

A standard Decca Tree usually comprises three omnis (Oktava MC012), but Clark likes to augment that arrangement by replacing the front omni with an MS Sennheiser MKH30/40 pair to give him more options in the mix.

“The biggest decision is how high you go, which determines how much of the room sound you capture. Granger Studios isn’t that exciting and not the quietest of spaces so I don’t want a lot of room and tend to have it lower. There’s carpet on the floor anyway, though we did have some of the players on risers and the percussion on firm boards.

“I probably put it about three metres high. If I did a full orchestra at the Town Hall, where I want to capture more of the space, it’d probably be about 3.5-4m. In some rooms you can reach a point where you feel very close to the orchestra, and only a relatively small movement of 300mm will make the room sound take over. It’s like being on the edge of a cliff.”

Clark had a couple of experienced operators

AT 30

wrangling mics for him; Mick Jackson from Festival Centre, and Gab Agostino.

They used DPA (4099, 4061 & 4021) clip-ons on all of the strings, Sennheiser MD441 dynamics on stands for the brass, and a mix of both approaches on woodwinds. They placed Octava MC012 mics on stands for a lot of the percussion, and AKG C414 on timpanis, while others were velcro wrapped to particular instruments, like the bell sounds.

“If you’re going to use a spot mic, you really need it close,” said Clark. “Which is why we arrived at clip-ons. Traditionally you could spot mic a section from 1.5m away, because you’re only using it to add colour to your main microphone capture.”

Clark used his Merging Technologies Pyramix system with two Hapi converters at the front end; connected via Ravenna Audio over IP. He also has a custom headphone rack that can deliver around 50 sends to the players. Debris supplied stereo reference tracks with the bed on one side and click on the other, but the orchestra members were only hearing the click. To prevent any stray click or bed tracks bleeding into the space, Clark supplied fresh in-ear buds with one side snipped off.

Part of Clark’s role was to prepare the tracks for the mix by naming and sorting the takes. However,

there were still a couple of translation issues at first. “I’d labelled the timpanis ‘Timp L’ and ‘Timp R’,” explained Clark, “but Baz panned them hard left and right in the mix. We had to put them back in the right place. The guys really tried to respect the layout of the orchestra, and the mix reflects that.

You’ve got all the bright strings predominantly on the left, winds in the centre, percussion behind that, and basses and brasses to the right.

“We talked a lot about reverb choices, because with close mics you have to artificially add a sense of space. I’ve done a few recordings, where you have a lovely space to work in and it sounds natural. When you bring it back to the studio, it’s an accurate representation, but nine times out of 10 that’s a pretty uninteresting recording for the listener when they get it on a home hi-fi. You’ve got to work it a little bit. It’s like stage makeup, it goes on pretty thick and bright because it needs to be seen from a long way away.”

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(Far left) The session for Cosby Sweater: Restrung shows the number of orchestral tracks Debris had to try and fit into his mix. (This page) Debris' orchestral mix bus chain, with Waves Vocal Rider to help with overall automation, and the final Lexicon Chamber reverb.

Debris: “One of the things we said we weren’t going to do, but did, was record them to click track.

Everybody interprets a click differently, whether they play in front of it or behind it.

“Hip hop generally has a laggy swagger to it. ON A LOT OF THE TRACKS I HAD TO MOVE THE ENTIRE ORCHESTRA TO THE RIGHT BY EIGHT OR NINE MILLISECONDS TO GET THEM INTO THE GROOVE. Then there are tracks where

we have a late kick drum and every third snare is staggered. Even though we tempo mapped the click track, it didn’t quite capture that feel, so we had to go in and flex edit those tracks. It got to the point of blisters on the mouse hand; we even brought in our friend and producer, One Above, to help. The ASO nailed what they had to play to, it’s just that we had to mould it to the syncopation of our beat.

“I spent a good three or four days preparing for the recording. I ended up folding the mix, minus vocals, into the left channel in mono with the click on the right. That way, on the day we could have the balance of choosing between the two. We ended up giving the conductor a mix of both, but the orchestra got the click. They had no idea what they were playing to a lot of the time, which has its pro and cons. It can be good because they’re not interpreting how they swing to it. If I had to do it again, it would at least be to the rhythm of the sampled drum.”

MAKING ROOM

Flex editing the orchestra into the groove required a lot of grunt work, but once everything was in time Debris still had to work out how to mix 40 new stems into sessions that were already up around 120 tracks.

“The struggle with hip hop is there’s not much room,” said Debris. “Every snare hits at basically the same volume. We don’t limit it, but there’s already a very full mix and you’re trying to introduce something that goes from quiet and dynamic to super loud. Trying to find a middle AT 32

ground where that fits into a mix is difficult. When you turn one element up it causes a reaction; you turn the violin section up and the vocals disappear, turn the bassline up and the whole mix seems muddy. That’s the rule of mixing. Every action has a reaction, but it’s tenfold when you mix two genres that are foreign to each other.

“We tried to set up a general starting template with buses and plug-ins. However, it’s really hard to find a middle ground that covers something as dynamic as an orchestra — some tracks have longer melancholy notes and others more pizzicato stabby parts — I had to revisit it several times.

“I had separate EQs and automation on each channel, but most of the general reverb and compression was done at the master bus. We changed the reverb halfway in from a Space Designer convolution reverb to a Lexicon. It’s amazing how much one parameter on a master bus of an orchestra can change how everything sits. THERE WERE ALSO OCCASIONS WHEN I WANTED A CRESCENDO TO PUNCH THROUGH THE MIX, BUT AS I TURNED IT UP THE COMPRESSOR ON THE BUS WAS CATCHING IT. IN THAT CASE, I HAD A MIRRORED BUS WITH A HIGHER THRESHOLD. I always learn as I go.

“Neville was a huge help in getting on the right path, because he’s recorded and mixed a number of orchestra sessions. Because he’s such a kind man I had to tell him to be brutally honest and tell me what he would do better. Those things you’re not really considering when you’re struggling for breath under hundreds of stems, like EQ on the reverb.

“Initially, I just had a flat convolution verb.

He sent through an example that had a great space about it. WE ACTUALLY HAD A SIMILAR REVERB APPLIED, WITH THE SAME PRE-DELAY SETTINGS, BUT MINE WAS SOUNDING MUDDY. AS SOON AS I PULLED OUT THAT 200-240HZ WOOL IT OPENED UP THE WHOLE MIX. It’s

always stuff I learnt 20 years ago at SAE that I conveniently forget.

“I tried to avoid compression where possible,

just because it brings up the noise floor. Amazing things happen in an orchestra. When you listen to every stem you can hear all the footsteps and every breath and sniffle. All that stuff gets hidden when you play it as a whole, but when you start compressing it comes up through the floor.

“I ended up using the Waves Vocal Rider plug-in to automatically manage the automation of the main orchestra bus. It’s not ideal because it’s geared towards vocals, but I couldn’t find another plug-in that could do that. I had it on a very slow response to contain things like the RMS volume of slowly rising crescendos. I tried that approach instead of whacking a compressor on it when it gets loud.

“The choice of compressor is important too.

You don’t want to dirty up the sound with a PSP Vintage Warmer when you’ve got an amazing orchestra playing perfectly miked, 100-year old instruments. It’s a balance between maintaining the integrity of the sound and leaving the dynamics, but also having enough volume to compete with a brickwall of a track that already exists.”

YOU’VE STILL GOT MAIL

Debris’ approach to the email problem didn’t exactly pan out. “There were orders of magnitude more emails going back and forth,” he said. “I was surprised we didn’t shut down Gmail’s servers!

We were keeping one song to one thread, and one of them got to 200 entries before we even got to the mix. It’s a lot to wade through. It’s good to have other people’s feedback; because it’s easy to get yourself locked in a cage and lose perspective on what you’re doing. Long story short, I think we could do this another 10 times and learn a lot each time.”

I’m sure if we check back in during the next ‘restrung’ album, Debris will be clipping on DPA mics to violins and commandeering the recording.

After all, there’s always something new to learn.

AT 33

STUDIO FOCUS: MELBOURNE ELECTRONIC SOUND STUDIO (MESS) Half a million dollars’ worth of vintage synths tucked away in a back alley shed near Melbourne’s CBD might be some people’s idea of heaven.

For Byron Scullin and Robin Fox, it’s that and much more.

Welcome to MESS, the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio where, Robin enthusiastically states, “you can get your hands on the entire history of electronic music.”

MESS is a not-for-profit organisation birthed by these two guys who share a passion for nostalgic music machinery. The inventory is nothing short of impressive — name a synth brand from yesteryear and you’ll doubtless find a well-preserved model sitting on the shelves.

The philosophy behind building a coveted collection like this is to make the signature sounds of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s accessible to everyday musos. For $220, you can purchase a one-year membership at MESS which gives you access to the space as often as you like (with an entry fee of $40 per four-hour visit). Bring your laptop and interface, grab a synth from the shelf, set up on a workbench, and inject some vintage vibes into your tunes. Or, you can simply spend your four hours patching leads on a gargantuan, limited edition Moog System 55 (MESS has two of those) or custom-built Transaudio modular synth. You won’t be judged.

But where did all this gear come from? Good question. It’d take more than a lifetime for any one person to acquire a room full of synths with this kind of desirability, which is why they’ve come from several sources — some from donors who’d rather have their synths played than nestled in a cabinet at home, others from educational institutions, others from the manufacturers themselves, and many from Byron and Rob’s own collections.

AT 34

BUCHLA — Byron: “Buchla synths are quasi-scientific and almost mystical. The oscillator knobs are deliberately wonky so you can wiggle them for a little tremolo. The idea with a Buchla is you almost can’t make ‘traditional’ music with it. If you try to, you’ll send yourself insane.”

