Resolution V6.8 Nov/Dec 2007 by Resolution

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

noveMBer/deCeMBer 2007 v6.8

Donal Hodgson on The Police reunion and the new Millennia Steve Lipson talks us through his new room and the way he works How Machinima will democratise the ﬁlm making process CD’s future as the high-quality, premium-price-tag format Meet your maker: Chris Woolf — Rycote Ten instruments you seldom record REVIEWS: UA 2-LA-2 • SSL Duende • SE USB2200A • RND Portico 5033 Prism MMA-4XR • Violet Flamingo • Acoustic Energy AE22 • Nuendo 4

Designed to Adapt Nature has come up with clever ways to let some animals adapt quickly to their environments. At Genelec our new 8200 / 7200 DSP Series also have the ability to adapt to their environment, by design. AutoCal™, Genelec’s optimisation software takes into account level, distance and 8-band equalization to adapt each monitor loudspeaker to its immediate environment. What’s more it does it as a system with network control of up to 30 adaptable loudspeakers, including subwoofers.

For Mac and PC

On screen, GLM software uses its Interactive Response Editor to give visual indication, loudspeaker-by-loudspeaker, of exactly what the response of each loudspeaker is.

In 1978 Genelec brought active monitoring to the professional audio world. An essential part of our active design is the room response controls. They are included in every Genelec analogue model to help integrate them to the listening environment. To further this, Genelec Product Specialists travel the world providing system calibration services to ensure optimum monitoring performance for our large system customers. The Genelec DSP Series now brings this commitment, along with our acoustical knowledge and experience, directly to every customer.

AutoCal™, cleverly designed to give you the room to adapt.

www.g enelec.com

november/december 2007 v6.8 iSSn 1477-4216 AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

News & Analysis

Leader

News

Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.

16 70

Products

New introductions and announcements.

Headroom

Revisiting the NS10, PC speaker mix and sound design.

Craft 16

Mastering studio turns multimedia full service provider and redeﬁ nes audio’s position in the process.

Steve Lipson

MSM Studios

Combining talents as an engineer, producer and musician, he talks us through his new room and the way he works.

Donal Hodgson

Chris Tsangarides

Ten

How a move to the coast and the creation of his own facility has enabled him to continue cutting it in the economic climate.

Instruments you seldom record.

Meet your maker

Chris Woolf — Rycote’s ideas man on the art and science of microphone protection.

On The Police reunion, recording it through Millennia preamps and Sting’s own studio Steerpike.

Business 56

CD: a format with a future?

We predict a rosy future for the CD as the high-quality, premium-price-tag format in a downloadable world.

Technology

Machinima

Bastard child of machine and cinema represents the democratisation of ﬁ lm making technology. There’s audio opportunity too.

Your business

The Monarchy may not be diminished but the Royalty certainly is. Daley cries ‘Long live the ka-ching!

Reviews 24 26 28 29 30

Steinberg Nuendo 4 SSL Duende Neve 8801 Prism Sound MMA-4XR SE Electronics USB2200A

editoriaL editorial director: Zenon Schoepe tel: +44 1444 410675 email: zen@resolutionmag.com editorial office: Po Box 531, Haywards Heath rH16 4Wd, uK Contributors: rob James, George Shilling, Jon thornton, Keith Holland, Keith Spencer-allen, neil Hillman, nigel Jopson, andy day, Philip newell, Bob Katz, dan daley, John Watkinson

Slaying Dragons

32 34 36 38 40 42

Technology and electricity are inseparable, John takes his own sort of look at the matter.

Universal Audio 2-LA-2 Violet Design Flamingo PreSonus FireStudio & MSR Acoustic Energy AE22 RND Portico 5033 Sony Vegas Pro 8 advertiSeMent SaLeS european Sales, Clare Sturzaker, tel: +44 1342 717459 email: clare@resolutionmag.com uS Sales, Jeff turner, tel: +1 415 455 8301 email: jeff@resolutionmag.com

ProduCtion and LaYout dean Cook, dean Cook Productions, tel: +44 1273 467579 email: dean@resolutionmag.com

IBC Awards 2007 IBC International Honour for Excellence The established IBC International Honour for Excellence is given each year for an outstanding industry contribution. Winner of the IBC2007 International Honour for Excellence is:

Steve Wozniak

One of the founders of Apple Computers who changed the face of the media industry forever.

The IBC Innovation Awards Celebrating successful partnerships The IBC Innovation Awards, inaugurated in 2006, celebrate excellence in the creation of rounded technical and operational solutions. What makes them unique is that the submissions come from both the technical supplier and the end user.

Winners of the IBC Innovation Awards Judges Award CNN Digital Newsgathering Content Creation CNN Digital Newsgathering Content Management Instant Tapeless Production at RTL-TVi Content Delivery ITN Nemesys System

IBC 40th Anniversary Award This year is the 40th anniversary of IBC and to mark it we presented a unique award to the

BBC Natural History Unit which this year is celebrating its own 50th anniversary.

Photograph ÂŠ BBC Natural History Unit

Full details at: www.ibc.org/awards

IBC2008 Exhibition 12 - 16 September Conference 11 - 15 September RAI Amsterdam

news appointments BiLL WoodS has b e e n a p p o i n t e d g r o u p s a l e s a n d marketing director for MC2 Audio, XTA and Quested Monitoring Systems. Bill has been living with his family in the USA for the last three years and for some of that time worked on a freelance basis representing Quested. He has now returned to the UK. Quested Monitoring Systems has appointed Afﬁ nity Audio Ltd as its UK distributor. Beyerdynamic GB is now UK distributor for MC2 Audio.

univerSaL audio has moved from Santa Cruz to new, larger premises in Scotts Valley, California. UA has experienced ‘high double digit’ revenue growth every year for the last ﬁ ve years and the new headquarters has room for continued growth. Universal Audio, 1700 Green Hills Rd, Scotts Valley, CA 95066-4926, USA. dK-teCHnoLoGieS H a S a p p o i n t e d Carsten Rauhut as sales manager for its German office. He previously worked for Sony Deutschland, Sony Broadcast, AVID and SAT-1.

London-BaSed Sound Network has won DPA Microphones’ 2007 D i s t r i b u t o r o f t h e Ye a r a w a rd . (l-r): DPA Microphones sales and marketing director Poul Koza; Sound Network directors Ralph Dunlop and Pete Wandless; DPA co-founder Morten Stove.

©2007 S2 Publications Ltd. all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication, but neither

Leader

the proliferation of devices that can play back all that wonderful entertainment to those goingplaces types with time enough to enjoy it raises issues. the first thing i want to know is how they manage to bust enough holes in their day to make their watching and listening anything other than token worship of their new technology gadgets. the next thing is how these ‘entertainment’ interludes impact on their ‘real’ lives — are they as good to work after watching last night’s comedy as they are on some talk radio or that Best of collection they got for Christmas? are they really watching and listening or are they just pretending to for the benefit of others? i remember that when the original cassette Walkman alerted the public consciousness to its existence observers drew attention to two things. they questioned the social responsibility of Walkman users who were among us but not really with us as they had sunk instead into their own alternative environment. While the worries about these ‘disengaged and distracted’ individuals walking out in front of cars might have been far fetched i am sure that those who choose to text and walk must bring everything into their homes on their shoes. the other Walkman effect was the intrusion of headphone spill and that is still key to the personal entertainment experience of today. except that while we may mix and master for 5.1 dvd, Cd, the single, the radio play, the mp3 and for PC speakers (see Headroom p70) the reality is that most on-the-hoof listeners are using earbuds. aside the wide variance in performance between models (just as there is between proper, real headphones) earbuds couple to the ear canal in a way that is quite unlike any other process. don’t misconstrue my direction here as concern for the auditory system of the poor, misunderstood and exploited consumer; my real concern is for the fact that an awful lot of programme output is listened to on these terrible things yet there is no reference for production professionals to work towards. the vision of grey-haired mastering engineers crunching down to mp3 while listening through a pair of earbuds is quaint but unrealistic. it’s not enough that most consumers are listening to compressed audio but they’re also listening to it through crappy earbuds. it probably isn’t doing their hearing any good but it also creates an expectation of what audio sounds like. it’s about a generation getting used to the idea of bit reduction died straight into their heads. Zenon Schoepe

APRS honours Sound Fellows The UK APRS Association’s a t i t s 6 0 t h p r e s i d e n t , A n n i v e r s a r y S i r G e o r g e L u n c h Martin, CBE to h o n o u re d a Chris Blackwell, n u m b e r o f p r o d u c e r r e n o w n e d a n d f o u n d e r individuals with o f I s l a n d APRS Sound Records, audio Fellowships in c o n s u l t a n t recognition of Sean Davies, their special p r o d u c e r contribution to Alan Parsons, the art, science e n g i n e e r and industry K e i t h G r a n t , o f s o u n d Glyn Johns, George Martin, Keith Grant, Ken Townsend. producer Glyn recording. Johns and EMI’s former technical wizard Sound Fellowships were awarded by the Ken Townsend.

S2 Publications Ltd or the editor can be held responsible for its contents. the views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the Publishers. Printed by the Grange Press, Butts rd, Southwick, West Sussex, Bn42 4eJ.

S2 Publications Ltd. registered in england and Wales. Company number: 4375084. registered office: equity House, 128-136 High Street, edgware, Middlesex Ha8 7tt.

resolution

Riedel intercoms at Rugby World Cup

Riedel’s Rental Service Division provided ten stadia in France and England with its Artist Digital Matrix intercom and Digital Trunked Radio systems for the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Riedel conﬁ gured an infrastructure consisting of digital matrix intercoms, digital party-line systems and professional mobile radios to facilitate communications at the individual sites. An Artist 64 digital intercom system was used in each stadium alongside ﬁ ve control panels, six C3 2-channel digital beltpacks and Riedel’s RiFace. Riedel also provided a digital trunked radio installation for each stadium. ‘The organising committee is utilising the Tetra systems for its logistics and security,’ said Simon Korzen, Riedel’s rental project manager. ‘Each stadium is using about 15-20 talk groups, making it easier to locate certain individuals who handle different responsibilities. Riedel is not just providing equipment but also offers solutions to help simplify event planning behind the scenes.’

CRL analogue TV processor line ends Circuit Research Labs, parent company of Orban/CRL, has announced the final run of production for its CRL analogue television products. These CRL units have served television stations worldwide for more than 20 years. The emphasis is now on new digital technology for the CRL and Autogram product lines. ‘For a product line like this to have a 20 year life span in this fast changing industry in almost unheard of,’ said Orban/CRL president, chair man, and CEO Jay Brentlinger. ‘We won’t ever see this kind of equipment life span again.’ CRL introduced its fi rst digital product this year. The Autogram/CRL DDA-8+USB is a high resolution, all digital professional grade 8 output digital audio distribution amplifi er designed to isolate and distribute digital audio data formatted in accordance with AES-EBU specifi cations.

SuBSCriBe www.resolutionmag.com annual Subscriptions: uK £37.00, europe £46.00, rest of the World £53.00

November/December 2007

news NY AES biggest for decade

appointments

The organisers of the 123rd AES Convention in New York in October claim that 20,674 attendees visited more than 445 exhibits and more than 150 conference events, making this the largest AES Show in more than ten years. ‘This show’s attendance demonstrated the diversity of the audio industry,’ said AES executive director Roger Furness. ‘Engineers and producers walked the aisles alongside acclaimed design consultants, live sound engineers and broadcasters, students and musicians. AES is where advocates for improved audio meet — regardless of their area of specialty and professional status. This is exactly the unique, inﬂ uential and powerful constituency that the AES is proud to represent.’ The next US AES will be held in San Francisco, 2–5 October 2008.

Producer/writer Lenky Marsden has equipped his area 39 Studios in Jamaica with a SSL aWS 900+ along with three full XLogic X-racks to add 24 more channels of dynamics. He has worked with Sean Paul, Christina aguilera and Sinead o’Conner among others.

M 149 is top choice for Zobler and Duke

DK CEO Karesten Hansen and Jean-Baptiste Lannoy of Monitoring Company. aS Part of a restructuring of its international distributor and dealer n e t w o r k , D K - Te c h n o l o g i e s h a s appointed Monitoring Company to distribute is range of audio and video products in France. CLaire inGLiS has b e e n a p p o i n t e d assistant to studio m a n a g e r L u c y Jones at London’s Angel Studios. She previously worked for one and a half years as receptionist at Metropolis Studios. tranSaudio GrouP has been appointed the US distributor for Paul Wolff’s Tonelux Designs discrete audio products.

Far Heath reﬁts

Now celebrating its twentieth birthday, F a r H e a t h R e c o r d i n g S t u d i o s i n Northamptonshire, UK has completed a total refurbishment. The studio has been rebuilt from the foundations up, increasing the size and quality of the rooms, and adding even more windows to make the most of the views over Ravesthorpe lake. The control and live rooms have been designed by Whitemark and now boast a SSL AWS 9OO+ running Pro Tools HD3 with main monitors by Matt Dobson of Exigy. ‘The main reason for the refurb was to get the monitoring spot on — the guys at Whitemark have done a fantastic job with this,’ said owner Angus Wallace. ‘We have also invested in the Aviom headphone system which has been a huge success.’ Over the years, Far Heath has played host to The Prodigy, Spiritualized, Love and Rockets, The Fall, Bill Nelson and Louise Rutkowski.

SiMon BLaCKWood has been appointed MD of Turbosound. H e f o u n d e d a n d grew the Spirit mixer business in the early 1990s and most recently was MD of Focusrite/Novation.

Jazz pianist and producer George Duke and recording engineer Erik Zobler have reﬁ ned their equipment list and techniques over 25 years, a process that earned the duo backto-back Best Jazz Vocal Album Grammys in 2001 and 2002 for their work with Dianne Reeves. Yet they’ve recently discovered the Neumann M 149 Tube. Zobler was recording Teena Marie with his long-time favourite mic for her, a Sony 800G, but put up the Neumann out of curiosity and was amazed. Duke bought three as a result. ‘We have a rebuilt Telefunken 250 that we’ve used on vocals forever,’ said Duke. ‘It’s a great microphone and I’ll always love

it, but since the Neumann M 149 Tubes arrived, it seldom gets used. The majority of the time, we ﬁ nd that the M 149 Tube gives us the best sound when dealing with singers who sing hard, or who have mid range issues. We’ve made such a radical shift and I can hardly believe it! We’re forever trying new microphones, but until now, we always gravitated back to our standbys.’ ‘Normally, engineers speak of presence in the 2.5kHz to 10kHz range,’ said Zobler. ‘The Neumann M 149 Tube has a unique low-mid presence. It brings the voice forward in a “meaty”, substantial way that almost every singer that we’ve used it on likes.’

donGYanG diGitaL of Korea has won Studer’s International Distributor of the Year award. (l-r): Ian Staddon (Studer), K W Lee, Myoung-HO Seo and Soo-Yeun Woo of Dongyang Digital. European Distributor of the Year was Norway’s LydRommet.

Subscribe now online at www.resolutionmag.com UK £37 • Europe £46 • Rest of the World £53

November/December 2007

resolution

news appointments

M-audio HaS changed its distribution model in the Benelux and joined forces with its sister company Digidesign to maximize resources and infrastructure. M-Audio Benelux sales will be managed from the Digidesign Benelux ofﬁ ce with Digidesign territory manager Sander van der Reijken (left) assuming responsibility for M-Audio and Digidesign sales operations for the Benelux. He has been joined by Roger Bisschops (right) as the new Benelux M-Audio sales manager. GC Pro has been appointed primary US sales channel for Fairlight’s Xynergi Media Production Centre. The Xynergi will be featured at several GC Pro locations and supported by GC Pro’s team of local account managers.

PMC and fluid ﬂow into mastering

tim debney and nick Watson previously met and worked at town House Studios, London and decided in 2006 to put their collective experience to use by opening a mastering facility of their own. fluid Mastering’s aim is to provide world class mastering with ﬂexible pricing in recognition that an increasing number of artists will release their material on a self-financed basis in the future. PMC BB5 XBd-a monitoring was selected for their 6m x 5m room powered by Bryston amplification. ‘the transition to the new studio was pleasantly surprising; with the move from soffit-mounted to freestanding the difference is amazing,’ said nick. ‘the sound is very open and unforced but at the same time accurate and focussed.’ ‘You immediately hear the effect of every move you make with eQ or compression, which for a mastering studio is exactly what you need,’ added tim. ‘it’s by far the best room either of us has worked in.’

Goldstein goes ITB with Sonnox

PreSonus has appointed Hyperactive Benelux as its distributor for the Benelux. (l-r) Mark Williams, PreSonus director of international sales and Vladimir Kastelan, CEO of Hyperactive Benelux. riCK BoLin has been appointed as CEO designate of the IABM. He will take up the appointment in October, taking over from the current CEO Roger Crumpton in 2008. uK indePendent system integrator dB Broadcast has appointed Martyn Wheatley as finance director. He has worked in the broadcast industry since 1990 and was formerly ﬁ nance director of Independent Television News (ITN). SennHeiSer eLeCtroniCS C o r p o r a t i o n h a s appointed Sebnem A l t u g a s p r o j e c t manager for marketing communications. She has nearly a decade of experience in marketing and communications, marketing research, and advertising and ﬁ lm.

Mix engineer Jason Goldstein is now working fully ‘in-the-box’ due in part to the Sonnox range of Oxford plug-ins. ‘Sonnox plug-ins make up at least half the plug-ins on every mix I’ve done for over a year,’ said Goldstein. In that span of time, Goldstein mixed Beyonce’s Grammy-winning B-Day album and The Roots’ Grammy-nominated Game Theory, among others. ‘The Oxford is my total go-to EQ, and the Inflator goes on the stereo bus of every single mix. I also use the Transient Modulator and the Oxford Dynamics plugins all the time. ‘I used the EQ all over Beyonce’s lead vocal and the background vocals, for example. I also use the EQ on sweeter sounding instruments like acoustic guitars and strings. The transparency of this EQ is key — I can

be very surgical, very speciﬁ c with this EQ, but it’s also smooth and musical. It has the 1-4 EQ curve setting, and I lean towards 2 or 3 because it’s a wider bell, and more musical. A lot of the plug-in EQs out there allow you to get too narrow, which is just unnatural. People tend to make really tight cues and then add a lot of gain, which results in phase shift. With the Oxford, it’s a wider cue, a smoother bell, and the shelving EQ is also less drastic than others.’ When using the Inﬂ ator, he has the input at zero or –1 and puts the effect at 100% and sets the curve somewhere in the –20 to –30 range. ‘I feel like when I push it up too high, I get more of the apparent loudness, but I lose some of the dynamics as a result,’ he said. ‘So, keeping it in the –20 range gives me the best of both.’

resolution

Millennia archiving for Library of Congress

The US Library of Congress has selected six Millennia LOC archiving systems for its new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpeper. The LOC units are installed in each of the Library’s transcription rooms, scheduled to go online next year. The Millennia archiving systems will provide analogue preamplification and equalisation for the Library’s collection of LPs, 78s, 16-inch transcriptions, Edison Cylinders, acoustics, and many other historic electro-mechanical formats (estimated at nearly two million units). ‘The technologies being implemented at the NAVCC are unprecedented in scale and unmatched in their capabilities anywhere else in the world,’ said Greg Lukow, NAVCC director.j ‘Not only will these technologies enable exponential increases in the production of high-quality preservation copies of materials that are deteriorating in their current formats, but they will provide researchers with better, faster access to more of these materials in the future.’

T h e n e w N AV C C archiving facility spans 45 acres, with 90 miles of shelves, hosts nearly 6 million pieces of AV material along with rooms crammed full of every known playback machine. The archives include 124 temperature-controlled nitrate ﬁ lm vaults, a commercial ﬁ lm development lab, and one wing dedicated to cleaning and restoration. The complex of archives and technology is housed mostly underground beneath Pony Mountain in Culpeper, Virginia and the facility was built with private funds from David Packard (son of Hewlett-Packard founder) as the largest private gift ever to the US legislative branch.

November/December 2007

news appointments BroadCaSt BioniCS has been appointed UK distributor for Axia IPAudio networking products. The Axia IP-Audio system allows broadcasters to build audio networks of any size using standard Switched Ethernet to connect a few rooms or an entire facility.

orf takes three dS-00s for radio

audio aGent LLC has been named exclusive manufacturer’s representative for the range of PMI Audio Group’s audio brands and Blue Sky International in select US East Coast and West Coast territories.

A&H’s Bob Goleniowski and SunInfonet’s Neeraj Chandra. aLLen & Heath has appointed SunInfonet as its distributor in India. The company will manage sales, distribution and service from its HQ in Delhi. after CoMPLetinG a two-year Broadcast Engineering course at Ravensbourne College, Chris King has been appointed as a systems engineer by UK systems integration specialist Broadcast Networks. aBLeton inC has expanded its US sales force. Terry Hardin has joined as senior account manager. Working closely with him are Ableton product specialists Huston Singletary and Laura Escudé.

austrian broadcaster orf’s central radio facility in vienna comprises small to medium-sized studios used for recording radio talk shows and small live music shows as well as high-level postproduction. it recently purchased three Soundtracs dS-00 consoles — two for its vienna facility, the third for its eisenstadt regional studio. ‘orf have used Soundtracs consoles for some time, having had dS3s previously, and are familiar with the way they work,’ said othmar eichinger of diGiCo’s austrian distributor ton eichinger. ‘the operators are very happy with the dS-00, it is certainly the most cost-effective solution for orf and, as it is very similar to operate to the dS3, the learning curve is quick. in fact, there was no training needed at all.’ Meanwhile, a diGiCo d1 Live console has been installed in the Landestheater in Lower austria.

Rizzo buys into 6iDPs and TS112

CroWn audio has promoted Brian Pickowitz to the role of business development manager for touring s o u n d . H e w a s previously project lead engineer with responsibility for co-developing the Crown Commercial Ampliﬁ er range. CoMMunitY ProfeSSionaL Loudspeakers has appointed Mike Marr as US Eastern Regional sales manager. He joins from independent manufacturers’ representative ﬁ rm RJ Marketing. B o S C H CoMMuniCationS Systems has appointed Gary Pace as national sales manager for Dynacord in the US.

Producer/mixer Carmen Rizzo recently remixed a Dave Stewart song written for Greenpeace that featured the likes of Sarah McLaughlin, Annie Lennox, and Imogen Heap. Rizzo added an electro world beat and called in Toumany Kouyate (Senegal), Kate Havnevik (Norway), Joanna Stevens (UK), Dimitris Mahlis (Greece), Satnam Ramgotra (India/Canada) and others to represent Greenpeace’s worldwide reach.

It was the first project he’d used his Tannoy Precision 6iDPs and TS112 iDP sub on. ‘On the fi rst listen I was so impressed I couldn’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I tend to go through speakers often. I had two sets of monitors, a large nearfi eld and a small nearfi eld. When I got these they left. For me, to get rid of two pairs of monitors and go to one, is saying something.’

resolution

Pyramix is the orchestral choice The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) has taken delivery of a Merging Pyramix as part of an upgrade of the orchestra’s recording equipment. The Pyramix system is based around a Mergingapproved PC and two Mykerinos X30 DSP cards, with MADI and AES I-O daughterboard options. ‘I initially became familiar with Pyramix using the Native software-only version,’ said Jim Donahue, recording engineer at Boston radio station WGBH 89.7 and engineer for the BSO’s broadcasts on that station for 16 years. ‘It was Tim Martyn of Phoenix Audio, a long-time Pyramix user, who suggested the BSO evaluate a complete system. In record time, Dennis at Independent Audio put together a full DSP card-based system for us to use over the summer, and it worked ﬂ awlessly.’ Meanwhile, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has taken delivery of a Merging Pyramix which will be used to record concerts and allow the CSO to edit and master them ‘in-house’ for CD, DVD and SACD release. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra h a s u n d e r t a k e n i t s o w n m e d i a production for some time, releasing the recordings on its Resound label, and the purchase was part of an upgrade of its recording facilities.

Pow! Pix in New York Genelec DSP ﬁrst

Postproduction facility Pow! Pix has become the first facility in New York to acquire a Genelec DSP Series self-calibrating monitoring system. It has installed a 5.1 system with three 8250As, two 8240As and a 7270A DSP active subwoofer in a newly constructed audio mixing suite, which runs a Digidesign Icon. Pow! Pix specialises in the rapid turn-around of long-form episodic TV programming and broadcast specials. The company began with a single Avid system and now has 14 providing SD and HD postproduction. ‘The Genelec DSP Series monitoring system was the perfect solution for what we wanted to do, which was expand our audio capabilities further into the realm of high defi nition,’ explained Bob Barzyk, president of Pow! Pix. ‘We’re getting increasing amounts of HD work and we have to meet the demands of HD with the audio, as well.’ The Genelec DSP monitors provided Pow! Pix with the ability to create multiple listening positions within the same control room. ‘What I have is a sweet spot specifi cally for my mix position, and one that’s tailored to the acoustics at the producer’s desk, which is on a raised platform at the rear of the room,’ he added. ‘The producers notice the difference and appreciate being able to have the monitoring environment tailored to their specifi c needs.’

November/December 2007

news Biz Bites Live nation has paid Madonna over US$100m to sign all the rights to her tours, DVDs, ﬁ lms, TV, private events, corporate sponsorships and a minimum of three studio albums, writes Nigel Jopson. ‘Live Nation is the future of the music business’ runs the tag line at the bottom of the press releases: ‘We believe there is a sound return for shareholders in these rights,’ affirms Artist Nation CEO Michael Cohl. Cynical smiles and gritted teeth was the general reaction from major

label execs — not just from Madonna’s former label Warner. The overwhelming reaction was to highlight Live Nation’s lack of experience in distribution, and to assert they had definitely overpaid. ‘The economics of this deal could make it diffi cult for Live Nation to realise signifi cant fi nancial benefi ts since Madonna’s tours generally carry lower margins relative to others and we believe Madonna would have to average over 10m copies per album to break even on any album advances,’ said Morgan Joseph analyst David Kestenbaum. Madonna’s age may be an issue, but the 10m-albums-to-break-even sums just do not add up. Prince grossed more than $22m in ticket sales alone from his recent series of sold-out shows at London’s O2 Arena. That’s before you add merchandise sales. Cohl said their merchandise calculations for Madonna are based on a spend of $10 a head: this is the sort of number that was optimistically mentioned in the 1980s — it looks pretty conservative today. Live Nation already pays $1.5 billion to artists each year for a 4% margin business, signing all the rights to the most successful female artist of all time for about $10m a year seems a reasonable proposition. Live Nation has no experience of music distribution, but which business function is trickier to outsource these days? Distributing music ... or running a global livepromotion franchise? Live Nation has built an instant brand for its Artist Nation operation by acquiring a modern icon as a trophy artist. What sort of brand image do EMI or Sony-BMG project? Where headliners lead — others follow. There have been a rash of covermounts since Prince’s Mail On Sunday offering. Pavarotti (MOS), Bananarama (MOS), Blondie (The Star), Talking Heads (The Observer), while Warner came up with a new twist: a promotional CD for Seal,

france 3’s vista 8 oB double

identical Studer vista 8s have been specified for ‘the Benjamins’, two new Hd oB vehicles commissioned by france 3, the second largest french public television network and part of the france télévisions group. the first of the two trucks is already on the road operating out of france 3 Marseille région, while the other vehicle is expected to be delivered by the end of the year to france 3 rennes. the oBvs are 12m long, expandable to 4m wide and carry 12 Hd cameras. the vista 8 has Sdi inputs, the dolby e decoder, 11 d21 racks and uses the SCore Live dSP. there are two Studer stageboxes each with 32 mic inputs, plus another 20 locally available on the truck. ‘We cover a lot of football matches where the Stagebox has to be carried long distances,’ explained sound engineer Christian Mouttet. ‘We preferred the size and weight of the Stagebox, and its more efficient cooling systems.’ • Privately-owned radio station Zitouna fM has made its maiden broadcast to 90% of the tunisian population from a Studer onair 2000 Modulo at its main station in Carthage (left).

