AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION
V7.8 November/December 2008
The Chris Kimsey interview Why MySpace Music and social networks mean new revenue Barry Fox investigates the UK radio mic spectrum storm Room-within-room construction considerations Jean Goudier: top film sound practitioner Meet your maker: Colin McDowell — McDSP Reviews: Analogue Tube AT-101 • HHB CDR-882 • UA Twin-Finity SPL Phonitor • Manger Zerobox 109 • AKG C214 • Thermionic Rooster
Designed to Adapt L i ke N a t u r e, G e n e l e c DSP ser ies products h ave t h e a d va n c e d ability to adapt to their environment. To solve challenging acoustic issues associated with smaller working environments Genelec introduces the new SE (Small Environment) DSP System. With it, the new SE7261A 10'' DSP subwoofer provides connectivity for up to eight 8130A digital bi-amp monitors. Newly designed GLM.SE software provides computer control of all essential monitoring functions. Genelec AutoCal™ optimizes equalization, level and distance compensation through the SE7261A low-pass/hi-pass outputs to quickly adapt the subwoofer and each loudspeaker to its immediate environment, even in multiple locations. Genelec’s pioneering work in measuring and calibrating customer systems worldwide using our proprietary Room Response Controls led us to develop our new range of DSP monitors, bringing more flexibility and accuracy for our customers. The Genelec SE System brings your listening confidence to professional levels, and provides the most natural and accurate audio monitoring to today’s smaller environments.
www.g enelec.com
AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION
V7.8 November/December 2008
ISSN 1477-4216
News & Analysis
4 Leader
4
16
Products
Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.
66
Headroom
Yellow Cab Studios
54 Ten
56 Sweet spot
58 Meet your maker
Colin McDowell — the founder and brains behind McDSP plug-ins on being ‘the consummate audio DSP engineer from heck’.
64
Your business
62 Slaying Dragons
30 HHB DualBurn CDR-882 32 Universal Audio 710 Twin-Finity 34 SPL Phonitor 36 Manger Zerobox 109
News
New introductions and announcements. More evolution of an Icon; Gateway; and Brilliance at 0dB.
Craft
14
Small French post facility makes a big impression in film with some wise equipment choices.
38 Chris Kimsey
We talk to him about making a contribution, his room, The Stones and many others…
42
46 Chris Sheldon
Jean Goudier
Top film sound practitioner at the top of his profession on the modern production process.
Common terminological errors. Room-within-room construction in our series on planning and building a dream media production facility.
Rock specialist shares his refreshing and inspired approach to record making with us.
Business
50 Next generation revenue
Explaining the significance of MySpace Music and the way young music fans trust their social networks.
Daley suggests says that we’re not playing games here — or are we? Perhaps we should be…
Technology
60 The UK radio mic spectrum storm
If plans go unchallenged it will mean the closure of venues and put the broadcasting of the London 2012 Olympics in jeopardy.
Putting the VCO, VCF and VCF into context by considering the synthesiser.
Reviews
22 Tascam SS-R1, SS-CDR1 & HD-R1 24 Analogue Tube AT-101 26 AKG C214 28 Thermionic Culture The Rooster
Editorial Editorial Director: Zenon Schoepe Tel: +44 1444 410675 Email: zen@resolutionmag.com Editorial office: PO Box 531, Haywards Heath RH16 4WD, UK Contributors: Rob James, George Shilling, Jon Thornton, Keith Holland, Jim Betteridge, Neil Hillman, Nigel Jopson, Andy Day, Philip Newell, Jim Evans, Dan Daley, John Watkinson
Advertisement Sales EUROPE: Clare Sturzaker, tel: +44 1342 717459 Email: clare@resolutionmag.com EUROPE: Lynn Neil, tel: +44 208 123 5040 Email: lynn@resolutionmag.com US: Jeff Turner, tel: +1 415 455 8301 Email: jeff@resolutionmag.com
PRODUCTION AND LAYOUT Dean Cook, The Magazine Production Company Tel: +44 1273 467579 Email: dean@resolutionmag.com
news news Appointments
Genelec has appointed The Sound Team as its distributor in India. Daman Sood and his son Shiv started their business in 1994 primarily as an acoustic consultancy, setting up and advising some of the largest audio and post facilities in India. Daman (right) is a renowned audio engineer with 35 years’ experience in providing consultancy services to more than 75 studio in India. Ken Barnsley has joined Fairlight to head up its European operations. He has previously worked for Solid State Logic, Avid UK, Amek and, most recently, Merging Technologies, where he was head of sales and marketing for nearly eight years. Salzbrenner S t a g e t e c Mediagroup has appointed Russell Waite as president of US Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup Inc. based in Atlanta, Georgia. Rusty began his audio career at Siemens in Vienna as project leader for Eastern Europe projects, then managed European Sales for AMS Neve and most recently was executive VP of sales and product marketing at Euphonix. Calrec Audio has appointed Chas Rowden as regional sales manager for Europe. He has a s a l e s b a c k g ro u n d that includes tenures at Amek, AMS-Neve and Fairlight, as well as sales director for Tyrell. AKG Acoustics has acquired the worldwide distribution rights to the Crown family of microphones.
©2008 S2 Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication, but neither
4
Leader
It’s a common human condition that we want what we can’t have and if we are told that we can’t have it then we want it even more. Thus it is in the Right-On Guide to Popular Parenting — Course Three: The Teenage Years — that we encounter the notion that withholding exposure to recreational substances and the reproductory process is tantamount to encouragement. Personally, I think a couple of practical demonstrations by the parents would probably do the trick. Managing the business of ‘having’ rather than wanting is a discipline in itself and another common human condition is that of complacency and of taking things for granted. You can’t fail to appreciate the importance of education in a country like India and in among its social disparities is the feeling that the country is educating itself up. Education means the chance of a better job but it also serves as a means of personal betterment. As has been said before, they can do what they like to you but they can’t take your education away from you. Perhaps in the West we have adopted a more relaxed attitude to it and regard it not for how it enriches the individual but as a sort of job that children have to endure before they all swarm out and get rich quick. We are lucky in the audio industry in that there is still a strong vocational thread to playing in it — you really have to want to do it to endure it. But, with the increasing number of students dabbling in audio-related coursework it’s becoming democratised and diluted — every computer has a sound card. The technology that is now such a crucial aspect of audio training and education doesn’t help because it creates technology operators yet it is the deeper technical understanding that is harder to grasp. Teaching a class to use a word processor does not create a room full of writers and authors, it creates secretaries that use technology that everyone now uses. I remember when audio courses were berated for too much academic rigour and not enough operational use; now the balance seems reversed. The solution would be to include industry to tell the course operators what sort of people they need to churn out, academics to give the grounding that no self-respecting audio buff should leave home without, and to change all our attitudes towards education and to celebrate the betterment of the individual. Maybe that way we’ll get more audio entrepreneurs and people with great and new ideas. Otherwise we end up with a lot of people who know how to crash around in Final Cut Pro that are waiting for the phone to ring. Zenon Schoepe
First Dolby Digital Plus for HD terrestrial TV Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital have been chosen by France’s new national highdefinition terrestrial broadcasters for the Télévision Numérique Terrestre HD (TNT HD) platform. Initial services available on TNT HD include TF1 HD, France 2 HD, ARTE HD, Canal+ HD, and M6 HD. Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Digital audio will give viewers 5.1 and stereo. Dolby Digital Plus is based on Dolby Digital technology and is designed to adapt to the changing demands of future entertainment delivery while retaining backward compatibility with the existing Dolby Digital 5.1-channel home theatre systems in use today. ‘HD is synonymous with improved, highdefinition audio,’ said Jean-Pierre Lacotte, president of the HD Forum, France. ‘Everyone has a right to good sound -— especially those who have invested in home theatre systems -— and this new TNT HD service will provide superb HD images with 5.1 audio to match.’ ‘Being three channels in one multiplex of 24Mbps, the Dolby codecs are critical to save the scarce resource of bandwidth in this constrained environment,’ said Gilles Maugars, CTO of TF1’s Technology and IT Division. ‘This is why TF1 HD will use Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus for the coding of its audio streams, because the efficiencies they provide will enable TF1 HD to broadcast 5.1 audio.’
AES San Francisco upbeat
Resolution Awards 2009 Resolution will launch the Resolution Awards in 2009 to celebrate ‘Quality and Innovation’ in professional equipment. The result of requests from readers and manufacturers to ‘rubber stamp’ equipment to differentiate it and to credit excellence where it is due, Resolution Awards will be presented in eleven product categories to reflect the eleven categories in the new Product Reviews section that will be launched on the website in November. The new Product Reviews section at www.resolutionmag.com will contain every product review that Resolution has ever published and will represent an enormous archive of information.
S2 Publications Ltd or the editor can be held responsible for its contents. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the Publishers. Printed by The Grange Press, Butts Rd, Southwick, West Sussex, BN42 4EJ.
Resolution A w a r d nominations will be made by a panel of industry experts while voting will be performed on-line but will be available exclusively to Resolution readers. ‘It’s time to recognise and reward the core values of quality and innovation that underpin our industry and to get away from accolades that merely trivialise and pay lip-service to the effort involved,’ s a i d R e s o l u t i o n e d i t o r i a l d i re c t o r Z e n o n S c h o e p e . ‘ Yo u c a n e x p e c t Resolution Awards, like the magazine, to be different from the rest and they will be decided by the best qualified readership that there is. A Resolution Award will have genuine value.’
S2 Publications Ltd. Registered in England and Wales. Company number: 4375084. Registered office: Equity House, 128-136 High Street, Edgware, Middlesex HA8 7TT.
resolution
The 125th AES Convention in San Francisco in October attracted 407 exhibitors and 17,892 attendees, according to the organisers who drew attention to the upbeat nature of the event. ‘Certainly everyone is concerned about the economy, but equipment was being bought; people were taking advantage of Master Classes, Tutorials and other educational opportunities to improve their skills, and networking was on overdrive. This was an extremely positive event,’ said AES incoming president Jim Anderson. The next AES in the US will be held at New York’s Jacob Javits Center, 9-12 October 2009. The next European AES Convention will be held at the MOC Centre in Munich and will have a three-day exhibition running 8-10 May 2009.
Subscribe www.resolutionmag.com Annual Subscriptions: UK £37.00, Europe £46.00, Rest of the World £53.00
November/December 2008
news Broadcast India 2008 numbers up 30%
Gravity Studios install RND 5088
Appointments DPA Microphones has opened a regional office in Shanghai, headed up by Ken Kimura, regional sales director, Asia Pacific.
Broadcast India 2008, held in Mumbai in October, attracted more than 26,000 trade visitors, according to the organisers. This 18th event showed a 30% increase in exhibitors as well as visitors, according to the organisers. Broadcast India 2009 will be held 27–31 October at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Goregaon, Mumbai.
Riedel acquires Media Numerics
Buddy Guy and McBride.
Riedel Communications has acquired digital audio specialist Media Numerics, developers of the RockNet real-time audio network. ‘With RockNet we have a new product line, which really complements our existing portfolio,’ said Thomas Riedel, MD of Riedel Communications. ‘The acquisition also strengthens our development expertise in the field of professional audio products. We really look forward to the further development and success of RockNet.’ ‘With the integration of Media Numerics into the Riedel family this will allow us to focus 100% on the development of further innovative features for RockNet,’ added Matthias Knoth, MD of Media Numerics. ‘Tasks such as sales and order management, which increasingly absorbed our resources, can now be handled more efficiently within an international organisation such as Riedel.’
Grammy-winner Tracy Chapman has mastered her eighth studio album, Our Bright Future, at Ber nie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood.
Doug McBride has installed a Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console at his Gravity Studios recording and mastering facility in Chicago’s Wicker Park. The 5088, outfitted with 24 channels of Shadow Mix moving fader automation, is configured with two Portico 5012 Duo Mic Pres, eight Portico 5032 Mic Pre/3-Band EQs, 12 Portico 5033 5-Band EQs, two Portico 5042 ‘True Tape’ Emulators, and two Portico 5043 Dual Compressor/Limiter modules. The first session produced on the new 5088, which replaced a vintage Neve 8058, was with blues legend Buddy Guy for the upcoming TriStar Pictures film Cadillac Records, which chronicles the rise of Chess Records in the 1950s. ‘It was a lot of fun,’ said McBride, who cut his teeth at Chicago Recording Company before opening Gravity Studios 15 years ago. ‘He had worked here on the old console a few years ago and was really happy with how things went.’
C H Choe and Jack Kim, Best Leading Solutions.
T h e D PA M i c r o p h o n e s 2 0 0 8 Distributor of the Year award has gone to Best Leading Solutions of South Korea, recognising the contribution to sales and service that the company has provided over the last 12 months.
First all-digital mic milestone at Abbey Rd Dennis Feldman, EMS Africa (left) and Marcus Brooke, Sonifex.
Sonifex’s distributor of the year awards were announced at the IBC exhibition. Canford Audio were awarded best UK distributor and EMS Africa, based in Johannesburg, best export distributor. The first commercial recording using all digital microphones was made in July of The London Symphony Orchestra playing works from Bartók and Brahms at Abbey Road Studios in London. The recordings were made using two ‘parallel’ Sequoia workstations by sound engineer Wolf-Dieter Karwatky from the BKL Recording Group. ‘After a conversation with Gregor Zielinsky, artist relations manager from Sennheiser, the idea occurred about two months before the recording session to do the recordings using the newest digital microphones from Sennheiser and Neumann,’ said Karwatky. ‘After discussing this with producer Michael Fine and Abbey Road Studios, the decision was final.’
A selection of Neumann and Sennheiser digital microphones were used for Bartok — eight TLM103D, eight TLM184D, three 8020D, four 8050D and eleven 8040D — with Brahms requiring slightly fewer. All ran AES 42 outputs with RME DMC842s used as the preamplifiers with their outputs recorded via MADI directly in Sequoia. ‘The decision to use Sequoia was also important for postproduction processing, since Fine works without hardware and is able to execute multitrack edits in every facet of the material on his laptop, as he often does,’ added Karwatky. ‘Then the EDL is sent to me via “yousendit”, and I can quickly do a partial mixdown for the artists.’
Smart AV has appointed eMerging as its distributor in the UK for its controllers including the new low-cost Tango modular audio surface.
Subscribe now online at www.resolutionmag.com UK £37 • Europe £46 • Rest of the World £53
November/December 2008
resolution
5
news Appointments
Since acquiring the SADiE brand at the start of the year, Prism Sound has added a number of new staff. Among those who have joined SADiE are Steve Penn, who handles product support; Mark Overall, in charge of SADiE production; Ed Tottenham, from the SADiE software team; Mark Evans, who looks after sales administration and product support; David Cousins, who is responsible for processing SADiE orders; and Matt Mason, who now works in the accounts department. Pete Nash has joined Prism Sound as a sales consultant. Prism Sound’s line-up of new faces is completed by Dan Poxton, who is working on software development for the company’s test and measurement products; Tim Reynolds, a hardware engineer who is working with Prism Sound founding director Ian Dennis; and production assistant Christopher Bradbury.
D i G i C o h a s m o v e d i t s G re e k distribution channel to newly established company DN’A Systems, which is set to focus its attention on the digital sector of the Greek pro audio market. The company was founded by general manager Takis Tsonopoulos, sales director Yannis Tatsis, digital and concert sound technician Aris Koyntouris and installation technician Alexios Gkanas.
Cenzo produces with M7
Producer Cenzo Townshend has bought a Bricasti M7 reverb processor for his The Bunker studio at London’s Olympic Studios. ‘Although I haven’t had the Model 7 very long,’ Townshend confessed, ‘it has been used on everything I’ve mixed, including Snow Patrol’s new album, A Hundred Million Suns, singles and album tracks on Kaiser Chiefs’ new album, Off With Their Heads, and a forthcoming Howling Bells album. ‘I’ve been using Convolution Reverbs for specific effects — springs and chambers, etc. — although I’m lucky here at Olympic Studios to have four good plates to choose from. I was surprised at how true the Model 7 sounded compared to the real plate I’m used to — just as solid sounding but much less noise! My initial reaction was that I would have to buy one! ‘Predominantly, I use the M7 for vocals, strings and pianos — it is fantastic for producing vintage-type reverbs on percussion,’ he said. ‘I use a number of settings, including Fat Plate, London Plate or Echo Plate; I’ve yet to edit any of them drastically, apart from reverb time and brightness.’
6
Prism Sound is taking to the road in November with a series of educational seminars in the UK. In conjunction with Apple and PMC, the Prism Sound From Mic To Monitor road show will visit universities and colleges in six cities. E a c h s e m i n a r w i l l f e a t u re s h o r t presentations from the three companies involved and a talk by a guest recording professional who will also be available to answer questions from the audience on recording techniques. 18 November, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge; 19 November, University of Westminster, London; 21 November, University of the West of England, Bristol; 25 November, Liverpool Institute for Perfor ming Arts, Liverpool; 26 November, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester; and 28 November, Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, Nottingham. ‘The aim is to give students and invited guests from the audio industry a chance to discuss recording techniques and allow them to demo the cutting-edge equipment and software that is currently in daily use in the commercial world,’ said Prism Sound’s sales and marketing manager Jody Thorne. Attendance is free but you must register on line in advance at www.prismsound.com/mictomonitor2008
Miking NIN marimba with SF-24
Matchbox upgrades API to 1608
Prowda and Keppler.
Transamerica Audio Group has announced an international distribution agreement with Geoffrey Daking, which expands on its long-standing US distribution agreement.
Focusrite has assumed worldwide distribution of its Forte Suite Pro Toolsexclusive EQ and Compression plugin, formerly distributed worldwide by Digidesign.
Prism Sound seminar tour
Owner and operator of Matchbox Recording Studio, in Austin, Texas, Dwight Baker recently replaced his vintage API 2244 with a new 32-channel API 1608 small-frame console. ‘I absolutely loved my API 2244,’ remarked Baker, ‘but there is a shortage of good techs here in Austin. So when the 2244 went down, I called Mike Nehra at Vintage King for help. We have a full calendar of both up-and-coming bands and big ticket acts like Kelly Clarkson, and down
time is absolutely disastrous. Since I prefer the sound of API gear to anything else, the new API 1608 was the perfect solution.’ The standard 1608, with 16 input channels, eight buses, eight aux sends, eight reverb returns and full centre section facilities, includes a dozen 550A three-band equalisers and four 560 ten-band graphic EQ modules with space available for eight additional 500 Series modules. ‘I put some Avedis MA5 pres in the open slots so I can inject some Neve tone here and there,’ he said.
resolution
Nine Inch Nails is in the midst of its Lights in the Sky tour, in support of its latest album, The Slip. As part of the band’s equipment arsenal, it travels with a marimba that leader Trent Reznor performs on. Miking the marimba is a challenging task, and for this, FOH and monitor engineers Pete Keppler and Michael Prowda have found success with the Royer SF-24 Stereo Active Ribbon. ‘The marimba is a very difficult instrument to mic,’ explained Keppler, ‘and with 5½ octaves, it’s almost 8-feet wide. The SF-24’s pattern is perfectly suited for this instrument. We experimented with about a dozen other mic selections and placements, and nothing else came close. Due to the size of the marimba, the only way to get good coverage is by placing the mic about 3-feet above the playing surface. You inevitably get some spill from the rest of the stage at that distance, but with the SF-24, the leakage is very musical. I use almost no EQ on the mic, so the spill from Josh Freese playing a drum kit made of garbage cans and found objects sounds really good!’
November/December 2008
news Appointments
Steve Mac buys Big Ribbon A440
Fortman and Joanen find new Balance in Katrina rebound
Radial Engineering has appointed Shure Distribution UK as exclusive distributor for Tonebone in the UK. Karl Christmas, previously CA marketing manager, has been promoted to the role of deputy g e n e r a l m a n a g e r, Commercial Audio at Yamaha Music UK. This is a UK position leading the local team alongside general manager Ricci Hodgson. Microphone m a n u fa c t u r e r Mojave Audio has appointed Cathy Kelly as VP of sales and marketing. She previously worked for Ultrasone of America. A l a s d a i r MacCuish has been promoted to the position of MD at LipSync Post in London after five years as head of digital film at the company. Magix AG has appointed Arbiter Group as its distributor for Samplitude and Sequoia in the UK and Ireland.
KMR Audio in London has supplied Rokstone Studios with the first AEA phantompowered Big Ribbon A440 to be sold in Europe. Rokstone is owned by producer Steve Mac who has achieved recent success with Il Divo and Leona Lewis. ‘I haven’t recorded with any other mic since I started using the A440!’ said Mac. ‘This mic has the greatest useable dynamic range of any ribbon microphone manufactured today,’ said KMR sales manager Keith Malin. ‘The A440 is also the quietest ribbon microphone in existence.’
Juliano moves to Dangerous for consistency
Linn Products has appointed Tannoy North America as its new US distributor. Already sales director for Advanced Communication Technology, Kamil Swobodzinski has been appointed sales director CCS for the regions of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Deborah Jackson has been appointed sales and system engineer for CCS and ACT products, c o v e r i n g E u ro p e , the Middle East, and Africa. She was previously audio systems engineer at TSL. Ammar Fawzy has been appointed regional sales manager CCS in the Middle East and Africa. He was previously product manager with Mediacast Fzllc in Dubai.
8
Mixer Jeff Juliano is now using the Dangerous Monitor ST controller and the 2-Bus analogue summing amp. He has worked with Jason Mraz, Josh Kelly and Lifehouse, and John Mayer ‘I’ve used other monitor controllers, but I feel like I’ve stepped into the major leagues in terms of a listening environment with this equipment,’ he said. ‘It’s ridiculous! I could immediately hear the difference, and I had to have it. ‘I plugged in the ST and listened back to a mix that I had been working on for a day and thought was decent,’ he explained.
‘I started hearing stuff that I didn’t hear before and things that I wanted to go back and fix, which I did. I ended up also recalling the first three songs on the record and remixing them because I could hear issues with the high-end, a little clutter in the low-mids and some imaging things. It created more work for me, but the project turned out better. The ST makes listening consistent. It doesn’t matter what great outboard gear you have — if you don’t hear it right from the get-go it doesn’t matter what’s in your rack.’
resolution
Multi-Platinum producer/engineer/ mixer Dave Fortman and partner/artist development executive Gene Joanen have opened Balance Recording Studio in the New Orleans suburb of Mandeville. A 30-minute drive from their original (and still operating) studio, the new complex was created by Walters-Storyk Design Group architect/acoustician John Storyk. The first Balance Studio, co-designed by Fortman and Joanen, thrived for eight years until Katrina devastated the city. ‘We managed to get back in working order within a month after the disaster, but our labour pool and client base was decimated,’ said Joanen. ‘We outgrew our first studio long before Katrina hit, and had already found a 4,000sq.ft warehouse in Mandeville that more than doubled our size,’ added Fortman. ‘When the waters rolled back and things dried out we decided to move ahead.’ ‘Dave and Gene had discovered a terrific building for their new home,’ said John Storyk. ‘The loft-like open space provided expansive flexibility for our design programme. We developed a spacious 500sq.ft control room positioned in the complex to provide maximum visibility into the 900sq.ft live room. The existing warehouse allowed us to create a recording room of nearly 15,000cu.ft.’ The control room is centred around an SSL 4000 G+ and Pro Tools HD provided by PAD who also designed the Dynaudio Acoustics custom main monitoring system.
Ed Cherney with Jann Richards. Engineer and producer Ed Cherney has added Primacoustic Recoil Stabilizers to his studio. ‘Since adding Recoil Stabilizers to my system, I feel that I am getting better balances plus a low end that, when I take the recording out of my room and listen to it somewhere else, is more representative of what I am hearing when I record. Before I added the Recoils, I used to rely on “feeling the fundamental” of the kick and bass coupling with the desk. This necessitated cranking the volume to get that happening. With Recoils, the speakers are now decoupled from the console and I am really enjoying the balances.’
November/December 2008
Consistent, vibrant audio from the source to the sofa. Introducing Dolby Pulse. It’s HE-AAC optimized by Dolby. Now you can deliver amazing broadcast audio virtually anywhere. Dolby® Pulse combines the advanced low-bit-rate efficiencies of HE-AAC with the proven performance of Dolby—making it ideal for any bandwidth-critical application: HDTV, IPTV, mobile, or online. Like Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Pulse supports industry-standardized metadata to ensure consistent audio delivery from content creation all the way to the home or portable device. Add our unrivalled support and worldwide home-entertainment system compatibility to the mix, and you’ve got high-efficiency broadcast audio at your fingertips. Available 2009. Find out more at www.dolby.com/pulse.
