Resolution V21.3 June-July 2021

REPORT

REVIEWS

REVEALED

/ Monitoring focus: make the right choices / Eurovision: Rotterdam return / DSP room optimisation: Trinnov-ations

/ DPA 4466 & 4488: new headsets / Solid State Logic UF8: more DAW control / Synchro Arts VocAlign Ultra: get in line

/ WSDG: Studio design with NIRO / Heff Moraes: getting back in the game / NY Philharmonic: sound decisions

V21.3 | June/July 2021 | £5.50

The

Interview

Benjamin Wallfisch

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/ Contents

22 V21.3 | June/July 2021

News & Analysis 5 Leader 6 News 12 New Products

Columns

14 Tim Oliver

How has the concept of immersive audio evolved, what exciting technologies are available now, what’s on the horizon, and is it time for studios to adapt?

Craft

22 Benjamin Wallfisch

The composer talks to Danny Turner about his writing and pre-production processes, his relationship with technology, and his new LA facility — The Mix Room 26 Heff Moraes

Having stepped away from the audio world for the best part of a decade, Heff Moraes is back, with multiple projects on his plate and plenty to say about them to George Shilling 48 Thijs Peters

The head of broadcast sound for the recent Eurovision Song Contest sits down with Gijs Friesen to talk about its unique challenges, and building redundancy into all its audio systems

Technology

30 Walters-Storyk Design Group & NIRO

John Storyk, Dirk Noy and Romina Larrengina discuss their team’s eye-catching plans for a new studio that will act as a Paris base for Mix with The Masters with Jay Dean 36 Nearfield monitors

We take a look at the some of the picks from the current crop of nearfield monitor options, as well as a quartet of monitor controller contenders 45 Trinnov La Remote and D-mon

Mike Aiton guides us through the process of optimising a monitor set-up using the system created by French company Trinnov

Back To Business

52 Lawrence Rock

The director of audio for New York’s Phiharmonic Orchestra talks about how he’s helped it respond to the last year, the rise of streaming, his working methods, ethos, and how he’s looking forward to getting back to a full season of live events later in the year

Benjamin Wallfisch

30

26

45

48

52

REVIEWS 16 18 22 23

DPA 4466 and 4488 Nugen Paragon VocAlign Ultra Solid State Logic UF8

June/July 2021 / 3

Evolution Wireless Digital

Evolving With You. Evolution Wireless Digital raises the bar by providing the highest dynamic range of any wireless system currently on the market, utilizing advanced features that simplify your setup and guarantee the most reliable connection. Maximize efficiency by taking full control with the Sennheiser Smart Assist app and automatically coordinate frequencies with ease. Increased bandwidth and the lowest latency make it the most powerful tool for those who put quality and performance above all else. www.sennheiser.com/EW-D

/ Welcome

Leader

John Moore

Editor/Content Manager John Moore john@resolutionmag.com

Contributors Mike Aiton, Dennis Baxter, John Broomhall, Simon Clark, Russell Cottier, Jay Dean, Gijs Friesen, Kevin Hilton, Tim Oliver, George Shilling, Rob Speight, Jon Thornton, Danny Turner, Phil Ward

Chief Executive Officer Stuart Allen +44 (0)7999 847715 stuart@resolutionmag.com

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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.

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T

The pro’s tool?

he first time I ever sat in a ‘highend’ studio, it was actually a mastering suite in Camden. I’m 99% sure it was The Exchange, but which room has been a subject of hot debate. Anyway, whilst that nugget of mid-90s nostalgia is now lost in the mists of time, the lesson learned that day was not...

I was there with my friends, a band, sat in a (to us) lavishly equipped facility, staring at racks of strange dials, whatnots and whosits none of us had more than passing understanding of, to cut a 7” single. Mastering was still very much considered a black art back then, and this was exciting stuff.

What’s more, the tracks had been recorded and mixed on a Yamaha MT8X cassette-based studio co-owned by myself and my friend and long-time music technology enabler, Jay Dean.

We were only just University age when we scrambled together the money for the 8-track machine, that felt a light-year ahead of the Tascam Portas other friends had, and something we thought would put us in a similar league to the cobbled-together bedroom and demo studios we’d used to record our efforts up to that point. We were on our way; no reel-to-reel required.

The MT8X sat in Jay’s shared house, often in the lounge(!), with a couple of mics and a Zoom effects unit. We thought it was the business, in the way only teenagers could. Jay had almost infinite patience and a willingness to push its limitations, and he’d used all tricks on these recordings, too — including creating a lovely reverse reverb on the vocals, achieved by... *checks historical documents* turning the ‘tapes’ over. Witchcraft! Or so we thought, anyway.

Money, or lack thereof, meant there was only a standard hi-fi and headphones for monitoring, though. Maybe now you can see where this tale is heading…

It took considerable time for a patient and

diligent mastering engineer to bring the tracks up to a releasable standard. Watching that process was, at least as I recall, my first lesson on the importance of good studio monitoring (and the need to show maximum respect to mastering engineers). Jay had done little wrong, but it just wasn’t right.

It’s hard to convey the importance of monitoring to a lay person. Unless you’ve experienced its advantages, or — perhaps more likely — had an experience like this, it all seems very esoteric. However, when something you think sounds great turns out not to travel well because of bad decisions based on bad reference information, you learn lessons quickly.

Heff Moraes (on p26) will tell you that it's a very rare talent that can mix in any environment.

Mike Aiton (p45) appears to be on a one-man mission to prove just how problematic the belief that you ‘know your room’ can be. John Storyk and the team WSDG (p30), can regale all-comers with a list of common mistakes they find when analysing studios of all shapes and sizes. It always boils down to one question, though: are you getting good results because, or despite, of your listening environment? It’s a big distinction.

Sat with us that day was another artist on the same label. It felt like his track took about 1/10th of the time and effort, and only needed minor tweaks. The engineer was impressed, and asked where it had been recorded. He explained that he worked at one of the (sadly now-defunct) large music tech retailers, and that the mix had been done at his home with equipment and monitoring obtained and loaned from there.

It was another ‘home’ mix, but the difference was night and day.

‘Yeah, I did it in Pro Tools’, he said.

‘Pro Tools? Nice,’ came the nodding reply.

It was the first time I’d ever really paid attention to that exotic piece of new technology. I wonder what happened to it?

John

June/July 2021 / 5

News

LANDR acquires Synchro Arts

LANDR Audio has announced the acquisition of Synchro Arts, makers of the VocAlign and Revoice Pro audio software.

LANDR established itself with its AI-driven mastering software, launched in 2014, and also offers a music distribution service; a samples marketplace; a plugin store; a marketplace for hiring producers, engineers and promoters and video chat software that streams high-quality audio from DAW. Synchro Arts’ VocAlign plugin is used worldwide, and its Revoice Pro software is Academy Award-winning. The UK-based SynchroArts team will be integrated into the global LANDR company structure but will continue to be responsible for the development and evolution of the existing product lines, which LANDR says it has no plans to make changes to. www.synchroarts.com

Dock10 pick MatchBox

Dock10, the largest studio complex in the UK, has chosen Hitomi MatchBox to help virtual studio crews align audio and video outputs. Having recently added virtual production capabilities to its Salford site, ensuring sync between audio and video circuits subject to different amounts of processing became key, and Hitomi MatchBox Generator, Analyser and its Glass app offered a solution.

Virtual production is growing in Dock10’s key customer areas, and now such production capabilities are part of all its studios. Marrying live and computergenerated images can often result in a delay of a few frames, producing a sound-leading effect that is particularly disturbing for audiences. The MatchBox Generator creates a signal, including video and up to 16 audio channels, while the Analyser compares the video and audio elements to determine precisely the delays in each path. For quick tests, the Glass iPhone or iPad app generates a test signal, with the phone simply held in front of the camera to be tested. www.hitomi-broadcast.tv 6 / June/July 2021

Lectrosonics help Second City Sound Location audio experts Second City Sound utilised Lectrosonics’ D Squared line of digital wireless DBSMD transmitter-recorders for Chicago Opera Theatre’s livestream of La Hija de Rappaccini from the Field Museum of Natural History. They were fitted to the cast and picked up by two DSQD fourchannel receivers. DCHT digital stereo transmitters joined an M2T for missioncritical crew monitoring via M2R receivers.

“The museum was open to the public,” says Gerry Formicola of SCS, so “everything

had to be set up each day... that the Lectro’ system was so quick and easy to get up and running made a huge difference.”

The hardware also coped well with the wide area of coverage and the RF density that comes with a city location.

“Chicago may not be the worst, but it’s certainly not the best,” explains Second City’s Brad Galvin. “Lectrosonics’ RF circuitry is great when it comes to packing channels close together, but with the wideband tuning range, we didn’t need to worry.” www.lectrosonics.com

S.P.Y. produces with SiX and Fusion With recent work on Rag’n’Bone Man’s All You Ever Wanted and more, former Metalheadz artist S.P.Y. has made the most of lockdown. With fewer DJ gigs in the diary, he turned to production, and his DARKMTTR Records project to fill the gap.

This involved upgrading his studio with a Solid State Logic SiX console and Fusion processor.

“Mainly, I use the SSL SiX to process drums,” he says. Generally, that’s “to add a bit of overdrive” on his samples before beginning work in Ableton Live. “I get a ton

of headroom out of the SiX and I get a solid bottom end and punch that helps carry the track,” he says. Typically, he will then send the first pass of his mix through the G Series Stereo Compressor on the master section of his SiX. While he already uses an XLogic Alpha Channel in his summing path, he now also applies a Fusion as an insert on his interface, so when he is mixing or summing he can add EQ, compression or adjust the stereo image. www.solidstatelogic.com

APPOINTMENTS

Italy’s BH is first to buy Lawo mc²36 MKII Italian rental company BH, specializing in classical, contemporary and jazz productions, has become the world’s first customer for Lawo’s new mc²36 (MKII) all-in-one audio production console. BH took delivery of their two mc²36 consoles in April, and have placed them in inventory for use at the most distinguished music festivals in Italy.

BH’s Massimo Carli, it utilises the mc²36 consoles for “highly respected musical events that attract the most discriminating audiences,” adding that “for our new equipment, we wanted a console based on advanced Audio-over-IP technology.”

Cristian Merli, one of the BH’s Sound Engineers, adds that “The Lawo mc² consoles are the best match for our most challenging live mixing and recording productions.... Another thing that sets Lawo apart is the simplicity of preparing for complex shows or large orchestras.

Thanks to the ‘engines’ of the Lawo consoles, it’s easy to manage all the signals from the various sources to the various destinations such as mobile control rooms, TV, PA, stage, amplifiers, multitrack recordings, et cetera, with a single console.” www.lawo.com

Groovestter goes live for real-time collaboration

PreSonus’ bundles software with monitors

LA Company Groovesetter has unveiled its real-time, multi-channel audio collaboration platform for streaming, performing and recording over highspeed internet. It claims to allow musicians to perform in synchrony, with Groovesetter subscribers able to connect cloud-free with the high sound quality from up to eight remote locations.

Groovesetter lays out interactive visual routing of audio signal flow and flexible connection settings. Optional virtual channels allow for cable-free, multi-channel connection between digital workstations (DAWs) and open broadcast software (OBS), all in the same session. Groovesetter’s metadata module, which must be completed to schedule and begin a session, makes it possible to capture information for each element at the source of its creation — helping to ensure correct attribution.

Groovesetter is available as a subscription service, with multiple levels of pricing depending on required functionality. www.groovesetter.com

PreSonus customers who have purchased and models from its Erisseries, R-series, Sceptre-series, or Temblor-series studio monitors and subwoofers after March of this year, can now receive a software bundle that includes special versions of the company’s Studio One Prime DAW and Studio Magic Suite for macOS and Windows. This, we’re told, will stand as a permanent addition, not a temporary offer.

Prime is the entry-level version of PreSonus’ Studio One DAW, but still provides users with unlimited track count and a selection of Native effects and virtual instrument plug-ins. This version of Studio One Prime has been modified to enable use with the Studio Magic Suite software bundle, which includes plug-in effects from Brainworx and virtual instruments in VST, AU (Mac), and AAX formatsfrom Arturia and Cherry Audio; as well as lessons and more. www.presonus.com

Broadcast workflow specialists TSL Products has appointed Berny Carpenter as Audio Product Manager.

Carpenter’s role at TSL will focus on continuing the development of broadcast solutions and bringing new audio products to market.

His audio expertise was gained Dolby Laboratories, NEP Group, Calrec Audio and most recently the role of broadcast product specialist at Solid State Logic.

Carpenter has considerable experience in audio over IP and implementing IP infrastructures, is a keen audio engineer, musician, and graduate of the Tonmeister course.

“Berny Carpenter joins us at an exciting time for TSL, as our R&D team delivers an advanced technology platform that will see a multitude of new products launches over the coming 12 months,” says Chris Exelby, managing director.

PMC has appointed Budee Group to handle the distribution of its entire range of products in China, Hong Kong and Macau. With headquarters in Beijing and branch offices, warehouses and service centres throughout China and Hong Kong, Budee Group has nearly 20 years’ audio-focused experience distributing foreign brands into the Chinese market, with API Audio, Telefunken Microphones, Akai Professional, Linear Research, Trinnov and Lynx among its other relationships.

Lee Feng, Budee group’s Vice President of MI and Touring Business, says: “All MI, recording, broadcasting and prosumer business is conducted through our subsidiary, Unicover. We carry 35 brands and, in most cases, we are their exclusive distributor. Our aim is to align our representation of each brand with the manufacturer’s own style and marketing codes. We reflect their voice so that the market understands their brand’s values.”

PMC’s CEO Jeff Willcocks says: “Having such a highly regarded company as Budee Group handling our products in China is a huge benefit to PMC and we are very excited to see what this collaboration will bring. Budee Group’s well-established network of regional offices and studios, along with the professionalism of its sales team, will help us find new business opportunities for a product range that can easily satisfy the quality requirements of Chinese recording professionals.”

June/July 2021 / 7

/ News

APPOINTMENTS DPA Microphones is welcoming Søren Høgsberg as Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. As a former executive with many of Denmark’s leading corporations, Høgsberg will lead DPA in strengthening the coordination of its sales and marketing.

“In an effort to further increase DPA’s impact in the global market, it has been our recent goal to bring sales and marketing together under one functional, joint management team,” says Kalle Hvidt Nielsen, CEO of DPA Microphones A/S. Søren will have the overall responsibility for our global sales and marketing organisation, which includes product management, customer care and corporate service.”

Høgsberg most recently served as Vice President of International Sales at Demant A/S, a leading international health care company focused on hearing aids, audiological equipment and personal communication.

Audio-Technica has become the distributor for Optimal Audio — Focusrite’s new commercial audio brand — in 17 territories across Europe and Africa. Dom Harter, who serves as Managing Director for both Martin Audio and Optimal Audio, describes Optimal’s focus as “offering a one-stop solution of control, amplification and loudspeakers for small to medium-sized commercial installations, with a focus on supporting multi-zone venues. At the forefront of the eco-system are four and eight-zone, powered and non-powered Zone controllers that have DSP at their heart.”

The company will have sales responsibility in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

Moscow-based ShowCraft has taken on exclusive distribution rights for Lawo products to live performance, theatre and opera house sectors in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kirgizia. This agreement runs alongside and complement existing distribution partnerships for broadcast customers.

Lawo’s IP-based and cloud-ready solutions have gained ground in the live sector due to the pandemic. It believes this new partnership is perfectly timed to introduce more potential customers superbly to such workflows.

Philipp Hey, Lawo's Sales Director said, “With ShowCraft, Lawo has found a valuable partner to focus on our audio production solutions with Russian live application customers.”

8 / June/July 2021

Audio Engineers of Detroit pick Neve Audio Engineers of Detroit has opened a new recording studio in the city, featuring a 32-channel Neve Genesys Black console at its heart. The studio provides commercial voice over, podcast, and music recording services; with the capability to mix in stereo, 5.1 or Dolby Atmos. It also offers restoration, location sound, audio-visual services and runs an education programme. Mike Kinnie, founder and vice president, says he fell in love with Neve after mixing on a vintage console, and he “wanted that Neve sound

for the new studio.”

The studio also needed a DAW control, making the Genesys Black an obvious choice. “It does make life easier,” Kinnie adds, “knowing that you have options in terms of the way you want to work.”

He says that while most clients prefer ‘in the box’, he enjoys that he can now offer them a choice — and also that having the Genesys will “help our students develop their engineering skills.” www.ams-neve.com

Damian Lewis at home with Amphion Producer and mixer Damien Lewis, who has helmed hits for Justin Timberlake, Rihanna and Lizzo, prefers to do his work from home, away from distractions. To further this, he recently adopted a ‘minimalist’ setup designed to provide even more focus, including Amphion One18 monitors and Amp700, which he believes offer a perfect balance between his needs and the ears of mainstream music listeners.

“Transients are the first thing to go when you turn the volume up in modern music, because of how much compression and limiting is going on, so I needed monitoring

that would give me all that information,” he explains. “What I immediately loved about the One18s is, because they are unported and they have this honest transparent response, I can get all the transient information I need in a very unhyped way.

“You really want the placement of important elements — vocals especially — to be pleasing to the ear. I’m hearing the mid-bass better in vocal tracks so I can dial in all the thickness and richness while still getting a clear picture of the upper extensions.” www.amphion.fi

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/ News

Remote Production Group employs RedNet

Clearcut Sound Invests in Nuage Since first investing in a Yamaha Nuage system to control Steinberg Nuendo in 2018, London post-production facility Clearcut Sound Studios has purchased two more systems.

Having used Yamaha’s DM2000 digital mixers for I/O and remote control, the company chose Nuage because it “felt we were lacking in physical controls to fully unlock Nuendo’s creative ability,” says managing director Chris Wrigglesworth.

“With the need for multiple deliverables

COVID changed live broadcast production, perhaps forever, as some of the adaptions will remain as new efficient and effective approaches. With this in mind, the Remote Production Group LLC — which describes itself as “a cadre of leading production professionals” have joined forces to create a new remote mixing service. Technology and products from Focusrite Pro — including the Red 4Pre, Red 8Pre, and Red 16Line Thunderbolt and Pro Tools | HD compatible audio interfaces — will be central to how they do it.

Jody Elff, one of the specialists involved says the idea had “been floating around in our minds for a long time… I was on a tour that really needed a remote music truck for broadcast, but the project wasn’t willing to pay for it. That’s what really kicked my brain into high gear about how there’s got to be a better solution for a tour or project that really needs these resources and the services on a smaller budget.”

Having abandoned tests with VPNs about eight years ago, he’s now giving it another go with new advances in network and other technology to back up his plans — specifically a system called Unity Connect. The workflow involves sending a pre-built I/O rack and tech to the event or performance location, and connecting it to a high-bandwidth Internet connection. The Remote Production Group’s mix engineer works from their own home studio, monitoring only the stereo output, while the multitracks are recorded at the site of the performance. This means only control data moves over the Internet connection, via a proprietary codec and managed switches on a VPN, enabling a real-time remote mix.

