Audio Media July 2014

No. 284 z July 2014

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Vintage Gear Guide We do the legwork to find out how best to invest in secondhand kit p20 IN THIS ISSUE ARTISTS

FOR PEACE

A look behind the scenes at this highquality Haitian studio

p8

GAME

AUDIO Everything you need to know about setting up a game audio facility

p22

DEAN

ST STUDIO

Inside one of London’s most storied studio complexes

p24

TECH

FOCUS

Double feature: plug-ins and audio interfaces

p26

WELCOME

Meet the team

“We’re entering a period where the general public is starting to look at audio as something more than just the sidekick to visuals.”

Editor – Jory MacKay jory.mackay@intentmedia.co.uk Deputy Editor – Jake Young jake.young@intentmedia.co.uk Managing Editor – Jo Ruddock jo.ruddock@intentmedia.co.uk Commercial Director – Darrell Carter Darrell.Carter@intentmedia.co.uk Production Executive – Jason Dowie jason.dowie@intentmedia.co.uk Designer – Jat Garcha jat.garcha@intentmedia.co.uk Press releases to: pressreleases@intentmedia.co.uk

© Intent Media 2014. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owners.

Audio Media is published by Intent Media London, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18-26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, England.

Editorial tel: +44 (0)20 7354 6002 Sales tel: +44 (0)20 7354 6000 Audio Media ISSN number: ISSN 0960-7471 (Print) Circulation & Subscription enquiries Tel: +44 (0)20 7354 6001 email: audiomedia.subscriptions@c-cms.com Printed by Printed by Pensord Press Ltd

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I

can still remember the first time I realised the power of a stereo mix. I was 13 and had just begun playing guitar when my cousin lent me a CD featuring a pretty famous lefthanded guitar player. The ‘experience’ was eye opening on a number of levels. Not only did I hear the guitar being used in a way I had never imagined, but with a set of proper Sennheiser cans (stolen from my dad’s studio) strapped tightly to my ears I heard sounds move from left to right, seemingly flying around and swirling through my head.

I had a similar experience recently when I visited a well-known microphone manufacturer and was treated to a performance of the New York Philharmonic recorded in DSD and played back over a 5.1 system. I performed in orchestras when I was younger and the depth and richness of this recording made me feel like I was once again surrounded by sections of violins, cellos, woodwinds, and brass, the notes taking their time and lingering in the air before naturally receding into the background.

The appeal of immersive audio experiences is obvious. Sound in the real world moves in more than two directions, and even a 5.1 or 7.1 home stereo system can’t recreate the feeling of being inside of the action.

There’s why we love live music. The whole appeal of the venue, the way sound moves around and envelops us is just an amazing

and raw experience. Yet it’s not just music that benefits from an immersive format. Look at Dolby Atmos, or Auro3D, or in the games world, the rise of VR headsets from Oculus and Sony.

We’re entering a period where the general public is starting to look at audio as something more than just the sidekick to visuals. Quality and believability matter again, and it’s an exciting time to be in the industry.

But can it all be a bit too much? The first time I tried the Oculus Rift system I almost hurled up my lunch (I’ve never been any good on rollercoasters). And will creating these near-realistic audio and visual environments deaden our senses in the boring old real world?

Will the audio technologies of the future make that life-changing stereo mix as outdated as a black and white TV? Or will they become just another gimmick like 3D movies – a way for cinema owners to squeeze those last few pounds from your already light wallet?

If you’re lucky enough to be at this year’s Develop conference, you’ll get a few answers from Sony Computer Entertainment’s Garry Taylor (see interview on page 42) who will be talking about what 3D audio over headphones or VR means for the games industry during his keynote. If not, you and the rest of us will just have to wait and see.

Jory MacKay, Editor

July 2014 3

CONTENTS TECHNOLOGY NEWS Telefunken debuts mic .................................. 6 Flare Audio fills out line-up ............................7 Audinate announces Dante Via .....................7

INDUSTRY NEWS New Haitian studio build ............................... 8 Pro Sound Awards gears up........................ 10 Dolby does theatre .......................................11

FEATURES DPP Prep List ............................................... 16 Will Strauss investigates what broadcast facilities should expect after the upcoming switch to file-based delivery Vintage Gear Guide ................................... 18 Jory MacKay talks to the top resellers and brokers about best practices when buying secondhand kit Dean St. Studios .......................................... 24 Jake Young visits one of the most historic studio complexes in London

FEATURE John Broomhall finds out what it takes to build a proper game audio facility p22

TECHNOLOGY

26 Pa ge

Pa ge

Reviews: Featured: Sontronics Aria .......................... 32 Warm Audio WA76 ....................................... 36 PreSonus Sceptre S8 ................................... 38 Zoom H6 .........................................................40

18

Focus: Plug-ins and Audio Interfaces .................. 26

ALSO INSIDE GEO FOCUS: Japan ...................................... 14 INTERVIEW: Garry Taylor........................... 42

ADVERTISERSINDEX Blue Microphones Cadac DPA Microphones Dynaudio Professional Genelec IBC IT Broadcast Workflow 4 July 2014

9 2 44 17 19 39 37

Mogami Neumann PLASA PMC Loudspeakers Prism Sound Pro Sound Awards Radial Engineering

29 5 15 21 10 35 43

Richmond Film Services RØDE Microphones Sony Studiomaster TC Electronic Universal Audio Waves

12 25 27 13 3 11 33

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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Telefunken Debuts M82 Broadcast Mic at InfoComm Telefunken showcased its new M82 dynamic cardioid broadcast microphone at this year’s InfoComm exhibition in Las Vegas.

Hand-assembled and tested in the company’s facilities in Connecticut, US, the M82 features a 35mm diaphragm specially designed to capture low frequencies.

The M82 is an end-address microphone, meaning that the top portion of the headgrille is pointed at the sound source, and features two separate EQ switches: High Boost and Kick EQ. These two switches function independently of each other, providing four different settings.

The High Boost switch tilts the upper mid-range and high frequencies (starting around 2kHz with a 6dB boost by 10kHz).

For a source such as an announcer’s voice, the high boost provides further articulation and airiness in the upper register. Also

valuable as a music microphone in addition to broadcast voice, the M82’s Kick EQ switch engages a passive filter that reduces some of the lower mid-range frequencies (centred around 350Hz).

The construction of the M82 borrows heavily from the U47 body style by employing a head grille of similar architecture and is finished in a durable smooth black finish. www.t-funk.com

Eventide Releases Ultrachannel Eventide has announced the availability of its new UltraChannel 64-bit native plug-in for AU, VST, and AAX64 for Mac and PC. The plug-in is a full channel strip and includes micro pitch functionality from Eventide’s flagship H8000, stereo delays with variable feedback paths, plus two stages of compression, gating, and five bands of parametric EQ. UltraChannel features a pair of dynamics processors – the O-Pressor, capable of extreme compression (this is the compressor section of the Omnipressor), and a conventional compressor with de-essing and side-chain capability.

The plug-in also offers Soft-Saturation and Transformer emulation, which recreates transformer core saturation, while its FlexiPath routing allows drag and drop for reordering the signal path of the top level components (O-Pressor, compressor/de-esser, EQ, Gate).

Eventide is offering the plug-in free of charge until midnight on 8 July. To download UltraChannel go to http://bit.ly/UltraChannel and use access code 0AA225EC. www.eventide.com

Chandler Captures the Sound of Abbey Road Abbey Road Studios and Chandler have announced the release of the TG2-500 microphone preamp. Building on the popularity of the TG2 preamp, the TG2-500 delivers the classic sound of Abbey Road’s TG12428 preamp, used in the studio’s recording and mastering consoles in the late 60s and early 70s, in the 500 series format.

The Chandler TG2-500 delivers frequency response identical to the TG2 and has the same high frequency bump and mid forward tone, along with the warmth-inducing distortion which contributes to its sound. The end result is said to be a creamy, smooth tone with an open, clear top end. www.chandlerlimited.com 6 July 2014

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Allen & Heath Adds to Qu Family

The newest, and largest, addition to Allen & Heath’s Qu series of digital consoles, Qu-32, made its debut at this year’s InfoComm exhibition. Qu-32 is a 32-fader, 38-in/28-out digital mixer, which joins the rackmountable Qu-16 (see our review in AM January page 44) and the compact Qu-24. The new unit shares the series’ key features such as total recall of settings, Qu-Drive integrated multi-track recorder, dSNAKE for remote I/O and personal monitoring, multichannel USH stream, Qu-Pad control app, and the iLive FX Library, but comes with a larger, 7in touchscreen.

The mixer was designed to double up as a studio mixer with its 32 x 32 audio interface for streaming to/from a Mac or PC, and MIDI strips dedicated to control of DAW track levels, selection, mutes, and solos. www.allen-heath.com

Steinberg Updates Nuendo Steinberg has announced the forthcoming release of Nuendo 6.5, a purchasable update to its post-production software. Nuendo 6.5 features enhanced loudness processing, bass frequency management, and an improved Automatic Dialog Replacement (ADR) taker system.

The optional Nuendo Expansion Pack (NEK) also receives a version increment, extending Nuendo’s tool set through a range of features previously introduced to Cubase 7.5, such as the Groove Agent SE 4 drum sampler and HALion Sonic SE 2 sample player.

This latest update to the audio post-production environment now offers an automatic loudness-processing feature that renders loudness-based mixes on export at user-defined loudness levels, such as -23 LUFS. Enhanced support for Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) files ensures a smooth exchange between Nuendo and Pro Tools or Media Composer, while TrackVersions, track visibility management and automatic detection of waveform transients for skipping between transient peaks add to the many workflow optimisations. Others updates include a redesigned Control Room and metering section for a better overview, the re-record mode feature for instant record restart at the original position, and Track Quick Control assignments that are saved and loaded as presets and applied to different track types. Additional highlights are VST Connect SE 2 for recording audio and MIDI via the internet, as well as the Steinberg Hub, a multifunctional platform that comprises a news section and the convenience to call up frequently used folders and recent projects. www.steinberg.net www.audiomedia.com

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Flare Audio Launches X2A at ABTT 2014 British loudspeaker manufacturer Flare Audio has announced a new, smaller compact vertical point source system – the X2A. The X2A system, comprising the X2A Compact Vertical Point Source Array, the Q12 bass, and the X0A Mini Compact Vertical Point Source Array speaker, is designed to bring the same studio reference quality using Vortex and Space technologies (from the X5A) to smaller installations and live events.

Using the company’s Space, Vortex, and Nanoflow technologies, the X2A allows sound to be produced with a minimum of interference from box pressure and resonance with the aim that the purity of sound will provide a platform for expression allowing engineers to work with the sound created by the artist, not the loudspeaker.

The X0A can be used as a low-level installation speaker, arrayed in a vertical point source, or used as a delay www.flareaudio.com

Audinate Announces Dante Via Audinate started this year’s InfoComm with a bang, announcing its 150th Dante licensee, Kramer Electronics, as well as launching its Dante Via technology.

According to the company, Via transforms Macs and PCs into networked I/O devices, allowing users to build a complete, standalone audio system of networked PCs without the need for any dedicated Dante-enabled hardware to be present on the network. In essence, any computer instantly becomes a networked audio I/O device.

“Audinate’s mission is to revolutionise the way AV systems are connected to allow people to thrive in a networked world,” stated Lee Ellison, CEO of Audinate.

“Dante Via is another example of Audinate pioneering innovation, driving the convergence of audio with an IT world. Dante Via naturally complements the vast ecosystem of Dante-enabled products developed by our 150 OEMs.” Via can be used to create a flexible audio bridge for a computer to connect with legacy USB, FireWire, and Thunderbolt audio interfaces and transform them into networked devices. Without the need for additional hardware, Dante Via transmits and receives professional quality audio via an Ethernet port to and from such endpoints.

Via can also be used to distribute or loopback audio via the network from any application such as Cubase, Pro Tools, Nuendo, Logic, Reaper, or even Skype. www.audinate.com www.audiomedia.com

AwTAC Releases Channel Compressor Awesome Transistor Amplifier Company (AwTAC) has introduced the Channel Compressor, a brand new FET Compressor for the 500 series format.

Reminiscent of classic sounding compressors, the Channel Compressor behaves like channel compression does on a console, builds up well in a mix, and is quick and easy to set.

Transformer balanced input and output help deliver a big iron sound with its associated weight, while carefully tuned discrete transistor amplifiers are used in the audio and side-chain circuit.

The FET side-chain affects the gain of the input amp and can be thought of as an ‘auto-fader’ offering very smooth sounding compression akin to optical compressors. www.kmraudio.com

V4.1 for Sennheiser Wireless Systems The Wireless Systems Manager 4.1 is available now for either PC or Mac as a free download. Version 4.1 has a function that protects any selected frequency settings before the software calculates a new plan.

The software indicates the spacing between a microphone frequency and its neighbouring frequencies to the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, whether this is another carrier or an intermodulation product. This provides a better idea about how reliable a frequency is. If not all of your microphone and monitoring channels can be accommodated within a given spectrum window, the software will go below the recommended spacing but indicate this by marking the frequency red. In this case you could consider making this frequency a spare one or assigning it to a less important wireless link – or decide to move to another part of the spectrum altogether if possible.