Dolby and the double-D symbol are registered trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. © 2008 Dolby Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. W08/20536
news Biz Bites Releases by Kings of Leon and Oasis have helped Sony to beat Universal, the usual leading major in the UK, writes Nigel Jopson. Big albums still due from Sony a re A C / D C , Pink, Dido and Britney Spears, competing with Universal’s Kaiser Chiefs, Snow Patrol and Take That, but the UK market is still down 5.6% overall this year. Sony’s US market share is now 22.8%, down from 28.5% in 2004 according to Nielsen SoundScan, while Warner’s US share rose to 21.1% from 14.7%. Subsequent to buying full control of its label group from Bertelsmann, Sony plans to use music to drive electronics sales, just as Sony Pictures helps sell the Bravia line of TVs. ‘It’s nice to see Sony at least trying to line up some of their content efforts with their hardware,’ said Michael Gartenberg, VP of global strategy for Jupiter Media. ‘Up until now, the left hand never seemed to know what the right hand was doing.’ Nokia launched its unlimited 12-month music download service Comes With Music in October. The handset manufacturer now has tracks from all the majors, with EMI’s catalogue added to the service shortly before launch. Leading UK retailer Carphone Warehouse is offering CWM on the Nokia 5310 for UK£129.95 on PAYG, or with the Nokia N95 8Gb on contract. UK’s 3 network has made CWM available for free from 3 November on the Nokia N95 with an 18-month contract. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson has announced an unlimited music download service due for launch in the UK next year. Omnifone, which currently powers Vodafone’s music service Musicstation, will power the PlayNow Plus Sony Ericsson phones. Handsets will be bundled with up to 1,000 tracks, with the opportunity for subscribers to download an unlimited number of additional songs. Consumer take-up of Nokia handsets will be keenly watched by those who think the best way to market subscription music services is to hide the cost by bundling with hardware. I believe the issue is not customer resistance to subscriptions, but ease-of-use coupled with immediately-functioning cool hardware, as proved by Apple.
10
Heavy Metal meets Deadline
Studio Deadline owner Valle Adzic has completed the self-build of his facility in Trollhattan, Sweden. Although he plays guitar in Swedish heavy metal band Impious-Valle has carved a name for himself as a mixer of international heavy metal bands that send him files remotely as well as helping local bands out with demos. He mixes in-the-box in Cubase using a Vintage Design summing unit alongside a good selection of choice outboard with a Mackie 32:8 for monitoring. He has a live area and large control room designed by acoustician Claes Ohlsson with Genelec 1037s arranged in a fabulous stone front wall. Having the studio designed properly was crucial to Valle: ‘I didn’t want to have to make excuses for the room — if my clients aren’t happy then it’s my fault,’ he said. ‘I tried out some different monitors and went for these. The Genelecs have changed my life, they translate so well. Before I was having to listen to my mixes in the car, in the house, on the stereo but now they just work and my mixes travel.’ Meanwhile in Mumbai, Bollywood film music composer Ruhit Kulkarny has installed a Genelec DSP system at the centre of his newly opened mix and production room. Equipped by Shiv Sood from The Sound Team, Ruhit was adamant that he had to have Genelec. ‘It’s an international standard that you’ll encounter in music studios throughout the world. It’s important for me to be part of that and the monitors are an essential ingredient of my work.’
WWW upgrades to CC-1
LA radio production company World Wide Wadio has upgraded its studios to Fairlight Crystal Core technology with all four rooms now being driven by the CC-1 engine. The studios have also equipped with Xynergi user interfaces, three of which will be incorporated into large-format Constellation mixing consoles as Xynergi Centre Section panels. ‘As long-time Fairlight users it was clear to us that the Crystal Core System is a huge technological leap forward,’ said
Laurent Jouvin, World Wide Wadio’s senior sound designer and chief engineer. ‘Due to the growth of World Wide Wadio, we took the decision to upgrade to CC-1 because we needed to streamline our workflow and further increase the speed at which we could respond to our client’s needs.’ Also in California, Slate Run Productions has responded to HD video playback demand by installing a Xynergi media production system with PyxisTrack HD video.
resolution
news Biz Bites
In Resolution V6.6, I asked a rhetorical question in the business article (Prince and the retail revolution): where were the genre-packs of music, hot-loaded onto consumer electronics? On 23 October, Dell announced it will preload music from Universal into special folders on the computers it ships. Curated bundles of MP3s start at US$25, and Dell also has plans for bundled movies from Cinemanow.com. Preloaded promotional content the customer didn’t ask for is only ever going to annoy, but a bespoke bundle is a useful way to start an entertainment collection, and the concept fits well with Dell’s build-to-order sales process. UK songwriters will earn less from CDs this year than from any other form of copyright revenue. CDs were topped by broadcast and online income in 2007 but they’ve never been outstripped by performance and overseas revenue before. The first three quarters of 2008 saw a 4% increase in copyright revenues overall, up from £418m to £435m, but the relatively low sums songwriters get from the internet reflect the difficulty of collection in a fragmented market. ‘One of our members could expect to be paid, say, £18 for having a song played on Radio 2,’ said Steve Porter, CEO of the MCPS-PRS, ‘but it would be a fraction of a penny for a clip on YouTube.’ Sumner Redstone has been forced to sell $400m of CBS and Viacom shares to deal with $1.6bn of debt run up by his private movie theatre group, National Amusements Inc. Through National Amusements, Sumner and his family control CBS, Viacom, Midway Games, MTV, BET, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks studios, and are equal partners in MovieTickets.com. He needs to refinance $800m by the year end. Stock market declines mean Redstone’s Viacom and CBS shareholdings, used as collateral for the loan, have fallen in value and banking covenants have been breached. Viacom is currently embroiled in a legal tussle with YouTube (Resolution V7.7).
Showtime Tonmeistertagung, Leipzig................... 13-16 November InterBEE, Tokyo..... 19-21 November NAMM, Anaheim ........... 15-18 January 2009 Integrated Systems Europe, Amsterdam .................. 3-5 February CabSat, Dubai ..................3-5 March Prolight + Sound, Frankfurt .............................1-4 April NAB, Las Vegas ..............17-23 April AES Europe, Munich...........7-10 May IBC, Amsterdam....11-15 September Plasa, London........13-16 September AES US, New York....... 9-12 October
12
Stax console comes home
Stax Museum curator Carol Drake and Ardent Studios founder John Fry.
John Fry, founder of Ardent Studios in Memphis, has donated a console to the Stax Museum. The historic recording console was used for many years in his studios, often shaping the sound of Stax Records hits during a period when Ardent worked closely with the Stax label and recording studios. The console was made by Memphis company Auditronics, owned by Welton Jetton and Steve Sage. Auditronics had supplied smaller consoles to both Ardent and Stax in 1966. The donated console was fabricated from amplifiers and equalisers made by Spectrasonics of Odgen, Utah. The 20-input, 8-output console was installed at Ardent’s location on National St in 1969 and moved to Ardent’s present location on Madison Ave where it served in Studio B until 1985. Auditronics also supplied Stax with an identical console for its A Studio in 1970. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, located at the original site of Stax Records, has more than 2,000 related exhibits, videos, stage costumes, photographs, and instruments.
An informal gathering of old Trident Audio Development staff took place at Shepperton Film Studios in October. Assembled around a Trident Series 80 console that has been in use for 24 years are: Bryan Waters, Peter Watts, Mike King, Trevor Griffin, Bud Brimberg, Charlie Mohindra, Graham Capes, John Cherrill, Fatimo Godinho, Andrew Hingley, Harry Badh, Owen Highfield, Maureen Collinge, S Sidhu, Pete Burrows and Bill Childs. Several people were not able to join and particularly missed was Trident’s founder and long time MD Malcolm Toft.
TV production company SFP’s new HD OB truck was used for the first time at the Roland Garros tennis tournament. With a floor space of approximately 110sqm it is one of the largest European OB vans and employs K + H 5.1 monitoring. The main control room is equipped with three tri-amplified O 300 monitors at the front with bi-amplified O 110s at the rear plus an O 800 sub. Slow motion replays are monitored through M 52 Ds.
resolution
Radio Lollipop all clear with S2
Radio Lollipop is a charity that provides care, comfort, play and entertainment for children and young people in hospital. Established in 1979, it serves hospitals in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Radio Lollipop opened a new studio HQ at the Evelina Children’s Hospital in London recently. The studio is set in glass walls underneath the glass atrium of the hospital with the studio building and its furniture made from clear perspex, designed by Architect Mark Maffey of Studio Mode, and the remaining equipment from the Sonifex S2 Solutions range of furniture. The desks are made of clear perspex with the CD players housed in a Sonifex SOL-T12 desk-top pod. Beneath the desk sit two Sonifex SOL-B12 base pods that contain the amplifier, power supplies and other peripheral equipment. The centre piece of the studio is a Sonifex S2 split-desk mixer with 5 channels on one side and 10 channels on the other, it is configured with 6 stereo channels, one telco channel and 3 mic/line channels.
Stadius wins Gottelier Award DiGiCo’s technical director John Stadius has won PLASA08’s Gottelier Award — an award PLASA states recognises developers who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of equipment and tools that enable entertainment technology practitioners to push boundaries. ‘I’m very pleased to have won the award,’ said Stadius. ‘It isn’t just recognition of what I’ve achieved personally, it’s recognition of what we have achieved as a team in the R&D department.’ In 1978 Stadius joined Soundtracs, the company DiGiCo purchased in 2002, initially designing disco consoles, mixers, power amplifiers and loudspeaker. In more recent years, he has been heavily involved in digital consoles starting with the Virtua in 1996 and now including the company’s SD7 and SD8. Audio Precision recently helped to stage a reception in Parma, Italy to honour Professor Angelo Farina, the leading Italian acoustician whose work powers the technology at the heart of AP’s APx audio analysers. The evening event was attended by more than 50 acoustic and audio specialists, academic figures and press.
November/December 2008
facility
Yellow Cab Studios Two engineers open a facility to become masters of their own destiny. ZENON SCHOEPE visits a small French post operation that has made a big impression in film with some wise equipment choices.
A
s in many businesses, the move from small to bigger status frequently entails a level of commitment that is invisible to outsiders but is at the very core of what differentiates you within. Moving up from being a small audio for video/TV operation to a larger film studio involves a complex weave of interrelated and interdependent conditions that must be met. And with bigger name productions comes a quality assurance overhead that is often not appreciated by facilities looking to make the leap. Yellow Cab Studios in Paris has managed a gradual and careful metamorphosis from what was essentially a one-room operation at its origin in 1998 to a facility that now has a large room for feature film mixing, and three sound editing rooms as well. The facility was started by Steven Ghouti and Eric 14
Lesachet. Steven had been freelancing in TV movies and film and a big film job in Italy had bought an 02R and the two clubbed together. They offered audio post for video, documentaries and corporate films in a building much larger than they actually needed because they always had an idea that one day they might be able to build something bigger on the ground floor. The 02R was joined by two Akai DR8s and a DD1500 and a Fairlight MFX3plus was bought in 2000 for the first editing room followed by another. ‘We were keen on the idea of a mixing desk and a Fairlight as two separate entities that were doing two separate things,’ explains Steven. ‘Then in 2003 we had a few clients who called us and asked if we could do postproduction for their feature films.’ This crystallised that idea into a reality as suddenly resolution
they had three or four film projects on the cards; they started building the big studio in the same year. They were lucky to be working with a dealer who handled Soundtracs who in the first instance organised a rental and then a purchase of a DS-00 (128 DSP channels, 40 output buses) for their DTS certified new Studio A. Things went well. ‘With the DS-00, even though we had mixed 20 films on it, people wouldn’t acknowledge it as a desk that you could mix a feature film with. We were fine with it but as an attraction to outside clients, as something that could pull a bigger film in with freelancers, it was a different proposition. ‘The other thing we realised when you’re doing the whole postproduction process of sound editing and mixing,’ continues Steven, ‘is that it takes us an average time of three months — two months sound editing and maybe three to four weeks mixing. When we’re doing a feature film we can have our hands full for a year but the big studio would be empty for a lot of it. You have to have turnover in a business.’ And for that they needed a desk that had pulling power. In 2007 the DS-00 replaced the 02R in the original Studio B room and a Euphonix System 5 Fusion with 174 DSP channels, full DAW remote, 24 faders and an additional 16 faders on request, was installed in Studio A. November/December 2008
facility
Eric and Steven.
And the bigger film projects arrived as a direct consequence. The System 5 Fusion made the prospect believable for the production companies, according to Steven, as they realised that Yellow Cab is a small studio that you can mix a big film in. The Euphonix System 5 has gained strong and wide acceptance in the French film industry, which is important for a market that is populated by freelance mixers. The Fusion put them on the map and in the league. Yellow Cab works with Nuendo in all its rooms and considers it a powerful, flexible and affordable solution to its needs. They have a large Pro Tools system in the big room but only for incoming mix projects, says Steven. ‘We don’t transfer into Nuendo and people are very, very paranoid — and so they should be — about moving projects from one system to another. It’s OK if you’re re-editing the stuff, but if it’s just for going in to mix it doesn’t make sense.’ Nuendo’s integration with the Euphonix has also been advantageous as it’s given a palpable increase in efficiency in the theatre, which uses a 2k Merging Technology VCube and a 2k Sanyo projector for picture. The DS-00 has also come into its own in Studio B, which now runs 56-tracks of Nuendo with 5.1 JBL LSR32 monitors, and makes the room far more flexible and powerful than before. Apart from Steven and Eric, who do two or three features a year each, in-house engineer Thibault Arnold does all the stuff that they now can’t do, like the video and documentary work. The DS-00 studio has been vital
November/December 2008
to the progress of Yellow Cab as it’s the room that pays the rent and the base of the income. ‘The A studio has a bigger capacity financially because it brings in bigger projects but we don’t want to lose our old clients either,’ says Steven. The facility’s business is demarcated into two different areas — as the full audio service facility and as the big mix room for hire. ‘Eric and I are both sound editors and mixers as well so we try and keep an eye on the whole process and it’s how we’ve always worked — doing the sound editing and the mixing afterwards. In France it’s very separated between freelance sound editors and freelance sound mixers — at least in the film business — and a
resolution
production company will call a sound editor to do just that and it’s not seen in a good light to do both! But we do it. Having stated off in audio post for video, where we do everything, it seemed natural for us to do the same thing in film.’ There are no plans for expansion because there’s now no more room and no inclination. ‘Sometimes we’re a bit tight for space but then we don’t want to expand and just become studio bosses because that’s not what we like to do; it’s much more fun for us doing the job than just supervising other people doing it,’ he explains. ‘What Eric and I wanted when we started was not an industrial approach to sound but something smaller where we could take the time to do a job and do it right,’ he continues. ‘What we can do as a small facility, for example on a big film, is if I want to take another week to finish the sound editing to the standard that I’d like it to be, then I can do it. A production company can’t necessarily do that when it’s dealing with bigger facilities because every time it will have to go through accounting to see if it is possible. Because we’re independent we can do just about what we want and if we like a project then we can, of course, spend much more time on it than is reasonable! But that’s because we’re doing a job that we really like and we try to do good work.’ n
Contact yellow cab studios, paris, france: Website: www.yellowcabstudios.com
15
review gear
Products Equipment introductions and announcements.
Korg adds MR-2000S 1-bit
Korg has expanded its MR Series with the MR-2000S 1-Bit studio recorder. Input and feedback from engineers to its predecessor, the MR-1000, led to its creation. It is a 1U stereo recorder offering 5.6MHz or 2.8MHz 1-bit or up to 24-bit 192kHz PCM recording and playback. 1-bit file formats DSDIFF (used in SACD production), WSD and DSF are supported as well as PCM support for WAV, BWF (Broadcast WAV) and MP3 playback. Analogue connectors include XLR balanced I-O jacks and phono I-Os. The reference level of the XLR jacks can be switched in a range of -12/-14/-16/-18/-20dB. Digital connectors include SPDIF coaxial as well as Word clock jacks. The MR-2000S also features a multistep LED level meter. Korg’s AudioGate version 1.5 file convertor software is included, supporting reading/playback of MR project files and for converting to various file formats including from 1-bit to various multibit PCM formats, importing MP3, AAC and Apple lossless (with QuickTime 7), and WMA (Windows Media Audio, Windows only). There are improved conversion routines for all formats and AudioGate allows the splitting and combining of individual files, fade in/out curves, and gain change as well as DC offset correction. The unit’s built-in 80Gb hard disk allows approximately 14.5 hours at its highest quality of 1-bit 5.6448MHz Stereo. www.korg.com
A-T expands studio ranges Audio-Technica’s 20 and 40 Series studio microphone ranges have been extended with two new models apiece — the AT2035 and AT2050 and AT4021 and AT4022. The expansion of the affordable 20 Series and the pro-oriented 40 Series coincides with the discontinuing of the mid-range 30 Series.
The AT2035 is a large diaphragm sideaddress condenser model with a cardioid polar pattern, switchable 80Hz high-pass filter and 10dB pad. Further up the 20 Series ladder, the AT2050 is another large diaphragm side-address condenser, this time with switchable omni, cardioid or fig-8 patterns through a dual-diaphragm capsule design. The AT2050’s diaphragms are gold-vaporised and aged. The AT4021 and AT4022 condensers claim a flat, extended frequency response and low self-noise and are said to be well suited to recording acoustic guitars, strings, percussion and other acoustic instruments. The AT4021 features a cardioid polar pattern while the AT4022 is omnidirectional. The AT2035 and AT2050 are supplied with an AT8458 shockmount, threaded adapter and a soft protective
16
Platform news: Digidesign Pro Tools 8 has been previewed. Updated with a new user interface, more than 70 plug-ins and virtual instruments, fully-integrated MIDI and score editors, and an expanded array of editing features, Pro Tools 8 software will be available later in the year for Pro Tools|HD, Pro Tools LE, and Pro Tools M-Powered. The user interface has been enhanced with a more modern colour palette and higher-contrast text and graphics along with dockable Editor windows and a configurable Edit window toolbar. Pro Tools|HD 8 supports the Satellite Link option, which allows users to control up to five Pro Tools|HD systems as one. The Media Composer-based Video Satellite option brings Avid HD/SD video playback into the Pro Tools|HD audio workflow, while the Video Satellite LE option brings QuickTime HD/SD or Avid SD video playback into the Pro Tools|HD audio workflow. Pro Tools LE 8 and Pro Tools M-Powered 8 have been expanded to support up to 48 simultaneous audio tracks. Adding the Music Production Toolkit 2 or DV Toolkit 2 (Pro Tools LE only), gives users access to 64 audio tracks. The Complete Production Toolkit (Pro Tools LE only) combines the content of both toolkits above and offers up to 128 simultaneous audio tracks and 7.1 surround mixing. The third member of the 003 family, the 003 Rack+ Factory has 18 simultaneous channels of I-O for the most extensive array of analogue and digital I-O on an LE system. There are eight mic preamps with switchable 48V phantom and 20dB pads, analogue high-pass filters, and front-panel trim controls. For instruments and line-level connections there are eight analogue DI/ line inputs and outputs, including one DI/line input on the front. Digital connections include eight channels of ADAT optical I-O and two channels of SPDIF I-O and MIDI. Dedicated studio monitor outputs and alternate control room outputs combine with dual discrete headphone outputs and there’s BNC Word clock I-O and alternate source input for external device monitoring. 003 Rack+ Factory comes bundled with Pro Tools LE 7.4 software; initial purchasers will be eligible for an upgrade to Pro Tools LE 8 when it becomes available. 003 Rack+ Factory includes more than 80 effects and virtual instrument plug-ins. The D-Command Producer’s Desk is an add-on option for the Icon that provides a Pro Tools custom Qwerty keyboard, mouse pad area, USB hub, and space for a computer monitor. www.digidesign.com
carrying case. The new 40 Series models come with st an d c la mp and threaded adapter and protective carrying case. A-T has introduced the AT 8 0 2 2 X / Y stereo mic and the BP4025 X/Y stereo field mic. Each offers a coincident c a p s u l e configuration that allows for a smaller housing while producing a wide stereo image field. Both mics also feature a compact, lightweight design for camera-mount use. The AT8022 is designed for consumer or professional gear while the BP4025 is suited for professional use. The BP4025 features large-diaphragm capsules and
resolution
operates on 11-52V DC phantom power only. It has an integral 5-pin XLRM-type output and comes with a stereo cable and two 3-pin XLRM-type connectors. In addition to a high-pass filter, the BP4025 offers a switchable 10dB pad. A-T has also shown three new shotgun mics: the BP4071, BP4071L and BP4073 Line + Gradient Condenser models. All models require 48V DC phantom power, and a switchable 150Hz high-pass filter and rugged housing made of aluminium. The 15.55-inch BP4071 is said to be particularly useful for miking dynamic action in film/TV audio and claims a noise floor that is ‘hardly measurable’. At 21.22 inches, the BP4071L is among the longest shotgun microphones on the market. Developed at the request of broadcasters, the mic boasts an extremely narrow polar pattern and excellent rejection from the sides and rear. The BP4073 is said to set standards in small size and light weight and with a length of 9.17 inches and weight of 3.5oz it is said to be well suited to ENG and field production applications. www.audio-technica.com
November/December 2008
gear E Series modules There are two new modules for SSL’s X-Rack/ Mynx system. The E Series EQ Module has the two different EQs found on editions of the console produced between 1979 and 1987 that are distinguished by the colours used on the LF knob caps, known as ‘Brown’ and ‘Black’ EQs. The E Series EQ Module can switch between these two different flavours and has a Bell curve option on HF and LF and fully parametric LMF and HMF with Q. The E Series Dynamics Module has a compressor/ limiter and an expander/gate. A true RMS convertor is used in the sidechain while the gain element is an all-discrete design identical to the Class A VCA chip used in the original unit. The compressor has additional switching options to defeat the over-easy curve and to use a linear release instead of the more usual logarithmic curve. The result is a compressor with three distinct voices. The AWS 900+ has been upgraded to the AWS 900+ SE and includes the MIDI over Ethernet protocol introduced with the Matrix console. It also has the Logictivity project management browser software introduced on Duality.
Symphony 64 PCIe Apogee Electronics’ Symphony 64 is a 64-channel, 24-bit/192kHz PCI Express card made to interface Apogee’s X-Series and Rosetta Series convertors directly to Apple’s Mac Pro. It has extended audio routing with VBus and SBus. VBus allows users to route demanding, standalone software instruments directly between Core Audio-based applications instead of running them as plug-ins. Symphony’s SBus doubles the DSP power of The Symphony System by facilitating the communication of digital audio between Symphony-equipped Macs with a single cable. Now it is possible to route audio to a second computer and back again for plug-in processing, sample libraries, soft-synth players, and session transfers from one Core Audio application to another. www.apogeedigital.com
LaChapell 583e LaChapell Audio has begun production of its model 583E valve preamplifier with EQ. It sports the same 70dB tube amplifier found on the 583S coupled with an ‘ultra-clean’ transformerless threeband EQ with sweeping frequency controls and cut/boost settings of +/- 8dB. The 583E can offer the EQ section as a single autonomous module allowing the pre and EQ to be run separately. The module is designed for 500 Series frames. www.vintageking.com
MK 22 OpenCardioid With unique polar pattern – a blend of cardioid and wide cardioid.
SSL has added dedicated vocal processing to the Duende DSP plug-in collection with the Vocalstrip plug-in, which combines EQ and dynamics sections with a De-esser, De-ploser, and ‘asymmetric notch’ and ‘air’ bands in the EQ. www.solid-state-logic.com
It is an ideal soloist or spot microphone – directional with a natural sound.
