December 2018
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Vive l'évolution!
Christian Heil on a life in audio and the Darwinian nature of sound
Live depends on us “The PM7 is refreshingly reliable, a console I can truly depend on.” Matt Jones - Monitor Engineer, Pixies
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P3 DECEMBER 2018 www.psneurope.com
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DANIEL GUMBLE
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I
t seems fitting that our end of year edition coincides with our 2018 Pro Sound Awards post-show review. At the time of going to press, it’s likely that there were still a few sore heads among those who embraced the spirit of the night to the fullest. But as the morning-after fug starts to lift, the celebratory mood remains, with this year’s event delivering some of the most memorable moments in the event’s history. And I’m not just talking about Stormzy. Yes, that’s correct, Glastonbury 2019 headliner and bona fide megastar Stormzy made a surprise appearance to present Fraser T Smith with the event’s first ever Best Producer award and deliver a touching speech on the brilliant work of his collaborator. Yet this was just one of the night’s great many highlights. Never before had the Pro Sound Awards zeroed in so closely on those at the start of their careers in pro audio, so to see so many bright young talents winning awards and holding court with some of the industry’s biggest names and most revered figures was truly heartening. As Lauren Deakin-Davies, winner of this year’s Breakthrough Studio Engineer touched upon during her acceptance speech, there is a phenomenal stream of talent pouring into the industry at the moment, and to see the excellent work being done not just by the night’s winners but each and every nominee is both hugely inspiring and exciting. And on the subject of inspiring talent, it was a true honour for me and the whole Pro Sound Awards team to host a very rare public appearance from a true industry legend, L-Acoustics founder and winner of the 2018 Outstanding Contribution award, Christian Heil. Since founding the French pro audio giant back in 1984, Heil has been instrumental in shaping the way people think about sound reinforcement; his pioneering work in line array technology setting the standard in live and integrated sound in venues, installations and events across the globe. And in addition to his appearance on the night, Heil also sat down for a far-reaching interview with us (p13) in which he discussed his fascinating career to date and the Darwinian nature of audio. Of course, there isn’t enough space here to go into detail on all of this year’s big winners - see p26 - suffice to say all of the team here at PSNEurope would like to congratulate each and every winner and nominee from the 2018 awards. It’s been an outstanding year, and here’s hoping for an even more prosperous one in 2019.n
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In this issue... People
P6 Danley Sound Labs PSNEurope’s Phil Ward finds out about the US firm’s plans to take on the European market P8 Movers and shakers Find out who’s been on the move over the last month in pro audio
P13 THE SOUND OF SCIENCE A RARE INTERVIEW WITH L-ACOUSTICS FOUNDER CHRISTIAN HEIL
P18 Rick Wright Jr We catch up with Jason Derulo’s FOH enginer to find out about the Meyer Sound PA he’s been using on the star’s European tour P20 Fraser T Smith The winner of the 2018 Pro Sound Awards Best Producer gong reflects on an eventful 12 months
Report P34 Normal Not Novelty Mastering engineer and host at Red Bull Studios’ Normal Not Novelty events, Katie Tavini, discusses why such initiatives are so important for the industry
P26 AND THE WINNERS ARE... RELIVE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2018 PRO SOUND AWARDS
P40
Attitude is Everything Suzanne Bull, founder of Attitude is Everything, provides an end of year report on the work being done to make the industry more accessible for deaf and disabled audiences
Interviews
P44 John Metcalfe The talented musician and producer tells PSNEurope’s Simon Duff about the complexities of his 2018 album Absence and its supporting tour P54 Martin Warr Phil Ward gets up close and personal with Synthax Audio’s managing director Martin Warr
P32 40 YEARS OF GENELEC THE COMPANY REFLECTS ON A STELLAR 2018
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P6 DECEMBER 2018
Rosso restaurant, Manchester
Breaking point
Phil Ward senses a dramatic reduction in the speakers needed on tour – and meets the UK outriders of the storm…
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s it just me, or is there one hell of a lot of computing going on to get too many loudspeakers to deal with the basic requirements of sound reinforcement? That’s certainly the view of a growing number of professionals – usually below the radar of international marketing – who would like to get back to a few basics. Or rather, they would like to move forward with the same basics in a new van. These basics include the following recalibration of acoustic goals: if you don’t point sound at the roof and walls, it won’t hit the roof and walls – in which case many of the remedial machinations of processing are simply not necessary. Point source methods are alive and well everywhere, of course, but not for some time has there been such a groundswell of support for them in the core market of live music performance – especially of the loud kind.
In the UK the clarion call is clearest at Danley UK Sound Systems, the local outpost of US-based manufacturer Danley Sound Labs and a confident lobby for the manifestos of founder Tom Danley, a pioneer of point source solutions for every application. The current crop is spearheaded by the Synergy Horn, proudly assembled – as is the whole range – entirely on US soil and founded on a passionate regard for musicality. Industry veteran Peter Barnard and young gun Tom Drew have established Danley UK at just the right time, they believe. “The interest in point source is incredible,” says Barnard, “and it could be a manifestation of the typical 20-year technology cycle. Whatever it is, a lot of highly renowned engineers are re-educating their ears. When you add the advances of DSP and better components, you have the best of the old and the new.”
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“We tell people about the performance of the multiple drivers,” adds Drew, “combined in Tom Danley’s design to produce one sound wave, and while it’s all absolutely true we do get a few double-takes. Of course, as soon as people hear it, they believe it.”
Faith hearing One true believer is Kyle Marriott, MD of Manchesterbased Neuron Pro Audio, a brand-agnostic full service supplier with pointed ambitions. “Line array has consistently been pitched to the touring world as a scalable solution, as much for convenience as for best-quality audio,” he states. “The appeal has always been consistency, but at the same time in some cases you simply could not buy a leading system unless you consented to their intense training. Being one degree out makes a big difference when you’ve got many boxes
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source is irrelevant,” he says. “The sound system design is to achieve a goal: to be ‘this’ loud at this place; and less loud at that place, with the correct response. It’s a tool to get you there. The great thing about Danley’s point source boxes is that you put them up in the air, point them at the audience and give them a signal. That’s it! They work as you expect them to work, and there’s far less to consider. You don’t have to worry about the inter-enclosure relationships, or rigging angles, or time-alignment of the boxes in the array. Yes, there are many lessons we’ve learned from line array over the past 20 years – and now we’re taking them to the next evolutionary step.”
Word clock
Peter Barnard
interacting with each other, so you have to get it right. And in fairness, ticking all those boxes, there was an improvement and certainly a consistent toolset – and quicker to rig, too. “Don’t get me wrong: we do line array. We’ve done the courses. But what you effectively have is a vertical hang of point sources, and you lose the advantages of HF coupling and long throw because you have to compromise on the mids and lows: you get an unbalanced, smeared sound because the frequency response is variable. To overcome this you do the things that pull it back into the world of point source: the best line arrays are a vertical array of close-coupled point sources.” This practical understanding of line array and its latter-day developments underpins Marriott’s evangelism for Danley’s point source solutions. It’s part of his and Danley UK’s mission to communicate the realities of today’s touring technology behind the rider-led assumptions and the dense technical marketing that seems unwilling to let go of the line array paradigm completely. Instead, a swing back to point source techniques continues to be couched in the terms that established line array over the past 20 years. If nothing else, Marriott would like a little more transparency. “We’re simply telling the market that we have a better widget,” he says. “We’re not dismissing the training that’s done; we’re not dismissing the progress that’s been made; we’re not proposing some kind of return to the ‘good old days’. We’re saying let’s move forward: let’s condense this toolset and make things simpler. Instead of trying to aim multiple boxes, we might only be aiming a main box, a downfill and an outfill. We can go from 36 boxes per side to three – or just one, for many shows.” Marriott sees no need to differentiate between applications, either. “The key thing is that the music
The key position is that Marriott feels he is able to confirm and consolidate these observations using the Danley Sound Labs range he now purchases from the UK team of Barnard and Drew. As an articulate customer, he has already enthused several colleagues – and competitors – to join the cause, including Iain Mackie and the team at Glasgow-based full service rental company and installer A-Live Sound, Tom Drew StageLightSound in Dorset and a growing roster of open-minded venue operators. Andy Grey, who with Neil McDonald runs Clockwork Production in Oxfordshire, used Marriott’s Danley payload for the first time at this year’s Bestival – the boutique festival now in Dorset that pops up in the late summer or whenever the stars are aligned with the mushrooms in the crop circles. “We had them on the Temple stage as a direct replacement for line array,” Grey says, “and I thought they sounded really musical as well as being a convenient size and efficient to deploy. Outdoor line array output tends to get blown about in the wind, and the Danley J3-94s had real clarity and cut through right to the back – with a sweet cut-off, too. You can take it up another 1dB or 2dB and it still has all the information, with the punch, and your ears don’t close down because you don’t have that harsh top end. It’s obviously very well designed.” “I can deliver what’s required under better terms,” Marriott continues. “For example, for Farmfestival in Somerset we went down from eight-a-side line array plus 12 subs down to four boxes of Danley – two mains, two frontfills. We used way less electricity, and used the budget savings to fly the PA rather than groundstacking
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it. This gave us better consistency front to back, with fewer amplifiers, a smaller generator, less cabling and faster rigging time. “This is a 7,000-8,000 capacity festival, and we were able to provide a much better sound with fewer overheads – meaning better consoles, better microphones… an upscale of the whole production.” The line array alternative, Marriott points out, requires more work, time and money to achieve a result he believes is actually inferior, especially when you consider the lack of opportunity it affords to complete the fine tuning of various details that can commonly get overlooked. “I can walk around the site,” he explains, “and concentrate on all kinds of enhancements and fixes, like finally putting a four-corner system in the dance tent, dealing with client requests and giving everything a lot more attention.” This is for live music touring and festivals, don’t forget. But of course the advantages as Marriott sees them extend to Neuron’s installation work as well. “We’ve just done a multi-function venue in Manchester called Yes with two spaces – 400 capacity and 250 capacity in the basement – for Now Wave, a real taste-maker brand of promoter that helped to break alt-J among many other acts,” he says. “We pitched against premium quality tenders, not cheap, and put in one Danley enclosure per side. We did add delays, because the venue has a low trim height, but we got away with using far less treatment, less weight on the rigging point and all at a price point that enabled the inclusion of a world class desk: the Allen & Heath dLive. “The mics in the package are higher grade as well, as are the wedges. The whole venue has been significantly upgraded, and we still came in at a hundred grand cheaper than the next competitive quote. And the speaker enclosures are pink, too…” With up to 90,000-capacity stadiums unflinchingly set in their sights, Marriott and the Danley UK team are now planning certification programmes and increased rigging options to carry the message forward and raise skills and awareness among users who are perhaps ready for change. “It’s a really exciting time for us and the culmination of a lot of legwork,” Marriott concludes, and the smart money wouldn’t bet against them. https://danleyuk.com www.neuronproaudio.co.uk
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Movers and shakers
Stay in the loop with the latest job appointments and movements in the professional audio industry…
Riedel names Kristof Vanden Eynde sales manager, Belgium and Luxembourg
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iedel has appointed Kristof Vanden Eynde sales manager for Belgium and Luxembourg. Reporting to Wilbert Kooij, Riedel’s general manager for Benelux, Vanden Eynde will work to expand Riedel sales and rental opportunities in both countries. ”It’s a pleasure to welcome Kristof to our team,” Kooij said. “His experience in systems integration and channel marketing, coupled with his extensive knowledge of the regional broadcast market, will be a huge asset as we continue to build our sales operation in Belgium and Luxembourg.” Vanden Eynde joins Riedel from Belgian systems integrator Studiotech, where he served as area sales
manager for more than four years. In addition to sales in the Flemish and Dutch markets, he was responsible for business development management in West and North Africa and also handled product management for Evertz and other media software and video infrastructure solutions. Prior to Studiotech, Vanden Eynde served as technical account/product manager at Diginet, a VAR for the broadcast and pro AV markets, and also held a position at Studiotech as a sales engineer. “Riedel is well-known throughout Europe as the top provider of real-time communications and networking solutions, but there’s still tremendous potential to grow the brand in the Benelux region,” said Vanden Eynde. “I relish the challenge, and I’m really looking forward to joining the Riedel team.”
Bradley Watson promoted to global sales director role at Martin Audio
Powersoft appoints OEM sales manager for north America
Martin Audio has promoted Bradley Watson to the newly created position of international sales director. One ofthe company’s longest serving executives, Watson played a pivotal role in building domestic sales during the first decade of the millennium before leaving in 2010, but maintaining a close relationship in his capacity as an installer. Presented with the opportunity to re-join the company in September 2016, and assume the new role as sales manager EMEA, he described the opportunity as “a perfect scenario”. Speaking of the promotion, Watson said: “Since my return to Martin Audio I have been proud to be part of a team that’s been instrumental in bringing over 30 new products to market in just over 24 months. “As EMEA sales manager, I inherited many long standing relationships and distribution partnerships that my predecessor and good friend Martin Kelly worked hard to forge prior to his retirement, and I have greatly enjoyed the role to date.” He concluded: “The new role as international sales director will offer greater scope, as part of the new Martin Audio family, to further influence and develop our business in these segments, alongside our territory managers throughout the UK, EMEA, APAC and LATAM.”
Powersoft has appointed Gary Pace as sales manager - OEM - for north America. Pace’s key responsibilities includes connecting Powersoft technologies to audio engineering teams based in north America. Pace has over two decades worth of experience in the musical instrument and entertainment technology industry. His most recent experience includes working as sales manager at Beyerdynamic, and before that, as systems integrator at Advanced Lighting and Sound in Michigan, USA. However, his role as global sales and marketing manager at Littlite introduced Pace to the engineering side of OEMs. Pace will put his skills to use to help incorporate Powersoft technologies for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), which include amplifier modules, DSP, and transducers. “Powersoft technology allows me to help manufacturers of goods to expand their portfolio and get to market more rapidly while being associated with a premium brand,” Pace explained. “Smaller companies benefit from being associated with Powersoft for both performance and because of our strong brand awareness. We can give larger brands an advantage to add products more quickly to take market share from competitors and find new customers.”
