PSNE January 2019

January 2019

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P3 JANUARY 2019 www.psneurope.com

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EDITORIAL Editor: Daniel Gumble daniel.gumble@futurenet.com • +44 (0)203 871 7371

Welcome

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DANIEL GUMBLE

@PSNEurope

W

ell didn’t that go fast? It feels like it was only a few weeks back that I was hurriedly typing away at this page for our January 2018 edition, such has been the breakneck pace of the past 12 months in this industry we call audio.

In the final quarter of 2018 alone we saw some incredible acquisitions across the industry, primarily involving Italy’s RCF Group and UK rental giant SSE, which was picked up by Canada’s Solotech in a deal that raised eyebrows across the touring market. Plus, we also had the small matter of our very own Pro Sound Awards, which proved to be far and away the most memorable outing in the event’s history.

Now, as we prepare to shake off the lingering hangover and the additional pounds acquired over the Christmas period by pounding the tiles of the Anaheim Convention Centre, the focus is, of course, very much on NAMM. And in this issue, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about this year’s event.

Over on p11 we have an extensive interview with NAMM president and CEO Joe Lamond, who tells us why he believes the show offers something truly unique in today’s shifting trade show landscape, while on p17 we hear from some of this year’s top exhibitors to find out what keeps them coming back year after year. Plus, we have a nifty guide to what’s happening when, which you can find on p51.

Meanwhile, on p23 PSNEurope presents an exclusive look at the brand new KSL Series from d&b audiotechnik, which, after hitting the road with legendary dance outfit the Chemical Brothers, will be on show in Anaheim for all to see.

In addition, we hear from Oscar winning production sound mixer Simon Hayes (p36) about his work on the incredible Mary Poppins Returns and how he made the journey from Guy Ritchie’s go-to sound man to one of the most in-demand sound professionals for musical cinema on the planet.

In the meantime, depending on when exactly you’re reading this, we advise you to pack a comfy pair of shoes for the busy trade show season ahead - ISE 2019 is also just around the corner - and wish you a happy and prosperous new year. See you on the road. n

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P4 JANUARY 2019

In this issue...

People

P6 GROUP MENTALITY WE HEAR FROM THE CEOS OF RCF AND DPA ABOUT THEIR NEW SET UP

P11

Joe Lamond We speak to NAMM president and CEO Joe Lamond about what’s on offer at this year’s show and what sets it apart from the rest of the trade show competition

P23

Brotherhood Chemical Brothers’ FOH engineer tells us what he made of the new d&b KSL Series line array after taking it on the the road with the iconic dance duo

P26 Wolfgang Fraissinet

Phil Ward catches up with the Neumann president to discuss 90 years

of pro audio innovation P36 Simon Hayes

The Oscar winning production sound mixer takes us behind the

scenes of the magical Mary Poppins Returns

Report P38 Making Waves The plugins giant reveals all about its plans for 2019 and the grand

designs for its innovative SoundGrid technology

P17 WHY EXHIBIT AT NAMM? THIS YEAR’S TOP EXHIBITORS TELL US WHY THEY KEEP COMING BACK

P40 Off the RAK

David Davies visits the iconic London studio to find out how it

continues to attract the biggest names in biz

Interviews

P48 Lucy J Mitchell The versatile sound mixer and editor for TV, film, documentaries and

video games, discusses her career and the challenges most regularly

faced by freelancers P54 John Penn Phil Ward gets up close and personal with SSE founder John Penn

about his life in audio and the huge sale of the business at the end of

2018

P30 ON THE FLY WE GO INSIDE FUNKTION-ONE’S HIGHLY AMBITIOUS NEW PROJECT

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P6 JANUARY 2019

Kalle Hvidt Nielson

‘A new era has started’ Last month, the announcement that Italy’s RCF Group had acquired Danish microphone giant DPA Microphones sent shockwaves through the pro audio industry. Daniel Gumble caught up with RCF Group CEO Arturo Vicari and DPA CEO Kalle Hvidt Nielsen to discuss their plans for 2019 and how the Italian organisation is rapidly growing its reputation as a pro audio powerhouse…

H

igh-profile acquisitions and brand partnerships are hardly anything new in today’s pro audio market. Over the past few years, manufacturers, rental firms and suppliers have all been examining the ways in which they can pool their resources and combine their efforts. To list the numerous high-profile deals of this kind from recent history would take up far too much valuable time and space, suffice to say the second half of 2018 provided some particularly notable transactions, including SSE Audio Group’s acquisition of Capital Sound, then SSE’s acquisition by Solotech and RCF Group’s purchase of sleeping US loudspeaker giant EAW. But while all of these deals dominated the headlines, it was last month’s RCF acquisition of the iconic DPA brand that really set tongues wagging, marking the

Italian organisation’s first foray into the world of microphones and asserting its reputation not only as the fastest growing company in the business, but also as an all-round audio solutions provider.

“We were looking for another company to add to our roster, in order to become one of the biggest audio groups, and we were looking for an excellence that could complete the audio chain,” RCF Group Arturo Vicari tells PSNEurope.

“Yes, [the microphone market] is indeed new territory for us, but we have been in the audio industry since 1949 and have 70 years of experience and intuition. We knew that we wanted to add a strong, well-known company and that a microphone brand would complete the audio chain. Hence, when we realised that DPA was up for sale we couldn’t miss out on that opportunity. DPA will fit very

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well into the RCF Group, and when the two amalgamate, the results will be incredible.

“For sure this is a big change for the group, and we are now able to be more competitive and offer complete audio solutions. The RCF Group has several excellent products to cover all the needs that end users want, from large to small concerts, fixed installations, stadia, churches etc.”

Previously owned by private equity firm The Riverside Company, DPA is certainly on the course to benefit from the collective wisdom and pro audio nous offered by the RCF Group, which, according to DPA CEO Kalle Hvidt Nielsen, will be an ideal home for the Danish brand.

“Riverside decided to sell DPA after five fruitful years, during which the company has grown considerably,” he explains to PSNEurope.

P7 JANUARY 2019

“There were many interested buyers during the past few months. After a thorough selection and vetting process on both sides, Riverside and RCF agreed upon a mutually beneficial deal. We believe that the knowledge shared between DPA and RCF Group will be of benefit for us both. RCF Group’s unique expertise in loudspeaker systems and mixing desks complements DPA’s leading position in high-end microphones systems.”

Nielsen also points to RCF’s past for an example of how the Italian business has successfully worked the microphone market.

“RCF Group actually focused on advanced ribbon microphone designs back when it was established, so the company does have some background in microphones,” he continues.

“They have extensive experience in wireless systems and, since microphones for use in these systems is a major part of what DPA does, it seems like a good match. Having in-house knowledge of these systems will enable us to design even better mics for wireless solutions. We believe that we are on the right path with a new and ambitious strategy. RCF Group has the same opinion and plans to support us in developing further in this direction.”

According to both Vicari and Nielsen, the mutual benefits are myriad, while the day-to-day running of DPA will very much be business as usual.

“RCF Group’s unique expertise in loudspeaker systems and mixing desks is very complementary to DPA’s world leading position in high-end microphone systems, being under the same ownership opens new opportunities for all of us,” said Vicari.

“There are many synergies between the two companies, regarding technologies, market segments and geographical coverage,” Nielsen adds. “Together we can offer our customers solutions that cover their needs across the entire audio chain , which is a win-win situation. In addition, having an owner familiar with the pro audio industry makes it easier to discuss the business – its trends, opportunities and challenges – with a long-term goal in mind.

“The brand will stay the same, the quality will stay the same, the sound will stay the same. We are still a Danish business, with the same strategy, the same management, production in Asnæs, headquarters in Allerød, the same employees, the same distribution chain model and the same high-quality products that our customers know and love worldwide. “[Personally] I will have a different type of relationship with RCF Group because of their history and market knowledge but, my role will be the same. I am excited to learn from the RCF Group’s view of the pro audio market and I will use that information to help grow DPA. I also believe that the other members of the RCF group can learn from how DPA have developed its business.”

Nielsen also believes that his brand will be able to make a significant contribution to its new owner’s heft in the marketplace.

Arturo kVicari

Arturo Vicari

THE FACT THAT WE CAN CONTINUE OUR AMBITIOUS PLAN WITH A PROFESSIONAL PARTNER FROM THE PRO AUDIO BUSINESS IS A HUGE ADVANTAGE. I BELIEVE THAT IT WILL BENEFIT THE DPA BRAND AS WELL AS THE RCF BRAND. THE ONLY CHALLENGE MAY BE THAT I WILL HAVE TO LEARN ITALIAN! KALLE HVIDT NIELSON

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“We can bring a lot to the RCF group: a Scandinavian mindset, engineering expertise in high-precision microphone capsules and a world-wide leading position in high-end microphones systems, to name a few,” he states. “We add professional solutions in the first (and most important, we believe) step of the audio chain to RCF Group’s repertoire of solutions.”

As we enter the new year, the future certainly looks bright for both parties, as each looks set to build further on their 2018 successes. In the case of both RCF and DPA Microphones, the message is very much ‘watch this space’.

Nielsen says: “The fact that we can continue our ambitious plan with a professional partner from the pro audio business is a huge advantage. I believe that it will benefit the DPA brand as well as the RCF Group. The only challenge may be that I will have to learn Italian!”

“RCF Group is constantly looking to grow to become one of the most important [audio companies] in the world,” Vicari concludes. “A new era has started.” n

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Movers and shakers

Stay in the loop with the latest job appointments and movements in the professional audio industry…

Midwich appoints new divisional directors

M

idwich has promoted Lee Harris and Ross Floyd to divisional director roles, following the planned retirement of long-serving commercial director Lee Baker.

Harris will focus on AV (Midwich Ltd) and Ross Floyd will assume a wider role, covering AV, Document Solutions and further technologies.

Baker will be passing over his responsibilities to Harris and Floyd in January following an extensive handover period.

Baker has been with Midwich since 2002 and has played a key role working within the UK management team. He will be retiring at the end of December to pursue other activities outside of the Group.

Baker commented: “I’ve had a fantastic time at

Glenn Kalinowski to head up EAW NA sales EAW has selected Glenn Kalinowski as its new director of sales for North America.

Kalinowski’s role is to manage and support Eastern Acoustic Works’ dealer network and client base within North America, promoting product knowledge and business development.

Kalinowski has brought 11 years of experience at Bose Corporation’s Professional Systems Division to his new position, most recently serving as national major accounts business manager, where he provided sales, design, and systems support to Bose’s major accounts systems integrators.

While at Bose, Kalinowski earned several awards, including the company’s Distinctive Service Award. He has also previously worked in operations for Mood Media and DMX Music.

“The addition of Glenn Kalinowski puts an exclamation point on an already spectacular team of winners,” asserted EAW president TJ Smith. “Anyone paying attention can see that EAW is back and rolling with the power and momentum of a freight train.”

Kalinowski said: “I am excited to join the amazingly talented team at EAW North America. EAW is an iconic brand, representing incredible innovation and quality in the pro audio industry. I am also honoured to have the opportunity to partner alongside a legend such as Kenton Forsythe in writing the next chapter of the EAW story.”

Midwich and met so many brilliant people. I’m proud of how Midwich has grown from a small Diss-based business to a global player. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve seen some amazing things.”

Mark Lowe, Midwich managing director, added: “I am sad to see Lee leave, having worked together as friends and colleagues for many years. Lee’s legacy will live on in our business in the way that we work with our vendors and he will leave a lasting impression.

“We say goodbye to Lee, but at the same time, we are excited about the succession plan that has afforded Lee Harris and Ross Floyd a well-deserved promotion.”

Floyd and Harris said in a joint statement: “We are both excited by the opportunities our new roles present us. We look forward to continuing Lee Baker’s great

Polar appoints new business development manager Andrew Plunkett Installation, MI and professional audio markets solutions supplier, Polar, has appointed Andrew Plunkett as business development manager for its public address/voice alarm department.

A highly experienced industry professional, Plunkett joins Polar after 15 years at TG Baker, where he gained significant and wide-ranging experience in the design and distribution of public address, voice reinforcement and voice evacuation equipment.

Plunkett brings his expertise as a project manager having worked across diverse markets, including industrial, leisure, education and most recently, on large-scale stadium installations, with a goal to develop this area of Polar’s business.

Plunkett’s system design knowledge will help introduce the commercial ranges in Polar’s portfolio to organisations with a broader focus than audio installation alone.

Stuart Leader, Director of Polar integrated solutions welcomed Plunkett’s appointment: “It’s clear that Andrew’s know-how in this field marks him out as an excellent asset to POLAR. We continue to grow our business and expand a formidable range of expertise across our team, enabling us to provide the very highest levels of support to our customers. Andrew possesses a thorough understanding of the industry

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work during his time at Midwich in building rapport with our vendor and reseller partners.

“Our long-standing relationships set us apart from the competition; we’re excited to continue growing these and contributing towards Midwich’s future growth.”

and brings vast experience of designing systems for every scale and complexity of application. He’s an outstanding professional and we’re delighted to have him as part of our team.”

Plunkett added: “I have always admired Polar as an organisation. It has a superbly supported array of quality commercial audio brands, and I’m looking forward to introducing these to new markets.”

PSNEurope hires new staff writer PSNEurope has hired Fiona Hope McDowall as its new staff writer.

McDowall will work across all aspects of the brand’s editorial output in her new role, working alongside PSNEurope editor Daniel Gumble to develop the title’s agenda-setting content in print and digital formats.

A graduate in English Language and Literature, McDowall previously spent time working with London-based Hero magazine.

Commenting on her arrival, Gumble said: “It’s an exciting time for PSNEurope, as we continue to develop our editorial content with incisive, innovative journalism. I’m really looking forward to working with Fiona, who will be pivotal in shaping the brand’s output in 2019 and beyond.

McDowall can be contacted at fiona. hopemcdowall@futurenet.com.

P11 JANUARY 2019

A NAMM for all seasons: Joe Lamond

Going coastal With the global pro audio and MI industries gearing up for their annual trip to the sunny west coast, Daniel Gumble finds NAMM president and CEO Joe Lamond in equally bright and breezy mood, as he lets us in on what’s in store for the 2019 show and gives his take on what makes the event so unique…

I

t seems there is more than just the vast expanse of the Atlantic separating the Winter NAMM show from its European counterparts these days. Over the past five years or more, the pro audio trade show landscape on this side of the pond has been in a state of perpetual flux. The inexorable rise of ISE during that time has been evident for all to see. Breaking records left right and centre, it has had to relocate from its current home at the Amsterdam RAI to Barcelona’s Gran Via in order to accommodate the masses desperate to get in on the burgeoning AV and install market. Meanwhile,

London’s PLASA show has experienced something of a mini renaissance since the arrival of former Roland exec Peter Heath as its managing director, bringing with him a renewed focus on pro audio that seems to be winning over some of the doubters after the show endured a good few years of upheaval and a perceived deviation from its roots. And as for Prolight+Sound, well, who knows? The Frankfurt show has implemented major changes to the show’s layout and its consumer-trade balance for several consecutive years now as it strives to maintain its place at pro audio’s top table.

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Amidst all of this, the annual NAMM show has remained an oasis of relative calm, quietly going about its business year-after-year, applying the occasional tweak here and there and introducing just enough new content to keep the regulars happy and appeal to a steady stream of newcomers. Of course, the event’s sun-bleached, palm tree-peppered environs will always help to add a little sparkle to the NAMM offering, but it’s the combination of engaging content and networking opportunities that underpins so much of its success. All of which has been masterminded by its president and

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Show time: The Anaheim Convention Centre

CEO Joe Lamond.

