Resolution V7.4 May/June 2008

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

v7.4 maY/JUNE 2008

The Trevor Horn interview Le Voyageur is back on the road Getting studio foldback right Are downloads leading to a classical revival?

Dominique Blanc-Francard and a room of his own Cornering feature film dubbing at Moscow’s Pythagor rEviEWS: Josephson C720 • Grace Design m802 • M-Audio ProFire 2626 Sonifex RM-4-C8 • Gyraf XIV • IK Multimedia ARC • Sonnox SuprEsser

Designed to Adapt L i ke N a t u r e, G e n e l e c DSP ser ies products h ave t h e a d va n c e d ability to adapt to their environment. To solve challenging acoustic issues associated with smaller working environments Genelec introduces the new SE (Small Environment) DSP System. With it, the new SE7261A 10'' DSP subwoofer provides connectivity for up to eight 8130A digital bi-amp monitors.

Newly designed GLM.SE software provides computer control of all essential monitoring functions. Genelec AutoCal™ optimizes equalization, level and distance compensation through the SE7261A low-pass/hi-pass outputs to quickly adapt the subwoofer and each loudspeaker to its immediate environment, even in multiple locations.

Genelec’s pioneering work in measuring and calibrating customer systems worldwide using our proprietary Room Response Controls led us to develop our new range of DSP monitors, bringing more flexibility and accuracy for our customers.

The Genelec SE System brings your listening confidence to professional levels, and provides the most natural and accurate audio monitoring to today’s smaller environments.

www.g enelec.com

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

v7.4 maY/JUNE 2008

iSSN 1477-4216

News & Analysis 6

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leader

News

Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.

16 74

Products

New introductions and announcements.

Headroom

Notes on notes and praise for a leader.

Craft

14

38

42

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le voyageur v1 mkii

V1 is back on the road. We report on nine months restoring one of the world’s biggest and best mobiles.

trevor Horn

dominique Blanc-Francard

Cameron Craig

He defi ned what it was to be a record producer in the 80s and pioneered the production methods in use today.

A leading player in French recording is a survivor and an inspiration.

As happy to grunge up a drum loop as record an orchestra, he’s won a Grammy for his efforts.

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52

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Sweet Spot

The owner of Ireland’s new internationalgrade studio explains the arrival process.

NFtS — educating for sound

Factoring in time for training in your busy and successful post sound career can be useful.

Getting foldback right

Musicians who can’t hear themselves clearly can’t perform at their best.

ten

US recording centres.

Pythagor

We visit a Moscow post house that has cornered feature dubbing in Russia.

Business

54

Classical on an up

Recent data suggests that downloads are leading to a classical revival.

72

Your business

Live Nation — the son of Clear Channel has potential to do good or not.

Technology

68

lawo mc256

The addition of it latest and smallest desk gives Lawo access to a new broadcasting model.

70

Slaying dragons

Air movement and wind instruments — Watkinson muses.

Reviews 22

Grace m802

30

iK multimedia arC

24

Gyraf Gyratec Xiv

32

Sonifex rm-4-C8

26

Josephson C720

34

Sonnox oxford SuprEsser

28

m-audio ProFire 2626

36

Holophone H4 Supermini

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

advErtiSEmENt SalES EUroPE: Clare Sturzaker, tel: +44 1342 717459 Email: clare@resolutionmag.com EUroPE: lynn Neil, tel: +44 208 123 5040 Email: lynn@resolutionmag.com US: Jeff turner, tel: +1 415 455 8301 Email: jeff@resolutionmag.com

ProdUCtioN aNd laYoUt dean Cook, magazine Production tel: +44 1273 467579 Email: dean@resolutionmag.com

news news appointments E M E R G I N G LT D , the sales, service and s u p p o r t c o m p a n y b e h i n d M e r g i n g Technologies in the UK, has expanded its team by taking on Kevin McCue as product specialist for Pyramix and VCube. He was formerly a dubbing assistant at Twickenham Film Studios.

KMR AUDIO Ltd has announced an Audio for Education service with a dedicated brochure and department within the company aimed at serving the educational community. KMR have taken on Gavin Beckwith to head up the new department.

FOCAL PROFESSIONAL monitors are now being distributed in the UK by SCV London.

NAMM, THE US trade association of the international music products industry, has established NAMM International, LLC, a new branch of the association that will service the needs of Members abroad, which now make up 23% of NAMM’s membership.

Betty Heywood, NAMM’s director of international affairs, will oversee NAMM’s place of business in the UK in late summer 2008.

SOLID STATE Logic in the US has appointed K a t y Te m p l e m a n Holmes as broadcast s a l e s m a n a g e r i n the Western region.

S h e j o i n s f r o m Euphonix where she oversaw sales and customer service for the broadcast, postproduction and music markets.

A P O G E E E L E C T R O N I C S h a s announced that its Duet 2-channel audio interface will be sold in select Apple retail stores across the US.

©2008 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

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leader

ta l k o f w o r l d e c o n o m i c migrations, globalisation of trade and the changing dynamic of employment is nothing new for us in the professional audio business. the sheer compact nature of our customer base has meant that most manufacturers have been winning export awards for years and have been looking carefully at what they make and how they make it. i regard the Scotch Whisky industry as a glowing example of how you can make a market your own and exploit and protect it and still retain strong quality brand images alongside more populist concoctions for livers like mine. it is the content that sells here, just as it is the content from all those budding mozarts and Zappas, who use the gear that our manufacturers make, that fills the vats and is drawn off and sold as the music we buy. But if you look at the lot of the modern music content creator today then it’s really not that brilliant. if you go back to the very beginning of the Six decades of musical man — let’s say 1948 for purposes of convenience — you arrive at a time when popular music hadn’t really caught on. People enjoyed their music but it was through the radio, performance or from even singing around the piano; but they didn’t consume it. if you leap forward in ten year jumps you see popularisation, an increasing association with youth and fashion, and a commendable rise in recorded sales alongside good live appearance money. By the 1970s it’s exceeding the excesses of Pompeii. after the new broom of the New Wave the live context began to wane and the model shifted to primary income through record release. the world filled with musicians who spent their time making records they hoped would sell lots and who had little interest in playing live. the gradual downturn in recorded sales that followed over the next couple of decades was inevitable because consumers weren’t being offered a high value package and the structure wasn’t there to rebalance income for the musician across a variety of sources.

You could no longer take a band on the road and build it up because you’d die trying. No one would have signed messers Zeppelin if they’d arrived from the late 1980s onwards — ironic really when you consider just how much current live performance trades on the old days. they’re now selling nostalgia and it’s not all good memories. and what of our content-providing musician today? He won’t get much of an advance, certainly no multi-album deal, but he has the prospect of gigging in order to create a community that he can sell his mp3s and t-shirts to direct. if he’s really lucky he might record a song that is used in a film or an ad. in 1948 he would have been an Honest Joe, who did what he loved and earned a crust for his art. today’s musicians don’t even have the 60s and 70s to look forward to.

Zenon Schoepe

Lawo acquires majority shareholding in Innovason Lawo has acquired a majority shareholding in French console manufacturer Innovason, which terminates the receivership period for Innovason.

‘Our investment in Innovason adds a new dimension to our activities at Lawo,’ said Lawo CEO, Philipp Lawo. ‘The opportunity to create new synergies will be to the benefi t of both companies. Innovason is a strong brand in the live sound market, and we are looking forward to taking it to the next level.’

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.

Innovason’s Xavier Pion and Gerard Malvot and Philipp Lawo.

S2 Publications ltd. registered in England and Wales.

Company number: 4375084. registered office: Equity House, 128-136 High Street, Edgware, middlesex Ha8 7tt.

resolution

PlaSa gains awarding body status The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in the UK has announced that PLASA is the first trade association to become an awarding body in the entertainment, conference, architectural and communications industries.

PLASA’s accreditation is part of an initiative designed to allow the national qualifications system to recognise the specific needs of SMEs and larger organisations across the industry. It means that PLASA now shares the same status as other awarding bodies, such as City & Guilds and Edexcel, and all future qualifications developed by the organisation can be submitted for National Accreditation.

• According to the organisers, the PLASA08 exhibition is on course to break all records with a worldwide visitor preregistration offer attracting ‘an unprecedented’ 7,000 visitors to register online. More than 85% of PLASA08’s exhibitor space had been confi rmed by February, a record fi gure in the event’s 31-year history.

d&m Holdings buys allen & Heath D&M Holdings has bought UK console manufacturer Allen & Heath.

‘The acquisition of Allen & Heath is a strong complement to our Calrec and D&M Pro brands,’ said chairman and CEO Eric Evans. ‘This acquisition broadens our product offerings to our longstanding DJ customer base and expands our business in the professional market into installed live sound.’

Founded in 1969, Allen & Heath operates from its Cornwall manufacturing facility and has more than 150 employees.

The Company will continue to be led by Glenn Rogers and its current management team.

‘We’re adding another dimension to our position in the professional audio marketplace with this acquisition,’ said Evans. ‘Allen & Heath is a strong brand in the professional live sound performance market and well suited to benefit from the D&M business platform. Like our other premium brands, Allen & Heath can continue to focus on innovation while D&M provides expanded global market reach and other support. We also see useful tieins with Calrec, our live-to-air broadcast console brand, and Denon DJ.’

SUBSCriBE www.resolutionmag.com annual Subscriptions: UK £37.00, Europe £46.00, rest of the World £53.00

May/June 2008

news tC Group and Gibson merger fails TC Group and Gibson Guitar have discontinued discussions regarding a potential merger between the two companies. A statement said the decision followed an intensive effort by both parties to ‘consummate’ the deal within the targeted timeline, but a number of issues remained unresolved, and both Gibson and TC agreed that it was best that the merger proceedings not continue.

Hewitt makes tonelux Float

Prism buys Sadie

appointments

SOURCE DISTRIBUTION in the UK has appointed Richard Powell as Northern Regional sales manager. He has spent the last four years covering the North of England, Scotland and Ireland for Tascam UK.

Prism Sound has acquired the business and intellectual property rights of DAW manufacturer SADiE, which went into administration in February. The merging of the two businesses under the Prism Sound name creates a stronger and more potent player in the market for high-quality audio production tools, according to Prism Sound directors Graham Boswell and Ian Dennis.

‘The company’s reputation for innovation and creativity is truly remarkable and its digital audio workstations are rightly considered to be the best in the world,’ said Boswell. ‘SADiE has always insisted on the highest standards of engineering and this is refl ected in the quality of its product range and the tremendous loyalty of its customers.

‘Prism Sound is financially secure and in an ideal position to take on the SADiE brand,’ added Boswell. ‘By combining two complementary product ranges with overlapping customer bases, we are confi dent that we can create a formidable and highly competitive business for the future.’

Prism Sound’s initial aim is to place the existing SADiE product range on a secure business and financial footing.

Existing customers will have full access to product support as before using the same telephone numbers and email addresses as previously and new orders are now once again being accepted by Prism Sound’s sales offi ces in Cambridge, UK and New Jersey, USA. Deliveries will resume almost immediately, although availability of certain products may be limited initially as a result of reduced stock levels during the period of administration.

Ryan Hewitt recorded LA-based seven-piece band Flogging Molly at Grouse Lodge Studios, Ireland for the album Float and because they planned to track the whole band on an ambitious schedule of one song a day, Hewitt brought along 32 channels of Tonelux MP1 mic pres and six channels of Tonelux EQ4P proportional-Q 4-band EQ. From this Tonelux input stage, Ryan ran signal through the console before its fi nal destination in Pro Tools|HD. Hewitt said that the all-discrete Tonelux MP1 (recently re-released as the MP1a, with the addition of an output level control) has a sound all its own. With the exception of guitar cabinets, for which there simply weren’t enough inputs, Hewitt ran everything — vocals, backing vocals, acoustic guitar, banjo, fi ddle, accordion, concertina, mandolin, and drums — through the MP1s.

When the raw sound wasn’t quite what he wanted, and when mic choice or placement couldn’t correct the issue, Hewitt turned to his Tonelux EQ4Ps. ‘For subtle EQing, you get a nice wide Q,’ Hewitt explained. ‘When you need to really dig in, you get a tight, surgical Q. The top shelving gives a beautiful sheen and the bottom is as thick as you like. Apart from all that, I think the most important thing about the EQ4P is that it does exactly what I expect it to do.’

Hewitt mixed the album Float on a Neve 8078 at The Pass Studios in Los Angeles, with generous Tonelux EQ4P and TXC compressor inserts.

Neumann and DiGiCo make AES 42 happen A collaborative hard disk, with effort between optimal quality,’ UK-based console added Neumann’s m a n u f a c t u r e r p r e s i d e n t o f D i G i C o a n d marketing/ m i c r o p h o n e sales, Wolfgang m a n u f a c t u r e r Fraissinet. ‘The N e u m a n n h a s addition of the resulted in the DiGiCo console direct connection (l-r) Pappas; DiGiCo’s James Gordon connection gives o f N e u m a n n ’s and Dave Webster; Fraissinet. an added benefi t digital mics to DiGiCo desks via AES 42. to our customers by eliminating the need ‘Despite the development of the AES to use an external workstation, which makes 42 interface, there wasn’t any easy way to the process even easier.’ directly connect Neumann digital series ‘Although the AES 42 protocol was microphones to a console,’ explained developed in 2001, the interconnection with Sennheiser’s senior applications engineer, consoles has moved slowly,’ said DiGiCo’s Mike Pappas. ‘Now, with DiGiCo directly marketing director, David Webster. ‘Back then, supporting AES 42, we have a digital path the use of digital consoles still wasn’t that wide from microphone to speaker.’ reaching. However, with their onslaught across ‘This ensures that the legendary Neumann the market, the desire to be able to stay digital sound is captured unchanged on the user’s throughout the audio chain is much greater.’

BOSCH COMMUNICATION Systems has appointed Daniel Nix as VP of sales — Americas for the Pro Audio Group. He previously served as principal of The Nix Agency, a southwest rep fi rm, and has been part of the Bosch family for the last fi ve years.

E R N E S T O MONTAÑEZ has been appointed Telex sales manager for Mexico.

He previously worked as sales manager Pro Audio for Sennheiser Mexico.

U W E P E P P L E R h a s been appointed product manager, Dynacord Pro Sound.

DC AUDIO Products SL has taken over the distribution of Dynacord audio systems within Spain.

U K - B A S E D M A R Q U E E I n s t a l l a t i o n s h a s a p p o i n t e d R o b Whitaker as senior project manager.

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

May/June 2008

resolution

5

news appointments

SF MARKETING is the new intercom product distributor for Telex in Canada.

B B E S O U N D h a s opened a Tokyo offi ce a n d a d d e d t h re e new members to its global licensing sales and marketing team.

H e a d i n g t h e n e w offi ce is Takeo Kubo (pictured), general manager for the Japan region. Yasutaka Toda, sales engineering senior manager, will oversee existing accounts and Katsuhiko Iida will be responsible for the company’s audio licensing development and providing customer support.

PRO-BEL HAS announcing a number of new appointments and internal p ro m o t i o n s i n i t s E M E A s a l e s department. Mark Gardner has been appointed VP of sales for EMEA. He is returning to Pro-Bel after a period as international sales director at QuStream.

Malcolm Butler has been promoted to regional business manager for the UK and Ireland. Butler is a Pro-Bel veteran, having originally joined the company in 1984. Scott Barber has joined as a senior account manager for the UK. Barber was most recently at Sony.

Anthony Harries joins from Miranda, where he was QA Team Leader, and is internal sales co-ordinator. Sarah Dover has been promoted to sales office manager. She came to Pro-Bel with the acquisition of Vistek, where she was in charge of sales administration.

SHURE DISTRIBUTION UK has been appointed exclusive representative for Primacoustics acoustic treatment in the UK. A U R A L E X A C O U S T I C S h a s appointed Tim Martin as director of sales. He most recently served as project manager at Celerant.

BBC WORLDWIDE, ITV and Channel 4 have appointed Ashley Highfi eld as CEO of Kangaroo, the working title for the new video on-demand service set to launch in the UK in 2008 that will be owned by the three broadcasters.

6

audio-technica UK roadshow

Audio-Technica UK is hitting the road this spring with a seven-city roadshow that takes the brand directly to audio professionals and end users.

The ‘Road to Success’ tour is designed to allow visitors to attend a quality seminar and workshop programme as well as get hands-on experience with new Audio-Technica product in a specially designed mobile display vehicle. The vehicle will traverse the UK between 22 May and 10 June. Audio-Technica will not be exhibiting at PLASA 2008, so the roadshow is an opportunity to experience the brand in the UK this year.

‘Audio-Technica is known for its innovative approach in all aspects of business and we wanted to do something fresh and exciting in terms of the way we present our products and know-how in 2008,’ said Audio-Technica senior UK marketing manager Harvey Roberts. ‘We’re also aware that our customers’ time is precious — by taking Audio-Technica to our customers, we hope to make it as easy as possible for them to access all that we have to offer in terms of product innovation and advice.’

Visitors to the free-to-attend roadshow will have the opportunity to hear seminars and take part in a Wireless Workshop. The dates are: 22-23 May, Lingfield Park Racecourse and Golf Club, Lingfi eld, Surrey; 27-28 May, Tewin Bury Farm, near Welwyn, Herts; 30 May, Cadbury Hotel and Country Club, Congresbury, Bristol; 2 June, The Belfry, Sutton Coldfi eld, West Midlands; 4-5 June, Tatton Park, Knutsford, Cheshire; 6 June, Oulton Hall, Leeds, West Yorkshire; 9-10 June, Hopetoun House, near Edinburgh, West Lothian.

More information at www.audio-technica-roadshow.com

Tannoy fits Fox truck with Precision

discovery takes four System 5-mCs

Discovery Communications in the US has purchased three 16-fader and one 8-fader System 5-MCs for its in-house postproduction facility, based in Silver Spring. The Discovery Production Center, which is responsible for various postproduction and media creation processes across multiple platform distribution mediums, specialises in sound design, post mixing, and VO recording on a wide range of programme types and applications. The System 5-MCs will be used for posting original programming, repackaging and language reversioning of Discovery programmes.

‘Even a simple renarration, in which we just replace the narrator, might mandate the creation of 16 or more auxiliary configurations of the programme — so any system we use has to be able to be reconfigured quickly and easily,’ said Mark Edmondson, manager of audio postproduction services for Discovery.

‘The Euphonix System 5-MC will allow us to take advantage of all the workstation offerings available — Logic, Nuendo, etc. as well as our workhorse Pro Tools systems — allowing us to create an environment in which the rerecording mixer or sound designer can use any platform.’

France 3 goes SoundField for Hd

For its NFL and NASCAR coverage, FOX Sports conducts on-site audio/video production from a multitruck unit provided

by Game Creek Video. The unit consists of four mobile production trucks that travel to NFL stadia in the autumn and racetracks in the spring, serving as audio headquarters for regular season coverage and the Super Bowl and NASCAR’s Daytona 500 broadcasts.

FOX Sports audio consultant/senior mixer, Fred Aldous, chose Tannoy speakers for all the unit’s monitoring environments.

‘Space was my biggest issue,’ said Aldous. ‘I wanted a good nearfi eld monitor for my main left and right speakers, so I chose the Tannoy Precision 8Ds. But I also wanted surround monitoring, so Tannoy built me a customised Precision 6D centre speaker. The housing for the 6D driver and electronics needed to be 12-inches x 10-inches though depth was not an issue,

so the housing is quite a bit deeper to accommodate the electronics.’ Tannoy twin driver Arenas were selected as the back left and right speakers.

‘I wanted all of my 5.1 speakers to have the dual concentric driver in them,’ Aldous continued. ‘The Arenas have those drivers and are small enough to fi t into my control room, but also provide great sound. Using Tannoy speakers, I can mix and match any size dual concentric speaker and still have a consistent soundfi eld.’

In addition to the main audio control room, the FOX Sports mobile production unit also features an audio sub-mix environment, with a set of Precision 6Ds and Arenas, and the ‘racer radio sub-mix’ control area, which also features Precision 6Ds. The FX HD Production System is outfi tted with 17 Sony HDC cameras, ten EVS XT2 servers and Calrec Alpha Bluefi n and Sigma consoles.

resolution

France 3 broadcast engineer Christian Mouttet.

French state TV channel France 3 has b e g u n u s i n g S o u n d F i e l d s y s t e m s , comprising SPS422B microphones and SP451 processors, to provide surround audio for HD sports broadcasting. At present, all of France’s state broadcast transmissions are in standard defi nition, but the SoundField systems are now installed in several of France 3’s OB v e h i c l e s , re a d y f o r t h e H D s p o r t s coverage that France 3 will be offering in the future.

May/June 2008

To create a masterpiece, sometimes it only takes a simple tool. mc²56 – Performance, pure and simple.

A reduced control surface with maximum performance from the system core – these advantages of the latest mixing console from Lawo will really impress you. With the mc²56, not only do you benefit from the well-known highlights of the mc² family – powerful HD core, absolute reliability and innovative features – you also benefit from the console’s intuitive user guidance system, which guarantees unprecedented ease of use. The worldwide success of mc² quality, paired with groundbreaking functionality – just two of the features that make an mc²56 the perfect tool for daily broadcasting. For further information visit www.lawo.de

Lawo AG | Rastatt/Germany

Experience the mc²56 live at the AES 2008: AES Amsterdam, 17th - 20th May, Hall 10, Booth 1817

news appointments

metropolis installs aE22s

BEYERDYNAMIC IN the US has appointed D a n a F r o u l a a s market development manager — Pro Audio.

Anthony Zammit has been appointed as sales and marketing support specialist — Pro Audio.

FOLLOWING THE recent organisational changes at Yamaha Commercial Audio that saw Nick Cook take up the role of European marketing director and Karl Christmas become deputy general manager for the UK operation, the company has appointed G i a n n i A b r u z z e s e a s C A s a l e s manager.

GENCOM TECHNOLOGY will serve as a Linear Acoustic dealer for New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and South Africa.

LINEAR ACOUSTIC has promoted Erik Booth to director of engineering. He was previously a senior hardware engineer.

London’s Mertropolis Studios has installed Acoustic Energy AE22 nearfi eld monitors in its tracking and mix studios A, B and E. ‘The AE22 has already proven to be a popular choice with many of our clients, many choosing to use it over the NS10s,’ said Metropolis engineer Matt Lawrence (Resolution V2.3). ‘It offers even better analytical ability than the NS10 while at the same time having signifi cantly extended low frequency bandwidth and being able to play louder without distortion or compression. Client feedback has been extremely positive.’

The AE22s at Metropolis are passive units driven by Bryston amplification. A bi-amplifi ed active version of the AE22 is also available. The AE22 has been specifi cally designed to excel in time-domain, distortion and thermal compression parameters.

Capturing Sparro with UA

TERRATEC AXON Technologies has appointed the PB Music Group as its distributor in Germany, Benelux and Denmark.

KLOTZ DIGITAL has appointed Technical Audio Group (TAG) as exclusive Australian distributor for its Varizone range of products.

8

As an engineer, Randy Faustino toured North America with acts like Frank Sinatra, Anita Baker, and Jeffrey Osborne before working at Osborne’s studio, Wings West, and later Echo Recording. With the help of Mark King, Faustino then turned his experience to the world of television sound and worked on many shows. In 2007, he formed Creative Sound Solutions with King and Gerald ‘Butch’ McKarge to provide high-calibre music mixing for television.

The company has since mixed American Idol and a host of Idol-inspired shows, including The Next Great American Band, Rock Star, and MTV’s Rock The Cradle.

At Faustino’s request, all American Idol contestants use the Sennheiser MK 5235/SKM 5200 combo and when a wired vocal mic is required he prefers the e 935 dynamic. ‘What I really like about the MD 5235 dynamic capsule in combination with the SKM 5200 transmitter is its immediate presence and warmth, even without any EQ,’ explains Faustino. ‘It ends up being a lot less work than comparable models from other manufacturers. When we have to use other mics, because of artists’ contractual obligations, we always end up using more EQ than we normally do with the MD 5235.

‘The same is true of the wired e 935 that I’m using on backup singers and as my own talkback,’ he continued. ‘Without doing anything, the e 935 has better high-end and tighter low-end.’

For instruments he uses e 906 dynamic cardioids on guitar cabs, and a collection of e 604s on toms, e 602 II on kick, and e 914s for hi-hats and overheads. When doing overdubs or group prerecords, Faustino uses a pair of Neumann TLM 49s.

tCt happens with aid of Focusrite

S Y S T E M S I N T E G R AT I O N specialist Broadcast N e t w o r k s h a s appointed Jon Flay as general manager. Flay, who has previously worked for Dell and BP Marine, joins the company from PBDS.

KLOTZ DIGITAL Asia Pacific has appointed W incomn Technology Development as its distributor for all Varizone Performance-Line and VABLine products in China.

mK 5235/SKm 5200 combo is Faustino’s idol

UK producer Paul Epworth has produced albums for Bloc Party, The Futureheads, The Rakes, Maximo Park, Babyshambles and Kate Nash’s debut album and has now turned his attention to Sam Sparro’s album. Much of his output has come from his small studio near London’s Paddington where his ‘control room’ consists of an Apple MacBook hooked up to a Universal Audio UAD-Xpander, Yamaha NS-10M and Quested monitors, and a small rack that includes a Universal Audio 6176 channel strip.

‘Nearly everything I do at the moment

starts in this room,’ he said. ‘The quality of the UAD plug-ins means I can get professional-sounding mixes from my laptop. I just wish you could chain these things together –- I’d buy another four straight away.

‘The 1176 is such a standard piece of kit, so I checked out the UA 6176 and I thought: UA mic amp, UA compressor, one unit — boom — sounds amazing. I got the 6176 about nine months ago, and I use it on everything. It does a particular job for me, and the Røde mic [Classic II] is always plugged in to it.’

resolution

The Teenage Cancer Trust’s annual onew e e k m u s i c a n d comedy extravaganza at the Royal Albert Hall, London has become one of the most highprofile fundraisers of the music calendar with artists such as Muse, Paul Weller, The Fratellis, Madness and The Who taking part.

Recording and mixing of the event is handled

by Matt Hay and Gareth Johnson who employed a lot of Focusrite gear with recording engineer Matt relying on a fl ightcase of eight Focusrite OctoPres.

‘I record everything at the shows,’ he said. ‘The audio is then backed up onto our hard drives before Gareth takes it away and mixes it at his studio. Those OctoPres have been great, really clean, very easy to use. But it’s not just the sound — I also love the soft limiter on them, which really keeps those levels from going over.’

May/June 2008

Kubitza | Lieck | Renner

A definitive display of competitive edge

An investment in the heart of your sound control room should pay for itself in the long term. A mixing desk that will not become history by tomorrow is the goal.

Better still, it should always be ahead of the pack.

That’s why we recommend AURATUS for broadcasters. Not just impeccable sound but every aspect of the broadcast audio production process is within your grasp. Extensive logic and control functions enable you to control everything for on-air production – from cueing to communications.

And to keep you in the picture, AURATUS displays your every move with precision.

High res TFT screens, user modifiable display fields and OLED displays – capable of imparting information in all the world’s major languages. This is why we think AURATUS defines the competitive edge.

Digital audio technology with passion and competence – for broadcast, stage and studio.

SALZBRENNER STAGETEC MEDIAGROUP Industriegebiet See 96155 Buttenheim Germany Tel.: +49 (0) 95 45 440-0 Fax: +49 (0) 95 45 440-333 sales@stagetec.com www.stagetec.com

news Biz Bites STREAMING V I D E O a n d music across the Internet, an IPTV network, or a mobile handset w i l l g e n e r a t e $ 7 0 b n i n network-derived and contentderived revenue over the next six years, writes Nigel Jopson.

According to a new market research study from Insight Research Corporation, the market will grow at a rate of 29% annually, driven by on-demand audio, video, and the accompanying advertising revenue. ‘Questions surrounding consumers’ willingness to pay for content have been dispelled by satellite radio and iTunes,’ states Robert Rosenberg, Insight Research president.

‘The forecasts that we present are conservative and in line with current performance. If, however, per-stream costs drop faster than anticipated, we have quicker acceptance of IPTV, or improvements in 3G delivery take place faster than expected, it could blow the doors off of our forecasts, propelling this industry into explosive growth,’ Rosenberg enthuses. A key point of interest for c o n t e n t producers is the cost of b a n d w i d t h over wired connections: we have already seen a lot of grumbling from UK Internet service providers (ISPs) concerning the unexpected success of the BBC’s new iPlayer. Having marketed all-you-caneat broadband services to customers, there have been ludicrous claims from ISPs that the Beeb should in some way underwrite the network overhead of iPlayer’s IPTV service. It would seem prudent for media owners to develop new revenue sharing strategies for tackling this possible blockage in the pipe to the consumer. If they don’t, then ISPs will undoubtedly institute covert bandwidth-throttling, which will spoil the online media experience for consumers and limit take-up.

Philips Content I d e n t i f i c a t i o n i n t r o d u c e d transactional water marking and live fingerprint registration with the Mediahedge video fingerprinting system at the NAB show in Las Ve g a s . Tr a n s a c t i o n a l watermarking — inserting a serial number or the identity of the device that is downloading the media content — is gaining in

10

WSdG creates ‘invisible’ wall

The wall separating musicians from producers and engineers was rendered largely invisible at Diante do Trono Studio in Brazil through a design by Walters-Storyk Design Group who installed a glass wall. Renato Cipriano, head of the WSDG Brazilian offi ce, said that a clear sight line between the live and control rooms was a critical design goal for the new complex. Diante do Trono is the 50-member gospel band of Batista da Lagoinha, one of Brazil’s largest worship ministries. In addition to attracting huge crowds to stadium-level venues, the group has recorded 25 albums and sold more than 3 million CDs since its formation in 1997.