Dutch masters restored with CEDAR

The Meertens Institute, a research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), is continuing its work in digitising large archives from universities, museums and other institutes of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and is employing a wealth of CEDAR equipment.

The studios have two CEDAR AZX+ azimuth correctors and also run DCX, CRX, DHX, BRX units plus two Sadie 5s with CEDAR Retouch. Kees Grijpink is shown restoring a 1944 Dutch broadcast from London (recorded on a glass acetate) to occupied Holland which gave news on the progress of US and British forces.

resolution

news Biz Bites

half live cuts, plus the title track off his forthcoming studio album, and the offer of £1 off if newspaper readers followed a link to buy a CD online. Travis had a 12 track CD, which included Why Does It Always Rain On Me, Sing and Turn distributed with the Mail. ‘The CD is a career retrospective and will promote the existing albums,’ claimed Simon Stamford of Upfront Promotions, who brokered this and many other of these sad deals. ‘Career retrospective’ ... not Best Of ... so that’s OK then. Ray Davies put 1.5m of his new studio album on The Sunday Times: as his previous album only managed sales of 27,000, I suppose it was a no-brainer for Raymond Douglas (CBE), but retailers failed to notice any boost whatsoever in sales for the 63- year-old ex-Kink’s other material. It’s not giving it away that’s key ... it’s how you give it. The Offi cial Charts Company (OCC) is expanding the range of formats eligible for the UK charts, including making USB albums and vinyl hybrids chart eligible. Hybrids feature DVD or CD on one side and vinyl on the fl ip side, these formats have attracted much interest recently and there are several special edition or collectible maxi-single releases scheduled. Charts are a vital part of music awareness, if new OCC MD Martin Talbot (ex-Music Week) can make the offi cial countdown relevant again, he will have done us all a good turn. After months of speculation, Microsoft has beaten off competition from Google and Yahoo to claim a stake in social networking site Facebook, paying $240m for a 1.6% stake. They have won the right to sell advertisements and market to Facebook members, but have been suckered into over-bidding by Google. Facebook has a paltry estimated revenue of $150m.

two System 5s for Pinewood the Pinewood Studios Group has bought two large format dual-operator System 5 film dubbing consoles as part of a complete revamp of its sound department. the Group will also be upgrading its two existing euphonix System 5s in the Korda theatre and theatre 1 at Shepperton to include integrated daW control. ‘Part of our mission statement at Pinewood is to exceed our customers’ expectations through our commitment to professionalism, quality of service and by offering sustainable advantages over our competition. our investment into new sound facilities at Pinewood is key to this goal and we feel that our partnership with euphonix helps us to achieve it,’ explained Bruce everett, group director of postproduction for the Pinewood Group. ‘after three years of successful mixing on our System 5s at Shepperton, we knew euphonix would be integral to our renovation of the sound department at Pinewood.’

Over 25,000 channels in use.

HV-3R Eight Channel Remote-Control Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3D 8 Eight Channel Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3D 4 Four Channel Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3C Stereo Microphone Preamplifier

after a major renovation, Bohus Sound Studios (Resolution v5.1) in Gothenburg, Sweden has opened its Studio 2 with a 24-fader euphonix System 5 connected to 56-channels of Pro tools Hd4 via Madi. ‘We chose the System 5 because we wanted the best sound and ﬂexibility in a small package,’ said tobias Lindell, Bohus producer and engineer. ‘We are primarily in the music recording and mixing industry and the System 5 delivers the wide and punchy sound that used to only be found in big analogue consoles.’

Dublin Hall goes Cronus

M-2B Transformerless Class A Vacuum Tube Stereo Microphone Preamplifier

NSEQ-2 Twin Toplogy Stereo Parametric Equalizer

ORIGIN STT-1 Twin Topology Recording Channel

TLC-2 TWIN COM

Showtime

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SBES, Birmingham .....14-15 November Interbee, Tokyo ...........20-22 November CES, Las Vegas .........7-10 January 2008 NAMM, Anaheim ............17-20 January ISE, Amsterdam ...............29-31 January Broadcast Live/VideoForum, London ...............30 January-1 February Sounds Expo, London ..................28 February-1 March CabSat, Dubai ........................4-6 March Pro Light + Sound, Frankfurt ..............................12-15 March NAB, Las Vegas .................... 12-17 April AES Europe, Amsterdam ......17-20 May

Irish distributor Sound Communications has installed a Telex/RTS Cronus DSP matrix comms system into Dublin’s National Concert Hall. The system design entailed provision for the stage manager’s backstage communications centre to talk with up to 12 dressing rooms, artists’ bar, security, front of house, booking ofﬁ ce, and a cloakroom, as well as to communicate with the lighting director, sound mixer and a production loop. It also required reception to coordinate events taking place in key areas of the

building, including the Ivy Gardens some 100 metres to the rear of the building where summer concerts are held. ‘Telex’s professional approach impressed me and I felt confident because they took our project very seriously,’ said Paul Kohlmann, chief electrician at the Concert Hall. ‘It is an excellent system which will make our job a lot easier as we will have much more control over productions. With our fully-integrated radio system we now have site-wide communication, from front of house to backstage production.’

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TD-1 Twin Topology Por table Recording Channel

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MSM-Studios Opportunity presents itself if you are in the right place at the right time; how you get there is the hard bit. ZENON SCHOEPE visits Munich and a mastering studio that has turned itself into a multimedia full service provider.

SM Studios founder and MD Stefan Bock made a life changing decision when he left his record label in-house studio job and went out on his own. He had spotted a requirement for quality mastering in the German market and felt it wasn’t being taken seriously. He started off small and it was not until the move to the current premises and the construction of the first two mastering studios in 1994 that they started to be taken seriously and began building the reputation that the Munich studio enjoys as an innovator and quality brand. Occupying what were carpentry works near the city centre, MSM has expanded beyond the 250sqm of its first floor and now also occupies the 200sqm downstairs. This expansion was controlled but unmistakably organic with the business responding to market opportunities identified by Stefan but also taking the occasional risk with his attempts to preguess developments through his reading of new technology. Such a move established MSM as an early major player in DVD and also aligned it with SACD at a time when it was still exciting. As a consequence, the breadth of facilities being offered is very wide and aside from the two original mastering studios you’ll find a screening/mixing room 16

newly fitted with a Digidesign Icon, a small edit room, a colour correction and video post room and some smaller suites for authoring and quality checking for DVD. ‘The biggest chunk of our business is DVD because we do all aspects of DVD — the graphics, the authoring, video and audio post, encoding of audio and video. That’s at least 75%,’ says Stefan. ‘But most of the DVDs we do are music related due to our history and our clients.’ DVD music projects span classical to pop programme but there is also a healthy corporate business to serve for such clients as BMW. Stefan states that a key component for efficiency in such an environment is how your workflow handles incoming media for a project and how quickly you can appraise its quality and alert the client to any shortcomings. The quality theme is clearly evident at MSM and Stefan has no interest in the concept of Emastering in the cheap and anonymous sense of the term. He says that communication and discussion are essential to their way of working and that they only offer the one level of service and that is the best they can do. Christoph Stickel deals with most of the music mastering and believes that asking clients where they think the problems are in a project and where they resolution

want to go with it are essentials of what he does. That said, only some 40% of projects will have a client in the room with him. Stefan says this is evidence that the level of trust is high enough that they don’t feel they need to be there and Christoph adds other factors. ‘There’s also the fact that most clients probably can’t help me with what I do and I’m not being arrogant by saying that,’ he laughs. ‘So often they listen back and say “I think it’s fine but I don’t really know, I have listened to this production a thousand times”.’ This shift in attitude is also the result of production environments changing for clients, according to Stefan. ‘In the old days people sitting in big studios had a pretty good idea of what they had mixed but that has changed. They are now mixing on different types of equipment and they don’t always want to make the final decision on how it will sound so they keep it open.’ In typical MSM fashion this has been identified as another opportunity to help the client; and it has taken the process forward from the simple supply of stereo files to the supply of stems. ‘I’m doing about five or six albums a week and now two or three of them are stems mastering,’ says Christoph. ‘And it goes beyond that,’ adds Stefan, ‘because some are coming in not with stems but with the whole session. It’s one of the reasons we decided to go for the Icon — we have a dedicated room here now where we can mix if required. There are different options — getting stems, getting the whole session, getting the 2-track but the next stage on from that is having someone to assist them with their final mix.’ ‘There are producers in Germany selling 100,000 copies and they work on a laptop,’ explains Christoph. ‘They aren’t able to mix it as well as they might November/December 2007

facility

want to and at the end of it all they find they have mastering room is for stereo work and monitoring in a problem with the bass — they’ve got the small here is custom-built and impressive. Local firm ACM Genelecs and are able to balance the vocals but the was responsible for the comfortable acoustic design bass below 120Hz they can’t hear. If you go through throughout the complex. the tracks you might find that only the bass drum has How the Icon room developed illustrates precisely a peak at 40Hz and you have the possibility to cut how things happen at MSM. It also underlines Stefan’s that 40Hz from the bass drum and then everything insistence on getting involved in any new technology else is fine. If I do that on the 2-track master you lose and the fact that he never hands it on to anyone else everything from the deep end.’ until he is comfortable with it himself. The Icon room This flexibility was one of the reasons for buying started from Stefan’s idea to build a cinema and it the Icon but not the only reason. ‘We’re doing audio went from there. ‘Originally we wanted to build a QC post, sound design and premixing for film and final room for audio and video but, as is always the case, mixing for DVD release where the client can’t afford if you do one thing you end up doing something else a cinema mixing stage,’ says Stephan. ‘We have as well to make sure you do it properly and the idea these two components — the DVD work needing a grows. We found some seats from a cinema that had mixing console in a post environment and the benefit bought new ones and we had a screening room. Then of using it for the music as well. As a result we have we looked for speakers, found nothing in the hi-fi people coming here, seeing what we have and saying industry and ended up tripling our budget in getting they’d like to mix their film score here — they bring PMCs in here. Then in December last year we made up in their recordings and book the room for a few days our minds on the Icon, installed it and made the front or a week. They’re using it as a mixing room in the row of seats removable to add a little flexibility. We traditional sense although this was not the main changed the projector to full HD, which is important reason for building it.’ for the DVD market, and the room is connected to the While the Pro Tools-centricity of MSM meant rest of the facility via the network.’ that the Icon was the only controller to consider It’s the sensible and careful evolution of a room in they wouldn’t master to Pro Tools. To this end they response to an initial drive that results in facilities that use Sonic Studio workstations as their weapons of support and expand those already offered while also choice in the two mastering rooms — one of which is opening up to a new market. They got into DVD in optimised for multichannel work monitors adding Q212dn Resolution 216x 65 with ad PMC 21/6/07 17:361998 Page 1 graphic design and video editing suites and handles all the surround audio projects. The other along the way. They now have all the bases covered

as demonstrated by the last DVD of pianist Lang Lang where MSM did most everything else apart from the shooting — the offline and online editing of the concert, the documentary, sound design of the documentary and its mixing, editing picture for audio, the HD cam master for TV, the NTSC master, the DVD screen design. What is heartening to remember is that MSM is very definitely an audio company in origin and the fact it has spread its skillset across into other disciplines proves this sort of technical migration doesn’t have to be the preserve of picturebased companies. Stefan says that they also have advantages from an operational standpoint because their video editors, graphics people and colourist are all musicians and therefore have an attitude to music that gives them an edge over those who don’t. Such a width of operation means that the net is widest to catch any new business potential — the mastering client who returns to work on the DVD is an obvious example. They also have a responsive attitude towards the needs of the clients and believe they can make a difference. Stefan says that their biggest selling point remains ‘the quality’ because that is what they are judged on and that is the enduring legacy for the client. Of course, he’s right. ■

Contact MSM-StudioS, MuniCH, GerManY: Website: www.msm-studios.com

Trevor Horn and Hans Zimmer have trusted Questeds since 1985.

Isn’t it time you listened too? Make a sound judgement with the Q212dn monitor from Quested

November/December 2007

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gear

Products equipment introductions and announcements.

aPi compact 1608

API’s Model 1608 analogue console features 2520 circuitry and is built to the same standards as the ﬂ agship API Vision and Legacy consoles. Sharing the form factor of the manufacturer’s 1604 but increasing the bus and echo return counts, the standard 1608 is conﬁ gured with 16 548B inputs with 312 mic pre/line inputs and direct output; and also includes 12 550A 3-band equalisers and four 560 10-band graphic equaliser modules. A centre section features 5.1 monitoring and has space for up to eight additional 500 series modules. Other features include VU metering and rear connector patching. Eight additional inputs are designated as effects returns bringing the total line input count to 24. The 1608 ships with 16 manual mono input faders and a stereo master fader. Moving fader automation will be available as a future option. www.apiaudio.com

tL audio ebony Series

TL Audio’s Ebony Series is a range of three processors all of which use discrete Class A circuitry and have a tube stage with variable drive putting you in control of how ‘creamy’ or how ‘cool’ your unit sounds. Hand assembled in England the units have chrome knobs and a high gloss black ﬁ nish and balanced I-O, multi-input options, analogue VU metering and simple operation. All units are compatible with the TL Audio DO-2 SPDIF interface. Prices start at £499 (+ VAT). www.tlaudio.co.uk

McdSP ML4000 native special McDSP is offering its ML4000 Native mastering limiter plug-in electronically for US$295 until the end of November. ML4000 Native is a full version plug-in that is RTAS and AudioSuite compatible. www.mcdsp.com

Platform news: digidesign digidesign’s C|24 mid-format control surface for Pro tools|Hd and Pro tools Le systems draws on the legacy of the Control|24, and combines a sleek industrial design with a complement of analogue inputs and a versatile monitoring section. C|24 integrates an analogue front-end with 16 low-noise mic/line/di preamps, each with high-pass filters, plus a 5.1 surround monitor system with trimmable inputs and outputs. it also provides an 8x2 stereo submixer that is routable directly to the monitor system, and a built-in talkback mic, plus inputs for remote talkback and listen-back mics. the surface offers 24 fully bankable control strips, each with touch-sensitive, motor 100mm faders and dedicated, Led-illuminated switches for Mute, Solo, Select, input, record arm, eQ, dynamics, insert, Send, and automation functions. the control surface also features 24 rotary encoders with Led rings, and a bright dual-row Led scribble strip. the new large-format icon d-Control eS takes its place alongside the original icon d-Control and icon dCommand but is enhanced with a darker colour scheme and also features updated, higher contrast text and graphics for improved legibility in low light, and a new switch Led colour layout. digidesign will continue to offer the d-Control in its original blue colour scheme and current icon d-Control owners will be able to obtain a kit to convert their d-Control into a d-Control eS. Mbox 2 Micro is a pocket-sized Pro tools Le system that provides Pro tools users with an ultra-portable sequencing, editing and mixing solution. the size of a uSB ﬂash drive, Mbox 2 Micro combines high-quality audio output/monitoring with Pro tools Le software. Mbox 2 Micro has a rugged, compact, anodised aluminium case and its 1/8-inch stereo output jack supports 24-bit/48kHz audio playback. it comes with a collection of more than 45 Bomb factory and digirack plug-ins and digidesign’s Xpand! sample-playback/synthesis workstation. Suggested retail price is uK£155 (+ vat). www.digidesign.com

Waves releases Gtr3 W a v e s G T R 3 adds nine new guitar amps and seven new bass amps, i n c l u d i n g six new and i m p r o v e d h i g h - g a i n m o d e l s . The system i s n o w capable of standalone or DAWr e a d y operation. The GTR3 f e a t u r e s a s p e c i a l hardware guitar interface developed in conjunction with Paul Reed Smith that provides the correct impedance and level matching, maintaining the sound, volume and dynamic range delivered by a true guitar input. This results in minimum signal loss, maximum model realism and true touch playability. The GTR3 now includes 26-modelled classic and contemporary amplifiers. There’s also a choice of 22 cabinets, and with GTR3 you can mix and match amps, cabs, and mics with drag-and-drop simplicity. GTR3 also delivers 26 Stomp effects. www.waves.com

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HHB Cd-r machine

The HHB CDR882 DualBurn is compatible with low- and high-speed CD-R media and with a genuine Rec-Rec drive confi guration it supports seamless extended recording time across two or more discs, as well as simultaneous recording of two discs, high-speed duplication and intelligent disc management. Full 24-bit A-D and D-A convertors with noise-shaped dither onto CD combine with a quartz crystal-derived internal clock and ‘audiophile-grade’ analogue circuitry. Weighing 6.7kg, the CDR882 uses IDE CD-R drives mounted in a massive steel 2U rackmounting chassis. Connectivity includes balanced XLR analogue I-O, phono analogue I-O, balanced XLR AES-EBU I-O, coaxial and optical SPDIF I-O, external Word clock input, RS232 remote control and parallel control interface. An on-board SRC accepts digital signals from 3296kHz and the CDR882 ships with an infra-red remote. Track IDs may be manually created or auto-generated from the digital input, audio level threshold or time period, both of which are user defi nable. When recording seamlessly across two or more discs, track IDs are inserted when the next disc starts, and where the user-defi nable fade out and fade in start and fi nish. With an overlap between the two discs, the whole programme can either be played back uninterrupted on the CDR882, or reconstructed in a DAW using the track IDs to align the audio from the two or more discs. The CDR882 supports CD Text and makes its own use of it to identify multidisc recordings and their correct order. It includes Sync Record and Disc Copy modes, a Program mode to enable selective track record/replay, and Single/ Clone modes to select recording to one or both drives. www.hhb.co.uk

November/December 2007

gear Cedar Cambridge Server

a-t lifetime warranty

D e s c r i b e d a s ‘ t h e most powerful audio re s t o r a t i o n s y s t e m ever created’, CEDAR Cambridge Server is a combination of four e l e m e n t s : C E D A R C a m b r i d g e S e r v e r Pack software; CEDAR Cambridge V5 software core; CEDAR Cambridge Q quadcore server-grade host PC; and any combination of CEDAR Cambridge audio processes. The CEDAR Cambridge Server Pack offers print-server style batch processing, locally and across a network, and background processing using multiple instances of CEDAR simultaneously. The V5 software core adds an audio recorder with BEXT metadata handling and editing to every CEDAR Cambridge system. To maximise performance, CEDAR Cambridge Server is supplied on the latest CEDAR Cambridge Q quadcore host PC but the Server Pack software is compatible with all CEDAR Cambridge hardware, from the earliest dual-Xeon machines (with additional RAM) to the latest dual- and quadcore Cambridge Q processors. This means that all existing owners will be able to add Server functionality to their systems, albeit with some possible performance limits. www.cedaraudio.com

Genelec a-dC In response to customers who want to interface conventional analogue monitoring sections to Genelec DSP and SE DSP systems, Genelec has introduced the AD9200A 8-channel A-DC. It has eight balanced analogue inputs on 25-pin DB25 wired to Tascam pin-out and the digital outputs are on four XLRs each carrying stereo AES-EBU. The AD9200A convertor outputs AES3 format with 24-bit Word length and 192kHz sample rate. www.genelec.com

November/December 2007

www.manu-katche.com, photo: © Marc Rouvé

Audio-Technica has introduced a lifetime warranty on its 40 Series studio condenser microphone range. The extended warranty is free of charge and will be applicable on all 40 Series microphones sold by authorised resellers in EMEA from 1 November. A-T’s new UK product catalogue has revised recommended retail prices across a number of its MI retail microphone and headphone ranges. The new pricing brings UK RRPs in line with average market pricing across Europe and ends the practice of inﬂ ated published RRPs, common throughout the UK MI retail trade. The company’s RRPs now more closely reﬂ ect the true average selling price in the UK

retail market. The Sabine Phantom Mic Rider offers programmable microphone self operating capabilities in a small plugin unit that attaches to any condenser microphone, and draws its power from the microphone’s own phantom supply. The Phantom Mic Rider connects between the microphone and cable connector of any microphone and provides feedback elimination, automatic gain control, proximity effect control, plosive control and automatic gating that is controlled by a miniature infrared sensor that opens and closes the microphone in response to the presence of a user’s body heat. Controls hidden beneath a security cover allow adjustments to be made to match a particular microphone’s sensitivity. www.audio-technica.co.uk

A classy combination

SCHOEPS Mikrofone Karlsruhe, Germany +49 721 943 200 www.schoeps.de

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gear X-rack extras New components in SSL’s X-Rack modular rack system are the VHD Input Module and the Stereo Bus Compressor Module. The Stereo Bus Compressor Module makes the centre section compressor from G-Series consoles available in the X-Rack. The module has Threshold, Attack, Ratio, Release and Make Up controls and a true Stereo Side Chain Input is accompanied by a link feature that enables multiple Stereo Bus Compressor Modules to be combined for surround processing. The VHD Input Module is based on the input section of the SSL E-Signature Channel 1U processor Projekt1 18/02/07 12:55 Side 1 and offers a high bandwidth mic amp stage that can handle mic, instrument or line inputs, SSL’s Variable Harmonic

Drive circuit, an additional line input/trim control section, a set of High and Low Pass Filters and the classic Listen Mic Compressor. Pro-Convert is a translation application for moving sessions from one DAW environment to another. Pro-Convert can handle sessions including Pro Tools, Soundscape, Cubase/Nuendo, Vegas, Sonic Studio, SADiE, Final Cut Pro, Audition, OMF, AES31, Sequoia, Open TL and Tascam BU. Pro-Covert was developed by Cui Bono Soft, which has been acquired by SSL. SSL’s X-ISM is a VST/AU plug-in that can interpret inter-sample peaks. It can be downloaded for free from the company’s website. www.solid-state-logic.com

Brauner Phantom Classic The Brauner Phantom C is said to be the result of a design approach aimed at creating an affordable microphone that still maintains aspects and characteristics that Brauner microphones are famous for. Following the success of the limited Phantom Anniversary Edition released to celebrate Brauner’s 10th Anniversary, the new Phantom Classic is being released to carry the tradition of the Phantom C on. It’s a phantompowered condenser with fixed cardioid pattern based on the VM1 capsule design. www.brauner-microphones.com

recoil Stabilizer speaker mount sound engineering

The Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizer is a floating n e a r f i e l d m o n i t o r platform that claims to eliminate ‘disruptive resonant coupling from the loudspeaker to the stand’, while providing a stable base to reduce the recoil caused by the forward energy of the loudspeaker motion. M a d e f r o m t h r e e components, the Recoil Stabilizer begins with a high-density urethane foam base that isolates the speaker from the shelf, monitor-bridge or stand to eliminate vibration-borne resonance that would otherwise be transmitted to the substructure. When a transient hits the speaker, the energy of the speaker moving forward forces the loudspeaker to sway backwards and recoil, reducing the sharpness of the transient. To eliminate this recoil, the loudspeaker is stabilised by adding mass through a heavy laser-cut steel plate. To further ensure the loudspeaker does not move, a non-slip neoprene top surface is applied. The Recoil Stabilizer is available in various sizes and weights to address different speaker designs and may be ordered in standard and custom angles to aim the loudspeakers for listening environments. www.primacoustic.com

RM8 TUBE MODULES

Lexicon PCM96

RACK 'EM UP! - introducing 3 blue building blocks... Meet us at Frankfurt ProLight+Sound - Hall 5.1, B88

LYDKRAFT 20

www.tube-tech.com resolution

Lexicon’s PCM96 stereo reverb/effects processor also integrates into a studio as a control-only DAW insert or FireWire streaming hardware plug-in. Following in the tradition of the PCM60 and PCM70, the PCM96 sees the return of Lexicon’s Concert Hall reverb and appearing for the fi rst time are new Room and Hall algorithms, plus an assortment of new mono reverbs and effects. Selectable, reversible reflection patterns, multimode fi lters, and ‘infi nity switches’ provide additional new capabilities. With two channel XLR analogue and two channel XLR AES-EBU I-O as well as MIDI, Word clock, Ethernet and FireWire connectivity, it has ‘softrow’ keys for fast navigation through algorithms, a large OLED display and Compact Flash preset storage. www.lexiconpro.com

November/December 2007

gear dangerous additional Switching

Dangerous Music’s Additional Switching System is a 1U expander for its Monitor ST and SR controllers. The ASS offers two banks of two options each, allowing four additional capabilities for the monitor controller available directly from the ST-SR remote. Options introduced include mastering quality stereo DA conversion — DAC-ST — and dual-format video input switching for Monitor ST and ST-SR systems — Vidswitch. Upcoming options include 5.1 surround bass management with selectable filters and crossover points (Bass-SR), comprehensive subwoofer control (Sub-ST), comprehensive 5.1 to stereo fold-down and downmix control (Folddown), meter feed and selected output source for Monitor ST (Meter-ST), 6channel D-AC for surround setups (DAC-SR), and multiple input listening and input mixing for Monitor ST (Mix-ST). www.dangerousmusic.com

Marantz pocket portable The PMD620 solid-state recorder from Marantz uses SD ﬂ ashcard recording media, supports 24-bit and 16-bit PCM linear and MP3 compressed audio and has USB connectivity to PCs. It has an integrated stereo condenser microphone, while controls include a thumb-operated transport scroll wheel and onetouch record operation via a large red illuminating button. The OLED display screen provides vivid alphanumeric and icon display, and reduced power draw from the unit’s two AA batteries. The recorder features a built-in speaker, external line and mic level inputs, and a headphone output. www.dm-i.eu

audio ease Speakerphone The Speakerphone plug-in from Audio Ease is a speaker simulator with a host of environments to put them in. S p e a k e r p h o n e , powered by Altiverb, combines a wealth of effects including a convolution engine that uses actual samples of hundreds of original speakers, a radio receiver tuning dial, record player scratch and static generator, GSM cell phone data compression, distortion, tremolo, delay, a variety of EQ and dynamics, bit crushing, sample rate reduction, a full blown convolution reverb, and a library of samples to combine into entire environments. www.audioease.com

rndigital Signature Bundle The Signature Bundle contains all currently available native RNDigital plugins in RTAS, VST, and AU for Mac OS and RTAS and VST for Windows. The Bundle includes the Spl-izer adjustable 3-band 24dB per octave FIR frequency splitter, Inspector XL metering, Dynam-izer, Detailer stereo mastering tool, Finis, Frequal-izer, Uniquel-izer and Uniquelizer LE. www.rogernicholsdigital.com

audient London tube A u d i e n t ’s L o n d o n Tube range of valve products is the result of collaboration between Audient and David Manley Designs. Three products have been unveiled: Model 936 variable Mu compressor; Model 933 mic preamp and EQ; and Model EQP-2a passive EQ. ‘The launch of London Tube marks another step in Audient’s mission of delivering great sounding products that perform at the highest level,’ said Audient sales and marketing director Luke Baldry. ‘We’ve set benchmarks with the ASP8024 and the rest of the Silver Series products, more recently with Black Series and its unique technology and now we’re set to do the same with tubes.’ www.audient.com

HdSPe expressCard/34 R M E ’ s H D S P e E x p r e s s C a r d solution for PCIe N o t e b o o k s i s s p e c i f i e d a s a n ExpressCard/34 and provides the same features as the PCMCIA version. The card comes with drivers for Windows XP (multiclient operation of MME, GSIF and ASIO 2.0) and new drivers for Windows Vista and Vista 64. Apple users are served with Power PC and MAC Universal (Intel) drivers providing Core Audio and Core MIDI support. The HDSPe features RME´s own high-speed serial audio data bus, as used in the Multiface, Multiface II, Digiface and RPM DJ Interfaces. www.rme-audio.com

November/December 2007

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gear SC-vector Plus cable

dual path modules

Cultured fat Bustard

AlSo has released a modular rack system. This includes a dual mic pre module with 60dB of gain a n d i n p u t transformers ( S o w t e r ) , a d u a l D I module, and stereo input m o d u l e . A monitoring section module has Cue and Talkback capabilities and a headphone section. Rear panel connectivity permits patching between the modules. www.alternatesoundings.fr

One meter after a digital HD/SDI-signal has entered Sommer’s SC-Vector Plus 1.2/5.0 video cable the signal can look forward to another 599m of ‘ﬂ awless’ transmission. The 6.95 jacket holds 7 copper litz, each measuring 0.40mm (AWG18), and the 0.5mm PE-foam insulation provides optimum damping values (23dB@100m at 1000MHz). An AL/PT-AL-foil and copper braiding (85% tin-plated) provide optimum shielding. The outer jacket is available in PVC or FRNC for a robust HD-SDI/HDTV-video cable for a temperature range of –10°C to 80°C, and it is easy to wind. The single version of the SC-Vector Plus 1.2/5.0 is suitable for long distances while the quadruple version SC-Vector Plus 5x1.2/5.0 for RGBHV is especially suitable for sporting and large TV-events. www.sommercable.com

The Fat Bustard mixer from Thermionic Culture is a valvebased design that has eight inputs, passively mixed to a stereo bus. The ﬁ rst four channels on the top row of the 3U rackmount have ﬁ xed alternate panning. The bottom row of four channels each have a variable pan pot with a centre detent. Simple, yet effective bass and treble controls are available too.

