AudioTechnology App Issue 36

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SPOT THE DIFFERENCE Every M5 Matched Pair has been carefully made, tested and selected together, to ensure a variation of less than 1dB of sensitivity between each microphone.

You won’t find a difference.

Because there isn’t one.

RODE M5 Compact 1/2 inch Condenser Microphone AT 2

www.rode.com

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

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

Art Direction Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au Graphic Designer Daniel Howard daniel@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au Subscriptions Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au

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

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info@alchemedia.com.au www.audiotechnology.com.au All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2017 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. 22/02/2017.

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COVER STORY

Catalytic Converter: Will Apogee’s Second Gen Symphony Change your Mind?

Ball Park Music Record Live to 4-track Tape

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Mix Masters: Making Lemonade with Beyoncé

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38

Recording Tips: Tracking Live with Dope Lemon

dbx 580 Microphone Preamp AT 6

16

ISSUE 36 CONTENTS

50

Outback Acoustics: Recording in the Bungle Bungles

34

Arena Tips: Tight Bass

Audix Performance Series Wireless

14

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GENERAL NEWS

ADAM AUDIO S SERIES Adam Audio has introduced its new flagship line of nearfield, midfield and main monitors called the S Series. The product family is comprised of three models — the S2V, S3H, and S3V, and the larger S5V and S5H. Innovations unique to the S Series include a completely new and efficient long-throw Extended Linear Excursion (ELE) woofers, onepiece dome/cone hybrid mid-range driver for better dispersion, low distortion and power handling, new waveguides for the tweeter, and a high-power

DSP engine based on the latest generation of SHARC chips. The S Series also debuts Adam Audio’s S-ART tweeter, the latest iteration of the renowned accelerated ribbon design. The cabinets of the entire S Series are constructed from thick vibration-resistant material for cleaner sound even at higher SPLs. Rounded edges help minimise edgediffraction effects.

Federal Audio: 0404 921 781 or sales@federalaudio.com.au

ANTELOPE AUDIO ZEN STUDIO+ Antelope Audio has released the Zen Studio+ which will make its debut at Pro Light + Sound in Guangzhou later this month. The interface includes 12 built-in mic preamps, Thunderbolt connectivity, and a range of hardware-based FPGA effects in a single 1U rack unit. Further expandability comes by way of ADAT and S/PDIF inputs. Dedicated re-amp outputs can be found on the front of the unit, as well as headphone outputs and high dynamic range monitor outputs. Zen Studio+ also features built-in talkback capability and a customisable routing

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matrix. As always, Antelope totes its second-tonone 64-bit clocking as a major asset to the Zen Studio+. The interface can be controlled via a desktop app for OS X or Windows, allowing access to a full customisable signal routing matrix and up to four independent mixes for monitoring and full control of the FPGA effects. An iOS/Android app gives you the option to turn your smartphone’s microphone into the talkback device.

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

ISOACOUSTICS ISO-PUCK At NAMM 2017 IsoAcoustics released the new Iso-Puck — the same concept as the brand’s popular monitor stands, yet in a low-profile, flexible, scalable version. The little puck-like discs are placed under your speaker to achieve the same isolation. An Iso-Puck is pretty small — just 3cm tall and 6cm in diameter. Its round shape makes positioning a bit easier than with stands, especially on varied surfaces like the narrow space on top of a console meter bridge. The multipart isolation construction of the Iso-Puck

lets it move to isolate and manage the energy in line with the same isolation concepts employed in other IsoAcoustics products. The Pucks feature a flange suction cup on the top to hold tight the the speaker surface, as well as a bottom suction cup flange for the supporting surface. Energy is transferred to the core of the multipart isolator in between which resists lateral movement and offers better isolation.

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

PMC MB3 & BB6 MONITORS NAMM 2017 saw PMS add two high-end speakers to its Main Monitor Range. The new MB3 and BB6 are ultra-high-res active monitors with digital and analogue inputs, designed for freestanding of soffit-mounted use in recording, mixing, mastering and outside broadcast applications. Both monitors have PMC’s 34mm soft-dome tweeter and 75mm fabric mid-range driver couples with the Radian LF driver built specifically for PMC’s ATL (Advanced Transmission Line) designs. The exposed skeleton design of the LF drivers helps dissipate unwanted

heat so they can be driven for longer periods without affecting definition. Both models are available as single- or twin-cabinet versions, with the latter providing smoother in-room response and 3dB more headroom. Dedicated centre-channel versions are available for multi-channel systems.

PMC’s Control 1200 and Power 2400 Class D amplifiers give plenty of headroom.

Interdyn: (03) 9426 3600 or www.interdyn.com.au

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LIVE NEWS

dLIVE C CLASS Allen & Heath adds to the dLive product family with a compact range of surfaces and mix racks called dLive C Class. It’s founded on XCVI, the same 96kHz FPGA core which drives the flagship dLive S Class mixers, and also shares its DEEP processing architecture. The new range includes the ultracompact C1500, the first 19-inch rack-mountable dLive surface. Another two twin-screen control surfaces, the C2500 and C3500, join the ranks.

The C Class surfaces use the dLive Harmony UI with gesture touch control via 12-inch capacitive

screens and colour-mapped rotary controls. There are three new MixRacks in the series — CDM32, CDM48, and CDM64. These provide capacity for 128 inputs with full processing and 16 dedicated stereo FX returns, plus a fully configurable 64 mix bus architecture with full processing on all mix channels. Each surface and rack has a 128 channel I/O port supported by an array of networking cards.

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

BEYERDYNAMIC TG 500 Beyerdynamic has introduced the TG 500 wireless microphone system designed for live and install applications. With five pre-configured sets, the TG 500 is an all-rounder with a package for every need. The vocal set comes with either the dynamic TG V50 handheld transmitter that’s ideal for singing and performance, or the TG V56 condenser handheld transmitter that’s more suited for presentations. The TG L58 lavalier microphone allows unobtrusive positioning of the mic that’s perfect for lecture presenters. The ideal companion

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for theatre productions is the headworn set with the TG H34 headset microphone. The instrument set with included WA-CGI instrumental cable is ideal for professional miking of guitar and bass.

The TG 500 series comes with a 19-inch rack mount kit in which you can mount two 9.5-inch single receivers side by side. If you want to use multiple channels, a dual receiver with integrated antenna splitter is also available.

Syntec: 1300 467 968 or info@syntec.com.au

dBTECH DEBUTS B.H SERIES & NEW OPERA MODELS dBTechnologies has a new powered speaker family dubbed the B.H. Series. With an 8-, 10-, 12- and 15-inch model, all four have a one-inch compression driver and built-in Class D amps that produce impressive SPLs (up to 126.5dB for the 15-inch cabinet). The design features an asymmetrical horn for a wide and uniform throw pattern. There’s DSP onboard with which you can choose EQ presets Flat or Boost. The cabinets are nice and lightweight (from 6.3kg to 17.2kg) and can be used horizontally as monitors or vertically for FOH via the pole

mount. Secondly, dBTech renewed its Opera lineup with new 10-, 12-, and 15-inch models. With 1200W peak power and unique acoustic design, the trio work well for both playback and live music applications. All three models are equipped with a Class D 600W amplifier. The DSP has FIR filters for coherent audio performance and uniform coverage.

You get two input channels on each cabinets, two selectable output channels, and eight EQ presets.

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

QSC SINGLE-BOX CARDIOID SUB QSC’s newest family member is the K Cardioid subwoofer. Typically cardioid subwoofer configurations are obtained by stacking two subs on top of each other in opposing directions.

The K Cardioid Subwoofer represents a first-inclass single-box powered cardioid subwoofer solution that’s targeted to the entertainment and installation markets. With innovative design, 1000W Class D QSC amplification and advanced DSP in a single compact enclosure, the new sub has dual 12-inch long-excursion drivers arranged

in a 6th order bandpass chamber. These elements combine to produce 15dB more output at the front of the cabinet than at the rear. The cabinet is designed to be highly portable with aluminium handles and rear-mounted castors. Two M20 sockets are provided to accept a 35mm speaker pole in either vertical or horizontal deployment of the sub. The K Cardioid Subwoofer is expected to have a street price of US$1399.

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

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SOFTWARE NEWS

LANDR & NI TEAM UP LANDR and Native Instruments? This is one of those partnerships that makes you go “huh?”, then “ohhh.” The premise of this partnership is to offer mastering for the Stems format. Stems mastering is not available directly on LANDR’s website, where files created in Native Instruments’ free Stem Creator application can be dragged and dropped straight onto landr.com for instant, algorithmic polishing. Introductory price is US$9.99 per master.

It makes sense. Unless you’re super pedantic about your stems, you usually wouldn’t send it off to a

deluxe mastering house for final touches. Perhaps this is a glimpse into how algorithmic mastering will come into its own (for the skeptics of non-human processing). Stems allows DJs and producers to create spontaneous edits, remixes, and more, by making the elements of a track available independently. A Stems file contains a track split into four musical elements: a drums stem, a bassline stem, a melody stem, and a vocal stem, for example.

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

CONSOLE 1 GETS UAD SUPPORT Softube’s Console 1 hardware/software plug-in control system has ben given a software update that adds support for selected UAD Powered Plugins. The update is available for free if you own the first-generation Console 1 system as of February 16. Console 1 lets you quickly switch between tracks and control EQ, compressor, gate, and more, mixing with the sound of the included Console 1 SSL SL 4000 E emulation developed in collaboration with SSL. Now, thanks to the software update, you AT 12

can also customise the channels to fit your needs with over 60 Console 1 system-ready plug-ins available from Softube and Universal Audio, adding brands like Chandler Limited, Fairchild, and Helios to the range of products that can be used with Console 1 systems — all pre-mapped and easily selectable from the Console 1 software, so no MIDI mapping is necessary.

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

TC RELEASES VSS3 REVERB PLUG TC Electronics has made its System 6000 hardware reverb available in plug-in form. The company is toting VSS3 Native Stereo Source Reverb as the most realistic and versatile reverb plug-in ever made for your DAW — big claim. But TC has made a name for itself in the world of reverbs so it’s not without weight. The VSS3 has been designed to retain the impressive ambience the System 6000

is known for with a wealth of tweaking possibilities that makes it ideal for film and post production.

The GUI is simple and unassuming, and the plug-in works on all major DAWs including Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase, and more.

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

EASTWEST MEETS FISHMAN Virtual instrument developer EastWest has teamed up with guitar electronics manufacturer Fishman to create a series of virtual instruments specifically for MIDI guitarists. Utilising Fishman’s TriplePlay technology, the virtual sounds are selected and designed to take advantage of the complex and unique waveforms produced by a guitar’s vibrating strings. Initial sound offerings will cover a wide range of musical styles and instrument families.

“We have been testing MIDI guitar systems for years, and the TriplePlay is the best in class,” says EastWest Producer Doug Rogers. “So EastWest and Fishman worked together, re-programming

the instruments and making adjustments to the software specifically for the Fishman TriplePlay.

It all works incredibly well. In fact, it opens up a whole new world for guitar players who have been grappling with decades-old technology. I know many of our users consider themselves to be guitar players first, so they will now be able to compose using their preferred instrument, instead of a keyboard.”

Dynamic Music: (02) 9939 1299 or info@dynamicmusic.com.au Fishman: www.fishman.com

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TUTORIAL

Tutorial: Anatole Day

I’m always aiming to mix in big rooms with big PAs. I love to move a lot of air. Pushing out a wave that’s physically moving people is pretty cool; that’s a lot of power at your finger tips.

I like my bottom end. If I go to a gig and there’s not enough, I feel disappointed, like it’s underpowered and needs a kick in the guts.

I also know first hand just how quickly bottom end can get away from you if you’re not careful, especially in large rooms.

I cut my teeth doing a Queen tribute show. We went from playing RSLs to doing arenas across Canada and the US within 12 months. These were often big ice hockey arenas holding 5000-6000 people and it was a steep learning curve for me.

One thing that consistently plagued me in those early days was bottom end.

Getting bottom end under control was always a struggle. But I found that as soon as you get the kick and bass working together then you could build your mix on those foundations. If you didn’t tighten that up, then one kick hit will merge into the next and just build up from there.

Before you know it, you have a constant rumble without any definition.

It’s so important that I quickly moved past caring about how annoying I might have seemed to others. My drum tech was sick of the sight of me. I had him on the kick drum so long at soundcheck he had to swap feet. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, but if I don’t get it tight I’m going to hate the mix, then everyone else will hate the show.’

I would spend nearly an hour prior to every arena show just getting the kick and the bass to sit together correctly. As soon as I got that combination tight, almost everything else would sit where it was supposed to.

After my Queen tribute tour of North America I’ve subsequently been on a stadium tour with Guy Sebastian as support for Taylor Swift. It was a dream come true. I would love to do stadium touring my entire life. There are a lot of challenges that come with it, but when you get it right there’s nothing like it — you get a lump in your throat, take a step back and soak it in.

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MIC CHOICE, RIGHT PLACE The right mic in the right place is always the first place to start.

Kick: I’ll mostly use a Sennheiser e901 inside the kick to get more of the beater and an e602 to get more of the sound of the drum.

Bass: I’ll run a DI and usually a Sennheiser MD421 on the cabinet.

With two mics or a mic/DI combination, always check for phase — pop the button in and out and listen, it can make a huge difference.

0.002 CHANNEL DELAY Most digital consoles will allow you to delay individual channels. This is good news when you need to line up two lines from the same source. Delay one mic slightly so they’re hitting at the same time, which is helping with your phase. The rule of thumb is 1-foot difference between sources equals 1ms of delay.

PHASE SET TO STUN Phase is especially important for low end. When two sources are out of phase you can really lose the guts of the sound. Even if your mic placement is exactly the same night-in/night-out it’s still always worth hitting the phase flip button on one of the two source channels to hear which alternative is best.

FURTHER READING Head to AT’s website and search for Howard Page’s ‘Shelve the Low End’ article. If you find that interesting then graduate to Howard’s in-depth tutorial on how to tune a large-scale PA. Howard Page: “Many large venues around the world have an RT60 in the low frequencies that’s so long it will tend to ‘hold on’ to low notes, and in the case of a kick drum this hold will extend beyond the typical 4/4 timing of most rock music. The result is a complete mess — boomy, unintelligible low-frequency energy that ruins the show experience for the audience.

