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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
Art Direction Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au Graphic Designer Daniel Howard daniel@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au Subscriptions Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au info@alchemedia.com.au www.audiotechnology.com.au
AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628). Contact 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. (Editorial) PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia.
All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2017 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process with out written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 22/12/2017.
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COVER STORY
14
Layers of Pain with War on Drugs
ISSUE 46 CONTENTS
20
PM10 Goes on Transmission
How Preamps Quietly Make Big Gains, Part II
28
Antelope Orion Studio Rev 2017 Interface
Rode Performer Wireless Microphone AT 6
50
Ecca Vandal is a Genre Chameleon
46
NI Maschine MkIII Controller
dB Technologies ViO Line Array
24
38
28 42
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GENERAL NEWS
HARMAN DISTRIBUTION SHAKE-UP Effective February 1st 2018, CMI will take on Australian distribution for all brands under the Harman umbrella, including JBL, Soundcraft, Crown, dbx, Lexicon, BSS, and AKG (which CMI took on in August 2016). The development sees Jands part with brands like JBL and Soundcraft. AV Technology (avt) will handle the commercial AV side of Harman’s portfolio. Ramesh Jayaraman, VP and GM, Harman Professional Solutions, APAC, said “The new distribution model leverages over 60 years of collective experience between avt and CMI in the Australian market, and will provide customers greater clarity through
simplified sales and support structures. Delivering on this strategy also creates the opportunity for further investment and expansion by Harman Professional Solutions in the Australian market, as avt and CMI extend their capabilities and support across the entire Harman Professional audio range.” Support, warranty and repair of Harman Professional products in Australia will transition to avt and CMI on February 1st, 2018. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
SSL PURCHASED BY AUDIOTONIX Digico managing director, James Gordon, established Audiotonix as a parent company that purchased British console stalwarts, Allen & Heath and Calrec. Now he’s buying arguably the biggest mixing console name of all, Solid State Logic. SSL was rescued some years ago by unlikely ‘angel’ investor, Peter Gabriel. The company, far from the leviathan of the ’80s (when virtually every song on the charts was mixed on an SSL), has been doing its best to reinvent itself. The days of million dollar studio consoles are long gone. SSL’s Live series of consoles are well regarded but haven’t found a regular place on tour riders. It’ll be fascinating
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to watch what Audiotonix does to inject extra vitality into SSL. James Gordon CEO of Audiotonix comments: “With its incredible history and reputation, their enthusiasm and loyal customer base, SSL is ideally placed to be the next partner in the group. Having SSL’s help to further expand our international reach, technology and customer base will be a lot of fun.” Amber Technology: 1800 251 367 or sales@ambertech.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
WARM AUDIO U47 CLONE Everyone’s got a soft spot for a nice U47 clone. Warm Audio has released its stab at the venerated tube mic with its own WA-47. It utilises a custom reproduction of the vintage K47-style capsule designed and built entirely in-house with the same hole pattern as the original. Warm Audio says the basis for the WA-47’s circuit and design came from comparing and listening to two different vintage U47s with mildly different characteristics. The output transformer is a TAB-Funkenwerk (AMI) with a JJ Slovak 5751 vacuum tube sitting in the external power supply. Nine polar
pattern options are selectable from the PSU. Self-noise is very respectable at 11dBA and the WA-47 will handle a maximum SPL of 140dB to give a dynamic range of 130dB. The microphone ships in a classy wooden box with a shockmount, 5-pin XLR cable, and external power supply. Studio Connections: (03) 9416 8097 or enquiries@studioconnections.com.au
RME ADI-2 DAC RME released the ADI-2 Pro AD/DA converter in 2016 and it soon became a hit both in the studio and among hifi enthusiasts. Now RME presents the ADI-2 DAC that’s built on the same technology, concept and features of the ADI-2 Pro but with a focus on DA conversion specifically. It comes with tow super high quality headphone and IEM outputs and a remote control. The 1/2RU unit offers balanced/unbalanced analogue outputs (XLR, TRS, RCA), an Extreme Power headphone output, a super low noise IEM output, SteadyClock FS, four-stage hardware
output level control, DSP-based signal processing, external power supply operation, Class Compliant USB compatibility, sample rates up to 768k, as well as DSD and Direct DSD playback. It accepts digital input signals in the form of S/PDIF coaxial and optical (ADAT compatible) and USB. The remote control has clearly labeled buttons that are readable in low light. Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au
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LIVE NEWS
d&b APPOINTS NEW CFO Chief financial officer of d&b audiotechnik Kay Lange (left) has handed over his role after 31 years with the company. Lange joined d&b in 1986 when the company and its 10 coworkers had just moved from a garage into a former furniture shop. Now d&b continues to expand its 25,000sqm headquarters with over 350 coworkers in Backnang, Germany. Taking his place on 1st December as CFO and managing director is Jens Nilsson (right), who becomes the third general manager of d&b audiotechnik, working alongside Amnon Harman (CEO) and Markus Strohmeier (COO). Nilsson is responsible for finance, sales finance, IT and
facility management at d&b. He brings management experience from roles in finance and controlling, as well as sales and marketing. “We look forward to working with Jens Nilsson as new CFO at d&b audiotechnik”, said Harman. “He has the right experience to strengthen the management team on its way from a loudspeaker systems manufacturer to become an audio technology and solution company.” National Audio Systems: (03) 8756 2600 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au
VERO GOES FULL THROTTLE Melbourne-based Full Throttle Entertainment has invested in a Vero sound system from Funktion One. According to company founder Adam Ward, the addition of the vertically arrayed loudspeaker system equips them to do bigger shows and answers the requirements of a wider range of clients. “Vero opens up a lot of different markets for us,” said Ward. “Many clients need to see speakers look a particular way and irrespective of how amazing Vero sounds, it has the look many corporate and live clients want to see.” Full Throttle Entertainment aided Funktion One in Vero’s
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development by deploying a beta version of the system at a number of events before it was officially launched, meaning Ward and his team had an opportunity to work with the system and build their understanding of it. Funktion One’s Tony Andrews said, “Adam and his team have already had some fantastic results with Vero. I’m certain that there are many more to come.” Full Throttle Entertainment: 1300 233 482 or info@hearnoevil.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
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SOFTWARE NEWS
AUDIOSWIFT TRACKPAD CONTROL AudioSwift is a new app for macOS that lets you use a trackpad as a control surface and MIDI controller in your DAW. AudioSwift launches as an app in the menu bar and is called up with a four-finger tap. Four controller modes are available to cover a range of parameters: Mixer (for fader/pan/solo/mute/record controls), Trigger (which divides the trackpad into a grid so you can play samples), Scale (to play notes
within a selected key), and XY (for modulation). The creative app runs on macOS 10.11 or newer one MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or any Mac with a Magic Trackpad 1 or 2. On compatible trackpads, Force Touch translates to aftertouch when playing MIDI instruments. Mixer mode currently supports DAWs such as Pro Tools, Logic and Ableton Live, with more to come. The other three modes with any DAW.
ANTHOLOGY XI The Roman numerals have spoken — Eventide is up to the <eleventh> version of its ‘everything’ bundle decoratively dubbed Anthology XI. This is no ordinary update. Of course Anthology XI includes all 17 plug-ins from Eventide’s X bundle, but it brings with it six of its latest hits to the collection — these are Blackhole, Tverb, UltraTap, MangledVerb, and 2016 Stereo Room — taking the plug-in count up to 23. Plugs like UltraChannel, EChannel, Precision Time Align, EQ45 and EQ65 are high-quality utility tools. UltraReverb comes across from Anthology X but if
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that didn’t suffice, there’s an extra four new reverb additions to help you craft the perfect ambience for your mix. Fission is a creative processing tool which uses Eventide’s Structural Effects method to split tracks into transient and tonal parts. Plus there’s delays, Octavox and Quadravox pitch shifters, and a number of Clockworks legacy plugs still to explore. Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
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FEATURE
LAYERS OF PAIN Constantly starting from scratch, stacking layers on layers, chasing the tail of the â&#x20AC;&#x2122;80s, and mixing songs six times in six different studios. This is the story of how The War on Drugs uncovered A Deeper Understanding. Story: Paul Tingen
Artist: The War on Drugs Album: A Deeper Understanding
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The War on Drugs’ leader, Adam Granduciel, has a habit of wearing his heart on his album sleeves. Granduciel admitted to having suffered from anxiety and endless second-guessing while making 2014’s Lost in the Dream, noting, “I started going off the rails a little bit, in my own head. Getting a little too sucked in.” Three and a half years later, on the follow-up, A Deeper Understanding, a rejuvenated Granduciel is able to embrace his elaborate creative process. However, while he may have come to terms with it, that anxiety transferred to engineer and mixer Shawn Everett. During our interview, Everett opened up about anxiety attacks of his own that echoed Granduciel’s own recollections of making Lost In The Dream. “Adam told me about the time he wanted to be a painter,” began Everett. “He had this layer approach where he would paint, scrape away, then repaint, and so on. That’s what it felt like he was doing while we were working in the studio; him adding crazy amounts of passes and uncovering all kinds of layers in a song, and us going crazy trying new guitar setups, different amps, pedals, and keyboards. After months of working like that on a song, he might mute it all and do several other rounds of guitars! Working on the album was an endless process of layering and scraping, and layering and scraping. “Part of my job was to be the archeologist and keep track of everything. Riding volumes to let certain parts shine and ensure the strongest melodic elements kept surfacing. On top of all that, we worked in several different classic studios — Boulevard Recording, EastWest, and United Recorders in LA, and Electric Lady and Thump Recording in NY. Every time we went into a new room I would re-amp the snare drum, kick and other instruments, to capture the ambiences of all these rooms. I had tons of different layers and vibes from all those studios! As a result, I ended up with hundreds and hundreds of tracks per session, to the point where you would go cross-eyed just looking at it! Plus, I’d use the desk and outboard in each studio to do a rough mix. I mixed most songs six times, in six different studios!” The mental intensity was only exacerbated by Everett’s obsession during his mix process to try to “be as good as Bob Clearmountain’s classic mixes from the 1980s, like Roxy Music’s Avalon! Every time I got a mix to a certain spot I would compare it to one of his mixes and it was like, ‘Nooooo!’ My mix still didn’t match up! I just wanted to get a classic feeling that would stand up to these timeless records or at least have some kind of close proximity to that. It was driving me out of my mind.” MAJOR LABEL MOVES
The product of Granduciel’s endless layering process and Everett’s ‘crazy obsessiveness’, is a depth to A Deeper Understanding’s mixes that effortlessly showcases all the details, while not losing the heart of the album’s 10 songs. Lost in the Dream was a breakthrough success for the band which led to a deal with Atlantic Records. Unphased by signing to a major, the band’s first single from A
Deeper Understanding was a 14-minute epic called Thinking of a Place. While waiting for a flight to Portland, Maine, where The War On Drugs were scheduled to perform, Granduciel explained, “I was trying not to think of it as being my first major label record, but one of the consequences was that I had a bigger budget to work with. Still, I tried to stay true to the record-making process I’ve developed over the years. I wanted to make sure I used all the tools I’m familiar with and the sounds I like. I continued to try to become better at playing guitar, production, piano, and have material I felt was a step up for me and a little bit more challenging to figure out.” In addition to the bigger budget, a couple of other changes during the making of A Deeper Understanding had a major impact. First of all, Granduciel relocated from his home base in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to where his girlfriend lived in Los Angeles. Granduciel brought over some of his gear, and rented a studio called Sonora for 16 months, where he’d “go every day to write, build songs up, and record demos.” The other big change was the close collaboration with Shawn Everett, who Granduciel contacted because he’d read an interview written by yours truly detailing Everett’s stunning and Grammy Award-winning engineering and mixing work on the Alabama Shakes album Sound & Color. Granduciel: “Sonora has been there since the early 1990s and has a great microphone collection, some really cool outboard gear, and quite a few nice keyboards. I also brought some of my favourite microphones over from my studio in Philadelphia, for example my Sony C37A, which is my main vocal mic, several keyboards, and some of my outboard, like my Roland Chorus Echo, Retro Instruments stereo tube EQs, and my MCI desk. A few years ago I bought a 3M M79 24-track tape recorder, and I used that to record demos, but it needed a lot of maintenance work, so for this album we were working mainly with Pro Tools. I love Pro Tools. I like collecting awesome outboard and esoteric vintage stuff, but Pro Tools is f**king awesome for arranging songs. It’s the way to realise your dreams.” LINNDRUMMING IT IN
Granduciel’s recording process mirrors the way he circles around a subject on the phone, repeatedly probing it from different angles, rather than divulging a narrative beginning to end. It’s as if his arrangements are floating around in a cloud of Pro Tools sessions before the final mesmerising and hypnotic version pours out. “I usually work in the studio,” Granduciel explained about his songwriting process. “I write little bits on the guitar, or the piano, but these don’t really turn into songs until I lay down a drum machine — often a LinnDrum — in Pro Tools and commit a chorus or other idea, and then create a demo. After a couple of months working that way at Sonora the band came over from Philadelphia, as did Shawn, and we set up in my studio. I’d play them the demos and we’d record the songs as a band with more groove and dynamics.
“Pain was one of the first songs I wrote, and the first thing the band recorded with Shawn. We were really confident, but after a couple of hours it almost sounded too rock, like we were overplaying it. I said, ‘let’s turn it down and chill,’ and we recorded Thinking of a Place. Parts of that take, the first three minutes and the outro, ended up on the album. It was a really sweet vibe, so I suggested we record Pain again in that same mood. After four takes we had recorded the album version of Pain. I spent the next nine months adding, subtracting and arranging the song in Pro Tools. In between band sessions I would go in and reinvent the songs, record guitars, some piano, some Wurlitzer, whatever, trying to give the songs a new framework. Sometimes I just really need to be alone in order to end up somewhere I didn’t expect to go. Shawn would also start messing with the songs in his way, and everything really started to come to life.”
