Audio Technology 74

AudioTechnology THE MAGAZINE FOR SOUND ENGINEERS & RECORDING MUSICIANS

The Art & Science of Broadcast 5.1

Stargate: The Multiple-Hit Wonders | Recording John Butler | Stav Discovers Colour Reviews: Audio-Technica AT4081 & 4080 | Korg SV1 | SPL Frontliner | Retro 2A3 D.A.S. Audio Avant 12A & 18A | PreSonus Firestudio Mobile 2010

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AudioTechnology Editor Andy Stewart andy@audiotechnology.com.au

ED SPACE

Publisher Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au

Marking a line in the sand.

Editorial Director Christopher Holder chris@audiotechnology.com.au Deputy Editor Brad Watts brad@audiotechnology.com.au

Text: Andy Stewart

Design & Production Leigh Ericksen leigh@alchemedia.com.au Additional Design Dominic Carey dominic@alchemedia.com.au

There’s one audio discussion in particular that never seems to go away. Every few months, no matter how many times I spray it with DDT, up it comes again like blackberries in springtime. The weed in question is headroomicus establishus, more commonly known as ‘calibration’.

The topic of calibration has been confusing and confounding audio enthusiasts and professionals ever since the bespectacled long white coat brigade hung up their test equipment, cashed in their retirement funds, and headed off in the campervan.

One aspect of the discussion that seems particularly impervious to the minds of audio enthusiasts is the topic of digital converter calibration and how such a device interacts with modern and vintage analogue equipment.

This Ed Space I thought I’d try to clear things up a tad by focusing on one specific aspect of calibration that seems to elude many of us: the ‘reference level’. Without an understanding of what defines a reference level, all hope of understanding calibration flies in one ear and out the other.

Once upon a time the audio industry had standards… it still does, they say. One of these was an expectation that any time you looked at a VU meter, 0VU equalled +4dBu. In a nutshell, what this meant was that wherever 1.22 volts was fed into a piece of audio equipment, it measured 0VU on all the meters of the various consoles, tape machines and outboard equipment (with the exception of the broadcast industry where, prior to the ’80s, the convention was: 0VU = +8dBu or 1.94 volts).

Now, before you throw your arms in the air immediately and say: ‘I don’t understand what that means!’ just remember one thing: without this ‘standard’, the concept of the decibel is meaningless, since decibels are only capable of expressing the relationship (or ratio) between one measurement and another. Think of it this way, the concept: 0VU = +4dBu is simply a line in the sand, below which an audio signal tends to get progressively noisier and above which ‘headroom’ is reduced until a signal eventually overloads.

The reason for this line in the sand is simple: decibels (dBs) are not markers on an absolute scale, and by that I mean, you can’t count them like apples or rocks. I can’t just have 10 decibels on their own. They have to be relative to some other number. Obviously I can count apples: one, two, three… and so on. But annoyingly, the decibel only measures how many more or less I have relative to my neighbour, and both of us compare our relative ‘weights’ to a reference level standard.

Let’s say Fred ‘weighs’ two decibels more than ‘0VU’ in a calibrated system. Relative to the calibrated standard, he can be said to weigh +2dB. What this means is that Fred weighs two more decibels than the standard reference level (which has been defined, in terms of voltage, as 1.22V or +4dBu). You can’t just say: ‘Fred weighs 2dB’… relative to what? Now, if I then jump onto the scales and push them to only –3dB, I could say I weighed –3dB compared to our reference level, and –5dB relative to Fred.

How all this relates to audio signals is quite straightforward. In the past, analogue equipment was built such that its optimum signal level occurred at 1.22V or +4dBu; a good compromise between signal-to-noise and signal-to-overload ratios, and thus our metering was calibrated to read 0VU at this level. Above this ideal voltage was the mysterious region we’ve come to know as ‘headroom’.

Headroom is the amount of volts – again described in decibels (dB) – above +4dBu (remember that’s 0VU) that a piece of gear can handle before it hits a brick wall. Fundamentally, this headroom comes from a unit’s capacity to supply voltage to a circuit, and more specifically, from its power supply: the motor that drives any piece of audio equipment. The bigger the motor and the more volts it can produce, the more headroom above 0VU that piece of equipment can muster.

Now, the problem is, if I have a USB-powered digital converter that can only produce +10dBu at full-scale digital (0dBFSD) – that’s only 6dB above the +4dBu (0VU) standard – and I feed that into a piece of analogue equipment that has the capacity to run out to +24dBu (which is common), in practice I will struggle to provide that outboard device with enough grunt to really get it humming. This is why professional converters run on mains power, not via USB – so they can produce enough output voltage to interface with analogue equipment.

But let’s clarify one thing here: the real issue isn’t whether a converter can handle ‘hot’ analogue signals feeding into it (A/D), but rather, whether it has enough grunt to drive an analogue device (D/A). If you’re mixing in the box all of this is essentially irrelevant, but if you’re combining analogue and digital equipment (during a mix for instance), you need that output level to drive the analogue gear and its associated sweets spots.

So just remember, 0VU is a measure of +4dBu, above which most analogue equipment typically has +20dB of headroom. It must not – under any circumstances – be confused with 0dBFSD, above which there is no headroom in a digital system!

Advertising Philip Spencer philip@alchemedia.com.au Accounts Manager Jenny Temm jen@alchemedia.com.au Circulation Manager Miriam Mulcahy mim@alchemedia.com.au Proof Reading Andrew Bencina Regular Contributors Martin Walker Rick O’Neil Michael Stavrou Calum Orr Paul Tingen Graeme Hague Paul McKercher Hugh Covill Adam McElnea Greg Walker William Bowden Anthony Touma Greg Simmons Rob Squire Robin Gist Michael Carpenter Mark Woods Jonathan Burnside Andrew Bencina Mark Bassett Chris Vallejo Distribution by: Network Distribution Company.

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CONTENTS 74

48

102

FEATURES 30 OPENING THE STARGATE

When it comes to the US R&B scene, there’s no-one bigger than the Norwegian songwriting duo, Stargate.

What, you’ve never heard of Stargate? AT goes behind the scenes of this highly successful yet obscure songwriting duo.

36 5.1 – STATE OF THE ART IN 2010

Fresh from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Al Craig has returned to Australia, thrown off the winter woollies and penned the definitive tome on 5.1 mixing for broadcast.

48 RECORDING APRIL UPRISING

John Butler and Robin Mai take AT through the recording of Australia’s smash hit independent release, April Uprising.

REGULARS 14 YOUR WORD

Readers’ Letters.

20 NEWS

News and new product information, including big news about Integrate and InfoComm.

62 HOME GROWN

This issue, Brad Watts revisits an itch that began back in the ’80s with Itch-E & Scratch-E.

68 WHAT’S ON

Studio roundup featuring

Audrey Studios and SumSound.

70 PC & MAC AUDIO

Martin Walker reckons now is not the time to be switching over to SSD drives.

Meanwhile Brad Watts tries to Supaglue his earbuds to his head.

TUTORIALS 52 STAV’S WORD

Is colour something you consider part of your mixing palette? Stav sheds some light on the matter.

56 SIDE-CHAIN FILTERING

58 WHAT ABOUT

UN-ENGINEERING?

104 ROOM TO MOVE - PART III

Rick scores a forklift.

SUBSCRIBE & WIN an Audio-Technica AT4080!

SEE PAGE 18

Mark Bassett reminds us that a compressor’s side-chain filter is nothing to be sneezed at.

It’s a powerful tool that many engineers underestimate on a daily basis.

Michael Carpenter switches on the conceptual portion of his creative brain and discusses how to make records without engineering ... too much.

REVIEWS 78 AUDIO-TECHNICA

AT4081 & AT4080

Ribbon Microphones

82 MACKIE ONYX 1640i

Audio Console

86 DAS AUDIO AVANT 12A & 18A

Powered PA Speakers

90 PRESONUS FIRESTUDIO MOBILE

Bus-Powered Interface

92 PREVIEW: ALCONS AUDIO LR14

Ribbon Line Source Array

94 KORG SV-1

Keyboard

98 SPL FRONTLINER 2800

Outboard Channel Strip

102 RETRO 2A3

Stereo Equaliser

REGULARS

YOUR WORD Readers’ Letters

PROBLEM PINNED DOWN Re: The ‘DIY Phase Checker’ – Issue 72: I just wanted to say a massive thank you for Rick O’Neil’s article on the DIY phase checker. I have only recently subscribed to AT and I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time not getting it and reading it cover to cover before now! Rick’s article finally cleared up the phase ghosts for me and gave me information I can actually use – how refreshing! I was 90% through mixing a song for a friend and trying to fix this feral-sounding gunge that was coming out of my pencil condenser and, like Rick said, I tried to fix it with EQ, but the stench lived on. I discovered that my bigger-name stage mics were pin-3 hot and the generic pencil condenser was pin-2 hot. I would never have known!

Anyhow, I love the magazine and these top-notch articles – thanks a million.

Heath Jefferis -GONE BONGOS

I have almost completed a major rebuild of my studio over the last three weeks, including phase testing all my microphones, cables and outboard and would like to share some thoughts.

Firstly, regarding the testing the of mics, cables and equipment for phase, as per Rick O’Neil’s tap test article [Issue 72], I totally agree on the validity of this test and its importance. The only problem was that when it came to hitting the front of my Shure 141’s windscreen, I baulked.

This is my preferred method. Get a $25 bongo and a drum stick from Billy Hyde’s, put the bottom (open) end over the mic and hit once… you will have absolutely no problem determining the positive side of the waveform; it’s the best ‘positive’ sound pressure generator you can get – no disrespect to EMT. Everyone I tell this next tip to laughs: I always run equal length mic leads when recording, as I do all my rear panel cables to and from outboard gear. As the laughter abates I ask people if they run equal length cables to their monitor speakers, and always get the answer: “Of course, yes!”

So is it just me, or is there a benefit? And yes I know it’s the speed of light, and not the speed of sound in this case, but I still think it’s about absolute phase.

Also, on the subject of phase, in the context of channels and buses at the master fader in a mix, I’m finding as I come closer to a good sounding mix, I often have multiple alternating rhythm sections at the channels (eg: two rhythm guitar, brass counterparts etc) out of phase with each other. This then occasionally extends to the buses where, say,

the drum and guitar section will be in phase and the bass and vox out of phase – but it’s never necessarily the same combinations. Sometimes they end up sounding best all in phase.

My thinking is that when these sounds combine on the speaker cone from the lowest to highest frequencies, they intertwine better when they’re not all in phase – some get the chance to actually de-accelerate the cone velocity on their first 180 degrees and therefore combine in a ‘friendlier’ way.

I haven’t heard anyone talk of this, and again think: ‘is it just me?’

Best wishes you and all the AT staff – the best audio mag out there.

Bruce Griffiths, Omni Blue Studios

time spent touring as keyboard techs for Icehouse.

Simon was the reason I picked a career in the audio industry and we spent countless hours discussing the best ways to solve audio problems over the years.

Simon’s other passion was snow skiing and our many trips to New Zealand in the ’80s and ’90s with various friends will always be remembered as some of our best times together.

We will all miss this wonderful person, and anyone who was lucky enough to know him will carry a part of his friendship and knowledge with them for life.