Taking place from January 24-27 at the Anaheim Convention Centre, NAMM 2019 promises yet another stellar array of exhibits, live performances and educational sessions, as Lamond explains…

While the global pro audio trade show landscape has changed significantly in recent years, NAMM has remained a constant, fine-tuning its offering as opposed to making sweeping changes. Do you have any new features in store this year, particularly with regards to audio?

The credit for the vibrancy of the NAMM Show goes 100 per cent to our members, who have continued to see this event as a stable, reliable platform for them to launch their year. Operationally, the NAMM team looks at each year as another experimental show. Starting from a blank piece of paper, we think carefully about how we can do the best job possible for the industry, given our members and the economic conditions in the global industry. This year’s show will see expanded offerings in pro audio exhibitors, hands-on educational opportunities and new features like the Loudspeaker Systems Showcase; an opportunity for manufacturers to demonstrate both their flown and portable systems in

a real-world setting to a mix of industry professionals.

We’ve also worked closely with our partners AES, ESTA and groups like Timeless Communications to curate high-quality education that complements the already successful NAMM TEC Tracks. Our guests who take advantage of these opportunities will leave much better equipped for success in the new year.

Are you ever tempted to relocate or implement any big changes, or is NAMM’s gradual evolution a deliberate approach?

If we were to rewind to 1960, you would find two thirds of the show floor featuring console television sets and radios. How crazy is that to imagine? The fact is, that as the industry has evolved, NAMM has evolved in tandem to reflect the demands of the market and to anticipate the needs of the industry’s future. The crossroads concept of bringing music products, pro audio, and event technology all together is an extension of that, and a reflection of where the industry is headed.

Southern California in January has been the home of the NAMM Show for almost 40 years; we’re lucky on so many fronts. It’s true that the industry changes and evolves, and that our members are extremely entrepreneurial, but in my opinion, one of NAMM’s main

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jobs is to be stable, reliable and predictable so that our members can launch from this platform.

How big a challenge is it to achieve the right the balance between pleasing regular visitors and attracting new visitors?

The NAMM Show is about our member communities, the professional tribes; they are the heart of our organisation. As industry evolves with market demands, the products, services, and technologies we see do as well. Often that means new segments are created and grow, and perhaps, some are smaller than they once were. These are market forces at work; customers will always be looking for new and innovative products to create new and innovative music. Looking back over the course of our 118-year history, The NAMM Show has been a reflection of these changes.

Have you been able to learn anything from the huge growth seen at shows such as IBC and ISE, which is relocating in 2021 to accommodate its ever-growing audience?

It seems to me that new and innovative products drive any industry, whether its autos, electronics or medicine.

The segments where we are seeing this kind of growth have a lot in common. Product innovation and the

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resulting obsolescence of older product, increasing demands from the market and higher customer expectations, in this particular case for their sound, lighting, and video needs. What a great combination. And again, looking back through NAMM’s historical data, this pattern has repeated itself over and over again, just the segments have changed - at one time, home organs had the same trajectory.

How important is it for NAMM to keep abreast of what’s happening in Europe with regards to trade shows?

We’re insanely curious about all kinds of things. The NAMM team are voracious readers, and we think carefully about many industry economic and geopolitical issues. As the famous comedian Steven Wright said, “It’s a small world (but I wouldn’t want to paint it”. But seriously, our member companies do business around the globe; we want them to be successful, and therefore we support efforts that lead to that outcome.

What can visitors and exhibitors expect from the new pro audio space that opened in 2018?

Crossroads 2.0 launched this past January with the opening of the new hall, the ACC North. It was a longsought expansion and could not have come at a better

time. We laid out the show floor having never seen the finished building though, and we learned a lot about traffic flow and building logistics. This year our guests will find more exhibits and improved convenience in locating and seeing all of the exhibits. The security perimeter has been widened as well, so our guests will be able to move freely between the new ACC North and Halls A and B, which also include many exciting pro audio, lighting, video and event technology exhibits. This year’s improvements will really be felt by our guests, and I suspect they will have a really fun and productive time in Anaheim.

There has been a major education drive in recent years at NAMM. What’s in the pipeline on that front this year?

As you can imagine, we’ve given this a lot of thought.

NAMM’s mission is to strengthen the industry and to help our members be more successful in their craft; professional development is one of the most important ways to do that. There is basically an extensive educational conference within the NAMM Show, which could almost be a stand-alone event. Inside the NAMM U Education Center at the Hilton, professionals will have world-class leaders, product experts and technology innovators to learn from. Here, alongside the Audio Engineering Society, Audinate’s Dante, ESTA, The

Entertainment Services and Technology Association, A3E, and NAMM’s TEC Tracks, professionals can advance their career through know-how from the industry’s top experts and luminaries.

What are the key business trends have you seen in 2018? Any particular markets or sectors that have surprised you?

As much as technology has brought us all together digitally, I’m continually awed by the human need to gather with like-minded tribes. Live music and music festivals are thriving, and keeping music in the forefront as a positive unifier in an increasingly divided world, I like that trend. Business-wise, I’ve seen many NAMM members quietly having some of their best years ever, not wanting to say it out loud for fear of jinxing it. These business cycles will continue to ebb and flow, which also reminds us to be sure to put something away during the good years.

What are the biggest opportunities for the NAMM show and the NAMM organisation in 2019?

Honestly, I’ve been looking at the show exhibitor map and simply cannot believe how much exciting new product will be on that floor. Many of us are ‘gear folks’ at heart, and that alone is enough reason to get to the

Legendary producer Butch Vig (right) giving a talk at NAMM

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show. Bigger picture, the industry continues to evolve.

Names that were just huge a few years ago have been challenged by new and up and coming companies with a new vision. This is normal and just as it should be, after all, who would be happy having their first mobile phone from the ’90s? So, in my opinion, the biggest opportunity for us all, NAMM included, is not to be afraid of change, to seek it out and make it your own. No one can invent your future better than you, so why let them?

What would your message be to first-time pro audio exhibitors at the show or those who have yet to exhibit at the show?

It is an extremely competitive world, so my message is quite simple, and that is don’t miss out – maximise every opportunity you have to get business done, invest in yourself and in your company/skill set through education and have some fun along the way.

Last year’s introduction of the pro-audio wing was a welcome change. Will there be further tweaks this year? And how will you address the handful of issues that came up, like the low number of concession stands or the sometimes extensive lines to get in?

THE BIGGEST OPPORTUNITY FOR US ALL, NAMM INCLUDED, IS NOT TO BE AFRAID OF CHANGE, TO SEEK IT OUT AND MAKE IT YOUR OWN. MAXIMISE EVERY OPPORTUNITY YOU HAVE TO GET BUSINESS DONE AND HAVE FUN ALONG THE WAY. NO ONE CAN INVENT YOUR FUTURE BETTER THAN YOU, SO WHY LET THEM? JOE LAMOND

As with each of our shows, member feedback guides our model of continuous improvement, and in the case of the ACC North, that’s true as well. After our first event in the new building, we’ve made adjustments to improve the traffic flow of attendees to create a more seamless

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process, reduced the physical security barriers and have increased access and options of available food and beverage inside and outside of the building.

We have also worked closely with our partners to improve the Wi-Fi and cellular service in and around the space and created those in-building networking and gathering opportunities.

In the wake of the first AES@NAMM event last year, NAMM and AES signed an agreement to continue that partnership for a number of years. What do you feel AES brings to the table for the NAMM Show and its attendees?

I’ve been going to AES events for decades now and always thought we should work together. Like NAMM, AES shares in a member-focused mission to offer essential and affirming professional development opportunities to keep the industry strong. With the NAMM Show as the platform to AES’s expert sessions, courses and training workshops, NAMM members and audio professionals can fulfil the need for continued education and networking, as well as to experience the latest in products and technologies from the leaders in pro audio across the NAMM Show floor. n

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Talking business We hear from some of the biggest names in the pro audio sector about what keeps them coming back to the NAMM show year after year‌

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Anaheim Convention Center

d&b audiotechnik For a second year, d&b will head to California for the annual NAMM show at the Anaheim Convention Center.

From 24-27 January, booth #17915 and demo room #204A will be alive with all of the latest developments from the German audio technology company. This includes the global launch of its SL-Series KSL system, a line array system described as delivering ‘nothing short of full broadband directivity control to sound reinforcement projects of any genre, medium or large, mobile or installed’.

You can find the d&b booth in the ACC North hall level 2, booth #17915. From there, the d&b demo room is just a short walk across the sky bridge to demo room #204A. Besides the launch of the KSL system, you will also find examples from the d&b product range, including d&b Soundscape, all loudspeaker series E, T, Y and V-Series, as well as monitors and amplifiers. There will also be a d&b Workflow station on the booth, featuring NoizCalc, ArrayCalc, R1remote, and ArrayProcessing.

During the show, d&b will offer multiple demonstrations daily. No registration is required to attend a session.

Maria Fiorellino, marketing manager, Digico With NAMM increasing its focus on the pro side of the market, the show has become an ideal forum for Digico to connect with customers, as well as to see which new audio trends are emerging.

The show’s organisers have a refreshing approach, constantly engaging with exhibitors, looking for ways to improve their offering, listening to feedback and, so far, acting on it.

Equally importantly, the organisation is keen to encourage exhibitors and attendees from around the world to visit by offering initiative, such as first class educational sessions, networking events, and concerts and performances. This means that NAMM is increasingly gaining more significance for Digico’s US

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and international client base, making it more important than ever in the company’s calendar.

The timing of the show is also ideal, sitting as it does in the right place of the touring calendar. This, along with events such as the Parnelli Awards, which now takes place during the show, and initiatives like the TECnology Hall of Fame, has made it critical for Digico to attend and made it a pretty special place to be.

At this year’s NAMM Show, Digico will be taking the opportunity to launch some exciting new integration options, showcase the upgraded options for existing SD consoles and, of course, there will be a few surprises, too.

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IT’S DIFFICULT TO FULLY QUANTIFY WHAT YOU GET OUT OF ANY TRADE SHOW BUT WE FELT THAT NAMM WAS A GOOD SHOW FOR US, SO WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO BEING THERE AGAIN IN 2019 DAVID BRUML

Simon Poulton

Simon Poulton, Focusrite

Funktion-One/Sound Investment

NAMM, for us, remains the single greatest global opportunity to present who we are as brands to the entire industry, and at the same time, to be something more than just the products that we make.

With NAMM being so multifaceted, it’s an amazing platform for us to engage with retail, other brands with whom to collaborate with, and a wide selection of end users, all of which really helps us feel connected to the industry and community in which we exist.

This year, Hall A booth #11110 is home to the Focusrite Solutions Hub, hosting Focusrite products and support staff ready and eager to meet one-on-one with each customer. Visitors can discuss their audio needs, problems, and workflow solutions with our experts whilst sitting at comfortable desks with a bottle of water and charging their phones. The Focusrite Solutions Hub embodies the company’s commitment to removing barriers to creativity with state-of-the-art hardware, along with industry-leading customer care, support and knowledge. When they leave, we want them to feel rejuvenated with passion for their craft, and with the knowledge that Focusrite is a brand that cares.

Show attendees will also have a special treat in store on our Novation booth in Hall A booth #10506. The Novation Arcade is a unique configuration demonstrating Novation’s products in fun, cerebral, and interactive ways, utilising sight and touch in addition to sound.“

Funktion-One returns to NAMM for the second consecutive year with distributor for North America, Sound Investment. After making its debut in 2018, Funktion-One and Sound Investment were keen to exhibit again and build on the impact their participation made last year.

Funktion-One technical sales director, David Bruml, said: “It’s difficult to fully quantify what you get out of any trade show but we felt that NAMM was a good show for us, so we’re looking forward to being there again in 2019. We’ll be showcasing loudspeakers from across our ranges and look forward to plenty of productive conversations.”

David Bruml

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Senior representation from Funktion-One will be in attendance, alongside the directors and staff from Sound Investment. The Funktion-One/Sound Investment stand will showcase the Evo 6E full-range speaker, Evo 6E L115 mid-bass speaker, F124 bass enclosure, a BR118/ F1201 system, the PSM318 DJ monitor and the PSM12 wedge monitor.

Sound Investment’s Todd Konecny explained: “Our business is built on solid relationships and NAMM gives us the perfect opportunity to connect with both new and existing customers. We were attracted to the show last year, in part because of its renewed focus on pro audio, and came away from it with a lot of positivity about our involvement. We’ve had a busy year and we’re looking forward to heading back to NAMM in January.”

Since NAMM 2018, Sound Investment has delivered Funktion-One sound to a wide range of projects, including: Ravine (Atlanta), Sidebar (San Diego), Academy (Los Angeles) and Palms Casino Pool and Nightclub (Las Vegas).

JoeCo At the 2019 NAMM Show, JoeCo will be returning to the Anaheim Convention Center with its Cello desktop interface that offers features such as 384k recording and a 125dB dynamic range.

Designed and built in the UK, Cello has been created to combine high-end performance and classic design.

With 22 inputs and four outputs, the USB 2.0 interface for Mac and PC boasts a true analogue front end, a 125dB dynamic range and up to 384k recording. Also featured is its Adaptive Conversion technology and JoeCo’s new Top+ algorithm.

Visitors to booth A-12108 will also have the opportunity to get up close with the BLACKBOX family of multi-track recorders. What began a decade ago with the BBR-1B has now grown to encompass versions of the recorder with both Dante and MADI capability, with the BBR64-DANTE and BBR64-MADI respectively, as well as built-in, JoeCo-designed preamps with the BBR1MP. In addition, the award-winning BLUEBOX range will be on-hand at the show.

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Laurent Vaissié

Laurent Vaissié, CEO, USA and Canada, L-Acoustics NAMM has always been the place where the music world meets and it has now also demonstrated its ongoing commitment to professional sound. L-Acoustics returned to the trade show as an exhibitor last year and is pleased to do so again in 2019. Our company will be more than doubling its footprint this year at NAMM, with a new demo space to showcase our trailblazing multidimensional sound technology powered by L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound, as well as an interactive showroom concept populated by our latest loudspeaker products, processors, and software.

The combination of technology showcases, education opportunities, and exciting awards ceremonies make NAMM a great place to reconnect with peers and key clients, as well as reaching the broader audience of music enthusiasts who help our industry thrive. The January timing in our annual events calendar, in addition to NAMM’s location not far from our US headquarters, make this show a great way to kick off our year.

Please visit us at booth #17208 and demo room 203A.

John Monitto, director of business development, Meyer Sound The Meyer Sound stand #17800 will highlight a wide range of its products for portable and installed sound reinforcement and studio applications. A feature this year will be the new Slim System, comprised of the UP-4slim ultracompact loudspeaker and its companion MM-10ACX subwoofer in a pole mount configuration.

A complete UP-4slim system provides high fidelity, extended bandwidth and remarkable power output in a discreet and portable package.

The stand also features a 7.1.4 mixing system demo, employing Amie precision studio monitors and Amie-sub compact cinema subwoofers. Representing

Meyer Sound’s LEO Family of line arrays will be a ground-stack configuration of its LINA line array loudspeakers over a 750-LFC low frequency control element.

Exhibiting at NAMM has become increasingly important to Meyer Sound John Monitto as the show has broadened in recent years to incorporate the pro audio market at a higher level. This is evident in the new partnership with the Audio Engineering Society, which seems to have abandoned West Coast conventions in favour of a strong presence at NAMM. As Southern California is such an important market for Meyer Sound, particularly in the realm of film and video postproduction, we find that NAMM provides a convenient focal point for meeting with key clients in the area.

Also, NAMM is now the site of the TEC Awards ceremonies, an event always of interest to Meyer Sound.

This year, for example, our SIM (Source Independent Measurement) System will be inducted into the TEChnology Hall of Fame while the Bluehorn System studio monitor and VLFC (very low frequency control) element have been nominated for TEC Awards in their respective categories.

Mick Olesh, EVP sales and marketing, Waves Waves is very excited about the upcoming NAMM show.