The ground fl oor of the complex has a 600sq.ft live room (with ceiling level windows facing the tropical sky), a 350sq.ft 5.1 control room with two isobooths, and an equipment room. Studio B on the 2nd fl oor features a 600sq.ft live room/control room/edit room tracking facility and a video edit suite for music video projects.

WSDG architect/acousticians John Storyk and Renato Cipriano developed variable acoustic panels, including motorised units installed in the ceiling that can be operated from the control room. The studio’s most striking design is the expansive forward-looking panoramic glass wall separating the live and control rooms. The three main Genelec 1032 5.1 surround speakers are housed in the glass via a baffl ed confi guration. Positioned over the equipment rack, they establish an unobstructed view between the rooms. The installation meets all ITU standards.

‘The challenge of fl oating the main monitors within a panoramic front viewing glass wall in an acoustically acceptable confi guration has been a long-time design goal,’ said Storyk. ‘In 2004 I was a member of the acoustic team for Jazz At Lincoln Center. The 500-seat Allen Room performance venue there features a 50ft high by 90ft long glass wall overlooking NY’s Central Park directly behind the stage. The experience we gained from that project was extremely benefi cial in helping us realise Diante Do Trono.’

With facilities in London and New York, Goldcrest Post has recently added to its London operation with The Television Studio, a surround sound television mixing suite based around a 32-fader Icon D-Control with Pro Tools HD3, supplied by Scrub. The addition takes the studio count at Goldcrest London to five surround rooms, complementing the full service High Definition and 2K picture and sound facilities in New York.

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Sonnox plugs shine on daryl webcast Grammy award-winning engineer/producer/ mixer Pete Moshay, who has worked with Average White Band, Ian Hunter, Barbra Streisand, and Hall & Oates, is a confi rmed Sonnox plug-in fan.

One of Moshay’s current projects is recording and mixing Live From Daryl Hall’s house for a monthly webcast. ‘The show features Hall and his special guests performing in the “Great Room” of his upstate NY house,’ explains Moshay. ‘It’s made from Hemlock and hard pine, and it has an amazingly distinctive sound. The show is pretty laid back, with Daryl doing classic Hall & Oates material, songs by other artists, anything that strikes his fancy.’

Moshay captures Hall’s performances with a mobile hard disk recorder, using a combination of stage and studio mics. He then transfers the material into Pro Tools for fi nal mixing and editing. New shows, which are available online, are ready to roll by the 15th of every month. Moshay uses the Sonnox Limiter on the production. ‘It’s great for providing extra density for tracks,’ he said.

‘I’ll ease it across the bus mix, very gently, and open it up with a bit of the Enhance feature.

It’s an incredibly musical tool and the perfect touch at the end of a chain.’

Moshay finds the SuprEsser’s visual feedback exceptionally helpful. ‘You get instant feedback watching the FFT,’ he said.

‘If you want to get right to that offending 6kHz peak, you can get in there and nail it.

I’ve been de-essing my whole career, and basically working by ear. But no matter how good you may be, the ability to actually see what’s going on lets you zero in and do the fi x immediately.’

audient leaps into Salmon Grove

When setting up a music production facility at Hull University, technical engineer Michael Fletcher had to build a studio that catered for the professional market but was also equipped to teach music undergraduates.

‘We decided that these criteria were best met through the combination of a high quality inline analogue console, and a digital audio workstation with a control surface. This is the combination which initially attracted us to the Audient ACS8024,’ he said. ‘It made perfect sense to us to have access to a Command 8 for our Pro Tools rig in the mix position.’

Located on the Hull Campus of the University, Salmon Grove Studios form part of the teaching resources for all music degrees. The University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning offers short courses in the studio, and with its experienced engineer and talented session musicians it doubles up as a commercial music production facility.

May/June 2008

news Biz Bites popularity as an alternative to Digital Rights Management (DRM). Philips also announced transactional watermarking for music files. Its technology inserts watermarks on the server side (before user download), meaning client devices do not need special players or plug-ins.

Philips said major labels have expressed great interest, but did not announce any specific online music retailers that plan to use it. It’s easy to forget that content tracking was once just as important as device or user-tethering when DRM systems were fi rst planned.

The auditing of who is playing what over which pipe is going to become increasingly important — even if production pros have already given up on the idea of royalties — the issue is still very important for songwriters, label owners and TV channels.

IBM has demonstrated a new type of digital storage that would enable a media player to store half a million songs — or 3,500 movies — and be economical to produce. ‘Racetrack’ memory uses the spin of an electron to store data and can operate far faster than regular hard drives. Like fl ash memory there’s no moving parts, meaning battery life is extended and no skipping or damage from physical bumps. Unlike Flash, Racetrack can write data extremely quickly, and does not have the ‘wear out’ phenomenon that means Flash memory devices can only be used a few tens of thousand times before they die. The technology could be in devices within a decade.

Motley Crue is releasing its latest single ‘Saints of Los Angeles’ as a downloadable p l a y a b l e t r a c k through the Rock Band store. Gamers can buy the track for $1 via the Xbox Live Marketplace, and via the PlayStationStore for the PS3. It is the fi rst time a new single has been released for purchase on a game platform in advance of its street date.

Showtime AES Europe, Amsterdam .. 17-20 May BroadcastAsia, Singapore ....17-20 June Plasa, London .........7-10 September IBC, Amsterdam ...12-16 September AES US, San Francisco .. 3-5 October Broadcast India, Mumbai .........................17-19 October SBES, Birmingham .... 5-6 November Tonmeistertagung, Leipzig .................. 13-16 November InterBEE, Tokyo .... 19-21 November

12

Sonacom installs four Xynergis

French postproduction specialist Sonacom has transformed its facility in Neuilly sur Seine by installing Fairlight Xynergi systems in each of its four HD 5.1 surround sound studios. Alongside its four Xynergis with Pyxis SD/HD Video, Sonacom has also installed six Xynergi 12-fader sidecars with metering units, fi ve SX-48 MADI interfaces and a centralised AudioBase3, which is localised on two 16Tb redundant servers. The facility started initially with an MFX3 before upgrading to a Dream Station powered by QDC. ‘Fairlight has always offered the fastest workstation on the market and we’ve had very good experiences with its products,’ said Dominique Perrin, CEO of Sonacom. ‘By combining Xynergi with Fairlight’s Crystal Core Digital media engine, we now have all the tools we need for high-end audio for video production in all widely used surround formats.

‘We have an intense workload, therefore it is very important that we use every minute of studio time productively,’ he said. ‘When clients arrive they want to know exactly how long their project will take — and the sooner we can complete the project, the happier they are. Installing Xynergi systems into each of our studios has already enabled us to speed up our workfl ow, and as we become increasingly familiar with the features offered

by Crystal Core and Xynergi we are fi nding even more ways of working faster.’

Herman’s motown approach Paul Herman has c o - w r i t t e n w i t h D i d o , N a t a s h a Bedingfield and Mint Royale and has a mic cupboard full of SE 3As (stereo p a i r ) , R e f l e x i o n Filters, Z5600a, Gemini, and SE mic stands and pop shields.

‘The Refl exion Filter is just a great asset for any vocal performance — even when recorded in a vocal booth,’ he explains.

‘It gives me an even more neutral starting point for what I’m recording. And as a result we now use it on all our lead vocals.

‘We have a simple philosophy when it comes to recording. I guess it’s pretty much the same philosophy they used for those old Motown classics, which is to try to write great songs, record them live with fantastic musicians — no click track — through fantastic equipment. As long as you do all that in great sounding rooms then you’ll be sure to guarantee two things — big smiles on everyone’s faces and great results every time.’

Jutland avenue calls on Kmr

LiveWire is mobile with C200

LiveWire Remote Recorders recently installed a 48-channel SSL C200 HD console and two SSL C-SB Stageboxes into its 32-foot mobile truck. The truck records and supplies live stereo and 5.1 mixes for broadcast productions throughout North America.

‘In the last year, every other call we received would ask if we had 5.1 surround abilities,’ said LiveWire owner Doug McClement. ‘It’s really become a factor for video production companies; if you are going to hire an HD video truck, you need an audio truck that can work in 5.1. With this console, working in 5.1 is seamless, it’s part of the console’s architecture.’

Within days of the installation, LiveWire was on the road recording Alanis Morissette for an MTV Canada broadcast and a live recording of Canadians Blue Rodeo at Massey Hall in Toronto.

‘Another thing that we needed was

snapshot recall of all the parameters. We do a lot of shows like Virgin Fest where there are 10 or 12 bands performing and having to reset everything between bands manually, is a real pain, not to mention risky,’ he adds. ‘Because the microphone preamps are on stage, we’re running cables 500 feet, 850 or 1000 feet if we’re doing a stadium gig. Since we’ve got Neutrik fibre optic snakes running from the SSL Stageboxes back to the truck, there’s no signal loss. That’s a major thing for us because you need that added reliability when recording live.’

• Korean Broadcasting System’s ‘Studio 1625’ has installed an SSL Duality with integrated patch bay and redundant power supply. KBS Studio 1625, part of the KBS Group, is responsible for recording and mixing material for KBS music, broadcasting and postproduction projects.

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L A - b a s e d p ro d u c e r J a y K y o n h a s assembled a new studio, Jutland Avenue, in London’s Battersea through KMR Audio.

The studio is an extension of the ‘lifestyle’ market that Jay has been used to servicing though his LA Roadstarr Specialists custom car bodyshop. ‘I am interested in music as a lifestyle and the studio is designed to provide the sort of facility that can be used any time of the day or night by people wanting to make music when the desire takes them,’ he explained. ‘It is not just for our own record company but is a commercial facility open to anyone.’

Jay sourced a large amount of panelling and acoustic treatment from the auctioning of Eden Studios, which also provided the Pro Tools system and some of the outboard.

KMR Audio supplied an SSL AWS900+ and KRK main monitoring together with AKG 414B and Neumann U87 vocal mics. The studio has already attracted the attention of Hip hop artist Akon and catered for pop, indie rock and dance acts.

duffy sings 5051 Singer Duffy has been using the TL Audio 5051 tube voice processor on her vocal for her UK, US and European tour.

‘She needed something to warm up her vocals and give a top sound, plus Duffy is very particular about her on-stage sound,’ said Duffy’s monitor engineer Nikoma. ‘It needed to be warm, smooth and rich all at the same time, TL Audio seemed the obvious choice for me.’

May/June 2008

facility

Le Voyager V1 mkII 12th June 2007: the Voyageur V1 mobile studio is on fire on a Spanish motorway. 13th April 2008: V1 is back on the road, with a brand new console and an improved digital architecture, to record a French show at Paris Zénith. FRANCK ERNOULD reports on nine months of hard work to bring one of the world’s biggest and best mobile studios back to life.

T

he original Le Voyageur mobile studio was built in 1980 by the Château d’Hérouville team in a small Mercedes truck. It then changed owners; Voyageur 2 and Voyageur 3 were built in the 1980s and were seen in France and in Europe. The company was finally bought in 1992 by Dispatch (a major French SR audio supplier and renter, and a member of Dushow Group). Its new owners then began to think about building a really huge mobile studio, fully digital and 5.1-compatible, with a custom monitoring system, perfectly tuned to the truck’s acoustics.

As a result, Voyageur V1 was born in July 1999.

Among V1’s main designers are French sound engineer Yves Jaget, who came with the final drafts, and Dispatch’s specialist in monitoring systems conception and tuning Marc de Fouquières. It is a 30-ton lorry with powered lateral extensions (1m width each), a 96-channel, 144-input SSL Axiom MT, and a proprietary 5.1 tri-amplified monitoring system built in the front wall with TAD horn-loaded tweeters. Surround channels are small powered Meyer 14

speakers and the LEDE control room is 6m long, 4m wide: the sound engineer sits with his back to the trailer’s tractor.

The console itself is swivel-mounted: it is longitudinally oriented for transportation but is used transversally when the extensions are out (a hydraulic system powers the extensions, and moves the front wall, which is the trailer’s rear, 70cm back). French acoustician Christian Malcurt fine-tuned the room’s acoustics, which is said to be flat down to 15Hz. The outboard racks are full with Lexicon, TC, GML, and Millennia gear.

The machine room is located at the front of the trailer. At the time of the original build the recorders were PCM-3348s, and the room hosts the amps, the patches, the console’s power supply, and ancillary equipment. V1’s total budget was around £800k in 1999 — that was never heard of in France at the time, and since, for an audio-only truck!

V1 had a rich and varied life: it was used to capture national and international concerts, festivals, DVDs, and even on-location records (like William Sheller’s Les Machines Absurdes, mostly produced in a La Baule mansion with the V1, mixing and mastering

by Jaget himself included!). It was also used as a deluxe OB van, praised for its flexibility and its 5.1 capabilities. Even if fees were high, it had no equivalent in Europe, and was often out and about.

For example, it was to be used to broadcast the MTV Awards in Madrid, but travelling there on that fateful day in June 2007, it almost disappeared in flames.

To kill the fire, which was started on the lorry’s resolution

right rear axle, firemen, drilled holes in the panel work (and, consequently, control room walls), and poured lots of fire-retardant foam and water into them. As a result, the console was saturated and definitely beyond repair. The four computer screens, situated between the front speakers, melted with the heat.

The direct radiating loudspeakers received their lot of water too, and the hardwood floor was destroyed.

Happily, no one was injured in the fire.

Most of the costly analogue outboard gear, installed in foldable FX racks behind the sound engineer position, was not touched by the water and neither was the machine room, situated in front of the lorry, because it was protected by its closed door. However, smoke and dirt got everywhere but when the V1 crew came to visit the lorry a few days after the fire, they realised that it could all be cleaned. The hydraulic system was destroyed, but the main question was: ‘Is the trailer structure damaged by the heat?’ V1’s maker Toutenkamion said it could manage with it.

Insurance experts were called and agreed to repair the trailer and to replace its equipment. ‘We certainly had to inject some money,’ says Laurent Israel-Alexandre, Le Voyageur’s technical manager, ‘but it was possible to put the V1 back on the map, with a new console, and a modified audio architecture, but reusing many of its parts.’

When the V1 was back from Spain at the end of September, Toutenkamion workers had replaced the rear axles, cut out several square meters of the lorry’s burnt plastic panel work and replaced them with new elements. They completely dismantled the trailer, including its two lateral extensions, examined and checked every aspect and then built it again.

Everybody was happy to be able to re-use most of the parts, after cleaning and ‘decontaminating’ them.

Rockwool had to be changed, but wooden acoustic parts were put back in place after careful cleaning and sanding. Great care was taken to put things back exactly where they were, as the original V1’s acoustics were praised by every user of the mobile studio.

All the wiring had to be re-done, in a more modern way. ‘With the Axiom MT, we had more than a dozen analogue multipoint connectors and a patch May/June 2008

facility integrated in the console,’ says V1’s project manager JĂŠrĂ´me Blondel. ‘So there was a lot of multicore wiring involved. Using a modern digital console allowed us to simplify the wiring.’ As the trailer only came back to Le Voyageur headquarters in late February, most of the wiring had been done and tested in advance. As the SSL Axiom MT had given total satisfaction to V1 crew, freelance sound engineers and customers, it was natural for the V1 team to go for a digital SSL console again. They chose a 48-fader C200. ‘It can handle 96 mic inputs, and 126 channels, even in 96kHz!’ says JĂŠrĂ´me. As a matter of fact, according to Laurent Israel-Alexandre, the new V1 is the only 5.1 96kHz/96-channel sound truck in the world. As the C200 is less deep than the Axiom MT, there is more space in front of the speakers, and the control room seems even bigger now than before.

Two SSL CSB 48-channel stageboxes have been bought and employ military-spec multimode optic fibre and around the console the wiring has changed.

There are no AES-EBU multicores and MADI fibre connects the console with the rest of the audio world. Several analogue audio cables run monitoring together with VGA and Cat5 and recordings are made on two PowerMacs running Pro Tools HD, with 96 tracks each. V1 has its own network with Wi-Fi capabilities, and every computer can be used from almost everywhere, with keyboard/mouse and monitor switching (there’s a PC in the machine room, used for ancillary tasks).

The outboard rack changed only slightly. Most of the boxes were cleaned, and some gained a very personal ‘bronze’ finish in the operation (like the Millennia). An Eventide H3000SE and a TC 2290 had to be replaced, but every other module is back after cleaning, including four vintage dbx 902 de-essers and the analogue patch was moved to the machine room.

The monitoring system stayed basically the same for the LCR. Some loudspeakers were replaced with identical models — the four 18-inch direct radiation boomers for the .1 have been changed, as Marc de Fouquières had found alternatives. The most apparent change took place at the rear where the small powered Meyer speakers were replaced by a horn and four PHL loudspeakers, directly integrated into the acoustical walls. ‘This is Marc’s idea,’ says Laurent. ‘One of the loudspeakers is used for the mid-range, the other three for the bass.’

Yves Jaget (right) and JĂŠrĂ´me Blondel.

In the machine room, everything seems familiar, but there are some small changes here too. The C200 power supply takes up less space than the Axiom MT’s, and there are now four SSL X-Logic MADI interfaces. Master digital clock is a Mutec iClock; two SYNC I/O interfaces are present for the Pro Tools rig, and original Crown Studio Reference I and II (three of each) are now complemented by a Lab Gruppen power amplifier for the rear channels.

Most importantly, the monitoring system is now managed by two Dolby Lake digital processors, working in 96kHz mode. ‘They replace BSS Omnidrives, and they allow us to reach a new level of quality in terms of transparency and tuning,’ says JĂŠrĂ´me. Computers and the console have separate uninterruptible power supplies and there are also some DAT machines and CD burners and two Pro Tools operators can now work easily in the space formerly occupied by the 3348s.

After nine month’s absence, V1’s aura is intact.

V1 mkII was inaugurated by Yves Jaget (as had been V1 mkI), to record a Sol en Si show (a major musical charity event involving great French artists). ‘Yves was delighted to be back in V1, he designed the original version, and found that after the fire, it had

improved! We all missed the V1 during all this time,’ says JĂŠrĂ´me. ‘We had to run complex operations with our V2 truck, which has still an analogue architecture.

We always managed to do what we were asked for, but the first time I could just roll out our two fibres with the V1 and have 96 audio channels up and running in no time on the console, it was such a relief.’ The V1 will be used at the beginning of May for a live 5.1 broadcast to Japan of a concert taking place at Le ZĂŠnith. Record companies probably can’t afford the V1 as much as they could in 1999, but the truck’s 5.1 capabilities will be of great appeal to HD broadcasts. ‘We just began to communicate about the new V1, and it seems customers will be present and willing to hire it. There’s no equivalent in France, or even in Europe. And when Bob Clearmountain visited us, he told us that even in the USA, there’s no truck like the V1 — some are as powerful, but smaller, with just one extension, for example.’ A real 5.1 all-digital studio, on wheels: the original concept is still valid, but improved. â–

Contact lE voYaGEUr, FraNCE: Website: www.levoyageur.com

Is your room under control? w w w. t r i n n o v. c o m

Trinnov’s Optimizer: s 2ESOLVES ACOUSTICAL MONITORING PROBLEMS s )MPROVES TONAL BALANCE AND SOUNDSTAGE s 4RUST YOUR MONITORS AND FOCUS ON THE MIX

UK Distribution: Sound-Link Marketing - tel: 01223 264 765 - trinnov@sound-link.co.uk May/June 2008

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w w w. s o u n d - l i n k . c o. u k 15

gear

Products Equipment introductions and announcements.

dangerous daC-St

Dangerous Music is shipping the DAC-ST digital convertor option for the Monitor ST controller. The DAC-ST is the fi rst available option in the line for the new Additional Switching System (ASS) one-rack space expander that can house up to two banks of two cards each, adding four additional functions switchable directly from the ST-SR remote.

The four rear-panel digital inputs on the DAC-ST accept AES or SPDIF formats and have active Thru outputs for routing these input signals to other devices.

The Additional Switching System is sold as a chassis/power supply set with one or two user-selected options, each option having a specifi c price. Users can purchase a single option along with a chassis, then purchase a second option later and self-install that card; or purchase a chassis with two options already installed. Several other options are in the works including the DAC-SR, a 6-channel D-AC for surround setups, and a companion to the Monitor SR expansion. www.dangerousmusic.com

Grace design m101 preamp

Grace Design is shipping the m101 preamp as the successor to its model 101 preamp. The m101 includes a number of sonic performance and feature enhancements over its predecessor while retaining the price point of the former model. The audio signal path incorporates 0.5% precision metal resistors, higher performance output line driver and HPF amplifi ers have been added, and RFI suppression has been enhanced. The 12-position rotary gain switch is now gold plated and a sealed gold contact relay is used for Hi-Z input switching.

Another big change is the inclusion of a built-in, universal power supply and the 1U, half-rack m101 sports a new look.

New operational features include the addition of Grace’s ribbon mic mode as standard, which provides a wide 1075dB gain range. Three output connectors are now present on the rear panel; XLR balanced, ¼-inch TRS balanced and ¼-inch TS unbalanced. LED status indicators have also been added for +48V, ribbon mode and the HPF. www.gracedesign.com

Green Black Hole JZ has launched a third Black Hole microphone. The Black Hole PE (BH-3) has a fi xed cardioid polar pattern and adds a pad with options of -5dB and -10dB to avoid overloading mic preamps. Visually it looks similar to the previous two versions (BH-1 — multipattern, BH-2 — fixed cardioid) but it is dark green in colour. www.jzmic.com

16

rNdigital d1

8-track 788t

D1 is a graphic dynamics processor based on RNDigital Dynam-izer Zone A u d i o L e v e l technology. D1 was developed to make RNDigital’s dynamics control technology more intuitive. The graphic elements of the GUI now represent the signal fl ow from left to right.

‘We came to realise that many users fi nd it diffi cult to grasp the concept and therefore the benefits that are provided by Dynam-izer,’ said Reinhold Probst CEO and owner of RNDigital. ‘I came to the conclusion that Dynamizer may be too advanced to serve as an introduction.’

D1 is not a light version of Dynam-izer and has all the functions required to perform most dynamics control tasks. If further options are needed, presets saved by D1 can be imported into Dynam-izer. It has also introduced a new concept called Zone Gain Control that controls what happens with audio levels ‘outside’ of the level zone defi ned by D1, in many cases eliminating the need for makeup gain and/or gating.

RNDigital plug-ins will now be available for electronic download only. Retail box versions will no longer be available. www.rogernicholsdigital.com

mKH 800 twin Sennheiser’s MKH 800 Twin is based on the MKH 800 RF condenser microphone and is a dual-capsule microphone that provides two separate sound signals at the microphone output. This means that the pick-up pattern does not have to be set at the microphone before the recording but can be remotely fi ne-tuned and corrected at the mixing console under monitoring conditions, and even during postproduction.

The signals of the two linear symmetrical push-pull transducers are fed separately to the mixing desk. The pick-up pattern is then generated as required by adjusting the fader setting and signal phase. As the Twin has two separate cardioid capsules, co-incidentally mounted back-to-back, it is simple to add an MKH 30 (fi g-8) or MKH 800 (in fi g-8 mode) and, using the MSM ‘double MS’ format, produce 5.1 surround from just these three capsules.

The new member of the MKH family also features low self-noise and a frequency response that is said to extend to 50,000Hz. Recessed LEDs front and rear help with alignment and the microphone is available in a satin nickel or dark grey Nextel fi nish. www.sennheiser.co.uk

rtW ‘loudness Family’ R T W ’s S u r r o u n d C o n t r o l , SurroundMonitor, and DigitalMonitor now include an integrated loudness display conforming to the ITU BS.1771 guideline as a standard feature. With this line-up, the manufacturer now offers solutions for monitoring the loudness of stereo, multichannel, and surround signals in a wide range of applications. www.rtw.de

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Sound Devices’ 788T 8-track recorder is designed for multitrack on-location productions and features a signifi cant expansion of input and output capability with eight fullfeatured mic inputs. In a stainless-steel and aluminium chassis weighing less than 4lbs and roughly the size of a hardback, the 788T accommodates individual controls and connectors for each of its eight inputs, plus numerous additional I-O and data connections.

The 788T comes equipped with a 160Gb 2.5-inch internal drive and, additionally, CompactFlash cards with UDMA support and external FireWire mass storage volumes can be used. All three storage mediums can be selected for simultaneous, redundant recording.

Each of the eight input controls has a corresponding tri-colour circular LED, making level adjustments simple.

The 788T’s Input Control Toggle allows for quick access to common settings such as input type, limiter engagement, high-pass fi lter activation, and phantom powering. Its LCD display is viewable in all lighting conditions.

As with the 702T and 744Ts timecode recorders, the 788T has a high-performance, full-featured timecode generator.

It is also equipped with selectable Word clock sync source, including numerous video sync sources. The 788T is powered by 7.2V Li-ion batteries or external DC (10-18V) and offers an on-board Li-ion battery charger. www.sounddevices.com

dtrS tape from HHB

At a time when other professional audio media manufacturers has abandoned the market, HHB’s DA60DC and DA113DC double coated DTRS tapes provide users of the Tascam 8-channel recording system with the latest metal particle tape formulation to deliver high output and carrier to noise ratio, along with low block error rates.

A non-magnetic layer beneath the recording layer contains a lubricant for smooth running of the tape, while the tape substrate itself is designed to minimise friction during high speed shuttling. The binder is specially formulated to minimise the shedding of the metal particle recording layer, even after repeated use over many years.

Approved by Tascam for all DTRS recording applications and now the only double coated DTRS tapes available on the market, the 60 and 113-minute tapes are packaged in library cases and are supplied with labelling formatted specifi cally for professional use. www.hhb.co.uk

May/June 2008

gear Fibre interface E u p h o n i x h a s a m o d u l a r r e m o t e a u d i o interface solution for broadcast applications featuring redundant fibre audio connectivity and control. It connects multiple high-density stage boxes into the Euphonix DSP SuperCore via MADI over fi bre with control directly from the console’s channel strips.

A modular 3U stage box can handle up to 56 mic preamps and can also be fi tted with combinations of I-O, including analogue, AES-EBU (75 and 110ohm), SDI and MADI. A second stage box could be fi tted to provide analogue or digital splits of the mic preamp outputs from the fi rst stage box for feeding the local PA/monitor mixers, for example.

Euphonix now offers integration with the Ross OverDrive Production Control System available in its Synergy Series Production Switchers. OverDrive offers centralised control of many studio devices including servers, routers, and robotic cameras, as well as the audio console. The system’s Rundown Control playlist software allows for fully automated productions.

The optional software upgrade requires no additional hardware and enables external control of all channel faders, on/off switches, pans, and PFL. Other console functions will be added in future releases. www.euphonix.com

Holophone Portamic and coders Holophone’s PortaMic 5.1 retails for US$599 and like the H4 Supermini features a 2.5-inch x 1.5-inch mic head with six separate mic elements arranged to correspond to a 5.1 speaker s e t u p . P o r t a M i c ’s e n c o d e r, equipped with Dolby Pro Logic II encoding, is low profi le when connected to a camera. The Surround encoded audio is output to stereo mini plug and 6-pin balanced mini XLR. The mic features a unity gain control and a 12dB pad.

The D-Code multichannel Pro Logic II decoder takes the two audio channels, which are

encoded using the H4’s or Porta-Mic 5.1’s encoder from the camera’s recording medium or other two channel source, and decodes into six discrete audio channels. The recording device is connected to the D-Code through two phonos and decoded audio is delivered via six phono outputs or multichannel USB directly to the computer.

The Holophone N-Code takes six channels of audio from the H2-PRO or H3-D and converts them to two channels using Dolby’s Pro Logic II. The box has six XLR/1/4-inch inputs with mic/line selection and two XLR outputs plus 48v phantom through six preamps. It is battery powered.

Rycote is developing windscreen systems for all Holophone microphones. www.holophone.com

iZ convertor system iZ Technology, maker of the RADAR digital multitrack recorder, has introduced the ADA multichannel A-D and D-A convertor.

Each ADA is madeto-order with 8, 16, or 24 channels of iZ Technology’s Classic, Nyquist, or S-Nyquist convertor cards –- the same cards found in the iZ RADAR multitrack recorder. With ADA’s modular design, users can select the desired number of analogue I-Os, then reconfi gure the I-O ratios and add channel count to the unit whenever needed. ADA also interfaces with Logic, Nuendo, and all native DAWs via MADI or with Pro Tools via the iZ Dual Pro Tools HD interface card. www.izcorp.com

Fairlight dream 2 v1.5 Fairlight has released Dream 2 Software Version 1.5, which has more than 50 new features. All Dream 2 systems are supplied standard with on-board video and the new release extends the capabilities to include support for a comprehensive array of video and audio interchange formats as well as providing support for a wide range of commonly used media fi le formats.

These include AVID (QT Ref), MXF OPAtom, MXF OP1A, AAF, OMF, OMF2, D10, Thomson/Grass Valley XML, AES-31, BWAV, Aif, MOV, AVI, BMP, Mpeg2, VMU (native Pyxis), MT, and DR2. ML EDL formats supported include AAF, OMF, OMF2, Thomson/Grass Valley XML, AES-31, MT, DR2, ML, and Sony 9100. In addition the system supports native playback of a wide variety of video codecs such as Avid DnXHD, QuickTime H.264, DVCPro HD, IMX 30, IMX50, Mpeg2, and DV100.