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d&b audiotechnik recruits managing director for Japan d&b audiotechnik has hired Hideki Yajima as the new managing director for Japan. Yajima will be responsible for developing the business and establishing a broader market reach. He will be based in Yokohama, Japan. Yajima’s previous experience includes working with international teams and leading large divisions. Most recently, he worked as national sales manager for Shure Japan and prior to that, he worked as sales director for Bose Japan. A graduate of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, Yajima started his career in the sales department of the AV division of Matsushita, which is now known as Panasonic. “We are delighted to be writing the next chapter in d&b Japan’s success story with a proven expert in the pro audio world,” said Amnon Harman, CEO of d&b audiotechnik. “He will be instrumental in bringing the d&b brand even closer to our customers and partners in Japan.” “I am honoured to be a member of the team of one of the most advanced technology companies”, said Yajima. “Serving the customers of a major global brand like d&b audiotechnik is both a privilege and an exciting challenge. Harman concluded: “Asia Pacific is a key region for us. d&b has firmly established itself in the Japanese market and further strengthening our team at d&b Japan will enable us to build on those foundations.”
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Visualised Sound Shure’s senior marketing specialist, pro audio, Marc Henshall, gives PSNEurope some insight on a fascinating project aimed at redefining orchestra for visually impaired musicians…
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t present, visually impaired musicians around the world are much less able to play with traditional conducted orchestras as they cannot physically see the conductor to follow their lead. This is a huge missed opportunity for all music lovers, conductors, orchestra members and listeners alike, as it is well known that visually impaired musicians are some of the best musicians around; they are often unique in their playing styles and unparalleled in their abilities. The Baton Project aims to progress music accessibility forever, bringing about a shift in music culture as powerful as that of the Paralympic games phenomenon. The scope of the project is to research, design, build, test, demonstrate and document a new conductor’s baton that sends wireless signals to wearable vibration devices, enabling visually impaired musicians to play with traditional orchestras and conductors. This new device captures the speed, angle, attack and sway of a conductor’s hand in real time and beams it directly to every player wearing a vibration receiver. They feel the expression and timing of the conductor – just as if they were seeing the baton itself. Human Instruments, a company that makes highquality musical instruments for people with physical
disabilities, has worked closely with The Paraorchestra and Friends and their conductor, alongside artistic director Charles Hazlewood, to develop and put the Baton Project through its paces. Shure has shown their support in this fantastic project by providing PSM900 in-ear monitoring systems to transmit the vibration signals as audio from the conductor’s baton directly to a wearable device, worn by the visually impaired musician to receive signalling and direction for their performance. Marc Henshall, senior marketing specialist, pro audio, for Shure explains why this project is important for the company: “Music is a universal language that transcends many cultural boundaries. The Baton Project represents a huge step forward in accessibility for musicians that serves to further enrich our enjoyment of music. It is widely understood that when one sense diminishes, others often heighten. Orchestral music could soon see an influx of incredible new talent thanks to this noble project, and we think that’s an exciting prospect for the future of music.” The first test lab and concert using the Haptic Baton at St George’s was an amazing success, exceeding all expectations, with over 50 invited audience members and 12 musicians from the Paraorchestra and Friends in the UK and Dominant Agency in Korea. They will now
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devise the best way to showcase and proliferate this ground-breaking innovative work, worldwide. Visually impaired pianist, Rachel Starritt, explains how the concert felt. “The vibrations and buzzing of the Haptic Baton had a sensation which we could react to like magnesium. All of a sudden, we were in this liberating universe, connected as one unity rather than the beats providing a rhythmic obstacle that we had to face.” Working closely with programmer and developer Charles Matthews, Vahakn Matossian took his father Rolf Gehlhaar’s original prototype (dubbed Beat Buzz) to the next level with, gesture sensitivity and zero latency stereo haptic response. Vahakn explains “All the testing has been so revealing, it either flies or it doesn’t. There’s no halfway. Latency is out of the question, and crystal radio transmission is the backbone. Shure have provided an unparalleled system. It really helps to work with exceptional gear.” “This is a world’s first. No conductor has ever wirelessly transmitted simultaneously to both multiple visually impaired and sighted orchestral musicians with the same baton.” Human Instruments are actively seeking collaborative projects and financial support. They also welcome new players and team members. For more information, visit www.humaninstruments.co.uk n
Few individuals have had as transformative an effect on the pro audio industry as L-Acoustics founder and line array visionary, Christian Heil. His pioneering approach to sound reinforcement has shaped the way much of the industry thinks about live sound, and his more recent excursions into object-based audio continue to innovate in a sector that is accelerating more rapidly than ever. In a rare interview, Heil tells Daniel Gumble about the challenges he overcame to launch a pro audio juggernaut and shares his views on today’s market and the technology shaping its future...
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t the top of a hill in Highgate’s leafiest reaches sits L-ISA’s London headquarters. An extension of French loudspeaker and sound reinforcement solutions brand L-Acoustics, the north London facility is focused on developing the business’s immersive, or ‘hyperreal’ audio offering. Its modest exterior gives little away as to the vast technological advancements taking place within, and to cross its threshold is to take a step inside the mind of its enigmatic creator. The clean, white walls of its reception area are suggestive of the centre’s scientific sonic approach and the ongoing development of L-ISA, interrupted only by flashes of contemporary artwork and photography. The theme continues in the main L-ISA demonstration room, where PSNEurope finds L-Acoustics founder and pro audio pioneer Christian Heil shooting some test shots before a small film crew here to record today’s interview. His reputation as an elusive, media-shy figure has always preceded him, yet he is warm and welcoming upon our arrival, his softly spoken, philosophical manner at odds with his standing as a towering pro audio icon every word is chosen carefully, every response carefully considered. Prior to taking our seats he gives us a tour of the building’s various testing rooms before lounging with us for an extensive demo of the L-Acoustics Island - an extremely high-end personal auditorium featuring an immersive surround sound speaker system - as well as a look at some more of the stark artwork and photography spread throughout the building. In many ways, the outwardly humble yet extremely complex inner workings of L-ISA HQ are a manifestation of the man himself and the core components that have lead Heil to where he is today. With a PhD in Particle Physics and a long-held passion for music and the arts, his work ethic has always been fierce and meticulous, informed by a deep respect for his craft and a ceaseless commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible. In the eyes of many, it was his singular vision and scientific rigour that pioneered the line array approach to sound reinforcement that remains ubiquitous in the world of live events. It is this undimmed passion for breaking new ground that earned him the Outstanding Contribution award at last month’s Pro Sound Awards, celebrating those who have made a significant contribution to the industry and displayed a pioneering spirit within their work. “I understand that this award celebrates innovation, so as a celebration of innovation I’m very proud of it,” Heil tells PSNEurope. “I’m very proud because this award celebrates evolution in this industry, and if I’ve been a piece of this then I’m happy. I don’t take this award as a personal thing. This is a collective team and many people have been operating with me to perform and innovate every day, so it’s more a collective gift to the L-Acoustics and L-ISA teams.”
In the beginning... A student of Particle Physics in the early 1980s, the young Christian Heil could scarcely have predicted the life in audio he would go on to have in the ensuing four decades. Despite a long held love of music, a career in science looked inevitable, given the academic credentials he’d accrued. Yet a chance meeting with a sound technician proved pivotal in spinning Heil’s world from its axis. “I remember meeting this engineer at a party and I had no idea what that even was,” Heil recalls. “This person became a friend and he was my connector to this world, which was much more exciting than the physics of elementary particles, and I decided to shift my career. I started building speakers in my garage or in my room. I had no idea what was needed. I made a few mistakes, but progressively, being exposed to the realities of this industry, I quickly understood that I had to change [my approach] completely.” In September of 1984, three years after completing his PhD and following much experimenting with various speaker and cab designs, Heil deviated permanently from the path mapped out by his studies to launch a two-person brown box building operation called L-Acoustics. “I decided not to go into the nuclear physics domain and when I finally came up with some ideas that were interesting I founded L-Acoustics. It was just me and my wife, a very small enterprise. At that time, companies making loudspeaker systems were not as big as today. They were small, artisanal companies, with maybe 30 people at most. It was around 10 years before we got to 10 people and received national exposure. We had a small range and some companies started to trust what we were doing and we started expanding our network of customers.”
Falling in line Despite Heil’s decision to leave behind a career in science, it was his extensive background in the subject that helped inform his biggest audio breakthrough. His reputation as the forefather of line array technology was certainly not something he came by overnight, but over months and years of applying the rules and principles of optics and wave propagation to sound reproduction. Through “science and observation”, he cultivated a new style that remains an industry standard. “In the ‘80s, people were using two concepts,” he explains. “One was using stacks of bass bins, mid cabinets and high frequency cabs separated - the assembly of that was quite artistic but not very effective. I understood that this was an attempt to combine the lows, the mids and the highs together. And there was another approach, which was cabinets that would include all these sections. When I was trying to [combine separate cabs] with my own products I could not get the results of coupling I was expecting. Coupling in the lowend was easy but uncontrolled; the mids were controlled
in such a way that it was fine up to a certain frequency, but above that it created a chaotic field. In other sciences, like laser and light, the knowledge was that to combine sources of light together was more efficient. So I took that approach. Basically what we created was a laser, but it had to be implemented mechanically. We had to understand the rules of combination between frequencies, how to modify the wavefront of conventional drivers. But that was obvious. What was not obvious was how to bring that to the market and how to convince the market.” Arguably, the task of bringing the now legendary V-DOSC line array system to market was even more of a challenge than conceiving it in the first place. As with most markets, the process of prising people away from tried and tested practices and pushing them towards new, uncharted territory can be arduous, as it was for Heil and his burgeoning loudspeaker brand. “It took seven years before V-DOSC, before WST technology was recognised as a standard,” he notes. “When we started, our job was to buy speakers from the market, put them in a box and sell the box. Later we began to integrate these loudspeakers with other technologies, like mechanical rigging. You have to understand that at the beginning no speaker manufacturer was designing mechanical rigging, it was subcontracted to specialised companies. But we were not doing that; designing a V-DOSC, I had no other choice than to design a dedicated system for it. “New things take a long time [to catch on]. People need to understand and trust the technology. They must adopt a new behaviour, and there was some resistance. In Europe there were regions where people were interested - Scandinavia and the north of Europe, they wanted a new technology. But some markets were more resistant. It was quite a challenge, but I understand why it took so long.” So could he have predicted the huge success he and the business would go on to have with the format? Not a chance, he says. “I thought we had brought one idea to the market, but I was convinced that other manufacturers or designers would come with other ideas or concepts. Apparently the line source array concept has convinced many, many people - there is still some resistance in some areas but as a general concept for the pro audio industry it is interesting to see that it has convinced so many.
Hyper-reality While the concept of immersive or object-based sound has been around for several years, advances over the past 18 months have raised its profile higher than ever before. Most commonly associated with classical music and theatre productions, it is now making its presence felt in more conventional live settings, with UK indie act alt-J becoming the first rock band to incorporate L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound technology within their show, which they did to stunning effect last month at the
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L-ISA’s London HQ (left) and L-Acoustics’ first production facility, opened in 1985 (right)
Royal Albert Hall. For Heil, the possibilities offered by L-ISA and its ‘hyperreal’ capabilities are endless. “I believe that using left and right configuration is a mistake and has always been a mistake,” he states. “Since the beginning of L-Acoustics and my experience in sound, I wondered why people were using pseudo stereo systems for concerts. I did not understand the concept, I just admitted that it was practical. It was practical to put the sound on the side and leave the centre to the stage, to the performers and the visuals. But it is what it is in every single concert today, and the problem is that during these 30 years, visuals and stages have become more [central] and sound has been pushed to the sides, which disconnects the audience from what is really happening on stage. “The concept of L-ISA and other alternative technologies is to bring the speakers back to the centre, where they should always have been, and if you have the option to use these speakers across the stage that means you can bring signals to these arrays that will replicate what is going on onstage, so you are opening a new world of creativity to the engineers, the artists, to production, but the first thing is to accept this concept of having speakers across the stage. That will be the most challenging thing for the next generation.” However, Heil does accept that in the beginning L-ISA will not be applicable to the vast majority of rock and pop shows, claiming that the technology’s additional complexity will take time to be widely accepted. “There are more challenges because the sound interacts with the lighting and the video so it will only happen when it makes sense for the artists; when the sound and music are most important,” he explains. “alt-J is a perfect example of complex electronic music which deserves a much more spatial localisation panorama. I was at the first alt-J night at the Royal Albert Hall and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. The lighting design was absolutely awesome, but what if, with such beautiful visual effects, we had just had a mono sound? No way! I believe [hyperreal sound] is the future for maybe five or 10 per cent of productions, but 90 per cent will remain classic left and right because the sound is
not considered as important. That is the next challenge. Convincing the 90 per cent could take another 15 years.” Heil is also quick to highlight the distinction between immersive and hyperreal sound: “What is important is how you reproduce what the performers on stage are doing. You have to be able to connect the sound to the performers, to create some kind of intimacy. This is nothing like ‘immersive’. We call that hyperreal sound because we want the sound to be true. [Immersion] is the cherry on the cake.” As was the case when establishing L-Acoustics’ line array technology, the key to spreading greater understanding of L-ISA’s full potential is education. While the format he helped establish has held steady for so long, the aesthetic element of live events has been evolving at a rate of knots, often sidelining both figuratively and literally. This, says Heil, is a trend that must be rectified. “There is never only one path,” he observes. “Genetics have proven that there are several solutions to one question. We could have completely ignored the situation and kept doing sound as usual, making bigger and bigger line arrays and using the same configuration. But that would have driven us to a situation where sound would have been less and less important and the visuals would have taken all the attention. I hope we are helping audiences and artists see that we need to combine visuals and sound together so that we don’t go in a direction where sound is just the poor commodity factor.”