It is an exceptional opportunity to personally meet, share and learn from our community, and enable visitors at our booth to experience unique artist presentations from which they can learn first hand the tricks of the trade from knowledgeable and established engineers. Waves Product Specialists will be on the booth floor, providing hands-on demonstrations of the latest Waves product releases. This will include the Axis One: a standardised computer, custom-designed and optimised to run Waves audio applications and packed in a road-hardy halfrack 2U case; the SoundGrid Server One-C: a plugin processing powerhouse which relieves your computer from plugin processing, enabling it to run hundreds of SoundGrid-compatible plugins in real time, live or in the studio; the SoundGrid Extreme Server-C: a compact and sturdy yet powerful unit which can effortlessly process hundreds of SoundGrid-compatible plugins in real time, live or in the studio as well as the Server One-C, while taking the space of only half the width of a standard rack; the small but mighty SoundGrid Mobile Server which great for travelling, mixing small live shows, or for use the studio and can be taken anywhere

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you go, boosting your plugin processing power, and the prevalent eMotion LV1 Live Mixer V10, now with updates and new features, including I/O sharing.

Musicians and producers will be able to benefit from valuable hands-on demonstrations of Waves’ expanding line of virtual instruments, including the Inspire Virtual Instruments Collection and the recently released Flow Motion FM Synth, which combines the best elements of FM (frequency modulation) and analogue-style subtractive synthesis into one powerful virtual instrument.

Waves is especially excited at the prospect of revealing and demonstrating a unique, compelling and innovative plugin at the NAMM show that will dramatically change how you mix and was developed in collaboration with one of the most prominent engineers in the industry today.

Alan Macpherson, GM, Yamaha Professional Audio Division

Yamaha Corporation of America has long maintained a very significant presence at the NAMM show in Anaheim, exhibiting the best in musical instruments and professional audio products. With NAMM’s recent partnership with AES and the TEC Awards, the show has now become even a larger force in the live sound and sound reinforcement arena.

With this trend in mind, Yamaha Professional Audio has shown new product from its commercial product line over several years, adding to its large presence for its more portable pro audio product aimed the musical instrument channel.

Specifically, the company has featured RIVAGE PM Digital Audio Consoles and its superior Dante integration and wireless microphone control on its world renowned digital audio consoles (including CL and QL Series), its NEXO line array products, Commercial Installation Solutions (CIS), new Dante enabled L2 switches, and networking applications.

This coming year’s NAMM show will also mark the show’s debut of the Yamaha DZR Dante speaker line, as Mick Olesh well as the launch of a new NEXO product.

As we continue to offer our customers complete, integrated solutions, the overall Yamaha theme this year is “Creating Perfect Systems” and this will serve as our overarching theme for 2019.

Of course, the Yamaha Entertainment Group’s concert extravaganza on the Grand Plaza will showcase our RIVAGE Digital Audio Consoles, as well as our classic NEXO line arrays.

Yamaha Commercial Audio is will be presenting at Booth #17819 in the Pro Audio Hall and will once again participate in AES@NAMM.

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Photos by Luke Dysom

Superstar DJs: The Chemical Brothers

Legendary dance duo the Chemical Brothers recently set about reinventing their live sound with d&b audiotechnik’s newly launched KSL Series, the loudspeaker giant’s first full bandwidth control line array. In a PSNEurope exclusive the pair’s FOH engineer Shan Hira takes us inside the new system…

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Here we go! The Chemical Brothers take the stage with the d&b KSL Series

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nhanced dynamic behaviour: great name for an album. Even if the Chemical Brothers haven’t written it yet, you get the sense they could. Never conventional by any stretch, Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands have just completed a tour that has once again changed the way they sound.

What audiences heard was simultaneously familiar and yet entirely new. “Chris Fitch at Skan offered us the opportunity to try something at the forefront of audio development,” says long time FOH engineer Shan Hira.

“Knowing I would have Scott Essen as system tech, who always does a great job, it was just too good an offer to resist.”

Hira’s opportunity took the form of full broadband control: “Quite simply a PA system that from top to bottom only did what we asked it to do,” he claims. “We had great fun with it in Amsterdam AFAS and Paris Bercy, and it really came into its own at Ally Pally. Not the most pleasant of rooms to mix in, but it felt like I had more control than I’ve ever had in that room before.”

The system in question was the recently launched KSL Series from d&b audiotechnik.

“With the advent of line arrays, skilled system technicians and designers using accurate modelling tools have been able to tame difficult acoustics for some time; but even so, the pattern control of KSL over the entire spectrum down to 50Hz is a much-welcomed feature,” comments Skan’s Matt Vickers, a man whose knowledge of d&b systems in the live domain sees him regularly consulted by d&b’s development team. “It has been the long-term challenge of most systems to control these difficult ‘upper bass’ frequencies. Rather than glossing over it, the guys at d&b went at it head-on and found a solution that really works.”

Hira agreed: “KSL is a pleasure to mix on, it’s a nice flat playing field right across the spectrum, even that tricky Hi Low-end - it’s all in your hands.”

Skan also saw several other aspects of KSL that compelled the team to road test it in the live environment. “Headroom is central to any system’s

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performance,” notes Vickers. “With regard to pattern control, it has increased performance with no noticeable compromises elsewhere. In terms of the increased low frequency response, this appears to have no negative effect on headroom. The only thoughts here being those of re-educating ourselves as to how best use the system and control this extended range from the ‘one cabinet’ solution, rather than having separate gain control over flown subs.

“If applying ArrayProcessing (AP), the headroom can be managed at the design stage within the prediction software. That is a really important point, we (as the system techs) are still in control. With AP there are many options and realistic results that can be achieved, given the arrays chosen. If an end user runs out of steam then they have either chosen the wrong box count for the space available, or they are trying to defy the laws of physics by over processing, all of which are relevant to any system

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design with any product.”

Essen, Hira’s system tech for the tour, experienced a new practical advantage.

“With the advent of the d&b SL Series there are now three ways to fly,” he comments. “Traditional tension rigging, compression rigging with the manual tensioner, or compression rigging with a motor as a tensioner.

Under Matt’s guidance over the last year or so, I and several other Skan system techs have been working intermittently with KSL’s larger cousin the GSL. It’s the first full bandwidth control line array from d&b and is designed for large arenas and stadium applications. The rigging choice here was a no brainer, it’s a heavy box, so Skan have chosen the latter option for this as our standard package, and yes, using this method is easier, faster, and more manageable than equivalent long lines of J-Series. For the KSL, the jury is still out.

Skan has vast experience of flying J-Series from our own custom carts and packaging with only tension mode available, so we have a fast, safe and neat way of doing this.

“That said, my experience from using the motorised compression method on the Chemical Brothers tour leads us to believe it will become the winner as we get used to working in a different way with this new product.”

Vickers adds: “Back in November 2018 we used GSL in San Mames stadium in Bilbao. I can very much testify that, when allowed to run in a space this large, the system comes to life. Obviously, it works in arenas and still sounds amazing, as the last year has shown,

and we are more than happy to supply GSL in these environments if that is what the client chooses, but there are other factors to consider such as weight, scalability for smaller venues along the same tour, and line length vs elements available for processing etc. Sometimes there can be a tendency to ‘just want the biggest system’, hence one of the biggest challenges we face is to work with our clients and look at an entire project to ensure that we are recommending the best product for the job. It certainly feels like KSL will fit perfectly into the arena market. It is the right size and weight, is more scalable for the varying venue sizes and styles on a typical arena tour, is truck smart, and you get the benefit of more elements per effective line length available for processing in tricky indoor environments.”

“To this day I believe, and our touring techs constantly report, that J-Series is currently the most consistent sounding system across the globe,” Vickers concluded.

“Never once has our J rig let us down, and even when Array Processing came along and pushed its boundaries even further, it continued to deliver. That said, I believe KSL will be a significant step forward from J, and as users realise the benefits of full range pattern control, the demand for this technology will increase. The KSL will hopefully be received as the most sensible and viable solution for arena sized touring, and slot into place where the J-Series has historically done so well.”

From Hira’s perspective, that’s a given. “Once you’ve used KSL you won’t want to go back. I have used J-Series since then and had a good gig, it’s still the best system easily-available world-wide, but as an engineer I now have KSL and GSL at the top of my request list.” n

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Neuman Berlin Entrance Area: Neuman’s current HQ in Leipzigerstrasse

The history channel PSNEurope’s Phil Ward considers Neumann’s 90 years on the front line…

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week is a long time in politics, but 90 years is an eon in Berlin. The microphone manufacturer founded by Georg Neumann on November 23 1928 could not have been placed closer in time and place to the heart of modern European history, as if the very technology of capturing voices had arrived just in time to record it. It’s the sort of tough history that needs recording, but it also has a story of liberation in the later chapters that makes you feel good about being alive today – wherever Europe may turn next.

U-Bahn Very much alive today is the Neumann brand under president Wolfgang Fraissinet, who accepted an award from the AES at the 145th Convention in New York last October for ‘Service to Industry’: namely, Neumann’s extraordinary contribution to the advancement of microphone technology and the legacy of its engineering. Some product icons were on display at the exhibition, plus a limited edition U87 Rhodium Set and a re-issue of the U67. Meanwhile, the immediate present and the future were also acknowledged by such innovations as the Neumann. Control app for iPad, a key adjunct to the KH80 DSP studio monitor.

Fraissinet is keenly aware of the balance of innovation

and legacy that underpins Neumann’s image. “When we re-issue an original like the U67, we really mean it’s the original,” says Fraissinet, who joined Neumann Berlin in April 1990 at an obviously pivotal moment.

“There are so many fakes on the market, and we wanted to re-build our original exactly as it was. It hasn’t been ‘modernised’, apart from some soldering chemicals that would be non-compliant today. All of the components are from the original sources, and were tested and re-tested until we had a product that sounded totally convincing to the ‘golden ears’.”

There is indeed a generation or two of engineers who have grown up with and cherished these products all their lives, although Fraissinet is aware of its limitations.

“Of course this story has an end,” he says, “and there are new generations growing up in the recording industry who don’t have this legacy in mind and who seek brand new solutions. That is what drives us more than coming out with re-issues. ‘Vintage’ is the cherry on the cake: the research into the future goes on.”

When you visit Berlin today, you find a city perfectly at ease with past, present and future, its legacies fused

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with smoothly presented civic statements. The original HQ of Siemens, for example – the company that literally electrified and telegraphed Berlin and Germany – is a smart Mövenpick Hotel. The Wall is T-shirt and novelty mug fodder, true – but history is taken seriously.

Wolfgang Fraissinet

Wall Street shuffle The first Neumann factory, right in the centre of Berlin, was bombed late in 1943.

Clearly a safer home was required, and a former textile mill was chosen in Gefell, to the South-East, near the Bavarian border. The whole company was moved in 1944, and there is still a local neighbourhood known as ‘Little Berlin’. A small facility was maintained in Berlin, and after the war Georg Neumann and some of his staff returned, leaving the rest in Gefell. As the Soviet Eastern Bloc gained influence in that part of Germany, many manufacturers including Neumann – such as Leitz, Zeiss and Agfa – found that de facto there were two different companies, one in East Germany and one in West Germany. Now located in the American Sector, Georg Neumann Berlin GmbH was registered in 1946.

By 1952 this company was again manufacturing in

P41 JANUARY 2019 Georg Neumann

Charlottenstrasse: Metres from Checkpoint Charlie, Neumann’s Berlin HQ in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s was right next to the Wall

Berlin, but it was still a precarious location. When the Wall drew its line in the sand in 1961, capsule workers who were living in the East of the city simply couldn’t get to work so they were returned to Gefell. For about 10 years Gefell’s M7 capsules managed to get delivered to West Berlin for export, but the writing was well and truly on that Wall: in 1972 the Gefell company’s name was forcibly changed to ‘VEB Mikrophonbau’ – meaning Volkseigener Betrieb, a publicly owned business – and Georg Neumann lost control in common with many private owners whose assets became ‘the property of the people’.

But Neumann’s West Berlin HQ in Charlottenstrasse prospered, and its role as the company’s home for nearly 30 years coincided almost exactly with the existence of the Wall. It was only a few metres away from Checkpoint Charlie, and those who worked there recall the fascination it held for all of their overseas visitors. Some even ruefully point out that the propaganda between East and West sold a lot of microphones, and if you can include Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and The Beatles in that summation they’d be right.

After the Wall came down in 1989 there were attempts to re-integrate the Gefell facility with the Berlin operation, but it was difficult. There was even the ‘Perestroika’ range – good, affordable if not top-class Neumanns. Financial difficulties were exacerbated by production cycles of over a year for expensive disccutting lathes and digital mixing consoles, and when Sennheiser bought the company in 1991 it phased out disc-cutting and consoles completely. Interesting footnote: the resulting departure of several key digital mixing console engineers was a crucial factor in the subsequent formation of Stagetec, founded in 1993.

Charlottenstrasse became prime real estate in the centre of a new Berlin, and the Neumann building made way for the developers as Neumann’s Sennheiserowned Berlin offices relocated further out of town.

Meanwhile, VEB Mikrophonbau joined a list of innovative manufacturers able to re-invent themselves as

capital investment companies; its Neumann-inspired microphone skills became Microtech Gefell GmbH. Sennheiser moved Neumann manufacturing to Hanover, and ceased co-operation with Gefell.

A new stage The relationship with Sennheiser has been fruitful, and increasingly sophisticated. As concerts and auditoriums experience audio closer and closer to studio quality, for example, Neumann has begun to turn its attention to this market, one globally dominated by the Hanover partner. “We see the music market trending towards major revenues from touring and live performance,” confirms Fraissinet, “rather than the sale of CDs or vinyl.

We are starting some deeper investigation into what’s needed in this area and, although we have a partner well established in this sector, we have our own ideas.

It wouldn’t be necessary to brand our contribution as ‘Sennheiser’, for instance, like an OEM agreement.

The typical Neumann customer expects Neumann to produce its own solutions, and that’s how it will be.”

The new ‘Neumann.Berlin’ web site has a matrix of recommendations for microphone application, and while this clearly pertains to the recording of specific instruments, it’s easy to see how this matrix could be extended to include sound reinforcement techniques and solutions. “We’re also looking at the new processes of music recording and live performance,” adds Fraissinet.

“The way people capture, publish and generally transduce sound has changed, and the audio industry needs to modernise. We’re not alone anymore, and we have to integrate with video and IT – it’s no use having three heads for one problem.”

Fortunately, since 2000 Neumann has been at the forefront of digital microphone technology. The flagship of the Solution-D series is the D-01, but as originally conceived its appeal is limited. “It’s not an item that sells in large quantities,” Fraissinet says. “The D-01 is used in dubbing studios, and others in the range have gone to the likes of the Philharmonie de Paris. These users

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are very happy with them, but the AES42 standard didn’t penetrate the recording studio and concert hall markets as we expected. What we’re doing instead is a new research project into how this technology can be used without proprietary interfaces, irrespective of AES42.”

The new networking landscape may suit Neumann better. AES67 offers an interoperability standard between the latest protocols, including both Dante and Ravenna. “You will see solutions from Neumann that will illustrate our different thinking about this,” promises Fraissinet, “and within the foreseeable timeframe.” At the same time, Neumann is exploring the interactive and immersive markets that suggest completely new types of audio and multimedia capture. In fact, let’s face it: innovation is so ascendent at Neumann that maybe the U67s and U87s belong with the T-shirts and mugs at Checkpoint Charlie after all…

“This is still a market to ‘explore’ rather than ‘exploit’,” says Fraissinet, “but it certainly has synergy between Sennheiser and Neumann. ‘AMBEO’ is a combination of ‘ambience’ and ‘stereo’, and was coined as a concept rather than a model name: it predicts the world of VR and AR. With the help of products within the Sennheiser group, we will make the AMBEO world more visible and audible to our customers and wider audiences.”

