PSNE April 2015 Digital Edition by Future PLC

April 2015

www.psneurope.com

Analogue agog! Supplying the muscle for the mighty modulars at Node’s one-off London gig P44 P26

P34

P52

SIMON BLACKWOOD

NEXT FOR NETWORKING

RETURN OF THE KING

A RARE INTERVIEW WITH THE MAN WHO KNOWS

IS DANTE THE ONLY REALISTIC WAY AHEAD?

LEICESTER CATHEDRAL MAKES READY FOR RICHARD III

Welcome

PSNEUROPE Editor Dave Robinson drobinson@nbmedia.com

Commercial director Darrell Carter dcarter@nbmedia.com

Deputy editor Jon Chapple jchapple@nbmedia.com

Account manager Rian Zoll-Khan rzoll-khan@nbmedia.com

Managing editor Jo Ruddock jruddock@nbmedia.com

Head of design Jat Garcha jgarcha@nbmedia.com

Advertising manager Ryan O’Donnell rodonnell@nbmedia.com

Production executive Jason Dowie jdowie@nbmedia.com

Contributors: Mike Clark, Marc Maes, Phil Ward, David Davies, Kevin Hilton, Erica Basnicki, David Wiggins

PSNEurope NewBay Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18–26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN Editorial: +44 20 7354 6002 Sales: +44 20 7354 6000 Press releases to: ukpressreleases@nbmedia.com Circulation and subscription: Refunds on cancelled subscriptions will only be provided at the publisher’s discretion, unless specifically guaranteed within the terms of the subscription offer. NewBay Media may pass suitable reader addresses to other relevant suppliers. If you do not wish to receive sales information from other companies, please write to Circulations and Subscriptions, NewBay Media, Curwood CMS Ltd, The Barn, Abbey Mews, Robertsbridge TN32 5AD Subscribe by email to: psne.subscriptions@c-cms.com Subscriptions tel: +44 1580 883 848

PSNEurope is published 12 times a year by NewBay Media, 1st Floor, Suncourt House, 18–26 Essex Road, London N1 8LN, United Kingdom ISSN: 0269-4735 (print) 2052-238X (digital)

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Cover image and images on p44 and p46: Node Live 2015 c/o Neil Fellowes www.flickr.com/photos/manof2worlds (THANK YOU NEIL!)

03 APRIL 2015

DAVE ROBINSON Editor

twitter.com/psneurope

e said we were going to be undergoing a redesign. And as you can see, we weren’t mucking about. Welcome then, to a PSNEurope for 2015, and the first time we’ve ever had this ‘footprint’. But – hey! – if it’s good enough for the Times and the Guardian, then A4 is fine by me. It’s easier to fit into your laptop bag, for a start. When you actually start probing the pages, you’ll see what’s changed. But it’s not a tremendous amount. One big shift is the ‘news’: aside from the upfront ‘Business’ pages, we’ve adopted a longer approach to items in the four sections, and thus ‘soundbites’ are gone. These will be catered for online and in our newsletters. After all, when news can easily ‘go cold’ within days (even hours sometimes), we need to continue to reflect that in how and where we report it. I hope you’ll agree, we’ve kept the good stuff, while making it more accessible and, dare I say it, stylish too. I’m very pleased that ‘The Strategic Position’ is back, giving us a platform for a ‘big’ interview with brands and characters that are really defining the future of our industry. Plus, I know how much regular writer Phil Ward likes getting his teeth into those particular interviews! We’ve brought in columnists, too, for our ‘Vocal Channel’ page. The first names in the chair (... it seats two) are former PSNEurope writer and muchloved Canadian ladygeek, Erica Basnicki, and general know-it-all and gigging plankspanker Dave Wiggins (ex Midas KT and Meyer Sound). What do you think? Have they got a point? I’m sure you’ll let me know. I also welcome other voices out there seeking a platform to spout off. Get in touch if you’re a spouter. Finally, what a joy it’s been to indulge myself at the Node gig this month. The fact that analogue modulars like these giant machines are something from the early times of electronic music, while we’re always trying to bring you stories about the cutting edge of technology, is not lost on me...

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04 APRIL 2015

Contents

In this issue... P28 SLAM DUNK GEO SLAM ‘FILLS A VOID’ IN STOCKHOLM WITH SSL-EQUIPPED PANGAIA STUDIOS

P42 GROUNDED! CLEAN AUDIO FOR EVERY CRASH AT THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE

P10 PSNPRESENTS…

P52 OUT OF MY SIGHT!

… A RAPTUROUSLY RECEIVED INAUGURAL EVENT AT THE HAM YARD

A MOST DISCREET INSTALLATION FOR RICHARD III’S FUNERAL II

Business

Broadcast

6 7 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 26 34 58

40 42

End of 4HM as Bel Digital streamlines branding Northern Light spin-off NL Productions goes it alone They’re back! Introducing the Pro Sound Awards 2015 PSNPresents: A “brilliant evening” Vocal channel: Erica Basnicki and David Wiggins Movers and shakers PSNTraining New products Show preview: Prolight + Sound The strategic position: Simon Blackwood, Audient Feature: Networking Feature: Training

Studio 28 30

PanGaia formed in Stockholm Sontronics’ decade of design

BBC R&D trials Responsive Radio Livewire makes waves at Volvo Ocean Race

Live 44 48 50

Node Live at the Royal College of Music Cookies and Cream and Avid rock De Shop Ligabue sees RCF red in Rimini

Installation 52 54

NoiseBoys prepares Leicester Cathedral for reinterred King Richard SFL overhauls St Martin-in-the-Fields, London

Back pages 61 62

Hither & dither Backtalk: Andrew Dudman, Abbey Road Studios

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INTRODUCING LEOPARD

COME SEE IT AT PROLIGHT + SOUND IN APRIL HALL 8, STAND F70

06 APRIL 2015

Business

United Kingdom

Bel Digital streamlines branding Formation of group structure sees 4HM line absorbed into historical brand, reports Phil Ward

ith the creation of the Bel Digital Group, Milton Keynes-based manufacturer Bel Digital has broadened the scope of its offering while building a platform for future expansion. The company makes “very high quality” audio and video monitors, interfaces and delays and is established in the broadcast sector, and co-director Craig Lovell sees the new group formation as a much stronger enzyme for potential.

“Historically, fellow director Barry Revels and myself have been working on Bel Digital audio sales for quite a while,” explains Lovell, “and the right time came for us to form the Bel Digital Group – initially comprising Bel Digital and 4HM. Over discussions we have decided to move the 4HM brand into Bel, so that everything becomes branded ‘Bel Digital’. The reasons for that are simple: 4HM is a young company, whereas Bel has a fantastic history stretching back 40 years. It has very good brand recognition, so

Craig Lovell at February’s BVE show at ExCeL

it makes sense to exploit that as the foundation of the group.” This foundation can be used to enter various new territories for Bel, according to Lovell, including sound reinforcement. “When you look at the history of Bel, and the areas it has been successful over the years, this is a natural extension of that legacy,” he says. “Where Bel is mostly associated with monitoring and delay devices in the broadcast sector, the 4HM product portfolio brings in a strong MADI presence, with converters and so on. It widens the portfolio […] which is vital to take the whole group forward.” While MADI continues to inﬂuence live and installed audio systems, the 4HM heritage of broadcast solutions – such as SDI to AES/MADI de-embedding – should help the Bel Digital Group to migrate into various converging markets. To do this, the earlier 4HM products are being upgraded. “They operated at 48kHz for broadcast applications,” continues Lovell, “whereas now we’ve updated our MADI devices to be able to operate up to 96kHz and handle both highspeed and SMUX MADI protocols. This enables them to be connected to live consoles, for example, that use these formats. It’s a ﬁrst step to making the portfolio available to other markets.” UK events supplier Blitz Communications has already taken delivery of Bel Digital’s MADI status monitor – developed by 4HM – for

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diagnostics. “We’re looking at all the vertical markets we can address,” adds Lovell, “because a lot of the technology that exists on the broadcast side of production can be ported to other applications: the underlying technology is there – we have it already [and] we’re in a position to adapt it to widening needs.” Revels’ experience in broadcast perfectly complements Lovell’s own background in both broadcast and live sound, he feels, while time spent growing Lake Technology’s business in the far east, as well as Cadac and Amek, brings an understanding of high-tech sound reinforcement for live sound into Bel Digital’s revitalised UK manufacturing effort. “Yes, I’m back in the west now after many years in the far east,” Lovell confirms, “and I’d like to get back into those live and fixed installation areas with Bel that I knew with Lake – worldwide, of course. It presents a new set of challenges with distribution channels, but that’s where the group structure will help. “We’re also streamlining our production here in the UK. There’s no need for us to move our manufacturing, even though I have inside knowledge of the facilities people are using in the east. Our economies of scale are not affected by the pressure to find adequate massproduction and, in any case, I’m very proud to build British!” www.beldigital.com

Business

07 APRIL 2015

United Kingdom

NL Productions goes it alone A new limited company has been formed from the hire business of Edinburgh’s Northern Light, writes Jon Chapple

ollowing a management buyout, the hire department of Edinburgh-based Northern Light Stage and Technical Services has struck out on its own as an independent limited company. Led by former hire manager Phil O’Halloran – now MD – NL Productions will operate in a “unique alliance” with the rental business of Northern Light’s Bristol-based sister company, Stage Electrics. Stage Electrics and Northern Light remain under the ownership of holding company VPT1. Providing technical expertise, design and equipment, NL Productions is to offer sound, AV, lighting, staging, rigging and power distribution to events across Scotland from the existing Northern

Light hire premises in Edinburgh. “Our local knowledge and capabilities within our speciﬁc market area, coupled with the backing of an alliance relationship with Stage Electrics, provides an ideal combination to drive continued growth and deliver value for customers that will be a beneﬁt to all parties,” says O’Halloran. A spokesman from Northern Light told PSNEurope that the company will now concentrate on installation, focussing primarily on “designing, supplying and installing audio, lighting and technical infrastructures for theatres, concert halls and schools”. Dan Aldridge, managing director of Northern Light/Stage Electrics, comments: “This deal moves

NL Productions’ Andrew Thomson, Justin Baird, Phil O’Halloran and John Pike at PLASA Focus: Glasgow 2014

the NL Productions business into a new ownership arrangement, promoting the continued expansion of the hire business in Scotland while providing NL Productions Ltd with the agility it needs to maximise its effectiveness in the region. The new structure will prove to be a great advantage.” www.nl-productions.co.uk

United Kingdom

Boris backs music venues taskforce The London mayor pledges to “keep our live music venues live”, reports Jon Chapple

oris Johnson, the mayor of London, has thrown his support behind the Music Venue Trust’s campaign to save Britain’s live venues by backing the creation of a new ‘music venues taskforce’ for the capital. The taskforce, chaired by the Music Venue Trust and backed by the Musicians’ Union and UK Music, will “look at steps the city can take to protect and secure its vital network of live music venues”.

Boris Johnson in the Music Venue Trust video

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“They’re of huge […] importance to our city, and that’s why it’s so worrying that we’re seeing the pressure from development take away so many of those venues,” says Johnson in a new video. “That’s why [Music Venue Trust’s] work is so important. Let’s keep our live music venues live in London.” Read the Music Venue Trust’s vision for a sustainable UK live music scene at www.psneurope.com/dont-kill-live-music.

08 APRIL 2015

Business

United Kingdom

Want to get involved?

A range of partnership opportunities – from headline sponsor to category, photobooth, red-carpet and afterparty sponsorship – are available. Contact PSNEurope ad manager Ryan O’Donnell (rodonnell@nbmedia.com) or account manager Rian Zoll-Khan (rzoll-khan@nbmedia.com) for more details.

They’re back! It’s the Pro Sound Awards 2015!

On your marks… get set… lobby!

he hottest event on the pro-audio calendar, PSNEurope’s Pro Sound Awards, returns to the world-famous Ministry of Sound nightclub in London for the third time on Thursday 25 September. Tickets for the awards, which celebrate excellence in live, studio, installed and broadcast audio, are on sale now for a bargain £49. Leading studio equipment manufacturer Focusrite, which sponsored last month’s PSNPresents event at the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho (see p10), is already confirmed as the first event partner, lending its support to the studio category. The lobbying period for the awards is open from 15 April (the first day of Prolight + Sound) to 22 May, and is, as always, open to anyone and totally free to enter. Simply read through the categories and see which one(s) you feel you want to make a pitch for, nominating yourself, your team, an associate or a project or person with which you have been impressed and want to give wider recognition. Then send a short pitch (up to a maximum of 300 words) for each award under consideration to prosoundawards@nbmedia.com. Provide as much factual information as possible; data and evidence of notable successes are invaluable. Up to three hotlinks to relevant material online can also be provided – and, by all means, ask your colleagues or industry friends to make their feelings known. Based on the email nominations, the Pro Sound

THE CATEGORIES Live/touring sound • Engineer of the year • Best tour/production sound • Best theatre sound

PSNEurope editor Dave Robinson, lifetime achievement winner John Pellowe and Metropolis’s Nina Jackson at the 2014 awards

Awards team will create a list of finalists for each category. This process involves looking at the performance of those nominated companies over the past year, plus the information provided by the lobbying emails, but we don’t base finalist positions on the number of emails we receive about a particular company. A shortlist of finalists for each category will be presented to a 50-strong panel of judges from across the spectrum of the pro-audio industry, who will ultimately choose the winners of each Pro Sound Award (with the exception of the grand prix and lifetime achievement gongs). “We’re back at the Ministry for the third year running, having absorbed all your comments and feedback from the first two awards shows,” says PSNEurope editor Dave Robinson. “We’ve learned what to keep, what to tweak, when to turn it down and when to ramp it up. The Pro Sound Awards 2015 will be the best and most accomplished edition yet!” www.prosoundawards.com

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Studio sound (Sponsored by Focusrite) • Engineer of the year • Best studio • Best sound in post-production Installed sound • Team of the year • Best permanent installation project • Best temporary installation project Broadcast sound • Team of the year • Broadcast event of the year • Best facility Achievement • Marketing initiative of the year • Rising star (in association with Audio Media International) • Lifetime achievement • Grand prix