Michael Horn, Sound Devices --

Editor’s Response:

A STRAGGLER

Nope, you’re not alone on that last point Bruce. I used to use that technique occasionally to tuck back cumulative peaks when I didn’t have a decent limiter back in the early ’90s. I still occasionally do it to investigate whether flipping a discrete percussive element’s polarity lessens the peak energy of a mix in odd places, but I rarely if ever find the need to make this inquiry a permanent fixture of my mix. Stav also mentions doing this very same thing in his book from memory, though I’m not sure on what page exactly… it’s been a while since I edited it. I’d be very careful, however, to get involved in flipping sub-groups or large chunks of key program material. Chances are whatever benefits you may perceive in one moment of the song will simply be robbed from you elsewhere, and there’s obviously the danger in getting it all wrong and accidentally flipping phase-related mics out of polarity with one another. It’s a dangerous practice, one I wouldn’t advise many engineers try, or get in the habit of.

Did I make the deadline?

Love the bongo option by the way… and same length leads are always beneficial, provided they’re the same cable type and in good working order. This is especially relevant if the leads are sharing some aspect of the same sound, ie, two leads, each one carrying one side of a stereo signal, or the cables carrying the various channels of a drumkit. Hope that helps – Ed. -GOODBYE MY FRIEND In February we lost one of the modern pioneers of the audio industry in Australia and a really great guy.

Simon Leadley and I had many audio adventures over the years, from his time helping out with PA systems at Vaucluse Boys High School, sharing technician duties together at Hutchings Keyboards, building studios together (and later becoming a partner in Trackdown Studios in Camperdown), to

I mixed the ‘Traps’ song in Cubase 4. This is a rough outline of what I did: Drums: every drum track was compressed and equalised. I panned the drums so that the stereo image was heard from the drummer’s perspective, which is something I do all the time when mixing bands in the studio. I cut the tom track into two separate channels: one for rack and one for floor – panned differently. I was quite surprised to see the toms on a single track to be honest. The overhead image was widened and I applied reverb to the overheads only. I smashed the RCA and Coles channels with a couple of nice limiters to get the bloom happening, and added distortion to the snare bottom track for some extra tang.

Bass: I used the Puncher compressor – only mildly – and also lifted the subs and around 5.5k with EQ. Guitars: I didn’t use any EQ until the lead: for this I pulled the SM7 track into a new channel and used Cubase’s AmpSimulator and Phaser. I doubled Ben’s ‘88’ track and panned them hard left and right.

Vocals: I lifted the highs, cut the subs and ran it through my secret weapon compressor. From there it went through a delay which I rode harder in the choruses – all of this with Steinberg’s NaturalVerb inserted at the end.

Extras: I added some crashing wave effects; a nasty guitar squall at the end of the solo; a three-over-four dub-style snare delay after the first chorus; some pitch correction on the vocals at the beginning; tightened up the bass riff at the beginning and made some general fades on all the tracks.

Hope you enjoy it!

Dav Byrne Check out Dav’s mix on the AT website.

PULLING POWER OF VACUUM MIXING Re: Mixing in a Vacuum – Issue 73: Wow! I was blown away when I grabbed AT this month and found my own name staring back at me from the Mixing In a Vacuum article! It was very cool being able to combine two of my favourite things – mixing and writing – as part of the project, but in all honesty, I never expected to see it in print! What a way to expose my ignorance and incompetence to the larger audio community!

Seriously though, it was really interesting to see the variety of approaches that others took to the mix.

Anyway, thanks for the mag and the cool projects!

Andrew Gosden -DIGITAL MIXING RULES, OKAY?

Just as important as what I did do in my mix is what I didn’t. I didn’t adjust the alignment of any of the tracks; they blended just fine the way they were recorded, nor did I gate them: avoidance of gates on a drum kit is standard for me, as I find it makes a kit sound small.

The snare-under mic is barely audible in my mix and the Coles room mics were completely unused.

I found the Coles tracks were just giving me noise; like hearing the band play from another room – all definition was lost. The RCA drum mic (sent through a room reverb) is also very low in the mix.

This kind of rock song benefits from a more saturated, beefy drum sound, so my drum bus features a saturation plug-in, followed by a compressor. The drums were also sent to a drum compression bus.

From a production point of view, there were a few things I’d have done differently:

Re: Mixing in a Vacuum – Issue 73: Analogue mixing? Been there, done that.

Mixing the Traps’ multitrack was pretty straightforward. Bass, guitars and vocals were compressed and EQ’d – nothing out of the ordinary.

Aux sends included room, hall, and plate reverbs and two delays: one stereo, one mono. My master bus featured a saturation plug-in and a compressor, performing only a light touch of compression.

I don’t think the snare drum was really tuned properly. It sounded thin and subsequently needed a lot of processing to bring up to spec.

I would have preferred a Bass D.I. track to work with instead of the miked track, but if given the choice, I’d gladly mix with both.

I think the choruses of the song needed an organ part; some gritty, thick Hammond sound.

I would also have arranged a vocal harmony for the last chorus, just to give it a bit of lift, and the vocals in the verse need a tune-up as some words are out.

(Another reason why I prefer working in digital.)

To me, there’s a clear-cut winner, and that’s digital.

It has everything going for it – instant recall, full automation, ‘unlimited’ processors (restricted only by your CPU power), no noise and zero maintenance, editing capabilities that open up new sonic and production possibilities, faster-thanrealtime bounces and a great sound that can be relied upon to give the same results every time.

My advice? Get your room sounding as good as it can with properly planned-out acoustic treatments, then buy the best mics, preamps, A/D converters and monitoring you can afford.

Dax Liniere Sydney, NSW --

!

Want to give Rick a kick, Andy a rev-up or Stav a serve?

Get in touch: andy@audiotechnology.com.au

AudioTechnology THE MAGAZINE FOR SOUND ENGINEERS & RECORDING MUSICIANS

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FEATURE

When it comes to succeeding in the US R&B scene, nationality is no barrier. Just ask Norwegian songwriters Mikkel S. Eriksen and Tor E. Hermansen, members of Stargate.

Text: Paul Tingen

Stargate are a Norwegian songwriting and production duo that have been storming charts around the world since 2006, particularly in the US where they’ve enjoyed a staggering 21 top 10 hits in the last four years. The duo have been so successful at beating the Americans at their own R&B game, in fact, that the New York Times, not normally known for going out of its way to cover behind-the-scenes songwriters and producers, wrote an extensive interview with them recently, where it was noted that Stargate’s hugely impressive achievements seemed a little incongruous given that its two members, Mikkel S. Eriksen and Tor E. Hermansen, are “wholesome-looking, milkcomplexioned Norwegians… both shiny of scalp and beanstalk thin.” This isn’t exactly what one has in mind when one imagines people working in the American urban music genre, and the story goes that when singer, songwriter and occasional rapper Ne-Yo first met the duo in 2005, he refused to believe they worked in R&B. Luckily Ne-Yo looked beyond appearances, and soon afterwards the Norwegian duo and the American singer co-wrote the single So Sick, which went on to become a US and UK #1.

Since then Stargate have become first-call songwriters and producers for American R&B and pop acts like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lionel Richie, Chris Brown, Jennifer Hudson, Flo Rida, Mary J Blige, and many others. Their efforts earned them a Grammy in 2008 for Best R&B Song for Ne-Yo’s Miss Independent, and several other nominations, including this year, in the Album Of The Year category, for their work on Beyoncé’s I Am… Sasha Fierce. (The duo co-wrote and co-produced two songs on the album, including the single, BrokenHearted Girl.) Stargate now have a studio in Jay-Z’s prestigious Roc-The-Mic studio in New York,

and have also joined forces with the rapper in a publishing company and record label called StarRoc. Stargate’s ascendancy to the top of the American music scene in 2006 may sound too meteoric to be true, and it indeed turns out that Eriksen and Hermansen spent many years cutting their teeth in the Norwegian and British music scenes between 1999 and 2004. Stargate – at the time a trio with third member, Hallgeir Rustan – enjoyed 40 top 10 hits in the UK alone, before deciding to risk all and set off across the Atlantic.

Eriksen and Hermansen set up shop in a room at Sony Music studios in the beginning of 2005, and initially met with little success, until a chance meeting with Ne-Yo in the corridors of the studio later on in the year. So Sick changed everything for Stargate and Ne-Yo, and together they wrote a further three songs for his debut album. In 2006, they were responsible for two more international monster hits: Rihanna’s Unfaithful and Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable. The following year Stargate co-wrote and co-produced worldwide hits like Beyoncé and Shakira’s Beautiful Liar, Rihanna’s Don’t Stop The Music, and Chris Brown’s With You. The following year they had major success with Rihanna’s Take A Bow, and Ne-Yo’s Grammy-winning Miss Independent. In the last two years the tsunami of Stargate hits has given way to a slightly more surfable wave (which would still be the envy of most songwriters), with hits like Flo Rida’s Be On You, Beyoncé’s Broken-Hearted Girl, and early this year Mary J Blige’s I Am. CHORDS & MELODY It’d be hard to point to a signature Stargate style.

There is, however, a common thread that unities the duo’s songs. Rather than a focus on beats, sonic experimentation or attitude, their songs

AT 7

tend to succeed on the more old-fashioned qualities of melody, chord progression, and emotion. In addition, their productions are always wholly supportive of the song, many of which are minor key ballads or medium-tempo numbers that allow the singer space to shine.

It’s understandable that all this makes Stargate popular with singers. What’s more, Hermansen and Eriksen also almost always co-write their hits with fellow songwriters, and often with the singer, which gives the latter even greater scope to make the song his or her own, not to mention that it also allows for a share in the royalties.

Eriksen appears proud of Stargate’s non-ego approach, and explains that it’s the result of the epiphany that lay at the heart of the creative outburst that followed meeting Ne-Yo in 2005.

Eriksen: “So Sick was definitely an eye-opener for us in that it really worked to have the singer write the lyrics. When we lived in Europe we used to write most of the lyrics ourselves. We’d hum melodies into a dictaphone and I used to sing on our early demos, which taught us about what makes a good vocal melody. These days we really enjoy working with American lyricists and top writers. They’re on another level lyrically, and this gives us the space to focus on writing and recording, which is the part we love the most. We put a lot of instrumental melodies in our music that singers and lyricists can use and adapt. Our goal is also to inspire

singers to come up with their own melodies, which we can then edit.

“The other thing we discovered with So Sick is how simple a good song can be. You don’t have to have loads of vocal harmonies and overlapping lines in the background. The most important thing is to have one great lead vocal throughout the song. You can sprinkle it with all sorts of stuff but you try to keep it focussed on the lead vocal and make sure the melody and lyrics are great.”

GEAR AT THE GATE Like more and more hit makers these days, Stargate weave their magic on a state-of-the-art ProTools system, and little else. Says Eriksen, “As you know, everything is moving towards smaller production facilities these days. You don’t really need big consoles or lots of outboard anymore to make a good sounding record. We have a G-Series SSL at Roc-The-Mic, but we only use four channels of it: two for ProTools and two for the iPod. We do everything in the box and the desk is just there to make our room look like a real studio (laughs). Back in the days in Norway we used quite a bit of outboard, but now it’s all about plug-ins. I think we were one of the first to move to ProTools for song writing… that was 10 years ago now. Before that we’d been using Cubase for the previous 10. Cubase was much better for MIDI at the time, but because we were doing the vocal recording in ProTools, it

eventually made more sense to work on just one platform, and ProTools was the more convenient of the two. In the end it doesn’t really matter what you use. It’s all about ideas now, not the equipment. Anyone with a laptop and a small keyboard can create records that sound just as good as the ones on the radio.

“Tor and I both play keyboards, and we have all the different Yamaha Motifs: the ES, the EXS, and so on. The Motif ES is my master keyboard. We also have the Roland Fantom and Fantom-G, and several older modules, like the Roland JV and Proteus 2000, but we rarely use them any more. These days we mainly use soft-samplers and soft-synths, the main ones being Digidesign’s Structure and Access Virus Indigo. We also use XPand! a lot and the new Transfuser software, which allows us to chop up and mess with the sounds. We have pretty much every soft-synth on the market, and several symphonic sample and drum libraries.

