AudioTechnology App Issue 32

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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.

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

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. 07/09/2016.

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COVER STORY

Peaceful Intervention: Violent Soho Hits No. 1

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ISSUE 32 CONTENTS

24

Wild Sounds: Mixing The Revenant

Guy Sebastian: All the Right Regions

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New Path Follows Abbey Road

Korg Minilogue Analogue Synth AT 6

50

Blasko’s Eternal Reinvention

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30

Presonus Sceptre Coaxial 54 Studio Monitors

Doubling Down: Shure Reinvents the Dynamic Mic

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New hits • Great classics • Same passion For more information on our wide range of products contact: +61 (02) 9975 7570 syntec.com.au info@syntec.com.au New dealer enquiries are welcome.

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GENERAL NEWS API FINALLY ATTENUATES 512 API’s new 512v lunchbox mic preamp isn’t so different from the 512c — it’s got the same transformers and 2520 op amp — but it includes the one addition engineers have been craving for decades; a variable output level control to provide built-in signal attenuation when working with DAWs or other input level-sensitive devices.

You get 65dB of mic gain, 45dB gain as a line/ instrument preamp, and a 20dB pad switch can be applied to either input circuit. The 512v also features a 3:1 output transformer tap switch that produces a lower output level. Between this and the output control, you can drive the input, and output transformer, as hard as you want for loads of API saturation. Also included is front and back panel mic input access, with the front panel combo-style socket adding quarter-inch line/ instrument inputs, an LED VU meter for gain level indication, and 48V phantom power switch. The 512v comes with a five-year warranty.

Studio Connections: (03) 9416 8097 or enquiries@studioconnections.com.au

ODYSSEY REBORN IN A RACK Korg’s classic Arp Odyssey had its first birth in 1972, but has been born again as a desktop synth module — and we reckon they’re rather endearing.

Two models form the lineup — the white Rev1, and the black/orange Rev3 — both of which nicely hark back to the look of their keyboard-equipped ancestors. The mini-sized units have CV/Gate as standard for interfacing with your analogue

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desktop racks and synths, plus USB and MIDI connectivity for binary communication with your controllers and DAWs. With a reasonably accessible price tag, they’ll add that classic ’70s analogue synth sound to your studio desk in a form factor that’ll leave room for your keyboard and mouse.

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

BEHRINGER SYNTH DIGS DEEP ’Tis the season for new synths, it’d seem. But Behringer? Interesting. The DeepMind 12 — naming isn’t Behringer’s strong suit — is the company’s first ever analogue synth, recently released by the company with appropriate fanfare. The polyphonic synth is capable of an impressive array of sounds and control. The central screen’s scrollable menus give visual feedback for the parameters you’re toying with. Uli Behringer: “With approximately

4000 components, the DeepMind12 is one of the most complex synthesizers that has ever been built.

Due to its discrete design structure, it has vastly more components than you will likely find in any of the current synthesizers on the market.” DeepMind 12 is also the first synth to feature wireless tablet control. A rack-mount version is to follow.

Australis: (02) 9698 4444 or www.australismusic.com.au

ROLI ACQUIRES FXPANSION ROLI, the company that created the amazing Seaboard MIDI controller, has acquired FXpansion, which makes equally amazing virtual instruments such as the acoustic drum collection BFD3 and analogue-modelled synth Strobe2. ROLI has other forward-thinking products in its inventory. Equator is a software synth developed by the company, Noise is the free app that turns iPhones into instruments, and Blend is a social media platform for music collaboration. So what’s the angle with purchasing FXpansion? ROLI CEO Roland Lamb

says, “We’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries of musical expression and technological innovation with FXpansion, which has been at the forefront of audio software development for the past 15 years.” Angus Hewlett, founder and CEO of FXpansion, had this to say: “This acquisition is a momentous opportunity for FXpansion. Together ROLI and FXpansion can create best-in-class instruments, even as we continue to develop the FXpansion products our users know and love.”

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LIVE NEWS

YAMAHA RACKS UP NEW TF MODEL Yamaha’s TF Series consoles quickly made an impression with their genius TouchFlow and 1-knob control, affordable price point, not to mention Yamaha’s build quality? However, these days a family of digital mixers isn’t quite complete until it’s spawned a rack-able version. Yamaha has boarded the mobile-mixing bandwagon with the release of the TF Rack — a 3U unit that sports the same touchscreen as the TF1, TF3 and TF5 consoles, allowing for TouchFlow operation and 1-knob control over dynamics and EQ, bringing you the TF experience (albeit without faders) in a tiny form factor.

QuickPro Presets are included for a variety of musical instruments and mics. A range of I/O options are available, along with 34 x 34 digital record/ playback channels accessed via USB. Of course you can control the mixer wirelessly using apps, and there’s a heap of DSP, recallable D-PRE mic preamps, and an expansion slot for the Rio1608-D I/O to add Dante compatibility with low latency. The TF-Rack will start shipping in December.

Yamaha Music Australia: (03) 9693 5111 or www.yamahamusic.com.au

PUTTING THE ABLE IN PORTABLE The term ‘portable PA’ is kinda relative. It could mean anything from a 5W handheld boombox to JBL’s new PRX800W system. While it probably isn’t the sort of PA you’d tuck under one arm and comfortably take for a stroll, the PRX800W system is designed to be as lightweight as possible. It also has hands-off, wireless control via the PRX Connect mobile app for iOS and Android, giving you control over eight-band parametric EQ, speaker delay, mute, gain and more. You can even configure

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shows offline and save presets right from the app.

1500W integrated Class-D power amplification drives the system, which also boasts DSP and JBL’s Differential Drive subwoofer technology. The cabinets are made of wood and have a DuraFlex finish for protection. The Crown input panel offers XLR, ¼-inch and RCA inputs and dbx Type IV limiting keeps an eye on the outputs.

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

BREAKOUT CONTROL FOR DLIVE Networkable mini-controllers for dLive? Allen & Heath is onto something good here. The IP6 and IP8 remote controllers interface with the dLive mixing system through TCP/IP connections, plus you can network them with other controllers and computers via Ethernet. The IP6 gives you six push ’n’ turn rotary encoders and colour LCD displays, 19 programmable soft-keys, and a mic stand mount.

The IP8 has eight motorised faders, colour LCD displays, and 23 programmable soft-keys. Both can be configured with up to six layers. With PoE

capability, the controllers could be a perfect fit as personal, single-cable monitor-mixing solutions for musos. Also new to dLive is the Waves V3 audio networking card which provides a 128 x 128 channel interface to the SoundGrid platform, and the gigaACE card which provides a 128 x 128 channel 96k point-to-point redundant link to another dLive mixing system.

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

BLUE IS THE NEW BLACK DAWs can be finicky. That’s why live and studio engineers will often choose hardware over software to record mission critical sessions. But wouldn’t it be nice to have that kind of peace of mind all the time? Well, now you can. JoeCo’s new Bluebox recorders are audio interfaces and recorders at the same time — anything you record in your DAW can be simultaneously backed up to an external drive via USB 2.0 or 3.0 pre-software. To guarantee against power failures, the units can run

off 12v batteries. Sure to satisfy the redundancy freaks among us, Bluebox acts as insurance against the unexpected DAW freeze or failure. There are two models in the range; the BBWR24MP and BBWR08MP, both of which support 24-bit/96k recording and vary only in number of onboard mic preamps (up to 24). Inputs connect via D-Sub and custom headphone mixes can be created at nearzero latency with JoeCoControl, or JoeCoRemote for iPad.

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SOFTWARE NEWS

KOMPLETE KRANKED TO 11 Native Instruments’ Komplete 11 adds a whole new ‘portfolio member’ in Komplete 11 Select, a new version of the suite that comes with 11 instruments covering synths, pianos, drums, percussion and effects. Replika and Solid Bus Compressor round off the collection which boasts over 2500 sounds, with more than 25GB of instruments and effects. Native Access simplifies the downloading, installation, activation and updating process. A brand new synthesizer called Form joins Komplete 11 and Komplete 11 Ultimate. Form uses a sample

as the primary oscillator so is great for sound design and sparking fresh sonic ideas. Komplete 11 Ultimate also includes Symphony Essentials, based on the Symphony Series of instruments with the same recordings and interface but streamlined articulation options. All up, Komplete 11 Ultimate gives you 87 different products and over 18,000 sounds, and adds 13 new instruments.

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

SPITFIRE GOES TO THE CHAMBER If you’ve ever wondered what a chamber orchestra actually is, the word ‘chamber’ describes a group of instruments smaller than a symphony orchestra — anything from a quartet to 40-odd players. Spitfire Audio’s new Chamber Strings is a sample pack of 16 pro strings players recorded at Lyndhurst Hall within London’s Air Studios via a Studer two-inch tape machine using a selection of valve and ribbon mics, Neve preamps, and a Neve 88R console; then AT 12

digitised at 96k. Chamber Strings is also Spitfire’s first sample-based virtual instrument for Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player platform. The selling point of the sample pack is the attention to detail throughout the sampling process. A comprehensive selection of articulations and techniques presented in an Ensembles format so you can sketch and compose. Three different mic positions — Close, Tree, and Ambient — provide soundstage flexibility.

PARALLEL WAVES Waves’ new plug-in Scheps Parallel Particles was designed in collaboration with producer/engineer Andrew Scheps. Four main controls correspond with Scheps’ four go-to mixing processes. Sub is a harmonic generator that’ll invent and introduce low frequencies using EQ resonances from the source material. Ideal for those tracks that should be fat but aren’t. Air uses the same LF information acquired from Sub and generates high frequency content to add in. A similar effect to an exciter, but not. Bite “is designed to create sonic vitality and

emotion,” yikes. Under the hood, Bite predominantly alters the leading edge of a waveform to increase attack and aggression, though it’s apparently doing stuff to the release of an envelope too. If you want “solid body”, look no further than Thick, which does the whole ‘warmth’ EQ curve thing in the mids to make a track sound richer and closer. Waves also deviated into the VI world with Electric 88 Piano, more to come.

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

RIDE THE NIMBUS Exponential Audio has created what it calls the next generation of reverb. Taking much of its inspiration from the company’s PhoenixVerb plugin, the new Nimbus has an expanded EQ section and a dynamics process called Tail Suppression that helps lower reverb levels when input signal is strong. Pre-delay and reverb delay can be locked to tempo and there are more choices for early reflection patterns. Finally, the new Warp section

has an input compressor/expander, an overdrive circuit, and word-size reduction. The 1200 presets should help if you’re not one to care for all that tweak-ability. Exponential Audio says Nimbus is pretty CPU-light, and your DAW will handle dozens of instances without getting too taxed. You can try it out with a free 21-day demo available online.

Nimbus will go for $199.

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REPORT

EV’S NEW X-LINE X2 DEBUTS AT PORT FAIRY Report: Preshan John

A folk festival is a nightmare draw for a new PA’s inauguration. There’s something about a combination of acoustic instruments — guitars, drums, percussion, banjos, mandolins, fiddles — that instantly and unforgivingly reveals a system’s character.

Melbourne production company Powa Productions was a key supplier at Port Fairy Folk Festival for its 40th anniversary this year, and took the chance to put its newly acquired Electro-Voice X-Line X2 two-way mid/high line array system and X12 subwoofer to the test on the main stage.

Powa Productions has had a long relationship with EV that started when AC/DC toured Australia in 1998. Pat Kearney, Production Manager, recalled beginning their “connection with EV via AC/DC. One of the partners in the company was a sound engineer for AC/DC so we grew with AC/DC tours in the late 1990s and the 2000s. It presented a really valuable product. We’ve moved forward into the line array ranges as EV has released them.

“The X2 package is a really great system, and a great step forward in EV’s voicing. It’s continued the work it started with XLC/XLD/ XLE and taken it one step further to help create some consistency across its package purchases. As EV investors, or as a touring engineer, you know that as you go from one gig or town to the next, your system is going to sound the same. Plus, you’ve got that same consistency as you go from one cabinet size to the next.

“I feel like the X2 has got great dynamic range — it’s got more dynamic range than its

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WATCH THE VIDEO

Powa Productions’ Pat Kearney gives the lowdown on EV’s X-Line X2 inbetween sets at Port Fairy. www.youtube.com/audiotechnologymag

predecessors. It feels more like a return to the XF and XN X-Array, which I really loved. It has great presence and truth through the midrange and feels more responsive to your mix.”

The X12, a dual-18 sub, is one of the highest powered subs on the market at 4000W continuous and 16,000W peak. EV has put in the hard yards in its new anechoic chamber fine-tuning the voicing of the subs. “It’s a very clean tone, and everyone likes the punchiness of it,” said Kearney. “There’s much less of the woofiness that we hear across other brands.”

For production and rental companies, ease of rigging is almost as important as a PA’s sound. The ability to fly the X-Line arrays quickly, easily, and safely, is one of its greatest assets. EV has taken a new approach designing the rigging method for X1 and X2. They both use the same rigging system, although you wouldn’t do combination hangs of the two. Kearney: “It’s an interlocked system — you don’t have any pins to lose or any

bits to get bent. It’s very easy coming out of the carts. You fly your first half of the cart, spin it, pick up the next cart, fly it straight as a flat hang and put your degrees in as you go up. Minimum fuss and nice and quick, both in and out. There’s a lot less juggling than with other products when you’re trying to get things into carts, especially on uneven ground.”

The X-Line rig didn’t quite break a sweat at Port Fairy, but Powa Productions has plenty more gigs lined up for the system that’ll see it flex some muscle.

Kearney: “I’m really looking forward to putting the PA out next summer on the Red Hot Summer Tour. It’s a great rock ’n’ roll event that has audience sizes up to 5000 people in states all across Australia.

We’ll see some sites with throws of 80m, some with 100m, with varying shapes and sizes. The event itself is a great one for the PA because you know it’ll be light, it’ll be quick. We can get in and out really quick and have a great, consistent-sounding PA.”

Powa Productions: www.powa.com.au Bosch: www.boschcommunications.com.au

TECH SPECS X2-212/90 Size: 12-inch LF woofer/dual three-inch HF compression drivers Coverage: 90° Horizontal Frequency Response: 52Hz – 19kHz Weight: 42.2kg X12 SUB Size: Dual 18-inch Coverage: Omnidirectional Frequency Response: 33 – 200Hz Weight: 88.5kg

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Record EVERY channel AR Hybrid mixers have the features you really want.

1. Multitrack recording of every channel to your PC 2. One touch stereo mix recording to an SD card 3. Bluetooth streaming from your mobile device Record anywhere, anytime: The AR mixers are also multi-channel USB audio interfaces. Record band practice to your computer via your DAW of choice or with the included Studio One® 3 Artist or Capture™.

If you can’t bring a computer to your gig, the onboard SD card slot lets you quickly record a stereo mix on the go.

There’s also a Bluetooth channel for wireless connection to your mobile device—ideal for backing tracks, click, or filler music. You also get a PreSonus-class digital effects section stocked with lush reverbs and delays.

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©2016 All Rights Reserved by PreSonus Audio Electronics who proudly claims StudioLive and Capture as a registered trademark and trademark, respectively, and furthermore wants you to know that StudioOne is a registered trademark (oooo!), except by PreSonus Software, Ltd. AT 17

REVIEW

MACKIE FREEPLAY Personal PA Review: Preshan John

Expect to pay $749 CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

It’s a hot summer day. You’ve got mates over, cooking up snags on the barbecue. Ol’ mate Baz gets a hankering for some music, and Jim puts in his request for Summer of ’69. You’re happy to oblige, but you’d rather sing it to them yourself than move the PMCs out to the backyard. Enter, the Mackie FreePlay; the modern boombox for the discerning soundie.

Dubbed a ‘personal PA’, the FreePlay is a batterypowerable portable speaker system. With XLR and line inputs on the back, this is more than a mobile iPod dock. It’s a mobile iPod dock on steroids… without an actual iPod dock. But we’ll get to that.

The speaker setup is not your average. A single eight-inch driver sits in the centre like the green iris of Cyclops’ peeper, flanked by two one-inch HF drivers on either side. It’s as solid (and heavy) as a AT 18

brick, with a neat handle on top, freeing up your other hand to hold a 58 while you freestyle your way down the sidewalk.