SE/Rupert Neve active ribbon SE Electronics’ Siwei Zou and Rupert Neve have unveiled the SE Electronics RNR1 active ribbon microphone as the first of several mics being readied for production in the Rupert Neve Signature SE series. The RNR1 claims ‘revolutionary performance’ courtesy of a blend of discrete circuits and purpose-designed transformers from Rupert and the best capsules and chassis design that Siwei Zou and SE have to offer. ‘I have worked for some time on the designs for this new range of microphones — the concepts of which are actually already being implemented in our own Rupert Neve Designs 5088 Console, namely utilising discrete single-sided circuits and my custom designed transformers,’ said Rupert. ‘This new approach to analogue sound processing has required extreme care in its manufacture and meticulous alignment of the embedded discrete op-amps and the delicate microphone elements.’ ‘I have known Rupert for many years, and have discussed with Rupert many times his theories regarding microphone development and design,’ said Siwei. ‘To get the opportunity to couple Rupert’s exemplary and time-tested approach to electronics design with my own passion for excellence in sonic reproduction and acoustics has been incredible. I think that the results speak for themselves.’ www.seelectronics.com
November/December 2008
Unrivalled versatility SCHOEPS GmbH Spitalstr. 20 76227 Karlsruhe, Germany resolution
www.schoeps.de mailbox@schoeps.de Tel. +49 721 943 200 17
review gear Focal CMS Focal’s CMS series consist of the CMS 50 and CMS 65 speakers with a subwoofer to complete the series expected later in the year. The CMS 50 and CMS 65 are equipped with Focal aluminium/magnesium inverted dome tweeters. The CMS 50 integrates it with a Focal 5-inch woofer whereas the CMS 65 has a Focal 6.5-inch woofer for an extended response. Focal manufactures its own drivers and its inverted dome tweeter has been a company signature for more than 20 years and claims to be the only design to offer ‘a
homogeneous movement of the complete dome thanks to optimum mechanical coupling between the cone and voice coil’. The Polyglass technology used in the woofer is constructed by applying thin glass micro-balls on a cellulose pulp cone. The resulting rigidity rating is said to exceed that of single skin Kevlar and to be almost ten-times superior to that of polypropylene. The CMS 50 has 80W LF and 50W HF amplifiers while the CMS 60 has 100W LF and 60W HF. The monitors are supplied with a decoupling rubber sole, four rubber spikes, two height-adjustable spikes for installation at the front or rear, and two removable grilles. The cabinets are die cast aluminium. CMS speakers have controls for HF Shelving and LF Shelving while Desktop Notch correction suppresses the interference reflections generated by consoles and desktops. www.scvlondon.co.uk
Rack recorder
The Fostex UR-2 stereo rack recorder uses SD cards and USB pen drives. Features include two SD card slot and a USB host connector and recording in stereo or mono WAV (BWF) at 44.1/48/88.2/96kHz and 16/24-bit. It has timer play and power-on play and the play mode list employs the CSV file format. There are 99 Cue points with locate function and a waveform display in scrub mode, a microphone input with P48V on the front panel, analogue I-O with balanced XLR and phono jacks, plus digital I-O on XLR. Remote transport control can be performed via footswitch, parallel remote (D-sub 25-pin) and RS-232C and an external USB keyboard can edit file names and control the transport. Fostex has added a high-gloss white PM04 to its PMseries range of studio monitors. www.fostexinternational.com
Lexicon PCM96 Surround
Lexicon’s PCM96 Surround Reverb/Effects Processor delivers 50 new Lexicon reverbs, delays and modulation effects and more presets, configuration options and additional inputs and outputs. It can function as a control-only insert or FireWire streaming audio plug-in inside any Mac VST or Audio Units software. A new Pitch algorithm has been developed for the PCM96 Surround in addition to the Room, Hall and many additional algorithms for music and post. The Pitch algorithm has also been released as a software update for the original PCM96. The Surround can be divided into four virtual machines, each of which can run its own algorithm. This allows the signal from each input to be routed through a variety of algorithm combinations. Two models are available: a digital only version with six XLR Stereo AES I-Os; and a version with digital and analogue that includes two DB25 connectors with 6-channel analogue I-O and one DB25 with 6-channel digital I-O. Both versions feature MIDI, Word clock, Ethernet, and FireWire. www.lexiconpro.com
Brauner Valvet X Three years ago Brauner presented the limited Phantom Anniversary Edition and the next anniversary to be celebrated is the Valvet’s tenth. The Valvet valve mic is derived from the VM1 and offers the same open and lifelike sonic character. The Valvet’s new design with its shorter body and its cradle suspension served as the model for all the following phantom-powered solid state mics that Brauner released. To celebrate the 10th anniversary, Brauner has released a pure cardioid version called Valvet X that has an entirely black body and suspension and will be offered at a lower price than the Valvet, which will also be reduced in price during its anniversary year. With its optimised cardioid pattern, the mic has been tweaked by Brauner in a subtle way and is intended mainly for ‘intimate’ vocal and solo recordings. www.brauner-microphones.com
18
resolution
November/December 2008
gear Radial Forest brand Radial Engineering has launched the Forest Audio brand aimed at the p ro f e s s i o n a l recording market. The first product is the Forest F15 Roundback instrument preamp, which is a combination 2-channel instrument preamp, direct box and re-amper. It has high performance class-A feed-forward topology and no op-amps in the main audio circuit or signal degrading negative feedback loops. For acoustic instruments, the F15 has a built-in piezo signal booster for gain and a 10MOhm i n p u t impedance. This is augmented by switchable 6V and 12V phantom powering while outputs include dual mono or mixed balanced outputs on ¼-inch and XLR. The Radial PhazerBank is a 4-channel version of the Phazer phase alignment tool and has four completely independent phase adjustment circuits. The Radial H-Amp headphone device takes any amplified signal and coverts it so it can be monitored through headphones. A typical application would be to take a feed from a passive stage wedge monitor to feed headphones for a drummer or to take the output from a power amp and feed a host of headphones. Because the draw is so minimal, the H-Amp will not cause impedance issues on solid state amps. Features include Neutrik Speakon input connector, headphone impedance range select, lo-cut filter, tone control and headphone volume control.
SPL plugs
SPL has shown its first software plug-ins — the Transient Designer and a series of EQs (Vox Ranger, Bass Ranger and Full Ranger, based on the passive graphic equalisers of the SPL RackPack) mark the start of a new era for the company. Available as RTAS, VST and AU versions, TDM versions will follow soon. The analogue 2Control monitor and headphone controller allows connection and selection of two stereo sources,
two stereo speaker sets and two headphones. A third mono speaker output can be used to feed a subwoofer. Speaker volume is controlled by a central, massive volume pot. Each headphone output is supplied by a separate amplifier stage and can be controlled individually. www.soundperformancelab.com
The Radial SW4 is a high performance switcher with gold sealed relay switching for source select and nickel-wound Jensen Transformers to isolate the output. It has four stereo inputs: Inputs 1, 2 and 3 are 100% passive balanced XLR while Input 4 is equipped with A or B stereo input sets and is active-buffered and transfor mer-isolated. A headphone monitor bus allows any or all sources to be pre-switch auditioned. Radial is launching a series of lunchbox modules to fit the API 500 series format. The first will be the JDV-LB direct box that employs the Radial JDV circuit and this will be followed by the PHZLB lunchbox version of the Phazer. www.radialeng.com
November/December 2008
resolution
19
review gear Primacoustic acoustic solutions The Machine Room from Primacoustic is a compact enclosure designed to house and quieten computers. It has a cool air intake at the bottom allowing hot air to rise and exit at the top and this is supplemented by a variable speed fan that ‘sucks’ the warm air out from the top and forces it through a foam lined manifold to ensure exit fan turbulence noise is subdued. The filtered intake vent and outlet port are positioned at the rear of the enclosure. The FlexiFuser is designed to mount at the receive end of a room to diffuse directional acoustic energy by reducing
the standing waves and flutter echo. Effective from 500Hz and up, the fullsize FlexiFuser measures 48 inches high, 24 inches wide and 6 inches deep and has six variable pitch slats that can be rotated during assembly. When used in clusters, various patterns may be combined. The FlexiVoice is built like a cupboard and hangs on a wall and opens to create a 48-inch x 48-inch recording area that is quiet and does not suffer from small room bumps in the lower mid range. Two-inch high-density fibreglass panels fill the back while low-profile 1-inch panels line the
doors. FlexiVoice is said to be ideal for voice over and vocal tracking. The GoTrap is a high performance ‘stackable’ studio gobo. It features laminated Baltic birch construction with tough dove-tail corners. Both sides of the G-Trap are equipped with high-density 6lb fabric covered panels for absorption. Inside, a high density diaphragmatic MDF panel increases isolation and combines with the air cavity to absorb bass. Following the success of the Recoil line, the new RX5 Upfire is an isolation platform that features a 10º up-fire angle for studios where nearfield monitors are positioned on the desk surface and need to be aimed up. Once installed, this mass-loaded isolator eliminates resonance from the desk and improves the transient response of the loudspeaker. www.primacoustic.com
Voiceover box
New PD Series Location Recorders
The RB-MTV1 is a 1U rackmount designed to be used in voice-over booths. It has four inputs and two outputs with a mono microphone input on XLR with switched coarse gain and variable fine gain control from +20dB to +80dB. There is also a switched LF rumble filter, switched +48V phantom power and switched level limiting control. A rear-panel multi-turn preset pot allows adjustment of the threshold of the limiter. Microphone level is monitored by a 5-LED meter. There is a mono balanced Talkback input on XLR and two balanced XLR stereo inputs, Cue and programme, each with a 10dB input gain switch. Each of the inputs can be mixed and monitored on the front and rear headphone outputs with individual volume controls. Which inputs are presented to the headphone outputs can be configured using two banks of DIP switches. www.sonifex.co.uk
New Tubetrackers
Audio acquisition that’s as versatile as you are. Designed from the ground up to excel in ‘real-world’ applications, wherever you happen
www.fostex.jp Fostex Company, 3-2-35 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, Japan 196-0021 Email: info_sales@fostex.jp
to be in the world. The new PD606 (8-track) and PD204 (2-track) location recorders both offer spectacular audio quality, flexible recording to 12cm DVD-RAM, hard disc or a combination of both, rock solid timecode implementation, extended battery life, loads of ‘instant access’ knobs, buttons and switches plus a whole battery of interface options.
T h e M 1 - F f ro m T L Audio features the same valve preamps and EQ as the original M1 Tubetracker console but the master section has been improved with a mono button and balanced insert points for mixdown, summing and mastering. It can also be fitted with the new DO-F digital card, which will enable all channel inputs and outputs and main outs to be accessed via a single FireWire cable connected to a computer. The connection works at 24-bit/96kHz. The M1-F is available in 8 and 12 channel configurations. The DO-F interface is also compatible with the Fat Track. www.tlaudio.co.uk
But impressive features are only part of the script. Fostex’s unrivalled pedigree in designing and manufacturing world class location recorders for over 16 years and our unique understanding of the broadcast, film, tv and audio acquisition environments means that these new recorders aren’t just the best PD recorders ever, they’re simply the best professional location recorders available today.
20
resolution
Elite special Sonnox has a time-limited promotion on its Elite collection — the company’s ultimate bundle, containing all the Oxford plug-ins. For the month of November 2008 it is offering a 20% discount on the Sonnox Elite Collection. www.sonnox.co.uk
November/December 2008
gear Lawo Crystal
Lawo’s Crystal console is designed for radio on-air and edit-suite applications. It has an easy-to-operate surface with a reduced number of controls and displays and is delivered with a choice of ready-to-use configurations for standard applications but can also be freely configured. It provides a conventional 4-fader mixer but with an integrated matrix of up to 288 I-Os, customisable configuration and intelligent networking with other consoles and matrices. The Crystal comprises the tabletop control surface and the 19-inch base unit chassis that houses I-Os, signal processing and the control system. Both units are connected via CAN bus on Cat5 cable. The control surface is available with 4 to 16 faders and has a height of only 3cm. Each channel strip has two OLED displays and status LEDs below the faders, which can be used for colour marking. The surface has bargraphs for level and phase indication and an ambient light sensor adjusts the brightness of displays and buttons. Optional extras include key panels with illuminated pushbuttons or LCD keys, auxiliary GPIOs for extended control, and graphical user interface VisTool touchscreen software. www.lawo.de
protection available’, and automatic Extreme Voltage Shutdown (EVS) to protect connected equipment from Furman has released its Classic Export Series of rugged, dangerous over-voltage conditions. For rack illumination, 1U power management/light modules for 220V to 240V the units have ‘Smooth Track’ LED rack lights and a rearcountries. Offered in 10-Amp and 16-Amp versions, the panel BNC to power any standard gooseneck lamp. Series offers a new industrial design and a feature set The Series includes the 10A PL-8C E and PL-PLUS C E, and engineered specifically for A/V. the 16-amp PL-PRO DMC E. All units have 11 IEC outlets They include Linear Filtering Technology (LiFT), Series with two rear-panel isolated outlet banks and a ‘Protection Multi-Stage Protection (SMP) for ‘the highest level of surge OK’ indicator on the front panel. The PL-Plus C E has a multisegment, colour LED voltmeter to monitor the incoming line voltage. The PL-PRO DMC E adds a precision-grade digital voltmeter/ammeter to monitor the incoming line voltage and true RMS current, a colour-coded voltage range indicator, and a front-panel charger for small USB-powered electronics. #24274 - UAD-2 ad Reso Junior 15/9/08 10:46 Page 1 www.furmansound.com
Furman Classic Series for Export
Focusrite Liquid Mix HD Liquid Mix HD from Focusrite delivers the power of Liquid Mix to Pro Tools HD. Providing the same pool of EQ and compressor emulations, more than 60 instances can be used simultaneously on an HD 3 system. Each instance provides one compressor and one EQ emulation from 40 compressors and 20 EQs. As with the original Liquid Mix, a hybrid user-defined seven-band ‘super EQ’ is available in every instance, built out of separate EQ bands. The Focusrite Saffire PRO 40 has eight preamps and a FireWire interface. It has 10 analogue outputs, ADAT I-O, stereo SPDIF I-O and two virtual ‘loopback’ inputs for routing digital audio between software applications. Every channel has phantom power with the first two also featuring -9dB pads and there’s front panel five-LED metering for each analogue input.
MORE POWER. MORE PLUG-INS. UP TO 10 TIMES THE POWER OF UAD-1 IN STORES NOW
Choose UAD-2 Solo, Duo or Quad cards for up to 10 times the processing power of UAD-1.
AN EVEN BIGGER CHOICE OF PLUG-INS New plug-ins coming soon from Moog, Empirical Labs, Harrison, Valley People and Little Labs.
FANTASTIC UPGRADE OFFERS Saffire PRO 40 comes with a Suite of Focusrite plug-ins — compression, reverb, gating and EQ VST/AU plug-ins along with Ableton Live Lite, Novation’s Bass Station soft synth and more than 1Gb of royalty-free samples. Two independent headphone buses are provided, each with their own level controls, and front panel controls include a main monitor dial with dim and mute switches. www.focusrite.com
November/December 2008
All existing UAD-1 users can crossgrade all their authorised plug-ins to UAD-2 completely free of charge for a limited time. And registered UAD-1 owners will also be rewarded with bonus UAD$ vouchers up to UAD$250 for each registration of a UAD-2 card before the end of 2008.
uad-2.com UK distribution by Source • Find a dealer at www.sourcedistribution.co.uk/ua • T: 020 8962 5080 All trademarks recognised as the property of their respective owners.
resolution
21
review
Tascam SS-R1, SS-CDR1 & HD-R1 Once upon a time life was relatively simple. If you wanted to record something you used a tape-recorder. If you wanted to play a tape back on cue you used a tape recorder and some dexterity. ROB JAMES looks at a cluster of stereo recorder/playback devices.
Tascam SS-R1
Tascam SS-CDR1
T
he simple stereo recorder was ubiquitous with applications in every field from music, broadcast, film and theatre to schools, houses of worship and conferences. In the considerably more complex digital world of today there is still plenty of room for standalone stereo recorder/players and it is encouraging to see Tascam coming forward with not one but several related products to address a wide variety of requirements. All three recorders under consideration here are 1U rackmounting boxes with substantially similar controls except, obviously, where there are different features on offer. SS-R1 and SS-CDR1 are virtually identical apart from the addition of a slot-loading CD recorder in the SS-CDR1. Both come complete with wired RS-SS1 remote controls. The front panels are finished in discreet black anodise while the HD-R1 is in quiet silver with no remote control included. Front panel headphone outputs have level controls and provide an unusually generous output level. SS-R1 AND SS-CDR1 — First out of the box is the UK£393 (+ VAT) SS-R1. Recording onto Type I Compact Flash cards of 512Mb or larger, the SS-R1 supports 44.1kHz and 48kHz sampling rates at 16-bit in linear PCM WAV or MP3 formats. Next up is the £680 (+ VAT) SS-CDR1, which can record or playback from CD or Compact Flash but not record on both at once. Existing Compact Flash recordings can be burned onto CD and CDs can be ripped to CF. The internally illuminated transport keys are positive and all the controls feel substantial and smooth. The LCD display is very clear and sufficiently large to avoid irritation. The only incongruity is the door to the CF slot which feels a little flimsy by comparison to the rest of the panel and especially when compared with the relatively massive alloy door of the HD-R1. The door can be locked with a screw. Apart from commercial CDs the SS-CDR1 also plays CDs containing stereo or mono WAV files and 44.1kHz/48kHz MP3 files at bit rates from 64kbs to 320kbs. This is likely to prove extremely useful since the machine will play any files conforming to these requirements from CD or CF whatever machine or computer they were recorded on. The CD transport is a slot-loader, much more robust than the usual light plastic tray popping out of the front. 22
Of course, as with any IT based device there are housekeeping conventions. The maximum number of playable files is 999 for CF and 99 for CD (There are a few sound effects CDs around with more tracks than this, but not many). If a CF with more than 999 tracks in a folder is inserted then only 999 will be accessible or playable. To help manage media with potentially several hundred files, the current area of interest is dubbed ‘The Play Area’. With a CD this will usually be the entire disc; with CF there is a choice of All, Folder or Playlist. Continuous Playback is the default mode and all tracks are played back in track number order. Alternatively, Single mode plays only the selected track and Program Playback follows the order of tracks in user defined playlists. Random play is the final option. Playlists are created or deleted easily and adding tracks is equally straightforward. A ‘Flash Start’ function allows the beginning of up to 20 tracks to be loaded into memory for instant starting. Pitch and ‘Key’ control enable varipitch playback and using the two together gives the potentially more useful speed control — i.e. you can slow down or speed up a track without changing the pitch. Connecting a standard Qwerty PS2 keyboard to the front panel socket gives access to 12 tracks or a dedicated Flash Start remote control connected to the parallel port goes up to the full 20. A PS2 keyboard can also be used for labelling and other remote control functions. Remote control is a big deal with these machines. Apart from the wired TV style remote supplied there are serial and parallel ports on the rear. The parallel is effectively a GPI-O connector and all the details are
in the manual. Tallies and fader start are possible as well as direct access to up to 20 tracks and the usual transport controls. EOM is an end of Disc/track tally. When the function is activated a tally signal is output on the parallel connector to warn of the impending end of the current track/programme. The duration can be specified from 1-99 seconds or Off for either the current track or Play Area. If you want to use the RS422 serial port, you will need to obtain the protocols from Tascam. I was delighted by the number of PS2 keyboard shortcuts for control. When the front panel Power On Play switch is set to On the unit will commence playing after the power is switched on and it has booted up. With this function in mind it comes as no surprise to find the Power switch on the front panel. For recording there is the choice of three inputs; unbalanced or balanced analogue or coaxial SPDIF. Recordings can be made in WAV or MP3. A built-in sample rate convertor enables digital sources from 32kHz to 48kHz to be accommodated regardless of the chosen record sample rate. Level and balance are adjusted via the Multi Jog Dial, which also doubles as the Enter key. A compressor can be applied if required and recording can be initiated and stopped manually or automatically when the input level exceeds or falls below a predetermined threshold. Alternatively, recordings can be split into separate tracks by using Auto Track and again this operates on input level. Tracks are saved at four-second intervals for safety and an internal clock enables recordings to be timestamped. Editing is limited to combining or splitting WAV files but transferring the files to a DAW for editing makes much more sense. There is a learning curve to these machines but it is not an onerous one — any file-based non-linear system has the same overhead. It is tempting to feel nostalgic for the simplicity of an analogue tape recorder but the massively useful management, playback and remote control possibilities more than compensate for the necessary complexity. The file-based genie is out of the bottle and it is impossible to put it back without losing convenience and utility. HD-R1 — Designed by a different team, Frontier Design, the £782 (+ VAT) HD-R1 has a slightly different feature set and a greater emphasis on the ‘install’ market. It uses CF cards but can also upload files onto these from USB memory sticks. The same socket can be used with a keyboard for labelling and remote control purposes. The CF loading door has blanking plugs for security screws (included) if the unit is to be mounted in risky environments. In addition to the array of remote control options on
Tascam HDR1 resolution
November/December 2008
review the other machines the HD-R1 has an RJ45 LAN socket for control and file uploading. Control uses the same protocol as the RS232 serial port via Telnet on port 21. File transfer is accomplished via Ftp. In the same ‘installation’ vein a Euroblock audio connector provides line level balanced I-O as a back panel switched alternative to the Mic/Line XLR inputs and Line outputs. The mic inputs (with back panel switched phantom powering) are used not only for recording but also for live announcements. An automatic ducking function finishes this off nicely. Two three-way input switches on the rear select between XLR, XLR with 20dB pad, or phono. Front panel rotary input level controls are much easier to use than the menu-driven levels in the SS machines. The HD-R1 accepts Type I and Type II CF cards, meaning that it can also use the hard disk based variants. On the front panel the LCD screen is weak in comparison to the others and the Shuttle/Data wheel does not double as the enter key. As a result the user interface is less intuitive. Given there are more options to negotiate this is unfortunate. Taking everything into account the HD-R1 feels like an older, less polished design. On the other hand, this unit supports sampling rates up to 96kHz at 16 or 24 bits. Remote control capabilities are slightly different. In Direct Play mode up to 16 tracks can be accessed via the parallel port. In Binary Play mode the first ten pins are interpreted as binary numbers giving direct access to up to 1023 tracks. A Marker function adds markers either at intervals of time or on record overs. A 20 second prerecord buffer is an excellent feature for capturing those unrepeatable moments. Front panel controls can be locked out if required. I had some issues with WAV files added to the CF card on a PC. The SS units played them back without fuss but the HD-R1 refused to play all but one. Also, while the SS units cope with multilevel folders, the HD-R1 is only happy with audio files in the root or top level folders. With the price of solid-state media plumbing new depths as the giant memory manufacturers battle for market share, Flash memory has a lot to commend it as a recording medium. However, all Flash memory is not created equal and it is advisable to use highquality, fast access cards. Tascam provides a list of tested media in the support section of the website. Since Tascam had forgotten to include any CF cards I dashed out to find one. The computer shop and the high street multiples had none but the local camera shop came to the rescue. However, this does raise a small concern. Compact Flash is relatively old technology and availability is diminishing in favour of SD, etc. SS-R1 and SS-CDR1 are worthy tape-recorder replacements. They will find homes in a very wide range of applications. At the simplest, once set up, they can be used pretty much as you would have used an analogue machine. The extra features made possible by their IT nature are for the most part highly desirable. The HD-R1 is a deceptively different device. It is more difficult to get to grips with and lacks desirable features such as an input compressor. Conversely, in a fixed installation it has several useful functions absent from the others e.g. the mic inputs and ducker. It is also better suited to unattended operation in potentially hostile public environments. Once programmed, I can imagine the HD-R1 being used in applications as diverse as railway stations, stadia, hotels and supermarkets. n
PROS
Affordable; SS models are impressively well thought out; comprehensive remote control options.
CONS
SS models only 16 bits and maximum 48kHz; SS CF card door is out of character with the otherwise excellent construction; HD-R1 is quirky and the learning curve is steep; CF is becoming rare, SD would have been better.
EXTRAS
Tascam has released the £510 (+ VAT) RCSS20 wired Flash Start remote. A panel of 20 internally illuminated buttons provides instant access to tracks on the recorders. The RC-SS20 supports the Flash Play mode on the SS-R1 and SS-CDR1, so sound effects and announcements can be preloaded for instant playback. The End Of Message LED indicates when the end of the current track is approaching.
THE SYMPHONY SYSTEM
The Most Powerful Audio Workstation Available The Symphony System combines Apogee’s legendary X-Series and Rosetta Series converters with Apple’s revolutionary Mac Pro and Logic Pro audio workstation using the 32-channel Symphony PCI card.
BEST SOUNDING The most sonically advanced audio hardware interfaces combined with the most advanced music creation and production tool
Introducing Logic Studio
HIGHEST PERFORMANCE 1.6 milliseconds at 96k and up to 192 simultaneous channels of audio
A suite of powerful, easy-to-use music creation and production tools, Logic Studio gives musicians everything they need to write, record, edit, mix and perform.
GREATEST VALUE A fraction of the cost of popular card-based, DSP systems
Symphony PCIE Card 32-Channels of I/O per card & up to 96 channels per system
The Total Package
Contact TASCAM, japan: Website: www.tascam.co.uk
November/December 2008
resolution
23
review
Analogue Tube AT-101 Despite its short run and long obsolete status the Fairchild 670 compressor remains most highly regarded with examples changing hands for easily the largest piles of cash of any outboard item. GEORGE SHILLING encounters what he judges to be the definitive recreation.
