Resolution V19.2 March-April 2020

REPORT

REVIEWS

REVEALED

/ Such Sweet Thunder: AoIP links analogue / Military Wives: recording the choir / Microphone special

/ DPA 4560 binaural headset: immersive / Avid Pro Tools: new features / Arturia Creative Suite

/ Warren Huart: Produce Like a Pro / Dave Pemberton: A Day in the Life / The sound of multi-Oscar winner Parasite

V19.2 | March/April 2020 | £5.50

The

Interview

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx Jean-Michel JarreXxx

INTRODUCING...

PROGRAMMABLE ANALOG PROCESSING The McDSP Analog Processing Box (APB) combines the flexibility of software with the fidelity of premium analog processing. Each channel can be controlled by an APB plug-in giving true digital workflow with genuine analog performance. Processing options include the C673-A Compressor, which brings the McDSP variation of the Fairchild 670 back into the analog domain. The C673-A offers advanced signal tracking to accommodate modern production styles, while still imparting a ‘warmth’ into the audio output. The use of high end analog components allows the C673-A response to be even faster than any previous Fairchild emulation by McDSP. lea more about the C673-A along with all the other plug-ins that come with the APB-16, and to find an Head to mcdsp.com/apb to learn APB dealer near you.

P R O F E S S I O N A L

A U D I O

H A R D W A R E

A N D

S O F T W A R E

/ Contents

24 V19.2 | March/April 2020

News & Analysis 5 6

Leader News News, studios, appointments 12 New Products 48 A Day In The Life Dave Pemberton, The Prodigy recording engineer

Columns

14 Business Remote production, and DIY artist gain in 2019 15 Broadcast Aside ‘Made for TV’ sound could become a production differentiator 16 Crosstalk Creating interactive audio for virtual assistants 50 Playlist Electronic music choices from the team

Jean-Michel Jarre

Craft

24 Jean-Michel Jarre Four decades in, the Oxygène composer brings a breath of fresh air to electronic music composition with EōN 28 Warren Huart The inspirational engineer/producer behind TEC Award-winning Produce Like a Pro on where the music industry is at, his journey from musician to producer, and returning to a studio with a multiplatinum artist…to find the locks changed!

32 Military Wives Production soundman Paul Paragon on the challenges and rewards of using on-set audio for the choir movie 36 Ralph Tae-Young Choi Creating the sound for Oscar winner movie Parasite 38 Such Sweet Thunder Atmos mixing room— Merging AoIP digital with vintage analogue

28

32

36 50

REVIEWS 18 Avid Pro Tools (latest) 20 DPA 4560 CORE Binaural Headset 22 RØDE VideoMic NTG 23 Arturia Creative Suite

43 MICROPHONE SPECIAL

38 March/April 2020 / 3

/ Welcome

Leader

Nigel Jopson

EDITORIAL Editor Nigel Jopson nigel@resolutionmag.com

From a distance

CONTRIBUTORS George Shilling, Jon Thornton, Dan Daley, Dennis Baxter, Danny Turner, Russell Cottier, John Broomhall, Simon Clark, Mike Aiton, Bob Katz, Bill Lacey, Piper Payne, Tim Oliver, Erica Basnicki, Catherine Vericolli, David Kennedy, Phil Ward and Rob Speight

ADVERTISEMENT SALES EUROPE Chris Cope +44 (0)20 3289 8015 chris@resolutionmag.com Sean Leslie +44 (0)20 7993 4704 sean@resolutionmag.com US & INTERNATIONAL Jeff Turner +1 415 455 8301 jturner@resolutionmag.com

PRODUCTION AND LAYOUT Dean Cook, The Magazine Production Company +44 (0)1273 467579 dean@resolutionmag.com

PRINTING Gemini Print Southern Ltd, Unit A1 Dolphin Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. BN43 6NZ

MANAGEMENT Publisher Dave Robinson dave@resolutionmag.com Published by S2 Publications Ltd +44 (0)1543 57872 info@resolutionmag.com 192 Longford Road, Cannock Staffordshire. WS11 1QN ©2020 S2 Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication, but neither S2 Publications Ltd or the editor can be held responsible for its contents.

The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the publisher. S2 Publications Ltd. Registered in England and Wales.

REGISTERED OFFICE Gowran House, 56 Broad Street, Chipping Sodbury, Bristol, BS37 6AG Company number: 4375084

/resolutionmagazine

@resolutionmagazine

A

s I write, the world is in the grip of a global health emergency. It started with news of trade show postponements, and rapidly snowballed with live events and concerts cancelled, as politicians struggle to implement solutions to protect populations.

Our colleagues in live sound have clearly born the brunt of many cancellations, but spare a thought for those at work in production sound for movies and episodic TV. As Hollywood stars scarpered from location shoots, news has come of audio pros having to find their own routes home to self-isolate (or head to hospital), in many cases forced to leave personal equipment — a lifetime of investment — behind.

A refrain I’ve recently heard from some production pros is self-reassuring talk of “when things get back to normal”. From the point of view of an industry veteran, it seems to me that most media people under the age of 35 have always lived in a time when global travel, instant human connection, free trade and peace existed.

I’m sad to say this is not “normal” for our world.

In future, a generation now too young to reach the faders is going to have quite different life-imperatives — driven by environmental concerns — as a certain Swedish teenage activist

has amply demonstrated. And they will be in charge.

To those with an interest in economics and history, it was also more than clear that certain media corporations, airlines, tech companies and other businesses were hopelessly over-valued, with investors just waiting for an excuse to correct their exposure. Those of us with inside knowledge of large media projects are aware that some teeter on the brink of financial viability, with IP owners secretly longing for a justification (other than their own incompetence) to bail-out.

Life will change, and perhaps dramatically.

There is going to be huge demand for remote working, and remote media production.

Educational institutions will increasingly need to hold classes remotely. Those who develop innovative ways of presenting events without the risks and ecological impact of thousands of people being in the same location are going to find themselves in great demand. Holograms, immersive sound, interactive social commentary — we are the media people — and we know how to do it. The changes that will come won’t always be benign or within our control. But we can keep busy with good solutions for the social consequences.

Nigel

Editor

March/April 2020 / 5

News

$2m for Australian schools hit by virus

Australian manufacturer RØDE Microphones announced it will donate $2 million worth of podcasting equipment to help New South Wales schools impacted by health concerns. As teachers face the difficult task of overcoming disruptions to classes in the coming months, RØDE founder and chairman Peter Freedman established a programme that will give schools access to audio equipment they can use to deliver classes remotely via podcast platforms. As of March 13th, any NSW public schools who wish to participate have been able to access an online portal on the RØDE website where they can order a complete podcasting kit, which includes a RØDECaster Pro Podcast Production Studio (review, Resolution V18.2), microphones and accessories.

COVID-19 Relief Fund

The Recording Academy and its affiliated charitable foundation MusiCares have established the COVID-19 Relief Fund to help people in the music industry affected by the coronavirus disease outbreak and subsequent cancellation of multiple music events. Administered through MusiCares, the COVID-19 Fund will be used to directly support those in the music community with the greatest need. To establish the fund, both the Recording Academy and MusiCares have contributed an initial donation of $1m each, totalling $2m.

Additionally, all Recording Academy Chapters have committed to fundraising in their local communities. “The situation, requires an unprecedented response,” said Harvey Mason jr., chair and interim CEO of the Recording Academy. “We are asking the entire industry to stand with us to support the musicians, artists and professionals who are the bedrock and the future of our music community.”

6 / March/April 2020

Korean Audioguy goes immersive In the heart of Seoul a unique recording space has taken a different approach. Focusing on acoustic music, including classical, jazz, and the Gukak style of Korean music — the recording room has a longer reverberation time of 2.7s — more like a concert hall, explains Jung-Hoon Choi, founder of Audioguy Studios. The facility chose a Genelec 7.1.4 monitoring system based around ‘The Ones’ coaxial three-ways. “I would be very confused when making mix decisions without the standardised in-situ corrections of frequency response, level and delay offered by Genelec’s GLM software,” reflects Choi. “Using this system, the 11 individual monitors (three 8351As as LCR, eight 8331A monitors as surrounds and overheads plus a 7370A subwoofer) sound exactly as they should. We can mix in the most precise and accurate way, GLM makes it very convenient and easy to switch between 3D, binaural and stereo formats and analyse the differences.”

MPG Awards 2020 gong-grabbers London’s Grosvenor House hosted the 2020 Music Producers Guild Awards on 27th February — an annual event that recognises the creativity, skill and talents of all music recording professionals. Recording Engineer Of The Year was won by Daniel Moyler (pictured with Elizabeth Wilkinson of sponsors AMS Neve). Moyler has worked with Marina and the Diamonds, Shura, Dermot Kennedy, Frank Carter, Dua Lipa, Birdy and more. Producer Of The Year was won by Dan Carey for his work on the Black Midi album Ducter, Kate Tempest’s Firesmoke and Fontaines D.C. Boys in the Better Land. Marta Salogni won Breakthrough Producer Of The Year for her work with The Orielles, Georgia Ruth, Hero Fisher, Two Monkeys and Yak. Studio of the Year went to The Church (Resolution V13.8). The MPG Award For Outstanding Contribution To UK Music, sponsored by PPL, was awarded to producer Stephen Street (Resolution V8.5).

APPOINTMENTS

API revives Capricorn Studios The Macon, Georgia, facility where the Allman Brothers recorded was dormant for decades until reopening in December 2019. A new API 2448 Recording Console with the largest 2448 frame built to date takes centre stage: with 40 mic pres and 40 API equalisers, each channel features two inputs, both with faders. Rounding out the system is API’s ‘Final Touch’ motorised fader automation.

Steve Ivey, a Mercer graduate and Grammy-award winning producer based out of Nashville was a key figure in the planning and revitalisation of the studio. “For 50 years API consoles and Capricorn Studios together have made a worldwide, profound impact in music and recording,” said Ivey. “As a Mercer University music graduate who learned to record on an API console, under the direction of Capricorn producer Paul Hornsby, I’m thrilled to be part of the team taking Capricorn Studios and API into the next era of recording great music.”

Resolution and coronavirus In these strange and difficult times, I’m writing to inform you of a few ‘mods’ we’re making to the Resolution machine, if you will. The impact of the pandemic has meant aircraft space for transporting of freight is scarce and increasingly expensive, if available at all. Surcharges and the quarantining of goods are changing every few days. In some territories, even if we could get a print copy of Resolution into the region, it might be stuck in a depot for some time before it reaches your doormat.

We have therefore taken the decision to limit the number of print copies produced for the time being. In a small number of countries — as I type, Spain, France, Italy and the USA (but maybe others) — you won’t receive a print copy of Resolution; instead you will be sent an email containing instructions on how to download (as a PDF) and view (via issuu.com) a digital copy of the magazine. You will receive this before the print version is distributed.

We know many of you prefer a hard copy, but right now it is just not viable for certain regions. There will be an opportunity for you to obtain a print edition when we have some sense of global normality. Let’s hope that’s soon.

In the meantime, we have racked up another couple of years’ worth of free archive issues for your reading pleasure. Every edition of Resolution produced before January 2010 — that’s from V1.1 to V8.8 — is available at no charge to you, via our website or www.issuu.com/resolutionmag.

The Resolution team will continue to create your favourite pro-audio read to the best of our ability during this trying period. I hope you enjoy this current copy… and I leave you with this photo of myself and the impossibly ageless Monsieur Jarre, taken in Dublin at a time when the only ‘Virus’ of note was a synth module by Access.

Dave Robinson, publisher, info@resolutionmag.com

Ralf Oehl has been appointed as CEO of Georg Neumann GmbH. In his new position, Oehl will continue to build the business and brand, further developing the overall strategic direction of Georg Neumann GmbH, a Sennheiser Group company. He will report to Peter Claussen, COO of the Sennheiser. Oehl joins after founding his own company, Concinno, which focused on strategic and M&A advisory services to high-end manufactures. He has expertise in areas such as disruptive industrial technologies, innovative new business models and innovation-driving organizations.

Stage Tec Berlin has a new management team: René Harder (R), who has been a VP for many years, and Sascha Khelifa (L) have been appointed managing directors. From 2008 to 2018 Khelifa was MD of Meyer Sound GmbH. Khelifa will be responsible for sales and commercial management. “Stage Tec is a globally active, well regarded company with an attractive portfolio. I am really looking forward to working with a dedicated team in Berlin,” explains Sascha Khelifa.

Harder began working at Stage Tec as a software developer in 2003 and has gained extensive know-how in various areas as assistant to the management and vice president since 2013.

Decca announced the promotion of Tom Lewis and Laura Monks to co-managing directors of Decca Records Group.

Lewis moves up after a year in his current role as VP of Decca, A&R and Artist Strategy. He joined the company 17 years ago as label manager for the jazz division before moving into A&R. Monks is promoted to co-MD after eight years at Decca, starting as senior digital campaign manager and moving through digital, commercial and marketing positions to the position of GM in 2018. She has worked on successful campaigns for artists such as Gregory Porter, Andrea Bocelli, Ludovico Einaudi and Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

March/April 2020 / 7

/ News

APPOINTMENTS Calrec announced Graham Murray as business development manager. Murray now represents Calrec in the Middle East. His goal is to further develop Calrec’s business in this territory and maintain its already strong presence. Murray has over 30 years of sales experience across the broadcast, studio and post-production industries in the UK and globally. “Graham’s wealth of technical experience, starting as an engineer at AMS in the ‘80s, coupled with extensive experience in the broadcast industry, make him the ideal fit for this job.

His knowledge of the region makes him an incredible asset,” commented Dave Letson, VP of sales at Calrec.

Avid promoted Kathy-Anne “KAM” McManus to the newly-created role of chief customer experience officer.

McManus re-engineered Avid’s solutions, services and customer care operations after joining as SVP, global customer solutions & services, boosting the company’s ability to provide exceptional support to its customer base, better supporting its fast-growing subscriber base, and the ramp-up of Avid’s cloud and SaaS solutions.

Prior to re-joining Avid in January 2019, she served as the company’s VP of worldwide professional services and director of services for Asia Pacific.

McManus has also held senior leadership roles at several media technology providers including Adobe, Amdocs and Ericsson.

Focusrite has appointed Greg Westall director of product for Focusrite, as well as Focusrite Pro, Novation and Ampify. Previously he has worked with pro-audio and MI brands including Universal Audio and Line 6. “Working with such an amazing team of product managers and developers at Focusrite is a once in a career opportunity,” says Westall. Tim Carroll, CEO of the Focusrite Group, adds, “I’m very pleased to have someone with Greg’s experience and track record joining us. Greg’s deep industry knowledge, leadership ability and personal style is a great fit for Focusrite, and we’re all very excited to have him on board.”

Westall will relocate to the UK.

8 / March/April 2020

…sing and cry, Valhalla I am coming Located in the centre of Upstate New York, between Syracuse and Niagara Falls (known as the Finger Lakes region) Valhalla Studios is an ambitious 20,000 sq ft multi-studio facility. Owner Joey DeMaio commented: “We are honoured to have Ronald Prent and Darcy Proper with us; they are both megastars in their fields — Ronald in audio engineering, recording and mixing and Darcy as a multi Grammy award-winning mastering engineer” (Resolution interviews V4.8, V15.5).

Studio 1 is a former church-turnedstudio. This 2,500 sq ft recording space

stands out with remarkable acoustics and the latest technology, including PMC’s QB1 monitors (driven with 27,000 watts of power, apparently) and a unique 64-channel immersive audio-ready analogue console with the ability to seamlessly pan from bottom to top. The first of its kind in the world — specially designed by FIX Audio Designs (Paul Wolff) — and co-developed with Ronald Prent, who was Grammy-nominated in 2018 for Best Immersive Audio Album. Valhalla is certified for Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio and Auro-3D.

Blackhall studio “creates 3,000 jobs in UK”

White Mark revamps Middlesex Uni’s studio

Blackhall, which runs a film production facility in Atlanta, Georgia, is planning to enter the UK market with a major development in Reading. The company said it was proposing “the largest purpose-built film studio and digital creative hub complex in the UK” and that it would incorporate “extensive purpose-built digital production facilities” at the Thames Valley Science Park site. Blackhall claims it could create up to 3,000 jobs in the local boroughs, including 1,500 onsite, by early 2022. Ryan Millsap, Blackhall chairman, said plans were made after US-based clients Disney, Universal and Sony were “all asking us to expand into the UK to meet UK demand.”

The University, based in Hendon, already has two stereo production suites Dantelinked to a booth, a 5.1 Avid mixing suite and a 24-track recording studio (Studio B). Studio A had sound spill issues to resolve and the university decided to build a new acoustic space from the ground up, ready for the launch of a new BA Degree course in Music Production. Studio design consultancy White Mark Ltd transformed Studio A into an acoustically accurate control room, live room, and booth. It can now handle stereo and surround sound projects, thanks to the inclusion of a monitoring system giving students the opportunity to mix in 5.1 and 7.1 formats.

Getting the Thrill Across.

World Cups and countless other games.

Global album launches streamed live over the web, major rock festivals brought to millions, classical performances in any venue.

Lawo is where the thrill is. By appointment to the

ROCK IN RIO, Brazil

most talented people on the planet.

All over IP, in cutting-edge quality.

HYPERX ESPORTS ARENA, USA

BASTILLE DAY, France

GEARHOUSE COLUMBUS, USA

GRANGER COMMUNITY CHURCH, USA

www.lawo.com

/ News

Pro7ect 2020 at Rockfield Studios

This year’s Pro7ect, the creative retreat that brings top songwriters and producers together to write and record, has announced the line-up for September.

Producer/engineer Greg Haver (Resolution V13.5, Manic Street Preachers, John Cale, Catatonia and Super Furry Animals); Stew Jackson, writer and producer for Massive Attack and Nick Cave and a founding member of Phantom Limb, and Gethin Pearson, who recently produced and mixed Badly Drawn Boy’s new single ‘Is This A Dream?’ and has also produced tracks for artists such as To Kill A King, KELE and JAWS. Pro7ect will run two residential sessions across eight days at Rockfield, Monmouth, — the first from September 7th-11th and the second from September 11-15th 2020. The sessions will be separated by a one-day Masterclass on the 11th, which is open to people who want to find out more about the Pro7ect experience before committing to a full three-day retreat.

Spain’s first Dolby Atmos Home certified studio

Part of Mediapro’s image and sound post-production company, Telson.Tres60 opened its new facility in May 2019, and has decided to upgrade its monitoring capabilities to better serve clients. “The system upgrades were driven by client demands - for example Movistar asks for everything in Dolby Atmos,” explains sound production co-ordinator, Ana Belén Martín.

The Telson.Tres60 team, alongside Unitecnic — Mediapro’s engineering company which handled the installation — turned to local Genelec partner AudioTechnica Iberia for the 7.1.4 monitoring solution. In both rooms S360A monitors were installed in the LCR positions, with four 1032C monitors as surrounds and the same number of 8340As covering the overhead channels. Low frequency content is handled by a 7382A subwoofer.

