AMI March 2019

International

March 2019

www.audiomediainternational.com

RAISING THE BAR

As AES heads to Dublin for the first time, we find out how Beechpark Studios is celebrating 25 years in the business

TECH TALK

Inside WSDG’s Acoustic Simulation Lab

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INTERVIEW

NUGEN Audio’s CEO Paul Tapper on his new role

REVIEWS

Genelec, Sennheiser, Cubase 10, and more...

04/03/2019 14:39

d&b Soundscape – and everything is a concert hall.

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CONTENTS

OPINION

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10 Studio Building

Rosewood Studios’ owner Ed Scull

talks us through the dos and don’ts

FEATURES

30

19

14

Studio Profile Grammy nominated singer/songwriter John Parr gives AMI the inside story about Somewhere In Yorkshire

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Producer Profile Daniel Dylan Wray asks British punk producer, engineer and mixer Nick Launay about his 40 years in the business

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Beechpark Studios Colby Ramsey speaks to the Dublin-based studio’s owner about its 25th anniversary against the backdrop of AES

INTERVIEW 22

NUGEN Audio The company’s co-founder and now CEO tells AMI about the NUGEN journey so far

REVIEWS

26 Genelec S360 & 7382 SAM 30 Cubase Pro 10 March 2019

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AMI MARCH 2019

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CONTENT Editor: Colby Ramsey colby.ramsey@biz-media.co.uk Designer: Tom Carpenter tom.carpenter@biz-media.co.uk ADVERTISING SALES Sales Manager: Bryce Richards bryce.richards@biz-media.co.uk

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Cover photo credit: Beechpark Studios

Printed by Buxton Press Ltd ISSN: 2057-5165 Copyright 2019

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hatever industry you’re in, it must be said that 25 years is a long time to be active in the business, untiringly doing the things you love. 2019 marks the 25th year of service for Audio Media International, and what an exciting time it is to be celebrating such a milestone.

As many of you may know, AMI was formed in 2015 after the rock solid heritage of Audio Media magazine was combined with the online strength of Audio Pro International – creating the leading technology resource for the pro audio end user, if I do say so myself.

Having worked on the mag for almost four years now, I’m delighted to be steering the good ship AMI towards its goals, covering the live, studio, broadcast and installation sectors through a combination of features, interviews, opinions and of course product reviews.

Another business celebrating its silver anniversary this year is Beechpark Studios, a wonderfully placed facility in the Irish countryside. As one of the last surviving recording studios in Dublin, and with the AES Convention taking place in the city for the first

time ever this month, this milestone is arguably even more significant for its owner and founder Daire Winston, who I spoke to for this month’s cover feature. The plan here is to invite Beechpark’s original designer, Roger D’Arcy, to record there during the convention – a chance to reflect on the success of a studio that has been at the forefront of the music recording industry in Ireland for a long time.

I suppose long-serving success is somewhat of a theme in this issue. On page 22, NUGEN Audio’s co-founder and recently appointed CEO Paul Tapper gives us an insight into how the company has continued to come up with industry leading audio solutions during its 15-year journey.

I’d say it’s certainly been another busy month for the industry in general, as ISE welcomed its usual swathe of visitors and BVE took place for what could be the last time in February – the show is moving to a June date as of 2020 to facilitate its significant growth over the last few years, better positioning it between NAB and IBC. There’s also lot of opinions to get stuck into this month, along with the usual lineup of reviews towards the back of the mag. Make sure to check out Stephen Bennett’s fantastic review of Genelec’s new SAM monitor/subwoofer combo on page 26.

So while I raise a glass to AMI’s 25th birthday, I hold hope that we continue to serve the thriving pro audio industry for many years to come. Here’s to the next 25! ■

Colby Ramsey Editor Audio Media International

Experts in the issue

If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/ or have the necessary rights/permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Biz Media Ltd. and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Biz Media Ltd. nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions.

Daire Winston is the founder and owner of Beechpark Studios in Dublin www.biz-media.co.uk

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Paul Tapper is the co-founder and CEO of professional audio tool creator NUGEN Audio

Dirk Noy is a partner and director of applied science and engineering at WSDG

+44 (0)203 143 8777

March 2019

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04/03/2019 16:46

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29.10.18 11:41

NEWS

www.audiomediainternational.com

Producer Shy One at the Shure x Red Bull Soundscapes event

SHURE AND RED BULL TEAM UP FOR ‘SOUNDSCAPES’ EVENT AT RED BULL STUDIOS A recent project between the two companies saw rising music producers capture the sounds from three of Red Bull’s flagship sporting events with Shure’s MV88+ Video Kit...

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hure worked alongside Red Bull during the latter half of 2018 to arm three up-andcoming producers – Anz, Shy One and HAAi – with the newly launched MV88+ Video Kit and challenged them to capture the soundscapes of three of Red Bull’s most eye-catching sporting events. The end result is a collection of produced audio recordings that aim to provide a highly immersive experience.

Those from the audio industry were then invited to an event on February 13 at Red Bull Studios in London, where the finished products were played on the big screens. Attendees were also offered the chance to tour the studios and get hands-on with the product in a mic showcase.

“I really wanted to tap into Red Bull’s audience of thrill seekers – young people who care about video but maybe overlook audio a little bit,” said Shure’s global head of marketing Paul Crognale, who was at Red Bull Studios on the night. “I knew a new product was coming and wanted to do a project with them where audio is the front and centre.

“Everybody knows Red Bull make amazing content, but I think some people overlook the fact that a great video is not a great video if it doesn’t have good audio,” Crognale added. “As much as everyone can check the videos out online and interact with them, I just wanted a physical end to the project – an opportunity where we could invite some creatives or YouTubers or audio enthusiasts down to see it in the flesh.”

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Two of the three producers who worked on the project were also present on the night, which meant that people could actually ask them more personal questions about what they did with the mics and how they used them.

“One of the producers was also doing studio tours, so she recorded sounds on the night and then then took people up to the Red Bull Studios, explaining to them how she might use field recordings in her tracks,” Crognale recalled. “She was EQ’ing and putting the effects on live while taking questions from the floor.

“I think microphones for phones have historically got a bit of a bad rep, so I guess this was also a great opportunity for people to have a quick play around with the product, and make them realise that actually, their phone is really powerful with this mic plugged in,” Crognale continued. “We’ve been saying these words ‘just add phone’, because with this kit you don’t need anything else. Shure supplies everything and it makes it very versatile, and while £250 might be a lot of money to some people, it solves a lot of problems and has a lot of different creative setups available.

“Obviously what I was more interested in for this particular project was the audio capture, as it is possible to set it up in a field recording mode and get it in lots of nice positions with the tripod. Everybody has their phone on them nowadays and this little kit is backpack friendly.”

Shure was able to invite Red Bull’s database to the event which included all of the attendees from its

Normal Not Novelty initiative. In the mic showcase, five or six mics were set up so that people could just plug their phone in, quickly download the app and have a go themselves.

“Some people had been on the website previously and had seen the videos, some people who came were actually fans of one of the artists we’d worked with, and there were some who were just interested in audio,” Crognale said. “I spoke to a couple of people who were young techs at Fabric, some students at SAE etc. We showed the video content on the big screen and then invited them to speak to the girls, have a studio tour, or get hands-on with the product themselves.

“When you’re talking about an audience who just have a laptop and headphones, it’s a whole different story,” Crognale added. “You don’t have to spend £10,000 on studio gear to get good recordings. There’s plenty of good audio and video available just from your phone, which most people have access to.

“Field recording is kind of a thing at the moment and in music production it’s a way of setting yourself apart from the producers. I think it’s a really nice way of being able to make your recordings perhaps a little bit more personal and original, so I guess the MV88+ is a vehicle to help people achieve that – that’s what we were trying to get across to young people on the night.” n www.shure.co.uk www.redbullstudios.com

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NEWS

BVE 2019 HONES IN ON PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY The UK’s leading broadcast, production and media tech event returned to ExCel London from February 26-28...

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wo new zones were unveiled at BVE this year – the Pro Video Zone and Pro Moviemaker Stage. The Pro Video Zone is a new creative space dedicated to production and acquisition, bringing together camera, lens, lighting, audio and production kit manufacturers, distributors, resellers and service providers, offering a unique environment to discover the latest kit and technologies.

The Pro Moviemaker Production Stage is a 150sqm live production set where visitors could get hands-on experience of filmmaking techniques and skills, featuring demos from leading pro video makers in a real-world environment.

On the product side, German manufacturer and IP specialist Lawo showcased its new mc²56 3rd generation production console including the A_UHD Core ultra high density network-based, software-defined audio DSP engine. Its 1,000+ fully featured DSP channels can either be utilised by a single mc² console for coping with challenging productions or be shared amongst up to four consoles.

Also at the show was the company’s Power Core, a native IP audio I/O and DSP remote production node with on-board WAN capability, providing low-latency onsite audio processing for monitoring and IFB mixing. The 1RU device features 48 processing channels, and allows remote control of all relevant channel parameters from mc² consoles.

NUGEN Audio was at BVE revealing the updated version of its Halo Downmix solution, featuring new ranges for downmix coefficients and a Netflix preset. The new version also adds a new LFE enable control and LFE filter cutoff control. NUGEN also highlighted its new Audio Management Batch processor extension (AMB) and Loudness Toolkit 2.8 throughout the event.

Meanwhile, Riedel Communications revealed that the National Theater of Japan in Tokyo is using its Bolero wireless and Artist wired intercom systems across its two performance halls – a 1,610-seat theater and a smaller 590-seat theatre – to enable flexible communications with crystal-clear audio quality.

BVE head of marketing, Sebastien Brasseur, said: “Our goal is to showcase the latest and greatest in innovation while also giving audiences a behind-the-scenes perspective and the chance to get hands-on experience with the latest and greatest kit.”

BVE 2020 is moving to a new date in the global industry calendar, and will take place from June 9-11 2020. n

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04/03/2019 14:43

OPINION

www.audiomediainternational.com

NORMAL NOT NOVELTY: A NOTCH IN THE BELT Freelance producer and recording/mix engineer Jess Bartlet explains how the Red Bull initiative, now in its third year, has opened up new opportunities for her career...

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grew up playing a lot of instruments, particularly drums and jazz piano which I’ve played for quite a long time.