When setting up the balance between the low frequency elements of the main sound system and the sub-bass systems it’s vital the balance be very carefully matched. The sub-bass systems should only ever be set as an extension of the main system low-end, not as a separate (often louder) entity.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

STUDIO

We caught up with Anatole Day earlier in the year when he was out with Guy Sebastian on his regional tour.

HEADPHONES

50Hz

STAGE

NOTCH EQ Every room is different and will have its own sonic idiosyncrasies. Certain frequencies will linger and build up in the room, which contributes to a lack of solidity in your sound. Spend the time finding which frequencies you need to tame to maintain a solid response from your bass guitar and kick.

WIRELESS

INSTALL 125Hz

SYSTEM EQ Once the rest of the band is in the mix you can use the system graphic EQ to further tame rogue frequencies in the low-mids and LF. Remember: we all love low end but not at the expense of punch and hearing the fundamental notes of the bass guitar.

Audio

NOW DISTRIBUTED BY CMI MUSIC & AUDIO P/L CONTACT US AT CMI@CMI.COM.AU

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REVIEW

APOGEE SYMPHONY I/O MK II Professional Converter We compare the second rendition of Apogee’s flagship AD/DA converter against its professional competition, and run it off against a prosumer interface to hear what’s missing.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Preshan John

PRICE Starting at $4195 for 2x6 CONTACT Sound Distribution: (02) 8007 3327 or www. sounddistribution.com.au

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PROS Sounds measurably incredible Convenient touchscreen Simple calibration Keeps its cool Built-in Thunderbolt

CONS None, if you can afford it

SUMMARY If you’re wanting to upgrade, Apogee’s Symphony I/O Mk II offers improvements over its predecessor by way of the full-featured touch screen, better ventilation and updated I/O cards. If you’re looking for uncompromising, pristine conversion, the I/O Mk II leaves nothing to be desired.

Conversion. One step in the grand scheme of a recording signal chain, but a giant leap between the fluid domain of voltages and alternating current to the precise, unforgiving world of 1s and 0s, and back again.

Somewhere in your audio journey, you may or may not arrive at the point where you place a heck of a lot of importance on that leap. The machine that breaks down the organic makeup of your sound, teleporting the bits, and reconstructing them, will be treated with the same suspicion as if it was your own body on the line.

Another factor likely to affect your standing is the gear you already own. If your outboard rack looks like Millionaire’s Row, you’re not going to make everyone catch the bus to work. You’ll want to plug all those Neves and APIs into a device that’ll accurately capture their desirable nuances.

The Apogee name has been synonymous with high-quality conversion, ever since the company devised standalone converters. Even the novel Apogee GiO and tiny Apogee One sell themselves on the premise of ‘industry-leading Apogee conversion’. They may very well be the best there is in pedal board or single-channel interface conversion, but there are different levels at play here, and the absolute best Apogee has to offer can be found in the new flagship Symphony I/O Mk II.

kept out of sight and requiring little to no TLC. Kinda like a wi-fi router. Once it’s set up and doing its job, you don’t want to interact with it much.

That’s why Avid’s HD I/O has nothing more than a Power button and LEDs on the front. Apogee’s touch-screen addition assumes the Symphony may be placed within arm’s reach of the user, which — like the Thunderbolt inclusion — shows the company considers laptop-toting producers part of the professional connoisseur category.

You hear much of the same detail, there’s plenty of quality and resolution in both, but the Symphony presents a more convincing, bigger, wider, more real sonic image

ORDER’S UP

Apogee has moved with the times, and abandoned PCIe cards altogether. The previous incarnation split out to it’s possible connections via Symphony PCI ports, with its optional ThunderBridge box required to get you into a new Mac. The Mark II now natively ships with two Thunderbolt 2 ports onboard. There are also two other interface cards — the already available Pro Tools HD variant, and an impending Waves Sound Grid one. As well as connectivity, you can select I/O modules relevant to your needs, with the choice of 2x6, 8x8, 16x16, and 8x8 + 8MP with eight built-in mic preamps.

If you get the preamp model (also the most expensive), all gain, polarity, filter and pad settings can be controlled from the onboard touch-screen.

Crucially, Apogee has kept its modular upgrade promise. There are two revamped Mk II I/O cards — 8x8 and 16x16 analogue — to update the older ones with slightly better specs. However, the original Mk I versions are still compatible. The only cards to fall off the wagon are the two 16 analogue x 16 digital variants.

The Symphony I/O Mk II has a number of upgraded features over its predecessor, not the least of which is a slicker chassis. The Mk I had two knobs and two headphone outputs, the Mk II has just one of each. Other differences include the new touch-screen, and the air intake port on the front for better ventilation. Apogee says the Mk II also has a quieter fan that engages less often thanks to improved airflow within the unit. Good news if you plan to keep the unit on your work desk and not tucked away in a back-room rack.

It’s intriguing why Apogee has chosen to revamp the front panel with a touch-screen. Units like these are often designed as set-and-forget workhorses,

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

If you think an expensive gear purchase entitles you to a prestigious unboxing experience, don’t buy the Symphony I/O Mk II — it’ll tell you warm fuzzy feelings are for sissies. Flip open the cardboard box flaps and you’ll uncover not much more than the power cable, a skinny user guide, and the unit itself.

No Thunderbolt cable, no break-out cable, no extra goodies, not even a ‘Congratulations, you now own an expensive converter’ fly sheet.

It’s very black, and very heavy. The front panel is extremely minimal, and if you didn’t notice the 4.3inch TFT touch-screen you’d think the only control was for Power. Once it’s on, the touch screen comes to life with vivid colour and it’s pleasantly responsive. You can slide between multiple pages and do most of your tweaks right from the screen — monitor all your inputs and outputs, trim and calibrate line levels without getting the screwdriver out, adjust your output levels, select what parameter the big knob controls, etc.

WORTH IT?

Perhaps you’re of the mindset that it’s absurd owning a unit like this in today’s world. Maybe your recording system consists of a single interface with sufficient I/O for your daily work. I can empathise with you.

I have a $600 Focusrite Saffire interface I lug around in my portable rack. It gives me 18 inputs.

That includes eight built-in preamps, digital expandability, multiple headphone outputs, plus I didn’t have to buy pricey Thunderbolt cables and break-out cables to start using it. And, to be honest, it sounds pretty good. That said, I don’t use much

more than its computer interface and outputs, as I send my Focusrite ISA pres into the conversion of my Universal Audio 4-710D, hooked up to my Saffire via ADAT. The market is full of great-value interfaces like these. So who on earth shells out over $5k for a box that’ll give you just eight channels of no-frills, linelevel conversion? No preamps. No input DSP. Just conversion. Oh, and a headphone output.

LET’S TALK SPECIFICS

Before getting bogged down in the whole ‘What’ll this give me that I don’t already have’ debate, let’s crunch some numbers and find what makes the Symphony I/O MkII stand out on paper.

Dynamic range is a major factor in what makes a professional converter ‘professional.’ You pay through the nose for a video camera that’ll give you lots of detail in both the highlights and shadows.

Same deal with audio gear. A peek at the specs for my middle-of-the-range Saffire interface shows the dynamic range for an input channel to be 109dB. In contrast, the dynamic range of a line input on the Symphony I/O Mk II is 122dB. Logarithmic scale or not, that’s a big difference. Frequency response?

The Saffire covers the auditory spectrum from 20Hz to 20kHz with ±0.1dB deviation throughout.

The Symphony’s specs state an extended spectrum of 1Hz to 20kHz with half of that; ±0.05dB. Output specs are just as important — you want to monitor with über clarity too. The Saffire’s line outputs have a dynamic range of 108dB, while the Symphony boasts 126dB. These numbers, ladies and gentlemen, are what you pay for.

Obviously comparing apples to oranges will reveal substantial contrast. What about apples vs apples?

As far as high-end conversion is concerned, Pro Tools HD systems are up there with the best.

Avid’s HD I/O converter box went up against the Symphony I/O Mk II during our review tests — a much ‘fairer’ comparison than with the Saffire. Its line input ADC dynamic range is stated as 122dB; neck and neck with the Symphony. Frequency response deviates slightly less than the Symphony at ±0.03dB, but that’s within 20Hz-20kHz. Digitalto-analogue conversion falls 1dB behind at 125dB. SYMPHONY OF BINARY

Numbers aside, the Symphony sounds amazing.

The first time I ever ran it up, I was immediately struck by the clarity of the Symphony’s outputs.

It doesn’t take a pro to appreciate all that glorious detail coming out of your headphones, or monitors. Compared to the Saffire, the soundscape presents with more dimension and space. Highs are smoother, lows are cleaner, and there’s more distinction between tracks in busy mixes. It has a huge impact on tracking, to a large extent removing any disconnect between playing and hearing it back. While a lot of us focus on getting the best quality into a DAW, the outputs commonly seem to be the area of least attention for prosumer interface manufacturers. They’re much more important than that. As a side note, the headphone DAC and current drive technology is actually copped from Apogee’s mini headphone DAC, Groove. It seems AT 17

the little guys can be ‘industry-leading’ after all.

The other factor crucial to modern tracking environments is latency. While interfaces like the Saffire use direct monitoring to skirt the issue, Apogee is beholden to a much more rigorous set of standards, where users like to track through software at the lowest possible latency. Good news here, the latency is extraordinarily low. Apogee quoted its best number as 1.35ms roundtrip when going hell for leather in Logic at 96k with a 32 sample buffer. We achieved bang on the same internal latency number in Pro Tools, on an older Mac laptop, over Thunderbolt, without the option card — pretty awesome.

The Apogee Symphony I/O Mk II’s soft-clipping feature is supposed to sound better than just a levels insurance gizmo. I tested this by slamming excessive level into the line-ins. It responded in a musical fashion up to a point, beyond which it started sounding like the limiter was trying too hard, marked by gooey breakup and unpleasant harmonics. ‘Get-it-right-at-the-source’ gain staging gets my vote in this case, and with such high-end conversion you’re not losing anything by being conservative with your input levels anyway.

Apogee’s first Symphony had some known issues with overheating so I set up a long-haul recording test with the Mk II to put the Symphony’s improvements in this area to the test. Recording eight tracks into Pro Tools at 96k saw it keep its cool, even when wedged between other rack units.

It yielded rock solid reliability throughout the marathon. Eventually Pro Tools carked it after 22 hours, bringing the 163GB recording to an end.

And when it did switch on, the Symphony’s fan was appropriately quiet.

I’M AN AVID APOGEE FAN

As mentioned, we conducted as accurate a recording experiment as we could devise between the Symphony I/O Mk II and the Avid HD I/O. We used passive Y-cable splits to keep transformers out of the equation (level loss didn’t really concern us considering we were comparing conversion), pre-calibrated levels with pink noise and set up parallel Pro Tools systems. Instruments recorded were drums, upright piano and acoustic guitar.

After syncing the files up and blindly A/B-ing the tracks, it became painfully obvious that the view from the top doesn’t differ much from product to product. Much to my relief, and the justification of my existence as a pro audio reviewer, I managed to consistently distinguish between the two recordings thanks to an ever-so-subtle sizzle in AT 18

JUDGE FOR YOURSELF Still not convinced? You can listen to and compare the unadulterated recordings by downloading them from our website. Compare the multi-track mix (minor level balances, no EQ, compression or effects) of the Avid HD I/O against the Apogee Symphony Mk II, as well as the guitar recordings of the Symphony vs Saffire. Invite your friends around, break out the beers, get someone to blind test you, and let us know what you hear by emailing me at preshan@audiotechnology.com.au.

Go to: www.audiotechnology.com.au/wp/index.php/apogee-symphony-mkii-shootout/

the extreme highs present in the HD I/O tracks. It was mostly an ego thing to be honest, and not the kind of difference Joe Bloggs would appreciate in the slightest. It was impossible to say which was minutely more realistic, both were pleasing. [I was also pleasantly surprised to be able to repeatably select which unit was which in a blind test – Ed].

If you’d like to have a crack pitting your wits on two of the industry’s leading converters, you’re in luck. The high-res 96k files are online at the AT site.

Let us know if you can spot the difference between the two. Gather your audio buddies together and house a listening party with your nicest Focals or B&Ws. Winner gets bragging rights.

SAFFIRE VS SYMPHONY

Here’s the juicy stuff — the Saffire vs the Symphony, prosumer vs professional. Using the same Y-split method as with the HD I/O, we laid down four acoustic guitar tracks, sync’d them up, matched levels, exported, and imported into a new ’Tools session for comparison. Predictably, the difference was significant. I’ll do my best to explain.

Imagine standing front and centre before a large, flat panel, hi-definition screen, watching a scene from a western flick with a cowboy-laden horse galloping full speed towards you. Behind the charging stallion a red cloud of dust rises like a fiery backdrop. As the horse nears you can see the expression on the rider’s face, the pistol in his belt, the crest on his Stetson. It’s an impressive sight, but you’re still looking at a screen, observing from a distance, impersonally.

Now imagine watching the same scene on a gigantic, floor-to-ceiling cinema screen that curves around, enveloping your peripheral vision. It’s like you’re standing right there in the red wilderness beholding the sight in person. As the horse approaches, you feel your muscles tighten. You physically flinch when it does an almighty jump over the camera.

This is how I’d describe what it’s like listening to the Symphony’s recording after the Saffire’s.

You hear much of the same detail, there’s plenty of quality and resolution in both, but the Symphony presents a more convincing, bigger, wider, more real sonic image. In comparison, the Saffire feels a bit wimpy; the soundstage is flat, two-dimensional, pushed back, less ‘inclusive’, maybe even boring.

Though the Pro Tools meters peaked identically for both recordings, it seemed like the Symphony was louder. The guitar tracks leapt out of the speakers with vigour and an authoritative presence that was simply lacking with the Saffire.

I have to add that the Saffire’s conversion in no way sounded bad. Also, I’m pretty convinced many people won’t notice any difference, and genuinely not care even if they do. I gave a friend a pair of cans and played him the two recordings.

His response: “Well, yeah, it sounds better but not four-and-a-half grand better.” While we were marvelling at how good the Symphony sounded [it was significant – Ed], he was wowed by how well the Saffire measured up against it.

CONVERTED?

Takeaway point from all of this? If you’ve got a Saffire, or another prosumer interface — good news. You’ve got a great converter that’ll go up against an industry standard without falling completely to mush. If you’ve got a Symphony I/O, or other top notch converter — also good news.

You’ve got something that’s noticeably better than what prosumer interfaces can offer.