MIX BREAKDOWN
PAIN by The War on Drugs
INVISIBLE STEMS Shawn Everett’s final mix session of Pain contains a fairly moderate 68 tracks, many of which are marked as stems. Hidden within each, explained Everett, is a whole world of outboard and other treatments: “I used a lot of outboard, particularly when I was in the process of mixing into the tape machine. I kept printing outboard gear as we went, then we’d continue to work with the stems. A lot of invisible processing went into those stems. What looks like a simple stereo track, could be a distillation of many tracks and a deep web of insanity! One guitar stem could initially have consisted of 15 tracks of material from several microphones, then I’d figure out a tone I liked and blend them into one stem. I just kept whittling it down to a point where I could look at the session, and not have a panic attack!” LINN-ING UP TEMPO Even before getting to the tracks, Everett points out an anomaly that reflects an obsessive attention to detail; a tempo map of the LinnDrum track. “The Linn was recorded to tape, and both the Linn and the tape have some kind of fluctuation in the feel, and don’t line up 100% to a grid,” explained Everett. “I had this abstract thought that if I made a tempo map based on the Linn track, I’d create a more intriguing feel to work off, rather than just the normal Pro Tools grid.” CRAZY ELECTRIC Everett: “Adam wanted less bass than I kind of automatically went for, so we had to find a middle ground. The electric guitar stems contain all manner of crazy processing, using DI, re-amping, chambers, sending DIs back into Adam’s amps with new sets of weird pedals, going through a Leslie, and so on. Everything you could throw at a guitar we tried! The electric guitar tracks also had the most extensive volume automation I have ever done in my life.” AT 15
TWICE THE DRUMS Everett: “While trying to compete with Bob Clearmountain, I wasn’t quite happy with the drum sound I had. Rather than add drum samples, I found an original drum recording and layered it in underneath the other drum kit. It created more of the feeling I was after. The drums had to be rock solid, they’re essential for the propulsion of the entire rhythm track. “The first drum kit was mixed through a console, and had Fairchild compression and desk EQ. The second drum kit had also been mixed through a desk, going to tape, but I found it wasn’t working. That’s why the second kit has more plug-ins, mostly the FabFilter Pro-Q2 and Pro-MB, and also the UAD Harrison 32 and API 550a, to fix tiny anomalies. There are also two SoundToys Decapitator plug-ins on the snare under mic on the second kit, which is placed close to the kick. When I worked with Mark Ronson he told me that it was the sound of the Amy Winehouse record he’d worked on. The Decapitators dirty that sound up a little bit. Sometimes I use that mic for my main drum sound. Also, I am pushing the sound of the room mic on that second drum kit up as the song builds. The entire second kit goes to a 'Drumz' aux, which has the UAD K-Stereo to widen the kit a bit.” MATCHING EQ CURVES Everett: “I use many FabFilter and UAD plug-ins. The FabFilter plug-ins are very forward-looking, and the UAD plug-ins give you classic gear in the box. You can do things with the Pro-Q2 you never could with analogue. It’s like a laser. One lesserknown feature I use all the time is the EQ match, which is nuts. You send something into the EQ, get an EQ graph and then apply that to something else to get it to match. For instance, when I was working on the John Legend record, we wanted an old-fashioned Hollywood string sound, so I took a sample of strings from the Hollywood Boulevard movie from 1950, got the EQ curve, and then applied that to the strings I had recorded. If you want your kick to sound like an 808, just send an 808 through the Q2 and apply that EQ to your analogue kick, and it will sound significantly like the 808.” ALIEN ACOUSTIC GUITARS Everett: “Most of the acoustic guitar stems are from when I mixed through the console and to tape. I used the AMS DMX15 delay unit a lot on the acoustics. There’s an ‘acoustic tape’ track which has the PSP Vintage Warmer, there are several instances of FabFilter plug-ins because I had already done the more analogue, character things on the console. Sometimes with acoustic guitars you have too much low mids, and I use the Pro-MB to tame that. I also like to use the Pro-MB as an expander, and like a noise gate only operating on the high frequencies when the guitar plays, which creates a strange, alien effect. It never sounds like a gate, because the other frequencies are stable.”
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I mixed most songs six times, in six different studios!
IN SOMEONE ELSE’S HEADSPACE
Everett is also prone to endless tinkering, and it’s served him well in a career that’s taken off this decade. He’s a Canadian who attended the audio program at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada before moving to LA in 2005 where he cut his teeth at producer Tony Berg’s Zeitgeist Studio. Over the years Everett’s credit list has become ever more impressive, with big names like Weezer, Alabama Shakes, John Legend, The Killers, and Kesha. Still, he took this tendency to extremes while working with Granduciel because, “I like to work inside of somebody else’s process; I like to get into their headspace. I started feeling what Adam was feeling when working on his previous record.” Everett vividly recalls entering Sonora Studios for the first time to record the very first band session for A Deeper Understanding: “Adam had sent me demos, which were like starting points. They were not quite fleshed out; basically they were extended chord sequences, sometimes up to 15 minutes long with a drum machine, usually a Linn, guitars and keyboards, and sometimes some actual vocal melodies. Each one of them provided enough of a basic structure to begin recording a song. The band would record over the top of a demo he had created, with the LinnDrum as a click track for the drummer. After that I’d usually mute the Linn and everything that was on the original demo. Then we worked with what the band had played. “The band takes were often 15 minutes long,
and Adam generally didn’t like to edit those performances down right away. He’d pick the performance he liked the most then spend months working on that 15-minute take before we cut it down. We recorded Pain on the first day, and I did a rough mix of the chosen take the same night. Following that we kept recording and replacing. Adam would try new guitar tones and pedal combinations, and he kept layering guitars the entire time we were at Sonora. He might hear something melodically inside one guitar pass, and the next passes of guitar would revolve around that new melody, which would rise to the surface while the old one would dissipate and leave. I was regularly creating new rough mixes to fit in all those new elements. “It was similar with vocal melodies,” continued Everett. “As he worked, the melodies would take different shapes and re-form until something solid emerged. Then the melodic shapes would eventually form into words and then lyrics. It’s always fascinating watching a songwriter at work, because even while you’re in the room with them, you’re not quite sure what they’re thinking. Adam constantly cuts away at the fabric. I’d often think we had a bullet-proof chorus then he’d change the melody completely, and it’d take me a week and a half to get used to that! His songs tend to develop like Polaroid photos, slowly reverse evaporating into existence. I like working with people who dive into that mental state. It’s an interesting and wild journey working in cloudy atmosphere where you don’t know exactly what is going on or
Adam and I were not trying to go for full-on 1980s recording techniques, instead we were really into that expansive, otherworldly, hi-fi, psychedelic recording vibe that some people touched in the 1980s. We worked a lot in my studio as well, where I have an API 1608, but I don’t have the same amount of classic gear or those chambers with all those different natural acoustics. We went to several classic studios and used the gear, rooms and reverb plates to see if we could capture the dream-like qualities some of those records from that era have. “I would re-record things in all sorts of crazy ways. I’d reamp the guitar parts recorded with a DI and record them with a binaural head I recently got, two room mics, a distorted room mic, and so on. There would be mics all over the place. It meant I had the room sounds of all those classic environments available in the mix.” PUSHING THE ’80s ONTO TAPE
what is going to happen. It reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks; an unresolved journey with no real understanding or perspective of an endpoint.” Everett said Granduciel would even commandeer the Pro Tools sessions, mute parts and add different plug-ins, so “when he returned to the song to me it would be in a completely different shape than where we had left it.” Some people would be freaked out by or get impatient with the process of endless chopping and changing, and layering and tinkering, but not Everett, noted Granduciel appreciatively. “Shawn was never precious and didn’t take anything personally. He didn’t mind if I recorded over something he had done. He knows that the essence of music is the urgency with which things are committed. If I recorded a fleeting idea with one mic, he knows the urgency of that is more important than recording a non-urgent idea with 14 microphones.” “He never gets caught up in the sentimentality of the way he feels listening to one version of a song, and he never got attached to particular rough mixes, the way some people do,” reflected Everett. “The only exception was with the drums. With Adam’s music, there is a floating quality that just naturally comes when he is creating. It exists in most of the elements, but weirdly, not in the drums. He usually builds his tracks up using a LinnDrum machine, which has almost no floaty, ethereal quality; it’s pretty airtight. In my experience, The War on Drugs tracks are based on an airtight drum sound and tracks that you then build all the ethereal and ever-changing elements on top of.”
MIXING IN THE SOUNDS OF STUDIOS
Keeping track of each song’s progress required constant vigilance on Everett’s part. At any time a song could be finished or completely upended. Either way, it would need to be mixed. “I felt like I was mixing the album the entire time,” Everett recalled. “I never stopped mixing while working on it. It was the only way to keep on top of what we were recording and to hear through what was happening. Every time Adam added another 10 layers, I would figure out how to fit them all in, even if a lot would eventually get muted. The way to organise things in my mind was to sonically carve and shape everything, instead of dealing with a block of sound that was impenetrable. I also wanted to keep shaping things throughout the process, so it would not get to the point where things stacked up so much that it would be stressful for him, as it had become on the previous record. “I’d like to take you on the journey of Pain,” continued Everett, not intending any irony. “It was not only the first song we recorded, but also the first song I mixed. For that song in particular I had tracks and tracks of my captures from re-amping the snare, kick and guitar solos in pretty much every room in Los Angeles. “The reason was that Adam and I had been talking about these big records — particularly from the 1980s, made in classic, big studios — and we’d seen these photos of the engineers experimenting with certain types of gear. We’d talk about Daniel Lanois, latter-day Talk Talk records and Bob Clearmountain as inspirations.
The ’80s influence went deeper than just reamping into those same acoustic spaces, the instruments were carefully curated from the era too. Along with the LinnDrum, Granduciel predominantly used keyboards released in the 1970s and ’80s, including the Roland Juno 60 and 106, Korg Poly, Prophet 5, Arp Odyssey, Yamaha E70 Organ, Yamaha CS-5 and Arp Solina String Ensemble. “I use those instruments as a reference to the 1980s, though I had not really thought about the Linn too much until someone gave one to me,” he explained. “The Juno 60 has a sound that’s on many of the songs I love, and the Solina is an all-time favourite. Nothing else sounds and cuts through the mix like it. I’ve used the plug-ins, but they don’t sound anything like the real thing. I often double it and then pan the parts left and right with some delay, so it feels really wide. I’m always looking for the next piece of gear that inspires me. I’ll mess with something to see if there’s a song in there I can unlock. However, my references aren’t only from the past. I also really like what Nigel Godrich has done with one of my favourite bands, Radiohead, and the recordings made by guys like Flood and Trent Reznor.” With ’80s references on hand, but a desire to still make the mix sound modern, Everett continued the story of, well, Pain. “The first time I mixed the song was at EastWest Studio 2, which has a 40-channel Neve RCA Custom 8028 console. I laid the session out across the desk, and used its EQ and compressors, with the outboard and chamber there. After I finished the mix I made stems, which we worked with from then on. Adam would overdub to them, then I’d go to another studio — United Studio B — mix it again, lay it out over the desk again, and make stems again. Then we’d overdub again, and I’d go to another studio again. I might sometimes go back to an original version of the drums, or something like that, but overall we kept on working with the stems which were mixed all over the place. “At United I also had this weird system going for Pain, where I went from Pro Tools to the desk, and then from the desk into a 24-track tape recorder, and I’d take each track off the repro head and feed AT 17
iPHONE SAX Everett: “The horn was recorded in a wild way because I didn’t want it to sound like a straight saxophone. I taped iPhone earbuds to the sax, almost using them as contact mics, and I also used normal ribbon room mics, but put the latter into these big, old plumbing tubes. The sax sound went into these tubes, and was double-horned in a way.” DYLAN’S VOCAL MIC Everett: “I recorded Adam’s vocals with his Sony 37A. At one point I had a Neumann M49 and a U67, as well. For the opening track, Up All Night, he told me he used a Shure SM7 with some wild preamp, which had a super boost in the high end. When I was mixing that it felt like I was working with a 67! I think Adam got the 37 because he’d seen Bob Dylan sing into it. I have never fallen for that mic, but at some point I found a chain that suddenly clarified for me what the 37 is about. I sent it through a specific Neve preamp, and then through an 1176 and I did parallel compression with a pretty slammed Fairchild. You can see the uncompressed and Fairchild tracks stems in the session, so I could find the right blend. In the mix I sent his vocal through a Memory Man pedal, and also the Lexicon Prime Time. I was really obsessed with the way the Prime Time degenerates the sound in that weird, old, digital lo-fi way.” MASTER MADNESS Everett: “Basically everything in the session goes to the Master 3.1.1 track. From there into the Master Aux, and then the stereo mix gets printed below. This allows me to push the master aux the way I want. If I feel I’m slamming the master aux too much, I can just pull the 3.1.1 fader down. The two master aux tracks have tons of plug-ins! There are three UAD Chandler Curve Benders on the Master 3.1.1 track, because I’d done this weird EQ curve with the Pro-Q2, but it has such a clean sound to it, I wondered whether I could get a more analogue equivalent with the Curve Benders. I used the Waves Q-Clone EQ modelling plug-in to analyse the EQ curve of the Pro-Q2, and then sent the Curve Benders into the same Q-Clone, but it took three Curve Bender plug-ins to get the same EQ shape. I AB-ed this with the Pro-Q2 and found that it did sound cooler with the Curve Benders. “There are a lot of tape simulation plug-ins on the Master Aux—ATR102, A800 and two PSP Vintage Warmers! I had these tape plug-ins on the session the entire time, so I was mixing into them, just like I’d done with the actual tape machine. I’m pushing into something that adds character. The other plug-ins are just touching, apart from the UAD Oxford Limiter, which is very important because that’s where I’m getting most of my level. Until that point my mixes are quite quiet: I could turn up the limiter 12 or 13dB and it still won’t distort. I like to keep my gain structure pretty low the entire time, so if I suddenly do something dramatic, like push a guitar or something, I have room to work with. This also helps to preserve the transients, although loudness can be weird; a lot of it comes from finding the right EQ curves.”