Additionally, version 4.1 allows users to set their own individual noise threshold. If the power of an interfering source is below the selected threshold, the frequency it is on would still be good to use; if the interfering source is more powerful (i.e. above the threshold), its frequency will automatically be disregarded for the set-up. www.sennheiser.co.uk

System 10 New from Audio-Technica Audio-Technica introduced its System 10 camera-mount wireless microphone system at InfoComm 2014.

The lightweight hot or cold-shoe mountable ATW-R1700 receiver is compact (8.9cm x 5.7cm x 2.8cm) and features an independent headphone monitor output and selectable balanced or unbalanced audio output on 3.5mm minijack connectors. Powered by an internal rechargeable (via micro-USB and included adaptor) Li-Ion battery, the System 10 camera mount unit has both receiver and transmitter battery life indicators and can be used with Audio-Technica’s System 10 beltpack or dynamic handheld digital wireless microphone transmitters.

System 10 operates in the 2.4GHz range, immune to TV and DTV interference, and is said to offer accurate sound and easy operation with instantaneous channel selection, sync, and set-up.

The system ensures clear communications

by providing three levels of diversity assurance: frequency, time, and space.

Frequency Diversity sends the signal on two dynamically allocated frequencies for interference-free communication. Time Diversity sends the signal in multiple time slots to maximise immunity to multipath interference. Finally, Space Diversity uses two antennas on each transmitter and receiver to maximise signal integrity.

The ATW-R1700 camera-mount receiver will be available in September. www.audio-technica.com July 2014 7

INDUSTRY NEWS

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RECORDING

Industry Comes Together for Haiti Audio Institute: We Are the World School of Music and Audio Engineering is the first institution of its kind in Haiti and the newest division of Artists Institute, a free professional college for art and technology in Jacmel. It features a worldclass recording studio, Pro Tools-enabled writing rooms, and a technical curriculum based on the use of tablets developed with some of the top audio engineering programmes in the world. Jake Young talks to David Belle, CEO of Artists for Peace and Justice, the non-profit organisation behind Audio Institute, about what the organisation, its partners WSDG and Nimbus School of Recording Arts, and supporters Vintage King, SSL, Genelec, Sennheiser, and more are doing for the youth of the poorest nation in the Americas.

Who’s backing Audio Institute? I see Arcade Fire are on your advisory board.

The seed funding for the initiative comes from the We Are The World Foundation and that was money raised from the We Are The World 25 For Haiti rerecording song and music video that Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie produced. Jackson Browne was there recently with us and Arcade Fire have been a supporter from the beginning.

What were the main challenges of turning traditional Haitian buildings into studios?

It was all built from scratch. They have a design inspiration from traditional rural Haitian architecture and they have the guts of great modern sound studios and recording spaces. We brought in WSDG so that they could take our design vision and campus structure – and most importantly the use of local materials and local builders – and adapt it into something that would meet what was locally feasible and at the same time meet international standards.

The Audio Institute recording studio is designed and certified by WSDG

Tell me about your working relationship with WSDG. John [Storyk, principal, designer] was introduced to us via an introduction from Arcade Fire to Electric Lady Studios. He’s been an extraordinary supporter from the beginning. They were brought in to do all of the acoustic engineering and technical layout and electrical plans. All of the guts of the buildings as I refer to it.

And your technology supporters.

I think every person involved in this project has committed to getting it done with the best resources possible on a minimal budget. Everyone involved has cut their fees, reduced fees, donated things at cost or below cost, and that’s what’s enabled us to build and create a really quality programme with really quality people and gear for not a lot of money. All of those companies provided gear to outfit all these different studios at really discounted prices and they did it all at the drop of a hat. There was no arm-twisting.

What rooms does Audio Institute feature?

There’s a very generous, beautiful live room

overlooking the ocean and a large control room, purposefully large so that we can hold classes in there in addition to it being a great big room for studio sessions. Then there’s another building that has a smaller recording room and four other rooms feed off that in a honeycomb effect so you can have workshops going on. You can have four student groups recording the same thing simultaneously. Then two other mix rooms and two really big, beautiful classrooms.

What is Audio Institute up to now?

It’s the end of the school year so everyone’s in year-end projects, which are thesis projects.

One of the things that’s really important philosophically about the education is that we’re teaching people how to work with very simple, locally available resources and tools in addition to learning the A to Z of what a big room looks like. I’d like to have graduates come out of there who can record a voodoo ceremony at the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere with a laptop and a microphone and be equally comfortable at a big board in the studio. www.audioinstitute.org

POST PRODUCTION

From the Cutting Room Evolutions post production has opened a 13,000sqft purpose-built HQ in the heart of Soho.

The facility features 33 light and spacious suites including two fully equipped Pro Tools audio suites with 5.1/Dolby E capability and HD monitoring.

At London’s Factory sound design studio, engineers Anthony Moore, Jon Clarke, and Tom Joyce provided the naturalistic soundscape for the feature film Downhill. The Factory team worked across sound design, sfx editing, dialogue editing, ADR, plus stereo and 5.1 mixes.

8 July 2014

With the World Cup taking centre stage this summer Grand Central Recording Studios worked on a TV spot created by Saatchi & Saatchi for Visa Europe called ‘Bolt To Brazil’, which features Usain Bolt as he travels from Jamaica to Brazil.

ENVY recently completed a project for Minnow Films called My Granny The Escort, which was self shot by director Charlie Russell and mixed

by ENVY’s Bob Jackson. The team, which also included a final mix by Matt Skilton, said that the audio was particularly challenging and required

much use of noise reduction and enhancement techniques using iZotope RX and Cedar software.

Jungle has been busy this month with Chris Turner completing the sound design on a cinema ad for charity Adot and mixing the titles for the BBC’s World Cup coverage. Jim Griffin and Dominic Dew worked on M&C Saatchi’s online BeatBullying campaign with Dew also picking up some new projects for Low Cost Holidays.

Want your audio post news featured here? Send any relevant stories to jake.young@intentmedia.co.uk www.audiomedia.com

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INDUSTRY NEWS

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RECORDING

EVENT

Heard Around Town At Studios La Fabrique, recent clients include Herbert Grönemeyer recording his new album produced by Alex Silva and engineered by Michael Ilbert. The Gipsy Del Mundo have recorded some new songs with Patrick Jauneaud, while Morrissey recorded his forthcoming album World Peace is None Of Your Business.

Britannia Row Studios has been humming with sessions from Ed Sheeran with Guy Massey and Jasper Dent, Little Mix with Troy Boy with Jasper engineering, and Rhodes with Tim Bran and Roy Kerr and Jasper.

String quartet Escala have also been in with Youth producing and Michael Randall engineering.

At Kore Studios in West London, House of Lions were back recently, while Rebecca Lander and her band booked in for a day of live tracking.

Notable projects at Angel Studios

10 July 2014

include the soundtrack to the West End production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, engineered by Niall Acott with assistant engineer Joshua Thomas in Studio One. Busy days at Manchester’s Bigtone Studios where Tim Gray reports: “Highlights have been sessions with Ginger Wildheart (singer with The Wildhearts), the tracks of which include collaborations with a number of very famous special guests which I unfortunately can’t announce until the tracks are released.”

Congratulations to EGREM Studios (Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales) in Havana, Cuba. The home of Buena Vista Social Club and much more is celebrating 50 years in business.

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Pro Sound Awards: Over to the Judges…

Last year’s inaugural Pro Sound Awards

The lobbying period for the 2014 Pro Sound Awards closed on 31 May, and the awards team are currently hard at work going through your entries to create a definitive list of finalists for the big night at Ministry of Sound, London, on 25 September.

Early signs point to exceptionally strong showings in the Marketing Initiative, Best Theatre Sound, and Best Permanent Installation

categories, with competition also particularly fierce for the Best Studio and Live/Touring Engineer of the Year gongs.

Stay tuned for the finalists!

Early bird tickets are still available for £79 + VAT, and include access to the Pro Sound Awards Pre-Roll, an early evening session of lively panel-style discussion, new for this year. www.prosoundawards.com

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INDUSTRY NEWS POST PRODUCTION

EVENTS

Theatre First for Atmos

By Jake Young The third title in the West End Theatre Series, captured live in high definition by Digital Theatre and distributed by CinemaLive, Ghosts was the first ever live production captured on film with audio using Dolby’s Atmos technology. Audio Media was invited to experience the production at the Dolby London Office.

The preview started with an explanation from Melissa Keeping, chairman, Event Cinema Association, about how Dolby and Digital Theatre worked together to mix and produce Ghosts in Atmos.

“Dolby’s endorsement of event cinema by producing this in Atmos is a wonderful sign and we’re all really excited

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about it,” she said. “I can’t even imagine where this will lead.

The harnessing of a theatrical production in Atmos is really exciting as well because we’re going to hear the full strength of what this product has to offer: things off the wings, sound effects, forward and backwards, and so on.”

“Digital Theatre and CinemaLive are transforming how we watch performances

that are traditionally reserved for theatre,” said Andy Dowell, regional director for northern Europe, Dolby. “For the first time, a theatre production has been captured in Dolby Atmos. This brings a unique and extraordinary experience to the cinema, making it feel as if you are sitting in the theatre itself and watching the original performance of the play.” www.dolby.com

Channel 4’s Abraham to give IBC keynote David Abraham, Channel 4 CEO since his appointment in 2010, has been confirmed as Thursday’s IBC Conference keynote speaker in the agenda-setting panel ‘Assessing the Health of Broadcast TV’.

Since being appointed, Abraham has been focused on preparing Channel 4 for the growth of connected television. His success to date has led to over 10 million registered viewers, an industry-leading Big Data initiative, and an historic high of over £1.03 billion in revenue in 2013.

The opening keynote session will deliver a high-powered panel discussion with Abraham alongside two other broadcast industry players. Attendees will gain insights that will inform and shape business strategy as IBC takes the pulse of broadcasting and asks where it fits in an increasingly on-demand and IP-based world. www.ibc.org

July 2014 11

OPINION

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Supporting Sound Design Consulting editor Jim Evans on the Tony Awards audio controversy, sound problems for World Cup broadcasters, and a fond farewell for Monty Python.

ASD hits back over Tony Awards Good news that The Association of Sound Designers (ASD) has issued an official response to the announcement that the Tony Awards is to drop the two Sound Design Awards from its future programme.

The ASD said: “We were disappointed to hear of the decision by the Tony Award Administration Committee to remove the categories of Best Sound Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Musical from their roster.

“In 2008, Howard Sherman spoke on behalf of the American Theatre Wing and Broadway League to introduce the inclusion of these new categories, saying ‘We want to reflect an evolution of the understanding of the sound designer’s role, both among artists and in the community at large.

This is not an award for placing a microphone somewhere. It’s about the creation of an aural environment that impacts our relationship to a production, just like any other design’.

“Sound design has evolved further

The FIFA World Cup Opening Ceremony was plagued by poor sound quality Credit: Danilo Borges/Portal da Copa

since 2008 and now is an integral, if not utterly essential, part of every show playing on Broadway. To absent sound designers and their work from the awards is a failure to respect the contribution that sound designers make as core members of a show’s creative team and the artistry that they bring to a show.

“We strongly encourage the Tony Awards Administration Committee to reconsider their decision.” An online petition to reinstate the Tony Awards for Best Sound Design, started by Tony-nominated sound designer John Gromada, has already attracted over 27,000 signatures and can be found here bit.ly/1hUseIR. Get writing!

World Cup Audio Own-Goal Maybe we should rephrase this item as ‘Been There Before’. The World Cup got off to a faltering start when poor sound quality left many television viewers unable to enjoy the opening ceremony. When Jennifer Lopez took to the stage to sing the official FIFA song We Are One (Ole Ola) those inside the stadium were able to enjoy her singing, but the experience of many at home was hampered by ‘appalling’ sound quality. The voices of Lopez and fellow singers Pitbull, the US rapper, and Claudia Leitte, a Brazilian pop star, sounding faint and ‘tinny’, according to the Daily Telegraph.

A source at ITV, which broadcast the ceremony in the UK, said that it had ‘no control’ over audio levels because a single feed was distributed around the world. An ITV spokesman said: “The sound problem... was caused by a technical issue with the host broadcaster, which provides the

12 July 2014

coverage of all the action at this year’s World Cup.” Older readers may care to ease back 28 years to June 1986 and the World Cup Finals in Mexico, noted more for the first appearance of the phenomenon dubbed the Mexican wave than for the quality of the football. It was, however, the poor TV sound quality that attracted the attention of both the national and trade press. It was all blamed on the ‘incompetence’ of the local broadcasters. Plus ça change.