T
he business of recreating obsolete equipment is on a steady upward curve and, as a marketing tool, cloning hard-to-find equipment used on legendary recordings seems to be a winner. This is achieved with varying success depending on (a) the price considerations of doing a proper job and (b) the availability of equivalent components. Even long-established equipment purveyors who realise they are sitting on a potential goldmine sometimes struggle to re-manufacture their own original products with complete accuracy. One of the most highly regarded items of audio processing has for many years been the Fairchild 670 compressor, ever popular with recording engineers for many tasks including vocal, drum and mix bus compression. It is held in such high esteem that examples change hands for easily the largest piles of cash of any outboard processor. Over the years, everyone who is anyone in recorded music has enjoyed using Fairchild compression, including, of course, The Beatles, yet as unlikely as it seems, there are apparently thought to have been less than 50 units built. In recent years many designs have been created that aim to emulate some of the magical glow and character of the 670 (and mono 660). Some have succeeded in copying some aspects but most fall at the hurdle of component supply, most notably the need for eight matched 6386 valves, an obsolete design. And these are only a part of a catalogue of components including a total of 20 tubes and 11 transformers. Following a five-year development period Analogue Tube’s Simon Saywood appears to have succeeded where all others have failed and has persuaded an EU valve manufacturer to remanufacture authentic 6386 valves, identical in character to the GE originals. The construction and build of a 670 is undoubtedly fairly complex, and with a complement of other difficult-tosource components, it is hardly surprising that it has taken Saywood five years to develop the product. With over 20 years in the business (he currently holds the post of senior technical engineer at London’s Metropolis 24
Studios) and a tube obsession dating from even earlier, this has been something of a labour of love. He has faithfully reproduced the wiring turrets, commissioned other unique components to be built (such as the specially made Sowter audio transformers used throughout) and painstakingly recreated almost every aspect of the original, improving reliability and component accuracy in some areas. One of the changes (and the only ‘downgrade’ or perhaps ‘crossgrade’) is that the Lat/Vert-L/R switch has been replaced with a stereo link switch. Although few AT-101s are likely to be used for vinyl mastering, the Lat/Vert mode of the original device can still be useful — Mid-Side processing can be fun, creating some interesting stereo fields and almost psycho-acoustic enhancement, so I suspect that at some point this may be requested by potential purchasers of the AT-101. Although undoubtedly useful, I have never worried unduly about the lack of a Stereo Link switch on a 670. An undoubted improvement is that the power supply now takes a couple of seconds to ramp up the heater voltage to help maintain tube life on power up. The tubes run as hot as on the original, and to that end there is a temperature monitoring system built into the resolution
lower panel with a red light warning system. The review unit was supplied with a (rather noisy) fan mounted in the rack above the main unit, and something similar (hopefully quieter) may be offered as an option when production units are supplied. Changes for the better over the original include chassis mounted XLR connectors, an improved heater cathode supply, Hovland Musicap Polypropylene film capacitors and ceramic tube sockets throughout. Although the chassis design is new, the front panel is broadly similar. The stepped Gain knobs are rather more clicky when switching settings, the knob caps perhaps don’t feel as expensive or substantial as they should, but the illuminated vintage meters are lovely, and the etched lettering is business-like. Every original 670 is different in sonic character, and sometimes those with older components can add a desirable crunch. But even the smoothest, best maintained units add some character and the AT-101 is no exception, albeit at the smoother end of the scale of my experiences with original units. The low end seems to stop waffling around and becomes tamed yet warm, levels can be compressed by needle-bending amounts with just a touch of extra richness, and a super magical sheen engulfs the top end. Everything glows and flows a little more and across the mix the AT-101 frequently turns the mix into a ‘record’. You immediately realise that you have stopped gritting your teeth and started enjoying the music rather more. Time Constant 5, with its fairly slow auto-release, is great for just gently warming things in this manner. Crushing the drums with Time Constant 1 is always fun, while vocals sound luscious with a setting of 3 or 4, even with oodles of compression. The initial unit was completed at the end of 2007 and since then has been extensively tested, most notably by producer Chris Potter during the making of the latest album by The Verve. He enjoyed it mainly on guitars — I similarly recall tracking almost every overdub on rock guitarist Bernard Butler’s solo albums (co-incidentally briefly a member of The Verve) through the 670s at AIR and Konk Studios. Those were on analogue tape, but even more so in the digital DAW era, there are few overdubs on which you wouldn’t want a dollop of this magic. A good Fairchild, and indeed the AT-101, imparts a fullsome warmth — like you might experience with good vinyl records and a well-adjusted, top-class playback system. Of course, news that 6836 tubes are being manufactured again will be comforting to 670 owners, but you would still arguably be better off with this recreation with all the aforementioned improvements over the original, and the reassuring thought that all components are new and will have many years of life. The thoroughly engineered AT-101 is something to truly impress knowledgeable clients. It is a remarkable achievement. And it is even available with five different front panel colours. Decisions, decisions… n
PROS
The best attempt to date to recreate the holy grail of compression; lives up to its promise of sonic excellence; should be rather more reliable than a 670; stereo link.
CONS
Expensive (UK£11,500 + VAT) — understandably; very large and heavy; efficient cooling required; no Lat/Vert mode.
Contact analogue tube, uk: Website: www.analoguetube.com Tel: +44 7957 257034
November/December 2008
$ 0! -/ " ) , % 3 5 2 2 / 5 . $ - ) # 2 / 0 ( / . %
9O U l R E S U R R O U N D E D
W W W D P A M I C R O P H O N E S C O M
#ANlT BELIEVE THAT A STEALTHY MICROPHONE LIKE THE $0! CAN BE SO SONICALLY ARRESTING 9OU SHOULD ITlS A BRILLIANT TRACKING DEVICE #HALK IT UP TO YET ANOTHER THRILLING CAPTURE BY THE $ANISH AUTHORITIES &OR A FULL BRIEFING ON THE REST OF OUR ARSENAL DOMINATING ENGINEERSl -OST 7ANTED LISTS AROUND THE GLOBE CONTACT THE PROFESSIONALS AT $0!
review
AKG C214 We all need references, be they sonic or operational. JON THORNTON encounters a mic that would seem to derive from his own personal microphone ‘starting point’ and finds himself calling for a towel…
A
ny fans of the late Douglas Adams’ Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy will undoubtedly be aware of the exhortation that you ‘keep your towel with you’. For those who haven’t come across the book/radio play/TV series/ film in question, a towel is supposedly the singularly most useful item to carry around the galaxy, serving a multitude of functions and getting you out of tight corners. Let’s face it — in audio terms we all have our own equivalent, whether it be a favoured piece of outboard, a pair of monitors or a microphone. For me, and I suspect for many others, it has to be AKG’s C414. Grab hold of a flightcase with half a dozen of them in and there are very few recording scenaria that you can’t deal with. Of course, this cosy familiarity has been rocked on occasion by the introduction of updated models, the most recent of which was the replacement of the venerable C414-B ULS with the newer XLS and XLII variants. A new capsule and housing took some getting used to visually and sonically, but they remained basically true to the same core values. But now the good folks in Vienna have launched the C214, marketed to some degree as being effectively a fixed-pattern 414. But is it really a 414 for those who never bother with the pattern select switch, or is it more of a hand towel than a full-on fluffy bath type? Initial reactions to its physical appearance are that it is even more ‘rounded off’ than the new 414, inexorably moving further away from the chiselled trapezoid shape of the original 414s. On the plus side, the casework seems well put together and sturdy, and ‘Made in Vienna’ is stamped prominently on t h e underside. This fact alone differentiates it from AKG’s recent Perception microphones, which unashamedly 26
occupy a lower price point and are of Chinese manufacture. Yet, while the Perception range features true, externally biased capsules, the 214 uses a 1-inch diameter backelectret capsule. Nothing wrong with this, of course — there are plenty of very respectable large and small diaphragm back-electret designs around. But it does suggest that the sonic heart of the 214 might have its roots less in the 414 and more in some of the company’s other offerings such as the C3000. In strictly performance terms alone this means that the 214 is significantly noisier than the 414 (13dbA as opposed to 6dBA equivalent noise) Other departures from convention from an aesthetic point of view are the locations of the -20dB pad and high-pass filter (160Hz, 6dB/octave) switches, which are located at either side of the bottom of the microphone housing rather than on the front, and these are conventional mechanical affairs rather than the electronically switched arrangement on the current 414. This does make accessing them when the mic is mounted in the supplied shockmount a little trick, though not impossible. As well as the shockmount the package also includes a ‘sock’-type pop shield and a hard carrying case. resolution
So — the moment of truth when patched in, powered up and settled down. Of course, there was only ever going to be one choice for comparison purposes, and that is the 414. In deference to the march of progress, I chose the newer 414 XLS rather than one of the older B-ULS variants and also because internal inspection of the capsule assembly of the C214 shows a far greater similarity in terms of internal suspension and mounting to the most recent 414. A quick walk check around both microphones with speech is all that is required to establish that there are substantial sonic differences between the two when the 414 was set to a cardioid pattern. First, the 214 is more obviously ‘voiced’ than the 414. There’s a very pronounced HF peak that makes it much brighter sounding than the 414, coupled with a general lift in the low mids and a much more exaggerated proximity bump. The 414 is less ‘scooped’ sounding and seems to have a much better low frequency extension. Both microphones have similarly even off-axis response, although the 214 has noticeably less rear rejection. Moving to acoustic guitar showed that both microphones captured transient and harmonic detail well but the tonal characteristics so obvious with speech were even more obvious here. Whereas the 414 delivered a neutral, honest representation of the guitar, the 214 was a little bit more forward sounding and seemed to exaggerate the fundamental tones a little more. But here’s the thing. I actually preferred the sound of the 214 in this particular application not just because of the voicing in its response but also, I think, because of the difference in rear rejection mentioned earlier. In some respects, this made the 214 sound more like I’d expect an omni microphone to sound in this particular application, pulling in a little more of the room sound. As ever, though, it’s horses for courses and in some other applications — just in front of a kick drum, and as a kit overhead — the 414 sounded leagues better to me; not as splashy on the kit, and with far more low frequency grunt on the kick. Sung vocals — as ever it’s more about matching the microphone to the singer — and on this particular (male) vocalist the 214’s more forward sound won the day. Which makes it officially a draw. So, is the 214 effectively a fixed pattern 414? Absolutely not. Is it a decent microphone in its own right? Unequivocally yes. A fairer point of comparison might be with Audio Technica’s 4033 or 4040, with which it shares a lot of similarities. But crucially, if I didn’t need the variable patterns, could the 214 step up and become my ‘towel’? That’s a very personal question (You wouldn’t want to share my towel, for example. Ed), but I have to say not. Even though I preferred it in some applications to the 414 while reviewing it, I still wouldn’t have the trust in it that I have in the original to cope with the unknown. But taken for what it is, it’s a well engineered, useful microphone that deserves to succeed at what is a very crowded price point (UK£383 + VAT). There are far worse choices you could make. Like listening to Vogon poetry. n
PROS
Well engineered; good value for money; forward voicing suits some applications.
CONS
Not a fixed pattern 414; fiddly pad and HPF switches; noisier than its sibling.
Contact AKG, Austria: Website: www.akg.com UK, Sound Technology: +44 1462 480000
November/December 2008
% % $ ! - $ #% $ )% $ * $ % ! & ! % $ )%
+ & !! ! + ! ! + "# , & - $ ! * $ - % # * % % ! "# ! . ! & / ) " 0 ! %
% 12 ! 0 12 ! 3 4 5 "# & 6 $$$& & % $ "# * ! &
' ,
! " #$ %& ' ( ) "!* +
!! !
"# $ % ! & ' ! % & ( !! &
! " # $" ! % & #
review
Thermionic Culture The Rooster Subtitled ‘Valve pre-amp with EQ & attitude’, The Rooster continues the tradition of bold, mildly eccentric, all-valve, proudly English outboard. GEORGE SHILLING says he’s ready for some of that.
F
rom the workshop of the legendary Vic Keary, with partner Jonathan Bailes looking after front panel design and manual writing, The Rooster appears to build upon the reputation of earlier Thermionic Culture units and indeed combines certain features borrowed from several of these. Essentially, the unit comprises two channels, with high quality microphone preamps, separate line inputs and DI inputs, some powerful ‘vari slope’ EQ (similar principle to the Earlybird 2 EQ), and the Attitude section, which features the same 5725 distortion valve as featured in the much-loved Culture Vulture Mastering unit. Front panel layout is perhaps a little cluttered and idiosyncratic, but the switchgear all works solidly. Labelling is clear, but a bit more colour (other than the two red chicken head knobs) might have been helpful. The channels are laid out from left to right, one set of controls above the other. Preamp and input controls are situated to the left. First there are useful Phase Invert toggle switches, followed by Mic/Line selection. These inputs have the luxury of discrete XLR connectors on the rear of the unit so there is no danger of sending 48V to line connections. Next along are the DI jack sockets. These override the selection toggle when a plug is inserted. The input gain knobs are smoothly damped and uncalibrated — just the old Spinal Tap 1 to 11 scale. With no graphical delineation between the sections we next start to encounter EQ controls, but also relevant to inputs are the phantom power toggles which, oddly, are located across the other side, last before the power toggle and blinding green power lamp. No illuminating indication is provided for phantom, but they are locking toggles which affords some protection against accidental operation. Meanwhile, back at the EQ, the first section is a fixed frequency Bass Lift scaled 0 to 10. At small boosts (around 3) this acts as a shelving curve, applying about 4dB of boost from 400Hz downwards, but as more is applied the low end ‘tips up’ so at full tilt the graph looks almost diagonal from 1dB boost at 1kHz down to an 18dB boost at 30Hz. The Mid/Hi Lift is even more versatile, accompanied by a three-position toggle selecting 2.5k, 4k or ‘Hi’. These are all rather broad curves, while the Hi setting does the vari slope thing again, with full tilt giving a 10kHz-centred boost. Mid Cut is next with a centre frequency of 700Hz and a narrowing bell-curve as Cut is increased. Bass Cut is a six-position switched knob with a complex selection of different filtering and shelving settings, the details of which I won’t 28
bore you with. Suffice to say they cover most filtering requirements from simply extracting the very low stuff, to a shelving curve that is 3dB down at 3kHz (and 10dB down at 30Hz). Most settings drop away more steeply at very low frequencies. Next along is a switchable Low Pass Filter (-6dB at 8kHz). This is actually plumbed in after the distortion circuit to tame and smooth excessive fuzz when pushing the Attitude section. And so to the distortion section. A toggle selects Triode (for smoother 2nd order harmonic distortion) or Pentode (for grungier 3rd order harmonics). The red ‘rooster’ Attitude knob has six positions — 1 to 5 then ‘Max’. In position 1 the signal can be very clean indeed (typically 0.01% claimed, but only 48dB mic gain available). As the setting is increased, the graunch increases. Of course, this is all rather dependent on the input source signal, and also the input gain applied, so judicious tweaking and experimentation is required. Finally, the output level knob works as expected, this can also be brought into play to reduce overdriven signals to avoid overloading the next piece of equipment in the chain. The basic character of the mic amp is big and commanding, without sounding coloured. There is a lovely richness evident on vocals through a condenser. Increasing the Attitude setting needs careful attention and juggling also of the Input and Output Gains, but a wide range of distortion amount is available, and it sounds great — rich, juicy and unmistakeably valvey. The Attitude settings are, of course, inextricably linked to and reliant on input signal level and Input knob setting but the six positions will take you to where you need to be in all instances, from clean through mild warming to total fuzz. For drum ambience, crushing with plenty of Pentode is tremendous, lending a trashy excitement to the sound. Subtle Triode distortion can be usefully employed to enhance ordinary sounding signals including vocals, or even whole mixes. Cello sounded gorgeously warm and rich using a U87 and a fair amount of distortion (Triode, 3), with just a bit of Hi EQ required to poke it through the mix. The EQ bands work amazingly well, you feel like you are adjusting a radiogram tone control, such is the powerful nature of these. Just occasionally you’ll miss being able to notch out a narrow band, in which case another device will be needed. Being so coarse, and with continuous knobs smoothly damped, the EQ is quick to set, the only operational problem I found was the lack of any bypass switches — I found resolution
myself winding knobs in and out to hear what they were doing. Flipping the LPF in certainly sweetens the tone when large amounts of distortion are applied, I would perhaps have liked a more variable circuit for this aspect. As suggested in the clear manual this can be especially useful for DI signals such as bass guitar — which sounds wonderfully vibrant, even set clean and flat. The build of the unit is excellent, it feels solid and weighty and appears to have been built to last. To cram all the character and versatility of The Rooster into a 2U and then make it a dual channel device is remarkable — the price (UK£1595 + VAT) seems quite a bargain. And to have the separate Line inputs is a real bonus — if you aren’t brave enough to commit to recording with distortion, running the signal back through for rerecording or on mixdown is always simple to set up. And even if you only occasionally venture away from clean, with such solid sounding mic amps and characterful EQ sections, the Rooster would make a great main recording channel for any studio. n
PROS
Culture Vulture-style distortion; great mic preamps; uniquely characterful EQ; all valve.
CONS
No EQ bypass
EXTRAS
The final production model of the Thermionic Culture FAT Bustard valve
mixer has 12 inputs instead of the 8 that were on the version previewed last year. The inputs are arranged as 4x stereo pairs, 4x mono with pan controls, and all the channels have toggle mute switches. The simple bass and treble EQ now has 0.5dB stepped Lift controls while there are 6-way stepped bass and treble cut controls.
Contact Thermionic Culture, UK: Website: www.thermionicculture.com Unity Audio: +44 1440 785843
November/December 2008
Audio
perfection
The current state of technology in the recording and reproduction of sound is at a very high level today thanks to tireless efforts of a handful of pioneers. This relatively small group of researchers and innovators, all of whom were continually striving for sonic perfection included Horst Klein and Walter Hummel. In 1945 they courageously founded a company that is still to this day, exclusively dedicated to the perfect reproduction of sound. www.klein-hummel.co.uk
review
HHB DualBurn CDR-882 The audiophile CD-R machine still has a place in racks yet the choice is not as wide as it once was. ZENON SCHOEPE enjoys a machine that sets the bar higher for what you now expect from a new model.
M
ost of the attention and energy that used to go into producing professional CD-R machines in their various guises has long been diverted by manufacturers to solid-state devices, as we always knew they would. The arguments for chips are compelling but if, like me, you associate ‘memory card’ most immediately with low-bit, compressed and back-to-mono then the swathe of modern thin-line players and recorders in rackmount and portable orientations will not disappoint even though they are capable of better. We know why that’s happened but there’s still a place in a rack for a good audio CD-R machine although we now expect a lot more from them. Choice is down on CD-R recorders, with many older models victims of ROHS, so it’s an interesting time to be presented with
an HHB CDR-882 because the technology has moved on and the underlying reasons for having one have moved on too. Whereas once it was all about creating that ‘master’ yourself with a little bit of duplication, that’s not enough in 2008. Thus we get two CD-R drives, rather than the usual clever drive/dumb drive arrangement, presented in a solid and reassuring hefty 2U. The DualBurn in its title refers to its ability to effectively ‘lock’ the two drives together to act as one so you can record the same thing onto both drives simultaneously. This has implications for the CDR-882’s other trick, DiscSpan, which can switch recording between the two drives for continuous long recording. You load up both drives with blanks and as the first drive’s disc approaches its capacity the other drive picks up
recording. Meanwhile, the first disc is finalised up and ejected so you can put another blank in ready for the next change over. And on it can go up to a maximum of 99 changed discs, which would account for most eventualities outside of a Grateful Dead gig. You can set fade in and fade out on the incoming and outgoing drives and, most importantly, the overlap period when both drives are recording. And that, together with the track IDs that you’ve set, is all you will need to reconstitute the recordings in playback as the drives effectively reverse the fade in, fade out routines and deliver uninterrupted continuous playback as you drop the numbered discs into the appropriate drives. However, smartest of all is the ability to multimachine CDR-882s via RS323 and effectively
review
DualBurn and DiscSpan across them. You can load and lock four CDR-882s and have unattended continuous DiscSpan recording across the eight drives, which beats sitting there on a full bladder waiting to do the reloading manually. There is a smartness to the CDR-882 that takes some of the load off you — you can’t, for example, feed it a non-blank disc during DiscSpan as it’ll spit it back out and when doing a straight drive-to-drive copy it works out the blank and the recorded disc for itself. But it’s 2008 and it really ought to; you are continually reminded that this is a newer incarnation of CD-R machine than you are used to. The rear panel has I-Os on balanced XLR and phonos, AES-EBU I-O, SPDIF I-O on coaxial and optical, plus Multimachine link input and output and a parallel remote socket and Word input. The front panel may seem as if it offers dedicated keys for the two different drives but that’s not the case. You select the drive you want and the controls apply to it although many of the functions are more global and pertain to the three operational modes of Single, DualBurn or DiscSpan. Configuration is accessed either via dedicated buttons that access the function directly and show it on the large central screen for adjustment with a continuous dial with push-to-make, or by access
through a stepped menu. Recording involves choosing the input from the rear panel pool, deciding how you want to mark IDs and then adjusting the analogue input level on the front panel pot or adjusting the digital level after a bit of prodding around in the menu and then tweaking with the dial. Playback options are elaborate and include the inevitable Program Play (useful for Program Copy only) and you can with a bit of dexterity use it as a dual playback machine. A PS2 keyboard can be connected to the front or rear but can only be used for CD Text entry, which is handy but they’ve missed a trick here by not endowing it with some remote functionality. The infra red remote you get is adequate but lacking in ergonomic prioritisation as all its buttons are the same size and are amassed in a 4 x 10 field with two hardly meaningful gaps. It’s difficult to read the tiny legending above the buttons and, while many of the front panel controls and functions are represented here, it comes down to the usual remote shortcoming of needing to be close enough to the machine to be able to see confirmation of your action on its display, in which case you might as well use the front panel anyway. You find a way of sharing operation between remote and panel but I just can’t bring myself to initiate an important
Record on two small squidgy remote buttons, even if they are red; I have to thump a front panel button (10s shock buffer). There is a lot in this machine and a degree of complexity results although this is likely to be more keenly felt by a reviewer, who feels obliged to at least try to perform all the various routines being offered, than an end-user who is unlikely to need it all. This broad feature set means that the appeal will be wide too. The RS232 and parallel remote will satisfy one set of users, whereas others will want it as a duplicator, for its DualBurnability, its DiscSpan record, or even just as a plain old audiophile CD-R/CD player with the ability to record on one while playing back on the other. It does all this and more. I’ve left the best to last and that is the sound of this thing. I noticed it immediately; it has an exceptionally fine back-end and the analogue input circuitry is good too. Performance has moved on since the last generation of machines and the CDR-882 is certainly the best sounding CD-R I have heard. I actually thought it would be more than the UK£569 (+ VAT) that’s being asked so I suppose that makes it a bargain. Still, you won’t find anything else that does what this can. Maybe it’s the last audio CD-R machine that you will ever need to buy. n
PROS
Clever logic; DiscSpan and DualBurn; very wide application appeal; solid; sounds splendid.
CONS
Remote is fiddly; Qwerty keyboard connection limited to CD Text entry.
Contact HHB, UK: Website: www.hhb.co.uk
review
Universal Audio 710 Twin-Finity Proving that solid-state and valve preamp stages can reside within the one house, UA’s latest box combines the two under the control of a Blend knob. JON THORNTON enjoys the extremes and the in-betweens.
U
niversal Audio’s new box is an example of a growing trend (or perhaps the rediscovery of an old one) towards making preamps that offer a range of tonal shaping possibilities rather than simply viewing the signal path as one that should be preserved as pristinely as possible. Recent examples of similar units include the Chandler Germanium Pre, UA’s own 4110 and (going back a bit further) SPL’s Gainstation. It’s the last of these units that springs to mind first when making comparisons, as, like the SPL unit, the Twin-Finity employs a solid-state and a tube-based gain stage. But whereas the Gainstation uses these stages serially, the Twin-Finity sends input signals to both simultaneously, and then sums them together at the output. The amount that each of the stages contributes to overall output is infinitely variable between the two via a front panel control — hence the name. Externally, the Twin-Finity (UK£595 + VAT) is a sturdy looking, half rack width box. It comes complete with a rack mounting kit that allows one or two units to be racked in 2U of space. Alternatively, a separate kit is available as a cost option that creates a carrying strap at the top of the unit for more mobile applications. The back panel is straightforward — separate microphone and line level inputs in and a single balanced output, all on XLR connections. Somewhat unusually for a modern unit of this type, the Twin-Finity has its own internal auto-switching power supply, so no wall warts required here. The front panel aesthetics show more than a passing nod to older UA designs, with a matte grey enamelled front plate, small toggle switches, mechanical VU meter and black knobs with wide, clear plastic collars. Separate gain and output level controls allow the overall gain structure to be tailored to use (or not) varying amounts of harmonic distortion by driving the twin gain stages hard or gently. Internally, the architecture is as follows. Input 32
signals are first met by a solid state, trans-impedance amplifier whose gain is set by the Gain control. The output from this is then fed to two separate, phase aligned, further gain stages. One of these is also a solid-state trans-impedance design, the other is a single-ended Class A triode tube stage, based around the ubiquitous 12AX7. The outputs of both stages pass to the output stage with its own output level control via a Blend control that determines whether the output is entirely solid-sate, entirely tube, or anywhere in between. In addition to the core gain, output level and blend controls, the front panel also features switches for phantom power, a -15dB pad (only on the microphone input), mic or line input selection, polarity reverse and a high-pass filter. A front panel TRS jack also allows the connection of a high impedance input via its own J-FET buffer. Metering is provided by a mechanical VU, which shows level post the output level control and is calibrated to 0VU = +4dBm. The meter can also be switched to monitor what UA terms ‘Drive’, which really means how hard the initial gain stage is being driven before it passes to the downstream tube and solid-state stages. Rather than indicating this in terms of level, UA has
opted to show this as the percentage of THD at this stage. When switched to this mode 0VU represents 1.2% THD on a 1kHz sine wave and -10VU is equal to 0.4% THD. This sounds strange in theory but is actually quite a useful gauge in practice, although it’s no substitute for using your ears at the end of the day (Or at any other time. Ed). In use, the Twin-Finity performs completely predictably. It’s quiet and clean when not driven hard and opens up the sound of pretty much any microphone you plug into it very well. What’s on offer here is essentially a very progressive shift in tonality as you move between the extremes of the solid-stage and tube stages. Even at low levels of drive there’s a distinct shift — the solid-state stage sounds slightly harder in the low mids but with a very open high-end and the tube stage softens the high-end response and warms up the low mids nicely. This is very noticeable on vocals. For example, when paired with a 414 (which can tend to sound a little unflattering on some voices) using just the tube stage softened things up nicely while still preserving good levels of detail. Equally, a Sony C-800, which can tend to sound a little on the dark side in the same application, sounded just that little bit tighter and harder in the low mids when using just the solid-state stage. With vocals I found that, more often than not, I was tending to use the Blend control at its extremes but the real flexibility of the Twin-Finity is more apparent on other sources. Acoustic guitar, this time with a C451 in a close position, benefited from careful adjustment of the Blend control, giving a slight warmth to the overall tonality but not losing any of the transient bite. Of course, it’s easy to overcook things by driving the initial gain stage a little too hard, although this is far more apparent with the tube stage than the solid-state stage. It almost seems as if the solid-state stage increases its THD content very consistently right up to maximum level, whereas the tube stage adds it smoothly up to a point and then dives straight into guitar-pedal overdrive mode. If I have one reservation it’s that the Twin-Finity can sound quite strained quite quickly at the extremes of its gain range, almost as if it could use a little bit more headroom than it has. In fact, the specs show a total gain range of 70dB which I have no reason to doubt — it’s just that the last 10dB or so sound ever so slightly squashed and I’m not just hearing tube compression here. Overall, the Twin-Finity is a very flexible unit. It’s clean, there’s clarity and openness there if you need it but so also is added character and warmth and the Blend control helps to get the exact balance of the two you need for any given application. n
Contact UNIVERSAL AUDIO: Website: www.uaudio.com UK, Source: +44 208 962 5080
PROS
Very flexible sound; compact size and range of mounting options; interesting metering options; Blend control gives a wide range of tonal possibilities.
