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THE STUDIO MADE SIMPLE Packed with premium technology, RØDE’s all-new AI-1 single channel audio interface offers studio quality at an accessible price. Available as a complete kit with the legendary RØDE NT1 large diaphragm condenser microphone, accessories and cables. Creativity is simply a click away. Lets get started.
The Complete Studio Kit RØDE NT1 Condenser Microphone, AI-1 Single Channel Interface, shock mount, popshield and cables. AT 2
www.rode.com
Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Assistant Editor Preshan John preshan@alchemedia.com.au
Regular Contributors Martin Walker Paul Tingen Guy Harrison Greg Walker Greg Simmons Blair Joscelyne Mark Woods Chris Braun Robert Clark Andrew Bencina Ewan McDonald
Art Direction Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au Graphic Designer Daniel Howard daniel@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au Subscriptions subscriptions@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 PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia.
All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2018 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process with out written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy. 31/08/2018.
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AUSTRALIA’S LEADING SUPPLIERS OF PROFESSIONAL AUDIO EQUIPMENT SINCE 1976 BEST PRICES • BEST SERVICE • BEST ADVICE • LARGEST STOCK • NATIONAL DELIVERY EDUCATION SPECIALISTS – TERTIARY, SECONDARY & STUDENT PRICING AVAILABLE ONLINE STORE www.turramusic.com.au/shop
Expert advice on Education licensing for Institutions, Students and Teachers
Turramurra Music
Celebrates in the Music
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Industry this Year
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Thank you to all our loyal customers! We look forward to extending our hand to all our future customers.
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COVER STORY
24
Courtney Barnett is Really Feeling It
ISSUE 50 CONTENTS
Ed Sheeran’s Crew Go from the Streets to Stadiums
Studio Focus: SAE Perth
22
Roli Seaboard Block Controller
Do $2000 Headphones Sound Expensive? AT 6
42
Mix Masters: Maserati’s Perfect Mix
48
Electro-Voice ELX200 Speakers & Subs
Rode AI-1 & NT1 Recording Kit
32
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40
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Musos Corner Celebrating 50+ Years in the Music Industry
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GENERAL NEWS
DRUMBRUTE IMPACT & KEYLAB MKII Arturia’s DrumBrute Impact is not just a scaled-down version of the DrumBrute hardware drum machine. It’s packed with attitude, tweakable analogue drums sounds, an all-new Colour layer and output distortion with on/off switch and Gain knob. The 10 sounds are accessible through eight responsive performance pads: kick, snare 1, snare 2, tom high, tom low, cymbal, closed hat, open hat, and FM drum. The additional Colour layer lets you create dramatic changes to the sound on the fly and the polyrhythmic 64-step sequencer is supported by a host of easy-to-use performance controls. Arturia also released
the second generation of its KeyLab MIDI controller keyboards, available in both 49- and 61-key versions. Like the original KeyLab, the MkII models shine when paired with Arturia’s Analog Lab software to take control of your jam sessions or live performances. Control your outboard synth and Eurorack modules with KeyLab’s CV/Gate outputs. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
ATH-M60X HEADPHONES Audio-Technica has added to its acclaimed M-Series headphones range with the ATH-M60x on-ear professional monitor headphones. Designed for studio, broadcast and mobile applications, the M60x utilises the same 45mm large-aperture drivers in the M50x, with rare earth magnets and copper-clad aluminium wire voice coils for clarity throughout an extended frequency range and accurate bass response. The M60x’s low-profile, closed-back, on-ear design provides great sound
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isolation and a fit that’s enhanced by the comfort and durability of the memory foam earpads and headband. The headphones come with three interchangeable cables (1.2m-3m coiled, 3m straight, and 1.2m straight) – each with a 3.5mm mini-plug, a 6.3mm screw-on adapter, and a protective carrying pouch. Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
It doesn’t matter if you’re setting up your first remote live stream session, DJing your hundredth party, or mastering your twelfth studio album—the Studioseries has got you covered. All of these interfaces boast as much I/O as we could
Studio 24: 2x2 USB-C audio interface
squeeze into their sturdy chassis. But robust hardware is only half the package. The included Studio One® Artist
Studio 26: 2x4 USB 2.0 audio interface
DAW lets you record and mix with unlimited tracks and effects in an intuitive UI that stays out of your way. And the Studio Magic Plug-in Suite expands your sonic palette with powerful VSTs from the best developers in the business.
Studio 68: 6x6 USB 2.0 audio interface
Meet the family.
Regardless of what your musical passion is or where you make it happen—we’ve got the right interface for both your workflow and workspace. Learn more at www.presonus.com.
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Ph: 03 8373 4817 www.linkaudio.com.au
OVER $400 VALUE INCLUDED FREE AT 9
MOTU GOES MOBILE MOTU is now shipping Touch Console, a new mixing environment in its Pro Audio Control web app specifically designed for mobile mixing on a tablet or smartphone. Touch Console is now available as a free firmware update to all users of MOTU pro audio interfaces, including the 1248, 16A, 8M, 112D, 828es, UltraLite-mk4, UltraLite AVB, Monitor-8 and Stage-B16. The recently released 8pre-es already has Touch Console firmware installed. Users launch the Pro Audio Control web app on their tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android) to access Touch
Console, giving them control over the DSP-driven 48-channel mixer in their MOTU interface, with 12 buses and effects including four-band parametric EQ, dynamics processing, classic reverb and a model of the vintage LA-2A levelling amplifier. The ‘On Faders’ panel lets you instantly map sends for any bus or group to channel faders. Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au
FADERPORT REBIRTH Presonus has downsized its FaderPort 8 and FaderPort 16 into a single-fader format to replace the original model. Rather than forcing you to revise your mixing method, the FaderPort is designed to augment the way you currently mix. Keep using your keyboard and mouse for the things they do well and let the FaderPort handle what you want to get your fingers on: your mix. The FaderPort’s Session Navigator provides easy access to eight mission-critical functions for maximum flexibility. Use the large encoder button and companion buttons to edit and mix with
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greater efficiency and speed. Scroll through the timeline using the encoder or work measure by measure with the arrow buttons; zoom in and out with the encoder and make your tracks larger or smaller with the arrow buttons; navigate and drop markers; and maintain constant control of your main level. Link Audio: (03) 8373 4817 or info@linkaudio.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
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LIVE NEWS
AUDIO-TECHNICA 3000 SERIES The fourth generation of Audio-Technica’s 3000 series true diversity UHF wireless microphone systems has a 60MHz tuning range — more than twice that offered by the previous versions — and is available in two frequency bands; DE2 (470-530MHZ) and EE1 (530-590MHz), with a 100m operating range. Frequencies can easily be scanned and selected on the receiver and then synced with the transmitter via IR sync functionality. The 3000 series lets you set a backup frequency that can be quickly swapped by pressing the transmitter’s malfunction button. A receiver audio squelch feature automatically adjusts the squelch
setting to maximise operating range while minimising potential interference. System configurations feature an ATW-R3210 receiver along with an ATW-T3201 bodypack or ATW-T3202 handheld transmitter. The ATW-T3201 is equipped with Audio-Technica’s new rugged cH-style screw down four-pin connector, accommodating AT’s cH-style lavalier and headworn microphones or cables. Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
LOUD LETS MARTIN GO HOME Martin Audio, the company originally started by Aussie engineer, Dave Martin, is back in the hands of its management. Loud Audio, the parent company of brands like Mackie and EAW, has decided to sell Martin Audio. It agreed to a management buyout led by Managing Director, Dom Harter, with the backing of LDC (a private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group). The Pro Audio/AV manufacturer has been headquartered in Buckinghamshire, UK, for quite some time, with a £20m annual turnover and staff of 60. Locally, Technical
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Audio Group has been the long-time distributor of Martin Audio, bringing the technology to major venues all around Australia. TAG Technical Director Tony Russo couldn’t be more pleased: “We at TAG are very excited about the future of Martin Audio and love that it’s 100 per cent back in UK hands.” Technical Audio Group: (02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
01 8* N (3 ow + w 2 ye ith ar Ex s) te fr nd om e d Se W pt ar em ra n be ty r1 : ,2
NOW AVAILABLE IN WHITE!
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 • Professional PA performance with wide, even coverage and clarity • High-quality Bluetooth®* audio streaming and wireless control and monitoring via the EV QuickSmart Mobile app • QuickSmart DSP via EV’s signature single-knob user interface with LCD
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The Bluetooth® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG * Registration is required for the extra two years of warranty.
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| www.boschcommunications.com.au
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MACKIE ADDS TO DL SERIES Mackie’s got two all-new DL Series digital mixers, the 16-channel DL16S and 32-channel DL32S wireless digital live sound mixers with built-in Wi-Fi for multi-platform control. Both DL16S and DL32S offer Onyx+ mic preamps and DSP on each input in an all-new stagebox form factor. You also get a whole new suite of effects like chorus, flanger, rotary, auto-filter, and more. DL16S and DL32S feature full multi-track recording via USB to create live recordings and even play them back into each channel as a virtual sound check. Mackie Product Manager, Matt Herrin, says, “With rock-solid, great-sounding hardware and the most
proven control app, Master Fader — Mackie is continuing to bring professional quality and intuitive control to price points that make sense for users of all levels.” Master Fader 5.0 has been re-engineered to deliver more choices for how you control a DL Series mixer with the addition of multi-platform support on Android, Mac, and PC, plus the entire new FX suite and UI. Amber Technology: 1800 251 367 or sales@ambertech.com.au
TOUCHMIX-30 PRO GETS AUTO MIXING QSC has added Automatic Microphone Mixing to its TouchMix-30 Pro digital mixer. The Auto Mix function comes in the form of two independent processors which are available to all of the mixer’s 24 mic/line inputs and delivers advanced gain sharing capabilities for a variety of applications, like multi-mic panel discussions. “QSC has continued to further enhance the mixer’s capabilities well beyond customers’ original expectations and we have done so each time as an added-value, no-cost upgrade,” says Gerry Tschetter, QSC Vice President of Product
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Development. “Auto Mix has been on our customers’ wish list for some time and we are pleased to be able to provide them with this capability.” The TouchMix-30 Pro Automatic Microphone Mixing feature is a component of the latest firmware upgrade, Version 1.3, available as a free download from the QSC website. Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or www.jands.com.au
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
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SOFTWARE NEWS
AUDIONAMIX INSTANT DIALOGUE CLEANER Audionamix introduces IDC: Instant Dialogue Cleaner plug-in, its first real-time, cloudless solution. The IDC plug-in makes use of a unique, integrated DNN artificial intelligence that automatically detects and separates speech, no matter the surrounding content. Audionamix says the software excels at addressing common audio issues including complex interference, wind, birds or insects, car and plane interference and roomy recordings. With the turn of a knob, users can clean up dialogue from production audio, field recordings, news and sports recordings, and more, making it the perfect tool for audio
post professionals, dialogue editors, re-recording mixers and broadcast engineers. Maciej Zielinski, CEO of Audionamix, says, “This plug-in offers immediate dialogue clean up with the turn of a knob and addresses common audio issues such as complex variable noise interference including weather, traffic noise, music and room ambience.” Turramurra Music: (02) 9449 8487 or hitech_sales@turramusic.com.au
LOOPMASTERS BASS MASTER Bass Master is a plug-in dedicated to producing a variety of bass tones inspired by hardware classics and cutting edge synth science. A set of 217 waveforms are available across two layers. Bass Master comes with over 350 mix-ready presets with a clean and simple UI, meaning it’s a breeze to dial in your ultimate bass tone. Each preset comes with parameters ready-mapped to the three-slot mod wheel matrix, so every patch is ready to modulate throughout your track. The onboard filter offers 13
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filter types including a range of low-pass, band-pass and highpass models, ladder filters and a comb filter. By way of effects, Bass Master offers Distortion, Drive and Colour, for warming saturation or drastic transformation; Stereo Chorus has four algorithms with Amount and Rate; and Reverb Send contains Bright, Mid and Dark algorithms with Level and Size controls, to add space to sounds.