Robin: “The thing that modular synthesists seem to be really interested in is this slightly generative, slightly random, not-quite-surewhat’s-gonna-happen, chaotic aspect.”

TRIADEX MUSE — Robin: “This was touted as one of the first artificial intelligence sequencers ever built. If you read the manual to the Triadex Muse, they start off by saying you can’t make current music with this; you can only make the music of the future. At that time, there was this really utopian, almost science-fiction relationship to the sound of music which was saying this is literally the future of music.”

MOOG SERIES 55 MODULAR — Byron: “The Moog 55 is essentially a big mono synth.

Moog has only made 55 of these reissues and we have access to two of these in the MESS collection. When Moog first started creating modular synths, they were a la carte systems.

But later on down the track Moog started to produce pre-designed modular systems, and that’s what the 55 is. With the way Moog designed its synthesizers, the 55 was designed for accuracy. If you go to this machine with intent, you’ll get the sound you’re looking for.”

Byron: “In some ways, what we’re about here is trying to give people the full experience of electronic music. Everyone’s using laptops, there’s all this software out there; but if you’ve got five grand in your back pocket, are you going to buy an old mono synth, that probably needs a lot of maintenance, or are you going to buy a gang of plug-ins that’ll give you such amazing functionality?

The problem is, they give you so much functionality that it can be really hard to penetrate beyond presets and the vast array of options.

“In here, the idea is that you sit down with one of these old machines and come face-to-face with the people who designed them and their ideas about how electronic sound should be produced. With all these machines, you start from zero. Whichever way you get to the sound, it’s your experience, it’s your journey that you go on.”

From the quirky Buchla to the straight-laced Moog, MESS is the gourmet kitchen for the electronic music chef de cuisine. You can whip up virtually any concoction of other-worldly sounds with the extraordinary variety at your disposal. While there are too many to mention in two pages, here’s the lowdown on some of MESS’s most prized possessions.

AT 35

FEATURE

ROCK IT, YEAH

Def Leppard Live Def Leppard has been touring non-stop for 15 years.

AT checks in on a finely-tuned rock ’n’ roll machine.

Story: Chris Holder

AT 36

It’s easy to poke fun at Def Leppard’s outrageously popular Pour Some Sugar On Me music video of the late ’80s… so I’m going to.

If you’ve not seen the clip since perhaps a latenight ABC Rage session, then it’s worth joining the other 18.1 gazillion viewers on YouTube and checking out a band in its strutting/preening pomp.

Lead singer Joe Elliot cuts a dashing figure in his self-referential Def Leppard singlet and shredded denim. Steve Clark’s Les Paul is hitched so low he’s just about dragging it around the stage.

Rick Allen’s customised kit is big on Simmons drum pads (nothing says ’80s like a SimmDrum).

There’s plenty of ‘lean in and share the mic’ action, lasers and slo-mo Eddie van Halen-style guitar calisthenics. The crowd (or at least what we see of the crowd) all look like Meg Ryan (circa When Harry Met Sally) and are as equally excited… saying that, there’s one chap conspicuous for his commodore’s naval hat. It’s a joyous, stupid, singalong classic that you’d have to be dead or Sam The Eagle not to enjoy.

Fast forward nearly 30 years and very little has changed: a Def Leppard gig is big, loud, unselfconsciously boof-headish, and none the worse for it.

ONE LUMP OR TWO?

Ronan McHugh is the band’s front of house engineer. He was sucked into Def Leppard’s orbit while the band was recording Euphoria in the late ’90s. Having stepped into the job of engineer in a Dublin studio he was tapped for the FOH role when they took the new album on tour. “I was working a lot on the album’s vocals — overdubs mainly,” recalls Ronan. “But I think Joe liked my affinity with his vocal and that gave him confidence I would be right for the live job.”

In this respect it’s easy to forget that Def Leppard is a vocal outfit as much as they are hair metal/cock rock plank spankers. There’s more nuance and art than perhaps the band might be given credit for.

“They’re a heavy rock band but they’re also a big vocal band,” concurs Ronan. “The vocals are the most important component of the mix and keep me the busiest. Then the guitars, then Rick’s kit — he’s the ‘Thunder God’, after all, and you’ve got to mix drums accordingly. So it’s a big, loud rock show but with vocals more prominent than most.”

XL4 OR D5?

When Ronan McHugh first toured with Def Leppard he pioneered the use of the Digico D5 with a Midas XL4 as his back up… talk about the yin/yang of mixing in the early noughties!

“The D5 was new to the scene and I couldn’t source it in every territory so I’d switch to the XL4 at times,” recalls Ronan. “I wasn’t totally sold on Digico until they came out with the SD series, which have been awesome. I’ve been using the SD7 or SD5 ever since.

“The SD’s 192k converters really help. The front end sounds more analogue to me than other digital

mixers. I’d go as far to say that they sound more like a Midas than a Midas digital mixer.

“And, yes, I was like everyone else, cranking the crap out of the XL4 preamps and loving the sound.

So it took a while to get out of that habit.”

RIDING FADERS FOR DEAR LIFE

There’s more to mixing a Def Leppard gig than jacking the master fader to 11, kicking back in your leather pants and watching the crowd erupt.

“I don’t get a minute to kick back and fine tune EQ. I’m mixing the whole time,” notes Ronan, who doesn’t own a pair of leather pants. “Joe will sing in full voice then switch to falsetto in the second half of the line. He’s constantly swapping, with as much as 10dB jumps in level. At other times Phil will occasionally sing the melody and Joe will take the high harmony. So you need to be on your toes throughout.”

Lead singer, Joe Elliot, is big on the stage histrionics, as you’d expect, including the occasional exaggerated motion of pulling away from the mic when letting rip.

“His vocal mic technique is generally very good.

I’d prefer if he didn’t pull the mic away but an 1176 plug-in helps me deal with that.

“We use a Beta 58 capsule on Joe’s vocal. Have I shopped around? Millions of times. At the start of every tour we try other mics but we’ve always come back to the Beta 58. I think it works so well because of the way Joe switches from chest voice to falsetto — there are other mics superior in the falsetto register but none that are as good across the board.”

then there's Rick’s kit — he’s the ‘Thunder God’, after all, and you’ve got to mix drums accordingly

LESS MICS PLEASE, WE’RE BRITISH

Ronan keeps his mix within the console using Waves plug-ins along with board EQ and compression: the aforementioned Waves emulations of the 1176 and Pultec EQ on lead vocal, an API 2500 compressor on the drums group, DL2 limiter on bass guitar, as well as a SSL bus compressor, Waves C6 multiband compressor and L2 on the master bus. There is an outboard exception: Ronan has Distressors sitting across the backing vocal mics.

Apart from vocal mics, the rest of the stage sources are mostly direct. Ronan has been using Palmer DIs on the guitars for many years now. Phil Collen’s guitar rig has moved from JMP amps and a Palmer DI to a Fractal Axe setup. Vivian’s rig is a little more old-school but still has a Palmer DI at the back end.

Rick Allen, the world’s most famous onearmed drummer, has a highly modified kit. Just about everything is on triggers, including the pedal-activated snare, kick and toms. There are mics on the three hi-hats (regular open, totally shut, and slightly open, as he hasn’t a third foot to activate conventional hi-hats), ride cymbal and as overheads.

Bassist, Rick Savage, is the only band member not on in-ear monitors. But despite everyone else being on ears there’s plenty of onstage backline sound.

FOH Engineer, Ronan McHugh’s ‘office’, the Digico SD7.

(Above) Keen observers will notice a disturbing development on the cowbell channel. (Top) Four ELI Distressors sit over the backing vocals.

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Both guitarists have cabs on stage, and there are d&b M2 wedges and subs behind the LED staging that provide a drum PA — effectively emulating the acoustic sound of a drum kit in full flight.

Sounds loud, but it’s controlled. In fact, Def Leppard were never ones for onstage PA largesse: “The band never had monster sidefills, just a couple of double-12 wedges to cover the sides,” noted Ronan.

CLASS ACT

Hysteria was one of the biggest selling albums of all time. It was also one of the most expensive studio albums ever made… masterminded by the legendary Mutt Lange. Rumour has it that sales were grumbling along (a paltry three million or so) and not actually recouping the monstrous studio costs, and it wasn’t until Pour Some Sugar On Me was released as a single that the album fully hit its straps.

Quite rightly, Def Leppard has been making a tidy living as a rock ’n’ roll band ever since. Ronan told AT the tours have been gradually ramping up in popularity since 2000. “When I joined we were playing to B arenas and state fairs in the US but this year has been huge.”

Let’s hope guitarist Vivian Campbell beats the dreaded big ‘c’ and they keep motoring.

JPJ PA: J SERIES ALL THE WAY AT caught up with JPJ’s Dean Mizzi to get the lowdown on the Def Leppard PA. Don't let the L-Acoustics T-shirt fool you, it's a d&b love-in.

“It’s d&b J Series: 14 deep on the main hangs and 12 on the side hangs. We have flown J subs and stacked J subs on the ground and d&b Q7 infill. We time align the PA back to where the backline and drum fill are on stage. We’ve supplied the Digico SD5 using a Dolby Lake Processor as the mesa system EQ.” JPJ Audio: www.jpjaudio.com.au

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FEATURE

LIVE! THE TOURING PUB CRAWL Rockwiz’s production has travelled a long way from pub TV trivia, but Rockwiz Live! shows it hasn’t lost the rock.

Story: Lucie Robson Photos: Daniel Sievert

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Too old to rock ’n’ roll? Never! Bringing a pub-rock-inspired quiz show to big stages around the country requires the best and most experienced minds in the business.

Saying Rockwiz is a challenging show to mix is putting it mildly. Merging comedy, theatre, a game show and live rock concert into one; boisterous dialogue from contestants and hosts is interrupted by spontaneous bursts of live music from a fivepiece band and recorded stings...and it gets loud!

