AudioTechnology App Issue 1 by Alchemedia Publishing

Gotye's Right-hand Man Roadtests

ABLETON LIVE 9

NICK CAVE FINDS THE MAGIC AT LA FABRIQUE

WIN

a PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2AI

MIX MASTERCLASS: RIHANNA’S VOCALS ON DIAMONDS RODE iXY COMPARED

Phone: 08 9204 7555 | Fax: 08 9204 5416 Email: info@galacticmusic.com.au Website: www.galacticmusic.com.au

EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS

N I W & E B I R C SU B S

With its incredible signal-processing power on every channel, easy store and recall of every setting, and the ability to record it all with just two mouse clicks, a StudioLive mixer will spoil you fast! Easier to use, better sounding, and flawlessly integrated with state-of-the-art software, it delivers the most creative environment possible for both live performance and studio music production.

Active Integration technology that adds unprecedented power for mixing consoles anywhere near this price class. So while the counterparts it has with far more computing power, which makes possible some very useful new features.

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REGULARS

Editor Mark Davie mark@audiotechnology.com.au

ED SPACE

Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au

Listening, to the tune of…

Graphic Designer Leigh Ericksen leigh@alchemedia.com.au

Text: Mark Davie

Art Director Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Jaedd Asthana jaedd@alchemedia.com.au Subscriptions Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au

My son is approaching his first birthday. And I’m not sure if it’s purely me projecting on him, but it feels like he has an affinity for music. There’s the cute Rockin’ Robin tango he does down the hallway with his walker; his ride-on car stereo blaring an up-tempo version of Camptown Races; his crocodile xylophone; his eery bubbling nighttime music player he can’t get enough of; and of course, dear old Dad making fart noises, beat boxing terribly and wrapping everyday chores into song. Lately, he’s starting to find his own voice. He now has three main syllables to work with — ‘Da’, ‘Ma’ and ‘Na’ — enough to get by. But slowly he’s adding more sounds that work purely on an emotional level — sounds tied to frustration, elation, boredom, joy… His music is easily decipherable and usually evokes a response. If only we still had access to those kinds of emotions, where frustration built up to the point of just letting it rip. No one would have a clue what you were physically ‘saying’, but they’d feel it. I guess that’s why the most captivating artists aren’t necessarily the ones with years of training, but the frustrated ones that know no other way to express themselves. When you find an artist that has something to say, how do you help them say it? We can all work on our critical listening till the cows come home, but the real art is listening to what an artist is really trying to say. The movie The King’s Speech is about just that. A self-taught speech pathologist who helps a king find his voice. His ‘trickbag’ of profanities to get the blood pumping, and singing passages to the melody of, you guessed it, Camptown Races were just that, tricks. We’ve all got those — tricks to get the words out. But deep down the king was just a kid nobody listened to, it wasn’t until someone really listened that he found his voice.

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Regular Contributors Martin Walker Mark Woods Michael Stavrou Paul Tingen Graeme Hague Guy Harrison Greg Walker Blair Joscelyne Andrew Bencina Jason Fernandez Brent Heber

“

the real art is listening to what an artist is really trying to say

”

AudioTechnology magazine (ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd (ABN 34 074 431 628). Contact (Advertising, Subscriptions) T: +61 2 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest NSW 2086, Australia. Contact (Editorial) T: +61 3 5331 4949 PO Box 295, Ballarat VIC 3353, Australia. E: info@alchemedia.com.au W: www.audiotechnology.com.au

All material in this magazine is copyright © 2013 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. 1/06/2013.

CONTENTS1

FEATURES 28

12 NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS 18 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN LIVE

REGULARS 32

SUBSCRIBE & WIN! A PRESONUS STUDIOLIVE 32.4.2AI DIGITAL MIXING CONSOLE WORTH $4499

6 NEWS 39 LAST WORD

TUTORIALS 24 RECORDING VOCALS WITH PHIL TAN

SEE PAGE 38

REVIEWS 28 ABLETON LIVE 9 32 RODE iXY 34 IZOTOPE OZONE 5 AT 7

GENERAL NEWS

AVID iOS INTERFACES $197/329 | avid.com

1300 734 454 or www.avid.com

MORE SSL 500 SERIES

SM Pro Audio has released two new 500 Series devices. The Pre-Z Variable Impedance Microphone Preamplifier features mic and instrument inputs and a full complement of controls allowing users to expand any given microphone’s tone palette simply by adjusting the preamp’s input impedance setting. The core benefit of variable input impedance is the ability to create a variety of tonal colours without introducing additional noise or degrading the signal. The Pre-Z’s high-pass and low-pass filters offer additional control and signalshaping options, and its LME49720 op-amps ensure low noise, wide dynamic range, and up to 68dB of gain. The Phase Box provides continuously variable control over the phase of an audio source signal across 360 degrees. The Phase Box can be placed in-line directly after a microphone/instrument preamp or fed via the insert bus of a mixer or DAW. The source audio’s phase can be adjusted using the front-panel rotary encoder in combination with the phase reverse switch. True bypass, low-cut filter, output level adjustment, and VU metering are also provided. The Phase Box design also features low noise/wide dynamic range LME49720 op-amps.

Solid State Logic has released its SSL Stereo Bus Compressor in a 500 series format. The centre section compressor from the 1980s G-Series analogue console is an audio production legend credited with making mixes sound bigger, with more power, punch and drive. To this day it remains a key element of the SSL sound. The availability of the Stereo Bus Compressor in a module for the 500 series should be a popular one with users of the format. SSL already has 12 different modules for SSL’s own modular X-Rack system. The release of the Stereo Bus Compressor Module for the 500 Series modular rack platform makes another small slice of the legendary SSL sound available to a wider user base.

$349 apiece | smproaudio.com

Hot on the heels of announcing ProTools 11 comes the Fast Track Solo and Fast Track Duo interfaces. Bundled with the none-too-shabby ProTools Express, these basic mobile USB interfaces also have a direct 30-pin connection capability with your iOS device of choice and promise compatibility with iOS apps. No prizes for guessing the Fast Track Solo is a single preamp and single instrument input box with headphone out and a pair of RCA outputs on the rear. The Fast Track Duo gives you two preamps which can be switched instead to a pair of 6.5mm balanced inputs on the rear for synths, etc. Outputs are also 6.5mm TRS. The specs say you need two USB ports on your PC – one being for an included iLok for ProTools Express. Aside from the bundled ProTools software, which will surely come in handy, at a local RRP of $197 and $329 respectively, these Fast Track devices are a viable iOS interface on their own. One snag – there’s no MIDI connection or USB input, so a controller/Fast Track/iPad setup isn’t possible. The case and chassis are full metal with reinforced knobs and connections. Avid reckons you can happily chuck these around. Avid:

SM PRO AUDIO 500 SERIES

$2599 | solid-state-logic.com

Amber Technology: 1800 251367 or www.ambertech.com.au

Sound & Music: (03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com

Audient has launched its new recording interface, the iD22. Features are two-in, six-out + ADAT I/O with 24-bit/96k AD/DA converters, and console-like monitor controller functions in a desktop package. ID22’s Class A mic pres are exactly what’s used in Audient’s standalone units and consoles. You get three programmable function keys (F1-F3) and you can expand iD22 via ADAT. Awave: (03) 9813 1833 or www.awave.com.au

Based in Canada, Sage Electronics has released the SE-D.I.3 Mighty G DI Box, a palm-size direct active DI box featuring NOS vintage germanium transistors. The Mighty G is 90mm long and 40mm wide housed in a die-caste enclosure and is designed to plug directly into most instruments. Sage Electronics promise that the Mighty G’s germanium transistors contribute a ‘magical sonic presence’. You can buy the Mighty G direct from Sage Electronics for US$299. Sage Electronics: www.sageelectronics.com

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SSL has unveiled Sigma, a remotecontrolled analogue mix engine. Designed for the DAW user that seeks the sound of an SSL console while retaining the convenience of working in the box, Sigma is an analogue mix engine in a 2U rack unit that is remote controlled with MIDI via Ethernet using a DAW or an iDevice-compatible software interface. Using proprietary MDAC control technology Sigma’s 100% analogue summing engine can be driven by automation data created within your DAW of choice. Amber Technology: 1800 251367 or www.ambertech.com.au

The Studer Vista 1 console is now available in a 22-fader version suited to small spaces such as found in OB vans. The Vista 1 still provides a comprehensive solution requiring no additional racks, including integral I/O, DSP and surround sound management including up and down-mixing. The Vista 1 is based largely on the Vista 5, so existing Vista users will be familiar with all the functionality of the Vistonics user interface. The Studer Vista 1 also features a redundant PSU and Relink integration with other Studer Vista and OnAir consoles. ATT Audio Controls: (03) 9379 1511 or www.attaudiocontrols.com

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NEW CANS FROM AKG Following up on its K702 headphone line, AKG has introduced the K612Pro reference class and K712Pro reference studio headphones. The Viennamanufactured headphones with two-layer diaphragm patented Varimotion technology promise exceptional imaging and distortion elimination. The K612Pro is an open-back, circumaural dynamic headphone, delivering high detail for a full, spacious sound. The selfadjusting glove-leather headband with aluminium arches and solid rivets provides a lightweight, maximum comfort fit. The K712Pro

is the new top-of-the-line reference headphone with the K702 aligning itself in the middle of the two new headphones. It has an open-back design, 3dB improved low-end performance, revolutionary flat wire voice coil and a detachable professional cable. K712Pro has the same genuine soft leather headband for a lightweight and comfortable fit. Its pre-selected transducers provide consistency and accurate localisation. K712Pro comes with an additional coiled cable and a premium carrying bag. Audio Products Group: (02) 9578 0137 or www.audioproducts. com.au

RUPERT NEVE CENTRAL www.rupertneve.com

From Rupert Neve Designs comes the 5060 Centerpiece 24x2 Desktop Mixer, designed to be the Class A analogue heart of your recording studio – and who’s ever going to argue with Rupert? Sized for the desktop, the 5060 provides the tone and centre section features of Neve’s flagship 5088 console, bringing outboard equipment together with custom transformers, flexible monitoring, and DAW transport controls. With an abundance of interconnectivity the 5060 can be the core of any modern studio. Using the Centerpiece, existing gear can be integrated with this mix bus, plus it’ll integrate stem

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BASS STATION $649 | www.novationmusic.com With all the apps and VSTi’s around it’s always nice to see a new piece of real noise-making hardware, something with honest-to-goodnes keys and pots – especially one with a slice of history attached. The Novation Bass Station is officially 21 years old and to celebrate Novation has brought out the Bass Station II. The name has always been a bit of a misnomer since the Bass Station has been responsible for some classic synth lead sounds over the decades. Bass Station II has been completely re-worked for the 21st century, with two filters, two oscillators plus a sub-oscillator, patch save and a fully-analogue

AT 10

effects section. Plus there’s a step-sequencer, arpeggiator, a two-octave (25-note) velocitysensitive keyboard with full-sized keys and a powerful modulation section. There’s also MIDI I/O and USB connectivity. In addition to the original (now called) ‘Classic’ Bass Station filter, there’s a brand new Acid diode ladder filter for squelchy TB303-esque bass sounds. You get 64 factory patches on-board with room for 64 more of your own and you can save more to your computer via USB. Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or www.innovativemusic. com.au

outputs from your DAW with the rest of the control room, sums the final mix, and provides two-track outputs, source selection, and multiple speaker feeds from the monitor section. With its custom transformers, a Class A mix bus and variable ‘Silk’, the 5060 can also provide a large range of tonal flavours. For a rich, vintage vibe, the mix bus can be driven hard and Silk/Texture can be implemented in either of two different transformer saturation modes, or Silk can be disengaged entirely for clear, wideopen sonic sound. Awave: (03) 9813 1833 or www.awave.com.au

