Resolution V5.2 March 2006 by Resolution

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

V5.2 MARCH 2006

Calum Malcolm — audiophile quality across musical styles Rafa Sardina — The leading Latin producer Accelerated Ribbon Technology explained Bob Katz on why you should be in charge, not your computer Meet your maker: Bill Putnam Jr — Universal Audio Ten enduring designs REVIEWS: Chandler EMI TG12413 • Drawmer Three-Sum • CEDAR Tools Magix Samplitude • Tascam HD-P2 • RND Portico 5012 • Great River MP2-NV

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March 2006 V5.2

ISSN 1477-4216 THE PRO END-USER AUDIO PRODUCTION MAGAZINE

News & Analysis 4

Leader

Products

News

Headroom

Sales, contracts, appointments, biz bites and the bigger picture

New introductions and announcements.

Red is green; metering points; Angela’s name.

Craft 14

Option AV

A Belgian facility that prides itself on offering all the services and all the expertise under the one roof.

Ten

Sweet Spot

Rafa Sardina

The leading Latin producer talks about building a studio, starting his own label and living with ten Grammys.

Calum Malcolm

A purveyor of audiophile quality that spans pop, rock, folk, jazz and orchestral work discusses room preferences, mic placement and technique.

Getting the most from

Omnidirectional mics. Stop worrying about spill and learn to love them.

Enduring designs. How to put ART into midrange and tweeter driver designs.

In the picture

There’s more to HDTV than an ‘HDTV Ready’ sticker.

Katz’s column

The computer revolution was supposed to have simpliﬁed our lives, but really it has greatly complicated them.

Meet your maker

Bill Putnam Jr — Universal Audio’s CEO on system modelling and having the right ingredients.

Business 58

Orchestral dilemmas

Real orchestras have never been more popular for ﬁlm and computer games, but who is beneﬁting?

Your business

Father Dan Daley spots a living for technicians who would work for their daily bread.

Technology 64

A grip on the weakest link

Connectors and cabling require regular inspection and replacement, now there’s a tougher XLR connector.

Slaying Dragons

Anyone fancy a dual? Watkinson comes out guns blazing and shooting from the hip.

Reviews 22 24 26 28 30

Magix Samplitude V8.2 CEDAR Tools Tascam HD-P2 Chandler EMI TG12413 plug-in Fostex RM-2/6301D

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, Keith Spencer-Allen, Terry Nelson, Jon Thornton, Neil Hillman, Nigel Jopson, Andy Day, Kevin Hilton, Dan Daley, John Watkinson

Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5012

Serato Rane Series

Great River Electronics MP2-NV

Drawmer Three-Sum

ADVERTISEMENT SALES European Sales Clare Sturzaker Tel: +44 1342 717459 Email: clare@resolutionmag.com US Sales Jeff Turner Tel: +1 415 455 8301 Email: jeff@resolutionmag.com

PRODUCTION AND LAYOUT Dean Cook Dean Cook Productions Tel: +44 1273 236681 Email: dean@resolutionmag.com

news Appointments CHRIS HOLLEBONE has been appointed director of European operations at Euphonix and will be based in London with responsibility for managing Europe, India, Middle East, Russia and Africa. Hollebone started his career in recording studios and followed this with a 15-year stint at Sony Broadcast Europe plus time at DTS and Harris Grant Associates/Coastal Acoustics. Mark Hosking, will continue to manage sales in the UK, India, Middle East and Africa. GENELEC FOUNDING members Ilpo Martikainen and Topi Partanen have withdrawn from daily management after 28 years. For mer marketing manager Ve i k k o H y v ö n e n (pictured) takes over as MD. Ilpo Martikainen is now full-time chairman of the board and R&D director Topi Partanen has retired but will continue as a member of the Board with the title of chief technology ofﬁcer. The new R&D director is Siamäk Naghian. HERBERT LEMCKE has been appointed president of Lawo North America Corp. in Toronto, Canada following the departure of former president Prodromos Constantinou. Lemcke was previous sales director at Lawo in Germany. DIGIDESIGN HAS made several organisational changes to its sales and marketing team. Christopher Bock, who has been active in sales and marketing for more than 19 years, has taken on a new role as VP of tactical business development. Initially he will lead Digidesign’s live sound sales team but will also drive new business development.

©2006 S2 Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication, but neither

Leader

Having a cleanout and major reorganisation is a process that even the chronically untidy can see the theoretical benefit of. It’s the same practical, sensible nature that encourages us to archive and file away data at the end of a session, tidy your desktop, reappraise your rack gear and usage, and look at your wiring arrangements. All require the process to be at least a little brutal if it is to be effective at all. The problem occurs when you confuse the drive to reduce clutter with the business of becoming more efficient –- less of everything must obviously mean more efficient, right? I believe it’s just about accessibility. The reason you haven’t plugged in those two EQs in the last year is not because they’re now rubbish and you don’t like them anymore, it’s often because your expansion in other areas — more than likely around a computer — has not made it easy to get to them and use them easily anymore. The biggest drawback of basing an audio system around a computer is that, by definition, it cannot be expected to integrate with everything else that you already have except in a limited way. It forces you to make decisions that might seem temporary initially but become inflexible and complete before very long. Consequently is it any wonder that the drive to do everything in the box and to fill the box has been the overriding one of this decade? Of course, a plug-in solution within an application will integrate seamlessly (ish!) compared to an analogue counterpart. The most incredible thing that the computer in audio revolution has achieved is the changing of working methods. Before their arrival, and even upon their arrival, the business of interfacing and interconnecting and integrating was accomplished as an organic process that absorbed what was new. The adoption of the computer forced us to make decisions and abandon what we already had. I always thought that the great promise of digital would not just be cheapas-chips gear, automated everything, the ability to leave everything open to the very last moment and the ability to unpick everything at any stage to get back to where I had been; it would be the freedom to work in any way I chose using whatever I wanted without upsetting anyone or coming across as some sort of weirdo. Our digital reality, while undoubtedly great, is substantially more restrictive than that. While there are a few packages that integrate analogue outboard, for example, into the computer I just wonder how much more exciting things would have been if the requirement to integrate analogue had been pursued with as much enthusiasm as other less difficult tasks. Zenon Schoepe

Digidesign buys Trillium Lane Labs Digidesign has purchased the assets of Trillium Lane Labs, LLC, the developer of effects plug-ins for Pro Tools systems, such as TL Space convolution reverb and TL EveryPhase phaser. ‘Trillium Lane has delivered an impressive range of great-sounding, high-quality products for Pro Tools users,’ said Dave Lebolt, general manager of Digidesign. ‘The plug-in portfolio includes a compelling group of cross-platform effects and utilities. We’re pleased to be able to continue to offer these plug-ins to our customers.’ Versions of all currently shipping Trillium Lane Labs plug-ins are available for Pro Tools 7 software (a TL Utilities bundle will ship soon) with TL Drum Rehab (a multisample sound replacement plug-in) and TL AutoPan planned for imminent release.

ISE on a high Statistics from February’s Integrated Systems Europe 2006 exhibition in Brussels include an attendance ﬁgure of 10,970 (an increase of nearly 50% over last year), 330 exhibitors from 30 countries, and 80% of this year’s space already sold for 2007. Next year’s ISE will return to the RAI Exhibition Centre in Amsterdam 23-25 January. ‘Building on the success of this year’s show and the need for a central European hub to support ISE as it continues to grow at an increasing rate, we needed a venue which has accessibility, support and location as key factors, hence why we are returning to Amsterdam,’ said Mike Blackman, MD of ISE.

Real World upgrades Big Room desk Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios has installed a custombuilt SSL XL 9000 K Series console in its main The Big Room studio to replace its original U-shaped G Series. The room has also had its monitoring and acoustics upgraded for 5.1. ‘We have always been known as a musician’s studio and this is undoubtedly the best sounding console on the market,’ said Real World’s studio manager Owen Leech.

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‘Being able to offer full 5.1 surround mixing and sound to picture facilities is vitally important because it allows us to maintain our reputation as the UK’s premier residential recording facility.’ Real World will also be transforming its smaller second studio, The Production Room, by installing an SSL AWS 900, which will free up enough space to build a voiceover booth.

S2 Publications Ltd. Registered in England and Wales. Company number: 4375084. Registered ofﬁce: Equity House, 128-136 High Street, Edgware, Middlesex HA8 7TT.

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Preparations for the 31st SBES (Birmingham NEC 15-16 November) include conﬁrmation that the show will once again include increased floor space compared to the previous year. There are also plans to expand the number of smaller stands for first time exhibitors and to increase the number of outdoor exhibits.

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March 2006

news BCAsia06 ‘journey forward’

Boote buys AIR Lyndhurst

The theme for BroadcastAsia2006, the 11th International Digital Multimedia and Entertainment Technology and Conference organised by Singapore Exhibition Services (SES), is Digital: The Journey Forward. BroadcastAsia2006 will be held 19-22 June at the Singapore Expo. ‘BroadcastAsia is paving a road where there’s something for everyone,’ said Jackson Yeoh, project director at SES. ‘If exhibitors and visitors wish to blaze trails by speeding up, they can, and if they are driving the digital transition at a slower pace, they can do so too. The key here is that ultimately, everyone is moving forward, and everyone has the same thing in mind — reaching that “digital destination.”’ Singapore wants to develop its media industry to contribute 3% GDP by 2012 and to attract more digital media players to set up base there. Companies like Lucasﬁlm and Electronic Arts have set up operations there and the Economic Development Board has committed US$1 billion over the next 10 years to develop the digital media industry.

NAMM partners with China Continuing its tradition of working with music products associations around the world, including those in the UK, Germany, Australia, Canada and Spain, NAMM (the International Music Products Association) has entered into a partnership with the China Music Instrument Association (CMIA). NAMM will offer professional development, market development and music education advocacy programmes to the Chinese music industry. NAMM University courses will be offered at the 2006 Music China show in Shanghai (18-21 October) and NAMM will work closely with show organisers CMIA, Intex and Messe Frankfurt (HK) on this effort. ‘China’s rich musical heritage and rapidly growing economy will create new opportunities for the entire industry,’ said Wang Gentian, president, CMIA. ‘We are eager to learn from the more than 100 years of NAMM knowledge in order to build our own infrastructure, train our local dealers and spread the beneﬁts of music making to our population.’

Martin and Boote Richard Boote, owner and MD of Strongroom recording studios has bought AIR Studios — the recording facilities established and chaired by producer Sir George Martin — from Chrysalis Group plc and Pioneer GB Limited. The multimillion pound purchase is backed by Lloyds TSB Corporate. ‘I believe that bringing Strongroom and Air together will not only ensure the survival of two of the greatest recording facilities in Europe, but also enhance the offerings of both studios,’ said Boote. ‘Clients will benefit from an expanded and more varied pool of technological knowledge and experience, a wider choice of studios and access to a much broader range of state of the art audio and video postproduction facilities.’ Boote plans to keep both businesses running as they exist today, maintaining their structures, identities and areas of specialisation. ‘AIR Studios has been in existence for nearly 40 years, during which time we’ve recorded some of the finest artists in the world and most of the memorable film scores,’ added Sir George Martin. ‘What I love about AIR is that as well as being a great studio it has a well deserved reputation for friendliness and efficiency. People who record here always want to come back. I am very happy that we are now associated with Strongroom, a company that shares our ideals and our dedication to recording high quality music. I am confident that Richard will continue to promote and develop AIR as a world-class recording facility.’

Sonifex acquires SBS audio product line

The IT range and a proven history of Flexrack range of sales to customers SBS audio products that aren’t buying have been bought R e d b o x e s , ’ by Sonifex Ltd. explained Sonifex ‘At a time of MD Marcus Brooke. continued rapid ‘ We ’ re b a s i c a l l y expansion of our buying into a larger group of companies, share of this market. including the Our Redbox range purchase of a much of audio interfaces larger manufacturing is going from and operations strength to strength facility, we decided and the SBS audio Brooke and Easton products add to the to streamline our operation and focus in on our core business customer’s choice. of broadcast transmission products and ‘We’re distributing the products worldwide services,’ said SBS CEO Pyers Easton. under the ProAVM brand — Professional ‘SBS’s audio product range was started at Audio, Video and Media. The existing the same time as our popular Redbox range prices, products and distributor network and while some of their products compete will be retained, so there should be no with our existing products, they clearly have worries for existing customers.’

Appointments Paul Foeckler has ﬁlled Bock’s previous role as worldwide VP of sales and marketing. He previously led marketing efforts as director of corporate marketing and was p ro m o t e d t o t h e company’s executive management team in 2005. Tim Carroll has assumed the role of senior director, worldwide sales, reporting to Foeckler. He was previously d i r e c t o r, s a l e s Americas. Chris Hammond, previously Midwest sales territory manager, has become director, sales Americas. DPA MICROPHONES has appointed Delhi-based Visual Technologies India (VTI) as its Indian distributor.

ABBEY ROAD Studios has appointed mastering engineer Geoff Pesche to its staff. He moves from West London’s Sanctuary Townhouse studios and has previously worked at Utopia, Tape One, and Masterpiece. AUDIO & DESIGN has undergone a major change with new owner and MD Richard Strang ( p i c t u re d ) t a k i n g over the reins. Strang has worked for the company for more than 11 years and intends to build on Audio & Design’s reputation in the audio broadcast ﬁeld. TERRATEC PRODUCER, the Germanybased manufacturer of pro audio cards, has appointed Synthax USA as its distributor for the US.

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March 2006

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news Appointments JAY FITZ has been named chief operating ofﬁcer of Mercenary Audio. He started at Mercenary in 1996 as an associate.

LA Audio’s Ross McFarlane and A&G’s Luigi Agostini. A&G SOLUZIONI Digitali has been appointed distributor for LA Audio in Italy. PA U L W I S H A R T has joined PreSonus as executive VP with responsibility for ‘facilitating worldwide growth as well as business development’. He previously worked for M-audio as director of business development and Steinberg as director of business development and European sales manager. UWE BINGEL has joined Riedel as chief financial officer. He previously worked for Bertelsmann AG, TV production company Endemol, and media asset management provider Blue Order. RICHARD BUTLIN has been appointed technical sales engineer at Sonifex. He has worked for the company for nearly 20 years starting as a trainee electronics engineer and working his way up through the test department to become the head of test for several years.

Atempo’s Müjdat Konuralp. EVI AUDIO has appointed Atempo Sound and Lighting Systems as distributor for RTS Telex products in Turkey.

Studer’s Eastern promise

Studer has supplied digital desks to China’s HeBei TV in ShiJiaZhuang City and to TianJin TV in TianJin City. HeBei TV’s 32-fader Vista 8 will provide the main broadcast signal in its largest live studio, used for producing more than 60% of its entertainment programmes and all its major live shows. The TianJin TV station has refurbished its main studio (pictured), an 800sqm area used predominantly for live productions, and installed a 40-fader Vista 6 with 32 mic and 24 analogue line inputs plus a further 24 AES-EBU I-Os. Taiwanese Videoland Television Network has commissioned a HD OB van with a 30-fader Studer Vista 6 desk. Part of the Koo Group of companies, Videoland was founded in 1983 as a production house and has since become one of Taiwan’s main satellite providers, with six channels under its Videoland banner. • South Korean cable and satellite channel Arirang has installed a Studer OnAir 3000 at the heart of its new Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) centre in Seoul. This brings Arirang’s total inventory of OnAir Series mixers to 15 with most of the other consoles installed in the recently-opened radio station facility in Seoul.

Beyerdynamic acquires Interkom Electronic

Beyerdynamic’s Luckhardt (left) with Interkom MDs Nico Mreches and Gerhard Kock. Beyerdynamic has acquired Interkom Electronic Kock & Mreches GmbH, a Wedemark, Germany-based company specialising in wired conference and simultaneous interpretation systems. The acquisition is said to illustrate the growth and success of Beyerdynamic’s Conference and Presentation unit, and completes Beyerdynamic’s objective to offer a comprehensive range of products to that area of the market. Beyerdynamic has grown by more than 25% in the last three years, according to the company. ‘Beyerdynamic and Interkom are a perfect

ﬁt, given our respective product portfolios,’ said Wolfgang Luckhardt, Beyerdynamic’s worldwide MD. ‘We will capitalise on this synergy, improving our research and development, production and sales in the conference and presentation sector.’ Interkom Electronic Kock & Mreches GmbH has manufactured products for the conference installations market for 25 years with a recent focus on customisation and tailor-made solutions for analogue and digital wired conference systems. The company will relocate to Beyerdynamic’s production facility in Heilbronn, Germany.

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MediaHyperium SACDs use Pyramix

The MediaHyperium team with Waltl (centre). MediaHyperium studios, known as a top US studio for SACD and surround productions, was nominated twice at the 2005 Surround Music Awards for SACD productions Willy Porter and Ray Charles: Genius Loves Company. ‘The stereo and surround mixes of this SACD are completely new mixes derived from the original multitrack masters,’ explained studio owner Herbert Waltl. ‘To achieve the highest audio quality, the recordings have been mixed at MediaHyperium studios on an API Vision console. A DCS 954 A-DC has been used to create the DSD ﬁles and recorded using Merging Technologies’ Pyramix system. To keep the integrity of the pure DSD quality, all further postproductions were controlled with the Pyramix, including the mastering which has been done completely in the DSD/DXD domain. We are Philips’ reference studios for SACD productions in North America and we use only Pyramix systems for all our DSD productions.’

Hebden Sound expands

UK condenser mic manufacturer Hebden Sound has taken over Accusound, which will continue under this name and will continue to have input from its founder Griff Jones. The Accusound range of products offers individual, instrument-mounted mics for acoustic instruments particularly for live performance. They are available as wired or wireless systems. ‘We felt that this was a very positive step for us,’ said Hebden Sound director David Anderson. ‘Both companies are known for their attention to detail and customer satisfaction and we can now offer a wider range of products to meet our customer’s requirements.’

NFTS takes Satellite Tekcare has installed Fairlight Dream Satellites into the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Beaconsﬁeld, UK. One Satellite is dedicated to each of the six studio rooms, two dubbing theatres and a music-recording studio. Each Satellite offers 96 tracks and is networked with Audio Server and AV Transfer ﬁle utilities. ‘From an educational perspective, we did not want to adopt a platform bound by third-party components,’ explained Andrew Boulton, head of sound production at NFTS. ‘We wanted a dedicated tool that would teach our students the core principles of sound editing, rather than simply how to manoeuvre a mouse and keyboard.’

March 2006

news Appointments SWITCHCRAFT HAS appointed Madridbased Magnetrón to stock and supply its connectors, audio and video patchbays and cable assemblies to the broadcast and professional audio markets in Spain.

Motherwell Foundry opens

KLIPSCH AUDIO Technologies has appointed Peter Madsen as director of engineering. Madsen is an acoustical engineer and the product designer behind many KEF and JBL speaker lines and is now responsible for developing new lines of Klipsch products for distribution throughout Europe. GERMAN-BASED distribution company SEA has taken over worldwide distribution for Swiss cable manufacturer Vovox. LIVERPOOL-BASED on-line music store Dolphin Music has appointed Grahame Hill as retail manager. He previously worked at Rose Morris and Dawsons. Pete Huggins joins to develop the education side of Dolphin’s business after nine years at Andertons. APT HAS strengthened its licensing division by appointing a new licensing business manager and two new DSP engineers. Licensing business manager Stephen Wray joins from Amphion Semiconductor where he was Global IP Business Manager. APT has also appointed Chris Clotworthy and David Trainor as senior DSP engineers. After a seven year spell, Gregory Massey has returned to APT where he is now chief technical officer. During the last 15 years he has concentrated on design, product development and intellectual property development. APT has appointed Hartmut Foerster to the newly created position of product manager for the WorldNet Oslo audio codec. He joins from Pro Audio Systems GmbH, which has been APT’s German distributor since 1993. JEFF PHILLIPS has been appointed market manager, Recording Products for the Lexicon brand.

Dufﬁn and Jones Foundry Music Lab has opened its doors in Motherwell, Glasgow as a project devised by Wet Wet Wet guitarist Grame Dufﬁn and sound engineers Sandy Jones and Ted Blakeway. The ‘Lab’ is a converted 5000 square-foot warehouse containing two rehearsal rooms, a recording studio and a training facility. ‘The foundry Music Lab is a hard working professional environment where the end result is as important to us as it is to the client,’ said Jones. FML’s rehearsal rooms are well isolated with full air conditioning and natural daylight and employ a PA of Tannoy V-Series loudspeakers with a Soundcraft mixer. Multicores link from the rehearsal rooms to the main control room, which is equipped with Digidesign Pro Tools HD2, Yamaha O2R96 V2, plus a variety of outboard and mics. Monitoring is through Tannoy Precision 8D actives. The studio will be an integral part of the education programme, offering students ‘real environment’ work experience on site. ‘Apart from the quality of a recording, it will be important to demonstrate to students during training sessions the need for absolute accuracy in a mix,’ said Ted Blakeway. ‘We all really liked the natural, clean sound and great intelligibility that Tannoy’s Dual Concentric driver design delivers.’

Argentinian DNS ﬁrst

SoundRec in Buenos Aires is the ﬁrst studio in Argentina to install a Cedar DNS2000 dialogue noise suppressor. The company offers stereo and 5.1 recording and mixing for CD and DVD, film soundtrack final mixing encoded in Dolby Digital and Dolby SR, and sound mixing and Dolby encoding for advertising. ‘Very often, the quality of the dialogue tracks we deal with required equalisation efforts that represented a sort of a restoration process,’ said SoundRec’s Alberto Tarantini. ‘We wanted to be a centre of excellence in mixing services, but we felt we were missing a tool that allowed us to create crystalclear dialogue tracks from somewhat suboptimal dialogue recordings. This is where the DNS2000 comes into the scene. It is an incredibly powerful tool that integrates seamlessly with our Pro Tools platforms and enhances our service capabilities by an order of magnitude. It is capable of performing corrections we simply were not able to do until now.’

A-Type makes Broadway history

St. Anne’s Scrubs up with Icon

London post facility St Anne’s has breathed new life into what was previously one of its lesser-used rooms by installing a 16-fader Digidesign Icon D-Control from Scrub. ‘Studio 5 is a comparatively small space, so we were looking for a cost-effective and space-efficient refit,’ said Johnny

Whitehead, head of technical operations and engineering. ‘The room now has much more client space, yet the Icon still has all the ﬂexibility and presence of a traditional mixing console. Also, the gradual migration to Pro Tools for all our audio mixing and editing makes Icon the logical choice.’

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The original Cadac A-Type console that opened with Phantom of the Opera on Broadway in 1988 has secured a place in the history books by becoming the longestrunning console on a Broadway show. In January, Phantom of the Opera took over from Cats to hold the title of the longestrunning show ever on Broadway. The A-Type, supplied and serviced by Masque Sound Inc, has proved itself as the most enduring element within the sound system requiring no more than regular maintenance. Estimates indicate the show has been seen by more than 80 million people worldwide, bringing in over US$3.2 billion in ticket sales. Featuring the original sound design by Martin Levan, the current sound team includes Jason Strangfeld as the lead mixer, accompanied by Jason McKenna and Charlie Grieco at the A-Type’s controls.

March 2006

news The Big Picture • BIZ BITES — Internet and mobile phone music sales generated US$1.1b in 2005, up from 2004’s $380m, writes Nigel Jopson. 420m songs were purchased, twenty times more than in 2003; there are now over 2 million unique tracks available online. Digital music accounts for 6% of label revenue, and new IFPI research finally indicates more legal downloads than P2P file swaps. Universal music, the world’s biggest label, announced it had digitised its entire active catalogue, and will now start a programme to digitise 100,000 deleted European recordings, with albums from artists like Marianne Faithfull and Brian Auger. Resolution has often observed that digital downloads represent a unique opportunity to mine the fantastic back catalogue in label vaults. The success of artists like Jeff Buckley demonstrates the public has an appetite for good music, even if the artist resides in an old-musos home or is playing at the great gig in the sky. Sales of CDs remained level in January in the US, crossing 40m units. That roughly matches the first month of 2005; part of a down year overall as global music sales dipped 2%. 2 0 0 5 stood out as the year the mobile p h o n e became a portable music device — accounting for 40% of digital revenue. Master ringtones (clips of original artist recordings) account for the bulk of the $400m earnings. Dem Franchize Boyz (So So Def/Virgin/ EMI) recently sold one million master ringtones a week before their full album release. It’s not just music playing on mobiles, with market research firm Strategy Analytics predicting sales of mobile TV phones to grow from $5b in 2006 to over $10b in 2010. One popular feature expected to grow is TVOut, which lets users send mobile TV content to a home TV, set-top box or digital video recorder. Strategy Analytics forecasts 40% of all TV phones in 2010 will support this feature, up from less than 10% this year. Nokia and Sony Ericsson announced plans to make their mobile TV handsets and services interoperable from 2006, using the DVB-H mobile TV standard, and are working together to launch mobile TV services using the Open Air Interface guidelines. SonyBMG submitted a tentative settlement to the class action suit over damages to users’ PCs caused by CD

Nuendo powers King Kong: The Game

Nuendo formed the backbone of the audio production in the King Kong computer game from Ubisoft. ‘Nuendo gave us exactly what we needed, namely speed and stability,’ commented Yoan Fanise, lead sound designer on the project. ‘This was a massive project, involving huge numbers of sessions and audio files. The voiceovers for the actors alone comprised 14,000 files in seven languages, so features like the batch function saved us valuable time, as did the ability to quickly drag and drop files not just between the multiple Nuendo projects we had open all the time but also other applications. And the stability of this software is indisputable, it’s like a rock inside your computer.’

Sy80 is SuperStar in Lebanon

FTV’s Jamal Atrouni and Tohme Future TV, based in the Beirut Hall complex in Lebanon, has installed an Innovason Sy80 console as part of an upgrade of Studio D. Offering 12m of vertical clearance and 1500sqm of set and audience space, Studio D was purpose-built for FTV’s major music show SuperStar, the pan-Arab version of Pop Idol. Philippe Tohme, independent producer/ sound engineer and acting consultant for FTV-Lebanon, explained the priority was to upgrade the system to accommodate the new space and to maintain the high audio standards for which the show has become known throughout the Arab world. ‘I looked at dedicated broadcast systems from all of the major broadcast manufacturers as well as a number of digital consoles from the live sound reinforcement

sector,’ he said. ‘What I found was that the Innovason solution offered all the speciﬁc functions I required for a fraction of the cost of dedicated broadcast systems, and for a competitive price compared to similar “touring” desks. ‘We have a 32-piece oriental orchestra, 12 SuperStar candidates, 4 personalities in the jury section and one presenter plus audience mics, VTRs and media players all visible and live on the Sy80. In addition to providing three stereo buses for recording and two mono buses for broadcast, the desk also produces eight mix-minus buses as returns to the stage area. In other words, we’re working it pretty hard, but the Sy80 handles it all with ease, and remains extremely simple to navigate,’ he said.