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His songs tend to develop like Polaroid photos, slowly reverse evaporating into existence
those back into the channels on the other side of the desk. I had my desk split in two. If I turned up a pre-tape machine fader, I was driving the tape machine harder. At the other side of the desk all the faders were set to zero. Because I wasn’t tracking, the latency from the repro head was not an issue. It was a fun way to work, pushing into tape compression while I was mixing.” CHASING CLEARMOUNTAIN’S TAIL
After mixes in several big-name studios, Everett still wasn’t done. The mix of Pain eventually culminated in five days of non-stop mixing at his studio. “This is where my obsession with Bob Clearmountain’s work in the 1980s really played a big part,” he said. “I was listening to Avalon, Born In The USA and other records he’d mixed at the time. I was constantly AB-ing my mix of Pain against what Bob had done, and every time my mix sounded horrible compared to his. It was driving me insane. I’d spend hours working on a drum sound I thought sounded cool, and when I compared it to a Clearmountain record, I’d go, ‘Aarrrrghh!’ “I was hyper-obsessed. I had this vision of how I wanted the song to sound, but didn’t quite know how to get there. I was getting panic and anxiety attacks, but I couldn’t stop working on it. I was creating mixes based on Eno’s Oblique Strategy cards. I would change the drum sound completely, then mix the other elements into the new drum sound. I was trying to find little spaces for each element; if one instrument had a cool little melody, I’d pull that up. Adam’s music is so dreamlike and there are so many waves that you could automate
forever and still find small gems inside them. “I was building these whole soundscapes, like mountains, then I’d go back and AB the drums again against Clearmountain, and it wouldn’t be as good so I’d have to start again. His stuff is just such an explosion of sonic glory! I never thought of asking him directly, even though I know him. When I was working on a Charlie Winston record in 2011 at Apogee Studio in LA, which is Clearmountain’s studio, he called in one day and said: ‘I hear our assistant isn’t coming in today, would you like me to assist?’ So he came in to assist me on that session, changing mics and everything! “Eventually I got my mix of Pain to a point where I liked it, and thought it was finished. At that point we went to New York for a month, to work on other songs. I had worked so hard on Pain, and I wanted Adam to like what I had done so much, I did not dare play him my mix, as I was really worried he wasn’t going to like it. There was some gear in the room at Electric Lady that I hadn’t used for my Pain mix, including a Lexicon Prime Time delay which I really wanted on his vocal. Whenever Adam stepped out I’d work on the mix again, and mute it when he came back in. On the last day at Electric Lady he said, ‘You never played me your mix of Pain!’ I sent it to him, and while I was in a taxi on my way to the airport at three or four in the morning he sent me a text, saying, ‘You motherf**ker, you got it!’ That was one of the happiest moments for me working on this record. I guess what I did with that song became a little bit of a blueprint for the rest of the mixes as well.”
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FEATURE
Funktion-One Vero teams with Yamaha PM10 Rivage for a trance extravaganza. Story: Christopher Holder
Okay, let’s get the jibes over with before we go any further. This is more than an ‘aux cord’ story about DJs pressing Play and sound guys with their feet up tooling around on Facebook. Transmission is a phenomenally successful trance franchise event, still zealously overseen by head honchos, out of the Czech Republic. It’s a super-slick, super-spectacular, themed event. (Don’t bother trying to hire a laser on a Transmission weekend; they’re all taken.) Over the daylight savings weekend in Spring, Transmission once again touched down in Melbourne (after a successful 2016 Australian debut at Hisense Arena). This year the event kicked into another gear, hiring out the cavernous Etihad Stadium. Partygoers parted with $150+ to join thousands of others on the field of play where bigger-thanBen-Hur staging, lighting, LED and laser were matched by an equally monstrous audio rig. Full Throttle Entertainment was again selected to provide audio for the 2017 edition of Transmission after a successful performance at the 2016 event. Full Throttle Entertainment is the only Australian AT 20
source of sufficient stock of Funktion-One PA, and the Transmission Festival is a Funktion-One aficionado. It’s no secret that dance music events love Funktion-One, and Full Throttle Entertainment, helmed by Adam Ward, is a heavy hitter in the boutique festival market. Far from a cut ’n’ paste gig, this was to be Full Throttle’s biggest and most challenging of its short yet eventful six-year existence. VERO ARRAY
First challenge was to cover the space. The promoters wanted every square metre of the field of play evenly covered with pristine, powerful sound. That’s something in order of 80m wide and 80m+ deep, with an additional VIP area behind the FOH position. Full Throttle Entertainment let its Funktion-One Vero rig do most of the heavy lifting. With 12 cabs a side, Vero looks all the world like a large-format line array but designer Tony Andrews will be the first to tell you it isn’t. It’s a horn-loaded PA based on three different boxes that take care of different throw and dispersion jobs. Near the top of the array
it acts like a line array and couples accordingly yet as you move down the array it behaves more like point source with a coherent sonic signature. Talk to a lot of loudspeaker designers and they’ll tell you that most line arrays are trying to do a similar thing under the guise of being ‘line source’, Tony’s just got the cajones to stand up and tell the market he reckons his approach is actually superior in many/ most applications. Outfill was addressed by a flown array of Funktion-One Resolution cabs, with some additional groundstacked Resolution loudspeakers. The arrays were arranged in a L/R, R/L configuration so everyone enjoyed a stereo image. Stereo is important for a trance festival, where a lot of wide imaging and phase effects keeps ravers’ skin tingling. SUBS TRACTION
That’s all as might be expected. But the real fun begins in Sub Land. The Vero array is not a trifling rig. It’s big, powerful, and its frequency response extends down to about 80Hz. Beyond 80Hz is where a festival like Transmission really distinguishes itself and is
one of the reasons why Funktion-One has so many dance music acolytes. The gig had three main sub arrays, each monstrous. The Vero 221 (double 21-inch) sub does a lot of the work. They’re arranged in two configurations; both Tony Andrews specials. Something he calls a Delta Array, which I assume provides directional advantages. The other is horn-loaded. Actually it’s hornloading an already hornloaded box, by coupling an enormous plywood extension to an array of three 221 subs. It’s unwieldy but there are significant efficiency and throw advantages to doing this. All up, it’s like something out of a Mad Max rave party. But the 221s are only assigned half of the bass duties, because Full Throttle Entertainment has something special up its sleeve to reproduce the audio you feel: four of the new Funktion-One 32-inch Super Subs. Yes, you read that correctly. 32-inch subs aren’t totally unheard of, but when you apply some 10,000W of power, a fully-sick unit from Strathfield Car Radio wouldn’t last a minute, so Funktion-One designers Tony Andrews and John Newsham put their signature touch on the massive 32-inch diaphragm and horn enclosure creating a combination capable of handling the massive forces, the extremely high output, 24/7 punishment, all while remaining musical. It’s a brute — about 1.5m high and as big as two or three chest freezers. Adam Ward is coy about exactly how the subs are arrayed. There’s some secret-squirrel Tony Andrews smarts going on. But the principle is clear: minimise the number of arrivals by keeping the subs arrayed nice and tight. With the subs effectively acting as one huge point source there’s less smearing of the transient impact. The kick drum is snappier. What’s more, the LF is more coherent — you can hear the notes, rather than filling the space with indistinct trouserflapping LF woomph. YAMAHA PM10 ARRIVES
This is also a story about Yamaha’s flagship PM10 digital mixing console. After a long gestation and a
number of firmware upgrades, the PM10 is starting to feel fully market ready. Adam Ward spent time with the console at the Integrate tradeshow in Melbourne and was immediately impressed by its usability. He asked the Yamaha guys to drop the demo system down to his warehouse to hear how it sounded. “We had a listen to it in the shop and there was definitely a big difference in what we were hearing,” noted Adam. “That made us happy.” Adam is more accustomed to trucking a hefty Midas Heritage 3000 to festivals and, thanks to dust and heat, he’s likely to continue doing that. “Something like the Rainbow Serpent Festival means four days solid of searing heat and freezing nights with dust that just settles into everything. The dust acts as an insulator and can quickly cook amps and processors if you’re not careful. The digital consoles just can't handle the conditions… yet.” But for a self-confessed analogue guy, Adam felt about as comfortable as he could, inserting a brand new, largely-untested digital console into his setup. “It’s a very nice console and very easy to get around,” noted Adam. “A lot of digital consoles require you to jump down a black hole of menu pages to access settings. Easy and instant access is a big deal for an analogue guy such as myself.” This was much more than an analogue guy having some kinda digital epiphany. The PM10 brought significant advantages to the setup and the workflow. DANTE HOPPING
When it comes to digital audio distribution, Yamaha has gone all-in with Dante. For a festival in a stadium, Dante made eminent sense. That said, Adam Ward and his team were testing the cable run limits of the protocol. “We put in about four kilometres worth of Cat 5 cable,” recalls Adam Ward. “It was about managing the limitations of Dante over Cat5 without making the leap in cost to running fibre. “We had an 80-90m run from front of house to the distribution back of house and then another 80m to the outfill amp racks and to the Vero amp
Yamaha’s flagship PM10 digital mixing console in action (above left). One of the 12-deep Vero hangs (above). The sub control 'Untz’ master fader.
OPEN LIVE Adam Ward: “We had some great feedback from the DJs on the Open Live offering. We often offer records of our shows for the DJs but it’s labour intensive mastering it after the show. A DJ might get overly excited on the night or be overly ‘refreshed’ on another and their levels could be all over the shop, but it’s going to be beyond most budgets to have someone mixing as you go on the night. So then we have to go back and master it afterwards and get the levels right. Open Live does that all in a turnkey box. The talent can log-in and do some fine-tuning if they so desire. But to be able to just walk away with a great-quality record ready for SoundCloud or streaming is brilliant.”
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The 32-inch subs are huge, nearly as huge as the 221 Delta array (far right). Full Throttle Entertainment’s boss Adam Ward (right).
racks. The distances quickly rack up. “Each run of Dante had a redundant duplication, and we had a whole additional network for another level of redundancy. “We didn’t need any of it. Dante was so ridiculously stable it wasn’t funny.” UNTZ FADER
Normally a Lake LM44 system processors take care of system distribution, however the PM10 offered a different route: rather than using the Lake to fine tune the level adjustments to main L/R, side hangs, outfills, VIP area etc, Adam Ward used the PM10 to offer multiple Dante sends. The sub arrays’ level was given even closer scrutiny, having their own fader with further matrix sends. “The PM10 allows you to have two master
AT 22 Federal Audio_AT#122.indd 1
faders,” explains Adam. “So apart from the usual stereo master fader, we had Master Fader 2 controlling everything below 80 cycles. We called it the ‘Untz’ fader and it controlled the matrix feeding the various subwoofer arrays.” And here’s the rub with having a properly designed and implemented 20Hz-20kHz PA, reproducing a music genre disproportionately represented by bedroom producers — the sub content can be light-on, over-cooked or even non-existent, because the producer often does not have the ability to accurately monitor those frequencies. “This PA puts the bass under a microscope — you can hear the definition and you can really hear the differences between tracks, and poorly produced tracks are really exposed.”
Adam keeps a ready finger on the Untz Fader to assist where he can while doing his best to remaster individual tracks on the fly with appropriate EQ. PM10 SOUND
After the Transmission experience Adam Ward is a PM10 fan: “I definitely noticed some amazing things. First up, you can recognise the traditional Yamaha sound of the PM3500 or 4000. They had a very distinct sound especially on vocals, which always sat differently in a PM4000 mix. Something new to the PM10, in my opinion, is just how big it sounds. It’s a new console with a new sound, and I was really impressed with the warmth of the console, coupled with the 32 inch subs I was really blown away.”
10/07/2017 12:04 pm
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FEATURE
We visit Ecca Vandalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio to find out how she and Kidnot melt together everything from hip hop, to punk and chill wave. Story: Mark Davie
Artist: Ecca Vandal Album: Ecca Vandal
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Ecca Vandal doesn’t really fit in, and she’s okay with that. Disappointing her Sri Lankan family by pursuing a career in music mostly absolved her of any need to people please. “Coming from a Sri Lankan background, the career markers of success are very different for that culture,” she explained. “Pursuing a creative career is not an option.” Besides, she was already on the fast track into the financial sector, having accepted a scholarship to study business at Monash University. Doing music full-time had never crossed Ecca’s mind until her high school music teacher brought it up. Once it was tabled, she couldn’t shake the thought, so she applied to study at VCA on the sly. “I did the audition in secret, and got accepted,” recounted Ecca. “I broke the news to my parents, and they took it horribly. They’re still trying to accept it. I had to accept I’d be a disappointment for a long time. Let’s face it, there’s not a secure career in music.” ALL THAT JAZZ
Ecca’s background is primarily in jazz, but talking to her while she’s poised under an A1 Nirvana poster with a Kangol topping her half-shaved/ half-grown out hair, sporting a Kappa jacket, and surrounded by racks of vintage synths — it’s hard to spot the influence. She explains that it’s still there, manifested in the way improvisation helps form her songs. “Towards the end of the degree I couldn’t quite identify with writing original jazz music or singing standards for the rest of my life,” she explained. “If I’m writing original music, what does that sound like? I got obsessed with punk rock. I was introduced to Bad Brains, Fugazi, which opened my mind to lots of different sounds. Then I met Richie [Buxton, her flat mate, band mate, and co-producer]. We did a cover at a bar together and started talking about making original music. Then I took some time trying to see what the sound would be. I picked up a guitar — even though I wasn’t really a guitarist — and made stupid ideas in Garageband. I played Richie some demos, and he thought there was some good stuff to work on.” Richie: “They were terribly good!” Ecca: “Our first single, White Flag came from that, and the first song off the album, Your Way.” Buxton, who also produces under the moniker Kidnot, isn’t a newcomer. He’s played in hip hop bands, and did a stint playing bass for rock band Trial Kennedy during their last album. His brother Haydn — who mixed the record, and also happens to record a lot of jazz — came up through Metropolis studio, giving Richie an inside line when it came to learning the craft as well: “Haydn would just say, ‘I’m over my 001, have it.’ I learnt by writing music in my bedroom, then ringing Haydn and asking him how I’m supposed to do it. He’d look at my songs and say, ‘you’re doing it all wrong, but how you’re doing it is really quite cool.’ Just that naive approach to it.” He currently has a day job composing music for commercials at Method Studios, though he’s gone part time as Ecca has become more serious. “I’d worked with quite a few bands, but as soon as I heard Easy’s songs, I thought, ‘Man this is
something different and fresh,’” explained Richie. “From a vocals perspective too, a lot of vocalists are narrow minded, but I could be listening to Slayer and she’s listening to Wicked by Ice Cube. Let’s mix them together! A lot of our production has been learnt by writing the songs. A lot of mistakes have been made.” POT LUCK
Ecca’s music is a melting pot. You can tell from the mashup of fluorescent punk nicknacks, hip hop collages and grunge paraphernalia filling the entire living room studio. Cherry pick one track off her debut self-titled album and it could sound anywhere between At The Drive In mixed with No Doubt on the punky single Broke Days, Party Nights, to the slowly expanding chill wave of Cold of the World. “It’s just about following those bread crumbs,” explained Ecca. “That’s what improvisation taught me. Just committing to a direction and allowing yourself to go there. I’m really led by melody, but rhythm and big beat is really in my blood, with traditional Sri Lankan beats, Bhangra, and southern Indian music. Then harmony, chordal harmony or distorted harmonics from a guitar, or lush Rhodes sounds… I just need to feel emotion.” The mixed end result is also due to never starting from the same position twice. “Easy might bring in a hack guitar riff that’s so rad, then I’ll put my two cents in,” said Richie. “A song might start off with a drumbeat of mine, or Easy might hop on a keyboard and play a line and build it from there. We work in ’Tools and build everything in it, including drums. There’s no live drums on the record at all. It’s all programmed. Some drummers are like, ‘How many arms does that guy have?’” Richie mostly uses Superior Drummer for MIDI drums, occasionally booting up Strike because he loves the built-in talkback distortion. Maschine makes an appearance every now and again to fatten up beats, or they might sample something from a synth and process it. In a somewhat upside down logic, they use MIDI to program the ‘acoustic’ drums, but always record audio back in for any electronic sounds, which requires searching through kicks and snares until they find the right one. In fact, outside of the drums, the entire record is audio — no soft synths. “We just like committing to a sound,” said Buxton. “MIDI for me creates more options. I hate that rabbit hole, I just want to get the song down. Sometimes it’s bitten us on the arse when we want to redo something but didn’t save the patch on the Prophet.”
video there, and collaborated with Darwin Deez on Your Orbit — but I put all my savings into going, then came back to nothing and had to finish the record. It was really tough.”
