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Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au 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
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AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628). Contact T: +61 3 5331 4949 E: info@alchemedia.com.au W: www.audiotechnology.com.au (Advertising, Subscriptions) PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia.
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All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2017 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process with out written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 31/11/2017.
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COVER STORY
Too Close For Comfort: In the Studio with QOTSA
14
Music From Airports: Gudwin Mixes Despacito in Transit
24
Dave Fridmann-isms with Spoon
28
20
Yamaha TF Rack Digital Mixer
Antelope DSP Effects AT 6
ISSUE 44 CONTENTS
38
Bernard Fanning’s A ‘ wesomely Wanky’ Concept Albums
42
Soundbrenner Pulse Wearable Metronome
Korg Grandstage Stage Piano
48
28 46
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GENERAL NEWS
HERITAGE RAMS IN MONITORING Heritage Audio has introduced its Reference Audio Monitoring (RAM) series which is a bit like a Mackie Big Knob on steroids. Each RAM system has identical core analogue circuitry and a big red 64-step master level attenuator. The RAM System 500 is a two-slot 500 Series module unit with three stereo inputs including Bluetooth input for AAC, APTX, and SBC audio. Outputs include one stereo speaker output, one headphone output, as well as a 20dB Dim switch, Mute and Mono buttons. The RAM System 2000 is a desktop version with three pairs of balanced analogue inputs and a cue input for making a musician mix. The subwoofer output is independent so it can run with different sets of monitors, and two user-assignable preset levels let you recall common settings. A built-in 24-bit/192k Burr
Brown DAC input, talkback system and LED metering finish it off. RAM System 5000 is the flagship model, offering wireless remote and talkback, a Wolfon 24-bit/192k DAC input, plus support for 5.1 monitoring. Soundtown: (08) 9242 8055 or sales@soundtown.com.au
ARTURIA OPENS WINDOWS TO LOW LATENCY Levelling the playing field is Arturia’s bag. It’s made a name for itself putting out-of-reach synths into the DAWs of young producers, then by making analogue affordable again. When it released its first audio interface, the impeccably crafted Audiofuse, it performed well on Mac OS, but lagged a little on the Windows front. With the first firmware 1.1 update, Windows users can enjoy the same 3ms latency. The whole system has also been tuned to provide the best CPU performance on either OS. Arturia says you can even reliably use a buffer of eight samples,
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provided your DAW will let you. There’s also a new ‘sleep’ mode, which is essentially the standby feature promised during the launch. Overall, the update means users will be able to get more tracks, more effects and more VIs out of their computer to complement Audiofuse’s tightly packed array of I/O. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
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LIVE NEWS
NEW FAMILY OF LUCAS NANO HK Audio’s Lucas Nano family of portable PA systems has a few new models as of this month — the 302, 305 FX, and 605 FX. With five inputs, built-in reverb effects and Bluetooth audio streaming, Lucas Nano 605 FX is ideal for small bands and DJs or even presenters and public speakers. The Lucas Nano 305 FX and 302 are smaller than the 605 FX in both weight and power but include the same input options and features. Rüdiger Forse, HK Audio’s Senior Product Manager, said, “We’ve built in highly requested
features, such as reverb, to some models, and our groundbreaking technologies like the Multicell Transformer on the 608i, 605FX and 602 systems make sure your performance will sound incredible.” The Lucas Nano 600 and 300 models will now be phased out and replaced by the new 605 FX and 305 FX models. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
MEYER HITS NEW LOWS WITH VLFC A new subwoofer joins Meyer’s Leo family of loudspeaker, and its primary purpose is to provide “visceral impact at frequencies below the threshold of hearing.” This is where the line is blurred when describing audio as solely auditory. The very low frequency control element (VLFC) focuses energy into a narrow band between 30Hz and 13Hz to generate extreme variations in air pressure that are sensed by the entire body as compression waves, while those frequencies at the upper end of its range are perceived as thunderous bass sound. The VLFC is a self-powered system with two 18-inch cone drivers doing the hard work. AT 10
The on-board power is supplied by a two-channel Class AB/H bridged amplifier with complementary MOSFET output stages for high peak power and clean transient reproduction even at extreme operating levels. Cabinet porting and internal baffling have been optimised to deliver maximum acoustic output in one octave that extends across the lower limit of human hearing. Meyer Sound: www.meyersound.com
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
NEW
Grandstage STAGE PIANO - Available in 73 & 88 Key Models • Includes stand, damper pedal and music rest. • Seven sound engines: the SGX-2 with six acclaimed acoustic pianos, the EP-1, CX-3, VOX, Compact, AL-1, and HD-1. • A user interface designed for playability on stage. • Easy to control reverb & delay • Dynamics knob lets you instantly control the sound’s crispness and expressivity.
• Favourite buttons let you instantly recall yours sounds. • Smooth sound transition creates a natural-feeling change when you switch sounds. • Three-band equalizer lets you shape your sound. • Layer/split capability lets you easily combine sounds. • Panel lock prevents unintended operation.
PROMOTION NOW ON Deals across the range of KORG Digital Pianos, find your participating dealer at cmi.com.au/korgdealers
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SOFTWARE NEWS
LAUNCHPAD ARCADE Don’t have a Launchpad but always wanted one? Novation has released a browser-based version of its famous clip-triggering controller called Launchpad Arcade that’s a whole lot of fun. Utilising Google Chrome, Arcade is a place where you can get straight into making music with Launchpad’s familiar clip-based user interface. You can perform tracks from an extensive loop library, and you can even design and play lightshows, too — if you already have a Launchpad device. Launchpad Arcade works inside the Google Chrome browser. All you need is a computer and an internet connection to get going. If you already own
Launchpad hardware, you can install Ableton Live Lite for free or connect to the Launchpad App on your iOS device. The easiest way, however, is with the new Launchpad Arcade — you don’t even need a Launchpad! Launchpad Arcade is ready for players with zero music-making experience or seasoned finger drummers. Go have some fun. Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au
SOFTUBE DYTRONICS CHORUS Softube’s new Dytronics tri-stereo chorus plug-in is an exacting emulation of the ultra-rare, three-channel dream machine favoured by ’80s LA session royalty — Michael Landau, Steve Lukather, Dann Huff. The plug is available exclusively for UAD hardware and Apollo interfaces. The Dytronics tri-stereo chorus plug-in gives you all the expansive depth of the original’s three independent bucket-brigade delay lines, along with new plug-in-only features, for tracks dripping with lush vibe and character. The Dytronics plug gets you thick analogue chorus from three bucket-brigade delay lines, simultaneously on a AT 12
single source. Craft rich, swirling analogue chorus textures on guitars, keyboards, bass, synths, and whatever else you fancy whacking a chorus on. Lush modulation sounds can be sculpted with Preset or Manual mode, each with its own LFO waveform output. You can even use Preset and Manual modes together to craft your own signature chorus tones. Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
HUNTER CAMPUS TAFE NSW INSTALLATION BY MUSOS CORNER
Musos Corner We recently completed the design and installation of the new post-production audio facility at TAFE NSW Hunter Campus - the first Avid S6 Dolby Atmos training facility in Australia. Featuring Pro Tools HD (with Dolby Atmos), Avid S6 and MTRX, Focusrite Rednet, Focusrite ISA, Neve, SSL, AML, Yamaha - all with full Dante implementation - Argosy, Sterling Modular, and custom built furniture.
New stock landing:
Musos Corner
Showroom Open 7 Days. 1 National Park St Newcastle West NSW 2302. PH: 02 4929 2829 www.musoscorner.com.au Flexible payment options available. Ask in-store for detail. AT 13
FEATURE
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: IN THE STUDIO WITH QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE Snares that sound like they’re saying, ‘cock!’; contact mics on drums; ‘dry, shallow and vacuous’ DI guitar sounds; and Mark Ronson bringing the Uptown Funk. We join in the weirdness that is a Queens of the Stone Age recording session. Story: Mark Davie AT 14
Artist: Queens of the Stone Age Album: Villains
Backstage at Festival Hall in Melbourne, guitarist and dapper gent, Troy van Leeuwen, reckons the Queens of the Stone Age have exposed themselves enough. If you’ve seen old footage of ex-bass player Nick Oliveri onstage with his cock in a sock, you might agree. Their last record …Like Clockwork was a tough period. Bandleader Homme said the recording sessions were clouded by a depression that built up when he was bed-ridden after routine knee surgery. Van Leeuwen described the result as, “a little more introverted, a little darker and probably the first time we expressed any kind of vulnerability.” He said the first move the band makes whenever they’re contemplating a new record is, “look back at the last record and say, What were we doing back
then? Let’s not do that.’” They’d exposed themselves, box ticked, said van Leeuwen, “we can do that now.” Staring into the abyss of making a new record, they “wanted to do something that was more upbeat and not as dark.” The first step away from the downer of …Like Clockwork was to partner up with producer Mark Ronson. Who better to transition from dark to upbeat than a guy who went from Rehab to Uptown Funk? He knows how to get people to dance, and that’s exactly what Queens felt they needed. AT 15
They’d pull out an RCA 44 saying, ‘Elvis sang into this mic.’ Good luck!
The band also decamped from their own studio, Pink Duck — a comfortable place in Burbank, LA with a full SSL G-Series console and all of their accumulated equipment — and relocated to United, originally built by Bill Putnam. “We usually produce ourselves and are hands-on setting up mics, but we felt like being a band this time and have somebody else handle all that,” explained van Leeuwen. “We wanted to be outside of what we’re normally doing and utilise one of the greatest studios in Los Angeles — to be with Sammy, Frank and so many of the great ghosts in those walls. The microphone selection alone… they’d pull out an RCA 44 saying, ‘Elvis sang into this mic.’ Good luck! We wanted to use that gear, those walls and have the best-of-the-best help us be the band we wanted to be.” Travelling with them was the band’s staple engineer, Mark Rankin, who’s been part of the crew since the band flew him over from the UK to record part of …Like Clockwork. That first three week trial turned into seven months, and he’s since gone on to work with Homme on the Iggy Pop record, Post Pop Depression, and Eagles of Death Metal’s Zipper Down. “We love working with Rankin, he’s our guy,” said van Leeuwen. Songs for the Deaf was a landmark record for the band, back when Dave Grohl leant his two heavy hands to pound the drum skins. The ratcheted-up energy of his playing and the punchy, fuzz guitar tones made it an instant classic. Rankin said this new album, Villains, is a bit of a return to the dryness of Adam Kasper and Eric Valentine’s engineering on that early record. “Josh was talking about having really vacuous, small sounds,” explained Rankin. “Kind of like Songs for the Deaf where everything was tight but in a newer way. A bit raw but not a lot of air or space on the drums.” It all starts with that signature Queens of the Stone Age snare sound, which Rankin said is hard to describe. “We did get somewhere on this record,” regarding the description. “We deduced that as soon as the snare says ‘cock!’, that’s a good AT 16
starting place. We were messing about and it was like, ‘That’s it! You can basically make it say, ‘cock!’’” With that, they were back to rocking out. DRUMS: FIRST CONTACT
Nobody Knows off Songs for the Deaf has to be one of the most air-drummed songs of all time. Something about the way Grohl pounds the toms gives off a clickety-clackety dryness that punches you in the face. It’s all power without relying on space to make it sound big. Drums are a vital part of the Queens sound, along with Homme’s vocals and the fuzzed out interweaving guitars. During Rankin’s first session with the band for the last album he “was pushing the drum tech quite hard from the first song, which was Keep your Eyes Peeled. I was pushing him to keep tuning the drums lower and lower. He was saying it wouldn’t go any further, and I was asking him to go just a bit more. Then Josh said to the tech, ‘Just do what he says. Sounds good.’ That was a really good confidence boost.” Rankin attempted to explain the Queens snare sound in more explicit terms: “It’s a sort of ’70s dry-ish sound, but it still has a bit of ping. It’s obviously not a really pingy rock snare; it has a little crack that’s quite Queens. When we get the snare to that point, we start tuning the rest of the drums from there.” Homme holds the key to the Queens sound. Rankin says most of the songs are fully formed somewhere in Homme’s head, it’s just a matter of decoding them and making them a reality. It will often start as a string of references. “He was playing me Scottish marching band references for some of the drum sounds,” said Rankin. “I GOT HOLD OF THESE CONTACT MICS FROM A BRITISH COMPANY CALLED C-DUCER. THEY BECAME QUITE A BIG PART OF THE SOUND ON THIS RECORD, BY STICKING THOSE ONTO THE KICK AND SNARE.