Actually, it’s a real danger, having too much stuff and too many possibilities, which is why we often go back to our own sample libraries.

But to be honest, we don’t really care whether we use a preset or our own sound. Often we start with a preset and modify it; at other times we create a sound from scratch. We don’t focus too much on the sounds – more on the ideas and the song writing.”

THE STARGATE TOUCH: Mikkel Eriksen on writing some of the Norwegian duo’s greatest hits.

IRREPLACEABLE (2006) Artist: Beyoncé.

Writers: Shaffer ‘Ne-Yo’ Smith, Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen, Espen Lind, Amund Bjorklund, Beyoncé Knowles.

“This song began with some guitar chords that were given to us by

Amund and Espen, and we arranged them and added bass and drums, strings and melodies, and everything else. The chords were leaning towards country, so we had fun exploring something new.

Ne-Yo is also not locked into one genre, and when we presented the song to him, he wrote lyrics to it and added a melody… and magic happened. It was actually an A&R person who suggested that the song would work better sung by a female. A couple of labels wanted the song, but for a while nothing

happened, until Beyoncé heard it. She loved it and recorded it, but it didn’t seem to fit on the album she was doing at the time, B’Day, which was supposed to be a hard-hitting club album. Finally, one of the producers on the album, Swizz Beats, said that she’d be crazy not to include the song on the album. It was released on the album as track number nine, and then spent 10 weeks at number one as a single, and in the new edition of the album it’s the second song, immediately after Beautiful Liar.”

BEAUTIFUL LIAR (2007) Artists: Shakira and Beyoncé.

Writers: Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen, Amanda Ghost, Ian Dench, Beyoncé Knowles.

Eriksen: “This song is very simple. Most of the time we have more chords in a

song, because we find it hard writing a great song on just one chord. But if you do it right, you can make it work, and this song is a good example of one that works. We’d written the backing track a year earlier, and played it to one of our managers TyTy (Tyran Smith), who loved the track and said that it’d be perfect for a duet between Shakira and Beyoncé. We were like, ‘yeah, right’ and laughing and shaking our heads and thinking it couldn’t be done. But he was really devoted to the idea. We didn’t have a lyric or a top

melody so various writers had a stab at finishing the song. The first two or three attempts weren’t good enough, and then he had the idea of putting us together with Amanda and Ian, who we hadn’t heard of, and they wrote the lyric and the melody. It originally had a Spanish title and different lyrics, but then Tor said, “You have that line beautiful liar in one of the verses, why not use that as a feature?” So that became the punchline. We presented it to Beyoncé, who loved it and added her own twist to the lyrics and then recorded a version

WRITING TOOLS Stargate are thoroughly 21st century creators in that they record whatever they come up with directly into their DAW. No sonic notepads or demos here. “We only write when we’re in our studio,” asserts Eriksen. “Basically, Tor and I are standing in front of each other, each of us behind a keyboard, and we jam. We get sounds and we start playing melodic ideas and feels, and when one of us gets something the other likes, the other might say, ‘Oh, do that again,’ or ‘why not try this chord instead,’ and so on. We’re going for a unique feel, or melody, or chord progression, or an interesting sound – anything can be an inspiration, although we rarely start off with a beat. Most of the time we start with a melody or a chord progression. We put a lot of thought and attention into having strong melodies in our tracks, and the feedback we get from singers and lyricists is that they love that there are already so many melodies in the track they can use.

“Although we sometimes have ProTools running while we’re improvising, we normally don’t record anything at that stage. We generally prefer to develop a musical core that we refine and develop first, and it’s only then that we record into ProTools. From there we start layering, adding other sounds and melodies, a drum track, and so on. Then, later, we might change things around or strip things back, and only keep the three most unique elements.

of it, but they couldn’t get Shakira to feature on the song in time for the release of B’Day. A few months later Shakira agreed to sing on the track, and recorded the vocal. Her people also added the ethnic strings and percussion break. The song became a huge hit around the world and this version is now included on the new version of B’Day. It illustrates for us the importance of having dedicated people around who believe in your ideas and your music and push it forward to make it happen.”

BROKEN-HEARTED GIRL (2009) Artist: Beyoncé Writers: Beyoncé Knowles, Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, Stargate.

“Originally this was a classic, full R&B track that we wrote with Babyface.

He came in and changed

SPONTANEOUS & QUICK According to the New York Times interview, Stargate often write three or four songs a day.

Eriksen admits that this staggering creative pace is normal for them. “We may have 500 song ideas a year, though good finished songs amount to about one or 200 per year. As I’ve said, we’ve developed our craft over a long time, so when we have an idea it’s easy for us to execute it. I can have the right sounds in five minutes, and we have very effective and quick ways of working without compromising quality. One thing that makes things more straightforward is that, by focusing on melodic ideas, we’ve learnt that we can keep tracks open and sparse. If a core idea is good enough, you don’t need five sounds doing the same thing. When a song is played on the radio and compressed by the station, the fewer elements you have in a track the better it sounds. In the R&B genre things sound better stripped down. For that reason we try to focus on simplicity and primary colours in our songs and arrangements. We use bright red and yellow and try to keep them separate.”

Another element that adds to the duo’s productivity is the fact that they prefer to write songs for the pure fun of it. Although they do write to order, it’s not their preference. Eriksen: “We sometimes have specific sessions for an artist or a record label, but experience has taught us that the best stuff comes when we

one chord and wrote the lyrics and then he added a falsetto voice that we recorded as a demo. From there we proceeded to change the entire backing track around his vocal.

We changed the chords, everything, and this is where that four-on-thefloor piano emerged. The song is in Dm. I suppose many of our songs are in minor keys. We probably lean towards more a moody, melodic expression.

It’s what comes most naturally to us.”

don’t think of any artist in particular. We just write songs, and it’s only later that we might find out who the song’s best suited to. If we were to write a song for Whitney Houston, for instance, the risk is that we might limit ourselves by thinking, ‘it has to be in this genre – she sings like this, and it can’t sound like that.’ It’s better to just create something that you love, and then afterwards think, ‘oh, this would be a good song for Whitney Houston.’ It’s also often the case that songs work in ways that you initially didn’t think would make a good fit. Irreplaceable, for instance, wasn’t written for Beyoncé, and nobody seemed to think it would fit the R&B genre – it was just too different to be played on the radio. Even after Beyoncé recorded it people were still convinced radio stations wouldn’t play it. And then suddenly everybody was playing it! A good song is a good song, no matter how you wrap it.”

WRITTEN & RECORDED IN TWO HOURS Stargate and Ne-Yo’s commercial and creative American breakthrough, So Sick, has since become a blueprint for the Norwegian duo’s way of working. The simplicity of the song is embodied in the basic chord sequence – Ebm, B, Abm, Db – and then a pedal B chord. Erikson traces the song’s genesis and how it shaped their working methods: “The song consists of a good feel in the harp sound, three drums sounds, an Indigo bass, and a lead synth – that’s it. We actually wrote the song in Ebm, because it’s very easy as keyboard players to just start something in Am or F or whatever and fall into a pattern, and just play the same chords over and over. So sometimes we choose to start a song in a strange key so you have to search and stumble across interesting things along the way. In the end the chord sequence in So Sick is pretty standard, but I don’t think we would have arrived at that choice of notes had we written it in another key.

“The song started with me playing the harp sound on the keyboard and a theme that was much longer. Tor then said, “Why don’t you just repeat the first section?” We tried that, and it really worked. Writing it was very spontaneous and quick; I think we wrote and recorded the whole track in 25 minutes! Ne-Yo loved it when he heard it, and he used the harp tune at the beginning of the song as the basis for his vocal melody, plus he wrote the lyrics in maybe half an hour. We then recorded what was intended as a

quick demo of his vocal. I think he did one take for the verses and a couple of vocal overdubs, which took another half hour, and that became the actual vocal on the finished version. So the whole song took less than two hours, from improvising the first notes to the end result. It just shows that it doesn’t necessarily take long to create something great.”

GREATEST FEELING In addition to a penchant for simplicity, speed and filling their songs full of melodies, several other working methods and approaches emerged from Stargate’s experience of co-writing So Sick with Ne-Yo. There’s a total openness in writing songs together with others, as well as creating clear arrangements and structures without becoming attached to them. “When NeYo first heard the song, the whole structure of So Sick was pretty much the way it is today. We always try to have the structure of our songs and the arrangements very clear in our recordings.

We’ll have the verses and choruses and bridges and transitions complete. Of course a singer or another co-writer may want to extend or shorten parts of the song, but it’s much easier to do that if the song is already very structured to begin with. And in some cases we’ll completely change our backing after the singer has overdubbed his or her vocal. We might change the beat, or the chords, or completely re-arrange the song. In Take A Bow [a UK and US No.1 for Rihanna in 2008] for instance, our original track had an almost Asian feel, inspired by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It was much more left-field, and then after Ne-Yo wrote the lyrics and melody, we changed the whole beat and made the song more straightforward.

“We’ll often try left-field ideas that we later adapt. We constantly search for different sounds and different inspirations. You don’t want to be stuck in one lane and just repeat versions of your last hit record. We also sometimes use the considerable skills of Espen Lind and Amund Bjorklund, a Norwegian writing and production team called Espionage, who sometimes record guitars for us. They’re great song writers – they had the guitar idea for Beyoncé’s Irreplaceable, Rihanna’s Hate That I Love You and Chris Brown’s With You. We also sometimes use guitar parts by Bernt Rune Stray who, for instance, appears in the track Closer by Ne-Yo. He originally sent an idea to us in 6/8 – we sampled it, chopped it up and totally changed the feel.

Sometimes it’s inspiring to use someone else’s starting point. We use ideas like that almost as a sample.”

For this very reason many Stargate-written and produced songs have an extended list of writing credits. Given Stargate’s commitment to reinvent themselves and their eagerness to write with many others in the process, it’s perhaps surprising that some critics have accused them of repeating an ‘acoustic-guitars-in-R&B’

formula, introducing it on Irreplaceable, and then allegedly repeating the idea on With You, Hate That I Love You, and Jordin Sparks’s Tattoo.

Erikson seems relaxed about this criticism. In fact, the only hint of agitation comes when the discussion veers towards the question about whether Hermansen and he consciously tailor their work for the hit parades.

“With You and Irreplaceable both have strumming guitars and similar drum sounds,” acknowledged the Norwegian. “But the songs are very different. If you listen to any successful producer or writing team, it’s easy to hear that they have a certain expression and a certain sound. I don’t think anyone should be afraid of that. You’re searching for that unique sound all the time, and when you find it, you shouldn’t be afraid to re-use it. But it’s not a commercial decision. We don’t think of the pop market while we write. Even from very early on in Norway we had critics saying that we were writing music from a formula, but basically we just write the music that we love, and we’ve always loved pop music. It’s what comes naturally to us. We never think: ‘we have to make this sound right for the radio so that it will sell.’ The best stuff we make is the stuff we’re inspired by. That’s our starting point, our motivation for doing it. The greatest feeling is when you start the day with nothing, and by the end of the evening you’ve created something special.”

In talking about pursuing a unique sound, Eriksen steered the conversation to the other aspect of Stargate’s work: they produce all the songs that they (co-)write. “In fact, we also engineer almost everything in our songs,” adds Eriksen, “apart from occasionally the vocals or the strings. But whatever is recorded in our studio I record myself. It’s so much quicker than telling someone to press record or explaining which takes to keep. Many artists are surprised that we do our own vocal engineering, but I’ve been doing it for 15-20 years and I’m very specific about how I want it. Getting a good vocal sound makes a big difference to the production. The gear I use depends on the vocalist, but we often use the Blue microphone, which we like a lot, and that goes into an Avalon compressor and from there straight into ProTools. We also love and use the classic Neumann mics and the AKG C12.