The Apogee Symphony I/O MkII offers no surprises. It’s an astounding converter with incredible detail, superlative specifications and 24/7 reliability. If you buy one, your recordings will undoubtedly step up in quality, and along with the superlative outputs, give your mixes every chance to reach a new zenith too. The price and ‘one-trick-pony’ nature of a converter like the Symphony Mk II position it within reach of only those who rate quality conversion very highly. For such people, the Symphony I/O Mk II will by no means disappoint.

Digital Mixing Redefined. Again.

T

he new StudioLive 32 digital console/recorder is by far the most powerful mixer in its class. It is a mixing and recording powerhouse that is equally formidable in live and studio applications.

Nine years in the making, StudioLive 32 is beyond everything else in its price point and surpasses anything we’ve ever created. Yet it remains at the head of the class for ease of use and sound quality.

From XMAX preamps, 7-inch colour touch screen and a 55 x 55 AVB networking interface, to 1.6-billion DSP instructions per second and 40 inputs, the StudioLive 32 feature list is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Also mix wirelessly, or over a wired network from anywhere, using UC Surface touch-control software for Mac, Windows and iPad . Includes new versions of Studio One, Capture™, QMix®, UC & UC 2.0 software.

One-touch Multitrack Capture™ SD Card recording without a computer— leave the laptop at home.

Totally re-designed Fat Channel with State Space Modeling now has vintage EQs and compressors in an all-new UI.

100mm touch-sensitive motorized faders maintain that intuitive 1:1 fader-per-channel workflow which StudioLive mixers are famous for.

Visit presonus.com to learn how we’ve leap-frogged our competition again.

Our customisable fader layer lets you place any channel or bus fader anywhere you want.

PreSonus products are proudly distributed in Australia by Link Audio. www.linkaudio.com.au

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FEATURE

Artist: Ball Park Music Album: Every Night the Same Dream

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Ball Park Music recorded their last album themselves, at home, on a computer. This time they travelled to the other end of the country to record live to four-track tape in a barn. The question was: Could they do it?

Feature: Mark Davie

“Daddy… can I come in now?” came a whine over the talkback. “Don’t be a Donald, one more take!” snapped back ‘Daddy’. “Roll tape!”

Brisbane-based band, Ball Park Music, and producer/engineer Matt Redlich, are like one big, slightly unhinged family. Sam Cromack, is the lead singer/guitarist and occasional toddler impersonator who dragged the band all the way down to a converted garage in rural Victoria to record a whole album live to four-track analogue tape. Naturally, he’s bonkers.

On the other end of the line Matt — not his Daddy — decides whether or not a sound or take works by judging how ‘randy’ it is. As he puts it, “It’s a fine line between being too randy, and not randy enough. If you’re not randy enough, you may as well go home. I’d rather be too randy.”

Who wouldn’t?

Rounding out the rest of the band are Paul Furness, sight-reading genius keyboardist who prefers the quiet of Brisbane but hates what the new lockout laws will do to live music. Bass player, Jen Boyce, piano teacher and singer-songwriter who thanks her lucky stars she asked to swap music groups at uni and ended up in this band rather than an all-female vocal ensemble or the typically dysfunctional ensemble of rock guitarist, funk bassist, metal drummer and grunge chick she would have been lumped in with. Then there are the twins, Dean and Dan Hanson (guitars and drums, respectively… I think); both killer players who I did catch saying the same thing at the same time — ESP does exist.

To explain exactly why a band whose last album Puddinghead went to number two on both the ARIA charts and Triple J’s Best Album poll, ended up driving all the way down the East Coast of Australia just to record live to four-track analogue tape, Sam had to start at the beginning. As it turns out, AudioTechnology was partly to blame.

REWIND THE TAPE

Five years ago, when Ball Park Music were thinking about recording their debut album, their manager suggested they contact fellow Brisbane-ite Matt who, at the time, was primarily recording to a 16-track, two-inch machine. Sam — despite studying music and production at uni — had never seen or recorded on a tape machine in his

life. “We’d recorded with other people and it was always a mega-modern digital affair with a ‘100 mics on the drums’ scenario that totally lacked vibe,” said Sam. “We went to all this effort and it sounded shit. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, our band properly sucks! These recordings are so bad we’ll never, ever make anything good.’ When we met Matt, we rocked up with this short, sharp, little rock song. He tracked guitar, keys and drums all at the same time, and the keys were going through this broken old amp that was pointing right at the drum kit, which ‘only’ had three mics on it. We were thinking, ‘Can you even do this?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about a click, just play,’ which was a real turning point for us. It sounded more awesome than anything we’d done before.”

It was more than just the tape, said Sam, “Matt’s fun because he’s a bit of a rule-breaker, like getting me to play acoustic guitar out in the garden. He pulls great sounds but has a playfulness about him and is keen to go on an adventure with the song. I don’t like working with people that are too clinical, it’s just boring.”

They recorded that album, Happiness and Surrounding Suburbs, as well as their second Museum with Matt to tape. Then we put a crazy idea in their heads. “A guy touring with us had a copy of AudioTechnology magazine and there was a special on DIY musicians,” said Sam. “All five of us took turns reading the article and after reading it we were all thinking, ‘We can do this!’ Particularly reading about Kevin Parker. Obviously he’s supertalented and skilled, but I was just really surprised at his lack of technical focus. What the article said about the way he would do things was very much focused on the bigger picture, not worrying too much about the gear or the technical element, which can intimidate people.”

Sam had always done a lot of recording at home on his laptop, but once they’d decided to record themselves, they went out and spruced up the rig.

A new computer was purchased, Focusrite Saffire interface set up, software installed, a basic mic collection pulled together, a house rented, then they “just kind for went for it.”

Puddinghead ended up being their most successful album to date. However, when the band started playing songs on tour, Sam realised there was something missing, the same thing they

missed whenever they overdubbed on tape — that live feeling.

“I thought producing it ourselves would give us this greater level of creativity, but one of our biggest regrets is simply not experimenting enough,” said Sam. “Even though the record did well for us, it doesn’t necessarily sound like we do. As soon as we started playing shows I was immediately thinking, ‘this has something we’ve never really put on a record.’ Even when we recorded with Matt to tape, his old machine had 16 tracks, and we might play guitar, bass and drums together, then wipe the guitar and bass and overdub on top of the drums. Nearly every time, the record you do previously informs how you want to do your next one. This time around we really wanted to do it super-super-live.”

GET THE PICTURE

Sam didn’t necessarily have a picture of what that would look like or how they would capture a ‘super-super-live’ recording. Then one day the picture emerged fully formed — it was staring him right in the face, on Facebook. Some of Sam’s friends were ‘friends’ with the owner of a little country Victorian studio, Sound Recordings, and a photo of the control room flashed up on his feed.

“You could see the tape machines and the desk,” remembered Sam, who was instantly charmed. “I really wanted to come to a place that felt great to be in. So much of the gear looks old school; big silver things with gigantic knobs, it’s hard to not be like, ‘Cool!’” He began stalking the studio online, and when he saw the live room, it “was hard to not fantasise about tracking in there as a group.”

Sam started researching every album he could find recorded to four-track tape, but the results weren’t altogether helpful. “The spectrum of how bad or good they were was super wide,” found Sam. Coming up short on that question, ‘will it sound any good?’ His next move was to ask Matt to check it out — who was in the midst of moving down to Melbourne anyway. “I’d heard of the studio before, but not much more than knowing C.W. Stoneking recording Gon’ Boogaloo here,” explained Matt, who was equally curious about whether he could do the job there. He did have one vote of confidence, “Ryan Strathie, who’s the drummer in Holy Holy, the band I play in, knew AT 21

all about it,” said Matt. “He’s a big vintage nut. We were all impressed with how authentic that C.W. record sounded. You’d just never know it wasn’t record back in who knows when.”

Matt was sure they couldn’t do what they needed direct to two-track, but he was intrigued about going back to four tracks, something he used to do before he decided he needed the track count and ‘mod cons’, like a counter on his 16-track machine. “I always loved the sound of it,” said Matt.

“The four-track sounds like all of your favourite recordings from the early ’70s. It immediately sounds like something just by going through it. The low end is exciting and big, it seems you can push it quite hard without it getting unmusical in any way.

It has this spongy head room. It kind of means you can treat it a little less carefully.”

Playing it safe wasn’t really on the cards, and Matt and the band wanted to focus on the performances going down, so having headroom to push into is key. Luckily, Alex’s gear has plenty of headroom, most of his control room is equipped with hand-built custom gear by Ekadek in New Zealand, designed to maximise headroom and sound good even if you hit its limits. “It’s the nature of what we’re doing,” reminded Matt.

“We don’t have the time or equipment to do it precisely. It’s got to be all about vibe, and you have to make a judgement in the moment of whether it feels good or not, then more or less live with the judgement forever.”

STACKING TRACKS

Once everyone was onboard with the idea, the real work started up in Brisbane. “You’re forced to make everything that goes onto those four tracks count in a way you don’t have to in digital or a 16-track machine,” said Matt. “If the idea isn’t absolutely working or definitely making it better, then it can’t go on that track because it’s recording on top of something else.” The combination of tracks is vital.

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Sam always planned to track vocals at home, so that was one instrument taken off the list. Regardless, there were still at least five others, plus any room mics and effects, to squeeze onto four tracks. The maths demanded some combinations be made; whether it be rhythm guitar and keyboards, or drum room flange effect and lead guitar, a few instruments had to get cosy.

Ever since Puddinghead the band had been writing songs for this record and fleshing out demos along the way. Prior to rehearsing as a group, they prepared in smaller clusters. “For instance, Paul would come to my house and we’d spend hours getting all the keys parts and sounds right,” explained Sam. “We pretty much did that for every instrument.” When everyone got together for group rehearsals two months out from the recording, they all knew what parts they were playing. “It was a bit like the prep you do after recording, when you learn the album to go on tour,” explained Sam. “We’d just did a quick recording on our phone and if it sounded shit, it sounded shit.

We had to get it better.”

Meanwhile, down South, Matt was using the demos and his mental image of Sound Recordings to form a plan of attack: “My main thoughts were around how we were going to record it, how it was going to sound, what parts had to be in the bed, and what parts probably shouldn’t be.”

While most of the tracks encompassed the entire music bed, there was no hard and fast rule that everything had to be printed at once. Occasionally Matt and the band would decide to leave a part to be overdubbed because it wasn’t mixing in with the other instrument on its tape track. Once everyone knew what parts were going down, the way everything sounded through headphones was crucial to getting the vibe right in the room explained Matt: “It changes the feeling in the room when all the sounds are working and every part comes through clearly.”

REAL TIME REALITIES

The band invited AudioTechnology along to spend a couple of days out in Castlemaine while they tracked the soon-to-be album, Every Night the Same Dream. Things seemed to be motoring along fairly consistently while we were there. They had 12 days to record 11 songs, and each day we visited the band managed to lay down a couple of songs.

We arrived on the second day and they already had Feelings, the opening track, nailed. It was sounding as visceral as they could have hoped, full of rich low end and powerful mid range. Most of all, it sounded like a talented band playing with wellrehearsed abandon.

Sam says it wasn’t always that smooth: “If you don’t get it within the first two or three takes, it’s going to be 10 takes. There’s been a few songs in particular where we’ve hit massive walls. Everyone’s fatigued, frustrated and it feels like you’re getting further away from it. You have to dig really deep and inevitably get it in the end. If you look objectively at the amount of time you spend to get the take, it’s easily the same or less amount of time as tracking each part, one at a time. It’s certainly more fun.

“The challenge of having to do it as a group is great. Nearly every final take where we go, ‘That’s the one!’ has a bunch of errors in it anyway. In many cases, we get it to a point where the five of us nail it, but it just lacks vibe. The ones that have that extra magical something are the ones where we just stopped giving a shit.”

CREATIVE FEEDBACK LOOP

The session moved along remarkably smoothly while we were there. The band had hired a house in the surrounding area, not realising Alex also runs a B ’n’ B onsite. Each day they rocked up at about 10am in the van, and piled out into the studio to find their spot.

When Matt and Sam were setting up, the drums

SOUND RECORDINGS STUDIO (opposite page) Dan Hanson on drums, Jen Boyce on bass, and Sam Cromack recording his acoustic guitar out on the Sound Recordings patio to get a bit of separation and nature. (above) Alex Bennett mans the Ampex AG440B four-track machine and intently listens to takes in between, while (right) Matt Redlich uses his trusty Beyer cans every now and again to hear how things are going down.

Alex Bennett, owner of Sound Recordings in Castlemaine, is the definition of a house engineer.

He was born and raised on the property in country Victoria, and the studio building was originally built

by Alex’s old man to house his vintage car collection. He went on a decade-long journey of discovery that started with a Degree in Music Technology at the Queensland Conservatorium. He then furthered his studies in composition in New Zealand, and started seriously collecting gear when he was hired as a technician at Auckland University’s music school. “One of my jobs was to keep the area tidy and move stuff around constantly because space was an issue,” recalled Alex.

“I stumbled across an eight-track tape recorder not being used in the basement. I pulled it out, cleaned it up, found a manual and how to use it on the internet, then started making recordings. From then on, I was converted. I hadn’t done many recordings for a while because I couldn’t relate to digital technology. The tape recorder gave me a new relationship with recording technology; the hands-on nature and process involved in getting the sounds all made sense.”

We’re not chasing, ‘okay we can hear every drum now.’ We’re chasing a ‘Woah!’ reaction every time someone walks in the room

Alex still has that original Otari MX5050 1/2inch eight track machine, but his main tracking workhorse is now an Ampex AG440B 1/2-inch, four-track. “It’s got twice as much headroom on

the tape,” compared Alex. “This machine has far superior electronics, it’s known for having what people call ‘a big, phat sound!’ It’s all to do with the fully discrete record and playback electronics, with all Class-A designed circuits in the record stage.

It’s from about 1968-’69. I picked this one up on eBay but it originally came from ABC TV Studios in Riponlea, Melbourne.

“By 1968 they’d really ironed out the kinks in overdubbing. It has self-sync which means you can record something on one, two or three tracks, hear them back in the cans and be able to lay down the fourth track without there being any delay.”

Whereas the valve-based Ampex 300 1/4-inch two track machines he uses to mix or track live to won’t allow overdubs, the tracks are either both on or off.