“On the kick I would put it on the front head but on the snare it would be on the shell round the side, facing towards the kick drum. It gave a really cool, interesting small, hard sound. There’s no ambience
on it, and we would mess with that a bit and drive it. “That would be the core starting point for the sound on this record. We’d gate it down to get a vacuous breakbeat-ish kick/snare pattern with no ambience. It would form the front portion of the sound, the detail, and then we would add other things in behind it like a bigger kick. The small, distorted nature of the drums on Head Like a Haunted House is the contact sound.” Beyond the sound of contact mics, Rankin used an old RCA ribbon mic just over the drummer’s shoulder. “It’s as if someone is sitting with their chin on your shoulder while you play,” said Rankin about the mic placement. “It looks down toward the snare and the kick. Sometimes if there’s too much hi-hat I’ll move it over to the other side so there’s a bit more distance. WITH A BIT OF COMPRESSION AND A BIT OF DRIVE, IT’S A GREAT HARD 800HZ-AREA BREAKBEAT SOUND. It gives you the
character. We would start somewhere between that and the contact mics, then add things to fill the picture out.” He’d have some standard overheads set up, but most of the times it was just the mono overhead with some room mics added for size. He put up a couple of Neumann M50 tube condensers to capture the great room sound at United, but most of the time that ambience was too big. “Sometimes I had a couple of condenser mics low to the floor, just outside the kit and facing out to get that close slap. Or if we had panels around them I’d have them facing out towards the panels to get quite a close ambient sound.” Toms are a crucial part of the Queens drum sound, and the secret to that small, powerful sound is to use small toms. “We used tiny 12- or 13-inch toms on this record,” said Rankin. Samir from Masters of Maple drums was on hand to help with the drum selection and tuning. “We weren’t tuning them that low though, we were getting more weirdness out of the mics and chains.” He would usually stick an AKG C414 on each, then either gate them aggressively or trim them down in Pro Tools.
We deduced that as soon as the snare says ‘cock!’, that’s a good starting place
SECRET DISTORTION WEAPON
They also used a lot of distortion to shape the sounds. “I’m a big fan of distortion on the way in, it makes things come alive,” explained Rankin. “It adds a bit of aggression and pulls the harmonics out of it. Sometimes it means you can push the ambience lower but still get the feeling. The sound becomes a bit more hammered and the harmonics seem to spread it out a bit. It means the drums don’t have to be so banging, but they feel like they are. “I used a lot of distortion from a great company in LA called Overstayer. We heavily used the Saturator. I usually put that on ambient and room mics to drive those a bit. Overstayer’s VCA compressor also has harmonics you can blend in. I used the JHS Colour Box pedal on the RCA mic. It has two stages so you can drive it into itself. And the Standard Audio Level-or is insanely good. Sometimes we’d also drive the board. “The idea was we didn’t use any plug-ins and did as much as we could on the way in. There was a bit of distance for Alan [Moulder] to take it in the mix, but we made tonal choices on the way in.” By the end of setup, Rankin might come out with 10-12 channels of drums. “Within that there should be a few good drum sounds,” he said. “Once we get to that stage, I can give the band something exciting to play to. Then we’ll start working out the song and refine the sound as we go along.” During the session, the guys stacked up a seven foot high stage for drummer Jon Theodore to play on in the studio. “We were going to have Jon play on this little stage,” explained van Leeuwen. “We thought it would be funny to see someone his size up there. We didn’t end up using it, but it’s still a funny story.” BACKWARDS DI GUITARS
While Homme has the songs written, a lot of the arrangement happens in the studio. Anything goes really, as long as it serves the song. Van Leeuwen doesn’t normally recommend having three guitar
players in one band. “Too many flying egos,” he said. “But we make it work. We have a healthy understanding of each other’s voice when it comes to the parts. Sometimes it’s harmonising, sometimes it’s counter-melody or sometimes it’s doubling. Sometimes it’s not playing at all or picking up a synth rather than playing guitar. We’re always trying to find our own space and playing around each other. We have this joke about how we always finish each others’… sandwiches.” In a similar way to the contact mic-based, direct approach to the drums, Rankin said most of the guitars were DI’d. “IT WAS A BIT BACKWARDS WHERE WE HAD THE DI AS THE MAIN SOUND, AND THEN WE WOULD SEND THAT TO AN AMP VIA A DELAY AS AN ECHO SEND OR A REVERB. It would give it a totally different character,
so the delay is in a different world. Sometimes we would go back and refine that, and maybe even reamp it.” The Colour Box often served as the front end for the DI signal, with pedal EQ to get that band-passed effect. Remember, said Rankin, “a lot of the dazzle we were going for on this was small, vacuous sounds that leave space for other things.” “When you have three guitar players, everyone’s got to have their frequency zoned and it’s all got to fit together,” said van Leeuwen. “Sometimes DI is the easiest way to control where that frequency is going to be. It’s right there; you’re not searching for it in the mix. You’re actually turning it down because it’s so in your face.” To help nail down his spot on the frequency spectrum, van Leeuwen went as far as designing his own guitar pedal with Dutch maestro Dr. No. It’s called the TVL Raven, one of two pedals the pair worked on, the other being the TVL Octavia. The Raven is a filter/booster pedal with a central, raven skull-shaped knob that switches between three different ranges. “We basically made a sweepable filter and boost,” explained van Leeuwen. “It’s almost like a wah pedal, but instead of a pedal you have a knob. You’re defining the frequency you want to boost and it’s pretty sharp. It’s easier to grab a knob and go, ‘there it is.’ It’s the benefit of having everyone in the band knowing
how to record. You can do things like filter your sound well before the mix.” FUZZY MEMORY
On the fuzz side, other than the TVL Octavia, van Leeuwen said the Queens pedal collection is “obscene. Somebody needs to stop us. Between all of us players we’ve got hundreds of fuzz pedals. There were a couple of pedals I leaned on for this record. One was from a friend of mine who lives outside of Philly and has a pedal company called Fuzzrocious. He makes this pedal called the Oh See Demon that’s like an old school octave fuzz, but it gates so you’re not getting any feedback. You’ve got to know how to have enough signal to sustain it, but it clamps off really cool, so it’s a fun pedal to use rhythmically.” On the modulation side, Rankin said they used the Electro-Harmonix Mellotron pedal for any string sounds. Towards the end of Feet Don’t Fail Me, “that was Josh playing one of those. It’s almost like a string sample straight off.” “Dean and I use the Eventide H9 a shitload because it does everything, and it’s Eventide — their shit’s f**king rad,” said van Leeuwen. “A lot of guitar tracks were sent back through the amp in the room, because that room sounds incredible. We had the M50s up all the time. They were at certain spots in the room, you could just turn the far one on if you needed more size. The room is about thirty feet wide, the ceiling is high, and it’s all wood, which is why it never got harsh.” Rankin said the difference between DI and amp tracks was yet another way to separate the different parts. “If we had one DI and went for another DI that was somewhat close to the first, then the third sound would be an amp. It was all about preserving whatever the main part was and keeping as much space in there as possible.” On the amp side, van Leeuwen relied on a two amp system. He used his Peavey solid state head for anything that was quick with a lot of attack. The other amp he used was an EchoPark Vibramatic 4T5 made by Gabriel Currie. “It’s a perfect mix of a AT 17
’60s Bassman and a ’60s Super Reverb with a little Vox,” he explained. “It’s very open. The head itself is small and he makes these cabinets with one 12-inch and two 10-inches in them, so I had the option of either speaker. I just love those speakers and cabinet, so I was using them most of the time.” KING OF DRUM AMBIENCE
Once the arrangements are nailed down, the band plays everything live. “We used a click track maybe once or twice on this record,” said Rankin. “That was only because we were unsure of the arrangement and it gave us room to edit and fly parts around if we needed to.” During the takes, Homme would sing into a Shure SM58. Occasionally Rankin would put up two, because “of those times you put it up and go, ‘Shit the drums sound great on that but there’s a vocal over it!’ A lot of the time the guide vocal mic is the king of drum ambient mics. PARTLY BECAUSE
lot, and then the guitars will be out wide. If we got to the point where it felt like we needed some space, we would just send something out into the room at United and record the room. It’s like the Ocean Way plug-in on UAD. Because the rooms sounds so good, you’ll fire something out on the PA, record it back on the ambient mics and all of a sudden it works.” RONSON’S MUSICAL DATABASE
Mark Ronson is apparently a huge fan of the band, even though his isn’t a typical rock producer’s discography. Van Leeuwen said Ronson did what a good producer should; helped keep the band moving forward: “Whatever we were going for sonically, he was right there to show us what to try. And when it came to the drum sounds we really wanted to make it sound like an old SP1200, like a f**king hip-hop drum kit. “He really took it to the next level. USUALLY WHEN
IT’S FACING AWAY FROM THE DRUMS SO IT’S PICKING UP
WE RECORD, WE INTENTIONALLY DO THINGS WRONG. WE
MORE ROOM, AND THE FREQUENCY RESPONSE OF THOSE
PLUG AMP HEADS INTO OTHER AMP HEADS AND THEN FRY
MICS LENDS ITSELF TO THAT.”
AN AMP IN ORDER TO WRITE THE RIGHT SONG. He was
When it came time to record Homme’s final vocals, Rankin said there were three different schools of thought: “One was the upfront, clean condenser — a Sanken CU51; a ribbon for a bit of character — an RCA 44; and sometimes an old dynamic like an Electro-Voice. The Sanken has two capsules. United had one and it was insanely good; I wanted to use it for everything. The RCA44 ribbon also sounded fantastic. United have copies that have been there since they bought them new, and they’re really well looked after. Sometimes we’d use an Electro-Voice dynamic, purposely trying to get a harder, harsh sound.” He would put either an Eventide 910 or 949 Harmonizer in the chain. “It’s a favourite,” said Rankin. “A little bit of delay and a little bit of pitch gives that really good fake room sound.” That balance between dryness and space was pretty critical. “A lot of times we’re letting the low end of the drums or the bass be the big thing and keeping guitars small. We’d have a the 949 on the vocal a AT 18
there with all these technical tricks. He would take the Overstayer gear, chop up vocal syllables and make great underlying, creepy tracks — things we don’t normally do. He let the band be who we are, but if we ever ran into confusion he was our reminder of who we are.” “Ronson has got such a vast knowledge of songs; it’s ridiculous,” said Rankin. “I’d be listening to something in the morning and the first thing he’d say when he came in was what album it was from and what year it came out… ‘and the B-side was this.’ I’m like, ‘Morning!’ “With such a vast database of music to draw from he’s a really good reference for sound, music, arrangements, and really good with songs. We had a system going where I would be tracking and he would be set up in the side room programming and processing some of the sounds. There was a lot of sharing and throwing stuff around. Anything was up for grabs in Ronson’s little side lair. Whether it was mangling sounds or injecting
little tasty tidbits. “For instance, in Head Like a Haunted House he recorded that crazy thereminsounding keyboard,” explained Rankin. “Or we’d get to a point where we’d be working on guitars so Dean and Mark would be in there throwing keys down. Then Mark would go through and mess with it. “There’s a few cheeky little harmonisers on vocals, which was Ronson. He would do loads of processing and give us the parts back and we’d select what fitted in or how they sat into the mix. There’s also a drum machine clap in Hideaway, but Jon played it live with a foot pedal. We liked the aspect that it was electronic sounds played live.” The Overstayer gear once again played a key role. “It was kind of the secret weapon on that session,” said Rankin. “I started off with some piano mics going into the Mod Channel. It’s got really cool filters on it that self-oscillate. We had the piano tuner in, so while he was working I put the piano through it and started messing with the filters. It made him disappear into this world. Ronson commandeered it and I’d give him files and he’d process loads of things. Any extreme filtering was done on that thing. Everybody wanted one by the end of the session.” MIXED EFFORT
Just like the recording sessions, everyone got hands-on with the mix too. Alan Moulder flew out from the UK to mix the record at United. This time Rankin was set up in another control room to help feed any overdubs or mix edits back to Moulder. Because the sounds were so baked in, after Moulder’s assistant Caesar Edmunds set up the console and session the way Moulder wanted, then Rankin and Homme would guide him on drums and guitars to a point. Once Moulder had a good crack at it, Ronson would then come in and do his final listening and finishing off. “Everybody was involved,” said Rankin. “It’s not always a good thing, but it worked. Alan has so much experience that he was able to deal with that.”