When I was about 19 I started collaborating with a producer to do more work that was in line with what I was interested in at the time, like independent Ninja Tune stuff, which was really cool. From here I started to get more involved in the production and mix engineering side.

A while back I went to a BBC Amplify event where there was a talk about women in music, run with shesaid.so, with people there from Normal Not Novelty too. This was how I first stumbled upon it. When I went to my first NNN event, I remember being completely blown away, and just kept asking myself where all these incredible people had been hiding! It was amazing but equally very enlightening, as it became very apparent to me just how important it is to get all these women visible in the industry.

For me, the drive has always been there. That very first session that I went to was run by Marta Salogni, whose work I have admired for so long. At the time I was incredibly stuck on mixing and didn’t know where to look or what to do to improve my mixes. It was a very long and difficult process up to that point. After I went to that session, everything just kind of fell into place, and her feedback has now influenced my mixing so much. I was really lucky because after that I was able to go and shadow Marta in her own studio. This is where it really opens up doors – I would never have access to these opportunities otherwise, and would probably be limited in terms of where I am with my technical ability. This is where NNN has probably helped me the most.

Normal Not Novelty has also been incredible because I’m completely independent and I’ve not had any formal training.

I’m always just practicing and practicing, and whilst it’s all well and good putting in the hard work, it can be very difficult to get out of a tricky situation when you get stuck.

There have been two NNN events already this year and I’ve been to both of them. They have DJ, production and engineering workshops; I tend to go to the latter as I’m interested in the recording aspect as well as the mixing aspect. The first one this year was a mix feedback session, so you can bring along something that you’ve been working on and explain where you might be stuck with it. Everybody there can then pitch in and give you some advice, which has been extremely useful in the past and was very useful in the last session I went to on vocal engineering, hosted by Katie Tavini.

In terms of my career going forward, I would ideally like to start producing for other people, and Red Bull is coming up with quite a few opportunities in that respect. I really enjoy the recording and the engineering, but I also love the songwriting, so it’s both the creative and the technical stuff that I enjoy. It’s very difficult to be a musician now and not have a second job, and so I’m also trying to balance that while pursuing my love of production and songwriting. It’s therefore nice that there are musicians that I can meet up with who are in the same position – it helps give me some direction in a way.

With initiatives like Normal Not Novelty, I think the industry is also definitely moving in the right direction. I was reading recently that at the moment just two per cent of

producers and three per cent of engineers are female, so there’s still so much more to do in terms of visibility. Seeing people like Marta, Katie, and a friend of mine at The Church Studios (where I’ve done some work experience) Chloe, it’s great to know that there are incredible women in these positions that are really succeeding. Although, I’m still yet to see any female producers owning big studios, so a lot of change still needs to happen.

What Red Bull is doing is amazing. I can’t really praise it enough because without it, I’d be in a very different situation.

I would love it if there was even more of a community going on around it. What’s interesting about the music industry at the moment is that a lot of the artists who are bedroom producers or who are independent much like myself are expanding this networking and creative community. More collaboration and more innovation, especially on the immersive audio side, is definitely going to impact what we do in the future and it’s a very exciting time. n

Jess Bartlet is a freelance producer and recording/mix engineer who writes, produces, and now mixes all of her own material under the name Island Fox.

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OPINION

THE TRUTH ABOUT NOISE INDUCED HEARING LOSS We hear from Stephen Wheatley of HearAngel, a new smartphone app designed to reduce hearing damage caused by headphones...

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here’s a big, unspoken thing going on in the audio world. We all know it’s there, we all know how it happens, we all worry about it, and we all worry that if we start to suffer from its effects, then we won’t be able to do our jobs anymore. I’m talking about hearing damage – Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL).

When you hear sounds, you receive sound wave energy which ultimately vibrates hair cells in your inner ear. These hair cells convert the sound energy into electrical energy which travels to your brain. The problem is that when these hair cells are exposed to large sound doses, prolonged periods of sound, or short bursts of extremely high sound, they can become damaged and, once damaged, they are irreparable. To add to the problem, the effects are cumulative, and you are unlikely to realise that your hearing has been damaged until many years after exposure.

One of the more common symptoms of NIHL is tinnitus, described as a continual ringing (or rumbling, crickets, sirens, whooshing noise, pulsing, ocean waves, buzzing, clicking – sometimes in combinations) in the ears.

Ultimately, NIHL sufferers will also experience severe loss of hearing at mid to high frequencies (3 - 6kHz) which can make everyday conversation almost impossible.

We all consider ourselves to be indestructible as teenagers – remember those nights in the pub, three hours sleep and a hangover? Each gig had its effects and they all accumulate over time, as we now know.

Many people take better care of themselves as they

get older, but those in the audio industry have to carry on working for long periods exposed to high sound energy levels. If we worked in a factory, health and safety rules would force us to wear hearing protection, but that isn’t about to happen with PA sound, or broadcast soundies wearing comms headsets all day.

Here’s how it works: According to the HSE, you are allowed to experience an average sound level of 85dB over eight hours or 40 hours in a week (although they have expressed the intention to revise this downwards soon).

This means that the level can be louder than that sometimes, provided it’s quieter at other times, while sleep, rest breaks and meal times contribute to lowering this average level.

The average level is also dependent on the type of audio you are listening to. For a given peak to peak level, speech has a low average level because of the pauses for breath and thought. Classical music has a higher average level as there are more sustained tones. With rock or dance music, the average level is much closer to the peak level – we all use compression to get the energy up in the room (and so also in our ears).

The sound dose is also dependent on the amount of time we are exposed. In fact, it’s a direct relationship; if you double the level you are exposed to you halve the time of exposure. 85dB for eight hours, 88dB for four hours etc.

The solution sounds obvious – reduce the dose. This means either reduce the level – tricky, (especially if you have a drummer) or reduce the exposure time – more tricky (especially if you give the drummer a solo).

For acoustic exposure, the simplest and most affordable

way is the use of hearing attenuators. These are custommoulded earplugs that have a diaphragm which attenuates all frequencies fairly evenly, acting like a pair of sunglasses for the ears. They are very different from ordinary foam or wax earplugs, which will make the sound very muffled and hard to hear (much like the NIHL we’re trying to stop!).

Attenuators work really well, although they will take some getting used to, as things do sound different when your ears are not being overloaded – persevere and you’ll realise that the reason they sound different is that you can hear everything much better.

For reproduced sound exposure, you should choose headphones that isolate you from ambient noise, so you don’t have to turn up the level just to overcome the ambient. The problem with headphones is knowing just how loud you are listening, but there are some technologies that can help.

If the headphones are shared, obtain headphones fitted with a fixed level limiter, such as LimitEar FL, which will ensure you don’t go over a pre-set level. If you have your own personal headphones, then there are dose management devices that will ensure that your entire daily reproduced sound dose is safe. LimitEars’ HDM Pro device ensures the daily reproduced sound dose is within HSE guidelines.

If you are using a smartphone for listening, then HearAngel is an app that will monitor and control your daily sound dose. So, don’t stop listening to your favourite music or podcasts – just ensure you’ll be safe and protect your hearing while listening. n

Stephen Wheatley has spent six years creating occupational hearing protection solutions and is one of the founders of HearAngel – a smartphone app that helps users protect their ears from damage while using headphones. www.hearangel.com

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04/03/2019 10:54

OPINION

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I’VE BUILT A STUDIO… I MUST BE MAD!

By Rosewood Studios owner Ed Scull...

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he term ‘studio’ is a fairly common word in the musical world. Most working musicians will have some form of studio or rehearsal space at their house. Acoustic isolationwise, there are some fantastic products widely available to buy with great results, ranging from simple foam, through to diaphragmatic bass traps and full-room acoustic solutions.

With a small budget and a bit of imagination, you can turn small spaces into great functioning rooms that allow a good environment to hear your music. The complications come when you decide to scale up and build a space for commercial use. Trust me when I say that this is not for the faint-hearted.

A common misconception is that all you need to do is build two walls (the room within a room idea), chuck a load of rockwool in the cavities, and bish bash bosh you have a studio. This is most certainly a misconception.

I realised this and decided to use a studio design and build company through recommendation. Its website looked impressive, and when they came for the first site visit they were armed with professional brochures and pictures of rooms they had worked on, but that is as far as their expertise went. The realisation that they didn’t have the expected expertise came once the studio was complete. Without going into detail, the result of this build was watching a JCB smash its way through the back wall of my studio and take me back to where I was 12 months earlier with an open space and no studio. Ouch! All major businesses like these will carry insurance right? Wrong!

The logical solution would be to walk away right? I guess not. Not wanting my dream to end because of

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someone else’s incompetence fuelled me to go for it a second time and really make sure that we could create something truly special. A big concern was the pressure it would put on my other business and also the general pressure of a legal process running in the background against the initial designers. Some may call me mad for trying again, but the second attempt went a lot smoother and I can assure you that this one actually works, really works! One lesson I did learn however is to do due diligence before embarking on such a project.

With a background in the form of a classically trained percussionist, I have spent most of my adult life working right in the heart of the UK music industry.

With this career comes a collection of percussion instruments that has grown exponentially over the years, resulting in the need for a bigger space to store my instruments. Self-storage companies are a great way of finding space to keep instruments but when you start looking for space north of 1000 sq. foot, this suddenly becomes fairly uneconomical. I needed a commercial space in London but with real estate being like gold dust in the city, there was no way I could ever afford something that would be practical, let alone available. What already existed was hugely expensive, and massively limited by size restrictions, noise limitations, lack of parking, congestion charge and in a few months a beautiful thing called ULEZ. I found my little haven on the outskirts of south London in a town called Redhill, a 13 x 13 metre space with eight metres of height, unlike a lot of commercial studios in London which have to fit into pre-existing spaces. It’s always good to have

something different, so our control room has a comfy wrap-around feel to it and makes use of slate on our monitor walls and also on the back wall of our five metre high live room; bringing the outside in. One of our quirkier rooms however disguises itself as a spiral staircase which leads to our kitchen and lounge. This six metre stairwell however happens to have tielines at the top and bottom of the stairs, and has been rigged as a Reverb Chamber on the majority of projects so far.

At a time when studios are closing left right and centre, why on earth would I build a studio? The clue’s in the title. The disasters of the first studio allowed a fresh head to really think about what I wanted to get out of the space. Yes it needs to function and have all the right gear and acoustics, but above all it needs to be a space that allows for true creativity and for the artist to be at one with their music. A space that feels truly special yet completely timeless.