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SOFTWARE NEWS AVID iOS INTERFACES $197/329 | avid.com

LAUNCHPAD RELAUNCHED $xxx | novationmusic.com

Launchpad S is an update to the original grid controller for Ableton Live, the Novation Launchpad. To recap, the 64 tri-colour pads can launch loops and clips, trigger drums and samples, and also control effects, volumes, mutes, solos and more. Launchpad S can do all this, but has vastly brighter LEDs, a significantly faster refresh rate and is now plug and play with other software such as FL Studio. It also now works with the iPad – of course – although you’ll need the Apple Camera Connection kit. The Launchpad S comes complete with the Ableton Live Launchpad edition which will let you start composing straight away, or if your looping DAW of choice is something different, a selection of

Arturia is launching its KeyLab range of professional-grade MIDI keyboard controllers with all-new accompanying Analog Lab synthesiser software. As you might guess, the KeyLab 25 features 25 keys with velocity sensitivity. Larger KeyLab 49 and KeyLab 61 models are available with aftertouch and an additional 16 backlit pressure-sensitive pads. KeyLab controllers come complete with a new version of Arturia’s Analog Lab synthesiser software solution. CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au

Avid: 1300 734 454 or www.avid.com

control overlays are included – you might get lucky. The Launchpad S is bus powered, even from an iPad. And, talking of iPads, there is, naturally, an app that Novation has developed which enables loop triggering and effects independent of Ableton Live. The app features a 1GB sample pack of brand new hand-picked loops curated by Loopmasters, ranging from drum samples to artist packs across a variety of modern genres. Innovative Music: (03) 9540 0658 or www.innovativemusic.com.au

It’s taken a while and there’s even an 8.02 update for the Mac DP8 in the meantime, but Digital Performer 8 for Windows is finally here with 64-bit Native operation. MOTU say it’s ‘nearly identical’ to the Mac version. Features in DP8 are 17 new plug-ins including two new classic guitar amp models, the Subkick kick drum enhancer and the Springamabob vintage spring reverb processor (gotta love that name). It’ll be interesting to see how much a Windows version raises the profile of Digital Performer in the fiercely-contested DAW market. Major Music Wholesale: (02) 9525 2088 or www.majormusic.com.au

Notable new features in Image-Line’s FL Studio 11 include a Performance mode and multi-touch support for recognised Microsoft gesture functions. The Playlist has been beefed up to 199 tracks, increased from 99 and overall the GUI has benefited from a host of workflow tweaks. Three new plug-ins in FL Studio 11 are the BassDrum, Groove Machine Synth (GMS) and Effector, while FL Flowstone now uses Ruby high level programming language. Image-Line reckon this means that connected to the right robot, FL Studio is the first DAW in the world that can now make you a coffee. Sounds like the folks at ImageLine need to cut back on the caffeine a little, more than anything. Major Music Wholesale: (02) 9525 2088 or www.majormusic. com.au

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you need two USB ports on your PC – one being for an included iLok for ProTools Express. Aside from the bundled ProTools software, which will surely come in handy, at a local RRP of $197 and $329 respectively, these Fast Track devices are a viable iOS interface on their own. One snag – there’s no MIDI connection or USB input, so a controller/Fast Track/iPad setup isn’t possible. The case and chassis are full metal with reinforced knobs and connections. Avid reckons you can happily chuck these around.

Brief News Version: DTS (originally Digital Theater Systems) and Fairlight have collaboratively announced the release of Fairlight’s new 3DAW, a 3D audio production platform with native MDA mixing and format support. The first of its kind, Fairlight’s 3DAW enables sound designers to truly mix object-based audio in unrestricted 3D space, monitor on any configuration, and output in DTS’ proposed future specification— MDA. The new Fairlight 3DAW is available as a turnkey solution based on Fairlight’s Crystal Core Media processor and software. Fairlight: (02) 9975 1777 or www.fairlight.com.au

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FEATURE

NICK CAVE & THE MAGICAL FABRIQUE Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds spent three weeks with Nick Launay recording in luxury in the French countryside, before holing up in Los Angelesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Seedy Underbelly to mix the beautifully honest album Push The Sky Away. Story: Paul Tingen Cover Image: Cat Stevens

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VOCALS

“It seems this album is really touching people, more than any other album I have ever worked on,” mused producer Nick Launay at his home in Los Angeles Launay was talking about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 15th album Push The Sky Away. And considering the producer, mixer and engineer has worked on albums for Public Image Ltd, Midnight Oil, Kate Bush, David Byrne, INXS, Eric Clapton, Lou Reed, Arcade Fire, and more, for him to say that the response to Push The Sky Away has been stronger than any other album he’s been involved with is a big statement. But with a Metacritic rating of 8.2 out of 10, and reaching No. 1 in close to a dozen countries, he’s backed up by overwhelmingly favourable critical and public sentiment. Even the US is starting to bend to Cave’s charm, with the album hitting No. 29 on the Billboard charts. “People appear almost overwhelmed by it,” continued Launay. “I’m noticing women especially love it. The whole idea was to make a very touching and beautiful album. Not only does it sound organic and warm, with loops, squeaks, buzzes and hums deliberately kept in, its stories are told in an unusual way and with an incredible sense of humour, making the album very entertaining. In fact, every album I do with them is getting wilder and more unusual.” Outstanding albums don’t always have outstanding making-of stories, nor does an exceptionally inspired production process necessarily lead to great results, but as Launay related the story of the writing, recording, and mixing of the album, there were enough hints, details and anecdotes to at least partially explain Push The Sky Away’s greatness. FANTASTIQUE FABRIQUE

The London-born Launay first worked with Nick Cave right at the beginning of his studio career, in 1981, on a single for the Australian’s post-punk band The Birthday Party. The two re-united in 2002 when Launay recorded, mixed and produced Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ album Nocturama (2003). Since then the band lost a founding member with every album: Blixa Bargeld was AT 16

Launay: “I recorded Nick’s vocals with a Neumann M49, going into a Neve 1081, a Tube-Tech CL1B, and then to ProTools. All the vocals on this album were original takes done with the band, and were not overdubs apart from a couple of songs where Nick had changed the lyrics. With the Bad Seeds many decisions about what take to use are based on the vocal performance.”

no longer there for Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004) and Mick Harvey left before Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2008), but Launay, as producer, remained a constant. Launay and Cave also worked together on two albums by Grinderman, Grinderman (2007) and Grinderman 2 (2010). Push The Sky Away is by far the most introverted and atmospheric of the albums Cave and Launay have worked on together. It wasn’t exactly planned that way, but when the ensemble decamped to La Fabrique studios in the French countryside, surrounded by gorgeous grounds, a pool, wine and good food, the soothing effect of these environmental anodynes conspired to bring out something far more filmic and expansive than anything they had previously done. “The environment definitely helped,” agreed Launay. “One thing that also played a part was that Nick and Warren [Ellis, multi-instrumentalist] have been doing quite a bit of film music in recent years, so they’ve been breaking down the whole rock approach of music needing to have a drumbeat with a snare on two and four. I’ve also been doing some film music, so we all recognised that the most important thing is the way music makes people feel. “Nick also had fantastic words, poems, stories to tell and feelings to share, many of which were written before the music existed, so the process was a matter of everyone trying to find the right music for the lyrics. This contrasted with the way previous Bad Seeds albums were done, with most of the songs written by Nick before the recordings, and the band rehearsing, then recording them very fast in the studio. Whereas The Grinderman records started with the band jamming, messing with sounds and loops, then Nick writing lyrics to that — the exact opposite of the way Push The Sky Away came into being. “Each of Nick’s albums have a different feel. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! was recorded in four days at Terry Brittan’s State of the Ark Studios in London

BEGIN AT SING SING

While the picturesque La Fabrique certainly had a strong impact on Push The Sky Away, the record had its genesis elsewhere. Launay: “The album was done in three parts, and the first happened before Christmas 2011. Nick called me up and said that he wanted to try recording some ideas at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne — one of my favourite studios in the world. I flew out to see a Grinderman gig at the Meredith Festival on December 11, and the day after we went to the Neve room at Sing Sing where there’s a vintage Neve with 1073s. We jammed for four days with Nick, Warren, Thomas [Wydler, drums], and Marty [Casey, bass]. They were simply throwing ideas around to see what would happen, though the possibility that it could become an album was in the back of our minds. We recorded absolutely everything, made notes of the good bits and also did rough mixes of them, and then we all went off to do other things. Later, in the spring of 2012, Nick and Warren got together twice in a small studio in Brighton, England, to play around with things and come up with some new ideas. They also recorded with [bassist and Bad Seeds co-founder member] Barry Adamson, and at that point we all felt that we had the makings of an album. It was then that Nick booked La Fabrique for three weeks, which is a very extravagant amount of time for The Bad Seeds!

WARREN ELLIS Launay: “Because I never knew what Warren was going to play, I took feeds from absolutely everything. I had DIs before and after pedals, even though we rarely used the DI signals in the mix. They were more for backup, and I’d usually re-amp them. I always had two mics on his amps, usually a Beyerdynamic M88 up close, and a tube mic further away, like a Neumann CMV lollipop mic, both of which went through a Neve 1081 mic preamp, two Urei 1176 compressors, and then into ProTools. He plays violin and viola, and although they go through an amp, I also mic’ed them acoustically with a Bock 507 microphone going through an 1176. The Bock microphones are handmade by David Bock in the same manner as vintage microphones and sound even better than the originals. I recorded Warren’s flute with the same mic, or maybe an AKG C12.”

— incredibly fast by anyone’s standards. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus was recorded in Studio Ferber in Paris — a fantastic studio that absolutely affected the way that record sounds. And there was a deliberate idea behind the making of Push The Sky Away. I was asked to look for a residential studio in the UK so we could all stay there and really focus on the recordings and feelings we were getting without having to deal with hotels and getting cabs every morning. But I couldn’t find any residential studios in the UK that didn’t have an SSL. I prefer recording on a Neve or any other vintage desk, and it appears that every beautiful English desk made in the 1970s has been sold to the US, it’s a real shame. I spent my first 10 years recording on SSLs, but once I encountered a Neve, I immediately thought: ‘my goodness, this sounds so much more natural, the headroom is much higher, and the depth of sound so much better.’ And the bands that I work with benefit from the honest sound I get by using vintage desks. “I was really frustrated I couldn’t find a suitable residential studio in the UK, and in the end I asked my friend [producer] Nigel Godrich if he knew any. He suggested I check out La Fabrique, which is close to where he occasionally lives, in the southeast of France. I visited the website, and it looked great. It has a 72-channel Neve 88R desk in a huge control room, and is located in a large old house with an incredible history — for example, the dye for the uniforms of Napoleon’s army was made there. Nick went to visit the place and immediately loved it. He called me while he was still there and said, “The studio has a great vibe, with no overhead lighting. I’ve booked it!” The studio, and the house as a whole, has a very homely atmosphere, with lampshades, and thousands of classical vinyl records stored in woodpanelled shelving. The Neve desk is quite new and doesn’t have a lot of character, but it’s clean and clear, has a lot of headroom and at least it doesn’t sound like shit!”