“Two channels of audio," Eiff says, "is relatively easy to move over the Internet...

You basically have full OB van functionality, but with engineers in different geographic locations, working in ideal listening environments either across the country or across the globe.” www.pro.focusrite.com 10 / June/July 2021

becoming standard, the time was right to streamline our processes. Nuage was a solution to that,” he adds. The company feels that the new system has simplified what was a relatively cumbersome process, letting engineers and sound designers move away from keyboard and mouse editing, giving them a physical control for everything. Customisation options also mean that new features in the software can quickly be assigned to user-defined keys. www.yamaha.com

Lucky Cat launches Dolby audio suite Soho-based post house Lucky Cat has invested in expanding its picture and audio facilities, including the addition of a new Dolby audio suite with a trailers and commercials license, along with Dolby Atmos capability. They’ve also upgraded their Baselight to 4K, for their newly refurbished main grading suite.

Lucky Cat Managing Director Jonathan Myers says its vision is to “remain one of the leading boutique post-production

providers in the West End, and this investment should show we are well placed to work on larger commercial and broadcast TV projects.”

Established in 2011 Lucky Cat is has worked with broadcasters, agencies, television and film producers including projects for Channel 4, BBC Studios, ITV, Discovery, MTV, TikTok, Adidas, Jaguar, Coca Cola and Lidl. www.luckycatpost.co.uk

UPCOMING SHOWS Summer NAMM, Nashville

15-17 July

AES Fall [Digital]

20-23 October 2021

AES Education Conference, Nashville 22-24 July

IoA Reproduced Sound, Bristol 16-18 November

PLASA, London

Broadcast Tech Fest, London

5-7 September

High End, Munich

9-12 September

NAMM, Annaheim

IBC, Amsterdam

10-13 September

NAB, Las Vegas

9-13 October

Musikmesse, Frankfurt

AES Fall, Las Vegas

11-13 October

MPTS, London

Prolight+Sound, Frankfurt

30 November

20-23 January 2022 26-29 April 2022 April 2022 11-12 May 2022

ESTELLE RUBIO ON USING THE MUSIC MISSION With amazing audio quality in the studio that transfers to live and streaming scenarios, thru or bypassing a DAW whilst still using its FX and keeping full control; what kind of magic is this?

Ultra-low latency mixing gives unbeatable timing for singers and musicians; it is totally transforming my performances! estellerubio.com

merging.com/anubis Merging Technologies SA, Le Verney 4, CH-1070, Puidoux, Switzerland

T +41 21 946 0444

E anubis@merging.com

W merging.com

New Gear

New products A guide to the latest new hardware and software Solid State Logic

UC1

SSL is expanding its line of controllers with the UC1 – a USB-powered and connected device that brings the familiar layout and ergonomics of its desk channel strips and bus compressor to users of their software versions. It provides simultaneous multi-function control of the SSL Native Channel Strip 2 and Bus Compressor 2 plug-ins – both of which are bundled with the hardware – within a DAW session.

Interestingly, at the heart of the UC1’s functionality is the new SSL 360° plug-in mixer, a piece of software allowing users an overview of all of the SSL channel strips and bus compressors applied in their DAW via one virtual console. This affords a graphical ‘console-style’ visualisation of the settings applied across a mix, which can be physically controlled by the unit via it or the individual plugin instances. The software will also provide similar instant access to current and future SSL-designed channel strip and bus compressor plug-ins going forward.

The UC1 offers knob-per-function encoders, switches and feedback LEDs, with a moving coil bus compressor gain reduction meter in a style familiar to users of its original hardware incarnation and its multiple software imitations and models. Along with this, it offers continual on-board display of the plug-in currently in use, and a value readout of the control currently engaged SSL’s Native Channel Strip 2 and Bus Compressor 2 plug-ins are digitally modelled versions of EQ and Dynamics curves from the XL 9000

K SuperAnalogue console. The V2 iterations add the ability to trigger the dynamics sidechain externally, while Bus Compressor 2 expands its feature set with additional Ratio, Attack and Release options, the ability to trigger the sidechain externally, as well as 2x and 4x oversampling. The UC1 is available priced: £499 + VAT, $849 + Tax, €619 + Tax. www.solidstatelogic.com

Lawo

FabFilter

Waves

Lawo’s Radio v6.6 PL-003 software is an upgrade to On-Air Designer, used to customise the firm’s radio mixing consoles and audio cores.

It adds the ability to load snapshots using extended logic functions, enhanced AES67 tools, and integrates control of Lawo A__line audio I/O devices. The update also adds new features to the configuration pages of Power Core, Lawo’s RAVENNA/AES67 mixing engine and I/O gateway device, and VisTool GUI Builder.

Radio v6.6 applies to all Lawo radio products, including Ruby, Sapphire, Sapphire compact, Crystal and CrystalCLEAR mixing consoles, Power Core and Nova17 MK2 engines, VisTool MK2 GUI Builder software, and the On-Air Designer.

Timeless 3, the latest version of Fabfilter’s delay plugin, introduces a streamlined interface, five feedback circuit effects, four more filters, up to 16 delay taps, improved filter and saturation algorithms, a revised preset library, and more.

FabFilter has “upgraded and optimised” its analogue-modelling algorithms, redesigned the interface to simplify operation with a new darker colour scheme and visualisation of delay time, feedback, and mix settings. The interactive filter display makes shaping the frequency simpler and a full-screen mode expands the GUI for maximum focus. Modulation sources and targets help visualise modulation signals and the new source flow area provides an overview of all active modulations.

Five new ‘one-knob’ feedback effects — Drive, Lo-Fi, Diffuse, Dynamics and Pitch all shape the sound and be controlled with modulation from the XLFOs, Envelope Followers, XY Controllers, MIDI CCs, and more.

Waves’ eMotion LV1 live mixer and the SuperRack plugin chainer for live sound processing, as well as the SoundGrid Studio and StudioRack applications for low-latency recording and mixing in the studio are all getting software updates. The new code will add integrated monitoring sync between SoundGrid Studio and two DAWs — REAPER and Bitwig Studio — meaning users of those two pieces of software can now automatically switch Soundgrid I/O routing and toggle StudioRack’s input/playback modes from within the DAW, streamlining workkflows. It also provides support for the Waves MyMon personal monitor mixing app in SoundGrid Studio; graphic interface resizing options for all apps including eMotion LV1 and SuperRack, and more features and performance improvements.

www.lawo.com

www.fabfilter.com

www.waves.com

Radio v6.6

12 / June/July 2021

Timeless 3

Software updates

Antelope Audio

PreSonus

The Zen Q Synergy Core is Antelope Audio’s new bus powered14x10 desktop audio interface with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. Combining Antelope’s own AD/DA, and 64-bit Acoustically Focused Clocking technology, it offers recording, mixing, and playback at up to 24-bit/192kHz. It provides two Discrete pre-amps with 65dB of gain via combo mic/line/Hi-Z XLR inputs with phantom power. There are also two DC-coupled TRS line outputs allowing transmission of CV to an analogue synthesizer. Stereo monitoring is via another two TRS outputs, and it provides another eight additional input channels thanks to an ADAT connection. There are also two-channel S/PDIF in and out connections.

DAW connection via Thunderbolt 3 gives 16-channels of bi-directional audio, there are two line/Hi-Z inputs on the front alongside two stereo headphone outputs with independent gain control over TRS. The Synergy Core functionality also affords access to Antelope’s range of ultra-low latency plugins and modelling options for tracking and mixingthat leverage the Zen Q's two DSP and single FPGA chips for real-time effects — 37 of which come as part of the package, including Antelope's AuraVerb reverb.

Users can create customisable presets with signal routing, level adjustments, mixer and effects settings for easy recall as well as tailored monitoring mixes with adjustable volume, pan and reverb. The on-board Modeling Engine can also be used in pairing with the Edge line of microphones for real-time use of vintage microphone emulations.

Retro Mix Legends is a collection of Mix Engine effects exclusive to the Studio One DAW, comprising ‘Alpine Desk’, ‘Brit Console’, and ‘Porta Cassette’ available individually or as a bundle. The Mix Engine system allows an effect applied on any Studio One bus to simultaneously affect and cross-process all channels feeding that bus. In these cases, that can include features like crosstalk, noise, drive, saturation, and other elements defining the modelled hardware’s character.

Alpine Desk aims to reproduce a classic ‘American console’, with Drive, Crosstalk and Noise controls — and a variable variable output transformer for higher drive settings; Brit Console applies the same principle to a classic British design, with unique noise modelling on every channel included and ‘Vintage’, ‘Super’, and ‘Modern’ options; while Porta Cassette draws inspiration from the four-track cassette recorders of the 1980s and ‘90s, including adjustable levels of wow and flutter and pitch adjustment settings that emulate tape speed changes but don't effect playback tempo. The three new options are available as part of a Retro Legends pack, or can be purchased individually.

www.antelopeaudio.com

www.presonus.com

Zen Q Synergy Core

Retro Legends

API

RME

UAD

In an update to its 527 500-series VCA-based single-channel compressor/ limiter — now called the 527A — API has expanded the feature set by including improved LED monitoring of Gain Reduction and a hard bypass option. This brings it into line with the company’s newer 529 stereo compressor units, and also the 2500+ stereo bus compressor, by making the feature sets more consistent across the company's 500 Series options. .

The original 527 unit — and thus the updated version too - offered both feedforward (dubbed ‘New’) and feedback (‘Old’) compression styles, a link option for interdependent compression from a single sidechain, a Hard/ Soft knee options, as well as a ‘Thrust’ frequency-dependent sidechain control that adds a high-pass filter before the RMS detector, and output fader control.

As it warms up for its 25th Anniversary celebrations, RME has announced the Fireface UCX II, an update of its original UCX interface featuring 20+20 I/O channels in the same ½ rack-style unit, its SteadyClock FS clock and jitter reduction technology, 2x mic/line combo inputs and built-in parametric EQ. Direct USB Recording (DURec) means that means any input or output of the Fireface UCX II can be recorded directly to a USB storage device using the integrated DSP, which provides stand-alone operation without the need for a computer. The rear panel has ten analogue balanced line inputs and outputs, MIDI I/O and ADAT I/O. The RME TotalMix FX DSP mixer offers routing and monitoring options, as well as the DIGICheck Analyzer — allowing measurement and analysis of the digital data feed in both directions.

UAD's latest software update to its Luna DAW offers the possibility of utilising its first ever end-to-end analogue console emulation in a unique way. The Vision Console Emulation Bundle ($699), models API's L Series preamp, EQs, compressor, gate, filters, and summing circuits. It offers the low-latency live tracking UAD users get with its other plugins — that then switch to native processing for all mixing functions — but consolidates multiple plug-in windows into a single row in Luna’s mix screen for a large format mixer-like experience on the desktop.

www.rme-audio.de

www.uaudio.com

527A

www.apiaudio.com

Fireface UCXII

API Vision Console

June/July 2021 / 13

Column

Sound opinion Tim Oliver

Immersion Meter Tim Oliver takes a sideways look at the history, and current states, of immersive audio

E

ver since I can remember, and way before I became involved in recording, I was aware of the hunt for that elusive super-sensational listening experience: The one where you’re right in the centre and all around you is a sound so big, transparent, clear and defined it blows your mind. Well… that’s what the sales spiel tells you it’s going to do.

At first it was quadraphonic that was going to transport you personally into the middle of the performance, but it was singularly unimpressive and, with no simple media options, way too expensive for mainstream take-up. The advent of the Walkman in the early 80s saw the first real rumbling from binaural and my first experience of ‘beyond stereo’. Binaural had been around for a 100 years before the introduction of personal stereos, but their headphone drivers meant that people could begin to experience it (and buy into it) en masse. I do recall a big ‘WOW’ moment when I first heard binaural and remember clearly the moment at Spirit Studios in Manchester. I was on a session with the late, great Pete Shelley, post-Buzzcocks, recording demos for Telephone Operator. He came in to the studio with a recording Walkman he’d picked up in Japan that had a headset with integral mics which he put on my head and proceeded to run round and round me while whooping and squealing. I vividly remember the realism of the playback was extraordinary, particularly with closed eyes, but as with any momentous experience, I’ve failed to repeat that first big hit.

No Atmos fear

Since then we’ve had surround in various formats that found a niche in the home cinema world and this has evolved up to Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, competing proprietary brands of point-based audio over multiple speakers. The former, Dolby Atmos, is showing encouraging signs of becoming an accepted consumer format with its adoption by Netflix and Amazon, and the facility to switch between both formats on consumer AV units gives them both a chance of survival.

Dolby Atmos has also recently been adopted by Apple into its Spatial Audio, which is a big step towards the establishment if ever there was one: artists can mix in Dolby Atmos and this will be encoded into their Spatial Audio experience for delivery on stereo headphones and devices. Quite how effectively it transcribes remains to be heard as I write, but I’m looking forward to it and hopefully to the possibility of creating mixes specifically for the medium if it’s as good as they’re telling us.

If indeed it is a success, the knock-on effect for studios can only be a positive if they can cover the initial installation costs.

It’s a considerable investment and here at Real World we’re just working through the sums and putting a finger up to the wind, as it were.

As an aside, for most, the more exciting part of Apple’s announcement in May was the support of lossless audio over Apple Music… finally!

14 / June/July 2021

/ Apple are poised to include immersive audio features for its AirPod headphones

/ Genelec's Aural-ID software creates a unique HTRF profile to optimise binaural playback

Revolution in the head (measurements)

most notably Noisemakers. There’s also Bacch (www.theoretica.us) who use your selfie image within its software and are focussed on 3D imaging from stereo monitors via their ‘stereo purifier’ as well as binaural microphones. You can buy a complete hardware/software combination for an eye-watering sum and I quote: ‘"transform your Mac-based audio gear into the ultimate 3D audio playback system’".

Listening to all the demos available on manufacturers websites with my eyes shut I couldn’t tell you exactly where the sound is meant to be or get the sense of it smoothly moving around and about me.

I can’t wait to hear Apple’s Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio and get a sense of the convergence of surround towards the binaural experience using cutting edge DSP. Undoubtedly the processing will improve results, but surely universal super-realistic 3D binaural playback is ultimately reliant on creating an accurate image for your unique HRTF that can’t be achieved by a panoramic selfie.

Maybe it will get to a point where we’ll be taking a trip down to the Woolworths of the future and sit in a photo-booth that takes an accurate head measurement and dumps the algorithm onto your phone to be used by all music apps, although more likely it will be at your local Apple Store. Either way, I’d like that.

Meanwhile, binaural has definitely not gone away. Almost under radar and away from the Dolby Atmos noise, people have been working away at developing available technology to enhance the process and its delivery.

The problem with binaural is that quality of the experience varies from individual to individual because of head shape. The reason Pete Shelley’s squealing was so realistic to me was because it was recorded with microphones positioned where my ear canals are and the sound to left and right ear filtered by the shadow of my own unique profile, which my brain has become accustomed to. Someone else listening to it would have a much less realistic experience because their head is a different shape so their brain doesn’t compute it in the same way.

So in labs all around the world academics are working to find a way to translate a generic head-shape recording into a personalised audio stream through an algorithm derived from a measurement of your own bonce — the so-called Head-Related Transfer Function. To date, Genelec have launched Aural-ID (see Resolution Jan/ Feb 2020), which computes your personal HRTF from an uploaded 360° selfie at great expense. This algorithm is open-source and is being used in products by various manufacturers,

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ing a simple Dolby Atmos Music Target Curve setup), bass management and individual channel delay settings. With a powerful, dedicated remote control unit, all monitoring functions are at your fingertips, and system info is clearly displayed on the large LCD screen. To top it off, the m908 delivers the finest audio quality of any monitoring equipment in the world.

The m908 will easily manage your stereo and 7.1.4 Atmos speaker systems, providing 12 bands of parametric room correction EQ per channel (includ-

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“I found it hard to think of something that, after a little interrogation of the manual, that the m908 couldn’t do. And to cap it all, the overall audio quality is astonishingly good. Another winner from the Grace brothers” -Jon Thornton, Resolution Magazine

www.gracedesign.com

/ Review

DPA 4466 and 4488 SIMON CLARK gets up-close with a new pair of DPA headset options

B

ack in the Summer of 2018 I got justifiably excited about the 6000 series of miniature microphones from DPA. These tiny units sound just like their renowned, but bigger, predecessors — the 4000 series. So, given that a headset mic is very much 'in vision' you could be forgiven for thinking like me that DPA would only use the 6000 series capsules for this kind of design.

Well, it turns out that the slight price premium for going from miniature to microscopic, along with the lack of a cardiod pattern option, was not to everyone's taste.

You may wonder whether that's a false economy, when it means gaining near invisibility — it probably would be, were we talking about one or two mics. However, the 4466 and 4488 models we have here are DPA's response to customers who either don't have an issue with visual footprint, or who require these things by the truckload — where even a small cost differential can quickly become a big line in the budget. I am told that many such customers are looking to use the minuscule 6066 for the most visible performers, and these 4000-based headsets for others.

extends to get the capsule to that crucial position at the corner of the mouth. In fact, you can swap it from side to side if you overcome the fear of breaking something.

The whole unit adjusts thanks to simple sliders at the back to accommodate different head sizes. All this without having to bend anything. A clever cable management device can slide around at the back of the head whilst gripping the cable firmly. I had the headset fitted comfortably and securely in less than a minute.

Actually, I wore both models simultaneously to compare their sound.

DPA helpfully fits a small mirror inside the carry case, which is invaluable if you are fitting your own headset. There is a tiny, flat flexible disc on the boom arm a centimetre or so back from the capsule, which has the delightful purpose of stopping sweat running along it — yuk! Both models are provided with foam pop shields and naturally the cardioid 4488 is more likely to need one fitted to reduce wind noise.

The review models were supplied with DPA’s MicroDot connectors, but they are also available terminated with connectors to suit popular radio mic systems.

Defying gravity

Happy talk

The nature of these devices means that this review is as much about the headset as the microphone itself. It’s a tricky thing to make something inconspicuous and comfortable to wear, yet secure enough to stay on during a dance number. The 4488 and 4466 look delicate at first glance but, believe me, they are seriously robust. Adjusting them — and they are very adjustable — made me nervous to begin with, because it requires more force than I thought the wire frame would withstand. I need not have worried. The boom arm tilts and 16 / June/July 2021

4466 is an omni capsule with the famously flat response of its body worn cousin. I am used to hearing these microphones fixed to a performer’s chest and the first thing one notices is how much difference a few millimetres of movement makes when adjusting a headset. It is essential to get the capsule as far forward as possible without putting it in front of the lips. A tiny amount back towards the ear and the lovely sibilant frequencies plummet as though a vicious low pass filter has been switched in. The same accuracy is required in

the vertical axis. These headsets, whilst easily adjusted, stay in position absolutely once set.