While the FreePlay mightn’t qualify as ‘pro audio’ in the strictest sense, it sounds pretty impressive and has plenty of control. It’s also got doof for days, and will happily munch away at your party mix.

There’s no shortage of connectivity options.

Only got a 3.5mm Aux cord? No problem. What about a mic and XLR? That’s covered too. You could even hook up a keyboard or sampler using the line inputs. And if you want to ditch the copper altogether, switch to Bluetooth.

Getting connected is easy — press the Pair button ensuring Bluetooth is switched on on your device.

Scan for ‘FreePlay’, connect to it, and select it as your playback device if you’re on a computer. Remember

Bluetooth isn’t UHF. It helps to keep a reasonably small distance between the paired devices so you don’t end up with non-stop glitch-hop.

While there’s a bunch of buttons and dials on the rear of the unit, the mini Mackie Control app for iOS and Android devices lets you drive the Freeplay without getting up from your deck chair.

Each of the three input channels have faders, mutes, three-band EQ and a send for the built-in reverb. You can alter the global EQ between four pre-defined settings, and there’s a switch to flip the Feedback Destroyer on and off.

The FreePlay has seen its share of use around the AT office. Sometimes as a mix-checking tool, other times oozing Miles Davis jams while we have lunch. Whatever your scene, the Mackie FreePlay will probably fit into it.

AT 19

STUDIO FOCUS:

MOONSPOON STUDIO With a background in industrial design, building a custom studio was always on Jim Moynihan’s bucket list. So when the ideal piece of land presented itself, he seized the opportunity.

Nestled in the hills of St Andrews, Victoria, MoonSpoon Studio currently features a 3.5m x 4.5m control room which Jim says is the best sounding room he’s worked in. Primarily functioning as a creative kitchen for his own music, the space was designed from scratch with his needs and great audio in mind.

Vertical standing waves are eliminated by a convexshaped ceiling. The 13 trapezoidal 800mm x 1200mm bass traps fit snugly into the room corners, an extra five 600mm x 800mm traps are placed around the room, and a large bass trap built into the back wall. He used Tontine Acoustisorb 3 material to get good broadband absorption and because it beats working with rockwool.

Touring internationally under the Spoonbill moniker meant Jim was in and out during the construction process, which took about 14-16 months all up — though he estimates it was about five months worth of fulltime work. Getting a house up was also a must, but the studio sat higher on the priority list so he could get stuck into work. In the meantime, Jim lived in a tram onsite for 18 months with his wife and newborn baby. That’s dedication to the craft, and an accommodating partner.

His gear rack has some new acquisitions like the A-Design Hammer EQ and TK Audio BC1-S compressor — little studio-warming gifts to himself.

While the live tracking space at the rear of the control room is a work in progress, the studio has still seen a frenzy of activity since its completion with albums mastered for SunMonx, Austereo, Griff, Adham Shaikh, Miso, Cheshire and Swarm Theory. A few other production and sound design jobs are also in the works.

In July, Jim released Spoonbill’s latest album Tinkerbox featuring a collection of downtempo, cinematic electronica tracks. www.spoonbill.net.au

AT 20

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REVIEW

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT2020USBi USB Microphone Review: Preshan John

Price: $349 Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au

There’s something empowering about having a mic set up on your work desk. As if it lends everything you say a little extra authority. I’ve had Audio-Technica’s AT2020USBi sitting on mine the last few weeks, and people have been taking me much more seriously around the AT office.

Truthfully, I haven’t taken the time to ask, I’ve just had far too many important things to tell them.

The mic is a familiar one, it’s an iOS-compatible version of the USB version of the AT2020, itself a popular mic choice for many home studio enthusiasts. The cardioid condenser supports 24-bit/96k sampling and comes with a folding table-top tripod stand, USB cable, and — to suit its new iOS capabilities — a Lightning cable.

As you’d hope, getting sound from the USB class compliant AT2020USBi into your computer is as easy as plugging it in. A blue LED lights up behind the grille when the mic is powered up. It’s just as straightforward using it with an iOS device too — no setup needed.

The controls are very minimal. A single rotary dial on the front adjusts the mic gain level.

Unfortunately, there’s no headphone output in AT 22

HEAR IT You can check out a quick acoustic guitar recording using the AT2020USBi at www.soundcloud.com/audiotechnologymag

sight, which means you can’t directly monitor the microphone’s output. When you don’t have any control over the buffer size, say recording directly to Quicktime, the default latency is pretty slow. It might not be a big deal for podcasting, but kills the mood when you’re trying to monitor yourself recording to a click, or singing vocals to a track.

To work around the default buffer, I used Audio MIDI Setup on my Mac to configure an Aggregate Device, using the AT2020USBi for sound input and the computer’s built-in output for monitoring.

Latency wasn’t much of an issue at 32 or 64 samples buffer size, which demonstrates that the mic’s internal latency isn’t altogether lousy (AudioTechnica told us the internal latency was around 1ms, assuming this fastest spec occurs at 96k). At higher buffer settings the delay will throw you off if you’re monitoring what you’re recording. Your best option is to always use a dedicated recording program that gives you control over buffer sizes, even on iOS. If you don’t need iOS device compatibility, the 24-bit/48k AT2020USB+ offers both a headphone output and Mix control for zero latency monitoring.

The AT2020USBi delivered good, clean results.

Its subdued midrange gives it a scooped ‘smiley face EQ’ sound. I found myself unusually adding a generous amount of 1kHz to most tracks to compensate for the absence of mids. The low end is very present, with substantial proximity effect. Recording multiple layers of acoustic guitar exposed a slightly unpleasant build up of muddiness, but nothing some EQ couldn’t fix.

The AT2020USBi works a treat on spoken word.

Nice and full in the lows, present in the highs. Bear in mind the pickup pattern is pretty wide so you’ll want to stay close to the mic to avoid excessive roominess. Plosives are another thing to watch out for, but a high-pass filter at 100Hz almost completely got rid of them for me, even without a pop filter.

The AT2020USBi is a stripped back USB mic that’s easy to set up on both your computer or iOS device. It’s not fancy either but for its price you’ll feel comfortable carrying it around with your laptop or iPad for thos moments when inspiration unexpectedly strikes. For the rest of the time, park it on your desktop to give your home or work interior an authoritative edge.

AT 23

FEATURE

WILD SOUNDS:

MIXING THE REVENANT Alejandro Iñárritu didn’t take home back-to-back Best Director Oscars by taking it easy. The Revenant was filmed on location in the winter wilderness, and that production sound made it all the way into the final mix.

Story: Mark Davie

AT 24

Alejandro Iñárritu has a nose for unique birds, and an ear it seems.

He co-wrote and directed Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), about a mentally ill action movie star-cum-theatre aspirant who couldn’t shake the Tyler Durden-esque birdman that haunted his consciousness. It won him a Best Director Academy Award. Recently he won the same Oscar for The Revenant, making him the first director in 65 years to go back-to-back.

Jon Taylor — who with Frank Montano made up the re-recording mixer team behind both projects — knows Iñárritu’s taste for rare birds all too well.

“There was a scene from The Revenant with bird sounds,” said Taylor, making pains to point out they were, “really interesting sounding birds. And Alejandro says, ‘what are those birds? Did you wake up in the morning and put a microphone out the window to record those? They do not belong in my movie. Every single sound has to be unique to my film.’ That was the approach every single day, it was a lot of work.”

That quest for uniqueness has set Iñárritu apart. It wouldn’t appear that difficult to stand out amongst the swathe of blockbuster superhero flicks, but it requires an incredible amount of work when you’re also trying to preserve original performances and the location sound as much as possible. Times that by a difficulty factor of a thousand because the film location wasn’t a studio backlot but the wilderness of Argentina, Canada and Mexico.

For all those pieces to work, it wasn’t just Alejandro demanding it, but the team had to double down and work out exactly how they would use mono sound literally captured in the wild and make it the bedrock of an expansively filmed epic.

One of the major concerns early on was whether Tom Hardy’s dialogue would be intelligible enough.

At least this time he wasn’t wearing a Bane mask.

Alejandro was consigned to ADR-ing Hardy’s performance if he absolutely had to, but the entire team were pushing to keep it. “Why would you change such an unbelievable performance?” questioned Taylor. “You don’t get it all, but it was so compelling, so authentic and so maniacal the way he talks, that it works.” During a break in another film, Taylor spent 12 days pre-dubbing dialogue the editors had cut together, striving for clarity and intelligibility, especially on Hardy’s takes.

SETTING THE TONE

In many ways, those 12 days set the tone for the entire mix in two specific ways. First, they doubled down on their commitment to using as much of Chris Duesterdiek’s production sound as possible.

“He mostly covered everyone with the shotgun, and for the most part there was very excellent coverage,” said Taylor. “Boom voices are the preferable source because it sounds more real. If we’re having problems with clarity from the boom, we’ll try to use consonants or syllables from the lavalier to enhance intelligibility.” Secondly, the rawness of the The Revenant’s harsh winter setting was brought out in the dialogue. “Re-recording mixers generally have a sound they go for,” explained Taylor.

“Alejandro’s incredibly picky about the quality of

dialogue, it has to feel raw. When they’re yelling at you, it has to feel like dogs barking. Normally you’d reel that stuff in and not let it sound so aggressive, but in this case it has to come at you and make you feel threatened in some way. IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT FOR THOSE ELEMENTS TO COME OUT, SO I DON’T USE A TON OF COMPRESSION, I USE A LOT OF EQ AND LITTLE VOLUME GRAPHS TO GET CLARITY. It’s as raw as possible with it

still sounding like people talking to each other in the movies, not like a TV show.”

At the end of the day, there were only a few pieces that had to be re-looped because there was a lot of dialogue getting panned in the mix and he didn’t have the separation he needed. However, ADR was mostly used to re-loop the American Indian dialogue, and only to ensure they had highly accurate readings of the Arikara and Pawnee language. “On the set they may not have been totally accurate,” explained Taylor. “Alejandro was very demanding of that. They ended up having three or four professional interpreters and culture consultants come in and read through the lines with the actors again.” Duesterdiek logged every microphone he used so the ADR team could match every mic exactly. Surprisingly, a high percentage of Leonardo Di Caprio’s grunts, which made up most of his onscreen audio, were from the original production sound taken while he was crawling around on the ground.

While Taylor had the job of bringing clarity to the vocals, he was somewhat hamstrung by Alejandro’s insistence on raw reality and that nothing be ‘cleaned’ right out of the dialogue track. “Whatever’s there is there,” said Taylor. “When they’re at the river, a lot of the sound you’re hearing is production sound supported by backgrounds. This is a fully immersive film, whereas the production sound is generally mono. If I pan it to the left, then all that natural noise is just in the left. If the people are speaking in the centre, then all of the natural noise is in the centre. That had to be supported with many different tracks in the background.”

DIVIDE & CONQUER

Taylor and Montano mix together, but the typical division of duties sees Taylor take care of the dialogue and music cues, while Montano manages most of everything else like sound effects and ambiences. The first thing they do before pulling up any sessions is watch the film in its current state. “Even though we’ve read the script, and ideas have been conveyed,” said Montano, “once you watch the movie you see where the challenges are going to be. There was so much unique camera work, with 360-degree shots and moving from location to location that we knew once we got into the body of the film it would have to emulate the location, camera movements and transitions.” On his first viewing, Taylor noticed one main thing, a conspicuous lack of music. “When I saw the first cut of this film I saw four music cues that came to about six minutes of music,” he recalled. “I saw it before Frankie and came back to tell him, ‘You’d better buy some new tennis shoes, because I’ll be done after the dialogue’s pre-dubbed and you’ll be working your arse off.’”

Alejandro’s very aware of lowering things in order to hear dialogue clearly. He doesn’t like that; he knows it’s a Hollywood trick

Taylor says, even though Alejandro is also a composer, there’s never much music in his films: “Birdman had the most music of all of them put together. In Babel there was 22 minutes of score across a two and a half hour film. Biutiful was about the same, and 21 Grams had even less than that.” Over time, quite a bit of music was added to the film before Alejandro pared it back again on the final dub stage. “Truth is,” said Taylor. “THERE’S A LOT OF MUSIC IN THIS MOVIE BUT YOU DON’T NOTICE IT BECAUSE THE GOAL WAS TO MAKE SURE THE NATURE NEVER WENT AWAY. MUSIC WAS TO NEVER TAKE OVER NATURE; IT WAS OFTEN TREATED LIKE AN AMBIENCE.”

Once the edited post-production recordings started making their way down the chain, Taylor and Montano started piecing all the elements together and working on the mix to get separation, depth of field and movement. Montano: “The wind separate from the trees, tree leaves separate from multiple layers of water, and layers of specific ambient sounds we can build depth with — in the distance, close, behind you, on the side of you. All that is separated and managed, ready for the final mix, so when filmmakers come in we can really isolate and manipulate everything.” The tracks have either been recorded and cut from an archive library or are fresh recordings that Sound Designer Jon Title and his team of editors sync to picture.

By the time it gets to the Hitchcock Theatre, “the characters and locations have either run through Alejandro or Stephen Mirrione, the picture editor,” said Montano. “If you see it, you may or may not hear it, but it has to be available. Once we open up the size of the spaces, that’s really where the shaping occurs.

“We listen to it against the final music track, the production dialogue and ADR, building it up to see how much we can get away with, and how much really fits with what Alejandro is trying to say with the film.” The film often slips between two feels — raw reality and ethereal dreams — tracing the arc of the wounded main character Hugh Glass as he slips in and out of consciousness. The realtime raw feeling of ‘being there’ is often self-explanatory as it tracks the change in terrain from location to location. Then there’s mixing the emotional content like the ethereal flashback dream sequences, but also incorporating real sounds that are effective even though they might not be indigenous to the AT 25

TRACKING THE WILD LIFE It’s a rare event to find Production Sound Mixer, Chris Duesterdiek, in the more controlled conditions of a studio. In the case of The Revenant, impossible.

Every day was shot on location in the Canadian wilderness, between the months of September and April, which included the dead of Winter. Most of the film was shot well away from the production trucks, sometimes many miles down goat trails and across rivers where ATVs and snowmobiles couldn’t reach.

“We had to go mobile and fit a cart-based location package into bags,” said Duesterdiek. “Whether it was sleds or backpacks, our team of three had to figure out how to be sound sherpas.”

The film was entirely shot in available light, which meant a lot of filming in Magic Hour (shortly after sunrise or before sunset) when the light is most diffused. Duesterdiek: “We’d be there all day long, then once the sun set and we were losing light, they’d continue to film with torches and get a little more experimental. We started our day in the dark and ended it in the dark. It ended up being longer days than a studio shoot.”

Duesterdiek is Canadian, so the Winter had less shock value than others on the crew. Mostly, he said, you’ve got to know how to dress for it: “You’ve got to have wicking layers because you can get sweaty hauling the gear in, then you can sit in one spot all day getting punished by the cold.”

SOUND SHERPA’S BABY The sound team had to reduce their kit in terms of size and mobility, but not in options. Duesterdiek recorded the dialogue onto a Sound Devices 664 he dubbed his ‘sound baby’ because he wore it for most AT 26

of the film. Only about one third was recorded on a soundcard at locations that were easier to get to.

They carried their usual mic arsenal: mostly Sanken Cos-11D for lavaliers, a Schoeps CMIT shotgun boom microphone, a Pearl MS mic for ambiences, Schoeps CMC641, and Sanken CUB boundary microphones.

They also carried a secondary recorder, a Zaxcom Deva 5.8, exclusively to capture 7.1 ambiences with a Holophone H2 Pro 7.1 mic.

“On the bag, I had the capability of recording up to nine wires, the boom, and the MS stereo mic,” said Duesterdiek. “For example, the scene where they’re at the grave site, I would be 100ft off in the bush in one direction and string out an MS stereo mic an extra couple of hundred feet past where I was. I got lucky on a couple of days; once I had it up in some trees and got a dialogue between two ravens for hours. You never know what nature is going to do until you press record. Other times it would capture wind in trees and scrub brush, trees creaking.”