For many in the Rockwiz audience it's like reliving their youth. You can hear the adulation zinging off the theatre walls.

Between September and November Rockwiz went on the road for a new show, the fourth such national tour: Rockwiz Live! Salutes the ARIA Hall of Fame. The live stage version of the beloved music quiz show added celebrity guests from the Hall of Fame and a longer set of live performances of Australian classics. It was a run of 19 shows, mostly in new venues every night. When AudioTechnology headed along to Chatswood’s Concourse theatre on a Saturday afternoon, the cast and crew were still busy getting every tiny element into place for that night’s show.

“We just hire the best people, and let them do it,” explained Peter Bain-Hogg, one of the executive producers and co-creators of Rockwiz. He says the success of bringing the regular show to theatres around the country relies on the specific and extensive experience of the people he has on board.

“But in reality, what we do in the Espy [Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda] is not what traditionally happens on a TV show anyway. It’s not a TV studio, we make it in a pub. It’s the same kind of philosophy, just bigger venues. Good front of house, good lights, good stage techs.”

Front of house engineer Tim Millikan has his work cut out for him translating the Espy show into a touring event, said Bain-Hogg: “It’s a completely different set of everything, really. Tim’s got a much more difficult set of parameters in which he has to work. It’s not like we can take anyone and put them into his job but he can go and do anyone’s job, because he’s got all that expertise. Tim’s background is front of house, and also playing for various bands, so he’s the best at what he does. He’s also our front of house engineer for the TV recording. The transition for him is really about making it sound right with the scale of the venue.”

Millikan joined the Rockwiz operation around 10 years ago, having previously worked for artists such as Paul Kelly and Peter Luscombe (the drummer in the Rockwiz orchestra). Bain-Hogg brought Millikan on board to redesign the way the show was doing sound, and he’s hung around ever since for all TV recordings and live events.

DAN DUGAN NINJA

The sound team that Tim Millikan leads on Rockwiz isn’t large. On most of the tour shows there were only three people: Millikan, monitor engineer Cam Elias and Matt Miller from JPJ’s Melbourne shop. Additionally, Dugald McAndrew, recognisable as the man who holds up the scorecards, is the production manager, and guitar

and stage tech. But for the Chatswood show, JPJ in Sydney supplied stacks and racks, as well as an extra set of hands, Tim Jones. “I’ve got an extra audio guy today that I wouldn’t normally have,” Millikan said. “Normally it’s just three of us, and Matt is really here for Cam. There’s a lot more stuff happening up there. My setup’s relatively easy, we fine-tuned everything prior to going out with front of house; it’s really just a couple of multi-pins and tipping a few cases.”

Millikan describes his front of house setup as “fairly straightforward”. The Avid Profile console has Waves multiband compressors, reverbs and delays onboard. “The multiband compressors are very important,” he said. “The Waves C4 multiband compressor allows me to control EQ as well as dynamics, but doesn’t take the body out of the inputs.” In addition Millikan uses a Mac running QCart and a Dolby Lake Processor with a tablet, to hook into house systems and have control of EQ and delay. His “secret weapon”, and extra pair of hands, is his Dan Dugan Automixer, which he’s been using for seven years.

“You can’t have all these headsets and lectern mics open with a live band playing, and have it balanced and sitting but not wanting to ring out,” Millikan explains. “If I switched all of them on you’d just hear it on the verge of taking off.” The Dan Dugan processing is like a “little ninja in a box”, Millikan enthused. “Opening and closing faders really quickly, it allows me to not worry about the six panel mics. You’ve still got to ride them a bit, but you’re not having to jump on something to stop it feeding back.”

INTERSTATE PUB CRAWL

The live show has two acts, and although each night has different contestants and performers, the essential format remains the same. In the first act, co-host Brian Nankervis adjudicates a selection of contestants by inviting audience members onstage to answer trivia questions and guess song snippets, played as stings from the front of house console.

The atmosphere is festive, and becomes only more so during the evening. The crew are looking for contestants who have big voices, know how to use microphones and will provide some entertainment for the crowd. And, of course, they must have excellent Australian rock trivia chops.

During intermission, Millikan and co-host Julia Zemiro quickly speak with the lucky four contestants who have made it through to the next round, teaching good microphone technique.

Millikan: “When we get the contestants up, as Julia meets and introduces them then has a little chat, I can EQ, get gain structure, and that allows me to sit it where I need to. Then I override the snapshot, and keep it in there when I go between musical acts.”

In the second act, all microphones and speakers are put to good use. In total there are six contestants onstage with hosts Julia (headset) and Brian, two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard, singers and backup singers.

Even with all this sound, the dialogue of hosts and contestants needs to take priority. But trickily,

the music needs to have sufficient heft to create the sticky-carpet feel of a pub. Additionally, venues such as The Concourse that are designed to handle orchestral performances can have reflective surfaces which create additional challenges. In this regard, Millikan is the master of Rockwiz. He explains that he has only around 3dB of headroom to work with. “The dynamic headroom is between the dialogue and the music. If the band is too loud, you start losing the dialogue component of the show, and vice versa, you can’t have the band too quiet, or there’s no vibe,” he said. “It’s Rockwiz, not Cabaret Wiz.”

You can’t have the band too quiet, or there’s no vibe… It’s Rockwiz, not Cabaret Wiz.

Millikan says the key to creating this particular ‘rough and ready’ live atmosphere is picking the part of the mix you choose to finesse. “Rockwiz is a lot about nostalgia for some people. We have an older audience and when they were in their teens and twenties, they used to go to pubs and see Icehouse, Divinyls, bands like that. Because we have a lot of those artists on Rockwiz, these people are coming back and reliving their youth to a certain degree. So you’ve got to deliver that, but you’ve got to do it with today’s class of production.

“It’s got theatre in it, but it’s a rock show and it should be rock. The PA needs to move a bit of air, you need to have a bit of bottom end happening.

That’s all I’m trying to do: make it clean and intelligible so you can look at everyone on stage and hear everything that’s going on. Not too loud, but you feel like you’ve been to a gig.”

While the music needs to boom, the dialogue needs to cut through everything, otherwise the show’s raison d’être will be completely obscured.

Millikan says that this makes the dialogue, which makes up around 70 per cent of the show, the hardest part of the entire project. “The dialogue is the section where you’re dealing with people from an audience dragged up onstage to be part of a show, who don’t know how to speak into microphones,” he explained. “You don’t know what you’re going to get onstage on any one night. They change. You can get these little nuggets of gold that come up onto stage and make the night something really special, then you get people who are like rabbits in the headlights — they get up there and they freeze.” Add the fact that alcohol is being served, and “all sorts of things have happened!”

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Not an IEM to be seen, it‘s d&b M4 wedges all the way. The tour used Sennheiser SKM9000 series wireless, with the MD9235 dynamic super cardioid capsule on the handhelds.

Usually the sound crew manage to get through it with aplomb but “occasionally you get a contestant who speaks really quietly all night, and that’s difficult if they’re the ones who know their stuff and are answering a lot. You’re just trying to get more level without feedback,” Millikan said.

“Feedback is unacceptable.”

SENNHEISER LOVE AFFAIR

Millikan lists the microphones he uses on stage: “A lot of Sennheiser stuff, e901 and e902 in the kick drum, and e904 on toms, I’ve also got Shure SM57s on top and bottom snare and AKG C414s for hi-hats and overhead. I use Sennheiser e945 dynamics on all the vocals, and the radio mics are the Sennheiser SKM9000 series with the MD9235 dynamic super cardioid capsule, they’re really good sounding radios, and relatively easy to use.

It’s got a built-in frequency scanner and recorder, which makes it pretty versatile for a single unit. It’s handier than having to carry a separate computer with frequency software to go searching.”

Millikan is enthusiastic about the quality of the AT 42

Sennheiser 9000 series. “I have to say, it’s actually one of those things where I used it and said ‘Wow, that sounds fantastic!’

“Same with the headset, I’ve been using the DPA 4088 cardioid for years, but we’re using the Sennheiser headset on Julia. With this, it had a usable bottom end, hardly EQ’d it. I was planning to use the DPAs, but we got stuck with it the first time because the adapters we had were for a Shure pack. So we fired it up, and I just went, ‘I’m not changing.’

“I also recently added Sennheiser MK8 condensers on the guitars. I’ve gone from Audio-Technica 3060s and they’ve got it right with this one. I wasn’t really happy with the MK4, but this one sounds great. The DIs are all Radial passive JDIs. “Yeah I mean, for years I’ve been using Shure Beta 58s and all that sort of stuff. I used the 945s on something else I was doing, and the vocals were just lush; it’s got usable low-mids. This time I just stuck them everywhere. I thought, ‘rather than just using them on the guest vocal, I’m going to blanket

them across the stage.’ It’s made it so much easier.

I’ve been fighting the old dinosaur in me and changing to a few different things that I wouldn’t normally use. I’m really happy with it, it’s rich, full and sounds good.

Monitor engineer Cam Elias agrees: “The handheld mics sound incredible, and the headset we’re using for Julia has an incredible amount of feedback rejection as well, which is quite unusual for headset mics and foldback. I can get a lot of gain before feedback, without having any trouble.

I’m well impressed with that stuff.”

The final pieces of noise-making equipment are the buzzers, smashed enthusiastically by the contestants at every question. Inside the buzzers, the signal is split to a light and a mic with a Shure SM58. The lectern and panel mics are from Clock Audio, and have 400mm active shafts with a C3H capsule.

IN-EAR FREE ZONE

Some time ago the Rockwiz sound crew decided to eschew any in-ear mixing entirely, save for

(Above) FOH engineer Tim Millikan at soundcheck in the Concourse Theatre, Chatswood.

exceptional cases. “We don’t have enough time in the day to spend getting in-ear mixes together and so forth, and if they’re not right, then people aren’t going to nail the performance,” Millikan explained.

