Resolution V7.5 July/August 2008 by Resolution

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

v7.5 JUlY/aUGUSt 2008

The Laurie Latham interview Ten albums every aspiring songwriter should listen to Paul Epworth: spanning genres and disciplines Merging’s MassCore technology explained Music’s new economy — you’d be surprised ■ Audio at the Beijing Games Supplement ■ rEviEWS: Alternate Soundings Dynax2 • Solid State Logic Matrix Focusrite ISA One • TL Audio Fat Track • Brauner Phanthera V

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

v7.5 JUlY/aUGUSt 2008

iSSN 1477-4216

News & Analysis 6

leader

News

Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.

Products

New introductions and announcements.

Beijing Games news

Headroom

Screen size Vs SPL continued.

Craft

the wizardry of televised sports

The role of host broadcaster is crucial to the success of a large televised sporting event. We look at the infrastructure beneath track and ﬁ eld coverage.

Bob dixon

the sound of competition

The NBC Olympics director of sound design and communications talks us through their solutions and planning for the Games. Audio is ﬁ nally coming of age with the advance of HD and sport is the perfect vehicle to showcase it.

Keeping people talking

Satisfying the intercoms demands of the Beijing Games is a medal-winning achievement in itself.

laurie latham

His earlier output has aged better than most, he tells us why he’s not into taperecording ideas; he’s into making records.

Paul Epworth

A young producer who spans genres and disciplines with equal success explains how and why he does it.

ten

Albums every aspiring songwriter should listen to.

taylor made Broadcasts

The OB van that is used for BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time programme has had a complete reﬁ t and update.

Business

music’s new economy

We know that the old model is broken. We look at the curves and the predictions and are surprised by the pattern.

Your business

The live industry may be rolling but it is dependent on artists of advancing age. Daley asks who will follow.

Technology

massCore explained

Merging’s technology is billed as the quantum leap forward in processing power that the industry has been waiting for.

Slaying dragons

Continuing his musical instrument theme, John bangs that drum and trills on that funky Marimba.

Reviews 17

Solid State logic matrix

Brauner Phanthera v

alternate Soundings dynax2

Chandler Germanium Preamp/di

Focusrite iSa one

tl audio Fat track

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

tC Electronic PowerCore X8

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 C E D A R A U D I O h a s appointed Tom Carter as manager of its Forensic Audio division. Formerly a Norfolk Constabulary technical ofﬁ cer, he has more than four year’s experience in forensic audio investigation. JUERGEN BOPST has been appointed general manager, Studer, based i n R e g e n s d o r f a n d reporting directly to Andy Trott, president of Soundcraft and Studer. Bruno Hochstrasser remains executive VP of sales for Soundcraft and Studer. Bopst has previously worked for ITT, Dover and Vishay. EUPHONIX HAS a p p o i n t e d D o m i n i c J a c o b s o n a s s a l e s m a n a g e r f o r t h e Mediterranean, India, Africa and the Middle East. He takes the reins from Mark Hosking who will now assume the role of sales manager for the UK, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia and Benelux regions. Jacobson was previously an audio media software and broadcast technical consultant for Sony Business Europe.

leader

anyone who attended the aES Pro audio Expo and Convention in amsterdam in may would have to concede that its mood and feel was quite at odds with that of other trade shows. at a time when all industry exhibitions are vibrant, proactive and expanding, the amsterdam event was ﬂat, sluggish, small and frankly very disappointing. Few will argue about the validity of the aES as a standards body and a doer of good for the audio industry. it runs exhibitions in Europe and the US each year and the US event has a completely different feel to it; it recently reinvigorated itself with a successful drive to raise the numbers of young people attending. that’s a stark contrast to the aisles in amsterdam. the papers and workshops programmes are all well and good –- bigger and better, we are constantly told -- but it is the exhibition that is the commercial front-line for the gathering. Exhibitors attend not so they feel good about supporting academic research that may one day trickle down to actual product, but to do business. trade shows are markets, places where people can see all the products in a given category, and aES shows should be strong in this respect because they are audio-only. Yet the exhibition side of the aES in Europe has consistently shrunk each year since the new millennium. Somebody is not watching the ball. amsterdam was the smallest aES exhibition i have ever been to. i was prepared for it but i would have been peeved if i’d ﬂown in specially to hone my big buying decision only to find a lot of manufacturers absent. What to do? Well you can argue about the wisdom of holding a small audio show in the Netherlands when there was another vibrant iSE exhibition there in January and there will be another vibrant iBC there in September. Similarly you can question next year’s venue of munich in may when there will have been tonmeistertagung in November and Frankfurt Prolight + Sound in april. But really you have to question where the hell the organisers think they are going with the aES Exhibition in Europe because i can’t work it out. they appear to be in denial. the organisers should talk immediately and publicly to the exhibitors, gaining their input and answering their objections. they should also reappraise the format of the show with regard to the programme and exhibition, its duration and venue choices, and they should market and sell the event professionally and well in advance. the aES needs to be seen to be doing something about its Convention in Europe fast. i remember the rapid decline of the aPrS exhibition in the UK and i’m telling you that the aES Exhibition and Expo in Europe has a similar smell about it. Zenon Schoepe

Bain Capital to acquire D&M Holdings RTW HAS appointed Inka Danielmeyer as sales engineer, replacing Claudia Haase who has worked with RTW for eight years and is leaving to pursue personal and professional opportunities in the US. Danielmeyer joins from Junger Audio where she was charged with developing sales presentations and overseeing press coverage and participation in trade shows for the German and Scandinavian markets. ERIKSON AUDIO has been named Ableton’s exclusive distributor in Canada.

©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

D&M Holdings and Bain Capital Partners have entered into an agreement under which an acquisition corporation, owned by investment funds advised by Bain Capital Partners LLC, will launch a tender offer for all of the shares of D&M Holdings at a price of 510 yen per share of common stock. Following the completion of the tender offer process, the shares of D&M Holdings would be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. D&M Holdings is a global operating company that provides worldwide management and distribution platforms for brands that include Denon, Marantz, Calrec Audio, and Allen & Heath. ‘After an exhaustive review of strategic options, we have determined that this

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.

offer from Bain Capital represents the best overall value for our shareholders. The next few years should be an exciting time for D&M as we enter another phase in our development,’ said chairman and CEO Eric Evans. ‘If Bain Capital acquires D&M through the tender offer, we believe we will be better positioned as a privately held company to be more ﬂ exible in the fast-paced changing markets in which we compete. We will also have wider latitude to invest for medium- and long-term growth.’ The Company intends to continue its ‘active pursuit of acquisitions and growth’ in the consumer, commercial and automotive audio video businesses.

S2 Publications ltd. registered in England and Wales. Company number: 4375084. registered office: Equity House, 128-136 High Street, Edgware, middlesex Ha8 7tt.

resolution

Belden to acquire wireless trapeze Networks

Belden has entered into an agreement to acquire Trapeze Networks, a provider of WLAN equipment and management software, for US$133 million in cash. The acquisition builds on Belden’s position as a ‘complete signal transmission solutions provider’. The acquisition will make Belden the world’s largest unified wired and wireless solutions provider. ‘Belden’s strategic vision is to provide the best signal transmission solutions to our customers regardless of technology,’ said John Stroup, president and CEO of Belden. ‘We believe the acquisition of Trapeze Networks uniquely positions Belden to offer our enterprise customers tailored connectivity solutions that benefi t from blending the strengths of copper, fi bre and wireless technologies. ‘We believe we are at an infl ection point in enterprise wireless LAN expansion, a market that is already growing nearly 25% per year, and that wireless connectivity is no longer considered a luxury but is a customer expectation,’ added Stroup.

Sound technology acquires UK Harman Pro distribution Harman International has sold its United Kingdom and Ireland distribution business for the company’s Professional Group to Sound Technology, Hertfordshire. The agreement transfers to Sound Technology a team of sales professionals and distribution rights for JBL Professional, Crown, Soundcraft, AKG, dbx, BSS Audio and Lexicon products in the UK and Ireland. ‘Sound Technology is a premier pro audio distribution business in the UK and Ireland with strong market knowledge and a commitment to selling systems across Harman’s served vertical markets,’ said Blake Augsburger, Harman Professional CEO. ‘This direct-to-third-party shift provides Harman the entrepreneurial drive necessary to support its international goto-market strategy.’

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July/August 2008

news Cadac in administration Cadac Electronics has been placed into administration following ‘a sudden and unexpected fall-off in anticipated sales of the company’s analogue products’. Having recovered from its financial difficulties of the last three years, Cadac was close to putting its new digital console into production to fulfil an anticipated order book of approximately UK£2m. ‘Although additional bank finance had been put in place to complete the S-Digital development and to get its production under way, the sudden slump in forecast analogue sales over the next few months meant that Cadac would be unable to maintain the underlying cashﬂ ow necessary for its survival,’ said Cadac MD Bob Thomas. ‘Unless we can ﬁ nd a buyer for the company, the S-Digital, which is thought by many to be the best-sounding digital console ever developed, will disappear, along with Cadac.’ The directors are hopeful that buyers can be found for Cadac, as not only is the S-Digital console approaching production, but the sales, service, refurbishment and new production of Cadac’s analogue desks is an on-going business. Anthony Kent of Maidment Judd, Harpenden, has been appointed as administrator.

Yamaha to acquire Nexo Yamaha Corporation has made an offer to the founders of French Loudspeaker c o m p a n y N e x o t o a c q u i re a l l o f their shares. After c o m p l e t i o n o f t h i s transaction, Yamaha’s share holding would rise to 74.9% of the share capital and Yamaha intends to seek to acquire 100% of Nexo shares through the launching of a tender offer process on the ﬁ nancial market on which Nexo’s shares are listed. Yamaha purchased a 10.22% interest in Nexo in 2005 and entered into a strategic alliance with the company. They combined their know-how to develop the NXAMP Powered Digital TD controller and joined forces to strengthen their capabilities for providing better system solutions for their clients. Yamaha had come to the conclusion that its joint activities with Nexo would generate results at a substantially accelerated pace if the two companies could work in closer cooperation. Accordingly, Yamaha then took steps towards making Nexo a wholly owned subsidiary of the Yamaha Group.

Schmitt turns on to Bricasti

Schmitt (right) with assistant Steve Genewick in Capitol Recording Studio A.

multiple Grammy recipient al Schmitt recently completed sessions at Capitol recording Studios with singer Natalie Cole using his new Bricasti model 7 stereo reverb processor. ‘the m7’s clarity and ease of use are outstanding,’ said the engineer/producer. ‘on muted brass, trumpets and vocals, in particular, the model 7 is unmatchable. For me, it’s a major breakthrough.’ Schmitt’s first experience with the model 7 came during tracking sessions with Natalie Cole. ‘i had borrowed a unit from Summit audio [Bricasti US distributor] to try out on the dates. i liked the reverb processor so much that i ended up purchasing one for myself. an external reverb like the Bricasti model 7 is perfect for the way i work. i can quickly store and recall settings via the user-friendly front-panel layout.’

appointments CALREC HAS appointed Peter Harrison as sales manager for the UK. He joined Calrec in 2004 as regional sales manager i n t h e U S A . S a l e s manager Dave Letson has assumed sole responsibility for mainland Europe with sales executive Jimmy Green taking responsibility for Africa and the Middle East. JOHN STEVEN has left Sennheiser UK, having been its director of marketing for eight years, to start and run his own company, John Steven PR. He will continue working with Sennheiser UK on a freelance basis on various special projects, including assisting general manager Phil Massey with the company’s ongoing involvement with the National Film and Television School and the Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts. LAWO HAS appointed Michael Mueller to the position of US sales and marketing manager. After his initial sales position with Audio Techniques in the 1980s, he has worked for Siemens Audio/AMS-Neve, Solid State Logic, and Fairlight USA.

Shree Lakshmi Munro ﬁlm mix room

(l-r) Harris, Moss, Williams, Jones, Tavaria, Davey, Fleischhack.

Mumbai postproduction facility Shree Lakshmi Studios has opened a new 5.1 Cinema Mix room designed and speciﬁ ed by Munro Acoustics. ‘The new room has been designed to meet the stringent requirements of a Dolby Premier Studio in preparation for the new generation of high definition digital projectors,’ said Andy Munro. ‘The acoustic design is modelled on a form of semidiffusing module that has been developed over many years experience with top London studios such as Shepperton and

Pinewood. The result is very tight sounding low frequency response with smooth, even sound over the whole width of the console. This approach reduces the variation in perception of balance between engineers and directors by producing a very large sweet spot.’ The room is fitted with a 192-channel Harrison MPC4-D and screen monitoring is Dynaudio M3FX, surrounds are ten Dynaudio BM15P’s and two JBL 4645Cs are used for the LFE. MC2 ampliﬁ ers are used throughout.

RETAILER DOLPHIN Music in the UK has announced a new board of directors. Paul Harris has joined as director of marketing. Peter Moss has been appointed director of ﬁ nance and operations. Chris Fleischhack is director of sales. Sam Davey has been appointed technical director. Martin Jones joins as director of retail. Jason Tavaria and Rob Williams are joint MDs. Dolphin Music has been appointed UK distributor for Auralex Acoustics. LONDON DATA s t o r a g e a n d media specialist P r o t a p e h a s introduced the Olixir range of secure hard drives to the UK market.

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July/August 2008

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news Biz Bites

German media group Bertelsmann is asking $1.2bn-$1.5bn for its half share in Sony BMG, writes Nigel Jopson, as the two media conglomerates opened talks that could result in Sony gaining full control of the world’s second largest music company within months. The two agreed during the merger of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group in 2004 that either company could buy the other out until August 2009. IMPALA (the indie label association) has lodged a new appeal at the EC’s Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, challenging the EC’s unconditional authorisation of the SonyBMG merger for a second time. New Bertelsmann C E O H a r t m u t O s t ro w s k i h a s vowed to boost the privately held group’s sales by switching to new areas such as media services. The cash component could reduce if Sony agreed to buy services from Bertelsmann-owned Arvato, which manufactures and distributes CDs. The latest hot rumour is that former Zomba owner Clive Calder has also made a bid. Calder made his fortune when BMG bought Zomba for $2.8bn in 2002. In business, as in music, it seems timing is everything ... Recorded music is important to Sony because full content ownership allows deep integration into game devices and mobile phones. Sony Ericsson is preparing to go head to head

w i t h r i v a l N o k i a ’s Comes With Music ( R e s o l u t i o n V 7 . 1 ) platform, and will start selling a catalogue of around 5m digital downloads via its PlayNow site. Like its rival, Sony Ericsson will need to strike a fine balance in targeting users directly without antagonising its wireless carrier partners. Terra Firma boss Guy Hands revealed accountants KPMG have done an analysis showing EMI lost £750m on new releases over ﬁ ve years prior to the takeover, covered up in the accounts by money made on catalogue. ‘We

Criteria hits 50 with duality

Hit Factory Criteria Studios in miami celebrated its 50th anniversary by upgrading Studio F with a 48-channel SSl duality. ‘the ability to use the duality as a 48-channel analogue console one moment and a 32-channel daW controller the next is a huge plus,’ said vP and general manager trevor Fletcher. Hit Factory has a long relationship with SSl, dating to Eddie Germano’s first console purchase in 1984 and an additional 23 consoles bought over the years between Hit Factory Criteria and the former Hit Factory New York Studios.

Fundamental opens in Ireland with System 5

Owner Robin Ball has opened Fundamental Studios in Newcastle, County Wicklow, Ireland with a Euphonix System 5 and a host of other equipment supplied and installed by London-based KMR Audio. ‘I basically supplied an equipment wish list and explained what I wanted to do and KMR just got on with it — they were very attentive and if there were any problems they sorted them out straight

away,’ said Robin. ‘I was recommended to contact KMR after speaking to friends and colleagues in the industry who praised KMR’s reputation and their ability to get anything for a client.’ Fundamental opened in February and has already attracted a number of Irish acts and Robin is keen to partner with publishing and record companies to offer production facilities for developing their acts.

resolution

Fred Beyer

Shareholder and long-time MD of Beyerdynamic GmbH & Co. KG, Fred Beyer, died in June in Heilbronn, Germany. He will be best remembered as a man who did not bow to convention yet still maintained a strong sense of traditionalism. After his father’s death in 1959, at the age of 26 he took over as MD of the still family-owned manufacturing business and held that position until his retirement in 2002. He gave up a very promising career with the US Army and with it his great dream of a military life. He led Beyerdynamic for more than 40 years and was instrumental in helping to make the headphones and microphones manufactured in Heilbronn world famous. Under his guidance Beyerdynamic manufactured the first wireless microphone in 1962 and the DT100 headphone in 1965. The company has lost an important figurehead, whose philosophy and approach will remain with the company well into the future. He is survived by two sisters, his wife and daughter.

romanian radio covers Summit with onairs

The Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation has, over the last 10 years, been one of the biggest customers for Studer’s series of OnAir consoles. Recently it purchased two OnAir 3000s, initially for use on the NATO Summit which was held in Bucharest. Radio Romania established an on-site radio station at the massive Palace of the Parliament, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. Two studios were specially built to manage the recording and transmission of interviews and live coverage of proceedings. The two OnAir 3000s were installed in the temporary studios with modest 9-fader configurations but have the capacity for expansion when relocated to Radio Romania’s main broadcast facility after the Summit.

July/August 2008

Championship Performance

Euphonix at the Summer Games As champions are crowned, Euphonix will be there. 17 E u p h o n i x d i g i t a l a u d i o s y s t e m s will be b r o a d c a s t i n g t h e games in Hi-Def around t h e w o r l d. As the most a d v a n c e d d i g i t a l b r o a d c a s t m i x i n g s y s t e m a v a i l a b l e , the System 5-B c o n s o l e is designed for a u d i o p r o f e s s i o n a l s who demand the gold standard.

And

dsp s u p E R c o R E

ARE tRAdEmARks of

Euphonix inc. All

othER tRAdEmARks ARE pRopERty of thEiR REspEctivE ownERs.

news Biz Bites

didn’t believe it at fi rst,’ the fi nancier said, ‘they were losing huge amounts of money in new music.’ Just as well then that Coldplay have scored their first No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, propelled from the No.2 position by digital sales of 246,000. In the UK, the Viva La VIda album shifted 125,000 on the fi rst day of release. ‘This rate of sales exceeds even our optimistic forecasts, and shows how massively popular a band Coldplay remain despite having been away for the best part of three years,’ commented Gennaro Castaldo of retailer HMV. Castaldo observed the album was selling ‘large quantities’ from HMV’s website. Sony/ATV Music Publishing has entered into an agreement with GEMA (the German Collection Society), with the aim of offering to license the rights to its UK/US repertoire administered by Sony ATV under a single license across Europe for mobile and online uses, without the need to contract on a territory by territory and Society by Society basis. We need more like this. If Guns ’n Roses album Chinese Democracy is not released soon by G e f f e n , a l l G N R f a n s will already have it. Apart f ro m b e i n g t h e m o s t e x p e n s i v e u n r e l e a s e d album (Ten, R e s o l u t i o n V7.3) it is fast b e c o m i n g t h e m o s t bootlegged ever.

UK v-mix first at Corn Exchange

one of the first rSS v-mixing Systems in the UK has been bought by the Bedford Corn Exchange, which has snapped up the digital console plus snake package to use as a portable system between four local venues. Pro-audio dealer JaP Sound supplied the m-400 16-bus console and two S-1608 digital Snakes with remote controllers. By pairing up the v-mixing System with self-powered rCF monitors, chief sound engineer marcello Quartarone (pictured) says he has slashed his overheads. ‘We no longer need a lorry to transport the Pa equipment,’ he said. ‘there is no outboard, no amp rack, just two runs of Cat5. and it is so simple to set up, we just go in and throw down a Cat5 cable and put the Stagebox on stage.’ an rSS S-4000 digital Snake is holding together £1/2 million of audio and video technology in a newly-built performing arts space and tv/recording studio at the production facilities of the Southampton Solent University’s new 200-seater venue Studio C. Cat5e cables are used to distribute 40 channels of 24-bit/96kHz audio between stage and recording studio, tv studio, and two discrete Pa systems. Studio C is a former lecture theatre that has been converted into a multipurpose live space, and aims to provide training and performance facilities for students as well as earn income from private hires. the hall is linked to a munro acousticsdesigned recording studio, equipped with Pro tools and an audient analogue console, and to a high-definition tv production gallery.

Plasa, London .........7-10 September IBC, Amsterdam ...12-16 September AES US, San Francisco .. 3-5 October Broadcast India, Mumbai .........................17-19 October Tonmeistertagung, Leipzig .................. 13-16 November InterBEE, Tokyo .... 19-21 November

Film and TV soundtracks, trailers and ads are now benefi ting from Audient’s Black EQs, as the most recent addition to music composer and producer Brad Stanfi eld’s North Hollywood studio. Stanfi eld and his engineer and creative partner Elan Trujillo are discovering what an asset the Black EQ is. ‘Mainly I use them on stem bounces to accentuate and trim certain frequencies, then bouncing each post-EQ stereo waveform back into Pro Tools,’ explained Stanfield. ‘I also find them to be quite amazing when bouncing stereo mixes in a “faux mastering” type of application, which is good for most of the indie album and fi lm clients I work with.’

Scottish studio Gridlock Music has installed an Audient ASP8024 console. ‘We are an analogue-based studio, so we were keen to go for an analogue desk to compliment our much-loved Studer A827 Gold Edition 2-inch tape machine,’ said Nik Walker, one of three brothers who run south-west Scotland’s Gridlock Music.

Sennheiser UK on-board with Eco-Boat record attempt

Showtime

SBES, Birmingham .... 5-6 November

Stanfield in Black

Miloco Studios has announced the latest addition to its studio group, Alpha Centauri, in which the studio has teamed-up with singer-songwriter Steve Rhodes to operate his SSL mix room based at the old Battery complex in Willesden Green, London. It is billed as one of the UK’s best speced mix rooms, boasting a selection of equipment that Steve has amassed for his own personal use. The studio is built up around an SSL 4060 G+, Dynaudio M4+ monitors, Pro Tools HD3 and a full complement of plug-ins and outboard.

resolution

Sennheiser UK is supporting Earthrace, the eco-boat currently attempting to break the round-the-world speed record. Sennheiser supplied Earthrace with PXC 450 noise cancelling headphones plus two HMEC 450 aviation headsets for navigation communications. Earthrace is a 78-foot wave-piercing trimaran that runs exclusively on biodiesel, and has a net zero carbon footprint. Skipper Pete Bethune and his crew set off from Sagunto, Spain on 27 April in an attempt to break the round the world speed record of 75 days.

July/August 2008

e d a r G t- hone s a c d oa Microp r B n o i Precis Shotgun

ANODISED, WATERPROOF ALUMINIUM STORAGE CASE 50% LESS NOISE THAN MOST SHOTGUN MICROPHONES EXTREMELY LOW HANDLING NOISE HIGH LEVEL OF IMMUNITY TO RF INTERFERENCE TRUE CONDENSER (EXTERNAL RF BIASED) 10 YEAR WARRANTY

Ask your local RÃ&#x2DC;DE dealer for more information or visit rodemic.com/ntg-3

review gear

Products Equipment introductions and announcements.

Neumann 80th anniversary with tlm 67 Neumann’s TLM 67 is based on the ‘workhorse’ of the 1960s, the U 67. Like the U 67, the TLM 67 incorporates the K 67 capsule. In addition, the special new circuit design closely reproduces the sound characteristics of the classic U 67, without the use of tubes. Similar Neumann circuit technology has already proved successful in the TLM 49. It has three switchable directional characteristics (omni, cardioid and fig-8), selectable 10dB preattenuation, and a highpass filter. The TLM 67 introduces a novel Neumann dual-colour scheme with the pearlgrey of the microphone body combined with the classic Neumann nickel. On the occasion of its 80th anniversary, the Neumann company is honouring its founder, Georg Neumann, with a three-dimensional metal emblem on the front of the TLM 67. www.neumann.com

Waves Jack Joseph Puig Collection F o l l o w i n g on from free downloadable Waves presets from multiple G r a m m y w i n n i n g producer/ m i x e r J a c k Joseph Puig ( J J P ) , t h e company has r e l e a s e d a collection of plug-ins based on some of the most soughta f t e r p i e c e s o f v i n t a g e gear. The Jack Joseph Puig Collection models the Fairchild 670, Pultec EQP-1A, and Pultec MEQ-5 and is the result of a collaboration where Puig shared his knowledge and expertise on these devices but also gave Waves exclusive access to model the processors in his personal recording space at Los Angeles’ Ocean Way Recording Studios. Key features of the PuigChild 660 and 670 Compressor/ Limiter are: Lateral Vertical Mode (MS compression) for optimal stereo imaging; linked and unlinked modes; Digidesign Icon Support; up to 24-bit 192kHz resolution; mono and stereo components; TDM, RTAS, VST, AU support; PC and Mac compatibility. The PuigTec EQP-1A Program Equalizer is a replication of Puig’s original handcrafted unit, heard on dozens of popular recordings. The midrange PuigTec MEQ-5 and the broadband PuigTec EQP-1A together constitute one of the best-known equalisation chains. The JJP Collection is available separately as well as part of the Waves Mercury bundle. www.waves.com

Platform news: digidesign Following on from the updated icon d-Control ES worksurface is the d-Command ES. as an update to the original blue d-Command, the ES has been enhanced with a darker colour scheme as well as updated, higher contrast text and graphics for improved legibility in low light. the icon d-Command ES has a suggested retail price of UK£9,345 (+ vat) for the main unit and additional 16-channel fader modules can be had for £8,245 (+ vat). digidesign is also offering an 8-fader and a 24-fader dCommand ES Bundle that allows customers to save money by purchasing a complete icon and Pro tools|Hd system bundle instead of buying the same items à la carte. Pro tools 7.4.2 software provides mac oS X 10.5.3 (leopard) compatibility for Pro tools|Hd, lE, and m-Powered users. all registered Pro tools 7.4 users may download the free Pro tools 7.4.2 software update from the digidesign website. Some currently shipping plug-ins and virtual instruments are not yet compatible with Pro tools 7.4.2 software running on mac oS X 10.5.3, and some require that users update their plug-ins if an update is available. Before installing the Pro tools Hd 7.4.2 update, users should review the Pro tools Plug-in Compatibility with leopard page, which is updated regularly with the latest information. www.digidesign.com

Sennheiser digital mic module Sennheiser’s MZD 8000 digital module allows MKH 8000 series mics to be digitised directly at the microphone head. The compact digital module is screwed onto the microphone head in place of the XLR module. Like all signal-carrying components in the 8000 series, the module is designed with two channels and converts the microphone signal according to AES 42, turning the signal of the MKH 8020 (omni), MKH 8040 (cardioid) and MKH 8050 (super-cardioid) into digital. The module also contains a DSP unit which, with the aid of PC control software and an AES 42 interface, allows microphone settings, such as the low-cut filter, attenuation and limiter, to be remote-controlled. The interface also provides phantom power and Word clock. www.sennheiser.co.uk

tl audio Ebony Summer

Ua twin-Finity U A’s 7 1 0 Tw i n F i n i t y s i n g l e c h a n n e l , t u b e and solid-state, preamp has dual signal paths and is centred around a phase-aligned ‘tone-blending’ knob that is continually variable from 100% tube to 100% solidstate offering access to a myriad of unique preamp tones.