Users can drag and drop their required fi le to the project timeline. Alternatively the Dream 2 video system can be used as an HD VTR with 9-pin machine control to capture video directly from HD video decks. www.fairlightau.com

May/June 2008

Karlsruhe · Germany +49 721 943 200 www.schoeps.de

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gear C200 Hd tweaked

SSL’s C200 HD console now has expanded features that include routing system expansion to over 5,600 inputs and outputs. The desk now offers support for Tri-level sync with solid internal clocking and also supports HD playback machine control and dynamic automation at SD and HD frame rates. www.solid-state-logic.com

Studer onair 2500

lawo plugs L a w o , D o l b y a n d M i n n e t o n k a A u d i o S o f t w a r e h a v e announced the Lawo SurCode for Dolby E R e a l - T i m e D e c o d e r plug-in that operates in the new Lawo Plugin Server. A Dolby E Encoder module will follow later this year.

The Lawo SurCode for Dolby E functions as a VST plugin allowing for control and recall on the fl y, completely integrated into the Lawo production environment. The integration allows one or more instances of the Dolby E Decoder on the Lawo Plugin Server to be used in combination with existing Dolby E hardware products. www.lawo.de

Studer’s OnAir 2500 radio on-air console uses the software technology derived from the OnAir 3000 console and builds on the operational concepts of its predecessor, the OnAir 2000. With the OnAir 2500, the control surface, I-O breakout, DSP Core and power supply are all integrated within a single compact chassis.

The Fader strips include a graphical OLED screen, which contains a channel label, level and gain reduction meter and parameter readouts, adjustable via a rotary encoder and two pushbuttons below the display. The large TFT colour touchscreen uses Studer’s Touch’n’Action system, where only the most important functions have hardware control elements in the channel strip.

The touchscreen can also display the relevant settings and configurations for each channel in addition to the OLED displays. A simple touch on one of the eight small channel pushbuttons, e.g. equaliser, dynamics, Aux send, immediately opens the corresponding page on the main screen.

As well as interfaces on XLR and Sub-D outlets (microphone inputs, headphone outputs, Line and AES I-Os), the internal audio system also offers interfaces to digital multichannel formats such as MADI, ADAT and IEEE1394 FireWire. Three standard confi gurations with 12, 18 and 24 faders are available, with motorised channel faders available as an option. www.studer.ch

Whirlwind adds CobraNet i-o modules

Whirlwind has introduced the CI8L input module that converts eight analogue line level audio inputs to CobraNet digital networked data. The CI8L is also available in a 2channel line level input module, the Whirlwind CI2L. The CI8L is Whirlwind’s 8-channel CobraNet line level input module. It can be temporarily or permanently connected to the CobraNet network, anywhere network access and AC power are available. Connect any line level source, such as mixer matrix or aux outputs, speaker system crossover outputs, or surround sound processor outputs, and instantly send them throughout the CobraNet digital audio network.

The CO8a converts CobraNet digital networked data to eight analogue line level channels. The CO2a, a 2-channel version of the CO8a, is also available. www.whirlwind-europe.com

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May/June 2008

gear Headzone Pro Xt

Headzone PRO XT from Beyerdynamic is an updated version of the original Headzone portable surround sound mixing system. It uses DSP technology to provide headphone-based 5.1 surround sound reproduction and the headtracking system to locate the orientation of the listener’s head with respect to the source material and adjusts the audio accordingly.

The PRO XT version includes enhanced headtracking functionality by providing more routing possibilities (left/ right and front/back) in the software control panel. Also new are added XLR inputs, an adjustable communication input with volume control, and a second headphone output.

The Headzone PRO XT also allows for three individual user presets to be directly accessed through buttons on the unit’s front panel and includes an adjustable, password protected limiter for hearing protection.

Headzone PRO XT offers an advanced room simulation program, which allows the user to create an auditory space within which to monitor the surround audio and, therefore, provide the optimal ‘sweet spot’. www.beyerdynamic.co.uk

ati portable digital audio monitor

ATI Audio Technologies’ DM500 is a digital audio monitor and a D-A convertor in a portable form factor. The unit has 96kHz digital inputs, a powerful headphone monitor amplifi er, a weather-protected carrying case and alternate mounting confi gurations.

It has XLR, BNC and phono inputs, displays sample rates and digital errors, has a calibrated digital level meter showing headroom, can read analogue level, and provides a balanced analogue line output. www.atiaudio.com

Head-worn mic Phonak’s proVocanto is a miniaturised boom microphone with patented mechanics, a system weight of 2g, and easy handling and positioning.

Length and orientation of the boom are adjustable — you open the loop, put it around your ear and tighten it with a gentle tug.

T h e o m n i d i r e c t i o n a l microphone is protected from moisture, salt and dust and an anti-perspiration ring keeps sweat away. www.phonak-communications.com

Zaxcom Fusion The Fusion audio mixer and recorder from Zaxcom achieves its low weight and power effi ciency by eliminating the use of a hard drive. This has the added benefi t of removing concerns of hard drive damage from extreme temperatures or motion. The system instead records to two CompactFlash cards simultaneously. For fault-tolerant recording, the Fusion records to one card in the mobile audio recording format (MARF), which allows audio to be recovered even if power is lost during recording.

Simultaneously, Fusion records a redundant copy of the audio fi les in the FAT32 format to the second CompactFlash card, creating an easy way for the postproduction team to have immediate, portable access to the fi les.

Fusion includes an integrated, lockable touchscreen interface and users can adjust more than 300 mixer crosspoints and 200 controllable parameters. Four balanced AES inputs with sample rate conversion allow eight channels of audio to come from four different devices with varying sample rates or unlocked sample rate clocks. Fusion can mix together 16 inputs to eight output buses for recording up to eight tracks. The system additionally works as a FireWire bus master to control and supply power to external hard drives or DVD-RAM drives.

Fusion also offers an optional effects package and each channel can feature a soft knee compressor, high-pass fi lter, delay, and 3-band EQ with peak or shelving fi lters. The system includes six fi lters per channel, with frequency-selectable high pass fi lters included and optional EQ and notch fi lters.

Zaxcom has introduced the Deva Mix-8 and Deva Flash Drive to expand the functionality of its Deva product line. Deva Mix-8 is an 8fader mixing panel that integrates directly with the company’s Deva IV, V, 5.8, 16, and Fusion systems. The Deva Mix-8 unleashes the internal mix functions of the host audio recorder. The unit has 100mm faders, input trim pots, and input level meters and is powered directly from the Deva unit via a cable.

The company’s TRX systems are now available with a wireless dynamic range expander and an adjustable RF output power feature, both of which increase the operational fl exibility of the unit. www.zaxcom.com

May/June 2008

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gear variable frequency control (500Hz to 20kHz) and amount of dynamic enhancement. Dry mixes a user-defi ned amount of ‘uncompressed’ signal with the compressed signal to create a ‘parallel compression effect’.

The Kickbox 4x4 is an ‘all terrain’ 4-in/16out mic/line signal s p l i t t e r t a r g e t e d The S2 Signature Series dual channel tube compressor is through its robustness the latest product to emerge from Ivor Drawmer’s high-end at live production designs and offers an ‘all tube — no technical compromise’ a p p l i c a t i o n s . I t circuit. The S2 features new creative processing possibilities. i n c o r p o r a t e s f o u r Big retains bass frequencies and minimises undesirable studio-grade mic/ ‘pumping’ by rolling off the detection signal at 75, 125 line preamps, each providing up to 66dB of gain, and 16 or 250Hz (user switchable). A fully variable level control balanced output stages, each with the option of transformer allows for the desired amount of Big processing and an isolation. The 4x4 is supplied in a road-proof case with a FR-2LE Resolution 142x194 5/1/08 12:58 PM Page 1 in/out switch provides the option to bypass it. Bright is removable lid for access to all controls and connections. a dynamic high frequency enhancer with continuously www.drawmer.com

drawmer S2 and 4x4

telescopic pole

Lightwave Audio Systems’ new G5-4M telescopic production pole is a 4-metre long version of the existing 2.5-metre G5 pole, with the same patented, easily serviceable triple-cam locking system. Weighing 618g and just one metre long when collapsed, the carbon-fi bre G5-4M is a solution for newsgathering or location recording teams. www.lightwavesystems.com

dolby media meter

Elegant, Professional Field Recording to CompactFlash™

The new Dolby Media Meter, as well as new features to the Dolby LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter and Dolby DP600 Program Optimizer, are part of the company’s showcase of loudness, transcoding, and licensing solutions.

Dolby Media Meter, which is new to the Dolby Media Producer family of products, is a software loudness meter for Mac and PC applications that uses measurement techniques, such as Dialogue Intelligence technology, adapted from the Dolby LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter.

The upgraded LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter incorporates the new ITU-R BS.1770 Loudness Algorithm — recognised as a worldwide de facto standard for broadcast programme measurement. The LM100 includes true-peak measurement support per ITU-R BS.1770 Annex 2, and ITU method Dialogue Intelligence support via user control. The ITU-R BS.1770 method is included in addition to the legacy Leq(A) method that the LM100 has used for years. www.dolby.com

Charteroak m900t CharterOak’s M900T front address small diaphragm tube condenser employs the same cardioid, hypercardioid, and omni capsules used with M900 transformerless small diaphragm condenser but combines them with a vacuum tube head amplifi er and US- made Cinemag output transformer.

The M900T features a two-step sensitivity switch (0dB and -15dB) and 75Hz bass roll off (6dB per octave) and the mic will ship in a metal fl ightcase and includes three capsules, Gotham Audio cables, power supply, shockmount and mic clip for US$1299.

The SCL-1 solid state compressor/limiter will be released under the CharterOak Entertainment Group brand. The unit employs all discreet electronics and is capable of providing a constant output level regardless of input level or frequency, without pumping. The unit claims extremely fast attack times without overcompensation, and a release characteristic, which is a function of dynamic range and average programme level. www.charteroakacoustics.com

FR-2LE

24bit 96kHz Field Recording to CompactFlash™ Fostex have done it again with the launch of the new FR-2LE - a compact audio recorder designed from the ground-up to meet the needs of professionals in the field.

The FR-2LE records to CompactFlash in Broadcast WAV Format at 24bit 96kHz quality and it's equipped with two professional phantom powered XLR microphone inputs complete with precise control over the recording level. In addition, it features a 1 take equals 1 file recording system which eliminates overwrites and the 2 second ‘pre-record’ buffer means there should never be a missed take or lost soundbite. There’s even an MP3 mode and built-in stereo microphones designed for interviews.

Feature rich and elegant in operation, the pedigree of the new FR-2LE looks assured.

Korby expands Kat

Effect acquisition

Interview

www.fostex.jp 20

Musical notepad Fostex Company, 3-2-35 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, Japan 196-0021 Tel: +81 (0)42-546-4974 Fax: +81 (0)42-546-9222 Email: info_sales@fostex.jp

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Famed for his ‘Hot Swap’ Convertible microphone designs, Tracy Korby has expanded the KAT range to include cardioid and multipattern standalone models.

The products included in this latest design phase are the Kat Red cardioid, Kat Red multipattern, Kat Blue cardioid, Kat Blue multipattern, Kat White cardioid, and Kat White multipattern. The cardioid only products list at £1975 and the multipatterns list at £2195 (both + VAT). www.asapeurope.com

May/June 2008

gear Crown anniversary amps

Having crossed its 60th year and more than two decades of producing the Macro-Tech Series of power amplifi ers, Crown is commemorating both milestones with a run of 600 MA-2402, MA-3600VZ and MA-5002VZ boxes as Anniversary Edition models. Each features a copper-

plated front panel (including handles, knobs, and buttons) and be shipped in a custom wood crate.

The Crown’s XLS Series has been extended with the addition of the XLS 5000. Delivering 1800 watts per channel in 4-Ohm stereo mode, and 5000 watts in 4Ohm bridge-mono mode, the XLS 5000 packs more than twice the punch of the next highest-powered model in the range, the XLS 802. It’s equipped with a forced-air fan and the front panel sports dual detented rotary level controls and six LEDs indicating signal, clip, and fault for each channel. Rear panel connections include two electronically balanced XLR inputs as well as touch-proof binding post and Speakon outputs.

Crown’s 135MA and 160MA mixer-amplifiers are capable of providing 8-Ohm and constant-voltage outputs (70V and 100V). Each is housed in a compact half-rack chassis, the 135MA is equipped with three inputs and a 35W amp output, while the 160MA provides four inputs and a 60W amp. Both models provide priority muting, which can be voice-activated or triggered via an external switch. www.crownaudio.com

intercom controller Clear-Com now offers control of its Eclipse Digital Matrix Intercom System with a compact V-Series Desktop unit.

The desktop unit, complete with a loudspeaker and gooseneck microphone, has individual audio level controls for each of its 12 talk-down/listenu p k e y s , i n c l u d i n g o n e d e d i c a t e d f o r answer-reply. A bright g r a p h i c a l d i s p l a y shows ten international characters including Chinese, Japanese and Russian and a shift button gives access to eight further switch pages and the menu button provides access to assignment and set-up menus.

Based on Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, Clear-Com Concert delivers sound over a standard LAN

May/June 2008

or Inter net between venice router local and remote users.

The interface has dragK l o t z D i g i t a l ’s and-drop functionality Venice audio router a n d p o i n t - a n d - c l i c k has been designed controls. The ‘Presence for applications where a large number of channels need A w a r e n e s s ’ f e a t u r e to be routed and offers a routing capacity of 2624 x 2624 monitors participants’ channels and an almost unlimited size can be achieved by availability. cascading multiple units. It offers support of optical and The system is scalable coax MADI standard protocols and Klotz Digital’s Vadis fi bre to many hundred users optic network. The StudioNet Octo-Bus is also supported and is designed with and Ethernet AV (IEEE 802.1 AVB). proprietary protocols and Venice’s synchronisation capabilities including AES sync, error recovery algorithms Word clock in and through. All principal functions are f o r m i s s i o n - c r i t i c a l controlled via LEDs, status display and via an Ethernet port applications like live and the device has redundant fi bre I-O and redundant power supplies with separate power inlet to sync redundancy.      broadcast production.        www.clearcom.com www.klotzdigital.com

The Art of Analogue

UA founder

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

Grace Design m802 There’s a real demand for outboard preamps to handle multimic recording duties as conventional console use wanes. However, not all pres are made equal. JON THORNTON encounters a batch of eight at the higher end of the evolutionary scale.

B

ased in Boulder, Colorado, Grace Design is one of those pro-audio companies that started manufacturing built-to-order custom designs and just grew. Founded by Michael Grace, the company’s first standardised product was the m801 microphone preamplifier in 1994. Since then, the range of products has grown steadily and includes pro audio and high-end audiophile offerings. What has remained constant, though, is a commitment to quality in manufacture and design.

The visible aspect to this philosophy is apparent in the physical appearance of most of the product range, which adheres to the ‘build it from girders and make it last for all eternity’ school of thought.

And underneath this solid, if vaguely utilitarian exterior the same approach is taken to the internals — highest quality components, no capacitors in the audio signal path, highly specified power supplies, highest tolerance possible with passive components; the list goes on and on. For those interested in such things there’s a four page document on the company’s website that spells it out.

The m802 is a recent addition to the product range, and at heart goes back to Grace Design’s core competency — high quality microphone preamplification. Where it differs from the rest of the range is in eschewing the rather chunky analogue controls of its stablemates in favour of a large LCD panel, a rotary encoder and a smattering of pushbuttons. With the addition of a remote control unit, this gives you eight channels of remote controllable analogue preamps. The whole system comprises the base unit, an external power supply and the optional remote control unit. It’s optional, because unless you need to control it from a distance or want to control multiple units from a single source, the unit can be 22

quite happily operated without it.

Starting with the base unit, the rear panel gives eight microphone inputs on XLR and two sets of eight balanced line level outputs, also on individual XLRs. As an option, the M802 can be ordered with additional 130V microphone inputs for use with DPA high voltage microphones. This option is available in blocks of two channels and when fitted, these (4-pin XLR) inputs replace the second row of outputs. One of two digital output boards can also be specified as an option, giving eight channels of AES3 on a DB25 connector, plus either AES3-id outputs on BNC or twin ADAT outputs on lightpipe. The unit supplied for review had two channels of DPA 130V input, and the ADAT variant of the digital board. A chunky DC input socket, remote input and output (on 9-pin DSubs) and a pair of MIDI sockets finishes things off at the rear.

As a 2U 19-inch rack unit, the m802 is a symphony in brushed stainless steel, with a front panel that is decidedly minimalist. It’s dominated by a backlit LCD display with a resolution of 240 x 64 pixels, which in operation shows the status of all eight channels in terms of gain, signal level and indicators for phantom power, phase reverse, etc. Basic operation is extremely intuitive — scroll across the display with the data wheel until you reach the channel you need to edit, push it to select, and then adjust gain with the data wheel and toggle phantom power or phase reverse for the channel with dedicated front panel buttons. Gain range in normal mode is -7dB to +63.5dB in (more or less) 1.5dB steps. Any number of adjacent channels can also be grouped together, so that any subsequent gain adjustments are applied to all channels in a group. This was the first time I had to delve into resolution

the manual, as it involves pressing and holding the Group button having selected the first channel to be grouped, and then scrolling across channels with the data wheel to include them in the group — not as intuitive as other operations but easy enough.

A setup button on the front panel steps through a number of additional modes, which allow presets of the current unit status to be stored and recalled, the behaviour of the meters’ peak reading to be altered, and other housekeeping stuff like display contrast and backlight settings. If a digital option board is fitted, this mode also provides options to activate it, and allows adjustment of sample rate, clock source and digital output format (single or bi-wire). With the A-DC option enabled, the bottom line of the main display shows the current status of these settings with a ‘lock’ indication if using an external clock source, and the metering switches to a 0dB FS scale, rather than the dBu scaling otherwise shown. The relationship between full scale at the A-DC and output level of the preamp channels can also be altered by accessing a ‘hidden’ menu on power-up — with four possible choices between +18dBu and +24dBu = 0dBFS in 2dB steps.

The final function available in setup mode is to configure the input routing for each channel. For standard microphone channels (i.e. those without the DPA option fitted), the choices here are between normal and ‘Ribbon’ mode. Both of these modes use the standard 3-pin XLR input as a source, but engaging Ribbon mode increases the available gain range by 10dB, disables and locks out phantom power on the channel, and bypasses the +48V decoupling capacitors to minimise signal path. If a DPA option is fitted to a given channel, the choices are between normal and the 130V option, which uses the 4-pin XLR installed on the rear panel if fitted. Strangely, a DPA optioned channel can’t be set to Ribbon mode, which seems a shame.

If required, connecting the optional Remote Control Unit (RCU) is simple enough. The Philips I2C serial bus is employed for communication purposes, and a serial input and output on the back of the main unit allows up to eight units to be daisy-chained together, putting 64 channels of preamp under the control of a single RCU. Serial connections between RCU and the main unit(s) use 9-pin D-Sub connectors — although the RCU ships with adapters that break these out to male and female XLRs, allowing a standard microphone cable to be used for long runs (up to a maximum of 1000 feet).

The RCU itself is a compact unit, but requires its own external wall-wart PSU to operate. The LCD screen on the remote is exactly the same size and resolution as that on the main unit, and all of the pushbuttons from the main unit are duplicated on the remote, although in this case they are illuminated instead of black. There are some additions, though. Each of the eight displayed channels has an individual channel select button under the display, which makes channel selection much quicker, and two additional buttons allow the remote to scroll back and forth across channels if more than one unit is being controlled. A large LED display shows the gain level of the currently selected channel, and a View button can switch the display to allow metering of 24 channels at a time, which can again be paged through up to a maximum of 64 channels. Handily, even in May/June 2008

review

this meter mode, individual channels can be selected and the gain level altered using the data wheel.

But the RCU isn’t the only remote control option available, as Grace Design has cleverly designed the m802 to emulate a Digidesign PRE so that it can be remotely controlled from Pro Tools via MIDI. There are a couple of caveats to this, though. The first is that the gain range and resolution of a PRE is different to that of the m802 (0-63dB in 3dB steps, as opposed to the m802’s -7 to 63.5dB in 1.5dB steps). No real problem here, as in MIDI control mode, the m802 simply ignores the additional steps. The second is the fact that the PRE has certain features (pad, HPF) that the m802 does not — again trying to use these features from Pro Tools simply has no effect. Other than these minor differences, this works just as advertised — just tell Pro Tools that it has the one or more PREs connected and it happily controls gain, Resolution Half Page 17/3/08 16:50 Page phantom power and phase reverse remotely.

So, it’s intuitive, easy to use and flexible. but how does it sound? I was lucky enough to put the m802 to work in an application that I suspect it will find much work in — a live recording of a musical. That the recording in question needed 63 channels of mic pres running off a heap of active splitters meant that a pretty broad spectrum of 8-channel preamp solutions was pressed into service, including the m802. And in comparison to all the others — from all price points — the m802 shone simply in its total transparency, frankly astonishing headroom and lack of noise even at quite high gain settings. There is a little noise in the form of slight clicks as the gain settings step up and down, which could be an issue in this sort of application if emergency gain changes are needed, but this was the only significant blot in its copybook. And if I’m nit-picking, building a touring rack of multiple units could be a little untidy due to 4 each one needing its own and not insubstantial and

non-rackmounting external PSU. But what stands out more than anything is that the remote control functionality has not been implemented at the expense of the quality of the analogue signal path, and vice versa. This unit sounds just as substantial as it looks, and given the flexibility of control options, is equally likely to find a home in the recording studio or on location. ■

ProS

Build quality; headroom and noise; intuitive user interface; scalability; emulates PrE for control via Pro tools.

CoNS

Slight audio artefacts present when changing gain steps; not much else.

Contact GraCE dESiGN, US: Website: www.gracedesign.com

When you’re mixing sound for light entertainment, it’s best to expect the unexpected. You need to set up and handle multiple sources quickly and easily, access pre-sets, network your i/o and instinctively control the whole thing without missing a beat.

calrec.com

IF ELVIS LIVES, YOU’LL BE THE FIRST TO HEAR

At Calrec we’ve been dedicated to live production and on-air broadcast audio mixing since the first Elvis impersonator wiggled his pelvis. Today, as well as all the practical functions you could want, we also offer the most innovative and economical solution for surround sound.

Bluefin technology provides twice the signal processing capacity in a fraction of the space of conventional systems, at no extra cost and with 100% redundancy.

Sounds exciting? Find out more at calrec.com

Putting Sound in the Picture

May/June 2008

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review

Gyraf Gyratec XIV There has never been a bigger selection of valve-based EQ available to us.

GEORGE SHILLING sticks his neck out and says he’s sure you have never used an EQ as smooth, silky and satisfying as this one.

G

yraf is a Danish company that has been quietly making valve-based outboard equipment for more than 15 years; and it’s been a few years since Resolution last looked at any of its products. Its high quality hand-built processors are one of those best-kept secrets, beloved by aficionados, although prices are really rather reasonable for what you get. Designs are steadily developed by designer Jakob Erland who is based at Feedback Recording in Denmark’s second city of Aarhus. Erland is obviously a good old-fashioned boffin with the curiosity to experiment, and the knowledge to adapt circuitry to achieve excellent sonics. Designs are tested extensively in the studio there, and Gyraf steadfastly keeps solid state electronics out of the audio path in all its products.

The Gyratec XIV (or G14; Euro 2703 + VAT) is a stereo Parallel-Passive Equaliser, essentially providing a single set of controls covering two channels of 5-band parametric EQ. There are no high or low pass filters, and no shelving bands. All frequency controls are switched, with a choice of eleven frequencies on each band, with a varying amount of overlap between bands, but no exact duplication of frequencies anywhere.

The most obvious comparison for the XIV is Manley’s Massive Passive. But the Gyraf approach is slightly different. Like the Massive the Gyratec is passive, but Gyraf boasts that there is no solid state op-amp drive as found in the MP. The EQ comes immediately after the input transformers. The signal is then fed to a minimalist all-tube gain and output stage — Erland says he wanted ‘the organic nature of the tube processing itself to shine through’. Like other Gyratecs, the XIV uses commonly available valves, in this case two 6DJ8/ECC88s.

24

The impressive looking 3U black box is sturdily built and beautifully etched with the legending.

There is no obvious provision for heat dissipation, but the two valves have plenty of space to breathe in the large case. Bakelite-style knobs follow the Gyraf house style, a sort of macho retro-cool (Something that can only come with age; not the Bakelite-style knobs, that is. Ed) All switches are rotary. Large rack handles usefully protect the front panel, while rubber feet are attached to the base and these can be removed for rack mounting. The rear is simple and neat with IEC mains socket with integral fuse holder and XLRs for audio connections.

There are very few other dual channel EQs that use just one set of controls, but this is something of a revelation, just tweaking and listening, rather than trying to match two channels. All matching has already been done at the unit’s assembly stage.

On the front panel, the frequency bands start with the lowest on the left. The top row of knobs select frequencies. Below these is an oversize rotary switch that selects boost, defeat or cut, alongside a small Q control for each channel.

At the bottom are the Level knobs for making boosts or cuts. These are continuous potentiometers.

The tactile feel of these is not great, by Erland’s own admission. But these are custom items with an unusual value/stack, so Gyraf was tied to the one supplier capable of making these to the required standard. I am assured that their quality and life expectancy is excellent, but it does feel as if you are turning rusty oil-soaked bath taps! Main controls at the right are a large Level trim knob with a boost of about 5dB available — this has a rather more pleasant knurled feel — and Power and In switches reside here also. The power light dims in bypass mode and this is a true hard-wire bypass. resolution

Internal assembly is worth a peek. A pair of ECC88 valves are centrally mounted, and four Lundahl transformers are apparent. The interior is fairly sparse, but most remarkable is the neatly arranged forest of carefully matched capacitors behind the frequency knobs. Inductors are made in-house to get the quality and tolerances within spec. Making this unit operate in perfect stereo undoubtedly means a lot of fine-matching to achieve accuracy.

Unusually for a unit designed for mastering, there is no calibration on boost and cut knobs, and these are potentiometers rather than switched controls. This lack of legending is something of a feature of Gyraf equipment — the EQ section of the GII recording channel doesn’t even indicate the actual frequencies selectable! Maximum boost for each band is about 10-12dB but this depends on the Q setting. There are other characteristics that won’t be apparent from staring at the front panel. As with all passive EQs, there is no ‘adding up’ of adjacent bands when similar frequencies are boosted, (although there is a distinct tonal change).

Furthermore, the maximum available Q is higher at the upper frequencies of each band compared to the lower frequencies, and is sharper in cut mode than in boost mode. In practice, nothing seems odd, it all works beautifully, and any ‘limitations’ seem to pretty much stop you from being able to make things sound at all bad!

With 55 frequencies to choose from, from 35Hz up to 22kHz, there is plenty of scope for seasoned tweakers, but setting a wide Q and adding a couple of notches of brightness or bass is just as satisfying.

I am absolutely sure that you have never used an EQ as smooth, silky and satisfying as this. Choosing a few good frequencies and making a few small tweaks can feel like a monitoring upgrade, it really is that amazing. I normally love finding offensive frequencies by boosting then flipping to cut, but often, the boosts sound unexpectedly good. This is true sonic sweetening, without getting sickly.

Highs are crystal clear and exceptionally smooth; lows are hugely effective without resonating or booming. Full boosts never sound nasty, but subtle boosts can work wonders too. The ability to bypass each band easily is always useful. The lack of Level calibration is little problem in practice, even when mastering, and the Gyraf website helpfully provides some slightly shaky hand-drawn recall sheets.

As a programme or mastering equaliser this really is beyond dreams, but furthermore the XIV makes an amazing general purpose recording EQ, even if you are just using one side in mono. The valve circuitry undoubtedly adds a certain amount of sonic magic. But that is not to say the unit sounds at all gloopy or crunchy or unnaturally hyped in any way. The valve contribution adds to the wonderfully silky and open sound without any overblown distortion or colouration. Using the G14, it feels as if you’ve gone from colouring in with crayons to painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. ■

ProS

arguably the finest sounding EQ — ever; no faffing around matching channels.

CoNS

No high pass, low pass or shelving bands.

Contact GYraF aUdio, dENmarK Website: www.gyraf.dk UK, Home Service: +44 208 943 4949

May/June 2008

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review

Josephson C720 The fact that the choice and affordability of proper ‘grown up’ microphones has reached new peaks in recent years has made it that much harder for small and ‘different’ brands and products to cut through the glare. JON THORNTON believes he’s found a great one.

A

lthough in comparison to some of the bigger German or Austrian outfits, hitting 20 years in the business of microphone manufacture might still class you as a young upstart, for a company like Josephson Engineering it’s a significant milestone. Significant, because ‘boutique’ is the order of the day here — volumes are low, quality is high, and customers have arguably some of the most critical ears in the industry. And despite all of this — or perhaps because of it — there’s still time and space for some innovative thinking. The C720 is a case in point. Made in a limited production run of only 20 microphones (one for each year of the company’s existence), it’s a curious confection of classic microphone design and construction and some novel ideas.

This is immediately apparent as soon as you open the rather nice Pelican case that the microphone ships in. The microphone itself is a large, metal-bodied tubular construction with an integrated yolk assembly.

But what at first appears to be a foam pop shield over the business end is in fact the capsule housing.

Rather than the traditional metal mesh, Josephson has created the housing from an open-cell metal foam. As this structure is entirely selfsupporting, it avoids the need for supporting bars or rings inside the housing, which, it’s claimed, significantly reduces internal reflections and the associated ringing or frequency response anomalies. The material is open enough to be reasonably acoustically transparent, yet rigid enough to protect the capsule and provide the necessary screening properties. The one downside is that it doesn’t provide quite the degree of pop, wind and (let’s face it) spit screening of more conventional approaches — 26

so there’s an additional very fine mesh screen inside the basket to help out.

