PSNE MAY 2018 by Future PLC

May 2018

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WHAT YOU HEAR is

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FOLLOW US ON Twitter.com/PSNEurope Facebook.com/ProSoundNewsEurope Instagram.com/PSNEurope EDITORIAL Editor: Daniel Gumble dgumble@nbmedia.com • +44 (0)203 871 7371

Welcome

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Managing Director, Mark Burton Financial Controller, Ranjit Dhadwal Events and Marketing Director, Caroline Hicks Head of Operations, Stuart Moody HR Director, Lianne Davey Audience Development, Lucy Wilkie Printed by Pensord Press Ltd, NP12 2YA ISSN number 0269-4735 (print) © NewBay 2018

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DANIEL GUMBLE Editor

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e’ve reached that point in the year where the industry can take a collective sigh of relief, as shafts of clear daylight begin to emerge between the relentless onslaught of trade show commitments dominating the trade show calendar. It’s hard to believe that in the past four months the biz has traversed the globe to take in the vast and varied offerings provided by NAMM (California), ISE (Amsterdam), NAB (Las Vegas) and Prolight+Sound/ Musikmesse (Frankfurt). As expected, the outlook from NAMM was sunny and hopeful as ever, while ISE predictably delivered another record-breaking edition of what is fast becoming, some would argue, the most important professional audio trade gathering of the lot . Meanwhile, early reports from those on the ground suggest that this year’s NAB was a rip-roaring success. However, it was last month’s Frankfurt show that many were most intrigued by, given the vast changes the dual show’s format has undergone in recent years. The initial reaction appears to be one of uncertainty – as seems to have been the case for several years now – with overall footfall apparently down but trade attendance up an impressive 10 per cent. Many of the exhibitors I have spoken to were quietly confident in the show’s offering, with the overriding sense being one of quality over quantity regarding the people they met at the show. You can read Phil Ward’s in-depth Prolight+Sound report over on P14, while MI Focus editor Laura Barnes offers her view of the Musikmesse element of the show on P42. Elsewhere in this issue, we’ve cast our eye to the future of pro audio technology, with extensive reports and analysis of the companies and products shaping the next generation of sound. The latest developments in broadcast audio are thrown under the spotlight, while the ever-evolving worlds of AR, VR and immersive audio are given an equally thorough examination. Many of the products and innovations explored throughout this edition of PSNEurope are at the cutting edge of what is, and will soon be, possible in the world of sound. As listening experiences continue to grow and transform, so too will the business of pro audio. And on this evidence, the industry looks to be in the safest of hands as it enters the next phase of its evolution. n

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P4 MAY 2018

In this issue... People P8

Movers and shakers A look at who has moved where over the past month in pro audio

P11 Normal Not Novelty Producer and Red Bull Studios’ #NormalNotNovelty host K-Minor fills us in on the monthly event’s latest outing

P6 ROBERT MORGAN-MALES THE AUDIO-TECHNICA CHIEF GRANTS US A RARE AND EXCLUSIVE CHAT

P13 Up Your Output Mariana Lopez on why the annual AES Up Your Output weekend is so vital for the future of pro audio

Report P14 Prolight+Sound 2018 A comprehensive look at what went down at the annual Frankfurt show and what exhibitors made of this year’s outing P17 A new reality We delve into the world of AR and VR for a close look at the technology shaping the future of audio

Broadcast P26 THE HARMAN EXPERIENCE WE VISIT THE AUDIO GIANT’S BRAND NEW UK EXPERIENCE CENTRE

P21 Casting the net Broadcast audio expert Kevin Hilton explores the latest trends affecting the sector and what they mean for the business

Interview

P32 VDC VDC Trading CEO Niall Holden chats with Erica Basnicki about the ins and outs of the cable business P36 Jenn Decilveo The Grammy-nominated pop producer tallks studio techniques and new projects

P54 GIORGIO BIFFI THE OUTLINE CEO TALKS THE ITALIAN FIRM’S ILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY

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P6 MAY 2018

Robert Morgan-Males

The cartridge family In a rare and exclusive interview with PSNEurope, Phil Ward sits down with Audio-Technica CEO Robert Morgan-Males to reflect on his career in pro audio to date and to discuss the company’s European strategy for this year and beyond…

familiar figure in UK and European pro audio and hi-tech MI, Robert MorganMales joined Audio-Technica in September 2013, having discussed a possible position since January that year. Initially the job title was marketing director for Europe, but it has just been confirmed that he is now CEO. Latterly he had been nursing investments and travelling – working for Foster Electric in Japan and Australia on a consultancy basis that stretched from an initial six months to five years. The relationship was deep: Foster had merged with Fostex in 2003, and Fostex is still one of the brands handled in the UK by SCV Distribution. While under the earlier guise of SCV London, a branch of erstwhile French distributor SCV Audio now trading as Freevox, Morgan-Males represented Fostex and many other brands for eight years in the 1990s. He had also been financial and operations director of pan-EU distributor Sonic8, and sat on the board of directors of Digigram hi-tech spin-off Auvitran. His

resettlement in the UK reconnected him with Richard Garrido, who had already been president of AudioTechnica Europe for several years and was a founder of SCV Audio in Paris. As Morgan-Males puts it, AudioTechnica was “poised for the next growth phase” – and all the signs are that a significant phase of growth has happened. To get there, Morgan-Males has applied all of this experience to handsome effect.

Heritage sites He steps into deeply respected shoes. Audio-Technica was formed in 1962 by Hideo Matsushita, a magnetic cartridge pioneer with an averred goal to make excellent sound quality available to everyone. This meant finding pricing structures that would support the mass market, and the degree of altruism evident then seems to have been nurtured down the years. The first headphones were produced in 1974, and first microphone in 1978 – transducers being at the heart of operations all along. As an organisation it has become one of the model pro audio/consumer

crossover multinationals, with an equally established presence in Asia, Europe and the Americas: the main hubs are Audio-Technica Ltd, for Europe; Audio-Technica US, for all the Americas; Audio-Technica Greater China, including Hong Kong; Audio-Technica Taiwan; AudioTechnica India; Audio-Technica Singapore for the rest of Asia; and of course Audio-Technica Japan, which also supports Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. Japan presides over market-leading headphone sales in the domestic market, as well as a strong pro install performance for industry and commerce. Europe has been a steady ship with a strong UK role since 1978 – established in Leeds because that’s where the original UK distributor was based, a firm that was acquired by in order to turn it into Audio-Technica Ltd. About 15 years ago, according to Morgan-Males, a new focus on the B2B channels emerged by recognising the integration of the signal chain, applying the right economies of scale and bolstering distribution effort. This meant handling complementary brands in strategic territories, taking the mic-to-speaker model

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P7 MAY 2018

as the basis of integrated distribution, specification and support. Naturally this transformed those centres involved into the more sophisticated, quasiconsultancy-based operations of installation and pro audio reselling today, leaving behind the box-shifting mentality of a bygone era. “There are pure distributors, who try to have complementary brands but inevitably compromise on the lines they can obtain, and there are pure manufacturers locked into their own brand,” Morgan-Males says. “Then there are the hybrids, which is probably a model more suited to microphone brands like ourselves because we are, after all, at the start of the signal chain.” Accordingly, France and Germany became direct markets, while a joint venture called Audio-Technica Central Europe was set up in Budapest. “It was with our distributor there,” he adds, “now responsible for our business in that region with the exception of Russia and Poland, which continue to be handled from the UK.” Another factor, more obliquely, was the pole position of A-T as a consumer brand in Japan. “At Board level,” reveals Morgan-Males, “it was a strategic decision to recruit in preparation for the next drive behind this success, backed by sustained success at home. Like other Japanese companies we have three-to-five year plans with strong growth targets: the five-year plan for this started in 2013. So I was part of this willingness to recruit at the outset of this plan, which I’m very pleased to say we’ve been able to achieve.”

Electric avenue Time at Foster Electric in Tokyo had given MorganMales a solid grounding in the native business culture, something that has to help if your brief is then to interpret elsewhere on behalf of that culture. To some extent, Morgan-Males and his overseas peers report back to Tokyo as its ambassadors but, he points out, the organisation is intrinsically global. “Audio-Technica is truly multicultural,” he says, “and regionally autonomous in its approach. What I like most about our president’s modus operandi – he’s the son of the founder – is his commitment to keeping local people in his regional offices who can understand their markets. They vary, so he likes the idea of running a global and a regional plan alongside, and he likes us to find the ways that they can meld together. “It means a lot of exchange, a lot of internal meetings. We have product managers for each of our regional operations who will be in Japan a minimum of five times a year, guiding the development of the products.” Interpreting is by definition a two-way process, though, and Europe needs quite a bit of… well, interpreting. “There’s a distinct practical issue. You could have centralised governance, which some would see as centralised control, or you can establish various R&D centres around the world and hope that they will take the regional differences and apply them to a coherent end product. But it’s not all about those regional

Morgan-Males: ‘We’ve always been pan-European’

differences any more. The way that customers behave is more homogenised. “I don’t think manufacturers should combine consumer and professional sales simply for economies of scale, but you have to understand the growing similarities between B2B and B2C customers. They use the same online methods to learn about and experience the products and solutions available to them and the results that they require. Information exchange is across continents and instantaneous. “Audio-Technica needs to be closer to our customers and closer to the market, and that’s what we’ve been driving in Europe by creating those direct markets and dedicated product managers. It’s remarkably cohesive, despite the reality that Europe is multicultural and has many different views of itself. Explaining these issues in Japan can be challenging, but the process is openminded, constructive and positive. The common goal is the best product for our customers’ needs, B2B or B2C.” A good example is the development of the ATUC-50 Digital Discussion System, which needed an internal team drawn from around the world rather than relying on a singular vision. “Globally we end up with the right product, which is a result of the mix of people within Audio-Technica,” Morgan-Males confirms.

Market stall Not only do B2B customers in Sydney and LA face the same challenges and appreciate broadly the same solutions, they talk to each more easily and more immediately today than ever before. “That’s why we are on those communication platforms,” Morgan-Males says. “For any brand today it’s about being part of those conversations, because they are many-to-many and no longer one-to-many. The traditional marketing I knew

when I started is over. If you can be seen as a credible commentator and content contributor you are giving your manufacturing brand the best possible profile. You can’t dictate – perhaps you never could. “It’s especially true of the professional sector. We were always hungry for information – you would delve into manuals and there would be word of mouth – but now those synapses connect so much more quickly. You have to be genuine, and the peer analysis is ruthless.” The “calm base”, in Morgan-Males’ words, of AudioTechnica laid down in 1962 has been particularly helpful recently as the UK-Europe axis so well defined by Garrido’s tenure as president has been plunged into Brexit. Cometh the hour… “It’s all about longevity. We all take long, considered views and there is a solid foundation of wisdom – don’t forget that this is a second-generation family business, and the sense of continuity is palpable. I’m very confident that it will go to the third and fourth generations. Part of my job on the board is to report back to Japan five times a year, and everything we’ve learned about Brexit has been measured against our own structure as it has unfolded. And we’re very comfortable with what we’ve been building in Europe. “When I joined the company, we put measures in place to take effect over the following five years. To get closer to the market, we acquired our distribution partner in the Netherlands. We also acquired our partner in Spain. Now our direct markets have increased – Netherlands handles Belgium and Luxembourg, Spain handles Portugal – added to the ones I described earlier. Furthermore, we had a plan to extend warehousing from over-stretched Leeds to Utrecht – which now looks prescient but was in the pipeline all along. We’ve always been ‘pan-European’, and we’ll stay that way.” n

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P8 MAY 2018

Pro audio movers and shakers Stay in the loop with the latest job appointments and movements in the professional audio business over the past month…

Coda Audio appoints Jeff Taylor as sales director to establish brand’s presence in USA

oda Audio USA has appointed Jeff Taylor to head up sales, to help establish the brand’s presence in the US market. Based in Vancouver, Washington, Taylor brings with him a wealth of industry knowledge, having enjoyed more than 20 years experience working with notable professional audio brands. MD Luke Jenks said: “Jeff combines a highly developed business sense with the technical understanding of a professional audio engineer, a role he continues to play in venues across his home city and which demonstrates a level of enthusiasm for pro audio that is shared throughout the global Coda Audio family. “Coda Audio is all about exceeding expectations with our innovative, customer focused solutions,” he continued, “and Jeff has the know-how and strategic experience to meet growing demand by building a sales organisation that will deliver the highest possible standard of support and satisfaction.” Taylor added: “When I heard Coda Audio’s technology and recognised the benefits, I was immediately convinced that it sets a new benchmark in professional audio. Today’s sound reinforcement challenges require

not only exceptional speaker systems but also a solid platform of business solutions that have to be as wideranging as the scope of the work they support.

UK-based Prism Sound bolsters US sales force with two key appointments

Audiologic hires Simon Jones as business manager to support QSC deal

CUK Audio reinforces sales channel support with applications specialist

Cambridge, UK-based audio interface manufacturer Prism Sound has appointed two new US representatives – Eric Klein (pictured) and Scott D Ray. Both Klein and Ray will promote Prism Sound’s extensive range of recording products, including the company’s flagship ADA-8XR multi-channel AD/DA converter and Titan, Atlas and Lyra audio interfaces, all of which connect to both Macs and PCs via a USB interface. Eric Klein, founder of Soul Tech Marketing Inc., will handle Prism Sound sales across the East Coast and Canada. Scott D Ray, who will handle Prism Sound sales across the West Coast, is the founder of S D Ray Associates Inc., a company that provides marketing and independent sales and management representation for leading audio and music technology products.

Audiologic’s new business manager Simon Jones says his working approach is “in tune with Audiologic’s view of business” as he joins the company from Sennheiser. Jones has experience in many aspects of audio, including manufacture, system design and project management. He will take particular interest in supporting the company’s recent distribution deal with QSC. Andy Lewis, sales and marketing director, said: “We’re genuinely thrilled to have secured the services of such a well-respected and popular industry figure. Simon not only brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise of all things audio to the company but a track record of proven success and an enviable reputation as a principled and customerfocused operator. Those are precisely the qualities that Audiologic seeks to promote and I’m confident that he will thrive in our close-knit environment.”

CUK Audio has hired Fraser Sanaghan as applications specialist following its recent distribution deal with ClearOne. Sanaghan’s brief is to support the conference and collaboration sales channel with specific focus on ClearOne, broadening out over time to additionally design live and AV solutions. Sanaghan comes to CUK after nearly 11 years in applications support with TC Group (now Music Group), working with brands such as Tannoy and Lab.gruppen, where he was responsible for distributor network training throughout the EMEA region as well as some system design. “I’m delighted to be part of the team at CUK who have a great reputation in the industry,” he said. “We took on distribution of ClearOne early this year so I’m excited to support their products as well as the other industry-leading brands we have on our roster.”

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“I look forward to helping Coda Audio USA in this respect and establishing the brand as a leading light in the US market.”