The sound is (surprisingly to me given the positioning) natural although, inevitably rather 'intimate' and with a lack of higher frequencies i.e. in the 12kHz and above range — a noted side-effect of such a placement. Lip smacks, swallowing, and the like, is also exaggerated with the closeness of the placement.

One revelation is how similar DPA have managed to make the omni and cardioid versions sound. This is partly achieved by tuning the close-up response of the pressure gradient capsule to allow for the proximity effect.

Consequently, the 4488 makes distant — and by that I mean anything more than 10 or so centimetres away — sources sound extremely thin. This in turn can help achieve more gain before pain when put through a live PA. The off-axis rejection of the 4488 is extreme.

This should be no surprise considering the wanted source should only be a few millimetres away and in the sweet spot. The cardioid model is even more fussy about positioning. Get this millimetres wrong and the voice will sound low-level and muffled. In addition, if you are near a loud external sound source, its level will change dramatically should you turn your head or walk around it.

I preferred the results from the omni 4466 despite, maybe because of increased ambient pickup, which seems to reduce the effect of having a microphone so close to the mouth.

However, I appreciate that 4488s would likely be the transducer of choice in a live performance. Especially in a situation when 20 or more performers are next to each other on stage wearing them or high sound pressure levels on stage were an issue.

A self noise of 26dB re. 20 μPa, combined with DPA’s CORE technology means that these microphones can reproduce everything from a whisper to an opera singer at full throttle. This, combined with a measly power drain of 1.5mA and the ruggedness the capsules are known for, makes them supremely suited for the musical theatre world.

VERDICT PROS Lightweight yet robust; comfortable and adjustable; based on proven high-quality capsules CONS

Headset-worn capsule will always sound a little in (or should that be “on”) your face

www.dpamicrophones.com

MIX MORE The McDSP APB-8 and APB-16 programmable analog processors bring mixing out of the box right back into the box. Choose from a growing list of APB ready plug-ins, available in all the major formats (AAX, AU, or VST3). Sample accurate automation. Savable presets.

Instant session recall. You can spend your time recalling mixes with patch cables and traditional outboard gear, or you can spend your time mixing. Isn't it about time you got to mix more?

Find out more mo at www.mcdsp.com/apb.

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

/ Review

Nugen Paragon JON THORNTON explores the worlds of Nugen’s new reverb plug-in

N

ugen Audio have been on the scene for just over a decade now, and in that time have developed a reputation for producing absolutely rock-solid, professionally relevant and incredibly useful plug-ins.

Paragon is their latest release, and the company’s first ever reverb. Okay, confession time: although I’ve been an enthusiastic user of their Loudness Toolkit and Halo Upmix plugs for several years now, it wasn’t until researching this review that I realised that the company is headquartered not in some sunny Californian enclave, but rather in Leeds, Yorkshire.

That may go some way to explaining why the core technology that it leverages comes out of research undertaken by Dr. Jez Wells at the nearby University of York.

Two things make Paragon stand out. The first is that, in common with some other recent reverb plug-ins, it offers full multi-channel support up to 7.1.2 channel arrangements. And the second is that it is a convolution reverb, working from a set of recorded impulse responses. Taken in isolation, neither of these seems particularly unique — but collectively, well there aren’t that many IR based reverbs around with full 7.1.2 support. Perhaps the best known contender in that space is AudioEase’s Altiverb, but that only works up to 5.1 (although their Indoor plug-in does support higher channel arrangements). On the other side of the fence, we’ve seen some wonderful 7.1.2 capable algorithmic reverbs recently, with an astonishing amount of tweakability — LiquidSonics’ Cinematic Rooms springs to mind most immediately. With Paragon, Nugen have attempted to build similar degrees of control and flexibility, but in an IR based approach.

Convolution solutions

And that has long been the Achille’s heel of convolution reverbs. Whilst they give perhaps the ultimate realism in terms of artificial reverb, tailoring a reverb for a particular purpose — something as simple as adjusting the decay time for example — has meant employing time stretching, often resulting in audible artefacts. This where Dr. Wells’ research comes in. What Paragon does is effectively resynthesise (not 18 / June/July 2021

quite in real time, but very quickly) the base impulse responses based on user adjustments, before applying these to the audio. And as a result, what you get is not a vast library of recorded impulse responses, but just 19 of them.

Anyone familiar with Nugen’s Halo Upmix plug-in will feel right at home with Paragon’s user interface, which is clear and uncluttered, but offers access to additional levels of detail when you need them. The main page is dominated by a circular ‘radar’ type display.

Depending on what type of instance you call on, this is bounded by icons for the channel positions. It’s quite an informative display, as you can see the distribution of both dry and wet signal across the space by colour (blue through orange then red from dry to wet), and frequency (centre to outside from low to high).

Each of the channels can be either muted or soloed by clicking on the relevant channel icon, and signal level meters for each individual channel are located at the bottom right. Global parameters for adjusting the core characteristics of the reverb are available on the main page, to adjust size, decay, brightness and pre-delay– and these resynthesise the currently loaded IR. Also available here are an overall high-pass and low-pass filter, wet/dry balance and output trims.

A global crosstalk parameter controls how much reverberation is distributed to channels other than the source. In multichannel instances this is supplemented by some useful shortcuts to exclude reverb in the centre or height channels completely, or to allow those channels to receive or generate reverb from / to other channels. Predelay, filters, trims, crosstalk and decay multipliers also have much more granular, channel specific controls available in the I/O page. But the IR page is where the real flexibility in shaping reverbs lies. Whilst broad parameters such as decay, size etc. are available on the main page and repeated here, the tonal shaping of the impulse response can be massively tweaked on this page. Up to four EQ ‘nodes’ can be applied to the IR with peaking, or shelving responses and varying Q — and these used to either EQ the reverb tail,

or to adjust the decay of those frequencies in the tail. Again — it’s important to realise that you’re not simply EQing here, but re-synthesising the IR as a result of the settings.

Loading any of the 19 supplied IRs, which include a useful variety of both indoor and outdoor spaces, and first impressions in 7.1.2 are of very natural and immersive results. The fact that the IRs were captured in 3D shows — especially in the way the height channels respond. The flexible crosstalk options also work well — whether in clearing a little space for dialog in the centre channel, or by creating immersive environments from mono or stereo sources — the control here is very good.

Adjusting the core IRs also work well, within limits. Shortening or lengthening decay and size parameters by a factor of two or so results in little or no audible artefacts, and the same is true of adjustments to the spectral content of the tail. Of course, it’s perfectly possible to overcook this — and at extreme settings the limitations of the resynthesis can be heard. But given the variety of starting points provided, this is unlikely to be an issue. The only feature missing, in my view, is the ability to easily adjust the relative levels of early reflection to tail.

Directly comparing Paragon with LiquidSonic’s Cinematic Rooms is interesting — it’s clear that both have very distinctive characters as you’d expect from an IR vs. algorithmic comparison. Paragon creates spaces that are truly immersive, with a great sense of realism, whilst Cinematic Rooms sounds that little but ‘lusher’ at the expense of realism. Both offer a great deal of control and tweakability — but Cinematic Rooms just edges things in this respect. In truth, it comes down to taste; if you had both, they would certainly fulfil nearly every reverberation requirement you can think of.

VERDICT PROS Great, natural sounding reverbs — especially in 7.1.2; excellent degree of tweakability of IRs with little or no artefacts; good user interface; excellent control over crosstalk; no need for vast libraries of impulse responses CONS

Not quite the level of control given by algorithmic equivalents; no way to easily adjust early reflection / tail balance [though we are informed that a ‘distance’ control is coming in an update].

www.nugen.com

Synchro Arts VocAlign Ultra JOHN MOORE rues lost time while reviewing VocAlign Ultra

D

o people still roll their eyes at things like Synchro Arts’ VocAlign plug-ins? Do people still show disdain for technology that turns ‘studio magic’ into a sleeklyworkflowed ‘process’, and reduces a task that used to take hours to little more than a few mouse clicks? I don’t know, ‘cause I’ve stopped listening to them, to be honest — and I don’t hold much truck with that thinking.

I get it. If you’ve toiled over the task of wrangling tight vocal stacks and backing vocals, are blessed with perfect pitch, or even come up with your own creative solutions to the task, I can see why such things would feel like a shortcut. They are.

Ultimately, I’m quite lazy, though — and see technology being used to make onerous and/or repetitive tasks easier as the epitome of progress. Modern production methods demand modern solutions, too. Ultimately, though, this review isn’t the time or the place to debate the merits of the audio-industrial complex and its ways of doing things, or my penchant for an easy solution so I can spend more time on stuff I actually enjoy.

Ultra, man

So, we come to the new iteration of VocAlign: Ultra. For me, once installed and licensed via iLok, it became available in Pro Tools’ Audio Suite menu for use within the DAW. For VST3 and AU users it can sit on an insert slot of the track to be altered.

Either way, the new, blue, interface offers three windows to the left that outline its operation.

At the top is Guide, where the reference track sits; below that is Dub, or the track to be aligned to the reference; and below that Output, which provides a graphic representation of the changes VocAlign has made to the Dub track by displaying the new altered waveform inside an outline of the Guide. This makes it easy to see alignment changes, while the view can be switched by buttons below to show pitch or energy information — the latter being the display method of older VocAlign versions. The new pitch features that second option displays are really the big addition here — ported from the company’s ReVoice suite to offer an all-in-one workflow for (relatively speaking) basic pitch alignment tasks.

Any track can have user-defined ‘Safe’ areas, denoted by shields positioned in a drag and drop manner in the area below the Output render. These will force VocAlign to ignore either pitch or timing alignments, should they be causing problems for the algorithm’s work, Guide and Dub can be provided with guide points in a similar manner, to aid alignment.

A Guide is created by selecting an audio region in the Pro Tools edit window and pressing the blue capture button; the process is then repeated for the Dub — at which point VocAlign will create an Output according to either the Preset selected from a wide range in the Preset menu (covering vocals, rap, and speech options for ADR/dubbing), or the settings options on the right-hand side of the interface. The changes can be monitored from speaker switches on the bottom right before being rendered back to the target track (this is automatically the dub source location in Pro Tools.

Out of controls

In Basic mode, you get on/off buttons and a single-knob control for Timing, Pitch and Formant shift. Switching to Advanced, allows more under-the-hood tweaking of operation parameters and algorithm selection. There’s nothing too granular here, 20 / June/July 2021

you’re simply making changes to how the system’s ‘black box’ does its thing, here be no dragons.

In the nicest possible sense, VocAlign isn’t a ‘creative’ tool. It’s a tool in the same way an electric drill is — it doesn’t perform any task that can’t be done with other tools given the requisite amount of effort and time; ‘There’s nothing you can drill that can’t be drilled’, as The Beatles never said.

It is, however, a tool that does hard work very well, with ease, and allows you to spend time being creative elsewhere by greatly simplifying your life. If you’ve already decided to stack vocals, or are mixing in the wake of somebody else who’s decided to do that, this takes the donkey work out of polishing them up. Ditto if you need to do a redub or have a problematic ADR performance, or a guitar line with a double that needs to be a bit tighter.

Want to formant shift some backing to fill out the sound? No problem. Pitch down an octave to add a low-level bit of body to lead vocal? Sorted.

The addition of the pitch and formant tools from ReVoice is little more than a nice bit of icing on the cake here, to be honest. That they mean you don’t have to go elsewhere represents a timesaving bonus, though, which is what this software is at heart.

within the software itself. Break your tasks up into well-thought-out packets, and you can whizz through them at speed and get transparent results using just the basic controls and options. Its operation is opaque, lacking the granular tools of more involved software, but the do-it-for-you algorithms are robust when used well — and that’s not why you’d go for this software.

To be honest, it’s a joy to whistle through a stack of vocals on a chorus that would usually take a frustrating amount of time to edit or fettle with effects. I went back to an early version of a mix I once spent a long time sorting out with Liquid Audio and blasted through it.

Providing your Guides are optimised and tuned, and your dubs are in a ballpark in terms of pitch, time or both, it’s hard to imagine it being much simpler to create anything from a silky unison to a nicely aligned ensemble of voices without giving all the decisions to the software in some sort of AI takeover.

Like any good power tool, how and where you apply VocAlign Ultra is the real issue, not its ability to perform.

VERDICT PROS

Super-slick workflow for repetitive alignment tasks; New pitch options create an all-in-one solution; Super simple to use; Resizable GUI

CONS

You could wish for more pitch editing options, maybe

It ain’t what you got…

As with all pitch and timing tools, VocAlign needs to be applied with nous if you want transparency. The more you ask it to do, the more cracks in the facade you’ll perceive. This, though, comes down to astute and circumspect use of its feature set, not any problem inherent

www.synchroarts.com

/ Review

smooth, snappy to jump to position, and quiet in operation. It is remarkably easy to hone in and set them accurately (within 0.1dB). You can automatically add the Command modifier for fine adjust for Sends and/or Pans with the V-Pots, or there is a dedicated Fine button when those options are disabled.

V-Pots

Solid State Logic UF8 SSL’s new eight fader controller aims to satisfy users of various popular DAWs. GEORGE SHILLING controls himself

T

he UF8 is a solidly built, elegant and modern looking fader unit. SSL describe it as an Advanced DAW Controller, and there are certainly plenty of pushbuttons. To be precise, 79 silicon-rubberised multi-colour illuminating buttons, with 43 assignable functions available over 11 of them for each of up to three DAW layers.

The eight motorised faders and associated controls are nicely spaced, but when using the adjacent Solo, Cut and Select buttons there’s always the danger of touching the faders. The Select buttons are also available for Automation modes and Record arm. The V-Pot endless rotary encoder above each fader is handy for Pan, Send level etc. And above that is a superb high resolution screen showing metering, channel name, fader level, V-Pot function, and the current function of the assignable button above each screen.

complex operations with one button press on the unit, in addition to MCU/ HUI functions.

The first of five available banks of soft buttons is assigned to Transport controls by default, as SSL has decided against adding a dedicated set of these to the UF8. Reaching to the top to press Play or Stop is not intuitive to me, though, and the button labels at the tops of the screens are tiny. There are Shift, Ctrl or Opt/Alt modifiers on the third bank of buttons if you find it more convenient to access them there than on your keyboard.

The Chain

Zoom

To set things up, you first need to install the SSL 360° application on your computer. This tidy new app is where you select the DAW modes, (three different DAWs can run concurrently on layers), set up shortcuts, update firmware and so on. Like the Nucleus2 the UF8 uses the MCU protocol to provide profiles for Logic, Ableton, Cubase and Studio One, and the similarly vintage HUI system for Pro Tools. Unlike the Nucleus2, which connects via ethernet and requires network setup, here a USB-C port connects to the computer — much easier. You can chain up to four units together for a 32 fader setup, and to this end SSL usefully provide a ‘Thru’ USB-A port, with the caveat that some computers apparently won’t like a chain this long. The other thing that happens when you connect to a Mac is that the UF8 is recognised as a computer keyboard. Following a brief trip to System Settings you can program useful multiple keystroke operations to execute

There are lots of useful and clever functions, though. As well as conventional Bank Nudge buttons there is a large Channel knob, which clicks gently to scroll through the channels, left or right. This knob also has other functions, such as acting as a mouse scroll wheel — e.g. for the adjustment of plug-in knobs when you hover your mouse over them. It can also nudge your selection, or scroll/jump through your timeline, which is very handy. I also liked the convenient and clear Cursor keys which Zoom or move through Tabs and Track selections.

In use, the faders are beautifully

Send levels can be controlled using the channel V-Pot, assuming you’ve already assigned them in Pro Tools. Although there are 8 Send buttons, only Sends 1-5 are available due to the limitations of HUI. But usefully you can Flip and balance cue mixes on the faders.

Plug-ins can be controlled, but the HUI limitations make this a pretty frustrating business, with not all surface controls available, resulting in page scrolling. There seems no apparent advantage to simply using a mouse and computer screen, unless you are automating a knob, perhaps.

In Pro Tools I missed EUCON-only commands where there is no keyboard shortcut, e.g. Delete Track — a nuisance to find on the right-click menu! Users of other DAWs with MCU get a Markers function for example, but no Nudge.

Whatever the DAW, there are unfortunate but unavoidable limitations.

SSL have done their utmost to squeeze in all that these protocols will allow it to, but I did miss some of the EUCONderived functionality.

I've always felt that DAW providers should partner up with traditional desk manufacturers in order to integrate the best of both worlds. Over the last 20 years things have improved, and it's satisfying to see a leading desk manufacturer like SSL throwing great effort into products like this DAW controller. EUCON would have improved this but, as AVID seems reluctant to allow third-party hardware to use its protocol, that's not on the table. Even with this being the case, the UF8 is a very fine unit.

VERDICT PROS

Beautifully designed and constructed; excellent faders; multi-DAW compatibility, informative colour display screens

CONS:

No dedicated and conveniently located Transport controls; limitations of MCU and HUI preclude useful EUCON-only functions in Pro Tools; plug-in control is limited

www.solidstatelogic.com

June/July 2021 / 21

The Interview

Benjamin Wallfisch

Film composer Benjamin Wallfisch is pushing the boundaries of creative mixing at his state-of-the-art studio The Scoring Lab. DANNY TURNER delves deeper

Photo credit: Benjamin Ealovega

…it helps to treat the composing process in the same way that a filmmaker would experience working with a film editor, where they can directly influence the detail of a cue

M

ulti-award-nominated producer, composer and orchestrator Benjamin Wallfisch has worked as primary composer on dozens of A-list movie projects including the It franchise, Shazam!, The Invisible Man, and Blade Runner 2049 alongside longstanding friend and mentor Hans Zimmer.

With over 25 albums released to date, Benjamin has also performed live at over 100 concerts worldwide, conducting orchestras from the Sydney Symphony to the London Philharmonic.

Alongside renowned architect Peter Grueneisen, Wallfisch recently unveiled his new Santa Monica-based studio The Scoring Lab. Nominated at the 36th NAAM TEC Awards for ‘Creative Achievement in Studio Design’ the facility features some of the most cutting-edge studio technology currently available.

Optimised for re-recording mixers, scoring engineers and composers mixing in Dolby Atmos, 7.1 or 5.1, the facility hosts The Mix Lab built in close collaboration with Dolby Laboratories.

Did working with Hans Zimmer on Blade Runner 2049 make it doubly appealing to you?

It was an unbelievable honour to be anywhere near Blade Runner and it blew my mind to get Hans’ call at the time. I still consider him a mentor, although we’d already worked on movies like Hidden Figures. When that conversation started it was really about our shared love of electronic music as well as orchestral. I’ve always been a die-hard fan of ‘80s and ‘90s synth music like Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre and when we had the first meetings and watched the movie it was obvious we’d have to get down to writing very quickly.