As well as his primary role of capturing sound during the takes, Duesterdiek always tries to make use of any downtime, including his lunch hours, to build a library of field recordings for the editorial team.

The team would record a 7.1 ambience at every location, then hunt for individual sounds specific to the scene. Duesterdiek: “We did a lot of water recording, with the 7.1 mic, but found we could get more beef with the stereo mic. We would stick it in air pockets under ice sheets on the rivers and get really interesting sounds. There were so many different types of water running — rivers, creeks and streams. Same with snow, it has its own character — dry and pow-

dery, hard and crunchy, wet, deep — I would record individual footsteps with spaces in between using the same leather moccasins and footwear.”

He’d also try and capture multiple perspectives of the same ambience to match the camera’s field of view. “When we were down by the river filming scenes of Glass's healing montage, they were shooting lots of different directions. I’d go down at lunch and get as many different directions as I could — a wider one, tighter perspective, or closer to the river with water rushing over rocks.”

BOOM BALLET While Duesterdiek took his lunch hour off to try and match a few perspectives, boom operator Charlie O’Shea was doing that dance full time. “They used a lot of wide lenses on this shoot,” explained Duesterdiek. “In one shot they could capture the entire mountains and background, then swing around and bring it within inches of an actor’s face. As long as Charlie matched that perspective, it would sound wide, then when they swung it around, he could get into the breath and crunchiness of the beard at times. That reinforced the image, which is our whole job.

“Charlie and I collaborate; he doesn’t tell me how to mix and I don’t tell him how to boom. I might ask for more meat of certain elements, but I’ll leave it up to him how he wants to accomplish that. The camera is constantly moving, so he’s going in and out with the lens, moving through trees, extending the pole and bringing it back in to get around branches, going from underneath, up top, from the side. It was like watching a ballet with the camera, which is what an experienced boom operator brings to the table. I

Whenever you walk down the street and hear a dog bark, you get on edge, so we keep that in some of the dialogue for that reason

PAIRING UP Jon Taylor and Frank Montano formed an official mixing partnership three years ago. A couple of years prior to that, they’d worked on Fast Five together, but since making it official they’ve been working solidly out of the Hitchcock Theatre at Universal and not looked back. As well as the timing being right, “our sensibilities and work ethic match,” said Taylor. “We’re happy-go-lucky kind of guys and work really hard.”

“It’s truly a good match,” added Montano. “We’ve both had multiple partners over long careers. Just like a band, we finally found the person we wanted to work with. The reality is you spend more time working with each other than with our own wives.”

There’s 60 years of mixing and about 250 films between them — and Taylor has been a re-recording mixer on every one of Iñárritu’s feature films except his first Amores Perros — yet they’re “learning every day” and continually striving to the ultimate goal, which is “no stone left unturned.”

can’t tell him to change a footstep in his ballet.”

Early on, Duesterdiek heard some issues with the intelligibility of Tom Hardy’s character. “At the end of the day,” he said. “It’s a creative choice between the performer and director. Sometimes I may mention it to the director at the start of a shoot, other times I’ll not mention it at all, which was the case on The Revenant. Alejandro seemed to be liking it and Tom certainly made a choice to perform it that way. Technically we were recording exactly what he was choosing to do.”

COLD SNAP While the camera department had some mechanisms freeze over, and video playback scrambled to keep their rig running, the sound gear managed to handle the cold. 12 years ago, Duesterdiek filmed The Snow Walker up in Canada's far north: “That taught me a lot about what to prepare for in the Winter, like keeping your batteries warm and having many extra batteries and cables. When it gets too cold your cables can break. We had certain cables made with looser insulation wraps on them, would coil XLR cable in very large loops, and carry triples of any smaller timecode and auxiliary component connector cables. There comes a time, when it’s -30 degrees, that something is going to snap, and you can’t just go buy another one.

Some batteries went down, but we had extras, and the main components worked seamlessly.

“It was quite a trip, but I’m not going to rush out and do another one right away. I can check that off the list for a while.”

location, like a cricket chirping away in the middle of the winter wilderness. “That cricket sound is derived from when Glass goes into some of the dream sequences and is seeing his son, Hawk,” said Montano. “It’s his signature post life surreal sound, and it follows, to a degree, any confrontation he had.

“In the final scene, where they’re talking before they throw down and fight, it’s in the music and not used as an effect. The cricket is really prevalent and acts as a catalyst to let you know it’s about to hit the fan. TO MAKE A STATEMENT WITH IT WE HAD TO PLAY IT 20DB LOUDER THAN IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. IF YOU DIDN’T PLAY IT LOUD, YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT WAS A CRICKET IN THE SNOWY WOODS, WHICH WOULD BE COMPLETELY INACCURATE, THERE’S NO SUCH THING! YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT AS IF IT’S A PIECE OF NARRATION.”

MOVEMENT & COLOUR

One of the hallmarks of The Revenant is Iñárritu’s embrace of movement. It’s a journeyman film, which means you’re constantly on the move as you track Glass from location to location. There are also some incredibly dynamic scenes like the opening battle sequence where the camera changes direction in an instant as it picks up characters in full flight.

“This particular movie was all about the movement,” said Montano. “Tracking the camera, the location, depth of field. Those things make it feel like you’re part of those scenes; inside the film rather than outside of it. They all take a life of their own.

“That was the edict, there was always a point of view. Whether it’s Leo’s breaths in his struggle, the point of view of nature, the point of view of travels.

There was always a point of view; a narrative to every sound and every scene, no matter what that sound may be.”

“Alejandro thinks of it like a spotlight, where everything has its 15 seconds of fame,” said

Taylor. “Basically, everything gets a little bit of a magnifying glass.”

That process of drawing the viewer’s attention isn’t unique to Alejandro’s films. It’s standard practise for re-recording mixers to move sounds out of the way into different surround channels, dig a little hole in the music, and use level, space, equalisation and reverb to make sure a sound has the presence it needs.

However, the challenge with Alejandro’s films is his disinclination to be polite, preferring to shoot for accuracy rather than ease. One of the hardest scenes to mix, said Taylor, was the tavern scene towards the end of the movie where Henry and Fitz are holding a conversation: “It was one of those scenes where you can’t be polite just because they’re talking. You’ve got 50 people in that room — a bunch of drunks, prostitutes, violin players.

Alejandro’s very aware of lowering things in order to hear dialogue clearly. He doesn’t like that; he knows it’s a Hollywood trick. Everything has to be constructed to feel natural. Having a nice bed of walla that everyone can fit into, and then have the callouts, the laughs, the dropping of drinks, or the violin players all happening. It’s immersive, so all of these things have to come from different speakers. It seemed like a small scene, but there were four days in that scene, just in final mixing.

“Keeping it authentic was the goal, nothing so out of place that it took you away from the experience. It had to be completely immersive — so you’re part of the movie rather than watching the movie — but that was always a moving target. WE FOUND THE DYNAMIC RANGE IN THIS MOVIE COULD GO FROM SOMETHING EXTREMELY LARGE TO AN INTIMATE MOMENT SHORTLY THEREAFTER AND REALLY BRING THE AUDIENCE IN. AT 27

HITCHCOCK THEATRE Taylor and Montano primarily work on a large Harrison MPC4-D console. They also have an integration of Avid Artist Mix work surfaces and some JL Cooper panners. The main reverbs used on the film were Altiverb, Phoenix Reverb, and a Lexicon 480L on the dialogue. Taylor: “One day Alejandro said, ‘Mr. Taylor you’ve had this box for every movie we’ve done.’

‘And for all the next ones too,’ I replied.” Another tool the pair find useful are subharmonic simulators.

The biggest tool in their arsenal though is the second identical stage — matched in gear, not in size. “If Frankie is hung up on a scene, or vice versa,” explained Taylor. “I can go on the other stage and pre-mix on the same console. Get all the automation correct and spend time refining things, then shift that automation back over to the Hitchcock in seconds where we can work together again. We get twice as much time to work on things. It eliminates what we refer to as ‘monitor hog’.”

AT 28

“The bear attack had three phases to it. Between the attacks you hear all the forest life still going about daily business, the wind and trees. Then mama bear would come back and have another go.

There’s always a fine line between hyper reality and realism though. For instance, the bear never vocally overpowered Leo, you always heard his angst and battle to survive. In this movie, things that happened on a real visceral level and had extreme dynamic shifts had a real emotional impact. The audience is always on edge; man versus nature, then the struggle turned to man versus man.

“There are no rules, because it’s what works emotionally. In the dialogue, you don’t want that painful 3kHz, but it’s a little bit of a dog barking at you. Whenever you walk down the street and hear a dog bark, you get on edge, so we keep that in some of the dialogue for that reason. You don’t know why, but you’re a little scared all of a sudden.

“In this case, there weren’t very many music pieces that were elevated. HOWEVER, EVEN IF YOU TAKE A BEAUTIFUL SCORE THAT HAS LUSH STRINGS AND PLAY IT 8DB LOUDER THAN IT SHOULD BE PLAYED, IT’S GOING TO AFFECT YOU DIFFERENTLY. YOU FEEL OPPRESSED SOMEHOW.

confines of Hitchcock Theatre. “It wasn’t a straight line,” said Montano. “There was always something to experiment with. A piece of audio that needed to say something. There was nothing we could cruise through. But it’s a post-production sound mixer’s dream to work on something so visually interesting and epic that there’s no choice other than to sonically follow and emulate.”

“I’m just going to throw out numbers,” said Taylor. “But on our first playback of a reel, we may have 100 notes, second playback we may still have 100 notes, third — 75, fourth — 50, fifth — 25.

Next thing you know, you’ve worked through every reel and then you watch the whole movie. Then it’ll come down to five notes. Eventually he left this movie with zero notes, which is proof he’s getting everything he wants out of the film.

“It’s a really good feeling going through this journey — similar to Hugh Glass in many ways — and come out the other side where everybody has a huge smile on their face. Sometimes this job is easy, and sometimes it’s a lot of really hard work.

Those are the ones we prefer best, being pushed by someone as creative as Alejandro.”

THEY’RE NOT ‘TRICKS’, THEY’RE JUST WHERE YOU HAVE TO BE TO GET THE EMOTION YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.”

JOURNEYMEN OF SOUND

“Alejandro gave a great analogy on one of our last days,” said Taylor. “He said, ‘Making this movie is like freehand rock climbing. You get to the middle of the mountain and you can’t go down. You have to go up to survive.’”

The Revenant had its challenges that were felt all the way from the wild to the relatively cosy

Own The Revenant on Digital HD on May 4 and on Blu-ray™ and DVD on May 18.

AT 29

FEATURE

While carrying her first child, the ever-changing Sarah Blasko riffed on love and her childhood in the synth pop-laden Eternal Return — her first album recorded in an Aussie studio.

Feature: Paul Tingen Photos: Jess Chapnik & Natalie van den Dungen

AT 30

It’s too early — for a number of reasons — to call Sarah Blasko ‘Australia’s Bowie’, but her restless creative spirit is at least kindred of the master of reinvention. Blasko’s most recent solo effort, Eternal Return, sees the artist remodel her output once again. Blasko says the album is “totally about love” — the most eternal and unchanging of subjects — and a return to feelings she experienced at a young age. She has given shape to these themes in ways that make Eternal Return a radical departure from her previous album, which was a departure from the one before, which diverged from the one before that… you get the idea.

Here’s a brief field guide charting Blasko’s kaleidoscopic discography. Her 2004 debut The Overture & the Underscore put her on the map as one of Australia’s most important new artists of the decade. Its guitar-driven, folk-meets-electronica pop was recorded in LA with help from fellow Australian songwriter Robert F Cranny. What The Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have, again made with Cranny, was recorded in New Zealand and won an ARIA for Best Pop Release, a coup considering it featured what can best be described as Baroque Chamber Pop. Fast forward a bit and Blasko headed to Sweden to record As Day Follows Night with Swedish producer, and Peter Bjorn and John bassist, Bjorn Yttling. It featured more melancholic chamber pop, this time piano-driven and jazz-influenced. It earned Blasko a Best Female Artist ARIA Award. Then there was an ambitious self-produced orchestral album, I Awake, recorded in Bulgaria and in Sweden.

As quickly as she picked up the orchestra, Blasko dumped it for analogue synths and a drum machine. Made with producer Burke Reid — best-known for working with guitar acts like The Drones, Dan Kelly and Jack Ladder — Eternal Return happens to be the first album Blasko has recorded in her native land of Australia, at The Grove Studios an hour north of Sydney. Over Skype Blasko explained that the roots of Eternal Return’s direction can be found in her branching out into other compositional ventures, such as an experimental collaborative album called Emergence made with composer Nick Wales in conjunction with the Sydney Dance Company; and writing the music for Brendan Cowell’s feature film debut Ruben Guthrie. Composing music for Del Kathryn Barton’s animated short The Nightingale and the Rose was particularly instrumental in pushing Blasko towards using synths.

“I started writing the music for a new album on piano like I had done for the previous two, but I was just repeating myself,” recalled Blasko. “Then I bought a Dave Smith Instruments Prophet ’08 and

grew to love the sounds and the feel of playing it. It felt refreshing after two essentially acoustic albums.

I used the Prophet on a couple of film projects, Del Kathryn Barton’s film being one of them. It’s based on a book by Oscar Wilde and there was a real aggressiveness and intensity to the visuals and the story, which really suited synthesizers. Playing an analogue synth is like plugging a guitar into an amplifier, it has a very powerful feeling to it! So my film score was just voice and synthesizers. After that I kept going on that trajectory!”

OPENING THE ENVELOPE

Blasko’s ‘trajectory’ took her deep into the mysterious and unpredictable world of analogue synthesizers, which require both musical and technical adroitness to operate. However, about the first thing Blasko said — aware that the interview was for AudioTechnology — was “I have to warn you, I am not very technical.” This, however, is a bit of a red herring, for not only did she clearly reach a high degree of proficiency in operating all those pesky buttons that can litter the surface of analogue synths, but she is also quite adept at using the Pro Tools system she has at her house. Plus, on previous albums she has accumulated drum programming and engineering credits.

Clearly, Blasko is no technophobe or Luddite.

“I’ve had to delve more deeply into Pro Tools than just using it as a tape recorder because of the film music I was doing last year,” Blasko admitted. “It makes sense to be able to do more at home than to continue taking things into commercial studios. I got myself a bit more equipment; one of those API lunchboxes with some Neve mic preamps, which go into a Pro Tools Mbox. I also have a couple of reasonable microphones, I think they’re made by Røde. I am terrible at remembering gear names, particularly the numbers. But I suppose I am kind of nerdy in that I like to get a good result when recording at home, and often end up keeping stuff I’ve recorded there.”

Blasko recounted the first creative steps of Eternal Return, which began with demos at her home studio mostly using her Prophet ’08. “After doing that for a while I thought that it would be a great idea if I wrote songs with some friends I’ve been playing music with for 10 years. We know each other’s likes, and yet have never written songs together. I invited them to go away for a week, and all we brought was my Prophet ’08, a Korg MS20, a Rhythm Ace drum machine and a drum machine on an iPad. We recorded straight into an iPhone because I didn’t want to labour over the demos. After a while we had 20 or 30

People’s songs are a little bit like their children. If you think they’re being a bit too lazy as a parent, or too strict, you have to be very careful how you comment on them

songs that were loosely finished, which is when I started working with Burke.”

HATE’S A STRONG WORD

Blasko’s invitees were guitarist Ben Fletcher, composer Nick Wales, and keyboardist David Hunt. Her invitation to Burke Reid to produce the new album was a little counterintuitive, not only because Reid is known for working with guitar bands, but also because Blasko had produced her previous album herself and seemed perfectly capable of continuing along these lines. Regardless, Blasko wanted to be directed. Initially, Sarah “thought it would be a weird match but that it had good potential”, so she trialled Burke on two songs, Only One and Say What You Want. “I liked his enthusiasm, his passion for music,” she found. “He’s not an egotist and he’s happy to change direction at any point. Working at Grove Studios, where he’s mostly based, really suited me because it wasn’t far from home and I was pregnant.”