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P11 Photo: Rianna Tamara

MAY 2018

L-R: LUCY (producer), Esmeralda Jonuzi (producer for Radar Radio) K-Minor (producer), Madam X (DJ) , Lucy Madge (producer for BBC Radio) , Moxie (DJ)

Bull’s eye Producer and regular Red Bull Studios’ #NormalNotNovelty host K-Minor reports on the event’s latest outing, which saw electro producer and DJ LUCY deliver an enlightening workshop and demonstration of her working methods…

e were lucky to have an amazingly talented producer by the name of LUCY at the most recent (April 10) #NormalNotNovelty Electronic Production Demonstration last month, which provides workshops and masterclasses for female producers. A producer and DJ currently blazing a trail with her dark, energetic sets and producing gritty bass-heavy music with gripping layers and trippy drums, LUCY has gained a lot of traction off the back of reaching the final of Riddem Rally - a production competition event run by Red Bull in 2017. She kicked off the latest #NormalNotNovelty night by explaining briefly how she got into music. Having started producing at the age of 14 and then deciding to study music in higher education, she explained her view that higher education isn’t essential to becoming a top producer, but that it does provide what she describes as an “invaluable foundation of knowledge”. Working from a Logic Pro X workstation, LUCY informed attendees that she is a keen sampler. “I love taking samples from really strange places,” she said.

“The weirder the place, the better it is.” She also gave an introduction to ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) sounds, which she describes as being like soft whispers, wet noises or textured scratching to stimulate physical sensations in your body, through tingles on your scalp or neck. LUCY has collected and used a lot of these sounds in her music to create percussive clicks and snaps and to add new dimensions to her compositions. Unlike some producers, LUCY tends to mix as she goes. She explains that her songs are quite lo-fi so do not require much ‘post’ mixing, but she is also aware that she’s very much on her journey and still has a lot more learning to do. “Listening to music as a producer is good because you can deconstruct the music and understand how it works,” she explains, expressing how vital it is to understand how tracks have been constructed in order to further develop one’s own compositions. She starts her workshop by creating a drum pattern within a 16-bar loop using Native Instruments BATTERY. “It’s much more effective to use a 16-bar loop because

there are more options to play with,” she notes. “Tuning your drums and making sure they are in key with your music is also essential.” Once the drums and chords were in place, the track morphed into an atmospheric, melodic wall of sound using a melancholy sampled piano and a hard hitting, hip-hop drum pattern. Indeed, it quickly became clear that LUCY’s approach to making music is very much to utilise the tools she has around her and to be as creative as possible with the gear at her disposal. She reveals that her go-to synthesiser for bass is SERUM, explaining that sound design isn’t essential but can be a very useful tool in creating the sound you hear in your head rather than scrolling through loads of sound packs to get the right one. This hands-on approach made for a highly engaging session, highlighting that one of the most effective ways of honing one’s skills is simply to put the hours in and acquire as much practical experience as possible. Her advice for anyone looking to get involved seriously in music production is simple: “Just do it, study it and surround yourself with it.” n

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P13 MAY 2018

Upping the output Earlier this year, Leeds Beckett University hosted the sixth edition of the Audio Engineering Society’s Up Your Output student event. Here, AES UK vice president Mariana Lopez, tells PSNEurope why such initiatives are so important to the industry …

p Your Output is an annual event that was first envisioned in 2013 by Nik Georgiev and was included as part of the benefits offered to AES student members. Since its inception it has provided students with career and networking opportunities, but it’s so much more than that. It was never just about specialism, it was always about helping students grow, not just as budding audio engineers, but as people. Who we are (in addition to our specialism) is what we bring with us to our work practices and has a great impact in our industry. Learning about different ways of doing things, different paths into the industry, different forms of education and backgrounds are all key to education. The AES embraces a huge number of sub-fields and we are keen on exposing our student members to diverse role models. Up Your Output hasn’t stopped growing since 2013. From a one-day workshop it has now turned into a whole weekend event. The number of sponsors has more than doubled since 2013 from six to 15 this year. This is a huge achievement and key to the continuation of Up Your Output as it’s thanks to sponsor contributions that we are able to keep the event free of charge. The 2018 Up Your Output is one I’m particularly proud of. From this year and onwards Up Your Output has turned into our flagship event for equality by providing students with a variety of role models. For the first time ever we had 50% female speakers (this is compared to none in 2013, 17% in 2014, 11% in 2015, 25% in 2016 and 7% in 2017). In addition to this, we were also eager to make sure we encouraged the participation of female and non-binary audio students and we awarded three HeForShe bursaries sponsored by Big Bear Audio. The bursaries covered the cost of the AES Student Membership. As a result of our commitment we had 31% female participants. This is wonderful news, especially if we consider that the AES Membership only incudes about 5-6% of female members. The diversity in our programme was reflected clearly in the topics we covered at the event, which were intended to spark the interest of students by encouraging them to think about career options that they might not have been familiar with previously. Day one started with an interview with sound editor Kate Hopkins from Wounded Buffalo. If you ever watched

Shop talk: Marta Salogni delivers an insightful workshop at Up Your Output 2018

any nature documentaries, it is very likely that Kate was involved. Broadcast engineer Ann Charles talked us through the skills involved in her job and the variety of paths open to students that wish to enter the field. Those students interested in games were treated to a session by Joe Thom, who is a junior sound designer at TT Games. The afternoon was all about workshops. I managed to attend two of them, one on mixing with Marta Salogni and the other on mastering with Katie Tavini. It was exciting to learn from both Katie and Marta and students commented on how incredibly valuable and insightful they found these experiences. Day two kicked off with two presentations by AES vice president in the US, Leslie Gaston-Bird. The first one was an introduction to the newly formed AES Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which she chairs. The second was a presentation on her work as a foley recordist for the film Feral. We were also thrilled to welcome Eloise Whitmore, whose breadth of experience in the field of radio drama is amazing and her explanations on her

creative practice were incredibly inspiring, which was obvious by the line of students waiting to speak to her after her talk. The afternoon included two interactive events: a workshop delivered by Gavin Kearney from the University of York on audio for VR and the other was a critique session that invited students to play their audio work and receive feedback from a panel of audio experts. The latter was led by Ian Corbett and the panel included Paul Thompson, Nik Georgiev and myself. A special thanks goes to Paul Thompson, member of the organising committee and an extra special thanks to the chair of the Up Your Output committee Ben Mosley, who choreographed an inspiring event. So what next? We are hoping Up Your Output 2019 is even better and reaches and even larger number of students. We had around 80 registrations this year but we would like the event to keep growing. I personally don’t want money to be the reason why students don’t attend, which is why we hope that in the future we can continue providing bursaries to ensure the most motivated students can participate. n

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P14 MAY 2018

Live and kicking: Frankfurt’s demo area pulling in the crowds

The Frankfurt-Am-Main Event Phil Ward’s feet appreciate the single hall for pro audio at Prolight+Sound – but questions remain about its next steps…

here are two ways of interpreting the orientation of the L-Acoustics booth in Hall 3.1, the only remaining Hall in Messe Frankfurt’s traditionally exhausting zip code with enough pro audio to sustain a three-day visit. The booth’s front opening faced the entrance of the Hall, at least at one end, in a clear victory for Strategic Branding: the youngest Prolight+Sound ingénues might well have assumed that Christian Heil was running the whole shooting match. However, it wasn’t one of those walk-through booths. It formed an enclosed suite of meeting rooms and lounges, which means it also had a rear end. This rear end – the rear end of L-Acoustics – bared itself to the rest of the industry and concluded business even before you reached the second row of Hall 3.1’s designer campsite. I don’t know, maybe it was just me. Nobody else seemed to notice.

Exit signs This would be because L-Acoustics is actually as open-minded, and open-hearted, as anyone in today’s industry with a vested interest and a cool expertise in networked digital audio, and formed a key part of this show’s commitment to multi-brand complicity and the partial retreat of the kind of proprietary chutzpah that would justify the symbolism of turning your back on a room full of competitors. When Digico announced on Day One that significant features were being added to

the SD console range, L-Acoustics was well to the fore in the list of collaborators behind several joint initiatives: L-ISA Source Control headed a list that also included SD support for d&b audiotechnik’s Soundscape platform, more Waves Multirack integration and a brand new digital engine – Quantum 7 – that promises users even more flexibility. Speaking to PSNEurope, Digico MD James Gordon expanded on the current brand openness. “L-Acoustics and d&b have different technology,” he said, “but actually it’s important to control both from our work surface because the last thing you want to do is get in the way of the engineer’s workflow. Our customers are their customers, so we have to be part of it.” Gordon’s comments followed his press conference teaser that this might well be the final appearance of the brand within these walls, confirming an uneasy sense of doubt in the ether. Conventional wisdom, in plentiful supply at this Messe, assumed that the combination of a spirited campaign by NAMM; the curious popularity of ISE among touring production professionals; and the accidents of the calendar has eaten away at the commitment of some to what was, beginning in 1995, a key indicator for the industry and even one nail in the coffin of the Spring exhibition side of AES in Europe. The absentees – Harman, Loud, Sennheiser, Shure, Meyer Sound and MUSiC among them – seem to have migrated to a world defined by concepts of AV in preference to PA, and this is the vacuum that could suck

the remainers out. Others pointed to the city of Frankfurt’s selfdestructive tendencies towards over-pricing, warning of a Montreux-style kamikaze attitude – the one that forced IBC to relocate from Switzerland to Amsterdam – while at the same time highlighting the joys of bargain motels in Orange County. Really? And so the theories trundled round and round, like the Rolltreppen of a forgotten shopping mall, ignoring important details such as the free transport provided by Messe badges – just like Amsterdam; the soaring air fares and paranoid immigration methods associated with travel to California; and the global habit of hiking room rates when the Convention Centre is busy – just like Amsterdam. Finally, and this made the least sense of all, the opinion formed that if you hadn’t completed your specification and spending spree for the season by the time Frankfurt came around, you obviously weren’t very busy. Therefore, manufacturers need not waste their resources by aiming themselves at rental operations that clearly had nothing better to do and little money to spend. When did it happen that all production reinvestment was obliged to take place in January and February? When did an MI show on the West Coast – despite an excellent and expanding sound reinforcement dimension – begin to dictate European touring patterns? And when did an exhibition of digital signage take over

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the buying habits of those responsible for a convincing rock sound? Despite these unanswered questions, the industry awaits Digico’s lead and the outcome of mooted consultations behind the scenes. Reflecting on the lemming-like habit of negativity, Out Board’s Dave Haydon summed it up well: “Although there were a few naysayers trying to get us to agree it was dead, we were flat out for all four days both with booked meetings and with walk-ups.”

PRG delivered hourly demos in the Festhalle

Box clever Meanwhile, Prolight+Sound 2018 delivered plenty of what this show used to be all about before the cable monkeys went all RJ45. Boxes made a spirited comeback, some of them big enough to hide Tony Andrews in. Funktion One’s F124 bass bin has a 24” driver coupled to the company’s famed horn-loading technology, and two years’ work has gone into a new, highly durable electro-magnetic assembly. Pioneer Pro, a company similarly enthusiastic about low end, showcased the XY-2 2-way mid-high downfill and the rental-friendly XY-3B. Outline – more of these irrepressible Italians shortly – unveiled the Superfly compact line array, itself boasting more low-end than it deserves, while HK Audio went nuts: three new box concepts appeared, representing “the biggest product launch in its history”. Cosmo is a line array family; Contour X is a new series of point source models; and Vortis 2 is an installation line first spotted, appropriately, at ISE. Fohhn Audio AG showed Focus Venue, a line array with beam steering that comes with Performance Series subs and some Class D amps that happily mingle AES/EBU, Dante, Optocore, Fohhn’s own AIREA protocol and analogue XLR. dBTechnologies added to its VIO group of line array and subs, and introduced a new portable option in the BH Series, together with a line called Opera Unica that networks up with the RD-net protocol and Aurora Net software. From the US, Crest Audio launched another powered line array with plenty of on-board DSP: Versarray Pro is a medium-range weapon of mass dispersion with ribbon drivers and a waveguide christened ClearForm. LD Systems, part of the boldly present and aisle-filling Adam Hall Group, introduced the CURV 500 Touring Set – “the newest member in the CURV 500 family” – an active, portable line array with duplex satellites and a spiral array design. Dutch house-of-ribbon Alcons Audio rolled out the VR5 compact monitor previewed at ISE, with a new Alcons waveguide technology claiming 90ºx60º dispersion all the way up to 20kHz, plus additions to the L-Series line array and proprietary VHIR processing. Finally, some proper German boxes to kick the Fahrtgasse out of Old Heidelberg: d&b’s GSL is “the next generation line array in the d&b series, sitting above the J, Y and V-Series. [It] delivers unparalleled cardioid dispersion control across the entire audio bandwidth, providing excellent output and accuracy in large-

format line arrays for the largest sound reinforcement applications”. Guests at the out-of-town, 65-year old Jahrhunderdhalle, which has hosted everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Justin Bieber, were rooted to the spot.

Digital magic Today’s digital brains are totally dominated by the fabric of networking, and were here represented by a few key players. Audinate highlighted Dante Domain Manager, to scale and secure Dante networks everywhere that IT may take it, as well as NAMM debutante AVIO. Stage Tec announced that it was finally joining the Ravenna protocol community, in addition to supporting Dante and AES67 and consolidating the agnostic mood across this sector. Outline backed up Superfly with the official launch of Newton, the far-reaching audio management and control platform with all the FPGA trimmings and some new Warped Finite Impulse Response filtering, while Optocore gave a world debut to The Festival Box, a timely funnel for all the main protocols likely to pop up under festival conditions and another triumph for the company’s unyielding faith in fibre-optic solutions. Crest’s ProTour series amplifiers already grasp the zeitgeist by integrating Dante and DSP. There was a bit of mixer activity: Crest debuted a couple of compacts in the form of XD-16 and XD-28; Cadac marked 50 years in the business with further showings of the CDC Five and CDC Seven. On the last day of the show, traditionally quiet even when numbers are up, the queue for demos of L-Acoustics’ L-ISA immersive audio platform stretched around the block. Sherif El Barbari of L-Acoustics’s London-based R&D team behind L-ISA reported unprecedented interest in the technology, helped no doubt by the event’s parallel promotion of an Immersive Technology Forum and even a ‘Klangdome’ featuring more homespun solutions using Ambisonics. “We returned to Prolight+Sound with a wealth

of demos and products this year, welcoming our worldwide partners plus potential clients who came to see us and learn about our products,” he told PSNEurope. “The reactions we received at our L-ISA demonstrations, to the presentation of the upcoming P1 AVB processor – and on our booth – were overwhelming. Visitors gave us very positive feedback, which is reassuring and encouraging. Personally, I was very proud; our demos were so well attended we were very sorry to not be able to fit everyone in. Even on the Friday afternoon, which is typically a rather quiet final day of the show, we struggled to accommodate demand from so many attendees.” Meanwhile d&b audiotechnik had the very good fortune to have Kraftwerk’s FOH engineer Serge Gräfe available to demonstrate its competing solution – Soundscape – using the plug-in on an Avid S6L. No shame: this Kraftwerk fan had a tear in his eye. And that wasn’t all. Fellow Dutch exhibitors Alcons Audio and Astro Spatial Audio (ASA), with adjoining booths, continued the theme with demonstrations of ASA’s SARA II Premium Rendering Engine for objectbased audio processing through Alcons speakers.