10 / March/April 2020

Pip Studios will launch in June

Audio post-production facility Pip Studios announced it will open its doors in June (subject to the coronavirus situation). The company will provide audio localisation services for feature films, television, gaming and streaming services. To facilitate this, six Dolby Atmos stages have been built on the Pip Studios site in Winnersh, Berkshire.

Pip has been co-founded by Ally Curran, Mark Sheffield and Nigel Bennett. Curran previously worked at Deluxe for six years, where she held the position of studio manager.

Mark Sheffield comes to the company with 30 years of experience in post. He has held several high-profile roles in the industry, including dubbing mixer at Pinewood Group, before becoming re-recording mixer and later director of audio operations at Deluxe — a post he held until last year. His international credits include Avatar, Prometheus, Transformers and Jurassic World. Nigel Bennett will operate as co-founder and chairman of Pip Studios, a position he will hold alongside his current duties as managing director at Molinare.

Abbey Road Institute opens first US school Abbey Road Institute has announced the next step in their international educational offering with the launch of their first specialist music production school in the US, confirmed to be opening in Miami, Florida in 2020. The school will be opened in partnership with multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy winner Julio Reyes Copello at his studio, Miami Art House.

Reyes Copello, who has worked with some of the biggest names in music, including Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith, Alejandro Sanz, Camila Cabello and Alessia Cara, is excited

to be working with the established British educational institution. With the new school opening at his existing studio complex, Reyes Copello will act as a mentor to the select group of students joining the program. His team at Miami Art House will also play key roles on a day-to-day basis bringing the reality of studio life directly to the student experience with the school occupying a space within the building alongside the commercial studios. The school will be enrolling its first intake of students onto the Diploma in Music Production and Sound Engineering in autumn 2020.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON (YES IT MUST!) Infocomm, Las Vegas Summer NAMM, Nashville AES audio edu, TN

17-19 June

AES, New York

21-24 October

9-11 July

BPM, Solihull

3-4 October

23-25 July

Afial, Madrid

6-8 October

AES VR conf, WA

17-19 August

SoundPro’20, London

BIRTV, Beijing

18-22 August

LDI 2019, Las Vegas

PLASA, London

6-8 September

IBC Amsterdam

11-15 September

BroadcastIndia, Mumbai SMPTE 2019, Los Angeles

NAMM/PLS Russia

17-19 September

Interbee, Tokyo

17 October 19-25 October 19-31 October 9-12 November 18-20 November

New Gear

New products The essential briefing on the latest equipage Calrec

Lectrosonics

Type R for TV fulfills the rising demand for automated audio consoles in smaller news operations. “More often we’re seeing the console surface not used at all, which is driving the demand for broadcast-level virtual consoles,” says Calrec’s Director of Product Management, Henry Goodman. Type R for TV is compatible with popular station automation systems including Ross Overdrive, Sony ELC and Grass Valley Ignite. It provides fully automated programming with real-time adjustment of ‘unpredictable external factors’ via a standard web browser.

Type R’s small, adaptable and highly portable hardware elements can be easily added if desired. Powered by standard POE switches, Type R has three different panel options. If broadcasters prefer a physical surface then banks of 6x faders can be added, or adaptable soft panels like Calrec’s Large Soft Panel (LSP) and Small Soft Panel (SSP). Calrec’s Assist web UI makes it easy to access the virtual desk on almost any device, wherever in the world a user is. Assist works over TCP/IP and has minimal control lag, which makes minor adjustments easy and quick to do.

The next-generation receiver unit is nearly half the size and weight of the industry-standard IFBR1A receiver that it is replacing and uses a slim 3.7V LB-50 rechargeable lithium ion battery instead of the archaic 9V type. The new IFBR1B is fully compatible with the existing line of IFBT4 transmitters. With a backlit LCD and membrane buttons, the new receiver is easy to set up and use, offering 10 presets which are easily programmable from the front panel.

Five tuning ranges are available for the new IFBR1B receiver: the VHF version (red knob) covers 174-216 MHz, the A1 (470-537 MHz), B1 (537-614 MHz) and C1 (614-692 MHz) versions (blue knob) cover the UHF TV frequencies for most countries, and the 941 Band version (black knob) covers the North American license-only 941-960 MHz range. Future firmware updates can be installed in the IFBR1B in the field via the USB jack on the bottom of the unit. The system’s new companion dock charging system, the CHSIFBR1B, is capable of charging up to four receivers or four batteries in any combination.

www.calrec.com

www.lectrosonics.com

IFBR1B Miniature Receiver

Type R for TV

London Acoustics

Waves

IK Multimedia

Making use of the Acustica convolution engine (Resolution V17.5), ENNA is “an emulation of three Mid/High frequency enhancers combined… featuring the sampled-units’ characteristics, such as EQ curves and saturation”.

We’ve been experimenting with ENNA at Resolution studios, and for those seeking an ‘AIR BAND’-style tonal modifier with an analogue flavour, this plug-in is an excellent solution. The MID FOCUS control acts somewhat like a high-Q tonal boost for the effect. TELGE ITB tube revitaliser is a sampled “special analogue-tube custom gear rig”, intended to be used in send/return configuration only (set in parallel with the source tracks). ENNA & TELGA bundle are available in VST2/3, AU, AAX 64-bit for €70.

MultiMod Rack has three plug-in slots, each of which can host Waves’ newest distortion and saturation plug-ins: the vintage analogue-modelled Abbey Road Saturator, the modern waveshaperbased Berzerk, and the MDMX Screamer, Overdrive and Fuzz modules. MultiMod’s slots divide your signal into three frequency bands — lows, mids and highs — with adjustable crossover controls. Assign the different plug-ins to different frequency bands, and separately control the flavour of distortion in each. Five LFO, sequencer and amplitude modulation options are available, with independent level, pan and harmonics controls per slot/band, plus a modulatable 4-band paragraphic EQ, a reverb, delay, and chorus. $99 with intro offer of $49.99, with a bundle of MultiMod plus Rack/ Berzerk/MDMX currently available for $89.99.

IK recreated the sound of the rooms, chambers and reverbs of this legendary L.A. studio using its unique Volumetric Response Modeling (VRM), a hybrid convolution technique. A simple user interface gives access to modelled live rooms and iso booths from Studio 1, Studio 2 or Studio 3 and three live echo chambers from each studio. Users can also select the various Sunset vintage reverbs, including an Echoplate, EMT 140, and an AKG BX-20E spring. Preliminary Resolution tests reveal room sounds redolent of a particular musical era, very easy to tune and adjust. The €/$149.99 Sunset Reverb can be used as an individual plug-in, or inside the T-RackS 5 shell.

www.londonacoustics.com

www.waves.com

ENNA & TELGA

12 / March/April 2020

Multimod

Sunset Sound Studio Reverb

www.t-racks.com/sunsetstudio

Solid State Logic

Steinberg

The latest V2.3 System T broadcast production platform release adds significant benefits to the entire range of System T consoles; S500, S500m, S300 and TCR. This latest release adds enhancements including; DAW control, Immersive audio, Dynamic Automation, Patch Manager CSV files, Access Control, Event Manager, Scene Automation and a fully featured on-board FX rack.

A Network I/O V4.0 update includes ST 2110, ST 2059-2 and ST 2022-7 support for all devices, providing standards based AoIP and Dante technology simultaneously on the same chipsets. This allows installations to leverage IP networks for both infrastructure and consoles-based audio routing workflows, without proprietary hardware TDM routers, and adds support for TSL UMDv5 providing the audio operator with accurate information about the source currently presented on each fader. V2.3 brings Dante Domain Manager (DDM) login capability directly into the console software. System T is a routing controller with direct on-console routing control for any Dante enabled device, providing complete AoIP resource sharing. DDM integration allows system designers to add a software-based security layer with; user authentication, defined guest, operator or admin roles, with complete audit logging.

The UR24C is the latest of a line-up of UR-C USB 3.0 interfaces that are designed for musicians, producers and performers. The UR24C provides USB Type-C (USB 3.1 Gen 1 SuperSpeed) connectivity to ensure universal compatibility with PCs and Macs, as well as iOS devices. It features 32-bit/192kHz audio and delivers DSP power for using effects when monitoring audio without latency.

The UR24C features two balanced Neutrik combo inputs, high-grade D-PRE microphone preamps, two TRS main outputs, four RCA line outputs, and MIDI in and out. Its specialty lies in the switchable monitor modes for headphones: DAW mode is used for producing music, where output 1 or output 2 is chosen as the headphone source while allowing the user to adjust the balance from the DAW and from the UR24C’s inputs.

DJ mode is used for performances with DJ software and backing tracks where the signal is split, so the mono master sound is output to the right of headphones and the mono cue sound to the left, letting the user adjust the balance of both signals. RRP is €249 inc.

www.solidstatelogic.com

www.steinberg.net/urc

System T Version 2.3

UR24C

Sontronics

Lawo

Hit’n’Mix

The £99 Sontronics Podcast Pro, developed and handbuilt at Sontronics’ UK HQ, is a dynamic microphone that’s been designed specifically with podcast, broadcast, radio, gaming and voiceover applications in mind.

Available in red or black, the Podcast Pro has a tightly focused supercardioid pickup pattern, giving good side rejection. Its three layers of internal protection and integrated fine-mesh pop filter provide superb control of extraneous noise or rumble and also help control unwanted sibilance or plosives.

Easy to set up and position, and compatible with any desktop or floor-standing mic stand, the Podcast Pro is supplied with an angled yoke mount, and the microphone is covered by Sontronics’ unique Lifetime Warranty.

Lawo announced a new software license package for its versatile Power Core AoIP mixing engine and I/O node: Power Core MAX. ‘MAX’ — short for Multiple Access — makes it possible for a single Power Core device to be the mixing engine for multiple on-air mixing consoles. “Power Core MAX lets you unlock all those resources to power two, three or even four small mixing surfaces. That’s a capability that anyone who wants to maximise their equipment budget will immediately appreciate,” says Lawo Radio Marketing Specialist Clark Novak.

Power Core is an AoIP workhorse. Dualredundant front-panel AES67 ports can accommodate up to 128 streams with a total of 256 audio channels. Four front-panel MADI ports can handle 64 MADI channels each, for a total of 256 channels, or 128 MADI channels in dual-redundant mode.

Infinity 4.5 now offers the ability to rip and export video and MIDI files, import and paint your own samples into rips via the Instrument Palette, auto-detect and set BPMs, tempo, scales and keys and remove noise. “Infinity is the culmination of 17 years of research and we’re really excited to be offering a new audio editor that unlike other editors, doesn’t work on samples and waveforms, but instead breaks down the audio into the individual components of frequency, amplitude and harmonics. This enables you to change most characteristics without any kind of limit, hence the name Infinity!” said CEO Martin Dawe. €269 with a free trial available.

www.sontronics.com

www.lawo.com

www. hitnmix.com

Podcast Pro

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March/April 2020 / 13

Columns

Business

Nigel Jopson

Pivot to remote working Business deals which affect production pros

Remote production

Amazon data for artists

DIY artists growing fast

The coronavirus epidemic has increased the imperative for remote-working and remote production software. Ben Foakes, founder of Base Media, a cloud-based media asset management service, says: “The highest number of enquiries is from larger broadcasters, postproduction and production companies we work with who are now looking for full remote working or virtual facility systems, anticipating the potential need for locking down business premises and having staff work remotely.”

“The TV and post-production sector is behind the curve compared to other industries in using remote working technology but I can see it kicking in, not least because of pressures from the cost of operating in central London,” says Séamus MacCormaic, CFO of postproduction service provider The Farm Group.

“I think we need to have the flexibility going forward to offer clients the choice of on site or remote working.”

London’s Soho-based post house Molinare offers a full range of remote review tools for editorial sign-off, to high quality remote grading or editing sessions. “We utilise Streambox for remote picture and surround sound sessions, and offer Source-Connect for remote mix sessions and audio recording, giving access to thousands of studios and talent worldwide,” says Richard Wilding, CTO. The coronavirus outbreak is likely to provoke an industry-wide pivot to remote working — one that was already underway due to the cost effectiveness of distributed workflows in post production and remote production for live events. Investments made now in remote working will permanently shift the industry from face-to-face to the virtual.

Amazon Music has launched an analytics platform for music producers and musicians called Amazon Music for Artists. Spotify and Apple, have similar tools, but Amazon’s app is the includes Alexa voice data. Not only does the app display an artist’s total number of voice requests, it shows details about the various ways people request songs, such as by artist, album, song, or lyrics. Last year at Nashville’s Music Biz conference, Amazon Music’s director said during a panel that “Alexa, play…” is the second most popular command for the device after “Alexa, set a timer”.

The data is close to real-time with the iOS app interface driven from five tabs: Overview, Songs, Fans, Voice, and Programming. Music producers can choose to see their data for the last 24 hours, the last seven days, the last 28 days — or using a custom date filter for any period since 1st January 2018. The Fans tab includes overall listeners, and breaks down how many of those are ‘fans’ and ‘superfans’.

Amazon has its own calculations to decide whether a listener is a fan or superfan based on metrics including how often they listen to an artist; how long they listen for; and whether they follow their profile in the Amazon Music app or Alexa.

CD Baby has partnered with Amazon Music for the app’s launch, so artists who are distributed through CD Baby will be fast tracked if they apply. Amazon Music says more distributors will be added soon.

Amazon Music recently surpassed 55m customers globally across all its streaming offerings, while subscriptions to its premium Amazon Music Unlimited service grew by more than 50% in 2019.

The global recorded music industry continued its resurgence in 2019 with a fifth successive year of growth. Global revenues grew by 11.4% in 2019 to reach $21.5bn, an increase of $2.2bn on 2018. That growth was bigger than 2018 in both absolute and relative terms. According to analysis from Midia Research, $11.9bn of the total (56%) came from streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube.

Major record labels still dominated the overall market in 2019, accounting for 67.5% of the total, edging down from 68.0% in 2018. The remaining 32.5% – accounted for by independent labels and artists combined — was up 0.5% from 2017 and 4.6% from 2015. ‘Artists direct’, or artists without record labels, was the fastest-growing segment of the market, growing by 32.1% in 2019 to reach $873m, representing 4.1% of the total market — up from a mere 1.7% in 2015. “The continued boom in recorded music revenues is accompanied by a growing complexity to the underlying business, with increased diversification of business models and artist/ label relationships,” said Midia’s Mark Mulligan.

“Over the next few years continued revenue growth will be both accompanied and driven by business model innovation and disruption.”

Meanwhile IFPI, the organisation that represents the music industry worldwide, found the highest rate of growth for streaming engagement is the 35–64 year-old age group, with 54% of that group accessing a streaming service in the last month (+8% on 2018). The IFPI recently named Taylor Swift the world’s bestselling recording artist of 2019. This is the second time for a Swiftie sales bonanza — the first time being 2014.

14 / March/April 2020

Broadcast aside Dennis Baxter

Big sound

A

Optimise sound for home entertainment

fter ten years of writing Broadcast Aside for Resolution, I think that the last decade has realised a convergence of the technologies.

This convergence makes advance multi-channel audio production, delivery and consumption a reality for all media. Streaming media has taken the place of the broadcasting dinosaurs who are dying along with their rigidly scheduled programming and terrestrial antennas. UHD pictures and immersive sound are here to stay along with 360 Music. Most importantly, the pace of adopting the next generation of immersive and interactive sound is on schedule.

What does advance multi-channel audio mean for all electronic media, including gaming, music, movies and what we know as television? I will tell you. Quite simply, big sound makes more opportunities for all of us.

Those who have survived this business learned a long time ago that it is all about the consumer. Does the consumer want 85-inch UHD TVs and immersive sound? It seems so.

TV’s are cheap and you can mount them on the wall. Immersive sound? I am optimistic… but I still hear the push-back.

Out of professional curiosity, I travelled to the world’s largest consumer electronics show, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, to do some ad hoc research. Amid the autonomous cars, refrigerators and heated toilets, there was a good offering of home entertainment sound products — TVs and soundbars.

Soundbars, with all their warts, are going to be the first choice for home reproduction. The good news is that soundbars are evolving for the better. But we, as audio practitioners, need to evolve and learn how to optimise our sound for soundbars. Drama, movies and other post-produced audio programming are leading the way in immersive sound adoption followed by live sports. But let’s look at this migration.

The perception of bigger and better

I expect 1st Generation Immersive Sound to be more general spatialisation of the sound which does not require perfection. It’s actually more of the perception of bigger and better.

How do we get there? During 2019, I looked into various immersive sound applications, practices and technologies. As a result, I am

With any sporting event, minimum immersive sound production can be as simple as injecting additional ambiance and atmosphere into the height speakers. Some sound above the viewer/listener will usually create a sense of aural space for the 2D picture. But sound designers are wrestling with the concept of what sounds should be heard above the viewer when there is no obvious reason for it to be heard.

It’s above you!

convinced that entry level immersive sound is not hard to create and produce with minimum resources.

First: to create immersive sound, a mixer needs to be able to hear the dimensional soundfield. Second: the mixer must be able to adequately position the sound elements in the soundfield. Finally, the mixer must be able to make and maintain an artistic balance of the elements through distribution.

I visited several OB Vans with less than perfect speaker placement, but the monitoring seemed to be adequate for immersive sound monitoring. In these transitional periods, it would be advisable to have a high-end monitoring room to QC immersive sound production and provide real time feedback to the sound mixer.

Ambisonic microphones can create impressive immersive sound, but are not necessary. I spent 2019 recording side-by-side a 1st, 3rd and 4th Order Ambisonics microphone along with 10 spot microphones and have come to the conclusion that ambisonic microphones sound great — but are not essential to creating immersive sound.

To me, football is the definitive example of the use of overhead atmospheric enhancements for spatialisation. Additionally, overhead atmospheric enhancements do not require any localisation and can be accomplished on most 5.1 mixing desk. NOTE — 3D panning is helpful for precise localisation, but, bottom line — convincing immersive sound for most sport does not require precise localisation.

Additionally, there is no doubt that these field sports have no ‘sport-relevant’ sound in the vertical axis (above the listener), only ambience and atmosphere. Artificial embellishments are probably not appropriate.

So consider that perhaps enhanced ambience is enough of an embellishment for football fans and that immersive sound does not need to be over-the-top to be effective.

Bottom line? Immersive sound production will develop and evolve with creative sound design and imagination. The picture is still twodimensional and sound could become a production differentiator where ‘Made for TV’ sound will become a viewer attraction.

Advance audio designs are imminent, but will need to be built on proven successes.

Audio practitioners must be versed in a variety of potential channel configurations for immersive sound. We do not know what that will be; 5.1.2, 5.1.4 or 22.2… And how does any one of those sound formats translate into immersive sound reproduction over various soundbar configurations?