It wasn’t all roses. In an interview with a British newspaper Sarah said, ‘I really hated Burke a few times!’ Blasko clarified what she meant: “Hate is definitely a strong word. I’m not sure it’s an entirely accurate description, but there were times when I found he was pushing me to pull apart the songs and that can be really painful for someone who’s constructed them. It’s why I wanted to work with a producer, but there’s nowhere to hide when someone is in that role asking you to question what you hear in your head. I knew it was making the songs stronger in many ways. I had to let go and trust him, which is difficult when you haven’t worked with someone before. I was also occasionally grumpy at him sheerly out of fatigue because we worked such long hours — often from 11am until 3am. But it was a hell of lot of fun.”

The man in question laughed when confronted with the ‘hate’ quote, and commented, “There were some points where I was used to working in a certain way, and she wanted to know why. I’m not a very confrontational sort of person, and in these scenarios it was a matter of trying to keep the show running and making sure everyone’s opinions got heard. At times, my job as a producer is to do some pushing, and sometimes I may say a few things that are difficult to hear for an artist, like, ‘that’s good, but maybe it could be better.’

People’s songs are a little bit like their children. If you think they’re being a bit too lazy as a parent, or too strict, you have to be very careful how you comment on them. You may get a few on the chin, but that’s what you’re called in to do as a producer!

Ultimately you develop a mutual trust, knowing that you’re all looking to make sure an album becomes the best it can be.”

The mutual trust and occasional bit of friction that are part of Reid’s modus operandi as a producer have definitely stood his career in good stead. His band Gerling was nominated for an ARIA award three times. Following this he cut his engineering teeth at Big Jesus Burger studio in Sydney, “getting lunches for people and eating humble pie!” While there, he bluffed his way into engineering and producing The Mess Hall’s Devil’s Elbow, which won AT 31

It’s why I wanted to work with a producer, but there’s nowhere to hide when someone is in that role asking you to question what you hear in your head

an Australian Music Prize. From there Reid went on to engineer, mix, and/or produce albums by Jack Ladder, The Drones, Liam Finn, DZ Deathrays, Courtney Barnett, and many more.

Reid currently divides his time between Canada and Australia, but spends most of his working life at The Grove Studios, which was bought by producer/ex-BJB co-owner Scott Horscroft a couple of years ago. Despite featuring the accoutrements of a holiday resort, it’s apparently possible to get solid work done there.

Convening at the studio in late 2014 were drummer Laurence Pike, bassist Donny Benét, David Hunt, and guitarist Jim Moginie, occasionally aided by Reid on rhythm guitar and Matt Keegan on saxophones. Blasko stated, “We used a host of authentic, aged synths. Donny didn’t only play bass, but also brought his collection of vintage synths, which included a Prophet 5, a Moog, a string keyboard called a Stradivarius, an Arp, and many more, plus I brought my Prophet ’08 and Korg MS20. Donny, David and I played them. We had a synth station laid out of about 12 synths, and late at night we’d have synth time. We were all a bit delirious and would play melodic lines over what we already had.”

Reid added, “As we got more into the album it became increasingly apparent that guitars weren’t going to be a feature, so the guitars we did use were very sparse, effect-laden and soundscape-like, rather than purposeful notes. You’re not going to write guitar tabs from those guitar parts! The focus was on the drums, bass, synths, and her vocals.”

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ETERNAL, NOT RETRO

The synths used in the making of Eternal Return all date from the 1970s and 1980s — no soft synths were involved — which gives the album an ’80s sheen, with echoes of anything from Donna Summer to Gary Numan to Depeche Mode to Soft Cell.

Despite the references to the ’70s and ’80s, Blasko and Reid emphasised that Eternal Return is not a retro album. Reid elaborated, “I’m not big on trying to go for retro sounds. You’re always influenced by tones and ideas from the past, but they are usually just starting points. We weren’t saying to each other, ‘let’s make it sound ’80s’. We were just using synths that are associated with that period. Once the general atmosphere of a song started to take shape, we didn’t think about whether the sounds we used belonged to a certain genre or time period, we just went with what sounded best to us.

“The discussions were purely about what each song needed. Turn on a synth, create a sound, play until it sounds cool, and then record that.

The starting point in the studio was Laurence playing to a click or a loop. Getting the tempos exactly right was incredibly important for these songs and helpful for workflow because we were mostly building the tracks up brick by brick. We’d occasionally record drums and bass together, but we’d always record alongside a guide vocal.

Laurence, and sometimes Donny, would put down a rough outline for most of the songs, and then we’d change tones and microphones for the drums and

bass of each song. If it worked, it stayed, if it didn’t, we’d redo it.”

Reid tried to record the instruments as he wanted them to sound, using plenty of Studio 1’s outboard on the way in. He went for a “fairly standard” drum recording setup, experimenting by adding “some odd microphones. I’d have an SM57 on the snare, and a Sennheiser 421 or AKG D12 on the kick, or maybe a Røde Classic tube.

Sometimes I’d put an SM7 above the kick, just over the lip between the snare and the floor tom. I find that this gets me a great overall mono kit sound that I’ll saturate/distort/compress and add in with the other mics to flesh the sound out. I recorded the cymbals separately, and would remove them during the actual drum recording, so they weren’t resonating along. Laurence also played in a really small room next to the control room, so I put up different mics and compressed them to bring out the odd tones. We also had a few drum machines, like the Roland TR808 and 909, here and there, but we always triggered them by hand and added them to the live drums.

“I recorded Donny’s bass through a DI and an Ampeg SVT amp, sent to a Distressor or an 1176 and an old Evans ‘Echopet’ rackmount delay unit which also has a spring reverb in it. The distortion you hear on the bass mostly comes from the Evans.

We also often doubled the bass guitar with some keyboard bass from a Moog. The keyboards — which also included a Roland Juno 6, Mellotron, MicroKorg and Nord Lead — were DI’d through a Chandler Germanium. Very occasionally we’d send

SINGING TO YOUR BABY

I bought a Dave Smith Instruments Prophet ’08… it felt refreshing after two essentially acoustic albums a keyboard through an amp for some room sound and air. I often used the Ensoniq DP4 on the synths, which is an ’80s multi-effects unit I like for its simplicity. I’d cycle through the presets and quickly find something to give it the right tone and vibe.

“David also played piano on the album.

Sometimes we used the Nord piano — EQ’d strongly with effects — because it fit better in the track. When we used the upright at The Grove we liked the sound of it with the dampener on.

I’d record it with a stereo pair of condensers like Josephson E22s or Neumann U47s if I wanted something very detailed. I tend to mic uprights from behind, if possible. I like the sound off the soundboard behind the piano, as opposed to the top where the hammers are. I might also take the bottom front soundboard off, where the foot pedals are and place an additional mono microphone there. It’s where the strings cross over, so it will pick up the highs and lows. Depending, of course, on how creaky the foot pedals are!”

Reid: “I usually have an SM57 and a Royer pointed at the guitar amplifier, but because we were using so many guitar pedals, getting pristine guitar tones and the exact guitar mics and mic placements were not that important. Only two or three songs have minimal guitars. The twangy guitar sound at the beginning of Luxurious is actually a bass, played high up and going into my Guyatone Tube Tremolo pedal, DI’ed and split into the Evans Delay and a plate in the Grove cellar. We usually used Neve 1064 mic pres on the guitar, bass and drum mics, though I also used some Quad Eights on the drums, because they’re a bit faster than Neves.

“I recorded Sarah’s vocals with a Neumann U47, going through a Brent Averill 1073 mic pre and then a Distressor. Generally Sarah did not want the vocals too treated, so we kept it fairly safe. I don’t like to record vocals with EQ, so I just had a hi-pass to get some of the rumble out. Sarah is very particular about the effects on her vocals, so while I might have had a reverb for her to sing to, I didn’t record it. Any vocal effect would have been applied

by David Wrench during the final mix. The reason I don’t generally EQ vocals is for safety. If you add too much high end, you can struggle with sibilance later. Also, if you’re recording vocals in stages with weeks or months between sessions, it makes it easier to drop in and match the sounds.

“I do mess around a lot with the vocal microphone position, distance and angle.

Depending on the singer and the way they sing,

you can get a lot of mouth noise and sibilance. I look at the profile of the singer, and watch whether their head angles up or straight or down, and try to find the best-sounding spot for the mic; often just above or below the mouth and on an angle. I put the mic either the distance of a fist or an open hand away. Sarah moves around a lot, most singers do, especially if they have a big, strong voice. I try to find a position where I won’t lose all the vocal sound even if they go off-axis. In Sarah’s case I positioned the mic straight at her, just above the mouth, and about a fist way. If it’s a slower song with a lot of focus on the vocals, I often place the mic even closer, so you can use the proximity effect to fill out the vocal sound. Normally you don’t want that much bottom end in faster-paced songs.”

The lead vocals were all overdubbed towards the end of the recording sessions, around March 2015 when Blasko was reaching the third trimester of her pregnancy. “This made singing physically difficult for her,” recalled Reid. Apparently Blasko was at times literally gasping for breath and regularly had to stop, which meant that the vocal overdubs took a long time. After having spent several months distilling the sounds of her childhood onto a record, time and a new kind of childhood were catching up with Blasko. She was changing yet again.

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FEATURE

Violent Soho are more at home than ever on Waco. The second album since returning to their roots sees the band continue their loyal relationship with producer Bryce Moorhead.

Feature: Mark Davie Photos: Luke Henery

Artist: Violent Soho Album: Waco

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For a while there, Violent Soho was like a smartphone in the hands of a confused gorilla — Thurston Moore’s label Ecstatic Peace! to be precise. It could sense there was something valuable inside, but rather than deferring to the owner for the unlock code, it just kept smashing it on the floor.

Inevitably, things started to crack. Rather than producing a rare jewel, the extreme pressure precipitated a final collapse, after one too many beatings.

Before Ecstatic Peace! came on the scene, the Mansfield band’s first EP went down well. Locally produced by Bryce Moorhead, it netted them a number of strong support slots. A locally made album followed — this time produced by manager Dean Dirt, and recorded and mixed by Moorhead and Sloth — with songs strong enough to attract the attention of the Sonic Youth frontman.

When Ecstatic Peace! picked the band up, rather than trusting the band to keep growing, a hold was placed on Violent Soho’s discography. The label decided it would be prudent to re-record seven out of 10 songs with Gil Norton and rehash them as a self-titled debut.

After 18 months, the band were left with no money, and no label. Oddly, while the album didn’t do well enough Stateside, and despite it already having mostly been heard back home, the rehash still managed to get an ARIA nod. Go figure. It even surprised the band. Guitarist James Tidswell was on his way out of the door holding a Maccas application form when he got the call about it.

Looking back, it seemed like a misstep. Since returning to their Brisbane base, the band has released two more albums under the I Oh You label, Hungry Ghost and the new one, Waco, which climbed to No. 1. Both have been produced, recorded and mixed by Bryce Moorhead — picking up from where the band left off before the US adventure — and the band couldn’t be happier.

“It’s always kind of scared me to think of going anywhere else,” said singer and main songwriter Luke Boerdam about working with Moorhead.

“I’ve been locked out of studios before for a ‘producers only’ mix session. ‘F**k you! Am I not part of the mixing process?’ Either we can do it together, or you can kick me out and we’ll send 400 emails back and forth. It’s stupid. I want to work with the engineer, I want to work with the producer. Bryce has an amazing amount of patience to listen to my bullshit for a few months and help mould it into something.”

ZERO INTERFERENCE

Exactly what makes a fruitful, long-lasting artist/ producer relationship is hard to pin down. It seems to be as contingent on the producer’s understanding of how the band wants to work as it is on results. Boerdam put it this way: “We tried other studios but didn’t get that same dynamic.

We still got results and made records I’m proud of, but the songs I’m most proud of are ones recorded with Bryce. There’s something natural about how he produces audio which just sits well with our band. We’ll just sit and chip away at finding the

guitar sound that slots into the song, without needing any processing.

“Sometimes I make the ugliest vocal sound, but the way Bryce produces makes it fit in naturally.

When we recorded with Gil Norton he put this monstrosity of a mic in front of me which some company had sent him for a demo. I’m used to singing into something basic but I said I’d give it a go. I hated it. I remember asking Gil if we could put up room mics; a bit of delay left and right is what Bryce does. He just said we’d add it later. He wanted me in a vocal booth, and I was saying, ‘Can’t we record in an open room with high ceilings?’ Again, he just said we’d add the reverb later. I know that’s not right, I’ve done this a million times before!

We’ve tried so many different techniques and we know what works.” [See Room for Vocals sidebar].

Moorhead currently works out of The Shed studios, but he also used to engineer at a studio called Zero Interference, where the name doubled as a policy aspiration. Moorhead said it stemmed from being in a band where “the person recording you is telling you how your music is supposed to sound. I just wanted to be someone who was more of a facilitator and help translate their ideas into something that was listenable.”

He’d heard exactly that sort of negative interference when Violent Soho came to him with demos recorded by another engineer who “obviously thought Violent Soho was this really heavy, tough semi-metal sounding band,” said Moorhead. “It was all scooped guitars, whereas this band’s the antithesis of scooped guitars. Midrange is good for these guys. It’s got to have rough edges, the performance has to be a little bit ragged and a translation of what they’d be like live.”

Boerdam says rather than trying to put his stamp on a song’s direction, Moorhead tries to filter Boerdam’s “blubbering on” about song influences and visions into something meaningful. “He won’t interfere with you or the creative process,” said Boerdam. “You’ll be in the middle of coming up with a new idea or song, and he’ll just watch you.

But when he hears something that’s really off, he’ll tell you it’s not working.”

WRITE TIME

Boerdam writes and demos all of Violent Soho’s songs at home. Hungry Ghost was mostly demoed in GarageBand, with an old Avid MBox plugged into a venerable Apple MacBook. In the last couple of years he’s upgraded the MacBook, and moved on from Garageband to Logic. The MBox has been replaced by an Apogee Duet interface, and he’s plumped for a Shure SM7B vocal mic.

“I usually plug guitars straight into the interface and program some s**t computer drums,” said Boerdam. “I use the EZ Drummer library, but always have the same four go-to rhythm patterns.

The coolest part is you can just drag and drop parts and totally rearrange stuff.”

With Boerdam’s growing home studio, he admits he’s also gotten into the audio engineering side and dissecting how engineers and producers put colour into a band’s sound. He doesn’t have any desire to take over from Moorhead though. “I respect the

Sometimes I make the ugliest vocal sound, but the way Bryce produces makes it fit in naturally.

When we recorded with Gil Norton he put this monstrosity of a mic in front of me which some company had sent him for a demo. I hated it

BASS-IC PACKAGE Luke Henery changes his bass amp set up for each song, but normally it will include a DI and an amp. “Sometimes two amp lines,” he said. “For Hungry Ghost I had a clean amp, a dirty amp, a DI line and a sub line running a separate 15-inch cab. This time it’s a bit more straight forward. I’m playing a bit cleaner on some of these songs using a slightly overdriven Fender Super Bassman. It still has heaps of headroom so I can get those low notes when I need them. I’ve been liking the MXR Bass DI, but we haven’t tracked with that yet. Our sound guy’s got an Avalon preamp and I often borrow that for my DI. “Playing live, I normally use an ’80s Peavey T-20 P-bass-style guitar. Then I’ve got a Black Widow by the brand Acoustic, which is a bass made by Semie Moseley. It’s from the old Mosrite amp company and they only made two guitars — a six-string guitar version and a bass version. It’s got a rosewood fretboard and is a bit deeper and bit darker than my T-20, which is maple. I’ve also got a reissue Gibson Grabber, but it hasn’t made it on this record. It’s rad, you can slide the pickup towards the bridge to brighten it up or to the neck to make it a bit bassier.

“I like to keep my sound in the mids most of the time, then in big moments I drop real low to probably 40-50Hz. I like it a bit scooped in the lowmids so it’s not so muddy, but then underneath it is a real subby, hip-hop bass sound. I often tune my bass down a whole step.

“I love using the Rode K2 on bass,” said Moorhead.

“Because it can handle around 150dB SPL before it distorts. It just seems like the best application for that mic, because the top end helps.”