Spatial sound Despite “the positive echo from the exhibitors of the two fairs” reported by Detlef Braun, member of the executive board of Messe Frankfurt, and a course to “exploit synergistic effects between the events to the utmost” that will schedule Musikmesse and Prolight+Sound to overlap over all four days, many pro audio observers were dismayed to hear that next year the cohesive profile of Hall 3.1 will be uprooted to Hall 8 – and closer to the music fair it has taken 24 years to avoid. According to another source, the two shows should “move closer together spatially.” Well, why not? Unfortunately – and it frustrates me to say it – there’s plenty of room. n

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DIGITAL 6000

No intermodulation. More channels. More power for your business.

Others dodge problems. We prefer to solve them. Of course, you can work your way around intermodulation and do some software magic — but that is no real solution in the already congested and limited frequency spectrum. By design, Digital 6000 has no intermodulation artifacts. Our superior RF technology results in more channels and more flexibility for any production and any stage — with no trade-off in transmission power or quality. Smarter, leaner, more efficient — this is the built-in principle from user interface up to spectrum efficiency. Redundant Dante™ sockets and the command function are just two components of the recent update. More about the next step towards the future of audio: www.sennheiser.com/digital-6000

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Beatie Wolfe giving an immersive, anechoic performance

MAY 2018

Worlds collide Immersing oneself in a world of music is no longer simply a figure of speech. Here, Erica Basnicki immerses herself in the technology shaping the industry and looks at how augmented and virtual reality are transforming the listening experience...

o a certain extent, we are already using music to control our reality. Music wakes us up in the morning, makes our commute more bearable, helps us focus at work, relaxes us after a long day and even puts us to sleep again. We let off steam at a club, a gig, or a weekendlong festival. Music is a perpetual sonic wallpaper, always adorning some activity or other. Life is definitely more pleasant when set to music, and most of us have a small, portable device of some sort to make it extremely convenient to provide such a never-ending soundtrack. But what kind of effect does this convenience have upon the audio quality of our listening experience? The backlash began several years back. Vinyl’s resurgence isn’t simply about sound quality (itself a very subjective – and contentious – debate). There is a

focus when listening to a record. It lacks convenience and demands, at least initially, attention. In a bizarre twist, digital AR and VR technology might just be able to one-up vinyl’s ability to put music centre stage in our minds again. The technology is still in its infancy, not quite established enough to describe itself as “here to stay”, but certainly more than a mere fad. It has grabbed a definite hold on many artists, and there is no shortage of startups willing to work with them. Get ready to listen like never before...

Virtually there Several artists have already combined music and VR in imaginative ways. Last year, Bjork released four singles in VR, combining them with a world exhibition tour. More recently, producer and DJ TOKiMONSTA partnered with social VR music platform TheWaveVR to release

a special edition of her album Lune Rouge, featuring a VR rave. An album that exists entirely in VR? To our knowledge, it doesn’t exist. Yet. Enter American electronic outfit I-Exist, comprising lead singer, keyboardist, guitarist, and cellist Brian Lenington and percussionist Cameron Bailey. The pair are hard at work creating Consciousness, the world’s very first VR album. To date, it’s a Kickstarter success story, having raised their goal of $20,000 to see the project through until completion, scheduled for the end of this year. Originally a four-piece, I-Exist rose to acclaim after their song Fire Fly was featured on the Saw 3D soundtrack. In 2011, the group released the epic four-volume concept album, Humanity. Never short of ambition, I-Exist have always keen to explore technology, explains Lenington.

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I THINK AS ARTISTS IT’S ABOUT BEING CREATIVE AND THOUGHTFUL AND REALLY IMBUING AN ALBUM RELEASE WITH AS MUCH MAGIC AS POSSIBLE, TO TRIGGER PEOPLE OUT OF HAVING MUSIC ON 24/7 IN THE BACKGROUND

BEATIE WOLFE

“We’re always trying to one-up ourselves and adding things to our live shows; a dramatic light show, video,” he explains. “We hit the road and half of our band quit so we turned them into holograms and had a holographic tour. As crazy as it sounds, it’s just a natural progression. We came back from our tour and thought ‘What other crazy thing can we do?’ And here we are.” It’s not quite that simple; the idea for Consciousness has been three years in the making. Rather than handing coding duties over to developers, Lenington and Bailey have been teaching themselves C#, the scripting language used by the 2D/3D cross-platform game engine Unity, in addition to working on the musical material for the album. The first single, “Find Dreams”, has already been released in traditional, linear, formats. How it will sound to the listener when the VR experience is available, will depend entirely on where the listener wants to go with it. “Each song has two parallel states of consciousness: consciousness and subconsciousness,” Lenington continues. “At any point you can switch over and wormhole to the other version of song. One is high-

energy, the other is low-energy, the user can switch at any point.” “‘Find Dreams’ is the first song that we’ve released that we wrote, produced, mixed and mastered,” adds Bailey. “Both that and the VR thing are just two roads that we’re driving down, slowly getting to where we want to be. It feels really good to release that first song.” I-Exist are sold on the idea of VR as a lasting platform; Lenington, a self-confessed early-adopter of new technology, says: “I just knew this was the next thing...You can’t deny the experience of virtual reality. It’s undeniably amazing. You can be skeptical if you want but that probably means you haven’t tried it.” Although a richer musical experience was the impetus for creating Consciousness and for I-Exist to explore VR, Lenington’s conviction is that VR extends beyond simply improving the way we listen to music. “People talk about social media, and being on their phone, and plugged into the Internet; it’s much bigger than music,” he elaborates. “Other than going to the movies, there is no other time in your life ever when you get to actually unplug. You’re always connected;

checking texts, checking notifications. That’s the sweet thing about VR: Off. I’m going to go to some crazy world now, bye. I think that’s powerful.”

Fantastical augmented reality In many ways, AR has seen a much wider acceptance than its virtual counterpart. Just a few years ago the world was obsessed with searching for Pokémon “outdoors”. Last year, the world went mad for Beatie Wolfe’s Raw Space; the world’s first live 360˚ AR stream, which combined live, 360˚ stereoscopic video and real-time AR visuals. An “anti-stream”, as she describes it, that celebrates the world of the album in its entirety; artwork, lyrics, story, arc etc. “The way I see it, is that it’s not about being negative about the digitisation of music; there have been so many benefits,” Wolfe tells PSNEurope. Rather than see digital technology as the enemy, Wolfe has drawn inspiration from its capabilities, stretching our concept of what digital music – and indeed an album in the digital age – can be. “Part of that idea of moving forward is that there’ll

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be a lot of things that we try that won’t work, and we’ll ultimately return to things of meaning. I really believe that. I don’t think albums will ever go out of fashion. That experience of sitting down and really immersing yourself in an album and having a deeper experience with it, that’s core to our humanity in a way that music is also core to our humanity.” Launched in May 2017, the live AR experience was a week-long, 24-hour stream that combined live performance and music from the album itself. It was the result of a collaboration between Wolfe and the renowned Nokia Bell Labs, home to the rejuvenated Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) programme. Wolfe was initially inspired by the labs’ anechoic chamber – the ultimate space in which to listen – deciding it was the perfect location for Raw Space to be broadcast to the world. It is certainly an engrossing experience that begins with Wolfe ceremoniously placing the needle of a turntable onto a record. The music starts and fantastical lyrics and animated art – provided by interactive creative firm Design I/O – begin to ﬂoat around the room. The stream is no longer ‘live’, but AR videos of the music will continue to live on YouTube.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT GREAT ART NEVER GOES OUT OF FASHION. GREAT ART NEVER DATES. IT’S TIMELESS

BEATIE WOLFE

“Right now, we’re replacing ceremony with immediacy but I think we will return to ceremony,” says Wolfe. “I think as artists it’s about being as creative and thoughtful as possible and really imbuing an album release with as much magic as possible to trigger people out of having music on 24/7 in the background, and to think about it like ‘Oh wow! This new album experience really asks me to go deeper with it.’ I think when we’re asked to commit to things we get so much more out of them.” At last April’s VR World Congress in Bristol, producers emphasised the need for more VR and AR content to get the general public excited about the technology. But Wolfe doesn’t necessarily think that it’s a platform

to be explored just for the sake of it: “It’s not that I think that every artist should make these extravagant experiences... ultimately ‘why’ is the most important word; if you don’t know why you’re doing something, why you’re using live AR to bring to life the album’s artwork and lyrics, it’s not going to connect. You have to know why and I’ve always been very clear about that.” For now, Wolfe is still inspired to push the ideas behind Raw Space as far as they will go. In September of this year, the album will come to the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the London Design Festival. There, an individual can walk into a replica of Nokia Bell Labs’ anechoic chamber and watch the album come to life. An excellent opportunity to experience a new way to listen, but just don’t get too hung up on the technology. “The bottom line is that great art never goes out of fashion,” Wolfe concludes. “Great art never dates. It’s timeless. The thing we don’t have is time to decide what aspects of what we’re doing right now will remain relevant, and which are the ones that will die. Time is the only decider. Right now we’re in the eye of the storm. Great art, whether it’s poetry, music, literature, paintings, never goes out of fashion, it’s always relevant and it’s always meaningful.” n

MIPRO partners with Dante™

MIPRO adds Dante technology option to simplify cable management and cost reduction for ACT-72 dual channel & ACT-74 quad channel receivers as well as the digitally encrypted ACT-828 dual channel & ACT-848 quad channel receivers; the latter is a new expansion of ACT 8 Series. The choice of either rechargeable or AA-powered transmitters is available for these models.

ACT-7 Series

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A Legacy Redesigned

NEW 3000 Series •

60 MHz UHF tuning bandwidth

•

Transmitter’s multifunction button can quickly switch to a backup frequency

•

Handheld transmitters feature interchangeable microphone capsules using industry-standard thread mount

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eu.audio-technica.com

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P21 MAY 2018

The broadcasting biz eyes an IP future Of all current trends in broadcast technology, IP - and its audio version in particular - is the one that is, above all others, really starting to establish itself. But it’s not yet as complete a take-over as was expected, writes Kevin Hilton in this special report...

any innovations for radio and television have been to improve how audio signals are processed and distributed to and round facilities before going into the transmission chain. Others have focused more on improving the listening and viewing experience. Increasingly these two requirements are coming closer together under the growing umbrella of IP (internet protocol) and IT, which are creating new infrastructures to accommodate new ways of producing programmes and coverage of events, such as remote production. IP will undoubtedly have a major and lasting impact on broadcast technology in general. The expectation among most manufacturers and engineers is that it will ultimately replace SDI (serial digital interface) as the dominant video transport format. There are similar expectations in audio, which, in an unusual switch around of the status quo, has been leading its visual counterpart in embracing and adopting the technology. Audio over IP (AoIP) has been increasing its presence over the past 10 years; after starting in radio it is now becoming a major consideration for television. But, as with many emerging technologies, although AoIP is increasingly an ongoing subject of discussion and a major focus at exhibitions and various ‘plug-fests’, staged to demonstrate interconnectivity between different types of equipment, the rate of implementation does not reflect that profile. “There’s still a level of uncertainty about AoIP but it is moving up people’s requirements,” comments Chris Collings, director of distribution company Aspen Media. Representing a variety of manufacturers that have incorporated AoIP into products, including connectivity and bridging specialist DirectOut, Joshua Rush which recently signed up to Audinate’s Dante format in addition to RAVENNA, Aspen Media has supplied equipment to a number of recent broadcast centre

Portugal’s Rádio Renascença

installations, unfortunately all covered by nondisclosure agreements. A current trend appears to be, Collings observes, for broadcasters and facilities to create ‘AoIP islands’ for specific operations. “We’re seeing isolated systems based on, for example, RAVENNA,” he says. “This gives the user all the benefits of networks and PTP [Precision Time Protocol].” Among the facility operators to do this is BBC Studioworks, which has created selfcontained RAVENNA networks for recording and post-production at its Elstree and TV Centre studios.”

As might be expected, developers of the main AoIP systems are confident that interest in the technology is growing, with this being reflected in increasing numbers of broadcasters beginning to specify it. “The trend is the shift to AoIP, which has been underway for a while, but we are seeing it pick up momentum and make its way through the entire broadcast workflow,” comments Joshua Rush, SVP of marketing and product development at Audinate. “We’re seeing more requests for proposals from broadcasters that are requiring manufacturers or integrators to outline their support for AoIP.” Rush concedes that “many broadcasters” will not be in a position to replace all equipment in favour of AoIP at the same time but follow a more piecemeal or staggered route. “We tend to see broadcasters start with upgrading portions of their workflow or facility, which requires them to ‘manage the seams’ with legacy analogue and digital gear,” he says. “It’s not uncommon

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IP set to have a ‘long-lasting impact on broadcast technology’

for a broadcaster to upgrade an OB truck to AoIP but need to interface to a studio that is analogue or MADI.” Dante and RAVENNA, along with AVB (audio video bridge), LiveWire+ from Telos Alliance and Wheatstone’s WheatNet-IP, are the main AoIP protocols that broadcasters are considering today. As these systems are already established it is highly unlikely that a single standard will emerge, meaning that any choice makes an installation locked into one technology and incompatible with anything else. The Audio Engineering Society’s interoperability standard, AES67, is helping to ease this problem by creating an interchange hub that the different formats can be connected to and form wider networks. Despite this, there are concerns that full AoIP adoption could still be hampered by the conflict of technologies. “I’m not sure AoIP will become a general requirement before more properly standardised equipment, such as AES67 and AES70 [the open control architecture for networks] becomes available,” says Thomas Lund, senior technologist with loudspeaker monitor manufacturer Genelec. “Dante is too proprietary to be dependable in the long run and most broadcasters are aware of that. Older formats such as analogue, SDI and MADI have survived for decades and still ensure a decent low-latency performance.”