Designed and built in the USA it includes a single or dualunit 19-inch pro rackmount kit. The 1176AE anniversary edition celebrates a decade since UA’s refounding by Bill Putnam Jnr and combines the best of the ‘bluestripe’ and E revisions while adding the lower 2:1 compression ratio found on the 176. A new ‘slo’ attack mode gives the 1176AE the potential for classic and individual compression effects. www.uaudio.com

Unisex Xlr The Ebony A4 from TL Audio is a 16:2 summing mixer in a 2U and has 16 balanced inputs on XLR and D-Sub with individual pan controls. All inputs are also switchable between +4 and -10dB. The unit uses Discrete Class A circuitry throughout and also boasts the ability to activate an optional tube stage on the master bus; once activated, you can dial in the amount of warmth you want from a dedicated dual triode tube stage. The addition of balanced insert points on the master bus section means that you can patch in a stereo compressor or EQ. www.tlaudio.co.uk

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Neutrik has introduced the ﬁ rst unisex 3-pin XLR connector. ConvertCon (NC3FM-C) is a 3-pin male and female cable connector in a single housing and is also available with black chrome housing and gold contacts (NC3FM-C-B). By simply sliding the housing back and forth, ConvertCon is transformed from a male to a female connector. ConvertCon shares some of the features and benefits of Neutrik’s XLR XX series and has an improved chuck-type strain relief. www.neutrik.com

July/August 2008

gear more processing for auratus The entire control and audioprocessing hardware of the Auratus compact console now ﬁ ts onto a single board that slots into a standard Nexus 3U Base Device. This mixing-console-on-a-board supports mixer configurations with up to 54 audio channels and 8 sums, 8 aux buses, 8 monitoring buses, and 8 mix-minus sums. The Stagetec console family now comprising the Auratus, the Auratus XL, which uses the same control surface but is based on more powerful DSP hardware, and the big Aurus console covers the gamut from powerful compact desks to large-scale mixing-console systems. Aurus now has a virtual control interface that can either append eight additional fader control channels to the console or be run in parallel with the mixing console’s faders. The Virtual Surface is a software application that when networked with Aurus via WLAN, can serve as a roving remote control. www.stagetec.com

New K+H subs

røde shotgun The O 810 and O 870 subs have a built-in 7.1 Channel High Deﬁ nition Bass Manager. Eight channels of analogue, or

an optional 8-channel 24/192kHz digital input card, offer ﬂ exible interconnectivity. They employ 10-inch drivers, a solid cabinet with ports and reproduction down to a claimed 18Hz. www.klein-hummel.com

The Røde NTG-3 shotgun is designed to withstand adverse environmental conditions and incorporates a technology known as RF-bias that renders the microphone almost completely resistant to moisture. Its true-condenser super-cardioid capsule accepts 48V phantom power and has a claimed response of 40Hz to 20kHz. The NTG-3 also claims low handling noise, 50% less self-noise than the majority of shotgun mics (13dBA) and a high level of immunity to radio frequency interference. It weighs 163g and standard accessories include a stand mount, foam windshield, soft pouch and aluminium storage case. It comes with a 10-year warranty. www.rodemic.com

merging unveils total adr solution The ADR package from Merging is a simple, costeffective, all-in-one system that covers the requirements f o r r e c o r d i n g dialogue or Foley effects with the relevant video/fi lm reference in sync at any frame rate. It has customisable audible and visual countdowns, wipes and GPIOs for triggering external cue lights. Installed in a single custom chassis with the option of GPIOs, a dedicated custom keyboard and Merging’s Isis edit controller and fader extension unit it replaces the need for a separate mixing console. The PureNotes Denoiser for Pyramix is a noise reduction system from the French plug-in developer Flux. The PureNotes algorithms analyse the music in short frames (from tens to a few thousand samples at a time) and for each frame identifi es the noise and music c o m p o n e n t s . T h e n o i s e components are then removed, using an intelligent algorithm that further examines the frames to ensure that music with characteristics similar to noise is not removed. All processing is linear phase and the signal identifi cation and separation can be automated, semi-automatic or manual and can be applied at rates from 44.1kHz to 352.8kHz (DXD). A new range of VCube systems is now available as software only, software and card-sets; as well as full turnkey solutions in standard and high defi nition. There are three basic confi gurations. The VCube LE starts from €1,000 and has no export or rendering to different video formats, but does retain the ability to import an array of formats just like the main VCube system. VCube XE is the same as the LE, but with video exporting, rendering and wrapping capabilities. The VCube SE range comes in a standard or high-defi nition model and is supplied with the appropriate video I-O hardware. With the video card installed it can record from external sources and play out to external displays. www.merging.com

July/August 2008

instrument adapter

Unrivalled versatility

SCHOEPS GmbH Spitalstr. 20 76227 Karlsruhe, Germany resolution

www.schoeps.de mailbox@schoeps.de Tel. +49 721 943 200 13

review gear aPi introduces arsenal line

API has launched the Arsenal Audio line of analogue signal processing products, the ﬁ rst three of which are the R20 2-channel mic pre, the R24 2-channel 4-band EQ, and the V14 4-band VPR 500 format equaliser. Each channel of the R20 has a rotary gain control plus toggle switches for phantom power, phase, pad and mic/instrument input selection. The R24 has two identical channels of EQ modelled on the APSI model 562. Continuously variable control knobs allow for separate adjustment of frequency and gain. All four bands are peak/dipping parametric designs with 12dB of boost/cut. EQ in/out is controlled by toggle switches. www.ArsenalAudio.com

trinnov’s optimizer for dubbing theatres Trinnov Audio has added a set of new features that broadens the field of application of its room correction product to dubbing theatres. New Target Curves functionality means a calibration of the sound system can be performed in less than an hour. Instead of relying on multiple boxes for the measurement, analysis and equalisation, the Optimizer offers all these features in one box. It automates the otherwise trial-and-error calibration process and automatically computes the ﬁ lters that will meet the cinema X-Curve. Once the system is inserted in the monitoring path, it only takes a few minutes to perform the measurements, compute the ﬁ lters and save them in a memory preset. www.trinnov.com

manger returns to studio market Manger — manufacturer of the Manger Sound Transducer (MSW) — has unveiled the ﬁ rst model of an active studio monitor line. The MSM c1 monitor combines the MSW and an 8-inch woofer in a sealed cabinet. The amplified 2-way system uses analogue filters and amplifiers to allow the MSW to originate fast transients and ‘complex musical structures from a single point source down to 300Hz’. The woofer handles the frequency range down to 30Hz. An additional 8-inch woofer MSM c1 LFModule can be switched in parallel for higher SPL and larger rooms. Two different stands are available. www.manger-pro.com

vertigo vSm-2 V e r t i g o S o u n d ’s second unit, the VSM2, is described as an extension unit for its VSC-2 Compressor or any other dual mono compressor but you can also plug in equalisers, de-essers or daisychain units into the box. Applicable to recording, mixing or mastering it offers level matching up to +30dbu at its I-Os, fast input and output metering plus various clip LEDs, all controls can be recalled via stepped pots or switches, it has MS De and Encoding with AFL mono summed Solo for the M and S signal. It has balanced insert on XLRs, mix Controls for M and S, Dry-Wet mix control provides parallel compression for LR and MS, two independent stereo ‘colouration’ circuits with stereo and M or S generation of pure 2nd and 3rd harmonics. www.vertigosound.com

aKG C 214 Described as an addition to the C 414 family, the C 214 microphone is a single-capsule, cardioid-only design with a 20dB pad. It has an integrated capsule suspension and comes with a spider-type shockmount, windscreen, and metal carrying case. Like its predecessor the D5, the D7 is a dynamic microphone but has an improved capsule design with a humbucking coil and a high-pass ﬁ lter along with a new look. The new Perception Series of condenser mics includes the P 120, P 170, P 220 and P 420 — each o f f e r i n g a 2 0 d B attenuation pad and a low cut filter. The P 120 is a generalpurpose recording mic with a 2/3-inch diaphragm. P 170 is a 1/2-inch diaphragm condenser with a cardioid polar pattern. P 220 is a one-inch diaphragm condenser. P 420 is a multipattern large-diaphragm condenser with cardioid, omni and ﬁ g-8 patterns. www.akg.com

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July/August 2008

gear Equator Q8 Equator Audio Research’s Q8 monitor measures 13-inches x 13-inches x 13-inches and has an 8-inch woofer coupled to a high-powered, 1-inch compression horn driver. It is said to deliver the power and accuracy of larger Q Series models in a more compact form factor. All Q Series monitors have a ‘Zero Point Reference’ coaxial design with Digitally-Controlled Transducers. The CPU that resides inside each Equator monitor handles the matching of the transducers and incorporates the system’s crossover approach. Included with every Equator Q Series monitor is a software application that enables a mix engineer to manually compensate for acoustic anomalies in addition to issues created by placement/boundary and secondary reﬂ ections within the listening environment. The software also provides control over equalisation, mute, solo, and phase and an optionally available Q Series Calibration kit automates the analysis and compensation process and includes a calibrated test microphone. www.equatoraudio.com

CEdar for Noa CEDAR Declick for NOA and CEDAR Dehiss for NOA have been written to provide a processing environment that complements an archive’s workﬂ ow while retaining the highest standards of processing. CEDAR’s existing users would not recognise these processes, which forego the company’s traditional real-time interfaces for a new approach based upon NOA’s proprietary CLIP processor. CEDAR processes are now available on the AMS AudioFile SC/X www.cedaraudio.com

SSl mynx

Sanken CoS-11x

SSL has released Mynx as an ‘affordable’ way to get SSL SuperAnalogue processing. The two module desktop mini X-Rack allows you to load your choice from the X-Rack module range. P o w e r i s v i a a n external supply and audio connections are made directly to the back of your selected       modules. Mynx has no Total Recall capability. www.solid-state-logic.com

S a n k e n ’ s C O S - 1 1 x f e a t u r e s a n e w f r o n t mesh screen that is water r e s i s t a n t a n d b e t t e r protects the microphone from perspiration and makeup. Sanken uses an original vertical placement of the diaphragm for a much greater effective area within the extremely small casing. The COS-11x is available in black, grey, beige and white. Soft and pliable cabling and a sturdy clamp design assure   long-term durability. www.sanken-mic.com

Thirsty for Tone? 100% tube, 100% solid-state, and everything in-between

JBl Control 2P JBL Professional’s Control 2 P c o m p a c t p o w e r e d monitor is a 5-inch 2-way powered stereo system. It is based on the Control 1 Pro and uses the same transducers and crossover and incorporates internal ampliﬁ cation. The system includes two speakers, one of which incorporates power ampliﬁ cation and user controls for itself and the connected passive speaker. Snap-on pedestals are included. www.jblpro.com

roll music ‘tubule’ The RMS5A7 valve microphone preamp, or Tubule, from Roll Music Systems is presented in the 500series modular format. The Tubule is a true transformercoupled valve mic preamp, getting all its ampliﬁ cation from a standard dual triode tube. It uses modern power management circuitry to generate the high-voltage plate supply and the highcurrent heater supply to power the tube. Careful design of the high-efficiency power management circuitry has allowed a preamp to be ﬁ tted within the space and power consumption limitations of a single module. The Tubule has switches for -20dB input pad, polarity inversion, and phantom power, a 12-position gain control switch that ranges from 33 to 66dB in 3dB steps, and a continuouslyvariable input attenuator that ranges from 0 to -10dB. www.kmraudio.com

July/August 2008

The new 710 Twin-Finity Microphone Preamplifier & Instrument D.I. Phase-aligned blending of tube and solid state transimpedance circuits. Satisfy your thirst for tone. www.twin-finity.com ©2008 Universal Audio, Inc. All rights reserved. Universal Audio, the Universal Audio logo, “Twin-Finity”, and “710 Twin-Finity” are trademarks or registered trademarks of Universal Audio, Inc.

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

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review gear USB Snowﬂake mic

royer live series

motU 896mK3

B l u e M i c r o p h o n e s h a s The thicker ribbons in Royer’s Live followed its Snowball USB Series of ribbon mics is said to make mic with a portable them more durable and better able design called the to stand up to the rigours of the road. Snowflake. Blue The three microphones offered in the has combined a new series are the R-121 ribbon, R-122 USB bus-powered phantom powered ribbon, and SF-24 capsule with a stereo phantom powered ribbon. Live c l a s s c o m p l i a n t Series Royers are badged with dark red design to make the Royer medallions, differentiating them from studio models, Snowﬂ ake truly plug-andwhich have dark green Royer medallions. play on Mac and PC. The only audible difference between studio and live The mic folds into a compact case that also houses a versions of these three microphones is slightly slower USB cable. Unfolded, the case serves as a desktop stand transient response from the live mics. Live Series mics can be FR-2LE Resolution 142x194 5/1/08 12:58 PM Page 1 or a laptop clip. changed to studio versions for the standard re-ribbon fee. www.bluemic.com www.royerlabs.com

Elegant, Professional Field Recording to CompactFlash™

MOTU’s 896mk3 is a cross-platform FireWire audio interface with on-board effects and mixing. Features include eight XLR/TRS combo-style analogue inputs with preamps, hi-Z guitar inputs, a total of 28 inputs and 32 outputs, 192kHz analogue operation, signal overload protection, 32-bit ﬂ oating point DSP for digital mixing and effects processing, and two banks of conﬁ gurable optical I-O. All I-O is routed to an on-board 16-bus digital mixer driven by hardware-based DSP. The mixer allows users to apply no-latency effects processing to inputs, outputs or buses directly in the 896mk3 hardware, independent of the computer. Effects can even be applied when the 896mk3 is operating standalone as a complete rackmounted mixer. Input signals to the computer can be recorded wet, dry, or dry with a wet monitor mix (for musicians during recording, for example). Effects include reverb, parametric EQ and compression/ limiting. www.motu.com

Portable madi solution for laptops R M E ’s M A D I f a c e i s described as the world’s ﬁ rst portable MADI solution for Laptops, providing 128 channels of audio at up to 192kHz. Consisting of the HDSPe ExpressCard MADI and a small breakout box, the MADIface offers 64 channels input and 64 channels output, in-MADI embedded MIDI transmission, TotalMix that is remote controllable and has all the features of the ‘bigger’ HDSPe MADI, as well as the lowest latency and CPU-load. The power for the breakout box is provided directly by the ExpressCard. MADIface (like all RME devices) uses SteadyClock to extract the reference clock directly from the MADI signal. Although not available at the MADIface itself, Word clock input and output are available when using another RME MADI device. www.rme-audio.de

FR-2LE

marantz network Flash recorder

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.

Effect acquisition

Interview

www.fostex.jp 16

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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D&M Installation has introduced the Marantz Professional PMD580 1U Compact Flash recorder, which brings advanced network control capabilities with Ethernet LAN and USB connectivity. Drag and drop ﬁ le transfer and network remote control, via the PC and Mac compatible web-based GUI, allows users to set menu parameters, schedule recording events, and transfer and archive audio ﬁ les. Recording is selectable between mono and stereo, and linear PCM and MP3 formats. For PCM recording, 16 and 24-bit options are available and for MP3, bit rate is selectable between 32 and 384kbps. Record start and stop times can be scheduled and a prerecord memory buffer enables recording to be activated at the start of an event. The integrated time and date generator automatically stamps all sessions. It has balanced analogue and digital AES-EBU I-Os on XLRs as well as unbalanced interfaces and RS232 control. www.dm-i.eu

July/August 2008

review

SSL Matrix Given the popularity of the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix franchise and the careless way we all refer to ‘router matrices’, it’s interesting that the principle OED deﬁnition of the word ‘matrix’ is ‘a place or medium where something is grown or developed’. In view of the potential of SSL’s new baby console ROB JAMES says this seems entirely apposite.

new SSL console is always an event but when the asking price is a mere UK£12,500 (+ VAT) a lot of ears prick up. The headline features belie the price; a SuperAnalogue 16-channel, 40-input mixing console with master and cue buses, four effects buses and inbuilt signal router with multi-layer digital workstation control. If it sounds a bit too good to be true, maybe it is. First impressions can be misleading. With its silver surround and bright chrome fader knobs I initially thought the Matrix looked plasticky and rather cheap, an image swiftly dispelled once it was out of the box. This is a commendably low-profile control surface at only 230mm high at the top of the meterbridge. It has been designed with integration in mind and to this end there is a lip on the front and sides to enable it to be dropped into a suitable aperture in custom furniture. An alarming sign of terrorist infiltration is to be found on the front panel. A 3.5mm monitor input, dubbed ‘iJack’. I’ll get me coat. The front arm rest is rather shallow and, on this early sample, the larger square buttons are a very tight fit in the panel which gives them a tendency to stick. But that is the end of the bad news. The Alps faders, despite the garish knobs, are smooth and recessed into the surface. The buttons and knobs would not disgrace a big-gun console and the transport controls and jog wheel are pleasantly chunky. In order to understand where this console is coming from it is necessary to appreciate what is not July/August 2008

included as well as what is. There are no mic amps, no built in dynamic automation and no channel or bus EQ or dynamics. What you do get is, in many ways, archetypal SSL: 16 analogue channels, with dual line inputs, balanced insert sends and returns and a dedicated direct output. Channel level control uses the same high resolution Digital Controlled Attenuator as in the AWS 900+ and Duality consoles. However, the Matrix has a trick up its sleeve, the channel DCAs can be remote controlled via MIDI, which means that with a suitable DAW, MIDI tracks can be used to provide full dynamic automation control of analogue levels. The eponymous insert Matrix enables any of 16 ‘Devices’ to be patched into any of the 16 Channel Inserts. Up to six Devices may be chained and added to a single channel. All this is mono so a stereo effect will take up two Devices. Assignments are made, saved and recalled via the ‘Matrix Remote’ software. For monitoring there are independent Main and Mini (nearfield) monitor outputs, an Artist Monitor output with independent EQ and source selection, and three external monitor inputs, all of which can be summed. Although there are four effects buses, and the channels can send to any of them, each channel is limited to sending to two at a time. Matrix has one digital I-O pair. This can be fed from the Rec bus, Mix bus or the Pre Monitor pot signal. SSL Total Recall is also in evidence with indicator LEDs on most of the analogue controls. This is resolution

extremely effective, if a tad time-consuming, but nobody has come up with a better idea short of a fullon DCA console. Up to four SSL X-Rack units can be connected for Total Recall with their TR data saved as part of the Matrix session. In typical SSL fashion the Matrix has immensely versatile signal routing which, to the uninitiated, can seem more than a little arcane, but this will pose no problems to the illuminati. Central to Matrix operation is the Master Channel strip. All 16 channels share the Master Channel which can affect individual channels, groups of channels or all of them at once. The Master Fader’s Focus mode can be switched independently. Thus it can control the analogue mixing channels or any DAW channel, no matter which focus mode the other faders and the rest of the console are in. DAW control obviously figures prominently and SSL has built on the experience gained with the AWS 900 and Duality. Possibly the most significant Matrix button is the prominent Focus key. This is lit green in analogue and unlit in DAW focus. Four DAW control layers can be programmed for specific workstations, MIDI instruments, etc. MIDI is carried over IP Ethernet and keyboard commands via USB. Matrix supports two protocols, Mackie HUI and MCU, and there is also the possibility of mapping your own via MIDI Continuous Controllers. Although the protocols are supported by Pro Tools, Nuendo and Logic they are still no substitute for full native control and there are a lot of other workstations out there. I tried using Pyramix in HUI emulation mode with some limited success, but this is a pale shadow of what could be achieved. Mac or PC, the Java application Matrix Remote gives access to many routing and housekeeping functions. The only potential installation drama arises if you don’t have Java on the machine. Even if you don’t, on a PC with a web connection, this installs automatically. Matrix Remote is a modern, tabbed application with pages for Projects, Total Recall, Channels, Insert Matrix and DAW.

Matrix is most likely to be used in this manner. The first channel input will take the output of a mic pre, an instrument or DI box. The second input takes the return from the DAW. The Channel direct output, CHOP, will normally feed the pre-fader signal to a DAW track. When overdubbing there is an automatic switching mode, Auto Mon, which will switch between 17

review channel inputs depending on the track record status. Working in conjunction with the transport controls the SuperCue function can be used to control the headphone feed to the talent. It sums the channel send and DAW return in Play, and automatically mutes the DAW return in Record providing zero latency record monitoring. At mixdown both channel inputs can be pressed into service for 32 channels into 2. There are devious ways of increasing this number to 40. Effects, either for record, record monitor or mixdown, will be inserted in channels via the Matrix and into Mix, Rec and Cue buses via their separate inserts. The Matrix is aimed at a group of people with specific ways of working. For a start it is resolutely stereo only. There isn’t even a nod towards surround. It presumes you already have (or are prepared to

details, details…

purchase) a pile of outboard including a bunch of ‘boutique’ mic pres and external A-D and D-A convertors. You’ll also need a computer or two and a DAW. It also presumes you will do all your EQ and dynamics either in analogue outboard or in the DAW and, while the Matrix can control plug-ins, it is probably easier in many cases to simply use the GUI although it does work well with plug-in instruments. I have no idea how many people are currently working with a cobbled together mass of outboard and a DAW without a console but I hope for SSL’s sake there are plenty of them with UK£12,500 plus VAT lying around in loose change. Assuming there are, then the Matrix could make a lot of sense as the hub of a project studio. You don’t pay for mic amps, EQ and dynamics you won’t be using (because your

Power supply is external and comes in an alloy case with a wire retainer for the iEC power input, a positive switch and a captive one meter baby elephant’s trunk of a cable to the control surface. to the left of the surface are two banks of 8 faders and strips. above the motorised faders are Select, Solo and Cut keys plus a v-Pot with switch. Next up is the bright orange two-line digital scribble strip. above this, Select and track keys are followed by centre-detented Pan, three pots with on/off switches when pressed for the Cue and Effects sends, centre-detented Stereo Cue, Pan and CHoP (Channel output) level pots and, at the top of the strip, insert and phase reverse buttons and the centre-detented Channel input gain. the master Channel strip has buttons for: master input Flip, auto monitor and daW monitor, CHoP Source, Cue Stereo Source and SuperCue, Set, all, FX 1/3 Source, FX3, FX2/4 Source, FX4 and Bus record and mix with the big Focus button. at the bottom are a fader, v-pot, Select, Solo and Cut keys while to the right is the talkback level pot and mic. Below in the monitor section are aFl, dim, mini and main monitor level pots, dim and Cut keys and on their right the monitor select buttons for Solo Clear, ∑ (sum), Ext1 (iJack), Ext2, digital, rec, mix and three further buttons for phase reverse left, mono and mini. the next column deals with main vU Select and artist monitor. vU -10dB is provided for those normalised daW tracks that weld the needle to the end stop and there are mono, record and mix buttons. artist monitor has ∑ (sum), Ext1 (iJack), digital, Cue, mon and mix together with HF and lF EQ pots, an on/off switch and level pot. Below this comes the Headphone section with level pot and From artist key.

favourite outboard takes on that role) and you can sum outside the DAW in analogue, which for some unfathomable reason, has become very trendy. Matrix is a potential spearhead of a new age, demonstrating some interesting possibilities. ■

ProS

the price — for an SSl; usual SSl virtues; a new dawn?

CoNS

Not an all-in-one solution; daW control is something of a compromise; requires a change of mind-set.

Contact Solid StatE loGiC, UK: Website: www.solid-state-logic.com

the mix Bus section has a centre-detented +/-20dB level pot and keys for insert and ∑ (sum). the rec bus section is the same but adds a to mix button. Cue Stereo is the same again but adds an aFl button. dig i-o has a single button that toggles between mix, rec and mon. Each of the four Fx Send buses gets a centre detented pot, infinity to +10dB, and an aFl key. the four Stereo returns each have mix, rec, and Cue Stereo routing buttons. mono sums the signals and there is a balance/pan pot. the level pot has an infinity to +6dB range and there is an aFl button. Bottom right is the transport panel with the usual controls, the talkback button and a chunky jog wheel, mode and cursor keys, and 20 further daW keys including bank and channel nudge. in the panel above there are another 16 daW keys and above and below the display strip 8 soft keys for a total of 16. these are used for matrix setup and daW control. in the meterbridge each channel has two 12-segment lEd bargraphs. in analogue mode the right-hand meter is blank. in daW mode it is used to display the right-hand leg of stereo daW channels from daWs that support the relevant HUi mode. above the bargraphs, Sel, rec and Edit lEds indicate daW track status and below further lEds indicate automation status and total recall in analogue mode and automation status in daW mode. the channel meters usually follow the Focus mode but can be locked to analogue or daW. above the centre section, two large analogue vU meters dominate with a further 12 bargraphs for mix and rec buses, monitor, Stereo Cue and the four effects buses. the auto lights below each meter are used for automation and total recall in analogue Focus, and HUi daW automation status in daW Focus. the channel meters follow the desk Focus mode but they can be locked to analogue or daW metering regardless of Focus mode. most connections are on 17 25-pin Sub-ds in tascam pinout. digital i-o is on Xlrs in aES-EBU format or toslink SPdiF. an Sd card slot provides for storage. Network is rJ-45 and there is a 4-pin USB. a button switches the output level between +18dB and +24dB. two footswitch jacks, the locking dC power connector and a 9-pin Sub-d for X-rack connection complete the picture.

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A U D I O

A T

T H E

B E I J I N G

G A M E S

S U P P L E M E N T

JUlY/aUGUSt 2008

Contents iii. vi. ix. xii. xiv.

News The wizardry of televised sports Bob Dixon: NBC Olympics Capturing the sound of competition Keeping people talking â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the intercom challenge

a U d i o at t H E B E i J i N G G a m E S S U P P l E m E N t

To create a masterpiece, sometimes it only takes a simple tool. 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

mc²56 – Performance, pure and simple.

Beijing Games Shorts

Euphonix desks come out in Hd force

CCTV in Beijing employed a System 5-B for its coverage of the Olympic torch being carried to the summit of Mount Everest.

Seven Chinese broadcasters will be using a total of 17 Euphonix broadcast consoles for complete Hi-definition coverage of the Beijing Games. China Central television (CCtv), the country’s largest broadcaster, has four Euphonix consoles, two max airs and a System 5-B in its state-of-the-art broadcast facility and another System 5-B in its oB truck. Shandong tv has two Euphonix-equipped oB trucks as well as a max air equipped-studio. Chongqing tv has equipped two large oB trucks with Euphonix max air consoles for broadcasting directly from the olympic village while tvCC has two System 5-B broadcast studios and Jiansu tv’s oB truck features a max air. liaoning tv will use a max air on its oB truck and a System 5 for postproduction and, in a similar fashion, Yunnan tv has a max air-equipped oB truck and a System 5-mC console in its postproduction studio. three Euphonix clients — CCtv, liaoning tv and Shandong tv — will be using the new Euphonix High-density Fibre Stagebox for their oB applications. this modular remote audio interface for broadcast applications features redundant fibre audio connectivity and control. the Stagebox connects multiple high-density stage boxes into the Euphonix dSP SuperCore via madi and can handle up to 56 mic preamps that can also be fitted with combinations of i-os to match the application.