AT 35

WHAT’S UNDER YOUR DRUMBRELLA Moorhead: “Drum tuning is pretty important to me, particularly getting the snare’s long overtones in tune with the song. Here in the shed we’ve got the Drumbrella, so I’ll get a guitarist to play in time and I’ll hop on the drums and work out what note fits with what they’re playing.

“The Drumbella is a way of making the snare fatter. Depending on where you’ve got it tuned, it might be 180Hz or 200Hz — you can find the particular height where that resonant note in the snare is being reinforced.

“I’ve also got to check the toms aren’t being compromised by the Drumbrella. Sometimes the lower you go with the Drumbrella, the fatter everything sounds. Which can make putting mics in as overheads a bit tricky! With Violent Soho I tend to close-mic the cymbals which means I can get the Drumbrella lower if I need to. It seems to help bring definition to everything and help localise busy cymbal hits.

“I mostly run close mics and a couple of room mics, lately ribbons, back about four metres. I think one is an RCA 77DX. It’s the one that has a little knob you can turn that puts up a little shield behind the ribbon and turns it into cardioid. I run that as the mid mic with a little Reslo ribbon as a side for a mid-side configuration. That Reslo ribbon mic is insanely bassy, it largely rolls off the top end.

“I’ve usually got Beyer M201s top and bottom on his snare and Sennheiser MD421s on the top of the toms. I put a couple of AKG C414s on the cymbals, and we’ve got an old Rode Classic overhead that we put one of those RK7 capsules in and it sounds so much better.

“I’ve been using an AKG D112 in the kick drum hole and running a Shure Beta 98 around the other side on the batter head. It’s a little more modernsounding, and gets that high click definition of the kick drum. When I’m mixing, I usually roll off a lot of the bottom end and either get the whole kit from the kick or just duck it when the snare’s being hit.”

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dudes around me that have been doing this stuff for 20 to 30 years and recorded hundreds of bands,” he said. “Also, I’d rather be sitting in my room writing songs than tuning vocals for 14 hours in the studio.”

The band had toured some of the songs on Hungry Ghost for two years, whereas all of Waco’s tunes were fresh off Boerdam’s demos. “We usually find the longer we work on a song as a band, the better and easier it is to record. I never realised how beneficial touring was; having a year or two to mull it over, get an understanding of the song’s natural dynamics and have a vision for it. That said, as a songwriter I’ve learned what makes a Soho song. I’ll add certain elements and nuances that counterbalances not touring for a few years.”

That’s not to say he can necessarily churn out the hits on demand. Boerdam’s songwriting process has no fixed timeline. With the TV on in the background, he’ll riff on ideas, pulling old ones off the shelf and storing new ones away hoping one day they’ll find their companion pieces. “There’s no point rushing songwriting,” he said. “Writing to a due date does nothing but turn out horrible songs.

It’s not a natural fit, it’s not the best a song can be. My one pet gripe is I can’t stand boring, long sections that have no purpose, yet go for ages.”

THE BEST VERSION OF YOU

The band spent two weeks in pre-production with Moorhead to finalise arrangements. “Unless we listen back and think that something’s not working,” said bass player, Luke Henery, “everything is normally sorted out in pre-

production. Then it’s just about getting a good performance and making sure our tones are right.

“Bryce is known for bringing out the best version of a band. He gets you in the room, makes sure you’re tight, gets everything miked up and sounding awesome. Then he’ll make you keep playing it until you give him the best take. He’s got an amazing ear and he finds the little nuances in the way you’re playing, which sometimes get lost from demo to album. You played it exactly the same but for some reason it doesn’t have the same energy. Bryce finds out why and helps bring it out.

It might be a little harmonic that you’re accidentally hitting because you’re holding your finger down on the G-string. It was a mistake, but he wants you to keep doing it.”

The band has figured out what works best for them in the studio, preferring to capture the bass and drums together, with Boerdam laying down a guitar guide track at the same time. They don’t record everything at once because they’ve found it’s usually “too hard to get proper isolation and to get the guitar tones the way we like it,” said Henery. “We’d always end up re-amping or something anyway. After tracking bass and drums it gives Luke time to sit there and work out his guitar parts. He really flourishes in the studio, like it’s what he was meant to do. We always give him space in the studio because typically something awesome happens.”

Moorhead concurred: “Luke Boerdam is the guy who’s got the vision for the song, so it’s important we have a lot of time for him to realise that vision.” Moorhead said early on they tried

DIRECT GUITARS playing everything live, then overdubbing guitar parts again. These days, they prefer to cut to the chase. “The guys are so good at playing their instruments now that it’s just more efficient to get straight to it and get the drums and bass down, then have a lot more time to experiment with guitar parts and sounds.”

ANTHEM FOR A NEW SOUND

The first song released from Waco was the punky anthem Like Soda. Its pre-chorus build-up, I don’t mind/I don’t care/I’ll just say whatever, has shades of The Pixies and Blink 182 and instinctively feels like the lead up to a classic Drop-D chorus, balls deep in low-end extension. Instead, it crunches away in the midrange; all energy, less extension. It was a surprising choice to lead off with, even more so in retrospect, given the rest of the album is full of prototypical big Violent Soho choruses.

“Like Soda isn’t a full picture of what the record is like, especially from an audio engineering perspective,” said Boerdam. “But we’ve been a band for 10 years so we’d rather just drop music that we feel right about at the time. Rather than think about some larger marketing scheme or plan for the record.”

“That song was actually a bit of a nightmare to work out because of the tempo changes,” said Moorhead. “The demo tempo change was even greater and the guys were really attached to how it sounded, but it didn’t work. It just seemed like lots of little bits jumbled together. We tried heaps of things to get it to work while keeping the original intent of the song. There wasn’t

Boerdam’s go-to guitar is a custom job made by Tim Brennan, who runs a shop called Tym Guitars in Brisbane. “I wanted a really dark Gibson sound — really simple and straight to the point — but I hate Les Paul Junior bodies and don’t like the necks,” said Boerdam. “I call it The Mongrel. It’s a Strat neck with a black Tele body and all Gibson hardware. This guy in Adelaide, Mick Brierley, makes these P90 throwback pickups and you can choose how hot he winds them. The only way I can get it to be clean is if I lightly pluck it.

“That goes through a Fender Twin on about six. I’ve never ever got a gain sound I’m happy with besides that guitar. It’s wound so hot, as soon as you hit an MXR Distortion Plus through an amp, it’s awesome.

“In the studio I’m using a Twin Deluxe for that super bright, a little bit glassy, clean sound, then I have a really dull amp to back it up in the chorus. That’s an early ’80s Marshall JCM800. I use two amps live, because I can’t stand it when you hit a distortion pedal in a chorus and it sucks all the volume. I used to have modded Boss DS1s with boosts in them that kind of worked. As soon as I started using two amps it was like I was in heaven.”

“We thought a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier was going to be a magic bullet and it wasn’t,” said Moorhead. “It was one of those things where you think a real expensive guitar or amp has got to be what all those other bands are using to get that magic sound. But it’s not.”

“I’ve also been mucking around with an ’80s Vox AC30,” continued Boerdam.

“The Vox has got a natural dark, broken-up sound.

There’s a lot of drop-D chords in the choruses, so I’m overlaying higher-pitched power chords higher

up the neck to colour the chorus. The Vox is really nailing that role, it’s poking right through the mix without any additional EQ. “We usually end up sticking with one guitar panned left and right and then for a chorus only adding that shimmer up the neck. It’s an unspoken rule that it has to be different because you’re only muddying up a mix if you’re layering too much. We’re playing in that drop-D key a lot, so we can’t layer without it sounding like some sort of nu-metal band!

“The lighter we keep it, the better. It’s just making sure we dial in the right gain settings. I currently use the MXR Distortion Plus, but I’ve also got a Tym Guitar Special. I’ve always flirted with the classic Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer. The saturation has something about it that serves a particular function. I could see myself jumping over at some point and cheating on my MXR.” To record guitars, Moorhead usually opted for one Beyer M201. “I just put a mic up as close as I can, centred on the cone,” detailed Moorhead. “I know from testing speakers with a measurement mic that’s how you get a full bottom end without any notches from floor bounce. I know that’s not what a lot of other people would do, but I don’t want any notes to be lost. Then I also run a room mic and blend that in. I DI everything, especially dirty guitars, because that’s where the strum is.

“Mostly I just capture it the way I think it’s going to need to be in the mix. We spent a lot of time making sure the distorted sound is good and I put the mic in a good place using the right mic and preamp. We have eight home-built Neve 1290 preamps which are great for guitars and vocals.”

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My one pet gripe is I can’t stand boring, long sections that have no purpose yet go for ages

ROOM FOR VOCALS When Boerdam was ‘young and naïve’, he used to hit the whisky before a vocal take. He thought it was a great idea, until the day he lost his voice.

“These days I’ve got way more control in my voice,” said Boerdam. “Bryce and I are extremely particular about vocal takes; we do a lot. I wish I could say I did them in one take. Sometimes I have, but the reality is it’s a load of comping; getting the right delivery on each line and making sure we build up a really honest performance.

“One song I recorded 20 to 30 takes and just couldn’t get what I did on the demo. We literally had to pull over a demo vocal. There’s something about hitting record for a demo. You’re thinking, ‘well this is just a demo so who cares.’ With that ‘who cares’ your voice loosens up for an awesome vocal performance. Then when you’re in the studio it’s all opposite and rigid.

“The biggest thing is learning to relax. The more I try to nail it, the more I end up screwing it. It’s tough and really time-consuming. I like it when the vocals are done and I can work on the cool guitar stuff.”

Moorhead’s vocal recording technique, which Boerdam alluded to when working with Norton, is something Moorhead “used to do all the time in my old studio which had a big, wide room with pretty high ceilings. I didn’t learn under anyone or do any SAE courses. I didn’t have much gear in high school, just a four-track cassette recorder. I didn’t have a reverb unit, but I did have reverb in my room. It seems more authentic to actually use the sound of the room the artist is performing in.

“On a few songs I tried mixing in a really lush reverb on the vocals and there was something not quite right about it. As soon as we put that room sound on it changed, it was Violent Soho!

“I used to space Rode NT5s on the ground three or four metres away and a couple of metres apart. A lot of times I’ll delay those room mics by a really obvious amount like 60ms, so you get a bit of a slap-back delay.

“With Luke we’ve been using a Shure SM7, it doesn’t overload when he screams and the top end without the boost is perfect for his voice. He can tend to be a little bit sibilant.”

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any deliberate decision to change the way the bass sounded, it was just the puzzle the song presented. The verse was supposed to be the biggest, ballsiest part of the song.”

“We usually have a soft/loud dynamic where the pre-chorus cuts out then jumps to the chorus,” said Boerdam. “This feels more like it glides in. I struggled with that song from demos right through to mixing. There was a change of thinking required, like having to accept this chorus is more of a slowpaced chorus, not loud and abrasive with a bunch of ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’ squeals. I realised it’s got some charm to it, when you hit that chorus it slows and makes sense. It doesn’t need that heavy Soho riff to drag it down, it just flows.”

It turned out to be an inspired decision, fans even going so far as to petition for it as a replacement national anthem. It also speaks to the place Violent Soho occupies — a fulltime Australian band, with the backing of an

independent label bent on trying to represent exactly who the band is. That is, they can release what they feel good about, not something that fits into a label’s marketing plan.

“When you’re younger and land your first record deal, you think things like that matter more than they actually do,” said Boerdam. “How much money the label is putting into marketing or whatever, especially back when the internet didn’t rule everything. Before you got to that stage, however, none of it mattered. The Golden Rule was to have good songs that are honest and people can connect with. The music always has to come first.

It’s a lesson to keep learning again and again.”

DROPPING THE BIG CHORUS

Beyond Like Soda, Waco holds its fair share of powerful, low-end moments. The single Viceroy is deep and ballsy, Moorhead talks about how he keeps those moments powerful without losing

punch. “In a lot of the heavy parts of their songs, there’ll be a really constant kick drum which can be quite tricky,” said Moorhead. “It’s trying to control the decay of that kick drum and make it punchy enough that it’s not just flapping around and taking away space from the bass guitar.

“I mix all in-the-box using UAD plug-ins. I usually send kick from an AKG D112 and Beyer M88 to a group that’s got the legacy UAD Fairchild plug-in on it. It has this little knob down the bottom you can turn that seems to affect the attack of it. I back that off a little bit and it just seems perfect for making each kick poke through. Getting that kick drum hitting the right place is important.

“I’ll also bus all the instruments to a group and have all the vocals going to the master bus, then I’ll put a parallel compressor on that instrument group.

When it comes up to a heavy part of the song, I’ll automate the uncompressed bus down a little and push up the compressed bus so it jumps and starts pumping a bit, but the vocals don’t get modulated by the compressor.”

While Moorhead and Violent Soho know how to create powerful punk rock, as Like Soda shows, there are plenty of diverse moments on Waco that make it more than a couple of singles. Waco has already hit No. 1 on the ARIA album charts, numbers to support the feeling this is an Aussie album well worth listening to. “To be honest,” signed off Henery, “they’re songs I’ll always be proud of. Undoubtedly, I’ll end up playing house parties around Australia. Makes no difference to me man, as long as I can still turn my amp up!”

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FEATURE

GUY SEBASTIAN ALL THE RIGHT REGIONS Guy glad hands the bush, keeping Mum, Nan and the kids all happy.

Story: Christopher Holder

It doesn’t take long to be won over by the considerable charms of Guy Sebastian. I’m not sure who was more sceptical, me (who still recalls the reality TV shock of Idol) or my 12 year-old daughter (who is instantly suspicious of any of her father’s music ‘recommendations’). But a few minutes into the gig and both of us were eating out of the palm of Guy’s hand.

I’m not saying anything that tens of thousands of fans who flocked to last year’s arena shows don’t already know – Guy Sebastian is the consummate showman.

He’s also a nice guy. Not content with playing the big arenas in the big cities, this year he’s hit the road playing a regional theatre tour, much to the joy of his multi-generational fanbase.

Guy’s FOH engineer is Anatole Day, he’s been with Guy since the Memphis tour in 2008; when he came on board manning monitors. Initially, he too was a little lukewarm: “Until I found out I was working with Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and the rest of the original Stax musicians, and seeing how natural Guy was with them — he belonged in that company.”

KEEP TRUCKIN’

A big tour comes with big baggage — six semi trailers in the case of last year’s arena tour — while a regional tour needed to be more nimble.

Amazingly, Anatole and the crew managed to shoehorn the whole production into a 12-tonner.

A couple of the dates required some rental PA to supplement what was in the truck but mostly the combination of 8 x L-Acoustics ARCS and 8 x SB218s powered by LA8 amps did the trick.

“The ARCS are flexible,” explains Anatole.

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“Ground stacking a PA inevitably means it’s a lot louder at the front than the back, but I’ll occasionally stack the subs three high to lift the ARCS up from the audience a little more, then flip the boxes upside down, that way I get 40° downward coverage for the front rows, and with 20° dispersion upwards I can still hit the back row.”

TRAVELLING LIGHT Everything you see here jams into a 12-tonne truck (well, okay, maybe not everything… the musos might object). Space saving measures include the exclusive use of in-ears, using projectors instead of LED walls, and maybe leaving half a dozen guitars at home.

NOW & SENN

The microphone package is all Sennheiser.

Unsurprisingly, given Anatole struck a deal with Sennheiser a few years back to guarantee he was delivering the kind of sound Guy was asking for: “Occasionally I’d be caught short on corporate gigs. I’d send in the technical rider and everyone was okay, but then I’d arrive and find some of the gear wasn’t up to scratch. I knew I had to at least guarantee Guy’s sound for those gigs. I put together a 2U road case with two Sennheiser 2050 wireless mic channels (SKM2000 handhelds and Neumann KK205 capsules) and two stereo sets of G3 in-ear monitors. That way, whatever the circumstances I had Guy’s sound covered.”

Most of the wireless is the new 9000 Series.

Eight channels covers Guy, BVs and guitar packs.