RAVENNA was conceived by Philipp Lawo, chief executive of the console manufacturer that bears his surname. The company has embraced IP for both audio and video, providing equipment to facilities and production organisations such as Dorna Sports, which works on TV coverage of the MotoGP series. Lawo’s SVP of business development for broadcast infrastructure, Erling Hedkvist, comments that these are still “early days” in the implementation of IP for broadcast but this does not mean it is unviable. Hedkvist observes that the initial problem of a lack of standards is now being addressed, particularly Thomas Lund with the recent ratification of SMPTE ST2110 for Professional Media Over Managed IP Networks. This is a “suite” of standards primarily for video but it does incorporate AES67, albeit rebranded as ST2110-30. Hedkvist says the challenge now is to establish best practices because early adopters are “taking the brunt of the learning curve”. He adds that broadcasters are being pragmatic about AoIP, implementing it for solid financial or technical reasons - or both - rather than because it’s cool. Gustavo Robles, sales director of AEQ, which produces mixing consoles, codecs and routers, agrees that AoIP is a trend but says the level of implementation depends on where broadcasters are in the world. “Some

areas are 100 per cent looking for AoIP solutions,” he comments. “Other countries - and customers, led by their budgets - are in a middle position looking for IP but with integration of analogue or digital. In the third category are markets and customers that are still one step behind and asking for digital without IP.” Among the broadcasters AEQ has worked with that went for the fuller option is Rádio Renascença in Portugal. Since last year the media group, which operates commercial stations RFM, Mega Hits FM and Rádio Sim, has been running on a Dante distribution network at its broadcast centre in Lisbon. The installation is based around a central technical control centre, which houses the audio engines for the on-air consoles, with the matrix connected to all other equipment over four redundant Dante Gigabit Ethernet networks. Multichannel MADI connections also work alongside AoIP. Television is now catching up with radio in terms of adopting AoIP. Stephen Brownsill, audio products manager with TSL Products, comments that the TV sector “is beginning to recognise the advantages - and ultimately the necessity - to convert to both AoIP and video over IP operations.” TSL Products’ PAM1-IP and PAM2-IP audio monitoring units are able to accommodate SMTPE ST2110 streams and the Ember+ open control protocol, in addition to SDI, AES and analogue connections. Brownsill acknowledges that because a great deal of audio is still carried over older transport technologies, broadcasters and facilities are now facing a similar choice as when, in the 1990s, digital audio and video began to emerge: “It is just a matter of time before anyone wishing to perpetuate a plant with AV signals flowing over coax and twisted pair cables will find themselves operating a museum, with little or no support from vendors. The recent ratification of SMPTE standards and practices for IP AV signal transport, along with ‘all IP interconnected facility’ demos at the NAB and IBC shows, are beginning to have a positive effect in terms of sparking interest in making the jump to IP.” As well as what it offers as an overall networking technology, AoIP is also making an impact on the design and operation of specific equipment crucial to broadcasting, most notably mixing consoles and intercom. Wheatstone and Telos subsidiary Axia have been producing IP mixers for 12 and 15 years respectively, primarily for radio. They have now been joined by Calrec Audio, which, at the recent NAB Show, introduced the Type-R desk, its first native, all IP product. Unlike the company’s live TV boards, this is not based on Calrec’s proprietary Hydra2 router and I/O interfaces. Instead it is modular with a “simple” 2U core and integrated I/Os, which connect to an AES67 network. The Type-R takes Calrec back into the radio market, which the company’s director of product management, Henry Goodman, sees as being ahead of TV in the take up of AoIP implementation. “IP is still a challenge for

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people moving on with their existing infrastructures, especially in TV,” he says. “The OB side is not so hard because it is relatively easy to build a new truck and make a conscious decision about how far to take it into IP. Multi-studio complexes are more challenging as they can be refurbished only one studio at a time. And when you’ve got a new studio it’s an island of IP that has to be interfaced with everything else around it.” Ian Staddon, VP of sales at Digico, agrees that conversion of formats is a major issue in the transition to AoIP, which he views as becoming a general requirement. “The older technologies are still being used and need to be converted into an AoIP format,” he says. “But that is purely for transportation and not processing. The fact that there are multiple AoIP formats means it is a challenge to make the transition. Consequently a lot of broadcasters are still relying on the old standards for elements of their infrastructure.” IP also began to make its presence felt on intercom in the early 2000s. Trilogy Communications, now a subsidiary of Clear-Com, was the pioneer in this field with its Mercury system. Today AoIP is not only part of big matrix-based communications systems from the big three manufacturers - Clear-Com, Riedel Communications and RTS - but has made possible a new breed of matrixless devices from smaller companies. These include Sonifex, Telos and Glensound, which produces the Beatrice range. Glensound managing director, Gavin Davis, comments that “AoIP is finally happening properly”. The smallscale UK manufacturer is now producing commentary units, interfaces and headphone amplifiers, as well as intercom, all based on Dante/AES67. On the comms side, Davis said the company saw a market for small, easy-to-use talkback units for small radio stations, OB trucks and theatres. The OB sector in particular has recognised that AoIP-

Gavin Davis

Gustavo Robles

based systems offer more flexibility, something that appeals to production clients. Most OB operators have taken this route, including NEP Visions, which now uses RTS AoIP-based systems in all its UK vehicles. These run on the manufacturer’s OMNEO platform, featuring Dante for media transport. NEP head of sound Paul Fournier says this has simplified installation, with everything now on CAT5 or fibre cables, as well as allowing panels to be set-up for specific users and productions. Not all areas of broadcast and pro audio lend themselves as readily to AoIP as intercom. The microphone sector sees the potential, with US wireless specialist Henry Goodman Wisycom integrating IP into the chain from antenna management to frequency control, coordination and monitoring. Another leading maker of wireless systems, Sennheiser, is a little more circumspect. Tobias von Allwörden, portfolio manager for broadcast, likens the transition to AoIP to the change from analogue to digital radio mics: “This is a process that will not be completed in a few months but will continue for quite some time. The benefits of technology that is purely IP/digitally-based are obvious. There will be a time of co-existence but, ultimately, users will not see a technological advantage in keeping traditional technologies alive.”

The most noticeable change in broadcast operations that IP in general is making possible is remote production. This has been on the increase for the last few years, particularly in the US small-scale TV station sector, but this year sees the concept starting to come into its own. During the Winter Olympics in South Korea, several major broadcasters, including the BBC and NBC, used remote connections to control equipment and processes, such as audio mixing, from their bases back at home. “Remote production is steadily gaining traction,” comments Henry Goodman at Calrec. “It’s becoming more prevalent for each major sporting event and is getting better all the time.” AEQ’s Gustavo Robles also sees the rise of this technique, but adds that it does complicate matters for the sound department: “We should offer the same level of audio quality but having transmit and receive lines in the middle, which we didn’t have in the past, might limit the quality of service. Delay is also critical and we have put a lot of effort into algorithms to ensure good quality at low bandwidths with low delay.” Such benefits aren’t always obvious to the viewer at home, of course. But discrepancies in lip-synching will keep one of the bulwarks of TV broadcasting - the angry complaint - going for some time. n

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24/04/2018 11:52

P24 MAY 2018

The grand opening of Harman’s new EMEA Experience Centre

New order Last month saw the opening of the brand new Harman Experience Centre for EMEA in Hertfordshire’s Hemel Hempstead - or ‘London’ as it has been described by the company. Phil Ward took a look around to find out exactly what it has to offer…

emel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, England, is not exactly London. It corresponds to the UK capital in much the same way that Hahn Airport in Germany corresponds to Frankfurt – close enough for Ryanair, or anyone else with a particularly high aerial view. But the new complex built by Harman Professional Solutions to showcase everything the organisation does, which opened on April 4, is billed as ‘The Harman Experience Centre – London’, raising a few local eyebrows and exercising geography pedants with empty diaries. However, eyebrows should be returned to their resting facial expressions. When the full rationale behind the centre is understood and placed into the context of the other three such centres around the globe, these details pale into insignificance. For a start, Harman Professional Solutions does indeed have a particularly high aerial view. In fact, it’s practically in orbit. As the marketing materials state, “chances are you’ve seen or heard Harman today”. There doesn’t seem to be a single area of leisure, hospitality or entertainment without

something Harman being engaged, whether you know it or not. From this position, the world is much bigger than Hemel Hempstead.

Visitor attraction Furthermore, not being in London itself fits in with the plan. People are expected to drop in for the day – and some of them may well have set off from Letchworth – but most will have passed through Heathrow Airport just 23.6 miles away, experienced the experience and got back home in time for pasta, goulash or paella. They are people with no interest in tourism, unless they run an active supply business into that sector and are quite simply checking out the latest technology to make tourism more efficient, more fun and more profitable. Furthermore, this is technology made by an organisation that sees all of this from outer space. EMEA is a business concept, and its outposts don’t need the local bus timetable. The business itself is very broad. While the upper floors of this centre provide ample office and

administration facilities for all of Harman’s EMEA figureheads and functions, the ground floor resembles something of a department store in its presentation of related technology – related, that is, if you can find a conceptual link between JBL line array and the Echolike controller that closes the blinds in a hotel room, other than that they ultimately conform to a Harman business plan. Accordingly there is an area for retail, hospitality, home recording, sound reinforcement, broadcast, stage, lighting, huddle room, conferencing, theatre and even signage in a cinema-style lobby, sequenced rather like the promenade around IKEA outlets. The big question is whether busy pro audio engineers will find it worthwhile. Mohit Parasher, president of Harman Professional Solutions, is confident. “Obviously we don’t have the big JBL VTX A12s hanging from the ceiling,” he says, “although you will find them in our experience centre in California. The crews and specifiers from the top acts around the world ultimately will go there if they want to see the whole system in action. But

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P26 MAY 2018

Mohit Parasher

IT’S NOT ABOUT DESIGNING ONE PRODUCT IN ISOLATION. THAT IS NO LONGER ENOUGH MOHIT PARASHER

we do have some high-end pro audio equipment here, which our EMEA distributors can see.” “It complements the wider range available for demonstration at our UK distributor, Sound Technology in Letchworth, which is not far from here,” adds Chris Smith, vice president and general manager EMEA at Harman Professional Solutions. “What we’ve found is that the more business we win with these big products, and the more venues we supply, it allows us to take other customers into these real-world ’experiences’ too. This is where the artists and their crews can hear, feel and touch the products in an environment that they’re used to.” The theory is that pro audio prospects will get the most convincing trial run in an existing Harman venue, backed up by Sound Technology’s well equipped – and well-trussed – demo suite, topped off with a clinching drop into this Experience Centre where paperwork can

be processed and a reassuring glimpse of Harman’s astonishing reach into daily life may just send the client on his way with increased confidence.

Trade off You might also see The Harman Experience Centre as a permanent trade exhibition, without the usual distractions. Bad news for Frankfurt, but Germany’s loss is Hemel Hempstead’s gain. “You can go to lots of separate trade shows, but this is the only place where you’ll see the full suite of solutions that we provide,” continues Parasher. “It’s also rare to have meaningful conversations at these shows; they are so transient. To have deep, engaged contact you need places like this where we can articulate the art of the possible – what you can achieve with this technology.” The displays will change every few months, not simply for variety’s sake but because the potential

is so large for different suggestions, solutions and scenarios. “There are many more users for the same technology than we can address,” Parasher points out, “even with all that we have on display at any given time. The possibilities are endless. For example, we opened the centre in Los Angeles only three months ago and already it’s going through its first update – new solutions, new displays, new examples.” This is in Northridge, to be exact, which you will immediately recognise as the home of JBL. In this instance, Harman has preserved an electro-acoustic heritage going back 75 years. The Centres in Shanghai, Singapore and here do not map on to Vienna and Regensdorf in the same way – although you could argue that Potters Bar is essentially the same neighbourhood, give or take a few spins of Telstar. The relocation of Harman resources is a reflection of new thinking about the true nature of a brand in 21st Century commerce. It exists in a more virtual environment than ever before, harnessed more closely to the World Wide Web than to any specific street corner. Therefore its collateral is free to roam in search of any regional advantage – with an iconoclasm bound to unnerve the traditionalists. “Obviously whenever you make a change there is some resistance,” Parasher acknowledges. “But eventually, when people understand what we’re doing, it evaporates very quickly. If you leave brands rooted in a place where they are unable to scale up, and do not provide the platform and considerable strengths that a company like Harman has, actually you are doing the brand a disservice. You are denying access to capital, access to talent, access to technology and to all the intellectual property we have. “Frankly, we are not abandoning the heritage of Soundcraft or any of the other brands. We are adding immense advantages to it, in order to take it to the next level. Take our centre for electronics in Texas, for example. There’s a deep well of talent there that will benefit every product. It’s not about designing one product in isolation. That is no longer enough.”

Event horizon Customers old and new are welcome, of course. “Firstly,” explains Smith, “we have a lot of brand loyalty from historical partners with JBL or Studer, for example – linear connections with one brand. With them we can share some of the secrets of the rest of the business that they won’t know about. We can broaden their

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P27 MAY 2018

Space men: Visitors gather in the centre’s Huddle Space

horizons. FOH engineers are interested in what we’re doing in stadiums, in broadcast, in lighting, even in boardrooms – the fact that most of the major banks use Harman. It gives an additional relevance to our scale, our investment and our capability. “Secondly, we can use this facility to explain all of the different elements of Harman to a new customer and prove why they should engage with us. It has been a challenging concept to present to someone for the first time. The elevator pitch can be difficult, because there’s so much ground to cover!” At least 200 floors’ worth, I would say. This is one of the few places where AMX, JBL, Crown, BSS, Martin Professional et al can be seen to be doing all their stuff under one roof – except maybe a business-friendly hotel with a stadium, a theatre, a TV station and a branch of Victoria’s Secret in the lobby. Dubai? Actually Hemel Hempstead concludes an experiment begun in Shanghai. “This is not our first Experience Centre – it’s the fourth,” confirms Parasher. “There’s was huge excitement when we completed the first one in China. With the opening of each one – Singapore was next, then LA – we discovered that the responses

IN LA, WE HAD 1,000 CUSTOMERS IN THE FIRST 90 DAYS – PEOPLE FROM DISNEY, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, LARGE CRUISE SHIPS, HOTEL CHAINS, PLUS A-LIST ARTISTS LIKE MICHAEL BOLTON AND GEORGE CLINTON AND LIGHTING AND SOUND CREWS FOR FOO FIGHTERS AND DRAKE MOHIT PARASHER were much bigger than we thought. I think it shows a certain latent need for facilities like this. People have been waiting for somebody to take the initiative and put all of these things together. We were really encouraged with each step, as you can see from the continuing investment. “In LA, for example, we had 1,000 customers in the

first 90 days – people from Disney, Universal Studios, large cruise ships, hotel chains, plus A-list artists like Michael Bolton and George Clinton and sound and lighting engineers for such international rock and pop luminaries as Lady Gaga, Foo Fighters and Drake. They spend all day, using the gear and understanding all of the processes. “Then you add executives from JP Morgan, Facebook, Google… we expect the same response here in Europe.” “We have two days out of the next six weeks when, at the moment, we’re not fully booked out,” adds Smith. “Bear in mind, though, that you don’t need an appointment. Any partner can just drop in, although I’m sure that most visits will be more structured than that! Our partners – any distributor, dealer, consultant, reseller, engineer – are expected to use it to host their own delegations of existing and potential customers.” They are bound to come. Certainly the presence at the centre’s opening of the likes of Roly Oliver, Andy Brown, Nick Screen and Mark Hosking added considerable grist to the professional audio mill, and PSNEurope will be hearing more from them individually soon. Meanwhile… taxi for Heathrow? n

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P28 MAY 2018

George Bullimore

Way out west Last month, professional audio ODM Tymphany announced the opening of its brand new R&D facility in Bridgend, Wales. Daniel Gumble caught up with company veteran and head of transducers, George Bullimore to find out what it means for the firm’s European expansion and how its location will help benefit the business over the coming months and beyond… Back in early April, pro audio ODM Tymphany revealed that it would be opening a new R&D facility, located in Bridgend, Wales, in a strategic move to ramp up its activities in Europe. The UK Design Center will be led by Tymphany veteran George Bullimore and will have two primary focuses: ‘high-performance transducer R&D and early-engagement system design and prototyping for professional and premium audio customers worldwide’. The facility features in-house voice coil winding, comprehensive measurement and simulation facilities, and an end-to-end prototyping lab with 3D printing capabilities. This, along with its full test and validation lab, will enable the center to act as Tymphany’s global IP & innovation center for transducers and related technologies. PSNEurope editor Daniel Gumble spoke to Bullimore to find out more about what the new centre has to offer... Tell us about the new Wales facility? The state-of-the-art facility is intended to enhance our research and development capabilities. It offers inhouse voice coil winding, comprehensive measurement and simulation facilities, along with an end-to-end prototyping facility with 3D printing capabilities. Initially, we will focus on high-performance transducer R&D,

but will also offer early engagement system design and prototyping for Tymphany’s growing customer base.