“I’ve also developed a handy technique for comp’ing vocals. While recording I mark

the parts that are good and cut those out immediately and drag them down to a new track, while remembering what was great about that section. Once I have enough sections, I drag all of them to a new track, and get the transitions right and have a listen. If it’s good enough we move on. If not, we record more. It’s a much more efficient way of comp’ing than recording 20 tracks and then having to listen to all of them again before comp’ing them.”

VOCAL CHORDS, NOT VOCAL CHAIN Eriksen is by all accounts a tech-head, so it’s interesting to hear him – time and time again – de-emphasise the importance of gear. Just like he’d reckoned that everyone with a laptop and a keyboard can get the same quality of productions as can be heard on the radio, he also enthusiastically relates how recording vocalists in the US led to another revelatory ‘the-geardoesn’t-matter’ experience. “We worked with a lot of great singers in Europe, and were always trying to get that sparkling and fat American vocal sound, but we never managed it. We always wondered how they did it and when we finally came here to New York we discovered what it was. It wasn’t about the microphone chain, or the microphone, or the EQs – it’s about the vocalist. The best vocalists in the world just have that sound in their voice. Basically, when I’m recording vocals nowadays, it’s really just a matter of not f**king it up. I’ll usually have a very simple vocal chain and will just add a little bit of sparkle, some compression and an effect of choice, and it will sound great. For this reason we’re not very particular about the gear we use.”

Moving on to the last stage of the production process – mixing – legendary British mixer Spike Stent recently commented that the differences between British and American pop is largely about the mixing stage. Eriksen agrees.

“Somehow the music sounds warmer and richer in America, and more bass heavy, and they have a fantastic vocal sound. In England the music tends to be more mid heavy, and sharper. It’s like a different expression. I don’t know exactly why this happened, because we all use the same equipment. It must be just a matter of taste. All I know is that our sound has changed since we came to America, and we’ve found our own expression here.”

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FEATURE

John Butler’s success in Australia as an independent artist has been well documented over the years.

His new album, April Uprising has become an instant hit – like the previous two – and his charmed run with the Australian music-buying public continues…

Text: Andy Stewart

When I heard on the grapevine recently that John Butler was recording his new album in his own space in Fremantle, a bulb flashed in my head. ‘Is this the beginning of the end for commercial recording facilities in Australia?’ I mused. It’s not of course; there are still plenty of good reasons why someone might want to record in a commercial facility, but it does seem significant that one of Australia’s most successful independent artists – John has sold over a million albums in Australia alone – should choose to record his new release in his own private studio, away from the ticking clock.

Like his previous two albums, John Butler’s new CD, April Uprising, has gone straight to No.1 and has quickly become one of the fastest selling albums in Australia this year. He’s a hit-making machine of the independent variety. An enigma in many respects, John’s musical style seems to push aside musical and social barriers like a gorilla at a tuck shop, and his albums appeal to every generation from A to Z. It’s a mixture of genuine upbeat feel-good, reggaeinspired acoustic folk/rock songs, and an old school work ethic that has seen him gigging in every corner of Australia for well over a decade.

So what was his reasoning behind renovating the rehearsal room in Fremantle and turning it into a recording studio? Surely there were enough funds in the John Butler Trio coffers to pay for a few weeks in the recording studio? I had to ask.

Andy Stewart: John, I have to start our conversation by asking the obvious question: what possessed you to record the album at home in Fremantle?

John Butler: Well, strictly speaking we recorded the album at my studio in Fremantle, not literally at

home. I’ve got a rehearsal space down the road from my house that feels really good, and towards the end of rehearsals for the new album I started thinking; ‘Why on earth am I contemplating recording somewhere else when I can probably just do it here?’

So I put the money, that would otherwise have been spent on recording an album in a commercial studio, into modifying my own space, buying a bunch of equipment and doing it here!

AS: What sort of gear emerged for you once that decision was made?

JB: Well, for starters I figured we needed some sort of desk in there so we settled on a 24-channel Toft ATB, although as it turned out we didn’t use the EQ on the console all that often, even though it sounded good. I also got some nice 1176 compressors, API preamps, and three Neve 51Series strips (which I had racked by Rob Squire at Pro Harmonic), along with a few decent mics, including a fabulous Wagner 47…

AS: Which I presume you sang into on the album?

JB: Yeah, I sang into it and recorded my guitar with it as well. The aim was to get as much juice as possible into the sound before it hit the digital realm, which meant buying great gear. Of course, I also had Robin Mai at the helm, engineering the album so we had some golden ears involved to manage that elusive midrange too.

AS: The elusive 1k!

JB: The alchemy of the 1k!

AS: Did you track most of April Uprising in one group session?

JB: About half and half. I mean, we always put down

drums and bass beds together, but a lot of the time Byron [Luiters] would go back in and hit it again once the drums were recorded. First and foremost we tried to get the best drum track down live to a click and sometimes we also kept the bass, guitar and banjo from certain takes. At other times we completely re-did things and not always to a click either… it was a classic case of whatever worked best for the song.

of a no-brainer to go, ‘Why are we thinking of going anywhere else? Let’s buy the gear and do this right here’. Once that decision was made we embarked on the task of making the space more soundproof, but I was also very careful to preserve the feel of the place, so that when we recorded we wouldn’t feel like we were in a commercial studio again, where the clock’s ticking all the time. I don’t like that ‘here we go, every minute is a dollar’ mentality, you know?

AS: Were you generally tracking together as a group regardless of whether the aim was only to capture Nicky Bomba’s drums?

Not having that pressure over my head during these recording sessions was fantastic. Having our own place meant we could work at our own pace and never feel stressed about how long things were taking. At one point we spent two or three days on a song and then just scrapped it when it wasn’t working. That felt really liberating. It was the exact opposite of the ticking clock approach, where you find yourself saying, “Shit, we’re gonna run out of money; let’s just do this as quickly as possible!”

So, yeah, it was an extremely conducive way to make music.

JB: Yeah, with the exception of Don’t Wanna See Your Face – that was a drum loop – and The Satisfied Segue.

THREE’S A CROWD AS: How were you guys setup in the space?

JB: I was in the control room playing guitar and singing, and drums and bass were in the main recording room. There was only one song that I actually sang live and that was Gonna Be a Long Time.

AS: What about the rest of the vocals, how were they overdubbed in the end: in a block after everything else was recorded, or throughout the sessions?

JB: We did it differently this time. I always used to record my vocals right at the end, and that always came with a lot of pressure… and quite frankly, it’s a lonely experience. So this time, after we’d tracked all the nuts and bolts of each song, I’d track the vocal.

I didn’t have all the lyrics together each time either, so occasionally I was still writing the lyrics as I was doing the vocals. For some of the songs I’d record six or seven ‘scratches’, letting my subconscious do the work, and then writing the lyrics from there.

That was an exciting way to work and it captured a lot of lightning, you know? And then other times I’d written and re-written lyrics over and over in a completely refined process as well. So it was a real mixed bag this time, and for once, it worked!

Sometimes the lyrics were about half written already, and stepping up to the mic really got them over the line. That was the missing link. It was like: ‘Okay, I need to let this come from the gut a bit more… and at the risk of sounding clichéd, it needed to come from the ether somehow. I needed to let some magic happen, basically.

In the end I tried to keep my mind out of it wherever possible. I used my brain when it was needed and kept it out when it wasn’t. But it’s a fine line, you know? You can ruin a song by over-cooking it and sometimes you can ruin a song by under-cooking it.

ON THE (FRE)MANTLEPIECE AS: How did recording the songs at your own place change things?

JB: It was amazing. I’d already built the place to be conducive to playing music in, so the aesthetic of the room was already pretty well established. I just applied that same brush stroke to the monitoring room. It was my shed, originally – metaphorically speaking – and as you know, every man needs a shed. Mine just happened to be a studio. It was kind

“

I always used to record my vocals right at the end, and that always came with a lot of pressure… and quite frankly, it’s a lonely experience.

”

It was also cool for the guys to be able to stay at the studio while we were tracking – we built rooms right above the studio in the upstairs area. Everyone had their own room and a kitchen – it was all in-house… very Funky Monk. Did you ever see Funky Monk?

AS: Yep. JB: It was a lot like that!

SHEDDING SOME LIGHT AS: Knowing that you’ve recorded April Uprising this way reminds me of how hard it must be to attract clients to a commercial recording studio these days…

JB: Sometimes I put myself in the studio owner’s shoes and it’s kind of frightening. But, of course, the thing is you can’t get some of the sounds without some of that gear. So in terms of Sing Sing for example, where we mixed the album, if you want that sound, you’ve got to go there. It’s the only place in Australia where you can get that kind of stuff.

AS: And it’s a great studio… Kaj and Jude are amazingly hospitable.

JB: Oh they’re total sweethearts.

MIXING AT SING SING AS: Did you mix the album in the ‘K-Room’?

JB: In the K-Room, yes. [The ‘K-Room’ gets its name from the 72-channel K-Series SSL that takes pride of place in the main control room.] That’s a great room. We were in there for a little over three weeks I think… it’s all a blur now. We mixed the album in two stints… with a couple of weeks’ break in between. That thing’s like a Mack truck, or the Space Shuttle – I could never decide which.

AS: And you mastered the album with Bob Ludwig in the end I see?

JB: Yeah, well last time I did Grand National, we used another great American mastering engineer – the one Mario Caldato Jr [the producer of the band’s last album, Grand National] uses all the time – Ray Drummond. But more recently Bob Ludwig did the sound on one of the singles and his master just came back sounding better. Actually we did about three or four different masters until we got it right. I was quite picky and was always comparing them to some of Robin’s quick masters that he’d done at the end of each mix. When you listened to them at the same level, you could hear that Robin had nailed it. So I was always comparing them to that, making sure we weren’t losing that midrange, you know… it’s just so critical to get that midrange right.

FROM PERFORMER TO ENGINEER After speaking to John, and with his comments about Robin’s ‘golden ears’ still ringing in my head, I raced over to Robin Mai’s local engineering haunt, Woodstock Studios, in Balaclava, to discuss with him some of the details of the April Uprising recording sessions. As it turned out, most of the gear John purchased for the record was actually pulled together by Robin.

RM: That’s right, I had the honour of deciding which gear to buy – that was a lot of fun actually.

I had the models and makes in mind and shopped around for the best prices on the gear. Everything was sourced locally.

We bought three Neve 51-series channel strips; they were on the guitars. Then we had four channels of Vintec preamps, a four-channel Sebatron preamp for the toms as well as some Purple Audio, API, and Midas preamps. So there was a nice variety of preamps in the collection for us to use.

AS: Can you describe the scene of recording April Uprising from an engineer’s perspective?

RM: Everything about this album was well rehearsed prior – even while the place was being built they were hard at it. Having said that, there were still parts being written during the recording sessions: new bass and drum parts, lyrics etc… so the recordings still had plenty of spontaneity about them. It wasn’t totally by the numbers.

Nicky [Bomba – drums] was in the big room by himself, sonically speaking at least, Byron [Luiters – bass] was standing next to him but DI’d – his amp was in the next room – and John was with me in the control room with cans on.

Robin Mai: AKA ‘Golden Ears’

AS: Were you close miking the instruments, trying to minimise the sound of the room or were you going for a ‘roomy’ tone?

RM: Well we baffled the kit off and sometimes we’d baffle the front as well to keep the sound right inside, but most of the time the kit had baffles on either side.