For us it’s the little things that help to build credibility with an artist. With limited budgets, sessions can often feel rushed and the artist is

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OPINION

under pressure to be creative. Spending time with clients at the start of the day over a freshly brewed coffee and talking about their favourite music and inspirations helps build confidence, so they feel safe and comfortable enough to experiment without feeling self-conscious. When the artist feels as if they are in their own home, they will try out new things and that is when the magic happens and you get a great performance. And don’t think for a second that it’s not appreciated by the artist! Going that extra mile is a simple way to stand out when studios are competing in this closely knit industry.

But, don’t forget to sort the business first. Get process and contracts sorted before the session so everyone knows where they stand, this will make the whole project more relaxed.

Obviously we are trying to take a slice of the same cake that everyone else is going after when trying

to make a studio work in the current climate, but when we do have ‘down time’ we are far from quiet.

It’s important to be adaptable, for example several albums for major library companies have already been written and recorded at the studio and we also spend a lot of time creating our own ‘original’ music.

We find our clientele are mainly drums and rock and roll, this is probably because the sound of drums in our live room is truly special.

So, if you’re planning to build your own studio perhaps don’t start out as I did and ensure that the people you hire do actually have the expertise, experience and completely understand what you are trying to do. Obviously there are elements that you can do yourself and if it goes wrong then you only have yourself to blame, but to make it work in the industry it’s important to provide a creative space that offers flexibility and a great place to play. n

Edward Scull is a freelance timpanist and percussionist, and the owner of Rosewood Studios. www.rosewoodmusic.co.uk

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OPINION

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WHAT DOES THE RISE OF STREAMING MEAN FOR AUDIO POST? Tristan Rose, Head of ADR at Grand Central Recording Studios in London, offers his thoughts...

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ovefilm’s DVD rental postage system is a distant memory for most of us. It was once a fresh approach to Saturday afternoons spent at Blockbuster, picking up the latest VHS releases.

But now, with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, home entertainment is fully transformed into a digital experience that we can access in seconds, on our mobiles, tablets, laptops and TVs, wherever we are in the world.

As a sound designer who has spent the past seven years specialising in ADR, I’ve seen that these streaming services – known by the wonderful acronyms SVOD, AVOD and TVOD – have had a huge impact on the type and quantity of work that we now see in our industry.

The UK film, video and TV post production industry was expected to reach over £3 billion by the end of 2018. In 2017, 250 million households worldwide paid for an SVOD service. This is expected to rise to more than 450 million by 2022. Speak to any post-house, exec producer, postsupervisor or dialogue editor and they all say the same thing – they are busy, and despite the threat of Brexit, they expect to continue to be.

Offering high quality and/or cult programming is essential for subscription services – as they strive to keep subscribers happy and compete to expand their subscription base further. The quest for content is real. With a wider selection of broadcasters, the market is now broader than we have ever known and their platforms needs filling. Distribution is fast, as is consumption – resulting in an audience hungry for more. The impact this has is wide ranging.

No longer are multi-film franchises necessary to tell a

longer cinematic story. Feature-length quality programmes are becoming the norm and are no longer constricted by ad breaks and a broadcaster’s set episode length.

Production is now more global than ever before. I recently worked on the second series of Snatch, the TV series loosely based on Guy Ritchie’s 2000 movie – which was a hit on Sony’s streaming service Crackle. Series 2 ran in the UK on AMC Global, which is available exclusive to BT customers.

From a broadcast drama point of view, opportunities are now given to new and emerging actors to become household names overnight. High-profile, traditionally feature actors are also getting in on the act, happy to lend their talent, name and brand to original SVOD productions. Recording for Outlaw King was a pleasure – a film starring Chris Pine that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival before being released on Netflix the following month.

Perhaps the real turning point has come in the form of Netflix’s first Best Picture Oscar nomination for Roma: Being a box office hit is no longer a vital ingredient to success within the Academy.

For ADR these two factors mean that remote records – linking up to other studios around the world, either to record the actor, loop in the director, or both – are becoming more of a daily occurrence, along with late night and early morning records to accommodate the host studio’s time zone.

Good quality ADR is something that cannot be

compromised. Projects with this reach deserve the same level of respect and care that we would afford a terrestrial broadcaster. Put it this way – rather than “passive” terrestrial broadcasting, which is scheduled, curated and airs live, when an SVOD subscriber watches a show, they have actively chosen to do so. The ante is upped.

Experts estimate that by 2020 Netflix will be outspending terrestrial broadcasters, so if you are not already working on an SVOD production, it is safe to say you soon will be! n

Tristan Rose is head of ADR at Grand Central Recording Studios (GCRS). www.gcrs.com

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04/03/2019 10:56

OPINION

NAVIGATING THE FILE STORAGE JUNGLE OF POST-PRODUCTION HOUSES

By Claire Goodall, Senior Client Executive at Tectrade...

R

ecording only represents the tip of the iceberg of the work process that goes into audio production, which often takes months or years to complete. What comes after is a much bigger task, requiring lots of data to be processed and managed throughout the lifespan of the project.

This process is highly time sensitive with several deadlines to be met. However, a lot of time is currently wasted due to poor data recovery systems, meaning that chunks of data are lost into the so-called data libraries at production studios. An efficient system of retrieving the required data not only saves production studios massive amounts of time and effort, but also enhances the reliability and reputation of the company as it’ll be able to offer quicker services.

A simple request to access a particular audio file in a post-production studio’s database may seem straightforward on the surface. The assumption of retrieving data from data libraries being like picking a book from the shelf at a library is far from the truth, due to the sheer size of the audio files. Restoring audio files is time consuming, and with several requests coming in daily it can be overwhelming for those tasked to retrieve it.

Post-production houses today are thus put under immense pressure to handle all these requests to very tight deadlines, and it has recently been reported that they are due to increase the cost of using their services in certain regions due to intensified workloads. The quantity of data they store is growing faster than in any other industry, and

needs to be easily accessed in order for post-production houses to deliver projects rapidly and stay competitive.

Once a project is done, files tend to be left unprocessed, leaving them stored somewhere in the data library for an infinite amount of time. We’ve witnessed that very few steps are normally taken to either archive or delete old files, which effectively fills out and overwhelms libraries making them much harder to navigate. Obviously most of the data will, and should, be kept for future reference, as clients often return to old projects wanting to rerun or rework existing material.

Setting up proper data recovery systems will make everyday life easier for those working in post-production houses, and potentially save the business, as clients often work with several post-production houses at once and will always go for whichever can provide the quickest turnaround.

What post-production studios need to manage the workload is clear: a modernised and rapid data recovery system. With rising demands and tighter deadlines to be met, post-production houses should not have their time wasted on recovering data, especially when solutions to help them do just that already exist.

To protect any data in the best way possible, the key is firstly to know what data the company holds and understand what the storage systems are currently doing, in order to get a strong overview of the processes undertaken every time data is being retrieved. This will also indicate where the issues may lie and, by establishing the pitfalls of your system, an alternative infrastructure can be built to better suit the needs of your company. Experts in the field will start the process by getting to know the current IT infrastructure

of the company by finding out what the current storage environment is like, where data is being held, how they move this data around and what systems they have in place to protect and recover data. Doing this is especially vital for media and audio houses, seeing that most of their data is stored on site due to the cost of keeping it in the cloud, which means storage environments may differ quite drastically.

Today’s solutions can optimise storage by organising data so that the most recent top priority files can be accessed more quickly than others, whilst making sure older and less irrelevant files are archived and aren’t taking up space.

An alternative cost-effective system is to keep the most relevant and recent data at hand as green data for 30 days or so, to then be moved to a lower amber level of the storage system after 45 days, and then any files untouched for over 60 days will be archived onto tapes or moved onto an object file system. This process can be completely automated, giving producers the power to restore, archive and delete files autonomously, effectively saving precious time.

Audio post-production houses hold huge amounts of data, and they are constantly challenged by the inefficient systems of locating, recovering, editing and moving files which is often an alarmingly long process, putting companies at risk of losing clients. With producers often needing to turn projects around as quickly as possible, it is not unusual for them to work with several post-production houses and decide to go with the one which can meet those demands.

With the right tools and consultation, recovering files will not be an exhausting and time-consuming task, and it may even help your business win clients. n

Claire Goodall is a senior client executive at Tectrade. www.tectrade.com

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04/03/2019 10:15

STUDIO PROFILE

www.audiomediainternational.com

A BLAST FROM THE PAST Grammy nominated singer/songwriter John Parr gives Colby Ramsey the inside story about Somewhere In Yorkshire, his throwback of a recording studio nestled in the North England countryside...

T

he main room at Somewhere In Yorkshire is like a barn; in fact it is a barn – a 30 foot high, 300 year old William and Mary threshing barn. With its waxed beams, York stone flags, stained glass and handmade bricks, it is a testament to the craftsmen who built it and a constant source of inspiration for singer/ songwriter John Parr, who has sold over 10 million albums and was nominated for a Grammy award for his US #1 hit "St Elmo's Fire" in 1985.

The studio is large enough to accommodate a 50-piece orchestra with sound to picture. It has two minstrel galleries which are used quite extensively, putting the player up against the wooden eaves of the roof and adding warmth and character to drums, guitar and strings. The main room also features a Yamaha C5 Grand piano which is tuned for every session.

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Being in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside means natural light and natural air, with plenty of space to seat a band and still ample room to record. Centre stage is a 40-channel Digidesign ProControl, which Parr “tends to just use as a big old analogue desk for grouping and riding.”

The outboard features the usual suspects, which, as with the console, was chosen from Parr’s personal experience and research to provide an artist’s palate of colour, treatment and signature sound that would “fulfill practically any producer’s wish list.”

The outboard list is extensive indeed, and includes interfaces from Lynx, Neve, Manley, Inward Connections and Avalon along with API pres. There’s Massenburg, Focusrite and Manley equalisers, while Lexicon, Bricasti, AMS and Eventide provide the polish and processing with classic microphones from

Brauner, Neumann, Beyer, AKG, Sennheiser and Shure.