Republic, we have a unique opportunity to offer local support with access to Tymphany’s global scale.

Why was now the right time to open a new UK site? As Tymphany grows, it makes sense to diverge locations, and with engineering sites in the US and Asia, we can offer our customers 24-hour engineering coverage. It also provides further access to the worldwide talent pool, while being local to our global customer base.

Do you foresee any issues with an impending Brexit? We don’t see any significant issues. Since Brexit, there is a strengthened desire from the UK Government to support and enhance the UK’s R&D ventures.

Why Wales? Wales has a rich history in loudspeakers, with Harman, Panasonic Automotive, and REL (among others) being based in Wales at some point or another. There’s also a strong engineering support presence in Wales, with many local facilities close by. Lastly, it offers good transport links with Cardiff International Airport 30 minutes away, and London two and a half hours away. How much of a focus is there on the European market at the moment? We have a strong focus on the European market. Our engineering focus will be on innovation in pro and high-end transducers and related technologies. With our recently acquired manufacturing facility in the Czech

What are the biggest opportunities for you in the European market? We are seeing strong demand in Europe for highly innovative, high-performance professional market transducers and acoustic systems, alongside the more traditional premium Hi-Fi. Will you be looking to open more facilities in Europe? My personal focus is on developing the UK facility to reach its full potential, but who knows what the future may hold? What are the biggest challenges you face in your European expansion? As always it takes time to set up a new facility and team, and we want to be running at full capacity as soon as possible. We are finding equipment lead times are typically much longer than those in Asia. n

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P31 MAY 2018

Spectrum auction winners announced, wait for PMSE compensation continues As expected, major mobile phone companies were the big winners in the latest round of spectrum auctions. Here, PSNEurope’s Kevin Hilton reports on the current situation and how it might affect wireless microphone users...

ncertain times continue for users of radio microphone and in-ear monitoring (IEM) systems in the UK. While they await both details of financial packages to compensate them when the 700MHz band is cleared in 2020 and the outcome of ongoing discussions over proposed new frequencies for PMSE (programme making and special events), the first in a series of spectrum auctions giving more wireless capability to mobile phone operators has been completed. Bidding for airwaves had been running for the 2.3 GHz and 3.4GHz bands, with many of the big name players taking part. Right now the 2.3 GHz band is used for existing mobile phones and will provide further enhancements to 4G capacity. The next move on from 4G, currently available for video streaming and downloading, as well as telephony and email, is 5G. This has provisionally been allocated 3.4GHz, which is viewed as being capable of accommodating the next level of mobile technology. In total 34 ‘lots’ of spectrum were offered for auction over the two bands. Five companies took part in the bidding process, four of which were successful. EE, the mobile network operator and internet service provider created by the merger of Orange UK and T-Mobile UK and now owned by the BT Group, gained 40MHz of 3.4GHz, bidding £302,592,000. Hutchinson 3G UK, which operates mobile phone and broadband services under the Three brand name, won 20MHz of 3.4GHz for £151,296,000. Telefónica UK, a subsidiary of the Spanish telecom group that trades as O2, took all 40MHz in the 2.3GHz band for £205,896,000 and 40MHz of 3.4GHz at £317,720,000. Vodafone, the world’s second biggest mobile phone company, won 50MHz of 3.4GHz at a price of £378,720,000. The fifth bidder, Airspan Spectrum Holdings, a provider of LTE (long-term evolution) small cells and backhaul technologies for mobile radio access networks, did not win spectrum in either band. The total raised by what broadcast and spectrum regulator Ofcom describes as “the principal stage” of auctions for 4G and 5G is £1,355,744,000. The money generated as a result of the sale of these frequencies will now go to HM Treasury. The next and final step in the bidding process will be ‘assignment’. This involves the winning companies vying to establish where in the frequency bands the spectrum they have acquired will be placed. Commenting on the outcome of the auction, Philip

Philip Marnick, Ofcom

Marnick, spectrum group director at Ofcom, said, “This is good news for everyone who uses their mobile phone to access the internet. As a nation we’re using ever more mobile data on smartphones and mobile devices. Releasing these airwaves will make it quicker and easier to get online on the move. It will also allow companies to prepare for 5G mobile, paving the way for a range of smart, connected devices.” Kester Mann, principal analyst of operators at market information and analysis firm CCS Insight, comments that the “big winner” in this bout of the spectrum selloff is O2. “They’ve swept up all of the crucial 2.3GHz airwaves that can immediately offer much needed 4G capacity,” he says. “Vodafone will also be satisfied, spending the most on 5G spectrum. The outcome for Three will do little to improve its precarious market position. EE’s strong spectrum position meant it was unable to bid for 4G airwaves. Its spend on 5G spectrum will support a strategy to launch commercial services in 2020.” Mann observes that the outlay of £1.4 billion in total was higher than expected, reflecting a “hugely competitive sale” involving frequencies that will play major roles in the long-term future for each network. “Attention now moves to the 700MHz sale,” he adds, “another 5G band that is vital for wide-area coverage. That could be auctioned in the UK as soon as next year.” This is the critical part in the new allocation of

spectrum for PMSE. Alan March, senior manager of spectrum affairs and system design at Sennheiser and a spokesman for industry body BEIRG (British Entertainment Radio Industry Group), comments that the reallocation of 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz does not directly affect wireless mic and IEM users but points out potential concerns over proximity: “Deployment of LTE in the 2.3GHz band, if not carefully managed, could potentially compromise the bottom end of the 2.4GHz ‘Wi-Fi’ band. The effect could be to constrain capacity in the 2.4GHz band due to out of band interference from newly deployed LTE services. There are some audio products that operate in the 2.4GHz band but they are not what could be regarded as ‘professional’ products.” March and others involved in the PMSE debate are currently in discussions under the auspices of CEPT (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations) over proposals for UK wireless mics and IEMs to move into the 9601164MHz Air Band. March observes that this is opposed by the aeronautics sector and authorities in France, despite Ofcom’s insistence that it will go ahead. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is overseeing the drawing up of compensation packages for PMSE users forced to move frequencies and buy new equipment, told PSNEurope in April that an announcement would be made “in the next few weeks”. n

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24/04/2018 14:02

P32 MAY 2018

Cable guy: Niall Holden

Leading role From a £5,000 loan to international exports, VDC Trading CEO Niall Holden chats with Erica Basnicki about the ins and outs of the cable business and how the company has grown to become one of the industry’s key players over the past 30 years...

iall Holden’s office is something of an anomaly at VDC (Van Damme Cable) Trading headquarters. Gorgeous coloured prints of Jimi Hendrix and a beautifully restored and fully functioning Wurlitzer jukebox dominate. There are guitars, amplifiers, and classic car memorabilia; every inch excitedly screams rock n roll. Beyond the CEO’s door the tone is muted a touch – this is a warehouse after all – but it’s certainly not dull; a few more prints, another jukebox. Perhaps serving as a reminder that VDC Trading is in the business of making the thread that binds rock’n’roll together. A business Holden started in October 1987...

Last year was your 30th anniversary; was it a good year for VDC? Yes, we had a strong year. I think we had a bit of a wobble in 2016 but we overcame it. It wasn’t life threatening, just growing and changing pains. Those years come and go, and 2016 was one of them. Last year was great, and 2018 is shaping up to be better with much to look forward to. We recently had a management meeting; all 12 of us met down the road in a a conference room at the St Pancras Renaissance and we were there from 6:30pm until 11:30pm. I needed to see what the first quarter looked like, whether we could tick a few boxes and see

that we’ve progressed. It was a great meeting full of positives, much achieved. It’s always nice to look back and see how far you’ve come. Any significant changes since 2016? We have some new staff who have made a great impact on the business. For example, there’s Tony (Maraia) who’s the new financial director who’s been here about two years and he’s really got hold of things. He’s like the accountant in a Mafia film; he knows where all the money is and where all the bodies are buried and the focus ends up on him to spill the beans (laughs). We’ve nothing like that going on here! Of course, it’s far more

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P33 MAY 2018

important to get the cashflow right...it’s the lifeline of the business. We also spent the last 12 months ramping up our stock holding. Most of our customers depend on us having available stock with little or no lead time so it’s critical to carry the stock. This can be a gamble, as effectively what this means is that your cash is tied up in stock and not sitting in your bank account. Consequently you have to move it and hope you’re not left with ‘yesterday’s’ technology sitting in your warehouse. It can be quite a tough remit aiming for 100% all the time, but that’s what sets you apart. And I imagine that helps with last-minute requests... People buy all the d&b speakers, XTA amps, Digico boards, Shure mics to put their rigs together then remember, Oh shit, we need some cables. So it can be 11th hour and the end of the budget stuff, but that’s what we’re geared up for. This is going back a few years now but Delta Sound did the London 2012 Olympics. Two days before the Olympics opening ceremony with Coldplay, they needed 2,500 microphone cables. We did it, but they did not just come off the shelf; we had to make them – all bespoke. This was on a Monday and they had to have them latest Wednesday evening, but we did it - a bit like a Saville Row tailor meets Domino’s Pizza. Is it because cable lacks a certain glamour that it gets overlooked? I think that’s right, but the good thing about cable is that the sexy bits are what it gets plugged into, like lovely old guitars and amps. We provide kit for great tours and world-famous artists but it doesn’t have to be at that level to be good business. The beauty of audio, video and data cable is it’s everywhere – from Coldplay tours to supermarkets, most equipment just doesn’t work without it. We debated this at VDC and calculate that in a year we do between three and four million cable terminations and the pleasing thing is it just hardly ever comes back from a pissed off customer. Our manufactured kit goes out the door and it just works. How do you ensure 100% all the time? If something comes back and there’s a problem with our procedure or goods, it’s simple - we just change it. Our methods and products are constantly evolving, but it’s only cable and connectors for goodness sake. This isn’t the Tesla factory in California, it’s not that level of technology... but it can be. When we’re dealing with people like Digico, it’s fairly exacting standards. Their desks go on tour with our Cat6A cable and they’re running it 75 yards to the stage; it simply can’t go wrong. There are much cheaper brands than Van Damme, but I don’t want to go to that grubby bun fight end of the trench. Personally, I would hate to come to work and make apologies for the quality of what we

THE BEAUTY OF AUDIO, VIDEO AND DATA CABLE IS IT’S EVERYWHERE – FROM COLDPLAY TOURS TO SUPERMARKETS, MOST EQUIPMENT JUST DOESN’T WORK WITHOUT IT NIALL HOLDEN

sell, or blame the customer for not handling the cable properly. It drives me mad in my personal life when I’m buying something and the quality just isn’t there. In the B2B space they don’t suffer failure whereas in B2C it’s more tolerated. But if you’re dealing with the FOH engineer for Muse, or Foo Fighters, or Radiohead they don’t want to suffer rubbish as it reflects badly on them, so we have to maintain this 100% reliability. What does that look like on the floor? The way people are trained, no one goes live on wiring cables until they’ve been here for weeks if not months, and it’s scrutinised and tested very carefully. Most of the guys upstairs have been here for years and years. Colin (Huntley, product manager) has been here for 13 years, Paul (Marchesi, general manager) has been here 20 years and these guys know what they’re doing. They know how things work and how things get treated when they’re out on the road and so everything is put together with exacting standards. You also have to keep up with new technology... There is always new kit coming out with different connectivity on the back; we have to keep up with the trends and technology and make sure that we can terminate in the correct way. A couple of years ago we were Class A COCA (Certified opticalCON Assembly) approved by Neutrik; we sent some guys to Liechtenstein who were trained on how to terminate fibre. We put the fibre room in upstairs, which cost a good chunk of money, and developed a fibre range of cable called Van Damme Tourlight, In the last couple of years this has massively taken off. It’s not just the big tours but the Olympics, Cheltenham, football, Twickenham...any big live event, you’ll find it there. We’ve also just put out TourCat Cat 6/6A cable; it’s a very flexible cable, tactile, handles like a microphone cable and coils well. It’s a very popular cable. What sectors are particularly strong for you at the moment? We’re doing a lot in the education space. The University of York reset the bar some years ago; they invested heavily in new music and film facilities. They did it to

such a level compared to a lot of other universities it was a no-brainer to choose that uni for someone who wanted to study using state-of-the-art gear. The knock on effect was that other universities had to up their game and make the investment or not attract the students. So as a result of that, many of the universities have followed suit and upgraded. Van Damme has a pretty strong name in the educational side of things now, so we tend to get spec’d a lot by the architects. The other week we got the same tender from six different installers as Van Damme was specified. It feels gratifying when you’re doing something right. I also don’t think all universities by any stretch of the imagination have been done. Any other particular verticals to note? We did the new Derren Brown ride at Thorpe Park (Ghost Train: Rise of the Demon). The ride uses VR headsets, but whoever initially installed it didn’t use the right quality cable, and the kids were coming in and ripping the leads out so they were failing all the time. So we leapt in, underpants on the outside, rewired it and they loved us for it as the failures were very expensive for them. Also, we recently we did a lot of work for Edmondson’s (the electrical contractor) for Shrek’s Adventure! London on the South Bank. What’s next for VDC? Going forward for us, exports are a much bigger target. We’re growing more and more; we’ve got a strong foothold in America, and also in China. Middle East is also very strong. Certainly the Far East are very fascinated about how we do things here. They want to learn about our methods of carrying cables, or rigging up systems. I’ve only started to focus on exports in the last few years. People have approached us because they found Van Damme and they want to use it. The thing I feel quite proud about is that we’re well established in the UK. You have a lot of opinions in this industry; lots of different ways of doing things. It’s a funny industry, and it’s got some great characters, but it makes it a very tough market to penetrate and become established in. I’m proud we’ve done that in the UK. n

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L-R: Cray and Gräfe

MAY 2018

d&b Soundscape: ‘Expanding the possibilities of creativity’ d&b audiotechnik’s much-lauded Soundscape platform has made quite the splash since its launch earlier this year. Here, Grammy award-winning sound designer Tony David Cray and Serge Gräfe, FOH engineer for electro pioneers Kraftwerk, explain to PSNEurope why they believe the new system is radically changing the face of live sound as we know it…

ynthesiser or soprano. Man or machine. Ring Cycle or Ring Modulator. It doesn’t matter what your audio programme contains, the ever-evolving nature of concert sound reinforcement is bringing seismic changes to both production and perception. And with its new Soundscape processor suite, it seems d&b audiotechnik has firmly cemented its position as one of the sector’s foremost exponents. This is certainly the opinion of Grammy awardwinning sound designer Tony David Cray and Kraftwerk’s touring FOH engineer Serge Gräfe. Following months of analysis and first-hand, real-world use of Soundscape with their diverse client lists, the two recently came together to share their thoughts on the new system and to discover that they have much more in common than it might at first appear. Cray is a sound designer specialising in major outdoor events, as well as a busy live sound and recording engineer. His experience so far with Soundscape has given him a unique insight into its application, especially in the open air and with orchestral music. “Soundscape allows us to create a virtual

environment in which we can place close-mic’d sources across a broad space,” he says, “and more than anything it increases our empathy with the music and enables us to deliver it to the audience in a much richer way. When I first heard it used, on the opera Die Tote Stadt in Sydney Harbour, I wept. The illusion of spatialisation was overwhelming.” Meanwhile, Gräfe, who has mixed all of Kraftwerk’s recent ‘3D’ shows as the pioneering German outfit continues to push the boundaries of audio and video, has been equally impressed by Soundscape’s immersive capabilities. “I’ve been trying out Soundscape for nearly two years now, and it’s amazing,” he comments. “It really expands the creative possibilities, and especially with electronic music it gives us the freedom to create a completely new world of sound. The audience feels the music much more deeply than with stereo. “Kraftwerk’s music is based on technology, and when I joined them they were already well versed in quadrophonic sound, for example. So when I met Ralf Zuleeg of d&b audiotechnik and he told me about Soundscape, I immediately saw the opportunity to take their live sound to the next level. We always have a

stereo back-up at each show, and if you make an A-B comparison it just takes your breath away. The band sees it as a real step forward. They’re really into it.” There is an operational difference between ‘stereo’ or ‘180’ Soundscape and ‘360’ Soundscape: the former is a frontal configuration of at least five line arrays to deliver significantly enhanced stereo imaging to the entire audience; the latter is a truly immersive experience. “Full 360 is certainly something to look forward to,” says Gräfe, “and actually we’ve already done it in the Royal Albert Hall in London – loading in only that morning and playing the same night. It was a long day, but it’s possible. The experience just explodes for everybody in the room. You’re really inside the music, not just looking at it from outside.” Cray’s credentials may differ somewhat to Gräfe’s, but he too can see the potential of Soundscape throughout his professional brief. “In the classical arena, I can see this tool becoming immensely powerful,” he says. “You’re positioning a large number of musicians and singers on the stage, and Soundscape reduces the masking that occurs when you just have a stereo mix buss or a left-right mix buss – pushing all of that energy down such relatively narrow

