AudioTechnology App Issue 38

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THE SOUND OF SILENCE The RØDE NT-1 is the quietest microphone in the world.

With an imperceptible 4.5dBA self-noise, the RØDE NT-1 is the blank canvas upon which you can create your masterpiece.

Make some noise.

RØDE NT1

1” Condenser Microphone Made in Australia 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

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

Assistant Editor Preshan John preshan@alchemedia.com.au 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

info@alchemedia.com.au www.audiotechnology.com.au

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

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

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All material in this magazine is copyright Š 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. 22/05/2017.

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COVER STORY

AudioTechnology & Studios 301 Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard Lush

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ISSUE 38 CONTENTS

32

Designing Universal Music’s New Studio

Pascal Gabriel’s Laid Back Approach

36

Bush Orchestra — Recording Rayella

dbx 500 Series Processors 52 AT 6

Mix Masters: Twenty One Pilots on Suicide Squad

16

ABC Goes to Rio

Native Instruments Komplete 11 Ultimate

28

40

28 54

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GENERAL NEWS

ANTELOPE AUDIO GOLIATH GROWS Antelope Audio’s Goliath HD is giant. It features 64 channels of I/O and 16 new Accusonic mic preamps, each with their own volume control on the front panel. As you can expect, Antelope hasn’t skimped on the clock, incorporating 64-bit Acoustically Focused Clocking (AFC) jitter-management technology and a 10M input. The conversion is based around ESS chips, resulting in 124dB of dynamic range at the analogue inputs, and 129dB on the way out, and supremely low THD figures despite being crammed with I/O. Not satisfied to settle with enough mic preamps to track a live band, Antelope also included four DI inputs, two

transformer-based re-amp outputs, a built-in talkback mic, two headphones output, a pair of analogue inserts and dual MADI. Antelope has also made it a killer Pro Tools front end with exacting HDX delay compensation. Probably the best feature, however, is Goliath’s ability to talk to more than one DAW at a time. By incorporating both HDX Digilink and Thunderbolt/USB 3.0, you can switch between either mode, and therefore any DAW, without skipping a beat. Add onboard DSP, and it doesn’t get bigger than Goliath!

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

DPA’S MINI FIELD RECORDING D:VICE DPA’s new d:vice MMA-A is a cute, but serious little audio interface designed for live and mobile journalists. It works with any iOS device, Mac or PC for a puny, on-the-go pro recording solution.

The two-inch-wide puck incorporates two mic preamps and AD conversion with dual mono or stereo operation for capturing interviews or ambience. It comes with interchangeable Lightning and USB cables and MicroDot inputs allow d:vice to be connected to all DPA miniature microphones including d:screet Miniature, d:fine Headset, d:vote

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Instrument and d:dictate recording mics. Functions like preamp gain and high-pass filters can be controlled through the smartphone app, where you can also save presets. Third party applications like Skype can be used to perform live broadcasts, and when paired with a d:fine 66 In-Ear Broadcast Headset Microphone, it allows interruptible foldback for broadcast situations.

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

NOVATION’S SYNTH PEAK Novation has launched a new polyphonic synth called Peak, designed by Chris Huggett — the man behind Bass Station, Supernova, OSCar, and many other synths. Peak takes its inspiration from the Bass Station II analogue monosynth, but incorporates an FPGA to give pure digital control. It has eight voices with three New Oxford oscillators for each voice, and you can opt to begin with either Numerically Controlled Oscillators or 17 digitallydesigned wavetables, which include mathematically pure sine waves. It has a resonant multi-mode analogue filter and three distortion points for each voice. It’s capable of receiving polyphonic aftertouch; there’s also reverb, delay, and chorus

effects; and an onboard arpeggiator. Peak connects via CV, MIDI I/O, or USB. Novation also announced Circuit Mono Station, which adds a paraphonic analogue synth to the top of the pad-based Circuit controller. Like Peak, it’s derived from the Bass Station II and has three sequencer tracks that benefit from the 32 pads. It has two individuallycontrollable oscillators, three distortion modes, and one multi-mode filter with high-pass, low-pass or band-pass. It also offers four waveshapes, a sub oscillator, ring modulation, noise generation, plus an overdrive.

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

PRESONUS BOLTS WITH QUANTUM Quantum is Presonus’s new 26 x 32 Thunderbolt 2 audio interface. Taking full advantage of Thunderbolt’s high transfer speeds, Presonus says Quantum offers extremely low latency and expandable I/O. Its 26 inputs are comprised of eight built-in XMAX remote-controllable mic preamps and two sets of ADAT Optical inputs.

Two TRS main outputs are complemented with an additional eight balanced line outputs, plus 16 Optical outs and two pairs of headphone sends on the front of the unit. Further expandability

comes by stacking up to four Quantum units via Thunderbolt for a maximum of 96 inputs and outputs. BNC word clock I/O keeps things in sync, plus you get five-pin MIDI and S/PDIF I/O. Sampling rates go to 24-bit/192k and Quantum integrates tightly with Presonus Studio One for enhanced functionality such as recallable mic pre settings.

Quantum’s onboard features can also be controlled using Presonus’s free UC Surface control software for remote access.

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

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LIVE NEWS

JBL VTX GETS AN A GRADE JBL has added another tier to its VTX flagship line array range. Despite having a different prefix and look, the 12-inch A12 sits roughly between the 10-inch V20 and the 15-inch V25II, rounding out the VTX range as a complete family.

Everything has been freshly designed on the A12.

The new HF section combines three drivers, the HF phasing-plug and waveguide into a single part.

JBL says it yields better tolerances, increased sensitivity above 6kHz while reducing distortion

and weight. The four 5-inch mid-frequency drivers are integrated into the HF waveguide while still providing a smooth horn surface, and both 12-inch LF woofers are the fourth-generation of JBL’s Differential Drive. It’s also been designed with touring in mind to speed up rigging time., Vertec are still available, but will come down in price as a more affordable line-array from JBL. Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au

L-ACOUSTICS GIVES IT STICK The L-Acoustics Syva is an elite stick PA. The highpowered speaker system features six mediumfrequency and three high-frequency drivers in a sleek J-shaped progressive curvature format. The transducer arrangement called ‘segment source’ produces a directivity pattern of 140°H/26°V, optimised for surface coverage and 35m of throw.

Syva can be accompanied by the Syva Low highpowered sub or Syva Sub infra extension to achieve

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142dB max SPL. Syva Low has two 12-inch drivers and a response down to 40Hz. Syva Sub has a single KS28-grade 12-inch driver to extend bandwidth down to a staggeringly low 27Hz. One LA4X amp can drive up to four enclosures. Syva can be wallor pole-mounted, as well as flown, standing on a baseplate, or standing on the Syva sub.

Hills: 1300 445 571 or www.hills.com.au

DIGICO STADIUS ULTRA PREAMP The sound of Digico consoles has long been a selling point — clean and precise, yet happy to be driven hard. Lately Digico’s Tech Director, John Stadius, has been itching to put out an even better preamp design for ultra-discerning engineers to stuff in their SD-Racks. The Stadius is an eightchannel mic preamp card that will slot into existing racks. It’s the result of wanting to push the internal conversion stages to 32-bit, and needing a preamp that would make use of the extra bit depth. Though technically, 24-bit is more than capable of handling the Stadius’ 123dBA of dynamic range. Either way,

it’s an impressive beast with a frequency response of 20Hz-44.5kHz ±0.1dB, and <0.002% THD + noise and zero phase shift between 20Hz and 22kHz. Each channel has twin 32-bit AD conversion which chunks through the code and spits out digital bits in 73 microseconds. Digico has also reduced the card’s operating temperature because it… ‘sounds cooler’. Nice to know the humour’s not lost in all those cutting edge specs.

Group Technologies: (03) 9354 9133 or sales@grouptechnologies.com.au

SHURE AXIENT DISRUPTS DIGITAL Shure debuted its new Axient Digital wireless system at the NAB 2017 Show in Vegas and blew up previous notions of what a wireless system could handle. Axient systems now have a tuning range of a whopping 184MHz. Compared to 80MHz of the previous Axient, and 64MHz of ULX-D. Like ULX-D, it can pack up to 63 channels into 8MHz in High Density mode. There are also two transmitter levels you can buy into; the AD and ADX Series. Both feed the same dual or quad receivers. With AD Series transmitters, you get the core necessities like exceptional RF performance,

digital audio, and networking options. Stepping up to ADX incorporates ShowLink: real-time control of all transmitter parameters with interference detection and avoidance. The ADX Series also includes Axient’s first micro bodypack with an integrated self-tuning antenna for better concealment and comfort. Axient Digital is compatible with the Shure Battery Rack Charger which supports up to eight rechargeable batteries in a single rack space.

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

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SOFTWARE NEWS

NEVE 2254E TURNED MULTI-BAND It seems the Neve 2254E compressor/limiter is in vogue. Check out our review of AML’s take on the hardware later this issue, but if software is your bag, you can download Plugin Alliance’s Lindell Audio version, the 345E plug-in. It chains three 2254E models together to create a multi-band version. It keeps the 1.5:1 to 6:1 compression ratios, but adds features like a Nuke button for dramatic over-compression, a side chain function, and a Niveau filter for tilting the side chain and

high-pass filter response towards preserving more of the bass energy and lending itself to the API ‘thrust’ compression effect. The attack and release controls differ slightly from the original, allowing you to select an insanely fast two microsecond attack. There’s also auto release and auto makeup gain, and the crossover points are easy to dial in with a digital number readout. Now you can have not one, but three Neve 2254E’s per channel, and even run them in mid-side.

REASON 9.5 GETS VST SUPPORT It’s been the number one feature request for years, and finally Propellerhead has delivered. The latest version of Reason officially offers full support for VST plug-ins. That’s right — your love-hate relationship with Reason can now become pure love. Watch in awe as all your favourite plug-ins open without complaint in the software. Or if you’re a Reason user who’s never explored VSTs, now you can check out the thousands of processing, instrument, and effects options out there, both paid and free of charge, available online.

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Propellerhead has worked hard to ensure the new compatibility hasn’t diluted the Reason experience in any way. VST plugs will be right at home in the Reason rack. You can drag and drop them from the browser, use CV with your plug-ins, add Players, and even put them in Combinators with Reason’s own devices or Rack Extensions. If you already own Reason, version 9.5 will be available as a free update at the end of May. Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au

NOVATION’S COMPONENTS STANDALONE After spending months in development, Novation has come out of hiding to reveal a new update for Circuit Components users around the world – Components Standalone. The new update gives you the keys to Components on Mac or PC, to use offline and without a Facebook or Google login.

If users have registered Novation hardware, they can access Components Standalone by signing in to their Novation accounts. If you’re wondering

what Components is, it’s a platform developed specifically for Novation’s groovebox, Circuit.

Components gives you a suite of free tools so you can expand, tweak and create your own customised instrument. Components Standalone features easier navigation so you can quickly visit the areas of Components you go to most often.

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

NI’S META REMIX STRATEGY Ex-Beatport CEO Matthew Adell has joined NI as Chief Digital Officer to spearhead new strategies for the brand’s online product portfolio. One of those moves included Native Instruments recently acquiring MetaPop, a start-up specialising in monetising remixes for their creators as well as their rights holders. Just one year after launch, MetaPop revealed it had legalised more than 20,000 bootleg remixes and has a catalogue of 200,000 songs.

CEO of Native Instruments, Daniel Haver said: “At Native Instruments we want to inspire and empower music lovers to express themselves, and in a very short time MetaPop has enabled thousands of new producers and remixers to do just that.” The MetaPop team will expand Native Instruments’ US office, building the 50-strong Los Angeles team into a major innovation hub for NI. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

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HUNTER CAMPUS TAFE NSW INSTALLATION BY MUSOS CORNER

We are proud to be celebrating 50 years as one of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading musical instrument and pro-audio retailers. Its been a long journey and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve have come a long way from originally selling pianos in 1967, Musos Corner have collaborated with Hunter Campus TAFE NSW Music Department in the design, refit and installation of not one, but two new recording and post-production studio facilities. The studios now feature a 48 channel SSL Duality Delta and an SSL Matrix respectively, as well as full Dante networking, Focusrite Rednet and Avid Pro Tools HDX I/O. TAFE have been so satisfied with our work that we are now also delivering a third post-production studio featuring an Avid S6. Hunter TAFE are only one of the many institutions we now service.

This is what we can do for large institutes; imagine what we can do for you!

If you would like to check out these facilities or gain more information on Sound Production courses at Hunter Campus, TAFE NSW please call 02 4923 7595 or for other NSW areas 131 225. https://www.tafensw.edu.au

We can help with your studio!

Musos Corner

1 National Park St Newcastle West NSW 2302 Showroom Open 7 Days. Finance Available.

PH: 02 4929 2829 www.musoscorner.com.au

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REVIEW

MACKIE PRODX

Compact Digital Mixers Review: Preshan John

APP-Y & YOU KNOW IT

If you’ve used Mackie’s DL mixers before, you’ll feel right at home with the ProDX’s control app MixerConnect. Once it’s installed on your smartphone, getting it running with the ProDX is as quick as unwrapping a mic cable — select

PRICE ProDX4: $449 ProDX8: $599

the model you’re connecting to, then press and hold the Bluetooth button on the mixer. Done.

Weirdly, a fader’s unity position is right in the centre of its travel. So if you’re ‘sight mixing’ according to how a regular desk’s faders are laid out, you may find your levels are all +6dB or above. The lack of channel gain control may be the reason for the positional offset.

Channel processing is a piece of cake.

Touch the icon underneath a fader to reveal a panel where you can set effects send level, compression amount, and EQ. The three-band EQ has a sweepable mid band, plus a high-pass filter. All mix tabs sit permanently to the right, so you’re only ever a touch away from tweaking a foldback mix or returning to your L/R mix.

You have 16 options for the effects engine, eight of which are various reverb types, and the other eight include chorus, doublers, and delays.

Though more equitable with the ProDX price, the reverbs still have the same artificial quality as Mackie’s other recent digital consoles. Tap the gear icon below the master fader to see a sevenband graphic EQ for all outputs. Being seven bands, you’d use this more to perform broad brushstroke mix enhancements than surgical problem frequency notching.

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

ACROSS THE BOARD

If your phone battery dies, the ProDX mixers let you perform all major functions right from the front panel (unlike some other app-controlled mixers). Sussing out the ‘one knob, many buttons’ workflow takes five minutes before it feels entirely natural. Simply select a mix, then a channel number, and use the knob to control the channel’s level in that mix. Same for effects.

Applications for the ProDX mixers are endless. And it’s in a niche of its own compared to analogue counterparts, which likely won’t have built-in effects, GEQs on every output, and wireless app control.

It’s good fun for small-time needs. Running up a little acoustic band for a backyard party?

Or need to manage a few inputs for your pub or restaurant? Maybe you want something super portable to accompany your lug-around PA at gigs? ProDX has you sorted, and smartphone control means a quick mix change is as accessible as reaching into your pocket.

SUMMARY For the price and portability, the ProDX mixers are almost a must-have for itinerant sound techs who occasionally handle gigs that only require a handful of inputs. Super fast setup, intuitive app control, and impressive onboard DSP sweeten the deal.

NEED TO KNOW

While we’re more likely to get excited about the latest digital live consoles with virtually endless input counts and inexhaustible DSP, we’ve still got a soft spot for cute and functional mini-mixers.

Most of these mini-beauts are analogue, but Mackie has expanded its digital console line down to the baseline with the ProDX series. So far, the series comprises an odd-looking duo with a look more closely aligned with a bedside alarm clock than anything common to pro audio. Spare them some attention, though. The ProDX mixers are so practical that I’ve wound up wanting one.

The ProDX4 has two mic preamps onboard, stereo master outputs, and an aux output. The ProDX8 has six mic preamps, two aux outputs, and stereo master outs. Both models have a 3.5mm TRS aux input socket, stereo Bluetooth streaming input, and a headphone output on the rear. A slot on top lets you perch your smartphone in it.

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FEATURE

An indigenous acoustic duo tracking with chamber orchestra musicians in rural NT? Audio engineer Tim Webb knew this was no ordinary gig.

Story: Preshan John

Hailing from the tiny town of Marlinja, Northern Territory, indigenous father/ daughter duo, Rayella, has regularly performed its distinctive, haunting flavour of acoustic music in the region for the past three years. Last year the pair, Ray and Eleanor Dixon, jammed with a select picking of Opera Australia chamber orchestra members at the Desert Harmony Festival. Its success birthed the concept for a more formal recording collaboration.

With funding secured, orchestral arrangements written and recording sessions scheduled, Opera Australia flew the six orchestra members from Melbourne to Tennant Creek for a four-day stint with Rayella. Kicking off on a Monday, the two groups rehearsed together until the ‘official’ recording date of Thursday, giving audio engineer Tim Webb plenty of time to fill his hard drives with backup material. “We only had the orchestra for four days so we had to track as much as we could,” he said. “If I could get a great performance, I wanted to capture it.”

CLASSICAL COLLAB

For Tim Webb, the whole prospect was slightly daunting. Though home-grown music blossoms in this region of NT, there’s not much by way of professional, well-equipped studios worthy of a chamber orchestra. Determined to pull off a top notch recording regardless, Webb worked with engineer Jeff McLaughlin (aka Dr Fluoride) to track the musicians in a primary school hall owned

by Barkly Regional Arts. McLaughlin knows the lay of the land, having worked at Barkly’s Winanjjikari Music Centre for 10 years. He supplied the core recording system — an Apogee Ensemble and API lunchbox loaded with JLM preamps. Webb provided some mics, Opera Australia sent a bunch of DPA clip-ons up with the orchestra, and Barkly Regional Arts also loaned some gear. The sessions were assisted by James Winwood, who also wore the production manager hat.