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
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NI KICK & BASS Native Instruments has released a new kick and bass instrument for Reaktor called TRK-01. The instrument is a combination of mixing techniques and sound design features that address common issues encountered when mixing kicks and bass while adding synthesis, modulation and sequencing capabilities. TRK01 is broken down into two modules; the Kick module which combines synth and sample-based layers, and the Bass module which provides the choice of five synth engines from waveshaping, FM, analogue synth models and more. Both modules feature insert, send, master effects and modulation, with ‘smart’
and ‘simple’ routing. While two independent step-sequencers house features such as eight hot-swappable pattern slots per sequencer and triggerable sound settings, allowing instant switching between up to eight completely different Kick and Bass module settings. TRK-01 comes with full NKS implementation and over 200 presets to get you going. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au
ABBEY ROAD CHAMBERS PLUG Waves’ new Abbey Road Chambers plug-in brings the sound of Abbey Road Studio’s own reverb chambers right to your DAW. Also featured is a complete recreation of Abbey Road’s original S.T.E.E.D. (Send. Tape. Echo. Echo. Delay.) setup – a system designed to extend the chamber’s natural sonic palette into new territories, by splitting the signal and creating a feedback loop from the studio’s REDD console, through a dedicated tape delay, via RS106 and RS127 filters, and then to the chamber and back. The plug-in also gives you an additional set of the original filters
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going into the chamber – EMI’s RS106 hi/low pass filter and the EMI RS127 Presence EQ – to further tweak the chamber sound. In addition to the main reverb chamber, the plug-in includes two other spaces: Abbey Road’s famed Mirror Room, and the Stone Room from Olympic Studios in London. Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au
Analogue is Only the Beginning
#analogforall prologue 16-voice with 61 keys
distributed by CMI Music & Audio find your local dealer at cmi.com.au
prologue 8-voice with 49 keys
WWW.KORG.COM AT 19
REPORT
CAPITAL WORKS When technician Mickey Levis had to find a new PA for Bendigo’s Capital Theatre, he did a full dress rehearsal. Story: Mark Davie
When Bendigo’s new 1000-seat Ulumbarra Theatre opened in 2015, everyone thought it would simply spread the gig load. Up until then, the 480-seat Capital Theatre had been doing it all — music, events, theatre — you name it. By the seat allocations alone, Ulumbarra should have cannibalised at least two-thirds of the Capital’s shows, but head technician Mickey Levis said the Capital is still as busy as ever. There’s just more gigs happening in Bendigo. Two hours north-northwest of Melbourne, Bendigo has carved out a place for itself as the centre of a regional tour catchment. If a tour is hitting Bendigo, punters will often head there — even when they’re on the dividing line between there and Melbourne — because accommodation is cheap and the area is beautiful. With the newly built Ulumbarra getting a d&b line array and Yamaha CL5 digital console, it felt like The Capital was lagging behind. The Capital Theatre was built in 1873, as a masonic hall, when the big Corinthian columns and Octastyle porticos of the Renaissance Revival were in vogue. You’ll find similarly statuesque proportions on significant buildings like the State Library of Victoria. The cement rendered building is ornate, and it looks brilliant, so good that it has a dreaded heritage overlay. CASTING CALL
Nary a hole can be drilled or lick of paint applied without attracting unwanted attention, so when it came to choosing a system, it had to be able to hang off the existing front truss. It also had to come within the budget, and handle a huge variety of performances: from Fred Astaire tribute acts, for retirees, to indie bands travelling through the region. To keep consistency, the console is also a Yamaha CL5, which passed the theatre crew’s sound, workflow and torture tests. Two stages of raked seating have been installed into the originally flat-floored building since it was converted into a theatre in 1991. The only other soft touch are the heavy stage drapes. The rest of the surfaces are entirely hard and untouchable, yet the Capital sounds surprisingly good. When some capital funding came the Capital’s way, Levis knew he didn’t want to make the decision in isolation. He founded Troy Horse in Sydney and has a long history in event AT 20
KV2 Audio: 0448 959 865 or www.kv2audio.com
management and audio installation. “It’s very hard to make a decision in your own venue; you know too much about it,” he explained. “We wanted to get closer to what the clients coming through the theatre, and the punters in it, experience.” Drawing on the larger Victorian Performing Arts Centre (VPAC) organisation, he invited other technicians, local theatre and hire companies to be part of the process. He then put out a call for any distributors who wanted to be part of the shootout, coming out of the process with a handful of high quality PAs that fit under the budget ceiling. LIVE PLAY LIST
Levis wasn’t content to simply pump out a playlist of program music, “the majority of what we do is live performance, so we put live music through it,” he said. “We had a local guy called Bill Barber come play some acoustic blues, then some material with a full rhythm section. Then we got a guy to talk at a lectern, ran some theatrical sound effects and, of course, played program through all the systems, too.” Throughout the day, no one knew which PA they were listening to — Levis would alternate between them in random orders — or what price point each came in at. “Gradually people narrowed down to a couple of systems,” he said. Everyone took notes and they went across to the pub to chat about it. The next day, a smaller group of technicians returned to the theatre to find out which PA was the easiest to pull a mix on. “I was very concerned about making sure people got hands on with mixing through the systems,” said Levis. “I figured if more technicians could pull great mixes through it, it would be better for everyone.” With all the feedback and written reports, Levis was worried they’d get a spread of favourites. Reassuringly, however, he said it was almost unanimous, everyone loved the sound of the KV2 Audio rig. After showing the rig to management at the end of the process, they were pretty happy that it also came in at $35,000 less than any other contender.
ALL CLASS
The system now installed at the Capital is a pair of KV2 Audio ESR215 full-range, three-way loudspeakers. The five-foot tall box has two 15-inch woofers, above and below a central threeinch compression driver and eight-inch, hornloaded mid-range driver. With its 110-degree dispersion and centrally-located mid and hi drivers, it works best flown where the top end can spread out rather than hit you in the stomach in a ground stacked setup. It pairs with the ESR3000 control device containing six individual amplifiers with separate Class AB topologies to match the components each is driving. System processing is via an SAC2 Super Analogue Controller — which has basic controls for limiting, a four-band EQ and a couple of notch filters — and two SDD3 Delay Lines. There’s no DSP signal processing to mess with, which fits into KV2 Audio’s philosophy of building monitoringquality loudspeakers that don’t need intervention. Despite the tri-amplification, it all goes to the box on one cable, which suited Levis’ heritage-restricted working environment just fine. While the ESR’s go down to 30Hz, the system also has two VHD 2.18J subs mounted under the stage to reinforce the low end. They’re driven by a separate VHD3200 amplifier Three perfectly-timed EX26 front fill speakers are embedded into the stage, which Levis can pull up on top of the stage to get a bit more throw during a band show. The whole system sounds fantastic, and gets great coverage across the venue without the sense of losing one side as soon as you step off the centre line. Front to back, with the seating rake, you only lose about three dB, eliminating any need for delay speakers. It’s a testament that sometimes flashy line arrays, with loads of processing and Class D amps aren’t always the best solution; point source boxes tied to a Class AB amplifier can still sound spectacular… and apparently come in much cheaper, too.
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youtube.com/yamahaaustralia AT 21
STUDIO FOCUS:
SAE PERTH
Two years ago, SAE Perth relocated to Northbridge at the upper end of the CBD, placing it in close proximity to two important things — the hub of the city’s live music scene, and a train station. The new spot replaced SAE’s original location on Bennett St in East Perth — a tired campus that was in desperate need of an upgrade to accomodate higher intake numbers and the growing number of animation, film, design and web students. Audio lecturer Shane Pillai showed me through the new campus which is significantly larger than before. Hallways are lit with a classy blue glow, the kitchen and lounge areas are spacious, the main lecture space has an integrated AV system and much nicer chairs. Zak Franklin is a Course Advisor at SAE who came across to Perth from the Byron Bay campus. “The build was close to $6m,” says Zak, AT 22
Story: Preshan John
commenting on the new Northbridge facility. “This place was completely redone to suit what we needed it to be. We actually had lecturers onboard who helped during the design phase — different types of soundproofing — so it would be up to the industry standard and what our students needed.” Just like the recent renovations of SAE’s Melbourne and Sydney campuses, the global institute hasn’t skimped when it came to decking out these studios. While there’s a handful of carryovers from Bennett St, the studios are laden with mostly new equipment — the highlights reel includes a Custom Series 75 console with a two-inch 24-track Studer, Avid S6 and Genelec monitoring in the 5.1 mixing room, an Audient ASP8024, and a couple of Audient 4816s. The mastering studio is home to a pair of Focal Twin6 Be monitors, plus a set of custom-made reference speakers brought over from the Bennett St location.
Outboard includes a Neve 8816 summing mixer, Buzz Audio Resonance EQ, and fine pieces from Dangerous Audio. Elsewhere you’ll uncover enviable racks loaded with outboard from Warm Audio, Lexicon, dbx, Drawmer, TC Electronics, SPL, and more. WA’s creative industry is growing rapidly. While the eastern states offer plenty of education options and institutions where creatives and audio engineers can cut their teeth, choices are limited out west. Which explains why every intake at SAE Perth has shown steady growth. “We’re utilising as much space as we can but we’re expanding yearly,” says Zak. “Currently we have nearly 500 students on campus and three big intakes per year. It’s been massive how much we’ve grown from what we started with in this campus. We’re the only creative media school in Perth really, especially when it comes to the technical side of
things, so we’ve definitely got a niche market here.” Film and animation numbers are on the rise, but it’s evident audio remains SAE’s main attractant. “Audio will always dominate, it’s where our roots are,” Zak says. Having said that, film students can enjoy a beautiful cyclorama room, C|24-equipped post production studio, and cutting-edge edit suites. “I love my job,” enthuses Zak. “I literally get to watch people that have similar passions to me everyday. The coolest part is getting to watch people come in here — sometimes they’re straight out of high school, sometimes they’re in their 50s — and you get to watch them go from knowing just the bare minimum to going out there and being industry-ready. Or just watching their portfolio build up. Or listening to beats they’ve made that I want to listen to on repeat.”
www.sae.edu.au
AT 23
FEATURE
REALLY FEELING IT Courtney Barnett is big time and runs her own label. She could have recorded her new album anywhere, with anyone… but why go to Electric Lady when you can stay home? Story: Mark Davie
Artist: Courtney Barnett Album: Tell Me How You Really Feel
AT 24
Courtney Barnett is a paradox; fame and entrepreneurialism dressed down in a flannel and beanie. She’s an American TV late show star and indie music entrepreneur with her own record label whose lyrics chronicle life with a tenor of self doubt and anxiety. The lead track off her new album is called Hopefulessness, a slow build jam that tails off into the vexatious sound of Barnett’s own kettle whistling away on the gas stove. It’s the sound of her anxiety captured on an iPhone. “When I’m at the other end of the house and hear it going but can’t get there, it really stresses me out.” If you could visually reconstruct the melancholy haze of Barnett’s lyrics on songs like Depreston, you’d end up with the strip of shops her Milk! label headquarters is nestled into. The red-painted brick building still has the markings of an ex-industrial solvents outlet, and its flanked by mostly decrepit or defunct businesses for which time has moved on. Inside, the front is stacked floor to ceiling with merch. Wall-to-wall t-shirts surround a central island bench. It feels crafty and DIY, like the cutting table at your local Spotlight. I meet Barnett out the back, where the band/loft space is separated from the front by a giant curtain. It’s Barnett’s happy place — guitars, Fender amps, a drum kit, PA, and the perfect place to procrastinate. When she was meant to be writing lyrics for her latest album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, she would distract herself by hanging fairy lights. “I spent three hours nearly falling off ladders trying to hang fairy lights!” she said. “I had this manic idea that I needed to have fairy lights every where to have a vibe. Burke [Reid, producer] was like, ‘Stop with the fairy lights and write your lyrics!’” MILKING IT
Owning and running a record label wasn’t part of a master plan. It just kind of happened after Barnett finished recording her first EP at a friend’s place. “It came to the point of putting it out and I didn’t really have any idea of where to send it or what you’re supposed to do,” she said. “It seemed just as easy to start my own online store and sell it, which was essentially how the label started. I used social media and tried to shop it around to people, then it grew a bit and I put friend’s albums on the store.” The independence has worked well for Barnett, who would “recommend it, though people don’t anticipate how much work it is. It’s a weird industry of working around the clock, and social media is part of your work, but it’s great. We can create our own projects, compilations and tours. We did a tour with all the bands around the east coast of Australia because we decided it would be fun.” These days she and partner, Jen Cloher, run the label. Barnett says Cloher is now the label manager, “and does most of the daily stuff. I do a bit more hands-on stuff, design the merch, and boring back end website stuff. We also have labels based in London and New York, and Milk! Records goes through Remote Control in Melbourne, so there’s lots of people working on it. We’re not doing everything, that’d never work.” Despite Barnett being the boss of her own label,
she prefers to keep things low key. When it came to choosing a studio to record Tell Me How You Really Feel in, Barnett kept to the status quo of her last album: same city, Melbourne; same engineer and producer, Burke Reid; and same band — Dave Mudie on drums, Bones Sloane on bass and coproducer Dan Luscombe on lead guitar. The only thing that changed was moving five k’s down the road from Head Gap to Sound Park Studios. “I’m a bit indecisive so I kept leaving it till later and later,” she said. “I’d done random sessions in studios around the world: New York, Wales and London. I thought about going back, but I find it a weird business to pick a producer, engineer or studio you don’t know or have never been to and just lock it in. You have no idea from a chat how it’s going to work. My brain can’t wrap around that. They could be a total arsehole or really condescending.” She’s not against change or experimentation, but there was an element of being paralysed by choice. “Once I realised that I wasn’t just restrained to Melbourne, it was almost too much,” she explained. “Do I want to go to a cabin in the woods and make an album there? Or do you go to Electric Lady in the middle of New York? I came back to the fact I wanted to do it near home and I really respect those guys and their musical choices. So let’s just do that again and have fun. I like Sound Park, I found it to be a bit homely and not too sterile; there’s knick-knacks everywhere.” Before Sound Park was even on the cards, Barnett had a completely different approach in mind. She and Reid spent time at The Grove Studios, where Reid is based, with Barnett playing all the instruments. “I went with a loose intention to make an album, but it ended up being lots of demos and ideas,” she explained. “I was playing all the instruments, but I was still working on and struggling to finish the songs. It was a fun process, and very challenging playing all the instruments and tracking it to clicks, bit by bit. Normally we just do it live, without too much fussing around.” “It was really good for Courtney to get her headspace back into the studio and working on the writing stage. Taking some of the pressure off,” said Reid, who helped jury-rig sounds and set up drum machines to help get the groove. “Drum machines are a good way of getting a song together quickly, because you can try different rhythms really fast, and different sounds, put them through amps and distort them and get inspired.” Barnett liked the results, but not enough to turn it into an album. “That was the headspace I was in at that time. I liked the idea of basic, slightly DIYsounding stuff, but then I didn’t want it to sound
too s**t!” It took another seven months before she showed the band, and headed in to Sound Park. PARKING IN ONE SPOT
Reid tried to count the number of studios he’s worked in. Around 20 was as solid a number as he could muster; more than a few. When I talk to him, he’d just made it to the UK for pre-production with Flyte before heading into Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle of Wight. “It’s a beautiful converted barn, almost church-like inside.” Reid had never worked at Sound Park before, but he’s not too worried about where he records, as long as most of the gear works and the vibe is good. “A happy band leads to a happy album,” he said. “I can usually find ways around problems on my end.” He was fortunate to have spent a week doing pre-production in the rehearsal room at Sound Park, which meant he could poke his head in and try stuff out. When he walks in cold, Burke says a quick squiz is usually enough to take in the acoustic limitations, then his first stop is the microphone cabinet to see what he’s playing with, and what works. “If it’s a brand new studio, I might try some interesting outboard, but I usually do lots on the console and only use a bit of outboard gear. I don’t like to get too complicated.” Sound Park has an MCI board now, which was in great nick, and Burke was more than happy with the microphone collection and variety of instruments on hand. He also loved the DIY acoustic treatment: “It’s not super schmick, which is good, because it settles everyone in pretty fast. It takes the pressure off — you’re not looking at the clock so much.” Reid said sessions with Barnett go relatively quickly. They spent 10 days recording Tell Me How You Really Feel. “She’s super fun to work with. Nice, easy going, and when the decision needs to be made, she makes it,” said Reid. “Sometimes she knows exactly what she wants, other times you offer a few avenues to go down, then she knows exactly what she’s after.”