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channels. You have the ability to position a sound source on the stage and create the illusion that it’s actually coming from that location.” For Gräfe, the calling is equally powerful for alternative reasons. “With electronic music we’re only just scratching the surface of what will be possible,” he continues. “I’ve started thinking much more deeply about this, and imagining what I could do so much better in the future. You have to think about how to process effects, for example, and you have to go deeper into the whole art of mixing: in fact you become more like a record producer, deciding which sounds go where and what kind of emotions you want to inspire.” Cray heralds the transparency and accuracy of the system as a means of remodelling the entire acoustic ambience of almost any space, while Gräfe is excited by the ‘psychedelic possibilities’. “The feature of Soundscape that I’m really excited about is the En-Space software module, with its convolution processing for the creation of room simulations,” he elaborates. “I’ve used it a few times and I still keep forgetting it’s on. I simply believe that I’m in the acoustic that’s actually modelled by En-Space, and

that’s very rare for room simulation software. I’m really keen to see how far we can push that.” “I’m looking forward to working on effects that are specially designed for 360,” adds Gräfe. “I’ve already started to develop some delays in Native Instruments’ Reaktor software, with several outputs so that every repeat has a disparate position in the room. “And I think we can expect to build some reverbs that could work in the same way, where a specific tone comes from one position and the next tone comes from another but the basic reverb remains in a core location. That’s really interesting for electronic music, but I’ve also experimented with this on other styles.” But is it something users would be comfortable touring with, or pulling in and out of arenas and parks under a tight schedule and difficult conditions? “Over the last few years we’ve begun to focus on areas of the sound reinforcement system that are beyond the frontal line arrays,” Cray explains. “It’s now about envelopment, particularly for outdoor concerts of acoustic music such as ballet or symphony where you make the audience feel as though they are immersed in a venue even though they’re sitting outside in the sun or the breeze.

“It’s crucial, and we find that the more effort we put into it, the better the audience’s experience.” “Our last tour was frequently back-to-back concerts with five line arrays and a flown sub array,” reveals Gräfe. “We’d get in at 9am, take the measurements and then rig everything up – with doors opening at 7pm. So yes, it is tour-able! If you prepare everything properly it’s fine.” While being simple to deploy, Soundscape also invites new approaches, new techniques and even new thinking about the role of the FOH engineer. And audiences will be at the ‘front of house’ too, sharing much more closely the intimate and intricate details of the music that Soundscape has been designed to reveal. “Soundscape keeps on bringing up the question of what we’ve been doing for so many years,” Cray concludes. “We’ve used a stereo buss, and pushed things out through left and right arrays; trying to use a bussed process to glue the vocals; trying to equalize an entire section of instruments… all because the medium of a stereo buss is flawed. Using Soundscape you have to have the courage to let that go and let the performance speak for itself. If you can do that, the results are quite remarkable.” n

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On the record Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter Jenn Decilveo is currently making her mark on the pop music landscape, working with chart-topping artists to record the genre’s biggest hits. Tara Lepore caught up with her to talk about the importance of mastering your technique, how the production scene is changing and her journey to get to where she is today...

n our transatlantic phone call to LA-based producer and songwriter Jenn Decilveo, the one thing she’s really dying to talk about is the amazing production talent coming from Europe at the moment. Frequently flying over to London to work with emerging pop artists and studio stalwarts in the capital, she’s full of praise for the Music Producers’ Guild’s most recent award winners – especially the record number of women taking home prizes this year (Catherine Marks won Producer of the Year, with another four women receiving prestigious accolades). A similar title could soon be heading her way, as Decilveo’s songwriting ability and instinctive production prowess leads her to work with pop’s most streamed artists, including British pop singer Anne-Marie, whose long-awaited debut album Speak Your Mind – which Decilveo partly produced – was released last month. Although she only moved to LA to pursue a career in the music industry within the past decade, New Jersey native Decilveo’s roster of artists is already seriously impressive. Having written with the likes of Beth Ditto, Albert Hammond Jr of the Strokes, Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan and the aforementioned Anne-Marie, her songwriting and production credits are showing up more and more frequently in the pop landscape. Her work on Anne-Marie’s debut saw Decilveo work with award-winning producer Fraser T Smith and another MPG 2018 award winner, Recording Engineer of the Year Manon Grandjean. But back to the States. Almost a decade ago, after quitting a job in finance (“It’s a great profession for some people - I was miserable”), Decilveo started interning at a studio in Manhattan. Initially working on the business side of things, an engineer at the studio began teaching her about recording, which piqued her interest in production. A job at a booking agency followed, which led her to make contacts that prompted her to move to LA in 2009. “It’s kind of scary to actually take the plunge when you’re used to a paycheck and benefits. But I did, and I’m still here in 2018.”

ENGINEERING AND MIXING TO ME HAS BECOME ESSENTIAL TO PRODUCTION. YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT GEAR TO USE AND HOW TO MIX SOMETHING PROPERLY, AS WELL AS HAVING THE IDEAS JENN DECILVEO

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IF YOU USE THE SAME SOUND THAT’S AVAILABLE TO EVERYBODY, YOU HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO FUCK IT UP. THERE’S A CHANCE THAT EVERYONE’S USING THE SAME SYNTHS, THE SAME WAVES, AND YOU’RE GOING TO HEAR THAT. EVERYONE SHOULD MESS IT UP - IT GIVES THE PRODUCER AN IDENTITY JENN DECILVEO

Decilveo produced Andra Day’s Grammy-nominated debut

In those nine years, Decilveo says she’s seen the music business change in that more people than ever have the ability to make music from their bedrooms. “I think there are fewer barriers to entry, but I find that a lot of music is homogenous these days. Engineering and mixing to me has become essential to production. I feel like you need to really understand the gear or the plugins to make it sound decent.” This appreciation for technique led Decilveo to hone her recording skills four years ago. She says: “I wish I’d been obsessed with recording when I was 10 because I think the best producers need to know what gear to use and how to mix something properly in production, as well as having [musical] ideas in their brain. “Production now, at least in the stuff that I do, is very close to being finished when a demo’s turned in. It’s 70% there. The quality is enhanced when you have good ingredients, like good synths, good preamps, good compressors and good pedal delays. It’s all about choice of the gear after the ideas are there, and you have to know what you’re doing, mix-wise and in terms of engineering, to make it sound tight.”

the same as everyone else who’s using it. There’s something to be said about making it your own. There’s a chance that everyone’s using the same synths, the same waves, and you’re going to hear that. Everyone should mess it up – it gives the producer an identity. “Because of that music, everyone’s using the same over compressed high-end vocals,” she continues. “If you listen back to a Fiona Apple record, for example, you can hear the intricacies of her voice because it was treated differently. I think that adds character to a song or a record. Everything from the choice of the drum kit or the guitar or the amp or the player makes a difference. “I’m definitely playing catch up on mixing, though. I’ve had Michael Brauer mix records of mine, as well as Phil Tan and Geoff Swan. I want to get the song as far to done as possible, and then the mixer comes on board and makes it really incredible. With Brauer, who I worked with on Beth Ditto’s [2017 album] Fake Sugar, he just ran the music through stuff and warmed it all up. As a producer you need to get as far along as possible with that mindset before it even gets to the mixer. It’s different now with everyone to able to make music – it’s not ‘plug and play’ recording anymore.

Pineapple studios When in LA, Decilveo works mostly from her studio which she affectionately calls The Pineapple Box, featuring her “trusty” analogue synth LA-2A. “I’m an obsessor of synths,” she continues. “Recently I met a guy in London who made me look like an amateur, with synths in the entire room, from floor to ceiling. He started to talk about it in a way that’s so advanced, just next-level conversation. He said, I hate presets – you’re not a producer if you use presets. I don’t necessarily know if that’s right. But he’s correct in that if you use the same sound that’s available to everybody, that means you have to find a way to fuck it up, otherwise it sounds

Speaking your mind Decilveo’s work on Anne-Marie’s debut is a clear indicator of just how many people are involved with creating a pop record in the 2010s. Rather than overseeing the entire record, working with an artist on each track, Decilveo represents a new era of producers who are called in for their different talents on each song, often with the main aim of making the next big hit. Anne-Marie has a huge following in pop after vocal features on No. 1 hits including Rockabye by Clean Bandit. Decilveo met her in March 2016, when they began working on her debut which ended up being

almost two years in the making. She says: “Straight off the bat I liked her personality. I was like, Huh, you’re interesting and you can sing. Oh, and you have an opinion. And we’ve been working together ever since. Whenever she’s in LA or I’m in London we get together and write. I would probably say if I could count on my hand the artists that I’ve met in the last decade that I want to write songs with for the rest of my life, one of them would be her. We just work very well together.” As well as the Anne-Marie record, Decilveo has just finished producing albums for Bibi Bourelly, Bat for Lashes and Demo Taped. In 2016, Cheers To The Fall, an album she produced with American singer Andra Day, was nominated for a Grammy. Who else does she dream of working with? “Adele, obviously. Pink. Miley Cyrus. I’d love to work with FKA Twiggs. Oh, and Bjork.” As our conversation draws to a close, the chat turns to some of the great work being done by other producers doing big things in the biz right now, and it’s clear she’s passionate about supporting other women in the industry. “I wish I had a girl to talk to about production when I was younger as sometimes the technical language and jargon [within production] can be a bit scary. I was talking about compression to an artist the other day and she didn’t understand it until I explained it properly, like really broke it down for her. I think women communicate differently.” So, what advice would she give to a young woman starting out in the business now? “Big picture, non-technical, human advice would be to stay the course. There are no hand-outs. But if you’re passionate and love what you do and do it for the right reasons, you can take it. You’ve just got to stay the course, there’s lots of ups and downs.” And technically? “Start early. Do your 10,000 hours. Become a master at your craft.” n

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Sounding good: Kirsty Gillmore

Grand designs

As a sound designer, showreel producer and voice actor, Kirsty Gillmore’s love for audio leads her to enviably creative projects, conjuring up soundscapes for award-winning plays and creating sound effects for objects that don’t exist. Tara Lepore spoke to her about her theatre sound business Sounds Wilde and how the ‘golden age’ of audio is opening up endless possibilities...

irsty Gillmore is someone with more than one string to her bow. Her devotion to all things audio has led her to carve out a career for herself that focuses on creativity and exploration within the aural realm. After almost a decade at the BBC working in radio, Gillmore set up her own business specialising in theatre sound design, which along with her voice acting work and desire to support the wider industry as part of equality organisation SoundGirls, has rendered her as someone who knows their way around both sides of the microphone. To bring us back to the start of Gillmore’s varied career in audio, we have to go back to a gig in New Zealand in the late 1990s. “I was listening to a band one night with a composer friend of mine and we started talking about the mix: how we couldn’t really hear the keyboards where they’d been placed; how the effects the guitarist were using were a bit odd. He said, Oh this is the sort of thing that a music producer does, have you ever thought about going into music production?”

Not knowing any producers or engineers, Gillmore started to look around for a course in sound engineering – something that didn’t take long, as there were only two courses available in New Zealand at the time. After graduating from the Music and Audio Institute of New Zealand in sound engineering, music and performance, Gillmore worked for a post-production company that she’d previously interned at. She’d occasionally do voiceover work here too, which is where her multi-hyphen job title began its early life. At 24, Gillmore moved to London, feeling frustrated at the lack of opportunity in her native country. Spending eight years at the BBC in a number of different roles, including as a sound engineer involved in the digitisation of much of Radio 4’s archive and managing studios for BBC World Service, Gillmore left the corporation in 2010 to start her own business and focus on sound design – specifically in theatre. The product of this was Sounds Wilde, a service offering character audioreel services for actors, who

– for those not in the know – need a well-produced recording of their voice to get work performing on radio dramas and recording audiobooks. Gillmore helps actors capture their natural vocals (plus a selection of appropriate character voices) from her studio in north London, while also working as a voice actor herself.

Mic check “It’s not what kit you use that’s important, it’s how you use it,” explains Gillmore, when PSNEurope asks her about her equipment of choice. “My favourite condenser microphone at the moment is an [AKG] C414 to record most people’s voices – it doesn’t colour the sound too much so it’s perfect for voice actors. While a warm tone is great, I have to err on the side of the microphone that’s not going to colour the sound too much to capture people’s different voices accurately. I like Audient interfaces which have a really clean sound, and use Focal monitors for my sound design work in postproduction. I’m really fond of them because they give

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quite a detailed sound and it’s important for me – with the complex mixing I do for radio and short films – to be able to rely on my reference to know that what I hear is as accurate as possible. “I’ve been a Pro Tools user for 20 years; it’s got its quirks, but I can’t imagine changing that now. I work from [digital audio workstation] Reaper a lot when I’m doing remote recordings, and use a lot of Waves plug ins, as I’m sure everybody does.” Gillmore continues: “Having tools that accurately reflect sounds is useful to me, but I’m not completely reliant on my software to create the kind of sounds that I want. The tools are incredibly useful; software like Iris is great to manipulate sounds, but I rely quite a lot on really great bass sounds, especially for my sound design work. I’ve got an extensive sound library now, but if I can’t find the sounds I need, I create them.” Creating new sounds to incorporate into a play’s audio tapestry is a “pretty cool” part of Gillmore’s work, and it’s something that requires a fair bit of research alongside lots of imagination and creative licence. In 2017, Gillmore worked as the associate sound designer on award-winning play The Shape Of The Pain, which featured “exhilarating sound and lighting”,

description elements. She also operated the sound for the production’s London previews.