DS-00s provide NBC support

In addition to the eight Studer Vista 5s, one Vista 7, three Vista 8s and nine OnAir 3000s used by Chinese broadcasters in Beijing, another 13 are being brought in for the event by foreign broadcasters. Soundcraft Vi4 and Vi6 consoles are being used at the National Olympic Conference Centre and the National Aquatics Centre.

Euromedia rolls out road runner 3

DiGiCo has provided DS-00 digital consoles to NBC for the network’s coverage of the Beijing Games where the desks will support NBC’s coverage of basketball, boxing and indoor volleyball. Three DS-00 consoles will each be outﬁ tted with expanders to handle a total of 40 mic/line inputs, 32 analogue line outputs and 64 AES inputs and 64 AES outputs. ‘We’ve had to change quite a bit this year technically,’ explained Bob Dixon, director sound design and communications, NBC Olympics. ‘Whereas in previous years, NBC was using a hybrid of both SD and HD, often with stereo or up-mixed audio. But with

the 2008 Games, it‘s the ﬁ rst time we’re broadcasting all Network shows in high-deﬁ nition with six discreet channels of audio. We’re covering about seven venues on our own, taking some of the feeds from the host broadcaster, but then adding our own cameras and mics to give it our own perspective. ‘As for digital consoles, when looking for a digital console that was between a very large format and a smaller console…there are not as many choices as you’d think. DiGiCo was the perfect solution. And they were extremely proactive in working with us to accommodate our needs for the TV market,’ he said.

SSL has installed a C100 HD audio console in Euromedia Télévision’s new Road Runner 3 high definition outside broadcast vehicle. The new French truck was launched in May and will be used in Beijing in August. The Euromedia C100 HD includes 56 faders, ﬁ ve master tiles, full redundancy and MORSE stageboxes. Equipped for full HD multipurpose productions, the truck is flexible enough to simultaneously generate HD, SD 4/3, SD 16/9, Pal 4/3 and PAL 16/9.

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

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Beijing Games Shorts

Dennis Baxter, multi Emmy Awardwinner, Sound Designer for the 2004, 2006 and 2008 Olympic Games, and author of two of the articles in this supplement, has released a book — A Practical Guide to Television Sound Engineering (Focal Press).

CLEAR-COM has supplied an intercom network that will span the broadcast operation at the Games. Clear-Com’s communication network will provide a link for CCTV between the International Broadcasting Centre, the hub of all broadcasting activities for the Olympic Games, and CCTV’s Television Culture Centre (TVCC), which will house administration along with news, broadcasting, studios and programme production. The buildings are more than 20km apart and will be networked using Clear-Com’s ﬁ bre link technology with a redundant VoIP connection as an automatic failover backup. CCTV has purchased two Eclipse Omega systems with 120 ports in total, which will form the heart of the network at the IBC and TVCC. An integrated digital wireless card, E-Que, will enable connectivity between FreeSpeak user beltpacks and headsets within the Eclipse matrix system. An additional six Eclipse PiCo units, each providing up to 36 full duplex/4-wireless ports, will be deployed throughout the arenas for electronic ﬁ eld production. GENELEC HAS a number of its DSP monitoring systems in trucks at the Games and shipped 47 8250As and 11 7271As to equip a variety of surround suite ‘cabins’ for on-site multichannel production monitoring.

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Stagetec puts itself in the picture

more than 90,000 visitors to the Beijing Grand National Stadium will hear the words of the opening speech mixed on two aurus desks installed in the stadium central control room which will be fed via a Nexus audio network to the sound-reinforcement system of 220 line arrays. Furthermore, around 40 billion tv viewers around the world will also view the opening ceremony and the audio for that will be forwarded from the aurus control room via madi lines to the international Broadcast Centre and some 60 oB trucks, many of which are themselves equipped with technology from Stagetec. the master console is an aurus with 40 faders and a processing capacity of 96 audio channels. the smaller aurus slave console offers eight faders and accesses the same dSP resources as the large system. the slave console addresses the requirements of specific zones inside the stadium that are fed with signals different to those going to the main spectators’ area. Both consoles are connected to a Nexus audio network comprised of eight Base devices plus a Nexus Star. Stagetec points out that the complete system has been permanently installed and has not been hired just for the event. a new Hdtv truck belonging to CCtv accommodates more than 25 cameras and includes a generously equipped surround sound control room with an aurus/Nexus system while an Hdtv oB truck at Hunan Economic tv houses eight cameras and also includes an aurus in its control room. tpc tv productioncenter has sent an oB vehicle with Stagetec systems to the Games. the Zurichbased tv production company’s Hd-1 36-ton truck houses an aurus with 128 audio channels plus a Nexus matrix offering 700 x 600 i-os. tpc tv productioncenter will equip its central apparatus room at the iBC with a total of five rented Nexus Base devices for an overall capacity of around 1000 x 1000 i-os. one of the main reasons why such a highperformance set-up is required is that each video signal will be accompanied by audio commentary in German, French, rhaeto-romanic, and italian — the four official languages of Switzerland.

Lawo’s biggest Chinese radio install yet To satisfy its broadcasting requirements for the Olympics, China Radio International (CRI), one of the world’s leading broadcasters in terms of the area it covers, has invested heavily in new equipment. Its central control room and the control rooms of its individual studios have been renovated and updated. Ten Lawo zirkon radio mixing consoles and two redundant Nova73 HD crossbars serve as the centrepiece of the radio control rooms in the broadcasting centre in Beijing. Five of the consoles have 20 faders each and five have 12 while the two Nova73 HD routers boast a capacity of 3,000 crosspoints each, a scaleable routing capacity of up

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to 8192 mono channels in a single frame, Dolby E compatibility, clock-synchronised switching to set crosspoints to video frames, and integrated signal processing. It is Lawo’s largest central control room installation to date in the radio sector in China and it is also the ﬁ rst time Lawo hardware has been combined with Chinese control software. The latter consists of a scheduler for time-controlled switching and a breakdown management system, whereby in the event of a failure in one control room, its tasks will be reassigned to another. The software was developed by Lawo’s Chinese partner InfoMedia.

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July/August 2008

www.studer.ch

Beijing Games

The Wizard of Oz in televised sports The role of the host broadcaster is crucial to the ﬂow of a large televised sporting event. DENNIS BAXTER looks at the infrastructure at work beneath track and ﬁeld coverage.

s in The Wizard of Oz, large-scale televised sports production, such as The Olympics, World Series Baseball and World Cup Football, have a wizard entity behind the curtain pulling the stops and calling the shots. In this setting, the wizard is an elite organisation dedicated to creating a core, unified broadcast coverage that is packaged and sold to broadcasters all around the world. This wizard organisation is commonly known as ‘The Host Broadcaster’, which is responsible for all broadcast coverage of the sports. The sports coverage is then tailored to the production styles of rights-holding broadcasters, including adding announcers, graphics, music and athlete stories. When the programme is televised in the home countries, it appears that the BBC, NBC or any national broadcaster is covering the entire event — no one sees the wizard.

This Host Broadcaster production model is the future of large sporting events because of two growing issues: the huge production costs associated with televising an event and the growing interest from a global audience. The broadcasters benefit from many levels of savings through economies of scale and receive a significantly better production. Sports production offers unique challenges for the broadcaster — particularly at the Olympics where there are many sports and events that have a significant number of qualifying athletes. It is the mission of the Host Broadcaster to cover and record all athletic competition, including track and field sports, which present difficulties because of simultaneous competition. Throws (discus, hammer, shot-put and javelin), horizontal jumps (long and triple jump) and vertical jumps (pole vault and high jumps) at some time have

Stageboxes

access to the audio signals is through a network of active electronic cards known as a remote access box or stagebox. these are usually 19-inch racks with a power supply and are located where the oB van’s audio resources are; camera microphones, video recorders, audio routers and monitoring. the remote boxes integrate the audio directly into the mixing desk, which becomes the centre for all signal distribution and management. additionally, stageboxes are located on the FoP for all microphone inputs and in the toC for the mix and splits outputs. the technical operations Centre (toC) is where all audio and video signals are centralised, processed as necessary and disseminated. the production from track, throws, horizontal and vertical jumps are sent by fibre from the toC to the international Broadcast Centre. to integrate the audio into the oB van required four stageboxes. recorder i-os require 160 channels (16 channels x 5 machines x in+out), programme outputs — 32 channels — Control a mix 5.1 and 2.0 primary and redundant outputs. Plus monitoring and router feeds.

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simultaneous competition. How can simultaneous action be credibly recorded and televised? Here’s where that wizard comes into play again. Let me take you through a complex case study such as track and field. Athletics comprises track, throws, horizontal jumps and vertical jumps with many overlapping and simultaneous competitions. The Host Broadcaster produces feature coverage of athletics in an ‘Integrated Outside Broadcast Van’ that can record and playback any of the productions. This integrated feed records long periods of action from the other controls rooms and produces a composite coverage of any or all of the sports. The size and capability of television and broadcasting equipment permits dense packaging of camera controls, video recording and processing equipment in an Outside Broadcast van. Often an OB van has been hired because of its video and camera capabilities and not its audio facilities. Many OB vans travel with 12 to 20 cameras and are ideal for large video productions, or, in the case of the Olympics, ‘dual production’ in a single OB van. Most television engineers, including the director and producer, wear headsets making isolated communications possible. Some video switchers have satellite panels that permit remote video switching or additional equipment can be brought in. Dual production from a single OB van is possible for video and has been used in the Summer Olympic coverage of Athletics since 1992. Dual production in a single OB Van is not practical for audio and not possible for surround sound because of monitoring. The television industry is in a major transition to digital and it is easy to overstate the video capabilities of an OB van. There has been a tendency to mix production formats of wide screen video with stereo audio, but at international sporting events, such as the Olympics, the requirements for audio are high. An often under-considered aspect of surround sound is the number of additional audio channels that have to be mixed, routed and recorded. With analogue mixing and routing, capacity and space is exhausted quickly. Consider that a stereo video recording device requires four wires for the stereo audio in and output. A widely used digital video recording device has 16 audio channels input and 16 audio channels output. There is also the possibility to embed the audio into the video to construct many more audio signal paths. This situation constitutes an enormous technical challenge with the increasing demand for high-definition sound. Large-scale events require the integration of multiple OB vans, audio cabins and equipment with various format and interface issues. With surround sound, audio production has become extremely complex and demanding and it is common to supplement the audio production for international events. Athletics requires the integration of five OB vans, four audio cabins and a centralised signal distribution headend. The audio capabilities and basic OB infrastructure must be evaluated individually and as an integrated production unit to determine what needs to be done. As with Toto, older OB vans can be dogs. The remote broadcasting industry is in a transitional period and many OB vans have been retrofitted with high definition cameras, but the audio has not evolved. An OB van with an analogue stereo mixing console and two-channel audio routing can get by for a while, but the requirements of an international event like Olympic Athletics requires audio that is high-definition quality. Even though you can produce two video feeds from a single OB van, you cannot properly produce two surround audio feeds. The solution is to augment and integrate additional audio facilities, create two additional mixing positions July/August 2008

Capture the emotion. At the last Winter Games, one of the audio challenges was... Setting 42 channels of UHF wireless, conforming to national regulations regarding frequency band, spot frequency allocation and maximum power transmission. Then setting this up around a 30m x 60m ice rink and having constant operation of up to 12 hours a day. At the last Winter Games in Torino, Audio-Technica was successful in rising to this challenge and will again be transmitting the emotion of the Beijing Games 2008 using their flagship Artist Elite 5000 Series UHF wireless system to achieve noise free transmission and pure audio path.

Artist Elite 5000 series wireless system

If you need to transmit the emotion of your next event, whether it be a sporting event, a rock concert, an opera or a business presentation, Audio-Technica is ready for the challenge. Let Audio-Technica be the supplier for your own games to begin.

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Beijing Games with surround speaker monitoring to cover the side-by-side simultaneous sporting activities from a single OB van. Note that all other broadcast functions, production, video switching, engineering and recording still reside in the OB van. With any mixing platform (and particularly a digital platform) you have to correctly anticipate the number of inputs and outputs because any additions on site are very difficult and require programming of the CPU or processor. miX aNd SiGNal FloW — The complexity of the signals at an international event can be overwhelming and you may wonder which path to take. Every feed, track, throws, vertical jumps and horizontal jumps, plus an integrated control room, has a full-time dedicated, mixing position, either in the OB van or in the primary audio cabins. Remember, during qualifications throws (shot-put and hammer), pole vault, high jump, long jump and triple jump, can operate two independent and simultaneous competitions that require two audio mix positions designed as a primary feed and a secondary feed. The secondary output or playback will always flow through the primary control room and the secondary feed is not available as a split or mix. The secondary production will always be recorded. The two secondary control rooms are shared between the throws, vertical jumps and horizontal jumps production. Stageboxes are placed in the vicinity of the locations of the various competitions and are connected to the broadcast compound by multimode fibre. All audio control rooms have digital mixing consoles and networkable routing from the German firm Lawo. Networking the Lawo Nova 73 processing cores together made the switch over possible because otherwise you would have to repatch the proper video record/playback machine plus mix flow to the proper OB or primary audio cabin. There has to be a contingency plan for component and path failure. Once a signal flow is established, the settings are saved and can be recalled. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The athletics installation and programming required more than five setup days with five audio technicians to setup the equipment and patch and interface the OB vans, audio cabins and Technical Operations Centre (TOC). moNitoriNG aNd mEtEriNG — The Wizard’s voice reverberates through Oz like a producer’s voice through the OB van. A typical OB van audio room is an extremely difficult environment for critical sound monitoring. The space is generally limited, the speaker placement can be haphazard plus there is a tremendous amount of fan and HVAC noise.

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the wizardy of consoles

the capabilities of digital mixing consoles are amazing, however the i-os are costly and have to be accurately planned especially when you are replacing the audio mixing, monitoring and routing of two oB vans. the most tedious aspect is counting the signals, their direction (input or output) their format (analogue or aES) and the physical location. there are limitations to the number of signals you can have in a madi and atm ﬂow (madi and atm are the two generally accepted transport protocols). madi can carry up to 60 signals bidirectionally; however, i-o cards are usually packaged with eight inputs or outputs per card slot. Eight i-os x seven cards = 56 signals. also, remember that a digital mixing console is a ‘big CPU’ and requires boot-up time — which is time off the air. Where’s the Wiz when you need him?

There has been an increase in the use of dual OBs, which use two or more trailers and provide additional space for audio and other operations. Additionally, there are specialised audio OB vans, often designed for music with proper surround monitoring and large capacity. Of course, it is a very costly operation to keep those trailers moving event to event and lend support to flightpacks and temporary seasonal installations. For sports that travel an international circuit (like Formula One) or in situations like the Olympics, where there is simultaneous competition and additional mixing facilities are needed, audio cabins and remote mixing positions becomes a viable option. Temporary installations have to consider the listening environment for the sound mixer and even the producer. Proper monitoring requires critical listening space — it is an absolute requirement. In an attempt to provide proper mixing conditions, the final surround sound mix for World Cup Football was created at the Broadcast Centre. This was practical when you had only a couple of matches being telecasted, but with the number of simultaneous events you have at the Olympics complete local production is essential. The audio control rooms are constructed inside typical portable buildings that are used and seen throughout China. These cabins are used for office, production and engineering space and are outfitted to fit a specific need. The audio mix space is walled and acoustically treated to meet some minimum audio standards and specifications. The audio cabins are equipped with a Lawo MC266 desk with Nova processing and routing core, and Genelec monitoring and RTW plasma meters. resolution

With the advent of digital recording devices, the number of record and playback channels for a live sporting event has increased exponentially. The most common digital video recorders have very high quality compression schemes for four video inputs and 16 audio channels. Any of the 16 audio channels can be mapped to any video channel up to a total of eight audio channels per video channel. For example, the audio channels can be allocated equally to all of the video channels allocating four audio channels for each video channel. Another possibility would be two channels of audio to the first and second video channels, four audio channels to the third video channel and eight channels to the fourth video channel. In athletics, there are two groups of eight channels of audio created. One group of audio is used for the handheld camera perspective, which must follow the handheld camera angle because it is significantly different from the more distant cameras. This handheld group of audio has router control over the audio going to the left/right and front left/right channels of the recording machine. The audio for these channels is the stereo microphone off the handheld camera. All handheld camera audio is switched through the router and follows the proper handheld camera. An appropriate atmosphere mix is created for the rear channels and is consistent for all handheld cameras. Mapping the audio and video inputs and outputs is necessary before operation of the recorder. Note once the audio channels are mapped and fixed to the video, the audio playback will accompany the video. Well, for all this it sure doesn’t look like Kansas anymore! As the world becomes smaller through communications, global audiences for athletic events like the Olympics, the World Cup and World Series will see more and more wizardry in large-scale television productions. The elite production teams behind the curtain will become even more expert at flexible and efficient coverage of the montage of events, while the rights-holding broadcasters will benefit from their efforts. As technology evolves and event requirements change, outdoor broadcast facilities that are scaleable and that can be easily integrated together offer realistic solutions to complex productions. That is the future. ■ July/August 2008

Beijing Games

Bob Dixon The NBC Olympics director of sound design and communications talks ROB JAMES through the logistics and solutions of their planning for the Games.

BC, ‘America’s Olympic Network’, owns the exclusive US media rights to the Olympic Games until 2012. This includes Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012. Bob Dixon is NBC Olympics’ director of sound design and communications. Bob began his career in sound almost by accident. His first job after college was in the shipping room of a public television station. Within three months they told him they needed an audio person and, although that was the area he had the least amount of training in, ‘they had a bunch of really good engineers who helped me through the learning curve. I was very lucky.’ Resolution caught up with him just a few hours before he boarded the plane to China and the Beijing Games.

July/August 2008

How did you get to be director of sound design and communications at NBC Olympics? All my work had been in music and designing systems and I’d never been a fan of sports but a friend of mine from public TV said, ‘Hey Bob, there’s a company that wants to record a bowling tournament would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Well I’ve never done it, but how hard can it be?’ That show went fine, but the producer said, ‘So, who are you?’ It’s just like everything else, word of mouth. Then you get the second call and then a third and sports was growing like a cancer. I never had to pick up a telephone. It was a lot of fun and this led to the Olympics in 1984 doing rowing and canoeing. I got hired by NBC in 1988 to design the audio for all of the venues in Korea. I ended up doing hockey for CBS Olympics both in France and in Norway. I was asked by NBC to take charge of the audio for the broadcast centre in ‘96 in Atlanta. When NBC got the rights long-term and decided they needed an engineering group to work full time on it they put together a team. What major problems are you facing? Being in China means that we’ve not been able to secure remote trucks that are already built, which is what we’ve done in every other Olympics — big venues, big remote trucks, beautifully designed and laid out with things like gorgeous Calrecs in them. We can’t get them because they would be on a ship for so long it would cost a fortune, we couldn’t afford to pay

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for the time they’d just be travelling. So we’ve had to resort to ‘flypacks’. NEP Visions in England are going to be doing the two biggest flypacks for us. One for athletics, track and field, which is one of our big ‘A’ venues and the other is gymnastics.

Are you the lead coverage on those events? No, we’re not the lead coverage on any events. The IOC has the responsibility for hiring a ‘host broadcaster’. In ’84 ABC was not only the broadcaster for America but also the host broadcaster, but they didn’t have a different truck for the host coverage. So we provided video and audio feeds for the other countries as well as serving our own. The other countries didn’t think our coverage was so equal. At that point they decided they really needed a host broadcaster not connected with covering for a specific country. In the future the host broadcaster will be owned by the IOC but before they used to put it out to bid. So the place must be stiff with trucks? Not so many as you might think. It costs so much money. Most countries take the host feed. They’ll send announcers and hire a booth from the Olympic committee and use the host video and sound. Depending on how many people they’re serving and how much money they’re getting to make out of it they start adding things. Like the BBC will come over and start adding some of their own cameras and editing.

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Beijing Games

So what’s in a ﬂypack? The flypack, depending on the size, will have a video switcher, a mixing console and a number of recording devices. We have our own small flypacks that we designed having as few as two recording devices and no editing facilities to as many as five recording devices and small editing facilities. It has a video area for the technicians to match the cameras etc. a production area up front for producers, ADs, statistics people, graphics. It’s really what’s inside of a truck but built inside of a trailer. Things that would be bolted to the floor in a truck are often on wheels and all of the interconnecting harnesses that would be under the floor are on the floor. How does the new technology help or hinder? Because everything is being done in 5.1 that doesn’t mean we can do the whole show using only 5.1 because most of our recording machines and most of the editing facilities can’t handle 5.1. If it’s live going to America we do 5.1 from the flypack right to the homes. But if we have to record some parts we do a simultaneous mix of programme to stereo and we also mix down the sound effects only with no announcers. So besides the six channels of 5.1 we’ve got the four channels which also have to be created and transmitted around. For all the recording machines and most of the monitoring places, like in video and tape etc., they have to listen to the stereo feed. 28/x

Do you use embedded SDI? In the broadcast centre we do it as HD SDI with 12 of the possible 16 tracks embedded. If you’re working with a tape machine and you punch up on the router, let’s say programme, you’ll get the first four channels programme and effects. If you are in transmission or in audio you would select groups three and four so that you would get channels 9 though 16, 5.1 and stereo. At the venues we’re running two to four channel audio routers in conjunction with the old fashioned video routers and that’s going on as it always has. We often just bring the embedders right to the venues. Do the consoles help? I remember when I first got an analogue Calrec Q2 and I used to tell the producer or director, and I never felt this way in my life before, ‘I don’t care what you want to do, it doesn’t matter. Just let me know and I can do it. We can do anything.’ And that’s the way I felt the first time I had these big, beautiful, glorious desks with so many faders. Right now in the digital era a fader can control a 5.1 signal, a stereo signal or a mono signal. But having 5.1 on one fader is just amazing and because you have the ability to press a button and there’s a spill out panel you can now tailor that 5.1 and treat those rear channels if they’re not to your liking. On the Calrec it couldn’t be easier to set up a simultaneous stereo mix. I tell my people resolution

that by far the biggest amount of our audience are watching in standard def and listening in stereo. So I say spot-check the 5.1, that’s fine, but do 95% of your monitoring on the stereo.

How about the acquisition end? Back when we were doing Korea every time the host broadcaster had a Sennheiser 416 to pick up something, I would go out there and put another Sennheiser 416 and make it an XY by taking a split from his and adding mine to it so that every pick up we had was stereo. Well, now you can’t do that. You can’t go out and put your own mics on the floor. So, what can we do? Well, we can have our own ambience microphones, for example, to capture the 5.1. What are you using for that? I’m using Audio-Technica 4050s. I’ve always been impressed ever since the days of doing symphony at just how beautiful a single microphone can sound. When I put out two really nice microphones, just for an ambience pick up, I was often surprised at just how pretty it was. So what I do is use five of these things and spread them way out. I tell them, ‘Don’t put them in the same place, don’t put them near each other.’ You know the one area I always thought did the very best job in surround is film. Movies have always been my reference point. I hear baseball in a movie and I think, hey that’s how baseball should sound. July/August 2008

Beijing Games Omegas at gymnastics and two of those for athletics as big as they can be and we have a single Omega at beach volleyball.

How will the double ones be used? We’re going to have one doing mostly the sound effects mixing and feeds that are going for ISO and the other one will be doing the show mix with all of the tape machines coming in and the announcers and feeds from the sound effects person. There’s a MADI interface between the two consoles so they can swap things back and forth. How do you keep sync with all the video delays etc? You watch any of the news networks here and it’s all over the place. This is not an area that has a solution yet. You have to measure, you have to do lip sync tests before you do anything. It could be as simple as someone counting on camera or a device that creates a flash and beep. We’ve been pretty good, we check it out and if we’re editing something we know that when it leaves us it’s in perfect sync. Do you get involved with the post sound work? That’s strictly done by the editors. They don’t have separate audio people working in editing. If I could change one thing, that would be it. No that’s not true, I’d probably do something about the war in Iraq first. What do you do about long cable runs, do you preamp at the mic? We often will use the Sound Devices MM1 or, if we’re doing a stereo pair somewhere, we can use the Mix Pre. They’re really nice little boxes. We can run some fibre and spread things out a bit because one box can jump over to another, etc. But we can also plug in to a camera. For the ceremonies what splits do you have? They charge us a not insignificant amount of money for every split that we get. So, if I want a microphone split or even a sub mix we have to pay for that. Our budgets keep getting cut and cut so what I try to do is say, ‘Give me a mix of just the performance in 5.1 and then give me just your whole surround ambience in 5.1.’ That comes on three AES for each split. Where we have our own hand-held cameras

July/August 2008

close-up we put stereo shotgun microphones on all of those. They’re not really shotguns but they’re so much nicer than a mono shotgun when you’re close up to people and the coach is hugging the athlete who just got done performing.