There’s no live drums on the record at all. It’s all programmed. Some drummers are like, ‘How many arms does that guy have?
The song starts off with an aggressive staccato rhythm. “The sound is from the DSI Pro2,” said Buxton. “Easy was in the other room and as soon as I put my finger on that sound she asked, ‘What the f**k’s that?’ “We were just listening to it on a loop, and played a drum beat on the keyboard. After that, we had a big argument over what the bass line should be. E won, of course, and in our mind we were thinking it would go on an EDM route. After the drums, E came up with the bass line and I doubled it with an electric bass. I picked up the guitar and added the opposite one-note parts. It started getting this Bloc Party vibe, then we found a chord progression that took it somewhere. I then added that guitar over the section. E wanted the angular guitar, I’m often using the Friedman amps on UAD , and this was the Tele through the UAD Roland Chorus Ensemble CE-1 . I just committed to the ’90s Nirvana type sound I wanted. I’ve got a little Orange amp, but the UAD Apollo gear sounds so good. We did a little bit of live tracking at my work, and I tracked the bass through an amp as well, which gels it a bit.”
BROKE DAYS, PARTY NIGHTS
The pair broke down the lead single off Ecca’s selftitled debut album, Broke Days, Party Nights, which “sums up our mindset at the time because we were f**king eating two-minute noodles,” explained Buxton. “E was just singing, ‘I’ve got no money’ over and over again. I was feeling her pain.” “It’s brutal,” said Ecca. “We went through the gamut of emotions making this record. From ‘Why are we doing this?’ to ‘I love it and can’t think of doing anything else.’ We had a great time going to New York to write — they also shot the AT 25
The UAD Apollo Twin's plug-ins got a heavy run. (right) Two key sounds on the album — a Moog Little Phatty and Fender Rhodes.
“We added that At the Drive In-style chaotic drum part, which took quite a bit of programming. A lot of it was going through the drums making sure it wasn’t a loop. I hate quantising. We will move a kick if it’s standing out, E has great ears.” “It’s just I want to make it sound human,” she said. “If we want it to sit back we’ll go through it and make sure it’s in the pocket. Sometimes if it’s a driving beat we’ll be a bit more towards the grid, but it’s never quantised because I don’t think it sounds human.” SCREAMING TO THE END
It was all high fives after the initial parts were down. It took a couple of days, but they had a real direction to the track. Wanting the chorus to be less angular, they both took up their instruments; Ecca started singing a chanting part while Buxton followed along with a guitar in his hands trying to shape the chords underneath. Ecca mostly used a Shure SM7 dynamic mic to record her vocals, especially “the heavier vocals,” she said. “It’s quite versatile. We also used the Shure AT 26
KSM353 ribbon mic, which was really beautiful for Cold of the World. Future Heroine was the only one I recorded externally, which was written in New Zealand’s Roundhead Studios at the APRA song hub, and we kept the demo vocal recorded on a Neumann.” To give the vocals a bit of extra cut, the pair always tend to use a touch of UAD’s Raw Distortion pedal, which is an emulation of a Rat. “It sounds unreal and we always print the effect when we take mixes to Haydn,” said Buxton. “It also gives E a bit of extra cut in her headphone mix for tracking. We then commit to the sound if the song requires it.” The backing vocals are a free for all, Ecca uses them as a vehicle for specific emotional ties. In Broke Days, Party Nights “they almost sound like they’re taking the piss,” said Buxton. “It adds a bit of humour to it. In the pre-chorus she added these backing vocals — oh-oh-oh — which gave it this cool spooky vibe.” The last part of the song to come was the bridge. It starts with a overdriven bass line, “the Moog, which had a bit of Soundtoys Radiator on it,” said
Buxton. “We got the drums to have that head nod feel, with toms going along with hats, go figure. Then I jumped on a lot of synths and made those alien noise sound effects. We wanted it to be a bit nasty, dirty and psychedelic. E went off in the corner in her own world and just started spitting a rhythm. Then we were like, ‘How do we get back to the chorus?’” “We just went horror!” said Ecca. “She does this massive scream,” continued Buxton, describing a true blood-curdler that goes almost two measures. “The only baffling we had was a doona, so she was under there, but it didn’t do s**t. Our neighbours thought she was either murdering someone or getting murdered.” “The amount of times we’ve had all our neighbours knocking on our door saying, ‘Can you guys keep it down, or are you ok?’” laughed Ecca. “I’m screaming at the tops of my lungs.” Ecca is a true vocal chameleon. One minute she can go from rapping to the spritely snarliness of Gwen Stefani, to beautiful chill wave enchantment in Cold of the World “I don’t feel constricted at all,” she explained. “What I want to achieve is being fearless but vulnerable at the same time. I made it really hard to sing live. It’s a brutal live set. It keeps me interested, too; it can challenge me having to sing with different vocal qualities and push myself to areas I haven’t tried before.”
Sometimes if it’s a driving beat we’ll be a bit more towards the grid, but it’s never quantised because I don’t think it sounds human
Richie 'Kidnot' Buxton at the centre of his and Ecca's home studio.
AT 27
TUTORIAL
AT 28
+1V
0V
+1V
DIFFERENTIAL SIGNAL
1V
PRI
SEC
1V
1:1 +1V
NTIAL SIGNAL
SEC
1V
+1V
PRI
SEC
0V
1:1
1:1
DIFFERENTIAL INPUTS
In the first example, an audio signal arrives at our transformer’s Primary coil 0V is continually changing the potential between in 0V the form PRI of a voltage SEC which +1V the two ends of the coil. This forces a varying current to flow through the coil, producing magnetic flux, which collapses into the Secondary coil and 1:1 of the original wave at the output. creates a facsimile
COMMON MODE NOISE
0V
COMMON MODE NOISE
In the second example, the same transformer is greeted by some electromagnetic noise transmitted by a hand-drill next door. Because this atmospheric debris has no power to choose one wire over the other, it winds up on both, and in equal proportion. This results in a difference across the Primary of zero volts, so no magnetic flux is created, and no noise signal appears at the output. In reality some noise would appear because of natural imperfections in the system.
After walking through the trade-offs of microphone preamp design last issue, this time Andy Szikla jumps in head first and designs one of his own. Column: Andy Szikla
Many years ago my drummer’s parents threw a dinner party for the band, because they wanted to meet the scumbags who were leading their son into a life of sin. To ease the initial awkwardness I launched into the tragi-comic tale of one Olive Gherkin, a high-school chum of the mother of a friend of someone I knew. Young Olive had a headache in class, and excused herself to the school nurse, who quickly concluded Olive was having the sort of challenges that come to a girl on a regular basis. She supplied Olive with a bit of intimate apparel with strings to fix it in place, but the poor girl had never seen one before, and having a headache turned up back in class with the thing tied to her head. Yes, I feel ashamed of myself now, but at that time tales of teenage humiliation seemed like fair game. Plus, she had a funny name. The anecdote went over about as well as you’d expect with the oldies, and in the lonesome cricket silence that followed I began to contemplate the value of subtlety and nuance – both sorely lacking in my anecdote — and how a blunt instrument just gives people a sore head. Years later, when I was designing a microphone preamp, I likewise discovered that while making a signal louder by brute force is an easier tale to tell than the subtle and nuanced mystery of ‘good sound’, unless I wanted my customers to wear faces like I saw around that dinner table, I’d better deliver on the latter. In Part 1 of this article (Issue 123), I suggested that a microphone amplifier requires the co-ordination and harmonisation of a whole range of concerns. In blunt instrument terms, it should provide:
• 40 to 70dB of gain for the audio signal. • Rejection of unwanted noise and radio frequency interference. • Low self-noise. In addition, the complete microphone amplifier should provide: • Some variable gain, to cater for a wide variety of microphone input levels. • An input pad to attenuate particularly loud levels. • Phantom power to supply condenser mics. • A phase reversal switch, to correct mic pairs that are pointed in opposite directions. VIVA LA DIFFERENTIAL
One desired characteristic of microphone amp design is the rejection of external noise sources, so that when the audio signal receives amplification, the noise does not. In professional balanced systems we use what is called a differential input, and the easiest way to get one is to use an audio transformer. A transformer consists of two coils of wire known as the Primary (input coil) and the Secondary (output coil). When a microphone sends its signal down a cable, it will do so in the form of a varying voltage between two wires. When that ‘difference voltage’ is connected across a transformer’s Primary, a varying current will flow through the coil. This causes a magnetic interaction with the Secondary, creating a facsimile of that same signal at the output. The trick with a differential input is how it deals with noise. When radio signals and other delinquent atmospheric nasties attack our innocent microphone cable, they will inflict their voltage
upon those two wires equally and in common, creating what is called ‘common mode noise’. At the transformer input the noise voltage on both wires will be equal, and therefore the difference voltage between them will be zero, producing no current flow through the primary, no magnetic interaction, and no reproduction of that noise at the output of the Secondary. Think of it like a piano accordion: when one hand goes left and one hand goes right, the bellows expand or shrink, and music comes out. If both hands go left or right by the same amount, the bellows don’t change size, and the music stops. WITH THE ACCORDION, THE DIFFERENTIAL MOVEMENT PRODUCES AUDIO, AND THE COMMON MODE MOVEMENT PREVENTS IT.
The ability to suppress common mode noise is an important figure of merit. A typical common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) for a transformer might be 100dB or more. What that means is a microphone cable could have equal amounts of differential signal and common mode noise travelling down it, and therefore a disastrous signal to noise ratio of 0dB. However, when that mess exits our audio transformer’s Secondary, the differential signal will pass through whole, but the common mode noise will be attenuated by 100dB, and that would become the new signal to noise figure at the output! It must be said that transformers have a natural talent in this area. I will just pause here for a moment to reiterate that what I have just described is a ‘balanced audio system’, and the whole reason it exists is for the cancellation of common mode noise — which is a hopeless pursuit in an unbalanced system. It is a widely mistaken belief that balanced audio means AT 29
+2V
+1V IN
+ OP AMP −
+1V
OUT 5KΩ FEEDBACK RESISTOR 5KΩ SOURCE RESISTOR
PROGRAMMING OP AMP GAIN USING NEGATIVE FEEDBACK This example shows an Op Amp with an amplification factor of two (6dB gain) which is set by the two resistors that form the voltage divider at the output. The Op Amp will receive the positive-going wiggle at the input, and try with all its might to amplify it to infinity. The voltage divider tracks progress at the output, and sends a padded version of the signal back to the inverting input, where it gets subtracted. When the feedback signal equals the input signal, the circuit reaches equilibrium and the output stops rising. In this case, because the voltage division is 1/2, the output will be twice the amplitude of the input when that happens. If we change the Feedback Resistor to 10KΩ, the voltage division will be 1/3, making an amplification factor of three (10dB gain).
equal and opposite signals must appear on the two wires of an audio cable, which it does not. It refers to the balancing of output and input impedances seen by both wires, and in a properly matched system it makes absolutely no difference if you have a signal on one wire, and nothing on the other. The point is the audio signal will arrive at the balanced input in differential mode, and be amplified, and the unwanted noise will arrive in common mode, and be cancelled. That is balanced audio. The downside with transformer balancing is that in the process of converting from one form of energy to another and back again, information gets lost, and errors accrue. A happier way of saying this is that there is colouration, which can be a good or bad thing depending on what you are after. Transformers traditionally sound a bit soft and furry in the bottom end, but also seem to have a signature of their own, much like microphones do. If a device has an audio transformer in the signal path, that sound can be hard to get away from. Not all microphone amplifiers use an audio transformer, and it is possible to build a differential input exhibiting good common mode rejection purely from electronic componentry. The circuit I developed for the Prodigal channel strip is such an animal, using low-noise transistors at the front end, configured as a differential input with high common mode rejection and moderate gain. ACCENTUATE THE NEGATIVE
In 1927, while going to work on the Hoboken ferry, Harold Black of Bell Laboratories scribbled a diagram and some equations onto his copy of the New York Times, showing how negative feedback — a system derived from nature — AT 30
could be applied to electronic amplification. Negative feedback is a system where some of the output from a process is fed back to the input in such a way as to have a subtractive and controlling effect on proceedings. THINK OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET HOT — YOU SWEAT, AND THE HEAT EXCHANGE FROM EVAPORATION LOWERS
If you didn’t have a sweat mechanism providing negative feedback, you might just get hotter and hotter till your head melts. Your body temperature would be at the mercy of external forces, and its ongoing state would be unpredictable. The negative feedback helps keep your body at an even 37°C, and so provides equilibrium, stability and predictability. In an amplifier the transistors or valves will provide gain, but the vagaries of manufacture will ensure that no two components provide exactly the same amount except by accident. Furthermore, whatever gain they do exhibit will vary with temperature. In early amplifier designs these vagaries were a dominant influence on the overall gain — a cause of non-linearity, harmonic distortion and amplitude drift. It was just as well that stereo had not been invented, because a stable image would have been impossible with such equipment. Black’s idea was to send some of an amplifier’s output back to its input, to be subtracted like a bead of sweat from the input signal, with the result that gain would finally become fixed, predictable and constant. If a bonfire under Black’s amplifier caused increase in gain within the circuit, it would be accompanied by an increase in the negative feedback signal, to be further subtracted from the input, which would in turn reduce the output, and
YOUR TEMPERATURE.