Send your entries to prosoundawards@nbmedia.com before Friday 22 May 2015

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10 APRIL 2015

Business

United Kingdom

PSNPresents pleases all Inaugural spin-off event praised by guests

Andy Tapley and Scott Talbott (second from left and centre) from BBC S&PP complete the ﬁrst line-up

ast month’s PSNPresents, the ﬁrst in a series of social/panel events hosted by PSNEurope, drew an enthusiastic response from its 100-strong audience, we can conﬁdently report. The evening event, held at the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, comprised two sessions of interviews and interaction with leading technical lights from the worlds of theatre, broadcast and live sound – plus a healthy dose of meeting and mixing in the bar before and after! With sponsorship from Focusrite and Avid, PSNPresents kicked off with a Q&A by industry personality and former Pro Sound News Europe editor Phil Ward and guests Steve Zissler (Royal Opera House), Jonathan Suffolk (National Theatre) and Scott Talbott and Andy Tapley (BBC Studios and Post Production). Then PSNEurope editor Dave Robinson took to the stage for a live panel with ‘fourth member of Portishead’ and Adele, Air and Florence + the Machine engineer Dave McDonald, Charles ‘Chicky’ Reeves, (Grace Jones, Prince), Massive Attack’s Robb Allan and Deaf Havana FOH Ben Hammond to chomp and chew over the highs and lows of working in the live sound scene – including the perils of working with Kanye West and the truth behind the rumours that Saxon were the inspiration for Spinal Tap… Focusrite and Avid were the principal event sponsors, with the prize of a Focusrite RedNet 6 MADI bridge being won by University of West London music tech student Marcus Bagdonas. “PSNPresents is a great format,” said attendee and HHB Communications marketing manager Andrew Low. “I really enjoyed the discussion on technology’s role in enhancing a production without muddling the creative process, combined with interesting anecdotes so that it wasn’t too tech-heavy. It was a good mix of

RedNet 6 winner Marcus Bagdonas (centre) with Focusrite’s Simon Short (right) and the editor

interesting to say and sounded very genuine and passionate when answering the questions and talking about their experiences. Looking forward to the next one.” Chris Hollebone, sales operations and marketing manager for Merging Technologies, added: “I thought it was a brilliant evening: well attended, a good mix of ages and involvement in the industry, great venue. I enjoyed the sessions a lot and Phil and Dave have nicely contrasting styles, as did the interviewees. Alexis Lipoff, director of 3WM Communications, says: “I was particularly impressed by the way PSNPresents was organised – the quality of the panel and topics covered were spot-on. The industry needs to see more of these events and I am looking forward to the next one in November. My negroni made by the barman wasn’t bad, either!” www.psneurope.com

industry heads, students and top engineers that made for an all-round entertaining evening.” “It was a well thought-out choice of venue, with a nice relaxing atmosphere,” adds L-Acoustics application engineer Dan Orton. “All the guests had something

The discussion continued in the hotel bar later!

Dave Robinson hosts the live sound panel with (L–R) Robb Allan, Ben Hammond, Dave McDonald and Chicky Reeves

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The event was ﬁlmed, and edited highlights from the night will be available to view online in the weeks to come. The second edition of PSNPresents is scheduled for early November – details to follow!

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12 APRIL 2015

Vocal channel

Erica Basnicki: Save our sounds!

his October, Europeana Sounds will hold its first-ever international conference, The Future of Historic Sounds. Co-ordinated and managed by the British Library, the consortium consists of seven national libraries, five archive and research centres, non-profits, universities, companies and other public bodies. The project itself – co-funded by the European Commission and the Europeana Sounds consortium – was launched last year with an aim of “opening the gateway to Europe’s sound and music heritage”. Well over 100 years after the invention of sound recording technology, doesn’t it feel a bit late to be having this discussion? An alarm bell has rung not just in Europe, but also around the world. For whatever reason, we’ve neglected our national sound archives, and now they are at risk of being lost forever. In the UK alone, a staggering £40m is being sought to preserve a national archive comprising 6.5m sounds, many of which are held on wax cylinders and reel-to-reel tapes sitting on dusty shelves in various stages of decay (see ‘15 years to Save Our Sounds’, PSNEurope February 2015). Surely we saw this coming… so why is it only important now that it might be too late? And why hasn’t

the pro-audio industry spoken out any sooner? (Has it even spoken out at all?) Is it because as sound professionals we are used to playing second ﬁddle to visual media? Or that sound has never been as important, and never will be? Or is it because we tend to think of sound archives as a collection of old music pieces you are unlikely to ever want to load onto iTunes? OK, so we all know and appreciate the power of sound – maybe our archives have been neglected because we’ve collectively been too busy perfecting the art and science of capturing the sounds of today; broadcasting them so millions can appreciate them; restoring what has already been recorded. It is not to take away from these phenomenal achievements, or to hold pro audio responsible! But surely our industry could – and should – be doing more to ensure we don’t lose any more of our sonic history. The loss of sound archive material isn’t just the loss of natural sounds, famous speeches, performances and music. It’s also the loss of pro audio’s story. It’s the loss of a documentation of amazing technological advances in microphone technology and multi-track recording. It’s the loss of honouring the creativity and ingenuity of engineers (even if they weren’t called that back then)

who captured these sounds for future generations. Rudimental as these early recordings may be, they are the building blocks upon which the pro-audio industry has been built and they are as relevant to telling pro audio’s story as any book or memoir out there. None of us work in this industry expecting our efforts to sit on a shelf and rot in the years to come; let’s not let that happen to those that came before us. www.europeanasounds.eu

ERICA BASNICKI is a writer and sound designer

Dave Wiggins: The end of the Next Big Thing?

he 1990s gave the real world some weird and wonderful stuff – mad cow disease, Cool Britannia, Dolly the sheep and perhaps most memorably, Iron Maiden atop the pop charts – but in pro-audio land they were a period of unprecedented technical advances. Will we ever see their like again? Obviously there had been numerous developments and technological advances in audio system technology in the 30-odd years preceding the decade. But stepchanges in audio abounded in the ’90s, the ﬁrst of which was the arrival of the digital crossover. The TOA Saori hove into view ﬁrst, a mighty and baffling device which pre-empted an arms race among signal processing manufacturers as they scrapped it out for a chunk of this new market. In many cases PA rental companies could (and did) coax several more years’ operational life out of loudspeaker systems which suddenly featured accurate component time-alignment, per-frequencyband EQ, limiting and other digital delights. All was well! About the same time, from Europe came whispers of a bizarre new loudspeaker system. This apparently eschewed the concept of multiple different boxes pointed hither and yon on huge PA wings in favour of something called ‘line source’ technology. This relied

DAVE WIGGINS is a freelance marketeer and pro-audio pundit on wide, narrow enclosures flown in a single vertical column with almost no gap between them, and which apparently enabled the individual drivers to couple in some magical way, thus producing more output for the same amplifier power, much more predictable coverage and requiring half the truck space. Supposedly a Hammersmith Odeon-sized system could be flown from a single motor per side. Merde alors! What could this strange device be? And then, like something from another planet, the

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ﬁrst digital consoles started to appear, promising (and sometimes delivering) the sound engineer’s Holy Grail: full recall of all functions! Not just a mixing console: a computer with a user interface, whereby the functionality grew exponentially as users were presented with an entirely new level of control and integration. What’s next? Is there a next? Or have we reached the point where the limits of physics and product development budgets coincide to prevent any more Next Big Things? Or have we just run out of ideas? It would be sad if this were true. The pro-audio business is justly proud of its rugged pragmatism and original thought, but perhaps now that everything is “pin-2 hot”, the time of the true innovators is past. Or is it? Networked audio isn’t really a candidate because, useful and game-changing as it undoubtedly is, in truth it is a by-product of the computerised systems that now control PA systems. Let’s blue sky it, people! What about: • A method of delivering frequencies below 160Hz at concert volume that doesn’t use lots of enormous cabinets and vast power consumption • A genuinely weatherproof audio mixing console Bonkers? Maybe, but that’s what I thought the ﬁrst time I tried to use a Saori...

14 APRIL 2015

Movers and shakers

New hire at Sonnox takes the biscuit Giles Farley leaves Pinewood Studios and heads to the Oxford-based plug-in developer

ollowing what it calls “a period of continued growth”, Sonnox has announced a new addition to its expanding team in the UK. Giles Farley joins the plug-in developer in the newly created post of international sales manager, taking responsibility for the company’s international reseller channel. Farley, who was manager of Pinewood Group’s post-production department from 2010 to 2014, began his career with Digidesign (now Avid) in 1993 as international product specialist. “Giles Farley has a vast knowledge of the audio post-production ecosystem, from both the technical and the practitioner perspectives,” comments Sonnox senior sales and

marketing manager Nathan Eames. “Sonnox plug-ins are finding wider acceptance in TV, feature film and broadcast applications, and we are confident that Giles will be highly effective in further expanding our user base.” Farley adds: “The experience I’ve gathered in software, music and post-production will be invaluable in helping me grow the Sonnox business and in serving our international reseller network. The Oxford team is uniformly brilliant, and their enthusiasm for their work is genuinely inspiring. I very much look forward to working with this extraordinary group.” www.sonnox.com

DEALER NETWORK EM Acoustics has welcomed Bradford-based Pro Audio Systems as its newest dealer. Pro Audio Systems, which offers sales, installations and hire, handles a diverse portfolio of projects for local authorities, retail clients, theatres, houses of worship and the education sector. www.emacoustics.co.uk www.proaudiosystems.co.uk

Native, the music supervision and composition arm of Soho audio facility Jungle, has announced the appointment of industry veteran Rachel Menzies. www.nativemusicsoho.co.uk

PMC has boosted its sales team with the appointment of Chris Allen, who joins the company as export sales manager for its pro-audio product range. www.pmc-speakers.com

Riedel Communications has hired Andreas Pater as head of rental innovations. Prior to joining Riedel, Pater was technical MD of Gahrens + Battermann. www.riedel.net

AC Entertainment Technologies has, with immediate effect, appointed Brith de Blanck to the role of regional sales representative for Denmark. www.ac-et.com

Former Studer MEA sales director Mark Hosking has been promoted to global sales director. Before joining Studer, Hoskin was at Euphonix Europe. www.studer.ch

Riedel’s second hire of the month is Maribel Roman, sales manager for Spain. Roman will provide support with a focus on Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. www.riedel.net

www.psneurope.com/business

Sound Network, UK distributor of DPA Microphones, has expanded its remit across the Irish Sea. Taking charge of Sound Network’s expansion into the Republic of Ireland are sales manager Adam Pierce, product manager Rob Ramon and marketing manager Caleb Hill. “We will be looking to create a skilled and knowledgeable dealer network over the coming months,” says Pierce, “just as we have done in the UK, where this has resulted in substantial growth for DPA.” www.dpamicrophones.com www.soundnetwork.co.uk HHB Communications has been named RTW’s distributor for the UK and Republic of Ireland. The announcement of the partnership, which takes effect immediately, was made on HHB’s stand at the BVE show at the ExCeL centre, London. www.rtw.com www.hhb.co.uk

15. - 18.04. 2015 Hall 8.0 / Booth A22

X-LINE ADVANCE Forward-thinking line-array design starts here. The result of rigorous R&D, the introduction of the new X-Line Advance family sees Electro-Voice push the parameters of line-array performance to the next level. X-Line Advance utilizes state-of-the-art EVengineered components and incorporates a range of innovative new features, all of which work together to surpass the capabilities of other line arrays, and all in a signiﬁcantly more compact, ﬂexible, and quickerto-set-up package.

KEY FEATURES: An unprecedented performance-to-size ratio for installed and concert sound applications. Advanced audio quality and control via a host of new and exclusive EVengineered technologies, including next-generation Hydra wave-shaping devices, high-output transducers, and proprietary FIR-Drive optimization. New-look EV industrial design and new Integrated Rigging System combine streamlined appearance with simpliﬁed setup.

The ﬁrst wave of X-Line Advance products includes two full-range elements (X1-212/90 & X2-212/90) and the X12-128 — the most powerful subwoofer EV has ever developed.

Designed, engineered, and tested for ultimate reliability by Electro-Voice in the USA. Learn more at: www.electrovoice.com/X-LineAdvance

16 APRIL 2015

Four new courses for 2015 from Britannia Row

BY JON CHAPPLE

Britannia Row Productions Training, the educational programme founded by live sound company Britannia Row Productions in mid-2013, has announced a series of new training courses at its Twickenham, London, HQ for 2015. The courses are based on the core elements of its existing 12-week live sound technology course.

The new courses are A talk on the live sound industry (one day), “an overview and insight into what the live sound industry is all about and how it works”; the Live sound basic PA course (two days), suitable for “anyone who needs or wants to [operate a small PA] and is not entirely sure how to go about it – from taking on some work with your friend’s band to the teacher who needs to get the PA out of the cupboard a couple of times a year and make it work for the school panto and prize-giving day”; Live sound fundamentals (15 one-day modules + an assessment day), which teaches “entry-level fundamentals for those wanting to work in live sound as semi-professionals or in a local venue or small sound/AV company”; and Live sound intermediate (15 one-day modules + an assessment day), “ideal for those who […] feel that they cannot move further forward without some training to get to the next level”. training.britanniarow.com

Mediagroup day is on the Buttenheim

BY JON CHAPPLE

Following a successful inaugural event last May, Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup held its second HighTecDay educational event on 4 March. A mix of workshops, presentations, product demonstrations and hands-on training sessions, HighTecDay 2015 – organised by Salbrenner’s contracting division, Salzbrenner Stagetec Audio Video Mediensysteme – allowed over 150 “planning engineers, users [and] audio and video professionals to discover new solutions and discuss them with

colleagues”, including products from Stagetec, Delec, Brähler, Sennheiser, Crestron, Merging Technologies and L-Acoustics. Central to the HighTecDay programme were new products from members of the Mediagroup, including Stagetec’s programmable Nexus logic control module, Salzbrenner’s Polaris Evolution networked mixing console and Brähler’s expandable modular conference system. The presentations covered the advantages of Dante networks for intercom applications (with Delec), the integration of live mixing consoles with DAW systems for theatre, opera and ballet productions (with Merging) and new aspects of room acoustics (with Fraunhofer), while, for planning engineers, a dedicated workshop explored current trends and upcoming challenges in the projects business. The day closed with a guided tour of Stagetec’s Buttenheim headquarters. HighTecDay will return in 2016. www.stagetec.com/en

Sound Fundamentals for Theatre 14 this month BY JON CHAPPLE

Orbital Sound has revealed the dates for its 14th annual Sound Fundamentals for Theatre training course. The course, arguably the industry’s de facto theatre sound training programme, will this year take place from 7–10 April at Orbital’s purpose-built Brixton, London, training facility. Combining essential theory with practical skills, the course caters for a wide cross-section of skill levels. Students will be given the opportunity to try out a range of audio equipment from brands including Yamaha, Shure, d&b audiotechnik, Flare Audio, Nemesis, Q-Lab and CSC. The Sound Fundamentals for Theatre week forms a core component of Orbital Sound’s educational

25 March CUK: Powersoft X Series training Dublin, Republic of Ireland www.cuk-audio.com

15 April ISCE: Sound System Design Watford, UK www.isce.org.uk

22 April Shure Academy: Wireless Mastered Waltham Abbey, UK www.shure-academy.co.uk

29 April Shure Academy: Wireless Mastered (with White Light) London, UK training@whitelight.ltd.uk

THE ESSENTIALS: WHAT IS SOUND?