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Jeff McLaughlin helped Tim Webb assemble the core system, which included an Apogee Ensemble, additional Presonus preamps, a lunchbox full of JLM Audio pres, and Opera Australia chipped in some DPA clip-on mics. Webb preferred the sound of the Rode NT2/Audio-Technica AT2021 MS configuration, with a spaced pair of AT2020s.

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AT 18

Barkly Regional Arts’ involvement in this project is a fine example of a well-executed, government-sponsored program that breeds promising, home-grown talent.

Tim Webb: “This kind of project wouldn’t have happened without the Barkly Regional Arts.

They’ve been in the Barkly region working with artists for a long time, and more recently supporting the development of musicians with the Winanjjikari Music Centre, and offering training and employment opportunities for local Aboriginal musicians. They oversaw this entire project, from sourcing funding through the NT government, to administering and organising the live events. Their work is what makes special projects like these possible.”

Most live engineers would agree DPA mics on classical instruments are a hard-to-beat combination, but in the studio, Webb says he preferred the airier sound of an MS configuration (made up of a Rode NT2 and Audio-Technica AT2021), plus a spaced pair of 2m-high AudioTechnica AT2020s, 2.5m apart. The mics pointed at the six-piece group arranged in a semi-circle on a slightly raised stage facing Ray and Eleanor, who sat in the mics’ nulls.

BUSH RECORDING

All tracking was done live. That posed some challenges in tackling monitoring and controlling spill. “I made a conscious decision to not use headphones,” says Webb. “We just wanted everyone to feel comfortable. We had three wedges — one in front of both Ray and Eleanor. The orchestra was having a little trouble timing to the guitar, so I put another under the MS pair. That meant we ended up with a bit of guitar and vocal spill in the orchestra recordings, and if you listen very carefully there’s ambient spill like birds in the background.

Notwithstanding the actual chamber orchestra sounds have come through how we wanted. It’s

bush recording, and we were trying to get a high quality product in a less-than-ideal situation.”

The acoustic guitar was miked with a Neumann TLM102 shielded with a Kaotica Eyeball for isolation. Both Ray and Eleanor sang into Rode NT1s for vocals, most of which were for guides.

Webb: “Ray and Eleanor have a distinctive, accomplished sound. They sing really nice harmonies, which I don’t often hear from other bands in this region, so having the strings was very complimentary. There were a couple of moments tracking when Ray became very emotionally moved by the music and had to stop and have a drink of water. Those were beautiful moments, seeing the success of the collaboration first-hand.”

CELEBRATORY GIG

In all, six of Rayella’s original songs were recorded during the Opera Australia group visit, most of which were tracked as single takes. Mixing is underway and will be completed mostly in-house.

After an intense week rehearsing and recording, both Rayella and the Opera Australia members performed at a live celebration event on the Friday evening, put on by Barkly Regional Arts to

About Tim Webb Tim Webb has been a Tennant Creek local for over 10 years, with most of his time spent teaching music to school children. Audio engineering is another arrow in his quiver, and his portable recording setup, WindUp Studio, has seen many clients recorded in unconventional spaces — lounge rooms, community halls, live gigs. Besides NT, Webb has operated in NSW and Victoria. windupstudio.wixsite.com/timwebb

celebrate the state’s Territory Day — which was followed by fireworks and general NT frivolity… beer, crocs, etc.

To coincide with the EP release, and to continue the relationship between Barkly Regional Arts, Rayella, and Opera Australia, the duo will be performing at Wick Studios in Brunswick, Melbourne from 7pm on Saturday, November 19th.

AT 19

FEATURE

Producer / Engineer Lifetime Achievement Award

RICHARD LUSH Since

AT 20

1965

Audio apprenticeships don’t come any better than assisting on Beatles sessions at Abbey Road studios. Richard learnt the ropes from Geoff Emerick — ramping the varispeed on the ADT machine, and cutting up tape slivers for Sgt. Pepper’s — engineered solo albums for Lennon and McCartney, before moving to Australia where he had a string of No. 1s, including Sherbet’s Howzat and Stevie Wright’s Evie. We were honoured to present Richard with the Producer/Engineer Lifetime Achievement Award as a part of ARIA Week at Studios 301’s 90th birthday celebration.

Story: Mark Davie

Richard Lush was a Stones fan. Everyone else at his school were “Beatle-people”, but a bunch of Liverpudlians in twee jackets flipping their mop tops wasn’t doing it for the self-described rebel; he liked the rawness of the Stones and Mick Jagger’s attitude. Then he heard Twist & Shout, a feistier cut which tipped him towards The Beatles before he had any idea his career would forever be linked with the band. Maybe he would have turned sooner if he’d met Jagger as a school kid instead of later in life. “He came in on a Beatles session once wearing a white suit and I couldn’t believe how tiny he was,” remembered Richard, demolishing the giant stature he’d cultivated of the singer.

Richard’s musical journey started at 14, when his parents brought home the guitar he’d been begging for as a memento of their Spanish holiday. At the time, there were only a few true, lead-playing guitar bands for a teenager to idolise, and Hank Marvin of The Shadows knew how to wail on his whammy bar. Looking through the liner notes of their album, Richard came across Abbey Road Studios. Without a clue about recording, or what even happened inside a studio, he followed an inclination to get closer to the source.

“I wrote them a letter,” said Richard. “Who knows what I said in it.” Abbey Road management asked him to come in for an interview, then after a series of questions and a return call three months later, they offered him a job. “Two of us started on the same day, the other guy was called Peter Mew, and he still works there every now and again. He’s never left since 1965.”

UP THE ABBEY ROAD

Back then at Abbey Road, there was a progression; a very clear pecking order. You started off in the tape library, where you learnt the workings of the building by running tapes around the three main studios. The next step was assistant engineer, where your main duty was to be the tape operator — a position Richard found himself in after six months on the job. Every day, the Operations Manager would assign each engineer to an artist, which occasionally turned into regular gigs. “If you got popular, then you’d get asked for,” said Richard. “If you were really

unlucky you’d end up with The Beatles!”

Today, any audio engineer would die to be in that room with The Beatles, but the job required a level of sacrifice not everyone envied at the time.

“You had to suddenly say ‘goodbye’ to normal life,” explained Richard. “You’d be there all night, every day of the week. People used to feel sorry for us because they’d come in in the morning and you’d just be heading out the front door.

“Normal sessions would go from 10 till one, 2:30 to 5:30, and seven till 10pm. If you were working with Shirley Bassey, you might be editing albums together in the morning and then you’d do two three-hour sessions with a break in-between. If you were working with The Beatles, you did nothing else; it would have ’10 till 10’ written jokingly on the sheet.”

Still, Richard knew, even then, that working with The Beatles was the creative pinnacle of pop music. All the hours spent waiting for the band to make their way in from McCartney’s poolside, just down the road, would be erased by witnessing a now-classic tune materialise. “They’d ring George Martin to tell him to be there at six, but nobody would ring us lackeys,” Richard explained. Still, at the end of the day “you’d go home and say, ‘We did A Day in the Life today. S**t that’s a good song.’ The pros outweighed the cons.”

When Richard was first assigned to The Beatles in Studio 2, work was beginning on Revolver. It was a completely new team, Geoff Emerick had come on for Norman Smith as the balance engineer, and Richard was working the tape machines. “They didn’t really like different people being around.

When I started, no one spoke to me for about four days. I was just the guy in the corner. Then once you’re there, you’re part of the family. They were very secretive about what they were doing,” said Richard, which didn’t stop other artists grabbing on to any sound bites drifting out of the studio. “We’d have a track going backwards, and somebody from The Hollies would hear it through a crack in the door. Then Graham Nash would come up and ask, ‘RICHARD, WHAT ARE THEY DOING?’ ‘I CAN’T TELL YOU.’ ‘I HEARD SOMETHING GOING BACKWARDS.’” Later on, when

Richard was working on The Hollies’ album, which was more or less finished, “they heard dogs barking

and cows moo-ing on Good Morning Good Morning and said, ‘we’ve got to have that on our record!’ Of course, we did it and they decided they didn’t like it, so we had to undo all the edits. It was a nightmare.”

BAD DAY, SUNSHINE

Richard’s first recording session with the Beatles, Good Day Sunshine, was almost disastrous.

“Halfway through, we had a hiccup and I wiped some vocals,” he sheepishly recalled. “I started recording and nothing happened, there was a big silence. John said, ‘What happened to the vocals in the cans?’ George Martin looked across at me and asked, ‘Where did you drop in Richard?’ I don’t think I went red, but I was embarrassed — I’d counted the wrong number of vocal lines. I thought it was seven, and it should have been after nine.

George was very good. He said, ‘We’ve had a bit of a problem, could you sing those again?’ I remember thinking, ‘What are they going to do when they come up to the control room?’ But it was no problem, nothing was ever said about it.”

Despite the hiccup, Richard managed to keep his job and went on to assist Geoff Emerick for the remainder of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Emerick quit during the making of the white album, and Richard followed him out the door two weeks later, signalling the end of regular work with the band. “By the time the white album came along, there was a lot of friction in the band,” recalled Richard. “It was understandable.

They’d been together for a long period of time and musically they were all going in different directions.

There were lots of sessions where they were fighting and arguing. At the end, Geoff had had enough of it and Ken Scott took over.”

IMPRESSIONS: GEORGE HARRISON Richard: “George wasn’t the best guitarist in the world. He definitely got better after The Beatles. He had written all these songs, but was only allowed the token one song on each album. Consequently his first solo album had all these great songs he’d written over time. It was fortunate for him, because he had a very successful solo career.”

AT 21

IMPRESSIONS: JOHN & PAUL Richard: “I wouldn’t say Paul was the boss, but he would be the most accessible out of all of them. John was very different from day to day. He was very impatient. Once he'd played his song to George Martin, he wanted to get moving. He wouldn’t do vocals many times, he’d say, ‘that’s fine and move on.’

Whereas if we were doing a bass line, Paul would chip away at it for hours.

“Quite often the bass was done last, late at night with McCartney. The bass on With A Little Help From My Friends was crafted around the whole song.

We dropped in on each line. It must have taken three hours to do that bass.

That bass line still stands out.”

Richard later returned to do one last session for the band, The Long And Winding Road. It was one of Spector’s contentious contributions to the final album, Let It Be, and most of the band weren’t even in attendance. “We got the orchestra in at great expense to the management,” said Richard.

“Somebody sent me a picture of the session wanting to know who the people in the background were. It just looked like a room full of gangsters; Spector with sunglasses on, their manager at the time, Allen Klein, and a couple of bodyguards.”

REVOLUTIONARY REVOLVER

Before The Beatles started to fall apart as a group, they were continually setting creative high-water marks. Sgt Pepper’s could be credited as the first concept album, but with Geoff Emerick onboard, Revolver had already changed the recording process for good.

Richard put it this way: “Phil Spector’s sound was reverb, and Geoff ’s sound was compressed drums.

If you compressed the drums, once the bass drum hit it would compress the cymbals, which was his signature. Also, Fairchild compressors had a sound of their own; unique to anything else at the time.

He would have three to four Fairchilds stacked up on a little table, plus a couple of Altec compressors and EQs on a trolley. I’d be in the corner and he wouldn’t be able to see me some times.

“The bass drum mic was the AKG D12, which might have been called a D20 back then. It’s got a lot of really low sub you don’t get out of the Neumann FET 47, EV RE20 or Beyer M88 some people are using.

“He wanted to try and get everything to jump out of the speaker rather than sounding like a band in a room. He thought, ‘If I put the mic right in front of the sound, provided the mic can take AT 22

If you got popular, then you’d get asked for. If you were really unlucky you’d end up with The Beatles!

the dynamic range of the instrument, then we’ll be fine.’”

It sounds utterly routine to us now but at that time this close-miking approach was totally revolutionary.

“There could be limitations when it came to cut it. If you put too much level on the 1/4-inch tape, the needle would come off your record player as soon as the bass drum hit. A whole new book had to be written about mastering back then.

MASTERING ENGINEERS WOULD SAY YOU COULDN’T HAVE THAT MUCH BOTTOM END ON IT AND TRY WIND IT OUT, BUT GEOFF WOULD SAY, ‘NO, YOU CAN’T DO THAT.’ We’d

compress it a bit to tape and cheat a bit to get around these problems.”

Eventually Emerick’s close-miking technique caught on in the pop world. The spreading of information was one of Richard’s favourite things about Abbey Road. You not only got to record a huge variety of material, but you picked up tips from other engineers. Whether it was someone diagramming out the seating arrangement for an orchestral session, how many mics they used, or work ethic, it all left a lasting impression on the young assistant. “Geoff would be running between the control room and the studio, fiddling with the guitar amp, changing the guitar, making it brighter,” Richard said. “If it didn’t sound right out there, forget about fixing it in the control room.”

It was a different story beyond the walls of Abbey Road. Engineers never really mixed (in the social sense) with anyone outside the studio. Other than knowing Decca was down the road, they had no insight into how other studios operated. If a specific sound caught their attention, they’d have to dig around to figure out how it was crafted.

“I remember when Small Faces’ Itchycoo Park came out with the phasing on it,” said Richard.

“Somebody got hold of the record to look at where it was recorded and see if anybody knew someone who worked there so we could find out how they did it. EVERYTHING WAS ALL A BIT SECRET BACK THEN, UNLESS YOU HAPPENED TO SEE A PICTURE OF FRANK SINATRA AT CAPITOL IN FRONT OF A U47. THERE WAS NO AUDIOTECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE, AND YOU DIDN’T HAVE THE INTERNET. It’s great for kids now, if they’re interested

they can find out what goes on. Whereas we were in the dark back then and just did our own thing.”

EMERICK EMERITUS

What’s perhaps most astounding about Emerick’s influence on the engineering landscape was how limited a window he was looking through at the time. Sure, they were helped along by Ken Townsend, who invented the Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) machine [see sidebar], and had loads of Neumann mics to play with. “It was 47s, 49s, 50s, 56s, 54s and then some classical ones you’d never use,” said Richard. “One appreciates it more now how valuable these things are. You’d have a 47 on a guitar amp and Coles 4038 ribbon mics on drum overheads most of the time. We’d EQ a lot of the top end in and ‘Bob’s your uncle’ — very smooth sound.” But there were no pan pots, it was just left, right, or straight up the middle. And getting accurate EQ on the original tube REDD 37 consoles was a chore; you had to order it in a la carte. “There wasn’t much EQ on the console,” said Richard. “If you wanted specific frequencies, you had to plug outboard in. There was a little square box called an RS127, which went from about 2kHz to 10kHz. That was quite often used for the snare, with a whole lot of 4kHz. There was another oblong piece of kit called a Curve Bender, and that was like a graphic EMI EQ, very broadband. We’d plug that in on guitars.

IMPRESSIONS: GEORGE MARTIN Richard: “George Martin, ‘the fifth Beatle’, had a lot to contribute to their records. He would always work out the harmonies and would sometimes play piano or harmonium on songs. He knew about song structure and orchestration. He was very influential, but as time went on, the band got more involved and wanted it to be a certain way. One of his best orchestrations was I Am the Walrus. For its time, the string arrangement on that was great.”

IMPRESSIONS: RINGO

Richard at Paul McCartney's studio in Sussex with Geoff Emerick and George Martin

“It was quite laborious to use outboard gear.

YOU DIDN’T HAVE IT IN RACKS BEHIND YOU. YOU HAD TO PHYSICALLY FIND A PIECE OF EQUIPMENT OR GET THE CHAPS IN THE WHITE COATS TO BRING THEM OVER AND PLUG THEM IN. In the ’60s, that’s all we had. You plug it through

something that sounds good.”

The other limitation was, of course, the track count. During Revolver, four was the largest number of tracks that would fit onto a tape, so Richard would have to dub from one machine to another. “We’d fill up one four-track then we’d do a four-to-four, and then a four-to-four,” Richard recalled. “We might do four or five generations on some songs. We’d be so concerned about the noise and hiss, but Geoff said when he came to do the Beatles Anthology, there was no hiss. We were paranoid at the time because we knew what it sounded like on one four-track, but you play those years later and it’s like, ‘Wow!’ You just took the punch and dynamics for granted at the time.”

Despite the limited track count of the Studer machine, Geoff presciently planned his bounces ahead of time so they never had to be revisited.

“Even when we did multiple generations of bouncing from four-track to four-track, we never went back and redid one on Pepper,” said Richard.

“You had to make decisions at the time. If the guitar didn’t sound right, you tried another guitar.

The drums weren’t right, well try a different snare.

You’d do it over and over and over again to get the balance right and then that was it.

“In other words, whatever we blended together — whether it was drums and guitar, or vocals, tambourine and cowbell mixed together — when we came to the end, nobody ever said the snare’s not loud enough or ‘we need more of this’. You just EQ’d a little more 4kHz into that track.

You never went back to ‘sing that line again’.

You couldn’t anyway because there’s a bloody tambourine going on.”

When EMI brought in a 3M one-inch, eighttrack at the behest of The Beatles, Richard’s job got harder, not easier. “The Beatles were complaining because all the other studios in London had eighttracks, so the first one at Abbey Road was just for them,” said Richard. “It was a nightmare as it didn’t have a clock on it! You couldn’t tell where you were on the tape. You’d just have all these bits of yellow mark over it. The boffins eventually put a clock on it and we were laughing.