“Because it’s only a song, or maybe two songs, like a song and a duet from a couple of artists, it’s not worth the grief involved in setting up racks of ears. A lot of people don’t have their own moulds, so we’d be using generics too. It’s just easier to put out a bunch of good monitors — we use d&b M4s — and get a really deluxe overall stage sound.

It’s about stage coverage, which Front of house has to compliment as well. If you create an overall sound, as opposed to different audio in particular positions on stage, everything sounds great and is more consistent with the dialogue as well.”

So while the decision was for convenience, it also helps to keep VIP guests happy and calm.

“You’ve got to make artists feel comfortable on stage too,” said Millikan. “They may be singing one of their songs, but they also might be doing a duet from a totally different genre of music that they’re not overly comfortable with, in front of AT 43

(Above) AKG C414s on cymbals and a Sennheiser e904 on toms. (Top right) The impressive interface of the Sennheiser SKM9000 wireless system. ((Right) Wireless central at monitor world, including a look at the SK9000 bodypacks.

(Bottom right) Another new addition to Millikan's mic arsenal is the Sennehiser MK8 condenser on guitar cabs.

a bunch of strangers.” There isn’t a huge amount of time for performers to get to know their new stage and crew. “It can be quite intimidating for an artist to come on and think, ‘I’ve got to sing this and get it right’. But they do it! The whole trick to that is to make them feel as comfortable as possible. If they feel comfortable, and don’t feel like they’re being watched or judged, then they’ll have a much better performance.

“We have such a wide range of artists, from young up-and-comers to seasoned pros, to people getting on in their career and so forth. It’s unfair to walk up to someone like Col Joye and ask him to put a set of ears in.”

THE REAL THING

Rockwiz is great fun for all involved, whether you’re onstage or not. In the first act, the audience gets to show off their knowledge and enthusiasm for Aussie rock ’n’ roll. Then in the second, they get to witness those past decades come back to life as classic songs are re-imagined. On the night of the Chatswood show, Vika and Linda Bull sang backup to Steve Kilbey’s rendition of Wide Open Road by The Triffids, and then Vika sang a blistering version of Back In Black. Kilbey sang his own song Under The Milky Way with Kate Miller-Heidke, who on her own also sang Hey Little Girl by Icehouse. Even co-host Julia Zemiro joined in, performing a solo tribute to Olivia Newton-John. The music industry may be changing but Rockwiz Live! Salutes the ARIA Hall Of Fame showed there’s still a lot of joy to be had in being a fan.

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STUDIO FOCUS:

SAE MELBOURNE OPENS UP The first day of school can be rough; no friends, unfamiliar surroundings. It’s easy to just duck your head, go to class, and keep the interaction to a minimum. SAE’s Melbourne campus used to be a little like that. Cosy, sure, but light on the breakout areas. It was very much a come-and-go kind of place full of small studios and classrooms attached to a rabbit warren of corridors.

But over the last couple of years, SAE has been rebuilding its campus and rethinking the way SAE students learn, with a focus on facilitating collaboration.

After securing the adjoining building, it not only allowed the campus to double in size, but

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rethink the layout to add more space as well as new facilities. Corridors are wider, ceilings are higher, breakout areas are everywhere, the library study area has grown considerably, and permanent outdoor seating links to a large cafeteria hangout. It’s a place you want to spend time in, which is crucial if the goal is to get students talking to each other.

So far so good, we talked to a couple of students who are loving the new facilities. We caught Becki Whitton — a singing teacher enrolled to develop her production chops — as she was heading to the airport to coach a Canberra-based student through her album recording. She’s been getting a bit of

extra-curricular tutelage herself from a ‘drum programming guru’ in her class.

Charles Mann is in his second year and starting to feel his mixes clicking into gear. He’s especially looking forward to running live shows in the new soundstage, seeing live engineering as a key part of his future.

That new soundstage is pretty impressive, big enough to house an orchestra, but the plan is to use it primarily as a live venue and filming stage.

It’s a double-storey (commercial height) 360ft² space with a separate loading bay and hydraulically operated lighting rig. Curtains can be pulled around the space to take the edge off, but there’s

also some fixed baffling on the walls.

Back in Issue 104, AT got the hardhat tour of the new premises, which was little more than a basic concrete structure at the time. You could see it taking shape, but now it’s a professional soundstage completely isolated from its industrial surroundings.

In the upstairs bio box is a new Avid S6 control console. While the existing Neve Genesys is still the flagship analogue console at the campus, the S6 lets students get their hands on professional level digital control. With 5.1 Focal monitoring, it can serve as a post-production mix down facility, a standard mix room, or as an interface to the soundstage for live broadcasts. To broaden its use

even further, SAE’s technical department opted to install a Focusrite Rednet system, which can connect inputs from anywhere in the campus into the S6 room via ethernet. Downstairs on the soundstage floor, an Avid S3L compact live system lets students get experience mixing on a current touring rig.

Like most facilities on the SAE campus, the soundstage is designed to be multi-disciplinary, but also bolsters the live component of SAE’s curriculum. And, of course, it’s a great place for students to collaborate.

You can check out our tour of the new facilities at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ewx-oFWRm4

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REGULARS

PC Audio Money tight? Why not explore some of the best PC freeware plug-ins around.

Column: Martin Walker

It never ceases to amaze me just how many really useful and high quality freeware audio plug-ins are out there for PC owners. It’s about time I honed in on some of the best around. Most of these are fairly new releases that rapidly caught my eye, but I’ve also thrown in a few oldies but goodies. If you’ve missed them thus far then you need to explore their excellence for yourself.

IGNITE AMPS

www.igniteamps.com Ignite Amps builds custom guitar amps and effects to order, but also provides an accurate real time virtual simulation of them before building the real hardware! With this core business in mind, it also offers a range of freeware virtual guitar amp plugins, which have a great reputation with guitarists.

However, what recently drew me to its website was the PTEq-X, a surprisingly comprehensive Pulteq-style EQ plug-in, released only recently.

Unlike some of the Pultec freebies out there, this one performs the simultaneous low-end boost/ attenuation trick correctly, giving you that handy EQ curve that can be so useful for kick drums and other bass instruments. The model performs similar magic when adding air with its high shelf option. It also includes an extremely comprehensive MQ5 mid-range section offering two peaks and one dip option over a wide choice of frequencies, a third HL3C section containing low cut and high cut filters, and even a choice of options that model the subtle second/third harmonic effects of four different ECC tubes!

TDR VOS SLICK EQ

www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-vos-slickeq Another very clever business model is employed by Tokyo Dawn Records: its small range of boutique plug-ins available both as very capable free versions and tantalisingly more upmarket Gentleman’s Editions, which contain lots more features. I use its VOS Slick EQ a lot in my own mixes. Its three band semi-parametric design offers four distinct modes (American, British, German, Soviet), each with different shapes for its shelving/peaking low and high bands and the boost/cut curves of its mid band, plus a handy high-pass filter for removing subsonic mud. There’s also a musical EQ Sat harmonic contribution affecting EQ boosts, AT 48

and a separate output stage offering three optional saturation modes with variable drive to add further analogue ‘mojo’. A particularly useful feature is the Auto-gain mode that preserves subjective loudness as you alter the EQ curve.

I was so impressed with this plug-in that I upgraded to its €30 Gentleman’s Edition. It adds a further Japanese EQ flavour, more versatile high-pass filter, a new low-pass filter, several more output stage options, very handy tilt filter and a spectrum analyser displaying the current EQ curve and its real-time audio response. Wunderbar!

RAZ AUDIO F1 FILTERBOX

www.razaudio.com A new name to me, Raz Audio only produces its free plug-ins in Windows 32-bit format — though they work fine for me inside 64-bit Reaper using its built-in bridge, and in other applications using jBridge. Its latest March 2016 offering is F1 FilterBox: a multimode filter with low, high and band pass options in both 12dB and 24dB/octave formats, with frequency and resonance modulated via an integrated LFO (either free-running or tempo-synced to your DAW), or driven by an envelope follower. These three modulator modes can also be run in parallel for more complex results, and the F1 Filterbox X/Y pad display of freq/resonance and other controls are easily automate-able from your DAW. F1 FilterBox is an easy to use and versatile effect for those with electro tendencies, although it would benefit from input and output level controls to more easily avoid overloads at high resonance settings.

GLITCH MACHINES FRACTURE

glitchmachines.com/downloads/fracture If you want to morph your sounds in more radical directions, I can certainly recommend this classic.

Featuring a buffer effect, along with a multimode filter, three LFOs and a delay, this really does live up to its claims of creating ‘robotic artefacts and abstract musical malfunctions’. Essentially it records a small portion of your input signal and loops this a number of times before starting again, but under the long-term control of an LFO (tempo-sync is once again a handy option). The multi-mode filter and delay modules provide LFO modulation of their parameters, and you can re-

order all three modules in search of different sonic results. Fracture is now up to version 1.2 and with over 100 presets from famous sound designers to get you started this creative powerhouse will truly warp your incoming audio in fresh and often jawdropping ways. Even if you input a steady sine wave signal and hit the random button you’ll be amazed at many of the sounds that emerge!

SGA1566 VINTAGE TUBE PRE

www.shatteredglassaudio.com/product.php?id=104 Apparently this two-stage 12AX7 tube design is simulated in real time using a high performance circuit simulator, with a two-band Baxandall-style EQ stage that can be placed at either end of the tube circuitry. The results range from added warmth and overdrive, to out and out saturation. While I found you do need to switch to its higher oversampling and CPU settings to get best results, it’s a great way to add some character and dirt to your tracks.

One favourite setting of mine was to use lower gain settings combined with high output levels, delivering some lovely second harmonic distortion along with some extra warmth and snap from the plug-in’s Baxandall EQ. SGA has now released a MkII version with various enhancements for just US$29.99, but the original remains freeware.