We close miked everything on the kit, but kept wet room mics up at a distance as well. We also had a mic in front of the kit, placed in the usual ‘front-andcentre’ position for a mono kit sound – a Neumann U87. I originally tried a ribbon but it didn’t work out.

AS: And the guitar amps… were they ever in the big space?

RM: No, they were always locked up inside an isolation room to separate them from the kit. I miked them up with a Shure SM57, a Beyerdynamic M88, and a Royer 121.

AS: So the amps never saw the light of day, not even during dedicated overdubbing sessions?

RM: No, we didn’t use the big room for guitar. I did use the room upstairs occasionally though. It’s a really big wooden room that sounded great. I took a couple of speakers up there and re-amped stuff through those occasionally – snare, guitar and some vocals – basically using the room as a reverb unit…

as well as a place to sleep! I used a pair of mics in an A/B arrangement, pointing away from the speakers to get some wetness and space back into some of the sounds, which I could then tuck back into the mix later at any level I liked.

AS: What resolution did you track the album at?

RM: We recorded all the songs into ProTools HD at 24-bit/96k. I had plans to track at 192k at one stage but it just didn’t seem stable enough above about 20 tracks, so I abandoned that idea pretty quickly.

We had Aurora converters and an Apogee Big Ben clocking everything.

AS: Did you get involved in any Elastic Audio work in ’Tools during the sessions or anything like that, or are the takes quite raw?

RS: Oh no, they’re raw! There’s very little tomfoolery involved in the tracking. It was a very simple recording philosophy. Occasionally two takes of drums might get spliced together, that sort of thing, but that’s about it. The sessions were all about getting the performances right, and to achieve that we worked hard – about 12 hours a day. John loves to work late into the night, but the time just flew.

AS: John tells me you recorded the vocals with a Wagner 47… how was that?

INDEPENDENTLY MINDED John Butler’s success has always partly been attributed to his independence from major label intervention. So is he still in charge of the purse strings?

JB: Yeah, more so now than ever, in fact. We just signed with three different independent labels

around the world – and that’s already proven to be a more effective way of getting our music out there.

to develop artists and there’s not a lot of focus anymore. You just can’t get a team to stick around long enough.

Record companies are so crippled by downloading these days that they’ve had to down-size bigtime, which isn’t cool, but that’s what’s happening. This has damaged their ability

AS: Well that’s the main problem isn’t it? You ring back in six months and it’s all different people!

JB: Exactly, and that was no different for our album.

So we hooked up with some great independent labels, and ironically all of them have major label experience – they’re filled with everybody who got fired! But they’ve a lot more focus and a lot more quality control, which is exciting. So now it’s a completely independent venture.

RM: Yeah, most of the vocals were done with a Wagner 47; it’s fabulous!

AS: There seems to be a lot of vocal unison work on the new album; a lot of genuine double-tracking.

Were all John’s vocal tracks recorded with the same mic or were the double-tracks recorded separately with that specific role in mind?

RM: No, not really. I mean, they’ve had different processing and they went through their own analogue chains – with different EQ and different compression. One is definitely subordinate to the other, generally speaking, although in some of the choruses the vocals are actually triple-tracked: lead vocals in the centre and a unison either side to give it extra power and width. John’s a big fan of the doubletrack sound and I like it too. It sits in nicely.

AS: And I hear you mixed the album on the K-Series SSL at Sing Sing. How did that treat you?

RM: It was good, that was my first time on the paddock with the K. I quite enjoyed it really. It doesn’t have the tone of the Neve but everything has got so much power and control, you can sort of do anything with it. It’s wicked.

AS: And did you mix down to tape or ’Tools?

RM: We tried 1/2-inch tape, mixing to the Ampex ATR, and generally I’m a big fan of that approach, but in this case it just didn’t help.

AS: It didn’t make any difference?

It made a difference; I was hoping tape compression would do good things to the mixes, but it just took too much ‘point’ off the sound, so we just mixed back into the ’Tools session from the SSL.

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REGULARS

PC AUDIO Are your hard drives getting you in a spin? Do you need 7200rpm or 10000rpm spin speeds, or multiple drives in RAID configuration? Or would SSD be even better? Read on and all will be revealed.

Text: Martin Walker

Way back in June 2003, I carried out some practical tests on hard drive audio performance and, as a result, offered the advice that musicians “stick with a single 7200rpm EIDE hard drive for audio purposes, which should be perfectly capable of running around 48 tracks of up to 24-bit/96k audio.” In July 2005, I updated my research with a more modern 7200rpm SATA drive and managed 76 tracks of 24-bit/96k audio before the drive ran out of steam.

Today’s 7200rpm drives are even faster, offering sustained transfer rates of between 100 and 150MB/ second, and typically eight to nine milliseconds access times as their read/write heads whizz about getting to the appropriate location on the collection of magnetic disks. So, unless you need more than, say, 100 simultaneous 24-bit/96k tracks (or more, at lower sample rates) there’s no practical reason to fit 10,000rpm drives. Faster spin speeds generally mean more acoustic noise, too, which is bad news for most musicians in a studio context. So next time you need to buy a new hard drive, my advice is to choose a reasonably priced and suitably sized 7200rpm model and stop worrying!

You certainly don’t need multiple hard drives set up as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) to supplement audio recording and playback performance, unless you require even more simultaneous audio tracks, or need to stream video alongside them. For sample streaming, RAID may even be counter-productive. You’ll almost certainly be grabbing lots of small data chunks in real time from semi-random positions on the drives, for lots of different sampled instruments. Therefore, if you want to run even more simultaneous software sampler voices than you can manage from a single 7200rpm drive (typically over 200 voices), it’s better to have several independent drives for sample storage and install some of your sample libraries on each one (perhaps across three or four drives in the case of huge orchestral libraries). Then each drive’s read/ write heads are free to dart about, grabbing whatever data they need, rather than being tied together as

a single array. So when you’re installing sample libraries, if you get options to choose locations for these separately from the application during an install, do think about the possibilities.

To sum up: a single 7200rpm hard drive is sufficient for most musicians’ audio needs, and several of the same if not. So why are some musicians getting so excited about SSD (Solid State Drives)? Well, they certainly offer impressive sustained transfer rates of over 200MB/second and amazing random access times of a fraction of a millisecond, which makes some people get moist (I’m totally immune to such things). Rather like a USB flash drive (but without the bottleneck of its USB 2.0 connection), the SSD relies on flash memory for its storage, and therefore has no moving parts, making it more rugged. This aspect of its performance makes it attractive to musicians using computers live on stage, where vibration might cause problems with traditional mechanical hard drives. In the studio, another advantage of the SSD is that its lack of moving parts results in lower power drain and silent operation.

However, there are various reasons why we aren’t all beginning to discard our hard drives and swap over to SSD. One aspect is cost. For a similar outlay to a 2TB mechanical hard drive (that’s 2000 Gigabytes) you’re only likely to get a 64GB Solid State Drive, which is about the minimum capacity you’d need to install Windows and a few applications to give you significantly faster bootup and application launch times. For the typical musician this means you’ll probably need two mechanical hard drives as well – one for audio streaming and the other for sample libraries – and given that most audio applications rarely access the Windows drive/partition after their initial launch, this means the SSD is only offering you the advantage of a faster startup time, but no real-time performance enhancements.

Another downside is that the memory cells of Solid State Drives eventually wear out. Admittedly, they tend to be rated for tens of thousands of read/write cycles and therefore have a typical lifespan of many years, but the SSD controller chips nevertheless

“

At the moment, installing a Solid State Drive in your audio PC is a luxury rather than a necessity…

”

have to monitor read/write activity and even shunt regularly changed data around the drive to keep this ‘wear’ even throughout the drive, all of which increases overheads. Flash memory is also typically accessed in 512kB blocks, so if you only need to store a single kilobyte this happens very quickly with an empty SSD, but once the drive is partly filled that same kilobyte of data might require a 512kB block, with at least a kilobyte of empty space to be read into a cache, have the new data slotted in, and then the resulting 512kB block written back again.

MORE OVERHEADS At the moment, installing a Solid State Drive in your audio PC is a luxury rather than a necessity, but as with all computer storage options, SSD prices will drop and long-term data management and overall performance will improve. It’s not quite time to say goodbye to our hard drives just yet, although I’m sure it won’t be long before we wondered how we managed without SSDs, as the silent studio gets ever closer. Mind you, with people seemingly unable to walk down the street or visit the local supermarket without clutching a mobile phone, the ubiquitous background music in supermarkets, lifts and public places, and so much light pollution that some people have never clearly seen the beauty of the night sky, the thought of empty space and silence is already frightening to some. Meditation anyone? I understand it’s a good antidote to technological overload!

REGULARS

MAC AUDIO Brad gets stuck into the differences between the two new laptop processors currently on offer from Apple.

Text: Brad Watts

It’s getting to that time again. That indecisive ‘should I replace my laptop’ feeling has reared its ugly head again.

My early 2008 laptop, née MacBook, is beginning to show its age. Not that I haven’t looked after the little fella – it’s in pretty good nick. I’ve tucked it away at night and kept it away from the kids with their drinks and mucus-encrusted hands. It’s generally enjoyed a charmed existence, with the only upgrade being a 500GB drive, which I must say is a prerequisite with a laptop – you always need a bit of spare space when you’re traipsing about, and it’s also inevitably where one stores one’s ever-expanding iTunes library.

Despite being a perfectly usable laptop for the majority of my work, there’s recently been one aspect that’s seriously letting me down, and that’s graphics performance. All I have to do is open a YouTube clip and my poor little MacBook starts sounding like a Lockheed Martin research vehicle. Try letting it render video content in the background and any foreground tasks become akin to wading through Golden Syrup. It’s all because of the tawdry graphics processor Apple used with the MacBooks from that era: the Intel GMA X3100 graphics chipset. These GPUs are built into the main logic board of the 2008 MacBooks, and offer a mere 144MB of RAM (later models used the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB).

So the recent release of new laptops from Apple has got me thinking it’s time to move on up to a new MacBook (huffs on his knuckles) Pro. For a start, these units ship with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M GPU with 256MB of RAM – 512MB if I splash out on the top of the range 15-inch model. Plus, the dedicated GPU is assisted by Intel HD Graphics processing built into the logic board – the NVIDIA card only kicks into gear when conditions warrant, like when you’re watching video or, say, rendering Final Cut Pro projects.

But, the big question is – and this is quite a separate issue from graphics performance – do I go for the top of the line 15-inch MacBook Pro with the i7 620M processor, or do I save a few hundred bucks and settle on the i5 540M processor? What’s the difference between these two CPUs? First up, you should remember, these are not the same as desktop model i-series processors – they’re based on the same technology, but have been pared down for mobile applications where battery life is a primary consideration. Both the mobile edition i5 and i7 processors – codenamed ‘Arrandale’ – have only two processing cores; desktop i-series ‘Lynnfield’ CPUs meanwhile offer four cores. But, because of Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, the

Arrandale mobile i5 and i7 processors behave as if there are four processing cores. Hyper-Threading offers a distinct advantage over the previous generation Core 2 Duo processors, in that it allows the processor to deal with two instructions, or threads, at a time – effectively allowing the processor to behave as if there are four cores. Consequently, you’ll hear the term ‘virtual cores’ bandied about quite often. Also, don’t confuse the mobile Arrandale i5 processor with the Lynnfield i5 – the four-core Lynnfield processor doesn’t do Hyper-Threading.

Both i5 and i7 processors offer Intel’s ‘Turbo Boost’ technology.