“We reviewed the stuff that was recorded at Sing Sing and in Brighton and found that parts of it were really good, with a great vibe, and some of it ended up on the album. The basic tracks for Jubilee Street, Finishing Jubilee Street and Higgs Boson Blues were all recorded at Sing Sing. And although the Brighton recordings were intended to be demos, we also used the bass tracks played by Barry on Finishing Jubilee Street and Push The Sky Away. Almost everything else was recorded at La Fabrique. “All the music is based on loops that Warren would make up using various instruments and his sample pedals. He has two Boomerangs, which are very old and probably still 8-bit, a couple of Eventide pedals, a Digitech Jam Man Stereo Looper/Phraser pedal and a Boss RC30 Dual Track Looper pedal, plus a lot of distortion, EQ and other pedals. He plays with them and his instruments [violin, viola, tenor guitar, mandolin, flute, synthesiser, electric piano] until he gets something that feels good, and then the band plays to the loops. The loops often have odd ‘mistakes’ in them, are never consistent, aren’t necessarily in 4/4, and it can be debatable where they start and end. It always led to interesting things! All our decisions about the music were about what felt good and not about whether something was correct or not, so we kept things like the out of tune tenor guitar in Jubilee Street because we liked the vibe!” FOLLOW THE MAGIC FLUKE

Launay added that although he’s still a big fan of the sound of analogue tape, he recorded Push The Sky Away on ProTools at 24-bit/96k because they wanted to be able to extensively edit the recordings. “Our aim was to capture all the performances and then distil and edit all the bits of magic that we had recorded. Especially Warren’s loops, which are a real mysterious thing. He’s tinkering and tinkering, and suddenly it sounds great. They’re often like some magic fluke, and it would have been impossible to recreate or replace them. Sometimes we would record his loop and the band would play to that, but more often than not he’d trigger it live. Most songs were played for much longer than needed, and editing was part of the arrangement process. We’d chop things down to a length that would keep the listener’s attention and then edit further, swap things around, overdub, and so on. For example, the original jam at Sing Sing for Jubilee Street was 20 minutes long, and we cut it down and edited sections together, which meant that there are sudden changes in tempo. “In the past my job as a producer was to do pre-production with a band and help them arrange their songs as best as possible, and then go into the studio to record them performing these arrangements as best as they could. This is where analogue tape worked well, and I might do razor-blade edits between takes (in some cases up to 30 per song!) to get the best feeling. But this album wasn’t done that way. Instead it was a lot about cutting, editing and moving things around in a track. We would AT 17

PIANO Launay: “Because Nick usually plays piano while he sings, I had to find ways to isolate the two. For this I use a microphone that fits into the piano with the lid down, the AKG C12B, which looks a bit like a 414. I have two C12Bs and, with permission of the piano owner, I use two layers of gaffer tape to construct a suspension bridge over the metal piano frame, and tape the mics to that, so they are suspended over the strings. The lid stays down, and I very often seal the underside of the piano as well. The sound I get in this way is very dead and close-sounding, but actually works surprisingly well. The piano mics go into Neve 1081s if I have enough of them, or API 550s. With electric pianos, like the Wurlitzer or Fender Rhodes, I’d have a DI and also a mic on the amp. Another keyboard that was often used during the sessions was the MicroKorg, which is almost like a toy keyboard, but it has some really cool sounds in it. We tended to put it through guitar pedals so the sounds aren’t so obvious. Wherever you hear a synthesiser on the album, it was a bastardised MicroKorg.”

BASS Launay: “The bass went into an old 8x10 Ampeg SVT cabinet and then a DI going into a Drawmer 1960 compressor, and it was miked up with a Sennheiser MD412 as a close mic and a Shure SM57 as a more distant mic, which went through a UREI 1176. The latter gives me a lot of grit for songs that need it.”

AT 18

sometimes move an entire vocal take slightly in time to get the best feeling. These are all things that ProTools is great for. We never abused ProTools to get technically perfect recordings, like fit the drums to a grid or tune things. Every decision was based on how things felt, and probably half of what’s on the album is technically wrong. But if it felt good, we would use it, or even exaggerate it. This is what my job as a producer is all about: capturing and recognising great bits of magic, and then editing and manipulating them — ProTools is an incredible tool for that.”

whisper to extremely loud, which meant I had compressors on all microphones. Most of the time they were just ticking over, but if the band started playing really loud the recording wouldn’t overload in an unusable way.

The mandate to capture absolutely everything, while continuously editing and crafting rough mixes meant Launay had to dig deep into every bit of skill and know-how he has amassed over 30 years of working in studios. “I had to be really on the ball with no space for distractions, no picking up of cell phones or anything,” said Launay. “It was a matter of being ‘on’ all the time. Warren may start playing one instrument, and then halfway through decide to pick up another one, and the very first thing he plays on that second instrument may be the bit that we need. So I had to set things up in such a way that no matter what and when he played, it was going to sound great. It was the same with everyone else. Also, The Bad Seeds have the greatest dynamic range of any band that I’ve worked with, going from a

BLACK SEEDS GET SEEDY

“I always tried to catch things with two different mics, so I could later choose one, or a combination of the two and play off the differences between the mics against each other using phase reversal or time shift in ProTools. You can create many different sounds like that.” The La Fabrique sessions began on June 24, 2012. And two weeks into the three-week booking, Launay said they had essentially finished their work. They spent the last week trying different things, but deep down it was mostly an excuse to spend a few more days in the studio’s idyllic surroundings! On July 15th they loaded any rented gear from the UK into the truck and drove back north. Everyone took a break for one and a half months, after which Launay began to mix the record at Seedy Underbelly Studios in Los Angeles, a place he rents from a friend for up to eight months a year. Seedy Underbelly is a tiny studio filled to the brim with Launay’s favourite gear, including a late ’80s 32-channel API Legacy desk and Adam P22 monitors.

“I’ve mixed almost every album I’ve done in the last 12 years at Seedy Underbelly,” explained Launay. “The desk is pretty much identical to the ’70s API desks, which may sound a little rounder and warmer, but not by much. API desks are relatively simple and the electronics are very similar. They sound great. I like them because they don’t give me a mushy low end. When I record an album on a Neve and also mix it on a Neve, it ends up so fat-sounding that it gets too big and flabby and you end up EQ-ing things during mastering. So I prefer to mix on an API. The one at Seedy Underbelly has Uptown automation that runs on a Windows 98 computer. It’s very basic mix automation, but I like it. It does what it needs to do: move the faders and up and down and cuts, and you can store your mix. What more do you need? I love my Adam P22 monitors. I have a pair in Seedy Underbelly, and a pair in the UK I took to La Fabrique. I used to work on Yamaha NS10s, but I found they sound too harsh when working with ProTools, which prompted me to look for speakers you can listen to at high volume all day long without getting fatigue. The P22s have ribbon tweeters that help a lot. “Warren and Nick came over to LA to mix the album at Seedy Underbelly. The way we worked was I’d go in one or two hours before them, and I’d set up a basic mix, then they’d come in with fresh ears and give their comments, and I’d take it from there. Most of the mixes at Seedy Underbelly were very quick, usually taking between five to six hours for each song, after which I’d spend time laying down the various mix takes and stems. My mix process is I first get a basic balance of the entire song, and then EQ and compress things to make them work together, while doing minimal fader movements and only very rarely solo-ing. I find that your mixes flow better and sound more natural that way. It’s different from the days when I mixed on SSLs. I would solo certain sounds, like the kick or snare, and then would put the whole thing together, hoping everything would fit — sometimes it didn’t! “What I do very often, and with this album in particular, is that once I get the mix to a place where I feel that it is pretty good, I will listen to the rough mix again. Many of the rough mixes I did in France were really vibey. They were very simple, but really worked, so I didn’t want to stray too far from them. Instead I’d just try to improve on the rough mixes a little bit. In fact, there are two songs on this album that are the rough mixes I did at La Fabrique: We No Who U R and Push The Sky Away. These rough mixes had a magic that I can only describe as: they were distorted in a really good way!’ At Seedy Underbelly I added new backing vocals to the rough mix of We No Who U R, and also mixed in a bit of a loop by Warren that sounds a bit like a space ship. I obviously couldn’t recall the La Fabrique mixes, because they had been done on a completely different desk, but I will very often take photos of the desk for reference of a rough mix and refer to these. “My main gear at Seedy Underbelly consists of eight Neve 1081s and eight Neve 1073s and compressors like the ELI Distressor, and Drawmer noise gates, an EMT 140 plate reverb, a Furman spring reverb — which is pretty cheap, $300, mono, and sounds like a guitar amp reverb — and a Roland RE301 tape echo, which was a major part of the sound of this album. I have all the outboard I use for mixing more or less permanently wired into the board, and lay the mix out so the kick is always on the same channel, and the snare, and so on. I didn’t actually use many effects for the mixes on Push The Sky Away. It’s quite a natural-sounding album. There are a couple of tricks I always use, like a gated Sansamp PSA-1 on the kick drum and I like to compress the snare a lot with a Distressor. I usually have the snare uncompressed on one channel and I’ll compress it on another channel that I will dull down so the hi-hat spill doesn’t pump unnaturally, and I’ll mix that in with the uncompressed snare. So I use the compressed snare sound for low midrange and low end and the non-compressed snare for the top end. “Because Warren used loads of pedals, most of the effects were already in the sounds. So all I did was add a little Furman spring reverb, EMT vintage plate or a slap back echo from the Roland RE301. I used the same effects on the vocals, as well as the dual Tube-Tech LCA 2B compressor. I’ll also compress the room mics a lot. The Urei 1176 is really good for that because it adds quite a lot around 2-3kHz and also distorts in that area, which makes the effect very exciting. But because you can lose a bit of low end and get these exaggerated high-mids they’re not as good for vocals, because they tend to bring out the ‘ess’-es. Instead I’ll often use the Tube Tech CL1A on vocals,

DRUMS Launay: “For the drums I usually had a Beyerdynamic M88 on the kick, and I EQ lots of low end into that. The snare had a Shure SM57 or a Unidyne 57, toms I recorded with AKG C414s, overheads were Neumann KM84s, Schoeps 402 pencil mic on hi-hats, all of them going into 1081s, if I have enough. If not, I’ll always use 1081s on the kick, snare and hi-hats, and will use whatever desk is available for the other mics, so in this case the Neve. I always had room mics at La Fabrique because everything is happening so quickly and they often started recording before I had even managed to set levels, so I had two Neumann U87s as room mics, going into two API 550 EQs and then two UREI 1176s with minimal compression, as well as a tube mic like a Bock or a C12 with lots of compression.”

AT 19

La Fabrique’s control room. A 72-channel Neve 88R dominates the room, while a tantalising library of vinyl invites further investigation.

which is modelled on the 1176 but it doesn’t have the mid-range boost. It sounds very warm and works great on Nick’s vocals.” MEAT IN THE MIDDLE

Launay is proud to declare that he uses a hybrid of analogue and digital gear in his work. “I use analogue and digital absolutely 50/50, and I am very happy with that. There are things I can do in ProTools that I could never do in the analogue domain, particularly very detailed things and problem-solving. I basically do all the broad strokes in analogue, on the desk using the faders and with outboard, and detailed adjustments in ProTools before it goes out to the desk. But on this album I also used several plug-ins for controlled digital distortion, like the SoundToys Decapitator on bass, and sometimes on the vocal, as well as on Warren’s stuff. In the past I’d use compressors like the Gates on the kick drum, but I found the Decapitator pretty much captures all these things. It has five buttons that allow you to change the tone and to find the best harmonic distortion for the sound. “In addition I also used the EchoFarm plug-in a lot, which emulates vintage echo machines. I’m a bit worried that ProTools 10 doesn’t support TDM anymore, and EchoFarm is TDM only. I also use the Waves DeEsser, which is amazing. De-essers compress a certain frequency in a very narrow bandwidth, so you can also use them to get rid of low booms and other sounds, so I use de-essers to get rid of all kinds of sounds I don’t like. I also often use the ProTools EQ3, as a notch filter. It doesn’t do much sonically — i.e. it doesn’t make the sound warmer or colder — but it’s a AT 20

great tool to boost or cut very specific frequencies. The SoundToys Crystallizer is another favourite plug-in, as well as the Devil-Loc, which is great. I do a lot of controlled distortion! And I use the Waves Expander/ Gate a lot.