“I started out really young playing instruments and was in a band in my teens, which is what I was doing right up until I was about 30 – the clubs, the pubs and the cabaret circuit in the UK and Europe,” Parr tells AMI. “In 1980, a buddy of mine who I was in a band with had a few quid and he asked me to build a studio for him. I was green as grass but I literally got the tools out and converted an old building. In those days it was just with an eight-track Scully machine, a Soundcraft desk, and the early Drawmer gear. In fact, Ivor Drawmer was in a band with me, called Ponders End.” In the years following, Parr signed to Carlin Music and started making demos. People started to get interested in his songs, Meatloaf being the first big one. The Who had just broken up for the final time and their business manager – who ran Shepperton Studios – liked Parr’s

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STUDIO PROFILE

tape, took it to America and instantly got him a deal with Atlantic Records. Parr then started working and producing in a number of big studios, including Ramport Studios in London where The Who recorded and Criteria Studios in Miami which welcomed The Eagles and Eric Clapton through its doors.

“It all took off from there for me and I realised that while I was spending all this money on recording studios, I needed to build my own. We’d just bought this house in the country with a couple of barns, so I converted one of them with my dad into an analogue recording studio with lots of great outboard, and it was wonderful,” says Parr. “Around 10 years ago, we made the move to digital, and we’ve really developed it since.

I wanted to make it a hybrid – a cutting-edge studio but still with a vintage vibe and a load of outboard gear.”

One of the biggest names to visit Somewhere In Yorkshire recently was Mike Clink, who engineered Guns N’ Roses in the 80s and then became a producer.

“He came in and did a project that Slash had played on, and he loves the studio,” recalls Parr. “We’ve got a

20-channel point-to-point desk based on Pultec that a friend of mine built – he wanted to take it away with him but it’s never leaving this place! Meanwhile, the 1963 factory refurbished Yamaha Grand in the live room is immaculate and just sounds incredible, while we’ve also got a ton of the old guitar amps and a couple of special amps which I’ve had rebuilt.”

The studio has been visited by producer David Mackay, who’s worked with a number of big names including Eric Clapton, Bee Gees and Bonnie Tyler, as well as Jim Cregan, who had worked with the likes of Rod Stewart, Michael Bolton and Gipsy Kings.

“However, the studio is mainly for me,” asserts Parr.

“These days we also like to give recording time to old timers who have been playing for years but have never been in the studio, or to upcoming bands at mates' rates.”

While Somewhere In Yorkshire’s control room features a lot of acoustic treatment, the main room has been left very natural with wood, stone and brick textures: “Its greatest strength is its vibe – there’s

definitely a bit of magic when you go in, and I think it’s reminiscent of the great recordings studios of the past,” says Parr.

At the time of interview, Parr was halfway through his new album: “I’ve got quite an interesting way of doing it – it’s just me and a drummer in the room with no engineer,” he explains. “It’s literally just a case of setting up, pressing go, and walking into the main room to record. I’m working on this with drummer Kenny Jones from Faces and The Who, along with a guitarist called Keith Atack – he and I are really steering the ship. It’s a real throwback to my early records with some big songs and horn sections, and I’ve got big hopes for it.

“There’s some other big studios in the area but I wouldn’t call them competition as such, because like I say, it’s mainly built for me and I’m always in there,” Parr concludes. “I’m a bit precious and selective about who comes in because so much love and care has gone into it.” n www.somewhereinyorkshire.com

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04/03/2019 12:14

PRODUCER PROFILE

www.audiomediainternational.com

Launay recently worked out of Sunset Sound in L.A.

CRAFT PUNK

Nick Launay has produced hundreds of records for a plethora of chart topping musical artists and bands. Here, Daniel Dylan Wray speaks to the British record producer, engineer and mixer about his 40 years of sonic service...

W

hen Nick Launay was just 10 years old he made his first ever record.

Living in remote Spain with his bohemian parents surrounded by visiting musician friends, he soaked up the sounds and equipment that was around him.

Fascinated by tape machines and in love with the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, he recorded a loop of the intro and then recorded the vocal take from the Beatles’ Paperback Writer, which was slowed down by weighing the turntable down to match the speed of the Stones loop. After merging the recordings he had essentially created a musical hybrid of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as a very early example of what later would be called a remix or a mash-up.

When he moved to London in the late 1970s and punk was in full swing, Launay’s ambitions to work in

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that world only grew. “I went to see just about every punk band,” he says. “I was down the front getting spat on. I went to something every night – that was my whole life. Eventually when I did get a job in a recording studio, I knew that I wanted to make those kind of records because I was living that life.”

In 1978 a job at Tape One studios opened up in the mastering room where Launay would chop up hit pop songs and edit them down for vinyl compilations. It was also here he edited the 12” release of M’s Pop Muzik, which went on to be a number one hit. However, it was his next job that became life-changing and set him on the course for where he is today. Getting a job as an assistant engineer at Townhouse Studios, he soon found himself in the studio with Public Image Limited, the seminal postpunk outfit that John Lydon formed after the Sex Pistols.

“I was the youngest person there,” he recalls. “I was still a

tea boy mostly. The only reason I got put on that session is because the other assistant engineer refused to do it because John had been obnoxious to him.”

The main engineer had trouble working the new SSL prototype desk and Launay found himself constantly having to step in to assist. When the engineer went to the toilet Lydon locked him out of the studio. “Then he looked at me and said, ‘go on then, mix the record, you know what you’re doing’. It was like being forced to do what you always wanted to do and I just did it. We got the songs sounding pretty good – he was getting up and dancing around. I’d been to see PiL about four times, so I knew exactly what he wanted. I was only 20 years-old – it was ridiculous. I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t have any proper training; it was all just enthusiasm. Once I was in a professional studio, I just knew what the equipment did intuitively. John

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PRODUCER PROFILE NICK LAUNAY’S TOP GEAR PICKS ■ Echoplex or Roland Space Echo 301 - 501

■ Soundtoys Decapitator

“I find tape echo like an instant vibe machine. Elvis wouldn’t sound like Elvis and John Lennon wouldn’t sound like John Lennon without it. It’s way cooler than reverb.”

“I love distortion. Imagine a box of different coloured distortion and you have this. It’s like a box of favourite chocolates for sound.”

■ Tech 21 SansAmp

■ Neumann M49

“Adds grrrr where I need grrrr. I use it on bass guitars and kick drums to make the low end growl.”

“Simply the best microphone ever made for all purposes. I love how it is full sounding – bright but not harsh, rich bass without sounding boomy. It also distorts in a rock ‘n roll way.”

Lydon absolutely gave me my first break and it was a very lucky one, but I did something with it.”

What followed next was a whirlwind year. His work on PiL’s Flowers of Romance had pricked ears and Launay found himself working on records by Gang of Four, The Slits, The Birthday Party, Killing Joke, Kate Bush and the Virgin Prunes. “They are some of the best records I’ve ever made and I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says. “I did know instinctively, of course, but it was all just done with me being oblivious. What happened in that year was pretty extraordinary – I look back and go, ‘What the fuck? How did that happen?’”

What came next was a hugely rich and eclectic career that saw Launay work with David Byrne, Lou Reed, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Arcade Fire and countless others, up to recent credits with artists such as Anna Calvi and Idles. This has resulted in Launay travelling all over the globe to work with artists, and so he doesn’t have his own studio in the traditional sense: “I sort of have a studio,” he says of his home setup in L.A. where he has been living for 20 years, although the now closed Seedy Underbelly studios ran by John Kuker was his ostensible home for 12 years until he passed away. “I can’t record drums at mine so I go to good studios in L.A. and get the backing tracks down at places like Sunset Sound. Then I do overdubs at my house or sometimes the artists I work with have little studios too. We move around depending on the budget.”

When asked to describe his role and function as a producer, Launay responds, “A musical psychologist to the eccentric,” before amending to, “…to the most imaginative people on earth. I think when you go into

■ AMS Neve 1081 EQ

“To get overall huge natural tone, plus standard Pro Tools EQ used as a notch filter to take out ugly irritating frequencies.” this job you never realise that psychology is top of the list of things you need to be good at. My niche, and where I seem to work very well, is being the person who can make these very creative and imaginative people’s ideas come true. With the albums I make, it’s all about the attitude and the mood and the feeling. I’ve always worked with bands and artists who have had a lot to say and a lot of attitude. They are characters – eccentric people who are in their own little world when they create these great songs.” For Launay, his creative process is about plugging into these little worlds and embedding himself into them: “I spend a great deal of time getting to know the people I work with, almost to the point that it feels like I’m in the band; I listen to what they listen to, we go out, we hang out.”

As a producer who doesn’t play any instruments, Launay is somebody who looks not only to extract mood and atmosphere – alongside working closely with the band as people – but is also obsessed with tone. His work looks to extract sounds that can change perceptions, melt hearts and rip open minds: “I’ve always been very into tonality; how you treat a guitar can affect the emotional impact of the guitar part on the listener entirely – that’s what I’ve always been into,” he says. “I’m interested in sound and how it affects you.

It makes sense that I’ve been involved with so many bands making unusual sounds – I’m drawn to these bands and they seem to be drawn to me.”

Preparation is also central to Launay’s working method, which, combined with intrinsically knowing and understanding the artists he’s working with, makes for a potent yet blissful recording scenario. He looks back on the 2013 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album

Push the Sky Away as a key instance of all of this rolling into one harmonious, flowing session. “It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had,” he recalls.

“The memories only become more magical. There’s an incredible intensity to working with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds because everything is very quick. Nick is on as a person all the time – you have to capture him and everyone around him. I always get there days before he does and set everything up for any eventuality – every keyboard is ready to go, it’s going through the desk, and it’s all ready. When they come in and pick up any instrument I’m ready because they will often pick up one instrument during a take and then drop it and pick up another. There’s no demo, no rehearsal, just Nick ploughing through these emotions and everyone is following. The first take is always really great, the second a lot better with a couple of mistakes and the third pretty much there. The fourth take doesn’t exist because Nick is pretty much over it. He’s had enough and moves onto another songs.”

Looking back on over 40 years since that lucky break with John Lydon, Launay reflects on a career that has seen him throw himself into the worlds of others, worlds he thankfully sees as being full of eccentrics. “Recording bands can be like joining the circus,” he says. “When I’m working with bands I’m entering into their world. It’s like a family and they have girlfriends, wives, kids – it’s a beautiful thing, almost like a commune. I fly in from my normal world and then I join another world for a while and it’s intense. It’s a very unusual life that I lead. I feel very lucky.” ■ www.launay.com

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04/03/2019 14:46

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18/09/2018 17:25

FEATURE

LUCK OF THE IRISH Beechpark Studios is one of the last surviving recording studios in Dublin. The facility, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary, is inviting back its original designer Roger D’Arcy to coincide with the 146th AES Convention, which will take place in the Irish capital for the first time this month. Here, Colby Ramsey speaks to the studio’s owner and founder Daire Winston about its storied past, and the implications of such a move against the backdrop of today’s turbulent recording industry environment...