Working with Hans, could you pinpoint something specific that elevated you as a composer?

More than anyone I know Hans is able to translate the most abstract story point into a concept. With film scoring, you’ve got to find a mirror that’s fundamental to a movie. Often that takes the form of a melody or theme, but that could also be in terms of your choice of orchestration, structure or the rhythm of intensity of a score. So much of what happens in a score exists in the subconscious realm and Hans is great at finding a jumping off point that’s entirely distinctive.

In this case, the score was built around the Yamaha CS-80 synth. Do soft synths still require a lot of effort to match that fullness and depth?

A few years ago the answer would have been yes, but there’s an incredible instrument by u-he called Zebra. The filters and oscillators are enormous-sounding and the potential in terms of what you can craft with the LFOs and routing is almost limitless and just as impactful. A lot of it is about how you process the sound, and in the case of Blade Runner we used Studer tape

/ Benjamin in session at Abbey Road

Filmmaking is a team sport and I’m very lucky to have built a team that we can bring on board emulations to create the saturated warmth that you’d expect. 70- 80% of the soundtrack is Zebra but u-he Diva also provides some very distinctive patches too. There’s also a fantastic granular plug-in from Soundtoys called Crystallizer, which mangles those generated sounds.

Film composers often have a team built around them. What processes do you implement to ensure sessions run efficiently?

Filmmaking is a team sport and I’m very lucky to have built a team that we can bring on board. As soon as you finish writing you talk about the orchestration. My orchestrator David Krsytal and I must have done 15 movies together and he’s an absolute monster. He has his own team, but to get to that point I have assistants helping me to prep all the mix files and generate stems and MIDI files to send to orchestration. There’s orchestral contractors and editors involved, scoring engineers, the stage crew, and of course the musicians who bringing everything to life.

How does the process evolve from demo to mock up to live orchestration?

Some people use the word ‘demo’ for core themes or musical concepts that work for picture and show that to the director, but the

process has evolved to a point where I always show very finite mock ups to directors. For me, it helps to treat the composing process in the same way that a filmmaker would experience working with a film editor, where they can directly influence the detail of a cue. When you’re presenting a piece you can decide together whether a string or brass moment is required or if a choir is needed, but you also need to record it in such a way that it can be changed if the edit changes. Often the movie’s still being cut while you’re recording, so you need that degree of flexibility.

Having orchestrated so many movies, are you now able to set up and record instruments instinctively?

It definitely varies from film to film. For example, with Shazam! we were trying to achieve the classic orchestral sound of French movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s and therefore wanted to record an orchestra in a room together as much as possible with minimal separation, tracking and overdubbing, because that’s how they were recorded back in the day.

With a hybrid score like Mortal Kombat, you’re layering and separating things out so you can have certain levels of control in the mix to combine all the synths and other elements.

June/July 2021 / 23

certified by Dolby as a fully-fledged Dolby Atmos theatre. We worked closely with Dolby for about 18 months to design the room.

What speaker setup are you using for the Atmos room?

I’m in love with ATC speakers. So many composers and producers I know have gone towards the ATC sound because they’re completely transparent and pure, totally accurate and they don’t fatigue your ears. It’s so hard to trust your ears after you’ve been working for 15 or 16 hours, so part of the deal was that everything had to be ATC. I wanted to hang about 20 full-range ATC SCM45 speakers from the ceiling and walls but it created so much stress on the structure that it wasn’t possible. In the end, ATC worked with us to remove all the amplifiers and host them remotely in our machine room.

/ Benjamin’s writing room at the new Scoring Lab facility

Is combining live orchestra, synths and sound design becoming increasingly seamlesssounding?

It’s important to think of all instruments as being one form of technology. On Blade Runner we wanted to create the emotional impact of an orchestra using synths, so it’s really about what the movie calls out for and pushing those elements to the limit. All technical innovations have a direct lineage, from the fortepiano or harpsichord to everything we’re using now. If you adopt that mindset then pushing the sonic possibilities by combining synths and orchestra is the natural next step in a composer’s evolution. It’s a fascinating thing because the orchestral format has been established for over 100 years and is almost unchanged, yet there’s still an infinite range of possibilities due to different cultural traditions and instruments used. For example, European and American horns sound completely different to each other, so there’s always room to reinvent.

When did you first begin planning your new studio The Scoring Lab? I’d been thinking about building a studio for a long time but wanted to plan everything carefully. The process started in 2018 when I found a beautiful warehouse space in Santa Monica. I’d been in touch with Peter Grueneisen over the years — he’d designed Hans Zimmer’s studio and many other iconic spaces and is a real genius. It took about six months to design and a year to build. The two main rooms are the mix room, which we call The Mix Lab, and my writing room, but we also have a tracking room, offices and some lounge areas. It’s a childhood dream come true and we’re really excited about it. We’ve had some great projects come through the studio already and it’s a wonderful place to work.

24 / June/July 2021

I understand that Dolby Atmos technology is a central aspect of The Mix Lab? When I first heard a Dolby Atmos mix I was completely floored by the potential of this new format and immediately started mapping out the idea of a studio that’s built around a Dolby Atmos room. There are obviously huge sound stages that use Atmos, but they’re designed for final dubs for movies; I wanted to try and create a mix room that’s accessible to musicians but

Once completed, did The Mix Lab meet your expectations?

The Atmos experience is not just a vague glow but events that come right next to your face, on top of you or from behind, which creates an emotional response. When you harness the power of that in music it gives you endless possibilities, and I wanted to fully embrace that in my mixes. I haven’t been able to do that yet because due to the nature of delivering mixes to a dub stage it’s often better for them to receive 7.1 mixes rather than Atmos, but I really want to make an album in Atmos and I’m recording orchestras now with the idea of re-releasing them in that format when it’s more widely available.

/ Atmos is at the heart of the Scoring Lab’s ATC-equipped mix room

/ Interview

How do you feel Dolby Atmos technology is helping to develop cinema’s creative potential?

Almost all cinemas have upgraded to the Dolby Vision experience so it’s really become mainstream. When you record an orchestra, or pretty much any recording, you’re trying to envelope the listener, take them on a journey and engross them from the first second to the last, and part of that’s in the physical experience of the music surrounding you in a way that tells a story in itself. For me, this is what we’re starting to tap into now and I want to run with that and take it as far as I can.

Photo credit (top): Shambhala

Beyond that, does Atmos have the potential to reach into a more domestic consumer environment?

What’s most interesting to me is binaural, which has made huge strides, so I think the biggest shift will come when people can get as close as they can to the Atmos experience using headphones. Hundreds of singles and albums are now being mixed in Atmos, and I know Tidal has a relationship with Dolby to bring that to the mainstream so it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the dominant format. I don’t think there’s been such a shift since we went from mono to stereo. You can argue that 5.1 and 7.1 did that, but those are fixed formats and what’s fascinating is that an Atmos mix creates metadata that can be translated and scaled up and down depending on how and where you’re listening to it. That means the intentions of the engineer are kept whether you’re in a 120-speaker theatre or listening at home on headphones.

Do you tend to surround yourself with technologies that lend themselves to immediacy?

When you have a chance to build something from scratch you’ll build in those efficiencies but you also want to future proof everything.

Another technology that we’ve embraced is Dante, which is a pretty incredible way of moving sound around. Up to now I’ve been using MADI over light pipes, but with Dante you’re able to transmit incredibly high resolution sounds over Cat6 Ethernet cables. The philosophy is to have Cat6 ports all around the studio, plug peripherals into these Ethernet ports and use a virtual patch bay that connects anything to anything.

For example, in The Mix Lab I have a Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, but I might want to use that on one of my synths in my writing room, so I’ll use Dante to patch that compressor from a completely different part of the studio without even moving. I also want to make sure there’s a good healthy mix of analogue and digital technologies. We’re using a lot of analogue preamps and outboard, and the way the sound moves around the studio is entirely in the Dante or MADI format. Basically, we want to be here for a very long time without wanting to rip everything out and start again.

Cubase as an event so it effectively becomes part of the process with everything repeatable at the touch of a button.

You can apply Lemur to editorial processes too, for example adding a certain amount of volume or modulation to a MIDI command, deleting all muted elements or navigating around a big template to pick just brass or strings.

/ The Scoring Lab machine room handles the storage, processing, Dante and MADI routing for the facility as well as housing the amplification for its adapted ATC SCM45A monitors

There appears to be a lot of modern-looking touchscreen technology in your writing room?

When working in a software sequencer environment I want to use the mouse as little as possible. I like the idea that the instrument you’re playing is your DAW, with the same speed of access to certain functions, and there’s an incredible piece of software called Lemur that allows you to basically build any kind of touchscreen environment from scratch.

For example, we’ve built a pretty complex system involving four iPads that all talk to each other over MIDI, so it’s all very fluid and ergonomic.

Can you give a practical example of how Lemur enhances your writing process?

When I’m sitting at my rig, there are three iPads in front of me and one to my left next to the MIDI keyboard changing CC data using virtual faders for when I’m programming. The other iPads are interacting with the DAW in such a way that I might select a trumpet or clarinet patch in my sequencer and one of the iPads will update all the articulations of that particular instrument. I’m basically able to choose between legato or staccato, hit record and select the articulation that will be recorded in

Did you plump for an old-style Neve mixing desk or a big, shiny new one?

It’s an Avid S6, which is an incredible 64-channel desk. It’s actually dual operated with two master sections because we sometimes use the room as a dubbing stage and may want to have two mixing engineers work independently of each other.

The S6 helps you think in a slightly different way. In Pro Tools you can mix entirely inside the box of course, and many people do, but when you’re dealing with huge sessions of eight orchestra passes and many prerecords you want to be able to navigate quickly and immediately execute a creative idea. The S6 allows you to create VCAs inside a session that can be spilled onto the desk like folders.

For example, you might have a fader that says ‘live orchestra’ and you’ll spill that to the left to get strings, brass, wind and percussion, spill that to get room or spot mics and open that to get to the individual spot. It’s almost layered three-dimensionally, so you can just move around the session with a speed and ease that’s particularly suited to film scoring and constantly updating what you’re doing inside of Pro Tools.

Was it always the plan to make The Scoring Lab commercially available?

I wanted to design the ideal space for myself, which includes access to a Dolby Atmos mix room. I don’t know of any other rooms like it, certainly in Los Angeles, so I wanted to fill that gap and almost democratise Atmos so that any musician or composer can experiment with the format right up to making fully fledged Dolby Atmos dubs, which we’ve already done a couple of times for Netflix and other producers.

The Mix Lab is separate to my composing business and operated as an independent commercial studio for hire. It’s been great so far, even though we’ve had to massively reduce the operation due to Covid.

What scores are you working on at present and do you have a dream project?

I’ve just finished scoring Mortal Kombat for New Line/Warner Brothers, so I’m incredibly excited about that but can’t say too much about other projects just yet. In terms of my dream project, I sometimes pinch myself that I’m lucky enough to work on some of the projects I have been.

There are certain films and filmmakers that are iconic to me, and I strive towards that, but I never take for granted the process of working with inspiring filmmakers on movies like Blade Runner 2049, Shazam! and The Invisible Man. June/July 2021 / 25

Craft

…the reason they got those results is because they were brave; they were willing to take chances 10 number one albums, received a Grammy and two Brit Awards. Credits included Annie Lennox, Whitney Houston, Cher, Paul McCartney, Backstreet Boys, Will Young and Bryan Ferry. Moraes often ended up working for extended periods in LA, and with a young family back in London, he abandoned music altogether in 2007 to help his wife with her fashion business. He was lured back around 2016, and helped rebuild the recording studio at Tape London — part of a nightclub complex of the same name in London’s Mayfair, where he is also partner — and helped install a PMC monitoring system. Tape soon became a prime recording location in London for hip-hop, attracting major clients like Drake, will.i.am, Travi$ Scott, Migos, and Moraes has also worked there with the likes of AJ Tracey, Steel Banglez, MoStack and MIST. He now divides his time between making records, managing and coaching young producers (including the highly successful production duo The Elements), running Tape as a senior partner, and a role with PMC monitors at its new Dolby Atmos demo facility located at The Ivories building in Islington, London.

What makes Tape so popular with the hip-hop fraternity?

It's got extraordinary speakers, it’s a very well designed room. And there’s a Pro Tools rig, a good mic amp and a good compressor. That's all it needs.

Heff Moraes The former SARM engineering whizzkid is back in multiple new roles. GEORGE SHILLING finds him running a nightclub, a studio, and advancing the cause of PMC Monitors

B

ack in the 1980s, Heff Moraes landed a job at SARM as night receptionist, starting when Frankie Goes To Hollywood were at both Number 1 and Number 2 in the charts. He was soon thrust into assisting Stuart Bruce (Resolution V10.8) 26 / June/July 2021

on the recording of the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas? Over the next few years his talent developed and he became Stephen Lipson’s (Resolution V6.8) right-hand man. By 2007 he had acquired recording and mixing credits on nine number one singles and

What led you to choosing PMCs? Thirty years ago, myself, and Stephen [Lipson] went to Metropolis to master an album that we'd worked on for ages. Tim Young had these new PMCs. And we listened to the album and we were like, 'these are way too clinical'. But over the years, I kept coming across PMCs, and I was like, Oh my god, the lack of distortion is extraordinary. If you're recording a band, it helps if you're listening on big monitors, because there's so much distortion, it's a bit of a vibe. But, with PMCs, the lesson for me was you initially have to work harder to correct any issues, but once you’ve done that, whatever comes out of there, it's gonna sound great anywhere. I wanted to be able to make records that sounded amazing in the club. Now, PMCs allow you to do that, unlike almost any other speaker I've ever come across.

What inspires you in your multiple roles?

When I came back into the music business in about 2016, my big vision was to return the UK back to its maverick, brave, great sounding record place. Because, from the 60s, musically the difference between the UK and the US, is that church is a big part of the culture there.

People from the age of three are singing at least twice a week, great songs, difficult songs.

And therefore they learn to be great singers and great musicians. In the UK, the musicians can be slightly inferior, technically, as musicians.

Over here, we realised that we weren't quite up to it musically. So The Beatles must have gone, 'we're going to use technology and be brave'.

And then people in America were like, How the hell are those guys making those records? Even Visconti came from America to learn how to do the shit that we were doing and took what he learnt to become a major trailblazer. Then in the 80s and 90s, with Trevor and Stephen, and a lot of the records that they were making — every time we went to America, people were like, How do you do that? And the reason they got those results is because they were brave; they were willing to take chances. I love UK hip-hop, and I'm very much part of it, but I feel it needs to become braver and take more chances. So when PMC first talked to me about this role, I realised, actually I can work with PMC in order to get their speakers into more people's studios, in order to give them a solid base. So it's really

/ PMC’s new Atmos-equipped demo studio in Islington, London

about talking to people and educating people about the basics of signal flow and all that kind of stuff. But also you can watch as many YouTubes as you want about this plug in or that plug in. But if what you're listening to is nonsense, it’s all nonsense. Monitoring is the most important thing. So what I'm trying to do in my mission is to help young UK producers to become brave. That mission aligns very nicely with PMC.

Are you talking about bravery in terms of the overall sonic character?

Yeah, bravery in everything. Like, going from mono to stereo suddenly, or going from very dull to very bright, suddenly, that kind of thing.

And also having a proper, clear picture of what's going on... I was talking to a guy who mixes a lot of drill stuff. And I was talking to him about this distortion thing. And he said, 'Yeah, but I distort everything, so why does it matter if

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June/July 2021 / 27

/ Heff at the controls

the speakers are distorting or not?’ And, as I said to him: the issue is, if you're distorting a kick and a bass through [certain monitors], you're basically listening to distortion through distortion, so you can't tell where the two meet.

So, it's literally like you're rubbing your eyes so much that you can't see through them. And then you're trying to align the kick, and the bass — which is quite important in hip-hop, or drill — and distort them, but you can't actually hear where one ends and the other one begins because the distortion is getting in the way.

And that led to your new role at PMC as UK Business Development Manager?

I met Maurice who runs the US office, and he was amazing, and we installed the QB1 XBD system into the studio at Tape, and a BB6 XBD system into our members lounge. And you know, it's been a huge success. And over the years, I stayed in touch with PMC and Maurice.

And then they asked me to help them with their brand. Because in the US, they're smashing it,

/ PMC’s Oliver Thomas, who designed and installed the new Islington facility

We're just sticking to a formula. And it's not just in hip-hop. It's in all commercial music they own the market — they're the go-to speaker. But I think in the UK there was more that could be done.

Did you help build the new demo room for PMC at The Ivories?

That was built by Oliver Thomas from PMC. He did an amazing job, I just did a couple of tweaks, obviously, tweak the bass end, because that's what I do. I have a few different presets depending on who's coming in. I only have two presets at Tape, one of them is flat, to mix. And the other one is blow your ears off with the bass end — and it's a crazy amount of dB at around about 80Hz. But the PMCs can handle it. And it blows people away.

/ The PMC QB1 XBD system at the heart of Tape Studios in Mayfair

28 / June/July 2021

What do you think about Atmos?

Dolby Atmos is, for me, actually a really exciting platform. Me and Steve did quite a lot of 5.1 mixing and I really enjoyed it. But it was a bit like, shove the reverb at the back and they didn't feel full range all around you. And actually, I installed a 5.1 system here at home on a Friday during the day. And then I went to work and came home on the Sunday and the missus had taken it out. ‘I’m not having those ugly wires and speakers around my house!’ So what is fantastic for me about Atmos, is it's scalable. So you can listen on headphones, which you know, 80-something-percent of people do now. You can listen in a fancy room, like the PMC room, or you can listen in any scale of speaker system.

/ Tape’s lounge area, also PMC equipped

/ Craft

Presumably, to do it ‘properly’ at home, you still need multiple speakers?

Well, you can, but what I often do is start mixing on headphones at home. And you get a good sense of how most people will be hearing it. So that's important. And then I just take it into the studio, and as soon as you hear it in the studio, you go, okay, maybe change this and that, particularly with the EQ because I'm listening on PMCs at the studio so I can separate things from a clearer perspective. I just check everything and spend two or three hours at PMC London, just making sure it's okay. But everyone does it differently.

And you’re at PMC’s studio most days?

I would say I'm at PMC three or four days a week, generally during the day, and then obviously, the nightclub’s a nightclub. I live in Crouch End very near to the PMC studio. PMC is in Islington.

I’ve just mastered three CDs worth of extra tracks for the re-release of your neighbour Bernard Butler’s solo album, that I engineered in 1997…

Wow, my daughter was in his son’s class at school! He's a great example. Whatever happened to that swashbuckling maverick

mindset? It is almost exclusive to this country.

We're just sticking to a formula. And it's not just in hip-hop. It's in all commercial music. And it's a terrible shame. Because we're great when we're brave. That's when we excel.

So what happens at the PMC demo studio?