CONS
Sounds like it could use a little more headroom at times; THD added by tube stage could work a little more progressively towards the extremes.
EXTRAS
The 1176AE anniversary edition celebrates a decade since UA’s refounding by Bill Putnam Jnr and combines the best of the ‘bluestripe’ and E revisions while adding the lower 2:1 compression ratio found on the 176. A new ‘slo’ attack mode gives the 1176AE the potential for classic and individual compression effects.
resolution
November/December 2008
the world of content creation • management • delivery
IBC thanks everyone who helped make IBC2008 another record breaking show •
49,000+ visitors
•
130 countries
•
1,400+ exhibiting companies
•
Packed conference sessions
IBC2009 Conference 10 - 14 September Exhibition 11 - 15 September RAI Amsterdam
www.ibc.org IBC Fifth Floor International Press Centre 76 Shoe Lane London EC4A 3JB UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7832 4100 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7832 4130 Email: show@ibc.org
review
SPL Phonitor
Headphones account for a surprisingly chunk of the monitoring experience yet attract not nearly the same attention as speakers. ZENON SCHOEPE encounters the combination of phones and monitor.
W
e may be fussy about our speakers but we’ll strap any old bit of rubbish onto our heads and plug into any socket that’ll take us. The average in-head experience may not be memorable but good headphones through a good amp can tell you things about a mix, performance or track that you often won’t be listening for on monitors. And that’s precisely where SPL’s Phonitor comes in, deriving as it does from the company’s 120V rail camp of ultra high-end products that its UK£1100 (+ VAT) tag suggests. Describing the Phonitor as a headphones amp is doing it a disservice. It’s objective, which is set out at some length in the manual, is to replicate a loudspeaker setup on headphones; not just to give you a bit of out of head activity but to replicate a monitoring setup. The manual explains how to A-B between your monitor and your headphones and to bring the two closer in line by using the controls on the Phonitor. We’ll get back to this. Connections are on XLR — I-Os on each channel for inserting the box into any suitable signal chain — and there’s one headphone socket on the front and plenty of clout on the large Volume knob. It’s a quality item with top drawer switch gear. There’s a Solo switch for isolating the left and right channels and a phase invert switch for each leg plus Mono and -20dB Dim switches. Super mechanical meters can be switched to VU or PPM and you can increase the sensitivity by 6dB if you want more waggle. The clever stuff starts with a six-position Speaker Angle switch (adjustable between 15 and 75 degrees) that attempts a frequency-dependent simulation of the ‘speaker’ stereo image width by playing with interaural time differences. This interacts with a sixposition Crossfeed switch that effectively mixes in progressively more of each channel into the other channel. Both are bypassable as one. A switchable Centre Level pot then allows you to attenuate the ‘centre’ part of the stereo signal by 0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2 1.6, and 2dB. This simple statement
34
resolution
underlines the fact that unlike ordinary headphones amps that effectively give you discrete feeds for left lughole and right lughole, the Phonitor really does bring the soundfield up in front of your eyes. Bypass this circuitry and all you have is an expensive headphones amp with positively stupendous neutrality and a superbly effortless power delivery. Switch in the Crossfeed and Speaker Angle circuitry and you can nudge the virtual ‘speakers’ closer together and soften the demarcation between the two. The effects are subtle but appreciable much as is the stereo centre attenuation. SPL has judged this well. I couldn’t detect any phasey artefacts and it’s all as clean as a whistle. I did detect a subtle drop off in bass on certain types of programme. SPL considers the Phonitor to be an alternative to monitors in certain circumstances. I’d agree with that to a point but would certainly consider it to be a vastly better proposition than any other headphones amp. If you have to use headphones then use a Phonitor as it’s easier on the ear because the action of bringing the soundfield more in front of you gives you something to focus on when listening hard in the same way that you focus on monitors. That’s a big improvement over the ‘point sources on your shoulders’ that phones normally give you. This won’t be for everyone — the price certainly won’t be — but if you use cans a lot then you owe it to yourself to try it. n
PROS
Superb neutrality and performance; interesting concept that is well executed; the best in breed headphones amp.
CONS
Not for everyone; expensive.
Contact SPL, Germany: Website: www.soundperformancelab.com UK, The Audio Professionals: +44 1923 693770
November/December 2008
A range of genuine quality PA speakers that brings serious power to the stage at a previously unheard of price. The designers have focused on sound quality, resulting in smooth high frequencies and solid bass. Recessed hardware and a compact design makes ‘flying’ and transportation easier.
Built to a standard, built to last.
Features • • • • • • • • • •
Diecast aluminium framed drivers Huge Neodymium magnets Flat pure copper wire for greater efficiency Kapton voice coil frame Electronic HF driver protection Extremely wide dispersion angles Rock solid construction Semi-gloss painted finish Mid range drivers on selected models Foldback and sub bass models
For more information, visit www.studiospares.com.
Free catalogue available on request. © 2008 Studiospares Ltd. All Rights Reserved. All specifications are subject to change without notice.
www.studiospares.com Tel: 08456 441020
monitor benchtest
Manger Zerobox 109 KEITH HOLLAND
T
he Manger Zerobox 109 is a mid-sized, 2-way passive loudspeaker with a difference. Instead of the conventional bass-mid/tweeter arrangement, the mid and high frequencies are reproduced by a unique driver known as a Manger Sound Transducer (MSW). This driver features a fairly conventional voice-coil/magnet arrangement, but the more usual cone or dome is replaced by a complex, three-layer, flexible, flat diaphragm assembly designed to support travelling bending waves. The idea is that the vibration of the voice coil sets up bending waves that propagate radially outwards until they are dissipated at the perimeter, with the effective area of the moving surface reducing with increasing frequency. Manger claims that this arrangement results in a more accurate transient response than conventional loudspeakers while maintaining a broad radiation pattern. The woofer is a conventional 8-inch (210mm) cone unit mounted in a sealed cabinet of dimensions 490mm x 260mm x 360mm that weighs 17kg. The passive crossover is specified as having 2nd order low pass and 1st order high pass filters crossing over at a very low 140Hz; the 109 could therefore be thought of as a single driver loudspeaker
with low-frequency enhancement. The nominal impedance is specified as 4ohms. Figure 1 shows the on-axis frequency response and harmonic distortion performance. The most notable feature of the on-axis response is the unevenness of the mid-frequency range; the response lies within +/-6dB from 40Hz to 20kHz. Response irregularities of this magnitude are sure to be audible. The low-frequency response is extended, having a second-order roll-off with -10dB at around 30Hz. Also notable from Figure 1 are the relatively high levels of harmonic distortion from 200Hz upwards. The second harmonic distortion is seen to peak at around -25dB (5.6%) at 250Hz with the third harmonic around 10dB lower. Although it is difficult to predict how audible this distortion would be on programme, the figures do indicate that the MSW doesn’t behave in as linear a manner as most conventional drivers. Figures 2 and 3 show the horizontal and vertical off-axis frequency responses respectively. The directivity in the mid-frequency range is excellent, with no trace of the mid-range narrowing found with many conventional bass-mid drivers, and no mid-range cross-over dip (the spacing between the
Fig. 1. On-axis frequency response and harmonic distortion.
drivers is effectively small at the crossover frequency of 140Hz). At high frequencies, things are a little less good with the response at 15 degrees off-axis seen to be maintained within 5dB of the on-axis response up to around 8kHz, above which it falls quite rapidly. At wider off-axis angles, there is much evidence of lobing at frequencies above 3.5kHz. The mid-range response irregularities noted in the on-axis response also generally occur off axis. The step response for the Zerobox 109 is shown in Figure 4. The leading edge of this response is probably the most rapid of any loudspeaker I have tested with the possible exception of the KSDigital ADM2, which has a digital crossover, and, of course, Quad electrostatic loudspeakers. However, the irregularities in the frequency response noted above do manifest themselves as a form of ‘ringing‘ in the step response. Figure 5 shows that the acoustic source position moves less than 2m behind the loudspeaker at low frequencies. This result, along with the rapid step
ASP8024
One analogue world ...hundreds of studios ...thousands of users
Prices start from around £12,000 plus VAT and Delivery. Options include DAW control bay and patchbay. Distributed in the UK by SCV London. Tel: 020 8418 1470 www.scvlondon.co.uk
monitor benchtest
Fig. 2. Horizontal off-axis response.
Fig. 4. Step response.
Fig. 6. Waterfall plot.
Fig. 3. Vertical off-axis response.
Fig. 5. Acoustic source position.
Fig. 7. Power cepstrum.
response, reinforces Manger’s claim of an accurate transient response. The waterfall plot (Figure 6) demonstrates a rapid decay at low frequencies with only slight evidence of ringing at about 60Hz and in the mid-band at 500Hz. The other mid-range response irregularities do not ring and so do not appear to be due to resonance; they are therefore more likely due to interference which may be less audible. The power cepstrum (Figure 7) further reinforces that possibility by showing evidence for a lot of reflections or echoes for over 2 milliseconds after the first arriving sound.
Overall, the Manger Zerobox 109 is a mixed bag. The time domain response is, as claimed, very accurate, with very rapid rise and decay of transient signals. However, this transient accuracy is achieved at the expense of frequency response and nonlinear distortion, both of which lie outside the specification for most monitor loudspeakers. The offaxis behaviour is also a mix of good and less good, with a very well controlled mid-frequency range and a narrow and lobed high frequency range. Clearly, the strengths of this loudspeaker lie in its accurate
transient response, with the more traditional design goals of flat response and low distortion very much taking second place. Whether this makes it a better or worse sounding loudspeaker as a result is difficult to assess. In any case, Manger should be applauded for producing a different type of loudspeaker with different qualities. n
Contact MANGER, GERMANY: Website: www.manger-audio.co.uk
www.audient.com
craft
Chris Kimsey His work is known to many and his contribution has been enormous to what were in many cases difficult projects. GEORGE SHILLING talks to Chris Kimsey about The Stones and others…
A
lthough not particularly a fan of rock bands, Chris Kimsey was initially interested in film music and helped out with the music for his school plays. After pestering the studio manager he landed a job at Olympic Studios — Keith Grant showed him around and offered him the position after an interview that consisted of testing his knowledge of wiring a 13Amp plug. Instructed to quietly observe a session with Alan O’Duffy, he entered the room to find that the assistant had gone off sick, so O’Duffy (not realising that this was Kimsey’s first day) threw him in at the deep end and he immediately started tape-operating duties. He soon built up a rapport with Glyn Johns who appreciated Kimsey’s keen attention to detail. During a Johnny Hallyday session with a bunch of top session players, engineer Vic Smith called in sick and 38
Kimsey took over, subsequently working on many more Hallyday albums. Further projects included Peter Frampton, Ten Years After, and he engineered some of the Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers album. When Glyn Johns decided to quit working with the Stones, Kimsey was the natural successor. He engineered and mixed Some Girls and this was the beginning of his long relationship with the band for many albums including Tattoo You, Emotional Rescue and Steel Wheels. Additional career highlights include Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, The Chieftains, Gypsy Kings, Marillion and Fish (including Misplaced Childhood and Kayleigh), and orchestral sessions with Jaz Coleman. Kimsey has occupied a room at Sphere Studios in West London for the last six years with a Sony DMX-R100 console and last year he mixed the New Model Army album High there. Chris has also resolution
been working with Arabel Von Karajan (daughter of conductor Herbert). He formed a production company in the US with two partners and they have signed Very Emergency from Kentucky and Saint Jude from London, both of which Kimsey produced. He had just finished a major three-month project for a Russian artist and was just about to mix Chris Jagger’s new album when Resolution caught up with him. (Photos www.recordproduction.com)
Is it true that Charlie Watts won’t hit his drums for you to work on the sound? You’ve got to get the sound while he’s performing, you might get one hit of each drum, but that’s it — quite right too! There was one day in Paris doing Some Girls where I got there early — they’d always be late — and I sat down at the drums and started playing them, and Charlie’s tuning is peculiar to Charlie, it is odd, but the way he plays, it makes total sense. But I decided I’d tune the snare drum just one or two turns. Charlie came in and he folded his jacket neatly, and sat down, and the first strike of the drum, he was in shock. He said, ‘Someone’s touched my drum!’ I said it was me, but I was totally amazed he could tell. Because he’s a jazz drummer it’s all touch and finesse. November/December 2008
craft You can’t recognise drummers’ styles so much listening to modern records, why is that? I think because they’re not listening to the song as much, the thing with Charlie is that all the song writing would be done in the studio, so you never knew what the song was, he’d have to create the groove that was right for the guitar and vocal. I think a lot of drummers today are too precise. They’d do seven or eight takes, but the big thing with them was when everyone went to the bridge, it was done on a nod and a wink when it felt right. I realised that with Charlie’s drum fills, instead of leading into the bridge or the chorus, the chorus would happen and then Charlie would do a drum fill after the fact, which made it unique and special. I said to him on one occasion, Charlie it would be great if you’d lead into the chorus, he said ‘Lead into the where?’ Even he didn’t know, it was just a complete feel thing. When it’s all worked out and perfectly mapped out, you just get the beat, you don’t really get the style of the drummer.
How do you enjoy computer recording? I love Pro Tools, that’s what I’ve got here. But interestingly a lot of mixes from before Pro Tools, even with effects, they seem to do more than all the plug-ins in Pro Tools.
Terry Britten’s studio on the old EMI TG that I recorded Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, and most of Tattoo You on. He bought the desk from Pathé Marconi, so it’s like seeing an old girlfriend. And we did overdubs and mixed it in here, turned out great.
Do you mix in-the-box? No it’s all on the board, the DMX. I never planned to have a studio, and then after a while I decided to sit down and do some writing, and I have to have faders. This had just come out, and I was really impressed by how simple it was to operate. I like the EQ, I don’t get into this whole thing of, does it sound digital, I just know if I enjoy it, and if I like what it does then I’m happy with it. I was also excited about the instant recall, because song writing, you want to move really quick. And I’ve mixed lots of albums on it. We recorded the New Model Army album last year at
So you use some analogue outboard? Yeah, a little bit, some compressors and reverbs and stuff. And you write down all the settings? I do, ha-ha, try to! I mix back into the computer, but always also on DAT, just as a backup. I don’t know why, people think I’m crazy, but I do. I’d rather mix onto an analogue machine, but tape’s pretty expensive now. What we did on the Russian project was record via tape onto Pro Tools. I couldn’t do the overdubs on tape; there weren’t that many overdubs,
Would you edit the Stones’ songs for arrangement reasons? Yes, the song Some Girls had hundreds of verses about what girls Mick liked and what girls Mick didn’t like, went on for about 12 minutes. 12 minutes of verses, with only three or four bridges in that. I remember Mick and Keith coming into the control room to listen to it all, and Mick turned round and said, ‘Make it about four minutes, pick what verses you want.’ It was on 16-track, so I started editing. About ten minutes later he came back and said, Have you done it?! I said it’s going to take a bit longer than that! Everything was from a different place, as the multitrack went past you couldn’t see much brown, all you could see was white! There was no click in those days, it was down to the drummer’s timekeeping, and it’s always nice to tell bands these days that you don’t have to have a click, because if you’re any good as a rhythm section, you should be able to chop between takes. As long as the tempo curve is upwards, there’s no problem, you’d be amazed what you can do without a click. I’ve seen more sessions ruined in later years where engineers and producers can’t even record a rhythm section until they know what the tempo and click’s going to be. The first thing they want is the click, and that creates this immediate atmosphere for the rhythm section that they’re beholden to the click, rather than finding their own natural tempo. If a song has been recorded too slow, you just do it faster — better to do it a lot faster, than one or two clicks up. But it’s always easier to go faster — if you start fast and decide to do it slower, you’d better do it the next day! How did you approach the Gypsy Kings project? It’s still music, and all about capturing performance. I took Pino Paladino as the bass player, and John Carin, he’s played with Roger Waters, Pink Floyd and The Who. They don’t speak any French. On the first meeting with the band John had a Kurzweil and the Gypsies thought he was a magician. Pino played along, and they came over and started sniffing us — they’re real Gypsies, crazy people. On one song, we overdubbed the lead vocal, and we got to the end and I said, That’s great, do another. He said, Why? I thought — Yeah! Okay, why do another?! And he was right, he’d done his performance. My mission on that album was that I wanted just them, no drums and brass, a more rootsy album. November/December 2008
resolution
39
craft everything was going down live. That was a real eye-opener, because I hadn’t really done an analogue session for some time, and it was so much fun to play with tape again, and I’d forgotten how much you can play with it. You can really squash it and do wonderful things with it. Bringing it back in here, I noticed I could listen to it time and time again and get less ear fatigue. The only thing was I had a problem with the artist when I was mixing it, he said, There’s not enough top, everything sounds very warm! I said, yeah, that’s right, there’s bass and depth and warmth! I said, you’re not having any more treble, you can do that in mastering! People’s ears get a bit frightened sometimes. Another project we did in the States last year we did analogue, and the comments I get back from that are, wow, what a great big warm analogue sound!
Was the Stones’ track Undercover recorded to a click? No. That’s one of the few songs that, if you just put up the multitrack now, it is nothing like the mix. It took me a week to mix that. I had a vision of what could be done with that song, mix-wise. It was literally two or three days of throwing down different mix ideas, listening to them all, then re-editing the song with those mix ideas. The backwards stuff, there’s loads of stuff going on there. The bones of the song were acoustic guitar and timpani. It was Charlie going boom-da-da boom da-da boom on the timpani and Mick playing acoustic guitar and singing a guide vocal, that’s how the song started. And I think the disco comes from Sly & Robbie, that’s where the electronic beat comes from, with a very simple beat from Charlie. Charlie would hate overdubbing anything, it was very rare that he’d overdub drums.
40
resolution
November/December 2008
craft And the backwards stuff — did you record some of the guitars backwards? No, that’s totally invented in the control room, I also used the H910 with the feedback to make his voice go down, wwwoouumm. Just a lot of fun throwing down tons of stuff on quarter-inch, and then working out what to do with it. That was the first song I mixed on that album, and Mick and Keith were in a really bad patch, they were not getting on. We were in New York, and I had Mick come in from one o’clock ‘til five o’clock doing his overdubs and giving me his input on mixes, and then Keith would come in from nine o’clock until whatever, and after three or four days I said guys, I can’t do this, leave me alone, I’ll just mix it. So that was the first mix, and they both said, Great, mix the rest of the album like that! You must have been really inspired to come up with all those ideas for Undercover? It was fantastic. And the relationship with Mick and Keith — I was never really told what to do. It was more what they expected and what they got. There was never a discussion about guitar sound or drum sound.
because it’s compressed to shit and just sitting there! In recording drums I try to use as few mics as possible, I actually walk around the kit for quite a long time deciding where to place microphones, I’ll be out there listening while everyone’s playing. I’ll get basic microphones set up, but then spend quite a long time in the room moving things about, so that in the room things sound in balance. I’m always trying to have musicians play without headphones. Most of the Stones recordings, there were no headphones. We set up a mini PA, mainly to put Charlie through because he’s so quiet, just put the bass drum and the snare drum through the PA, and a bit of Mick’s vocal, just a bit of mumbling — this is the verse, this is the chorus. And in some recordings if you listen really hard on headphones you can hear a ghost vocal where he’s changed the vocal or changed the melody. If you do use headphones you
have to pay attention that there’s a really good mix going on. Ten or 15 years ago they didn’t realise they could have the mix changed, and a lot of engineers would be too lazy to even tell them. So I’m always very fussy to make sure people can really hear what they’re doing.
What else makes for successful sessions? Make sure that everything’s set up, so there’s less room for mistakes, and so that everyone just slips in and feels a lot more comfortable, rather than, Shall we use that? Shall we use this? You can do that later, but for bare bones recording you have to be prepared to make things run smoothly. After that, in production, you’ve got to look for a great singer, and great songs, that’s number one. I can’t work with people who can’t sing in tune and can’t deliver, they’ve got to be better than me. And I like to sing! n
But it shows terrific initiative on your part to come up with such a creative mix… It sounded nothing like the general perception of the Rolling Stones… But totally related to the song and to the feel. And if you tried to emulate that now with all the plug-ins, what would you do? Maybe you wouldn’t be so brave, there are so many choices… There was one track with Arabel Von Karajan, when I had a bit of an Undercover moment, where I thought, wow, I wonder what the whole track would sound like backwards? Not the vocal, and not the drums, but the other instruments. That was quick and easy, and worked. It was quite a big thing to do, a big decision. I’ve always believed, if you’re going to do it, do it big! What tips do you have for miking techniques? One of the best ones is if you have a vocal mic up, even if it’s just for communication, and you’re playing stuff back and the singer’s not singing, but there’s this great drum sound coming from somewhere. You turn off that microphone and it’s the drum sound,
November/December 2008
resolution
41
craft
G
Jean Goudier Unless you’re French, or very observant at reading end credits, you may not know the name, but Jean Goudier is at the top of his profession. A quick glance at his extensive IMDb entry is revealing. ROB JAMES talks to a top film sound practitioner.
oudier finished a degree in French language and literature which he followed with a spell at the Louis Lumiere College, one of the French film schools, where he completed a Masters. In the meantime he worked in the labs (Film Laboratories) to support himself and thus began the film industry career that he continues to follow. He also spent a year in the army — ‘A year wasted’, according to Jean — and upon his return he was fortunate enough to complete his apprenticeship on That Obscure Object of Desire, Luis Bunuel’s last film. Dean Humphreys has been mixing Roman Polanski’s films for many years and worked recently with Jean on the Ronnie Harwood adaptation of Oliver Twist. Dean says of Jean: ‘When you meet him for the first time he seems so laid back you wonder if he’s really involved in the project. It’s a complete illusion. I first worked with him 20 years ago on Frantic and many times since. A more committed and talented man you couldn’t hope to meet. If there’s a problem Jean just sorts it with a self-effacing gallic shrug of the shoulders. A twinkle in the eye betrays his dry sense of humour.’ I asked Jean where it all began… I loved sound maybe from birth. When I was a little older I used to make ‘radio’ comedies on tape with some friends. I think sound is so much more powerful than the image. I worked first with magnetic (film), of course, from 78 until 1992/1993.
Where did you begin with digital? I first worked with the Akai DD1000 and DD1500s and one year on Pro Tools and then I discovered Pyramix and I preferred that. Pyramix was the first to develop 5.1 editing, before Pro Tools, and that’s why I decided to buy one. I feel more comfortable with Pyramix because it is more intuitive and intelligent and, of course, it sounds better. The Horseman on the Roof was the first film I worked on with the Akai DD1500 and then I think the first film I did with Pyramix was Ginostra directed by Manuel Pradal in 1999 — nobody saw it! How long have you been using MassCore? Ah well, three or four months and for me it is a revolution because until then I was a bit unhappy because when you begin to add one plug-in more, and one more, or more tracks you get annoyed with the DSP — not enough. Now suddenly with MassCore it is as if you don’t have to worry any more about DSP because it seems to be limitless. It’s not, of course, but it seems like it. I used to use about 80 or 85% DSP with the old version and now it’s 13 or 14%. Do you use intensive plug-ins? Yes, for instance Arkamys, which is very heavy. It took about 33% with the old version and now you can put five or six Arkamys instances on a six track without any problem. I’ve even tried 8 and it was still going strong. Is there anything on your wish list? There’s one thing I would like more of and that’s more stems on a single master strip, you know? 16 stems at most is not quite enough because some rerecording mixers want more. Because MassCore offers you so many more possibilities I would like to put music, Foleys, sound effects, ambience and so on in the same project but separate them when you go to the mix. So 16 (stems) is not enough for me. Do you use a hardware controller? No, I used to use it in combination with a Sony DMX R-100 but not any more. I still use the mixer for monitoring but that’s all. It’s a waste. 42
resolution
November/December 2008
craft A big difference from the Akai days? Oh yes, it’s so far away it’s amazing. I cannot tell you just how enthusiastic I am about MassCore; it has changed my working life. I have the same installation at home, in my cellar, and that’s exactly the same but with two ADAT cards. I’ve got 32 channels of I-O and it works like a dream. It is easy to move projects and I can work in Boulogne or at home. I’m also using VCube for the pictures.