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Liquid Channel in post action

London post house Hackenbacker has been employing the Liquid Channel on a variety of film projects. ‘I used the Liquid Channel to acquire sounds on Charlie And The Chocolate Factory,’ said re-recording/ Foley mixer Nigel Heath. ‘It was selected for low noise operation, as with sometimes over 100 open tracks of recordings running simultaneously — often containing audio from quiet sound sources — the low noise floor is especially important. ‘The Liquid Channel also gives me an even broader palette to play with on my recordings and I enjoy having the choice of tracking in either a wonderfully clean way or a more flavoursome touch by combining some of the more colourful devices on offer,’ he said. Other users include Slate Post Production in Dublin and Frankfurt’s Fundamental Studios. Robbie Bronnimann co-wrote, produced and mixed Howard Jones’ Revolution Of The Heart album using a combination of Jones’ classic gear and a Focusrite Liquid Channel, which Bronnimann also used on an album he produced for new Sony signings, Industrial Salt. ‘I wanted to approach vocal recording as a creative thing with choices for character of sound instead of a functional vocal chain that tracked everything as neutrally as possible,’ said Bronnimann. ‘With Howard it was for some extra vocals but with Industrial Salt it enabled me to store the LC patches along with finished Logic project files so I could go back and spot things in if necessary which I did a number of times.’

A Custom Consoles Media Desk and auxiliary furniture form the centrepiece of a new video suite in the Interaction Design Laboratory at the University of Dundee. The Media Desk houses HDV editing equipment, enabling students to obtain practical experience of 1080i and 720p digital cinematography and standard deﬁnition TV production.

March 2006

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While many microphones add a ‘certain something’ to the sound, DPA microphones are world renowned for capturing the performance – and the performance only – with breathtaking sonic accuracy. The new 4090 exhibits an open natural sound, with an imperceptible noise floor and an impressive 134 dB of SPL handling capability, making it a perfect choice for a wide variety of both live and recording applications. From acou-stic guitar to drum overheads, acoustic piano to full symphony, this mic excels.

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Find out more about the 4090 at www.dpamicrophones.com. Also available: the acoustically identical 4091 with an additional 10 dB of SPL handling.

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news The Big Picture

Double M/S captures Lang Lang in surround

copy protection (Rootkit) technologies from First4Internet and SummComm. The settlement, which requires a judge’s approval, offers exchanges for non-protected CDs, cash refunds and credits. Interestingly, the document reveals the label is only agreeing not to use the current faulty and intrusive TPMs, rather than renouncing the idea of copy protection. • NON STOP Music’s library of broadcastquality music can now be searched and downloaded at www. CUEgle.com. CUEgle combines the look and feel of a physical CD collection with the quick search capabilities and instant gratiﬁcation of an online library of 1,100 CDs with over 35,000 tracks.

Nightfrog ‘Dragon Songs — Lang Lang in China’ Loft Music and Nightfrog are producing a TV documentary about Chinese ‘superstar’ pianist Lang Lang, which will also be released by Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music on DVD. The shooting accompanied the artist on his recent tour of China and the sound was recorded to Aaton Cantar in discrete 5.1 by Deutsche Grammophon sound engineer Stephan Flock who covered concert performances as well as documentary footage using a boom. For the documentary, Flock employed a Schoeps Double M/S rig, which augments the cardioid/fig-8 M/S arrangement with a rear-facing cardioid to create a rear M/S. Schoeps’ new CMIT 5U shotgun was used for the cardioid mid front contingent with a CCM 8 Lg for Side and a backward-facing CCM 4 Lg for the rear mid. A second Double M/S setup was used on a stand in static recording sessions for concerts and rehearsals. This consisted of the conventional Schoeps Double M/S rig of three compact CCM mics (two CCM4V Lg and a CCM 8 Lg). Spot mics for the piano were miniature boundary layer BLM 03Cg and CMC6 models. John Eliot Gardiner chose Polyhymnia International in 2000 as the exclusive recording company for his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, a series of 59 different programmes of all of Bach’s 198 cantatas, recorded live at churches throughout Europe and with the final concerts in New York. Gardiner and his group gave concerts once a week for a whole year and fitted the cantatas into the liturgical calendar where appropriate. The first CD release in 2004 sold more than 20,000 copies in three months and the project will continue with a total of some 50 CDs being released over the next few years. The Polyhymnia recording engineers Erdo Groot, Everett Porter and JeanMarie Geijsen standardised on the use of a main microphone and every recording in the Pilgrimage series used Schoeps CCM 2H compact microphones in an A/Bstyle setup.

• MOTOROLA and Eastman Kodak Company have announced a 10-year global product, cross licensing and marketing alliance intended to fulfil the promise of mobile imaging. Kodak expects to supply its CMOS sensors to Motorola for use in its camera phones while Motorola mobile devices will integrate with Kodak home printers, retail kiosks, and the Kodak Easyshare Gallery.

SHOWTIME

CabSat, Dubai ...................................7-9 March Prolight + Sound, Frankfurt ..... 29 March-1 April NAB, Las Vegas ................................22-27 April AES, Paris ..........................................20-23 May Broadcast Asia, Singapore................20-23 June IBC, Amsterdam .......................8-12 September PLASA, London ......................10-13 September AES, San Francisco ......................... 6-9 October SATIS, Paris ..................................... 7-9 October SBES, Birmingham .................. 15-16 November Interbee, Tokyo....................... 15-17 November

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(l-r) Matti Helkamaa (YLE), Börje Brüggemann (Lawo), Thomas Volgmann (DSA). Finnish TV and Radio YLEIS Radio (YLE) worked from the International Broadcast Centre in Torino for the Winter Olympics with a 16 + 8 + 16-fader Lawo mc 2 66 console and one zirkonXL. Central signal routing for both consoles and the clean feed distribution was handled by a Nova73 HD router.

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London’s Grand Central post studios has installed Christie e-cinema projectors including two Roadster S6 three-chip devices. ‘We liked the ﬁlm-like image and high intensity produced by the S6 as well as the compactness and configurability,’ explained Grand Central’s Ivor Taylor. ‘Our clients favour a high ambient light working environment. This factor, coupled with the large room sizes, meant we needed a projector that could run constantly at a high light output. ‘Full motorisation of all of the optical features of the projector -— lens position, horizontal, vertical, zoom and focus -— gives us great ﬂexibility to accommodate multiple varying picture formats that can make daily work so much fun!’ he said.

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NOTHING ADDED. NOTHING TAKEN AWAY.

HV-3D-8 Stereo Mic Preamp

With more than 20,000 HV-3 channels in use around the world, over half of Hollywood movie scores are now recorded using Millennia microphone preamplifiers. For clarity and dynamic range, no other mic preamp comes close.

Totally uncoloured and gifted with a breathtaking dynamic range, the remarkable HV-3 microphone preamplifier circuit fronts an extraordinary range of outboard processors from Millennia. Developed with a singular passion by the visionary US recording engineer John La Grou, devices including the TD-1 Half Rack

TCL-2 Dual Compressor/Limiter

STT-1 Origin Recording Channel

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Recording System (pictured above) empower the user with unprecedented signal processing control, with features including Twin Topology® selectable vacuum tube or fully discrete solid-state input amplifiers, variable input impedances, fully parametric EQ, dual REAMP® outputs and Speaker Soak® technology. For the ultimate in high-end audio processing, talk to HHB about Millennia.

Option AV An increase in its market for audio has seen this Belgian facility install three Fairlight Constellations and broaden its client base in the process. ZENON SCHOEPE visits a complex that would offer all the services you could need under one roof.

ENTRALLY LOCATED BETWEEN Antwerp and Brussels on a business park that includes Endemol as neighbours, Option AV has carved a reputation for itself as a leading player in the region and prides itself on being able to offer a broad range of complementary services. Option was the result of a staff buyout of the studio facilities from a large company that went bust. When the new operation started in 1993 audio was not part of its business model. ‘Video duplication was very important, video editing and translation for subtitles — all of which we still do now although the video duplication is on a much lower scale but we now also do DVD and CD,’ explains technical manager Koen Smedts. ‘We have ﬁve Avid suites but we started with audio postproduction nine years ago.’ Upping the audio service side of the business was seen as an opportunity and a potential area for early expansion but it was not without its risks. ‘Before that the audio was being done at the same time as the video editing by the video editor,’ says Koen, ‘but the market was asking for higher standards. We took a chance and it was quite difﬁcult to convince the client that they now had to pay for something that had been part of the package before. After a year and half the clients were convinced that the results were much better.’ 14

That first audio room kicked off what has been a long-term relationship with Fairlight when Option bought an MFX3plus. ‘It was a strange position for us to be in because at that time other people were using things like Akais and the Fairlight wasn’t the cheap option. But we ran it with an 02R because there was MIDI communication between the two and it was a good combination.’ It’s interesting to note that this first audio room has only been upgraded in the last few months and Koen says it’s a good example of expensive equipment paying for itself many times over. However, three years ago Option had to admit that its single room audio capacity was insufficient, and had been for a while, and although it toyed with the idea initially of building a small suite to take up the strain it became clear that something bigger and better would make more sense. The second room was built and equipped with a Fairlight Constellation and Dynaudio Air 25 speakers for 5.1. ‘That room has been pretty much fully booked since the day it was finished,’ says Koen. A third room was completed in December, also with a Constellation, and when that was finished the original MFX3 room was refitted and a third Constellation installed. ‘The MFX was only 16-track and not big enough and if we wanted compatibility resolution

between all the rooms and being able to move projects around it had to be a Constellation.’ Smedts says that the audio rooms are nearly always fully booked and acknowledges that they’ve been lucky in making this expansion work, particularly as when they made those initial tentative steps into dedicated audio they were so unsure about its acceptance. The audio rooms are nicely finished, have voiceover booths and have acoustics by Koen and Pierre Thomas from Fundamental Acoustic Research. Dynaudio Air monitoring will be installed throughout when the Genelecs in the original room are replaced for the sake of standardisation and to make it ‘easier for the editors to move around’. Smedts attributes the success to having rooms able to handle the projects and to connections from its freelance audio staff that has allowed the facility to move into film work. One of the engineers, Bart Van Voorden, works at the facility for most of his time but when he’s not there he’s making location recordings, which he brings back for final mix to Option. Koen also believes that success breeds more success and that one of the problems that facilities can encounter as demand increases is not having the capacity to accept the new work when the clients want to come back. Standardisation on Fairlight has also contributed to the success. ‘It’s difficult when Pro Tools is the reference, we own a lot of Avids and integration between Avid and Pro Tools is very easy and everything works like it should do,’ explains Koen. ‘However, our experience is that Pro Tools is built for mixing, not editing, and what we do here mostly is editing. We’ve done jobs three times faster than Pro Tools.’ While there can be issues with OMF sessions from video editors that have started putting levels into the mix, new clients are often intrigued when they don’t March 2006

facility see Pro Tools in the room. On the other hand, longterm clients were alarmed when they were told that the original MFX3 was due for an upgrade because they liked being able to see and understand what the engineer was doing. ‘But they can see that the Constellation is faster and now with the integration of AudioBase, we have a couple of 100,000 effects too,’ adds Koen. All the rooms are networked and every room has its own Pyxis picture system. Option is a classic example of a facility’s initial choice of an editor being the important one. They liked the original editor, liked the idea of integrating a mixing desk with it, and because they had to open more rooms they liked the idea of networking the systems for efficiency. Most of the work is for TV with some film and music DVDs and even the occasional radio commercial — ‘but it’s another world,’ says Koen. ‘They work at different prices — cheaper prices — and there is more composing and music involved, which we don’t tend to do. Whether that’s a weakness, I don’t know, but it’s one of the things that we’re still missing — composing and sound design.’ With 30 employees and 6 freelancers Option also has a room for graphics creation, one for special effects for video, a subtitling and translation department, and a section that works on DVD authoring and compression. It works with replicator Technicolor for whom it is now an important client as last year it passed the million mark with 850,000 DVDs and 150,000 CDs. The big news is the refit of a huge TV studio area at the back of the plot, which has been block-booked for a reality-style TV series. With the business rolling and new opportunities presenting themselves, Koen remains cautious but never complacent. ‘The market changes so fast,’ he says. ‘Last year was a very good year for us,

March 2006

but this year we can’t tell yet and that’s always the problem — you can’t predict. What we’re seeing with video editing is that many production companies are now doing their own because Final Cut Pro is cheap and we may lose some of that work as a result. ‘We’re also seeing that broadcasters are accepting much lower quality and you can see that from all the programmes on the television. When we started working with broadcasters it was quality, quality, quality — it couldn’t be good enough. It’s not like that now.’ The approach they adopt, he says, keeps their

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client base broad so that a downturn in one area can coincide with an upturn in another, something that can be helped by keeping an eye on new technological developments. New forms of distribution will still require content, and helping to create content is what Option is all about. But then it has always prided itself on providing all the facilities you could need under one roof. ■

Contact OPTION AV, BELGIUM: Website: www.option-av.be Tel: +32 15 28 73 00

review gear

Products Equipment introductions and announcements.

Portable vocal booth SE’s Reflexion Filter ‘portable vocal booth’ is a device that is positioned behind any microphone by means of a variable position stand clamp and reduces room ambience when recording live sources. Its main purpose is to help obtain a dry vocal or instrument recording. The stand assembly has a horizontal bar onto which the Reflexion Filter and any standard fitting shockmount can be fixed. Both can then be moved vertically and horizontally along the bar to obtain the optimum working position. The Reflexion Filter has six main layers. A strong layer of punched aluminium allows sound waves to pass through it, diffused, to a layer of absorptive wool. The waves then hit a layer of aluminium foil which helps dissipate energy and break up the lower frequency waveforms, and from here they hit an air space kept open by rods passing through the various layers. The air gap acts as an acoustic barrier. The sound waves then pass to a further layer of wool and then through an outer, punched, aluminium wall. Price is UK£229 inc. VAT. SE has also released the H1 handheld condenser and the D-01 USB mic. The H1 is based on the SE2a condenser capsule, re-voiced and tuned to accept an SPL of up to 145dB. The mic has a rubber internal shockmount that limits handling noise and the mesh head can be easily removed to reveal the revoiced SE2a capsule for instrument recordings. The cardioid capsule of the H1 is interchangeable and hypercardioid and omni capsules are expected by the summer. The D-01 is a USB2 mic based on the SE2200a capsule. It records 24-bit, 48kHz via USB directly to a DAW. It includes ultra-low latency headphone monitoring (less than 1ms), 10dB pad, bass cut and an analogue switch that enables the user to use the mic via an XLR connector with 48V phantom. www.seelectronics.com

V1.2 for VCube Version 1.2 software for Merging’s VCube SD and HD-2K hard disk video recorder/ player systems is free of charge. New features include quick settings for SD and HD and MPEG2 and DVCPRO 50 codec support in playback and capture. HD-2K VCube now allows direct playback for HDV video (m2t ﬁles) and Video capture is now handled at 23.98fps with a 29.97 timecode reference. High frame rates, up to 120fps, are available for compositions. A Last Frame In Cache feature allows VCube to play back a low fps media ﬁle into a high-speed composition with no drawbacks in terms of storage or networking. Clips properties now also feature a revert function. The video engine has been further improved and now takes up even less CPU. www.merging.com

Platform news: Digidesign Digidesign’s Music Production Toolkit is a selection of tools that can expand the creative power of Pro Tools LE or M-Powered systems. Users can take advantage of a collection of plug-ins and enhanced editing tools, increased track count, and the ability to export mixes as MP3 files. The plug-ins include Hybrid (a high-definition synth from Digidesign); TL Space Native Edition convolution reverb; Smack! LE compressor/limiter; SoundReplacer (a time-saving sound replacement tool); and DINR LE noise reduction. Users can also expand their Pro Tools sessions up to 48 mono or 48 stereo tracks at 96kHz. In addition, the Toolkit has a multitrack version of Beat Detective, which allows users to perform automatic groove analysis and correction across multiple audio and MIDI tracks at the same time. This multitrack capability was previously available only with Pro Tools HD. DV Toolkit 2 includes three plug-ins for working with sound for picture: the TL Space Native Edition convolution reverb, DINR LE noise reduction, and Synchro Arts VocALign Project time-alignment. It adds the DigiBase Pro file management tool for working with the large number of files and volumes on post projects, DigiTranslator 2.0 for importing and exporting projects to and from video editing applications, and the Pro Tools MP3 Option. DV Toolkit 2 also adds Time Code and Feet + Frames Functions, Replace Region and Edit to Timeline Selection Commands, Scrub Trim Tool, Export Session Text, Continuous Scrolling, and the Universe Window. Following the acquisition of Wizoo, Digidesign has renamed the R&D group as the Advanced Instrument Research group, which has the sole mission to create virtual instruments for Pro Tools. The first two virtual instruments are Xpand! (a free multi-synthesis sound factory workstation plug-in) and Hybrid — a high-definition synth plug-in available soon in RTAS. Xpand! offers virtual analogue, FM, and wavetable synthesis, sample playback, tonewheel organ emulation and effects. www.digidesign.com

Platform news: Steinberg WaveLab 6 is shipping for XP with features that include a new Spectrum Editor, enhanced editing and signal processing functions, and advanced audio I-O handling, among other things. The Spectrum Editor provides restoration and editing possibilities, including easy removal of disturbances and unwanted noise with highquality linear phase filters and flexible replacement options. The ‘Surgical’ mode allows the copy/paste of a whole region or the background ‘ambience’ of that region, as well as the application of any processes to the selection -– with full undo and redo. New functions include the integration of hardware effect equipment within the mastering process, allowing engineers to combine the editing facilities of WaveLab 6 with their favourite analogue gear. The master section now features SmartBypass, which assesses how a plugin alters sound textures by compensating for volume changes induced by the plug-in. New audio processors including a sample rate convertor and the advanced Dirac time stretching and pitch-shifting algorithm. Audio Montage’s clip handling and editing capability has been further extended to include new fade editing features. WaveLab 6 also has remote controller support via MIDI while new metering and monitoring tools include support for mastering engineer Bob Katz’s K-System. WaveLab 5 owners can update to 6 for €99 while version 3 or 4 owners can update for €199. www.steinberg.net

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March 2006

review gear Waves SSL 4k plug-ins Waves has released the SSL 4000 Collection of plug-ins, developed under license from SSL, which includes the SSL G-Master Bus Compressor, SSL E-Channel and SSL G-Equaliser. The G-Master Bus Compressor captures the sound of the master bus centre compressor including its IC input and twin VCA gain-reduction ampliﬁer design. The new SSL E-Channel consists of two sections. The equalisation is based on the Black Knob and features a steeper high pass filter and enhanced cut and boost ranges. The dynamics section features a soft-knee compressor/limiter and an expander/gate modelled on the SSL LS611E. It offers a soft-knee compressor/limiter and expander/ gate, as well as automatic makeup gain. The SSL G-Equaliser is modelled on the G Series EQ292. This 4-band offers greater gain change than the E-Series EQ and a slightly different curve with the original’s pre-boost dip and pre-cut rise. www.waves.com

Apogee Ensemble and Symphony Apogee’s Ensemble is a multichannel digital audio interface designed specifically for use with Macs and is described as the first multichannel audio interface to be controllable natively within Apple Logic Pro. Ensemble features 36 channels of simultaneous audio, including 8 channels of Apogee A-D and D-A conversion, four digitally controlled 75dB mic preamps, 8 channels of ADAT I-O, 2 channels of SPDIF coax and optical I-O, and FireWire connectivity to and from the computer as standard. It also includes SoftLimit, UV22HR, and Intelliclock. Apogee Symphony is a multichannel PCI Express card designed specifically for use with Macs. Controlled by

Apogee’s Maestro software, Symphony features 32 channels of digital I-O with support for sample rates up to 192kHz. It can be used as a digital router or patchbay when connected to external convertors or other digital outboard. Symphony connects directly to Apogee’s Rosetta and AD-16X and DA-16X convertors via the X-Symphony option card, which installs in the slot of the convertor. With the ability to install three cards in an Apple G5s it can realise 192 channels of audio simultaneously. www.apogeedigital.com

Mackie FireWire Satellite Mackie’s Satellite FireWire recording system has two parts. The Satellite Pod is a portable 2-channel FireWire interface that incorporates two Onyx preamps and 24-bit/96kHz A-D/DACs. Additional features include dual headphone/control room outputs with individual level controls, two inputs, two outputs, and a rugged portable design. The Pod snaps into the Satellite Base Station and provides AC power, additional I-O, talkback and monitor switching functions. By plugging the Satellite Pod into the base station, the Satellite System becomes a 2-input, 6-output FireWire interface with a routing matrix, built-in talkback mic, monitoring functions and surround speaker control. The Satellite System’s two inputs can be switched between mic, instrument or balanced line input sources, and its six-channel volume control provides for surround sound mixing. Its control room section can switch between two monitor outputs. It comes bundled with a full version of Mackie’s Tracktion 2 software. www.mackie.com

Dual-diaphragm handheld Shure’s premium KSM9 vocal condenser microphone capsule is now available. The KSM9 features a dual-diaphragm design and a switchable polar pattern between cardioid and supercardioid. It also employs ‘two-stage’ shockmount technology to reduce handling noise. The KSM9 capsule is available with Shure’s UHF-R Wireless Systems in champagne and black ﬁnishes. The wired KSM9 microphone will be available soon. www.shure.com

March 2006

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review gear Ghost absorber panels Ghost Acoustics is a new brand of ‘professional room treatments’ from the SE Electronics International group. The Ghost range will comprise five products in charcoal grey or light grey. The central building block for the range is a 2ft x 2ft absorber built around a steel inner frame. These are constructed from layers of highly compressed glass fibre with layers of aluminium foil that help ‘break up’ lower frequencies. These layers are covered with a fully fire retardant fabric and the whole

structure is bound with a brushed aluminium frame. Each absorber ships with a metal frame that can be screwed to a wall and has a series of mounting-heads onto which the panel can be hung. Each absorber has two tubes running through it that allow the panel to be mounted and stacked on a steel rod base to create ‘Gobos’ up to three panels high. In addition to the standard 2ft x 2ft panel, there will be a 2ft x 2ft wedge for side wall absorption/diffusion, a 2ft x 4ft flat panel for wall mounting behind main monitors, the Gobo steel base and rod set, and a corner bass trap. www.ghostacoustics.com

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Big Blue Blue Sky’s Big Blue SAT 12 is a three-way, tri-amplified, 500-Watt, midfield monitor featuring a 12-inch high excursion hemispherical woofer, an ultra low distortion 4-inch hemispherical midrange driver, and a 1-inch dual concentric diaphragm tweeter with integral waveguide. A proprietary ‘Multi-Aperture Acoustic Diffraction Absorber’ has been incorporated into the bafﬂe to maintain smooth onand off-axis frequency response throughout the MF and HF range. Big Blue is designed to operate vertically or horizontally, thanks to a rotatable MF/HF plate. It is powered by a dedicated 200W amp for the 12-inch woofer, 200W amp for the midrange, and a 100W amp for the tweeter. The rear panel has two independent balanced input stages and also has controls for ‘full space’ or ‘half space’ operation, along with HF, MF and LF level trims. For compatibility with Blue Sky’s new SUB 15 Universal, SUB 12 and BMC (Bass Management Controller), an 80Hz high-pass network, with phase correction filter is also included. Big Blue has been designed to integrate with Blue Sky’s SUB 15 Universal, 1000W subwoofer. The SUB 15 Universal is a sealed box subwoofer, designed around a 15-inch forward-ﬁring driver with a massive cast aluminium frame and dual 2.5-inch voice coils. It has a switchable low frequency response characteristic of 30- 200Hz +/-3dB or 20-200Hz +/-3dB for large rooms. Big Blue is available in a number of configurations including a 5.1 system with two SUB 15s. www.abluesky.com

Powering up wireless monitoring Sennheiser’s new SR3254-U single-channel transmitter, SR3256-U dual-channel transmitter and EK3253-U bodypack receiver are compatible with Sennheiser Evolution series wireless G2 monitor products. The new units offer extended tuning ﬂexibility and 100mW output. The 3250 series transmitters incorporate the HDX compander technology used in Sennheiser’s G2 wireless equipment achieving noise suppression of up to 90dB. Offering a total of 7,200 frequencies, all three products ship with 16 pre-coordinated preset frequencies and 16 user-assignable presets. The bodypack receiver, the EK3253, is 20% smaller than its predecessor but even more robust with the body and battery cover now made of metal. The Evolution e912 boundary mic is a companion to the e901 bass drum boundary mic, but has been designed for speech, vocals and acoustic instruments, especially pianos and concert grands. A rubber plate on its underside ensures that vibrations are not transmitted and mounting slots enable the mic to be installed securely on a stage, table or lectern. Weighing 350g, the preamp electronics are integrated into the mic, which is available in off-white and black. www.sennheiser.co.uk

March 2006

review gear Mastering compressor

Elysia’s Alpha compressor is its first high-end tool for mastering and recording. Its switchable M/S matrix enables the separate processing of middle and side signals. The control mode and entire sound character can be adapted to the source by employing adjustable sidechain and audio filters. Original and compressed signals can be crossfaded by using a mix stage that provides onboard parallel compression. Additional Soft-Clip limiters can be used to protect the A-DCs from clipping. All functions are switchable via relays. The Alpha’s design is fully discrete and signal processing is realised with single transistors in permanent Class-A mode. Even the sidechains and power supply have fully discrete circuits. www.elysia.com

Ultrasone iCans

WMS 40 Pro

Specially designed and developed for portable sound devices, Ultrasone’s iCans feature S-Logic surround sound and MU metal shielding and fold away into a solid box for storage. www.ultrasone.com

AKG’s new ‘thirdgeneration’ WMS 4 0 P ro r a n g e includes three families of allnew, applicationfocused systems. WMS 40 Pro Flexx diversity systems have three userselectable frequencies for each channel; WMS 40 Pro Single systems have ﬁxed frequencies; and WMS 40 Pro Dual systems have two transmitters and two independent channels in a single half-rack receiver. The system achieves more than 30 hours’ of use from a single AA battery and is compatible with previous WMS 40 systems. www.akg.com

Sony portable S o n y ’s P C M - D 1 p o r t a b l e recorder has a case made from 1mm titanium and is ﬁtted with a matched pair of condenser mics. The machine offers 24/96 recording, 4Gb Flash memory, a Memory Stick Pro slot and a USB 2.0 port. The device records in .WAV format, has analogue level meters with peak overload indicators, a LCD, SBM, limiter and 200Hz high pass ﬁlter. It is powered by four rechargeable AA batteries for around 4 hours’ continuous use. www.sony.com/professional

Smart Pro Series

Smart AV has introduced an affordable Professional Series of its workstation controllers optimised for postproduction and mixing. Post 4, Post 8 and Post 10 Smart Consoles work in conjunction with DAW engine packages from other parties and have 95 dedicated editing buttons, a high sensitivity jog wheel and ARC-based track selection. Plug-ins can be instantiated, displayed, edited and automated using ten high-resolution active controls and the console touchscreen. Touch-sensitive faders allow automation display and update modes and automation can also be written using dedicated EQ and dynamics controls. The Professional Series Mix range of consoles are optimised for mixing and production environments. www.smartav.net

March 2006

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review gear TFPro outboard

Naked ribbon

TFPro has released a number of outboard products. The TDE is a twochannel, 4-band EQ. Two bands are high and low shelving, two are parametric mids and there are high and low pass ﬁlters on each channel. All the controls are switches and the design uses inductors and vintage ampliﬁers. There’s also the P9 inductor-driven EQ and the P10 compressor/limiter. www.tfpro.com

Personal monitor

The new ‘naked’ ribbon mic from Crowley and Tripp is described as a versatile multi-voiced product in a more ‘wallet friendly’ form. The Naked Eye ribbon m i c h a s a b r i g h t e r, l a r g e diaphragm condenser sound on one side and a ‘traditional smooth darkness’ on the other, while keeping off-axis colouration in check. Each mic comes with a wood case and a low diffraction mount designed to reduce phase distortions. www.soundwaveresearch.com

TC-Helicon has introduced an innovative approach to personal vocal monitoring. VoiceSolo is a new range of nearfield voice monitors, optimised for live vocals with easy setup on conventional microphone stands and booms. The range consists of the passive VSM-200P m o n i t o r, t h e a c t i v e VSM-200 and the active VSM-300 with advanced connectivity and personal mix controls. The monitors employ an ICTTM true point-source driver and the rugged cast aluminium enclosure offers multiple mounting options. The VSM-200 and VSM-300 are equipped with a 150W amp, volume control and mic/line input. The VSM-300 additionally offers professional I-O with mic in, stereo instrument, aux, and splits as well as front-mounted personal mix controls including VoiceShape tone circuitry. www.tcelectronic.com

TASCAM’s DM-3200.