“Then Studer came out with an eight-track and that was sort of okay, but it just didn’t sound as good as the four-track. It was always a bit of a compromise in the dynamics. The drums lost all the punch. The bass drum was going in at around -4dB, and it came back 10dB quieter with all the bottom gone out of it. In those days, you could hear line in and line out on the console, so you could A/B what was coming off the floor, and what was coming off the repro head. “The rock’n’roll engineers protested to the management and said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this. This eighttrack sounds terrible.’ We had Willy Studer come over to London and hired a drummer to show him what it was like on the four-track and what it was like on the eight-track. ‘Whoa, dat is a big difference!’ he said. Then they went out for lunch and that was it!”

TWO DAYS IN THE LIFE

Throughout his time with The Beatles, there were many incredible moments. Though A Day in the Life and All You Need is Love “stick in my mind as two of the most amazing days at Abbey Road,” said Richard. “They were both parties. All of a sudden there’s a 50-piece orchestra, a hundred of their

Richard: “I used to feel sorry for Ringo, because when you were doing backing tracks he would be there from seven in the evening until five am. He’d be playing drums for a long time, and the song would be meandering along, always changing. He’d be absolutely knackered and would be the last to leave. He didn’t have a lot to contribute, although he was a fantastic drummer. When they tried editing some of the songs together for Cirque de Soleil, the tempos hardly varied from one take to another. He was like a metronome before click tracks even happened in recording.”

friends, and film crews. For A Day In The Life, the musicians were just told, ‘Start on this note, and play anything you want.’ That was foreign to them.

All You Need Is Love had so much pressure on all of us with so many million people watching.

“I basically had two four-track tape machines, and when they cut to us, they were miming along to some backing vocals on a separate tape,” recalled Richard. While they introduced the show, George Martin gave him the cue and Richard had to quickly spool that tape off and load up the tape with the full instrumental backing… in under half a minute. “I’d practised it a few times. THEN IT WAS ALL ON, 700 MILLION PEOPLE WAITING TO SEE IF I HAD THE RIGHT TAPE ON THE RIGHT MACHINE. I MIGHT HAVE ONLY BEEN 19.”

FROM THE BEATLES TO BANJOS

Typically, the next step after graduating from assistant engineer was to round out your education with a stint in mastering, before taking on the role of balance engineer. Emerick did it, Ken Scott did it.

It was a pathway designed to make sure engineers knew what could be reasonably cut onto a vinyl lacquer. Richard skipped that step and went straight to engineering at the age of 22. His first session was with the Big Ben Banjo Band — a banjo rhythm section and half a dozen horn players recorded direct to stereo. He’d never miked up a banjo in his life and rode by the seat of his pants, praying he’d numbered each mic correctly as the producer called out which banjo was playing the melody.

During his time at Abbey Road, Richard was involved with The Zombies, Cliff Richard, and worked on scores for films like Lady Carolina Lamb.

Soon after The Beatles broke up, he also found himself working with the members separately. He part engineered both Lennon’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway AT 23

Sherbert in front of the EMI TG console in 1976.

solo albums. On both occasions, another engineer had begun the album and Richard picked it up.

Alan Parsons had started McCartney’s when Pink Floyd asked him to engineer Dark Side of the Moon.

While Parsons was trying to capture spoken word responses to questions like, ‘Is there a dark side of the moon?’ from the studio janitor, Richard recorded McCartney’s No.1 single, My Love with a full orchestra. “Alan was feeling like he’d got the wrong end of the stick,” said Richard. “But it’s been quite successful for him since then.”

Richard said, far from the dramas of the white album and the complete disintegration of Let It Be, working with each Beatle in a solo capacity was thoroughly enjoyable. “Working with John and Phil [Spector], you just had so much fun. It was what they wanted together, so there were no arguments.

I always loved Phil. He’d want so much reverb on the reverb, then reverb on the reverb. He pushed you to the limit, and he still wasn’t happy.

Sometimes he went from mono to mono 10 times, after that there wouldn’t be enough piano because it got lost in the shemozzle of reverb, so he’d put another piano on. That’s what made his wall of sound.

“John was the man with the mission. His request was actually not to have the Phil Spector Wall of

Sound, he just wanted him to produce it because he was a fresh ear. It was done a lot quicker, not hour after hour with Eric Clapton struggling out of the studio half stoned. It was the same working with Paul on Red Rose Speedway, you spent a bit of time mixing, and fiddling around, but it was a relief to work with them on their own.”

NO.1 TICKET HOLDER

Soon after My Love went to No.1, a notice appeared on the Abbey Road bulletin board offering a two-year engineering position at EMI in Australia. “We all laughed, ‘Blimey! Who wants to go all that way,’” said Richard. When he went home and told his mum about it, she thought it might be good for him, and after a time so did Richard. He’d done a bit of work with Australians in the past: Olivia Newton-John, Cliff Richards’ manager was Australian, as was the Managing Director of the music division. “All these Australians I knew in London said I’d love it,” said Richard. “They all talked about Kings Cross and the beaches, and the weather. It all sounded right up my street. Then you get on the plane and wonder what’s going to happen.

“The first ever session I did was with a band called the Ormsby Brothers. We did a cover

version of You Don’t Own Me, and it went to No.1.

I’d gone from McCartney’s No.1 to the Ormsby Brothers’ No.1.”

In the next two years, Richard had a string of successes, including Sherbet’s Summer Love. After his tenure ended, he had a contract to go back to Abbey Road. “I went back and it was pouring with rain every day. I was thinking, ‘What have I done?’” Two months later he was back on a plane to Australia.

Sherbet were keen to have him back in the producer chair, so in 1976 “I got married and we did the Howzat! album,” said Richard. “Roger Davies, the manager, wanted it to be their Sgt Pepper’s. We spent a lot of time rehearsing and getting the songs into shape.”

There was a vague understanding that in some way, Richard would bring a little bit of Abbey Road to EMI Studios in Australia at the time. One of the first sessions he did, the drummer asked him how they got that English drum sound. After listening to his snare Richard told him to tune it down deep: “He said, ‘I can’t do that, then I don’t get the rebound on the skin.’ I said, ‘well, that’s how they do it. You can’t make the snare sound really deep unless it’s tuned really deep.’”

Other times he had to figure out how to adapt his way of recording to the Australian mode with a bit of cheeky ingenuity. “At Abbey Road we used to put one mic in the middle of the piano and ‘Bob’s your uncle’,” said Richard. “When I first came to Australia, I put one mic out, and the people here said, ‘We use two mics on the piano, we do stereo.’ I thought, ‘How am I going to get around this?’ I put three mics out, and they thought, ‘Oh wow.’ But I, in fact, only used one.”

At the time EMI Studios in Australia was still a poor cousin of Abbey Road. The main console was a limited version of the TG sent over from London. “It wasn’t the top-end version, but the same quality,” recalled Richard. “The Abbey Road ones had a limiter and compressor on every channel, this didn’t. You could also group and bus everything to two channels and put a stereo limiter on those, which you couldn’t do on the Australian one. Then they had a couple of funny consoles that don’t bare mentioning.

“The console after that, EMI made in conjunction with Rupert Neve and it was great [There were seven made, one of which is in Tom Larkin’s Melbourne studio, Studios in the City.

Another is in Paul Epworth’s The Church Studios in London – Ed]. It kept a lot of the EMI EQ and had

AUTOMATIC DOUBLE TRACKING Richard: “ADT was my little baby to look after. We had a lot of fun with that. ADT involved sending a signal. For instance, if John Lennon said I want ADT on my vocal, you sent the signal from the sync head on the multi-track to a quarter-inch machine. Then that came back in parallel, and you sped the machine up so the sync got up to where the record head was.

Then you had a double track. You could either have it as a double track sound, or vary the speed of it a little to give a bit of a flanging sound. The word ‘flange’ came from John Lennon saying, ‘Can you flange my AT 24

voice?’ Then you’d be wobbling it. On Magical Mystery Tour, for instance, we went crazy with the ADT effect on the vocals on that. They loved it, I could do no wrong. George Martin would say, ‘Oh Richard, honestly!’ You hear it now and it sounds crazy, ‘Roll uUuuUuUp’, all wobbly. That’s the signal coming from the sync head and back again, hitting the tape machine, wowing, and nearly coming off the machine.

“It was a huge box. The actual box was built by a guy called Bernard in the technical department at Abbey Road. It was about three foot high and probably a

foot wide, and six inches deep, on wheels. Then you had a varispeed control with a cable coming out of it that you could sit on your lap. I just sat there and controlled it from my lap. It was a see-through box with all the valves lighting up. Quite a psychedelic little unit.

“Normally any new piece of equipment had to go through the technical department at the top of the tree to be tested. This was probably one of the only pieces of equipment we used they didn’t go near. It hadn’t been ticked off by the chief boffin.”

AT 25

Phil Spector’s sound was reverb, and Geoff’s sound was compressed drums

Richard at the new Neve EMI console in Abbey Road Studio 3.

a separate monitor section from the record side, which was pretty happening at the time. That was the last thing EMI really made. Now they’re putting things of old into plug-ins.”

AUSSIE GOLDEN ERA

Throughout the ’70s Richard worked with Ted Mulry, Jon English, Mark Holden and Air Supply, and a bunch of sessions with Vanda & Young, including Evie with Stevie Wright. “That was another highlight,” said Richard. “Recording Stevie’s vocal on the slow version of Evie, my hair was standing on end. They’re quite rare, those moments when you all look at each other and go, ‘shit, that’s a piece of history.’ There was some great talent in Australia, it just had to be steered in the right direction.”

In 1980 he got a call from singer/songwriter Billy Field, who was setting up Paradise Studios and wanted Richard onboard. He’d been with EMI since 1965, and was nervous about leaving the company to work for a new studio. “But I went to Paradise, so to speak, did a record with Billy that went to No.1, Bad Habits, and quite a few other records there.

After that, Richard went freelance, but often found himself back at EMI, now Studios 301, recording commercials three to four days a week with Les Gock from the band Hush. Later, Gock built his own studio and Richard worked full time AT 26

for him recording commercials and scores for TV shows like Water Rats. “That was quite challenging.

We had three different composers doing the music,” said Richard. “You had to turn around an episode in a week with wall-to-wall music.”

In 1999, once Tom Misner had put the finishing touches on the new Studios 301 in Alexandria, Richard went back to work there. “One of the first things I did was record 90% of the music for the Olympics,” recalled Richard. “I worked with Bruce Jackson to engineer and oversee the music for the opening and some of the closing ceremonies. One of the most challenging pieces we did involved a 300-piece choir, and a 140-piece orchestra all live in the Opera House for an hour and a half to record 12 minutes of music.” It was recorded on two 24-track Fairlight Merlin machines synced together, because the company had just come out with them and were engaged to playback a lot of the music at Homebush.

50 YEARS & STILL BALANCED

With such a long and storied career, involving countless technological advancements. Richard hasn’t changed his approach to mixing a whole lot.

He’s still a heavy advocate for bands playing live together, and for vocals to be loud enough in the mix. “No matter who it is, unless it’s instrumental, the focal point should be the singer,” emphasised Richard. “That’s who is telling the story.”

Above all, balance is the key. It’s what he was first employed to do at 22, and has been doing ever since. “What I was first told when I started recording was, ‘You have to hear everything.’

Whether it was an orchestra, jazz ensemble or band, you had to hear it all and the blend of instruments had to be in balance. We were called ‘balance engineers’ back then, that was the job.

From about 2000 onwards, it became fashionable to compress everything. The problem I have with a lot of the current records is they’ve got a whole lot of stuff on them, but you can’t actually hear what half the things are because they’re so squashed. I FEEL LIKE THE ART OF ACTUALLY BALANCING THINGS HAS GONE OUT THE WINDOW A BIT.”

It could be those countless four to four-track bounces that drilled into him the importance of printing the right balance to tape. We’re right to marvel at those Beatles mixes now, they were a technical achievement as well as a creative one.

Though Richard can’t stress it enough. If you want to hear the real Pepper, go and buy the mono version. The stereo version was done by George, Geoff and Richard, without the input of the band at the dictum of upper management. After all, said Richard, “It was a team,” involving everyone from Lennon and McCartney to a young 19-year old kid sitting behind a wall of Fairchilds wiggling the big ADT knob.

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TUTORIAL

Artist: Twenty One Pilots Album: Heathens

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Melancholy, minor-key, mid-tempo electropop appears to be all the rage these days. The Chainsmokers’ Closer, Major Lazer’s Cold Water, Seeb’s I Took A Pill In Ibiza, DJ Snake’s Let Me Love You and Twenty One Pilots’ Heathens are just a few of the songs in that musical vein which have been slugging it out at the top of the hit parades all over the planet.

Heathens was the lead single of the Suicide Squad movie soundtrack, and has been one of the big success stories of 2016. The song was also the third big hit for Twenty One Pilots, a duo that broke through last year with the megahit Stressed Out, followed by the more moderately successful Ride. There are strong similarities in the sound and musical direction of Stressed Out and Heathens, which is unsurprising as both were produced by Mike Elizondo and recorded by Adam Hawkins, who also mixed Heathens.

Heathens was written by Tyler Joseph — singer, keyboardist and bassist of Twenty One Pilots — in Logic. He took his demo over to Elizondo’s Can Am Studio for two days of further development and recording. From there, Elizondo “fine-tuned the arrangement,” recalled Hawkins. “He added

and took away parts, and programmed additional drum sounds. After assistant engineer Brent Arrowood moved the session over to Pro Tools, we started overdubbing live drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. But the rest of the arrangement is made up of synths and samples. The signal chain I used on Tyler’s vocals consisted of a Sony C800 mic, going into a UA610 preamp, which I was overdriving, and then into a UA Bluestripe 1176. It’s the same signal chain I used on the songs I recorded for Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface album, including Stressed Out.” The words “overdriven” and “distorted” popped up a lot as Hawkins talked through the making of Heathens. It seems he wasn’t alone either, as many of the other songs on the Suicide Squad soundtrack are awash with distortion. While distortion may be part of an overall aesthetic designed by the film’s music supervisor to fit in with the dark and creepy atmosphere of Suicide Squad, Hawkins said he didn’t refer to the movie at all. His aim was simply to make it sound right for the ears and sonic sensitivities of Twenty One Pilots, Elizondo, and Pete Ganbarg, Atlantic Records’ Executive Vice President and Head of A&R.

ABOUT ADAM HAWKINS Hawkins grew up in North Carolina, and though he loved playing in bands, realised it wasn’t for him. He got interested in recording and ended up working at a small studio in Greensboro around 1996. He later moved to New York, where he started as an intern at Unique Studios, and also worked at Sony Studios, The Cutting Room, The Hit Factory, Quad, Battery, and so on. In 2005,

Yes, there’s a lot of distortion

“Yes, there’s a lot of distortion,” agreed Hawkins.

“On the vocals, the drums, the bass, and almost everything towards the big ending of the song.

A lot of that was already there before I started to mix. Many of the synth sounds and samples were already very distorted, and I recorded Elizondo playing a heavily distorted live bass through a fuzz pedal. Although the lead vocal sounds fairly natural, it has some distortion as it was pushed heavily though that tube preamp, and the backing vocals underneath are heavily treated and distorted.

I also used Avid Heat, which is part of the Pro Tools Mixer to add a little bit of crackle and distortion to everything in a pleasing way.”

STILL HANDS ON

Hawkins was speaking from his Acacia Sound studio in the backyard of his property near Los Angeles. His Pro Tools system with Avid HD I/O is at the heart of his studio, where he now works entirely in the box. On his web site, he lists quite a few nice analogue goodies, including a UA Blue Stripe 1176 and 6176, Chandler TG1, Manley Massive Passive, SSL G Compressor, Distressor, Altec 1612B Limiter, BAE Vintage API 312, Wunder PEQ2R, but Hawkins explained that these see very little, if any, action these days.

“For the last three years I’ve been pushing the mixing side of my work, and I now spend 90% of my time in this room, mixing,” explained Hawkins, who’s had his current studio setup for a year.

“This is where I am happiest, even though I still enjoy occasionally going out to record an album for someone. In my previous room I had an SSL AWS900 for a short time, but today everybody expects me to mix song after song after song for an album. Then I get all the notes for all the songs at once, and I spend a day making changes. Doing it all in the box makes that much faster and efficient.

With the console and analogue gear it takes 20-30 minutes to switch songs, and you never get your recall 100%. Of course, when you’re in the box, a recall is just a double-click away.

“Also, when I was working on an album on a console and with outboard, I would sometimes try not to change the settings on a piece of outboard, and only change the levels going into that piece of outboard, to make the recall process simpler and faster. I think that limited me. By contrast, when working in the box all my effect and EQ settings are completely unique for each song, which works much better. I’ve also learned how to get the sound I want in the box. I did lots of AB testing between in the box and out of the box to make sure I was happy with the sound I got in the box and had figured out a way of re-creating some of the character and flavours I like from outboard gear.

“I do still like to have my hands on faders, though. I now have two Avid Artist Mix controllers, and recently also got the Avid Pro Tools Dock, which uses an iPad. I have 16 faders plus the one on the Dock. I’m one of those people who actually uses those things! I may assign the lead vocal to stay on one fader at all times so I don’t have to go searching for it, and I will assign a couple of different stereomix versions to two of the faders so I can AB them easily. I will also assign the drum VCA, so I can solo it. Otherwise, I set it so that when I select a track on the screen it immediately jumps to a fader.

Lately, since getting the dock, I’m using that one fader more than all the others. I prefer to listen to things and adjust them with a fader, because I hate drawing in little automation dots with the mouse.

Screens have such high resolutions nowadays and the dots are so tiny that I feel you have to click on that exact pixel, and it’s just awkward.”