This unusual construction houses a dual, large diaphragm capsule, with each side delivering a cardioid response. However, there’s a singular lack of a pattern select switch (or any other switches for that matter) on the microphone itself. And therein lies the other slightly unusual feature of the C720. The captive cable that leaves the microphone terminates in a 7-pin XLR, and a splitter lead is included that delivers the output of each capsule half via separate impedance conversion/preamp stages on two 3-pin XLRs. As a result, you can choose to use either of the two capsule halves in isolation, or combine them at different levels and phase relationships to achieve any pickup pattern you want. The key advantage here is that this can also be done in postproduction if required, by simply recording both outputs to two separate tracks. Of course, in itself, this is not particularly new — Josephson has offered a number of variations on this theme with other microphones in its Series 7 range, and Sennheiser’s MKH 800 Twin has identical functionality.

Internally, the C720 uses a discrete Class A circuit for each capsule half — a pair of FETs in a ‘cascode’ arrangement directly drive a custom Lundahl output transformer.

This uses amorphous metallic glass as its core, which apparently results in a much higher overload point. The whole thing looks and feels incredibly well engineered and assembled, and the end result is a very solid and quite weighty package.

Despite this, the C720 sets up nicely on a stand (and I do like American manufacturers who thoughtfully provide a thread adapter as standard for us Europeans), and the thumbwheel screws on the yolk tighten and loosen firmly and easily to aid in placement.

First test for the C720 was male vocals, using a single, cardioid output from the microphone via a Millennia HV3C preamp. First impressions are that it sounds like it looks — incredibly solid. resolution

In fact, it’s hard to get away from that adjective even after more detailed listening — there’s a depth and reach to the low-mids that gives a solidity to male vocals without even the vaguest hint of boxiness or strange resonances. Higher up the frequency range things remain very neutral and understated, the response sounds quite flat with nothing overly hyped, but at the same time manages not to sound clinical.

How much of this is attributable to the novel capsule housing, and how much to the capsule and electronics is debatable, but it does give the impression of almost direct-injecting a sound source to your brain.

Things really get interesting, though, when you start combining the two outputs. Bringing the rear facing capsule up in the mix to an equal level obviously results in an overall omnidirectional response, with the expected increase in ambience and a reduction of proximity effect when used close in. The latter effect is somewhat useful on vocal sources, but this really works a treat when recording an acoustic guitar. Bleeding in just a small amount of the rear capsule widens the pickup pattern slightly and really lets you balance room tone against direct sound with a minimal amount of colouration or phase issues.

Getting back to a vocal source, bringing the rear facing capsule back into the mix but this time with it’s polarity reversed, and the cardioid pattern starts to tighten — eventually leading to a near fig-8 response.

At the same time the tonal characteristics of the onaxis sound start to shift as well — most noticeable as a little more high-mid presence and ‘reach’ to the sound.

It really is a very ‘tuneable’ characteristic, and sounds much richer than simply reaching for some EQ. Inspired by these initial experiments, it was time for something a little more radical, so I tried the C720 as a room mic on a drum kit. It was set up with the diaphragms at 90 degrees to the drum kit, and the outputs mixed to give a near fig-8 response with a null point facing the kick drum. Again, adjusting the relative levels of the two capsule halves allows you to almost steer the null point around a little, with similar results to moving a conventional microphone around slightly to find that perfect bit of ‘air’ in the room.

There are also some interesting results to be had by keeping the polarity of the capsule halves the same, but panning them left and right rather than summing them together — there’s a nice stereo ambience effect to be had here that’s highly mono compatible.

At a time when the choice of microphones and manufacturers is arguably wider than it has ever been, there’s a real danger that your palette can start to become a little jaded (Very good point and well said Jon. Ed) So when a microphone comes along that really grabs your attention and inspires you, it’s a wonderful thing. And the C720 does just that.

There’s virtually nothing you can point to that’s bad about this microphone. OK, it’s not cheap (UK£2760 + VAT), there’s no shockmount, and you’ll have to move quickly to secure one of the 20 that are being manufactured. If your pockets are deep enough, I’d recommend you do just that. ■

ProS

Fabulously solid sound; accurate and honest without being clinical; massive flexibility in twin outputs; great build quality.

CoNS

Price and availability — that’s about all…

Contact JoSEPHSoN ENGiNEEriNG, US: Website: www.josephson.com UK, Kmr audio: +44 208 445 2446

May/June 2008

Redefining AN ICON

“ICON’s direct integration with Pro Tools optimizes the time spent at the desk, letting us focus on the mix and improving the quality

With tighter deadlines, post-production facilities such as Sonygraf Digitsound are in search of better technologies and solutions to meet increasing demands.

At Digidesign, we strive to continuously improve our

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into our established working environment. ”

Digitsound have what they need to get the job done

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quickly and easily. For this reason we developed the enhancements found in ICON D-Control™ ES.

Technical Manager, Sonygraf Digitsound

Visit www.digidesign.com/icon_res or visit your local ICON dealer to learn more about the D-Control ES worksurface, and how ICON is revolutionizing the art of mixing.

digidesign.com © 2008 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Avid, Digidesign, D-Control, and Pro Tools 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

M-Audio ProFire 2626 Adding value to the notion of a FireWire interface with extra bells and whistles is what this new box is about. ROB JAMES says that it also takes the brand further up market than it has ventured before.

F

ireWire, i-Link, IEE1394, whatever you want to call it, has been around for some years now. It promised much and in some applications at least, for example digital video, has actually delivered. Audio manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon of a cheap and wide interface. Unfortunately, most audio implementations have been plagued with niggling faults and in some cases total failure to operate in a useful manner. It may be that the technology is finally maturing, albeit with a number of caveats. It is no great trick to send a couple of channels of even high definition audio in close to real-time down a FireWire link but lots of channels increase the risk of failure or, at the very least, problems. M-Audio is no stranger to the FireWire arena and its latest offering, the ProFire 2626, pushes it close to the top edge of the performance envelope. However, this unit is a great deal more than a simple way of getting a decent number of audio channels into and out of a computer.

As the name implies, the UK£408 (+ VAT) ProFire 2626 offers a maximum of 26 concurrent SD channels in each direction between audio interface and computer. It can also be used standalone as an A-D/D-A convertor or A-D plus SPDIF format convertor. Also in the mix are eight preamps with Octane technology, a user assignable master volume control and on-board mixer and router.

Each mic preamp has a 75dB gain range and a -20dB pad accessed by simply pulling the gain knob out. The knobs themselves feel a mite ‘plasticky’ and rough around the edges but this soon wears off. At first I found the unusually long length a touch offputting but, rather like a long handled screwdriver, this seems to give finer control in operation. 48V phantom is available, switched in blocks of four inputs.

The main eight analogue inputs can be found on the rear of the unit with Combo XLR jack sockets for mic and line. Channels 1 and 2 also have front panel instrument ¼-inch jack inputs with a push switch to determine whether the XLR or Instrument input is active. The ¼-inch line input sections of the Combo connectors are not routed to the preamps, however, the unit does sum the ¼-inch jack linelevel input of the Combo socket with the front-panel 28

instrument-level input. Although this does not alter impedances or levels, it is possible to record audio from both inputs simultaneously. A point to watch if you are using the line-level inputs together with the instrument jacks.

The aforementioned mic inputs are commendably quiet with very low distortion and a usefully wide gain range. Hardware metering is limited to a pair of LEDs per analogue input channel, green for signal present and red for clip, not ideal but adequate.

After the eight gain pots come two headphone sockets with volume controls and the rather clever assignable master volume control. The headphone outputs take the analogue line out 1&2 and 3&4 respectively. The eight ¼-inch jack main analogue outputs are to be found in a block on the rear panel along with the two FireWire ports, four optical Toslink ports for up to 16 channels of ADAT I-O, with the alternative of SPDIF on one pair, and the 15-pin Sub-D breakout connector. Smux and Smux IV support up to 192kHz but the number of channels and returns from the DAW are reduced accordingly and the specific returns dropped differs between Macs and PCs. A breakout cable is supplied with MIDI I-O, coaxial SPDIF I-O and BNC Word clock I-O. Power supply is an external in-line brick and the rear panel connector is non-locking. Last item of front panel interest is the blue power LED. It lights solid with power on and a valid clock (internal or external) and flashes in the absence of sync.

Although a great deal of the hardware and software appears at first glance to be self explanatory you will soon discover that there are hidden depths and a few ‘gotchas’ in some scenarios. Fortunately the user manual is a model of excellence and covers everything you will need to know in depth and with clarity. I used the ProFire with a Mac and a variety of applications including Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 at the end of the review period. ProFire is quiet and elegant. In combination with M-Powered it may well be all that many applications require. Just add mics, instruments, hardware and/or software, and an amplifier and speakers for monitoring.

One key to success with FireWire in the audio context seems to be, ‘moderate your enthusiasm’. In other words, just because it is theoretically possible resolution

to stuff 52 or more channels of SD audio down one FireWire link doesn’t mean you have to. It is likely to be a whole lot more reliable if you don’t stress it to the maximum. M-Audio tacitly acknowledges this by recommending that although there are two FireWire ports, only one should be used and other FireWire peripherals such as hard drives should be connected to an alternative socket on the computer. Similarly they also suggest that the software Control Panel is used to reduce the number of software returns to minimise the demands placed on the FireWire bus and decrease the amount of system resources used.

This function also differs slightly between the Mac and PC implementations due to the different ways in which the two platforms handle audio. Also worth mentioning here is that you should always use ASIO drivers in PC applications in preference to WDM, if available. Performance is almost invariably better.

The software supplied is pretty and useful. The ProFire is versatile and the software enables it to be configured easily for widely differing applications, such as stereo tracking or 7.1 surround mixing. In the latter scenario the master volume control can be used as master monitor volume. The DSP mixer handles up to 18 ins and 16 outs and can provide virtually zero latency monitoring for tracking. Inputs are sourced from hardware and the software returns, i.e. DAW outputs. Destinations can be hardware or DAW input streams and the router allows inputs and outputs to be reconfigured without physical patching although this can give rise to confusion if you are not careful. I have looked at a lot of FireWire audio boxes and the ProFire is far from shabby in comparison to units at twice its asking price. ■

ProS

Price/performance ratio; versatility; relative simplicity if you don’t deliberately make life complicated.

CoNS

in Hd (96kHz and 192kHz) modes complexity increases; rudimentary hardware metering; not much else at the price

Contact m-aUdio, US: Website: www.m-audio.com

May/June 2008

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review

IK Multimedia ARC Here’s something unique and interesting: software to correct control room monitoring problems. GEORGE SHILLING says as more large commercial music studios close and increasing numbers of hours are clocked up in less than ideal environments, it is perhaps a timely release aimed at remedying monitoring problems.

I

K Multimedia’s ARC package comprises a measuring microphone along with analysis software, plus a plug-in (RTAS, VST and AU) that loads the derived settings acquired from the measurements taken. The system uses a technology developed by Audyssey called MultEQ. This was apparently developed over five years with $6 million of University-based research. It provides an automatic system designed to correct audible sound distortion caused by room acoustics over the whole listening area and not just the sweet spot.

Along with the IK ARC (Advanced Room Correction) package, Audyssey has provided the technology to other third-party companies. For example, Denon has incorporated the system into a range of home theatre products. The ARC package is stereo-only, but it seems likely that a surround version will become available in the future.

The instructions for taking measurements essentially tell you to point the (omni) measurement microphone towards the ceiling at ear level. The software takes you through the steps of setting the inputs and outputs of the audio interface and setting a rough level. Then each measurement sends a series of 10 frequency sweeps through each speaker (separately). It is required to take no fewer than 12 measurements in different spots, and 16 to 20 for better results. This is done by moving the microphone around the listening area between each set of sweeps, the main proviso being that you take even numbers of measurements at each deviation left or right of centre. When you think you have enough measurements, the calculation is computed quickly and you can store the settings. Multiple settings can be saved.

Loading up the plug-in in your DAW then enables recall of the measured settings.

My first attempt at this seemed to add a rather odd delay between the left and right speaker; I’m not sure 30

why, but going into the preferences it was possible to disable time delay functions, and the result was rather better. However, I subsequently took a number of further measurement sets without such an obvious delay-related problem, and it may well have been that I made a mistake somewhere during the measuring procedure.

The plug-in window displays the left and right frequency graphs with an ideal ‘target’ response curve that is flat from 20Hz to 20kHz, along with before and after curves, showing roughly the effectiveness of the correction. Along with the Flat target curve, it is also possible to select a preset high frequency roll-off, which can reduce excessive brightness. There is also a midrange compensated response that puts a dip in the middle to provide a more natural sounding response for horn-loaded speakers or those with crossover circuitry that adds some harshness here. And there is also a response combining high and mid reductions.

It is interesting to note that the system doesn’t simply average the frequency response measurements to apply correction, as this would achieve nothing if there was, say, a boost at 200Hz in one position and a dip at another: the average would be to leave the response unadjusted. Instead, MultEQ looks at patterns in the time domain responses and classifies them into clusters, based upon the similarities in those patterns. Some complicated processing is then applied resolution

including some complex maths and fuzzy logic.

However, fuzziness does seem remarkably reduced by the resulting EQ curve.

I have encountered a number of music producers who work from what are obviously less than perfect rooms, and having built my own room (with minimal consultation from expert acousticians), I would assert that my mixes have steadily improved since the studio was set up, purely from my becoming used to the monitoring environment in relation to how mixes translate elsewhere, and getting to know how great records sound in there. Using ARC, the stereo imaging was certainly improved in my room, but the frequency response adjustments to my powered monitors took some getting used to.

Although the imaging was clearer, high and mid frequency adjustments did tend to make things a trifle harsh, and this was emphasised by a reduction in the low frequencies.

I grew up in a commercial studio where the low frequency response was slightly exaggerated, and have always preferred hearing an ‘enhanced’ low end — as do many musicians and artists, in my experience — it’s simply more fun. Having spent two years becoming more and more used to my current situation, I found the short period of the review was not really enough time to adjust to working with a corrected response. I suspect that over time this could prove worthwhile, but I’d personally have liked an ‘enhanced low frequency’ preset to be added to the list of target curves, or a ‘custom’ curve.

With large powered monitoring systems, becoming used to a flatter, more accurate response is probably a very worthwhile pursuit. With smaller ‘real-world’ monitors such as Auratones and NS-10s, it was interesting to hear their corrected responses, but this perhaps rather defeated their purpose. Making things sound good despite less than ideal systems is part of the skill set developed over many years! Corrected responses seemed to make the powered monitors and NS-10s sound even harsher and more fatiguing, even with the compensated curves. Conversely, the Auratones sounded rather more pleasant, but that’s not necessarily helpful!

A small drawback is the latency introduced into the monitoring chain. With a hardware buffer of 128 samples, the plug-in delay was 6.7ms, and of course at 256 this doubles to 12.5 and so on. I’d be reluctant to record musicians with this kind of delay in their monitoring chain, so you might not want this plug-in inserted during overdubs, although it depends how your monitoring chains are routed. And switching presets when flicking between different sets of monitors could prove a nuisance.

ARC (Euro 539) works extremely well; it is probably not for everyone, and perhaps money spent on room acoustics might sensibly be a priority, but it is a novel approach to the problem of imperfect monitoring. I’m sure this technology has an assured future. I haven’t yet decided whether I want to start learning the sound of my room all over again, but ARC is certainly an eye-opener and functions beautifully. ■

ProS

Quick fix that ensures a fairly flat response in most circumstances; improved stereo imaging; microphone also useful for recording.

CoNS

large latency; limited selection of target curves.

Contact iK mUlitmEdia, italY: Website: www.ikmultimedia.com

May/June 2008

review

Sonifex RM-4-C8 Designed for non-critical listening in mission critical environments, rackmount monitors need to be seen and heard. ROB JAMES finds one that redefines the breed through its flexibility and also doesn’t sound bad.

A

nyone who has spent any length of time in a big facility or a broadcaster will be familiar with the concept of rack audio monitors.

The idea is simple, provide a means of monitoring signals passing through the rack for identification and checking purposes. With a properly designed analogue jackfield this is simply a matter of jacking the monitor into listen jacks of the source or sources you are interested in. Old style rack monitors are mostly pretty simple beasts with a couple of PPMs (stereo in some cases) and fairly rudimentary audio amplification and loudspeaker(s). If you were lucky the most commonly used sources would be hardwired to a selector switch. The audio quality would have disgraced the average tranny but that wasn’t really the point.

Fast forward to today and the requirement to

monitor various signals in a rack environment is still there but, in the digital age, we are faced with stereo AES streams, Dolby Digital and Dolby E encoding and, in video facilities, embedded audio streams within SD (Serial Digital) and HD SD (Hi Def SD) video. While there are already ways of dealing with such signals, Sonifex has produced a compact and elegant solution for monitoring several formats in one unit. Sonifex has a great reputation for producing the essential but often ‘forgotten until you need them’ red boxes at a reasonable price and its new departure into the new and blue Reference Monitor series is no exception.

The UK£950 (+ VAT) RM-4-C8 version I had on test combines local metering and monitoring of up to eight mono audio sources in analogue and/or AES digital formats with extensive remote control via USB. Audio sources are divided into Banks. As standard

there are just two, with four mono channels per Bank, thus there are two groups of four XLR inputs on the rear panel. In each of these groups two sockets accept either mono analogue or stereo AES digital streams, auto-sensing which type of signal has been applied; very clever! There are a maximum of six Banks depending on which option cards (if any) are fitted.

Banks are selected using the left-most rotary source selector on the front panel. Pressing the rotary steps through all the Banks, returning to the first when you press the knob with the last Bank selected. Turning the knob selects the input in the Bank for monitoring on the Left Speaker and headphone output. As you would expect, the right-hand rotary source selector does the same for the Right Speaker and headphone output.

The four 26-segment LED bargraph meters look at the four inputs of the selected bank. A variety

Sumo

The right tools for the right job.

Audient Workstation Peripherals When it comes to recording excellence, Audient are the masters of analogue design.

The sonic integrity of their high-end consoles, the ASP8024 and ACS8024 is legendary.

Audient offer the same classic sound with their range of workstation peripherals - a collection of high specification tools designed to create the optimum signal path in the analogue domain.

For more information, see audient.com

Ten21 Studio (UK). Control room featuring Audient ASP8024 Console

High Resolution Summing Amplifier

review of common characteristics/ballistics are provided, selected via DIP switches on the base of the unit.

These include BBC PPM, VU, Nordic, DIN and AESEBU digital PPM. Self adhesive scales for each option are provided and brightness can be adjusted using an instrument screwdriver via a small hole in the front panel. Adjacent to the level meters, five LEDs are used as a phase meter. This simply indicates the degree of correlation between the left and right sources selected currently.

Positive, internally illuminated pushbuttons provide the expected functions of Dim (by 10dB), Left Cut, Right Cut, Mono Sum, Phase Invert (Right-hand Source) and M+S (Middle and Side). The M+S function is both encode and decode, i.e. if the unit is fed with L+R then engaging M+S encodes and when fed with M+S it will decode. This affects the internal speakers, the headphone and line level outputs. The centre detented +/-6dB balance (pan) pot affects the internal speakers and headphone output and the Level pot affects the internal speakers, the headphone output and, optionally, the line-level outputs. Four indicator LEDs show if the loudspeaker protection limiter is operating, if the currently selected source is within 0.5dB of Clipping and if Left and Right digital inputs are locked.

Returning to the rear panel, the inputs are accompanied by two XLR line level outputs for stereo analogue or an AES pair on the left-hand socket (configured by the bottom panel DIP switches). A 15-pin D-sub gives GPI-O access to remote functions and tallies and there is the alternative of a 9-pin DSub RS-232 or a B Type USB serial for remote control from a PC running the freely downloadable Sonifex SCi software.

Tally outputs include an Audio Overlevel Alarm, Underlevel Alarm, triggered when either of the currently selected input sources falls below -20dBu

for longer than 20 seconds, and the Sustained Phase Error Alarm is triggered when the phase difference between the currently selected inputs remains consistently above 90 degrees for longer than 5 seconds. These tallies, together with an alarm reset have obvious applications in transmission and transfer suites. The mains socket is IEC and, as is often the case with professional rackmounting boxes, there is no power switch.

Input termination for the AES-EBU inputs is switchable via the base-plate DIP switches to suit specific installations but Sonifex wisely recommends that for optimum reliability, termination is left switched on at all times. Input level selection is also on a DIP switch bank with gain switched in 6dB steps for a maximum of +18dB over the standard settings.

Although this is a 1U unit Sonifex has gone to great pains to ensure that audio quality is streets ahead of the average rack monitor. To this end the three-way speaker system is fed by class D amplifiers via an active crossover with the drivers mounted in sealed, custom profiled and moulded, infinite bafe, magnetically shielded chambers and the whole unit has been built like a tank with welded stainless steel case, more lid-fixing screws than I have ever seen before, foam sealing and a megalithic slab of alloy for the front panel to eliminate the possibility of internal rattles. For the really keen, there is a five-band parametric equaliser to further tailor the sound to the installation environment, accessible from the SCi software.

I was delighted by the RM-4C-8. It does what it purports to do and is completely intuitive in operation. Output level is more than impressive for such diminutive speakers. Truly this is the ghettoblaster of rack monitors. At more modest levels, although it cannot break the laws of physics, the bass is more implied than present but it is surprisingly accurate. The build quality is impeccable and the

metal knobs are deliciously tactile. Everything feels as if it should last a lifetime.

The optional extra interfaces rocket it into a different league in price and capabilities. You will know if you need the pricier options and will be well used to paying the premium.

For the rest of us the RM-4C-8 and its siblings are professional pieces of kit at very reasonable prices that should receive a hearty welcome in all manner of facilities. â–

ProS

massive build quality; ideal blend of function and form; value for money.

CoNS

Good reproduction but not hi-fi; options pricey (but par for the course); bottom panel diP switches may not be convenient in some installations.

EXtraS

there are two other units in the Sonifex reference monitor range. the rm2S4 has two lEd meters and four stereo inputs and the rm-2S10 has two lEd meter and 10 stereo inputs.

Contact SoNiFEX, UK: Website: www.sonifex.co.uk

Centro Monitor and Foldback Controller

ASP008 8 Channel Variable Impedance Mic Pre

- think clarity

www.audient.com

Distributed in the UK by SCV London.

Tel: 020 8418 1470 www.scvlondon.co.uk

review

Sonnox Oxford SuprEsser There has been something of a rash of plug-ins concerning themselves with the management of uttered plosives. GEORGE shILLING is especially impressed with this de-esser.

N

ew from Sonnox is the Oxford SuprEsser, designed to be ‘the last word’ in DeEssing. A number of plug-in designers have recently turned their attention to deessing, and there are some excellent alternatives, but Sonnox’s new release avails the user of more control parameters than any rival. The busy plug-in window features a whizzy real-time graph display; there is a ‘More’ button revealing extra parameters, and a further hidden preference menu. Unlike traditional hardware de-essers, the full audio frequency range is selectable, resulting in the possible application of this plug-in for all kinds of frequency-conscious or broadband dynamic processing.

The SuprEsser comes as a native-only plug-in in VST, Audio Units and RTAS formats. There is no TDM or PowerCore version, nor is there planned to be. Sonnox is at pains to point out that this is not a policy decision signalling the end of TDM or PowerCore support, but merely a technical decision as the processing used by the SuprEsser is too complex to implement on fixed-point DSP. Three versions of the plug-in are installed, each set up to use varying Kernel sizes. The linear phase filters require a processing time — an ‘Impulse Response Kernel’ to model the filter response. So there is a trade-off between the accuracy of the low frequency processing and the plug-in delay. The three different versions of the plug-in have different preset kernel sizes, so it is up to the user to choose the appropriate setting. The standard version uses a kernel size of 2048 samples, and it is recommended to use a similar sized buffer to lower the plug-in delay. Lowering the buffer too much is claimed to cause problems as the plug-in won’t have big enough blocks of audio to process, but in practice I didn’t find a huge problem with lowering the buffer, although a ‘Warning!’ indicator appeared at the top of the plug-in.

The standard version is suitable for working on the entire frequency range at 44.1kHz, but for high sample rates the high resolution version is recommended, which exhibits an enormous kernel size of 8192 34

samples. There is also a ‘low latency’ version that is set for 512 samples. However, this is unsuitable for low frequency accuracy below 400Hz. The other problem caused by such sophisticated processing is that the SuprEsser uses an enormous amount of CPU power, so depending on your computer and what else is taxing the CPU, you might be limited in the number of instances or which of the three versions you can use, or find that you need to further increase the buffer…

This soon leads to the high resolution version causing the accumulated delay to go beyond the capabilities of the Pro Tools delay compensation engine, although the actual delay is accurately reported in the track delay information.

SuprEsser uses the excellent Oxford Dynamics processor, adding two linear phase crossover filters to enable complete control of a particular area of the frequency range. The signal is split into the band to be processed and the surrounding bands that are not processed, then these are re-merged with appropriate delay compensation within the plug-in, and you can select monitoring of either path (‘Inside’ or ‘Outside’) separately for checking purposes, as well as the intended mixed output.

Despite the processing complexity, it is fairly easy to set the de-esser for normal function thanks to the excellent moving graph display that shows spectrum analysis. ‘Esses’ are pinpointed on the fly with a vertical line and a frequency readout, so watching a few go by will soon show you the range where they are most problematic. A horizontal slider at the bottom allows you to centre the frequency to be targeted, and the band can be narrowed by dragging a point at the top downwards or adjusting the Filter Width setting on the left numerically or by dragging, causing the vertical boundary lines to narrow. This can be set down to 0.2 octaves, or as wide as 10 octaves (full range if centred). Fainter lines show the slope that can also be adjusted from a numerical display on the left of the graph — normally this is set at a remarkable 72dB per octave, which, thanks to the linear phase filtering, causes no problems. resolution

The vertical slider at the right then sets the threshold in conventional fashion. However, the threshold moves dynamically thanks to continuous level tracking, and the resulting de-essing is natural and seems consistent with differing levels of sibilance. There is also an Attack time setting, but for general de-essing, I found no need to fiddle further. The graph can be zoomed in either direction by dragging the mouse logically from one point at the bottom left corner, but it scrolls automatically when setting the frequency, if one is zoomed in.

Other bonus items on the display are tall LED-style meters for input and output, with corresponding Trim settings, and a Wet/Dry mix setting. An Access button (‘More’) opens up further setting options, with Hold and Release to accompany the Attack setting, and a Ratio control with unnecessarily odd scaling in degrees.

Further, there is Level Tracking On/Off and Damping setting. And here, the Trigger sensor and the Audio modes can be switched from the Band setting to Wide mode, opening up further processing options.

Sonnox has introduced its own Waves-style preset manager with this plug-in, allowing users to dial up the same settings across differing platforms if, say tracking in Logic and mixing in Pro Tools. This part of the window is hidden by default, and its view setting is one of the options viewed by clicking the Sonnox logo, where you can also choose the default view (Easy/More), Clip light settings, and so on.

Sonnox supplies a number of presets as starting points for different situations, and these are provided in the native host’s normal library as well as in the proprietary menu. But you won’t generally need them, such is the ease with which areas can be identified and processed using the graph display. ‘Ess’ and ‘Sh’ sounds are dealt with exceptionally well, and with minimal tweaking, effective de-essing is achieved with no loss of brightness. For other uses such as reducing instrument harshness or resonances, or depopping, results are very good indeed, and made all the easier with the excellent graph display. The only downer is the processing overhead and latency but the initially daunting interface soon becomes familiar and the results are excellent. ■

ProS

Unquestionably the de-esser with the most parameters; phenomenal control.

CoNS

No tdm version; large latency of all versions but especially the Hr version.

EXtraS

the first wave of oxford SuprEsser purchasers will get 10% off the purchase price of UK£180 (+ vat) if they buy before 30 June 2008. a fully functioning 15-day demo can be downloaded from the Sonnox website.

Contact SoNNoX, UK: Website: www.sonnoxplugins.com

May/June 2008

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review

Holophone H4 Supermini It’s compact and tidy and represents a real-world solution to real-world multichannel acquisition issues. ROB JAMES tries a Supermini on for size.

T

he rapid rise of HDTV broadcasting and even HD for weddings and events has brought with it the requirement to produce costeffective 5.1 surround sound.

The feature film approach, where the 5.1 track is meticulously constructed from many elements just isn’t an option for many productions and, in any case, this approach won’t work for live. So, the hunt is on for a practical 5.1 mic system.

If you already have strong opinions about stereo mic techniques you will find corresponding ideas in surround. The coincident and M&S camps are already well represented by the SoundField and Schoeps’ double M&S system. The near-coincident, spaced mic fraternity has SPL Atmos/Brauner and any number of custom mounts for other capsules. This leaves ‘dummy head’ as the wild card. Dummy head has found little favour in sound for picture circles for the simple reason that, in stereo, the effect only really works well on headphones.

Physically all the Holophones are an abstract representation of a human head. The H4 is no exception but this head, a plastic, ellipsoid shaped housing with large rubber grommets mounting the five external capsules’ has been subject to a serious shrinking process. It attaches to the control unit via an edge connector and two thumbscrews. The H4 arrived with a somewhat ill-fitting Velcro fastened foam windgag and a Rycote Windjammer furry cover. I had

feared that the combination of small capsules and a foam gag would be a recipe for excessive wind noise. In fact, the amount of wind it can tolerate was a pleasant surprise.

The H4 has six capsules. One points forward, two are angled left and right along the pointy bit of the ellipsoid also facing forward, and two are angled along the hemispherical part, facing backwards. The sixth LFE mic is hidden within the casing.