The digital centre of your universe.

Thermionic Pullet The redesigned Thermionic Culture Pullet is a passive equaliser originally designed to complement the Earlybird preamp, and is now suited to be used with any preamp. It provides variable Q boost at 11 frequencies of 21dB and simultaneously a cut at 11 frequencies of 21dB. In addition, high top can be boosted or cut with a shelving ﬁlter. The high input impedance (10kohms) of the Pullet ensures optimum performance when placed in a chain after any piece of equipment. www.unityaudio.co.uk

XLogic pre and EQ

* 48 mixing channels (32 channel inputs, 16 aux returns all @96k/24-bit * 16 busses or two 6.1 surround busses * 8 aux sends * 16 analog mic/line inputs with inserts * Powerful automation with 100 mm touch-sensitive motorized faders * Dedicated DAW control surface layer for Pro Tools®, SONAR®, DP™, Logic, Cubase® and Nuendo® * EQ and dynamics on each channel * 2 built-in effects engines with TC® reverb * Per-channel LED ring encoders for pan, aux sends, EQ and more * 24 channels of TDIF and 8 channels of ADAT® built in * 2 expansion slots for FireWire®, Surround Monitoring, ADAT®, AES/EBU, TDIF and analogue cards * TASCAM Mixer Companion software (Win®XP/OSX) with driverless USB connection to computer for back-up/ restore of mixer data * Get the whole DM-3200 story on-line @www.tascam.co.uk or visit your TASCAM dealer today.

TEAC UK LTD Units 19 & 20 The Courtyards, Hatton Lane, The Croxley Centre, Watford, Herts, WD18 8TE Brochure hotline..01923 438888

e mail...info@tascam.co.uk

DM-3200 resolution.indd 1

www.tascam.co.uk

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T h e X L o g i c SuperAnalogue mic amp module for the SSL XRack system is directly copied from the XL 9000 K Series console. T h e m i c a m p ’s electronically balanced, high-bandwidth input has +75dB of gain and variable impedance. It also includes instrument and line inputs, as well as fully variable high and low pass ﬁlters with individual in/out switches. The XLogic Channel EQ is identical to the XL 9000 K Series EQ complete with E/G Series switching. It has fully parametric mid bands and high and low bands that are switchable between shelving and ﬁxed bell curves. Mid bands are switchable between the SSL E (bandwidth constant with gain) and G series (bandwidth increases as gain is reduced) characteristics. Shelving high and low bands are also switchable between SSL E (6dB per octave) and G (steeper slope with overshoot) characteristics. The Channel EQ for X-Rack also features switchable operating levels (+4dBu/-10dBV). www.solid-state-logic.com

March 2006

review gear Soundcraft boards

Soundcraft’s Live 8 is aimed at FOH mixing but the high input and output count also means it is suitable for multitrack recording. A development of the Spirit 8, it is built around a steel chassis with individual channel PCBs. Various frame sizes hold 16 to 40 mono inputs, which are combined with two stereo input channels and 8 stereo returns. An integral meterbridge with LED bargraph meters is included. The desk uses UltraMic+ mic pres with individually switched phantom and 4-band EQ, six aux buses, 4 mute groups, 100mm faders, 8 subgroups and the main stereo. The output section is complemented by an integral 10 x 2 matrix. The low-cost EPM mixer is available in 6, 8 and 12 mono inputs, each with two stereo inputs. EQ is 3-band with a swept mid, while the stereo input has two-band EQ. It has 2 auxes and all main connectors are XLR and jack. www.soundcraft.com

Lex Lambda, Alpha and MX400 Lexicon’s Lambda Desktop Recording Studio includes a USB I-O mixer, Steinberg’s Cubase LE and Lexicon Pantheon reverb VST. Based on the Omega Studio, the Lambda Studio has two XLR mic inputs with TRS inserts and switchable phantom. There are also two TRS balanced inputs, two TRS balanced line outputs, a headphone output, an instrument input, and MIDI I-O. It can stream four channels of 44.1/48kHz at 16/24-bit and can record two tracks at once in addition to recording MIDI.

Alpha Studio is a bus-powered 2 x 2 x 2 USB I-O mixer packaged as a complete recording solution with Cubase LE and Pantheon VST Reverb. It has one XLR mic input, two TRS line inputs and two TRS and phono line outs. The 1U MX400 and MX400XL are dual stereo/surround reverb processors offering 4-ins, 4-outs and have Lexicon’s Hardware PlugIn technology — a USB connection and VST/AU interface for use with software recording platforms. The MX400 has TRS connectors while the MX400XL has XLRs. Both products offer 4-channel surround algorithms. www.lexiconpro.com

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Safﬁre Pro interface

Focusrite’s Saffire Pro 26i/o FireWire interface has 24-bit/ 192kHz processing and software control for 52 channels of I-O (26 in, 26 out). Combining eight channels of preamp with eight analogue outputs and 18 digital I-O (two SPDIF and 16 ADAT at 48kHz), Saffire Pro26i/o allows for the option to aggregate multiple units. As with the original Saffire, the unit can be bus-powered or powered via an external PSU. SaffireControl Pro provides a control application of similar format to the original SaffireControl but also has talkback. A fully customisable mix of I-Os can be created for each of the analogue outputs. In addition, the front panel provides two independent headphone outputs with volume control. It comes bundled with compression, reverb, amp modelling and EQ VST/AU plug-ins. www.focusrite.com

Dolby Lake Processor

The Dolby Lake Processor is a digital signal processing hardware and software system for advanced loudspeaker management and equalisation. It includes a patent-pending Portal display that allows for sophisticated front panel metering and easy control and monitoring. The panel of the processor contains four Portals, each capable of representing multiple audio channels of level and limiter metering along with text labels and mute controls. The Processor is a conﬁgurable hardware platform that can provide eight independent channels of Lake Mesa EQTM or 4 x 12 channels of Lake loudspeaker processing. LimiterMax is a new limiter technology that couples a true-RMS limiter with a peak limiter while Iso-Float provides all the beneﬁts of transformer-isolated inputs and outputs for avoiding ground loops. www.dolby.com/livesound

March 2006

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review

Magix Samplitude V8.2 Professional Ten years ago, native multitrack workstations were more than a little hit and miss. Most began life as MIDI sequencers. Audio was gradually bolted on as computer technology and user expectations advanced. Then along came Samplitude, one of the few to begin life as an audio application and have MIDI added later.

ROB JAMES

N 1998 I REVIEWED Samplitude 2496 and was sufficiently impressed by it to have used it as my default multitrack native DAW for several years. It had some eccentricities but it was pretty solid and, most importantly, it sounded good. Many other native workstations have come and gone but Samplitude has survived, albeit better known in continental Europe than elsewhere. Recently, I had rather lost track of it, so I welcomed the opportunity to see how it has developed. The Samplitude story goes back to the dawn of the audio workstation age. Its original developers were two graduate engineers, Tilman Herberger and Titus Tost, who began experimenting with digital audio processing in 1983. They released their first audio application, a sample editor for the Amiga, in 1988. Unusually for the time, this was capable of processing in 24-bit resolution. Soon after, the first multitrack version of Samplitude for the Amiga was released. The successful Red Roaster CD mastering package shares the same heritage. In 1993, Samplitude was ported to Windows in an 8-track multitrack version and has been continuously improved since. Now marketed under the Magix banner, Samplitude Version 8.2 has just arrived with yet further enhancements and 8.3 has already been announced. Installation is, as it should be, a doddle. Copy protection is a USB dongle plus a challenge/response registration requirement or the license expires after 90 days grace. The first hint of continuing eccentricity is the WIBU CodeMeter dongle, which appears as a mass storage device although you cannot actually use it as such. The PC I installed Samplitude on fits the upper end of the recommended specifications perfectly. A 2.4GHz P4 with 1Gb of RAM and an RME Hammerfall DSP soundcard. Any properly set up more modern machine should perform better still. With most native DAW software, the first few(!) minutes are usually spent in simply attempting to get audio in and out (60 to 120 minutes you mean. Ed). With this set-up it wasn’t even necessary to patch IO from Samplitude to the RME Hammerfall. I simply loaded a demo project and voila, instant gratification. ASIO, MME and WDM drivers are supported, but ASIO is preferable if the soundcard can cope. Given sufficient CPU power and disk bandwidth, up to 999 tracks are theoretically possible with up to 64 submix buses and 64 aux buses. More realistically, the high track count allows things to be laid out logically and methodically. The Samplitude premise is virtual audio objects with real-time effects. Object manipulation is a very powerful Samplitude feature and goes a lot further than the now familiar paradigm of editing nondestructive ‘clips’ pointing to the underlying audio files. Audio Objects can be panned, equalised and have effects added independently of subsequent processing in the mixer. Automation curves can be tied to tracks or linked to objects. So-called Wave Projects allow destructive editing and processing of the original media files, albeit with plenty of safety dialogs and options to save copies of the original files. Over the years, the developers have obviously paid considerable attention to real-world workflows. This has resulted in the addition of a set of Manager windows for 22

File Archive, Object, Track, Range and Markers. A new Take Manager and Take Composer make life easier for those working with multiple takes of the same material, comping and ADR, for example. Multichannel recordings are catered for. Workspaces are a further aid to the adoption of disciplined working practices. Workspaces do not, as you might suppose, store different screen resolution

layouts, but in fact allow the user to customise menus, toolbars and other interface parameters. The result can be saved and recalled at will. Recall is fast and it is perfectly possible to design a skeleton interface for repetitive tasks, secure in the knowledge that the full range of options is only a mouse click away. The preprogrammed Recording Workspace illustrates the point. When you click on the Recording Workspace, the arrangement of toolbars changes and irrelevant buttons are hidden. If you do want to store screen layout, zoom level, mute and solo states, etc. this can be achieved with the Setup buttons at bottom left of the track display. There are two types of project — Wave and Virtual. The VIP (VIrtual Project) window, where you spend most of your time, is a conventional track display with floating, dockable toolbars and familiar Windows drop down menus. Supplementary windows for transport control, time display, mixer and track visualisation (meters, analysers, scopes, etc.) may be overlayed and positioned as desired. Samplitude is unusual in that tracks are fundamentally stereo. Each track has buttons that give access to track properties, mute, solo, lock, volume and pan curve display/hide. Beneath these are stereo ‘LED’ bargraphs and volume and pan sliders, routing, etc. The timeline display has numerous options for zoom level and the amount and type of detail. The tracks can be set to scroll, but this is not especially smooth by current standards, or to jump a page at a time when the play cursor hits the screen edge. Alternatively, for minimum processor overhead, the cursor is allowed to move off screen without updating the tracks. There are a number of cursor modes of which the most useful is Universal although the Pitchshift/Timestretch mode is noteworthy. This gives direct access to the real-time object Timestretching and Pitchshifting by simply grabbing handles to lengthen or shorten or shift the pitch by up to six semitones. In Universal Mode, placing the cursor in the lower half of a track gives access to ‘object handling’; in the upper half ‘marker and range manipulation’. Once an object is selected, five ‘handles’ appear that allow the object to be moved and/or fades to be created. This can be achieved even while the project is playing. If multiple objects are selected, a fade, for example, may be created across multiple tracks in one operation. Crossfades are also catered for across tracks and within the same track. If two objects are overlapped the Crossfade Editor window can be selected. This relatively simple yet powerful tool allows many parameters of the crossfade to be set. At UK£566 (plus VAT) Samplitude Professional has some unique features that really set it apart from the rest. Comparisonics Colors is the most obvious and, to my knowledge, no other DAW currently offers this feature. This mode uses an algorithm patented by Comparisonics to depict the audio objects waveform in different colours. Dependent on the pitch (and additional parameters), a specific colour (hue) is computed and displayed for each time segment of audio. Low frequencies show up in shades of blue while higher frequencies go through green and yellow to red. Tonal sounds are shaded in colour, while noise and March 2006

review atonal sounds are grey. With experience this enables the operator to consistently recognise characteristics of the audio that would be undetectable using a normal waveform display. Audio analysis segment size is userdefinable with a recommended minimum of 50ms, to ensure accurate computation of colour. Despite the fact that the colour to frequency relationship seems completely back to front when compared with the colour spectrum to frequency relationship and all my previous experience, I really value the extra information Comparisonics imparts. For Hard Disk Wave projects there is an innovative audio search technique, based on the Comparisonics colours. This allows for quick and convenient location of points of identical, or similar, audio material. Markers are automatically placed to enable rapid location of the points identified. In contrast to the Technicolor Comparisonics waveform display, the rest of the user interface graphics are clean and simple and none the worse for it. Competent performance in mono and stereo can be taken as a given in any of the current native workstation packages. Surround is a different matter. Samplitude was early into surround, part of the initial attraction for me. Now in V8.x, the surround sound implementation has been completely revamped to include a new 5.1 panning model with some unusual modes, a multichannel equaliser and multichannel linkable dynamics processing tools. The real-time room simulator based on convolution technology comes with 490Mb of impulse samples and has been upgraded to surround. The object model holds good and each audio object can be individually positioned within the surround sound field. I liked the surround panner Angle Mode, which allows stereo sources to be panned around the room, for passing cars, for example. Samplitude tracks can contain audio or MIDI objects. Folder tracks can contain several ordinary tracks for visual tidiness and grouping of certain functions and folders can be nested. When collapsed, a folder track can display any of the tracks it contains. An 8-voice virtual-analogue drum synthesiser with integrated Robota Pro step sequencer adds to the appeal. The new Remix agent can be a great help by AutoCutting and Autolooping beat-based audio and there is support for ReWire. If you do not need or use MIDI it can be turned off and the MIDI controls hidden. Magix Elastic Audio brings flexible pitch-shifting and time stretching with automatic pitch recognition and

correction routines along with a variety of algorithms including resampling. The brand new Vintage Effects Suite Pro brings together Corvex, a Chorus Flanger, Ecox, echo/delay and Filtox, a stereo multimode filter based on an analogue model. FFT analysis and filtering can be inserted into many Samplitude locations. The implementation is such that this can be used for correcting technical deficiencies in recordings or creatively. A further innovation can be found in the Sound Cloner functions, which aim to analyse the characteristics of one recording and impose these on another — for example you can use the sound of a 60s recording to transform a current recording. The renowned POW-r dithering is included. Video support has been improved with the adoption of DirectShow. Compatibility with the plethora of codecs is enhanced and any DirectShow compatible graphics card can be used. Despite all the additions there will always be a wish list. Having grown used to an overview of the entire project in other DAWs I miss it here and, although effects are automatically delay compensated when applied to objects there is no automatic time alignment in the mixer and come on guys, where’s the reverse play button? No doubt other users will add their own pet omissions to the list. I’m glad to be re-acquainted with Samplitude. There is still room for improvement but this has more to do with increasing expectations over time than any real inadequacies in the current version. A lot depends on

what you want to achieve and what you are used to. I would now be very reluctant to part with it because of some of the unique features, such as Comparisonics. It still sounds good and although many of the new toys need time and practice to extract the maximum benefit, this is only to be expected. It is still intuitive — or is that just muscle memory from learning it years ago? Truth is, I don’t believe any one DAW will give you everything you need or want and neither should it. This is nicely analogous to the good old days of tracking on an SSL and mixing on a Neve (or vice-versa) and a very healthy state of affairs. The day one workstation can genuinely give you everything you desire is probably the day you should retire. Samplitude Professional is one of the few remaining wild cards in the native workstation market. Well specified, it has most of the features we’ve come to expect including CD-R and DVD-A production and hardware controller support for an extensive list of devices. Native effects, DirectX plug-ins and a VST wrapper, MIDI, MTC, MMC and virtual instruments are all present. Samplitude also has unique virtues, not least the ability to produce sounds you will not hear anywhere else and visualisation aids such as Comparisonics. It has been around long enough to have real pedigree and is likely to appeal to anyone feeling dissatisfied with the usual ‘safe’ choices. Magix also offers Samplitude on a rental basis for a mere UK£22.13 plus VAT per month. Although there is a minimum period of 25 months, there is also a three-month trial offer at a higher monthly rental with full credit if you purchase. This is a great way to check out the full product properly. Any unfamiliar workstation package takes a lot of time and effort to evaluate and learn in depth. If you appreciate what it has to offer, Samplitude will repay the investment with interest. ■

PROS

Crossfade Editor; Comparisonics; tools you won’t ﬁnd elsewhere.

CONS

No overview; no auto latency compensation for mixer plug-ins; no reverse play.

Contact MAGIX, GERMANY: Website: www.samplitude.com

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review

CEDAR Tools CEDAR needs no introduction as the most pre-eminent company in the ﬁeld of audio restoration. CEDAR Tools is the company’s ﬁrst venture into providing some of the functionality of its dedicated processors for Digidesign’s Pro Tools platform, something that was previously only available to SADIE and Pyramix users.

VAILABLE AS A SET of RTAS plug-ins for Pro Tools LE and HD systems, CEDAR Tools is currently only available for Pro Tools on PC — something of a problem for facilities (like my own) that run Pro Tools exclusively on Mac. The nice folks at CEDAR were good enough, therefore, to supply me with a laptop running Pro Tools LE for the purposes of this review. Software authorisation is via a dedicated USB dongle (not iLok), and as this was pre-installed and authorised I can’t comment on how straightforward this process is. This first release provides three restoration processes — Auto Dehiss, Declip and Retouch. We’ll tackle each in turn, starting with the most straightforward — Auto Dehiss. There are many approaches to removing unwanted broadband noise from signals, particularly reasonably consistent noise such as tape-hiss. In the past, this has ranged from simple low-pass filters, to dynamic filters to multiband expanders. More recent developments use subtractive processing based on having a ‘fingerprint’ of the noise signal — in other words a sample of the material that contains just noise and no signal. Auto Dehiss moves a step beyond many of these processes. Although still based largely on the principle of spectral subtraction, the process is automatic in the sense that you are not required to 24

JON THORNTON

identify a passage of noise without signal to act as the fingerprint. Instead, the process dynamically tracks and automatically updates the noise fingerprint, which in part makes the results more natural sounding. In use, you have the option of fully automatic or manual modes. Invoking the plug-in brings up the familiar Pro Tools plug-in wrapper, with a button for Auto mode On or Off, and up to four variable parameters. The key parameter here is attenuation, which sets the degree to which the presumed noise component is removed from the signal. Engaging Auto mode and simply changing this parameter produces quick and very good results on a variety of material. Hiss can be dramatically reduced, with very little in the way of artefacts to the signal, and plenty of transient detail left intact. Although the intention of this automatic mode is that all its parameters are in their theoretically ideal positions, these can be tweaked if desired. For example, the degree to which noise is identified can be altered with a Bias parameter, which can make the process more or less aggressive in identifying noise for removal. In practice, reducing this parameter makes noise slightly more apparent, but this is countered by a little more openness to the high end with some programme material. There is also the capability to resolution

force the process to target LF noise (below 5kHz) more aggressively than HF noise or vice versa. It’s all very straightforward, and gives great results extremely quickly. Disabling auto mode requires you to set an otherwise unavailable parameter to manually identify a threshold point for the noise component. Other than in extreme cases where the ratio of noise to signal is comparatively high, I don’t really think many users will stray too far from the automatic setting. Declip is designed to reconstruct in a single pass multiple instances of damaged audio caused by analogue or digital clipping. Selecting a passage of audio and invoking the plug-in brings up an analysis window that shows a graph depicting the average number of sample values either side of zero in a given period of time. With most audio that has not suffered from clipping, the shape of this curve will be roughly similar to a normal distribution curve — indicating that the proportion of high sample values either side of zero is relatively less than medium or low values. In the case of clipped audio, the graph shows very obvious spikes at the extremes of sample values, indicating that a higher than normal number of samples of these values is present. Digital clipping shows up as very deﬁned spikes, analogue clipping March 2006

PROS CONS

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as more rounded but still pronounced peaks. Two controls then allow you to set the sample level at which clipping is deemed to have taken place, and this moves lines on the graph. Moving them just inside the spikes tells the Declip algorithm to reconstruct waveforms at any level exceeding these values. Two algorithms are offered, one optimised for light clipping the other for heavy clipping. In practice, the plug-in is certainly able to improve the quality of the audio — and in the case of sporadic light clipping, does so very transparently. Severely damaged audio though, results in an output that, while less objectionable than the original, is still noticeably problematic (Somethings are just beyond redemption. Ed). Interestingly, it seemed to perform better on material with a strong harmonic and transient content, such as piano, than it did on speech — although the speech example used was quite severely clipped. The final process on offer, and in many ways the most impressive, is Retouch. The (excellent) help files describe this process as the audio equivalent of PhotoShop, and I can’t think of a better way of putting it. If you imagine the process of retouching a digital photograph, removing a blemish by replacing it with pixels of similar luma and chroma values as those surrounding the blemish while making sure that there are no objectionable ‘steps’ between boundaries — all you have to do is apply the same concept to frequency and amplitude over a given time period. In fact, the PhotoShop analogy is further strengthened by this plug-in’s use of a spectrogram to indicate these characteristics. Selecting a region and invoking the plug-in pulls up this spectrogram, with sample values along the horizontal axis, frequency along the vertical axis, and colour variation indicating relative amplitude. Because the concept of Retouch is to use material surrounding the offending artefact to take its place, the original audio selection needs to include at least three times the length of the audio to be removed — preferably either side of the artefact. A series of zoom tools allow easy navigation around the spectrogram, and identifying the offending artefact is reasonably easy given practice. Any noise event that has harmonic content is also clearly visible with individual harmonics rising up the vertical axis. Although Retouch has a few different modes of operation, the interpolation tool is by far the most powerful. Having identified an artefact (or part of an artefact, as harmonics are best treated individually), selecting the interpolation tool allows a marquee to be drawn around a given area. Once drawn, an outline appears that includes the area selected plus a ‘handle’ either side of this on the time axis. These handles are used to define the areas of signal that will be used to synthesise a replacement for the identified artefact. Although by default they are symmetrical, they can be changed afterwards — if, for example, an unwanted noise in a period of quiet is immediately followed by a louder, wanted signal, the user can change the post event handle to be zero, and set a larger preevent handle. Once this is done, parameters control to what degree the marked artefact will be replaced by interpolated signal, ranging from no replacement to full replacement — in other words an artefact can be reduced in intensity or removed. If necessary, the gain of the selected area can be increased or reduced to give the best match. Once these parameters are set, clicking the Retouch button performs the task, after which the result can be previewed from within the plug-in window. Each Retouch step can be undone and redone at will, and typically this does involve a little playing around. Once you are happy, the processed audio can be rewritten back to the Pro Tools time line. Again, much like PhotoShop, the mechanics are easy enough, but there is a definite skill in identifying what to manipulate and how. A little practice, though, goes a long way and after half an hour or so I was able to remove an intrusive car horn in an otherwise quiet section of a choir recording with no detectable artefacts — very impressive stuff. There are other edit modes that allow you to ‘patch’ audio by identifying an area in the spectrogram, and then replacing it with another area that you identify, but this proved harder to get good results with. Overall, this is an excellent package that prioritises the absolute quality of the restoration process over everything else, although I was much more impressed with the performance of Dehiss and Retouch than I was with Declip. I very much hope that CEDAR will continue with the development of these tools and start to include more of its processes in future. And please could we get them on a Mac too? ■

review

The Antidote to Compromise Considering the critical role monitors play in audio production we believe this is one place where compromise is simply unacceptable!

“If you want a monitor’s opinion of your mix these speakers will tell it like it is – warts ’n’ all.” Play Magazine Nov / Dec 2005

“Probably the best specified, most flexible monitoring system in this price range.”

High quality and largely set and forget Dehissing; Retouch an extremely powerful tool; excellent documentation and help ﬁles.

MusicTech, June 2005

acoustic measurement software

Now the great-sounding monitors we build will sound great where it matters; right there in your studio!

Declip not as immediately impressive as the other processes (but then again, get it right to start with!); PC Pro Tools only.

Contact

Tannoy United Kingdom

T: +44 (0) 1236 420199

F: +44 (0) 1236 428230

E: enquiries@tannoy.com

Tannoy North America

T: (519) 745 1158

F: (519) 745 2364

E: inquiries@tannoyna.com

Tannoy Deutschland

T: 0180 1111 88 1

F: 0180 1111 88 2

E: info@tannoy.com

CEDAR AUDIO, UK: Website: www.cedaraudio.com

March 2006

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review

Tascam HD-P2 Technology changes — often rapidly — but there is a consistent requirement for a wellspeciﬁed stereo location recorder at a sensible price. Still recovering from the expiry of his old companion portable DAT, ROB JAMES is looking for a replacement and expects to be impressed by this sold state recorder.