Always Look On The Bright Side Glastonbury and all the other summer festivals aside (Metallica headlining indeed!), this summer’s live list is topped by Monty Python at the O2 Arena. The final reunion show is to be broadcast live on television. Monty Python Live (Mostly) will be screened on comedy channel Gold on 20 July, marking the end of the group’s 10-night run. The three-hour event will be preceded with a live backstage programme.

“We are very excited that not only do we get the chance to screw up on stage, we get a chance to screw up live on TV too,” Python’s Eric Idle said.

“What could be finer at the end of a long life in comedy, than a chance to reunite with old pals and say goodbye to all our fans in one final mad musical show.”

Gold will also screen a five-part series later this year celebrating Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the effect it had on the comedy world. If you haven’t got tickets for the O2, tune in to Gold. I want a licence for my goldfish, Eric... www.audiomedia.com

GEO FOCUS JAPAN

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Big in Japan Long known for its high level of quality manufacturing, Japan is home to a number of influential pro-audio brands, and has been a breeding ground for technological advances over the past few decades. But have these advances helped or hindered the recording, live, and broadcast industries? Jory MacKay finds out.

F

rom world-recognised audio brands, to a bustling live industry and a huge music market in the US, Japan is by-andlarge one of the healthiest pro-audio industries in the world.

According to the Recording Industry Association of Japan, the country is the second-largest music market in the world following the US, with sales reaching $4.42 billion in 2012 (which amounts to 26.8% of worldwide sales).

Although digital music sales dropped 25% in 2012 (the last year that precise figures are available), the country saw an overall increase of 3% across the total value of recorded music and digital music sales, the first in five years.

The big news, however, is the continuing strength of sales of physical albums, with sales in Japan the highest out of the top 20 grossing markets worldwide at 80%.

Yet, despite this, many within the music industry are concerned by the health of the market and the longterm effect of the obsession with ‘Idol’ acts.

Japanese Idol groups are manufactured pop acts admired more for their representation of youth and cuteness than musical abilities. A small handful of these groups with obsessive fans make up the majority of the Japanese music market.

The groups regularly release several versions of each record with different covers or packed with tickets for concerts or ‘shake-hand’ events (basically the opportunity to line-up and meet a member of the group for

14 July 2014

approximately 10 seconds).

AKB48, one of the largest girl groups in the country (as of May 2014 the group includes 140 members), has sold more than 30 million records and can attract up to 200,000 fans across Japan and neighbouring countries to shakehand events for a single release.

This mass manufacturing of music has led to a decrease in commercial studios and concern over audio quality. Home recording is more standard and most production companies are building their own studios (mostly software-based and ITB).

“I think there is no way to get Japanese people to return to the real traditional recording style again.

Everything is digital-based now and people have forgotten about analogue gear, especially young kids.

It’s all plug-ins with very few live instruments,” comments a music producer in the country who asked to remain anonymous.

Koenji. However, unlike in most other countries where the venue will book and pay bands, most Japanese bars and clubs work on a pay-to-play system where the artists need to sell a certain quota of tickets or otherwise pay the difference.

While this raises the question of why an act would potentially pay just to step on stage, most venues supply a high-quality sound system and a full backline, and with the artists ostensibly becoming the venue’s ‘customers’, the staff and engineers cater to almost all of the whims of even the smallest indie act (something anyone who has played shows in other countries will almost never see).

Outside of the live house scene, the trend for massive summer festivals has also been wholly embraced with productions such as Fuji Rocks, Summer Sonic, and Rising Sun Rock Festival attracting crowds to see both domestic and international acts.

Live Music Despite issues with the outdated Fueiho laws (which restrict dancing in nightclubs without a special licence) Japan, and Tokyo in particular, has an impressive live music scene from small to mediumsized concert halls (called ‘live houses’) to massive productions and festivals.

Tokyo alone has hundreds of live houses scattered across the city with higher concentrations in neighbourhoods such as Shibuya, Shinjuku, Shimokitazawa, and

Broadcast Japan’s national broadcaster, NHK, has been developing what it calls ‘Super Hi-Vision’, which pairs a picture with 16 times as many pixels as HDTV with a 22.2 multichannel three-dimensional audio format.

The NHK Science and Technical Research Labs has been working on the project since the early 1990s with BBC R&D collaborating since 2008.

While the technology has been tested at a number of events, it was the capture and playback of events at the London 2012 Olympics that showed

POPULATION: 126M (10TH IN THE WORLD)

the format’s real true potential.

Game Audio As the birthplace of the videogame industry, the Japanese games industry realised early on the importance of music and sound.

“For a long time, Japan didn’t have an indie game development scene like in the US or in Europe.

However, affordable game engines (Unity in particular) and new dedicated events such as BitSummit in Kyoto have been catalysts, as was the emergence of the mobile game market,” comments Nicolas Tsugi, a 20-year game audio veteran who worked with companies such as Konami, EA, and Sony, before starting his own game audio technology company Tsugi.

“All this translated in the need for more audio content, and often on smaller projects. It changed the game audio landscape and encouraged newcomers and well-known musicians/sound designers to become independent themselves, in the same way that some famous Japanese game producers/designers like Keiji Inafune from Capcom (creator of Megaman) have started their own smaller companies.

“Although there are still huge audio departments in companies such as Capcom, which employs up to 60 people in their audio group in Osaka, smaller companies are being created by ex-employees of the big ones.

“Attic in Tokyo is an example of a recently created small studio which is dedicated to game audio.”

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File-based Delivery – What You Need to Know From 1 October 2014, the UK broadcast industry is facing a seismic shift in the way programmes are delivered. While audio considerations are to the fore, if you still haven’t done anything about it yet there is no need to panic, writes Will Strauss.

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nless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 12 months you’ll know something significant is about to happen to television programme delivery in the UK. In what is described as the “biggest change since the move to colour”, from 1 October broadcasters will expect external programme suppliers to submit any new post-produced shows as a digital file rather than on a tape.

According to Mark Harrison, the chair of the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), the rationale behind the move is there for all to see: “Producers are already shooting and editing their programmes digitally.

But then a strange thing happens. At the moment a programme is finished it is transferred from computer file to videotape for delivery to the broadcaster. When the broadcaster receives the tape they pass it to their playout provider, who transfers the tape back into a file for distribution to the audience.”

For broadcasters this move will mean, among other things, a single industry standard, no more tape obsolescence headaches or VTR upgrades and it should make metadata ingest easier.

But how will it affect sound engineers and audio post-producers?

The Basics Fundamentally, the change is just replacing physical items like tapes, labels, and VT reports with their zeros and ones equivalents. So, instead of a plastic tape case it’ll be an AS-11 DPP wrapper. Inside the wrapper is the programme as a digital file and the associated metadata.

Loudness is Key The good news is that the content creation stage remains largely the same as for tape delivery. The only real difference is the new loudness

16 July 2014

Audio post facilities will face a number of changes after 1 October

measurement technique (EBU R128).

The DPP rules are fairly clear: all new programmes must be mixed to comply with R128. Programmes that have been mixed to the old PPM6 standard, including legacy or archive content, will only be accepted by prior agreement with the broadcaster.

The loudness check is likely to be the first part of the delivery process.

It has been written about constantly but for the sake of clarity, R128 looks at normalising audio and is based on average loudness rather than peak level.

Producers are being advised to “tell the post-production provider whether the programme is mixed to PPM or R128”, a decision based on the version of the Technical Standards to which the production company is contracted to deliver. So, expect a call.

Surround Sound and Workflow For audio-only post houses, the days of laying back to tape are probably numbered. The easiest way to get around this will be to deliver .wav files to an Avid (although, it is worth mentioning that working that way it won’t be easy to check the sync as you will possibly never see the mixed audio with the finished pictures).

If there is a 5.1 Surround Sound mix required, this “must be delivered as discrete audio tracks, not Dolby E encoded”, but Surround

Sound programmes still need the Dolby metadata to be sent to HD television sets. This is a grey area and development is ongoing.

Programmes delivering surround sound must also carry a stereo mix meeting all requirements for stereo delivery. This should generally be an automated down-mix of the surround channels using the same downmix parameters as are held in the surround metadata. The advice here is that “in order for both the surround mix and stereo down-mix to comply with EBU R128 the down-mix should be normalised before layback”.

Quality Control Matters QC is affected quite considerably by the move to file-based delivery with the responsibility falling entirely to the programme producer, and not the broadcaster. There is a perception that the responsibility has been changed, in fact it has always been this way.

Broadcasters will do basic checks but won’t do a full QC check so firstly a manual QC check will be required, with humming or buzzing, silence, and lip sync among the considerations.

Then an automated QC process will be possible where some technical checks – for audio clipping, audio dropout, and audio phase errors plus loudness and maximum peak – can be done by a computer.

The Output To complete the process the postproducer will then output an MXF file containing both the audio and video encoded material, and the required metadata. The video and audio tracks must be encoded and structured according to the DPP Technical Standards as a compatible AS-11 OP1A MXF file.

For HD files, the audio must be frame interleaved with the video and carried within a BWF container as described by AS-11. All audio tracks must be encoded as PCM with a sample rate of 48kHz at a depth of 24bits/sample.

Last-minute Changes It is highly likely that, in the early days, this delivery process will take longer than its tape equivalent. Which is fine if you allow plenty of time and nothing goes wrong. But, and here comes the biggie, if something needs to be changed or goes wrong, you cannot currently insert edits on a file.

So, if there’s a late credit change, for example, where with tape it was easy to drop in the amended shot very quickly, with file delivery, there’s no option to do this so you have to create a new full master file.

As of now, there is no consensus on how to deal with this problem other than producers will need to adhere to deadlines. The fact that they will most likely be charged by their post house for the creation of a new master may also be encouragement.

While it sounds problematic, ITV supervising editor, Emmerdale Post Production, Gary Westmoreland does have some advice: “It is really about keeping the QC process close to your edit timeline so that if you do have a failure you are not too far down the road for you to then to go back, rewind, correct the process, re-warp, and deliver from there.” www.digitalproductionpartnership. co.uk www.audiomedia.com

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Caveat Emptor The Audio Media Guide to Buying Secondhand For those looking to stretch their budget when equipping or upgrading a studio there is no better way than to buy secondhand. But how do you know whether that deal really is just too good to be true?

Jory MacKay investigates the market for buying used and brings tips and advice from the industry’s biggest brokers and resellers.

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alking into a shop selling used pro-audio and studio kit can feel like going deeper and deeper into an Aladdin’s cave passing shiny and notso-shiny esoteric pieces of kit in search of that diamond in the rough. Yet there is always the risk that when you clean the grime off that ‘vintage’ piece of kit, there’s a lot less diamond and a whole lot more rough underneath.

It would be a lie to say that the vintage gear craze is slowing down, with any self-respecting studio owner going above and beyond to fatten out their list of vintage microphones, preamps, consoles, and backline (we’re still waiting for the vintage plug-in craze to kick in). The stacks of outboard that disappeared during the initial move over to digital studios in the 90s have sprung up again, with analogue kit being a big selling point for many commercial studios.

But the path to a vintage-equipped studio is fraught with pitfalls that even the pros sometimes can’t avoid. Just as if you were buying a secondhand car sight unseen, what’s under the hood might not be exactly as advertised.

For those looking to add some flavour to their studio, or just stretch their budgets, there are a number of processes for procuring used kit, each with their pros and cons.

Where to Buy The private market is full of people moving along old kit, upgrading, or who just fancy a change. But what if you aren’t willing to part with your hard-earned cash without some type of 18 July 2014

guarantee as to what you are receiving?

“You can obviously stretch your budget and pick up a bargain, but you’re in a bit of a lottery,” comments Funky Junk founder Mark Thompson.

“Lets put it this way: we love eBay. Probably at least 50% of our work in the past year has been from things that people have bought on eBay and aren’t what they thought it would be.

If it’s a bargain there’s a pretty good chance it won’t be as it seems.”

Thompson founded Funky Junk in London in the early 1990s. It specialises in buying vintage kit, servicing and sometimes restoring it, and then selling it with a warranty. At almost the same time across the Atlantic, engineer/ producer/musician brothers Michael and Andrew Nehra were doing something similar under the Vintage King moniker. Both had become frustrated with the lack of responsibility taken by private sellers and gear brokers of the time and understood that, as Thompson puts it: “Every single piece of gear has something that needs to be done to it and most pieces of gear that come from a professional background need a lot done to them.”

Thompson uses a recent example of a Teletronix LA-2A that Coldplay

“If it’s a bargain there’s a pretty good chance it won’t be as it seems.”

Mark Thompson, Funky Junk Knowing what you can, and can’t get spares for is important

wanted to use on their new record.

The unit measured fine on all the tests but his techs said that it didn’t sound exactly right and brought in a tube specialist.

“Before that goes anywhere we’re going to make sure it sounds like a Teletronix should,” he explains. “If you were buying that same unit off eBay, you’d pay the same as you would from us or Vintage King, the difference being that we would have invested £160 in bits, maybe more, plus a couple of hours on the bench. It’s not just the cost of doing that, but finding someone who has the time to do it.”