The large 9m x 10m sedimentary rock structure has a high gabled ceiling, it’s quite big and open without being too reverberant, the diffusion likely owing to the varied surfaces of the walls. It’s got a relatively small control room big enough for a band and engineer to squeeze into, but the idea is to spend the most time getting the tracks right in the live room.

Alex has had Sound Recordings up and running for the last two and a half years. He particularly likes the challenge of recording live to two-track, with the most successful release so far being C.W. Stoneking’s Gon’ Boogaloo, his return to form after a six-year hiatus that was recorded and mixed entirely by Alex in just two days.

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GEAR AT SOUND RECORDINGS CONSOLE — The centrepiece of the studio is a Frankenstein Cambridge Audio console from the early ’70s. The English-built 14-channel desk was originally gifted in the ’90s to Greg Brice, who builds equipment under the banner of Ekadek Electronics & Sound in New Zealand. It’s fully discrete, making it a handy testbed for modifications. “He pulled it apart, gutted it, modded it, cloned some bits, and used it as a skeleton for his own crazy projects at the time,” said Alex. It was in his studio for a few years, but when Alex told him about his intentions in Castlemaine, Greg offered it to him with all the custom mods to make it work for Sound Recordings.

THE MS MATRIX — Alex built a passive MS matrix, which saves him one channel on his mixing console.

He used a couple of old Trimax transformers out of old telephone exchange units discarded at the Castlemaine tip as the basis for the design. A large knob controls the attenuation of the sides. “If you go all the way to the left, it’s just the omni mic and therefore mono. You then bring up the sides until you have your MS set. But if you keep going, it splits it right apart until you’ve got a really unnatural, wide image.”

THE BIG PRE — He also has a huge two-channel valve mic preamp with an EQ stage also built by Ekadek to supply loads of clean gain to Alex’s vintage ribbon collection. “It’s quite versatile and really clean, with lots of headroom. The mic amp stage is based on an old ‘50s Pultec design that Greg has reworked, modified and made to suit his own style. The ribbons have incredibly low output impedances so it’s really useful having the two transformers coupled together on the input stage.

You can mix and match the different taps and tune the preamp to whatever microphone you’re using.

It’s also useful for oddball dynamic mics that have odd output stages or levels, but it can also be used for completely run-of-the-mill modern mics as well.”

Alex will also use the line input for EQ during a mix.

“It’s got high and low shelves with switchable crossover points, making it quite useful for gently shaping a sound during the mixing process. It also has really long, musical curves on the EQ, so you can really boost stuff or cut stuff without it sounding chopped.”

LIMITER — One of his other custom-built Ekadek pieces is a fully valve, vari-mu limiter. “I believe it’s loosely based on a ‘60s Phillips design, although a lot of that is probably a secret,” said Alex. “It’s really transparent, really smooth, and again, almost infinite headroom. It’s very hard to make it distort, making it perfect on bass guitars and vocals, especially paired with a valve preamp.”

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found their home in a corner of the room. The bass amp — a Marshall JMP head set at a clean level and the cab miked up with an AKG D12 — was set up along the wall close to another corner, with dividers diminishing leakage a little. The guitar amps were setup in the other two corners, with Dean’s cordoned off into a gobo cubby hole and Sam’s occasionally having one dragged in front of it.

Matt’s main focus was balancing the volume of the amps then using gobos to kill the top end and make the sound less directional. Dean mostly played through Matt’s Dr. Z head and cab, while Sam alternated between the 100W Gunn combo house amp for a unique jangly tone, and a Fender Deluxe to fill the role of the “one sound that’s not very extended and ‘good-sounding’,” explained Matt.

“Many amp’s sound good really cranked. But in a situation like this, that’s actually what’s going to kill the sound of that instrument because the low-mid bleed into every other mic will make it sound bad.”

With the song worked out beforehand, the band would start preparing their sound — changing cymbals and tom heads if required, and tuning to the song; pulling up patches or preparing the piano; and finding the right amp to play through.

Matt would immediately get to work listening to each sound and determining what worked and what didn’t. A guitar sound could start out played on a six-string through a 100W amp, and end up recorded on a 12-string direct through his homemade valve DI. Likewise, the keys could go from being played direct off the computer, to Paul having to switch between keyboards mid-song, with one amplified through a hacked vintage projector and miked up at a distance.

“The Bell & Howell projector has a built-in valve amp,” explained Matt. “We’ve put the Korg MS20 through its little speaker cabinet. It’s kind of thin-sounding but it’s small size makes it easy to overdrive. When you do resonant filter sweeps through it, it picks up particular frequencies and clips them. It creates animation in the sound you

wouldn’t get with a DI or a clean setup. The keys have also gone through this Gerard amp which is another weird-sounding amp that’s apparently part solid state, part valve power amp.”

No two songs were the same, and therefore no consecutive tracking sessions stayed in the same configuration. The two constants of the drum mic setup were a kick mic of some sort — typically either a Bock iFET or an AKG D12 dynamic — and a kit mic. Matt likes to think of it that way, as opposed to an overhead, because it’s not there for the cymbals, it’s to pick up the whole kit image.

“Most of the time, you should start minimal and try to get as much out of each one mic rather than starting with 12 or 16,” said Matt. “The thing with over-miking kits, if you’re putting all 12 mics in the best possible place and having half an hour to listen to the different places you could put the mics, that’s a whole days worth of just miking a kit up. Unless you have that time, having heaps of options is a bad thing.” Matt was also limited by the passive mixer, which required unplugging the final input patch cable to solo instruments; a distracting process when you’re trying to listen for phase anomalies. “It’s not as easy as pushing a button and concentrating on what you’re hearing,” said Matt.

“Also, once you get a balance, if one of the mics is quiet, you can’t just turn the fader up for a second to check it. Your only option is to use your ears and tweak the knobs until it sounds good. Which should be the case all the time anyway, but we don’t because we have the power to not.”

Ball Park Music are all talented, and Dan is the perfect lynchpin. Technical and solid, but with a heavy groove that would make Bonham proud.

He can go everywhere the songs do, whether it’s laid back beats, to pounding tom fills. He’s also impeccably in tune with his drums, swapping between standard coated and fibre heads depending on the track, and playing his toms heavier than his cymbals. Having a great drummer lets Matt rely on one or two kit mics, sometimes it would be an

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RCA77 over the kit, or a U47 over Dan’s shoulder, occasionally a blend of both. Matt also might sneak an omni pencil condenser up between the rack toms, or sit a Sennheiser MD421 a foot above them.

Sometimes he’d have a Shure SM57 close miking the snare, other times, none at all.

Matt started out the sessions EQ’ing and compressing each mic on the drums before hitting the mixer, then running the summed mono kit through his 1176 and JLM Audio Pultec-style EQ, prior to tape. He’d also occasionally run a UAD distortion plug-in on his laptop for monitoring.

Towards the end of the sessions, he backed off the processing slightly, preferring to pre-EQ into the mixer, and only compress to tape.

MIXING A MIX

Matt was never shy of printing with effects. On one of the songs they recorded while we were there, Matt had “a room mic going through a bright-sounding Space Echo that was printed on a track with the guitar. It may not have been perfect, or the exact volume I wanted it to have, but I thought it sounded good and it created an energy and space they played off. It’s that classic thing of the drummer playing to the Space Echo and it becoming almost like a click track. I like to create a feedback loop, where I can inspire them to creatively take it somewhere with new ideas, and they inspire me in turn. It’s much more fun than getting it nice and clear in the headphones.”

Early on, they did try stereo drums, but quickly went back to mono. “Once you get into that mindset, suddenly you’re treating the drums as a single instrument, which is really what they are,” said Matt. However, even though he was recording the drums in mono, as Matt was archiving them onto his computer, he started playing around with stereo-ising effects to see if he could add some width back at the mix stage, and many of the drum tracks did get treated with a subtle micro shift effect to create space around the mono track in the mix.

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At the mix stage, Matt found some songs sounded great straight off tape, while others required a little more pushing. The groovy pop of songs like Peppy and Suit Yourself seemed to suit the recording process, whereas the rockier Nihilist Party Anthem was particularly difficult. Matt had gone for a reasonably punchy, clean drum sound, but the band wanted them dirtier. It’s a hard task when you’ve got all your drums on one track. “Even just the cymbals in close mics can be a problem in multi-track recordings, so when you have an overhead mixed in and start distorting and use lo-fi effects, the cymbals get crazy!” said Matt. “Getting something interesting that’s also not a hash of white noise in the chorus is always a challenge. I ended up going as far as I could and sending them a version that showed what happened when I took it up a notch from there. I was still concerned about maintaining punch and how it would sound on radio and smaller speakers.” It was also one of the more complex mixes, as the band had gone on to record lots of vocals, double guitars, and add sound effects back home, resulting in a session that resembled a regular multitrack. On the tougher songs, Matt had to surgically dissect some tracks to give him control over a bass or kick, because “if you change the low end on one mic, it can drastically affect others when you’re mixing two or three together.” Overall, Matt was surprised that the low end was either bang on or just shy, given he felt he was pushing more to tape than he usually would.

ENGINEER A LIVE PERFORMANCE

Matt thrived on the challenge of returning to four tracks and the level of commitment it required.

He was reminded of how good it can sound when you mix things down live, and has started printing drum and guitar mixes alongside individual mics in all his recent projects. “It’s really cool to put yourself in that position as an engineer and not just be deferring things till later, later, even later… till mastering. It should be, ‘Let’s get it exciting right

Matt used his Apollo 16 interface to archive all the takes.

He brought two 1176 compressors; a Universal Audio reissue (“Smoother sounding for vocals and guitars”) and a Hairball Blue Stripe copy (“Great for drums”). Matt’s lunchbox is loaded with an AML ez1073-500 (“1073 clone I use on bass, drums, anything”), Hairball Lola (“a clean, fast pre”), two Hairball 1081 clones (“good on drums and guitars”), a Harrison EQ, Hairball 500 and JLM Audio FET500 1176-style compressors. “The JLM is a bit cleaner and extended, it has more headroom and is faster,” said Matt. “It’s good on kick drum and we were using it over the whole drum bus yesterday with great results.” At the end of his rack are two Radial ‘trick’ boxes — the EXTC, to blend in some Soul Blender distortion on snare, and X-Amp 500 for reamping.

now!’ I’m having to give a live performance as an engineer, reaching down into that subconscious pool of experience developed over years. You come up with ideas and opinions you can’t even explain in words, they just bubble to the surface in a situation like this.

“That’s how you create compelling results for the listener. It’s exactly what the band are doing when they write the song in the first place. Those song ideas bubble out of this collective pool of experience, and the playing comes from years of performing live and knowing what the crowd responds too.”

Even though Matt is a co-producer with the band, he sees the job of engineering as integral to helping everyone realise the vision for each song.

Building up sounds that are unique enough to create interest, but meshed enough to give the band that feeling of togetherness while performing is integral to the vibe in the studio. “On one of the songs I set up all the mics, set all the compressors, EQs and gains without hearing anything, and it sounded f**king cool,” explained Matt. “Sam was like, ‘Woah!’ That was the reaction we needed to preserve. Tweak it a little bit to fine tune some things that are out of control, but that’s what we’re chasing. We’re not chasing, ‘okay we can hear every drum now.’ We’re chasing a ‘Woah!’ reaction every time someone walks in the room. They want to have a big smile on their face because of what we just recorded.”

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Bart Willoughby headed to the Bungle Bungles to record in the spiritual surroundings of its naturally-formed cathedral-like acoustics.

Story: Nick Harrison Photos: Cole Bennetts

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Is there a better place to record one of our most iconic Indigenous songwriters and drummers than in a 200m-high, naturally formed cathedral of a gorge that turns toms into thunder? With bags full of Nagra, DPA and Rycote gear, we headed off on a 10-day expedition to find out.

The idea was to record instruments amongst the beehive-shaped towers of the Bungle Bungle Range and collect natural soundscapes for Bart Willoughby’s upcoming album, Iron Ore. Several months ago we had recorded Bart playing the grand organ and drumming at the Melbourne Town Hall, and these new recordings were made using those as backing tracks.

The pain and suffering Aboriginal people have experienced since the invasion and settlement 230 years ago is still felt today. Bart’s early life was similar to many other Indigenous people; he was taken from his mother at the age of three, put in an Aboriginal mission and didn’t find her again until he was 17. He taught himself piano and drums and wrote the Aboriginal anthem, We Have Survived, when he was only 18 years old. From there he went on to become the first Aboriginal artist to sign a record deal and tour internationally (with his band No Fixed Address) and the first to score music for a feature film. He’s also played in pioneering groups Yothu Yindi, Mixed Relations and Coloured Stone.

In addition to the recordings, Bart had booked gigs in Kununurra, Warmun and Frog Hollow with Broome musician Steve Pigram, giving the two time to connect with surrounding communities and the land.

Cathedral Gorge highlighted how amazing reverb can be in naturally formed environments; lush, diffuse, no problematic echoes and no chance of standing waves

LOCATION BUNGLE

The Bungle Bungle Range sits in the far eastern part of the Kimberly region of Western Australia, about 1000km south west of Darwin. It’s a spectacular 450 square kilometre area of rocks that includes massive beehive shaped domes standing 250m over the grasslands. The rock formations were sculpted by 20 million years of erosion and amongst them are huge caverns, chasms and gorges. Getting into the Bungles required driving a 4WD 90 minutes beyond the main turnoff over a number of river crossings. The probability of just happening on the perfect acoustics in a hayfield of caverns was pretty low, so we’d scouted out a number of locations a year earlier and were well prepared.

PACKING HEAVY

This type of trip calls for real location sound equipment; battery powered recorders, windshields, appropriate stands and carefully chosen mics. We brought it all over on the plane from Melbourne, and because Bart and I are APRA members we made full use of the musician’s extra baggage allowance, which only cost $90 for 128kg over eight bags. Awesome! We actually ended up flying too much gear over to fit in the 4WD and had to leave the empty cases in Kununurra.

I picked up the pair of small Rycote Cyclone windshields specifically for this trip. They look quite different to typical blimps and deadcats; their reinforced frame is covered by Rycote’s 3D-Tex material, which does a great job of keeping the wind out. You access the mics by removing the sides of the shield held by extra-strong magnets and

The sound gear included:

Nagra VI eight-channel location recorder Nagra Seven two-channel location recorder Nagra EMP two-channel location preamp Two DPA 4006A omni mics in a pair of Rycote Cyclone windshields Two DPA 4023 cardioid mics in a Rycote ORTF windshield DPA 4017 shotgun mic in windshield DPA d:facto vocal mic

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clip locks. Inside, the Lyre clips cradle the mic and an XLR connector neatly feeds the mic signal to the handle helping to avoid that problematic small air gap that can open up on other windshields. Most importantly they sound quite transparent and the improved wind protection resulted in zero wind issues. It was very nice to have that sense of security during the more critical location recordings.