Four additional channels of 2000 Series wireless takes care of backups. “The wireless is rock solid,” observes Anatole. “Every gig, Justin our monitor engineer, starts scanning as soon as he can. He’ll do that throughout soundcheck right up until the show kicks off. You never know what the hundreds of mobile phones in the audience might do to your clean spectrum. But we also know the 9000 series will find the best chunk of spectrum and has never missed a beat.”

SWART BE WITH YOU Anatole likes his tagteam mic combos. Here he has a Sennheiser e903 and an e906 on the Swart Space Tone combo. Anatole will blend the tone to taste.

JUST FOR KICKS The drums are kitted out with 900 Series Sennheiser mics — 12 channels in all. There are a couple of exceptions: an e602 sits out of the kick drum shell complementing the e901 inside the drum, and a pair of MK4 large diaphragm condensers take care of ‘underhead’ duties.

KEYS OF LIFE Any synth head would be happy with this particular quartet of keys: Nord Stage, Korg Kronos, Access Virus Ti Polar, and a Dave Smith Prophet 12.

DESK FLEX Anatole Day: “I’m not one of those guys who demands a Digico or an Avid or Midas. In fact, when I’m working on a console I quickly become its biggest fan as I appreciate the things it does well — I had that experience recently with a Soundcraft Vi3000. I get the fact that sometimes you need a certain mixer for a certain sound, or you might have all your secret sauces on an iLok that’s got to plug into a Profile, but often the demanding engineers are just a bit insecure about working on something they don’t know so well. I decided early in my career that I wouldn’t be fussy. Sure, you need the humility to ask the production supplier to give you a quick guided tour if you’re a little rusty on the mixer, then you just get on with it.”

DOOMSDAY REDUNDANCY The show has playback coming out of Logic running on a Mac Mini.

The band’s guitarist has some basic Play, Stop and Next control over the playback via a small display on stage. The Mac Mini is connected to a MOTU Ultralite Mk3 interface spitting out three stereo pairs of tracks (precussion, instruments and BVs), a mono click and a 1kHz tone for syncing with a Radial SW8 switcher. Here’s how it works: For the sake of redundancy there’s a mirror Mac Mini sync’ed with the ‘A’ system. Once David the guitarist hits play, both instances of Logic spark up, through two MOTU Ultralites and then into the Radial ‘Doomsday’ device — the SW8 Auto Switcher. The SW8 will pass System A audio for as long as it registers the 1k tone. If the tone stops it seamlessly switches to the System B audio.

“We test it every day,” notes Anatole, “and it truly is seamless. You simply can’t hear it making the switch.”

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REGULARS

Apple Notes More ways than one to skin OS X. Column: Brad Watts

Three years is a long time in technology. It’s at about the three-year mark where you’d seriously look at replacing any workstation computer — either sell it on or relegate it to lesser tasks — and ship in a more powerful unit that can keep up with the endless progress of software.

With this in mind, it seems odd we are yet to see a new Mac Pro from Apple. The ‘Late 2013’ Mac Pro has possibly reached its replacement date. It’s not that the currently available Mac Pro isn’t capable of keeping up with the workload and applications it was assigned nearly three years ago — it most certainly is. The question remains; what’s next? Will Apple release a better Mac Pro? Or, will Apple coerce it’s customers into buying bigger and better Retina-endowed iMacs. Surely it’s obvious there’s a need for a ‘discreet’ desktop machine.

Lately there have been whispers of a new Mac Pro, with reports of unearthed code within Apple’s latest operating system, El Capitan, for an as yet unannounced machine. But will that machine appear in time for your next upgrade, and will it fall victim to the same three-month delivery times as the first trashcan Mac Pro? The thing is, there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t so fun with the 2013 Mac Pro. Firstly, the price. The Mac Pro is an expensive option in any language. With a base-level machine you’re forking out $6500. That’s with 16GB of RAM and a chunky 3.5GHz six-core Xeon processor. There’s also no space for additional hard drives within the unit; you’re stuck with hanging drive cases off the machine via USB 3 or Thunderbolt. What’s more, optioning up the internal PCIe flash storage to what I consider a minimum of 1TB adds another $1280 to the price tag. While we’re talking minimum specs, lets look at RAM. For 32GB — enough to handle audio applications and video side-projects — Apple asks an additional $640. So far we’re looking at AU$8419.

HACK A MAC

There are cheaper options. First up, you could build your own Mac. As is fairly common knowledge these days, you can run OS X on a suitable ‘PC’ motherboard using an Intel CPU. Let’s do some quick sums to see how that approach checks out.

You’ll spend $350 on a suitable motherboard (I’d AT 42

recommend the Gigabyte brand) that includes Thunderbolt 2 (although make sure you’re ready for a learning curve to get this working seamlessly).

Motherboards are available with Thunderbolt 3, but this is unsupported by OS X thus far — stick with Thunderbolt 2 or avoid it if you can. 32GB of DDR4 RAM, let’s say $350. Processor? Why not an Intel Core i7-4790K at $550. These things run at 4GHz and 4.4GHz in turbo mode. They’re very quick. Storage? Let’s go with an Intel 750 1.2TB PCIe SSD for $1299. For projects you’ll need separate hard drives; two 960GB SSDs at $490 each.

You’ll also need a graphics card. If you’re working with video, something grunty like a Geforce GTX 980 Ti at about a grand. If you’re not fussed about video editing you could spend as little as $150 on an Nvidia card that would support three monitors; the Nvidia GT 740 will do the trick.

Don’t forget a quality case and power supply.

Have a look at the Be Quiet! Silent Base range — beautifully designed and quiet cases for about $140 — in which you can fit multiple hard drives, all with tool free mounting and rubber decoupling. Oh, that power supply. Again, see the Be Quiet! range — a 600W unit will set you back $100. A BlueRay drive (with DVD-R and CD-R compatibility) for backing up and loading sample libraries — $100. All up you’re spending $4119 — add a grand if you’re after strong GPU performance.

Not bad for a machine with more drive space, and a faster processor than Apple can provide — with all the added joy of everything being contained in the one unit. Granted, you’re not getting ‘workstation’ components, but you’re still getting the speed at half the price! The other advantage is you can upgrade parts of the machine over time — unlike a Mac, in most instances (which I’ll get to shortly). All you need to do is some homework on the configuration. There are some excellent sites from which to glean this info, with step-by-step instructions.

UPGRADE YOUR OWN MAC

All this DIY tomfoolery may not be a sport you’re keen to be involved in, in which case, consider upgrading an older model Mac Pro. These machines offer the space required for multiple hard

drives, can be upgraded to 64GB of RAM, and include audio-centric accoutrements such as optical drives (although they don’t offer Thunderbolt). You could go back as far as 2010 in model release dates.

Ebay is bursting with Xeon processor upgrade kits for many of the older design Mac Pros. It’s simply a case of swapping your existing processor tray for a faster CPU tray. Prices range from $450 through to $2000, but if it means you don’t have to swap your entire machine out and go through the chore of reinstalling countless plug-ins and sample libraries, then this sounds like a sensible option.

Apple machines will always be the pricier option, but that doesn’t mean you have to upgrade your Mac, or buy a Mac at all to be running OS X. At the end of the day there are more ways than one to run our favourite operating system. How you choose to do that will inevitably be a trade-off between downtime considerations, your tenacity, and available funds.

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STUDIO FOCUS:

NEW PATH FOLLOWS ABBEY ROAD The Abbey Road Institute in Melbourne has finally kicked off in earnest, with the first student intake having embarked on their Music Production & Sound Engineering Certification from Abbey Road Studios in October. It’s an all-in intensive course for those keen on furthering their music production chops, with participants engaging in a hefty 46 weeks of tuition over the course of a year.

The institute is closing in on securing government accreditation, but it’s somewhat secondary to the main sell. The premise here is: train at Abbey Road Institute and you’ll have the chops to cut it at any of parent company, Universal Music Group’s, studios.

To achieve that end applicants are prescreened, not just for technical acuity but for their willingness to work hard and network.

Seasoned music manager Kelli Wright has been AT 44

assembling the first round of students and called on her industry connections to provide networking opportunities. There’s no guarantees of employment in the music industry, so as well as walking away with the Abbey Road stamp of approval, students are also equipped in all the facets of becoming freelance audio engineers and producers by label executives and current music producers.

There are already institutes in Germany, France, and of course, London. Melbourne’s Sturt Street campus is the first to open in Australia, with Sydney to follow. There will be three intakes per year — the next one is in March — but the total number of students will be kept to around 50, to ensure the educator-to-student ratio remains high. Students are treated to the best gear available onsite, and will have plenty of occasion to use it. As well as a lab with Apple

iMac workstations and Universal Audio Apollo Twin interfaces for each student, there’s a central live room with instruments ready to go. The generously-proportioned live room has two attached control rooms. Each room shares the same acoustic treatment and monitoring setups — comprising incredible b&w 802 floor-standing speakers and Genelecs on the console bridge — and sound fantastic. That’s what’s the same, but there’s plenty that’s different: one control room has a completely analogue front end, with its 32-channel API 1608 console complemented by ELI Distressors and Fatsos, Universal Audio 1176 and 6176 channel strips, and more 500 series gear from AMS Neve, SSL and Shadow Hills; while in the other control room is an entirely digital setup fronted by a 16-fader Avid S6 controller with the top-of-the-range M40 engine, coupled to Apogee Symphony converters.

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Of course, it’s not all about sitting in labs and control rooms. The thrust of the education program is to not only provide a curriculum grafted from 80 years of Abbey Road engineering, but to also constantly expose the students to international professionals through a consistent masterclass program. “This is an unprecedented initiative from Abbey Road, the world’s most recognisable recording industry success story,” said Australian CEO Paul Ledingham, who sits on the institute’s board alongside Abbey Road and Universal Audio execs. “We will now have the ability to bring the biggest names, brightest minds and most promising talent together for a world-class educational experience that is wholly designed to meet industry needs for Australian students.”

Tantalising stuff.

The AudioTechnology App is made just for tablets. All the latest news, reviews, features, columns and tutorials every month for next to nothing. Stay tuned for more news at audiotechnology.com.au or like us on Facebook.

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Abbey Road Institute: 1800 274 338 or melbourne@abbeyroadinstitute.com

AT 45 AT_App_HalfV_AT#112.indd 1

9/11/2015 10:12 am

REVIEW

SHURE KSM8 DUALDYNE

Handheld Dynamic Microphone Shure has torn apart its dynamic microphone concept to add in another diaphragm; and two is definitely better than one.

Review: Mark Woods

NEED TO KNOW

Whether it’s in ALL CAPS, longwinded technical jargon truncated into an acronym, or simply a made up, authoritatively-stamped name like ‘TransMotik™’, marketing phraseology is mostly designed to disguise the fact that Company A’s product does exactly the same thing as Company B, C and D’s.

Shure’s new epithet, Dualdyne, actually means something. Firstly, it comes from a distinguished lineage of corporate milestones that started with the first Unidyne directional microphone in 1939 and evolved into the Unidyne III; identifying the dynamic diaphragm assembly inside your bog standard SM58. Secondly, it’s not just a description slapped on one small piece of a product to give it a bit of leverage in the marketplace; Dualdyne is the core reason Shure’s new KSM8 — the first handheld dual diaphragm dynamic microphone — is a product.

Everyone loves simple, strong dynamic mics but there’s always been a few areas ripe for improvement: they’re boomy up close, thin at a distance and nasty off-axis for starters. I’ve been winding the bottom end off SM58s for around 40 years and the prospect of a Shure-made dynamic handheld with controlled proximity effect and a decent off-axis response is, well, exciting. Shure’s KSM8 is a new type of microphone designed to address those issues, and live sound will never be the same again.

PRICE $949 CONTACT Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au

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PROS Seductive sound quality Innovative proximity effect control Consistent sound across polar pattern & at any distance Timeless look

CONS A bit expensive

SUMMARY Shure’s new dual diaphragm KSM8 dynamic handheld sits in a long lineage of unidirectional microphone invention. Adding a second diaphragm, and going from Unidyne to Dualdyne, has given Shure complete control over proximity effect and consistency in polar pattern and mic tone. You may not need that handheld condenser any longer.

DUAL DIAPHRAGM TECH Shure Product Manager, John Born, was one of the small development team that worked on the KSM8 project. He said the idea for the KSM8 came out of what Shure had learnt while building the KSM9 handheld condenser: “We knew from the KSM9 that if we could get a second diaphragm into the cartridge, we could use it as part of the acoustic network to control proximity effect. It had never been done on a dynamic due to the physicality of trying to make it fit. There’s all these parts in the way — coil, air cavity, pole piece — to put a second diaphragm in the spot, you have to break everything in the process.”

Such a design would also allow Shure to get rid of the presence peak that’s a byproduct of making a single diaphragm mic directional. Born cites two reasons for its existence. “One, you need the peak to offset the proximity effect when you get right up on the microphone, so it’s not muddy. Secondly, physics make it hard to get rid of it even if you wanted to.”

When confronted with the task of developing a dual diaphragm dynamic, Shure’s engineering team stipulated they couldn’t be beholden to any existing parts or processes — they literally started out with nothing. What they ended up with was a unique design.

Born: “When you make a microphone directional, you allow sound to strike the front and back of the diaphragm. You delay the sound that goes through the back of the cartridge and time align it to achieve rejection. With the KSM8, in addition to the resistance delay we also have a diaphragm which delivers proximity effect control. As the source gets closer to the microphone, the second diaphragm starts seeing that low frequency energy more, and starts blocking that energy from building up as the source gets

OLD YET NEW

Shure has put a lot of effort into the KSM8, inside and out. It’s an old look that comes off new; shiny (black version withstanding) yet practical. The aluminium body is finished in brushed nickel reminiscent of the old Unidyne models, but it looks flashy and modern on stage, especially under lights.

The slotted collar and Shure insignias are similarly retro but the silver grille is too finely machined for the 1950s. It’s too nice to substitute in as a hammer, like one might an SM58, but it feels strong and the hardened grille, lined with a layer of spit-blocking hydrophobic foam, has no give in it at all. The silver version I was reviewing had started to develop fade marks where the mic clip grips the body and a couple of little scratches from use, so they may develop some patina over time.

The attention to aesthetics continues under the grille too. The capsule housing the diaphragms

closer and lower. At 0Hz, it basically tricks the front diaphragm into thinking the capsule is sealed and the mic is omnidirectional.

“Omni-directional microphones don’t have proximity effect, so we reap the benefits of that. But we do it in a way where we don’t actually sacrifice polar pattern.

As you creep up into the audio band at 20Hz, it starts becoming more cardioid to a point where the second diaphragm is transparent to high frequencies. The KSM8 is pure cardioid right down to 100Hz without any electronics or a crossover band-pass network.”

There’s no fixed crossover frequency point where the diaphragm becomes invisible, it’s conditional on the distance between the source and the microphone. “It’s based on both the Inverse Square Law — whereas a source gets closer, it gets louder — and on frequency” explained Born. “A single diaphragm microphone goes almost bi-directional in its low end response as you get close to the source; that’s what causes the proximity effect. At further distances, a single-diaphragm microphone exhibits its purest pattern.

“The second diaphragm breaks that, rendering a more stable pattern at varying distances. In the acoustic chamber, you can run tests at different distances and see the pattern control and frequency response maintain its consistency. We play a balancing act between maintaining good pattern control and subjectively realising the proximity effect benefits of omni-directional patterns.”

The KSM8 was seven years in the making, but Born says six years of that was spent fixing everything they broke in the process of trying to fit a second diaphragm into a dynamic mic. Born: “That’s where the

looks like a little rocket and even though you’d never see it in use, the disc sitting above the diaphragm proudly sports the shiny Shure logo. The shape of the KSM8 body flairs towards the top, similar to family-mate KSM9, and even though its slightly wider it still conveniently fits in a regular Shure clip.

At 330gm it’s 10 percent heavier than a 58 but it’s well balanced and feels just right in the hand.