The Personal Touch While Thomspon and Nehra have built their businesses around this model, the recording industry is still a small, tightknit group of people, and one where many deals still happen on a personal basis. Enter the pro-audio broker…

“A broker’s role is one of trust and providing a secure buffer between the buyer and the seller so that both can feel confident in trading especially when a technical authority is required to be certain of how much value for money you’re getting,” explains

Neumann mics are perenially popular on the used market

Hamish Jackson of equipment broker and studio real estate company mjQ. “Quality and assurance is the basis of a broker’s reputation, which takes a long time to establish.”

Unlike Funky Junk and Vintage King, which act more as a curated secondhand shop, a broker is responsible to both buyer and seller, which means, at least to Jackson, that sticking to a clear company policy is the best bet at making the deal as transparent as possible for both sides – something that is summed up in the unofficial mjQ motto: if it ain’t fixed, don’t ‘broke’ it! www.audiomedia.com

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Mark Thompson’s Top Tips The Funky Junk boss gives his best advice on how to make sure you get the most out of your used gear purchase.

1. Looks Matter – “Very often cosmetic condition gives a good clue as to how it’s been treated. Especially if the seller still has the original boxes. That suggests he’s up his own ass and has been looking after the gear quite well!”

2. Be a Historian – “Find a bit of history about how it’s been used: has it been used as a doorstep or did he record for say two days a month? A lot of companies offer extended warranties, so see if those are transferable.”

3. Get Hands On – “Ask if you can try it first, and if that’s too difficult then ask for an independent technical report.”

4. Get a Guarantee – “If you can’t try before you buy – and I understand a lot of private sellers or a place like eBay won’t allow you to – be sure to get some sort of money back guarantee, even if it is only for a few days.”

5. Use a Little Common Sense – “Know what you’re buying! We’re astonished at how many people come to us with bits of gear they’ve bought secondhand and have no idea all the capacitors are shot or the pots are shagged and just say ‘I assumed that’s what they sounded like’. A lot of this stuff has been used professionally. It’s been turned on 24-hours a day. It’s been rock ’n’ rolled. It’s going to need some servicing and refurbishment.

Don’t think for a moment that you’re going to go out there and buy something [that’s perfect].”

Knowing When to Steer Clear Experience counts when it comes to buying used gear. Besides going through all the right steps once you’ve begun the negotiating process (see box above), are there some pieces of kit that you should be especially wary of ?

“Anything digital can be an issue because it isn’t fixable by a normal tech as usually it has surface-mounted technology and has to go back to the manufacturer who then tends to change the board,” says Thompson.

“There is a list of stuff that you just cannot get spares for: Fairchilds, if the output transformers are gone you can’t get them and the value goes down

from £30,000 to £15,000 on the spot.

Neumann’s, with the U47 if the VF14 tube is gone you can spend a long time looking and spend a lot of money trying to find out. On an AKG C12, the capsule - you won’t get one.”

Yet it’s not just the specific model numbers that you need to be aware of. Buying secondhand smartly also means knowing what a piece of kit should sound like.

Thompson: “When capacitors go in a piece of equipment it will very often continue to work although it may become intermittent, but the sound thins out – you lose the bottom end, you lose clarity and punch. This

Electric Lady Studios in New York is home to a fully restored Neve 8078

is why I say we often see people who have bought stuff secondhand, usually processing gear, and they’re putting up with something that isn’t performing anywhere near to its optimum and they don’t realise it.”

Sound Investment While the idea of buying ‘secondhand’ might be a great way to build up your studio while saving money compared with purchasing new gear, buying ‘vintage’ is a whole other story.

There is some level of cultural weight we attach to recording gear from the ‘Golden Era’ that manufacturers continue to play off. Just look at the way new kit references the revered items of the 60s and 70s, or the sheer amount of plug-ins that claim to be the most realistic end-to-end sonic recreations of those specific models.

“People are increasingly conscious of the resale potential, much like works of art (which they are!),” says Jackson. “Trends are still quite territory-specific, for example Neumann vinyl cutting lathes are going back to Germany where the mastering industry is booming and the Chinese love affair with tape machines is still very much alive and well.”

“With computer technology and the internet over the last 15 years you’ve seen a steady and exponential increase in the amount of musicians who can record affordably,” adds Nehra.

“We still find a massive amount of this stuff and it does still change hands, but more people want it and that’s driving up the price. So, there’s only so many U47s, and however many Pultecs, Fairchilds, Teletronix LA2As, etc… So the demand is higher and the price has gone up.

There’s more users and only X amount available. When we started in 1993, a vintage 1073 was $700, now it will go anywhere from $6,500-$7,500. It’s a pretty good investment.”

Not everyone, however, is as optimistic about the continuing growth of the market and Thompson believes it is starting to soften and that prices might need to be reevaluated and lowered in the near future: “Instinctively I feel the market softening a bit. I don’t know why, maybe because the stuff we do is just the froth on the cappuccino.” www.funky-junk.com www.mjq.co.uk www.vintageking.com

The Vintage Hit List “A lot of the vintage or classic recording equipment was made at a time when the recording artists used to ask the in-house technical staff to come up with a piece of equipment that did a particular job for them, like special reverbs (Phil Spector - Wall of Sound) - or heavy compression ( Joe Meek - Telstar),” comments mjQ’s Hamish Jackson, who has brokered deals for artists and facilities such as Mark Ronson, Paul Epworth, Abbey Road, and Gary Barlow.

“In the old days, kit was generally hand-built at the studios using highquality components with durability, a wide frequency range, and that special feature of the day – the valve or tubes as the Americans call them. The big warm sound was an important ingredient – liken this to a valve-based jukebox playing in your local café: it may not be at its most accurate, but the listener

20 July 2014

finds it acceptable to listen to for some length of time.”

“There was a lot of beautifully sounding pieces and model numbers made and they were built really well, for the most part, and they sounded great because of the transformers they used, the inductors, the quality of the components, and the style of the construction,” adds Vintage King’s Mike Nehra.

“1073s, any vintage Neve modules, vintage API modules, any vintage Neumann or AKG mics whether they be tube or solid state, Urei, vintage Teletronix, Telefunken tube modules, preamps, and so-forth. Those are really popular staples but anything that is classic, whether it be British, European, American, built in the 60s and 70s – almost all brands increase in values.”

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FEATURE GAME AUDIO

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How To Build A Game Audio Studio With game audio becoming more of a focus for developers John Broomhall investigates gear and facilities for creating today’s videogame sound.

Tools of the Trade Audio Media asked around to find out who’s using what and the general nature of facilities where today’s cutting-edge audio for games is being created. By no means scientific, it’s more of a finger in the air – but the main headlines are clear enough:

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any moons ago, I recall a certain pro-audio magazine running an article on the equipment necessary for creating game music and sound. It turned out you needed a Mac running a midi sequencer, some modest stereo editing software, and the latest Kurzweil flagship: the K2000. Or thereabouts…

The article cast the game audio world of nigh on a quarter-of-acentury ago as awash with 8-bit quality sound, and reading between the lines, one populated by somewhat less than ‘pro-audio’ practitioners.

Understandably, if perhaps a tad arrogantly, it confidently forecast a time when the industry would grow up, and technical standards for fidelity would blossom to ‘CD quality’. The message was clear – all you ‘proper’ studios, stand-by, at some point this is all coming your way, because eventually those bedroom audiomancers struggling with 8-bit samples on the Amiga home computing console will no longer be able to cut the mustard.

Harsh, but fair?

Well, it’s complicated. In some respects, this was a reasonable analysis given the prevailing circumstances – how many back then really foresaw the huge explosion in reliable

22 July 2014

computerised music technology? Yet, arguably, software-savvy audio creatives in the games industry were very well placed indeed to harness the rapidly developing new recording tech and run with it as they increasingly found the game tech concurrently developing in leaps and strides. It started to become possible to ship games with believable 3D audio worlds replete with credible acoustic modelling, boasting occlusion and obstruction and a plethora of other DSP treatments in play. It wouldn’t be long before those game audio pioneers would be able to replay dozens of 3D audio channels rendered in 5.1 and then 7.1 – all running live at ‘run-time’ in a videogame via a sophisticated virtual digital mixing desk – a revolution in interactive audio.

Let’s also not forget that the notion of a ‘project studio’ was nascent – the concept that you could create master quality assets in less than top-end pro-audio conditions was to become a reality, changing the recording industry forever – from ADAT to Pro Tools… you know the rest.

Creative Opportunities Would the dominant technology limitations surrounding game audio eventually fall away for good? It was touch and go for a while. Not

MIDDLEWARE/BESPOKE SPECIFIC GAME DEVELOPMENT TOOLS WWise; FMOD; In-house proprietary tech; Unity; Unreal (Specific ‘devkit’ required for console platforms such as PS4, XBOX One, Nintendo Wii etc) DAW OF CHOICE Pro Tools; Nuendo DAW INTERFACE RME MONITORS Genelec; Adam Audio (Most rooms equipped for 5.1 and/or 7.1) HEADPHONES beyerdynamic; Sennheiser every generation of games hardware brought music to the ears of the audio community. But without doubt, the advent of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ushered in an era where creativity could blossom abundantly, far less hampered by technology than previously. Today, we live in the world of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and the future for high-quality music, sound, and dialogue, both technically and artistically, looks very bright.

Meanwhile, many of the original

EDITING SOFTWARE SoundForge; Audition SOFTWARE PLUG-INS iZotope – various; Waves – various SOUND LIBRARY MANAGEMENT Basehead; Nuendo Mediabay; SoundMiner ROOM ISOLATION Approximately half of the people asked have a fully sound-proofed, isolated room.

PROFESSIONALLY DESIGNED ACOUSTICS Roughly three-quarters of the respondents have professionally designed acoustic treatments. videogame audio types from back in the day are alive and well, creating or overseeing top-class interactive audio content. As to the level of in-house provision – it’s a mixed picture – some larger companies have created impressively high-spec’ed designer recording and mixing environments while others take a much more stripped back approach.

(And interestingly, there really is no correlation when it comes to the Bafta and Grammy awards season). www.audiomedia.com

FEATURE GAME AUDIO

Key Questions

Outsourcer’s Perspective

Steve Brown, associate audio director, Lionhead Studios, creator of the renowned Fable series, highlights the key questions to ask when setting up a new facility for game audio production.

Tim Bartlett, co-founder Of UK outsourcer The Audio Guys (whose credits include Sonic Jump & Sonic Dash, Surgeon Simulator 2013, and Forza Motorsport 5 On Xbox One).

“How many staff do you have in your project and are you planning for long-term or for the immediate short-term needs of the team? Will it be in-house talent using these facilities or will you have external partners utilise them as well?

“Does the design have flexible spaces – can it be used cross-discipline, for example, a large mixing space that can also function as a high-performance dialogue recording area/ Foley recording area. Do you need Foley pits etc? Should you have additional, adaptable acoustic treatment or fixed?

“What type of connectivity do you need between the spaces? How many different people work in the same rooms? If many people work in the rooms a good way to ensure maximum productivity is to have each room mirror hardware and software if possible. People should in theory be able to ‘plonk down and play’. However that Holy Grail is rarely achieved – there’s always something going wrong or failing in a large audio facility – having the odd spare monitor and patch bay is always useful!”

What were your top three design considerations when putting together your own private workspace and equipment?

1 “Make an outhouse functional to work from. This involved building a room inside a metal barn. This was all done with wood, due to cost, and the fact that it works well for audio.”

2 “Given that each of us in The Audio Guys needs to build up our own facilities, the ultimate aim is to end up with a room that is reasonably ‘dead’ and functional for audio. We then need to get everything we are likely to need… in each location. The basics are obviously a workstation… TV on wall… multiple monitors, etc, etc.”

3 “As far as gear goes… we use PCs, but our rooms are not really studios as such. We have very little outboard gear [as] most is done in software.

The vast majority of our gear is dedicated to our recording exploits… and this involves tons of stuff… five recorders, many (20+) mics, blimps, cases of cables, DIY kit needed for cars and building mic rigs etc, furry stuff for wind protection… stands, chargers and all kinds of accessories.”

Little Tearaway Kenny Young, head of audio for Media Molecule (developer of LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway) on design considerations for the four interconnected audio production suites in MM’s office.

“My primary concern was maintaining collaboration with the team, and that’s infinitely more important to the end result of the audio experience in our games than having a perfect monitoring environment.

The two really are totally at odds with each other – soundproof rooms scare people, and that’s not good for teamwork. So, our rooms are not soundproof – it’s important for me that we have an open door policy as much as is practical rather than being hermetically sealed off. And our rooms have windows facing onto the dev floor – this compromises the acoustics but makes us feel part of the team.

“Gear-wise, I like having a mic set up permanently and being able to record when inspiration strikes, not writing down that inspiration and booking some time for recording, and I make sure everyone in my department is set up to work that way too.”

Environmental Issues Alan McDermott, audio manager, Sony’s Evolution Studios (creators of DRIVECLUB PS4 and the Motorstorm series) discusses creating the right environment for cutting-edge racing game audio.