Darwin, the future and Brexit Though much of Heil’s time is spent at L-ISA’s Highgate HQ these days, he is still heavily involved in the refinement of L-Acoustics’ vast product range. “As in the car industry, you are not making a revolution each time you create a new model,” he says. “You have new models of cars every two years bringing some improvements, we do the same. Our products have to last at least a decade so as not to generate too much reinvestment for rental companies. We are improving in terms of weight, practicality, rigging, control. The new thing is array processing, improving
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the results of a system over an entire audience. All manufacturers are paying attention to that, so that is a form of evolution. The challenge is always coming from competition. This is where competition is interesting - it is the Darwinian effect of our industry.” One of the most transformative shifts experienced by Heil during his career was the evolution from analogue to digital technology. In his view, its impact on the audio world is unlike anything seen (or heard) before or since. “It has impacted everybody,” he comments. “In comparison, the line array revolution is a nice story, but it doesn’t have the impact of digital and DSP technology. DSP serves us every day. We can provide better control of our systems, better modelling, better assistance and support to the engineers. I’m also a photographer i and there is still this debate of analogue or digital. There is no comparison. With digital you can do so many more things than with analogue.” On a more personal note, one of Heil’s most transformative moments came four years ago when he relocated from the Paris suburbs to north London to be closer to L-ISA. “Living in London is great,” he beams. “I was planning to relocate to central Paris or to London, because with the concept of L-ISA I wanted more contact with decision makers, people involved in sound, artists and so on. So I decided on London and I’m happy to be here. It’s a very international city.” With a busy afternoon schedule awaiting, Heil has just enough time to broach the subject of Brexit before PSNEurope departs. Having navigated and indeed instigated some of the biggest changes in the industry’s history, he is philosophical about Britain’s future outside of the EU and what it could mean for business. Though potentially troubling social, economic and political days may well lie ahead, Heil’s Darwinian view that the key to progress is to adapt and evolve rather than repel and resist remains unshakeable. “Democracy has made a choice,” he concludes. “I’m hoping smart people will make smart decisions. As I said before, one effect will have several solutions and I’m confident the UK will survive and Europe will survive, just in a different way.” n
P18 DECEMBER 2018 (l-r and centre): ‘Boo’ Derek Williams, lighting director; Ben Briggs, vocal systems engineer; Ben Hogarth, Pro Tools & recording engineer; Ethan Novak, backline tech; Bill Laing, systems tech, Rick Wright Jr, FOH engineer; Evan Lineberry, monitor engineer
The Wright stuff For the past four years, Rick Wright Jr has occupied the FOH position for international pop sensation Jason Derulo with a Meyer Sound PA system in tow. Daniel Gumble caught up with him on a particularly eventful night on the European leg of the star’s recent tour to find out why the firm’s LEO family is now his “go to” system…
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piercing collective shriek emanates from outside of Prague’s Tipsport Arena shortly after 9pm on October 25 as Jason Derulo emerges from behind a glass window and on to the venue’s balcony with microphone in hand to deliver an impromptu acapella set for the 1,000-strong throng of die hard fans congregated below. It’s not quite the spectacle they were expecting, but for many it will live long in the memory, not least because many with tickets had opted to head home prior to the star’s unexpected emergence upon hearing that the show had been cancelled due to unspecified safety concerns regarding the stage area. Rewind a few hours to 6pm and the mood was rather different. Bracing the city’s chilly conditions, an army of mostly teenage Derulo devotees, many with parents in tow, are gathered outside the venue in anticipation of doors opening. But there is a delay, as PSNEurope discovers upon entering the arena through the back door
as we prepare to meet with Derulo’s FOH engineer of the past four years, Rick Wright Jr. Inside, the venue, home to the Sparta Prague ice hockey team, feels colder than it does outside. The stage is currently a mass of rigging and stage crew hard at work seeking a solution for those aforementioned safety concerns, and Wright is on-hand to assist where required and to ensure the show is ready to proceed with as little disruption as possible. However, after much deliberation and a valiant effort from all involved to get things back on track, the decision is taken almost three hours later to pull the gig, much to the consternation of those still hoping to catch a glimpse of the man they paid to see. Though some decided to leave, those who stuck around didn’t have to wait too long for their patience to be at least partly rewarded, with Derulo taking to the balcony with a member of Meyer Sound’s LEO family to perform a stripped back . While all this was taking place, PSNEurope found time to sit down with Wright, still in high spirits and
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extremely generous with his time given the extenuating circumstances, for a chat about how the Meyer Sound PA system - supplied by Wigwam Acoustics - currently out on the road with Derulo has added new sonic dimensions to what is an ambitious and highly dynamic live show. He tells us that the packet system specified for the tour is only out with Derulo for about 15 per cent of the year. “Jason has big productions, and we only use a packet system around 15 per cent of the time,” he explains. “This is a seven week tour, so there are 45 other weeks in the year where we’re hopping across all four corner of the globe. As far as audio is concerned and being his FOH guy, it’s always tough to work from what’s being created from his studio in California to going around the world representing that. So that 15 per cent of the time that we’re out on the road with a packet system we’re really able to dive in and make a lot of things better. Because we’re constantly off and on planes we don’t
P19 DECEMBER 2018
Derulo delighting fans on the road
get a lot of rehearsal time, so to work for him you’ve got to be ready for the things you don’t know you need to be ready for! I’ve always tried to go in and maximise everything I can at each show, but with this system - the LEO family, which I also used on the 2016 tour - I already knew it was one of my cornerstones. This thing is so transparent and responsive to what I do on the control side. I didn’t want to change anything from that 2016 tour. I’m able to do a lot of things differently audio-wise from ‘16, but I know this system is still the same. The first show on this tour that the booking agents and Jason’s manager heard, they both came off the rise with a face of awe and shock.” The packet system in question is comprised of 22 x LEO, 24 x LYON, 8 x LYON WIDE, 16 x LEOPARD, 14 x 900LFC and 12 x 1100LFC, with numbers changing slightly from venue to venue. Typically, though, main hangs are comprised of LEO with LYONs underneath, while side hangs are LYONs/LYON WIDE. There is also a hang of 900s between the main and side hangs, with 1100s on the floor and LEOPARDs used as infills where necessary. Stage side fills are LEOPARDs and 900s. “Over the course of the tour, one of the main things I’ve liked about this system is how flexible it’s been,” Wright continues. “Because it’s LEO family we have LEOs, LYONs and LEOPARDs. The LEOPARDs are flown side fills, but there have been some smaller shows where we’ve hung all LYONs, and there have been some shows where we’ve hung four LEOs, so it’s been really versatile in that we have three products from the family and we can do different things to fit in with rigging capacities day-to-day and not really affect the soundfield or the sonic output. That’s what’s amazing about it. “Also, one of the best things about this PA is the headroom. There are moments of the show where I can push it and - we’re now at show 24 on the tour - my
system tech has never had to tap me on the shoulder and say, Hey, can you lighten up on it? It’s done everything I wanted it to do. It’s been so transparent and so telling, it’s like a litmus test. For instance, I’m able to do different digital configurations of Waves and UA and digital transmission over Midas preamps.” Another key area in which the LEO family has impressed Wright is in its relation to the show’s visuals. “I was, at the time, part of the aesthetic design for the tour and I knew I didn’t want my PA to affect any of the visual lines,” he explains. “This PA could easily be
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another two or three metres forward, but right now our downstage motorpoint is on the downstage edge and it’s been that way all tour, and we have a 32ft runway. Jason’s mic sits there at about nine metres out for about 30 per cent of the show. Aesthetically, I don’t need that PA forward where 25 per cent of the crowd gets a blocked visual. Having that control and high coherence is nice.” As with any show of this scale, there are, of course, challenges. Yet, says Wright, these have been easily overcome due to both his extensive knowledge of Derulo’s performance style and the flexibility of the LEO system. “Some of the challenges are when he’s all the way out on the runway and he’s doing a combination of Michael Jackson mic stand tricks, to the whole R&B singer thing, doing his own vibrato by physically moving the mic. Some of those are a tough challenge,” he states. “We do have one ballad that’s a duet with one of our backing singers and that is a moment where, because of her proximity to the PA, it’s a bit of a challenge. But with the stereo imaging I can move a little bit. It’s FOH guy tricks. There is a good 30-40 per cent of the show where I am a spectator as well, just because the sonic palette is there and the dynamics of the band is controlled within their playing ability and some of my dynamic stuff.” Increasing calls for Wright’s services elsewhere in the venue signal the end of our time together, as he concludes: “This PA and the audio design allow me to enjoy the show and not have those palm sweating moments. It’s like the train is running itself down the track and you’re just making sure you move tracks at the right time. It’s a beautiful thing.” n
P21 DECEMBER 2018
Loudness evolution Paul Tapper, technical director at NUGEN Audio, discusses some of the key issues surrounding regulating the loudness of broadcast content versus advertising...
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ow-a-days loudness measurement of audio is absolutely routine for audio postproduction engineers, and broadcast QC departments. Since the grand-daddy of all loudness standards (ITU-R BS. 1770) was published back in 2006, broadcasters around the world have adopted loudness standards as part of their delivery specs. The original motivation behind the loudness standards was a need to solve the problem of highly compressed commercials becoming significantly louder than the programme material they were played out next to, giving
the viewers/listeners an uncomfortable experience. The enforcement of loudness levels appears to have largely solved this issue (complaints around commercials being too loud have dropped dramatically). A secondary benefit of the new standards was an avoidance of a broadcast “Loudness War,” which would have resulted in hyper-compressed (and therefore damaged) audio. Because the loudness is fixed at play-out, there is no loudness benefit from hypercompression, freeing up engineers to make use of much greater head-room, for greater audio detail and clarity,
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than they would be able to otherwise. So, I think it would be fair to say that, in the words of EBU PLOUD chairman, Florian Camerer, “Loudness has made the world a little bit better.” But, that does not necessarily mean that the existing broadcast loudness standards are perfect, or that they are a good solution for every situation. For example, we at NUGEN Audio have worked with broadcasters for quite a few years now and have identified problems with broadcasting soundtracks from cinema releases. It’s easy enough to normalise
P23 DECEMBER 2018
IT’S EASY ENOUGH TO NORMALISE THE AVERAGE LOUDNESS OF A FILM TO MAKE IT COMPLIANT TO THE BROADCAST STANDARD, BUT OFTEN-TIMES THE “DYNAMIC RANGE” IS TOO WIDE FOR HOME VIEWING ENVIRONMENTS PAUL TAPPER
the average loudness of a film to make it compliant to the broadcast standard, but often-times the “dynamic range” is too wide for home viewing environments. When I say “dynamic range” here, what I really mean is the “macro dynamic range,” or the Loudness Range (or LRA measurement), which is a measure of (roughly) the loudness difference between the loudest sections of audio and the quietest sections. An approach to reducing this Loudness Range could be to pass the audio through a compressor, but particularly for films with very loud sections (e.g., action movies), this has a tendency to push the dialogue level down in the overall mix, leaving the Loudness Range acceptable, but the dialogue quiet and unintelligible. It turns out that now the viewers have stopped complaining about loud commercials, they mainly (in terms of audio related complaints) complain about dialogue intelligibility (e.g., see Mumble-Gate - the furore around the BBC’s drama series Jamaica Inn in 2014). So, this still leaves us with a problem that the common standard measurements don’t address. Thankfully though, there is a way forward. Dolby has very kindly made its algorithm for detecting dialogue in audio freely available, which means that it is possible for loudness algorithms to measure the loudness of just the dialogue sections. This allows us to get a number for the Dialogue Loudness in a clip of audio, as well as the overall average loudness. By using both these numbers, it is possible to detect situations where you might have a problem with dialogue intelligibility due to the dialogue being too quiet. It is even possible to have the computer automatically process your audio to give you a first pass version of the audio repurposed for broadcast, with an appropriate Loudness Range, and it can preserve the level of dialogue in the mix (NUGEN Audio’s DynApt process, available in LM-Correct and AMB, is an example of this sort of processing). Another potential problem with dialogue intelligibility
is caused when there is a large variation in the loudness levels of the dialogue present in the mix. You might have some sections with speech levels at a good clear level, but then other sections with dialogue that is too quiet to hear clearly. The average level of the dialogue might seem okay when you measure the Dialogue Loudness, so you need yet another measurement to detect this situation. A sensible choice of measure here would be the Dialogue LRA (the loudness range of the dialogue present within the mix). If the range of dialogue loudness is too great, it’s not going to be possible to set just one playback level to give a comfortable dialogue level throughout. Dialogue LRA is another measure, which could be used to detect the likelihood of potential dialogue intelligibility problems. For very dynamic content, like cinema soundtracks, or premium content that is intended to be consumed in home theatre environments, it makes sense to measure, not just the standard average loudness, but also the Dialogue loudness, the LRA and the Dialogue LRA to give you a fuller picture of whether the audio is likely to give the viewers the results you are hoping for.