“

The loops often have odd ‘mistakes’ in them… and it can be debatable where they start and end. It always led to interesting things!

“The stereo mixes went through two EAR compressors, and then two Neve 1081s, with which I added a bit of top and bottom and sometimes a bit of 2kHz, just brightening up the mix and making it thicker. The mixes went back into ProTools via Lavry AD 122-96 converters. I also use a Lavry digital clock, because the main problem with ProTools is the clocking. So all the above is how I make up for not using analogue tape! The other reason for no longer mixing to ½-inch tape is that mixing stems back into ProTools allows me to adjust my mixes afterwards. For example, we may have chosen Mix 4, but then I might decide there’s one section where I want the snare a bit louder. So I just get the snare stem and feed that in, or if I want the snare less loud, I’ll put the snare stem slightly out of phase so it substracts. You could never do that before. Using ProTools allows me to have my cake and eat it!

”

“I’m still not 100% happy with the sound of ProTools, even though 24-bit/96k is a big improvement over 44.1k or 48k. I recorded Push The Sky Away on 24/96, but the reality is that 80% of people will end up listening to the album on MP3. That may be sad and frustrating, but it’s the truth. So as long as I am happy with the warmth and the feeling of my mixes, in part because I use a lot of analogue gear while recording and mixing, then I am OK with recording to ProTools and mixing back into ProTools. I could have mixed to ½–inch and then back into ProTools, but it’s arguable whether that would have made any noticeable difference to the sound. More often than not, all it ends up doing is cutting off the transients, and you end up trying to get them back during mastering, using EQ. You can easily go round in circles, and in the end it’s better to simply accept that people listen on MP3 or, at best, at 16-bit/44.1k. So I use ProTools, and every trick in the book I have learnt over many years to make my recordings and mixes sound as good as possible. I think I managed to make Push The Sky Away sound pretty analogue, despite the fact no analogue tape was used. I am really satisfied with the way it came out. It’s interesting that the album has struck a chord with so many people. It’s nicely surprising, and it also gives us hope!”

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FEATURE

Photo: Marty Philbey AT 22 AT 38

Bruce Springsteen rocks the house in a huge three-hour show. Story: Christopher Holder

There are 192 potential songs on the set list and tonight Bruce Springsteen picks one they haven’t rehearsed. The Springsteen touring ‘caravan’ has plenty of multi-decade veterans, and that includes a good chunk of the audience. And they know to bring placards with song requests, because Bruce is quite likely to pick you out and, if inspired, bash out an obscure B-side you made your own. And so it was the night AT checked in. Bruce pulled the placard from the audience found a key on his electric, “No, that sounds too high… let’s try this… Okay, E Street Band, we’re in the key of C.” “They give us a set list on the night but that’s only a guide. Bruce will call a song he picks out from the audience and you have a couple of seconds to find the right snapshot on the console. I have an ‘Oh Shit!’ snapshot for when he picks out something we haven’t rehearsed!” FOH Engineer, John Cooper, has been touring with Bruce for nearly 12 years, which he figures makes him a relative newcomer. Wrecking Ball is a big complicated show that powers on for over three hours. At 55, ‘Coop’ is at the top of his game and clearly enjoys the challenge. With backing singers, a brass section, percussionist, fiddle player, a Hammond B3 along with the drums/ bass/guitars nucleus, the stage is crowded and so are the Avid Profile’s input panels. “It really sharpens your chops up to be involved in something like this,” observes Coop. “It’s three hours of very intense concentration. You’ve got to watch the band. This is not a show where you can stare at the sound board.” WRECKING BALL: IN FULL SWING

Wrecking Ball, as the name suggests, is a loud rock ’n’ roll show. The stage volume is punishingly loud. Along with all the foldback, there are two arrays of Vertec for sidefill. Bruce’s two Marshall amps, in themselves, are scary-loud. Similarly, the JPJ L-Acoustics K1 rig earns its keep and Coop isn’t shy with the subs. And when all 18 musos are in full flight it’s what I can only describe as a glorious, unholy racket. It’s exhilarating, but it’s not politely pristine. Coop: My aim is to deliver it the way it’s been played. There’s

not a lot of magic in what I do, I’m just trying to reproduce the performances through a narrow window — it’s a lot of audio info to squeeze out through that PA. AT: So how do you achieve a measure of separation in the mix? Coop: It’s about how to tonally separate and spatially separate everything. There’s just too much information for everything to be heard all at once, so you have to spread it out over the stereo spectrum and spread it out over the tonal spectrum. You’ve got to be very cautious with it. There’s only a finite amount of real estate there and a seemingly infinite number of input sources. So you’ve got to figure out what you’re going to do to make the most of the dynamics for that particular song. And it’s not always the same from song to song, in fact, it can be quite different. We might go from one song where everyone on stage is playing full throttle to the next song where it’s really quite stripped down. It’s about finding the important elements when they’re needed. AT: Are we talking about savage EQ song-to-song, for each element to occupy a niche? Coop: It’s very rarely done with EQ, more often it’s done with volume balance and spatial balance. I leave the 12 o’clock (centre) position open for only four things in my mix: Bruce’s vocal, bass guitar, kick and snare. Everything else has a ‘clock’ position. I don’t pan hard (mostly between ‘10:30’ and ‘1:30’) and the panning generally adheres to the player’s position on stage. I’ll also do a lot of stereo simulation. Which means I’ll take a mono source like the horns or backing vocals, I’ll put those through a stereo delay and bring them back with time offsets, left and right, to create a stereo perception of that group of instruments which pushes them ‘around the clock’. AT: While always keeping Bruce’s vocals riding high? Coop: Bruce is always telling a story, so you’ve got to maintain the vocal intelligibility regardless of the war that might be going on underneath musically. VOCALS: RIGHT OUT FRONT

Bruce Springsteen is 62. He’s been on the road off and on for 40 years or more. At this point in his career many would cut AT 23 AT 39

TOM & STEVE Guitarist Tom Morello has deputised for E-Street stalwart, Stevie van Zandt, because Stevie has chosen to ‘freeze his ass off in Norway’ — referring to a tough-guy role he’s playing for Norwegian telly. Tom (from Rage Against the Machine) has collaborated with Springsteen before but given how integral Stevie is to the E Street Band sound, it was always going to be a shock to the system. Or was it? Coop: Their styles are dramatically different and so are their musical perspectives. Tom is more up front and Stevie is a ‘tasty lick’-type player. I love them both for different reasons. AT: How did you accommodate such a radical change in sound and approach into the mix? Coop: I wish I could say I’d made a bunch of profound changes to the tone and to the mix but I didn’t change a damn thing! I didn’t even change the EQ or compression. We mic Tom’s amp with a Shure SM57 and with Stevie I use a vintage Sennheiser MD409. That’s the only difference. The 409 is slightly warmer sounding. Stevie generally plays a Strat through Vox amps — a clean sound and the 409 just warms that up a little. Tom plays a 50W Marshall head with a 4 x 12 cabinet and his sound is a little more upfront so I put a 57 on there. They both work fine, they’re kinda interchangeable, but that’s the only change. I swear to you, I never touched an EQ or a compressor.

FOH Engineer, John Cooper at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne.

You’ve got to maintain the vocal intelligibility regardless of the war that might be going on underneath musically

Coop: A good deal of the time he’s in the audience. My approach is to, first and foremost, set his vocal mic up for stability — about 12 to 16dB above his operating level. Bruce’s vocal is routed independently of the stereo bus, so there’s independent control of the vocal through the matrices that drive the PA. Then on a daily basis I ring his vocal mic out, like a monitor engineer would, so he can be on a platform 30m in front of the PA and we won’t have feedback issues. He can be in the aisles singing. He can be on his back crowd surfing and singing and we don’t have feedback issues.

the K1 switch because he liked what he heard in previous tours. But when invited to express a preference for XYZ over ABC there’s a barely concealed impatience. The gear is secondary. “It’s all about the music, and being emotionally involved with the music.”

The PA packs a lot of horsepower, it’s a loud show, and the vocal mic is a deadly item in those circumstances. After all that work is done, you still have to be very active in the way you mix the vocal. You have to turn things up and down, off and on, religiously — you have to stay on top of it. AT: Including when he’s back on stage and not in the crowd?

AUDIO CREW FOH Engineer: John Cooper Monitor Engineers: Troy Milner, Monty Carlo System Engineer: Etienne Lapré, John ‘Boo’ Bruey Assistant Engineers: Ray Tittle, Rob Zuchowski JPJ Techs: Adam Smith, Karl Sullivan AT 24

“

the man some slack. You might even allow him a retirement-fund Vegas residency. But Bruce is still doing it the ‘hard way’. He’s the bandleader, the star, and the spiritual guide of a large group of people. And talk about leading from the front! He pushes his uncomplaining compadres through three-plus gruelling hours where Bruce gives his absolute all — the bloke even crowd surfs. Bruce is a total pro. Still, from an engineer’s point of view he’s hard to keep a handle on. The guys on monitors even have a screen dedicated to ‘Bruce Cam’, for when he makes one of his loping runs into the crowd.

Coop: The stage is very loud and I’m riding that fader hard. It’s not like some acts where you can leave the fader and rely on muting/unmuting the vocal, you have to throttle it on and off because he may phrase things differently night to night. So when he’s on stage, I have to watch him like a hawk, because he’s always moving. Most nights I’ll spend no time looking at the sound board. If he’s downstage centre with an acoustic guitar, then that’s one of my more leisurely moments — I don’t have to work the fader quite as much. But if he’s playing electric and he’s singing and he steps away from the vocal mic, his guitar amps are right behind him. That mic has to be ducked out immediately. TEAM OVER GEAR

Coop will politely and cogently run you through what he’s using and why. He sings the praises of the Avid Profile’s reliability, for example, and made

”

Coop: Don’t get me wrong, technology does help. The first tour I mixed for Bruce I used a Midas XL4 and racks of outboard electronics. I would be totally comfortable doing that today, but it just takes up a lot more space and many more guys to set it up, and lift it in and out. It’s just as effective, only a little more mechanical. Meanwhile, the automation allows me to have a starting point for each song. It keeps me from spending the last 30 seconds of Song A worrying about Song B and the first 30 seconds of Song B making sure the preparations were correct. In other words, it keeps me mixing more, where previously I had to manually turn things on and off. I’ve been a proponent of automated consoles since the mid ’90s. I was one of the first brave souls to take the Amek Recall out on the road and I had great success with it. It was a life changing moment — I wasn’t spending all that time prepping one song while mixing another. I was mixing the whole time; I was engaged

Troy Milner: We use a lot of trusty standards on stage, like Shure SM57s and 58s — we know they’ll work. Something different are the Heil PR28s on toms. Max, the drummer, doesn’t like big mics but wants a big mic sound. So credit to Heil there, they’re very consistent in the monitors, and they have a very tight pattern — you don’t hear a lot of cymbal bleed. We’re very happy with them. Max likes a clean look so we position the ‘overheads’ under the cymbals — ‘underheads’ we call them… Shure KSM137s.

