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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 Assistant Editor Preshan John preshan@alchemedia.com.au
Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark Andrew Bencina Ewan McDonald
Art Direction Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au Graphic Designer Daniel Howard daniel@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au Subscriptions Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au 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. Contact (Editorial) T: +61 3 5331 4949 PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia.
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. 09/08/2017.
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COVER STORY
Mix Masters: David Wrench’s XX Vocal Effects
18
How to Remix a Song Better than the Original
36
Studio Focus: Matthew Neighbour
26
16
Korg Monologue Analogue Synth
Presonus FaderPort 8 Control Surface Review AT 6
ISSUE 41 CONTENTS
44
Polar Patterns: Recording 100-Knot Winds in Antarctica
52
Beyerdynamic DT1990 Pro Open Back Headphones
Zoom F4 Multi-track Field Recorder
54
28 48
OUR MOST COMPLETE DAW EVER
Flexible. Reliable. Professional. Introducing Cubase 9 — with ground-breaking new features, streamlined workflows and stunning new plug-ins — the latest update enhances your favourite digital audio workstation in every direction and underlines Cubase’s claim of being the most complete DAW available.
Zoning in on Cubase Access all areas in the fastest and most convenient way. The new Lower Zone provides a neat and tidy overview. Your tools and editors are now just a mouse-click away: the Lower Zone will enhance your workflow regardless of whether you‘re working mobile on a laptop or a multi-screen studio environment.
Sampler Track Do you need that extra bit of flavour to spice up your production? Are you looking for a starting point? Enter the Sampler Track. It‘s the fastest way to inspiration. Just use any piece of audio to create a Sampler Track, play the sample chromatically, manipulate it with its on-board filters and controls, experiment and enjoy the sonic extravaganza only the Sampler Track can give you. And to top it off, the Sampler Track comes with Caleidoscope, a dedicated sample library with hundreds of samples and presets to get you started right away.
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GENERAL NEWS
FOCUSRITE HITS THE RED LINE… AGAIN Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au
Focusrite’s ongoing attention to networked audio is ever so clear in its latest two interfaces. Red16Line is a 64 x 64 channel 1U rack unit, 16 x 16 of which comprise analogue I/O. It fully supports Pro Tools HD and Thunderbolt 3 workflows and offers 32 x 32 channels of Dante audioover-IP connectivity. Two onboard Red Evolution pres provide 63dB of gain and ISA-modelling ‘Air’ mode. Conversion specs are stated as 118dB on the way in and 121dB digital-to-analogue. Also in audio-over-IP territory, Focusrite introduced the slick little X2P Dante interface with two Red Evolution mic pres and a stereo headphone amp. It’s a good way of adding some I/O to Red interfaces or any other Dante system, say, as an input and monitoring device for artists in the recording room. Physical controls include input gain and settings for both preamps, line out and headphones level knobs, and a network/local input mix knob.
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IZOTOPE SPIRE STUDIO
KORG DEBUTS KROSS 2
Electric Factory: (03) 9474 1000 or www.elfa.com.au
CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
The latest from iZotope is a fascinating hardware interface called Spire Studio for wireless mobile recording. Designed for use with iOS only, Spire Studio is unique in that all recording takes place wirelessly over a Wi-Fi connection between itself and the accompanying Spire app. The futuristiclooking unit has two combo XLR/jack inputs for recording mics or instruments, both of which can provide 48V phantom power. There’s also a built-in microphone and headphone output. Navigate the device using the LED touch screen ring around the top along with the five buttons for record, play, volume, new project, and ‘Soundcheck’ automatic gain function. The Spire app lets you add effects to your inputs which you can monitor in real-time. Once you’ve laid your tracks down to the eight-track recorder, you can mix them on the intuitive, graph-based mixer which adjusts panning, volume, and stereo spread. Mixes can be exported right from your iPhone or iPad, or you can collaborate with other Spire users by sharing the session.
Kross 2 succeeds the original Kross and is a compact, portable workstation with a huge range of sounds. The new model enhances Kross’s sounds and functionality and has a built-in selection of over 1000 presets plus 128MB of expansion PCM memory. Also new is a sampler that allows full-fledged sampling with 16 playable pads. You can record the input from the Line In jack and assign a stereo sample of up to 14 seconds to each pad. Up to four pads can be triggered simultaneously. The colour scheme is even more stylish, especially the marble red finish, and the user interface allows intuitive operation even by beginners. The 61-key version weighs only 3.8kg — that’s a big deal for Korg whose keyboards usually weigh a ton. The synth can be run off six AA batteries for seven hours if you want to go mobile.
UPGRADED MASCHINERY CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
Both Maschine and Komplete Kontrol hardware have undergone significant revamps by Native Instruments. Both feature reengineered workflows, better layouts, better visual feedback, and deeper studio integration. The most notable addition to Maschine Mk3 is the dual high-resolution colour screens for easier sound browsing, editing, sample slicing, and so on. More dedicated function buttons are sprawled across the surface, and the pads have grown a bit larger and are more responsive. For more convenience and portability, Maschine Mk3 also has a builtin 24 bit/96k audio interface via USB 2.0 with headphone and dual quarter-inch TRS outputs, two TRS line inputs, a quarter-inch dynamic mic input, and MIDI I/O. On to Komplete Kontrol — NI’s capable keyboards have also received two high-resolution screens for easier browsing and previewing of sounds. New pitch and mod wheels have been added, along with a horizontal touch strip for more expression.
ROYER R-10 RIBBON MICROPHONE
SLATE RAVEN CORE STATION
Mix Masters: (08) 8278 8506 or sales@mixmasters.com.au
Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au
Ribbon mics are Royer’s DNA so we’re expecting the best from the new R-10 passive ribbon microphone. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Royer release a new baby. Hand-built in the Royer factory in Burbank, California, the R-10 handles SPLs of up to 160dB and is designed for use in both studio and live applications. It has a 2.5-micron aluminium ribbon element formed with Royer’s patented direct-corrugation process and is protected by a three-layer windscreen and internal shock-mounting. The transducer is wired for humbucking to reject electromagnetically induced noise. Royer mics are famous on electric guitar cabs — the R-121 has become a staple of sorts. The R-10 is supposed to be no exception, with equally appealing results on brass, violins, guitars, and drums. Vocals will be lent a warm and vintage character and Royer says the mic responds very positively to a HF boost at 12k on tracks that edge on the dark side.
Slate Digital’s Raven touchscreen mixing system has gained a fair amount of traction. After all, touching a screen isn’t a foreign approach for anyone these days, so why not replace DAW keyboard shortcuts with multi-touch finger gestures? In building and expanding upon the original Raven concept, Slate Digital has announced the Raven Core Station. At first glance, the Core Station looks a lot like your average studio desk with a kicked back section for mounting rack gear but it’s actually a custom desk that snugly houses one or two Raven MTi consoles and a Slate Control monitor section. The recessed mount for the Slate Control section is ergonomically positioned within easy reach of your left hand. Raven’s latest 3.0 update adds multi-touch control of more DAWs including Ableton Live, Cubase/Nuendo, Digital Performer, Logic Pro X, Pro Tools 10-12, and Studio One V3. Now with the Core Station, taking the Raven route has never looked so good.
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LIVE NEWS
MACKIE THUMP REDESIGNED CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au Mackie has redesigned its Thump Series of active loudspeakers, introducing five new models: Thump12A, Thump15A, Thump12BST, Thump 15BST, and Thump 18S. Living up to the name, the Thump Series is equipped with highoutput woofers and 1.4-inch titanium dome compression drivers plus an allnew ultra-efficient amplifier design with Dynamic Bass Response technology for plenty of power on tap. The 1300W Thump12A and Thump15A feature a two-channel mixer equipped with Vita preamps and Wide-Z technology that can handle mics, instruments and line level signals. Four applicationspecific speaker modes let you optimise the system for your needs at the push of a button. The ‘boosted’ BST models offer wireless control, streaming, linking capabilities, and onboard three-channel digital mixers with DSP. App control comes by way of Thump Connect, utilising Bluetooth to wirelessly link loudspeakers to each other so you can control the entire system from a smartphone or tablet. Options for stereo or dual-zone configuration are included.
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MEYER WRITES TO AUSTRALIAN CUSTOMERS
It was a shock to the industry to hear that Meyer Sound had pulled the plug on Meyer Sound Australia, parting company with Australian Meyer stalwarts Harley Richardson and Stephen Devine. In her letter to the Australian market, Helen Meyer urges their customers to hang tight until alternative arrangements have been made. “We are taking this opportunity to take a fresh look at our distribution model in Australia and New Zealand with the intent of improving customer service and technical support,” wrote Helen. “We expect to announce the sales and distribution plan by the end of the year. In the interim, please know that our dealer network will ensure a seamless transition.” Key persons from Meyer’s global leadership team will visit Australian customers in upcoming months in preparation for a new customer service and distribution program down under. In addition, John and Helen Meyer are hosting a regional customer event in Singapore on November 3rd.
RODELINK PERFORMER KIT
RODELINK PERFORMER KIT
Rode: (02) 9648 5855 or info@rode.com
Amber Technology: 1800 251 367 or sales@ambertech.com
It was a matter of time until Rode gave us a wireless microphone system designed for the stage. It’s finally arrived in the form of the RodeLink Performer Kit. The kit is currently available as a handheld condenser microphone (TX-M2) and a desktop receiver (RX-DESK). Performer Kit operates in the 2.4GHz band using a Series II encrypted digital transmission sent on two channels simultaneously. The receiver automatically chooses the channel with the strongest connection. One-touch pairing means quick and easy set up, perfect for applications like weddings, outdoor gigs, and any other kind of live performance. The receiver sports dual rear-mounted antennas and a digital display to show battery life, signal status and peak warnings. The handheld microphone has a mute switch and can be powered by the new Rode LB-1 lithium-ion battery (included) or two AA batteries. Performer Kit joins the other products in the RodeLink family; Newsshooter Kit and Filmmaker Kit.
Vue Audiotechnik revealed the next addition to its h-Class family, the h-208, which combines Vue’s transducer technologies with onboard VUEDrive system electronics into a low-profile configuration ideal for low-ceiling applications. The two-way h-208 includes a custom-designed three-inch large-format compression driver with a Truextent beryllium diaphragm and neodymium magnet. The horn’s dispersion is 70° horizontal by 45° vertical. The two eight-inch transducers benefit from large, three-inch voice coils that increase power handling while minimising losses due to power compression. Onboard VUEDrive electronics offer 64-bit digital processing which handles EQ, time alignment, crossover management, speaker protection, and complete SystemVUE network control and monitoring functions. A dual-channel amplifier delivers 1600W LF, and 275W HF power long-term with more than 3000W burst output. All that is housed in a birch enclosure that includes integrated M10 hanging points. A U-bracket yoke is provided as standard.
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SOFTWARE NEWS
AROUSOR 2.0
MCDSP MULTI-BAND
Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au
Sound Distribution: (02) 8007 3327 or www.sounddistribution.com.au
Following the release of its first plug-in version of the famous hardware Distressor, dubbed Arousor, Empirical Labs has released a second version of the plug-in with some new and improved features. The biggest one would have to be AAX-DSP support for Mac OS. The Arousor is billed as Empirical Labs’ “classic knee compression in a plug-in”, complete with the familiar white knobs in the GUI, broadband saturator, Rivet ‘brick wall’ ratio setting, and trademarked AtMod Attach Modification Control. ELI says Arousor 2.0 has been revised to now have greater CPU efficiency, increased bar graph accuracy, a preset sharing function so you can distribute you favourite settings via email, visual and GUI updates, and better support for control surfaces including older Avid D-Command UIs. Arousor 2.0’s Blend section offers an Expert button which is a panel with a new control “to allow perfect matching of levels between compressed and dry signals.”
McDSP has announced its new 6034 Ultimate Multi-band plug-in offering all the compression, expansion, and gating modules from the 6050 Ultimate Channel Strip plug-in in a four band crossover network. Like the 6050 modules, the 6034 Ultimate Multi-band modules can be swapped on the fly for quick auditioning while retaining relative settings. Crossover slopes can run at 6, 12, or 24dB/oct roll-offs. Metering includes gain reduction and output levels on all crossover bands, as well as main input and output levels. Analogue saturation modelling gives that warm mojo McDSP plugs are known for. The plug-in is pitched as an ideal tool for the master bus or submix buses, thanks to its low latency, flexibility, and both mono and stereo versions. 6034 Ultimate Multi-band supports all major plug-in formats including AAX DSP (HD version only), AAX Native, AU, and VST.
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ROB PAPEN RP-VERB 2
SOUND FORGE AUDIO STUDIO 12 Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au
The RP-VERB 2 from Rob Papen Soundware is a serious reverb for serious reverb users. It builds and expands on the original RP-VERB with a number of new unique parameters. Different processors within the plug-in include Distortion, Ensemble, a brand new Reverse engine, Early and Late Reflections, and the Reverb engine itself. These processors can be individually turned on and off, and you get a fair amount of flexibility routing and configuring each. There’s plenty of adjustment allowance within each processor and you can pull some very interesting textures playing with the Mix knob between the standard reverb and reverse reverb, even selecting the waveform points when the reverse kicks in and out. Creative options include the envelope follower which enables gated reverb and modulation options with an additional envelope and LFO. RP-VERB 2 is available in AAX, AU, VST formats for use in all major DAWs.
Magix has released Version 12 of Sound Forge Audio Studio which takes the software to a whole new level of recording, editing, and enhancing capability. Now built on a 64-bit architecture, Sound Forge Audio Studio 12 offers more editing power, more processing power, and a snappier workflow with a redesigned recording window. The Slice Edit feature lets you nondestructively tweak your edit even after you’ve made your cut, while Soft Cut creates automatic, user-adjustable crossfades with each edit to get rid of pops or clicks at edit points. iZotope Ozone Elements comes bundled with Sound Forge Audio Studio 12 and there’s a full gamut of audio restoration and repair tools including a DeClicker/DeCrackler, DeEsser, DeClipper, DeNoiser, even an elastic audio editor for tuning vocals. If you like to see audio and well as hear it, the visualisation window offers a phase oscilloscope, correlation meter, direction meter, spectroscope, spectrogram, bit meter, peak meters, and tuner.