D

aire Winston moved to the building which soon became known as Beechpark Studios in 1993. A house on an acre of land with a single and double garage, perfectly positioned in the Irish countryside on the outskirts of Dublin, quickly inspired the freelance recording engineer to make a music room.

The Apple Mac had started to sneak into recording studios in the early 90s, particularly in

MIDI sequencing, and so Winston knew he had to get up to speed. Before he knew it, an old client came along from Ritz Records and asked if he would record one of their singers, so he set about doing this in one room that was hastily put together with a small DDA console, two TASCAM DA-88s, and an Apple sequencer.

“The following year, the label came back, this time with a more heavyweight artist, so all of a sudden

we had to start taking it seriously,” says Winston. “A room that had been designed as a bit of a playroom and a place for me to get out of the house, now had lead vocals being recorded in the corner. We realised we needed to up the ante, soundproof the place and create a space to start recording drums. The first major build, which consisted of three recording rooms, was massively over-specced, and it paid great dividends.”

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FEATURE

Beechpark trundled along like this until 2004, yet Winston kept building up equipment in the control room, with outboard gear stacked up to the ceiling beginning to cause a tedious situation. Somewhere along the line, Winston was introduced to Roger D’Arcy from Recording Architecture, a studio design company based in Greenwich, London at the time.

“He thought we should go for broke, with a big control room that would have exceptional monitoring, which was music to my ears,” Winston reveals. “After some toing and froing, Roger came up with a design based around the ATC SCM300 monitors and an Audient desk, which was a huge success. The room is so solid and quiet and it worked out really well.”

Now that he had a properly acoustically treated control room, Winston could hear the deficiencies in the recording rooms, so two years later he brought Roger back to gut them and start again. “He brought

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www.audiomediainternational.com

the standard up again and now they’re particularly nice for recording acoustic instruments,” Winston adds.

Then came the crash of 2008, which – with Ireland well overextended as a nation – caused a particularly negative vibe: “I remember thinking at the time that it would take eight years to recover,” Winston recalls. “I went to AES in San Francisco that year to get a fresh perspective, and upon my return I decided that I was going to do the exact opposite of everyone else – I was going to upscale instead of downscale and build a large live room, which was the one thing we didn’t have.

“This was again designed by Roger and sat separately from the main studio (it is known as The Barn), which allowed us to run rehearsal sessions and diversify somewhat. This brought in new customers who become familiar with the studio, and allowed us to record bigger musical sessions with multiple sections.”

Tipping the Scale The whole point of this upgrade was of course to survive the recession and stay alive as a recording studio. With all the main studios in Dublin now closed, Winston became – almost by default – the last man standing.

“It did bring in new artists and some household names in Ireland, and got us through that period until around 2014 when things started to pick up again,” he explains.

“Tackling the situation head-on really paid off and even distracted from the general air of depression at the time.

We kept ourselves busy and really opened up a lot of new possibilities in terms of recording and experimentation.

“One of the things I like about the studio is that we’re out of the city centre, which a lot of recording artists also like,” Winston says. “They can just get here, relax and let their creativity flow. The more you let people be creative, the more you spread the word, and the more people are happy to come back again because they like the vibe.”

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FEATURE

During that period between 2009 and 2015, Winston also decided to form Beechpark Records, inspired by a well known jazz guitarist called Louis Stewart who he wanted to get into the studio: “It was an honour to record him and this was the first record on the label,” recalls Winston. “He unfortunately passed away in 2016 so this made it doubly important, 'Tunes' being the last album he recorded.

This brought me into the sphere of trying to sell records – but that’s another story! Being our 25th anniversary, I’m of the belief that people who have been in the industry and are still in it, should give back in some way.”

Someone Beechpark has stuck with and worked with extensively over the years is Daniel O’Donnell, arguably a mini industry in his own right in terms of breaking into and retaining international markets. He has recorded a whopping 24 albums at Beechpark, totalling over 12 million sales. “There’s an element

of this that allowed us to raise our game to international standards, because we had to step up to record and broadcast concerts in the US to huge audiences,” Winston reveals. “It allowed us to become professional in a way that I don’t think we would’ve been able to do otherwise. That was probably one of the biggest thrills I’ve ever had in terms of being involved in audio.”

The 146th AES Convention, which takes place March 20-23, marks the first time the event has been in Dublin. Having had some great experiences at the show in cities all over the world, it immediately presented a fantastic opportunity for Daire Winston and Beechpark.

“We’ve confirmed that our friend Roger D’Arcy, who is also a singer/songwriter, is coming over for that,” Winston reveals. “He was here late last year to do some recording and he is brilliant at what he does. He really is the main man and I thought it

would be a perfect opportunity to get him back over for AES. “I appreciate that while AES like to have their open studio or open theatre day within walking distance of the convention centre, I plan to get some visitors coming over to the studio on the evening of Friday 21, with Roger having recorded that day. We might even bring in a new piece of gear for a bit of excitement!”

So, with Beechpark’s original designer returning once again to record some of his next album songs, during a time when all eyes will likely be on the Irish music market, it looks like this could be another significant milestone for the studio.

“We’re very much a song and album based studio and we’ve stuck to our guns over the years,” Winston concludes. “To be able to build the studio up to this – it’s been a long journey, but a brilliant one.” n www.beechpark.com

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04/03/2019 17:24

INTERVIEW

www.audiomediainternational.com

THE RIGHT TOOLS AMI catches up with Paul Tapper, NUGEN Audio’s recently appointed CEO and the brains behind many of the original algorithms in use by the company’s products today...

How did NUGEN first come about and how were you involved in its creation?

NUGEN Audio started back in 2004 when cofounders Jon Schorah and I discovered a mutual interest in audio software, coming from very different directions. At that time, I was the lead programmer on a console games project with a leading UK game developer. Meanwhile, Jon was working as an EDM producer and DJ with a major UK record label.

When a mutual friend, who had booked a mastering studio to cut a track to vinyl, was told it wasn’t possible due to the stereo in the bass, we became interested in finding a solution to the problem through software. I applied my PhD in Pure Maths to provide a musically pleasing correction to the damaged audio with a software plugin, and after some design and useability work, NUGEN Audio’s first plugin was released.

This was soon followed by more stereo-image related plugins, and then plugins exploring other applications of mathematics to music and audio in general.

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How has the company’s ethos helped it to become a market leader and what role have you had in this?

Right from the outset, NUGEN Audio has been fully focused on providing solutions to real-life problems.

Despite our fascination with, and love of, the technology and theory behind audio processing, we believe in the role of NUGEN being able to apply those techniques to create the tools that real users actually need day-to-day. The goal is always to enhance our users’ lives – either making existing challenges easier to overcome, or producing new and exciting possibilities to ignite the imagination.

NUGEN has always endeavored to identify product categories that are either new, or currently under-served, and then striven to create the most practically useful solutions in those categories. My personal involvement in this was initially the audio algorithm design and then software implementation of the products. Over the years my role has gradually transitioned into more management and business development, and led to my current role as CEO – although I do still enjoy being involved in the occasional technical discussion, and still offer advice on the audio processing.

NUGEN Audio’s UK office

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INTERVIEW Could you describe the company’s growth trajectory over the last few years? Do you plan to leverage that growth going forward?

We experienced rather rapid growth as a company about five years ago and since then have experienced more moderate sustained growth. We have used this as an opportunity to consolidate and upgrade our processes, infrastructure and staff team to match the increased scope of the company. Also, as our brand has become more established within the broadcast and cinema audio post-production communities, we have have been working hard on providing truly professional grade robustness in our software engineering, QA processes and our customer support. We know that our customers rely on our products to get their jobs done and we take this responsibility very seriously.

Are there plans to develop your current products? And what do you think has made them industry standards?

As a company, we are constantly listening to our customers’ feedback, through support queries, one-to-one conversations at tradeshows, site visits at customers’ facilities and semi-regular customer surveys. As a result of all this listening, we always have a large pile of feature requests, niggles to fix, new product ideas, wishes and pipe-dreams. So, we’re never short of ideas for developing our existing products or creating new ones, but, of course, the challenge is in deciding which ideas will add the most benefit and value to our customers.

I think a key part of the success of our loudness measurement and correction set of plugins is the Loudness Toolkit. It has become the industry standard for loudness, thanks to its robust reliability, great flexibility and versatility. It sometimes feels like every few months there is an update to (or new requirement of), the various international loudness standards, and we are devoted to keeping up with these and realising their potential in the best possible way in software.

Our surround audio processing plugins, Halo Upmix and Halo Downmix, have also become something of industry standards. In this case, I believe this is due to the creative freedom given by the audio-processing algorithms, while ensuring that the final result is always pristine quality, undamaged audio.

Can you tell us about any developments in the pipeline with regards to future products?

We always have a wide array of different developments in-planning or underway, from bug fixes, usability improvements and feature extensions for existing products, to whole new product ranges, but I’m not going to tell you much about them… Just yet.

One really interesting project that we have in current active development, which I can allude to,

“The goal is always to enhance our users’ lives – either making existing challenges easier to overcome, or producing new and exciting possibilities to ignite the imagination”

is a collaboration with a UK university that utilises a unique new audio process to provide a new level of user control – currently unachievable with existing methods – to a much used common audio process. It’s always exciting to be on the cutting-edge of technology, and I personally really enjoy the challenge of taking some groundbreaking new ideas and making them practically applicable in software in a way that can really make a difference for users.

How would you summarise the NUGEN journey so far?

As with all fairly young companies, our journey has been a constant exploration, learning curve and an adventure.

As a company we have a motto, “playing the long game,”

which impacts everything we do and every decision we make. There’s often a temptation to cut a corner for a quick gain, in product development, customer support or marketing, but our approach is that we should always choose the option that will give the best result for the customer and the company in the long-term. This often involves taking the option that is less convenient in the short-term, but our belief is that over time, users and partners come to appreciate the approach and it works out better. We’ve been playing the long game for 15 years now, and plan to keep playing it for the next 15 ahead. n

www.nugenaudio.com

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TECH TALK

www.audiomediainternational.com

TESTING, TESTING AMI hears from Dirk Noy, Partner and Director of Applied Science and Engineering at WSDG, about the company’s Acoustic Simulation Lab in Basel, Switzerland...