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These measures could be easily used by an automated QC process to flag potentially problematic content that would benefit from a person checking that the dialogue in the programme is intelligible throughout. Looking at the problem in the other direction, it is also a common application for broadcasters to want to reuse content for lower-fidelity playback contexts. One example of this would be the distribution of broadcast content to mobile devices, where a likely usage would be watching/listening while travelling or commuting. Because of the high noise-floor provided by the car, train, or plane, there’s an even greater need for the loudness of the dialogue to be consistent (i.e., even lower Dialogue LRA) to achieve consistent intelligibility. Of course, there is the problem of ascertaining the physical environment of the playback. Hopefully, the discussion above will have convinced you that it is possible to use extensions of the standard loudness measures, combined with Dialogue detection to give additional and useful information about your audio content for broadcast and to improve the overall listener experience. n
P24 DECEMBER 2018
Fraser T Smith
Simply the Best Multi-award-winning producer Fraser T Smith received the Best Producer gong at last month’s Pro Sound Awards, having put his signature touch to some of the most vital records to come out of the UK in recent years. Here, he tells Daniel Gumble about his stellar year and what’s in store for 2019…
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aving worked with some of the most revered and influential artists to emerge from the UK over the past 10 years, Fraser T Smith has firmly established himself as one of the most sought after producers in the industry. Last month, he picked up the the Best Producer award at the 2018 Pro Sound Awards, adding to a glittering array of honours amassed over the past 12 months. At the beginning of the year, Stormzy’s No.1 debut album Gang Signs & Prayer picked up the Best Album Award at the BRITs, while his work with rising UK star Dave on his Question Time record earned him an Ivor Novello Award. Throughout his career, he has worked with a plethora of stars on some of their most celebrated works, including the aforementioned Stormzy and Dave, as well as Adele, Florence and the Machine, Gorillaz and many more. Here, he reflects on what has been a phenomenal 2018, while also offering some insights into what he has planned for the year ahead...
How did it feel to win the 2018 Pro Sound Awards Best Producer award? It was a massive honour to receive the award, especially being the first Best Producer award. Over the past year, I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some incredible visionaries, such as Stormzy and Dave - we’ve made music together which hasn’t been censored or patrolled commercially or sonically - so the fact that this music has been recognised in such a positive way means a great deal. And to win the Best Producer award, which reflects the pure sonics of what we’re doing, is incredible, as this is something we take very seriously in the studio.
2018 has been a big year, what with Stormzy’s GSAP winning multiple awards and the critical acclaim of Dave’s Game Over EP. What have been some of your highlights from the past 12 months? Stormzy’s performance at the Brits and winning Best
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Album was a unforgettable moment. Nobody had heard his rap before the performance except me, my engineer Manon Grandjean and Stormzy’s friend Flipz. He hadn’t even performed it in rehearsals for fear of it being censored - so to hear it booming around the O2 and addressing so many relevant topics was amazing. He used his platform for the greater good that night, in front of a stunning stage, created by the great Es Devlin, and to a beat that we’d created two days before. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life. Winning an Ivor Novello award with Dave for Question Time was also a standout moment of the year. I’ve written songs before which have been more traditional and been nominated for Ivor Novello awards, but I’ve never won one. Dave and I have been working together for two years now since his first 6 Paths EP, and we’ve grown very close musically and as friends. So to win this award with him with him, was very emotional - to see how far he’d progressed as an artist, rapper and lyricist. To be a part of his journey has been amazing, and we
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just saw his first No.1 with Funky Friday.
What else have you been working on this year, besides the Stormzy and Dave records? Besides Stormzy and Dave, I’ve been working with a great new band called Easy Life. It’s brilliant to be working with a band again, as it’s such a contrast to working with rappers, but they share the same energy and vision. They’re from Leicester and we’re working towards their debut album. Their sound’s hard to describe in that they draw from old school hip hop as much as more modern sounds. It’s very fresh. I’ve also produced some tracks with Nina Nesbitt, which has been great fun and Mabel who is also fantastic to work with.
Are there any producers you’ve been particularly excited by this year? Any records that have caught your ear? I’ve been working closely with Tyrell 169 who’s a young producer from South London - we started working on some of the Dave stuff together and he’s very exciting. He’s got some incredible music coming through.
I’m a huge MGMT fan and think that their latest record Little Dark Age is a real return to form. I love the stuff that Dave Fridmann produces of theirs. I’m also a huge Kevin Parker (Tame Impala) fan, and I love what he did with Travis Scott on Astroworld, and that album in general. I also love what Kanye did with Nas this year on Nasir and Kanye’s collaborations with Party Next Door.
Have there been any new pieces of studio kit that have caught your attention this year? Or do you have a tried and tested studio setup? I’m a huge Undertone Audio fan. Eric Valentine has become a great friend, and we designed my UTA 32 channel desk together. The sound is like nothing I’ve ever heard. This year we’ve been using his MPEQ-1 preamp on vocals, and it’s sounding great. We also did some blind tests on various external clocks and found that the Grimm CC1 added depth and clarity to everything we track. Ableton Live 10 has some great new improvements and we continue to track everything into ProTools 12,
which remains the centrepiece of our recording setup. I bought a Mellotron M4000D which I love - it’s very inspiring to have such great sounds there on tap. And I’ve just bought two of the Yamaha Reface keyboards for travelling - the CS80 and the YC Organ... great fun!
What’s been your favourite album and single release of 2018 ? My favourite album of 2018 is Little Dark Age - MGMT, I love the quirkiness of their songwriting and their choice of sounds and structure/arrangement. This feels like their best album since Oracular Spectacular. My favourite single is Leave A Light On by Tom Walker - I love the way that Tom and Steve Mac have crafted a perfect pop song using classic and super modern influences. It’s a great blend of old and new.
What are you working on at the moment? Anything you can tell us about? We’re working on the Dave album at the minute - it’s our sole focus. n
Smith receiving his Best Producer award at the Pro Sound Awards
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Calm before the Storm: Stormzy presented Fraser T Smith with the 2018 Best Producer award
DECEMBER 2018
In the eye of the Stormz The 2018 Pro Sound Awards proved not only to be a star-studded affair but also the most memorable night in the event’s history, as pro audio’s finest turned out to celebrate a stellar year in sound. Here we reflect on who won what and relive some of the highlights…
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-Acoustics founder Christian Heil, producer to the stars Fraser T Smith and grime icon and Glastonbury 2019 headliner Stormzy were among a glittering array of guests at the 2019 Pro Sound Awards, as the great and good from the world of pro audio turned out in force for a truly unforgettable installment of the annual awards extravaganza. Now in its sixth year, the 2018 Pro Sound Awards delivered some of the most memorable moments in the history of the event. Held at London’s Steel Yard on November 22, this year’s ceremony provided an all-new category list with a strong focus on the next generation of audio, celebrating some of the most exciting and inspiring breakthrough talent, as well as the most cutting edge products and projects from the past 12
months. Up and coming artist and studio engineer Lauren DeakinDavies received the inaugural Breakthrough Studio Engineer award on the night, taking the opportunity to highlight the great work being done among her peers and contemporaries, commenting: “It’s pretty inspiring to be [nominated] with the people that I am and to be part of this generation that’s coming through and to be representing that group of people. I just feel so honoured, so thank you.” Heather Knott, recipient of the Breakthrough
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Breaking through: Lauren Deakin-Davies
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L-R: PSNEurope editor Daniel Gumble, Stormzy and Fraser T Smith
Best Studio Engineer winner Marta Salogni
FOH Engineer award, was out on the road with the stage production of Matilda but found time to send her thanks via video message, while Marta Salogni took home the 2018 Studio Engineer award. “Thank you so much, it means a lot, and thanks to everyone who has walked this journey with me so far,” Salogni said on receiving the award. In a moment that stunned many in the room, grime star and Glastonbury 2019 headliner Stormzy made a surprise appearance to present Fraser T Smith with the all-new Best Producer award. In a moving speech, Stormzy paid tribute the huge influence Smith - who has worked with the likes of Adele, Kano, Sam Smith and Florence and the Machine - has had on his career to date. “Besides being an incredible producer, Fraser is the
most genuine, incredible soul, heart man I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting,” said Stormzy. “Working with this guy is beautiful. If you see us in the studio it is a beautiful partnership. He’s allowed me to realise my true ability, my true talent, he’s pushed me and I always say, If it wasn’t for Fraser I don’t think I’d have been able to realise the artist I could be. For an artist it can sometimes be very selfserving, but honestly I don’t think I’d be able to walk with the confidence I walk in if it wasn’t for Fraser shaping me, mentoring me, guiding me, being my therapist at times, and of course
Neumann was honoured with the 2018 Best Studio Mic award
Genelec’s Maria Martikainen
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Outstanding Contribution winner, Christian Heil
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being the fucking top boy producer of life! I can’t thank him enough.” A shell-shocked Smith was equally generous in his praise for the talent he has worked with throughout his career, stating: “I’m very emotional. I honestly didn’t know that this guy, my brother, was going to
be up here. Thank you for this award, it’s incredible. Stormzy has shown me a lot of love, which is incredible, but without guys like this, everybody in this room and what we all do pales into insignificance without people like Stormzy and other great artists we’ve all worked
d&b’s GSL was crowned Best Live Loudspeaker
2018 Pro Sound Awards:
THE WINNERS BEST LIVE LOUDSPEAKER d&b audiotechnik - GSL
BEST LIVE MICROPHONE Sennheiser – Digital 6000
BEST LIVE SOUND PRODUCTION SPONSORED BY EAW
BEST STUDIO MONITOR SPONSORED BY FOCUSRITE Unity Audio – Mini Rock Monitor
BEST STUDIO MICROPHONE Neumann – U 67
BREAKTHROUGH STUDIO ENGINEER
Meyer Sound - Ed Sheeran ÷ (Divide) tour
Lauren Deakin-Davies
BEST FOH ENGINEER SPONSORED BY D&B AUDIOTECHNIK
BEST STUDIO ENGINEER
Chris Marsh
BREAKTHROUGH FOH ENGINEER SPONSORED BY HARMAN Heather Knott
BEST STUDIO Abbey Road
Marta Salogni
BEST MIXING CONSOLE SPONSORED BY EAW Solid State Logic – L100
BEST INSTALLATION PROJECT SPONSORED BY D&B AUDIOTECHNIK Delta Live – BBC Proms 2018
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BEST IMMERSIVE SOUND PROJECT d&b audiotechnik – Starlight Express
CAMPAIGN AWARD Red Bull Studios – Normal Not Novelty
BEST PRODUCER Fraser T Smith
COMPANY OF THE YEAR Genelec
OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION Christian Heil
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Sennheiser collecting Best Live Microphone
Katie Tavini receiving the Campaign Award
with. So, Stormzy, long live the king. Thank you.” Smith also said to PSNEurope after the event: “Amidst all the excitement of Stormzy’s heartfelt tribute to me, my speech was completely derailed! I wanted to thank all the researchers, developers, technicians, designers and everyone involved in the companies who release the equipment that we all use on a daily basis. We can often take their incredible work for granted, so I wanted to publicly say a massive thank you for everything you do, as we rely on your expertise, passion and commitment to make the gear sound as good as it does, and to push the creative envelope.. “Also a massive shout out to my brilliant engineer Manon Grandjean who’s at the front end of my constant blind A/B tests and deliberation between mics, preamps and compressors!’ A rare public appearance from L-Acoustics founder Christian Heil also captured the attention of the room, as he took to the stage to accept the 2018 Outstanding Contribution award. In a speech that honoured the work of his co-workers and collaborators, he highlighted his hopes to unite the worlds of sound and visuals: “I’d like to share this award with the hundreds of people who work every day and deliver their intelligence, their consistency to provide a better sound to the industry, that’s very important,” Heil said. “All of us are passionate about music and science and the combination of both. “With L-ISA we are trying to introduce a new thing that is very ambitious that consists of fusing visuals and sound. That is very, very important. That is a very difficult challenge. Maybe in the future the lighting people and the sound people will become friends again and that will be a great achievement!” Another brand new award for 2018 was the Campaign Award, which recognises a campaign or movement
Team Abbey Road presented with Best Studio
that has helped provide a positive change to working practices, diversity and equality. The winner of the award was Red Bull Studios and its Normal Not Novelty campaign, which has provided a hub for women working in the industry, or looking to start a career in the studio sector, to network and exchange ideas, as well as raising the profile of those doing great work in the industry. Throughout the year, the campaign has held monthly Normal Not Novelty gatherings, featuring workshops on a range of studio disciplines, live demos from studio professionals and panels sessions and interviews with some of the world’s most talented, DJs, engineers and producers. Mastering engineer and Normal Not Novelty host Katie Tavini was joined onstage to collect the award by engineer Sophie Ackroyd and Brendon Harding, who helped launch the initiative. Tavini dedicated the award to “all the women creating amazing music out there”.
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Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Genelec was crowned Company of the Year, with the firm’s Maria Martikainen accepting the award on the company’s behalf. “Thank you, this is truly an honour,” she said. “I want to thank all of our customers throughout the years. Without you we wouldn’t exist. And thank you the whole Genelec family for making Genelec what it is.” On the product front, d&b audiotechnik scooped the Best Live Loudspeaker award for its GSL range as well as the Best Immersive Sound Project for Starlight Express; Sennheiser emerged victorious in the Best Live Microphone category for its Digital 6000 series; and Unity Audio’s Mini Rock series won this year’s Best Studio Monitor award. Abbey Road took home the Best Studio award and Delta Live scooped the Best Installation Project award for the BBC Proms 2018. n
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Photo by Elly Lucas
DECEMBER 2018
Recipe for success Mastering engineer and musician Nick Cooke tells PSNEurope about his brand new mastering facility and the challenges of opening a new studio in today’s ever competitive market…
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ast month, musician and mastering engineer Nick Cooke cut the ribbon on a new state-ofthe-art mastering studio in Wrington, near Bristol, named Nick Cooke Mastering. The bespoke facility was designed by White Mark and comes equipped with analogue processors by Maselec, Dangerous Music and Avalon Design, a Maselec mastering console, audio conversion via Burl Audio and two Prism Sound Lyra 2 converters and audio workstations, Pro Tools and SADiE 6. Cooke has also installed a pair of Meyer Sound X10s for monitoring, which he acquired from Abbey Road Studios. Here, the former chief mastering engineer at Extreme Music, the London-based production music arm of Sony ATV, gives PSNEurope the inside track on his brand new project…
Tell us about your new studio. What kind of services will it offer? Nick Cooke Mastering is my new business based in a brand-new purpose-built mastering facility located in Wrington, a beautiful and vibrant village just south of Bristol. I have been working as a professional mastering engineer since 2008, initially for De Wolfe Music and then for Extreme Music. Now, with my own company, I offer mastering for audio recordings of all types and like to work closely with the client to achieve the desired results. This involves stereo mastering and remastering work for an ever-increasing variety of formats and
styles, including streaming and other digital distribution formats such as Mastered for iTunes as well as vinyl and CD. Recent projects have included independent music records, as well as music and sound for TV and film. I began my career as a remastering engineer working mainly from tape and I plan to include tape restoration as a service again very soon.