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REVIEW
Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Review: Preshan John
I cringed a little clicking ‘Download’ on Spitfire Audio’s Symphony Orchestra installer. 255GB of high-res samples sitting on servers somewhere in the UK, charging through the internet, landing on my hard drive. I secretly hoped the chaps in the office wouldn’t suffer the travails of laggy internet as a result. More importantly, I hoped the enormous amount of consumed bandwidth would be worth it. 20-something hours later I fired up Kontakt 5 and loaded the libraries. That first press of a note on my MIDI keyboard was sweet satisfaction. If you’re at all acquainted with the world of virtual instruments, the name Spitfire Audio will more than ring a bell. With most of its products being orchestral and acoustic instruments, the small UK-based company has purveyed an impressive collection of sample libraries since its birth in 2007. Spitfire Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is the latest of its bundles — a combination of the pre-released Symphony Strings, Symphony Brass and Symphony Woodwinds libraries, plus the all-new Masse, designed as a no-fuss scoring tool for composers. MASSE
NEED TO KNOW
I’m not heavily invested in film scoring but I love to dabble in orchestral composition. Plus I find the experience of playing high-quality samples rather addictive. Masse grabbed my attention because it promises a simple and lightweight approach with curated orchestral sounds that still deliver sonically. The Masse library consists of purpose-built patches PRICE US$1699 CONTACT www.spitfireaudio.com
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PROS Masse streamlines quick composition Very realistic sounds
selected from the big dog libraries —Symphony Brass/Strings/Woodwind — including a Tutti instrument with cross-pollinated combinations from the aforementioned trio. Various presets and articulations are organised methodically for creative composition. Spitfire took half a year putting Masse together with forensic detail. The library is presented in four instruments — Tutti, Woodwinds, Brass and Strings. There’s also an Advanced folder in which you’ll find individual articulations of the four main voices along with some other patches. There’s plenty here to work with. The Beast presets have both Long and Short articulations, all brimming with power and punch. You can pull sweet and airy tones from the Slow Cool Strings presets, or ominous, sub-rattling notes from the Giant Epic Long patch. The low notes hold together with delectable clarity and oompf. The four iterations of Cool Strings patches are beautifully voiced and emotive. The same goes for the Choir patches in Masse Brass. The Dynamics control (mapped to the mod wheel by default) cross-fades between the sample layers of each patch — an easy way to add emotion and interest to your performance, or even into a single held note. For spritely motifs, Tutti’s Nutracker preset and the Brass Shorts are pure bliss. Solo instrumentation is where Masse falls short. You won’t find a violin or flute patch with smooth legato and deep expressive control. But the other three Symphony libraries cover that in abundance. Masse’s strength is painting emotional CONS Big download
musical canvasses with broad brushstrokes — from ominous and foreboding suspense to twinkly and playful frivolity, and everything in between. SYMPHONIC STRINGS/BRASS/WOODWIND
Of course, the symphonic libraries are nothing short of incredible, and here you’ll find what Masse leaves out — namely, individual instrumentation with no-compromise realism. Each patch is highly configurable. Blend between the Close, Tree, or Ambient microphones to place an instrument right where you want it in a mix. Assigning MIDI CC controls is simple thanks to Kontakt’s ‘rightclick + Learn’ workflow, and I always configured Expression and Vibrato to adjacent faders on my keyboard. Most articulations feature several round robin samples for ultra-realistic solos. GET IT!
If orchestral stuff is up your alley, the addition of Masse to Spitfire’s Symphony Orchestra bundle gives you reason to give it a closer look. It’s a truly versatile, on-the-fly composition tool that promises endless fun. The price is steep, but high-quality sounds like these don’t go out of fashion. Invest in your future!
SUMMARY Apart from percussion, SSO is all but an entire orchestra living in your computer. It’s about as real as ‘fake’ instruments get.
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STUDIO FOCUS:
MATTHEW NEIGHBOUR Matthew Neighbour thrives off half-formed musical ideas. The Melbourne-based freelance producer has developed an addiction for fleshing out half-baked tracks by mashing and mangling sounds from his eclectic collection of instruments and effects. In fact, Matt actively hunts for bands whose music has lots of wiggle room arrangement-wise so he can unleash his creative streak. Prior to freelancing, Matt worked as an engineer at Melbourne’s Sing Sing Studios. “There were a lot of instruments and gear lying around at Sing Sing, and I really developed a love for experimenting with that equipment to create new sounds,” recalled Matt. “I didn’t want to lose that aspect when working on freelance projects, even if the budget wasn’t huge.” The latest band to team up with Matt was chill indie group Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird (CTBNF). “Often artists are keen to experiment a little bit, but the core of the song is locked in and can’t be touched,” said Matt. “CTBNF is different because everyone’s really open to letting the songs develop. That’s why we set up the space to make the album, so we could come in with a blank canvas, chase ideas down and let the songs develop.” That’s right, Matt set up a studio space from scratch solely to create the perfect temperature for preparing slow-cooked songs for CTBNF’s new album. The space is decked out with vintage organs including a Hammond and Farfisa VIP 500, various analogue synths, guitar pedals, an old upright piano, even a Yamaha suitcase electric piano. Outboard gear includes a couple of ELI Distressors, an API lunchbox loaded with tasty modules, and a Lynx Aurora porting it all into the digital world. What exactly happens in one of Matt’s sessions? Well, the whole idea is to avoid a fixed schedule or time constraint. Usually there’s lots of sitting around on comfy couches, playing with musical ideas, finding a riff that’ll stick, then recording it in AT 16
a creative, mostly unconventional way. Organs are a favourite, as are guitar pedals and effects units. Matt: “I’ve got this great Dynacord Echochord Mini tape delay. I can’t tell you how much I use it. It’s got this great, warbly character. Sometimes I’ll record music to it with a single repeat, then put it back in time and replace the dry signal with what’s come back from the delay. It just gives this really natural filtering and distortion. “The production work I like to focus on is a retro futurist style. Lots of old sounds but tweaked, twisted and manipulated to try and create something different and new. I definitely look out for stuff that lends itself to that experimental style. Some people will write these loose, open songs that you can fill with ideas. I also like when people come in with really high-functioning simple songs but aren’t too attached, and therefore open to letting the song take a different form.” Matt is in the privileged position of wearing the freelance producer hat and having a packed diary. So what’s his take on the role of a producer in today’s world of home studios? “On top of all the creative, musical, vibe stuff, the role of a young producer is someone who can oversee the whole production process,” says Matt. “I don’t think there are many young producers out there who wouldn’t be working on their mixing chops, or trying to become better engineers. I think the role is three jobs bundled into one. It’s being able to facilitate what the artist wants, but also being able to challenge them to see things a different way and work differently to what they’re completely comfortable with, for the sake of the song and direction of the music.” It seems to work, Matt’s mixes for CTBNF pull together the swirling stewpot of textures and unexpected sounds into a cohesive auditory experience that listeners are loving. Melbourne Bitter, the band’s lead single from last year’s EP, has topped 400,000 plays on Spotify.
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TUTORIAL
Artist: The xx Album: Say Something Loving
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The xx have always looked and sounded as if you’ll scare them off if you get a little too close. They like their space, it seems, and it’s reflected in their mostly spare and intimate music. Keeping with this close-to-the-chest mode, the band’s first two albums were in-house jobs. Recorded, produced and mixed by the band’s reserved beatmaker Jamie Smith (aka Jamie xx) and XL Recordings’ in-house engineer Rodaidh McDonald. Early on, the introverted collective apparently disliked the treatment of their sound at the hands of other producers, preferring to rely on Jamie’s now-undeniable production sensibilities. It was a good move. The band captured attention in large part due to their unique whisper-y aesthetic. Then a change occurred. Jamie xx released his solo album, In Colours [see Issue 110 for our feature with Jamie], and not only was it kaleidoscopic by comparison with The xx’s releases, he also involved mix engineer Tom Elmhirst in the process. The response to the record apparently stimulated the group to open themselves up in two new ways; musically, and with the people they let work on their record.
I See You is a sophisticated piece of work with a very focused and singular artistic vision, even though it took two years to make with sessions in New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Reykjavik, and RAK Studios in London. On it, the band expand on the introverted, minimalist, atmospheric palette of their first two albums. Jamie xx’s broad production — which mixes Drake and medieval singing samples with influences from trap, house, electronic music, shoegaze and rock — wonderfully frames the fullbodied, silken lead vocals of guitarist Romy Madley Croft and bassist Olivier Sim. On the personnel side, The xx added cellist Peter Gregson and Laurie Anderson on viola. Australian drummer Stella Mozgawa, from the band Warpaint, plays on Say Something Loving. Hal Ritson, known for his work with Dizzee Rascal and Katy Perry, also heavily treated some saxophone and trumpet recordings that are used to dramatic effect on the opener Dangerous. However, the main new contributor who added his touch to the record was British mix engineer David Wrench. Perhaps it was Elmhirst’s impression on Jamie that pushed The xx to use a
All these outboard units modulate and add a bit of randomness, which brings life to the music. By comparison, plug-ins are very predictable
mix engineer outside their fold. Whatever caused the shift, it’s worked. The glacial soundscapes and chilled atmosphere of I See You sound fantastic, and far superior to The xx’s previous two albums. There’s a smoothness, depth and grandeur to the sound image — full of panoramic reverbs and subtle delays — that’s quite stunning. It greatly enhances the melancholic and romantic moods of many of the songs, and gives the album a rare stature and authority. TWO YEARS ON
Wrench’s striking face and long, white hair graced our cover of Issue 106. In the 2014 feature he talked about his mixes of FKA Twigs, Jungle, and Caribou. At the time, Wrench was based in Wales and travelled to Strongroom Studios in London if clients wanted to be present at his mixes. Since AT last spoke with Wrench he’s been exceptionally busy, mixing albums by Hot Chip, Beth Orton, Glass Animals, Bloc Party, Bombino, and many others. These days, he works out of his own studio in London. “I needed to be around people,” explained
Wrench, “and it’s easier for people to come here when I’m finishing stuff off. I also ran out of space in Wales with all the gear I was getting. I still mix in the box, but I have a lot of outboard and synths, and a 1/2-inch tape machine. My monitors are Neumann KH310As with the Neumann sub, a pair of Unity Audio The Rock speakers, and I still use the Pure radio quite a bit. I have a laptop with a Pro Tools native HD box and an Apogee Symphony I/O, which seems to work. I now mix at my place most of the time, because I know the sound in here. It can take a couple of days before I get used to the sound of another studio.” Despite Wrench’s preference for his own studio, he mixed all of I See You at RAK Studio 3 in London because it provided continuity for the band who had finished recording the album there. “It also meant it was much easier for the entire band to be present while I was mixing,” continued Wrench. “I mixed the album over three weeks during July 2015. In total I mixed 14 or 15 tracks, so it took about one and a half days per track on average. I’d get the mix for each song up to a certain stage, and then Jamie would come in and listen, we’d
talk about it, and I’d work with his comments. By the end of the day Romy and Oli would also come in and give their feedback and I’d work that in. Sometimes Rodaidh [‘Roddy’] came in as well.” ALBUM TIES
According to Wrench, he wasn’t presented with some grand vision for his mixes before he set to work. Instead, he recalls, “my main brief was to make it sound and feel like a record. They had been working on it for a long time, on and off, so the tracks sounded a bit different from each other and needed pulling together. Getting the bass end really tight and solid was important, but my main focus was on getting the vocals to sound great and really upfront. The album needed to sound interesting and have its own identity, but at the same time it needed to work in America and when played on the radio. For that I really had to bring out the vocals. In the end I used a trick on the vocals that worked on the entire record.” We’ll get to the details of Wrench’s vocal ‘trick’ further on; for now it should be noted that it involved some choice pieces of outboard. AT 19
SAY SOMETHING LOVING To illustrate his mix approach, Wrench chose to focus on the second song of the album, Say Something Loving, because “it was the most complex and the most interesting. It also was in part done on the Neve desk.” As opposed to the mix of the
album’s lead single, On Hold, which was far simpler and entirely in the box. Wrench’s final Pro Tools session of Say Something Loving is laid out in a pretty standard manner. It
contains 69 tracks, with 12 drum tracks, six tom tracks, 14 percussion tracks, three bass tracks, five guitar tracks, 10 loop and sample tracks, three strings and synth tracks, 17 vocal tracks, a track for delay compensation, and a master track.
DRUMS ON DESK 11 of the 12 drum tracks at the top are marked ‘DESK’ because they were sent through the Neve VRP desk. The original drum tracks were removed from the session and placed in the track list. Wrench explained why the drum tracks were routed through the desk: “Jamie was hearing a certain balance and wanted to be hands-on with the drum levels by manually riding faders. I was also keen on doing that, plus I wanted to do some EQ on the desk to replace the EQ I had already done in the box. I also thought the Neve desk would thicken the drum sound a little bit. So we split the drums out on the desk, into groups, but then routed each individual track back into Pro Tools. We were also running the rest of the mix out through the desk on a stereo pair to be able to judge the drum sound in context. The outboard I used on the drums included some compressors, like the Fairchild 670 and a Urei 1176. I used reverb from the EMT 140, but some of the reverbs on the drums were already there from production. “There was a lot of finessing during the mix to get the drums of this song to sit right and afterwards I tweaked the tracks again in Pro Tools. The first kick track has the SPL Transient Designer, to give it a bit more attack, and I’m using the Pro Tools EQ3 7-band for some extra EQ. The EQ3 has been my main EQ for a long time. However, I tried the FabFilter ProQ2 during the mixes for this album, and I liked it so much that it’s now my go-to EQ. There’s also a low-pass kick track, and we added an 808 kick after we sent the drums through the desk, because the kick still was not quite right. So in total there are five kicks of various types, which is quite common these days. It’s important to make sure they’re all phase-aligned.
TUCKING IN TOMS Wrench: “None of the individual tom tracks have treatments, but they were sent through the H949, which adds a pitched delay that I manually manipulated as I printed them back in. All those tom tracks are sent through the tom bus, which has quite a few plug-ins: the UAD Thermionic Culture Vulture adds some distortion, the EQ3 7-band is a hi-pass and takes off some top end, the UAD LA2 for compression, and the UAD Studer A800 for tape emulation and saturation. The toms did not feel quite like part of the kit, so we had to add harmonics to get them to sit in.”
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STELLA PERCUSSION Wrench: “Stella Mozgawa is an amazing drummer with a very particular feel. All I did, and only on some of her percussion tracks, was use the Pro-Q2 and EQ3. The ‘Cut Up Percussion’ track already had lots of reverb on it. We also recorded Jamie playing two cymbal tracks during the mix, which are sent to the ‘Cym OD’ bus with a Pro-Q2, Waves Fairchild 670 to control the levels a bit and a Valhalla Vintage Verb, which I love because it sits really well in the mix.”