The control unit is housed in an alloy extruded casing with a locking hot/cold shoe mount at the bottom and the head socket at the top. The right-hand side has all the sockets. There are 3.5mm stereo jacks for the three pairs of discrete outputs and two more for the stereo Dolby encoded output and headphone output. An XLR allows connection of an alternative centre channel mic and there is a phantom power switch below with a coaxial 5V DC external power socket below that. On the back, six bi-colour LEDs, arranged to mimic the capsule layout, glow green when the signal reaches a certain level and red when clipping approaches. It takes something pretty loud to light them and then the reds come in soon after. Under the LEDs a zoom button,

duplicated on the left-hand side of the unit, alters the gain relationship in favour of the front capsules.

Beside the Zoom indicator LED lies the Mic Gain control for all capsules. Holophone advises that this should be set and left. Sound advice since it exhibits zipper noise-like steps that render it all but useless for adjustments during recording. Another knob, Ext Centre Mic, adjusts the gain of an external mic connected to the side socket. Below this is the Phones level control. A further button switches the 12dB pad into circuit. Finally, the power switch has a positive sliding action. All the buttons have associated indicator LEDs. The manufacturer states that the H4 is intended for on-camera mounting and the primary mount is indeed a locking cold shoe type. However, I do not believe this method of mounting is its forte. The combined mic head and control unit is quite heavy at a measured 725g with 4 AA cells on board for power. The weight is only part of the problem. At around 250mm from the mount to the top, if even modest pressure is applied at the top there is considerable stress on the shoe. With smaller, lighter camcorders (Sony PD170, for example) the extra weight can unbalance the camera and I found it unwieldy.

There is a good reason for the height. Even when hand-held there is considerable scope for the cameraman’s body to form an effective screen for the rear elements. On the end of a boom it’s a lot of weight to hold for any length of time. The actual mic head is very light. I suspect it would be feasible to use an extension cable between the head and control unit. If

review Holophone decide to offer such an accessory it would make for far better ergonomics in many circumstances.

The idea of adding an external mic for the centre channel is just fine but... This is only really acceptable when the other capsules cannot pick up significant amounts of the centre channel sound, for example, a close miked voice in a noisy environment.

If they can, then the phase effects caused by the lack of co-incidence between the capsules may well be horrendous. Something similar was attempted 30 years ago when people were experimenting with M&S for TV. Somebody had the bright idea of pointing the M capsule at the action and hanging the S capsule over their shoulder to pick up the ambience. It sounded kind of OK on headphones and absolutely horrendous on speakers. And here is the danger with non-coincident mic techniques, it may well be that it is only when the post people get to hear it on speakers that phase problems become evident.

Holophone has equipped the H4 control unit with a Dolby ProLogic II encoder in addition to six discrete outputs. Full surround captured in just two channels. It’s a seductive premise, but let’s examine this a little more closely. The Dolby Prologic II system is primarily a phase relationship matrix and even its most ardent supporters would

not claim super accurate imaging. I have considerable reservations about using it for acquisition of material likely to be subject to manipulation in post and subsequent delivery through a broadcast chain. In these circumstances I would advocate using the discrete outputs. The headphone monitor outputs Virtual Surround but, at least with the headphones I was using, I didn’t perceive much of a surround effect.

I am a huge fan of coincident mics and less than enthusiastic about dummy heads for reproduction on speakers so you won’t be surprised to hear I was somewhat sceptical about the Holophone premise. In use it’s a lot better than expected. It certainly manages to produce a tangible surround field with good separation while capturing the crucial main event at the front. Perhaps the relative proximity of the capsules confers some of the benefits of coincidence? I suspect that there is also some surface effect involved. Whatever, there is obviously something going on here beyond ‘conventional’ dummy head theory.

Handheld, on a stand or boom mounted, the H4 delivers, even in quite boisterous wind conditions. If you can set aside purist prejudices, it is a pragmatic answer to feeding the growing demand for ‘real’ 5.1 recordings in a variety of real-time, real-world locations. ■

ProS

Good wind resistance; light and compact head; versatile outputs.

CoNS

Control unit with capsule attached heavy and ungainly with a lightweight camera; signal lEd sensitivity odd; steps in mic gain control.

EXtraS

Newly released at NaB is the H4 multi-Cable which reduces the height of the H4 by dropping it 6-inches. it also allows the H4’s encoder, preamp and monitor module to be mounted in a variety of locations. the multi-Cable is available with 90cm or 1.5m cable, which connects the multichannel microphone head to the encoder. an upgrade to the H4 adds balanced outputs to the mic’s encoder and will now have one 6-pin mini Xlr output that contains lt and rt balanced information. the microphone is priced at US$2,695.

Contact HoloPHoNE, CaNada: Website: www.holophone.com

craft Horn and Downes briefly joined legendary progrock band Yes, before Trevor quit to pursue his career as a producer. Dollar and ABC won him chart success, with ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love giving the producer his first UK No.1 album. He produced Malcolm McLaren and introduced the hitherto-underground world of scratching and rapping to a wider audience, then went on to produce Yes’ biggest chart success ever with the classic Owner Of A Lonely Heart from the album 90125 — No.1 in the US Hot 100. Horn and his production team of arranger Anne Dudley, engineer Gary Langan and programmer JJ Jeczalik morphed into electronic group Art Of Noise, recording startlingly unusual-sounding songs like Beat Box and Close To The Edit.

In 1984 Trevor pulled all these elements together when he produced the epic album Welcome To The Pleasuredome for Liverpudlian bad-boys Frankie Goes To Hollywood. When Trevor met his wife, Jill Sinclair, her brother John ran a studio called Sarm.

Horn worked there for several years, the couple later bought the Island Records-owned Basing Street Studios complex and renamed it Sarm West. They started the ZTT imprint, to which many of his artists such as FGTH were signed, and the pair eventually owned the whole gamut of production process: four recording facilities, rehearsal and rental companies, a publisher (Perfect Songs), engineer and producer management and record label.

A complete Horn discography would fill the pages of Resolution dedicated to this interview, but other artists Trevor has produced include Grace Jones, Propaganda, Pet Shop Boys, Band Aid, Cher, Godley and Creme, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, David Coverdale, Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, Eros Ramazzotti, Mike Oldfield, Marc Almond, Charlotte Church, t.A.T.u, LeAnn Rimes, Lisa Stansfield, Belle & Sebastian and Seal. Horn received a Grammy Award in 1996 for Seal’s second album. (photos www.recordproduction.com)

When you came to record Malcolm McLaren at the studio where I worked as a house engineer in 1982, I was completely riveted to see how you worked with the (then new) Fairlight II. Playing your bass into it — finding just the notes you liked and then sequencing them to make a track.

Did we have the World’s Famous Supreme Team there with Malcolm?

Trevor Horn Trevor Horn defined what it was to be a record producer in the 80s, and pioneered the production methods in use today. NIGEL JOPSON talks to a legend for whom he once moved a fader a very small distance.

T

revor Horn demonstrated how the new wave of electronic musical instruments could be used, not just for electronic bleeps and sweeps, but to fashion mainstream pop hits. Horn’s Sarm Studios modelled the next generation of recording facility, where the control rooms hosted as much — if not more — of the recording process as the rooms in which microphones and pianos stood. With his innovative use of drum machines, synths, samplers and synchronisers he 38

reassembled songs as pop classics, and provided a template for the cut-and-paste DAW production techniques used today. Having played bass in a dance-band and backed 70s disco star Tina Charles, Horn formed The Buggles in 1977 with keyboard player Geoffrey Downes. In 1979 they had a UK No.1 with the single Video Killed The Radio Star, the video for which became famous when it was the first (and later millionth) to be played on the seminal entertainment channel MTV. resolution

Malcolm had a huge box of tapes you had recorded of the US rappers and scratch artists.

I was fascinated to watch you sample snippets of this audio and build a song from it.

In the early 80s a lot of people didn’t really know what was going on. If you tried to explain a Fairlight to them — ‘it’s a digital Melotron’ — they didn’t know what you meant. That was a wonderful period ... technology was so expensive you had to be successful to get it! I tried to explain it to the World’s Famous Supreme Team: ‘You guys scratch records, but we’ve got this Fairlight, look at the amazing things it can do’ — I saw their eyes glaze over — they weren’t really interested! There was something new every week, the first time we ever locked a Fairlight to a drum machine was when we did Relax. There was a device called a Conductor which was made by Syco Systems, God knows what it was, but that was a totally new thing, being able to lock sequencers together.

Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie of Fairlight didn’t think of their machine as a sampler, they built that feature in for waveform modelling, it May/June 2008

craft was really you who turned the Fairlight into a ‘sampler’ by using it. I worked with other early owners of the Fairlight II and they just played it like another keyboard.

I never spoke to anyone from Fairlight ever, and they never spoke to me. I just paid full whack for it — in fact, I’ve generally been like that with manufacturers — you can get too side-tracked if you get into those kind of things. I do remember just before I got the Fairlight, I received a phone call from a guy called Brad Naples, who ran Synclavier at the time, and who gave this whole sales pitch to me saying: ‘If you’re looking for gimmicks, then the Fairlight is the thing for you, but if you’re looking for a serious scientific instrument then you should buy the Synclavier.’ So I said to him: ‘Actually I’m looking for gimmicks, I’m a record producer! So I’m going to buy the Fairlight.’ I subsequently bought a Synclavier as well, but I must say this was the single biggest waste of money in my whole career, $260,000. We did use it, but once the audio quality became ‘normal’, sampling lost its fun aspect for me. If you put something in the Fairlight, it came out sounding slightly different, it was romanticised in some sort of way. The Synclavier was perfect quality, so it felt more like a recording, it was no fun anymore. Somebody asked me about six months ago what I thought of sampling, it’s a stupid question now because everything is a sample these days!

things to be clear, I think pop music is a great form of communication, and whatever the artist is trying to communicate, I’d like to try and get that across. I come from the background of being a dance band musician, rather than a rock musician. I’ve always found rock music rather simple harmonically, and quite tedious most of the time — except for bands like Yes or Steely Dan — they would be much more to my liking than Black Sabbath, who I can respect and appreciate, but who I wouldn’t listen to by choice. I didn’t really even like Led Zeppelin until they split up ...

The Grace Jones album Slave To The Rhythm, which followed your ‘Fairlight II era’, seemed like a bit of a departure sound-wise. At the time it was speculated how much of the groove might be programmed in the Synclavier, or played by Luis Jardim.

The interesting thing about Slave To The Rhythm is that it was really engineer Steve Lipson [Resolution V6.8], he made up a drum loop using two Sony DASH recorders. We had a Go-Go band in, they were all the top stars from the Go-Go world. The percussion players were from EU (Experience Unlimited) and the drummer was a guy called Ju Ju, they were all great but they just couldn’t remember arrangements. They didn’t get the idea of start here and stop there, they just played. We were trying to record the song with them playing, but it was hopeless. We did have a recording of this little bit of a jam they had done, before we started trying to show them the arrangement. The feel of this jam was really good, Steve took a few bars and made up five minutes of playing. At the time Steve was pretty hot with the two Sonys [DASH PCM-3324 multitracks & IF-3310 edit controller] he could do just about anything with them, it was all done with SMPTE

Was the guitar solo on Owner Of A Lonely Heart sampled and played from the Fairlight?

No, Trevor Rabin played that on guitar, it was one take apart from the last two notes. ...and one pan pot I believe!

Yeah, he was annoyed with me about that, because every time we used to play it back I would pan it and crank the reverb up. When he heard the final mix he was really upset, because he thought I had only been doing that as a joke. I said: ‘No, of course I was going to do it on the record, I used to do it every time we played the bloody thing back!’ When he played that solo, Chris Squire [Yes’ bass player] wasn’t there.

We got a harmonizer and put a fifth on the guitar, we rolled the tape and he played the solo and said: ‘I think we should do something like that, we should work on it.’ I said: ‘That’s it, you’ve just played it, it’s brilliant!’ We argued for a bit, then I gave him another go, but kept the original. It wasn’t like nowadays, we probably only had one other track. The new solo was crap, I didn’t like it. In the end, I agreed to let him replace the last two notes in the solo, so we had to erase the original last two notes to punch the new notes in. Just after we’d done that, Chris Squire arrived and I said: ‘Check this guitar solo out, you’ll love it’.

He said: ‘It’s good, but I don’t like the last two notes!’ I said: ‘No one’s touching it, it’s staying just like that!’

Trevor Rabin said about you: ‘There’s always a Trevor Horn stamp on his productions.’ Is that because you have a vision in your mind of what you want a piece of music to communicate to listeners?

I have an idea, but I can be convinced otherwise.

People will try and persuade me, so I will listen to something again and try and like it. Sometimes if you try and like something you will, and you’ll realise that before you were prejudiced against it. I do have certain things I can’t tolerate. I wouldn’t say I have any great vision, I think sometimes having a vision in music can be a damn nuisance, you’re much better off taking what comes along. If the guys play a different way and it’s better, then go with that. I like May/June 2008

resolution

39

offsets. We slotted all the drum fills into the loop, then we slotted eight bars of the guy actually playing freely into the middle of it. It was a bit of a departure, because it was arranged as if it was programmed, but it had the sound quality of a beautiful recording. It was quite tough to play to afterwards. Luis Jardim didn’t play the drums on it, but he played a great bass part. I remember Luis saying ‘it’ll take me 20 minutes, Trevor’ — it took him eight hours, in fact — because the drum loop was just slightly out of time, you couldn’t lay back on it in the way that Luis was used to. Slave To The Rhythm had its problems, but it’s a great sounding record, and to this day it’s one of my favourite productions. It had some elements of ‘hi-fi’ to it which previously I possibly hadn’t used. Frankie didn’t have much of that.

We’re sitting here in one of your studios, Sarm West, tell us how you came to own it.

Twenty-six years ago when I made Buffalo Girls with Malcolm McLaren, Chris Blackwell [Island’s founder] bought the album for the world outside of the UK, just because he liked that track so much. Chris said he’d like to meet me for dinner, so I went along with my wife Jill, who was managing me at the time. Half 40

resolution

May/June 2008

craft With the current ‘analogue myth’, it’s hard to explain to people who didn’t experience it how terribly frustrating it was to lose all that presence on recordings.

It certainly is an analogue myth. We checked out some modules and eventually bought the SSL because it had the most top end. I was dead against computers, I can remember Gary Langan [Resolution V4.5) and Julian Mendelsohn kicking me out of the control room, because I was saying ‘it’ll break down, we should mix it by hand’ ... but it didn’t. The first song we mixed on the SSL computer was ABC’s The Look Of Love. But once I’d had a couple of hits, everybody else wanted to book Sarm [East]. So I was constantly traipsing around the studios of London, sometimes it was alright, but a lot of the time it was crap ... going to places with awful old Neve boards that everyone raves on about now, but I could never get enough top end, I had the knobs flat out. So when Blackwell suggested this place I was very interested and we did a deal. My wife, who is an astute businesswoman, made an arrangement to buy the building off him as well. I think the first record we did here was Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax. It was an extremely tense moment, because it took a few months to become a hit, and Jill and I had borrowed £1 million from the bank to do Basing Street up.

It was the Top Of The Pops TV appearance that really broke Frankie, wasn’t it?

Yes, I can remember the TOTP people made the band promise they wouldn’t misbehave. That was wonderful — not that they had to promise to behave — what was wonderful was that people were a little scared of them, it gave them an air of excitement.

way through dinner I asked him what he was doing at Basing Street, and he said: ‘Oh, I’m selling it to Richard Branson, why? Do you want it?’ To which I said: ‘Yeah!’ and Jill kicked me under the table. Chris said: ‘I’ll let you have it if you’ll start a record label for me there.’ I said OK. It’s amazing how quickly you can do a big deal with someone if you both want the same thing, I think we wrapped it up in two weeks. Sarm [East] had an old Trident mixer, Geoffrey [Downes] and I had been working on a Buggles track at the Townhouse — they had an SSL which we loved — although it didn’t have automation yet. The Trident was a good desk although a bit noisy, while recording you monitored through this sort of jukebox section, then you had to switch over to the main board when it came time to mix: the difference in the sound was terrible, it was always an awful moment. I had had a really bad experience elsewhere with the Neve Necam automation system, losing all my mixes. I was really into top end as well, I had been to America and worked on MCIs, the engineers out there put more top end on the tracks than I’d ever heard in my life, it really was a cool thing because in the days of analogue tape, all the top end would be knocked off later.

May/June 2008

Now that it’s possible to Autotune every Holly Johnson ad-lib, has music technology lost a bit of its appeal for you?

You can put people in tune, but you can’t give them a great voice: there’s a huge difference between singing in tune and having a great voice. Music is really still about the same sort of things as it was before.

Everybody expects you to tune them up these days, sometimes you can be a little bit sad ... but I would never tune someone up when their natural pitch helps the sound of their voice. Sometimes I get stuff to work on, I look at the waveforms and they are these little, awful, crummy recordings. I think ‘project studio’ recordings are generally mediocre. How could they possibly not be, because unless you have really accurate monitoring, how can you take any chances?

It’s the room the equipment is in and what you can hear. Everyone seems to think that if they’ve bought some sort of Neve mic pre — probably made in China, now — that that’s going to make the quality of their recording good. Bunk! It’s not bad recording that’s the enemy, in fact it’s an achievement if you can make something sound terrible these days, everything sounds blandly mediocre to me most of the time.

You’ve produced so many talented performers, is there a particular artist you haven’t worked with who you’d like to produce?

With me it’s more to do with material, I’d rather work with good material, whichever artist I don’t mind. I’d also prefer to work on someone’s first album rather than their twentieth. I still like making records ... I love making records. However long I’ve done it, I still feel like a complete novice when I start a new record. It’s a good feeling, I’ve been doing it a long time but everyone starts from the same place on a new recording. ■

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www.rolandsg.co.uk 41

craft How is your work made up?

Benedict and I split the rooms between us, she does a lot of producing now and I continue to also do mixes for people who come to the end of a project and their mixer doesn’t suit. So my work is split into the 5.1 DVDs, producing compete projects for artists, and doing mixes for people who have already recorded.

The idea about this place was to try and recapture what I discovered when I started in this business. I started in a small studio and when I listening to records I always wondered where they were recorded and what the studios would be like. But they would never let you in to see the place; it was mysterious. That magic is very important for the myth surrounding the recording of sound. The result is always 25% the equipment, and 75% the people behind it. I’ve very happy with the equipment we have but if was up to me, and it’s not, and it was not a necessity, which it is, then I’m not in love with Pro Tools because it doesn’t sound too good to me. But working with other software can be a mess because it’s not very easy to translate them.

The way we work with Pro Tools and the Euphonix is like working with a master tape -– you can tweak and edit it, put a plug on specifically to get the sound we want, and then mix with the desk and put the mix back in the Pro Tools session.

Dominique Blanc-Francard He’s a leading player in French recording with a career that goes back to the 1960s, yet he’ll tell you he’s as busy now as he’s ever been. ZENON SCHOEPE meets a survivor and an inspiration to us all.

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ominique Blanc-Francard is an elder statesman of music recording in France having started his career in the 1960s.

What is interesting about his life and his approach is that he has adapted continuously and successfully to changes in musical style, recording methods and attitudes, and technological change; he’s a survivor.

He’s old enough to remember mono operation, the enormous changes that increasing multitrack track counts had on the production process, the individuality of different console brands, the impact of fledgling digital, the standardisation of console types and recording methods, the crashing democratisation of technology and the new and more stable dawn of modern high-end technology. His career has covered stints as an ordinary employee, house engineer, freelancer, studio owner, engineer, mixer, remixer and producer. His credits include a host of top French acts over the decades while his international credentials are assured from his time as house engineer at Château d’Hérouville in the 1970s where he worked with Gong, Magma, T. Rex, Cat Stevens and many other acts that passed through the studio.

Today he works with his wife engineer Bénédicte Schmitt in his own studio Labomatic, which is in a premium Paris plot just off the Champs d’Elysses.

There’s been a studio on the site since the early 1960s and it had the distinction, as one of the first independent studios in France, of being the recording venue for The Beatles recording in German of She Loves You. Dominique took the studio on with his two 42

producer sons in 1996, initially to serve as a place to hatch their musical ideas with Yamaha 02Rs. He was tracking around Paris studios and returning with DA88s and continuing on the 02Rs. Things came to a crossroads when one of his sons decided he wanted to record an album in their studio. They rented another desk, multitracks and discovered that the studio was a good place for recording. ‘I wanted to escape from the big Paris studios just because it was so boring to go into a studio every morning and see an SSL and two young assistants telling you they’d put the mics up and that everything was ready to record and it always sounded the same -– same desk, same speakers, same room and…the same music too.’

Later, an initial Euphonix System 5 purchase was made largely on an expected boom in 5.1 for music and when that didn’t materialise they had a big console in a small studio. They started working with record companies by offering a complete package ‘they give us an artist and we give them a master tape — they don’t care what equipment we use, they only want to sell records.’

A couple of years and a couple successes later and the momentum had been gathered, to the extent where they didn’t have enough capacity. They added a second-hand CS2000 in the large ‘office’ area then in 2007 replaced it with another S5. The two rooms, which share a live area, are completely independent but can also work together if required.

Dominique still clearly enjoys the job and has arrived at the sort of work that he can apply all his experience and knowledge to. For example, he’s been working with Carla Bruni for some years now. resolution

How does that compare to mixing in the box?

One test that we’ve done is comparing mixing in the box, with the Euphonix Hybrid, and mixing through the digital desk. Using the digital desk sounds 50% better and we used the Hybrid to create the same balance and the same levels. What’s interesting is that if you only have a vocal track, acoustic bass, guitar and a tambourine, it sounds very similar. Add electric guitars, drums and keyboards — 40 tracks — you start to hear the differences. It’s not black and white but it is much better, so much so that we bought another desk instead of running both studios with controllers and mixing in Pro Tools, which would have been much easier. We chose the S5 because I expect in the next three or four years maybe new Pro Tools cards that may be much better -– then we’ll already have the controllers. We are covered either way.

But I’m happy because it was difficult switching from the digital toys that the Yamahas were to highend digital equipment — and that’s in an industry where everything is falling apart. I’m not anxious about the music industry; I’m anxious about the recording industry. The music industry is still earning money, in different ways, and what ever the future will be they will always need content. Content is songs, singers and good songs because people love music. We have to think differently today and that means optimising the ratio between spending money and earning money. No studio can work today like they did in the past when record companies spent money shamelessly.

I’m not sure that everyone can record themselves.

The main point there is that you have time; there’s plenty of that and you can spend two days on your mix. But you are alone. You need someone to help you when you are producing a song. It’s not true that you can go to a shop, buy your own studio and make your own record alone.

Many studios will disappear, many will stay, but the new studios will be places where people can be helped to finish or start a project if they think in the same technology terms as the musicians do at home. And there comes a point at which you can’t have all that equipment at home because it is still too expensive. It’s still like 25 years ago when you had a Revox at home but you wanted to work on those Otaris.

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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

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So you’re saying that there needs to be a difference between the equipment a studio uses and what the musician has…

There is a need for a difference just for the quality of the result and for the feel of the person behind it.

It’s not a question of the equipment, it’s about the knowledge of the operator and the job they do and the tools we choose to use. We stopped working with the Yamaha 02Rs not because of the sound but because we had musicians coming into the studios and saying; ‘I don’t like the EQ used on my guitar, why don’t you put 3dB at 2.5k because that’s what I do at home and it sounds good.’ I told one guy ‘That’s funny, you have a Fender and you don’t sound anything Roadshow Resolution(216x125mm).qxd:Mise en like Eric Clapton.’ He’s a guitarist, I’m an engineer, he

does some sound at home and that’s great, and I play my guitar at home but each of us has different levels of expertise. The problem is that the industry has sold individuals the idea that they can do everything on their own. When I work with Carla I send days recording guitar parts just to give the real musicians the idea of what I want them to play — and they’re ten times better than me.

There’s also the issue of price. A record company today wants to spend as little money as possible and when someone tells them they can do the job for 1 Euro at home rather than 10 Euro in the studio, they want to believe it. The record companies don’t care about the quality to that extent but they do care about page 1 30/04/08 13:56 Page 1 the cost.

So how can you work in such a market?

It’s the difficult balance of explaining with arguments that if they do give you a project then they will be able to sell it. So, we need to have successes to make this believable. They need to look in the charts and see Labomatic, Labomatic, and Labomatic — then they know that they should work with us.

And the artists that come here are happy and when they’re happy they make better records. It’s a combination of knowledge, commercial attitude and doing the job right -– then you can live with it but you have to be very precise in your judgement of your work. Your work transforms the money of the record company into much more money in sales, whether that’s a CD or a download; you have to make music that people want to buy in whatever way. In the next years people will buy music in a variety of different ways, but they’ll still have to like it enough to spend money on it. People discover one song on the Internet and they buy it but they don’t buy an album that has only one good song on it anymore!

You seem well set up for all eventualities here…

Technically it is outstanding, people like the mood of it and they come back but it is very dependent on our continued success. We always have to choose the technology that is best for us. I’m always thinking about what’s coming next and I won’t find that on the Digidesign website; I find it on the components websites. Two years ago when Hitachi bought the hard disk business from IBM that told us that IBM thought hard disk was dead and that solid state storage was coming.

It’s important to know what the technology of the next two years will be because it avoids you spending badly.

Your road to Success The 22nd of May will see the start of Audio-Technica’s 2008 Roadshow stopping at 7 key locations across the country over a 3 week period. Our custom designed trailer will offer you the chance to view a selection of our key product offerings and discuss issues pertinent to you in a relaxed and informal manner.

To find out more, and register to attend an event near you, visit

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www.audio-technica-roadshow.com

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May/June 2008

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How did you start your studio career?

I started as a musician in the 1960s.

My father was a sound engineer in TV and I spent a lot of time going to TV shows. He left and went to a radio station and we always had tape recorders at home because he was finishing edits so we played with tape recorders. But I wanted to be a guitarist and it was hard to make a living so my father had a friend who had set up a small studio and I went to work in it.

I went in and the man asked me to do some edits and, of course, I knew how to do that and I was hired as easy as that! It was a mono studio and nobody was ever there so I brought my guitar in and recorded that every day. Then suddenly it was the start of multitrack recording and we got a second-hand 3-track from Studio Davout and we ended up in 1968 with the first 8-track 3M. I had a good friend who was a jazz producer who knew someone who was setting up an incredible recording studio in the country and he wanted me to see it — it was Michel Magne and Château d’Hérouville.

I went to that place and was absolutely amazed because nobody had put a recording studio in a château before. He explained the project to me and then one night I went there to help on a recording session, fell in love with it and then left my job and started there. That was the real start of my career and when the château closed I went freelance. The first studio I opened was Continental in the 80s, which had the first 3M 32-track digital in Paris…it was a complete mess!

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That machine sounded brilliant but it ate tapes and people were scared of it. You’d put a tape on and rewind it and it would spill on the ground.

The brilliant engineers at 3M had put some stroboscopes under the motors and when you put the machine in fast rewind there was one speed at which the machine would think it was in play because of a stroboscopic effect. A very expensive experience.

You seem to be working as hard now as when you started…

I’ve never worked as much as I do now and with so much tension. I like that but you have to have a break in between just to get some inspiration.

But you can’t do more than three of four full projects a year. A production is around two months and then you need a holiday. Mixing for me is like a holiday because you have no implication -– you’re just doing the best you can to make the record sound good. You don’t have to take nights and nights on getting a good guitar part. When you produce you have a lot of pressure about the content of the song and you are responsible for the finished product. It’s always a fight between the artist, who wants a keyboard here and not a guitar, and the record company that says you should put a flute there, and you have to be tough when you are sure that the success of the song needs to have a guitar. If you’re a good diplomat you can say ‘It could be a guitar sounding like a piano.’ In the end, you do what you want but if it is a success then you know why! ■ resolution

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Cameron Craig Quiet and unassuming yet equally happy to grunge up a drum loop as record an orchestra, Cameron Craig has won a Grammy for his efforts. He talks GEORGE SHILLING through his attitude and approach.

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n his native Australia, Cameron Craig was always playing in bands, organising the PA and making recordings, and this naturally led to the pursuit of studio work. He traipsed around his hometown of Melbourne and landed a job at a studio run by an early hero of his (Ern Rose) that was equipped with a classic combination of Harrison console and MCI multitrack, and which had a useful affiliation with a hire company, giving Cameron the opportunity to experiment with gear. He had a rather brief training, and was soon thrust into the engineering chair. He was ‘the AMS kid’ and the first on the block with SoundTools. However, he ‘went retro’ for a while and got interested in microphones, amassing a collection of unusual models, including many ribbons, along with valve and crystal models.

Craig moved to the UK in 1996 on something of a whim, feeling that he had gone as far in his 46

engineering career as he could expect to in his native surroundings. His work encompasses an enormous spectrum of musical styles including dance, indie, and orchestral recording. (‘I’m not fazed by different styles. In Australia I did everything.’) He recently collected a Grammy for Best Engineered Album for his contribution to the latest Suzanne Vega album.

A hugely impressive credit list notably also includes two albums with UNKLE, along with names like Joe Strummer, The Hours, Duffy, Baaba Maal, Paulo Nutini, Amy Winehouse and many more.

He recently finished a Grace Jones album that was completed in a shared private studio, which was essentially built to complete the record. Possibly one of the softest spoken and most charmingly shy interview subjects that Resolution has ever encountered, we met up with Cameron at another of his favourite studios, Beethoven Street in West London. (Photos www.recordproduction.com) resolution

Tell me about your more unusual mics…

I don’t know their names. There’s one little mic called Winston because I’ve seen a picture of Winston Churchill and he’s got four of them across the front of him. A great little mic, I think it’s made

by Vitavox, with Admiralty written on the back of it, so probably ex-military. I’ve used it on all sorts of things, even vocals, a lot of drum things, it’s quite middly.