Why branch out on your own now? After six years running the mastering department at Extreme Music of Sony/ATV in London, I have gained an amazing and varied experience of music and sound mastering. Whilst still working full time, I started to receive more and more requests to master independent records. When offered the chance to tour as a professional musician with Kate Rusby as part of her band, this gave me the opportunity to realise my dream of stepping out on my own as a mastering engineer.
Talk us through the studio spec Some giant speakers and some other stuff! I have gone for an arguably modest set up as I find that simplicity is key. So, as well as various plugins from Sonnox, FabFilter, A.O.M, iZotope, Sonoris and others, my outboard processing comprises the Avalon Design AD2077 Mastering Equalizer, Dangerous Compressor, Maselec MPL-2 peak and HF limiter, Maselec Mastering Transfer Console, and a couple of custom units and converters by Prism Sound and Burl Audio. DAWs
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include Pro Tools and SADiE 6. However, the most crucial part of the set-up is the listening environment and monitoring. I’m very pleased that I’ve managed to acquire a pair of Meyer Sound X-10 speakers.
Tell us about White Mark’s involvement? White Mark are incredibly good at what they do and there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted them to design this facility. It took two years to find suitable premises for the studio. It had to be big enough to accommodate the optimum set-up of the speakers and allow for effective sound isolation. Natural daylight is also important to me. When I found this place in Wrington, I was very pleased to find a local company, Chew Valley Construction, who would follow the designs of the build carefully and accurately, successfully completing to a very high standard. White Mark did their thing and brought their trusted people in to add the finishing touches, including acoustic engineer Matt Dobson to align and tune the monitoring position. The result is an incredibly accurate and easy environment to work in, plus it’s nice to be in and it looks great.
What are the biggest challenges you face? There is a reluctance to pay for quality when it comes to mastering. With so many studios offering cheap online mastering, which has its place, it makes it more difficult to remember that top-quality mastering is a specialism that can make all the difference to a record. n
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Siamäk Naghian
The big 40 Celebrating its 40th year in business, studio monitoring specialist Genelec was named Company of the Year at the 2018 Pro Sound Awards in recognition of its incredible work over the past four decades. Here, managing director Siamäk Naghian looks back at some of this year’s highlights...
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P33 DECEMBER 2018
Genelec’s Maria Martikainen receiving the Company of the Year award at the Pro Sound Awards
It’s been a big year for Genelec, what with the 40th anniversary celebrations and the Company Of The Year win at the Pro Sound Awards. What have been some of the key highlights from the past 12 months? The most import highlights are naturally related to the recognitions and attention we have received from people in the audio community both related to the company anniversary, its history and heritage, and also related to new products. Our anniversary event was a great milestone and having our friends all around the world celebrating our joint success was a very rewarding moment. Most of those people we have been working with for decades. They have been contributing to the company success and naturally it was great to celebrate such a milestone with the wider Genelec family. It was also a touching moment when we gave a Genelec medal to our personnel who have been working for the company more than 10 years. More than 50 per cent of the whole personnel have been with us over 10 years and some even more than 30 years. This is a great indicator of our company culture. These all show the deep commitment people have had to Genelec and the mission the company has been committed to – achieving the most truthful sound. Beyond that, and in terms of new innovations, The Ones’ success has been an excellent highlight. It is encouraging to see how greatly both users and the audio community in general have been responding to these radical breakthroughs.
40 years is a major milestone for any company to reach. What has been the key to Genelec’s longevity? The company values, its philosophy, professional heritage and mission are definitely the foundation for such an amazing history. For over four decades being a pioneer and continuously bringing new innovations to the monitoring market at a time when technology, society and the wider business environment has been developing extremely fast. This would not be possible without a deep dedication and determination to constantly push the boundaries forward. This has required commitment and determination to long-term research and development, as well as the building of close relationships with our network of users, suppliers, distributors, and other partners. Building trust in all directions as to what the company does, and providing real value to the community, has been key to the company’s longevity.
The company is still very much a family business. How crucial has this unified vision been to the company’s success over the past four decades? Dedicated and present ownership is a unique way of motivating others to get committed to the company’s mission and vision. Such a model has helped the
company to fully concentrate on its shared vision, invest in long-term development, and enhance its committed to lasting relationships. It is very different thing to exercise decades of business experience, as opposed to going for quick wins. When its works, a family business is mostly about long-term commitment. This creates trust both in the organisation and within the network and chain that the company operates within. This is crucial for creating a unified vision and striving together for excellence and making such vision a reality through persistent work.
Talk us through some of Genelec’s key 2018 product launches. While The Ones have been establishing themselves within the audio community, we have also been actively contributing to immersive audio development and education. Launching the S360 and 8382 reflected our vision and belief in immersive audio and the unique experience it brings to users. The new version of the Genelec Loudspeaker Manager (GLM) along with Cloud Services, as well as expanding our Smart Active Monitors (SAM) range, also shows very clearly the evolutionary path of monitoring technology and the ways in which it can be applied in the not-toodistant future.
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What do you consider to be the biggest opportunities for Genelec as we prepare to enter 2019? We see immersive audio, IP and digital technology and their applications as key areas. This has been evident throughout the products and solutions we have been initiating in the recent years. There are significant transformations going on in the working process in audio production, distribution, and consumption. For over two decades we have been conducting research and development in digital technology and we are moving in a fascinating direction, which is now becoming a reality. We expect that next year will be natural continuation in this direction.
And the biggest challenges? New opportunities and challenges go hand in hand. The ongoing transformation of our industry and business environment provides significant challenges too. However, currently, and in 2019, the most serious challenges come from the global economy, or actions against it, social changes, and the uncertain economicalpolitical climate. Such changes are already causing harmful uncertainties globally and our industry is not an exception in this respect. n
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Master of the arts: Katie Tavini
Why we need campaigns like Normal Not Novelty Katie Tavini, mastering engineer and regular host at Red Bull Studios’ Normal Not Novelty nights - which won the Campaign Award at the 2018 Pro Sound Awards - tells PSNEurope about the benefits of such initiatives and the positive impacts they can have on those pursuing a career in pro audio...
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will admit, it’s a boring topic. Sitting around and discussing what it’s like to be a woman in a male dominated industry is tiresome and it rarely achieves anything. This is why, when Brendon Harding (formerly Red Bull Studios) phoned me in December 2016 and asked if I’d like to run an engineering workshop the following month for anyone identifying as female, I said yes. It was so refreshing, the thought of teaching women who are interested in sound an actual skill that they can take away and use to create beautiful music. And at the same time, it was terrifying. I’m not going to lie, a couple of days before the first workshop, I very nearly phoned him back to bail. And I’m so glad I didn’t! The reaction to Normal Not Novelty has been mixed - set in Red Bull Studios (and occasionally at other venues) we have discussed practical engineering techniques, from mastering with Mandy Parnell and recording film scores with Fiona Cruikshank, to mixing with Lauren Deakin-Davies (winner of the Breakthrough Studio Engineer award at the 2018 Pro Sound Awards) and starting work as an engineer with Steph Marziano.
However, some men have felt threatened. We share knowledge and support each other. We collaborate and make connections to further our careers. We cheer each other’s on and celebrate the support of each others new releases. We do not sit around and moan about being in a male-dominated industry, and we do not speak negatively of male engineers. We are not creating an anti-male club, and we are not trying to write men out of audio engineering. Think of it like this; you’ve been working as a professional engineer for a decade, yet when you go to events, people assume you’re there to support your other half. Well unfortunately, that’s the story for a lot of females working in the industry, including myself. And so, to put your hand up at these events to ask a question can feel like the scariest thing in the world. But that’s just the beginning - mixed events are typically 90 per cent male, and some women may have had a trauma that makes them feel unsafe around men. Some women are the only female in their class at college/uni and want a change of scenery. Some women may be trans (we
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support you trans sisters, you are welcome at any NNN event!) and may feel threatened in a room full of cis men. And some women are just plain bored of being asked if they’re someone’s girlfriend. Normal Not Novelty has given women a platform to share their music, either in real life or in the ever growing Facebook group. It allows women to promote their events, ask advice and to feel supported. Personally, it has given me more confidence in my own ability and also the confidence to network with other music industry workers. It has expanded my knowledge as each month we cover a different topic, and it has taught me that there is no shame in being proud of your achievements. But mostly, Normal Not Novelty is an event where you will never be asked to justify your attendance. It’s not necessarily changing the balance - if women aren’t interested in audio engineering, then we’re not going to try and convince them otherwise. But what we do want is women in audio to feel a sense of community, to be visible, and to be respected. And if the balance does change, then that’s cool too. n
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Stuart Kerrison,, founder of Second Warehouse
Second coming Following the launch of online cross-rental platform Second Warehouse’s CashBack initiative, which aims to create new revenue streams for rental firms, company founder Stuart Kerrison spoke to Daniel Gumble about how the service works and what the industry’s response has been to the business since its launch earlier this year…
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eb-based cross-rental platform Second Warehouse recently introduced a new CashBack feature to its service, designed to enable rental companies to earn money from hiring in pro AV equipment. Launched back in February, Second Warehouse aims to make the cross-rental process faster and more efficient, allowing companies to do business in a safe and cost-effective manner. Its new CashBack feature is designed to provides users with up to three per cent cash back against the amount they spend on equipment hire within the system. All users will receive two per cent cash back on the total value of rentals they make. That percentage will rise to 2.5 per cent cash back after a user has either made 10 rentals or entered at least 50 qualifying items into their own Second Warehouse inventory. After 20 rentals or entering at least 100 qualifying items into their inventory, users will benefit
from the full three per cent cash back. The cash payouts will occur twice per year, providing users with the time to accumulate a bi-annual lump sum. To find out more about CashBack and how the pro audio market has taken to Second Warehouse, Daniel Gumble spoke to its founder, Stuart Kerrison...
What’s been happening with Second Warehouse since its launch earlier this year? Our first half year has outstripped our expectations. We are far ahead of where we hoped to be at this stage, both in terms of the number of companies who have registered to use Second Warehouse and the equipment that has been added to the rental inventory. In the meantime we’ve also been paying very close attention to how companies have gone about cross-renting equipment in the past and how they are now beginning to use Second Warehouse.
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It’s all been really exciting and the progress that we’ve already experienced has enabled us to look further ahead at implementing a whole host of new plans i
What has the responsebeen like? Without exaggeration, it’s been 100 per cent positive! Prior to the launch of Second Warehouse we conducted a long period of beta-testing, when we ran demos for a lot of rental companies throughout Europe. The feedback was really encouraging, but I always wondered if the real response would be a bit more subdued when the service went live. In fact, the opposite has proven to be true. We now have hundreds of rental companies across the UK and Europe signed up to the service, and the general feedback is that Second Warehouse is a service whose time has come. I won’t pretend that there haven’t been challenges along the way, but I’m very proud of what we’ve built in such a short space of time.
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Explain how the CashBack feature works Pro AV rental companies have always earned money by renting out their equipment, but now, for the first time, rental companies can earn money when they rent equipment in. Renting in extra equipment is part of everyday life in a rental company, so equipment sub-hires are an unavoidable, necessary expense that everyone just accepts. Now, when you make those sub-hires through Second Warehouse, you can actually earn up to three per cent of the rental price back – not in points or vouchers but in real cash. As before, you’re free to negotiate prices as much as you like with as many companies as you like, but no matter what final deal you end up with, you will always get between two per cent and three per cent of that amount back. This is a brand new feature but we’ve already become accustomed to our users having to take a little time to let its significance sink in, particularly what it could mean for a rental company’s bottom line. With the enormous sums that companies spend on sub-renting in equipment every year, we’re talking about a substantial amount of money coming back. The fact is that if a company chooses to rent in equipment through any means other than Second Warehouse, they’re literally throwing away thousands of Euros. Meanwhile, every company who chooses to rent in gear through Second Warehouse will get at least two per cent of that rental price back. Companies who make their own equipment available for hire by adding it to their Second Warehouse inventory will earn 2.5 per cent or even three per cent. The more you add, the more you earn. And that’s on top of what you make hiring out! All of this is paid back to users in real money, straight into your bank account, twice per year. We’re really excited to find out how the industry feels about CashBack, but it’s not the only big addition to Second Warehouse. As part of this update we’re introducing two new search methods, one of which allows a renter to simply tell us what they need so they can get back to other things while we gather quotes on their behalf. The other new search method is aimed at solving a huge problem which every touring professional understands – those last minute emergencies when a piece of equipment fails and you desperately need to find a replacement. For the first time, finding that gear is as easy as pressing a button thanks to what we call SOS Mode. You simply tell us what you need and we’ll send urgent SMS and mail messages to every relevant supplier in your local area, asking them to get back to you within 12 hours. Problem solved.