I find it a weird business to pick a producer, engineer or studio you don’t know and just lock it in. They could be a total arsehole or really condescending
MO-JANGLES
Barnett’s go-to tone is a bit of distortion and chorus through a Fender Deluxe amp. “In radio situations people are always telling me to dial the treble down, but I like it slightly abrasive and the real jangle that comes with it. I used a lot of chorus and on the last lot of touring as a three-piece, which would make it all sound a bit bigger! But it gets a bit old after a while.” To help expand the palette of tones on the record, Reid and Luscombe would put their heads together and devise a pedal and amp combination for each part. “It was always about AT 25
conveying the uniqueness Courtney has in her lyrics on the music side as well,” explained Reid. “Dan’s a great musician with awesome taste. We talk a lot about the colour and vibe. We all know that language pretty well, so it’s about having access to the finer ingredients. Dan’s great at pulling out something left of centre, which is usually the one that makes the cut.” “I’ve just always respected his taste more than anything,” concurred Barnett. “He has a really encyclopaedic knowledge of music. If I’m second-guessing myself, I’ll ask him. If he likes it, it’s okay! I’m so vulnerable and sit there thinking everything’s terrible and I’m making a terrible idea. It’s nice having that reassuring person.” For guitars, there would have been any of a number of amps, pedals or chains of pedals. For Nameless Faceless Luscombe capoed Barnett’s guitar and pulled two strings off so it sounded ukelele-ish. Other times, he’d pluck piano strings, or Barnett would use a bow to create the foreboding drone at the beginning of the album. “For Crippling Self Doubt & a General Lack of Self Confidence, he found something called a VHS Counter. I don’t think it was a guitar pedal. It made it alien and underwater-sounding.” “One consistent thing was the amps were played extremely loud,” said Reid. “Lots of the distortion was from hot hot amps, and the microphones overloading a little bit.” Reid has a particular affection for AKG C451 pencil condensers on guitar amps, but the pads aren’t often enough to cope with the barrage of level. “I’m not the biggest fan of using pads on consoles. I prefer it on the microphone,” he said. “DAN HAD A PAIR OF OKTAVA
from the kit, capturing really short room ambience. “Drums are the thing that matter most in the room, so finding the right spot is important. When I know cymbals are going to get smashed a bit more, I’ll angle my overheads differently. I’ll also see how far I can move the cymbals away from the kit to get more space around the skins. Squishing drums up against the walls makes them resonate more, and putting padding up on those walls helps tame the cymbal reflections. You just twist and turn until it sounds good. Then record.” Reid’s always looking for a place to stick a Shure SM7 dynamic crush mic. “Sometimes it’s in the middle of the kit nestled just above the kick drum, other times up high,” he said. “DAN HAS A U47 COPY FROM BEES
I’m so vulnerable and sit there thinking everything’s terrible and I’m making a terrible idea. It’s nice having that reassuring person
PENCIL MICS THAT COME WITH THESE SCREW ON PADS. THEY’RE GREAT BECAUSE YOU CAN SCREW ON MULTIPLE PADS AND GET A 30DB PAD. Then I just move it around. There’s a bit of distance, maybe a foot or so from the actual amp. Even then, I’m not really able to go past one click on the preamp. I like condenser mics and ribbons on amps, sometimes 57s. Maybe one mic will not be handling it well, then I’ll have another mic that’s really padded to blend in if I need a cleaner version with dynamics.”
CORNERING THE DRUMMER
Reid wasn’t terribly interested in capturing any large ambience on drums at Sound Park. After trying a few spots and finding the bigger room a bit tricky, he eventually settled on pushing the drums into the corner of the medium-sized partition. “I tend to make my drummers struggle to get into their drum kits,” said Reid. “Dave was a good sport. It wasn’t about getting a bombastic room sound. Any room mics are only about four to five feet away AT 26
KNEES, WE WERE PUTTING IT UP AGAINST THE KICK DRUM AND IT WAS BLOWING UP THE PREAMP IN A REALLY COOL WAY, ADDING AN ALMOST ELECTRONIC SUB. Sound
Park has some really cool Pultec-style EQs. They’re fun on an SM7, you just pump the lows and highs, then put it through a compressor. Reid is very conscious of drums not eating up his entire image, preferring to keep them largely mono and push guitars out wide. “Keeping drums mainly mono helps the punch cut through,” he explained. “When you start layering a bunch of things top, it’s harder to get the centre through. The more space you have between hits keeps the centre feeling more aggressive.” Instead of spreading his overheads, he’ll often look for ways to exaggerate movement. “I had Coles ribbons as overheads, but facing each other on either side like a pair of ears,” he said. “When you have them facing each other on the edges of the cymbals, they do weird phasing things across the stereo spectrum, which can give movement. “I use Soundtoys’ Echoboy a lot, but not necessarily for delays. You can change it to ‘Time’, and I’ll play with it at about 12 or 13ms. Then there’s a Memory Man or Space Echo patch in the other menu that allows you to play with the modulation. There are two knobs you can move one click at a time and it screws with the space. SOMETIMES I’LL TAKE A ROOM MIC, SNARE, OR WHATEVER, AND DOUBLE IT, THEN PUT A STEREO ECHOBOY ON, AND HAVE IT MODULATING. WHEN YOU BLEND IT WITH THE ORIGINAL SOURCE, IT CAN SHIFT THINGS IN WEIRD SPOTS AND KEEP IT MOVING. I like spatial things that
modulate so they’re not static. I used to not like hi-hat mics, but there’s always a song where you’ll need it. They’re also fun mics to destroy and bring up other parts of the kit. I might put a Panman on it, and have it moving back and forth in time slightly left and right. Sometimes either side of the centre, or over in the left speaker so it sounds like their hand is going up and down.”
FAIRY LIGHT GUIDES
Once Barnett finally had her lyrics sorted, she brought her two clumps of fairy lights and strung them up a Sound Park. “It became this joke, they were all around me,” she said. “It was ridiculous.” Other than that, she would prefer people clear out for her takes, the lyrics were new, constantly changing. “It’s incredibly vulnerable, so to have people in the control room would make me nervous.” “Some of the vocals were live from the band takes,” explained Reid. “When we set up to do the tracking, we were trying to get a microphone that wasn’t super intrusive and daunting. We wanted something that wouldn’t pick up as much of the band if we decided to use it, and one she could get her face into. We used an Electro-Voice RE20 into a big red Giles Audio VMP-2B tube preamp and it sounded amazing. I threw it up for guides, but we really liked it and ended up using it for all the vocals. When we’d overdub stuff, we’d sometimes have her playing along on an unplugged guitar just to have that feeling of playing along with the band. That helps the delivery, because you’re concentrating on something else other than your vocals coming through the headphones.” AUTOMATED FOOD FIGHT
Reid took the sessions back to the The Grove, where he mixes in the box using a load of parallel chains laden with saturation and distortion. “It can look a bit mad,” he said. “I have the intention of starting out organised, then it can look like a bit of a food fight. SOMETIMES I’LL HAVE TWO OR THREE PARALLELS, AND PHASING CAN TAKE AWAY PUNCH, OTHER TIMES IT CAN ADD EXTREME HIGHS AND LOWS. If you get
that balance right with your close mics, you might change the tone of things, but it can be interesting and add a weird spatial element to it.” Because he moves around between different studios, Reid has tried to keep his list of plug-ins short. He’s also not on the UAD train, despite having used them and finding them tantalising. “I’m trying to use plug-ins I know I can put onto any computer. I have the installers with me and I know they work. That way if I’m travelling or working at another studio, I’m not relying on carrying around a UAD system. “I used to fall into the trap of ‘needing’ this or that, but I lined up a bunch of different compressors and played around with them. There are one or two that sound a bit different, but you can get in the ballpark with the ones I have. Having one or two plug-in compressors that I know well is fine. It’s like outboard gear. Just pretend that each plug-in costs $3000. Figure it out, and use it in the situations you wish you had something else, but it’s all you’ve got. “I really like the Soundtoys bundle, and the Eventide plug-ins, which can be similar in some aspects. I use Kush Audio and its offshoot, Sly-Fi, a lot. Sly-Fi has an API-style EQ, the Axis, which has a distortion knob on it that sounds really great. Sometimes I just use that knob. Some of them are simply the first plug-ins I used and know. I’ve been bringing back the PSP Vintage
Warmer a lot these days. I use the Valhalla a lot for reverb, it’s pretty flexible.” While Reid is a sucker for nailing the drum and bass groove, he says automation is “one of the most important things in a mix, and one of the laziest to get around to. You can spend a lot of time with a kick drum, but in the mix it might not make as big a difference. You’re orchestrating the mix when you automate. You can make performances really come to life. I try to get sounds and balances happening fast, then start automating, turning effects on and off, doing weird pans, pushing the master fader up in spots, pushing drum fills.” Reid prefers to do the bulk of his automation on trim plug-ins at the end of his plug-in chains. “That way I can copy that trim plug-in to different instruments, if I want them to all do the same
automation,” he explained. “THE TRIM PLUG-IN STARTS AT 0DB, WHEREAS YOUR DRUM BUS MIGHT BE AT A PARTICULAR PLUS OR MINUS LEVEL. IF I WANT IT TO HAPPEN ON MY BASS TOO, I CAN’T COPY THE FADER AUTOMATION, BECAUSE IT MIGHT BE AT A DIFFERENT INITIAL SETTING. However, I can just copy that trim
plug-in and it’ll ride the bass the exact same way from its initial level. “I can also bypass them easily, which seems a lot faster than flipping between the channel automation. It also means I can do broad level changes on the faders. For instance, if I’ve gone through and automated volumes on a trim plug-in on my drum bus, I can still fade the drums out in a spot or do another last minute volume automation, over the top.”
AT 27
TUTORIAL
Despite Ed Sheeran’s third album being symbolically titled ÷, as in ‘divide’, the world seems united by an affection for the guy. ÷ dominated 2017, outselling and out-streaming all-comers. As if that wasn’t enough, the album also spawned five major hit singles. The first four, including the monster hit Shape Of You, were all released in the first few months of 2017. Just when it looked like Sheeran might give everyone else a chance, he released the album’s fifth single, Perfect. Another huge hit that reached No. 1 in dozens of countries. Not quite done, the British singer/ guitarist released two additional versions of Perfect at the end of 2017. One was an acoustic duet with Beyoncé, the other an orchestral duet with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. It seems the world truly cannot get enough of Sheeran. The Beyoncé duet version of Perfect in particular was very successful, topping the charts in many countries. The feat was impressive given it was — unusually for a hit song — stripped down to only organ, a few acoustic guitars, and Sheeran and Beyoncé’s vocals. AT 28
The British singer also went ever so slightly off script in his choice of mix engineer, too. These days, most songs at the pointy end of the hit parades are mixed by a handful of star mixers. It just happens that every so often some mixers — through a combination of label connections, readymade hits and sheer talent — rise to the top. In the US, Serban Ghenea and Manny Marroquin reign in the charts, while British artists tend to engage compatriots Tom Elmhirst (Adele) and ‘Spike’ Stent. Stent actually mixed the whole of ÷ and the Bocelli version of Perfect. But for the Beyoncé treatment, Sheeran mixed it up a bit and went with Tony Maserati. It’s not to says Maserati isn’t a star mixer — his clientele includes Lady Gaga, Jason Mraz, Black Eyed Keys, and Beyoncé — he just doesn’t dominate today’s singles charts in the way those other mixers do. He’s still regarded as a mix guru by his colleagues, has been honoured with several Grammy Awards and nominations, and has his own signature Waves plug-in series, The Tony Maserati Collection.