Find out in this edited excerpt from Mic It! by Dr Ian Corbett, professor of music technology and audio engineering at Kansas City Kansas Community College What is it that we are trying to capture and craft into a hit record? Examples of objects that produce sound include the strings on a guitar or violin, the reed in a wind instrument mouthpiece, a trumpet player’s lips and the head on a drum. All of these sources have one thing in common: they vibrate, creating variations in air pressure, called sound waves. Sound does also travel through other mediums, such as water and solid objects – but seeing as air is the medium that usually surrounds us, we’ll concentrate on that!

offering, and is complemented by May’s Mixing Musicals course, which focusses on FOH mixing. www.orbitalsound.com

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Read the full article at www.psneurope.com/what-is-sound

18 APRIL 2015

New products What is it? A harmonic and dynamics processor designed to add “analogue warmth and character”.

LOOPTROTTER EMPEROR

Details: Available as a dual-channel rack unit or mono 500-series module, the processor uses compression, limiting and harmonic distortion to add brightness, warmth and thickness. And another thing… The Emperor features fast, medium and slow settings, dry and wet controls and two independent ﬁlters to avoid phase shift. www.kmraudio.com

STEINBERG

CLIFF ELECTRONICS

REVOLABS

What is it? A four-input, two-output 24-bit/192kHz USB 2.0 interface.

What is it? A series of new audio, data, and ﬁbre connectors that may be front- or rear-mounted into a 24mm XLR-connector mounting hole.

What is it? An IP/USB conference phone ﬁrst previewed at Integrated Systems Europe in February.

UR242

Details: Featuring built-in DSP, class-compliant support for the iPad, MIDI input/output and discrete Class-A analogue D-PRE microphone preamps, Steinberg calls the UR242 “unique in its price segment”. And another thing… All UR242 customers are entitled to a free download of Steinberg’s Cubase AI software. www.steinberg.net

FT SERIES

FLX UC 1500

Details: Cliff describes the FT series as “ideal for developing custom I/O solutions for broadcast, AV installations, systems integration [and] home theatre”.

Details: Available later this year, the FLX UC 1500 builds on the success of the smaller UC 1000 by adding the capability for two optional extension microphones for larger conference rooms.

And another thing… RJ45 versions of the FT series are also suitable for creating Ethernet hubs and patch points in industrial applications. www.cliffuk.co.uk

And another thing… Revolabs describes the UC 1500 as “the industry’s ﬁrst all-in-one conferencing solution [...] for large meeting environments”. www.revolabs.com

www.psneurope.com/studio

Open & Closed The new ďŹ&#x201A;agship studio headphones

ATH-R70x PROFESSIONAL OPEN-BACK REFERENCE HEADPHONES ATH-M70x PROFESSIONAL MONITOR HEADPHONES Audio-Technica introduces the new leaders in studio headphones: ATH-M70x and ATH-R70x. Both models offer extremely accurate audio reproduction along with the comfort, durability and convenient features that are bound to make them studio mainstays. So whether you prefer the sound isolation of the M70x or the spacious sound of the R70x, deciding on your next pair of studio headphones is an open and closed case.

www.audio-technica.com

20 APRIL 2015

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Photo: dontworry/Wikimedia Commons

Germany

One hell of a Messe Launches aplenty planned for the world’s biggest live sound trade fair

t’s the show that needs no introduction: Prolight + Sound (PL+S), the biggest international trade show for the events, installation and production sectors, is back, promising once again to attract pro-audio professionals the world over to the Messe Frankfurt exhibition centre from 15 to 18 April. PSNEurope will, as always, be covering PL+S in full (keep an eye on our Twitter feed and website for all the latest developments), but for now, here’s what we know so far… Audio Precision brings news of the availability of a package enabling Dolby MS11 compliance testing via APx-series audio analysers. (The Dolby MS11 Multistream Decoder provides TV, set-top box and IC manufacturers with a single-package solution for decoding all premium broadcast audio formats.) “The value of a test solution that speeds the compliance test process without compromising the results is vital to any engineer tasked with achieving that compliance,” says Dave Schmoldt, Audio Precision CEO. “We’re pleased to provide exactly such a solution to our Dolby-licensed customers, free of charge.” B&C Speakers is adding to its family of woofers with the launch of the MBX series. Designed as a general-purpose woofer, the MBX series (below) is well suited to application in two-way point-source systems and offers “an excellent balance between low- and mid- frequency reproduction, with higher sensitivity than current, similar alternatives”.

“As full range enclosure sizes continue to shrink, the MBX series was a logical addition to our line”, says Ron Tizzard, the company’s director of sales. “We already have signiﬁcant demand for this type of woofer from our OEM partners, so bringing them to the general market was an obvious next step.” Bose’s stand will play host to the “global launch of a new portable PA system”. And that’s all we know so far… DPA Microphones is pushing education at the show: the Danish company’s booth will ”be the place to go to if you want to learn the best placement of a microphone on your instrument, and how to get the best sound from your instrument or voice”. The booth

will feature workshops with DPA product specialists who will demonstrate vocal and instrument microphone placement on saxophone, acoustic guitar and upright bass. There will also be a listening area where visitors can compare sound samples from DPA microphones with those from other brands. Funktion-One will launch the new Evolution series of high-intensity loudspeakers along with a new system for smaller applications (over). The Evolution range is centred around the Evo 6 and Evo 7 enclosures. Both products are fully hornloaded with 15” mid-bass, 10” Funktion-One signature midrange and a 1.4” compression driver solely for high frequencies above 4kHz. The Evo 7 has a 30°

INSTALLATION INSPIRATION At Prolight + Sound 2014, Inspired Audio previewed its intention to broaden its product offering from a live sound-based range to encompass products for portable sound and ﬁxed installation. At this year’s show, the company will deliver on that promise with a range of production-ready products. Portable products aimed at all aspects of live performance will be represented in the form of the MQ series, which features three full-range enclosures. MQ12 and MQ15 enclosures feature mid/bass cone drivers with 3.5” aluminium voice coils and neodymium magnet structures, combined with 1.4” exit compression drivers, mounted on CD waveguides, while the MQL – also mounted on a CD waveguide – is a three-way enclosure that uses a 15” cone driver for the 55–400Hz pass band, combined with a horn-loaded 8” midrange unit and 1” exit highfrequency driver. All MQ-series products are ﬁnished

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in a road-ready heavy-duty polyurea finish and equipped with bracket and insert points, making them suitable for installation or portable applications. Also new in Frankfurt will be the iQ series boxes (iQ8, iQ10, iQ12 and iQ15) for fixed installation and a major addition to the eFlex amplifier range, the Q20. “The existing eFlex Q5 is purely software-controlled, which has been well accepted by the AV and installation markets but [has seen] some resistance from the touring brigade, who want a visual indication of status,” says Inspired’s Chris Scott. “The Q20 addresses this, quadruples the power density and adds all the features that the current market expects, such as the Dante and AES compatibility. This product marks out Inspired’s ambitions – it is up there headto-head with the best and will become our touring benchmark.” www.inspired-audio.co.uk

22 APRIL 2015

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horizontal dispersion angle and very high efficiency, so just three wide gives 90° horizontal coverage for crowd sizes up to around 2,500 people. The British manufacturer will also unveil a new self-powered bass enclosure, designed for domestic, home studio and small venue applications.

Gibson will “continue to honour the legacy of Les Paul, the genius who pioneered the solid-body electric guitar and multi-track recording”, at Frankfurt with the release of the Les Paul Reference Monitors (below). The Nashville-based MI/pro-audio manufacturer says the monitors combine “superior deﬁnition with

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the iconic Les Paul [guitar] styling, using exceptional materials including flame maple tops, diamond-like carbon-coated titanium tweeters, non-woven carbonfibre woofers and custom-designed amplification to ensure ultra-clean transient impulse response and ample headroom”. Les Paul Reference Monitors are available in 4”, 6” and 8” sizes, in cherry, cherry burst and tobacco burst. HK Audio will show new variable curvature options available on its ConTour Array CTA 208s. Every CTA 208 ordered from the beginning of 2015 onwards features curvature options of 0°, 3° 6° and 9°, giving far more flexibility to the end user (previous CTA 208s feature only 0° and 9° options). For customers who wish to upgrade their existing CTA 208s to the new specifications, an affordable ‘CTA 208 0°, 3°, 6°, 9° Upgrade Kit’ is also being made available. HK will also show the Patchbay 6 (below), the new and improved successor to the classic Patchbay 2

Show preview and Patchbay 5. The PB-6â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;clear layout and high quality constructionâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it features components from renowned manufacturers such as Neutrik and Cordial â&#x20AC;&#x201C; make it suitable for HK Audioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cohedra, Cohedra Compact, ConTour Array and Cadis loudspeaker systems. K-array has developed the KR802, which it claims is its â&#x20AC;&#x153;most advanced self-powered, portable ampliďŹ cation system yetâ&#x20AC;?. The system features a pair of the newly launched Kayman mid-high line array elements matched to the double 18â&#x20AC;? powered KMT218 subwoofer (left). KV2 Audio will launch the VHD5.0 constant power point-source array in Frankfurt. According to KV2, its former ďŹ&#x201A;agship offering, the VHD2.0 large-format system, had the capability to cover crowds in excess of 10,000 people with just one or two enclosures per side. The challenge, then, for designer George Krampera and his team in building an even larger point-source system (suitable for an audience of 50,000+) was to â&#x20AC;&#x153;reproduce the low-mid energy that certain line arrays provide though the summing of multiple drivers while maintaining the key beneďŹ ts of point source technology, such as minimal destructive

interference in the higher frequency range and accurate impulse responseâ&#x20AC;?. With the VHD5.0, KV2 claims to have not only risen to this challenge â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x153;the sound remains the same in every seat in the houseâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but also reports that the design is the â&#x20AC;&#x153;ďŹ rst major advancement in large concert sound reinforcement since the development of the line arrayâ&#x20AC;?. Bold claims indeed! LD Systems will launch the Contractor series of ďŹ xed installation speakers. According to parent company Adam Hall, Contractor loudspeakers â&#x20AC;&#x153;convince not only through their wide dispersion pattern, extended frequency range and reliable operation [but] also provide an aesthetic architectural solution combined with a discreet appearanceâ&#x20AC;?. In addition to wall-mounted models in white or black â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including an extremely ďŹ&#x201A;at 37mm deep model â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Contractor series features recessed speakers for ceilings and walls. Recessed Contractor speakers are only available in white, and also include a frameless option. Pan Acoustics will present its active, digitally steerable Pan Beam-series column speakers, now equipped with Dante networking technology.

learn more and be ready.

www.psneurope.com

23 APRIL 2015

24 APRIL 2015

Show preview

Sebastian Oeynhausen, product manager at Pan Acoustics, says: “Dante […] effectively completes, in addition to our Pan Powerline technology, the range of Pan Beam products.” Pan Beam models can be set and monitored via Dante (directivity, EQ, delay and on), and switching presets, saved in the Pan Beam speakers, is also possible. As part of production house PRG Germany’s LEA awards broadcast and stage set-up, a complete EAW ADAPTive System will be used and will remain in place for the duration of the expo. PRG will be holding 10-minute demos of their complete stage audio and lighting set-up every 30 minutes, with all audio delivered through EAW’s new Anya and Otto systems.

German manufacturer Voice-Acoustic will present its new HDSP multichannel ampliﬁer series. Models are available in various performance classes from 1600W up to 16kW into 4Ω and are “characterised by some unique features”, says the company. The DSP/ amp (class D) units are constructed in “modular design with an upside-down layout of the electronics

in a stable corrosion-resistant aluminum body housing. They have multiple power supplies, power amp sections and DSP boards. This ensures the highest reliability, serviceability and maximum bass performance without interference between the channels.” In addition, Voice-Acoustic will unveil new loudspeaker models, including the Paveosub-112 and -112sp (self-powered version with 4,000W three-channel DSP ampliﬁer module inside) 12” bass speakers. Finally, Yamaha promises the European debut of the new large-format RIVAGE PM10 digital mixing console (left), as ﬁrst seen in Japan late last year. pls.messefrankfurt.com

SAFETY FIRST FOR MPG

“Keeping digital music ﬁles safe” is the focus of a Prolight + Sound/Musikmesse panel hosted by the Music Producers Guild (MPG). Producers Tony Platt, Stevan Krakovic (pictured) and Gareth Jones will speak on taking proper care of recordings and session information, “especially when an entire album’s worth of creativity can now be contained on one memory stick”. “In the days of analogue recording, the tape box and track sheet logged all the important information,” says Krakovic. “In this new digital age, [however], we have become very casual. Too many sessions are badly labelled, and too much information goes unreported. Wereally need to up our game and get more professional. Our panel aims to discuss this and identify ways in which the situation can be improved.” The panel will take place on Friday 17 April at the VdT Academy at Room Esprit (next to hall 9.1). An MPG Speakeasy event will also take place at 7pm on Thursday 16 April in Freiraum II at the 25hours Hotel by Levi’s, Niddastrasse 25. www.mpg.org.uk

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Business The strategic position Audient’s participation 26