Have you encountered any sceptics wondering if there is a catch? In terms of our CashBack scheme, the answer is not yet – but we’re sure there will be people who are sceptical initially, and that’s fine. The best response to those worries is to try the system and experience the
benefits. Also, we work in a relatively small industry where everyone knows one another. Word will spread quickly that this is exactly what it seems to be – a really good deal.
Do you think this latest development will help get more people on board? Getting companies on board isn’t really our priority right now, as at this stage we already have far more European companies registered with us than I anticipated at this stage. Of course, we always welcome new registrations. I’m sure that all the news surrounding CashBack will bring new companies onboard and in turn that will create an even bigger pool of equipment to rent so everybody wins. But features such as CashBack, SOS Mode and Gear Finder, are more aimed at driving day-to-day rental activity. We’re really proud of what Second Warehouse has achieved but we’re never going to be complacent about the need to bring in new innovations to keep our users on the system and feeling great about being part of the Second Warehouse family.
How challenging is the task of persuading the industry to part with the traditional rental/ cross rental process? It is definitely a challenge and it would be foolish to expect otherwise. That’s why we decided to start Second Warehouse in careful stages and take our time to make sure everything was right before we announced features such as CashBack. Changing the way people work and go about their daily lives is always a really long process, even when it’s offering to make life easier. People are creatures of habit and they naturally stick with what they know, especially in a business as traditionally
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conservative as Pro AV rental. We’ve taken that challenge very seriously with a lot of marketing activity to help spread the word – including good old fashioned knocking on doors – and a carefully planned strategy for building a long-term platform. I think it helps a lot that Second Warehouse is made up of people from the audio business so we understand where our users are coming from and what they need from us. Also, it’s important to remember that the times they are a-changin! There’s a new generation of younger companies coming up, run by people who have basically grown up online. They are open to newer, more efficient ways of doing things, and for them online services like Second Warehouse are now the norm. The world has changed and our business is changing with it.
How many companies are currently using the service? Well the number grows by the day but it’s already in the hundreds. We are meticulous in ensuring companies pass a credit and status check when they register to make sure that Second Warehouse is a safe environment in which to trade. Registered users have access to our user list on the service so they can see which other companies are on board.
What next for Second Warehouse? I don’t want to get into specifics now, but there are a lot of exciting things on the horizon. It’s clear that other third party software developers, equipment manufacturers and vendors see the many benefits of a service such as Second Warehouse and we are currently in discussions with a number of them regarding future integrations and services – the message is very much watch this space. n
Eliza Shaddad
Future proof In October of this year, the multi-talented Eliza Shaddad released her debut album Future, which has received much critical acclaim and marked her out as one of the brightest talents in the industry. Here she tells Daniel Gumble about her role in the record’s production and her hopes and ambitions for 2019 and beyond…
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liza Shaddad’s debut album Future has been a long time coming. Released on October 26, the record followed two EPs - Waters (2014) and Run (2016) - and took more than three years to complete. Produced by Mercury Prizenominated producer Chris Bond in close collaboration with Shaddad, Future’s sonic DNA can be traced back to the otherworldly atmospherics of mid-’90s trip-hop and chorus-soaked alt rock, while its taut structures and melodies make for an immediate and intimate listening experience that one mightn’t expect from an album that endured such a protracted gestation period. PSNEurope editor Daniel Gumble sat down with Shaddad in an East London cafe to find out how she and Bond managed to create such a cohesive record amid difficult circumstances...
Tell us about the inception of Future Songwriting actually started three years ago. Some of the songs are from around my last EP. I’d written an album by December of 2015 and the plan was to go into the studio and record it in March 2016 after touring the last EP. We got there, started recording, had loads of stuff in place, a publishing deal on the table... and it all fell through while we were there. For several reasons it just went wrong, so we had to stop and take stock. But things had been going so well that we decided to go on for a little bit longer in the studio. So we did half the album in that session and came away thinking we’d go back in a couple of months, but it took so long to get schedules to align and to get funding sorted, so we didn’t go back for another year. Then I went back in August last year for a week to finish it. By that time I’d written a heap
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of new songs, so I had to pull everything apart and piece it together as a new album.
Chris Bond is credited as producer. How did you find working with him? I worked with him on the last couple of EPs. He’s a great producer and a great musician. For this record his brother Andrew was the engineer, but there was a lot of collaboration in the studio, and as we had less and less time to discuss and really get into stuff, the more we were using the original ideas that I’d laid down in demos at home. So there were certain songs I was really happy with but I’d want to try some drums over the top, so we’d start tracking drums over the demo, but the longer we went on with it the more we felt we didn’t need to re-record it all as it was already fine. There was
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so long between the main recording sessions, so I took the songs we recorded in the first session and added layers and brought them back to the next session. Some of them were kept and some weren’t. Also, I asked Chris not to work on it without me. I wanted to be there for all the decisions. I mixed it with Adam Jaffrey, and I was in the mastering sessions. I wanted to be there for every single moment, and I thought that deserved a co-production credit - partly because we used bits of stuff I’d worked on at home and also because it was my vision that held the project together.
first song on the album has a 16-bar intro and it sets up the whole album. And that was going to the the first single and everyone was like, You need to cut it down, it needs to be three seconds ideally. I’m not going to start the album with a three-second intro! So we have two version of that song on Spotify and there is a four-bar difference between them. It’s pathetic.
How collaborative was your relationship with Chris?
The sense of achievement and satisfaction at completing an album is so huge that I don’t think just making a
Where was the album recorded? How important is it to you to continue making traditional albums in the streaming age, with singles and EPs seemingly the most commercially viable format?
I write the songs at home on guitar, then I’d demo them on GarageBand or Logic and build up a really comprehensive picture of what I want the songs to be. Then me and Chris go back and forth on email discussing ideas and then go to the studio, where we’d rehearse everything and play the songs. We’ll keep anything and everything from the demos that feels right, and if we have time we’ll experiment. It’s a very complementary partnership. The reason I originally wanted to work with him four or five years ago was because I loved the atmosphere he created on the records he’d worked on. He’d worked with Ben Howard and Monika Heldal and [the work he’d done with them] was expansive and widescreen but intimate. I really admired his work.
It must be a difficult path to navigate It causes a lot of stupid arguments. For example, the
Almost all of it was recorded at a studio called Deep Litter in Devon on a peninsula with a lighthouse at the end of it - it’s on the last farm before you get to the lighthouse. There’s water on all sides and there’s lots of fog, it’s super moody. And there’s no phone signal or Wi-Fi. You’re just locked away in a barn for 12 hours at a time.
Talk us through the mixing process
How different was the process of making Future compared to the EPs? Apart from how long it took?! With the second EP the production of the demos were slightly less formed than they were this time, just because I knew less. There was a bit more experimentation because it was more open. By the time we got to this record, especially with all the waiting, I had such a clear idea of what I wanted it to sound like and what it needed to be. In some ways it’s tighter and more cohesive. And the songwriting has changed. My mood changed and therefore the songs changed. And it’s hard not to take into account industry feedback. So if a song naturally comes out quite short, I previously would have been like, Let’s give it a double-length intro, but now I find it increasingly hard not to think of all the different people who would say, No, it’s good if it’s short because it’ll do better on radio or Spotify, all that bullshit. I don’t think that affected the songwriting, but it might have affected the length of the intros!
Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet. I love that soundtrack and the variety of songwriting and styles. It’s so hard-hitting but also enjoyable to. I was analysing the tracklisting and thinking about what it was that I loved about it so much. I really wanted to inject some of that variation and diversity into this record.
Shaddad at work in the studio
single could compare to that, although it would be much cannier! Albums still have a lot of meaning because it’s a proper body of work and it represents you.
What were your production influences for Future? Going into this record I had Portishead’s Dummy on repeat on the five hour car journey to the studio. I’ve been very lucky in that Catherine Marks mixed the last EP and I listened to her back catalogue and totally trusted her to get the sound and the vision. When I was growing up I listened to a lot of stupid music on my own and then my sister introduced me to a lot of really good music. She was listening to stuff like Hole, Skunk Anansie, Radiohead, Tori Amos, that sort of thing. Another influence was the soundtrack to Baz
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I went around the houses a lot. I finished recording and immediately started doing test mixes of White Lines. I did a lot of test mixes and it was never quite right, so we tried I few different things and I just decided that I needed to be there and be a part of the process. I found it hard to connect with something that I sent off and that would then be sent back to me. We found the perfect person in Adam Jaffrey who I knew because he’d worked on my old label mate’s (Palace) record. He had just moved into a new studio in Greenwich, and I told him I wanted to be there for the whole mixing process, and he said, Well, you can be here for a lot of it, but maybe not all of it! After a couple of days he was fine, I would come in every day after 12 and we’d make decisions on things in the afternoon. Because the songs are so varied the rough mixes we had were really sonically different and it was hard to see how they would fit together well on an album, from stuff like You’re Core, which was way rougher, compared to something like Daydreaming, which was really smooth when it came out of the recording session. But we managed to find a balance.
Do you feel like next time you’d want to be more technically involved? I’m planning the next record already, but I’m taking baby steps on that side of things. What I’m really interested in is taking my band in - I’ve never gone into the studio with my band - and recording stuff, taking it home and then messing around with it. Even if you’re working with the loveliest people ever in the studio - which I think I am - it can still be intimidating in the studio, taking that leap from artist to producer, but I’ve learned so much from these amazing people I’ve worked with and watched so closely. I definitely want to move further in that direction. I feel quite free now that I’ve made a record. n
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Homme advantage: Suzanne Bull with Josh Homme at Reading Festival
Changing Attitudes Suzanne Bull MBE, CEO, Attitude is Everything, updates PSNEurope on the brilliant work being done by the organisation to improve access for disabled audiences at live events‌
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very year since 2000, Attitude is Everything has been making astonishing progress in helping transform the live music experience for disabled audiences. We’re still some way from ‘mission accomplished’ - in truth, I suspect we’ll always be some way from mission accomplished, as there’s always more to do - but we’re now at a stage where over 160 UK venues and festivals have signed up to our Charter of Best Practice, committing themselves to a consistent improvement of their access provision, and the pursuit of stepping up from Bronze to Silver to Gold status. It’s been incredible to witness these advances. Between 2017 and 2018, over 170,000 deaf and disabled people attended Charter venues and festivals around the UK. We have trained almost 7,000 music industry professionals and provided hundreds of volunteering opportunities for disabled fans. From the largest outdoor events to the smallest grassroots pubs and clubs, live music is gradually being opened up to all. Barriers are being dismantled. Promoters are engaging with a whole new wave of disabled audiences. Believe me, it was not always like this! Drawing on Government data, Attitude is Everything estimates that deaf and disabled people, along with people with chronic health conditions and impairments who might not personally identify as such, account for one in 10 of live music attendees in the UK. It’s a very significant proportion of the gig-going public, and certainly one that cannot be ignored. Meanwhile, there is growing recognition that “access” and “disability” must be inherent to the music industry’s ongoing and much-needed dialogue about inclusion and diversity, and part of similar conversations about race, gender and social mobility. Such conversations are hugely important if the music business is to reflect the diversity of our audience and our artists, and it has been hugely gratifying for our charity to have enjoyed such strong support from the likes of UK Music as well as all the various partners we work with. In 2018, we continue to make significant strides with a renewed focus on small venues, launching and marketing a DIY Access guide for grassroots promoters, and employing our first ever artist development manager in order to better support deaf and disabled musicians. Coinciding with publication of our latest State of Access Report in April, Attitude is Everything also launched the Ticketing Without Barriers Coalition - a coming together of more than 40 ticket agents, promoters, venues and trade bodies, all with the aim of improving the ticket-buying process for disabled fans. In short, there is a lot to shout about. Rather than stand outside the tent, the Attitude is Everything’s approach has always been to encourage change from within; to identify the cultural and economic benefits of improved access, and to show how even small-scale changes can make a transformative impact to the lives and experiences of millions of fans. In our
Suzanne Bull
experience, highlighting best practice is the best way to bring about meaningful change. The manifestation of this approach is our first ever event to celebrate the best and most innovative access provision - the Outstanding Attitude Awards, which will be held on March 12 2019 at the Islington Assembly Hall. After trialling the concept back in 2016, when the winners encompassed everything from the videobased travel information provided at The Albany in Deptford to the adoption of user-led British Sign Language interpretation services at Reading Festival, the 2019 Awards will be expanded to cover 10 categories, including ‘DIY access’, ticketing technology, infrastructural improvements, online innovation, and customer service. We have deliberately set the criteria to suit venues, festivals, businesses and artists of all sizes. Basically, if someone is doing something progressive and beneficial for disabled audiences, then we want them to hear from them and receive their nomination.