MONITORS: 140 CHANNELS & COUNTING The Wrecking Ball stage is big and demanding. So much so that monitor duties are split between two boards and two engineers positioned either side of the stage. Monty Carlo takes care of the all-important Bruce mix, along with the musos stage left, while Troy Milner controls the drum mix, the horns and others on his side of the stage. Both engineers use a Digico SD7. Troy Milner: The SD7 has been great. I think I’m sitting on 140 channels at the moment and 60 outputs for all the effects, mixes, wedges and ears. There are plenty of zones on stage. For example, Bruce will head back towards the horn section and want to hear more of the horn section when he’s there. So I have a wedge in that zone just for horn solos, so he can stand there and see and hear them, right in his face. That I/O count includes 70 channels of wireless (Shure mics/Sennheiser IEM). Which is a lot.

That said, I double-assign many of the inputs. For example, I do a set of inputs of drums for the drummer and a set for the wedges and ears and everyone else. I can tailor the sound for the drummer without it affecting everyone else. That eats up more channels. Previously, we used PM1Ds, but we outgrew them. And you don’t want to be the guy who has to say, ‘ we can’t do that’. With the SD7 we can, ‘we got it’. Still, it’s a lot to manage. The drummer (Max Weinberg) plays with two drum subs — two double-18 subs — and then he’s on a hardwired ears system. It’s pretty loud. I’m using headphone amps, that I keep in my rack, for his ear mix. It’s a little silly to run a speaker cable 100 feet away from me, but I know these amps are working when I’m looking at them — there’s some visual security. I lose a bit of signal driving it 100 feet but it’s still plenty loud. Max likes a warm

analogue, grainy sound, and everything’s so pristine with the digital stuff, so I’ll use some Waves SSL Channel Strip plug-ins for him — that’s from my Soundgrid server. I mix the drummer manually on VCAs, just like I would out front for the audience. Everyone else is programmed in but at the top of every song I go through every mix as fast as I can, just to make sure everything is in the right spot — touch things up to compensate for the room. All the ears are in stereo. We had a couple of people trying the one-ear approach but it just doesn’t work. I always try and steer people away from that. Two ears is always better than one.

AT 41 AT 25

musically with the band until the last moment of that song and the first moment of the next. And that for me is the single biggest benefit of today’s consoles. THE BOSS IN THE HOUSE

Bruce Springsteen commands respect. According to Coop he’s always educating; always being the consummate band leader. If he’s offering advice to one member of the band then it behoves all involved to pay attention — The Boss isn’t verbose, but it pays to hang on every word. And the Springsteen professionalism is contagious. “He’s made me such a better audio engineer because he always comes to play with his A game. He’ll never let up. He’ll come in today, he’ll flip open his notebook and he’ll have a note about something during the last show or he’ll have a note about a new song he wants to work up, or he’ll want to try this or try that.” In other words, if The Boss cares, then maybe you should as well. Coop: I go back every single day, and I’ll brush over every song from the mix. What I hear through the sound system on the night Wrecking Ball was a great hitout for JPJ’s L-Acoustics K1 PA. Apart from the racks ’n’ stacks, it was a Solotech is obviously the most gig — with Solotech equipment and crew. Solotech hails important thing that from Canada and fairly recently bought out fellow rental company Audio Analysts. System engineer Etienne Lapré I do but at a later date joined the tour early last year and took us through the they might take a system. video cut of that night Etienne Lapré: You’re looking at a typical arena setup with the main hangs comprising 10 x K1s with because it looks great, 6 x dV-DOSC down, flown with K1-SB subs. There’s a and then it lands in centre hang with 12 x dV-DOSC. Then there are four rear hangs of 12 x dV-DOSC. We have eight cardioid subs my court, and if the on the floor. I use the LA Network Management for the audio isn’t so great processing — L-Acoustics has improved that side of things so much — and the Meyer Galileo for matrixing, as then they can’t use it’s quick to use. The K1 is very revealing, you cannot make it. So it’s up to me to a mistake and get away with it. If your finger slips, you’ll hear it 100 times over through the system. Compare that make sure the mix to a Milo or a J or an i5, you can make a mistake. K1? Nup! translates to all the There’s nowhere to hide. It’s a great PA for this music. It brings what Coops is trying to recreate. different destinations. But you can’t really focus on those ‘derivatives’ in the moment. The only way to do that is to go back and listen back to 60 seconds of every song that I’m recording in ProTools. AT: What are you listening for? Coop: I’m focussing on the mix balance: where it should be and where it is; see how it ebbs and flows with regards to the dynamics of the band on the night; how that emotion reads and turns into audio. I carefully pay attention to that on a song-by-song basis. K1 REVEALS ALL

Solotech out of Canada has the Springsteen account. Coop got the chance to use L-Acoustics K1 while mixing Sheryl Crow and liked what he heard. So come time for preparations for Wrecking Ball the call was made to Solotech. JPJ has the account in Australia, supplying ‘stacks ’n’ racks’ for the tour. The arena configuration is pseudo in-the-round: mostly shooting up the room but with those behind the stage trading off eye contact for an up-close experience. Solotech system engineer, Etienne Lapré, likes the approach because the AT AT 42 26

PA isn’t exciting the whole room symmetrically. Four hangs of K1 with dV-DOSC underhangs do most of the work, and tag teams with the flown K1-SB subs. Etienne assures me that low-end isn’t a problem, “The whole bowl is covered.” Groundstacked subs provide additional support for the floor area in front of the stage. The sides and back of stage are covered by four hangs of dV-DOSC. Coop: For me, the goal is consistency. In production rehearsals you have the sound system and that’s the static element in the rehearsal period. Everything else is changing as the band work on their parts and you refine your mix. It’s being built. Once rehearsals are over, that role is reversed. Now the music is fully formed: the parts are finalised, the tone is set and the balance leaving the console

becomes more constant. Now the dynamic element is the environment — the room. If I’m achieving consistency from the mixing side and we have the technology and know-how to set up the sound system so it’s reproducing in a uniform manner day to day, then we’re firing on all cylinders — we’re working perfectly. And that’s the luxury we have on this tour — a spectacular sound system managed by real professionals. The canvas is white when I start the show. It’s not yellow. Whatever colour I lay on the canvas will be there. If it’s shit brown then that’s what it is. And if it’s a beautiful sky blue, then that’s what you’ll hear.

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TUTORIAL

Tutorial: Paul Tingen Born in Malaysia, Tan graduated in 1990 from Florida’s Full Sail education facility, and was given his big break by rapper/producer Jermaine Dupri. Since then Tan has amassed credits like Mariah Carey, Usher, Justin Bieber, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, Outkast, Jay-Z and many others, and won three Grammy Awards as a mix engineer on Mariah Carey’s album The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), Ludacris’s album Release Therapy (2006), and Rihanna’s Only Girl (In the World). A staggering eight of Rihanna’s 10 US number one hits were mixed by Tan.

Diamonds is the 10th US No. 1 for Barbadian mega-star Rihanna has scored since her international breakthrough in 2005. It was written and produced by the Norwegian duo Stargate and American hitmaker, Benny Blanco, and mixed by Phil Tan. It’s the kind of melodic mid-tempo pop ballad on which Stargate appears to have established a 21st century monopoly, the odd-ball ingredient being its four-to-the-floor dance kick drum that gives it movement and bite. It’s also lavishly arranged with strings, piano and a whole panorama of keyboard sounds all competing in the mid-range frequency area. According to Tan, the rough mix was already in great shape, and his main attention during the mixing of Diamonds went into making sure the vocal sounded great and cut through the track. He explains some of the things to focus on when mixing vocals, using Diamonds as an illustration. 1. MAKE SOME ROOM

“When you’re mixing a pop record, you’re always aware that the listeners will be focusing on the vocals. The vocal is the star of the entire show. It has to keep the listener’s attention for the entire track. They might like the instruments and arrangements, but they won’t necessarily care as much for them as for the vocals. In the case of Diamonds, the balances in the rough mix were pretty decent, and their sketch was very distinctive, so I didn’t have to do much in terms of surgery.”

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2. YOU’RE ONLY HUMAN

“As a fan I care more about how something makes me feel than technical perfection, any day. You want to be sure every word/syllable gets heard, but you don’t want points of emphasis in the performance to be subdued too much. There’s Autotune on all the vocal tracks, because that has become part of her vocal sound. But in this case the tuning is very minimal. If you bypassed it, you’d hardly hear the difference. It’s not there to create an effect, but just to keep her vocals in place.” 3. A MIX OF FRESH INGREDIENTS

“Spend time capturing a good recording. That’s the key, really, to a good mix. Just like with cooking, your dish will come out better if you have fresh ingredients.” 4. DO EXPERIMENT

“Finding the right EQ or compressor is a bit like finding the right mic for recording. That LA-2A you used and worked great on the last song may not seem right on this one, for any number of reasons, the tempo and key of the song, for example. I don’t have specific settings I use on everything, unfortunately. I wish I did: everything would go so much quicker! Instead, every setting in every mix is done on a case-bycase basis. I basically just adjust things until I think it feels good. For some of the less experienced,

consulting a frequency chart might not be a bad idea. Analysers can help too, when trying to identify problem areas. “Mixers sit for hours every day in a room, and like to try new things, and with Diamonds, I tried the VintageMaker summing box. It has 16 inputs, and I sent stereo pairs of drums, music, vocals and effects returns to the VintageMaker from my Mitch Berger-modified Avid 192 I/O. The VintageMaker is passive and has no sound of its own, so to bring it up to line level it needs to be sent through a stereo mic pre, which also adds some character. In this case I used my two Neve 1079s, which went into my Manley limiter. From there the stereo mix went back in ProTools, coming up on Track 3, on which I had the Waves S1 Stereo Imager to create a bit more space and width for the image, and the Metric Halo ChannelStrip.

The SSL Channel adds small boosts at 1.8k, 5.5k and 9kHz, with nothing larger than 3dB, as well as a high-pass filter at 70Hz. Notably there are no cuts in the chain other than a de-esser, which points to quality engineering and mic choices.

6. FATTEN UP 5. Q’ING UP THE VOCAL

“The EQ1B is the ProTools EQ, which just acts as a high-pass filter, taking out some messy rumble in the low end. I also had the Waves SSL Channel.”

“The tracks at the bottom of the session are all vocal effects tracks, with a Waves Rverb, ProTools Extra Long Delay II, Waves MetaFlanger, and two different Doublers, one acting more like a micropitch shifter. Their aim was to fatten the vocal up a little bit.”