FLYING SOLO

The Heathens session totalled a whopping 100 tracks — 22 live drums tracks (including aux tracks), 25 sampled drum tracks (including aux tracks and one VCA track), 12 miscellaneous sample and noise tracks, which also include four bass tracks and two guitars tracks, 18 keyboard, synth and sample tracks (including one strings track), 14 vocals tracks including a Vocals VCA track, and nine aux effect tracks at the bottom of the session. With many of the tracks being stereo,

when Hwakins was 25, he decide to move to LA. He’d been working mainly on hip-hop and rap, and heard there were more sessions with live musicians in LA. Ironically, his first recording session in LA was a hip-hop session. However, it was where he met Mike Elizondo, with whom he’s worked regularly ever since.

Hawkins said the session, “maxed out my available 128 voices on Pro Tools. I almost had to buy a second Pro Tools card just to play the session!”

Hawkins got a handle on the sizeable mix by doing doing it in stages. “I got the rough mix in the ballpark at Elizondo’s studio,” he explained. “But I didn’t get to dial in detailed automation dynamics or fine-tune EQ curves. When I took the session to my place, the first thing I did was line up the five kick samples so they were enhancing each other, rather than taking away from each other. You don’t want certain frequencies disappearing due to phase issues. I spent a lot of time flipping the phase on each one against another, and would nudge them forwards and backwards until they hit just right.

Moves like that add punch and clarity. I also lined up the snare samples.

“After that I spent time on the drums as a whole, making them sound powerful and clear. Many people say you’re not supposed to mix things in isolation, but I do it anyway. I like to work from the ground up, which for me, means making the drums sound great, then adding the other elements in as I go through the session. I go through each individual track and make sure it sounds the way I think it should sound to me on its own, then I fine tune it while it’s playing with everything else.

So yes, I am a solo-er. I like to solo things and find out what is bugging me about particular elements, fix it and put it back in the track to see if that helps.

I need to focus on each thing individually before it can feel as one whole thing to me. I do a lot of nitpicking over stuff that no-one else will ever notice. It’s just how I have always done it.”

SQUAD GOALS

In fact, despite Hawkins saying he’s not supposed to mix like this, that ‘solo and build a mix section by section’ approach is fairly common. Hawkins took AudioTechnology on a solo-ers journey through all the parts that make up Heathens, so you can walk through the mix process as he was hearing it. Hawkins: “Was this song easy to mix? No, there are no mixes that are easy! The biggest challenge is always the internal creative pressure I put on myself: ‘Is it good enough?’”

Given how well Heathens has travelled and its lead single status on Suicide Squad, Hawkins can rest assured that the answer is a resounding, ‘Yes!’ AT 29

DRUM ARRANGEMENT Hawkins: “In the arrangement, Elizondo decided not to use the live drums in the first verse and chorus, so they’re greyed out. I recorded the kit, including kick, snare, toms, overheads and two room mics. Below that are a number of overdubs like hi-hat, floor tom, crash, and a ring snare sample for the big section of the song, which we labelled the bridge. I felt that the snare needed more attitude during that section. We also added an old drum machine style electronic drum fill for that section (‘Phill’).

DRUM PROCESSING Hawkins: “Many of the individual drum tracks have the Waves SSL Channel — usually doing some hi-pass and gating, to shorten decays — and the FabFilter Pro-Q2, which I use to notch out specific frequencies. The Waves SSL Channel is a workhorse I’ve used since the beginning. I also like the compressor in it, especially when it’s not set to a fast attack.

All live drums are sent to the ‘Master10’ master track, on which I have the SoundToys Decapitator in E-mode for some more distortion and punch, the Waves API 2500 for some compression, and the SoundToys Devil-Loc for yet more distortion.

“The drum master track is sent to three different Drum aux tracks, one without treatment, and two other tracks for parallel compression; one with the McDSP 6030 Ultimate Compressor really slamming it, and one with the Eventide Omnipressor, again destroying things. The latter also has a Trim plug-in to take it down a bit. The sampled drums have similar treatments: almost all individual tracks have the Waves SSL Channel, and all the sampled drum tracks go to a master with the same chain, as well as the same triple aux treatment.”

ALL THAT NOISE

BASS

Hawkins: “‘Wahwah’ is that mid-range two-note accent you can hear underneath the vocals at the beginning, and at various other points in the track. It’s the name Tyler gave it, and it stuck. The track called ‘32GgSSL’, is a sample of a 32-gauge shotgun load from a sound effects library, tying in with that two-note accent. There’s one section at the end where the electric guitar and bass also plays the same accents. ‘Noise’ is just static noise, ‘C-hit’ is white noise, and ‘Machnns’ is a weird, bleepy, machine-like noise.

Hawkins: “The ‘Lead Bass’ track is a synth bass. Below that is another synth bass under that, then the distorted live bass called ‘Bass.05’, and ‘BassChuk’ is the accents. ‘ChnC 101 and 1101’ are the two guitar tracks, playing the accents. Waves SSL Channel appears on many of these tracks, on ‘Lead Bass’ it’s doing a hi-pass and bumping up some low end, while the FabFilter handles the low-pass. The bass synth tracks have the UAD Blackface 1176 and Valhalla Room plug-in. Overall, the drums and bass just needed tightening up a little bit; nothing too dramatic. In general, the direction of the song was pretty clear by the time I got to mix it.”

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PIANO & SYNTHS

VOCALS Hawkins: “The vocals were the last thing I added. While mixing I’m always thinking that I need to keep space for the vocal. Sometimes the vocal steps on the track a bit when I put it in, and I have to back pedal, but it generally works out.

The vocal tracks here are mostly stems. Again there are many instances of the Pro-Q2 for a hi-pass, and the UAD 1176 Bluestripe version, all buttons in, pretty insanely compressed.

“On the backing vocals I used AutoTune and SoundToys Little AlterBoy for those weird pitch parts. Little AlterBoy is so quick to use, and it’s a current trend to pitch down with a formant shift. The Waves Renaissance De-esser is still my favourite de-esser, even though it’s not transparent and changes the sound instantly. There’s a track called ‘Verse Crystallizer’, which I automated very strongly to add this weird left-right vocal effect.

“The vocal tracks have many sends, which go to the nine aux tracks at the bottom of the session. They include the UAD MXR Flanger/ Doubler, a reverb from the UAD EMT 250, four different delays from the SoundToys Echoboy, and a delay from the Waves HDelay with a UAD Dimension D on it as well, and a Valhalla Shimmer.”

Hawkins: “Below the shotgun sample are two piano tracks, with the Waves J37 tape saturation adding a little bit of a slap delay and some wow and flutter to give it the sound of an upright piano in a bar. I used a Waves Kramer Master Tape plug-in to add a little bit of slap delay to the ‘Verse Synth’, and a SoundToys Microshift for an H3000-style micro-pitch shift. Other synths have just the FabFilter Pro-Q2, mostly hi-passing, and many have the Waves EMI TG12345 Channel Strip. I’m taking out some mids and widening the stereo field and blending in the limiter just a hair. The ‘distrtdid’ tracks are distorted synth tracks, with the Pro-Q2 as a hi-pass filter because I don’t want some weird rumble taking up the space. I mainly use the TG12345 for more stereo spread. I put the strings through the Waves SSL EQ and the UAD Roland Dimension D to make it sound like a 1970s Roland string ensemble.”

MASTER BUS Hawkins: “I mix back into the session, though it’s not shown. I go to a master track, which has the Waves NLS Analogue Summing plug-in, Avid Impact, plus an EQ. I change the mode on the NLS from time to time. Impact is my favourite bus compressor, which is odd, because it’s probably everybody else’s least favourite. I have it barely do any work, just 2:1 ratio and the attack is on the slow side with an auto-release. The biggest section of the song has maybe 1dB of gain reduction. I am not big on bus compression. When I send out rough mixes for feedback I also use the Ozone Maximizer, just to make it louder, but I leave that off while I’m mixing and it doesn’t go to mastering.

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FEATURE

Universal Music’s new Sydney studio, Forbes Street Studio, has cars travelling all around it — even underground. Michael Fronzek helped keep the noise out while maximising the reverb time.

Story: Mark Davie

Among the myriad reasons Universal Music built their own studio, was “the depressing news that Alberts closed as a studio, Sing Sing’s up on the block, and Studios 301 is soon to finish up where it is,” explained Managing Director Michael Taylor. “It felt like, ‘S**t, we still make records, we still need a place to do it!’”

Studio designer, Michael Fronzek, takes his hat off to them. “When was the last time you saw a record company build a recording studio in this country?” he asked. “I think it was 30 years ago. I’ve always thought the first thing a record company should do is build a studio. It’s intrinsic to what they do.”

Of all the record companies, Universal Music Group is probably the most active of studio owners, and it still only has a handful. There’s the big guns, Abbey Road and Capitol Studios, New York’s Republic has a studio, and according to Taylor there are a couple of other European-based studios Universal part owns. It’s not as though Universal has a studio on every street corner, but it now has one on the corner of Forbes and Williams Streets in downtown Wolloomoolloo.

It all started about two years ago, when Universal Music Australia relocated to its current building. The previous tenancy had no room for a studio, so when the 7 Eleven at the base of AT 32

Universal’s new digs relocated across the street, Taylor immediately jumped on the freshly vacated ground floor corner space.

“We find ourselves creating more and more content for our artists — visual, live and bonus content,” said Taylor. “Having our own creative space is so good for that, because we don’t have to rely on hiring and bringing in other people.”

WORKING IN ISOLATION

The studio is multi-functional, with three main areas. The main live room is big enough to house a band or small string section, and it’s connected to the SSL AWS924 console-equipped control room; then there’s the smaller all-in-one Writing Room production space; lastly, an interview booth gives visiting artists a place to record radio interviews via a couple of Rode Procaster mics, and it’s connected to an A/V suite, which houses a six-core ‘trash can’ Mac Pro and professional audio-over-IP codecs to whip up all that content for distribution.

Michael Fronzek of Sound Spaces designed the entire studio, and his first act was to figure out how to fit it all in. He started with the control room. “When they told me they wanted to put in a console, I said we needed to start around the 35sqm mark,” he explained. “The Writing Room was always going to be a workstation-focused room, it

needed to be around 25sqm. Everyone agreed on those dimensions once we’d sketched it out and got a sense of the size. After we had the two control room areas sorted out, it became easier to allocate the rest of the space to the studio, and figure out how to maximise the volume of the space.”

By volume he means the dimension, not level.

With a slab-to-slab height of only four metres, he knew he had to make the most of every vertical inch. Directly underneath the building is a carpark and Sydney’s Cross City Tunnel. Then there’s the nearby railway and the perennially chocked Williams Street on the studio’s doorstep. Fronzek had some serious sound to isolate the studio from.

“We didn’t lay a second slab because I didn’t want to lose too much height,” he said, explaining that the classic double leaf, wood-framed room within a room structure ate up less of those precious metres. “A low ceiling is where you get your earliest reflections from. We ended up floating a timber floor on pads. We put down a layer of kiln-dried sand to help maximise the isolation and dampen the slab down to minimise any low frequency resonances from the carpark and tunnel. The sand goes to about half the height of the cavity because I didn’t want the sand to bridge to the floor. The insulation above that helps dampen the timber floor from below. The sand is

MIC ’EM UP Forbes Street’s mic locker is the result of Anthony Garvin amalgamating the Top 10 lists from a handful of Sydney-based engineers.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

Pair Neumann U87ai Wunder Audio CM7-GTS Manley Reference Cardioid Pair of Royer 121 Pair of AKG c414-XLS Pair of Sennheiser MKH8040 4x Sennheiser 421 2x Shure SM7B 8x Shure SM57 Electrovoice RE20 AKG D12 VR Beyer M88 Shure Beta 52

SSL ROOM GEAR LIST To go along with the SSL AWS 924 console, Barefoot Micromain 12s, and 32-channel Pro Tools 12 HDX system, Forbes Street Studios has every plug-in collection you’ll ever need, including a UAD Octo DSP with the Ultimate bundle. Here’s a smattering of what else is on offer: • API, Neve & Chandler preamps • Tubetech CL1B, dbx 160VU, UA 1176, Distressor and BSS DPR402 compressors • Bricasti M7, Ensoniq DP/4 and Lexicon PCM70 outboard effects • Nord Electro, Roland Juno & Jupiter, and Korg MS-20 synths

covered in a membrane so it can’t get wet. If it gets wet, you lose the functionality of the sand, which is a great absorber.”

The same applied to the ceiling, where Fronzek was adamant about losing as little space as possible to ducting. Overall, he was happy with the 3.3m height that remained.

MAXIMUM REVERB TIMING

Once he knew what the volume of the live room was going to be, Fronzek was able to calculate the reverb time range. “I aimed for as high a reverb time as I could possibly get that sounded reasonable,” he said. “I could always pull it back from there if people found it too live.”

Fronzek mostly uses a collection of Excel models he’s refined over years of acoustic consultancy. He has a formula he uses to calculate the optimum reverb time for a control room of a given size. His goal for the live room is essentially double the reverb time of a control room of the same volume. “I build two models; one to reach my top goal, and one to reach my lower limit,” said Fronzek. “Once I have those two extremes, I start to put together my finishes to try to find a solution that allows me to move reasonably easily between those two extremes. Once I’ve got that range, then it’s about turning around and finding out what

people like and dislike about it, and what we need to change within that range to better suit it.”

Other than the interlocked semi-cylindrical wall diffusors, the acoustic treatment in the ceiling is probably the most striking feature. Fronzek chose an elaborate diffusion technique that incorporates a Roger Penrose aperiodic system of tiles. “As you alter the height and angle of the faces, you get some nice, unusual reflections,” he explained. “It helps break up the flat isolation ceiling. We perforated them so we could put different absorbers or reflectors behind them, to achieve different grades of absorption.”

The RT60 reverb time is currently 0.53 seconds in the live room, but Fronzek has built in a level of variability to bring down the reverb time if required. “There’s a Plan A to Plan D with different levels of absorption and diffusion,” he said. “It’s not dynamically variable, but within a couple of hours we can go from one version to another.”

VARIETY IN THE LOW END

Fronzek says studio design hasn’t had a major shakeup lately, other than the progressive, and out of reach, ambechoic design of Blackbird’s Studio C. However, he says, a control room that can handle low end is more important than ever. “If you go back to the ’80s, everything was ‘radio-friendly’,”

he recalled. “There wasn’t that extended bottom end. These days, there’s more focus on making the response of the room go lower than was necessary some time ago. The top six octaves are easy to deal with, it’s the bottom six octaves that are the hardest, and usually the ones that are treated least in studios.”

To keep it tidy down low, Fronzek uses a variety of diaphragmatic absorbers in the control room and studio. He uses a broad range of tunings to cover off all the modes in the room and keep them to a minimum. Variety is the key says Fronzek; in size, type and material of absorber: “When using modules with the same size and dimensions, you find the constant dimension imprints itself on the room. You start to see common problems related to that size module.”

TAYLOR-MADE STYLE

When Taylor first conceived the studio, his main focus was on making a creative space, not just filling out the gear list. “We didn’t want to go for a traditional look with lots of wood,” he said. “We wanted to incorporate interesting colour choices and fabric designs.” He employed interior designer Nyree MacKenzie, who fits out hospitality spaces in Byron Bay, but was introduced to Taylor years ago by Tom Misner when she was a musician.

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She collaborated with Fronzek to help turn some of Taylor’s ideas into an acoustically-functional reality. “The brief for the Writing Room was to make it look like an eccentric Englishman’s study,” said Fronzek. “Michael showed us pictures of wall panelling from Victorian houses, and we used that as a starting point. It worked out well. It still has that wall panelling look to it, it was just a question of finding an acoustic solution that would suit the visual language.”

Fronzek returned to his Excel models for that too, explaining how he again uses a range of variability to account for any errors beforehand.

“Even when you’re modelling, there’s still such a huge error from what you end up measuring at the end,” he said. “You’re always trying to allow an error in your predictions, and figuring out in advance how you’ll correct for that if required.”

TUNING IN

All along the way, consultant Anthony Garvin has called on the collective expertise of a range of top engineers and producers around Sydney like Eric Dubowsky, David Nicholas and Paul Mckercher.

Nick Didia and Bernard Fanning helped sell them on the SSL, since they work on Bernard’s SSL 900 every day. Others put in their outboard gear requests, and Anthony curated the microphone cabinet according to everyone’s top ten mics.

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Even before the studio officially opened, producer Andy Mac recorded a whole track with country act The McClymonts. Jimmy Barnes’ son, Jackie, did a day of drum tracking to test the room in various spots and trying out different mics on the kit. “Tim Carr engineered that day, but it’s knowledge we can pass on to other engineers about which parts of the room sound live, meaty, or dead,” said Taylor. “Carise Eden has been in to write, as has Winterbourne. Over the next couple of weeks we go from Shawn Mendes, who’s in town, to the violinist Andre Rieu doing a performance for Sky News. He called and asked how much of the orchestra could he bring? Maybe a quarter of his string section!”

It appears to be working well so far, with only a couple of tune ups required in the live room before it opens to the public. That’s right, Forbes Street Studio will operate as a normal commercial concern. While Universal artists will undoubtedly receive preferential rates, anyone is able to hire this new creative space for their project. Taylor is still finalising the rates, but expect to see even more gear installed when the new year’s budgets kick in for January. Still, Garvin says having a professional collection of gear is a given, it’s really the vibe that’s resonating with people. “Engineers fuss over all the equipment,” he said. “But the design pushes the envelope from an artist’s perspective.”

WRITING ROOM The hub of the Writing Room setup is an eight-channel Neve Custom 75 Series, but let’s be honest, the real heart will most likely be a computer. Forbes Street has you covered with a Mac Mini, sporting Pro Tools, Logic and Ableton with UAD, Slate and Native Instruments Komplete bundles.