Maserati's mix room at Mirrorball Entertainment has a plethora of analogue outboard, including a Neve Melbourn sidecar console; Telefunken V76 preamps; Neve 33609, Urei LA3A, Chandler RS124, and Shadow Hill compressors; and Chandler Zener and Pendulum PL2 Peak limiters. Still, Maserati says, “For me it’s not about getting my rocks off fiddling with analogue gear. I generally don’t touch my analogue gear. I set it, and forget it."
Artist: Ed Sheeran & Beyoncé Album: Perfect
RIDING EVERY BREATH
Tony Maserati got the job because of both his connection with Beyoncé and the acoustic, stripped-down nature of the song’s arrangement. Rather than getting the mix to sound as hardhitting and in your face as possible — as Ghenea, Marroquin and Stent tend to do — the brief was to be sensitive to the song’s more intimate approach. Maserati gave the lowdown on his mix from New York, where he was due to attend the 60th Grammy Awards ceremony for his work on K. Flay’s album Every Where Is Some Where, which was nominated in the Best Engineered Recording (non-Classical) category. “Stuart White, who used to be a second of mine years ago, recorded this version of the song and did a really nice rough mix of it,” recalled Maserati. “My job was to get the best sound for Beyoncé’s voice, and give it more life; so it breathed more in a way Beyoncé is used to hearing. This meant doing a lot of fader riding. In fact, after I got Ed and Beyoncé to sound the way I wanted, I spent most of my time mixing the song by physically riding a fader with my hand. Instead of drawing in rides, I used my D-Command. The other thing is that the organ and acoustic guitar start right at the top, and they’re very static throughout the song. Instead of everything remaining flat from beginning to end, I did a lot of dynamic rides with the organ and guitar, lowering and raising them all the time, to give space for the vocals. “My main focus was on how I could create breathing room and make sure all parts of the arrangement moved, to literally ride things up and down to follow and support the emotion of the vocals. Sometimes that meant when the vocalist is taking a breath to bring up the organ, or the guitars, so it fills the space. Or it may be bringing the organ down a little bit when the vocal is talking about something more intimate and emotional. Then bringing it up again where the vocal is having a crescendo. Fader riding was the primary task I was performing in this mix.” BE UNDER THE BONNET
Emphasising breathing and emotion by simply riding the faders makes Maserati’s mix of Perfect sound deceptively easy from a technical perspective. However, it’s a bit like talking about what it takes to drive a car, without mentioning the cogs and combustion under the bonnet. Even in a simple song like the Beyoncé duet-version of Perfect, Maserati spends a lot of time under the hood. Maserati came up in the 1980s working as an engineer at Sigma Sound Studios in New York, and went on to become one of the driving forces behind the New York hip-hop movement, partly responsible for shaping its sound. He worked for a long time from his own studio just north of New York, but moved to Los Angeles in 2011, where he and Stefan Skarbek set up Mirrorball Entertainment, a music publishing, production and recording company. Maserati has his own mix room at Mirrorball, with a hybrid analogue and digital under-the-
bonnet setup. Maserati’s Pro Tools HD Native cards with four HD I/O’s and Avid D-Control desk make up the in-the-box side of his system. He then has a collection of analogue goodies, starting with Chandler EMI TG and Neve Melbourn consoles, as well as a Chandler Mini Mixer. On the outboard side, he has Telefunken V76 mic pres, Neve 33609 and Urei LA3A compressors, a Chandler Zener Limiter, Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, Chandler Curvebender EQ and the Pendulum PL2 Peak Limiter. At the end of the chain, it’s all coming out Tannoy DMT12 and ProAc Studio 100 monitors. When I asked why he continues to work with analogue, despite former diehard analogue aficionados like Tchad Blake and Andrew Scheps moving into the box, Maserati replied, “The idea that you can only do one or the other is kind of crazy to me. I have the best of both worlds, and the benefit of having a hybrid system is that I have tons of hardware insert and summing choices. I will always use some hardware gear on the Pro Tools inserts even if I sum in the box. “For me it’s not about getting my rocks off fiddling with analogue gear. I generally don’t touch my analogue gear. I set it, and forget it. I don’t sit there during a mix noodling on my Neve desk. I have two Chandler Limited RS124 compressors, and I used one setting for Beyoncé’s voice in the verse and one setting for her voice in the chorus, and didn’t touch it again during the mix. When I put the RS124 on her voice, it immediately sounded like magic. I then also threw on my ITI EQs and that sounded amazing; I was good. COULD I HAVE GOTTEN THE SAME RESULT BY USING A DIGITAL EQ AND COMPRESSOR? I DON’T KNOW. BUT WHY SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT THAT? I like using analogue gear, but I’m not an analogue gear advocate. I’m a ‘getting things done’ advocate!”
A MIND FOR HEADROOM
Maserati also says he still understands headroom better in the analogue world. This led to a lengthy exposition about an often forgotten and misunderstood subject: the supreme importance of headroom and gain staging. “I am constantly dealing with head room and how it works inside of the computer,” he explained. “On every single track, in the groups and buses, and ultimately the mix bus, then to how it works outside of the box, like when I am summing in analogue. I’m always thinking about headroom and gain staging. I’ll clip gain if the signal goes too hot to EQs or compressors, whether digital or analogue. “Of course, I absolutely use my ears to monitor head room, but I’m also very systematic in using both VU and peak meters, at all times. I pay attention to where my kick hits, where my vocal hits, where my snare hits, what the level is on my bass, and I am metering it. Those tools help me to work faster and keep me from having to roll back later. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and my methodology is to start lower, because it’s easier to push the level later on than remove it.” Given how carefully Maserati treats gain staging and because many sessions are recorded and
I like using analogue gear, but I’m not an analogue gear advocate. I’m a ‘getting things done’ advocate!
mixed very hot, you’d think Maserati would have his assistant, Tyler Scott, adjusting and pulling back levels when setting up the mixes for his boss. According to Maserati, Scott has a more important job to do after he’s collected all the files and flowed it into a template. “A crucial thing Tyler does is make sure that when I open the session, it sounds as close to the rough mix as possible,” explained Maserati. “You must not forget that the rough has been approved by the artist, management, the A&R, so I need to start from there. If I start from somewhere out in space, more than likely I’ll get feedback saying, ‘what happened to our song?’ I can’t do that. SO I NEED THE SESSION TO SOUND AS MUCH LIKE THE ROUGH AS POSSIBLE, THEN I CAN START THINKING ABOUT WHAT I NEED TO IMPROVE.”
THOUGHT PROCESS
This next thought process isn’t a rush job. Before jumping to EQ a kick drum, or balancing anything, Maserati will simply listen to the session “over and over. I keep cycling the song, and write myself notes about what I want to do and how. While I’m listening to the session, I’m working on ideas in my head and figuring out what I’m going to do. I may pop on an EQ here or there, or try little effect ideas, but I try not to solo things too much. Unless something is bothering me to listen to, I’m probably not going to bother messing with things until after I’m done formulating my ideas. “As I’m listening I try to determine what the different frequency groups are and how they relate to each other. If the kick and bass are closely related, I’ll chose at which frequency each will be dominating. I may manage those things without soloing or digging too deeply. These are all broad strokes, I’m not doing detailed work yet. Then I’ll go through a process of one to two hours of subtractive EQ-ing. Generally speaking, everyone is pushing, pushing, pushing. But what I do is ask myself: ‘What frequency in that guitar part do I not need, so that if I take it out, the part still does what it needs to do?’ Many people think that all parts need to have full frequency spectrum, but that’s simply not the case. If a guitar is playing a high arpeggio in a really heavy song, that arpeggio guitar doesn’t need the 120-200Hz boom that most guitars have. Instead, its sole purpose is to add tinkle at the top, and I can take out everything below that. AT 29
PERFECT SESSION There are 27 main tracks in Maserati’s mix of Perfect; acoustic guitars, Farfisa organ, and Sheeran and Beyoncé’s vocals. From top to bottom, there’s Maserati’s ‘L2’ reference mix, followed by the five group tracks, two original guitar tracks, one Farfisa track, Sheeran’s lead vocal stem and a track with Sheeran
ORGAN & GUITARS Maserati: “The Farfisa organ is going through the Original Stem aux, as are two of the acoustic guitars. It’s probably something Stu [White] created and I just edited and worked with it. The Guitar Group has insert 5-6, which goes to my Neve 31114 EQ and Neve 33609 compressor.
DON’T FIGHT IT, EDIT Maserati: “I prefer to edit people’s work, and if appropriate credit them, rather than just remove it. Stu [White] had his own aux in the session for Beyonce’s verse, LeadVox.1. I duplicated it, so I could start exactly from where he had left off. All of his plug-ins are gone and replaced by my analogue gear — my ITI EQ, second Chandler RE124, and GML EQ — on the inserts. They’re greyed out because I’m not in my studio at the moment. The Waves RVerb Hall and the AltiVerb EMT Plate on the sends come from Stu, and there is no automation on them. I probably just lowered the level and edited the settings. The other reason I prefer to edit other people’s work is because somebody like Beyoncé has already listened to this 100 times, and the last thing you want is for her to go: ‘What happened to my reverb sound?’ Or, ‘What happened to my delay?’ Trust me, she has an incredible memory, and remembers things exactly the way they were. I added the other sends to the aux tracks with the UAD EP34 Tape Echo, SoundToys MicroShift and PrimalTap.”
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harmonies, a Farfisa delay track, three new acoustic guitar tracks, Sheeran’s actual lead vocal audio track, and nine lead vocal tracks from Beyoncé, which are split between the verse and chorus, and include five aux effect tracks. Apparently the session continues with another 20 Beyoncé backing vocals.
BEYONCÉ VOCAL GROUPS Beyoncé’s second verse and second pre-chorus leads go to the B Lead Verse aux, which is also sent to a Lead Parallel compression aux with Waves’ CLA76 on it. Likewise, the main chorus vocal goes to the B Lead Chorus aux, which also has a send to the parallel compression aux. In all cases the audio tracks are very sparsely populated with plug-ins, in some cases none, while the aux track insert chains are stacked to the brim. From there, all the vocal aux tracks are sent to the Vocal Group, which has a very small amount of Pro-Q, reducing 3.5dB with small Q at 250Hz.
MAKING MOVES The main thing Maserati stressed time and again was how every mix treatment was to create movement. For example, regarding the two plug-ins he has on the main Farfisa organ track — the SoundToys Decapitator and McDSP AE600 Active Equalizer — Maserati said, “the Decapitator is automated on and off. It’s on for only one eight-bar section. With the AE600 you can set a threshold above which one of its six bands become active, and in this case I’ve set the fifth band to
3496.6Hz, with a Q of 1.89, and the moment the signal hits -25dB or more, it kicks into action and adds 15.36dB of gain. So every time the organ hits a certain volume, it goes ‘blaaah.’ Similarly, when the Decapitator comes on, the organ also jumps out. These are simple things that create movement.”
AUTOMATING EQ Maserati: “The Fabfilter Pro-Q2 on the main Beyoncé lead vocal chorus comp track is automated. I go in section by section, word by word, to automate EQ. It’s something I do often. The track also has the Avid EQ3 7-band, and this plug-in is also dramatically automated. To me, this is necessary to make the vocal sound smooth. It’s not static. I also had the EQ3 on Beyoncé’s verse track (133comp), and you can see that it moves almost all the time. That
automation is just for one EQ band, sometimes I’m automating three! Similarly, there are two EQs on Ed’s main lead vocal track, the UAD Massenburg MDWEQ5 and the Avid EQ3 7-band, both automated. I also have the FabFilter Pro-DS DeEsser and the UAD TubeTech PE 1C EQ on his vocal, with which I am pushing the top end these and are also automated. Plus Ed’s vocal has Insert 9-10, which goes to my Chandler Zener limiter.”
SUMMING Maserati: “The Guitar group, the Vocal Group and the Backing Vocals Group all go to my EMI Chandler Mini Mixer, and the Effects Group to my RMS216 Folcrom summing unit; which is great, with 44dB of headroom… but it has no mixer, so it goes to my Telefunken V76 amplifier, just like the Mini Mixer. All that’s summed to stereo, and the 2-mix goes to my Chandler TG12345 Curve
“The subtractive EQ phase is very functional; it’s about what I can lose and not change the energy of the mix. I’ll be using plugins like the FabFilter Pro-Q2, and even the Avid EQ3. Simple stuff. Most people boost when they want to hear something, as opposed to taking out what they don’t want to hear. You add all the unnecessary low-frequency stuff together and you get a lot of mud. IF I TAKE OUT ALL THE LOW FREQUENCIES THAT DON’T PLAY AN ESSENTIAL ROLE IN THE MIX, IT GIVES ME ROOM TO ALLOW OTHER INSTRUMENTS TO CONTROL THOSE LOW FREQUENCIES.