CONTROLLED DYNAMICS

The dual-diaphragm is not there for its looks however, it’s there to solve problems. Proximity effect is probably the biggest one and it affects all directional mics. I love my SM58s and keep coming back to them, but when singers are right up on the mic the low frequencies overload and you have to filter them out. The high-mid presence peak is builtin, partly to try and cut through the mush but it adds harshness and colouration. The physical layout of the two diaphragms in the KSM8 allows it to behave

reverse air flow comes into play. We had to connect everything — the resistance network, the pneumatic shockmount, the specifically-sized air cavity to get the correct tune up — back together using four tubes which wrap around the cartridge.

“During alpha testing I had 20 units comprising sawnoff SM58 handles connected to a 3D printed part that we’d glued a 3D printed cartridge into. We put some foam around it and glued on some machined grilles. It wasn’t shockmounted, but acoustically it was there. We literally had a piece of cardboard on it for a frequency tune up issue — if you dropped it, it would have exploded.

“I took the 20 samples out to users — James Taylor, a couple of festival gigs, some broadcasters, a couple of local guys and some small venues — and asked them to put it on a background vocal, not touch it or take it out of the stand and tell me if it sounded good.

It’s not like anything else on the market, it’s super flat and doesn’t trigger compression and EQ in the way other dynamics do. I also wanted to make sure gain before feedback was going to be okay, because the KSM8 is a really textbook cardioid, whereas an SM58 is kind of super cardioid. 19 out of 20 people said it was like nothing else they’ve ever heard.

“We’re relishing this one for now. We definitely don’t have anything else in the works yet. We learnt a ton about dynamic mics in the process — the leverage we have, what makes dynamic microphones tick, how we can tweak, modify, change and replace parts.

We had to go back through the lab note books and re-learn how the Unidyne III worked, strip it down to its core and build it back up. I think it’s the beginning of some really cool dynamic microphones.”

like an omni (no proximity effect) at very low frequencies and gradually become cardioid around 100Hz. In use there’s still some added lows right on the mic but it’s well controlled and sounds natural rather than boomy. The low-frequency response is also extended and while some LF filtering may still be needed for vocals it will only be a touch, compared to what you’re used to. Like all mics, it will pop if provoked, but not unduly and according to Shure, the dual-diaphragm design delivers a lower level plosive than single-diaphragm designs.

The other benefit of controlling the polar pattern to limit proximity effect is its effect on the source as it moves away from the mic. Rather than disappearing up the frequency spectrum into thin air, the KSM8 retains clean and strong low-mids.

This extra clarity has allowed Shure to remove the familiar presence peak built into most dynamic vocal mics. The net effect is a mic that is essentially flat, has an extended frequency response, maintains AT 47

PROXIMITY OF DESIGN Reducing proximity effect in dynamic microphones isn’t a new pursuit. Credit must be given to ElectroVoice’s Variable-D design — found on mics like the RE20 — for providing the first solution in 1954 to the ‘problem’. Rather than a second diaphragm, it spaces separate ports for high and low frequencies down the body of the microphone to control the time at which each frequency range hits the rear of the diaphragm. By manipulating the delay

its response over a greater range of distances, and dramatically reduces proximity effect up close.

Basically, an entirely better microphone.

There’s more. Microphones turn threedimensional sounds into two-dimensional outputs and the accuracy of the sound arriving from the rear and sides is a big part of why some mics sound more natural than others. I mentioned that I love my 58s, but not for drum vocals because the kit sounds trashy in the drum vocal mic. If I use a mic with a more accurate off-axis response the kit can sound pretty good in the mic. Reinforcing acoustic music requires mics with good off-axis response to sound natural, but this hasn’t been as important for louder music, where everything’s close miked. Yet, as sound reinforcement systems have improved and IEMs have become popular the focus has turned towards higher quality microphones. The KSM8 has a pleasing SDC condenser like neutrality to its off-axis response but it has a sharper cardioid pickup pattern and much greater rejection. The pick-up pattern stretches evenly right across the top of the mic and it still sounds good some way down the side of the grille before dropping off sharply with excellent rejection at the rear.

Shure won the handling noise battle ages ago with its proprietary pneumatic shockmount system. It’s been tweaked for the KSM8 and joined by the new Diaphragm Stabilization System [patent-pending acronym alert - Ed] that gives extra protection from plosives and knocks. If you take the top off the KSM8 and tap the diaphragm assembly directly, then tap on the body of the mic, the difference in output levels is around 30dB and quite astounding when you hear the difference as an A/B comparison.

TESTING TIMES

My first live show using the mic was with Toni Childs at the Theatre Royal. Her mixer Damien Charles was interested in trying it so we set up both the KSM8 and an SM58 at the FOH desk. First impressions using it with a PA system were similar to using a condenser mic — at low-medium levels the more natural, detailed response was noticeable but at higher levels it wanted to get unstable earlier than its single-diaphragm cousins. However, it had an instantly appealing character and I wanted to hear it in use. We invited Toni to compare the two mics. She gave it a good test but concluded the AT 48

of different frequencies, EV’s Variable-D mics net similar effects to Shure’s Dualdyne, namely that proximity effect is reduced, better control over polar pattern, and the source is tonally consistent over different distances. Shure even tried a similar approach with the SM53 and SM54 handheld dynamics with rear entry ports halfway down the microphone handle. You only needed one port to be unobstructed for the microphone to work

regular SM58 was better suited to her voice and used her radio mic with a 58 head for the show. I hid my disappointment and used the KSM8 on the support act, Kate Lucas. Straight away I was hooked on the smoky, intimate tone it captured from her voice and wanted to hear more.

Bealiba Blues and Cruze a few days later was the perfect proving ground; 20 acts over two days ranging from timid young acoustic performers to old blues bands playing way too loud on stage.

The early acts were solo performers and small groups, and the KSM8 had me from the first act.

The bottom end is great; vocals were deep and rich in a large diaphragm condenser sort of way. The mid-range is flat so it doesn’t hurt up loud and the smooth high end made me think of ribbon mics or a slightly dark SDC. I didn’t notice any added sibilance and only registered a few pops over the weekend. Its off-axis response is condenser-like too, but it’s a different type of sound and the pickup pattern is much tighter than a condenser. It’s got terrific reach in front though; they can move around, in and out and it all sounds on-axis and neat. It’s also great to be able to unplug the mic either deliberately or accidentally without anything going bang. There are good reasons for keeping condensers confined to the studio but their sound quality on vocals has drawn performers to use them on live stages in recent years. The KSM8 may reverse that trend.

From the FOH desk the KSM8 had a smooth, natural character that made me want to turn it up — my highest compliment. I started to notice the MC’s SM58 was sounding harsh and boxy compared to the artists when they spoke. There were lots of mics on stage but I kept the KSM8 as the main vocal mic and it didn’t miss for male, female, breathy or strident. No channel EQ required for any act and the HPF stayed in its box for most of the day. A couple of voices had me rolling off just a little lows but they were acts that would normally require big cuts to the low frequencies.

The PA liked it too. I tune for the vocal mic because it’s doing the hardest job, but often end up cutting around 2-5kHz to avoid too much vocal bite at high levels. The KSM8 is so smooth the PA can be tweaked flatter for a sound that’s crisp rather than bitey, though it still cuts through when it has too. There was a few times I was concerned it wouldn’t cut through the noise of louder bands, but

properly, but Shure never produced a similar mic after they went out of production. Likewise, Electro-Voice has mostly limited the Variable-D design to its larger, broadcast microphones, with the bobble-headed RE16 handheld dynamic holding on as the lone exception. None of its newer line of handheld dynamic mics carry the feature.

it held its own. I was similarly unsure what would happen in the monitors at higher volumes on stage, some singers always seem to want more, and more again. Those that asked for more got a bit more, nothing went wrong and they didn’t ask again — can’t ask for more than that. I’d been thinking I’d still need an SM58 or Beta 58 for the loudest of shows, but there wasn’t a peep of feedback all weekend and I got a great reaction from the performers and audience alike. I tried to tell them it was the mic but they wouldn’t hear it.

SM58 V KSM8

I have been unfavourably comparing the SM58 to the KSM8 and I don’t mean to be unkind.

The SM58 is the sound of rock and has been my reference mic since the late 1970s — tuning PAs from the Corner Hotel to Madison Square Garden.

The comparison is valid because I reckon this is the mic that replaces the SM58 for live vocals. It may have taken years of development but the good folks at Shure have made a better type of dynamic mic.

It’s more than twice the price of a 58 so it won’t be an everyman product. Likely, the demand will start from professional users and spread to vocalists who carry their own mic, many of whom currently use handheld condensers. The KSM8 is not quite as easy to drive as a 58: at first blush it may not seem as stable and I suspect some amateur users will not immediately hear its improvements over regular dynamic mics because, like a sports car, it rewards good drivers. For me, I won’t be going back. I already consider it my new vocal mic but have a feeling it will take time to fully appreciate its exotic character. I just want to use it for vocals but if I had lots of them I’d try them on guitar amps and brass as well. There’d be studio applications too, of course; but that’s for another time.

Dynamic microphones are relatively simple objects with no circuitry and only the laws of physics to shape the sound. Shure has reimagined the handheld dynamic microphone and considering what its learned during the KSM8 development process, expect to see other inventive dynamic models in the future. Shure has really pulled one out of the hat with its dualdiaphragm KSM8 Dualdyne and I agree that it deserves to be held in the same regard as the company’s other major milestones. The future starts now and it’s exciting.

AT 49

REVIEW

KORG MINILOGUE

Polyphonic Analogue Synth Korg’s Minilogue packs a lot of analogue punch in a small package. Even its miniature OLED display does more than you’d think.

Review: Jason Hearn

NEED TO KNOW

LEVERAGING PERFORMANCE — Eschewing the traditional Pitch and Modulation wheels, the primary (and only) performance control is a diagonally oriented performance lever. While it provides a unique look in use it has substantial mechanical noise, a fair degree of lateral play and feels a touch too heavily spring loaded, being particularly resistant toward the extremes.

PRICE Expect to pay $899 CONTACT CMI: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

AT 50

PROS Gorgeous analogue sounds Eight voice modes, lots of sonic options Lightweight but well-built Mini-screen more than a gimmick

CONS Modulation matrix a little light on Delay can get a bit noisy

SUMMARY Korg has managed to pull of a miniature modern polyphonic analogue synth with aplomb. Minilogue is light without being a lightweight and does gorgeous analogue without being too regressive. While its modulation matrix lacks a little flexibility, a little motion sequence inventiveness can put you back on track.

NOTABLE KNOBS — The slightly-rubberised finish on the knobs feels fantastic, and any wobble is avoided by their chassis mounting. There’s also plenty of space for chubby-fingered tweakers.

Many controls have a precise 1024 steps of resolution, which is substantially higher than many legendary vintage synths. The resolution is essential for accurate recall of patch memories and to avoid stepping when swept. The largest knob controls VCF Cutoff, and will last the distance even in the roughest of tweaker’s hands. Retro flip-switches are reminiscent of your old, hi-fi tape deck — the ones that probably still work. In short, the controls on this synth feel professional.

ONBOARD OSCILLOSCOPE — The highresolution OLED oscilloscope display, albeit small, is legible at a wide range of viewing angles. It displays the output of the last voice triggered and is fascinating to watch. Far from a gimmick, for sound design beginners to seasoned synth heads exploring the architecture, its value can’t be underestimated. It lends the whole process a scientific bent, giving a visual result of your sound design ‘experiments’.

MAX MINI-KEY — Minilogue has the same scaled-down keybed found on Korg’s recent MS20 Mini and ARP Odyssey. As a kid, as well as tinkling ivories I was simultaneously playing the minikeys of a Casio CZ101. For me, adapting to non-full-sized keys has never been problematic. Since it is a poly synth, I’d rather three octaves of minikeys, in preference to two octaves of full-sized keys. Though it has a satisfying velocity response, the keyboard lacks aftertouch and, unusually, any opportunity to modulate elements of the synth engine via aftertouch events incoming via MIDI.

Picking up the Minilogue box, I was afraid it might be missing something… like an analogue synth. The ones in my rack are typically more of a workout, but the Minilogue is surprisingly light.

However, cruising through the factory presets showed it’s a sonic heavyweight. Presets covered the gamut of searing leads, sumptuous pads, wobbly poly-key patches, relentless punchy bass sounds and even some inventive percussive sequence patches. It could be perfect for the Uber-riding musician wanting to jam a real four-voice, polyphonic analogue synth in their backpack.

VOICE A LA MODE

The Minilogue has eight voice modes and a Depth control that adds functions specific to each mode.

Poly mode gives four-voice polyphony with the Depth control inverting chords in varying degrees.

In Duo mode, you get two-voice polyphony with pairs of voices stacked and detunable by up to 50 cents. For those seeking ultra-fat basses and leads, Unison mode is truly monstrous, stacking all voices with up to 50 cents of detuning. You can access additional sub-oscillators in Mono mode via the Depth control. Chord mode stacks the voices in various chord types selected via the Depth control.

Think instant, one-finger Detroit techno chords stabs. Delay mode provides a note repeat delay effect that reminds me of the note chase function of my Roland D5.

Unusually, the arpeggiator has been implemented as a separate voice mode.

Arpeggiators are typically independent of voice allocation, allowing the sound character to remain consistent regardless of whether or not it’s engaged.

If you’ve just rustled up a detuned bassline patch in Unison mode and wish to arpeggiate it, engaging Arp mode will lose that wonderful detuning. DAW MIDI arpeggiation means it won’t be a showstopper, but it’s an issue to consider for the laptop-free live band member. On the plus side, beyond the typical Up/Down/Up & Down variations, there are two Poly modes providing polyphonic chord triggering in addition to a few random modes. If you find yourself searching for a latch mode, oddly, it is missing.

Last of the modes — unique to Minilogue — is the Sidechain mode, which is best explained by example. Let’s say you’re holding down a three-note chord with your right hand, triggering a fourth note in the bass register ducks the volume of the chord by the amount selected on the Depth control.

MANUAL DRIVING

Minilogue passes any user-friendliness tests with flying colours; no ‘manual diving’ required.

The only part I found counter-intuitive was for functions where you’d normally be looking for a ‘Yes’ or ‘Execute’ button. Instead, rotate the Value encoder one step upward and the display prompts ‘Press Write’ to proceed. Dedicated Yes/ No buttons would have been easier. Also, some common ‘broad-stroke’ synth parameters, such as the portamento rate, are menu items rather than dedicated panel controls. Curiously, others

better reserved for a menu setting — for example, Velocity setting in the VCF — have panel controls.

On the whole, considering its diminutive size, Korg has excelled at finding the right balance of hands-on control versus price. Even the typically cumbersome act of naming a patch without QWERTY keys is rapid and implemented sensibly.

ANATOMY OF A VOICE

Minilogue’s voice architecture comprises dual VCOs, each offering saw, triangle and square waves with a waveshaping control specific to each. The Square wave waveshaper varies the duty cycle of the waveform which, combined with the LFO, provides pulse width modulation. With Triangle and Sawtooth waveforms engaged, additional harmonics are progressively introduced.

Both VCOs have four selectable octave pitch settings as well as fine control over two octaves in one-cent increments (±1200 cents). The VCO section also features oscillator cross modulation, hard sync and ring modulation which can be engaged in any combination. Vital for tonal interest, VCO2 can be modulated by the second envelope in tandem with cross modulation, sync and ring modulation. Still, it does feel like an opportunity was missed to create thick complicated sounds at the VCO level. The (single) LFO can only simultaneously modulate the wave shaping for both VCOs by the same amount. Independent modulation amounts would have been ideal!

Before hitting the VCF stage, the signal flow enters a mixer providing a means for balancing VCO1, VCO2 and a noise generator. The VCF low-pass filter sports two- or four-pole flavours that have a sweet and clean sound. Self-oscillation is easily introduced with the resonance set above 70%. The VCF modulation controls include the amount and polarity of the second envelope, and hard stop settings for key-track and velocity response. While the filter’s wide range produces plenty of textures, I did hanker for the added thickness of a drive stage.