You have a lot of sources? I buy an awful lot of separate microphone splits at the big sports because we do sub-mixes and ISO cameras to tape. It’s not that I put out a whole great deal of microphones but I have a lot of sources. When you figure each machine acts like four that’s why we’re going crazy with consoles. They get bigger and bigger and bigger with all those sources. We’re actually going to two consoles at the ‘A’ venues. Because these are flypacks it’s really hard to get [Calrec] Alphas to go around in flightcases although we do have one Alpha at swimming and diving. We have two of the new

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What’s the best part? Of working on the Olympics? Just about everything. I get to re-think what we do with each new Olympics....the design part is like play time. Our engineering group is small in size, but they are each incredible to work with. Their skill set is very high, and equally as important, so are their senses of humour. It’s sometimes strange that we are all so familiar with Monty Python and Spinal Tap though. NBC Olympics has been a wonderful company to work for, no kidding. What will you do after the games? Directly after the games I will try to catch the remainder of the summer on a motorcycle through the sweet hills of New England, quickly followed by a couple of weeks in England and Italy with family and friends then it’s quickly back to start working full time on the Vancouver Olympics project. ■

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Beijing Games

The sound of competition Audio is ﬁnally coming of age with the advance of HD in television production. DENNIS BAXTER says it represents the next step up for sound and sport is the perfect vehicle to showcase it.

he international appeal of televised sports is on the rise, fueled by the increasing global interest in athletes from around the world competing in sports like basketball, ice hockey, golf, tennis and motor sports. To meet this demand, the core television broadcast production of sporting events must produce excellent coverage as well as provide cost advantages to multiple ‘rights-holders’ — local or regional network broadcasters — for an event. Additionally, the production of international events such as the Olympics, WorldCup football and the World Series baseball present an opportunity to develop and incorporate new production techniques and push the technology envelope. Live television sports sound production is still in its infancy and offers new challenges for sound designers and practitioners of the future. The viewer’s high expectations, plus the wide selection of available entertainment options creates tremendous competition among films, computers, games and television for the consumer’s attention. Television sound and sports sound, in particular, have stimulated the demand for surround sound productions and created more opportunities for the audio industry. In the past, stereo certainly opened new possibilities, but today, surround sound offers new dimensions to the creative process. The sound of competition sports is critical in the viewer experience. From the crack of a baseball on a bat to the squeak of the high bar in gymnastics, the sound of athletics is what brings the picture alive and makes the event feel personal. Sound engineers and designers are capable of creating film quality sound in a live environment and do so, but to be consistently successful they need the support of the entire broadcast production team. Production: Surround sound is an expensive and complex production. Production needs to consider what to do with this quality of sound and its inherent creative value. The result is an enhanced production value. Engineering: From an engineering standpoint, surround sound requires a lot more work. Rather than questioning the value of it, engineering needs to understand that, as with any new technology, it takes time to fully realise the opportunity it presents. Finance: At the end of the day, somebody’s got to pay for it. And like any technological advancement, justifying the equipment and time involved can be difficult. But better production means better programming and that means better ratings. When approaching a production the audio producer must consider the creative and engineering aspects of the endeavour. The engineering decisions of signal flow, recording, and transmission are required to patch and route the growing number of audio signals needed for a show. It is rare that a sound mixer will generate a single sound format with surround growing globally in various formats. Multichannel audio is here whether it’s a simultaneous discrete surround and stereo mix or a matrix type Dolby Pro Logic II mix or even just a stereo mix with a surround archive. Often the production aspects of television audio are not carefully thought out. The sound mixer must work closely with the show producer to create an acoustic 30/xii

signature for a production and then implement a sound design often with limited resources. This begins with a thorough analysis of the camera coverage that frequently provides a basis for a sound design. Additionally, a review of past coverage can be beneficial during the preproduction process and helps people identify the production aspects of audio. This should be the beginning of the creative process that includes capturing the audio, processing the elements and generating an entertaining soundscape. At the onset, the sound of a sports presentation is fundamentally a production consideration. It is beneficial to define the goals of a sound mix with specific details and avoid vague embellishments. For example, can you clearly define what the 5.1 sound field consists of and what goes into the front channels, the surrounds? How closely will you want the LCR to follow the action? Will the action extend into the surrounds? What’s the overall source placement strategy, and will it vary according to the event? First, the picture needs an acoustic foundation to build on. An atmosphere base consists of the audience and venue acoustics. Different layers and tones of audience should be captured and combined to create an acoustical space that adds realism to the audio mix. Of course, an indoor venue and an outdoor venue will have a significantly different tone, but different zones or spaces within a venue should have consistency in sound. Creating the acoustic foundation for surround sound has been accomplished with fixed surround arrays, such as the Soundfield microphone or the Holophone, and variable arrays that are doublespaced pairs that are tuneable as necessary. The fixed arrays are easy to set up and instantly provide an acoustic foundation. The problem is that the microphone capsules are fixed in a compact housing and you have to place the surround package in a specific location. If you are too close, you capture a nice zone of sound. If you are too far, which is often the case, the atmosphere is too distant and diffused. For those broadcasters that transmit in Dolby Pro Logic II, the spacing of the microphones can be critical and the fixed arrays have limitations. The variable array incorporates adjustable degrees of decorrelation (distance between microphone capsules) to create a spaciousness. Additionally, the microphones are positioned as spaced pairs with the front combination of microphones closer to the audience and a separate set of microphones some distance away from the audience for the surround channels. A closer audience is appropriate in the front channels to fix the viewers attention to the picture (and generate a stereo mix) and use the surround channels to contribute to a sense of space. The perspective of the atmosphere should be stable and change only when necessary to match and enhance the camera view. Generally dramatic atmosphere shifts only work best with equally dramatic camera switches such as in automobile racing when changing to an in-car camera. With a variable or tuneable array, you can change the space and location of the microphones to create the desirable acoustic environment and space. Outdoor resolution

field sports such as football, field hockey, baseball and others have a relatively diffused stratus of atmosphere and venue tone resulting in an indefinable atmosphere perspective — wherever you sit in the venue, the sport and any sport specific sound you hear is in front of you and the crowd and venue surrounds you. The Audio-Technica AT4050 large diaphragm multipattern microphone is used to capture the core acoustic foundation at Olympic Venues. This is a high quality microphone that can withstand a significant amount of sound pressure level, which is beneficial when you have lively and dynamic audiences.

a-t at4050 spaced pair.

A simple spaced array as previously described works well with outdoor field sports and the separation of the microphones and the number of spaced pairs used should be finalised on site by listening. I discussed the atmosphere microphone placement at the Superbowl 2007 with the sound mixer/designer Fred Aldous and he said he used six different spaced pairs but also said that ‘a well placed pair for the front channels and a separate pair for the surrounds can be equally as effective in creating a surround atmosphere base.’ The ‘man in the stand’ perspective to microphone placement is a relatively conservative but effective approach to surround sound. This philosophy positions the home viewer on the near side of the field sitting in the middle of the stands surrounded by fans. This is a similar perspective for many commentary positions on the home team side in the press box or at courtside. This sound field focuses the sports specific sound along with the announcer in the front space anchored to the picture. The surround sound channels are generally atmosphere and venue tone thus creating an acoustic space specific to a venue. This creates an acoustic environment or space that is pleasant and a significant improvement over two dimensional stereo. Additionally, the front atmosphere microphones and the surround atmosphere microphones should be different and decorrelation between the front and surround atmosphere base is definitely desirable if the surround is downmixed by a matrix system such as Dolby Pro Logic II. July/August 2008

Beijing Games

Surround Channel Effects mics. tennis layout.

landing mats — surround effect.

Camera perspective and audio perspective have evolved along different time lines and the viewers’ expectations of audio for sports does not always match camera perspective. At basketball, the July/August 2008

‘whoosh’ of the net is expected for television but virtually no one hears that sound in the arena. Tennis is a sport that is televised over the shoulder of one of the players and does not lend itself to any left-right image but does create a near and far visual image. If you orient the sports specific sound to a near and far perspective on the serve, the new depth contributes significantly to the picture. It is not necessary to change the atmosphere perspective of many court and field sports like tennis, field hockey, football or basketball. Off-camera perspective is often used in film and certain sports can also take advantage of off-camera perspective, such as coach and player dialogue, which can benefit the production. Another method that has tremendous possibilities in audio for sports production is extending the effects into the surround channels. This is especially useful when creating an effect for motion. At the Summer Olympics, landing mats are used at pole vault, high jump, at gymnastics for vaults and rings plus in other sports. By placing microphones on each corner of the landing mat and by proper spatial panning of the microphones in the mix, the result is that the viewer resolution

hears the athlete land around him. Point of View (POV) cameras are used to create interesting images that benefit from correlating spatial sound that accentuates motion in sports. White-water canoeing can benefit from the use of the surround channels by mixing in various levels of water sound into the surround channels. Motion in sports has tremendous possibilities in winter sports because of the speed achieved in downhill skiing and bobsledding, for example. Bobsleigh is shot close to the track and a proper mix will accentuate motion from left to right and front to back. Extending the effects into the surround channels has several technical implications that must be considered. As previously stated, the production’s audio is probably in stereo and surround, which requires at least a dual signal path with independent spatial controls. If you are using the surround channels for effects there will be some microphones that need to be oriented in the surround mix differently than in the stereo. This feature may not be available in some mixing desks, but, to achieve the same effect, the mixer can enter the signal source into the desk twice or dual microphone (a spaced pair) the sound source. The athletes and coaches at field hockey are very vocal and at the Olympics they place two Audio Technica AT899 miniature microphones on the shade cover over the athletes. This creates a spaced pair and one microphone is assigned only to the left channel and the other is assigned exclusively to the surround left channel. This creates a stereo image of one bench in the left sound field and a separate stereo image of the other bench in the right sound field. This gives space in the mix and spreads out key sound elements over the entire sound field. These spaced pairs are relatively decorrelated when close to the sound source and mixdown predictably. Surround sound provides a specific channel for bass effects that should be used to enhance specific frequencies and not just produce noise. The LFE is particularly useful in the discrete production of surround and has to be considered at the onset of a production and the sound mixer/designer must search out low frequency information in a sport. Punches at boxing, kicking of the ball at football and the impact of the shot-put create good low frequency information that can be tapped and passed through the low frequency channel. The use of the centre channel is still being discussed. Some believe it should be used exclusively for commentary while some like to include any voice elements, such as referee calls or PA announcements, in the centre channel. For international events such as the Olympics or World Cup Football, the centre channel has been reserved exclusively for the rightsholding broadcasters, while a German production of Formula One by Hans Biermann and Hermann Gier used a ‘phantom’ centre channel in the effects design which shaped a smooth pan of the sound across the front channels. In the end, it all comes down to a number of rules of the game. 1. Do not stifle creativity. Surround sound is still in its exploratory stage, and it is our obligation to understand its technological and creative impact on the entertainment value of live televised sports. 2. Learn from listening to your peers and contemporaries and hear what is missing in your mix. How do you capture it? How do you convey it? 3. Generate it live! The challenge in entertainment is to get the viewer excited. Sound involves the viewer at a personal and visceral level and generates excitement for the sport. It can only make things better. ■ xiii/31

Beijing Games few constants in this business. Other challenges I consider more or less normal for the specific locations and they appear very obvious, but you have to solve them nevertheless. For example, it is a challenge to find rooms for the crew in a small town like Torino, in a 15 million town like Beijing it isn’t. And then of course the language and culture of the counties have a big impact as well, but this is what keeps the job exciting. Olympic Games — it’s never just a repetition of the ones before but always a completely new event.

Keeping people talking Satisfying the intercoms demands of televised large sporting events is a medal-winning achievement in itself. ZENON SCHOEPE talks to Marc Schneider, rental director with Riedel Communications, about the preparation and the implementation. of matrix, partyline and radio intercoms. The third field is the Opening and Closing ceremonies, which have become more and more complex over the years, resulting in growing demands for the communications infrastructure to execute these events. And, last but by no means least, there’s the intercom infrastructure for broadcasting the Games worldwide. The objective, and also the necessity in each field, is to create a real-time voice communications environment that is independent from public communications networks in order to achieve maximum reliability and security.

hat are the primary objectives in planning a large-scale intercom infrastructure for international multi-sports events? If we look at international multi-sports events such as the Olympic Games, we’re not talking about one single intercom infrastructure, but mainly of four different fields. First there is the communications for the organising committee, which includes services like transport, security, protocol, venue operation, accreditation, food and beverages, etc. This is mainly radio communications, in recent years, usually based on a digital trunked radio system (TETRA) with several thousands of mobile radios. The second field is the venue comms, which describes all sports related communications at each venue of the Games. This contains, for example, the communications between presentation manager, judges, scoring, and so on. In Beijing that’s 37 venues of various sizes. Communications here is realised usually with a mix 32/xiv

What are the typical problems that have to be overcome and how big a part does geographical location play? Of course the geographical location has a big impact on the infrastructure. It starts with the type of event: Olympic Summer Games are usually located within or around one big city, while Olympic Winter Games usually include large distances. In Vancouver, it’ll be more than 120km between the locations, making the infrastructure much more complex. And then of course it depends where in the world the Games take place. The technical standards of the existing infrastructures are quite different. The challenges in setting up the communications environment for the FIFA World Cup in Germany was, of course, different from the challenges of doing this, for example, in India. For China I would say it’s somewhere in between. Typical problems — I would prefer to say challenges — are that in most of the cases the local organising committees don’t have the experience of a similar sized event. This means that we’re usually also in a consultant position and let our customers profit from our expertise, which we’ve gained since our first Olympic job in 1994. We’re pretty much one of the resolution

Because large broadcast events inevitably expand in size, how do you build scaleability in? The scaleability of our solutions is definitely one of the reasons why we’re chosen to provide our systems for these kinds of event. The Artist digital intercom platform from our manufacturing division reflects the needs of these events already in its system architecture. The intercom matrix is designed to consist of up to 128 intercom mainframes, which can be connected via fibre to form one single, nonblocking matrix of up to 1024 users. Due to the fibre ring architecture, cabling is significantly reduced, saving costs and set-up time. In addition to this we can connect up to 32 of these installations using trunking. The system is also designed to adjust easily to shortterm changes incorporated usually with events like this. Changes can be easily applied via drag-anddrop, even for our partyline intercoms. If we look at wireless communications it’s again the scaleability of the digital trunked radio installations we’re using. This allows us to coordinate thousands of users with all their individual demands in programming. Even though the planned installations are already really big, we usually send about 10% spare materials. This is not to replace broken devices, which actually happens very rarely, but to be prepared to cover additional demands occurring during the event. As I already said, Olympic Games are very unique and are being created in the moment of their performance. How do you accommodate different broadcasters’ intercom equipment choices? If we look at the broadcast intercoms for such an event, it’s obvious that the intercom equipment comes from various manufacturers. So one part of the broadcast intercoms are the ones used by the host broadcast service which provides the international feed. In the case of Beijing that’s BOB. Then we have all the rights-holding broadcasters, such as the BBC for the UK or ARD/ZDF for Germany, bringing in their own equipment. And then we have usually about 50 OB trucks from independent truck companies, serving usually the host broadcaster to cover the venues. In Beijing there are about 35 OB trucks coming over from Europe so as a result we have quite a big variety of intercom systems on site, not a homogeneous infrastructure. If it comes to linking these systems, which is necessary for some applications, this might go easier with one system and is probably more difficult with the others. Most of the European trucks, for example, have a Riedel Artist system on board, so they can be easily linked via fibre. When linking other trucks or systems, engineers usually go for a lot of 4wire connections which is quite time consuming. Describe typical intercoms equipment setups at the different types of operator position. Generally the intercom set-ups are quite similar in all the fields where intercoms are in use at the Olympic Games. That’s more intercom matrices with several user control panels. Then there’s usually interfacing to wired partyline intercoms, professional mobile radios or other wireless intercom systems and ISDN, July/August 2008

Beijing Games

telephone or IP codecs. This concept basically stays the same, if it’s for broadcast, for venue communications or any other application. It just differs in the system size and the roles of the users. In broadcast, it’s the director, in venue communications, the presentation manager, etc.

What are the interconnection options in the light of the large distances involved? If we’re looking at the distances within the city, where we’re talking about some kilometres, fibre definitely is the transport medium of choice. If we’re talking about bridging the distance from the broadcasters back home to their main studios in the US or in Europe, it’s either ISDN or IP interfaces allowing the intercoms to call home.

Artist 1000 control panels, 123 C44 system interfaces for the integration of digital partylines in the matrix environment, 1370 Performer C3 digital partyline beltpacks, 42 PMX Panel Multiplexers to distribute panels via fibre and more than 320 professional mobile radios. Opening and Closing will feature probably the world’s biggest and most complex temporary intercom installation ever — containing eight Artist digital matrix intercom systems linked via fibre, 80 intercom control panels, 24 system interfaces for the integration of digital partylines, 210 digital partyline beltpacks, 44 RiFace radio repeaters/ interfaces, 650 Motorola radios, six FM transmitters as well as 12,000 (!) radio receivers for mass monitoring of the on-field actors. The communications for the organising committee will employ about 15,000 digital TETRA radios. Last but not least, there will be a total of about 100 intercom matrix systems for broadcast communications, with about 3000 control panels and three to four thousand radios.

How does Riedel cope with the sheer volume of equipment required in such an event? First of all we have the equipment to cover an event of this size and you should bear in mind that FIFA Euro 2008 is also going on right now and that there will be World Youth Day in Sydney in July and lots of smaller events as well. In addition to probably one of the world’s biggest rental stocks for intercom and radio communications systems, we also have the necessary crew to run such projects. In addition to Describe the layout and scheme for a large our full-time engineers and project managers we have broadcast event. built up an international network of qualified freelance Maybe the quantities are the best way to give an engineers to flexibly cover our requirements for largeoverview of the intercom installations of an event like scale events. Also, our corporate structure at Riedel is the Olympics. If we look at Beijing, the installations optimised to handle these kinds of events. Tasks like for venue comms include 51 Artist 64 intercom Resolution Half Page 7/12/06 17:15 Page 3 the Olympic Games are not handled in addition to matrices, which are partially linked via fibre, 185

MIX 1 PART ACTION WITH 5.1 PARTS PASSION

the day-to-day business of a rental company, but as individual projects with individual project managers that are appointed only to one project at a time. And the rest? The expertise of 20 years in business with quite a long list of references for international largescale events. ■

As surround sound becomes more widely used, especially in sports, viewers can enjoy all the excitement of being there. But additional audio signal paths demand more console capacity – and with the increased complexity of today’s productions, that could be a problem. Fortunately now there’s a solution. Our revolutionary Bluefin technology more than doubles the signal processing capacity of conventional systems – all on a single card, occupying just a fraction of the space. Even better – it cuts the cost per channel by half. It’s the sort of innovation you’d expect from a company exclusively dedicated to live production and on-air broadcast audio mixing. If you share our passion, find out more at calrec.com

calrec.com

July/August 2008

Putting Sound in the Picture

resolution

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Kubitza | Lieck | Renner

Elite Competition, Exeptional Sound

When the best in the world gather, it’s a privilege to be among them. Competing at Olympic level honours the participants and confers elite status on the chosen few. In the disciplines of audio mixing and routing, AURUS and NEXUS will take gold this year in Beijing by ensuring that the events thrill the 91,000 spectators at the Games – and billions more all over the world. This is because our mixing console and routing systems will produce and transport the entire PA sound for the Olympic Stadium. They will also supply the International Broadcast Centre sound feeds. AURUS and NEXUS always take the lead, whatever the event. 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

review

Alternate Soundings Dynax2 It’s big, brash and beautifully built but it’s also a bit bonkers if it’s gain reduction control that you’re after. GEORGE SHILLING plugs in and watches the blue window turn red.

lternate Soundings (Al.So) is the brainchild of Olivier Bolling whose credentials include involvement with the design of the Neve 88R and a lengthy stint at Paris’s Plus XXX Studios, where he designed and built two new control rooms and recording studios. The Dynax2 (pronounced Dynax Square) is essentially a retweaked stereo version of the now discontinued mono Dynax opto limiter. Bolling’s maverick approach is reflected in the physical appearance, and the exceptionally high build quality apparently reflects his experience in the maintenance room. Hence, the Dynax2 is remarkably solid and sturdy, with exceptionally clear legending and labelling. Full marks for the 10mm thick aluminium front panel, where all the labels are deeply etched using a stylish font that suggests 1930s sophistication and living up to the French reputation for style. And the rear connectors couldn’t be more clearly labelled, which is what you want in the dark recesses of a rack. The beautiful VU meter is housed behind a perspex cover that is the same thickness again as the front panel. The power transformer is housed in an external metal case, with a thick flying lead terminating in an XLR connector to join the rear panel of the main unit. Inside the main unit are Sowter transformers and other high quality discrete components. Both boxes are weighty. Large, deep bakelite-style knobs dominate the front. Power is enabled from the external transformer box, while the front panel features a push switch (similar to old-style guitar pedal stomp switches) labelled Standby and this is a hard wire bypass. When the unit is enabled a blue LED illuminates the meter, however this dramatically turns red to indicate overloading (similar to the implementation in the Drawmer 1968 Mercenary). A long warm-up period is recommended, and indeed it takes quite a while for the VU to settle centrally. The Limiting function is selected from three possible settings: Limiter, Brick Wall and AntiDyna. The mono unit additionally provided a Compressor setting, but this has been abandoned and the ratios re-jigged so that the Limiter on the Dynax2 is somewhere between those two settings on the original. Bolling is currently also planning a gentler compressor model. The Limiter is a 10:1 ratio, Brick Wall is infinity:1 and AntiDyna is a unique setting where a negative ratio is achieved: the further the level over threshold the signal goes, the less level is generated. The large Threshold knob is stepped with 24 positions; turning the knob clockwise lowers the Threshold and increases the limiting. However, there is an additional toggle switch on the rear panel, no July/August 2008

doubt something of an afterthought, that increases Threshold sensitivity by about 10dB. None of the level knobs are calibrated, and I had assumed this to be a policy decision, but Bolling says the next batch will be calibrated. Attack is a continuous pot, while Release is a 23-position stiffly switched knob — Bolling prefers continuous knobs but this pot value wasn’t achievable as the Release setting covers an enormous range, from extremely fast to very slow indeed. Bass Drive selects a sidechain filter with three settings to allow low frequencies to be circumvented in the detector circuitry. Make up gains are separate for each channel and operate continuously, then there are a couple of small toggles to switch VU function and also to select detector source — L, L+R or External (accessed from a rear panel jack socket). The last of these might be useful for other filtering options or surround linking, while the Left only option usefully enables sidechain compression of the right channel signal. This is self-evidently a unit for fans of heavy limiting, but some interesting effects can be achieved, and the sonics remain remarkably clean and undistorted at all times. This makes it useful as a mastering limiter. Just a few dBs of gain reduction can glue a mix nicely, but if more dramatic limiting is required this can be difficult to achieve without undesirable pumping. Even with the fastest attack setting, the initial transients are generally retained briefly, with the signal then ‘sucking’ away. However, the Bass Drive circuitry mitigates this. With a slow release and a low threshold, huge gain reductions (10dB or more) can be achieved without distortion or any adverse effect on the tonal balance. With a medium attack, this can actually sound much gentler than expected (depending on the mix) adding a bit of pleasantly gluey containment. I had particular success using slow attack and fast release for a really exciting rock sound. And this was excitement without distortion, a really huge analogue sound with warmth and depth. But overdo things and it can quickly get a bit rubbery sounding; the danger certainly exists of squeezing the life out of the mix. Pumping can often be effectively reduced by notching the Bass Drive control up to 100, 200 or 300Hz, although oddly this doesn’t seem quite as dramatic as similar circuitry found on other mastering compressors. The somewhat crazy AntiDyna over-limiting mode produces some unusual effects that Bolling claims can be used creatively. However, even with fastest settings it tends to reduce anything percussive to a small tapping sound and this wasn’t particularly to my taste. And putting it on solo instruments generally had a similar effect — making the start of a note resolution

go ‘pop’. Limiter mode was more than enough in most instances, with Brick Wall way too strong in many cases. The only use I found for AntiDyna was slap bass, where the popping sound was sometimes desirable, but I struggled to think of other uses. However, Limiter mode was surprisingly useful on solo vocals, working especially well with some dynamic female vocals, balancing them perfectly in the mix with minimal fiddling. With judicious setting the Dynax2 controls and tames in a highly enjoyable manner, with no loss of fidelity, no unpleasant distortion and no tonal colouration. It can be brutal, and indeed it does tend towards the overly-powerful for many music applications. I liked the sound best when it was only showing one or two dBs of reduction on the meter, where things gelled and glued nicely. And as a mastering limiter it works very well. For general studio use, the Dynax2 can be overly powerful, and I’d have liked a lower ratio setting. But it is obviously very well put together and combines excellent sonics with a wide range of adjustment and some unique features. And it looks great. ■

ProS

Clean as a whistle top-notch sonic integrity; powerful limiting with wideranging controls; bass side-chain; bonkers ‘antidyna’ mode; sturdy build; looks fab!

CoNS

No gentle compression ratios; tends to pump if not set carefully; antidyna mode a matter of taste!

EXtraS

al.So has released the modual modular rack system. this includes a dual mic pre module with 60dB of gain and input

transformers (Sowter), a dual di module, and stereo input module. a monitoring section module has Cue and talkback capabilities and a headphone section. rear panel connectivity permits patching between the modules.

Contact altErNatE SoUNdiNGS, FraNCE: Website: www.alternatesoundings.com

review

Focusrite ISA One Focusrite’s ISA One is a curious beast. In part, it’s because its form factor means that from a distance you could easily mistake it for a bench power supply or a portable welder. But it’s also because it offers a collection of features that at ﬁrst glance you might never have considered useful.

he ISA One is primarily a single channel mic preamplifier. Based around the same topology as the proven and highly regarded ISA110, it features the original Lundahl LL1538 transformer on the input side. Rather than being consigned to a rack though, the ISA One is designed to be taken directly to wherever the action is — hence the welder-like case design complete with carrying handle, and the fact that it comes supplied in its own compact flightcase. The look and feel of many of the front panel controls will be utterly familiar to anybody who’s used other units in the ISA range, and the core of the unit is very straightforward. Coarse gain is applied via a 4-position stepped control, which works in one of two ranges (0–30dB or 30–60dB) selected by an illuminated pushbutton. A continuously variable trim control gives another 20dB of gain, meaning that there’s an impressive 80dB total gain on offer. A selection of other illuminated pushbuttons offer the usual phantom power selection, polarity reverse, a high pass filter (75Hz@18dB/octave) and the activation of a balanced insert point, accessed by a pair of TRS jacks on the rear panel. The transformer employed on the microphone input can be toggled through a number of different taps by another front panel button to allow input impedances of 600, 1.4k (the original ISA110 value), 2.4k or 6.8kOhm. Another pushbutton cycles through three input options for the main signal path — mic level, line level or instrument level. Balanced microphone and line level inputs appear on the rear panel (XLR for mic, and XLR and TRS jack for line inputs), while the high impedance, unbalanced instrument level input is located on the front. It’s at this stage that the ISA One starts to differ somewhat from a more conventional device. The DI input has its own gain control, with +10 to +40dB of gain on offer. It also has a choice of two input impedances (470kOhm and 2.4MOhm), and a useful ‘pass through’ output on the front panel for sending a guitar DI onwards to an amp, for example. Selecting 36

JON THORNTON

the instrument input as the source routes it to the main output and enables it to be metered on the prominent VU meter. But even if it isn’t selected as the main source, the DI section remains active and has its own dedicated balanced output on the rear of the unit. This means that a DI source could be recorded via this output, while the ‘pass through’ is sent to an amp. A mic on this amp could then run through the mic pre, which feeds its own, separate output. In this kind of situation, the metering provided is quite comprehensive. The signal selected as the main source is displayed on the mechanical VU meter and

on a LED peak meter. A second LED peak meter normally shows the level of the dedicated DI output. Both peak meters and the VU meter can be calibrated to different operating levels. The VU meter defaults to 0VU = 4dBu. Pressing the VU Cal switch on the front panel changes this to any value between 0VU = +11dBu and +26dBu — the exact value is set via a small pot on the rear of the unit. A similar pot sets the operating level of the peak meters between 0dBFS = +18dBu to +26dBu, although this trimmer is permanently in circuit. These options become important if the optional A-DC board is fitted. This gives two channels of output at sample rates up to 192kHz on a choice of 9-pin D-Sub, optical ADAT or optical SPDIF. The first resolution

of these two channels is always the currently selected main source. The second channel is, by default, the dedicated DI output. However, a balanced line level input (TRS jack) is available on the rear panel and if a source is plugged in here it replaces the DI signal on both the second LED meter and the input to the second channel of the A-DC. The D-Sub output can be switched for AES or SPDIF operation, and can work in single and dual-wire modes. External Word clock input and output are also provided on BNCs. The final string to the (UK£424 + VAT) ISA One’s bow is in the provision of a headphone monitoring section. By default, this simply gives a volume control and allows monitoring of any active signals. This means that if a single microphone is plugged in and selected as the source, then that is what you will hear. But if either the DI signal path or the external input mentioned earlier is connected, then the headphone output will contain a (non-adjustable) mono mix of this plus the main source. A temptingly labelled ‘Cue Mix’ button next to the headphone volume control promises to add a little more flexibility, but in fact doesn’t. Activating it allows the headphone amp to pick up a stereo signal from yet another pair of balanced inputs on the rear of the unit, but there is no way on the unit itself to set a balance between source and backing, for example. The best way to describe this is simply to regard it as a foldback amplifier, the mix for which would need to be sourced from a DAW or a mixer. In use, the sound of the unit will yield no surprises to anyone who’s used other devices in the ISA range. The mic pre is quiet, clean and nicely neutral with just a touch of HF brightness. The switchable input impedance works well here too, with the lowest settings able to pull some additional LF weights out of dynamic and ribbon microphones. The DI stage impressed me as much as anything else — my current favourite is a Radial JDV, and the ISA One’s DI matched it in most respects. Particularly useful is the ability to drop the input impedance of the DI when working with sources like synths. But it’s the feature set that continues to puzzle me, as I’m still not entirely sure of the application that the unit is aimed at. As a solution to minimum signal path recording of guitars it works well, particularly for recording both a DI and mic feed. And if you’re short on decent headphone foldback amps, it has its uses here too. Yet I can’t help thinking that, for the solo recordist, some extra flexibility in the monitoring section would be a welcome addition. ■

ProS

High quality mic preamp; excellent di capabilities; ﬂexible metering and digital output options.