KLANGHELM MJUCJR

klanghelm.com/MJUCjr.php MCUCjr is a colourful variable-mu compressor with real character yet easy to use controls. It’s a junior version of the fully-featured MJUC, which spent two years in R&D yet retails at a remarkably low €24. Junior has just two main controls in charge of compression and make-up gain, along with a three-way switch for fast, slow or auto timing; while setup is made easy via the large gain reduction meter. Notwithstanding, once you listen to the results you’ll realise there’s actually a lot going on under the hood, with two tube gain stages and an interstage transformer simulation with variable slew rate. Results range from the natural, dense compression of early vari-mu designs to a more forward-sounding output associated with 1960s models; with plenty of desirable harmonic contributions. I loved this compressor’s attitude; from its punch and snap on drum loops, to the pumping at more extreme settings.

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REVIEW

ALLEN & HEATH DLIVE S5000 Control Surface & DM32 Mixrack Allen & Heath’s dLive basically doubles everything the iLive did, for around the same price. Leaps and bounds, people!

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Guy Harrison

CONTACT TAG: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au

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PROS High 96k channel counts, fully processed Ergonomic drag ’n’ drop customisation Sounds & feels great Price!

CONS No iPad app yet

SUMMARY Allen & Heath has developed a new core FPGA engine and the dLive is reaping the rewards. There’s enough power on tap to handle almost any sized show, and its custom configuration and drag ’n’ drop flexibility means it can handle mega channel counts without getting itself tangled. It’s so easy to navigate, it even has an onboard mix wizard to make sure you don’t get lost.

I put this dLive system through its paces in a variety of scenarios from rock shows to theatre production and never found it wanting

On paper, Allen & Heath’s new flagship digital console series, dLive, looks to be tremendous value. It doubles the I/O processing power of the iLive series, with 128 x 64 fully processed I/O, and makes the leap into 96k processing. All for the price of a 4WD, not a house.

Check it out for yourself, just hold up the price and specs side by side and go crosseyed like you’re doing a magic eye. At first it has the outline of a garden variety tabby, then boom, out pops a three-dimensional jungle cat! If the dLive can deliver on sound and ergonomics as it has in price and specs, it could be king of the jungle.

The dLive series comes in three console variations: the S3000 is the most compact with 20 faders and a single touch screen; the S5000 supplied for this review has 28 faders and dual touch screens; and the big kahuna S7000 ups the fader count to 36. An external screen can be connected to all of the dLive consoles which will especially please S3000 purchasers. Unlike analogue replacement-style consoles, like the Qu series, these are only control surfaces; the engine is contained in the MixRack. Let’s head down to the stage end to take a peek at the brains behind the setup.

sample rate, and you’re beginning to get the picture.

With latency quoted as 0.7ms and all buses timealigned, it’s streets ahead of the iLive and almost twice as powerful as anything in its price range.

More I/O is available on the MixRack by way of three ports which offer a further 128 x 128 channels. Although full processing channels on dLive are ‘limited’ to 160 x 64 you can use the tie line feature to route any of 800 inputs to 800 outputs without using any DSP. Connection to the dLive surface is via A&H’s GigaACE protocol with dual redundancy. A quick test unplugging revealed that everything keeps rolling as you’d expect.

Even when I ripped out both cables there was no disruption to the audio, and the console came back to life in seconds once I’d reconnected them.

Every component in the dLive range has the option of dual redundant power supplies.

Thoughtfully, these power supplies are identical across the range so you could, for instance, have two power supplies in the Mixrack and only one in the control surface. If the control surface power supply was to fail you could borrow one from the Mixrack and the show goes on! There is also an ME port on the Mixrack for A&H’s personal mixer system.

BRAIN NOT DEFINED BY RACK

CONFIGURABLE CONTROL

Despite there being three sizes of Mixrack in the DM series — 32 mic/line inputs by 16 line outputs, 48 x 24 and 64 x 32 — there are no dummies in the bunch. Each box has an identical mix engine, regardless of physical size or I/O. To save on cost, Allen & Heath has also developed the DX32 Expander, which adds additional I/O as either mic/line or AES3 without the brains. Up to three of those can be connected to the Mixrack or control surface.

A&H’s engineers have been busy fiddling with the XCVI core processing unit. It’s based on a new FPGA chip with enough power to handle 128 input and 64 output channels with full processing, alongside 16 stereo FX with dedicated returns. Add to that a configurable 64 bus architecture and 96k

The S5000 feels comfortable the minute you sit (or stand) at it. It has a slightly curved front armrest which gives it a cockpit feel. This is more than just aesthetic as it places you closer to the touch screens where a lot of your work is done.

The two screens serve separate functions; the left controls inputs, and the right handles outputs and FX. While the iLive had single channel stripstyle ergonomics, the dLive departs from this by offering loads of configurable controls. The stalwart essentials like gain, hi and lo-pass filters and parametric EQ surround the input screen and get a permanent slice of screen real estate to support their functions. Almost every other control on the desk is custom configurable.

There are six user assignable soft rotary controls

to the right of each touch screen with three banks available. These knobs can be configured on the fly with cleverly implemented drag ’n’ drop functionality, and the right hand strip of the touch screen follows your selection to indicate what you’re adjusting. You can even switch banks here with a flick gesture on the touch screen… you know, just in case pressing the bank button is too ’90s for ya! By default the knobs control the gate and compressor, but you can just as easily change it to FX or Monitor sends, or a dedicated control of one of your 16 stereo FX units. The recurring theme on this console is that there are many ways to get at the same controls. For instance, the rotary controls above each fader have four configurable banks as well as pan, gain and sends options.

What impressed me most was how quickly you can configure these controls on the fly. Say you want control of modulation and delay time on an FX unit for a particular song. You can bring those controls to the six knobs beside the screen in an instant and start tweaking. This same high speed assigning can be achieved with fader layouts too.

The S5000 surface feels fluid, almost as though it doesn’t matter where something is because you can move it without a hassle. It changes the way you mix and it’s really empowering.

PROCESSING LIBRARY

The onboard processing is equally flexible. On top of the obligatory parametric EQ, each channel has a library of compressor options for every input and output. These are modelled on some famous analogue devices and cover both FET and opto topologies. There are also 31-band graphic EQs available on all outputs which don’t pinch any DSP processing from your 16 available stereo FX slots.

Allen & Heath has provided a wide variety of onboard FX to fill the 16 DSP slots. Once again there are some familiar looking GUIs that pay homage to analogue counterparts. I did particularly enjoy the ADT Double Tracking unit; add a little tight plate or small room and a great rock vocal AT 51

sound can be had in seconds! The library is also intelligently laid out in categories, so finding the appropriate FX is a quick process.

Another feature of the S5000 worthy of mention is the listen function. When pressed, it lights up sections of the touch screen in yellow. You can choose any section to listen to in isolation, such as a compressor side chain, EQ, gate, etc. Even an aux send can be sent to your headphones in this way.

The output touchscreen also has a wealth of control options and it’s here where configuration of the console, metering, stereo ganging and scene control takes place. Once again it’s all very intuitive.

If you’re really stuck on how to do anything, there is a Help button which brings comic strip-like speech bubbles to the touch screen explaining how each part works. Scene control is also particularly well implemented. Features like fade times (up to 20s) between cues and dedicated Previous, Next and Go buttons will keep the theatre fraternity satisfied.

SUM DO HAVE ’EM

Over a fortnight of operation, I put this dLive system through its paces in a variety of scenarios, from rock shows to theatre production, and never found it wanting. Operation is intuitive and fluid and the dLive is very much an ‘if you can dream it, it’ll do it’ console. Hell, you can even configure it to be a 60 mono send monitor desk!

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The dLive’s ergonomics are outstanding and A&H’s engineers should be complimented on striking a great balance between configurability and usability. It could so easily have gone wrong, with this amount of customisation on offer, but the touch screen, drag ’n’ drop assignability, and clever management of onscreen parameters means you always feel in control.

The dLive sounds great too! The jump to 96k and the power of the processing can be heard in the reverb tails. In general, every move you make, be it pan or EQ, feels rock solid and analogue in a lot of ways. That is, you don’t feel like it’s stepping through numbers as you move controls. The tactile feel of the faders and soft rotaries are pleasant too, gliding under your fingers yet providing enough force to give great feedback. I spoke to a long term iLive user who recently purchased a dLive and uses it week in, week out for a regular gig in the same venue. He said he was prepared for his mixes to sound deeper with the dLive but was surprised by how much wider they seemed too. I have to concur.

I’m sure the dLive will find its way into a lot of venues. It’s equally at home at FOH in a pub or club as it is in a theatre or as the centrepiece of a large festival stage.

Nowadays, Allen & Heath is owned by an umbrella company called Audiotonix, which also owns Calrec and Digico. While it’s reportedly

leaving the companies to operate as separate entities, judging by A&H’s move into FPGA processing there may be some collusion occurring.

Digico’s promised Stealth Core 2 upgrades will bolster its lower end SD9 range, but for now the dLive will set the cat among the pigeons in big console price-to-performance. At just over $40,000 retail — for a digital package that includes 64/32 I/O fully processed at 96k, and the option to double that I/O for $20,000 — the dLive has to be heard and driven to be believed!

PRICING Control Surfaces S3000: $24,999 S5000: $32,999 S7000: $35,999 Mixracks DM32 (32/16): $13,999 DM48 (48/24): $15,999 DM64 (64/32): $17,999 Expander DX32 Chassis (4 Module Slots): $3399 Input Modules (8 channels): $899 Output Modules (8 channels): $799

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REVIEW

PRESONUS STUDIOLIVE CS18AI Live & DAW Control Surface Presonus has designed a control surface to perform the double duties of live console and DAW controller. We find out if the Studiolive CS18AI can be the linchpin of Presonus’s endto-end utopia.