HERE IS NO SHORTAGE of high-end options for location recorders but for those with less demanding requirements and/or (much) lower budgets, compromise is the rule. The manufacturers’ challenge is to deliver an attractive mix of features at the right price. There are obvious family resemblances in the HDP2 to my now sadly defunct DAP-1. The two machines are about the same size, control layout is similar and a dual-concentric gain control is a prominent feature of both. However, the HD-P2 eschews DAT as the recording medium in favour of Compact Flash. Type 1 and 2 are supported, which means solid state cards and microdrives can be used. Not all Compact Flash media is equal. Some older and budget cards have little buffering and use slower memory chips and may not be capable of reliable recording at high sample

rates. A list of tested and approved media is available on the Tascam website. Compared to the DAP-1, the HD-P2 feels like a cheaper build. Matt plastic replaces the rubberised ﬁnish of the DAT machine and switches feel somewhat ﬂimsier. But at the much lower price of UK£765 (+ VAT) this can be excused because functionally it is in a completely different league. A shoulder strap, case and a FireWire cable are included. A sign of the times and the omnipresence of Microsoft is to be found on an interesting licence sticker inside the battery compartment lid. It says: ‘WIN CE .NET 4.2 Core’. From this it is fairly safe to assume that the HD-P2 is running an embedded version of Windows. Following the ancient dictum, ‘when all else fails, read the manual’, I decided to see how far I could get

Sockets to the right, sockets to the left On the right hand side panel the analogue audio I-O is pretty much what you would expect. Switchable XLRs for mic/line input with phonos for line in and out. On the opposite side phonos offer SPDIF I-O, there is a headphone jack, BNC for Word clock or video sync input, an XLR for timecode in, a FireWire jack and a PS2 socket for connecting a standard PC keyboard. If a keyboard is connected it can be used to control the ‘transport’ as well as for more convenient naming. On the top, slide switches set mic/line and –20dB pads individually for left and right channels. Phantom power, 18dB/octave 100Hz Low Cut, Limiter and limiter Stereo Link all affect both channels. A small internal mic is ﬁtted and a switch determines whether the left input uses this or the main mic input. The remainder of the top surface controls are menu keys and the shuttle/data wheel together with the Rewind, Fast Forward, Stop and Play keys. Record, Pause, Timecode, Locate, Marker and Retake keys are on the front panel. The Retake key deletes the last recording and sets up to rerecord with a single button press. A prerecord cache enables the last ﬁve or ten seconds of audio to be captured before the Record button is pressed from standby.

before being forced to resort to the reading glasses. Unlike some previous Tascam products the answer is ‘a very long way’. Any half-competent recordist could have this machine up and running within five minutes of opening the box. That said, there is a lot of valuable information in the manual and Tascam has thoughtfully provided not only the usual Quick Start Guide but also a Field Reference Card to remind you of convenient shortcuts and where the most commonly used settings are to be found. Although Compact Flash is a lot more robust than DAT, it isn’t indestructible. If something fails in the middle of a recording, you lose it from the last point the file headers were written. To boost reliability and confidence the file headers are continually resaved during recording. Sample rates go all the way up to 192kHz and there is a choice of 16 or 24 bit resolution. Powering is versatile and sensible. A mains adapter is supplied or power can be supplied via FireWire. Battery power uses eight AA cells (NiMh preferred) rather than an expensive proprietary pack. All three power sources can be connected simultaneously and the unit uses the logical source (highest voltage) and seamlessly switches to an alternative if the primary source is interrupted. A set of alkalis runs the HD-P2 for around 5 hours. A project contains an EDL, audio files and a markers file. Default record mode is Append and recordings are made sequentially within a 24-hour timeline. All recording is non-destructive and with Append switched off it is also possible to record anywhere in the 24-hour timeline. EDL is dynamic and plays the most recent recording where more than one exists in the same place. Markers can be dropped manually wherever desired or automatically on ‘overs’ or incoming timecode dropouts. Markers are related to the timeline independent of the audio files. For output, a composite recording can be consolidated or ‘conformed’ with a little free application from the Tascam website or all the component files can be transferred via FireWire to a PC or Mac. Alternatively, you can use a workstation to conform material to an EDL with the HD-P2 in timecode chase. For maximum postproduction compatibility, pull-up and pull-down sample rates are supported, even at highresolution settings. The HD-P2 supports tri-level sync as used by High Definition video systems as well as the more familiar black and burst and Word clock. The HD-P2 is very unusual in having timecode functions at this price level. Although it cannot generate and output timecode, Broadcast Wav files can be time-stamped from the internal clock or from external LTC. It can also chase external LTC with a variety of jam sync and chase options. If you need something for extreme conditions, start saving for something several times the price. So long as you don’t expect to use it in storm conditions, out at sea or in a tropical jungle then the HD-P2 answers a long-felt need. It’s a workflow friendly, stereo recorder with all the core virtues and essentials for more complex production routes. Film Schools and low budget producers among others will love it to bits. ■

PROS

Well priced; good feature set; timecode.

CONS

No TC output; a bit fragile; screen visibility in bright sunlight.

Contact TASCAM, JAPAN: Website: www.tascam.co.uk

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review

Chandler EMI TG12413 plug-in The co-operation between Abbey Road studios and US manufacturer Chandler has resulted in EMI-derived outboard. There’s now also a software equivalent of one of the most popular circuits as GEORGE SHILLING discovers.

FEW YEARS AGO I was lucky enough to use an original EMI TG12345 console owned by Mike Hedges that he had had restored for his private studio. Seemingly built to military spec, the desk had been used for a number of late 1960s and early 70s classics including releases by The Beatles and Pink Floyd, and it didn’t take me long to discover that there was indeed some genuinely magical sonic influence on the sound of these recordings from the console. Every channel featured a simple limiter with two knobs and no metering. But working up a rough mix I was soon lifting the spring-loaded latching toggle switches and cranking the knobs, working my way along the channels –- sheer temptation, a crunchy, juicy warmth that oozed vintage EMI. The music sounded fabulous, and when I stopped the tape, from the silence there was a rapid crescendo of hiss, such was the amount of gain I was driving into the limiters! The TG console was designed as a replacement for the ageing valve equipment at EMI Studios in the mid 1960s and I’ll skip the Shabby Road jokes, because these old desks undoubtedly enhanced one or two classic recordings. The contemporary recording engineers loved the Fairchild 660/670 limiter, so the designers attempted a copy, hence the apparently s i m i l a r switchable release times. However, the end result was quite different in character. As well as installing one of these on each channel of the console, another version was designed to fit a modular format and to include a meter for the mastering department. I recently used some racked examples of these during a mixing session at Abbey Road. American designer and anglophile Wade Goeke’s Chandler hardware rackmounting version of the EMI limiter caught the attention of Abbey Road, and a partnership was formed with officially endorsed hardware based on EMI designs and other TG hardware being reissued. Now they’ve teamed up with a software developer to provide emulations for the ranked masses of Pro Tools users. The plug-in is offered in TDM for HD (£400 + VAT) and LE (£200 + VAT) and the more expensive TDM installer includes the RTAS versions. The package comprises two plug-ins. First, there is the 1969 version, which attempts to directly recreate 28

the original hardware. The GUI copies the appearance of the mastering version of the hardware. Second, there is a 2005 version where a few aspects of the gain structure and control have been modiﬁed; this is closer to the Chandler TG1 hardware reissue. When I reviewed the hardware TG1, I found its strength to be in extreme drum limiting. So, of course, that was the ﬁrst test and, yes, this soon put a smile on my face too! Using the 2005 version, set the Release to 1, switch to Limit and crank up the input. The most gorgeous pumping, chomping drum emanates! (Chomping drum? Ed) It really rocks, bringing up the room sound in a very exciting way, lending the snare an airy squish. You might think that having a real hardware TG1 box

will seem bigger and better, but sonically this is pretty close and for a tiny fraction of the cost of the hardware. Of course, the plug-in has no hiss or hum although perhaps that is part of the magic of analogue! To avoid the temptation of cranking towards total mush, one trick is to duplicate audio and mix uncompressed and compressed signals together for a best of both. Delay Compensation is useful here for phase accuracy, of course, but the TG plug-in seems to generate an exceptionally short delay of a mere four samples, or 0.09 milliseconds, so it’s ﬁne for monitoring when tracking. The main difference between the two versions of the plug-in is to do with the gain structure. The authentic 1969 version features a Hold knob that is effectively input gain, but as it is adjusted the resting point of the needle moves, indicating the amount of gain reduction available –- as you turn it left the meter rises, showing the moving threshold. On the 2005 version, the Input gain simply drives the limiter harder as you turn it up, and more drive is evident here for more extreme gain reduction. I still frequently found myself with the Input up around 9 though, and the resolution

break-up never gets nasty. Compressing vocals in ‘Compress’ mode adds a honky dryness that won’t suit every voice, and careful choice of Recovery time is required to avoid strangesounding gain riding. This can be reduced by running two TGs in series with differing release times. I wouldn’t say the sound is warm on vocals, but there is a certain unmistakeably analogue character to the tone that is not usually heard with compressor plug-ins. However, this tone can be subtle unless a reasonable amount of gain reduction is taking place. The Limit and Compress modes are quite different, with Limit employing considerably faster attack and recovery times, as well as a higher ratio, so it is worth experimenting with both modes in any given situation. Attack is quick in Limit mode, but not so fast in Compress, w h i c h sometimes splats the front of vocal phrases if pushed. Limit is better for catching otherwise nasty acoustic guitar sprangs and so on. Recovery settings reach ridiculously slow settings in Compress mode, the 10 seconds release for position 6 in Compress mode is super-invisible. It can, however, sometimes just congeal the mix nicely. There aren’t many truly characterful plug-in compressors and limiters. The Universal Audio version of the Fairchild is terriﬁc, but this is different, which makes it an interesting and appealing alternative to that and the Bomb Factory Fairchild. I love it! ■

PROS

Seemingly accurate modelling; terriﬁc and unique sound character; very ‘analogue’ sounding; fantastic for big drum sounds; appealing GUI.

CONS

Mouse control sometimes a little erratic (straight line/direct jump operation only); slow recovery settings very, very slow; No sign of the presets promised in the manual…; not enough initial gain on the 1969 version’s input but, hey, that’s vintage gear for ya!

Contact ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, UK: Website: www.abbeyroad.com

March 2006

review

Fostex RM-2 You want sound but the space is tight so you’d like it as small as possible. How does as stereo rackmount in a 1U grab you? ZENON SCHOEPE listens with conﬁdence.

ONITORING CAN BE divided into a number of different classes depending on your outlook and how precious you want to be about the subject. In there among the talk of deﬁnitive references and domestic reference lies the unglamorous but important business of monitoring just to hear that something is there. Rackmounting such a monitoring device makes it the preserve of the machine room, truck or anywhere else where space is tight or valuable. The problem with the RM-2 is that it’s not rackmountable when you get it; you have to screw the ears on yourself. That’s the sort of thing I used to enjoy when I was younger but it’s an irritation now and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to use it as a standalone; if you need a standalone then use some speakers.

The RM-2 (£399 + VAT) is a tidy little 1U that provides two speakers for full and glorious stereophonic reproduction together with some metering and analogue or digital input source selection. Rackmounting monitors tend to fall into two rough categories: those that serve as a listening post for a variety of sources that can be connected to the back and those that simply play out leaving the multitude of source selection to some other piece of gear. The RM-2 very ﬁrmly falls into the second type. You get a pair of balanced inputs on Combi connector and an XLR AES-EBU running 44.1-96kHz. You switch between these two sources on a dedicated front panel switch with LED indicators. Once you have the stereo signal you want you can decide how you’d like to be listening to it. A second

Fostex 6301D

Representing one of the enduring designs from the brand, there seem to have been small black boxes with volume controls and orange Fostex logos on the front for as long as the company has existed. Of course, the models have changed but the 6301B, on which the 6301D is based, has been around for long enough to attract widespread acceptance. You’ll see them in studios, machine rooms, bound together with an adaptor and rackmounted, and they’ve long been an exhibition demo favourite on account of being small and innocuous. It’s the deﬁnitive convenience monitor. The 6301D (£199 +VAT each) adds an AES-EBU input and Thru to its back panel alongside the analogue jack input. The front panel retains the power switch and LED and Volume pot, which never really needs to go past 2 in a small civilised room situation. Part of the charm is the aluminium box and metal grill that makes it feel indestructible and 6301s can certainly take some knocks (note to SCVLondon to check the review models upon return). A 10W amp drives a single 10cm driver with no ports and no fancy stuff. Like the RM-2 above, 6301s are about hearing something rather than listening and in this role they excel. There’s a middly quality again that aids clarity and you’re not going to forget about it while it’s playing along in the background. However, what I really like about them is how you can pick them up and plug them into anything you want to get sound out of in a hurry. Still convenient, now with a digital input.

resolution

switch circles through the options of delivering from the two speakers LR stereo, mono or the isolated Left or right channels individually in mono. Thankfully there is LED indication of what you are listening to although it’s not the most obvious of presentations. The Channel Select switch also acts as a Mute when pressed and held. There’s then a dual concentric Level pot and a fine sounding headphones circuit that disables the speakers when a plug is inserted. Finally we encounter the metering which is multi-LED and switched in ballistic from 3S peak hold for digital sources to just peak hold for analogue sources. Needless to say, slap a modern hot CD up the analogue and the room lights up and stays lit. The Peak hold on this is unfortunate and would have been far more useful if it followed the digital input’s 3S pattern. I also have a problem with the intensity of the LEDs because they are so very bright that in low to medium lighting conditions I found they blinded me from being able to see the panel legending around them. Still, the RM-2 doesn’t sound that bad for the intended application. There’s very little in the way bottom end and nothing in the way of rattles and buzzes, which is important. The sound is peaky and middly without a lot of top end fizz — perfect therefore for cutting through in noisy environments. There’s also more than enough level available if it should come to a shouting match, although the RM-2 becomes very strident in its delivery when wound up. The 110mm x 40mm cone, magnetically shielded drivers are driven by a 10W amp, which doesn’t sound as dangerous as it is, if you get my drift. It’s not a bad little package marred by the metering issue but the fact remains that it is rare to find a rackmount monitor for this sort of money. ■

PROS

Compact; loud enough and abrasive enough to keep you informed.

CONS

Metering too bright in low light conditions; peak hold is too much.

Contact FOSTEX, JAPAN: Website: www.fostexinternational.com UK, SCVLondon: +44 208 418 1470

March 2006

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review

Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5012 Hailing from Wimberley Texas, the 5012 is one of the ﬁrst of an expanding range of outboard equipment carrying the Portico designation. Offering two channels of microphone preampliﬁcation, it carries that most famous of names on its front panel — but does it live up to it? asks JON THORNTON

OUSED IN A HALF-WIDTH rackmount unit (buy two and you get some additional metalwork that enables them to be strapped together and mounted as a standard 19-inch rack unit), first impressions are of a solid piece of kit. The enclosure is folded steel, as are the front and back plates. This impression of solidity is let down by the amount of play there seems to be on the (switched) gain controls, something that is made more obvious by the relative firmness of the pots and switches. Power to the unit is from an external PSU supplying 12V DC, although the manual claims the unit will function happily from most DC supplies that can supply the required power between 9 and 18 volts — a car battery, for example, could power several units in a remote location. Still, as a relatively highend piece of studio outboard, the use of an external supply might raise eyebrows in some quarters. The front panel contains no real surprises. Each of the two channels offers up to 66dB of gain in switched 6dB steps, with a +/-6dB trim control available for fine-tuning. A continuously variable high-pass filter with a slope of 12dB/octave is available with a range of 20–250Hz, as are switches for phase reverse and phantom power. Metering is per channel, and is courtesy of an 8-segment LED bargraph that shows output level on a scale between –30 and +22dBu. Internally, the circuitry is discrete Class A, which in part accounts for the reasonably hefty power requirements (1 Amp at 12V), but is pretty much expected of a Rupert design. A ‘Silk’ switch on the front panel reduces the amount of negative feedback employed in the amplifier, resulting in a sound that has a greater harmonic distortion component, but also colours the spectrum in a manner reminiscent of ‘vintage’ designs. The inputs and the outputs use transformers, although in a somewhat unusual fashion. While the main outputs are transformer balanced and floating, the inputs are electronically balanced but not floating, 32

using a ‘Transformer-Like-Amplifier’ design. This then feeds (post coarse-gain) an actual input transformer, which in turn feeds the remainder of the channel. The advantage, according to the company, is in combining the best of both worlds. This also means that there is a great deal of immunity from hum and RFI when interfacing with other equipment of various vintages and I-O topologies. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when the 5012 was hooked up for the first time. On the grounds that seeing what a pre can extract out of an SM57 is as good an initial test as any, this was its first task, on both acoustic and electric guitars. For comparison, a Focusrite ISA215 was used. On the standard setting, the 5012 sounds clean and open. Overall it sounded a touch softer than the Focusrite — particularly on picked electric guitar. While there wasn’t a great deal of colouration to the sound, it sounded rich and full without being overblown. This was even more obvious when mated with an AT4050 to record vocals and as a drum overhead — again there was a sense that the HF wasn’t quite as exaggerated as with the Focusrite, but this wasn’t at the expense of any transient detail, rather an incredibly solid but detailed tone. Engaging the Silk switch changes things. There’s a distinct tonal shift — lows remain full and rich, there’s a slight brightening to the high end with perhaps a little dip in the high mids. Overall a slightly raunchier sound, and perhaps one that is more reminiscent of the man’s earlier designs — but on balance I preferred the standard setting in most cases. At this stage it’s worth pointing out one other feature of the 5012, as it really serves to illustrate where the company is heading with this range. A switch on each input panel allows the signal to be routed to either an A bus for channel 1 or a B bus for channel 2. This routes the signal, pre-mute button, to one of two unbalanced, high impedance outputs on the rear panel. Each bus appears on a pair of normalled 1/4-inch TRS jacks, which would allow resolution

daisy-chaining of these outputs if multiple units are employed. The long-term intention of these buses is to interface with a forthcoming bus amp/monitoring module shortly to be added to the range. Other planned modules include a high quality, 2-channel DI interface, a single channel mic pre with EQ, and a stereo compressor/limiter. Already available is an intriguing tape emulation line amplifier. It’s easy to see the possibility of configuring a series of these analogue building blocks with exactly the range of features needed into a fairly compact space — the company provides a larger rack unit that allows the mounting of up to eight Portico units in a vertical orientation, very similar to the API Lunchbox without the associated back-plane. They even provide exchange face-plates so the panel legending reads correctly in this orientation. All of which is very tempting, particularly if the quality of the forthcoming units is as good as the 5102 (list US$1795). I have to admit to wondering at first whether the Portico range was simply an exercise in badge-engineering. I’m glad to say though, that this is very much the real deal — and stays true to the values and qualities that Rupert has always stood for. ■

PROS

A great sounding pre with a very big sound; ﬂexibility in conﬁgurations and busing options; compact size; lives up to the name.

CONS

Minor niggles with build; external PSU and mounting arrangements a pain in a ﬁxed installation if you only buy one…

EXTRAS

The Portico 5042 is a 2-channel ‘true tape’ emulation and line driver. When the Tape circuit is not engaged the

5042 may be used as a transformercoupled, high-performance line amp that includes a gain range of +/-12dB. The 5042 incorporates a tape drive circuit that feeds a tiny magnetic ‘head’ which, in turn, is coupled to a correctly equalised replay ampliﬁer. ‘Record’ and ‘Replay’ controls are counter-ganged to keep overall input-to-output level approximately constant; it only changes as it would in a real tape recorder, with changing drive levels to the circuit eventually resulting in saturation. The frequency response and distortion performance of the 5042’s tape circuitry is tailored to that of a typical analogue tape recorder

Contact RUPERT NEVE DESGINS, US: Website: www.rupertneve.com

March 2006

Main Features

 Record uncompressed Standard and High-definition video  HD/SD SDI interface with Dual link option for RGBA 4:4:4:4 and CGI applications  Real-time HD1080 format conversion for multi-streaming  Directly open OMF multi-layer video compositions  Multi-layer video and audio time-line  Real-time basic editing with fades/dissolves with cut, copy, paste functionality.  Three user level interfaces - VTR Emulation, Director and Advanced modes.  Instant access and transferability of SD and HD media across network/servers  Convert any SD/HD video format to any other format e.g. to AVI, QuickTimeTM SD to HD.  Notation capability for version referencing and film dubbing  Security embedded Water-marking  Picture-in-picture facility

Applications

 Up to 6.4TB media storage  Alternative replacement for SD/HD video tape machines  Playback/screening system at 24fps Film, PAL, NTSC and HDTV frame rates  Create clips, loops and play-lists within the system.  Ideal for audio post production SD and HD video and film dubbing referencing  HD Video Recorder for CGI and model animation frame store/playback  Digitizing station for Media Servers  Uncompressed RGB 4:4:4 recorder  Multi-format cache for telecine transfer

HD VIDEO SYSTEM

HD1080 VIDEO SYSTEM

HD-2K

review

Serato Rane Series Equalisation and dynamic control is the mainstay of DAW functionality and is ably supported by a wide selection of plug-ins that would offer variety and ﬂavour. GEORGE SHILLING — who tells us he is by nature a cutter rather than a booster — looks in on a three plugs from a live production background.

ASHINGTON STATE-BASED hardware company Rane have been widely praised for its live sound products since the early 1980s, and has previously co-operated with New Zealand software company Serato on the Scratch Live and MP4 DJ hardware products. Here they come together again in a rather different way, simulating Rane hardware with software plugins. Their development presumably motivated by the introduction of Digidesign’s Venue live console, the plugs will run either on Venue or Pro Tools HD, and comprise three products (£446 + VAT each). There’s the Graphic EQ, Parametric EQ and Dynamics, although the last of these comprises two distinct plug-in modules, imaginatively named Compressor and Gate but symbolic of a no-nonsense approach. The only vital part of the boxed versions of these is the serial number that enables iLok authorisation. Also included are wafﬂe-free manuals, installer CDs that are identical (all contain every plug-in), and plenty of hollow cardboard box (More practical than the solid cardboard box type. Ed). The Graphic EQ emulates the Rane DEQ 60/60L, providing the traditional 31 bands of graphic EQ. However, the hardware model is anything but traditional; it is in fact digital, although with one knob per function and analogue audio connections only, you might not initially spot that. This model includes Rane’s switchable ‘Perfect-Q’ technology, which uses DSP to eliminate interaction between adjacent bands. This makes the shape of the sliders’ arrangement resemble more closely the actual EQ applied, and the hardware unit is highly regarded for its performance in this respect. The plug-in version looks pretty much like a mono version of the stereo hardware unit, albeit with a few small detail differences. On the plug-in, some sliders have been graphically represented as knobs, and as with all these plug-ins there is an area at the bottom for displaying or entering the currently adjusted and adjacent controls’ settings. Rotary controls comprise broad 3-band EQ for general shaping of High, Mid and Low, and Low and High Cut Filters. These two sections feature bypass ‘toggles’ not apparent on the hardware. The only other difference is a meter toggle for dBFS/dBVU, accompanying the virtual LEDs. The graphics are elegantly rendered, and the window size is large without being excessive — you want to see a graphic EQ properly, after all. I immediately wanted to draw shapes with my mouse, of course, but normally, only one slider can be moved at a time; holding the Shift key enabled drawing to commence, and I soon started enjoying the ﬂexibility of working with so many individual instantly accessible bands. Because there is no band interaction, the 6dB mode seems very subtle. Flicking to 12dB does the trick, but being by nature a cutter rather than a booster, I quite enjoyed the ability to switch to Cut Only for the full scale of whatever EQ had been set to behave as if I was scooping the bits out, rather than piling on more gain. A line is displayed superimposed on the graphic, showing not only the achieved EQ curve, but also using colour shading to 34

bandwidth uses a slider up at the top right. Where most EQs use a Q setting, here there is a Bandwidth slider with the scale going the opposite way. This is a little inconveniently placed, and I had to reference the manual to find out the modifier key to enable editing on the graph. When shelving, the slope shape is fixed. Other features are similar to the Graphic EQ — tone controls, filters and metering, plus the superimposed EQ/Phase graph. This is a simple and neutral sounding EQ, with a subtlety that means that larger boosts are needed to equate to similar settings on other EQ plugs. There is little doubt that this EQ is achieving the displayed settings, but because it sounds so smooth, you can sometimes find it frustratingly benign in extreme settings. However, with 10 bands and plenty of headroom, it is easy to double-up on frequencies. The graph is clear, and the sheer number of tone controls provides immense flexibility. The Compressor part of the Dynamics plug-in features a parametric bell-curve EQ band sidechain, and will also operate in Dynamic EQ mode for knocking out particular nasty frequencies or deessing. A post-compression Peak Limiter is also provided, as is External Keying. The display is extremely comprehensive with an astonishing complement of meters and graphs. The ‘Relative Key Level’ meter display is particularly useful, with a central yellow Threshold indicator. Compression is controlled by knobs and sliders, all bringing up temporary editable numeric displays at the bottom of the window. This is a smooth sounding compressor, although the Auto timing mode is rather lethargic, perhaps like an old Neve, and tends to be choking for drums. Set manually, the faster settings don’t seem quite as fast as the numbers suggest, and even small amounts of compression are generally fairly audible in a dbx 160 kind of way. The Gate features Drawmer-style High and Low Cut Filters, which both cover the entire audio spectrum, Key Listen, and Gate, Expand or Ducking modes, with External Keying available. Again, a dynamic graph indicates the gain reduction, along with plenty of meters. In Expand mode, the Depth knob becomes a Ratio control. This is probably the most comprehensive dedicated noise gate plug. It works elegantly and clearly displays all you need to know, although the numeric displays could do with an extra decimal place for the shortest settings. ■ show varying leading or trailing phase shifts at all frequencies. The Parametric EQ is modelled on Rane’s PEQ 55, again an analogue controlled digital box. There are 10 bands of EQ here, and each band can be switched to high or low shelf, or bell-curve. There is, of course, individual bypass for each band, but also, interestingly, you can link bands together for simultaneous dragging around of bands, and these don’t have to be adjacent. Boost/Cut and Frequency can be achieved using axis sliders or by dragging the numbered bands around on the graph, but resolution

PROS

Simple to use; Venue-compatible; clear displays; reliable; smooth sounding.

CONS

Low Cut ﬁlters could have a higher upper frequency; no RTAS; no AudioSuite.

Contact SERATO, NEW ZEALAND: Website: www.serato.com UK, SCV London: +44 208 418 1470

March 2006

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review

Great River Electronics MP2-NV Not that well known as a brand in Europe but a well respected manufacturer in its native US, Great River is beginning to make in-roads on this side of the pond. JON THORNTON investigates a dual channel preamp that nods towards vintage designs and becomes strangely transﬁxed by the experience.