CoNS

monitoring section could use more ﬂexibility; variety of signal path permutations on offer a little confusing at first.

Contact FoCUSritE, UK: Website: www.focusrite.com

July/August 2008

Audio

perfection

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

review

TL Audio Fat Track DAWs are great but they don’t always interface that well with some of the rudimentary tasks that production demands — like monitoring. At last, a compact and integrated answer to all those who wished they’d never given away their analogue consoles.

t happens as infrequently as it ever did but every now and then you come across a product that you feel is right. I felt the Fat Track was right from that first time I opened the press release about it and was even more encouraged when I saw an early picture. Fat Track is a pair or recording channels with EQ, a four stereo pair summing mixer and a block of monitoring functionality all packaged in to a gently slanted desktop unit. For me, the problem with so much of the modern and eminently practical way of working is that the centricity of the DAW predictably throws up its limitations pretty quickly for those big enough to acknowledge it. Thus you need a means of getting into it, out of it and to be able to listen to what you have done in a natural and relaxed sort of way. The problem with the miniaturisation of a recording rig is that you eventually have to add some of the bits back in that your clean sweep with a new DAW threw out. Thus we get boxes that in effect represent parts of a proper mixing console. The first of these was the channel strip but it has been followed, in these more progressive times, with monitoring boxes and summing boxes and source selectors. The issue here is that if you do it properly you end up with a right load of assorted jumble dumped right back in the space you thought you’d reclaimed for pictures of the family… And while your monitor controller is a desktop unit and the channel and summing box are rackmounts, chances are you could also have a mic pre brick with a handle on the top. At the end of it all you still have to connect it up and it won’t stay connected the same way for very long. That kind of misses the point for me. We moved away from consoles for the sake of streamlined efficiency and space-saving but what has been arrived at in most cases is worse productivity than we had before. People mix with a mouse and keep it all in the box and do it all with plugs because 38

it’s simply less bother than attempting the alternative. Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather have a desk. Or a Fat Track… What we are presented with here is effectively two recording channels and a monitoring section that has access to four 2-track returns, each of which is on its own pot. That 4 x 2 sum alerts you to the fact that those eight inputs can be employed for summing duties but I’m getting ahead of myself. The back panel is blank although there is space that alludes to the optional ADAT digital interface. All the connectors are on the top on stout screw-locked jack sockets and locking XLRs. TLAudio stuff is well screwed together. For the two channels you have instrument, line and mic inputs with inserts on both channels and direct outs on each channel. The four 2-track returns are on jacks and can be switched for +4/-10 operation. There are outputs for two sets of loudspeakers, an unbalanced stereo output and the main balanced XLR outputs (these do get in the way a bit) and these have balanced inserts. Then there are two sets of phones sockets (each with their own level pot), a stereo effects return (channels have an FX send), an FX send and a Tape Out. Channels have switches for Phantom, Mic/Line selection, a 30dB pad, phase reverse and 90Hz roll off. There are centre detented Pan and Gain pots, the aforementioned FX send and a rotary fader. EQ is not switch bypassable but is 3-band with shelving HF and LF (+/-15dB) and the same boost and cut over the swept 150Hz to 7kHz mid. Finally there’s a Mute and a switch for the insert (nice grown up touch). The 2-track returns have rotary faders and routing to the main bus while the main output also has a rotary and switch for its insert. The monitor section has a big knob volume control, loudspeaker Mute, switching to the Alternate monitors, and selection of the four 2-tracks with LED indication. Stereo resolution

ZENON SCHOEPE

metering consists of some traditional TLAudio VUs and a 0, +6, +12dB traffic light LED ladder. Channels additionally have Drive (brighter is harder) LEDs and a red peak LED. Operation is child’s play and I found the scale and layout to my liking. You can track through the channels and listen to your backing either coming back in as stereo subs or as a complete mix from your workstation. Two people could happily work a Fat Track but I have a feeling it will find most homes with solitary users. You have a ridiculous amount of connectivity here and it’s easy to access although when you’ve filled all the sockets it does begin to take on a completely different appearance and starts to feel a little cramped. TLAudio refined its valve orientated signal paths long ago and this unit displays a comfortable front end with a surprisingly characterful mic preamp and a gain structure throughout that allows you to balance things nicely in terms of drive and richness. I always adjust the inputs and output so the signal gets into the ‘alive’ zone before I start fiddling with anything else. In honesty I didn’t use the EQ all that much, relying instead on inserted processing, but I do like its top and bottom. From the standpoint of summing the same character traits are carried over although for me I am drawn to the Fat Track most for the number of inputs you can get into it — you have the stereo return too, of course — and how easy it is to access them. From an equipment reviewer’s point of view it is ideal kit for comparisons and testing purposes. You can rely on it to provide quiet and solid performance. I think it’s significant that TLAudio has placed this box (UK£999 + VAT) at the bottom of its console portfolio. It shares the EQ with the M1 (albeit without the EQ Bypass switch) although it’s actually a long way short of a traditional console. Maybe this is what ‘desks’ of the future will look increasingly like. However, I could see this principle refined quite a bit more with a few well-chosen bells and whistles. Better EQ, some dynamics, more returns, for example. If you can see the limitations of the cobbled together DAW setups offered as a pick ‘n’ mix from a variety of sources then you are a candidate for the Fat Track. If you can’t then you won’t even know what you’re missing. ■

ProS

Great idea; a medley of popular daW analogue add-ons in one box; solid performance; sounds good; much more integrated than the alternatives.

CoNS

Gets a little crowded when fully plugged up; no EQ bypass.

Contact tl aUdio, UK: Website: www.tlaudio.co.uk

July/August 2008

review

Brauner Phanthera V Following on from the original FET-design Phanthera, the new model adds a V for ‘variable’ pattern. JON THORNTON assesses the difference that a diaphragm and a couple of switches make.

K, the story so far… In 1993 Dirk Brauner decided to design and build the best microphone he possible could. Working from a converted barn, he eventually produced his first commercial product, the VM1. This in turn spawned a range of other microphone offerings from the young German company that all had one thing in common — they employed valves in their electronics. It wasn’t until 2001 that Brauner produced a FET-based design with the introduction of the Phantom. Throughout this fairly rapid process of development and growth (which has resulted in a recent move to a new production facility in Germany), two things have remained constant. The first is Brauner’s belief that a microphone is a creative tool as much as a technical instrument. So while you can view figures for noise and sensitivity in the spec sheets, you’ll never find a published frequency response chart for any Brauner product. Instead you’re invited to judge them by simply listening. The second is the maintenance of two distinct groups of broad tonality within the Brauner product portfolio. Broadly speaking, these tonalities could be described as ‘natural’ and ‘coloured’ and the valve-based designs have offerings in both groups. As far as the FET designs go, the original fixed pattern Phanthera was introduced last year as a foil for the very pristine sounding Phantom. The Phanthera V on test today is the newly introduced variable pattern version. Visually, the Phanthera V (UK£1796 + VAT) is almost identical to the Phanthera – it comes with the now familiar snapto-fit shockmount and is supplied in a small aluminium case complete with a Vovox mic cable. The most obvious differences are the double headed capsule lurking inside the head grille, a three-position pattern select switch (omni, cardioid and fig-8) and a -10dB pad. The microphone looks just as well screwed together as the rest of the range, and the published figures quote a respectable 40

Equivalent Noise figure of <11dBA and a sensitivity of 33mV/Pa — it’s got a pretty hot output. Starting with the cardioid pattern selected, and it’s clear that the addition of another diaphragm hasn’t changed the key characteristics of the Phanthera V on vocals. A much darker sounding proposition than the Phantom, it works well with male and female vocals. Chest sounds are more pronounced, and worked close-in there’s a definite sense of low-mid enhancement to the sound in addition to the expected proximity effect. Despite this, the high-end remains open and bright, capturing a lot of nuance and detail — perhaps with a slight tendency to exaggerate sibilance and spit noise with some singers. In general, it’s a little more forgiving than the Phantom on most voices, particularly those that need a little more weight than they naturally possess. The original intention with the Phanthera was to try to create a FET-based microphone that possessed many of the sonic characteristics of a valve-based design, and when I reviewed it, it was clear that this had been successful. T h e transition to a multipattern variant hasn’t lost any of these qualities. In cardioid mode, the pickup pattern is quite wide, which means that placing the Phanthera V quite close on an acoustic guitar (pointing down the neck towards the soundhole) gives quite a balanced sound. Switching to the omni pattern opens up the sound somewhat, although the tendency of the microphone to emphasise low-mids (circa 250Hz) does tend to exaggerate any innate ‘honk’ in rooms of a certain size. This was also true of using the Phanthera V as a room microphone while recording a drum kit. In some ways the sound here is very useable as it manages resolution

the difficult task of capturing transient information without sounding at all thin — but it needed a touch of EQ to stop the low-mids sounding overblown. Switching the polar response to fig-8 in the same position with the null facing the drum kit also helped cure this — although judging by the shift in tonality achieved when moving the microphone slightly, this is probably more to do with phase/position than something innate in this pick-up pattern. Although most potential users would inevitably choose the Phanthera V as a vocal mic in the first instance, I also decided to try it as a close microphone on a guitar cab — back on the cardioid pattern and about 6 inches from the speaker. The pad proves essential in this application, and the results were actually quite striking. Rolling off a little of the high end helps here, as unlike many ‘vintage’ tube microphones or replicas the mic doesn’t have a marked HF roll-off. The sound was not unlike using a ribbon microphone such as the Beyer M160 or Royer 122 — a nice smooth low end that sounds dark without being muffled, but with a little more attack to the sound. Adding selectable patterns and the pad has certainly made the Phanthera a more useful studio workhorse — in fact the omission of these was about the only negative comment I had about the original. More to the point, it seems that despite Brauner’s growth and change of production facility, the qualities that I associate with the products have remained intact. Still can’t quite get used to that name though… ■

ProS

Good sounding vocal microphone capable of bringing out added character with some voices; adds a hint of valve warmth; variable patterns and pad increase ﬂexibility of application.

CoNS

Can exaggerate room tone in some applications; ‘i know, go and get the Phanthera from the mic cupboard!’ still doesn’t quite roll of the tongue…

EXtraS

Both the Phanthera and the Phantom Classic microphones are now being offered in a more budget friendly basic edition that comes with elementary accessory equipment only.

Contact BraUNEr, GErmaNY: Website: www.brauner-microphones.de

July/August 2008

With genuine dual drive recording, the feature-packed new HHB CDR-882 DualBurn delivers twice the performance in the most demanding live and studio CD record/replay applications. And unlike consumer-derived technology, the CDR-882 is designed from the ground up with a massive steel chassis, robust IDE CD-R drives and audiophile circuitry to ensure uncompromised sound quality and long-term dependability.

• DiscSpan seamless recording across 2 or more discs • DualBurn simultaneous recording on 2 discs • High speed disc duplication • Industrial strength design and build quality Professional cueing and seamless track increments •

CDR-882 DualBurn: The ultimate CD recorder. Find out more at www.hhb.co.uk

HHB Communications Ltd T: +44 (0)20 8962 5000 E: sales@hhb.co.uk In the USA and Latin America: Sennheiser Electronic Corporation T: 860 434 9190 E: HHBSales@sennheiserusa.com In Canada: HHB Communications Canada Ltd T: 416 867 9000 E: sales@hhbcanada.com

review

Chandler Germanium Preamp/DI There’s a misconception in some quarters that ‘pleasing’ colouration of sound by a preamp requires the use of a valve somewhere in the audio path. This has resulted in the simplistic but incorrect view that solid-state equals clean, and valve equals coloured. Chandler’s new Germanium Preamp/DI helps challenge that view head on.

he name on the box is the most immediate clue as to where it’s coming from — the guts of the unit are based around discrete Class A designs that use germanium rather than silicon transistors. Germanium devices have been favoured for many years by some guitarists when used in stomp boxes and fuzz pedals, and were used in many vintage pro-audio designs. Ultimately, they were largely replaced with siliconbased devices that featured higher gains and less susceptibility to thermal problems. But a return to the ‘old-school’ was perhaps inevitable given our current obsession with vintage gear, and indeed the Preamp/DI is just one of a range of ‘Germanium’ branded products produced by Chandler in addition to its EMI/Abbey Road TG series. This old-school approach is in evidence on the exterior and interior of the unit. Pointer knobs in a rather fetching shade of yellow coupled with big pushbuttons set the tone for the front panel. A brief inspection of the internals reveals chunky transformers on input and output and high quality components on a no-nonsense, over-sized PCB. Unfortunately, the active side of things in the shape of the germanium devices employed is sealed in a plastic enclosure; whether to keep it away from prying eyes or to aid in temperature control is unclear. The unit is powered by an external box that supplies +/-28V and +48V via a 4-pin XLR. A balanced input and output on XLR complete the

JON THORNTON

rather minimalist rear panel. The front panel has two rotary controls — a switched gain control (also labelled as Germanium Drive — images of Scotty and Star Trek spring to mind (That would be Dilithium. Ed)) with 10 positions in 3dB steps, and a continuously variable Feedback control. This has an effect on the overall gain of the unit, as increasing it effectively reduces the amount of negative feedback used by the amplifier. Of course, by doing so the response becomes less linear as a result. At its lowest setting, the unit produces overall less gain but with better HF response, lower THD and a more open sound. Higher settings tend to result in increased gain, higher THD, a gentle lift in the low-end and a more muted HF response. Pushbuttons are provided for phantom power, polarity reverse and a -15dB pad, and output metering is via a large, 10-segment LED bargraph whose range can be switched to either -12 to +3dB or +5 to +20dB. An unbalanced ¼-inch jack on the front panel also gives a high impedance input for DI sources — this is selected by means of a recessed toggle switch adjacent to the socket. Last, but not least, a final pushbutton, labelled ‘Thick’, does exactly what it suggests in adding a gentle low end boost to the signal. Using the unit is really all about balancing different settings of Drive, Feedback, Thick (or Thin?) and judicious use of the pad to keep the output level under control when exploring the upper reaches of Drive. What you get from all of this is

ProS

Simple, fuss-free front panel; excellent range of tonal variation; headroom.

CoNS

Can get a touch noisy with certain drive/Feedback settings; ‘cleanest’ setting lacks a little clarity in the HF compared with more conventional solid-state designs.

EXtraS

Chandler’s Germanium tone Control uses active and passive EQ circuits in combination with the amplifier developed for the Preamp and incorporates the Feedback and drive controls. the passive low frequency section is selectable between Pultec/lang interactive curves and more standard low frequency with pass filter while the treble and Presence bands are active

the Germanium Compressor starts with the same all-Class a amp while the compression circuit uses a FEt gain reduction element with controls for Wet/dry mix, Comp Curve (which selects the knee using various diode combinations), Clean/dirty Comp, and Sidechain Filter.

resolution

quite an astonishing range of tonality from what appears to be such a simple box. At its cleanest setting (lowest feedback setting, Thick disengaged) and with a C414 plugged in as a first point of reference, the Germanium sounds reasonably neutral and open. There isn’t quite as much detail as the Millennia HV-3, it’s more like a Neve 1073 in character, although it sounds a little brighter in the high-mids. Dial in a little more (well, strictly speaking, less) feedback and the mid range starts to sound a little grittier. It’s not an unpleasant characteristic, but I’d say that it adds an edge to the sound rather than warmth. Push in the Thick button, though, and the low end fills out noticeably not unlike a little proximity effect coming into play. The combination of Thick together with the Feedback control is a nice tool for fine-tuning a microphone to a vocalist although it does start to sound a little bit grainy on some voices with a mic like the 414. Switching to a U87 tames things a little, but capacitor microphones in general and extreme settings of the Feedback control don’t make terribly good bedfellows to my ears. It’s a different story with dynamic microphones, here the ability to thicken up the low and draw some grittiness out of the sound works beautifully. My favourite combo from the test session was a Beyer 201 in conjunction with the Germanium. It helps here that the 201’s output is on the low side, so it needs plenty of gain to begin with. Up close and personal on a diminutive Orange Crush combo, Thick engaged, plenty of Drive and just a touch of Feedback — hands down one of the fullest close mic guitar sounds I’ve heard for a long time (and not an SM57 in sight!) It’s also quite possible to drive a line level source through the unit with the pad engaged if you’re looking for something to liven up your mixes although you’d need a pair and frankly there are other boxes in the Germanium range that would be better suited to this task. What’s on offer here really comes down to versatility. There are better choices in the market if out and out transparency or ultra-low noise performance is the priority, but very few that can match the sheer variety of sonic textures that this box delivers. Valves… who needs them? ■

Contact CHaNdlEr limitEd, US: Website: www.chandlerlimited.com Unity audio, UK: +44 1440 785843

July/August 2008

Master Classes n Training Sessions n Tutorials n Live Sound Seminars n Broadcast Events n

Exhibits n Platinum Panels n Special Events n Historical Events n Tours n

Exhibitor Seminars n Technical Papers n Educational Events n Workshops n

www.AESshow.com

125 AES ConvEntion th

Make the right ConneCtions Conference: October 2-5, 2008 Exhibits: October 3-5, 2008 Moscone Center San Francisco, CA

PHOTO PHiLLiP AngErT

review

TC PowerCore X8 (with Tube-Tech CL-1B) As one of the earliest purveyors of the ‘box of DSP’ approach, TC has seen the power of computers increase and has hiked the power of its PoCos accordingly. The X8 is its most powerful offering yet but GEORGE SHILLING can handle it…

C’s PowerCore system is now long established as an excellent method of increasing the capabilities of a native system, adding a broad range of included, optional and third party plug-ins to the host, with extra CPU horsepower to boot. It’s been around since 2001, and since then, host computer power has increased immensely, so it is now possible to run more capable DAW systems without assistance from external processors. However, the inevitable progress of technology has led to more complex and demanding plug-ins whose quality has noticeably increased in the intervening years. Like the Universal Audio UAD-1 and SSL Duende, the PowerCore devices run dedicated high quality plug-ins

on custom hardware. The latest addition to the PowerCore family is the X8, its most powerful unit to date. It includes 8 Motorola DSPs that equate to double the power of the PowerCore FireWire and four times the power of the PowerCore Compact. And there is, of course, plenty of included RAM. It ships with V3 software, although inevitably after the installation it transpired that there was a newer version online, and the process had to be repeated. The box itself is a simple 1U with a pair of FW400 connectors and a little in-line external PSU. The front panel has an enormous bright blue illuminated logo that shines brightly when all is well, and there is a rocker power switch.

The X8 comes with 14 included AU/VST plug-ins, plus a voucher to choose some optional extras from the TC-now website. Many extra demos are installed at the outset, which can be potentially frustrating, as these are fully functional but time limited, so checking the list of what you actually own in the control panel is advisable, and even then it’s not always clear. Some standard plug-ins don’t show up in the list, while others have different names. I started enjoying the excellent BrickWall Limiter, only to find that it is part of the time-limited demo MD3 Stereo Mastering suite. As well as enabling viewing and authorising of plugins, the installed Control Panel shows DSP usage, and allows setting of a few performance parameters.

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 Bundled plug-ins include the 1176 emulating 24/7C, unsurprisingly somewhat inferior to the UAD version, but it includes all the usual controls and the famous all-buttons-in mode. The gain structure is slightly odd and I found it difficult to apply subtle compression to an upright bass and still have enough gain on the output to match the bypassed signal. A more tweakable vanilla-flavoured dynamic processor is available in the PowerCoreCL compressor limiter, with two distinct sections; the compressor featuring a mix control, and the limiter including Soft Saturation. The multiband mastering Master X3 is also included, still a useful level maximising tool. EQSat Custom is the main dedicated EQ plug-in, with five bands and a Soft Saturation setting available. Noveltech Character is an enhancer that analyses incoming signal and intelligently enhances aspects of the signal using only three parameters — it is equally useful on any signal for a bit of extra juice, and adds a nice glowing presence. Dynamic EQ includes four bands, which can be continuously varied between static and dynamic function. VoiceStrip includes basic EQ, compression, de-essing, etc and the excellent Chorus-Delay is modelled on the TC 1210 hardware unit, with BPM settings available. This covers crispy and rich chorus and flanging as well as delay with a high cut filter. Classic Reverb provides good basic reverb, and Mega Reverb takes algorithms from the M5000 for some very nice settings. However, the trial versions of the System 6000-based DVR (based on the EMT 250) and NonLin2 really whet the appetite with their astonishing richness, showing what can be achieved with the power of the PowerCore processors. Filtroid emulates two analogue filters with various routing and modulation possibilities. The useful and effective DeNoise gives a flavour of the Restoration Suite.

Tubifex is a terrific guitar amp modelling plug-in with three modelled 12AX7 tube stages and speaker simulation –- it’s very convincing, with a very rich and variable overdrive sound. Finally the PowerCore01 is a virtual synth modelled on the classic Roland SH101. This is a great sounding instrument, with all controls mapped to MIDI controllers. It comes with a huge categorised preset library, and there are loads of great settings. Each plug comes with a number of presets with a proprietary file system included on each plug-in, and while (apart from the PowerCore 01) these are not bountiful they generally provide enough starting points. The review model was additionally supplied with the Tube-Tech CL-1B plug-in, an emulation of the famous hardware unit. This has been modelled by Softube AB of Sweden, and is to all intents and purposes

a thoroughly authentic recreation, sounding every bit as characterful as the hardware unit. This was created with ‘highly advanced component emulation technology’ to great effect. There’s nothing quite like the real thing, but this captures the character very well. I especially loved it on vocals and acoustic piano. PowerCore plug-ins do not come as RTAS versions for Pro Tools as standard, but with FXPansion’s VST to RTAS utility you can wrap all plug-ins to work, with no evident problems. Particularly useful on my HD system with ageing computer were the buffer multiplier settings found in the PowerCore control

panel. These provided virtually no RTAS CPU penalty in exchange for slightly longer latency settings, and those were dealt with seamlessly with the delay compensation. Using some of the more complex plug-ins inevitably requires more processing power, for example the Tube-Tech uses 44% of the processing of one of the eight chips. In normal use there is plenty of power to create a complex mix setup, even without the help of onboard computer processing. Although some seem a little long in the tooth and possibly past their sell-by date, some of the standard bundled plug-ins are truly excellent. I had a better experience with latency and bandwidth issues using the X8 compared to Duende or UAD-1, but each of these solutions provides different plug-in selections — if you are a fan of vintage compression then the UAD is probably of more interest. However, once optional TC and thirdparty plug-ins are added to the PowerCore there are few weak areas. Some of the add-on reverbs really glow, and a unique bonus is the ability to run a number of different soft synths. ■

ProS

Plenty of processing power; great reverbs — especially with the optional add-on plug-ins; good support from third-party developers including Sonnox; good soft synth included.

CoNS

FireWire connection; uninspiring compression without adding the tubetech plug-in; fiddly graphics on some plug-ins; demo authorisations not always clear; some optional plug-ins expensive.

Contact tC ElECtroNiC, dENmarK: Website: www.tcelectronic.com

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

Laurie Latham When a relatively brief but productive spell as an engineer gave way to production responsibilities, Laurie Latham ended up creating many of the enduring releases of the time. He tells GEORGE SHILLING why he continues to like making records, not tape-recording ideas.

aurie Latham started at Maximum Sound Studios in the Old Kent Road in 1973 which was at the time run by producer-engineer David Heath-Hadfield, and co-owned by Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg of the Manfred Mann band. Latham assisted Heath-Hadfield and learned his craft. He also did a short course at Surrey University that included lessons on recording strings, a day trip to The Roundhouse (he remembers trains rumbling underneath) and a lecture from George Martin. Working with Manfred Mann’s Earth Band he engineered Blinded by the Light. The single was a hit in the US and he headed across to America to capitalise on the success. In the meantime, the studio (now re-christened The Workhouse) was by now partly owned by Blackhill Enterprises, and they soon had Laurie working with Ian Dury, doing New Boots and Panties, which catapulted Latham into record production. In the 80s he produced diverse artists including Echo and The Bunnymen and Paul Young. Working with Squeeze in 1986 he got to know Jools Holland, and around 1990 he started to make use of Holland’s Helicon Mountain studio to do preproduction work with bands like The Christians. Gradually he started working on Holland’s own material, and it became more convenient to base himself at the studio. More recently a purpose built live room was added with a mezzanine balcony on three sides, this providing just enough space to squeeze Holland’s Big Band in. Latham has recently been managed by his son Laurie Jr at SJP, ‘He’s great, but he can be a bit irritating sometimes, Why don’t you do this? He’s forever sending me bands, check this Myspace out!’ He is currently keeping busy with Jools Holland projects — Eddi Reader features on a film soundtrack project featuring Holland’s Big Band for a Richard Linklater film, and the Big Band are recording a blues-ska album with members Rico Rodriguez and Bammi Rose. Apart from Holland-related projects, Latham is also producing The Rays featuring another son George on drums, and has a writing project with Seamus Beaghen. (Photos: www.recordproduction.com).

Blinded by the Light was quite ahead of its time… It was quite complicated, a lot of cross-fading and submixing. Sonically, it went through God knows how many generations of copying, but it’s an interesting record. The crossfade idea was Manfred’s, he was very encouraging — it was a great apprenticeship. He had unlimited studio time, and I learnt an awful lot about song structure, and certainly editing, the whole pop vision of making records. How did you end up doing Paul Young’s No Parlez? Mark Pinder, who’s now A&R at Sony, was playing drums for Paul at the time and he recommended me because I’d done some other work for Mark on other projects. We did a couple of tracks and got the thumbs up from Muff Winwood at CBS and went from there. We started by doing singles, and it gradually turned into an album. I was probably an unlikely choice of producer, and it’s probably that different chemistry which made it [cross over]… He was in a band called the Q-Tips, and I said look, let’s not have Hammond organ — now I use Hammond on everything! Let’s get some bass marimbas and some unusual instruments in! Was it a big budget album? No, not the first one, you had all the usual battles with the record company. It was all on a tight budget, but all done at The Workhouse. The next one we did at the fantastic Pathé Marconi in Paris. I’d already done an album there with the fantastic old EMI valve desk 46

resolution

July/August 2008

craft with a matrix patchbay on the wall. Then we ended up in Park Gates in Sussex, got snowed in, and then back to The Workhouse. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve just remastered the 25th Anniversary of No Parlez, and that was quite funny going to Metropolis with Tim Young who mastered the original and had all his original notes, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all mastered on quarter-inch. But it sounded really nice â&#x20AC;&#x201D; quite bright â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the 80s was Margaret Thatcher and treble, it gives me the horrors! It was toppy, but in a warm nice way on this quarter-inch tape. But Tim looked at his notes and said, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe it, we actually added more top to this when we mastered it! So now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bit warmer and friendlier.