“The main consideration was the use of space. We had a small area to begin with, so it was about building a room into that space that would be comfortable for my sound designers to be in for long periods of time.

Next was the acoustics of each room – I didn’t want them completely dead. I wanted them to have a touch of life, hence working with The Studio People closely to ensure we didn’t pack the walls out too much. In terms of gear, we tried to future proof ourselves as far as cable runs and sockets. As for gear, I knew what systems I wanted each room to have and I wanted each room to be exactly the same in terms of kit: Genelec monitoring with surrounds built into the walls, mounted TV for Sound to Picture work and game sound design, and enough desk space to accommodate an array of outboard gear.

XBOX Audio

Kristofor Mellroth, senior audio director, Microsoft Studios, cites need, speed, and acoustics as primary considerations for their facilities.

1. Need – “Is this gear needed this year? Is it needed by only one person or useful to all? When outfitting 25 workstations, everything adds up and you won’t get enough money to do it all. Someone might need a special

soft-synth for this one effect. But would everyone use it? Make sure you maximise your dollars every year.

Ubiquity is fairly important for a large facility so avoid the tendency to buy a bunch of random stuff.”

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2. Speed – “Plug-ins and tools that are overly complex and esoteric, you probably don’t want to invest in.

Get stuff that is generic and fast that everyone can easily put to good use quickly.”

3. Acoustics – “Soundproofing is less important while to me, acoustics are more important. Bad reflections, resonance, and bass response kill time – and time is both money and quality.”

July 2014 23

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On the Road of Music Legends Jake Young goes down to a small Soho operation that has a big history.

DEAN ST. STUDIOS

T

ucked behind a nondescript black metal door in central London is one of the city’s most storied and celebrated recording complexes. This isn’t the illustrious Abbey Road or the grandiose AIR – this is Dean St. In 1976, what is now known as Dean St. Studios was bought by legendary producer Tony Visconti, who recorded the likes of David Bowie, T. Rex, and The Moody Blues here before selling it to music production company Joe and Co in 1989. After fading into somewhat obscurity in the early 2000s, director/studio manager Jasmin Lee launched Dean St. in 2007.

The Studio 1 control room is the main hub and is currently manned by head engineer Austen Jux-Chandler.

It has recently upgraded to a new Pro Tools HDX system running on one of the new Mac Pro towers, but sitting quietly in the corner is also a Studer A80 tape recorder. It belongs to Lee, who inherited it from her late father Alvin Lee of Ten Years After.

“It’s a shame that it doesn’t get used more often in sessions,” admits JuxChandler. “But when you tell people about the extra costs of lining it up, and how expensive tape is, plus the problems with syncing, most people

24 July 2014

just decide it’s easier and cheaper to stay in Pro Tools. A lot of people get nervous as well when I tell them I won’t be able to chop up their drums or comp the vocals. I think the idea that a musician would have to practice their instrument to the point where they can perform their entire part in a single take is a bit of a lost art.”

The control room houses a 48-channel SSL Duality console and loads of industry-standard outboard including pieces from Neve and Chandler. Jux-Chandler has a personal connection with Focusrite, which has given him the ISA828 mic pre and the ISA430 MkII channel strip.

ATC SCM50ASL Pros were the only monitors that Jux-Chandler found worked here.

“This room’s got character,” he says.

“The layout and treatment hasn’t changed much since Tony Visconti’s days so sometimes if you’re mixing you can notice the depth of the balance changes in certain spots, but I know this room so well it’s never been a problem. We tried out so many different speakers. The SCM50ASL Pros are perfect for this room.”

While Jux-Chandler works with Tom Odell quite often and Peace were recently in Studio 1 for five weeks with producer Jim Abbiss, Dean St.

Austen Jux-Chandler in the Studio 1 control room

Studios also supports smaller artists.

Hank Marvin was in the studio on the day of our visit. “It was funny because he did actually use the phrase ‘I’m Hank Marvin,’” laughs Jux-Chandler. “He didn’t actually give a performance but he was being interviewed and then he played a few licks.”

Old Meets New The studio owners have invested in a lot more instruments and amps for the live room in recent years. Also coming from Lee is an old Hammond C3 organ and George Harrison’s harmonium. The collection also includes a 100+-year-old Bechstein, while the newest keyboard that Dean St. has acquired is a Streetly Electronics M400. According to Jux-Chandler, the drum kit is a bit of a ‘zombie kit’. “It’s mostly a Premier with some Yamaha and Mapex pieces chucked in for good measure.”

The mic cupboard includes a couple of Royers, the R-121 mono ribbon and the SF-24 stereo ribbon; a Wunder Audio CM7 tube; Josephson C42 pencil condensers and the e22S side-address cardioid; a Crowley and Tripp El Diablo ribbon; and a home modified valve Neumann U 87 Ai condenser.

Dean St. also sublets four further studios as private production suites, one of which is rented by production company Yellow Boat Music.

Company director Paul Cartledge has been here since the Visconti days.

“It’s an ironic twist of fate that I’ve ended up back in the basement where I started,” he laughs.

On occasion Yellow Boat Music will hire Studio 1 when they need a larger space. “They hire session musicians who nail it on the first take, which is a bit scary for an engineer!” jokes JuxChandler. “But it’s always a friendly and relaxed atmosphere.”

Producer/mixer duo Charlie Russell and Brad Spence work in studios 4 and 5. They’ve most recently been working with Hero Fisher and Jake Bugg but they cut their teeth assisting different sessions and producing for Jamiroquai. Studio 4 is also on longterm shared hire to producer/mixer Alex Beitzke.

Studio 3 is a dedicated audio post-production suite in conjunction with GuiltFree, which does a lot of voiceovers for the BBC, CITV programme Horrid Henry, travel programmes, and more. The studio has a small booth, which can fit a drum kit when Dean St. runs it commercially. www.deanst.com www.audiomedia.com

FEATURE STUDIO PROFILE

Dean St. for Corey Fox-Fardell Corey Fox-Fardell is a 19-year-old singer songwriter who started writing when he was 14.

Austen Jux-Chandler runs us through To Be With You, a song that builds on the success of Fox-Fardell’s plays on Radio 1 and 6 Music.

How did the project come about?

Corey was interning for us. He was doing general odds and sods that any intern would get involved with; cleaning, making teas, getting sandwiches, all the usual kind of things. Towards the end of his three-week stint he played me his EP and I was pretty blown away by the standard of songwriting.

He let me know he had been to BRIT School, but he’s also just been sent on a songwriter’s bootcamp in Nashville that is sponsored by PRS. As payment for the internship we gave him a day in the studio.

You’re helping him develop a more refined sound?

After his initial ideas, we tracked the acoustic guitars, lead vocals, and backing vocals. Then I took that all away for a bit and worked on a few production ideas, cutting up loops and samples etc. Then we came back into the studio again to add live drums and electric guitar and replace the synth bass with a real one.

What special challenges did it present?

I suppose the timing of things; Corey likes to incorporate a lot of samples and loops so trying to get a natural performance against that sort of rigidity was hard. I had to find the right tempo that worked for the song naturally, with just him and a guitar, then make sure that all the samples were set to that before he recorded. It ended up quite a lot faster than he had it originally but to be fair, he nailed it!

www.audiomedia.com

How did you find an interesting sound for the acoustic guitar?

I kept a Neumann U 87 Ai as a control, so that was an AMS Neve 1073 and a Universal Audio LA-2A. Aside from that I also had this weird Sony flat mic, which is actually something that you would plug into a phone. There was also an old Sanyo mini tape recorder to try and get a bit of character into it. That’s a little tip that Tom Upex the studio assistant picked up from working with Jim Abiss when Peace were in. They’re new toys that are floating around the studio so I chucked them in to see if it was worth having them.

July 2014 25

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS AUDIO PLUG-INS

Expert Witness Matthew Holley talks through a few of the dizzying amount of plug-ins available.

S

oftware manufacturers of DAWs these days seem to be vying with each other as to how many sound-shaping tools they provide. Nuendo, Pro Tools, and Logic are all stuffed full of creative toys to keep you happy, surely you don’t need any more third-party plug-ins, right?

Perhaps, but plug-ins offer more than just a funky new skin for an EQ; they offer different ways to shape it, distort it, or even just monitor it.

Having the choice of a third-party EQ, or two, can really help your creativity and other types of plug-ins could potentially save your mix in a tricky situation. If you need to move from one DAW platform to another, having your own set of plug-ins that can move with you is very important.

Some plug-ins are free and fun while others represent a serious financial investment. Many seek to emulate old and classic outboard hardware while others invent entirely new devices.

Let’s start by looking at what EQ options are available. You’ll find many variations on a theme of classic hardware as well as completely new designs. Most free EQ plug-ins tend to be limited in their scope or development and so may not find a permanent home in your toolbox, but a small outlay will get you the versatile and good looking MDynamicEQ which incorporates dynamics processing. This side-chain effect is usually seen on compressors, but why not have it as part of your EQ for added versatility? You also get visual feedback in the form of a sonogram, which can be a real help in understanding how your sound is being affected by the changes you make.

Taking a more traditional approach to EQ with a plug-in based on the hardware unit found in Sony Oxford large-format consoles; the Sonnox Oxford EQ presents itself as a precision tool. With a simple, clean layout, this EQ is easy to use and you should find the result you want pretty quickly.

Recreating a classic sound of the past is the role fulfilled by the Waves

26 July 2014

PuigTec EQP-1A & MEP-5 – copies of the highly regarded Pultec units of the same name. With simple controls and a very musical sound you’ll quickly be able to dial-in an effect you like.

Reverb It can be easy to under-estimate reverb as just something to take the dryness away from your recordings, but the appropriate application of it can really enhance things. Perhaps you feel like placing the vocalist in the middle of Notre Dame cathedral?

Or maybe recreating a more intimate room setting for your drama without building several false walls around the talent? A convolution reverb plug-in is what you need for this. It recreates the environment of your choice by sampling the reverb from the actual building itself and applying it to your mix.

“It’s a given that at some point your DAW of choice will comprehensively change its core software and your favourite plug-ins will become redundant overnight.”

Matthew Holley AltiVerb is from the originators of this tool, AudioEase. It offers a wide range of sampled spaces to play with as well as the ability to make your own. Something really useful for post production is the function to take the sound of the clapper-board to recreate room ambience. When going back to the original location is no longer an option, this could be a potential scene saver for any over-dubs that may be required.

If you’re searching for a more electronic sound then there’s a huge range of choice. ToneBoosters offers its versatile TB reverb plug-in, which includes another six useful studio plug-ins – one of this year’s plug-in bargains.

Any self-respecting studio in the 80s would have had a Lexicon 224

reverb unit as part of their tool set – the ubiquitous white control box proudly on display at the centre of the desk. With the RC-24 reverb, Native Instruments has recreated this popular effects box, right down to the 12-bit sampling converter. There’s also the RC-48, which recreates the more sophisticated Lexicon 480L. Loudness Monitoring Plug-ins are not just for the fun stuff either. With the widespread acceptance of the EBU R128 protocol for mix loudness a demand for improved audio level monitoring has developed. There are cheap versions to expensive ones so pick what suits your needs/budget/abilities.

First up is the Klangfreund LUFS meter. Still in beta, but also free, this basic meter gives you an easy-to-read overview of programme loudness, as well as a peak display. It won’t give you a live readout of your programme peak levels, so you’ll have to play it all through first in real time.

TC Electronic’s LM6 is a plugin based on its own hardware. This displays the loudness history in the form of a radar sweep, adjustable from between a minute and 24 hours, making it suitable for a range of programme material. A more traditional momentary peak display wraps around the radar view along with numerical readouts, making for a busy but compact display.

Nugen Audio has a range of loudness plug-ins forming a Loudness Solution suite. Comprising four separately available tools, this suite not only gives a comprehensive monitoring overview of your audio but corrects it as well.

Cross Platform I’ve ensured that the plug-ins mentioned here are cross-platform, working on both Macs and PCs in VST, AU, and RTAS formats. It’s worth bearing in mind that some of

Matthew Holley Credit: Holly Tighe

the more esoteric choices you may find are often single platform.

Don’t forget the format you choose may have a bigger impact on your set-up than you may wish. Many plugin manufacturers include different formats as part of the cost but it pays to check your long-term plans. It’s a given that at some point your DAW of choice will comprehensively change its core software and your favourite plug-ins will become redundant overnight. Avid’s adoption of a new format, AAX, to ultimately replace its aging TDM and RTAS plug-ins is a case in point. While the shift to a more-future proof format can be seen as a wise move, the resulting cost implications of new hardware and software meant that many users went looking for DAWs that used a more universal (and cheaper) plug-in format.

Expert witness With nearly 25 years of experience in BBC Radio and freelancing, Matthew Holley is currently based at the Open University as an audio producer.

www.audiomedia.com

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Audio Plug-ins The wealth of choices when it comes to plug-ins is creating an increasingly crowded market.

Here are some of the products you need to be acquainted with.