APRIL 2015

In a rare interview, Audient owner Simon Blackwood shares his vision for the industry with Phil Ward

n December 2013, one of pro audio’s more recondite business leaders emerged as the new owner of Audient, the fader-friendly home of recording consoles, preamps and more created by industry veterans David Dearden and Gareth Davies (both of DDA and Midas). Simon Blackwood had recently completed a turnaround/sale to Music Group and launch projects at both Turbosound and DiGiCo, but this is less than half the story. Under his guidance, some of pro audio’s most pivotal products saw the light of day in the recording and live sound sector and – having “bought Gareth his beach towel” and with David Dearden fully engaged in the next step of Audient – he sincerely intends that more of the same is nigh from the Hampshire-based manufacturer. Audient is not his first ownership venture. Blackwood had invested in Focusrite in the mid-’90s following a highly successful period of “making a lot of money for Dr Harman” – as operations director of SoundcraftStuder in the late ’80s, VP of business development for Harman/UREI/JBL in California and then, especially, founding and launching the Spirit brand that generated annual revenues of $45 million before his departure. Indeed, it was the sheer ascendancy of this achievement that led to a level of corporate management that began to lose its appeal as it drew Blackwood away from a presiding passion: to guide creative and innovative technical teams to create groundbreaking products and lead them to meaningful marketshare. Not that Spirit was without significant meaning, of course. The combination of those mixers with the Alesis ADAT, the ‘project’ recording platform du jour, helped to build the very markets that Audient can dovetail into today, and it’s hard not to see Blackwood as now reaping the benefits of his own premise as technological

“It’s difﬁcult to come into pro audio and enable change without understanding the market in its widest sense. You have to know the ramiﬁcations of each and every step” Simon Blackwood

evolution places the Spirit-ADAT nonpareil onto the desktop. “I was lucky enough to work with Graham Blyth in the formation of Spirit,” Blackwood says today, “and it was a privilege to get to know such a visionary as Sidney Harman, who gave me that opportunity. The common denominator through all the opportunities I’ve been given is the encouragement I’ve had – and that’s a big part of my role as I see it here. It’s about coaching and helping people beat their potential.” The Focusrite period began when Phil Dudderidge’s own post-Soundcraft venture was roughly the same size as Audient is today. It was the time of the affectionately known “golf course” Green range; and what followed was Platinum, ISA, Saffire and perhaps one of the most revolutionary product lines in recent history, Liquid Technology, the building blocks that has made Focusrite the success it is today. These were all responses to the

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Spirit-ADAT – and, to be fair, the Mackie-ADAT – template and its Pro Tools aftermath. The large-format console had had its day, at least as a Focusrite ﬂagship, and Blackwood saw an opportunity to recalibrate an iconic, independent brand in a way that, in many respects, is being repeated today. “The new product lines drove the business forward,” he recounts, “but what really was transformation from a brand development and business perspective was the opportunity of expanding the relationship with Digidesign. The Control|24 and Command|8 controllers that followed was a watershed for both companies, and I must say the Digidesign opportunity was a major attraction when I ﬁrst started talking with Phil [Dudderidge] as I could see just how disruptive DAWs were destined to be. It was a way of marrying a software expert, Digidesign, with excellent hardware – at a time

27 APRIL 2015

when computers were nothing like they are now. It gave us kudos and access to software engineers in Palo Alto, and led directly to the acceptance of my suggestion that Focusrite develop the interface that became the phenomena that was Mbox.” Focusrite’s star remained in the ascendancy, a clear take-off for the acquisition of synthesiser maker Novation and the continuing investment seen today. For Digidesign the hardware habit took a different turn with the purchase of M-Audio, but surely it was the Focusrite keycard that provided access to that lift. Audient’s product roadmap has already been unfolded on the bonnet. Two Frankfurt’s ago, the iD22 recording interface was launched as a 10-in,14-out controller with 24-bit/96kHz converters and the Class A mic pres used in the much admired ASP consoles. Six months later, the 19-inch rackmount ASP880 mic pre and A-D converter became the first post-Blackwood product, continuing the theme of porting Audient’s analogue legacy into DAW front ends. This month’s Prolight + Sound exhibition promises more in the same vein, with an even more cost-effective interface controller and more features pertaining to advanced recording workflow packed into the 19-inch and desktop audio format. Blackwood sees this development as not only strategic, but inevitable. “The market rules,” he says, “and the reality is that it’s not just about product on its own any more: it’s about workflow integration, top-class product and figuring out how to push priceperformance. That’s what we’re seeing now. You can be dragged kicking and screaming into it, or you fall by the wayside, or you embrace it. I’ve always preferred to take the latter route, and find ways to innovate. It requires you to be creative. And, as a collection of people to work with, the team at Audient is one of the most creative I’ve ever worked with – and I’ve worked with some pretty creative people. “It’s the team that delivers the results, in the end. I’m not quite ready to be considered an elder statesman, but the fact that I have a role to play is great. I’m very glad to enable and encourage them to be better than they possibly thought they could be. That shows in the products, and hopefully you can see the enthusiasm behind them. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve struggled working for very large corporations, because that ability to make a difference can be elusive.” The ASP consoles continue to sell well, says Blackwood, particularly into the education sector. Whatever the future holds for these slabs of heritage, Blackwood is already poised with his own ergonomicproof interests: he also owns a significant stake in an ‘apps’ developer, with clients including Sky among others, which is behind many of the iPad apps that a number of digital console manufacturers use. He has a lot of IT under his belt, in fact, and few with such a grasp of audio’s analogue archive could match him for inside knowledge of digital technology business models and

their current inﬂuence over all of us. Nevertheless, being on the inside of this industry is better than coming from outside, he believes. “It’s difficult to come into pro audio and enable change without understanding the market in its widest sense. You have to know the ramiﬁcations of each and every step. It takes anything up to a year to get to know pro audio. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t change, but if you are going to make changes you have to have a really solid basis. “Looking back on the number of brands that I’ve had the privileged of being involved with, and with the hindsight of living in the most connected world ever, I can see that Audient and others probably face the biggest challenge to acceptance of the need for high quality audio that the industry has ever had to

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respond to – but Audient faces them with the best tools we’ve ever had. Earbuds are increasingly the playback medium the output of our products are aimed at, and at the same time music making has never been so accessible – or disposable. Whatever that means for the preservation of hi-ﬁ values, it’s the market we have to understand and address. As long as more and more music is created for the Spotify generation, we have a business. “Things have been disrupted and will continue to be so, but there are still plenty of big, fast cars being driven by record company executives and independent producers that proves there’s still a fabulous future for those who can ﬁgure out their place in the continuing revolution that faces music makers.” www.audient.com

28 APRIL 2015

Studio

The RedOne Room at PanGaia

Sweden

Slam dunk RedOne Productions songwriter/producer Geo Slam’s new studio, PanGaia, aims to ﬁll a “void” in the Stockholm recording scene, writes Jon Chapple

anGaia Studios, the new venture by Swedish producer and songwriter Geo Slam, opened last month with a launch party attended by Mike Fraser (AC/DC, Franz Ferdinand), Eric Racy (Nicki Minaj, Pharrell), Chris Tsangarides (Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy) and Solid State Logic’s Dan Duffell. Studio owner Slam began his career as a session guitarist and producer for various studios in Sweden, and is now associated with multi-Grammy Awardwinning producer RedOne. He has written and produced for One Direction, Blue and Jason Derulo, while PanGaia’s staff have, says the studio, written, engineered and produced hits for Lady Gaga, Prince, Jennifer Lopez, Backstreet Boys, Adrian Lux, Pitbull, Enrique Iglesias and Europe. PanGaia, located in the Stockholm Hotel, features six recording studios, a private conference room,

press room, live streaming video system, personal artist lounges, two kitchens and “modern, parametric décor”. The studio’s partners include Solid State Logic (SSL), Yamaha and guitar manufacturers Fender, Jackson, EVH and Charvel. A 48-channel SSL Duality console forms the core of PanGaia’s control room. Monitors come courtesy of Yamaha, ADAM Audio, KRK, TAD, Behringer, ATC and Genelec (driven by Electrocompaniet and Rotel power amps), while mics are manyfold in moniker: Shure, Neumann, Sennheiser, AKG, Coles, Manley and Royer. A generous selection of outboard includes AMS Neve mic preamps, Universal Audio compressors and an Empirical Labs Distressor. (For a full list of equipment and more studio pictures, go to www.psneurope.com/pangaia.) “We recognised a void,” comments Slam. “It’s not often that the studios we are working at have

everything we need. “Over the years I have been in numerous studios all over the world, and I’ve taken notes on how to build the perfect studio. Many of these places were constructed in the ’70s, and they can’t necessarily be rebuilt. I wanted to do something from scratch that incorporated everything I felt was missing. We’ve got top-notch equipment, but we’ve also got the ultimate accommodations for artists and their respective teams to be comfortable.“ “Geo Slam is not only an incredible songwriter and producer, but he’s also a longtime friend of mine; my brother!” adds acclaimed Moroccan–Swedish producer and Slam collaborator RedOne. “PanGaia Studios is where my team and I will call home when working in Stockholm. I really think it will be a game-changer.” www.facebook.com/pangaiastudiosab

ONLINE AUCTION of

OVERSTOCK FROM DIONISYS SHOW SYSTEMS

Professional Light and Sound Equipment -

– 3542 AB Utrecht (The Netherlands)

CLOSING: Tuesday 28 APRIL

270 M² LED WALLS, indoor/outdoor, P6 (black face), P10, P18, P40; 24 LED moving head panels “Elation” EPV 762 MH; VIDEO: 5 projectors “Barco”, “Eiki”, 18.000 and 10.000 Ansi Lumen, projection screens, 800x600 and 320x 250 cm, HD video mixer ”Grass Valley”; festival stage decoration items; LIGHT EQUIPMENT incl. 300 LED moving heads “Martin” MacAura and “Robe” Pointe, Beam 300, Tracker, Sharpy 5R, 700 spectral RGB(W) M1000 Q4, M800 ip 67/tour, M300, M260, 200 LED Sunstrip pro RGB, 500 LED Par 64 / 56 RGB, star sky’s, strobo’s, par’s, pixel strips, 6 light control mixers “MA Lighting”, “Avolites”, “Lightjockey”, dimmerpacks, boosters; 2000 mirror balls; AUDIO EQUIPMENT incl. line array sound system “Nexo” Geo D, full range / subwoofers “Soundprojects”, 4 mixing consoles “Digico” D1 Live, “Yamaha”, “Midas”; EFFECTS: 13 lasers “Rti” Piko 18 W, 4 Co2 octoheads “Universal Effects”, 45 smoke machines, bubble machines, flame throwers; 300 flightcases; 140 Euro containers; 60 jumbo boxes; 4 trucks “Scania”, “Mercedes”;

www.TroostwijkAuctions.com

Viewing: Wed 22 and Thur 23 April from 10.00 till 16.00 hrs

www.psneurope.com/studio

30 APRIL 2015

Studio

United Kingdom

Saturn rising At NAMM in 2005, Trevor Coley invited Dave Robinson up to his hotel room to see something exciting. Not puppies or etchings, no – instead, a collection of shiny mics…

“

I’m very proud to be here,” reﬂects Sontronics’ Trevor Coley, taking time out of a busy NAMM for a special meeting with PSNEurope – just as he did a decade ago. This time, however, we’re not squirrelled away in a Hilton Garden Hotel bedroom, unpacking a compact cargo of prototype microphones. That was how Coley began his campaign to build a brand and make real his ideas; a journey that, ten years later, has turned Sontronics into a recognised player in recording circles, with users including Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Epworth, Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey and producer Flood. PSNEurope: Take us back to Anaheim in 2005…

Trevor Coley: Since July 2004 I’d spent time prototyping and preparing four pre-production models for the NAMM Show, but the important thing was getting the mics in front of the right people. Before this I’d been international sales manager for Spirit, working for Soundcraft and Amek, and I’d been in UK retail before that, so thanks to my track record and my reputation, I had a lot of contacts who trusted in me. At that show alone I managed to get agreements with about four or ﬁve European distributors, which was phenomenal. I went home knowing it was going to grow, but what was surprising was how quickly we got off the ground. We got the European distribution on its feet ﬁrst, then a UK distributor, Sonic8 – Steve Helm did a superb

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Sontronics founder Trevor Coley, NAMM 2015

32 APRIL 2015

Studio

job of applying his talents to get Sontronics into the UK stores – and, of course, it helped that it was a homegrown British brand. That got me ﬁred up and from there we added new models to the line.

How does sales manager for mixers suddenly become a microphone designer? Having been a musician and an engineer, realising that mics are utterly fundamental in that process, that was a great starting point. My father was an electronics engineer and mic circuits aren’t that complex, so it felt natural for me. As for the outward design, I’ve always appreciated art and architecture and I’ve always loved geometric shapes and design. Microphones lend themselves to well to that.

Surely though, there’s more to it than that? Luckily I was able to build up a team of electronics experts in our factories who were able to bring to life my ideas and over the years, my depth of knowledge has grown immeasurably. The brand ethos was always about reﬁning the sound characteristics and building a mic for today’s digitalbased recording industry. Sontronics, from the start, was all about original design – [both] sound design and [the] physical design of the product itself. I wanted the best quality sound and build, but I wanted our products to be realistically priced for the end user. With that in mind, there was no question, I had to make the products in Asia. Bear in mind this was ten years ago, when people were always putting down Chinese-made products. These days there is more respect for the far east – after all, our Macs, our

What makes your mics different? “I knew I wanted to create mics that would stand up to modern-day recording in the digital domain. I could see (and hear!) where the problems were in a lot of mics, the high frequency response could be too fizzy. Because many mics are still now based on designs from the 50s, they haven’t been reengineered for today’s digital recording. Analogue tape saturates at around 15kHz, and microphones have always captured beyond that frequency but it couldn’t be heard, because it was above what was recorded to tape. However, digital recording captures iPhones, our tablets are all made out there – but back when Sontronics started, I knew it all came down to standards and quality control and management. If all those are kept extremely tight (which is what we do), then fundamentally your product should come out as you intend it, wherever you’re manufacturing it. Often, engineering firms in China are not asked to make things to a standard, they’re asked to make it to a certain price point, but we do things differently. When working on a new mic, we aim for a specific product with specific quality components and specific sonic results… the price is worked out afterwards.

What about the names of the mics? I’m often asked about the names of my products. The STC suffix stands for Sontronics Trevor Coley, but in my career I’d always recognised that products with a name are often more popular than those with model numbers. I’ve always been interested in Greek and Roman

Sigma and Saturn mics make it a big 10!

the full spectrum so you can now hear this extra 5kHz above 15k. It’s blindingly obvious and if you’ve got a frequency response that can’t track accurately, then you end up with artifacts, called dithering. With Sontronics microphones, we’ve engineered our capsule and circuit design to cut all of that ‘dithering’ out, and our ultra-smooth high frequency roll-off has become a Sontronics USP. Our mics are made for the digital recording domain, whatever your budget. That began the journey for me, and has underpinned everything we’ve done since then.” mythology and so I started naming them after gods: Helios, Apollo, Saturn… We now make 18 microphone mics in total, excluding colour variations.