This allows the processor to speed up, as long as conditions such as temperature allow it. The 2.4GHz Core i5 520M in Turbo Boost-mode can increase its clock speed to 2.93GHz. The 2.53GHz i5 will speed up to 3.06GHz, while the 2.66GHz i7 will stretch out to 3.33GHz – this is a trick the previous Core 2 Duo models could never perform, and it’s an obvious advantage.

Faster is better after all.

As it turns out, there’s not a lot of difference between i5 and i7 architecture. What sets them apart are two things: the i7 offers a 4MB level-three cache, while the i5’s cache is only 3MB. Also, as previously noted, the i7 will overclock in ‘Turbo Boost’ mode to 3.3GHz. That’s a spankingly fast laptop in anyone’s language.

That said, at 270MHz slower, 3.06GHz from the i5 CPU is also an extremely nimble laptop, and at $299 less than the i7 it’s looking to be the best value.

Would I buy the i7? I doubt it. That $299 would be more wisely spent on custom ordering a 500GB 7200 rpm internal drive and installing 8GB of RAM when the prices come down to reasonable levels. Sure, if money’s no object, go for the i7, but in terms of audio production work, there’s not a lot of difference.

Now before I sign off, I thought I’d let you in on a small iPhone tip. If you find your earbuds have ended up going through the wash because you’ve left them in your jeans pocket, don’t despair. Simply allow them to dry and they’ll recover their full functionality. What unfortunately occurs, however, is the transducers become unattached from their housings. The soapy, belly-button-lint-laden water seems to degrade the glue used to hold the transducers in place. All you need to do to keep the transducers in place is apply a few carefully placed drops of superglue around the inside rim of the transducer housings.

Pop the transducers back into position and you’re good to go.

Now, here’s the tip: Don’t do what I did and place the newly repaired earbuds straight into your ears. Let that superglue dry out for a few minutes – I almost ended up permanently wired to the things!

MINI REVIEWS

KORG MICROSAMPLER Fortunately, the Microsampler is a fully-fledged sampler, so there’s no need to sweat the inadequacies of the factory samples. What your replacement samples can’t replace, however, is the absence of a modulation wheel on the keyboard. There are two control dials that take care of real-time parameter tweaking, but for a keyboard so geared toward performance, a mod-wheel – or at least a mod-slider – should have made it into the design. Okay, that’s my two major complaints out of the way.

I’d imagine Korg has spent the last several years basking in the success of its microKorg XL, and even longer with its precursor, the sensational microKorg.

Now the company has extended its nanoscale range to include a dedicated sampler – the Microsampler.

The Microsampler bursts out of the box with its 37 micro-ivories primed for sampling mayhem. There’s a pile of samples already installed in the keyboard to get the ball rolling, of which, the instrument style samples are perhaps the most useful – the drum loops and beats meanwhile sound alarmingly passé. Sure, ‘funkydrummer’ might come in handy at some point, but perhaps Korg could have ventured a little further into the rhythm-zone – a mock-up of the good old ‘Amen break’ would have been infinitely more useful.

Otherwise, the Microsampler is an awesome bit of gear. As mentioned, it’s aimed squarely at live performance, with all buttons deeply recessed into the top panel – I assume to help avoid inadvertent presses during wanton performance exposés. These top panel ‘wells’ include two slots for accommodating an iPod or iPhone (Nokia smart-phones won’t fit, sorry). There’s also a top panel XLR input for the included gooseneck dynamic microphone. The rear of the unit meanwhile features TRS jack stereo inputs and outputs for sampling, a headphone out, MIDI In and Out and a USB port for liaising between the Microsampler and your computer via the supplied editing software.

Just use the Tap Tempo function to match the BPM of the source material and the Microsampler will automatically divide the sample according to your chosen bar division across multiple keys. There’s also a sequencer that will record patterns up to 16,000 notes per bank (up to 16 patterns), and patterns can be resampled. Also included in the Microsampler is an effects engine derived from the Kaoss pad range of devices, and again, these effects can be resampled into the unit. Filtering duties are handled by the effects section, just in case you can’t find the filter functions – I fell into this trap and was about to cry foul until I discovered the effects parameters.

Finding a dedicated hardware sampler is a tall order these days, so anyone after such a beast will no doubt latch onto the Microsampler like a trodden-on wobbegong. A neat little keyboard, purpose-built for on-stage shenanigans. Brad Watts.

Price: $999 Musiclink: (03) 9765 6530 or atdept@musiclink.com.au

The Microsampler uses a number of different sampling methods, one of the more interesting being ‘Auto-Next sampling’. This method allows the capture of rhythmic phrases as multiple samples across individual keys.

PLOGUE ART ET TECHNOLOGIE CHIPSOUNDS 2 the balance will shift dramatically towards 100% synthesis, although Plogue has already stated that it anticipates that some classic sounds will be impossible to model, so it’s likely there will always be some sampled elements.

Chipsounds is a virtual instrument that provides emulations of 12 (in version 1.003 at least – and more to come) of the 1980s’ ‘bittiest’ 8-bit chipsets. From the classic Atari consoles and the Commodore64 to the next-generation Nintendo Entertainment System, Gameboy and their Sega competitors, a wide range of chips are represented. Even the iconic Casio VL-1 mini keyboard is modelled here. Impressively, the geographical variations between television broadcast standards have also been addressed with separate NTSC and PAL versions of many of these chips also included.

At present the re-creations are split between synthesis and samples on a chip-by-chip basis. It’s hoped that as the instrument approaches version

Chipsounds is the first virtual instrument available directly from the French Canadian developers, better known for their modular environment, Bidule. Based on the Aria 64-bit sampler/synthesis engine – developed in collaboration with Garritan for its sample libraries – the plug-in is available in the standard VST, RTAS and AU formats as well as a stand-alone version. A 64-bit instance is provided for Windows x64 users and while the instrument works within 64-bit Mac OS architecture, it’s only the 32-bit form.

The use of this standardised interface means that Chipsounds is far more than a straight emulator. The first of its tabbed pages is, in fact, an eight-channel mixer, with each channel capable of loading a full program. Multi-channel configurations can be saved in Snapshots, which can then be reloaded from any channel. This allows for the saving of complex multichip layered sounds or simply to accommodate a number of individual sounds within one instance of the device. Unrelated Aria-compatible sample sets can even be loaded here making the stand-alone version a viable and surprisingly flexible live performance tool.

The instrument is further enhanced by the inclusion of an excellent arpeggiator; acting as a MIDI preprocessor, a powerful Modulation tab, and an effects tab, accessible from the Mixer’s channel sends. At present only a reverb, ported from Magnus Jonsson’s Ambience plug-in, is available but other standard effects are in the works.

The best bit about Chipsounds is the sound of the chip’s bits. While it’s ideal for anyone wanting to recreate classic sound effects it’s also capable of a broad range of great electro tones; and the sound design possibilities are immense. This instrument captures all of the limitations inherent in the architecture of these early sound devices.

At the same time it frees them from their shackles allowing new and creative applications. The choice of whether to adhere to the restrictions of the chip music dogma is left to the user. I loved working with the Wave Sequencer to create beats, melodic loops and modulating hits. I can’t wait for the circuit bent edition. Andrew Bencina Price: US$95 www.plogue.com

SPECTRASONICS TRILIAN high esteem. As a consequence all Spectrasonics plug-ins are fiendishly uncomplicated. You can dive straight in brandishing an inspiring preset sound, stick your head under the bonnet and tweak a patch, or create a new sound from the ground up without feeling daunted or bored. The choice is yours. All avenues are possible with Trilian, with the exception of actually loading in your own waveforms.

There’s absolutely no denying Eric Persing’s sound design credentials. Not content with simply supplying a range of world-class sample libraries, Mr. Persing has now consolidated his sound design philosophies into a concise range of sample playback and synthesis virtual instruments. The current range encompasses three software instrument plug-ins: Omnisphere, for pad and choral style sounds; Stylus, for beat and percussion construction; and the subject of this review, Trilian, which is squarely focused on bass sounds – both authentic and synthesised.

Apart from creating incredibly inspiring sounds, the Spectrasonics ethos holds simplicity of operation in

The 35GB of supplied waveforms are easily installed to an external drive and take only a couple of hours to transfer from disc. Plug-in formats include Audio Unit, VST, and RTAS. OSX 10.4.9 is the minimum Apple system required, and its universal binary format suits both Intel and G5 Macs. Windows 7/Vista and XP SP2 are catered for on the Microsoft end, while 64-bit native support for both Windows and OSX is reportedly in development.

The authorisation process functions perfectly via a web-based ‘challenge and response’ system, and the plug-in converses with home base to determine which upgrades are available.

The layout and GUI of Trilian is clear and uncomplicated. The initial ‘Custom Control’ page offers 11 controllers, user configurable as either knobs or switches. These can each control multiple parameters of the synthesis engine, including any of the myriad effect processing devices, and be

APOGEE ELECTRONICS GiO

Apogee Electronics is well known in professional audio circles as a manufacturer of exceptionally fine audio converters and digital clocking. Its Rosetta and AD8000 converters and Big Ben digital clock can be found slung off many a ProTools rig. More recently, Apogee has been teaming up with Avid’s number one competitor, Apple, to deliver high quality converter/ pre-amp products to the mac-centric community.

Just recently I acquired an Apogee Duet to afford me greater portability than my previous Fireface 800/UA 2192 combo. I’m glad I did. The conversion, preamps, driver and software mixer are all first class and I find myself turning to it even when I’m back at my studio where I have several other high-end converter options.

While it was a welcome sight to see the GiO land on my doorstep, I couldn’t help but wonder why Apogee, the maker of fine converter systems, would bother with guitar pedals! As I opened the package and got online

controlled via MIDI CC (continuous controller) sources. Each patch is first presented with this page, and typically has enough ‘Custom Control’ parameters to adjust a sound to suit. However, skipping into the editing pages reveals further in-depth editing options. There are all the typical synthesis functions of course, but there are also a number of features specifically for this style of playback instrument. What I found most interesting were the parameters that adjust the RAM usage of Trilian. The instrument can ‘learn’ the actual notes played by a sequence and pare back the samples loaded into RAM to suit the sequence, minimising the load on the system.

As for the sounds themselves… for solid, earth shattering bass, look no further. I’ve stacked up Trilian against various instrument plug-ins, both commercial and freeware, and the Spectrasonics option blows the others away. It’s trouser-flapping bottom end that will require some acute house-training to squeeze into your tracks. Brad Watts.

Price: $419 Sonic Virtual Media: (02) 9977 3391 or sales@ svmedia.com.au

The GiO is a sturdy piece of kit made from 2mmthick brushed aluminium. The buttons onboard look like they could withstand many a thousand stomps and I wouldn’t hesitate to take it on stage.

Apogee has also incorporated large rubber strips on the underside to help counteract the beer slip grip problem guitarists face when playing live. To that end, the top surface of the GiO has enclosed switches to avoid potential harm from drink spills and the like.

to download the latest drivers, it dawned on me that Apogee was attempting to provide guitarists with the same quality of conversion as found in the rest of its range, while also being able to enjoy controlling Logic Pro 9 from ‘the floor’ via a stompbox. Furthermore, the GiO seamlessly integrates with Logic Pro 9’s new Pedalboard feature whether the GiO is the designated soundcard within Logic or not. Very cool.

For hours after connecting everything up, I began to marvel once again at how excellently Apogee had integrated itself into Apple hardware… and now its software. For instance, every pedal in the new Logic Pro 9 ‘Pedalboard’ plug-in has its colours represented via coloured LEDs on the GiO stompbox, which allows you to quickly determine which virtual pedals are selected. When Logic Pro 9’s pedalboard plug-in is bypassed, the illuminated LED shines more dimly on the GiO to give you the heads-up. Brilliant!