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FEATURE
Jim Eno is pretty comfortable running his own successful studio, Public- Hi-Fi in Austin. But when Spoon got the chance to work with Dave Fridmann again, it was worth braving the winter in upstate New York to spend time with the super-producer. Story: Mark Davie
Artist: Spoon Album: Hot Thoughts
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Spoon are used to being apart. Frontman Britt Daniel splits his time between his place in LA and his condo in Austin, drummer Jim Eno is based near his Austin studio Public Hi-Fi, and keyboard/guitarist Alex Fischel is based in LA. So when they regrouped with bass player Rob Pope in upstate New York at Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Studios, it seemed the perfect opportunity to get off the grid and immerse themselves in their ninth album, Hot Thoughts. Then the cold seeped in. “When you’re there in the winter it’s really miserable,” said Eno. “There’s really nothing to do; you’re just sleeping there, it’s pretty hard.” After the first two-week stint, they made a rule: “We’d only work a week at a time up there to keep our sanity.” They quickly returned to their fragmented, cross-country approach; either heading back to Eno’s studio for overdubs between sessions, or Daniels returning to LA to write lyrics, and each of them taking multi-track sessions home so they could play around with arrangements. “We would usually start by tracking to tape and do some initial overdubs at Tarbox,” said Eno. “By the end of the session we had to get everything back into Pro Tools in order to do our shared recording among three different cities.” The band is obviously very capable with technology, which is not surprising considering they’ve been recording themselves since getting dropped by Elektra in ’98. “I figured it would be good if I started getting gear so I could be more in control and self-sufficient,” said Eno about the gear collection that eventually became Public Hi-Fi. “It was also to save us some money and move forward on things. I bought an early Pro Tools system and then a tape machine and a console.”
Being capable of recording and production makes it harder to trust someone else with your sound, but this is the second time Spoon has worked with Fridmann. He appeared halfway through their last album, They Want My Soul, and expanded Spoon’s sound. They’d always been big fans of his work with Sleater-Kinney, MGMT, Flaming Lips and Low, but “you think about Spoon and we tend to have fairly tight drums and production,” said Eno. “Then you listen to Dave and he’s pretty much the polar opposite to that.” They thought it would be a good mix, and when people kept telling them, ‘Dave isn’t one to make it seem like his record’, they leapt in and were really happy with the marriage. “His sense of building a song is great,” remarked Eno with obvious admiration for his fellow producer. “Keeping the listener engaged throughout a three-and-a-half/four-minute song takes tricks. You have to introduce new things and make things slightly different. He’s a master at that. He’ll have one little sound that comes in on the chorus and it won’t come in again. He’ll layer drums so he can mute things here and there in the middle of the song. It’s really great to be around him and see him work. I could go on for a while.” Going into a session with Fridmann with specific expectations would be unwise. His not likely to stick to any rules or conventions, it’s all about what works for a song. Eno gave an example from their previous record. He and Daniels had recorded a demo for the song where Eno played a tight hip hop groove, going for a Dr Dre feel. When they got to Tarbox, instead of getting Eno to re-track the drums, Dave just programmed the same beat in. “I never played it, but I did play it, you know what I mean?” said Eno. “Because he programmed every little kick
Keeping the listener engaged throughout a three-and-a-half/fourminute song takes tricks. He’s a master at that
FRIDMANN-ISMS:
SNARE MULTIVERB Jim Eno: Do I Have to Talk You Into It had some horn blasts through a big reverb (0:37). We wanted to create a reverb snare to balance (0:40), like on old Cure records. We used a snare drum through a lot of reverbs to create that.
SPOON-ERISMS:
DIRECT GUITARS The guitars on Hot Thoughts can be quite striking at times, and there’s a particular dryness to the rhythm sounds on occasion peculiar to Spoon. Eno explained that “one of the things Britt does is record his guitar through his Tascam 424 four-track and overdrive the preamps to get that sound. He’ll just plug right into it and crank it up, then he’ll either record on the tape and dump it into Pro Tools or just record straight from the direct out.”
Dave Fridmann in front of the Neve 88RS console at Tarbox Studios in upstate New York.
TARBOX ROOMS Fridmann’s Tarbox Studios has two main recording spaces, and three iso booths with a really tight sound where they tracked drums for the title track Hot Thoughts. The main recording space is 31 by 22 feet with a cathedral ceiling. “It’s a big live room but he has carpet on some of it and ceramic tile on some other parts,” explained Eno. “That way, when the drums are on the ceramic tiles it’s pretty splashy.” The other space 30 by 30 feet which has “more of a warm sound,” said Eno. Britt was working on the cover I Just Don’t Understand from the previous album They Want My Soul while we were mixing. It’s a good indication of the difference in that B room; all the pianos were recorded there, and the drums too with just two mics and a lot of compression.” AT 21
FRIDMANN-ISMS:
FRIDMANN-ISMS:
PEDALLING BETWEEN SECTIONS
HALF-SPEED PRACTISE PADS
Jim Eno: On WhisperI’lllistentohearit the middle section (1:51) is basically where two songs are joined together and we needed a part that bridged the first to the second part. Dave said, ‘Hey Britt, go in the live room and pick out 10 pedals that talk to you. Ones that really speak to you or you think look cool.’ So Britt brought in 10 pedals, Dave hooked them up and created the noise that bridges those two sections. I’m not really sure how he did it but I thought it was pretty cool.
Jim Eno: On Hot Thoughts there’s a little bridge section (2:29) where you’ll hear these minisounding drums. I played that part at half-speed on the tape and put a bunch of muffling on all of the drums. I used those practice pads you can buy to use your regular acoustic kit in your apartment. Then I played a bunch of takes with these weird fills, and it came out pretty cool.
drum and my little fills, and made them super tight on the grid.” Eno is old enough not to be perturbed by that idea either. He’s all onboard with whatever approach makes the record more interesting. It goes both ways. During the mix of Can I Sit Next To You, Eno wanted to keep pushing the level of the string section. He explained, “Dave had them at one volume and they weren’t loud enough and Britt and I wanted it louder. I said, ‘Dave it’s not parting my hair yet!’ I just kept making him turn it up. It was so loud, but Dave is really on board with things being dramatic.” Programming drums isn’t what Fridmann is known for. If anything, it’s the opposite — bombastic, big live drum sounds. “Dave has a way of using rooms to add a lot of excitement to a drum sound,” explained Eno. “You can hear it on Do I Have to Talk You Into It. A lot of that sound is Dave using his room and compression and a lot of distortion, then being able to balance those mics so it sounds really cool. He will do things like place a ribbon mic right in front of the kit, distort the crap out of it through one of his crazy mic preamps and
distort the crap out of it and that would be maybe 30% of the sound. “He would often use stereo overheads, a Beyer M88 on kick and his room mics would be fairly close. But that’s the positive about working with an engineer… I don’t have to worry about that stuff. I have a hard enough time getting a drum take. I make a lot of very subtle changes to my headphone mix when I’m tracking. I might be asking Dave to raise the snare by one and a half dB. A lot of it comes down to, ‘Dave this sounds badass and excites me when I listen to it on headphones so I’m gonna get a good take.’ “I tend to record drums a lot tighter using a lot of close mics and maybe a perspective mic up front of the kit. I consider what I do pretty basic, so I feel like Dave takes it to the next level. He’s a professional! There was one time when I was hanging out in the studio with Dave and his son. His son asked him a question and Dave said, ‘Jim and I are professional recording engineers, that’s why we do this…’ Dave Fridmann just called me a professional recording engineer… what a day!”
SPOON-ERISMS:
VOCAL MICS Jim Eno: “We use either a Neumann U67 or Shure SM7, whichever sounds better. Then I’ll usually put it through the Neve [Public Hi-Fi has a fully-restored 80 series Neve console], an 1176 and maybe a Urei 175. Britt likes hearing his vocals very compressed when he sings, so we tend to make it pretty compressed to tape.”
FRIDMANN-ISMS:
FOUR-STRINGED INSTRUMENT Jim Eno: For the strings on Can I Sit Next To You (1:29) I remember we layered a bunch of different types of string emulations. I think I used a Nord, an ARP Solina, a Roland string synth and some Native Instruments strings to get that sound.
Jim Eno playing his kit in the main room at Fridmann's Tarbox Studios: "He will do things like place a ribbon mic right in front of the kit, distort the crap out of it through one of his crazy mic preamps and distort the crap out of it and that would be maybe 30% of the sound."
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FEATURE
Artist: Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee feat. Justin Bieber Album: Despacito
I’ve got a new line to add to the biggest hit of the Summer: Despacito es un gran éxito. Whether you’re singing it in Spanish or English, Despacito is a huge hit. It was already a massive Spanish language success when two Puerto Ricans, singer Luis Fonsi and rapper Daddy Yankee (who both co-wrote the song with Panamanian singer/songwriter Erika Ender), released it in January. Then when the part-English language version received the Midas touch from Justin Bieber, it turned into a record breaker. It’s been at number one in over 40 countries, and at the time of writing still holds its place there weeks and months later. In Australia it spent 14 weeks at number one on the ARIA singles chart, and 15 weeks at the top of the US Billboard singles charts. Already last July, Despacito was declared the most-streamed song in history, and just recently broke a record for the most weeks at number one on the Billboard streaming chart, sticking there for 15 weeks. It’s been so extraordinarily successful that it has reportedly increased tourism to Puerto Rico this year by a staggering 45%! Bieber’s astonishing high-profile run as a featured guest singer started in 2016, after the success of his fourth album, AT 24
Purpose. Since then Bieber’s involvement helped propel Major Lazer’s Cold Water, DJ Snake’s Let Me Love You, DJ Khaled’s I’m The One, and most recently, David Guetta’s 2U to the top of the charts. Josh Gudwin was the main engineer, mixer and album producer on Purpose, and was at Bieber’s side to record and produce the singer’s vocals in each guest appearance. Gudwin calls these collaborations “strategic planning,” that help keep Bieber in the public eye. It’s worked, because Bieber’s name hasn’t left the top of the singles charts. HIGH FLYING IDEAS
According to Gudwin, all Bieber’s collaborations manifested in a different way. In the case of his and Bieber’s ‘remix’ of Despacito the process embodied the epitome of 21st century album-making — Gudwin edited and mixed it on a laptop, with just an expansion chassis and headphones while flying
ABOUT JOSH GUDWIN For a long time Josh Gudwin wrote and played music as a hobby, mostly playing guitar. He spent some time in the Marines, and it wasn’t until after this — when he went to college in Miami, Dade and a teacher suggested he make a career out of music — that he took it seriously. He attended Florida’s Full Sail University for a year in 2005/6 and then moved to LA to pursue a career as an engineer and mixer. His first step was to be an intern at Track Record Studios, then an assistant engineer at the Record Plant, where he worked with songwriter Esther Dean. He later worked for two years with top vocal producer Kuk Harrell. A recording session with Justin Bieber in 2010 changed Gudwin’s career path, and he has worked on almost every Bieber release since. When he’s not working with Bieber, Gudwin is engineering, (vocal) producing and mostly mixing for others. He currently works from his own room at Henson Studios in LA, where he monitors using ATC SMC25A, Yamaha NS10s and little Bose Freestyle speakers. GUDWIN’S GEAR AT HIS STUDIO IN HENSON: Conversion: Avid HD IO 8x8x8, Apogee Symphony 16 I/O, BURL B2. Outboard: SPL Mix Dream summing mixer, Bricasti, Neve 1073, API 3124, Altec 1566a, Dolby 740, Retro 176, 2 x Tube-Tech CL1b, Crane Song Avocet.