In 10 years: a few highlights? Being part of the Olympics project – without knowing it! In 2011 and 2012, Underworld had been in touch and bought a load of mics, but said they were using them for some new tracks, one of which might be used in an Olympics-related show. Then, we were watching the opening ceremony and literally, as it ﬁnished and the ﬁreworks were going off, I had a call from their engineer Kris Burton to say, ‘Just to let you know… all the sound you heard tonight was recorded with your mics’. That was just a jaw-dropping moment!

Another? When we launched our Delta ribbon mic for guitar amps at NAMM 2008, I had just one precious pre-production model with me (the only one in existence!). We had a couple of days off after the show and left the mic with our rep to take to a couple of studios. On our way to the airport to go home, we called him to arrange to get the mic and he said: “You can’t have it. Dave Grohl’s got it in his studio and he won’t give it back ’cause he’s using it on his next album.” Amazing!

What has a decade of growing a business taught you? In the last few years, the professional industry has been consumerised by the advent and growth of the computer market. It’s a good thing because there are many, many more people who are interested in making music, but there are many, many more products out there for them to choose from. We help cut through the confusion by creating application-speciﬁc products. If you’re recording drums, we have drum mics. We could tell them we have have 10 different mics that are all great at recording drums (which is true!), but that doesn’t help them. Of course our kick drum mic also happens to be great at recording trombone and bass cabinets and double bass and even male vocals, but that drum-speciﬁc signpost really helps people. www.sontronics.com

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Feature

34 APRIL 2015

State of the (networked) nation A new report compiled by RH Consulting provides an illuminating overview of the extent to which audio networking has truly begun to achieve mainstream crossover. David Davies talks to Roland Hemming about the ﬁndings – and ponders the way ahead

nalysis and conjecture about the

probable roadmap for audio networking haven’t exactly been thin on the ground in recent times. But what has often been absent from the debate is what we might call (to quote political satire The Thick of It) “fact-enforced noise” – in other words, proper research backed up by hard data. A newly published report compiled by leading audio consultant Roland Hemming and his ﬁrm, RH Consulting, goes some way to addressing this void. But as Hemming explains, the impetus for The Death of Analogue and the Rise of Audio Networking – which was commissioned by Audinate with a brief to be as independent as possible – was actually to encourage a change in the parameters of the debate. “Even now, there is still so much coverage of networking that borders on the simplistic; for example, all this talk about a turf war between

“The real battle is to get people off analogue, and no one can really predict how that is going to work out” Roland Hemming, RH Consulting

protocols,” he says. “This, to me, is to miss the point. The way we need to see it is that we have analogue in one corner, and networking technology in the other… and that’s it!” After reading the report, one is tempted to surmise that Audinate’s Dante technology – which recorded its 200th licensee at ISE in February – seems to be very

Broadcast specialist Jünger Audio will be releasing products that are now Dante-ready, such as this processor

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much ‘it’ when it comes to the future of networking. But while its current market-leading position is in no doubt, one of the other points Hemming wishes to stress is that we are still at a very early part of the networking transition and that further seismic changes should be expected. “The real battle is to get people off analogue, and no

35 APRIL 2015

one can really predict how that is going to work out,” he says. “Yes, Audinate is the clear frontrunner at the moment, but that could change – and they know it.” In the grand scheme of things, “we are way down the adoption curve in terms of conversion to networking… we’re barely anywhere.”

Audinate CEO Lee Ellison (centre) with Bosch’s Bill Scott and Yamaha’s Terry Hilton in early 2014

Time of transition Hemming might be keen to discourage the obsession with protocols, but the report certainly has plenty of interesting things to say about them. As he points out, “audio networking is not new” – the ﬁrst commercially successful implementation of audio over Ethernet, the Cirrus Logic-developed CobraNet, will celebrate its 20th birthday in 2017. Moreover, it is still extremely commonplace, with 351 products using the protocol available as recently as 2014. But since development of CobraNet has apparently now ceased, the way has been cleared for new technologies to emerge. With 296 available products as of December 2014 (up from 124 in 2013), there is no denying the current momentum behind Dante – more of which anon. The other eminent contenders – Ravenna and AVB – are shown to be trailing in its wake, with only 37 and 61 products, respectively. There is “no reason” that Ravenna should not

transcend its current broadcast focus and cross over into other markets, says Hemming – and what’s more, the recent introduction of the AES67 AoIP interoperability standard (with which Ravenna is compliant) is bound to help its case. He is rather more

Keeping an open mind As Hemming’s report indicates, the advance of Dante has been crucially assisted by a steady stream of new product hitting the market and thereby maintaining its profile. For example, Audio-Technica has recently introduced what is billed as the world’s first Dante-enabled microphone, the ATND971, as well as the Dante-supporting ATND8677 microphone desk stand. “The development of Audio-Technica’s network audio products was as much about recognising global trends towards increasing integration of audio and IT as it was a response to specific customer requests,” says Tom Harrold, European marketing manager, pro audio, at Audio-Technica (pictured). “The exciting work from Audinate in creating Dante – and subsequently from the likes of Symetrix and Biamp, with whom Audio-Technica has worked closely to ensure GPIO-over-Dante integration – has also been a motivating factor.” But while it currently only offers Dante support in its networked audio range, Harrold stresses that Audio-Technica will be retaining an open mind. “The dominance of the protocol and the plug-and-play and scalable benefits of Dante make it a compelling proposition in the installation market. But of course as an innovative and design-led company, AudioTechnica will keep options open as technology develops in terms of other formats.”

critical of AVB, which despite its present momentum in the automotive world he feels is the subject of “wasted investment” in the world of pro audio. Even bearing in mind Dante’s success, the report says that the overall transition to audio networking is being undermined by the fact that no one has yet determined “the best business model. AVB and Ravenna are open but they still have a cost and require investment in terms of their promotion, testing and future development. CobraNet and Dante charge for selling hardware that goes into a manufacturer’s product. Dante can also charge you for selling a software sound card and there are paid-for Ravenna solutions, too.”

Display of agility

Jünger Audio, meanwhile, is making it possible to use two slimline chassis processors, the D*AP4 and D*AP8, with optional Dante I/O interfaces. International sales manager Anthony Wilkins highlights Dante’s “broad support” across the industry and the fact that the integration process went “very well”, but like Harrold is eager to point out that the company will be responsive to changing needs. “I wouldn’t say ‘Dante has won’, even if the support by the industry is very impressive,” says Wilkins. “If there are strong requests for other formats we would deﬁnitely consider using them. But [at present] we are concentrated on Dante, [and believe that through using it] we can open other markets and new applications for our product solutions.”

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Nonetheless, the report does an effective job at delineating the primary factors that have contributed to Dante’s ascension: ease of integration into products; active support for manufacturers as they work to incorporate Dante support; regular updates to meet evolving market requirements; different channel count options; and a consistent sales and marketing message. Hemming also thinks Audinate’s private-company, VC-backed structure has stood it in good stead – especially when compared to the consortia approach pursued by AVB-supporting organisation, the AVnu Alliance. “If we ignore the slow adoption due to lack of switches, we still see a desperately slow certiﬁcation process and poor messaging,” states the report. “Organisations such as AVnu, by their very nature, tend to be less agile than private companies.” Hemming has positive expectations for AES67, which is not a new solution in itself – but instead seeks to establish terms of interoperability between existing technologies. But in general, it is clear he

36 APRIL 2015

Feature

feels that the focus on standards has been allowed to eclipse the debate on real-world usage. “Talk about standards is meaningless without something to apply it to,” he says. “The aim should be to deliver things that work. At this stage in the adoption curve a pure standards-based approach is unlikely to succeed.”

Divine inspiration With many of the pro-audio world’s leading lights now signed up to Dante, it is inevitable that licensee growth will not continue at the current rate. But the quantity of available product could be about to skyrocket: Hemming’s report predicts an increase of more than 75 per cent in the number of Dante products this year, and a rise of 130 per cent over the next two years. (See the ‘Keeping an open mind’ box for the thoughts of two manufacturers who have recently introduced Dante-enabled products.) Audinate’s recent announcement that it too will support AES67 adds further fuel to the argument that the new standard is “the likely enabler that will allow the ‘network effect’ to take place. Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a network is a function of the square of the number of nodes. So this might help us move to the tipping point

ATND971: the ﬁrst wired microphone to transmit audio and control data together over the Dante network protocol

into the mass adoption stage away from the market creation phase that we are probably in at the moment. When industries get to that stage it is usually the time that investment pours in,” states the report. Underlining Hemming’s point that it might be wise to have the standards in place before seeking cross-industry consensus, the Media Networking Alliance – whose objectives include the adoption

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and standardisation of AES67, and the provision of developer support for AES67 products – was established nearly a year ago after the standard itself was published. Less than six months after formation, its membership already includes the likes of Bosch, Genelec, Riedel and Yamaha, among many others. Many of the same protagonists are involved with another current initiative, the Open

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38 APRIL 2015

Feature

Where next for Dante? Audinate CEO Lee Ellison expects there to be “more Dante-compliant products, more quickly” than predicted by the report – possibly as many as 1,000 by the end of 2016. But in general, he agrees with the conclusions and the central proposition that “as an industry, we really are at a nascent stage in terms of the adoption of digital audio networking.” Continuing to build a “sizeable ecosystem” of devices will be crucial, suggests Ellison, as will ongoing educational efforts. In this regard, Audinate can point to a busy programme of free-to-attend recent and forthcoming events, including an all-day AoIP in broadcast demonstration in London last month, and AV Networking World sessions across the US during April and May. Two upcoming developments will also help to further cement Dante’s industry-leading position. Previewed at trade events throughout last year Control Architecture (OCA) Alliance, whose objectives are the development of a common control and monitoring language. The result, currently referred to as AES-X210, will soon be ratiﬁed as an official AES standard and could dovetail neatly with AES67. (Watch out for a report on OCA’s latest developments in the next couple of months.) While Audinate is not presently a member of either organisation, the company has “taken the long-term view that standards such as AVB and AES67 need to be considered and they might need to work alongside those initiatives, should they succeed, to continue to give Dante relevance,” states the report. As Hemming wisely concludes, “anything can happen in the future”, and the bigger challenge of

Audio-Technica ATND8677 microphone desk stand: Dante-ready

and currently due to ship in Q2/2015, the Dante Via software for PCs and Macs will allow them to connect with USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt and analogue audio interfaces, thereby transforming them into networked devices. “Dante Via breaks down traditional physical barriers and allows for flexible networking of sound to and from any connected PC or existing Dante endpoint,” says Ellison, who expects schools, HoWs, meeting centres, conference rooms and court houses to be among the beneficiary applications. And while it is a little too early to divulge many specifics, the Audinate R&D team is also hard at work on “something to enable more simplified implementations for routing across multiple subnets over Layer 3 networks. I think we are probably about 12 months away from being able to productise that,” says Ellison. “getting people off analogue” is still very much a work in progress. But quite apart from the issue of product, PSNEurope’s own anecdotal experience – in which interviewees now frequently refer to ‘going Dante’ as opposed to ‘going networked’ – speaks volumes about a solution that has now achieved that rarest of feats: becoming embedded in the consciousness of the industry. To download The Death of Analogue and the Rise of Audio Networking in its entirety, head to go.audinate. com/resources/assets/death-of-analog-rise-of-audionetworking-f. In addition, RH Consulting has released an app that allows specifiers to find networked audio products across all protocols, available from its website (www.rhconsulting.eu) and iTunes.

KEY POINTS: • New report collated by RH Consulting underlines the dramatic growth in Dante-supporting product over the last couple of years • The much-trumpeted AVB is not living up to its promise – and not just because of the poor availability of compliant switches • “Anything can happen” as we are still at a very early stage of the move from analogue to audio networking

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40 APRIL 2015

Broadcast

United Kingdom

The real request show BBC R&D tests Responsive Radio, which delivers a variable length, object-based listening experience. Kevin Hilton reports

he pace of life today is, we’re told, so fast that people need more flexibility to fit in everything they want or need to do. New technology has not only brought that to the workplace but also for the home and leisure activities. There is Listen Again and streamed video players so that anyone who missed their favourite radio or TV programmes can catch up whenever they want. This still means committing an hour or 30 minutes of one’s valuable time, so now there is the potential to specify how long you’ve got to spare and the show will run to the desired length. BBC R&D last month launched Responsive Radio, which uses the concept of object-based broadcasting (OBB) to construct a programme from existing elements to match a running time specified by the listener. This is a continuation of the broadcaster’s research into the application of object-based audio, which has already produced tests of personalised programmes. The first was in 2012 with the drama Breaking Out, which incorporated the weather and local information of the listener’s location into the action. This was followed in 2013 by coverage of a live football match that allowed fans to select the crowd noise from where their team’s supporters were and how much commentary was in the mix. Responsive Radio – which, for now, is the name of

both the technology and the programme strand – is currently based on a documentary called The Cornish Gardener. This was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 with a running time of 28 minutes. It is now available through the BBC Taster website, with the option for listeners to select their preferred length. Senior engineer on the Responsive Radio project Matthew Brooks was involved in Breaking Out and says that while the basic principles of object-based audio are similar the new test is “more end-to-end” and generic. “On Breaking Out the concern was more about the end effect of what the objects gave,” he explains. “For Responsive Radio we have a back end that maps the entire story as a graph. Everything involved – the speech, the wild track effects and the music – hang off that and are assembled using its template.” The core of this is an Excel spreadsheet detailing all the component parts, which are broken down into objects. Once a listener speciﬁes a running time the software assembles the programme to match but still with the correct narrative structure. This means that if one part of the story is mentioned in a speciﬁc object, it has to either follow on from another element or continue to appear later if relevant. The content of The Cornish Gardener was broken down into many parts, which were then organised in the graph database as Narrative Objects, Themes and Audio

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Responsive Radio senior engineer Matthew Brooks

Objects. These are then put in order using an algorithm that is designed to recognise and retain narrative relationships between nodes. Brooks says this prototype technology is “the start of a playback solution” for something like Responsive Radio. “What we don’t have now are the tools that we would want producers and editors to use to make programmes like this,” he comments. “Creating tools takes time and effort so we need to start looking at this.” Brooks adds that to do this an engineer needs to do “some munging” in the production world, working out how things are done to produce speciﬁc applications for making variable time programmes. The Cornish Gardener was cut to 28 minutes from a 45-minute original version. Right now it is only possible to create shorter versions but Brooks says that if a longer edit of a programme does exist it will be possible to specify that as well. “It’s also radio over IP rather than over the air,” he explains, “but if this proves popular we will look at tools that will linearise it. What we need now is for someone to come along with a blank piece of paper to create another test programme.” www.bbc.co.uk/taster/projects/responsive-radio