METERING — The meters can be flipped between input, output, gain reduction and mix masters. The actual labelling refers to the Fat Channel parameters, which is probably for the best. For a hint on what the channel meters are telling you when in input or output mode: they’re a dBFS peak meter and are the same as the ‘Selected Channel Level’ meter to the right.

Review: Mark Davie

NEED TO KNOW

Presonus set itself a complex task when designing the Studiolive CS18AI hardware control surface. No bones about it, it’s much easier to design console hardware and software at the same time. That way you can trade off software features to meet hardware limitations, or design the software around them. Presonus didn’t have that luxury, it was retroactively fitting a control surface to pre-built software. To take matters to a whole other level, Presonus didn’t just have one software program to interface the CS18AI to, it had two. The CS18AI performs two functions: in a live situation it acts as the

PRICE $2999 CONTACT Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au

AT 54

hardware front end to Presonus’s RM series of stagebox mixers and accompanying UC Surface software, while doubling as a control surface for Presonus’s Studio One DAW. Admittedly, Presonus’s task wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. There were some restrictions already built into the way RM operated. The RM series’ I/O routing presents much like a traditional analogue board. You can’t dynamically assign I/O to any fader position — it’s essentially one-to-one.

PROS Completely integrated live to studio system Intuitive fader bank layout & colouring Easily assign any Studio One plug-in parameter to pot AVB I/O makes it more than just a control surface

This makes fader layers on the CS18AI pretty straightforward. The top fader layer represents channels 1-16 now and forevermore.

If you want to patch a bass next to your guitar, you’re going to have to physically get up and wrangle XLRs at the stage box.

Presonus also deployed its de facto Fat Channel as the input channel processing inside the RM, which includes a gate, compressor, limiter, high-pass filter and EQ. It’s the same processing Presonus has put in its Studiolive series of mixers for some time, so it has experience building interfaces for it.

CONS Knob & meter placement feels too disconnected from channel names & numbers Minimal transport controls for Studio One control Inability to reassign I/O digitally limits flexibility of scene recall

SUMMARY Presonus has done a good job of designing a control surface that straddles the live and studio workflows.

It’s undoubtedly better than mixing on an iPad, but it’s best when used in combination with a screen of some description.

IN THE STUDIOLIVE MOULD

The CS18AI’s form factor is similar to Presonus’s other 16-channel Studiolive consoles. It’s designed to fit neatly into a 19-inch rack by pulling off the end cheeks and whacking some ears onto it. The 18 long-throw motorised faders (16 channel, one flexi master and one master) feel good to the touch and respond snappily when flicking between banks. The translucent, soft touch buttons all feel responsive, and the coloured backlighting gives a good indication of what mode you’re currently working in — green for main mix, pink for effects mixes, and yellow when dealing with aux mixes and DCAs. While the colour system helps you keep track of the general state you’re in, beyond that point things get a little grey. It’s the same criticism I have of Presonus’s UC Surface app; most everything is presented in a grey and blue palette that means you either have to know your session inside out or do a lot of reading. At least you don’t have to scroll through faders on the CS18AI, which is a big plus. Every input is going to appear in exactly the same spot every time. But that sort of uniformity doesn’t help with the Fat Channel sections: all the knobs are blue-topped, all the labelling is the same colour, and they’re all set out in a straight line. The first few times I used the CS18AI, I had to keep scanning through the labelling to remember which knob to turn.

To me, having a mixing surface with real faders isn’t about nostalgia, it’s about speed. This lack of colour is a real impediment to speed. Even Mackie topped its knobs in different colours back in the early ’90s.

The reasoning behind the uniformity must be because the knobs serve multiple functions. They can be switched to control preamp gains, and can be deployed as parameter controllers for any plug-in inside Studio One. If that is the case, then at least putting colour into the physical labels of each section would have made a difference; as those labels are printed in fixed positions on the surface anyway. The Studiolive knobs aren’t my favourite — they feel plasticky and a little small for my fingers.

The upside is that they feel solidly mounted and have enough resistance to not slip away on you.

There is one less row of knobs on the CS18AI compared to the Studiolive 16.4.2AI, but you do gain an LED screen above each channel fader which gives you feedback on channel naming, pan, etc.

LIVE MIXING

I used the CS18AI and RM16 stagebox combination to mix a five-piece band a couple of times during the review. I connected the two directly via CAT5e cable so I could use the AVB outputs on the rear of the CS18AI. You can also use an AVB switch, which I didn’t have, but incorporating any non-AVB switch or router will stop the control surface’s AVB audio I/O working. It’s also not an Ethercon port on the rear, which suits the double act of hooking it up in a studio. If you’re planning on regularly rolling out an ethernet cable for shows, I’d recommend stuffing the console and RM stage box in rack

cases and building Ethercon patch panels at both ends. It will give you a more secure connection to your rack and reduce wear on the connectors that matter — those on the units.

Once the RM rack is fired up, pressing the control surface’s UCNET button gives you the option of linking to it. The reason you have to select what system you’re working on is because the CS18AI automatically detects active instances of Studio One on the network too, which are selectable via a Software drop down menu.

I also plugged the provided wireless dongle into the front of the RM and set up a wireless router so I could also use my iPad for monitor tuning and parameter manipulation.

It’s a handy combination. While the CS18AI can function standalone, I found it much easier to name channels on the iPad, and I kept going back to it during the show to adjust my channel EQ. On the CS18AI, there are only four knobs for the four-band EQ section. They’re set to control gain by default, though you can select frequency and Q via the touchscreen as well as watch a graphic of your curve. Although the iPad does dynamically update fader positions and meters, its current page doesn’t follow the channel you’ve selected on the CS18AI. It’s less painful than it sounds to find the channel and tweak it on the iPad, but a ‘follow selected channel’ feature would be handy at times.

The primary reasons to invest in the CS18AI over just running an iPad are the faders and mute buttons. Whenever I’ve mixed on an iPad, inevitably I’ve double- or triple-pressed a mute button at some stage. Each false positive caused me to frantically press harder and faster, which only made it worse. On the CS18AI, the mute and solo buttons feel solid and responsive, and it’s easy to assign any of the eight Mute Group buttons — just mute the channels you want grouped, then press and hold one of the group buttons. You can also toggle all mutes on and off.

Other than the channel naming, EQ, mixing monitors and tweaking graphic EQs — which are all still easier on the iPad — I found myself pretty comfortable using the CS18AI by the second stint.

Once you get a handle on which colour represents the mode you’re in, you’ll stop accidentally balancing FX levels when you think you’re manipulating an aux send.

The fader banks are pretty straightforward. As well as four channel banks, there are the Returns for your FX, talkback and tape returns, the Mix Masters (which are the master sends for your 16 mix buses), Group Masters (which display the filtered DCA groups) and a DAW button for when you’re controlling Studio One. In any of the Master banks, when you press the Mix button above any channel it will spill the channels that make up that mix across the faders. I found this far quicker than the iPad version. However, pressing any other button from there will spit you out into the Main Mix. If you want to return to the previous bank you need to hit the same Master button again. The FX engines each have their own dedicated mute and mix select buttons, which is helpful when you need to quickly knock

The CS18AI is really the hardware embodiment of the end-to-end system Presonus has been trying to build up over the last decade

out a delay if your vocalist talks between songs.

There’s also a large tap tempo button that you can assign to one of your two delay engines.

You can assign any channel combination you want to a custom DCA group, and UC Surface will also automatically group input styles — like Instruments and Vocals — into generic DCAs, which is a neat little trick.

INS & OUTS

There are four inputs (two combo mic/line and two ¼-inch line inputs) and two (XLR) outputs on the rear of the CS18AI, which you can access when you have an active AVB connection between the console and the RM stagebox. By default the first mic input is routed as a talkback input, and the two line inputs as a stereo Digital Return. There’s nothing digital about them — the pair comes up in the same fader bank as your FX masters — they’re useful for handling analogue inputs from a phone or computer. Unfortunately there’s no processing on this channel, which would have been useful as the video feed I had to run through it needed a little attention.

Although having the extra I/O at the desk was useful, the quantity and routing seemed more suited to when the CS18AI is being used as a DAW controller.

Presonus has also updated the RM’s firmware to allow two stageboxes to be linked together over an AVB network, meaning the system can have a total of 64 inputs, plus the AVB I/O on the CS18AI itself. It could allow users to host some serious I/O at the FOH position if required as well as having a 32-input stage rack. For now, the outputs are limited to the original number on the master rack.

While this review isn’t about the RM series of stage mixers, they are really well put together. The preamps and 96k conversion don’t leave much wanting, especially at this price point. Still, while the four effects (two reverb and two delay) engines present some reasonable sounding algorithms, you’re somewhat limited for choice and flexibility.

The main issue I have with the stageboxes is the output pop at startup and shutdown. You’ll want to make sure you have your power up and power down sequence in order.

The other issue I have with the system is the slow response of scene recalls. It takes over a AT 55

second to switch between scenes, making it useless for in-show recall. What it would be useful for is setting up scenes in an install situation; but without the ability to re-route inputs to different faders, it somewhat limits the flexibility of this approach.

If, for instance, you implemented the system in a bio box at a school, some days it might get used by an experienced operator to mix a full band and multiple speakers, while another scenario might be a teacher with little audio experience who only needs to run a presentation. Setting up a scene with only a PC input and mic routed to the first two faders would be ideal, but you can’t re-route input locations in the software. On the upside, you don’t need the CS18AI to be turned on for the iPad app to run, so it still makes multiple setups easier than a standard console.

CAPTURED & STUDIO BOUND

Following Presonus’s breadcrumb trail from live to the studio, I recorded the gigs I mixed using the RM’s Firewire 800 output into my Macbook Pro, loaded with Presonus’s free Capture 2 live recording software. It was completely painless both times. Before booting up Capture, it’s best to make sure the UC Surface control software on your computer is seeing the RM mixer on the network.