How did the lab first come to fruition?

The room was opened in September 2018 and we invited some people over for a ceremonial launch event.

We worked on it with a team here locally and it took around two to three months of construction to build.

It’s kind of a modular approach – the room was already existing so we just had to put some furniture in there along with some acoustic treatment for absorption and diffusion on the walls and ceiling. When we moved here about 18 months ago the room was left empty for a long time. It’s in the basement which is tough to use for anything else, so it got to a point where we finally decided to make use of the space.

How does the testing process work?

When running acoustic simulations, you have a dry signal like speech or piano recorded in an anechoic environment, and if you listen to it, it sounds completely anechoic with no reverb on it. This is usually used as a base file where the simulation program will add the reverberation signals as they occur per the calcs, and you create a stereo wav file that you normally listen to on headphones, although this doesn’t always work perfectly – I mean who wears headphones in a concert hall?

What really opened our eyes was when we started to play around with VR goggles. Users are placed in a virtual

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3D space and as they turn their heads with headphones on, they will hear no change in the audio effect regardless of where they are looking in the space, as the headphones are basically glued to their ears. However, if you get rid of the headphones and install a number of loudspeakers, you can move your head to the right side and actually hear the reflections off the right side wall (reproduced by the loudspeaker that sits in that area). We then started testing the simulation software itself because we needed to make sure that our simulation program can actually generate the multidimensional files.

We’re using a program that can create a 5.1 simulation – which we then employ on two height levels – and it is also set up for 9.1, or rather 9.2 because we have two subs.

We have a nine channel audio file being replayed from a DAW to all nine loudspeaker channels simultaneously.

The program takes around two days to generate the files, because it takes a dry signal and generates all those reverb contents to it. We’ve not done it yet, but you could listen to a regular 5.1 or 7.1 mix in the lab as well if inclined to do so.

To do the simulation process correctly we’re using a simulation program called CATT-Acoustic, where you can transfer your room to a 3D model inside the software, and then dress it up with materials on each surface. From that information, if carefully entered and calibrated correctly,

you can then insert the audio file into the program and it will calculate the simulation files overnight. You can pretty much use any audio file you want – up to now we’ve done small concert halls with piano, speech and a choir, as well as an ice hockey arena and a train station. You could even put a piece of machinery inside a factory hall or another functional space and see what’s happening when you bring in a sound absorption panel etc.

How exactly are you putting the lab into practice?

I’ll use the train station as an example, because we recently got a dry speech signal from the train operator here in Switzerland using the actual chime and voice that they use on the platform, and we were therefore able to mimic that space and test it acoustically.

This is not a production space but a dedicated listening lab – that is the main purpose, although it must be said that it’s not in use every week. A project has to be of a certain size to make it meaningful. In the last couple of months we’ve had three or four successful projects where some client teams

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TECH TALK

have come in to look, listen and talk. In terms of products, clients usually don’t care about this side too much, as long as it sounds good. We’re using the manufacturer’s data to produce the simulation files, so in the acoustical program we can select a loudspeaker type or model and it will of course change the sound of the space depending on the product chosen.

What do you hope to achieve with the lab in the long term?

It was a significant investment so we’re very motivated to make use of it. Let’s take the train station example again.

If we have a client who is a station architect, they may have very little understanding of acoustics, so if we can let them listen to two or three acoustic treatment options with two or three loudspeakers options, we can have intelligent conversations with them about acoustical topics. They can then make a determination quite clearly about what they like and don’t like, even if they’re not familiar with the technicalities and terminology.

With the lab, we’ve tried to be simple but still comprehensive enough so that our hearing understands it as a three-dimensional sound field. I think at the moment, 9.1 is actually a good compromise in terms of representing reality – which is totally complex and has hundreds of thousands of sources – as best we can, while still being manageable in a project environment.

Because we are an international firm, we now have testing labs in New York and Berlin, which provide our global clients with these same options. The Swiss lab however was the catalyst for the original idea, and the room itself really does sound amazing.

I guess the main purpose is that it’s an application based setup that facilitates dialogue between acoustical experts and clients, audio architects and users of the space. The real value is that users can compare different degrees of acoustical treatment etc. – it makes it possible to base an educated decision on an issue that will make a meaningful improvement to the client’s environment and workflow. Apart from its role as an acoustic simulation lab, it’s a decision facilitator and dialogue enhancer! ■ www.wsdg.com

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PRODUCT REVIEW

www.audiomediainternational.com

GENELEC S360 & 7382 SAM

Stephen Bennett recently headed to London’s Metropolis Studios to test out this new studio monitor/subwoofer combo from the Finnish manufacturer...

MONITOR/SUBWOOFER

M

ost audio engineers would tell someone with the requirement to fill a large space with high-fidelity audio to “want loud, think big”. Obtaining a high SPL from a modestly sized cabinet is possible, but you usually have to trade off fidelity and higher distortion to achieve it – not to mention the heat issues you’d have with the amplification you’d need. As is so often the case, improvements in design and DSP-based processing have enabled monitor manufacturers ‘to boldly go where no-one has gone before’. With the increased interest in immersive audio, surround dubbing suites and multi-speaker theatre installs, there is a keen requirement for really loud, high-quality, reasonably small monitors.

As Aki Makivirta, research and development director at Genelec puts it, in these types of installation, you often have to squeeze a lot of speakers into a confined space, so their size is vitally important. The Genelec S360 is a two-way powered monitor which measures a relatively diminutive 530 x 360 x 60 mm, putting them into the mid-field bracket while weighing in at a

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Key Features n Smart Active Monitor (SAM) systems n Directivity Control Waveguide (DCW) technology n Iso-Pod Stand n ± 2.0 dB (39 Hz - 19 kHz) hefty 30kg. A pair of S360s are capable of generating 130dB at one metre and, alongside the 7382 sub can hit 105dB at a 10 metres distance – a comfortable spread for most of the kinds of places these speaker will end up being installed in. The frequency range of the S360 alone is 36 Hz to 22 kHz (-6 dB), but the lower end is extended considerably by using the 7382 sub.

The S360 also features an energy saving mode, the Intelligent Signal Sensing (ISS), that ‘sleeps’ the system if idle but wakes it up when required – it consumes just one watt in this mode.

The enclosure itself is, in many ways, quite unlike other modern Genelecs, being box-shaped, of MDF construction – albeit with a 32mm front baffle – and available in black or white. However, the 1.7-inch

RRP: S360 - £2,875; 7382 - £7,530 www.genelec.com titanium diaphragm compression tweeter lies in what Genelec calls a deep cone-shaped Directivity Control Waveguide or DCW. The 10” low frequency driver is based on Genelec’s master series and low-end performance is enhanced by a downward facing port.

The speaker sits on four small legs to set the bass free, which the company call an ‘iso-plate’.

Genelec pays particular attention to phase issues and the speaker’s off-axis response is excellent. The company provides ample documentation, including specifications and calibration curves to demonstrate the

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PRODUCT REVIEW “Genelec pays particular attention to phase issues and the speaker’s off-axis response is excellent”

efficacy of their design, which is always reassuring to the prospective purchaser. The speaker itself features several mounting points and the integral amplifier can be removed and racked using a special kit, which is going to be very important if it’s going to be used in a confined space. Alongside the usual power and signal connectors, balanced analogue and digital in and thru, the 250W (woofer) and 100W (tweeter) class-D amplifier has an ethernet interface for setting up Genelec’s GLM network using standard cat5 cables. This network is used by Genelec’s Smart Active Monitor (SAM) digital signal processing system to help compensate for discrepancies in the acoustic performance of any room – and you can read more about SAM in my review of Genelec’s 8331 monitors from November 2017.

The monitors also feature physical tone controls on rear DIP switches if you’re not using the SAM system and Genelec suggest settings for typical applications – the monitor is perfectly usable as a rather good ‘traditional’ studio monitor. The GLM Loudspeaker Manager software also allows the user to monitor the internal temperature of the speakers, input levels and levels to the drivers, as well as input clipping, a digital audio full scale warning and system overload protection for all of the monitors on the GLM network, which can be a mix’n’match of compatible Genelec devices.

The 7382 sub features three 15” drivers driven by a 2500W external amplifier, the RAM SW, which means the speaker can be flush mounted in a convenient location without worrying about heat issues. The sub’s connectors feature analogue LFE and digital connectivity alongside the connector for the speaker system. Using the sub takes the combined system’s low end down to 15Hz – which is going to be essential for those cinematic explosions and monster attacks.

The crossover can be set between 50 to 100Hz and has a slope of 48dB per octave.

The S360/7382 combination can work with the SAM system to apply correction over the complete frequency range, which could be a make or break deal in an installation that has a constantly changing sonic signature. Genelec also provides ample documentation for the setting up of small surround to large immersive systems, all controllable from the single GLM network, where the surround format and the frequency balance of individual monitors can be calibrated to suit the space. The software can be used to mute monitors and load calibrations from different listening positions, and you can also use Genelec’s 9301 AES/EBU Multichannel Interface that allows 7.1 channels of digital audio to be used with all of the 7300 Series of subwoofers.

I didn’t think that my studio could cope with the high output that the system is capable of producing, so I was glad when Genelec suggested I decamp to Metropolis’ studio C in London to check out the system in a 2.1 configuration. The S360s were placed above the studio’s Neve VR 72 console, while the 7382 was dropped in behind the desk – low frequencies not caring where they emanate from! The raised feet of the S360 act as effective de-couplers from the bench and initial listening at the mix position with some familiar tracks demonstrated the S360s to be an excellent mid-field monitor, albeit with the transient response and stereo imaging that befits a physically smaller system. The tweeter/waveguide combo acts in a similar fashion to a compression horn, so it’s no surprise that the speaker excels in reproducing the upper frequencies with excellent directionality. The SAM system appeared effective in compensating for the frequency problems caused

by the monitor’s placement over the substantial mixing console and the systems’ effect on the output was noticeable wherever you sat in the well-treated studio environment. The ability to adjust the system to suit the room will be extremely useful in theatre or installation applications, as will the ability to tweak each monitor’s response remotely. Turning up the volume did not appear to significantly affect the fidelity of the system and at five metres distance, the audio seemed completely unstressed at volume levels which the listener might be!