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42 APRIL 2015

Broadcast

The Mapfre team leaving Auckland (Photo: Maria Muina)

World

Sound adds extra dimension to Volvo Ocean Race Round-the-world yacht racing is not wholly a spectator sport, but enthusiasts are able to keep up with all the action thanks to modern communications and video technology, writes Kevin Hilton

ramatic pictures are all well and good, but sound is always needed to not only put them in context but give them a human aspect as well – which is why the boats taking part in the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) are as fitted out with microphones as they are cameras. These help capture not just the many and changing moods of the seas – from raging storms to idyllic, almost eerie calm – but also life aboard cramped vessels where everyone has to work and live together. It is these personal aspects that the media team behind the 2014–15 VOR are highlighting. Over its 42-year history, the spotlight of the competition, which was known as the Whitbread Round the World Race until Volvo became the primary sponsor in 2001, has swung from the yachts and the sea to the people who pit their sailing skills and endurance against both. “When Volvo took over the race we made the focus more about the people taking part than the boats and the water,” says VOR technology director Jordi Neves. “There are 66 sailors spending 140 days at sea and we want to reflect that using the technology available to us: video, audio, satellite phones and email.” This technology is a mixture of hardware, software and communication circuits, provided variously by Livewire Digital; Inmarsat; and Cobham group companies Tactical Communications and Surveillance (TCS) and SATCOM. This forms a platform for both keeping the crews in touch with race headquarters in Alicante, Spain – and, by extension, home – and producing broadcast and online programmes that document the progress of the racers and their lives afloat. A key figure in producing this record is the onboard reporter (OBR). This non-sailing member of the crew contributes to daily life on board by preparing meals – from freeze-dried ingredients – as well as writing a daily blog and compiling reports that are sent over IP and satellite links to the VOR broadcast centre, also in Alicante. These form part of a weekly TV programme, Life at the Extreme. This is produced by Sunset+Vine and, as well as onboard footage, features material shot at each port stop, including pictures from chase boats and helicopters. The 2014–15 VOR marks a departure from previous races in having a single design of boat. The seven Volvo Ocean (VO) 65s have been built to the same blueprint, with same hull, keel and sail configurations. This means that the richest teams can now longer

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43 APRIL 2015

“I could get away with poorer quality imagery for the [Vestas Wind] crash coverage but not poor audio. Getting clean sound made that footage” Brian Carlin, onboard reporter, Team Vestas Wind

gain an advantage by building the highest-spec vessel possible. As part of this, each yacht features the same communications and video production set-up. One of the starting points for acquiring material is the array of waterproof microphones and cameras built into the hull. These were designed and produced by Livewire Digital to, as managing director Tristan Wood explains, withstand the often-extreme environment on board the VO 65s. The mics are designed to be used for interviews, usually in the cockpit area, as well as for capturing the voices of the crew as they work and general ambience. They can also be part of a an intercom system between

the helms and the navigation area below deck, plus sailors using iPhones fitted with wireless capability and the CrewComm app. A pair of mics is positioned either side of each of the two helms, with another between the hatchways to pick up crewmembers working on the winches and one on the mast below the camera on the radar covering the foredeck. These can be used for both live broadcast and recording, with feeds run down to the audio mixer at the media desk. The desk is not an ideal workspace – located as it is at the stern of each boat next to the navigator’s area – but it does provide the OBR somewhere to compile and edit reports on a laptop running Apple’s Final Cut Pro. The reporter selects camera and mic feeds through a control panel and combines these with footage shot on camcorders. Video is then sent to the media centre using the Livewire M-Link Newscaster software application through the Cobham SATCOM FleetBroadband 500 or 250 antennas. Cobham TCS’s NETNode Mesh IP radio provides IP connectivity for email and internet access, with COFDM modulation to integrate video, audio and GPS information. Brian Carlin, OBR with Team Vestas Wind, uses both a Canon 5D MkIII digital SLR and a GoPro camera for shooting more specific material. The Canon is fitted with a

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Røde VideoMic Pro in “a ﬂuffy”.. Team Vestas Wind is currently out of the race after the yacht ran aground on an isolated reef in the Indian Ocean on the evening of 29 November 2014. While his crewmates worked to secure the damaged vessel, Carlin got on with the job of recording the action and then saving as much footage and equipment as possible before the crew abandoned ship. He also had to decide which camera to take off the boat: “I decided on the GoPro because it is waterproof but also because I wanted audio quality over image quality. The GoPro has an onboard mic and although it’s not great it’s what I needed to do. I could get away with poorer quality imagery for the crash coverage but not poor audio. Getting clean sound was what made that footage.” Everyone got off the Vestas Wind safely and they ensured there was as little environmental impact as possible to the shoals. The boat is being rebuilt and the aim is for Carlin and his crewmates to rejoin the race at the Lisbon stop in June. Meanwhile, the other six VO 65s left Auckland in New Zealand on 17 March and are expected to arrive at Itajaí, Brazil during the early part of this month. www.volvooceanrace.com www.livewire.co.uk

44 APRIL 2015

Live

Node perform at the Royal College of Music

United Kingdom

Meeting of the modulars On the rare occasion of a concert by analogue synthesizer collective Node, Mustt Audio and Flare delivered the punch but stayed out of sight. Dave Robinson has a big smile on his face

espite their chosen name, Node don’t get together very often. In fact, if you weren’t standing on the concourse of Paddington station in 1995, you won’t have heard them play live before. That incarnation of the band and unusual (to say the least) concert followed the 1995 release of Node the album on Deviant Records, and featured legendary producer Flood, and composers Ed Buller and David Bessell, academic composer and audio researcher. The band performed on rare and vintage analogue synthesizers worth, and their music recalls the ‘Berlin School’ of Tangerine Dream and suchlike of the mid’’70s: dense textures and bubbling sequencer lines. (Full disclosure – the writer’s very favourite type of music.) In February, Node were back after a 20-year break, with Mel Wesson replacing Gary Stout from the original 1995 line-up. The landmark Node Live concert took place in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall at the Royal College of Music in London in late February. The band delivered a talk to students on the ins and outs (as iut were) of analogue synths ahead of that evening’s soundcheck and gig. Mel Wesson spoke to PSNEurope in a precious few minutes of gig-day downtime. Wesson is a programmer and musician who, among other things, collaborates with soundtrack composers to produce ambient and atmospheric landscapes for the movies. Originally a programmer and session musician, Wesson says he’s not a synth collector per se – he just “bought the

tools for the job as his clients required them”. He has a working relationship with Hans Zimmer that stretches back to a time when, as 20-year-olds, they would be “programming a [SCI] Prophet 5 together, then we’d run off to do music for a cornflakes ad or something!” You can hear Wesson’s fingerprints and a recording of his then-unnamed baby daughter on the hidden track Deep Freeze on 1997 Verve album Urban Hymns. Wesson first met Flood 30 years ago when the young Mark Ellis was an engineer at London’s legendary Trident Studios. Before this, as it transpires, both men were present at the Tangerine Dream performance at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls in 1975, a gig that would form the backbone of the German synth pioneers’ first live album, the landmark Ricochet. “Flood got in touch to say he was putting the Node thing back together, and did I want to come down and jam with them?” reveals Wesson. The first sessions in Flood’s Battery studio in north London were held in December 2011, but it wasn’t until mid-2014 that the second Node album (Node 2, no less) saw the light of day via Ian Boddy’s ‘ambient electronica’ DiN label. “We always had to put our schedules down so we could do this,” says Wesson. “It’s purely for fun, and to work without any restraints or constraints from directors or film companies. The only financial restraints are ones we’ve set ourselves, because it’s costing a lot to put this on! It’s a fair observation to suggest that no other collective of musicians working today would be capable

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of putting a project of this scale together. Certainly, the gig represents the largest collection of modular systems gathered together in one place outside of the NAMM Show. “This is a way to express ourselves and remind ourselves of a music without the music business” is how Wesson describes it. Indeed, in the talk for RCM students, Flood says: “Analogue synths are a good reﬂection of the human individual.” Wesson’s modular stack, downstage right, is typical of the instruments at the gig. On the bottom is a Moog 3C from 1969, “The classic Moog with the 901 oscillators. How one tiny module can make such a vast noise is phenomenal.” Above that is a cabinet of “interfaces, attenuators, mixers and clock interfaces” made by Moon Modular of Germany. “For me, the most interesting is what’s on top: the PPG 300, an analogue system from about 1974,” says Wesson. Elsewhere in his assemblage you’ll ﬁnd a PPG Wave 2 synth, an EMS VCS3, a Minimoog and more. That’s just a taste of the tens of thousands of pounds worth of synthesiser heaven sitting on the RCM stage. “The biggest problem with us four individuals is the difficulty in getting everything to talk to each other. There are many different clockable devices here. So we have MTC [MIDI Timecode] coming from a laptop (hidden in the wings), and we read that clock using MIDI interfaces converting to gate/CV controllers, and break that down into 8s and 16s and so on.” As Wesson returns to tune and tweak his kit with the

46 APRIL 2015

Live

three other analogue aﬁcionados, PSNEurope grabs a word with the PA department. “Our aim is to be invisible,” says Waq of Mustt Audio, supplier of the Flare Audio rig for the evening. “We are there to transfer the music from the musicians, as it should be! I come from a studio background so I understand the pain musicians go through.” Waq was already running Yellow Arts studio in Sheffield when he started Mustt Audio, back in 2004, providing sound for bands, orchestras and DJ events. Jarvis Cocker is a friend and customer. He explains how the nascent Flare brand came to his attention: “I’ve used a lot of audio systems; a lot of them were great, but I still didn’t have that satisfaction of bridging the gap between the sound in the studio and the sound on stage,” he says. “We were on a tour and we

Mel Wesson mans his modular stack

Two Flare Audio X2As provide frontﬁlls for Node Live

brought in a monitor engineer who mentioned Flare. That’s how it started.” Waq eventually ventured south to hear a Flare system at a club event in Brighton. “The first system, the Stealth Array I’d never heard HF like it!” Mustt has been a Flare user since and – full disclosure here – has worked for the company since November 2014. Two X2A (frontfills) and four X5A cabinets provide the 390-capacity Amaryllis Hall with mid-high definition coverage, while six flat-panel bass units (SB21Cs) deliver the full and controllable bass needed for the dense textural soundscapes generated by the quartet. Originally, only two X5As were on the rider, but than FOH engineer Steev Toth decided to start the gig with the sound of the band emanating from the back of the hall, then sweeping ‘down and to the front’ as the music pulsed and grew. Hence, two more X5As were added (Mustt brought spare kit!) along with Flare S1 studio monitors and X0 boxes (featuring a 4” driver in a compact point source cab) to complete the effect. Because of the scope of Node’s visual set up, it was important that sightlines were not interrupted by speaker stacks. Flare’s slim but powerful speaker system was an ideal choice. Lab.gruppen PLM amps with Lake processing provide the juice for the night. At set up, Waq noted that during the set up there was “a little dip in the low mid EQ to accommodate for room modes, but that’s it.” He recommended a Soundcraft Vi1 for Toth, because the FOH man wanted “an analogue-style

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47 APRIL 2015

set up where he can just walk up and use it in ﬁve minutes”. The mix is surprisingly troublefree. There are four pairs of stereo ins, one from each musician, as each is responsible for his own mix on stage, executed with individual compact Mackie mixers. Toth also sends a monitor mix back to each of the four – no additional

means they are great for stacking and touring too. “The speakers’ rear rejection courtesy of the Vortex Technology, means a really clean stage sound - the monitors can be a

lower output - it’s a lot more of a pleasant experience for the artist. The X2s on the stage: they look more like power supplies than speakers. “Nothing [Flare make] looks like a speaker. Even Mel from the

desk needed here – who listen back on their own monitors. “It’s such a great spectacle on stage, the idea is to make the PA invisible. This is something we love to do: so you can get immersed in the sounds.” After the event and two hours of dark, pulsing explorations into deep and rhythmic textures – all rather reminiscent of Tangerine Dream c. 1977 – Wesson will comment: “We wanted to hear everything from those old synths, the highs, the lows, each uninvited rattle and hum… Flare gave us a truly dynamic sound; a perfect match for our ancient technology.” Back to Waq: he comments that the reduced size of the Flare speakers

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band and pointed at them and said, what’s that? Someone else said, what are you doing putting a ﬂightcase up there?” www.ﬂareaudio.com www.musttaudio.com

Live

48 APRIL 2015

The band take to the stage at the start of a 200-date tour Photo: Jan De Meuleneir

Belgium

Shop gear For the ﬁrst big gig at De Shop, Antwerp’s newest venue, sound engineer Peter Philips found his new Avid S3L-X console was the icing on the cake for Cookies and Cream. Marc Maes licks his lips

t the end of February, De Shop, Antwerp, hosted a showcase for acclaimed covers band Cookies and Cream. It was a unique opportunity to test the band’s 2015–16 setlist before a 2,000-strong live audience of events organisers, companies and festivals. The show at the former dockworkers’ employment office marked the start of a 200-date tour for the band, and the first with a “fixed” FOH configuration, provided for the tour by rental company Lemon. Sound engineer Peter Philips used De Shop’s installed ‘C-Type’ main FOH system (developed by production giant PRG), in combination with 12 d&b Q-Subs and four d&b cardioid J-Subs. d&b Q1 and C6 bozes served as fills and delays. The PA was steered by his S3L-X desk, with a DiGiCo SD8 for in-ear monitors. “The fact that the venue, for the first time, was at full capacity encouraged us to bring along more subs and extra delay speakers and outfills to complement the fixed install in the venue, which is normally used for corporate events, receptions and presentations,” explains Philips. “The Shop […] has a stone tile floor, brick walls and huge glass windows, requiring extra acoustic measures and more speakers.” In addition to the extra cabinets, logistical support company Kick installed some 60m² of TexLnt mobile low-frequency baffles, drastically improving the hall’s acoustics. Placing the d&b subs in a cardioid speaker setting

reduced reﬂections on the back walls,” explains Jan Van Hove, managing director of Lemon. Van Hove is a dedicated d&b user, and his company, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has grown along with the increasing demand for the band. Peter Philips decided to replace the original Soundcraft MH3 analogue console with an Avid VENUE S3L-X desk for this tour. “The band’s set is becoming more complex, and in addition to the added value of touring with a ﬁxed FOH set-up, the upgrade to digital is a bonus both in logistics and functionality,” he says. “For Cookies and Cream, we have 40 inputs, including linear timecode coming from the stage. I use Pro Tools 11 for recording and virtual soundcheck, allowing me to program snapshots and trigger them automatically from the incoming timecode.” The console also features a McDSP ML4000 multiband compressor/limiter (on the mix bus), AE400 active EQ (on vocals, kick and piano), MC 2000 multiband compressor (on the keyboards) and Sonnox Trans-Mod plug-ins. “I also use an Avid ModDelay III, a Moogerfooger phaser and analogue delay, a SansAmp PSA-1 pre-amp, and Avid Reel Tape Suite plug-ins.” The choice of Avid was inspired by Philips’ familiarity with the D-Command format through his work in the post-production sector, “and also the compact size of the console – it’s probably the most compact digital console offering 64 inputs”. The S3L’s latest software version can

www.psneurope.com/live

Peter Philips prefers an S3L-X at FOH (photo: Marc Maes)

be used to control Pro Tools, which comes in handy for those post-production assignments. Another advantage, he notes, is that plug-ins emulating most of his analogue peripherals are now available. “For the Cookies concerts, I decided to leave extra outboard gear at home,” he says. On stage, the band use eight wireless Shure PSM 900 IEM in-ears and two Shure UR4D handheld microphones. To further reduce volume on stage, the drum kit is equipped with Zildjian Gen 16 cymbals and a digital snare drum. “In doing so, I get full control at the FOH position, and that’s crucial for smaller or corporate events,” concludes Philips. No doubt Cookies and Cream will be whipping up the crowds around Europe in the months to come. www.lemonbvba.be www.cookiesandcream.be www.de-shop.be