MULTI-BAND HOLDS BASS Wrench: “The bass DI and bass amp tracks go to a Bass bus, which has the Waves C4 multi-band compressor and PSP Master Q2 EQ. I like using multi-band compression on bass, because sometimes you want to hold the low end without affecting the bite on the note, and sometimes you want to control the bite on the note without pulling back the bass end; the C4 is great for that. The PSP EQ is notching out some specific resonances that were sounding wrong.”
GUITAR EDGE The electric guitar was recorded with a Shure SM57 and Neumann U87. Wrench: “I copied some of the 57 guitar across to a new track, ‘Guitar Distortion’, and added distortion to that using the UAD Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808 to give it extra edge. The track ‘Guitar Processed Layers’ was treated by the band in Logic with all sorts of effects. I EQ-ed that with the EQ3. The four guitar tracks go to a guitar bus with an EQ3 helping them sit right in the mix.”
SAMPLES & SYNTHS Wrench: “The song uses a short sample from Do You Feel It by Alessi, that has been treated, looped and expanded upon. Those are the ‘loops’ tracks in the session. Many of them are just snippets of sound which provide a background mood in places. I used the PSP Master Q2 on the two main loop tracks, adding some saturation and a tiny bit of limiting. The ‘Loop Plate’ track is a print of me sending out specific bits of the loop to the EMT 140. Three of the loop tracks have the EQ3, with a 6dB boost around 300Hz, for some extra warmth. All loop tracks have intensive volume automation and go to a loop bus. Finally there’s a synth strings track, with the EQ3 boosting at 1kHz, to make the track cut through, and two synth pads underneath that. The one named M8 has stereo widening from the Waves S1.”
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VOCAL TRICK Finally, on to the lead vocals, and Wrench’s ‘trick’ to help them sound gorgeous. Wrench: “Oli and Romy are brilliant singers, but I had to work quite hard getting them to sound right in the track. So what I did was use a real plate reverb on them, the EMT 140, with a fairly short setting. I also ran pretty much every vocal through the H949, twice, because it’s a mono unit. One time I pitched it slightly up, perhaps two cents or so, and the other time I pitched it slightly down, again two cents. I printed these on separate tracks panned left and right and mixed them in 19dB lower than the main vocal. That thickened the sound very subtly, and it was a trick that worked on the entire album. You can see these H949 and plate print tracks below Oli’s main vocal, with the plate print track having an EQ3 and a Waves Renaissance DeEsser on it. “I treated Oli’s main, dry vocal track with the PSP Master Q2 EQ, notching out some frequencies, then the UAD Summit Audio TLA 100 compressor, the Pro-Q2 EQ, and finally the Renaissance DeEsser. There’s also an aux on Oli’s main vocal on which I have the UAD AMS RMX 16 plug-in. “Further down in the session you see Romy’s dry vocal with the prints of the H949 and EMT effects underneath. I treated her dry vocal with the Pro-Q2, the Waves Fairchild 660 compressor, the PSP Master Q2 EQ and the Renaissance DeEsser.”
DELAY OF SESSION Wrench: “Because the drums had a delay on them after they went through the desk and were printed back into the session, I had to make sure the entire session was phasealigned. This meant I had to delay everything that had not gone through the desk — by sending it to the ‘Delayed GRP’ using two Time Adjust plug-ins — to match what had.”
MASTER PRINT Wrench: “I printed my Master track at the end of the mix. The five plug-ins are my regular master chain that I use on everything I mix. First there’s the PSP Master Q2 EQ which I used to add a bit of 50Hz, a little bit at 400 Hz, plus two decibels at 11.5-12kHz. I automated the Waves SSL Compressor during various sections of the song, set to a fairly slow attack and a fast release with a ratio of 2:1. The Waves Linear Phase multi-band compressor really holds the track in place. Then there’s another PSP Master Q2 EQ, taking a bit out at 200 Hz and at 2.5kHz, and boosting a little at 8kHz. The Waves L3 limiter is purely for listening purposes, and I take that off when I print for mastering.
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“I use two compressors, because I can ride the level of one compressor into another. So the SSL drives different levels into the multi-band, and this allows me to sculpt the shape of the song a little better. There is sometimes a difference between pre-compression and post-compression EQ, hence I have the PSP EQ twice here. The session was in 24-bit/96k. I really like working in 96k because I think you get some more depth and detail. It takes it to an extra level, especially when you’re recording reverbs in, like I did in this case. I am quite a fan of 96KHz. It sounds brilliant.”
Wrench: "I also ran pretty much every vocal through the H949, twice, because it’s a mono unit." Read about his vocal trick on the opposite page.
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The album needed to sound interesting and have its own identity, but at the same time it needed to work in America and when played on the radio
Despite Wrench primarily working in the box these days, outboard played a substantial part in finessing the sound of I See You — even RAK Studio 3’s vintage 60-channel Neve VRP Legend console saw some action. “The outboard I used during the mixing of the album were things like the Eventide H949, Roland SDD 320 Dimension D chorus, AMS RMS16, Mutron BiPhase, a Japanese spring reverb, the studio’s real EMT 140 plate reverb, and the Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Binson Echorec EC3 for delays,” said Wrench. “All these outboard units modulate and add a bit of randomness, which brings life to the music. By comparison, plug-ins are very predictable. I used similar effects from these outboard units on all songs, just with slightly different settings on each song.” Wrench’s mix process started before he even heard a track. The first step was for Jamie xx or McDonald to export stems from their Logic sessions, which Wrench’s assistant, Marta Salogni, imported into Pro Tools. “She sat in another room at RAK,” said Wrench, “and prepped these sessions for me; cleaning up all the tracks, taking out any clicks, and making sure the combined stems matched the rough mix I was given for each track. She gave me Pro Tools sessions that were laid out exactly the way I want them, ready for me to mix. “I would then spend an hour or two on getting a very quick balance before going into detail. I work with mouse and keyboard and I use a lot of volume automation. I go through the session track by track, balance the volume of each, and put a little bit of basic EQ on everything. Because we had the EMT 140 plate plugged in I’d also start routing stuff out to that. I had all the outboard permanently wired into the soundcard, and brought it up on aux tracks in the Pro Tools session. I would then print the outboard into Pro Tools so those tracks are permanently in the session.”
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FEATURE
POLar pAtTERNS Philip Samartzis went to Antarctica to record the sound of wind, which ain’t easy when it’s travelling at cyclone level velocities. Story: Mark Davie
Philip Samartzis does what any other audio engineer does; he records air molecules vibrating. It’s just that the molecules he’s trying to capture are caught in katabatic winds pulling ice and snow across the Antarctic sheet at speeds over 100 knots. That’s Cyclone Tracy level velocities. They call that a blizzard down in Antarctica; from the safety of the mainland, I call it madness. Samartzis is an associate professor at Melbourne’s RMIT School of Art. His trip to Australia’s Casey station last year was the second time he’d visited the Antarctic region. The first was a three-month long jaunt in 2010 that covered six weeks at the more remote Davis Station, followed by time on the sub-antarctic Macquarie Island (roughly halfway between Hobart and Antarctica) before heading home. Navigating between each place took two weeks aboard an icebreaker, which added Southern Ocean sea sickness to the blizzards. “There’s no room for the weak!” said Samartzis. “You’ve got to be uncomfortable to get those recordings.” Both trips were funded by Australian Antarctic Division’s Arts Fellowships, which is open to anyone who works in a medium other than moving image: poets, photographers, writers, and sound artists like Samartzis. His first trip to Antarctica was an eye-opener. Davis Station houses around 65 people during the summer, less than half that during the winter. It’s a mix of tradies, scientists, forecasters, comms guys, pilots, station management, and they each have their own cliques. Unlike the Americans, who hire cleaning and cooking staff, the Aussie contingent assumes a socialist-inspired dynamic where everyone pitches in. The downside of this communal station life is a lack of privacy; every area is common, living quarters are shared, and you can’t go outside alone on the off chance you get caught in a blizzard or fall down a crevasse. “Isolation does weird things to you. It affects your psychology, I was unnerved after three months,” recalled Samartzis. Which is not to say he didn’t enjoy it. On the contrary, as an artist Samartzis thrives on those sorts of tensions; observing the rituals and social dynamics of the alpha male, risk taker tradie who’s off-his-face the entire time, while the ‘governance of station’ crowd desperately tries to manage that rampant drinking. Samartzis describes Antarctic life as “a cross between a youth hostel and a ski lodge. Everyone’s running away from something.” Anthropology skating on thin ice. AT 26
LISTEN To hear the results of Philip's Antarctic adventures, head to bogongsound.com.au/projects and click on the Polar Patterns and Antarctica tabs.
ROBUST RECORDERS That’s what I’m interested in, that paradox of our very act of preservation destroying the place at the same time
The tension went deeper than humans interacting with other humans, it was clear to Samartzis there was tension between humans and the continent itself. “Antarctica is not all seals and penguins. It’s the sound of stations, and they’re very loud, complex environments,” explained Samartzis. While he somewhat aligns with groups like the Canadian Soundscape movement insofar as letting the field recordings speak through the composer, not forcing his own agenda on them. He’s also not going to blinker his mic’s perspectives to take in only the beauty of the environment while ignoring the discarded fuel drum, the mummified body of a seal, or the plume of smoke from the incinerator burning station waste. “It’s a natural place and wildlife preserve, yet within that the cost of human habitation is quite high in terms of impact and contamination,” said Samartzis. “That’s what I’m interested in, that paradox of our very act of preservation destroying the place at the same time.” All of that ultimately infused itself into the composition. “What I ended up with wasn’t beautiful studies of Weddell seals and penguin colonies, it was about getting that dynamic of tension infused into the work,” said Samartzis, besides “Doug Quinn did that in 2000, and released a fantastic CD. I could never surpass it, it’s the standard. I focus on the dysfunction instead.” SONIFYING THE ATMOSPHERE
Over his trips, Samartzis has crafted a number of remarkable compositions. As well as documenting the sounds of icebreakers, helicopters and other machinery humans use to navigate Antarctica, he’s also stuck a DPA 8011 hydrophone down a hole in a frozen lake to record the sound of it flexing with the thermal energy of the sun. He’s captured the harsh squawks of a radar station beaming coded sine tone signals into the ionosphere to detect turbulence in the solar wind. With accelerometers attached to the radar array, you hear the real local stress of cold metal fatigue mixed with intermittent blasts of signal sent to probe space kilometres away. A fascinating project was sonifying the Aurora Australia. “One of the engineers at the station created a software program to transpose the infrasonic sound of about two hertz into the audible frequency range,” explained Samartzis.
Philip Samartzis: “I’ve always worked with Nagra field recorders. As a student it was the Nagra IV, then the digital range came out, so I got a Nagra VI and an ARES-BB+. I took those digital recorders as well as a handheld one to Casey. They’re incredibly robust; they’ve been frozen, left out in the field for days at a time, and continued to work. “There are limiters on the VI, but not on the ARES. One of the real issues is setting gain when you can’t monitor the signal. It’s impossible to gauge the threshold of a blizzard, especially
“He took one year of data and transposed it for me, whereby each day of the calendar year is rendered down to about four seconds of sound.” It sounds like whip cracks and lightning, mixed with wind hitting the side of a thick tin shed. His latest project is to translate his recordings of the effect of katabatic (low gravity winds that begin at the pole and speed up as they reach the coast) wind-induced blizzards on Casey station into an exhibition. It’s called Polar Patterns, a name I aped for the article… because ‘c’mon!’ How are you going to do better than that? WINDING IT UP
Recording wind is not easy, and prior to this trip recording katabatic winds was almost impossible. “Most people associate wind against a mic as a blaring sound, and most of what you hear on TV and films is exactly that,” said Samartzis. “It’s not really the sound of katabatic winds.” Out in the field, Samartzis used DPA 4006 omni mics which needed extra-special protection given one of the blizzards was the strongest ever recorded at Casey, exceeding 100 knots. He ended up procuring a set of Rycote’s new Cyclone windshields, adding fuzzy jammers over the top. “Rycote actually built them for me to take down there,” he said. “They were in production, but they hadn’t gotten around to building the models to house the 4006s. I wrote to let them know I was heading to Antarctica, and to find out if they could make them for me. They built four to take down and test. This project was about recording wind, not reducing or mitigating it. The Cyclones were really amazing because they removed all the turbulence of wind moving across the diaphragm, leaving just the sound of wind as you experience it in the environment. I couldn’t have got that sound without the Rycote Cyclone wind shields, it would have been a different effect.” For two hours, Samartzis sat out in a -20°C blizzard recording the effect of the katabatic winds. By the end, when his body couldn’t take anymore, the windshields were frozen solid and his Nagra VI recorder was a block of ice, but still working. As well as the sound of the 100 knot wind, you can hear the granules of ice pattering against the stand. Samartzis layered that recording with a host of
when you have to wait 12 hours for it to reach its peak. Bruel & Kjaer leant me one of the LAN-XI Notar recorders. It’s a digital solid state recorder which has no gain structure. You just activate it and normalise the recording afterwards. It has no noise and you don’t have to worry about getting the gain level right. However, it’s a four-channel recorder that costs something like $30,000, so I couldn’t buy one myself. Without it, having a conservative guess at a gain level mostly ends up with fine recordings.”
other recordings made during a 36-hour blizzard event. He placed accelerometers on restraining cables, ambisonic microphones in vents, and other microphone configurations around the station to pick up the effect of the blizzard on the station. Then he set gain levels on his recorders and hoped for the best while he was trapped inside. You can check out the eight mic placements and descriptions Samartzis used to create his composition on the station map. The entire effect is unnerving. Because the recordings are gathered from all around the station, from both interior and exterior aspects, the soundscape makes you feel at once protected from and exposed to the elements. The moment you lock onto the sound of an interior air vent and feel a sense of comfort at being inside, that feeling is stripped away the second you realise you’re simultaneously standing right in the middle of a freezing -20-degree, 100-knot blizzard with ice granules catapulting into your face. There was tension even in this one human listening back to Samartzis’ recordings a continent away from Antarctica.
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HOW TO RECORD A BLIZZARD AT CASEY STATION ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH HUT
MOBILE HANDHELD RECORDER
Location Info: This hut is located outside station limits and its location exposes it to high velocity winds.