equilibrium would be maintained. This system sacrifices some of an amplifier’s available gain for a more linear response and lower distortion, so it is a method for controlling gain, rather than creating it. Black built the first negative feedback amplifiers for Western Electric in 1928, and published a paper in 1934. Today there is scarcely an amplifier in operation which fails to take advantage of Black’s world-changing idea. For two bucks anyone can buy an ‘Op Amp’ integrated circuit and, using two resistors, apply negative feedback to set that amplifier to almost any level of gain they might require. One limitation of the negative feedback system is that there is always a miniscule delay between a signal arriving at the input, and any correction forced by the feedback. This can cause oscillations at radio frequencies, if the delay is longer than a signal’s rise or fall, and the negative feedback fails to constrain its amplitude. In audio devices, particle noise is for the same reason almost impossible to control with negative feedback, and that is why a good amplifier will try to attenuate very high frequencies and particle noise before amplification. PHANTOM POWER
In the olden days, condenser mics would have their own power supplies, and output their signal down the wire to a mic amp. At some point, putting the mic power supply inside the mic amp was deemed more convenient. Power was then sent up the wire to the microphone, the same way as the terrestrial telephone system worked. The practice caught on, and now every microphone amplifier in the universe sports a 48V DC phantom supply. About 10 years ago I downloaded a copy of the IEC standard and got a shock. Yes, a voltage shock. It stated that although 48 volt systems are in use, new systems should be confined to 24 volts! Was I reading correctly? Yes, I was. Well it actually made great sense, especially if you are building a preamp that runs on batteries. In fact, most condenser mics will work fine on as little as 12 volts, but I think the standards committee just made that decision too late in history and no manufacturers wanted to change. I for one have never laid eyes on a 24 volt system, and while I momentarily considered making the first one myself was basically too spineless to risk a move of such flamboyant extravagance. So why was 48 volts chosen in the first place? Simple — it was what AT&T used to power their telephones. ADJUSTABLE GAIN
Some microphones are louder than others, so it helps to have a Gain knob, mainly to wind backwards so that the loud ones aren’t driven into distortion. Gain is different from volume. A gain control might form part of the negative feedback loop, and so changes the amount of amplification being applied to a signal. A volume knob usually appears before or after amplification and merely attenuates the signal passing through. For best noise performance and headroom management, most channel strips employ a gain control at the input, and volume control (the fader) at the output.
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Szikla Prodigal Dual Channel Strip – Microphone Amplifier Board
INPUT PAD
When the mic signal is really loud — say a condenser with a kick drum pounding through it — a microphone amplifier’s lowest gain setting might not be low enough to allow the signal to reach the output without having its peaks clipped. In those instances it is common to attenuate the signal before it enters the mic amp. A switchable pad of 15 to 20dB can be a very useful inclusion to a mic amp design, and the process can be done quite simply and cleanly with a voltage divider made from a few resistors. Even these days not all mic amps have input pads, and I still carry a couple of home made XLR pads in my kit. PHASE REVERSAL SWITCH
This is another useful widget that not all mic amps feature. It can be used to correct a bottom snare drum mic that is physically 180° out of phase with the top snare mic, or to check the balance of a stereo pair — maximum cancellation with one mic flipped equals perfect balance when you un-flip it. TINKERING WITH THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN
If you are designing a mic amp, the entire laundry list of features above needs to be considered, and it all looms like a crazy jigsaw puzzle before you even begin. By the time you finish, pieces will have been thrown in the air or rearranged, and there will be dead components with black holes in them where the smoke has come out. A bearded sage once spake unto me that all electronic devices run on smoke, because when they break the smoke comes out. He said that when mankind works out how to put the smoke back in, electronic devices will last forever. He had a point. Design development can be quite a circus, and not every interesting idea you AT 32
try will survive. But that’s the fun of it. And here’s the thing — if you are really looking, then you are also listening. Not just staring at a computer screen, but fiddling with an actual circuit and seeing how you can manipulate the sound of it. With the Prodigal, I set out to make a transformerless differential input, and I wanted the microphone amplifier to have its maximum possible gain only slightly higher than when the negative feedback is connected, to help keep the noise down. After satisfying such matters of housekeeping I was ready to open my ears. Changing around electronic components can be a bit like changing a microphone. The exact same circuit can be made to exhibit variations in colour simply by swapping say, a transistor, a capacitor or an op amp to a different kind with the same value. If you own an electric guitar, and the tone control uses a ceramic disc capacitor, changing it to a polyester greencap of the same value will probably yield a difference you can hear. Also, if you haven’t tried it, interchanging a TL072 op amp with an NE5532 will aurally change the flavour of a circuit, but I’ll be jiggered if I can see why with scopes and probes. Altering the architecture within which these components interact will of course have even greater potential to affect the sound. I have to conclude that the human ear is a very sensitive instrument and, for audio, the most important tool of reference. Throughout the Prodigal Frankensteining process I did all the required stuff with lab equipment, but also performed critical listening tests with actual music. One of the albums I was fond of using was Aaron Neville’s Warm Your Heart which was also my favourite PA tuning reference disc for many years. Besides sporting a full rich bandwidth with plenty of percussive edges, it also
has the added wrinkle of Aaron’s beautiful voice which contains a karate chop at 2.5kHz that can sound really nasty if your mids are crap. So I was inching my circuit forward, getting it to run on lower and lower currents, messing with the input impedance, swapping out transistors, etc. At some point Aaron’s voice got all three dimensional, and while I was thinking ‘that sounds good’, Mrs Tech Bench stuck her head around the corner and said ‘that sounds good’. Wow. So what makes something sound good? I can’t really quantify an answer, except to say if you have sound A and sound B, and you would rather hear sound B, then sound B is the good one. After some more tinkering, it was a variation of that version of the mic preamp that finally made it into production. GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME
So in the end I wound up with something I think sounds great. I also did a bunch of tests and wrote down the results, which I hoped would be impressive, so that people with no ears could enjoy my work as well. Olive Gherkin appeared in my dreams dressed as a bearded sage, and banged on about metaphysics while waving her golden staff at the heavens. She told me I was a phoney, and that Edison never tinkered like me, but received divine design instructions from a winged cherub with a mohawk. I woke up in the night all full of self-doubt, wondering about the blunt instrument and the brute force, and the complex interactions between all the constituent parts. Does my gadget fly? Does it have a sound, and is that sound the important bit? I had been on a journey around the big design table, exploring the subtle and nuanced mystery of what is good, and discovered that while brute force may be quantified, goodness really is a mystery and probably always will be.
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PC Audio Less is more, getting sorted, and templates — three ways to be more instantly creative with PC plug-ins. Column: Martin Walker
Less is more. How many times have we heard that phrase and wondered how relevant it was to our current situation? Well, in the case of making music I reckon it’s spot on. Like so many other musicians, my plug-in folders have over the years ended up stuffed to the gills with both commercial and freeware offerings, to the extent that even choosing an EQ can prompt a deep breath and an impromptu tea break. There’s no way I’d ever get any music created if my current PC was bogged down with everything I’ve ever installed. Do I really need 50 character compressor or EQ plug-ins (two of my own glut areas)? STREAMLINING YOUR OPTIONS
Limiting your FX palette can really reap dividends when you want to move forward with your music-making, so like most people I end up using a much smaller subset of them on a regular basis. There’s nothing more creativity-sapping than scrolling through endless lists of plug-ins looking for something suitable for the current task — by the time you’ve tracked down and auditioned a few possibilities you’ve gone off the boil. It’s bad enough at the mix/production stage, when your performances are already captured, but if you’re still about to record and are trying to find a suitable ‘live’ effect treatment it can kill inspiration within seconds, as your brain gets so easily diverted from its original course. Whittling down your plug-in list can really speed up your workflow, by allowing you to make composing/mixing decisions more quickly. You just need to delete/uninstall those you haven’t used for years. This may simply be a matter of looking through a long list in your vstplugins folder and being ruthless, but I’ve also used a handy freeware utility to help me decide. It’s PluGView (twodev.at/releases/plugview), from the ever-helpful developer Tom Liqube, which lets you quickly look back to see which plug-ins you actually used in previous projects, and how many instances of each, without opening your DAW. It can even display any used plug-ins that have since gone missing. PluGView currently works
AT 34
with Cubase from SX1 onwards, Nuendo 1 and higher, Ableton Live 1 and higher, and Reaper, and can even be run from a USB stick. I found it fascinating to see just how few of my favourite plug-ins got regularly used, and could soon discard quite a few that had never made the grade. NEW BUT SLICK
Of course, there will always be spanking new plugins you want to buy, either because they sound better than the competition, offer something new, or a cunningly different combination of features. For instance, in my case I’ve recently found myself purchasing new releases that essentially do what I could previously only achieve by chaining two or three other plug-ins, such as preamps/ channel strips. Slick design can speed up the creative process, making it just so simple to dial a near-perfect sound very quickly. Another type is special effects that incorporate a modular-like versatility — instead of having to add several layers of automation to your effects to tie them more closely to the rest of your track, I now enjoy those with integral tempo-synced LFOs to modulate their other parameters, such as the very creative options from Unfiltered Audio (www.unfilteredaudio.com). The easier a plug-in makes it to move your music forward, the more likely you are to reach for it in the heat of the moment. GETTING SORTED
Back in AT117 I described how to install your plugins neatly into a single location on your PC so they could all be easily found by whatever DAW you are using. However, this is largely housekeeping, and won’t help you feel any more creative. What does make a difference is taking some time to utilise any plug-in folder organisation features offered by your DAW — many now have these, and taking the time to organise your tweaked plug-in collection into suitable categories can result in huge workflow improvements. Some apps offer options to sort by plug-in manufacturer, which is a time-saver if you already know which plug-in you need for a particular task. However, I much prefer to sort
mine by Type, creating a set of FX subfolders and dragging my existing plug-ins into them so you can instantly see just the contents of a specific category. A subfolder set that has worked well for me over the years has been: Distortion, Dynamics, Enhancement, EQ, Preamp & Tape, Restoration, Reverb, Spatial, Special and Multi FX, Time Domain (chorus, echo and delays), Spectral Domain, and Tools. Your rule of thumb should be that when the contents of a particular subfolder can’t all fit on your screen without scrolling, it needs splitting into two smaller ones. For instance, my EQ eventually separated into EQ Character and EQ Clean, while Dynamics has fragmented into Dyn Character, Dyn Clean, and Dyn Mix Buss. Nowadays, if I’m after a basic EQ this instantly limits my choices to no more than perhaps 20 items out of the 250 or so in my whittled down plug-in collection. When adding a plug-in to your project you can narrow down the possible options within a second or two, without any long-winded scrolling. This can be a life-saver in terms of creativity! SONG TEMPLATES
If you regularly start new music projects, the natural conclusion to the plug-in streamlining process is to create DAW project templates containing everything you need. This makes perfect sense if you regularly record bands with vaguely similar line-ups, or if you need starting points for music projects across a range of different genres. You can neatly place all your usual plug-ins and pre-colour-code tracks in the arrangement, perhaps with a selection of send effects already set up. If you’re one of the new breed taking advantage of the ‘console’ channel strip on every track approach to plug-in mixing, this will also save you a huge amount of initial setup time. Don’t go overboard with the preset mentality and try to include everything that might just be needed, as this may end up limiting your on-the-spot creativity, and may also ramp up CPU overheads unnecessarily. Slick and quick, that’s the way to be creative!
PROFESSIONAL
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precisely direct sound to the audience in both installed and portable applications. Each array module offers field-changeable waveguides that can vary coverage and even create asymmetrical patterns. The result is unmatched sound quality and vocal clarity for every seat in the house. Learn more at SHOWMATCH.BOSE.COM
NEXT-GENERATION ARRAY TECHNOLOGY
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REGULARS
Apple Notes Back to the beginning of Infinity Loop Column: Brad Watts
Hands up who wants an iPhone X! Go for it. I’ll sit this one out. The iPhone X has been targeted as the most breakable and most expensive to repair phone in the history of earth by U.S. insurers, SquareTrade. Fair enough, too. I’ve seen a lot of broken iPhones, and those that break most often have glass backs like the iPhone 4. Yet both the iPhone 8 and iPhone X are made of glass to accomodate the wireless charging system. I hate Lightning cables like the next iPhone user, but making a phone from glass to avoid a cable seems foolish. Frankly, every first model of anything turns out to be a lemon: VN Commodores, AU Fords, Camira, anyone? They’re all experiments, tested out on a public that’s happy to fork out for the test run. The iPhone X is exactly that; an experiment. With unproven facial recognition and Apple’s first stab at an OLED screen. It’s an attempt to be seen as innovative. I’m literally not buying it. I’ll grab an iPhone 7 when my 6 carks it. BRUISED APPLE
If you’re wondering why I’m Apple bashing, I’ll explain. I regretfully feel Apple is losing its way, again. Back in the early-to-mid 1990s, under the direction of CEO John Sculley, Apple had a plethora of designs under the Quadra, Centris, and Performa lines. Amongst those core lines was a profusion of models with slightly varying specifications. If you include the Newton PDAs and Mac laptops, Apple had 39 different machines to choose from, all with various mixtures of Motorola 68040 and 68030 processors. The company was punching in the dark, hoping something might stick and help reclaim the market share it was quickly losing to IBM and Microsoft. In 1994, Apple made its move from Motorola 68040 processing to RISC-based Power PC processors, yet it was still attempting to market no less than 43 different designs. Apple even went so far as to licence its architecture to third parties for the production of Mac clones (they were predominantly rubbish). That period is well known to be one of Apple’s darkest times, with every possibility the company would trip over its
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feet and hightail it into a ditch. That is, until Steve Jobs inveigled his way back in on the back of his NeXTstep operating system. Apple acquired NeXT and the NeXTstep O.S. became the footing of what is now macOS. From 1997 onward, Steve Jobs set about killing off the clone manufacturing, and then took a stick to the burgeoning range of 48 different Macs. 1998 saw a reinvigorated Mac range consisting of 16 different desktop and laptop machines; the abolition of the 68040 in favour of G3 PPC processors; the introduction of USB and homefriendly iMac colouring; while at the same time exterminating the superfluous 3.5-inch floppy disk. Now Apple could concentrate on doing a few things well, rather than throwing ideas against a wall hoping something would stick. Things were looking up. SALAD DAYS
From that point Apple kicked a flurry of goals. It totally abolished the floppy disk, moved to a far superior CPU than the somewhat-too-hot PPC G4 and G5 to the Intel CPUs. It sent the music industry back to the drawing board with the release of the iPod and iTunes in 2001, in 2007 set the mobile phone industry on its ear with the release of the iPhone, and then altered the publishing landscape (again) with the release of the iPad. Even the Apple TV added further facets to the company’s lustre. These landmarks have made Apple the largest publicly traded corporation in the world (by market capitalisation). As of February this year the company is valued at somewhere around the US$695 billion mark — just so we’re clear, that’s 695,000 million dollars. Of course, Steve Jobs passed on in late 2011, but all Apple’s products owe their genesis to the work of Apple’s inimitable founder barring one exception; the Apple Watch. Here’s the thing though; and it’s why I feel somewhat disenchanted with Apple’s current trajectory. The company again seems rudderless. The Apple Watch was the first ‘groundbreaker’ since Mr Jobs’s departure, but it feels like something the company released to prove
to the world it could come up with yet another disruptive device — when it simply isn’t. Why? Everyone’s still trying to work out if the Apple Watch is useful or not. 41 APPLE FLAVOURS?