50 APRIL 2015

Live

Luciano Ligabue knows how to rock… (Photo: Jarno Iotti)

Italy

Seeing red in Rimini

Custom red grilles for the RCF TTL hangs (Photo: Mike Clark)

Italian rocker Ligabue takes unusual step, touring with his own RCF PA, writes Mike Clark

aunchy singer/songwriter Ligabue’s fans like their music loud and, although they’re getting their money’s worth on the artist’s current sold-out tour of large indoor sports arenas, the audio team is cutting no corners as far as sonic quality is concerned either. In fact, to ensure the max sound-wise, the artist and his hard-hitting band, featuring the twin guitars of Federico “Fede” Poggipollini and Max Cottafavi, Luciano Luisi on keyboards, US drummer Michael Urbano and Davide Pezzin on bass, are using an expansive RCF TTL

PA purchased by Ligabue’s management, Riservarossa. With the exclusion of the PA, all the audio equipment and crew on tour was provided by Nuovo Service, a company from Toscanelle di Dozza with 30 years of audio and lighting rental to its credit with many of Italy’s top artists and for key events countrywide. Owner Willie Gubellini, audio chief on the tour, explains: “Although normal practice in the past, for the ﬁrst time in recent years, an artist’s management company decided to purchase the PA.” Alberto Butturini, Ligabue’s FOH engineer since

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2008, has also worked with countless other Italian artists. “As far as I’m concerned, these dates are almost identical to last year’s stadium shows, although the rig has been scaled down to get into smaller venues, and varies in size according to the speciﬁc arena. “Regarding the sound, the set-up is giving us great satisfaction. We’ve used it in a wide variety of venues, starting with the Royal Albert Hall in 2013, then small cities’ indoor sports facilities with a 1,000–1,500 capacity, and we’re now doing large indoor arenas.” The RCF systems at the audio team’s disposal are

51 APRIL 2015

deployed according to the venues’ dimensions and layout, and the figures are impressive: 68 TTL 55-A selfpowered line array modules (for main and side hangs), 18 TTL 36 AS flown subwoofers, 18 TTL 33-A line array modules (as extra side hangs when required), six more TTL 33-A as front fills and thirty TTS 56-A subs installed on the floor along the front of the stage. “I must say I’ve always enjoyed working with the system,” says Butturini. “I’ve obviously got to know it better gig after gig, as has the team responsible for the PA on tour, and we’ve thus all accumulated experience in a wide variety of situations, optimising its performance and achieving excellent results.” Emanuele Morlini, an external consultant with RCF, works on the development of new pro products; he designed the set-up and is responsible for its control on this tour. “All the systems fielded are strictly off-theshelf, except the custom red finish on the front grilles, chosen by the production’s creative team,” he explains. The main problem Morlini faced was the decision to use a set similar to last year’s stadium tour, in which visibility for the audience is more than the traditional 180°. In fact, the large curved LED screen also enables spectators to make the most of the show from the sides of the stage, but they have to be reached by the same sonic ‘message’ as those out front. Morlini adds, “Mid-high frequency coverage is ensured by the various line array hangs, in some venues adding a small (6-module) ‘extra-side’ cluster, positioned to ensure almost

240° coverage, but we had to complete the coverage with the floor-mounted subs, so used a curved line with groups of three modules in cardioid configuration, plus an ‘endfire’ array at each side of the stage.”

Butturini concludes: “I’m not inﬂuenced either way by the fact that a PA is manufactured in Italy or elsewhere, but judge it exclusively on the results it gives. The RCF system has a great sound, suited

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to Luciano’s music, and I hope to have the opportunity of using it with other artists and other genres in the future.” www.nuovoservice.com www.rcf.it

52 APRIL 2015

Installation

Thousands trekked to Leicester Cathedral to see Richard III’s coffin Photos: Paul Kent Photography

United Kingdom

Out of my sight! Van Damme cabling enables discreet installation for NoiseBoys ahead of Richard III reinterment at Leicester Cathedral, ﬁnds Dave Robinson

he discovery of the bones of King Richard III has caused much excitement amongst historians and, following the decision to reinter his remains in the cathedral at Leicester, sparked a massive refurbishment of that establishment including detailed attention to the cathedral’s AV systems. Stepping up to the task was Leicester pro-audio and acoustics consultancy NoiseBoys Technologies who, having won the competitive tender to become preferred supplier to Leicester Cathedral in August 2013, was commissioned to design and install a completely new audio system. All the cabling for the new system was Van Damme, supplied and assembled by VDC Trading. The system was speciﬁed by Arup, the engineering consultancy, as a speech-only, distributed point source system, which “would have sounded good, but visually would not have been nice,” says Phill Beynon, technical director for NoiseBoys. “It would have meant multiple column speakers on most pillars in the cathedral at eye-height. So we approached the lead architect with the Pan Beam system: Pan Beam sound great for speech, but the beauty of them is that they can be mounted way up near the ceiling and digitally steered down to exactly where the sound is needed. There’s multiple steerable array columns on the market, but the Pan Beams really stood out because the new PPL versions allowed us to run audio, control data and power for the internal amps over two cores of Van Damme’s installation microphone cable.

“The fact that we only needed one cable with a tiny diameter to each speaker meant that we could hide it really easily in the fabric of the building, and cut our installation time right down on what ended up being a tight schedule.” The installation involves multiple zones around the cathedral, each one crystal clear in its reproduction of speech, yet natural in the context of the cathedral’s space and acoustics. Each zone can function individually for smaller services, or the whole cathedral can be used as one space for larger gatherings. There are nine Pan Beam speakers (three PB16, two PB08 and four PB04) covering the whole of the cathedral’s main space (the nave and the aisles), with six JBL CBT 50’s covering three side chapels and Richard III’s tomb area. An additional passive PB04 is used in the altar area as ‘clergy foldback’, and there are some JBL Control 25s covering the ‘back of house’ rooms such as the vestry, each with a volume control. There’s also a wireless link to a bell tower monitor. The control system is BSS Soundweb, and is designed to be very capable, yet simply presented to the users, most of whom are non-technical staff or volunteers. Day-to-day control of the Soundweb is achieved via a touch-screen tablet, allowing vergers to tap once to set up the entire cathedral, but more advanced users to mix services live. Microphones comprise a mixture of DPA and AKG units, and at the mix position Tascam provides the playback and recording devices. The whole system is

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connected using a variety of cabling options by Van Damme from VDC Trading. Beynon continues: “We chose Van Damme from VDC because of their exceptional reputation; they are always our first choice for cable, so we were confident that we would get great customer support and a product with uncompromising quality. The Leicester Cathedral project was quite complex and we needed a variety of cabling solutions for different areas within the building and we knew that VDC were able to provide this, which made our job so much easier. We were able to design a sound system with small and discreet cabling, which gave us the flexibility to produce a solution that did not impact on the integrity of such a historic building, but also doesn’t compromise on the superb sound quality which is so important.”

NoiseBoy Phill Beynon with his iPad controller

53 APRIL 2015

JBL CBT 50 line array column, VDC cabling

reinforcement for all of the Radio 3 services broadcast from the cathedral during the week of ceremonies and celebrations of the reinternment. As PSNEurope went to press, coverage in all parts of the press (TV, radio, print and online) was very heavy;

Leicester Cathedral is concerned with telling the story of King Richard III and to help visitors understand what they’re looking at when they visit, and to that end has commissioned a series of interpretative displays. Unlike the interesting and historically informative displays over the road in the Visitor Centre, these are not designed so much to inform or entertain as to stimulate people to think – and maybe also to pray. They will do this by linking aspects of the story of the life and death of Richard III with the stories of our own lives.

Late 16c portrait of Richard III at the National Portrait Gallery

Established in 2009, NoiseBoys is the typical small operator: a team of three at the core who call on the resources of freelancers when required. “Our regular installs to date have been mainly house of worship, but we’re moving into the corporate and education markets at the moment, as well as building up a hire stock.” Leicester Cathedral has been NoiseBoys’ biggest installation project to date, “and also the most formal, involving multiple architects and three different contracts throughout the installation,” says Beynon. The start date was subject to the decision on where Richard III was going to be reinterred, so the installer only started “on the ground” properly in January 2015, with a deadline of mid-February. The ﬁrm was also contracted to provide live sound

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Beynon noted that there were “currently 83 camera crews in attendance for the week, so we’re looking forward to being part of something that has attracted so much interest from around the globe!” www.noiseboys.co.uk

54 APRIL 2015

Installation

A Yamaha QL1 desk controls the new sound system

United Kingdom

SFL’s inclusivity offering at St Martins Dave Robinson talks to sales and installation manager Tim Horton following the overhaul of the landmark church

FL Group has just completed an upgrade of the audio system at central London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields church. The new system is based mainly around a Yamaha QL1 console, L-Acoustics loudspeakers, and microphone technology from Sennheiser and Shure. St Martin-In-The-Fields is one of London’s most famous houses of worship, and welcomes on average 750,000 visitors – religious or otherwise – to its services, events and music performances every year. The church claims to have made one of the very first religious broadcasts (incredibly, as early as 1924), and it continues to broadcast to people around the world. SFL reports an extensive portfolio of worship installations from its 20-year history; having presented a proof of concept with a Yamaha LS9 digital console, the company was asked to undertake the project at St Martins. “Being open and inclusive are the cornerstones of the church’s mission, part of which is ensuring that its congregation and audiences enjoy the best possible sound at its services and musical performances,” says SFL sales and installations manager Tim Horton. “Originally we were going to use the LS9, because we needed a console with a small footprint, but it was also very important for the church to have Dan Dugan auto microphone mixing. When we saw the QL1, which has the Dan Dugan facility built in, it was the obvious choice.” It made the system “more flexible, yet more straightforward, than any other solution”, adds Horton. The historic architecture of St Martin-in-the-Fields meant that aesthetics were just as important as acoustics, so the QL1 is installed in an unobtrusive oak cabinet which matches the pews around it. The same was expected of the L-Acoustics 8XTi and 5XT speakers, which were supplied in brown or white finishes, to

match wood or paintwork as required. SFL added time-aligned EM Acoustics i2 speakers in the exterior portico so that concerts/services could be as “inclusive as possible”. Complementing the console is a Yamaha Rio1608-D I/O unit at the altar end of the church, plus a pair of Ro8-D output units for broadcast requirements. While the church’s concerts are largely classical, ‘unplugged’style performances are also popular, so the Rio1608-D allows for amplified instruments and also powered monitoring or IEMs to be used when needed. Horton says it was no big deal task when it came to teaching the staff: “Yamaha digital consoles are inherently straightforward and we set the QL1 up with scenes for different uses, all on the user-defined keys. “We just spent a day with the vergers, concert team and some of the clergy showing them how to use it. The Dan Dugan facility means that the console can often be unmanned but, if they need to mix a performance, they can.” The spec continues with 11 Shure MX412C lectern mics, plus five wireless microphone systems

The magniﬁcent Walker 3,000-pipe organ was installed in 1990

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St Martins is just off London’s Trafalgar Square

(Sennheiser EW300, spot-tuned to deal with the complex RF environment in central London) and some ambient microphones, important for broadcasting sermons around the building, reports Horton. The ﬁnal hurdle for SFL was the installation window, because the church is open to the public every day. The SFL installation team, headed by James CremerEvans, worked a fortnight of 10pm–6am sessions, a fair amount of which was spent ensuring the system was as invisible or discreetly complementary as possible. Horton noted that 2015 is already proving to be a busy year for the 45 staff of SFL, with a diary full of installations and events rolling out from both their Reading and Peterborough sites. “Yamaha and L-Acoustics are proving to be successful product ranges for both divisions of the business, along with d&b and Barco,” he adds. www.sﬂgroup.co.uk

Feature School’s in 56

APRIL 2015

Six months on, Jon Chapple asks more training providers for their take on the state of the pro-audio education market

hile institutions like the School of Audio Engineering, Alchemea College and the Academy of Contemporary Music have long offered a solid education for the audio engineers of the future, the last few years have seen a rising number of pro-audio manufacturers, distributors, dealers, hire companies and industry associations make training a key component of their product offering. From SDUK’s Shure Academy initiative and wireless spectrum campaigns to Audinate’s Dante networking roadshows and Yamaha’s Live Sound Surgery workshops, an educational component is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous part of the average pro-audio company’s core business. But, as we discovered when we last looked at the state of the training market late last year (‘Making the grade in studio/broadcast’, PSNEurope September

2014, and ‘Making the grade in live/installed sound’, PSNEurope October 2014), education and continuing professional development (CPD) is becoming more and more important for end users, too: as Prism Sound’s Elliot Whyte said in September, “There are [so many] people who want to work in pro audio […], so the key thing is to make sure you stand out – go above and beyond what is required for your training.” “As current technology develops so quickly, training and education have arguably never been more important, both for hopeful and new entrants to the industry and for established professionals,” says

Via the QSC YouTube channel, Patrick Heyn (left) and Nathan Makaryk show viewers how to use the FX Wizard function of its TouchMix mixer in episode four of its series of TouchMix training videos

Rodrigo Thomaz, Audio-Technica’s Brazilian-born new product training specialist. “Digital technology allows for an incredible pace of change, and simply keeping up with developments – even in areas of an individual’s particular expertise – often requires some form of training almost to stand still!”