STEINBERG

CEDAR AUDIO

MCDSP

RND PORTICO PLUG-INS

CEDAR STUDIO 6

AE400 ACTIVE EQ

The Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5033 EQ and 5043 compressor plug-ins bring the legendary Neve sound to your DAW. Available in VST 3, VST 2.4, and AU formats, these plug-ins combine the best in analogue and digital technology.

Announced at the 2014 NAB Show by restoration specialist Cedar Audio, the newly released Cedar Studio 6 suite comprises AAX and VST plug-ins that allow users to restore and improve the sound quality of their audio.

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UNIVERSAL AUDIO NEVE 1073 PREAMP & EQ PLUG-IN COLLECTION The Universal Audio Neve 1073 Preamp & EQ plug-in collection captures the sonic characteristics of one of the most revered preamp and EQ circuit ever designed bringing that ‘Neve sound’ to UAD-2 hardware and Apollo interfaces. Ĺ” &YDMVTJWFMZ /FWF MJDFOTFE 6OJWFSTBM "VEJP NPEFMMFE /FWF QSFBNQ BOE &2 Ĺ” .PEFMT FOUJSF /FWF $MBTT "

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McDSP’s new offering, the AE400 Active EQ, is used by Grammy-winning mix engineers such as Andrew Scheps and Mick Guzauski who have been lauding the versatility and sonic ďŹ delity of the only active EQ available for AAX DSP and AAX Native.

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WAVES MAXX TECHNOLOGIES Waves’ MAXX technologies are used to improve sound quality in virtually every sector of the audio market, from recording, mixing, and mastering to postproduction, broadcast, and live sound. Ĺ” "EWBODFE QTZDIPBDPVTUJD BMHPSJUINT UIBU DBMDVMBUF QSFDJTF IBSNPOJDT SFMBUFE UP UIF GVOEBNFOUBM UPOFT PG TPVOE Ĺ” 5IF SFTVMUBOU GSFRVFODZ FOIBODFNFOU UFDIOPMPHJFT TUBOE CFIJOE 8BWFTĹ? QSPDFTTPST www.waves.com

SONNOX

The Oxford Reverb is a exible reverb plug-in with full control over all of its many parameters.

Designed with the ability to create virtual spaces from scratch, the Oxford Reverb also has over 100 presets.

IZOTOPE NECTAR 2 PRODUCTION SUITE iZotope Nectar 2 Production Suite is a complete set of tools designed speciďŹ cally for voice. Producers can set up their favourite vocal settings as presets and quickly recall them every time. Ĺ”

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28 July 2014

OXFORD REVERB

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www.audiomedia.com

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

ACCUSONUS

ANTARES

DRUMATOM

AUTO-TUNE 7

According to Accusonus, Drumatom is the world’s ďŹ rst dedicated drum leakage suppression tool. It is a standalone program based on proprietary technology developed by Accusonus, based on BSS (Blind Source Separation) algorithms. Drumatom aims to locate and reduce bleed effectively, without the usual disadvantages of traditional tools like gates.

Auto-Tune corrects intonation and timing problems in vocals or solo instruments, without distortion or artefacts, while preserving all of the expressive nuance of the original performance, all with a user-interface that is clear, speedy, and easy to use.

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SOURCE ELEMENTS SOURCE-CONNECT 3.8 Voice and radio professionals can easily and instantly conduct sessions and interviews on the road using any internet connection with appropriate

www.audiomedia.com

bandwidth with the new version of SourceConnect 3.8. SourceConnect Pro X is used for real-time surround mix approvals as well as multi mic and other

multichannel audio transmissions. Ĺ” /P ĹŁ SFXBMM DPOĹŁ HVSBUJPO SFRVJSFE UBLF 4PVSDF $POOFDU BOZXIFSF Ĺ” )% EJTUJODU DIBOOFM TUSFBNJOH TPGUXBSF Ĺ” *OEVTUSZ TUBOEBSE GPS *1 "VEJP GPS QPTU QSPEVDUJPO UIF *4%/ BMUFSOBUJWF Ĺ” CJU TVQQPSU GPS 1SP 5PPMT www.source-elements.com

SOFTUBE TSAR-1 REVERB

Described as “an amazingly natural sounding algorithmic reverb that adds the room microphones you wish had been part of the original recordingâ€?. The TSAR-1 algorithm works with four separate reverb engines that feed into each other in a complex manner. This creates a wide stereo ďŹ eld that blends well with the ambience in the recording. Ĺ” 5SVF TUFSFP BMHPSJUIN Ĺ” &YUSBPSEJOBSZ WFSTBUJMJUZ Ĺ” $PNQSFIFOTJWF VTFS JOUFSGBDF BOE FYDFMMFOU

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July 2014 29

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Audio Interfaces Transferring your signal from the outside world and into your DAW of choice is one of the most important parts of the recording process. Here we round up some of the top choices for maintaining your audio integrity.

APOGEE ONE Apogee ONE is a studio quality microphone and USB audio interface designed for easily creating professional recordings on an iPod touch, iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Using Apogeeโ s premium A-D/D-A conversion, ONE produces pristine music, podcast, and voice-over recordings while also delivering audiophile quality sound to headphones.

RME FIREFACE 802

The Fireface 802 is built on the Fireface 800, but equipped with all the latest features RME has to offer. ล 64# BOE 'JSF8JSF DPOOFDUJWJUZ ล 5PUBM.JY '9 XJUI %41 ESJWFO &2 EZOBNJDT BOE '9 ล DIBOOFMT * 0 BMM DPNNPO BOBMPHVF BOE EJHJUBM GPSNBUT QSFTFOU ล )JHI FOE " % % " DPOWFSTJPO XJUI MBUFTU MPX MBUFODZ BOE TVQFS MPX OPJTF DPOWFSUFST ล J1BE DPNQBUJCMF www.rme-audio.de

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AVID

DIGIGRID

FAST TRACK DUO Following implementation of Waves SoundGrid for the DiGiCo SD consoles, DiGiCo and Waves have created SoundGrid-based studio hardware including a full line of I/Os with converters, preamps, headphone ampli๏ฌ cation, built-in DSP servers, and network switches. ล "EWBODFE BVEJP JOUFSGBDFT GPS DPOOFDUJOH NVMUJQMF %"8T BOE IBSEXBSF

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FOCUSRITE SAFFIRE PRO 26 Saffire PRO 26 is the latest addition to Focusriteโ s family of studio-quality Firewire/ Thunderbolt-compatible audio interfaces, with full 24-bit/96kHz conversion and four Focusrite mic preamps with phantom power. Saffire PRO 26 was designed with both studio recording and live musicians in mind, offering extensive input and output capabilities for maximum ๏ฌ exibility. ล 'PVS 'PDVTSJUF QSFBNQT ล 1SFDJTJPO CJU L)[ DPOWFSTJPO BOE QSJTUJOF BOBMPHVF BVEJP ล 5IVOEFSCPMU DPNQBUJCMF ล $PNQSFIFOTJWF * 0 ล JOQVUT BOE FJHIU PVUQVUT ล %VBM IFBEQIPOF PVUQVUT ล NVMUJQMF NPOJUPS NJYFT www.focusrite.com

30 July 2014

Designed for the aspiring solo musician, Avidโ s Fast Track Duo comes with everything needed to turn a Mac, PC, or iPad into a portable, easy-to-use songwriting and audio recording system. Featuring dual mic preamps/instrument inputs, linelevel inputs, and Pro Tools Express software, the studio-grade Duo enables musicians to sound their best. ล *EFBM GPS IPNF TUVEJP BOE NPCJMF BQQMJDBUJPOT ล 3VHHFE NFUBM DIBTTJT BOE SFJOGPSDFE DPOUSPMT BOE KBDLT Pลข FS QSPUFDUJPO ล &OBCMFT UIF DBQUVSF PG UXP TPVSDFT TJNVMUBOFPVTMZ BU CJU

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M-AUDIO M-TRACK EIGHT

M-Audioโ s M-Track Eight is an eight-channel, 24-bit USB audio interface designed for expanded recording capabilities with an ultra low-noise signal path, 111dB SNR, and zero-latency monitoring. Said to be ideal for recording groups, entire drum kits, or any multi-mic arrangement, the M-Track Eight combines a practical design with professional features. ล )JHI IFBESPPN JOQVUT XJUI 0DUBOF 1SFBNQ 5FDIOPMPHZ ล 6Q UP L)[ SFTPMVUJPO ล &JHIU 9-3 JO DPNCP JOQVUT XJUI JOEJWJEVBM NFUFSJOH ล %VBM IFBEQIPOF PVUT XJUI TFMFDUBCMF TPVSDF PS

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TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

MERGING

PRESONUS

HAPI

AUDIOBOX 44VSL The four-in, four-out PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL gives users near-zero-latency signal processing on all inputs and playback streams, including reverb and delay and the same EQ, compression, limiting, and high-pass ๏ฌ lter found in the PreSonus 16.0.2 digital mixer.

AudioBox 44VSL boasts Class A XMAX mic preampli๏ฌ ers and 24-bit/96kHz converters, and comes with PreSonusโ Studio One Artist DAW.

The new Hapi has many shared features with Horus, particularly the same A-D and D-A boards. A small 1U compact design makes Hapi a lower cost node on a Ravenna/AES67 network and an ideal companion to Horus where fewer channels are required. Easy remote control of all parameters can be managed by a simple web browser. ล &JHIU "&4 &#6 * 0 PO %4VC

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MOTU 828X Motuโ s 828X connects to a Mac or PC with Thunderbolt or USB 2.0 (3.0 compatible) and delivers DSP effects and mixing for 28 inputs and 30 outputs with 32-bit processing. Effects include Classic Reverb, modelled analogue EQ, and vintage compression modelled after the legendary LA-2A. ล TJNVMUBOFPVT DIBOOFMT JODMVEJOH UXP NJD QSFBNQT XJUI TFOET FJHIU 534 BOBMPHVF JO PVU TFQBSBUF NBJO PVUT PO 9-3T QMVT PQUJDBM BOE 4 1%*' EJHJUBM * 0 ล $VF.JY '9 IJHI QPXFSFE %41 XJUI NJYJOH BOE Fลข FDUT PO JOEJWJEVBM JOT PVUT ล 'SPOU QBOFM DPOUSPM GPS TUBOE BMPOF PQFSBUJPO ล 'PPU TXJUDI JOQVU GPS IBOET GSFF QVODI JO BOE QVODI PVU XIJMF SFDPSEJOH www.motu.com

SOUND DEVICES USBPRE 2

Sound Devices USBPre 2 is a ๏ฌ exible portable interface that connects professional microphones, line-level sources, consumer audio electronics, and S/PDIF digital sources with Mac OS and Windows computers via USB. It also features Windows OS ASIO drivers, allowing it to connect to popular DAW software platforms in Windows, such as Pro Tools. ล &YUFOEFE CBOEXJEUI MPX OPJTF NJDSPQIPOF QSFBNQMJลฃ FST ล 7 QIBOUPN MJNJUFST IJHI QBTT ลฃ MUFST BOE E# QBE ล %ZOBNJD SBOHF HSFBUFS UIBO E# JO CJU PQFSBUJPO

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TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Sontronics Aria VALVE MICROPHONE

Simon Allen puts his doubts aside and finds the latest release from Sontronics holds its own even against more expensive options.

B

ritish microphone design company Sontronics is now in its 10th year and has built an extensive range around one guiding principle: to design ‘task-specific’ microphones.

The company’s success story is built on build and sound quality along with reliability, but at surprising prices thanks to the fact that its products are built in Shanghai to founder Trevor Coley’s exacting specifications.

However, with a wide range of microphones already in its catalogue, where will this latest addition sit in terms of both application and sound?

With this in my sceptical mind I was very keen to get my hands on one. I wanted to find out if the Aria is really able to compete with wellknown classic microphones as it is suggested.

On The Surface There is no hiding the fact that the new Aria looks great.

Its design pulls on styles that instinctively suggest its purpose and level of quality before you even turn it on.

The satin and chrome finish coupled with the shape and size give this microphone a very attractive retro look.

The Aria comes equipped with two styles of stand mounts: a simple clip and a cradle. While the finish of the microphone is of very high quality, the suspension mount is just as spectacular. All too often cradles are poorly designed, but the Aria’s is well thought through and built with strength.

Like most valve mics, the Aria uses its own power

32 July 2014

supply unit, which is built very well, and offers a -10dB pad and a 75Hz high pass filter. There is also a blue LED to let you know when the tube has warmed up for optimum recording results, which is great.

Completing the package inside its neatly presented flight case is a good length custom cable with screw connectors to run between the PSU and the mic itself.

If the Germans built this microphone then yes, you would expect a slightly higher refinement of the engineering of some components, but to be honest, not by much.

Considering the price and what you are getting, this is definitely Sontronics’ best build quality to date, to a level of which it should be proud.

Beneath the Exterior The Aria has been predominantly designed as a vocal microphone and has a fixed, single cardioid polar pattern. It features a 1.07in gold edge-terminated capsule.