That way it will automatically populate all the track names in Capture from your UC Surface session.

Once that’s done, you can disconnect the Wi-Fi or ethernet link to the RM mixer and just continue on with the Firewire connection.

If you keep the connection live, at the end of your recording you can press a button to store the mixer’s last settings — effects, pans, levels, etc — nondestructively. Then once you open the file in Studio One, not only are the tracks still there, but you can pull up a starting point for your mix — excellent!

If, for some reason, you can’t connect UC Surface on your Capture computer, don’t worry, Capture will still recognise the 16 or 32 audio streams over Firewire, you just won’t have the channels automatically named for you. With the new firmware, if you connect two RM stageboxes you can record up to 64 inputs.

MIXING IN COMFORT

Back in the studio, once I’d figured out which of my routers was reliably sending signal over its ethernet ports, setting up the CS18AI was an absolute AT 56

doddle. All you have to remember is to press that lovely green DAW button after connecting via UCNet, and you’re off. Pulling up the Capture session in Studio One, all of the channel names were in place, some effects were routed, and the Fat Channel settings and last fader positions were stored — I had a neat headstart.

After settling in with the session, I started to see why Presonus stuck with the single line of pots.

I’m not saying I like it, but in this mode they can manipulate most parameters of any plug-in. You can also easily assign any parameter from third party plug-ins to the encoders and buttons in the top row, via a GUI mirror of the hardware. You just pick the knob or button you want to assign to, wiggle the parameter on the plug-in, hit the arrow at the top of the assign window and away you go.

It’s one of the more obvious and easy systems I’ve come across. Once you’ve assigned a parameter, it appears in the LCD below the encoder.

Below is a bit of a stretch, I guess; there’s quite a distance between pot and screen. Overall, I think both modes would be better served if the row of pots was just above the screens. Heck, I know it’s unconventional, but the meter bridge could be shifted there too. It would better link the pots to their channel names and numbers when tweaking preamp gain in a live setting, and directly connect the pots to plug-in parameters on the LCD screen when used as a DAW controller.

While I found it useful to escape the screen and adjust most plug-ins via the pots, oddly the Fat Channel implementation is probably one of the worst on the CS18AI. While in the surface’s live mode you can at least access all the EQ controls via the touchscreen, in DAW control mode you can’t even turn each band on or off. There’s no other recourse but to adjust the plug-in onscreen. I ended up replacing all instances of the Fat Channel with separate Pro EQ and Compressor instances. There were other little niggles, like adjusting delay times to get a slapback in sync on Studio One’s Analog Delay plug-in. On your computer, you can hold shift while adjusting the knob to get incremental millisecond values, but there’s no similar option while turning the CS18AI’s encoders.

The fader banks work as you’d expect, you can navigate to the channel inserts by hitting the FX icon on the Home screen. Once opened, you simply touch an insert to bring it up on the

encoders. It was handy having faders to mix on, and if you can shell out for an AVB switch you’ll be able to use the CS18AI’s I/O for talkback, mic inputs and monitor outputs.

One of my main bugbears was the simplified transport control. It only has four buttons — play and record, and two buttons marked as ‘skip to beginning’ and stop (which also pull triple duty to allow skipping between markers, fast-forward and rewind). In the absence of a jog wheel, it should at least have buttons for each function. As it is, you have to hit an option and shift button to switch modes. It really sucks not having a dedicated stop button.

FITTING IN

From a purely live mixing viewpoint, if you’re already invested in Presonus’ RM series and solely mixing on an iPad is starting to frustrate you, then the CS18AI is a no-brainer. If you’re looking for a 16- or 32-channel I/O digital mixing system, then the CS18AI is up against some pretty healthy competition in that price range. Yet if you’re after a system you can expand to 64 channels at some point, the economies of scale come back on Presonus’ side. The selling points for the CS18AI don’t stop when the gig ends though.

While I had some issues with how the CS18AI is laid out, Presonus has done a good job of delivering a control surface that works with both its live and studio recording software.

The CS18AI is really the hardware embodiment of the end-to-end system Presonus has been trying to build up over the last decade. Now, with one system, you can mix a live show, record it and mix the outcome on the same gear; with software designed to speak the same language.

It’s an impressive pathway and there’s nothing stopping you using an RM box and the CS18AI as a dedicated recording setup either. That’s a lot of I/O with low latency outputs. To get this kind of live to studio, end-to-end hardware and software integration the only other purpose-built option I can think of is an Avid S3L-X and Pro Tools solution; which is aimed at a completely different market and over three times the price.

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REVIEW

WAVES NX

Virtual Mix Room Plug-In Review: Preshan John

Price: US$99 Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com

Mixing with headphones can be a risky ordeal.

I remember when I first tried producing a song entirely in cans — the track was bangin’, everything felt big and wide, the vocals cut through like a knife. Then I chucked it on some speakers and, to my dismay, the levels were all out of whack, effects were overblown, and anything panned centre was way too loud.

Waves’ new Nx plug-in is designed to marry the paradigms of headphone and speaker monitoring by maintaining the convenience and privacy of headphones while rectifying the deceptive auditory world they put you in. Namely, a dramatically wide stereo image, unconventional amount of detail, lack of ‘crosstalk’ between left and right channels, and the absence of any room reflections mingling with the direct sound before arriving at your eardrums.

Pop Nx onto your master bus and you’ll hear the difference immediately. The stereo spread narrows, the centre image softens, and you’re transported into a world filled with pseudo-room reflections and artificial depth. The overall effect is the comparative ‘blurriness’ you’d get from hearing AT 58

real speakers in a real room, and Nx manages to present this quite naturally. There are plenty of settings that let you tailor your virtual acoustic environment. You can graphically adjust the virtual speakers’ width and position, and even place them behind your head. The Room Ambience controls let you alter the amount of reflections and trim the centre level. The soundscape Nx creates is very reminiscent of a binaural recording — it’ll even present 5.1 surround mixes on cans!

Head Tracking uses your computer’s builtin camera to follow your head movements for “enhanced realism.” Waves has really committed to this idea, even announcing a piece of hardware called Head Tracker that clips onto your headphones and pairs up with Nx to provide the same effect.

Over a period of time, Nx lulls you into a sense of spaciousness that really does feel like you’re monitoring in a room. In fact, it almost feels off-putting when you bypass the plug-in after an extended mix session.

But does it improve your mixes? It depends.

Personally, I’ve learnt over time how to compensate for the anomalies imposed by headphone mixing — so I can’t say Nx will revolutionise my production quality. If you’re not a heavy headphone user, then it’ll scarcely make it beyond your plug-in menu.

But if you’re a laptop producer or engineer who works primarily on headphones, then maybe Nx will help provide that extra bit of objectivity in levels judgment and stereo spread to improve your mixing consistency.

Regardless of the regularity of your headphone usage, Nx is still a great ‘hearing aid’ to have tucked in the toolbox, for whenever monitors aren’t in reach. I reckon it’s a justifiable purchase even if only as a quick mix-checking device. Head over to waves.com, download the free 14-day demo, and give it a whirl. At the very least, you’ll find it rather entertaining spinning the virtual speakers around your head.

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REVIEW

EVE SC203

Compact Desktop Speakers Review: Preshan John

I’m sure we can agree that a studio monitor doesn’t have to be enormous to be accurate.

But let’s face it — you can’t get much smaller than a three-inch speaker before the term ‘pro audio’ starts to lose weight.

The Eve Audio SC203 is the baby of the company’s well-regarded offspring of studio monitors. It’s a master/slave speaker system, meaning the unpowered left speaker is chained to the right, which receives power and input signal via USB, optical, or analogue RCA connections. You can hook up a subwoofer through the RCA output, though its quoted frequency response of 62Hz21kHz actually puts it in the full-range category.

The provided FlexiPads are like the toy in a HappyMeal — not really a mandatory addition, but it totally sweetens the deal. Like the base of the SC203 itself, the FlexiPad has a 7.5-degree slant. Sticking it underneath a speaker kicks it back 15-degrees while flipping the pads allow the speaker to sit flat for ear-level mounting. As a bonus, the FlexiPads’ rubber surface provides a degree of acoustic decoupling for cleaner low end and isolation.

Other goodies include threaded adapters that let you mount an SC203 on any speaker or microphone stand. Eve Audio also graciously provides an abundance of connection cables — companies with Thunderbolt interfaces, take note.

WHIZ KID

The SC203 is laden with digital intelligence.

24-bit/192k Cirrus Logic converters deliver signal to the DSP section. These converters are bypassed entirely if you use the optical digital inputs. Among the almost unnecessarily large amount of DSP tweakability are three settings depending on what position the speakers are in — ear-level on stands, angled up on a desktop, or somewhere in between on a console’s meter bridge. Each option sounds notably different, but to my ears the best-sounding setting in each scenario didn’t always correspond with its intended position.

All DSP functionality is controlled with the knob on the right speaker, with which you can adjust volume, select input, control the ±3dB high/low shelf setting, choose speaker position, adjust left/ right balance, and more.

Next to even a pair of humble five-inch M-Audio monitors, it’s still abundantly clear that a three-inch monitor won’t reproduce sounds with the lifelike quality of larger drivers. It’s just the way things are.

It’d be unreasonable to put the SC203s up against AT 60

Price: $999/pair Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or www.elfa.com.au

six- or eight-inch monitors; but put them in a decent space, crank them up, and they’ll punch well above their weight. It’s near impossible to make them sound tinny, even if you choose to use the DSP controls adversely. The µA.M.T. tweeters don’t provide a clinical sense of clarity in the highs; they have a certain ‘mush’ to them, but impart enough top end to not sound bland. Of most surprise was the woofer’s tight and defined low end. Whatever technical wizardry Eve Audio has implemented with the coated paper woofer membrane and rear passive bass radiator, it works admirably for the size.