I'm there most days, part-time at PMC and part-time at Tape. The two have a great synergy because at Tape I get to meet everyone in the music business. And that’s very key for PMC. Those are the people you need to reach. Everyone knows who PMC is, but my role is to bring the brand to the attention of the younger market.

So do you run demo sessions at the demo facility?

I've got one this afternoon. I had one yesterday morning. We work quite closely with Dolby. And since this Apple announcement last Monday.

I've lost count of the A&R people have called me up saying, ‘Heff, what's Dolby Atmos? And how do I do it?’

And you’re ready to go there now, aren't you?

Who is coming this afternoon?

The owner of a London Studio who has built a Atmos room with PMC Result 6s and he's done a few mixes and he wants to check them out.

They've done a similar thing to Tape in a different area. They've got a nightclub associated with the studio. The thing is, I'm a brand ambassador. The room sounds amazing.

And yeah, it's a very exciting time because I really believe that UK music could be on the verge of great things. It just needs to sharpen up its act.

/ Maurice Patist at Highland Park

June/July 2021 / 29

Craft

Walters-Storyk Design Group John Stroyk, Romina Larrengina and Dirk Noy on WSDG’s work on Mix with The Master’s new home in Paris, acoustic treatment mistakes, and not being software developers

A

s we wait for his colleagues from the Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG) to join us on a trans-Atlantic Zoom call, John Storyk’s effusing about a once-in-a-lifetime baseball blooper from the previous night's Pirates vs. Cubs game.

As we talk, his phone pings in the background with messages from friends wanting to discuss the debacle.

"I just don't know how to explain it," he tells us. This is the last time in an hour-long

conversation that he has that problem.

When John talks business — his is architectural acoustics and technology — he has plenty to say, and a seemingly bottomless well of studio design experience to draw from spanning back as far as his reputation-forging work on Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady studio with Eddie Kramer, and running on through countless other eye-catching builds. We've got together to discuss his company’s designs for a new studio project in Paris, where it is

/ From left: Coordinating the project on the ground in Europe is Dirk Noy; John Storyk, and the team at WSDG’s research group has spent three years developing NIRO; and Romina Larrengina, whose New York team produced the designs based on NIRO’s advice and Mix with The Master’s well-defined requirements

30 / June/July 2021

overseeing the creation of a new base for Mix with The Masters (MwTM).

Founded by Victor Levy-Lasne and Maxime Le Guil, MwTM made it's name offering exclusive educational seminars at the La Fabrique facility in the south of France that deliver a week’s worth technical and career tutoring from some of the most experienced and best-known studio practitioners on the planet. In more recent times, it has parlayed its reputation into building an online portal stocked with content that reflects the ethos of those events, and features many of the same big names.

The concept of its new home in the French capital is a studio layout built around a centrepiece main seminar/control room that’s big enough to host 15 students. They will sit behind a lift-mounted SSL console, outboard racks and nearfield monitors that can be lowered (we like to think Thunderbirds-style) into a floor cavity. This will allow the space to be utilised as a large live room by the facility's second, smaller, control room, meaning the site can also operate as a commercial recording concern when it is not being used for teaching and filming.

At the moment, though, the nascent studio is a building site, and a very detailed set of renders

JS: We abandoned the work that had been done on the interior. All the treatments etc. That was a condition. We just threw that away and started all over again.

Would you still take on a project if it had needed to be started from scratch?

DN: We would have been honest, we would have told them: ‘Hey guys, I'm sorry, this will not work. We need to redo this and this and this…’

But it was a good, intelligent concept. We did make one or two small modifications, a few repairs — an additional door, some window sizes — things like that could still be changed.

So what were the design priorities? I assume aesthetics were quite high on the list as much of this is a potential in-camera location?

JS: The first thing we did was the all-important low frequency analysis — which is really the heart and soul of most control room design. We get the internal room acoustic analysis done, this tells us where we need treatments, where we need dampers, etc. That's a complex process, where we use our experience and proprietary software called NIRO — Noncuboid Iterative Room Optimisation — that we've spent three years developing. It figures out where we need dampers and optimising

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So what was the starting point for the Mix with The Masters project?

John Storyk: Mix with The Masters had this dream to build a second facility in Paris. They started the project, but not with us; they created an interesting design and started construction. At that point, we got a call. That's not the first time that's happened with us, but it’s not typical. Dirk went to Paris, just to check it out to see if this was a project that made sense for us and one that we could bring meaningful input to.

Dirk Noy: When we first went there, in February, we found that [the design] was robust. We had to fix a couple of things that were not ideal, but the general bones of the structure, and the layout of the rooms made sense. The workflow, and the space, and the room dimensions — the height, etc. — were acceptable for us.

We're then putting the meat on the bones; the interior acoustical treatments, the technical infrastructure, acoustical studies of how to pick and choose the materials in the right place, the right material type, the interior design, colour scheme, all those things. It's a full WSDG project from there.

SLEEK. STUNNING. STELLAR.

www.lawo.com

June/July 2021 / 31

the capability of offsetting certain dimensions to change the volume and help with some low frequency issues that we may have. So in this case, I'm going to say that probably 85-to-90% of the room has custom low frequency units.

These were designed specifically for both control rooms. NIRO tells us what would happen without the room being treated with low frequency treatments and then with. So NIRO shows recommendations on what kind of treatments we were designing specifically for this room.

/ The proposed lounge area for the new Mix with The Master HQ in Paris

treatments. It advised that we modify certain locations — it gave us more exact positioning for speakers, and mix position. The lift that allows the entire console to go down on an elevator only gave us a little bit of flexibility regarding where that could move as the lift pit was already created.

DN: Yes, 20 centimetres...

As I understand you get data from NIRO specifying a range of tuned acoustic treatments for the frequencies and locations that need to be dealt with. Then you get these made and the test and deploy them. Is that basically the system?

JS: That's right. NIRO gives us locations for very specific treatments. Then the next step is where Romi’s work is really hard. We have to take what NIRO says about exactly where these treatments should go, based on well-defined pressure points. We have to turn it into architecture. That is not always easy. I think Romi would agree Mix with The Masters was not so simple....

Romina Larrengina: In this case, the art was so important that we did that first. Then we worked with NIRO to tell it where it could put things.

JS: NIRO may say we need a 1m2, 5” thick resonator with a certain characteristic in this corner, and you turn around and there's an air conditioning duct there, or there's a window there, or the guys don't want to see it there.

And then we have to make it look good. So now comes the art of transferring that information into a real plan and renderings. NIRO doesn't spit out those renderings. NIRO spits out a roadmap for the specific acoustic treatments, which we call APEQs (Acoustic Parametric EQualisers).

We like to think that we're at the nexus of architecture, acoustics and technology, that's what we do, we don't really think that one is painted on the other, they all have to kind of dance at the same time.

RL: Since this room had a geometry that we couldn't change — walls, ceilings, floors, everything was already built — we didn't have

/ The control room renders for Mix with The Masters’ new control room, produced with the mix of cutting edge software and architectural knowhow

32 / June/July 2021

So these acoustic treatments are your custom-designed APEQ units?

JS: First NIRO runs its geometry calculations, which is the algorithm-based iteration process.

It makes hundreds of passes of [a model of] the room after you throw the variables into the program and that produces detailed frequency-based pressure maps. Then we start to go into where the peak pressures are, and develop specifically-tuned APEQs — both frequency and parametric shaping — to squash them. Then throw that back into the programme and get the revised frequency response until we're happy.

Then there's the reflection module, basically, ray tracing — we've been using other programmes to do that, but that's inside NIRO now. This is a very exciting addition to our work and will allow for iterative mid- and highfrequency ray tracing. The result there is another report, which gives generic damper positions.

This kind of report, we would not normally share with clients, it's an internal report.

However, the Mix with The Masters team are not normal clients. We wanted them to see it, and they wanted to see it.

But you found it easy to chime with the aesthetic they were looking for?

JS: We assumed that this would be a pretty comfortable ride, but it was not 100% smooth.

They have very specific requirements. Dark woods, they want an ‘analogue’ feel, that's their, that's their spirit. That's the way they roll. So it took a long time to get to these designs. There were some days when it was tough to get everybody to be happy, but the resulting images speak for themselves. Romi had the patience of a saint, you can quote me on that.

This is a very important project for us, an extremely significant project...

RL: A lot of their engineers are former clients of ours, and it was interesting to work with these guys knowing that we had worked with a lot of their friends.

JS: One of the game-changing moments they had during the design process — which was to move a window around, so they could look into a lounge — was suggested by Eddie Kramer. He is a lifetime friend. He's a client.

He’s my daughter's godfather. He's part of our universe. Jack Antonoff has been a client more than once. This is not a normal project for us by any means.

/ Craft

Did that up the ante?

JS: It ups the pressure, yeah. This room, this room has to be perfect. There's no margin for this not working. We are double- and triplechecking. We had this design completely done, double-checked, and then it was checked again by yet another one of our acoustical engineers out of the Europe office, and he saw one reflection that he didn't like, and we had to go back and look at it again. We try to make every project as perfect as possible within the limits of reality, but this one…

Are you steering the direction of the equipment that is being installed as well?

Your monitoring environment is somewhat dictated by the actual monitors used and other equipment in the room, so what is your say on that side of things?

JS: Virtually nothing....

DN: They know what they want... they told us 'it's got to be this console, these monitors, these nearfields, these Atmos monitors, please provide for them.

RL: We did originally have a different set of main monitors. And then, after several discussions, we ended up changing the main monitoring system, which is the Augspergers JS: Typically we have projects where people come to us and they will ask us for advice and design of systems. And then we have another kind of client like Mix with The Masters where it's just simply not necessary. The monitors were the one change, because the monitor system is the singular moment that connects technology to the room. . Everything else is almost furniture, in reality it's not acoustically significant. But the monitors were different; we were very involved in redirecting them to where they should put them, what the size should be, and, and the location, and the relationship to the window. Initially, they had a very different approach to the speakers.

Are you advising them led by iterations you're getting from NIRO, essentially saying that this would be a far more optimal situation if we place the speaker here..?

JS: Half NIRO and half experience. NIRO gives us the optimum location for the speakers. And then experience gives us some information - like how to create a window framing system using a splayed configuration. NIRO doesn't do that!

Not everything comes out of a computer program, we wouldn't have a job.

RL: One of the one of the conversations we had for a while with them was the requirement of having the main Augspergers work at the same time as the ATC SCM 50s, that they have in the front. We had to work with different heights and make sure it was at the right height for both of them, because they will work with both going back-and-forth between the mains and the nearfields. In most cases, most engineers don't, but In this case it was a big requirement because there are a lot of chairs in the back of the room, a lot of students, and visitors to their events.

JS: This is a school. I mean, it wants to work as a professional, commercial studio, but it's mostly a school. So we optimise the location of the speaker, get the angle just a little bit closer to optimise the position. So NIRO spits that out, and then humans do the rest.

RL: You have to design and build it. You can’t have the right software and pretend that you're an architect, you know? It’s a bit of both.

When NIRO’s mapping out the acoustic properties of the room, did you do that with the audience in mind?

JS: There was a discussion about whether we

should compromise the critical listening position, you know 'should we compromise it there, to give a better response back here?' And the answer was ‘no’. We optimised for the normal, critical listening position, it was agreed that it was not critical for someone at the back to hear everything exactly the way it's being heard in the prime position. They have to see what's happening in a session and then come up in groups to the prime position.

DN: There's a tolerance curve with the lowest and the highest amounts of advisable reverb for rooms like this. We tried to focus a little towards the lower end of this, which

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June/July 2021 / 33

Do you see this multifunctionality as a direction that more studios are going to be taking?

DN: I think it's unique that they're gonna shoot as much as they do in this control room.

JS: We have more than one project on our boards now where the live rooms are putting in infrastructure and for video, but not so much in the control room.

/ A too-and-from process between Paris and New York finally produced plans that suited acoustic and aesthetic demands

makes it more controlled for the audience further back. So, we have a lot of direct sound from the speakers to your ears, that's also good for the switching between the big and small monitors.

So what sort of reverberation time are you optimising the room to?

RL: It's .4 of a second…at 1kHz. Don't forget that this is a big room, and also a live room. We had to go back and forward and try to optimise it so that it was kind of a middle road for both.

Then also a video shooting. There were so many requirements for these rooms. It's more important to create a balanced decay rate throughout the entire frequency range. This we were able to do.

Did you consider any kind of active elements to the room to be able to change its characteristics?

RL: There are curtains in many areas of the room because we have doors. And so if they can draw the curtains and make these area's less reflective. One door also becomes a tall window, so that when you come down the stairs you can look down into the control room.

So it was a requirement, and we needed to make sure that the visuals were not disturbed by any of the ceiling treatments. The curtains help with absorption, but also visual components. Because then they can use this room while everybody else is using other rooms. They can be using them in conjunction, or not be disturbed by each other.

Are there lessons that NIRO teaches you about room optimisation on bigger projects like this, that translate down to less auspicious listening locations?

JS: An obvious trend is for smaller control rooms and critical listening locations — we call them e-Studios. There are more studios than ever, the entrance fee is less than ever.

Equipment is smaller, cheaper. So everything is working in the right direction!

What does that mean In terms of high level acoustic design and critical-listening design?

Well, that’s linked to another trend: there's more and more attention being paid to lower frequencies. If you put both of those notions in a blender, you see the need for some kind of way to have better prediction, and also very thin low frequency control — thin for us mean 6” or less — as opposed to old-fashioned bass traps. I can't put a two- or three-foot velocity absorber in a room that's only 20m2. It just won’t work.

NIRO doesn't have a front end, it's in Python; we didn't really want to go into the software business — we're in the SaaS business — we're not interested in selling the software. We just needed a tool that allows us to accurately predict where the pressure points are, which is really what low frequency control is about, then change the geometry iteratively. By that I mean hundreds and hundreds of potential solutions, to optimise the design. That's what it's doing.

The result is treatments that are thin. That's the trick. There it is in a nutshell.

“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity” Isaac Newton quested.com | info@quested.com 34 / June/July 2021

/ Craft

/ An example of the 'waterfall' decay predictions created by NIRO — showing control room reverb time for the subwoofers.

/ Similar 'waterfall' decay predictions for the main monitors at mix position before and after treatment.

And these thin absorbers are the APEQs concept?

Thin low frequency absorbers are either going to be resonators, or they're going to be membranes. Really only two ways to do it.

We've called them APEQs — Acoustical Parametric EQualisers. We’re trying to line-up with two or three preferred vendors who will make them. We don't want to make them — we're equipment and product agnostic. We just want to know the best people that make stuff.

Most of our solutions are resonators right now or typical mid-/broadband absorbers where you need mid-frequency control that's relatively easy stuff to do. Schroeder frequency and down that's where the work is. That's the heavy lifting, here most people don't even understand what we're talking about.

So what are the biggest studio design mistakes you see?

JS: No low frequency treatment, just high frequency treatment. That's the single biggest mistake, 99% of the time. No low frequency treatment, or too much foam.

DN: You get a boomy dead sound. It's booming

/ NIRO's low-frequency pressure predictions at 60Hz (left) and 144Hz (right) for the MwTM control room before (above) and after treatments (below).

in the low end, and it's very dead on the high end. That's the most common mistake.

Is that because they're dealing with frequencies that are easy to deal with?

DN: You find the gold package of a particular manufacturer online for £199.99. And you buy that, you stick it on the ceiling and the walls and you have a dead room that's boomy.

JS: Also, reading bad information on the web. I mean, I just don't want to get into it. 4” pieces of foam in the corner, they're only going to do so much, they don't really deal with low frequencies.

The other common mistake is just really bad, stupid geometry. like making a square room, or putting your listening position smack in the middle of a room. Like, what do you think was gonna happen? People taking monitors and putting them on a console bridge and having an obvious console reflection. I mean, there are half a dozen obvious mistakes.

And you still find them still find them quite regularly?

JS: All the time.

D: Fortunately. So we still have something to do!

/ Pressure distribution — Mains 144Hz, without and with treatments

TF11 FET June/July 2021 / 35

Monitor Supplement

Focus: Monitors Making the right choice when choosing monitors is essential. The only problem is, there really isn't a right choice. The best you can do is make the right choice for you and your environment; everyone hears differently, and no two rooms are the same.

Wouldn't life be easier if that wasn't the case, though?

Over the next seven pages, we look at a range of options for nearfield monitoring that vary greatly in price and approach, but we're pretty sure there's something in there for everyone. After that we look at a few control and optimisation approaches that can greatly help make life easier, sound better, or both...

ADAM

Amphion

The most popular speaker in Adam Audio’s range, and one that’s been around for a good decade now, the AX7A features its own iteration of the Acoustic Motion Transformer (AMT)-type tweeter. Here it’s called the X-ART (eXtended Accellerated Ribbon Technology, should you be wondering), and is paired with a 7” woofer in a frontported enclosure design. Power is bi-amped, with 100W+50W provisions to the woofer and tweeter respectively — the former being Class D (PWM) and the later Class A/B. The quoted frequency response is between 42Hz-50kHz with a max SPL per pair of 114dB @1m. High- and low-shelf EQ is available (+/- 6dB at >5kHz and <300Hz), while tweeter gain can be adjusted by +/-4dB. While the AX7As are a long-established favourite for smaller and project listening environments, the AX range offers a couple of bigger options, and Adam Audio also provide a range of Subwoofers to augments them should that be needed. The same elements as this unit are also found in the powerful AX77A mid/nearfield model, which utilises a 2.5-way system where one of the two 7" woofers it holds 'fades out' above 400Hz to limit potential for phase cancellation in the mids.

Amphion’s new-look BaseTwo25s are an update on the company’s ‘lowfrequency extension system’, which serves to extend and improve the low-end response of a monitoring system. Though they’re designed to be twinned with any of Amphion’s monitor range (or any other comparable monitoring system), the company is keen to stress they’re not a subwoofer in the traditional sense, but rather an effective way to augment a two-way nearfield system and create a three-way solution — in a way that not only improves bass clarity but will also improve midrange performance by passing off the lower frequencies the BaseTwo25’s woofer in a graduated way. This alleviates issues that can arise with steep filtering while taking the bass response down as low as 20Hz in a coherent way.

The new system configuration twins the line’s existing full-range towers, with its back-to-back configuration 2x 10” woofers and radiators configuration, to the new BaseAmp1200 — a 2U unit that combines a 2x 700W amplifier with Amphion’s discrete filtering module, offering a crossover selection (40, 60, 80, 100Hz) and variable-level attenuator.

There is also a bypass to switch operation in and out as the task demands.

www.adam-audio.com

www.amphion.fi/create

AX7A

36 / June/July 2021

BaseTwo25

/ Monitor Supplement

ATC

Barefoot Audio

While many studios, and some Resolution writers, continue to swear by the larger ATC SCM50s, the scope of this focus section means we’re inclined to pick these compact passive 2-ways out of the pack.