The whole point is about sculpting holes, and all of a sudden you can hear details you could not hear before and the track can breathe again.
Someone sent me a rough mix at -3LUFS the other day. I sent them a note saying that’s useless, because Spotify is operating at -14LUFS!
Bender EQ, and then the Shadow Hills mastering compressor, the Pendulum PL2 Peak Limiter, and finally the Lavry converter, and I print back into the session. Rather than the L2 I actually used the A.O.M.’s Invisible Limiter plug-in on the mix print, doing 2.88dB of limiting, but that was purely for listening purposes. I’m not sending that to the mastering engineer."
Pulling back all the things that are not necessary on individual tracks in the entire session also usually frees up a lot of headroom. Most people send me over-maximised and over-limited mixes these days. Someone sent me a rough mix at -3LUFS the other day. I sent them a note saying that’s useless, because Spotify is operating at -14LUFS! “To allow, especially the vocal, breathing room, I prefer to limit groups — in Perfect they were broken up into Guitar, Vocal, Backing vocals, FX, and Original Stems Aux — rather than the entire mix. In essence, using groups like that allows me to do more limiting and compression, which allows more room for the vocals. If I maximise
the entire mix, the vocal is also subjected to that, and if you push it up by 1dB in the mix, that’s not what you’ll be hearing. So my method is to activate limiting on the groups, and only minor maximisation on the whole stereo bus. That way my vocal gets to breathe. “It turned out to be quite a complex session for a very simple arrangement! But all the automation was to breathe life into the song. I don’t need to fix Sheeran or Beyoncé! The goal is to keep the listener engaged the whole time, and that was all about making it breathe, and about getting everything in the track to move with the emotions that Ed Sheeran and Beyoncé put into the song.” AT 31
FEATURE
Ed Sheeran’s unlikely tilt at the ‘world’s most popular performer’ crown takes him on a worldwide stadium tour. AT talks to the sounds guys who are ‘levelling up’ to hang on for the ride. Story: Christopher Holder Photos: Andrew Bennett AT 32
It’s the sound guy equivalent of winning Powerball. Like hitching your wagon to a bullet train. No one could predict it and nothing could prepare you for it. One minute you’re chugging along on the daily grind, the next minute you’re on a white-knuckle 300kph ride, using all your strength just to hold on. “I came on board for a two-week run. I was then asked to continue to do some one-off promotional shows. We had some early success over here in Australia which we followed with a couple of shows. Things then started to tick along in the US, so we flew to America. And before you know it we were doing a show at Madison Square Garden! We’ve been touring pretty much constantly ever since.” That’s FOH engineer, Chris Marsh’s remarkable story; a story he relays from the front of house position in the middle of Etihad Stadium in Melbourne; a stadium Ed Sheeran sold out four nights in a row. I think some bright spark crunched the numbers and estimated about one in every 20 Australian adults saw Ed live. It’s truly phenomenal. This tour sees Chris and system engineer Charlie Albin moving from touring arenas to stadiums. It’s yet another ‘pinch yourself and get on with it’ progression for the two. “It’s a bit of a learning curve doing spaces this size,” admitted Charlie. “But we’ve been finding our feet reasonably quickly.” BUSKING IT
In many ways, Ed Sheeran is the world’s biggestname busker. He’s not needed to change much about his show since those 2011 performances. It’s him, his guitar and a loop pedal. And he performs like he might do to a small crowd in a train underpass: he’s relaxed, chatty and genuinely appears to be having a fun time. The fact there are 50,000 people in the audience rather than 50; and he’s clearing a king’s ransom rather than loose change doesn’t seem to phase him in the least. Chris Marsh: “My mix is all derived from Ed’s acoustic guitar and vocal. I take the guitar as a clean feed, before it goes to his looper. Ed has four guitars: two small guitars, and two larger guitars for ballads. The Digico SD7 creates a matrix, sending a feed to his Loop Station and then Ed records multiple loops for certain songs which include rhythm parts, lead parts, and rhythmic parts (where’s he’s actually slapping the guitar to rhythmic effect). He’ll also create vocal loops using a different microphone, building up harmonies or beatboxing. I end up with around 16 channels of inputs from two sources. “We use a Sennheiser 9000 series wireless mic system. There’s an MD9235 capsule on his lead vocal transmitter and a 934 capsule on the loop vocal transmitter. The 934 capsule has a much tighter pickup pattern which is important when he’s building his loops. The noise of the crowd is quite intense, particularly after 30 seconds when they figure out what song he’s about to play. If you’re not careful you can end up with spill from the audience screaming and that will get repeated every 12 beats for the six-minute duration of the song. It’s something of a distraction.
System Engineer, Charlie Albin (left) and FOH Engineer, Chris Marsh.
“The 9000 series system also handles the guitars. Everything stays in the digital domain until it reaches the PA. “The wedges on stage are Meyer Sound MJ212s and they’re supplemented by two Meyer 900 subs. He uses a Sennheiser SR2050 IEM system. We have a guest set of ears, just in case, and the techs backstage have a set so they can hear what’s going on. It used to be very loud on stage but since Ed’s started using ears more and more, the stage level is much quieter so techs do need to be on ears. There is no monitor engineer, everything is handled by the SD7.” Ed is quite happily cocooned in Ed World on stage. Chris reckons Ed hasn’t requested a change to his mix or setup for years. Which explains why Ed never asks for a sound check, and Chris and Charlie have never requested one. “From my point of view there’s not a huge benefit from him coming in. Now we’re playing to stadiums, even less so. The reference of Ed playing to an empty stadium… it’s vastly different to when it’s full. Everything changes.” Ed’s so happy that he’s very supportive of Chris and Charlie in their efforts to keep levelling up with technical upgrades — so long as nothing changes in Ed World. One big change was moving to the Meyer Sound Leo rig. LEO THE LION ARRAY
Chris Marsh: “I’ve been a fan since Meyer came out with Milo. To my mind Milo was the first system I felt delivered next generation performance to [L-Acoustics] V-DOSC. Personally, I think nothing else until Milo offered a reason to switch from V-DOSC — it’s a PA that’s been an industry leader for a long time. Milo came out as a great competitor in every way, and not just a competitor; Milo had a more defined high end, I just found it much clearer, so we started using Milo.
If you’re not careful you can end up with spill from the audience screaming and that will get repeated every 12 beats for the six-minute duration of the song. It’s something of a distraction
“We had a one-off opportunity to give Meyer’s Leo a go for a Belfast arena show a few years ago. The difference between the Milo and Leo was remarkable. Ed’s loops can get very, very complicated, when he over-loops and overloops. There’s an awful lot of texture in what he’s playing and while a lot of PAs will allow that to be heard, the definition gets lost within all the loops. Whereas Leo managed to maintain all the definition within the loops and have his vocal sit really nicely on top. It wasn’t something only us techies noticed. On that particular occasion, Ed’s family were there along with some friends and musician friends who’d been to previous shows. They remarked on how much better things had gotten, and they didn’t know why. For me, it’s solely down to the use of Leo.” Charlie Albin: We’ve since had the opportunity to tour in countries where we couldn’t carry Leo or couldn’t find it. We’ve had to use other PAs and chosen the best of the bunch in those territories. AT 33
Charlie Albin: “I can say with certainty Leo is a very, very powerful box and throws a long way. Doing something on this scale where the side hangs are firing up to 120 metres and they’ve still got to maintain the full frequency spectrum and intelligibility up to the highest seats. I don’t think there are many other boxes out there that can do that. You’re in elite company.”
Four hangs of 18 x Meyer Sound Leo cabs take care of FOH and sides, with 42 x 1100LFC subs either own or stacked in end-fire mode.
As a result we’ve been able to reference back to Leo and it’s definitely the right choice for us. The characteristics of this PA just suits this show the best, and by a considerable margin. MONUMENTAL PA
As mentioned, Chris and Charlie were only a week or so into their first stadium tour when they met with AudioTechnology. The stakes are higher and the sheer quantity of PA is monumental. Four hangs of 18 Meyer Sound Leo cabs take care of FOH and sides, with 42 x 1100LFC subs either flown or stacked in end-fire mode. In Melbourne, three hangs of 16 x Milo took care of delay. Then there’s a constellation of Mica, Leopard and Lina for various fill purposes. Charlie and Chris are modest enough to admit they’ve still got their stadium training wheels on and too modest to admit that thanks to diligence and professionalism they’re killing it. Charlie Albin: Naturally we’re sent plans of the venue to get a sense of where to hang the PA before we arrive but once we do arrive on site it’s a matter of getting the tools out and taking our own measurements. It’s not difficult to find a PA position that gets us decent coverage, but it’s dealing with the fine tuning on the day that takes the time. We’ll time align the various hangs and fill, apply some broadbrush EQ, then we’ll walk the space. “What we notice most in stadiums are the multiple arrival times. There are spots in the stadium where you may well be hearing five different arrays and five different arrival times. So optimising the system is always about compromises; picking the least worst setting. “We’ll do that while looping a reference track, AT 34
making sure the sound and coverage is as even as possible. We’ll then reference that back to the front of house sound.” Chris Marsh: “There’s got to be a strong correlation between what I’m hearing from front of house and what others are hearing at the back.” NOWHERE TO HIDE
Come show time, it’s easy to feel something of a sound guy’s tension. When you have a full band, as an observer you ride those first few songs with the engineer as he pulls together and fine tunes the mix. With Ed and his guitar it’s easy to feel exposed, especially surrounded by (what feels like) every Meyer loudspeaker in the southern hemisphere, all in the one location.
The subs are really activated by Ed’s percussive slapping of his acoustic. The resonance is trouser flapping, barely controlled and genuinely exciting. The looping gives the arrangements an improvised quality. They’re lush, complex, and harmonically rich. It’s quite a one-man show. Chris Marsh: “On the first night in a new stadium I have sweaty palms. I’m pleased I do because it means I still care. In that first song you can tell very quickly if it’s all there and if it’s right or not.” And, yes, for a show hinged on one bloke with a guitar, Chris has to be seriously focussed. Chris Marsh: “It’s a very dynamic show and there’s nowhere to hide — there’s no way of hiding anything within the mix.” Chris uses a Bricasti M7 reverb for Ed’s vocal
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FOH Engineer, Chris Marsh talks us through this rack. Avalon 737SP: The compression looks after Ed’s main vocal. It’s a very subtle, very transparent compression but it really does the job. I also use the EQ for some broadbrush adjustment — anything more intricate is done on the SD7. API 2500: It isn’t in line. It’s in case of emergency. Waves MaxxBCL: I used to run the subs on an aux but it always felt like it separated things into a sub bass and a full range system — I never really managed to make the whole thing feel like it was one. Now we run the system off of left and right bus but the MaxxBCL gives me the ability to grab some of the sub bass frequencies when Ed is rhythmically punching the guitar and accentuate them as required. When we get to the ballads I wind that sub bass right back out again which helps smooth out the mix. Bricasti M7 x 2: One for Ed’s vocal and the other as a guitar reverb. As far as I’m concerned the M7 is best reverb there is on the market. Eventide Eclipse: Chorus and pitch shift. Ed’s loop vocals sometimes need affecting in various songs. Sonifex: Deals with media broadcast splits JoeCo: Our multi-track recorder. Records the show every night for playback purposes.
and another on guitar. Chris Marsh: “The vocal reverb is based on the Crystal Plate patch. It responds well to sibilance and it seems like a very natural and deep reverb. I have a hall patch on Ed’s guitar. I’ve shortened the decay time and use it to thicken up the body of the acoustic guitars’ sound. An acoustic guitar tends to be quite a thin-sounding instrument and this really helps give it body without adding lots of chorus or synthetic additions.” At other times Chris will need to back off on the vocal treatment. Chris Marsh: “Outdoors you tend to have to push reverbs a lot harder but we’ve done shows where I have not used the reverbs because of the endless decay in the room. If I can’t fight it, I tend to use a lot more delay for the extra definition the vocal reverb can’t provide in those circumstances.” AT 36
WONDERFUL JOURNEY
I suppose it should come as no surprise that Chris and Charlie are a couple of chilled individuals. Chris is also production manager on the tour. The people set the tone. No aggro. In fact, there’s the feeling that everyone’s aware that what they’re doing is a privilege. Ed Sheeran isn’t an entertainment industry creation surrounded by svengalis and spin doctors. He’s just an everyday bloke who writes catchy songs that seem to resonate and get under the skin of 10-year old kids, grans, mums and blokes in utes. He’s sentimental and he’s approachable. It’s easy to tell that Chris Marsh is a fan: “It’s been an absolute adventure and great fun as well. I think it’s a very rare situation within the industry: I started with the guy doing clubs and with the technology
available. My first purchase was a little Digico SD11 mixing console so I could carry my sound around under one arm and put it in the back of the car. So amazing to be able to go from club PAs all the way to now using stadium PAs like the Meyer Leo. But he’s such a consistent artist and to bring your own consistency, that’s been a key. It’s been a wonderful education and journey. It’s been great to evolve with Ed, evolving the gear as the budget has allowed.”