The twin channel Rooster is a valve-based mic/line and DI preamp with EQ and a distortion section based around the same 5725 used in the Culture Vulture. The input stage uses a custom 1200-ohm Sowter transformer and an ECC81/12AT7 valve. The EQ section has a broad bass lift control, peaking at 60Hz, a mid cut at 700Hz, and a selectable mid/high lift at 2.5kHz, 4kHz (bell shaped) and 7kHz (shelving) respectively. The 6-position bass cut is straight off the Earlybird 2 preamp. The 5725-distortion tube offers a subtle distortion characteristic in the triode position, more so than a Culture Vulture due to the higher HT voltage, and so has a very low (about 0.01%) distortion when the Feedback control is set to Max. In the pentode mode it generates more 3rd harmonic distortion. The Phoenix MC Master Compressor now has a sidechain ﬁ lter. www.thermionicculture.com

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Steinberg, with input from Euphonix, has redesigned the dynamic automation system in Nuendo 4 for control from Euphonix controllers via EuCon. Nuendo 4 automation modes will be familiar to Euphonix System 5 users. Preview mode allows multiple punches to be auditioned and works in all automation modes. Touch Assist ensures that all parameters within an automated element are punched during automation passes. Channels can be set to follow Global automation punch mode (touch, latch, trim, etc.) or to an individual status. The use of Virgin Territory keeps automation data to a minimum and also allows the fader to be adjusted in Virgin Territory areas in Read mode without the constraints of currently written automation data pulling the parameters back. All standard Euphonix Fill features (Fill to Start, Fill to End, Fill Region and Fill to Punch) are included and directly accessible from the MC’s 56 SmartSwitches. The Nuendo automation modes are included in the latest Application Set from Euphonix that maps Nuendo functions to the MC’s SmartSwitches. www.euphonix.com

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13/09/07 10:16:38

November/December 2007

gear tC Studio Konnekt 48

The Studio Konnekt 48 FireWire-powered audio interface offers the most comprehensive feature in TC’s range. All recording tools are in one box including DSP effects, a wealth of I-O options, and speaker management. The I-O section has four Impact II preamps and with eight line inputs on the rear it can handle a total of 12 inputs and 12 outputs. Two outputs have digitally controlled analogue XLRs while the analogue output section has two independent phones outs. The digital I-O section has double ADAT 96kHz SMUX, Tos, SPDIF and Word clock I-O. Studio Konnekt 48 comes with the Fabrik C Studio channel strip and mastering tool, which offers 4-band EQ, multiband compression and limiting, and the Fabrik R Studio reverb. It has a 24/8 digital mixer with 48-bit double precision summing on all mix points and routing for all outputs and insert points. It comes with a remote that offers access to all essential mixer parameters, including main level, mix levels, reverb level/decay time, speaker set selection, Aux sends and more. It has a built-in talkback microphone. PowerCore X8 is described as the most powerful PowerCore to date with eight DSP engines, which offer twice the processing power of PowerCore FireWire. It ships with 14 plug-ins as well as PowerCore 3.0 system software.

The XL version’s processors boards are accommodated by a Nexus Star just like Aurus. Thus, the XL takes advantage of the fast Star backplane bus to provide access to the multitude of audio signals it offers. The next generation Nexus Star router features an integrated controller and multiplexer board (RCX) instead of the previous separate boards for multiplexing (RMX) and the CPU (RCPU). A redundant RCX module can now be Stagetec’s XL version of the Auratus desk features up to 40 accommodated by the space-saving change. Nexus Star channel strips and 140 audio channels and sits between now not only switches to this second RCX in the event of the compact Auratus and the Aurus. Both Auratus versions a board failure but also to a complete fall-back bus system feature eight sums, eight aux paths, eight n-1 sums and in the all-new backplane.             both are 5.1 ready. www.stagetec.com

next gen nexus Star

The Art of Analogue

UA founder

TC-Helicon has announced a sonic upgrade to its VoiceSolo line of personal vocal monitors with improved SPL, frequency response, off-axis response, and reduced resonance. VoiceSolo VSM-300 XT uses a 150W BASH ampliﬁ er, onboard mixer and EQ and Custom ICT 6.5inch speaker. An I-O box is included with four inputs, six outputs, mic preamp and phantom power. VoiceSolo VSM-200 XT employs the same ampliﬁ er and driver combination combined with mic or line input with pass through, and a front-mounted volume control. The VSM-200P XT is a passive monitor featuring an ICT 6.5-inch speaker and integrated tweeter and runs at 8ohms. It features a detented front volume control and Speakon connectors. www.tcelectronic.com

tonelux v8 T h e To n e l u x V 8 r a c k s y s t e m c a n house up to eight mic pres, EQs and compressors, in any combination. The rack can also house any of the mixing modules, including t h e M X 2 , F X 2 , MX5.1, SM2, TR8, and the CR2 for monitoring. The system pictured is an eight-channel mixer with two MP1A mic pres and two EQ4P equalisers. www.tonelux.com

November/December 2007

tnam

M.T. ‘Bill’ Pu

Universal Audio has been making music sound better since 1957. Today, UA continues the legacy of founder M.T. ‘Bill’ Putnam with world-class audio hardware and software – designed, manufactured and qualitycontrolled with passion and pride in Santa Cruz, California, USA. The new DCS Remote Preamp combines two console-grade mic-preamps, specialised monitoring capabilities for artist and engineer, and easy remote control/DAW integration making it an ideal upgrade to the basic features and sound quality found in most audio interfaces. And who better than UA to evolve the classic LA-2A into the stereo 2-LA-2, combining the unique sonic signature of the original with two channels of silky, tube-amplified, stereo matched optical gain reduction in one unit.

NEW!

DCS

Remote Preamp

Find out more about the art of analogue at:

www.uaudio.com

NEW! 2-LA-2

Twin T4 Levelling Amplifier

UK distribution by Source • Find a dealer at www.sourcedistribution.co.uk/ua • T: 020 8962 5080

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review

Steinberg nuendo 4 How does a daW manufacturer make an incremental software upgrade seem exciting these days? roB JaMeS fires up the latest version of nuendo and finds out...

Here are ManY similarities between politics today and the state of the digital audio workstation market. Where once the differences were obvious with ‘clear blue water’ between manufacturers’ differing approaches to capability and direction, today there is a worrying consensus. As soon as anyone has a bright idea, everyone else interprets it (to be charitable) and claims it as their own idea instead of dismissing it as irrelevant to core values and purpose. This results in feature bloat and loss of focus, with workstations and politicians alike 24

striving to be all things to all men. Nuendo 4 might just be the first sign that the tide is turning. The packaging and documentation are the first signs of change but it becomes a lot more obvious when you discover what Steinberg has taken out. The Score and MIDI Drum Editor, VST instruments and MusicXML import and export are only available as an extra cost add-on, ‘Nuendo Expansion Kit’. The sharper focus is equally obvious when you begin to dig a little deeper into what has been added and reengineered. resolution

Nuendo’s mixer is a major beneficiary. Routing has been completely re-thought with the result that signals can now be sent from tracks to groups and effects returns pre- or postfader. Signals can be freely routed between group channels regardless of order, and audio subgrouping is now legal, with signals sent from groups to effects returns and vice versa. Because all of this flexibility introduces a high possibility of inadvertently creating feedback loops, Nuendo 4 automatically detects and disables nonsensical routings. Steinberg’s VST plug-in format has become the most popular standard in use today. Nuendo 4 sees the introduction of a new variant, VST 3. Several of the new effects have sidechain capability and all can be dragged and dropped between tracks and strips. Thirty-eight surround-capable VST 3 plug-ins are included along with more than 20 updated VST 2 plug-ins from the previous version. Perhaps the most noteworthy newcomer is a 4-band parametric EQ that arrives instantiated on every audio channel as standard. The new EQ offers up to seven different characteristics per band. Shelf slopes are adjustable via the Q control. An inverse switch enables fast mirror switching between boost and cut. New VST3 dynamics tools include three compressors, an expander and a limiter. Like all VST3 plug-ins, these can be applied to surround tracks. The renowned MPEX 3 algorithms are used for pitch-changing and time-stretching. Aimed directly at sound for picture, the new Post Filter is intended to make it simple to quickly find and remove unwanted noise. It has standard low/high cut, and a very tight notch filter and a useful Preview function. There is also the choice of adding further notches to deal with harmonics. It’s a bit like having a Urei ‘Little Dipper’ as a plug-in without some of the undesirable artefacts. Dynamic automation has long been neglected by most DAWs. While paying lip service to automating fades, pans and mutes and frequently pretty much every other variable parameter, they have all rather missed the point: that an automation system should be easy to use and have the scope to satisfy users with more complex requirements. Not the least of these is how they well they map to hardware control surfaces. The current crop of full version upgrades is, at last addressing the issues and Nuendo is no exception. The automation system in Nuendo 4 has been completely redesigned and now more closely resembles the functions you would find on a highend console. Among the new features you will find November/December 2007

review individual punch-out modes for each channel and socalled ‘Virgin territories’, which are designated areas where no automation is written. There are proper ‘fill’ commands for writing automation to end, start, punch or loop. Automation modes include the usual Touch and Auto-latch and now the excellent ‘Crossover’ mode. I first encountered this almost two decades ago and I’ve liked it ever since. Essentially it allows you to drop into write and make an adjustment, and then, when you let go of the fader or control, the automation remains in write until the value matches or crosses the previously written data. At which point it automatically and seamlessly punches out into read. Great for updates. Some parameters still cannot be automated. Several of these mirror controls that cannot be automated on many console automation systems. Top of my wish list is routing automation. As with most DAW omissions, there are workarounds for this but these are never as satisfactory as the direct function. Much is made of the ‘Touch-Collect’ functions: here it means the ability to ‘touch-isolate’ and adjust many parameters then drop them all into write together at a given point even when the transport is static. When combined with the versatile fill options this is an extremely powerful set of tools. Punch logs are useful for recalling parameters as they were at punch-in, and also for recalling sets of parameters that have been ‘touch-collected’ at a previous punch-in. The downside of having all this automation power is that when used to the max, it will require a lot of resources. To get the best out of it, you’re going to need the most powerful machine you can lay your hands on: the bigger and more complex the project, the more you will need and use the automation. Let’s not forget that big-gun consoles use an entire PC just for automation to obtain this kind of functionality. Track Quick Controls have been added to the Track Inspector. This means a set of eight user-definable real-time controllers can be assigned to any of the parameters available on the track. A MIDI Learn function simplifies setting up a suitable external hardware controller. The remote control faders or knobs will then follow track selection. Asset management is another big issue and this includes media files, presets, automation data and another new feature, Track Presets. These are snapshots of entire track/channel strips including Audio, MIDI and Instrument Tracks. MediaBay adds a database environment to keep track of the ever-growing number of files by using organisational techniques such as folders and attributes. As you would expect there are smart search facilities that can operate using a variety of attributes or rapid filtering of results. Filters operate using a search system including a list of graphical filter elements. Needless to say you can also add and modify tags and preview material in the ‘Scope’ section. Nuendo still lacks conform and re-conform tools but a summer announcement promised special versions of the well-regarded Virtual Katy software with tight integration. The editor has not been left out of this upgrade cornucopia. Nuendo 4 offers a total of 20 new editing commands and tool modifiers aimed squarely at sound for picture. These include old favourites such as ‘Cut Head’, ‘Cut Tail’, ‘Enlarge/Move Range to Previous/Next Event’ and a long list of key modifiers that enable events to be aligned with other events or the cursor. You can now use the mouse wheel with a hot key for event volume and fades. Nuendo 4 is fully compatible with Windows Vista in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours, and of course November/December 2007

Universal Binary for Macs. A VST plug-in bridge enables 32-bit plug-ins to run alongside native 64-bit examples. It will cost you UK£1063.83 (+ VAT) to buy Nuendo 4 from scratch, or UK£144.67 (+ VAT) to upgrade from Version 3. The Nuendo Expansion Kit is UK£170.20 (+ VAT), and an upgrade from Nuendo version 3 to version 4 with the Expansion Kit is UK£229.78 (+ VAT). There are many other small improvements, but they are far too numerous to list here. Make no mistake, this is a very serious upgrade. However, even with all these improvements, Nuendo 4 still has a mountain to climb. Workstation applications, and especially their user interfaces, have become so complex that, for professionals using them intensively, it is a brave move to change from the devil you know. To become truly productive requires an intimate knowledge of the package, including keyboard shortcuts (especially

for editing), and this constitutes a considerable investment in time and effort. That said, for anyone starting from scratch, and for those contemplating a change, Nuendo has never before offered such a credible alternative. ■

ProS

the plug-ins alone are worth the price; dynamic automation; vastly improved mixer.

ConS

Steep learning curve; still no reverse sync play except via shuttle; Conform/ reconform requires virtual Katy at extra cost.

Contact SteinBerG, GerManY: Website: www.steinberg.net

THE SYMPHONY SYSTEM

The Most Powerful Audio Workstation Available The Symphony System combines Apogee’s legendary X-Series and Rosetta Series converters with Apple’s revolutionary Mac Pro and Logic Pro audio workstation using the 32-channel Symphony PCI card.

BEST SOUNDING The most sonically advanced audio hardware interfaces combined with the most advanced music creation and production tool

Introducing Logic Studio

HIGHEST PERFORMANCE 1.6 milliseconds at 96k and up to 192 simultaneous channels of audio

A suite of powerful, easy-to-use music creation and production tools, Logic Studio gives musicians everything they need to write, record, edit, mix and perform.

GREATEST VALUE A fraction of the cost of popular card-based, DSP systems

Symphony PCIE Card 32-Channels of I/O per card & up to 96 channels per system

The Total Package

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review

SSL duende does this unassuming 19-inch rack unit really pack in all the mixing and processing power of a 32-channel SSL? GeorGe SHiLLinG cracks his knuckles and puts it to the test...

uende iS a Spanish word, apparently meaning ‘a mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain.’ But I’m going to try anyway! SSL’s Duende (UK£850.21 + VAT) comes as a 1U rackmount box that houses a board with 40-bit floating point DSP processing engine chips. Despite the manual talking of squeezing the processing into a 1U rack, there is mostly air inside: Duende could easily have fitted into a rather smaller package, but the smart 19-inch format means that most studios can screw it into the bottom of a rack and impress clients. The box is very light, and apart from the DC connector, the rear simply provides a pair of FireWire 400 connectors (which normally make the PSU redundant). Accompanying the unit in the elegantly packaged box is software that installs the accompanying plug-ins onto your computer. These come in Audio Units and VST formats as standard, and the latter are wrapped into RTAS versions using a second installer. Included with the unit are the Channel Strip and Bus Compressor plug-ins: optional add-ons currently comprise Drumstrip and X-EQ, which only demo for a short time unless purchased. Installation is straightforward and quick. I suffered stuttering audio problems that SSL initially ascribed to buffer problems, and a reinstallation seemed to fix it. But when the problem returned, two reinstallations failed to cure it, and it turned out that chaining the box after a DVD writer on the FireWire bus was causing bandwidth choking. There was little indication in the manual that Duende needed to be first or have its own dedicated FireWire bus; perhaps this should have been obvious. On a Mac the control panel is installed to the

Other section of System Preferences. There is nothing to control here, but the page that appears displays DSP slot usage (there are eight slots across four chips), along with driver and firmware versions, and a serial number. One Duende allows you to use 32 mono or 16 stereo plug-ins at up to 48kHz — the four different plug-ins each use one of the 32 memory slots available. Numbers are halved for 88.2/96kHz operation. As with other wrapped/powered plug-ins, these still seem to use some of the host computer’s horsepower, although Duende is slightly less taxing than the UAD-1 PCI card, for example. The Channel Strip looks rather familiar, and is based on the EQ and Dynamics section of the C200 digital console, which was itself modelled on analogue SSL desks. EQ can be switched between E-Series and G-Series style. +/-20dB Gain knobs are provided on input and output, both accompanied by level metering. The Input has a polarity flip, and the output a Sidechain Listen button. Just as on a K-series, the Filters can be switched to the Dynamics sidechain, or moved to the first point in the chain (instead of after the EQ). The 4-band EQ is smoother and cleaner than the Waves SSL 4000 collection version — there is no modelling here of analogue distortion, but it sounds silkier than I recall the Waves version, even with the latter’s Analogue emulation disabled. Nevertheless, it has a very powerful analogue feel to it, just slightly smoother and sweeter than using an analogue SSL. There is an obvious difference between the E and G modes, as expected. The technical differences are well documented: suffice it to say that the G is glassier while the E is more rock ‘n’ roll. The Dynamics resolution

section will be familiar to SSL console users; it’s excellent and is switchable Pre-EQ (there is a useful signal flow display at the bottom). Both the Compressor and Expander/ Gate work just like the original desk sections, with similar LED indications of gain reduction. It’s all thoroughly convincing; more ‘digital’ sounding than a 4000E/G, but powerful and super-sounding processing for any kind of music. The Bus Compressor is another familiar-looking design, with a lineage going back to the famous Quad Compressor of the 4000-series desks. For sure, there are subtler compressors available, and it may be mainly down to the fact that these were built into desks that they became such a popular tool. But for whatever reason, the SSL Bus Compressor is a familiar and enjoyable sound across a mix. With a mono version also provided, you can try this across anything. The Auto Mode sounds particularly good for drums. Auto is the safest mode for the mix bus, otherwise things can get a bit rubbery or start pumping. Initially I wasn’t sure that this sounded quite as instantly gratifying as one built into a big analogue desk, and the enormous meter’s needle looked rather flickery, but set up carefully it did the business, gluing the mix together as promised and adding a bit of excitement. All the familiar controls are present: however, the designers missed the trick of Waves’ version, which has the AutoFade function bolted on. Drumstrip is the first available add-on plug-in for Duende. It comprises an interesting combination of five processor blocks, each with individual bypass. The processing order can easily be changed at will using the display at the bottom. Adjacent Peak and RMS metering is provided for both input and output, and there is also an unusual ‘Dynamic History Meter’ that displays the dynamic range covered over the

November/December 2007

review last second or so. A Gate provides separate Open and Close thresholds, and Attack can be set super-fast. It works really well, with no nasty clicking, but lacks sidechain EQ or external keying. The Transient Shaper is similar to the SPL Transient Designer hardware box. No-one seems to have made a plug-in quite as good as that hardware, but SSL has made a brave attempt here. An unusual innovation is the Audition mode, which enables the Amount to be set to catch the peaks required. There’s a Speed knob to set the transient decay, and a Gain control to send the required amount of signal to the detector. It does sound really good, adding some nice crunch in ‘Inv’ mode (to soften the transients and add body) but despite all these extra knobs, and as with Sonnox’s fiddly Transient Modulator, the range seems not quite as extensive as that of the SPL, although there’s usually plenty enough here to work with. Separate HF and LF Enhancers are provided, along the lines of Aphex Aural Exciter and Big Bottom processing. These are extremely powerful and surprisingly good, bringing some bottom end to signals that start out with virtually none, and adding strong HF to dull signals, or just a little extra sparkle as required. These use Drive and Amount knobs, plus a Frequency knob for the HF, and a Turnover frequency knob for the LF processor that acts downwards from the selected frequency. Also included is the simple but fabulous Listen Mic Compressor which was available as a VST as the LMC-1, but now features a Wet/Dry knob and an EQ In button. It sounds wonderful across a drum bus — for a subtler effect you can blend with the wet/dry knob, or crank it for the full-on Phil Collins. The EQ In/Out allows a choice of full-range audio or the slightly telephoney character of the listen mic circuit.

November/December 2007

X-EQ is the second add-on plug-in, a ten-band EQ with a comprehensive selection of variable filter types and bell shapes, developed in collaboration with DSP software house Algorithmix. Its graphic appearance is similar to PSP Neon, but X-EQ lacks the linear phase processing of that particular plug-in, taking a more conventional approach, albeit with some of its own unusual and unique features. With this plug-in SSL has introduced a proprietary file management system for presets. Confusingly, therefore, there are three ways to load and save presets in Pro Tools: using the Pro Tools settings bar at the top, using the VST bar at the bottom, or the SSL Load and Save just above that. However, the SSL system ensures cross-platform compatibility. This is the only Duende plug-in to come with a library of settings, which SSL claims are based on settings used by ‘top mixing engineers’. This is perhaps slightly silly, as surely you adjust EQ by using your ears or even meters, rather than by dialling up presets. As with most good plug-in EQs there is a graph with draggable nodes for each band, along with mouse-controlled adjusters and direct numerical entry of values. However, the graph dragging was less than smooth on my system, making small adjustments tricky. There are High and Low Pass filters with 648dB/octave slopes (in 6dB steps) and five different filter types including Butterworth, Gaussian and Bessel. 20dB boost and cut is available for the High and Low Shelf bands, which use the Q control to set overshoot/undershoot. No less than nine different bell curves are available for the six parametric bands in Serial mode, with various different constant and proportional Q, symmetrical and asymmetrical settings. Parallel mode works like a traditional passive EQ and the sonic

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signature is noticeably different, remarkably clean and thoroughly enjoyable, particularly for mastering applications. Helpfully, A and B settings slots allow quick comparisons, while an FFT Spectrum Analyser can be superimposed on the display, enabling easy spotting of problem frequencies. Linear EQ aside, this really has to be just about the most comprehensive EQ plug-in available, and it would surely take months or years to really get to know the sonic implications of all the different curves and modes. With all the plug-ins there was a problem with the Pro Tools auto delay compensation: when I hit the host’s Bypass, everything went audibly out of whack. There is a Bypass within each plug-in, which works fine as long as you know to use it, but it’s a nuisance having to either open the window to bypass, or make the plug-in inactive. There was no such problem with Logic’s PDC, and SSL says this will be addressed. But apart from such teething troubles, the Duende provides a great source of mix processing. Channel Strip and Bus Compressor provide excellent breadand-butter SSL processing, while Drumstrip and X-EQ both push into unique territory. It’s all very good, and I suspect there is more to come. ■

ProS

traditional and modern SSL processing; extra processing horsepower.

ConS

uses some host CPu power; a-dC problem in bypass; too much latency to track with; unnecessarily large box.

Contact SoLid State LoGiC, uK: Website: www.solidstatelogic.com uK, Sound technology: +44 1462 480000

review

neve 8801 How do you fit a channel of neve 88r console in a 1u rack? Well you can’t but GeorGe SHiLLinG leaves it to neve and eventually it comes up with a solution of its own.