To be truly adopted by the broadcasters, the migration to immersive sound must be planned, methodical and most importantly successful. To be adopted by the consumer, immersive sound must be marketed as a simple solution for great entertainment value.

Think about it this way: it used to all about Big Screens. Now it’s all about Big Sound.

March/April 2020 / 15

Crosstalk Rob Speight

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL!”

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Creating interactive audio for virtual assistants

hen I was around the age of seven I vividly remember being in my local library in West London looking at a book about the future.

According to that book the future is now. How fascinated I was that we would have a computer on our wrist — got that one. How amazed I was that we would have a computer in our pocket — got one of those too!

As I grew older I dreamed of a machine I could interact with by talking to it. How I marveled the first time I saw the elegance of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then in the most formative part of my childhood, the early eighties, we were offered a glimpse into the exciting new world of talking, self driving

us to utter an innocuous keyword, triggering these inanimate objects to life (kind of).

These devices, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s HomePod and Google’s Assistant, are here to serve. They can learn skills, extra bits of code which enable them to do new and exciting things!

The future is now: interactive audio cars with the creation of KITT in Knight Rider.

All of this has come to pass (kind of) and more recently we have been thrilled (kind of) by the introduction of speaking cylinders whose only function is to constantly and intently listen to our every word, waiting with anticipation for

However, the potential for new and exciting forms of interactive audio is there. Not sure what that could sound like? Think documentaries that allow the user to delve deeper into parts of the subject they want to know more about, think entertainment shows that allow the user to only listen to the parts they are interested in or — going back to the

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Still small in size, now even bigger in stature.

16 / March/April 2020

/ Column

’80s — think Choose Your Own Adventure.

Recently I was involved in a project to create an interactive documentary for the Alexa and Google devices. Thankfully, there was a coder to deal with all the intricacies of programming, but as the producer and recording engineer there were many areas of the process that, while not necessarily new from an audio perspective, provided unexpected challenges to the workflow process and the production as a whole.

The first hurdle was to deal with the maximum length of audio file that can be played (not streamed) from a device. For Alexa this is 90 seconds and for Google 120 seconds.

Due to cross-platform development the shorter had to be used and this had a trickle down effect onto how the voice script and interviews were broken down into chunks. As a side note, it is possible to play longer audio files but doing so precludes some of the functionality needed to keep the documentary flowing.

You may well ask: “Well why not stream or why not use some of the other methods of playback that do allow for longer audio”? To which I may well say: although audio may be streamed, it is dealt with and exits out of the built in streaming SSML API (Speech Synthesis Markup Language Application Program Interface), it will drop out of your show back to the equivalent of a C:>_ prompt. In other words, not a very useful behavior in this context.

OK, so I am boring myself here, but the point is these devices are currently not designed to play a Choose Your Own Adventure, they are designed to interact back and forth in short bursts. They want to be spoken to constantly, or else they get bored, lonely and depressed … depressed…think Marvin from Hitch-HIker’s Guide!

requirements are of course different for each device and this mostly comes down to loudness, true peak levels and file type. Both devices support MP3, AAC and WAV/PCM ranging from 32-256kbps bitrate and 44.1kHz or 48kHz sample rates.

In terms of loudness specifications (prepare to have your audio rejected by the tech giants if you don’t comply) Alexa requires -14dB LUFS with a true peak of -2dBFS, whereas Google wants -16dB LUFS for stereo and -19dB LUFS for mono material with peak speech levels reaching “approximately -20 to -10dBFS”.

To deal with the various deliverable

specifications the powerful batch file processing functions in iZotope’s RX were utilised — of course there are many other similar products that will achieve the same result.

Working with loudness levels like this you can say goodbye to dynamics and “hello Mr Compressor-Limiter”.

The project I worked on was an experiment, and with more time, ingenuity, playful coding and fancy editing the possibilities for some really interesting audio content are pretty much endless. Now… where did I put my copy of Lost on The Amazon?

Useful links: http://bit.ly/creating-interactive-audio

Producing an interactive documentary

What this meant to the production was that it had to be approached differently early on in the script writing stage, breaking down content to ensure it fitted nicely into the shorter ninety second bursts supported by Alexa. With this in mind a simple but effective naming strategy and script layout template is a must, in order to keep the large number of audio assets manageable. In all fairness we ended up using a process that anyone who has ever provided audio for a computer game would be familiar with. Very logical, very tidy and easy to follow.

After the recording stage, post-production March/April 2020 / 17

Reviews

Avid Pro Tools Avid have regularly introduced features over the last couple of years. GEORGE SHILLING casts his eye over the improvements for music professionals

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ith the advent of a new “year. month” version numbering system at the start of 2018 came the rolling out of a number of new features which have been steadily implemented over the last two years.

2018.1 added support for iLok Cloud licenses — aimed towards travelling engineers worried about losing their dongle. Full marks to Avid for being first off the mark with this.

Unfortunately, even two years later not all third-party plug-in developers support it, and a significant number of plug-in licences on my iLok lack the icon which signifies that they can be used from the cloud.

At long last a Track Presets feature was implemented. This makes for some useful timesaving when you want to repeat settings across different tracks and sessions. It borrows Session Import features, and you can even include audio and MIDI clips as well as all the track settings and plug-ins in a track preset, so it’s not just for chains of plug-ins, although that’s what most users wanted. When you create a preset, you can choose what elements are saved in a dialogue very similar to Session Import.

Pro Tools optionally adds a whole bunch of metatags which include channel width, plug-in names, manufacturers and categories. But of course you can create your own. You can organise things into folders (‘Category’). Saved 18 / March/April 2020

editing, clogging up the screen with huge numbers of unwieldy waveform displays, especially when working with Groups, e.g. multi-mic’d drum takes. Essentially, this means that the top (visible) playlist no longer needs to be the target track to comp to. There are a bunch of useful new shortcuts, and provision for auditioning/previewing edit sections from different playlists by nudging through them while in Waveform view, before copying or moving the selection to the target playlist. The Playlist button helpfully changes colour to reflect whether you have the target playlist visible.

Recall that riff

track settings can be accessed from the New Tracks dialogue, or (of course) you can dial up chains of plug-ins from the plug-in inserts. As with the earlier Freeze, Commit and Bounce features, Avid kept everyone waiting for something that was much requested, but similarly to the offline processing features, it was worth waiting for: Track Presets is elegantly and comprehensively implemented.

Playlist comping got an update with the useful provision of Target playlists, saving the need to stay in Playlist view when comping and

MIDI features were improved in 2018.1 with Retrospective Record capturing recordenabled tracks during playback. If you try out ideas while running through, they can be revealed and kept using this function. Also included with this release were new MIDI editing arrow shortcuts, later in 2019 tweaked to be active only in Notes or Velocity views.

These make it easier to trim starts and ends of MIDI notes, and quickly nudge velocity up and down or transpose; you can even constrain notes to the current key. Related to that, there is also a handy new chord analysis tool. Most useful for orchestral composers was the doubling of available MIDI tracks to 1,024, in 2019.5, allowing for plenty of articulation options in your template.

2018.7 changed the way that copy and paste worked in Relative Grid mode so that Pro Tools remembers the grid offset when pasting clips or MIDI notes. For example, with a 1 bar grid value, if you Copy a clip that’s at 1.4.356 then click the cursor at 5.0.000 and Paste, it will actually paste it at 4.4.356. It’s a small thing, but really rather helpful.

There’s a groovy new little EQ Curve display in the mix window supported by a number of EQ plug-ins — sadly not the UADs which I

mostly use!

Plug-in drop-down menus were given a make-over with a useful new Search function — handy if you’ve got hundreds of plug-ins.

There’s a similar feature in the Send menu for finding a bus by its name. View menus and the Edit window Toolbar were given checkboxes instead of the old ticks system, making it easier to set view options in one hit rather than having to keep re-opening the list.

Avid are ever keen to promote cloud collaboration and have added further features to encourage this, but I’m still preferring the old-fashioned way, with most of my mixes coming as WAVs exported from Logic. The HD version of the software was renamed Ultimate in 2018.4, which cleared up confusion between HD hardware and software. Avid also introduced the Complete Plug-ins Bundle, included with Ultimate and available as a bundle to Pro Tools First and standard versions. It comprises over 75 plug-ins but is not completely complete, as you don’t get HEAT or the Aphex enhancers. You do get the AIR instruments and processors, the Pro series processors, Revibe II, the enormous bundle of guitar pedal emulations, and all the old favourites like Impact, JOEMEEK, Moogerfoogers, Reel Tape and X-Form. The latter is still one of the best algorithms for stretching certain material, and the Reel Tape Flanger is my favourite for authentic Itchycoo Park-style phasing. HEAT later became available to standard users, and also included free with subscriptions.

silence when blasting playback on the big speakers with the band in the room (or worse still, their manager or label!) Unfortunately you still can’t add an effects send while recording when your talent is gasping for reverb! And you still can’t toggle the FMP button on Sends, nor can you de-select channel link in multimono plug-ins without stopping playback. But you can seamlessly change loops while in Dynamic Transport mode.

Also in 2019.5 came the handy ability to name tracks from the create tracks dialogue, saving a few clicks when setting up to record.

Sensibly, a default name reflecting the track type is still provided if you don’t type something in. For native users, there was a significant increase in available voices/audio tracks from 256 to 384, with optional 128 voice-packs to rent or buy to get you up to a maximum of 768 (matching an HDX3 system).

HDX users were left stuck at 256 voices per HDX card. Most music users won’t get anywhere near these limits of course, and I have rarely felt short of tracks since the restrictions of Pro Tools LE many years ago. I am however still frustrated that with 3rd party interfaces you are needlessly limited to 32 I/O. One small but occasionally useful addition for 2019.5 was a new shortcut for nudging clips to butt up to previous and next clips.

2019.10 brought lots of value for post users, with video engine improvements, Dolby Audio Bridge improvements, and multi-stem bounce in a single file, and at the end of 2019 the final Pro Tools 2019.12 release brought Catalina support for eager Mac users. The disadvantage was loss of support in Catalina for the likes of MOV, MP4 and AAC file imports, so as long as you didn’t mind finding a workaround for those as necessary, you could happily upgrade the macOS or get working with a new computer.

Continuous Playback

In 2018.10 there were improvements for live sound users and Dolby Atmos which signalled the theme for 2019. Many of the new features introduced last year were targeted towards post users, and the first 2019 release didn’t appear until May. However, there were still quite a few useful new things for music producers. One reason for the delay was implementing the Continuous Playback feature. Pro Tools no longer stops when inserting plug-ins, creating tracks, changing tempo, and a huge number of related tasks.

Some plug-ins still make a small audible splat which I suspect is related to Delay Compensation adjustment, but overall things are mightily improved. This is excellent not only for one’s concentration and focus, but also reduces the embarrassment of a clunking great

Sound Effects library, pureMix and Groove3 tutorials. UVI Falcon was first added in November 2018 and updated to version 2 in 2019. You get Plugsound Avid Edition and Falcon Factory Sounds libraries — hundreds of great, categorised sounds. With Biotek there are also oodles of presets, a highlight being 40 sounds from film composer Christian Halten (Catwoman, The Ring, Double Take) which include big atmospheric pads, sequences and effects.

Pro Tools 2020: Folder Tracks

Coming in Pro Tools 2020 is the much vaunted Folder Tracks feature. As usual with Avid, if it seems that they are late to the party, they at least make sure they turn up with plenty of beer. You can nest up to nine folder levels, and added effects are propagated to tracks inside.

This will certainly be a popular update to those of us trying to keep a handle on sessions recorded in perhaps a slightly indulgent manner compared to days of yore (i.e. 24 tracks on tape)!

One perhaps undervalued advantage for long-term Pro Tools users is that added features rarely seem to get in the way of long-established working methods and ingrained muscle memories. Shortcuts and menus have stayed largely unchanged since the big menu rationalisation of version 8. Until writing this review, I’d been loyally updating but almost unaware of some improvements detailed above! I still rarely venture into the Clip Effects processing window which has hidden at the top of the Edit window since version 12.6. Pro Tools is still arguably the best platform for backwards-compatibility, with the ability to save in old version formats as well as importing from older sessions. Of course, many enhancements are focused on postproduction users, whose needs are completely different from mine, and some argue that the software should be split into two separate versions for the different communities. But it’s great to know that so many functions and possibilities exist without hindering the elegance of operation which Pro Tools still excels at.

VERDICT

Bonus!

There are some welcome bonuses for Pro Tools users that have been added for those on a current Upgrade or Subscription plan which add considerable value. Most notably for musicians are the excellent UVI Falcon Avid Edition 2 and the fun Tracktion Biotek 2 software synths. You also get Convology reverb and ERA Voice Leveler plug-ins, a Pro

PROS

Continuous customer-led improvements for both music and post professionals.

CONS

Still a few functions unavailable during playback, only 32 I/O with 3rd-party interfaces.

EXTRAS The new Avid S1 controller is an affordable expandable control surface that moves on from the MC series with support for optional iPad, Android and Fire touch-pads for display, Eucon protocol via ethernet, and even support for Cubase and Logic Pro. www.avid.com

March/April 2020 / 19

/ Review

conditioner, machinery) which renders the locations with extra realism. Although I often found myself filtering at the low end, there’s no doubt the broad and linear frequency response enhances the sense of ‘being there’.

Dynamic to the CORE

DPA Binaural

“It’s above you!” NIGEL JOPSON immerses his ears

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ith the DPA 4560 CORE Binaural Headset Microphones you are, in effect, miking-up the outside ‘earhole’ surrounded by your pinnae (‘outer ears’). The system is an ingenious combination of a pair of 4060 CORE miniature omnidirectional microphones, mounted on two earhooks ‘borrowed’ from DPA’s 4266 Flex headset. The matched 4060s are handpicked on sensitivity within ±1.5dB. Two foam windscreens options (large/ small) are supplied to offer a comfortable fit and some damping of wind noise. In blustery conditions outdoors, you will require something extra: either strap foam slabs to your ears(!) or use some sort of polar-fleece headband to cover the mics.

If any type of personal movement is anticipated, it’s essential to run the cable directly up your backbone (inside a jacket) so the Flex headset is snugly located in the nape of the neck. In this position, the well thought-out earhooks will not ride up and the 4060s are firmly presented to the external auditory meatus. There is some leeway for ‘mic positioning’: basically pointing the 4060s a little more forwards or inwards.

This can make a big difference to the capture. Perhaps because I have relatively small ears, I found the recordings best reflected what was ‘in front of me’ with the capsules angled forwards a little rather than into my ear.

It’s all in your head

We express the physical influence of the head by the Head-Related Transfer Function or HRTF (see Genelec Aural ID review, Resolution V19.1). This function mirrors how the head, the ears (and the 20 / March/April 2020

/ Mobile recording rig, including MM-A interface, showing DPA MM-A app on iPhone

torso) affects the transmission of an acoustical signal from a sound source to the eardrums. The size and the shape of the head, the size of the ears and the distance between the ears all filter the signal before it reaches the eardrums.

There’s no doubt the sense of realism is most keenly felt by the person who’s own head recorded the sound, or whose head was used as a model for a dummy — Arjen van der Schoot of Audio Ease (Altiverb) has a dummy of his own head — for making binaural IR samples.

I think if I were recording very quiet sounds, or making wildlife recordings, I would experiment with placing the DPA rig on dummy heads. It’s impossible not to make some sort of self-noise or movement when recording binaurally!

Conversely, the DPA rig gives an incredibly realistic impression of footsteps, ambience, and movement from the point of view of a human being.

Foley recordists are going to love it!

Unlike some other binaural solutions, there’s a substantial amount of low frequency sound captured (traffic, air

The 4560s were CORE-equipped — a recent DPA technology which increases the dynamic range of their miniature microphones up to 14dB (benchmarked by Simon Clark in September 2018 — search our website for CORE 6061). As an interface, I used DPA’s MM-A Digital Audio Interface (reviewed in Resolution V16.5, available online) — an interface chosen by NASA to capture audio on their Mars Rover! Measuring a mere 56mm in diameter and weighing 50g, the MM-A connects securely to the 4560s via MicroDot connectors. With a quoted noise floor of -114 dBFS, THD of 0.001% (1kHz -10dBFs), the recording quality of this DPA rig exceeds any other portable setup I’ve used. With a simple DPA app (gain, high pass filter) I recorded to an iPhone running Apogee MetaRecorder.

I used the €860 DPA binaural system extensively outdoors, recording the obvious binaural tests of car drive-pasts, trains, head rotations and so on. I would characterise the recordings as substantially more immersive than normal artificial head or Jecklin disk audio. Recorded drive-pasts, for example, seemed to realistically convey the ‘around the head’ traverse. A true binaural moving capture should not pass ‘through’ the head, but past it, either in front or behind; the DPA rig excelled at imbuing this sense of natural movement to the sound, rather than the often-heard “arriving on the left-zap-now it’s gone to the right”.

I’m fortunate to live near woodland on the North Downs Way in the UK, and one of my tests was to record a bird murmuration at dusk. Despite the orthodoxy that binaural recordings are optimised for headphones, my big surprise was how good these recordings sounded from stereo loudspeakers. There was something about the channel coherence and exceptionally detailed reverberant soundfield which managed to deliver a very natural sound movement.

The role of the DPA MMA-A USB audio interface was important: the superb low-noise capture contributes immensely to the binaural 24-bit recordings, and with <100mA current consumption, hours of portable audio.

For years, binaural was a bit of a niche recording technique.

But with the rise of virtual reality hardware like the Oculus Rift, Sony’s Morpheus, and Samsung’s Gear — systems dependent on realistic 3D audio to immerse their users — binaural should soon go mainstream. Consider the development of Motion Capture: what was once a novelty for animators has now become an essential movie-making technique. I predict POV sound capture will develop along similar lines, with immersive environmental sound an essential part of media projects, and the DPA Binaural Headset is perfect to capture this audio with fidelity.

VERDICT PROS

Superb, low-noise, realistic binaural capture which will surely become a benchmark. For recordists who already own 4560s, purchasing the extra rig elements is a no-brainer.

CONS

Secure mounting on-head takes a little practice!

EXTRAS The DPA MMA-A interface is a perfect companion for low noise, distortion free 24-bit recording. www.dpamicrophones.com

Give your music the world class treatment it deserves. Preamps, filters, reverbs, delays, and compressors that changed music as we know it, now in your DAW.

Triple-purpose mic

RØDE VideoMic NTG NIGEL JOPSON tests a versatile shotgun for cameras, computers, and mobile devices

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ur production sound professional Simon Clark had barely completed his enthusiastic reception of RØDE’s new NTG interference tube (shotgun) last month, when I received the ‘sawn-off’ videographer version for review. The NTG VideoMic is just 171mm in comparison to the (already diminutive) 203mm of the NTG tested by Simon, and utilises a similar design principle of “little perforations” on the tube.