WATCH THE VIDEO Check out our interview with Chris Marsh and Charlie Albin on the AudioTechnology YouTube channel.
www.youtube.com/audiotechnologymag
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COLUMN
Dressing For The Occasion How to manage the hats of the modern music recordist. Column: Dr. Lachlan ‘Magoo’ Goold
Throughout my 27-year career, I’ve almost always been both an engineer and producer. I can count the times on one hand where I’ve been one or the other. I don’t think the time of distinct roles has entirely passed, but it requires big budgets. High-end studios are out of reach for most artists, but paying two people in any studio for a couple of months is costly. The roles cross over and I like to visualise them as hats; you take off one to don another. Engineering has a lot of rules, whereas the goal of producing is to let the song happen and capture the moment—to bottle lightning. It’s the engineer’s job to get all the ingredients out and prepare them; do the mise en place. Then it’s the producer’s job to select how much will be used in the dish. You might have been to the shops and bought six chillies, but just because you have six, doesn’t mean you have to use them all — unless cooking a really hot dinner is the goal. Most of the time you’ll only add one or two. It’s the producer’s job to decide how much to put in there, and the meal, or the song, will dictate how much to use. TWO HATTED ESTABLISHMENT
It all starts with the producer hat in preproduction. You sit with the band through a few rehearsals and work out song arrangements. It can be quite creative; talking to the band about sounds, what you’re going for, and ultimately creating a vision for the song. Before you go into the studio, you put on the engineer’s hat; to think through what has to be done to execute that vision. If it’s not in a studio, where will I set up the control room? Where am I going to put the drum kit and what microphones am I going to use? Will I use a mono or stereo overheads? Big room mics or keep it close and contained? Moving on through all the instruments. Do I need to find a particular type of guitar amp or keyboard, or are we going to use soft synths? You have all those conversations and work out the answers beforehand. The engineer will get the plan happening. It’s dividing the roles between the left (logical) and right (creative) sides of your brain. During the session, it’s great to be really adept
Goold is Head of Audio at JMC’s Brisbane campus. He’s produced and engineered acts like Regurgitator, Powderfinger, Midnight Oil, Spiderbait and Kate Miller-Heidke. He’s been nominated for 12 ARIA awards, and is a two-time winner.
and quick at the technical side, so you can forget about it and let the producer take over. If the engineer side is well-organised, then you have more space to think about performance. Your ears are open to pick up those moments that are great, or mistakes that enhance a song. I love mistakes in the studio. Often I’ll go out of my way to create a situation that is a bit chaotic, which can be frustrating, but that’s when those unusual gems pop out. When everything’s going right, it can get boring and dull. PRINCELY VISION
One example of following a vision would be ! ( The Song Formerly Known As) by Regurgitator. The band usually had a reference point right at the beginning of a recording, in this case it was Prince. A lot of that album, Unit, was written and recorded in a DIY studio setup on ADAT. Rather than hire an expensive studio with their recording advance, the band bought the equipment, which gave us the luxury of time in the studio. Quan arrived at the studio one day with a Nord keyboard he’d just bought and the first song idea he’d sequenced in Cubase. It was a bass line with only two notes. He didn’t think much of it, but added ‘it kind of sounds like a Prince song’. We all listened to it and loved it, which spurred the recording on. Initially we recorded the song as a live band. Martin Lee on the drums, Ben Ely mirrored the sequenced Nord on a bass guitar, and Quan played a funky guitar part throughout. We were listening to lots of Michael Jackson and Prince, and he wanted to get that higher tone on the vocals. You could slow the ADATs down by fixed intervals, so I went down a semitone or tone, and Quan sung the song in a lower (and slower) key. When we played it back at normal speed it sounded a little bit chipmunk-y. We spent a couple of days working on that version. Not long after we finished the recording, Quan came in and said, ‘I hate it, it’s s**t.’ But he loved the vocal. I ran the vocal onto a DAT tape, which he took home and put into a sampler—line by line. He also sequenced a drum beat by sampling a Roland groove box run through a Boss compressor/ sustainer guitar pedal. I added a tiny bit of guitar
from the ADAT recording, and he added in a couple of samples (Silver Convention) that he probably shouldn’t have, as they lost a lot of royalties. We had a vision of the song sounding like a Prince song, and Quan was the one who said it didn’t sound enough like a Prince song. We ended up recording the song twice to complete the vision. That happened all throughout Unit. We’d record a song once then realise it wasn’t quite what we were looking for. So, we’d record it again and choose a completely different direction. We had demoed songs on the first album and we struggled recreating those performances in the high-end studio. This was our panacea. It’s also the determination to keep working on a song until it sounds right. WHAT SKILLS YOU NEED
The number one skill to develop as a producer is communication. You need to listen to the lyrics, the musicians, and learn how to read body language. Quan could tell me straight out he hated the direction, but many musicians end up in music precisely because they aren’t the best communicators. They can’t get their emotional ideas out any other way, so they end up picking up an instrument, or singing and writing lyrics. It’s important to notice when an artist is struggling with an idea, because they often won’t say it. It’s your job to ask, “What’s wrong?”, and keep digging until they’ll tell you what’s wrong with the idea. Often a direction will appear out of that conversation. If you open that door of communication, your recordings will thank you for it. It also means you have to be open to new ideas. Someone who doesn’t know anything about the studio might have an idea that sounds bananas. Begrudgingly, I’ll often start with that idea and, before you know it, you’re fully trying it out and it’s amazing. You would have never thought of doing it, and they would have never been able to direct how to do it. Being able to interpret people’s ideas and creativity is the primary job of a producer. Underlying it all is motivation. As long as you’re motivated, you will do whatever it takes to get there.
Apply for JMC Academy’s Audio Engineering and Sound Production course, to get qualified with hands-on experience, study abroad options and internship opportunities. Intakes in February, June and September. www.jmcacademy.edu.au AT 38
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Production Audio Video Technology Pty Ltd 4/621 Whitehorse Road, Mitcham 3132, Victoria PH: 03 9264 8000 sales@pavt.com.au NEW ZEALAND OFFICE PH: +64 21 410 050 tim@productionaudio.co.nz AT 39 www.audixusa.com | 503.682.6933
REVIEW
ELECTRO-VOICE ELX200 Powered Loudspeakers EV finds the smartest fit for its powered speakers. Review: Mark Woods
The market for portable speakers is huge, and Electro-Voice knows it. Rather than trying to devise one plastic box to rule them all, EV has a habit of micro-segmenting; match-making users to their perfect pair. In all, users can pick from a total of four series, spread out in roughly US$200 increments. The ELX200 series is EV’s latest update to its second tier. It’s not quite as go-lucky as the cheaper and cheerier, plastic-moulded ZLX. Nor is it as buff as the more powerful, slightly more expensive, plywood-bodied EKX series, or the swoon-worthy, top-spec two-kilowatt ETX series. It sits happily at that intersection of casual and semi-pro with a range of features to suit. QUICK SMARTS
NEED TO KNOW
The ELX200 series is the first of its powered speakers to incorporate EV’s QuickSmartMobile technology. First available with the Evolve 50 portable column system, it uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) technology to remotely control up to six ELX200 speakers and it’s a keeper. The series includes three full-range, two-way speakers in the usual 10-, 12- and 15-inch wooferplus-horn configuration, and two subs with either 12- or 18-inch drivers. All five models are also available as passive speakers for those with their
CONTACT Bosch: 1300 026 724 or boschcommunications.com.au
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PROS Lightweight & solid High powered Sound great Tune DSP at FOH with the app
CONS Plastic-moulding not as appealing as EVCoat
SUMMARY There was always a lot to like about EV’s ELX lower cost portable speakers; they sound good, are reliable, and lightweight. Now, with the QuickSmart app, you can set up and tune the speaker response while standing at the FOH position. Not your every day plastic box.
PRICE ELX200 Powered Speakers 10-inch: $1379 12-inch: $1499 15-inch: $1649 12-inch sub: $1649 15-inch sub: $1849 ELX200 Passive Speakers 10-inch: $709 12-inch: $819 15-inch: $929 12-inch sub: $1149 15-inch sub: $1219
own amps and processing. The ELX200 series cabinets are polypropylene composite with extensive internal reinforcement and they feel solid and resonance-free despite their relatively low weight. They look like a big plastic box from the back and sides, which they are, but professional enough from the front, sharing EV family looks with the other series. The subs are made from 15mm plywood and finished with EV’s satin, textured EVCoat, and over time they’ll attract less handling marks than the composite full-range boxes. Handles at the rear of the top and bottom of the cabinets, as well as a side handle is generous and makes for easy grabbing and carrying. The little ELX200-10P doesn’t get the bottom handle but it’s only 13.5kgs so that’s okay. The ELX200-12P is only 16kg and the ELX200-15P only 19kg so they’re an easy one-person lift. As well as the pole-mount the cabinets have moulded feet on the bottom and an angled side that allows the speaker to be used as a floor monitor. Or they can be flown or mounted with integrated M10 fittings and optional hardware. DRIVE WITH FLARE
The ELX200 series uses established EV technologies including SST technology (signal synchronised transducers) that places the LF and HF drivers as close as possible, and in line with each other, for maximum phase coherence. The way the front of the horn flare sticks out over the top of the LF driver is clever. This means the horn waveguide can be quite large, giving better pattern control, and the gap that’s created acts as a bass port. The woofers are the same as those in the higher EKX series with EVS-10/12/15M woofers and a new DH-1C 1-inch titanium HF compression driver. All ELX200 powered speakers have a 1200W peak Class D amp to get them moving. On the rear of the cabinet there’s the standard two combo XLR/jack input sockets. These each have a gain control knob with the 12 o’clock position as the nominal starting point. Turn left for trimming line level inputs, turn right for cranking up dynamic mics. It’s simple and avoids having those pesky mic/line switches. The available input gain is well set for live use, there’s not enough to get you into trouble and even set to full gain it’s reluctant to feed back with a standard
dynamic mic. If you need more gain or want to use condenser mics (there’s no 48V phantom power) then a mixer is recommended. EV has sensibly retained a time-proven pair of RCA inputs and not provided Bluetooth audio streaming. I worry about the quality of the files coming from phones and laptops to start with… no point making them worse. I’m with Neil Young on this one, hi-res files only please. DJs too. A single XLR output socket sends the mix to other speakers. There’s not a switch in sight on the rear panel. EV’s QuickSmart DSP knob next to the small LCD screen controls everything. Familiar to current EV users it provides access to presets for different physical environments and the user controls. It starts up as the master volume at the last-used setting and acts as an overall volume control that will turn the speaker all the way off, or give up to 10dB of gain at full level. When pressed to expose the menus, the knob controls the mode/location presets and simple fixed-frequency three-band EQ with HPF. The HPF should be used if a sub is part of the system but the on-board EQ is probably only useful as an EQ of last resort, the speakers are commendably flat out of the box, and the response can be optimised by the mode/location settings in the DSP. Also, if you don’t know who’s been using the speaker previously, there’s a risk of unintentional settings because you can’t see that the EQ is active without checking in the DSP menus. Enter the new EV Bluetooth QuickSmartMobile app and everything changes. Suddenly you can access the presets, gain, EQ, etc from a phone or tablet. The app finds the speakers, identifies them and allows control of up to six of them at a time. They can be controlled individually or as a group with handy level and limiting monitoring, including a warning if overloads are detected. This is a great feature and I expect to see the idea spread. Mixing on a tablet or phone does nothing for me but I sure like being able to tweak the system from out the front. POWER BILLING
The ELX200 series uses the same woofer and similar amp/DSP to the higher-spec EKX series and I suspect the main savings to get it into the lower price point has been in the cabinet construction and materials rather than the internals. Plug and play, they arrive ready to go. The overall voicing is characteristically EV; solid, accurate mids, smooth between 1-4kHz, with an accentuated response from around 6kHz. They don’t sound harsh at all but they are somewhat grainy above 5kHz and I found the added high frequencies tended to spit sibilance on some sources. Vocals sound big and bright with good intelligibility, and they’re commendably resistant to feedback. The meaty power is well-controlled by the DSP and delivers loud, distortion-free output over the vocal range, and they limit nicely if pushed too far. For music playback or live sound, the low frequency response is influenced by the size of the woofer but not by as much as you might think from the size of the speakers. The quoted specs for LF response and maximum SPL are very close across
all three models with the 15P being understandably a little louder and a little deeper. The mode/ location presets combine to offer a useful range of LF shapes. Most effective are the shapes that cut the low frequencies such as the Speech or Monitor presets. Boosting the low frequencies works up to a point and the Live and Club settings provide good bass depth for music playback and lighter live music. At higher volumes the low frequencies run out of puff before the mid/highs and for FOH duties you’ll need to get the separate subs if its bands you’re mixing. The subs come in two sizes, the ELX200-12SP and the ELX200-18SP, both with 1200W of peak power. The ELX200-12SP is a compact size for a sub and weighs less than 20kg. There’s no 15-inch model sub in the range, the ELX200-18SP is the bigger deeper option. It’s especially strong in the 50100Hz octave with 132dB quoted maximum level. It’s a bigger box but still weighs less than 30kg. SMARTLY DRESSED
Aimed at the same bands/DJs/venues as the other series of EV portable speakers, ELX offers better sound than the ZLX series at a modestly increased price but has the big advantage of the QuickStartMobile app that immediately improves the way you control the system. The polypropylene composite cabinet on the ELX200 series will get scuffed up quickly if the speakers encounter any kind of roadie/truck action. Better suited to installs or venues. There’s optional covers available that will help, but a speaker from one of the series with wooden cabinets finished with EVCoat will keep its looks a lot longer. As front-of-house speakers these are easy to set up, with a strong, clear vocal range that will run loud and won’t feed back in normal use. They’ll fill a small to medium room with a decent level and won’t overload if the input levels get too high. As floor monitors the ELX200 series work well, the horn is not rotatable so you’re stuck with the narrower throw when the box is horizontal on the floor but in use it proved wide enough, and the overall response allows high vocal levels before needing any EQ. The Monitor preset in the DSP effectively trims the low frequencies that often couple uncomfortably with the stage. Electro-Voice has a series of speakers for every budget and each release gets you something new or improved. The ELX200 series combines high power and performance with light weight and convenient operation. As a bonus the ELX200 series brings with it the new and shiny QuickSmartMobile app that will change the way you control your system.