Apart from the stuff you could replicate with EQ, what else do these mics give you?

I think it’s too complex to try and do with EQ, and just the way the mic reacts to things is quite different to EQ, so a condenser mic will act a lot differently to a ribbon mic. So even though you might get the frequency thing the same, the actual reactions are quite different. I’ve got a lot of weird and wonderful mics, and a few nice ones. It just started out from going to studios and not having weird and wonderful mics, so the collection’s grown –- there’s no normal mics at all. I’ve got a U47 because a lot of studios didn’t have them at the time, and a lot of ribbon mics, because studios don’t have them. I just love the sound of them.

Watching you work, I noticed you miked a guitar amp with your RCA ribbon from quite a long way back…

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craft That’s one thing I like about ribbons, you can have them back but they still have a lot of presence. I use a lot of distortion on drums, with ribbon mics, just distorting them a bit. I use amps live with the drums, I get the sound feeding back into the drums.

I’ve got some Turner crystal mics that are great for feeding guitar amps, with the right impedance. I plug that into an amp, and just have that feeding the room.

Where do you put the amp?

Usually where it is, it doesn’t make that much difference, it’s just feeding the room.

You don’t close mic the amp?

I have done, but I generally just use it to fill up the room.

Do you pick vocal mics depending on the singer’s gender?

Sometimes, I’ve got a really nice 47 but it just hates female singers for some bizarre reason, they never sound right on it. It gets a bit sibilant. It does tend to like deeper male voices. So I’d probably use a C12 or 87 even. But it depends on the songs. In some cases ribbons suit the vocal.

In Australia I did all sorts of things, and that was just something you did. I seem to have become the strings man for a select group of people. Suzanne Vega was done at Olympic with the London Session Orchestra, and Will Malone did the arrangements, I’d worked with him on UNKLE.

Do you use a minimalist arrangement, or stick millions of mics up?

I tend to stick millions of mics up, and then use three!

They’re all just there for safety really. I use the tree mainly, and some ambience mics.

A Decca tree with three M50s?

Depending on the room. I think they were U67s on that session because Olympic don’t have M50s, I thought that was a good alternative. I’ve used

ribbons sometimes. The UNKLE stuff was done at AIR, it’s quite a bright room, so I put up ribbons as a tree, and it worked quite well because it toned the brightness down a bit.

Is orchestral recording a high stress situation?

Once you get over the fact that it’s costing £30 a second or something, it’s quite enjoyable. As long as you understand what you’re doing, technically it’s quite easy, it’s all in the preparation really. If people throw a few curveballs, that’s when you’ve got to be on the ball. You get about a minute and a half to get your levels, you generally know roughly, the close ones are going to be the ones that might be a bit different. It’s not such an issue because they’re only there if you want to bring up a part or add a bit more definition to the bottom end.

Are you particular about mic preamps?

Yeah I’ve got a rack of Neves, a rack of Telefunkens, and I did have some Universal Audio ones. Ribbons don’t like SSLs, and even some studios, it took me a while to figure it out, but going to big studios like Townhouse or Metropolis, the ribbons used to always buzz. And it’s just that the cable runs are so long. So I ended up using remote mic preamps, and that sorted it out. You’ve got to be a bit careful where you use them. They’re like single coil guitar pickups, especially the old ones.

And you EQ on the way in with the Neves?

Yes. I still use software EQs as well.

Isn’t it a nuisance to set up an EQ on an Aux input and route it when recording though?

Yes it is, and it’s always the latency issues that are a problem. If you want to just EQ the bass drum, you have set up the whole kit; they all go through Auxes then into channels just so you can put one EQ in, it is a bit of a pain. But it’s not that bad — it’s better to get it right onto tape.

So you try to make things sound as you envisage them ending up?

When I’m mixing it, it makes it a lot easier, because I got it to sound the way I want it to sound. A lot of projects, I end up mixing as well, because you get there and go, Well, it’s nearly mixed isn’t it!

But presumably there’s some re-invention goes on at the mixing stage?

It’s more about balances when I get to that point, hearing the song breathe, because a lot of those decisions have been made. But when you’re mixing someone else’s song, that’s when all your plug-ins come out, because you’re trying to make it into something you want it to be. Disrespectful is the wrong word, but I won’t have any shame in going, that snare drum sounds wrong, I’ll just sample one and put that in. Mainly things need beefing up, so I’ll add things in and get it working.

You recorded a large string section on the Suzanne Vega album, where did you learn orchestral recording techniques?

May/June 2008

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craft And a good headphone mix must be essential?

Well, that’s all in the preparation, it’s good if you’ve already got stems. And I make sure all the levels between all the tracks are about the same, so when switching from one track to the next the levels don’t vary wildly.

For mixing, do you prefer in-the-box, a summing mixer, or a console?

All of the above, depending on the situation. Some records it’s half and half, some on the desk and some in the box. One record, it was ‘track reduction’, we had so many tracks that we actually mixed, but mixed to stems. We took the stems away and worked on those.

What about the sonic differences?

They’re just different, I don’t think there’s anything right or wrong about either way. Some things actually sound better in-the-box, because it seems a bit more contained sounding. Some things need the width of coming out on the desk, it just depends how it was recorded, and what you’re trying to achieve in the end.

Do you use mix bus compression?

I’ve really gone off it, I’m trying not to lately, it’s usually a [Smart] C2 if I do it, but I’m not enjoying mix bus compression at the moment. I do a lot of mixing to stems now, where I’m listening to the stems as I’m mixing, and it gets complicated when you’re putting things across the mix bus, so I try and avoid it where possible.

Do you use stem bus compressors, say across the drums?

Yes, but I tend to get everything out of 32 outputs,

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craft and get those back into Pro Tools, so essentially I can pull it back up in Pro Tools as it was on the desk, but with all the processing as it was on the desk.

What’s good about this room at Beethoven Street?

I like mixing in here, it’s an old SSL, and at one point we used to hate them, but now we quite like them because everything is so clean, it’s a bit grungy and it’s helping now. I get good results here. I use KRK 7000s, NS-10s and usually some Auratones as well, and keep switching between the three. I usually start off quite loud to get a vibe for what you’re doing, get excited about it, then turn it down and get to work.

When did you last multitrack to tape?

2003, that was 2-inch, 16-track, but literally straight into Pro Tools as well, and immediately the tape was done, it was dumped into Pro Tools, so almost using tape like an effect. But it was good to switch between them and hear what tape was actually doing.

Everyone liked the tape better.

Does the tape do something to the bottom end?

Yeah, but in a nice way. We’d tweak the bass and bass drum tracks’ bias to get it just right for them, and that did extend the bottom end range, and at 15 [ips] it did help.

Do you tend to roll off the low end when recording to Pro Tools?

Not really when recording, I like it to be there, then in the mix trim it accordingly. I don’t like to do it in the recording, because the rumble might be good, and I don’t want to not know it was ever there, I’d rather know and then filter it out a little bit.

May/June 2008

Do you think musicianship has declined?

I don’t think so, the only thing I think we’re battling with now is a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. A lot of people can make records at home but not have the knowledge to make it a great record, yet.

That diminishes some things. But there’s some good stuff coming through.

Do you often pull tracks in from demos?

Yes, it happens a lot. I’ve come to terms with it, because of Pro Tools you’ve got the scope to do whatever you need to do with it. A lot of mixing work’s done from people who record their own stuff, and you’re like a finishing producer; they’ve done this stuff and you’ve got to turn it into a record, but you’ve got all the tools now to be able to do that. It’s not that fast any more in that respect. A lot of things come from Logic, it drives me crazy having to sort out Logic and transfer it over.

Why do people employ you?

I think because I’ve done diverse things, they know I can sit there and record the drum loops and get it really trashy sounding, scrabbling around connecting wires in someone’s home studio, and then being at AIR the next day doing a 40-piece orchestra, and not being fazed by either situation.

You’re a fairly quiet chap, is that an advantage?

I think so, I keep my head down when things are going wrong! I don’t get easily flustered. There have been a few sessions where things have got out of control, technically or emotionally. Just being able to keep working through it — everyone will calm down eventually. When everyone is freaking out, I’m just, Yeah, no problem, and everyone calms down. ■

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sweet spot

(l-r) Paul and Joe.

The Nut Shed Ireland has a new international grade studio planted in the centre of the country.

The Nut Shed owner JOE EGAN tells us how many steps it took to get there.

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’d always wanted a ‘proper’ studio. A studio where I didn’t feel I’d be making compromises technically or musically… I guess that’s every ‘studio’ owners dream? I’ve now been lucky enough to realise that dream.

Like a lot of readers I started off in bands in school, playing Guns’n’Roses covers and the like in my case.

My town, Clara in County Offaly in the Irish Midlands, has always been a town full of music and still is, even though the population is only 3,500. When I was 16 I was in a band that did well on the local scene and we recorded a couple of songs in a local studio that were hits in Ireland and that’s when the recording bug hit.

I was fascinated by the recording process, so much so that I decided to study recording in Dublin and was lucky enough to train on SSLs and Neves. I quickly discovered that the only way to make the recordings

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I wanted was to have access to great gear in great rooms. Early on I cottoned on to the fact that rooms maketh the studio. My family are in the building trade so I decided to build my own studio. Unlike the route that a lot of guys take, I made the building the priority, initially. I could easily add or replace gear, unlike walls!

In 2005 we built a spacious control room with natural light and lots of height (4m) and a similar sized live room plus a vocal booth. I started off with a Digidesign 002, a Focusrite ISA producer pack, Genelec 8050s and a motley collection of mics. It was basically a ‘bedroom’ setup but never-the-less ‘The Loft Studio’ was in business.

The next few months were spent finding the limitations of my rooms and equipment while making some pretty OK recordings, while I explored what I

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could and could not do. Bands felt so relaxed here that we ended up experimenting and in no time at all we had bass amps in the bedroom and drums in the kitchen. All great fun but not something I’d do everyday.

Around that time I started to do some business with Paul Brewer at a Dublin-based pro audio dealer Audio Warehouse. He’s originally from Tullamore, down the road, and we vaguely knew each other through the music scene. I quickly added an Audient ASP 008 to up my mic preamp count and Paul advised from the beginning that to maximise the studio’s business I needed to focus at being the best at one thing, not a Jack of all trades as many studios try to be. With my musical interests and the space I had available the obvious thing to concentrate on was rock bands, of which there are many in Ireland.

I also needed to move the studio forward at a speed that matched the fullness of the diary and the coffers, so we looked at taking three steps. The first was acoustic treatment. While the studio was well built from a room to room isolation point of view, I really was guessing with the acoustics. The untreated rooms sounded OK (again down to luck, more than planning) but I knew I needed to improve this. With my limited budget Paul put together an Auralex solution. This involved quite a lot of bass trapping (big rooms!) a good deal of absorption (breaking up standing waves and reducing RT time) and quite a bit of diffusion in the live room.

With a few tweaks we now had a very usable control room and a lively but controlled recording area that sounded great for drums.

The second step was also logical if not typical.

As the customers I wanted to attract initially were Indie bands, they would come here to track drums and maybe stay to overdub, or maybe not. The thinking then was to maximise results with the minimum outlay and to specifically aim at tracking.

Paul suggested 8 channels of Neve 1073 DPA and an Apogee Ad16x that I bought in early 2006. While my back end left room for improvement (God bless the humble Digi 002) the front end was A1.

The third thing to address was more living space.

I thought that to attract more clients I needed space for them to live, so I built five bedrooms and a big lounge area. This allowed me to attract good tracking work and as we predicted, a lot of guys came here to track and overdub but went to mix elsewhere. Once the word got out, bands started to come down from Dublin regularly as it’s only an hour away. The plan was working.

In fact the plan was working so well it wasn’t long before myself and Brewer hatched up some more steps and that’s where things got really interesting.

My next logical step was Pro Tools HD, to which I added the Waves Gold Bundle. As I’d already bought the computer and Apogee AD16x I was one third of the way to HD already. An integral part of my buying process is ‘buy for now, but also for the future if you can’. I ordered a Manley Massive Passive EQ and a Manley Vari-Mu Compressor — gorgeous. We plugged in my new HD3 system with an Apogee DA16x for outs and away I went.

I’d built up such a solid working relationship with Paul that we started to do some production work together at weekends and he’d often send down gear for me to test (or was that to buy...?) At the beginning of 2007 it was suggested that Audio Warehouse hold a pro audio show at my studio — it has a good central location in the country, with lots of room for guys and gear so it was ideal. In July 2007 little ole’ Clara became the centre of pro audio in Ireland for 24 hours. Twentytwo industry guys, including Zen from Resolution, descended on Clara coming mostly from the UK but May/June 2008

sweet spot some came from as far as Germany and Switzerland.

One of the exhibitors was Jim Motley from SSL who had an X-Rack and an AWS 900 with him. I loved the idea of the X-Rack, perfect for my setup once I’d discovered the positive effect that out-ofthe-box analogue summing has on a track. But, I also thought ‘Gosh, that AWS 900 Jim bought (and fully connected up to my system) looks and sounds fantastic, perhaps I ought to buy that instead?’ Things were racing ahead quicker than I anticipated and I had to wonder if the studio warranted that kind of expenditure so early in its, and my, life, We decided to do some research. We were very familiar with the Irish scene and decided to ask our questions further a field. London has always been a centre of excellence for recording and is only an hour away by plane, so that was the logical choice. Through Paul’s SSL contacts and help from Ian Downs from PMC we opened the doors to some of London’s premier studios. Running parallel to the gear development we decided we needed a more professional acoustic look at my rooms. It was around that time Paul spotted an article in Resolution mentioning Chris Walls from Munro Acoustics designing Julian Lennon’s studio. As we were in town, we arranged to meet with Chris.

So, last autumn, like many Irishmen before us, myself, Paul and another studio owner friend Peter headed off to where the streets are paved with gold, London. On the way we went to SSL and spent an afternoon mucking about on their fine consoles. In London we visited Metropolis, British Grove (the ‘Taj Mahal’ of recording studios in my opinion), and AIR Lyndhurst.

Rejuvenated, we returned to the Emerald Isle and thought long and hard about how to proceed. I toyed with the idea of getting an X-Rack and taking that route but that AWS had looked fabulous in my room and sounded even better — so perhaps that was the way.

After a few week’s thinking I bit the bullet and took the big step and I’m recently the owner of a 48-channel SSL Duality; the first in Ireland. I’ve rewired the studio with Vovox cabling and have been recognised by Vovox with its Purum Certificate. I’ve got 48 channels of Apogee A-D/D-A and a very full rack. I also have an extremely large loan… and a Gaggia Coffee Machine.

I felt that a Duality was my ultimate console ‘goal’ and that an AWS would have been an intermediate step. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to charge more daily for it but I will be able to sleep well in the knowledge I have a studio that sounds great and should leave no one wanting.

We installed the equipment in early March and while Paul lost a bit more hair during the process, it was relatively simple. We had a bit of fun getting the two console halves up the stairs but nothing that the muscles from the local Mark Hogan band couldn’t sort. As nearly all the ins and outs are on D-Subs we were in a position to prewire the studio so the rack was populated and plugged up by the time the console arrived. This meant that on the evening the console arrived we were mixing… well, at least listening.

There was the bit where the 4-bay rack arrived and turned out to be 2m high instead of the 1m one I ordered, but it would be unfair of me to Paul to mention that. I’m now at the stage where Greg Haver (Resolution V4.2) is producing the above-mentioned Mark Hogan band here today. All is working well, and Greg must be very pleased if he’s listening to the monitors that loud.

Nearly everyone who has worked here has rebooked at least once and a lot of the engineers in the country agree that if Ireland is to compete on the international stage it needs facilities to produce recordings as good, if not better, than abroad. I’ve recently renamed the May/June 2008

studio The Nut Shed, it’s now home for myself and Paul’s production duo The Nut Heads.

My next step is to upgrade my monitors, which I’ll do after Chris Walls has done his acoustic jiggery pokery. I started with the Genelecs and still use them plus NS10s and PMC TB2s. I love the PMCs and we’re going to try a bigger set after the acoustic ‘lick of paint.’

Despite all the nay saying that goes on in the industry, I feel there is still room for ‘proper’ studios.

I feel my investment will pay off as I can now offer a level of technical excellence that hasn’t been readily available in this country. Everyone knows that recording budgets have shrunk — but that’s a reality.

I accept that and am prepared to work within that constraint. I think it’s interesting to remember that the main reason a lot of home studios started initially (apart from enthusiasm) was to avoid the very high

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costs of pro studios, which were realistically beyond the reach of everyone except professional bands. Now those same pro studio prices have dropped so much that you could ask why anyone would bother putting together one of their own when it won’t match the results of the now affordable, professional setup.

The future looks very good for the Nut Shed.

Let the ‘real’ work, the recording of music, begin. ■

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NFTS – educating for sound If you haven’t factored in any time for on-going training in your busy and successful post sound career, then it is time that you did. JIM BETTERIDGE looks at the example of the NFTS and likes what he hears.

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hat you are reading Resolution means there’s a reasonable chance you’ve at least considered acquiring some structured training in audio at some time in your career, if not actually attending a course.

If so, you’ll know that the UK is brimming with colleges offering short courses, diplomas, BAs, MAs and MScs in media related studies with a variety of angles and specialisations — including audio.

The National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Beaconsfield is different from all the other media colleges in the UK. It’s generally recognised as a National Centre for Excellence and as an educational establishment it is uniquely funded by the department of Culture, Media and Sport and the film and television industries (as opposed to Education). It was originally established in the 1971 as a government initiative intended to foster the talents of future leaders in a UK film industry.

Prior to the NFS taking the site it had been a fully operational film studio dating back to the 1920s, with a truly impressive list of famous names and productions to its credit (see http://www.britmovie.co.uk/studios/ beaconsfield/biog00.html if you’re interested). When the college opened its doors in 1971, just 25 young filmmakers were admitted as students. The courses adapted to individual’s needs in a process that was far

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more organic than today’s highly organised, highly monitored educational structures. The nominally three-year syllabus sometimes took seven years to complete, with some students going off to make films for a year or so, almost like a modern day sandwich course. Interestingly, Nick Park wouldn’t have completed A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit if he hadn’t been given a full seven-year term.

In 1983, rumoured to be under pressure from incoming American multiplexes, Margaret Thatcher did away with the Cinema Tax. Though the government kept up the grant for a few years, by the end of the 1980s they had halved it, raising the balance through contributions from the main broadcasters. This remains the situation today although, in an effort to get greater industry involvement, Iain Smith OBE, producer of Cold Mountain, Children of Men, The Fifth Element and Seven Years in Tibet, among others, is to chair a new Film Industry Training Board (FITB) with statutory levy powers to ensure that companies across the film production industry invest in training. It will oversee the delivery and operation of the Skills Investment Fund (SIF), a training levy for the film production industry that will move from voluntary to mandatory status at the end of 2008. So the tap’s been moved further back up the pipe, but once again the industry’s being asked to contribute to its own future viability.

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In 1992 the arrival of a new principal, ex-head of the Danish Film School, Henning Camre, signalled the beginning of a new more structured arrangement for the NFTS in general and for the sound department in particular. He believed in the equality of all departments, raising the status of sound and putting it on an equal footing with the other disciplines. In 1994 BBC sound recordist Andrew Boulton became head of the sound department and was charged with devising a new three-year diploma course in sound.

This was the basis for what are now the MA in Sound Post Production and the diploma in Sound Recording For Film and Television.

In 1998 the school won lottery funding to the tune of £4,000,000 which, with support from manufacturers, translated to around £8,000,000 worth of new kit.

This allowed all departments to be re-equipped and moved the school firmly into the digital age with new DAWs for the audio department and Dolby Digital for the main dubbing theatre. The new kit was great but 27 years after its inception very little had changed to the main architectural structure of the place. There were still no purpose-built teaching spaces as such, and lectures, discussions and seminars were held in modified rooms in the admin block, dressing rooms and temporary buildings. This just didn’t seem right for a National Centre of Excellence approaching the dawn of the third millennium. A bold new plan was needed, but the path ahead wasn’t destined to be easy.

There was a two-year involvement with Ealing Studios at the end of the ‘90s that was interesting but finally aborted. After that, detailed plans for a move to a smaller, central London location were drawn up at significant expense, but were also dropped after long consideration. Instead it was decided to initiate a threephase development of the existing site. By selling off some land to a developer and raising a mortgage against projected income, the school raised enough money for phase one: The Educational Building, which finally opened its doors in January this year.

It’s a big new £8m block housing a wide range of teaching and meeting spaces, a library, a new short course unit, a canteen and a big new Dolby-equipped cinema. Phase two will be a new admin block and phase three will see a range of cutting/editing/prep rooms plus a second large surround dubbing theatre to match the existing one.

The sense of excitement and renewal that has accompanied this extremely impressive new building is palpable and its expanded facilities mean it can offer more back to the industry. For instance, this year’s Association of Motion Picture Sound (AMPS) AGM was held in the new building with great success. AMPS Council meetings are also often held there as will be various meetings and seminars put on by AMPS. It’s an excellent new meeting place for the industry and an invaluable way for students to meet professionals. I found myself wondering if government couldn’t do a bit more to support what should be something of a figurehead for a thriving British film/TV industry.

‘The governments of other countries like France, Denmark and Norway spend a lot of money on their national film industries and education to ensure that their own cultures are expressed through film; they know that if they didn’t they’d be swamped with American product,’ says Andrew Boulton. ‘We need to do the same to ensure the future of our industry; as a centre of national excellence we need to be just that, excellent, and that requires proper funding. It can’t solely be a matter of “how much money will a Sound MA graduate make once he or she leaves school”; it’s also about a more socialist idea of keeping the culture and creativity of our society alive.’

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postproduction As any new entrant knows, the number of decent available openings in the television, radio, film and games industries each year is tiny compared to the number of graduates. From the point of view of the (already massively over-subscribed) sound industry, it’s apparent that holding an MA in a sound-related field is no guarantee of a job. In the case of the NFTS only eight new students are accepted each year on MA courses and the standing of the school gives them a better chance than most of working at the higher end of the industry. What of the thousands of others that leave college each year?

Alan Tutton was a senior lecturer at the BBC’s training centre, Wood Norton and he recently took a similar position at De Monfort University. ‘Even before the proliferation of media courses, top jobs in sound production were hard to come by. Only a small fraction of those starting out wanting to mix broadcast drama or feature films have ever realised their dreams,’ he says. ‘Today the demand for sound engineers is greater than it’s ever been in that there are so many more channels broadcasting to the world through an ever expanding range of media. It’s good to aim high but as ever you may have to be pragmatic about getting employment. And even if you don’t end up working in media it still holds true that earning a degree is great training for life and demonstrates your ability to handle complex tasks and achieve your end.

The first thing is to choose your course carefully. At De Monfort we offer BScs in various audio disciplines, rather than BAs; we consider it very important to produce graduates with a good balance of technical and creative capabilities. It’s no good wanting to be a “Sound Designer” if you haven’t got to grips with the basic ideas and tools of your craft. Having been involved at the heart of the industry for so long my intention is to create graduates who’ll be properly equipped to do real world jobs.’

Someone who has made it to the top and who has had a different experience of education is Adrian Rhodes, a leading UK rerecording mixer and part owner of sound post facility De Lane Lea. He was at the NFS in the late 80s: ‘Mine was the first year to stream the new student intake into specific disciplines — director, camera, sound, etc. Before that they just took “filmmakers” and it was up to you to chart your own course. The emphasis was very much on creativity and the tools were there to help you realise your ideas. Today the course is a lot shorter, there are many more students and there’s an exam to pass at the end of it. These pressures are bound to have an affect on creativity. The danger is that we churn out lots of skilled DAW operators who lack the spirit of experimentation and adventure needed to make a good film. When I take people on as trainees I always look for creativity first; that and personality: you’ll be spending many hours in a confined space with these people and they have to be able to rub along. I’ve found people with a strong musical background often work out well.’

With Department of Education funding on a perstudent basis, and colleges required to perform like any other business, there’s an irresistible pressure to get as many bodies through the door as possible.

The NFTS’s funding is different as is the number of students per year and the real cost of their audio MA is more than twice that of most other MA courses. So how do you get in?

‘With all the resources involved we have to be responsible in our choice of students: who’ll benefit most from the training,’ says Boulton. ‘An applicant may actually be too advanced in their career; we often need to take them right back to square one and so they need to be open to change and new ideas.

May/June 2008

People who’ve spent many years teaching themselves on sophisticated, low-cost DAWs learning “the wrong ways” to do things and relying on a vast array of one-button plug-ins to make things work, may be too set in their ways. Hence our choice of Fairlight as our main DAW (although Pro Tools and Nuendo are also used), it’s not something many new students will have had experience of. We’re looking to get back to basics; thinking in terms of what sounds should go where, supporting the film, understanding how to effectively mix the elements together: skills that can be transferred to any workstation. School projects are much like the real world in that you’re working with a team and receive constant feedback from the other disciplines who may have no technical understanding but are very creative and know what they want to achieve. So we look for someone with potential who isn’t set in their ways and who has the personality to

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andrew Boulton

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business

Classical on an up The sales and prospects of classical music have not looked good in recent years with the genre suffering greatly from record company ‘reorganisations’ and consumer technological ‘progress’. It may be down but it’s certainly not out: recent data from Soundscan suggests that downloads are leading to a classical revival.

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lassical music reached an all-time market share high of 5% of the CD market in the early 1980s. The designers of the CD extended its capacity to 74 minutes (at the insistence of Sony’s Norio Ohga) specifically to accommodate Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 1951 performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, and classical buffs pumped sales of the new format as they replaced vinyl in their collections. By 1987 the classical recording industry was delivering around 700 new releases a year but, just a decade later, the hope of a major recording contract had pretty much disappeared for all but a handful of classical performers.

As file sharing threatened mainstream rock and pop, even the titans of classical looked vulnerable, and by 2000 sales of new classical performances were plummeting, Deutsche Grammophon cancelled its recording contract with John Eliot Gardener. The 54

NIGEL JOPSON

Telegraph newspaper sneered: ‘A run of pinstriped MBAs and former wine salesmen was put in charge of classics, only to depart before their signings cut a debut disc.’ BMG had won 24 trophies for pop music at the Grammy Awards, and classics accounted for less than 4% of BMG’s annual revenue of $16.4bn from more than 200 label imprints. ‘When the bottom line reddened amid a general classical downturn, the division [DG] was swatted by an executive fist, like a flea on a giant’s hide. That is the way of the corporate world, and that is what is killing classical recording.’

The decline continued: classical music shipped to UK stores fell by over 2,500 units between 2003 and 2004, to its lowest point since before 1986. The value of those units sent out had shrunk by a quarter and, by 2006, releases were down to around 100 new recordings a year — many from the tousled-hair crossover repertoire that purists would not count as ‘classical’ at all. resolution

In The New Statesman, Joseph Horowitz published a piece entitled ‘Classical Music in America: An Oxymoron?’ as famous classical broadcasters such as WTMI-FM, WNIB-FM and WNCN-FM in the US either put out for-sale signs or reinvented themselves as rock stations. The American music critic Samuel Lipman wrote that ‘... classical music today is in deep trouble. It is not clear whether we can do more than bear witness,’ as classical music disappeared from US network TV, and 17 orchestras closed. Polemical journalist and music critic Norman Lebrecht seemed to be making a career out of documenting classical’s decline, as he penned the books ‘Who Killed Classical Music’ and ‘Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: the secret life and shameful death of classical music.’

Although widely criticised and denigrated by the high priests of the classical world, there was a harsh element of truth in Lebrecht’s assertion that it was the promotion of a ‘star’ culture for soloists and conductors that had contributed to classical’s decline. He shone a light on some unsavoury practices and inequalities that riddled the system, and highlighted the weakness inherent in a business where the chosen few — such as super-agent Ronald Wilford of Columbia Artists Management (who controls the careers of more than 100 conductors) — wield disproportionate power.

The only dispute about classical music seemed to be whether it was dying or already in the coffin.

So what went wrong? More effective recording technology offered a method of comparative evaluation not available to earlier performers, and not anticipated May/June 2008

business by composers of former centuries. Tenors measured themselves against Caruso, pianists benchmarked Rubinstein, and during the post-War period hubris prompted conductors like Von Karajan to deliver ‘definitive’ performances of famous works. Modern vibrato technique teaching plus entrenched ideas about mic placement and application of reverb only led in one direction: a succession of similar sounding recordings of the same works released over the last 30 years.

Compare this with the stark differences in performer’s readings from earlier recordings — for example, the Ricci/Sargent/New Symphony recording of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in 1950 compared with Heifetz/Reiner in 1939. Lebrecht mourns the passing of this interpretive tradition, which he describes as ‘a scatty riff of finger fliers who renew familiar masterpieces with the magnetism of real

May/June 2008

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personality.’ An unhealthy recent concentration on a particular canon of classical music resulted in a gross oversupply of premium-priced recordings. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons had been largely forgotten about until a manuscript discovery in 1926, yet now there are over 400 recordings, with at least 100 CDs currently available. There’s possibly an element of the virtuous circle in this, but how many Beethoven’s 5ths do we really need? We might choose Kleiber/Vienna (now on SACD), Furtwangler/Berlin, Klemperer/Philharmonia and Bruno Walter ... so where does that leave the other 200 recordings of the late 20th century?