Following the capsule is the tube itself, for which Trevor Coley, the founder and designer from Sontronics, specified the well-used ECC83 from Eastern Europe.

Coley is not only proud of this choice, but he personally selects which valves actually get used in each microphone, as he reports that each one differs a little.

Another component that Sontronics is proud of is the power supply unit. The manufacturer has installed a high-quality, medicalgrade mains electricity filter to ensure a pure and interference-free supply.

Normally, you would expect

to have a slightly lower noise to gain ratio with valve microphones, which is the case here too. However, the Aria is better than many classic valve mics and it didn’t concern me on any of the recordings I made while testing it. If you wanted to mic something more ambient, then this possibly wouldn’t be the best choice.

There has been a lot of development around the Aria, and it shows. The microphone has been on the drawing board for about three years with some fairly important individuals involved over the last 12 months of R&D, including PJ Harvey, Paul Epworth, and several Abbey Road engineers. They all now own an Aria and are strong advocates for Sontronics.

There is pedigree associated with the microphone already and I think it’s well deserved.

“The Aria doesn’t just match what very expensive microphones achieve, but also shines a little of its own magic when inside a mix.”

Simon Allen

The Sound Initially, I used the microphone for several vocalists, both female and male, at Woodbury Studios.

In direct comparison with some other microphones of significantly higher value I found negligible but pleasing differences. I was really impressed by this because it’s

as if Sontronics has unlocked the secret to a great vocal microphone, which I didn’t expect. I have to admit that I had my doubts, but it wasn’t long before I realised the significance of this release.

With the female vocalist there was less noticeable difference between the microphones but the male vocalist highlighted some key benefits of the Aria’s valve.

The valve really was allowing the harmonic content to shine through in the way that you would expect to hear from classic valve microphones worth several thousands. The response was very smooth with a slight presence lift, but not quite in the sibilance territory.

Looking at the extremes: the high end, like with most of Sontronics’ mics, isn’t overemphasised but is in fact slightly tamed. I think because there was already so much clarity and detail in the sound,

thanks to the valve, there wasn’t the need to look to the ultra-highs for more detail.

At the low end, there was a lovely warmth and richness to complete a full-bodied sound, but it wasn’t too much at the same time. In fact, the result was very close to a finished mixed vocal and there wasn’t much treatment needed.

I should point out that in direct comparisons it was hard to pinpoint the Aria’s tone when the mics were in ‘solo’ mode. The sound was just as I would have expected from a more expensive vocal microphone. I’m also reassured that there isn’t anything about the sound that is out of the ordinary. As soon as you hear the microphone within a mix however, that is when its character starts to be more obvious.

Along with the silky highs that come through, the presence in the mids and its low-end depth, you also really www.audiomedia.com

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Trevor Coley, Sontronics founder, designer, and MD, speaks with Audio Media editor Jory MacKay about the thought process behind the Aria.

What was the inspiration behind the Aria and how long was the development process?

I have always loved using and hearing recordings made using valve microphones on vocals as they, especially the classic vintage models, impart something magical to the voice. For that reason, two valve mics, Omega and Helios, formed part of our line-up when we launched Sontronics in 2004. Over the years, I’ve always wanted to create a mic dedicated to vocals, which is how my first prototype for Saturn started out before it took a different, multi-pattern condenser path.

After its release, I started work on a valve vocal mic which ended up being three years in development from initial sketches and prototypes through the betatesting stage (working with PJ Harvey, Paul Epworth,

start to hear the valve come into its own.

When in many situations an unprocessed vocal could be lost in the mix, the Aria was as clear as day with the detailed harmonics coming cleanly through. This is where I believe the Aria doesn’t just match other microphones of higher value but really starts to impress. Anyone who records with the Aria will probably find that their dry signal won’t need much work at the mixing stage, achieving an easy placement of vocals in the mix.

We’ve spoken a lot about Sontronics’ ‘task-specific’ design method and how great the Aria sounds on vocals, but when you look at the mic’s specifications on paper there is no reason it can’t suit other applications too.

I used the mic on a lot of different instruments and in 34 July 2014

and the Abbey Road engineers) to its launch at NAMM this year.

What applications was it designed for and where does it really shine?

The focus for Aria was always vocals, and thanks to the way we’ve crafted the capsule as well as the individually selected valves (which I do myself ), I’m proud to say that it excels on both female and male voices, sung and spoken. I’ve been lucky enough to hear Aria used on new tracks by PJ Harvey and Paul Weller – two voices that couldn’t be more different – and the results sound so lusciously smooth yet with a real crystal clarity and depth of character.

Interestingly Aria has also become a real favourite with professional cellists.

The engineers at Abbey Road beta-tested Aria on

different placements to see what else I could achieve.

Firstly, I used the Aria as a room mic for an electric guitar cabinet which I might do normally with a valve mic. Electric guitar room sounds can vary hugely and often either need additional processing or clever mix placement, but again the Aria captured a very clear sound which worked well in the mix.

I also put the microphone through its paces with Paul Clarvis, one of London’s best session percussionists.

We ended up using the microphone on everything from shekeres and bells through to the low end of cajĂłns and an orchestral bass drum. We were both very impressed with the microphone. Nothing seemed to find a pitfall of the microphone or overload it in any way and the sound

piano and strings (as well as vocals), once on a session with Sherlock composer Michael Price, and he, along with cellist Peter Gregson and others have bought Arias and champion it as a cellist’s dream mic!

What are some of the features that set it apart from similar microphones?

Although Aria may look more conventional a microphone than some of my other designs (Saturn or Apollo, for example), it does have certain features that make it sound very special indeed. The materials used in the body construction and its size, the shape of the grille, the single-sided, edge-terminated capsule, the frequency response and the choice of vacuum tube all play a huge part. We actually tested more than 12 different types of tube before settling on the European-made

was prominent and clear. I really hope others start to realise the potential with this microphone and don’t just keep it for vocals as there are many applications where it sounds great. Although I haven’t had the chance yet, I understand that there have been reports of the microphone sounding great on cellos, which I can quite easily believe.

Conclusion I wasn’t quite prepared for the results from this microphone. To be honest, I had my doubts. However, the Aria doesn’t just match what very expensive microphones achieve, it also shines a little of its own magic when inside a mix. It is a very versatile microphone that not only suits male and female vocals but other applications too.

Due to its incredible price

12AX7 ECC83, but even in a small batch the tubes can be minutely different in character, which is why I personally select and test the valves before and after putting them in each mic.

It’s an arduous process, but that personal approach and attention to detail is what helps the mic stand out from the crowd.

Why build another tube microphone?

Just because a particular type of microphone exists

point, I think this microphone is a great choice for the growing market of home recording or small project studios. These smaller studios will also benefit from the mic’s almost ‘ready-made sound’

in our range doesn’t mean that my imagination or our R&D stops there. I’m always experimenting with different components, body materials, mic shapes, and capsule designs, and Aria grew out of a desire to create something special both in look and sound that would inspire a singer and recreate the kind of sound that would only otherwise be achievable with a vintage microphone costing many thousands of pounds.

where you don’t have largeformat analogue consoles or expensive recording chains.

This is a modern take on a valve microphone, which is ideal for the digital age.

A great British product! „

The Reviewer Simon Allen is a full-time sound engineer and record producer.

After a stint as senior engineer at City Studios in Cyprus where he headed up the new music studio, he can now mostly be found at Woodbury Studios in Hertfordshire.

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TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Warm Audio WA76 DISCRETE COMPRESSOR

Can Warm Audio’s compressor match up to the legendary status of the classic 1176? Stephen Bennett ďŹ nds out.

W

alk into any professional or semiprofessional studio facility and you’re likely to see one (or more) Urei 1176 Limiting Amplifiers. These have long been the compressor of choice for generations of musicians and, even if a vintage unit or the modern recreation from Universal Audio (UA) can’t be found, it’s likely that one of the many clones that have appeared over the years will be nestling somewhere in the equipment rack. However, if you wander into the typical project studio, processing hardware is likely to be almost completely absent, superseded

this is the iteration that Warm Audio has chosen to recreate as its latest hardware audio processor, the WA76 Discrete Compressor.

The Specs Warm Audio has developed a formidable reputation for building high-quality audio processors for reasonable prices, and devices such as the TB12 Tone Shaping Microphone Preamp and WA12 Microphone Preamp have found admirers and a place alongside more expensive equipment in many studios. Unlike some boutique manufacturers, Warm Audio’s products are aimed at those who might normally use

“The presence of physical transformers and components always seems to add a certain subtle something missing from the software models.�

Stephen Bennett by virtual recreations of classic equipment with some of the most popular options being various flavours of the 1176, which just goes to show how popular this compressor still is.

The reason for the device’s desirability among engineers is, of course, the positive way it affects any audio passing through it, which is why studios are prepared to shell out significant amounts of moolah for a vintage 1176 and why project studios owners are keen to have virtual versions.

As you might expect, the original 1176 has undergone many revisions over the years and each has its advocates.

One of the most popular is the ‘Revision D’ model and 36 July 2014

plug-ins – in fact, the WA76 costs around the same as some virtual compressors. However, it appears that Warm Audio hasn’t cut any important corners when manufacturing the WA76, as it employs fully discrete circuitry and Cinemag input and output transformers – the latter company being the owner of Reichenbach Engineering, producer of the transformers for the original Urei designs.

Popping open the WA76 reveals a well-constructed and neat layout. The most significant difference between the WA76 and the original unit is the latter is shipped with a chunky in-line external 24V AC power supply.

This choice must have had a significant impact on the build price of the unit as it significantly simplifies the circuit and enclosure design required and, as the WA76 is probably going to be used in a static studio-type situation, I think most potential purchasers will be happy with this particular compromise.

Externally, the WA76 looks like (surprise, surprise) an 1176! A significant reason for the original unit’s popularity is its simplicity in use, and the WA76 recreates this exactly.

The large and friendly backlit meter can be set to display the amount of Gain Reduction, has two settings that change the value of the 0dB indicator to display +4dBm or +8dBm levels, and a physical off switch for the unit.

The Attack knob allows the user to set the compressor’s attack time between 200 and 800 microseconds, while the release knob ranges between 50 milliseconds and 1.1 seconds. The Input knob controls both the signal level entering the unit and the threshold setting – there’s no separate threshold control, the level at which compression occurs being set in conjunction with the ratio controls, which offers gain reduction ratios of 4:1, 8:1, 12:1, and 20:1 – the last effectively turning the WA76 into a limiter.

Aficionados of the original 1176 will be pleased to hear that the ‘all ratio buttons in’ and ‘all buttons out’ modes also work on the WA76, so the full gamut of creative compression options are offered. The Output knob provides gain makeup and

the Class A output amplifier provides a signal perfectly capable of producing lownoise results with modern audio interfaces and mixers.

The rear panel is even more spartan – a socket for the power supply, a -23dB input pad button (that’s useful if you have high-output preamps or want to overload the input), and, usefully, simultaneously available balanced inputs and outputs on both XLR and TRS sockets. There’s no stereo link option (though a mod is available) but I can’t see that really being an issue on this unit, as it’s more likely to be mostly used on mono sources when tracking, rather than on a stereo bus when mixing.

In Use I compared the Warm Audio WA76 to both a vintage Revision D LN (Low Noise) 1176 and a Universal Audio 1176 revision D plug-in – which has become my ‘go to’ software compressor. The WA76 immediately sounds impressive. Patched in to

the inserts on my Metric Halo ULN-2 and fed by my 80s Neumann U87, I was presented with ‘that sound’ that I’m familiar with from hundreds of records and dozens of recording sessions.

I can get somewhat close to the same feel with the virtual 1176, but the presence of physical transformers and components always seems to add a certain subtle something missing from the software models.

Strangely, the difference in sound between the WA76 and the UA model appeared less than the difference between the Warm Audio unit and the vintage Urei, the latter sounding more ‘closed in’ to these ears spoiled by this modern world of digital clarity. However, the WA76 definitely sounds like a real 1176 and the controls behave in the expected and predictable manner – I can’t give it higher praise than that.

At the price, I can’t really fault the WA76 – apart from Warm Audio’s logo, perhaps! „

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 University of East Anglia.

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TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

PreSonus Sceptre S8 COACTUAL STUDIO MONITOR

Rob Tavaglione is left impressed by the latest innovation from PreSonus.

T

here’s just no way around it: i’ve never seen – or heard, actually – a monitor quite like this before. Leave it to PreSonus to find a new way to combine materials, modern design, and a touch of oftforgotten classic design into a reasonably priced and effective yet unusual nearfield monitor.

The Specs The Sceptre S8 employs an 8in (glass-reinforced paper) woofer and a 1.73in horn-loaded high-frequency transducer with its most notable design feature: a timealigned, coaxial, concentric woofer/tweeter arrangement that is highlighted by the use of a square horn.

Time-aligned coaxial drivers were largely popularised by Tannoy, but the S8’s design will trigger fond memories from veterans of 70s Urei 813B mains with their blue styrofoam-coated horns.