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REVIEW
FOCAL CLEAR Reference Headphones
Do these $2000 headphones really sound expensive? Review: Preshan John
I realise my opportunity to spend a few weeks of alone time with Focal’s two thousand dollar reference headphones is an experience shared by few. The rest of the AT office realised this too — one of our graphic designers insisted on taking the Clear home for a weekend. As financially inaccessible as they are, exorbitant headphones will always have a certain appeal, and it’s mostly based on curiosity: do expensive headphones really sound expensive? Funnily enough, Clear isn’t the priciest in Focal’s luxury headphone line — that would be the Focal Utopia which goes for a cool $4k. Clear is next in line, though, so my expectations were rather high. The question is, what does that kind of money get you? COMFORT & BUILD
NEED TO KNOW
In photos, the Focal Clear exudes an aura of understated class with a touch of futurism. It’s the same effect in person, times ten. It goes without saying that primo cans of this calibre possess the finest build quality. From the gently sprung earcups to the aluminium/magnesium alloy arms with delicate curves, every millimetre has been constructed with purpose and finesse. The memory foam earcups and headband feel like pure luxury and you soon forget you’re wearing headphones — even though they weigh nearly half a kilo. As for the grey leather, well, it’s a personal taste thing. A selection of fabric-wrapped cables are presented in a separate box; a 3.5mm, 6.5mm and (weirdly) a balanced four-pin XLR (perhaps it’s a hi-fi thing). At the other end, the cables plug in underneath each ear cup with two balanced 3.5mm connectors.
PRICE $2299 CONTACT Audio Chocolate: (03) 9813 5877 or www.audiochocolate.com.au
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CLEAR AS DAY
Living up to its name, the first time I played some familiar tunes through Clear I was struck by its real-ness and focus. It presents a good mix with almost a sense of authority by separating instruments with precision and pushing them forward in incredible detail. Minuscule bits of musical information I’d never noticed before suddenly became absurdly apparent. With a low impedance of 55Ω, Clear will happily plug into a smartphone or laptop — it’s surprising how little power it needs to get loud. Naturally, it still benefits from a quality DAC. My Antelope interface lent the Clear a gutsier low end than my MacBook Pro or smartphone headphone output could manage. Clear’s strong point is its low end which nails that balance of punch and clarity like no other headphone I’ve heard. Bass frequencies are very in-your-face, like a pair of high-quality closedbacks, yet with the accuracy and spaciousness that only open-backs can give. Surprisingly, the trebles come across rather differently. ‘Suppressed’ is a strong word but it’s the first descriptor that comes to mind. Don’t get me wrong, the Clear has enough detailed highs to deserve its price tag, it’s just not nearly as bright as most people would expect. I didn’t miss the shimmer all that much, but let’s just say if you’re mixing a tune on these cans you’d want to reference it on something else to ensure the highs aren’t overblown. The smooth midrange keeps vocals present while reining in any harshness in the 1-6kHz band. Clear’s soundstage isn’t super wide — noticeably less than a pair of AKG open-backs — due to the orientation of the drivers which sit
PROS Incredibly detailed sound, big bass Nice case and cable selection
CONS Spills everything Highs a bit subdued
slightly forward and angled back into your ears, as opposed to perpendicularly, like most cans. This better simulates the positioning of a set of studio monitors placed in front of you, and the sonic result is a very lifelike spatial reproduction of music which you’ll especially notice on live albums. Feedback from non-audio nerd friends who tried Clear was the same: “It feels like the band is right in front of you!” OPEN TO CRITICISM
Open-back headphones are not all created equal. Some spill sound like water from a clogged gutter, others manage to be more socially acceptable. The Clear is most definitely the first. Hold the earcups to the light and you’ll see there’s no more than a thin layer of perforated metal separating the 40mm drivers from the outside world. That means in an occupied room everyone near you will be able to hum the tune of the song you’re listening to. The opposite is also true. The headphones do little to block out external ambience and I found a voice or TV droning in the background can quickly become annoying, even while listening to music at a reasonable level. To keep everyone (and yourself) happy, the Focal Clear is best enjoyed alone in a secluded and quiet room. In your favourite armchair and comfy slippers. At over two grand, the Focal Clear isn’t an everyday spend, and wouldn’t be my first choice for mix reference headphones. I imagine you’d end up with a pair of these if you either take hi-fi headphones very seriously or you’re properly cashed up. If that’s you, the Clear doesn’t fall short of a premium auditory experience that will present your music in a new light.
SUMMARY The Focal Clear does what a $2000 headphone should; bring a level of clarity to music you may not have heard before. With subdued highs and very open backs, these are more for private listening than ultra-critical.
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REVIEW
RODE AI-1 & NT1 Complete Studio Kit Rode’s first audio interface is what the NT1 was to mics. Review: Mark Davie
NEED TO KNOW
Rode previously had a couple of complete recording kits, but they were never really complete. Sure they had shockmounts, pop filters and cables, but they missed that link between your Rode mic and computer. With new brands and models entering into the lower-cost end of the microphone market every month, Rode made a return to the top with its revitalised NT1. A product of the ‘vintage’-style capsule quest the manufacturer has been on, it wasn’t as peaky as the original NT1, the mic that started it all for the company, and generated less noise than an anechoic chamber. Beyond the mic, there was the astoundingly good Rycote-infused shock mount, with its insertable fine mesh pop screen. It was the perfect starter mic, but it needed a companion. At the Freedman Electronics 50th birthday bash, Rode owner Peter Freedman AM announced a long list of future projects for the company. Most of them were high-end or ground-breaking in some way. Only one has seen the light of day so far; the neat VideoMic Pro+. There was never any mention of an interface, so it caught us by surprise when Rode announced the AI-1. A single-channel interface that debuted in a fully ‘Complete Studio Kit’ with the NT1. We should have seen it coming. The AI-1 interface is a palm-sized black, powder-coated metal desktop unit that has
PRICE AI-1 Kit: $499RRP (expect to pay $449) AI-1: $199RRP (expect to pay $179)
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CONTACT Rode: www.rode.com
just enough room to fit a combo XLR/1/4-inch input, two push-button knobs and a full-size headphone jack on the front. On the back are a stereo set of output jacks and a tiny USB-C connector. Thankfully, it comes with a USB-C to A cable in the box. Thoughtful for the majority of users, while future-proofing the connection. Nice move. The AI-1 is bus-powered, which makes it uberportable. Its single (mono) input automatically switches between mic and instrument level depending on what you’ve got plugged in. While it has two stereo outputs, it’s strictly one at a time; meaning you have to unplug your headphones to hear your monitors. It would have been nicer to have just one more switch. Rode is expert at miniaturising control, having loads of experience cramming functions onto Videomic backplates. Likewise, the AI-1 is simple to navigate and well laid out. There are four LEDs on the front. A signal LED with traffic-light colours to warn you when your signal is getting too hot. Press down on the gain knob and the red +48V phantom power LED will light up red when activated. Pressing down on the headphone/monitor level knob will switch between direct input and software monitoring. Similar to most budget interfaces without their own ‘zero-latency’ mixer software, the option to
PROS Very portable & buspowered Simple to operate Powerful headphone amp Includes Ableton Live Lite redemption
CONS No headphone/monitor toggle switch
monitor the direct input is the way to go. As a core audio device, even with a 32 sample buffer on my 2015 MacBook Pro, the latency wasn’t great for tracking. Direct monitoring is fine for recording with the microphone, but restricts the ability to use software guitar amp simulators. You’ll want to feed it some pedals on the way in if you need distortion and add the amp sim later. The dynamic range (104dB) and gain range (45dB) on the AI-1 are decent for a USB buspowered device, but aren’t the most impressive specs you’ll find on an interface, even in the single channel market. However, when paired with the Rode NT1, it’s a keen match. The selfnoise… well there just isn’t any. It’s a hallmark of Rode’s designs that even the most affordable models deliver nothing other than the sound you put into them. Also, with the sensitivity of the NT1 being quite high, the 45dB gain range isn’t going to be an issue on any source. Just to have a loads better quality headphone amp than what’s available on your computer is worth the sub-$200 price tag. It even drove my 250Ω Beyer open back headphones, which is a struggle for the MacBook Pro. The output level on the monitor side wasn’t quite as gutsy, but it is clean; which is better than loud and distorted. It goes all the way up to 96kHz sampling rate, and is a great addition to the Rode line of very useful devices.
SUMMARY Rode’s first audio interface is simple, yet effective. It’s bus-powered and isn’t any bigger than it needs to be, making it ultra-portable. It’s not the highest spec device, but marries perfectly with the low-noise, high-sensitivity NT1 condenser mic to make the perfect studio when you’re starting out or on-the-go.
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REVIEW
AUDIOFLY AF180
Premium In-Ear Monitors When custom in-ears aren’t in your budget, try this Aussie-designed onesize-fits-all IEMS with all the balanced armature drivers you can handle. Review: Preshan John
Custom-moulded IEMs are the bee’s knees, but let’s face it, forking out a couple of grand for a pair isn’t always feasible, what with the rest of the gear you have to have. Audiofly is a Perth-based IEM designer that specialises in the ‘one size fits all’ approach to musician-focused in-ear monitoring. We stuffed the premium AF180 IEMs into our ears; one model below the top of Audiofly’s range. The AF180 is a pro-looking piece of kit. Its fabric-lined wallet is well-apppointed with a handy elastic mesh pocket, but I'm not certain the luxurious feel justifies the overly generous size. Along with the nine different ear tips, the case also contains an aeroplane adapter, 3.5mm to 6.5mm adapter, and a cleaning tool. BALANCED ARMS
NEED TO KNOW
The AF180 crams four balanced armature drivers into the tiny housing. Balanced armature drivers are more expensive than dynamic drivers — the price you pay for more responsive detail — but their weakness is lower output. On paper, multiplying the number of these little drivers promises solid bass response — provided you get a good seal. Audiofly claims a frequency response of 15Hz-25kHz, though there is less low end present than other top-shelf generic IEMs that have come through the office. Listening to music on the AF180s is a detailed experience. The AF180 is like the IEM equivalent of a nice pair of reference open-back headphones. I love my AKG K702 headphones for their ability to display a dense mix in wide and precise stereo. The AF180 follows suit in an IEM kind of way. The soundstage is broad and enveloping — never
PRICE $649 CONTACT Audiofly: www.audiofly.com
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PROS Excellent sound with loads of detail Good isolation
congested or claustrophobic like budget IEMs can be — yet it’s not so clinical that it’s boring to listen to. Treble frequencies have a zesty sparkle to them that’s never fatiguing. The extreme highs above 10kHz are very polite. Mids are slightly under-represented lending a mildly scooped character to the overall tone. While bass frequencies aren’t overt, there’s plenty of accuracy in low-end presentation. Big EDM bass drops extend into sub-marine depths with so much precision you could follow it with your finger. Each earpiece can be detached from the cable with a little twist. The Audioflex SL twisted cable itself is a lengthy 1.8m; great for average listening, but a little long for performance considering the short distance from the back of your neck to an IEM receiver at your waist. Nevertheless, you’d have a hard time getting it in a hopeless tangle thanks to its hard-wearing Cordura fibre-reinforced design — especially beneficial when you’re on stage. FITTING ROOM
Spend time getting the right fit because it has a huge bearing on how much low end you hear. Nine ear tips are included with the AF180 — three floppy rubber ones, three ‘Christmas tree’ rubber jobbies, and three Comply foamies. Earplug material is another factor to consider; each does something slightly different to the lows and I found the squishy foam Comply tips provided the warmest response, possibly absorbing more high end in your ear canal. The
CONS Ear loop not adjustable
cone-style tips feel light on in the lows, though they isolate very naturally. The standard rubber tips were a good inbetween option. With three options in each material you’re bound to find a perfect match. My only gripe is that the AF180’s ear loop, which hooks around the top of your ear, is a fixed piece of rubber. That means if the back of your ear is larger or smaller than the loop’s pre-formed curve, bad luck. This is the most unfortunate part of the AF 180’s ‘one size fits most’ design; memory wire would be a lot better, although most folks shouldn’t have trouble with it. IN ISOLATION
With a good fit and the right ear tips, the AF180s attenuate sound very well. Whatever you go with, don’t expect dead silence. The goal is to provide enough isolation that you don’t need the earphones pumping dangerous levels of SPL into your ears to overcome ambient sound. I gave a set to a drummer who said he found himself taking less level than usual thanks to its isolation. $649 might look steep but it’s nothing on the asking price for a decent set of customs. If you’re in the limbo of wanting to level up the quality of your stage monitoring without a trip to the audiologist to get your moulds taken, the Audiofly AF180s will rival most other generic IEMs in this price bracket. Worth a serious look and listen.