SMALL’S SMALL

The thoroughbred DNA the SC203 carries is apparent in its DSP capability, but there’s no denying it’s still a small speaker — so small it basically renders itself unworthy of the ‘monitor’ title. To be fair, Eve Audio actually calls the SC203 a more fitting ‘compact desktop speaker.’ In other words, you wouldn’t use the SC203s for mixing, and Eve Audio seems to know that. It’s hard to ignore the family of premium studio monitors

these micro-speakers are joining.

So instead of underwhelming monitors, I see (and hear) the SC203s as impressive-sounding mini speakers, with a truckload of DSP and flexible input options. They are expensive for their stature, so to buy these you really have to be sold on the concept of size and the USB D/A conversion — gaming, education facilities, and travelling producers come to mind. The SC203s are miniaturised enough to fit in a backpack with plenty of room to spare, and you only need to locate a single power outlet when you whip them out. Potentially just the ticket for location recording playback. They won’t replace your go-to mixing monitors, but they might suit your specific need to a ‘t’. Plus, with onboard USB D/A conversion, they’re certainly a step up from plugging speakers into your laptop’s headphone jack.

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REVIEW

EAW REDLINE SERIES Powered Speakers EAW’s Redline series are more than just portable powered speakers, they’re chameleons that can change their stripes for any job.

LIGHT WORK — They’re slightly bigger and heavier than your average prosumer speaker, but they’re definitely lighter than they look. 24kg for the RL15 won’t present any problem for the professional road crew you’d expect to see delivering these speakers. When you add the 18-inch RL18s sub-woofer, again a fairly big box, at a comparatively modest 37kg, it adds up to a very high output-to-weight ratio.

Review: Mark Woods

NEED TO KNOW

ROAD READY — The cabinets are made of wood and finished in EAW’s tough Roadcoat surface. The perforated steel grill feels strong, and the stylish recessed handles work well. They look much better than your average powered speaker.

PRICE RL12: $5026 RL15: $5513 RL18s: $6895 Call for package pricing

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CONTACT PAVT: (03) 9264 8000 or sales@ productionaudio.com.au

PROS Full sound even without subs Convenient & versatile operation Good looks that don’t attract attention Lightweight

CONS Only one monitor angle

SUMMARY EAW’s Redline does more than most powered speaker lines, but doesn’t scream about it. With good clarity and voicing straight out of the box, and able to be manipulated via DSP and screwdriver into most situations, Redline delivers on the portable powered speaker promise.

The promise that a portable powered speaker can go anywhere and do anything is one of the audio industry’s white lies. Handy, sure, but great sound in any situation? I think not.

Lately, I’ve been reviewing more speakers in this open class that are getting closer to delivering on this promise with high-end DSP, well-programmed presets, or physically manipulable features. Still, it’s still a tough promise to keep and not many include all the necessary add-ons to excel. EAW’s Redline seems to have done just that.

MONITORING PERFORMANCE

One of the most compromising spots a powered speaker can find itself in is lying prone on the floor posing as a monitor speaker. Sure, it’s got all the right angles, but you didn’t actually think it was designed for that job, did you?

With a focus on the requirements of production companies, Redline is designed to be flexible.

There are two full-range speakers in the range, either a 12-inch (RL12) or 15-inch (RL15) LF driver coupled with a 1.75-inch voice-coil HF compression driver.

Powered speakers nominally designed for FOH get used as floor monitors all the time and there are always two problems; the bass boominess and the horn throwing vertically. The low-end is easy enough to fix with EQ and Redline gets preset voicings for full-range, with sub, or monitor use.

The narrow beam of highs you get with the horn on its side is a tougher problem and EAW has addressed it by allowing the horn to be rotated. It’s quite easy; star-head screws release the grill and Allen-key screws release the horn. Rotate and reconnect. As long as you’ve got the tools it only takes 5-10 minutes per box.

EAW goes one step further though. If you need to flip the box over so the horn is pointing at you from the other side of the box, the entire amp/ connections module can be moved to the other angled rear panel so the connecting leads don’t get squashed against the floor. Unsurprisingly it’s a slightly longer job than the previous one.

Inside the cabinet is not a place you often go, but either of these operations give you a good view of the sizable cavity inside the cabinet, the electrical components and the four fluted bass ports. These bass ports are unusual and apparently the product of painstaking development to achieve the right length and exact placement.

The cabinets are deeper than most, look substantial, and are very black. The EAW logo on the front of the speaker is black. The red stripes that give the series its name, as well as cover the black grill screws, are magnetic and lift straight off leaving a completely black profile. You can stick them on the fridge so they don’t get lost.

I first got familiar with the RL15s as floor monitors at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine, first for Courtney Barnett and a couple of days later for Marlon Williams, both strong vocal acts. Better suited to large stages than small, they stand quite high in front of the acts and throw up at 45 degrees.

Set to the Monitor Preset my initial impression

with Courtney’s regular Shure SM58 vocal mic was the big clear volume; quite a smooth, thick sound, and not too bright. Exploring full volume they first start to get edgy around 2-4kHz, right where the mic is peaky, but they’re stable at high levels.

The next show had Marlon using a Shure KSM9; looking for high volume out of a condenser mic made for a good test. I ended up cutting a fair bit of 10kHz out of the graphic over that send but still got a good high level for the show and everyone was very happy with the way they worked. A strange concern for me was the way the vertical panel with the connections, power input and gain control were presented to the audience at the front of the stage.

I had to trust that punters at the very front would avoid the temptation to make any tweaks. You can ‘mute’ the LEDs to help deter anyone that wants to be ‘helpful’.

POWER TRIP — Driving the speakers are 1000W LF and 250W HF Class D amps. EAW uses several proprietary processes, both physical and digital, in its noble quest for transparency.

Redline DSP includes EAW Focusing that concentrates on the speaker’s impulse response and DynO that keeps everything nice at maximum output.

STICK ’EM UP

Competent as they are as floor monitors they had a different character when pointed at the audience and it’s a more natural role for them. On a stand, or pole-mounted on top of the subs, the RL15 looks the part and sounds great. Surprisingly detailed and coherent for this type of speaker, with a nice even coverage across its nominal 90-degree horizontal pattern, they have a touch of studio monitor about them. The RL15 on its own is a full-range speaker and the fluted ports play a part in delivering deep, tight low end. The HF driver is accurate with crisp percussive transients but it’s not at all harsh even at high levels. It combines seamlessly with the full-sounding 15-inch woofer to produce a very appealing sound that made me want to turn it up.

They’re loud but well-controlled; the limiter steps in at just the right time, and even at the limit you can stand quite close to them without having your head shrieked off.

Then there are the subs. The RL15 full-range cabs have a very strong bass response on their own but adding the RL18s subs lifts everything.

The RL15s don’t have to work as hard so they can deliver more mid/highs. The 18-inch woofer with 1000W of power is a thumpin’ beast but it’s well controlled and shares the RL15’s tight, fast response. It reaches down low with a stated response of 30-160Hz. For party tricks, one sub can be placed on top of another and with the press of a couple of buttons the DSP uses polarity, cancellation and summation to turn the subs into a cardioid array. I know everyone is doing it, and you need at least four subs if you’ve got them on both sides of the stage, in the normal manner. Nevertheless, it’s still a good trick and it works, with a noticeable reduction in woofiness behind the speakers. The cardioid stack looks kind of weird with one speaker pointing backwards but the control panel lights that end up pointing at the audience are, again, thoughtfully dimmable.

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My initial impression with Courtney’s regular Shure SM58 vocal mic was the big clear volume; quite a smooth, thick sound, and not too bright

READY TO ROLL

The RL15s, with or without the RL18s subs, are ideal for music playback and would make a perfect plug ’n’ play DJ rig. Though they are relatively light for their size, and you could squeeze a pair of RL15s in a large car or wagon at a pinch, they’re better suited to being packed into easily manageable roadcases for professional transport.

Once delivered, the system is as easy to set up as possible. The RL15s need a decent speaker stand for full health and safety compliance, but also mount securely on a pole above the RL18s sub, if the whole system’s being used. Out of the box the sound is disco-ready and if they need any EQ at all

it will be because of their environment. Controls are kept to the essential low-frequency shapers, with the Monitor setting trimming more than the Main + Sub setting. Either of these settings makes an effective HPF for reducing proximity effect if the speakers are being used for voice only.

As FOH speakers the RL15s project with ease and from the desk they sound bigger than they are. Being a point source system you can get more focused bite than the equivalent sized line-array and this makes them a better choice for live bands.

Vocals can be pushed clear above the band and the limiting does a good job of subtly controlling the peaks at high volume. Running full-range on a speaker stand the voicing sounds just right and the low-end response is strong enough for some useful kick and bass levels in a small room. With the RL18s sub added, the system voicing is almost bass heavy — partly why it sounds so good for music playback — and some low-mid EQ trimming was helpful with open mics. Adding the subs greatly increases the amount of punchy, full low-end available and I found I was running them lower than the RL15 top box, even outdoors.

These are professional speakers that are made to work and they’re priced accordingly.

EAW makes lots of speakers; over 100 different products split across 12 series covering everything from festivals to installations. What it doesn’t do is make a lot of portable powered speakers. I reckon it’s spotted an opportunity; a product for its time.

I couldn’t decide if Redline was at the top of the high-quality powered speaker market or the entry level to the higher-quality, professional speaker market… it might be both.

FINAL CAT CALL

These are catwalk speakers. The smooth sound, the deliberately discreet looks; I kept thinking they’d be perfect for one of those big, pumping fashion shows. Or maybe a corporate product launch with live performers, venues and music-based installations and, of course, production companies.

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