I was a sound engineer long before I got into video — my Canon 5D MkIII is capable of incredible cinematic quality with a range of sophisticated lenses — yet the built-in mic may as well be from a Christmas cracker! Thankfully RØDE have developed a range of compact add-on solutions — many of which we’ve tested in these pages — which preserve the lightweight ethos of run-and-gun videography.

In true RØDE-style, this pressure gradient electret condenser comes with foam windshield fitted, charged and ready-mounted on it’s Rycote Lyre suspension. You can literally take it out of the box and mount on a hotshoe! Charged via 5V/USB, the mic autopowers on when connected to a camera and powers off when disconnected — for manual switching hold the power button for three seconds. A short press on the same button engages the -20dB pad, another press engages the ‘safety channel’: rather than a mono signal to the stereo out, the RH channel is reduced by -20dB (left LED off, middle LED illuminated). A third press engages both functions (left and middle LEDs illuminate).

The far right LED is the peak warning, turning red when the mic’s internal preamp clips.

22 / March/April 2020

Warm sound, subtle filters

The other momentary button engages the 75Hz or 150Hz filters, in conjunction with or independent of the HF boost. Surprisingly for a ‘shotgun’ the NTG is capable of very generous low frequency capture. The HPF are gentle slopes and the HF boost is subtle, so I often found myself with both HF boost and 150Hz roll-off engaged. If (like me) you use a viewfinder rather than a screen, the gain control placed on the rear of the mic is perfect for subtle ‘feel’ adjustments while filming.

I used the VideoMic in a variety of different acoustic environments, and was impressed (as Clark was in his Resolution V19.1 review of the NTG) with the low self-noise and lack of tonal colouration off-axis. Audio neophytes expecting some sort of sound-zoom will be disappointed — nothing this short is going to be as directional as a 550mm NTG8 — but the off-axis attenuation compared to other ‘top mics’ is significant. I had a long day in a 70m long hall with a 5m ceiling, during which I had the opportunity to swap top mic brands for comparison. Another make of shotgun was significantly harder to blend with on-talent lavaliers in post. Switching to a built-in video camera mic, the dramatic rise in confusing ambience was immediately obvious. During filming it started raining hard, and I found it quite easy to reduce the roof-drumming by subtly tilting the angle of the VideoMic. Recording speech, it’s possible to back the camera off considerably and forgo a lavalier.

When audience members talk off-axis there’s sufficient rejection to keep focus on a main speaker, and a natural room tone.

This microphone is far more than a ‘camera top’: the USB C input on the side is not only for charging, but to connect to a computer. The VideoMic acts as a USB interface for the computer: the gain control on the rear of the mic now controls monitor level (from computer/DAW) and the gain of the mic into the DAW is controlled via the computer’s system gain. Somewhat confusingly, the output from the mic capsule is summed with the computer/DAW signal to the 3.5mm output/headphone jack on the side of the VideoMic. Without full input/repro control from a DAW, use of the VideoMic NTG as a USB interface becomes less valuable for music recording, but I can see it potentially being useful for VO artists, or reporters on Source-Connect. It certainly makes a better Skype microphone than anything built-in to a journalist’s laptop!

Even more usefully, the VideoMic connects to a smartphone — unfortunately (as RØDE make clear) — not via the USB cable. The cunning 4-pole TRRS 3.5mm ‘auto sensing’ cable connects to the phone headset jack.

Having a mic such as the NTG to use is a huge improvement over most ‘reporter kit’ microphones available for ENG use. However, the analogue headset socket no longer exists on newer iPhones, and there’s a brutal HPF and poor preamp to negotiate anyway. I had a cheeky attempt to connect via an Apple Lightning/USB camera adapter, but as expected iPhones report insufficient power.

I’d willingly accept a larger battery than the current 350mAh power-source, lengthening the VideoMic by a few mm, in return for digital connectivity to smartphones. Having such a directional and clean mic to use for newsgathering and location recording via smartphone would be real game-changer.

RØDE have enthusiastically improved their product-line so I hope this may be a possibility in future.

A USB firmware updater gives plenty of opportunity to tweak aspects of the design, in fact whilst I was testing the mic, it received an update to better interface with Panasonic cameras. The innovative design delivers an unusually warm and full tone for this category of microphone, with a sufficiently directional pickup to make the VideoMic NTG a quality addition to the videographer’s kit bag.

VERDICT PROS

Natural off-axis sound, warm tone, versatile connection options, value-formoney (£239).

CONS

If digital connection to smartphones could be implemented, the wish tick-list would be complete.

www.rode.com

/ Review

Arturia Creative Suite RUSSELL COTTIER explores new French models

plug-ins offer MS/LR mode selection when in stereo instances.

Preamps galore

T

he Creative Suite is a set of audio plug-ins and virtual instruments that Arturia believes will give the user the key tools needed for modern audio production, particularly if they are using Arturia hardware. Keen readers may have noticed that in my recent review of the Arturia AudioFuse 8 Pre (Resolution V18.7) I mentioned that the Creative Suite comes bundled with the unit, but the individual products are also available separately.

The Creative Suite is cited by Arturia as ever-growing with the 140 reverb being added to the package recently, so it appears that more plug-ins might be added way as time goes by. However, right now the collection includes three preamp (and EQ) modelling plug-ins, an FET-76 compression plugin, Filter MINI and Delay Tape-201. Furthermore the Analog Lab 4 Virtual instrument plug-in offers extensive synth models.

The Pre 1973 preamplifier plug has that oh-so-familiar look of a Neve 1073 and was modelled from serial number 3392, for those Neve aficionados. There are even controls for transformer type to switch between the original Carnhill and the Marinair. EQ offers High Shelf, a Mid Parametric control and a Low Parametric band (shelf). Of course the obligatory high-pass filter is in there too allowing a tight low end boost for Kick drums, bass and synths etc. Usefully the controls are continuous, unlike the original, which makes complete sense in the context of software. Input gain allows signals to be driven harder into distortion and an auto-gain feature allows driving the input without changing level. All of the Pre

The Pre TridA is modelled, as you might guess, from the Trident A Range and offers a 4 band, twin channel EQ with those classic Trident-type faders for gain on each band. Low and High Pass filters are on buttons and you can even ‘push’ in multiple buttons for a more pronounced effect. The input gain saturation is quite appealing and certainly has some of the charm of the original unit.

Pre V76 is based on the REDD console that we all know and love.

Judging the plug-in purely on its own merits, it seems to do a nice job, in the sweet spot it is somewhat more subtle than the other pres perhaps but very useable. The EQ is based on a modified Telefunken V612 and you only get 2 bands, but sometimes that’s all you need. The preamp clipping is nice and valve-like in this model.

We often ask, does the world need yet another 1176 plug-in? Of course it does! These units are one reason that classic records sound the way they do and you can never have enough of them in my opinion. Comp FET-76 offers all the usual features and the All Buttons In mode is quite nice, it seems to add a little more saturation than some other 1176-style plug-ins, and maybe a little more than some hardware units too. Parameters respond exactly as I would expect, but this plug-in really stands out from the competition because there is an extra ‘rack’ in the GUI that lets the user fine-tune the sidechain. I found myself reaching for this plug-in often, even with the hardware versions to hand [Sacrilege! — Ed]. Arturia have also

added Time Warp, a feature that lets you further manipulate the compression envelope for some nice effects.

Regen with Russell

Delay TAPE-201 is a welcome inclusion that might just have bumped my favourite tape delay plug-in off the top spot. It has a classic EchoSonic vibe and the input Equaliser is particularly useful for shaping less intrusive delays. The Modulation section really lets you dial in some interesting feature effects. This is more than just a simple tape delay.

Filter MINI: this filter is essentially based on the Moog ladder filter and can be used to great effect in a mixing context. The filter sounds great, but it is perhaps the modulation controls that really start to add this to the lists of must-haves for my mixes lately. The LFO, step sequencer and envelope follower are all very powerful tools for inspiration in both production and writing sessions also.

Rev PLATE-140 has recently been added to the collection and offers a plate reverb based on the EMT 140.

With three plate models to select from, there are lots of useable sounds in this plug-in, one of the nicest features is the modelled valve preamp stage that really keeps inputs under control when pushed.

The Creative Suite also includes Analog Lab Lite (from Arturia’s V collection, reviewed in Resolution V18.3); this software instrument contains 18 synths, six pianos, three organs and a whopping 6500 presets.

Individual plug-ins in this collection retail at €99 each, and €199 for the full version of Analog Lab. All Arturia’s studio plug-ins are available bundled in the FX Collection for €399, so the Creative Suite which comes free with selected Arturia hardware is a real gem.

Production pros would do well to audition this offering from the French company well-known for its keyboards and realistically modelled synths.

VERDICT PROS

Great sounding preamp plugins.

The sidechain controls on Comp FET-76 are innovative and useful.

Analog Lab is vast in both range and precision.

CONS

Individual plug-ins are a little pricey at €99 if not in the Creative suite or FX collection bundle.

www.arturia.com / FET-76 showing additional sidechain rack

/ Pre 1973, TridA and Pre V76

March/April 2020 / 23

The Interview

Jean-Michel Jarre Four decades in, Jean-Michel Jarre still feels compelled to rewrite electronic music history. DANNY TURNER discusses his latest ground-breaking algorithmic app, EōN

Photos: Anthony Ghnassia

Artists are like sponges — we are stealing and inspired by everything around us…

I’m more and more convinced that technology is dictating styles and not the reverse… / How’s this for a ‘keyboard cave’? Clavia Nord Lead, Mellotron, MemoryMoog, Roland System 500, Grp A4, Waldorf kb37, Kurzweil K2000, Eminent 310, ARP 2600…

S

ince 1976, the name Jean-Michel Jarre has been synonymous with electronic music. His album, Oxygène, sold over 18 million copies and led the synthesizer revolution of the ’70s. From the first modular synths to the rise of digital recording, Jarre’s fascination with technology has kept him one step ahead of his peers, bridging the avantgarde and mainstream through his albums and jaw-dropping live performances.

Balancing the abstract and familiar; the organic and artificial, Jarre has redefined our expectations of what electronic music should sound like — it’s therefore no surprise that his latest venture should lead electronic music into unchartered territory once more. Titled EōN, Jarre’s generative music app is designed to produce infinite combinations of tempo, tone and rhythm, creating a unique music experience for every user, every time.

I just wanted to touch on the Electronica albums you released in 2015/16. Looking back, what do you think you gained from working with so many artists that you clearly admired?

Electronic music is really quite solitary work; like a writer or painter you’re stuck in your own studio. I was going through a rather dark moment in my life and wanted to open the door and try to create a true link with people I admire — not just by sending files to artists you never meet or talk to, but sharing our DNA in the same place physically. It’s been really cool to learn other people’s approach to ideas and technologies and it’s an experience that I want to develop as a parallel project to my studio albums and other activities with Electronica 3.

Was the project all the more meaningful considering Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese passed away in 2015?

When I met Edgar in Germany I had no idea he was ill. He seemed to be in quite good shape — maybe a little tired, but the track we did together was the last he would do as Edgar Froese and Tangerine Dream. Of course, that added another emotional layer to this collaboration.

Artists are like sponges — we are stealing and inspired by everything around us, so that experience taught me a lot and I hope it brought a little to the other collaborators.

What these artists all have in common is an instantly recognisable sound. You take 30 seconds of Moby, Air or Massive Attack and you know it’s them and nobody else. I remember working with Moby in LA and he just played a D Minor on the keyboard — a chord that a 5-year-old child could play, but it was instantly Moby and that’s what’s fascinating about working with such great musicians.

Many people had hoped for collaboration with Daft Punk, but it never materialised?

When I started the project they were already in the middle of the promotion and marketing of their last album, which was very pop and disco-oriented. The Electronica project was based on a purely electronic approach, so it didn’t match their ideals.

You’ve just released a new album ‘EōN’ — a generative music app. Was this an idea that’s been hibernating for a while?

When I was a student at the Music Research

Centre with Pierre Schaeffer — the father of musique concrète and generative music, I always thought it would be really cool to make an infinite album. In the history of recorded music you have a start and ending note, but I always wanted to conceive a piece of music that was in constant development and a unique experience for every listener. Each time you play the app, it’s totally different, and it’s not just an ambient experience, because that’s already been done by lots of people.

How does EōN differentiate itself from those generative-based ambient albums?

With an ambient-style project it’s easier to give a feeling of constant evolution, but not in terms of texture, beats, loops and atmospheres. With the EōN project, we wanted to deal with different BPMs, textures and styles while keeping my personal touch.

With the emergence of artificial intelligence, there are two ways to approach collaboration with technology through algorithms. When I collaborate with Moby or Massive Attack I’m expecting them to give me content that, by definition, is not mine and bring fresh ideas.

That’s one way of working with algorithms — to expect them to feed new ideas and melodies, and that’s something I’m working on even if the results are not convincing, yet.

The other way is to compose a huge toolbox of music, so the content is entirely human, and then the algorithm is remixing and rearranging the different patterns and sequences. For EōN, it took me one year to compose hours of music where every pattern and sequence is able to work with everything else in terms of tonality and BPM. March/April 2020 / 25

/ Back in the day: EMS synths featured heavily in the Oxygène era

So you didn’t write songs per se, but sections of music that had the potential to interact?

It was quite similar to symphony orchestration where you’re writing the strings, brass section and percussion and trying to match them. The sequences were 10 seconds to 3 minutes in length and I defined different rules to go from one tonality or chord to another and create sound effects made of common notes. For instance, you can go from C Minor to F Major because the C is common in both chords. All these tricks and processes allowed me to give a variety of styles, tempos, melodies and textures.

Presumably, you had to test that everything would converge harmonically?

Like anything, you define your own grammar or vocabulary. At the beginning I was quite concerned that it could become too repetitive or abstract, but step by step I built my own principles until it started to work quite well. For example, every piece should be a definition of the same category of BPM and if you have a dissonant texture it shouldn’t work with something that’s not dissonant.

Many of your albums are conceptually driven.

Was that something you could apply to the music for EōN? When you’re writing an album you always have pre-conceived ideas but it’s a constant fight between those and the direction you take.

Those ideas pull you backwards and forwards but also show where you to go. For EōN, while listening to the music I was quite surprised that it sounded like it was coming from me and not leaning towards an abstract algorithm. What’s fascinating is that when I listen to EōN as a generative app, I still recognise every piece of it — and that’s fun for me and hopefully the listener.

26 / March/April 2020

/ Close up of Jarre’s MemoryMoog, with the presets listed for a performance of Oxygène

I suppose that goes back to what you were saying about Moby. As soon as Jean-Michel Jarre plays a note, his personality is indelibly forged into the music?

Yes, it’s true, but it’s also a trap. I had this discussion with Robert Del Naja from Massive Attack. I told him that I would dream to make an album that sounded like Massive Attack but it’s impossible. Whatever you do as an artist is a variation of yourself. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but you can’t escape your own style.

When I was starting as a musician I met a great Italian director, Federico Fellini, who told me something very interesting. “Jean-Michel”, he said, “I always thought every movie was totally different, but looking back I realised it was all a variation of the same idea”. That’s very true. If you think about Tarantino, The Beatles, Coldplay or Picasso, their careers are just variations of the same thing and we give it a style.

You worked on the app with a French music tech company called BLEASS. What was their involvement?

Together, we set up a series of rules for rearranging these different sequences. Inside the app you have some mini-plugins that are able to transform the textures in terms of delay, filter and tempo, so you cannot hear a repeat of what you first heard. You can always record it, but the principle is to experience a moment in life.

So the intention is that EōN is a living experience, unlike pre-recorded music?

Yes, the moment we are spending together now is never going to be repeated in the same way, which is the reverse approach to today’s technology. With Instagram we are becoming archivists. In life, a memory or recollection is like a download — a moment to keep in your

/ Interview

Whatever you do as an artist is a variation of yourself / JMJ with his custom Waldorf kb37/Eurorack

own hard drive, but you’re not able to live that moment twice, and that’s what makes EōN so exciting to me.

And you couldn’t realise the vision until the technology was ready?

Of course, and I’m more and more convinced that technology is dictating styles and not the reverse. It’s because the violin was invented that Vivaldi existed, because Les Paul or Fender created the electric guitar that we had Chuck Berry, Jimmy Hendrix or Slash, and because we had synthesizers that I am talking to you today. Like everything in life, suddenly you find the right people to collaborate with and that was the case with BLEASS, and because it’s an app for smartphone or tablet, the visual side is also quite important.

Indeed, you worked with Sony Computer Science Labs on that element?

I was in Tokyo last year and met with Sony CSL. They’re involved in developments for AI — not just for music but ecology, environment, smart cities and space. I’m actually developing a flow machine project with them based on AI algorithmic software for generating music and melodies, but also found they had a graphics department so I talked with the team about

my EōN project. We applied the same philosophy, trying to establish a relationship between variations of light and texture in a subtle way rather than just every bar and beat, to generate a constantly new visual that would never be the same.

That sounds perfect for live visuals too, but it’s more difficult to envisage how EōN would work in that context musically?

At the moment, that’s still a work in progress.

We’re planning to develop a live version of EōN at the end of 2020 that establishes a dialogue between me and the app on stage. What I like about putting EōN on stage is that, at a time when most live shows are time coded and the same every night, in this case every night will be totally different.

Is the objective to play along to the appgenerated algorithms, similar to any onstage relationship between musicians?

Absolutely, improvising like in jazz where the musician is beside you working on predefined patterns in terms of tonalities, textures and beats, then responding to establish a live dialogue in the truest sense of the word. It’s the reverse of a DJ arriving with an SD card and playing a totally pre-programmed show.

Could you foresee the app being retrofitted to previous works of yours?

Yes, everything is possible, but I’m not really interested in that. It’s much more interesting to adapt new material to this idea. For me, this EōN live project is something special that I would like to share with an audience, but in parallel I’m going to tour my existing catalogue. These days, I’m really interested in doing two or three different stage productions.

I’m preparing a big outdoor concert in the Arabian desert in March — a bit like Coachella on steroids, an arena tour for existing songs and the EōN project, which is intended to be a theatre project for concert halls.

I understand the app is only available for iPhone currently?

For technical reasons we decided to develop the app for iOS first, with the Android hopefully coming in March.

Also, there will be improvements. I’m going to add some more music and try to improve the listening experience. So it’s a living creature — not just EōN, but how I would like to see the concept evolve.

Jean-Michel Jarre’s ‘infinite musical creation’, EōN, is available now via the App Store: http://bit.ly/EōN. March/April 2020 / 27

Craft

Warren Huart

NIGEL JOPSON meets a storm of boundless enthusiasm for music, audio and learning

A

prototype for the modern production professional, Huart began his career as a musician, moving to Los Angeles from the UK in the late ‘90s after his band Star 69 struck a record deal. He switched to ‘the other side of the glass’ to continue his career as an engineer and producer for acts The Fray, Daniel Powter, Marc Broussard, Korn, Disturbed, James Blunt, Rick Springfield, Ace Frehley, Aerosmith (with Jack Douglas producing) and Better Than Ezra. Huart wrote the score to the 2004 documentary following Joe Strummer, Let’s Rock Again!, his work has since featured in TV and movies including Inglourious Basterds, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Hills, Lost, Scrubs, and Grey’s Anatomy.