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All details are listed on the Attitude is Everything website www.attitudeiseverything.org.uk. To be considered for the awards, nominees have until December. After that date, submissions will be shortlisted and judged by a panel of industry experts, artists and fans. So here’s my message to PSNEurope readers: if you’re involved in live music in any way shape or form, if you’ve benefitted personally from access provision, if you visit a venue or festival or see an artist that you think is doing a good job for disabled audiences, then I urge you to tell that company or individual to nominate themselves. This is really important! We want the Outstanding Attitude Awards to be a beacon for all that’s good about this industry, and to showcase the benefits of access to those who could improve how they serve their deaf and disabled customers. I’m enormously proud of what Attitude is Everything has achieved over the past 18 years - but such is the progress we’re making, that we can’t stop now. n
P42 DECEMBER 2018
Sound affects
Soundgirls and Spotify recently launched the new EQL Directory, designed to serve as an international database for women working in audio and music production. Daniel Gumble spoke to Soundgirls co-founder Karrie Keyes to find out more…
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ast month, Soundgirls and music streaming giant Spotify joined forces to launch the EQL Directory - an international database for women working in audio and music production. The directory is a nonprofit, international database of professionals designed to create more opportunities for women working in the music and professional audio industries. It is currently estimated that less than five per cent of all audio professionals are women. “[We] face the myth that there are not very many women or non-conforming people working in audio, and because of this people don’t even bother to look. The EQL Directory proves that this is not true,” said Karrie Keyes, co-founder of SoundGirls and Pearl Jam’s longtime sound engineer at the time of launch. “SoundGirls already had this global directory of women in audio and production, and we came together to help them make it more beautiful, more useful, and more visible within the industry,” explained Kerry Steib, Spotify’s director of social impact. “We know that increasing equity for women in these fields is a complex problem to solve. We have to work with great partners across the industry and come together to create solutions." Visitors to the EQL Directory can find resources from campaigns and organisations including the Audio Engineering Society, Beatz By Girlz, Equalizer Project, female:pressure, Gender Amplified, Girls Make Beats, Instituto Criar, Secret Genius, shesaid.so, SoundGirls in Mexico, The 7% Series, Upfront Producer Network, Yorkshire Sound Women Network, and the Women’s Audio Mission. And according to Keyes, the benefits that come with signing up to the directory are substantial. “This is a great resource that can be easily accessed and forwarded to people who are looking to hire women and non-binary people. SoundGirls has had success with the directory, helping to get women hired and several people have been hired through the directory,” she told PSNEurope. “Now, with Spotify, our reach within the industry will have a greater impact. It will help artists that want to work and hire women be able to find them.” Prior to Spotify’s involvement, SoundGirls had launched its own directory, but now with the streaming giant onboard as a partner, its profile is set to receive a significant boost. “SoundGirls launched the original directory so that we had a database to send to people who inquired about
Karrie Keyes
hiring women engineers, producers, and techs about two years ago,” Keyes continued. “We also launched it to combat people saying they wanted to hire women but they just could not find any. Spotify has helped us build it into a platform that is easy to use and will have a greater impact. Our industry lacks diversity and all industries function and run better with a wide range of talent and different voices - and Spotify has the ability to make this a go to directory.” Keyes and SoundGirls are also busy with a number of additional activities, as the organisation prepares for another eventful year. “SoundGirls is just gearing up for NAMM and
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GIRLSCHOOL, which we will host events during NAMM, including our NAMM Mentoring Session and providing all the techs and engineers for the Annual She Rocks Awards,” Keyes elaborates. “GIRLSCHOOL immediately follows, which is a Women Led Music Festival in Los Angeles, which SoundGirls provides the production staff for." She concludes: “We will continue to grow and provide support to women in audio. We are currently working on more events and workshops for women in Post Production Sound and Film & TV Sound. We are excited to launch this inititave will help women just starting out in production and location sound.”
Photo: Tom Oldham
P44 DECEMBER 2018 John Metcalfe (right) and his band
String theory
Composer, violist, producer and arranger John Metcalfe’s new album Absence is released in September on the Neue Meister label. As well as his own projects, the last 12 months have seen Metcalfe arrange for U2 and write original music for a major new theatre production in Rome, based on Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescos. Simon Duff caught up with John for a chat to reflect on a busy 2018…
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ohn Metcalfe’s work schedule is a combination of creating his own ambitious contemporary classical electronica as well as as orchestral arrangements and production for clients such as U2, Peter Gabriel and Coldplay. The Duke Quartet, in which he plays viola, keep his classical roots well in place. He has all the attributes of what a modern day music producer should be - cross-disciplined, multitasking technologies and always striving for the new, looking to the future whilst respecting and knowing the past; never getting too comfortable and being humble. As a composer he has a unique voice. It’s a remarkable balancing act. “I am very careful about the projects that I take on. They have to mean something and I do have various techniques to deal with my work load and pressure,” Metcalfe says. “ I set myself targets and meet those, and if things are not going well on one track or song I will turn that off and move to another track. In that way I can have lots of plates spinning in the air and nothing is going to fall off.”
His recording studio in Oxford is a dedicated set up away from his house in a facility called The Bus Stop, where much of the new album was worked on. Monitoring is on a pair of KRK V4s and a KRK 105 sub. His viola is a Giovanni Batista Ceruti made in Italy in 1800 and one of only a handful in the UK. Microphones at the facility include a Neumann U67, Neumann TLM 103 and a Schoeps CMC 6 and MK 4 Cardiod capsule. There is a choice selection of Neve 1073 mic pres recording into Digital Performer plus a host of sample libraries, including East West Libraries, Native instruments, U-He Diva, UAD plugs, Waves, FabFilters and Sibelius running on a Mac Pro recording at 48kHz utilising a UAudio Apollo 8 Quad Audio Interface and UAD-2 Satellite Octo. Latest synth additions to the studio include the Moog Sub 37. In late autumn of 2017, U2’s management approached Metcalfe to do arrangements for a BBC U2 Live at Abbey Road TV broadcast, aired in December. The brief was to arrange for a small orchestra on twelve tracks to
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accompany the band. Revisiting some of the existing arrangements made for U2 by Caroline Dale, who did the track One, and other notable arrangers, with new arrangements by Metcalfe on other tracks. Working with producer Bob Ezrin, he produced demos and recordings at The Bus Stop before flying out to Monaco to meet up with the band for playback of that work. Go ahead was then given for full production with one day spent at Air recording the arrangements, the mixes of which would be used as part of the final TV audio mix, prior to the Abbey Road performance. Metcalfe says: “As a kid I grew up being a big fan of U2’s Boy album, so to work with them was an honour. The level of support from band, crew and management and their professionalism is at a level that is quite extraordinary.” A project that took longer to gestate started in 2014 when Metcalfe was appointed to be the musical director and composer for a major new theatrical production in Rome based on Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescos. Called Giudizio Universale: Michelangelo and the Secrets
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of the Sistine Chapel, the show is a stunning, €9m immersive stage show created by Marco Balich and Lulu Helbek, at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome. It opened in March 2018 and is due to run well into 2019. The music includes a new song by Sting created for the show. Work was recorded at Air, engineered by Fiona Cruckshank with stems mixed by Jonathan Allen. Metcalfe summarises his artistic approach: “What I went for in some kind of representation of the human condition. Something very profound. In my view, Michaelangelo was trying, under the auspices of the
church, to understand the world and the universe as seen through human eyes. He was painting people and nature, such as birds and Noah and their sense of what they thought God looked like. Also there are things that are much more elemental than that. There is the forming of the earth, of land and water and the power of the massive creation. My job was to match that in sound.” The end score on the show aimed for a new timbre. Not so much about chords and melody. He continues: “Much of what I wrote was aimed at a sub-conscious level for the audience. As deep as it could possibly be and how, for example, humans respond to low-end. How we respond to flutes or a brass section, or strings, or a creation of a sound world that will put us in a frame of mind where we are open to bigger concepts. That was very much my palette, which was always open. Based on orchestra but also what the electronic sound world can bring.” Once in Rome, mix work on site was done with Italian sound designer and engineer William Geroli at the helm. A Bose ShowMatch was the choice of PA in a custom surround sound 9.1 set up with a Yamaha QL5 deployed at FOH. Geroli, together with Moreno Zampieri, tech supervisor of Bose Italia. together with the Auris Populi, a Rome-based system integrator and Bose partner, coordinated and supervised on site the PA setup. The new album Absence is possibly Metcalfe’s finest and most powerful work to date. Vocal melodies soar over cutting edge layered strings, powerhouse organic rhythm section and highly detailed well structured electronics. Emotional concepts are to the fore, and deeply personal. When Metcalfe was 11 years old he came home from school to find his father lying on the floor in a critical state. In the years since his father’s passing, he has often thought about a last conversation he might have had with his father. As such, the album is very much a meditation on the notion of absence. How we all have imaginary conversations with those we know but are no longer around or who have passed
Metcalfe and his band performing live in Berlin
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away. The album is also a band-based record. Work started in 2017 with writing and demo production. “I wanted a new melodic focus with strong themes,” he says. A lot of the source sound was driven by the textured modern folk singing of Rosie Doonan. Absence is the first Metcalfe album that has vocals on every track. Also central to the sound of his work is the bass playing of long term collaborator Ali Friend whose lyrical, distinctive style has been a feature of Metcalfe’s music for some time. For the new album, Friend used solely double bass with a set up based on a Biesele pick up, tuner, splitter box. His FX board includes an Electro-Harmonix Octaver, Electro Harmonix Reverb, Crybaby Wah, Mutron Envelope filter and Mooger Fooger ring modulator, into a Trace Elliot AH1000 12. Friend adds: “I like to use effects and John encourages this; the harmonics and acoustic vagaries of the bass make for interesting sounds once processed by FX. I use a preamp, which mixes input from both magnetic and contact pick up sources, and put the signal through a Trace Elliott Head which seems to love that bass.” Along with Friend, Doonan and drummer Daisy Palmer, formed the core line up that entered the studio to record the album at Monnow Valley in South Wales, Owned by Andrew Scheps with house engineer Matt Glaseby in charge of recording. The studio is based on a 64 channel Neve 8068 Mk II complete with flying faders. In addition, the studio has a selection of vintage Pultec and Lang EQs, Urei and RCA limiters, as well as valve classics from Neumann and AKG. Additional acquisitions include a Neve BCM 10 with 10 x 1073 modules, a pair of RCA Ku3a’s and a wide selection of boutique Mic’s, Compressors and EQs - all used extensively on the album. Work on Absence then proceeded at Air Studios and Oxford with mix work by Cruckshank. Metcalfe adds: “She has brought dynamics to it in a way that I didn’t know how to. She has made it more immediate, more visceral, more beautiful. She has, if you like, ultra-realised it. Mastering was handled by Guy Davie at Electric Mastering and Neue Meister have have also made a 180-g vinyl pressing available.” Looking to future and new live projects, Metcalfe is keen to get involved with the current trends in immersive audio. He concludes: “I do think that it is time for the industry to move on from stereo. It’s definitely time for something new. I hugely admire the work the leading PA manufacturers are doing in driving immersive audio. With object-based mixes, I like to think of it as a move to a more physical thing and a new space, if you like, where a sound could lead the listener to a new space. “Also I think a lot of new brain imaging has to be done in order to more fully understand how we as humans respond to sound. That new complex research needs to happen. If we really are going to be truly 3D, we need to do even more research. “I am sure it’s going to be an exciting journey and I look forward to being part of it.” n
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This year, UK indie three-piece alt-J became the first rock outfit to utilise L-Acoustics’ L-ISA system, debuting it at Forest Hills Stadium in New York before closing their tour with two spellbinding nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Daniel Gumble caught up with FOH engineer Lance Reynolds and the band’s Gus Unger-Hamilton and Joe Newman to find out how they fared with the ‘hyperreal’ system…
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t’s approximately four hours before showtime on October 30, and PSNEurope is at the FOH position of the Royal Albert Hall. L-Acoustics’ Sherif El Barbari and FOH engineer Lance Reynolds are in deep discussion about tonight’s alt-J show - the second of two consecutive nights - which will see the band once again using L-Acoustics’ L-ISA ‘hypereal’ audio system. There has been plenty of buzz from the sound crew about how the system performed on the first night at the legendary London venue and at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium, where the three-piece became the first band to use the L-ISA - a system more typically associated with classical music events. The shows using L-ISA so far have been lauded as major successes, with the band and their crew, and perhaps most crucially, audiences, hailing the audio clarity and immersive nature of each performance. And
as we head backstage to meet with lead vocalist and guitarist Joe Newman and keyboardist and backing vocalist Gus Unger-Hamilton, their excitement at the new dimensions L-ISA has brought to their concerts becomes immediately apparent. “It’s incredible,” beams Unger-Hamilton as we take our seats. “I was quite emotional when we listened back to the first show we did using L-ISA. It was like listening to the songs for the first time again. It was really unbelievable to get that feeling like you’re in the studio listening to a mix of a song you have just recorded for the first time. It was amazing; a new dimension. “We’ve always liked trying new things onstage; trying new things out with our lights and in the studio. We like getting in everything we can. For instance, using a 20-piece classical guitar group or a 30-piece string orchestra, or a choir, and we thought, How can we bring
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the sound of the show up to the same level as the lights and the recordings.” Newman is similarly excited at the opportunities L-ISA has opened up for the band, suggesting that the technology and its potential is still in its relative infancy. “It’s a bit of a Pandora’s Box,” he comments. “When Lance and Sherif were working on the Forest Hills gig, it wasn’t until the show started that they realised what we could do with it. There is a lot of potential. It could change the way in which we format our live shows to highlight the system, so we would probably add break moments between tracks where you could appreciate how the system works. We might extend introductions to songs if there was something interesting going on. The more acquainted you are with the idea the more comfortable you are, and that breeds a further creative drive, and who knows what then might happen?”
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Photo by Richard Gray
Despite the complexity and additional costs that can come with incorporating such a system, Unger-Hamilton says the band would be keen to utilise L-ISA wherever possible in the future. “We’d like to take this everywhere,” he exclaims. “It’s a bit more expensive for us to put on a show of this size, but if we could do it everywhere we would. The feedback from New York and London has been so amazing. We’d love to share it with our fans even playing some tiny festival in Greece or something like that.” So how did they wind up becoming the first rock band to use L-ISA? “Last year, I was introduced to L-ISA while visiting L-Acoustics at the Westlake office in Los Angeles,” explains Reynolds, who introduced the system to the band. “I got a chance to do a little test mixing and as soon as I heard it, I knew I wanted to try it live with alt-J.