Available in active (discrete MOSFET Class A/B bi-amp with 200W/50W continuous power delivering 108dB SPL per pair @1m) and passive configurations, they feature proprietary ATC 150mm/6” mid/ bass driver and 25mm/1” dual suspension ‘S-Spec’ Tweeter with a crossover point set at 2.5kHz, delivering frequencies between 55Hz and 25kHz (-6dB). In both their incarnations, these speakers sit squarely in the middle ground between the smallest offering in the company’s expanding Pro range, the SCM12s, and the larger units the firm has been associated with for much of its near 50-year history. However, everything up from here is active, with the next step being the SCM25A Pro 3-way system.

Barefoot Sound’s updated version of its signature MicroMain speaker features its MEME (Multi Emphasis Monitor Emulation) tech, which the company says models the essential response and translation characteristics of other classic studio monitors — ostensibly to save the us the trouble of rigging up other tried and trusted secondary reference monitors (those Cubes and NS10Ms), as well as new electronics and drivers. The unusual Barefoot design features five drive units: 2x 5¼ ” mid-bass driver and ring radiator tweeter, with 2x side-mounted 10” aluminium-coned subwoofers that operate in a ‘dual force’ manner. This means theythey're set back-to-back and physically joined together internally — thus when they’re run in phase their movements cancel each other out and reduce vibration at high volumes. Crossovers are set at 100Hz, 600Hz and 3kHz. Barefoot describes this as a ‘3.5-Way’ design, and it offers a frequency response of 30Hz-45kHz (+/-3dB). It is four-way powered, with 500W for the subs, 250W for each of the mid drivers and another 250W for the tweeter.

www.Atcloudspeakers.co.uk

www.barefootsound.com

SCM20 ASL/PSL

MicroMain 27

www.pmc-speakers.com

Get the result you deserve, contact us to hear more

TM Advanced Transmission Line

@pmcspeakers_pro

+44 (0) 1767 686300 sales@pmc-speakers.com

June/July 2021 / 37

Blue Sky

Dynaudio

The Sat 6D, part of Blue Sky's modular Star System One range, offers both XLR Analogue and AES/EBU Digital inputs— which will default automatically to digital if both inputs are connected. It features Burr-Brown 192kHz/24-bit A/D, and 192kHz/24 D/A, with a Cirrus Logic Digital receiver and sample rate convertor. It offers a 'Pure-Digital' mode for 48- and 96kHz operation, where the native input from the AES/EBU receiver is sent straight to the DAC. It's DSP crossover filters use Blue Sky's BOO optimisation, and the Sat 6D has a USB data port for speakers settings, updates and room correction. This comes via the included SRO software, which can control the speakers via a USB connection, and optimise their performance with the addition of a measurement microphone. This software includes a 1/3 octave 31-band digital graphic equaliser, and selectable parametric EQ. The woofer is a 6½” cast frame unit, twinned with a 1” ring radiator tweeter; it's power by 300W+150W of amplification, and delivers in a frequency range between 45Hz and 20kHz when in full range mode. Setting it up to do that involves removing a 'sealed' plate on the back panel of the speaker and replacing it with the included 'ported' plate, though the company encourages testing of both options to decide what's best for you listening environment and placing.

It wouldn’t take you too long flicking through Resolution back issues to find a studio touting its Dynaudio monitoring. Usually, it’s what the company now calls its ‘Classic’ BM units; a range that still persists in the form of the active, DSP-free BM6A and BM15A nearfields and the passive BM5 MkIII (and that still has plenty of life in it yet). However, the 6A has been around for over 20 years now, and in that time the company — having been taken over in the middle of the last decade — has concentrated much of its effort on processing-augmented designs, most recently in the form of its Core models.

Introduced in early 2019, the range initially consisted of the Core 7 2-way and Core 59 3-way models, but have since been added to with a smaller 3-way ‘47 unit and a Sub. The Core 7 marries two class-D amps (500W/150W) to the Dynaudio DSP, which offers dual filters that look to address issues regarding its position (desk or soffit) and boundary (wall or corner) and also provide an 80kHz cutoff for combining them with a subwoofer. It also allows the user to select between ‘bright’ and ‘dark’ settings, that apply a full-spectrum band-pass filter to alter frequency response characteristics.

www.abluesky.com

www.dynaudio.com

EVE

Focal

Berlin-based EVE Audio was started in 2010 by Roland Stentz, a longserving audio/ electrical engineer and former CEO of ADAM Audio after he left the company he had started back in 1999. Superseding its SC407 as a sizeable monitoring solution, EVE Audio’s new SC4070 features two 6.5” woofers that handle frequencies up to 280Hz as part of its 4-way operation and ported design. Also key is the rotatable central plate containing the midrange woofer and Eve’s distinctive Air Motion Transformer (AMT — don’t call it a ‘ribbon’) tweeter, which makes the enclosure suitable for vertical or horizontal alignment. This panel also hosts a ‘Smart’ knob and LED ring to select the ‘Room’ adaption filters — low shelf, mid EQ, and high shelf filters with a ‘desk’ setting, all of which can be locked by back-panel switches — and volume control. Powering all of this are four class-D 250W amplifiers.

If all that sounds like a bit too much heft, you could look down the line at the ‘3070 iteration, which delivers a similar package with less power; though for a strictly nearfield solution in the traditional sense, we like the look of the SC207s which combine a single 6.5” driver and AMT with the same DSP package and 150W+50W of bi-amping. These speakers offer a frequency range (-3dB) of 44Hz-21kHz with a quoted max SPL per pair of 116dB.

Touted as ‘two monitors in one’, the French company Focal’s Trio6 offers remote switching between operation as a 2- and 3-way system with the use of most conventional guitar amp footswitches. In full configuration, they marry an 8” sub driver (and front-facing bass port) with a 5” woofer and 1” Beryllium inverted dome tweeter to make a sizable unit; offering the ability to switch to the ‘compromised’ configuration — which limits frequencies to between 90Hz-20kHz — to check mixes when needed.

Amplification is of the Class-G type, which utilises multiple power rails increasing voltage steps to increase efficiency and reduce heat dissipation, and allows the enclosure to eschew the usual requirement for a heatsink even though it offers up 450W total (200W+150+100) to the three drivers, which adds up to 115dB SPL (peak @1m). Room integration features provide low- and high-frequency shelving (+/- 3db @ 35-250Hz and 2.5kHz to 40kHZ), with a low-mid EQ of +/- 3dB @ 160Hz via controls of the back panel.

www.eve-audio.de

www.focal.com

SAT 6D

SC4070 and SC207

38 / June/July 2021

BM6A and Core 7

Trio6 BE

100% Analog Precision Studio Monitors & Active Bass Traps

Distributed in the UK by emerging Ltd

www.emerginguk.com

www.psiaudio.swiss

Genelec

HEDD

While they offer speakers for a wide range of applications, it’s likely that nearfield choices from Genelec nowadays will probably boil down to a choice from among its Smart Active Models (SAM). This will mean either something from its 2-way options, or from ‘The Ones’ range — which will all work in conjunction with its ever-evolving GLM monitor software (and which we talk about later in this focus) as part of an RJ45 connected network. The choice is going to come down to taste, experience, the configuration of your control room and a bit of budgetary side-eyeing, but suffice to say they almost certainly have your needs covered either way. Decisions could be made a little easier if you have an AoIP workflow, because the 8430A IP is the SAM that integrates that functionality, taking its build cues from the mid-range Smart Active 8330A — with its 5 ⅛” woofer and ¾” tweeter and 50W+50W Class D bi-amped configuration. The larger 8350A offers 200W+150W of amplification, but the soffit-mountable 1032C 250W+150W is the daddy of the line.

Heinz Electrodynamic Designs launched its ‘Mk2’ range of speakers late last year, and the Type 07 is a 2-way model from the line that provides a 7” woofer and AMT tweeter with 100W+100W of amplification, delivering up to 116dB SPL per pair with a quoted frequency response of 38Hz–40kHz. All of HEDD’s Mk2 models now offer ‘closed or ported’ (CoP) functionality depending on the needs of your application (bass response or ‘accuracy’, as HEDD puts it), with the change activated by the addition of plugs to speaker enclosure’s ports and an alteration of the in-built DSP. That processing also delivers the system’s Lineariser phase-correction, which corrects minuscule timing errors between drivers — though this processing, as is the way with such things, comes with a latency of 12ms and may need to be turned off for trackingas it is over the limit on what most people consider perceptible in such circumstances. Also included are DSP-driven shelf filtering options, a range of ‘Desk’ settings to help with reflections from mixer surfaces, and the ability to extend bass response at the expense of higher SPLsall activated via switching on the enclosure's back panel.

www.genelec.com

www.hedd.audio

Kii

KRK

8430A IP and 1032C SAM

Three

Type 07

V8

If you have a big budget for monitoring and the taste for something a little bit different, then Kii Threes could well be the speaker for you.

Designed and built by a pro audio supergroup of talent in Germany, their headline feature is an unusual cardioid polar dispersal pattern that extends down to the (usually omnidirectional) low frequencies. This is achieved by DSP working in conjunction with side- and rearmounted drivers; of which there are six within each the 40cm deep enclosure — one 6.5” woofer and 1” waveguide tweeter up-front, two more of the large drivers at the rear, with one on each side. Each of these has its own 250W of amplification, along with its own DSP and D/A conversion. Aside from the work to perform tricks on the low-end, the DSP also offers placement options to deal with different speaker positioning — even in corners, it claims — a range of EQ options, and the power needed to deal with all the phase and timing issues its unique design creates. Again, this last correction will need to be turned off for tracking, as latencies can run to 90ms.

Established in the mid-80s by the eponymous Keith R. Klawitter, KRK is now part of the larger Gibson group of companies but continues with the distinctive styling and the price-competitive character that it is best known for. Most recently, it’s expanded its 'Classic' line of studio monitors with the addition of new 7” and 8” models. they will — no doubt — appeal to a wide range of home users, especially in the project studio and DJ sectors — that have long been the natural home of the KRK range due to both their pricing and their ability to make dance music and bass-heavy content just sound good.

Higher up the specification line, but equally interestingly priced, especially for the cost-performance ratio they offer those on a budget, are the company’s V Series. These come in 4”, 6” and 8” and are versions, Class-D bi-amped with 55/125/200W+30W respectively. The largest model, the V8, offers a +/-3dB frequency response of 35Hz-19Hz from its Kevlar built woofer and 1” dome tweeter and front-ported design, with adjustable DSP driven EQ and attenuation options controlled by the back panel. These are going to adhere to the characteristics that define the range, no doubt, but if that's what you're after then go for it.

www.kiiaudio.com

www.krkmusic.com

40 / June/July 2021

/ Monitor Supplement

PreSonus

Neumann

PreSonus’ eye-catching 2-way active R80 units come packed with 100W+50W of Class D amplification for their 8” Kevlar woofer and Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeters, delivering a frequency response of 40Hz-22kHz and peak SPL @1m of 107dB. They offer optional bass correction of between -1.5dB and -6dB, which can be applied in relation to placement and proximity to walls. There’s also switchable high-pass filter points of 60, 80, and 100Hz if they’re needed for pairing with a subwoofer. High-frequency boost and cut options can be applied about 2kHz to help tailor the sound to room conditions. Energy conservation settings can deactivate the RF shielded units after half an hour of inactivity, and input can come via XLR, TRS or RCA connection.While we like the blue finish as shown in the picture, it may be worth noting that the faceplate element of the R80's design is also available in a black version, should you feel that more circumspect styling is required. Beyond the R80 line, sit the company's Sceptre range, which is notable for its coaxial drivers. Like the Unity Audio MiniBoulder (below), these combine the high- and mid-frequency drivers into a single unit, to create an eye-catching design, while DSP provided by Fulcrum Acoustics minimises phase issues.

The Neumann KH 80 DSP may not look like the most exciting option in the company’s nearfield monitor range, but they are currently the only model that takes full advantage of its new automatic monitor alignment software and the MA-1 measurement microphone. The system, reliant on Neumann’s first such mic, an ethernet connection, and Mac or PC software, can make calculations based on tests of the speakers and the room in which they are placed. It can then optimise the amplitude response and their phase relationship, to create better sound. Should those bi-amped 150W+55W speakers not really offer the power or performance your room requires, there is an option to take advantage of the same alignment software by investing in either the KH750 DSP or KH750 AES67 subwoofer, which can provide the necessary DSP processing to align and correct any pair of speakers from the KH line when they are connected to it.

www.presonus.com

www.neumann.com

R80

KH80 DSP and KH750 DSP

June/July 2021 / 41

Ocean Way

PMC

Charmingly on the monolithic side of the nearfield monitoring spectrum, these somewhat unique trapezoidal, ported enclosures are every bit the Ocean Way monitor — though far from the massive size we are used to associating with the US company's high profile studio installs. Delivering 250W per side, as a 2-way active system with digital and analogue inputs, they utilise a silk fabric dome design tweeter with a reinforced aluminium cone woofer similar to that which you'll find used by Barefoot Audio. They claim a uniform frequency response of 35Hz-25kHz, and 110 dB maximum SPL between channels, and offer input adaptations that can tailor them for use with a subwoofer by providing a roll-off at 85Hz. The most likely pairing from the Ocean Way line for such a combinationwould be in the form of the S10A sub, which delivers 110dB SPL itself thanks to 300W of amplification and a 10" woofer — with a frequency response of 20Hz to 120Hz. It provides with controls for Gain, LF Adjust, Crossover, and Delay, and inputs via XLR. That's it as far as Ocean Way's nearfield options go, but you could easily while away some time dreaming of some of the monster mains it has on its website.

PMC is best known for its larger install models, but the company sees its result6’s as an ideal introduction to its ATL (advanced transmission line) technology. The concept of that is a more advanced method of bass porting that utilises the specific internal structure akin to an organ pipe — that’s the transmission line, and in this case there’s roughly 1.5m/5’ of it — of the cabinet to route the energy from the bass driver on a path lined with custom-designed acoustic materials. These absorb higher frequencies while leaving the remaining low-end to exit from a front-panel vent, extending response in a way that is consistent from low to high volumes.

Getting into specifics, the Result6 is a 2-way active system, with a 1” tweeter (and the other interesting acoustic technology that is the D-Fin surround, designed to offer better diffraction of higher frequencies) and 6.5” woofer. These are powered by 100W+65W of amplification, which can deliver 112dB SPL @1m.

Frequency response ranges from 45Hz to 22kHz

www.oceanwayaudio.com

www.pmc-speakers.com

PSI

Quested

Swiss company PSI is happy to tout its newer 3-way A23-M units as ‘100% DSP-free’, seeking to champion the design’s ‘flat’ frequency response. These triamped (Class G/H) speakers, designed in the image of its larger A25 models, offer 140W+70W+50W of power to their handmade tweeter and woofers, delivering up to 111dB SPL (short term max SPL @1m).

Interestingly, the company tunes each speaker in its own anechoic chamber, and delivers them to customers with a report showing individual frequency responses (now that’s precision). Recommended for listening distances above 1.5m, they deliver a frequency range of 34Hz–23kHz. If you’re in need of something smaller than the A25 or A23, the A17-M has many of the purely analogue charms of its larger siblings, but with a 2-way design (Class A/B, 80W+40W) and an understandably limited response of 43Hz-23Hz. These are pure nearfields, but tout the same flat frequency performance as the A23-Ms, and will also be handmade and individually calibrated. Both options can be augmented by one of the companies compatible subwoofer models, should your needs demand it.

The S7R delivers the unpretentious look and feel you’d expect from Quested, in a — relatively, compared to some of Roger’s monster installations you’ll find across the world — diminutive package.

Incorporating a 6½” low-frequency driver with a double flared front-loaded port design and a ⅛” soft dome tweeter. The amplification provides a total of 190W RMS to the drivers (120W+70W), and the maker quotes SPLs of 107dB (using pink noise @1m) and frequency response is 68Hz–20kHz, with a +/- 2db tolerance and a -6dB cut off down to 58Hz. Should your application require it, the S7R can be beefed up with the SB10R sub that will take the bass response down to 25Hz with its 10” driver. It uses the SBC250 amplified controller to power it, a 1U rackmount unit delivering 250W that also features a variable crossover operating between 40Hz-to-135Hz, gain control from -14db to +6db, output level metering and a bypass function.

www.psiaudio.swiss

www.Quested.com

Pro 2A

A23-M

42 / June/July 2021

Result6

S7R and SB10R

/ Monitor Supplement

Unity

MiniBoulder 3 The latest addition to Unity Audio’s range is a 3-way active design sharing the same electronics, tweeter and woofers as its larger Boulder Mk3 models. The interesting design ethos sees the unit combine its 5" mid woofer, and AMT-type ‘JET5’ tweeter into a combined, 'coaxial' driver the company calls X-JET. Cosmetically, it gives the speaker a conventional 2-way nearfield look, at least at first glance, but is designed for phase accuracy and mid-range clarity. The X-JET unit, provides a combined frequency response from 694Hz to a batbothering 50kHz. Picking up duties on the low-end is an 8” woofer in an unported cabinet. The three units are powered by a similar combination of Class D (300W) for the woofer and 2x 100W of Class A/B for the X-JET elements that ADAM Audio chooses for its AMT-style systems. In line with the larger Boulder system, which differs by offering two of Unity’s distinctive 8.5” crystal membrane drivers as part of a much more powerful system, the MiniBoulder offers a high-frequency 10kHz Shelf switch (+/- 2.5dB) as well as a mid driver cut/boost switch (+/-3dB). www.unityaudioproducts.co.uk

Yamaha

HS8

The era of the ubiquitous white-woofered monitor may be over, but Yamaha still honours that look with the HS Series from its Pro Audio range — though, there is no ‘10 iteration to be seen. The HS8, though, is a 2-way bass-reflex bi-amplified nearfield studio monitor with 8" cone woofer and 1" dome tweeter, with 75W+45W of power with a 47Hz-24kHz (-3dB) frequency response.

Of course, the NS10 was not per se a monitor speaker, nor was it ever ‘the worst speaker that Bob Clearmountain could find’ as the apocryphal tale its haters like to tell goes. It was, at least according to our former editor Nigel Jopson’s telling of the tale (Resolution V6.3), a success story built on word of mouth. This did centre around Clearmountain, and his use of the speakers mixing Avalon at the Power Station — but Clearmountain says that they were recommended to him by Bill Scheniman, via Greg Ladanyi, after the latter had spent time working in Tokyo at Take One studios.

Anyway, all this to say the NS nomenclature does live on in the Yamaha catalogues — where it always has, in its hi-fi ranges.