Location Info: Interiors Samartzis could access during the blizzard
Equipment: B&K 4198 omnidirectional microphone
Purpose: To gather additional stereo recordings from different interior locations.
Equipment: Nagra SD handheld recorder
Purpose: To capture the force of the blizzard on a wooden structure and its sets of scientific instruments including an anemometer.
EMERGENCY VEHICLE SHELTER
Location Info: Hilltop lookout positioned above station Equipment: B&K 4198 omnidirectional microphone Purpose: To record the effects of the blizzard upon the natural environment.
SCIENCE BUILDING Location Info: Marine, remediation and atmospheric science labs. Equipment: Two DPA 4060 miniature omni mics Purpose: To capture ambient recordings of the interior laboratory spaces.
Location Info: The building is specifically positioned to absorb the main trajectory of the blizzard as it flows down Law Dome and out to sea.
Budnick Hill
Equipment: Soundfield microphone Purpose: To capture an ambisonic recording of the interior. The orientation of the mic was steered toward the rattle of the overhead vent and rendered down into a stereo configuration for the exhibition. Philip Samartzis: “The ambisonic mic allowed me to capture a surround experience of an air vent in a fire station, and fold it down into stereo. You get the whistling and clattering, but the subsonic rumbling at the same time. I’ll find a use for the surround information in another exhibition, but in this instance, I’ve creatively decided to take that experience and focus on the ceiling sound by changing the perspective of the mic. I used it for interiors because it’s a little more delicate.”
STATION LIMITS
Crane Cove 40
BUDNICK HILL
Memorial Cross
40
Reeve Hill
Unsafe Area – Cre Waste treatment outfall
STATION LIMITS 4 Quarry as surveyed February 2013
RED SHED Location Info: Living and sleeping quarters of Casey Station residents. Equipment: Two pairs of DPA 4006 omni mics Purpose: To record the effects of turbulence and stress upon various interior spaces, as well as the direct sound of the blizzard from cold porches. Philip Samartzis: “The first microphones I bought were 4006s. I did a number of residencies in the late ’90s, and one of them was at the Danish Institute of 40 Electroacoustic Music. The engineer there, Klaus, was a legend within the Danish altrock scene. I was getting tired of working with synthesis in the studio, and I wanted to get some microphones for field work. He suggested the B&K 4006s because they’re versatile, and you can do whatever you want with them. I got them in 1997, and still use them. I got an additional pair from DPA for Casey Station. They’re highly robust and can deal with -20 degrees.”
Magnetometer Riometer H
STATION LIMITS 1 Shirley Island Walking Route
Australian Regional GPS Network Receiver
STATION LIMITS 2
Magnetic Variometer Hut
Atmospheric Research Hut
Magnetic Absolute Apple
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40
Nicholson Island Ionosonde Receiver Wharf
VEHICLE REFUELING AREA
Storage Rack
Location Info: Gas and fuel dump
Ionosonde Hut
Equipment: Two B&K 4518-003 accelerometers
Ionosonde Transmitter
Lower Fuel Farm
Purpose: To document the sound of wind and ice upon metal surfaces including 44-gallon fuel drums, gas bottles and steel crates.
S6
Philip Samartzis: “I was a bit concerned
Geoffrey Bay
Old Carpenters’ Workshop IRIS Siesmic Vault Boat Shed
with only recording wind. I contacted B&K, STATION LIMITS 5 and they suggested working with industrial
style contact microphones that are used for vibration purposes. They have an operating range of something like -50 to 250° Celsius. They’re designed to be put on hot motors or frozen items. They sounded fantastic, and a lot of the things they pick up aren’t discernible to the naked ear.”
evassing Thala Valley
Brown Bay
IONOSONDE RECEIVER
Storage Rack
Location Info: Outside station limits on the edge of Vincennes Bay. Equipment: Two B&K 4518-003 accelerometers
H
Purpose: To document the sound of restraining cables used to stabilise the Ionosonde radar system.
H
H
Legend Station search zones
30
Mast Antenna
STATION LIMITS 3
Transmit Mast, Antenna
CAUTION: Absence of the depiction of crevasses does not indicate a crevasse free area 100
200
300
40
0
400 Metres
Danger RF non-ionising Radiation DO NOT TOUCH MAST, ANTENNA H
/
H
Helipad with / without facilities Rock/ Ice Cliff Contour (Interval 10m) Road AT 29
FEATURE
Bring Me The Horizon’s transition from Metal to Metalcore hasn’t stopped them being loud! Hutch explains how to mix when your hearing’s on the edge. Story: Preshan John Show Photo: Jaz Meadows
It’s 9pm on a Monday night. I’m sitting in my car in Margaret Court Arena’s underground carpark listening to my mud flaps rattle. Sheffield metalcore rockers Bring Me The Horizon had just opened their set. The stage is at least 50m away — with lots of concrete between here and there — but I already know Hutch wasn’t kidding when he told me during soundcheck that he likes his subs loud. Oliver Hutchinson — that’s Hutch — has been mixing BMTH for five years. That’s long enough to have surfed the band’s transition from metal to metalcore — a short ride for some, but all the difference in the world to others [see ‘Get to the Core’ box]. It’s also long enough to have each song’s fader moves printed to muscle memory. His affiliation with BMTH has taken him around the world. He would have even made it to Ukraine if not for a rocket launcher attack the week before. Before his globe-trotting journey began, Hutch cut his live sound teeth mixing for a mate’s band in high school, then learnt the ropes of monitor engineering doing the pub gig circuit, followed by a sound technician role at a venue in Leeds. He came across Bring Me The Horizon quite by chance. “It was only supposed to be a gig in Sheffield,” recalled Hutch. “To be honest I hadn’t heard of them at that point. I had a little listen and was like, ‘Whoa, sounds very heavy.’ Incidentally, that was Jordan Fish’s (keyboardist/programmer) first gig as well, so things changed sound-wise from that point. I was working with an indie band at the time. Most gigs were very pop rocky. I also did some ska bands, even though I’m not really a fan of ska. But AT 30
mixing BMTH was fun. It’s diverse — the set list goes from very heavy to very chilled. It keeps you on your toes when you go between very distorted guitar parts and heavy drum patterns to chilled keys parts and vocals with reverb.” THAT’S THE SPIRIT
BMTH’s latest album That’s The Spirit is notably more radio-friendly than their earlier tunes. When I raised the notion of recreating that slick sound at a live show Hutch responded with a funny look. “I try and hit all the hooks from the album so people can recognise the songs, but I definitely don’t try to recreate the album sound. I like to make use of the PA we’ve got — it’s not being played on an iPhone!” That means dynamics. And lots of sub. To preserve the transient detail in the show while still milking every inch of punch from the PA, Hutch employs an unconventional technique. He leaves all channel strips completely bare and relies entirely on parallel group processing. Yep, you won’t find a single compressor on any of the direct input channels — the kick, snare, vocals, nothing. Instead, parallel compression is the name of the gain reduction game. All input channels are grouped into VCAs, then sent to various parallel compression busses, most with fairly aggressive settings. Hutch says this allows him to beef up the sound without slicing away all the natural dynamics of the show. “I use parallel compression for everything,” he said. “Everything’s really clean then just goes into groups so I can dynamically change the level
of compression with buses rather than actually changing individual settings. It also allows me to go between the heavy songs and the softer songs without really changing many settings. I just change the balance between the different buses.” This unique workflow is a carryover trait from Hutch’s analogue mixing days. Nothing teaches efficient use of processing like having just two Drawmer compressors to mix a whole show. Adopting bus processing from an early stage helped make the most of limited resources, and the fact that today’s digital consoles are capable of running copious amounts of DSP per-channel hasn’t changed his approach.
GET TO THE CORE You may be wondering how on earth ‘metalcore’ and ‘chilled’ can occupy the same page. For Hutch it was a fair deviation from mixing indie and ska, that’s for sure. To state the obvious, metalcore is metal and hardcore combined. It’s open for interpretation, but metalcore tunes typically combine both singing and screamo vocals, heavy breakdowns and slower tempos with passages of clean guitars and vocals. The ‘chilled’ stuff isn’t exactly bedtime music, but as a whole metalcore is often a little slicker than the unadulterated rage that marks metal proper.
Hutch at work Hutch’s weapon of choice is a Digico SD series console, usually the SD5. Although, it wasn’t long ago that you’d find him behind an Avid Profile. Hutch: “Desk-wise this is a fairly new choice. I’ve been using Profiles for a while, purely out of ease and the fact that every festival had a Profile — consistency, really. But the Digico sounds great and I’m able to transmit 1080p video down the multicore. Quite handy because I run the videos for the show.”
Though now a Digico SD user, Hutch is accustomed to mixing with third-party plug-ins from his Avid Profile days. Some of his favourites include the Waves CLA-76 on the drums bus, Waves API-2500 on guitars to smooth out the highs, and Waves C4 multi-band compressor on the output. “I only keep the high-mid band active on the C4, just to catch the horrible sharp spiky bits that might take people’s heads off. I reference it every now and then to make sure I’m not driving into it really. It’s just there as a safety net more than anything else.” Effects are minimal, according to Hutch: “There’s a plate on the drums, a vocal doubler that barely sits underneath just to make Oli sound a bit bigger, and a hall reverb that gets used in about three songs. Those are all Digico effects, I’ve never really enjoyed Waves effects.” I/O GALORE
For a metal show, the I/O is rather extensive. Much of that is due to the playback system handled by keyboardist Jordan Fish. Timecode is generated from the same rack that sits next to Jordan’s keyboards and percussion, and several key elements of the show are synced to it. Add stereo keys, stereo Akai MPK, stereo Alesis Sample Rack outputs, electronics from the drum kit, rack and floor tom triggers, talkback mics for all the crew, and the input count streaks up to 56. On top of mixing FOH, Hutch also controls video playback for the mammoth LED videowall backdrop — though his job is rarely much more
than the occasional fade and a quick strobe using the spacebar shortcut. Video is synced to the timecode and backline tech Jamie McKivitt uses a footswitch to kick off playback for each song, triggering the timecode, click, and all of Jordan’s programming and samples. It’s a tight, neat, and largely automated affair. Mic setup is plain as vanilla. It’s predominantly Shure dynamics or condensers, with the odd Sennheiser e906 or MD421 on guitar cabs and an Audix D6 on kick. Hutch likes to keep things simple. An SM57 is far easier to replace on a global tour than a custom hand-wired boutique model that’s going to get thrashed every show anyway. Lead singer Oliver Sykes uses a Shure wireless handheld. “We’ve gone through all sorts of different capsules but we’ve settled with the standard Beta58 now,” says Hutch. “He keeps throwing them on the floor so it sounds entirely different every day. We have a wired SM58 as an ultimate backup, which usually sounds amazing!” A single guitar results in six channels — two mics on the clean cab, two on dirty, plus a DI from each. Occasionally Hutch mixes in the DI signal underneath the mics to add some clarity to more intricate passages, though he admits it sounds horrible by itself. MONITOR PRIORITY
The BMTH chaps are all on IEMs. Aussie monitor engineer Jared Daly helms an Allen & Heath dLive to mix very specific cochlear concoctions for each member.
Having initially mixed monitors for the band, Hutch appreciates the importance of Daly’s role. “Jared’s very involved with everything. The band all like very different things and they’ve all got very different levels of hearing ability as well. The drummer was told he’s got a hearing age of an 82-year-old so his mix is just low end and reverb, super compressed. It’s all about feel. He’s got no top end response at all really. That’s why we have the china mic — it just really needs to cut through for him to hear it. The guitarist stage right has mainly himself. Oli has a mix like the CD with himself on top. Jordan has a very low and spaced mix with himself on top. He’s always the most particular about it.” WIRELESS ORGANISER
A few RF nightmares led to the upgrade of their entire wireless rig to incorporate Shure’s Axient frequency management system. The band’s IEMs are the Shure PSM1000s, the crew is on PSM900s, and guitars on UR40s. Because the band members take their in-ear mixes so seriously, Hutch is more than happy to play second fiddle to Jared’s demands for monitoring perfection. In fact a number of mics are set up for the sole purpose of giving individual band members a more comprehensive monitor mix — you won’t hear a peep from them out front. For example, the bass cab is miked up for Matt Kean’s monitor mix, but only the direct SansAmp DI signal is used in FOH. But IEMs aren’t enough — BMTH still likes to AT 31
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Guitar cabs
Playback rig
The double-stacked Marshall cabs are configured one for dirty, one for clean. Each has two mics on them — a duo comprised of either the Sennheiser MD421, Shure SM57 or Sennheiser e906. These are panned hard left and right to get some thickness out front.
Playback is from a JoeCo Blackbox. Two units for redundancy. Backline tech Jamie McKivitt explains: “Channel 24 is a sine wave between the two JoeCo units. If for any reason the sine wave cuts from the main, the backup will instantly take over. The backup unit’s outputs go to FOH and monitors, and the main is hooked up into it via D-SUB, so it acts as a through. If that sine wave drops, it just takes over onto its own outputs.”
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Amps & wireless Shure’s Axient frequency management system keeps an eye on all RF conversation. The racks sit next to the dLive monitoring console and are handled by monitor engineer Jared Daly.
Drums Jared Daly oversees all the stage mics, including the kit. Overheads are a pair of Shure Beta27s, a KSM137 small diaphragm condenser sits underneath the hats, and toms get a Beta56 each. The kick is dual-miked with an Audix D6 in the hole and Shure Beta91 inside. The SM137 china mic is just for drummer Matt Nicholls’s in-ears mix.
have some stage level. Okay, a lot of stage level. d&b audiotechnik J12 sidefills flank either side of the stage, plus subs under the keyboard riser, going hard all show. “The biggest problem is just the amount of noise coming off stage,” says Hutch. “Despite the in-ears the huge side fills are sometimes a little annoying… but it used to be worse. The last show I was doing over here Oli [Sykes] asked me, ‘Is it normal to get nauseous on stage?’ I said ‘No. It’s just the amount of level up there.’ It’s just too loud. I couldn’t walk on stage. I had earbuds in, hands over my ears, and
I still couldn’t go on stage. I said ‘Dude, we’ve gotta stop doing this and get some in-ears.’ He tried it for a gig, hated it, then went back to it after a while. Still, the sidefills are running all show because Oli generally takes his ears out toward the end of the set, just to get a bit more vibe.” Stage setup is clean. All amps and cabs are tucked away under the stage to give clear view of the massive LED wall silhouetting the band for the entire show. BMTH’s set is a visual feast that almost steals the glory. Hutch created the visuals for four songs anyway, so he doesn’t mind. When
the touring life starts to feel old, he’s keen to spend more time on the visual aspect of shows. “I’m assuming my hearing is going to get worse and worse so I’m trying to get more involved in the visual side of things, more production stuff. I’m still enjoying mixing at the moment and haven’t had any negative feedback so I assume I can still hear to a reasonable extent — though I won't do this forever. I’d quite like to live at home for some period of my life, but it’s fun for now.”