GORGE-OUS CATHEDRAL

Our key destination at the Bungle Bungles was Cathedral Gorge, a huge cavern with a half-open ceiling at least 100m above and acoustics similar to what you would expect of a large cathedral.

The acoustics here really highlight how amazing reverb can be in naturally formed environments; lush, diffuse, no problematic echoes and no chance of standing waves. I measured an RT60 of seven seconds and the ambient sound was quite usable for recording (averaging about 35dBSPL, A-weighted).

As fortune would have it, there were also no flies or other insects during any of the recordings.

Over three treks into the Gorge we recorded didge, clapsticks, woodskin drums, ukulele and singing over backing tracks sent to Bart through headphones.

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TAKING IN THE SOUNDSCAPE

Throughout the trip I made around a dozen soundscape recordings, mostly in and around the Bungle Bungles. Using two field recorders I can either record two different locations simultaneously or one location with multiple perspectives.

My preferred approach is to set up the recorders in different locations and leave them for several hours before returning. Making shorter recordings and hanging around just hasn’t worked efficiently for me in the past; I might end up with five or 10 minutes of decent sound but there’s always a period after the car has stopped (and then setting up the mics) where the insects and any animals change their behaviour/sounds. Waiting around during a recording takes patience which increases the likelihood of only making a short recording. If I spend 20 minutes on the setup and pack down I want a reasonable duration of recording.

I split the two rigs into the Nagra VI with two DPA4023 cardioid mics in the Rycote ORTF windshield, and the Nagra Seven with the two DPA4006 omni mics in the Rycote Cyclone windshields on a K&M stereo bar (for an A-B 35 arrangement). I used the Manfrotto Nano stands because they’re compact and light.

The soundscapes were quite unique around the

park. The insect life was active although, apart from birds, I captured almost no wildlife in 15 hours of recordings. There were some distant dingo howls around Elephant Rock, otherwise there’s not much around at this time of year. It was quite surprising, yet very good in terms of soundscape recording.

It’s also a perfect area for capturing natural sound, no cars or manmade sounds polluting the environment. The result is a series of lush, detailed stereo soundscapes that will be woven through Bart’s songs.

WUNAN, GIVING BACK

I was introduced to the term ‘Wunan’ by our friend Gian in Kununurra. He described it as a type of gift cycle used by the people of the Kimberly and beyond. Lending a hand, sharing a skill or some knowledge, giving a present, all of that is so important in developing relationships and we found it often lead to surprising outcomes and opportunities.

Travelling through the Kununurra, Warmun and Frog Hollow communities for gigs gave us a chance to try and contribute to the communities.

Bart did this through a concert in each town or community, Cole our photographer spent time showing kids how to use cameras, then passing the

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photos and any copyright back to the communities.

I went out and made promo recordings for the local radio station (asking kids to yell ‘Warmun Radio is deadly!’ and similar), sound recordings of elders at Warmun conducting a language preservation class, two junbas (corroborees) and a spoken word piece on youth suicide by Uncle Gabe in Warmun; each of these recordings were given back to the communities and go towards repaying them for the gifts given to us such as junbas and hospitality.

We got told a number of times that folk come into communities and take, take, take — particularly photos without consent. It’s important to seek permission to make audio recordings, or take video and photographs of anyone, including remote communities. Transferring the copyright for recordings and photos to the community is a good approach to consider, any usage of the recordings by us then needs to be sought through the community, which helps to keep things in check.

Overall this was a great experience working within one of the world’s oldest cultures. The project gave me plenty of food for thought about protocols, ethics and responsibilities as a sound recordist, and really highlighted the spiritual connection with land that Aboriginal communities have in a way I wasn’t aware of.

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THE WHO Jordan Power produced and engineered the album. Angus Stone was the primary songwriter, singer and guitarist, but Dope Lemon is more collaborative than his solo records. Both Rohin Brown from the Walking Who, and Elliott Hammond from the Delta Riggs are core members of the group, with Brown helping write some of the songs. Rob Calder (bass) and Matt Johnson, who played drums on Jeff Buckley’s Grace, both play in Angus & Julia Stone’s band and jammed on this record.

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THE WHERE Honey Bones was recorded over two years in Byron Bay, primarily at producer Jordan’s Inky Studios, a “smelly basement” studio called Double Basement, and Angus’s solar-powered Belafontè cabin studio on his farm. “Angus was living in the cabin, but he’s turned it into a studio and built a yurt up on a hill to live in,” said Jordan, noting Angus has filled it with all the essentials of yurt life. “It fits a pool table, a couch, a TV and a bar; they’re all very squashed in.

“The tracks really reflect the environment they were recorded in. The Double Basement track was really heavy and moody; the more traditional Angus Stone tracks were recorded out at his place; and those done at my place had a bit more of a studio kind of sound.”

Power has been freelancing since he left Studios 301 in Byron Bay just under three years ago. His warehouse studio in Byron is called Inky because it used to be an ink cartridge storehouse. He’s kept the couple of hundred square metre, seven-room layout; divvying them up into live rooms, a control room and a central lounge area. He shares the space with another producer in the mezzanine. The studio is booked out most of the year round, he’s recorded Xavier Rudd and Ash Grunwald there, as well as working on records for Kasey Chambers and Delta Goodrem externally.

His control room is centred around a TL Audio valve console he bought from Wolfmother, a couple of

UAD Apollo 16 interfaces, API preamps, a couple of SSL preamps and compressors, and Universal Audio LA3A and 610 hardware. The rooms aren’t heavily isolated, but “the live room sounds incredible,” commented Jordan, and he was loath to ‘fix’ it.

When he asked 301 technician Stephen Crane for some acoustic advice, Steve told Jordan to leave it the way it is. “He said part of what makes it sound so good is that sound can get out; it’s not boxed in,” said Jordan. As it stands, the central lounge room puts enough distance between the live and control rooms to make it work. Other than a little treatment of the control room, Inky is structurally the same as when he moved in.

JAM TOGETHER, THEN CUT TOGETHER The songs were often the product of a jam session, then cut into a more structured song. Take the single, Uptown Folks. Initially, the band had set up at Inky with a plan to record a different song which didn’t make the record. Then, explained Jordan, “Angus came up with the Uptown Folks line and they just started jamming on the riff while he worked on the lyrics. IT TURNED INTO A HALF-HOUR JAM. THEN WE WENT BACK AND START CUTTING IT DOWN, FINDING THE MELODIES, AND GLUING IT TOGETHER. Then if the lyrics aren’t right

because they were done on the spot, we go back in and start overdubbing.”

By cutting up the live jams, it keeps the vibe of the performance, with the option to overdub parts where needed.

I had one of Angus’s guitar amps in the boot of my Commodore wagon, because they are amazing guitar booths!

ALWAYS PUT UP A VOCAL BLEED MIC Angus is a relatively soft singer — controlled, but soft — which is why Jordan uses a Shure SM7 dynamic mic. Its directionality helps cut down on instruments bleeding into the mic, but doesn’t eradicate it. Inevitably, Angus will overdub at least a few vocal lines, because the lyrics aren’t typically finished during the jam. IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO CUT BETWEEN THE LIVE VOCAL TAKE AND OVERDUBS, JORDAN PUTS UP AN EXTRA MIC BEHIND ANGUS PURELY TO CATCH THE LIVE

CAPTURE THE ROOM WITH A BLUMLEIN PAIR While Jordan has to figure out creative ways to handle bleed in the vocal mic, other times he’s actively trying to capture it. When he’s tracking a live performance, he spends time ensuring his stereo room mic pair matches the individual panning he’ll use in the mix. OFTEN HE’LL USE A PAIR OF AKG

TAKE SPILL. If he mutes the live vocal take without adding in the ‘bleed’ mic, the

whole tone of the drum kit changes. “I usually put it behind him so I don’t get his vocal on it, just the same noise I can add when I need to,” said Jordan.

C414S, SOMETIMES SWITCHED TO A FIGURE-EIGHT POLAR PATTERN AND PLACED CENTRALLY IN THE ROOM. “It doubles your image,” he explained. “Whether the

instrument is sitting in front or behind one capsule of the mics, it will be panned to one side.”

He’ll place the stereo room mic “closer to anything acoustic because if amps have to be in the room, I try and get it away from those, same with drums. A lot of the placement is just by sight then walking around the room and hearing where things are sitting. Usually it’s pretty central in the room.

“The reason I do it is to capture the fact they are a band in a room, which can be hard to re-impose on the mix.”

RECORD GUITARS IN CARS One trick Jordan uses to isolate guitar amps from the live take is to put them in a car boot. “I HAD ONE OF ANGUS’S GUITAR AMPS IN THE BOOT OF MY COMMODORE WAGON, BECAUSE THEY ARE AMAZING GUITAR BOOTHS!” HE SAID. “THEY HAVE A LOT OF SOFT SURFACES, AND HARDLY ANY OF THEM ARE PARALLEL.

“I’ve done a couple of albums with Kasey Chambers, and at one stage Jim Moginie was playing guitar as well as her dad, Bill. We had three wagons lined up as the amp rooms! Then I just put a basic SM57 on those; it’s hard to go past the sound of a 57 on guitar cab.”

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COMPRESSING A DRUM SOUND INTO FEW MICS In the spirit of capturing the band as a whole, Jordan also used minimal spot mics on the drums to keep it sounding like a single instrument. “I try to keep the amount of mics down,” he said. “USUALLY FOR A DRUM KIT IT’S JUST TWO OVERHEADS, A KICK AND A SNARE; AND I DON’T ALWAYS USE A SNARE MIC. IT’S JUST ABOUT USING MIC PLACEMENT, AND COMPRESSION TO SORT OUT WHAT’S POPPING OUT.”

Jordan mixes primarily in the box, and without a hardware stereo compressor he often compresses his overheads with a stereo version of the 1176 plug-in by UAD. “I usually set a brutally fast release to get everything coming to the front, with the attack set to about half way,” he said. “I don’t really look at the meters to check how many dB of gain reduction I’m sitting at. I just use enough to bring everything into the image without the cymbals getting crazy.

“I use condensers for overheads. I don’t particularly love ribbons on drums, my room is pretty big and the figure-eight pattern of ribbons gets a bit too roomy for me. I find it better to use XY stereo pairs and compress to pull the room sound up. Uptown Folks was just a simple drum setup, with a Blumlein pair for room mics about four metres back.”

COMMIT ALL THE TIME

QUIETLY COMPRESS A LOW LEVEL VOCAL Jordan treats the vocal very carefully in the mix, because it’s not just the vocal being recorded but the sound of the room too. “I can’t really compress too much because I’m just going to start bringing up drums and guitars,” said Jordan. He generally goes without any when Angus is tracking through his pedals. Which is only possible because he’s a consistent singer. “He’s quiet, but he doesn’t get too dynamic,” explained Jordan. When he does use compression, it’s usually a combination of two plug-ins: “I SET UP THE FATSO WITH A FAST ATTACK

Commitment was a big part of the Dope Lemon recording process, even to the point of tracking with vocal pedal chains. “The vocal sound on Uptown Folks was from a couple of guitar pedals Angus was running through during the recording stage,” explained Jordan. “It wasn’t a Boss delay, it was a specific sound he was going for. I had no control over that at all. IT’S NICE TO COMMIT TO THOSE THINGS BECAUSE IF I HAD THE CHOICE I’D PROBABLY GET THE DELAY IN TIME AND IT WOULDN’T HAVE THE CHARACTER IT DOES ON THAT TUNE. It would sound too nice,

because it’s second nature to put things in time. It makes the recording really interesting. On the other hand, if you commit to something that kills a song, you haven’t really done your job.”

AND RELEASE TO CONTROL THE SIGNAL AND KNOCK 3DB OFF THE PEAKS. THEN I USE AN 1176 AS A MUSICAL COMPRESSOR TO SCULPT THE TONE WITH A SLOWER ATTACK AND RELEASE.”

FOCUS ON MIXING, EVEN IN THE BOX Jordan mixes completely in the box — mostly because of the recall ability — setting all his console faders to zero and using it as a summing box. “It’s taken a while for me to come around to it because of my time at 301, where I was mixing on an SSL,” said Jordan. “I fumbled with it for a while, and kept trying to find smaller studios where I could mix on a console. Initially I migrated through necessity; bands can’t afford to be mixing in big studios. Now I’d rather not mix on consoles and I’m more than happy to do it in the box.”

The mix process was relatively short, compared to the recording process.

Jordan mixed the album over seven days, averaging a couple of songs a day.

Towards the end of the two years Jordan was “a little restless. You want to hear it released. It took a lot of concentration towards the end because I’d been hearing those songs for so long.

“You need to try to keep it fresh somehow and make sure you’re still listening to the song and not getting over it. ALWAYS ASK PEOPLE’S OPINIONS ABOUT THE MIXES. The best part of the album going for that long was how many different feels we have on there. It’s cohesive because I mixed it all, but it’s a really broad collection of emotions.”

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TUTORIAL

Story: Paul Tingen B&W Photos: Kenevan McConnon Jungle City Photos: Ramon Rivas

Artist: Beyoncé Album: Lemonade

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Beyoncé’s latest album, Lemonade epitomes the adage ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. The album addresses infidelity, with Beyoncé on the receiving end. Wounded and angry, the album pulls no emotional punches. Rolling Stone labelled it “an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown.” With her hackles well and truly raised by the betrayal, Beyoncé didn’t stop at her own distress, instead she cast the album’s net over broader themes of women’s power and racism on songs like Freedom (with Kendrick Lamar) and Formation, which are the singer’s most politically explicit to date. Beyoncé has responded to life’s basket-case-full of lemons by serving up some pretty tart Lemonade.

Just like Beyoncé’s previous self-titled album, Lemonade was released with complementary fulllength visuals. While the former had individual music video accompaniments, the new album settles in with an hour-long art movie consisting of 11 chapters. It moves from Intuition to Denial to Anger, eventually ending with Hope and Redemption. Each chapter contains a song, and in between the songs Beyoncé narrates poignant texts like “You remind me of my father, a magician,

able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood you come home at three a.m. and lie to me. What are you hiding?” Not exactly a bundle of fun.