REAT RIVER ELECTRONICS has been quietly producing low volume, high speciﬁcation audio equipment for many years, although it might not be as well known in Europe yet as other marques. The Great River in question is the mighty Mississippi and is a nod in the direction of the company’s headquarters in St Paul, Minnesota. The MP2-NV (US$2795) is a 2-channel microphone preamp, packaged in a 1U rackmount. Compact it might be, but lightweight it most certainly isn’t — due to a combination of rugged casework, large internal PSU and a whole lot of additional iron courtesy of transformers on inputs and outputs. The ‘NV’ designation, one assumes, is due to the fact that the internals are based on the classic 1073 module. So in addition to all the ironmongery, you get ClassA, fully discrete circuitry throughout. Starting at the business end (the rear panel), microphone level inputs and balanced line level outputs are on XLRs. Each channel also has an additional, unbalanced output on 1/4-inch jack, working at a nominal –10dBv, which is useful for monitoring purposes if the box is acting as a front end to a DAW. This output is also derived pre the output transformer, so if you are happy with a lower operating level and an unbalanced signal, it gives you another option in terms of sonic character. An unbalanced insert point on TRS jack for each channel completes the connectivity picture. The front panel is similarly unsurprising in terms of features. Each channel has a stepped gain control (5dB steps from +5 to +60), which works in conjunction with a continuously variable output level control. A six-segment LED ladder meter is provided for each of these gain stages, which is nice to see, and allows a good degree of sonic control. Each channel has a front-panel switch for phantom power, output polarity reverse, input impedance loading

(300ohms or 1200ohms), and output loading. The last connects a 600-Ohm resistor across the output transformer’s secondary to achieve the flattest frequency response when pushed in. If not switched in, this allows the output transformer’s natural resonant peak (roughly +6dB at 50kHz) to exert an effect on the overall tonality of the signal. The loading, input impedance and polarity reverse function are all relay switched, and the stepped gain control feels sturdy and positive and virtually immune from crackle or noise. I mention this simply because it is an indication of the attention to detail given to ensuring the highest quality signal path throughout — there’s been no skimping here. The final item on the front panel is the provision of a high impedance input, again on 1/4-inch jack. This provides a FET-based impedance buffer, which in turn drives the input transformer directly. This means that the input impedance switch also comes into play even with high impedance sources. The MP2-NV was tested with a variety of microphones, capacitor and dynamic, on a range of instrumental sources. For comparison, a Universal Audio 610 was used. Initial tests were carried out with the loading switch in, and with the first gain stage doing the least work possible — in other words the secondary gain stage used to make up as much of the required output level as possible. This is the method suggested by Great River to achieve the most neutral sonic performance, although overall impressions of tone even in this configuration are that the sound is impressively solid, particularly in the low-mid range, when compared to the UA610. This is more obvious on some sources than others — most notably with acoustic guitar and a closemiked bass cabinet, and surprisingly less noticeable on vocals and drum overheads. To my ears, the Great River also always seemed to flatten out high frequency transients slightly in comparison — not in

PROS

Terriﬁc headroom; punchy but open sound; more transformers than you can shake a stick at; feels indestructible.

CONS

Lack of legending on meters; unbalanced insert point.

EXTRAS

Great River also makes single channel preamps and dual and single channel EQs. The MEQ-1NV combines the one channel preamp ME-1NV and the one channel equalizer EQ-1NV in a single rackmount.

a way that suggests a lack of detail necessarily, but almost like a very gentle HF compression. Unloading the output transformer doesn’t negate this effect, but seems to add a sense of ‘air’ around the high frequencies in a manner more reminiscent of an exciter than simply an HF shelf. At the same time the low-mids seem to get a touch less dense, although this could simply be that the mid range seems to possess a little more bite. Playing around with the input impedance was a little less satisfying. On capacitor microphones it just seemed to (unsurprisingly) give more gain, and made it easier to drive the first gain stage into clipping. With an SM57, lowering the input impedance seemed to open up the HF response a little, but at the expense of rolling off the low end much earlier. The fun really starts, though, when you allow the initial gain stage to be driven a little harder, while attenuating overall level with the output level control. Doing this doesn’t really change the overall characteristics of the preamp, it simply exaggerates them. That sense of low-mid crunch, of solidifying the sound, becomes progressively more pronounced. Overcook it, and things degrade fairly gracefully as the levels of harmonic distortion build, but at all times the Great River seems to maintain an openness to the extremes of the frequency range that doesn’t seem to close down the sound. As an aside, one thing that really impresses, no matter how you use it, is the terrific sense of control that the Great River imparts. And I don’t mean control over tonality, but rather a sense of massive headroom — you never feel the need to baby-sit it in terms of watching signal levels, it just gets on and does the job. Which is just as well, as one of the few niggles about the unit is the lack of any calibration on the meters. And if we are into nit-picking, it would be nice on a unit of this calibre to have a balanced insert if you’re going to have one at all. Despite these observations, I’ll come clean and say that I more than just liked this box. If we were playing Desert-Island Preamplifiers here, it would certainly be on my list. To be honest, if it came down to simply having one mic pre in my rack, it’s already displaced some of my previous favourite contenders. ■

Contact GREAT RIVER ELECTRONICS, US: Website: www.greatriverelectronics.com UK, Unity Audio: +44 1440 785843

resolution

March 2006

review

Drawmer Three-Sum Multiband compression has largely been the preserve of the digital domain but this new box gives it to anyone who already has three stereo compressors. Who said there is nothing new in the world of dynamic processing?

’VE BEEN RELISHING the prospect of writing this review because I’ve been excited by the prospect of this product ever since I saw an early version at a trade show last year. What hits a chord with me about the Three-Sum is the fact that it’s an intelligent and practical addition to every rack that contains dynamic processing and, like all great ideas, it’s simple and brilliant. While there is no shortage of wonderful outboard dynamics devices on the market, they all do pretty much the same sort of thing. What differentiates them and makes compression and limiting so varied is how they do it, how you control it and what sonic character they impart upon the signal. However, the majority of compressors are broad band in their action. With the notable exception of Tube-Tech’s superb SCM 2B, which is a strong personal favourite of mine, if you want to go multiband for compression then you’re going to have to do it in digital. This is where the Three-Sum comes in because it acts as an interface to effectively split a stereo input off into three bands for individual compression and then sum the results back to stereo for output. Like I said, simple idea but brilliant. This means that you can use your existing outboard compressors to create the mother of all multiband compressors. The rear panel has XLRs throughout — two for the stereo input, two for the output, and two I-Os for each of the three bands. Of course, you can use only one half of the chain for mono sources and you’re not obliged to use all the bands. You’re also not obliged to use the bands just for compression, the manual suggests applying distortion, delay or reverb selectively. After a lot of scratching around I only had a chance to try reverb on the high band, which was interesting but it might be more effective to use this box as an adaptation of the EQing an aux send principle. You could theoretically sit this on a stereo aux and only peel off the high band to the send, but am starting to sound a bit too 80s? You get an input Level Trim (+/-10dB) and a +/10dB output gain pot to balance the front and rear ends of any processing that goes on between. The band split pots sweep over 18Hz-1.6kHz and 530Hz42kHz (yep, you read that last ﬁgure right). The Low, Mid and High bands that are created by these splits each have Mute and Bypass switches — the former kills the band allowing you to listen to the remaining bands for processing effect, the latter bypasses the band’s processor. At ﬁrst I thought I would have liked LEDs for the Mute and Bypass switches but with the long-throw switches you don’t really need them. 38

Then we hit a brick wall limiter with a pot that adjusts the level of the wall, gain reduction LED metering and a Limiter On/Off switch. I found the limiter most useful when working towards a multiband result as a means of protecting the back end from what can at times be a pretty wild and loud tweaking process. When I got to where I wanted to be I then switched it out. Two VUs complete the picture with Input/Output source selection and a hot +10dB option, which is vital. At this point it becomes difficult to say very much more about the Three-Sum because satisfactory multiband compression now depends on what you do with the boxes you choose to hang off the bands. What I will say is that when fully connected up there’s a lot of circuitry in the signal path and the Drawmer isn’t contributing any noise of its own. Mind you, by the time I’d cranked the hell out of three separate stereo compressors I’d stopped worrying about it. It is a complete delight. You can choose your dynamics according to the band and mix and match powerful combinations. The permutations are endless and I was surprised at just how well some boxes do in certain roles and how even relatively ‘bland’ processors can do the job. It clearly all is in the band split positioning and this varied for me on a track by track basis, as you would expect. The real boon is being able to effectively solo a band to see what it’s doing and to be able to bypass bands to monitor their interaction and contribution. The only downside for me, and it may not be the case for you, is that not all my dynamics boxes are in the same place or area of rack and I quickly found myself adjusting the bottomend over there, the mid band up there, and the high band here. That says more about my rack ergonomics that it does about the Three-Sum. Why multiband is such a good idea is that broadband compressors are generally driven by the dominant frequency component in the incoming signal. How they respond is part of their charm and character and it’s great and we love them but there are times when you might want to try something a little more specific and different. Unless you’ve actually tried analogue multiband compression then you won’t know precisely what I’m talking about but imagine it as improvement on the side chain to end all side chains. You can slap a nice retro compressor on the bottom end to flatten out some of the peaks, use something contemporary on the mid range to tie it down hard, and then leave the highs to fend for themselves. The tunability of the bands means you can isolate just one problem area, say, the lower mids, attack resolution

ZENON SCHOEPE

that one narrow band with restraining compression and hear how the whole track opens up. What’s so frighteningly impressive about such a simple solution is that the alternative would have involved broadband compression and EQ and it still wouldn’t have hit the nail on the head quite so well. I’ve said this before, but once you get your ear ‘in’ to hearing multiband you start to listen differently and I’m convinced that in corrective applications it’s far less destructive. Creatively it’s in a completely different league, especially if you have some special boxes to play with. It adds far more value than the UK£465 (+ VAT) it costs to your rack because it releases extra potential from outboard you already own. That said, I got excellent results from some otherwise rather dull and affordable multiple channel compressor 1Us. So there you have it. Simple and brilliant. I love it. ■

PROS

Superb idea; excellent implementation; adds value to your existing dynamics; multiband compression for everyone.

CONS

From an operational standpoint it helps if you have all your compressors near the Three-Sum!

EXTRAS

Drawmer’s S3 3-band stereo valve optoCompressor forms the basis of a new

‘Signature Series’ and offers ‘previously unattainable control and tonality’ over each of the three frequency bands. The signal path has I-O transformers, passive components and ten valves in a fully balanced Class A design. The Light Dependent Resistors in the optocompressors are temperature sensitive and the S3 houses an ‘electronic oven’ that sustains the optimum LDR operating temperature. Large scale VU meters can be switched to Peak mode and two further VU meter rescale modes are available to display the unit’s ability to output levels up to +30dBm.

Contact DRAWMER, UK: Website: www.drawmer.com

March 2006

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Did you record the music for this movie, or are you just mixing it? On this project, we scored the whole movie in New Orleans with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra at Piety Street Studios. It was quite an experience because they had not recorded a 40-piece orchestra before, I had to bring some equipment with me like the Decca tree and some M50 Neumanns. The movie studio had a commitment to helping New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, it had a lot to do with bringing business back to New Orleans. Even five months after the disaster, you would be amazed to see the condition of some of the neighbourhoods. Was it a big investment setting up your studio to work to film? I have a full 5.1 set-up and the capability to lock to any picture format. People don’t realise what goes into building a studio because some of the most difficult and expensive parts are largely unseen. There’s a big screen and everything is playing synced together, people don’t really see the wiring and infrastructure behind that. At least half of the money I spent is somewhere behind the walls! I see you are working on a ProControl ... I have a beefed up Pro Tools rig with Apogee convertors. I’ve been a big fan of Apogee for a long time. At the moment I have a ProControl, but I’m in the process of adding an analogue board, it will probably be one of the new SSL AWS900s. Although I use some plug-ins, I still hear the benefit of using my analogue EQs and dynamics — even reverbs — there are some wonderful pieces that work so well, so why switch? I have quite a few old Neves, 1073s and 1084s, a lot of API preamps, API graphics, and some old Sphere EQs. I also have two Eventide SP2016s which are one of my favourites, and I have an old AKG BX5 spring reverb. They become part of the sonic tools that you know how to apply to your productions.

Photo: Ed Freeman

Rafa Sardina Just when we thought we’d got the measure of him he’s gone and added a further award at this year’s Grammys to take his running total to ten; Rafa Sardina talks to NIGEL JOPSON about the speciﬁcs of Latin music, building a studio and starting his own label.

ARDINA RECEIVED HIS 10th Grammy (best Mexican-American album) for Luis Miguel’s Mexico En La Piel at the 48th Grammy awards. Rafa also contributed to this year’s Grammy winning performance (best male pop vocal) of Stevie Wonder. Acclaimed guitar player Alejandro Sanz’s album No Es Lo Mismo, recorded by Sardina, won Record Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Album and also took the trophy for Best Engineered Album at the 46th awards. Rafa began his audio career in the Basque region of Spain, playing guitar and bass and doing live sound for local folk and jazz performers. After moving to Los Angeles he served his apprenticeship as an engineer at Hollywood’s Ocean Way and Record One studios, working with a diverse array of artists from the Rolling Stones to Ricky Martin and Rod Stewart. His big break as an 40

independent came when he scooped a gig engineering for superstar Luis Miguel, with whom he earned two Latin Grammy Awards in 2000, Album Of The Year and Best Pop Album, for Amarte Es Un Placer. He has now recorded seven albums for Miguel. Sardina mixed Antonio Orozco’s top ten album El Principio del Comienzo, which stormed into first place in the Spanish album charts on release in 2004, and its 2005 follow-up. Rafa has recorded a varied and impressive list of artists including Macy Gray, Dr Dre, Dru Hill, Sheryl Crow and Marc Antoine. He also worked on film soundtracks including Any Given Sunday and 102 Dalmatians, and last June opened his After Hours studio adjacent to his home in Woodland Hills, where he was busy mixing the soundtrack for Family Reunion, a feature film from Lions Gate Entertainment, when Resolution interviewed him. resolution

How do you integrate all the outboard processors with your ProControl? I have developed a way of working when I’m mixing where I use my convertors as inserts. I have my own calculations of the processing delay, so I can slide things around to compensate. When you start using subgroups on drums and stuff like that it’s a completely different ball game, it’s not like working on an analogue board where everything is phase coherent. I calculated the delays for the Digidesign — I have some 192s — and for the Apogees using a test tone, then I line up the before and after audio to ﬁnd the processing delay. I see your outboard hardware is not just conﬁned to vintage analogue pieces ... There are some truly amazing new hardware devices, like the Distressors and the Transient Designer. I sometimes use Transient Designer to change the sustain on a piano, or to change the hammer attack, it can really alter the way a keyboard sits in the track. Transient Designer can work well on other instruments besides those that are drum-like, although people tend to forget that sometimes. I also have the Sony sampling reverb, which I love, and the new Celemony Melodyne software can be a really creative tool. How are you using the Melodyne? I use it to develop new harmonic ideas, maybe to do funky stuff like triggering tones into percussive elements, I’ve even used it with a conga track. It all comes down to how much time you have to experiment. I like to try new things, but only one at March 2006

craft a time and when I can justify the time and purpose. If you try to introduce too many elements it can work out badly — it has happened to me that a band might rush out before a recording and all buy new instruments, new amps — and they haven’t even ﬁgured out how to use them! It can sometimes be a step back rather than a step forward.

Do you find there are constant script and edit-driven music revisions involved with film soundtracks? In the past I have, for example, been mixing some of the underscore and then — on the same day — I’ve had to book another room to record a jazz quartet to create a new cue. There’s a lot of improvisation to it which I sort of like. There are high levels of restriction when they come back to you with their specific needs for a scene, but it drives your level of creativity up, and you get to work with many different styles of music — you might be working on an orchestral piece — then next it’s an R&B track. Sometimes different producers handle this, but often it’s the same team of people and I really enjoy that, you really get to exercise your chops. I have another movie I might be working on as executive producer for the music — it’s a feature film about dancing, about old-school Salsa — so it has a lot of music!

Photo: Kevin Scanlon

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Is your home studio recording space large enough for a live band? My studio is not a huge tracking room, but it’s big enough to record drums and a grand piano, I have recorded a jazz trio live in there. I tried to build my studio from the ground up as a state-of-the-art place, the good thing was I had some experience helping artists to specify and build their own studios, I built a couple of studios in Spain and a few more in LA. I used Clayt Hudson for the acoustics and to help me realise the design. It’s not really a ‘home’ studio, it just happens to be built next to my house! It’s very well equipped, it’s just not available for booking as a commercial facility. Did you build your studio to bring in the ﬁlm work, or was it part of a drive to develop new artists as a producer? Until two years ago I was mainly engineering and mixing, since then my main focus has been producing. From the very beginning the whole philosophy of having a studio was to facilitate my work and the creativity of people I bring in. Right now I’m about to start my own small independent label with some partners. When you are working for a big label there are so many other factors that come into the equation. There are so many ‘baby projects’ at the major labels: you may produce several tracks for them — then they’re never released — the label is just pitching the market! There’s quite a lot of that sort of work happening these days. Producing artists ‘on spec’ always raises the difﬁcult issue of how to structure a contract to protect the producer’s time and work, is having a record label a good means of formalising this relationship? Having your own label does make this aspect of development much clearer. It also shows your further commitment to the artist. Even if you have a sort of ‘guerrilla’ attitude about how to promote your artist you still don’t have the marketing and distribution resources, you will need to strike some sort of arrangement with a major to really be able to sell your product, it’s not an easy task. Despite the new ways of promotion over the Internet, we still need March 2006

craft the traditional marketing and physical distribution muscle of a large corporation to reach a big audience. At the moment I’m ﬁnalising some agreements in that respect.

Is the outsourcing of artist development to producers like yourself a growing trend for the majors? The whole landscape is getting smaller and smaller as the major labels get rid of so many of the resources they once had. The truth is, the majors just don’t have the manpower these days to really go out and do proper scouting for new bands. Even when they find new artists, major labels are relying more and more on independent producers and smaller labels to jump in and develop the artist. How do your development artists come to you? From every possible way! There are two different styles of artist: there are those who don’t write their own music, who will need a high degree of collaboration to be able to create music, who will require the whole nine yards. Then there are bands who already know the craft of making music, but need help to channel their efforts. You don’t really get to choose which sort of artist you work with — you either like the music or you don’t — you must respond to your instincts, and not worry beforehand about what it’s going to take to really come out with a great final product. Listening to Luis Miguel’s Mexico, the album you won the Grammy for, it sounds like he really took the range of his vocal performance up for that record. It was a very special album for him: those songs are truly part of his roots, he was born in Puerto Rico, but he grew up in Mexico. He always included mariachi music in his live performances, but he had never released a mariachi album. It was really in his heart and his blood. I believe the band you used, Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, is very famous? They have been active since 1895 — over a 100 years — non-stop. They are the oldest existing mariachi group, it was a fantastic experience because some of the players had been with the group for 50 years! We recorded them at Ocean Way Studio B. Do you find acts are encouraged to come to you because of your success as a Grammywinning engineer? Many people know me because of my Latin work — even though it may not have been my main line of work — but I have had most success, or recognition, with that genre. When I got a job at Ocean Way Studios I was exposed to do so many different kinds of music, from orchestra work through the Black Crows, to Frank Sinatra and Barbara Streisand. I was lucky enough to get a big break with Luis Miguel, but at the time I was working on a lot of R&B music with Dr Dre, Dru Hill and so on. My label really reflects that, I’m developing a hip-hop R&B artist right now. I get the feeling guys like Antonio Orozca may have been listening to bands like Weezer or Goldfinger ... and these new influences are emerging in the work of a new generation of Latin artists. Yes, the landscape has really changed in Latin music, even though it’s still a bit more conservative than most markets. This means more work for artists and producers who want to make a change, because obviously they find there’s a bit of a reaction against 44

At Chalice Studios

Photo: TheC

them for trying to move forward, but it’s very satisfying seeing many artists ... ‘being allowed’ ... to do something different that reﬂects what’s happening in other world markets — like Britain!

When I was in Chile recently, I was quite surprised to hear Andrea Echeverri singing to sampled beats and ﬁltered sequences on her new album. It’s funny that you’ve highlighted this artist, because she was a singer with a very famous Chilean band, Aterciopelados, before she went solo. In order to do that, she had to come here to LA from Chile and sign with an independent label based here called Nacional Records. She had to go the indie route to be able to release material in the style she really wanted — which doesn’t mean she won’t want to eventually switch to a major label to reach a bigger audience. Artists have become more educated about the process of making music, about what it means to work with a producer. These days I ﬁnd that artists know more about what they need to do to get signed, or to create a buzz in the business. Before, this used to be a rather obscure area, resolution

nobody would talk about it and the business side was something that happened behind closed doors.

So you’re very busy mixing ﬁlm scores, recording Grammy-winning albums with major artists, building studios, song writing, developing new artists, starting a label ... are you doing all this on your own? I have a team of people I collaborate with, some arrangers I work with, a couple of people I co-produce with. Otherwise it would be impossible! I also have two assistant engineers — who work independently — I call them for different projects if I need them. I’m quite good at time-managing myself. If you think that you are going to be able to mix and match and do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, you really won’t get the results. You have to force yourself to be very speciﬁc about your schedule: for this day I will work on this — then the second half of the day I will work on this other project — and then you must commit yourself to really doing that. Sometimes you must commit to not answering the phone, you have to be 100%! ■ March 2006

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the person who is operating it is doing at the time. Music is playing, but the operator could be zoomed in on something, doing a bit of editing, without the screen scrolling, and you’re looking for something else thinking: ‘what the feck is he doing?’ Then you realise he’s not doing what you thought — but he’s working on the chorus before — and you think: ‘but I don’t want ...!’ I ﬁnd that absolutely infuriating, quite distressing, so I try and work it myself, most of the time. If you are working in MIDI it’s quite quick, but if you happen to want to edit something and it’s not to a grid it can be quite slow.

You formerly had your colours ﬁrmly nailed to the analogue mast, was it the new generation of high sample rate convertors that persuaded you to go digital? I have done a lot of SACD/DSD recording and I love it, I think the whole sound is more relaxed, that’s the main thing I get out of it compared to PCM. I had the opportunity to directly A-B test digital with analogue tape. 192k is very seductive, but we decided in this case, because of the project we were doing, that we were going to stick at 48k. I was at Hook End where there are wonderful Studers, A827 Gold Editions, no noise reduction, we picked our tape carefully and lined the machine up to death so that everything was spot on. There’s a very large SSL so I was able to have all the mics plus the two multitrack returns all on channels. It was sounding great, I recorded a song top to bottom on both machines at the same time. We were all thinking: ‘this is going to be it, tape is gonna kick Pro Tools into the dust, we know that digital thing is not as good.’ We played them back side by side and the 2-inch just sounded crap! Really crap ... I was so disappointed. It was a small middley sound, and Pro Tools sounded massive. I set the recording up so it would have sounded good coming off tape: modulating certain things, but being careful not to drive the hihat and so on too loud, I knew I had played to the tape’s strengths. It still sounded rotten. So that’s it for me, I can’t do it anymore, I can’t waste all the time and effort!

Calum Malcolm He enjoys an enviable reputation as a purveyor of audiophile quality yet incredibly his portfolio manages to span pop, rock, folk, jazz and orchestral work. NIGEL JOPSON quizzes him on room preferences, mic placement and technique, and why he can’t be doing with analogue tape anymore.

ALUM MALCOLM IS an engineer and producer whose discography encompasses an unusual breadth of genres: he’s been just as successful recording The Blue Nile, Hue and Cry, Simple Minds, Wet Wet Wet, Fish, Prefab Sprout and Mark Knopﬂer as he has been producing traditional Scottish music from Davey Spillane, Aly Bain, Billy Jackson, Mairi MacInnes and Boys Of The Lough. His recording credits for classical music — including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Polish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble, BBC Proms in the Park, David Paul Jones and The Celtic Tenors — would be enough to keep a lesser knob-twiddler in gainful fulltime employment — but still he’s managed to carve a reputation for himself as an audiophile jazz producer with Barb Jungr, Claire Martin, Carol Kidd, Ray Gelato Giants, Gerard Presencer, Martin Taylor and Stephan Grapelli. As if that weren’t enough, Calum owned one of the best known Scottish recording studios 46

— Castlesound in Edinburgh — for 24 years, and has apparently recorded the marching bands of just about every signiﬁcantly musical regiment in the British army! (pictures at The Mixing Rooms, Glasgow by www.recordproduction.com)

Most of your work is as a producer now, do you still do all the engineering as well? I do, because it’s quicker! By the time you’ve asked somebody you may as well have done it yourself. I can’t work Pro Tools very well — I’m OK — but I’m not a whizz. All the DAWs are very much a one person operation, they exclude other people in the room: that’s the musicians and the producer! It’s less of a problem when you have a console as you can see faders and meters moving, you feel a part of what you’re hearing and you understand it. If a DAW is not connected to a console, you don’t know which tracks you are hearing, and you also don’t know what resolution

So is it tempting, now you’re completely in the digital domain, to cut and paste choruses and key song sections? No I won’t, I make musicians play it all the way through! I believe the listener tunes out if they hear exactly the same thing twice, I’d rather it was a little bit different. I may move some audio — I might think it sounds interesting somewhere else — that’s what non-linear editing is all about, making something unexpected happen. But I wouldn’t cut blocks and paste songs together .... you can get a computer program for twelve quid that’ll do that. Don’t laugh! I bought Logic Audio — £700 it cost me. Then I went to the bookshop at Christmas to get a present for my daughter — there was Logic [Dorling Kindersley Hit Kit version] — you can have it for £15.99 including a microphone and a CD of loops from Steve Levine. Well bugger that! It didn’t work properly, of course, but if it had .... Is it the lack of a physical worksurface that bothers you? I have to use consoles, I couldn’t mix within Pro Tools, that’s truly appalling, I can’t live with the sound of that at all. For the type of production I like to do, and the sound I like to get, I still have to use a console. I don’t care if it’s an analogue or digital mixer, it’s still better than working within Pro Tools because the mix bus just doesn’t do it for me. I’ve argued with Digidesign about it — they say it’s perfect — I just don’t believe March 2006

craft it. Or if it is perfect, then I don’t like perfect. I have a little digital mixer at home, a Sony DMX-R100, it’s much nicer sounding so why should I bother mixing within Pro Tools? But then I’ve got an old Neve at home that blows everything into the weeds.

Which generation Neve is it? It’s an old one that Decca had built for all their classical recordings in the mid 1980s, it’s a ‘transportable’ Neve — so large and heavy I shall probably have to sell it — a 40-channel console in three sections. Really simple but it sounds beautiful. I did a comparison between a mix on the Neve and a mix in Pro Tools — the difference is night and day. I was going to ask who manufactures desks designed for what you do, but I suppose the answer is Rupert Neve when he was a lot younger! I do like his consoles, my favourite would still be the 8078 series. I recorded the Blue Nile’s third album on one of those at Mad Hatter Studios [formerly owned by Chick Corea] in Los Angeles. They had two 8078s in there, I’ve done a few other Jazz albums on 8078s in New York, I just love them.

large, dry space is you can get your microphones back off the instruments, you still get good separation, but with a much bigger sound because the microphones are not stuffed up the bell of a trumpet or the f-hole of a whatever. As you back off the instrument it becomes very much more real, but you still get this very ‘in your face’ sound because it’s a drier acoustic. That went completely out of fashion in the eighties — I think it might be coming back — I hope so!

Recording jazz ensembles and orchestras is often an excuse to wheel out the minimalist mic set-ups, but you use close mic techniques that owe a lot to rock and pop. Are you working hard at the mix stage to mute channels? Quested_S8_Resolution_ad_5-05.qxd No never. I leave it all open, I’m very careful 4/5/05 to get the colouration low at the time by placing mics in

certain positions. I do admit to occasionally measuring distances and adding delays later, 1ms per foot or so. I’m not daft about it, but it’s especially useful if you’ve got vocalists performing with an orchestra. Then it always sounds crap, very hollow with terriﬁc colouration from the crosstalk.