What makes your 80s records stand the test of time? Well I suppose the Ian Dury stuff is more timeless than Paul Young. There was a definite strategy and production angle â&#x20AC;&#x201D; letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s use fretless bass, mixed with analogue pad sounds, and â&#x20AC;&#x201D; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not something I particularly like now â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Simmons drums. At that time we were all into reggae, the Sly and Robbie thing, and all those guys started using Simmons kits. Lots of delay lines, things like that, and a very definite idea of the production â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and I got a lot of slagging off for that. Did you come to the musicians with the production concept? I think it just evolved. The way we did it was pretty much Legoland style, there wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much of a band in the room all playing together, so normally weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d start off with keyboards, and put a nice warm pad down, rather than putting drums and bass down, so you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t peg down the bottom end to start with. You can start by exploring nice inversions, and Pino [Palladino; bass player] would probably be the last person to go on.

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d run a click? Yes, we sort of personalised the 808 sound, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s used a lot. I still really like that drum machine, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a certain inherent feel that other machines donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to have. We werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really big on Linn Drum machines, they were big at the time.

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craft working out, if you’re doing a vocal or something, come on, let’s go down the pub or something and come back tomorrow. Whereas if you’re working at Abbey Road or somewhere, the old clock’s ticking, you’ve paid for that day, and you feel obliged to press on, even though it’s probably futile.

How does it work with the Big Band in here? We had the Hammond organ player upstairs, guitarist in the top room, occasionally we even do backing vocals at the same time. Vocalist in the booth, then I think 17 horn players squashed in here, Jools there, Gilson [drummer] there, bass over there… Jools always wants the room mics shoved up, the spot mics in the end hardly get used on the final mix, because that’s the sound he loves. But you have to find a happy medium, because you are making a record for today as well, so you’ve got to get that illusion that it’s an old fashioned sound, but still with a bit of bottom end in it.

guitar and keyboards on top of that. For the second album, we thought we’d do the complete opposite and use real players. Frightened the life out of them! I got Pino Palladino, Manu Katché, and we’d switch drums between Manu and Steve Ferrone, so two superstar session people. And Henry playing guitar with them, which scared them a bit, but it worked out great.

Do you set all the mics up yourself? Ron who works with Jools on the road helps me to set up, because it is a day of setting up — he’s really brilliant — but I’m terrible, I have to set mics myself, if somebody sets a mic up for me I have to go and move it.

Do you use any unusual miking techniques? I was talking to someone about drum sounds, and he was talking about miking the snare underneath, which is something I never do, it always sounds a bit synthetic to me. I just said, what I always do is put a mic above the snare, which is an old Abbey Road technique, if you look at any pictures of the Beatles, and then really compress the hell out of that … it’s something I nearly always do, and put that on a separate track.

You’ve got a large SSL and Pro Tools, how do you work these days? I still mix on the desk, a bit of manipulation and editing, but I just assign it like tracks and mix on the SSL. I’m getting more and more into plug-ins, particularly do you know the [Crane Song] Phoenix? I was very impressed. Yes, but I can never remember which version is which…! I know, I spend days going through all the various options. It’s all about narrowing down your options, and you’re presented with a million more with Pro Tools. With the Jools thing it’s a very defined thing. I still mix the drums down — stereo kit, etc, not assign everything to its own track, that’s how I learnt, I was a balance engineer. And you are mixing Jools’ stuff onto tape? There’s something about it; when we remastered No Parlez and there’s this little quarter inch tape, all stuck together with bits of sticky tape, and the sound of it, I just thought, I’ve got to get back to mixing on tape again. For cost purposes sometimes I mix back in. How did you go about recording The Christians? Their first album was the biggest album Island had for a debut artist. A lot of that was programming with Cubase, little Casio keyboards, all quite naïve. Anthony Moore helped out with programming, and Henry Priestman, he was good — between us we’d thrash it out. Then it would mainly be Henry playing

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And those recordings have aged pretty well… I’ve not listened to them. Probably the second one still works. But there were some good songs, and good songs tend to survive, whatever’s going on in the background.

So it’s two or three feet above? Yeah, before it gets annoying for the drummer, and I usually find it’s great, a really integral part of the drum sound. I usually use an 87 with the pad on it, through a Urei. I’ve also been getting into that thing with a figure-of-eight on acoustic guitar and Hammond, after all this time I’ve finally got round to doing it. You know the thing of taking two channels for the figure-of-eight? A mid-side conﬁguration… Take a mono mic, and a figure-of-eight on top, reverse the phase and get that psycho-acoustic… well, we’ve got some lovely acoustic guitars here, an 1970s J200 Gibson which sounds like a bloomin’ piano or something, and a beautiful Martin. In this room, with that mic setup it sounds great. What mics do you use? For that, normally two 414s, and I’ve been trying it on the Hammond, for that there seem to be endless theories of how to mic it up, you get people that put two mics on the top, but then you’re halving or diluting the cycle of the Leslie, I used to just do it mono, one on the front and one underneath, so the figure-of-eight thing works great, reasonably close. Obviously you have to keep checking in mono, because the danger is you can end up with no signal in mono.

July/August 2008

craft Presumably it’s about balancing the elements? Exactly, just pushing it as far as you dare before losing it in mono. On Jools’s piano I just use a pair of 87s, he always plays live, I can never get him to overdub anything, so it’s a case of shutting the lid, chucking loads of blankets over it. And talk about close miking, he bashes the hell out of the piano, so I put the pads in the mics, just two 87s on cardioid close to the strings. He hits the top end so much that you can put the top end mic more mid-to-top on the strings, and that seems to work. If we do do overdubbing I’ll put a room mic up as well and dabble a bit more if I can. Do you do much preproduction? I like spending time with the demos, and then coming back with copious amounts of notes. I’m one for endless notebooks of ideas, and — Why don’t you start with the chorus, that sort of thing. I don’t spend a lot of time [in the rehearsal studio] because when you get in the studio things just change so much. The thing with me is I’m not into using the studio as just capturing what somebody does live, I have a romantic vision of making records, records are great as an art form. Now that the emphasis is on the live thing, I really would like to get back to that well-crafted, English Psychedelia, Tamla Motown, The Beach Boys — all those great crafted records. And this whole notion that making a record is a quick process is nonsense. If you picked up one of your favourite records, the chances are that it took a long time to make and get right, augmenting and changing. And that’s what I like to do, I like to make records, not taperecord ideas. ■

July/August 2008

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Paul Epworth Equally at home with gnarly guitars or clanging electro beats, he’s so hot his TrackPad smokes. NIGEL JOPSON talks to a young gun who aims to make it in the long term.

aul Epworth is a young British producer who has mastered the tricky skill of being a hip name for clients from a wide variety of genres. He came onto the major label radar four years ago after his co-production with Andy Gill (Resolution V7.1) of The Futureheads debut album. Having survived being christened a ‘Production Wunderkind’ by the NME for this album, he went on to produce some of the most interesting of the UK’s recent crop of guitar-toting bands: Bloc Party (Silent Alarm), Maxïmo Park (A Certain Trigger), The Rakes (Capture/Release), The Rapture (Pieces of the People We Love) and White Rose Movement (Kick). In a parallel but intertwined career as a remixer, Paul manages to combine his indie cred with cutting-edge dance floor cool. He has remixed tracks for Annie, Death From Above 1979, The Streets, Goldfrapp, New Order, The Killers, Tom Vek, Black Strobe and P-Diddy. In between all this activity, Epworth releases singles under his remix-pseudonym Phones on fashionable 50

French electronica label Kitsuné Music. In 2007 Epworth produced the chart-topping debut album for Kate Nash, having co-written her No.2 single Foundations, for which he was nominated for an Ivor Novello songwriters award. In 2008 Paul produced Sam Sparro’s first album, which debuted in the UK charts at No.4. He also produced Primal Scream’s recent kick-ass single, Can’t Go Back, plus the title track of their new album Beautiful Future. Behind every producer-dujour there’s a story of life in the cable management trenches, and Epworth is no exception: he started as an assistant at AIR studios, toured as FOH engineer with The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem, and was involved in the setting up and operation of live music venue 93 Feet East in London’s Brick Lane. When Resolution met up with Paul he was busy writing songs with XL artist Jack Peñate, whose forthcoming album he is producing, while simultaneously overseeing the mixing of Bloc Party’s new album. (Photos www.recordproduction.com) resolution

Did you have a breakthrough album as a producer? The Futureheads were really the breakthrough for me, Andy [Gill] and I didn’t actually work together. Andy had already recorded most of the album, but the band had a few more ideas they wanted to explore and I was lucky enough to get roped in. The results we got meant I was asked to go back and try some of the tracks they’d already finished. I think there are lots of elements in that record which have been overlooked, the band have a very avant-garde ear. It opened the door for you to a whole menu of bands like Maxïmo Park and The Rakes ... And White Rose Movement — their first single was very good — and should have done better, I think. There’s some production work on that I’m quite proud of. Not forgetting Acoustic Ladyland, for whom your combination of talents might have been tailor-made. That was funny because they wanted to record it [Skinny Grin] all in two days, I think we came back and did some vocal overdubs ... but that was pretty much it, plus a couple of days mixing. I think they’re a very important band because that whole forwardthinking side of jazz — as played by bands like Henry Cow in the 70s — is a bit under-respected at the moment. I hope they just keep doing their thing because we need bands who are stubborn and play with conviction rather than following trends. July/August 2008

craft There can be a lot of pressure from labels to emulate recent successes ... I have found that a bit more in the last year and a half. Before I didn’t really notice it. At the same time, pop music is changing. Songs that would never have made the charts before are finding a groundswell, without the support of national stations like Radio 1, and some tunes that are getting radio airplay are not charting, because they don’t connect. If the media pick up on something, it’s so much easier now for people to find a band or song. When I was a kid I had to search for specialist shops to find the records I wanted to buy. Now if I read about a piece of music on [internet review site] Pitchfork, I can usually buy it immediately. Listeners can make more impulsive purchases of single tracks — it’s ‘just a download’ — and this has altered the landscape slightly. It’s an interesting time, the guitar thing is on the wane a little bit, I think that forward-thinking pop music will dominate for the next couple of years. Were you pleased to get the Sam Sparro album? I like diversity, I’ve worked with British hip-hop MCs like Kano and Plan B, I’ve made a conscious effort to do productions which were outside of the genre for which I originally earned a reputation, so that I didn’t get pigeonholed. Judging from the advice of some ‘elders’ I’ve spoken to, diversity is what keeps you going long-term. I think it allows you to make more informed choices about the music you work with. With the remixing, it’s fun to just disassemble something and work without a brief, chaotically, and not having to work just with what you’re given. There’s a lot of people out there who can remix or reassemble tracks, but even having done that for four years, it’s only last year that I’ve begun to fine-tune my musician’s ear ... at the moment I’m enjoying learning the artistry of song writing.

July/August 2008

How did you get into remixing? I found myself working with a bunch of bands who were essentially from a similar genre and I thought it was important to show there was another side to my projects. What opened the door [to remixing] for me was mixing the first Bloc Party single, Banquet, on an old G4 laptop with a pair of clapped-out NS10s in an untreated bedroom in a flat in Chiswick! I obviously had all the parts in front of me, so I thought I’d just try a remix and see what they made of it. With hindsight I wish I’d time-stretched it all down by about 25bpm! Are you mixing with a control surface? I don’t have a surface, I just use a Mac Book Pro with the TouchPad. I have the UAD-Xpander for plug-ins and I use a Mackie Big Knob as a monitor controller. Sometimes I think I would be quite up for having a desk, but I really appreciate the speed with which you can switch between sessions on a computer. When you’re mixing in Logic, do you move the screen faders up and down or do you draw the automation moves in? I draw moves in with the track pad. I’ve been thinking about getting a fader controller, because it’s bound to open up your creativity a bit, but I tend to be a bit hesitant about purchasing anything that will radically change my working methods, I’m quite considered about that sort of thing. Do you work on a mix in sections or do you let it truck through? Much more the latter. I’m quite instinctive and my attention span is quite short so I have to really have an explicit reason to go into detail. The way I find myself working in Logic is splodging compression on

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craft absolutely everything, squash it all on the mix bus, shape it up with a bit of EQ, rebalance and then see if anything needs some special attention.

Which software compressor plug-in are you splodging with? Since I’ve had the Universal Audio Xpander I’ve been happy to use pretty much anything from that, you can only run five or six of them at once, I tend to use the Precision Bus Compressor a lot as there’s nothing that really does that within Logic in quite the same way. For lead vocals I like the UAD Fairchild or Urei — anything that’s not going to require so much attention on my part. If it’s not a lead vocal or overall mix I’m inclined to use the Logic compressors as they’re cheap on processing. In the latest version of Logic they do the job.

Are you using Logic Pro 8? Did you ﬁnd the new ‘Apple’ version quite a shift? I am using Logic 8, I don’t think it’s such a radical shift, although it does feel a little bit more consumer somehow. I find it quite infuriating that so much of the screen is now given up to icons, I’d much prefer to have the screen space to work in. If you’re going to spend 12 hours a day in front of it, there should at least be an option as to how the screen should be laid out. But the main thing is that now, with my laptop hardware [2.6GHz Intel Core 2, 4Gb RAM] and software, I can do as much as I want without worrying about processing power. I don’t have to keep stopping to freeze tracks or bounce down. The benefits of having a portable set-up like that far outweigh any frustration about Logic’s new design.

Sometimes when I listen to your remixes I hear little things ﬂitting from side to side, there’s a lot of background audio movement. I feel a good mix needs some movement, whether it’s from a musician or something panning, or a reverb boom just to keep the interest. Maybe it’s just my short attention span, but I’m always thinking of ideas to create a bit of excitement or drama. Some of that stuff is so easy to achieve now in Logic: dump it in touch, stop and pan the track around. The automation is so easy to use, you can arm a Logic track to record it or you can draw it in. Do you have to restrain yourself from adding too much to a band’s songs from your arsenal of fat synths when you’re producing, not remixing? I’ve always tried not to impose my ideas too much on a band’s sound, I think my approach falls squarely between that of Steve Albini and Trevor Horn. I like the idea of capturing a raw dynamic, but I also like production aesthetics. Some things require a bit more input, like with White Rose Movement there were a lot of synths and a lot of drum processing. But I also want to make sure that when a punter goes to see a band play live, they don’t stand there thinking ‘it doesn’t sound anything like the record.’ I’ve always thought there should be a relationship between live and recording, so the band doesn’t have to resort to digital backing tracks. As a producer you carry a bit of responsibility, especially with first albums. In the singles leading up to the first album you have to think about not alienating the existing fan-base, not becoming the ‘guy who’s killed the vibe’! Then you have to manage the transition which will hopefully allow the band to make their music popular with even more listeners — I don’t mean selling out and going all commercial — but if a band are writing good songs in a particular format, they obviously want to reach people with it. As a producer you’re like the messenger, you’ve got to try and take their message and help them shape it in a way that will make it easy for listeners to understand it. When you’re recording a live band, have you got a preference for a particular recording space? I’ve really enjoyed working at [Ben Hillier’s] The Pool, run by Miloco. It’s between there and Eastcote Studios, which is very near to my home. I like working at The Pool because everything is all in one big room, there’s great communication with the band and you can work very impulsively. You can record very live sounds in there, each surface of the room is different, there’s no even reflections. If I can afford it from the budget I try and use tape to record with. So much of the history of modern pop music is the sound of an electric guitar or drum kit, associated with the analogue distortion you get when recording on tape. Vocals I will always record digital, to keep them clean. Did you record the recent Bloc Party album to tape? Yes, I used it just as a recording medium and then put it straight into Tools, I managed to blagg some Quantegy GP9 from somewhere. I’ve also started using the overdrive plug-ins in Logic on a lot of tracks, to simulate that tape sound. It’s easy to dial in the amount of analogue distortion you want, I’ve been using the standard Logic plug-in, the cut-off is how much bias you want on it, you can add a sense of ‘aged quality’ to a recording.

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July/August 2008

craft

AE22 Timing is everything

Do you work with an engineer when recording bands? I had to start working with an engineer just for the sake of my stress levels. I work religiously with Mark Rankin, he’s definitely my cohort, he has a very old-school esoteric audio approach. He ran the recording studio at The Exchange, which was all EAR valve equipment, split polarity cables and passive mixing boards. He’s come from that background, so between my little bit of understanding of that approach and his dedication to it .... As long as I feel we’re going in the right direction, I just let him do his thing. Do you think you have to write songs to be a producer nowadays? With a lot of music now, for example Stargate [Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel S. Eriksen] or Timbaland, they’ve got two dudes in a room making backing tracks, they’re putting chords together. Then they’ve got a beat programmer, a top line writer, a singer ... the writing is all part of the production and the production is part of the writing. But I have to wear two different hats, even if my combination of skills is a mutual experience. When you’re working with a band you have to be very sensitive when you’re making an effort to develop their songs, if you move a couple of chords around you can’t just say: ‘Hey guys, I’ve changed this, now I’ve got a writing credit!’ It’s a tricky one, maybe the producer’s July/August 2008

backing vocal ideas will become a stronger hook than the chorus, but it’s just part of the job. You’ve only got to look at the contributions George Martin made to The Beatles — when he was on a fixed wage from EMI — you’ve got to think we’re kind of lucky, nowadays!

Which producers influence or inspire you? I used to listen to a lot of reggae and dub, King Tubby and Lee Perry, I learnt you could use a mixing desk as an instrument by listening to those records. Those are the sort of records that made me think differently about a producer’s input. Conny Plank was someone who made so many influential albums that he has to be the person I’ve directly or inadvertently drawn lots of my ideas from. He brought electronic music to the mainstream, he influenced hiphop, pop and experimental music and was someone that Eno and Visconti, both of whom I greatly admire, drew huge influence from. I love [David Bowie’s] Heroes and Low, the latter was a big influence for me. It is icy and elegant, but very soulful at the same time. The title track of the new Primals record is an unashamed homage to it... but I think it was the fact that Conny was able to bridge the extremes he did, both in terms of genre and sonically. Believe me, I know enough about the techniques used to make music back then, that I appreciate present day technology every minute I use it! ■ resolution

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n e t w o r k

business

Music’s new economy The changes in the economy of music have seen the scene set for a possible breakout but they haven’t created one — yet. NIGEL JOPSON looks at the curves and is surprised by the pattern.

hen I wrote about beta-testing Pressplay (now Napster) and other fledgling legal download services in Resolution V1.5, it felt a little radical to promote the idea that music should feel free — that less money should be charged for downloads and that labels and bands could take maximum advantage of this new online link direct to fans. Since then the tectonic plates of business reality have thundered apart for record labels. Having first tried defending old models with ill-conceived strategies, most label executives are now basically singing the same tune I was six years ago. Sony and BMG have merged, EMI has been bought by a business turnaround financier, and every Web 2.0 maven now wants to explain how your newly recorded song should be made available — not for the equivalent of a beer and burger as suggested in that old Resolution article — but for free... on the latest and greatest internet social network thingummie, or perhaps in return for a slice of some potential ad-revenue... Speaking at the ‘Music Brand Pioneers’ panel during the London Calling conference, Scott Cohen, co-founder of digital distributor The Orchard, called ad-funded models more ‘hype than meat’, noting that an 8% cut –- the same as copyright holders get from digital sales of their music — of ‘not very much ad revenues’ was not the greatest payment model. Cohen pointed out that figures mooted for the total potential internet advertising spend this year came in at US$30bn. ‘But that’s for everything, every single thing,’ he pointed out, not just for the ad spending on a few online music sites. ‘This is not going to bring in $10bn, it might bring in $10 million, but that’s a drop in the bucket.’ Glenn Otis Brown, products counsel at YouTube, also dismisses the idea that there’s some ‘magic bullet’ to solve the music monetisation question, although he believes ads will ‘go a long way’ toward supporting musicians distributing music without major labels. If there’s a company that knows about monetising content, it must be Google, but serving up contextually relevant ads against text is much easier than serving them against video or music. At another conference, Brown revealed that: ‘There’s a massive royalty problem, a deep infrastructure problem that must be resolved before we move forward ... we [Youtube] have all the data (on what gets played), and nobody wants the data!’ Dude ... where’s my royalty? As the music industry restructures itself, in a rather unstructured manner, a passel of blog-writing socalled futurists have sprung up to spin us a fairy tale: somewhere, at the end of the Web 2.0 (or possibly 54

3.0) rainbow, is a pot of gold where musicians and bands the world over will thrive creatively, financially and with total independence. If only, eh? If only those talented young musos could somewhere find the correct button to click that would get them paid for their music a fraction of what these web-spinners earn from mouthing-off at conferences. It’s true that a whole menu of easy-to-use, inexpensive services now exist to help musicians and indie labels. TuneCore can put your song on iTunes overnight. Aggregators like The Orchard can do a professional job of distributing an indie label’s catalogue, and iLike can spread a band’s profile across multiple networks in a trice. CD Baby can sell your burn-on-demand CD — physical cdbaby.com sales are up 30% in 2007, and over $78m has been distributed to musicians — and Zazzle can help bands with merchandise. For management companies or bands who can employ desk-jockeys, effective list management and smart targeting can be lucrative tools. But all those steps set the scene for a possible breakout, they don’t create one. Data from Soundscan (the music sales monitoring organisation) shows that in 2007, 80% of sales for new releases came from just 950 albums. Around 80,000 albums were released last year, so just 1.2% of new music produced the lion’s share of sales. I can’t think of any other industry that wastes resources

on so much non-selling product (And has been doing so for quite a while now. Ed). The 450,344 albums that were purchased less than 100 times in 2007 should not have been on sale, or only for sale on digital. Guy Hands has already discussed a new strategy for EMI through which artists will get smaller advances in return for a larger share of sales receipts. This would give artists more of a vested interest in promoting their albums, and give labels a lower risk in a softening market. It’s similar to the indie label strategy, as I described in Resolution V2.2. For a major label to actually implement this strategy, however, it would have to automatically rule itself out of all ‘bidding wars’ for hot bands. A few solid numbers are beginning to emerge to document this new era for the music industry, and they make interesting reading. Some of the most illuminating statistics were in the £550 Recording Industry In Numbers tome from the IFPI, which hit desks in June. Downloads have reversed the decline in single sales, which reached $1.4bn globally in 2007, more than any other year since the IFPI began collecting data in 1973. The download market is definitely driven by individual tracks — certainly at the expense of consumers buying a full album — and probably putting the whole concept of ‘album recording’ in doubt for the future. In the US, 70% of teens are supposed to access social networks

Nielsen Soundscan research suggests that total album sales clearly depends on the strength of new releases from major record companies. Since 2004, sales from new releases distributed by major record companies has declined 34% — from 228m in 2004 to 151m in 2007. Since 1997, the sales from new releases distributed by indies has been consistent (37m) even though the number of releases has increased drastically. resolution

July/August 2008

business monthly according to eMarketer. But in Europe, the IFPI research notes that only 26% of 15-24 year-olds visit artist pages on social networks, and just 8% of over-25s do. It’s easy for wired-up commentators to overestimate computer and broadband access for the wider public. Most depressing is the news that 50% of youngsters in Europe who download illegally apparently got their P2P (peer to peer) pirate software savvy from their parents. IFPI chairman John Kennedy strongly criticised businesses that unfairly profit from music, with the US radio industry coming in for particular stick: ‘US corporate radio generates $16bn in revenues every year, largely by playing music to attract listeners the advertisers want to reach. Yet they pay artists and record producers nothing for the music that drives their business. That situation is totally unfair — it must change and I believe that it will.’ The US remains by far the biggest market for music, with retail sales of $10.4bn ($6.06bn at trade prices). The UK sold $2.98bn of music and Japan $4.9bn. The US is ahead in digital music, with 24% of all songs bought through internet and ringtone sales in 2007, compared to 8% in the UK and 16% in Japan. Nearly 90% of Japan’s digital sales are OTA (over the air) downloads. South Korea is the most digitally engaged nation, with 61% of all music in the country sold online. Global CD sales fell 13%, and global record company revenues fell 8%. With this business playing field, different players are formulating diverse strategies. Some artists are simply positioning their recordings as teasers in favour of money-makers like touring, merchandising, and sponsorships. U2’s Vertigo tour grossed $355m, and the top-grossing Police reunion tour of 2007 has so far brought in $212m. Other artists like Radiohead

video (dancing on running machines), have made over 200 licensing deals. ‘The accepted wisdom now is that no one is selling records,’ says manager Jamie Kitman, ‘so how do you keep the wheels on the bus? There’s a person in my office who spends half her time fielding licensing queries.’ A couple of simple ideas have yet to be exploited. Our recording industry now services more formats for a single song across multiple platforms than ever before. The song is available in a physical or digital format, as a remix, edited into a ringtone, ringback tone, mix-it-yourself tone, bundled into a subscription plan, or as an OTA download. The recorded music industry now plans for these multiple formats from the start of production, and several artists and producers have interesting concepts for the separate

components. But these assets are rarely sold together — they are a fragmented group of goods that cry out for a bundling play; an up-sell to the modern version of an ‘album’ if you like. And what about direct sales for digital? If Adobe can sell one of the most complex software applications, Photoshop, direct to consumers from 47 different native-language stores online, why can’t labels sell mp3s — which require zero user hand-holding — in the same way? Apple is really not going to stop selling Sony artist’s songs on iTunes if Sony had an mp3 store, and easy access is what consumers want. Online habitués use Seeqpod or The Hype machine to research and stream songs: if the Google UI proves anything it’s that most people want a simple searchbox interface to everything. If labels can consider

and Trent Reznor are attempting to realise recording revenue from die-hard fans — through tiered or name-your-price plays — while making headlines and increasing their hip status. Clever artists and managers are finding new ways to reach fans and make money. ‘For some bands we represent, there’s more licensing income than record sales,’ says Carol Baker, whose Ocean Park Music Group links artists with music supervisors for movies, TV and ad agencies. Ocean Park recently did a six figure deal for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Killing the Blues in the TV commercial for American Living, Ralph Lauren’s new clothing line. For lesser-known acts, licensing offers are more likely to be in the £1000£5000 range. They Might Be Giants recorded original music for 24 ads in a $1m deal with Dunkin’ Donuts. Chicago-based band OK Go, highlighted in the pages of Resolution V5.7 for their breakthrough Youtube July/August 2008

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negotiating with crazy concepts like Qtrax, then where’s the EMI branded version of hypem.com, with a buy-song button? While sifting through all these new numbers, one factor stood out: our part of the music industry, the

recording process that most Resolution readers are involved with, is driving a much larger business than the sale of recorded music. Most heartening, music still has value. It’s an integral part of young people’s lives, with under 25-year-olds listening to an average of over 6 hours of music daily. A just-released survey of 773 UK citizens conducted by the University of Hertfordshire for British Music Rights found that 73% of respondents would take their music collection to a desert island — ahead of their mobile phone (62%), books and magazines (49%), games and console (23%) and DVD collection (21%). The top line negative figures have a disproportionate impact on our moral, because for years recorded music was where it was all at. As the IFPI report suggests: ‘the economic impact of recorded music in our society is often neglected.’ Live concerts, music publishing, sponsorship and music player sales all rose in 2007.