Back in the day, the KU100 Dummy Head binaural microphone was made for stereo recordings; AMBEO is far more. So is the new technique of room ambience control, using combinations of mics and speakers to manipulate the wetness and dryness of acoustic space.

Will Neumann be a part of all this, as it is right now part of a future-defining Berlin? It certainly sounds like it.

“We’re on the verge of completely different thoughts and solutions for products and services for the music industry of the future – and I am explicitly not saying the ‘audio’ industry,” reveals Fraissinet. “Everything has to be considered from input to output, and all signal processing in between. There’s much more to this than ‘what is our next microphone’” n

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SNK Studios

Back of the Net

Focusrite RedNet, Red and ISA components were recently selected for UK audio post production house SNK Studios.

PSNEurope finds out how they have been put to use...

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ward-winning UK-based audio postproduction house SNK Studios has built an enviable reputation since its humble beginnings in 2003, when it started as a two-man operation working out of a single room in west London. SNK now occupies a six-floor building on the outskirts of Soho in central London, where Focusrite’s ISA microphone preamplifiers, Red audio interfaces, and RedNet range of Dante-networked audio converters and interfaces are integral to the facility’s ADR, voiceover recording, sound design, and television and cinema commercial music and mixing services.

“We’ve had a very long relationship with Focusrite gear, since having our first studio set up about 15 years ago,” explains the studio’s director and company cofounder Seb Juviler. “That studio had the original ISA 428 preamp, which had just been released by Focusrite.

We’ve stuck with its ISAs ever since.”

The sprawling SNK facility, which was built by the London-based studios powerhouse Miloco, with equipment supplied by reseller Jigsaw24 and Scrub/ HHB, also houses several dedicated audio book suites.

“They all have an ISA One and are recording hundreds of audiobooks a year,” says Juviler. SNK currently features four main audio post-production suites

delivering short-form commercial audio for agencies and brands and ADR for dramas and features, each equipped with a Focusrite ISA Two dual mic preamp, he says. Plus, they have additional 5.1 mix rooms, tracklay and prep systems often deploying Focusrite Scarlett IO. This complex network of interfaces facilitates the studio’s 20-plus Pro Tools systems. And, as one can imagine, running over 20 ProTools systems throughout the building requires a lot of interfaces and connectivity.

Paired variously with Audio-Technica, DPA, Neumann, Sanken and Sennheiser microphones, available in the nine voice-over booths scattered liberally throughout the building, the Focusrite ISA preamps have served a long list of audio book clients, including Audible, Penguin Random House UK and US, Scholastic, Macmillan and others. They are also used for SNK’s foreign dubbing and international versioning work, including shows destined for streaming platforms and international broadcasters.

“Then we’ve got the Atmos suite, which has two ISA 428 Mk II four-channel preamps,” he adds. The Dolby Atmos room, designated Studio 7, is the result of a collaboration between Dolby Europe, acoustician Nick Whitaker, Miloco Build and speaker manufacturer ADAM Audio. It was completed in 2017 and is Dolby-certified to handle SNK’s bread-and-butter work: short-form

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commercials for television and cinema presentation, typically in 5.1 and 7.1, Juviler says.

Studio 7 features several Focusrite RedNet interfaces that provide access in to and out of the room’s Avid Pro Tools HDX systems.

“We worked closely with the guys at Jigsaw who spec’d the room,” recalls Juviler. “The RedNet interfaces offer the ability to handle the quantity of channels and objects for Dolby Atmos. Plus, the product line is very modular, so you can pick and choose what you need.

Jigsaw were keen to use RedNet for that reason.”

He continues, “They’re running brilliantly and sound great. They’ve been in for nearly two years now and work seamlessly with Pro Tools and the Sync I/O, and the BSS Soundweb London signal processor, which handles the audio outputs and mapping.”

More recently, he reports, “We’ve put three new Red 16Line’s and new Mac Pro computers into the commercial suites. They can connect up and remotecontrol preamps in those rooms. We might be looking at moving some space around in the future and building one big shared live room, so having those Red 16Lines future-proofs the main post suites. If we do build a room, we can quite easily take advantage of RedNet’s Dante networking capabilities, which would be great.” n

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On the Fly Iconic loudspeaker specialist Funktion-One recently embarked on a highly ambitious new project with Kahlil Joseph, a visual artist who has worked with some of the biggest and most exciting artists on the planet. PSNEurope delves inside this most innovative of partnerships to find out more...

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ahlil Joseph is a special talent. Humble and honest, he’s the creative visual artist behind music video and film collaborations with music industry stars like Flying Lotus, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Sampha and Storyboard P. He has been labelled a true auteur, with work described as beguiling.

Joseph’s recent project, Fly Paper, started out at New Museum in New York, and over the course of the last 12 months has reached audiences in Berlin, London and LA. It has taken him on a journey into sound - exploring dimension, fidelity and a new layer of emotional impact.

The new work pays tribute to photographer of jazz and Harlem life, Roy DeCarava. It extends DeCarava’s virtuosity with chiaroscuro effects to the moving image, bringing together a range of film and digital footage to contemplate the dimensions of past, present and future in Harlem and New York City. This description, however, does a disservice to the intense sensory experience the piece delivers – an experience in which the aural, as much as the visual, are given equal importance.

Joseph’s first introduction to this world was in 2015 with the release of m.A.A.d – a short film set to songs

from Kendrick Lamar’s second studio album, 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city. Included as part of an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the project marked a subtle change of direction. The film, like much of Joseph’s other work, was characterised by deep emotional engagement and thought-provoking subject matter. Though this was the project that paved the way for Fly Paper, there were other elements that were already triggered – chief among them a curiosity for how an audience experiences reproduced sound.

One example of this was the stark difference in the audio quality at live gigs. “I never understood why sometimes I would go to a concert and I could hear everything,” Joseph explains. “There was all this range, and then you would see another performance somewhere and it was just loud and flat. So, I started to think about that in terms of installation and film.”

Another seminal moment came while creating a high-end sound mix for 7.1 for a feature film. “I went to a really fancy post-sound house in London and they’d done some pre-mixing before I got there - just to get the ball rolling,” Joseph recalls. “They’d put the dialogue in the

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front and the sound effects in the back, and I asked them, ‘Why do you guys do it like that?’ And they said that’s just how everybody does it. I remember thinking, there’s so much potential here - why don’t you put the dialogue in the back and the bass here and move things around?”

And so that’s what they did. “It was such an unorthodox sound design strategy that you could tell they were really activated by the processes.”

The reaction to the film was equally revelatory. “I remember hearing it for the first time in a movie theatre at the Toronto Film Festival and then having people come up to me saying: The sound was crazy! and Why is the sound so different? But all I did was move some of the elements around. I didn’t pump anything or try to get the most out of the equipment. I didn’t even know about any of that stuff back then. So, I was really taken by how a different approach - a subtler approach – to the sound, in that moment, had caused a reaction.”

It was four years later, while Joseph was working on Fly Paper, that things began to click into place, when a conversation with music producer Flying Lotus turned the artist on to two vital concepts: the importance of

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dynamic range and the existence of Funktion-One. “I’d seen him in concert maybe six monthsto-a-year before that and it sounded amazing. In addition to that, when I played his music in my car, it sounded way better than anything else. When his music came on, my subs were completely activated, and I could hear all this other stuff. I remember asking him: ‘Why does your music sound so much better than everybody else’s? I mean, not the production – it just seems like it’s mixed or engineered differently’.

“So he started to break down for me - the difference between the dynamic range of something and it just being mixed normally. It was so fascinating. How could I take this approach and apply it to my installation or something I’m working on? He said: ‘The first thing you can do is call Funktion-One - they make the best sound systems in the world’. So that’s what I did and that’s how I met [Sound Investment’s] Daniel Agne.”

Even if he hadn’t fully crystallised his desire for expansive audio, Joseph was very much awake to the idea of pushing the limits. He just hadn’t found a sound system that could handle his ambition. “I might be doing

a film festival or a screening at a University, presenting film but with a booming soundtrack,” he explains. “Their sound systems would be designed for movie dialogue, so there’s generally no low end – it’s mixed for the mid and high frequencies and there’s only a left and a right and that’s it. So, I’ve blown at least three systems over the years and that’s just at normal volume.

The techs would always say that something was wrong with my track, and I would say: ‘No - your systems are just whack!’”

He began to look deeper into how the sound design could support his creativity. “Before we began working with Funktion-One, we’d already started to do some research on how to bridge the gap.

I wanted to try and find a strategy or solution that blended a cinematic approach with a more music-based backing that had all this dynamic range. That way, if you wanted to do a lot of low-end stuff or just a lot of different things with voices and pulling shit apart, that was also available. So that was the conversation with

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Daniel. I told him that I wanted to do what I’ve heard in a music space – in concerts – joined together with what I love about a great cinema mix.

“Daniel put what I was looking for into simple terms.

He explained that it’s not only dynamic range in my mix, it’s the capability of the system in the room or the environment. If both the mix and the system cater to the same ideas of dynamic range, that is what I’m looking for. He gave the example of a large, scary ogre walking softly through a forest. You hear the branches and small trees crushing beneath his giant feet and maybe his deep ogre breaths. It’s not until he jumps up, stomps down on the ground below and yells out with a mighty roar that you know the shear threat in the moment.”

The Fly Paper sound system, designed by Sound Investment, is a 16.3 surround sound configuration. It features 16 Funktion-One F101 mid-high loudspeakers positioned around and above the audience area to produce an immersive, dome-like sound field. Two Funktion-One F118 single 18-inch bass enclosures are used for nearfield directional bass, together with two BR221 double 21-inch for mono sub-bass.

“It’s just like using the best cameras,” says Joseph.

“You get a higher level of clarity and resolution. I felt that

immediately with this Funktion-One system.”

With the sound system in place, Joseph turned his attention to his audio team. “It was quite organic in a certain regard,” he reveals. “I knew if I got Funktion-One interested, the next stage of getting a sound tech team together would be pretty straight forward. I knew people would be really interested to do a project like that – with sixteen such amazing loudspeakers.

“I have a brilliant sound guy, Brent [Kiser, Unbridled Sound], who’s worked with us on a couple of projects now.

He was really excited because he and I were going to do something that’s never really been done.”

Kiser in turn is quick to highlight the role played by Joseph’s long-time editor, Luke Lynch. “They work really well together - Luke’s the reason the edits feel more like mixtapes. He did a lot of the initial concept design and work like that and a lot of times I came in and polished or helped him develop an idea further when he reached his technical limits.”

Agne suggested the final key member of the team - Dr Gil Soulodre. Having collaborated with him on a number of projects, Agne knew how effective Soulodre would be in enabling Joseph to explore the realm of immersive audio.

Soulodre recalls: “Daniel had already discussed the

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idea of creating a multichannel immersive sound field experience. One of the things I can do is take any stereo content and create multi-channel content from that in real time. So, the notion was that we put multiple loudspeakers in the museum and I’ll create a multichannel soundtrack for you and we’ll create emotion and whatnot – tensions and things – via the spatial distribution of the sound. Not just the content of the soundtrack, but also where it comes from. That piqued Kahlil’s interest a lot.”

Soulodre posed an important question: can we get tactile? With a combination of the people and the technology onboard, they would do just that. In fact, the project – under Joseph’s behest – would push the possibilities of this particular flavour of sound and vision as far as they could go.

While Soulodre’s interest in the project was suitably stirred, his understanding of what would be expected of him was still a little unfulfilled. “It was getting a little tense for me,” he recalls. “I really had no clue until, eventually, about a month before the exhibition opened, I went off to LA and that’s when I first met Kahlil and his team face-to-face. The piece was far from complete at that point, but I was starting to see how it looked and

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how it felt.”

Soulodre has pioneered an algorithm technology that allows audio signals to be split in a unique way, decomposing an existing recording into ‘streams’ individual elements such as a singer’s voice or the guitar performance – that can be isolated out of the mix and manipulated as desired. This means elements like ambients, the reverberation, the sound of the room in which it was recorded, can all be pulled out separately, leaving only the dry original. “When you have all these different streams, you think, what do I want to do with those streams? In this context, we had a 16-channel surround mix, so now I’m going to create a multichannel surround mix with those streams in real time.”

While Soulodre had a solid toolbox to work with - thanks to many years of developing his ‘stream extraction’ technology - the demands of the project pushed him to new levels. At times, Joseph would present a section – typically a scene and its associated sounds – which would often lead to Soulodre writing new software on the fly.

As the launch drew closer, the team gathered – first in Los Angeles for two weeks, then onsite in New York at the New Museum. “We did the final work in the space itself, which was very beneficial – at least from the audio perspective,” highlights Soulodre. “The edit of the piece was changing constantly, and we realised that there was no way to really automate my part. So, if Kahlil edited the image and changed a scene and took out

five seconds and moved something around, that would change where the audio was. I was doing the spatial processing at the end, taking whatever the elements were going to be and creating this immersive mix. That meant that it could only be done on the final edit.”

Soulodre worked very closely with Brent Kiser throughout the project, the latter applying his post production expertise to the audio creation process.

“From a post production workflow, we never left Premier,” says Kiser. “That was my big thing, to create a way to do a mix in Premier that could send out 16 channels – 16 discrete channels. I told them that if you go from Premier to Pro Tools it’d take me four hours.

Then once we’re in there, I’ll have to export from there and bring it back to Premier. We took that out of the equation, so Kahlil could stay as creative as possible.”

Just to do the mix, the audio signal from the Adobe Premier software went to Soulodre’s stream extraction software and then recorded back into Premier while monitoring on the Funktion-One loudspeakers. The 16-channels of streams from Soulodre then had to be re-matched by Kiser in Premier in order to produce a QuickTime file for playback After looking at interfaces with 16 outs and considering the options, it was decided that going out over Dante was the best route. Kiser set up a Dante virtual soundcard on the Premier computer. The digital signal went Dante/Ethernet to Soulodre’s software, then Dante/Ethernet to a set of three Linea Research amps.

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Joseph’s vision of delivering a truly audio-visualsensory experience was realised, thanks to his innovative thinking, the skills of those in his team and the unwavering trust he placed in them.

Discussing the impact of the loudspeakers, Soulodre says: “Their capabilities became part of our ability to tell the story better. You had wonderful imaging and clarity and they could get high SPL if we needed it, ridiculously powerful and clear bass, which was important for getting tactile. Even using the smaller Funktion-One mid-high speakers put out really clean, high SPL output, which I’m relying on, because there are times when we’re swelling in terms of the emotion and the music and there’s lot’s going on and we’re driving it pretty hard, and it’s not distorting – it’s nowhere near distorting – and we’re getting wonderful coverage in the room. Then we’re hitting it with some deep bass and it’s crystal clear.”

Kiser agrees: “In our test facility we have a room that we set up to be able to go through work flow and stuff.

We used some other loudspeakers and, I don’t know how to best describe it.... it was just flat. The clarity and roundness that we were able to get with the FunktionOnes was just huge. It sounded incredible.”

Discussing what happens next, Joseph says: “We experimented in real-time on Fly Paper. I had already been making the film by the time Daniel and those guys came on board. I had no idea what was possible. Now that I do, I want to experiment in the lab and in the studio before the next interesting push.” n

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Katie Tavini

Conference call

Mastering engineer, Red Bull Studios Normal Not Novelty host and PSNEurope columnist Katie Tavini discusses the ways in which industry conferences are becoming one of the most vital educational opportunities this business has to offer, and why there is so much more to them than just businessmen in suits...

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hen people talk about conferences, I have always thought they sound like a really dull way to spend a weekend. You see it in movies, grey men wearing grey suits drinking cold coffee and talking about statistics in a stuffy powerpoint presentation. Don’t ask what films I watch, but this is usually what springs to mind.