If you have a look through Apple’s product range you’ll notice how many strains and variants are on offer. There are two MacBooks, two MacBook Airs, five MacBook Pros, six iMacs and the soon to be released iMac Pro, two Mac Pros (and an utterly neglected professional fraternity), three Mac Minis, two iPad Pros, one general admission iPad and an iPad mini. There’s no less than eight different iPhones still available new, an HD and a 4K Apple TV, an Apple TV game controller, five different Apple Watches, and all these have innumerable configurations of memory, drive space and GPU options. We’re tracking no less than 41 Apple devices orbiting 1 Infinity Drive. Feels like the old days. I think you’ll understand my concern. 41 devices and umpteen flavours of each looks so very much like when Apple lost its marbles back in the ’90s. Sure, Tim Cook has been lauded for his penchant for logistics, but he’s not the visionary Steve was. What’s next? Really. Or are Apple’s best days behind it?
NEW! AVAILABLE SOON
DOES MORE. WEIGHS LESS. The ELX200 series combines real professional audio quality, precision control, and robust, EV-engineered components in an ultra-lightweight package – a truly potent blend of performance and portability.
E EV LX OL 20 VE 0 50
• Wireless control and monitoring via the new Bluetooth®* QuickSmartMobile app • Perfect for both portable and installed applications
• Lightweight package with heavyweight performance • QuickSmartDSP provides best-in-class processing via EV’s signature single-knob user interface with LCD • Electro-Voice-patented SST (Signal Synchronized Transducer) waveguide design combines a more compact foot print with enhanced acoustic performance
S L E E K SOUNDS STU NNING
Designed to deliver an uncompromising combination of light weight, low-profile looks, and superior audio quality, the EVOLVE 50 sets a new performance standard for powered column systems.
• Clean, compact design, built to blend in • Easy transport and setup • Real PA performance with wide, even coverage • High-quality Bluetooth®* audio & wireless control and monitoring via the new Bluetooth®* QuickSmartMobile app
QuickSmartDSP provides best-in-class processing via EV’s signature single-knob user interface with LCD
Ph: 1300 026 724 | Fax: (02) 8850-2230
| Email: boschcomms@au.bosch.com | www.boschcommunications.com.au • AT 37
REVIEW
NATIVE INSTRUMENTS MASCHINE MKIII Hardware Controller Maschine software can turn your creative cogs at record speed, and the MkIII hardware is here to help you keep up.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Jason Hearn
Price Expect to pay $899 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au
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Pros Colour screens On-board audio interface Excellent edge-to-edge pad control Well-thought out Function buttons
Cons Some software issues
Summary Maschine hardware continues to evolve as MkIII takes all the best bits of previous incarnations and rebuilds the experience to suit the ever-growing power of Maschine. The same price as the last model, but hugely improved.
When Maschine (MkI) hit the scene back in 2009, it was a revolution — it delivered a hardware MPC-style experience powered by any BYO computer technology of the day you partnered with it. Instead of MB of RAM for sample storage you had GB of RAM in your computer. Instead of dealing with proprietary, cantankerous disk formats, file management was no different to everyday file storage. Because its software was written to exploit the control surface, it truly excelled at getting musicians away from their computers and focusing on the music. NI released Maschine MkII a few years later with a better build quality, the monochrome displays were backlit, and the buttons/pads received coloured backlighting with a more reassuring ‘click’ to the function buttons. Maschine Studio appeared in 2013 delivering the roomier ‘Business Class’ Maschine experience. The substantially larger chassis allowed for more relaxed button spacing and additional shortcut buttons. The full-colour, high-resolution displays provided a graphic-rich means of navigating the browser, a proper mixer and Mix window, and a DAW-like piano roll presentation of the step sequencer. Although it provided the bling experience (with a price to match), its release predated key features, later introduced in the Maschine software, creating a clear application for one-to-one function buttons. In 2016 a ‘sidecar’ iteration appeared — Maschine Jam — lacking any kind of displays, but with a user interface focused on on-the-fly step sequencing and touch strips that provide easy mixing, lock states and playing notes via strumming. Over a nine-year period, NI evolved the software back-end of Maschine, incrementally adding new features and substantial improvements. Although covered in modifier buttons the Maschine software began to outgrow its software shell and having a layout consistent with the original hardware no longer made sense. Notably, all Maschine hardware dating back to 2009 is still 100% supported by the latest builds of the software, a real achievement on NI’s part. TIGHTER TOLERANCES
Having spent lengthy periods with every Maschine incarnation to date, Maschine MkIII is completely stunning, not just in terms of cosmetics but also functionality. It’s the first significant departure from the original function button layout, somuch-so that for the first few minutes of use I had to re-train my muscle memory before my Maschine dexterity returned. It combines the joy of Maschine Studio’s luxurious displays, a builtin audio interface, an overhaul of its function button layout and a build quality superior to its predecessors. The pads are larger and have better sensitivity towards the corners; playing rolls with multiple fingers on a single pad is a joy. The function buttons are less ‘in your face’ with backlighting that makes the text glow, leaving the button black. Everything about the MkIII control surface feels superior to its predecessors. Some may compare Ableton’s Push 2 with Maschine MkIII, however, while some aesthetics
of Push 2 may have infiltrated design decisions, Maschine MkIII’s hardware feels a touch better. Unlike previous hardware, the encoders under the displays are chassis-mounted and feel rock-solid with no lateral play. These should last the distance even in the hands of the roughest handler. In a first for Maschine hardware, the encoders are now touch-sensitive. This allows contextual tag browsing of the library in addition to rapid mapping of parameters to Sound/Group/ Master Macros by simply touching the encoders for parameters you wish to map. Formerly, macro mapping wasn’t possible to configure from the hardware controller. CHANGE MODES WITH MOODS
Existing Maschinists would know, changing between the different pad play modes is one of the most frequently used functions, and most of them require modifier keys to access. There are now four dedicated Pad Input Mode buttons, conveniently located above the pads. Pad mode provides regular playback at the root pitch of a sound. Keyboard mode provides chromatic play (or within a selected scale) of the last pad touched. Chords mode provides single-pad triggering of chords (predefined by NI, which can’t be changed). In a welcome move, the Step mode button has moved from the extreme top left hand corner of the surface to this new location. In Step mode, the pads turn notes on/off in the current sequence while the displays show a luxurious piano-roll style editor. First appearing with the Maschine Jam in 2016, NI added a Lock performance function to the software, allowing storage of snapshots (up to four banks of 16 snapshots) of all parameters, project-wide if you like. You can rapidly switch between them (Target mode) or smoothly morph between them (Travel mode). Snapshots are local to either Master (the entire project), Groups or individual pads. To begin, press Shift and the Lock button, then pick a pad to store a snapshot on. From there, you can tweak any parameters you choose (perhaps to create a ‘peak’ or build up), and instantly return to the previous Snapshot. This allows for some superb real-time arrangement tricks, independent of Scenes and Patterns. My only criticism is that Travel mode could have a maximum length greater than 16-bars, since it serves as a great tool for gradually transitioning sounds over a lengthy period. A new master multi-axis push encoder has been added providing directional based navigation of Maschine’s displays. This was a logical inclusion considering Maschine’s displays are now more graphics-centric. It’s used for a wide variety of tasks including navigating menu trees, selecting notes in the piano-roll style step editor, and navigating strips of insert effects. My only critique is it feels a touch loose compared with other controls on the unit. Below it, you’ll find the new Performance Strip — a four-mode horizontal touch strip. The first two modes, Pitch and Mod, essentially provide an onboard means of generating Pitch Bend and Mod Wheel events (previously, you’d need to attach a
MIDI keyboard). The third mode, Perform FX, controls eight single-parameter optimised effects algorithms, including a filter, a freeze delay and even a turntable scratch effect. The fourth mode, Notes, provides a means of strumming notes. If the pads are set to Keyboard mode (best used with a scale selected), the strip will sequentially trigger the pads that are held down. With no pads held, the strip will sequentially play the whole grid of pads. With practice it’s possible to approximate strummed note triggering, however, approximation was as close as I could come. AUDIO ONBOARD
Including an audio interface has long been on the requested feature list, and it makes the MkIII the most convenient of all Maschines for gigging and mobile composition. NI says the interface is an entirely new design. It has two inputs and four outputs, and although it lacks an XLR input, dynamic mics can be connected via the jack in, automatically switching on a mic preamp. The headphone output has plenty of drive for loud environments and is addressed by a separate bus so you can assign Maschine’s metronome to the headphones but not FOH. Physical knobs are provided for controlling output levels and are sensibly located on the rear panel. Some internet naysayers have asked, ‘if you’re going to add an audio interface, why not make it 100% standalone like an MPC-X or MPCTouch?’ Not only would this push up the price, but you’d also be locked to the computer resources within the device and miss out on the joy of hosting any VST/AU plug-in from your arsenal within Maschine. The joy of Maschine is it is as powerful as the computer it’s attached to, and that combination of flexibility, sustainability and power will never be possible with a frozen-in-time standalone piece of hardware. SOFTWARE STICKING POINTS
As much as I love the new MkIII hardware, issues remain with the Maschine software (at the time of writing, version 2.6.10). My biggest bug-bear is that as soon as Maschine detects a new or updated plug-in, it scans all your plug-ins on launch; not just the new ones. This can take a fairly long time, and to date, there is no (official) means to conveniently stop this in software preferences. My frustration with this re-scanning cycle only ended when I discovered a hack workaround that limited Spotlight’s search on macOS (youtu.be/ cRPKYOHR04w). Plug-in verification should operate like other DAWs; scan only plug-ins added or updated since last launch. Although it’s now possible to enact the saving of Maschine projects via the MkIII hardware, if you wish to Save a New Project or Save As an Existing Project, it’s necessary to return to the computer to do so. Maschine offers no method to perform text entry for naming/renaming items from hardware. While your computer’s QWERTY keyboard performs the job better, the very essence of the product is to ignore the computer. In fact, I conducted much of this review with Maschine AT 39
on the patio table attached via a 5m USB cable. In hardware sampler land, we tolerated fiddly text entry methods with no complaint. Furthermore, there is no means to rename recorded audio files or new audio files created through re-sampling. If you’re hoping to finish mixing projects in Maschine without incorporating a DAW, be aware there is still no Plug-in Delay Compensation (PDC). If you make use of plug-ins requiring substantial buffering to work their magic (or UAD plug-ins), elements will go out of time in your project. To properly mix Maschine projects, it’s necessary to migrate your project to a fully-featured DAW. It would be great to have a preference setting to engage PDC for studio situations. HARDWARE HANGUPS
In Maschine MkIII’s preferences, display brightness is linked to the brightness of the backlighting in the function buttons. It’s difficult to find the right compromise of button readability versus having a nice bright display in brightly-lit environments. Independent brightness controls would be handy, because it’s impossible to read the labels on the function AT 40
buttons without backlighting, however, setting the brightness too high results in too little contrast between active and off states. I feel it could pose a problem for some live performers in sun-kissed festival marquees, though it’s sometimes difficult to even read laptop displays in those environments. Although Maschine MkIII will sit on the stand NI released for previous versions, it no longer locks in securely due to the repositioning of screw holes. I’m sure I’ll Macgyver a solution in time. Just like Push 2, I can’t help but feel Maschine MkIII would benefit tremendously from touch functionality (particularly when selecting and moving notes in the Step edit window). Imagine being able to bank the mixer rapidly across projects with more than eight groups by just swiping your finger left and right. MASCHINED TO PERFECTION
For an existing Maschine MkI, MkII or Mikro lover, MkIII is a no-brainer upgrade; you will fall in love with Maschine all over again. While Maschine Studio owners already have screens and four MIDI outputs, they miss out on MkIII’s superior aspects
including the audio interface, bus power, a smaller chassis, and the new function button layout. What’s more surprising is how much value has been added to the Maschine MkIII hardware yet the price remains consistent with Maschine MkII. For any newcomers to Maschine, this is a great time to jump on the platform. Don’t expect Maschine to be a one-stop DAW replacement — consider it akin to what can be accomplished on an MPC in terms of taking a tune to completion, with the added benefit of your computer’s power at your disposal. It’s an amazing live performance tool for the stage and a rapid means of capturing ideas in the studio. Its pads are even better than previous Maschine iterations and feel superb for fluidly performing drum and percussive parts. If I have any reservations about Maschine MkIII — not enough to keep me away — they would be focused on improvements which may come about in future software iterations anyway.