But just when this gloomy outlook and A&R mistakes had caused classical to be written off by most senior executives, a boost has come from an unexpected quarter: classical turns out to be the fastest-growing music genre in the digital music space. According to Nielsen Soundscan, classical

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download sales grew by 22.5% in 2006, and digital download classical album sales rocketed 47% in 2007, accounting for 7% of the genre’s 18m total album sales, up from 4.4% the previous year. Total classical album download sales breached the million mark for the first time, shifting a total of 1.2m units. The album Appassionata, released last year by renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, achieved the all-time highest percentage of first week digital sales for a Billboard Top 200 release on Sony BMG, as well as peaking at number two on iTunes’ overall album charts. It finished the week in fourth place with 57.1% of all sales being by download.

Sony Classical were inspired by this success to create a podcast series based around the Appasionata album, which was then featured on iTunes’ podcast page. ‘Classical music over-indexes a great deal more over the figures commonly quoted for physical retail,’ says Chris Bell, the director of world-wide product and music marketing at iTunes, referring to the 3-4% market share that has been the norm for classical over many years.

The reason for this out-performance online has no definitive explanation, but common sense suggests several plausible reasons. If you wish to buy anything more than the blandest or most budget of classical CDs from a shop, you need to make a journey to a megastore or specialist where there’s a dedicated classical department — such as HMV in Oxford Street, London — and the closure of the Tower Records chain two years ago deprived most US citizens of access to such retail meccas. There may still be downsides to visiting such bricks-and-mortar havens of high fidelity and classical acumen. It might be termed ‘shopper humiliation risk’. In the hushed and air-conditioned calm of the classical department, the knowledgeable customer approaches a counter and asks: ‘Have you by any chance got the ’70’s recording of Il Trovatore with Placido Domingo and Fiorenza Cossotto?’ Without missing a beat, the assistant icks a withering glance over his horn rims and asks: ‘Was it the Red Seal or newer ORF recording you were after?’ The customer’s face begins to colour as he realises he will have to confess complete and abject ignorance of the existence of a second recording of the opera with both famous singers, much less one that features the Vienna State Opera with von Karajan conducting ... ‘Classical music retail is an intimidating environment,’ LSO label boss Chaz Jenkins says. ‘With digital, you can experiment and listen to new music in your own time.’ The London Symphony Orchestra’s 8-year-old label, LSO Live, which has offered digital versions of its recordings via iTunes since 2005, says it now sells more downloads than CDs in the US. ‘An interesting fact I recently uncovered is that, when you look at different genres in terms of sharing and cross-pollination, there’s more dabbling going on than you might expect,’ explains Chris Bell. ‘We sell

almost as much hip-hop to classical buyers [on the iTunes store] as we do jazz. We’ve made iTunes a safe place to try classical music. It is easy to sample and the buying is low-risk.’ David Pakman, CEO of eMusic, reports similar customer behaviour: ‘Classical represents 12% of our sales in Europe and the US is not far behind. Our subscriber base has always been passionate about discovering music outside the mainstream and the free sampler statistics are a perfect example of how eMusic is able to increase sales of classical music and encourage consumers to discover great music outside the commercial mainstream, as well as outside of their preferred genres.’ The samplers Pakman mentions were an initiative started in late 2007, offering free downloads from the Harmonia Mundi and BIS labels, featuring performers such as Paul Lewis playing Beethoven Piano Sonatas and the excellent vocal ensemble Anonymous 4’s interpretations of American folk music. eMusic is the world’s second largest download retailer after iTunes, they have always sold non-DRM mp3s, with over 3m tracks available from independent labels only.

Higher quality audio may also prove a unique selling point for classical. Jonathan Gruber, VP of new media at UMG International’s classics and jazz division, says that recent availability of improved quality audio has drawn in core consumers.

Universal’s Deutsche Grammophon label has a new DRM-free webshop that offers around 2,500 albums — including over 600 out-of-print CDs — as 320kbps downloads for between $10.99 and $11.99 in 42 countries. At Magnatune, an independent online label featuring artists such as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, downloads come in five different formats, from WAV files to mp3s.

Shannon Coulter, Magnatune’s A&R director, says

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May/June 2008

business

AE22 Timing is everything

the WAV format is the most popular choice: ‘Real classical music fans tend to be audiophiles,’ she observes. The Philadelphia Orchestra sells downloads of its performances as non-compressed FLAC files, which feature double the encoding rate of the mp3s it also sells from its webstore. Christopher Amos, the orchestra’s director of electronic media, says about half of sales are in the FLAC format. ‘We’re dealing with a very sophisticated audience,’ he says, ‘we’ve had a lot of traction with specialists.’

Although it’s too early to trumpet a positive trend, the digital outperformance looks very good for classical. With the disappearance of many physical retail outlets, easy access to catalogue and deep catalogue (the so-called long tail phenomenon) must be playing a part.

Although I’ve not seen genre-precise numbers to support this assumption, there are some interesting statistics that suggest this may be the case.

Overall, catalogue sales for downloads are around 20% less than for current releases. But sales of older recordings are growing at a faster rate than for new releases: around 15% faster for catalogue (12-36 months old) and 10.5% faster for deep catalogue (over 36 months.) What’s more, this phenomenon of online classical growth doesn’t seem to be limited to digital.

Online classical-only CD retailer ArkivMusic posted a 30% year-onyear jump in sales for 2007. They are no Amazon –- think $1m in monthly sales rather than $1bn — but this is a specialist retailing from a decidedly plain, but informative, website selling only physical product. Founded in Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania not Gwent) in 2002, ArkivMusic started out as an innovative database of classical music, now it’s an online store with a catalogue of over 82,000 classical CDs, SACDs and DVDs. Recently Archiv has hit upon the inspired idea of licensing deleted classical albums from famous May/June 2008

imprints, and selling them as burnon-demand CDs in a special section of the online store. Although the quality of packaging is not up to the standard of the originals, CDs are supplied in standard jewel boxes with facsimiles of the original cover and tray card.

Liner notes are not included. ‘There are more out-of-print [recordings] than in-print ones,’ says Eric Feidner, CEO of ArkivMusic. ‘When we go into the deep catalogue of classical recordings, there are many recordings that do not have a demand of 1,000 or 2,000 units in the US, but they have a demand of 100 or 200 units,’ Feidner reveals. So if you hanker after the 1968 recording of Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philly playing Romeo & Juliet, you can buy the reissue version for $14.99.

There are now 5,518 titles in the ArkivCD range. Warner Classics, Sony BMG, Universal (Decca, Philips and Deutsche Grammophon), EMI (EMI Classics, Angel Records and Virgin Classics) are now all on board, as well as more than 20 independent labels.

At iTunes, it’s an easy hop between genres for some customers, many of whom would never even consider browsing the classical section of a traditional shop. Some who have snapped up the soundtrack for the film The Man Who Cried are also purchasing tracks by such diverse acts as Peter Bjorn & John and Right Said Fred(!).

Perhaps after hearing Osvaldo Golijov’s haunting score, they may buy his masterpiece The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. The backward-looking emptiness of post-War modernism generated a musical vacuum that sucked in Elvis, The Beatles and the entire art form that became pop music.

If classical is to live again, stunning contemporary composers like Golijov must finally be given their voice, and if the ones and zeros streaming down a broadband connection allow the genre to reinvent itself as a living art form, so much the better. ■ resolution

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know how

Getting foldback right No matter what the acoustic properties are of a recording space, and no matter how great may be the recorded sound, if the musicians cannot hear themselves clearly in it then they may not be able to perform at their best. PHILIP NEWELL looks at foldback.

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n the world of orchestral public performances, the ‘feedback’ (as many musicians call the reflected sound that helps them hear their own performances in the context of the other instruments) can be critical to the quality of the performance. Not all of the best-sounding concert halls are considered by the musicians to be easy to play in, and in some cases a better overall perception of the music by the public may arise in a hall where the musicians can play together easily, in the stage acoustic, even though the hall acoustic may not be of the highest quality. Somewhat similarly, in recording studios, the foldback is the stage acoustic in which the musicians are playing. Their performances can critically depend on how well they can hear themselves and the rest of the instruments, and if the performance is not good, then the quality of the microphones hardly matters: nor the preamps; nor anything.

Unfortunately, in many studios, the attention paid to getting appropriate foldback balances is minimal.

Often, the job is passed to the musicians themselves, with the recording personnel washing their hands of it. These days, it seems to me that there is lack of understanding of the importance of foldback. Well, I

say ‘these days’, but I remember times as a recording engineer when I was also dismissive about foldback balances. The foldback seemed to me to be little more than the means of allowing the musicians to keep in tune and in time. In those days (just before the Boer War, as it now seems) perhaps it was largely that the majority of studio musicians were consummate professionals, and if a ‘pop’ group couldn’t get the recording right then session musicians were often brought in to play on their behalf.

My attitude to foldback balances changed in a matter of minutes when, for the first time, I was sent into the studio to play on a track. I could never claim to be a good musician, but I was formally trained and I did play from time to time. It just so happened that one day I had an idea that I was having difficulty explaining, so the band told me to go and play the part myself. As it was, they liked it, but due to lack of experience, nerves, and probably other sentiments that no doubt affect many more of today’s recording musicians, who may not be able to play any better than I could back then, getting the foldback right was the only way that an acceptable performance could be coaxed out of me. I soon became all too

Figure 1. Constant voltage foldback system. N.B: if individual volume controls are used for each set of headphones, they should be potentiometers of about 600ohms, linear track, and should each be capable of dissipating at least 5W, or they will tend to burn up.

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aware of the importance of foldback to the musical performance, and I felt a bit ashamed of my prior lack of understanding of the musicians’ needs.

Back in those days, we usually used high impedance foldback systems, and what provoked this article was the fact that for the first time in around 20 years I have begun installing these systems again in the studios I have recently been designing, albeit in conjunction with the more typical systems of today.

The response to the installations has been very favourable, and to many people the idea has been perceived as something totally new.

The idea is shown in Figure 1. The foldback mix is made in the control room, usually via the auxiliary sends, and is then sent to a power amplifier of typically 50W into 8ohms. The amplifier output is sent to the studio, where distribution boxes allow many headphones of 400ohms impedance to be plugged in as needed. The high impedance of the headphones allows only about one Watt to be drawn from the amplifiers, so there is little risk of burnout or ear damage. As most modern amplifiers are considered to be constant-voltage sources (which means that the output voltage is not dependent on the load impedance), the volume level in any one set of headphones will not be affected as more are connected. Set the volume level on the first set of headphones and no change will be heard as ten or 20 more are connected in parallel.

A socket for headphones, on the same circuit, is provided alongside the mixing console, and whatever mix is heard on these headphones will be exactly the same in terms of mix and volume level as would be heard by the musicians in the studio. Traditionally, it could be the recording engineer, the assistant, the producer or a ‘spare’ member of the group who would do the mix, depending on their availability and experience. Often, it would be the producer, who would have a good idea of what would be required musically, and this would also leave the engineer(s) free to concentrate on the recording. This had two great benefits. First, time could be saved because the foldback could be adjusted while the recording levels were being set (and time saving could avoid musicians getting bored and frustrated while waiting too long to get started). Second, the producer could stay listening to the foldback during the performance, and could control not only the volume but also the appropriate balance of instruments in terms of how to ‘drive’ the music. For example, a certain drum in the kit could be emphasised to encourage all the musicians to follow a specific rhythm, in the way that a conductor leads an orchestra.

Using the wiring arrangement shown in Figure 2, by plugging the same distribution boxes into different sockets, either one stereo or two different mono mixes could be made. Often, two stereo amplifiers are used, allowing two stereo, one stereo and two mono, or four different mono mixes to be used simultaneously. This can be useful when a drummer needs a mix with little of the drums and much bass guitar, the bass guitarist needs the opposite, and the rest of the musicians need something a little more balanced overall. No extra equipment is required, things just get re-plugged.

The same patching arrangements are provided in the control room for whoever is making the balances.

It can be seen in Figures 1 and 2 that XLR connectors are being used. This is normally done to prevent short circuits on the amplifier outputs during the plugging/unplugging processes, as jacks often make short circuits as they are being connected and disconnected. The system also prevents typical, lower impedance headphones from being connected to the system, as these could draw more power from the May/June 2008

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know how amplifiers and either burn out, literally, or damage peoples’ ears with the excessive power levels.

Figure 3 shows a ‘tracking loudspeaker’ in use.

Many vocalists do not like wearing headphones while recording, so if a loudspeaker is judiciously placed facing them, a cardioid microphone is used, and the loudspeaker faces an absorbent surface, little of either the direct or reflected sound will enter the microphone. The loudspeaker is plugged in exactly as the headphones, but the 8-Ohm impedance will allow the full power to be drawn from the amplifier if

needed. The system is self-adjusting.

Typical headphones for use on these systems would be Beyerdynamic DT100, 400-Ohm models, see Figure 4. They are closed headphones. Despite the fact that many musicians prefer open headphones, they have two serious drawbacks due to their lack of isolation. When recording a group of musicians playing together, the precise mix to which each one is listening can be hard to assess from the control room because of the quantity of sound that the musicians can still hear directly from the instruments in the room

Figure 2. Wall socket arrangement for constant voltage foldback system. in the above arrangement, the headphones are wired with the positive of each capsule connected to pin 1 of the Xlr; the negative of the left-hand capsule to pin 2, and the positive of the right-hand capsule to pin 3. When plugged into the mono outlets (or into distribution boxes plugged into the mono outlets) the two capsules of each headset will be connected together, in parallel, from whichever mono channel of the amplifier they are connected to. in the stereo outlet, pins 2 and 3 are connected to different amplifier channels, so the signal in the headphones will appear in stereo.

in which they are playing. It can be difficult to get a clear, non ear-damaging mix for a drummer using open headphones when the acoustic sound from the kit can still be heard at full level. The other drawback relates to vocalists and players of quiet acoustic instruments. In these cases the ‘tizz-tizz’ of high frequencies in the foldback mix, or the sound of ‘click’ tracks, can enter the recording microphones, and they may become very noticeable when compressors or other effects are used in the final mix. It can be bad news when these sounds are only heard for the first

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 3. Use of tracking loudspeakers. in this situation, a directional microphone is used to record the vocalist, with a loudspeaker providing the foldback. a typical arrangement would be for the loudspeaker to be placed directly behind the microphone, and pointing towards an absorbent surface to control the amount of reflections of the foldback signal returning to the front of the microphone.

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Figure 7.

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know how time in a mastering studio. People want comfort, but sometimes the greater benefits need to be considered.

In days gone by, when the majority of recording vocalists could sing in tune (they had to, because Autotune systems did not exist), an occasional tendency to go sharp or flat was also sometimes corrected from the control room by means of the foldback system. If there was a tendency to go sharp on a certain note, then raising the voice in the foldback mix could sometimes cause the vocalist to back-off a little, and stay in tune. Conversely, a tendency to go flat could sometimes be corrected by reducing the vocal level, thus causing the vocalist to strain a little and perhaps pull up the pitch slightly.

There is still a lot to be said for having a recording team in the control room because one person doing everything can lead to a work overload, which precludes attention to the foldback.

In fact, it is probably this overload that has led to passing much of the foldback responsibility to the musicians. This can often work well with one-musician-at-a-time recording, but when many musicians are playing together a system such as that shown in Figure 5 can lead to anarchy in the studio. If the musicians are playing to different mixes and at different levels, then who is ‘conducting the orchestra’? They may all be going their separate ways. Some people like this system, but if a producer is supposed to be directing events it can remove a lot of control from his hands. Figure 6 shows a system that can restore some of this control, but the level at which each musician is listening is still unknown from the control room. However, one benefit of this system over that shown in Figure 1 is that different makes, models and impedances of headphones can be used because their differences in sensitivity can be compensated for by the individual volume controls.

With the ‘common power amplifier’ systems the different headphone sensitivities would give rise to different sound pressure levels in the ears.

Another variation on the theme of Figure 6 is shown in Figure 7, where a basic stereo mix is sent

from the control room but where the musicians can add various instruments to taste.

For the musicians, the foldback system is their working environment, and it can greatly affect their creativity. Stereo foldback can greatly ease the task of hearing the individual instruments, but multiple mono mixes can sometimes be more tailor-made to the requirements of individuals. In many studios the musicians can make their own foldback mixes, but this can run the risk of them not all playing to the same rhythm. Which system is the best is very dependent upon circumstances. With large numbers of musicians, the system shown in Figure 1 still reigns supreme, but when recording the instruments individually, or in smaller groups, which system is preferable can depend on the relative experience of the people in the studio or the control room, not only in terms of making foldback mixes but also their prior knowledge of the music to be

recorded and their work load.

Many experienced recording engineers are shocked when they hear what some less-experienced musicians have been mixing for themselves in the studio.

Conversely, many experienced musicians are appalled when they hear what they have been sent from inexperienced recording engineers in the control room.

Getting the foldback balance(s) right is a fundamental necessity for any good recording. Think of it in terms of the stage monitors at a concert. It doesn’t matter how good the front-of-house engineer is if the musicians are not playing well on stage. The stage mixes can be so important that the monitor mixers may even be considered to be part of the band. ■ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Sergio Castro for the drawings, which were taken from Recording Studio Design, Second Edition, Focal Press, Oxford, UK (2008).

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Figure 4. the author, with dt100 headphones and a charango, in the Silo, london, in February 1983.

(Hasn’t aged a day. Ed) May/June 2008

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ten

US recording centres Music recording in America has always been a peripatetic proposition. Granted, New York and Los Angeles have been the epicentres of the money (and in LA’s case, the occasional earthquake), but they are only two of a long and varied succession of music recording centres in the country, most of which have fizzled completely. Then again, says DAN DALEY, it’s a big country and you gotta be someplace, I suppose.

B R I S T O L (TENNESSEE) — Worthy of

note as the first instance of remote recording — and this place is pretty damned remote. In 1927, Ralph Peer, a record producer for the Victor label in New York, journeyed into the rustic North-eastern corner of the state and did the first recordings of legendary hillbillies (and I use that term endearingly) like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family. Peer paid them US$50 per song, which was pretty good coin for those days. But it couldn’t last: once the Grand Ole Opry, which began broadcasting on WSM out of Nashville in 1925, got traction, it became the magnet for country music for the rest of the century. Bristol’s motto is ‘A Great Place To Live’. Just not a great place to record.

MUSCLE SHOALS — The Petri dish

for modern R&B and a place so cool that the Rolling Stones jetted in back in 1970 to track four songs from Sticky Fingers. For one gorgeous decade, from 1965 to 1975, the studios in this tiny cluster of four cotton-pickin’ towns in northern Alabama, including FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound, buzzed with a who’s who of the music industry, attracting the likes of Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd. Wha’ happened? The controlling personality and legendary stinginess of producer and publisher Rick Hall, owner of FAME Studios and arguably the motor beneath Muscle Shoals’ bonnet, caused many of Muscle Shoals’ musicians to flee to Nashville’s higher pay.

MINNEAPOLIS — Prince, Morris

Day and the Time, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. First off, how did this many talented African-Americans wind up in a place that was settled by Scandinavians and is covered in snow for much of the year? That’s easy — their grandparents and parents were part of the mass migration from the South drawn northward during two world wars to fill factory jobs. But why aren’t Paisley Park and its minions still the centre of the R&B universe? ‘A city’s only as good as its people,’ says my friend David Z, Paisley Park’s chief engineer back in the day. Exit Jimmy and Terry to LA, Prince to Toronto for a while. You get the picture.

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WOODSTOCK (NEW YORK) — Synonymous

with the famous rolling-in-the-mud festival of 1969, Bob Dylan manager Albert Grossman opened Bearsville Studios in Woodstock that same year. It became and remained a rural Mecca for hundreds of artists over the next 20 years, but decline set in after Grossman’s death in 1986. Worse, rising real estate values turned what was once a genuine arts community into a generic, artsy-craftsy weekend retreat for affluent cityfolk. Big Pink, The Band’s home there, had simply gone Big Beige.

S E A T T L E — Relentless

precipitation and lack of sunshine make this city the west of Ireland but with more caffeine.

Small wonder that such an environment attracted angst-ridden grungers like Nirvana and Soundgarden. But the main studio in town, Reciprocal Recording, might have been a bit too grungy. Once mainstream success occurred in the wake of Nirvana’s Nevermind, Seattle’s talent base headed for cities with more Neumanns.

MEMPHIS — Pretty

much the same story as Muscle Shoals: Nashville’s better money, thanks to the Columbia, Decca and RCA marques being there and an aggressive musicians’ union local, lured key players like Tommy Cogbill, Reggie Young and Steve Cropper away from the studios that had made history: American, Goldwax and Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, where Elvis Presley first recorded. But they still have Graceland…

black middle class to the town after WWII. Homeboy and the King of New Jack Swing, producer Teddy Riley, bought the two-room Future Recording studio there in 1991. It became a hub not only for his productions, including Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown and New Kids On The Block, but also a boot camp for the next generation: Missy Elliot has a house there and the Neptunes and Timbaland made it home base for their own studios. What happened? Riley went bankrupt in 2002, joining co-poster boy MC Hammer in the ‘WTF-did-you-do-with-all-your-money?’ club.

The studio is now on the block to pay off creditors and back taxes. As for everyone else, it turned out to be much more fun to bling people from your Maybach in Miami, where la paparazzi could get room service.

SAN FRANCISCO — What started it? Hippies. What

killed it? Hippies.

VIRGINIA BEACH — This coastal resort

town was once so hot/cool that the London Daily Telegraph asked me to do an article on it. Its proximity to major US naval bases brought a resolution

MACON (GEORGIA) — Home of Capricorn Records, this hamlet south of Atlanta was the capital of Southern rock, where founder Phil Walden’s trailer park-ambient empire encompassed artists like Wet Willie, the Allman Brothers and the Marshall Tucker Band. Southern roots rock never went away, it just went elsewhere, like Austin and East Nashville, in a kind of redneck Diaspora. Urban decay set in, blighting the area and the record label’s studio — my last pass through Macon saw the building standing but utterly trashed. As part of an announced US$29 million scheme to build condos and a boutique hotel in the area, a planned restoration of the studio — as a museum — was included. Irony, anyone?

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this studio is anywhere and everywhere in America.

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facility

Pythagor Take a market that is enjoying expansion and you’ll find entrepreneurial spirit at work.

ZENON SCHOEPE visits a Moscow post house that has cornered feature dubbing in Russia.

T

he reason it is hard to talk about Russia today without referencing, at some stage, to the time before under the former regime is because the implications of the old system were so far reaching. While the sight of Muscovites queuing for

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State subsidised tickets to the ballet was a common occurrence that ensured its continued popularity today, they didn’t go to the cinema that often. In fact there weren’t many cinemas and there wasn’t much that people wanted to watch anyway. Russia now has

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a much healthier cinema culture, which means, of course, that somewhere there is postproduction work that needs to be done. While the State-owned Mosfilm film production and facilities operation stands as testament to the existence of a film industry in Russia, market forces have also cultured a commercial sector.

Chief among these is the curiously titled Pythagor digital recording and postproduction studio — a classical demonstration that given the space and some technology you can make it pay and enjoy an exemplary reputation for quality if your attitude and approach is right.

As with so much in Moscow, not everything is what it seems and rather than being housed in one of the Capital’s many modern looking new blocks, Pythagor is housed within a factory. It hasn’t taken over an entire former industrial building and converted it for its purposes, it has built its 800m2 multiroom complex within a floor and half of a mostly working light engineering factory. Not that you’d ever know once you are inside as this facility exudes a relaxed air of confidence and professionalism with welcoming staff and impressive rooms.

Described as probably the first studio in Moscow that used computers for audio, Pythagor now has seven studios including a Dolby theatre and specialises in dubbing of feature films. It started some 13 years ago, director Leonid Dragilev originally worked in TV — mostly in dubbing — and when Disney came to Russia he started working with them in a rented studio. He quickly created a studio of his own and toiled with all the inflexibility of a 24-track Tascam.

However, the first computer audio systems were coming into Russia and Leonid was torn between a Studer Dyaxis and Digidesign V1.12. Eventually he went with a 4-track Pro Tools system in one room at the Actor’s College near the Kremlin and had two studios and another Pro Tools within two years.

‘It was a very budget studio but we were the first studio in Moscow that didn’t have a conventional recorder or a console and ran picture from a card with the Pro Tools too,’ explains Leonid.

May/June 2008

facility They became popular with advertising companies and were involved with around 60% of Russian TV advertising but decided to start concentrating on dubbing into Russian for features and before long were making four dubbed films a year. ‘There was a time when there were hardly any cinemas here but gradually its popularity increased and then the majors came in,’ he says. ‘We didn’t have a Dolby studio, which was a bottle neck for us because there were only two Dolby studios in Moscow and both of those were at Mosfilm. So I mixed movies just about anywhere. Most of it was in Turkey, there’s a wonderful studio at Imaj in Istanbul and they had Pro Tools with all the plug-ins, which meant I could make premixes in my studios and take it there to final finish it. That was cheaper than using Mosfilm even including the hotel and the flight.

But we needed more studios because the clients kept coming and we had too many projects.’

They moved to the current site three years ago and went from two rooms to five, including a Dolby theatre, and from Mix to HD and to 1Gbit Ethernet in one jump. A year ago, another recording studio was added on another floor along with a room identical to the first Dolby room but which hasn’t been certified and is used for preparation mixes. Pythagor has mixing and edit rooms for 5.1, Foley and ADR, and a music recording room with a piano — important because they record music for cinema and TV and all the engineers are from a music academy.

Each room is Pro Tools HD and there are Icons in the two mix theatres. ‘When I planned this Dolby room I planned it with the Icon,’ says Leonid. ‘It’s quite cheap and I can put anybody who knows Pro Tools in front of it and he can start working — if he doesn’t know Icon then he can use the mouse.

There are five of us working on it now and it’s fine and the last girl who was on it came from using Pro

Tools LE before! She did everything with her own mouse because she hates trackballs but two weeks later she told me that Icon is faster. It suits our needs absolutely — we have everything in Pro Tools, we have a bunch of plug-ins and Icon really is very fast. We’re working mostly with dubbing and we’re

always short on the deadline — always — and Icon helps us a lot to make up the time. We’re doing around five movies a month now.’

The advertising work has dropped off on account of Pythagor now being too expensive for many clients and most of the advertising companies are now

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facility equipped with their own small rooms with a DAW. Pythagor has gone with the money and while Leonid says they are proudly audio-only, he has had requests from clients for some video editing capability, which he is thinking about.

They are also proud to have kept all their original staff so continuity and stability, that enormous advantage in any competitive environment, has been retained. They offer translations for all European languages and Japanese, Chinese and Korean with text adaptation, casting for actors and singers, dubbing director services and most importantly the creation of a dubbing team for a project of translator, lyricist, adapter, dub director, casting director and musical director. They work regularly for Disney, NBC Universal, Paramount, DreamWorks, WB and many others.

With the pick up in cinema in Russia their future growth looks assured but they don’t expect to be

seeing many Russian films at Pythagor. ‘It’s always a matter of elements that are beyond the postproduction

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66

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that we do — printing, location shooting, and so on,’ explains Leonid. ‘Russian companies prefer to work with one company that can give them it all and that’s why I don’t think we’ll be getting much Russian film work. For the Russian market, usually the guys who care about sound do come to us.’

The acoustic design is mostly self-done and Leonid says that he has maintained the same feel and acoustic in all the similarly sized rooms so operators can move from studio to studio with ease. What differentiates the rooms is individual colour themes. The music studio live area has variable acoustic panels on the walls. These are well-built ‘rooms within rooms’ that are really well isolated and they’re serious about it.

Leonid says that one of the rooms had to be renovated recently and placed on isolating springs as the factory, which was largely dormant when they moved in, had become a little busier and had set off structural noise transmission into the one room.

There’s a lot of Blue Sky monitoring throughout.

‘Every studio has them. They’re quite inexpensive but they’re also very good because the voice you hear in the edit studios is exactly the same voice you’ll hear in the Dolby room,’ he says. ‘So they’re important for dialogue and just what we need. You can’t use them for music though.

‘Normally a movie should take at least five days for recording and at least two days for mixing. On the other hand for War of the Worlds and Mission Impossible, recording took about a month and we mixed it at Skywalker. Projects vary and depend on how much they want to spend on getting it right,’ says Leonid.

Getting it right is clearly what Leonid considers to be the objective of their operation. ‘Russia is a very different market and it has different ideas about budgets. I travel a lot as a mixer and supervisor and they all ask me what console we have. When I say it’s an Icon and they ask why it isn’t a Harrison like they have, then I tell them it’s because we have a budget that they certainly don’t have,’ he says. ‘For us, I don’t think there could be any other choice for this money and this quality.’

The Icon fits the scale of the operation, its ambition and the depth of its pocket. It’s also a lot easier to get support for than the first Mac he bought in 1992. ‘I bought it from the US,’ remembers Leonid. ‘There was a 1Gb hard drive for around $2000. But Macs are so easy to use and they’re reliable. One of our co-ordinators joined us and she had never used a computer so we gave her an old Mac. After three months she phoned me and said that her mouse didn’t work. I told her to restart it and she said what does that mean? That says a lot about the reliability.’ ■

Contact PYtHaGor, moSCoW, rUSSia: Website: www.pythagor.ru

May/June 2008

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Phanthera: The Brilliant Character 67 26.04.2008 14:24:05 Uhr

technology

Lawo mc 56 2

Lawo has assembled a family of consoles that share core competencies but offer a spread on price. ZENON SCHOEPE takes a quick look at the latest and smallest addition.