However, when JP Braddock got in touch saying he was organising a mastering conference, I thought, okay, this is my kinda event. Still probably doesn’t sound super interesting unless you’re mega into mastering, but bear with me on this one. JP and Russ Hepworth-Sawyer managed to pull together a fantastic team, creating one hell of a lineup. Mastering is a relatively small part of the music industry, but the diversity of topics over the weekend was pretty incredible!

The conference kicked off with a keynote from Guenter Loibl discussing HD vinyl, followed by technical papers from AES members and event sponsors. Bob Stuart delivered a technical paper on MQA technology which, as this is a relatively new format, was incredibly important, especially as at some point we may be asked to deliver MQA masters. On the Sunday, Dr Andrew Bourbon delivered an interesting and controversial paper on how mixing and mastering can be taught at University level, followed by Stephen Bruel (who had

travelled all the way from Australia) who gave a paper on the art of remastering, based on his research of Australian band Sunnyboys’ remastered material.

One of the most sobering moments by far was Crispin Herrod Taylor from Crookwood on the future of mastering. He boldly started out by telling the room that in five years, 50 per cent of us would be out of a job.

What a statement! There were many tense murmurs around the room, but Taylor went on to inspire everyone to really think about how they run their businesses and how we can provide better services to clients. He reminded us that it’s important to invest in education, our rooms, and seek to become more efficient.

Taylor reminded everyone that although we work in an industry we love, we still have to work at it. And for me, this was one of the biggest things I took home from the whole conference. Because sure, it’s a huge privilege to work on great music, but if we’re sat in the studio every day, not challenging ourselves and not evolving, eventually it’s going to get boring and we will become unsatisfied. And so this keynote that started out seemingly all doom and gloom, actually lifted the entire room.

Another topic that really got me thinking was Mike Cave’s exploration of stem mastering, something I’ve never even tried before, but he really broke it down and

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inspired me to experiment. It also opened my eyes to how important it is to work closely with mix engineers we’re on the same team after all!

Sunday unveiled possibly the most terrifying but amazing moments for me; I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Mandy Parnell, one of my favourite mastering engineers. Her client list is basically a who’s who of my favourite music, and it was such an incredible opportunity to get to speak to her about creating it.

The whole event was a huge learning curve for me, and I would urge anyone, if they get an opportunity to go to a conference on their particular subject, do it!

Learning from complete experts is such a valuable experience and I feel like I learnt more during the conference than I have over the past two years.

That’s not even an exaggeration; you can do as much reading as you like, but to have completely up to date information from the people who are creating the technology, doing the research and making the records is an absolutely incredible way to learn.

Not only was it a significant learning experience, but the social part was a right laugh - I made some incredible friends at the conference who I’ve stayed in touch with ever since. It was great to get to know people who are all in the same boat. So, next time you see a conference advertised, don’t hesitate, just go! n

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Mary Poppins returns as Emily Blunt

There’s something about Mary

From the mean streets of Guy Ritchie’s London to the magical whimsy of Mary Poppins Returns, Oscar winning production sound mixer Simon Hayes has applied his midas touch to some of the most iconic films of the past two decades. Here he tells Daniel Gumble about his incredible career to date and the task of bringing one of cinema’s best loved characters to life through sound…

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hen a hungry and ambitious Simon Hayes made his feature film debut as a production sound mixer on Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels at the age of just 27, he could never have predicted that some 20-odd years later he would be regarded as one of the most sought after figures in the world of musical cinema. His outstanding sound mixing work on Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables earned him an Oscar in 2013, while his CV boasts credits for some of the biggest releases in recent history. Among them are Snatch, Shaun Of The Dead, Mamma Mia!, Layer Cake and most recently, the highly-anticipated Mary Poppins Returns.

What’s more, he is already working on a live action film adaptation of Cats and has a yet to be titled project with director Danny Boyle in the pipeline.

PSNEurope editor Daniel Gumble finds Hayes in talkative mood, as he recalls Poppins, gear and his path from working on commercials as a teenager to becoming one of the best production sound mixers in the business...

What first attracted you to sound?

My dad was a production sound mixer.

He would bring back bits of broken Simon Hayes sound equipment when I was about five years old and ask me to fix them. So instead of being given toys I was given bits of broken equipment. I left school at 16 and got a job as a runner in a commercials production company. I was gravitating towards being an assistant director, but at 19 I decided that route wasn’t for me and went to work with my old man.

I did that for a year and then, because I’d made some contacts in commercials as a runner, I started getting offered work and began mixing commercials when I was about 20 years old. I then met a runner on a commercial and who was an aspiring director, making short films at the weekend. He asked if I would like to come and do a short film he was working on that

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weekend. That director was Guy Ritchie. So we made this short film The Hard Case in 1995, but he thought 10 minutes wasn’t enough and decided he wanted to write a longer version. Two years later, he phoned me back to say it was financed and asked if would I like to work on it. That was Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and that was how I got into feature films at 27 years old.

What was it like to work on such a huge hit as your debut feature film?

At that point there was an established British film industry of older technicians, but it wasn’t a busy industry, so it was extremely difficult to break into.

There were a lot of technicians like myself across all departments who were enjoying quite busy careers in commercials and music videos but were desperately

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looking to get into film. With Lock Stock, we all arrived on set and the script was a real page turner, clearly something very special. I knew most of the HODs from commercials and music videos, and one thing that was tangible was that we had an ambitious and hungry cast and Simon Hayes no one on that crew who was deadwood.

Everyone was out to do the very best job they could and that definitely comes across in the movie.

Fortuitously, we were shooting with a DP, Tim Maurice-Jones, who was very supportive of sound.

Guy is all about comedy dialogue and patter, and consequently, he didn’t want to do any ADR. Thankfully, the cameraman was very accommodating to what we needed to get good sound on the movie. So, it got around the industry that we hadn’t needed to do any ADR on Lock Stock and that was very helpful in getting me my second, third and fourth films.

So what came next?

I took every film I was offered. I stuck with Guy Ritchie and his producer Matthew Vaughn and we did Snatch and Mean Machine. Then a couple of fortuitous things happened for me. Matthew decided he wanted to direct and he’d been the producer whose budgets I’d saved due to not having to do ADR. He wanted to take me on to his first project, which was Layer Cake, and that was a step up in budget. The film started getting bigger and I’m now serving Matthew and Guy. Also at that point, Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan had employed a very ambitious producer called Sarah Jane Wright who was looking after a company called Working Title 2, which was Working Title’s low budget films division. Suddenly I was asked to do Working title 2 films, one of which was Shaun Of The Dead. Then, because of my success with the lack of ADR on the Working Title 2 projects, I got a chance to interview for Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, which was a Working Title, big budget film.

How did that differ from what you’d done before?

It happened around the time when we were moving from two tracks to multi-tracks, and I had been very well known for using two booms on everything and getting very clean boom dialogue. Also, on the films I’d been working on, the budget meant we would shoot on one camera. If you shoot a film with one camera you can get

great boom sound, you’re always going to have sound quality that matches the camera perspective.

When I moved on to Bridget Jones, we were going to use two or three cameras on everything, so you’re not always going to be on the edge of the close-up.

You really have to commit to using radio mics as well as booms, which is a big step because radio mics are far more difficult to get sounding good. Now what we do on every film is use radio mics and booms because we have multiple tracks.

At that point, one of the things that held mixers back from radio micing and booming everything was the fact that we only had two tracks, so you had to make a commitment on the floor as to what your process was going to be. Now we’ve got multiple tracks, you don’t have to make that commitment, but when we were shooting Bridget Jones I couldn’t get my hands on a multi-track machine. So we had a non-linear Nagra V, which was a two-track machine, recording on to a hard disk rather than tape, and we ganged two of those together with Time Code and created four tracks. We were able to put a boom on track one and have three people on radio mics, or if required, mix a couple of people on to one of the tracks.

The next big step came when I was offered a film called Copying Beethoven, which starred Ed Harris and was extremely technically challenging musically. Ed was going to spend a lot of time in front of the camera writing music, picking up a violin or playing things on a piano. He couldn’t play either instrument, but his character needed to be playing phrases, so we had to assign every single phrase of the piano and violin and play it into a hidden earpiece so that in the middle of his dialogue scenes, if he picked up a violin, literally as the bow hit the strings he would get the correct phrase in his ear to mime to. That presented an extreme technical challenge, which brought us into the world of musicals.

The film was, technically, a great success. It received mixed reviews but for us it was invaluable in our learning process.

After that we got offered Mamma Mia! That was another level up and we had a lot of input from Benny and Bjorn about how we were going to record the musical parts and how we would blend the live recordings with the pre records. For instance, Meryl Streep sung two or three songs live on that set, and that gave me the confidence to tell Tom Hooper, when he

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asked me if it would be possible to record the whole of Les Miserables live, that it could be done.

How did you come to work on Mary Poppins Returns?

I’ve always been a huge fan of [director] Rob Marshall.

He’s one of the most exciting directors in the world today and getting offered Mary Poppins was hugely exciting.

He brings so much enthusiasm and support that it’s infectious. When you’re on a set with him everyone wants to do their best. We all knew it was a huge project to take on. Everyone loves Mary Poppins and we knew we had to do the best job possible to be considered in the same ballpark as the original. Not only was it a challenge for the spoken dialogue, but also the musical numbers. We did some really great live recordings and blended some of them into playback and back out to live when we needed to.

For sound, it was a huge technical task. What was wonderful about it was the scale of Rob’s vision. He only wants the best and that’s what I want when I’m recording sound for a director. Rather than settling for something slightly sub par to save time, he was very happy to extend the time to support his heads of department.

How did it feel when it was finished?

We were very lucky; we had a music director called Mike Higham who was incredible to work with. We also had Mike Prestwood Smith who is one of the best re-recording mixers in the world. Also, the supervising sound editor Renee Tondelli collaborated with my team and I from the get go. It wasn’t a case of sound production handing over the sound to sound-post; there was collaboration before we even started shooting where we talked about the tonal qualities of what we wanted to record and how we would weave creatively in and out of live singing and playback to dance numbers.

We also planned how we would go into the historic vehicles we have in the background on set, getting them recorded by putting mics inside the engines and on their exhausts so that every single background sound you hear is era-correct. That creates a soundscape that the audience believes. We tried to create a soundtrack par excellence.

Talk us through your preferred equipment There is only one type of lavalier mic we use and that’s DPA. We use 4071s on some voices, we use 4061s on others, but one thing’s for sure, we only use DPAs because they are transparent and natural. Other lavaliers sound like lavaliers, whereas DPA lavaliers sound like boom mics and sound open not compressed. Sound editors are able to edit them with booms more easily.

We also use Audio Developments mixers and a Zaxcom Deva 24. I’m only interested in using the very best sound equipment. The prerequisite is that it’s got to sound great, coming from a company that really cares about the industry and the creative process. n

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Mick Olesh

Sound Waves

This year, audio plugins giant Waves is looking to make a splash with its SoundGrid technology and range of associated products. Here, the company’s EVP sales and marketing Mick Olesh tells Daniel Gumble what the company has in store for 2019 and how it plans to take on the AV and install market...

E

ver since its launch some 26 years ago, Waves has been a company fuelled by innovation.

Launching with the world’s very first audio plugin in the form of the Q10 paragraphic equalizer, it has continued to evolve at a rate of knots, its products and solutions a ubiquitous presence across studios and live events the world over.

As with any trailblazing business, the key to its success lies in its unwillingness to stand still and rest on its laurels. While its activities in the plugins market continue to gather pace, Waves is also sharpening its focus on the increasingly exciting, and, indeed, lucrative AV/install sector. What’s more, it is currently breaking new ground with its SoundGrid software and hardware solutions, which are designed to bring ‘real-time processing and networking and the power of Waves tools to any system’.

To find out more about SoundGrid and Waves’ plans for 2019, PSNEurope caught up with the company’s EVP sales and marketing, Mick Olesh...

Waves has been working extensively on its SoundGrid products. What can you tell us about the philosophy behind the technology?

The basic idea with SoundGrid was to create what was, until now, a non-existant platform. By working through this novel technology, we can now transfer Audio-overEthernet through various Waves SoundGrid units and third-party compatible/SoundGrid integrated hardware, resulting in the ability to use I/Os or servers in a quick and effortless fashion; the latter, by using one Ethernet cable per a device (Cat 5e/6 STP or Cat 7), which greatly reduces cable runs and interference. This allows streaming of high counts of digital audio channels (up to 128) and the ability to process that audio through plugins at ultra-low-latency (as low as 0.8 ms), all taking place over a 1Gb network.

SoundGrid is a proprietary Ethernet Layer-2-Protocol and EtherType. In layman’s terms, that means SoundGrid is a way to move audio data between devices that are connected to the same local network and “speak the

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SoundGrid language”. These devices automatically convert SoundGrid to different audio formats and vice versa. Audio is routed and streamed between devices – I/Os and servers, all connected to the same network.

I/O devices convert SoundGrid packets to and from other audio formats. Servers receive audio from I/O devices, take care of plugin processing, and send the processed audio back. To allow for continuous, uninterrupted traffic, only SoundGrid devices should be connected to the network. In other words, SoundGrid is a private network. You can still use different network ports on your computer for other networks (such as internet).

This makes SoundGrid a great fit for any environment – from simple project studios to live venues, to complex networked AV Installations and broadcast facilities.

What are your plans for SoundGrid in 2019?

Waves SoundGrid technology and its various applications are continuing to evolve. We are perpetually at work to broaden SoundGrid capabilities, updates and features,

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together with expanding SoundGrid’s availability to more third-party companies that have realised the benefits of being SoundGrid compatible. The latest release (V10) of the eMotion LV1 Live Mixer has delivered a new I/O sharing feature, where you connect your LV1 mixers to the same network switch and share stageboxes between them. This means you can get your sources from the stage to multiple destinations at the same time, with separate gain control for each engineer and without having to split the signal with dedicated gear.

Similar developments are in the works for the SoundGrid Studio Application (which runs on your host computer and manages all software and hardware connected to the SoundGrid network) - a newly designed rack system and additional hardware I/O and format conversion boxes. eMotional: The Emotion LV1Live Mixer V10

Talk us through the latest launches Our most recent products include the Axis One: a standardised computer, custom-designed and optimised to run Waves LV-1, packed in a half-rack 2U case; the SoundGrid Server One-C: a plugin processing powerhouse, which relieves your computer from plugin processing, enabling you to run hundreds of SoundGridcompatible plugins in real time, live or in the studio; the SoundGrid Extreme Server-C: a compact and powerful, light and robust DSP unit, which can effortlessly process hundreds of SoundGrid-compatible plugins in real time, live or in the studio as well, while taking the space of only half the width of a standard rack; the SoundGrid Mobile Server, great for traveling, mixing small live shows, or for the studio; and the eMotion LV1 Live Mixer V10, now with new features and including I/O sharing.

Do you have any examples of recent projects that have incorporated SoundGrid - and if so, how have they benefited from the technology?

To name but a few, FOH engineer for Twenty-One Pilots, Shane Bardiau, is using the Waves SoundGrid Extreme Server on their Bandito tour. He conveyed to us that with them being only two guys on stage they are still at 78 inputs, and that the Extreme Server has enough power to run 28 rack spaces and all 33 of his plugins simultaneously while staying under 70 per cent capacity.

Another example is mega church Saddleback Church in Lake Forest California. Its technical director, Aaron Ruse, needing to be in control of a full five-to-sevenpiece band, supporting six-to-eight singers and at times, a 60-80-person choir, a pastor and guest speakers, as well as frequent live shows by touring artists. The church is using two Waves MultiRack systems running through SoundGrid Extreme Servers. They also use Waves MultiRack together with a SoundGrid Server One in order to run a large selection of Waves plugins at all of its broadcast locations.