Phil Tan currently works from his own studio in Atlanta, called Ninja Beat Club where he mixed Diamonds using his Avid Icon D-Control desk, some choice outboard, and Dynaudio M1 and JBL LSR6332 monitors, both powered by Bryston amplifiers. He also has a pair of RCF Mytho 8 speakers and Digidesign RM1 monitors, and adds, “Sometimes I’ll check my mixes on a little mono Deadmau5 monitor or the Ecko Spray Bluetooth speaker.” Tan has spent most of his career mixing on a desk, usually an SSL, and explained that his decision to install a D-Control desk at Ninja Beat Club was purely due to the practical needs for mixing pop music in the second decade of the 21st century. Tan: “I work on many different projects at the same time, so recall is essential for me. This is the main reason why I stopped working on analogue desks, even though I still prefer the way they sound. I try to compensate somewhat by having a number of analogue pieces in my studio, like a Manley Variable Mu limiter/ compressor and an Inward Connections DEQ-1 EQ, plus I also have the SSL XRack (which has 16 channels of summing), a Tube-Tech CL-1B compressor, and mic pres like the Millennia HV-3B, two Neve 1079s and the Universal Audio LA-610 tube recording channel. Just before I mixed Diamonds I acquired the VintageMaker summing unit, and I first used it on that track.”

The Waves Renaissance Reverb Dark Plate reverb rolls off the high end, while the MetaFlanger adds some movement to the vocal

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VOCAL Autotune

VOX (Bus 43-44)

ALL VOC (Bus 39-40)

RCompressor

EQ1B

SSL Channel

VOCAL (A 13-14)

RDeEsser

RVox

RCompressor

VERB (Bus 3-4) RVerb

DELAY (Bus 5-6) CompLim II ExtraLongDelay 3

FLNGR (Bus 27-28) MetaFlanger

DBLR (Bus 25-26) Doubler 4 MCRPTCH (Bus 35-36)

CompLim II Doubler 4

VOCAL FX (A 15-16)

VOCAL ROUTING NOTES The vocal is sent to the ambience plug-ins (reverb and delay) before Tan compresses it a second time, leaving more dynamic content in the ambient feed. However, he does compress each side of the delay. After compressing the vocals a second time with the Renaissance Compressor, Tan then sends that information onto the widening effects before applying final compression and de-essing to the vocal. The EQ1B high-pass filter only appears in the last stage of the vocal chain. Tan already had a 70Hz high-pass filter activated on the SSL Channel, so the second filter acts as insurance. The widening and ambience treatments are combined in the single auxiliary, so Tan has separate control over the dry and wet signals.

7. DON’T OVERCOMPRESS

“Compression (in the conventional sense) lowers the loud parts and brings up the quiet parts, so if someone is singing their heart out and the signal is overcompressed, what the performer is trying to communicate emotionally may not come across. When some of the less desirable parts are really loud (breaths, ess’s, eff ’s etc.) it’s not a bad idea to check or re-tweak your settings. “I shy away from using too much compression on my tracks in general. The whole loudness war issue is a big issue, and I find myself constantly fighting the rough mixes of the songs that I mix. What often happens is that rough mixes are done late at night, after a day’s work, and the engineer brickwalls it and calls it a day. But often people get used to hearing things in that way, and many record company executives think that something that’s less loud is less good, whereas in fact it can be better, because there’s space in the track and it can breathe properly. The problem for me is that I have to make sure that whatever I turn in is at least as loud as the rough mix, or maybe a little hotter. “I prefer not to handcuff the mastering engineer by giving him something that’s so loud that he can’t do anything with it. I tend to send a version that’s anything from 5-7dB quieter, giving him headroom to be able to do his thing. This can vary per genre, and if it’s more of a clubby song where the low end needs to be really powerful, a limiter is part of the sound. I still try to make sure that the mix does not fall apart without the limiter, and that the balances are intact and the different parts of the song are doing their jobs, and the limiter basically enhances everything. In the case of Diamonds, I sent both versions to the mastering engineer, Chris Gehringer, who mastered the entire Unapologetic album, so he could do whatever he needed to do to make sure it fit in with the rest of the album.” AT 30

Tan uses the Waves Renaissance Vox dynamics plug-in at the start of Rihanna’s vocal chain to get a little control early on, and progressively adds compression in multiple stages.

The combination of vocal tracks in Diamonds

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REVIEW

ABLETON LIVE 9 The latest Ableton Live update keeps the live side simple while adding plenty of production prowess.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Tim Shiel

PRICE Live 9 Suite: $849 (Fully boxed) Live 9 Standard: $549 (Fully boxed) Live 9 Intro: $99

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CONTACT CMI: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au www.ableton.com

PROS Realtime EQ & dynamic visual feedback Improved core plug-ins & more top sounds Breakthrough potential with audio-to-MIDI

CONS Still a few bugs to iron out Not many updates to live performance & video features

SUMMARY Ableton Live 9 is a great update for the production environment. New and improved plug-ins, audio-to MIDI, plenty more packs, and Max for Live bundled with Suite 9 open up loads of new ground to explore.

Four long years since the release of its last major product revision, German developers Ableton are back in 2013 with the eagerly anticipated Live 9. While some of the software adjustments this time around are a little more subtle than previous iterations, there’s a lot to like about Live 9 for both seasoned Ableton veterans and brand-new users. Initially a tool primarily for electronic artists and live performance, over the years songwriters and producers from across all genres have gravitated towards Ableton for its jack-of-all-trades approach and idiosyncratic creative workflow. Almost accidentally adopted as a mainstream DAW, Ableton Live now finds itself catering to a broad church of users, who utilise the software for a variety of applications both in the studio and on stage — and as a result, some users are likely to get more out of this upgrade than others. Those interested in using Ableton as a writing and production platform benefit from a wide range of tweaks to existing components (including session automation, updated EQ and compression tools, and more advanced MIDI note editing capabilities), while those who use it as a platform for live playback and performance might feel there is not a lot new here. CONVERGING VIEWS

Session View still stands as one of Ableton’s most defining and idiosyncratic features, and while some veterans of the software swear by it as a creative workspace, others will play with it once and then retreat to the more linear Arrangement View, never to return to that grid of colours and loops. For the former, Ableton has finally introduced the long-requested feature of Session Automation, which allows you to capture the details and nuances of performance inside clips and loops in Session View. Previous incarnations of Live have allowed you to get around this oversight by recording relative modulation values into a clip. But it’s now straightforward to record the same absolute automation data into a Session View clip as could previously be recorded into an Arrangement View envelope, making it much easier to move clips (and their embedded automation) between Ableton’s two views — a godsend for some. GLUE AT THE CORE

There is a lot to like for production nerds in Ableton, with the developers addressing some core devices that were in need of some attention, particularly Ableton’s foundation equalisation plug-in, EQ Eight. Criticised by some for having a flat and artefact-y sound, many producers with keen ears have for some time avoided Ableton’s native EQs in favour of third-party options. To combat this, Ableton commissioned analoguemodelling specialists Cytomic to rewrite the algorithm for EQ Eight from the ground up, and the results are instantly noticeable, with EQ Eight sounding clearer and more musical. Cytomic was also brought onboard to develop Ableton’s only new native device in Live 9, the Glue Compressor, which is built around the algorithm from Cytomic’s award-winning compressor, The

Glue. Styled on classic ’80s SSL bus compressors, Glue Compressor is useful for ‘glueing’ together disparate elements across a mix, which makes it great for drum buses. But its clean, simple interface and rich driven sound make it a useful compression option for stand-alone sounds too. For those who have in the past avoided Ableton’s EQ and compression options because of their lack of depth and character, these revisions finally make Ableton’s native devices a good alternative to third-party solutions. DYNAMIC NEW VIEW

EQ Eight, as well as Ableton’s core Compressor and Gate plug-ins, also benefit from some visualisation improvements that fold neatly into Ableton’s distinctively simple aesthetic. Each device’s GUI now includes real-time visualisation of the processed audio. In EQ Eight this takes the form of a real-time FFT spectrum analyser overlay, which can also be expanded into a breakout display for a more detailed view. In the Compressor and Gate, scrolling real-time audio peaks are juxtaposed against a graph of the gainreduction envelopes, which is hugely handy when dialling-in musical attack and release settings. These are the kind of no-brainer improvements that instantly yield results, especially for rookie producers still getting their heads around the very vital concepts of equalisation and compression. Matching an EQ or compression adjustment with a visualisation of the change makes the whole act instantly less arcane and much more welcoming to novice producers. EQ Eight also benefits from a new Audition mode which allows for quick and easy auditioning of individual EQ bands. For those who would prefer to use Ableton’s inbuilt audio effects rather than third-party solutions — Ableton’s devices remain remarkably CPU-friendly in comparison to some other options — these tweaks will result in much smarter and more efficient use of EQ and compression. MAX FROM LIVE

Live 9 comes in three versions: a stripped-down Intro edition that really is only suitable for those wanting to test the waters; Standard edition; and the full Suite. Suite comes in at a few hundred dollars more than Standard, but it’s where many of Ableton’s most creative features can be found: Instruments like Analog, Collision, Electric, Operator, Sampler and Tension, as well as audio effects such as Amp, Cabinet and Corpus, and a host of sample and preset packs. But the main reason for making the jump to Suite is to get access to Ableton’s modular development environment Max for Live, previously a standalone add-on to Ableton but now integrated completely with every purchase of Suite 9. Still a revolutionary concept even three years since its release in late 2009, Max for Live truly separates Ableton from other DAWs, giving you hands-on control over the building blocks of Ableton’s workflow. In theory, musicians now have the tools to build whatever it is they need, engineer solutions to problems or develop wildly creative new instruments and devices. In AT 33

practice, many will never enter the programming environment and will leave it to others to do the dirty work. So far the Max for Live (M4L) community has been a little slow off the mark, but with the numbers of the M4L community about to swell dramatically, we should see an acceleration in the release of new plug-ins. In the meantime, 26 new Max devices ship with Suite 9, including a useful Convolution Reverb and a quirky drum synthesiser.

Live 9’s browsing is a lot easier with the ‘Spotlight’-style search

Robert Henke’s granular synthesis patch Granulator has had a revision and remains a great tool for the creation of ambient textures — wrangling Ableton’s audio warping engine to slice an audio sample into a stream of cross-faded grains, which can then be modulated in a variety of unlikely ways.