I had a five-hour lay-over, so while I was waiting in the American Airlines lounge I completed re-arranging the track and mixed it
across the world, sending files back and forth via the Internet. The entire process — from first phone call on April 11 to the remix release — took a mere six days! From his mix room at Henson recording studios, Gudwin retraced one of the most intense weeks of his already extraordinarily busy music career, which started with a phone call from Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, just as Gudwin was preparing to go on holiday. Josh Gudwin: “Last April, Justin was on tour in South America and heard the song. He really liked it and wanted to do a remix. When he got to Columbia he called Scooter, and on Tuesday, April 11th, Scooter called me, saying: ‘Have you heard from Justin? He needs you to cut this remix for him.’ I asked whether it could wait until Monday when I’d be back from a short holiday I had booked at Parrot Cay Resort, on the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. The answer was, ‘please go to Bogota tonight if you can.’ So I took a 3am flight from LA to Bogota, took a nap after I arrived, and went straight to Estudios Audiovision to meet Justin.” Back in LA, while Gudwin was on his way to Bogota, Jason ‘Poo Bear’ Boyd, one of Bieber’s main writing collaborators on Purpose, was working on the melody and lyrics for Bieber’s contribution to Despacito. By the time Gudwin and Bieber arrived in Audiovision, the vocal
producer and mixer had received Boyd’s outlines for Bieber to work with, as well as an instrumental version of Despacito — Bieber and Gudwin were ready to go. “I always travel with my laptop and an expansion chassis with HDX and UAD cards, which fits in a small duffle bag,” explained Gudwin. “I plugged my laptop into the studio’s I/O and looked around Audiovision for mics and mic pres. They had some nice vintage mics there, and I picked a Neumann U47, a Neve 1081 mic pre and a Tube-Tech CL1B compressor to record JB with. It’s a chain I also used to record his vocals on Purpose. Justin and I then worked on the parts, with help from Juan Felipe Samper, who coached him with his Spanish pronunciation. After four hours we were done. I went back to the hotel, comped the vocal, did some last-minute bounces for Justin, so he could listen to what we had done, checked out of the hotel, and flew to Miami, on my way to Turks and Caicos.” LAYOVER MIX
The recording session in Bogota was only the start of Gudwin’s work on the remix of Despacito. Next up were re-arranging and remixing the song, all of which he did while he continued to be on the road. Gudwin is an eminent vocal producer, who has
studied with the great Kuk Harrell (Mary J Blige, Rihanna, Celine Dion), but for logistical reasons he sent the vocal comp of Bieber’s vocals to Chris ‘Tek’ O’Ryan, an engineer who also has a stellar reputation as one of the world’s foremost vocal producers, and who specialises in vocal tuning for the likes of Bieber, Katy Perry, Mary J. Blige, Ciara and Mariah Carey. Fitting Bieber’s comped and tuned vocals in with the track also involved some re-arranging work. For this, Gudwin worked with a stem version of the original mix session by Jaycen Joshua. “I had a five-hour lay-over at Miami International airport before my connecting flight to Parrot Cay,” revealed Gudwin, so while I was waiting in the American Airlines lounge I completed re-arranging the track and mixed it. I was working on my laptop with the expansion chassis, and on Audio-Technica ATH-M50 headphones, which sound great. I didn’t record any instruments for the remix. I adjusted the levels of some of the instrumental parts and needed to arrange and mute parts of the original vocals to make space for Justin. The beginning of the song belonged to him. I also turned up the levels of some stems, like the guitars and the timbales, using clip gain. I didn’t use any EQ, I wasn’t going to change a great mix!”
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DESPACITO SESSION Gudwin’s ‘remix’ Pro Tools session of Despacito totals 67 tracks, 37 of which are Jaycen Joshua’s stems, followed by new vocal tracks, vocal aux tracks, and his master track. We’ll dive into the way Gudwin treated Bieber’s vocals (light green and light blue), as well as some new English vocal tracks by Fonsi in the third chorus (red), and his master bus chain.
FONSI’S VOCALS “I actually finalised the mix while I was on the islands, on Parrot Cay, where I was working on a Bose bluetooth speaker. I sent it out for approvals, then needed to make some changes, because I got a new vocal by Luis [Fonsi] while I was there with English text written by Marty James. Once Luis heard Justin on it, he wanted to add something himself, so I added that at the last minute. Luis’ vocals are called V and VDbl in the session, and they came in tuned. They already had the Waves D3 DeEsser on it, and the RVox, so I kept them. I then added the SSL E-Channel, the C6 and the Pro-Q2. They’re all doing light things, because Luis’ vocals also go back through the main $JB Buss$ again.”
ALL THOSE SENDS “The sends go to a series of aux tracks that are pretty standard. Everyone uses combinations of this stuff. The first send goes to the HALL aux, on which I have the UAD EMT 140 and a UAD Harrison 32 EQ. Then there’s the PING SHORT aux which has the Echoboy, Air Chorus and Waves RVerb, the 1/8 aux with the Waves H-Delay, the WIDENER aux with the AT 26
SoundToys Microshift for some width and Brainworx bx_digital for a bit of an MS effect, and the DIMENSION D aux with the UAD Dimension D chorus, and Waves REQ4 and RCompressor. Other aux effect tracks which I did not use, but which are part of my template, were the PLATE aux, with the UAD EMT 140, the MILLI aux with the Waves Trueverb set to a
‘millennium’ preset, half and quarter note aux tracks both with the HDelay, and a PING MOO aux with the EchoBoy, Waves Enigma modulation effect and RVerb. There are also SPACE FLANGE and UNDERWATER aux tracks which everyone has who’s worked with Dave Pensado.”
BIEBER BUS All Bieber’s vocals are sent to the $JB BUSS$ group track (purple) at the top of the new vocals section. This group track has most of the processing, with six inserts and five effect sends. JB’s vocal tracks are numbered 1-8, with 3 being his main intro vocal part, with a couple of words pulled out to Track 4, for a different EQ. Tracks 1 and 2 (in light green) are individual words with SoundToys EchoBoys delay throws — one ¼-note and one 1⁄8 -note, while Track 8 is a copy of Bieber’s entire vocal part, which has the Waves
REQ4 and Doubler, for a vocal widening and doubling effect in the background; the level of the track is pulled down to -20dB. The plug-ins on Bieber’s vocal comp tracks, 1-8, consist of just three instances of the FabFilter Pro-Q2 EQ and one Waves RDeEsser. Gudwin explained the nature of the heavy lifting on the group track: “First in the chain is the UAD SSL ESeries Channel Strip, doing some light compression [Ratio 3, Threshold -12], and light EQ [approx +2dB at 4.5kHz and -3dB at 250Hz], then the UAD LA2A
Silver to smooth things out [peak reduction is 25], the Waves C6 multi-band compressor for some very light EQ with compression, the Pro-Q2 fixes some weird things that were brought out by the C6 [it has a hi-pass with some cuts in the low mids], then the Waves Rcompressor again does some super-light touching [Ratio 2.13, Threshold -11.1], and the FabFilter De-esser takes away some high frequencies [at 7kHz and 14kHz]. That’s it on the inserts.”
MASTER BUS Gudwin’s master bus chain is different from Jaycen Joshua’s, which explains why the remix of Despacito sounds slightly different than the original. Gudwin elaborated. “The chain starts with the UAD Neve 33609 compressor. I go back and forth between that and the SSL compressor. Then the signal goes through the Plugin Alliance HG-2 Black Box, which has two virtual 12AX7 tubes, and adds a kind of tube vibe. It’s a cool box that lifts everything up a bit. The UAD Brainworx bx_digital V3 does some light MS processing to bring some of the elements on the side forward, and spread things out a bit. The iZotope Ozone 7 Stereo Imager also helps to widen the image. Finally there are the FabFilter Pro-L and UAD Sonnox Oxford Inflator for more volume. You also can put the Inflator before the Pro-L, it works both ways. “I take the Pro-L off when I send my mixes for mastering, but I sometimes also include it as an option. With the Inflator I set the Effect between five and 15 and the Curve between five and 10. When you go light on it, it still works. With the Pro-L I start with a preset, and I’ll tweak it if I need to. The song was mastered by David Kutch, who also mastered the original. He told me he used slightly different settings on our remix than he had on the original.” AT 27
FEATURE
DOUBLES OUTPUT FROM NEW STUDIO Producer Nick Didia, and studio co-owner, has been slowly influencing Bernard Fanning’s appreciation of prog rock, so when Fanning was ready to make a solo record, they decided to make two ‘awesomely wanky’ concept albums. Story: Mark Davie
Artist: Bernard Fanning Album: Civil Dusk & Brutal Dawn
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“Pretty awesomely wanky,” is how exPowderfinger frontman, Bernard Fanning, affectionately describes concept albums. Funny, because he just released a consecutive pair of his own — Civil Dusk and Brutal Dawn. Where did this wanky concept idea come from? While Fanning was responsible for the material, you could easily pin the largesse on two more culprits — prog-loving producer Nick Didia, and manager and Dew Process label boss Paul Pittico. “He’s really into prog; Genesis, Yes and all that pretty complicated, mid-to-late ’70s music,” Fanning said of Didia. “I’m pretty new to that. I like the absurdity of it; the pure indulgence and ridiculousness. To be honest, I think I prefer prog now! It’s funnier if you don’t take it too seriously. That’s part of why punk came along I guess because it was being taken so seriously.” It’s rare for a label to suggest that an artist release two albums in under six months. Over saturation, lack of marketing build up, slotting it in with other releases, all the reasons why — King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard aside — the minimum gap between releases is typically a year. Plus, what if the first one’s no good? It’s too late to pull back the horses; they’ve already bolted. When Fanning flew the idea of a new solo album past Pittico, and Pittico said, ‘why not do two?’ There was no way he was going to turn that down. “When the head of the label says that, you just jump on that chance,” said Didia. To be clear, there’s not much prog rock on either of these albums. Still, considering both have similarly dystopian, planet-laden covers with sun cycle-related titles, they’re ‘pretty awesomely wanky’ in exactly that prog kind of way. DADDY’S NEW STUDIO
Fanning doesn’t take himself too seriously these days, anyway. Since returning to Byron Bay after a year in Madrid, he’s essentially a house husband who’s day job is writing and recording songs. “I just go all day until the kids get home from school,” said Fanning, who loves his routine. “I’m just going to write as many songs as I f**king can. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. I would be more than happy to never go on tour again if the gods all smiled on me. I love either being by myself or with a couple of other people making music. It’s the thing that makes me feel best in the world.” When he’s not at home, he’s working out of his own studio, La Cueva Recording built inside the pool house on a property Fanning rents in Tyagarah, just outside Byron Bay. It’s 500 metres from the beach and takes in the whole of Cape Byron, all the way back to the lighthouse. The pool house was a large weekender, one-bedroom apartment. Bright, live and a killer view, it’s perfect for an open-plan recording studio. “Real World divided by 1000,” quipped Fanning. “There’s a kitchen that’s right next to the keyboard station. In the second verse of L.O.L.A. [off Civil Dusk and probably the most prog song on either record] there’s all this industrial percussion going on. I was doing a vocal take and the coffee machine’s automatic switch went off, so we grabbed it, cut it up and recorded more of its sounds with a 57, then chopped it all up and it ended up on the song.” Fanning co-owns the studio with Didia, and with
the approval of an accomodating landlord they’ve built an additional, isolated drum room. “It’s hard to say there’ll be a better drum room anywhere in the world in terms of the view,” said Fanning. The owner had offered to purpose-build them a studio, but they were happy with the results from the pool room, and decided to add the drum room instead. “I didn’t want to press my luck,” explained Didia. “Everybody who comes in says it’s a great place to make music. It’s vital for a studio to have that feel.” The building itself isn’t soundproof, and there’s no real division between control room and live room, so Didia wanted somewhere he could isolate drums from their neighbours, or a quiet place to record vocals without feeling isolated. They built the room on a pad roughly four by five metres (about a third the size of the existing live room) with a ceiling that slopes from three metres at one end to four at the other. Large windows connect the drummer to the view, while a huge three metre sliding door lets the drummer and band members interact. “It’s all one big line of sight from where I’m sitting at the board. The band is facing each other with their backs to me,” said Didia. “Everybody can see each other.” The drum room was finished post-Civil Dusk, but parts of Brutal Dawn were tracked in the room. “It ended up sounding like a pretty bright rock drum room, so it’s worked out good,” said Didia. Occasionally, the ’70s-era Yamaha C7 grand, originally from Festival Records, is wheeled in to isolate it a little more. Didia also has a storage room he’s turned into an iso booth for a Leslie cabinet, and a similar setup for the bass cabinet. He doesn’t put guitar cabs in an iso booth because he feels like it effectively changes the dimensions of the cabinet and therefore the sound. Instead, he uses a Suhr reactive load to bring down the guitar level when tracking. It’s Fanning’s happy place. “I understand why people like Prince would spend weeks at a time in the studio alone,” he said. “Because the pursuit of writing is so rewarding and never-ending. Everything else is a byproduct of the writing. Without it, none of it exists. Unless you’re on The Voice, where it’s more caught up with your performance and status in society, which I honestly could not give a f**k about. “Saying that from the point of view of somebody who has been known publicly, it’s just so uninteresting. You would not believe having to deal with that side of stuff, because it’s so meaningless. Anyway, it’s not like I get stopped in the street or anything very often, especially in Byron Bay! Too many hipsters in Byron Bay. They’re like, ‘Oh is that Angus Stone?’ Nope.” DROPPING IN DRUM LOOPS
Fanning is a minimalist when it comes to writing. He owns a lot of world-class gear, including the 24-channel SSL AWS 900+ console at La Cueva. However, these days he prefers to write his demos in Garageband. “I was on my Mac that didn’t have Pro Tools and I couldn’t be bothered buying it,” he explained. “Garageband is also much better than people think; it’s superquick, really simple and stops you from going into really complicated processes.”