You’re obviously not limited to that, with plenty of space to plug in your own laptop, and make use of the Genelec 8040b monitors and outboard, which includes Avalon 737-SP, Universal Audio LA-610, Warm Audio WA-76, Roland Space Echo and Lexicon MPX-1 effects.

If you want to write on a real instrument rather than a mouse and some keys; you could kick off a jam with a Roland 808, set a foundation with the Fender P-Bass, lay down some chords on a Fender acoustic, and pull some interesting sounds out of the Jupiter 8 or DSI Poly Evolver. Of course, you can always pre-book in any mics from the SSL, and if you ask nicely, they’ll probably loan you any instruments you’ve got your eye on.

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FEATURE

Emma Louise was close to musical burnout, but a French stint with a unique producer birthed her latest album Supercry.

Story: Preshan John

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Producer Pascal Gabriel’s style is literally miles away from the typical commercial recording approach. His home studio (if you can reduce it to that) is in an antiquated castle with fortified walls located somewhere in southern France. To maintain radio silence and lack of distraction when recording, the nameless studio’s coordinates will only be disclosed if you’ve booked in with him. Bass traps are replaced with sofas, instead of treated walls you’ll find windows looking out over picturesque French views, and the main studio throne looks like a horse saddle stuck on a pipe. Pascal’s wife’s catering is part of the experience with all meals provided, and accommodation too.

As it turns out, this extremely laid back recording treatment was precisely what Aussie artist Emma Louise needed. After a rough year following a breakup, negative experiences recording her previous album, and songwriting springs running dry, it was the Pascal prescription that revived her musical senses.

The result? Supercry. We’ll let Pascal take it from here.

GUIDING VOCALS When recording any artist, I always call the tracks ‘vocals guide’ or something, so it’s not like ‘oh, I have to do my proper vocals now’ and they get really nervous. Most of Emma’s final lead vocals in Supercry have a good 20-30% of the original first take in them. Usually when the singer is carefree and not thinking too much about their delivery, you get some really good parts.

I used a 1960s Neumann U57 microphone with a really nice capsule in it.

That goes through a UAD LA-610 then straight into the Apogee AD. I’ve got the sE Reflexion Filter, and that’s it — I NEVER DO THE VOCALS IN THE LIVE ROOM, EVER. It’s much better for the singers, they feel much more at ease. We can sit and chat about the song, which direction it’s going to go, and the mic is right there — it’s not like, ‘bye, you’re going to a different room.’

When mixing I’d usually put it back through the LA-610, sometimes I’ll send a couple of tracks back through the room, and that’s it. Other times I’ll track it through a different mic. I’ve got a vintage Sennheiser 421 which is nice and completely different — it’s not valve, it’s purely electronic, and it kind of softens the edges a bit.

The UAD plug-ins get a lot of use — I like the Urei simulation, the grey-face LA-2A, the Neve compressor and EQs. I actually had a hardware Neve and I never use it now because I found the UAD one was so close and so good, and instantly recordable, that it wasn’t worth working with the real thing. I think they’re very good plugs.

WINNING THE VIBE BATTLE Pascal Gabriel: Artists like to be relaxed. When you get them in a relaxed situation, that’s really half the battle won because they’re not worried or feeling stressed. ANYTHING ABOUT RECORDING, OR A STUDIO WITH BIG RED LIGHTS, I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE. I guess I’m quite good at making artists feel at ease — well, that’s what they tell me afterwards.

My studio is in a very old building in the south of France. The external wall is a rampart, like a fortress if you like. So the external walls are four feet deep because they were made to sustain cannon attacks and so on.

The tracking and control rooms are in the top floor. I call it a glorified bedroom studio because that’s what it looks like. It’s got great gear in it but it’s all set up in a very idiosyncratic fashion. It’s not very posh-looking. It’s very homely, like a living room. You can just chill out, have the lights low, and you get great views out the windows. I tried to make it looking as least like a studio as possible.

THINKING IN THE BOX I work pretty much all in the box. I send some things out to external units but MOST OF THE TIME MIXING-WISE IT STAYS IN THE BOX. I have a few send and return things like UAD LA-610, a couple of 1960s Drawmers and other bits and pieces, but generally it stays in the box.

Logic is my DAW and I use some of its plug-ins as well; if you use them kindly it’s fine. I use the compression quite a bit and the instruments sometimes as well because they’re different and just a bit more obvious.

Pascal sits in front of his collection of synths hugging one of his more obscure pieces — a toyish Electro-Harmonix Mini Synthesizer with its membrane keys.

MIX AROUND THE VOCALS Supercry is not a pop record per se, where you have big banging things coming in the chorus. On the album, it was really a question of finding the space for Emma’s vocals first. For me, vocals come first. I ALWAYS CONSTRUCT THE MIX AROUND THE VOCALS. MAKE THEM SOUND BRILLIANT, THEN WORK ON THE BACKING TRACK FROM THE GROUND UP, constructing the mix around the vocals. It’s all about the

silence, like in any mix. It’s all about the gaps, it’s about where you want the dynamics to happen and where you don’t.

Then in the mix stage it’s a question of finding the 3D image in your head and what you want to present. There’s no formula, it’s down to your taste.

You can mix the same elements into two completely different mixes. It’s all decisions. That’s how it works.

AT 37

Nothing like a Eurorack modular synth to go to when you're looking for some oddball sounds to pin under a track.

REAL VS SAMPLED PIANO

STRETCH IT OUT

The piano we used on Grace and I Thought I Was A Ship was recorded in the basement of a museum in Brisbane. But on most of the other tracks it’s my own Schimmel upright piano which I’ve got in the studio. Schimmel is a German brand with a very particular, velvety, muted sound. The soft pedal gives it this lovely felt piano sound. Emma loved it as well.

We also used a plug-in by Spitfire Audio which has two different felt piano instruments and they’re really great. It’s basically a multi-sampled Schimmel so it’s very interchangeable and very hard to tell them apart.

Quite a lot of the sounds were created with Emma. On Underflow, for instance, the big pad sound that comes in the chorus is basically a piece of sound that we isolated from her field recordings she made in Tokyo. WE TIME-

IT REALLY DEPENDS ON THE PART AS TO WHETHER WE RECORD MY SCHIMMEL OR USE THE SAMPLED VERSION FROM SPITFIRE AUDIO. Emma’s a great piano player, so we

just do a couple of takes on the piano and think ‘yeah that’s pretty good, now let’s do a couple of takes on the sampled piano’, then we decide which one we like best.

WHICH BASICALLY STRETCHES THINGS A MILLION TIMES, SO IT CREATES THIS REALLY, REALLY LONG SOUND FROM A TINY LITTLE SNIPPET. We turned that into a pad.

We found Paulstretch became a bit of a key element in terms of sonics for the album. We sampled the church bell of the village. We used some of Emma’s samples in Japan and from her travels, and new samples we created ourselves out of instruments I had lying around. It was good fun. It gives it character. I rarely use presets.

GET THE AIR IN THERE

VACATION RECORDING

I’ve got several little amps in the live room; some big, some small. Often I’ll send stuff to the room using a mini Mackie desk for in and out, and I physically bring something out of the Apogee audio box and just send it to an amp. I do things like that mainly on vocals, sometimes on instruments that felt a bit sticky, and no amount of in-the-box delay or reverb is making it work. By re-miking them I effectively get a bit more realness in it.

Artists I’m working with stay in a house with us. My wife caters for them — she’s an excellent chef.

It’s great because they don’t have any distractions.

There’s no photo shoot in the morning, no interviews. All they have to think about is their record, and that makes a massive difference.

They wake up and go for a run or whatever, we start at 11am, work until about 1:30pm, have lunch, work from 3pm until 8-9pm, then have dinner. After dinner we’ll go back upstairs, do an appraisal of the day’s work, then start again the next day. I’ve kind of honed it down to this set up over the last 10 years. It’s lovely, and it seems to work really well.

ONCE YOU SPEW THINGS OUT OF THE BOX AND BRING IT BACK, IT MAKES A BIG

Suddenly you have the air, the speaker performing, the mic performing, and the air in between performing. It creates a very different image of the sound which can sometimes really make it blend better in the mix.

There’s a couple of distant mics always set up in the room, and then depending on the sound, if I wanted a lo-fi mic, I’d use one of the cheap Eastern European mics I bought years ago and try them up close. If I wanted something nicer I might use a vintage Neumann, depending on what we were looking for. But the air is important, and mic position is very important.

DIFFERENCE.

AT 38

STRETCHED IT WITH A PIECE OF SOFTWARE CALLED PAULSTRETCH

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FEATURE

ABC GOES TO RIO Joshua Craig was ABC Radio’s sole tech stationed in Rio for the Olympics. Here’s his diary of how the ABC pulled off a broadcast amongst bomb threats, angry Frenchmen, and a temporary Olympic village.

Story: Joshua Craig

The ABC is not your average broadcaster; being resourceful is a useful skill — scratch that, it’s a required one. You have to build the systems the corporation wants with what it has available. If you’re lucky, you might be able to wangle a few extra bits of kit out of the coffers. At the Rio Olympics, the ABC wanted to program both Local and Digital radio, with different content every so often, and occasionally from the same studio. They wanted to have ‘off tube’ (see box item) calling capability at as many sites as possible, with most of it happening in Australia to cut down on travel and accommodation costs in Rio. But importantly, the broadcast had to sound as if the ABC had a full presence in Rio. To add to the challenge, I was the lone wholly technical person getting on a plane to Rio. This was my first project of this scale for the ABC. I came onto the project in January 2016 after past staff had already begun planning. It would have been beneficial to have been in on the discussions earlier, but you play the hand you’re dealt. My role was to design a system that runs primarily on IP with alternate path IP and ISDN redundancy across seven locations on two continents. The only thing that would give away a person’s location was the small delay when having a conversation.

International radio FX run under everything so it sounded as if the commentator was at the AT 40

stadium. I’ve got to say, the commentators are very talented to be able to bring such excitement to the broadcast even when they aren’t physically in the stadium. We help where we can by pumping the FX in their ears. Reporters in the field have the option of mobile reporting on several systems including Tieline Report-It, mobile VOIP, or from any of the ABC hardline locations spread across Rio, if mobile becomes an issue. Redundancy is the name of the game, so we also set up Skype as a backup for two-way communications if other systems failed.

We didn’t need to use Skype in anger during the Olympic Broadcast — the primary contribution systems held up.

Ultimately, we succeeded (with a lot of help from some amazing people within the ABC organisation). We broadcasted a total of about 200 hours across the 16-day period. All three major broadcast locations, including the IBC (International Broadcast Centre) studio in Rio and Australian-based ‘Riofern’ and Ultimo studio 217/218 fulfilled the brief of simultaneously programming local and digital radio with different content. We had a grand total of three off air events of less than a minute, and each was caused by issues out of our control — a power outage, and two open internet changes which reset our VPN tunnels. I have learnt a lot from the experience and seeing how the other broadcasters operate.

HOW TO REPORT IT Report-It is a software and services product produced by Australian company Tieline — a broadcast technology producer specialising in codecs. Report-It is a software codec allowing reporters to use their smartphones to gather, submit or broadcast live audio via mobile data networks anywhere in the world. The audio is transmitted via Tieline servers to the client’s FTP servers or other Tieline audio codecs. The system is scalable to any user base and integrates with current radio broadcast standards and technology.

Tieline’s rackmount Merlin range of codecs are designed for audio contribution for broadcast. They are used to transmit live audio via various mediums including POTS (phone line), ISDN (high bit rate phone line) or IP (open internet, SIP or other) networks.

These codecs can transmit/receive via any number of algorithms including lossy, lossless and full bandwidth options. We were primarily using Tieline algorithms Music and MusicPlus to transmit our audio.

HOW WE DID IT

DAY -10 TUESDAY 26 JULY

The gear we were using to broadcast was a mishmash of tech from the ABC’s current assets. The only additional gear we got were some Tieline Codecs to cope with the channel count, a MADI Router and some cabling supplies.

There were three major broadcast locations that could put the ABC’s coverage of the Olympics to air; Rio IBC, Riofern at Seven/NEP in Eveleigh, and Grandstand Studio in Ultimo. All of these sites are capable of programming two independent networks with unique content (most often from Riofern). In Rio there were multiple OB locations, both hardline and mobile that could also go directly to air in the event of system failures, but mostly these locations were for contribution only.

The Grandstand Studio in Ultimo was the main on-air studio manned by Rory McDonald, Kon Karamountzos and Karen Tighe. This studio brought all the contribution circuits together and put them to air when needed. They had access to about 35 audio assets in total from different sources around Rio and Sydney along with all the pre-recorded content. The studio is a standard ABC StageTec-based studio with the ability to be used in combine or solo modes.

WHAT’S OFF TUBE? Off-tube is when commentators use the host broadcaster TV feeds to call the action, rather than being at the event in person. A rights holder has the ability to order single camera splits in addition to the standard cut feed giving them more ‘visibility’ than a standard TV viewer.

Riofern in Eveleigh was the ABC’s makeshift off tube commentary position. The team here varied, but the technical team consisted of Andrea Williamson, Aaron Hull and Ryan Unwin.

The ABC hired the NEP mobile studio truck for this location; a TV studio floor on wheels that’s based around a Studer OnAir 2500 with attached Tieline and APT codecs. It’s treated, has power and climate control, and is comfortable. We had five off tube calling positions set up for various commentators to drop in and call olympic events, with clean host broadcaster TV feeds provided

by Channel 7.

Our studio in Rio at the IBC was the major contribution centre for the Olympics. It received most of the incoming Rio OB audio, then mixed and fed it back to Australia.

It was also responsible for feeding the international radio FX back to Riofern to mix with commentary from the off tube positions. I called that place home for about a month. I was often joined by many of our team on the ground and kept sane by the amazing staff and Channel 7. The system was based around a Digico SD11 console (I wish I had more for the other sites) with attached Tieline Codecs.

All our OB positions in Rio were using either Tieline iMix or Commander units with both IP and ISDN. This was backed up by Tieline Report-It and Skype for mobile applications.

BRINGING RIO TO OZ

This is Riofern, where some of our Sydney crew called home for a couple of weeks. The mobile broadcast truck was technically located at Seven/NEP in Eveleigh, right next door to Redfern, but Rioleigh just didn’t quite have the same ring to it.

This was the first setup day, soon technicians Aaron Hull and Ryan Unwin would install the setup prepared at the lab in Ultimo. The truck would eventually take host broadcaster feeds — supplied by the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) in Rio and transmitted back to Australia

by Seven for its TV coverage — of various venues so our commentators could call them.

This approach to calling international games ‘off tube’ is becoming more common and even the monsters of broadcast like NBC use this technique. It obviously saves money, keeps the broadcasters more alert and comfortable, and allows for instant ‘travel’ between venues.

FAVELA HIGHWAY

After close to 30 hours of travelling I was keen to get to the Media Village. It was my first time in Brazil, and the number of shanty towns/ favelas we passed was an eye opener. Despite the country’s best efforts to hide them, all you could

BV1/BV2 — the Media Village in Recreio dos Bandeirantes

ABC's main position inside the IBC based around a Digico SD11.

see out the window of the bus were mud, brick and wood houses built on any surface available.

On the way to the Media Village we passed the IBC and the Barra de Tijuca Olympic Park.

Originally another favela, the residents were kicked out to build the Olympic park, though some fought back and retained their land holdings on the site. The city begrudgingly built them some new little houses to live in on the edge of the park.

After about a 90-minute trip through Rio, Barra and most of Recreio we finally arrived at the Media Village. It was (and still was at the end of the regular games) a work in progress — the rooms were unfinished and initially we didn't have hot water — unwelcome news when you’ve just spent 30 hours in transit.

AT 41

GET SET!

After a couple of days, Aaron and Ryan had the Riofern truck set up. Field testing started towards the end of the day once I had my rig set up in Rio — I was 13 hours behind in Rio, so they easily beat me to it.

At my end, gear setup was far from the hardest part; most of the services the ABC had ordered from the Olympics providers were not working or had limited functionality. I spent most of the day trying to figure out how to log faults with OBS. It really hit me that the language barrier was going to make things a lot harder to get done. This day could have been reduced to one phrase, ‘não está funcionando’.

DAY -9

WEDNESDAY 27 JULY

DAY -8

THURSDAY 28 JULY

A Studer OnAir 2500 at the technical position

TEMPORARY DASH

The off tube positions in the NEP truck were nearing completion and testing had begun to ensure everything was working at that site. My focus was finding my IBC ‘land legs’. It was a very unusual place.

The building was a temporary structure; its only use was to host broadcasters during the games, after which, it would be demolished. Many parts of the construction were reusable, including cabling (data, fibre, electrical), air con units, and some of the modular walls. The building consisted of two double-height levels divided into six sections each. The combined Seven/ABC section only took up about 1/3 of one of the sections on Level 2. NBC took up two entire sections and

INSIDE THE BBC

I was still soldiering through IP issues. We were using several IP connections in the IBC, one of which was not working. This particular service was meant to receive incoming audio from our local outside broadcasts — ie. the audio from the venues in Rio. Without this working, I couldn’t get audio contribution into the IBC to forward to Sydney. Game over! It was time to go see the telcos and see if anyone could fix it.

I got to go downstairs and meet my BBC colleagues at both Radio 5 Live and the World Service. We were popping a Tieline Merlin into their system so we could share broadcast assets such as staff, venues and other tidbits. These lines also functioned as further redundancy in case all of the ABC redundancies failed; we could put the BBC coverage to air in Australia if we had serious issues.

