Exhibitor Focus: CMI MUSIC AND AUDIO

Representing and distributing some of the worlds most prestigious pro audio brands within the Australian market, CMI Music and Audio and their respective pro audio team are set to impress at this year’s Integrate Expo, promising an innovative audio experience as they take over one of the main demo rooms at the expo, located in the ICC Building, Sydney.

Having been in the pro audio distribution game since the 70’s, CMI Music & Audio has continued to grow its impressive pro audio brand portfolio, which now includes the likes of JBL, AKG, Adamson Systems, Tascam and Pan Acoustics to name but a few. But all of the brand names in the world means nothing without the right team behind them. This is something the company has always valued, with their pro audio team’s collective industry experience spanning decades –not just within Australia, but across the globe.

One of the handful of returning pro audio exhibitors at Integrate Expo, CMI is renowned for putting on a great show, which includes an impressive array of gear to discuss with the team, talks from key personnel directly from the brands, as well as impressive demos showcasing the latest and greatest in this wide span of brands that cater directly to the specific needs of AV integrators, consultants and so on. This year’s CMI demo room promises to showcase a plethora of pioneering audio solutions, as well as launch some brand new products to the Australian market. The line of JBL products available to get up close with this year includes the much anticipated launch of the new SRX900 series of loudspeakers. This new family of line array from JBL brings about some massive upgrades from the previous (revered and ever popular) SRX800 line, including new components across the range as well as new sophisticated DSP processing. This is JBL’s most exciting entry yet into the world of line array systems and assures to impress on the demo floor for a variety of potential AV applications.

The new PRX900 series will also be exhibited this year, which again brings some impressive new technology. Also on demo in the PRX family will be the PRXONE, JBL’s most sophisticated all-in-one portable column speaker system, with a massive 7-channel mixer with-high-level DSP processing and onboard effects. The PRX family is ever expanding and fills a gap in the AV market where hi-end features and innovative control features meet affordability. For even more affordable portability, and suited for a variety of applications, both the EONONEMKII and EONONECOMPACT are going to be worth checking out, both boasting impressive integrated mixers with solid feature sets and I/O.

Lastly, for the world of installed immersive sound, the Intonato is JBL’s dedicated monitor tuning and control system, which can comfortably handle a simple stereo system right through to full immersive formats. With a wealth of analogue and numerous digital format connectivity including networked audio, Intonato comfortably covers off numerous installed applications from studios, educational facilities, museums and more.

The Adamson Systems products on displays in this year's CMI demo room, put simply, are guaranteed head turners. The Canadian company is renowned for designing and manufacturing some of the most respected line array and point source speakers on the market found on countless production riders around the globe. But the installed and network enabled lines of speakers are every bit as Adamson as one would expect.

The IS series speakers including the AD-IS5C – AD-IS7C are purpose designed for install, specifically aimed at architecturally designed spaces, where blending into surrounds is paramount. Plenty of boxes ticked there. The CS series including the CS7P –CS10 – CS119 models will give visitors a taste of what Adamson’s networked audio speaker family is capable of, future proofed for all matter of networked audio installation requirements.

Probably the most anticipated product to be demo’d is the brand new Adamson Fletcher Machine. The AFM represents the brand's bold exploration into the world of immersive and spatial audio being a hardware based renderer with a powerful accompanying app and bucket loads of DSP processing power. This new box is sure to impress and prove itself worthy for an abundance of immersive audio scenarios in live and install applications.

Renowned Japanese pro audio brand Tascam have some really exciting products that can be seen in the CMI demo room this year, with the brand going deep into networked audio territory.

The rather impressive Sonicview digital recording consoles just released this year are a must see, being Dante enabled and boasting pristine, incredibly high-end digital audio conversion, these consoles lend themselves nicely for networked audio applications. Other exciting products include the MM-DANTE converters, taking analogue signals and converting to networked DANTE format, with both Euroblock and XLR connector configurations available.

The MZ-Mixers Multizone mixers are bound to capture the attention of installers and integrators designing for hotels, restaurants, cafes and the like. Versatile routing and mixing of signals with announcement capability, plus Bluetooth enabled. Say no more. SS Series Networkable recorders are a fantastic solution for live recording and events where high channel count and pro audio digital I/O including MADI and DANTE are in use. A SSD drive caddy and up to 64 channels of recording plus dual PSU for redundancy, the SS series of recorders are purpose built for critical recording situations in the AV sector.

Lastly, Pan Acoustics will have an array of their digitally controlled beam steering speakers on the demo floor. The German company offers unique and technologically advanced loudspeaker solutions for an incredibly high level of control and response, particularly for rooms that are challenging acoustic environments with long reverb time and where speech intelligibility is integral.