I’ve looked at many immersive style installs over the last few years. Most of them are not permanently sited and need to be moved around to different locations with wildly differing acoustics. The compact size of the Genelec system along with the SAM correction facility should help make sure that the audio’s reproduction is optimal wherever the installation resides. Any number of Genelec monitors can be tied to the same GLM network, and the high SPL/high-fidelity output is just what’s needed for modern movie theatres and dubbing rooms. With the S360/7382 combo, Genelec has indeed boldly gone – even if they still ‘cannae change the laws of physics.’ n

The Reviewer Stephen Bennett has been involved in music production for over 30 years. Based in Norwich, he splits his time between writing books and articles on music technology, recording and touring, and lecturing at the UEA.

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PRODUCT REVIEW

www.audiomediainternational.com

HEDD TOWER MAINS Nigel Palmer gets to grips with this modular full range studio monitoring system at Rimshot Studios in Kent...

STUDIO MONITORS

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PRODUCT REVIEW

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ike Thorne, an audio friend and owner of Rimshot Studios in Kent, recently told me of an upcoming HEDD main loudspeakers launch and demonstration at the studio organised by UK distributors CUK Audio – and asked if I would like to write something about them.

As those following my speaker reviews know, the usual MO is to set up units here for audition in the known acoustics of the Lowland Masters mastering room, and work with them for anything up to a couple of weeks to shake out their plus and minus points.

In this case, the short timescale in a less controlled environment felt like a daunting prospect, but as it turned out I needn’t have worried.

OVERVIEW Heinz Electrodynamic Designs, HEDD, is a German company based in Berlin and founded in 2015 by father and son team Klaus Heinz and Frederick Knop. Managing director Heinz has a long history of designing loudspeakers for many different uses, and was the founder and head of research and development of the ADAM brand; Knop is a mastering engineer and musicologist, and looks after HEDD’s sales and marketing. After achieving early success with the active Series One range, including the nearand mid-field Type 20 and 30 three-ways, the company took the bold step of introducing a modular system of full-range main monitoring as a no-compromise statement of intent to offer the best in sound quality, resolution and dynamics.

The HEDD Tower Mains systems are made up of two active building blocks, the TM80 main monitor and TMS36 subwoofer, both closed-box or nonported designs. The 280x835x400mm (11x33x16” WHD) TM80 has five drivers: two 7” woofers, two 4” midrange units (both woofers and mids have new ultrastiff honeycomb sandwich cones) and a proprietary air motion transformer tweeter (AMT). Frequency response is linear after a -6dB point at 80Hz up to a bat-eared 50kHz powered by three 300w ICEpower Class D amplifiers, the drivers being arranged in a quasi D’Apollito symmetrical array either side the tweeter to help reduce floor and ceiling reflections.

The TMS36 sub unit measures 280x580x400mm (11x23x16”), covers a frequency range from 20Hz (-3dB) to 80Hz (-6dB) and has four 9” drivers, two each at front and back to help cancel out cabinet resonances. Amplifiers are two 600w ICEpower, wired so each driver may potentially be driven at 300w.

The modularity of the system comes into play in a number of ways: start point is the TM Standard Tower, consisting of a TMS36 sub on the floor, topped with a TM80 main monitor joined to the sub with metal links, placing the AMT tweeter at around seated ear height. Then there’s the TM Extended Tower (the format heard at the demo), the same as Standard but

with an additional TMS36 at the top to make a large floorstander just over an imposing 2m (6’ 6”) tall.

And there’s more: a Standard pair of cabinets may be combined so the TM80 is mounted on a wall and the TMS36 placed nearby and turned 90º; or an Extended group could have the TM80 in-wall, and one TMS36 on top of the other out in the room. All versions may be used for both stereo and surround, making the building blocks of the system extremely versatile.

Finally, although the audio input to the tower systems is analogue by default, HEDD also provide a card, the HEDD Bridge (currently Dante-compatible), to integrate the towers into digital workspaces via audio over IP protocol where required.

LISTENING There were about 20 of us at Rimshot for the evening demo, a cross-section of people working in music and sound including engineer/producers, DJs, bloggers, musicians and distributors. After a talk by the two company principals explaining some of the thinking and technology behind the marque, CUK’s Steve Barton played a series of reference tracks both of his own and from attendees via a laptop-based system over an extended period. The HEDD Tower Mains come with a plug-in, the Lineariser, where by recording room impulse responses both the frequency and phase response may be flattened: effective though this might be judging from similar systems I’ve heard, it’s worth noting the Lineariser wasn’t used at the demo.

In fact the only concessions made for compatibility with the tracking room at Rimshot, a fairly large, medium-live space, were tall studio screens placed behind the speakers to mitigate rear wall reflections and a small reduction in low frequency output. This in a room intended for performance rather than playback, signalled to me that we might be in for something out of the ordinary.

While we as a group auditioned the system, which played into a stereo listening triangle roughly 3-4m/10-13’ per side, a number of things became apparent. Firstly, this was not like some tower speakers of the past: even bearing in mind the large listening area, the ‘sweet spot’ was huge, so there was no need to jockey for position to hear a good presentation; next, linearity in the setup was commendably wide, including a very natural and informative bass response where I could, for example, easily hear the cutoff point of highpass filters in a couple of pieces I’d mastered.

Where there was no bass in a reference below a certain point, none was reproduced as ‘phantom bass’, something I’ve found to be one of the indicators of a true monitor and a relative rarity. Another point was the unusual combination of extraordinary resolution and listenability of the Extended Tower, where one could hear deeply into any piece played from the purest classical to the most ‘out there’ electronica.

Key Features n Modular approach allows for different set ups n Advantageous directivity patterns minimise ceiling and ground reflections n Output power 2x 600 W / 4Ω cont. n Advanced µ-processor controlled safety guard RRP: Standard set - £7,589; Extended set - £11,569 www.hedd.audio My experience (and I don’t think anyone present would disagree) was that the best of the material was displayed in exquisite detail while other pieces’ faults were mercilessly exposed – but presentation somehow always remained a good listen.

A couple of standout moments for me from the demo: I noticed in a number of the recordings with male singers that the chest part of voice from the low mids upward was particularly cleanly reproduced, something I’ve found lesser loudspeakers can struggle with. Also, the studio has a great-sounding Bechstein piano, which was played by various people during pauses in the proceedings. At one point I was in the studio’s foyer and heard a particularly well-executed performance through the open door, went to see who of our number was the pianist and found it was a recording played through the Towers; someone else present also independently noticed this.

CONCLUSION The HEDD TM Extended Tower system is in a select group of the very best loudspeakers I’ve personally heard, and its resolution may well be unrivalled.

Pricing also seems thoughtfully placed, above the new generation of smart cardioid monitors but well below equivalent models from the best-known industry names. In addition, the modularity provides a unique possibility to turn a Standard setup into an Extended later for greater headroom and power when finances permit. All things considered, for me there’s a new star in the loudspeaker world, and I think one thing that’s needed for the HEDD Tower Mains to be a considerable success is for potential buyers with sufficient space to abandon preconceived ideas they may have about large tower speakers, and simply listen. n

The Reviewer Nigel Palmer has been a freelance sound engineer and producer for over 20 years. He runs his CD mastering business Lowland Masters from rural Essex.

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PRODUCT REVIEW

www.audiomediainternational.com

CUBASE PRO 10 Stephen Bennett rounds up all the new features in the latest version of Steinberg’s renowned DAW, which turns 30 years old this year...

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019 marks the 30th anniversary of the first version of Steinberg’s venerable Digital Audio Workstation. Cubase was the first DAW to combine MIDI and audio recording with virtual instruments and effects, and VST is a Steinberg technology which the company sensibly opened out for the use of other companies. Version 10 is the latest iteration – we seem to get a new version each year at the moment – and comes in various flavours to suit differing applications and budgets. This review covers the features of Cubase Pro 10, with Artist 10 and Elements 10 versions also available, each featuring a subset of features, with discounted updates for long-time users.

Version 10 is more of an evolution of Cubase rather than offering any radical change, though there are some important new features and workflow improvements in the update. For those wanting to dip their feet into the Cubase pond, there’s also a trial version available from the Steinberg website.

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My first automated mixing system didn’t have any detailed control over level changes – the SSL 4000 E being a tad out of my budget! Instead, you could take ‘snapshots’ of the state of the mixer and recall these, one by one, using MIDI timecode information as the song progressed. Cubase 10 kind of reflects back to this idea, but in a more sophisticated form. MixConsole snapshots save the current state of the mixing console for instant recall. You can add production notes to these snapshots and decide which parts of a mix (EQ, levels, individual tracks etc.) to recall. It’s a doddle to use and makes the production and managing of different mixes easier, which is extremely important for today’s ‘just in time’ production workflow.

Currently, snapshots don’t save plug-in automation – which could limit their use if you commonly automate these functions – but I hope Steinberg add this feature soon. The channel strip has been revised both in appearance and ergonomics and there are some changes in the appearance of windows and dialogue boxes, most of which won’t faze experience Cubasists one bit. You

DAW

Key Features n Audio Alignment tool for syncing stacked recordings n MixConsole snapshots for immediate store and recall n Completely redesigned channel strip n Includes Steinberg Virtual Reality production suite RRP: £480 www.steinberg.net can now drag and drop VST effects and instruments onto tracks and grab an image of your third-party software to display when selected – those supplied with Cubase already have these. The colour palletes and Add Track dialogue boxes are now ‘floating’ and so make small but important improvements in workflow, as do draggable mixer channel strips.

The bundled plug-ins have received some cosmetic improvements and are now a lot nicer to use on higher-resolution displays.

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PRODUCT REVIEW The new Auto Alignment feature allows you to line up tracks to a reference in a similar fashion to automated ADR software such as VocALign.

For music uses, being able to quickly align backing vocals or percussion will really speed things up.

Although Cubase isn’t usually the first DAW you’d turn to for post-production – though there have been some improvements for those who are composing for film – it’s useful to have the facility and it works extremely well. The choice of Time Stretching or Shifting Alignment makes it extremely useful for lining up multi-miked instruments and correcting phase issues.

Speaking of pitch ‘n time processing, Cubase’s VariAudio has received a significant algorithm upgrade and can really compete with third-party solutions. You can change the pitch, position, formant and volume of the separate audio ‘blobs’ without recourse to menus or modifier keys. It’s extremely easy to use and the quality is right up there with Auto-Tune and Melodyne – though it lacks the latter’s polyphonic editing modes.