SUMMARY As Audiofly’s premium IEM offering, the AF180 doesn’t disappoint. Sure to provide an exceptional experience whether you’re performing on stage or just listening to your favourite music.
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REVIEW
ROLI Seaboard Block It’s cute and squishy, and it might just take over the world. Review: Mark Davie
The Seaboard block is Roli in a nutshell. MIDI Polyphonic Expression… check. Squishy surface… check. Democratising a previously elite technology… absolutely. Roli has taken a Tesla-esque approach to its Seaboard rollout. Starting at the top, with an end game to reach the mass market. The Grand was expensive and made for ‘real’ keyboardists looking to take a chance on MPE, the Rise series was more affordable and suited to people more likely to play a chord on a synth than a sonata on a piano. Seaboard Block is cheap enough, small enough and fun enough for anyone. SIZE MATTERS
NEED TO KNOW
At almost half the width of Roli’s previous Seaboard, Rise 25, the Block version gets straight to the point. The entire purpose of the Seaboard is to place the five core dimensions of MPE at your fingertips. Seaboard block does that as economically as possible. As well as Roli’s squishy keys with 5D expression, the Seaboard block has room to slide up and down the two-octave span above and below the keys. It also has arrows at each end to nudge the keys up or down octaves, in a six octave range. While the Rise has extra sliders and an X/Y pad for limiting or expanding the range of motion on the fly, you can expand your Seaboard block with a Lightpad block to perform those functions, if you absolutely require them. The Seaboard block magnetically snaps into the Blocks ecosystem via built-in DNA connectors. You can hook up Lightpad blocks, control blocks, or more Seaboard blocks to create a ‘seamless’ multi-octave keyboard. I didn’t have two Seaboard blocks to snap together, so I can’t say exactly how seamlessly
PRICE Expect to pay $459 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au
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PROS Feels like a Seaboard Snap multiple octaves together Noise app even better Affordable MPE
they connect, but the dimensions seem to be spot on for the same gap to occur between octaves. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t expect to be able to slide my finger seamlessly between two units without a break in the note. At just one and a half times the depth of a Lightpad block, I didn’t feel like it was any harder/easier to play the Block version versus the slightly bigger Rise and Grand keys. It’s still tough for a newbie, and gratifyingly expressive to the familiar. IT’S MAKING NOISE
Roli’s Noise app continues to improve. It’s now available on Google Pixel as well as iOS devices. The number of packs continues to expand, as does the in-app purchase catalogue. With Pharrell Williams recently coming onboard as Roli’s Chief Creative Officer, you can download free sample packs for N.E.R.D.’s single Lemon. On the other end, Audio Modelling have an amazing SWAM engine, acoustically-modelled string section with violin, viola, cello and double bass for just US$14.99. Last time I reviewed a Blocks device, I lamented Ableton’s lack of support for MPE. Not a whole lot has changed on Ableton’s side, it still requires a bit of a workaround and arming 16 tracks at once for maximum polyphony. Although Live 10 brings with it the ability to
CONS None
edit multiple MIDI clips at once, allowing you to potentially edit your Seaboard masterpieces. It’s limited to eight MIDI clips at a time. So you can either choose to either edit the two parts separately or limit the polyphony to eight. We’ll get there eventually Ableton… right? While Ableton’s a bit slow to the MPE party, Roli is doing its darnedest to put polyphonic expression in everyone’s hands, even full-time creators. Noise is fully Ableton Link-compatible. It’s super easy to setup, and you can play along with any Ableton project and other Link-enabled apps and devices. Once you’ve laid down all your extra expressive parts inside Noise, you can now export an Ableton project, and save it to your phone or a cloud service. It only took a couple of minutes to save 16 four-bar audio loops. Then I could open them in my computer and continue on, with tempo intact and all the tracks neatly named and laid out in Session view. It’s a much simpler way of integrating the Seaboard Block into your Ableton workflow. Of course, if you’re on Bitwig, Logic, Cubase, Reaper, or even Garageband, just plug it in and jam away on Roli’s Equator or any of the built-in or third-party MPE compatible plug-ins. Roli is truly on a roll. And yet again, I can’t help but recommend Blocks as a way of getting in touch with MPE. The Seaboard Block is absolutely brilliant.
SUMMARY If the Seaboard has always intrigued you, there’s no better place to start your MPE journey than with the Seaboard block. The Noise app is even better — with Ableton session export — and now works with some Android phones.
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REVIEW
ROYER LABS R-10
Passive Ribbon Microphone The R-121 DNA is evident in Royer Labs’ new ribbon microphone, which is great because it’s less than half the price. Review: Preshan John
I still remember the first time I used a ribbon mic — a pair of Coles 4038s on drum overheads tracked in a lively old church building. The drum kit seemed to have a rugged ‘realness’ that a pair of condensers couldn’t quite capture the same way. The dark frequency response drew attention to the earthy texture of the drum skins and warm room reflections. I’ve jumped at the opportunity to set up a ribbon or two at a recording session ever since. If you’re into ribbon mics, you’ve heard of Royer Labs. David Royer made his first mic in 1997, so it’s a relatively young company considering how far back you can trace other notable ribbon mic manufacturers like RCA, Coles and Beyerdynamic. But that hasn’t kept the brand from establishing itself as a studio staple. In a short time, the R-121 has become a standard fixture on guitar amplifiers, often as a perfect complement to an SM57. The R-121 lives around the $2k pricepoint. That kinda cash spent on a good condenser gets you a solid all-rounder, making the ribbon a premium option to budget-conscious enthusiasts. Royer spotted the opportunity to target this middle ground when it released the blackbodied R-101. It was still a bit of cash at over $1000, but it was the most affordable way to capture sounds with Royer’s patented R-series offset ribbon transducer. At around $850, the brand new R-10 comes in at less than half its daddy. It’s also much smaller than the R-101, bringing it more inline with the svelte size and look of the R-121. The question is: which corners, if any, have been cut to slice the price in two without compromising the Royer reputation? OPEN IT UP
NEED TO KNOW
Like the R-101, the new Royer R-10 doesn’t have the ‘ears’ of the R-121’s transducer magnets poking out on either side. It also replaces the slatted grill with a steel mesh-fronted, triple-layer windscreen. It ships in a solid, small black case with moulded cutouts for the mic itself (in a velvety black satin bag) and a screw-on ring mount. Though tiny, the R-10 is a heavy mic for its size and feels like it could cop a beating (its internal shockmount means it actually could). Its narrow shape sees it go where few other mics can — tucked under a hi-hat, wedged up against an amplifier, or sitting discreetly under the lid of a piano.
PRICE Expect to pay $850 CONTACT Mix Masters: (08) 8278 8506 or info@mixmasters.com.au
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PROS Beautiful tone that flatters instruments Built well & small Has same offset ribbon as R-121
CONS Needs a good preamp for best results
SUMMARY Royer has managed to build its first sub-$1k ribbon mic without abandoning the R-series ribbon transducer. The R-10 is perfect for engineers who couldn’t afford an R-121, but still want Royer’s sound and performance. For Royer — or ribbon — aficionados, its bloomier lows and more acutely tapered high end provides a different flavour to the R-121.
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REGULARS
LAST WORD with
Robb Allan
FOH Engineer
Robb Allan was the house sound guy at the Underground in London when the Manic Street Preachers walked in the door. Two years later, he was mixing in arenas and hasn’t looked back. He’s Massive Attack’s FOH engineer, works full-time for Avid developing live console like the S6L, and is now getting a dream shot at mixing Radiohead.
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Jim Warren’s had Radiohead nailed down for 25 years. He’s working on Arcade Fire, so I’m getting a once in a lifetime chance. Years ago, somebody asked me what my top three bands to mix would be. I said Floyd, Massive Attack and Radiohead. Incredibly, by the end of this year, I’ll have done two out of three. Massive Attack is all to time code, my snapshots are triggered from code, the lights and lasers are all off code. Radiohead is the opposite. It’s completely improvised, The middle section might be eight bars, or 12, or 16. They’ll play 20 or 25 songs out of a possible 80, and it’s all played live. I have to create at least one snapshot for every single song. I’ve got an Avid S6L set up at home with Genelec 8351s. I have the multi-tracks from every single concert of their last tour and go back and forth between those and the album. I started with Jim’s session, but I’m not there to do his show. You could just get a kid to hit next snapshot; I have to stand behind it. The first gig is the National Stadium in Chile; 58,000 people. Radiohead in a football stadium full of South Americans… no pressure. I’m a musician who didn’t practise hard enough. I didn’t go to audio school or study electronics or computer science. It was the ’80s, I learnt on the job like everybody else. My first proper sound gig was mixing at Mean Fiddler in Harlesden, London. It was modelled on a Country ’n’ Western shack. We had all kinds of bands through there; The Pixies, Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was about 1100 pax. I started out by bluffing my way into the smaller 200-capacity Acoustic Room. I was the house sound guy at the Underground in Camden. The Manic Street Preachers came into the club wearing the white trousers, and punk shirts with manifestos written on them. They were fourth on the bill. They set up their guitar amps and started to play. I said, ‘Can you turn those amps up?’ After the sound check they came up to me and asked if I wanted to go on tour with them the next day. They hadn’t even heard me mix a show yet, but I was the first engineer who’d told them to turn their amps up, not down. That was my break; me with the four of them in a mini bus sharing the driving. I worked with them for 20 years, and by the end they were playing football stadiums and headlining Glastonbury. When I started mixing the Manics, there were 13 channels on the stage. That’s not even a quarter of the drum channels I have on Massive Attack. By the end of my time with them we were up to 80 or 90 channels. The reason I started using a Digidesign was because someone showed me Virtual Soundcheck. The band could leave the building, and you can keep working on the show. It blew my mind, it was so revolutionary. When my kids were little, there wasn’t Skype or mobile
phones. I’d be in Japan for two weeks and could afford to call home maybe once because it would cost a day’s wages. It was tough. Loads of my colleagues’ marriages failed because of that. Fortunately my wife was very tolerant. I also said, ‘If it gets too much, you’ve got to tell me.’ Right around the time Avid offered me the job, she’d had enough. I took the Avid job to stop touring, but it didn’t really work out that way. I’m full-time at Avid, but I’ll be mixing two months of Radiohead and a month of Massive Attack this year. If I’m out using the desk with great bands, then I understand the workflow processes of the desk and feed that back to the design. My involvement with the S6L started right at the beginning. We had a very small team called the Jedi group. Me, Rob Scovill, Al McKenna and a guy called Sheldon Bradford, who’s now left the company. The four of us sat in a room for a month — sofas, tables, white boards — and kicked ideas around. The Profile had been a massive success. What did we do wrong, what did we do right and what was the future of audio going to look like? The Profile and D-Show was all about transitioning people from the analogue world into digital as comfortably as possible. It had an analogue-like workflow with fixed processes on encoders; an EQ section that was only EQ, and a section just for gain. A digital desk was almost apologetic; it was pretending to be an analogue console. We wanted to make the next generation softer, and unapologetically digital. You can customise the S6L a million different ways. We were trying to design a console that would launch four years in the future and be around for at least another 10. The team that designed the Profile didn’t imagine the number of auxiliaries people would need. We would think of a number, then double it, then double it again. We put the desk out with the first doubled number, but it would need to have the ability within the architecture to double it again if we need to, which is why we separated the engine from the surface and I/O. There could be more horsepower in reserve, but worst case you add more DSP cards or swap out the engine. The console’s also completely modular. Each section is connected via ethernet and a power supply. If we need to make a surround sound panner section, we could pull out the knob section and drop in a completely new module. In some ways it’s already eclipsed the Profile. We’re now selling twice as many S6Ls per year as Profile did in its peak. There are about 4000 Profiles out in the world, and it’s been around for 10 years. We’ve sold 1000 S6Ls in a year and a half. If you add in D-Shows and SC48s, it’s about 10,000. I’d say we’ll do that number in the next three or four years. We’ve got plans to expand upon the S6L. We’re not going to be just a one desk company.
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