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Songwriters and bands make music, but as long as they’re making money, do they care whether it comes from concerts, publishing and advertising rather than audio sales? There are no figures collected or global reports on the new partnership deals and brand tieups being done, many of which management and labels are keen to keep confidential. But deals are being made, and the recorded music industry is no longer reliant on the traditional revenue streams it once was. Recorded music actually works together with a larger music sector which, according to the IFPI, is eight times bigger at $156bn, most of which is growing healthily. ■

Factoids

Since 2004, Cd sales are down 31%. video game sales have risen 90%. in 2007, 450,344 (80%) of all albums were purchased less than 100 times. in 2007, just 1,000 albums accounted for 50% of all sales. about 80% of sales were from 1.75% of available product (less than 10,000 albums). only 37% of sales were from albums first released in 2007. in 2007 1m consumers dropped out of the Cd market, but 29m bought digital music legally (an increase of 5m) driven by the 36-50 age group, who have also been driving sales of portable music players. in 2007, digital album sales accounted for 23% of radiohead’s in rainbows total — excluding undisclosed digital sales from the band’s own website — vinyl lPs made up 3% of total sales. in 2007, global record company revenue fell by 8% to $19.4bn. the iFPi figures include digital sales via Nokia, Youtube and other social networking sites, but do not take into account revenue from adverts, brand tie-ins, player levies, or other advances received from technology firms. in 2007, 37% of US adults and 70% of US teens visited social network sites monthly according to emarketer. in 2007, US digital tracks hit 844.2m, up 45% from 2006’s 581.9m. Flo rida’s low broke the record for weekly song sales with 467,000 downloads. Fergie was the top selling artist with single-track downloads of 7.5m. in 2008 , digital album (as opposed to single track) sales are up 53% over the first quarter. digital downloads overall are up 30% over 2007 thus far. Yey! By 2008, dave matthews had more than 80,000 fans paying $35 a year for fan club membership ($2.8m), according to Fast Company. in 2008, vinyl album sales are up 70% in the first quarter compared to 2007. Nielsen Soundscan predict ‘record’ numbers of 1.6m for 2008. Back to the future ... [Sales data from IFPI, Soundscan, NPD]

July/August 2008

ten

Albums every aspiring songwriter should listen to NIGEL JOPSON THE BEATLES 1962-1966 (AKA THE ‘RED ALBUM’) — This compilation covers their albums up to and including Revolver, after which their pioneering use of studio production techniques played a more prominent part in the songs. All of these 26 songs are LennonMcCartney, including Love Me Do, A Hard Day’s Night, Yesterday, Day Tripper, Nowhere Man ... this is pure John & Paul song writing at its very best. The longest track is Ticket To Ride, at 3:09! WHAT’S GOING ON: MARVIN GAYE (1971) — Devastated by the death of his vocal partner Tammi Terrell, Gaye considered quitting music. Instead, he gave black music a social conscience by writing this album, which Motown boss Berry Gordy initially refused to release, calling it ‘uncommercial.’ Until What’s Going On, R&B artist’s albums had mainly been collections of singles with fillers. The title song from Marvin’s LP became a rallying call for peace in a nation divided over a useless war, and Inner City Blues, sung with the lightest of touches to a laid-back conga groove, sadly retains its social relevance today. THERE’S A RIOT GOIN’ ON! THE ROCK ’N ROLL CLASSICS OF LIEBER AND STOLLER — Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, both born in 1933, started writing songs together when they were 17. If Elvis was the King, this duo was the power behind the throne. They penned over 20 songs, including Hound Dog, Love Me, Loving You, She’s Not You and Jailhouse Rock for Presley. Their early songs were also recorded by R&B greats like Jimmy Witherspoon, Little Esther, Amos Milburn, Charles Brown, Linda Hopkins, Ray Charles and Willie Mae Thornton — who recorded Hound Dog before Elvis in 1952. Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun signed L&S to the very first independent production deal in 1955. For the next 15 years hits from L&S constantly topped the charts, including Stand By Me, On Broadway, Spanish Harlem and I (Who Have Nothing), by Ben E. King, plus Drip Drop by The Drifters. July/August 2008

PET SOUNDS: THE BEACH BOYS (1966) — The vocal arrangements are must-listens for every (in modern songwriter-parlance) ‘top line’ writer. Apart from the interplay of lyrics, melody and (innovative for the time) production, the tunes are an object lesson in how to write tricky-sounding songs in a sympathetic manner for a singer’s vocal range. Pet Sounds was not a big hit in the US, peaking at number 10, as Americans wanted light-hearted surfing songs from the Boys. Paul McCartney called it the greatest album ever made and allegedly it was The Beatles’ inspiration for recording Sgt. Pepper’s. TOMMY: THE WHO (1969) — The fact that so few rock writers in the intervening 39 years have managed to assemble a collection of songs that work brilliantly in isolation, but which acquire even more meaning and impact when heard as a CD-length opus, says much for Pete Townshend’s song writing skills. The songs had populist appeal as well as being carefully crafted to showcase to best effect the musical abilities of band members. This album should be required study along with the purchase of any electric guitar. THRILLER: MICHAEL JACKSON (1982) — Sold 108 million, making it the best selling album of all time, more than doubling units of other top sellers. Today, with urban music such a feature of the charts, it’s salutary to remember Walter Yetnikoff had to threaten MTV he’d never give them another CBS video, and go public on their racist attitudes, unless the video for Billie Jean was aired. Jackson had been so involved with writing this melody he failed to notice the Rolls Royce he was travelling to the studio in was on fire. ‘A musician knows hit material. Everything has to feel in place. It fulfils you and it makes you feel good,’ Mike remembers, ‘I knew it was going to be big when I was writing it.’ The most famous weirdo in the world — a performer who’d been fawned over by audiences since he was a little boy — delivered the greatest artistic statement on celebrity stalking. Thriller paved the way for every muscular black rapper and MC with cool shoes who’s hit prime-time since, so the song writing must have hit resolution

the spot. THE RIVER: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (1980) — Springsteen may now be deeply unfashionable, but this double album epitomises the artistry and skill in his writing. Bruce collected all the anger, sadness and frustration of a couple of generations of blue-collar US workers and sealed it in some threeminute rock songs. His music became those people’s touchstone, his words a lightning rod for the losers from a thousand Jersey shores who were too dumb, too poor or too steamrollered by events to hang on to the magic moments in their lives. This album is an object lesson in how to connect with an audience. SAM COOKE: PORTRAIT OF A LEGEND 19511964 — Simple gospel and bluesinspired melodies express complex emotions with lyrics communicating universallyexperienced human feelings. A Change Is Gonna Come, written in 1964 at the peak of the turmoil surrounding the US civil rights movement, is the standout song. Renowned for his voice, Sam Cooke’s true skill was song writing: any of the songs on this compilation could be covered today with modern productions. ON BROADWAY: HIT SONGS AND RARITIES FROM THE BRILL BUILDING ERA — In 1962 the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses: a musician could find a publisher, cut a demo, promote the record, and secure a deal with radio all in one building. It was like a song factory, Carole King recalls: ‘The pressure in the Brill Building was really terrific — because Donny (Kirshner) would play one songwriter against another. He’d say: We need a new smash hit — and we’d all go back and write a song and the next day we’d each audition for Bobby Vee’s producer.’ Here are 25 alternate performances (King’s demo of Crying In The Rain, for example) of the works of Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and others. BUDDY HOLLY: GREATEST HITS — I’d rather listen to Hendrix than Holly, and nobody is ever going to persuade me his voice is anything other than grating on the ear. But this album represents a secret vein of pop song writing tricks and tips that many musicians have mined. Think of it as a ‘set text’ on the course to qualifying as a hit songwriter — just skip Peggy Sue — and don’t look at his face on the cover. ■ 57

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G Taylor Made Broadcasts The OB van that is used for BBC Radio 4â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gardenersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Question Time programme has had a complete reďŹ t and update. TREVOR TAYLOR, MD of Taylor Made Broadcasts and producer of GQT explains his thinking and his choices.

ardenersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Question Time on BBC Radio 4 was first broadcast in April 1947. The post-war OB equipment was state of the art and it consisted of disc lathes running at 78rpm and each aluminium lacquered disc lasted around three minutes so two dozen or more discs were used to record each programme. There were no razor blades or DAWs back then and sections were marked on the discs with a chinagraph pencil and then copied onto new â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;transmissionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; discs. It was a different era: news readers wore dinner jackets, engineers hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t discovered sandals, and wireless dominated leaving the fledgling television service well in its shadow. Sixty years on and although the OB-based Gardenersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Question Time format remains fundamentally the same, a panel of experts answering questions from the audience, the technical operation

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facility is somewhat different. In 2007 I decided OB2, the van we use for GQT and other live shows, needed an update. The existing van, a VW Sprinter, had delivered great service but after seven years in operation it was time to replace the aging analogue mixer and upgrade the entire facility. I had designed that OB van in 1996 and now the opportunity to be technologically and editorially adventurous was irresistible. Engineers shook at the thought of the producer mucking about with their van. The producer, however, got excited. The van provides technical facilities for a variety of programmes, including BBC Sport and panel-based shows on Radio 5 Live, but perhaps the highest profile is Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, which is a weekly show and is recorded throughout the UK in front of an audience and is aired 52 weeks in a year. The van is custom designed to provide precisely the facilities needed for audience-based OB radio shows. It has a control room in its centre and storage to the rear. Weight is a factor; we have been operating at close to its maximum legal weight and one of the redesign aims was to reduce the weight of the vehicle. If we had full fuel tanks and two of our more chubby engineers in the cab then we were right on the legal limit. Had they enjoyed an indulgent meal the night before, the van, like the engineers, was probably overweight. It was that tight. I wanted to exploit fully the latest advances in technology, I was even prepared to adopt unconventional approaches if it could deliver better quality and make the rigging and de-rigging easier and faster for the crew. For an experienced OB crew this was dangerous talk. Digital beckoned but some of the operators had reservations. It is one thing losing your way deep in some console’s nested menus on a recorded programme but it is totally different when live. Heads shook, teeth were sucked. Despite the operators’ misgivings I bit the bullet and decided to install a digital desk. The sheer wealth of facilities a digital desk provides means there really wasn’t a decision to be made. Even if the technical specifications were finely balanced, the costs of the two systems was thousands of pounds apart and in these days of tight budgets no one can afford to ignore the finances. Everything was up for discussion, nothing was to be taken for granted. Traditionally we’ve used 7-pair star quad multiways between stage and van. They are heavy, cumbersome and despite everything can act like an efficient aerial when connected to some mixers. I remember having one digital mixer on evaluation and when we connected the 100m multiway to its mic inputs we had a different radio station on every fader! After that the mixer manufacturer improved the RF rejection on the mic preamp front ends. Digital replacements for copper multiways have been around for some time but they have also been hideously expensive and although the fibre-optic cable may have been light, the boxes of electronics at each end made the whole set-up just as heavy. Recently smaller, lighter, cheaper options using Cat5 cable have become available and were now a real viable alternative. Apart from the reduction of weight the immunity to hums, buzzes and RF induction would save hours of engineer’s time. Roland’s Digital Snake performed well on tests delivering 16 channels from stage to van and 8 channels from van to stage and all at 24bit/96kHz. Perfect for our needs. Discreet whispers also suggested that lurking in Japan, and about to be launched, was a new mixer that would accept the digital input from the snake without the need for further DA/A-D conversion. Mystery surrounded the precise July/August 2008

specification of the mixer but what details were leaking out suggested it would be ideal for our OB operations. Sadly, like so much kit, delivery dates slipped and although we did manage to see a prerelease version, no shipping dates were being quoted. I decided, therefore to look for an alternative. It was at this point that I discovered the Mackie TT24. What attracted me instantly was the sheer number of connectors. There were dozens of XLRs and jacks on the back. Now one of the problems with many digital mixers is that although in theory they provide zillions of I-Os they have a very limited number of physical connectors and so there’s a real restriction on the number of inputs and outputs that can be used at any one time and even with expansion cards things don’t improve very much. The Mackie TT24 desk provided 24 mic/line inputs, 12 aux outputs, 8 groups, 8 direct inputs and 24 digital

inputs. The BBC OB engineers in 1947 would have loved that little lot. I’m reluctant to say too much about the coachbuilders because they are a real gem and I’d rather keep their identity to ourselves. They usually build and renovate fire engines and trucks for electricity supply companies and building OB vans is not their usual commission but they’ve done excellent work for us in the past and I didn’t hesitate when OB2 needed a refit. They are Agenda Coachbuilders of Barton Stacey, just east of Andover but keep it to yourself. I wanted to create more rack space, include a bigger (digital) mixer, and provide better visual monitoring of the ‘snoop’ cameras we use to keep an eye on what’s happening on stage and improve the producer’s position in the OB van. OB vans are generally designed by engineers, built by engineers and used by engineers. The poor producer is totally

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ignored. I’ve produced the Today Programme, and lots of other programmes, perched in a corner of an OB van balancing script, running order, stopwatch, phone, talkback box and coffee on my knees. In my OB vans I vowed I’d have a decent desk where a chap can produce a show without needing to be some sort of juggling acrobat. So, the plan was to increase the size of the producer’s table slightly and place it against the wall of the van so two computer screens could be permanently fitted — one displaying the Sadie screen and the other could be used to show a second Sadie screen or the output of CCTV cameras in the hall. Gardeners’ Question Time and the Radio 5 Live shows are not rehearsed and so to give the OB engineers a fighting chance of having the right fader open at the right time a video link is essential. Our rather cumbersome, and heavy, Sony CRT monitors were to be retired and replaced with flat screens. We increased the number of cameras to four; one looking at the main presenter, one looking at the panellists and two pointed at the audience. I also wanted to keep cabling between stage and van to a minimum — not only for Health and Safety reasons (that’s one aspect of modern OB working the BBC engineers of 1947 would not welcome) but to keep weight and rigging time down. How could I get four images back to the van on a single cable? TVIP cameras were one solution whereby each camera contains a mini-computer and pops up on a computer screen just like any other IP address. Technically elegant but expensive. There were also doubts as to whether we’d get continuous motion or jumpy-vision, which would be useless for judging who had just taken a breath and was about to speak. Also, going that route the snoop camera system was going to cost more than the mixer! In the end I opted to combine the four composite video signals from the cameras into a quad unit (which we already had in the ‘redundant kit’ store) and feed that to the van over a single 100m video cable. Displaying the video on a computer screen simply involved installing an inexpensive video card. Old tech I know but it works, we had virtually all the bits and it was cheap; sometimes tried and tested in best. One of the challenges of Gardeners’ Question Time and Radio 5 Live shows is that we operate in some of the most acoustically hostile environments you can imagine. Reverberant village halls, noisy pubs, school halls better suited to sports than broadcasting 60

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are our standard ‘studio’. The best we can expect in terms of acoustic treatment is a thin curtain over a window. To make matters worse we have to put a PA system into the space so the audience can hear. There is a perpetual dilemma here. If we turn up the PA so everyone in the audience can hear we destroy the quality of the recording. If we turn down the PA to improve the recording quality someone in the audience is bound to complain that they can’t hear. One solution we have been exploring over the years is the use of head-worn mics on the presenters so as to get a tighter balance on the voices while allowing the PA level to be increased. In the past, trials have not been successful as the mics delivered a too breathy, boomy sound. But modern head-worn mics promise a more open sound and there’s optimism that, at last, we may have a solution to the old dilemma. The fact that the mixer offers such comprehensive EQ and dynamics facilities also means we ought to be able to make each mic sound more natural and tailor the channel to an individual, recalling the specific settings venue after venue. We opted for Audio-Technica head-worn mics and these have proved an improvement on models tried before but there’s a skill in getting the best from them and patience and perseverance are needed in the set-up and operation. The broadcasters love them because they liberate them from the need to stay ‘on mic’. Over the years, I’ve watched engineers uncoil mile after mile of XLR cable to connect mics, headphone feeds, PA feeds, foldback feeds and the various other audio circuits needed for a live broadcast or recording. If we could eliminate much of the cables we’d speed up the rigging and reduce the weight we’d have to carry, I reasoned. This lead me to ponder the use of radio mics -- more nervousness from the engineers. What if we went a step further? What if we used in-ear monitoring rather than conventional HP amps and cans? Head worn mics, radio mics, IEM, digital snakes and all at OBs in dodgy village halls with acoustics more suited to a gym than a studio. ‘Are you sure Trevor?’ asked one engineer which when translated read: ‘You must be stark staring mad, mate.’ The outside confidence I portrayed to the engineers was balanced by inner anxieties. How would radio mic receivers cope with IEM transmitters operating close by at similar frequencies? What happens when we are in areas where other broadcasters are working? July/August 2008

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facility Frequency planning and licensing then becomes a real issue. What if the digital snake goes down — we’d lose everything whereas at least with copper wire we’d be unlucky to lose the lot. Well, if we could overcome the technical issues there were real editorial and production benefits. Now freed from cables tying him to a desk the presenter could wander among the audience — and, for that matter, so could the team of expert panellists. This opens up fresh opportunities and means the audience could now become more involved. This all led me to thinking about the stage end of the operation. Could we, I wondered, fit all the audio kit into a small rack that would be linked to the van using a digital snake and thereby speed up rigging and de-rigging while providing enhanced flexibility to the talent? It could, I decided. In fact the audio rack does not even need to be on stage. It could just as easily sit at the back of the hall or in a side room because the radio links would work over the relatively short distances involved. But what about the cue lights and the CCTV cameras? A second rack would be ideal providing those facilities but freed from any audio tasks. Things were beginning to take shape. Tests with Trantec radio mics and IEM units proved encouraging. We found that providing we chose the frequencies carefully we could operate radio mics and IEM transmitters in close proximity. All the stage audio kit, radio mic receivers, IEM transmitters, digital snake and PA amp could all be housed in a single rack on wheels. We chose SKB’s Gigrig. Having now defined the specification it was time to call in the Oxford Sound Company to make it all work. All our OB vans have been built by Oxford Sound –- a company based in Kingham, conveniently close to our Chipping Norton offices in Oxfordshire. Run by former BBC design engineer Andrew Riley it is now a major contractor to the broadcast industry building state-of-the-art studios for the BBC and commercial radio. Oxford Sound is not the cheapest audio contractor in the industry but they are good. Their kit works, it lasts, it’s reliable. Installation was overseen by Mark Lever with Rob Jeffrey and Richard Prewitt carrying out the work in a freezing van mid February. Schematic diagrams, rack plans and even jackfield layouts were emailed to and fro until we were all happy. You still can’t beat a jackfield for moving audio from where it is to where you want it. And, I have to say, there are still OB engineers who don’t feel as if they’ve done a day’s work until they’ve used every double-ender in sight. Work moved on well and on schedule. The final plug was connected the evening before the engineer’s ‘Play Day’. It would have been unfair, and very risky, to expect the engineers to turn up and use the new van without having had a chance to try it out beforehand. We therefore arranged a day when everyone could crawl all over the van and try it out. A dummy OB was created in a nearby barn and we switched on with fingers crossed. Given the complexity of the refit and the unfamiliarity of the new mixer, all went very well. Cynical and sceptical engineers even looked July/August 2008

excited by the new van. It was just days before the van was used for its first recording at a village hall at Witham in Essex. Of course it’s one thing testing kit on a trial day but quite another when it’s for real with several hundred audience. The first recording revealed a few faults. The radio talkback had packed up and so there was no communication between the hall crew and the van. Sadie outputs 1&2 and 3&4 were transposed and one monitor went blank. The radio talkback was traced to a broken aerial feeder, the Sadie problem was two plugs transposed and the blank screen was down to a dodgy plug. Given the complexity of the refit the faults were trivial. Set against this the digital snake and mixer worked a treat. The radio mics and IEM delivered what we expected. The audio quality was good and the ability to include EQ and dynamics in channels and groups enhanced the mix. We are now using the new OB van on a regular basis and with every gig confidence and enthusiasm grows. It has delivered what we set out to achieve. The rigging and de-rigging is faster and the use of the digital snake has eliminated the hums, buzzes, clicks and RFI experienced with the copper multiways. The two rack stage system works a treat and has dramatically reduced the time needed to rig thus allowing more time to be spent on sweetening the mix (and in the pub). The Mackie TT24 digital mixer is generally loved by the engineers but Mackie ought to address a couple of points. The XLR connectors are nonlocking, which is no doubt aimed at saving costs but means they will, eventually, work lose. The optional software that links mixer to computer works well but does not have a ‘maximise’ option and so does not fill the screen. The mixer’s touch screen is very temperamental and at times simply does not work. This may be a specific fault with our mixer and not typical of all. The Trantec radio mics and IEM work a treat. With 10 channels of radio mic available we now only have to rig a single cabled mic, a stereo mic for audience response. The Audio-Technica head-worn mics (AT 892) deliver good quality and have enabled us to improve the PA levels without affecting the recorded quality. The Roland Digital Snake performs faultlessly. It’s important not to overload it otherwise it distorts dreadfully but keep it within its designed range and it’s a dream. Its remote control system is easy to use and, like the mixer, the memory function means we can store settings for different shows and recall those in an instant. But, best of all, the guys who have to operate the kit and deliver top quality broadcast sound from some of the most difficult acoustics imaginable love the new OB van. Not only does it make their task easier when it comes to rigging but it gives them more time and better facilities to polish the balance and deliver high quality sound. Oh, and the reduced weight of the van also means they no longer have to watch what they eat after an OB. ■

Contact taYlor madE BroadCaStS, UK: telephone: +44 1608 646444

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technology

MassCore explained Merging Technologies has heralded its patent pending MassCore technology as the quantum leap forward in processing power that the industry has been waiting for. Merging’s president CLAUDE CELLIER explains what MassCore is, how it works and integrates plug-ins, and why he believes it to be superior to DSP and FPGA solutions.

PGAs and DSPs were created for different purposes. DSPs were created to provide an optimised platform for signal processing algorithms implemented in software, while FPGAs were initially created to provide glue logic. FPGAs are by far the superior choice for networking applications that move traffic at gigabit/second data rates. DSPs, meanwhile, have historically been the superior choice for video and audio applications. However, today there are many overlapping applications for the two device types. If we focus our analysis on the particular audio application of a mix engine, as the number of channel strips and buses grow and the sampling rates get higher, there is clearly a growing appeal for a digital audio designer to consider a FPGA over a DSP for the shear cost advantage that some of the latest generation FPGAs offer (as low as 0.2 cent/MMAC, or million multiply-accumulate operations). The raw computational power of such new devices allow easy to construct mixers that offer more than 200 input strips with full multiband EQ and dynamics on each channel into 80 or more buses. This is just impossible to achieve with even the fastest and most recent DSPs on the market. Such a mix engine would have to be split over several tens of DSPs to achieve the same result. Given their granular structure, FPGAs are also able to process audio with minimal latency and are hence optimal for ultra low latency between Live In to Live Out, which is clearly a major advantage for digital mix engines suitable for live applications. There are, however, a number of issues that made the choice of FPGA a much less interesting proposal for Merging. 1. Since not only the algorithms but also the underlying fabric (or structure) of the signal path must be extensively defined in an FPGA, typical high-level languages such as C or C++ cannot be employed. You have to resort to using a quite low-

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level design-entry language (such as VHDL, VHSIC hardware description language) which somehow brings us back to the middle-age of what assembly language used to be for DSP programming. 2. While relatively simple structures as those of a mix bus, an equalizer and even a dynamics section are relatively straightforward to program in such lowlevel languages, more complex algorithms (such as a reverb or pitch/time compression-expansion plugins) do represent a major challenge to implement in an FPGA. This is not only at the design stage but also further on through the entire optimisation and maintenance life cycle. 3. Finally one of the most significant drawbacks when designing with large FPGAs is how slow and tedious this process can be. During each design and debugging iteration stage an enormous amount of time is wasted waiting for new silicon to be ready for test. Every new compilation may require up to several hours (typically an overnight job) before being able to evaluate the result of even the simplest modification. Doing the same job for a DSP or a code running on an X86 CPU will, at most, take a few minutes for each iteration. Having had quite extensive experience with DSPbased audio engines — our first ISA DSP card’s design dates back to 1994 and our current VLIW (Very Long Instruction Words) DSP-based board was first put on the market in 1999 — we started a complete re-evaluation of the state-of-the art two years ago. We looked at and tried every possible solution, even the most exotic components, some of them composed of up to 96 parallel processing CPUs in one single device. We also designed an entire mix-engine with hundreds of channels’ mixing capability on a brand new FPGA and still have it on our prototype bench, but we were striving for a more elegant and straightforward solution. In accordance with Moore’s law, you would also

July/August 2008

technology response times in the order of a couple of microseconds (compared to tens of milliseconds under Windows) we were able to bring down the total Live-in to Liveout audio processing delay of the entire mix engine (including complex plug-ins) to under 1.4ms which is at least a factor of 10 better than even the best finetuned ‘native’ systems can achieve. However, the best part is to come. By relaxing slightly the latency constraints (to, say, 5.4ms, which is still OK for all but the most stringent live mixing situations) we couldn’t believe how much raw power was available from just one single core of those new Core2 Duo or Core2 Quad processors. We kept on adding input strips after input strips, mix buses after mix buses and quickly managed to reach the limit of what our (by then Pyramix V5) software was able to support while the CPU usage was still showing some moderate figure of between 10% and 20% of total

available power. We then spent the next few days expanding all the former software limitations we had put in place in the code, and discovered that the limit was well beyond anything we had envisioned in the first place. Not only could we achieve mix engines offering up to 384 concurrent channels on over 100 mix and aux buses, including full EQ and dynamics on all input strips plus generous finalising plug-ins on the master outputs at 48kHz sampling rate, but we could also reconfigure it within seconds to mix 48 channels in DXD (352.8kHz) for instance. Any other combination of sample rates in between is of course also possible, such as 96 channels at 192kHz. Such a large mix-engine needs commensurate means of audio I-O, which is something you will not find by default in a general purpose computer. This is where our existing Mykerinos range of DSP cards came into action. While their DSP power is no

Windows task manager confirms that one Core (in a 4-Core system) is simply ‘hidden’ from Windows, care of massCore.