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TUTORIAL
Tutorial: Paul Tingen
Artist: Ryan Riback Album: Remix of Starley’s Call On Me AT 36
Remixing is mainstream these days. It’s gone from hip hop sample culture, to electronic music B-sides, to the classy heights of riffing on ‘Cash Me Ousside, Howbow Dah?’ Memes are remixes, and they’re almost always bigger than their source. So it should be no surprise when a bonafide commissioned remix of a song charts higher than the original. Occasionally the remix is so successful it becomes the de facto version of that song, even to a point where the original is barely referenced anymore. That happened recently to young Sydney singer Starley, when Aussie Ryan Riback’s remix of her song Call On Me became a top ten hit in Australia and Europe, even reaching the number one spot in Sweden. It also prompted a video reshoot just for the remix which has netted 100 times more views than its predecessor. The original tune was penned by Starley Hope and Peter Waddams (aka New Zealand’s P-Money). Waddams also produced it, with additional production by Brisbane EDM duo Odd Mobb. It’s a curious mixture of folk acoustic guitar, R&B programmed drums, bass, and keys, and typical EDM trappings like vocal stutters and a heavily treated vocal sample that overpowers the chorus vocal to such a degree that it ends up functioning as the main hook. While it didn’t set the world alight, the single did well enough to get playlisted on most major radio stations and streamed millions of times. However, it wasn’t until DJ/producer Ryan Riback applied some magic ingredients three months later that it climbed the charts.
RYAN RIBACK’S TOP FIVE TIPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL REMIX 1) Choose the right song and settle on your main hook. Riback: “When I heard the original version of Call On Me I felt there was something special about Starley’s voice that I wanted to enhance. I immediately realised that the chopped-up vocal line was a great hook. When I heard that, I thought, ‘That will stick in people’s heads.’ I knew what to do with it. I began the song with it and repeated it a number of times during the song. 2) Set the right tempo and mood. Riback: “I sped up Starley’s song slightly, from 100 to 105BPM, because it created a unique energy, and something that you can dance to. It’s also at a tempo you can chill out and just bop your head to.” 3) Don’t be shy of stripping the original version to eliminate parts you don’t need. Riback: “I liked the movement of the guitars in the original, but they didn’t have enough energy. So I took them out and replaced them with organ and
REMIX MEDICINE 101
In an echo of what happened in 2015, when Norwegian production duo Seeb stripped all the instruments from Mike Posner’s song I Took a Pill from Ibiza and turned the folky, acoustic-guitarled singer-songwriter song into a worldwide EDM monster hit, Riback also stripped out everything but the vocal production, sped the track up, and added his own EDM arrangement. “I was sent the original session as wav stems, and dropped those into Ableton,” began Riback. “I kept the structure of the original song, but soon switched to only listening to her a cappela vocals with the vocal production. I have this process where I go for walks and listen to a cappella vocals and wait for inspiration. These walks get me in the zone before I go to the studio. The moment I had a solid idea in my head as to where to take the song, I go to my studio.” Seeb dramatically increased the tempo of I Took A Pill In Ibiza, from 74bpm to 102bpm. Starley’s
piano. I also like to strip the drums and not use drum loops but replace them with my own programmed drum patterns instead. It gives me more flexibility and opportunities to put my own stamp on the track.” 4) Use the tension release structure from EDM but don’t overdo it. Riback: “In pop music you can use the same principles and tools as EDM, but you don’t need the big risers and drops. Instead I use subtle things like reverse reverbs, particularly on vocals and cymbal crashes.” 5) Develop your own style and always add something uniquely your own. Riback: “I added a few things to Call On Me that were deliberately intended to do something different, for example that choppy, sped-up bass that sounds like a real musician playing. To me it created something I hadn’t really heard before. I also worked quite hard at creating a unique blend of trap and progressive house, the big-room EDM sound, and that has opened many doors for me.”
song was already in the same chill-out zone, so Riback bumped it up a little to 105bpm. Next he wrote new chords and added piano parts, an organ, a bass, a few ear candy incidental sounds, and programmed new drums. “The Seeb track was a really big inspiration for me,” said Riback. “This track is a bit similar in that I’m taking an awesome song and turning it into something with a dance vibe. I felt the tempo and acoustic guitars of the original were a little too chilled. So I upped the tempo, and tried to bring out the energy of her vocals in other ways. That’s why I went for big piano stabs, with samples from reFX’s Nexus 2, instead of the guitars. You could now either dance to the track or quietly listen to it. Once I had that, everything else fell into place.” MIX OF A REMIX
Riback rarely formally mixes, preferring to get the sounds exactly as he wants them and balancing their relationship with the rest of the track as he
goes. His ‘mix’ comes down to tweaking a few parameters during the last time he opens the session. “If I listen to my mix of Call On Me, I think that thousands of songs are better mixed,” reckons Riback. “But for some reason it works. I get the track to a point where I don’t have to fix anything anymore in the stems, and then send these to the mastering engineer. I may include a reference mix, but I always send the stems because it gives the mastering engineer more flexibility. Usually it comes back a bit more polished than what I did. The label then created a radio mix, which is simply a rebalancing of my stems.” Starley now performs multiple versions of her song, sometimes Riback’s version and sometimes a blend of the two. And just as quite a few of the world’s greats started sending Seeb their tracks for a remix treatment, Riback has been asked to reinvent tracks by Fergie, Maroon 5 and others since his version of Call On Me made Starley a true star.
WHO IS RYAN RIBACK? Originally from Johannesburg in South Africa, Ryan Riback currently works out of his studio in Elwood, Melbourne. “I lived in Australia for three years with my parents when I was a kid,” said Riback. “I learned to play the piano by ear, and experimented a lot. Then I discovered the computer side of making music and began using the Roland MC303 Groovebox. Later on I worked with Fruity Loops, then Reason, followed by Logic, and for the past three or four years I’ve been using Ableton Live. “When I was still in South-Africa I started DJ-ing. Someone introduced me to turntables and I thought they were the best thing ever, so I bought some turntables and started practicing. I had a lot of fun, but after a while it felt like there wasn’t a lot of room to move my music career forward in South Africa. I moved to Melbourne about 10 years ago and I’ve been here ever since. I’m an Ozzie now! I continued DJ-ing — playing tons of clubs and
festivals — but I’ve recently taken a break from that, because it was creatively draining me in the studio, and decided to put all my efforts into actually making music.” As a DJ, Riback has played the Goodlife, Breakout and Summadayze festivals. Before Call On Me he enjoyed some success with tracks like Work Money Party Bitches and Make It Wet (collaborations with DJ Lowkiss), and began building a CV of highly-regarded deep house, electro house, progressive house and Melbourne Bounce remixes, like his take on Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP’s From Me To You. Then came his opportunity to branch out into pop. “Over the past year I’ve been doing remixes because I found it’s the quickest way to get a fresh sound released quickly and be associated with high-profile acts,” explained Riback. “It involved
working a lot with a cappella vocals and putting tracks underneath them. So when Tinted Records offered me the Starley song to remix, I jumped at the opportunity, and put a new track under her a cappella vocals.” Riback conducts all remixes and develops his sound at his home studio in Elwood. It’s a typical minimalist 21st Century facility: a Mac laptop with Ableton Live, M-Audio BX8 monitors, Avantone CK6 mic, a Focusrite Sapphire Pro 24 I/O, and an Evolution MK449C MIDI keyboard. Special mention goes to his Sennheiser HD650 open-backed headphones, because “I do a lot of mixing on them when travelling around,” he said. “They sound great, though the bottom end isn’t quite as good as it could be, so I found an EQ setting on line that emulates a speaker system while listening to the 650s, and that helps with mixing the low end.”
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CALL ON ME DEEP DIVE Riback’s Ableton Live session for Call On Me has a relatively straightforward 40 tracks subdivided in groups: kick drum, vocals, piano, organ, percussion, bass, effects, and a master track. Riback later used those groups to print stems to send to the mastering engineer. After starting in Fruity Loops, and trying Reason and Logic, Riback explains why he settled on Ableton: “It took me a while to get my head around Ableton’s automation, but since version nine the flexibility of the automation has been amazing. You can craft ideas very quickly in Ableton. I found that doing the same things in Logic took a lot longer. I now have all my presets and templates in Ableton, which also speeds up my workflow. Plus I really like Ableton’s native plug-ins. The only non-Ableton plugins I used in this session were the Waves CLA Vocals plug-in, Nexus 2 and Kontakt.
SIDECHAIN KICKS Riback: “At the top of the session is a track called ‘SideChain, in black, which is a duplicate of the orange and red kick channel below. I muted that black track and used it to trigger a sidechain that was routed to other tracks where needed. The first kick is in orange and comes in at the same time as the piano to accent it. It then turn turns to a four-on-the-floor floor kick for the chorus, which are in red.”
VOCAL OPENER Riback: “The song begins with the main chopped vocal hook and organ. I automated the EQ so the vocal goes from dark to bright. I think that part is an E from Starley that’s pitched up, and I marked it as ‘Vox Chop’. I repeated that chopped vocal more frequently than the original version does, which is the reason why my version is a bit longer. I left the other vocals pretty much as they were, apart from using Waves CLA Vocals on the lead vocal to make it sound a little brighter and add some reverb. I also took a snippet from the lead vocal, reversed it and put a stock Ableton reverb on it. Then I reversed it again and placed it just before the lead vocal comes in, for a subtle EDMlike tension buildup-release technique.”
PIANO LAYERS Riback: “I layered two pianos for the piano part, both from Nexus 2, the presets being PN Movie Score 1 for the Piano track and Grand Piano Pop for the Strong Piano track. I wanted to have more top end on the Strong Piano, so I added some EQ, and I took some high end out of the other piano. Together they sounded big and in your face. I used Ableton’s EQ Eight, as I did for all EQ in the session.”
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CUTTING ORGAN OUT Riback: “I added the filtered organ in the beginning because I didn’t want to start the song with a bang. Instead I wanted to build up to the piano coming in. It was a preset from Nexus called SY Water Organ, and I really wanted the vocals to shine in that section, so I took everything out of the organ sound above 372Hz.”
PERCUSSION TRAPS Riback: “All the percussion parts are MIDI, and were programmed using Ableton’s Impulse drum machine. I’ve been collecting samples for years, and I used some of my own samples and some samples from CR2’s Tropical House, plus some Trap sample packs. There’s a finger snap similar to the snap in the original, which is a deliberate reference. I tried to keep the vibe similar, with just an Ableton reverb and EQ Eight on it. I’m pretty influenced by Trap, so I incorporated a number of Trap elements, including a Trap snare and hi-hat. You can only do Trap snares in samplers with MIDI because of the really short drum patterns. ‘Hey’ is a vocal sound that goes ‘hey,’ which is also a Trap sound.”
BUSY BASS Riback: After the organ came together, I messed with a bass guitar sample called ‘Classic Bass’ from Kontakt’s Factory Library, and that really started to develop the track into something special. I tried to get it to sound as real and energetic as possible. It sounds like a real bass guitarist playing busily, and helped create this nice balance between a dance element and something that’s not specifically just for the club. I side-chained the bass to the top kick track and had the EQ Eight on it. I had a bass track, ‘Bit Bass’, with ‘ Ableton’s Redux on it to get more colour and distortion into the bass, then I automated that.”
INCIDENTAL NOISE Riback: “At the bottom of the session are a number of incidental sounds and effects. Delays, reverbs, a crowd sound and some white noise. The crowd sound is from the Vengeance Sound sample pack. I’m a big fan of crowd samples for adding a bit of excitement, though I normally keep it in the background so you can feel it without it being in your face. The white noise comes from Native Instruments’ Massive, which is a really good instrument for creating white noise.”