Handy functional tools such as standalone LFOs that can be mapped to parameters, and Envelope Follower — an audio analysis tool which allows you to easily link the automation of a parameter on one track to the rise and fall of a parameter on another track — hint at M4L’s capabilities as a workflow Swiss army knife. In terms of userbuilt devices, Robert Henke’s granular synthesis patch Granulator has had a revision and remains a great tool for the creation of ambient textures — wrangling Ableton’s audio warping engine to slice an audio sample into a stream of crossfaded grains, which can then be modulated in a variety of unlikely ways. PACKED IN EXTRAS

Ableton has also expanded its range of multisampled instruments and sample packs. The Standard edition of Live 9 gives users access to basic packs that include your standard classic drum machine samples (TR-808, TR-909, LinnDrum, DMX, etc.), alongside a multisampled grand piano, percussion samples, and more boutique packs from reputable sources such as Cycling ’74 and Soniccouture. But the scope of sonic possibilities widens considerably with the purchase of Suite 9, with access to over 50GB of downloadable packs. It’s not so much the quantity of sounds that’s impressive but the consistent quality — the presence of boutique sound design company Soniccouture as a primary contributor to Ableton’s core sample packs is testimony to the curatorial smarts of the Ableton team. Soniccouture’s multi-sampled instruments truly deserve special mention and are a worthy addition to Suite 9’s core offering — take for example the eBow Guitar patch which offers a variety of articulations of sampled bowed strings for acoustic and electric guitar, coupled with smart and very creative modulation options built into each preset. Other idiosyncratic sound packs include the Tingklik, a Balinese bamboo percussion instrument realistically rendered from original samples, and The Forge, an experimental patch fusing classic IDM sounds with elements of modern cinematic sound design. These sonic options provide an intriguing counterpoint to the expected sample packs of retro synths and classic drum machines, and intuitively designed to push more openminded producers to make bold, unexpected choices during the creative process. EVERYTHING-TO-MIDI

One thing you could never accuse Ableton of being is boring. Its three new audio-to-MIDI conversion tools included in Live 9 — Drums-toAT 34

MIDI, Harmony-to-MIDI and Melody-to-MIDI — which promise to “give you unprecedented flexibility to extract musical ideas from samples,” have probably raised as many eyebrows as they have opened wallets. When these features were announced I was immediately reminded of the Groove Engine which was one of the lynchpins of Ableton’s Live 8 release — a tool designed to analyse rhythmic loops or samples and extract their ‘groove’ which could then more-or-less be dragged and dropped onto other loops and locked to that groove using Ableton’s trademark warping engine. On paper, Groove Engine sounded revolutionary — unlock the mysterious and unique swings and grooves of your favourite players and drag ’n’ drop them into your own compositions — in practice, it proved a useful creative tool for some but not quite the jaw-dropping ‘magic key’ many hoped it might be. Similarly, anyone hoping to unlock the composition secrets of their favourite tracks with the new audio-to-MIDI conversion modes might be disappointed with the results — a test run to see how these modes would deal with Art of Noise’s 10-minute art pop epic Moments in Love, for example, resulted in a barely listenable mess of conversion errors and garish rhythmic horrors. But as long as you keep your expectations in check, and are prepared for some manual post-conversion editing, this could be a very useful tool — particularly if Ableton continues to refine the conversion algorithms in future software patches. As they say, you can’t un-bake a cake. But over time these tools will be useful to those who are working with their own recorded material. Extracting MIDI from an existing piano or guitar stem is straightforward, and with Ableton’s everexpanding array of inbuilt instrument presets, it makes doubling parts very straightforward. For the vocally adept, quickly turning a beatbox

“

These are the kind of no-brainer improvements that instantly yield results

”

PUSHED OVER THE EDGE I’ve barely mentioned the Push — released simultaneously with Live 9, the Push controller is Ableton’s first step into the crowded world of hardware controllers. Dubbed by some as a ‘Maschine-killer’, the Push is designed as a fully integrated creative workstation and instrument, designed in collaboration with Akai who previously worked with Ableton to develop the APC40 controller. At the time this went to press, few people have had their hands on a Push — I was lucky enough to spend a few hours with a prototype version at Ableton HQ late last year and can say it’s a very useful and logical extension of Ableton’s philosophy. More to come soon.

rhythm into a loop played by a full drum kit, or a whistled melody into a synth lead with only a handful of clicks is definitely a realistic application of these new features. It should be noted that these conversion modes don’t operate in realtime — hopefully this is on the developers’ to-do list because live audio-to-MIDI tracking inside Ableton, if attainable, would be a wonderfully creative tool for live performers. LIVE LOSS

Despite the wealth of production workflow improvements, there’s not a lot of love for live performers in this upgrade. A revision of Ableton’s MIDI Mapping features seems long overdue. The simple touch-and-go mapping remains intuitive and quick, but a more extended mode for advanced users would be welcomed by those with more sophisticated live MIDI setups. For example, I would love to have manual MIDI map editing to be able to manually enter note, CC (Control Change) and channel assignments, or have the option to easily map multiple incoming CCs to a single device parameter — something that still can only be achieved in Ableton using workarounds. Crafty programmers no doubt could build Max for Live solutions to allow more sophisticated MIDI routing, but with MIDI assignments still at the core of most Ableton rigs both in the studio and on stage, it would be nice to see this area expanded as part of the core program.

Going digital ain’t so bad...

VIDEO STATIC

A well-kept secret to even its most regular users, Ableton’s implementation of video playback was snuck into the system many years ago in Live 6 and has not changed much since then. Charmingly basic in its capabilities — dragging a video file into Ableton’s arrangement view and you can cut, warp and loop it with the same editing tools used audio — it’s a rudimentary video sequencing tool that many users find only by accident. But it allows for quick and efficient video editing for those looking to avoid complicated video software suites. It’s also useful for scoring and can be used for live performance if you can manhandle Ableton’s finicky video playback window. The creative manipulation and meshing of audio to video would seem like fertile ground for Ableton’s wily developers — with artists increasingly integrating video into their performances. And since Ableton is a regular fixture on stages big and small, it seems a missed opportunity for Ableton to not have paid any attention to this cobwebbed corner of their software in Live 9. Perhaps consciously leaving it to some ingenious Max for Live developers to build a more robust video playback platform for use inside Ableton. BROWSING AROUND

There are a host of other subtle functionality improvements that make Live 9 a smoother, more transparent environment to work in. An improved browser integrates sounds, devices and project files for quick Spotlight-style searching [it’s a Mac thing – Ed]. Envelope curves have been introduced for those who are looking for a little more flourish in their automations, while a number of new MIDI editing features allow for quicker transposition, transformation and duplication of bulk MIDI notes. Despite many months in beta, not all of the creases have been ironed out of Live 9, and so anyone using Ableton in a critical environment such as on stage is probably wise to hold off for a few software patches to come through before making the leap. I’ve been using it as my production DAW for a month and have come across a few quirky non-fatal bugs, display errors and odd behaviours that are best described as nuisances. Other friends have reported latency issues and the occasional audio errors. If you’re impatient like me, or mostly use Ableton for production — the vast array of new production options and sound packs, combined with a range of workflow tweaks (many so subtle that you won’t notice how much impact they’ve made until you dive back into Live 8 for some reason) make the upgrade to Live 9 too enticing to resist.

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REVIEW

RØDE iXY & RØDE REC

TAKING THE HIGH RODE One of the most compelling features of iXY is its ability to record at 24-bit/96k. But it’s only possible with the $6 Rode REC app, which some might see as a Catch-22. Not wanting any iXY owners to come up short, Rode also released Rode REC LE. It’s a free version that opens up the 96k recording, just with limited EQ and cloud output (half Soundcloud capabilities and no Dropbox).

iXY, an accessory to your next iPhone hit. Review: Mark Davie

Rode has a knack for over-delivering. iXY is a case in point. While for some manufacturers the iDevices are just another opportunity to graft a few bucks from the general public with adjunct plastic bits ’n’ bobs. Rode has really bought into the design story of Apple’s devices and designed an accessory that would even satisfy Jonny Ives’ aesthetic sensibilities. iXY turns your iPad (1st to 3rd gen), iPhone 4 or 4S, and 4th gen iPod Touch into a 24-bit/96kcapable stereo microphone/recorder with the help of the Rode REC app. Unfortunately Rode was shocked by the same Lightning connector update as every other accessory maker. So while we may see an iPhone 5 compatible version in the future, this one is not. But no matter, there’s plenty of out of contract iPhone 4’s floating about. BETWEEN X & Y

Up top, iXY has two 1/2-inch cardioid capsules in a 90-degree, near-coincident stereo setup,

NEED TO KNOW

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RODE V ZOOM

PRICE iXY - $199 Rode REC - $6.49 CONTACT Rode Microphones: (02) 9648 5855 or www.rodemic.com

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Check out this video to hear the difference between our office staple Zoom H4n and the Rode iXY at a roundabout, cafe, and at the station. Obviously there’s a bit of compression on there that deflates the 24-bit/96k capture, but it should give you an idea. Each is directly above the camera, level-matched in post, no processing.

PROS Quality build, yet small 24-bit/96k recording App makes all the difference

onboard preamp and A/D converter, all packaged into a svelte metal unit that slips right into a 30pin slot. It’s gorgeous. When you plug iXY in, and boot Rode REC, you can choose any sample rate from 8-96k. And as well as stereo recording, can use either mic in mono if you’re doing some voiceover work on the fly, or even sum the stereo pair to mono. The real magic is in the Rode REC app, which slaps DAW functionality into a phone-sized touchscreen. After you’re done recording, flip the phone on its side and with your finger, you can fade in/out, adjust the curve of the fades, pinch to zoom, adjust region lengths, change gain or normalise a selection, slice or create a region, move it, copy it, do just about anything with it. THE META GAME

Once your track is manipulated into place, you can fill out metadata for AIFF, WAVE, Broadcast WAVE, CAF, Ogg Vorbis, iXML, Radio Traffic and Soundcloud. Use some compression, expansion and EQ, adjust playback speed, and share it straight to Soundcloud, link to Dropbox, FTP it, email it, share it via iTunes, or even access it via a web browser. After getting frustrated with the speed of Dropbox, which can be pretty slow, I tried the web access, and it’s fantastic. It quickly makes any recordings you’ve outputted available on your local network. Handy for downloading them to your computer if you couldn’t be bothered dealing with iTunes.

CONS 30-pin connector only at the moment

Rode has also included some handy preset processing from iZotope, with options for rumble and hiss reduction, compression and limiting, as well as situations you might find yourself in like a lecture or outdoor concert. You can also opt to monitor your signal, which is automatically turned off above 48k. Rode says it’s an iOS limitation, and seems to be the only thing holding Rode REC back. BUMPER CROP

The manipulation doesn’t stop there, one of the most useful features of Rode REC is the ability to import ‘bumpers’ into the app via iTunes file sharing. Handy if you’re live podcasting and need to get your show online asap. Just add your pre-recorded show intro and it’s ready to go. You can also use the bumpers feature to add iXY recordings together in the app. One of the only downsides is the labelling on the metering. There is none. You can change the ballistics between VU/Peak, VU/RMS and PPM Type 1, and scale between VU, K12, K14 and K20, which is great, but it gives you no indication of where you are on the scale till you hit orange, or red. Hopefully it’s something Rode can add in an update. The combo of iXY and Rode REC is far more formidable than a phone ‘accessory’ and an app should be. Not to mention it comes in a miniature moulded, zip-up case you can carabiner to your key chain, and a custom windsock. Rode’s on a winner with these two.

SUMMARY Calling iXY an iPhone accessory is almost an injustice. It’s a device that can hang off your keychain, but can turn the phone you already carry into a pocket recording studio. Genius. Just not for iPhone 5… yet.

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REVIEW

IZOTOPE OZONE 5 ADVANCED MASTERING PLUG-IN Time to release the ol’ mastering (ball ’n’) chain and tap into Ozone’s all-in-one potential.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Cal Orr

PRICE Ozone 5 Advanced: US$999 Ozone 5: US$249 CONTACT iZotope: www.izotope.com

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PROS Comprehensive metering, including loudness standards Meter Tap lets you observe multiple source interplay Save clutter & time

CONS None

SUMMARY iZotope’s Ozone 5 Advanced all-in-one approach to mastering saves clutter and time, without any side effects. And for mixing, the comprehensive metering and Meter Tap function provides all the insight into your track you’ll ever need.