HiS iS a product that now seems obvious, and although there have been boardroom and financial shenanigans, you might wonder why it has taken Neve so long to produce it. The 8801 (UK£1695 + VAT) takes Neve’s wonderful heritage and highly regarded 88R console technology and stuffs it neatly into a jam-packed 1U. The exceptionally busy front panel includes 22 vintage style rotary knobs, many of which also hide a pushclick function, plus 11 illuminating soft-buttons and a combo input socket. There is an awful lot going on here; it initially looks rather daunting. And if you want discrete circuitry, best look elsewhere or at Neve’s vintage reissues. Neve feels confident enough to produce high-quality audio using surface-mount components and ICs, making this cheaper to build, even though it’s not particularly cheap to buy. The front panel is divided left-to-right into logical sections: Input, Filters, Dynamics, Audio Router, EQ, and Output. On the rear are separate Line (combo jack), Mic (XLR) and DI (jack) connections; the last two are doubled with a combo jack on the front. Input gain is served by one knob; pushing it selects between these three and a fourth option, the Digital (Genie) which requires an additional card to be installed (and wasn’t present on the review unit, sadly). There is therefore also a redundant Digital Output select button with associated indicator LEDs. Power comes in via the DIN plug-equipped lead coming from the lumpin-the-line transformer. Surely by now flimsy DIN plugs have been banned from mains duties. Buttons are provided for Pad, Phase and 48V. Mic gain goes up to an indicated +70dB so there is plenty of level boost available — furthermore, the output knob is a fader that goes from off to +10dB (although there is no clue as to where zero might be!) Even more boost is available at the Dynamics section’s Gain Make-Up. Knobs are closely spaced, but thankfully the important

Input and Output gain pots are in clear space, making it easier to ride the recording levels on the fly. The mic preamp quality is excellent and based on those in the 88R console. It manages to sound clean and crystal clear without being weak and characterless, although there is little apparent colouration, just a maturity of tone. The Filters comprise two 12dB per octave continuously variable knobs with ample range, separately activated (again by knob push) and accompanied by a Filters to Sidechain button that acts on both simultaneously. The Dynamics section comprises four knobs for the Compressor/Limiter across the top for Gain Makeup, Threshold, Ratio and Release, with four knobs along the bottom dedicated to the operation of the Gate/Expander — Hysteresis, Threshold, Range and Release. All eight knobs include push functions for additional control: the Compressor’s knobs also control Hard/Soft Knee selection, Compressor Sidechain Link, Normal/ Fast Attack and Auto-Release mode — a triple timeconstant programme-dependent release time for extra smooth release with definitely no pumping. On the Expander Gate you can switch between Gate and a 2:1 Expander, Key Input, Normal/Fast Attack and, usefully, you can also set it to ‘Invert’ (Ducking mode). An overall Dynamics bypass button is provided; each of the two sections can be separately bypassed by setting their Threshold and Ratio or Range appropriately. The Dynamics section is extremely well featured and flexible. Internal jumpers change the two Attack settings to faster times, but you do wish they had put these on the front panel. There is an Auto Release setting for the Compressor/Limiter, but for vocals it seems best with a fixed setting somewhere towards the faster side of the knob’s range. It sounds good on vocals in Soft Knee mode, especially on female singers, although you need to set it bravely with a high ratio and lots of gain-reduction LEDs showing to really

control singers who have a wide dynamic range. The EQ section is four-band, with two fully parametric overlapping mid-bands, and sweeping high and low bands with switchable peak/shelf modes and a pushbutton Hi-Q setting available in peak mode. As well as a bypass button, there is an EQ to Sidechain function that does what it says and removes the EQ from the main signal path. The EQ is very useable and controls most situations effortlessly and musically, with a sweet top-end and powerful lows, with less midrange aggression than, say, an SSL E. The Audio Router is a clever little logic-controlled switching circuit to change the order of processing of the Dynamics, EQ and Insert (balanced, accommodated by a pair of dedicated XLRs on the rear). Changing the order is as simple as holding the button to enter programming mode, then pressing the main buttons in the order desired. A brief press of the AR button interrogates, and the order is displayed by flashing the buttons. The Output section has the aforementioned Gain knob: pushing this changes the LED metering between Input and Output. Along with the XLR Line Output, a headphone output is provided on the rear, and using an internal jumper the level of this can be bumped up if so desired. Also on the rear panel is a 9-pin D-Type connector allowing for linking of the Key Input and Dynamics Links (two are provided) to enable daisychaining of units. Last on the rear, there’s a Type B USB socket for recall. The software is included on the Manual CD (there is no printed manual) and operation is straightforward and slick, with smart graphics for matching settings with a seemingly high degree of accuracy — buttons are set automatically, although infuriatingly their status is lost on power-down. The main criticism of this unit is that it really should have been a 2U affair, just so you could get fingers around knobs and see the legending properly. It would also have allowed jumper settings to be available on knobs instead of having to take the top off and fiddle around — you can’t do that while the talent is waiting. And it might have allowed for a decent meter. I’d have also liked a separate limiter section, and perhaps a separate de-esser. But that said, a 2U box would have been undoubtedly rather more expensive, so a prudent Brown-ite philosophy has been employed here. It’s still a terrific bit of kit: the mic amp and EQ are particularly sweet. It all sounds bigger than it looks, and this is a great way for, well, anyone to employ some genuine Neve hardware when recording and mixing. ■

ProS

Jam-packed feature-rich recording channel; authentic neve sound; recall.

ConS

fiddly, crammed front panel; buttons lose status on power-down; no printed manual.

Contact neve, uK: Website: www.ams-neve.com uK, KMr: +44 20 8445 2446

resolution

November/December 2007

review

Prism Sound MMa-4Xr Swedish audiophile Leif Mases has updated his 4-channel preamp design for Prism Sound, the MMa-4, to create the MMa-4Xr. GeorGe SHiLLinG spends some time in gainful employment… a multiband compressor, and this year, he undertook a huge install of a custom archiving system for the Library Of Congress National Archives in the USA. In the late 1990s Mases forged an alliance with Prism Sound to market his stereo mastering compressor and stereo mastering EQ. These sell increasingly well, and are achieving something of a cult status. The original MMA-4 dates from a similar time, and the updated XR version (UK£2250 + VAT) makes a number of changes. Cosmetically, the front panel now matches the super-high-end ADA-8XR convertor; HiS 4-CHanneL MiC preamp is part of the this design is a deliberate attempt to indicate that they Maselec Master Series, an all-analogue unit are perfect partners -- mic preamps to match the high designed by Swedish audio wizard Leif Mases. quality of the convertors. He started out at Abba’s Polar Studios in Sweden, but Internally, the circuitry has undergone almost a moved on to engineer records for a number of major ground-up redesign with only the PSU section and rock acts, such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and layout remaining similar. The topology remains the Jeff Beck, with whom he collaborated for many years, same but over the years Mases admits to gaining most notably on the Grammy-winning Jeff Beck’s knowledge, and he realised that he could improve on Guitar Shop album. In the 1980s he achieved notoriety the design. The XR provides a maximum gain of 69dB for designing a replacement circuit for SSL 4000 series compared to the old model’s 60dB. This improvement EQs. Intended to possess some of the characteristics of was driven by the increasing popularity of ribbon Pultec EQ, it was christened Maselec, and this name microphones, but to achieve the extra 9dB Mases has stuck for Mases’ designs, some of which are now asserts that he needed three times the bandwidth, marketed and packaged by Prism Sound in the UK. He due to the bandwidth drop with higher gain. To this also has his own company which is best known for its end, the front-end is a new discrete design with 10 Resolution Half Page 7/12/06 17:10 Page 1 mastering consoles, he has recently been working on transistors.

WITHOUT US, THERE’S NO STORY

The MMA-4XR is indeed as well built as the ADA8XR, with the chunky curved front panel, and even gives off some similarly reassuring relay clicks when powered up. Operation couldn’t be much simpler. Each of the four channels is mirrored on the reverse with an XLR microphone input and line output. The gain is switched in 9dB steps, and each channel provides phantom power, phase reverse and mute toggle switches, along with basic metering. Indeed the gain is clean and powerful, and the only function I missed was any kind of fine gain adjustment. There is no (currently fashionable) adjustment for impedance. But there was no need; it sounded impeccable with any type of mic I could think of, revealing enormous detail. The preamps are extremely quiet, and if you want to hear the sound and character of a microphone, this seems about the best way to achieve that. Sometimes this starkness can seem a little dry, but there has been something of a trend of late towards natural-sounding recordings — if nothing else, you must have a pure signal to make use of all those crunchy virtual tape and console plug-ins! Mases is even slightly disparaging of ‘characterful’ models, gently implying that such descriptions are an excuse for poor design! The price compares favourably with other high-end units, so if you simply want clean gain you should like this a lot. ■

ProS

ultra-clean; plenty of gain; useful Mute switches.

ConS

no fine-adjust of level or gain fader; nothing ‘characterful’ about it!

Contact PriSM Sound, uK: Website: www.prismsound.com

When you’re mixing audio for live production and on-air broadcast, you’ve only got one chance to get it right. That’s why the world’s most successful broadcasters rely on Calrec consoles. Because we are dedicated exclusively to the broadcast industry, we understand what’s most important to you – whatever your size or production capacity. As well as being outstandingly reliable and intuitive to operate, our consoles are also uniquely adaptable to evolving broadcast needs – such as surround sound. Integral Bluefin high density signal processing technology, for example, delivers twice the signal processing capacity of conventional systems – in a fraction of the space. If that sounds like good news to you, get the full story at calrec.com

calrec.com

November/December 2007

Putting Sound in the Picture

resolution

review

Se electronics uSB2200a Hardened uSB audio cynic roB JaMeS prepares to disparage Se’s new uSB microphone, but is in for a very pleasant surprise...

CoMPuter iS not really the ideal place to plug in an analogue studio microphone, so we generally need a load of paraphernalia between mic and PC to sort out levels, impedance and phantom powering. Wouldn’t it be nice if the A-D convertor was in the microphone and all you had to do was plug it into a USB port? This is the premise behind SE Electronics’ USB2200a large-diaphragm cardioid condenser mic (UK£189 + VAT). Based on the bestselling SE2200a (over 20,000 sold, apparently), with the same SE 1-inch vacuum gold-sputtered ultra-light Mylar diaphragm, the new mic has a number of innovative features that mark it out from the rest of the herd. I also had an SE2200a (UK£127 + VAT) for comparison. The first obvious difference is the size of 30

the packages. Both mics arrived in cardboard boxes, but the SE2200a box was almost twice the size and the reason for this soon becomes apparent once the boxes are open. The USB2200a is foam-cushioned in its cardboard box, but the SE2200a arrives inside an expensive-looking aluminium flightcase. Cosmetics are the next obvious divergence. While the SE2200a follows the traditional rather conservative design cues set decades ago by the German classics, the USB2200A is much less of a shrinking violet and has a decidedly retro feel. Thus the SE2200a is finished in satin silver with a matt grille and comes with a completely conventional lightalloy elastic suspension mount, while the USB2200A sports a gloss white body, a chrome grill, and a chrome C mount with two finger screws either side of the body (it also fits the same suspension mount as its sibling, and this is available as an optional extra). Conditioned by many years of tediously conventional mic design, I initially found the USB2200A a bit brash for my liking. However, familiarity breeds content, or something like that, and now I’ve had the chance to live with it for a few weeks the look is growing on me. Aside from the USB connection, there’s also an analogue output via an XLR in the base of the USB2200A. On the back, the lower part of the cylindrical body is recessed and here you will find a standard mini-USB socket, a LED, a balance pot and a 3.5mm jack socket. The last two are a clue to the other tricks this mic has in store. There is a D-A convertor for signals returned from the workstation, and the pot mixes the analogue mic output with these for latency-free headphone monitoring. While on the subject of connections, the supplied USB cable is ridiculously short at a mere one metre. Luckily, USB extension cables are readily available and affordable. Just below the grille the usual bass cut and -10dB pad switches are joined by a three-way switch enigmatically labelled with a dot, a P and an M. This is an analogue gain switch: just to be awkward, Macs and PCs use different reference levels for audio over USB and the switch is intended to help compensate for this. The dot position is an intermediate setting. Invisible from the outside, the USB2200a has a proprietary chip and software set that removes noise and spikes from the 5V power delivered via USB before it is converted to energise the capsule. Noise is certainly not an issue here. I took both microphones to the studio of local vocal and performance coach and studio owner Jedd OwenEllis Clark to give them a workout. Since the USB2200a is a class-compliant USB2 device, it requires no additional driver software. It is literally plug and play on both PC and Mac and automatically appears in applications as a sound device. The one real limitation is bit depth. The output via USB is 16-bit and this means you need to pay close attention to the analogue level, using the switch and distance from mic, to avoid clipping. We used Wavelab as the host with no problems. With the mics set up side by side in Jedd’s vocal booth I recorded short sections of scales, speech and singing. Large-diaphragm mics in a small booth resolution

mean that bass cut can be considered a necessity. As with any large-diaphragm mic, a pop-stopper is also a must-have. With the takes lined up on different tracks of a montage for easy comparison, first impressions were revealing. Both mikes are a little bright for my BBC-trained ears but Jedd was unconcerned by this and found the slightly smoother response of the SE2200a less dynamic. Using USB with a wide dynamic range voice, the USB2200a’s 16-bit limitations become apparent. It is all too easy to clip. I actually preferred the analogue output due to a perception of slightly better bass response and smoother midrange. Overall though, the utility of the USB option plus my slight preference for the analogue output of the USB2200a makes it the winner in this company. In short, both of these mics deliver the goods. They are commendably quiet and can take serious levels in their stride. While they wouldn’t be my first choice for speech, my preferred alternatives are several times the asking price here, and lack the convenience of the USB connection. The USB2200a will lock to 44.1kHz or 48kHz DAW clock. Resultant files are 16-bit dual mono and, with the automatic conversion (bit stuffing), 24-bit. Although many Mac and PC programs will have no trouble creating 88.2kHz, 96kHz files, this feature is not officially certified by SE. I was predisposed to dislike this mic, on the grounds that USB is not ideal as an audio connection, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was a great deal better than I was expecting. The sheer convenience of just being able to plug in and go, with monitoring thrown in, outweighs the objections and the even better performance to be had via the conventional, concurrent analogue output seals the deal. ■

ProS

Sheer convenience; studio quality mic via uSB; price.

ConS

only 16-bit via uSB; appearance won’t appeal to conservatives; needs 24-bit capability and remote control of analogue gain to totally convince.

Contact Se eLeCtroniCS, CHina: Website: www.seelectronics.com uK, Sonic distribution: +44 845 500 2500

November/December 2007

Studio Legends. Refined over 35 years. AKG® C 414 B-XLII | C 414 B-XLS | Since 1971, the C 414 has been recognised as one of the premier studio condenser microphones. That’s why you’ll hear it on literally hundreds of classic recordings. These latest incarnations represent the pinnacle of this classic design. The stunning clarity and beautifully detailed sound are joined by enhanced features including a choice of five polar patterns and 3 switchable bass filters. The B-XLS delivers superb quality recordings across a wide range of acoustic sources, while for solo vocals and instruments the B-XLII has been specifically designed to capture every detail of the performance. When it’s time for a new microphone, choose a legend.

www.akg.com

Distributed in the UK and Eire by: Harman Pro UK T: 01707 668181 E: info@harmanprouk.com W: www.harmanprouk.com

review

universal audio 2-La-2 What’s even more useful than an La-2a optical compressor? Why, two new, matched La2a optical compressors, of course, especially if packed into a 2u box costing around a quarter more than a single one. GeorGe SHiLLinG sees double.

a HaS Been at it again. Previously, the 21176 packed a pair of mono 1176s into the space usually occupied by just one of them. And now UA has performed another magician’s trick, putting two of its reissue LA-2As (6U of circuitry) into a 2U case, which might seem even more impressive. However, if you’ve ever peered round the back of an LA-2A, you’ll know its case is extremely shallow, with just a few larger components sticking out of the rear. Perhaps even more impressive is the pricing — roughly just 25% more than a mono reissue LA-2A. The original LA-2A ‘Levelling Amplifier’ was introduced in the early 1960s. It was designed not by Bill Putnam, but by Jim Lawrence of Teletronix in Pasadena, California, before eventually being acquired by Bill Putnam’s company in 1967, which then became UREI. They stopped making originals in 1969, but when Putnam’s sons formed the new Universal Audio company, the LA-2A was one of their first reissues. Perhaps you might have expected the launch of the 2-LA-2 (UK£2499 + VAT) sooner, but it has been lovingly fashioned by original UREI engineer Dennis Fink, who was presumably busy beforehand getting the LA-3A reissue in order. A hold-up occurred with a planned extra Fast/Slow switch to incorporate an optional Fast mode, using another pair of T4 optical cells. Despite promo photos of units with the extra switches, and a movie including this feature on the DVD that came in the box, the final product omits this feature due to difficulty in obtaining the necessary components from the supplier. I found that the spaces for the extra T4 and tube components were still present on the circuit board, so perhaps an upgrade or mod might be available one day. Build quality is high, as you expect from this manufacturer. On the rear are quality XLRs for the two inputs and outputs, plus an IEC socket — some internal replugging and an alternative fuse is required for operation at 110V. On the front is a thick panel, on which are mounted large vintage-style knobs for

Gain (output) and Peak Reduction. These controls are undamped but seem perhaps just very slightly stiffer than those encountered on most mono LA-2As. A large power toggle is accompanied by a lovely oldfashioned purple light. Each channel includes a Limit/Compress toggle, and a toggle for the meter to switch between Gain Reduction and Output. Near the centre is a toggle for Dual/Link modes, and there is an overall Bypass toggle — something not included on original and reissue mono units. Bypass removes the gain reduction circuit, but leaves the valve amplification in circuit, so you can use the unit for a little extra gain and tube colouration. The etched faceplates look built to last. The VU meters glow in a nice aged looking yellow illumination, and although smaller than those found on LA-2As, are big enough — roughly the same width as those on an 1176, if a little shallower. Cramming all the circuitry into 2U results in the first piece of advice printed on a separate alert sheet: ‘Your 2-LA-2 Gets Hot!!!’ They are not joking; it does get fairly warm, and there are vents in several locations. So naturally, the recommendation is that you must leave 1U free above, and if possible 1U ventilation below; the space-saving benefits are almost gone before we’ve started. But apart from space saving, there is the more immediate concern of cost saving. Yes, the circuitry layout is arranged differently from a mono LA-2A, but UA is at pains to point out that this is indeed the same circuitry and the same sound as an original unit. Furthermore, you can stereo-link the channels here, so to that end the T4 optical modules are matched for a stable image. I love LA-2As: they make fantastic general-purpose compressors. With no attack or release adjustments, they are wonderfully quick to set up, and work particularly well with bass guitar, vocals, and anything you want tamed without drama. There is a masterful feel to the way they smooth a signal. Things really do seem bigger and warmer, grander and genuine,

without any unnatural or fatiguing hype. The only drawback that might be levelled (d’oh!) at the LA2A is its lack of ultra-high-frequency response — it tails off at around 15kHz. In practice, this is rarely a problem, but this roll-off is probably at least partially to blame for the ‘warming’ characteristic credited to the unit. But undoubtedly the compression character is warm — the two-stage release makes recovery relatively invisible, and the very fast attack time keeps most signals in check. The 2-LA-2 seems to retain the character, size and depth of the sound of the LA-2A, and works as well as expected in all the usual situations. On first listen, recording a cheap acoustic guitar with a U87 and my regular unofficial Neve clone mic preamp, the sound was instantly heartening — despite the instrument and player (me) there was a grandeur to the sound that is rare with modern gear. It warmed bass guitar and tamed ‘dynamic’ performances by lesser musicians. It soothes vocals effortlessly, and contains spiky guitars. But one of the main attractions of this new unit is the possibility it offers of stereolinked operation. I was fascinated to try it as a mix bus compressor, and it didn’t disappoint. On a grand alternative rock epic, it was just fantastic, gloriously rich. It doesn’t work on everything, and I’m not sure if it was the slight top-end loss, or perhaps just the deficiencies of going through A-D and D-A, but on one mix I definitely preferred a couple of dB’s reduction from the UAD-1 Fairchild plug-in rather than this box. On a pop-rock track it really tamed some of the unintended digital hardness and unpleasantness and yet conversely seemed to increase the ‘juiciness’ and excitement. And generally, when compared to the UAD-1 LA-2A plug-in, the hardware was markedly different, and far more pleasing to the ear. The compression is very more-ish, and with the needles bouncing beyond about -6dB gain reduction you start feeling like you are listening to the best-sounding FM radio, hearing your favourite song — you just want to turn it up! Even when working hard, the 2-LA-2 still sounds luscious and remarkably undistorted. You might need an air-conditioning upgrade to cope with the extra heat, but the 2-LA-2 pours warmth into your music. This really is magic: two LA-2As in a box. ■

ProS

Sounds as good as two La-2as for less money; matched stereo linking.

ConS

Gets hot and requires empty rack space above (and preferably below); eliminates highest frequencies; no promised fast mode (yet).

Contact univerSaL audio, uS: Website: www.uaudio.com uK, Source distribution: +44 20 8962 5080

resolution

November/December 2007

ICON

D-Control ES Enhanced Design, Improved Visual Navigation. Discover more about the D-Control™ ES worksurface for Pro Tools|HD® at www.digidesign.com/resolution

Over 2,000 ICON systems installed worldwide . Fully modular, state-of-the-art console control . Seamless Avid interoperability . 192 kHz sample- rate support . Industry’s finest plug-in options . Automatic Delay Compensation . Integrated video and delivery . Total session recall digidesign.com © 2007 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Avid, Digidesign, and D-Control are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Product features, specifications, and system requirements are subject to change without notice.

review

violet design flamingo the flamingo sits firmly at the premium end of violet design’s microphone offerings, and comes in two ﬂavours — Standard and vintage. actually, there’s a third ﬂavour in the form of the flamingo Magic ear, which has a diaphragm shaped like a human ear (no, honestly…) but it’s the two more conventional variants Jon tHornton is looking at here.

dMittedLY, ‘ConventionaL’ MiGHt not be a word you’d apply to the physical appearance of any Violet product, but the Flamingos are probably among the most restrained in this respect. Styled to reflect a vintage ‘bottle’ design, both microphones have an identical housing containing the valve-based electronics, topped by a roughly spherical capsule housing. Inside this is a conventional (i.e. circular!) 1-inch dual-diaphragm assembly configured to give a fixed cardioid polar pattern. Unlike some other bottle designs, and indeed some other microphones in the Violet range, the capsule assemblies are not designed to be removable, but are firmly fixed in place. External build quality seems good, although the knurled plastic ends that sit at either end of the main housing are also firmly fixed despite the fact that they look like they should unscrew. The two variants are easily distinguished by the finish on this housing with the Vintage being finished in a rather understated matt grey, and the Standard in a less understated polished violet. Both ship in a nice wooden box, which contains the microphone, power supply and connecting cable but strangely no shockmount. This comes as an optional extra, which seems a little mean at this end of the market. Particularly so when you see the optional extra, which clamps round the body of the mic with two felt strips tensioned by metal clips — for all the world like two cat collars. It works, but it’s certainly not an elegant design. The microphones internals are based around a 6267 tube, encased in a substantial heat sink and internally shockmounted to reduce the potential effects of valve microphony. The output stage is via a custom-wound humbucking transformer.

Connection to the supplied PSU is via a 7-pin XLR, with a balanced mic level output available on the rear of the PSU. Switching it on engages a softstart sequence designed to prolong valve life, which applies the heater voltage and then gently ramps up the plate voltage, and this is indicated on a front panel LCD display. The output is muted until the sequence is complete, and an LED changes from red to green when all is well. The final stage in the pre-flight check is to remove the three transit screws from the diaphragm assembly that prevent excessive play in the diaphragms internal shockmount during transport. First up to the plate was the Flamingo Vintage on male vocals, which gave an immediately gutsy result. Used close-up it succeeded in delivering a huge vocal sound from quite a thin voice. A touch of gravelliness was apparent in the low frequencies, although even when making maximum use of the sizeable proximity bump, it sounded well controlled. Mid-range frequencies were neutral and detailed, and HF response allowed a little ‘air’ around the voice without sounding overly bight or brittle. In fact, the HF rolls of quite noticeably but smoothly from around 12kHz, adding to

the slightly dark, smooth character of the sound. As a result, the Flamingo Vintage rapidly acquired the nickname ‘The Barry’ (White) from those who used it — it does that sound astonishingly well. The problem is that it’s something of a one-trick pony — used close and with certain voices and it’s fantastic straight out of the box. But change the voice — particularly with female vocals but some male vocals too — and it starts to sound just a little too voiced, as if there’s a bit of a low-mid scoop around the 200Hz area. There is some tweaking to be done with distance in some applications, but the Vintage does seem to be a microphone that is either instantly right or instantly wrong, certainly with vocals. This ‘all or nothing’ character was apparent in other applications too. As a single overhead on a stripped down drum kit for a jazz recording it just worked perfectly — plenty of mid range attack and detail, lots of tonal detail from the toms, and a nice smooth sound to the cymbals with no horrible fizziness. But on a none-too-bright sounding steel strung acoustic that lumpiness and sense of a low-mid scoop returned. Switching to the Flamingo Standard, and the difference in sound, though not quite as dramatic as the shift in body colour, is still very plain to hear. Tuned to sound a little more ‘modern’, there’s a slight mid-range presence boost and a wide peak at around 15kHz. When used in similar applications to the Vintage variant, there’s still a real sense of drama and grit in the lower registers, but this doesn’t seem to be quite as ‘all or nothing’ as with the Vintage. On male and female vocals, you don’t have to work the microphone quite so close in to get good results, and although the midrange is slightly harder sounding than the Vintage, it manages to avoid sounding brittle. The HF peak helps to capture a lot of air and breathiness around vocals, although this might be a touch too bright for some tastes. There’s a similarity in sound here to the SE Gemini. The Flamingo isn’t quite as in your face as the Gemini can be though, neither does it have that silkiness to the HF that, say, a Horch does. Instead, it sits quite squarely between the two. Both of these microphones could easily find a place in my mic cupboard – they are well made, extremely quiet for valve designs, and both have that fantastic LF gutsiness when used close in. If I had to pick only one, it would be the Standard rather than the Vintage. When the Vintage worked, it worked extremely well. But in terms of an all-round performer, the Standard seemed to take EQ better, be less fussy in terms of positioning, and seemed to deliver the goods on a wider variety of sources. If big, smooth male vocals are your stock in trade though, you really owe it yourself to demo a ‘Barry’… sorry, Flamingo Vintage. ■

ProS

Well made and quiet; warm and gutsy on vocals when used close in; nicely detailed and solid mid-range.

ConS

vintage very variable with different voices; shockmount a little clunky and not included.