What’s your view of the current state of orchestral recording? When I buy a new classical CD I’m often disappointed to hear the very obvious use of Lexicon presets and over-EQing of spot mics. It’s horrible. If you listen to BBC Radio 3 CD Review programme on a Saturday morning (where they compare four recordings of a piece of music) invariably there’s a classic recording from the 1950s, a late 2:13 1 ﬁrst digital recording from 1983 1970spm one Page and the or whatever ... then there will be the new version.

Is jazz a special genre for you? Looking at the audiophile Linn label, you appear to have produced just about every artist on their jazz roster. I probably have at one time or other! I like some jazz, but I’m not a jazz aﬁcionado at all, I just enjoy the sound. I love working with people like Clare Martin because she has such a fantastic voice, I’ve just ﬁnished making an album with her and Sir Richard Rodney Bennet in New York. There are still a lot of great recording rooms in New York — big and dry oldstyle rooms — those old designs were tremendous. Probably not that great to play in, I’m sure a lot of musicians cursed them, but the great thing about a

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March 2006

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craft

They always say: ‘... the 1978 version is fantastic for the sheer performance of it blah blah ... but the sound is a bit of a letdown compared to the newest digital.’ And I’m thinking: ‘I disagree! I prefer the sound of the 1958 recording thanks very much!’

There’s a recording you made of Mozart’s Requiem by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with Charles Mackerras conducting. In the very busy Dies Irae, where the orchestral sound is normally so confused, you’ve managed to make each part stand out, with the cellos really aggressive and crisp. If you stand in front of an orchestra you can hear all that — but a crossed pair never will. It’s annoying, I wish it did! And for the Rex Tremendae Mozart has all the choir voices going, all the orchestra basses are sawing away, how did you cut the boom and make the instruments sound so deﬁned? Well ... you record it in a good room: that was the Usher Hall. Almost certainly I would have delayed some of the spot microphones. I’ve done a lot of records there. I’ll start off with either a spaced pair or a Decca tree, with two outriggers for the strings, that’s the basic sound, then I’ll move in from there. I have a couple of DPA 4041s, the large diaphragm omnis, out in the room for ambience. Then I will mic up each section, but it’s surprising how much of the sound will just be the pair or the tree and the outs, the rest will be mixed in just a little bit. Of course the conductor makes a huge difference. Mackerras is just unbelievable. Sir Charles will come 48

in and say: ‘Its not big enough — the strings are not big enough!’

What’s your response to that? I know you don’t reach for the Lexicon! I go out and move mics, it’s hard to get it, I’ll bring up the room to give it a bit of bloom. The DPAs are beautiful mics, that’s what the ambience is on all those records. Most of it is in the playing though, that’s 90% of it. Every time we start making a record with an orchestra, on the first session the sound will be thin, not good. A couple of hours in and it’s all happening: what have I done? Moved a mic a few inches — that hasn’t made any difference! I’m also very fond of classical recordings without too many edits in them, I have a lot of discussions about that with my colleague Phil Hobbs, with whom I do a lot of these albums for Linn. How did your association with Linn begin? I met them the year I started Castlesound Studios in Edinburgh in 1973, and they started the manufacturing company a year later. I was in a hifi shop cursing my monitors and they said there’s a new company in Glasgow building some loudspeakers. Ivor [Tiefenbrun, Linn founder] came over and he brought his Isobarik loudspeakers with him, they worked on an equal pressure principle and sounded great ... sometimes. We set them up in the studio and they ... blew up! A professional loudspeaker is a completely different animal — a more industrial animal — and never particularly pleasant to listen to, especially when they are ‘flat.’ I don’t play music that loud, but if you are recording a pop record you might care to solo a bass drum, at normal playback level, in which case you just destroy resolution

a domestic loudspeaker bass unit, it’s not even that loud, it’s just the whole performance of the loudspeaker system is being taken up with one instrument. Ivor and I fell out over that for a while and we didn’t speak, but later we became great friends. Recently I went to see Ivor and suggested he do something for the professional market and I sat with them to cobble something together [the Linn Professional 328A]. Linn have this wonderful servo control bass system which really works, even when it’s playing really quietly the low end goes right the way down.

Is that a system where there’s a dual winding voice coil, with the second winding operating a feedback signal to the amp? No, they have an accelerometer glued to the front of the bass driver. It measures acceleration, the rate of change, rather than cone movement, compares it to the input and modifies amplifier power output to compensate for any non-linearity. This overcomes any inefficiency of the cone, so a small box like the 328A can be flat to 19Hz, and of course it sounds like there’s a sub on in the room. It was good fun, I enjoyed working on the design of the monitor, they’re not perfect but they are a great tool. You owned Castlesound studios until 1997 — what made you sell up? Twenty four years, that’s what. It was too much, I don’t feel the need to run a studio anymore ... not when I can persuade someone else to do it for me! Castlesound is still busy, you can’t book in. If you run a decent studio ... and there aren’t many places that are good anymore ... the work will come, I’m convinced of it. ■ March 2006

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Omnidirectional mics Favoured by some and derided by more than a few, the use of an omnidirectional mic does imply a certain maturity and experience about the user. Alchemea’s NEIL PICKLES explains how he stopped worrying about spill and learnt to love the omni microphone.

TANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE and wisdom seems to dictate that omni mics are only good for one thing, namely a nice spaced A-B pair on your drum kit, strings or piano. With advances in microphone design by manufacturers like DPA and Schoeps, particularly in miniaturisation, perhaps it’s time to reappraise that view and look at some of the arguments for using omnis in close miking applications. It’s important to note that most people’s experience of omnis is frequently limited to the omni option on a multi pattern mic. In my experience, these types of omni are generally unrepresentative of the breed as the mics often sound best in cardioid pattern. They don’t compare favourably with a mic that has been designed as an omni from the ground up. As an illustrative practical scenario I’m going to use the miking of an entire drum kit with close mic omnis. Let's discuss the spill issue ﬁrst as it’s the ﬁrst thing 50

people tend to think of when ruling out an omni mic for such a task. The ﬁrst and most overlooked thing to consider is the quality of the spill itself. Traditional dynamic mics typically used for close drum miking have poor off-axis response and the spill doesn’t sound very good at all when compared to omnis. It’s no wonder we spend so much time trying to gate, expand or edit out that spill. Omnis have excellent off-axis response and the spill can therefore be surprisingly useable and you may actually decide it doesn’t need removing at all. In terms of minimising the spill, clearly an omni will pick up sounds from all directions but if you can move the mic closer to the source you can get a better ratio between direct and indirect sound sources. Omnis do not suffer from any kind of proximity effect so move it closer, you will still get spill but you can get it down to a level that is surprisingly comparable to your ﬁrst choice dynamic mic, albeit with a much more neutral tone and some pleasant ‘air’ to boot. resolution

Positioning your mics is another area to consider. You may like dynamic mic X but what if the drummer’s set up is such that it’s not possible to get your cardioid mic pointed as you would like at the various drums? As we’ve already mentioned, directional (pressure gradient transducers) sound so much better on-axis and if you can’t get the angles right then you’ll be recording your drum with the worst sounding pickup area of your mic. Omnis are much less susceptible to off-axis colouration and should be considered for precisely this reason if space is tight. On kick drums and toms, do you want the bottom end to sound really tight and focused? Try using an omni mic that records flat from 20Hz upwards and doesn’t start to roll off under 100Hz as a lot of the dynamic cardioid mics do. A lot of omnis are pretty much flat from 20Hz-20kHz and will yield a much more natural, neutral sound than a traditional dynamic with its built in EQ presence lifts. What you’ll get with an omni will sound much more like what you heard in the room with the drums. ‘Yes, that’s fine but what if I like dynamic mic X’s upper mid lift because it adds more punch,’ I hear you say. Then dial in some appropriate EQ on the omni; the attack will be captured very accurately and can be easily accentuated and you still have that great bottom end as well. You may find that you just need to work the EQ less anyway as the recording will sound more natural in the first place. SPL levels and distortion are often cited as reasons March 2006

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getting the most from Spot the bass drum mic

not to use condensor/electret mics on loud sources, such SPL and rarely have I had to swap them out for a as drums, but AV_02.06 again this is a20/2/06 common misconception. Res_Smart 5:33 pm Pagemore 1 traditional dynamic in a session. The mics I have mentioned will handle at least 130dB Of course, omnis aren’t just for drums and there are

The most exciting new product in years - just got affordable! NOW FROM UNDER £11 k! The Smart AV Console has been universally acclaimed as a breakthrough in control surface technology, offering a quantum leap forward in ergonomics and a learning curve that is measured in minutes. Quality comes at a cost though and until now, the Console has not been within the reach of every facility’s budget. The introduction of the new Professional Series changes all that though, with prices starting from an incredible £10,999. Smart Consoles are designed for use with today's most popular DAWs including Apple Logic, Digidesign Pro Tools and Merging Technologies Pyramix and are also ideal for live use in conjunction with hardware engines from Peavey and Klotz. See what makes the Smart Console great below:

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other applications where the use of them serves as a great Get Out of Jail card. You have an acoustic guitar player who just can’t stay still; you position your mic beautifully to get the best overall tone and then they move. This makes drop ins difficult as the tone can vary staggeringly from even a slight movement and you can’t realistically demand that they just sit tight. Get a miniature omni mic, find a sweet spot on the guitar and just clip it on. They can now get into their performance and move all they like. You can get miniature cardioids but omnis will not have an unpleasant proximity effect and acoustic instruments truly benefit from a 20Hz20kHz response. The process is also good for double bass, cellos, and violins where you can even clip them using special mounts under the bridge. For percussion, such as tablas and congas, it’s a common misconception that a spaced pair has to be at least 50-60cm apart, which is why you can’t use a spaced pair of omnis for this type of application and benefit from their fantastic bass response. In fact, spacings down to 17-20cm are detectable by the ear as this distance is equivalent to the distance between our ears. You can accentuate this by using a Jecklin Disc between the two omnis or improvising one. A Jecklin Disc is an acoustic baffle that enhances the channel separation of stereo signals. When placed between the two microphones in a spaced A-B stereo set up, the shadow effect from the baffle will have a positive influence on the attenuation of off-axis sound sources and thereby enhances the channel separation. Baffles should be made from an acoustically absorbent material to prevent reflections. Percussionists have looked a little dubiously at my setup but have consequently commented on how much they liked the recorded sound over the setup they’ve normally used. For singers that move, that sing off-axis and around the mic, get in close with lots of proximity for one word and then pull away for the next… try an omni. And what’s wrong with a little room tone anyway? Some live rooms actually sound nice so let’s start recording them before the last one is shut down. In conclusion, I’m not dismissing cardioids. I’ll often record a snare or toms with a classic cardioid like a Shure SM57 or SM57beta top and bottom just because I like the sound and the same goes for guitar cabs. But I often also use omnis for the same. When I see reader’s advice articles in magazines dismissing the omni for these kind of applications, I don’t think they’re accurate or balanced and they certainly don’t equate to my experience of using them. We should stop worrying about spill and learn to love omnis as an essential element in every recordist’s sonic arsenal. ■

Contact ALCHEMEA, LONDON: Website: www.alchemea.com

March 2006

ten

Enduring designs Some things have never been bettered while others have simply remained largely unaltered for a variety of reasons, either way they’re ideas and designs that have longevity and a degree of acceptance in common. KEITH SPENCER-ALLEN reflects on a representative selection. BEYER DT100 HEADPHONES — Still the most popular studio headphones in the UK and many other places as well. Introduced in 1968 by Beyer who’d developed the original dynamic headphone 20 years earlier, the DT100 was perfectly adapted for all professional usage and able to provide a high output at a reasonable quality with a fairly neutral character. The circumaural design (total enclosure of the ear) provides a high degree of acoustic isolation, and for practical use, it was possible to wear just one earpiece without breaking them. Most important was the fact that they were marketed to professionals with the recognition that, while robust, at some time they will become damaged. Virtually every bit is replaceable from spares that are easy to acquire. There are many modern designs (including Beyer’s own) that stress they outperform the DT100’s audio specs but that’s just missing the point. THE PLATE — When the term ‘plate echo’ is used we are normally referring to those made by EMT who stopped doing so several decades ago. For those not familiar with the technology, a transducer was used to excite a thin metal sheet that was suspended under tension within a frame. Pick-up transducers were positioned — one, two or even four (according to the model) — distant from the ‘exciter’ to output the vibrations travelling through the plate. It sounds crude but when lovingly cared for and positioned, because they are very sensitive to external noise, the result can be very good. Digital Plate effects come close but the ‘contained density’ only comes from the real thing. BBC MONITORS — In the 1950s and 60s, the BBC’s R&D was particularly active in the development of monitor loudspeakers. Out of this work came two particular 2-way models, the LS3 and LS5, and to these model numbers was added a postfix to identify the drivers — the LS3/5a and the LS5/8 being the best known. They were made by a number of manufacturers under BBC license. Two factors are of interest — the BBC R&D dept was very innovative in the early use of Bextrene cones, crossover design, and measurement techniques and would always reference designs against the human voice as a standard. Years of consistent use and tweaking created a superbly natural sounding speaker that still holds its own despite rarely finding a home in non-broadcast studios. March 2006

THE MOUSE — Well over 30 years old and still the most popular input controller for a GUI interface. Although alternative controllers — the track ball, touchscreen, stylus/tablet, and scratch pad — have some specific advantages over the mouse, none of them wins overall. It’s reputed to have appeared first, in a form that we might recognise it, at the Xerox Corp’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) as part of its groundbreaking Alto personal computer in the early 1970s. It was a project that also introduced WYSIWYG displays with menus and icons, and a graphical user interface (GUI). The mouse has survived because it works well, can be used for precision control, and it’s adapted to human physiology — having opposing thumbs we’ve been able to use tools. Imagine your hand around a mouse; then imagine that mouse not being there and slowly you draw the fingers together. Familiar isn’t it?

DBX 160 SERIES — Introduced in the 1970s as a single channel using ‘true’ RMS sensing, simple controls, and a soft knee characteristic, the 160 compressor, and other members of the 160 series have remained ﬁrm studio favourites. Their automatic settings proved a boon for the engineer under pressure having no immediate opportunity to set up a complex compressor, while the gentle sonic effect was ideal for taming mildly wayward dynamics.

DRAWMER DS201 — When Ivor Drawmer’s ﬂedgling company introduced the 201 stereo gate in the early 1980s, it grabbed studios’ imagination. It provided high performance gating with controls (That’ll be the Frequency Conscious bit. Ed) not found on competing products at a lower price and in a highly functional form. It still remains a deﬁnitive analogue product and totally ubiquitous.

COLES MICS — We should be more specific — we’re really referring to the 4038, whose image is iconic but few remember its model number. Developed by the BBC in the 1950s as the PGS, it was then engineered and manufactured by STC, later by Coles, as the 4038. It’s a large, heavy ribbon mic whose fig-8 pattern defines use; output is low and needs matching with a suitable mic pre; while mechanically robust the ribbon is vulnerable to gusts of air and use of phantom power. However, treated with respect, this mic sounds very good on acoustic instruments in the right room and has even found application on Marshall stacks and drum overheads!

TANNOY DUAL CONCENTRIC — Introduced in 1947, Tannoy’s design placed a horn-loaded HF unit at the centre of an LF driver. The close integration of the units gave the design a number of advantages, the most recently recognised being that it was virtually a point source approach that was free from cancellations caused by multiple drivers; the single axis maintains a more constant stereo image due to a very uniform dispersion characteristic. Unfortunately it took over 20 years to get power handling to approach studio monitor expectations. A Dual Concentric is still a very effective nearﬁeld monitor as the sound doesn’t change with head movement but Tannoy has placed less emphasis on the technology in new models.

T H E EQUIPMENT RACK — We’ve enjoyed decades of standardisation in equipment dimensions and most gear fits into a 19inch rack. Now speced in EIA/ IEC standards the dimensions were created by the early telephone companies for manufacturers of their equipment to adhere to. Originally known as relay racks, accepted widths were 19, 24 and 30 inches but only the first has prospered. Heights are measured in 1U which is actually 1.75 inches minus 0.031 inches so that it fits.

THE FADER — Early faders were simply a means of turning a standard rotary potentiometer by using a linear movement. Having overcome the requirements of creating a linear resistive track, the full beneﬁts were seen. Here was a controller that also displayed its own level in a way that could be absolute, or viewed relatively against other signal paths. Even when the fader controlled a VCA or digital device, or was even itself virtual, its value as a level indicator is still recognised. ■

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sweet spot

Accelerated Ribbon Technology explained German monitor manufacturer ADAM has majored on its use of strange-looking drivers in its model range. ADAM Audio’s KLAUS HEINZ explains how they put the ART in their midrange and tweeter driver designs.

Impedance mag plot, showing a resonance peak of 30mOhm only (= very good damping). Note the high resolution vertical scale here, in a normal plot this resonance would simply disappear in the line thickness.

Frequency response with 0, -15 and -30 degree microphone positions, indicating good dispersion characteristics comparable to the ones of ﬂat mounted 1-inch domes. Note the system’s 20 kHz measurement band limit.

DAM (ADVANCED DYNAMIC AUDIO MONITORS) monitors are developed and manufactured in Berlin, Germany and employ innovative folded ribbon mid and high frequency drivers that incorporate a new approach to the Air Motion Transformer concept originally developed by Dr Oskar Heil 40 years ago. ADAM improved on this idea using superior geometries and materials and believed that this rare technical progress was reason enough for the two company founders to enter a market that wasn’t exactly crying out for a new brand of studio monitors. As every ADAM monitor employs this new tweeter design it is worth looking at the transducer situation in general and at the ART (Accelerated Ribbon Technology) in more detail. The dynamic tweeter used in more than 99% of all loudspeakers today generates sound via a voice coil that is mechanically connected to a stiff cone or dome. The materials preferred are fabric, polyamide, or aluminium. The unavoidable shortcomings of this construction method are the relatively high mass of the membrane/voice coil assembly, and the tendency of the assembly to lose stiffness over time. The former constrains the upper frequency range and the latter progressively degrades the overall sonic performance. A relatively early attempt to solve these problems was the ribbon tweeter, in which current is passed through a small aluminium ribbon located in a strong magnetic ﬁeld. Problems with this design included limited efﬁciency and dynamics and the very low impedance necessitated an extra transformer to drive it.

Impedance phase plot, comparing the ART tweeter with a 1-inch dome, the latter showing some deviations due to the voice coil’s inductive nature. Phase deviation for the ART tweeter in the used band is +/- 1.5 degrees compared to the +/-15 degrees of the dome tweeter.

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March 2006

sweet spot Their viability as a general replacement for dynamic tweeters was further reduced by the fact that these tweeters typically could only be used for frequencies above 5kHz, consequently missing a great deal of critical timbral information. Within the last 20 years or so, magnetostatic designs have superseded the original aluminium ribbons. In this method of construction, the aluminium ribbon was used in conjunction with a Kapton foil. These designs achieved normal impedances, and therefore eliminated the need for the extra transformer. The ADAM ART tweeters and midrange units take a completely new approach to the kinematics of moving air. The ART membrane consists of a pleated diaphragm in which the folds compress or expand according to the audio signal applied to them. The result is that air is drawn in and squeezed out, like the bellows of an accordion. All other loudspeaker drive units (regardless of whether they are voice coil-driven, ribbons, electrostatic, piezo or magnetostatic) act like a piston, moving air in a 1:1 ratio with regard to the motion of the driver. The problem with this is that the specific weight of air is much lower than that of the driving mechanism. As a result, the air does not couple effectively with the transducer. The analogous situation in electrical terms is described as bad impedance matching between source and load. In both cases (acoustical and electrical) the result is less than optimal power transfer. The ART design achieves an improvement in air loading by a factor of 4 over conventional transducers. This superior ‘motor’ is responsible for the clarity and transient reproduction that can be heard from ART drive units. In addition to the improved air coupling, the ART tweeter’s pleated membrane avoids the typical break-up and subsequent dynamic limiting at higher frequencies of stiffer voice coil designs, such as those found in dome and cone tweeters. Another positive of the ART design is that the driving ‘stripes’ are in direct contact with the outer air and are cooled immediately. Thermal power handling of the units is increased and surpasses that of 1-inch domes by a factor of more than 2:1. Many functional distinctions in construction and kinematics can be drawn between the ART tweeter and voice coil-driven dome tweeters. Previous ‘esoteric’ designs have always exhibited technical shortcomings, such as very little impedance (ribbons), bad dispersion (electrostatics, as with the original Heil Air Motion Transformer), low efficiency (magnetostrictive tweeters) or environmental problems (ozone from the ionic tweeter). ART tweeters show none of the engineering limitations of previous designs and have an efficiency of approximately 92dB/W/m, a linear impedance of 3.2 ± 0.05Ohm, a ‘perfect’ phase response of +/-1 degree within the used bandwidth, excellent directivity characteristics and a power handling two or three times that of 1-inch domes. Diaphragm area is another important factor in determining the dynamic range of a transducer. Basically, what you see is what you get. The cone area you can see is always the acoustically active area of the loudspeaker and this is true for practically all other drive units. By folding the ART diaphragm into the third dimension (as seen from the listener’s position) a larger foil can be used, thus increasing the acoustically effective area of the diaphragm by a factor of more than 2.5. This results in higher dynamic output with excellent dispersion. The ART midrange driver uses a diaphragm that weighs only a fraction of comparable voice coil units, and can cover the range from 600Hz to 12kHz. The large diaphragm area — comparable to a 7-inch conventional March 2006

midrange unit — permits very high, uncompressed SPL without compromising dispersion. The unit has an absolutely flat impedance curve and consequently exhibits linear phase behaviour, with a +/- 0.75 degree deviation within the used frequency band. The literature behind speaker engineering deals frequently with the question of how much does phase linearity influence sound quality. Transients often change their appearance in the time domain if they go through a system with only slightly nonlinear phase behaviour. The audible quality, however, is the same in many cases, so the proof, once more, is in the listening. We neither can nor want to finish the phase discussion, but it is good to know that the ART midrange units excel in this discipline. The woofers used in ADAM’s S Series monitors have a special diaphragm called HexaCone. The core is a honeycomb structure made of Nomex, making

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them light and stiff. The front and back of the cone has been coated with Kevlar, which withstands elongation and enables the cone to resist deformation. HexaCone woofers are far more rigid than paper, polypropylene or aluminium devices of similar dimensions. The effective length and diameter of the voice coils, together with the strength of the magnets and the available cabinet volume are aligned for musically optimum low frequency reproduction, not for the most impressive bass drum per cubic inch. All in all, ADAM is trying to make a step forward in the precision of music reproduction and to develop ‘the sharper tool’ for the demanding sound or mastering engineer. ■

Contact ADAM AUDIO, GERMANY: Website: www.adam-audio.com

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VER THE LAST 18 months there has been a massive transformation in the high street TV market. Before, although you might see a token plasma or LCD ﬂat screen with a scary price tag, the majority of sets were porky glass bottles. Now the position is reversed. The high street stores may still have a bottle or two in the larger sizes and a shelf of super cheap small screen sets but by far the majority are LCD with plasma not far behind. Several of the major TV manufacturers have stopped production of CRTs and UK high street electronics store Dixons has said it will no longer stock them. LCD and Plasma prices have plummeted to less than half the levels of a year ago and are still falling. At the same time, many of this season’s models sport a prominent ‘HD Ready’ sticker. This indicates that the TV meets minimum criteria set by the EICTA (European Industry Association for Information Systems, Communication Technologies and Consumer Electronics). HD Ready is intended to simplify choice for the consumer. You may wonder why this is necessary. The introduction of digital technology to TV broadcasting opens up many new possibilities but there is also a downside — confusion. With analogue terrestrial, life is simple for the consumer. The broadcaster sends 625 line 50 ﬁeld pictures in Europe (525 60 in the USA, etc.) and converts anything else to this standard before transmission. The only source of problems in recent years has been aspect ratios when 16:9 widescreen arrived. Even this comparatively simple ‘choice’ is often badly dealt with by current sets. In an ideal world HDTV would follow the analogue model with a single standard for HDTV delivery, at any rate for each continent. Given the pace of development in compression codecs and all the politics involved, this was never

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proaudio@goldenagemusic.se Tel. +46 322 66 50 50 Fax. +46 322 66 50 51

March 2006

in the picture going to happen. But at the very least it would have made sense to standardise on progressive scan formats. To quote David Wood from his EBU article High Definition — A Progressive Approach — October 2004 ‘… if you must have a de-interlacer, it is better to do something once with expensive and complex equipment at the studio output, than to do it a thousand times less well using low-cost equipment in each and every receiver across the land.’ Unfortunately it appears that this advice has not been heeded and interlace vs progressive is not the only issue. A digital display has a fixed native resolution; commonly 1366 by 768 pixels although 1920 by 1080 panels are becoming affordable. Any other resolution has to be generated by mathematically scaling images and the quality of the scaling process can vary -– a lot. A single resolution standard would have concentrated effort and reduced the complexity. However, the powers that be, in Europe and the USA, decided to allow a range. In the USA, thanks to commercial pressures, there are 18 possibilities although some will probably never be used. Broadcast HD in Europe currently arrives in one of two flavours, 720p (1280 by 720) or 1080i (1920 by 1080). Both require approximately the same transmission bandwidth due to the fact that one is progressive scan and the other interlaced. There is some debate about which is preferable. It is generally accepted that progressive scan formats work better with fast motion and the greater resolution of 1080i comes into its own with drama and arts programming. However, since the current ‘gold standard’ of 1080p50 (1920 by 1080 progressive @ 50fps) is demonstrably better, the argument is somewhat specious and the real question is bandwidth. Since codecs are rapidly progressing, this should cease to be a problem in a few years. By common consent the base HDTV multichannel audio standard is 5.1. In the USA Dolby is a required format. In Europe, Dolby, DTS and MPEG are all vying for attention. It is up to the broadcasters and the set top box manufacturers to decide. One might naively assume an HD Ready sticker would mean that the TV could receive broadcast HDTV. In fact the HD Ready specification doesn’t even mention broadcast reception or audio formats. No doubt integrated HDTVs will appear, just don’t hold your breath. You might also assume a native resolution matching 720 or 1080 would be a prerequisite. In fact, the requirement is only that the display should be capable of converting 720p and 1080i images and displaying them on a screen with a minimum vertical resolution of 720 pixels or active lines. This means a stretched 1024 by 720 panel can carry the HD Ready sticker. The specification does define minimum requirements for interfacing sources. There must be either: a DVI (Digital Video Interface) or HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) with ‘High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection System’ support and an analogue component input capable of accepting 720p and 1080i in 50Hz and 60Hz flavours. HD broadcasting has already begun in Europe with several companies routinely delivering HD content via satellite. Even in my sleepy little South Coast town the local independent TV shop has five screens showing Canal+ HD test transmissions from a satellite dish on the roof. Pre-publicity for Sky HD is everywhere and the bulletin boards are thick with rumour about the likely launch date with April 1 leading the betting, (appropriate or what?) The BBC has recently announced a series of HD trials and declared its March 2006

intention that all programming will be originated in HD by 2010. It has also begun campaigning for the bandwidth released by the analogue switch off to be used for HD terrestrial transmission. In the longer term, broadband appears to be the most likely delivery medium and I suspect the lobbying will be ignored. Against this background it is unsurprising that a great deal of HD production is already taking place. Facility houses and broadcasters’ own facilities are rapidly gearing up to accommodate this. The problem from the audio perspective is that we are now supposed to produce 5.1 soundtracks, in the majority of cases without any increase in budget. The dividend may come from the back catalogue of material, which will require conversion as a minimum. Film originated programming, especially natural history and drama can be remade for HD. Soundtracks can be remixed for 5.1 with fresh telecine and video work.