The BBC section was amazing. The crew brought full radio and TV capabilities with them including news, research, audio booths, master controls, AV routing setups and much more. An expensive endeavour, I’m sure. It was one of the biggest broadcasters at the games, with approximately 500 people on the ground.

Inside the endless corridors of the IBC

DAY -7

FRIDAY 29 JULY

DAY -6

SATURDAY 30 JULY

the BBC occupied just shy of one section.

OBS also commandeered a couple of sections. Being the host broadcaster, it was responsible for providing all of the AV elements to all other broadcasters.

COPACABANA BOYS

After more setup at the IBC, in the evening I was invited to ride along with the Seven crew to shoot some cutaway footage down at Copacabana. One of my Tieline rigs was going to be set up at the hotel opposite the beach volleyball arena, so it was a good chance to scope out the location.

Dan Sweetapple from ABC TV was the tech looking after the site. We’d worked together quite a bit in the lead up to the games to ensure ABC staff had technical assets, where possible, in each of the precincts. The rig down there was mostly used for radio crosses for NewsRadio and Current Affairs (AM, The World Today, PM). It was also a hardline redundancy in case our mobile broadcasting methods didn’t work correctly or failed.

After getting back to the hotel, I was due to meet the sports broadcasters Quentin Hull and Alister Nicholson arriving the next morning… at 2a.m.

The team on the ground in the IBC — (left to right) Alister Nicholson, Joshua Craig, Gerard Whateley, Quentin Hull AT 42

RIO TRANSIT

I couldn’t believe someone thought it would be a good idea to spread out the venues that much! Travel times were massive. It took about one hour to get from Copacabana to the IBC in Barra, about the same to the Olympic stadium, 30 minutes from the IBC to the media village — it killed my setup times! I knew it was going to be an issue before we went, but I didn’t think it would be that bad.

DAY -5

SUNDAY 31 JULY

Tieline Commander in a small room in the Village with a view of Team Germany next door.

FIRST LIVE BROADCAST

I went back to the Village to chase the previous day’s problems. There was no sign of a solution yet — the IP address I had set on the unit was correct — and I didn’t have time to return to it. Thankfully I was able to access it remotely once we were underway the next day.

That night we did our first broadcast — olympic football commentated by Ned Hall back in Riofern. It went well, with no major issues other than the ones I knew about; a good test run pre-games.

DAY -3 DAY -2

TUESDAY 2 AUG

WEDNESDAY 3 AUG

View of Team Australia’s accommodation in the athlete’s village.

DAY

0

FRIDAY 5 AUG

The broadcast position at the Olympic Aquatic Centre

THE VILLAGE

This room was used to interview various members of Team Australia. Although we were promised a nice quiet, soft room over at the Athlete’s Village, that had fallen through the cracks too. Hypercardioid headsets would have to do, which didn’t sound too bad. It all didn’t matter at that point anyway as there was no IP connection.

At least the Team Australia IT people were super helpful and spoke English. The trip wasn’t all a loss; McDonald’s had a popup restaurant at the Village, the best meal I had inside ‘The Bubble’ (the secure zone surrounding the Olympic precinct for accredited people).

THE OPENING CEREMONY

First thing in the morning I went down to the Aquatics Centre to make sure the problems down there were fixed — both ISDN and IP hadn’t been working. Back onto the support people. IP was working! Yes! However, ISDN was still out… No! I had a closer look and discovered the Cat 5 cable hadn’t been terminated properly. Nipping that off and re-terminating it did the trick and ISDN was finally working!

The opening ceremony went without a hitch. It was long, and the parade of nations was particularly tedious. We had a couple of reporters on the ground filing pieces wirelessly from in and around the stadium.

Surprisingly, the 3G/4G data network was pretty good in Rio, meaning VOIP calls via Facebook, Whatsapp or Apple worked much better than standard calls.

That night, as one of the radio reporters was heading back to their vehicle, they stumbled upon a young boy who had recently been shot dead. It was only one kilometre down the road from the stadium.

Maracana — where the stadium is — is in the North Zone, and apparently shootings are a regular occurrence.

AT 43

FIRST SESSION: IP IN THE DRINK

Day 1 had finally arrived. It was almost a relief after the setup period. We still had issues with IP, but I reconfigured the codecs to handle the unreliable network — more redundancy, less bandwidth. I was originally running 24-bit/48k at 128kbps with an additional redundant packet stream (twice the data). To help reduce network loss I increased the compression to 96kbps (reducing the bandwidth) and lifted the redundant packet streams to two (three times the data). It was technically 13% more total bandwidth taking into account the redundant streams, but that additional redundancy gave the system far greater stability. It still sounded good, and considering most of our listeners are on AM radio, it was fine.

Good thing I was close by the first session at the swimming, because about an hour out from going to air the IP dropped off — gone, with no ability to connect even though I could still see the address. After about 10 minutes of putting in my details with the support staff they finally took it seriously and said they were sending someone down to the venue who spoke reasonable English.

By the time I walked into the venue, sports broadcaster Gerard Whateley still hadn’t seen anyone. On the phone the support staff assured me someone was there, but when I got to our broadcast position there was no sign of anyone with only 25 minutes until we went to air. As I was calling them again, someone from the Brazilian telco — Embratel — turned up, but he didn’t speak any English. Using Google Translate, we sorted out a new IP address, made the hookup and got to air.

THE ‘BOMB’ IN THE IBC

Towards the end of the night, the IBC was evacuated because of a device found in the men’s bathroom just around the corner from our broadcast position. It was found by a member of the Channel 7 crew. Judging by the photo, it looked pretty suspicious.

However, the security forces performed a controlled detonation on it (the third such activity performed during the games) and later released a statement stating that ‘no explosives were found’.

AT 44

DAY

1

SATURDAY 6 AUG

DAY

2

SUNDAY 7 AUG

The games kick off. Quentin and former sub-10 second Olympic sprinter, Patrick Johnson, call the action from the stadium.

DAY

DAY

8

7

SATURDAY 12 AUG

SATURDAY 13 AUG The device found by a Channel 7 employee in the men’s bathroom.

HOLY MERDE!: FRENCH DIPLOMACY

Gerard called me around noon telling me to get down to the Aquatic Centre because they were having a problem with the French broadcasters. He said that one of them was looking to start a fight!

At the time I was monitoring a minor IP issue and needed it to solve itself before I left. It finished in a timely fashion and I headed out. When I got there, two of the French broadcasters were hysterical. They were claiming we had stolen their ISDN line, which we hadn’t. Time pressure is normal in this game, and we were again only about 30 minutes out from broadcast. I defused the situation by proving to them we hadn’t stolen their ISDN line. They were right to think someone had, as part of the test showed our ABC Ultimo Master Control Room was able to dial their ISDN number — it connected, just not to any of our gear. I stuck around for a bit (Quentin was monitoring everything back at the IBC) to help communicate with the support staff who wouldn’t run another line until after the current session. Luckily, the French were able to get a 4G connection up, which sorted them for that session.

NBC — THE BIG TIME

While I was helping a colleague at NBC fix a small problem with his Tieline device I got to see their facilities in the IBC. NBC is the ‘royal’ broadcaster for the games. It programs six or seven US networks during the Games period and has a lot of pull all over the world.

NBC runs a broadcast system considered second to none. In fact, the IBC is built around NBC’s gear, and its systems are built to fit into containers. It is an amazing place: several full TV broadcast studios, sound studios, 4K rooms, massive Master Control Room, catering, news offices, it’s all there. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Al Craig (a Sydney resident and AT contributor) runs NBC’s commentary system, with Australia’s very own Tieline forming its backbone. I was running four iMix consoles in Rio for the ABC, Al was running over 20 at the IBC, the Rio venues and at some studios in the US. While it seems remote off tube commentary is the future of broadcast, NBC has already been doing it for 10 years. With Al’s system, a broadcaster can have three locations simultaneously contributing to the same commentary as if they were in the same room/venue, even across continents. I could talk about this for hours.

DAY 10

POWER STRUGGLES

Finally, after six days of trying various fixes, we bypassed the extreme noise issue we’d been having at Riofern with the Studer console. The night before we had isolated it to the internal analogue input card, but it had been hard to track down as the symptom was happening intermittently. I sourced an Audient eightchannel preamp to bypass all our on air inputs and routed them into the AES. Still, it shouldn’t have happened.

The day started well but just after our first cross, Riofern lost all power, knocking both Seven and our site off the air. It was a major power outage that took out both main backups at the Seven/NEP building, the UPS and generator were offline. We had our own UPS backup which we could have used to go to air via ISDN (as network services also went down with the power), but instead chose to use staff at other sites in the next hour of updates.

Not long after power was restored at the site, sports broadcaster, Jim Maxwell had a medical emergency and was rushed to hospital suffering from a suspected stroke. All the team at Riofern handled the situation very well, and we chose to move broadcasting away from that site again while the team composed themselves.

MONDAY 15 AUG

DAY 15

SATURDAY 20 AUG

1

28/07/2015

Alister called the women’s triathlon action from the IBC — just like the marathon, walks, and cycling road race. Often the courses for those races cover very large areas and it’s logistically easier to call the action from a single location on the finish line or at the IBC using host broadcaster feeds.

Alister Nicholson calling the men’s triathlon.

DAY 16

SUNDAY 21 AUG

CLOSING DOWN

The final event was the closing ceremony, which was being commentated on from Australia. The only element required from me was FX, so I could basically dismantle the majority of my system in the IBC. One of my favourite parts of the games occurred in the closing ceremony when the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, popped out as Mario during the handover to Tokyo.

Here’s hoping Japan’s infrastructure will be a little more reliable.

Riofern in action.

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AT 45

REGULARS

Apple Notes Sierra is out on the range, but who’s supporting the new macOS? Column: Brad Watts

As many would be aware, Apple has released yet another chapter in the evolution of OS X, now known as ‘macOS’, no doubt to consolidate the blurring between desktop and iPhone/Pad operating systems. This further amalgamation of macOS and iOS is fantastic, with features such as auto-unlocking your desktop Mac as you wander within range wearing your Apple Watch, and the stupendous addition of Siri, the artificial personal assistant that’s been gaining intelligence since late 2011. With Sierra, you can ask Siri to call someone, or check the weather, find a file, basically ask your Mac to do stuff without typing a word. If only there was an option to change Siri’s name to something like ‘Computer’. Does it feel silly to anyone else that we’re all pestering the same impersonal, personal digital assistant? Anyway, these additional features, while useful for the MacBook-iPhone-Apple Watch wielding die-hards, really don’t add up to much when it comes to Mac-based audio work.

So are there any features in macOS Sierra worth the upgrade for audio systems? So far, no. Picture in Picture? No. Tabs in apps? Nup. iCloud Drive improvements? Don’t think so. Apple Pay? Not really. Optimised storage? Maybe, but I think I can look after my audio projects without Apple’s intervention. Emojis in Messages? Ab-so-freakin’lutely not! But here’s the clincher; will your AU plug-ins survive the migration to macOS 10.12?

And worse still, will your audio interface work?

Read on.

So far there’s a longish list of plug-ins and audio drivers that are incompatible with Sierra, and many ‘lagacy’ interfaces will never make the leap as manufacturers cease support for those units. Apogee’s Firewire interfaces seem to be left out with Sierra. UAD software is still in the testing stage and so far it appears the company’s interface drivers will need updates. Steinberg is also redeveloping drivers, and a number of Native Instrument interfaces such as Traktor and Komplete models are joining the unsupported list. And, wouldn’t you know it, ProTools, Avid audio interfaces and Eucon are all unsupported thus far. Avid only officially qualified the latest AT 46

update to El Capitan nine days after Sierra was released, so I wouldn’t hold my breath. Focusrite claims compatibility with a number of caveats and workarounds. RME is providing and working on updates (betas) for interfaces, though the Fireface 800 still works with the currently available drivers. Presonus is claiming compatibility with all its interfaces, apart from a minor startup glitch with the Studio 192 where the front panel display will behave erratically. Other than this the 192 and Studio 192 Mobile are good to go. As far as plug-ins are concerned, there are conflicting reports. Some plugs work, others do not; check with the manufacturer.

However, there is a way to get some of these devices and drivers running regardless of the manufacturer’s warnings. This is a little dicey, but could get your gear running with Sierra. Disable the operating system’s System Integrity Protection (SIP). This looks after a number of the OS’s security mechanisms, and to be honest, I’d only try this if your audio machine is only online for the bare minimum of duties, such as authorising plugins. This protection is stored in the Mac’s NVRAM, not within the file system. It protects the contents and file-system permissions of system files and directories, protects processes against code injection from malicious software (yes, viruses), and guards against unsigned kernel extensions.

Disabling SIP involves a little bit of work.

First, boot up in Recovery mode by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup. Then launch Terminal from the Utilities menu and enter the following command: csrutil disable. Then reboot. Be careful, and remember mileages will vary. If you wish to reenable SIP, go through the same procedure but run the command csrutil enable and reboot your Mac. It’s not the most elegant option, but it may get you out of strife until your interface drivers and plug-ins are updated.

Ultimately, the sensible option is to sit tight on either El Capitan, Yosemite, or even Mavericks.

Like we all know, a working and reliable audio system is the main aim here. For some, the jump to Sierra simply isn’t possible as some machines have

been excluded. Minimum spec machines for Sierra are MacBooks and iMacs from late 2009, and MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and Mac Pros from 2010 and later.

What if you’ve already upgraded to Sierra and need to go back to El Capitan? Well, there’s quite a bit of work to do there, and you’ll need to reinstall.

Hopefully you’ve still got your El Capitan installer in your applications folder. Obviously you’ll need to boot from that installer application to get your system back in order. First, backup your system with Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper, or hopefully you have a Time Machine backup of your previous system. Just to be safe, compress the El Capitan installer app and move it to another drive (you can’t copy it directly it must be a compressed copy). Then get an 8GB USB drive and download a copy of DiskMaker (diskmakerx. com). This free app will allow you to make a USB installation drive. Simply boot from the USB drive once DiskMaker has finished it’s job and install El Capitan. Once installed it’s easy to migrate your old system from either another cloned drive or a Time Machine backup. Good luck!

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 remains at the head of the class for ease of use and sound quality.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Proudly distributed in Australia by

StudioLive 16 and StudioLive 24 coming soon.

P: 03 8373 4817 www.linkaudio.com.au

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

AT 47

REVIEW

SLATE DIGITAL VIRTUAL MICROPHONE SYSTEM At one point, Steven Slate dared replace your drums, then your vintage gear, later your console, and now he wants to clear out your vintage mic locker. How does his virtual microphone sound? We put it to the test.

Review: Dax Liniere

NEED TO KNOW

Steven Slate has a big, L.A.-sized ego.

Unlike other musicians who gravitate to a more behind-the-scenes role in engineering, Slate lives vicariously through the ‘wow factor’ of his products — championing them with a combination of salesman-like exuberance and frontman confidence that’s rare in the tech industry. He’s long worked to be in the lime-light, and since declaring Slate Trigger and Steven Slate Drums to be the best drum replacement solution on the market, hasn’t backed down one bit when it comes to flogging

PRICE $1699 CONTACT Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or sales@audiochocolate.com.au

AT 48

the superiority of his products with straightfaced braggadocio.

He’s not without cause. After Steven Slate Drums, he teamed up with Fabrice Gabriel, of Eiosis, to form Slate Digital, and together they announced a string of hardware emulating plug-ins, eventually packaging them up into a monthly subscription bundle that’s continually expanding to include effects alongside its collection of EQs, dynamic processors, console sections and tape machines. Then there’s the Slate Pro Audio side, which developed a couple

PROS Inexpensive way to expand your mic locker.

Audition different mics without leaving your chair.

Pick your mic in the mix.

CONS Desktop preamp form factor not for everyone.

Single diaphragm can't reproduce true polar patterns of modelled mics.

Build quality could be better.

SUMMARY Slate's VMS is impressive indeed. While other mic modelling concepts have fallen short, Slate has gone to the trouble of building the base hardware. While it won't exactly replicate the originals in all aspects, it sounds darn close, is great value for the money, and a good sign of things to come.

LISTEN & COMPARE You can download the 52 audio comparison files for Single Bed by heading to audiotechnology.com.au/wp/index.php/slate-vms. They include the completely unprocessed VMS, 48 iterations of VMS microphone and preamp combinations with varying levels of intensity and drive, plus the Soundelux for reference.

of hardware signal processors, before releasing Raven hardware touch screen surfaces and the underlying software tool, Batch Commander, which many have found to be extremely useful.

However, of all the products Steven has released under all manner of banners, Slate Digital’s Virtual Microphone System (VMS) is undoubtedly his greatest calling card to the spotlight so far.

A collection of vintage microphones and preamplifiers is the dream of most engineers, but there are two barriers to ownership; the cost to buy and cost to maintain. As far back as NAMM 2014, Slate made an announcement that put everyone on the edge of their seat. We were asked to imagine having a locker filled with dozens of the world’s “most classic” vintage and modern microphones and preamps, with the ability to instantly audition them to find the perfect match and “finalise the recording chain of our dreams.” He doesn’t undersell, that’s for sure.

As I have it right in front of me, the Slate Digital VMS consists of a large diaphragm condenser microphone, single-channel microphone preamplifier and a software plug-in in the usual flavours of VST, AU, AAX and RTAS. Tall orders are nothing new for Slate, but as you’ll hear, the team has done very well in its attempt to bridge the divide.

been taken to ensure the microphone and preamp units of its VMS are clean, clear and neutral. The thing is, when you’re in control of the chain from start to finish, ruler-flat frequency response isn’t actually necessary — if you have a known curve, it can be compensated — though it does help to start in the middle of the road. The hardware portion of the system imparts as little colouration on the source as is practically possible. Listening to unprocessed samples of the VMS, it’s reminiscent of the Shure KSM44; you can hear its clinical depiction of the sound, which is exactly what is expected.