He’s also been keeping his writing process simple by buying pre-recorded drum loops from Drum Drops. “You can buy just drum loops or whole multi-tracks,” said Fanning. “They’re played by good drummers and recorded at Abbey Road, Olympic, Air — all those good studios — through vintage desks using vintage drums and mics, with good producers. “They have all genres. A lot of the time I might choose folk rock, then go to the BPM and see if they’ve got the right groove. It’s a few bucks for a loop, or for not much more, you can buy the multi-track which will have an intro, a first verse, fills into the chorus, then variation in the second verse, and a bridge.” Fanning says he could easily program those parts in, but says Drum Drops is far quicker. “That’s the problem with computers, there’s just so many things that appear to be convenient but actually suck the life out of my writing process. IF YOU’RE F**KING AROUND MAKING A BEAT ALL DAY, THAT’S A WHOLE DAY YOU COULD HAVE BEEN WRITING TO A BEAT THAT’S CLOSE ENOUGH AND HAS GOT THE VIBE YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.”
The quality of the loops can make them hard to let go of. “Wasting Time [the first single off Civil Dusk] has a little bit of it sitting in behind the actual drums, but it’s much better than some shitty Garageband loop,” said Fanning. “They’re decent sounds and not all perfectly on the click. The push and pull makes it feel more like playing with a real drummer.” Sometimes the stock Garageband sounds work perfectly fine, said Fanning. “I’m only ever intending to use the sounds for demos, but Change of Pace is all Garageband, except for the drums and bass. Even the guitar takes use Garageband’s amp models. It sounded shitty enough to use instead of it sounding good enough to use.” Whether it was pre-recorded loops or Garageband amp sims, Fanning said there was “heaps of cheating in this recording and we did it intentionally because it’s very much a Frankenstein approach. You might talk to a singer/songwriter who would be like, ‘Yeah we went into Sunset and did it all to two-inch with live takes of the whole band at once.’ Well okay, cool man, so what? Just do it your way. Whatever worked best is what we used. The purist approach, like Jack White only using 16 tracks of whatever has some merit. But ultimately, why does everything have to stop at 1966? Why was it better?” The Frankenstein approach meant the recording order was flipped too. “We kind of made this record all backwards,” said Fanning. “We overdubbed the band, which you can do if you’ve got the right players that can push and pull with what’s already there.” The beds of Isn’t It A Pity were re-cut around the vocals and acoustic guitar takes, which kept the original tempo intact. “He doesn’t over analyse the Drum Drops,” said Didia. “The tempo he chose for that beat was slower than a band would typically play it, but the held back nature really makes the record work.” Occasionally Fanning would also play live drums to keep a certain groove. “When singersongwriters play drums to their own stuff, it has a swing that often isn’t there when other people play on it,” explained Fanning. “I’m not trying to insult AT 29
the drummers of the world, there’s just particular cases where it really works to have the person that’s playing the guitar, piano or main rhythm part of the song playing the drums. I can only really do it on a Neil Young-style ballad. Even if I only get it right for four bars and just use bits of it.” GUITAR INSPIRATION
During his Powderfinger days, Fanning always felt like a passenger when it came to guitar. With Ian Haug and Darren Middleton pulling the strings, he never had to do much to keep the train rolling. When Fanning decided to record his first solo record, Tea & Sympathy, he bought a couple of Collings acoustic guitars as an incentive to improve. Based on pre-war Martin designs, they have “the same bracing and same timbers,” explained Fanning. “Having guitars that sound amazing has made me play and practice a lot more.” He’s now very much an accomplished guitarist, playing in session for a number of La Cueva clientele. It didn’t mean he played everything. Ian Haug dropped in to contribute, and Matt Engelbrecht played bass on every song except one. “It really pissed him off because I played it and he couldn’t beat it!” said Fanning. Engelbrecht also laid down lead guitar on What a Man Wants using a Kramer-like pointy headstock guitar through a little Supro amp to hit the break up point quickly. Declan Kelly played most of the drums, Hamish Rosser (ex-Vines) also lives up the road and ended up on a couple of tracks. They would ask him down to play something just to get the song moving, AT 30
“then the stuff that he played on was just f**king awesome!” said Fanning. “We weren’t going to beat it so we just used it.” Andrew Morris played guitar on Reckless, Ian Peres, who plays bass and keys in Wolfmother, played the piano on quite a few songs, and Salianna Campbell played strings. “I just played the rest,” said Fanning. “A little bit of drums at a ‘get away with it’ level. Not like, ‘F**k who played that!’ No-one will ever, ever say that about anything I play.” For synths, Fanning has a Korg Stage Vintage 1 keyboard which he likes for its limited choices when he’s recording demos. At La Cueva, he uses it as a controller to trigger a Nord Electro, then a Kurzweil, and occasionally running through the tremolo loop of a Wurly. “It’s a really fun way to do it with dials instead of getting presets up on a screen,” said Fanning. “It’s like when you’re mixing on a desk. It’s completely different to doing it in the box. That was the whole concept sound-wise for the record. Capturing sounds with a microphone, there’s air in it, you feel that vibration as opposed to a big resy synth recorded through Ableton on some guy’s Mac and then brickwalled. There’s such an absence of character in so much music that’s around at the moment. There’s people like Flume who are really good at it, and then there’s really bad bedroom versions.” MIKING THE AIR
Didia is partial to recording a slice of real air. His philosophy is that mic choice and technique should make whatever is being recorded sound like the
actual instrument. “Sometimes they have to be hyped up a little, depending on the track,” said Didia. “But anything acoustic should sound like it sounds in the room. Which is why the room is important, especially for drums.” The self-described ‘lazy’ engineer also chooses performance over sound every time. When Fanning was showing Didia the tune for Shed My Skin, he was sitting on the couch in the control room playing a high-strung Maton. Didia stuck a mic up and ended up using the track on the final recording. “Sound is a funny thing,” commented Didia. “It’s very subjective. You can have the greatest guitar sound in the world. Fullest, best expression, blah blah blah, but if it’s not fitting the spirit of the song it’s gonna sound like shit.” Didia’s approach to recording acoustic guitar is roughly the same every time. “I’ll use one mic, a Neumann KM86 small diaphragm,” he explained. “I think they’re KM84 capsules inside the body, with slightly different electronics and two capsules so you get different patterns. That goes into a UA 1176. It’s really about having good guitars, the miking and compression isn’t as important as the source. I HAVE AN OLDER MARTIN 00-17 SMALL BODY MAHOGANY GUITAR. WE CALL IT THE ‘PORCH SOUND’, AND IT’S THE OPPOSITE TO THE HIGH-END WIDE GUITAR SOUND OF BERNIE’S COLLINGS. WE’LL CHANGE FIVE GUITARS BEFORE I’LL CHANGE THE MIC.”
The old Festival piano sounds like it was ripped straight off an Elton John record from the ’70s. “It’s like a really responsive guitar and amp combination,” said Didia. “If you want to dig in it
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sounds tough and if you don’t, it sounds light. I set up Earthworks omni mics in a traditional low and high string configuration. For Sooner or Later I may have jacked up the compression because I’ll typically run the two mics through a UREI 1178 and just bury it.” For bass Didia uses “an old Fearn DW2 DI and an old monster 200W Ampeg V6B solid state head that sounds really awesome.” Keeping with the theme of whatever is easiest, most of the vocals were recorded through a Shure SM7 dynamic. “There’s a song called Somewhere Along The Way, which was actually an old recording we did at 301 with a Neumann U47,” recalled Didia. “I’ve got a Soundelux U195, it’s got a sound and I just bought an AKG 414 for some reason, one of the ULS ones. We probably used that one too.” Fanning’s voice is one of the most recognisable on the Australian music scene, but he says it didn’t really hit its peak until right near the end of Powderfinger’s catalogue. “There’s an EP called Transfusion which was made in 1993,” he said. “I sound like a weasel with a peg on its nose. I got older, and my voice changed for the better around about Vulture Street. I had to do heaps of yelling to get out over the band and it made me sing a lot louder in general. I used to sing much more quietly in earlier Powderfinger, which is probably a bit more melodic. “It’s also your age and physiological shape. I developed really late. I was 17 when I reached puberty. I was really small until grade 12. When Powderfinger made the first record in 1991 I would have been 23, but I was probably more like a 19 year-old physically. Then I got nodules from screaming in the early days and changed the way I sang, not singing out of my range. When we started Powderfinger we were doing covers of Led Zeppelin songs and it’s just not in my range. The very bottom of Robert Plant’s range is the very top of my range.” TOM DOUBLE MIC METHOD
Didia rarely uses more than eight or nine mics on drums, and depending on the song he’s cutting, it could be just two or four. “I don’t call them overheads, I call them drum mics because it should sound like the kit and not just something that picks cymbals up,” he said. “I might use the Glyn Johns setup with one over the top, one over by the tomtom and maybe one on the kick drum. Otherwise I use a more traditional setup wth a stereo drum AT 32
setup, one on the kick, one on the snare, one on the hat and one on each tom. TECHNICALLY THE TOMS HAVE TWO MICS — TOP AND BOTTOM — ON THEM, BUT I RUN THEM THROUGH THE SAME CABLE. I think it was at A&M when I was testing out the idea, because you always flip one out of phase anyway, so I tried running them through a phase cable that flips the hot on the bottom to neutral. Then it just depends on the combination of mics. That way you can just use one pre for the two mics, which balances the level depending on the different internal impedances of the mics. If you use the same mic top and bottom, you get way too much of the bottom head, because they’re equal. I go for about 70/30 as far as volume of the top head to the bottom. I use Sennheiser MD421s on the top with these other little Sennheiser clip-ons on the bottom. I used to use SM57s but these other ones sound a little better.”
RECORD THE MIX
Didia comes from the school of mixing as you go, printing parts as close to the final mix levels as he can so “when you’re mixing there’s not that much to do other than make it sound good,” Didia explained. “That was another thing about Brutal Dawn, the whole time we were listening to it like it was an eight-track record. I have a bunch of outboard preamps, but discovered that I really like the preamps in the SSL, so I split the console where I have 16 mic inputs and eight returns to listen back. The drums were pre-mixed in Pro Tools and came out on two tracks, then I had mono bass and each guitarist had a mono output. I always tell the guys, the mix isn’t going to be that drastically different to this. You make it sound really good right away and then mixing is not a big deal.” It means Didia is always searching for the song that will sonically anchor the record. In the case of Brutal Dawn it was the first song on the record, Shed My Skin; a rolling acoustic number with blustery tom rolls, diving fiddle lines, and a more mid-centric vocal sound. “We had cut some other things before, but that was the first song that stood out as the direction we needed to go with this record,” said Didia. “The sparseness of it, and the storyline lent itself to a darker tone which carried on through the record. Overall, Brutal Dawn is a bit more sparse than Civil Dusk was. “I don’t know why I started doing it but we were listening to everything in mono on this record. I remember working with Stone Temple Pilots
at Southern Tracks which was a proper 24-track 2-inch studio, then we cut a song in a house with an eight-track machine. Because we only had eight tracks, it made for a really interesting but sparse arrangement. You’ve got to make those decisions on the fly. Similarly, doing things in mono helps pare things down. “IT’S A GOOD LESSON, BECAUSE YOU BECOME WAY MORE AWARE OF WHAT’S TAKING UP THE SAME SPACE. If you
have a guitar and piano that sound similar, you’d usually be okay if you pan them left and right, but if they’re both in the centre, one of them’s got to move. It makes you sonically fit things in in a different way because you’ve got less room. When we ended up spreading it back out, it retained that feeling, even though it’s tempting to fill those spots in again. All those things played a part in how the record ended up sounding.” “The record has that ’70s singer-songwriter kind of feeling to it,” said Fanning. “It’s not some sad retro thing where that’s the best time in music and no-one will ever improve on it. It’s more like that’s what these songs are asking for. The songs were written on acoustic guitars and pianos and the way Declan plays drums just lent itself to that.” “Speaking of the ’70s,” continued Didia. “I was listening to Pink Floyd’s Animals today and that has a distinct sound that doesn’t sound like their other records. There’s similarities because it’s the same writers and same players. But I think that was the first time they worked in their own studio, whereas the other two were done at Abbey Road. I’m intrigued by that idea of capturing a moment in time and try to bring it into what I’m working on.” “It’s the best way I’ve ever recorded,” said Fanning about working out of his new studio. “That’s how I did all the demos, just sitting in front of the computer with a mic, a keyboard and an acoustic guitar on a stand. Nick has really complementary ideas, so having another me throwing things out there was really good. His ideas and mine line up really well and if they don’t then one or the other of us can make a convincing argument as to why theirs is better. It’s usually by getting a reference to some other band and then we go get on YouTube and watch that band for an hour! ‘F**k Emerson, Lake and Palmer, look at that bassist play, incredible!’ Scouring YouTube for prog bands is a surefire way to subconsciously steer yourself towards making a pair of concept albums. How awesomely wanky.