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HD displays already have a bright future thanks to the impending release of Blu-ray and HD DVD but the real driver for HD broadcasting will be sport. This year’s World Cup will be broadcast in HD and the next Olympics will provide a major boost. Despite the confusion and bickering, HDTV is here to stay. ■

business

The dilemma of the orchestra Despite the virtual collapse of the classical recording industry during the 1990s, real orchestras have never been more popular as the icing on the cake for ﬁlms and a new generation of computer games employ sweeping scores to dramatic effect. Are the UK’s famous orchestral players beneﬁting from this, or is the work going to the bargain-basement ensembles of Eastern Europe?

NIGEL JOPSON

CHILL WIND BLEW through the classical music world during the last decade of the 20th century. Not only were concert audiences getting older, greyer and less abundant, but also the major record labels — themselves under threat from falling sales — decided to downsize their classical divisions dramatically. The concept of churning out new recordings of the same old symphonies on CD had never looked a sustainable business model, but many musicians were shocked at the brutal cull as traditionally supportive labels such as EMI axed deals and reduced their output to a trickle of populist crossover acts. Of the world’s top-class orchestral players, those from the UK’s underfunded orchestras looked most vulnerable. The LSO, one of the UK’s premier orchestras, has a combined Arts Council and City of London grant of £3.5 million — considerably more subsidy than most British orchestras — but less than half that of the Berlin Philharmonic. European state-owned TV broadcasters frequently feature classical concerts, whereas these have virtually disappeared from the small screen in the UK. US symphony orchestras may run operating deficits, but the figures are largely illusory owing to their very generous endowments: the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra is cushioned by an endowment of US$175 million. Boston and Los Angeles orchestral musicians expect to earn about $122,000 a year, New Yorkers are on only a few thousand less, and musicians in Chicago and San Francisco make around $113,000. By comparison, a rank-and-file player in London’s LSO earns up to £40,000, while equivalent desks in the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia are unlikely to make much more than £30,000 — in the provinces it’s nearer £25,000. Research conducted in 2004 by the MU (Musicians Union) discovered there was long term commitment — an average of 21 years — to the orchestral musician’s profession, but measly average earnings of £22,500 per annum. 42% of the survey respondents were between 36 and 45 years old — an age range when salaries should be at their highest. British orchestras have a uniquely competitive system for appointing new members: after auditions, prospective appointees are taken in on trial, with the process taking a year or more. ‘If I thought of it as a job, I would never do it in a million years,’ an acquaintance from one of London’s top orchestras told me, before going on to describe how one colleague with a large family had left to work for a kitchen installation business. ‘British orchestras work two or three times faster than any in continental Europe, and the amazing thing is, they are better, too,’ said French violinist Philippe Honoré, a member of the Philharmonia. ‘Working under such pressure gives the concerts an edge; but the downside is that there isn’t time to explore the music in more depth.’ The American model, where the same programme may be played four times a week, has often been fiercely debated in the UK as regards artistic or commercial merit. Conductor Colin Davis puts the opposing view to Honoré: ‘The American system traps musicians on a treadmill ... the same pattern of 58

rehearsals, concerts and repeats each week through the whole season — it’s numbing. Nor do I think it’s true that a performance gets deeper when it is repeated three or four times.’ For an orchestra management with tight finances there are a whole raft of issues to take into account, including the costs of rehearsing a concert programme, which can be up to £20,000. ‘One huge reason why orchestras struggle is because conductor’s fees are so high,’ complains Fiona Higham, a second violin with the LPO (London Philharmonic Orchestra), ‘a conductor can earn up to £15,000 for one concert, while we’re paid around £100.’ Conductors are sometimes seen as too cerebral and out of touch with working musicians. Trombonist Denis Wick tells a story of Claudio Abbado being horrified to learn the LSO had been working hard all day on a recording date with John Williams for Star Wars, before coming to rehearsals with him ‘... he had absolutely no idea what his orchestra did when they weren’t with him!’ Just as the classical music industry entered its leanest period ever, a new rival appeared for the film and TV soundtrack sessions many British musicians depended on for extra income. In the early 1990s I can recall Michael Kamen commenting on the quality of an Eastern European orchestra I was recording with him — he subsequently went on to work with several orchestras (in particular the Czech Philharmonic) from the former ‘Soviet Bloc’, as did other top composers faced with budget constraints. Allan Wilson, a British orchestrator who frequently works with the London Philharmonia (he conducted resolution

them for three Harry Potter game scores) expressed a familiar view to me recently: ‘Music is the last link in the chain before the ﬁlm is dubbed, and sometimes it seems as if whatever money is left over at the end of production is all that’s given to the music. Many composers are given a pathetic budget with the brief of “making it sound like Independence Day”! I’m an advocate of recording in London, but of course I also want to ply my own trade. I’ve recorded in Prague, Munich, Budapest, Berlin and Bratislava. It might possibly take a little longer in Eastern Europe, but the percentage difference in price does not correspond to the difference in work rate and playing standards, it’s more than acceptable.’ The cost of living, and a pool of still-active musicians trained in the days of state funding, gives Eastern Europeans an undeniable advantage. In Slovakia it is possible to engage orchestral players for the equivalent of £7 per hour, an unthinkable rate in the UK, where Scale 1 (2-36 hours) is £104 and Scale 2 (37-350 hours) is £77. Prague is slightly more expensive than Bratislava, and rates in Berlin are around £70 per hour. Hollywood is the undenied capital of the motion picture industry, and initially travel, logistic and language problems dissuaded the lower budget productions from heading to the east of Europe, with Seattle and Salt Lake City popular alternative destinations. But now it’s possible to add an orchestral ﬂourish from the East to a made-for-TV movie without leaving Los Angeles. Steve Salani has a unique operation at www.orchestra.net that allows March 2006

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Jonathan Williams

composers to send scores by email to Prague, and then monitor the recording in real time with an audio and visual link direct to the session. Clients can either go to Steve’s studio in Santa Monica and watch proceedings on a big screen, or install a special application called Session on their own computers and link to the system remotely via a DSL connection. This remote control application delivers a 26-track monitor mixer, a live video window with camera control, and a conductor talkback system. ‘Our system is designed to fully support prerecorded tracks and click, nowadays composers are using MIDI tracks all the time — especially with percussion — often we won’t have a live percussionist because the composers use samples for that. The working system is very simple for the client, we simply open an FTP account for each project, the client can then upload all their click tracks, MIDI files and PDF files of the score. We take care of all the score printing and we set up all the audio files,’ he says. Recent clients include ABC with a mini-series called Empire, ESPN with Code Breaker and the composer Mark Isham, who recorded string parts for his score on the movie Running Scared by remote control. Rates can be as low as $1695 per session hour (for a 50 piece orchestra) — a union orchestra in LA or a session in London would be four or five times as expensive. Salt Lake or Seattle would be at least double the price. With economics like this, the outlook seemed grim

for London. But in 2003 the MU negotiated a new PACT (Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) agreement that changed the landscape considerably, making London a more competitive environment for certain types of production. Producers working on films with a low budget (under £10 million) can provide documentary evidence of this to the MU, and then engage players on the lowest pay rate of Scale 4, £51 per hour, which is normally only available if the production is engaging musicians for over 800 hours total. This rate also applies to any orchestral recording for computer games, as the MU’s session organiser Peter Thoms explained to me: ‘We decided as a union to encourage games, as we saw it as a growth area, basically the players will receive at least £153 for the minimum 3-hour session call. The agreement has been very popular since it was negotiated, we’ve seen quite a lot of films come over here partly because of the rights package on offer: they get the film, the TV, the DVD, the Soundtrack and the EPK (Electronic Press Kit). The rights package available under Union agreements in the US is more limited, studios have to pay residuals and add-ons.’ Jonathan Williams (pictured) is an orchestrator and conductor who works for production house Nimrod. He told me the new agreement has been a boon for outfits like his: ‘I don’t think some sessions would be possible without PACT, if we were having to pay Scale 1 we certainly wouldn’t be able to do such large scores! For the game 24 — based on the SKY

TV programme — we went to Abbey Road. We had quite a big orchestra, and even though there were no woodwinds we had over 60 players. We have been asked to explore Prague and Bratislava in the past for budget reasons, but I always advise that it will save money in the long run because the standard is so good in London.’ One advantage London has is the ready availability of featured soloists, and the UK orchestral musician’s ability to play pieces with a more jazz-based or contemporary feel. The Philharmonia recently played together with a jazz big band on the soundtrack for the new James Bond movie, and currently the score for the film of the Da Vinci Code is being recorded in London. Williams also made a good point to me about the phenomenal work rate of UK orchestras. ‘I sometimes push to the maximum allowable ... I have recorded 20 minutes of score per hour. I schedule it very carefully because we can’t afford to dawdle, there’s not the same amount of time available [for games] as there is for TV and film work. I have to prioritise and say: we absolutely have to record this and this, if we can get to these pieces then it will be a bonus — otherwise we’ll just have to use samples.’ Twenty minutes of recording per hour is a truly phenomenal work rate, and a testament to the ability of UK players. ‘London’s orchestral musicians are the greatest sight-readers ever known,’ confirms André Previn, ‘and the fascinating thing is that if you are doing a particularly complex piece, it usually tends to be better on the first reading than at the second. At the first reading, everyone is usually concentrating, while the second time through they relax!’ Suddenly the www.orchestra.net deal doesn’t look so economical after all: ‘I usually tell clients to budget for one hour per three minutes of material,’ Salani told me, ‘we are able in some cases to get up to twice as much recorded, but that depends entirely on the material and orchestra configuration.’ By that measure Jonathan Williams is getting very good value from his players. Even if two or three days by the Danube sounds superficially attractive, he has even managed to match the lowest budget Slovakian £7 per hour (if their work rate is only three minutes of score.) ‘I think UK orchestral musicians have to work many more hours now than they used to. In America and Germany orchestras pay their players comparatively more than they do in the UK, but that is tied up with education and the perceived value placed on classical music,’ noted Allan Wilson. ‘But there will always be orchestral music recorded: the orchestra as an instrument is an amazing machine and will never be replaced. You can have the best samples in the universe, but if it’s performed electronically, it lacks soul and spirit, the qualities that are yearned for by other human beings.’ ■

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katz’s column

Prisoners of technology I received this email thanking me for Becky and Fred’s adventure, Fear of All Sums (Resolution V4.4, V4.5). ‘Dear Bob: I almost bought into the hype of the analogue summing box — but something about the idea seemed intrinsically wrong so I’ve held off. After reading your article, I’m deﬁnitely glad I did.’

S I POINTED OUT, some parts of the analogue adventure are not hype. Some analogue circuits alone (without any mixing) do make sound wider (possibly caused by distortion or crosstalk). If we choose to use the big analogue desk because we like its sound, let’s attribute the ‘improvement’ to the right reason: euphonic colouration. Going D-A-D is always a lossy practice, and the weak link of the

BOB KATZ

analogue chain is the summer. I have demonstrated that mixing in the digital domain is transparent, so why not feed some or all tracks through a ‘colouring’ circuit? This maximises beneﬁt, minimises losses, saves a ton of unnecessary money, allows us to invest in one pair of expensive convertors, and one pair of expensive, nicely coloured modules. Try Becky and Fred’s experiment and see if

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I’m right. Note that I did not say that all processing in the digital domain is transparent; there are analogue compressors with fewer objectionable artefacts than many digital models. If we’re going to be prisoners of technology, at least let’s be knowledgeable prisoners. Which brings me to today’s topic. The computer revolution is supposed to have simpliﬁed our lives, but really it has greatly complicated them. Sure, we can

March 2006

katz’s column accomplish much more than in the days of analogue up every document on every computer every night. or acts funny, the first thing to try is trash the 4-track, but there’s nothing more complicated than Except for the audio, which is safely ensconced on the preferences. But it takes a lot of work to configure recording, editing and mixing in a computer. The RAID drives, and gets backed up on a project basis. the prefs for your favourite DAW. The solution is ‘mean time between failures’ rule tells us that the Wiebe Tech (www.wiebetech.com) makes a neat to copy the preference folder once you have your more complex a system, the greater the chance of product called the DriveDock that converts any bare DAW working the way you like; you can keep the failure. Some days I think my computers are in charge IDE drive to FireWire or USB. I buy cheap surplus copy right next to the main preferences. Or, copy the of me. I spend whole weekends and many nights 300Gb IDE drives, which instantly become plug-andpreferences from the latest total backup. imprisoned, maintaining my computer systems, and play FireWire. The 300Gb gets filled up every 3 to Now you’re in charge, you’re the warden and the I doubt it’ll get any easier in the future. There are 6 months, a real cheap backup solution; a lifesaver computer is your prisoner! ■ no ‘self-healing’ computers yet, but with a bit of if your email crashes or you accidentally erased a Information forethought, we can become the masters, reduce document. What, you never have those problems? Resolution recommends Bob Katz’s downtime and maintenance time. BACK UP YOUR PREFERENCES — Preference book Mastering Audio — The Art and REDUCE THE DAMAGE AND PRACTICE files are subject to corruption if a program crashes. the Science as an essential source of REDUNDANCY — In my two rooms, mastering Learn where your OS keeps preference files. On information for every pro audio enthusiast room and prep room (AKA Studio B), I currently PC, they’re usually in Documents and Settings\your who cares about sound. You can buy it on have six computers dedicated to audio plus an audio name\Application Data. On Mac, they’re usually in line at www.digido.com LRX_advert_resol.qxd 23/08/2005 10:56 AM Page 1 server, which may seem overly complex to you, but home/library/preferences. If a program won’t launch in reality, having more computers reduces the damage any one can do. If one goes down, I usually can accomplish the same task another way. I try to follow the ‘one DAW per machine’ rule, which keeps each computer relatively simple. And my main DAW is redundant; if SADiE A goes down, within 15 minutes I can move in SADiE B’s computer and get my session done. The networked audio and projects are stored on the seventh computer, separate from both SADiEs. The audio server uses a RAID 5 drive system, which is totally redundant, the drives being the most likely component to fail. I can lose, replace and hot-swap one entire drive without losing the audio. However, I The remarkable new SADiE LRX has been designed to fulfil do not have a replacement RAID 5 motherboard and the needs of an ever more complex recording environment. It is as effective in capturing original soundtracks for film power supply as a backup for that part of the system, and television production as it is for producing location it’s in the plans. audio recordings for release on distributed media such as CD CLONE REGULARLY — You can’t replace Windows or DVD. without losing all your applications and settings, so it’s really important to assume that someday you’re going The flexibility of the LRX hinges on its ability to utilise a to do something that will make the OS unstable. I’d like standard laptop running Windows XP® via USB2 as the host to thank PC-guru Glenn Meadows for recommending computer together with combinations of the same high quality Acronis True Image, a reliable and easy-to-use cloning i/o cards as the SADiE H64 multitrack workstation. A tactile hardware control surface is employed, incorporating a small program for backing up any PC’s boot drive. The Master assignable mixer and full editorial interface, plus dedicated and Slave IDE drives on my important computers are transport keys. on inexpensive removable caddies. Periodically I clone from the C: drive to a drive in a drawer that I put on the shelf. If the boot drive goes down or gets corrupted by some PC-weirdness, I can be back up in a minute with a known, reliable system. Here’s a hint: use the ‘cable select’ jumper on your removable IDE drives. You can instantly exchange drives without having to shuffle the jumpers. Also become familiar with Win XP’s ‘system restore’ feature (Start\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\System Restore). Every time you install or remove a program, XP usually creates a system restore point, and if your computer becomes unstable, you can restore it to the previous condition. This has This powerful combination is been a life-saver; can’t clone every night. supplied with a tailored multichannel Macintosh computers running OSX are far more version of the SADiE on-screen graphical user forgiving of system defects than PCs running interface. Timecode and professional genlock facilities are Windows and a lot easier to maintain. I once lost the incorporated and a video stream may be simultaneously captured for playback or on-set ADR. The system supports a help system, but completely reinstalling OSX fixed the wide range of industry file interchange formats, plus a second problem, without having to reinstall apps and data. external drive may be simply attached via USB2 or Firewire to And the boot disc can be cloned without taking the mirror recordings and provide simultaneous safety copies. computer off line, plus, Macs can boot from FireWire Contact your nearest SADiE dealer or main office and visit our drives. I keep a portable FireWire drive with OSX on website for further details and a brochure. it that will boot any Mac in the office. In contrast, Windows boot discs are computer-specific. Macs will also run applications that are not on the boot drive, so it’s a lot easier to practice redundancy. BACK UP EVERYTHING EVERY NIGHT — United Kingdom: SADiE UK The Old School, Stretham Ely, Cambs. CB6 3LD. UK Tel: +44 (0)1353 648 888 Fax: +44 (0)1353 648 867 When storage was expensive, I used to be frugal about USA: SADiE Inc backing up, setting Retrospect Backup (www.dantz. 475 Craighead Street, Nashville TN 37204 USA Tel: +1 615 327 1140 Fax: +1 615 327 1699 com) to skip system folders and obscure document Europe: SADiE GmbH folders I never thought I would need, but soon I learned Villa Leinen, Kollwitz Strasse 16, 73728 Esslingen. Germany Tel: +49 (0)711 3969 380 Fax: +49 (0)711 3969 385 DIGITAL PRECISION that was unwise. Now, Retrospect incrementally backs

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March 2006

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meet your maker

Bill Putnam Jr Universal Audio’s CEO and the man behind much of the direction in the company’s analogue and digital products discusses the hardware/plug-in issue, the right ingredients, system modelling, and why it’s all just about allowing people to express themselves.

NIVERSAL AUDIO WAS founded in the 1950s by Bill Putnam Sr as a natural extension of his success as a recording engineer, studio designer, and inventor. Putnam was a favourite engineer of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and many other music icons of the time. The studios he designed and operated were acclaimed for their distinctive sound and provided a fertile environment for his innovations and experiments. In 2000, Bill Putnam Sr was awarded the Technical Achievement Grammy post humously in recognition of his multiple contributions to the recording industry including the first use of artificial reverberation, effects sends, and the vocal booth. Universal Recorders in Chicago, United and Western in Los Angeles (now Ocean Way and Cello) all preserve elements of his room designs. Putnam started three audio manufacturing companies during his career — Universal Audio, Studio Electronics, and Urei — and all three built products that remain widely used decades after their introduction, including the LA-2A and 1176. In 1999, Bill Jr and James Putnam relaunched Universal Audio and merged with audio software company Kind of Loud Technologies with the goals of reproducing classic analogue recording equipment designed by their father and his colleagues and to research and design new recording tools in the spirit of vintage analogue technology. ‘Having grown up in the music industry, we naturally assumed that’s where we would remain,’ says UA CEO Bill Putnam Jr. ‘Jim, a touring musician and recording engineer, and our older brother Scott, a busy studio designer in Southern California, were the first to follow in my father’s path. I took a more circuitous direction, working in a number of engineering companies before undertaking my doctorate in Electrical Engineering at Stanford. It was there that I became closely involved in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), specialising in signal processing. However, the event that led us to start (or reinvent) Universal Audio was 62

ZENON SCHOEPE more serendipitous. ‘Our father, Bill Sr, passed away in 1989. When the time came to sell the family home, Jim and I were faced with the Herculean task of cleaning out his workshop and storage areas. At ﬁrst, we enjoyed sorting out all the old test equipment, boxes of parts and bits and pieces of consoles and half-cannibalised 1176s. But struggling to decide what to do with all of this history and, well, junk was wearing us out. Just as we were about to close the door on the project and retire to a cold beer, Jim came across our dad’s old design notebook. We spent the evening poring over his notes, realising that this was the map to every technical problem he’d ever solved. That’s when the lights came on and we decided that to bring back Universal Audio and its products was our destiny. ‘Jim and I struggled with what to call our company and products. It was important to us that this endeavour be a tribute to our father, as it would not have been possible without him. A little investigating revealed -— much to our surprise -— that his original company name, Universal Audio, as well as the correct product names were available for use. After all, what could be more suited to authentic, classic reproductions than the original names?

What’s special about UA gear? We take our role as a provider of tools to the creative community seriously. We believe we have a responsibility to our customers to help them realise their creative ideas as best we can. This means making our stuff easy to use, reliable, affordable, and above all, good sounding. It also means answering the phone and treating them with respect when they call and ask us questions. We aren’t just out for a fast buck, we believe in the long-view: make our customers happy and keep them happy in a way that’s sustainable as a company. Ultimately it’s all about the community we live in. We choose to live in a community of artists and creative people: that’s who we are and that’s who our customers are. In technical terms, what is it about certain items of old outboard that earns them classic status? This isn’t a technical issue, it’s a philosophical issue. The designers understood not just the technology itself, but most importantly how it needed to work within the creative environment. Many pieces of classic gear seem to share an ease of use, with a desired artistic result. The designers followed the Hippocratic Oath: ‘First, do no harm.’ On an old EQ, the choice of controls might seem quirky, but then you realise it’s really hard to make it sound bad. Those choices weren’t accidents; they were determined by real audio engineers in real recording situations, not technicians in a lab attaching shiny knobs to a panel. It was about what was right for the creative process and the music, not just what was possible. This focus on quality extended to the choices of components too. Things were built to last, and simplicity was the key. Simplicity requires great components. Like a simple meal of fresh tomato, basil, oil and pasta; with the right ingredients, it can be sublime. resolution

What are the technical processes involved in creating a reissue of a classic processor; how real are the component sourcing issues and how authentic is the result? Sourcing components is a big deal. I call it forensic engineering. When recreating a processor, we try to keep everything as original as possible. This sometimes involves tracking down parts that have long been out of production. We’ve gone so far as to track the equipment used to make these parts from the original manufacturer all the way through the decades of company mergers and acquisitions to their new owners and worked with them to remake the original parts on the original equipment. There is also a synergistic element that we have experienced from the research and analysis required for creation of our plug-ins. For example, there are some subtle programme-dependent effects introduced by the LN (low noise) circuitry that Brad Plunkett developed for the 1176LN. An understanding of these subtle, but important effects came out of our work towards creating a digital model. Intimate understanding of circuit elements and their perceptual impact becomes important in recreating classic gear, both analogue and digital. You’re one of the few companies that reissues classic hardware and also designs plug-in ‘equivalents’; isn’t there a contradiction in this stance? Not at all. As mentioned previously, from an innovation perspective these dual pursuits trade off each other in a positive manner. From the beginning, UA’s mission has been to break down barriers between digital and analogue — bring warmth and character to the digital world, and ease of use to the analogue world. Furthermore, we have customers who are most comfortable in a traditional analogue environment and customers who are most comfortable in a modern digital environment. We believe it’s our job to help creative individuals within both of these environments be as productive as possible, by giving them the tools that allow them to express themselves as fully as possible with the best results attainable. You want to plug it in, or you want the plug-in? Whatever you like, either way it’s not a compromise. How closely can a plug-in match the sound and performance of the hardware it is based on? We qualify the plug-ins so they are within unit to unit variation, and match the reference units in double-blind tests. In most cases, the plug-ins are modelled after a highly desired or well known ‘golden’ unit (like the Fairchild 670 from Ocean Way, or the EMT Plates at The Plant), so they may even outperform a typical unit. All our plug-ins are tested in the studio over a long time period and go through several weeks (sometimes months) of testing and evaluation by a large team of experts before we ship them. Many times, this is the most stressful part, because we get really picky. What are the technical processes involved in creating a plug-in equivalent of hardware and where are the compromises and limitations? The ﬁrst step is to locate the ‘golden’ reference units and the shop manuals. Next, the circuitry is studied and some preliminary measurements are taken. A DSP model of the system is created and prototyped, and the model’s parameters determined from the schematics and measurements. Sometimes there are strange non-linear components that need special attention, and these will be analysed separately before being integrated in the main model. The model’s behaviour March 2006

meet your maker is compared to the preliminary measurements and tweaked as needed to match. Once the model is close, detailed measurements are taken and the model’s parameters are ﬁtted to them. Listening tests are done over a long interval to qualify and tweak the model before it gets turned into a plug-in. This process is generally referred to as ‘system modelling’ or ‘physical modelling’ and is very different from ‘signal modelling’, which is used by sample-based algos. Signal modelling makes gross and often inaccurate assumptions about the insides of the box and just tries to emulate the effects on test signals sent through the unit, while system modelling tries to recreate the actual insides of the box, warts and all. Generally, the compromises are in the extremes of the original unit’s behaviour, like noise and overload distortion. Should we model the noise and hum? In most cases the answer is no, but not always. The RE210 Space Echo needs this to sound authentic. It needs something to chew on so those repeats can build on each other when there’s no signal coming in. Most limitations are imposed by limitations in processing power, and modelling the distortion eats this up faster than anything. Some of our algos can’t even run one instance on the fastest native CPUs, while some will only run one instance. We use a DSP because we need this extra horsepower, allowing us to create no-compromise models.

What do all good classic mic preamps have in common from a technical standpoint and how do these properties contribute to the performance? A good preamp interacts with each microphone to bring out that mic’s special character. It’s like the wine with the meal. There are preamps that claim to be ‘colourless’, but this is a fallacy. It’s like saying you don’t speak with an accent. No accent is an accent by itself! How a mic and preamp interact, and how that combination sits in the mix are special events that must be experienced ﬁrst-hand. There is no number on a spec sheet that will help you experience this. You simply have to try it and decide for yourself. It’s hard to classify good preamps from a circuit/ component/technical standpoint, but generally they all share an attention to detail in the choices of components and their build quality.

you should, then you’re not making your own choices, and you’re not in control of your reality. Being out of control is a pretty scary experience, but ironically, this fear only serves to worsen the situation! If on the other hand, you choose vintage gear because you like the results, you have respect for the way things used to be done, and/or you believe in the idea that we advance by building on the past, then it’s a positive thing. Frankly, a lot of what was sold to us as ‘new and improved’ simply wasn’t, and we need to go back and learn why before we can move forward again. This is not to say innovation isn’t happening or isn’t possible right now, it’s just more difﬁcult in today’s business climate than it was in the past, and the market is much less receptive to it. In the digital world, we look to the vintage gear to learn how to get digital to sound good. This is still a work in progress for everyone in the industry, and innovation often happens only after the fundamentals are mastered. As Archie Shepp once said to my sax player, ‘Man, play it strait ﬁrst. You can’t be out if you never been in.’ We’re still learning how to play digital straight, but our chops are getting pretty good, and so we’ll be stretching out a bit more.