Clearly, Beyoncé had some lemons to grind. Her process in creating Lemonade involved working with tons of producers (about 20) and co-writers (more than double that amount). Some of the co-writers were big names who also feature in the songs, like Jack White, The Weeknd, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar and Marcus Miller. Likewise, some of the producers are also well known names, like Diplo, Mike Dean, Hit Boy, and Just Blaze.

Beyoncé also brought in many up-and-coming young producers and executive produced the album herself.

MAN IN THE MIDDLE

The resulting 12 songs that appear on Lemonade (the extra song, Formation, plays during the movie’s credits) are a kaleidoscope of musical genres.

We’re talking R&B, rock, soul, hip-hop, pop, blues, gospel, trap, psychedelia, avant-garde, even samples from early 20th century folk recordings by John and Alan Lomax. It’s an incredibly diverse range

of collaborators and musical influences to hold together. The basic material from which the songs were drawn must have run into hundreds of hours.

To help her in this complex process, Beyoncé opted to have one engineer, mixer and occasional coproducer at her side the entire time. Artists relying on personal engineers and mixers has become increasingly common in R&B, other examples being Justin Bieber’s engineer and mixer Josh Gudwin (see issue 114), The Weeknd’s right-hand man Carlo ‘Illangelo’ Montagnese, and Lil’ Wayne who has for many years been assisted by mixer and producer Fabian Marascullio.

In Beyoncé’s case, Stuart White has worked as her full-time engineer since 2012. However, being the personal music and studio support to the world’s biggest female pop/R&B star was far from White’s mind when he was 10 years old in North Carolina bouncing tracks between a double tape deck and a karaoke machine. His life only started heading in that direction once he copped a photo of a recording studio with an SSL on the back of his cousin’s CD. “It fascinated me immediately,” recalled White, “and I wondered how I could end up working in a studio. However, I was still in North Carolina, and any recording studios seemed a million miles away. I did buy two turntables, DJ’d obsessively, and bought a sampler and an 8-track recorder. I went to Full Sail University in Florida when I was 21, did the year program, graduated in 2002, and moved to New York where I was hired by Quad Studios. I later worked with Russell Elevado off and on for about a year, which changed my life. He opened up a whole world of the creative side of engineering for me.”

At Quad, White met engineer Ann Mincieli, who he says was, “probably the biggest influence on my career. She knew her shit inside out, so I stuck to her like glue, and assisted her. She worked with Alicia Keys, who ended up buying her own studio, and Ann invited me to come and work there

as well. I ended up staying there for six years. It was a very creative time, because Ann was buying guitar pedals, amplifiers, crazy microphones, all kinds of stuff, and Alicia was really getting into experimentation and a whole new approach to making R&B records. That and my experiences with Russell showed me there’s more to recording R&B/hip-hop than just two keyboards and an MPC! Manny Marroquin and Tony Maserati mixed many of Alicia’s records, and they both were big influences on me as well. Alicia’s producer, Kerry ‘Krucial’ Brothers, then took me on as his personal engineer/ mixer. That’s where I really cut my teeth mixing.”

I’ve come to the point where I can often tell from Beyoncé’s body language what she is about to do next

FROM THE JUNGLE TO A MADE MAN

In 2010, Mincieli opened up Jungle City Studios.

Around the same time White went back to New York and worked both as a freelancer and Jungle’s main house engineer. Two years later Mincieli told him Beyoncé was looking for an engineer, and when the call came, White “couldn’t turn it down.” He was quickly thrown in the deep end with the recordings for Beyoncé, and confronted with production methods that were both on an industrial scale and highly experimental. “She

rented a mansion with 40 bedrooms, and brought many of the world’s best producers out there so everyone could live in the house for a month,” he recalled. “My then assistant Rob Suchecki and I shipped tons of gear there and set up seven studios in the house. The idea was to do the entire album in a month and a half, but in the end it took a year and a half. Beyoncé and I were in the studio together every day for that time.”

Spending day after day with Beyoncé in a studio requires far more from White than just being good at engineering. Having cut his teeth working several years with Alicia Keys, and having been mentored

by Ann Mincieli, White clearly knows a thing or two about dealing with top level creative people, particularly women. “The level that these artists work at, they really need to have somebody around them whom they trust,” explained White. “You’re in the room and hearing many different personal conversations. You’re also handling all these files, which are big business. These artists also don’t want to have to explain what they want to do every time. They almost want you to read their minds.

Eventually you learn to do that, and I’ve come to the point where I can often tell from Beyoncé’s body language what she is about to do next.”

Over the last four years 90% of White’s work has been with Beyoncé, leaving him only occasional time to work on other projects. However, his credit list since 2012 still includes impressive names like Sia, Nicki Minaj, FKA Twigs, and Boots.

Work on what was to become Lemonade started in 2014, after Beyoncé finished her Mrs Carter Show world tour. No mansions were rented this time.

Instead Beyoncé wrote in stages before retreating with White to her house in Los Angeles. The project was once again on an industrial scale, with the involvement of many different producers, and even more experimental than for her previous album.

White: “We started in August 2014 at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. We were there for a month

STUART WHITE’S STUDIO Down in a basement in the lower east side of Manhattan — in a building with quite a bit of rock ’n’ roll history (The Strokes recorded their first album there) — Stuart White has his own Avenue A Studios. It’s a mostly inthe-box affair, but White nonetheless proudly holds on to quite a few pieces of outboard, mostly of the more esoteric variety. “I have an Apple computer with Pro Tools HD Native, and an Avid Omni I/O,” he explained.

“For the rest I have a Telefunken Ela M251 microphone, an Avalon mic pre, and a TubeTech compressor, all of which I used to record the majority of Bey’s vocals. I also have the Chandler Mini Rack mixer, which I use as a summing box. Because I travel a lot with Bey, my hallway is full of flightcases with everything I need: cables, adapters, hard drives, microphones and mic chains. I have tons of pedals in my studio, and I’ll often just grab a bunch of them and throw then in a bag to take with me, just to have things with me that can inspire something new or different.”

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MIX EXPLORATION: SORRY Credits: The single Sorry was written and produced by Diana ‘Wynter’ Gordon, Sean ‘MeLo-X’ Rhodan and Beyoncé, and co-produced by Chauncey ‘Hit-Boy’ Hollis. White has an additional production credit.

AUX ORGANISATION IS CENTRAL White: “Melo-X made the initial track. I had his tracks highlighted during tracking, but during the mixing stage grouped them to an aux group track called ‘MXA’. I did the same with Hit Boy’s tracks for organisation. All organisational aux tracks are in two different shades of brown. The top four from 3360 onwards form a new intro I added two days before we finished. Below that there’s the ‘All’ aux, through which I send the entire session, and an ‘All Parallel,’ for parallel compression of the entire mix. There also are two ‘Kik’ auxes, because the kicks in my mixes are often huge and I want to have independent control over them.

Then there’s a ‘Vocal All’, ‘Music all’ and aux tracks for the effects on the vocals and music.

The green tracks below are all the effect aux tracks.”

TIP: MAKING HEADROOM White: “The aux group tracks and master faders help me manage the headroom in a session. It can’t be stressed enough, when you mix in the box you have to be very careful about headroom. In the analogue realm, you can keep on slamming it and most of the time it will sound good. Not in digital. The first thing I do when I get a session in is clip gain all the tracks down. If everything is normalised you end up having all your faders at -20dB, whereas I prefer them at unity. It’s easier for rides and then I can build things back up. Many people blow everything up in the computer, and they’re not hearing things correctly, because there’ll be digital clipping. Also, when I’m recording Beyoncé’s vocals I need a lot of headroom, because I want her to be able to sing without tons of compression on her. She’s a very dynamic singer, and I want to give her the ability to go from singing softly to really loudly without clipping internally.”

TIP: HALF-SPEED DRUMS White: “Below all these aux tracks are the drums, which come in two sections: the first seven for the intro, then the main drums. The faders for the intro drums are all at zero because I played them at half time from my mix by hitting ‘shift+spacebar’, recorded them to another Pro Tools rig at unity gain, and imported them into the session again. I often play things at half time to see what it sounds like. In this case, Beyoncé was looking for a different intro to accompany the moment in the video when Serena Williams is walking down the steps. When I played her the half-time version, she loved it. The half-time tracks are stems from my main mix that retain most of the main drum effects.”

DRUM DIALLING White: “I added some sub to the kick with Waves RBass, some attack with an SPL Transient Designer, and a small bump at 50Hz using Avid’s EQ3. Lo-fi adds grit to the hi-hats, but also tends to add some lo-mid that’s undesirable, so I rolled that out with Avid’s EQ. The last EQ is the Millenia NSEQ2 to add some smooth 16kHz to the hat. The snare reverb is from the Air Reverb plug-in, and I also used Avid’s Time Adjuster to lay it back a little. All the plug-ins are really subtle, just roll-offs in the bottom end, adding some high end, things like that. It’s in the vocals where it gets crazy.”

SYNTHS UNDER CONTROL White: “The bass had RBass for compression, the FabFilter Pro Q2 notched out a few frequencies and boosted low end, and I also laid it back a little bit with the Time-Adjuster.

I took off the LittleLabs IBP phase alignment tool, but I’m crazy about that plug-in. In my world I may be dealing with five kick drums in one session, that plug-in is great to get them all to make sense together. The main synth has the Waves RCompressor and CLA-3A compressor, and all the other synth parts have pretty basic treatments as well, mostly EQ and compression. Every plug-in does a little bit.”

FILTERING THE 808 White: “Some of the outro drums are half-time, like the intro, others are not. There’s a fair amount of EQ on the ‘808 Low’ track. An 808 kick is already low and subby. When you halftime it, you get a ridiculous amount of subsonic energy that will break your speakers, so I had to filter that with the Pro-Q2.”

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REVERSE PARALLEL COMPRESSION White: “I compressed the ‘Lead Aux’ track hard with a Waves CLA76, then copied that track to ‘Lead Aux Parallel’, took off the compression and mixed the uncompressed signal in with the heavily compressed track. It’s kind of the reverse way to how parallel compression is normally done. Those tracks both go to ‘Lead All’, which has quite a number of reverbs and delays on the sends, including a Valhalla Room reverb, church reverb from the RVerb, EMT plate reverbs, eighth note and quarter note delays, Waves MetaFlanger, SoundToys Little Microshift, and more.”

EFFECT OVERLOAD CAN BE EFFECTIVE White: “This is one of those songs where you look at it, and think, ‘Man, am I really using that many plug-ins?’ I used to be freaked out by that, but not anymore, because I’m comfortable just going with the sounds I like. Sometimes there are 10 to 12 plug-ins on a track. I had a low version of the ‘I’m sorry’ lyric repeated four times, which I pitched down an octave. The plugins I used were Lo-fi, UAD AMS RMX16, the UAD Moog Filter, which is a brilliant analogue filter, the SoundToys Little AlterBoy, which alters the pitch, and the UAD MXR Flanger/ Doubler. I spent hours automating all the filters, levels, thresholds and ratios. When you’re chaining so many effects together, you need to work harder to control all the frequencies and make sure none of them are sticking out.”

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FINAL MASTERS White: “Everything in the session goes to the ‘All’ aux track, which is my master fader. It has, amongst other things, the Sonnox Oxford Inflator for some loudness, and Cytomic’s The Glue doing a tiny bit of compression. I still wanted more glue in the track, so copied the entire master fader and added the SSL compressor set to a fast attack and 4:1 ratio for heavy parallel compression. Both tracks then go to an aux track with the Neve 33609 doing a tiny bit of compression. Then that goes to a set of master tracks, one without a limiter and one with the A.O.M Invisible Limiter on it. I then printed one mix without the limiter and one with and sent both to Dave Kutch the mastering engineer. He used my unlimited version and added a different limiter, which sounded really good.”

and had booked every single room; producers were everywhere writing songs. After that we took a break, then went to Paris for 45 days, where we lived in a hotel and set up two studios in two different hotel rooms. The identical setups consisted of ProAc Studio 100 monitors, an Avid Omni converter, Telefunken Elam 251 mic, an Avalon 737 mic pre, Tube Tech CL1B compressor, a Shure SM58 which she likes to use occasionally, and matching Pro Tools sessions. I tended to work with Bey in one room, while my assistant, Ramon Rivas, would work with Jay-Z in the other room.

Bey and J often work at the same time, which is why we needed two systems.

“After the New Year we went back to LA, to be in the sunshine, also Bey had to perform at the Grammy Awards ceremony in February. So we set up a studio in the movie theatre at her house. In addition to the gear I mentioned earlier, I set up an ASC AttackWall for the acoustics. I’m a big fan of that, and have it in my own studio in New York as well. I lived in a hotel close by her house for a year, and every day they’d text me early in the morning asking me to arrive at a specific time. We would sometimes start as early as eight o’clock. She’s a mother, and if her baby is up at seven, she’s ready to start work at eight! We later also conducted recording sessions at Conway, Henson, Pacifique, Jungle City Studios and Capitol Studios.”

MIX FROM NIX

The different producers and co-writers involved in the making of Lemonade would sometimes send in their material, other times White was involved in recording it. In the case of James Blake, White recorded him at Conway Studios. White: “He came in, heard the track (Forward), walked up to Bey’s Elam 251 with the same vocal chain (Avalon 737 into Tube Tech CL1B) and sang his vocal pretty much right off the bat. Then he tried some chords on the piano and I recorded him soon after using two older Schoeps W-221 small diaphragm microphones going into Neve 1073 mic pres.

“Jack White sent his stuff in for the song Don’t Hurt Yourself, which was recorded on eight-track analogue, with tons of bleed. I love bleed, as it helps glue the track together and creates depth.

The thing was, they’d taken all the effects off in the transfer to digital. It was a lot of work for me to get AT 42

it to fit in our sonic world and make it rock at the same time. We added some samples to beef up the drums and make them fit in our big bass world.

Bey sang through a Shure SM58 with distortion and the speakers turned up really loud, like Bono. The 8-track definitely gave it a colour and a mood, then we brought it into our more modern production aesthetic.”

White’s work of bringing all the sonically disparate tracks into that modern production started from the moment he received or recorded any material. “I don’t waste any time,” he said.

“Basically, I immediately start mixing; EQ-ing, adding effects, creating moods and sounds. In part, this is to help Bey find the right voice for a song.