Contact vioLet deSiGn, Latvia: Website: www.violet-design.com

resolution

November/December 2007

Audio

perfection

The current state of technology in the recording and reproduction of sound is at a very high level today thanks to tireless efforts of a handful of pioneers. This relatively small group of researchers and innovators, all of whom were continually striving for sonic perfection included Horst Klein and Walter Hummel. In 1945 they courageously founded a company that is still to this day, exclusively dedicated to the perfect reproduction of sound. www.klein-hummel.co.uk

review

PreSonus fireStudio & MSr roB JaMeS finds out what makes the fireStudio, the latest multichannel fireWire recording interface from PreSonus, such hot stuff. it’s all to do with the optional MSr.

eee 1394, fireWire, iLink: call it what you will, this serial interface has been phenomenally successful. For DV video and even the later high-definition variant, HDV, FireWire has proven to be robust and mostly reliable (the only caveat is that ‘hot-plugging’ has been known to lead to the premature demise of camcorders and other devices). The interface has also proved popular for external hard drives. However, I’ve never been totally convinced by FireWire as a real-time audio interface. Especially in the PC world, there are just too many variables. Therefore, being confronted by yet another FireWire audio and MIDI interface does not usually fill me with enthusiasm. However, PreSonus have come up with an interesting new twist. The FireStudio (UK£552.34 + VAT) also has an optional monitor controller, the MSR or Monitor Station Remote (£135.32 + VAT), that transforms what would otherwise be a rather mundane offering into something completely different. FireStudio is a shallow-depth 1U rackmount. Alloy sculpture extends beyond the front panel to the rackear side plates and makes this a rather handsome unit. PreSonus immediately gains some Brownie points for the locking low-voltage connector to the in-line power supply. This is a simple but robust threaded collar addition to the normal coaxial plug; other manufacturers please take note. Half of the front panel is dedicated to Neutrik combo XLR/Jack sockets for the eight channels of analogue mic/line input (1 and 2 are either mic or instrument with lineins on the back panel). Each analogue input has a gain/trim pot and clip LED. Two pushbuttons switch phantom power to inputs 1-4 and 5-8. There’s a headphone output jack and pot and a Main Level pot that affects the Main Output jacks on the rear panel. A pushbutton power switch and bicolour sync LED complete the front panel. At the rear, aside from the aforementioned power connector, there are two FireWire sockets, the second provided for daisy-chaining a second unit. There are the usual two MIDI sockets, plus two BNCs for Word clock I-O and four Toslink optical sockets for the 16 channels (at 44.1kHz/48kHz) of ADAT I-O. SMUX is supported for eight channels at higher sample rates. ADAT Channels 9 to 16 are currently only available to the host DAW software; they do not appear in the Console Control application (of which more in a moment). A pair of phonos handles SPDIF I-O at up to 96kHz and a further pair of phonos supply a domestic analogue input for comparison purposes. This only works with the MSR, for which the RJ45 Ethernet control socket is adjacent. The rest of the audio connections are all 1/4-inch jacks: a balanced pair for 36

the main output, eight more general-purpose outputs, and two more for line inputs 1 and 2, adjacent to Preamp 1 and 2 outputs for convenient insertion of external processing. Installation is a lot easier than the FireWire devices of yore, but it is vital to follow the instructions and carry out the process in the proper order. The FireStudio’s inputs and outputs will then appear in the usual way as sources and destinations in your host application. A Control Console application is included which broadens the possibilities considerably. You can use it as a matrix router between analogue and digital I-Os. Up to nine monitor mixes of all inputs and playback streams can be created and stored so that different musicians hear only what they need. Sends and returns can be set up for any input for insert purposes, and mixes can be sent to multiple outputs for comparison. FireStudio can also operate in standalone mode resolution

without a computer. Settings made in the Control Console application are stored in flash memory. Therefore FireStudio can function as a simple 8channel A-D and D-A convertor. Standalone mode can also be used to make a confidence backup of a live recording at the same time as recording via FireWire; if the computer goes down, the unit will still route signals to the alternative recorder. It’s worth noting that the FireStudio’s headphone output levels are more than generous, which is often not the case on such interfaces. All works as it should; so far so good. But, as I hinted in the introduction, the really interesting part begins when you have the optional MSR. MSR is a small (180mm deep by 130mm wide and 40mm high) desktop unit. The small top-panel pots control headphone outputs 2 and 3 (on the back of the MSR) and Talkback level. The larger one, unsurprisingly, controls the main monitor level. Immediately above this the first three buttons select stereo sources. C is latching for guide tracks, while A and B are mutually exclusive. The remaining six buttons in the central block are speaker channel mutes when in surround mode. To the left, three buttons select the monitor source from a choice of Aux main or SPDIF. To the right, Monitor Mode selects switch between Track, Mix and Surround. Either side of the volume pot, four buttons access mono and mute functions, a -20dB Dim and the rearpanel XLR, which is designed for users to attach an external dynamic mic for talkback purposes. The large latching Talk key in the centre at the bottom of the MSR control panel accesses the talkback mic, and also automatically invokes the Dim function when pressed to avoid howl-round. I have long felt that what many people really need in a do-it-all DAW peripheral is mic and line inputs, monitor outputs, metering and some hardware means of controlling the monitoring, levels and transport. The FireStudio, when coupled with the MSR, ticks a number of these boxes, but not all of them. The basic unit provides the I-O and phantom power, and the MSR adds monitor control including mode, source selection and talkback, plus a useful extra pair of headphone outputs. Another component, hardware control of levels and transport, can be had with the addition of a further PreSonus product, the FaderPort. MSR is the same shape and size, and the two units look the part side by side. Instant and intuitive monitor control makes a huge difference. Although most of the MSR’s functions are available one way or another on screen in the host DAW or the Control Console software, this is a poor substitute for real buttons. Together FireStudio, MSR and FaderPort are a great deal more than the sum of their parts. For under a grand you get the essential I-O and the equally important control. While I remain sceptical about the overall suitability of FireWire as a professional audio interface, I am impressed by this latest offering from PreSonus. For those without bottomless pockets, this combination offers a cost-effective way of getting the essentials. ■

ProS

useful blend of features; well priced; stylish.

ConS

Questions remain about the suitability of fireWire as a multichannel real-time audio interface; button feel on the remote takes a bit of getting used to.

Contact PreSonuS, uS: Website: www.presonus.com uK, Source distribution: +44 20 8962 5080

November/December 2007

J U S T A D D T A L E N T ... Whether you’re cutting tracks for fun or producing a groundbreaking record, Unity Audio has the best front end analogue and plug-in tools for the job. Professional producers, studios and artists choose our products, as they’re most favourite and indispensable tools for their daily work. Such as producer/engineer Cenzo Townsend (Kaiser Chiefs, The Zutons, The Feeling, Razor Light), Steve ‘Dub’ Jones (The Chemical Brothers, Primal Scream, Audio Bullies), Steve Osborne (Kt Tunstall), Ben Hillier (Depeche Mode, Doves, Elbow), Mark ‘Spike’ Stent (Madonna, Oasis, No Doubt, Gwen Stefani), Groove Armada, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers.

EchoVerb Tape Echo/Reverb

The sound and feel of tape eco/reverb is back! Six heads with guitar level inputs and transformer balanced XLR’s

Telefunken USA AK47

Multi-pattern valve microphone featuring new old stock Telefunken EF732 valve and custom wound hand made BV47 transformer. The mic bargin of the century, £845.00 ex VAT. Try one out on our 7 day no quibble sale or return

Audioease Altiverb 6

The masters of plug-in convolution based reverbs have raised the bar again. Simply the best sounding, feature packed reverb available, with the largest preset library on the planet

URS Classic Console Strip Pro

The ultimate, multi console in the box channel strip solution. Create your dream console choosing your favorite algorithms from the Input Stage, Compressor and EQ selections

Tonelux V8 Roadster Rack

8 way portable rack. Accepts any of the Tonelux modules. Load it with Pre’s, EQ’s, Comps, mono or stereo inputs – the choice is yours

Soundtoys Native FX Bundle

This is the effects rack you've have been waiting for. SoundToys Native Effects gives your mixes that pro quality, fat analog sound without the fat kick in the wallet. Includes Speed, Phase Mistress, FilterFreak, Echoboy, Tremolator, Crystallizer

Chandler Limited Germanium Compressor

FET based gain reduction element using the same class A amp found in the GERM Pre and Tone Control. Features include WET/DRY mix, COMP CURVE, CLEAN/DIRTY COMP, and SIDECHAIN FILTER

Little Labs Multi Z PIP

Pro instrument multi-impedance pre-amp, Re-amp, DI, splitter

Thermionic Culture Earlybird 1.2 All valve dual mono no compromise, no frills pre-amp. Ultra low distortion, noise and phase shift

GREAT TALENT DESERVES GREAT TOOLS the pro-audio specialists tel: 01440 785843 fax: 01440 785845 web: www.unityaudio.co.uk email: sales@unityaudio.co.uk

monitor benchtest

acoustic energy ae22 KeitH HoLLand

The sensitivity of the AE22 is around 87dB SPL at 1m distance for 1W input. Connection to the loudspeaker is via a pair of binding post terminals or a parallel Speakon socket. The on-axis frequency response and harmonic distortion (for an output level of 90dB at 1m distance) for the AE22 are shown in Figure 1. The response is seen to be somewhat uneven, lying within ±4dB from 70Hz to 20kHz, with an under-damped 2ndorder low-frequency roll-off reaching -10dB at around 50Hz. Somewhat unusually, the harmonic distortion does not show the rise in level at low frequencies

fig. 2a. Horizontal off-axis response left.

He ae22 froM Acoustic Energy is a twoway passive loudspeaker comprising a 200mm pressed alloy cone woofer and a 25mm ‘ring radiator’ tweeter. These drivers are mounted nonsymmetrically with the tweeter protruding beyond the top edge of the baffle, so the loudspeakers are available as handed pairs. The cabinet is a sealed box having overall external dimensions of 350mm wide by 300mm deep by 250mm high and a weight of 10kg. The passive crossover is specified as having 3rd-order Bessel filters crossing over at 2·0kHz, and Acoustic Energy recommends use with amplifiers having a power output of between 75W and 200W.

fig. 2b. Horizontal off-axis response right.

fig. 1. on-axis frequency response and harmonic distortion.

that is characteristic of many designs, but instead remains at a reasonable level throughout most of the frequency range. Two horizontal off-axis responses are shown in Figures 2a and 2b due to the non-symmetric driver layout and the vertical off-axis responses are shown

monitor benchtest

fig. 4. acoustic source position. fig. 2c. vertical off-axis response.

fig. 5. Power cepstrum. fig. 3. Step response.

in Figure 2c . Both horizontal plots show a dip at the crossover frequency due to the spatial separation of the drivers, although this is only really a problem at 60 degrees to the right. The layout does, however, allow the drivers to be closer in the vertical plane than with the more usually vertically-aligned driver layout, and this can be seen by the absence of a crossover frequency dip in the vertical plane. The plots show

that the tweeter has very wide dispersion between 2kHz and 7kHz, but that this narrows significantly at higher frequencies. The step response for the AE22 (Figure 3) shows the tweeter responding around 0Âˇ5ms before the woofer. A rapid rise time is evident although the decay demonstrates some unevenness. Figure 4 shows that the acoustic source position shifts to only a little over 1m behind the loudspeaker at low frequencies. This is an excellent result that can be attributed to the gentle, 2nd-order low-frequency roll-off.

fig. 6. Waterfall plot.

The power cepstrum for this loudspeaker, shown in Figure 5, does not have any significant features. The waterfall plot, shown in Figure 6, demonstrates a very rapid decay throughout the entire frequency range, with -40dB reached in less than 40ms at all frequencies. Considering this rapid decay of the low frequencies along with the small initial delay demonstrated by the acoustic source position plot, it is clear that this loudspeaker should reproduce lowfrequency transient signals very accurately. The Acoustic Energy AE22 appears to fulfil its apparent intended role, as a meter-bridge mounted near-field monitor, very well. The raised mid-frequency response is a characteristic of many popular loudspeakers of this type, indeed there is some evidence to show that this response is equalised in practice by the presence of the mixing desk. The very accurate low-frequency transient response is a great asset for this application. Of some concern, however, must be the unevenness of the frequency response. â&#x2013;

Contact aCouStiC enerGY, uK: Website: www.acoutic-energy.co.uk

review

rnd Portico 5033 the half width, 1u Portico boxes from rupert neve designs have become an increasingly familiar sight in outboard racks in the last year or two. Jon tHornton is smitten with the best eQ he’s heard in years.

rue to it’S word, the Texas-based RND outfit has continued to add to its range of devices at a steady rate and it now encompasses not only the staples of a signal processing diet, but also some more spicy offerings, such as analogue tape emulation and stereo width processing. The 5033 though, falls firmly into the former category, and is the only dedicated EQ in the range. It’s initially distinctive because of the number of bands on offer — three overlapping parametric bands cover the mid range, coupled with high and low shelving bands, to give a total of five rather than the usual four. The now familiar half-width 1U case is just as solidly constructed as ever, and Rupert’s signature printed on the top in silver is a nice touch and means that you never forget its provenance. The rear panel sports a balanced input and output on XLR connectors, together with a pair of TRS paralleled jacks. These (high impedance) outputs allow a number of units to be daisy-chained together to provide a bused signal that is the sum of all of the individual units’ outputs. Power is from an external PSU, with a DC input socket on the rear of the unit and the 5033 will happily work with supply voltages in the range 9–18V. Given the number of bands on offer, the front panel doesn’t look as crowded as it should do and is logically laid out. The high and low shelving bands offer 12dB of cut or boost, and sweep between 30Hz–300Hz and 2.5kHz–25kHz respectively. A single illuminated pushbutton by the HF shelving controls switches both shelving bands in and out of circuit. Each of the three parametric mid bands, by contrast, has its own in/out switch, together with 12dB of cut or boost, centre frequency and variable Q control. The Q in each band can be varied between 0.7 and 5, so you know immediately that this isn’t going to be a tool for surgical correction, but then again that’s generally not the point with a Rupert Neve design. An overall EQ bypass button and an input trim control (+/-12dB) complete the front panel line-up. Despite its size, the 5033 is fairly hefty on the weight front, due in no small part to the use of custom wound transformers on the input and output stages. This, together with the solid chassis and shielded DC-DC convertor unit in the power stage, makes for a box that is extraordinarily quiet and virtually immune from RFI in most situations. It also means that it will work quite happily as a high quality line driver with all the EQ bands switched out. But perhaps most intriguing is the effect that this I-O topology has on signals even when the EQ is switched out. 40

Yes, you’d expect some minor colouration given all of that galvanic action, but switching the insert point on a console in and out with the unit in place makes a very significant difference. A little low frequency enhancement and a real sense of added solidity to the low-mids is the best way to describe it. It’s not at all unpleasant – quite the opposite in fact, but you could never describe it as transparent! In use the 5033 is quick and intuitive. Yes, I know that EQ in general isn’t that hard to find your way around, but finding the area of interest and dealing with it just seemed absurdly easy. This is helped by the choice of overlap in all five bands — particularly the mid-range bands, which work between 50 and 400Hz (Low Mid), 330 and 2500Hz (Mid) and 1.8 and 16kHz (High Mid). On vocals in particular, where less is more in my view, having three bands available in that tricky mid range proved particularly useful. It was actually very hard to make things sound bad with the 5033 –- even when exploring the limits of the cut and boost in each band things never started to sound too nasty. The overwhelming impression is that although it tends to sound very gentle, it does this while still maintaining a high degree of precision. In comparison to an Amek 9098 EQ (another Neve design, incidentally), it shows similar degrees of accuracy and control. But the 9098 has always seemed very surgical in its action to my ears — even given the fact that the highest Q settings on its mid bands are actually lower than the 5033’s. And the Portico box is just light-years ahead in terms of musicality and smoothness. I have a CD of ‘problem’ material that I’ve gathered through the years — vocals with an inherently nasal quality, kick drums with more cardboard box resonances than a Tetra-Pak factory, you know the kind of thing, and I found myself working through it with the 5033. And the further I got, the more I realised that this is a stellar bit of kit. It’s able to deal with the problems not just by excising bits of spectrum, but in somehow doing this while not leaving any noticeable scars behind. Problems are few; one of the pots on the review unit felt a little less firmly anchored to the circuit board than I’d have liked, and external PSUs aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. You could also quibble over the lack of a high and low pass filter option. In truth, it would be hard to fit them into the available panel real estate, and the third parametric band really is a much better use of that space. I’ve reviewed several of the Portico units since their inception, and they have always been solid, resolution

high quality performers. The 5033 is no exception here, but for the first time there’s also that sense of something special and magical — somehow it’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s not about total transparency, nor about having all the bells and whistles possible. Instead, it’s all about useability and musicality. And in that sense, it’s simply the best EQ I’ve come across in years. ■

ProS

useful and extremely musical sounding eQ; three mid bands give plenty of sonic ﬂexibility; transformer balanced i-o adds something special to signal path.

ConS

external PSu; no HPf or LPf.

eXtraS

the Portico 5016 is a 2-channel device combining the rnd 5012 mic preamp with a di, which may be used together or independently. a variable Phase control allows the manual phasealignment of the direct input source in relation to the microphone input signal.

the 5016 features very short signal paths, minimal negative feedback and custom-designed transformers that, on the di input, provide ground isolation and the virtual elimination of interference loops. a continuously swept 12dB/octave high pass filter covers 20Hz-250Hz and the ‘Silk’ is included along with switches for mute, phase reverse and 48v phantom power.

Contact ruPert neve deSiGnS, uSa: Website: www.rupertneve.com uK, Sonic disribution: +44 845 500 2500

November/December 2007

review

Sony vegas Pro 8 Sony maintains its commitment to the concept of software-based desktop video editing with the release of the latest version of vegas Pro. roB JaMeS cuts and splices and finds a lot more audio.

Mere Year HaS passed since I last checked out Sony Vegas and DVD Architect, then at versions 7.0 and 4.0 respectively. One year on, we have Vegas Pro Version 8 and DVD Architect Version 4.5. As with the previous release, this is not a huge upgrade in terms of flashy features; the headline set has had a few features added and a couple of extras removed. Instead, it’s the inner workings of the package that have received the most attention. The editing model remains attractive to audio people (Vegas was derived from an audio editor) and just as alien as it ever was to anyone brought up on Premiere, Edius, Final Cut or Avid. Version 7 was bundled with Boris Graffiti LTD titling software, Red Giant Magic Bullet Movie Looks and a sample CD of Sony sound effects. These are no longer supplied but there is a new titler, the Protype Titler which is intended to make up for one of the losses. Changes common to both applications include Windows Vista compatibility and support for FLAC audio files. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format not too dissimilar to MP3, but lossless. This is analogous to zip file compression but is optimised for audio and should mean compression with no loss of quality. The other changes to DVD Architect are minimal. Version 4.5 adds support for MJEG files and a number of new ‘themes’. These are most welcome and are, at least for my purposes, a lot more useable then most of the previous ones, although of course, if you are serious about DVD authoring, you will want to make your own. Apart from bug-fixes, that’s it; there’s not a word about Blu-ray Disk (BD) authoring. I can only suppose Sony is keeping its powder dry while the chaos surrounding BD compatibility is resolved. On the surface, the biggest changes to Vegas are the new titler, multi-camera editing and to the audio user interface. Given its audio-based origins, it is perhaps fitting that Vegas’s audio mixer has been the subject of a re-vamp. Before, individual track volume and pans were only shown on the tracks. Now a new Mixing Console window presents a more conventional view of the mixing and effects functions. The beauty is more 42

than skin deep. Buses can be routed to assignable effects and to multiple sends. Track panning can be linked to apply to bus or assignable effect sends. If plug-ins are ‘tempo aware’ (like the Amplitude Modulation plug-in), then Measures and Beats tempo information is sent to them. The video engine has been revamped once again and now works in 32-bit floating point rather than the previous 8-bit. This helps with quality in a number of ways. Compositing can now be undertaken in linear-light gamma and there is support for 10-bit video encoding when previewing or capturing from AJA SDI video cards. 32-bit processing will even help 8-bit originated projects that are destined for 8-bit output formats due to lower losses in the conversion processes inherent in effects, colour conversions and transitions. Some of the supplied effects and transitions and ‘media generators’ only work in 8-bit so the video is automatically down-converted when these are in use. Provided the input and output formats match, V8 has a ‘no-recompression’ option for Long-GOP HDV and XDCAM ‘cuts only’ editing, reducing render times. Frames including effects, transitions and compositing will, of course, still have to be rendered. The new Protype Titler offers a huge amount of control but it is necessarily more complicated than the old titler. There are basic presets to get you going and the online help eases the passage into the mysteries of cascading keyframes for animation and adding text to a path. Multi-cam is this year’s ‘me too’ must-have feature. While useful for sporting and musical events coverage, this falls into the ‘essential if you need it’ category — but most users won’t (the functionality was, in any case, previously available via add-on scripts). However, this implementation is neat and once you have the material in sync (which can be achieved via timecodes but may be easier manually), it offers a desirable way of working. Once in sync you select all the tracks and choose Tools > Multicamera > Create Multicamera Track. All the selected tracks are then collapsed into a single video and audio track pair. resolution

You can either press number keys to switch between ‘cameras’ or simply click on the shot you want in the preview screen. As you do this, the edit is built up on the Video and audio track pair. If you use the Ctrl key as well the cuts become dissolves. You can switch freely between multicam and conventional editing. Last of the major items is Blu-ray Disk burning. All this allows you to do is burn a BD-R from the Timeline if you have a suitable burner, somewhat akin to burning a single-movie DVD in DVD Architect. In addition to all of these goodies, there are many more detailed additions, for example, a single-monitor full-screen video preview, digital signage support (the ability to create rotated projects for viewing on vertical or inverted displays) and the usual workflow improvements. Vegas has retained its core virtues, not least its low price (UK£425.52 plus VAT for the bundle), and Sony has added to functionality and desirability without compromising its undoubted charm. In a competitive and crowded market area it remains a true alternative. The big disappointment is the lack of full-blown BD authoring in DVD Architect. From the format’s chief architect Sony, this was hotly anticipated and its absence is baffling. Meanwhile DVD Architect remains my DVD authoring software of choice. In the last year I’ve flirted with a couple of others and found nothing desirable enough to make me want to switch. DVD Architect enables you to make a simple, good-looking DVD or a highly complex one with nested menus and subtitles. It’s quick, and although there’s a learning curve, it’s not an onerous one. There are few changes in this version, but then this isn’t a package that needs much fixing. It’s just a pity that Architect is not available on its own for users of other editors who don’t wish to contemplate switching. ■

ProS

fluid multiformat editing; compositing (if your needs are modest, you can save yourself a fortune); dvd architect.

ConS

no proper Blu-ray disk authoring yet; new titler is complex; dvd architect not available separately.

eXtraS

Sony Creative Software’s version 9 package of Sound forge includes Cd architect 5, noise reduction 2 plug-ins, and a Mastering effects Bundle.

Contact SonY, JaPan: Website: www.sonymediasoftware.com uK, SCv London: +44 20 8418 0778

November/December 2007

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Based on our finest analogue circuit designs, X-Rack gets SSLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s big console processing inside your studio rack - and letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s you configure the perfect set-up for your project. Choosing from the eight modules, you could build a stunning SuperAnalogueTM front-end for your recording system, with two different flavours of mic pre (SuperAnalogueTM and VHD), EQ, transparent dynamics and a powerful master section. Or create an SSL summing mixer with an ultra-pure analogue mix buss, using two different line input modules to achieve high channel counts or combine additional sources during mixdown to the legendary Stereo Bus Compressor. And when the system is in use - you can use Total RecallTM to keep track of all module settings. Choose the perfect combination for your studio at www.solid-state-logic.com/xrack

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huge setup with five rooms; ‘Very inappropriate for nowadays; it’s not the right climate for that behaviour, this room felt more appropriate.’ At the weekends he takes his laptop home to Oxfordshire to work on projects there, and he also enjoys working in LA. ‘I don’t think it matters where you are, you just need food and parking. You can generally get on with people, the room is the room, you can make it work.’ Starting out as a guitarist, Lipson was playing on sessions for a friend when he decided to learn how to engineer ‘because my guitar sounded so terrible’. The pair built a studio, and ‘after about 18 months I learned to engineer, but my guitar still sounded terrible. I realised I had to change the way I thought about playing.’ Lipson found his feet working with Trevor Horn, whom initially he didn’t have a great deal of enthusiasm for. Lipson ‘sort of ignored him’, which was exactly what Horn wanted — ‘someone to just get on with the job.’ Lipson always brought his guitar to the studio, and while working with Frankie Goes To Hollywood started playing on Horn’s productions. They co-produced a number of records, while Lipson also started his own producing career. The pair are currently again working together as fellow band members of The Producers, (along with Chris Braide, Lol Creme and Ash Soan) and Lipson is mixing the project. (photos www.recordproduction.com)

What has changed, why did you set this room up? No money, people don’t have money. Having a big setup would be high overheads, it’s no longer appropriate. Mean and lean is the way to go. I can man it on my own, or get one of the guys in to help, or I can go into another room. But I can keep costs down. So you generally work without an assistant? Yeah, well if you think about it, I don’t know what record making is now. If I do drums or a band I go in another room, if I’m working with a singer, I don’t want anyone in the room. It works out quite well. Do you do vocals in the same room you’re in? Right here, which works very well, apart from when they’re no good. Because then you’re not in a position to go, What are we going to do?! But generally I’m lucky enough to work with good singers. I have four of these Reflexion Filters, I can record a guitar with the speakers on as loud as they’ll go, and there’s no spill. I might get more, that way I can set my amps up slightly differently.