IN A LOT OF THE PROJECTS I’VE WORKED ON, PEOPLE REALISE HALFWAY THROUGH THAT THEY NEED SOMEONE TO DESIGN THE SOUND FOR IT. THIS CAN RESULT IN WHAT A FORMER COLLEAGUE OF MINE CALLS ‘DOG BARK, DOORBELL’ SHOWS

KIRSTY GILLMORE

according to Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner. Gillmore was responsible for shaping the sound design through the four-week rehearsal process, which involved adjusting levels, editing cues, making decisions on placement (with both speakers and audio elements), and recording and implementing voiceovers and audio

Forever young!

Creative licence Another recent project was a creative treasure trove for Gillmore, working on a ‘steampunk dystopian’ radio drama with a brief to design sounds for imagined Industrial Era machines that have never existed. How do you begin designing that? “I had to do a lot of research into clockwork and machines of the time to figure out how they’d work,” she explains. “For the last episode we did, I had to invent sounds for a flying machine. The director sent me drawing of the kind of thing he had in mind and said, I want it like to sound like a mosquito whine, but I also want it to sound very mechanical. “I listened to the sounds of really early Wright Brothers-era flying machines, but then had to consider adding insect-like sounds, so incorporated the sound of a dragonfly fluttering for the plane’s wings.” To achieve this, Gillmore used recorded sound effects of an early aeroplane and mixed this with the resonating noise of a Tesla coil, a high-voltage electrical device invented in the 19th century.

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Gillmore is the European director of SoundGirls

“I enjoy projects where I’ve got a bit more creative licence, where I can work collaboratively with a director and I can suggest things to them. Sound design work can be quite isolating, and I prefer working in collaboration wherever possible. In theatre, especially, you might only meet the rest of the team once or twice. There’s a lot of making by yourself. In a lot of the projects I’ve worked on, people realise halfway through that they need someone to design the sound for it. This can result in what a former colleague of mine calls ‘dog bark, doorbell’ shows. All the director wants is a certain sound effect coming out of the right speaker, which is a kind of ‘sound design by numbers’. “The best way I like to work is being brought onto a project early on and being able to talk about the creative vision collectively. Sometimes [in theatre], sound design can often be the last thought.”

Changing times However, the public’s general attitude towards audio is changing. When Gillmore was first introduced to the world of sound through her composer friend at that gig in New Zealand, she didn’t know of anyone working in the business.

Fast forward 15 years or so, and she’s “seeing people taking sound design more seriously.” She elaborates: “I didn’t even know sound design was a thing in the New Zealand back in the late ’90s. Although, it is still a bit of a hidden art. I think you can see [perceptions of] sound in general at the Oscars, for example, where a lot of Academy voters simply abstained from voting in the sound editing and mixing categories, because they think they couldn’t possibly understand it. But they’d still almost always vote in the cinematography award because it’s visual – they can see it. I think the idea that sound is more of a mystery still exists. “At the same time, I certainly think sound design has become more prominent within film. When I talk to people about sound, they tell me they really enjoyed the sound in films like Interstellar or Baby Driver, a film where the sound concept was a decision they made really early on in the process.” The rise of voice-based technology in products like Apple’s Siri and Amazon Echo’s Alexa command services means people are opening themselves up to audio media more than ever before. Now, people are experiencing as much audio media as they are visual

media, says Gillmore, with “audiobooks on the rise; there’s talk of podcasting overtaking radio – which is itself experiencing another golden age.” This is all great news for voice actors – like Gillmore – as the demand for audio-based drama increases. Along with her voice acting work, Gillmore is the European director for SoundGirls, an organisation that aims to support women working in all sectors of sound. She regularly writes blog posts for its website and organises monthly events in London to get women in the business networking and linking up. She says: “The rise in social media has meant it’s now easier than ever for women to connect in the industry – to find their networks and become more visible in the industry, because we have platforms to do so.” SoundGirls is free to join and open to all genders; “as long as [supporting women in audio] is something you’re an advocate for. We don’t close it off to anyone.” You can’t help but think that Gillmore has taken a similar approach to her career – by staying openminded, following her curiosity and pursuing a more creative path in audio, she’s resisted putting herself in a box. Cue door opening sound effect. n www.soundgirls.org

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As the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest music therapy charity, Nordoff Robbins is dedicated to changing the lives of vulnerable and isolated people, and helping them improve their wellbeing through the skilled use of music. Music therapy can help a child with autism to communicate, build confidence for someone living with mental health issues, and support those with complex disabilities to reach their potential.

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P42

Flying the flag: The HiWatt stand at Musikmesse

MAY 2018

Face the Musik MI Focus editor Laura Barnes reviews this year’s Musikmesse and looks at the key area of MI and pro audio crossover...

epending on who you spoke to, and on what day of this year’s Musikmesse you spoke to them, their answer to the question “how is the show going?” ranged from “it’s been a bit quiet” to “I’ve been so busy I haven’t even left my booth for three days”! One trade visitor suggested that they could probably condense their Musikmesse meetings into one day, while another said they were so busy that they were staying longer this year than at the last show. As the old saying goes, you can’t please everybody, but you certainly can’t say Musikmesse isn’t trying to. With 800-plus flight cancellations happening a day before Musikmesse opened – which was also the opening day of Prolight+Sound – and an unfortunate combination of torrential rain and public transport strikes, Messe Frankfurt didn’t have the smoothest of rides. Despite this, there was still plenty to see. This year saw Musikmesse and Prolight+Sound organisers add in a number of new elements to both the trade and consumer aspects of the two shows, bringing together the MI and pro audio markets where it saw the most crossover, and ramping up its live performance offerings throughout. Two areas of the show that proved particularly popular with the masses on the Musikmesse side were Yamaha’s huge dedicated area and the acoustic instrument hall. Yamaha pretty much offered its own ‘show within the show’. It had acoustic instruments, electronics, sound booths, classical instruments, performances and talks

all going on. It certainly appeared to be the busiest area of the show. Another busy area of the fair was the Acoustic Instruments, Percussion and Sheet Music hall. While traditionally a quieter affair than the Guitar and Drum camps, this year saw vast numbers of visitors gather to take in an array of show-stopping live performances on the Baton Rouge stand, check out the boutique offerings from the smaller brands, and queue up to try out Martin Guitar’s new Black Walnut models. Hal Leonard’s huge book stand proved quite a draw for visitors, too. While the electric guitar and drum areas traditionally tend to be the loudest and busiest at this kind of trade show, it was surprisingly a little more subdued than last year. The constant interruption drummers received from the onsite “noise police” didn’t help either. While this is a measure that must be implemented, it certainly appeared to be enforced with greater vigour this year than ever before. There were some notable announcements in this section though, mainly GEWA and DW Drums’ new hybrid drum kit and triggers, and the welcome re-launch of British amp manufacturer Hiwatt. New additions like Amp World and the Fender exhibition were a nice touch, but again somewhat quiet. It’s worth noting that Messe Frankfurt re-introduced days reserved solely for trade visitors this year, so it’s understandable that the more consumer centric elements of the show would seem calmer on these days, and is possibly why some exhibitors noticed a dip in footfall.

Messe Frankfurt’s post-event press release actually revealed that due to this re-introduced trade-only element, there was a decline in the number of private visitors from Germany. It was also revealed that there was a significant increase in the share of trade visitors (up 10 per cent). Where this year’s show really gave both consumers and trade visitors something new to discover was in the crossover halls. The ‘Audio, DJ and Recording’ and the ‘DJCon’ halls attracted a healthy mix of visitors with microphones, DJ and recording equipment, DJ software, live demonstrations, and DJ sessions aplenty. Next year, both shows will overlap fully on all days (Tuesday, April 2-Friday, April 5, with Musikmesse running for an extra day and closing on Saturday, April 6) and “move closer together spatially”. Not only will organisers hope that this decision will result in bringing everything closer together, but that it will also give trade visitors the chance to get through their meetings a little quicker and perhaps even have time to go investigate other areas of the show that they might have missed this year. While the 2018 instalment of Musikmesse may not have been quite as busy as last year, news that the number of trade visitors was up year-on-year could well be seen as an encouraging sign. Messe Frankfurt will certainly be hoping that the new set-up for Musikmesse and Prolight+Sound in 2019 will help cement its place and, indeed, importance in what is becoming an increasingly fluctuating and, indeed, challenging trade show landscape. n

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P45 MAY 2018

All together now New technologies are allowing intercom systems to become more integrated, not only for audio but video as well. The National Theatre is among the first to do this with Riedel’s Bolero DECT wireless technology. Kevin Hilton reports…

Photo: Jan Versweyveld

reaking away from something you have used and become familiar with over a long period of time is difficult. Technical and production staff at the National Theatre (NT) in London faced this wrench when it was decided to replace the venue’s 15-year-old comms system and move towards an integrated installation connecting security and FOH personnel as well as those backstage. The National Theatre was founded in 1963 and based initially at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. In 1976 a purpose-built theatre was opened on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is an instantly recognisable concrete creation housing three distinct auditoria: the Olivier Theatre, named after the NT’s first artistic director, actor Laurence Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Dorfman (formerly the Cottesloe). The NT’s head of sound and video, Dominic Bilkey, explains that the decision to replace the previous communications system led to discussions about installing something with greater integration between different departments, including technical, support and security. “The existing Clear-Com analogue matrix had been in place for about 15 years and was coming to the end of its life,” Bilkey says. “The plan was to investigate replacing the matrix and bringing wired and wireless together.” Although Bilkey and his team talked to ClearCom about the FreeSpeak II wireless system, other manufacturers were also approached. Among them was Riedel, which at the time - around the end of 2016 - was working on what became the Bolero DECT-based range. Bilkey comments that while installing another matrix was “a given”, there was debate over whether the overall system should be more than that. “We talked about a matrix with a number of party lines and wireless,” he says. “Something we explored with Riedel was whether wired and wireless were different entities or if there could be combinations. This was partly because we were looking to replace the wired party line used for the follow spot operators and supplementary crew, as well as points on stage.” The NT formed a technical partnership with Riedel to investigate these points and produce something that would fulfil its specific requirements. “For Riedel, this will benefit new products,” comments Bilkey. “It’s allowed us to integrate different aspects of communications used not only in the theatres but also round the rest of the building. We’ve got integration with the God mics [used by the stage manager or director during rehearsals] and the Motorola radio units for

Bryan Cranston starring in Network

the security and supplementary staff. The result is an integrated system weaving through the building.” The core of this inter-connectivity is the Riedel Artist intercom matrix. Four matrices of different frame sizes are installed round the building: a 128 in the communications room, which provides distribution to the Bolero aerials; another 128 in the Olivier, a 64 for the Lyttelton and a 32 in the Dorfman. “It’s one big Artist network on fibre,” Bilkey explains. “The Bolero aerials are all on Luminex switches, again over fibre, which connect to different spaces.” These include supplementary panels in office areas, which are linked through AES67 interfaces. There is also an AES67-interfaced feed from the back of the Artist frame into the building’s Cisco routing system, which is used to connect to remote technical units. A series of eight fixed-base Motorola radio base stations is integrated through the Artist frame, creating a bridge between the production intercom and the security/general purpose comms system. Also key is the Riedel MediorNet MicroN distribution router, which routes signals for the internal HD TV system, with embedded audio from MADI connections, as well as linking to the Dante-based show relay network. Installation began in June 2017 in the Lyttelton Theatre. The Olivier followed in January this year; Bilkey says that although in the first instance the two systems were separate, integration between the two was soon instigated. “The install into the Lyttelton took

about five days,” Bilkey comments. “We used Bolero on a number of shows after that and played around with configurations. We didn’t get it right from the beginning, but that taught us how we wanted the system to run.” After two technically straightforward productions - an adaptation of Jane Eyre and JT Rogers’ Oslo - towards the end of 2017, the Lyttelton was used for an ambitious stage version of the Sidney Lumet/Paddy Chayefsky 1976 film satire about TV, Network. The staging featured a central TV studio set surrounded by dining tables, where the audience could have dinner while the play went on. Shots from cameras on set were displayed on big screens, with the camera operators part of the action. Each operator wore Bolero belt packs; the system worked with MediorNet to produce pictures as well as providing comms. The Dorfman Theatre is due to have Bolero installed during May. The wireless intercom will also support this year’s River Stage, the outdoor summer festival that was used as an early try-out of the system during the 2017 season. Bilkey says there are plans to bring the Bolero installation up the theoretical limit of 100 belt packs, although the integrated Motorola radios will most likely be retained due to the number already in use. He concludes that staff at the NT have been getting used to the new technology: “It’s like driving the same car for 15 years and then jumping into another model. But what sold it was having a single front-end that is part of one big system.” n

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P46 MAY 2018

Inside story: Music Inside Rimini

Three is the magic number Italy’s ‘number one’ trade fair organiser is currently putting the finishing touches to Music Inside Rimini, a three-day event coming to the Adriatic Coast later this month. Mike Clark caught up with its team of planners to find out how this multi-sector show plans to make its mark in May, and what both visitors and exhibitors can expect from the annual audio and tech event…

imini Expo Centre on the Italian Adriatic is hosting the third edition of Music Inside Rimini (MIR) from May 6-8. The event, which features an original combination of an AV and lighting technology expo, live events, hands-on demos and technical updating, training and networking sessions, is organised by Italian Exhibition Group (IEG) with the collaboration of several key trade associations. IEG, founded in 2016 with a merger between Rimini Fiera and Fiera di Vicenza, describes itself as Italy’s ‘number one’ trade fair organiser, as well as a leader in the conference and congress sector. We spoke to two key members of the organising bodies to get some insight into the event and the philosophy behind its work - IEG’s Sport and Entertainment group exhibition director Patrizia Cecchi, and Gianni Fantini, the man behind the launch of the

Live You Play format, which this year is occupying no less than four of the venue’s 6,000sqm halls. The figures of Music Inside Rimini 2018 bode well: nine halls, 20 per cent more expo space than last year, 12 stages with live performances and much more to boot. Forecasts for visitor attendance are also high, and the aim is to exceed the almost 10,000 visitors at the previous edition. At the press conference in Milan to announce the event, Claudio Formisano, chairman of the Confederation of European Music Industries (CAFIM), described MIR as “an opportunity not to be missed, as it had been designed and planned as a long-term investment on behalf of the organisers.” Gianfranco Penocchio, media solution country manager with Sony Professional, remarked on how MIR represents something different on the Broadcasting and AV calendar: “The only opportunity for hands-on demos

and a place to show the public the technological and artistic backstage production process.” Thanks to the partnership with Live You Play, live events will again be among the key features at MIR 2018. In fact, four of the event’s nine halls will host 12 stages on which live bands will alternate, staging 24 live shows, 24 product demos and 12 virtual checks every day. Visitors will have the opportunity to discover in detail all the equipment on stage, as well as what’s out of sight backstage. All of the audio, video and lighting technology can be tested with the help of specialists at visitors’ disposal on the various stages and expo stands. Fantini comments: “Our Live You Play format is unique, and this year it will be even bigger, as the halls have been increased to four. The format will also be slightly changed, as the last slot on each day’s schedule will allow sound engineers and lighting ops to try their

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hand personally at carrying out both sound and cue/ light checks.” The four halls’ resident bands will alternate sets on the three stages throughout the day, and brands already confirmed for the stages include Bose, Clair Bros, ElectroVoice, FBT, K-Array, Link, Nexo, Sennheiser, L-Acoustics, Midas and VUE Audiotechnik. “We decided to increase the number of halls because a lot of companies asked to take part last year and we weren’t able to accept them all,” explains Fantini. Another new feature added this year is that one of the halls will feature stages that are not equipped by audio, lighting and video manufacturers or their distributors, but rental firms from all over the country. “I expect these set-ups to be a bit more essential,” continues Fantini, “with flight cases for the audience, rather than the tiered seating of the other halls.” Music Inside Rimini therefore involves the entire product chain by means of four well-established macro areas: Sound and Lighting, the core of the event represented by manufacturers of audio and lighting technology for the entertainment world and event industry; Professional Video, a sector dedicated to the world of cinema, television studios and visuals, where visitors will be able to test all the equipment featured in a dedicated context; Integrated Systems, an ample project which includes numerous initiatives such as the multimedia AV Experience area, courses and seminars; and, Music & DJ producer, one of the new features of this third edition, dedicated to musical instruments, where it will be possible to try out guitars and effects,

as well as mixers, turntables, synths, MIDI and DMX controllers, with the assistance of some of the bestknown endorsers in the business.