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REGULARS
PC Audio Windows remembers every item you’ve ever plugged into your PC. Here’s how to fire up your own Ghostbusters franchise and exorcise those long-gone phantom devices! Column: Martin Walker
Device Manager has been an extremely useful troubleshooting utility across all OS versions, from Windows 10 way back to Windows 95. It lets you view and stay in control of the various hardware devices attached to your PC, not only stuff that you plug into its various slots and sockets, such as drives, graphic cards, keyboards and mice, but also the host of electronic devices built into your motherboard itself, including system timers, real time clock, USB controllers and so on. It lets you check that these devices have been correctly recognised by Windows and are working properly, to update their drivers, enable or disable them, or even ignore them if they are malfunctioning. You can launch Device Manager (among various methods) via the Windows Control Panel, and it’s normally my first port of call if something doesn’t seem to be working properly. You just right-click on the offending device and select the ‘Properties’ option, and on the General page you should hopefully see ‘This device is working properly’. So far, so obvious you might think, but despite its comprehensive readout of devices (typically sorted into around a couple of dozen neatly-categorised folders such as Disk Drives, Mice and other pointing devices, Sound, video and game controllers, and so on) there are two types of hidden devices not displayed — the first are non-plug ’n’ play drivers, printers and the like, and the second are ‘phantom devices not connected to the computer’, for instance, any USB gear that’s not currently plugged in or powered up. REVEALING THE PHANTOMS
To force these categories to become visible requires slightly different methods, depending on which versions of Windows you are running. For Windows 7 and any earlier versions (for musicians the only likely ones nowadays are probably Windows XP and Vista) you first need to run the Command Prompt. Do this from the Start menu by typing in Cmd.exe and pressing Enter, and then from the command prompt itself type ‘set devmgr_ show_nonpresent_devices=1’ (without the quote marks), and then press Enter. Next, type ‘start devmgmt.msc’, and once again press Enter. Device Manager will automatically appear after the second AT 34
command, and now if you go into its View menu and select ‘Show hidden devices’ you should see quite a few ‘greyed out’ items referring to missing hardware in addition to all the normal stuff. When you’ve finished your troubleshooting, close Device Manager, and then type ‘exit’ and press Enter in the Command Prompt window — this will reset the nonpresent_devices variable. For Windows 8 and later, you just need to launch Device Manager and select ‘Show hidden devices’ in its View menu to get those pesky ghost items to appear. Microsoft is understandably cagey about showing these phantom devices to everyone, to avoid inexperienced users removing devices that may later be required by the system, which may result in Windows grumbling about missing drivers. However, for our purposes it’s a neat way to find and remove references to hardware that no longer exists, such as your previous audio interfaces, display adapters (graphics cards), retired hard drives, optical drives, monitor screens, and so on, plus any USB devices that aren’t currently plugged into any USB ports, including long-dead USB sticks and other detritus. CLEANING UP
Although your PC may be working well despite these invalid references, there’s still a chance that at some stage in the future you may try to install a new hardware item that has similar properties, prompting the old driver files to spring into action and cause problems. So, for the cleanest and most reliable PC, it’s safest to remove them all. Also, while I would always advocate performing a clean Windows install after a major upgrade such as changing your motherboard, I have in the past used this phantom technique to remove references to hardware that no longer existed after I changed a motherboard on a machine that was previously running well but simply needed more processor clout. These phantom devices included the old CPU, as well as the motherboard chipset, IDE controllers, USB Host Controller, IEEE1394 host controller, Network adapter, and so on. In my case the result was a very reliable PC, and the saving of many, many hours of re-installing Windows and all of my applications.
So what are you likely to see as ‘greyed out’ devices? Well, the above list is a good start. You’ll probably see a host of items in the topmost ‘Disk Drives’ category (I found 14 in mine), relating to removed internal drives, along with various USB sticks and external drives that are not currently plugged in. If you know you’re going to use any of these devices again then leave the references, otherwise uninstall them. I also discovered various duplicate PC keyboards and mice, three redundant monitor screens, and a couple of retired dongles. You can probably uninstall any ‘Unknown devices’ as well, along with greyed out items in the ‘Human Interface Devices’ section that relate to keyboards and mice that were previously plugged into different USB ports to those currently used, as well as any any greyed out items labeled ‘Generic volume’ in the Storage volumes section, which are likely due to drive changes after using partitioning utilities. However, you should leave anything in the sections labeled ‘Non-Plug and Play Drivers’ and ‘Network adaptors’, and any Microsoft filters and converters in the ‘Sound, video, and game controllers’ section. Windows also treats each USB port individually, so for a system with six ports you may see a valid attached device and up to five ghost devices (one for each of the ports), which you can also ignore. Don’t delete any ‘greyed out’ USB device you’re still using but isn’t currently plugged in, or you’ll need to re-install its drivers the next time you want to use it. Otherwise you can uninstall each item in turn that refers to a known piece of hardware that’s no longer connected, and when you next reboot you’ll have a cleaner and hopefully even more reliable machine. By the way, don’t worry if you do accidentally delete the odd device that’s still required, since Windows will detect it and reinstall the driver for you after you reboot, either automatically (for most system devices) or ask you to point to any drivers it doesn’t know about personally, such as those for obscure audio interfaces. So who ya gonna call to banish those phantoms? Device Manager!
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Apple Notes iPad’s Coming of Age? Column: Brad Watts
I reckon we’re mightily close to the point where an iPad can be used for serious recording. I know many already do, but for me it’s still lacking. I’ll get to why a little later. Of course, you’ll need an interface that is savvy to iPad connection. There’s actually dozens of interfaces accessible by an iPad, as long as they’re USB Class 2.0 compliant they can be tethered to an iPad for multitrack recording. Yes, USB is the only option for iPad I/O as the interface needs to be connected with an Apple Camera Connection Kit (for older 32-pin connectors) and a powered USB hub to keep the iPad powered, or the Lightning-toUSB Camera Adapter for Lightning port iPads. Don’t be swayed by the ‘Camera’ nomenclature — Apple market the connector as a device to shift photos and video from your camera to the iPad — but it’s suitable for all USB peripherals. There are two flavours of the Lightning-to-USB Camera Adapter: standard USB 2.0 for $45, and the Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter for $59. While only 2017-model iPad Pros offer USB 3.0, get the Lightning-to-USB 3 Camera Adapter anyway as it has an additional Lightning port allowing you to power the iPad while it’s connected to an interface. It will negate the need for a USB hub and you’re relatively future-proof when you move on to a better spec iPad; it’s $14 well spent. SMILE FOR THE CAMERA
Recently, a number of USB audio interfaces have been released which adhere to Apple’s licensing program for iPad and iPhone peripherals. The MFi Program (Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad) covers peripherals such as game controllers, headphones, ethernet adapters, memory card readers, and audio/MIDI interfaces. These interfaces will typically ship with a Lightning cable specifically designed to connect to your iPad and won’t require the additional expense of a Lightning-to-USB Camera Adapter. MFi standard devices include Apogee’s Quartet and Duet, Presonus’ AudioBox iOne and iTwo, Avid’s Fast Track Duo and Solo, Focusrite’s iTrack Solo, and single input units such as IK Multimedia’s iRig devices. MFi-compliant interfaces primarily inhabit the AT 36
entry-level space, with interfaces offering from one to eight inputs. If you’re after 16 or 24 inputs you’ll find yourself in non-MFi territory. No big deal, as the Lightning-to-USB Camera Adapter will cover you. Here you can spend some serious cash, with interfaces from the likes of Prism Sound, MOTU, upper echelon Presonus and Focusrite systems, RME and Antelope. If you’re more of a console recordist there are systems from Behringer, Allen & Heath, and Soundcraft which will record 24 discrete tracks. Before we get to software, I’ll displace some fears regarding the iPad’s processing power. It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that an iPad is a somewhat benign computer, but nothing could be further from the truth. Take for example the current iPads. The ARM A9 processor is a dual-core 2GHz processor, and the A10X found in the iPad Pro units offers six 64-bit cores that are divided in two halves. Three high performance cores run at up to 2.39GHz, with three power saving cores used for lesser demanding tasks. It’s called ‘big. LITTLE’ technology, and shuffles instructions to either set of processors dependent upon processing requirements, consequently keeping the processor within heat margins. So in a nutshell, three cores running at 2.39GHz will easily record 24 tracks, as will a dual-core 2GHz processor. In fact, you’ll record 24 tracks at 44.1k on a first-gen iPad, and you can achieve 48-track counts with later models — even up to 96k. SOFT OPTIONS
Now, software. There’s ample choice available on the App Store, but if you’re doing simple twotrack recordings you can’t go past GarageBand. It’s cheap (free) and will tackle up to 32 tracks. However, while it records at 24-bit, you’re limited to 44.1k — not that big a deal if you’re recording a band. Plus it dovetails impeccably with Logic Pro X. If you’re aiming for something with more of a DAW feel or 96k resolution you should investigate WaveMachine Labs’ Auria Pro. Auria Pro offers 24-channel input, 44.1, 48, and 96k resolution, up to 32 buses, track freeze, bounce, ample DSP for EQ and compression, delay compensation,
AAF export so you can shunt your project out to a multitude of desktop DAWs, the list goes on and on. At $80 it’s the best you can buy. It comes in a few flavours and price points, with the lowest ‘LE’ version costing $31. You can kick off with the LE version and upgrade with in-app purchases as you go. Prepare to be amazed. 11 REASONS
Getting back to the reason I’m convinced iPad recording is almost of age — quite simply, is the impending release of iOS 11. In September we should see iOS merging toward a singularity with macOS. iOS 11 provides a dock-like macOS — who’d have thought! It also features an app named ‘Files’. The Files app is much like a single window viewed as Columns (command-3) in macOS, and it allows you to move files around the iPad almost like you’re working on a ‘real’ macOS device. If you’ve ever needed to shuffle files around between an iPad and a desk- or laptop you’ll be champing at the bit for this update. If you’re dealing with large audio files from a recording project iOS 11 will make this tonnes easier. But be warned. iOS 11 is strictly a 64-bit operating system, and earlier iPads don’t make the cut. iPad mini 2 through to 4 models will accept iOS 11, as will iPad Air and up models. All iPad Pros are 64-bit. PADDING AROUND
We are without doubt at the crossroads now, where the iPad can be considered a viable recording option. The software is capable, the iPad processor is more than capable. A 512GB model will easily tackle a day’s recording with no moving parts and completely silent operation — the grail of digital recording. Combine these features with lightweight portability and a suitable interface, and you’ve got a professional recording rig. Gold.
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REVIEW
Are Antelope’s Free Real-Time Effects a UAD Killer? Built-in DSP effects are great for tracking, but is there a cheaper path than UAD? Review: Preshan John
Antelope Audio has been value-adding real-time DSP to its interfaces for a while, thanks to its use of internal Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. The concept was furthered when Antelope collaborated with guitar software company Overloud last year, bringing amplifier and cabinet modelling to the Antelope interface experience. I recently picked up a Zen Tour. It’s a desktop interface by Antelope with a whopping 32 channels of I/O. It supports both Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 connectivity, has four onboard preamps, super high quality D-to-A conversion, a built-in talkback mic, smartphone app control, even a touchscreen. Hardware aside, one of the highlights of the Zen Tour is the onboard FPGA effects. Let’s take a closer look. FREE, FREE, FREE
What I like most about Antelope’s FPGA effects is they’re all free; part and parcel of an interface purchase, not optional and expensive addons. Right off the bat you get a heap of guitar amplifiers, cabinets, EQs, and compressors, most of which emulate classic gear. What’s even crazier is you can stack up to 10 effects on a single channel… why you’d ever need to is beyond me. Entire AFX (Antelope Effects) chains can be AT 38
saved and loaded as you please, even onto other AFX channels of your choice — perfect when you want the same compressor/EQ chain on all your choir mics, for example. GUITAR AMPS
Zen Tour’s front panel has four DI inputs along with two reamp outputs — a plain giveaway that Antelope is wooing the recording guitarist. The partnership with Overloud delivered 10 different guitar amp models, most of which you’ll identify by their appearance, and they come pre-loaded on your new interface. The Vox AC30 emulation yields pristine clean tones that feel super snappy and responsive. Wind up the Top Cut knob for a warm jazz lead or if you want glassy sparkle pull up the Fender Blackface with its matching 2x12 cab. Crunchy blues tones from the Marshall and Tweed Deluxe imitations clean up beautifully when you ease back your guitar’s volume pot. 10 cabinets are mix ’n’ matchable with the amps. You can choose a pair of cab mics from the AKG C414, Shure SM57, Sennheiser MD421, and Neumann U87. There’s a level control for each, plus 45-degree and rear cabinet positions too. Moving the mics around in front of the virtual cones affects the tone quite like you’d expect, in real life. The high gain tones are slightly lacklustre in my
opinion, falling short of maintaining clarity and distinction between notes in open chords. They’re still very usable, just not my go-to for heavier distortion sounds. Notwithstanding, I’ve got no hesitation committing most of the clean sounds on the way in to my DAW, even without doubling up a backup dry DI track. When it comes to tone, responsiveness, and overall authenticity of sound, the Antelope guitar emulations don’t disappoint. Next to the sheer amount of I/O, Antelope’s onboard guitar amps and cabs would have to be the biggest value proposition of this interface. REVERB
AuraVerb is an exclusive reverb engine created by Antelope for tracking purposes; a ‘comfort’ reverb, if you will. It’s available on only the first of the four internal mixers, with a Send knob on each channel. You get as much flexibility as you’d want on any reverb plug-in — Colour, Pre-delay, Early and Late Reflection Gain, Richness, Reverb Time, Room Size, and Reverb Level. A nice list of presets helps you reach a decision quicker. It sounds quite lush and three-dimensional, a useful addition that’ll be appreciated when the talent wants to feel a little less isolated while recording.