Steve Lipson Combining talents as an engineer, producer and musician Steve Lipson helped to define the skillset of the modern production professional and he was involved in some very important recordings along the way. He talks to GEORGE SHILLING about his new room and the way he works.

teve Lipson has had a long association with SARM Studios, and has a mightily impressive list of credits as engineer, producer and musician, with and without Trevor Horn alongside. Milestones with Horn include Grace Jones’ Slave To The Rhythm (which Lipson co-wrote) and Propaganda’s ground-breaking A Secret Wish which used Fairlight, PPG Wave and Synclavier (‘Myself and Andy Richards would sit in Studio 3 doing mad things with the gear.’) On his own he produced Annie Lennox’s Why, and in recent years has 44

produced hugely successful pop hits with artists such as Sclub7, Ronan Keating (When You Say Nothing At All) and Will Young. ‘[He] had come out of Pop Idol, and I saw him as something else, and we spent quite a lot of time talking about it and then made a record to reflect what we’d talked about.’ When Resolution talked to Steve, it was in his recently established production room at SARM West Studios which has a Digidesign Icon at its heart. He moved into the room earlier this year from his previous studio in Willesden where he had a resolution

Why the Icon? I had a Euphonix for years which I loved, and got addicted to instant recall, so because of that I wanted a console that would have instant recall, and I looked at the [SSL] AWS900, the Duality, and this. And the AWS900 I couldn’t quite get my head round. I loved it, but couldn’t see what I was buying, I didn’t understand what for me it would do. It had a few faders that controlled Pro Tools, and some channels that I wouldn’t be using because I’ve got all this [outboard processors] so then I looked at the Duality that seemed to make more sense because of the signal flow. But the cost was ludicrous. And then I realised that all I wanted was a smart way of controlling Pro Tools — I can’t work without faders, so this seemed like the obvious route. I looked at the small one, it didn’t do it for me because it doesn’t have everything on it, this seems to have most things, so you can ignore the keyboard, which it also has built-in. November/December 2007

craft Do you use all the knobs for plug-in adjustments? Yes because I’m pretty hokey when it comes to the screen, I look at it and I get bewildered. Whereas I look at this and I can understand it. I set it up like an analogue console, so I’ve got sends here, EQ here, it all makes sense to me. And does it work well with the plug-ins you choose to use? Yeah apart from Universal Audio, the UAD card — they’re wrapped aren’t they? And because they’re wrapped, I don’t think there’s much of a conversation going on between the two companies. So does that mean you tend to use those less? Yeah that’s right, but I use them less because of their latency. They’ve got great plug-ins, but if I put one on the mix bus my latency goes berserk. I can’t hear what I’m doing. So unless you’re mixing… But mixing, that’s another funny one, when are you mixing? You’re sort of mixing all the time with this system, and overdubbing. So it’s difficult to use them — it’s a shame, because they’re very, very good. Have your working methods changed? Yeah, completely changed. It’s this in-the-box system, which I thought was ludicrous, but I suppose now I don’t care. To be perfectly honest, it’s because it’s easier. It’s quicker, a more compact way of working. And I can switch between songs or projects instantly, and I don’t have to worry about outboard gear or recalls, I can just go between things. And the other interesting thing is taking the session from here to another room, it just works. If it’s quicker, do you get more done in a day or go home earlier? I don’t know, I go home at eight, that’s not early — I’ve been going home at eight for years! Are you ﬁddling more? Well I didn’t mix or engineer for 20-odd years, and then I got this and suddenly realised it’s quite good fun. And I’ve been mixing, and it’s enjoyable. So yes, I am fiddling more. You have no problem with the sonics of mixing in-the-box? No. Those conversations, which happen a lot, it’s dealing with 5% of the issue, instead of 95% of the issue. I’m sure it sounds better the other way — whatever! It’s not the point. Are you concerned that a software update might render the Icon obsolete? Yeah, I don’t know. Of course that’s a worry. The other day, the chassis went down, nothing worked. But they were great, within 12 hours I had a new chassis. So maybe I’m lucky, I have a good relationship with Digidesign, to me they’re great. What did you do in terms of acoustics in here? No design at all. It seems quite ambient to me… Yep, me too! I think you can get used to anything, absolutely anything. Have you thought of sticking foam panels up? Yeah. November/December 2007

Are you going to do that? No. I thought about it and got bored. It doesn’t matter. Trevor and I talk about this, he’s had a room done in his house, John Flynn has done it, he loves rooms sounding good. I do as well, but I can’t see the point in here. I like the room, I like the ambience. I’m quite near to the speakers, the bigs are only for when something mad’s going on. You’ve been quite a pioneer with technology, using the Synclavier early on, how has technology improved? I might be going against the grain, but I can’t help but think technological advancements seem to make what is around available for more people. Is that a good thing? I don’t know, is Youtube a good thing? Is Brideshead Revisited a better thing to spend the evening watching than Youtube? I don’t know. None of us know. Kids under 20 don’t watch TV, they use their computer. resolution

Youtube’s fascinating because it’s all short, and really bad quality, and they don’t care about either of those things. I miss Top Of The Pops, it was my only reference, now there’s no reference, nothing matters — it’s all moving at the same rate.

You’re also a musician, did you always play throughout your career? Yes, always. Did anyone discourage you? Only Gerry Rafferty, but generally it was fine. In the early 80s in Montserrat I was working with Gerry Rafferty and a guitarist called Richard Brunton, and I was engineering. I thought Richard was playing in the wrong inversion and told him, and Gerry Rafferty said: you just do the engineering! How was it decided that you’d mix The Producers project? We all do whatever we feel like doing. Trevor’s two 45

craft engineers started mixing but ran out of time, but I’d just moved in here and said I’ll have a go, it’ll give me a chance to learn how to use the gear. It took me ages to begin with, but I realised this was quite good because everyone could come in and have an opinion, I could digest their opinion and go back to whatever I’d been doing, and put their ideas into the mixes. Also, I had this idea that being in the band I could mix it from the band’s point of view, rather than an outsider’s point of view.

Haven’t the best records, like, say, The Beatles, been mixed by outside producers? The Beatles is different, because their producer was a facilitator, they had most of the ideas. We have loads of facilitators in the band. Before producing Will Young, you chatted and hung out, is that important? Yeah. Well, it depends on the artist. I’ve just worked with Jordin Sparks who is the American Idol winner, I’ve done some tracks with her, and I’ve spent as long with her as it took to sing the songs. She’s brilliant, and very eloquent, and I didn’t need to spend any more time, it was all very clear. Do you use any software synths or Structure in Pro Tools? Not really, I actually have a bank of synths in Willesden but don’t use them any more. I’ve got a Matrix 12 here, and a Voyager. The thing is, I have another computer with Logic, so at the moment I haven’t quite managed to make the transition out of Logic. It’s connected digitally, I program the MIDI in Logic and copy it across. But also I have this thing, Network in Audio/MIDI setup, so the MIDI is connected between the two computers. So I can and do use software synths in Pro Tools, but program them in Logic and copy them across. The only one I can’t get my head round is [Ableton] Live, because it’s got two windows, and it’s not linear, yet it is. It looks good to me. There is X-Form which is completely brilliant, extraordinary — inaudible. I think you have to keep on things, gear-wise. I do think technology determines art. If you go back to Michelangelo, I have a feeling that technology of his time allowed him to do what he did. In Egypt, moving big stones — state of the art stuff. I think knowing what’s going on is good. Do you have a large EXS24 sample library? Kind of, it doesn’t really work that way for me, it’s all a little bit more hokey. For example, this song for [an artist called] Charity, I programmed it with the crappiest drum sounds in [NI] Battery, just because it’s top of the list. I took about 20 seconds programming it, looped it up, then we recorded acoustic guitars and vocals, and then Ash our drummer played on it, so that’s the drums. Bass I haven’t figured, but I will. Keyboards, I’m not interested really. A few guitars I’ll do, she’ll do some harmonies, and we’ll be done. So really, not much programming. And I don’t know if that’s average, but that’s what happened when she came in. Who do you enjoy working with most? You need people who have an opinion, I find it daunting to work with people who don’t, who say: Do what you want — I find that really awkward. I can do anything, so that’s not easy. Maybe with tried and tested artists you have some parameters. It’s not that I want to work with established artists, I want to work with people who know what they want, and who have a good team behind them. ■ 46

resolution

November/December 2007

craft

donal Hodgson from mixing on trident desks to operating Pro tools, from the La’s to Sting, donal Hodgson has had a long and varied career so far. niGeL JoPSon talks to him about the Police reunion, Sting’s own studio Steerpike, and an SSL that folds into a suitcase.

onaL HodGSon Started his career in Trident Studios at a seminal moment for the studio — 1985 — when many of the current great and good were cutting their teeth there as house engineers. Sadly for the young Donal, the costs of travelling to fulfil his duties on the Trident night watch rendered him prematurely bankrupt, but he made some useful contacts, and subsequently secured a post as assistant at Jacobs Studio (at a less walletbusting distance). Hodgson progressed to The Music Room, where one of the few Trident Di-An consoles ever made had recently been installed, freelanced at residential retreat Ridge Farm, and then spent five years as a house engineer at London’s famous Eden Studios. Having seen a client at Eden using an early Digidesign Sound Designer editing system, Donal saw 48

the writing on the wall and bought his own Pro Tools III rig. Being well ahead of the technical curve, he enjoyed a spell of gigs as a Pro Tools specialist, and this led to his first meeting with Sting, for whom he got a gig as a Pro Tools operator. Hodgson has engineered for a wide-ranging selection of artists, from Baaba Maal to Primal Scream, with a healthy sprinkling of landmark acts like The La’s, Tina Turner, Jeff Beck and Ocean Colour Scene. He has produced tracks for Apartment, Feed and Subcircus, and he has a long association, as engineer and latterly co-producer, with Canadian electronica act Euphoria. He now manages Sting’s Steerpike Studio, and has worked on Sting’s last three solo albums. When Resolution spoke to Donal, he was busy setting up recording systems for The Police’s reunion tour. resolution

Give us an overview of the rig being used to record The Police live. Originally we had Pro Tools HD fed with Yamaha AD8HRs [8-channel mic preamps which output an AES-EBU signal]; we took the digital output straight into three Digidesign 192s. This gave us broadcast quality, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. I decided that if we were going to record every show, we should really up our game a bit, so I swapped the convertors for Apogees and installed Millennia mic amps. Now we’re using six Millennia HV-38s for 48 channels, the quality is fantastic. As it’s purely a recording rig, I decided there wasn’t any point spending extra money and using up flightcase space for multiple D-A convertors, so we just have three Apogee AD-16Xs plus a two channel Rosetta 200 for monitoring. I set all the levels just before the tour in Vancouver, and they haven’t really changed much since. We are going to do a recording for a DVD in South America at the end of November, and for that I will add another eight or 16 channels. We do have some audience mics, but it would be good to have several more. There are also a few instruments where it would be nice to be able to choose between different microphones. November/December 2007

craft Drum overheads spring to mind... Actually the cymbal mics are fairly ambient, and the way the stage is set up Stewart Copeland’s percussion riser is right behind him; there’s a set of microphones quite high up on that which are always being recorded. I went through the live shows in August with Sting in Tuscany, looking at the possibilities for a live album. I’m not at all unhappy with the sound, especially with the mic amp quality. The ideal would be to record a show as a definitive live document, but the beauty of Pro Tools is that you can go back and nick a vocal from a previous concert where the performance was stunning, and just pop it in! I wouldn’t want to do that too much, because of the purity of a performance... but on the flip side, if you make it that little bit better... it’s a balancing act. So, are the Police playing to a click? There is an element of that. A lot of their songs are based on Sting’s harmonies and stacked vocals, which is a little bit tricky when it’s just him on his own! So there’s a bit of sample playback involved. Is someone playing them in from a keyboard, or are they coming from your Pro Tools system? There’s a Logic rig which I built for the previous Sting tours. When [former Sting producer] Kipper was producing Sting, he was playing keyboards onstage and was in charge of making sure that sounds from the albums, which they couldn’t play live, were playing back from a sequence. I designed a couple of Logic laptop systems with a switching unit so they were both always playing, running in sync, but if one crashed you could flip a switch and you’ve got all your channels back immediately. They were both started with a MIDI trigger, and then run in sync. Pete Cornish built us a switching box — in theory you can’t hear a click when the channels switch over, although it depends a little on the earthing systems at different venues. I think it’s only happened twice, maybe three times in five years. With The Police, this system gets started by Sting’s tech. I’m recording a mix of the backing into Pro Tools, because of course I already have all the individual Logic tracks. Are the recording levels on the Pro Tools rig unattended? Aaron [the support band engineer] is there to check on them, and the soft limit on the Apogees is switched on. I started out thinking I would be careful with the peaks, as there’s plenty of headroom in the system to get a reasonable level. It sounds great, very fat and warm through our line up. It’s a combination of both the Millennias and the convertors. I have Apogees at home, but it doesn’t sound like that when I use my input chain! I love the sound of my Manley mic amps, but the Millennia and the Apogee have a different texture, it’s like recording the whole band through a Millennia desk. When you listen through quality kit like Millennia Media’s, which is probably overengineered in the style of manufacturers like Studer, you realise that operating headroom is being tested a lot more than it should be these days... Oh, sure. I think people misunderstand what headroom is for nowadays: I believe they think it’s gain structure which they can nip in there and use to make it a little louder. But it’s all about having a bit of space for peaks through the system. It’s the same as mixing in Pro Tools, unless you redo your mix in a certain way November/December 2007

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craft there isn’t ever enough headroom in the system, you are always pushing digital zero and the whole thing sounds horrible.

So how much headroom do you leave? For the Police recording, I’m leaving at least 6dB; there are enough tools to make the whole session ‘Mark Stent loud’ if I want to later. When the live record gets made it needs to sound current, but at the same time it is a legacy band playing, it doesn’t need to be brittle and hard and pushed. I thought I would just go for quality. With a live recording you have to set a compromise between the one track that is played loud and aggressively, and the song which is really mellow. Do you prefer an analogue console for mixing or do you mix ‘in the box’? I started to think the idea of only being able to mix on

an analogue desk was rubbish when Kipper insisted he preferred a mix of a Sting single I had done in Logic to a mix that was done on an old Neve in the US. Mixing ‘in the box’ is a whole different game. It took me a while to get my head around it, but I’m completely committed now; I think it’s the future and I wouldn’t want to go back. The difference is a bit like listening to 96kHz recordings. I did a test earlier in the year with two Pro Tools/Prism systems, but the market doesn’t want that!

What listening tests did you do? Because I’m lucky enough to have spare Prism convertors hanging around in the studio, I thought I’d make the comparison. I had some Police multitracks which we’d backed up to Pro Tools and I also recorded some material in the studio. I had a 44.1kHz system and a 96kHz system both playing back through

40 Years U 87

Prisms, I could A/B through the desk, and I could hear the subtle difference. But then I got a couple of the tech guys who have worked for Sting for years, I didn’t tell them what I was doing, I just hit play and said: switch between those two and tell me if you hear something different. They couldn’t hear anything. It really is better... but we’re in such a changing industry, the market doesn’t want it. The market doesn’t appear to be saying, ‘Yes! 96k is a product we want to buy!’ I don’t think we, as production people, should be going down that road. I’ve tested DSD as well; I have a DSD-equipped Prism at the studio. DSD also sounds better than 44.1kHz 24-bit, but I think it’s another dead end. We need to make a huge improvement, a really massive quality leap, for the consumer to really get behind us.

As a charter member of the Pro Tools Guild, you must have some favourite plug-ins. Stylus RMX — I live by that. The V-series Neve emulators from Waves are good, and I like Trillium Lane Labs’ TL Space reverb. I’ve just put everything else in TL, because it takes the Impulse Responses from Logic and Altiverb reverb. And now Logic 8 has an impulse building feature, it’s only a matter of time before I take it further and record some of Sting’s spaces. We have places that we always record in, so I may as well sample them! The Ultramaximizer L3 from Waves does tend to appear on the rough mix... everyone expects the roughs to sound loud and pumping. And the Melodyne TDM plug-in — it really is the best tuning and stretching plug-in of all. The first thing I did with Melodyne to try it out was to put the Pro Tools multitrack of Desert Rose through it. I showed it to Sting while I was typing in new tempos in real time: you could hardly hear the quality changing. I was going up and down nearly 20bpm in real time. Sting, who is not particularly technically minded, looked at me and said: ‘It’s

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craft changing tempo, what’s the big deal? I know you can do all that with your computer.’ Well, now I can! There was another classic Melodyne moment when I was working with Sting on a Police song they had re-recorded for a potential release. They hadn’t all been in the studio at the same time, and somehow Andy’s solo had not been recorded. I said I could pop the original solo in from 25 years ago, Sting doubted it because it was completely the wrong key and a different tempo, but Melodyne was able to do it perfectly. That was a ‘Pro Tools’ moment. I don’t need to use Melodyne to tune Sting’s vocal, but I once tuned seven or eight different versions of a multitrack so that he could try singing a song in different keys. That’s what digital workstations were invented for...

Sting famously owns a big SSL that ﬁts into ﬂightcases; is it really that easy to do? His Steerpike studio, which is commercially available, is totally portable: the G-series SSL breaks into three pieces and pops in flightcases, everything else is racked and built into cases. You unplug it all, stick the cables in a big trunk, and you’re off. For some reason it always seems quicker to put up than it is to break down... we do keep buying extra equipment and adding things! You could probably go from an empty room to being in record mode in two comfortable days. There’s always going to be a fairly restricted client-base of acts who are interested in using it: U2 had it for the latter part of their last album, and recently it has been Sting himself and The Police using the studio. You need a bit of space to create a machine room and so forth. We have our own air-conditioning systems and the studio requires a 64 amp power connection, then it’s all clean-fed power through Pete Cornish custom-built AC systems. You’d want to hire it for at least a month, I would have thought, to make it worth the effort of moving and installing.

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Working with a ‘big name’ can be a bit of a double-edged sword; everyone else assumes you will be constantly busy on the high-proﬁle commission, so the calls stop coming after a while. Has that been your experience? Totally. When I started with Sting, everyone used to call... now the phone doesn’t ring so much, and I was dropped by my previous management. I sort of knew it was going to happen, there was a chap before me called Simon Osbourne who had worked with Hugh Padgham for years, the same thing happened with him. I think it’s just an unfortunate side effect, but I’ve learnt that there’s really no such thing as ‘the grass is greener.’ I’ve talked to so many people about management over the years, now I have a relationship with a really good guy called Paul Adams who works for Magus in New York. Certain engineers or producers do need someone to organise their lives for them, but when you actually talk to some of them you discover their mega-managers haven’t really got them a job with a new client for five years, they get work because of who they are and because of their own contacts. New ways of communicating are coming in; just having my own little website I’ve already had some unexpected contacts. If people are interested in something, nowadays the first step for many is to sit down and Google it. If you’ve made the effort to list yourself you will turn up in the search results. I’ve made records using DigiDelivery or iDisk, and that’s an amazing way of working with friends or talent who are outside of your budget just because they live in another country. Ultimately, though, even if you meet across the Internet you have to meet physically to gain a bit more trust, become better friends and take things further. It sounds like we’re talking about blind-dating! But there is nothing better than two people sitting face-to-face for communication. ■

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craft Tsangarides is an amusing, energetic character, full of enthusiasm for his work and equipment — I assisted him in 1985 and my enduring memory of the session is his penchant for setting fire to pools of isopropyl alcohol atop the NS-10s! His services are still very much in demand. Resolution interrupted him during the early stages of an album with Canadian alt-rockers Matt Mays & el Torpedo, and he has a list of upcoming projects taking him many months onwards including LunarMile, Bitches Sin, Lizard King, Victory, Diablo Blanco, Anvil and The Strawbs. (photos www.recordproduction.com)

Did you have a studio before this? Yeah, that was fondly known as The Dump, I had it with a drummer friend of mine called Darren Mooney who plays in Primal Scream and with Gary Moore. He built a series of rooms for him to bash his drums in, and I had all this equipment. It was great, worked an absolute treat, the racket we made in there was insane! Before that I was at Music Bank. I did an album with Gary Moore, and he liked the guitar sound in the rehearsal room. They had a lounge with a great double-glass which was control-room-ish, well it’s got the glass — no acoustic treatment. So I bought the desk. So you slid into having your own space? Yeah ‘cos I’ve been collecting gear, microphones forever, and I had a whole bunch of outboard stuff, and suddenly I had a studio after that record, because we had a Radar 1, a desk, a whole bunch of microphones and outboard, so I had a room at Music Bank, and used their rehearsal room as my live space. And that worked out fine, but it got tricky because it was like me sub-booking another studio, and tying up my schedule with theirs, so we had to move somewhere else, and I moved in with Darren.

Chris tsangarides Still as enthusiastic as ever after 33 years behind a desk, Chris tsangarides tell GeorGe SHiLLinG how a move to the coast and the creation of his own rooms has enabled him to continue cutting it in the economic climate.

HriS tSanGarideS Started as a tape op at Morgan Studios, London in 1975, around the time when clients included the likes of Mott The Hoople, Rod Stewart, Jethro Tull, Yes and UFO. ‘There was a bar, it was quite the scene,’ recalls Chris. Zomba bought Morgan and turned it into Battery Studios, and he stayed for about 14 years. ‘We could have any piece of gear, any amount of time, they knew what it took to do it!’ He produced his first record at 21, Gary Moore’s hit single Parisienne Walkways, which led to many heavy rock productions including Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy and Yngwie Malmsteen, but he has also carved out a parallel career working with alternative acts such as The Tragically Hip, Concrete Blonde and Aqualung. Tsangarides set 52

up a studio last year on the South Eastern tip of the UK, with views over the English Channel, and plenty of residential accommodation thanks to the building’s former use as a scout camp. Built with a 4-inch poured concrete roof and 12-inch thick walls, the soundproofing was already good. With the help of a friend, Chris built a cage of rockwool all around, a sloping ceiling ‘We learned carpentry, bricklaying, all sorts!’ No expensive architects were involved, but Tsangarides says that upon taking the first album he mixed here for mastering with Ian Cooper, it needed just ‘half a dB at 19k’. There are two recording rooms, a kitchen, and an office in the building, and Chris owns a number of amps and guitars. resolution

Did you feel you needed to have a space at that point? Yeah, because it wasn’t so much for doing anybody else other than me dicking around, writing. That’s all it was, but as people discovered it, ‘well maybe we could come down and do something’. Well, it’s not really set up for… but okay, slum it, you know. And slowly but surely these things take on a life of their own, and you end up buying a bit of this and you make it comfortable, and a kitchen… By the time I came here, the fact there’s accommodation as well, I’ve got a private residential studio! Insane! But it’s perfect, because the way the music industry’s become, I saw that writing on the wall a long time ago. How do people come to you? A hell of a lot of it is Myspace. They find you, ‘I can’t believe I’ve found you!’ Quite a few people like that, and because I’m such an old twat, I’ve done so many things that people remember, ‘I remember that old git!’ There’s quite a few young people I’ve been working with that remember old records, ‘I want it to sound like that!’ What do bands think of your studio? Everyone, they love it. I’ve had Japanese, Canadians, Germans, Greeks, and they just fall in love with the place, because here we have 60 acres, there’s the sea, the sun’s out. In the summer it’s absolutely gorgeous, we hang out on the beach, have barbecues, it’s great. People relax, and we come out with stuff that’s awesome. November/December 2007

craft Does it make economic sense, running this place? Yeah. Because I’m not a studio business, with an ad in the paper, Come to Chris’s studio, so much a day, and have your songs done, or whatever. People ask me to produce their albums. Depending who, what, where, how, we’ll either go to a studio somewhere else, but because the budgets are so shit, it works. This is part of the tools of my trade — if I was a plumber I’d have a big bag of tools. Because it’s so specific to me, it’s set up exactly how I want it. Things get done very quickly, and we have such a relaxed time. And there’s no restraint on… well, you booked four days and it’s taken me six, you owe me…. It doesn’t work like that. It’s basically, here’s the producer’s fee, and they can’t pay the producer’s fee and the studio these days. And it absolutely sucks. How did you choose your gear? The desk was an easy choice, on account of, what the hell are we going to do, given the money we have? I’d heard of TL Audio because I’d already got all this stuff [Ivory Series outboard] and I was a big fan of it. It’s not the top-of-the-heap that they have by any stretch of the imagination, but by a bit of dicking around, and having a clue what you’re doing, they really step up to the mark. So TL Audio sent us a trial [VTC] desk. We had a Mackie in there, just to get demos going. The moment we played back what we’d recorded, it was – there you go, straightaway! And I’ve been a fan of the Radar ever since they’d been invented, they just sounded so lovely. I remember buying the first one for an insane amount of money – basically a 486 computer was what they ran on, but they sounded phenomenal. Only recently I was running two Radar 1s, but I’ve updated to the new one, I love it. I mix to the Masterlink. I’d never have thought

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of that in a million years, because it says Alesis on it. And I used to have a Prism A-D convertor into a DAT machine. But I asked Ian Cooper at Metropolis, What are people turning up with these days? He said, Alesis Masterlink. I said, You’re winding me up! But he wasn’t, it turns out. I had a call to go to Los Angeles to mix a record, and I was checking out all the studios, all the big ones there, Studer-this, SSLthat, Alesis Masterlink! So I got one, and bloody hell they’re good. Straight in, I monitor through it all the time when I’m mixing, because there is a difference, but I find if you monitor that, then you mix to it, and

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there’s no surprises when you play it back.

Has there been a resurgence of bands? Yes, a hundred percent, judging by, again, the Myspace nonsense. There’s a lot of people write to me asking how you do this or that, and I love it, because it’s the first time you get some feedback from punters. These are the people that buy the stuff that you make, and they’re telling me stuff and you think, they just want to hear real stuff — the same with the bands that are contacting me. They just want to come and do their music.

craft Do the bands expect to work differently from the bands of old? No, that’s the other thing. I’ve had a really, really young band on a development scenario with Blue Mountain, average age of the group is 17. And my goodness me, what a bunch of old heads on young shoulders. They just want to play, Here’s our amp, and Wow, that’s the first time we’ve heard it how it should be. And you think, it’s not rocket science. But because it’s become the norm to go in your bedroom with your computer — there’s nothing wrong with that either, the diversity makes things great. But if our major studios closed down it would be shocking. How have your attitudes to studios changed over the years? I still like the big Olympics, the Metropolises, whatever. We need these places. Without that training that people used to have — this is how you pack a mic cable, just basic crap like that that gets logged in, it’s all part of the learning curve. And seeing those great people make sounds out of nothing. And that’s the sad part, there’s very little knowledge [passing] from older people to the younger generation. That learning curve is sadly missing. So what happens is like any type of artisan people – like thatching, it’s one of those scenarios, and it’s really sad. Do the bands of old record differently from how they used to? Yeah, probably the older bands are more into Autotune than the newer ones, because it’s like, thank God for that! People, if they’re working with me they know — after the first day they certainly do! If, it’s not sounding right, well, play it right! That’s what it is, there’s no secret to anything. If the guy can play, he’s got a decent guitar and a decent amp, that’s it. We

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craft can place microphones and capture whatever it is that he’s making. So there’s the secret, him, not me. I just know how to put the microphones so it sounds like it does out in the room. When they come in and go, ‘Can you get me an Eddie van Halen guitar sound?’ I say, no. ‘Why not, I’ve got the same guitar?’ Well, you’re not Eddie van Halen. Eddie would sound like Eddie, whatever he played. Once they get that into their heads, we’re in business.

Do you do much live recording and mixing? Not for the past year, but I’ve done a heck of a lot of live stuff, 5.1, DVD. I think the last one I did was a concert with Gary Moore, a tribute for Phil Lynott in Dublin, we put this show on, recorded it, they got all the guitarists from Thin Lizzy, and it was basically Thin Lizzy without Phil, bless him. And it was fantastic, took the Sanctuary Mobile and mixed it at Metropolis. How do you get on with 5.1? I love it, it’s just Quad isn’t it? Let’s stick another number and a subwoofer on it! I remember getting Quad down at Morgan when I was starting there and thinking, wow this is great. And we did one Quad session, and it was a piano! I was thinking, what am I supposed to do with a Quadraphonic piano session? I know, I’ll put a mic in each corner! Ridiculous. We never did anything in Quad, and we had this beautiful Cadac desk with Quad pots and all sorts, and no-one ever bothered, because they couldn’t figure out what damn format. And it’s kind of like it is now, they still don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s amazing for films, fantastic. If you were to do a specific studio album with a band in 5.1 there’s no specific template as to what should be where. But it certainly works well in a concert scenario, just stick the audience at the back.