Basic sound engineering training at the ISCE

www.psneurope.com/training

“It goes without saying that no one has an exceptional experience with poor audio,” adds Melissa Taggart, senior vice-president of education, certiﬁcation and standards at InfoComm International. “[Proper] training and education are required [to be a successful sound engineer] in the wide variety of venues and applications this industry supports.” Christophe Anet, education and training manager for Genelec, echoes Thomaz’s and Taggart’s comments but draws a distinction between the two parts of his job title. “Training [as opposed to education] implies a continuous process where one has to constantly be up to date with all the latest technological developments present in our industry,” he explains. “Production methods, signal transmission, control surfaces, transducer development, etc., change and evolve more quickly than ever. In order to select the appropriate solution for one’s need, there is no other way than to be able to compare different technologies, [and] this requires the user to have a deep understanding of each technological advantage and limitation. “As environmentalist and Patagonia company founder Yvon Chouinard states, ‘The more you know, the less you need.’” Anet believes that, “considering all the affordable quality equipment available”, it’s easier than ever

57 APRIL 2015

“Education should be the most sought-after thing – more than the dollar; more than the big gig, the big tour – because with the proper education and training [everything] else will follow” Jeffrey Cox, Eighteen Sound

represent. That’s why all QSC training is engaging, concise and always lighthearted and entertaining, which is a direct reﬂection of our corporate culture.” While the internet has indeed increased the educational choices available to aspiring audio engineers, Ros Wigmore, secretariat manager at historic learned society the Institute of Sound and Communications Engineers (ISCE), stresses the importance of choosing a trusted, credible training provider – something especially true in the information overload that is life in the 21st century. “The internet is a wonderful resource but is prone to having inaccurate technical information [...] – and it is surprising how often it is!” she says. Like QSC, another manufacturer taking full advantage of the possibilities provided by new media

is Italian loudspeaker company Eighteen Sound, which produces components including woofers, drivers and horns in the city of Reggio Emilia. Jeffrey Cox, Eighteen Sound’s business development, marketing and sales manager, emphasises that, in a world where most users buy loudspeakers as a complete box, it’s important for manufacturers companies like Eighteen Sound to educate the pro-audio industry and the wider public about the science behind loudspeaker design. “Education in this industry should be the most sought-after thing – more than the dollar; more than the big gig, the big tour – because with the proper education and training the big gig, the big tour, the big dollar will all follow,” he comments. Eighteen Sound’s educational offering is centred around Loudspeaker Lyceum, a continuously updated

TRAINING DIRECTORY to start out in the industry – but “the challenge to become a highly skilled engineer, producer, mixer, etc., is still as difficult – and possibly harder – as before.” Thomaz concedes that professional audio is “clearly, a very competitive [industry]; lots of people want to work in it”, but also points to “arguably more opportunities for all kinds of roles in recording, postproduction, live, broadcast, etc., situations than there have been in the past.” He continues: “Whether it’s harder to advance in the pro-audio industry these days is perhaps hard to quantify – but, in terms of advancing knowledge, with access to online resources, videos and manufacturer-organised training it’s probably never been easier.” Said training from Audio-Technica for the year ahead includes a new dealer training programme, which will “assist dealers of [Audio-Technica and distributed brands] in being comfortable with our products [and] to understand the features and product conﬁgurations”, and a series of on-site training sessions featuring kit by Audio-Technica, Allen & Heath and Vicoustic. “We’re currently in the process of ﬁtting out demo rooms with various types of Vicoustic acoustic treatment, which will allow us to give visitors a real understanding of how and where to treat a room to get the best from it,” explains Thomaz. One company which has found great success with its in-house training programme is Costa Mesa, California-based QSC Audio Products, which offers online and classroom-style courses geared at proaudio professionals and systems integrators. “Online training has really changed the game for us,” says Patrick Heyn, QSC’s senior manager for training and education. “We can reach people so much more effectively and efficiently with these platforms, on a truly global scale.” Heyn emphasises, however, that online training “doesn’t mean presenting insufferable PowerPoint slides, set to monotone narration. Training needs to be as engaging and accessible as the products they

Audio-Technica Starting this month, Audio-Technica is running end-user operational training for GLD, iLive and QU series digital desks by distributed brand Allen & Heath at its Leeds office. (It already offered a number of training opportunities with Allen & Heath products, including digital and analogue desks and XONE DJ equipment.) Training will also be offered on the company’s range of wireless systems and Dante-enabled networked audio products. “With the increasing interest of audio over Ethernet and the convergence of audio and IT in installations, it’s really important for ‘audio guys’ to understand the power of using Dante and other protocols in networks and the functionality and control it can bring,” says Audio-Technica’s Rodrigo Thomaz. www.audio-technica.com

day ‘All About Audio’ programme and short troubleshooting courses like ‘What’s That Noise?’. www.infocomm.org

ISCE The ISCE runs courses on sound engineering basics, such as the principles of networks, basic electronics for sound engineers, live sound engineering and designing for speech intelligibility, as well as training on standards for voice alarm and audio frequency induction loops. “We believe that it is the practical element of our courses that is really appreciated, along with the willingness of our lecturers to answer questions at any time during the course,” says secretariat manager Ros Wigmore. “The ISCE is all about opening up technical dialogue and sharing the knowledge gained through experience.” www.isce.org.uk

Genelec “For more than 35 years, Genelec has been a pioneer in active monitoring – and for that reason we have continuously dedicated an important part of our activity to education, training, lectures, seminars, etc,” says Genelec’s Christophe Anet, outlining the Finnish manufacturer’s training offering. “Genelec continues to provide online education and training, as well as face-to-face seminars and lectures, the world over. We will grow our offering in webinars, educational videos, animations and more. Stay tuned!” www.genelec.com

InfoComm International In addition to its courses for pro-AV and systems integration professionals, AV/communications industry association InfoComm offers a three-

www.psneurope.com/training

QSC Audio Products Training for the Q-Sys integrated system platform is available in two ﬂavours: Level 1, for beginners, is a video-based online course that is “quick, nonlinear, oftentimes hilarious and, best of all, free and open to the public,” says QSC’s Patrick Heyn, while Level 2 training is takes place in a classroom and teaches “advanced techniques in paging, user control interface design, third-party control and diagnostics”. On the rental side, the latest addition QSC’s training library is the Touch Mix Training Online series of videos, which offer “succinct training in real-world mixing situations while keeping the viewer fully engaged with effective animation and off-the-wall humour”. www.youtube.com/qscaudioproducts

58 APRIL 2015

Feature

CHALLENGES OF CONVERGENCE As the sine waves of the AV world and the ones and zeroes of information technology continue to converge, the ISCE’s Ros Wigmore believes it’s important that the pro-audio/AV industry provides IT technicians with the necessary education about the finer nuances of sound quality – and why audio can’t be treated as “just another data file”. She explains: “From an IT perspective, it may seem like a good idea to use as small as possible data file to free up network traffic – and, of course, those heavily compressed audio files are deemed to be acceptable to the masses through earbud headphones – however, us audio practitioners will visibly change pallor at the thought of one series of videos hosted by R&D manager Steve Hutt highlighting “a variety of topics relevant to transducer/ loudspeaker design, manufacture, behaviour and terminology”. (Eagled eyed readers may have spotted the Loudspeaker Lyceum videos The Spec Sheet, The Moving Parts and The Stationary Parts hosted on the

PSNEurope website and featured in our fortnightly

of these MP3-style audio files being broadcast over our finely tuned PA system because it will sound awful. There simply isn’t enough audio information. “Further, to the uneducated, 30 milliseconds would seem to be a very small amount of time, but in terms of sound it is a huge time lag that makes audio unintelligible. The ear–brain system requires discrete audio arrivals within 12–15ms in order for the audio to be coherent. “So, there are two simple examples of where specialist audio technicians and engineers are required – and why audio cannot be regarded as just another data file.” PSNTraining newsletter.) “Loudspeaker Lyceum is our portal to [our] education pieces,” explains Cox. “There are no short-cuts for success in pro audio: it’s a case of working hard to acquire as much knowledge as possible, but equally getting out there and working with absolutely anything,” says Rodrigo Thomaz. “One day you might be mixing a rock band

www.psneurope.com/training

and next recording a classical quartet. “Sometimes the challenges to break into pro audio have little to do with audio itself. Just be persistent, humble and keep learning.” “We should respect our industry as a science and an art form,” concludes Jeffrey Cox. “We can’t do that without being properly educated.” www.eighteensound.it www.psneurope.com/training

KEY POINTS: • Owing to the speed of the development of audio technology, “training and education have arguably never been more important, both for hopeful and new entrants to the industry and established professionals” • An increasing number of manufacturers, distributors, hire companies and industry associations are making training a key component of their product offering • Online training has “really changed the game” – but, more than ever, it needs to be accessible and engaging to its audience

Hither & dither

61 APRIL 2015

We might have redesigned the magazine, but there is one thing that will never change. Oh, dear me, no... We’ve been waiting many a year to show you this: NOT a room full of instruments, technical gear and, er, a carnivorous ﬁsh after all – in fact, some clever and innovative USB sticks. ETC’s Source Four light is particularly impressive (and must have cost a fortune…!)

More pictures from our ﬁrst PSNPresents night last month – taken in the bar, of course. Recognise anyone here?

Members of the original Radiophonic Workshop performed at the launch of the Korg Odyssey synth last month: and, as they played an excerpt from the BBC’s 1981 series Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who should appear among them but Trillian!

Finally, PSNEurope got to see the brilliant Underworld perform the 20th anniversary version of dubnobasswithmyheadman at the Eventim Apollo, surrounded by hundreds of ecstatic 40-somethings. (Thanks to Abbey Road and 9PR for making it happen!)

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Please send all contributions for possible publication to drobinson@nbmedia.com

62 APRIL 2015

Backtalk

Andrew Dudman Erica Basnicki talks to the award-winning engineer about Sondheim, the new Star Wars series and – inevitably – Gravity

hings you may already know about Andrew Dudman: he is a senior engineer at Abbey Road Studios, and his credits include the biggest film franchises in history – namely Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Things you may not know about him: he is one of the very few engineers in the world who has made a recording using the Royal Family’s microphones (for The King’s Speech), he’s spent the better part of the last 18 months working on Rob Marshall’s epic fairytale reimagining Into the Woods (when he wasn’t busy with critically acclaimed weightlessness worrier Gravity) and he was named studio engineer of the year at the 2014 Pro Sound Awards. It seems fitting, then, as we launch the 2015 awards, to shine a light on one of the brightest stars in film sound.

Congratulations again on your award! Thank you! It was quite the surprise. I wasn’t really expecting it… but it’s amazing what can happen when you have something called Gravity on your CV [laughs].

That was a good little bit of work. I really enjoyed it. And it was a “little” bit of work, because I didn’t have anything to do with the mixing of it, just the recording. I really feel for Gareth [Cousins], who did mix it. When it comes to the ﬁlm awards season, the music engineers aren’t included in the award categories unless they are part of the dubbing mix team. Especially as Steven Price’s Oscar-winning score was so central to the sound mix.

Are the songs permanently stuck in your head now? [Sings theme; laughs] I love it. It’s brilliant. Composer Stephen Sondheim is a genius, and it’s a brilliant story. The actors were all amazing, and they could all sing really rather well… much better than we could have hoped for [laughs]. And Meryl Streep’s a legend.

Are actors different to musicians to work with?

You say your Abbey Road bio isn’t completely up to date – what’s missing?

I guess most of the actors are slightly insecure about their abilities as singers – it’s out of their comfort zone, which can actually make it easier to get a performance out of them: you can guide them where you want to be, rather than them having a preconceived idea about how they’re going to do it. So all of them took direction really well… but that’s part of their career, isn’t it: taking direction?

The biggest project of the last year and a half was Into The Woods. That was probably only second to The Lord of the Rings in terms of the amount of time I spent on it. It was immense. We pre-recorded the complete musical and delivered that to the set so that the actors could sing along. Some of the singing was redone live, and other pieces were completely pulled apart, adjusted and retimed on the ﬂy as the scenes were shot. Then, last summer, we re-recorded it all again. Well, 70 per cent of it – with a bigger orchestra, broader ﬁlmic orchestrations and extra score music.

Is ﬁlm where you always wanted to end up working? I played violin and viola when I was growing up, so that’s the world I know and grew up in. I did the Tonmeister course at Surrey University and came to Abbey Road for my work experience year. The best thing about ﬁlm is that it can be anything; it won’t necessarily be an orchestra. You get the electronic elements, bands… it’s limitless. In this day and age, you’re processing orchestras a lot more than we ever used to. With Gravity, we

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deliberately recorded things in a way knowing [composer Steven Price] was going to mash them up or mess around with them. What’s been a highlight for you? I’ve been lucky enough to work on a couple of the biggest franchises out there. I’ve worked on all the new music for Star Wars so far, which was amazing: big orchestra, all live, no click, no headphones. John Williams had a secondhand clock in front of him and he’d know exactly where he was supposed to hit based on where the clock hand was. There aren’t many composers that work that way these days. Then there was The Lord of the Rings: that was the last real big non-Pro Tools ﬁlm [franchise]. We did it on a [Sony] 3348HR, which is a glorious-sounding tape machine, but it was quite an involved process. These days you forget how much time you used to spend going, “I can relax for three or four minutes while my tape spools”. Kit-wise, is there anything you can’t live without? I love our Bowers & Wilkins speakers here; I think they are so true, sound-wise. My Sennheiser HD 600 headphones go everywhere with me. But my favourite piece of kit is a Neumann U 47 microphone. They’re rare as hen’s teeth and we’re lucky enough to have 14 of them, so on a ﬁlm session I’ll use four on the basses… because I can. Anything else we should know about you? We try to have fun! Some of the best sessions are the ones that you remember just laughing. A bit of light banter… and if everyone’s involved in that, it’s even better. You seem like a smiley guy. I am a pretty smiley guy. It certainly helps. Especially during 18-hour mix days! www.abbeyroad.com

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