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Emulations abound in the EQ space; SSL G-Series and E-Series models, three Pultecs, Neumann PEV, three BAE Neve clones, Helios Type 69, API 550A and 550B, Studer 089 and 169, and more. There’s a host of usable options here. The SSL and API models are appropriately punchy, the Pultec and BAE are buttery smooth. It almost feels like there’s too much, and it takes a while to familiarise yourself with the character and nuances of each. Your performer won’t be impressed if you spend 10 minutes per input picking an EQs, so when experimentation isn’t an option, Antelope’s plain parametric EQ is perfectly sufficient.
gooey in the best possible way. It’s like Christmas every time Antelope announces a pack of goodies — run the Zen Tour Launcher on your computer, it auto-downloads the update, restart your interface, and watch your new selection of compressors appear, ready to use and absolutely free. I could get used to this. The vintage compressor family includes the UAD 1176, dbx 160 and 903, Retro Instruments Sta-Level and 176, Gyraf Gyratec X, and Altec 436. Each has its own distinctive character, some which excel at gentle massaging of a vocal, others at utter carnage on a drum bus. The more I use them the more I love them.
COMPRESSORS
DOES IT DAW?
Compressor world is mad fun. Antelope recently put out a new batch of compressors and the vintage EMA_AT111_[Print].pdf 1 28/07/2015 models look luxurious and the sound is sticky and
So we know we can track and monitor with Antelope’s DSP effects. However, the question 9:37 am remains: can you use FPGA effects when mixing
EQS
in your DAW? Short answer: yes. You’ve just got to configure the routing in Zen Tour Control Panel to mimic a hardware insert, and Antelope has a video showing how it’s done. For Pro Tools, this involved routing Thunderbolt playback channels into AFX input channels, then sending those AFX outputs through to a set of Thunderbolt record channels. Once you’ve set it up in a way that works for you, processing DAW audio is no more complex than creating a hardware insert on a track to the corresponding Thunderbolt playback channel. Would I record through FPGA effects? From what I’ve heard so far, yes. I dig the idea of lightly compressing a kick drum on the way in, or filtering a vocal track. But if you’re terrified of accidentally ruining the vibe of the perfect take, you can always record the dry signal to a separate track in your DAW at the same time.
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REVIEW
YAMAHA TF RACK Digital Mixer
Yamaha’s touch screen and Touch&Turn knob mean you don’t actually need an iPad to control this ‘iPad mixer’. Review: Mark Woods
NEED TO KNOW
The Yamaha TF Rack is the mixer you need when you don’t need a mixer. It’s a fader-less, rack-mounted version of Yamaha’s entry-level TF digital mixer range. Specifically for live sound, the mixers are designed for fast, easy operation by users who are not necessarily experienced sound mixers, while still providing the depth of function expected by those who are. The TF stands for Yamaha’s TouchFlow concept that aims to provide a fluid setup and operating environment centred around the touch screen. Not all shows need mixers. I mean both the hairy type who turn up with the band and the ones with faders. The TF Rack is intended for
PRICE $2699 CONTACT Yamaha Music Australia: (03) 9693 5111 or info@au.yamaha.com
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PROS Fluid operation Multi-touch screen No select buttons Good bang for the buck
applications where the latter is not required, or an iPad will do. Also, with Dan Dugan Automixer software included in the latest firmware update, you may not need the former either. Small venues, bands, broadcasters and corporate users would all be potential customers. STACKED RACK
The TF Rack is different to other rack-mounted systems in that it offers the same 16 physical in/ outs and full processing power as the smallest fader-equipped mixer in the range — the 16-fader TF1 — and it can be fully controlled from the front panel as well as wirelessly. Internal
CONS Flashing tap button I like faders
audio sampling is 48k and the input sources plug into Yamaha’s recallable D-Pre preamps. No faders here but you do get 40 mixing channels, 20 aux buses, eight DCA groups, eight FX slots and 10 GEQs. Booting the TF Rack up, I noticed the internal fan is a little noisy. You wouldn’t notice it at a live show but it could be distracting in a quiet room. The other thing you notice is the pleasing colourful touch screen. The display looks very clear, you can see what’s going on at a glance and the windows change as you’d expect. It’s fast and intuitive to control. Friendly features are everywhere like the musical notes/analyser
SUMMARY Yamaha’s TF series makes digital mixing approachable while still giving professionals ample control. Its rack version is no different. Everything from 1-knob control and presets for beginners to 20 aux buses and Dugan automating for pros. Best of all, the touch screen and Touch&Turn knob mean you don’t have to rely on an iPad and dodgy Wi-Fi to keep your show running.
One big advantage of having full control from the screen at all times is that the system is not totally dependent on a reliable Wi-Fi connection
displays on the EQ pages and the large emergency Mute buttons on the front panel. The layout of the screen and the front panel looks simple so its not intimidating to new users. It’s hard to get lost navigating the pages, but there are a lot of options available beneath the surface. Setting up channels is an example — it’s easy to start from scratch and build up your own settings in the usual way, but there are interesting alternatives. The GainFinder function uses an easily-understood traffic light system to help set the input gain on a channel. Strictly for non-pros I suppose, but input gain can be confusing to normal people and this could help. You can also choose to populate a channel (input or output) with presets from the QuickPro Preset library. The input presets are mostly commonly-used, instrument-specific settings. Nothing too dramatic so they’re safe and practical. More interesting are the settings for particular microphone brands and models. This has been done in conjunction with a handful of well-known mic manufactures that so far includes Shure, Sennheiser and Audio-Technica. Its kind of fun. Got an SM57 on a sax and don’t know what to do? No worries, there’s a preset. Whether you’re familiar with the particular mics or not, it’s briefly interesting to see what the makers have recommended. It’s also a fast way of working as it puts a lot of common processing choices in place at once, they can of course be freely tweaked as you go.
Output channels get a small library of generic presets for different locations. Preset EQ and compressor settings — including settings for IEMs run from the stereo aux sends — have been chosen to get you going quickly with minimum risk of errant settings. Like the input channel presets relating to specific mics the output channel presets include specific settings for Yamaha DBR and DSR speakers, in different environments. 1 KNOB TO RULE THEM ALL
Experienced users will be familiar with the Overview/Selected Channel layout common to most digital mixers. There are eight channels displayed on the Overview screen but rather than buttons to scroll to the rest, you swipe. Refreshingly, the TF Rack doesn’t have Select buttons. Touch a parameter on a channel and the channel is selected, touch it again and the parameter details are displayed. The on-screen parameter controls have got nice big buttons you touch to activate and drag to adjust. Pinch gestures change the EQ width and everything you do is accompanied by clear visual feedback. Apart from being intuitive to use like a smart phone, it means you don’t need hardware knobs to adjust the selected parameters. Unless, of course, you want to use a knob. That’s where Yamaha’s Touch&Turn knob comes in. Well-placed for easy reach beside the screen, the Touch&Turn knob is a multi-function device that’s activated by touching on the screen. Touch Input on the Overview screen and the knob provides instant access to the input gain of any displayed channel. Touch anywhere else and you can control EQ parameters, HPF, gate/comp thresholds and FX levels. The interesting alternative here is Yamaha’s new 1-knob EQ and 1-knob Comp functions. Both controlled by the Touch&Turn knob these can eliminate the need to use the detailed parameter controls at all. These functions are activated by the user when you’re setting up a channel, or automatically as part of the QuickPro Presets. Designed again for either speedy operation or users who don’t fully understand the meaning of the parameter values, these effectively give you more when turned up. More what? More everything.
On input channels the 1-knob EQ has two modes, Vocal and Intensity. If you’ve selected a particular microphone model from the QuickPro Presets then Vocal mode will probably give you a HPF, some low-mid cut and some high-mid boost. Turning it up with the Touch&Turn knob simultaneously delivers more HPF, more low-mid cut and more presence boost. Or less if you turn it down. You can also draw your own curve and have it exaggerated or understated. Its clever stuff and easy to use. Intensity mode is similar but aimed more at instruments. 1-knob EQ also works on the Main and Aux outputs with the Vocal mode being replaced by a Loudness mode that progressively boosts low and hi frequencies while cutting some low-mids. The 1-knob Comp performs the same task for channel dynamics. The basic settings are established by the preset; turn it up with the Touch&Turn knob and you get more threshold, more ratio and more make-up gain. The potential for over-processed channels is the risk when one knob controls several parameters at once, but the settings are all valid and there are sensible limits on the amount of boost on hand. Any setting can be changed or removed with a touch on the screen if it’s not to your liking. BASICALLY MIXES ITSELF
The built-in effects processors are derived from Yamaha’s SPX range and there are eight processors available. Two are set up as global effects with quick access via the Edit button, the rest are accessed via the stereo aux groups that each have one processor attached. These sends would often be used for monitors; particularly for IEMs with, for instance, a multi-band compressor across the send. The stereo aux sends can also be used as sub-groups and sent to the Master Out, with your choice of effects, or they can be used as purely stereo FX sends/returns. A big FX Mute button on the front panel is great for muting your FX between songs. A tap button for the delay effect in the top corner of the panel is handy. Its bright, constant flashing can be disabled in the settings, however, I’d prefer if it stopped after a few flashes and then started up again when it was next tapped. AT 43
Monitors are easily accommodated across eight mono aux sends which all have a compressor plus parametric and graphic EQs inline. The mono aux sends would normally be used to drive stage speakers while the six stereo aux sends with FX should be enough for IEM or other stereo send requirements. The TF Monitor mix iOS app allows for individual wireless mixing control using up to 10 iPhone or iPad devices. The TF StageMix iPad app allows for wireless control of the mixer enabling remote mixing or monitor set-up. An Android option would be nice, however, you can run the TF Editor application on a Windows PC with multi-touch to set up mixes or control them in real-time. One big advantage of having full control from the screen at all times is that the system is not totally dependent on a reliable Wi-Fi connection. Connection to a DAW via USB allows for record/ playback of up to 34 channels and a copy of
Nuendo Live is included with the mixer. New with the latest firmware is the built-in Dugan Sound Automixer, available on channels 1 to 8. Dugan mixers are the standard in automatic mixing systems and widely used in broadcasting, debates/conferences and TV shows. When activated it automatically raises the gain on active channels and lowers the gain on inactive channels. It’s a variation on my ‘the better things sound the louder they get mixed’ rule. Different weightings can be given to each channel and the whole system gain is held to the correct level to avoid any instability or feedback. WHO’S IT FOR?
processing needed for regular 16-channel bands if they can be mixed without faders, but it’s probably best suited to corporate applications and situations that require fast and flexible operating. I liked the sound quality and agree with Yamaha’s ‘natural and uncoloured’ description of the recallable D-Pre preamps. The EQ is good, accurate and thorough. The dynamics processors work as described and the FX are normal Yamaha quality. Combine that with the 1-knob multi-functionality and the QuickPro presets and it adds up to an interesting and friendly package. Up to date tech delivered at a reasonable price. Very reasonable when you throw in Dugan automixing.