Huart works from his own Spitfire Studio in Los Angeles, and has carved a parallel career for himself as an educator, with the YouTube Channel Produce Like A Pro, which boasts over 372,000 subscribers and over 34m video views.

This idea morphed into the Produce Like A Pro Academy (currently $169/year to join), and in 2019 Huart’s concept was validated when the Academy won the NAMM TEC Audio Education Technology Award.

You started as a guitar player, was that a blessing for your versatile future career?

I think I was blessed to start off in England… let’s be honest! My band got signed from my 28 / March/April 2020

demos and the label put out one of my demos as the first single. Jeremy Lascelles (who ran Chrysalis) said “Yeah, this sounds great. Let’s put it out.” And it was a modest hit.

I came to America, I developed an artist (this is late ’90s), took it to a label. They absolutely loved it — fired me immediately and hired one of their friends to make a record. It sounded to

me like the most boring copy of my demos.

There was a different mentality in England at that time based on creativity — in L.A. there was creativity but there was also just a lot of ‘business’… Nowadays the whole world is the same — whether you’re in America or somewhere else developing an artist — it’s 90% that you’re going to be able to release it

/ Huart hosting his Masterclass at Sunset Sound Studio 3 with Artist Christian Vegh

We came back from lunch and found the studio locks had been changed somehow. But it wasn’t that way when budgets were so big. Lack of budget is actually helping the creativity! When we were kids making music, there were two types of music career outcomes — feast or famine — and there was nothing in between. If you’re an independent artist now, it’s a really, really good time.

As an engineer/producer, was there a key moment for you?

The Fray were two very big records for me. The first one, I came in and did like lots of fixing and re-tracking and I tracked ‘How To Save a Life’ drums. They’d recorded the drums originally with Hot Rod drumsticks. We didn’t want John Bonham, but we just wanted something that was a little bit more hard hitting, so it could get on the radio. Ben [Wysocki] flew in and arrived at my studio at 11:00am in the morning. Half of my gear was out on rental, so I had a Rogers 24” kick, my Ludwig Supraphonic snare, no toms, the crappiest high hats I own and one cymbal — and we re-cut the drums for ‘How To Save a Life’.

I think we did two or three takes, a super quick comp, and then we took the hard drive and drove over to Scream Studios [Ventura Boulevard]. Mark Endert was waiting there — it’s about 3:00pm — he pulls up the mix, drops in the new drums and the rest is history [joint seventh longest charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, 3x Platinum, 5m downloads]. I love those kinds of things. Flying by the seat of your pants is how the records we grew up listening to were quite often made.

You hear the stories of the Beach Boys or the Beatles finishing a recording and then driving to the radio station and playing a copy of it. I love that stuff. I mean — it’s why we got into the music industry — to live those kinds of stories.

The Fray debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, but I gather the recordings were not without incident?

The second album was a big deal, I made the album over nine months with them. We started in Sausalito at the Record Plant. We’d been there a week and decided to go out for lunch one day — we’d been ordering-in before. Let’s go for lunch. Just going to see the town, ten minutes’ walk. So we go to this little diner and have lunch.

Ninety minutes later we come back with the assistant and the studio door key doesn’t work.

So the assistant calls the “owner”. But turns out he wasn’t the building owner. The actual building owner had found out that ‘this big band’ were coming in (at this point they’d sold four million copies of the first album) — and had probably just written out a massive cheque for some studio time. The “studio owner” apparently hadn’t paid his mortgage or something. So for

leverage, the owner of the building changed the locks while we were out, to make sure they got paid. God bless the music industry!

Did you stamp your foot?

What do you do? You want your artists to feel really comfortable and you can’t bring a bunch

of drama in. You can’t bring the band into the argument because if they’re comfortable, and they want the experience of recording in a room that did Songs In The Key Of Life, a room that did Sly and the Family Stone’s Fresh, they want that experience. If you start telling them “Oh, there’s all this drama”, all they hear is that you’re being dramatic. It’s a key production thing to realise that drama is only in the head.

So if I’m going ‘OMG the bad channels in the console, and now the lock has changed…’ We just made light of it. Obviously I was annoyed and those responsible were dealt with later, but for the band, you have to be a professional. You

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March/April 2020 / 29

/ Behind the scenes at NAMM, interviewing Stefan Lindlahr from Celemony

/ Recording drums in the live room of Sunset Sound Studio 3

have to pretend ‘it’s no big deal, and that was just quite funny’.

We did end up doing some good recordings there, but we moved the second two thirds of the record-making back to Denver. The Fray had a studio building, we bought the appropriate gear and rented some stuff. They had a wonderful time and made my favourite album I’ve ever recorded.

Where do you see music production going in the future?

It’s really strange because I feel like everybody’s talking about the album being dead. That’s all I hear. Every person, every talking head says “don’t bother doing an album, only do an EP” — and probably you should just do three singles and put them out — one every couple of months. That’s a mantra you’ll hear if we just open YouTube now and flick around.

The history of the music industry, as you and I know — having been through a few decades of it — is that there’s really no predictability. And even when you can see the future, it doesn’t mean that anybody’s actually going to take notice of it. We all knew when Napster was around and MP3s first started becoming a thing that record companies were going to have to figure out how to do more. And they didn’t. Talk about Napster — they took a big ‘nap’ on it.

They just thought they were too big to fail.

Now Spotify has come along and everybody likes to complains about it. Let’s be honest, Spotify has saved the music industry, because if we didn’t have streaming, then everybody would just be sending the music for free. So to complain about streaming is really, really naive.

The reality is that the people who are complaining about streaming are people who predominantly have old-school contracts, with 13% royalty rates, and they don’t like 13% of a stream.

But young artists… I have lots of young artists, they make about $2,500 a month off modest amounts of Spotify plays — they don’t have to go and work in a bar now — they can go out, play gigs, promote themselves. They’re 30 / March/April 2020

was quite interesting — obviously I had to film the video at nine in the morning before starting sessions every other day, so it was quite exhausting! But in the meantime, after we saw how much interest there was, we decided: this feels like it could be an online environment, where people can interact and share multitracks. But that was a year and a half later.

/ Huart at Spitfire Studio producing Mikey Pauker

not making millions of dollars a year. But if you could tell somebody they can make $60,000 or £60,000 a year being an artist, how many musicians do you think would take it? Of course they’d take it.

There are plenty of vociferous streaming royalty-rate complainers…

Put your contract up — then we can read how you only have 11% of the royalty rate from your label — if that. I have a song with an artist that had tens of millions of plays. He has one song that was in the highest tens of plays, and we worked out the income coming into the label on that one song was $157,000. The song has never been on the radio. So like — who’s complaining — you know what I mean? And yes, I only get three points of that, but still somebody is making a living. A modern artist is making a living and it’s paying the bills.

Did the business Produce Like A Pro start organically?

Sort of! I didn’t build the Academy until three years later. I had 18 months of zero monetisation. Nothing. I didn’t even put ads on YouTube. So for the first 18 months is was like 150 to 200 videos. We were doing three a week, so probably with the first 50 to 200 there was not even an ad or banner on them, because I just wanted to get people involved. The process

How would you explain your core concept of getting production pros to interact?

John Krivit asked me to do a day of panels at NAMM for the AES. My idea is to connect two groups of people. Production professionals who have made albums that are undisputedly the greatest albums of all time. Not necessarily biggest selling — not ‘sold 5m copies in 1997 off one single’. But the people who made the albums that we listen to for pleasure, people like Shelly Yakus — who made Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes, and recorded Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ — connect those guys with younger people. Producers and engineers in their twenties or early thirties don’t really give a crap about seeing another guy who made a record in 1997 that has ten songs that sound exactly the same. They don’t! But they do want to meet a guy like Shelly Yakus who can tell them what it’s like to get a great vocal performance out of John Lennon. They want to hang with people who are artists themselves, creatives who understand the dynamic.

What is it that Produce Like A Pro offers which other online concepts don’t?

Total community and collaboration. There’s 3,249 people in our Produce Like A Pro Academy. I know the exact number because I need to know who our audience is and what their concerns are. We have people from different backgrounds and walks of life, and 20% of our membership are women. But we don’t do that thing where we say: “Today, we’re going to focus on women in rock”. That’s so patronising, although it’s currently really fashionable. If you’re just good at your job, that’s all that really matters. Anything other

/ Craft

than that doesn’t matter — this human being (of whatever shape, size, ethnicity, gender, or whatever) is really good at their job. That’s why we’re talking to them.

How do you see Produce Like A Pro evolving in future?

I think it’s all about community, bringing in more people, making it less centred around me. Making it more about members. It’s Produce Like A Pro, it’s not ‘Warren’s thing’.

My name’s not on it and it was never supposed to be about me, none of the sites have my name on. Is it centred around me interviewing people? Yes. Would I be happy if we brought in other personalities to do stuff like that?

Absolutely. There should be something for everybody because it’s not centred around any particular genre.

How large is the team working with you on Produce Like A Pro? The team has grown as we have several facets to our business. Myself and Eric Gonzalez are at the core, John McLucas is new to the team and works in Los Angeles with Eric. There’s a marketing group of three people (in Canada), then I have contributors in England and Germany.

Is there any synergy between making records and your career as an educator — I mean, do new clients come to you now thinking — ‘that’s the guy who does Produce Like A Pro’?

Possibly… I don’t think I’ve personally found a whole load of new clients in that way. But the part I really enjoy is — I get to hang out with and talk to people like you! How else would I get to interact with people in the industry that are part of the wider world of music production? When you’re working in isolation in the studio making a record, that’s great. But you know, the fact that I can go and hang out with EveAnna Manley and talk about the great equipment Manley Labs make is special. That’s been a massive upside, spending time with some of the incredible characters in our business.

Meeting up with other producers, engineers and mixers — who I was friends with already — because I’m able to showcase them and build even better relationships, because I can bring them more to the front. And getting to know audio pros I had never met before. I didn’t know Bob Clearmountain, for instance, a year or two ago. Now I’ve interviewed him. It’s Bob fricking Clearmountain!! You know there’s mixers in the world, and then there’s Bob Clearmountain…

What motivates you to keep up such a hectic work schedule?

I like people that make music, but I also like people who make the tools for music as well. I like the fact that I can review something new that’s either ground-breaking technically — or better — technically great plus financially more accessible. Accessible equipment is getting more people to make music so they can potentially become professionals.

Did you sit one down one day and think to yourself — I’ve got to build myself a career as an educator?

A great question — and that’s another big message. In the digital world in which we all live — whether we want to admit it or not — you have to pivot! You hear that word all the time with the techie guys… You do something. It doesn’t work. You have to be willing to say: “I’m going to try something different”. I like kicking down barriers and getting rid of the stereotypes that foster any sort of negativity in our industry. To me it’s all about bringing people together. I feel like my journey as a

/ Interviewing Shelley Yakus

guitar player, turning into producer and engineer and mixer… songwriter, mirrors what everybody has to do these days.

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/ Assistants sound / microphone operators: Loveday Harding, Thayna McLaughlin, Jen Annor, Nina Rice, Gwen Sena, Lee Thompson

Military Wives Production soundman PAUL PARAGON on the challenges and rewards of using on-set audio

A

t the heart of the film lies a powerful tale of women, who in the face of psychological adversity, unite as a choir. With music at its core, Military Wives had some unique film-making challenges.

It was my job, as production sound mixer, to make the right creative decisions in order to fulfil director Peter Cattaneo’s vision. Half of our filming schedule would be days with full cast and singing. This is an account of the recording of those elements.

Choral recording has played a major part in my career, so I was delighted when I was asked to combine this experience with movie production sound mixing.

At the outset, Peter told me “this film is not a musical, it should sound like a real choir singing in real spaces”. He would not be casting actors with a background in singing or musical theatre, and wanted an authentic natural sound with the spontaneity of live performances, warts and all!

The techniques for recording a choir in a music studio or concert hall are fairly straightforward and well established, but to achieve this on a film set whilst dovetailing with 32 / March/April 2020

all the other departments would be a challenge.

The choices made at the recording stage would affect the whole sound of the film.

Keeping the audience ‘in the moment’

Audiences are psychologically astute at noticing tiny mismatches between what the eyes see, and what the ears hear. If something doesn’t feel right (even subconsciously), it can take an audience out of the moment and naturalness is lost. The desire for a natural sound gave us two aims: one, all the singing to be recorded live on set during the filming with no replacement in post; and two, that each take in the edit would use its actual sync sound.

This meant that for a given choral performance, in order to make seamless edits, the sound from each shot/take would have to be sonically consistent in mic type, placement and stereo image. Once we’d set a mic position relative to the choir, that would be it for the whole scene!

There would be no use of booms for the tight shots, and radio mics for wide shots.

Movie production crew have rarely encountered

stereo main mics because of their inherent problems when shooting — such as image shifting whilst placed in different positions out of shot — or unnatural sounding room reflections picked up by hypercardioid or interference tube (shotgun) mics. I explained how we would have to work for singing scenes to our director of photography, Hubert Taczanowski and assistant director, Barry Keil, both of whom were incredibly understanding and worked with us to achieve our goals. Many of the needs of choral recording are quite unusual on a film set and we relied on good communication with the other departments and the cast.

A sensitive team

As well as being excellent in technical ability, the sound team had to be extremely sensitive to the demands put on the cast during their days of standing and singing. If unused to it, a microphone can be daunting when asked to sing. It was vital that we had the confidence and trust of the actors, that the saw that we were taking them very seriously, and that we cared deeply about their performance. Our job would be very difficult without them on our side!

Loveday Harding is one of UK’s most experienced first assistants for sound. Her no-nonsense approach and joyful personality helped communication and cooperation with both cast and crew, invaluable when working with a 35-woman choir! Loveday would discuss beforehand where any tracks and cameras would be so that we could find a position for microphone stands. Once we had good sound takes, we could remove our mics and stands so that the cameras could shoot their wide shots.

Second assistant sound, Thayna McGlaughlin worked with Loveday on the microphones. Lee Thompson assisted with foldback/monitoring IEMs and stand mics; third assistant Mark Harris with PA, induction loops and Assistant Directors ‘Voice of God’ PA set up; and Ben Gandy, Pro Tools playback.

Ben prepared each playback guide track in liaison with orchestrator, Shane RutherfordJones after the choir had rehearsed a song and a decision made as to what vocal parts and song sections would be performed.

/ Paul Paragon (L) with Pro Tools operator Ben Gandy

/ Schoeps CCM22 mics on an ORTF rig

Every line of what you hear the women’s choir sing are genuine live takes Sometimes Peter, or choir mistress, Jenny O’Grady, would want to try something different and changes would be made to the playback track. Completing our sound team were 2nd unit mixers, Tom Williams and Giancarlo Dellapina and 1st AS, Gwendoline Sena.

Choir mic techniques

Peter wanted the choir to begin the film sounding like an untrained group singing together for the first time. As the film progresses they improve, become more confident until they are good enough to sing at the Royal Albert Hall. The singing scenes were shot in roughly chronological story order, which allowed the actors to rehearse and become more accomplished as time went by. The choir would only have two days of rehearsal before we started, to help get used to the singing, the recording process, the covert earpieces, and the stereo mic hanging overhead. They were not told what they were to sing in the first scene — so that it really would be an authentic unprepared moment!

Different techniques were used to compliment the sound of choirs singing development. A mix favouring multiple spot mics works well for keeping individual voices distinct, therefore early in the story weight was given to close-up spots and the cast’s lavalier microphones. I used Schoeps CCM 41s which sound great on female voices. They are also my favoured interior dialogue mic, which allowed us to boom between talking and singing without changing mic.

The singers all wore a DPA4061, which with good positioning and mixed with a room stereo pair sound superb. The trick to having

the sound being clean enough to be used in the mix is to have as much free air around them and as far away from any clothing rustle as possible. Costume designer Jill Taylor’s team were key to the success of these recordings. Assistants began each day with miking the 11 cast singers, plus the support artist singers. The costume dressers helpfully allowed re-positioning to the outside of clothing when the actors were obscured, for example those standing in the back row. To complete the set-up a stereo pair would be placed in a relatively diffuse position to provide a natural-sounding bed for the close mics.

The transition song from going from ‘bad’ choir to ‘good’ choir was Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time after Time’. From this point on, the sound had to be more beautifully blended and polished.

Our task was aided by our sets. The actors now stood in formation on risers and our locations such as the ‘drill hall’ all had good natural acoustics. This helped the performance too: it is more satisfying singing with nice reverb than to do it in an acoustically dry space.

The art of blending voices

The recording technique now had to blend the singing, making the sound of a group as a whole, greater than the sum of the individual parts. The art of blending voices is aided by stereo techniques that are non-coincident. For the main pair, I chose Schoeps CCM 22 ‘near cardioids’, in an ORTF arrangement (21cm apart and an angle of 110°). These microphones are absolutely outstanding in respect of a neutral frequency response, low harmonic distortion and low noise floor and a natural off-axis sound.

They sound similar to the renowned Schoeps MK2 omnis, but have the benefit of a front : rear

/ Phonak covert earpiece

signal ratio of over 5:1 which is great when you have a whole camera crew to their rear. They can be placed a little bit further back than an omnis which also helps with blending.

Main stereo pairs on choral recordings in a studio are usually mounted on a stand behind the conductor. In a concert hall they are slung out of the audience’s eye line in conjunction with spot mics on low profile stands. We needed to be very nimble to work around camera, track, and light changes. The solution was to mount the main pair on the end of a 5m boom which could rotate on a wind-up stand on wheels, allowing the stand to move but the mics to keep the same relative position to the choir. The solo/spot mics would be boomed by Loveday, Thayna, Nina and Jen. Our director Peter wanted the option to break convention in order to tell the story. He might need to raise the audio level for an individual character to get into their thoughts or draw attention to them. In order to do this on close-up shots, one of our booms followed the camera, or we could use lavaliers. Peter used this in the final mix to great effect, sometimes very subtly, sometimes dramatic.

In ear monitoring and foldback

Guide and click tracks were given to the singers via inductive covert earpieces, which fit invisibly in the ear. These work in a similar way to March/April 2020 / 33

hearing aid loops in public places — we rigged induction loops around each set.

Comedian/writer Sharon Horgan’s character — Lisa — played a keyboard in many of the singing scenes, both solo and with the choir.

Sharon, never having played before, remarkably learnt some basic tunes and chords for the filming. The keyboard’s speakers were muted, its output went to my desk and back to her hidden earpiece. She could play and sing, but we’d have both sources independent. I could route it to our PA (for rehearsing a shot) or through the choir’s earpieces (during the performance). If the choir didn’t want to have

the keyboard, Sharon had her own bespoke earpiece channel, via a body worn loop under her costume, linked by a Sennheiser G3 radio channel.