She changes her voice quite a bit from song to song, so I just go with my gut in the moment then add more and more tweaks every day until we get down to the final mix.

“Things changed constantly. Sometimes I copied a Pro Tools session five times to accommodate five different arrangements. We were changing things right down to the last minute when I printed the mixes and had to turn the album in. It didn’t necessarily involve extensive mix changes, it was often a matter of adding a section, or changing a part of an arrangement or vocal line. By the end the mixes were pretty dialled in, even though we had a separate mix stage at Pacifique studios in LA. I was there for several weeks, and finished off the songs I mixed for the album.”

IN THE LAPTOP BOX

White ended up mixing eight and a half songs on the album — the half was a co-mix of Formation with Jaycen Joshua — while the other three were mixed by Tony Maserati. Central to the entire process was White’s ability to do the entire project on a laptop. “Up until that point I was still using each studio’s desktop computer,” he explained, “but that became hell, because studio computers don’t have the same plug-ins, and I’m plug-in crazy.

Every time we went to another studio I’d spend two days getting all the right software. Then we’d need extra cards to run the sessions. It was a huge headache. I went completely in the box a long time ago, probably around 2006. Until the Lemonade project I was tracking everything in the box, but still mixing on a console. However, all the recalls

and moving around all the time — all part of the modern way of working — made that more and more difficult.

“I knew if I was going to be a mixer, I’d need to be able to get my best results in the box. It’s absolutely the future. It was like: this is my generation, I need learn to do this in order to survive. It’s a different approach to mixing, but you can get great results both ways. Mixing on a desk sounds different to mixing in the box. When I was working with Russell Elevado my ears were tuned to analogue, but there’s so much innovativation happening now that can’t be done in the analogue world, and I want to keep pushing forward. Digital has a crisp tone and texture that I’ve come to love. Analogue smears the transients and dulls the rough edges, which can sound great too but a lot of engineers have figured out how to work with the digital medium, and make sure it doesn’t sound harsh.

“Also, I strongly feel that an engineer’s job is to make the technology disappear for the artist, so he or she can just be creative. Working in an analogue environment with gear that is inconsistent and changes from studio to studio is a challenge. We work really hard to get something to sound a certain way, and we don’t want to lose that when we have to recreate it elsewhere. Artists certainly don’t like that. They also want to work on things when their ideas are fresh and the energy is new. Working in the box allows me to make the technology disappear for the artist. They can get their ideas down without having anything to worry about.”

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REGULARS

Apple Notes Process this: The ‘i’ of your apple.

Column: Brad Watts

A few issues back we looked at crafting your own OS X-capable machine using off the shelf computer parts — a Hackintosh, as it’s become known. Of course, this is frowned upon by the higher beings at Apple, but until the Apple stormtroopers come bursting through your front door there’s little to stop one from doing so. That said, if you’re planning to embark on building a bespoke machine to compete or better a Mac Pro, the costs can end up being quite similar. However, the advantages can outweigh the pitfalls: the main advantage being incremental hardware upgrades, and the weaknesses being issues with Thunderbolt compatibility and the time you have to spend getting a system up and running. In short, avoid Thunderbolt audio interfaces if you’re going the DIY path and value your sanity.

When stepping into these murky waters, perhaps the most important question you’ll be confronted with, apart from the choice of motherboard, will be which Intel processor to choose. Do you use an i3, i5 or an i7? Or do you go one step further and opt for a Xeon processor (or two Xeons)?

I’ll eradicate the i3 option immediately. While these processors can run at high rates (up to 4GHz), they only offer two cores and relatively small caches (4MB at best). Caches provide a holding area for instructions to and from the processor, allowing faster performance by drip feeding the processor instructions while it deals with the previous batch. i3 processors also offer hyper-threading technology, allowing an increase in the number of independent instructions in the pipeline, juggling the instructions as ‘threads’ between cores as those cores become available. Because of this, an i3 will show in some applications such as Logic Pro X, to have four cores.

While there are advantages to hyper-threading, the bottom line is you’ve really only got two cores. It merely brings a two-core processor toward a usable state. An i3 also doesn’t have ‘Turbo-boost’ enabled. This is the ability of the processor to add 2-600MHz to its operating speed when required, a feature found on the i5 and i7 processors. i3 processors are aimed at everyday use such as home users running word processing,

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rudimentary gaming and internet tasks. They’re the cheapest of the Intel processors, hovering around the $200 mark. Great for general use, but not great for audio work.

As you’d surmise, i5 processors up the ante, providing a true set of four cores. Turbo-boost is also enabled, so that extra 2-600Mhz speed increase (dependent on the version of i5 you run) will jump into play when the going gets tough. i5 processors also have larger cache memory sizes — most offering 6MB of this pooling area — so more instructions can be divvied out to the processor cores as required. However, what is missing in the i5 is hyper-threading; hyper-thread aware applications such as Logic Pro X will only show four cores.I have a number of machines running i5 processors, my audio machine included, and they do a great job. I seldom run out of processing power with effect plug-ins, but can push the limits with too many instrument plug-ins. The i5 is the middle class of Intel processors, and are generally available for anywhere between the $250 to $400 mark, dependent upon model. i7 processors combine all of the previously mentioned features and consequently are far superior for processor hungry work. Currently, standard desktop-style i7 processors like the i7-6700K will run at 4GHz and up to 4.2GHz in Turbo-boost mode. There’s an 8MB cache, and hyper-threading is supported in the i7. So, in Logic Pro X you’ll see eight processors in the CPU/HD performance window. The i7-6700K is used in the most recent special order iMacs, at an additional cost of $400. Knowing that, an i7-6700K processor itself can be picked up anywhere from $400 to $500. These processors are also ‘unlocked’ meaning if you’re running that processor in a DIY Mac, you can alter your BIOS options and judiciously set the processor to run faster than the stock 4.0/4.2GHz. Interestingly, there’s also an ‘i7 Extreme’ line of processors from Intel. These offer additional cores and much larger caches — up to 10 cores/20 threads with the help of a 25MB cache. While this undoubtedly covers all your virtual instrument and effect needs, be prepared to shell out up to a staggering $3000 for the i7-6950X. Logic Pro X will

support up to 12 cores, so it’s not out of the question if you’re aiming to build a killer audio machine.

The next option — Xeon processors — ups the stakes in terms of cost and performance. These CPUs are used in Mac Pro units — both the older tower designs and the 2013 ‘trash can’ models.

Xeon processors are used in what’s known as ‘server class’ or workstation machines — those running mission critical server level chores or running day-in/day/out rendering. Unlike any of the ‘i’ series CPUs, Xeon processors don’t include onboard graphics processing. However, unlike the ‘i’ series, they do support ECC memory. ECC memory can detect and correct common internal data corruption and correct these errors before hitting the CPU. This results in less freezing or sudden shut down of applications. If you’re working with video on Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Premier Pro, aim for a Xeon build. In fact, and I’ve mentioned this in previous columns, it’s entirely feasible to upgrade older (back to 2008) Mac Pros to current speed Xeon processors. Swap out your dual-core Xeon 5150s for a pair of four-core Xeon 5355s for example, which can be picked up for as little as $5/pair — this would almost double the processing power for a meagre outlay.

All-in-all, there are a number of features to consider when building or upgrading to a very capable machine. Knowing the pros and cons of the i3/i5/i7 lineage should get you into the picture as to what you need and help you find a match between those needs and your budget.

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REVIEW

AUDIX PERFORMANCE 40 SERIES

Wireless Microphone System Audix’s new wireless mic system throws everything it can at the Sennheiser/Shure duopoly.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Mark Davie

PRICE R41 w/OM2 handheld: $967 R42 w/two OM2 handhelds: $1989

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

PROS Solid metal construction High RF power transmission Great battery life Upgradeable capsules & receivers

CONS Channel scan results unclear

SUMMARY Audix is getting serious about its wireless systems. The Performance series’ metal build feels reassuring, and it’s a doddle to set up with auto scan and infrared sync. It also features a modular design, with interchangeable capsules, upgradeable receivers, even detachable bodypack antennas.

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Turn to the world’s most powerful live mixing system

Avid VENUE | S6L

Get the unrivaled performance, superior sound clarity, and onboard plug-ins that have made S6L the standout favorite among top sound engineers. And now S6L offers new Waves SoundGrid support, I/O sharing, 128-track Pro Tools® recording, and MADI and Dante connectivity. Even better, all systems now come with the industry’s highest level of support, including 24/7 assistance, overnight hardware exchange, software upgrades, and more—for three full years!

Discover the next stage in live sound: avid.com/S6L © 2016 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Product features, specifications, system requirements, and availability are subject to change without notice. Avid, the Avid logo and Pro Tools are trademarks or registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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By many accounts, Audix’s previous wireless system was a bit of a joke. I never had the opportunity to use it, so I can’t chime in other to point out that it was called RAD 360… RAD 360, it sounds like a white shirted marketing guy trying to ollie in front of a crowd of high school skateboarders and falling flat on his face. Not the best look.

Breaking up the Shure/Sennheiser wireless duopoly is hard. Audix’s new Performance system wireless is a confidence builder. Atoning for previous miscues by packing in features not usually seen at this price point. For a start, the name has got all the right components — a number hierarchy, and Performance says ‘serious, but not ULX-D serious’ so we know where it should stand.

The base model OM2 dynamic mic single channel system I reviewed is just shy of $1000 at retail, sitting right in the same bracket as the base models in Sennheiser’s 100 G3 series and Shure’s SLX systems if you’re looking at the analogue UHF range. Not a lot has been happening in this space lately. Sennheiser has really got itself sorted with the 100, 300 and 500 ranges, putting more effort into its budget (XS) and high end (9000 series) offerings. Likewise, Shure’s more recent efforts have been the cheaper BLX and the more advanced offering in QLX-D. Perfect timing for a new entrant.

STEELY GRIP

There aren’t many greater differentiators between handheld wireless systems than the feel and weight of metal versus plastic. Audix’s H60 mic body feels just right with a completely metal shaft and hard plastic antenna nub. Unscrewing and screwing the handheld elements apart was a little dicey on the pre-production review model, but I’ve since had a go at the production models and they thread into each other with confidence.

Its small LED brightly displays the current frequency, group, channel and battery status in normal operation, switching to a simple mute notification when its power button is momentarily pressed. Powering the mic on and off requires a longer press of around three seconds, which is much safer than a switch system. There was a tiny handling noise click when you mute, and the signal takes a second to re-establish when un-muting, which is a common trait of wireless.

Perhaps the biggest feature of the handheld is its interchangeable capsules. Not just because you can swap them out but because Audix has made the thread and connection system compatible with Shure. There’s no alliance here, just Audix realising its customers like choice. There are more than a few bands touring with Audix’s OM7 capsules adapted to a Shure body via a Soundtools adaptor. The new capsules will let them fit straight on, and vice versa with a Beta 58 or KSM9 capsule screwing directly onto the Audix. As it stands, there are options for the OM2, OM5 and VX5 condenser, with an OM7 capsule coming soon.

Two AA batteries slide up into the body of the receiver like you’re slotting rounds into a rifle.

As well as the mic readout, there’s a big battery indicator on the receiver’s front panel which is AT 48

fairly easy to read, and battery life is supposed to be 10 hours. I never tested that theory as I have a habit of swapping out batteries before a show, and they never registered a drop over a couple of hours.

A dipswitch in the battery chamber lets you choose either 10mW or 40mW of power transmission to the receiver. Counterintuitively, less power can be a good thing. With bigger channel counts, it can stop different systems treading on each other’s toes with intermodulation frequency interruptions. That said, obviously having a 40mW option makes distance applications more stable.

The cheaper Shure BLX, for instance, is set to 10mW only.

RECEIVING LINE

At the other end of the line, Audix has also made sure its receiver looks and feels solid too. There are two options, the single-channel R41 half-rack unit, or dual-channel R42 full-rack unit, which splits the antennas so you only need one set for both channels. Both units tune within a 32MHz wide frequency range, with two options — either between 522-554MHz or 554-586MHz. There is a range of 60 series receivers coming later in the year, which will cover the entire 64MHz at a 30% premium. It also doubles the recommended channel count to 16 and gives you 2560 tuneable frequencies, as opposed to the 106 precoordinated ones of the 40 series. The operating range also jumps from 90m to 137m in the clear blue sky. Both the handheld and bodypack transmitters already transmit over the entire 64MHz range, making it possible to just update the receivers if required.

Setting up is breezy, holding either of the up/ down buttons sets off an auto scan function that takes about 30 seconds to scan the lot and settle on a group and channel. While that part was easy, it would be more comforting to get a readout of clear channels in the group to make sure I had enough to work with. It seemed to be unsure of which group was best; every scan would come up with a different result — one with 14 available frequencies, the next with only eight. It also wouldn’t tell me if any of those channels in that group were compromised.

A channel list scan would be nicer, especially when setting up multiple units. Syncing the transmitter was super fast, faster than a Sennheiser 100 G3 system. Just drop the transmitter’s pants, hold it up to the infrared node, hit a button and you’re away.

You access the menu for further options by holding down the Set button. Frustratingly, after you select and change a parameter, it bounces you right out of the menu altogether, requiring you to press and hold again to adjust something else. It’d also be handy if there were some markings other than Sync and Set. A ‘Scan (Hold)’ marking on one of the Up/Down buttons would save a few questions.

The receiver also has squelch, with an adjustable threshold from 5dB to 45dB in 5dB steps. In practise, I found anything above 25dB severely limited my range, with the maximum setting persistently cutting out. Around 25dB was stable to about 15m, and 10dB let me go anywhere I wanted in a large auditorium. There’s also a Pilot

Tone Squelch you can turn off if you’re feeling dangerous, and a button lock option if you’re not.

WIRED VS WIRELESS

I tested the unit out in a system where I have a variety of wired mics — including Audix OM3xb dynamics and SM58s — as well as Shure BLX wireless with SM58 and Beta58 handhelds.

When I was setting up the system in some headphones, the Audix seemed noisier than the BLX. I started investigating levels and found out the receiver comes preset from the factory with +6 (presumably dB) gain on the receiver, which is also the recommended starting point for dynamic mics in the manual. Coincidentally, that setting did match the sensitivity of the wired OM3xb I had on hand.

However, when I unscrewed the capsule from the handheld, a dipswitch lets you set a transmitter output level of either 0dB, -6db and -12dB. It was set to -12dB. When I set the handheld output to 0dB and the receiver level to -6dB to compensate, it brought down the noise and the compander seemed to behave more comfortably. Obviously the level you set would depend on how hard your singer is pushing into the mic, but even when I was giving it a red hot go and pushing the meter to the top of its range, there didn’t seem to be any noticeable distortion.