Elsewhere, FOH engineer James Gebhard uses a Waves SoundGrid Extreme Server for plugin processing

on the current Whitesnake tour. He claims that mixing with the Waves LV1, together with not being limited in his use of plugins, has enabled him to achieve studiolevel sound, and to go from being a live engineer to being a live producer.

Also utilising SoundGrid is the musical Jagged Little Pill, for which sound designer Jonathan Deans is using two Waves SoundGrid Extreme Servers (one main, one backup) and Waves MultiRack, which offers the processing power needed to run plugins in real time during the show. To quote Deans: “Without plugins, it would be quite a different show. I would not have been able to achieve the tonality required for the performances, with the goal of creating a sonic experience fitting for an audience of all generations.

Plus, using this setup has enabled me to respect and stay true to Alanis Morrissette’s music, her overall wishes, and the expectation of the fans – including me.”

amount of resources in R&D. We have a yearly plan that goes through an ongoing revision process, since in order to stay ahead of the game one must be attentive to ever-changing paradigms. As Waves has an obligation to cater to every kind of user out there, including all musical genres and all fields - be it studio, live, broadcast, post production, sound design and more, we need to be able to react accordingly and accommodate diverse user requirements.

There are ever-changing paradigms in the industry today, such as the quality of tools that people expect, where and how they use these tools, the manner in which they are exposed to marketing and their purchasing habits. These continuous changes force us to adjust and perfect our strategies on an ongoing basis, not to mention the challenge of keeping our nearly 200 plugins up to date and ready to use in every host and every platform.

The AV and install market is becoming evermore lucrative. Is this an area you will be looking to make further inroads to in 2019?

What else does Waves have in-store this year besides SoundGrid?

Definitely. SoundGrid is naturally being embraced and implemented by the AV and installation market.

If we only consider the obvious prerequisite of the aforementioned smooth and easy networking, in this field, where reliable and optimal networking is a must, SoundGrid is the perfect solution.

What are the biggest areas of opportunity for Waves and SoundGrid at the moment? And the biggest challenges?

Waves is passionate about music and sound quality and has always striven, and still strives, to provide the very best tools possible for use in the artistic and creative process, as well as to develop and provide solutions that enable unparalleled sonic quality for all audio applications. To do so, Waves invests a substantial

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In the relative short term, Waves will be releasing additional products to its expanding line of state-ofthe-art virtual instruments and there will be substantial developments within our Nx headphone technology. We are especially excited at the prospect of revealing and demonstrating a unique and compelling soon-to-bereleased innovative plugin that will dramatically change how you mix. This upcoming release is being developed in collaboration with one of the most prominent engineers in the industry today. Following Waves’ hugely successful Abbey Road product releases in 2018 - The Abbey Road Chambers and Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain plugins - in 2019 we will be releasing a brand new product encompassing one of the most unique, workflow enhancing and ground-breaking technical achievements that this prolific relationship between Waves and Abbey Road has ever produced. n

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Photo: Andrew Brooks

JANUARY 2019

RAK to the future

Expanding the technical capabilities of its four studios and establishing lasting connections with labels are among the factors that ensure RAK Studios continues to be an integral part of London’s studio community, writes David Davies… art-rock band Sundara Karma and a new cast recording of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s much-loved musical, Company. The latter saw Sondheim – who will celebrate his 89th birthday in March – conducting an ensemble of 20 vocalists and 15 musicians that obliged two studios to be combined together.

“It was a really interesting project for us and involved a good deal of planning, plotting, checking and set-up,” says Leese. “The original facility earmarked for the project had become unavailable, and we were perhaps not a natural studio physically speaking, but we successfully slaved two rooms together using all sorts of wiring and video conference equipment. Ultimately, we had the strings in the Studio 2 control room, vocalists in the Studio 2 live room, and the rest of the players in the Studio 3 live room.”

Although undoubtedly a challenging project, and one that was turned round on a relatively short timescale, Leese asserts that it passed off “very well and is just the kind of project that really shows off our capabilities.

‘Word of mouth’ [counts for a lot in this industry] and often results in similar projects coming our way”.

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Labels and leading engineers Of course, along with attracting one-off projects, there is much to be said for securing the loyalties of major-name engineers and producers. Producer and engineer Steve Fitzmaurice – whose credits include artists as disparate as Depeche Mode and Sting – has brought numerous sessions to RAK, as has producer, mixer and label executive Rodaidh McDonald.

The association with McDonald – whose credits include Adele, The xx and Gil Scott-Heron – is partly the result of a long-term association with prominent British independent label XL Records. “Rodaidh was someone that we became friendly with through the label at a time when he was XL’s in-house engineer,” Leese recalls. “He loves the vibe at RAK and has brought a lot of work to the studios; in particular, The xx album [2017’s I See You] coming here was a real coup for us.”

There is no doubt that a major contributor to the RAK ‘vibe’ is the continual finessing of its new and vintage equipment. “We are always on the lookout for interesting gear and instruments,” says Leese, pointing to the recent acquisition of a Wurlitzer piano and a Gibson

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash

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stablished in 1976 by legendary producer Mickie Most, RAK Studios has been a mainstay of London’s studio scene ever since. Like another notable facility in St. John’s Wood, Abbey Road, RAK has never been slow to respond to changing requirements while maintaining an ethos that blends the very best of new and vintage equipment.

Fifteen years after Most passed away, the studios are going from strength to strength, thanks to the continued vitality of the four primary studio spaces and a publishing arm, as well as more recent additions of a writing room and a fruitful association with the University of Westminster. General manager Andy Leese and studio manager Trisha Wegg both believe that RAK’s reputation for accommodating a diverse roster of clients and project types is serving it well.

“It’s been a good year,” says Wegg. “As with most studios these days there is always a quiet period at some point, but then things pick up again and, in fact, we are already confirming bookings for March and beyond.”

2018 has been another “very eclectic year”, confirms Wegg, with recent weeks seeing RAK hosting British

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Spreading the net wide

Trisha Wegg in Studio 1

overall operation healthy. An ongoing collaboration with Communion Records that involves artists coming in for a day each and recording three to five tracks live, including a cover from the RAK Publishing catalogue, is a case in point. So, too, is an initiative involving the University of Westminster that entails one student per year – drawn from a wide range of artistic disciplines – basing themselves at RAK for project work and mentoring.

A series of masterclasses are also going, underpinned by the desire to expose more people to studio life. As Leese observes, “many industry people

Photo: JQ

With six- or eight-week studio stays now largely a thing of the past, there is an onus on studios to continually explore other sources of work that can help keep the

Photo: Andy Leese

J-200 acoustic guitar. “It’s not something we advertise prominently, but there are a lot of great instruments here and you will be able to use if them you come to work with us.”

In terms of fundamental studio equipment RAK retains an enviably diverse infrastructure. Studios 1 and 2 are both based around API desks, while Studio 3 houses a vintage Neve VRP Legend desk as well as both a classic and new outboard. Studio 4 – oriented towards mixing – features an SSL 4056 desk. Coming right up to date, a pair of Quested Q212D monitors have just been installed in Studio 3.

RAK also remains a popular destination for artists wanting to record to tape for at least part of their project.

Wegg mentions a recent session that involved recording drums to tape before moving everything into Pro Tools, whilst South African jazz pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim recorded an entire album to analogue in superquick time.

“When he and his band came in they were saying it was a 40-minute album and they needed 40 minutes to record it!” says Wegg, adding that a full backup was also captured with Pro Tools.

JANUARY 2019

Andy Leese

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RAK: selected highlights from 42 years and rising

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hoosing just a few classic discs from more than four decades of excellence is no easy task, but the following selections would probably be on most people’s list of the ‘best of RAK’. From the early years of the studios, Ultravox’s 1981 synth-pop milestone ‘Vienna’ is still a radio play mainstay the world over.

Released six years later, The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ is the most played Christmas song of the 21st century, its emotional arc only made more poignant by the tragic death of guest vocalist Kirsty MacColl in 2000.

Classic albums cut at RAK include Simply Red’s Picture Book (1985), Robert Plant’s Fate of Nations (1993) and Radiohead’s The Bends (1995).

More recent full-length highlights include Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour (2014) and Villagers’ Where Have You Been All My Life? (2016), the latter recorded entirely live in just one day at RAK. Finally, a less well-known choice – but a strong personal favourite of the present writer – is Scott Walker’s Tilt (1995), a frequently breathtaking album that ushered in Walker’s second phase career as an avant-garde record-maker. n

don’t get the opportunity to go into [major professional] studios anymore. With a lot of working taking place in production rooms or bedrooms on laptops, it’s good to be able to offer that other kind of experience.”

With a formidable roll-call of classic tracks and albums recorded at RAK [see Box] reinforcing its contemporary position, the studios have been wellserved by a relentless determination to “prove what we can offer in terms of quality, and a willingness to explore new areas of diversity,” states Leese. “That will remain our emphasis in the future.” n

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Full stream ahead

PSNEurope’s Kevin Hilton finds out about BBC Radio’s moves into the streaming world with its new Sounds app…

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he box set has become a way of not just collecting favourite series but watching lots of episodes in one sitting. This indulgence has primarily been for films and TV shows on DVD but has now extended to streaming anddownload services. Radio listeners have had cassettes and CDs to binge on in the past, but over Christmas and the New Year the BBC made streamed box sets a reality for the audio-only medium.

These included Prince Charles on the 1,000th edition of the programme Private Passions; the best of performances from the Live Lounge; a new series of festive short stories; and music mixes by Trevor Nelson, Matt Lucas and Rudimental. All this was hosted on a new audio platform, BBC Sounds, which allows people to listen on computers, mobile phones and other devices to access live programmes and on-demand material.

The BBC Sounds app was officially launched at the end of October, with live broadcasts of national and radio programmes from the London Eye. The new platform replaces iPlayer Radio, adding to what was already available with more than 100 hours of ‘new’ comedy and drama from the BBC archives, podcasts, music mixes and live broadcasts.

The user interface of BBC Sounds and what the app can do differs considerably from that of iPlayer Radio.

“We wanted to make a product that was very focused on audio and more personalised,” explains the executive product manager for BBC Sounds, Chris Kimber. “The iPlayer Radio app was a good product if you knew and loved radio but if you weren’t familiar with the BBC brands it was quite confusing and not welcoming.”

Kimber says the primary aim behind the new app was to “reach out to more than hardcore BBC radio fans” and allow people to discover what material was available.

Being able to do this means there are even more technical differences between the two systems.

“BBC Sounds has been built from a set of APIs and is more consistent than iPlayer Radio, which ended up with too much complexity,” he comments.

In a blog about designing the API structure for BBC Sounds, software engineering team lead Patrick Cunningham wrote that, in the past, API endpoints had been created for particular features requested by clients.

Cunningham and his team began to look at an API that was independent of a specific platform to create a single integration point. This has resulted in the layout and content of BBC Sounds being defined in an API. Kimber observes that this makes the app “more

consistent” and allows it to be rolled out across different platforms. “Because we’ve built a core business logic, if we want to build it out in another direction, such as working with voice devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo, we can,” he says. “We’re able to provide the underlying technology for those.”

Material that ends up on BBC Sounds can come from a number of different sources, including podcasts produced at a presenter’s home on a computer-based DAW or programmes made in a fully equipped BBC studio. Jim Simmons, executive product manager for BBC Platform, Media Services, comments that many of the live programmes are captured off-air and taken into the department’s control room.

The source feeds are distributed by the BBC’s streaming system, Audio Factory, and then sent up to the cloud for processing by a cloud-based encoder into one of four bit rates: 48, 96, 128 or 320kb/s.

“These cover the range of devices from mobile up to top end hi-fi for a station such as Radio 3,” Simmonds says. “These are then formed into chunked HTTP for on-demand delivery.”

Simmonds says this works well for live material.

Pre-recorded programmes are taken from the playout system and then sent for encoding. The app is able to interrogate the target receiving device so the most appropriate quality is delivered.

“Metadata is very important in deciding what is offered,” he explains. Kimber adds that metadata also

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plays a role in searching for programmes and podcasts.

“At a very basic level we rely on good metadata to aggregate everything and then sort between genres, such as comedy, history and music.”

Metadata is additionally used for personalisation and particularly for the play-queue feature. Currently available only on the web, this will cue subsequent episodes in a series.

“If you’re listening to a podcast like Michelle Obama’s Becoming, the system will line-up the following edition so the listener doesn’t have to keep reaching down to select something,” Kimber says. “When we’ve finessed the logic, we think this will become really useful.”

A major technical point that is still being ironed out, for radio in general as well as audio streaming, is loudness. Simmonds says that the BBC has been working with the AES, which produced the TD 1004 loudness recommendations for audio streaming and network file playback.

These have been adopted for podcasts, with the target set at -18 LUFS (loudness units relative to full scale).

“In noisy environments, podcasts were considered too quiet and we were getting complaints,” Simmonds explains. “We’ve added a loudness component for filebased delivery and -18 is a nice compromise.”

He adds that there are still some problems because the different smart speaker AI voices work to their own loudness targets, with Alexa at -14 and Home on -16. n

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Photo: Anthony Upton/PA Wire.

JANUARY 2019

Atmos sphere Cinema chains are now updating their theatres with 4k HDR images and immersive sound to keep moviegoers coming through their doors. The Odeon Cinemas Group is rolling out these new technologies and recently upgraded its West End flagship, Kevin Hilton reports.

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eicester Square in London’s West End is an international focus for cinema. It is home to many famous picture houses - the Empire and the VUE (formerly the Warner) among them - but looming above all is the black granite, art deco tower of the Odeon. Opened in 1937 and the go-to venue for many film premieres since then, it is now the first Dolby Cinema installation in the UK, featuring Atmos immersive audio through the use of SLS loudspeakers and Vision projection.

Described by architecture doyen Nikolaus Pevsner as “showily austere”, the Odeon Leicester Square was designed by Mather and Weadon and originally housed an ornately decorated auditorium of 2116 seats. Over the years, it has been renovated with the latest technological innovations, including the first widescreen presentation in Britain in 1953 and in 1999, it was the first British cinema with a digital projector.

On the audio side, it has offered Dolby Digital, DTS and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound. Reopening just before Christmas, the now so-called Odeon Luxe Leicester Square features Dolby’s object-based spatial surround system, Atmos, in conjunction with the company’s 4k, HDR (high dynamic range), dual laser Vision projectors.

This was all installed during an 11-month rebuild and refurbishment that cost millions of pounds.

The main theatre now houses 800 seats, some of which are Luxe powered reclining chairs which the Odeon chain has also installed in other cinemas. Building work had to take into account not only the heritage of the cinema, but also its unique structure. The auditorium is not just big but also deep, tall and wide, including two levels, with the upper featuring the Royal Box balcony,

and subsequently, meaning a standard system was not an option. Instead, a customised installation was designed, with the audio system in particular having to be tailored to meet the demands of the venue. The result is a Dolby Atmos rig of more than 400 loudspeakers, including line arrays, to deliver consistent coverage to the audience. This system boasts increased dialogue intelligibility, while not pushing the cabinets in the front third of the room.

“The high profile nature of the site, the unique architectural details, along with the fact that it is used for premieres often many times a month, has required us to create an audio playback system that is unlike anything we have done before,” comments Julian Stanford, senior director of business development, Dolby Cinema Europe.

“A typical Dolby Cinema is approximately 150,000 cubic feet and conforms to a conventional rectangular platform shape. When we deal with unique auditoria, especially those with a balcony, we are often forced to address multiple reference listening positions.”

In the case of the Odeon Leicester Square, Stanford explains, it called for a large number of loudspeakers for a space of roughly 1,000,000 cubic feet. This includes a sizeable seating section on top of the balcony and a “secondary reference listening position on the floor”, as well as the under-balcony area.