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REGULARS
PC Audio Is your PC running on the edge? If you’re prepared to reconsider some fundamental options, there may be a simple solution. Column: Martin Walker
I have a confession to make. My main studio PC is now four years old, but I’ve yet to feel any need to upgrade to a faster one. I’ve noticed a lot of other people finding themselves in a similar position — running out of computing power still seems to be a worrying occurrence for some, but over the last few years many computer-based musicians have simply come to the conclusion that they already have quite enough power under their bonnets for the foreseeable future. The main reason for this is that whereas our machines were previously capable of running dozens of ‘real-time’ plug-ins, many recent ones are now quite capable of running hundreds of them without breaking into a sweat, while simultaneously playing back dozens of simultaneous audio tracks. For those working in rock, folk, jazz and certainly classical music, this means a modest PC is perfectly adequate for music making. Even those exploring more exotic genres such as dance and electronica, where software synths are de rigueur and each channel may be sporting half a dozen plug-in effects that radically modify the initial sonics, you don’t necessarily need a bleeding edge PC. So let’s look more closely at how you can manage this feat, and when you really do need to dust off your credit card and invest in a newer machine. SAMPLING THE OPTIONS
My main studio machine runs an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K quad-core processor with a nominal clock speed of 3.5GHz (although mine has never put a foot wrong being permanently overclocked to 4.4GHz). With this amount of computing power at my disposal I can run far more plug-in effects than I’ve yet needed, and it only tends to be playing soft synths with large polyphony and high quality settings that put any noticeable strain on my system. However, given that my projects currently involve as many recorded audio tracks of electric and acoustic instruments as there are virtual ones being created by software ‘on the hoof ’, I mostly seem to stay well within its computing limitations. As a ballpark, I typically run around 30 audio/synth tracks and 50 plug-in effects per project. Now if I were creating entire albums only using the sounds derived from ‘in the box’ soft synths, AT 40
I might be pushing the real-time limits of this machine, especially if running such projects at a sample rate of 96k (or even 192k, though I’ve yet to hear any audible benefits at such extreme sample rates, and there’s strong industry evidence pointing out no audible benefit to sample rates above 100k). However, like plenty of other musicians I’m quite happy running my projects at a sample rate of 44.1k, for the following reasons. First, the difference in audio quality between 44.1k and 96k recordings made with my audio interface is vanishingly small (it may not be for yours, but do try it and see before committing yourself to more than double the overheads). Yes, I can hear improvements at 96k when running some plug-in effects such as compressors and high frequency EQs for instance, but many of these now offer internal ‘oversampling’ options that enable them to reap the benefits of higher sample rates where they may be audible, without having to run the entire project at 96k. Moreover, many of the higher-end soft synths offer similar ‘high quality’ options so you can once again trade off CPU against audio quality. And, unlike DAW options that enable you to ‘bounce down’ tracks complete with FX, to free up your processor so you can limp on to the end of a mix when your machine is running out of juice, you can instead leave your tracks intact by using more conservative soft synth quality settings, and then just whack them up to maximum/divine or whatever before the final offline stereo render. MODEST BUFFERS
I’m also happy working with a fairly modest audio interface buffer size of 128 samples, which at 44.1k gives me a fairly snappy 5ms latency when performing MIDI-based soft synths in ‘real time’ (a fixed latency of 1ms or so for the MIDI input, 3ms latency for the audio interface playback buffers, plus a further 1ms for the D/A converters in the interface). Choosing smaller buffers than this will ramp up processor overheads, often by a significant amount (on my machine for instance, dropping them to 32 samples instantly increases my CPU overheads by around 50%). If on the other hand your musicians need to monitor their
‘live’ performance being recorded as an audio track, complete with native plug-in effects, then the latency they hear in their headphones will be that of the round trip (typically 1ms for A/D conversion, plus record buffers, plus playback buffers, and then finally the 1ms D/A conversion). So, for 128 samples at 44.1k this round trip will be around 8ms in total, which probably won’t suit drummers or vocalists (always the most likely to notice tiny timing lags that may compromise their performances). Changing my buffer size to 64 samples will drop the round rip to around 5ms (acceptable to most), and at 32 samples to around 3.5ms (very acceptable, but you will now need a CPU with 50% more power to run the same number of plug-ins). Mind you, with a 96k sample rate these buffer latencies will be more than halved, but conversely you would require a CPU with 2.2 times the performance of mine to run the same plug-ins. THE CREDIT CARD BECKONS
As always, it’s going to be swings and roundabouts, so before I get lynched by specialist audio PC builders worldwide, I should point out that there are still plenty of musicians who will definitely need more processing power than me. You will if you insist on a 96k sample rate and 3ms round trip latencies for live recording/monitoring with plug-in effects, and you will if your total plugin requirements are much higher than mine, especially if you go berserk with multiple reverb plug-ins (I rarely use more than two during a song, relying on multiple send/returns to add as much reverb to each track as required). Anyone who fancies mixing on a virtual console — using modelled plug-ins, in particular the ‘dynamic convolution’ plug-ins such as those from Acustica Audio — will certainly need a more powerful machine to run enough instances to add them to every audio channel. You’ll also no doubt need more grunt if you’re running video alongside your audio, for film work. But if you’re currently on the edge, reconsidering your project options carefully could be a very wise move. Keep on tracking!
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REGULARS
Apple Notes Logic Pro Brightens Up in 10.3 Column: Brad Watts
Logic Pro X has come a very long way since the initial release on the Atari ST platform back in 1993. Then a product of Emagic, ‘Logic’ never gained the traction of Steinberg’s Cubase on the Atari. However, the Atari was nearing extinction, and the platform was abandoned that same year. By ’94, Logic had started its evolution from a MIDI sequencer, to a hybrid application incorporating both MIDI sequencing and audio recording/editing — what we now refer to as a digital audio workstation, or DAW. Logic went from strength to strength on both Mac and Windows platforms. In 2002 Logic Pro was acquired by Apple, with Windows compatibility dropped from version six onward. This caused quite a stir at the time, with PC/Windows-based Logic users migrating to DAWs like Cubase or Sonar, or biting the bullet and investing in a suitable Apple Mac computer. In 2004, Apple released Logic Pro 7, with the application completely rebuilt to look and fit into Apple’s ‘professional’ applications such as Final Cut Pro. This was the genesis of the Logic Pro X in use today, with its somewhat dark, grey-on-grey design scheme. I’ve never been a fan of the foreboding grey colour scheme — which has seemed to grow darker with each iteration since version 7. With the latest version 10.3, Apple has thankfully made a departure from the dreary Pro Apps look, brightening up the application’s interface and doing away with the skeuomorphic buttons and controls. It looks better overall. It feels clearer and more defined, and seems to flick between windows and screen-sets faster. So what else does Logic Pro X 10.3 bring to the party. There’s literally hundreds of changes, additions and improvements, so I’ll pick out some that I feel are more important. More on the graphical front, window backgrounds can be set as light, dark, or a slider allows adjustment of the background from light to dark grey. Grid lines for the Main Window can also be adjusted from light to dark. Bright background is available in the Piano Roll Editor, but unfortunately doesn’t carry over to the Audio File Editor. Another great graphical addition is ‘ghost’ AT 42
waveform display. This allows you to see the entire waveform outside of a region being edited in the Main — really useful if you do a lot of waveform editing in the Main Window. Far less useful is the animated metronome on the ‘Click’ button in the transport. It moves back and forth… cute. Many of the control bar buttons now hide additional options which are accessed by a right-click or control-click on the button. Of course there’s also support for the Touch Bar on the recently released MacBook Pro laptops, which I can’t really comment on not owning a new MacBook Pro. I’ve seen footage of the Touch Bar being used in Logic Pro X — it looks nice. Mixing and processing additions are bountiful, with an important change to the summing bus. Logic Pro now offers a 64-bit summing bus, which will result in more ‘precise’ mixes. This can be toggled between 64-bit and the older 32-bit summing engine if you can’t hear a difference, or your machine stumbles in 64-bit summing. That said, I noticed no change in CPU usage between each summing method. An extremely useful added feature is ‘Selectionbased processing’. This allows selecting one or more regions, a Marquee selection, or a selection of audio in the Track section of the file editor. The floating Selection-based processing window offers two channel strips where you can add both native Logic plug-ins or AU plug-ins. This is great for running quick processes over files such as a quick de-ess on a sibilant vocal for example, without resorting to automation. Only thing is it seems Selection-based processing needs a little more work as I found the preview function didn’t always work — which is odd on an i7 processor with 25GB of RAM at its disposal — fingers crossed this works more reliably in 10.3.1. Back to more traditional mixing features. Logic added the capability of running up to 256 busses, which isn’t something I’d ever use, but it’s there if you think you’ll need it. The I/O plug-in now offers a wet/dry mix slider which is excellent, and you can now automate switching sends on and off. Equally as cool is how hovering over a plug-in slot on a channel shows the plug-in’s latency in both samples
and milliseconds within the help-tag — something Pro Tools users have had for many years. Oh and speaking of plug-ins, a list of your last five used plug-ins appears at the top of the plug-in menu. Also a god-send is the ability to paste only plug-ins or sends between mixer channels. Finally there’s now individual panning placement of left and right signals on a stereo channel strip. A right click or control-click on the panning knob offers the standard Balance, Stereo Pan, or Binaural Pan. This allows you to set two pan locations and then move that spread left or right within the stereo field — way quicker and more intuitive than adding a Direction Mixer plug-in on every channel. The new ‘Track Alternatives’ feature is great in the arrangement phases of composing, and allows tracks to have an alternate region order. It’s much like playlists in many other DAWs. Previously you could do this with folders on a track, but this way you don’t need to mute/un-mute the regions within the folder to audition each variation. So that’s a handful of my favoured new features in Logic Pro X 10.3, although as mentioned, there are hundreds. Dive in – see what suits you, as there’s a million ways to get what you want from Logic Pro.
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REVIEW
PRESONUS FADERPORT 8 Control Surface
Presonus builds on the success of FaderPort, but is the FaderPort 8 really eight times better than its single-fadered sibling?
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Preshan John
PRICE $799 CONTACT Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au
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PROS Tight integration with Studio One Faders feel great Huge amount of control for the price
CONS Single pan pot Tiny Solo/Mute buttons
SUMMARY Presonus’s new FaderPort 8 is certainly capable of reigniting your passion for hands-on mixing. Its functionality is superb, so is its form and feel. For best results, combine with Studio One.
Custom Controls
SCRIBBLE STRIPS
MIXER VIEW
More buttons optimised for Studio One use. Press Link while hovering your mouse over any parameter to instantly connect it to the pan knob. The Custom Controls buttons are user-assignable in HUI and MCU modes.
Eight blue-backlit scribble strips display track name and number, pan position, and a graphical readout of the selected parameter. They also show a fair amount of info when tweaking plug-in parameters or other trackspecific settings.
Quick ’n’ easy control over which tracks are on the faders, reminiscent of a live sound workflow where you’re often jumping between standard input tracks, auxes, VCAs and masters. Get a handle on these buttons to become a blazing fast mix ninja.
simple DAW controller. Enter FaderPort 8. Pitched as the ultimate Studio One controller, it fills a niche that extends Presonus’s vision of being an in-house stable of hardware and software products that’ll do it all. Kinda like a budget-friendly version of Avid, five years ago. The FaderPort 8 is a class compliant device, so no driver installation is necessary to get it running with your computer. Spaciously laid out controls give the surface a professional feel. I love the extra room underneath the faders to rest the heel of your hand. Onto the niggles: the surface kicks back at a slight angle but it’s still just shy of having the scribble strips at the best viewing angle, the diminutive Solo and Mute buttons are a slight design flaw — they’re so close together that you can easily press both with one finger, and the ‘lump in the lead’ external power supply always feels a bit budget.
as well, though unfortunately this didn’t propagate an extra seven. Yep, you only get one endless pan/ parameter knob that lives on the top left of the surface. Selecting a track before panning it isn’t an enormous inconvenience, but I reckon it’s just enough to get on your nerves when trying to throw together a mix quickly. The detents aren’t my favourite either, but it does help when scrolling through menus. So what’s changed? The buttons, for one. The original FaderPort had plastic buttons that clicked noisily when pressed. FaderPort 8 sports silent rubber buttons that still feel good to push. The only things that’ll go clickety-clack are the pan/transport knobs and the faders when they hit minus infinity.
Okay, so I have a thing for faders. Real faders, by the way — not those plasticky, Fisher Price, non-motorised types. But to my shame I’ve been mixing without them for a fair while now, with no better excuse than insufficient desk real estate. I even settled into performing automation moves with a mouse (gasp!). Thankfully the FaderPort 8 landed on my desk for review. Oh, happiness! Eight glorious, touchsensitive, motorised faders surrounded with digital backlit scribble strips, extensive transport controls, a preposterous number of buttons, and a very modest asking price. It was like falling in love all over again — with mixing, that is. SAFE IN PORT
Presonus’s original FaderPort brought the envied motorised fader to bedroom studios around the world in a cheap and compact single-fader unit. Similar controllers were available from other vendors but the FaderPort dwarfed them in popularity. With Studio One becoming a big player in the DAW game and the company steadily building its own ecosystem of interconnectable devices with the StudioLive family, it made sense for Presonus to create a more thorough iteration of the FaderPort. The CS18AI finally brought motorised faders to the StudioLive paradigm, but that’s also why it can’t really be reduced to competing as a
ONE TO EIGHT
FaderPort 8 has a few carryover features from the original FaderPort. Obviously the fader itself has been copied and pasted seven times, and each one oozes ‘pro’. They’re smooth and pleasantlyweighted, with quick and quiet motors, ergonomic finger curvatures, and a generous 100mm of travel. The pan pot has been (excuse the pun) ported
JOG AROUND THE BLOCK
Presonus doesn’t call the FaderPort 8’s large blue knob a jog wheel, but given you can scrub through your session with it you’d be forgiven for such an assumption. It’s small, firmly detented, and doubles as a push button, but unfortunately fails as a jog wheel. I would’ve loved to see this twice its diameter, half its height, smoothly weighted without detents, and with a little crater on top for single-finger operation; like every other professional control surface. If this was the case you could easily and accurately control timeline position with just your right hand — forefinger on AT 45
the jog wheel, thumb on Play/Pause — leaving your left hand for individual track controls. In the knob’s defence, it’s an excellent multi-tasker thanks to the eight buttons below that dictate its function. DOING THE HUI DANCE
Pro Tools is my home DAW, so if the FaderPort 8 didn’t do HUI well, I probably wouldn’t be writing this review. Thankfully it handles it nicely for the most part. Boot into HUI mode by holding the first two Select buttons while powering the unit on, choose HUI, and press Exit. MCU (Mackie Control Universal) mode is also available for Logic, Cubase, Ableton and Sonar. FaderPort 8 remembers what you’ve last selected until you change it again. All the usual functions were perfectly fine in HUI mode — levels, solos, mute, pans, transport, automation, markers, etc. But it bared its soft underbelly soon enough. Controlling plug-ins in Pro Tools was nothing short of a nightmare. It felt like digging several layers deep into menus with no clear escape route, all while squinting at abbreviated scribble strip readouts hoping you’re adjusting what you hope you’re adjusting. To get the most out of it you’d have to spend some hours repurposing the Studio One-specific buttons into user-defined hotkeys that’ll suit your workflow. Or if you’re a ’Tools person, buy a EUCON-equipped surface like the Avid Artist Mix and be done with it. OPERATION AUTOMATION
As with its predecessor, writing automation is the FaderPort 8’s forte. It’s the one thing anyone could do without reading the manual or glancing at the computer screen. The six dedicated automation AT 46
mode buttons above the jog wheel affect the selected track in your DAW, and the controls translate across whichever mode the control surface is operating in, be it HUI, MCU or Native. I’m a big fan of Touch mode. I often treat a track with a single rough pass of level automation, then go back and overwrite micro-improvements in real-time. On some control surfaces, grabbing a fader while it’s following written automation can feel sticky or resistant. Not so with FaderPort 8. It seamlessly begins writing your new moves from the moment you touch a fader. In combination with the transport controls it was a real pleasure to use, and it goes without saying, a significant improvement over my mousing attempts. ONE AND ONLY
Studio One Artist is bundled with the control surface free of charge, along with a decent helping of plug-ins and samples. Opening a Studio One session saw FaderPort 8 reveal its true colours… literally. So many colours. It’s immediately apparent FaderPort 8 has been purpose-built for tight integration with Presonus’s own DAW. Every button has a useful function, every colour has a meaning, even the scribble strips spring to life with far more detailed readouts than in HUI mode. No setup is required. Just make sure the FaderPort 8 is booted up in Native mode and it’ll automatically sync to your Studio One session like a snugly fit glove. Five options in the Mixer View bar let you choose which track types to spread over the faders — Audio, VI, Bus, VCA or All. This incredibly useful feature is a prime example of the benefit of slick software/hardware integration. It’d be nice to
do this with HUI mode in Pro Tools, but HUI can’t see differences in track types, so not a chance. Plug-in control is refreshingly straightforward with Studio One. Select a track, hit Edit Plugins, choose your insert, and all respective controls are neatly mapped across the faders. Feedback from the scribble strips is sufficient for most EQ/ compression tasks, but if you don’t like being in the dark you’d probably feel more comfortable eyeballing your monitor mid-twiddle. Further control comes with the Custom Controls bar to the left of the faders. The Bypass button deactivates the inserts on the currently selected track while Macro assigns Channel Editor parameters to the faders. You can open/close the Channel Editor window by pressing Shift + Macro. Finally, the Link button lets you marry the pan pot to whatever control your mouse is hovering over and you can lock it to that control by holding Shift. Very nifty. MADE TO MEASURE
While FaderPort 8 can be used with virtually any DAW, it really comes into its own when paired with Studio One. Presonus has done a fantastic job giving its DAW a physical interface. While I’m not a regular Studio One user, the control surface made me see (and feel) the software in a whole new way. There’s no question the FaderPort 8 is enormous bang for buck, and entirely justifiable as a control surface for non-Presonus DAWs. I’d get one just for the quality faders and no-fuss automation workflow. But if you really want to see this thing in all its glory, give it a whirl with Studio One. And if you’re already a Studio One user, I have no hesitation calling the FaderPort 8 a no-brainer.