Like most analogue compander systems in this range, it failed the key test, turning the jangle into a deep packet of chips. But other than being a little more excitable than the wired version, it didn’t seem to have a noticeable impact with voice. It responded to sibilance similarly when compared with the wired mic. Overall, the OM2 is a well-behaved dynamic. Relative to an SM58 and the ‘extended bass’ OM3xb, it sounds like it has a built-in, high-pass filter. It cuts through, makes for a killer, pre-tuned presenter microphone, and is useful on singers you want to cut the mud out of.

The provided screw-on antennas are huge, and the optional ADS48 also works with the receiver systems to provide antenna distribution for up to four units (eight channels when combined with the dual-channel units). I did notice that cupping the end of the mic made it struggle to send signal, an issue I couldn’t replicate blocking any part of the BLX handheld. It’s highly unlikely that would ever happen though. On the plus side, the bodypack has a removable antenna, which is not typical of this price range. It also comes with a handy soft carry case; another little perk.

BREAKING RADIO SILENCE

Audix has really powered back into wireless with the Performance series. It’s added features here that firmly put it in step with the competition: metal construction and interchangeable capsules are just some of the highlights. PAVT is also bundling rack ears in; an Australian-only special.

It looks professional, feels right, sounds great, and the impending 64MHz option will really put the pressure on. Being able to upgrade or swap out capsules is a great benefit for a simple wireless system, and the native capsule swapping is big news for the hybrid Audix/Shure users out there.

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REVIEW

DBX 580

500 Series Microphone Preamp dbx managed to pack loads of control onto a 500 series front panel without it getting overwhelming. What’s more, the 580 preamp’s sound is as clean as it looks.

Review: Greg Walker

I’ve always been a fan of the dbx sound.

Whether it be patching a kick or bass guitar through a vintage 160VU compressor, tweaking a 160A in a live rig, or running a vocal through a 902 de-esser in an old 900 series rack.

There have been few more reliable or sonically useful brands throughout the last 30 years in both live and studio environments. Owning a 900 series rack of compressors and EQs myself, I was doubly curious to check out the new and very affordable 500 series modules recently released by dbx. In the next issue of AT we’ll be looking at the new compressor, de-esser, EQ modules — which build on the heritage of the older designs as well as an innovative subharmonic synthesiser. For this issue, we’ll be focussing on dbx’s new foray into the world of preamplification — the 580 microphone preamp.

LAID OUT RIGHT

NEED TO KNOW

I’ve got to say right off the bat that I love the look and feel of the 580 preamp. I don’t know if it’s dbx’s long experience with designing compact circuits for the 900 series cards but I’ve seldom seen a better laid-out set of controls on a 500 series unit (and I’ve used and reviewed a lot of ’em). There’s plenty going on in terms of controls with continuously variable gain, high and low ‘detail’ boost and low cut filter knobs as well as no less than six switches for phantom power, 20dB pad, polarity invert, low cut enable, detail enable and mic/ instrument selection. Add to that a lovely backlit VU meter for output gain, a variety of coloured LEDs that indicate which of the controls are engaged, plus a peak meter and a

PRICE $499 CONTACT Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au

AT 50

PROS Affordable pro quality Great feature list Well laid out and information-rich faceplate Versatile and transparent sound

CONS Gain taper on DI a bit touchy

SUMMARY The dbx 580 delivers good sonics and excellent additional features in a well thoughtout and executed package. Fast transient response and simple tone shaping abilities make it especially good on percussive sources while the DI is a very musical bonus.

Free & Easy The clarity and flexibility it offers on things like drum and percussion recording make it a winner in my book

jack input for Hi-Z instruments, and you’ve got a very well populated front panel that nevertheless is clear and easy to ‘read’. In use the dbx 580 feels very pro with all controls being smooth to the touch and the switches robust in operation.

The busy front panel is surprisingly quick to acclimatise to. The only control that is slightly difficult to get at is the phantom power switch and this is fine by me as its location makes it very difficult to accidentally engage — a smart and subtle bit of design nous by dbx.

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

Perhaps the most notable feature of the 580 preamp is the inclusion of high and low ‘detail’ controls which are basically EQs under another name. The high detail control introduces a shelving filter with a corner frequency of 10kHz, useful for adding top end clarity and focus on things like vocals and acoustic instruments. Low detail is a more complex circuit that simultaneously introduces a bell filter boost centred around 125Hz and another bell filter cut around 400Hz. The combination of these two EQs plus the low cut filter (a 12dB/oct Bessel filter that is continuously variable from 30-300Hz) means there is a tremendous amount of tonal sculpting available prior to hitting tape or DAW. The preamp circuit itself is a fast solid-state design offering up to 60dB of clean gain, probably not enough for old school passive ribbons and dynamics on quieter sources, but more than adequate for most other applications. There’s no ‘warmth’ or ‘drive’ controls to be seen so if you’re looking for saturation effects best to look elsewhere. I know I’m not alone in often liking to use gear that has an inherent colour and/or drive to it for imbuing sources with character, but having said that, there are many situations where what is required is a clean, transparent signal path with quick transient response that allows things like drums and percussion to pass through unscathed.

Such preamp circuits retain their clarity and punch under duress, and this is where I see the dbx 580 doing its best work.

MR BRIGHTSIDE

My first experiences with the dbx 580 were with an active ribbon mic on percussion instruments where I was immediately pleased by the nice full frequency response and smooth definition of the sounds. When I switched to violin I was similarly

impressed and I found the full-bodied tones from a number of overdubs combined well and sat sweetly in the mix. Next up were acoustic guitar and drum room duties using a Soyuz 017 tube LDC. Again the results were good with a nice sense of body to the sounds. When I engaged the high detail control and added 3-5dB of boost the acoustic gained a sweet sheen up top without getting too clangy in the upper mids, and I also found the high detail boost to be a real winner for drum tracking with a similar sense of refined clarity on overheads and room mic without too much harsh cymbal wash or nasty transient behaviour. Conversely, the low detail boost came in very handy on a couple of bass guitar tracks where the extra emphasis on the fundamentals gave my old Ibanez bass more authority down low.

When the focus changed to miking up individual drums I was pleasantly surprised by how well the 580 captured kick and snare sounds.

The combination of the dbx’s fast transients with its -20dB pad and a little lift of the high detail EQ was an excellent combo. I found the low detail control sometimes added too much bulge to the sounds but a little touch could be helpful to bring out the weight of the kick in particular. For a few years now I’ve been using an older API 512B mic pre on kick (which I love for its fast transient response) but I could see myself swapping that out for the 580 on a regular basis. Finally, mention must go to the instrument DI which I really liked on bass guitar. Again the fact the EQ was always on hand to help tailor a sound was of great use here and I found my DI’d bass tones sat really well in a variety of mixes. In fact my only slight gripe with the unit was that at the high end of its taper the DI signal got a bit jumpy so small and careful gain adjustments were required.

CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK

Its hard to fault dbx on this one. They’ve kept the cost in comparatively cheap and cheery territory while delivering impressive sonic performance and a rich feature list that really adds value in many applications. While having a 580 preamp in your 500 series rack may not serve every purpose, the clarity and flexibility it offers on things like drum and percussion recording make it a winner in my book. Add to that its abilities as a sweet DI and as a versatile performer on guitars and bass and you’ve got a very handy addition to your studio.

AUDIOTECHNOLOGY: THE MONTHLY APP

Lower latency, cheaper and more in tune ...but with all the soul of the original 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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AT 51

REGULARS

Last Word with

Marcus Ryle, Co-founder of Line 6

Marcus Ryle is a co-founder of Line 6, the original amp simulation innovators.

As it turns out, Ryle has a long history of audio innovation, including helping develop the ADAT standard with Alesis. Ryle was in Australia as Line 6 moved distribution across to Yamaha Music Australia.

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It’s Line 6’s 20th anniversary this year.

The company that is now Line 6 was founded in 1985 as Fast Forward Designs.

I worked as a design engineer at Oberheim Electronics from ’80-’85, along with Michel Doidic — The French Guy, as he’s referred to. Oberheim was pretty focused on synthesisers and drum machines, whereas we wanted to build a wider range of solutions. Michel and I along with my wife Susan Wolfe decided to start a consulting company. The notion being we’d focus on what we do best, innovating, but do it for other manufacturers.

Alesis became a client; Digidesign — now Avid — was a client; Dynacord was a client. The first products we did with Alesis were the MMT-8 and HR-16 — an early sequencer and drum machine.

In all we designed about 40 products with Alesis.

ADAT was such an obvious problem that needed to be solved; you should be able to make amazing recordings at home. Keith Barr, one of Alesis’ founders, had the audacity to believe it was possible before we knew it was possible.

Like most people, I had a cassette-based Portastudio at home. I was fortunate to be a studio musician in the early ’80s and spent a lot of time in really nice LA studios. To be able to capture your music in that way at home was not possible. Unless you were Frank Zappa.

The first notion was it should be digital. ADAT was based on VHS tape transport, but we quickly realised we had to design custom heads, the whole tape format, a different tape speed, different track width… different everything.

We had to invent the ADAT optical interface because there wasn’t a good standard that existed, not because we wanted it to be proprietary. We wanted a very efficient, affordable way to transport eight channels of completely isolated audio between machines in 24-bit, which is why we went with optical. At that time, there was MADI, which could do even more channels, but it was a very expensive interface. Alesis shared ADAT with others, and it still gets used today, which is kind of funny.

By the mid-’90s plug-ins were starting to become popular and keyboard players could pretty much get any sound they wanted at the touch of a button. We felt guitar players were being left behind. Every time I’d done a session with a guitar player you’d spend a day getting a guitar tone. You wouldn’t dream of exploring lots of different guitar sounds on a song because of the time it would take to set up different amps and microphones, let alone troubleshoot them all.

It started as an internal research project to see if there was enough DSP power to create a software model of a tube distortion and have it be convincing enough to be useful. Three years later we came out with the first amp.

Racks for guitar players kind of ebb and flow. Sometimes it’s in fashion, sometimes it’s not. Someone had the bright idea to say the POD should be a desktop unit and it needed to have a curved shape to represent the organic nature we tried to embody with the modelling. Many years later Seth Godin wrote a book called Purple Cow; without us knowing it, POD was our purple cow.

The basic notion is if you’re driving down the road and you saw a purple cow, chances are you’d stop and tell someone about it.

It’s important to get noticed. Now we can put modelling in a rack or on the floor, because we understand what it is, but the kidney bean was what started it all.

It’s reaching a level now where we’re not going to see night and day changes in amp modelling and effects.

One of the convenient things about digital is that we get to be the beneficiaries of computer technology and consumer electronics evolving. We have so many more times the DSP power in Helix than our original POD. The Helix has two 32-bit floating point Analog Devices Sharc processors running at 450MHz. The original POD had a single 24-bit fixed point Texas Instruments DSP running at 24MHz. The difference is crazy!

We had to be so efficient in those early days to get every ounce of power. You had to be really thoughtful in how you were approaching algorithms, and that discipline has served us well all the way to today because even though we have much more power, we still try to write really efficient code.

When you’re limited on DSP you might model the overall impact of a larger section of circuitry, now we can go as detailed as we want. We modelled the individual light bulb filaments in a Uni-vibe to get the right lumpy characteristic to do with how the filaments glow and fade out with the different photo-resistors.

Happy accidents when the original products were developed have become part of the core character we love.

It takes us about a month to model each amp, because it functions by processing the audio signals through the models of the elements that make up that amp. When you turn up the presence on an amp, it might actually affect the tone stack or gain in a different way. We’re creating all those oddities in the models — like how much the power supply sags or AC ripple is happening — so you can get the range of sound possible with that amp when you interact with those controls.

We meticulously maintain an amazing collection of classic amps and effects in the office. We went through at least half a dozen 1959 Fender Bassmans before we picked the one that sounded the best. Occasionally someone will say, ‘This is a great sounding model but it doesn’t sound like my 1965 VOX AC30.’

They’re probably right, but we can guarantee you it sounds like our 1965 VOX AC30.

Yamaha acquired us in January of 2014, and it’s been fantastic. It was refreshing finding so many people at Yamaha who shared the exact same passion for people making music.

Variax is a very exciting technology for guitar players, but some were critical of the first generation because of the instrument itself. We worked with luthier James Tyler on the second generation to make instruments that made the Variax technology more interesting to a lot of people. Working with Yamaha on the Variax Standard we were able to take advantage of Yamaha’s skill and factories to make high-quality instruments and bring Variax technology to an even more affordable price point.

Induction Loop Systems The use of an inductive loop system allows hearing-aid wearers to pick up signals emitted by audio sources directly without the use of specialist receivers.

Now distributed

by Madison Technologies

All that’s needed is the hearing aid. AUDIOropa produces a full range of induction loop systems, from small portable systems to suit the counter-top, through to large scale systems for major venues.

Infrared Systems IR systems are preferred in installations where confidentiality of the information exchanged plays a decisive role or in areas where several transmission systems are operated in parallel to one another.

AUDIOropa Infrared systems offer reliable transmission, free of electromagnetic interference, and the restraints of structural elements within a building. Systems are commonly found in the modern school, university, court room and generally in urban areas where there is a high rate of RF emission present.

RF Transmission Systems The most common of the wireless transmission technologies, RF transmission provides the most powerful system with the largest range of coverage. The nature of RF signals allows users to leave the room in which the transmitter is installed without loss of coverage, and the system is also well suited to outdoor events. The receivers can be equipped with tele-loops which provide for the inductive transmission of signals to the hearing aid.

AUDIOropa RF transmission systems are designed for professional applications such as sports arenas, other major venues, churches and lecture / seminar rooms.

with Madison, you’re well connected™

Assistive Listening Systems

by

Meeting and conference centres, cinemas, theatres and other public institutions, such as banks or hotels can let hearing impaired people wearing assistive listening devices participate in acoustic events using AUDIOropa technology.

Download the product catalogue > madisontech.com.au/audioropa For a demonstration, call 1800 00 77 80 or email av@madisontech.com.au

AT 53

Free & Easy

AUDIOTECHNOLOGY: THE MONTHLY APP

Lower latency, cheaper and more in tune ...but with all the soul of the original 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.

GET IT NOW AT 54