“To deal with the multiple reference positions and occlusions, like the balcony, we need to duplicate the loudspeaker feeds from the CP850 processor,” says Stanford. To do this, the QSC Q-SYS software-based processing and networking platform was selected. This is used to duplicate, time align and equalise additional signals coming from the CP850 Dolby Atmos processor,

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which has 64 output channels as standard. Q-SYS is also used for general processing and routing.

Stanford comments that another reason for the high loudspeaker count is the presence of many SLS line arrays. SLS Professional Audio is a brand of Dolby that produces line array, point source cabinets, subwoofers and ribbon technology.

“Each line array comprises multiple modules which form the curved arrays,” Stanford states. “We count each module in the array as a speaker. The modules in each array are driven by one amplifier channel in sets of two or three, meaning there are fewer amp channels than there are loudspeakers.”

Big line arrays are installed behind the screen and over the first third of the auditorium. All sources for the loudspeakers originate from a fully redundant system made up of three CP850s and one CP650 Digital Cinema processor. The CP650 has been installed to handle 35mm and 70mm film, both of which are still used for film festivals.

The Odeon is a multi-function venue. To create a bigger stage, the screen - weighing around 25,000kg can be moved, along with five channels of line arrays, a large grouping of subs and a complicated metal truss and masking system. This was made possible by reinforcing the overhead structure above the screen.

As the cinema is in a particularly busy, noisy part of London, acoustic isolation has been fitted to ensure the audience gets the full benefit of immersive soundtracks.

Additionally, an isolation wall was built behind the screen as a baffle between the cinema and the hotel next door.

The Odeon Group plans to open a further seven Dolby Cinemas from 2019 onwards. n

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David Stewart

Off the record

Moving more concertedly into film scoring, as well as tape restoration and transfer, has ensured that Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios in West London remains a hive of activity, writes David Davies…

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ack when PSNEurope last covered British Grove, in March 2015, the studio was celebrating its increased popularity for film scoring, with award-winning sci-fi thriller Gravity among the major projects to have passed through its doors. Nearly four years later, the studio's appeal to the film-making community has seen it expand successfully into several other areas, including tape restoration and transfer.

British Grove’s long-resident studio manager David Stewart leafs through the diary, noting “it is very apparent that we have been doing more and more film scoring work, particularly during the last two years, the number of projects having actually tripled”.

With Studio 1 featuring a large, double-height space that can comfortably accommodate 40 string players, British Grove was always destined to attract these types of projects in a city where there are now only a few

studios capable of supporting orchestral recording. The decline of large studio availability in other capital cities – “for instance, we have had a lot of work through from Paris” – and the willingness of British Grove to adapt to the many challenges of string sessions, have also undoubtedly played a part.

“Recording strings is definitely a different discipline to band sessions,” says Stewart.

“As opposed to working with a group – where you might set up a drum kit and essentially leave it for a week or two – recording cues for films is a fast and furious business. There are an awful lot of factors to consider in advance, from setting up microphones and 40 to 50 sets of headphones, to ensuring that you have enough noise-free music stands. Then there is the whole issue of technical backup to the engineers running Pro Tools, as the session files for film are more complex than those for ‘regular’ recording. And, of course, you

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have to be ready to go on the downbeat at 10am!

“It’s an incredible discipline, and I am very pleased to say that the team here has really embraced it, performing very well,” states Stewart, paying tribute to an in-house team that includes music editor Poppy Kavanagh, and recording engineers Jason Elliott, Martin Hollis and Andy Cook.

These capabilities have not been lost on leading film composers, with Alexandre Desplat (Operation Finale), Stephen Price (2019 animation Wonder Park) and Nicholas Britell (forthcoming Dick Cheney biopic Vice) among the major names to have visited the studio.

British Grove has worked with several notable TV projects, including BBC1’s The Little Drummer Girl, for which Jo Yeong-wook provided the score.

Live streaming success Increased bookings for film and TV have hardly been

P47 JANUARY 2019

British Grove Studios

the only manifestation of a desire to diversify, with a recent 5G live streaming event undertaken on behalf of Japanese telco NTT, involving band performances captured by one moving and five static cameras.

“We derived a stereo audio mix that was fed back to each camera and encoded onto the final signal. The six camera feeds and the mix were processed and streamed live to Japan for the hour-long broadcast. For those accessing the 5G signal, there was the opportunity to switch between the different camera positions.

“We tested for several days beforehand, but I won’t deny that my heart was in my mouth on the day,” laughs Stewart. “It all went very smoothly, so that looks set to be another string to our bow.”

The same can be said for British Grove's recent move into tape restoration and transfer, with an ongoing project on behalf of Decca, so far involving the digitisation of nearly 80, mostly 1” four-track tapes of performances by Pavarotti, and including complete renditions of Tosca and Turandot.

“The tapes were generally in a pretty good state, but you have to be exceptionally careful,” recalls Stewart.

“You need to take every step possible to avoid the absorption of water because the tape layers can stick together, and if you then fast-forward you can rip the tape, at which point you are in big trouble with nothing to fall back on. There is also the possibility of oxide shedding [during the transfers].”

So not exactly an endeavour free of stress, but “it has been wonderful to be entrusted with these historic tapes, some of which date back to the 1970s”, says

Stewart, adding that “we have also recently transferred the entire Led Zeppelin back catalogue”.

EC was there As befits a studio established and still owned by guitarist, singer and songwriter Mark Knopfler, British Grove remains very much a ‘pure’, music-oriented complex.

The entirety of Knopfler’s last few studio albums – including Down The Road Wherever, released in November – were recorded and mixed at British Grove, whilst Eric Clapton has also undertaken the bulk of his studio work there in recent years. The Rolling Stones tracked their delightful 2016 covers album, Blue & Lonesome, in just a few days, and have since returned for “several week-long stints” to record material that has yet to be released.

Studio 1's multiple large isolation booths are undoubtedly a big part of its appeal to bands, such as the Stones, who would prefer to track live.

“I don’t think I have ever seen so much equipment out on the studio floor,” recalls Stewart of the Stones sessions. “There were guitar racks and cables everywhere, and with a band like that you really have to be on top of everything and ready to go. But the sessions went very well, as proven by the fact that they have been back several times now.”

Stewart readily admits that the studio would love to

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host more band projects, but with streaming continuing to assail record company budgets, the days of extended studio stays are largely gone. There are still plenty of one- or two-day bookings, and the studio remains attractive for mix sessions, Ian Brown’s forthcoming solo album, Ripples, being a very recent example.

The studios have always been a winning blend of new and vintage equipment, as underlined by the recent acquisition of a classic RCA Consolette console, and a BTH mic that “weighs a tonne”, Stewart’s team has also invested in a headphone monitoring system from GJC Designs that “allows each artist to have a little mixer, with eight mono and two stereo inputs and a reverse talkback mic. It was beautifully designed and executed, and it’s proven to be extremely reliable and easy to use.”

No one would claim that the major studio market is in a settled place, nor would they rule out further seismic shocks as project budgets continue to be squeezed. But thanks to a very judicious cultivation of the necessary skills and facilities, British Grove appears to be as wellpositioned as possible.

“Over time we have done more and more work in different areas and it’s evident that that diversification has ensured that we continue to flourish as a business,” concludes Stewart. n

P48 JANUARY 2019 Lucy J Mitchell

Post graduate

Lucy J Mitchell has been steadily garnering a reputation as one of the most versatile freelance post production sound editors and mixers in the business, boasting an impressive CV across TV, film, documentaries and video games. Here she tells Daniel Gumble about post production career paths, working on one of Britain’s best loved soaps and why more work must be done to address mental health issues in the industry…

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t approximately one hour and 20 minutes into PSNEurope’s conversation with Lucy J Mitchell, our dictaphone runs out of space, forcing us to stop, delete some longforgotten chats and pick up the recording. At this point we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we’re here to talk about - ‘here’ being a part-hipster, part-swanky coffee shop-cum-workspace for south London’s laptopwielding locals and the focus of our interview being Mitchell’s illustrious career to date. “I told you I can talk for England,” she laughs.

She’s not wrong. Since ordering our cappuccinos, the conversation has darted from the back-breaking hours

she put in to make it as a sound editor and dubbing mixer, her ambitions to build a voice over studio in her garden, being given a baptism of fire working on Eastenders and the huge toll working as a freelancer can take on one’s mental health. Her passion and dedication to her craft is immediately apparent, as is her honesty and openness in discussing the anxieties and personal difficulties she has faced - and continues to face - in the name of doing the job she loves. To date, she has worked on everything from drama and animation, to documentaries, feature-length films and video games.

“I started as a runner making tea on a low salary, and didn’t have a relevant audio or film degree,” she explains.

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“And though that never used to be a thing, I did notice I was the only one of my peers that didn’t have one. That was the beginning of the generation where everyone had that training, so I was a little bit intimidated. For me it was very much about going to watch someone else work in your free time and asking questions. So my progression was to first become a tape op in the machine room and I’d be there during lunch breaks and after work, which is quite hard when you’re doing a night shift and an early shift and you’re only being paid for eight hours but are there for 12.”

Though she may have earned her stripes via the more traditional route of learning on the job, Mitchell is quick

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to point out the benefits of a university education, having spoken to students at numerous universities and herself possessing a classical music degree.

“I would never want to put a negative stamp on universities because some of the courses are great; when I was a tape op I was always jealous I didn’t have one,” she elaborates. “Not that I needed one necessarily, but I feel like it would have made me more confident. I had to learn far more than everyone else just to get to the same level as them, and knew that they would be able to progress to editing and mixing faster than me.

But even when I speak at universities I always say that work experience is super important. A lot of people come out of uni and find that work is very different.”

Like most freelancers, Mitchell made her name by taking on projects of all shapes and sizes, rendering her CV an increasingly valuable commodity and enabling her to develop her skills across a multitude of disciplines.

“The first game I worked on was Guitar Hero Live at Shepperton, Pinewood,” she says. “They do a lot of computer games there. The sound for computer games these days is crazy - if you look at the amazing visuals the audio has to match. When I did Guitar Hero Live I was doing it all linear, editing and mixing to 3-4 minute sequences like I would for film or TV, so it wasn’t quite like working on a regular game. At the same time, they were doing another big game project where they were working on the “assets” like movements, footsteps and individual sound effects, rather than sequences. This was more how I was told game would be, and closer to the workflow of another game I worked on for Cloud Imperium Games called Star Citizen. I had to edit and clean up individual lines of Performance Captured dialogue and deliver each line separately. It would then be put into the game engine by audio programmers.

A lot of game audio jobs require you to do the audio programming yourself.

“Though the principles are the same, there are differences between doing games, TV, film etc. Things like track layout, as you’ll have way more sound effects tracks on a film, because there are usually way more effects and detail required. With documentaries there is always a lot less time. I always say our job, when editing, is to make the mixer’s life easy. The main difference I have found is prepping for a dialogue edit; in film and drama you need to use an EDL from the picture editor to conform all the microphones and takes from the audio rushes. I was used to just loading an AAF which had all the source audio I needed.”

One of the projects Mitchell counts among her favourites in recent years came in the form of a feature film she worked on back in 2017.

“I did the sound effects for a rom-com with David Tennant last year called You, Me and Him,” she recalls.

“I was doing all the sound effects, but because we had the time scale and budget, I got sent all the foley to sort through, and was asked to merge our sessions to prep for the effect premix. Because I come from

documentaries I was thrilled to have to time to go over it more throughly and started watching scenes without the dialogue and figuring out if there was anything on screen I wasn’t hearing. I also attended the pre and final mix, which always helps me improve my editing. In the final mix, the mixer Rob Farr sat me down at the end of the mixing desk with my own Pro Tools and fader pack and asked me to do any tweaks he wanted on the FX mix so he could concentrate on the dialogues. I enjoyed that as I got to do more than my original effect editor role; I was actually given supervising effects editor as my credit.

Arguably the highest profile name to grace Mitchell’s client list is Eastenders, for which she has applied her sound mixing and editing skills on a freelance basis for several years now.

“It’s a very fast turnaround on Eastenders”, she comments. “It was a good stepping stone between factual TV and full on drama because of the middleground schedule. I did well there because of my speed, which again came from making documentaries. I was able to add more background detail and idividual effects to scenes rather than just the “say what you see” style effects editing often needed on factual stuff with tight deadlines. It has helped my creativity and gave me my first dubbing mixer credit so It’s been a really good job for me. I hope to always be freelancing for them” Outside of her freelance work, Mitchell is also in the midst of building a new studio in her garden, aimed primarily at the voiceover recording, foley and mixing sector. Her goal, she tells us, is to create a space that offers a high-end spec but at an affordable rate.

“It’s a huge job but if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly,” she says. “I’ve worked with good companies with high standards so if I’m going to offer new services I need to match those levels. Obviously we’re not going to compete with the Pinewoods of the world. I don’t imagine high budget features will come to us for their foley. Those studios are fantastic but they are expensive for independent film companies or lower budget TV productions; not a lot of people can afford those but they might be able to afford something a little bit cheaper. A lot of productions don’t book foley because there’s no room in their budget, and there doesn’t seem to be many foley studios that fit within these budgets, so there’s a bit of a gap in the market for us. I have some fantastic freelance voice over directors, foley artists, sound engineers and composers interested in being part of the studio who all are very experienced in their craft, so we are not going to be cheaper because our quality of work is any less, they will be paid their usual rates. It’s just my studio mark up will be less than a Soho facility.”

Like many in her position, Mitchell is well accustomed to the long hours and high-pressure demands that come with being a freelancer. However, among the major challenges she has encountered is the impact it has had on her mental health, from the uncertainty that can come with freelancing to the loneliness of being locked away in a room for days on end mixing.

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“I’m lucky that my husband is also a freelancer, because it can be a really lonely job,” she tells us. “I had anxiety problems in general before, but I think that’s enhanced because of my job. I find that I am always comparing myself to others. With the internet and social media you are always aware of what other freelancers are doing and it can make you question yourself as to why you perhaps haven’t got a particular job. The internet and social media is obviously wonderful for a lot of people but it can also make things quite difficult.

You wonder if you’re where you should be, or you think you should be. And as a sound editor, whether you are working from home or in a studio, you’re on your own all day, which can be difficult. It’s a lonely job and it can take its toll. Getting a dog has helped a lot because it gets me out of the house. There have been times when I’ve been working alone from home for four days or more and then realised I hadn’t been outside for the whole time.

You just don’t notice this and it’s not good for you.”

A solution to these issues is far from being established, with budgets continuing to slide with production values and demand for jobs passing them in the opposite direction. For now, Mitchell believes the key is to raise awareness of mental health issues within the industry and for the sector to work harder to provide better support for those who are suffering.

“Budgets are getting smaller and smaller but people are expecting the same standards of work,” she concludes. “You can be completely drained but are still expected to work these incredibly long days, and I don’t see how that’s going to change. Something I’ve found useful is reading things that people have written about their own experiences. I read a piece on Soundgirls.org about ‘the burnout’ recently and it really made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

“Mental health is a big issue that I don’t think a lot of people consider. So many things affect your mental state as a freelancer - the worry of not knowing if you weren’t re-hired because they don’t need anyone, or if you just weren’t good enough; the stress of not having any work booked and not knowing when the next job will come; managing your finances etc. You need to be quite head strong to essentially be a business as a freelancer. But I do love it and it is, and has been, the best choice for me, my lifestyle, and my career.