Have you worked abroad? Yes, sometimes, one month ago I was in Israel, Jerusalem, to do a son-et-lumiere that takes place in a museum at David’s Tower. It was a really amazing experience. I had to mix on screen in Pyramix in the museum because there was no hardware mixer or control surface. It was very, very interesting to do and it all went very well. It’s worth a trip to Jerusalem just to see and hear it.
Have you played with the ADR? No, not yet, but it’s not in the French way to use ADR like that. Here the actor just reads the rythmo band. With your way [English language], he can’t read, he has to act. The result is much better.
What are you working on at the moment? A French comedy you won’t see I think, because it won’t go abroad, Tellement Proche, which could be more or less translated as ‘So Close’ or ‘So Much Alike’. There are two directors for that film.
Do you think we’ve lost anything with digital? Maybe, but it all depends on the sound you put on the tracks and the way you treat it in the mixing room. It’s not as warm as magnetic film but I have no regrets at all because I couldn’t go back to the magnetic, it’s not worth it.
Do you record a lot of your own sounds? Yes, not on the set but most of the sounds that are
used are recorded by myself because I like it. Every time I go on holiday or even to work abroad I always take something with me to record.
Do you record in 5.1? Just double MS with the Schoeps system. I get a very good sound with that. I put a green overcoat on the Rycote. It’s absolutely amazing. Even in a storm nothing moves in it. It’s made out of pig bristles and it’s green and ugly but very efficient. What recorder do you use? Usually a Sound Devices, I have used a Cantar with the double M&S to record sounds for Dogora a film with no words, just effects and music composed by Étienne Perruchon set in Cambodia. Before shooting he did a score with a great big choir and orchestra that had nothing to do with Cambodia. The words
Do you do a lot of your own premixing? Yes, not always completely for the whole film but for some sequences, yes of course, there is now very little to do in the mixing room. So, why go into the big room with the big console? It’s another way to listen to what you did in the editing room. Even if you have good speakers, as I do, a very good Showmax system. The sound comes from behind the screen but it’s not a perf screen so the picture is better. A big mixing room is a necessary stage in the process because you are supposed to listen to the movie in a big theatre and this is another way to listen to it. Furthermore it’s very healthy to have somebody else mix the film. I mean somebody different from the sound editor or sound designer because he has another perspective. It depends on the film and on the mixing engineer but most of the time it’s good for the movie. I would like to do the whole thing myself. I would like to go from the first sound to the optical because I’ve got an ego too, you know? But it is not wise. Do you work mostly at Les Auditorium de Boulogne? I’m lucky because from one production to another I can stay in the same room. That way I can have a big screen and the Showmax system which is very heavy and hard to move about. I’ve been here for around four years now. You did the sound for several Asterix films and also cut the picture on one? It was Asterix and the Big Fight in 1988. I worked on it for a year and a half. It was the first film I did as editor and sound editor. Cartoons are very interesting because the sound exists before the pictures. It’s simpler to do the sound first. You can adjust the picture to suit and when the picture comes back you can adjust the sound again. It’s fascinating work to do. What are the challenges? I think that’s where I learned most of the skills I use now because you have to tell something with the sounds before a frame exists or the script is even written. On the action scenes you have to imagine, to work with your imagination to build an action as if it was on the radio with no words. It was quite complicated to do that. That’s where I became so conscious of the power of the sounds. November/December 2008
resolution
43
craft used in the choral recordings were invented by the composer, which he called ‘Dogorienne’, a made up language, and Dogora took its name from this. Patrice Leconte did the shoot and produced these amazing images and he asked me to go back to Cambodia after he had finished shooting to have some sounds from there to put under the music. It is a very happy memory for me.
movies I did for the French director Manuel Pradal, Marie Baie des Anges and Ginostra, because everybody was on the same track and heading in the same direction. In Ginostra the sound is not usual and followed the script and drama which is very rare in France and also we get along together very well.
Do you have any great likes or dislikes? Well, I don’t like films with too much music, when it draws attention to itself or you notice evident sounds. Did you see No Country For Old Men? It was so amazing. There is no unnatural music just one cue at the end. I watched it with my wife and she didn’t notice that there was no music. I would love to work on a film like that. You are in the movie, you don’t notice anything, you just feel it. You don’t notice the sound, you just feel the way the director intended you to when he did the movie and that’s so rare in France. I don’t like it when sound is too obvious and draws attention to itself — ‘Hear how clever I am’. I dream, movie after movie, to make a film using just production sound, ideal production sound and that doesn’t exist of course, because nobody can do it in one take. I’d like sound that is so natural that you just wouldn’t notice it, but you have to feel it and it’s part of the emotions you should have when you see a movie.
Do you do any of your own Foley work? No, never. I leave it to somebody who can do it well but the border is not very straight between sound effects you can make and the things that need a Foley artist. Of all the things you’ve done what are you happiest with? There are many movies I like but not necessarily because I’m proud of the sound, more because it was a good experience to work on them. Like Roman Polanski’s films, the last one was Oliver Twist. Even though I don’t agree with every part of the sound, I like it. For instance, even though we did the mix on 8 channels for SDDS with Dean Humphreys, Polanski couldn’t bear to hear anything on the edges when the scene was indoors. Every time we tried to put something subtly even on the inner left and inner right speakers he would hear it and get very angry about it. He just wanted the sound, every sound, in the centre. As a rule, you couldn’t do anything else. It was very peculiar. He has quite an ear because we just couldn’t get away with it! Of course I am very happy with some of Patrice Leconte’s films like La Fille Sur le Pont (The Girl on the Bridge) and Monsieur Hire. I think I’m happiest with the sound of two
The Revolution Continues.
In 2000, the model 101 helped fuel a revolution. When people took professional recording into their own hands, it was there with all of the quality and performance of a high-end mic preamplifier, but with a price that made it available to the masses. 8 years later, and the cause moves forward with the newly redesigned m101. With its impressive list of new features, the m101 is ready to give any mic preamplifier a run for its money. Consider the new audio signal path with 0.5% precision metal film resistors, 12 position gold plated rotary gain switch, a built-in universal AC input module, or our exclusive RIBBON mic mode - and the picture becomes clear: This is now a fully professional, state of the art precision mic preamp that roundly outperforms anything in its class. All this at the same affordable price of the original model 101.
How about your great success, Les Visiteurs? The first Les Visiteurs was a big long laugh from beginning to end to work on and the second more painful. But both were challenging because of the contrast between medieval and present day sounds in the same movie. Besides, it’s very pleasant to work on a successful movie, just to have the illusion of being somehow a little bit useful. n
t t t t
t t t From podcast to concert hall, the m101 brings the build quality, refinement and performance to t revolutionize any recording facility. t
Audio signal path uses 0.5% precision metal film resistors 12 position gold plated rotary gain switch Higher performance output line driver amplifier and HPF amplifier RIBBON mic mode (also great for dynamic mics)- Relay bypass of phantom power decoupling capacitors, increased input impedance, and 48V lockout. Wide 10-75dB gain range Three output connectors: XLR balanced, TRS balanced and TS unbalanced Bold and bombproof laser-etched black anodized frontpanel Sealed gold contact relay for HI-Z input switching Built in power supply / no wall-wart!
JO UIF 6, "TQFO .FEJB -UE t XXX BTQFO NFEJB DPN t XXX HSBDFEFTJHO DPN
Power • Detail • Grace
Knowledge Passion Capture: Content Ideas Creativity Insight Experience Innovation
Regardless of the important role you play in the creation of content, from conceptualization through production and post-production, the NAB Show delivers the tools and techniques to give life to your next award-winning vision. Experience a wealth of hands-on educational opportunities designed to expand your know-how and abilities. See, touch and test the advancements influencing today’s edgiest content, from HD to 3D, editing, and the latest in animation, gaming, widgets, social networking and more.
Conferences: April 17–23, 2009 / Exhibits: April 20–23 Las Vegas Convention Center / Las Vegas, Nevada USA
www.nabshow.com
From big screen to small screen to no screen and beyond, the NAB Show is the ultimate venue for exchanging solutions and strategies for creating award-winning content to be viewed by local, national and global audiences. Join the world-wide community of professionals who share your passion for entertainment excellence. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.
E FRE its ib Exhsport Pas A151 wheen n code onli Use stering i reg
craft
Chris Sheldon He’s carved a niche for himself in the rock field and considers himself to be non-technical. Chris Sheldon shares his refreshing and inspired approach to record making with GEORGE SHILLING
R
esolution recently met with the enthusiastic and bubbly Chris Sheldon at the rather smart Kore Studio in West London. While often tracking in studios, such as Kore, Chris now mixes mainly in his personal room in North London, where he built his own equipment furniture and acoustic panelling. He works there with an HD rig, Neve summing and fader packs ‘and a compressor to stick on the end of it. I love having all this stuff for recording, when it comes to mixing, nowadays I don’t use it.’ About 60-70% of Chris’s work is mixing, and he often finishes off overdubs then mixes projects that have been self-produced. Having played in bands, in 1982 Sheldon followed his school chum, renowned producer Tim Palmer, into studio employment at Utopia Studios in North London, a (long since closed) complex with two studios and mastering owned by Phil Wainman, where he was trained by chief engineer John Mackswith. ‘The studio was very relaxed, they’d let us take multitracks out and practise mixing, it was a great way of learning.’ He went freelance as an engineer after only four years, having built a relationship with producer Ian Ritchie (‘he was mad as a hatter, in the best possible way!’) His breakthrough record was Northern Irish threepiece Therapy?’s Troublegum, a vibrantly aggressive yet melodic rock album.
46
Despite being offered other three-piece Irish rock bands he chose instead to work next with Shed Seven. However, he is now known mainly for his work in the rock field with a CV that includes Biffy Clyro, Foo Fighters, My Vitriol, Terrorvision and Feeder. Recently he produced a folk-rock album with Rose Kemp, and after a 10-year gap he recently renewed his working relationship with producer Gil Norton and, ironically, mixed another three-piece Northern Irish rock band: In Case Of Fire. He’s currently working on an album with The Waits (‘Smashing Pumpkins guitars, baroque strings and William Shakespeare!’); mixing a French punk record and planning a possible project with The Favours. (Photos www.recordproduction.com)
What made the Therapy? record sound so idiosyncratic? A lot of that was the drummer Fyfe, he used to play with the drums really high pitched, the snare sounded like a biscuit-tin. I thought, this is exciting, this is what he does. Whatever the band does, that’s what I will make the best of — the idea of getting somebody else in is an anathema, you make the best of what the band do. It was the same with Andy Cairns the guitar player, he wasn’t the best lead guitar player in soloing at all, but he was awesome at rhythm resolution
guitar and making a racket; that’s what excited me. I remember he was making this incredible racket, and I turned round to see what he was doing, and he was holding the whammy bar and just bouncing the guitar up and down! I thought, that’s the kind of band I like to work with!
You weren’t trying to make them sound ‘normal’… Also, I was probably too naïve or nervous, I wasn’t the commander-demander saying, this is how it’s going to be. And I loved what they were doing. Why did you build your mix room? It was partly out of necessity, what people used to pay as a fee is now the entire album budget, and you either make it work, or you get out of the game. If you mix something you haven’t recorded, there must be some computer housekeeping to do? If you’re lucky you’ll get it and it all makes sense — ‘Rhythm Guitar’ rather than ‘Guitar 1’ or ‘Audio 1’. I normally spend a day on a mix and check it in the morning. Nowadays I try and get everything up front and spend at least a day going through everything [for several tracks], prepping them. November/December 2008
craft Why did you get the Neve Summing Mixers? I bought those because they have recall on them, I think they’re the only one that does. I need this, because quite often I’ll be working on three tracks in one day where I’ve done the mixes and people ring up and say, can you update this, and it’s so quick. I don’t know if they sound better than any others, because I didn’t try any others out. And I wanted faders to get a balance before doing internal moves, I’ve got 32 faders, so it’s a proper desk. The only analogue outboard I use is a Smart compressor, I was going to buy a GML EQ, but I used the GML software EQ and it’s great. I’ll put those across the mix, and it works really well. I think it’s as good as if I was in any studio. Do you use boutique convertors? No, I am the least technical guy you will meet. People are always bemused, but I am always more interested in the music than worrying about the convertor. That’s why I come somewhere like this [Kore] with all the incredible mic amps, it doesn’t matter what I put it through, it’s always going to sound great. I’ve made great records in questionable circumstances, and I think that as much as this stuff is terrific, it’s not going to make a crappy record a good one. A lot of people get very hung up on gear, and it just isn’t necessary. Maybe it’s just my age, but we never really thought about it. You just made a record — moving a mic around makes more difference than a mic pre. People get very hung up on gear, but I think you’ve just got to use your ears. People are making bizarre sounding records that I love. Even back in the 60s — The Beatles still sound awesome today, but I’m sure there were a lot of crappy records that are terrible.
November/December 2008
Do you use reverb plug-ins? I do it all inside the box, but to be honest I hardly ever use reverb. To me it’s a total effect that should be used every now and again. Elliot Scheiner said he’d always pan the reverb with the guitar, and I’m a great believer in that, otherwise things just start to swamp around. But I’m very dry, if you’re going to use an effect it should be dynamic. I’ve used subtle delays for vocals to make the chorus seem more interesting or different. Do you group things inside Pro Tools? I’ll put things through Auxes; people might record three bass drum mics, or the NS-10 in front, or a sample, but then instead of EQing them individually I’ll just put them through an Aux and put the compressor or EQ on that. And it’s the same for the guitars and vocals, it works fine. Have you acquired much gear? It’s mainly guitars and amps, and tons of guitar pedals, but I’m a terrible guitar player. Quite often I’m working with bands who don’t have a lot of money, so I let them use all this stuff and it makes for a better record. When I’m sent demos I’ll put them into Pro Tools LE, do edits and put rough keyboard ideas and melodies, changes that could be interesting. I’ll play it to the band and say, look you can use these ideas if you want but I’m not precious about it. How do you make things sound exciting, do you listen quietly? Yeah, that’s something you learn with experience. When you’re first making records you’ve got these speakers you can turn up to 100 and it’s really great, because you could never do that at home. As you get
resolution
47
craft more savvy, you don’t mix loudly because you can hear things further back, and I push things — my maxim is I want things loud and clear, I want to be able to hear all the parts and make it exciting. I mix quietly — not whisper volume, but moderately quietly. Then when you turn it up, you go, oh yeah, this is knocking my socks off. Whereas if you mix loudly then the end result is everything’s diluted and pulled back.
Calrec Resolution Ads
28/8/08
12:29
Do you bus things like the drums together? Yes, the same as if I was mixing on a desk, there will be two buses with the drums going through a normal one, then one with a really limited, heavily compressed sound, which is nothing new. People were doing that in the 60s, Shel Talmy used to do that, but it works for me, it brings out a lot of the tone in the drums. For that I would use a Bomb Factory 1176, and I use the EMI TG compressors which are brilliant, I use a lot of URS compressors. I’m a big compressor guy, even when I’m recording. You can alter the sound of things and really change the way things sound. I don’t do anything differently in the virtual world, it’s just a bit quicker. My secret weapon is on SoundToys Filter Freak, they have a setting called Mid Boost for Mellow Guitars, and I’m telling you guys, that’s the answer, it’s amazing. It brings out all the grunt in guitars, so often guitars have this smiley EQ which when loud sounds exciting as hell, but when you turn it down quiet just sounds like something annoying buzzing in the background. Any assistants I work with laugh at me because I am Mr Preset. If somebody has spent six months programming a reverb in a Lexicon, who am I to come and adjust it? Clearly, I’m going to make it sound worse! I use the Pultecs a lot, and I want to buy the Page 2 Waves SSL plug-ins, they sound good.
And the interface is comfortingly familiar… Well yeah, you make the adjustments and go, that’s what I’d normally do. I think the thing is, don’t expect it to be exactly the same as its pretty picture. They’ve tried to model it, but it’s not exactly the same. I remember a maintenance guy telling me, I could make you a Fairchild, but you wouldn’t like the sound of it, what you like is the sound of a forty-year-old compressor covered in dust, where the valves haven’t been changed for years, and that’s what people like, whereas if I built you a new one it would be crisp and clear and not what you want at all. Equipment changes, and people like the old and knackered bit. So a virtual compressor or EQ is not going to sound the same — every Neve EQ sounds different — but just accept it for what it is. If you like it, use it. You can make a great record with the Digidesign stuff. Even the budget stuff sounds good. Todd Rundgren, whose records I love, once said that if you’ve got a Revox and 57 you can make a record, and it’s quite true. How long do you spend on preproduction? Not as long as some people do, for an album I would do at the most a week, because I do a lot of homework where I’ve already tried edits, done overdubs and tried things out. It cuts down a lot of the process, they can hear the edit and then play it. On the other hand I work with bands like Oceansize who don’t let me change anything! The stuff is so technically worked out that if I came along and said, can we change that, the whole thing would collapse like a pack of cards and they’d hate me! My role becomes something else, half the time I should be credited as ref.
WHATEVER THE ACTION CALREC AUDIO MAKES THE NEWS
calrec.com
There are no second chances in live broadcast. That’s why demanding broadcasters in Europe, Asia and across the USA choose Calrec consoles for national and international news applications. Whatever the story, we are making the headlines. From the smallest regional news stations to the largest, multi-control room, national news centres, demanding producers know they can rely on Calrec to deliver hard-hitting, must-watch news content. Our consoles are renowned for automatic redundancy and incredibly intuitive control surfaces – all you need to get you on the air fast, and keep you on the air. Putting Sound in the Picture
If that sounds like good news to you, get the full story at calrec.com
48
resolution
November/December 2008
craft How do you handle difficult situations? If something’s not going well, always have a backup plan. On the first day, if the drummer is not feeling it, I’ll say, ok, go and play on the PlayStation, I want to adjust some things. I’ll calm everyone down. I never get het up in studios, because it’s not going to help. It’s just music. And particularly with young bands, however many records we might have made, probably hundreds, they have never done this before. You’ve got to try and be as enthusiastic as they are, and if somebody has a terrible idea — somebody wanted to do a backwards Ebow, and I said, look it’s going to sound the same as a forwards Ebow! — but it’s easy to let them do it, and they can go, yeah, you were right, or I can go, that’s brilliant, I would never have thought of that. And that’s great, particularly with young bands. How do you make drums sound exciting? I setup a crush mic, I normally place a mic somewhere behind the drummer or down low near the bass drum, which is then utterly abused through a mic amp and compressor, and you just need a whisper of that to blend in. And when I’m mixing I’ll take the snare drum back through a mic amp distorted. You just need a whisper of it and you get this ‘brrang’, this big tone with all the harmonics, which is what I love. Suddenly it sounds like a proper drum kit, somebody making a big racket in a room. What makes bands want to work with you? The most important thing is for them to feel like I’m going to make them sound great. And I’m honest, and I’ll super-enhance what they do, which is how you make great records — guitars don’t really sound like that, but you make them sound like that because it’s exciting. Most of the time, the best results come from 5000series_Beijing (Resolution) 125x216mm.qxd:Mise en page 1 not being too timid. n
5/08/08
16:28
Page 1
Capture the emotion. At the last Winter Games, one of the audio challenges was... Setting 42 channels of UHF wireless, conforming to national regulations regarding frequency band, spot frequency allocation and maximum power transmission. Then setting this up around a 30 m x 60 m ice rink and having constant operation of up to 12 hours a day. At the last Winter Games in Torino, Audio-Technica was successful in rising to this challenge and has transmitted the emotion at the Beijing Games 2008 using their flagship Artist Elite 5000 Series UHF wireless system to achieve noise free transmission and pure audio path. If you need to transmit the emotion of your next event, whether it be a sporting event, a rock concert, an opera or a business presentation, Audio-Technica is ready for the challenge. Let Audio-Technica be the supplier for your own games to begin.
Artist Elite 5000 series wireless system
www.audio-technica.com
November/December 2008
resolution
49
business
Next generation revenue Music fans want to consume music in different ways, whether the generation that grew up with vinyl likes it or not. NIGEL JOPSON explains the significance of MySpace Music and reveals that young music fans trust their online social networks.
T
he music industry got very excited on 24 September when MySpace Music launched. MySpace, the eighth most visited global website with 68m US monthly people, was already the default destination for anybody looking for information about a music artist or producer. Songs on artist pages could be played from the small music player, fans could sign up for newsletters, tour dates could be published, reputations could be pimped. MySpace Music adds the money making parts: artist stores where songs, ringtones and (in a future update) merchandise and concert tickets will be sold. Why were labels so excited?