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REVIEW
dB TECHNOLOGIES ViO Line Array
dB Technologies leans on DVA’s DNA to deliver its first touring system.
NEED TO KNOW
Review: Preshan John
VIO L210: $6,999RRP
VIO S318: $11,999RRP
VIO S118: $7999RRP
Freq. Response: 78Hz - 218kHz (±3dB) Max. SPL: 135dB Two 10-inch LF drivers One 1-inch HF driver Directivity: 100° H
Freq. Response: 35Hz to X-over point Max. SPL: 143dB Three 18-inch drivers Directivity: Omni
Freq. Response: 36Hz to X-over point Max. SPL: 139dB Single 18-inch driver Directivity: Omni
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CONTACT: National Audio Systems: (03) 8756 2600 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au
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Mention dBTechnologies to me 10 years ago, and my mind would have instantly conjured up plastic 12-and-horn boxes you find in a mate’s garage. Gear that gets pulled out for 21st parties and when the budding family DJ makes a living room debut. It wasn’t bad stuff by any means, Opera was actually a very good box, and dBTech and its corporate cousin RCF did very well off the humble powered speaker. When dBTech decided to launch into more serious audio markets — those requiring more boxes and more coverage — it cracked new ground (line arrays) while keeping a bit of its DNA (powered plastic boxes). The product was DVA, which has since become one of the all-time best-selling line array products with 30,000 units sold worldwide. Proving once again dB knows what the market wants. Granted, it took several iterations for dBTech to iron out the wrinkles in pattern control and tone. The flagship T12 cabinet was right on target, as the sales figures suggest. The solid win bolstered dBTech’s confidence to invest in R&D and focus on a whole new array product. A few key criteria were laid out on the drawing board — it would be a notable step up from DVA, and it would target the rental and touring markets. A few years later, dB shed its plastic skin and announced its first touring PA. It’s called ViO. VIVA VIO
National Audio Systems had a full system firing at Festival Hall in Melbourne for ViO’s Australian launch. To cover the venue, NAS hung eight boxes a side, with two stacks of three triple 18-inch S318 subs in a central cardioid configuration. Safe to say, everyone who came was quite impressed with ViO’s voicing, smooth pattern control, and smashing SPL for the size. Aside from the PA demonstration, the launch gave dBTechnologies’ Marco Cantalu a chance to fill the Aussie market in on his company’s background. Being under the RCF Group means the relatively young startup has PA in its DNA. Its headquarters in Bologna, Italy, is only a stone’s throw from the homes of Ferrari and Ducati. Tertiary education in the region births some of the world’s finest young engineers in the automotive scene, and dBTech has enjoyed first pickings of these bright sparks and put them to work in the pro audio world. It’s a youthful team at the office, and Marco says that’s what makes the dBTech difference. While I’m talking to Marco at the launch, one of his Italian colleagues texts him to sound out a waveguide idea for a product in R&D. Marco replies, “It’s 2am, why are you awake?” Case in point, he shakes his phone at me and says this is the work culture at dBTech — passion for sound. STAYING ACTIVE
Like the DVA series, ViO boxes are active. An active, self-powered line array system certainly has its benefits. You don’t need to lug a rack of amps everywhere, you save on cable costs, and the individual amp-to-driver pairings makes for more
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possibilities when configuring pattern control and throw distance than if multiple boxes were grouped into single amp channels. Conversely, if an amp goes down before a show, it’s easier to switch an amp in a rack than it is pulling down an array to get at the faulty loudspeaker module. Besides the EAW Radius and QSC KLA systems, there aren’t many big players that’ve released active line arrays in this market, and this may well be a decision-making factor for potential ViO adopters. UP TOP
The star of the show is the ViO L210 active twoway line array element. Self-powered by Digipro amps, L210 has two 10-inch LF transducers positioned in a V formation which are covered by the full-height aluminium phase plugs with diamond-shaped hole punches designed to reduce interference within the crossover zone. It’s powered by a Digipro G3 900W class D amplifier. HF material is generated by a three-inch voice coil compression driver through a 1.4-inch exit throat out into the world at a horizontal directivity of 100° thanks to the newly-designed waveguide. Generally you want the crossover frequency to stay away from the crucial vocal intelligibility range, so the 950Hz crossover point of the L210 may raise an eyebrow, though in practise while the voicing was rockforward it felt very balanced. Its maximum output SPL of 135dB SPL places the L210 in d&b T-Series or L-Acoustics territory. Monitoring, configuration and control can take place remotely via dBTechnologies’ own RDNet networking protocol, with an RDNet Control 8 or Control 2 unit acting as the interface between PA and PC. dBTechnologies Network Software lets you keep an eye on things like temperature, limiter status, levels, and all further operating parameters in real-time. Getting it up in the air is easily a one-man job. The L210 has a built-in three-point rigging system that lets you select your splay angles while the
boxes are still on the cart using a hook-type link on a central rear rigging strand. String up the array and your angles fall into place. THE SUBS
A ViO system is offered with two subwoofer options — the single 18-inch S118, and the triple 18-inch S318. Both of them are active, powered by 1600W class D Digipro G4 amps. The Digipro G4 preamp has a slot module for RD Net system monitoring. Digipro DSP features onboard attenuation control and a delay module allowing a maximum of 9.9ms delay in 0.1ms steps. Cardioid configuration is stored as a preset ready for groundstacked or flown use with another S118. The triple-18 S318 isn’t three times the size of the S118, although its width renders it un-flyable. It also has a built-in cardioid preset, 2700W of power, a frequency range that drops to 35Hz, and a box that’s optimised for in-phase frontal emission — the kind you’d string across the front of a stage. Onboard delay adjustments help you line up the wavefronts with precision and of course this can be controlled remotely via RD Net. SOUND BEGINNINGS
Though it’s a young company, dBTechnologies has made big strides. A decade refining its hardware and DSP with DVA has really helped the company debut with a strong contender in the mid-level touring game. Though it’s hard to tell on a first listen without mixing on it yourself, the ViO is a great sounding system — loud and articulate, a high-mid edge that could help vocal cut through, with defined pattern control and plenty of throw for Festival Hall. Time will tell, and definitely worth having a listen. Rental and touring markets will benefit from the straightforward rigging, built-in amplifiers and comprehensive RDNet remote control/ diagnostics capability. dBTech has promised Dante compatibility soon too. Up against similar offerings in the market, ViO has a lot going for it.
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REVIEW
ANTELOPE AUDIO ORION STUDIO REV. 2017 Audio Interface
Let yourself be captured by the promise of Orion’s great beyond… getting there might not be smooth, but it’s worth it. Review: Mark Davie
NEED TO KNOW
Getting an Antelope Audio interface up and running is like reaching the Promised Land — it was everything you hoped it might be, but you have to wander through the wilderness to get there. This is the third time I’ve fought through Antelope’s installation hedge maze, and it hasn’t gotten any better in three years. It’s a shame, because once you find your way out the exit, the milk and honey flows in torrents. Antelope has tried to mitigate the issues by uploading a few video walkthroughs and how-tos outlining the ‘simple’ procedure, but while I’m sure it works for some, we’ve never had a clean run. In my case, when the initial — and automatic — firmware upgrade failed, it got stuck in Primary Boot mode, for which there’s no official solution other than plug it into another computer and try again. It’s exactly what I had to do, but having access to another computer should never have to be a solution. It’s bonkers.
PRICE $3985 CONTACT Turramurra Music: www.turramurramusic.com.au Federal Audio: www.federalaudio.com.au
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When I thought I’d finally got it to update — after sticking to the provided USB cable, not Thunderbolt like the manual suggests — following the prescriptions of deleting all existing Core Audio preferences and doing a factory reset of the device, I could control the unit, but it wouldn’t pass any audio on the inputs, just playback via one headphone output. I tried different mics, different instruments, and nothing would show up on the unit’s meters, let alone on the control panel or in a DAW. After almost giving up, I found a forum post where one user had found that unplugging the unit, doing a factory reset, plugging it back in again, then unplugging it, restarting the computer and plugging it back in would get it going… that worked. It reminds me of an old Presonus interface I used to own, that wouldn’t respond unless you booted everything up in exactly the right order.
PROS Free DSP effects! Stellar sounding Huge I/O complement for 1U Low latency
CONS Buggy installation process Inserting DSP FX into DAW not seamless
It sucked, and thankfully Presonus interfaces just work these days. I install a lot of review interfaces, and most, if not all, are simple to get going. A far cry from five years ago. Antelope is really dropping the ball here. Antelope chocks up a lot of the failures that freeze the unit in the firmware update process as either USB or internet connection failures. In my experience, it’s usually a drop out during the download or authentication. Perhaps separating the firmware file download from the actual device update would help. I appreciate the effort to make the update one automatic single step, but if it’s a consistent point of failure, trying a more common approach could be prudent. It’s an odd chink in the armour, because Antelope’s other software achievements — like its onboard DSP-driven FX — suggest nailing the installation would be a doddle.
SUMMARY Antelope’s interfaces are a bit like childbirth — well worth the pain. Installation might be tough, but you’ll soon forget about it once you’re working with Orion Studio Rev 2017’s free DSP effects, 12 mic preamps and top notch conversion and clocking.
MILK & HONEY
Once you get past the gate, a playground of features awaits. When you buy into Antelope’s Orion Studio series, not only do you get Antelope’s top notch conversion and clocking, you get 12 (four more than typical for this sort of interface) clean preamps, four DI inputs, two reamp outputs, a couple of headphone outputs, 16 line outputs, two pairs of monitor outputs, and plenty of digital I/O. Phew! On top of all that is Antelope’s real coup; onboard real-time DSP effects, given to users free of charge. Not to be sneezed at as some cheaposounding, limited function freebies. They’re all top quality and incredibly useful effects that just happen to be free. When you add up all the value you’re getting, as much as I hate to say, it actually feels like it’s worth the pain. Installation bugbears aside, I can report that after a month using the unit as my main interface I haven’t had a problem since. It’s booted up and connected every time, even on different systems. It’s kept its settings intact, and the pain of the install has worn off. If I didn’t have to write about it, I dare say I would have forgotten about it by now. On another note, Antelope has again showed it can do software well with the development of individual mobile apps for each of its interface lines. Getting the app up and running is the polar opposite of the interface installation rigamarole. After downloading it from the App Store, my iPhone automatically connected to the interface, presumably over wi-fi, and away I went. It gave me control over the entire front end as well as clock source, sample rates, and monitoring levels. It also didn’t drop out when my phone locked, it just kept right on trucking. Very impressive and great for the home recordist who is setting their own levels away from the computer, as it gives input level indications. It would also be a nice option to hand control of monitor mixes over to artists, but this is a pretty good start. REVISED OUTLOOK
There have been some minor changes with this 2017 revision of Antelope’s already silly-specced Orion Studio. The first is cosmetic, moving from a silver faceplate to ‘carbon’ grey. It’s a nice look, though I still wonder why it doesn’t have four rackmounting holes. I get that two rack screws is fine for studio applications and installs, but I’ve seen the odd screw come loose in transit, and wouldn’t like to see my beautiful interface half bent just because it only had one screw left in. Antelope’s conversion and clocking has always been a high point. Users love the sound of their devices, and for good reason. The Rev 2017 still keeps the mastering grade 129dB of dynamic range on the monitor outputs, and the very respectable 120dB on line outputs. However, it’s upped the dynamic range on the AD conversion to 124dB, beating out everything in its class. There’s also apparently more DSP so you can have 32 compressor instances and 40 EQs open at the same time on the one chip. It’s a lot of instances;
enough to cover a huge complement of inputs, if you’re expanding digitally. While it kept me to four amp and cabinet combos — makes sense given there’s only four DI inputs on the unit — I could keep whacking on vintage EQs and compressors until I hit about 55 instances, give or take, depending on which models you use. It means you can run around four of the most processor intensive effects per channel, and up to eight if you’ve got the overhead, not bad. NO PAD, NO PROBS
While some people don’t love the dark GUI, you can resize it, which is rarer than you might think. You can also undock the Routing, Mixer, Effects and Meters tabs if you have enough real estate. Just two-finger or right-click it, then close the window to dock it back in the main window again. The gains are also now continuous from 0-65dB. When I reviewed the Zen Studio, the gain range started at 10dB without a pad. It was too sensitive for some mic/source combinations. There’s still no pad, but it’s not as important now. While I can’t be sure, it appears Antelope is cannily moving the 55dB gain range of its preamp around to do this. If you speedily swipe the gain control end to end, you’ll hear some audible clicks, but it’s not a problem in standard use. Line amp gain is -6 to 20dB, and Hi-Z gain is 0-40dB. Once again, Antelope has nutted out the details of its software nicely. The preamps were quite honest sounding, and everything I recorded carried through to the mix and master stages. I didn’t feel like I was getting too harsh in the tops or missing low end. Adding AFX inserts while tracking was just more icing on the cake. You definitely have to know how to use each piece of kit, and simply getting distracted by the options and shiny lights isn’t going to help your results. By sticking to some more familiar pieces to start off with, I was able to not destroy my drum sounds. There were a couple of times I eagerly jumped on the RCA BA-6A and went too far, too quickly. As always, use your ears. FEELING THE FX
So, what other secret sauce do you get amongst all those gratis onboard FPGA effects, or AFX for short? Antelope has been busy. There are 21 vintage EQs, including BAE-branded Neve emulations, API, Pultec and SSL strips, along with less common but famous options like Neumann W492 and PEVs, Helios Type 69, Studer, Harrison and Lang. All of them sound great after a month of use, though it’s going to take more time than that to settle on specific favourites. The Helios has a nice thick quality to it, the 1073 sounds a little more mid forward, the Lang transparent, all in minor degrees. On the compression side you’ve got dbx 160VU and 903, blackface 1176 and silver face mono version of an 1178, Retro 176, Sta-level, Altec 436C, Summit 100A limiter and Gyraf Gyratec X. There are a few others like the Grove Hill Audio Liverpool, Fairchild 670 and a noise gate tool which are available on some units and not the Rev 2017 yet. The 1176 works as expected, the Altec has a
The internal latency of the device is so minuscule that it was undetectable when singing or playing guitar through this double round trip setup