Having owned the original for 10 years, I can confidently say that with Intensity set to around 120%, Slate’s model is fairly close

PURE CONCEPT

The VMS concept relies on capturing the signal as purely as possible through dedicated microphone and preamp hardware, then convolving that signal to replicate the sound of microphones and preamps outside the reach of most engineers’ budgets.

Antares, the makers of Auto Tune, brought a similar software-only concept to market back in the early 2000s. It was largely unsuccessful as it was an incomplete system that left out too many variables while promising to deliver on unreasonably high expectations. Bridging the gap between anyone’s Shure SM57 and a vintage U47 was hardly likely.

Frequency response is only one small part of the puzzle, having a tightly controlled capture system was another.

Slate Digital assures us that great lengths have

There are immediately some limitations presented by the design. For one, Slate can’t alter the physical characteristics of either the mic or preamp of the VMS system. So, for instance, while a classic Neumann U-47 has a sensitivity of 25mV/ PA, Slate’s ML-1 microphone has a slightly lower 20mV/PA sensitivity. Likewise, without physically altering and controlling both diaphragms of the microphone, it would be impossible to model the way another mic changes its polarity pattern at different frequencies. Also, while the VMS One preamp might have a very usable gain range of 57dB, and model the drive characteristics of a vintage preamp via software, it won’t have the same true gain range.

The other end of the scale would require physically modelling the input, similar to the way Korby Audio Technologies attempts to in the analogue realm. At the end of the day, Slate isn’t trying to sell you another handful of vintage clones, the aim here is to get as close as physically possible and let the software do the rest. How it sounds is more important than the slight deviations in physical specs.

WHAT’S IN THE PACK

The Slate ML-1 microphone is a matte black, phantom-powered, large diaphragm condenser.

It’s paired with the VMS One, a quiet, neutral microphone preamplifier with an atypical desktop form factor, emblazoned with Slate’s logo. It won’t fit in with every studio layout, as the unit demands to be stationed on a desk or on top of a rack.

Naturally, it calls attention to itself — no surprise there. The top face houses familiar preamp controls for gain, pad, polarity, unit power and phantom power, along with a bi-colour LED to indicate level (green = good, red = bad) and an input selector switch for mic or instrument.

The back panel has a Neutrik XLR/1/4-inch combo input, XLR and TRS outputs, DC input and DC pass-through. The 1/4-inch input allows the VMS One to also be used as an instrument DI. The matching external universal power supply features an API Lunchbox-compatible pinout. Since the preamp itself is quite small, we’d rather have seen a rack-mounted version; perhaps a two-channel unit with internal power supply will exist in future.

The VMS package ships with the ML-1 mic, matching suspension shockmount, a hard case for the mic and shockmount, the VMS One preamp, a power supply, and a card which contains the iLok licence activation code for the VMS software. An iLok2 is required for any of Slate Digital’s plug-ins.

Once registered, you can download the VMS software which contains the digital goodies that transform the clean signal through an analoguemodelled signal chain. Adding the microphone module in the first slot of the Virtual Mix Rack plug-in lets users choose from one of the three included microphone models — FG-47, FG-800 AT 49

and FG-251. On the mic module, the Intensity control stands out as a deviation from standard issue analogue mic and preamp technology. It’s basically a means of magnifying the character of the microphone model. Next up is the microphone preamp selection — VMS comes with a famous British preamp clone in the FG-73, and a German tube preamp clone, the FG-76. Since this setup occurs inside Slate’s Virtual Mix Rack, you can also add any other Slate modules you own to create a custom chain.

That’s a lot for only AU$1699 and, as you’d expect, the build quality matches the price point. Not bad, but not German-made precision; how else could you get a microphone, a preamp and a suite of microphone and preamp models for that price?

IN THE STUDIO

Gareth Esson is an acoustic soul singer-songwriter from London with honesty and sincerity right down to his core. To test this revolutionary new product I needed the right talent and song, and Single Bed showcases both Gareth’s range and song-writing prowess. The Gibson J-50 acoustic guitar and vocals were recorded in separate takes using the Slate ML-1 simultaneously alongside a Soundelux E251C. They were connected to the Slate VMS One and API 3124 preamps respectively. Ideally I would also have had a Neve 1073 and Siemens/Telefunken V76 to compare, but the Soundelux is intended simply as a quality reference as I couldn’t put up more than a couple of mics to capture Gareth’s performance anyway.

For guitar, the mics were about 10 inches away from the fourteenth fret where the neck meets the body and for vocals the mics were at a distance of about one foot.

Head over to the AudioTechnology website and download the comprehensive set of 52 audio files for Single Bed. They include the completely unprocessed VMS, 48 iterations of VMS microphone and preamp combinations with varying levels of intensity and drive, plus the Soundelux for reference.

BEHIND THE GRILLE

The FG-47 model emulates a vintage Neumann U47, one of the most sought-after microphones in history, and at 100% Intensity it has that familiar thick flavour. When set to 150% it yields a more vintage tone, perfect for an Iron & Winestyle acoustic guitar sound. This tone was less pronounced on vocals, but the higher setting did feel a bit more closed which will suit certain vocalists, though it wasn’t the best choice for Gareth’s smooth voice. On the Gibson acoustic, it accentuated the natural boominess of the largebodied instrument, which would require some processing in order to sound more balanced.

The Sony C-800G is a modern classic that debuted on a Mariah Carey record in the 1990s.

Its model is named the FG-800. It’s the brightest of the bunch, which can really help it cut through a mix without any additional EQ. Having owned the original for 10 years, I can confidently say that with Intensity set to around 120%, Slate’s model AT 50

is fairly close. There’s a certain character in the low-mids that is unmistakable and sounds great on many sources.

Lastly, the FG-251 model seeks to capture a microphone that was manufactured by AKG in the late 1950s and sold with the Telefunken badge as an ELA M 251. I feel that the FG-251 doesn’t have quite as much of the tube sound as I would expect from this mic, but it’s still a great sound that will suit many sources. On acoustic guitar, this mic conveys the instrument with a great tonal balance and, at 150% Intensity, offers a flattering, largerthan-life portrayal.

Frankenstein’ing mic parts together to make unheard-of mods is now a digital reality.

Another powerful feature of the VMS is that you can audition different microphones in a matter of seconds without even leaving your chair. I mentioned that I felt the FG-47 mic model overstated the boominess of Gareth’s acoustic guitar, whereas the FG-251 mic model was very flattering on the source. This is a perfect example of how VMS could save the day, especially on rushed sessions where you don’t have as much time as you might like to be able to tweak microphones.

GAIN A LOT

To play devil’s advocate, one thing became very apparent after the recording had been done and it was time to compare the files. Even with ‘only’ three mics and two preamps, VMS gives you a lot of choice. While the choice can be liberating, adding the ability to change the mic and preamp at any time during the mixing process brings another level of indecision to anyone already trying to ‘fix it in the mix’. It’s going to slow some people down as they weigh up the nuances of each microphone model, intensity setting, and preamp choice against the other variables in the mix.

What we’ve heard is certainly impressive, but does Slate’s Virtual Microphone System sound 100% identical to an original U47, ELA M 251 or C-800g? I think there’s a better question: does it need to sound 100% identical to sound good or, at the very least, be useable? Regardless of how many superlatives you can whisper into the capsule of a vintage microphone, no two will sound the same.

The older a microphone gets, the more its tolerances change as capacitors dry out and the capsule is affected by environmental exposure. Now consider that to buy good condition originals of each of the three microphones and two preamps in Slate’s VMS, you’d be looking at around $70,000. That’s if you can find someone willing to part ways with them.

Is Slate’s Virtual Microphone System worth $1699?

Take a listen and decide for yourself.

On to the microphone preamp models. Slate Digital made its console circuit modelling debut in 2011 with the release of Virtual Console Collection (VCC) — covering six different console flavours including SSL, API, Neve, Trident and some old RCA tube mixers. The two included preamp models, FG-73 and FG-76, take that style of analogue colouration much further. They can add a great deal of heft and pleasing thickness to a signal while giving the top-end a signature sound.

They loved being pushed, which the Drive knob made painless by increasing the input gain while simultaneously reducing output gain to maintain an honest comparative level.

One of the great things about the modelling concept is that new microphone and preamp models can be released down the track and we’ve already seen the Classic Tubes 2 (US$499) collection surface. Included free for early purchasers, it contains five emulations — FG-12, FG-67, FG-269, FG-800M, and FG-M7. Each models classic condensers AKG C12, Neumann U67 and M269, and a Sony C-800 (earlier, nonheatsink version of the C-800G). It also includes an emulation of the venerable Shure SM7, used on countless vocals from Michael Jackson’s Thriller to System Of A Down’s Toxicity. But there’s a twist; the FG-M7 samples the dynamic microphone’s capsule through the tube stage of a vintage U47. Slate has shown us that this technology can go much further than we might have initially imagined.

WHEN TO CHOOSE VMS

Gareth Esson’s debut album Almost Something is out now and features a version of Single Bed.

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www.sounddistribution.com.au AT 51

REVIEW

DBX 510, 520, 530 & 560A 500 Series Units dbx has packed its lunchbox with loads of character, including some miniature reprises of classic designs.

Review: Greg Walker

Last issue we put the new dbx 580 mic pre through its paces and liked what we heard.

There were a few loose ends to tie up, namely the other four 500 series modules alongside it, so we’ll be dining out of the dbx lunchbox and digesting the very affordable 510 Subharmonic Synth, 520 De-Esser, 530 Parametric EQ and 560A Compressor Limiter.

TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT

NEED TO KNOW

The 560A Compressor Limiter is unashamedly based on the design of the evergreen 160A rack unit model, a mainstay of live and studio racks just about everywhere for the last 20 years or so. The 560A is a simple three knob affair with continuously variable compression threshold, ratio and output gain controls and very detailed I/O level and gain reduction LED metering down the right hand side of the faceplate. Beside the bypass switch down low is another switch to

PRICE 510 & 520: $299 530 & 560A: $399 CONTACT Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au

AT 52

PROS Affordable Classic designs reprised in mini Well-planned faceplates

select either input or output gain metering. At the top of the unit another switch engages either hard-knee or ‘over easy’ compression curves and a dedicated trio of LEDs shows when the signal is below, at or above the knee of either curve.

In use the 560A is musical and does a great job of controlling levels in a fairly neutral way.

On guitars and bass there is a subtle thickening of tone in the low mids which is very welcome, while on kick and snare the 560A can do subtle or dramatic dynamic work on your signals while imparting a satisfying thud to drum sounds.

Vocals sent through the dbx come out the other end both tonally unmolested and nicely controlled. For those who haven’t used dbx compressors before, the ‘over easy’ curve is quite forgiving and soft while the hard-knee setting is far more grabby and lets more of the transients through before acting upon the signal at higher thresholds, while a lower threshold and high

CONS None

ratio delivers brick-wall limiting with no trouble whatsoever. Personally I favour the ‘over easy’ sound and the abilities of the 560A as a relatively transparent dynamics controller rather than a ‘smash ’em up’ colour box. The lack of dedicated attack and release controls means there’s limited fine tuning available, but overall the 560A is a very useful and musical tool for a wide variety of tracking and mix applications.

ESS IS FOR SENSATIONAL

The 520 De-Esser is the most minimalist and simple to use module in the new dbx 500 series range. It is a close reproduction of the 902 module from dbx’s old 900 series and as such is a beautifully effective piece of audio design.

Put your overly bright, cheap and nasty modern condenser recorded vocal or spiky 4kHz-heavy acoustic guitar signal through this device, set your de-essing threshold and your amount

SUMMARY The rest of dbx’s lunchbox is full of tasty treats made with vintage recipes. The classic 160A compressor is reprised in miniature, as is the reputable 902 de-esser.

While the 530 EQ and 510 Subharmonic Synth both add loads of analogue control in a small package.

controls to around midday and hit enable… job done. If you really want to fiddle around you can try engaging the ‘HF Only’ button. Sometimes it sounds better, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve said this before in this magazine and I’ll say it again — I really do think the 902 de-essing circuit (and now 520) still pulls down the pants of every software de-essing plug-in I’ve heard. It’s super musical, very hard to get wrong and it doesn’t suck all the joy out of your top end. Props to dbx for recognising the fact and regurgitating it here for a new generation of audio engineers… love it!

EQUAL BILLING

The 530 by contrast is a heavily populated 500 series module with three bands of fully parametric EQ. Again there is a very large debt being paid here to the 900 series via the 905 EQ and that module’s modus operandi is exactly reproduced here. Each band consists of a dual concentric knob. The inner pot controls gain boost or cut up to 15dB and also offers a problem-frequency-killing ‘infinite notch’ mode when switched fully anti-clockwise. The outer pot sweeps between gentle bell curve and tight peak EQ curves while another continuously variable knob dials in the required frequency. The three frequency bands overlap, with an overall range of 20Hz to 20kHz. The upper and lower bands can also be switched to shelf mode and there’s a bypass switch and a peak LED at the top of the faceplate.

The sound of the 530 is nice and punchy in the mids, sweet in the highs and solid but not gigantic in the lows. It’s a great general tone-shaping tool for things like vocals and guitars while there’s enough

tightness in the Q to do some proper analogue surgery on troublesome frequencies. The lack of centre detents on the gain controls is a little annoying and recalling settings will obviously be tricky with this module’s small knobs and basic legending. The layout is tight but quite functional and more flexible than the majority of 500 series EQs given the fully parametric nature of the three bands.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE

Finally comes the 510 Subharmonic Synth, the joker in the pack and certainly the dbx module that bucks the small-coloured-knob trend of its siblings.

While based on the vintage dbx 120’s circuitry, the larger silver rotary controls of the 510 are vaguely reminiscent of hi-fi amp controls of yore and the layout is suitably straight-forward. Two band controls dial in frequencies between 36-56Hz and 24-36 Hz and are flanked by their own three LED gain meters, while below are controls for adding subharmonics and low frequency boost. It pays to use your ears when working the combinations of these controls. Each control is independent but they do affect each other and things can get pretty… erm… bassy down there pretty quickly with this device.

The 510 really packs a whallop down low and is a great tool for reinforcing deep frequencies in things like drum, bass and synthesiser parts.

The basic concept is to create harmonics of the existing frequencies an octave further down and I was quite impressed by the 510’s ability to add weight to whole mixes as well as individual sources when added judiciously. However, be warned that this module has the ability to really mess up your

signal path with excessive frequencies below 50Hz. There’s a real art to getting things right with this particular tool and you need decent speakers and/ or headphones to hear what’s going on. Compared with the plug-ins I sometimes use to extract extra bottom end from sounds, the 510 produces much more refined and ‘natural’ sounding results.

Sometimes this only becomes clear when you hit the bypass button and hear what the original sound actually was.

BOX OF TRICKS

The new range of 500 series dbx modules is a welcome addition to the burgeoning ranks of available modules. While they are aggressively priced they don’t sound or feel cheap and they are serious audio tools for a wide range of audio situations. When you link a few of them up, as I did for an afternoon, they also make pretty deep channel strips that can go places most plug-ins can’t quite reach. If you’ve never had the pleasure of dialling in a decent analogue EQ on a vocal or a snare drum you could do a lot worse than starting with the 530, while compression hounds will love the ease of use and sonic quality of the 560A. Meanwhile the 510 and 520 address more specialised needs and do so with quality sonic results. dbx has certainly laid down the gauntlet with its current pricing for this range of modules, so if you’ve got a spare couple of spaces in your 500 series lunchbox, you’re going to have to go a long way to find a more cost effective outboard audio dining experience!

AT 53

REVIEW

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS KOMPLETE 11 ULTIMATE

Sample & Software Instrument Collection What do you do when you've already made the kitchen sink? Throw more gold into it.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Mark Davie

PRICE Boxed: $1899 Update: $599 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au

AT 54

PROS Covers all bases Flesh & Form take samples new places Wealth of symphonic additions Play through the subcontinent

CONS No pause button on downloader

SUMMARY Native Instruments Komplete 11 Ultimate has everything you need to make music.

Even the latest update covers the gamut from a suite of symphonic instruments, to an entire Indian collection, fresh ways of manipulating and synthesising from samples, and a delay that will rock your socks. Hard to pass up if you rely on your computer to make music.

Native Instruments isn’t the only provider of software instruments, effects or samples, but it does the kitchen sink better than anyone. Native Instruments’ all-inclusive Komplete Ultimate collection includes every single one of its products: synths of almost any kind — even sample-based semi granular ones, drum samples and drum machines, orchestral samples and players, vintage-inspired effects, random performance tools… you name it, it’s got something that will fit the bill.

Every time Native Instruments goes up a digit — we’re up to 11 now — it herds the six to eight products it’s dreamed up since the last round number and corrals them into the new upgrade.

Interestingly, the new additions seem to show that Native Instruments really does have all its bases covered. With the exception of Tim Exile’s Flesh — a performance instrument that seems very fresh indeed — most of the included instruments expand on the categories already a part of Komplete. To coincide with the 11 release, NI redesigned its classic Reaktor modular environment with some better building blocks, as well as enhanced the core Kontakt sampling system. Kontakt has been redesigned so the size of instruments can now be 1000 by 750 pixels.

Unfortunately, on my Retina Macbook Pro, that’s really not even close to enough. With so many libraries available for the platform, it’s no doubt difficult to keep every provider’s graphics up to date. I still find the adjusted design a little crammed, purely because of Kontakt’s wealth of options, but it’s not unusable by any means and all the newest instruments are well laid out.