“A worry I have, although not an immediate concern, is when I have children. Obviously there is the money side, especially because both my husband and I are freelance – but actually what worries me a lot is taking time out from work (including the social media side of work) and being forgotten. I’m still not the go-to person for drama and film - people have freelancers they have been using for years - and if I then disappear for however many months to have a baby, I worry about people never thinking of me for a job and having to almost start again. Hopefully my freelancers can do some foley and voiceovers in the studio while I take time off – maybe that will keep my foot in the door a bit. Who knows! “ n

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A guide to NAMM 2019 Steve Harvey fills us in on what to expect from this year’s NAMM show and how to get the most out of its busy and exciting programme, revealing highlights and NAMM’s new app…

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he NAMM Show has long been the MI world’s top event, but in recent times, it has become increasingly important to the pro audio industry as well. This was evident in 2018 with the debut of a two-story exhibition building devoted to live sound and recording, as well as with NAMM’s notable addition to its educational sessions through the AES@NAMM collaboration.

The 2019 convention later this month finds NAMM bolstering its educational offerings even further. While attendees may head to Anaheim to see the latest gear, they also have the opportunity to come away with far better insight into how to actually apply that equpiment.

On-hand to share their expertise will be top industry pros, legendary producers and engineers, and for good measure, Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap. Held in Anaheim, CA, Thursday, January 24 through Sunday, January 27, the NAMM Show 2019 is scheduled to feature more than 250 pro audio sessions dedicated to every aspect of production, presented in the Anaheim Hilton Hotel’s NAMM U Education Center. The show will once again include the four-day AES@NAMM symposium and will see the launch of the Loudspeaker System Showcase, running twice daily, in the Anaheim Convention Center’s arena.

The Audio Engineering Society’s AES@NAMM Pro Sound Symposium, Live & Studio is returning following its successful premiere at last year’s show and which will continue annually through to 2021. The industry leaders organising this year’s AES@NAMM programme are Mark Frink, programme director and manager, live sound content; Charlie Hughes, manager, scientific and technical content; and Bobby Owsinski, manager, studio recording content. Expert presenters will include live sound professionals Robert Scovill, Dave Rat, Dave Shadoan and Ike Zimbel, and studio production professionals Andrew Scheps, Sylvia Massy, Gavin Lurssen, Reuben Cohen and Ron McMaster.

New for AES@NAMM 2019 are the Microphone Academy: Studio & Live on Friday and Saturday, and the Digital Audio Networking Academy on all four days. The Line Array Loudspeaker System Academy, Live Mixing Console Academy, Entertainment Wireless Academy, In-Ear Monitoring Academy, Control Room Academy, Main Stage: Studio, and Main Stage: Live, as well as a series of Sound System Measurement & Optimisation sessions, all return by popular demand.

AES@NAMM requires a registration fee, but all other sessions are open to NAMM Show attendees.

According to Frink, “AES@ NAMM is an opportunity to expand your knowledge and skills in an intimate classroom setting.

The presenters for the AES@NAMM symposium are some of the best minds in the business, and the programme takes maximum advantage of their knowledge.

“For instance, in the new Microphone Academy, Dave Rat will lead a session on double miking, while ‘Coach’ Connor takes us on tour with Paul Simon. The Digital Audio Networking Academy will include Dante Level 2 certification and feature sessions spanning network ownership, AVB, MADI, AES67 and AES70, with presenters including Ethan Wetzell from Bosch and OCA, Yamaha’s Patrick Kilianey and QSC’s Bob Lee.” Audinate’s two-day Level 2 Dante Training and Certification courses, which will include a demo of Dante AVIO adapters, will take place Thursday and Friday.

A host of pro audio manufacturers are providing resources for AES@NAMM, including Allen & Heath, Alteros, Applied Electronics, Audinate, Auralex Acoustics, Bose Professional, d&b audiotechnik, dB Technologies, DPA Microphones, iSEMcon, KLANG, Lectrosonics, My Mix, Powersoft, Rational Acoustics, RME, Royer Labs, SCHOEPS, Sensaphonics, Studio Six Digital, Townsend Labs, Ultimate Ears, VUE Audiotechnik, Waves and Yamaha Commercial Audio.

Thirteen manufacturers are lined up to present their flown and portable systems as part of the Loudspeaker System Showcase, including products from Alcons Audio, BASSBOSS, Crest Audio, dbTechnologies, Martin Audio, RCF, TW Audio, Verity Audio and VOID Acoustics. The showcase will reportedly feature a music track selected by a popular vote of participating companies and be hosted by a neutral industry expert.

Systems integrator 4Wall will host a series of lighting demonstrations, as well as provide video walls and the infrastructure for the showcase.

TEC Tracks will present more than 60 sessions on a range of topics, plus a series of keynotes by Al Schmitt

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(Thursday) previewing his autobiography; Alan Parsons (Music Production is Everywhere, Friday); Chris Lord-Alge (We are the Studio Heroes, Friday); and Spinal Tap bass player Derek Smalls in conversation with CJ Vanston (Sunday).

Highlights include The Future of Music with Craig Anderton; Mr. Bonzai interviewing musician Danny Kortchmar on classic records and artists and the rollercoaster of the music business; Pioneers of Analog Synths, a special panel presentation by Michelle Moog-Koussa; Prince: The Making of a Legend, with the original arranger from Prince’s team, Brent Fischer, who, with his late father Dr. Clare Fischer, collaborated directly with Prince over three decades; and Birth of a Record: Cheap Trick at Budokan.

Additional presenters will include Michael Beinhorn, Ed Cherney, George Massenberg, Eddie Kramer, Jack Douglas, Ross Hogarth and Frank Filipetti.

For those with an eye on the future, A3E, running Thursday to Saturday, is offering a program exploring how advanced audio applications are transforming the music industry, production and performance, Other unmissable sessions include Driving the Future of Music Production, Powered by Intel with electronic artist BT, The Impact of Blockchain on the Music Industry, Developing Disruptive Technology: The Risk and Reward and The Art of Artificial Intelligence: The Science of Creative Tools.

Pro Production sessions, curated by ESTA, will offer education across production technologies, including professional audio.

If keeping track of all these events seems overwhelming, well, there’s an app for that. The new NAMM app, available in early January, has been built on an entirely new framework and is said to feature innovative ways to plan and maneuver around the show floor using 3D Google-style maps plus easily searchable listings. The My Show Planner feature is an app-linked calendar that gives dynamic access to information with the ability to export notes to email. n

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John and Heather Penn

JANUARY 2019

Penn to paper Phil Ward talks with the man behind Sigma Sound Enterprises (SSE to you and me) at one of the most pivotal moments in the company’s long and storied history…

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he sale of SSE Audio Group to Montrealbased global operator Solotech is the culmination of over 40 years of expert rental empire building, and group managing director John Penn is in a celebratory mood. However, his feet, typically, are still very firmly on the ground. He has, he says, “won the lottery twice” – as will be revealed – but the Caribbean island and yacht are still in the post. Business, as usual, is business as usual, and the workforce-focused ethos across the group will continue in the philanthropic way it always has been under the auspices of the Penn family: John and his wife Heather since days of long hair and Transit vans, latterly son Alex as sales director and John’s brother Geoff, via GPC Media, in charge of marketing.

How does this affect the coalition with Sound Image?

It really helps. It’s been entirely successful – based solely on a handshake, as it should be – and it will continue. No reason why it shouldn’t. It’s mutually beneficial, and it all adds to what we can do for American artists over here.

It’s clearly a logical progression…

It is – we’ve grown not only through the acquisition but

also through the success of SSE itself, and you get to a point when you realise that to take it to the next level, you’ve got to have a base in the States. If you set up your own office there, all the competitors range their guns against you, so this move is better. We didn’t put up a ‘For Sale’ sign, but I had a phone call from Richard Lachance, Solotech’s VP of touring, having done several projects with them over the last few years, and we began to talk very openly about the idea of acquisition.

There was a new management team over there about 18 months ago, and everything was settling down.

They wanted a strong base in Europe to build upon, not just a company with expertise in delivering shows, but also in further expansion and with an understanding of the market and development. It made perfect sense to us because that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s one thing to know how to put the sound up, but you need the financial backbone as well to deliver the resources.

What you’ve been doing must have added to the attraction…

Absolutely. It demonstrated that we understood how to acquire businesses – including some understanding of what it’s like to be acquired – and how to make changes, as well as leaving things that you definitely don’t want

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to change. We’ve always been careful to preserve the quality of what we’ve bought – if it’s fundamentally sound, you don’t need to make changes – and to maintain brands, people and structures. These things take a long time to build, and can be destroyed all too quickly. There are many examples of firms that get sold, the new owners change everything and the company no longer looks anything like the one sold. Then it inevitably fails, and you wonder why they even bought it in the first place.

Isn’t Solotech exactly the same age as SSE? Yes – 1976. Its formation goes back to the Montreal Olympics. So we’ve all been in the same audio game through all the same changes, and we understand each other. I was especially impressed when they made a presentation to us that emphasised its five main corporate values, ahead of sales figures and money. These were – and I’m quoting from the actual PowerPoint – passion, innovation, excellence, respect and collaboration. That’s us. I knew they ‘got it’, even though some of them are moderately sharp-suited…

Crucially, they also started out as purely an audio company: audio guys think a bit differently. The ‘wow’ factor is in the moment, there’s no second chance, and

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John Penn and Ian Horne

you can’t take a photo of it. I remember talking to Mike [Lowe] and Bryan [Grant] after the acquisition by Clair of Britannia Row, and they emphasised how important it was that the deal was with an audio company as opposed to video or even Wall Street. These things matter to us.

Is the kit getting better?

Each time we’ve taken a step forward in what we do, it’s been driven by the technology and the manufacturers that make it. We built our own at first – lack of money, mainly – but gradually we introduced off-the-shelf systems and began to support the manufacturing sector, firstly Electro-Voice, then Nexo and others. Our own kit was the basis of the business, really, but that experience means we truly understand what they’re all doing and can make a meaningful contribution.

Is rental becoming a global system with local – but reliable – boxes and control in the hand luggage? …And talent in the seats. That’s relatively easy to move around, while the cost of shipping the bulk is huge. The depots have been well stocked by the major players, all of which can be hooked up and used effectively. By being able to offer our services through Solotech, who are bidding world-wide jobs, we can, with our resources, help them win the bids anywhere.

EACH TIME WE'VE TAKEN A STEP FORWARD IN WHAT WE DO, IT'S BEEN DRIVEN BY THE TECHNOLOGY AND THE MANUFACTURERS THAT MAKE IT JOHN PENN What’s the next gig?

Tonight we’re off to see Madness at the Arena Birmingham, with Ian Horne at FOH, who 45 years ago showed me how a mixing desk worked. He was my mate’s brother-in-law, and had got the job mixing the first Wings tours of ’72-’73. At Liverpool Empire I ligged in, as you do at 17 when you know someone in the crew, and he explained it all to me. It was a huge RSE desk, and he went through gain, EQ and how to listen to the room before you listen to any music. He only said it once, but somehow I just soaked it all up and I can remember everything he said to this day.

Then McCartney walks in and Ian introduces me – you couldn’t make this up – and this guy from The Beatles, who’s doing his first gig back in Liverpool since back in the day, chats away and I tell him I want to be a roadie and get on the road doing all of this.

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“It’s not an easy business,” McCartney says, “so specialise in something and be the best. The world’s full of jack-of-all-trades so I hire the very best in each different department. I depend on these experts.”

“Won the lottery twice”…?

During a routine health check for the insurance, they found a small tumour. The shock was that I felt completely fine, I had no symptoms, but there it was.

Luckily, Heather had switched health policies and we got this medical as part of the deal , otherwise we would never have known. It was treated and I’m all clear now, but the message is: get checked in all the right places every year. Don’t shy away from it.

Last night was our Christmas party, and I always ‘review’ the year: five new babies among the employees this year, so I pointed out that at least working for us wasn’t interrupting our employees' sex lives. We also lost Carl Reavey, one of the original team who became the Undertones guy, and there’s hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of him.

We’ve all been on this journey together and it continues to be exciting and fun. It’s central to our whole life. We may take a bit more of a backseat now, and let Spencer [Beard] and Alex have more room to flourish with their own ideas, but we’ve no plans to retire. That’s what people do when they stop doing something they don’t like! n

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Photo: xxxx

JANUARY 2019

Proactive in production at the BRIT School The world famous school has recently invested in two Digico SD12s for students on its Production Arts Diploma…

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he BRIT school has a unique place in UK performing arts education. Situated in Croydon, South London, it’s a state-funded school for ages 14-18 and is dedicated to “education and vocational training for the performing arts, media, art and design, and the technologies that make performance possible”. Pupils joining at 14 years follow both a dedicated ‘strand’ subject area, plus a core GCSE study programme. Pupils joining at 16 all follow an 18-unit Level 3 Extended Diploma, specialising in one of 10 specialist areas. Those Diplomas are designed to provide both direct entry to the performing arts industries, and a springboard onto related higher education courses.

The Production Arts Diploma aims to equip all students with the technical, creative and management skills required to run theatre productions. Andrew Smith is technical manager at the school: “It’s a foundation in lighting and sound, stage management, set design, and costume. One of the unique things is that we have strands inside it that give students access to a broad range of genres: musical theatre, theatre, dance, and so on. From the point of view of sound and lighting those genres are different animals and we give the students the opportunity to understand how they are different.

“A really high proportion of students go directly into the industry as riggers, sound engineers and lighting programmers and controllers, all the way through to people taking their studies further, maybe at one of the well known universities operating in our field,” says the school’s technical manager. “We’re proud of that.

We are energised by making sure that people have an

awareness of the industry and can make a career.”

A major emphasis for the course is real-world production practice. The school ran two major shows in the run up to Christmas 2018. One was Eras Of Pop, featuring over 20 different bands, while the other was a celebration of films, featuring live performance to click tracks. Lighting and sound for both was provided by the Production Arts course students. “In the New Year we’re opening a series of four plays in repertory,” adds Smith. “using the same lighting and sound techniques that would normally be used in those styles”.

The intensity of the performance programme at the school was one of the driving factors that lead to a search for new consoles: “We have a lot of things going on simultaneously at different venues,” explains Smith.

“So we needed some new consoles to fill the gaps, to be used in our own two fully-equipped theatres - the Obie Theatre (named after the late music exec Maurice Oberstein) and the BRIT Theatre.

The School decided that the Digico SD consoles could offer a platform that not only makes sense for the range and requirements of its performances, but also offers relevant experience for students that will soon be looking for a job in the industry. It has recently purchased two SD12 consoles.

“We can train students on a tool that gives them a real vocational opening into a broad range of genres. In the music industry, the SD range is very much at the top of the tree - and it’s the same in musical theatre where we see large scale consoles coming into play," comments Smith."Teaching on them is great, because students know it’s a piece of kit they have to get their heads

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around if they are going to work in the industry, so they progress rapidly.”

UK supplier HD Pro Audio provided and installed the new consoles and has worked with the school since its inception in 1991. Sales director Andy Huffer notes that the SD12 is suited to its wide-ranging production and learning requirements: “The SD12 is a fantastic ‘all-rounder’, suitable for both bands and theatre work, and of course it will mean that graduating students are already familiar with the popular Digico platform when go out into the industry.”

The integrated USB recording interface on the SD12 is something that is particularly useful to the school, as it enables not only convenient pre-show virtual soundcheck, but the opportunity for post-show analysis.

“It’s a key learning tool,” explains Smith. “If you’ve never engineered before, you can do all the prior training, but actually doing it for real is where you learn the quick decision making that’s needed. Then, in a calmer environment you can analyse what you’ve done and improve on it. Outside the live performances, we can use those recordings to give students a safe environment for learning to engineer.”

The BRIT School continues to add more successful alumni to its already long list - a success story that, it says, is about opportunity for all and drive for the vocational ideals that give graduates a real chance of making it. “We’re passionate about the creative and performing arts,” states Smith. “We have industry professionals involved at every level, and we’re interested in making opportunities for young people in an industry we love.” n

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