Patrizia Cecchi

Development training Once again this year, an professional training will be an essential element of the event’s offering, with conferences and opportunities for in-depth consideration of successful case histories available to all attendees, via the experience of those directly involved in developing large-scale projects. In July 2017, veteran Italian rocker Vasco Rossi hosted a concert to celebrate the 40th year of his career at the Enzo Ferrari Park in Modena, setting a world record for the concert with the largest number of paying spectators (225,173). His technical production team, including sound engineer Andrea Corsellini, will be out in force at MIR, giving first-hand info on the ins and outs of large-scale concert production. Training will be further widened, with special meetings and conferences dedicated to hot topics, such as performing rights and secondary ticketing, and guests will include Rossi’s guitarist for over 20 years, Californian Stef Burns, who has also played and recorded with Y&T and Huey Lewis and The News and many other artists, as well as his own band, the Stef Burns League. Live Experience is another of the new features at Music Inside Rimini, and will be divided into three areas: Live Broadcast Experience (focused on connected technology for the TV world); Live Film Experience,

hosting technology for independent filmmakers and large film productions; and Live Visual Experience: focused on technology used for installations and video projections for live events.

Music Inside Festival

Gianni Fantini

One of the first steps in the organisation of the latest edition of the show regarded a change in the schedule: At last year’s show, the Music Inside Festival opened the event, whereas this year it was held one week in advance on Sunday 29 and Monday 30 April, with a format entitled X-TRAINTOWN, and a live show featuring a line-up of world-famous DJs. A multi-venue festival, the event expands its borders throughout its run, starting from the expo hub and moving out into the city of Rimini and taking in various important historical buildings and unusual venues that are not normally used for live music performances of this type. The annual expo claims to have become the first reference point of the professional music and entertainment market and the various application fields that exist within it. Now in its third edition, it appears to posses all the features and assets necessary to expand further still over the coming years. For now, MIR continues to serve as an across-the-board incubator and hub of professionalism, in-depth networking and training at every level of the music chain. n musicinsiderimini.it

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P48 MAY 2018

Victorious

Alex the great: Alex Baranowski

For the new theatre production of Ingmar Bergman’s classic film Fanny & Alexander at London’s The Old Vic, composer Alex Baranowski and sound designer Tom Gibbons are utilising a Digico console and a d&b audiotechnik PA supplied by Stage Sound Services. Simon Duff took to the capital to take in the show and find out how the system performed on the night…

anny & Alexander is a 1982 Ingmar Bergman film regarded as a masterpiece of European independent cinema. For the 2018 London Old Vic theatre production, BAFTA awardwinning writer Stephen Beresford and Old Vic associate director Max Webster have taken on the challenge of re-interpreting the film for the stage. With a stellar cast led by Penelope Wilton and Michael Pennington, the production includes a modern, evocative, and haunting contemporary classical score by Alex Baranowski. The plot is set in the the gilded glamour of 1900s Sweden. Siblings Fanny and Alexander’s world is turned upside down when their widowed mother remarries a corrupt local bishop. As creative freedom and rigid orthodoxy clash, a war ensues between imagination and austerity in a magical study of childhood, family and love. Baranowski is a London based composer, trained at Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing

Arts (LIPA) and nominated for a Tony award for The Cripple of Inishmaan on Broadway. He won a Music + Sound Award 2014 for his score to BAFTA nominated film McCullin, and his ballet adaptation of 1984 for Northern Ballet recently won the prestigious South Bank Award for dance after a sold out run at Sadler’s Wells. Other collaborations with directors in theatre include Oscar winning Danny Boyle (Frankenstein), Rupert Goold (Earthquakes In London), Sir Nicholas Hytner, (Hamlet) at the Royal National Theatre, and numerous productions for West End and Broadway. A major inspiration and initial influence for Barnowski when creating the original score for Fanny & Alexander was Schumann’s piano Quintet op.44. He says : “That thoughtful, deeply emotional piece opens the Bergman film and Max and Stephen were both keen that I be guided by the spirit and intensity of that writing as I approached my score. That said, they were both really keen that I not be too influenced by the original film.

Indeed that goes for all aspects of the production. When Stephen acquired permission to do the theatrical version, the Bergman estate had a proviso that Stephen should create his own vision for Fanny & Alexander.” Work on the production for Baranowski started in autumn of 2017 with initial meetings and briefs from Max Webster. Back in his studio, scoring demos and ideas began in earnest. Based around Pro Tools HD 2018, PSI Audio A 17-M Active monitors and a host of choice outboard, Baranowski’s studio is a top of the range set up. Commenting on the PSIs, he says: “For orchestral work they are extraordinary near field speakers and they deliver a level of performance and accuracy that very few two-way designs can match, and which would also shame a great many three-way offerings. For serious high-end monitoring they are my absolute favourite.” The sample libraries that he works with in his studio include Spitfire Audio’s Chamber Strings. Baranowski

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Fanny & Alexander at The Old Vic

enthuses. “It’s a fantastic library. 16 of the finest string players, playing the finest instruments via the finest signal path in The Hall at Air Studios. A superb collection of string articulations and techniques.” He also uses The Complete Olafur Arnalds Collection, part of Spitfire Audio’s Chamber Evolutions series, a collection of sounds with celebrated Icelandic composer, Ólafur Arnalds, which introduces his signature “Waves” samples that Baranowski used for ghostly type cues in Fanny & Alexander. In addition, he draws upon Cine Samples’ Tina Guo, electric and acoustic Cello library. For his piano library samples he utilises Imperfect Samples, one of many piano libraries in his collection. This one has a soft character that worked well for demos played in rehearsals. All contributed to the sonic palette used on Fanny & Alexander. Choice outboard gear in his studio includes Neve 1073 mic pre-amps and EQ, a Universal Audio Apollo Twin interface, TLA Audio Valve compression and in the microphone department Royer Labs R-121 ribbons mics, DPA 4006’s and Sontronics Aria valve mics, are the order of the day. Working with sound designer Tom Gibbons, rehearsals began at the start of 2018 before 10 days of technical rehearsals on the Old Vic stage itself. Onsite composition was carried out and in total he wrote and produced some 62 cues, with score parts produced for the two-person band line up, comprising of Harry Napier, cello, and Kathrine Rockhill, piano, both of whom perform live positioned in one of the audience boxes overlooking stage and stalls. The two band members took cues off a click track

SCHUMANN’S PIANO QUINTET OP.44 OPENS THE FILM AND MAX AND STEPHEN WERE KEEN THAT I BE GUIDED BY THE SPIRIT OF THAT WRITING IN MY SCORE. BUT THEY WERE ALSO KEEN THAT I NOT BE TOO INFLUENCED BY THE ORIGINAL FILM

ALEX BARANOWSKI

when needed, fed by QLab and the Pro Tools pre-records. However, for most of the cues the band did not work with a click track, taking their timings from tempo and on stage visual cues. Final mix formats and stems were approved, running at 48kHz, 24 bit Wave files with stems sent to sound designer Gibbons, who in turn worked on QLab and Ableton Live, producing his sound design at FOH, which was mixed by Michael Woods, working with with Amanda Davies, sound operator. Gibbons trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in Theatre Sound and is resident sound designer for the international physical theatre company Parrot in The Tank. Recent work includes The Crucible (New York), Anna Karenina (Manchester Royal Exchange) and

A View From the Bridge (Young Vic). The FOH audio for Fanny & Alexander is run on a Digico SD10 T with Steathlcore, running all audio via MADI at 48kHz, 24 bit, supplied by Stage Sound Services. The Main PA, also supplied by Stage Sound Services, consists of six d&b Y7P on the proscenium with four d&b Y subs, a centre array of seven d&b Y8 and auditorium delays and fills, which are mainly d&b E8s and E3s with six E0s as front fills. On-stage there are four Meyer Sound UPAs (Old Vic stock) and four EM Acoustics 81s, as well as a d&b B2 sub. microphone used on the cast are 19 Shure UR1M packs with DPA 4061s. “Apart from the six Y7Ps on the proscenium and two of the Y Subs, the whole PA is from Stage Sound Services,” says Gibbons. “The Old Vic purchased the 4061s as they need for each shows, with a small number coming from old show stock. For example, we had an acoustic guitar on an existing 4061.” Baranowski is currently working on original music inspired by his Polish grandparents who came to the UK after WW2. His grandfather was a musician and published poet who wrote about his experiences, setting some of them to music. He concludes: “I’m in the process of creating my own musical pieces with the instruments he left me in his will. He ran a choir well into his nineties so I have some quarter-inch tapes of those that I will use. I’ve also got a film coming out in the coming months, which is a feature documentary about Rudolph Nureyev, which should be really beautiful. We recorded the score in Abbey Road last year.” n

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Sound and vision

In each issue, we publish the best pro audio pics shared on social media in the past month. From gig pics to get-out selfies, studio shots to product close-ups, the industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s online community is thriving and we want to share the great work going on. Want to be featured next month? Tag @psneurope on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook or email tlepore@nbmedia.com

travisballmixing What would be the first song you would listen to if you visited my studio?

thatstudioguy I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t often go to church but when I do it sounds pretty darn good! Can I get an Amen? #churchlife #churchaudio #foh

ez audio What a show! @not3sofficial shut it down last night at @kokocamden Looking forward to the summer!

@sparkyannc (Ann Charles, radio engineer) On my way to @AESOrg #UpYourOutput event to explain how amazing broadcast engineering is

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@martinaudioltd (UK-based loudspeaker manufacturer) Congratulations to our very own Sophie and Charlotte, who completed the Brighton Marathon on Sunday for Mind and Macmillan. Great work!

@nexoofficial Made in France. GEO M6 in an iconic pose in Paris, courtesy of Dimmer #nexo #geom6 #linearray

@plsfrankfurt A big THANK YOU to everybody for making #pls2018 such a success. We are looking forward to seeing you again from 2nd to 5th April 2019 in Frankfurt

@finlaywatt Yesterday in the RAH looking after system for Jethro Tull with @meyersoundlabs Leopard, 900-LFC & Mina

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P54 MAY 2018

In good shape Phil Ward casts an eye over Italian pro audio giant Outline’s illustrious history with CEO Giorgio Biffi...

or 45 years, Brescia-based Outline has defined Italian quality in sound reproduction and has grown to challenge any of the global names in the technical details of point source, line array and now DSP and networking. CEO Giorgio Biffi joined as sales director just three years after Guido Noselli had founded the business, and up to Noselli’s death in 2006 they were the twin forces behind its success. Now working alongside Noselli’s sons Michele and Stefano to continue that legacy, Biffi presides over one of the most inclusive and hospitable sales communities in pro audio. What’s the most Italian thing about Outline’s loudspeakers? The originality of the design. Our products have their own distinguishing style, which adds some performance improvements inside the box as well as having ergonomic benefits. If Outline were a wine, which grapes would it use? Hmm. Powerful, like a Brunello di Montalcino red, which fills the mouth when you drink it but at the same time is clear and crisp like some bollicine – sparkling – Franciacorta whites. How did you meet Guido Noselli? He used to be my customer when I was a regional rep for Harman Kardon and other leading hi-fi brands – he ran a high-class hi-fi shop in town. Soon after he started Outline he offered me a significant part of the shares to take care of regional, and later, national sales. As soon as the product range was appropriate, I began to look after international sales. I still do. What was the first ‘super disco’ to install Outline? The first top-class one was L’Altro Mondo Studios in Rimini, but what made us the top brand in Italy’s club scene was La Baia Imperiale on top of the hill facing the Adriatic in Gabicce Monte. It was the most iconic disco in the country, with the best DJs and sound and lighting.

Both these clubs are still open and doing fine after more than 30 years. What was the breakthrough event for Outline? The MTV Awards in Verona, in the late ‘90s, with local rental company Musical Box Rent. The biggest ever was Labour Day on May 1, 2011 in Rome, attended by more than 500,000 people and broadcast live on national TV channel RAI 3. When did you realise Outline could become an international force? Why was that important? The Butterfly line array system was the game-changer. In some countries, professionals knew the name Butterfly better than the name Outline. The most important feature was the very long throw in the open air, with amazing consistency across the full frequency range – including the top end and not just the bass and mid, like most line arrays still. What is Guido’s greatest legacy? His passion, just like mine, for hi-fi and therefore the highest quality of music reproduction.

ensuring long throw as well as a regular horizontal dispersion. Three of the five components of Superfly are also used in GTO – both of the 8” mids as well as the 3” compression driver – while the dual 10” woofers are the latest from B&C, the sole supplier for these models as well as for all the GTO family models, How do Outline products fit into a rental inventory? Capital Sound, for example, was looking for premium quality, small, lightweight, good long throw capability and the most natural sound ever. Superfly was a natural choice for them. It fits the gap between the large GTO C12 rig and the small Mantas-28, featuring a pair of 8” woofers, intensively deployed by Capital Sound in large arenas, open air festivals and small theatres. It’s on the current Australian Pink Floyd Show European tour, and they were amazed to realise that it easily covers the largest venues they play – up to 7,000, where they expected to use C12 or other brands.

Why is manufacturing in Italy so important? Because Italians do it better! This is not just an overused slogan; it’s the truth. We never give up. Most of the workers are passionate about the work and enjoy achieving good results to be proud of.

Is networking bringing you closer to other brands? Of course. It hasn’t been designed specifically for Outline loudspeakers. It’s not just a loudspeaker management system, despite this being one of several applications it may get in the near future. Its control goes way beyond that. As usual we’re doing things differently, and we proudly claim to have our own view. It’s interesting to note that most of the Newton units sold so far have gone to production companies with no Outline loudspeakers in the inventory. Indeed, some are touring with French, US or German loudspeaker brands. We foresee that most of the midsize or large production companies will purchase and deploy Newton processors because they fix several problems that occur when you need to match products with different communication protocols.

Does Superfly follow Butterfly or GTO? Superfly is the evolution of Butterfly, as it shares the same waveguide as well as the V-shaped horn, thus

What’s next? Newton is our future. For me, tonight, it’s an excellent bottle of Amarone. ■

What distinguishes your line array today? It’s still the Double Parabolic Reflective Wave Guide [DPRWG] – the way it made Butterfly reproduce the mids and highs so beautifully, with the best consistency and throw with very low distortion and a very crisp sound at the top end of the frequency range.

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