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Do you feel that people like you having studios like this are contributing to the downfall of big studios? No. It’s the record companies, because if they had the budgets I’d be at Olympic, I wouldn’t have to build my

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own place. These people in these record companies can’t see that by not investing in anything, there’s not going to be much left… I despair, I really do. But I’m very thankful that I have my little niche that’s enabled me to keep working non-stop for 33 damn years. ■

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Compact disc: a format with a future? the compact disc is 25 years young and some commentators say it’s reached the end of its useful life. niGeL JoPSon predicts a rosy future for the Cd as the high-quality, premium-price-tag format in a downloadable world.

ratHer enJoY trend-SPottinG in the entertainment industry, and at the moment my hifidelity sensors are positively humming at evidence of an increasing appreciation of audio quality. Some production pros have rather slipped into a mode of expecting consumers not to care about quality, to store their music in lossy formats and be content to use crappy earbuds. But the funny thing about music is the more of it you listen to (and there can be no doubt ordinary people are listening to more)... the more you begin to care about it... and maybe yearn for a bit of quality. Of course, I’m a little late to the party in my observations, at least as far as Resolution scribes are concerned. My colleague in the business section, Dan Daley, beat me to it when he announced in September that ‘Quality is back as a USP’ and argued for the do-it-all-yourself production approach to be consigned to the back seat of the recording process. And John Watkinson was, as ever, so far ahead of the curve that we were all looking the other way (and he is now several parsecs ahead) with his thoughts on higher resolution formats. I like to keep a weather eye on the upmarket hi-fi scene, and recently it’s been encouraging to observe

the rise and rise of the CD player as source-of-choice. The idea of vinyl as the new plus ultra front end has been eclipsed, a thoroughly good thing for high-end hi-fi, as it relegates the negative imagery of pipesmoking men in elbow-patch blazers playing with expensive turntable Meccano to history. The source for a top system is now likely to be something like the £15,000 Naim CD555 — featuring a D-AC mounted inside an (ahem) ‘quiet room’ — or maybe the Chord Choral Blu and DAC64 combination for $15,400. Now... I realise production pros know we can get better results with an EAC-ripped Wav played from a computer disc via a modestly priced professional D-AC... but you get the idea. Having 16-bit 44.1kHz elevated, or restored, to the gold standard has turned the spotlight back onto the recording process, and a thriving industry is gearing up to provide the software for all this high-ticket digital hardware. There has never seemed to be more interest in ‘audiophile’ versions of classic recordings, and with a huge number of reissue programmes going on, the easiest way to get some of the rarest and most desirable mono or early stereo vinyl... is on SACD or CD. Of course, passion for audio quality is not a modern

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phenomenon: in 1953 RCA embarked on a bold series of recordings, which preserved for ever performances from the Galácticos of the classical world. Heifetz, Piatigorsky, Reiner, Munch, Rubinstein and Fiedler were all recorded in stereo, in the hope that consumer equipment would one day catch up with the cuttingedge of recording technology. Three-track recordings were made on valve Ampex 300-3 1/2-inch 30ips tape machines, using Neumann U47 and M49 microphones; recording kit which still ranks on the most-desirable list over half a century later. These tapes formed the basis of the RCA Living Stereo series, finally released on vinyl five years later after Westerex invented the stereo cutting lathe. So the original stereo releases were, in fact, downmixes and thanks to surround systems, the whole series can now be heard on SACD in the same manner as the engineers monitored the recordings. We can hear Jascha Heifetz perform his own cadenza for Brahms’ Violin Concerto with Reiner conducting the CSO, with one microphone for each speaker L-C-R, and the result is inspiring. The competing Mercury Living Presence series, also originally three-track recordings, are now available as L-C-R on SACD as well. Transfers were made

November/December 2007

business using Saki Magnetics 3-channel heads mounted box on ebay.co.uk’s CD section and you will typically on Studer A80R 1/2-inch or Studer A820 1-inch see prices from £60 (Jethro Tull, Thick As A Brick) to machines, captured with dCS DSD A-D convertors. £12.99 (Cowboy Junkies, Whites Off Earth Now!). I’m waiting for them to get around to more of Antal There are now dozens of labels revisiting Dorati’s Tchaikovsky recordings. The Mercury SACD catalogue or commissioning new works to high audio discs are priced at $18.99, and the RCA Victor can standards. There are specialist labels like Chesky, be acquired for a very reasonable $11.99. The RCA Reference Recordings and Divox who have made Living Stereo series is also marketed as boxed sets, it their business to produce high-quality recordings with 10 and 11 SACD sets available for $109.99 and from scratch, sometimes with relative unknowns, $119.99. The classical field has traditionally been sometimes with artists signed to more generously supplied with good reissues than other labels. The latter contemporary genres, but these SACD releases show approach can what is possible when time and effort is expended be fertile revisiting original recordings. ground The re-mastering of rock and pop recordings began in the as a direct response to the terrible quality of overused classical stampers and recycled vinyl in the late 1970s and field, early 1980s. Companies like Mobile Fidelity Sound where Lab (MFSL, or Mofi) proved that even when priced there have at double that of a standard LP, consumers would pay been big for better quality. In Mofi’s case, this meant transfers roster cutbacks by majors only from original masters, half-speed cutting and over the last five years. I pressings from Victor of Japan on 180g ‘Super Vinyl’. recently came across an outstanding SACD of Henryk MFSL continued the tradition of excellent re-masters Górecki conducting his own Symphony No. 3 with the with their 24kt gold CD series, with popular releases Polish RSO. Prepare to be hypnotised; the sound and succeeding not just because of audio quality, but performances are stunning. It’s on Lipinski Records, because they addressed the issues of authentic mixes a newly founded imprint which is an offshoot of the and artist approval. For example: the Frank Zappa Lipinski Sound loudspeaker manufacturers. Then & TMOI album We’re Only In It For The Money was there are labels that do short-run licensing like restored and re-mastered from the original 1968 MFSL, such as Analogue Productions, Audio Fidelity, Verve/Bizarre mixes, rather than the awful 1980s DCC Compact Classics, Hi-Res Music and Silverline. remix. The value of this attention to detail is apparent Scratch the surface of these companies and you’ll in the prices fetched for now-out-of-print MFSL cuts find a small circle of dedicated music fanatics who (the company went bankrupt in 1999, and although seem to have made it their life’s work to negotiate now back in business, many previous releases are the twisted corridors of the major labels’ tape vaults. no longer licensed.) A Mofi Nirvana Nevermind on People like former ABC, Island and Epic Records exec ad4050(ResolutionMag)216x125.qxd:Mise en page 1 30/10/07 18:09 Page 1 DCC and later vinyl? At least $400. Type ‘MFSL’ into the search Marshall Blonstein, who founded both

Audio Fidelity. Former DCC staffer, photographer and Neil Young archivist Joel Bernstein sums it up: ‘We initiated our Gold series... because we felt that Mobile Fidelity, the other company working along these same lines, were not releasing the albums that we were interested in. I mean, I wanted to hear The Doors, I wanted to hear Bob Dylan... It was a purely selfish thing. I wanted to re-master all my favourite albums!’ Specialist mastering engineers like Kevin Gray and Steve Hoffman (responsible for the Analogue Productions C r e e d e n c e Clearwater Revival SACDs) have made getting great sound from old masters their speciality. This activity has not gone unnoticed by major labels and, although there have been ham-fisted attempts in the past (don’t mention Blonde On Blonde to a Dylan audiophile unless you’ve got an hour or so spare), majors are now doing some good reissues. It just takes them a few more years to get it right. The Allman Brothers Band Live At The Fillmore East has got to be one of the greatest live rock recordings of all times. But my pro-audio-type adult’s ears could never manage more than a couple of tracks from the four vinyl sides which so impressed me as a schoolboy before I had to turn the volume down. Thirty years, a couple of vinyl reissues and four CD versions later, Universal/Mercury have finally done Duane’s slide guitar justice with their recent SACD... break out the Bourbon! There is another aspect to quality, apart from

Before a product becomes so legendary that it is used by everyone, someone has to create it. When Akino-san, an employee of Audio-Technica for many years, spent hundreds of hours on the creation of the AT4050, he was working to obtain the AT4050’s superb quality of sound reproduction. Not only did he succeed in his ambition, but today, the AT4050 is used all over the world in a wide variety of applications, from recording studios to live sound to broadcast. And when he’s not creating legends, Akino-san loves the serenity of fishing. Audio-Technica’s range of studio microphones start from just £79.95*. To find out more, email info@audio-technica.co.uk or telephone +44 (0) 113 292 0461.

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business creative approach to his art,’ explains creative director at Big Active, Gerard Saint. ‘It invites the listener to get involved and participate visually in the album experience. In my opinion, that’s good design that delivers.’ With ex-Music Week editor Martin Talbot recently installed as MD of the OCC, the chart compilers announced this October that a music retail value chart will be introduced by year end. This chart will be published monthly, after advice from the OFT regarding price-sensitive data. Now the higher-priced packages with good revenue will be able to top discount or loss-making CDs which sell in higher numbers. Data will be broken down by type of retailer, revealing value, volume and average selling price. Stuart Green of Beggars Group approves of the new chart: ‘The beauty of the OCC system will be that we’ll be able to get a much better handle on pricing trends, and how retailers are selling products, like whether they are doing price promotions.’ I’d love to end by explaining how all this attention to quality is going to save physical sales   and restore the music industry’s status quo... but it isn’t. The landscape is changing, and in a decade’s time it will all seem as obvious as downloads do now, looking back at Fraunhofer and Napster ‘99.

EQ O AL £1 U N MO Co 499 IP A nt + P F ST ac V t y AT ED IRE 2 0 ou fo r L r a AU WI % R RE yn li O x d mi R ea ted A ler p 8 e ! fo rio rd d et on ail ly. s.

the audio. ‘We had beautiful records with fantastic artwork, like those by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd,’ says Axel Ortner, MD of packaging manufacturers Digifill. ‘When the CD came along, people connected the format with higher sound quality and completely forgot about the artwork. Then, with the advent of CD-Rs and internet downloads, people forgot about the audio quality and just went for the cheap option. The industry is changing again. There is a trend for quality packaging that appeals to the hardcore music fan.’ Album sales have dropped more than 12% since 2006, and major labels are suddenly very keen on distinctive packaging or quality add-ons that might boost revenue. ‘Research suggests it’s the additional content that really appeals to the fans,’ says Terry Felgate of EMI. ‘There are certain artists that are known for their packaging; Sigur Rós are a perfect example. Across all their albums, packaging has been integral.’ Several interesting bundles are now being prepared for the end of year purchase period, including a Stiff Records boxed set from Union Square, a Led Zep best-of to tie in with their one-off reunion gig, and a very eye-catching ‘Pink Floyd Mini-Vinyl Studio Box Set’ (£144.99) from EMI. Last October, The Official Charts Company (OCC) in the UK declared that Beck’s 2006 album The Information would not be chart-eligible, owing to the inclusion of stickers. It was an ambitious CD toassemble    commissioning   becauseit  involved 20 artists to design the imagery used to create the sheets of stickers. ‘We attempted to create a highly ambitious work reflective of Beck’s idiosyncratic and

The CD is being repositioned as a highticket, quality product. It’s got to be a statement, a commitment and a creative tour-de-force. If the music is good and an album becomes popular, it will become a definitive document. If someone as experienced as Sony Mastering’s Mark Wilder can get into so much trouble with Dylan buffs (shortening fades by referencing the ‘wrong’ stereo vinyl, careless editing, lack of reverb on vocals and harmonica) with his Mastersound Gold version of such a simple 4-track recording as Blonde on Blonde... we had better all know where our Pro Tools sessions are at. The writing became firmly etched on the wall when Radiohead recently released their new album In Rainbows. Consumers can pay — or not — as they like, to download the 160kbps MP3 of the album. The only thing Radiohead will get for sure in return will be an email address, to add to the 300,000 already in their fan database. If you prefer a physical product you can order the £40 disc box containing a booklet, two CDs and two vinyl discs. That is the future. ‘If the standard jewel case with the four-page booklet is all you can have, no wonder people are downloading more,’ says Scott Parker (designer of The Annual series for the Ministry Of Sound). ‘Who wants to trudge around shops just for that? Retailers, manufacturers, record labels and designers must come together to create new formats and environments that work together in harmony... this could really be very exciting...’ Happy 25th anniversary, Compact Disc. ■

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instruments you seldom record ‘oK, i’m ready for my ukelele overdub now...’ KeitH SPenCer-aLLen provides some lifesaving recording tips for engineers faced with instruments they’ve not recorded before.

t’S HaPPened to all of us; you’re confronted with an instrument you don’t often record. Where do you start? Well, although instruments, rooms and players can always differ, there are always certain recording techniques that work better than others. Here are some examples. BanJo — A guitar it isn’t; the same techniques generally don’t work. The vellum skin ‘amplifies’ the attacking percussive character of the strings being plucked far more than an acoustic guitar, so rarely is a close miked sound pleasant. Try positioning a mic so that it’s aiming at an area just below the bridge and then move it back until you have the sound you’re after. As the player will usually be standing, miking further away also accommodates the inevitable changes in sound due to movement. It’s a loud instrument and will mellow (slightly) with distance. If the banjo is part of a Bluegrass or Trad jazz band that performs then consider losing the close miking in favour of a stereo pair and let the players create their own internal balance (Beards and sandals allowing. Ed). fLute — Close-miking a flute presents a challenge if you are looking for a natural sound. Miking around the mouthpiece area will obviously include a lot of breath noises and may be part of the sound you’re after, but will not sound very natural. Sound is also projected from the side of the flute, and a different range of frequencies from the open end. No single close-miking position will pick up all of these. Other than using three mics, a good compromise would be a single mic about 50cm from the flute’s side which could then be adjusted to control the amount of breath noise in the sound. In the right environment, such as a lightly reverberant space, move the mic(s) back so that all aspects of the flute sound are present. This works better than adding reverb to a single close mic. LeSLie CaBinet — The distinctive sound of the Leslie cabinet is due to the rotating twin high-frequency horns and the ‘paddle’ spinning in front of the low-frequency speaker. These effects add a gentle Doppler pitch shift to the input sound. In recording terms we can place a single mic on the LF speaker, or as close as access allows. The HF horns can be similarly covered with a single mic but work superbly well in ‘stereo’. Quite how you do that is open to argument. Some favour a pair of mics on opposite sides of the cabinet while others choose a pair on adjacent sides. Personally I feel the latter method is preferable because the former technique is just recording identical horn movement in a different position. The real battle is against mechanical noise, particularly in older models. November/December 2007

XYLoPHone — In the hands of a pro, this can be a loudish instrument but other players tend to be too gentle, not hitting the wooden block ‘keyboard’ hard enough. The tubes hanging underneath the playing surface are responsible for the resonance. The Vibraphone is a related instrument but with a metal ‘keyboard’ and electrically operated paddles at the mouth of the resonant tubes. The temptation is to mike below the tubes, but this sacrifices too much of the percussive nature of the sound, which is more important when vibes are used with other instruments. A stereo or spaced pair about 50cm above the ‘keyboard’ but just in front works well. Note that a single mic isn’t enough to provide even cover over four octaves — and make sure that the floor is a reflective surface. uKeLeLe/MandoLin — There’s a range of stringed instruments that don’t necessarily have much in common in sound, but are similar in recording terms, such as these two and the hybrids such as mandolele and banjolele. In their standard forms (not the bass versions) they are bass-light instruments. Both instruments, but particularly the mandolin in its classic round-backed form, usually sound more distant from the mic than you might expect, and final mic positioning has to be done with your ears. However bringing mics in close often picks up the unwanted resonances that can occur in the instruments. So in this case it is a joint operation with a mic and an LF filter. Wherever possible, back the mics right off — these instruments were never meant to be heard at a distance of six inches (In the case of the ukulele, 2km seems prudent. Ed). HarMoniCa — Here are two very distinct techniques. For a ‘natural’ sound, treat the harmonica very much like a vocal, using a similar mic at a similar distance — although you probably won’t need a pop filter. A dryer acoustic is generally better, particularly for the specialist instruments such as the bass harmonica, so that notes can be kept more distinct. Less experienced chromatic players can be noisy on their use of the mechanical slide control and it seems that the best players are often asthmatic! So some time should be allowed for cleaning up a track, manually ducking breath noise and perhaps adding a little compression on mixdown. Blues ‘harp’, using a diatonic instrument is totally different. Players will often have their own mics (there are specialist types), but if not, a stage-type dynamic can work. The harmonica and mic work as one, with the player cupping the mic and harp together, blocking off the capsule, and all concepts of polar pattern are immaterial. Levels can be extreme and handling/breath noise is part of the sound. Gentle compression may be needed; alternatively, send via a guitar amp for another layer of smoothing/distortion and then mike as a guitar. resolution

HarPSiCHord — Together with the celeste, spinet and clavichord, the harpsichord presents a challenge when close miking. These are all quiet instruments with a high level of mechanical noise; eliminating it isn’t possible. In a classical recording context, I’d first ensure the instrument had had a ‘full service and MOT’, and then never bring the mics closer than 2m before proceeding. In a multitrack situation, and assuming the option to use a synth instead has been rejected, try to find a position where a single omni-pattern mic, favouring the upper register, picks up the least noise. This may involve removing the instrument’s lid, as this will just reflect the mechanical noise in the direction of the mic. PedaL SteeL Guitar — You mike up the amp and possibly take a DI input, but it still doesn’t give you those dreamy C&W tones that you’re looking for? It’s nothing to do with mic technique; it’s compression. Ask players what they favour; the best among them work to that, adjusting their playing until it sounds right. HarP — The full orchestral harp is a daunting instrument at first glance, because the sound doesn’t come from any single obvious place. The soundboard is actually the side of the instrument nearest the player, but it is small and doesn’t focus the sound output; rather, it radiates in all directions. If you are looking to closemike, a position around halfway up the soundboard looking downwards at 45 degrees at a height just below the middle of the strings may work. Any closer and you may find the noise of the foot pedal a problem. If more distant miking is acceptable, the preferred mic position is totally open to experiment — you can even try positions over the head and just behind the player, which is effectively at one end of the sounding board. douBLe BaSS — This differs according to how the instrument is played. When bowed, its sound is very rich and radiates in a more diffuse way. In a close-miking situation, the preferred position would be over an f-hole but out of the way of the bow. Although this can create very low frequencies, they will be at a far reduced level. These can be enhanced by a mic at floor level about a metre in front — a worthwhile use for a boundary mic with a good LF response. When the bass is plucked, much of the instrument’s resonance isn’t present, and the f-hole is again the preferred position, or around the bridge, which gives a harder sound. With a ‘slap’ style, a second mic about a metre in front at hand height may benefit the sound. If the owner is willing, try wrapping a mic in foam and wedging it in the f-hole or under the bridge; this will greatly increase the output level of what is a notoriously quiet instrument. ■ rule 1: Learn the rules of instrument mic technique. rule 2: use eyes and ears to study an instrument before miking. rule 3: Knowing the rules, break them and find something better!

meet your maker

Chris Woolf the man behind many of the designs at windshield specialists rycote talks to Zenon SCHoePe

HriS WooLf iS best described as an independent technical consultant. The technical part comes from 40 odd yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; broad-brush experience in the broadcast industry where he has frequently switched between engineering (such as planning, installing and fixing TV studios, dubbing

suites and OB trucks) and operational work (such as studio sound supervisor, ENG and film recordist, and vision engineer). His insistance on using this varied background and linking an academic approach with a dirtyhands approach has proved very useful in designing equipment. His association with Rycote started in 1997 when he changed from being a customer to providing some engineering support and scientific investigation of its products. This has proved highly successful to the point where he now acts as Rycoteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technical face, tests its products and has designed the majority of the current ones. Together with Vivienne Dyer he received an Academy Technical Award for this in 2000, and he continues to work closely with

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meet your maker the company but still as an independent since this allows him to exercise a greater objectiveness (and enjoy the delights of living with his goats, sheep and chickens in rural Cornwall). Chris is a member of the AES, IBS and the VDT. He has held numerous seminars for the three organisations and is also the author of many technical articles and the editor of Microphone Data.

What is special about Rycote products? At one level asking what makes Rycote products special is like asking why a hoover is called a Hoover. The name has embedded itself so firmly in the minds of recordists and production teams that anything fat and furry on the end of stick, and hung over an actor rather than a barbeque is called a ‘Rycote. But taking the point more seriously it is notable that the first Rycote microphone windshields, and their integral suspensions, were designed and made by a working location recordist, and the company has striven ever since to make sure it keeps this sort of close touch with its customers. With many companies that tends to be a glib pronouncement with little substance — with Rycote it isn’t. Customers with problems in Minehead or Minnesota are frequently astounded to find themselves directly in touch with the owner of the company and having detailed discussions with its technical arm in order to find a practical solution. That could be taken as just enthusiastic customer service but in practice there is a much more fundamental reason behind it. Closed loop systems are the epitome of fine and accurate control in electronics and servo systems: manufacturing should be no different. First-hand feedback from customers tells a company how the products are actually used, what works well and what doesn’t, and the foibles and failings of certain microphones in common use. All of that is used to provide both continuing minor improvements and also future product ranges. How have modern technology, manufacturing methods and materials manifested themselves in Rycote products? With an established company there is always the temptation to sit back and rely on past successes to keep the profits rolling in. That is a dangerous shoal on which many have foundered, but Vivienne Dyer, Rycote’s Ellen MacArthur, has read the sea-charts well. She has always insisted on putting new designs and advanced ideas into the market in front of the competition rather than reacting to it. In the early days, metal hoops were bent round a wooden former and suspension elastics tied by hand. That sort of approach has long been superseded, partly because it was too labour-intensive but also because of the need for greater precision. Today it is all automatic machining of parts, close-tolerance moulding and extrusions, and the fanciest of low temperature flexible plastics and whizzy elastomers. Despite its soft image, coddling microphones demands a hard-nosed, modern scientific approach and every trick that modern technology allows. How can you ﬁlter unwanted extraneous noise without compromising the performance of the capturing mic? The commonest misconception about wind is that it is a noise. As far as we know it is silent — until it hits something. So one of the techniques with windshielding of microphones is to get the boundary where the noise is generated as far away from the microphone as possible — that’s why Rycotes are big (the furry bit comes later). Distance, in this case,

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matters by an inverse cube law so even a bit bigger makes a lot of difference. Wind also has a high particle velocity compared to the minute shuffling dance of air molecules that constitutes ‘music’. It is quite simple to devise a material with a non-linear acoustic impedance which is almost totally transparent to slow-moving sound but pretty well impenetrable to a Force 8 gale. And despite its high particle velocity, wind actually generates a very low frequency spectrum of noise with most of its power to cause wumps and overloads being centred at frequencies that are infrasonic. Used with any pressure gradient microphone cavity windshields can be made to act as acoustic filters that cancel extreme LF noise before it ever wobbles a diaphragm. This trick, of course, is one reason why the basket zeppelin is vastly more effective than the simple foam hat. There are other technologies that are used, including fur that can randomise the turbulence of wind to the point where it doesn’t have the energy left to cause a rumpus, but the subject is complex, as is the science. However, it is science and not just a case of sticking a haphazard collection of fake fur and old nylon tights over a microphone to muffle it to the point where you think you really do need to clean the wax from your ears. Adding anything close to a microphone, even a stand, will have an effect on its polar and frequency response but good windshielding doesn’t have to involve drastic compromises with audio quality.