For an industry that is meant to be progressive and forward thinking, are we not unhealthy in our continued obsession with vintage equipment? Yes, to a degree in some cases. It depends whether someone is being overly conservative and is afraid to take a chance on something new, or whether they’re simply appreciative of old-fashioned quality and don’t think it was broke and needed ﬁxing. If you’re following a trend just because you think

Is hardware analogue processing a long-term proposition and where is UA heading with its technology? Ultimately, it must start and end with analogue. Regardless of how much processing is done ‘in the box’ you typically start with a microphone, and you need to monitor on speakers. That said, analogue will always have an important role in getting the signal into the computer, as well as providing monitoring. Digital is making huge strides towards being able to deliver what analogue has been delivering for decades, and while it may catch-up in some areas, it’s not all the way there yet, and it can never fully replace it. Our ears and the interaction of sound waves in the physical world are still analogue processes. Ultimately it really has nothing to do with the technology itself, it only matters how the technology helps people express themselves. If this is best done with analogue circuits, then that’s what we’ll use. If it’s best in some other situation with digital circuits, that that’s what we’ll use. If it takes a ham and cheese on onion roll, then we’ll use that. ■

AlWAYS ONE STEP AHEAD. . www.ı CLOCK-net.de

REDUNDANT MULTIPLE CLOCK SYNTHESIZER AND VIDEO REFERENCE GENERATOR

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Rob James, Resolution, January 2006

MUTEC GmbH Siekeweg 6/8 · 12309 Berlin Fon ++49-(0)30-74 68 80-0 . contact@ı CLOCK-net.de www.MUTEC-net.de

technology

Getting a grip on the weakest link Connectors and cabling may not be the most riveting of subjects but they still require diligence and regular inspection when the consequence of neglect and eventual failure can be disaster. Pomona Electronics’ DWIGHT HYLAND explains its tougher XLR connector.

OUND OR VIDEO FAILURE during a production inevitably points a first finger at mechanical connections as early suspects and not without reason. The connections that take most stress are usually at the front end — the microphone plugs or wires trailing in a broadcast van or studio — and the most common cause of failure is someone tripping over a wire and pulling out a connector. Finding the single offending cable can be difficult but it’s even worse when the cause is not visible due to a broken connection. Connectors obviously need to grip the cable securely, protecting it and the delicate electrical contacts from damage when strain is put on a wire. They also need to continue to protect after repeated use and abuse and long after the equipment is considered to be new. It’s also sensible that equipment that is suspected of being unreliable needs constant testing or replacement and this is particularly true of relatively low-cost items like cables and connectors. A fairly simple development from Pomona aims to prevent a large proportion of cable-related problems with the introduction of an XLR range of mobile broadcast audio cables and connectors that offer more than twice the pull strength of any previously available products. The new range features an innovative cable retention system with a clamping mechanism that withstands 45kg of pull without breaking or damaging the connector or its contacts. For low-noise audio transmission, the XLR connectors feature nickel-plated bronze or brass with gold or silver plate finish. They also feature a smooth latching mechanism for easy, secure connections. Most cables and connectors on the market (and Pomona has 200 in its broadcast range) have around 20kg pull strength, which is more than enough for routine use. Audio cables in a studio, for example, are often plugged into a mixer and stay there undisturbed from one month to the next. Or they may be used to interconnect in a stationary equipment rack, where they can also remain untouched for months. resolution

However, most mobile uses are far from routine. Virtually any type of portable operation adds stresses and strains on the cable. Audio cables for concerts and events need to be plugged and unplugged repeatedly, and each connection must be perfect. When an outside broadcast truck arrives on location, the cables are normally quickly pulled out for use and when clearing up afterwards they are simply reeled in often being roughly dragged along a pavement or kerb. All this can severely stress the signal path through cable and connector. Pomona ﬁts its new 45kg pull-strength clamp (Figure 1) on its mobile and high-end cable assemblies and connectors. The connector (Figures 2, 3) is designed for easy assembly, requiring no screws. The stripped audio cable is simply threaded through the boot and cable clamp. The cable is then soldered to the solder cups on the contact assembly. With Insulation Displacement Connectors, which require no soldering, the connector itself cuts through the insulation and makes the connection. Then the boot is screwed over the clamp, securely capturing the cable and contacts

Figure 1. Pomona’s connector construction showing cable clamp with 45kg pull strength — double the previous industry standard. March 2006

technology

Figure 2. The connector is designed for easy, yet rugged, attachment to the cable. IDC connectors that do not require soldering are also available.

against the rugged casing. The result is an excellent electrical connection as well as a solid mechanical connection. The strength of the clamp must, of course, be matched throughout the rest of the cable and connector construction. Pomona uses elastomer cables for repeated flexing, and polyester insulators for strength. Connectors have shock resistant zinc or aluminium alloy housings with a nickel finish. Contacts are variously bronze or brass with gold or silver plate finish. All take at least 1000 insertions. The 3-pin XLR connectors include solder and IDC types. The product range includes four types of rugged connector designed to withstand 45kg of pull, with a male and female of each type. Two of these types are designed for solder connections, one offering a nickel casing with silver plated contacts (5109 and 5110) and another offering black nickel casing with gold plated contacts (6852 and 6853). The other two types are IDC type XLRs, mentioned above, which allow fast connection of the cable without the need for solder. Again, these are offered with a nickel casing (7273 and 7274) or a black nickel casing (7275 and 7276). Again, they have 45kg pull strength. In addition, for studio applications where the connectors see less abuse, Pomona offers a value line of XLRs, with a variety of 3-, 4- and 5-pin types (5125A, 5126A, 6850, 6851, 7283, 7284, 7093 and 7094). There are also complete, ready-assembled male-to-female patch cords (6902 series) that use the clamp. This plug-and-play assembly has between

3 and 8m of Belden low impedance 1172A fourconductor Star Quad audio cable. The audio cables are 100% connectivity tested, with samples from the line being tested to destruction on a cable pull force gauge. They consistently withstand 45kg, and it is the cable insulation that normally fails — not the wires. Pomona also tests for resistance to kinks and bends. With the connector mated in a panel mount

receptacle, it is stressed with a 1kg weight and twisted through 180 degree bends repeatedly until it fails. Connections are checked electrically after each rotation and the test is stopped when the connection breaks. The worst results exceeded 30,000 bends, and some cables withstood up to 50,000 bends. As a comparison, leading Test and Measurement companies like Fluke consider 10,000 bends to show excellent performance and it is worth noting that Pomona established its reputation in the professional Test and Measurement market before producing audio cables. ■

Contact POMONA ELECTRONICS, USA: Website: www.pomonaelectronics.com

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Figure 3. Pomona’s XLR connectors (shown here is the 3-pin female, type 5109) feature easy assembly, and need no screws. March 2006

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slaying dragons

Anyone for a dual? You would expect that a phenomenon that rears its head in an amazing number of places in audio equipment, and that explains a lot that goes on, would be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Here JOHN WATKINSON discusses the central topic that, like Cinderella, is somewhat undiscovered.

john watkinson ‘we can also explain reconstruction in the time domain. If we take each sample individually, work out the waveform that results from passing it through a brick-wall ﬁlter and then add up all such waveforms, we would get the output waveform.’

NE OF THE FOUNDATIONS of digital audio that really resists shaking is Shannon’s theory of perfect reconstruction. This describes the way samples are converted back to the original analogue waveform. When a series of samples is to be returned to a continuous waveform, we can try to predict what happens using as many theories or explanations we please, but they must all predict the same outcome as there is only mechanism and it is unaware of our attempts to understand. Thus we can, for example, explain reconstruction in the frequency domain. The sampling process takes the baseband audio signal and amplitude modulates a pulse train at the sampling frequency. Modulation is a multiplication process that produces sidebands. These sidebands exist above and below the sampling frequency and its harmonics. But the

original baseband audio spectrum is still there as well. Clearly as the audio bandwidth goes up the bottom edge of the lower sideband goes down. To paraphrase Gerard Hoffnung, when the top edge of the audio spectrum going up meets the bottom edge of the lower sideband going down -– half way to the sampling rate — the audio quality will receive a severe blow, for we have aliased and for consistency I should have written this article under a pseudonym. It follows that the sampling rate must be at least twice the bandwidth of the input. It also follows that it is only the presence of the sampling rate harmonics and sidebands that is turning the audio signal into a pulse train. The baseband spectrum is still there and if we could filter off the images the audio signal would be all that remained. Ideal reconstruction needs a so-called brick-wall filter whose frequency response is unity up to half the sampling rate and zero afterwards. In other words the frequency response is rectangular. The baseband gets through and the images don’t, so we are left with the original signal. But we can also explain reconstruction in the time domain. If we take each sample individually, work out the waveform that results from passing it through a brick-wall filter and then add up all such waveforms, we would get the output waveform. The impulse response of a brick wall filter is a function called sinx/x, pronounced ‘sine x over x’ and it’s a symmetrical damped oscillatory function that passes through zero at exactly even spacings. That zero crossing characteristic is important, because if the cut-off frequency of the filter is half the sampling rate, and the peak of the sinx/x is aligned with any sample, the zero crossings will align perfectly with the positions of all the other samples. Thus the voltage coming out of the filter at the instant of one sample is the voltage of that sample alone, as the voltages due to all the other samples fall to zero at that point. Essentially, reconstruction joins up the tops of the samples with a smooth function. Unless a D-AC generates infinitely short samples, the frequency response of the convertor is impaired. In perfect reconstruction, the samples must be taken at an instant and recreated at an instant. The Enid Blyton explanation of D-ACs producing a staircaselike waveform is quite wrong. A staircase waveform only results if each instantaneous sample is extended in time throughout the whole sample period. This is known as zero order hold (ZOH). The time domain waveform becomes rectangular and the resultant aperture effect causes a roll-off of high frequencies in the audio spectrum. The shape of this frequency response? You’ve guessed: sinx/x. In our reconstruction example, the frequency domain representation of the filter was rectangular, but the time domain response was sinx/x. In the aperture effect example, the time domain waveform was rectangular but the frequency domain has a sinx/x characteristic. That’s the basis of duality. Sinx/x is the Fourier transform of a square wave. Thus the rectangle and the sinx/x function are transform duals. Let’s now consider a square wave. It hardly needs stating that the waveform is rectangular, but

those who get paid by the word frequently adopt an approach of excess caution. And what is the spectrum of a square wave? Well, we know it has no even harmonics, and that the odd harmonics alternate in phase and diminish in amplitude. Actually the spectrum of a square wave is a sampled version of a sinx/x curve. The reason there are no even harmonics is that these coincide with the zero crossings of the function. The non-zero harmonics alternate in phase because sinx/x is oscillatory. Shorten the period of a square wave and the time domain representation gets smaller, but the frequency gets larger. This is another feature of duality. Make something larger in one domain, it gets smaller in the other. If we make the pulses from a D-AC shorter in the time domain, the frequency response gets flatter. In optical systems, such as CD and DVD, the lens acts as a spatial filter. As spatial frequencies on the disc rise, the diffraction pattern they produce becomes increasingly oblique until there comes a point where it falls outside the lens aperture and cannot reach the pickup. It’s not called an aperture for nothing, because lenses suffer from aperture effect. A perfect lens can’t focus light to a point. The aperture effect changes the point to an intensity function. We can only detect light power in a laser pick up, and power goes as the square of the signal. Also squaring makes everything positive. Thus our familiar sinx/x function is squared so that the oscillations become positive only bumps. The result is known as an Airy disc after the then astronomer royal who discovered it. The zero crossings result in dark rings around the central bright patch. In laser discs we try to put the next track through the dark ring to minimise crosstalk. Now the transform of a squared sinx/x function is a triangle, and the frequency response of a laser pick up is triangular, falling to the optical cut-off frequency. If we wish to resolve smaller details on the disc, we have to make the lens aperture larger. Aperture effects also occur with sound. Considering a point directly on the axis of a microphone or loudspeaker diaphragm at a reasonable distance away, the time taken for sound to travel to or from that point to anywhere on the diaphragm will be the same. Thus if the diaphragm moves like a piston, the radiation from the whole surface will be in-phase at the point. However, if that point is moved off axis, the distance from the point to the diaphragm is no longer constant. Some parts of the diaphragm are now further away than others and so the sound from those parts arrives at different times at our imaginary point. Instead of adding coherently, a filtering action occurs. Clearly the shorter the wavelength, the greater the phase shift due to the difference in distance and the greater the reduction in amplitude will be. Assuming pistonic motion, we can obtain the directivity function by performing a transform on the rectangular aperture that is the diaphragm. The lobes in a directivity function are the equivalent of the oscillations in sinx/x. This is why tweeters have to be small in diameter;

slaying dragons in order to broaden the directivity, we have to reduce the size of the aperture. Thus the directivity of a tweeter of a given diameter narrows with frequency. It’s just as valid to produce a chart of directivity against the sampling rate that would be needed to handle that frequency. If we consider that most tweeters struggle to radiate 20kHz over a reasonable dispersion angle and that we can deliver that with 44.1kHz, then it should be clear that at 192kHz, the directivity of the tweeter has become like a pencil beam. The probability of one of our ears being in that pencil beam is very small.

On the other hand, at 192kHz the directivity of the microphone will also be like a pencil beam, so the probability of it pointing at a sound source is very small. Let’s consider the sound source. Unless the moving parts are microscopic, the source will be very directional and is unlikely to beam sound directly at the microphone. Thus above 20kHz, aperture effects mean that real sources probably won’t radiate towards the microphone. The microphone probably isn’t pointing at the source and our ears probably aren’t in the beam from the tweeters. Thus the overall probability of any

meaningful information being carried is vanishingly small, like a lottery winner being struck by lightning. This is of little consequence as even if information was carried we couldn’t hear it anyway. The physics is sinx/x but the marketing is pure hyperbole. What I really love to hear is exponents of high sampling rates explaining how much better large diaphragm microphones sound. The use of ridiculous sampling rates for audio representation brings to mind another of Hoffnung’s phrases: ‘At this point I must have lost my presence of mind.’ ■

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March 2006

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your business

WARM - THE NEW COOL Guy Berryman, member of one of the hottest British bands to emerge for some time, is passionate about what he refers to as ‘real

Time to get a little church At a time when we’re being told that many markets are contracting or ﬂattening,

music’. As bass player and co-writer with

few can deny that the church market is growing and spending money. Never one to

Coldplay, his innovative and creative musical

miss an opportunity, Father DAN DALEY spots a living for technicians who would

talents have seriously contributed to the band’s mega success over recent years.

work for their daily bread.

“Recording onto ProTools I wanted analogue sound” Check out:

www.tlaudio.co.uk/guy

dan daley

something that would give a warmer

‘The Rockets had music at the games, but they didn’t have a JBL Vertec line array powered by 80 Crown I-Tech amps running through four (!) Euphonix consoles.’

Guy Berryman Coldplay TELEPHONE +44 (0)1462 492090 // EMAIL info@tlaudio.co.uk //

AST YEAR ABOUT this time, I was at Abbey Road Studios. I’d stopped by to see an acquaintance and to show someone the facility. Coincidentally, I was there the day that the UK Christian music industry had assembled, almost to a man and woman, over 250 artists and musicians, in Studio B to record a We Are The World-scale track of a song intended to raise funds for tsunami survivors.

I was taken a bit aback. I’d always thought of Contemporary Christian music (the rubric the mainstream trades have stamped on all of it from rock to hip-hop) as a purely American phenomenon. Instead, like the blues 40 years earlier, based on the size of the gathering I saw in the studio, it might be one of those genres, like the blues, that the English wrap up into a nice, tidy package and send back to us to finally appreciate. Well, probably not yet, anyway. ‘One Voice, One Heart’ got plenty of airplay in the narrow confines of European Christian radio last Easter, but little outside of it. In fact, the mainstream media pretty much ignored the whole event. I suggest, though, that Contemporary Christian music is worth paying some attention to by those on this side of the glass looking for opportunities by changing market. Americans bought over US$70 million dollars’ worth of it in 2004 — an even 6% of the entire $12 thousand million US prerecorded music market, according to the RIAA. But as with all music these days, what passes through SoundScan portals is only a percentage of the actual number of transactions. The subterranean indie record market makes the souk in Istanbul look like a quiet street corner in Islington on a Monday; millions of CDs are sold at gigs and through independent websites each year. In that regard, the Contemporary Christian music market was the original indie genre. Dumped into the Religious category by the RIAA, it was viewed as a part of the more traditional worship music rubric, from Sandi Patty to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But over the last decade and a half and under the radars of the mainstream music business, CC has burgeoned into its own universe, one as diverse as the rest of music. There are rock bands, hard rock bands, crooners, singersongwriters, hip-hoppers and rappers, R&B artists, country singers and punks. Every now and then, a CC artist will cross over into the mainstream, like Amy Grant or the group POD. But mostly they swim in their own tank, preaching — literally — to the already converted. However, this universe has become significantly more three-dimensional in recent years. In the youain’t-seen-nothing-yet department, Joel Osteen, one of the more telegenic televangelists (think car salesman with a halo) felt he needed the biggest church of the current mega-church crop sprouting across the American South. So he took over the Compaq Center, a 16,600-seat former sports arena that had previously been home to the Houston Rockets basketball team. The Rockets had music at the games, but they didn’t have a JBL Vertec line array powered by 80 Crown I-Tech amps running through four (!) Euphonix consoles. The church’s audio and video post suites may not make the BBC envious, but after spending $3.3 million on the church’s media technology package — including a 34-foot video screen — it would make many other venues covet their neighbour’s facility. The whole church, if it can be called that, cost an estimated $75 million.

PASSIONATE ABOUT TUBES

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March 2006

your business I’m not spouting statistics for judgmental purposes. Rather, there’s opportunity in them thar’ hills. The evangelical movement has built a massive media infrastructure that encompasses music, broadcasting, video games and films (The Passion of Christ grossed nearly a half-billion dollars), and it is increasingly anchored by the estimated 1,000 mega-churches in the US that double as huge performance venues for CC music, movies and stage shows. These churches are cropping up at a rate of one new one every two days, according to Church Growth Today, a sector research firm, that defines a mega-church as one in which Sunday attendance exceeds 2,000 at a time. Most have integrated recording studios; some have their own video post houses and others have 50,000-watt transmitters as well as replication lines to pound out DVDs for the faithful. That’s a ton of technology. And somebody’s gotta run it. Most of the people managing the media technology of these churches are volunteers, and most of them are getting their technical training once a week, on Sunday. A cottage industry is already growing to fill this void. A bevy of monthlies is leveraging the market; magazines like Church Production and Sound for Worship generally include primers on basic topics like signalpath and grounding each month. Church Audio Secrets is a website selling a live-sound training programme on DVD aimed precisely at church volunteers manning the FOH console. The areas of expertise the programme covers would be familiar in any audio school 101 curriculum, and unless the laws of physics are somehow suspended in a house of worship (and some may believe they are), the only thing that makes this a church audio training programme is the clever insertion of the word ‘church’ into the title. I was talking recently with Brent Mullett, project manager at CSD, an audio systems company that deals exclusively with churches, who figures that digital audio technology’s effect will follow the same pathway in the religious market as it did in studios, ultimately making any-sized church a potential media haven. ‘I find that typically, for contemporary-style churches, they will hire a full- or part-time technician when the church size exceeds 700 to 1,000 seats,’ he told me. ‘As the church leadership discovers the need for a staff person to take care of this area, I am sure the demand for technicians — mixer, producers, engineers, editors — even in smaller churches will grow at a rapid pace. Most pastors are ready to pull their hair out over their sound systems and the inconsistency. Now it’s a matter of integrating the need into their budget.’ Producing and engineering CC music is a likely growth area. You just need to start with the premise that you are not going to get rich off it. (At least, not until you can start your own church.) CC records took full advantage of digital’s cost-effectiveness early on, and it was a boon for their budgets; the typical CC rock LP would be made for less than $20,000 in 1998, when I did a story on exactly that, and they haven’t gone up that much since then. But the work is out there; any number of former secular rockers have gone over to ‘the other side’ to make praise and worship (another useful term to know) records. They include the Outlaws’ Rick Cua, rapper Mase, and artists that seem to straddle the line, like Creed. And as with any market-driven enterprise, what a producer or engineer can command is based at least partially on their credits, secular and otherwise. Christian music is nothing if not market-driven. March 2006

Then there’s a less easily measured part of the equation: how deep into Christianity do you really have to be to play in this ﬁeld? There is no shortage of wolves in pastor’s vestments out there, I’m told by friends in the business. And maybe that’s a venial rather than a mortal sin, at most — in the end, CC artists are looking for the same thing their secular counterparts are: a commercially viable record that reﬂects who they are as artists and people. But there are two peculiar dynamics that come into play. First, one of the interesting things about the arts is, you need something more than simple greed to drive a career long term. No amount of academic knowledge can outweigh the pathological wisdom it takes to stay in music in any capacity for as long as it takes to build even a modest career. Secondly, if you lean over the

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well too far, you may fall in. In a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome, doing Christian music for an extended period of time might make a Christian out of you, just as doing disco music 30 years ago made cocaine addicts out of some people. The analogy is apt, and Karl Marx expressed a version of it 150 years ago. ('Religion is the opium of the masses.') But I’m not making a religious criticism, just a point worth noting. So you need to come to terms with a few things before considering pursuing this market. But in an era when the music industry has fragmented into scores of niches, CC music is one of the largest and most coherent of them. As it edges nearer and nearer to the secular mainstream, it’s going to pick up steam. And steam locomotives deﬁnitely need engineers. ■

headroom ANGELA — WHAT’S IN A NAME? Re: Keith Spencer-Allen’s footnote (Ten pro audio trivia talking points, V5.1)... Angela was the first Amek console not to have an alphanumeric ident. Well, I wasn’t actually there at the time, but Nick Franks always said that he got so frustrated with the endless debates about whether to call it the MSQ417PX or whatever, he exploded at a meeting and said ‘Why don’t we just call the bl***y thing, er... Angela?’ Which was apparently, the name of a lady he was seeing at the time. (If you have an alternative take on this, do tell!) True story — When Galileo was developed, Nick reckoned it was about time we had a console named after a dead astronomer, and first fancied calling it Copernicus. However, a highly unscientific straw poll around the factory asking whether Galileo or Copernicus sounded better, revealed that only two people in the building had ever heard of Copernicus — Nick and myself, so Galileo it became. Mick Boggis (former head of sales, Amek) Thank you for that priceless insight into the heady days of Amek, Mick. It’s largely what I had heard from Nick myself although I did get some other more specific information in the form of background that isn’t entirely relevant to the story! Angela was fortuitous and you’ve got to wonder if Dorothy, Maureen or Hilda would have caught on quite as well. I couldn’t imagine any console manufacturer having enough front to try a similar approach in this day and age. More’s the pity. What does that tell us about attitudes and expectations? I always think there is something more significant and lasting about a product that is important enough to be given a name as opposed to an alphanumeric that can be increased or decreased to reflect higher-end or lower-end derivatives. ZS

METER POINTS Hi Rob, You wrote a positive review of RTW 30900 in the magazine some months ago (V4.6, p26). I’m almost about to buy one, but I’m a bit concerned about the fact that you didn’t write a single word about how it sounds. Would you like to comment on its sound? Pietari Koskinen, SoundeFilm, Finland Hello Pietari, Thanks for your query. The short answer is — fine. The longer one is that, because the 30900 converts all inputs to digital it must degrade analogue inputs to some extent. The double conversion, analogue to digital and digital to analogue, will inevitably introduce some artefacts. This should all be taken in the context that only the most golden-eared will notice the difference. If you are using exclusively digital sources, you need have no concerns. In any event, a lot depends on your intended use. If you are mastering SACD or DVD-A then you should be auditioning several different units. If you are intending to use the unit for broadcast or broadcast-related work then the RTW has many convenient functions that are absent from more ‘audiophile’-oriented products. Not least their take on representing the surround sound field. I found this much easier to interpret than the alternatives. For my purposes, predominantly film and broadcast, I would have happily exchanged my current monitoring controller for the RTW — if I could have afforded it. I hope this is of some help in your decision making process. Rob James

GREEN IS RED Had the luxury of reading Resolution for a whole hour this morning whilst sitting in on my daughter at preschool today...the mag is great as usual. Just wanted to point out some inaccuracies or confusion in the Schoeps CMIT 5U article — see physical middle of the page re: filter positions (V5.1, p28). Have to say it didn’t bother me too much though — more bothered by the fact that I now wanna replace me old 416s.... damn! ...echo your thoughts on technology etc Steve LeCaz, HitMusicProducer, UK You’re absolutely right. Neil Hillman incorrectly identified the Filter Off position LEDs on the CMIT 5U as being red despite the fact that he was using the mic and we didn’t spot it despite the fact that we had photographs that showed the Filter Off LEDs as clearly being green. It does suggest that we all expected Off to be signified by a red LED despite the fact that it’s simple to follow the Schoeps logic for why they should be green. The fact that you and other readers spotted this is testament to the legibility of the mic legending. It could be another example of that interminable discourse on whether a circuit bypass should light a LED or extinguish it and whether green should mean Active and red signifies Alert. I’m in danger of flying up my own trouser leg here… but isn’t the mic a fabulous shade of blue? ZS

Sonifex MD Marcus Brooke’s sterling efforts to raise money for the Oxford Children’s Hospital by enduring the Great North and the Great South Runs last year raised an incredible £7,700 for the Hospital and £400 for Get Kids Going, a charity that provides equipment for disabled children. Marcus (still looking slim and svelte despite the excesses of a number of trade shows) is shown with daughter Georgia during the presentation of his hard-earned graft.

Advertisers Index AES ..................................................... 51 AMS Neve .......................................... 41 Calrec ................................................. 12 Cedar Audio .......... Outside Back Cover

RTW .................................................... 21

Dean Cook Productions .... Classiﬁed 67 DPA .................................................... 11

SCV London/Fostex ........................... 57

Enhanced Audio ................ Classiﬁed 67 ESE ..................................................... 54 Euphonix ............................................ 27 Fairlight .............................................. 59 Genelec ................... Inside Front Cover Golden Age Music ............................. 56 Harman Pro UK .................................. 39

Sennheiser .......................................... 23

HE Studio Technik ............. Classified 67 HHB/Lynx ........................................... 49 HHB/Millennia Music ......................... 13 Interfacio ........................... Classified 67 Lawo ................................................... 31 Loud/Mackie ...................................... 07 Lydcraft .............................................. 19 Merging Technologies ....................... 33 MJQ................................... Classified 67 Mutec ................................................. 63 Neutrik ............................................... 18 Quested ............................................. 47 resolution

Sadie................................................... 61 Schoeps .............................................. 17 SCV London/Benchmark .................... 51 SCV London/Universal Audio ............ 15 Smart AV ............................................ 52 Sonic Distribution/Apogee ................ 64 Sonic Distribution/Reflection Filter ... 55 Sonic Distribution/SE Mics ................ 69 Sonic Distribution/Waves................... 37 Sonifex ............................................... 60 Sony Plug-Ins...................................... 42 Soundfield .......................................... 65 Soundtracs Digico .............................. 09 Stirling Trading ................................... 43 Studer ................................................. 35 Studio Spares ..................................... 45 Tannoy ................................................ 25 Tascam ................................................ 20 TL Audio ............................................. 68 TL Commerce .................... Classified 67 Unity Audio/Adams Audio ................. 29 March 2006

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