A production sound mix was provided for director, script supervisor, operators, focuses and grips, and mix without keyboard plus main pair for the sound assistants (so they could concentrate on spot mics).

An off-screen keyboard was routed into the actors’ earpieces to provide live cues. Keyboard player Shane could give notes for pitch, or enhance the guide track. Sometimes after a few takes, the choir would start to become too

/ Off screen keyboard player and orchestrator Shane Rutherford-Jones

good! The director’s secret weapon was to have a crunching off-key chord played through their earpieces in order to throw them out of tune!

Recording equipment

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The choir scenes were filmed in a variety of locations spread across English counties Herts, Bucks, Berks and Yorks: a welfare centre, a drill hall, an exterior market square, a church, a disused railway tunnel, the ‘Albert Hall’ (set at Pinewood Studios) and a pub. Fortunately for us, the locations for the scenes with the choir singing well had great acoustics with complimentary reverberation, and the sets for the earlier scenes had drier acoustics which meant that no treatment of the rooms was necessary. However, all of this was to be filmed in three weeks, so we’d need a highly mobile recording set-up.

I used a cart-based Aaton X3 Cantar with Cantaress controller. This gave me 24 tracks and 22 linear mix faders to accommodate the booms, choir mics, radio lavaliers and keyboard.

The main stereo pair and solo/spot mics would go through RME Octamic preamps. The RME has incredibly low noise and harmonic distortion, perfect for a ‘natural’ sounding recording. The Pro Tools rig, on a second cart, was connected by Dante (plus analogue backup). The playback audio channels could then be routed to the various foldback transmitters, either in the Cantar or in Pro Tools.

Ben Gandy (pro Tools) also had access to my channels should audio require editing for playback. Having two small, lightweight carts meant our technical set-up times were incredibly quick, allowing more time to plan the microphone structure for a scene.

It wasn’t always ‘classical’ choral recording technique: in one scene the choir sing pub Karaoke. This requirement was still for a real live performance with a natural feel, so we kept the same regime of guide track through earpieces.

Following authentic Karaoke style, we swapped our Schoeps mics for a couple of Sennheiser handheld radio mics and some Shure SM58s.

A challenge of balance

Some of the early numbers were sung in unison, but as the story progressed, the pieces became more demanding, with up to 5-part harmony (sopranos, mezzos, altos, contraltos, solo melody). A professional choir and conductor will ‘self- balance’, making the job of the sound

/ Craft

I came up with a novel solution: we would have a selection of mute choir members…

Albert Hall performance. With the exception of only a couple of very small replacements, every line of what you hear the choir sing are the live takes recorded during the filming on set. This is an accomplishment rarely matched in film making. With expert editing, put together with a masterful and sympathetic score by Lorne

Balfe, and an outstanding post mix by Mathias Schwab, Military Wives has achieved the honesty and naturalness of sound that Peter Cattaneo envisioned. Sitting in the theatre watching, it was easy to forget the huge amount of high-quality technical work my dedicated sound team contributed to fulfil the aim of capturing an authentic natural performance on set.

After the lights went on in my local cinema, I heard a lady in the row behind me say to her friends, “that’s exactly how it was.” I turned around and asked her if she was a ‘military wife’.

“Yes, she said, and it was just like that!”

/ A green-screen shot will become the Albert Halll

engineer in that respect relatively simple, but our choir would not have had that training.

A solution for adjusting the balance is to use extra spot mics over the different sections to enhance the parts that need more emphasis.

Unfortunately, this wouldn’t work in our case for three reasons: they would get in shot; they may work against a blended sound required for some songs; they would restrict positioning of the actors to certain set groups within the choir.

The only way we could create an even balance would be to add extra voices in post. This would then cause a further problem that the sound would no longer match the picture as the choir would sound larger than it looked! I’d need to find a way of recording a natural performance without spots over each part, but allowing re-balancing later.

I came up with a novel solution. We would have a selection of ‘mute’ choir members, mouthing the words, visually making up the choir to reconcile the number of the rebalancing voices that we would add in later.

Altogether we would have a choir of up to 22 singing (11 cast, 5 trained support singers, 6 untrained support artists) plus up to 13 mute support artists.

Once a rough picture edit had been cut, I teamed up with music editor Rodney Berling.

Over the course of a few weeks, I assisted him with the assembly of the performances for each piece, being careful to preserve as much as possible the actual sync recording for each take (especially on close ups). We made a small list of overdubs that we would need to need to add in order to re-balance the choir. Our director had a very clear vision of how he wanted each piece to sound, which further informed our list of overdubs. We did two sessions, one with four untrained voices at my home studio, and another with eight trained voices at the Crypt Studios, London.

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March/April 2020 / 35

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Hw long were you working on the film?

Twelve weeks in total, with eight weeks on sound editing and sound recording. I spent two weeks doing a pre-dub mix for Dolby Atmos and two weeks on the final mix with Bong Joon-ho.

Where was the work carried out?

Live Tone Studios has two film mixing facilities, both of which are equipped with AMS Neve DFC 3D consoles, so the main mix was carried out in one of those rooms. We also have an ADR Recording Studio with a Neve Genesys console, which we use in conjunction with a 1073DPA stereo preamp and a Neve 33609 stereo compressor to record the actors’ voices. This room was used for all the ADR work on Parasite.

Ralph Tae-Young Choi BERT GEDLING on the audio post-production for multi-Oscar winning movie Parasite

P

arasite, the South Korean satire directed

by Bong Joon-ho, made Academy Awards history in February by becoming the first foreign language film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. It also picked up three other Oscars for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Film.

These accolades are not the only ones Parasite has garnered in recent months — in January it was honoured by the Motion Picture Sound Editors who named it 2020 Golden Reel Winner in the Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing — Foreign Language Feature category. That Award was presented to Supervising Sound Editor, Ralph Tae-Young Choi and Sound Designer Kang Hye Young.

The audio work for Parasite was carried out at Live Tone Studios in Baengma-ro, South Korea. Ralph Tae-Young Choi is CEO, sound supervisor and re-recording mixer at Live Tone Studios, a facility he helped establish in 1997. Prior to that, Ralph worked as a MIDI sequence programmer in the South Korean music industry before moving to Los Angeles where he honed his skills as a recording engineer.

36 / March/April 2020

Since 1997, Tae-Young has tackled more than 400 audio post-productions for many projects including Korean movies, computer games, broadcasts and OTT content sound. Here he speaks about Parasite and the equipment and workflows he uses every day at Live Tone Studios.

Being responsible for the sound in the first foreign language film to win a Best Picture Oscar must have felt incredible. How did you feel when it won?

I didn’t attend the Oscars because I was working, but the success of the movie was wonderful. I was very happy and excited. After the directors and actors returned to Korea, we all celebrated our success.

How did you get involved with Parasite — have you worked with the director before?

Yes, I’ve been sound supervisor for all Bong Joon-ho’s film projects and previously mixed the sound for notable films such as Snowpiercer, The Host and Memories of Murder. Naturally I got involved with Parasite, which he wanted mixed in Dolby Atmos. In fact he told me to start preparing for it during the audio post-production of Okia, a production he did for Netflix.

Did the DFC 3D console make the job easier?

Oh yes! Parasite was not as complex to mix as a Hollywood Marvel movie, for example, but the sounds were so detailed and emotional that they needed the console automation to operate very efficiently and simply, so this was where the DFC 3D really came into its own. I mix all of my movie sound with an AMS Neve DFC 3D console because it has a much more powerful audio engine and better audio quality than other consoles or DAWs. For a mixer to be intuitive and efficient, you need the console to be reliable and the DFC 3D excels at that.

Are there any features on the desk that you especially like?

I like most of its functions but I especially love its Filter, EQ, and Compressor. I love its control interface and Encore automation features, which make automation easy and fast. Stem assign automation is also very useful and convenient for pre-dub mixing and stem mixing, plus the enhanced WavTrak display and added RMX and DeEsser features in the new version of AMS Neve DFC 3D are very useful.

With regard to mixing Parasite in native Dolby Atmos, did the Neve DFC 3D console assist with that requirement?

Yes, because in order to fine tune the sound and creatively express what the director wanted, I needed the console to operate quickly and accurately. The DFC 3D allowed me to be instinctive and inspired. The intuitive and easy operation of the console unbound my body and allowed my imagination and emotions the freedom they needed to create good sound.

What monitors are you using for your main Dolby Atmos system?

I use a Dolby SLS speaker system, with SYS300A speakers for the main screen channel (LCR) and SLS CS1290S for the side-wall and ceiling surround speakers. For the subwoofer speakers on the screen channels I use two SLS CS218XL speakers and for the side wall subwoofers I use SLS CS118XL. Our speakers are powered with custom Pascal audio amplifier modules with SMPS and our monitoring equipment for mixing 5.1 or 7.1 uses DATASAT AP25 as a cinema processor.

/ Live Tone Studio’s mix room with the biggest Dolby Atmos and IOSONO system in Korea

/ The Kim family tries to scrape together some cash by folding boxes for a local pizza restaurant

How long have you been mixing in this format, and do you now find it is a requirement for most film projects?

I have been mixing Dolby Atmos movie sound for cinema since 2013 and did my first Netflix home Dolby Atmos sound mix in 2017 for Bong Joon-ho’s movie Okja. I was also involved in the Home Dolby Atmos mix of Kingdom Season 2 for Netflix, which opens in March 2020. The format is now very popular but I am selective about how I use it. I usually mix in Dolby Atmos when a movie is a blockbuster or can draw the audience’s attention. In those situations Dolby Amos can help express and strengthen the sound.

Can you describe your workflow for Parasite?

I mixed the movie using three Pro Tools DAWs with the Neve DFC 3D console. Each DAW had two HD MADI 64-channel digital audio interfaces, giving us 128 channels of MADI I/O. The first DAW had Dialogue Sound on 32-channel output, music on 24 channels, Foley Sound on 32 channels and BG FX on 64 channels. The second DAW had SFX on 96 channels, plus 32 channels of AUX effect plug-ins (Reverb, Delay, etc.). The last DAW (Dubber) had the 128-channel Dolby Atmos’ print master sound for recording.

I pre-mixed every stem sound source using the automation on the DFC console, and during the final mix I modified the console automation to suit what the director wanted. I never use DAW automation for pre-mix or final mix, I just use the DAW for sound editing and playback of sound sources. Aux output uses a 24-channel mono output, with 24 different Aux outboards.

The Dolby Atmos print master uses three 9.1 channel bed channels (DX, MX, EFX) and 98 object channels.

Was the initial mixing done in Pro Tools and fed into the main mix as stems?

No, it wasn’t. My initial mix — or pre-mix — was all worked directly from the AMS Neve DFC 3D using the console’s automation. All individual sound sources could be sent to the stem of my choice using the stem routing automation within the console. Also, for Dolby Atmos mixing, the Bed and Object channels were freely available and separated using Stem Rounder Automation. When it comes to Dolby Atmos mixing, this is a very convenient feature offered by AMS Neve.

Do you use outboard equipment? And are there any units you use regularly?

I always use outboard equipment and DAW plug-ins together. Two Lexicon 300L are used as room reverb for Dialogue and Foley sound, and for Music and EFX I use AMS RMX16/ DMX16, Lexicon PCM90, 81, 80, T.C. Electronic M5000, TC2290 Delay, two System 600s, SPL-Vitalizer and Eventide H3000SE. I use outboard equipment because I have some really good custom presets that I created before I started using plug-ins. I tend to use outboard for pre-mixing and final mixing, and sometimes for sound design, but these days there are so many good plug-ins that I’m using a lot of them for sound design.

/ Supervising sound editor, Ralph Tae-Young Choi

You mentioned that ADR was also recorded at Live Tone Studios — was there a lot to do?

Bong Joon-ho feels that ADR recordings can sound very unnatural so he kept this to a minimum and only re-recorded about 40% of the dialogue. These sessions took place over a two-week period according to the actors’ schedules.

Since 2009, our ADR studio has been equipped with a 48-channel Neve Genesys console, which we use for recording and monitoring. The desk doesn’t have a moving fader option for automation but it does have a warm analogue sound and an intuitive control interface that can quickly and accurately process ADR recording.

Does having Neve consoles in all of the rooms at Live Tone Studios make it easy transfer work between them?

The AMS Neve DFC 3D in one of the two mixing rooms had 32 faders and a single USP engine, which used to make it difficult to transfer console data. But last summer I upgraded it to 48 faders and a Dual USP engine, so now it is much easier to transfer data from both consoles. This has made our sound mixing environment more active and flexible.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on the sound for three Korean movies that will be released this summer. All three are expected to be Korean blockbusters and include a zombie movie, an action movie about a man looking for his kidnapped daughter, and a space science fiction action movie. My sound work schedule is hectic and I’m going to be very busy with movie projects right through to December 2021.

March/April 2020 / 37

Facility

Such Sweet Thunder SUSIE ELLIOT meets the dynamic duo mixing it up over AoIP in a Dolby Atmos studio

fabulous projects, including new re-mixing projects for the Beatles, and I was also drawn to film scoring. This was how I met Kirsty who was then a freelance film engineer, and everything just clicked with how we liked to work. Our overlapping skills complimented each other and I quickly realised she was one of the most talented engineers I had ever worked with — we both shared a passion for recording and mixing.

Kirsty Whalley (KW): I was obsessed with music as a kid and played in orchestras and bands. When someone lent me a 4-track Tascam Portastudio, I realised that recording was what I wanted to do so I enrolled for the

A

I was offered a job at Abbey Road Studios and came to the UK in 1995 thinking I’d be here for a couple of years, but London soon became home.

I was offered the opportunity to work on

The pair of you have worked together for a long time — what are your respective backgrounds and how did your professional relationship come about?

Pete Cobbin (PC): I started my career in Sydney with an EMI traineeship — old school record production, learning how to be a studio engineer. The record company and studio were in one building, so it was a great introduction to all aspects of the business. By a circuitous route

/ Kirsty Whalley and Pete Cobbin (at a more traditional ‘desk’ than the thunderDesk)

ward-winning music mixers Pete Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley were based at Abbey Road Studios in London for more than 20 years before they took the plunge and set up their own Dolby Atmos mixing room, Such Sweet Thunder. Four years on, Resolution caught up with them to find out how life has been since the move — and to discover more about their new AoIP workflows which allow analogue and digital technology to be combined in entirely new ways. “So musical a discord, such sweet thunder”!

38 / March/April 2020

We wanted a mix room that could tackle anything and a set-up that would allow us to react quickly and be efficient Tonmeister course at Surrey University. During my work placement year I tried to get a job in a studio, but didn’t have any luck. I was though offered a job with a film composer, which I wasn’t initially sure about, as though I liked film music I hadn’t considered working in that field.

But I had such a good year and did so many different things and spent time in many different studios and it opened my eyes to the possibilities.

After graduating I went freelance and set myself up at CTS Studios in London where I worked for various people, including composer Gabriel Yared who got me involved in some wonderful film projects. It was during this time that I met Pete. I thought he was such an

/ thunderDesk = SSL moving faders, MIDI controller, keyboard instrument plus built-in speakers

incredible engineer and musician, I knew I wanted to work with him as much as possible.

Eventually 21 years later I think I finally wore him down and we built Sweet Thunder — I haven’t looked back since!

Why did you decide to leave Abbey Road Studios and strike out on your own? Was it a hard decision to make?

PC: In the course of working together we had

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worked all over the world, and set up temporary mix rooms for various different projects. This had given us many ideas for building our ideal room. We knew it would be hard to achieve this ambition from within the confines of a corporate structure so decided to go it alone. It was a bit scary because Abbey Road was our safety net. The name sells itself and that was a big thing to let go. But it was also about us having a quiet ambition to do

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A/B Speaker switching Stereo and multichannel Dual headphone outputs Source input selection Talkback Bass Management

MERGING QUALITY AUDIO > Dual gain 32bit Mic Preamps 137 dB dynamic range > Mastering quality A/D and D/A > Sample rates up to DSD256 > Exceptional headphone amp for all impedances > All this at an affordable price Merging Technologies SA, Le Verney 4, CH-1070, Puidoux, Switzerland

T +41 21 946 0444

E anubis@merging.com

W merging.com

March/April 2020 / 39

We can link up all our vintage equipment and use it on an AoIP network studios and is also near the new creative hub of King’s Cross. Rollo Armstrong (Faithless) and Dido once owned the studio in years past so we jumped on checking this out when it became available. We loved the space and instinctively knew it was originally built to a high specification.

KW: We refurbished the whole place and made extensive changes in order to suit our workflow.

Within a month we knew we’d made the right choice because like us, our clients love it here and enjoy the central location. / A cornucopia of analogue outboard — unusual for movie mixing

something great because for years we’d had very specific ideas about transforming our mix room and changing how we worked with our clients. The only way to pull all that together and do something positive was to step outside our comfort zone.

KW: We also wanted to be more artistically involved in the projects we were handling and that was another incentive. We’d had the

chance to get involved with some productions at a planning stage, and while doing that we realised how much we enjoyed the experience.

Having our own production space would also allow us more flexibility about how we could manage our projects and business.

How did you find your current premises?

PC: Islington has a rich tradition of independent

/ Vintage and modern: Merging Technologies Anubis manages a large number of IP streams

40 / March/April 2020

What was your criteria when first setting up Such Sweet Thunder?

PC: We set out to address the needs of servicing today’s fast turnaround film industry.

We wanted a mix room that could tackle anything and a set-up that would allow us to react quickly and be efficient. Additionally we had the aspiration of combining analogue technology into our digital work flow.

KW: For quite a few years we had been storing up ideas about everything: the monitoring, the type of gear we liked, the converters, the clocking, etc. We brought that entire wish list into the design of this room. Everything was about detail and quality, even down to the studio couch that was specially built for us. We spurred each other on to push the boundaries, which was very exciting.

The centerpiece of this room is a very unusual console — the thunderDesk. Can you explain how that came about?

PC: It is custom-built and was designed by us to solve the limitations and frustrations we had experienced when mixing on traditional desks.

I started my career facing forwards, but with the introduction of DAWs I found myself spending more and more time either cramped or sitting sideways on to the monitoring. Then one day Kirsty, who was facing towards the monitors, asked if I wanted to get rid of a specific noise on the mix. I was sitting sideways on, buried in a waveform monitor, and I said ‘what noise — I can’t see it’. It was only when I turned around that I could hear it. It was a eureka moment. I had just spent 10 years of my career facing the wrong way! What were we doing? I needed to listen, not look. This was just the start; a desk that allowed us to do this and more.

KW: We identified that the necessity for a large format console was primarily for recording, and

/ Facility

listening and watching films. The desk also has two custom levelling valve amplifiers, a large main monitor pot, an integrated ’60s vintage mixer for music playback, a Grace monitoring controller and controls for the studio lighting, temperature and listening modes. We are really proud of the craftsmanship that went into making it and the way it enables us to work comfortably and efficiently.