The TF Rack can be many things and the application will dictate its function. In some ways it’s a comprehensive general-purpose sound controller rather than a mixer. Its got all the
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REVIEW
KORG GRANDSTAGE Digital Stage Piano Review: Preshan John
NEED TO KNOW PROS Beautiful piano sounds Large, usable preset library Very easy to use CONS Weight limits portability
Korg keyboards are heavyweights in both market position and gravitational pull. The new Grandstage has a significantly smaller stand-print than the flagship Kronos LS we reviewed a few months ago but still weighs close to a toddler hippo. Power it up, though, and your aching back will soon be forgotten. It’s a true delight to anyone seeking an authentic piano playing experience. Before getting too far into this review, I can’t fail to mention the ‘loudest’ design feature of the keyboard — an unmissable backlit Korg logo in the front panel that instantly turns the Grandstage into an extra lighting fixture at a gig. What’s more, you can activate Cycle mode where it transitions through different colours, or even better, make it flash when you hit the keys — a trick for the party bangers in your set that’ll either make you very cool or a social pariah! If you’d rather not have every performance turn into a flamboyant Korg advertisement, there’s an option to dim the backlight or turn it off altogether. TWO BLOCKS
Available in both 73- and 88-key variations, the sounds of the Grandstage are generated by seven separate engines — SGX-2 for acoustic pianos, EP-1 for electric pianos, CX-3, VOX, and Compact for organs, AL-1 analogue modelling, and the HD-1 PCM engine. All those sounds (500 of them) are served up via two partitions on the dashboard, the Ensemble and Keyboard sections, which can be individually turned on or off. Both sections have their own sound selection dial, Variation dial to scroll through presets, Level dial, and a small screen readout to display the preset name and edit parameters. Best treated as building blocks, Ensemble and Keyboard sounds can join hands using the Layer or Split buttons. Selecting a split point is easy and you can balance dual voice sounds AT 46
PRICE 73 Note: Expect to pay $3499 88 Note: Expect to pay $3699 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
with the level controls. It’s a fantastic layout that lends itself to quick blends of a huge variety of sounds without needing to deep dive into menus. The Favourite section lets you store 64 user-made patches, giving plenty of space to accumulate your custom collection. A Panel Lock button keeps your tone secure from wandering digits during shows. GRAND ON STAGE
Grandstage’s piano presets will satisfy even the most discerning players. Options available are broken down by country of origin; Japanese, German, Austrian, etc.; and both upright and grand piano models feel rich and lush on the impeccably-weighted RH-3 hammer action keybed. Authentic Rhodes and Wurlitzer tones are found in the EP RD and EP WL selections. Pressing the Edit button gives you control over preselected parameters relevant to the patch you’re on. Organ sounds turn the pitch bend wheel into a on/off control that mimics the switch on a rotary cab. The modulation wheel becomes a volume slider, so it’s pretty easy hacking a Hammond sound — minus the drawbars, of course — if you get good at using the extra expressive options. On the synthesis front, you could spend a week trawling through the variety of basses, leads, pads, bells, SFX and other eclectic sounds on offer. They’re great fun to play, albeit not very manipulable — but that’s the whole point… Grandstage isn’t trying to be a synth. I enjoyed the pads in particular. Texturally there’s everything you could ask for and you can pull some neat sounds by creatively combining both Ensemble and Keyboards sections. The screens are tiny but sufficient for the limited control you’re given. If there was a weak point in this thing, it would be the orchestral sounds. For the most part any kind of string ensemble patch felt thin and a bit cheap
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 Auto gain feature Pro-grade converters and I found myself winding down the LPF cutoff to ease back graininess in the top end. Same deal with brass sections, though some french horn and trombone patches sounded magnificent after a little EQ adjustment and a dousing of reverb. Having a measure of tonal control over the patches is handy but if you’re a tweak-freak you’ll possibly wind up craving more editability. BRUSHING UP
Like the two sound sections, the Effects section is super easy to navigate and minimal controls means you don’t waste time surfing menus. Four individual reverbs and delays present a heap of flavours ranging from a tight room reverb to colourful modulated delays, synced effortlessly with the tap tempo button. The effects are global, so they apply to both Keyboards and Ensembles sounds alike. The Dynamics knob is an invaluable addition, especially for the piano sounds. Rotate left for more delicate expression when playing classical pieces, spin to the right for pop or rock tunes. The global three-band EQ is a quick and musical way to compensate for differing PAs at gigs, or you could use the EQ on/off button as a one-push tone alteration option. At around $3.5k, the Korg Grandstage isn’t cheap, and its library of sounds isn’t as expansive as some may expect for the price tag. But this instrument is all about delivering the highest quality digital stage piano experience Korg can offer. Acoustic piano sounds are Grandstage’s sweet spot — you’ll find plenty else out there if you’re after synth sounds, orchestral emulations, or even electric pianos. So if you’re willing to treat everything besides piano tones as a bonus, Grandstage will impress. Leave it sitting on stage at a school concert hall, church, performing arts venue, or wherever else a miked up baby grand isn’t feasible, and there’ll be no regrets.
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REVIEW
SOUNDBRENNER PULSE Wearable Metronome Review: Preshan John
NEED TO KNOW PROS Very practical App integration is intuitive CONS Vibration can bleed into mics PRICE Expect to pay $149 CONTACT Musos Corner: 1300 687 672 or salesteam@musoscorner.com.au
The Soundbrenner Pulse is a Kickstarter campaign success story. At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking the device treads a fine line between novelty and functionality. However it’s a surprisingly practical concept with a well-executed design. If the name’s new to you, Soundbrenner Pulse is a wearable metronome that pairs up with your smartphone via Bluetooth and talks to an accompanying app. Only, this metronome doesn’t click — it vibrates. You can strap it on like a wristwatch, or use the larger band to append it to a lower limb, whereupon it pulses in time with the tempo of your choosing. FEEL THE BEAT
The idea of a metronome being tactile rather than audible is entirely legitimate. The tangible thump of a kick drum erupting from a subwoofer is just as groove-able as listening to doof doof music through cans. Even bum-prodding drum thrones have become a popular drummer accessory. We’re tactile people, and to musicians who are kinaesthetically predisposed, a pulsing click track makes perfect sense. But could it replace the ever-familiar ticktock-tock-tock of a wood block or marimba that studio folk are so accustomed to? I was keen to find out. The unit charges up via Micro USB through a separate battery pack that magnetically attaches to the base of the disclike Pulse. App control isn’t necessary for basic functions. Once you strap it on, tap the face at the desired tempo and the firm vibrations begin. The glowing dial flashes to give a nice bit of visual feedback and it can be rotated to change the tempo. AT 48
Double tapping the face turns the metronome on and off. A few minutes in and it begins to feel quite natural. Pick up your favourite instrument and you’ll find it’s a very different experience than playing to a traditional click track, and it’s not nearly as weird as you might think. APP TIME
Download the Metronome app for your iOS or Android smartphone and you enter a wide world of time-keeping fun with your Soundbrenner Pulse. The initial connection via Bluetooth was relatively stress free, though the app insisted on performing a lengthy firmware update upon first launch. Basic control is presented very nicely on the main Player screen. You can set the tempo on the dial or punch it in using the Tap button. Time signature and subdivisions are set with the two buttons above the dial and the Pulse emits a longvibrate for the 1-beats of every bar. You can create setlists for performances, complete with custom tempo changes for your songs. The Song Library lets you load pre-determined click track styles such as Shuffle and Waltz, many of which include varying levels of vibration intensity for each beat. The Settings menu reveals funky features like being able to shake your phone to set tempo, change the dial colours on the Pulse, make fine adjustments to vibration lengths for individual subdivisions, and lots more. IN SYNC
The chaps who kicked off the Kickstarter project had far more in mind for Pulse than just creating a novel toy. Utilising Bluetooth connectivity and
the benefits of app control, the larger concept is to allow multiple members of a band to synchronise tempo between all their Pulses when playing together. It’s a cool idea that’s way easier to pull off than, say, feeding a click into everyone’s ears at a pub gig with an under-resourced PA system. Ableton Link brings a new layer of functionality to the Pulse that lets you synchronise it to the tempo of an Ableton Live session and feel the tempo in real-time, be it on stage or in the studio. I can envision this being a useful tool in the studio. A drummer could ditch the earphones when laying down bed tracks, simply playing to the tempo of the Pulse which is dictated by the DAW. Integration with more DAWs would be a welcome addition, as would a quieter iteration of the Pulse itself that wouldn’t leak vibration noises into mics when recording softer instruments. As it is, the vibration motor is far from silent. Being an app-controlled Bluetooth device, Pulse is not without teething issues. I experienced the very occasional moment when the app connection went dodgy and caused the Pulse to spaz out erratically. Yet the device makes for a great alternative to a standard metronome. Soundbrenner pitches it primarily as a practise tool and I think that’s where it excels. Band members can lose the headphones at rehearsals and don Pulses instead — a far more comfortable way to stay in time over days of gruelling practise sessions. If you’re anywhere from a budding musician to a seasoned pro, you probably place value on playing in time. The Soundbrenner Pulse makes it a little more fun.
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REGULARS
LAST WORD with
Glenn Rogers
Glenn Rogers is the Managing Director of Allen & Heath, based in Cornwall, UK. Pictured is Allen & Heath‘s seminal System 8 studio console of the ’80s.
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I started at Allen & Heath back in June 1983 as an R&D design engineer. We were an analogue mixer manufacturer. I remember at the time I insisted on getting a PC for my desk, and that was about the extent of our digital capabilities. The company started life back in 1969. Allen & Heath had a great reputation for innovation. In the early ’70s Pink Floyd was touring with our custom-made quad mixer, complete with handcrafted panning joysticks! Another example of early innovation was our MiniMixer, which was the first on the market to use transistor technology. People loved that mixer. When you’re striving to innovate there was an element of risk in those days. Customers loved what we did but had to put up with a certain amount of unreliability and foibles. Even now I still hear from people who will complain about something that happened 40 years ago at some disastrous gig somehow involving an Allen & Heath console. People have long memories. It does remind me that you can never rest on your laurels. If things are going well, you still have to listen to your customers and be thinking about the next thing. You can’t have one bad day. If you’ve had a success you can’t sit and relax. Allen & Heath’s first big break was with the System 8 studio console. That was followed by Sabre, which had a great run as a modular mixer with good sound and performance. It really tapped into the project studio explosion of the ’80s, integrating well with the 16-track tape machines of the day. What’s the origin of our signature, super-light fader feel? It was back in the ’80s when people were sick of the stodgy and inconsistent faders of the time. We went searching for a reliable, consistent alternative and signed up with ALPS. The first console that had ALPS faders was the CMC [which was also the first to use a microprocessor to leverage MIDI capabilities]. We’ve been with them ever since. When ADAT came onto the scene, followed by PC softwarebased recording, we made an important strategic decision. We determined that with digital moving in so quickly, we would need to concentrate our efforts on live sound rather than the studio. It led us to release the GL2 [which combined front of house and stage monitor functionality into a single ‘dual function’ mixer — a big deal at the time], the MixWizard and the ML series [which put VCAs into the hands of a much larger group of audio people]. It follows suit that our next strategic move, the biggest decision we made, was from analogue to digital. We started work on digital back in 1995 with the Icon and DR install mixers. They were successful platforms that gave us the chance to learn digital.
We started work on digital back in 1995 with the Icon and DR install mixers. They were successful platforms that gave us the chance to learn digital.
iLive was also good for us. It taught us lots about what we needed to do in the future and evolved as we were learning. It’s all come together with dLive. Naturally the technology has moved on since iLive. We’re now 96k and the FPGA has given us greater bit depth. The DSP and processing… the system sounds great and that hasn’t gone unnoticed by our customers. We really worked on our packaging as well. We’ve learnt that the packaging and presentation is half the story. You can have the best engine, but if you can’t match that with warm enjoyable workflow, then it remains an uphill battle. Allen & Heath’s heartland is in the mid-range, great value market. That’s what we want to do best. Not so different from Yamaha in that regard. Affordable quality, rather than to be the top end or the mass market. I think we’re also known and loved for our passion for the industry; rather than just doing the job. It’s about wanting to have a good sound quality and make it affordable. Make the equipment last and support it well. For instance, we’re famous for our fabulous spares department that goes back decades. We try to look after people and that helps strengthen the image of the brand. New products are always a way forward and a challenge. Launching a new product is always like one day’s worth of euphoria. You talk to lots of people and the feedback comes trickling in — “that’s really good, but it’d be great if it did this”, or “why doesn’t it do that?”. You can’t please everyone, or include everything but making decisions about what features make the final design is what makes us successful. Having our HQ in Cornwall is wonderful. It’s where we once used to manufacture. Now we fill the place with a huge R&D team. We have 45 or so R&D engineers beavering away, most of them on software. They get to play with some cool toys, allowing us to rapidly prototype new ideas. We’ve come a long way from those analogue-only days of the ’70s and ’80s, but the passion is still the same.
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