Beyond this nostalgic aspect, the S8 exhibits all modern, or post-modern, traits. They’re selfpowered (90W of Class D amplification per driver, crossed over at 2.2 and 2.4kHz for the S6 and S8 respectively) with input level trim (non-stepped), three filtering/voicing options (lowend ‘boundary’ attenuation, tweeter level with boost or cut, and HPF at 60, 80, or 100Hz), and front-ported with self-protection (both thermal and current-output limiting).

Cabinet construction is where PreSonus broke the mould with an ABS-type plastic enclosure and a similar (yet harder) faceplate/baffle, weighing in at a mere 24lbs.

38 July 2014

The considerable DSP required to achieve consistency and eliminate acoustic issues inherent to a coaxial speaker design – diffraction and reflection of low frequencies off the horn create distortion, frequency response, and imaging issues – is courtesy of Dave Gunness at Fulcrum Acoustics, whose TQ (Temporal Equalization) is claimed by PreSonus to be the key to S8’s performance.

In Use I set up the S8 pair before a mix session and found them to immediately have that coaxial cohesiveness, stability, and depth of soundstage I recalled from my early work in the 90s on coaxial Tannoys.

The time-alignment and equilateral radiation from the horn indeed provide imaging, placement, and frequency balance that remains trustworthy even as you move from side to side (or up and down) within the S8’s rather large sweet-spot.

The second most notable characteristic of the S8 was its frequency response. Without my sub, I found reasonably deep bass extension, good punch despite a slight lack of note definition, and an overall bottom end that was rather smooth and absent of the peaks/valleys often found in affordable monitors.

In addition, the top end was not shrill or brash, but instead subdued and ‘natural’.

However, the S8’s midrange qualities did not inspire such trust; I heard numerous nonlinearities and colour that was not at all familiar, or comfortable, to me.

Deep in a week of serious mixes, I loaned the S8 pair

to colleague Jeff Long for a second opinion. Long commented that the S8s “made everything sound nice� with excellent imaging, but the frequency response threw him for a loop, too. I agreed, but felt like I could use some additional opinions – time for a group listening session.

Group Therapy Having invited four engineers into my control room, I sought to most accurately calibrate the S8 pair with my sub for a demonstration.

Upon feeding the S8’s tone and adjusting the input trims, I realised just how troublesome these small adjustment pots are. Small, jumpy (un-stepped) and not exactly aligned to their legend, obtaining exactly equal output from both speakers was very difficult. Integration with my subwoofer, however, was smooth and musical, with the S8 pair clearly benefiting from the release of 80Hz and below. We unanimously agreed the S8 pair benefited greatly from a sub (a rarity for me, as subs will often divide opinion, in my experience).

We noticed ‘puffier’ bass response at low levels. We all also agreed that imaging within the wide and tall sweet spot was fantastic.

Beyond that, the group seemed confused in their assessments, not unlike me.

The S8 has a fairly uneven frequency response through the mids; there’s a noticeable 200Hz bump that is quite the opposite of the scoop found in many affordable monitors, and that bump is followed by a scoop and another bump.

The result? It was hard for me to make midrange EQ

decisions while using the S8 pair.

But get this: I mixed on the S8s for a couple of weeks and got great results. I experienced limited fatigue, well-informed clients sharing the large sweet spot with me, and mixes that were right on point! As unconfident as I was, and as colored as the mids are, I still received fine results: a fact worthy of consideration, if vexing.

Conclusion Despite success in both tracking and mixing, I cannot confidently endorse the S8.

The difficulties I experienced in calibration and the minimal voicing controls gave me reason for concern. My biggest concern is clearly the unevenness of the midrange response, though the 200Hz abundance doesn’t bother me that much (I’d rather hear mud and tame it, than go on unaware).

Despite my concerns, these S8s crank out good mixes and do a fine job of even radiation and imaging in the nearfield.

At a price of £1,300 per pair, street, they are not budget priced, but are truly midpriced monitors. „

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TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Zoom H6 HANDHELD AUDIO RECORDER

The striking design isn’t the only talking point of this portable recorder, writes Jerry Ibbotsen.

I

have to admit something.

I’ve tested, reviewed, and used a range of Zoom products over the years but I’ve never quite ‘got’ them.

Good? Yes. But deserving of their huge popularity?

To me they were the Beats of the handheld recorder market: bestowed with some fine qualities but also highly marketed.

Before the lawyers start reaching for their phones let me state one thing: it may be a spoiler for the rest of the review but I really like the H6.

The design is striking, looking like something Captain Kirk would hold on a trip to explore an alien planet. But its beauty goes much deeper.

Under the Hood Let’s start with the on-paper specs: it’s a portable recorder that can be hand-held, stand mounted, or fixed onto a camera hotshoe with a separate adaptor. It’s capable of recording six channels of audio through a combination of four Neutrik XLRs and a multi-use socket that takes a range of slot-in capsules from XY stereo to shotgun.

It can record in MP3 format (though I’d consider that a waste) or .wavs at sample rates from 44.1 to 96kHz and at 16/24 bit.

Although it takes in six channels, it’s capable of recording an additional stereo backup as well. It can also be used as a USB audio interface on PC, Mac, or iPad. Open the case and the first thing that strikes you is the unusual design. In a world of small recorders (most of which are on or under my desk) the H6 strives to be

40 July 2014

different, with a body that arches up and away from the user. The grey, rubberised chassis has a colour LCD screen, transport controls, and four small horizontal dials.

These control the input gain for the XLRs. Sitting between them are -20dB pads for each input. They’re perfectly placed for quick operation and being ‘actual switches’ you can quickly register that they’ve been activated.

In Use The H6 has a straightforward menu system that is accessed through a rocker button and I managed to alter the record settings to 48kHz/24-bit and record some material with the XY capsule without even getting the manual out of its bag (and I’m no genius).

The range of features and functions is far too long to list here but you can record, edit, and mixdown on the machine as well as adjust a wide range of parameters in both recording and playback.

There’s a graphical mixer you can tweak, adjusting levels of individual channels, for example. There are even VU meters which you can bring up on the screen during a recording, in place of the standard peak meters.

There is also a compressor and limiter, which can be applied to separate inputs/ tracks and adjusted to suit via a range of presets. You can set the machine to pre-record, adjust the MS recording, tweak the level of the line out to suit a DSLR mic input‌ the list goes on.

But all this would be nothing without decent recording quality. I tried the H6 first with the XY capsule

and recorded some speech.

The process is simple enough but you have to remember to arm the inputs/ tracks before you start.

This is done by tapping the keys that sit just above the transport buttons. The small LEDs above each one turn red, then green when you start rolling. They also flicker if you reach peak on any channel.

Level is easy to set via the dials which sit on the capsule itself and are displayed on the colour screen. I found this a little small for my eyes but it does the job nonetheless.

I listened out for handling noise, which is the weakness of virtually every handheld recorder. I know this is down to physics but it does seem a major flaw if a handheld recorder can’t be, er, handheld.

The H6 has the bonus of a large body which gives you the chance to keep your fingers further away from the capsules. There was some rattling if I moved my digits around but otherwise it was not too bad. Of course, plug in an XLR lead and use an external mic and the problem disappears.

Conclusion The recording was pretty damn good (which is some of the finest understatement I’ve used in a while). It was clean and clear and had a real presence to it. I then packed the recorder in its little case and took it to show a few friends. One is a technician

at a local university film school and the other is a BBC radio engineer. With both I did the same simple test: record some speech and play it back through headphones (there is also a small speaker).

And with both the result was the same: a lot of shock and surprise at just how nice it was. I then plugged in my Rode NTG3 shotgun to XLR one and recorded some more speech. The result again was better than I’d expected.

There was something to the

recording, something hard to define, but it was clearer, more precise, and more ‘real’ than I’ve heard from a small recorder in a while. I haven’t had the time to carry out a more exhaustive test – yet.

But there’s a project coming up shortly that will need a combination of external and internal microphones. With the prospect of using the H6 – a powerful, well designed and brilliantly performing audio tool – I’m looking forward to it. „

The Reviewer Jerry Ibbotson has worked in pro audio for more than 20 years, ďŹ rst as a BBC radio journalist and then as a sound designer in the games industry. He’s now a freelance audio producer and writer.

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The International Audio Guide series from Audio Media Each International Audio Guide focuses on an important pro-audio product line, giving independent articles followed by in depth advertorials, covering the history and current range from the leading manufacturers in their field.

Available now: 2014 International Console Guide 2014 International DAW & plugins Guide 2014 Live Sound & Theatre Guide 2014 International Monitors & Headphone Guide 2014 International Microphone Guide

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INTERVIEW

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DEVELOP SPECIAL: In Conversation with Garry Taylor John Broomhall chews the cud with Sony’s audio chief Garry Taylor ahead of his 2014 Develop in Brighton Conference keynote address.

What does your job as audio director for the Creative Services Group (CSG) within Sony Computer Entertainment Europe entail?

I’m responsible for the strategy and direction of our audio provision.

CSG’s a service group, which supports our game developers. It includes audio teams working on games embedded in our studios around the UK and we also do a lot for marketing as well as for Sony (SCEI) in Japan. My primary role is supporting our audio people in the ‘first party’ studios, looking at their projects, helping them decide what they’re going to do and how, and then facilitating the technical and content-related resources they need to make the best-sounding games they can. We have teams based at Guerrilla (Cambridge) and Evolution, plus our London studio – but I also have plenty of contact with key developers like Media Molecule and Guerrilla (Amsterdam). In addition, I’m closely involved with the Audio Standards Working Group (ASWG) – we publish guidance and technical papers on audio development for PlayStation platforms generally.

the culture within each studio and the types of game they’re making, so there’s not necessarily a single production process to introduce that will work for everyone – it’s important to look at things on an individual basis and work out what’s specifically right in each case.

What do you see as the most common problems people in the game audio industry face?

It’s interesting, a couple of years back a lot of the problems we faced were technical. But that’s really not the case to such a degree anymore. Obviously, there are always technical issues that need to be resolved, but nowadays it’s more to do with communication between audio teams and the rest of the development disciplines. Technical issues like lack of memory, lack of voices, lack of resource are, to a greater extent, falling away but now, more than ever, we need to ensure our audio teams are involved very early in the design process, building relationships with the game team from the get-go.

However, there’s no obvious catchall solution. Our teams are very different from each other in the way they work,

“We need to ensure our audio teams are involved very early in the design process, building relationships with the game team from the get-go.”

Garry Taylor

42 July 2014

At last year’s Develop Conference, London Studios’ Joanna Orland (sound design) and Jim Fowler (music) talked about their proactive approach with the team on Book of Spells where they established a vocabulary and set of references to help non-audio team members to articulate issues about audio effectively – is that a good example?

We’re a service group and the game teams are ‘clients’ so we have to do our research and pitch ideas to get their buy-in. With Book Of Spells, Joanna and Jim thought very hard about what they were trying to achieve and put together style guides and show-reels, demonstrating what they believed would be best for the title – not just

for consumption by the dev team, but also JK Rowling herself. The pay-off for all the groundwork was that our presentations about audio direction engendered strong buy-in from the start, then during production, things went smoothly with a sense that the team had real confidence in what we were trying to deliver.

We won the Develop Audio Accomplishment Award for that

game – recognition like that really helps spread the word too.

So presumably, you’ll be talking more about communication in your Develop keynote… What else is on your mind?

I’m going to talk a bit about toolsets.

Audio development tools have improved a great deal over the last three to four years – from being just ‘good enough to do the job with little sophistication’, to what you might describe as robust, professionally presented offerings with much greater functionality. It used to be the case that you’d put something into a sound engine and hope it would come out the other end as you intended it, whereas now we have tools to track signal paths with profiling tools showing us what’s going on at every stage. One thing I’ve been heavily involved with is the establishment of loudness standards, which have been rolled out across a lot of the industry.

Our loudness standard is now supported by all the major middleware companies like WWise and FMOD and many third party plug-in manufacturers include an ‘ASWG’ pre-set in their tools.

What game audio has floated your audio boat recently?

For me, The Last of Us was a work of art in terms of audio. I was speaking to

the Naughty Dog audio team about it and they were asking me for feedback – a critique – I found it very difficult because it all works so well. It’s very hard to fault. I must say I also really enjoyed Bioshock Infinite – fantastic content. The music was brilliant. No wonder it cleared up at the awards!

What developments do you expect to see for audio on PlayStation platforms in the coming period?

There’s a bunch of stuff I can’t talk about yet, but I will say I’m very interested to see what people can do with audio for Morpheus, Sony’s new virtual reality headset, which has a real-time binaural 3D audio system. With the addition of head tracking, the sensation of 3D sound over a normal pair of headphones is stunning. We’re still working on the tech but I’m really excited about what other developers will make of it.

The demo we showed at GDC and E3 – The Deep, where the player goes underwater in this big cage surrounded by sharks and various other marine life, sounds phenomenal.

Garry Taylor Will be giving The Audio Track Keynote Address at the Develop In Brighton Conference on Thursday 10 July 2014.

For further details head to www.developconference.com

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