My typical software mastering path comprises Universal Audio, PSP, and Cryosonic plug-ins, all individually inserted, and all contributing to an unwieldy clutter that invades every session. And it’s not like I can pack one away to just ‘let it do its job’, they each have to be open all the time to read critical information at a glance, make adjustments to EQ, etc. With Ozone, iZotope has provided a way around this multiple plug-in method of mastering by offering all the required EQ, compression, excitation, widening, reverb and limiting plug-ins you need in one convenient window. It’s like tabbed browsing — every module is accessed via its own button. I took Ozone 5 Advanced for a spin to see if it could give me the same result (or better) in a quicker time than my usual go-to (ball ’n’) chain. To test the different mastering methods for fidelity, ease of use and speed of workflow I used an album recorded by Andrew Bencina in Balgo, Western Australia (see Issue 86), which I hoped would take no more than eight hours for the 13 tracks. All songs, bar one, were recorded in the same space —which would level the playing field. And to keep things reasonably fair I flip-flopped between the old process and new with each new song to ‘start afresh’ so I couldn’t get on a roll with one process or the other. I’m on a Mac, but Ozone 5 Advanced will install on both Mac and PC and is compatible with all major plug-in formats except MAS. It’s a plug-in, not a stand-alone application, so you will need either a multitrack or stereo DAW to host it. Lastly, you need either an Intel Mac running 10.5.8 or later, or a PC running Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit), Vista 64-bit or XP 32-bit. POLISHED METER BRIDGE

Ozone 5 Advanced’s newly polished black look is overall less glare-y and more conducive to longer sessions, though a preliminary glance revealed the main page layout to be pretty much the same as Ozone 4. All the modules are where you’d expect them — meters in the same place, etc. So aside from a facelift, the update to Ozone is primarily in a swag of new features. Positioned under the main stereo meters is the new ‘Meter Bridge’ button. Click on it and a new window opens with a Spectrogram, Stereo Field Graph, Spectrum Analyser and a more comprehensive Stereo Level Meter than the main page.This ‘overall’ style of meter won the metering aspect of my mastering process shootout. Wavelab’s metering options all operate in their own separate windows which only adds to the aforementioned desktop clutter. Furthermore, Wavelab’s Spectrogram provides only an overall snapshot of the program material, whereas Ozone’s fab looking Spectrogram is updated in realtime so you can analyse individual sections of music. Apple’s Logic (my other mastering DAW) doesn’t even have a spectrogram.

TAPPING THE SOURCE

Complementary to this, iZotope has implemented the very clever Meter Tap plug-in. It basically lets you ‘tap’ into any channel or bus in your project and not only see what it looks like on a spectrograph, but check the relationship between different parts. Simply place a Tap anywhere in your project, name it and you can access it in Ozone 5’s Advanced Spectrogram via the Meter Bridge window. Eight meter taps are viewable at a time — in either overlay, tile or stack view — and you can combine tap points to see how they interact. Great for viewing combos like kick and bass together to see the low ‘push’ or making sure the voice isn’t getting swamped by guitars. With just Ozone 5 Advanced running and using Meter Tap to analyse the audio I’ve noticed huge screen real estate savings in Wavelab and Logic, and the real-time information Spectrogram provides helps you get the sound where you want it — fast! It even sped up the non-Ozone side of my mastering process shootout. It would be great if the Meter Tap section was selectable from the main Meter Bridge window not just Spectrogram but this is a request not a gripe. And as if all these metering options weren’t enough, iZotope has thrown in a separate metering plug-in altogether, Insight. It’s great when you don’t need to Tap multiple points and/ or run an instance of Ozone 5 Advanced. It also accurately relays information for various EU, American and Japanese Loudness standards. It’s light on the CPU cycles even though displaying much the same information as Meter Bridge. Meter Bridge’s Stereo Vectorscope is replaced with either a Stereo or Surround ‘Sound Field’ scope. Insight, like Meter Bridge, can expand the individual meters to fill the whole window, however the main window is resizable to some degree, whereas Ozone’s is not. As with Meter Bridge, if you close a module it ‘hides’ itself in a selectable Tab at the bottom of the plug-in window.

Ozone 5 Meter Tap

’VERB ADJECTIVES

I don’t tend to use much reverb in the mastering process (that’s the mixer’s job) but sometimes you have a bunch of really dry close-miked demos or field recordings that just need a few walls around them. iZotope has upgraded the reverb module and added extra room models in the Advanced version. With some old demos of mine it was easy to find a space to suit. I wouldn’t hesitate to use it as a plug-in on individual elements or on a bus. All of which is possible because Ozone 5 Advanced’s modules now come as seven individual component plug-ins. This is like getting a whole plug-in suite that potentially covers all your mix-based processing needs — the iZotope algorithms really are that good. While iZotope’s Alloy 2 is its more mix-oriented product — sticking with the same tab-based, all-in-one GUI approach as Ozone — I’ve found particularly good uses for Ozone’s EQ, Maximizer and Imaging.

Ozone 5 Insight

Ozone 5 Meter Bridge AT 39

CUTTING THE CHAIN

“

The real-time information Spectrogram provides helps you get the sound where you want it — fast!

”

Halfway through the Balgo mastering session it was becoming evident that my standard mastering approach just wasn’t cutting it. Sonically, I felt I was achieving similar results, but my workflow was all wrong. My standard chain being any combination of the following plug-ins — Logic’s Gain; Universal Audio’s Pultec Pro, Cambridge, Neve 33609, Neve 1081 or Massive Passive; Universal Audio’s SSL G Buss Compressor, Precision Multiband, Precision Maximiser and PSP Stereo Control. After this I then move to iZotope RX Advanced 2 for dithering and sample rate conversion plus any restorative measures like click or glitch removal. It’s a long process but one that I’ve gotten used to and been able to speed up using batch processing within RX Advanced. Ozone 5 Advanced’s allin-one approach, including internal dithering, routing architecture for Left/Right, Stereo and MS just gets you there faster. Plus, if you want to change the routing of modules within Ozone 5 Advanced you simply drag ’n’ drop them in the Filter Graph view… dead easy. iZotope has updated all the modules, with many of the new features only available to purchasers of Advanced. In particular, the Dynamics section has a new variable knee on all bands that

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helped achieve smoother sounding bands and crossover points than in Version 4. So too, the Stereo Imaging now includes a Stereoize Mode for adding width to mono sources — great for synths. Also worthy of a mention is the refined Maximizer features, in particular the new ‘Intelligent III’ mode — lovers of drum-heavy music are going to be in raptures with its pretty exceptional transient-handling, without pumping or other limiting side effects. I tested it extensively during the review and began to use it as my go-to when things got ‘beats-y’. At the end of the mastering — which took two seven-hour sessions to complete — only five hours were spent inside Ozone 5 Advanced. That’s nine hours using my old method! Of course in the end, you can combine the methods by using Ozone as part of a plug-in chain. This is probably what I’d end up doing because I love what some other third-party plugins do to the chain and have become a creature of habit in regard to their tone. All this makes me wonder: should Ozone become stand-alone and act as a host for third party plug-ins? Anyway, I’m going to join the Ozone 5 Advanced fray and spend a lot more time with it in 2013. Or should that be less time?

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REGULARS

LAST WORD with

As a sound recordist Paul ‘Salty’ Brincat has worked on dozens of feature films and TV dramas since the mid ’70s. His CV includes work on the more recent Star Wars films, Mission Impossible II, and The Thin Red Line (for which he scored an Oscar nomination). He’s currently doing a lot of TV drama, having recently won an Australian Screen Sound Guild award for Redfern Now.

PAUL BRINCAT

I got my start as a soundie working for Reg Grundy Productions on Young Doctors, back in 1976. Things were very different back then. Not only were we recording dialogue, we also had to lay up the music playback, ambience and any effects. We had two Mole-Richardson or JL Fisher 20-foot booms, and concealed ‘plant’ mics for dialogue. We mixed all that live via our 16-channel Neve console in an OB van and recorded it to video tape. So, effectively, we were doing ‘post’ while we were doing the shoot. That was wild. So you might have the sound of a door chime or a car arrival in the distance and you would have that set up on cart machines or quarter-inch tape — miss the cue and everyone would have to go again. The only thing they had to do was slap the credits on and it was ready for air. I’d never go there again! Maybe for a school panto... These days we’re shooting hi-def video, not film. We’ve got to provide timecode to the cameras keeping sync. In my case we’ll use my Sound Devices 788T as a master clock. We didn’t do that with film so much, we used a clapper board and sync’ed it after the fact. I’m still working with Sennheiser mics and Electrosonics radio systems. I rely on radios a lot more now. With the move from film to hi-def video there are a lot more cameras on a project. This means it’s harder to use booms and we’ve got to be on the ball. I’m on a US drama series (called Camp) at the moment and there are three cameras running the whole time. All the actors are miked up. We still run booms wherever we can and use them on close-ups. So I’m recording both — we’re multi-miking drama more than we did. And off screen, providing you’re not using all eight tracks (of your HD recorder), we can record ambiences on a stereo mic. I’m using a Rode NT4 XY stereo mic. Laptops have their place. I have a couple I use for doing sound sheets and another for taking care of playbacks, but I wouldn’t trust a laptop to record my audio on location. When things are fast and furious you can’t beat a specialist portable hard disk recorder. My first feature film experience came in the mid ’80s with Emoh Ruo, produced by David Elfick. We were a young crew and he took a punt on us, including Andrew Lesnie behind the camera — and he didn’t turn out too bad [Lesnie’s credits include Lord of the Rings, Babe and others]. For that shoot I had a Nagra quarter-inch recorder and an Audio Developments six-channel 145 Pico mixer. Simple as that. We had booms and a few radio mics, which I mixed straight to the mono Nagra — no iso tracks; purely dialogue. I’ve worked in a lot of extreme locations. Being a sound recordist is physically very demanding. Lugging gear in jungles, up mountains, in rough seas… it’s not a desk job. Humidity plays havoc with the gear. And you can’t whisk your

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stuff back to the air-conditioned hotel, you have to leave it out in that temperature the whole time. I’ve had mics fry on me because of humidity and heat. I’ve had the 788 lock up on me because of heat. I had to cool it down with wet cloths. Sand is terrible. I remember doing a movie years ago called Sahara. We shot it in Nelson Bay in the dunes — “this is going to be fun.” I built a box especially for my gear — an Esky with a dustproof cover I could stick my hand through to control my recorder. The sand was horrific. On a stormy day it moved a whole sand dune in a day. Everyone was in face masks. It’s the sound recordist’s challenge: try and beat ADR [overdubbing dialogue in post production]. But on sets where you’re combatting two or three giant wind machines and your job is to get a guide track… well, sometimes it’s a challenge to even get a guide track! Probably my favourite spot for a bud mic is just in the hairline, which means making friends with the Makeup department. It can be a pain for them to incorporate the mic into their routine. If that’s the case we’ll go for the centre of the chest. Again, you’ll need your friends in Wardrobe to use as much natural cotton as possible. But these mics are designed to sit on the centre of your chest and sound fantastic there. We’ll use certain surgical tapes to keep the mic in position. For women with good cleavage then big bosoms are fantastic. You can get the mic in there and there’s a bit of natural wind protection... and it’s an interesting spot to go to put a mic. My favourite film I’ve worked on has to be The Thin Red Line (1998). The director Terrence Malick was such an ‘audio’ director — he gave us the room to ‘go get it’. I had Greg Burgmann as a second soundie. He brought along a multitrack that he set up in the back of a 4WD and he’d pick up a lot of sounds out there. I was trying to do what I could with traditional machines out in the field while I was recording dialogue. But Terrence Malick made the difference. For example, he’d hear an odd screech of a bird in the Daintree, and he’d stop an entire shoot to allow us to get that bird — point a shotgun mic at it, so we could get 30 seconds of audio, and have it on the loop. We boomed that film. Coverage was so tight and so fantastic, we were able to get great dialogue from shotgun mics — the clarity (compared to small bug mics) was brilliant. I also had the chance to record the Solomon Islands choirs, which Hans Zimmer brought to life with the London Symphony Orchestra in his soundtrack. It was pretty magical. AT 43