expect the power of all these solutions to roughly double every 18 months. Upon closer analysis, while DSPs and FPGAs were quite good at almost following Moore’s law, nothing could beat the tremendous scaling of performance that the x86 platform has enjoyed over the past years. As we already had quite a bit of experience with the Native side of things with our Pyramix Native software, we were looking for a possible way to combine all the advantages of Native x86 programming (high-level language, easy to operate design, maintenance and debug tools, rapidity and flexibility to test a number of design variants, etc.) with the advantages of FPGA or DSP-based designs (ultra-low and deterministic latencies under a strict real-time operating system). While it now could seem a rather evident solution, coming up with MassCore (patent pending) was not a trivial task. After many fights, after many trials to control (and limit) the impact of the Windows OS on the real-time response of an audio engine, with its formidable constraints on ultra-low roundtrip latency requirements, we decided it was basically impossible to prevent such a general purpose Operating System from messing up entirely at times by possibly delaying a critical audio task by as much as 10 to 20ms if not more. Our next thought was whether it would be possible to keep an audio engine running on an x86 CPU (such as a Pentium) by isolating it totally from the Windows OS. At the same time, the first Core2 Duo and Core2 Quad processors were seeing their market introduction by Intel, with similar multicore processors introduced by AMD. It then seemed quite tempting to try the following: isolate one of many cores of a CPU from Windows entirely, while leaving Windows to operate on the remaining cores to accomplish all the rather mundane tasks of updating the screen, fetching (or storing) data from/to hard disks, receiving new user data from the keyboard or from the mouse, transferring files over networks, etc. These are all the tasks that Windows is rather good at but keeping the audio engine as far away from it as possible. The way we made it work is to dedicate ‘the core’ where we wanted the audio mix engine to run to be operated by a true real-time kernel that takes ‘possession’ of that core and even makes this core essentially invisible to Windows. It was with great amazement that we realised this was possible and that the results, in terms of achievable deterministic latency, were even better than what we could achieve until then with our DSP-based cards. With guaranteed July/August 2008

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massCore can realise massive fully-featured mixer configurations

longer needed in full, since the main mixing action is now taking place in a Pentium Core, they are put to good use for I-O acceleration and handling processes. Their capability supports MADI, AES, SDIF, TDIF or analogue daughtercards and to provide the ‘heartbeat’ to the MassCore engine from whatever sync source is selected (Word clock, video or HDTV sync, LTC, etc.). This alone is one of the most cost-effective hand-on benefits of MassCore technology as even our earliest customers, who might have purchased their first Mykerinos card as far back as 1999, can enjoy the power of MassCore without having had to scrap their entire hardware investment. It’s almost as if their investment has been given a second life. While it is nice to come up with one of the most powerful mix-engines available, many of our customers do not need such huge numbers of tracks, channels and mix buses. A universally sought-after feature is the capability to insert plug-ins of their choice at every stage of their mix-engine, be it in the strips, in auxes or main buses without (or with as few as possible) limitations. While Pyramix V5 provided quite restricted connectivity to VST plug-ins (limited to playback strips) Pyramix V6 and MassCore provides an unlimited (as a matter of fact only limited by total CPU and memory available in the system) possibility to connect any VST (or chain of) plug-ins in every conceivable order in every possible stage of the mix-engine. On top of that it also provides fully automatic compensation for a VST plug-in’s latency and provides automation of all the automatable parameters of the plug-ins. Furthermore, the fact that the MassCore engine operates in the core sitting just a few microns apart from the other core(s) within the same chip provides an ideal boost in performance, since the buffers that are used to transfer audio data between MassCore and Windows are sharing the same CPU memory, thus getting away from the costly transfer of data through PCI or PCIe buses from/to dedicated DSP of FPGA hardware. Even better, in most cases, this data will be readily available in the inner cache memory of the multi-core CPU itself, removing any requirement to load and fetch it from the slower external memory. So while our users can now enjoy the most successful plug-in platform in the best possible way, choosing from the plug-ins written to adhere to the VST standard, there is still a small snag that we would like to share with you. While the MassCore engine operates on a well-controlled (timewise) platform, this is unfortunately not the case for VST plug-ins, which are designed to operate under Windows (or OS-X in the Mac world) and therefore

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cannot enjoy the strict deterministic behaviour of MassCore at the moment. In fact, as soon as even only one VST plug-in is inserted in the MassCore engine, the entire system’s latency must be relaxed to cope with the much larger audio buffers required by VST plug-ins (usually ranging from 256 to well over 1000 samples in the worst case). This means that while all VS3 plug-ins have been ported to operate under MassCore, benefiting from the ultralow latency inherent under the real-time kernel, VST was not conceived, in the first instance to live outside of Windows or OS-X. We strongly believe that in the same way that the mix-engine was ported to operate under a real-time kernel, the same could happen soon with a number of VST plug-ins. VS4L-ported VST plug-ins can operate under MassCore and benefit from a tremendous improvement in their worst-case latency, bringing them from several tens of milliseconds to virtually zero latency, making them suitable for the first time for live applications. Merging recently started the VS4L (Virtual Studio for Live) initiative, talking with a limited number of VST plug-in manufacturers to start porting some of their highest-quality plug-ins to what could become the next step for the very successful VST architecture. The great news is that initial tests show that a properly written VST plug-in can be ported to the MassCore environment in a matter of a few hours, often requiring not much more than a simple recompilation with the proper tools. Since a single afternoon could see the porting of several VST plugins, it becomes a no-brainer for VST manufacturers, since no tedious rewriting of their code is necessary. Further to that, the MassCore version of their plug-ins enjoys additional protection against piracy, since it will not work on a plain ‘standard’ Windows PC. As it is Merging’s intention to make VS4L an open format, we are looking forward to welcoming additional VST partners over the course of the summer. The readers with a bit of perspicacity who have made it thus far will certainly have wondered if MassCore couldn’t be extended to use more than one Core of a multi-core CPU or even better of a number of multi-core CPUs. Well, that might be the best part of the MassCore technology, as it is indeed possible to envisage a future where a number of cores will be sharing a huge mixengine. Merging is already prototyping a solution where up to seven cores of an Octo-core system (we are nice guys and leave Windows to do its stuff on one of them) could be running MassCore. And with Moore’s help there’s little doubt that 16 or 32 core systems are not that much further away. ■ July/August 2008

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25/6/08 12:07:53 65

slaying dragons

Beat that thing Continuing his musical instrument theme, this issue JOHN WATKINSON looks at percussion instruments from some unusual angles.

ver wary of being hauled over the coals for observations that fail to coincide with the various schools of thought on the subject, I have decided not to attempt a rigorous definition of percussion. In general, percussion is any process whereby sound is created from the collision of two bodies. Whether the sound is musical or not is entirely up to the listener. What defines percussion for me is that the excitation is an instantaneous, or transient, impact that must result in a rapid attack. What happens next depends on the construction of the two bodies that were involved. In percussion, the two bodies will often be highly asymmetrical, where one is brought down on the other to make sound. This contrasts with the symmetrical, but no less rewarding, process of banging politiciansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; heads together in the hope that they will suffer concussion. Given that the excitation is a single event, it has no time to be periodic. This means that it is the response to the excitation that determines the degree 2/5/08 For4:54 PM toprism_lrx_Res_ad.qxd which an instrument is periodic. example

the piano is, strictly speaking, a pitched percussion instrument. All of the hammers are the same, but the strings are tuned and vibrate in a small number of modes with a high Q-factor to produce clear notes having musically related overtones. However, if the Q-factor is low and the number of modes of vibration is high the result will be a broad spectrum or noise rather than a recognisable note or harmonic structure, leading such instruments to be called unpitched. This is great because they need no tuning. Nevertheless the noise can be band-limited. Maracas Page 1 are usually provided in pairs, each providing energy at a different region of the frequency spectrum. I put M3 nuts in my maracas so they can be pitched and un-pitched at the same time. location recorder The distinction between pitched and un-pitched instruments is too binary for my liking. It is better to think of these terms as the extremes of a continuum where real instruments may fall between the ends. The bell is a simple example of a pitched instrument. On being struck at a single place, two The SADiE contra-rotating bending LRX2 is the waves propagate around most flexible the rim. The pitch will be location recorder that which allows an integer available, meeting the number of bending waves demands of the modern in the circumference of the recording environment. This mouth. Consequently the feature-rich, compact unit possibility for harmonics provides the ultimate solution for exists. The harmonic increasing the productivity of the structure of the traditional time-conscious professional. flared church bell is not especially musical. Cymbals are basically Contact us now to arrange your demo: rather flat bells and the fundamental of a cymbal Email: sales@sadie.com consists of the same www.sadie.com bending waves running A Prism Sound Company +44 (0)1223 424988 +1-973-983-9577 round the periphery. In a

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typical cymbal the fundamental has very high Q and a very low frequency that it is unable to radiate effectively. In practice the fundamental is inaudible and the ear has to be brought right up to the rim in order to hear it. The flat shape allows a large number of vibratory modes and it is these that give the cymbal its characteristic sound, which will differ according to where it is struck. The shape of a cymbal is not so different from that of a loudspeaker cone and study of the modes of a cymbal can be quite instructive in understanding cone break-up. A flat bar can be made to vibrate in such a way that one face is alternately convex then concave. Simple physics requires the centre of mass of the bar to remain stationary. This means that while the ends are moving one way, the middle must move the other way. By definition, there must be two points on the bar that are not moving at about one quarter and three quarters of the length. These are called nodes. In order to obtain the best sustain, the bars are usually mounted at the nodes. Nodal beams are also used in helicopters to isolate periodic rotor vibration from the hull, which is mounted at the nodes. I find it highly appropriate that the technique was invented by Bell. A corollary is that shaking a bar by the nodes wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t cause it to bend. If the bar happens to be a car body, it becomes clear that the best place to mount the axles is at the nodes. The long front and rear overhangs of the Jaguar XJ-S achieve that, whereas these new-fangled short cars with a wheel at each corner obviously vibrate more, as well as being more aerodynamically challenged. Xylophones, marimbas and vibraphones use the principle of a bending bar. In the vibraphone and the glockenspiel, the bar is metal, whereas the others use wood. If portability is not an issue, stone can be used. As the resonance is between the mass of the ends of the bar and the stiffness in the middle, longer bars will resonate at a lower pitch. Bars can be raised in pitch by removing mass from the ends and lowered in pitch by removing material from the centre. The tuning fork and the triangle are just vibrating bars that are folded up to save space. The tuning fork bar is mounted at a node, the triangle nearly so. Bars are limited in their ability to radiate sound and as a result acoustic resonance is often employed. In the marimba, tubes of different lengths are suspended vertically below the bars which resonate in the same way as organ pipes. Traditional instruments would use gourds of various sizes as resonators. July/August 2008

showcase The vibraphone has discs between the bars and the resonant pipes that can alter the coupling. The discs are rotated by an electric motor to give a tremolo effect, suggesting that the vibraphone is a misnomer. There is an exquisite duality between the use of the tremolo arm on guitars to obtain vibrato and the use of a vibraphone to get tremolo. Given that the North Pole is magnetically a south pole and that electrons flow the opposite way to the current, it is difficult to justify giving musicians a hard time over their terminology. The pile driver meets the criterion for a pitched percussion instrument. Following the hammer blow, a longitudinal wave travels down the pile, reflects off the impedance mismatch at the bottom, and heads back up again, only to reflect off the top and so on. Thus a standing wave occurs, indistinguishable from that in an organ pipe, except that the medium is somewhat stiffer and the speed of sound correspondingly higher. The ability to radiate is often enhanced by the incorporation of some kind of membrane, or diaphragm, leading to the class of instruments called drums. The diaphragm can be thought of as a two-dimensional version of a string. Originally animal skin would be used, but synthetic materials are also available. A string needs axial tension whereas a diaphragm needs tension in all directions and has to be stretched over a frame of some kind. If the frame were rectangular, like a picture frame, then obviously it would end up like a pin-cushion when the diaphragm was tensioned. It doesn’t require much evolution, or intelligent design, to arrive at the circle or cylinder being the optimum shape to give stiffness with low weight, a development that the loudspeaker industry still doesn’t appear to have noticed. A short cylinder with a single diaphragm results in the tambourine and the bodhran. The similarity between the two words may not be a coincidence. If the cylinder is longer, diaphragms can be fitted at both ends, with the ropes used to tension them passing from end to end. The result is the classic drum that has been in existence for millennia. As a result, anything that is cylindrical with flat ends is called a drum; for example brake drums and oil drums. Interestingly, both have been used as percussion instruments. In the tympanum, the cylinder is replaced by a near-hemisphere, another naturally stiff shape, but harder to make. Drum skins vibrate in a large number of modes and so are not considered to be pitched, although the spectrum they produce can be moved up and down by controlling the tension. The colour obtained can be changed considerably by choosing the radius at which the diaphragm is struck. Certain coatings applied to the diaphragm can damp the high order vibrations enough to make the drum appear pitched, such that it can be tuned. Drummers receive more than their fair share of musical humour. One of the least offensive is ‘Mummy, when I grow up I want to be a drummer.’ ‘You can’t do both, dear.’ One interesting characteristic of percussion instruments is that they work in the time domain and in order to reproduce them properly the waveform has to be kept reasonably accurate. The glockenspiel is notorious for destroying audio compression algorithms. I find percussion very useful for evaluating loudspeakers. Speakers that use resonant techniques and/or passive crossovers fare badly on percussion material. I have, however, discovered that ported loudspeakers make excellent umbrella stands. ■ July/August 2008

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your business

Days of future passed If the ‘business’ model now is simply to sign high-priced existing brands with a name, fan-base and back catalogue, then where is the generation that comes after them going to come from? DAN DALEY reckons someone has to ﬁlter through the output and it might as well be you.

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t’s 2013, the last of Led Zeppelin’s three ‘farewell’ tours is over (supported by the Police — you didn’t believe them either, did you?), the Stone’s Steel Wheelchairs have rolled for the last time, and Live Nation has joint-ventured with Disney’s mad scientists to reanimate Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. They had to — there was no one left with sufficient star power for them to sign. They had ripped through a series of high-profile, high-dollar deals, starting with Madonna ($120 million) and Jay-Z ($150 million) back in 2008 (neither of whom do much of what Live Nation correctly identified as the new primary revenue stream: live performances), trying to corral as many superstars as possible before archrival AEG Live could. Now, like a bad Doctor Who episode, they have reached the edge of the universe and have run out of planets with sufficient mass to have their own gravitational effect on fans. It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. First off, the next generation or so of vocal sampling and processing is going to put Old Blue Eyes’s silky voice into play, allowing users to apply that voice to any set of lyrics they want, much the same way we’ve been playing sampled trumpets and bagpipes with keyboards for years (What do you mean ‘we’? Ed). But second and more to the point, the focus on signing established artists with already widely recognisable brands is an exercise in the finite in more ways than one: not only are there relatively few of them around but they have a disturbing tendency to get old and die. The old business model of the major records looks quaint and ridiculous now, just as the Soviet Union’s creaky mechanics must have looked to a Russian once that emperor’s clothes were gone. But in their prime, the labels were performing a function we as humans can appreciate: they were resolution

reproducing, or in their case, finding and developing –- however clumsily — the next round of cannon fodder, some of which would actually hit its mark. If the model now is simply to sign high-priced existing brands, whether it be Paul McCartney and Starbucks or the Eagles and Wal-Mart, then where is the generation that comes after them going to come from? More to the point, if the model is to acquire brands that need little in the way of marketing, it suggests that the next generation of music artists, who do need marketing and lots else to evolve into economically viable performers, is not an area of interest to these global corporations that have now taken on the mantle of record label. It’s like buying all the petrol you can get for you car now but not thinking about investing in refineries to make more of it for tomorrow. Live music may be the new revenue stream but nowhere is the reliance on aging rock stars more evident. Of the top 10 music touring acts on Pollstar’s chart as at the beginning of this spring’s touring season, two date back to the 1970s (the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band); two more hit their peaks in the 1980s (Metallica, Van Halen); the 1990s are represented by the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Counting Crows, Radiohead and the Stone Temple Pilots. The tenth touring act, the duet outing in support of the 2007 album by Robert Plant and Alison Krause, is a kind of hybrid of the 1960/70s and the 1990s. The list underscores the fact that the music industry has come to rely more and more heavily on revenues derived from live performances, specifically lengthy tours, at a time when many of the biggest ticket-makers are artists whose origins can be carbon-dated. What happens when those artists reach the point at which they cannot or (authentically) do not want to subject themselves to the rigours of the road anymore? This respect-your-elders theme has been in place for some time. In 2007, of the nine top-grossing music tours (I’m leaving out Cirque Du Soleil for obvious reasons), four — The Police, Genesis, Rod Stewart and Roger Waters –- accounted for about $464 million; nearly 60% of the approximately $803 million the top nine totalled for the year. The previous year, the Rolling Stones led the pack with $437 million (total for the Bigger Bang tour that kicked off in 2005), followed by Madonna’s Confessions tour, which booked $195 million in ducats. The year had lots of other aging (or, if you prefer, ageless) touring successes, including Bonjovi, Aerosmith and Motley Crüe (Dan, I’m beginning to detect a pattern…Ed). Back in 2005, it was U2, the Eagles again, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Elton John and Jimmy Buffet — six of the top 10 who had their first hits before 1975. And few of whom have had any since. With few exceptions, like McCartney and Madonna, these legacy artists may be still filling seats but they’re not selling records anymore. Assuming you still want to produce records and not become an impresario and produce concerts, where is the next July/August 2008

your business round of economically viable music that you will produce going to come from? It’s not like there’s no new music out there; if anything, there’s too much of it, enabled by affordable digital audio systems and unfettered by the filters of competent A&R scouts or much of the general public outside of a few dozen miles of where these artists play in clubs and colleges. In fact, recorded and live music may be headed to a similar future: a smaller core of best-selling artists surrounded by a huge mass of mid-market acts working on an increasingly regional basis. Pollstar’s 2007 year-end analysis shows a fall-off of nearly 2 million tickets sold, centred mostly in the megagross category. That suggests that the mega-touring artists — the still robust relics of past decades — are slowing down and are not likely to be replaced on the same scale. But the seeding grounds for the next generation of talent — the clubs -- have never been more numerous. New York and Las Vegas seem to open live venues that accommodate 1,000 people or less on an almost weekly basis. And they sound light years better than a club or pub did 30 years ago. And in a future in which petrol prices will limit the range of both touring and attending shows to a more regional scale, what better model for getting new artists in front of fans? There are fertile fields out there that can incubate a new generation of music artists for whom lowered expectations won’t affect art or passion, just economics. Fortunately, the record producer has had a long legacy in terms of acting as exactly the filter function that A&R once did. Back in the 1950s and 60s staff producers were charged with not only making records but also with finding the artists to make them with, the role played by George Martin with EMI in London and Mitch Miller for Columbia in New York. A&R became largely a separate function from record production after the rise of the independent producer in the 1960s and 70s. But in the late 1980s, A&R was one of the

headroom

first major-label aspects that came to be outsourced, as a predominantly white executive corps needed scouts that understood the genres like rap and hiphop as they began to engage mainstream audiences. Producers like Russell Simmons and Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs not only gained traction as mainstream record producers for these genres and others, but were able to flex their considerable entrepreneurial talents, as well. Today, a number of mainstream record producers with long and successful track records occupy chairs in both the executive suite and the control room, like Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Records, and Jack Joseph Puig, vice president of A&R at Geffen/ A&M Records. The mechanics of the process by which record producers act in the role of A&R hasn’t really changed: you still have to beat the bushes, scouring for talent that fits your aesthetic affinities and the requirements of a label that might want to invest in them. And these days, those requirements also include the ability to put on a great live show, since performance revenues are now eclipsing those from record sales in many cases. Another requirement is that new signings come with some sort of their own fan base. There are plenty of web-savvy Colbie Caillats out there who are building their brands online via MySpace, FaceBook, etc. But being Internet-astute doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t need help making their records. And fortunately those same web portals are a way to browse what’s out there, looking for artists that can benefit from your touch. It’s going to be an interesting transitional period coming up: as the legends of rock recede into senility, we’re left with a smaller pool of potentially long-term artists around which to build what we know of as a record industry. Will Radiohead, Green Day, Carrie Underwood, Robbie Williams and Hannah Montana carry on like Clapton and Page and Stewart have? We’ll see. In the meantime, the generation after that one is looking for its producer. ■

advertiser index Acoustic Energy ..................................................... 53

Mytek ..................................................................... 48

AES USA................................................................. 43

Prism / SaDiE ......................................................... 66

AlSo Dynax ............................................ Classified 67

Radial ...................................................................... 39

Audient................................................................... 44

Reidel ............................................................ 27 & 29

Audio Technica ....................................................... 25 Calrec ..................................................................... 33 Dangerous .............................................................. 49 DiGiCo .................................................................... 03 Euphonix ................................................................ 07

RND ........................................................................ 60 Røde Microphones ................................................. 10 SBES ....................................................................... 61 Schoeps .................................................................. 13

Fostex..................................................................... 16

SCV London ........................................................... 65

Funky Junk ............................................ Classified 67

Sennheiser .............................................................. 37

Genelec ..................................... Outside Back Cover

Sonic Apogee......................................................... 59

Georg Neumann .................................................... 55

Sonic RND .............................................................. 52

Grace ...................................................................... 47

Sonic SE.................................................................. 56

HHB ........................................................................ 41

Sonic Waves ........................................................... 63

Holophone ............................................................. 64 IBC .................................................Inside Back Cover KMR ....................................................... Classified 67 Lawo ....................................................................... 20 Lydcraft .................................................................. 14

Source Universal Audio.......................................... 15 Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup..................................34 Studer ..................................................................... 23 TL Audio ................................................................. 69

M-Audio ................................................................. 58

TL Commerce ........................................ Classified 67

McDSP .........................................Inside Front Cover

Vertigo................................................... Classified 67

Merging Technologies ........................................... 51

Vintage King........................................................... 18

Millennia ................................................................. 09

WSDG..................................................................... 62

July/August 2008

resolution

PErCEivEd loUdNESS vS room aNd SCrEEN SiZE In two recent issues of Resolution (V7.2, V7.3), Philip Newell wrote a pair of articles about a phenomenon which I have observed since several years ago and have also reported it to Dolby Labs as I think that it should be considered in the alignment procedure of cinemas and mixing theatres. Under the conditions according to Dolby and THX specifications, I could not, or at least not so prominently, ﬁnd some of the effects which Philip Newell describes and then uses to develop a theory of what happens when you play back in a small room a mix that was made in a large mixing theatre. I am referring to the reports of the dialogue level becoming too high and harsh in comparison to the music and effects (we will have a closer look into this later in this article). I have the impression just that the whole mix is too loud — or rather, the very soft sounds remain correct, but as the level of the programme increases, the perceived loudness increases to an even greater extent, which leads to a wrong (too loud) impression of mid- and high-level sounds. Different test setups seem to show that the screen size is the more important factor. Of course, you cannot have a screen that is bigger than your front wall, but you can put a small screen in a big room. But even by maintaining the same viewing angle as for the big screen, a remarkable reduction of the sound volume seems to be necessary — very close to what seems to match the situation in a small room with the same small screen. One important reason why the perceived loudness depends on the screen size may lie in our habit of relating the loudness of an object to its physical size. The values given by the following, empirical formula could serve as a starting point for further examinations: [dB(C)] In which ‘W’ is the screen width and ‘12’[m] is the ‘reference width’, which I have chosen as being the screen width for which the ‘magic’ 85dB(C) with the calibrated Dolby Noise source would be correct. As examples, this formula would give: One question is, in all W[m] dB(C) theatres with screen sizes 12 85.0 greater than 12m, should 10 84.4 the Dolby level should stay 6 82.2 at 85dB(C), or would it be 3 80.2 wise to increase the level, 1 76.4 even further, according to 0.68 75.0 the formula? One possibility (15 85.8) would be to use the level (18 86.4) increase only at big open (21 87.6) air installations and in mixing theatres. The latter because mixing engineers tend to mix louder (under pressure of the directors?) than most of the public would choose, and, maybe, because it can be assumed that the room acoustics of large mixing theatres are generally better controlled than in most commercial cinemas. Anyway, it is very important to realise that the whole sound system in a cinema can only produce good results if the room acoustics and electroacoustics are within the limits of the Dolby

headroom and THX specifications (see some of them in Figures 3 to 5); but, of course, sound distribution and power capabilities of the loudspeakers and amplifiers are, together with many more things, just as important. If the cinema does not meet these specifications then there is a big risk that the results are more or less far from the intentions of the filmmakers. At least, the alignment procedure must be adapted, taking into account the decay time vs room size and frequency. This would lead to adaptations of the X-Curve, which will, to some (limited) degree, improve the sound reproduction. This will be discussed later. Coming back to what Philip Newell wrote, I guess that the fact that people often report that it sounds too loud and harsh lies to the greatest part somewhere other than in the mix being made in a large mixing theatre. The factors responsible are usually the poor room acoustics and electroacoustics of a lot of cinemas, and the pitfalls of the usual alignment technique. If we look at the positions for the measurement microphones used for the EQ and level alignment in a cinema, suggested by Dolby (Figures 1a & b), then it’s obvious that they are usually beyond the critical distance — especially at lower frequencies where the directivity factor of the speakers is low. Therefore, what is measured with an RTA is the frequency response of the reflected energy. Even if a large mixing studio shows decay times that rise at lower frequencies, I believe that most of them remain within the limits that Dolby and THX specify (Fig. 3). This rise at lower frequencies would be compensated by the application of the X-curve for large cinemas. In my experience, this system seems to work fine; even down to very small rooms like home theatres. But for every room size it is a must that the decay characteristic stays between the limits given by Dolby and THX, as in Figures 3 and 5. Otherwise, the system fails miserably (and anyway, a too long decay time in a cinema makes the whole surround concept useless). Two things happen in a lot of cinemas and leads mainly to the aforementioned effects. 1. tHE room aCoUStiCS arE Not WitHiN SPECiFiCatioNS. You can often find that the room shows an over-damping of mid

and high frequencies and at the same time a severe lack of damping in the lower frequencies. Hence, given that the speaker has a reasonably fl at behaviour, the cinema technician will not measure a correct curve (like Figure 6 curve ‘a’) or something within its limits, but a tendency towards something like curve ‘b’ (Figure 4); this will lead to EQ settings somewhat like those shown in Figure 6 curve ‘c’. Since the ear differentiates between direct sound and reflected sound (as long as it does not arrive too early) the result of a real-time analyser cannot be taken as being authoritative in terms of how to set the EQ. What is measured is primarily the frequency response of the energy of the reflections, but this is not corrected with the EQ — it changes the colour of the direct sound, which most probably was more or less OK before! Hence the over-emphasised highs! 2. Poor ElECtroaCoUStiCS. Many cinemas have sound systems in which the amplifiers, loudspeakers, o r b o t h , a re n o t c o r re c t l y dimensioned. To save money, the components selected are already, under normal conditions, often short of power for modern cinema applications and they therefore produce a lot of distortion. If the EQ is then set somewhat as shown in Figure 6, with a big boost at high frequencies, the amplifiers and/or the loudspeakers are often driven well beyond their capabilities for proper reproduction. These distortions make the sound harsh — they hurt the ears! Besides what I said about perceived loudness vs screen size I think that these other factors are the main reasons why people very often complain about the sound being too loud and harsh in cinemas. However, solutions could be found within certain limits. I’m thinking of trying to convince Dolby to develop and implement an automated measuring and calibration tool in the cinema processor. This should measure the loudspeakers and the room response in several seats, and then align the system automatically (besides giving clear warnings in situations where room acoustics and/or electroacoustics are beyond certain limits) — taking room size, decay time and the frequency response of the reflections into account, of course. This should help to improve the situation dramatically. Christian Beusch, Switzerland

Fig. 1b.

Fig. 1a.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 6.

a) within limits: b) poor room acoustics: c) ‘misguided’ EQ, to compensate for the poor room acoustics:

resolution

July/August 2008

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