The majors own 40% of MySpace Music, and here was an opportunity — finally — to have a big digital sales channel that didn’t belong to Apple. It took iTunes three years to get to 1 billion song downloads, just a few days after launch MySpace Music had already streamed 1 billion songs. The advertising-supported streams are free to the listener ... so perhaps we’re not comparing Apple to ... Apples, but still a good start with the Quantcast traffic estimate graph showing an up-spike of 3.8m people shortly after going live. For visitors, MySpace Music has several new features. Users can now post up to 10 songs in an improved player on their profiles, and create playlists of up to 100 songs. Wherever a song link appears,
(FU UIF "OBMPH $PEFˆ
1MVH JOUP 41- TPGUXBSF
41- JT EJTUSJCVUFE FYDMVTJWFMZ JO UIF 6, CZ 5IF "VEJP 1SPGFTTJPOBMT -UE XXX BVEJPQSPT FV JOGP!BVEJPQSPT FV 5FM
50
resolution
&VSPQFBO EJTUSJCVUJPO TPVOEQFSGPSNBODFMBC DPN ½ %JTUSJCVUPST %FBMFST
November/December 2008
business there’s an Add button that allows any member to add that song to their playlists, as well as (possibly) a Buy button to purchase and download the MP3 via Amazon.com, or buy ringtones from Fox Interactiveowned JamsterMusic. Tracks not available on the Amazon store won’t show up to purchase. The ability to buy concert tickets and merchandise was a big rumoured feature prior to launch, and MySpace officials promise these will be added in a future update. MySpace Editors will do some curating and promoting of artist/celebrity playlists: the extended playlists are the big feature intended to attract online ‘freetards’ from streaming services like Last.fm and Deezer.com. The new MySpace Music search is improved to the extent that you can now search by artist, album or song title. A larger improvement would be the ability to search for official artist pages. For recent signings it’s not such a problem, but search for a classic act like Led Zep and you’ll be presented with 1,000 dodgy MySpace fan and tribute band pages. To be fair, if all you want is a Zep MP3 it’s quicker to pop over to Amazon. MySpace is all about community and the cluttered searches and eyesore pages are part of the experience. This is the most ambitious attempt to date to profit from free full-song streaming based on advertising: labels and artists licensing music to the site will receive a share of the service’s ad revenue based on the number of times their music is played. The major labels who are equity partners in the joint venture will also share a portion of all underlying revenues. Controversy surrounded the launch, with EMI only joining days before switch-on, and independent labels badly represented with only aggregator The Orchard included. Charles Caldas, CEO of international indie licensing group Merlin with 12,000 affiliated labels, has been very critical of MySpace and said: ‘... Any
November/December 2008
independent deal struck without an equity component (as was done with the majors), will see independent labels face a situation whereby their major competitors will profit from the use of their repertoire without an appropriate upside opportunity being extended to them by MySpace Music and its Major Label equity partners.’ Nice try, but dream on. On the 24 October indie digital music distributor IODA signed a deal with MySpace, bringing with it over a million songs from acts like Buena Vista Social Club, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles and The Stills with them. Indies want to get on the new service, and their distributors can and will sign them up. A note of caution: like many novel internet services, the ‘new’ MySpace Music is only available if you connect to the internet from the US, which is how I tested the service. If you access the site from the UK it will display the new logo but will be quite different, in fact it’s just the same old clunky MySpace of yore. Why is MySpace Music so important? Because it’s a huge social network, and the base level service — streaming up to 100 songs at a time to members — is free to the listener. At last year’s In The City music conference some of the most revealing commentary came from the Face In The Crowd panel (featuring late-teen-to-20 music fans.) There was a definite sense of ‘Why?’ — why should they pay for online music when exactly the same digital offering could be had for free? Some said they’d be happy to pay if they knew money was going direct to an artist but not if the artist in question was flashy and rich like Jay-Z! There was no real understanding of the relationship between artists, record companies and retailers — a beneficial relationship that most labels and retailers mistakenly consider is self-evident. A young music buyer claimed to feel bad about buying CDs at a highstreet store because a big corporation was ‘taking all
resolution
51
business the money’. One remark that struck me was: ‘You’re sharing with your friends, and through the internet we all have more friends than before.’ Looking over my 15-year-old’s shoulder at his Bebo page, it occurred to me I certainly didn’t have 90 friends at his age. Or rather ... I hadn’t kept in touch with all the individuals who had been former friends or acquaintances (And probably for very good reason if we’re all honest about it. Ed). I’d lost contact with everyone I knew at primary school, and I certainly didn’t have the address or phone number of anybody from four years earlier. That’s the difference. Not making more friends, but keeping the contacts you make and developing them as a network. Fifteen years ago a contact networking process was purely the domain of adults, probably only engaged in seriously once a career was taking off. Now the key music-buying demographic, the 12-25 year old, has already built a network and has a proliferation of their own influencer channels by the time they’re 16. These influencer channels may themselves be open to a bit of persuasion; it’s just that most of the music industry hasn’t really learnt the lingo yet. Whenever I hear music panel discussions involving young consumers, there are surprises. At the Bandwidth Conference in August, youngsters maintained they’d pay a monthly fee for all-you-can-eat subscription services: ‘... I would pay like $20. If you could get videos and stuff like that too ’cause that’s my thing, with iTunes the songs are expensive but the videos are even more expensive. It almost makes you want to illegally download the program.’ Like, duuh. One youngster had been on tour as a merch-man, and discovered his peers bought the band’s cool tie-dye design 7-inch vinyl ... even though 90% of them had no record player! Clever marketeers might see this as
UK average contacts Source: Universal McCann 2008
media production centre
Pure Inspiration record • edit • mix • create Fairlight Xynergi_Resolution mag1 1
52
resolution
13/8/08 12:40:53 PM
November/December 2008
business an opportunity to enclose a coupon with each single, giving the purchaser a free digital download in return for signing up for the fan email newsletter. The Piper Jaffray biannual teen survey (average age 16.2 years) released this October found 87% of respondents owned an MP3 player, up from 40% in 2005. And 37% would consider paying $15 per month for a subscription service (... please invent a cooler, easier to use Napster, well-integrated with players). Eight out of ten teens download music online, split 60-40% between illegal and legal, an improvement from the 2005 80-20% split in favour of P2P. For many youngsters, social networks have taken over as music influencers. The scale of this phenomenon is not just hearsay or the imagining of parents and enthusiastic pundits: thanks to a report from Universal McCann’s global digital research programme ‘Wave’, there are now some solid numbers. Universal McCann surveyed 17,000 active internet users — respondents needed to be using the internet either every day or every other day — in 29 countries. I was surprised by the extent to which trust or friendship is no longer just local or face-to-face, but is becoming geographically distant and virtualised. This is especially prominent in the large BRIC (Brasil, Russia, India, China) economies, traditionally a bit of a desert in music sales. In Brasil, the average number of contacts via social networks is the clear winner in ‘friendships’ at 51.5, versus face-to-face relations of 38.2. In China, instant messaging (49) and social networks (31.3) both beat face-to face (27.5). In the UK, face-to-face communication is in a close heat with social networking at 30.9 to 30.5, while in the US face-to-face still leads social networks by 20 to 16.6, but email has beaten both with 21.1 contacts. Although face-to-face friendships still win globally with an average of 35 friendships, email (32) and social networks (30) are very close behind. The wealth of data in this survey produced surprising conclusions: globally, we trust strangers online almost as much as a face-to-face recommendation; we would rather trust a stranger than a celebrity (by a long way) or advertising, and we trust strangers more in a regulated environment such as Amazon or eBay. Of the internet users questioned, 57.1% had reviewed music, second only to movie reviews at 59.28%. This survey, which has far more validity than most because of the wide sample involved, came to some conclusions that may be key for future music marketing: every target audience should be encouraged to share opinions and influence; there is a new category of ‘super influencers’, people who are making the most of the tools of social media. Bloggers, video creators, podcasters and so on should be considered as some of the most powerful voices of the future. The pivotal trend in the music industry at the moment is a splintering of the recommending, listening and purchasing process. Music fans want to consume music — discover, listen, store and pay — in different ways, whether the generation that grew up with vinyl likes it or not. Unfortunately this trend is not often apparent when visiting the offices of labels — the piles of CDs in every corner hark back to business models of the late 80s. Recently it’s often been artists or their management who have pushed boundaries in looking for new ways to monetise music. ‘In previous years, you only needed to know how radio and [print] media and press worked,’ said Mika and Alphabeat manager Iain Watt in an interview for Hitquarters, ‘now you need to be friends with every single brand that’s working in the music space. And you also have to be aware of how you can manipulate the newest brands and stuff that works outside the traditional music world to the benefits of your artists.’ November/December 2008
Everything musical cannot be made available for free to all consumers, despite what some technology pundits claim. Anti-corporate commentary intended for a literate audience has had some unintentional consequences in shaping attitudes among very young consumers. We can’t turn the music business upside down just because free file-sharing became popular, or switch totally to ad-supported legalised P2P just because some young label execs liked using the original Napster. Labels need to adapt their promo departments with dedicated teams for the new, fragmented market, and promote their music to the ‘super influencers’ of social networking. Jupiter Research teen surveys show that 51% of the ‘best’ teen music fans use social networks to find out about entertainment, and 35% use social networks to listen to music. In 2003 there were about 50 legal music services world-wide, with retail
revenues for digital of only $20m. This mushroomed to over 500 services and $2.9bn by the end of 2007. But what happens when we break down the figures? With iTunes making up around 70% of online downloads, it leaves rather modest amounts to share around the several hundred other digital music providers. Apple will only improve its service when new challengers arrive: perhaps the much-rumoured iTunes subscription service will appear. To remain healthy, we need to develop different services with scale and weight for the majority of music consumers, some big channels for the industry to aim at. We need to develop new services — like MySpace Music — for customers who pay for music, for those who don’t pay but would be happy to if the offering was more convenient or better, and for the youngsters who are the next generation of revenue for today’s songwriters, performers and production pros. n
Colourless. Clean. Transparent. Smooth. CMS Active Nearfield Monitors from Focal Professional Based upon Focal proprietary driver technology, the new CMS 65 and CMS 50 simply offer outstanding performance and exceptional versatility. We could bore you with the superbly finished aluminium die-cast cabinets which offer unconditional rigidity, the internal damping and bracing which banishes unwanted colorations, or the unique Al/Mg (aluminium/magnesium) inverted dome tweeter which easily extends up to 28kHz at -3dB, with a close to perfection pulse response. But you probably just want to know how they perform. And how much they cost. Brilliantly. And less than you think.
Focal Professional Users
Distributed by SCV London: Call 020 8418 1470 for your nearest dealer
www.scvlondon.co.uk
Focal CMS Resol Jnr 30-10-08.indd 1 resolution
Del Palmer
Chris Tsangarides
Sean Genockey
Kate Bush
Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Tom Jones
Manic Street Preachers, Kula Shaker, Tom McRae
- uses the Twin 6BE
-uses the Solo 6BE
- uses the Solo 6BE
30/10/08 09:57:4853
ten
Common terminological errors As the industry has become much less structured in recent years, the principal sources of information for many have become the internet and marketing publicity. These can be sources of much misinformation according to PHILIP NEWELL who identifies ten perpetuating terminological examples. were mounted above the soffits of the alcoves. ‘Soffit’ is an architectural term for the ceiling of a recess, or the underside of a balcony. So, if the loudspeakers are built-in, but are not above a small ceiling, then they are not soffit mounted; they are flush mounted. Bantam jacks — I recently came across a website, while helping a client look for ready-made patch cords, that offered Bantam jacks in ¼-inch or 3/16inch versions. They were using the term ‘Bantam’ to differentiate between narrow-tip type phone jacks from the ¼-inch 3-pole, ‘stereo’ jacks commonly used for headphones. Bantams are, of course, the 3/16 inch versions of the BPO/GPO/telephone jacks. Bantam jacks are sometimes referred to as TT jacks as in ‘Tiny Telephone’.
Soffit-mounted loudspeakers — In the 1970s, many studios had soffit-mounted loudspeakers, such as those shown in the photograph (Kay Studios, Manresa, Spain). They were mounted above alcoves that often housed tape recorders. The loudspeakers
54
The ‘real’ sound — More and more I am being confronted by people whose only reference to what is accurate, sonically, is what they hear via their, or their friends’, loudspeakers. What is more, the music is often almost exclusively modern and of very low dynamic range. When exposed to high dynamic range, professionally made recordings, they consider them to be badly mixed and un-exciting. As Barry Blesser (the father of digital reverberation) pointed out in the July 2008 edition of the magazine of the Boston Audio Society, familiar experiences can become, for many people, the definition of ‘reality’. That the modern day, squashed sounds are the current fashion is a fact. However, when people confuse fashion with reality, it can be rather sad. XLR connectors — Once upon a time -- yes, I know, there were three bears — but there was also a type of connector, made by Cannon, called the XL. When I was first working in the sound and recording industry in the 1960s there were still many XL connectors in use, but some of them suffered from bad connections. The contacts were
resolution
set into a rigid plastic insulating material, and after much use the female receptacle could open up just enough to allow the male to enter without actually touching the sides. To remedy this problem, Cannon developed a new version, using a rubbery, resilient material as the insulator, and setting the pins slightly non-parallel. By this means, when a male entered a female with a rubbery insulator, there was a spring effect, and the slight misalignment ensured a firm and satisfactory contact. The new version, with the ‘resilient’ mounting material, was designated the XLR. I have heard people teaching in universities that the XLR stands for Common (X??), Left, Right, and that it was originally a stereo connector. I have also read in the manuals of a British mixing console manufacturer that it stands for eXtremely Low Resistance. Time delays — Ok; this is an old chestnut, but how, exactly, can you delay time? You could refer to signal delays or arrival delays, but not time delays. The term ‘time delay’ is a total nonsense, but it has found its way into some standard
November/December 2008
ten terminology, such as Time-Delay Spectrometry and Initial Time-Delay Gap. The word ‘delay’ already includes the concept of time. It is the ‘pin number’ problem, again (see Mosfets).
Dynamic microphones be whether I suggest using a moving coil mic or a — While on the subject of ribbon mic. ribbons, it always jars when somebody asks if I think A linear frequency response — A linear they should use a dynamic frequency response does not mean that it is flat or microphone or a ribbon uniform with frequency. A linear response means microphone. It is the same that there are no frequencies present in the output as asking if I want fruit that were not present in the input. Non-linear juice or orange juice. Any distortion means that artefacts are produced in microphone that works on the a system, such as harmonic or intermodulation principle of a dynamo, by moving distortions, which give rise to frequencies in the a conductor in a magnetic field, is output that were not present in the input signal. If a dynamic microphone. In the case a frequency response is not flat, then it is suffering of a ribbon microphone, the ribbon from a linear distortion. The term is derived from the diaphragm itself is the conductor, input vs output graphs of amplifying devices, such whereas in a moving coil mic as valves, where operating over the straightest, most theAddiaphragm is attached a 1 linear section, gives rise to the least production of #24487 - CDR882 28/10/08 10:43 toPage separate coil. The question should spurious frequencies. n
Live rooms — A live room, according to Morphey’s Dictionary of Acoustics, is ‘a room in which the sound absorption is small enough that the mean free path is greater than the square root of the absorption’. When I build stone rooms and the like, they fit this requirement, but for many people a live room is any room in a studio, other than a control room, where musicians play. When this sort of loose terminology is used between similarly inexperienced friends, it is of little consequence, but when somebody who should know better asks me to design a live room that is really dead, I cringe. Live rooms are bright, or reverberant, whether they are used for music or not. When well-defined terms get so widely misapplied it often leads to misunderstandings when they get used correctly.
With genuine dual drive recording, the featurepacked new HHB CDR-882 DualBurn delivers twice the performance in the most demanding live and studio CD record/replay applications. And unlike consumer-derived technology, the CDR-882 is designed from the ground up with a massive steel chassis, robust IDE CD-R drives and audiophile circuitry to ensure uncompromised sound quality and long-term dependability.
Mosfet — According to Hitachi’s Power Mos Fet Data Book (August 1985, p7), MOSFET stands for Metal, Oxide and Silicon Field Effect Transistor. Accept no substitute explanation! Many times, the S is said to stand for semiconductor, but this is redundant because the T stands for transistor, which is a semiconductor. The latter explanation would be similar to the absurd repetition of ‘number’ when people say ‘pin number’, when ‘pin’ alone stands for ‘personal identification number’. Ribbon loudspeakers — One well-known manufacturer of loudspeakers publicises its ‘Advanced Ribbon Technology’, which would be all very well if they actually used ribbon loudspeakers in their products. In fact, what they use are Heil airmotion transformers, which look a bit like ribbons from the exterior, but which work in a totally different way. In fact, they do not even move in the same plane as ribbon loudspeakers. However, for the marketing department concerned, ribbon is probably easier to remember than Heil air-motion transformer. November/December 2008
• DiscSpan seamless recording across 2 or more discs • DualBurn simultaneous recording on 2 discs • High speed disc duplication • Industrial strength design and build quality • Professional cueing and seamless track increments CDR-882 DualBurn: The ultimate CD recorder. Find out more at www.hhb.co.uk
HHB Communications Ltd T: +44 (0)20 8962 5000 E: sales@hhb.co.uk In the USA and Latin America: Sennheiser Electronic Corporation T: 860 434 9190 E: HHBSales@sennheiserusa.com In Canada: HHB Communications Canada Ltd T: 416 867 9000 E: sales@hhbcanada.com
resolution
55
sweet spot
Room-within-a-room We’re still busy planning and building our dream media production facility and the issues of site selection and layout considerations were covered in the first article in the series (V7.6). DIRK NOY, from Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG), explains how we will define and achieve appropriate sound isolation between the facility’s rooms as well as sound isolation to and from the neighbours.
S
o what really is quiet? It’s an interesting question. In a regular residential or office environment, sound pressure levels of 30 to 40dB(A) or even higher are constantly present. ‘Quiet’ here would be considered anything that is approximately in or below that sound pressure level range — you can’t hear the fax machine while the copier and the coffee machine are running anyway. For media production facilities ‘quietness’ is a far less forgiving term. We sometimes have to record sounds or mix soundtracks that are particularly low in level, and additionally we deal with microphones instead of human ears and with proper preamplification, gain structure and processing these can be even more sensitive. For defining quietness levels in recording studios
Fig. 1. IRT noise level chart for recording and mixing environments.
and critical listening environments the use of the dB(A) scale is not sufficiently accurate. A number of appropriate international standards are in place, such as the Noise Criteria (NC), Noise Rating (NR) or Grenz Kurve (GK) values. The IRT (Institut fßr Rundfunktechnik) uses a combination of NR and GK curves as shown in Figure 1 for production facility use. Recommended values for various room types are indicated in Figure 2 — the mentioned curve should not be exceeded at any frequencies.
Fig. 2. IRT permissible GK values for various room types.
What sound isolation do I need? — Sound isolation requirements are a function of the required quietness of a particular space and the potential noisiness of the surrounding areas. For every room two parameters therefore have to be defined either by an educated assumption or — preferably, but not always possible — by an acoustical measurement: on one hand, the maximum potential sound pressure level, and on the other hand the required quietness of the area in question. These two values can be indicated for every room on the facility floor plan –- the level difference between adjacent spaces then defines the required sound isolation. The highest sound isolation is required between the potentially loudest spaces and the rooms with the lowest permissible sound levels. Sound isolation is a complex term that varies widely over frequency for any construction material. For easier communication and comparison a procedure has been
Fig. 3. Facility overview — sound isolation requirements and partition types.
developed to translate a series of transmission loss values over a limited frequency range (125Hz–4kHz) into a one-number STC (Sound Transmission Class) figure using a standardised contour curve. I will spare you the details here but be advised that a ‘STC49’ sound isolation door will not provide 49dB of isolation at 60Hz (but significantly less). On the other hand, it will provide approximately 49dB of isolation at 500Hz, and more at higher frequencies. To make matters worse, a STC47 door could potentially be better at low frequency isolation than the STC49 door‌ For real purchasing decisions it is wise to look at the data sheet carefully but, nevertheless, STC is a popular and useful measure. A sample facility’s sound isolation requirement sketch can be found in Figure 3, which shows the assumed maximum sound pressure levels and quietness requirements for the various rooms. This information is then used to design the appropriate wall construction. The shown facility requires three different partition types A, B and C; A being the most complex one and directly dividing the potentially loudest rooms (highest sound pressure level number) from the ones that need the most quietness (lowest GK number).
IS YOUR ROOM UNDER CONTROL? w w w. t r i n n o v. c o m
Trinnov’s Optimizer: s 2EDUCES ACOUSTICAL MONITORING PROBLEMS s )MPROVES TONAL BALANCE AND SOUNDSTAGE s 4RUST THE MONITORS AND FOCUS ON YOUR MIX
UK Distribution: Sound-Link Marketing - tel: 01223 264 765 - trinnov@sound-link.co.uk TrinnovAdvert_Resolution_216x82.indd 1
56
resolution
w w w. s o u n d - l i n k . c o. u k 27/10/08 18:59:48
November/December 2008
sweet spot Defining the specifications for sound isolation has to be done carefully as it substantially impacts financial implications: more sound isolation means higher cost in design and construction. On the other hand you don’t want to end up with a facility where the required ‘simultaneousity’ cannot be offered. In terms of construction budget, the easiest way to properly isolate two rooms with high STC requirements is to position them as far apart from each other as possible but this is not always feasible. Achieving sound isolation — Sound travels over two different paths. Airborne sound is carried through the air (sic!). Blocking airborne sound is achieved by inserting a solid material (such as a brick or gypsum wall). Structure-borne sound is carried by the structure itself. Blocking structure borne sound is achieved by inserting a soft material (such as rubber or air). Airborne sound can transform into structure-borne sound and vice versa so both travel paths need to be blocked. A smart combination of solid material (‘mass’) and soft material (‘decoupling’) therefore needs to be used. In more sophisticated terms, materials with varying acoustical impedances must be combined in a manner not unlike a layered sandwich. Building for sound isolation — The combination of mass and decoupling in construction consequentially leads to so-called room-within-room construction, where every room is a closed container with an individually decoupled (or floating) floor, and each with individually decoupled walls and ceilings. Because we still haven’t figured out how to float floors without any support at all the floating floor is built as a separate layer and decoupled from the existing floor by an arrangement of springs. The spring in its simplest incarnation is a rubber or elastomer element –- more complex types are steel springs or even air springs that offer the highest isolation at very low frequencies. The walls are constructed on top of the floating floor — basically freestanding and without rigid support to either the existing walls or other acoustical walls. Because the walls need some sort of fixation to prevent toppling a series of decoupling braces has been developed by various manufacturers. The ceiling is then either mounted on top of the wall construction, or built as a spring-suspended and therefore decoupled ceiling. As mentioned in the last article, relatively simple two wall systems with floating floors and suspended ceilings can achieve an STC sound isolation value of about 60-70dB. This is fine for a control room to isobooth wall, but not sufficient for two adjacent, independently operated postproduction rooms where more complex systems need to be employed. What does not work? — A common and still popular misconception is that materials such as pyramid-shaped foam elements or even egg cartons increase sound isolation — I am sorry to tell you that that is not the case. There is no shortcut to be found for real sound isolation — we will need to go for the full Monty of full decoupling and room-within-room construction using acoustical doors and windows. This is bad enough news for media production facilities but it is even worse for large spaces such as clubs or film theatres, so consider yourself to be lucky when you’re only dealing with a studio… And there’s more to come. Please keep in mind that when we’re done building our sound isolated container we have not done a single thing for the room acoustics. We’ve built a well-isolated but as yet completely useless echo chamber and we’ll deal with the interior ‘dressing’ of the room in the next article and cover such fancy things as absorbers and diffusors. n November/December 2008
mactomon_uktour08Res.qxd Fig. 4. Sample partition types.
24/10/2008
10:00 AM
Page 1
From Mic to Monitor UK Tour 2008
Attend a FREE seminar delivering key insights into modern recording techniques and dispelling popular myths surrounding the recording process Hosted by leading manufacturers:
manchester•26-11-08 royal northern college of music
��
liverpool•25-11-08 the liverpool institute for performing arts
� nottingham•28-11-08 confetti studios cambridge•18-11-08 anglia ruskin university
�
bristol•21-11-08 university of the west of england
in conjunction with
� �
london•19-11-08 university of westminster
Mix together a group of world renowned audio manufacturers with leading producers and engineers who have worked with such luminaries as Led Zeppelin, ABBA, The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and Elton John, to deliver a thought provoking evening of discussion and debate. Registered attendees are automatically entered into a prize draw to win a professional recording package and will receive exclusive offers.
to register for your FREE ticket please visit
www.prismsound.com/mictomonitor2008 You can also register your interest in future events and seminars in your area.
resolution
57
meet your maker
Colin McDowell
channel or two in it, whereas a plug-in can run as many channels of audio as your DAW processing power will allow! Hmm...
The founder and brains behind the McDSP range of plug-ins says that if someone had ever found their dream job, his name might be Colin McDowell. ZENON SCHOEPE
C
olin McDowell grew up in Buffalo NY, practically down the street from Moog Music, and the combination of engineering and music was his life’s ambition before he even reached high school. The hefty price tag of a Memorymoog (and his father’s unwillingness to hock the family car for one) did not deter McDowell for long. The synth gods smiled upon him, and a loaner Micromoog was granted from a helpful Moog employee. But after blowing up his parents’ stereo with the ultimate bass patch, it was time to get serious about concepts like EQ and dynamic range compression. Each new audio tool sucked McDowell closer to the music production vortex, and ultimately the recipe for another failed musician was in place. Fortunately McDowell also had a knack for the school stuff and he says that ‘where the music chops left off, the geek factor kicked in’, and soon a degree in Electrical Engineering, with honours, was under his belt. Armed with the tools to get into real trouble, McDowell began his journey as ‘the consummate audio DSP engineer from heck’. After earning his signal processing chops at places like IBM, Digidesign, and Dolby, McDowell set off on his own with his own company, McDSP. ‘McDSP came from some lunatic wondering why the plug-ins that came with Pro Tools sounded so bad and why a sidecar of nearly antique outboard gear sounded so good,’ says Colin. ‘His spouse got tired of his complaining about this issue (and his day job), strongly suggested he get a grip, write up a business plan, create some good plug-things and shut up.’ Ten years later, McDSP is still going strong, and McDowell is as busy as ever creating new products. And for the record, he is the proud owner of a Memorymoog (or two).
great, and the revenues could only support a one-man operation. So for a long time, the Digidesign-only support was a matter of necessity — there was only one person (me!) who had to continually create new products to pay the bills. About the time OS X and Pro Tools HD came out (2001-2002), a new USB dongle-based copy protection device called the iLok was introduced by Pace AntiPiracy. Digidesign integrated the iLok copy protection with their DAW nicely. Pro Tools required (and/or came with) an iLok — so adding additional authorisations to your iLok USB dongle for some more plug-ins made sense to potential customers. This was the first adequate step in software copy protection for pro-audio. The business model of McDSP ramped up quite nicely. I am very grateful. At that time, no other DAWs offered the same kind of copy protection system. If McDSP products were on AU or VST, many of those folks would have had to get up to speed on the iLok, much less buy one ($40 USD). So McDSP continued to make even more plug-ins exclusively for the Pro Tools platform. These days the iLok is in use on many DAWs, and customer acceptance is much better. Meanwhile, McDSP has created even more plug-ins and has hired more employees. Digidesign, meanwhile has created more features, control surfaces, and entirely new live sound consoles for us to support. So is the time ripe for some AU or VST stuff from us? Sure. But since we are known for providing professional and reliable products, we can’t just release something that does not live up to our quality standards for the long term. As the company grows we are adding staff that will look for ways to address the growing AU and VST markets in a meaningful way. In the meantime, I can say we’re doing a modest amount of work to get McDSP technology in a variety of places, including other plug-in formats. We have some cool new stuff coming out in Jan 2009 at NAMM I think you’ll like. Maybe it will wind up on a few other DAWs too!
What is special about McDSP products? McDSP is born from the kind of ‘need more gear’ fire that burns inside anyone who knows the meaning of AES or NAMM. If you had the opportunity to make some kind of specialised equipment to suit your own audio maniac needs, you’d do it. Because deep down inside you know if it sounds cool to you, there is a strong possibility others will have similar opinions. Not much of a business plan, but then, neither is the music business in general. So McDSP products are special because they are made by folks who aspire to create products that improve their own music productions, and subsequently the productions of others as well. Our simple but important mission sums it all up, our goal to make the best audio signal processing software ever.