Coincidentally, there had been an ongoing discussion between alt-J, myself, and the band’s manager (Stephen ‘Tav’ Taverner) about doing concerts in surround sound. So I arranged a demo at the L-Acoustics office in London, and before I knew it we were planning a massive 360 degree immersive show at Forest Hills. For Reynolds, alt-J were the perfect group with which to embrace such an ambitious project. “I believe there had been a few rock artists that tried the L-ISA “focus” system before alt-J, but if we’re talking about our 360 show, alt-J at Forest Hills was definitely a first. Any artist would benefit from the increased detail and coverage that L-ISA offers, but alt-J’s music is ideally suited for surround. They create music that is cinematic, with lots of textures and a few sound effects. “I didn’t have any doubts about the system itself and always felt confident that the speakers and L-ISA
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processing would get the job done. My only concern was how to effectively mix surround in a stadium...with a distance of about 250 feet from the stage to the rear speakers. And, how would the audience perceive the surround content from different vantage points. I’ve been in the audience where surround was used in an arena, with mixed results. It offered a nice effect near FOH, but there were obvious timing problems if you were seated near the surround speakers. Avoiding those issues was my primary goal.” Much like Newman and Unger-Hamilton, Reynolds says he was blown away by the system’s performance. “The clarity and detail was stunning,” he states. “The sounds of the instruments had the same character that I had been used to hearing at our non-L-ISA shows, but in greater detail. It was as if the sounds were in HD. And the mix was nearly identical everywhere. Usually, FOH is the ideal sweet spot, but L-ISA extended that sweet spot to a much larger share of the audience. I was able to walk left to right, back to front and only notice really minor changes. “On top of that, when I first heard the surround speakers fire up, in all honesty it was a “holy sh..” moment. I literally burst out with those words when I heard the bass keys in the song Fitzpleasure engulf the venue. It was just awesome.” The job of mixing alt-J with L-ISA as opposed to a more conventional PA did pose some new challenges, but nothing that was insurmountable. He continues: “I try to make use of the localisation capabilities of L-ISA. To do that, it’s important to avoid duplicating an identical source into multiple arrays... which is exactly what happens when you centre pan a lead vocal when mixing on a conventional left-right PA. You’re actually sending the same mono source to both sides simultaneously. “This appears centered while you’re standing near the center, but favours either left or right as you move off to the sides. With L-ISA, if you place the vocal in the center, it always appears to come from the center regardless of how left or right you stand. And, the sound remains clear and detailed. With L-ISA, you’re no longer panning sources, but instead placing them. There were challenges for sure, but I wouldn’t say major. My conventional mix was very “dialed in” on our conventional left-right system but with L-ISA, I found that some mix elements appeared louder depending on where I placed them. So, a little re-balancing was sometimes needed. It really wasn’t too difficult. The system is very intuitive, and it’s easy to build a mix.” As for the future of L-ISA in the rock arena, Reynolds believes it is inevitable that its use presence will continue to grow over the coming years. Yet he is also adamant that the standard approach to PA at rock gigs isn’t going anywhere. He concludes: “Hopefully we’ll use it where appropriate. It’s difficult to implement in smaller venues, but I’m keen to use it wherever I can. But using a standard PA system will always be like riding a bike.” n
P50 DECEMBER 2018
Patrick Hamilton
Global economy Producer, engineer, musician, music publisher, founder of Bruges’ Globe Studios, Patrick Hamilton has operated in just about every area of the business. Daniel Gumble caught up with him to discuss his glittering career to date and the challenges of running an independent studio in today’s market…
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here aren’t many areas of the music business Peter Hamilton hasn’t plied his trade in. A classically trained musician, his first foray into the industry was as a session player with numerous Belgian artists in the early 1980s, before taking up residence more and more frequently behind the desk towards the end of the decade. After helming a number of hit singles as an engineer and/or producer, in 1994 he decided to launch his own facility in the form of The Roof, which dealt predominantly with musical and TV productions. Never one to stand still, Hamilton set up the Bruges-based The Globe studios in 2002, while also running The Globe Music Company’s Bromo Music Publishing operation. Throughout his career, he has produced chart topping albums for the likes of Alfie Boe, Katherine Jenkins, Barry Mason and David Garrett, whilst also amassing a raft of producer, engineer and co-write credits with an assortment of international artists. Here, Hamilton takes a look back at his career to date
and ruminates on the challenges facing independent studios today…
When I was seven years old I wanted to be a professional musician (not a fireman or whatever) so my whole education was really focused on that. At 18 I worked for Hammond organs as a demonstrator and toured around Europe for them. Later on I became the keyboard player of a very well known band in Belgium, called the LSP-Band. A lot of Belgian artists began to ask me if I would play on their records, then they wanted me to produce and write songs for them, so bit by bit I rolled into it.
my own ears. At the beginning when I was mixing I got frustrated frequently as I couldn’t get the mix sounding exactly as I wanted it to sound and how I heard the production in my head. I realised that was a job on its own, so I hired real engineers to do the job. I was attending a lot of the mix sessions so I had the opportunity to steal a lot with my eyes and ears. Some years ago, my best friend and co-writer, Vincent Pierins, who’s obsessed by vintage analogue modular synths, made a record (Seqoia-M) and he asked me to produce it and forced me to mix it myself as he said that I totally understood this kind of music and knew how it had to sound. I got so many compliments with that record, that from that moment on I started mixing again. The guts came back and now I’m really enjoying it.
How did you learn your trade behind the desk? Were you formally trained or were your studio skills picked up on the job?
How beneficial is it as a producer to have experience on the other side of the glass as a musician?
Pretty much hands-on and thrown into it, trusting
For me I think that’s very important as I’m not a trained
What was it that first drew you to production and studio work?
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engineer and doing everything by ear. I am, what they call, an ‘old school’ producer working a lot with live musicians in combination with electronica etc, so you have to know how an instrument should sound. Music is an emotion, so I’m always trying to get the best performance out of my musicians and hope the listeners will feel it too and are touched by what they’re hearing.
Tell us about your studio. When did it open, what kind of projects you specialise in? Back in the ‘80s I worked for several years in a recording studio owned by a Belgian record company. We did all kinds of styles there, from underground, new beat, dance to folk, pop. That was fun to do as we were very successful and as a producer I wasn’t pinned on one style of music, which I liked. Somewhere in the ‘90s (I think 1996), I started my own home studio on the top floor of my house back then called The Roof Studio based around a Mackie 32-24 console and Logic and Pro Tools. When my mother retired I thought the building where her shop was could be a perfect space for a recording studio. So I bought it and started building the studio in 2001. It took me a year as I did everything myself (never had a brick in my hands before that). It was reconstructed in 2006 and in 2008 I bought the neighbour’s place so there was more potential to grow. Since 2010 the complex houses four studios.
How do you manage your time between working as a musician and producer, as well as running a recording studio? Working a lot to keep track of everything. In fact I’m not renting out my studios that much as I have so much going on as a producer that I’m my studio’s best client!
What are the biggest challenges facing independent studios today? We live in a world where you can make your record on your laptop in your bedroom. So you only go to a studio for mixing or recording of what you can’t handle at home. I’m going to other studios for recordings I can’t do at my studios. If I need a big orchestra or big room I usually work at Abbey Road Studio 1 or 2 or Air for the great sound of their hall and of course for the vintage gear (if my recording budget allows it).
And the biggest opportunities? In my case, it’s the combination of having all the recording possibilities at home.
What is your ideal recording set up? For recording I really like Neve consoles as I like the preamps. For mixing I prefer SSL. The choice of monitors is a difficult one. They have to sound right in your environment and be comfortable to work on and at the same time be very detailed and honest. Before you buy you definitely have to try them out in your studio. I have Klein & Hummel (now called Neumann) KH 310A,
and 4 are used by my assistants.
WE LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE YOU CAN MAKE YOUR RECORD ON YOUR LAPTOP IN YOUR BEDROOM. SO YOU ONLY GO TO A STUDIO FOR MIXING OR RECORDING OF WHAT YOU CAN’T HANDLE AT HOME PATRICK HAMILTON
Yamaha NS10, PMC IB1s & MB2s with Bryston amps I’m a big fan of the Telefunken 251E (the old one) and Neumann microphones. I used the U67 on all the vocal recordings for Katherine Jenkins.
Talk us through the equipment on offer at your studio? Studio 1 houses an SSL 4048E, which I bought from Westside Studios in London back in 2002, with lots of outboard gear (Urei 1178, Neve 1073, Tube-Tech (CLA, CL-2A, SMC-2B), Thermionic Culture (The Phoenix, Culture Vulture), Lexicon 480L (2x), Bricasti Mè (x2),.all running through Pro Tools. I used to have an SSL 4064G in studio 2 but I sold it two years ago as I was only using five or-six faders. I use studio 2 as my creative room for writing new songs, arranging and pre-productions through Logic X. Studio 3
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Tell us about some of the most memorable albums you’ve worked on during your career. What have been some of the highlights? Most of my life I’ve been working within the Belgian market and had lots of No.1 or Top 10 hits. Through my network as a publisher (I own Bromo Music Publishing) I met my first manager who told me I had to work more in the US and UK. My first non-local artist was the Canadian singer Mark Masri. His album, which I arranged and produced, was one of the five nominated for ‘Best adult contemporary album of the year’ in Canada (amongst Celine Dion, Sarah McLaghlan). I was spotted by Decca Records UK and my first album for them went straight to No.1 on the Classical album charts in the UK (Katherine Jenkins, Home Sweet Home).
What was the most recent project you worked on? I just finished the new album by Katherine Jenkins (Guiding Light), released through Decca on November 30. At the moment I’m working on the album by Branden & James (US) .
What’s in the pipeline? When I finish this album I’m planning to work on my own project. - I’ve been saying this for years now but I think it will finally happen!. It involves new instrumental music through which I will be combining my old synths with an orchestra. I have lots of ideas, mostly eight measures or even less, that I recorded on my i-phone while playing the piano that I’ll work out. I’m very much looking forward to starting work on it and experimenting. n
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The 2018 Pro Sound Awards in pictures
With industry legends, international hitmakers and the pro audio stars of tomorrow out in force, the 2018 Pro Sound Awards was an unforgettable night. And we’ve served up a few shots from before, during and after the show...
Our wonderful host, Jimmy McGhie
Award winner Lauren Deakin-Davies
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Christian Heil addresses the audience
Stormzy stuns the crowd
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Sync or swim Phil Ward meets music technology guru – and boy chorister – Martin Warr…
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wned by Martin Warr since 2007, Synthax Audio (UK) is currently enjoying the most successful period in its 15-year history, having posted record sales, record profit and record growth over the last 12 months. It stems from a carefully selected grouping of 10 complementary brands, which sell into music production, live sound, broadcast and scientific audio – the largest of which are Calrec Brio, Ferrofish and RME, with most recent growth powered by the broadcast market. But never mind that. As a pupil at a school in Croydon well known for its music curriculum, Warr was selected to sing in the boy treble chorus of Every Sperm Is Sacred for Monty Python’s 1983 movie The Meaning Of Life. It certainly seemed to sow a seed: Python’s audio mentor André Jacquemin later became a loyal client and was a valued customer for the Mackie Digital 8-Bus supplied when Warr was at Key Audio and instrumental in establishing the Mackie brand in the UK. The brands may shift, but the expertise grows ever more fertile…
What was that background? Classical music, at first: recording CDs; editing in Sonic Solutions, that kind of thing. I did learn to cut tape on the Music Technology Masters degree at York, and we did analogue Ambisonics… a lot of musique concréte as I recall. The computers were all Ataris, but it was digital audio more or less from the start. After college, through singing in York Minster, I met a classical record producer called John West who had a state-of-the-art digital system: a Mac; a DAT machine that fed into it; Sonic Solutions; and a working relationship with Mike Hatch and Steve Long who’d recently started Floating Earth. I assisted John with master assembly editing.
Ah, yes… singing
Yes – the Calrec Brio. That’s our broadcast console.
I went to a really cool school in Croydon called The Trinity School of John Whitgift, very active musically. The teacher was well connected and provided boy trebles for lots of musical projects – TV ads, theatre, even Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s The Little Drummer Boy. I wasn’t on that, but I was a ‘gigging treble’ for three or four years, including the Python recordings. Myself and seven others went to the Pythons’ studio in Neal’s Yard, met Eric Idle and Terry Jones and had a ball. We weren’t told the lyrics in advance, being 10 and 11…
A change of gear from post to live-to-air?
Back when Soho meant something…
It’s a different area of the market, but the same customers crop up – Sky, the BBC, people who are high up in sound at those institutions. I have a studio production background, but the synergies with live-to-air are many.
Even 10 years ago I could go there and see Turnkey, Rose Morris, Cliff Cooper’s shops, Westend Production… all gone now except for a couple of guitar shops. Even André has moved. He’s still a customer: he used RME on the reunion shows at the O2 a couple of years ago, and
You were associated with Fairlight for a while; has anything replaced it?
www.psneurope.com
he showed me round backstage – one of the original ‘sperm’ boys!
And after all that education? Persistence got me into Soundcraft, after cramming about post-production. But my first degree in Geography involved a lot of digital mapping, and the parallels between evolving paper cartography and analogue audio to computers were many and useful. I became product manager for the Ghost console, something I’m very proud of. Then it was straight into Mackie-world. Despite redundancy at Soundcraft, within a few days I’d been introduced to Tony Williams at Key Audio who, at the interview, said: ‘when can you start? Right, we’ll get you a new car because we don’t want that old thing of yours on the forecourt…’ One of my favourite little details of that period is that, at Real World, Peter Gabriel only had three console brands: Sony Oxford; SSL; and Mackie.
Did you leave when Greg Mackie sold up? I continued working with Mackie for four years after the sale to Sun Capital Partners – a baptism of fire that propelled me from digital-technical sales bloke to head of the UK, overnight. But that’s where I learned to run a company, and it set me up for opening The Audio Professionals in 2006.
What are your secrets of survival? Perseverance and fun. And being decent to people. It’s been sink or swim, sometimes… but I wouldn’t change anything. n www.synthax.co.uk
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