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REVIEW
ZOOM F4
Multitrack Field Recorder Simmo called the F8 a game changer, so what does he call the F4? Game over? Review: Greg Simmons
NEED TO KNOW
In 2015 I had the awkward pleasure of reviewing Zoom’s F8 field recorder. I say ‘awkward’ because I expected to dismiss it as a toy due to its unbelievably low price and equally unbelievably high feature set — the audio gear equation didn’t add up. And yet, there was so much to like about it and so little to dislike. The audio gear equation has three parts: features, price and sound quality. You can have any two at the expense of the third… usually. Products that break the formula are potential game changers. The F8 proved to be one of those products. Compared to its competition
PRICE $1249 RRP, expect to pay $900 CONTACT Dynamic Music: (02) 9939 1299 or info@dynamicmusic.com.au
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it was ridiculously cheap, well featured, and I could not be critical of the sound quality. I made the ‘game changer’ call, and it was quickly proven true. I’ve since used the F8 on dozens of recordings, and clients have often praised the cleanliness of the sound. No matter how cheap something is, the contemporary market always pushes for cheaper. And so it was with the F8. Even though it offered eight respectable XLR mic inputs at a price that was lower than its competitor’s four input and two input offerings, people who didn’t need eight inputs were asking for the same
PROS Ridiculous value for money, outperforms F8 in terms of bang for buck. Camera Return input & monitoring capabilities. Useful short cut buttons minimise menu access. SD cards securely locked away behind battery panel.
CONS Low-resolution monochrome display. No slate mic. Harder to access SD cards due to being securely locked away behind battery panel.
performance and ruggedness at an even lower price. Somewhere in Japan the agonised cries of ‘What is wrong with these people?’ must still be echoing through a boardroom! The less-for-less logic is simple, but borders on simplistic: if Zoom can make a serious eight-input field recorder at such a low price, surely they can make a four-input version for even less. But how much less? Taking away half of the preamps and AD converters is not going to reduce the cost by 50%. It still requires the rugged enclosure, the batteries, the connectors, the output circuits, the visual display and all the
SUMMARY Expect sales to go gangbusters.
digital smarts required to run the interface and manage the data. Considering the low cost of the F8, there can’t be much saving in simply removing four inputs. Zoom already offered an affordable ‘less inputs’ alternative with the H6, the flagship of their H series ‘Handy’ recorders. It has four XLR mic/ line inputs and six tracks of recording capability. Replace the detachable microphone capsules with the optional EXH-6 and you get six XLR mic/line inputs. The preamps are not of the same calibre as the F series, and it is designed as a handheld recorder, but the price is right. This proposed new member of the F series, the F4, needed to fit neatly between the F8 and the H6, without making either redundant or outpriced. It must’ve been quite a challenge for Zoom’s design engineers. How did they fare? F4 OVERVIEW
The F4 is a six-input, eight-track field recorder designed for over-the-shoulder use in location sound recording for film and video. It has four Neutrik Combo series mic/line sockets on the left side panel that record to tracks one to four. Inputs five and six can be fed from either a 10-pin connector on the rear (intended for use with Zoom’s modular stereo microphone capsule system) for recording to tracks five and six, or via the 3.5mm TRS ‘Camera Return’ socket on the right side panel for monitoring. An internal mixer allows a stereo mix to be recorded to tracks seven and eight. The stereo mix can also be routed to three different stereo outputs: the Main output on a pair of 3-pin male XLRs, the Sub output on a 3.5mm TRS socket, and the headphone output on a 6.5mm TRS socket. All four preamps are identical to those in the F8 and are as comprehensive as you could wish for. Each input has individually switchable phantom power, a High Pass Filter adjustable from 80Hz to 240Hz, a polarity invert option, a built-in delay for synchronising different input sources, and a comprehensive limiter with hard or soft knee operation and adjustable threshold, attack and release. There’s optional MS decoding, the ability to link multiple trims (gain controls) together, and a very useful PFL button that offers a choice of PFL or Solo behaviour. The Main and Sub outputs feature the same limiter and delay options as the inputs. The F4 can record .wav files in mono or poly
(interleaved) formats with 16- or 24-bit word sizes at sampling rates from 44.1k to 192k, and mp3 files from 128kbps to 320kbps. All files are written to removable SD cards. The F4 has two SD card slots and is capable of recording to both cards simultaneously. It can also record different things on each card in real time — for example, multitrack files on one card and a stereo mix for the dailies/rushes on the other. It also features a dual record option when using inputs one and two, allowing each input to be recorded to a second ‘safety’ track at a lower level in case of clipping (this option is only available when inputs three and four are not in use). The F4 features two modes of powering: internal battery pack or external DC via a 4-pin Hirose socket. It uses Zoom’s BCF-8 battery pack, the same one used by the F8. This is a clever move that reduces development costs and avoids trapping the user into buying specific battery packs for each new product. It holds eight AA cells, and can be fitted with alkaline, nickel-metal hydride or lithium batteries. As with the F8, the battery pack slides into a compartment on the back panel that is covered by a hinged metal door and secured with a thumbscrew. There are numerous power management options to conserve battery life, comprehensive timecode capabilities, and remote control via Zoom’s optional FRC-8 control surface. The F4 measures approximately 178mm x 141mm x 54mm and weighs 1030gm without batteries. It comes supplied with an AC adaptor, a Hirose connector for use with the AC adaptor (more about that below), a camera mounting plate and a cable for using it as a USB audio interface with a personal computer or iOS device. Bring your own SD cards. COMPARED TO THE F8
Considering that the F4 was conceived as a scaleddown version of the F8 for those who didn’t need eight inputs and wanted to pay less, it’s worth looking at what’s been taken out to bring the F4’s price down. It’s also worth looking at what’s been added, either as new ideas from Zoom’s engineers or in response to user feedback on the F8. First of all, and most obviously, the F4 has four less mic/line inputs. This has saved considerable space on the front panel, allowing for larger gain knobs and a row of four keys across the top —
three of which save significant time in the menu system. The ‘Option’ key offers access to built-in shortcuts such as TC Jam, Trim Link and Clear Clip. The ‘Output’ key offers quick adjustment of the Main and Sub output levels. The ‘Input 5/6’ key provides access to the menu settings for inputs five and six — essentially determining if they will be recording from one of Zoom’s modular mic capsules attached to the rear panel, or monitoring from the Camera Return socket on the right side panel. The fourth key replaces the F8’s Slate Tone toggle switch, moving it to the right side of the front panel and leaving more finger room around the Menu key and navigation dial. Note that, unlike the F8, the F4 does not include a built-in slate microphone. Four less mic/line inputs also means four less female XLR sockets, saving considerable space on the right side panel. This allows the F4’s Main Outs to use a pair of industry-standard male XLRs, rather than the F8’s TA3 connectors and their required adaptor cables. I think this is a good thing, but other location professionals might disagree. The USB socket and Hirose power connector have also been moved to the right side panel. Surprisingly, the F4 includes the same timecode capabilities and BNC connectors as the F8. Competing brands often make timecode an optional extra, or make a more expensive ‘timecode version’ of their field recorders. I had assumed timecode would’ve been one of the first things to go to bring the price down, but that’s not the case. Similarly, it’s worth pointing out that the F4 retains the two SD card slots found in the F8. In an interesting departure, however, the F4’s SD card slots are on the rear, immediately above the battery compartment and behind the hinged metal door that secures the battery pack in place. This is another clever move that simplifies the F4’s machining and therefore brings the cost down. The F8’s side-mounted SD card slots –—with their oh-so-cool magnetic-latching covers — were certainly more convenient to access, but added complexity to the machining and therefore to the overall cost. They are also possibly the F8’s only weak points, and look as though they could be easily broken off. I would not be surprised to see the F4’s simplified rear-mounted SD card slots appear in the F8’s successor. A welcome addition to the F4 is the Camera Return socket, sorely missing on the F8 and AT 49
operating the machine through that low-resolution monochrome display, indoors and out, despite being legally blind. And there I was complaining about it… SOUND QUALITY
a source of regular criticism. On a shoot it is common for the sound engineer to send a mix to the camera, freeing the camera operator from audio duties and saving a lot of synchronising work later. To ensure the mix is not overloading the camera inputs or having other problems (e.g. faulty or disconnected cable), the sound engineer takes a signal back from the camera’s audio output to monitor what is being recorded on the camera. Having a dedicated stereo input to accept this signal back from the camera frees up valuable inputs, while the Input 5/6 key makes it fast and easy to monitor when required. Unlike the F8, the F4 does not include a separate input socket for the AC adaptor. Instead, the supplied AD-19 AC adaptor (the same one used by the F8) is provided with a clip-on Hirose connector. This is an ingenious move that simplifies the machining and cost of the F4, and frees up panel space. Zoom’s promotional material mentions three powering methods, but there are really only two: internal batteries, or external DC via the Hirose socket. Whether that external DC comes from an AC adaptor or an external battery pack is irrelevant because both come in through the same connection point. The F4 is the same form factor and dimensions as the F8, give or take a millimetre here and there. It’s about 70 grams heavier though — despite losing two XLR sockets, four input circuits, four data encoders, two TA3 sockets, and the input socket for the AC adaptor. I doubt that the Camera Return circuitry and extra three switches on the front panel count for much in the weight department. It feels just as rugged as the F8, perhaps more, so I’m guessing the excess weight is due to using lowercost construction materials that offer the same strength as those in the F8 but at greater weight. I have a hunch that these alternative materials might also explain the F4’s bulkier retro styling. I prefer the cleaner contemporary look of the F8, but that’s a minor niggle. Assuming you’re happy with only four XLR mic/line inputs, all the differences above can be appreciated for their cleverness and, in many cases, are advantages over the F8. There are only AT 50
two negatives that I can think of. Firstly, unlike the F8, the F4 does not have Bluetooth functionality so cannot be controlled remotely via an iOS device — a wonderful feature on the F8. Zoom is encouraging users to buy the FRC-8 control surface for this purpose, of course. Secondly, after a year or so of using the F8’s full colour 320 x 240 LCD, the F4’s monochrome 128 x 64 LCD looks absolutely primitive. No doubt this is one of the major cost savings in the F4, and helps to price it appropriately between the F8 and the H6. At least it suits the retro aesthetic… IN THE FIELD
Field recorders should be tested in the field, of course, to ensure they can withstand all the constant travelling, rough handling, temperature extremes, wind, dust and humidity that field gear is exposed to. The review unit arrived just before I was due to embark on a three-week expedition through Myanmar. Australia’s Zoom importer suggested I take the F4 with me and give it a proper field test, something I was more than happy to do. Pelican cases and their attention-grabbing ilk are not allowed on my expeditions, so the F4 travelled in a fabric shoulder bag purchased from a street vendor in Kathmandu many years ago — the same bag that my Nagra 7 and Zoom F8 have travelled in before. It flew in the cargo hold from Sydney to Bangkok, Bangkok to Mandalay, and Yangon back to Bangkok. It travelled overland from Mandalay to Yangon on a combination of trucks, motorbikes, boats and trains, all the time tucked into that shoulder bag and stuffed inside my backpack or daypack. It powered up correctly every time, and there were no dislodged battery packs, no missing knobs or buttons buried somewhere in the baggage, no damaged sockets, no flattened batteries from accidental power-ups, no ‘unseen’ SD cards and no mysteriously corrupted files. Very reassuring. My expedition team made a number of recordings with the F4, including some outdoors in very hot, dusty and sun-drenched environments, and all under tight time constraints. The F4 consistently operated as it should, with no headscratching moments or causes for alarm. One of my expedition team members assumed the role of official F4 operator and had no problems
The F4 uses the same audio circuitry as the F8, so for comments on sound quality I’ll refer back to my earlier review where I compared the F8 as a field recorder against the Sound Devices 702t and the Nagra 7, and as a USB interface against Apogee’s Quartet. I have reproduced the most important part of the sound judgement here, which I still agree with: “Subjectively, it sounds marginally brighter than the more expensive Nagra 7 and Sound Devices 702t, but that brightness manifests as a subtle sheen that provides an enhanced sense of clarity without any suggestion of harshness or brittleness. I did not find it tiring or fatiguing. At the same time, the F8 does not have quite the same fullness in the lower midrange as either of the other machines. The end result is an ever-soslightly ‘lighter’ sonic presentation. I must stress that these differences are very subtle and should be considered more as a characteristic tonality of the F8 rather than a criticism.” It’s worth bearing in mind that the Sound Devices 702t and the Nagra 7 both cost considerably more than the F8 and F4, and both offer only two tracks of recording capability. You can read the F8 review on AudioTechnology’s website at the link below. The review includes links to the magazine’s Soundcloud page, where comparison recordings can be heard between the F8, the Sound Devices 702t, the Nagra 7 and the Apogee Quartet. www.audiotechnology.com.au/wp/index.php/ zoom-f8-multi-track-field-recorder/ CONCLUSION
So where does the F4 sit in Zoom’s product range? With its superior preamps, numerous professional in/outs, timecode functionality and over-the-shoulder form factor, it clearly differentiates itself from the handheld H6; I doubt anyone would be stuck choosing between those two based on the application. Things are not so clear when it comes to the F8. The F4 is a later generation machine offering the same sound quality and timecode functionality, but with more useful and/or helpful features. It only has four preamps, but adding Zoom’s EXH-6 to the rear panel connector would provide another two, albeit at the lower quality of the H series. It’s an interesting conundrum. I’m a big fan of the F8 so it pains me to say this, but unless you absolutely need seven or eight preamps the F4 might be a better option — provided you don’t mind the retro styling and the low-res monochrome display. In my review of the F8 I called it a game changer, and stated that anything costing more than twice its price was going to be a hard sell. The same logic applies even more to the F4. The F8 was the game changer, but the F4 is the one that will go gangbusters.