So, to the physical ins and outs I must go. Firstly, I should point out that the GiO is a mono input/ stereo output device, so you can’t output from stereo pedals into it, nor, in the studio sense, can you record a vocal at the same time as playing the guitar. This is the only downside of the device I can see. If only Apogee had added a second converter with a simple (and bypassable) mic preamp. That way it could accept stereo signals or a voice like so many singer/songwriters might expect. As it stands, if you want to record a vocal, you’ll need to pull out the guitar jack and insert the output of a stand-alone mic preamp into the unit before (or after) you’ve recorded the guitar/instrument take.

This brings me to one final point about the GiO: it will happily accept a bass or a mono synth at its frontend. I had awesome results using the GiO with my Korg Poly 6 and Ibanez Jazz bass. Calum Orr Price: $599 Sound Devices: (02) 9283 2077 or www.sounddevices.com.au

REVIEW

AUDIO-TECHNICA AT4081 & AT4080 Tie all the elements from the latest ribbon microphones together and they’d probably stretch around Flemington racecourse. Who’s going to put their money on Audio-Technica’s new entries with this many nags in the field?

Text: Greg Walker (AT4081) & Chris Ferguson (AT4080)

Ribbon microphone design has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. You only have to browse the last couple of issues of AudioTechnology to see phantom power, biased polar lobes, high SPL handling, even secret space-age alloys thrown into the mix of some of the most recent designs.

The latest manufacturer to add its voice to this creamy chorus is industry heavyweight Audio-Technica, and perhaps more so than any other company, its new AT4081 ribbon [yet another indistinguishable name from the king of indistinguishable names] genuinely offers a new take on an old formula. So much so, that when I initially used the 4081, it didn’t sound like a ribbon at all. But before I explain my reasons for this first impression, let’s take a quick gander at the mic itself.

Inside the microphone things get far more interesting. The AT4081 utilises a proprietary ‘MicroLinear’ ribbon imprint that’s designed to limit lateral flexing and distortion, while at the same time improve durability. Aside from Audio-Technica’s boast that there are 18 patents pending on this particular design, the specs make for pleasant reading: 150dB SPL handling (@1kHz with 1% T.H.D.), a 30Hz to 18kHz frequency response and a signal-tonoise ratio of 69dB. The frequency response chart shows a gentle lift in the 150Hz region and several more abrupt peaks at around 6 and 9kHz, but arguably the most important performance spec is its upper rolloff crossover point: well above 10kHz – abnormally high for a ribbon.

LOOK, NO EARS Physically, the AT4081 is a fairly unassuming ribbon microphone. At 155mm long and 21mm in diameter, it’s a smallish bipolar ‘stick’ style side-address design – kind of like a Royer 121 on a diet and without the Prince Charles ears.

It’s a well-built and hefty little number, finished in brushed silver and sporting an ultra-fine mesh that affords you a bird’s eye view of the inner workings of the transducer. It’s a pretty cool looking mic actually; a design that’s grown on me over time… despite earlier concerns that the mesh looked too weak to protect the fragile contents within. The AT4081 package ships with a generic yet sturdy black vinyl case, a wind shield and what the manual describes as an ‘isolation clamp’ – which looks a lot like a plastic mic clip to me (but, in use, seems to limit stand vibrations fairly well).

Still unusual – though less so these days – is the fact that the mic requires phantom power to feed the active electronics (not the dynamic transducer element), which, in tandem with neodymium magnets, allows the mic to deliver relatively high output levels. It should also be noted that, while the AT4081 is a very modern take on ribbon design, it still needs to be handled gently like an old timer: never blown into or thrown into the bottom of a gig bag.

BRIGHT AS DAY So what does the 4081 sound like? Well, if I had to choose a single word to describe the mic, it would have to be ‘bright’ – at least by comparison with every other ribbon I’ve used. My first adventure with the 4081 was as a room mic, recording double bass in a great sounding largish space, and when I listened back

to the results I was very surprised indeed. Here I was expecting a dark and reverberant ambience. Instead, what I heard back was a whole bunch of thin sounding early reflections and a fair bit of noise to boot. This somewhat alarming result changed quickly for the better, however, once I switched my trusty UA 6176 mic preamp from its 2kΩ impedance setting to a much lower 500Ω setting. This had several effects, some of which are actually generated by the preamp itself: a higher output gain, an altered tonal balance and a much reduced noise floor.

Things still sounded pretty bright up top for a ribbon mic though, and I was soon forced to alter my placement, bringing the mic to within about two metres of the instrument, where it captured a good middle-distance perspective that complemented the close Sennheiser 441 well.

This pattern was repeated on subsequent sessions on a variety of bowed and reed instruments. Initially I went for distant room ambience, only to find the results less than satisfactory, eventually finding a much more useable position closer in.

Unlike ribbons such as my Octava ML53, for example, which is dark enough to give Lord Vader the shivers, the AT4081 didn’t seem to throw much of a shadow at all. Indeed, its performance was far more reminiscent of a condenser microphone than a ribbon. It wasn’t that the mic was particularly zingy or harsh up top (indeed, the top end was quite smooth). It just didn’t conform to my expectations of a rolled-off old-time tone, and therefore didn’t perform the tasks I usually ask my ribbons to perform. I’ve got to say, at this point, I was fairly disappointed with the AT4081, and was contemplating seriously slamming it in the review. But then a little more time passed and I changed my tune.

Back in the more modest surrounds of my home setup, I found myself using the AT4081 close up for some violin and viola overdubs and, lo and behold, I actually liked what it did for the stacked timbres of these instruments – the bottom-end seemed ample, and the tops were clear without being harsh or overly ‘rosiny’. Ditto with some acoustic and classical guitars, and various hand percussion instruments. Suddenly I found myself using the 4081 on everything – even recording certain tracks again from scratch to benefit from the mic’s unique sonic perspective. Guitar amps sounded even and true, and drum room sounds were surprisingly useable – though I was often

adding a dash of bottom-end and backing off some tops with analogue EQ to get things where I wanted them.

Finally, a couple of quick vocals got me thinking this mic was actually pretty damn good… before I went back into a big room and tracked some more string and brass instruments.

Here I still found the 4081 best suited to mid-distance and close-up work. While recording a four-piece Russian folk band – I kid you not – I took a punt and put the Audio-Technica up close to the front of the piano accordion so that it caught the bass and treble registers of the instrument evenly. I baffled off the rear lobe of the figure-eight to reduce spill, and the result was a great tone that sat beautifully in the mix and felt very warm and alive. As I’d hoped, the ribbon element miraculously dodged all the mechanical button noises that can drive you mad when miking these instruments with condensers or dynamics.

As a parting shot I used the ribbon as a room source on a recording of five blokes bashing drums, and here it gave a very true representation of the chaos in the larger space.

180º FLIP So at the end of my time with the AT4081 I’ve turned 180 degrees and am happy to say I now really like it. A traditional ribbon microphone it ain’t, but that’s possibly its greatest asset.

With so many companies bringing out affordable (and not so affordable) variations on the ‘warm’, ‘rolled-off ’ tone of the golden years with a subtle nod to modern demands, AudioTechnica has instead given us a brand new mic that does brand new things. If you like, it’s a condenser without the hype or a conventional ribbon with all the tops restored. While it doesn’t give you the thick beefy bottom-end that many ‘vintage’ brands offer, it excels as an all-round studio tool, particularly for close miking and out to about three metres from the source. On percussion, strings, guitars and vocals, it does a great job of simultaneously delivering body and clarity – no other ribbon I know does that without the aid of decent analogue EQ.

The AT4081 has a unique character. In many respects it’s a genuinely new option for those seeking something in between condenser zing and ribbony roll-off. To get the most out of this mic you really need a relatively low-impedance (sub 1000Ω) mic preamp, but if you’ve got one in your kit and want a ribbon mic that isn’t restricted to ‘character’ roles, get on the AT4081 train – it’s definitely an interesting journey worth taking.

AudioTechnology THE MAGAZINE FOR SOUND ENGINEERS & RECORDING MUSICIANS

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NEED TO KNOW Price AT4081: $999 Contact Technical Audio Group (02) 9519 0900 info@tag.com.au www.tag.com.au Pros Top-end presence unheard of in a ribbon capsule.

Small and easy to reposition.

High SPL handling and low-noise performance.

Full-spectrum tonal character.

Good all-rounder in the studio.

Cons Modest bottom-end and overall brightness not such an asset in some room miking scenarios.

Doesn’t make you sound like Frank Sinatra after a few brandies.

Won’t please your traditionalist gear snob mates.

Summary The Audio-Technica AT4081 is a phantom powered ribbon with plenty of modern smarts, making it good candidate for studio applications. The controlled bottom-end and extended tops make it a surprisingly good all-rounder for those seeking something in between the mellow smoothness of a traditional ribbon and the clarity of a condenser. High SPL handling and relatively low noise complement the mic’s diminutive size to make it both versatile and easy to work with.

“

The sound is very taught and punchy (a product of the ribbon’s lightning quick transient response) and the overall signature is one of – dare I say it – warmth.

”

A WORD ON THE AT4080

Chris Ferguson: Before I begin I must make a disclosure: I love ribbon mics, and when I say ‘love them’ I really mean it. Not in the ‘I love Mrs Ferguson’ kind of way, mind you, but it’s a love affair nonetheless.

It all started in the mid ’90s when I recorded my first record exclusively with a fantastic collection of ’50s ribbon mics: the Coles 4038 (the horse shoe), the 4101 (the Flemington) and the STC 4033 (potato masher). I completely fell for the warm silky sound of all these mics and consequently used the same lineup to record my next three albums.

Audio-Technica is one of the most respected names in the audio business, so I was genuinely excited by the news that the company had released, not one, but two new ribbon mics onto the unsuspecting market.

Like the 4081, the altogether pudgier 4080 has been designed from the ground up to address two major issues: the fragility of the ribbon element, and the punishingly low output that very quickly exposes the limitations of most mic preamps with respect to their noise floor.

First issue: fragility. Like its sister ribbon, the 4080 uses a dualribbon design featuring a “proprietary MicroLinear ribbon imprint” – they had to call it something I guess. This process is designed to increase the torsional strength and rigidity of the ribbon element, with the added bonus of significantly reducing distortion figures, which it clearly – no pun intended – does.

The second issue – that of a ribbon motor’s exceedingly low output – is addressed by the incorporation of a Fet-based active stage, which raises the output of the microphone to a more typical condenser mic level. This technique has proved a popular solution amongst designers of late, even showing up in some of the cheaper Chinese models. It’s also had two additional knock-on benefits. Firstly, the design approach has freed up a swag of high-quality, medium-gain preamps to act as the amplifier stage; secondly it’s lowered the output impedance to 100Ω, which has the bonus effect of rendering the mic largely immune to issues of capacitance when using long cables that can significantly alter its frequency response.

SUBTLE STYLING Physically speaking, the 4080 is a fine specimen. The finish of the mic is excellent – in a typically understated AudioTechnica sense. It also comes complete with a very nice cast metal shock-mount.

But of course it’s how the mic sounds that’s most important,

and judging by my current recording interest – which mainly involves tracking quiet acoustic instruments in their ambient surrounds – it’s great.

These instruments – ukulele, hand drums, and soft vocals – are notoriously low in volume, but also require medium distance miking techniques – possibly the worst combination for a ribbon mic. This has provided me a great opportunity to expose the 4080’s noise floor – something that’s notoriously ordinary amongst ribbons, whether they be old-school or new.