Steinberg says that Audio Random Access 2 (ARA 2) support – which effectively allows Melodyne to work ‘natively’ in Cubase – is imminent. The programme also provides more information about how it compensates for latency, which may or may not be important depending on how you work.

There’s a nice new distortion/audio degradation plug-in, Distroyer, which has an unusual spatial setting alongside the usual filters and overdrive.

There are new loops available and the bundled Groove Agent SE 5 has been improved. From the start, Cubase took rhythm programming seriously and most other DAWs still don’t provide a percussion tool as good as the program’s Drum Editor window. Groove Agent SE 5 is the ‘lite’ version of Steinberg’s answer to the likes of FXpansion’s BFD. It now supports 32 velocity layers and the new bundled acoustic samples, called ‘The Kit’, sound very good indeed, as do the new ‘Laser Beams’ electronic sounds that you’ll be using in the ‘Beat Agent’ editor.

You can also add your own samples. It’s pretty easy to create excellent sounding electronic or acoustic backings for your work, especially with the quality of the effects on offer in the Groove Agent mixer, and you can now export these settings to the Cubase main mixer. Even though I almost always replace sampled percussion with what we laughingly call ‘real drummers’, I find being able to create realistic sounding demos helps to inspire during composition and gives my drumming colleagues some idea of how I want a song to sound. For this application, Groove agent SE 5 gives me pretty much all I need.

Cubase 10 now supports MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) which is good news for those

using controllers such as the ROLI seaboard: I really hope we are at the cusp of a polyphonic after-touch explosion! There has been some tweaking to the audio engine and the program felt snappier than 9.5 on my ancient Mac Pro. Cubase now supports the AAF transfer format alongside OMF, which should make collaboration with colleagues using different DAWs easier. With a nod to the future, Cubase offers tools that will be useful to virtual and augmented reality and ‘immersive audio’ producers. This VR production suite consists of a series of plug-ins, a third-order Ambisonics bus, an HMD connector for head tracking, a tool for creating binaural audio from non-binaural sources and a VR panning device, which is included in the VST Multipanner plug-in.

In all, it’s a comprehensive package, and with this particular area of audio production receiving a lot of attention right now, it’s good to see Steinberg taking this field seriously.

Most contemporary DAWs are mature products with each iteration bringing incremental improvements in ergonomics, while features and specifications are swapped between products like genes between bacteria. Sometimes, as in

Cubase 10’s case, looking to the past has brought improvements in workflow. If you’re a Cubase 9.5 user, the version 10 update is, as we say, a ‘no brainer’ and will feel familiar under the mouse right away. If you’re coming to Cubase for the first time, the software continues to improve and has become a powerful cross-platform audio production and composition tool that will provide for most users all of the features necessary for whatever area of audio they work in, from electronic dance music to composition for film.

It’ll be interesting to see what Steinberg do with their best-selling product as it moves into its early thirties. ■

The Reviewer Stephen Bennett has been involved in music production for over 30 years. Based in Norwich, he splits his time between writing books and articles on music technology, recording and touring, and lecturing at the UEA.

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PRODUCT REVIEW

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SENNHEISER IE 40 PRO Alistair McGhee gets to grips with Sennheiser’s professional in-ear monitoring system...

IEMS

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n-ear monitors or IEMs have been big business for a while now, with the move away from waves of on-stage monitoring washing over every open mic. That’s not to say of course that IEMs are without their own problems, but many performances now rely on in-ears to get the monitoring job done. Sennheiser has a serious reputation in the IEM world, not least because alongside its IEM product ranges, it is a massive player in the radio hardware side and there are thousands of musicians and bands relying on their Sennheiser IEMs every night. So when Sennheiser produces a new range of IEMs everyone sits up and takes notice. There’s some new tech to shout about too in the PRO range, notably new wideband drivers and what Sennheiser describes as internal cable ducts within the cable.

There are three new models: the now available IE 40 PRO which we’ll be covering here, and two bigger siblings, the IE 400 PRO and the top of the range IE 500, both coming soon. At the sub £100 point the IE 40 PRO sits in a very competitive part of the market and one in which it has to fight not only its peers but on two other fronts. Is it really worth the extra over the competition at half the price and of course there’ll always be: ‘what if I spend more...?’

Only one way to find out: fit them and fire them up.

I’m always slightly concerned opening new IEMs – I don’t know if I have ‘difficult’ ears but I often struggle to get a good fit. And fit is a crucial aspect of in-ear monitoring – nowhere else is technology so firmly in the ear of the beholder. To say nothing about sound quality, when you are putting the speaker in your ear for a couple of hours, you really do want the best fit and the best finish to your monitor sound. Initially, the IE 40 PROs just fell out, however a quick rummage in the neoprene carry case revealed a cleaning tool and three sizes of spare silicone tips – small, medium and large. I swapped the fitted mediums for large, which was large enough for big eared Scotsmen as it turned out, and the final fit was good enough to be described as excellent.

I’m always concerned that even a marginally less than perfect fit will cause loss of bass but these bad boys seemed very, very close to impeccable. Horizontal pressure on the ear pieces resulted in no real boost in bass. They were tight, but while the fit was snug the lightweight and discreet dimensions of the IE 40 PRO make them very easy to wear. The product finish on the

Key Features

ear pieces themselves is also of a very high standard. The cable is anti-tangle and replaceable which is a given really for a professional product. But you cable swappers note Sennheiser is using a proprietary connector.

So over that hurdle and onto the sound. Sennheiser makes much of the new wideband dynamic driver in the 40 PRO and you know, it’s not just marketing hype. From the off, the 40 PROs are clearly not just a well designed product but a good sounding one. Many cheaper in-ear products struggle to present a balanced picture of the audio spectrum – usually a hump in the midrange dominates the sound with the bottom end struggling and the top sizzling at best. The IE 40 PRO is just in another league all together. It has solid bass extension, great clarity through the mid range and a detailed top end.

If I were to point a finger at a weakness, it would be that the detail in the top end sometimes shades over into brightness and a touch of sibilance: more money does buy you better bass. Yet here we are in the world of legitimate personal taste. I dragged out some Audio Technica ATH E70s which are a big favourite of mine and the comparison was instructive. The E70s have class leading bass and a monster bottom end that contributes to a considerably warmer balance than the IE 40 PROs which suits my taste, however the Sennheisers are a better fit for my ungainly

n Dynamic 10mm broadband transducer for precise monitoring n Dynamic driver system reduces acoustic stress factors n Secure fit and high level of wearing comfort with single driver design n Internal cable duct fit for stage use RRP: £83 en-uk.sennheiser.com ears and in sound terms, they were in no way disgraced when compared to a product at a much higher price.

Sadly I didn’t have a pair of ATH E40s to hand for a more direct one-to-one price comparison but I don’t think the IE 40 PROs are going to be easily embarrassed. In fact, I think the IE 40 PROs are going to be pretty much at the top of the class when it comes to sub £100 in-ears.

You heard it here first. n

The Reviewer Alistair McGhee began audio life in Hi-Fi before joining the BBC as an audio engineer. After 10 years in radio and TV, he moved to production. When BBC Choice started, he pioneered personal digital production in television.

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BACKBEAT

www.audiomediainternational.com

PRO SPOTLIGHT In each issue of AMI we feature an audio professional from a range of disciplines to find out how they got started in the industry and what they’ve worked on. This month we speak to Daniel Bordovsky a.k.a. Borrtex, a soundtrack composer from Prague, Czech Republic...

What do you do?

I’m a soundtrack composer – I produce atmospheric instrumental tracks for film makers who then use it as background music in their professional video projects.

How did you get into the industry?

I went to a music school at the age of six, but didn’t like it at all! The idea of playing other people’s tracks from notes never seemed to be something for me. Even though my teacher was amazing, I was always bored. It was later on when I started coming up with my own melodies that music caught my attention, and I became more interested in production. The soundtrack genre is a place where you can do whatever you want and not be limited by anything.

What are some of your credits?

My music has been used in over 2,000 projects, from amateur short films and wedding videos through to student movies and large corporate commercials. The ones I’m most proud of are several episodes of the Gary Vee Show, which now has more than two million followers, a project for the US Government titled National Parks: A Love Story and music placement for clothing brand Moncler. Also, a very well known Hollywood film composer Junkie XL (Mad Max, Deadpool, Tomb Raider, Alita etc.) used two of my tracks in his promotional video where he presents

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his new sound library being released under Native Instruments’ company.

What is your favourite item of audio gear and why?

I’m completely in love with the old school acoustic upright piano, and it’s by far my most favourite thing in the world. Other than that I really enjoy playing with all the different sounds of my new electronic toy: a Korg MS-20 Synthesizer. I love it because it’s physically very small, so it fits well in my studio, but the amount of sounds you can create with it is beyond description!

What are some of the challenges that you face in your job?

Well, as I have my studio at home, it’s sometimes a bit more difficult to maintain the discipline and healthy boundaries between work and personal life. But when it comes to scoring films, it’s quite tough because sometimes I have a very clear idea of how the result should look like, but then here comes the director’s vision and I need to be able to understand his point of view, which is occasionally very different from mine!

What was your favourite project and why?

It’s hard to pick one, but my most favourite project was probably my latest album Music for Gary Vee which I released just a few weeks ago – it’s an exclusive

soundtrack and I was working on it for over four months.

After some thinking I decided that it needs to sound epic with a lot of percussion instruments, so it was quite a challenge to mix all the virtual tools with live recordings.

What industry professional inspired you the most to do what you do?

This one is easy: James Newton Howard. It was him who I had an amazing opportunity to meet back in 2017. His studio in L.A. and his attitude and personality started making me think that maybe I should at least try to come up with some of my own melodies. I was a filmmaker previously and was in L.A. to do some interviews, but this experience changed my mind. I made my first EP two months later... and here I am today!

What’s the best bit of advice that you can give anyone trying to break into the industry?

Give out your music for free. Send hundreds of emails to all kinds of video/film influencers and provide free value in exchange for the credits. That’s a great way of gaining the exposure which is something you need the most at the beginning, and you’d be surprised how giving out music for free changes the whole perspective. Eventually, you get paid much more anyway. It’s an easy strategy: give and get. It works 100 per cent. ■

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