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awo’s transformation as a console manufacturer now looks complete. Much of this may have been missed by users outside of its home German broadcast market but the brand has been working hard to reinvent itself while carefully retaining its family values. The brand was know up until relatively recently as a purveyor of large, modular, custom solutions and, it has to be said, with rather an ‘individual’ take on operational principles that caught the ear and the eye of its core market in German broadcasting. That all changed when it started to look at the export market and the arrival of the mc266 was radical from a number of different perspectives not least its relatively ‘fixed’ configuration and the way the thing looked. It didn’t look like a Lawo. The balance was slightly redressed with the launch of the mc290, which was its new flagship product — the type, size and scale of which most other manufacturers had not attempted for many years. I remember thinking at the time that it was heartening that a manufacturer could still build a desk that grand.

However, the 90 is a niche product in this day and age and it was inevitable that Lawo would turn

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its attention to a more mass market position below that occupied by the 66. So here we have the mc256 — the first five units of which will be employed at the Beijing Olympics with full roll out shipping starting in September.

You have to put the release of the 56 into a context of the other two desks because it now underpins Lawo’s new product range. It’s also interesting to observe that Lawo did not do what most manufactures do when they spin out new technology. It didn’t launch in to the top of its range with a flagship product that it then trickled down in subsequent iterations for different price points and market positions. Instead it launched into the middle of its range with the 66 — its BMW 5 Series. While I am unsure whether the 90 is a 6 or a 7 Series, I am certain that the mc256 represents Lawo’s 3 Series.

Of course, we are seeing a lot of activity at this level within the broadcast console market and that is because the market’s maturity is dictating it. The large organisations need digital desk technology at a level of sophistication and flexibility that corresponds to the complexity, channel count and throughput that their big productions require. Manufacturers

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are now also focusing on users further down the rankings, who are going digital perhaps for the first time, and on organisations that have rethought their infrastructures and have factored in more flexibility and more compact consoles. This is demonstrated by the fact that the 56 has been shown on a flightcase as part of a broadcast-to-go package in tune with the now real-life requirements of certain types of broadcasting.

Like all Lawo desks the 56 is a bundle of a worksurface, core and I-O resource. The back-end core is the same as that in the 66 and 90 and very little has changed in it since the introduction of the 90. However, when the 56 ships in September then it will incorporate a new router module in the core that will also house the control system for the desk. This is different from the 66 and 90 which house their control systems in their desk surfaces where there’s a computer with Ethernet and ATM connection to the core. In the 56 there are obvious cost saving implications for treating the worksurface purely as a remote controller.

Because of the use of the common HD core, this means a maximum of eight DSP cards for 384 fully equipped DSP channels running at 96kHz, 144 summing buses, MADI, ATM or AES connections at the core and analogue or digital I-O and control via Dallis. The routing matrix capacity spans from 3072 x 3072 to 8192 x 8192 mono channels. The desk is available in five frame sizes with 32 to 80 faders and there’s an option to expand with 16 or 32 fader bays.

The worksurface can also accommodate double fader rows and stereo PPMs or phase meters. It also has downlighting built in.

Visually the worksurface falls somewhere between the 66 and the 90 and while it is not as dark and sophisticated looking as the 66 (which I particularly like) it is not nearly as pale as a 90. The 56 looks best and most balanced to my eye when it has at least one fader bay either side of the centre section. These fader bays are significant in being 16-fader blocks and this pertains as much to ease of manufacturing as it does to any operational benefits. Lawo was, with the 56, not just trying to get the price down, it was also trying to get the size down. The space between faders is a little tighter than is traditional for Lawo, which doesn’t bother me, and it’s a very compact surface to get around.

Visually the biggest innovation for Lawo is the use of large touchscreens to cover channel information, metering and centre section feedback. This will look May/June 2008

technology pretty although the functionality is not quite in Soundtracs/Digico territory yet; Lawo is using the touchscreens as supplements to the physical controls.

They’ve looked at typical operational needs and kept physical controls for high-usage tasks and placed the less frequently used controls on the touchscreen.

Thus timecode-based automation controls, EQ bell/ shelving selection, and the specifics of whether you will see the parameter or its value displayed after you’ve touch-sensed a knob, for example, are touchscreen functions.

The 56 employs the same ‘reverse assignment’ principles of the other desk worksurfaces and takes them a little further. Attempts have been made to simplify operation as Lawo believes a different type of operator will be sitting in front of 56 than uses a 66, for example. The strip assignment buttons have been retained and the 56 is probably closest to the 66 in operational terms but it does incorporate some of the colour-coding principles introduced with the 90.

It only has two Free Controls per strip — the Gain control is always available on a top-most dedicated knob — and this possible limitation has been neatly addressed by the use of 16 user-programmable presets. These can be configured to display any combination of two parameters across all the Free Controls at the press of a button. There are also nice OLEDs on the strips, smaller than on the 90, of course, but giving 8 characters to play with. An Audio-follow-Video function is available on every channel as is Lawo’s General Purpose Channel, in which the channel’s controllers are disconnected from the processing and access instead the console’s MIDI and Ethernet interfaces with mapping to control DAWs and MIDI-controllable devices. Other concessions to space saving have seen the 56’s ‘fat channel’ fader

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replaced with a pot.

It’s not common knowledge, but dynamic and snapshot automation has been interchangeable between Lawo desks for years and the 56 joins the club. Apparently the software kernel on the different consoles has also been the same for some time although they have been confusingly differentiated by different release numbers. The release of the 56 has been used as an opportunity to underline this cross compatibility and all desk software across the range has now been aligned at 4.0.

Prices for a 56 start at around Euro 100,000 including the core and if you need to make comparisons to a 66 then, depending on how you configure it, the 66 will always be at least 30% more expensive.

Producing a bottom-of-your-range product is always a tough call for a manufacturer sensitive to

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the impact that can have on the other products in its portfolio. On the one hand it has to be different enough to justify a lower price tag; on the other it has to be similar enough to justify its membership of the family. Lawo has stopped a long way shy of short changing the buyer with a compromised product; in fact it could have gone a lot further and still have been in an operational comfort zone. It’s possibly significant that the 56 was apparently on the drawing board before the 90.

Given a brief encounter with the 56 there is little to dislike about it. The operational aspect is the only one that has been addressed in the creation of the 56 — there are no changes to the back end. The saving is made in producing a more compact and less controlrich worksurface that happily also fits in with new broadcasting models. ■

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slaying dragons

Wind instruments The use of air movement to create a musical sound is the basis of all wind instruments and the name suggests that the inspiration for their development probably came from sounds occurring naturally when the wind blows. JOHN WATKINSON continues his musical theme.

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proper understanding of how wind instruments work requires us to consider aerodynamics, or, to be more precise, a branch of that interesting subject known as aero-elasticity, in which the flexibility of a structure interacts with a non-steady air flow. The phenomenon that we strive to obtain in a musical instrument, because it is the source of sound, is the same one that we try to avoid in aircraft because it can result in break-up of the structure.

When an initially steady flow of air encounters an object, the result depends strongly on the shape of that object, as well as on its stiffness and mass distribution. Loosely speaking, air flows reasonably well around the front of the object, until the cross section begins to diminish. At some point after that 70

the flow will separate from the surface of the object, leaving a volume containing turbulent air between the object and the main flow. The pressure experienced by the object in the smooth flow is different in turbulent flow. If the position of the separation point moves, the force on the object will move.

With some shapes, the separation point will not stay still and there is an oscillating force on the object. If the object is not perfectly rigid, the change in force will cause it to flex. If that flexing causes the change of force to change further, there is an unstable condition and the system will flutter, sometimes to destruction.

The frequency or pitch of the oscillation can be determined using resonance. It is easy to produce a tone by blowing across the mouth of a bottle. The air resolution

mass in the neck and the compliance of the enclosed volume form a Helmholtz resonator. On initially blowing over the bottle neck, the sound produced is broad band, but the air mass in the neck of the bottle will respond only at the resonant frequency, and when it begins to oscillate, it modifies the airflow over the lip of the bottle in such a way that the excitation occurs at the resonant frequency.

The Helmholtz resonator only responds to one frequency, so it isn’t musically rich. In contrast, standing waves in pipes can exist at several musically related frequencies simultaneously, giving a more colourful sound.

The aerodynamically excited pipe, or flue, has no moving parts and is built with a sharp lip, or labium, over which the incident air supply flows. The flute works in the same way. The sound, particularly the onset, will be ‘chiffy’ as the initial broadband sound due to turbulence over the labium gradually gives way to the resonant frequency. The envelope of the sound increases gradually and continues until the wind ceases. The sound continues for a while as the resonance decays. The slow onset and sustain of this class makes a marked contrast with the powerful starting transient and decay of plucked string instruments.

The other major sound generating mechanism is the reed, named after the type of vegetation having a slim, flat, structure that can be made to vibrate if held in the hands in a certain way and blown by mouth.

In the organ pipe application, the reed is a flexible slightly curved plate, often of metal, that sits above a partially grooved component known as a shallot.

When the reed is relaxed, air can pass into the groove and thereby to the pipe. However, the forces on the reed due to air flow tend to close it down on to the shallot, sealing the groove and cutting off the air flow, so that the cycle starts again. In the pipe organ, the resonant frequency of the heavy reed determines the pitch and tuning is done by adjusting the effective length of the reed. The harmonica works in the same way, as do squeaky toys.

In other reed instruments, the reed is much lighter, and the pitch is primarily determined by the length of the associated pipe. In the clarinet, there is a single reed on one side of the mouthpiece; the latter performing the function of the shallot. In the oboe, there is no mouthpiece as such. Instead there are two reeds and the player blows air between them.

In brass instruments, there is no reed or labium per se. The player’s lips perform the function of the reed.

In all mouth-blown instruments, the sound is affected to a greater or lesser extent by the forces exerted by the player’s lips and by the air pressure. The general term is embouchure.

The reed or the player’s lips produce a type of excitation that is rich in harmonics and has a different colour to that of the flue. However, the excitation is only the beginning. The remainder of the instrument acts as a filter or equaliser that further modifies the colour. The remainder of the instrument may also serve to improve the coupling with ambient air and thereby increase the level.

An alternative method of producing more sound is to obtain the wind mechanically rather than from the player’s lungs. The accordion and the uilleann pipes work in this way. The operation of the accordion is self explanatory. In the uilleann pipes, the air supply comes from a bellows operated by the players elbow (uilleann is Gaelic for elbow) and is stored in a bladder similar to that used in the bagpipes. The harmonium gets its air supply from pedals. The organ requires a blower that might once have been a manually operated bellows worked by an assistant, May/June 2008

showcase but nowadays is electric.

Incorporating a pipe into the instrument allows a vast number of variations. Where compactness is a goal, the length of a single pipe may be changed to allow a musical scale. Having one pipe for each note allows chords to be played and produces a lot more Wellie.

Flues are naturally open at the mouth end and if also open at the other end, will produce strong even harmonics, because the open ends form antinodes. A stopped flue will have a node at the stop and so will produce strong odd harmonics.

Reed pipes are acoustically closed by the reed assembly and so the other end must be open.

They produce odd strong harmonics. Reed organ pipes often have a characteristic offset when the air valve closes. The sound from the pipe decays, but seems to rise again in one last little toot before the final decay. I don’t know the reason.

Narrow pipes tend to emphasise harmonics whereas wide pipes emphasise the fundamental.

Colour can also be adjusted by tapering the pipe.

The material also affects the tone, with high lead content alloys having a darker sound than pipes made from stiffer metals.

The pipe organ keyboard operates various ranks of pipes according to what stops are selected. As the valves are either open or closed, this is a binary logic problem. Originally solved mechanically, it then went to electrical operation using relays and finally to electronics. The well known console manufacturer Solid State Logic began by making organ control systems, hence the name.

The street organ that can pneumatically reproduce music recorded by holes punched in a medium is another forerunner of digital audio.

(It’s involved retraining of the monkeys. Ed) The simplest instrument is the traditional bugle.

Having a fixed length metal pipe, it can resonate only at the fundamental and a few harmonics.

The player selects one of the available notes by embouchure. With no moving parts, the bugle could survive as a military signalling device.

The length of the pipe can be changed in an infinitely variable way by moving a piston along it as in the Swanee whistle or by using a telescopic pipe as in the trombone. A set of fixed notes can be obtained by uncovering holes in the side that effectively short circuit some of the pipe as in the recorder. In an instrument that uncovers holes to select the note, the sound comes out of the hole, not from the end of the pipe. The small holes that a finger can cover or uncover form an impedance mismatch with the surrounding air and not much sound is radiated.

Such instruments tend to be quiet. Generally the pipe will be conical, thereby having a constant taper. Thus the width of the pipe at each hole is a constant proportion of the length, maintaining the same timbre for each note.

In most of the brass family extra lengths of pipe are switched in and out using valves. There are no holes and all of the sound emerges from the mouth. In this case it is possible to form the mouth into a horn-like shape that forms a better impedance match with the surrounding air and thereby produce more level, hence their position further away from the audience. This leads to the musician’s joke regarding the arrogance of certain conductors. What’s the difference between so-and-so’s orchestra and a cow? The cow has the horns at the front and the asshole at the back. ■ May/June 2008

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your business

Live Nation and the 360-degree turnaround We’re going to be talking about a different kind of producer this issue, one that will have a significant effect on all kinds of producers in the not-too-distant future. DAN DALEY says the son of Clear Channel has potential to do good or not.

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ive Nation, the world’s largest live concert producer, increased its revenues by 12.8% to US$4.2 billion, a year-over-year increase of US$473.3 million, according to its annual report released last March. Under Live Nation president and CEO Michael Rapino, the live music business is coming more to resemble Wall Street rather than Bleecker Street, at least from an operational point of view. When Rapino talks about music his tone is more like that of a City hedge fund manager than a Clive Davis or Doug Morris.

Listen to him wax poetic on how the concert touring business is changing — or more to the point, how he’s changing it: ‘During 2007, we made substantial progress in executing on our strategic plan to fully capitalise on our global leadership position in live music. We consolidated our global network and strengthened our core business through changes in how we drive revenue, manage our costs and measure our success. Our improved performance reflects early returns from the investments we made in transitioning our core business into a more focused, profit-driven organisation. We also made substantial progress in building an integrated platform aimed at further strengthening and monetising the relationship between artists, fans and sponsors — before, during and after live events. In the year ahead, we remain focused on driving our core business and implementing our plan to capitalise on the transformation of the global music industry.’

He’s not P T Barnum, or even Simon Cowell. But Live Nation is the biggest promoter in an industry that’s shown a compound annual growth rate of 15.5% since 2001, and which generated $3.6 billion in revenue in 2006, up from $1.8 billion in 2001, says Pollstar. This in an era when CD sales are plummeting 20% a year. In 2008, Rapino expects live concert touring and revenues to expand further, and plans initiatives to further build out Live Nation’s ticketing services. (The company will take ticketing completely in house starting 1 January 2009, ending

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your business the company’s deal with Ticketmaster. Instead, Live Nation announced a 10-year deal with Germanybased CTS Eventim, Europe’s largest ticketing company, which last year sold 60 million tickets to over 100,000 events in 17 countries.)

Michael Rapino may not be exciting but he’s no Guy Hands, who took over a barely breathing horse at EMI and then proceeded to beat it, demanding that his artists work harder for the good of the label. Rapino is actually building new infrastructure. The CTS Eventim is more than a snub to the historically obnoxious Ticketmaster; the deal allows Live Nation to collect data from those sales: consumers’ names, addresses, mobile numbers, preferences, MySpace links, and so on. All that data can be cross-colateralised (Only in America. Ed) with MusicToday, the fan management site Live Nation acquired in 2006. The company now has the concert production business as a lever to work in other directions, underscored by Rapino’s statement that, ‘Live Nation will use its most important asset, the concert ticket, to build artist careers and customer relationships….’

Onlookers tend to see the snatching of Madonna from Warner Records in 2007, and then Jay-Z earlier this year in an even bigger deal, as the windvane indicating Live Nation’s strategy going forward. But it’s not just about a high-profile signing for Rapino. While Live Nation is at first glance a live music proposition, Rapino is building a much more comprehensive infrastructure that could replace what’s left of the old-guard music industry. Aside from signing Madonna, Jay-Z and being in discussion with reportedly several dozen lesser lights for the company’s new record label, Live Nation also started its own recording studio group. The company’s vertical integration now includes fan club services, Internet content, publishing, touring, promotions, sponsorships and talent management. Rapino helped pioneer the concept of the 360 deal, in which the label participates in all revenue channels, from recordings to ticket sales to merchandising, in exchange for bigger royalty percentages.

According to Forbes, 75% of earnings for top moneymakers in the music industry in 2006 were earned from touring. That’s not going to last forever.

With the top grossing live tours now consisting mainly of classic rock acts from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, the end of that greying gravy train is already in sight. The ‘Steel Wheelchairs’ tour, perhaps?

Building out a comprehensive vertical infrastructure that can find, sign and develop new artists is critical for Live Nation going forward. It is, in fact, critical if there is to be a viable music business in the future.

Hubris, anyone?

Live Nation’s accomplishments are the stuff of moguls. Annually, Live Nation puts on more than 10,000 events at over 140 venues (many of which they also own) in 19 countries. Live Nation is the biggest promoter in the industry, according to Pollstar. Live Nation’s website is second only to that of Ticketmaster’s for unique visitors seeking artist and tour information. And as for selling tickets, Live Nation outsold their closest competitor, AEG, by a 3:1 ratio in 2007 — 27.9 million ducats to 8.5 million.

There’s one thing that the numbers don’t measure, though: hubris. Live Nation was spun off only three years ago from Clear Channel, a mega-corporation that had earned the industry’s enmity by creating focus group-generated pabulum-like playlists for their empire of radio stations across the US, stifling competition and institutionalising mediocrity. How much of that DNA still actively resides in Live Nation?

The ambition is there, as is the clarity of vision and the willingness to compete as well as the ability to May/June 2008

innovate. But so is the drive to be and stay number one. Live Nation continues to exercise the same leverage its erstwhile parent did in demanding that artists commit to their venues or play none of them at all. Aside from the 10-year, US$120 million Madonna deal, no one really knows what the terms of a Live Nation record deal are. Will everyone get 360 deals, or can there be a 270 deal, say, that leaves out one revenue component, like music publishing?

By extension, then, we also don’t know how those who produce records for Live Nation will fare, either.

Will the producer’s royalty remain part of a producer’s compensation? If, as has been the mode for some time now, producers continue to seek revenue by co-writing with the artist they are producing, will their share of the publishing revenues be affected by the artist having a 360-type deal with Live Nation? For that matter, how much control over the ‘product’ will Live Nation demand? The establishment of the recording studio division is telling. In the US, Sony Music was long the last holdout label owning a recording studio, till it cratered last year. EMI hangs on to Abbey Road as much for its historical, real estate and coffee mugsales value as anything else. In a market with a vast amount of low-cost recording overcapacity, where the technology is cheap and plentiful, why build recording studios? Unless, of course, you want to exercise a greater degree of control over what comes out of them.

Steve Jobs revolutionised the music business by developing a distribution system that acknowledged the fact that music was now an exchange of files, not discs. Despite some high-profile moves, Michael Rapino won’t be able to pull off anything as radically amazing as iTunes/iPod. David Kronemeyer, a former concert promoter and major label executive, laid out Live Nation’s potentially precarious financial position in his blog, where he notes that nearly a quarter of the company’s assets are attributed to ‘intangibles’ and ‘goodwill.’ States Kronemeyer, ‘Booking a $120 million long-term contractual commitment to Madonna… will increase Live Nation’s long-term liabilities by 29 percent. Put differently, if Madonna’s $120 million was shareholder’s equity, she would own 19 percent of the entire company. Which is ludicrous, and which is the reason why companies that survive from touring season to touring season — Live Nation’s business model — have no business making long-term contractual commitments that far exceed any reasonable revenue horizon…’

As long as live music continues its ascendancy as a money maker for the music business, Rapino and Live Nation are well-positioned. It might not have made a lot of economic sense to give $120 million to a 50-something Italian-American chick, but it gave Live Nation an enormous amount of bandwidth in the market of perception.

But a lot of Live Nation’s own bandwidth is going to be used up staying number one. A joint venture between LN’s jilted ex, Ticketmaster, and Cablevision (which owns Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, among other venues) is poised to acquire a 49% stake in AEG Live, Live Nation’s closest competitor. This brings AEG Live something that Live Nation doesn’t have: its own music video channel (Fuse TV) and teleproduction facilities.

When you look at the agents of change in the music business in recent years, you find them to be, like Jobs, Rapino, and even Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, financially astute and passionate about music.

You used to do the concert to promote the record; now, you distribute some songs to alert people to your upcoming tour. Change may be good, but it takes some getting used to. ■ resolution

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headroom PitCH aNd tUNiNG As a sound engineer with much experience of tuning issues, I’d like to add some observations to John Watkinson’s article on the subject (V7.3).

R e g a rd i n g t h e m a n y a l t e r n a t i v e u n e q u a l temperaments in use, typically with organs and harpsichords, there are digital tuners available offering some of the more popular options (e.g. Werckmeister III) thus saving the user the need to get bogged down in cents. There is no doubt that these subtle temperaments produce some distinctive sound colours which can be very pleasant indeed, while avoiding the occasional eye-watering dissonance of the earlier mean-tone temperaments.

However, even with equal temperament each key has its own flavour (although at first sight the maths might lead one to expect otherwise) and a variety of factors could play a part in this. The tuning beats generated by intervals other than octaves get faster, the higher up the scale they are played; many instruments vary significantly in tonal colour with pitch; indeed, since a degree of absolute pitch is involved with the recognition of vowel sounds, it may be that human hearing itself imparts distinctive colours to each key.

John rightly distinguishes between pitch (subjective) and frequency (objective). Although there is a general degree of agreement between the two it is certainly not absolute! For example, piano tuners frequently adjust the upper octave or two of a piano fractionally sharp, as this sounds more ‘correct’. Instruments with different harmonic structures can appear to be tuned to slightly different pitches when played one after the other, and yet there is no beat when played together.

Also, higher frequencies appear to fall in pitch as the sound level drops — a practical consequence of which is that unaccompanied choirs are more likely to gradually go flat in buildings which have a long HF decay.

The well-known choral conductor David Willcocks is widely quoted as saying ‘better sharp than out of tune’. My first choral experience some 45 years ago was in a local church choir which included a soprano (inevitably the most faithful attender!) who habitually sang sharp, to my considerable irritation, so this dictum didn’t find much favour with me back then.

However, over the years it has become apparent to me that, strictly in moderation, David Willcocks was right.

A solo voice or instrument sounds brighter and more vibrant when minutely sharp, particularly in relation to a keyboard accompaniment. Conversely, perfect tuning can sound bland or dull.

In choral music it’s very noticeable that even one or two singers slightly under the note can make the whole section sound flat, leading to a degree of frustration on the part of the ‘righteous majority’ when the conductor takes them to task. On numerous occasions I’ve been able to sweeten the odd note with the use of ‘surgical’ EQ to lessen the contribution of the offending minority. More surprisingly, on a few occasions I’ve successfully applied the same technique to a solo voice or instrument! This leads me to suppose that ‘real’ notes contain a slight spread of pitches (quite apart from any vibrato) which allowed me a degree of selectivity. I wonder if this ‘spread’ is lost with heavy use of Autotune, and contributes to the resulting synthetic quality?

Many instruments e.g. brass have inter nal inconsistencies of tuning which compound this issue and great care is needed to ensure that the residual discrepancies are northerly rather than southerly. Pitch can also be a function of the dynamic level — wind

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instruments and voices both tend to rise in pitch when louder. Thus considerable skill on the part of the performer is needed to compensate for all these factors to ensure a pleasing result. The combination of trumpet and organ in particular calls for immense skill.

Interestingly, the perception of pitch can be vertical (the relationship between all the notes currently sounding) and horizontal (the relationship between successive notes, typically in a single part). In the case of a solo line, such as with trumpet and organ, the horizontal aspect often predominates, so that it is possible to tweak the pitch of an individual trumpet note and the ear does not register the shift in organ pitch at all!

I have also observed that proximity to the sound source can affect the perception of pitch. For example, when recording a piece for viola and organ, the viola was consistently slightly flat over the monitors, yet it sounded fine to the performer, right next to his left ear. When he came through to the control room he instantly agreed that it was indeed flat. The solution was to give him a pair of headphones so he could hear the recorded mix — instant success. Singers have a particular difficulty in that they hear their own voices as much internally as externally, and sadly the two routes don’t always subjectively agree, which typically results in flatness. Much diplomacy can be called for on the part of the producer in avoiding the dreaded ‘F’ word.

One of my pet gripes is that music students are insufficiently coached in the art of tuning their instruments. At music competitions it’s all too common for the candidate to look questioningly at the accompanist for guidance as to whether they’re sharp or flat. I have to say the answer they get is not always correct, either. In this age of digital tuners it is a simple matter to learn about the tuning eccentricities of your instrument, and educate your ear in the process, so that you can make your own judgments. Imagine how much sweeter the school orchestra would sound if they all knew how to tune their instruments!

Having said which, it should be apparent that I’m not advocating an obsessive dependence on digital tuners — however, they can be a very valuable tool. You probably have already experienced how utterly bland and robotic a basic MIDI realisation of piece can sound (having said which, I’ve heard some superb examples from expert hands!). That sort of ‘perfection’, in terms of uniformity of pitch, tempo, and dynamic level, is simply not musical.

It is the subtle and controlled degrees of ‘imperfection’ which make for a really great performance. This is widely appreciated in relation to tempo and dynamics, but perhaps less so in the area of pitch.

David Wright, Gemini Sound, Southwell, UK

SPooliNG lEadEr Just wanted to say how much I, and my lads, enjoyed your leader article this month (ears vs plug-in EQ).

Couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, your leader is the first thing I read every issue... don’t ever hand it over to another writer. Keep it up.

Alex Murray, Welshpool, UK I pretty much always liked your leaders. But the current one (V7.3) beats it — couldn’t agree more! I have organised a panel at AES Amsterdam with the title: ‘Wow, this sounds great!’ about our criteria for quality (audio quality in particular), also within other fields — I have enough great panelists already, but you are top of the list for a possible further session in the future.

Keep them coming like this! That had to be said.

Florian Camerer, ORF, Vienna, Austria

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Where can I download a copy of this Trombone Hero of which you speak so glowingly? (Headroom V7.3) According to my golf tutor my arms are not of appropriate length for mastering of the trombone therefore I must resort to software-solutions. Will it run on OSX 10.5.2 and still be compatible with all my plug-ins including AcidTripSpectacular for Photoshop and FighterAce 3.0?

Also, do you know anyone at Fostex who can explain why the output of their MR-8 MkII multitracker is sufficient only to drive the inputs of their PM0.5 Active Monitor loudspeakers to the barest whisper, even with both loudspeakers’ input gain level knobs cranked round to 11 out of 10 (try this with any normal mixing desk and you will find the mid/bass cones embedded in your skull)? Do people who toil within such companies generally operate a policy of talking to each other?

Did the designers of Roland’s D10 synthesiser ever talk to the sullen mystic who wrote the manual for it, but who had never tried to edit a sound, let alone compose music, on it?

Thank you for a brighter Thursday morning.

Mike Lethby, Horsham, UK

advertiser index Acoustic Energy ................................................ 57 Also Dynax ........................................Classified 71 Audient.............................................................. 32 Audio Technica .................................................. 44 Calrec ................................................................ 23 Cedar Audio .................... Outside Back Cover 76 Dangerous ......................................................... 47 Digico ................................................................ 03 Digidesign ......................................................... 27 Euphonix ........................................................... 35 Fairlight ............................................................. 65 Fostex................................................................ 20 Funky Junk ........................................Classified 71 Genelec ..............................Inside Front Cover 02 Georg Neumann ............................................... 53 Grace ................................................................. 29 IBC ..................................................................... 59 Josephson ......................................................... 67 Klark Teknik ....................................................... 31 Klein + Hummel ................................................ 43 KMR ...................................................Classified 71 Lawo .................................................................. 07 Lydkraft ............................................................. 18 M-Audio ............................................................ 56 McDSP ............................................................... 49 Merging ............................................................. 48 Microtech Gefell ............................................... 69 Millennia ............................................................ 13 Prism Sound ...................................................... 67 Radial ................................................................. 36 RND ................................................................... 73 RSS .................................................................... 41 Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup ................... 09 Schoeps ............................................................. 17 SCV London ...................................................... 66 SEA Brauner ...................................................... 67 SIS Recruitment................................................. 67 Sonic Apogee.................................................... 61 Sonic Rupert Neve Designs .............................. 19 Sonic SE............................................................. 55 Sonic Waves ...................................................... 39 Sonifex .............................................................. 72 Sonnox .............................................................. 51 Source/Universal Audio .................................... 21 SSL ..................................................................... 25 Studio Spares .................................................... 63 TL Audio ..............................Inside Back Cover 75 TL Commerce ....................................Classified 71 Tonelux .............................................................. 11 Trinnov ............................................................... 15 Vertigo...............................................Classified 71 Vintage King...................................................... 45

May/June 2008

FatTrack

Coolest Solution, Warmest Sound.

The complete solution for tracking, summing and monitoring. The Fat Track Tube Production Suite offers everything you need to make the best recordings, in a stylish and compact unit. Place this at the heart of your DAW to deliver professional results with the richness, warmth and clarity that only tubes can. TL Audio’s new Fat Track is exactly what you need to improve your digital audio and make great sounding recordings a great deal easier.

Main Features 2 multi input channels (mic/line/inst) • 3 band EQ with swept mid on each channel • Direct outputs • 2 headphone outputs • Balanced inserts on channels and master • I/O switchable +4 /-10 • 4 stereo plus 2 mono returns for summing • Effects send / return • Alternative speaker mode • Optional ADAT I/O

PASSIONATE ABOUT TUBES

Tel: +44 (0)1462 492090 Email: info@tlaudio.co.uk Web: www.tlaudio.co.uk