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REVIEW
KORG MONOLOGUE
Monophonic Analogue Synthesizer Is the Monologue the best synth under $500… any synth under $500?
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Christopher Holder
Last year we posed the question: is the Minilogue the best analogue synth under $1000?’ This year we ask: ‘is the Monologue the best synth under $500?’ Just to clarify, I wouldn’t confine the question to being hardware-only or analogue-only: ‘Is the Monologue the best synth under $500… hardware or software?’ You might have your favourite, go-to softsynth — incidentally, for mine, the Rack Extension version of the Korg Monopoly is hard to beat — but what about in 10 years time? Before you answer, let me disabuse you of something: you won’t have that softsynth in 10 years time. I can almost guarantee you that it’ll have vaporised into the ether, with an OS change or a DAW platform shift or because you’ve taken up fishing and put your ‘studio’ in the e-waste bin.
So this story is as much a celebration of hardware synthesis as it is a review of the Monologue.
PRICE Expect to pay $459
CONS No arpeggiator No dedicated portamento knob
CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au
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PROS Great analogue bass and lead sounds Broad sonic palette Powerful motion sequencer Microtonal scale options!
GOT ME MONOLOGUE-ING
The Monologue sounds great. It’s much like a monophonic version of the Minilogue but according to Korg’s Chief Engineer of Analogue Synth Products, Tatsuya Takahashi, Korg’s had a poke at the two-pole filter, the LFO and the Drive control — giving the Monologue more bite and venom. It’s a monosynth, so it’s imperative the Monologue has kick-arse bass sounds and ‘searing’ leads, and it does. The envelope on the Monologue is as fast as you’ll find anywhere
— super responsive for those monophonic sounds. There are just so many sonic possibilities for a small synth. Sure, there are only two VCOs and there aren’t endless modulation matrix possibilities but the soundshaping options are generous. I think this will answer the first criticism levelled at most hardware monosynths: it’ll be difficult to quickly tire of the Monologue. Other monosynths can soon feel stale after you’ve felt like you’ve explored the possibilities. Adding to the range of sonic options is the motion sequencer. Pioneered on Korg’s analogue-modelled Electribe range, the motion sequencer allows you to punch/play-in some knob tweaking into a 16-step sequencer along
SUMMARY The answer to the opening question is ‘yes’: in my opinion this is the best synth, of any kind, for under $500. It’s a genuine hardware analogue synth that’s not a homage (but equal) to the legendary synths of the past. As well as resuscitating classics, Korg is creating modern ones.
BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE Supercharge your desktop DAW system Ultra-low latency Lightning quick 10Gb/s Thunderbolt transfer rate 2 x great-sounding preamps Full metering with the different note values. Of course, the tempo of the motion sequencing can be clock sync’ed, which allows you to easily rope the Monologue into your DAW-based creation (similarly, the LFO can also be sync’ed). Unfortunately, the motion sequencer means there’s apparently no room for an arpeggiator. For mine this is the biggest omission. In fact, if I had to choose, I’d prefer an arp to the (admittedly clever and powerful) motion sequencer.
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APHEX EXCITER
I’m not sure if this is fake news, but I saw on the internet that Richard James met his doppelganger. Not only did they look alike but they were dressed remarkably similarly. Yes, that’s right, he found the Aphex Twin twin. Like I said, it’s probably a hoax. Aphex Twin likes to encourage a range of intriguing myths, contributing to his legend. You may have heard that he owns a tank… well, an armoured personnel carrier at least. Presumably to drive through the crowds when playing Glastonbury. This isn’t true. He doesn’t own a tank… or at least I don’t think he does. Aphex Twin consulted on the development of the Monologue. There are Aphex Twin ‘AFX’ presets. They sound awesome. One of the key Aphex Twin contributions, according to Korg, has been a microtonal feature. I’m pretty dubious about this. Personally, I’m wondering if Richard James is ‘having a lend’. “My assistance on this Monologue project is predicated on you, Korg, adding the ability for me, the artist, to program in non-standard microtonal scales. I’m sorry but these are my terms.” I rather think he’s sitting in his bank vault house (true or hoax?) smirking — “I can’t believe they’ve added a feature no one will use ’cos I asked them to!” Saying that, if the ability to tune a monosynth to match your favourite Ravi Shankar solo is a non-negotiable tickbox, then you are most definitely in luck. LOGUE JAM
I love the Monologue. I love all of Korg’s analogue creations. When my kids leave home I’ll celebrate by buying an Odyssey and MS20… maybe just to have in the living room so I can mess with them on the way to emptying the dishwasher, and let them be stunning art pieces when I’m not. I love the wooden rear panel. I love how it’s ‘Monologue’ and not ‘Monolog’. I love the five different skins it comes in. I love how battery operation is a viable option. But above all I love the very modern sound of the Monologue. Actually, above all I love that it’s a genuine, living-breathing analogue synth for not much more dough than a softsynth. I can reach out and grab the Monologue. Play it, tweak it, work in sympathy with its quirks. You’ll grow close to the Monologue in a way that you’ll never grow close to a softsynth. And when you take up fishing and look back on your studio days, you’ll have something to show for it; something to pass on to the next generation. They may not recognise the USB or five-pin DIN sockets but they’ll pop some batteries in, power it up, watch the nifty OLED screen tell them it’s ‘tuning up’, hit bottom C on the Afx acid3 preset and be deeply impressed.
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REVIEW
BEYERDYNAMIC DT1990 PRO Open Back Headphones Review: Mark Davie
After listening to Beyerdynamic’s DT1990 Pros I’ve realised I haven’t found the point where you’re paying too much for a pair of headphones. At $1159, these feel like a bargain. These open backed cans are seriously revealing, like peering through the looking glass with a pair of binoculars. I’ve got a variety of headphones lying around, but I knew I’d stumbled behind the veil into a secret garden of detail as soon as I put the Beyer cans on. Like most open-back, circumaural headphones, you get a wider sense of space than with closed backs. The Beyers are no different in that regard, but it’s how things separate out across that space that seemed relevant, most of which came down to high end detail. Down at the bass end, you can actually change the response with two alternative sets of velour ear pads with different numbers of perforations around the rim — one is dubbed ‘Analytical’, the other ‘Balanced’. Basically, it’s options A and B, where B really stands for ‘more bass’. They ship with the B option installed, but A is more suited to professional use. It’s still got plenty of balls when you load up an 808, and the transient details of kicks and snares are rendered precisely. As far as bass weighting goes in this mode, when I slapped a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50s back on I felt like I was ‘in da club’ . The pads aren’t difficult to change, there’s a little notch in the cup that lets you rotate them around the 45mm driver housings with one full turn. EMA_AT111_[Print].pdf 1 28/07/2015 The mid range is clear and present, though not
overstated, and the highs are where the money is. I’ve been playing with Eventide’s new structural effects plug-in, Fission. It allows you to split a sound into its transient and tonal details. The Beyers really excelled at zooming in to help set the precise crossover point where the transient decay sounded most natural. After processing it with a very short delay, I could still hear the delay’s effect without straining when balancing it with the tonal portion’s processing. On other cans — like the cheaper, but still open-backed Audio-Technica R70x — the detail of that delay was harder to hear. You won’t have to listen to these cans loud to get all the details. In fact, you shouldn’t. A side effect of having such detailed and forward high end is it will force you to keep the volume low. Keeping level low is good for listening over a long period anyway, so you’ll be thanking Beyer for that. The cans are very comfortable, but like all Beyers cans, there’s a downside to incorporating high quality metal construction; weight. The first real headphones I ever had were the DT770 Pro closed backs. I eventually moved onto Audio-Technica M50s, because they were cheaper and lighter, which made them easier to have on your head during a day of tracking. While these aren’t the heaviest cans, you will feel them start to sink into your head when compared to plastic ones. Beyer does everything to offset that weight by 9:37 am installing a plush headband and the velour pads.
Price: $1159 Syntec: 1300 467 968 or sales@syntec.com.au
I have found that I get a bit sweaty on a hot day with these pads — something to keep in mind if you’re similarly prone. The rest of the packaging matches Beyer’s highquality construction. You get a moulded carry case that houses every component, including the second set of ear pads, and an optional three metre-long straight cable housed in an internal pouch if you don’t like the coiled one. Both are gold-plated detachable cables, via a 3-pin mini-XLR jack that clips into the headphone housing, and each have screw-on 6.5mm jacks. These are amazing sounding headphones that will reveal loads of detail you may never have heard before. And, as with the DT770 Pros — which my dad still uses — these Beyer cans will be around for decades. Worth the investment.
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REGULARS
LAST WORD with
Tom Hidley
Tom Hidley is one of the world’s most influential acousticians, with dozens of professional studios bearing his company’s ‘Westlake Room’ name in the ‘70s. AT caught up with Tom back in 2004 for a full interview. This is an extract.
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The Westlake name originated from the town I was living in at the time, Westlake Village, on the Californian coast. I started the company in 1969 in my garage. Westlake was selling package electronics. We were building entire systems. We had MCI and 3M tape machines, MCI and API consoles, and all manner of studio equipment, but we also built the studios to house those systems. By the time the company set up shop on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, I was designing the studios, our sales department was selling and packaging the gear, and our carpenters were building the rooms. “From design to downbeat” was the Westlake motto of the day. In 1975 I sold Westlake Audio. I had an argument with the other stockholders about expansion. We had just successfully completed three new studios in Europe: one for The Moody Blues back in 1973-74; Manor Studios in the countryside near Oxford in the UK for Richard Branson; and Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland for Anita Kerr in ’75. I returned to the US absolutely elated, thinking this was a new hit concept. I went back to my LA office and said, “Guys, we have to expand and open a European office.” But, hands down, everybody was against it. So I said, “All right I’m out of here. You guys own Westlake, this is the financial settlement and I’m gone.” My new company Eastlake was primarily focused on the design, construction and supply of monitors. The reason for the change of focus was that the industry was moving so quickly; I felt that no single person or company could do it all and get it all right. I had to specialise in what I felt I did best — designing acoustic environments. I was running Eastlake up until 1980. That’s when I sold it, retired, went to live in Hawaii and lay on the beach. But I got restless; I was always asking myself, “How could I have made my rooms better?” For a time there, through the ’70s, each new studio construction yielded a better product than the one before. It was like peeling back the onion, each studio taught us something new. But by around 1978/’79 the acoustic development and learning curves seemed to plateau. It’s important to remember that back then we were learning as we went — there were no books written on it at the time, so there were inevitably successes and failures. In simple terms, the rooms were often misrepresenting what the speakers put out and we couldn’t quite work out why. It occurred to me when I was lying on the beach that the timber-framed monitor wall structure wasn’t completely transferring the speaker energy into the aural part of the room. Some of the energy was going into the structure of the walls and the floor, which meant that the structure, particularly the monitor wall, was subtracting certain frequencies from the monitors, which was obviously affecting the overall room response. So I asked myself, “How can I improve the stability and isolation of the monitor wall?” I figured the answer was mass.
I left the beach, went back to Switzerland, and into business in ’86, trading under my own name, where I immediately set about putting some of these new design criteria into the structures of my new rooms. And, sure enough, the sonic difference was obvious. Those new rooms consisted of a wood-framed monitor wall in-filled with concrete, from the top down through the stud system to the floor. There was also an inner box for each monitor within the wall comprised of four inches of concrete. The monitor was now in a rigid wall system with 1/8-inch airspace allowing normal and requisite cabinet flexing, but encased in concrete. This meant that there was no (or minimal) transfer of low-frequency energy from the box to the wall system because the wall was rigid and stable. It’s the way I’ve done it ever since. When you do that the bass stiffens up in the room because there’s no flop and motion on the monitor wall... You can put the palm of your hand on the wall while the speakers are pumping out 120dB SPL low end into the room and you won’t feel a thing. It’s stable, very stable. The soffit mounting serves a two-fold process: to keep the image phase correct and also to stabilise the bottom end and isolate the speakers from the structure. I’ve always argued that flush mounting speakers is a better way to set them up than having them free-standing. It was something I learned when I worked at JBL in the ’50s. But like anything, there are good and bad ways to soffit-mount speakers. Virtually everyone in a home studio endures parallel walls. That’s a mid band and a low-end standing wave problem. Sometimes it’s a high frequency problem, it all depends on the type of room and the angles, the distance from one wall to the other and the finishes. You can get rid of a lot of highfrequency and mid-frequency nastiness between parallel walls just by inserting a simple cotton velour drape down one of the walls, but that doesn’t change the low-end character that a parallel rigid wall system will present to the room. Another rule of thumb is, never use monitors that are too big (low frequency-wise) for your room. If you put a monitor that goes down to 20Hz into a room that only has a 30 or 40Hz capability in wave distance, you’re going to create a huge bump about an octave above the fundamental frequency the monitor’s producing. And you’ll never get rid of that bump, because you’re introducing something into that room that shouldn’t be introduced (wavelength physics). If you’re going to build a small control room, match the monitor’s low frequency capability to the size of the room! (Half the wavelength of a room’s longest dimension should equal the maximum low frequency from the room’s monitor.) You can size your monitor downward in frequency as long as the room possesses the dimensions to carry it.
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AUDIOTECHNOLOGY: DIGITAL EDITION
Lower latency, cheaper and more in tune ...but with all the soul of the original The AudioTechnology App is made just for tablets. All the latest news, reviews, features, columns and tutorials every month for next to nothing. Stay tuned for more news at audiotechnology.com.au or like us on Facebook.
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