The first thing I did with the 4080 was simply don some highend headphones, plug the microphone in, crank up the gain, sit back, close my eyes and listen. Immediately I was aware of the birds chirping and my neighbour talking in his backyard, the wind tickling the leaves in the trees and very little in the way of self noise. A good start I thought.

Then it was on to some instruments…

First up were percussion instruments: hand drums, a red Indian tom tom, shakers, bells and tambourines. These types of instruments typically highlight the benefits of a ribbon’s tonal response: a gently rolled-off top-end drawing the attention away from the tizz and inviting you into a secret world called the midrange. Paul Klipsch, the famous speaker designer, got it right when he decreed: “music lives in the midrange.” The Audio-Technica 4080 agrees. Through it, you immediately become aware of the earthiness of skins and the clatter of a tambourine bouncing off the walls. It doesn’t blow you away; it sucks you in. The sound is very taught and punchy (a product of the ribbon’s lightning quick transient response) and the overall signature is one of – dare I say it – warmth. It just simply sounds right.

Next up was my concert resophonic ukulele, a lovely handmade Beltona from New Zealand. Resophonic instruments can sometimes prove difficult to record thanks to their nasal honk, which can sound strident and ugly when recorded unsympathetically. Not to worry. The Audio-Technica rewarded me with a balanced picture, revealing the overtonerich clang of the resonator. Similarly, with a classical guitar, the restrained top-end allowed for the woodiness of the instrument to come through beautifully.

Overall, the natural aural presentation of the Audio-Technica AT4080 makes it a wonderful asset for anyone working primarily with acoustic instruments.

NEED TO KNOW Price AT4080: $1399 Contact Technical Audio Group (02) 9519 0900 info@tag.com.au www.tag.com.au Pros Quiet.

Balanced and clear.

More extended bottom-end than the 4081.

Low noise, low impedance.

Superb build quality.

Cons Packaging pretty ordinary.

Summary The AT4080 provides detail and balance in equal measure. Its pleasing tone and modern high-output active Fet stage bring new preamps into the picture that would traditionally lack gain and generate too much noise. Well worth a gander if smooth tone and versatility are two of your main prerequisites.

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REVIEW

KORG SV-1 Korg reinvents the stage piano with a keyboard that immediately shouts ‘classic’!

Text: Brad Watts

Look, I have to get this out in the open; I truly am a sucker for Korg synths. In fact, I’m a blow-over for Korg products in general. What can I say? I like their operational methods and I love their sound. There’s a certain lushness to Korg keyboards that’s absent from most other synthesis engines, and neither can this sound be replicated with mere samples. Now Korg has gone and done it again.

There are some great new (and old) sounds happening in the SV-1 keyboard. This time around the company’s had a solid crack at replacing the archetypal ‘stage piano’ – a machine that’s been designed to take you from piano to organ, through to clavinet and electric piano. In short, it’s a player’s keyboard. A machine that can cover most bases, night after night. Forget maintaining a beaten up electric piano, this machine could cover your ‘vintage keyboard’ needs entirely.

BIG RED CAR The SV-1 is Korg’s answer to authentic vintage keyboards and piano. Available in 73- and 88-note configurations, the first feature begging report is the graded-hammer action (RH3) keyboard. It’s a top-notch set of ivories – well, not literally – that Korg designed and manufactured from the ground up a few years back, and has since incorporated into many of its flagship instruments. In the past the company outsourced its keyboards and key-beds from Yamaha, but this puppy is entirely Korg’s progeny. The weighting is delightfully realistic, and won’t leave hardened pianists hankering for anything more. That said, bear in mind this keyboard is a piano emulation, so if you’re after the feeling of an organ under your hands I’d suggest looking elsewhere.

Meanwhile, for the pianists, the SV-1 accepts three pedals for damper, soft and sostenuto.

The next fact I should point out, even though it’s blatantly obvious, is that the SV-1 is incredibly… well, red. I’m not talking fire-engine red here mind you… more a nicely burnt shade of red, slipping into the spectrum somewhere between ‘candy-apple’ and ‘Dakota’. I like it, and for me, the colour fits nicely with the automobile styling and overall vintage theme. I’m sure there’ll be a few who’ll regard this design choice as a touch on the flamboyant side, but why not push the envelope a little, I say. Keyboard and synth designs have been of the rock-and-roll-black-box persuasion for literally decades, so I salute Korg for leading the charge here with a

different aesthetic. Actually, I’m more disappointed by the fact that the SV-1 isn’t available in a variety of ’50s-inspired shades – I’d like a blue one, and of course there’d be many who would prefer black.

But leaving the colour aside, the whole design of the SV-1 is inspired by the sounds within it. The keyboard is designed to recreate the sounds of classic keyboards such as the Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer 200A electric piano – Wurlitzer did in fact manufacture a whole bunch of instruments, including pipe organs and guitars, along with juke boxes, but it’s the 200A electric piano that’s become known as ‘the Wurli’ – and it’s in the context of this tradition that Korg has gone for a retro feel.

Across the controls section of the unit are knobs and buttons reminiscent of the dashboard from an EK Holden.

There’s even a large metal flip power-switch – which, I’m afraid, could be inadvertently flipped off (if you were unlucky) while indulging in an overly exuberant solo in the upper registers. Ironically, for a Korg design, the knobs and buttons are remarkably similar to circa-1980s Roland switch and knobbery – I first noticed this thievery with the microKorg XL. Aesthetically that keyboard also had more in common with an SH series Roland synth than anything ever released by Korg.

IN GEAR Let’s forget the showroom semantics now and have a look at what’s really going on with the SV-1. The controls across the ‘dashboard’ are very simple – this is a performance keyboard after all. From the left is a master volume knob, followed by a three-band EQ section comprising ‘low’, ‘mid’ and ‘high’ tone adjustments – this can be bypassed completely. Following this is the pre-effects section for access to tremolo, vibrato, uni-vibe, boost, compression and a vox-wah function that can be controlled via an expression pedal. Two knobs provide control over each type of effect – labelled ‘speed’ and ‘intensity’. Here again this entire section can be bypassed.

Up next is the amp modelling section, also defeatable and offering a selection of six amplifier types and a drive control. Amp models include an ‘organ amplifier’, tweed, overdriven, and AC30 designs. What’s interesting here is that the modelled amps work in tandem with a vacuum

tube-assisted circuit to better recreate the sound of a valve amplifier. The tube circuit also includes a low voltage power amp-style circuit, a ‘solid-state simulation of an output transformer’, and a dummy speaker circuit to simulate the varying impedance of an actual speaker. All this adds up to a closer rendition of a keyboard plugged into an amp, which, of course, is what you’re after with a performance-based, vintage-style keyboard. However, I must say, that the 12AX7 valve under the clear plastic cover seems a little tacky for mine. I don’t know about you but I’m a little weary of tubes in glass windows with lights behind them at this juncture.

Sure the tube is doing something, but does it actually help to have it in your line of vision? More to the point, does it sound any more ‘vintage’? I doubt it.

MOTOROLA So, following across from the amp modelling section of the dashboard are eight patch recall buttons. Again, in the spirit of easy on-stage use, these are numerically marked and backlit into the bargain. Eight recall buttons may seem like too few to some players – I guess it will depend entirely on your approach.

Saving a patch to these locations is referred to as a storing a ‘favourite’. To the right of these favourites are two knobs for flicking between the sounds available from the instrument.

These are six-position knobs, the first labeled: E.Piano 1, E.Piano 2, Clav, Piano, Organ, and Other; the ‘Other’ section containing Solina and ensemble-style string sounds.

The second knob chooses between six variations within each genre. In practice you simply choose sounds with these knobs, apply EQ, amp modelling and any amplifierbased effects you see fit, along with the appropriate dose of modulation and reverb (which we’ll get to in a moment) and then simply save the setup to any of the eight ‘favourite’ buttons. Storing a favourite works just like programming your car radio – hold down the button until it flashes, then press the button again to store the sound. It couldn’t be any simpler.

Saving further patches is only possible via the included patch editor software, and this connects seamlessly to your PC or Mac via USB. This connection also acts as a MIDI conduit, so there’s no need to use a separate MIDI interface. There are also MIDI ports for normal connection to a typical MIDIbased system.

HYDRAMATIC Getting back to the onboard effects section for a moment, the first of these deals with time-modulation effects. Here again, choosing an effect is via a six-position knob, with effects including phasing, flanging, chorus and a rotary Leslie emulation. Speed and intensity controls are all that’s required here, along with a button for switching between slow and fast rotary speeds. Finally, at the right-hand end of the keyboard are the reverb and delay effects, consisting of

hall, plate, room and spring reverbs, and tape or stereo delay.

The latter delay type has a tap-tempo button below it. It’s a shame the tap-tempo button doesn’t adjust the tape-delay tempo as well.

UNDER THE BONNET Bear in mind that all the adjustments possible via the front panel of the SV-1 are broad brushstrokes to a sound. For finer and more comprehensive editing parameters you’ll have to dive into the supplied editing software. For example, the tape-delay section can have time, feedback, tone, low-frequency damping, and mix adjusted – none of these parameters are available on the deck. In the modulation effects section you suddenly gain access to feedback, width, chorus types, rotor and horn speed, and acceleration for the Leslie effect, pre-delay for the reverbs, and the stereo delay can be set to tempo and bar divisions. When it comes to the amplifier simulations there’s a choice of speaker cabinets (10 styles) and the amps themselves have gain and master volume, presence and three-band EQ. Even the EQ section suddenly offers up control over the mid section frequency point. There’s even a final dynamics processor/compressor that doesn’t make an appearance on the dashboard. Besides giving access to all these extra parameters, the SV-1 editor further allows backup and retrieval of countless other patches beyond the eight stored in the ‘favourites’ section.

In terms of the sound engine, the SV-1 offers 80-note polyphony, enough for any two handed player to not have notes disappearing when least expected. The unit is not multi-timbral, however, so it’s a one-sound-at-a-time machine. It will run in a ‘local-off ’ fashion, enabling you to use the SV-1 as a master keyboard for a sequencing system.

There is plenty of modern MIDI functionality though; the unit receives MIDI clock messages, transmits and receives aftertouch information.

IN THE STRAIGHT In terms of being a player’s keyboard I think Korg has done a great job with the SV-1. It’s very easy to pull up a sound and get straight into it. There are no menus, screens, or dual function buttons to learn, the outputs are presented as both unbalanced jacks and balanced XLRs, and there’s a stereo input for adding another synth or keyboard, or another playback device – yet another useful feature for the gigging keys-player.

There’s such a lot going for the SV-1 in fact that the only problem I can see really is that some won’t be able to come to grips with the look of it. So far, opinion is quite divided here at AT – it seems I’m the only one that likes the big red monster’s look. Aesthetics aside, the SV-1 is an incredibly easy keyboard to use, and I believe there’d be a stack of keyboard players out there who’d appreciate such ease of use.

NEED TO KNOW Price SV1-73: $3799 SV1-88: $3999 Contact Musiclink (03) 9765 6565 atdept@musiclink.com.au www.musiclink.com.au Pros It’s red!

Excellent hammer action keyboard.

Extremely intuitive operation.

Great piano sound.

Cons It’s red!

Power switch could inadvertently be switched off.

Summary It’s brave of Korg to splash out with such a retrospective design, but the SV-1 really captures the feel of yesteryear with it’s simplistic, ’50s-inspired look. For those wanting a keyboard to simply plug in and play, there’s little to argue with. For those that prefer their keyboards to look a little less ostentatious, perhaps the equally as red – but more complex – Nord Piano or Stage might be the way to go.

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Across the controls section of the unit are knobs and buttons reminiscent of the dashboard from an EK Holden.

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