nice crunch to it and you can get the RCA to be quite aggressively present. It’s really handy having these tools on the tracking side. You can easily set some gentle EQ and compression to get you in the ballpark for a mix if you want to record it, or be more aggressive with effects in your monitors, but record a clean single. Alternatively, you can record both simultaneously and choose later, which is different to UAD’s ‘either/or’ workflow. That said, it’s simple to copy settings to UAD’s DAW plugins, eliminating the need for going back to its Console software. On the guitar side, the options are equally diverse. The mainstays — Fender, Vox and Marshall — are all there, with a smattering of well-known and boutique models ranging from rock to metal tones. Once again, you don’t have to record the results, but there’s more than enough here for some quality monitoring simulations, and they’ll likely impress picky guitarists. There’s plenty of reason to record real amplifiers, but it’s becoming less imperative, these days. You’re given the choice between blends of ribbons, dynamics, and a couple of condensers, the ability to move them around on the cone, plus a 45-degree mic and back of cabinet mic. Once you’ve dialled in tones, you can either save all your session information as a preset or individual channel AFX settings. I had to load both types from the session menu (for some reason the AFX channel Load button wouldn’t recognise the .as format), but it still works. If you’re just wanting to import a single channel’s setting, you simply select the channel you want your chain to appear on and, hey presto! You’re ready to go. Word to the wise, the Delete All button is way too close to the navigation button for channel 1 of the AFX, and there’s no warning dialogue box to deter you. I accidentally hit it and lost 16 channels of AFX setups. You’ll definitely want to build signal chains and save some basic sessions, in case you lose them that quickly. QUICK ALL ROUND TRIP
Latency isn’t really an issue with the Orion Studio. For one, the latency over Thunderbolt is very low, but also because its onboard FPGA effects and amp AT 47
Not to be sneezed at as some cheaposounding, limited function freebies. They’re all top quality and incredibly useful effects that just happen to be free
modelling emulations almost completely negate the need for monitoring with DAW plug-ins. If you just can’t get what you want out of the internal effects or reamp loop, then head to your DAW. In Ableton Live, at 48k, latency was barely noticeable. With a 32 sample buffer the roundtrip latency was 2.9ms. At 96k, that time was reduced to 1.48ms and not a problem at all. Obviously, all those numbers depend on the computer you’re running and low buffers combined with high sampling rates eat up resources quick. Not so with the internal FPGA effects and mixer, you can run it stacked to the gills and not notice any change in latency performance. While Antelope’s real-time mixer even has a decent reverb onboard, it would be great to have a few delay options for singers. Wait a minute, there’s a trick for that. If you’ve got some spare guitar effects pedals lying around, getting a delay going is as easy as feeding your pedal chain via the reamp output and coming back into the interface via Hi-Z, then using it as an effects loop in your mixer. You can even use both reamp outputs for a stereo feed! It’s a great way of easily adding character to vocals with gear you already have on hand. The internal latency of the device is so minuscule that it was undetectable when singing or playing guitar through this double round trip setup. Having the ability to easily incorporate existing gear into your mix is a win by anyone’s standards. You might be able to create something completely unique with that odd cheap fuzz pedal that a thousand instances of Decapitator never will. DON’T BE PHASED
The other use of Orion Studio’s AFX is to insert them as ‘external’ insert effects in your DAW. Antelope hasn’t yet built plug-in versions of AFX, so plumbing them into your mix essentially works like a hardware patch. While it’s a super powerful way of getting 16 channels of DSP-driven, high quality effects in your mix, I found a few issues users should be aware of. AT 48
Typically, when setting up an insert, you would figure out the delay of a hardware insert — if there is any — and compensate in Pro Tools or similar with a milliseconds figure for your particular sample rate. However, when I inserted AFX inserts on the track, it always came back into the session marginally ahead of the signal. I checked this by duplicating a track, sending one out to AFX, and back again, then flipping phase. The only way I could get it to null was by delaying the AFXeffected channel by a few samples, meaning it was in front of the original, with no way to use hardware delay compensation to account for it. The standard EQ processor is very fast, so it required more delay (27 samples) to cancel out; while running at 48k with a 256 sample buffer. When I instantiated an EQ, compressor, BAE 1084 and dbx 160 chain, it was a little slower and required 17 samples of delay to correct any phasing issues. Obviously it didn’t fully null, as the two emulations are designed to impart upfront character, but it was in time. All that’s to say that if you want to duplicate tracks and put a DSP insert on one, you’ll want to run a test signal through it to ensure you’re not messing with the phase of your tracks. You won’t pick up the absolutely minimal latency shift if it’s a single instrument, but you will notice the phase shift if it’s a copy of the original track, on a parallel bus, or one channel in a multi-track drum setup. If you couldn’t be bothered going through the process of timing all your specific signal chains, then I’d keep AFX insert effects use to single channel processing and stereo masters, and avoid using it on one channel of a multi-miked instrument like drums, or parallel buses. However, opening up access to these effects in your mix is well worth the effort. I found it to be a powerful addition to my effects palette and didn’t run into any issues when using it over my instrument busses and master. The vintage
compressors in particular were satisfying in the way you can push the output of them, saturating the signal ever so slightly to gain apparent level without killing your dynamics. They don’t breakdown under duress, and stacking an RCA into the Gyraf variable-mu compressor was a great combination of lively punch and controlled level that really helped solidify drums in the mix. LEARNING THE VALUE OF PAIN
While I may have harped on about Antelope’s installation process, it’s one step in a process that has since proven very reliable. Antelope has obviously been listening to customer feedback; with changes to its user interface, preamp structure and heat dissipation. There’s always room for improvement, and it’s hard to criticise a company which is obviously doing its darnedest to provide outstanding value to its users. No doubt, Antelope has, and continues to, push the boundaries of the I/O complement, conversion quality and features you can expect for any given price point. If it continues to refine the user experience like it does specifications, then there’ll be no stopping its rise. The Orion Studio Rev 2017 is a welcome refinement on an already great interface. It sounds great, it works well, there’s not much better for the price, and you get a huge bundle of top-class effects thrown in for nothing. While you might be deterred by the slight drawbacks, I daresay the benefits will be more convincing.
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REVIEW
RØDELINK PERFORMER Wireless Microphone
First foray into live sound wireless hits presentation sweetspot. Review: Christopher Holder
There are a couple of things that instantly impress about Rode Microphone’s first foray into live sound wireless. The first and most impressive is the rechargeable battery. The lithium-ion battery is the size of two AAs, so you can substitute conventional alkaline batteries if you need to, but otherwise you can recharge them via the micro USB input on the mic. This is really, really nifty. Most FOH mixing spots will have some kind of USB port knocking about. I popped the (supplied) RodeLink lead into the USB data port on the front panel of my Midas Pro1. It’ll charge up in about three hours. The battery will last up to (a quoted) 10 hours. Being 2.4GHz wireless, it will be heavier on the juice than a UHF system. But the endurance was most respectable. ALL IN HAND
NEED TO KNOW
The transmitter feels balanced and pleasant to hold. When I gave it to our female talent her first reaction was very favourable, she loved the satin finish and the slightly slimmer form factor compared to the Shure and Sennheiser transmitters
Price ~$599 Contact Rode: (02) 9648 5855 or info@rode.com
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she was accustomed to (and at 220g the RodeLink transmitter is a good 20% lighter than the Sennheiser SKM-D1). This system is fighting it out in the Shure BLX or Sennheiser D1 sandpit and the build quality is comparable. Buttons depress with reassuring resistance. The barrel of the body takes a little bit of elbow grease to unscrew, which I prefer. The on/off button is on the bottom and easy to negotiate. The receiver is your customary half-rack width device with the requisite ins and out and a pair of antennae for dual diversity reception. The two-colour screen is great for a system at this price. The battery life meter is reassuring to have and the audio level metering is prominent. Pairing the transmitter is a standard process of pressing the pairing buttons. It all functioned as expected. The transmitter uses a M2 capsule. I’ve used handheld condenser mics for some time now (mostly the S1), so the hypercardioid pickup pattern and frequency response curves were familiar (presence lift around 4k and some bumps
Pros Priced well USB bus-powered rechargables Good vocal clarity
Cons Lighter transmitter than some will be used to.
around 12k). There’s plenty of vocal clarity and the handling noise is reassuringly low. Interestingly, there’s no beltpack system yet. I’m sure it’s on its way. After all, the Rode HS1 headset mic has been on the market for about a year, and is crying out for a companion transmitter to plug into. [Ed – The RodeLink transmitter in the filmmaker kit is most of the way there.] CHARGE!
RodeLink Performer is good value. At the price, it’s up against the likes of the Sennheiser D1 — another system I’ve had plenty of experience with — which has a similar spec and receiver features. Saying that, the D1 has some nifty audio DSP features and a choice of transmitter capsules. Meanwhile, RodeLink’s 4ms latency is perfectly acceptable and the 128-bit AES encryption is welcome, although not a feature you’d normally hear people demand in this price range. For mine, the USB battery recharging of the Rode system will be enough to win it a place in many single-channel presentation applications — it’s just such a handy feature.
Summary Ideal presentation wireless system. Every function room, school or church hall should have one. And thanks to the USB bus-powered rechargeable batteries you’re unlikely to be caught short again.
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REVIEW
MACKIE MR SERIES Monitors & Subwoofer Mackie’s MR studio monitors have always been good, but with a completely rebuilt line, these budget monitors sound anything but cheap. Review: Preshan John
NEED TO KNOW
Mackie levels up its MRmk3 Series monitors with the OG-named MR Series. It signals a restart for what has been a successful line of monitors for Mackie. The range features the same sizes as the previous versions but they all look slicker with a renewed focus on performance. You can get a pair of MR speakers in 5-, 6.5-, or 8-inch woofer sizes, with each accompanied by a one-inch silk dome tweeter. All MR monitors are self-powered by a class A/B amplifier, starting from 50W (5-inch) to 85W (8inch). Mackie makes a big deal of its logarithmic waveguide design that’s supposed to widen the listening sweet-spot and give better stereo imaging. Aesthetically the all-wood cabinets lend the monitors a professional look and feel and the boxes have internal bracing for added stiffness and less structural resonances.
PRICE MR524: Expect to pay $269 MR624: Expect to pay $369 MR824: Expect to pay $399 MRS10: Expect to pay $769
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CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au
Inputs on the rear are balanced XLR and TRS, and unbalanced RCA. Controls include a HF filter with 0dB, +2dB, and -2B positions, three-way Acoustic Space switch for controlling the amount of bass emitted from the rear port, and a level pot. When connecting a pair of MR monitors to the MRS10 10-inch subwoofer, your source inputs plug directly into the sub’s internal crossover, which then feeds the monitors. The MR624 6.5-inch version we received for review is a nice balance between size and sound. The extended low end missing with the smaller woofer size is more than compensated for by the MRS10 sub. Running the speakers for a few hours noticeably ‘opened up’ the sound, after which high frequency material was
PROS Detailed & honest reproduction Useful ASC & LP filtering options
communicated very naturally. I bought a pair of budget monitors — M-Audio BX5As — about 10 years ago for roughly the same price as a pair of new Mackie MRs. Putting the pair up together showed just how far budget studio monitor designs have come in the last decade. The MRs aren’t particularly ‘lively’ and the mid-range presence won’t flatter poorly-produced tunes like a scooped cheapie might. At the same time, complex mixes are broken apart far better — the kind of ‘magnifying glass’ effect you expect from a good monitor — and the sweet spot is also far wider than the M-Audios. With the sub switched
CONS Feeble low end without sub
SUMMARY Mackie’s MR Series does what any good monitor should do — offer sonic insight into your music. ASC plus high- and low-filtering options sweeten the deal. If you’re not ready to spend big bucks on your next set of monitors, the MR series is a fantastic choice.
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Putting the pair up together showed just how far budget studio monitor designs have come in the last decade
BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE Supercharge your desktop DAW system
off the 6.5-inch model felt a little timid in the lows compared to similar-sized models from other brands. I found the distance between the two monitors plays a big part in getting a cohesive stereo image — if you’re too close it lacks distinction, or if you’re too far the centre image becomes weak and undefined. When setting them up, have someone move one of the monitors in and out until all material from left to right sounds firm and flat. WHY DON’T YOU ASC
Acoustic Space Control counteracts bass reflex artefacts caused by near-wall placement by limiting the amount of bass ported through the rear of the monitor. You can easily feel the difference by holding your hand over the port while switching from A to B to C. Generally with small rooms, the less bass you pump into them, the better. Switching over to C instantly cleared up some muddiness. The logarithmic waveguide surrounding the one-inch dome tweeters disperse high frequencies fairly evenly but don’t expect uniform sonics while wheeling about your studio. The same goes for vertical movement so it pays to mount the monitors at just the right height for a more accurate representation of what you’re hearing. Keeping the tweeters ear-level is a good rule of thumb.
Ultra-low latency Lightning quick 10Gb/s Thunderbolt transfer rate 2 x great-sounding preamps Full metering Auto gain feature Pro-grade converters
THE SUB STANDARD
The MRS10 single 10-inch subwoofer is properly gutsy and voiced quite accurately. The Quick Start Guide recommends powering it up with the level set at 12-o’clock to Unity. I turned it on closer to 7-o’clock and it was still too loud relative to the monitors which were set at 12-o’clock. For an ‘entry-level’ offering, it’s a fantastic sounding box that complements the MR monitors beautifully. The continuously variable crossover is really handy. Take your time finding the sweet-spot for your room and resist the temptation to give the sub more work than it needs. Footswitch on/off control is invaluable when trying to judge an appropriate sub level without moving from your mix position. A sustain pedal-like footswitch comes included. Bear in mind that placing the sub in untreated home studios will result in peaks and nulls all over the place, and the spot for ideal bass monitoring probably won’t be at your mix position. In my room, the lows really blossomed when I pushed my chair about 1.5m back. The more I listened to the Mackie MRs the more I liked them. Long listening periods didn’t cause ear fatigue even at reasonably high levels. Reference mixes I know like the back of my hand were presented with surprising detail. The budget studio monitor market is a competitive one but Mackie’s long-held footing is only strengthened with the MR series. It offers honest, true sound with the useful Acoustic Space Control thrown in for good measure. AT 54
Zoom TAC-2 Thunderbolt Interface
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