Besides Flesh, you also get a sample-based synth: Form; a new piano: Una Corda; a new geographic destination to add to its Discovery Series: India; more orchestral samples: Symphony Essentials and Emotive Strings; a new delay effect: Replica XT, and something to add to the Session series: Session Guitarist – Strummed Acoustic.

Although you get a 500GB USB 3.0 portable hard drive in the box, it doesn’t come with any downloaded material installed. You want to make sure you have a good internet connection, as you’re going to be downloading… a lot.

There’s also no pause button in NI’s Native Access download app, so I had to force quit it occasionally when an instrument download was taking longer than I had time for. Thankfully, the next time I booted up it resumed at its last point and never corrupted the download.

Let’s dig into the new bits.

SYMPHONY ESSENTIALS

Of all the non-keyboard instruments, strings have been the most likely to be played on the ivories.

Most sampled string instruments have progressed from simply being mapped across the black and white keys. These days there’ll be as many keys used to switch modes from legato to pizzicato as there are keys left to play on.

Symphony Essentials occupies the middle ground, designed to make it as easy to bash out some string lines as it is on a Solina, but with loads

of flexibility under the bonnet to refine where required. It’s professional, yet approachable. It’s not just strings either, there are woodwind and brass instruments too, with a variety of solo instruments and ensembles.

For how detailed Symphony Essentials instruments can be, NI has really nailed the graphic hierarchy. A central big knob dominates the interface, and screams, ‘start here’. It controls dynamics, which varies the intensity of the played note via the modulation wheel. As you tweak the control, the instrument adjusts the playback combination of samples, from lightly bowed or blown, to the extreme of a player’s ability. There’s still the standard keyboard velocity response too, but the dynamics control gives you the ability to play expressively while swelling on held notes.

Downwards from there, the other main four performance controls are attack and release, to simulate a player’s natural per-note dynamics, then another couple of parameters that change per class.

For strings they are Expression (volume boost when playing with lightly bowed dynamics) and Brightness. For the woodwinds, it’s Tightness and Motion to add a bit of variability to the passage.

Below that, there are all manner of articulations, with a handful mapped to the first keyboard octave, with the ability to add more, or switch them out for alternative articulations. If you have an NI Kontrol series keyboard, the keyswitches will light up in different hues for easy identification. Each articulation has its own additional parameters, whether its a Solo or Duet option for the flutes with a variable legato response, or staccato arpeggiators.

All the staccato articulations have a cycling roundrobin approach to sample playback, so you never get the same sample triggering twice in a row, which makes for a more natural sound.

Sonically, the sets are great, though it felt easier to get more usable sounds out of some than others.

I struggled with saxophone, for instance, but instantly gelled with the solo flute. Modulating the dynamics is a must, and adjusting the attack and release times per instrument and articulation is a good starting point for more realistic results.

Overall, it’s an extremely useful set of symphonic tools for composition. It’s one of the easiest collections I’ve come across to not only get started with and play right off the bat, but delve deeper into developing highly playable articulations.

FORM

Form is a Reaktor-based synth that uses samples rather than an oscillator as its starting point.

Either drag ’n’ drop your own, or pick one from the bundled presets. You can do everything from simple formant shifting to give samples a little more juice, to mangling them into oblivion and playing a top line. After you’ve picked a sample, you can set the speed of playback and cycling (in Hz, BPM, or relative to the original sample speed). Once you’ve altered the speed of the sample, you can use that speed to adjust your motion. Motion is dictated by a curve, or a series of curves, you can add, edit and loop at will. Imagine drawing an envelope over a sample where linear angles make it ramp with a

percussive attack, while exponential curves ramp up in a gentler fashion. You can also change the frequency and phase, so a simple smooth tone can instantly be changed into a percussive chatter. Add curves and loop them to create motion patterns that move with the sustain of the note.

You can then alter the formant oscillator, and the additive oscillator, manipulate the oscillators further with modifiers like FM, stereo spread and multipliers. From there, you can control modulation envelopes, and filter cutoff and resonance, and add a whole range of effects. It’s a unique way of looking at sample synthesis, and you can get useful results regardless of how unfamiliar the controls seem at first.

UNA CORDA

Una Corda is another name for the soft pedal on a piano, which shifts the whole action to the right so the hammers only strike two strings instead of three. Piano builder, David Klavins, went even further to the right with his piano called Una Corda; it only has one string per note. It’s the second Klavins piano NI has sampled, the other being The Giant — a huge upright installed into a wall with a soundboard roughly double the length of a nine-foot concert grand. Klavins’ pianos don’t get out very much, so NI releasing it in sampled form is great for performers everywhere.

NI’s Una Corda adds even more controllable dimension than any piano it’s previously released.

Not only can you ‘prepare’ the piano by stuffing different material between the hammers and strings, you can adjust the overtones, mechanical noise, harmonics, pianist’s variability, resonant tone, and more. There’s also a really great modulation and effects engine that lets you do everything from subtle tape effects, to all-out glistening crackly textures. There’s a huge scope here for sound design, or just getting a slightly different piano sound. As a pure instrument, it’s a little more boxy and direct than your average piano, but it sounds beautiful. In the same way that Alicia’s Keys became a favourite for pop producers, this is an incredibly versatile piano that will have sound designers weeping.

SESSION GUITARIST: STRUMMED ACOUSTIC

At first, I couldn’t really get my head around Session Guitarist: Strummed Acoustic. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s funny as a right-handed guitarist having to play chords with my right hand and strum with my left.

Technically, you don’t really strum, NI does it for you. The low-end octave lets you slot in a selected strumming pattern which you can alternate during a performance. There are a total of 101 x 32-strum patterns in 4/4, 3/4 and triplet divisions. They have varying accents and mutes and cover a range of styles. The search facility lets you browse by mutedness of the strumming hand, dynamic, and bar division, as well as plotting in your own pattern to see which ones match. You can’t technically put in your own pattern, but you can offset and shorten any selected pattern to give you a lot more variety than the 101 already installed. You also don’t have AT 55

to hold the strumming hand down as it can latch to the pattern you choose.

Above that keyboard section you can play a selection of endings: from palm mutes, to body slaps and slides. Then beginning from the next E, you can play in chords with your right hand, or both hands. Session Guitarist intelligently picks out what chord you’re most likely trying to play, without necessarily relying on your root note.

If, for instance, you hammer out a Dsus4 with a sixth, it’ll interpret it as a G major chord and shift the root up, rather than playing a low inversion.

Sometimes it feels a little unpredictable. It felt like I could force voicings up higher, but it didn’t always work when I was trying to maintain a low note at the bottom. The unpredictability based on what keys you’re pressing is somewhat due to the voicing slider, which sets a general preference for lower or higher up the neck.

There are also options for guitar sounds (all based on a standard dreadnought), doubling, and fret noise, as well as some external processing.

The auto chord feature lets you use only a couple of fingers to select chords in a given key, with the ability to hold down a note to add seconds, fourths, sevenths and ninths. I typically preferred this mode. It’s a great sounding guitar plug-in, though I suspect you’d have to be a non-guitar player wanting to quickly fire out rhythm guitar tracks to get a lot of use out of it.

EMOTIVE STRINGS

Emotive Strings is another pre-phrased instrument, this time with orchestral strings. Not having the voicing randomness makes it instantly more comfortable. You can browse within four types of phrase. There are single pitch phrases, and melodic phrases that automatically shift between major and minor depending on the velocity. Emotives give you even more control over melodic phrasing, with the ability to hold richer chords than just major or minor with your left hand, which then automatically limits the notes your right hand can use to trigger phrases. There’s also a selection of arpeggio phrases.

Emotive Strings automatically splits the string section based on how many notes you’re holding down. So if you hold an ostinato and add in a note, some of your players will jump onto that note rather than a whole new string section setting up shop.

It’s a very usable instrument, as you can play single notes in-between phrases, and Emotive Strings will kick off the phrase again once you hold a note down. There’s a huge variety of phrases on offer, and it sounds great. You can also set it to a single note and simply play your heart out.

DISCOVERY SERIES: INDIA

The Discovery Series is a real highlight in the Komplete collection. A lot of effort goes into presenting a country’s unique musical diversity in one plug-in. So far, the series has encompassed Balinese Gamelan, West Africa and Cuba. Now it attempts to cover the whole Indian subcontinent.

When you select the entire ensemble, it pulls

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up a mix of everything from the well-known sitar and tabla, to the ghatam and dohlak, all laid out on a Persian rug. You can either keyswitch on patterns in the lower octaves or play a selection of each instrument’s articulation range over the rest of the keys. If you choose to play a singular instrument, melodic or percussive, you get a few more controls like tuning, as well as more articulations to play with.

Recently, a friend of mine who’s been living in India and studying tabla under a guru explained to me the rich tradition of the instrument. He’d regularly go to his ‘two-hour’ lesson with his guru, and end up there for an entire day. He conveyed how tabla rhythms are built on stories, and conveyed orally, each hit having a distinct verbalisation. All that’s to say, I have no right messing around on a tabla, or any other instrument from this culture. But it’s not going to stop me, the sounds are so engaging, and every guitarist who’s ever listened to The Beatles fancies themselves as a sitar player. However out of my depth I may be, NI has put some helpful guard rails in place, like being able to select specific Indian scales, or rely on pre-built patterns. It’s a great way to explore the sounds of India without feeling completely out of your depth.

FLESH

Tim Exile is a weird cat. Flesh is billed as a performance instrument Exile developed to fit into his routine. It’s not going to be for everyone, especially if you’re uneasy embracing randomness as a part of your music creation toolkit. The gist of it is, like Form, you start with a sample, but rather than playing it across the keys, you use it to craft an entire song with multiple parts.

It does this by taking the rhythmic elements of the sample and converting them to melodic and harmonic information that’s spread across multiple synth engines. From left to right, the five main circles represent the sub synth, mono synth, sampler player, poly synth, and FX engine. Each dial can be inflated or shrunk to change its level contribution, and then be fully adjusted behind the scenes to change synth engine (16 engines for each of the mono, sampler and poly parts) and adjust the sound. You then use three octaves on the keyboard to play back your track. On the far left, you can ‘play’ the harmony content, which is linked to a specific chord progression you can choose based on major, minor or chromatic scales. Next along is the sample selector, where you can switch between 12 different samples on the fly. Lastly, the sound control gives you 12 global macro keys which you can program to have different synth levels and characteristics. For instance, one note might represent a ‘sub only’ configuration, the next note might highlight the sample with some heavy effects, and the note after that could drop everything back in again. With those three octaves, there’s more options than you’ll need in a typical song.

It’s definitely an instrument you’ll have to embrace for its randomness. So far I’ve found

it useful for developing textures from existing beats and songs that I could try and incorporate underneath, as a middle section, or re-sample.

Who knows, maybe I’ll make a song out of it as time goes on.

REPLIKA XT

Native Instruments has had Softube build up a hefty collection of processing clones to fill out its compression, EQ and reverb stocks. Surprisingly, it hasn’t included a dedicated delay until now. Replica XT is a multi-mode delay, and it’s much more than a simple clone.

There are five main delay types — modern, analogue bucket brigade, tape, vintage digital and diffusion. Each type has specific controls — like ‘wow & flutter’ appearing only on the tape delay mode — but the remainder of the controls remain constant regardless of the mode selected.

The bifurcation of the modes from the rest of the controls feels like a good move, because you change the overall tonality but keep global parameters the same for things like high and low pass filters, repeat divisions, feedback, and mix. If you delve a little deeper, you can also adjust the shuffle and feel of the repeats, and set ducking and panning controls.

The central graphic display lets you see what you’re tweaking by showing the spacing and intensity of the repeats.

You can extend feedback past 100% and get some ominous, dreamy train sounds with the single Modern engine. It doesn’t take off in a bad way, it just adds some deep unstable chorusing that modulates as its own instrument.

I love those little glitches that delays make as you’re switching parameters mid-flight. Sometimes they’re ugly, but Replika XT always added something pleasingly musical. Setting a Moog onto a simple arpeggiated pattern, I dove right into flicking as many dials and switches as I could, revelling in the mini chords and off-kilter bleeps that popped up.

There’s also an extra effects engine, dedicated purely to the repeats. You can alter them with a phaser, flanger, chorus, frequency shifter, filter, pitch shifter and micro shifter. Again, the results were all incredibly musical. It’s hard to see myself needing another delay.

GOLD ADDITIONS

Native Instruments Komplete 11 Ultimate is a sure bet for anyone wanting to max out their creative palette in one fell swoop. NI could really only add to its already impressively filled out categories.

For those wondering whether to upgrade, the Symphony Essentials bundle is worth the price of admission, it’s hard to ignore the potent contribution of Indian music and the chance to get your hands on some the subscontinent’s virtual instruments, Una Corda is a very useful tool, Form is instantly inspiring, and Replica XT could very well be your new favourite delay. It’s more than just another sample set, every instrument is thoughtfully put together to give you the best chance of making music with it.

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Last Word with

Paul Petersen

Paul Petersen was discovered at 17 by Prince, and hand picked to appear in his 1984 Grammy-winning film Purple Rain as the new keys player (replacing Jimmy Jam) in the funk group The Time.

Dubbed ‘St Paul’ by Prince, Petersen fronted follow-up Prince project, The Family. Petersen released two solo St Paul albums and has produced, written and appeared on countless others. Hit him up on www.paulpeterson.com

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I grew up in Minneapolis in a musical family. My Mum and Dad were great session musicians of their time. My Mum played all the way up until the day she died, aged 92 — she was a renowned jazz keys player. My brothers and sisters all played for a living.

There were always instruments left around the house. We all played something different except me, being the youngest, I’d grab them all.

I remember as a 16-year old approaching my Mum to tell her that Patty (my oldest sister) wanted me to play six nights a week in her band. Her response: “as long as you can get your homework done that’s fine”.

I was playing bass at that time and word got around that there was this young player out there making a name for himself. Right after graduating from high school I got a call from my brother telling me I had an audition with Prince’s project, The Time. Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam had departed and my name was put forward to audition for the keys part.

I got the gig, and at rehearsals we had all the equipment we needed. I had an Oberheim OB8 and a Yamaha CP70 (electro mechanical piano) to play.

There I was, age 17, stepping/dancing, singing and playing, learning about the technology of the day, production, branding and marketing. It was an amazing education.

After The Time broke up Prince formed a new band called The Family and he appointed me as the lead singer. Prince produced the album and wrote the songs. At the time he produced just about all the synth parts on a new device called the Yamaha DX7! Dude found a way to make that synth sexy, cool and funky at the same time. He took those new FM sounds and combined them with the funk backbone of live bass, guitar and drums and, in the case of The Family album, a live orchestra.

After recording The Family album we performed one live show at First Avenue, Minneapolis. We rehearsed for nine months solid, six days a week. Then the band broke up.

Prince was a great producer. First of all he had great songs to work with — he knew how to write hits. A lot of people can’t produce their own music, Prince wasn’t one of those guys. He really thrived producing himself.

He was a great inspiration for us at that time. The feeling was: if Prince can do it himself, then I can too. There was friendly competition among us as would-be producers at the time. Our ears were opened. We were listening to all aspects of production: parts, sounds, the mix, effects, EQ, reverb, gated reverbs back in the day — all of this was on our minds.

As an artist in the early ’80s you wouldn’t normally soak up all this info, you’d just play, but I think it was his influence that showed me I could do this myself. Most music business people back then would say, ‘kid you don’t know what you’re doing, let’s get an experienced guy in there’, but Prince gave us the

license to demand this kinda freedom from major labels from such a young age.

Saying that, it wasn’t like Prince was actively encouraging us.

Artistic license? Hell, no! Working with Prince he just wanted you to do as you were told — if everyone plays their part then there’s a beautiful blend — he had that big-picture vision.

My early days of embarking on a solo career and being a producer involved a very steep learning curve.

It was about that time, 1985-86, that the first sequencers came out and the Yamaha TX816 monster FM rackmount synth — the refrigerator, as we called it.

After leaving the Prince stable I needed to come up with a demo tape for MCA Records. Their attitude was, ‘great, we’ll sign you but if you want to produce your own records then you have to prove to us you can do it’.

I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing so it took a lot of experimentation. But I was dead-set determined to do it.

I bought myself an Oberheim DSX sequencer and I had my brother’s TX816. MIDI was hard work in those days. I was syncing the DSX with my 16-track reel-to-reel via a striped SMPTE timecode track. Those do-it-yourself sessions got me my first record deal.

From there I graduated to a Linn 9000. Such an incredible device, taking floppy discs and inserting sounds onto the pads.

You could sample! Wow, greatest thing ever.

That was a cool period. It carried me all the way to the early ’90s until one day my Linn 9000 blew up — in a cloud of smoke… gone.

After that I was at a crossroads. Should I invest in more dedicated hardware like an Akai MPC60 or invest in the future… software running on a computer?

I bought a Mac Se30 running Opcode Studio Vision and it was just the greatest frikkin’ program.

I became the go-to guy for not only my own records but for anything my brother Ricky was producing for Warner Brothers — because I could program and sequence.

Programming was a serious gig back then and I made a good living doing it.

We made David Sanborn’s entire album in 1996 on Studio Vision when it had two-track audio. It was also the early days of Pro Tools, or Sound Tools as it was then.

Unfortunately Opcode went bust. I moved to Pro Tools kicking and screaming, because it wasn’t an easy program to get your head around in those days. Now I couldn’t do without Pro Tools, it’s just the biggest creative workstation you can think of… almost to a fault.

By which I mean, you have to keep a close eye/ear on whether the technology is serving the song. If the technology is aiding you, then great, but if it’s not helping you deliver that emotion to the listener then back away. It must serve the song.

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