With their products supporting audio formats from simple analogue, through to digital formats ranging from DANTE, AES67 as well as supporting transmissions over AoIP network connections with POE+, the potential for Pan Acoustics across the AV sector is near endless and a must see at Integrate 2023.

To enjoy the wealth of products being exhibited by CMI Music & Audio this year, as well as one off presentations on immersive and spatial audio and more, be sure to book a session here.

WORDS BY ANDY LLOYD RUSSELL

HOW TO: DIY record a live band

Reproducing this feeling in the studio or in a home recording situation is one of the greatest challenges of recording - whether it’s the absence of a crowd, the robot-like chops required to be able to play to a click track, or the disorienting experience of hearing yourself isolated in headphones, some musicians struggling tremendously to find their groove, especially if they don’t have a whole lot of recording experience.

These days, the conventional wisdom is to separate instruments as much as possible so that you can go back and fix things later on. To this end, amps are sequestered off in a separate room or cupboard somewhere and bass is DI’d. The musicians play either in the same room as the drummer or in the control room, with each wearing headphones, ideally with some way of managing their own headphone mix so that they can control how much of each instrument they hear.

Having line of sight brings back some of that intangible live feeling, producing better energy and cohesion, plus tracking everything at once means you can finish songs quickly without spending days on overdubs. There is, however, a very obvious drawback - we don’t have access to a studio with a bunch of rooms to isolate amps, or half a dozen sets of headphones with artist mixers.

The solution? Get rid of the headphones, the click, and the multi-room set up. Chuck everything in the same live room, but do it carefully - if you get the setup just right, the band will be able to hear each other perfectly without any headphones whatsoever, and the spill between drums and guitars will be minimal.

I was first introduced to this technique by a mate who read that it was favoured by legendary engineer Vance Powell, who in turn credits Glyn Johns, but it seems as though it was relatively common practice in England in the 60s. The basic principle involves setting the guitar and bass amps up in line with the resonant head of the kick drum, separating them with gobos. This mimics the setup of a band performing live on stage, enabling the musicians to hear each instrument and have a clear line of sight with one another.

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for questioning how such a setup could possibly hope to minimise bleed, with the drums placed so close to the guitar amps - the gobos might help a bit, but surely the overheads will still be more like guitar room mics...?

The first thing to consider is the dispersion pattern of the amps. Without going into too much detail about the physics behind it all, the speaker of your guitar amp doesn’t disperse sound evenly in all directions, with most sound directed out towards the front and less at the top and sides. This is especially true at higher frequencies, which are more directional, with lower frequencies dispersing a bit more omnidirectionally.

Ever noticed how when you stand right on top of your guitar amp at practice, it’s super hard to hear yourself clearly? This is the reason why.

Positioning the amps this way means the majority of guitar sound is directed out into the room, towards the musicians and away from the drum overheads and spot mics. Another thing to think about is the size of the amps you’re using. It goes without saying that the quieter you can make the guitars, the less bleed you’ll have into the drum mics. For this reason, you’ll want to go with smaller ampsI’ve found that little 5W tube practice amps are perfect because you can hit the ‘sweet spot’ at a much lower volume, rather than running big amps quietly and not driving the valves enough. What’s more, the smaller speakers on these little amps produce less of those pesky omnidirectional low frequencies that find their way into the drum overheads.

I’d even go so far as to recommend using a practice guitar amp for the bass - try filtering out the low frequencies, pushing the midrange, and blending the result with the DI’d sound to beef out the low end.

The last consideration is the directionality of your microphones. While cardioid microphones are what most people tend to have an abundance of in their mic locker, and can still produce some decent results in a pinch, for the best isolation you’ll want a handful of mics with a figure-8 (bi-directional) or hypercardioid polar pattern so that you can make use of their rejection points. For best results, use figure-8 mics on the amps (ribbons work great!) as the null points will be directed towards the drum kit, minimising bleed from the drums.

Tracking in this way will save you a fortune on recording gear and/or studio rates, and is a great option for recording bands in less-thandesirable locations - I tracked a punk band in a storage unit the other day and we came up with some great sounds. You’re never going to eliminate all of the bleed; you’ll likely hear faint drums in the guitar spot mics and definitely a healthy dose of riff in your drum overheads. But part of tracking live is about learning to embrace spill, which occurs at studios and at home recording - it’ll glue your track together and impart some of that palpable excitement, energy, and ‘vibe’ intrinsic to a band performing live in a room.

WORDS BY JARRAH SAUNDERS