/ Six Horus A-D/D-A Audio Interfaces integrate hardware outboard with Pro Tools

that for mixing our requirements were quite different. That was the starting point for the thunderDesk. It’s a moving fader production console with high quality SSL faders and also a MIDI controller and handmade keyboard instrument that allows us to play piano through the desk’s built-in speakers.

The work surface is very flexible so that we can be fully involved in the creative process as artists as well as engineers. The desk has its own integrated 9.1 speaker system and two built-in touch screens that allow us to stream music or the radio from the internet or digitally from a laptop. At the back of the desk are retractable, high-resolution displays with video switching for our multiple Pro Tools rigs. These screens are electronically height adjustable and can be completely lowered when we want to focus on

Such Sweet Thunder has racks of outboard equipment, including some very rare vintage pieces. How are you incorporating these into a digital workflow?

KW: Mixing a film score in today’s world means delivering a lot of stems for every mix. Even something basically orchestral can be broken down into 12 or more stems of music, which brings its own mixing challenge. Much of that is down to routing within the computer, but we also like using hardware units that are not part of the ‘in the box’ systems most film score mixers use.

To build the right Pro Tools system for our needs we had to look at I/O and think carefully about how we wanted to work. We like to run a 7.1/Dolby Atmos surround mix and a separate mix for our stereo, so it’s a completely different path within the machine. The stereo mix goes out analogue and through some of the choice pieces of equipment we have built up over many years. This meant we needed the best

converters possible for the stereo because we wanted our analogue path and gear to sound as good possible.

PC: Paul Mortimer (head of Emerging Ltd, Merging’s UK distributor) recommended Horus converters because they are very high quality and allow us to incorporate our hardware outboard units into our Pro Tools systems. We bought our first Horus and used it for analogue summing with a stereo chain, in conjunction with some of our old valve equipment.

KW: We were blown away by the way it sounded so we started using it with more analogue gear and using it as inserts within Pro Tools. We knew it could be great but because our workflow is quite complicated it took us a while to work out how best to use it. We finally figured that out when we took our Pro Tools rig to Glasgow to record a violin concerto for composer Danny Elfman.

The venue was equipped with Merging Technologies’ Hapis and Horus units, which meant we could simply plug into the network and experience the power of Audio-over-IP. It was amazing. We were just pulling stuff in here and there and using our own mic amps to boost up their system. The penny dropped — we could do this in our own mix room and instead of having microphones everywhere, we could have all our lovely analogue equipment networked together and pull in what we wanted whenever we wanted it.

THUNDERBOLT™ 3 & USB 2.0 AUDIO INTERFACE WITH 12 DISCRETE PREAMPS

SYNERGY CORE

“Working with the Antelope plugins as hardware inserts feels indistinguishable from the analogue workflow.”

antelopeaudio.com

ORION STUDIO

JASON O’BRYAN PRODUCER/MIXER/EDUCATOR (MOBY, KORN, LIMP BIZKIT, DUB PISTOLS, BUSTA RHYMES)

March/April 2020 / 41

/ Facility

it on a network, which was amazing. Now there is no stopping us and there is nothing holding back the imagination we can apply to our mixes.

/ …a midsummer night’s dream of a mix room

AoIP is now a key part of Such Sweet Thunder’s workflow. Can you explain your set up?

KW: Once we realised what was possible, we bought another Horus and some more analogue equipment and started incorporating it into our multitrack workflow in a way that we hadn’t seen anyone else do before. We now have six Horus A-D/D-A Audio Interfaces and two Anubis desktop interface units, which are fabulous because they can manage a large number of IP streams. Our main computer has three Horus attached to it so every HDX path in and out of Pro Tools can be on the network.

42 / March/April 2020

There is a lot of flexibility in the system because we like having the ability to move our analogue resources around so that we can use them to best effect. We also have one floating unit that can be used remotely in case we want to listen upstairs or run some nice analogue equipment to do a bit of editing or mastering.

PC: For years we faced the frustration of trying to integrate analogue hardware into a digital workflow but now we can do it easily. Once Kirsty demonstrated that there were no timing issues or latency, we were off. Suddenly we could link up all our vintage equipment and use

Your mixing credits are extensive — can you name a few projects you have worked on recently and what you are currently working on?

KW: Recent projects include Little Women, The Two Popes, Spider-man: Far From Home, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Knives Out and Jojo Rabbit. This year we’ve been doing preliminary work on the next Batman movie, which is scheduled for release in 2021, and a TV series about Catherine the Great. We are also working on the score for a new Marvel project — we’ve previously worked on numerous films for the Marvel franchise including Avengers: Endgame.

PC: We have long term relationships with many top directors and composers, but we also like to work with colleagues who don’t have enormous budgets so that we can give a bit back to the industry as well. We love working on Hollywood blockbusters, and they certainly keep us on our toes, but the joy of having our own room is that we can also deliver a good service to smaller independent projects — film and music — where we can be really creative and experimental. www.suchsweetthunder.co.uk.

Microphone supplement

Microphone round-up Electrical signal sophistication starts here DPA

AEA

DPA’s 2028 Vocal Microphone is designed to provide the same natural sound as the brand’s 4018 VL handheld microphone, but at a much lower price point. Ideally suited to live performances, broadcast and pro AV applications, the microphone needs minimal EQ. The 2028 features a fixed-position capsule and a specially designed shock-mount and pop filter. Both the outer grille and the inner pop filter can be detached and rinsed, making this the perfect mic to withstand the wear-and-tear of live performance (and anti-viral cleansing).

The 2028 exhibits a supercardioid polar pattern, with DPA’s wellknown uniform off-axis response. This gives the microphone a very high gain-before-feedback and makes it easier to handle bleed from other instruments in close proximity. It is available in three variants: a wired XLR with handle, and two wireless mic ‘head’ configurations that are compatible with most wireless microphone systems. This includes the SL1 adapter, compatible with Shure, Sony and Lectrosonics; and the SE2 adapter, compatible with Sennheiser. DPA’s design brief with the 2028 was to “deliver the full, natural sound of the artist’s voice and not what the microphone thinks the artist sounds like”.

Polar pattern: supercardioid Type: condenser Price: €500/£450 ex-VAT

The supercardioid KU5A breaks new ground in ribbon technology, with an acutely focused directionality that rejects bleed from other instruments, room reflections, and loud ambience in the studio and on stage. The KU5A is the latest in AEA’s line of active, live-ready ribbon mics that includes the near-field N22 and far-field N8.

AEA have possibly taken inspiration from the form factor of the venerable RCA BK-5: this end-address vintage microphone was originally released in the mid-1950s, and RCA famously touted it as possessing “gun blast resistance”! The AEA KU5A features a supercardioid pattern, chosen for its great off-axis response, and AEA emphasise that this pattern, paired with the microphone’s body style, will minimise room tone and bleed — whether in a studio or live setting.

The KU5A “delivers the low-end heft and pronounced midrange one expects of AEA ribbons with moderate, manageable proximity effect”.

There’s an integrated high-pass filter to roll off low end in close range recording applications. Interior components are the most protected of any in the AEA line-up, and the KU5A is equipped with active electronics, making it a good fit for any preamp.

Polar pattern: figure-8 Type: ribbon Price: £958 inc VAT

www.dpamicrophones.com/2028

www.aearibbonmics.com

Schoeps

Neumann

The CMC 1 is the renowned German manufacturer’s new, small Colette microphone amplifier — about one-third the size and 40% lighter than the well-known CMC 6. It is compatible with all components of the Colette system and can be used in place of the CMC 6 for all applications in which the size and weight of the microphone play a role. At Schoeps, “uncompromising miniaturisation” means that the electrical characteristics of the CMC 1 are equal to — even better than — those of the CMC 6.

“Schoeps haven’t just produced a physically smaller unit, CMC1 draws a miserly 2mA from the Phantom supply, half as much as CMC6,” said BAFTA-winner Simon Clark in his Resolution V18.7 review of the unit. “If you are providing current from battery powered mobile equipment (and especially radio mic transmitters), this is very useful. The new circuitry even provides for an extra 4dB maximum SPL handling over CMC6.”

“Constructed to Schoeps’ usual high standard and compatible with all the existing modules in the Collette range, CMC1 isn’t a revolution — but a very welcome evolution,” Clark concluded, “smaller and easier to conceal, superb build quality!” Customers who register their purchase with Schoeps can obtain a warranty extension to 10 years.

Function: Mic amp Type: Collette condenser Price: £549 ex-VAT

The TLM 107 is a reference class microphone for vocals and instruments. Five polar patterns plus variable pad and low cut settings make the TLM 107 exceptionally flexible. And with a dynamic range of 131dB the TLM 107 should be able to capture anything from a slight whisper to massive drums without unwanted noise or distortion. Neumann developed this microphone for project and home studio users who “prefer to capture an uncoloured sound image, true to the original source”. As a member of the TLM series, the 107 operates with a transformerless circuit ensuring an open, transparent sound and a full, unrestricted bass transmission, even at high sound pressure levels.

The mic’s large-diaphragm capsule was developed specifically for this model. It has been described as inspired by the capsule in the D 01 digital microphone. Both capsules are — unusually for Neumann — edgeterminated designs. The capsule’s rear diaphragm remains in-circuit for all patterns, even cardioid. This means the TLM 107’s cardioid mode has the same sensitivity (11mV/Pa) as its other polar patterns. The TLM 107 is available in Neumann’s traditional nickel or black finishes, with either a ring mount (the SG 2 swivel) or an elastic shockmount (EA 4).

Polar pattern: variable Type: condenser Price: £814 ex-VAT

2028

CMC 1

www.schoeps.de

KU5A

TLM 107

www.neumann.com March/April 2020 / 43

Antelope Audio

Sennheiser

Edge Duo features a premier dual-membrane design with low-resonance body and a 6-micron goldsputtered capsule. It records utilising two separate XLR output channels through the included Y-cable. In this manner, the on and off-axis response of each modelled microphone may be emulated via the bundled software with detail and accuracy. The Edge Duo boasts a library of 18 mic emulations with fully adjustable polar patterns.

The dual-membrane, large-diaphragm modelling condenser microphone is capable of operation with any preamp via native plugins (VST, AU, AAX). Polar patterns may be switched between cardioid, figure-8, omni (and everything in between). The electronics designed by Antelope engineers are housed in a low-resonant body. 18 “legendary” microphone emulations, from ‘Berlin 47’, through ‘Tokyo 800T’ to ‘Sacramento 121R’ are included.

Antelope Audio’s Edge and Verge modelling microphones feature a proprietary modelling engine simulating studio classics with flexibility. Antelope say each modelled microphone is studied in “one of Europe’s finest facilities”, then transformed into a digital replica with full control over polar pattern and proximity effect. Several Antelope Audio converters, including the Discrete MP, Discrete 4 and Goliath (review Resolution V16.8) are bundled with the Edge.

Polar pattern: continuously variable Type: condenser Price: £835/€899 inc VAT

Both MK 4 and MK 8 microphones are designed to be versatile. The MK microphones feature a low inherent self-noise and a maximum sound pressure level of 140dB. Despite their detailed sound, the MK mics are rugged tools. Their compact electronics, superior materials and zinc die-cast casing ensure that they are a good partner for tough recording environments.

The MK 4 is easy to handle and excellent value for money, making it an ideal choice for project studios and home recordists. It features a one-inch true condenser capsule based on the acoustics of the e 965 high-end vocal mic. The MK 4 is made in Germany, its transducer being manufactured in the same clean room as all high-end Sennheiser condenser capsules.

The MK 8 features five selectable polar patterns (omni-directional, wide cardioid, cardioid, supercardioid, figure-8) and is fitted with low cut/roll-off filters, as well as a three-position pad switch. MK 8 offers a defined bass, rounded-out mids and open treble. Professional users will appreciate its versatility — it can cater to any recording situation. The microphone has dual one-inch diaphragms precisely spattered with 24-carat gold. The shock-mounted capsule is accommodated within a sturdy metal housing.

Polar pattern: variable Type: condenser Price: MK 4 £277; MK 8 £629 inc VAT

www.antelopeaudio.com

www.sennheiser.com

Audio-Technica

RØDE

Audio-Technica’s BP40 large diaphragm dynamic microphone is designed to deliver natural sound reproduction in a variety of applications including radio broadcast, recording and postproduction. The microphone’s 37mm capsule features a patented “floating edge” design to optimise the surface of the membrane and maximise performance, while the humbucking coil prevents electromagnetic interference (EMI) generated by the video monitors, power supplies and so on found in modern broadcast and recording environments.

Enhancing its suitability for such applications, the BP40’s hypercardioid pickup pattern allows for great isolation of the sound source and excellent off-axis rejection. As such it’s a great choice for busy radio studios with multiple presenters; in terms of tone, the positioning of the BP40’s capsule has been designed to promote vocal clarity and presence, with an ability to cope with plosives thanks to a multi-layered windscreen.

Voiced with a peak at 4kHz makes for excellent presence, even at a some distance. It has a 100Hz high-pass filter for rumble attenuation, and Audio-Technica specify a frequency response of 50Hz-16kHz. The BP40 has a sensitivity of 3.9mV/Pa (around 6dB more than a Shure SM58). The rugged, all-metal BP40 ships with an AT8483 mic clip, with the AT8484 suspension mount available as an option.

Polar pattern: hypercardioid Type: dynamic Price: £255 ex-VAT

The NTG5 saw RØDE reimagine the shotgun microphone in a number of ways.

The body design was completely overhauled, with circular acoustic ports replacing the linear slots found in other shotgun mics. The revolutionary design delivers greater transparency, and a natural, uncoloured sound suitable for a wide variety of broadcast applications. It is also incredibly light at just 76g and relatively short, which is a huge plus for boom operators and sound recordists. Add to this a very flat frequency response, a tight polar pattern with excellent off-axis rejection, RF-bias circuitry, and a high-quality pistol grip and shock mount included in the kit, and you have a new standard in location recording microphones.

“Happily, the supplied suspension seemed to be able to cope with my simulation of a rookie boom-swinger shaking it like a pair of maracas,” joked Simon Clark in his Resolution V19.1 review. “Drawing a miserly 2mA from phantom power makes this microphone an ideal choice for powering from a radio transmitter which, with the advent of digital systems, is becoming the norm on-set now. RØDE have designed a really impressive, great sounding product in NTG5, especially considering the price point.”

Polar pattern: supercardioid shotgun Type: RF-bias condenser Price: £449 inc VAT

www.audio-technica.com

www.rode.com

Edge Duo

BP40

44 / March/April 2020

MK Series

NTG5

/ Microphone supplement

Josephson

Mojave

Earthworks

The Josephson C725 uses a hybrid of tube and solid state technology, with the dual-diaphragm capsule used in the C700 and C716 microphones. A separate high voltage regulated power supply has five switchable directional patterns and a ‘Sun/Moon’ mode selector to provide a choice of either full, or reduced, tube character.

In the C725 the voltage gain section uses a low-noise FET, while the remainder of the cascode circuit uses an EF86-family vacuum tube. This provides the low noise of the FET along with the dynamic characteristics of the tube. The output is provided through a custom nickel-core transformer, which also has a second output winding for negative feedback control used by the Sun/Moon control circuit.

“In all my testing, not once was I thinking about how the C725 sounded in comparison with something vintage,” said Jon Thornton. “I was simply thinking about how it sounds, period. Which is very, very impressive indeed!

That divide between tradition and innovation is very firmly bridged — this could be a modern classic.”

Polar pattern: omni, sub-cardioid, cardioid, hyper-cardioid and figure-8 Type: condenser Price: £8,874 inc VAT

Drawing inspiration from some of yesterday’s most revered microphones, Technical Grammy award-winning microphone designer David Royer created a thoroughly ‘modern’ tube microphone that features an original, NOS (new old-stock) 5840 tube, 251-style capsule, and custom designed transformer built by Coast Magnetics. The microphone is supplied in a substantial Peli-type case with foam cut outs. Also included is a supersized version of the patented Sling Shock suspension mount, which uses a system of damped springs and (non-elasticated) nylon cables instead of the usual rubberised parts and elastic cords.

Reviewed in Resolution V15.5, Jon Thornton said: “It has its own sound, albeit a sound that draws on some of the best characteristics of the ELAM 251 and other classic designs. You could easily A-B it against contemporary and vintage microphones costing many times more and expect it to come out at least equal, and the icing on the cake is that tune-ability with the variable pattern. It can do all these things because it’s completely honest about what it does and why — great design, attention to detail, careful choice of components and a desire to learn from and be influenced by the classics, not simply to copy them.”

Polar pattern: cardioid and omni Type: condenser Price: £2,195 inc VAT

Earthworks precision engineered their SR314 handheld condenser microphone to offer a fresh approach to miking vocals. The SR314’s tight cardioid polar pattern provides consistent frequency response to 90º off axis, with extreme attenuation of off-axis sound sources beyond 90º and maximum rejection at 180º. It captures open, richsounding vocals with minimal proximity effect and delivers articulate low end close-up that doesn’t thin out with distance. This allows singers to work the mic without dramatic changes in sound. The SR314’s 145dB SPL handling and an extended 20Hz–30kHz frequency response further enhance the versatility of this incredible mic, making it as useful for high-fidelity capture of instruments as it is for vocals.

Protected within its steel exoskeleton is a studio-grade, small-diaphragm, cardioid condenser capsule coupled with a Class A amplifier circuit that leverages Earthworks’ patented, proprietary technologies to deliver one of the fastest mics on the planet. The SR314’s extended, flat frequency response and excellent coherence time with fast impulse response sets the Earthworks SR314 apart from other handheld vocal mics in its class. The SR314 doesn’t just deliver studio quality on stage. It is a vocal microphones that aims to seamlessly transition between those two worlds without compromising anything in terms of performance.

Polar pattern: cardioid Type: condenser Price: $699 USD / £699 inc VAT

www.josephson.com

www.mojaveaudio.com

www.earthworksaudio.com

C725

MA-1000

SR314

AWA R D S 2015

AWA R D S 2015

•WINNER• EQ

•WINNER• PREAMP

AMS-Neve 1073DPX

AMS-Neve 1073DPX

REWARDING QUALITY AND INNOVATION

REWARDING QUALITY AND INNOVATION

Resolution Awards Winners 2015.indd 3

Resolution Awards Winners 2015.indd 8

29/09/2015 09:12

29/09/2015 09:12

The Definitive Mic Pre/EQ Neve 1073DPX Dual Preamp and EQ with extra features

Visit ams-neve.com/where-to-buy to find your local Neve dealer

DESIGNED & CRAFTED IN ENGLAND BY NEVE ENGINEERS ThirdPg_Horiz_Resolution_1073DPX_2018.indd 1

17/09/2018 15:38:45

March/April 2020 / 45

TELEFUNKEN

Sontronics

Aston

Designed, hand-built, and tested to strict quality standards in Connecticut, the Alchemy Microphone Series is TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik’s next generation of large diaphragm tube condensers. These microphone models feature unique sonic profiles developed from the ground up, utilising a combination of vintage microphone elements and modern reliability. The bold voicings of the Alchemy Microphone Series are the TF29 Copperhead, TF39 Copperhead Deluxe, TF47, and TF51.