AWARDS 2021 REWARDING QUALITY AND INNOVATION

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www.yamaha.com June/July 2021 / 43

/ Monitor Supplement

Monitor Contollers Genelec

Grace Design

Genelec will soon be marking the 15th anniversary of its GLM loudspeaker manager software. Now on version version 4, which we featured in detail back in Resolution V19.6, it has come a long way in terms of look, feel and operation over that time and is now heavily integrated with the company's Smart Active Monitors and subs. The GLM system utilises a network interface, measurement microphone, and the SAM DSP to optimise speaker response and phase whatever combination of Genelec equipment and/or listening positions the user sees fit to check. The process is operated via a slick software GUI, which had an overhaul for the latest incarnation, and provides a user-friendly front-end for the underlying ‘AutoCal’ process and any other EQ changes you may wish to make.

Different combinations of speakers and listening locations can the be saved as Groups, and recalled when needed from the GLM software and/ or stored in the cloud. A single Group can also be saved to the speakers as a default setting to remove the need for software activation.

Grace’s latest monitor controller delivers multichannel and immersive audio monitoring in formats up to 24 channels.

The system comprises three parts: the Audio Control Unit (ACU) is a 2U rackmount unit handling audio I/O and DSP (which includes bass management and comprehensive EQ options); the RCU remote and a PSU. The ACU comes with 68 potential digital inputs (AES/EBU, ADAT, USB2 and TOS-LINK), 24 digital outputs (AES/EBU) and 16 channels of balanced analogue outputs. Options allow a further 32 channels of I/O over either Dante, MADI or DigiLink, and up to 16 analogue inputs.

Additional rear panel connections are available for word-clock, an external talkback microphone, talkback footswitch and output. In a recent Resolution review (V19.6), Jon Thornton concluded the RCU was “a nicely engineered and tactile piece of kit,” while the audio quality of the system was “astonishingly good.”

www.genelec.com

www.grace-design.com

Merging

Trinnov

Ostensibly an audio interface, the Anubis’ use of so-called ‘Misson’ operation profiles make its potential use case scenarios much more varied — yet simultaneously highly specialised. Recently, its new ‘Music’ Mission has re-cast it as a pro/ project studio tool for tracking and headphone monitoring, but when we reviewed the unit in Resolution V21.1 we were considering its then-singular ‘Monitor’ mission, which placed it as an AoIP-savvy monitor controller. In Jon Thornton’s words: “describing it simply as ‘an audio interface’ is seriously underselling it…

That much is obvious from its colour capacitive touchscreen and large, gorgeously weighted rotary encoder. Dedicated illuminated buttons with icons for speaker and headphone selection, mute and talkback make it obvious that at least one of its capabilities is as a flexible monitor controller — and that it is — up to 22.2 monitoring.”

All this is Ravenna reliant, but if you’re considering utilising AoIP connectivity going forward, this unit deserves a very close look.

When it’s packed with technology and processing as interesting as Trinnov’s room correction algorithms are, it’s easy to brush over the talents of its D-Mon in its primary role as a monitor controller. However, as Mike Aiton’s exploration of that system on page 45 asserts, with additional features like bass management, simulated dynamic range control, downmixing, headphone cue mixes, an internal routing matrix, the GPIO and Avid Eucon integration (S6, S5, S3, Dock, D-Command and D-Control)... “The world really is your oyster.”

With the ability to integrate up to 12 speakers into flexible, optimised (or not, should you wish) ‘mix-andmatch’ set-ups using a whole host of I/O — and all operated from a dedicated controller or web interface — there really is a lot of powerful, time-saving, and workflow-changing stuff possible with this 2U unit and its eyecatching calibration mic. It comes at a premium, yes… But there’s a return on that investment.

www.merging.com

www.trinnov.com

GLM 4.1

Anubis

44 / June/July 2021

M908 Monitor Controller

D-Mon and La Remote

Technology

TRINNOV D-Mon & La Remote MIKE AITON goes 'to inTRINNity and beyond' in search of La Ultimate monitor controller.

T

rinnov Audio, the charmingly clever French audio boffins who research the processing of acoustic fields in 3D, have sent me a D-Mon 12 Integrated Monitoring Processor with their new remote controller, jauntily titled (with not a hint of ethnophaulism) 'La remote', to Trinnotest (to obsessively compulsively test, to within an inch of its life) for a couple of weeks. The Trinnov quite simply turns your monitoring and your room inside out and reveals the truth, so in deference I am writing this review back to front with the conclusion first.

Are You Missing The Point?

Looking for a monitor controller that you can trust for immersive audio? The Trinnov D-Mon is one of the best, cleverest and most flexible monitoring controllers in town.

Because we as an industry are still almost all in total denial of our monitoring and room deficiencies, many of us have been pigeonholing the Trinnov D-Mon into the audio awkward room. “Oh I don’t need one of those, I know my room” or “I just add an EQ” or “Aren’t they kind of expensive compared to Sonarworks?”

We have been doubly missing the point, by not wanting to admit the truth. Not only can this clever box and its programmable remote help your monitors to be the best and the most truthful that they can be, it can help them integrate into the most modern workflows too.

Top-flight totally flexible monitoring control with acoustic genius built in — what’s not to love? With both functions built-in, as well as efficacy, comes massive cost efficiency. The two functions share the same hardware. Think of it as two for the price of one! With its internal computing cleverness comes the ability to be almost infinitely flexible in features. It’s high level software monitor control! If you want a monitor controller for stereo and for surround (with multiple outputs) or want to be able to mix music in Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 and immersive formats, then this should be the top of your list (oh, and it can also take care of your acoustic

issues with correction for physical speaker position, phase, EQ and acoustics too).

So, as a quick recap for those who have not met a Trinnov, let's dive into the box itself and how I used it.

The hole truth

The last time I tried a D-Mon I learned the hard way that the biggest lie in professional audio is perpetuated by virtually all of us: “I know my room”. You think you do, as you may be familiar with the nodes (the obvious humps), but most of you have never officially met your anti-nodes (the dips), and you have no idea of what you are missing — you are getting the hole truth, not the whole truth!

So, although we all gayly spend lots of money on Brand X monitors, “mine are flatter than yours” and “these translate really well to the mix stage” and brag about them ad nauseum on forums, and most of us spend some hard-earned pounds on good stands, less of us spend money on getting our acoustic treatment right or ensuring good accurate monitoring paths.

Set phase to stun?

“My monitors are accurate — they are truly flat”, unfortunately that’s less than half the story, even if it were true, which sadly for many brands it just isn’t. The frequencies of a signal need to be reproduced accurately, but so does the timing (phase). As mere mortals (albeit sometimes with ‘spendy speakers’) we are sensitive to phase between approximately 300-3000Hz due to the 20cm distance between our ears. So, if you think you can just EQ your way out of bad monitoring or a poor room (yes, you — cinema mixers!) then think again. Phase kills!

As a post mixer, if you have to premix in one room, and final mix in another, then the two things you are most often battling with or continually adjusting are the atmospheres and the reverbs. These are both highly phase dependant. Room tones and atmospheres are like pink noise and very broadband. If you have nodes, anti-nodes or startlingly fundamental phase errors you will have almost certainly made inaccurate and poor choices with your EQ or your reverb balances. Had a listen to your

/ Trinnov's tiny La Remote balances simplicity and flexibility well

June/July 2021 / 45

mono atmospheres in stereo recently? Hearing some width? That’s the phase errors in your speakers and your room. Just how accurate is your phantom mono?

The ideal is, of course, to have a welldesigned and treated room, with a good accurate monitoring system, and then add a Trinnov to wring the very best out of it. With the fragmentation of the music AND post industry — and pandemics — most of us are working in smaller, possibly slightly less-than-ideal environments, and this is probably here to stay.

The Trinnov can correct for less than ideal speaker geometery as well as the phase and frequency issues at the chosen listening position. It measures your elevation, azimuth (angle of dangle?) dB level and time of arrival as well as frequency, phase, reverb time and a ton of acoustic stuff that is above my pay grade and my humble (very vintage now) BSc in Chemistry!

La Remote

The La Remote is USB bus powered, I just plugged it into the front USB slot of the D-Mon and its presence was auto-detected. You can also plug it into a Mac and it will connect via the networking side of the OSX Trinnov app (it shows up in the gateway part). Clever stuff. As a remote it has some heft and is reassuringly weighty. It has a small high-brightness monochromatic LCD screen for button legends and display purposes like metering. It has a very sexy feeling volume knob, that is weighted

and stepped with magnetic feel. This volume control is acceleration programmable, so the faster you turn it the more it goes through the gain range, and the slower you turn it, the more accurate it is.

There are eight totally programmable buttons, a rotary select knob for scrolling through to different programmable knob pages, and a non-programmable mute button with a bright red warning LED. La Remote can connect right across the Trinnov range from a D-Mon, to an MC-Pro or an ST-2, and can recall different profiles/presets, switch speaker sets, toggle downmixes, engage bass management, bypass the Trinnov correction, solo or mute individual speakers. It can even control the headphone volume or the talkback (some of these features are only for the D-Mon series).

La Remote is totally customisable and configurable from a web browser page of a computer attached to the D-Mon. Just select which functions you want from the page and drag and drop them to the buttons in the layout page you would like. There are unlimited layers.

I have often found that, in post production facilities, the functionality/complexity ratio paradox of the remote can be a problem. Often, if a piece of equipment of this ilk does what you want it is too complicated to be able to use effectively — especially for visitors/freelancers.

Conversely, if it is easy to use, it isn’t powerful enough. Trinnov have scored here with a simple but powerful remote that is very easy to personalise to your workflow. You can also save your customisations and import them into other La Remotes.

Looming it up

/ The simple but powerful, USB-powered La Remote unit

I connected my Avid Pro Tools HDX system to the D-Mon digitally from my Avid Omni. I then connected the first five DB25 analogue outputs to my Quad 520 power amps for my 5.0 Dynaudio BBC Ls5/12a monitors, and the last two outputs (7&8) to John York’s PSI 21 active stereo monitors that I have on loan, so that I have the ability to switch between two different

/ The D-Mon rear panel and its connectivity options

Connectivity

The D-Mon 12 is a 2u 19” rack mount unit, with a plethora of audio and computer/networking connectivity. Analogue IO is via eight balanced DB25 inputs, 16 balanced DB25 outputs, and eight balanced XLR outputs — all Tascam pin config. Digital IO offers 16 AES3 DB25 AES3 inputs and 16 DB25 outputs, all Tascam config, eight AES3 DB25 inserts, and wordclock input and output on BNC. General Purpose IO (via a loom to a DB25) is two GP control Inputs and I GP control output on ¼” jack, midi in and out on five-pin din, listenback and talkback inputs on XLR, headphone output on stereo ¼” unbalanced jack. There is also USB 2 (front and back), USB 3, VGA, HDMI and DVI and ethernet (more on that later) and one of those funny historical PS/2 keyboard ports.

46 / June/July 2021

speaker makes as well as two different speaker set widths.

The ADCs & DACs are 24-bit 96Khz, with 118 dB signal to noise ratio. The internal processing is all 64-bit floating point. The specs are very game-on and top-flight.

Initial Set up

The monitoring outputs from the Avid Omni are in Pro Tools internal film order (L C R Ls Rs LFe). When I set my room up, I chose my Quad amplifiers to be in AES/EBU pairs, L/R, C/LFE, Ls/Rs so that if I was working in stereo only, I could turn the amplifiers for the C/LFE and Surrounds off and be greener. The Avid Omni to Trinnov connection is a straight digital DB25.

I had to configure the output connections in the studio set-up page, i.e let the D-Mon know that, for my Dynaudio BBC surround monitors, L R is plugged to outputs 1+2, C to output 3, Ls to output 5 and Rs to output 6, and the PSI 21s were plugged to outputs 7+8. Once the speaker sets were created, I generated test tones from the Trinnov to prove each individual speaker connection, and to set the gain on the active PSI speakers to the same volume as the Dynaudios/Quad Amps, so that if I changed speaker sets whilst in Trinnov bypass, there would be no volume jump (when active, the Trinnov would correct for level differences).

Once checked, I then generated a panned test tone in Pro Tools to check the full pathway through from Pro Tools to the speakers. All good.

Measure by measure

The Trinnov tetrahedral measurement microphone was connected to four analogue inputs via a loom and is powered by an internal 9v PP3 battery. Do not use phantom power. Once you have positioned the mic in your listening position, making sure it is straight in all elevations and planes, put the Trinnov monitoring into mute (to prevent any howl arounds). Go to the Optimiser settings/ calibration tab page and / The distinctive Trinnov set a calibration going. It mic measures elevation, azimuth, dB will ask you to switch level and time of arrival the microphone on. It as well as frequency, will then start a series of phase, reverb time and other parameters test tones of what sounds like pink noise. Make sure the volume on La Remote (or the Mac app) is loud enough to measure about -30 on the meters page (so that the room is excited enough). Once you have set levels, stop this ‘initial level set’ calibration and start the real one. The D-Mon will measure each speaker of each set. To measure the 7 speakers took about a minute or so. Once finished, you

/ Technology

can turn the microphone off and then you can tell the D-Mon to compute, this takes around another minute or so for it to do all the clever maths (unlike me).

The results

Once finished you can nerd out and check your results, with before-and-after graphs for each speaker as well as 3D plots of speaker positions and elevations etc and lots of other fun stuff (like phase angles at different frequencies). It’s totally fascinating. You can download your measurements/settings to a PDF file if you attach a USB FAT32 stick to the D-Mon and then you can play ‘monitoring top trumps’ with your engineer friends as to who has the flattest monitoring/best room!

When you have finished your measurement, you can then store a preset with your studio speaker sets and your acoustic measurement/ optimisation. You can save other presets with the same (or different) speaker sets but with the optimisation measurements taken at different positions (i.e ‘the expensive seats’ or the client couch) etc. You now no longer have to share your engineer’s chair with the hoi polloi! It’s really quick and easy to make measurements.

Please note: NO rooms are ever flat, despite what acousticians tell you. No monitor systems are flat either (even in an anechoic chamber), but some are flatter than others… and very few speakers indeed are remotely phase accurate across much of the frequency range. With the Trinnov correction you should be able to get your monitoring to within +/- 2dB and mostly phase accurate.

Flexibility vs. simplicity

The D-Mon, because it is so powerful, does have an element of complexity — and like all things with power and capability, it’s key to understand the premise and the way it works allows in order to enjoy the power of what it can do. Once configured with a basic set-up — thanks to the help of Paul Mortimer from Emerging Ltd, Trinnov’s UK distributor — I was able to navigate my way around and (after just two quick phone calls to remind me of things I had forgotten after a week) make my own custom studio set-up and my own monitor calibration , and store my own La Remote custom button configurations. I still haven’t

read the Trinnov manual yet! Once set up, it’s plain sailing and I'm just using my La Remote buttons. Happy days!

Many of the advanced functions were not applicable to me, such as bass management (my monitors are full range and I don’t run a sub), or simulated dynamic range control, downmixing, or headphone cue mixes, the internal routing matrix, or the GPIO or Avid EUCON integration (S6, S5, S3, Dock, D-Command and D-Control). You even can set up the D-Mon to do unusual things such as only optimise your surround speakers, or only correct certain parts of the frequency range, or share the sub with the L and R in stereo mode, but treat it as a discreet destination in 5.1 mode.

The world really is your oyster.

Networking

The D-Mon was connected to my studio network switch, and assigned an internal IP address by my router. My studio Mac was then able to access the D-Mon via the OSX Trinnov app. What’s really cool is that, if I was stuck, I could ring Emerging in Reading or Trinnov HQ in France and they could remotely log in to my Trinnov D-Mon and check my settings. How cool is that?

The listening bit

Sound Supervisor and Re-Recording mixer John York owns a Trinnov D-Mon 6 (for 5.1 monitoring) for when he's working at home, and was a convert from my last Trinnov test. He premixes feature films or dramas at his home studio, so is confident that when clients attend playback at screening rooms or another mix theatre, the correct decisions have been made and the mix is in the best possible shape. He has 5.1 Dynaudio BM15s, which sound very similar to my Dynaudio Ls 5/12a.

Graham Kirkman (Luminol Audio) is a very experienced freelance re-rerecording mixer and has been a staff mixer in some of Soho’s top luminaries, such as NATS & Halo Post.

Interestingly, when I first played Graham some music in my studio, he preferred the music with the Trinnov in bypass. This is because “it sounded a bit bassier and brighter — as if the loudness button was on”. As soon as we switched to voice recordings (our more natural diet), without the Trinnov, Graham would have been reaching for the EQ as “it sounded very uneven”. As soon as I switched the Trinnov in, the need for EQ went and “the voice sounded much more homogenous”.

We tried listening to several atmospheres too and all of us felt the mid-range errors around 500Hz in the room and slight phase complications of vague mono imagery on stereo speakers without the Trinnov.

The Last Word

So if you have got this far, there is at least hope for you. Every time I come across Trinnov, I’m more convinced that the audio paradigm has changed. Get onboard and get arguably the best monitor controller in town, and get the best out of your monitoring and your room.

Trinnobunking isn’t professional anymore, and is strictly for amateurs.

Mike Aiton was weaned at the BBC. But after breaking free nearly 30 years ago, he become a Senior Dubbing Mixer at Molinare, Head of Sound at both ClearCut Pictures and also at ESPN. He is now one of London's busiest freelance dubbing mixers, and he can mostly be found in his Twickenham post suite, mikerophonics, thrashing gear to within an inch of its life. Mike works for Source Elements as a part of the Solutions Team In his spare time he takes therapy for his poor jazz guitar playing and his addiction to skiing and Nikon lenses.

A new lexicon

At Mikerophonics (my Twickenham post studio) I have been expanding the lexicon of studio speak with my ‘well-eared’ post colleagues, Graham Kirkman and John York, defining adjectives such as; Trinnovation — the excellence of science in achieving great monitoring; Trinnosophise — the art of discussion regarding the desire to remove room nodes, and of course the verb to Trinnopolise — to dominate your studio monitoring with examples of just how good it sounds! Trinnobunkers are defined as those who are part of the monitoring/ acoustics flat earth brigade who have not yet discovered just how inaccurate their studio monitoring/acoustics are.

June/July 2021 / 47

Craft

Thijs Peters The head of broadcast audio at the European Song Contest talk with GIJS FRIESEN about getting back to some semblance of normality

48 / June/July 2021

vacation to talk about the event from a broadcast audio perspective.

Can you introduce yourself and tell me how you got involved with ESC? I started off more than 30 years ago as an audio engineer at the Dutch Broadcasting Facilities (NOB Audio), but together with a partner I started a business for myself. I built a small Audio-OB van, with which we got hired a lot. So I built another one and slowly our business (dBmg) grew into a company with four trucks and 10 audio engineers. Five years ago I sold the company, and now I am working as a selfemployed audio specialist. Because of my many years of experience I had various connections with the NPO/NOS/AVROTROS. I was involved in the 2018 edition of ESC as well, so I think they found me because of my overall experience in the broadcasting industry in combination with my prior experience with the ESC.