Post-VCF, the signal enters a digital delay circuit with an auxiliary high-pass filter. While tweaking the rate in real-time invokes wild pitch modulations that get caught in the feedback circuit, I found the available delay rates a little short. With higher feedback settings, there was a definite onset of rising background noise. I found myself mostly using it to subtly add weight to sounds. Re-routing the integrated high-pass filter was very useful for shelving subsonics and even providing band-pass filtering in conjunction with the VCF. MODULATION MATRIX

In common with many modern analogue synths, while the VCO, VCF and VCA are truly analogue, the LFO and Envelope generators are generated digitally. While tweaking Minilogue, particularly with low VCF settings, I could occasionally hear clicking artefacts. Initially I dismissed it as a byproduct of voice-stealing when playing parts too complex for four voices, but it was also happening with some mono synth patches. Thankfully, a firmware update laid the issue to rest. Apparently AT 51

OLD BUT NEW LOOK — Korg blends modern chic and retro glory in Minilogue’s gracefullycurved, sandblasted aluminium front panel, generous serve of solid, slightly-rubberised pots, cheeky wooden back panel and gigworthy high impact plastic chassis. Those eye-piercing blue LEDs are completely absent. Korg opted for a gentle scheme of red indicators and backlighting, instead.

MONO BLOCK — While Minilogue has four voices, the output is mono only. Personally, this has never been a roadblock to enjoyment of other mono-output synths in my collection, and I actually prefer it in the studio. Others may not feel the same way.

the designer had to strike a balance between the fun of fast envelope stages and reducing this subsequent artefact. Minilogue’s envelopes are still lightning fast, making it a great candidate for sharp basses, up-front leads and synth percussion.

Although Minilogue has the sound of a heavyweight, it’s light on in the modulation matrix department. It only has a single LFO, a dedicated VCA envelope and a second assignable envelope.

What you see on the front panel is what you get, there are no modulation surprises nestled within the menus. The only modulation matrix possibility I haven’t covered is the three different destinations offered by the LFO: VCO pitch, VCF cutoff and the VCO wave shape. The LFO has three basic shapes with no sample-and-hold (noise) function; however, it can either be free-running or synced to MIDI clock.

The exception is the performance lever, which can be linked to 29 destinations (found within the menus). Only a single destination can be selected at a time, excluding it from patch morph tricks achieved by ganging multiple parameters.

There’s also no means of specifying a modulation range or polarity.

It’s not as deep as a sound designer might hope for, but considering the physical circuit paths required to interact with VCO/VCF/VCA on an analogue synth, those limitations are to be expected at this price.

Length, which changes pattern lengths from the 16step default to non-binary lengths for polyrhythmic experimentation. Step Resolution can be changed from 1/16th to longer note divisions, extending the maximum possible length beyond a single bar. Note and Motion data can be cleared independently, and Motion data tracks can be individually enabled or disabled — great for performance!

I prefer to consider the Motion sequence tracks as four tempo-clocked envelopes or LFOs and therefore a means of overcoming the modulation matrix limitations. Motion sequencing any parameter tied to a front panel control opens this synth up to rich, rhythmically animated sounds.

IN THE RIGHT SEQUENCE

After getting a great riff into the step sequencer, the natural instinct will be to play single notes on the keyboard to transpose the riff on the fly and follow chord changes. Unusually, it’s not possible, limiting the usefulness of this Minilogue hero-function.

My only other odd Minilogue moment was when integrating an external MIDI controller keyboard. The controller’s mod wheel was mapped to the noise amount! Even weirder, the sustain pedal affected the octave of VCO1. It appears the MIDI rulebook on the standards for continuous controller assignments was misplaced!

Where Minilogue shines as an inspiration and jamming tool is in its Note and Motion sequencing.

Rather than utilising a shared pool of sequences, Korg has wisely opted to store sequence data local to each patch.

With MIDI clock running from your DAW, you can immediately start sequencing notes on the fly by pressing Minilogue’s REC button and they will play back quantised and looped.

Motion sequencing any four parameters is equally accessible.

You can edit Note and Motion data like Step AT 52

Minilogue’s envelopes are lightning fast, making it a great candidate for sharp basses, up-front leads and synth percussion

MINI WINNER

While its presentation is excellent, build quality luxurious and sound quality superb, Minilogue’s modulation matrix doesn’t offer the depth to make it a go-to instrument for exotic sounds. However, with inventive use of the Motion sequencing function you can fake more modulation than what is on offer and push the unit further than you’d expect. All without having to crack the manual — it’s a very intuitive synth.

As a collector of vintage eight-voice poly synths like the Oberheim Matrix 1000/6R and Roland MKS80, I crave the sound of playing complex analogue poly parts across two hands without fear of premature voice stealing. With Minilogue, you’ll find yourself limited to simple chords and largely single-handed phrases.

Nevertheless, the Minilogue delivers massive, thick, detuned patches with ease. I found myself gravitating largely toward the Unison, Duo and Mono voice modes. The essential ingredients required to introduce subtle differences between the VCOs and create thick ensemble poly patches are missing. If anything, I found the four-voice Poly mode best for less-weighty sounds, introducing movement through cross modulation and sync.

For the money, there is a lot to like about the Minilogue — polyphonic analogue sound, beautiful build and extensive hands on control. I have no doubt it has all the charm required to win over those looking to acquire their first polyphonic analogue synth.

HEAR MINILOGUE IN ACTION Listen to sounds generated using Korg’s Minilogue and follow along with Jason as he crafts a nasty bass patch from scratch.

www.youtube.com/audiotechnologymag

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REVIEW

PRESONUS SCEPTRE Studio Monitors Presonus has added another classic configuration to its monitor range, this time the dual-concentric Sceptre.

Review: Brad Watts

I must admit to being surprised by the diversity of monitor designs bursting onto the market. Just when you’d think the standard two-way nearfield can’t be improved further, some smartypants comes up with yet another design angle offering further detail and an even better knack for transfering a mix effectively to external playback mediums. The recently reviewed EGG150 monitors is a good example of how a little ingenuity can shake up the audio world.

Which leads me, somewhat vaguely, to the monitors inhabiting my stands at the minute, the Presonus Sceptre series. Presonus has dabbled in a number of monitor design concepts itself, including the D’apolito Eris MTM range, and the ‘R’ series sporting ribbon top-end drivers, along with more conventional two-way designs for its entrylevel Eris and Ceres models. The Sceptre series follows yet another specific design ethic, this time embracing a dual concentric design, incorporated with the assistance of DSP. CIRCLING THE DRIVERS

NEED TO KNOW

Dual concentric drivers certainly aren’t the newest concept in driver design. Tannoy made its name ubiquitous across the UK with dual concentric monitors, and many other British brands such as Goodmans of England utilised dual concentric drivers successfully. If truth be told, I’m quite a fan of dual concentric drivers, and own both

PRICE Sceptre S6: $2116/pair Sceptre S8: $2470/pair CONTACT Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au

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PROS Detailed with good depth Non-fatiguing Wide stereo image Bang-for-buck

CONS Slightly smeared bottom end

SUMMARY Dual concentric designs have their immediate upsides, and Presonus has tapped Dave Gunness to filter out any residual anomalies with DSP. The result makes Sceptre an accurate monitor with a wide sweet spot, rounding out Presonus’ healthy range of monitor choices.

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DSP FOCUS — There are three DSPassisted alterations you can make to the frequency response of the monitors.

The high frequency driver adjustment provides -1.5dB and -4dB cut, or +1dB boost above 2kHz. A high-pass filter allows 60, 80, and 100Hz filtering with a 24dB/octave slope — for use with sub-bass units such as Presonus’s own Tremblor series. A final adjustment switch alters bass response for nearwall placement, and cuts -1.5, -3, and -6dB below 250Hz. Altering these filters is via a single push-button for each, which cycles through the four options (the fourth being a defeat of the EQ). An LED signifies where each filter is set, and the system remembers settings through power cycles, even when the IEC power cable is disconnected.

STEP TO IT — The Sceptre’s rear panel includes both XLR and 6.5mm jack inputs, along with an attenuation control, which is continuous rather than stepped, unfortunately.

POWER UP — Power to each driver is 90W and supplied using Class -D amplification. This follows for both the sixand eight-inch models, with SPL sitting at 109dB and 116dB respectively.

the aforementioned monitors. Here’s why. Dual concentric drivers — where the high frequency driver is placed at the centre of the low frequency driver — don’t suffer from time alignment issues.

Instead of two separate drivers pushing disparate frequencies toward you from two physical points, all frequencies are projected from a single point source. In other words, all frequencies are timealigned, and therefore, phase-aligned.

There is a disadvantage inherent in using dual concentric drivers, and that’s distortion of the high frequency driver due to movement and waves created by the low-end driver. Presonus has tackled this anomaly with DSP and a horn dispersement guide for the top-end. The digital smarts are courtesy of Dave Gunness of Fulcrum Acoustic. Dave is responsible for speaker designs for Electro-Voice and EAW, (Gunness Focusing), and has penned many a considered white paper for the AES. The DSP technology has been dubbed Temporal Equalization, or TQ for short.

The approach is to implement finite impulse response (FIR) filters to eliminate horn reflections and to correct linear time and amplitude anomalies. This works in tandem with Presonus’ driver design to alleviate issues connected with the AT 56

dual concentric concept. Factors including highpass, low-pass, and parametric filters, and delay, are all used to pull the two driver segments into line, as it were. With these features combined, Presonus has craftily birthed its own slant on coaxial drivers, and entitled the system ‘CoActual’.

DOES SCEPTRE RULE?

So there’s the background, but how do the Sceptre monitors stack up? To begin with, we’ll look at the overall build. Aside from the coaxial drivers, the cabinet design is fairly predictable: a black vinyl-covered MDF cabinet with a plastic front baffle incorporating an elliptical front-port. The front baffle surface also incorporates a recessed surround, presumably to alleviate the effects of diffraction. I much prefer front porting, firstly as I’d rather anything the monitor has to provide being directed toward me, and secondly because the monitors can be placed closer to the rear wall of the listening environment. Both the eight- and six-inch driver models were deposited in my studio for appraisal, which being a good 80-plus cubic metres, suited the eight-inch models more-so (but give me an eight-inch driver over a six any-day).

In listening, I couldn’t help but back off the

high-end drivers of the six-inch models by 1.5dB. By comparison, the eight-inch models sounded far more balanced with all EQ options defeated.

The crossover frequency is a typical 2.2kHz for the six-inch and 2.4kHz with the eight-inch models.

Imaging is very good indeed, and exactly what I’d expect from a dual concentric design, offering a wide phantom image. If anything, I found the high-end detail to be slightly on the aggressive side. Not painful, just very capable of exposing anything nasty you may have lurking in a mix.

Sharp transients didn’t attack me and I happily listened to a variety of material and mixes via these monitors without experiencing any degree of auditory fatigue.

The Sceptres provide an extremely detailed image, with the depth required to ascertain important mixing decisions. I did find the bottom end to be a little lacklustre. Not that there’s a lack of bass, just that I feel elliptical porting can smear low frequencies. For the price, the Sceptres present as extremely good value, and would compete admirably with more expensive designs. Worth auditioning if you’re on a budget, just be sure to evaluate alongside more pricey designs. You may find you’re quite surprised.

AT 57

REGULARS

Last Word with

Michael Carnes, Founder of Exponential Audio

After leaving Lexicon, Michael started up Exponential Audio, a developer of plug-in reverbs and effects.

Exponential Audio’s plugins are used by lots of top music engineers, and the development of surround, and Atmos and Aurocompatible reverbs make them a favourite for post production.

AT 58

I spent 25 years at Lexicon.

I was hired in as a senior engineer. It was the early days of workstations, and we made a monster called Opus.

We were in competition with companies like New England Digital, Waveframe and AMS Audiofile. All these hardware based, hard disk-operating, editing and mixing systems. It was bleeding edge. We were out front of the market and would beat each other bloody. Opus, for its day — talking the late ’80s — was really amazing. For the low, low price of US$200,000 you could get a 12x8 mixing console and a 12x8 editing system.

Anybody’s laptop will do better than that now.

I worked on Opus’ operating system and automation system, eventually managing the project for a couple of years. I begged to be taken off it, and moved into the reverb world. The PCM80 was my first.

I finished up our time in Massachusetts on the 960L, by then I was Principal Engineer. They asked us to move to Salt Lake City, and from that point on I was the sole reverb developer responsible for the IP. I did the PCM96, the 96 Surround, and all those plug-ins. I had people to help with ports and testing, but it was always a small group.

It’s been years since I’ve written one, but I could do a Lexicon algorithm in my sleep. There were certain approaches to the ‘Lexicon sound’. A lot of which came out of getting around the artefacts that arose from trying to do a reverb with pathetic hardware processors.

The issue you mostly encountered was room modes — you’d set up a recirculating delay and various old tricks — it’ll sing like crazy if you don’t actively manage it. My predecessor, David Griesinger, came up with a lot of those tricks to essentially keep it from getting nasty. That was the ‘Lexicon sound’; you could hear modulation, little pitch effects, all sorts of other strange things going on.

For the generation that grew up mixing in the ’80s and ’90s, those artefacts became part of their sound. Almost to a man, they’ll say, ‘That’s natural, that’s depth.’ Nothing could be farther from the truth. You go into a real hall and it never sounds anything like that.

I made a very conscious decision not to emulate the ‘Lexicon sound’. Largely I had to be the ‘Lexicon sound’ for a long time, and while I did a number of things to reduce those artefacts, it always had to sound that way. I knew there were better and more natural ways to do things, but wasn’t allowed to; you were a defender of that sound. It was wonderful to not have to do that any longer.

The ‘right’ sound depends on when you started listening to hit records. If it was the late ’70s and early ’80s, it was the Lexicon 224, and there’s never been anything better. If it was the late ’80s and early ’90s, it was the 480L, nothing ever better.

The 960L still had the Lexicon sound but was a departure in a number of ways. For people that started out on that, it was their sound, but was a betrayal to anyone who worked on the older stuff. People are very vocal about their tools.

There are some very successful, established mixers who keep their ears fresh and are not bound by the way they did things before, but it’s hard to escape that. You sit in your room with your old box and dial up a few presets, you’re done thinking about it and move on.

There are a few people who’ve endeavoured to emulate that ‘Lexicon sound’. Plug-ins like the LX480, and some from Universal Audio. There’s nothing creative there, and they typically don’t have the full flexibility of those boxes.

To the best of my knowledge, when I left Lexicon, there really wasn’t anybody to step in. It’s largely stuck where I left it. The old line goes, there’s graveyards full of indispensable people. I’m not posing myself as indispensable, but I think Harman’s interests lie elsewhere. The studio business takes a lot of attention, and when you’re a huge multi-billion dollar company, a bunch of ‘whiny’ mixers in their studios are more bother than they’re worth. ‘Whiny’ mixers are the guys I like.

Modern reverbs are built on only a handful of architectures.

There’s the convolution side, which has never been of any interest to me. I’ll give you the rant later. The other architecture, algorithmic reverb, goes back to an old paper published by Schroeder 40 years ago. Everybody’s got a better way to do it than the original paper, and he would be the first to recognise that. But if you look in the DNA, you’ll still find parts of the genome that hark back to that paper.

It’s a field with plenty of trade secrets. I have lots of my own and anyone else in the business has theirs. Who knows, we may have all figured out each other’s secrets. I think they all sound different enough.

I have two different architectures that go in different directions. The Phoenixverb architecture is designed to be natural and unobtrusive. My background is in classical composition. I’ve spent an awful lot of time in concert halls listening to chamber music and symphonies. I know what a good room sounds like from listening to good and bad attributes. The whole point of Phoenixverb was to be able to completely lather the thing in reverb and not really notice it.

The dry sound gradually stages into the reverb in a way that it feels ‘in a place’ rather than reverb that’s glued on.

R2 is not a Lexicon reverb, because I get there by different means, but it’s intended to bring back a little of that. The tail is more active, and if you crank things the right way you’ll hear some pitch in the reverb tail and hear it modulate and swirl around. That’s what some people call depth. It’s the farthest thing from it — you don’t hear depth — but it does have some tasty business going on in the back side. Depending on the material, it can be very flattering for a nylon string guitar or singer, when you have a sparse mix and a standout solo you want to drench.

Next issue, Michael gives us the rant on convolution reverb and what’s up with hardware vs software reverbs.

AT 59

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