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meet your maker How critical is the matching of mic to windshield and how real is the one-size-ﬁts-all ideal? Matching a microphone to a windshield involves many purely practical factors. Diameter and length are obvious — clips have to fit well enough to stop your favourite microphone sliding expensively towards the floor, and the capsule has to be kept equidistant from every wind-battered windshield surface. Mechanical and aerodynamic balance are less obvious until you try to hold a microphone out on a boom pole and also prevent it being tumbled around like a tailless kite in a hurricane. However, the desire for a one-size-fits all approach is very strong among customers, stockists and rental houses. It would make life much easier but the requirements are mutually incompatible so Rycote long ago espoused the concept of modularity whereby a relatively limited range of parts and products could be configured to satisfy almost every set of circumstances. Microphones from 40mm to nigh on a metre long can be catered for. The recently introduced S-Series, designed to cater for the most popular middle range microphones, also retains a significant element of modularity and interchangeable ‘pods’ to make sure that it is flexible enough to suit anything a customer wants to put in it. Are you disadvantaged in not also manufacturing microphones? It is certainly important for Rycote to understand about microphones — to appreciate the physics and the details of their construction — but that doesn’t require Rycote to manufacture them. The relationship between Rycote and just about every major player in the microphone world is very close and very friendly. It’s also a mutual relationship since any microphone

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that wants to enjoy the fresh air will need some clothes and a comfy seat. With the distillation of knowledge from so many sources there is probably no company in the world that knows more about microphones without actually making them. Rycote also tries to share some of this knowledge

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What are your plans for multichannel mic acquisition? Multichannel acquisition is a favourite topic nowadays and one that brings a smile to Rycote faces. MS arrays have been catered for for many years and more recently double MS arrays for surround use have become part of the repertoire too. The concentration on coincident, and specifically MS, for spatial acquisition is mainly because an axial alignment of microphones in a single windshield is the simplest and most effective configuration. Some XY arrays are feasible but these, the nearcoincident ORTF or NOS, and all their surround derivatives quickly become too large to fit into single windshields. Selling two or more systems is great for the company bank balance but does give the customer some unexpected headaches. In a single windshield any low level unsuppressed noise will be the same in all channels. In stereo or surround it will sit unobtrusively in a stable, central position. With separate shields there is no correlation and unsuppressed noise will appear all over the place, jumping and bumping from one speaker to another. At the moment the surround world is still young. Sports TV is quite keen on the Soundfield (which sits happily in a Rycote windshield), and a range of near-coincident single basket arrays have been tried out by various film recordists, as have spaced microphone arrays by surround gurus like ORF’s Florian Camerer. Time will show which become the most popular but you can be reasonably sure that they will have a Rycote windshield of some description keeping them snug. ■

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Machinima Machinima: bastard (and mis-spelt) child of machine and cinema — and that’s just the name covered. if you haven’t heard of it before you need to grasp its significance especially if you have any aspirations to keep up with what’s hot in video and film production with an eye for an audio opportunity. roB JaMeS bares all.

nYone WHo HaS ever watched a Pixar film and thought, ‘I wish I could do that’, will understand where the Machinima genre is coming from. To produce the next Toy Story takes many hundreds of man-years of effort, bleeding edge software, often purpose written for the job, and requires ‘render farms’, huge banks of computers that can still take a day to render a single really complicated frame, let alone a complete film. At the other end of the scale we have computer games with real-time animation that is little short of astonishing to those of us brought up on text-based adventures and 2D cartoon games. The first acknowledged Machinima was in-game demos and gamers recording particularly exciting game plays so they could replay and share them. From this it was but a short step to organising multiplayer game plays specifically to tell a story. The term arrived in 2000 from Hugh Hancock and Anthony Bailey, to describe movies made with realtime 3D graphics engines. The ones you find in first person shoot-em-up games in particular. It should have been ‘Machinema’ but one of them made a 64

typo and ‘Machinima’ has stuck (Could have been Machinenema. Ed). Hugh is co-author of the recently published Machinima for Dummies with Johnnie Ingram and director of the full-length feature epic Bloodspell. One of the first notable examples of the genre was ‘Quad God’ using the Quake engine and, because it was output as conventional video rather than a set of game instructions, it gained access to a much wider audience via magazine cover CDs and later the web. Clever people wrote hacks and patches that allowed other game engines to be used to make movies. Some games companies jumped on the bandwagon and included Machinima features or, in the case of Lionheart’s The Movies, made movie making integral to the game. Red vs Blue, Rooster Teeth Productions’ long running series using the Bungie Studios Halo 2 engine is one of the best known Machinima series. Spy vs Spy for the games console generation, Red vs Blue is made as a collaborative effort with a ‘clan’ or ‘crew’ of gamers controlling the characters and voicing the parts on headsets with one of their number operating the virtual camera. Now at its hundredth episode, Red vs Blue has achieved a significant cult following and made it’s way to a DVD release and as additional content in the latest Halo 3 release for XBox 360. Machinima music videos have been around for at least three years and the BBC programme Time Commanders used ‘Rome-Total War’ to produce animated re-enactments. Another parallel development could be seen in Ananova, the animated avatar newscaster launched in 2000 and now sadly pensioned off by new owners Orange. There are also echoes of the 80’s cyberpunk TV show Max Headroom. Meanwhile, an industry has grown up around accessible 3D figure-design, posing and animation resolution

tools such as Poser and DAZ Studio. Using them for animation requires considerable patience and skill. Purists will try to convince you that the term Machinima only applies to movies made with games software. In common usage the cognomen now encompasses a much broader church. In the last couple of years, dedicated software with no obvious purpose other than to make Machinima movies has begun to appear. (I know they are also used to make comics.) iClone from Reallusion in the US is a good example, another is the British MovieStorm from Short Fuze. MovieStorm is especially interesting since, although still in beta, it is free including, for the moment at least, add-on content packs. iClone is closer to the Poser/DAZ studio model in feel while MovieStorm puts a lot of effort into insulating the user from most of the nitty gritty of 3d animation jargon. I first sat up and took notice when I saw a short made with The SIMs II in a normal cinema programme shown as a trailer for an Electronic Arts competition. The main prize was to get your movie shown in the entire Vue cinema chain. It was immediately obvious that there are real film making possibilities here. The promise is 3D animation without the cost, time and high-level animation graphics skills required to make ‘conventional’ 3D animations. Although producing Machinima takes practice, if you have the necessary film-making skills, the learning curve is surprisingly shallow, especially with MovieStorm. It is perfectly possible to download the package in the morning and finish your first film in HD video by teatime. I know, I’ve done it. Alongside all this, Antics Technologies, based in Cambridge UK, has developed a successful low cost pre-viz (Pre Visualisation) software. This is intended to enable film directors to present fully animated storyboards when pitching an idea and to use the same software to map out a shoot including blocking actors’ moves, camera moves and lighting before a frame of film or video is shot. Potentially this can save a vast amount of time and money in the most expensive phase of any production, shooting. In yet another offshoot, the technology can and is being applied to military simulations, reconstructions for legal and law enforcement purposes, corporate training and education and for TV news and current affairs. Antics is more complex than MovieStorm but offers a lot more control in terms film-literate people will understand, such as camera lenses described in 35mm focal length terms. Although primarily aimed at different markets Antics is a natural for Machinima. Games companies are somewhat schizophrenic in their attitude. Some have included more and juicier moviemaking functions while others have tried to ban the practice. The big wrangle, as usual, is over intellectual property rights. If somebody makes a movie using a game’s IP assets and this is shown on YouTube then nobody gets over excited. But what happens if the movie is a big success and gets picked up for TV broadcast or even cinema distribution? All of a sudden dollar signs light up in eyes and the lawyers rub their hands with glee. Dedicated Machinima software such as MovieStorm and the pre-viz oriented Antics are unequivocal. Any movies made with either of these and using the assets supplied by them can be used to make films for any form of distribution without further payment. iClone’s license is a little more obscure while several games companies are either staying tight-lipped or are trying to impose impossible terms on machinimators. Unless these games companies change their attitude dramatically and soon they are likely to miss out. Microsoft (publisher of the Halo franchise) has at November/December 2007

technology

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least spelt out its rules and, while these may seem onerous to some, they are a good deal more liberal than most. The machinimation process varies considerably. Leaving out ‘live action’ filming in games, at one extreme you have to set poses using inverse kinematics, then use the software to morph between them. Position is set with sliders or numeric input and it takes some calculation to get natural movement. At the other extreme, you simply click on the spot you wish your avatar to move to, select the kind of movement, various walks, running or trotting, etc and let the software get on with it using motion capture data to do the hard work. This extends to sitting, kissing, fighting, just idling on the spot and so on. Although iClone is somewhat more difficult to use it has more features, such as particle effects for rain, fire, fog, gunfire and a special party trick — you can use photographs to turn your avatars into passable simulacra of real people. Although it is perfectly possible to produce completed movies from these packages, most will go through a postproduction stage, which may include editing, titling, compositing, grading and adding and mixing sound. There are also plenty of possibilities for integrating Machinima elements with live action footage using chromakey. But what about the sound features and most specifically dialogue? Early Red vs Blue neatly avoids the problem of lip-syncing dialogue because the characters’ mouths are hidden inside helmets. For Machinima production techniques to become mainstream this obviously wasn’t good enough and the recent crop of software is addressing the issue. MovieStorm can produce surprisingly good lip sync when fed with a clean dialogue WAV file for each character and even better results when this is accompanied by the script as a text file. Antics, with its origins firmly in the pre-viz camp, also makes a half-way decent fist of lip-syncing. iClone has it built-in but Reallusion also offers the full version of CrazyTalk as an option. DAZ and Poser are taking notice too. DAZ offers Mimic as a lip-syncing add-on at modest cost and the most recent versions of Poser has lip-syncing built in. The business model ‘forget the headline price, nickel and dime them to death’ is common in this market. The software is free or low cost but the all important content, costumes, props, scenery, complete characters, poses and motion captures are sold as downloads or by subscription. A whole industry has sprung up designing and selling these assets. But where is the audio content? Here is a potential source of drip-feed revenue for producers of sound effects and copyright free music. For example, if I need a car in my movie I can buy a suitable 3D model for perhaps $20 but it is mute. I would really like to be able to buy the 3D model complete with all the sound effects that should go with it. Idling, accelerating, November/December 2007

braking, constant run, door slams, etc. MovieStorm already has a few sound effects included but there is a real opportunity here for the audio industry to make some money. It is also quite evident that many of even the most talented Machinimators are in urgent need of affordable sound design and mixing services. Audio specialists are missing a trick or two here and if they are not careful, others will fill the void. Machinima today is a convergence of several technologies. The real-time performance is made possible by advances in graphics hardware and sheer processor grunt. The ‘real-time’ here often applies only to previews, although final renders are much faster than traditional 3D animation because the graphics hardware is used. Animation has always had a lot to commend it. Actors can be a pain and the weather is often unpredictable. There is an undeniable attraction in being able to control all aspects of a production. Machinima is here to stay and in all probability in many and various forms. Much lower production costs are already making the big studios sit up and take notice. Music videos are an obvious application as are education and training. However, it is the democratisation of another means of production that interests me. The results may not be Pixar standard but they can be very impressive at a minute fraction of the price. This will undoubtedly mean a vast amount of dross appearing on YouTube but somewhere in all of that I think we will find the next Robert Rodriguez. All the trappings of a new genre are already present with an Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, dedicated Machinima festivals and websites and bits of Machinima showing up in more general film and animation festivals. The Machinimators’ age profile is interesting. Where you might expect predominantly under-30s there are a surprising number of 40 to 50+ people getting involved, including Hollywood veterans. Early Machinima has the same relationship to what will soon be possible as Steam Boat Willy had to Monsters Inc. Can your studio afford not to find out about Machinima and whether its practitioners might require something you can supply? ■

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slaying dragons

electricity technology and electricity have become inseparable and audiovisual equipment is no exception. JoHn WatKinSon takes an orthogonal look at the topic.

LeCtriCitY itSeLf iSn’t much use, and useful results are only obtained when the electrical energy is converted to or from another form using a transducer of some kind. Like mechanical or hydraulic systems, electricity can be used for power delivery or for signalling. An electric motor is a power transducer, whereas a microphone is a signalling transducer. Loudspeakers are both, which helps to explain why they are a difficult subject. Mechanical and hydraulic systems are comforting because there is evidence of operation. We can see rotating drive shafts, and watch the hoses stiffen when a JCB takes a bite. I suspect this is why old steam locomotives are so fascinating; you can see Lennaert Walschaert’s valve gear in operation and have a ready reply when someone challenges you to name a famous Belgian. But electricity is in a different category: invisible and inaudible. It has been my experience that anything that is invisible and inaudible is doomed to be widely misunderstood and comes with a licence to write total garbage. This also applies to topics as diverse as radioactivity and religion, some of which may also be ineffable. One of the strengths of electricity is the freedom with which the power or signals can be delivered. Just run a wire. The earliest users were railways, which ran telegraph wires along their tracks. Once such signalling was available, it became possible remotely to synchronise clocks which led to the adoption of time zones rather than local solar time. The losses involved in electricity distribution are proportional to the current. As the same power can be delivered with less current if the voltage is increased, then it is obvious to distribute at high voltage, which suggests the use of alternating current so that transformers can be used for voltage-changing. In a single-phase system, the power must fall to zero twice a cycle and this would be destructive in large motors and generators. Consequently the three-phase system was developed, in which three conductors carry voltages that are mutually at 120 degrees phase. This results in the instantaneous power being constant. The use of multiple cylinders in piston engines is for the same reason. By adopting Blairspeak, I no longer have a 12-cylinder car. It is actually a four-cylinder engine with three-times oversampling. In the case where every load is a three phase device, no neutral conductor is needed. Kirchoff’s Law applies and the current going down one of the phases is equal to the sum of the currents coming back up the others. However, three-phase hair driers where the plug is bigger than the appliance wouldn’t catch on. Using a star-connected secondary on the sub-station transformer, a neutral connection is available, and single phase appliances can be connected between any phase and neutral. In many residential areas, 66

there is three phase power in the street, but each phase powers every third house to balance up the load. Some business and most industrial premises have all three phases available. If the phase voltage is 220V, then the voltage between phases is 380V, which is another reason most houses have single phase wiring. In some parts of the world, the sub-station secondaries have centre taps connected to neutral, so that two-phase power is available. 110V is available from phase to neutral for most purposes, whereas powerful appliances run on 220V between the phases. In a perfectly balanced two- or three-phase system, there is the same load on each phase and the neutral current falls to zero. Neutral conductors are significantly lighter than the phase conductors for this reason. However, if a phase imbalance occurs, there will be a significant neutral current and as a result the voltages between each phase and neutral will be different. This can result in equipment being operated above or below its intended supply voltage. For safety, electrical systems need earthing. The neutral point of the transformer is connected to a ground stake at the sub-station. Typically every property has its own ground stake, or relies on metallic water supply pipes as an earth. In the case of a fault causing a live conductor to contact the metal enclosure of a device, if the enclosure is earthed, instead of becoming live, there is a current path to ground that will blow a fuse or breaker. In areas where the conductivity of the ground is poor, the result of a fault is that the earth wiring becomes live. Voltage gradients appear across the ground and people learn to wear rubber shoes or take short steps. I’ve heard of people watering their earth stakes in dry weather, but I wouldn’t want to try that without checking the voltage on it first! There are two solutions. Each property has a ground stake, and the grounds of adjacent properties are tied together to reduce the resistance to earth. This is known as protective multiple earthing (PME). Another approach is to use residual current circuit breakers (RCBs). These compare the live current and the neutral current, and if they are not exactly the same, current must be leaking out of the circuit, possibly into you or me, and the power is cut off. With monotonous regularity we see the misguided recommending that the screen on XLR connectors be disconnected at one end to prevent earth loops. The whole point of balanced signalling is that the signals don’t travel in the screen. The screen of an XLR cable is just a continuation of the metal or metallised enclosures into which the XLR cable is plugged. A properly engineered differential input will operate normally with 10A at 50 or 60Hz flowing in the screen. Since currents in the earth wiring are supposed to be quite low, the effect of imbalanced phases is that a voltage appears between the neutral and earth conductors. Using a clamp Ammeter, it is relatively easy to find current imbalances in your own installation and sort them out by swapping units from one phase to another. On the other hand, neutral voltages can be due to an imbalanced load elsewhere, resolution

in which case there is nothing you can do except complain to the utility company. In an alternating system, the current and the voltage will only be in-phase if the load is purely resistive. In practice, real loads, such as transformers and motors, tend to be inductive as do conventional fluorescent lights having wound ballasts. The problem with loads that have a complex impedance is that for a given power delivery, the current will be greater. As the transmission losses are proportional to the current, clearly complex impedances make inefficient loads. The ratio of the actual power delivered in Watts to the product of the current and Voltage in VA is the Power Factor. If your rural installation is at the end of a long transmission line, low supply voltage may be due to poor power factor increasing transmission losses. It may be possible to improve matters by installing power factor correction equipment. This consists of a unit that is or behaves like a capacitor, to cancel out the typically inductive effects of real loads. Combinations of inductive loads and capacitors can also be used as tuned circuits that help to remove waveform distortion. Power supplies for electronic equipment often cause waveform distortion because they contain diodes that only conduct near the top of the voltage waveform. Electrical equipment sometimes hums audibly because of magnetostriction: the phenomenon whereby an object changes its dimensions in response to a magnetic field. In the UK they will hum at 100Hz, in the US, 120Hz. However, if there is waveform distortion, the harmonics will turn the hum into a buzz. Thus it is quite possible for a humming transformer to spontaneously change the tone of its hum because it may be responding to a difference in harmonic structure as loads change. The ring main approach used in the UK and certain other countries differs from the usual approach in that the wiring is daisy chained between each fixed power outlet in a ring that returns to the fuse box. Thus a heavy load connected to the ring can draw power via two paths. As the ring has high current capability, each plug contains a fuse that should be appropriate to the load it feeds. All very well in theory, but I have difficulty with the fact that every loose 13A plug that is sold comes fitted with a 13A fuse. Thus the spindly flex feeding your 60W table lamp bulb (which by now you should have replaced with an 11W low energy bulb) may well be ‘protected’ by a fuse that can deliver 3 kiloWatts. If you live in a 13A ring main area, do yourself a favour and check all the fuses in your plugs to see if they are 13A or whether they relate to the power of the load. ■

Check for visibly damaged appliance cords and get them fixed. Check the fuses in 13a plugs for the correct rating. Get your neutral to earth voltage checked. Connect the screen at both ends of XLr cables.

don’t

Work on electrical equipment alone or if local regulations prohibit. run extension leads anywhere damp or where the cable could be damaged without using an rCB. fix hum by lifting earths. find the real problem and fix that.

November/December 2007

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your business

Your piece of the pie the Monarchy may not be diminished but the royalty certainly is. dan daLeY cries ‘Long live the ka-ching!’

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ne tHinG turn determine the ultimate back-end payment to the tHat has producer –- if any at all. always set the And this scenario is further complicated by the producer apart from fact that those same labels, haemorrhaging money others in the record-making process has been their as they are, are less and less subtle about how they traditional ability to participate in the back end of a withhold payments. What used to be called ‘reserves’ record. That average of two or three points of retail — holdbacks for anticipated returns of product from turned into a mailbox-money annuity for many retail — keep getting bigger and bigger. Now bury all who were lucky enough to have worked on titles that complicated accounting under multiple layers of that have had long lifespan. In fact, a combination label mergers and acquisitions. (I just received a letter of the zombie-like refusal of 70s hard rock to die, from Sony/ATV welcoming me to that publisher, based plus the trend of 80s and 90s revivals in the form of on their acquisition of a publisher who held half a CD compilations and radio formatting, had meant a copyright of mine from 1980.) It’s a wonder anyone gets veritable gold mine for those who had a piece of the a statement at all, much less one that doesn’t require a back end: the artist, the publisher, the label and the master’s degree in Greek mathematics to parse. producer. ‘Digital sales are just an easy way for the record That all changed under the digital regime. The company to swoop down between the artist and fragmenting of titles into individual song files turned the retailer and keep the money from its rightful percentage points in decimal points for producer heir,’ says one major US artist/producer in an email royalties, slices often so thin they turned transparent (I’m purposely keeping the responses anonymous to the accounting departments of major record labels, — people are touchy when it comes to money). ‘I just which were apparently not all that sharp-eyed got a statement from my record company for my last to begin with. (Or were they…?) The perennial album and under iTunes was a typical “goose egg”. complaint of being short-changed by the annual or Not one person — no one — downloaded even one semi-annual accounting of record sales for those song? I doubt that very seriously.’ His coda called on back-end participants was now compounded by a the Who’s classic line: ‘Meet the new boss — same as dizzying array of digital distribution channels, each the old boss…’ with their own deals between label and distributor Those of you who read this space are familiar with Orph_resolution_280607.qxd 28/6/07 Pageabout 1 the importance of front-loading (i.e., Apple and the major labels, for instance) that in3:39myPMrefrain

revenues and not relying on back-end royalties or other payments based on revenues whose accuracy is difficult if not impossible to ascertain and coming from organisations whose honesty is questionable. The idea seems to be catching on. ‘Frankly, most of the artists I work with aren’t exactly rolling in royalties to begin with, but that said I have completely abandoned asking for points,’ comments a producer friend of mine in New York who has always worked with relatively successful edge-type artists and with South American jazz/pop musicians. ‘I try to maintain my fees at a decent level and ask for no royalties. If I work with an artist that self-releases, I will occasionally still ask for a couple points since their business is a bit more transparent. Labels were dishonest with points even when things were going well, [so] it is worthless to try to deal with them now on this. Even the artists aren’t making money from labels, and producers are way further down the food chain.’ A manager with a large roster of major producers says his strategy has shifted considerably in recent years. ‘We look for a larger front end for clients who have had success and can command the up-front payment,’ he states. Assured of anonymity, producers with track records of 30 years or so are reporting royalty decreases of 30 to 40% over the last five years. Without actually seeing statements, it’s hard to tell how much of that is attributable to sales being siphoned by illicit downloading, reduced royalties on legitimate downloads, or simply natural declines in the sales of older titles. What complicates that equation further is that a lot of those older titles are still selling remarkably well — who wouldn’t want a point or two on a Led Zeppelin or Steve Miller record of yore? The producer for a number of 1970s hits says the one true

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November/December 2007

your business evergreen in his bunch continues to generate a large check every three years (as per his agreement with the artist) while the residuals from the other hits have decreased 90% over 20 years. Few people get a perennial like that in their careers, and the sad truth is, contemporary music is simply not turning out as many recordings that will likely stand the test of time as well as many classic tracks have. If that’s the case, why look for a piece of the back end of something that’s so ephemeral? Producers, as well as artists and composers, should be aware of how the notion of royalty is changing under a digital regime. What’s been happening at Internet radio is informative. A long-running dispute about performance royalties boiled over into a confrontation that shut down the parallel Internet channels –- in some cases dozens or even hundreds of them from a single radio conglomerate — that many conventional terrestrial stations had been operating, as well as the Internet-only stations. Music publishers, who have also seen their revenues decline as a result of illicit downloading and Internet plays, wanted the legit Web stations to pay a royalty that was less than the standard rates shared by the main performing rights organisations BMI, ASCAP and SESAC (which are pretty arcane calculations to start with), but more than most webcasters, corporate or otherwise, were prepared to pay, based on the advertising revenue that their Internet station portals could generate. At the beginning of the year, the Copyright Royalties Board (CRB), a body that reports to the US Congress, raised the royalty rates to be paid by online broadcasters, via a legal vehicle called the Internet Radio Equality Act. The issue was threatening the evolution of Internet radio as a reliable channel for music, particularly indie music. In fact, the issue promoted two US senators to sponsor a proposed law that would have undone the royalty rate rise. There was a breakthrough earlier this year when the Digital Media Association (DiMA), which represents webcasters, concluded a deal with SoundExchange, an independent, non-profit performance rights organisation that is designated by the US Copyright Office to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for digital cable and satellite television music, Internet and satellite radio — everything but terrestrial broadcast, essentially. DiMA agreed with SoundExchange to cap the total fee that any company will have to pay at US$50,000. Though the deal only applies to those two parties, they are recommending to the CRB that it be adopted as policy for all Internet radio stations. SoundExchange represents over 3,000 record labels and over 20,000 artists, including both signed and unsigned recording artists; small, medium and large independent record companies; and major label groups and artist-owned labels. This is a significant front in the ongoing evolutionary battle about the future of royalties, but it’s also just one front among many. In another, the RIAA, watching as publishers got a little bit fatter from revenues from ringtones over the last several years, is arguing in Washington to reduce the statutory royalty paid to artists (and by extension, to producers). Further confusing the issue is how distributors, such as iTunes and Rhapsody, account for sales. Each report different data; some specify the album on which the song was released, others don’t. It is complexity upon layer of complexity, and if obfuscation is not the intent, it is the result anyway. There are some possible solutions on the horizon. The founders of eMusic, one of the pioneering download distribution channels, have formed RoyaltyShare, a web-based service that tracks the sale of music across a range of media and tallies the appropriate royalty November/December 2007

payments for each participating entity. Wall Street and The City have noticed; the company picked up $5 million in a second round of funding over the summer and also acquired Musicalc, the leading UK provider of royalty calculations software. A key thing to take away from all this is the fact that music publishers and record labels have welldefined organisations that are representing them in these frays; record producers do not. That notwithstanding, though, this is all pretty fascinating — we really do get to watch as something as fundamental as the concept of royalties evolves before our very eyes. But don’t confuse fascination and fun with food and shelter. The bottom line remains, if royalty revenues for record producers either disappear or become too costly to hunt down, how do you replace it, or can you replace it at all? One producer manager says that there is a heightened

emphasis on getting publishing participation on records by producers who can creditably compose as another way to replace lost mechanical revenues. While illicit downloading also diminishes publishing royalties, they compensate by giving producers a piece of performance royalties, which are not automatic in the US as they are in Europe. You might also take a page out of the book as it’s being written by the major labels, which are now seeking revenue participation from related sources such as artists’ tour ticket sales and merchandise, the so-called ‘360 deal’. I’ve yet to hear of a producer’s points coming from such sources, but if David Bowie could sell bonds, anything’s possible. In any event, your creativity is going to be tested as much in the accountancy end of this business as it is in the studio. Next time you download the newest version of Pro Tools, you might also update your Quicken too. ■

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headroom reviSitinG tHe nS10 aGain Following on from Philip Newellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s article The NS10 Revisited (V6.6, p50) I am looking forward to seeing the waterfall plots of other designs. I would be particularly interested to see how transmission line systems (e.g. PMC) show up on a waterfall plot, along with established reference monitors used in broadcasting (especially LS3/5a, LS5/8 and LS5/9, all of which differ in their approach to bass-loading). Perhaps John Watkinsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Celtic Legends also could be assessed in this context. Richard Poole, BBC World Service, London

MiX to PC SPeaKer From time to time I still get asked to produce recordings. Last July I was asked to produce a recording of Tibetan bowls and Chinese gongs for Ana Taboada, who gives performances of 45 or 50 minutes of music for meditation. We wound up with a recording of about one hour, with a dynamic â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wake-upâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; section for the final 15 minutes. In the mastering studio we tried to respect the natural dynamics as much as possible because they were such a fundamental part of the character of the performance. The people present at the mastering were very impressed by the richness of the harmonics and the emotion captured in the recording. Ana then went home, quite pleased, and gave a copy of the dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work to her boyfriend, who played it on his only available music system ... a desktop computer and two tiny loudspeakers. He immediately complained that when he set the levels such that the louder gong sections were driving the mini loudspeakers to their limits, the quieter sections with the bowls were inaudible in the domestic background noise. He insisted, and he was no doubt correct, that many people would use mini loudspeakers, even for meditation, simply because they had no other way of listening to their CDs at home. It would be a huge disappointment to them to buy the CD with great expectations, only then to find that they were unable to listen to it in an enjoyable manner. On the other hand, it would also be a pity if people with good hi-fi systems could not enjoy the full potential of what had been captured in the recordings. We tried, but there appeared to be no satisfactory compromise. We seemed to be left with no other solution other than to release a double CD: one mastered with quality reproduction in mind and one squashed flat. There was no compromise that

even came close to satisfying both camps, so for a few extra cents in production costs, the artist opted for the double CD; as a mark of respect to ALL the people who wished to buy her CD. This sees to be an eminently viable solution to a seemingly intractable problem. Philip Newell, MoaĂąa, Spain.

Songs on a food theme

ten unKnoWn unKnoWnS Keith Spencer-Allenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s column Ten unknown unknowns (V6.7, p61) quotes Walter Murch as having coined the title â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sound Designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; while working on Apocalypse Now. I believe that is correct. The title wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t new, however, outside the film industry. It was first given to Jack Mann on Broadway in 1961, and it was created again in 1968 by production stage manager Dorothy Fowler at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;to describe what Dan Dugan does.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I, too, am disappointed that the title has become vague in the film industry, referring either to a person responsible for the overall sound work in a production, or to a specialist who creates unique sounds. Dan Dugan, Dan Dugan Sound Design, San Francisco

Pasta Manana â&#x20AC;˘ Lady in Bread Nutroast City Limits Gnocci, Gnocci, Gnocci on Heavenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Door A Raisin Grace â&#x20AC;˘ Crispy Mountain Hop Please Cheese Me â&#x20AC;˘ It Takes Stew Baby Smoke Gets in Your Pies Beers of a Clown â&#x20AC;˘ Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Curry, Be Happy Gravyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on the Road Again Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (a Ham After Midnight) Needer of the Snack Parma Chameleon

advertiser index

AKM ..................................... 70 ASAP .................................... 54 Audient ................................ 69 Audio Technica .................... 57 Benchmark/SCV .................. 60 Calrec ................................... 29 Cedar Audio ........................ 72 Dangerous ........................... 27 Dean Cook Productions ..... 67 Digico................................... 03 Digidesign............................ 33 DPA ...................................... 22 Enhanced Audio.................. 67 Fostex .................................. 21 Funk Junk ............................ 67 Genelec................................ 02 Harman ............................... 31

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November/December 2007