/ Thijs Peters

As a Head of Broadcast Audio, what did your day-to-day work look like?

Most of my work was done long before there was anything going on at Rotterdam Ahoy, the venue where the contest took place. I worked closely together with Jeroen ten Brinke, the Head of Live Sound at ESC, and together we made a plan from scratch to make all the technical bits and pieces come together and we assembled an audio crew consisting of 40 audio engineers.

Photos: Ben Houdij and Nathan Reinds

T

he Eurovision Song Contest, the world's biggest live music event, took place in Rotterdam, The Netherlands this year.

Even in it's 65th year it remains very popular and according to the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) no less than 183 million viewers tuned in to this years' edition. The show was produced by the NPO/NOS/AVROTROS for the EBU and some of the biggest broadcast, lighting and live sound companies in The Netherlands worked together to deliver all the technical facilities and people. Broadcast companies NEP The Netherlands and EMGUnited joined forces and were the official technical supplier of Broadcast Services. They worked together with Ampco Flashlight (Official technical supplier of live and wireless audio).

Thijs Peters was Head of Broadcast Audio during this year's ESC. With the hustle and bustle of show preparation behind him, Resolution briefly interrupted Thijs' well earned

What I did there was checking if we were actually doing everything we were supposed to do. I was also in very close contact with the contest team, to function as an intermediary between them and the technical crew. There were 38 countries participating, so that means you also have 38 opinions from delegations, who all want the very best for their performance.

Sometimes it was really easy to do what they wanted, but sometimes it was almost impossible to do it in practice.

Do you have an example of that?

Well, you have to be able to read between the lines. If someone asks me to boost 0.5 dB at 8kHz on the lead vocals, then my conclusion is that they are pretty happy with the sound!

There are so many things that are not consistent during a performance, if someone is holding the mic in a slightly different way the sound is changed a little already. So boosting that 0.5 dB is possible, but it's impossible to hear the exact effect of this during the show.

Also we noticed that during the final, everyone was singing louder. You just have to use your ears and change the level or EQ accordingly.

also connected via MADI. They sent us their signal and we split that and gave it to the P.A. and monitoring people. But we also put the MADI signal back into the Dante network. We made sure everything was available on both MADI and Dante streams. For mixing the music, we built what we called 'The Music Room'.

This was a big container with two Lawo mc2-56 Mark III desks, a main and a backup desk.

Music Producer Thijmen Zinkhaan mixed all the music from there. So with this setup we created the 'international feed', which is the whole show except the commentary feed. Those feeds were done completely separately, as is usually done at

international events. Riedel, who was also responsible for all communications at the ESC, had an exclusive deal with the EBU to make all those commentary feeds. They used their own MediorNet system for this. It's all IP feeds going straight to the MCR of the countries.

So it's 'two of everything' for redundancy purposes. Can you tell me something about that?

Yes, two OB-vans, two FOH Digico SD7’s, two MON Digico SD7’s, two Lawo's for mixing music and everything was available in both Dante and MADI streams. Redundancy made the process

So it is not just a matter of recalling snapshots?

Switching the cameras was a fully automated process, all timecode based. But for audio, we didn't automate much. We did recall a snapshot per song, but there was no automation, except on the effects. Changing parameters on the reverb or delay units during a song can easily be automated.

Can you talk us through the complete audio setup?

Let's start at the FOH-world, where all the Shure Axient Digital receivers were located and from there they were connected via Dante & MADI to our Lawo desks in the OB-vans. We had two OB-vans (NEP UHD 1 and UHD 2) where the programme sound was created, so that is everything except the music.

UHD 2 was the main OB van, UHD 1 acted as the backup. At the audio heart of those trucks is a Lawo mc2 56 Mark III audio console. From there we used MADI to send the audio to the backup setups. The Playback-world (the place where all the music tracks were started, located between the F.O.H. and monitoring setup) was

If someone asks me to boost 0.5dB at 8kHz on the lead vocals, then my conclusion is that they are pretty happy

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June/July 2021 / 49

/ The Lawo mc2 56, the hub of audio distribution and final mix for the Eurovision final

a lot more difficult to set up but it also made things go more smoothly. Not only during the show, but also during rehearsals. Since it is a competition where every delegation gets very strict rehearsal times, you can use the backup systems if there are technical issues. So nobody has to wait for those issues to be fixed. But when switching OB-vans, everyone physically has to move. Not only the audio guys, but the

whole production team. And they have to be comfortable in the backup van as well. The headphones have to work, the intercoms have to work, but also pieces of paper you put on the wall as a reminder for something have to be in the backup van! Redundancy is important, but I think the way it is achieved is changing fast. If you work fully IP-based, redundancy is built-in.

You can add redundancy to connectivity by

/ Inside UHD1, the mobile home of the broadcast audio crew

50 / June/July 2021

using auto switching, so you will hardly notice at all that you are on a backup device. The mixing desk is just a control surface, there is no DSP in there, that's somewhere else in a rack. And that is also redundant. And if you are afraid the control surface may crash: in Lawo systems every fader bay is an independent computer.

So that way redundancy hardly has an impact on the workflow.

/ Craft

/ Theijs and head of live sound Jeroen ten Brinke

/ The Music Room, where the isolated music mix of the show was created before crowds and other audio elements for the international feed were added in the OB Van

Would 'IP all the way' have been an option for the ESC? We did a lot of interconnectivity via MADI streams. This is still much more consistent I think and MADI is very easy to use. You just pick up the signal and divide it, and if you work with a backup setup, this is a very easy way of working. IP based systems have a different approach. Networking is always from a users' perspective who addresses himself to a source.

And in broadcast we are used to directing a source to a user. It takes some time for engineers and manufacturers to get used to this new IP reality. I think there is still some work to be done to make it more user friendly.

What about Cloud Production, was that used for the ESC in some way?

No, we didn't do anything in the cloud. NEP The Netherlands tried to do several music productions in the cloud, but it didn't work. The music mixer isn't on site if you do things in the cloud. He or she is in a control room somewhere else. But to do his/her job well, he/she needs to have a chat with artists or management or

whatever and needs to be able to walk to the stage to see what’s going on. So if you drive to the venue with a truck and some equipment anyway, you may as well bring a full scale music truck. I don't think music festivals can be done in the cloud. And maybe I'm not the only one thinking this, because NEP The Netherlands recently built a brand new music truck. This was after all the cloud experiments they did.

What was the most remarkable thing you encountered during the ESC in your role?

Well, it's not something that has to do with audio or technology or anything. At ESC we had two companies working together, NEP and EMGUnited. They are seen as competitors, but no one of these companies could supply the whole package by themselves, so the CEO's of both companies decided to work together. The operational crew was very sceptical at first. But when it all came together, they actually learned a lot from each other. This has never been done before. I think ESC brought the companies closer together, especially in the operational department. In the end we all do the same job.

There were no conflicts and everyone was taking care of each other. That is really cool I think.

Did COVID have a big impact on the production process?

Well, we had to keep some more distance and we had to get tested every 48 hours at the

on-site testing facility. But other than that things weren't so different for us. Of course, we knew quite late in the process that there was going to be an audience present. We had a scenario in which there was no audience at all and we did some tests with a pre-recorded audience track. When this track was started, it was also played back through the PA system quite loudly. We picked that up with the ambience mics to mix the acoustics of the venue with the recording. It worked out very well, but in the end we didn't have to use it because thankfully 3500 audience members were allowed to enter Rotterdam Ahoy. For all the wireless microphones, my colleague Aart Heus of Ampco Flashlight (official technical partner of live and wireless audio) had a neat system in place to make sure every artist had his or her own personal mic. Pre-COVID it was never a problem if you would use the same microphone for multiple singers, but I think now we will not go back to that! In general I am very happy about how things went and how we handled everything.

And now it’s all finished...what are you going to do next?

I now have a few weeks off, then I start a new project at EMG-United. I'm going to take care of the audio crew, I will make sure they have all the skills they need for their job, both professionally and socially. Most engineers are very dedicated to their job, but there's more in life than work!

It's better for everyone if there is a good work-life balance. Furthermore I still have good contacts with NEP. The cooperation between the two companies at ESC made everyone realise you can sometimes benefit from doing things together. And educating your (freelance) people may just be one of those things where everyone benefits!

It takes some time for engineers and manufacturers to get used to this new IP reality / UHD 1, the main OB Van for the event

June/July 2021 / 51

Back to Business

guided the Philharmonic through an explosion in the recording of sound and vision — both as an augmentation of its archive, as content for broadcast, and latterly via social media and streaming. His work in New York has garnered him three Grammy awards, all connected to his work with John Adams on On the Transmigration of Souls, which he co-produced with the composer. He’s also worked with Lorin Maazel on The Complete Mahler Symphonies, Live; Deutsche Grammophon’s New York Philharmonic DG Concerts CDs and downloads; the Grammy-nominated Sweeney Todd: Live at the New York Philharmonic and sets for the New York Philharmonic Special Editions label among many others.

Our chat interrupts his preparations for the return of the Orchestra to the annual Bravo! Vail event in the Colorado ski resort during July, and comes as he is assessing the success of its first couple of New York-based parks concerts and socially distanced events of 2021 — the first having been being at the West Side’s new ‘Shed’ space at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, followed by the annual Memorial Day concert that you can see on Phil+.

Lawrence Rock As the New York Philharmonic, along with its home town, begins to return to something approximating normality, we talk to the Orchestra’s audio director about his evolving role, the challenges of streaming, mic choices, and saving a lost year

T

he venerable New York Philharmonic was inspiringly agile in its response to the pandemic’s encroachment on life in the spring of last year. Almost immediately, it began to enlist its long rollcall of talent for home performances, and put out content over its social media and YouTube channels that branched out in scope and scale as 2020 dragged on. Come Autumn/Fall, its musicians and technicians were out on the streets of Manhattan performing for its followers. Then, in February of this year, it launched its NYPhil+ subscription streaming service, to both leverage its considerable archive of classic performances — which are being remastered for it — as well as present new events from its programme for the upcoming season and beyond.

Lawrence Rock — who, in reliable audio engineer style, quickly insists we call him ‘Larry’ — has been audio director of the Phil’ since 1997, with a purview that puts him on point for all audio activities including recording, 52 / June/July 2021

broadcasting, and live sound. So, to say he plays a key role in how the general public interacts with the Orchestra in real life and online would be an understatement.

Having cut his teeth in radio and then with the symphony Orchestra in Chicago, he has

Does it feel good to get back to something akin to normal events?

I spent a lot of last year preparing performances made from iPhone recordings of individual musicians. It was a good thing to do to be visible and audible, but it really ran its course.

From last fall, we started to do various things — mostly location video captures. The first event we did indoors was in April for a small invited audience.

Then you did the Memorial Day event at St. John the Divine?

This year we streamed it live, too — which is always a little scary because you rely on the internet. That was also with a live audience, but very distant. We didn't have a stage this year to spread the performers out. There’s an eight second reverb time there as well, so it's a bit peculiar as, as it goes.

I assume the biggest change within your job has come been the rise in the amount you’re recording, especially with the streaming and filming the concerts?

Yeah, it really has changed, and ever since March 13th of last year, video has figured prominently. There are requirements for doing audio for video, including — of course — the sampling rate. The video standard is 48kHz, but all the archival recording I've been doing, ever since 96kHz became practical, has been at 96kHz. You can convert rates, but when it's live you have to decide about that. You're also always having to keep in mind what’s going to happen to this audio... Dynamic range is another can of worms.

Do you just have to make an educated guess about limiting dynamic range? It seems that, ultimately, all you can do is make a call based on taste and experience?

Yes. The problem — either feeding it live or uploading it — is what algorithm will be applied to it as a matter of course by YouTube, Facebook, Amazon or whatever. Regardless of what I do, it's going to go through something else, and then the data compression.

You don't want to feed something that's wide open and totally uncompressed hoping for the

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best down the line, because it's inconsistent. Nor can you pretend what you're doing is exactly what's going to be represented when people are streaming. So it ends up being an approximation. It’s a bit of a shot in the dark, because you don't know — and it can vary from time to time, instance to instance. On Memorial Day, we began with the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 — strings and harp — and it starts very quietly, but it has to be audible. At the same time, it can't be like pop radio.

Did you work on how the audio would be presented for the NYPhil+ streaming service?

That’s something that's been post-produced, so you can package it and do what’s necessary.

For one thing, you're uploading a file to the streaming service’s specifications, so it definitely gives you an advantage. It’s not so much the case when we're linking to YouTube and Facebook.

really widely spaced. There, all the wind players were 12ft apart so, even for a small orchestra, they were over a very large area. There's no way you could ever get a blend. With St. John The Divine, we were a little closer, but the acoustic in there is so reverberant, you would really have to have people tightly seated to get a blend and control that — which of course, is desirable. I hang a couple of mics for the mains, and you get some of the main floor and the ambience, but there's no way to get a natural blend, so it was inevitable that we would have to mic every player.

For video, they have to accept that microphones would be visible — and I've done my battles with TV directors about microphones. Some don't want to have anything hanging over the orchestra, but they're okay with standard mics. Then others are just the reverse... Then there are some that don't want to see mics anywhere!

I noticed a lot of close mic placements on the livestreams, more than I was expecting, Is that to do with performer spacing due to social distancing?

Besides St. John The Divine, there was another Episcopal Church that we worked in — St. Barts in mid-Manhattan — where everybody was

It looks like the Schoeps Colettes that you are using, or is it the smaller CCMs? It's the Colettes. I first learned of Schoeps in the 70s; what really put the brand on the map here was the introduction of the Colette series. TV sound crews brought in Schoeps mics with these skinny little cables, and this was a brand

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/ Back to Business

and all we were able to do was adjust the acoustics. One of the tricks in a hall that is not particularly live is to either use the stage extension or get sheets of plywood — typically four by eight feet — spread out on the seats.

We used 60 of those to bring up some high frequency — you know, 'air'. That can really can make a big difference in that overall ambience.

new thing. We’d been hanging big multi-pattern mics over the orchestra and it was very visible.

It was a while before we got the stand versions, but [straight away] you could use a lot of different capsules and different pickup patterns in the system with the same preamp — not a big switchable thing — and Schoeps developed new capsules as time went by.

It's really the go-to mic for me — on anything that's visual, of course, and then also live sound and recording. That has lot to do with the whole package; you're not having to put a typical mic stand with a mic and the cable draping down and all that — it's much more elegant. They're great-sounding mics and extremely well built.

Most of the Schoeps mics I have are about 30 years old, even my ‘newer’ capsules have been around for about 25 years. It’s just a solid system.

Most of the audio equipment out there, especially anything digital, becomes obsolete — except for microphones, they maintain their value. Also, the service Schoeps provide is the best bar-none. They’re just fantastic in the way they handle that.

Are you using tight polar patterns to make sure you're focusing on the individual instruments or using a wider cardioid to create a blend?

Some of each. If I only had one microphone of a given pattern that I could use, it would be the Collette MK21, which is Schoeps’ sub-cardioid or wide cardioid. You can almost use it as an omnidirectional mic, but you can also use it as a spot mic — it will work and it just sounds great for anything — depending upon the location.

What I tend to do is use sub-cardioids downstage, for the concertmaster and the violins that are farther from brass and percussion, and as I get back to where you're closer to some of that, then I kind of go in a more directional pattern and use the cardioids.

That’s the MK4, and then the MK41 — the hyper-cardioid, if I have a string player right in front of a percussion.

I also use the MK2S capsules — which are the Omni capsules that are used widely; Decca use 54 / June/July 2021

them for just about everything, definitely anything recorded in a live performance. I also have the [MK2H] linear omnidirectional mics, that are more for soloists. We did a video capture of a cellist playing all the Bach suites with a couple of those, in a church. When you get them in the right position, you get the presence and the ambience all with one pair of mics. That is, of course, the nicest way to go. It's very natural sounding.

How do you go about capturing an atmosphere for events? Do you mic the audience specifically or use boundary mics for ambience?

When I’m working with TV sound engineers, I do the orchestra mix and then somebody on the TV truck will add audience mics to be able to control bringing up the applause. They’ll typically use some kind of shotgun mics, pointing into the audience. I wouldn’t do that, as a rule, though. For one thing, you tend to only hear a small group of people clapping.

So as part of a typical event, I will have one set of main microphones, but also some ambient mics that have the ability to capture the totality of the event, including the audience. So you hear the audience in perspective with the ambience of the orchestra. I guess you might say I go for a layered approach of getting most of the sound from a main array, which typically is omnidirectional mics across the orchestra, and then spot mics for sections of the orchestra. And then a couple of mics hanging for ambience that are a little farther back and higher up. Balancing between them all is the trick.

When you come to put together a live recording, how much is there a to-and-fro between you and the musical director? Do you simply have to react to what they’re telling you regarding how it's going to be laid out?

The vast majority of my career has been live recording, where the layout is the layout — that’s even been the case with some of the session recordings that I've done. I did a whole series of the Dvořák symphonies in Milwaukee,

What's your recording rig?

I use Merging’s Pyramix or Vegas Sequoia; I personally like Sequoia for editing. I was an early user of Sonic Solutions, which was developed by people who used to work at Lucasfilm. I noticed that broadcasters, especially in Germany, all use Sequoia. Here in the States, I know of some producers that love Sequoia and then many who love Pyramix.

What I have settled on, because it just sounds so bloody good, is the Merging Technologies Horus interface. It’s just so clean and it just works and there are just some things about its approach that make complete sense. I've been using MADI, but now as part of the Horus there's also network audio that’s AES67. So, the Horus is the basis, with Sequoia and PCs — because it's much easier to build a custom computer that has exactly what you need, and is rackmounted.

So how are you sharing signals and feeds with FOH and others?

With TV trucks, I would feed them the MADI they’re accustomed to. When it's really critical to have, you know, a split and isolation — and no reliance on clock being shared or anything like that, we'll actually use mic splitters. I prefer passive transformer splitters to active, which add a whole extra layer of electronics. I have some good ones that I had custom-built, that have the Jensen transformers everybody likes.

Then you really have complete isolation and one party can do whatever they want with whatever preamps converters so on, and I do my thing. So there are three levels: the mic splitting, and then AES67 or MADI, those are the most common ways of sharing signal.

So what are you looking forward to from the new programme, what exciting projects have you got lined up for later in the year?

Well, there's one more thing this early part of the summer in a park adjacent to the Metropolitan Opera building the Lincoln centre campus, where we have one concert with our music director Jaap van Zweden. Then after that, Bravo! Vail in Colorado, a music festival we've been going to for about 20 years.

Colorado Public Radio does live broadcasts from there, so I'll do a separate radio mix. They have a Dante system. This year, we're actually doing a live video stream — typical of the era — where I will do a similar thing, I will be linking to that and doing a separate mix. Then there's a break until... well, there's some talk about something towards the end of August and Broadway reopens along with the Philharmonic in September. That’s a big deal.

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