The Alchemy Microphone Series is an evolution and refinement to past TELEFUNKEN models, benefitting from over a decade of in-house microphone design and production.

Features include a custom designed headgrille for transparency and openness, hand-plugged circuit boards, and premium selected tubes and transformers. All systems ship in a compact, protective case for easy transport and storage.

Included are two modern mount options, microphone dust cover, high-flex 7-meter cable, and an American-assembled power supply.

Each microphone is individually tested and listened to. All critical components are quality controlled in-house before assembly, including capsule frequency sweeps, vacuum tube burn-in and noise grading. These high standards lead to extremely tight tolerances from microphone to microphone.

Polar pattern: cardioid Type: condenser Price: (TF29); £1,275 inc VAT

British mic brand Sontronics celebrated its 15th birthday by announcing a new product to widen their range yet further: the £99 Podcast Pro, developed and hand-built in Sontronics’ UK HQ. Available in red or black, the Sontronics Podcast Pro is a dynamic microphone that’s been designed specifically with podcast, broadcast, radio, gaming and voiceover applications in mind.

The Podcast Pro has a tightly focused supercardioid pickup pattern, giving excellent clarity and depth with superb side rejection. Its three layers of internal protection and integrated fine-mesh pop filter provide superb control of extraneous noise or rumble and also help control unwanted sibilance or plosives. Easy to set up and position, and compatible with any desktop or floor-standing mic stand, the Podcast Pro’s XLR connection allows you to plug straight into your interface, soundcard, mixer, laptop or Xbox. The Sontronics Podcast Pro is supplied with its angled yoke mount and the microphone is covered by Sontronics’ unique Lifetime Warranty.

Polar pattern: supercardioid Type: dynamic Price: £99/$149 inc VAT

Winner of ‘Best Microphone’ at the NAMM TEC Awards, Aston Stealth is the only British manufactured microphone ever to achieve this. Stealth has 4 switchable voices and is equipped with an auto-detect function which senses 48V phantom power, and automatically switches the mic to active mode. A built-in, high quality, Class A Mic Preamp dispenses with the need for an external gain lifting device in active mode. Stealth also features a sorbothane internal shock mount system.

Stealth was developed in partnership with more than 90 engineers, producers and artists on the Aston 33 development panel, who participated in a series of blind listening tests designed to create the best possible sound.

The resulting four voice settings, Vocal 1, Vocal 2, Guitar and Dark, offer a variety of sounds.

“The ‘G’ setting is a real eye opener. If you’re after a tight, punchy, almost slightly compressed guitar sound from a miked cab, this is pretty much plug and play,” said reviewer Jon Thornton (Resolution V18.2).

“Switching to sung female vocals, the V2 setting sounds balanced rather than hard, with a sense of space that wouldn’t disgrace a decent LDC… It certainly isn’t the first time a manufacturer has claimed their offering is four microphones in one — but Stealth is probably the closest I’ve heard to fulfilling such a claim.”

Polar pattern: cardioid Type: dynamic Price: £229 inc VAT

www.telefunken-elektroakustik.com

www.sontronics.com

www.astonmics.com

Alchemy series

46 / March/April 2020

Podcast Pro

Stealth

/ Microphone supplement

DPA

Royer

Available in both wireless or wired configurations, DPA’s 4097 CORE Supercardioid Choir Microphone provides the same sonic qualities as the brand’s CORE 4099 Instrument Microphone, just with a higher sensitivity. It features DPA’s flat off-axis supercardioid pattern and very high-gain-before-feedback, with the intention of delivering the most natural sound possible from all angles. This makes it simple for sound engineers to use multiple mics on a choir — spot mics may be blended without having to fight the artefacts created from uneven mic pattern pick-up.

The 4097 also features CORE by DPA amplifier technology, which enables it to deliver a clear sound with lower distortion and an expanded dynamic range. Furthermore, the 4097 includes three shock mounts to ensure rumble caused by movement onstage is damped effectively. Configured with a MicroDot connector and a DPA adapter for wired or wireless operation — allowing for great flexibility on stage when there are multiple uses of the same space. The microphone is sleek, discreet and elegant, so that it doesn’t draw attention away from the performers even when it is at its longest stand extension (253 cm).

Polar pattern: Supercardioid Type: condenser Price: €900/£790 ex-VAT

Royer Labs is well known for making world-class ribbon microphones, with pricing to match. The R-10 is Royer’s first lower-priced ribbon microphone, but Royer says no corners were cut with the R-10. The R-10 is recommended for electric guitars, brass, drums and all acoustic instruments.

Like all Royer mics, the R-10 is hand-built in Royer’s Burbank, California facility.

STAR WARS • LORD OF THE RINGS • AIR STUDIOS • It features the same patented direct-corrugated STERLING SOUND • SONY MUSIC STUDIO • DISNEY ribbon element found in Royer’s R-121, and has • STING • ABBEY ROAD • DAVID BOWIE • BBC • LOU a David Royer custom-designed transformer REED • WISSELORD • PRECISION MASTERING • that gives great headroom. The R-10 has an SONY MUSIC STUDIO • CBS • NBC • LUCASFILMinternally shock-mounted ribbon transducer to SKYWALKER RANCH • THE JIM HENSON CO • help protect against vibrations and shocks to METROPOLIS STUDIOS • METALLICA • HANS the ribbon. It has a 3-layer wind screen system ZIMMER • WARNER BROTHERS • ABC • MANDY that greatly reduces potential for stretched PARNELL • DAVE GROHL • VAN MORRISON • ribbons from wind. The wind screen system LAURYN HILL • THIRD EYE BLIND • SOUND ON SOUND STUDIOS • FOUR TET • ROBBIE WILLIAMS also cuts down on bass build-up when closemiking electric guitars and other instruments. • EMINEM • AIRSHOW MASTERING • HARRY Royer say the design allows the microphone POTTER • TALVIN SINGH • STEVIE WONDER • to handle SPLs of 160dB at 1kHz, and maintain ROGER WATERS • KATARA STUDIOS • DEADMAU5 • BRITISH LIBRARY • full sonic integrity at extreme levels. The offset • PETE TONG • UNIVERSAL OF AUDIO • JAMES BOND • RADIO ribbon also makes the back-side pickup of the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS EXCELLENCE microphone slightly brighter, which is useful for NEW ZEALAND • STAR WARS • LORD OF THE vocals and acoustic instruments. The R-10 ships RINGS • AIR STUDIOS • STERLING SOUND • SONY MUSIC STUDIO • DISNEY • STING • ABBEY ROAD in an aluminium carrying case and includes an • DAVID BOWIE • BBC • LOU REED • WISSELORD adjustable swivel mount and a protective • PRECISION MASTERING • SONY MUSIC STUDIO windshield. The R-10 is also available in matched • CBS • NBC • LUCASFILM-SKYWALKER RANCH stereo pairs.

• THE JIM HENSON CO • METROPOLIS STUDIOS Polar pattern: figure-8 • METALLICA • HANS ZIMMER • WARNER Type: ribbon BROTHERS • ABC • MANDY PARNELL • DAVE Price: £470 inc VAT GROHL • VAN MORRISON • LAURYN HILL • THIRD

TRUST TAKES YEARS TO BUILD

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EYE BLIND • SOUND ON SOUND STUDIOS • FOUR TET • ROBBIE WILLIAMS • EMINEM • AIRSHOW MASTERING • HARRY POTTER • TALVIN SINGH • STEVIE WONDER • ROGER WATERS • KATARA STUDIOS • DEADMAU5 • PETE TONG • UNIVERSAL • BRITISH LIBRARY • LIBRARY OF CONGRESS • JAMES BOND • RADIO NEW ZEALAND STAR WARS • LORD OF THE RINGS • AIR STUDIOS • STERLING SOUND • SONY MUSIC STUDIO • DISNEY • STING Shure’s new line of premium subminiature omnidirectional lavalier and • ABBEY ROAD • DAVID BOWIE • BBC • LOU headset microphones are designed to stand up to the toughest conditions.

REED • WISSELORD • PRECISION MASTERING • Developed with input from leading audio professionals, TwinPlex supports SONY MUSIC STUDIO • CBS • NBC • LUCASFILME: sales@prismsound.com the diverse needs of theatre, broadcast, film and television. The TwinPlex is SKYWALKER RANCH • THE JIM HENSON CO • an easy-to-conceal package, ideal for quick costume changes or discreetly METROPOLIST:+44 STUDIOS METALLICA • HANS 1353• 648888 placed under clothes with no impact on sound quality.

ZIMMER • WARNER BROTHERS • ABC • MANDY The TwinPlex range consists of four lavaliers (TL45, TL46, TL47, TL48) PARNELL • DAVE GROHL • VAN MORRISON • and an ultra-light, fully-adjustable headset microphone (TH53) in multiple colours with extensive LAURYN HILL • THIRD EYE BLIND • SOUND ON accessories and options. The dual-diaphragm omnidirectional design delivers off-axis consistency SOUND STUDIOS • FOUR TET • ROBBIE WILLIAMS and low self-noise, creating lifelike vocal clarity and warmth. Just as much thought has gone into • EMINEM • AIRSHOW MASTERING • HARRY the cable, which is a common point of failure for microphones in this category. To simulate years of POTTER • TALVIN SINGH • STEVIE WONDER • intense use, the ultra-thin, TwinPlex cable was flexed, stretched, and pulled to the absolute limit in ROGER WATERS • KATARA STUDIOS • DEADMAU5 internal tests. Available in 1.1mm and 1.6mm options, the paintable cables are immune to kinks and • PETE TONG • UNIVERSAL • BRITISH LIBRARY •

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www.shure.com/en-GB/performance-production/twinplex March/April 2020 / 47

A Day in the Life

/ Drummer Graeme Smith of Y.O.U.N.G.

Dave Pemberton Resolution follows the former Strongroom Studios engineer, known for his work with The Prodigy (Invaders Must Die, Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned) plus a long list of other great artists from Ash to Supergrass, through his day Please note: this piece was commissioned and written before the coronavirus lockdown

A

t 9.30am I arrive at the studio, first job, have a little clear up, and get the coffee on…

10am: I’m recording a new song with the band Y.O.U.N.G today. A 5-piece band from Manchester. The song we’re working on is very sample-based, with a huge drum loop as the main rhythm track. I want to get the live drums locked in with this first. I have a demo from the band that we recorded a few weeks ago, so I’m starting with the drum loop, guide guitars, and vocals…

Graeme the drummer will be arriving at about 11, so time to get the kit set up in the live room. We have a stage in the studio, with PA and monitors, set up for live production rehearsals. But I prefer the sound of the drums in the middle of the live room, under the highest point in the ceiling. The kit we are using today is a Pearl Masters series, owned by the band. One rack tom and two floor toms.

I double mic the kick, inside and out, with an old AGK D12 on the outside near the hole, and an AKG D112, bullet inside — an inch or so back from the middle of the skin. I’m padding the kick with a pillow inside. I have three mics on the snare: SM57s top and bottom — and I’ve 48 / March/April 2020

been using an old AKG D125 as a second snare mic — nice and crunchy!

I have my sE 4400a as overheads, and an Aston Spirit behind the drummer. On the toms I have clip-on Sennheiser E904s. I also use a stereo M/S pair in front of the kit, and a pair of room mics as far away as possible…

11am: Graeme the drummer has arrived and

he’s getting the kit set how he likes it and having a warm up. While he does this, I adjust the mics, and start to work on the drum sound in the control room. I record using a combination of Golden Age PRE-73 on the snare, with a Focusrite ISA 131 compressor. I also have a Seventh Circle 8-channel mic pre, and a Digidesign C24 desk with 16 Focusrite mic amps built-in. Urei 1176 compressors across the overheads, and then into Pro Tools.

12pm: We start going for drum takes; a few of the boys from the band have arrived, Jamie the guitarist, Chez and Tom — vocals and bass. It’s quite tricky getting a drummer to play to a sampled loop, so we have quite a few takes…

1pm Still recording drums. Getting there now, dropping in sections, and fixing up the best take.

1.30pm: Lunch break. Grab a quick sandwich, then straight into editing the drums. I’ve extracted a groove template from the drum loop, and I’m using Beat Detective to quantise the live drums to the loop — which takes a couple of hours.

3.30pm: Drums done, sounding really tight!

Time for some bass guitar! I’m DI-ing the bass today, as I plan to process it later, using a Sans Amp plug-in for some vibe…

4pm: Bass is down pretty quickly, but I need to quantise it, as the loop and drums are so tight.

Bass doesn’t need too much work, just a few

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everything in place ready to record backing vocals. Tom and Chez do the BV’s, we stack a few harmonies, and the song is taking shape.

10pm: The last thing to get down tonight is Ben’s rap. He’s pretty well rehearsed on this song. We record four or five good takes for each verse, then I comp it, recording his double tracks and stabs.

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COMPRESSOR LIMITER

11.30pm: Finally all down! I think… Well, that’s enough for one day anyway. Tomorrow I’ll be back in, editing and pre-mixing. Sort out all the vocals, and get everything sounding really tight!

Dave Pemberton is based at MCC Studios, Manchester. www.mccstudio.uk, www.davepemberton.uk

JOSEPHSON ENGINEERING josephson.com

edits. I like to keep things tight as I go, it saves time in the long run.

4.30pm: We move on to guitars now. I have a selection of amps to choose from, all set up in a separate booth. Jamie is in the control room with me, playing in front of the monitors. We’re trying out a Roland GT-1000 Effects Processor today. Sounds great!

I’m taking a clean DI, the output of the Roland, and also running through a Vox AC30, and recording three channels for each guitar take. I double-track pretty much all the guitar parts, changing sounds and getting into the GT1000. Guitars all done by about 6 o’clock, and time for dinner before we get stuck into vocals.

7pm: Chez is in the vocal booth getting warmed up. I’m using a modified AKG Tube for Chez’s vocal, I love the warmth it brings to his voice. The mic is going into my Golden Age PRE-73 and Focusrite ISA 131, then into Pro Tools. Chez likes to work in loop record, so we’re cycling around the chorus while he fine tunes his vocal melodies… We usually both agree when he has hit a few good takes, which I extract to new tracks for comping later.

We work through the song like this until he’s done all the sections. Then I give him a break while I comp the lead vocals. I usually comp-up some double tracks at the same time, and put

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Playlist

Resolution electronica When Jean-Michel Jarre is on the cover…

Dave Robinson Artist Song

Why?

Jean Michel Jarre Arpegiator (The Concerts in China, 1981) A trippy, grandiose paradigm of multi-layered monophonic sequencer lines and drum machine rhythms, bouncing around in a cave of reverb and delay, and composed especially for his ground-breaking trip to the Far East.

Simon Clark Artist

Song Why?

Philip Newell

Artist Vangelis Song Conquest of Paradise Why? Electronic music can often be very mechanical, but this is a superb blend of electronics and emotion. The soundtrack from Ridley Scott’s 1992 film 1492 Conquest of Paradise and covered by many artists, including Blake and Klaus Schulze.

Nigel Jopson Artist Song

Why?

Ed Lister Artist

f.o.o.l (Rasmus Hermansen) Song Highway (2018) Why? This is THE COOLEST ‘80s electonic synth track you will hear today full stop… whether your going to the gym, need motivating for a shoot/in the midst of an edit… this will get you in an epic productive mood!!! One of the BEST tunes going!!! NEON !!!!!!

Be sure to check the video too!

EPIC!

John Musgrave

Artist Orbital Song Belfast (from Orbital 1 1991) Why? Given the massive body of awesome work that’s followed since, it may seem odd to choose this early Orbital track. But 30 years later it still captures that post-party vibe as well as any track and reminds us how beautiful electronic music can be created from a few choice instruments.

Ron Grainer & Delia Derbyshire Dr Who (1963) Truly electronic.

Truly ground-breaking. Truly catchy.

Truly scary. Derbyshire created each note individually by cutting, splicing, speeding up and slowing down segments of analogue tape-recordings of a single plucked string, white noise, and the pure harmonic waveforms of test-tone oscillators.

Boards of Canada Over The Horizon Radar (Geogaddi 2002) A beautiful vignette providing respite within an album which can be disturbing for non compos mentis listeners. The Sandison brothers (BOC) called the album “a record for some sort of trial by fire, a claustrophobic, twisting journey that takes you into some pretty dark experiences before you reach the open air again”.

Phil Ward

Artist Yazoo Song Situation (1982) Why? Every synth loves a bit of delay, and in the hands of Vince Clarke it becomes a slithering, erect joy. Plus Alison’s lovely giggle.

Rob Speight Artist Album Why?

George Shilling Artist Song

Why?

Why?

Don Karate Ice Age (Don Karate 2020) Don Karate is a talented Italian jazz quartet. Great musicians playing great contemporary jazz, I just want to share with my non-Italian friends.

Just to be contemporary — the song has an atmosphere with a tension that could describe what we are breathing these days in Italy for the lockdown.

Artist Song Why?

Fatboy Slim Gangster Trippin’ (1998) I love how Fatboy Slim manages to cram so many styles of music into one song. It’s like a music history lesson, but one where a very energetic and positive teacher tells you everything at once. With the help of some brilliant music videos!

David Kennedy Artist Song

Why?

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Like us and message us at: bit.ly/Resolution-Facebook

50 / March/April 2020

Chicory Tip Son Of My Father (1972) The first UK number one to prominently feature a synthesizer (it was a Giorgio Moroder cover; Chris Thomas programmed the Moog). My mum bought this (I was six years old) because we couldn’t understand the words on Top Of The Pops.

Turns out, neither could Chicory Tip, because they got them wrong and re-recorded it with the right ones in 2000!

Gijs Friesen

Donato Masci Artist Song

The Art Of Noise Daft (1986) This album was so formative in my fascination of electronic music and sampling. The rawness of the short samples, the heavy handedness of ‘In the Army Now’ and the haunting beauty of ‘How to Kill’ make the entire album one I still listen to and smile.

The Orb Blue Room (U.F.Orb 1992) The short version (17½ mins) of this all time top juke box value for money track is a giggly, joyous voyage round inner space. The long version? 39’57” and still technically a single.

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/ Guy Massey: Grammy-winning music man / Chris Jojo: Ferraris for Codemasters / Comparing 3D microphone arrays

/ NEW at NAMM 2020: all the gear / Hearables: AI audio / International Year of Sound 2020

/ AMS RMX16 500: digital classic re-born / RØDE NTG5: it’s the little perforations / Genelec Aural ID

/ Chris Sheldon: mixing Rocketman / Paul Butler: Bees guitarist in L.A. / MIDI 2.0

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