What’s the biggest single misconception about plug-ins that end-users have? The biggest single misconception about plug-ins, or software in general, is that it is perceived to have no value. It takes time and effort to develop it — and even more to maintain it and keep it running. The audio plug-in market is small. We are not writing apps for the iPhone, making the next Guitar Hero video game, or attempting to be the next Google or Microsoft. So if folks want good tools, they need to be serious about paying for them. McDSP’s FilterBank plug-in is $495. A Neve 1081 matched pair is about $8,000. Get a grip. Going a tad further — why is it a Neve, Manley, Portico, Chandler, GML, etc. product can command such a high price, and yet software alternatives remain relatively cheap? Production and component costs. It is NOT because a $500 plug-in is inferior to a $5,000 hardware box. They are both good products. One is an ‘inside the box’ insert, and the other is a front end to the digital world (or heaven forbid, an ‘out of the box’ insert). By the way — that hardware unit has only a
Why have you aligned so strongly with Pro Tools? When McDSP started back in 1998, each new product had a life of about 3-5 months before it was pirated. This would include plug-ins like FilterBank, CompressorBank, and the MC2000. Sales were not 58
resolution
Modelling plug-ins come from developers without imagination — discuss... Ouch! Well, you gotta wonder what cool things might come from the software industry if we all got a bit more original. I think some folks long for the familiarity and/or the social status of owning all the ‘classic’ gear ever made. To this end a market has been created which the software folks can fill. If you can’t have a giant analogue console in your facility, or have all the outboard gear of so and so, then by golly, you can buy a ton of software that looks like it instead. Heck, your spouse won’t even know! I do not think there is anything wrong with going after a ‘sound’. But an original UI and some nice additional features go a long way to making the next generation of ‘classics’. Part of McDSP’s success has been in providing products that can ‘get in-between the cracks’ of old models while providing additional novel features of our own. Take the McDSP Analog Channel plug-in. It makes audio sound like it was recorded to tape, even if you had to use Pro Tools! But it has a flexibility tape never had — hot swapping playback heads, tape formulations, constant output levels while you adjust the input for subjective ‘saturation’. And after nearly eight years in the field, the Analog Channel plug-in has a following of its own. Go figure! What are the pros and cons of the different format flavours that plug-ins come in and which sound best? I will answer this question by including the plug-in formats I am familiar with — AU, TDM, RTAS, and VST. There is no reason that an AU, VST, or RTAS plugin should sound different, much less have a different algorithm under the hood. All these formats use the floating point processing capabilities of the host CPU. You can write your algorithm code in C (or even C++, etc.). These specs try to best allocate CPU use within the confines of their respective DAWs. So floating point ‘pros’ are ease of programming and portability to various plug-in formats. Some ‘cons’ would be that you are at the mercy of the DAW and the CPU to let your algorithm have enough processing power to do its thing. The Pro Tools TDM format makes use of dedicated fixed point DSPs on their HD hardware PCI/PCIe cards. These DSPs require the algorithms to be written in assembly code, so many math features are not built-in to the chip. For example, a simple sine wave generator or circular buffer are much more work for the programmer. For all these limitations, such DSPs also allow a great deal of custom optimisation not available on a general purpose CPU. For this reason, there are still plenty of great plug-ins coming out on the TDM format. So fixed point ‘pros’ would be dedicated processing power, and custom coding opportunities. Some ‘cons’ would be lack of portability to floating point formats, and increased programming difficulty. As far as sounding the best — that is up to the software developer making the plug-in. Folks get all spun up about floating point vs fixed point, sample rates, bit depth, clock jitter and all that doo-daa. But the fact is, a well-designed algorithm will sound good on any platform. There do not need to be any sonic differences in a floating point and fixed point algorithm. If there are sonic differences in a well-designed algorithm, it’s probably in the D-A stage, monitor choice, listening November/December 2008
meet your maker
environment. It is worth noting, however, that not all companies’ algorithms will behave the same across the TDM RTAS boundary — in that case it may simply be that the two algorithms are actually just different.
How real are latency issues in a well set up system and which part is normally to blame? Latency issues are really pretty low these days. Pun intended. Folks are even firing up laptops to run Pro Tools and other DAWs for live performances. But there are a few scenarios where latency is still increased. In some cases where the session is large, and playback buffer sizes are large to accommodate those sessions, the latency of monitoring newly recorded tracks can be an issue. But with the power of computers these days those sessions would have to get pretty large to cause such problems. Many I-O boxes also offer low latency monitoring to alleviate these problems to an extent. Some plug-ins are real CPU hogs when running at low latency. Take the whole convolution reverb thing. They sound great, but either you take a huge CPU processing power hit, or you put the plug-in in a ‘nonlow-latency’ mode, whereby the CPU usage is decreased at the expense of more latency. Finally, there is that dang DAW operator. The digital revolution has made us all victims of choice. Too much choice. We keep five vocal takes, six guitar tracks for that wall-o-guitar sound, and tons of drums and percussion. Many times that ‘large session’ could really be pared down a bit (or a lot!), and by golly, that CPU usage will go down, and latency modes can be reset to ‘ultra-low’, etc. Alternatively, the DAW operator can mute tracks that are not essential to the creation of new tracks, allowing low latency monitoring. What are your thoughts on VST3? The VST3 spec added some nice features that are useful for natively run DAW apps — like the ability to shut down plug-in processing when there is no audio present. This can make for some serious CPU load variance, but it is still a good idea. The ability to test a newly created VST3 plug-in in a dedicated host app provided inside the SDK really helps get stuff off the ground. These dang DAWs out there can get pretty complicated, and make it difficult to track down bugs in a plug-in. The SDK is freely available, unlike some other platforms, so it is a great way to get a new plug-in out on a reasonable number of platforms. Are not all plug-in manufacturers completely dependent on DAW manufacturers to give them the ‘space’ and wouldn’t a dedicated but integrated November/December 2008
chunk of processing be a better approach? Hey, is there a software engineer at Resolution? This topic could well be the source of many of the problems between various plug-ins and DAWs. Yep, we all want that CPU to ourselves, and sometimes one of us might try to allocate some of the processing just for us. This usually causes problems. A dedicated chunk of processing might work, but then we’d all have to agree how to share. Human beings in general are not good at sharing. Software engineers are even worse. So there would need to be some governing system put in place, and that is what the DAW is trying to do already. Who takes care of digital ‘max’ inside the DAW and how hot does it run? Nobody really. A native (floating point) plug-in can shoot out whatever levels it wants. It is up to each plugin to limit, saturate, etc. signal levels exceeding the max. Sometimes the D-A stage gets to deal with it if no one else does. So like the banking industry, we are an unregulated bunch. Plug-ins can check input and output levels to see they are not exceeding the digital ‘max’ of the DAW they are running on. If such occurrences are discovered, it is up to the DSP engineer to correct the algorithm in a manner that is musical, or at least subjectively better than a digital clip. I should point out that the Pro Tools TDM environment does actually enforce a digital max, right down to the assembly code level. This is because Pro Tools TDM cards use fixed point DSPs, not floating point processing like those found on Macs and PCs everywhere. This is one of the reasons why a session might sound different on an HD rig than an LE/M-Powered. In our plug-ins, however, you will get the same saturation response on both. Are summing boxes the result of users being concerned about sound or the result of manufacturers exploiting an opportunity? Music production is subjective. If someone is not getting the result they need, and try a summing box for their DAW and hear something they like, good for them. But are they needed, or more to your point, the results of cleverly crafted marketing and hype? Well, yes. But the same could be said about any pro-audio product. In truth, the folks making music already do a great job. Us folks making pro-audio equipment are just lobbying for the customers in this niche market. Those of us that have lasted a while found ways to make tools that work well for some of these customers. And maybe along the way some of us have learnt not to take ourselves too seriously. After all, this is music we’re making. n resolution
59
technology
The Now, the Next and the Risk There is increasing demand from the telecoms and other industries for more frequencies for new services and there is every indication that this appetite will eat drastically into spectrum used by radio mics in the UK. In fact, if plans go unchallenged it will mean the closure of theatres and venues and will jeopardise the broadcasting of the Olympics in London 2012. BARRY FOX says there is a storm coming…
T
he Colisseum theatre in St Martins Lane stages a wide mix of shows, from opera to Broadway musical. Without mics the lyrics for a Gilbert and Sullivan opera were largely inaudible, which pretty much destroys the point of putting on G&S. I left halfway. The hugely successful revival of Leonard Bernstein’s musical On the Town was very obviously miked and all the better for it — although some purist critics moaned. Bernstein’s Candide is hybrid, part-opera and partmusical. I thought it was a hybrid staging, part acoustic, part miked. The next day Terry Jardine of Autograph, the British company that rewrote the rules of theatre miking 30 years ago with the musical A Chorus Line, told me how wrong I was. ‘Everything was amplified, with 48 radio mics and a few on the floor at the front of the stage. The mics are very well hidden mainly in hair and wigs, and only occasionally visible, for instance on the leading lady. Speakers were hidden in “browned out” stacks at each side of the stage, with extra units in the balcony.’ Better than anything this tells why it is so hard to get anyone outside the industry interested in the allocation of frequencies for radio mics, talkback and in-ear monitoring. It’s out of sight, so out of mind. There are also good reasons why it is hard to get people inside the industry interested in imminent changes in the frequency licensing system. The official and industry websites drown in detail. What’s more the facts won’t stay still. As Alan March of Sennheiser UK, and the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group’s (BEIRG) Steering Committee, puts it: ‘It’s like a soccer match where the pitch keeps changing shape with goalposts that keep moving and rules that keep altering.’ The Now — Government quango Ofcom rules the British airwaves — like the Federal Communications Commission in the USA — and currently licenses UK company JMFG to be ‘band manager’ and sub-licence frequencies for Programme Making and Special Events (PMSE) — radio mics, talkback, in-ear monitoring, wireless cameras, etc. JFMG has being doing this since 1997 and its current licence lasts until the end of 2009. JFMG currently administers 71 frequency bands ranging from 48MHz-48GHz. Analogue mics use 175-210MHz and the more popular 470-862MHz is used for analogue or digital mics and in-ear monitoring. Talkback uses 425-470MHz. In theory mics with digital compression should be more efficient and less prone to interference than analogue mics with 200kHz bandwidth. The range 1785-1800MHz is allocated for digital mics only but not taken up. Says JFMG Operations Manager Amanda Houchen: ‘There are people out there using digital mics in 470-862MHz, although not in large volume yet.’ The big problem with digital mics is latency; coding and compression delays the audio signal so that it lags behind live or analogue sound. It’s the same problem that makes Bluetooth headphones delay the sound when used with a TV. Witness the way Korean electronics giant LG is now looking for ways to solve 60
lip sync loss on its new range of silent listening sets. The PMSE sector currently works on the basis that 8 analogue wireless microphones can be used interference-free in a standard 8MHz TV band. Major musicals and large music events need between 40 and 60MHz for wireless mics and in-ear monitor systems. Channel 69 (854-862MHz) is currently the only 8MHz frequency that is available for PMSE all across the UK, allowing one piece of equipment to work anywhere on tour. The Next — There is increasing demand from the telecoms industry for more frequencies, for new services such as mobile phones, TV and broadband. The companies involved have far deeper pockets than the PMSE operators. Witness the way the government earned £22.5bn from the sale of 3G cell phone frequencies in 2000. A level ground bidding war for PMSE’s radio spectrum would kill off PMSE. There is now a once–in-a-lifetime opportunity to keep more people happy, and earn money for the government by auctioning frequencies to the highest bidders. The opportunity comes with the switchover from analogue to digital TV. Digital TV transmission is more efficient than analogue — an 8MHz channel that currently carries only one analogue TV programme can be used as a multiplex to carry at least half a dozen digital stations. In the USA all analogue TV will cease by 17 February 2009, with one big switch. The UK is stringing out the process over five years. The first UK switch off was in November 2007, at Whitehaven; the final transmitters in the London area will be converted in 2012, in time for the Olympics. The band 470-862MHz is currently used for Britain’s patchwork mix of five analogue services (to some of the UK) and Freeview digital terrestrial TV broadcasts (to some of the UK). When digital switchover has completed, 14 channels (112MHz) in the UHF TV Bands IV and V will be nationally cleared of terrestrial television. In addition Channel 36 (590-598MHz) will be cleared of airport Radar. The Mobile and High Definition TV industries would like to get their hands on it. But clearing Radar is only part of the story. There are currently more than 50 wireless low-power microphone users in this channel, including West End theatres. Another 8MHz comes from radio astronomy channel 38 (606-614MHz), but at low power only to avoid interfering with foreign star-gazers. The total 128MHz ‘new spectrum’ is known as the Digital Dividend. It is divided into two blocks; one from 550-630MHz and the other from 806854MHz. Some of the frequencies in between (from 630–806MHz) will be used (along with the existing digital TV frequencies 470–550MHz) to deliver six multiplexes of digital TV across the whole UK. To confuse the issue, there are two types of released spectrum. There will be cleared frequencies that are completely empty — Channels 31-37 (550-607MHz), 39-40 (614-630MHz) and 63-68 (806-854MHz) — and these will be closed to PMSE use and auctioned. Channel 38 will be auctioned, too, when British radio astronomers have been banished from it. resolution
There is also the 256MHz (470-550MHz and 630-806MHz) that will be used to carry the UK’s six digital terrestrial TV multiplexes. This 256MHz chunk contains ‘geographic interleaved spectrum’ or ‘white space’ gaps created because channels are used for high power TV in one part of the country but not another; and where the channel is unused for high power TV it can (in theory at least) be used for low power services. Some white space interleaved channels, 21-30 (470-550MHz) and 41-60 (630-790MHz), will be auctioned in some parts of the country, for local television or other uses. The 16MHz white space in TV Channels 61 and 62 (790-806MHz) will be auctioned along with the cleared spectrum. Ofcom’s calculations and predictions on what PMSE needs are based on legal licensed use only. But BEIRG estimates that more than 90% of wireless microphone use is unlicensed and illegal, by churches, schools and colleges. JFMG has no enforcement powers. Ofcom has powers to prosecute but does not do so. This parallels the way the FM band in London is plagued by interference caused by the many pirate radio stations operating illegally and theoretically at risk of prosecution by Ofcom. Ofcom repeatedly assures that it is in business to see fair use, not make as much free money as possible for the government. This is hard to swallow whole but it does empower Ofcom to sell PMSE spectrum at fixed price (not yet set) to a new age ‘Band Manager’ to be chosen by ‘beauty contest’ before JFMG’s contract expires. The judging will be on contestants’ ability to meet PMSE’s needs and handle spectrum efficiently. The Band Manager will then sub-licence frequencies to PMSE users, much as currently done by JFMG. ‘We hope to bid to become the new commercial band manager under the new licence,’ says JFMG’s operations manager, Amanda Houchen, ‘but we will not be able to make a decision on this until the full cost of the licence is known.’ The Risks — Apart from the price to be paid by the Band Manager, and passed on to PMSE users, the most contentious issues are the amount of spectrum to be allocated for PMSE, the quality of the spectrum, and the vexed question of what happens to Channel 69. Ofcom originally promised to retain Channel 69 for PMSE use after digital switch over. But European telecoms operators want to use all the channels from 61 to 69 inclusive (790–862MHz) for new mobile services. So Ofcom is under heavy pressure to take 69 away from PMSE. The industry fears that Ofcom is now trying to escape from its promise, if necessary by charging unrealistically high prices for channel 69, so that PSME has to abandon the channel. At a recent meeting held by Ofcom, 35 PMSE representatives repeatedly reminded the regulator that Channel 69 is the only nationally available PMSE frequency and Ofcom should ‘get off the fence….take responsibility…make proposals and offer solutions’. It was only in the last five minutes of the increasingly angry two-hour meeting that Ofcom stated categorically: ‘If Channel 69 is taken away we accept responsibility for finding an alternative and an answer to the problem.’ November/December 2008
technology When pressed, Ofcom promised that this would be done ‘at the same time as any decision on removal — we will say what the alternatives are when we announce any change of status.’ One new possibility, suggested by the mobile industry, is that a 12MHz slice at 820–832MHz (around channel 35) could be cleared all across Europe for PMSE use because the filters needed by mobile base stations to separate uplink and downlink bands leave a gap in the centre of the mobile band. When pressed, Ofcom also acknowledged that it can ask the government to release some of the money earned from auctioning spectrum to be used for compensating PMSE users who need to buy new equipment because they have lost channel 69. Clearly JFMG has to be cautious over criticising Ofcom. Contestants in a beauty contest can’t be too rude about their judges before the judging. Says Ms Houchen: ‘The main issue is whether there will be sufficient spectrum left in 470-862MHz after the removal of channels 31-37,38,39,40,61 and 62, and 63-68. ‘Our work shows that there will definitely be less than there is today, with some areas of the country having very limited availability.’ Trade body BEIRG can afford to be more blunt and has prepared a forensically detailed response to Ofcom’s plans. BEIRG’s overall message is to warn of the ‘disastrous impact’ of Ofcom’s current plans because ‘Ofcom has poor understanding’. BEIRG reminds that eight 200KHz wireless microphones can be used interference-free in a standard 8MHz TV band. Music events and major musicals like Spamalot, Phantom of the Opera and Oliver need between 40 and 60MHz. BEIRG’s study shows that under the new rules, and Ofcom’s decision to flog off Channel 38 (rather then let PMSE have interleaved use), some areas — for example, Woking — will have as little as 13.8MHz. As a result, some major venues such as Woking’s New Victoria Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival Theatre and Playhouse Theatre, the Regent Theatre in Stoke, Royal Albert Hall and Theatre Royal in Nottingham, Southend’s Cliffe Pavilion and the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford will not be able to stage large musicals. And that’s not all. Affordable PMSE equipment has a limited tuning range of 24MHz. Currently three sets of equipment with different tuning ‘windows’ will cover the frequency bands encountered on tour. Ofcom’s ‘white space’ frequency plan will spread the available frequencies wider apart. As a result at least twice as many sets of equipment — with costs doubled — will be needed for touring. BEIRG says Ofcom now values the affected equipment at around £35 million. There is also a big question mark over the practicality of using white — or more accurately, dirty grey — space spectrum. Debate on this is already hot in the USA where the plan is to let so-called smart or cognitive radios, e.g. in laptops, share spectrum with licensed PMSE or TV operators. The smart radios will not need a licence but incorporate spectrum sensing technology, or GPS and a location database, or both, to look for licensed users and avoid their channels. The US White Spaces Coalition (which includes Intel, Microsoft, Google, and Philips) has been lobbying November/December 2008
since 2004 for permission to use spectrum gaps. The National Association of Broadcasters and Association for Maximum Service TV have been fighting the White Space idea. They argue that the White Spaces should only be used by large companies that can be held accountable if they cause interference to existing broadcast stations or microphones. Hitachi, LG, Panasonic, Samsung and the American Federation of Musicians have all objected to unlicensed use. The FCC received 11,000 submissions, for and against white space use. One manufacturer argued that because wireless microphone ‘signals are simple narrowband and easy to detect… wireless mic detection is not a subject of this demonstration.’ ‘The idea that big manufacturers can dump millions of new gadgets onto the same frequencies… without causing interference is not supported by engineering reality,’ says Shure’s Mark Brunner. The Federal Communications Commission held tests of White Space devices submitted by Philips and Microsoft. The threshold set was -114dBm, although critics argue that the scanner should be able to detect and avoid signals that are weaker, below -116dBm. The Philips device successfully detected and avoided signals at -114dBm, but not at -116dBm. In a humiliating test result, the Microsoft device failed to detect and avoid even the stronger signals. Microsoft then claimed that the device it had submitted was faulty because a key component was ‘broken’. The computer giant cried foul, saying the FCC should have tested another device it supplied. David Donovan, president of the Association for Maximum TV, calls Microsoft’s excuse a ‘dog ate my homework’ ploy. ‘The device utterly fails and Microsoft says “oops it was broken”. Imagine the disaster if millions of these devices enter the market and they start to break.’ Hitachi, LG, Panasonic and Samsung are now telling the FCC that the White Spaces should only be used by fixed equipment, which has been licensed for operation at a specific location where its power and frequency have been checked against broadcast and microphone frequency allocations. They argue that by submitting a ‘broken’ device for such important official tests, Microsoft has proved how risky it is to let unlicensed devices operate in the licensed broadcast bands. BEIRG argues that it is essential for Ofcom to undertake its own testing of cognitive equipment, resolution
because the US and European digital TV systems are completely different (8VSB in the US and OFDM in the UK and in Europe). BEIRG also says it keeps trying to tell Ofcom that white spaces cannot be enlarged by narrowing the protection zones between 8MHz TV channels — from 600kHz to 200kHz. White spaces only exist if there are no high power TV transmissions blitzing the channel. Says BEIRG’s political consultant Alun Rees: ‘Ofcom is planning to release spectrum currently used for PMSE without knowing the implications; Ofcom has stated that there will be “broadly” sufficient spectrum for PMSE post-DSO, but has not proved this; Ofcom will create a “geographic cultural divide” whereby some venues and locations will be able to host large-scale musicals and live music events, whereas others will not; as a result theatres across the country will have to close due to the loss of revenue from musicals. “Ofcom is threatening the “broadcastibility” of the Olympics because if Ofcom sells off any cleared spectrum before 2012 then it is likely that there will not be enough equipment to cover the Games.’ The fear that Ofcom risks going down in history as the government body that screwed up the Olympics is backed up by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) which is responsible for the preparation and staging of the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympics. LOCOG has told Ofcom that it ‘believes the entirety of the cleared spectrum will be required to satisfy the broadcast requirements for the 2012 Games. It is very important therefore that any rights of use of the cleared spectrum awarded as part of the DDR be deferred until after the 2012 Games.’ (www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/ condocs/clearedaward/responses/locog.pdf) ‘We believe that Ofcom should defer the start date for rights to use the cleared spectrum across the UK (i.e. not just in London) until after the Olympics,’ says BEIRG. Adds Alan March: ‘The effects of decisions soon to be taken will not be felt until the future. But the battleground is now. Ofcom produces consultation documents, the industry responds, and Ofcom responds to the responses. But we all have day jobs.’ No-one in the industry seems yet to have proposed the one sure way to get the message across. Invite politicians, government ministers, policy-makers, Ofcom’s management and the press to a free performance of a smash hit West End musical. Raise the curtain and then, half an hour into the show, progressively switch off all the mics and let the cast finish the performance without any electronic assistance. Then ask the guests how they enjoyed the show. n 61
slaying dragons
The synth Putting the VCO, VCF and VCA into context, JOHN WATKINSON completes his musical instrument theme by considering the synthesiser.
T
he synthesiser is possibly the ultimate instrument because in theory it can imitate any other known sound source. Imitating musical instruments is a common subset of synthesiser use, besides the creation of completely novel sounds. Unlike devices such as the Hammond organ, the Rhodes piano and the electric guitar, that electromechanically produce a waveform ready for amplification, the synthesiser creates the waveform entirely electronically. Initially this was done with valves; later transistors and then operational amplifiers. The first music synthesisers were essentially specialised analogue computers. Later digital circuitry performed the same functions numerically and ultimately the processes were performed in general-purpose digital computers under software control.
Like analogue computers, the first synthesisers consisted of discrete functional blocks that had to be interconnected by patch cords into the desired structure. While this allowed the most flexible operation, clearly it was not compatible with live performance. Later units integrated the essentials into a single enclosure and were pre-patched to act as keyboard instruments. The late Dr Robert Moog was a significant figure in the adaptation of synthesis techniques to musical performance. While not quite the first album to feature the Moog synthesiser, Wendy Carlos’ Switched on Bach was the first synthesiser album that most people, this author included, had ever heard and it was clear that the technology had arrived and would stay. This was underlined by the work of Isao Tomita who got into trouble with the Holst family because his synthesiser version of the Planets suite wasn’t what they were used to. One cannot fail to mention Vangelis Papathanassiou who is probably the greatest composer of electronic music there has ever been. The basic note of an analogue synthesiser would be produced by a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). Additionally a component from a low-frequency oscillator (LFO) might be added to the VCO control voltage to provide vibrato. No real instruments produce pure notes, but instead have a series of harmonics. In
early synthesisers the VCO would produce a square wave, whose duty cycle could be altered, a triangle wave and a sine wave, each of which would have a different Fourier spectrum. By mixing these together, various harmonic structures could be produced. The amount of odd harmonics was usually greater than in conventional instruments and resulted in the distinctive sound of the first synthesisers to appear on musical recordings. Subsequently, frequency modulation was used to enrich the harmonic structure. If the control voltage of the VCO is changed at an audio frequency, the VCO will produce an FM harmonic structure that can be predicted by Bessel functions. The principle is exactly the same as that used in FM radio and in analogue video recorders. In the first synthesisers the keyboard was not essential. The control voltage could come from a sequencer or from a ribbon controller that produced an output that was a function of the position of the player’s finger. The ribbon controller was a descendent of devices such as the Ondes Martenot and the Trautonium which were early electronic devices that formed a bridge between the Theremin and the synthesiser. The Ondes Martenot also has a keyboard where the keys could move sideways to allow vibrato. Martenot was a cellist and he wasn’t prepared to lose the expressiveness of cello playing in a keyboard. With only one VCO, chords are not possible, but the individual notes could be made to slide from one to another using integrators to provide a portamento effect. In a monophonic keyboard the lowest key pressed would disable higher ones to prevent odd effects if two keys were pressed at once. Later machines offered a number of VCOs so that chords could be played in real time. The VCO produces constant amplitude, whereas
You think cables don’t make an audible difference? You’ve heard one cable, you think you’ve heard them all? Well, it’s time to challenge your opinion. Give our highly specialized cables a chance. Visit one of our authorized dealers. Funky Junk UK, sales@funky-junk.co.uk KMR Audio, sales@kmraudio.com
VOVOX® sound conductors are distributed worldwide: S.E.A. Germany info@sea-distribution.com www.sea-distribution.com
+ swiss eng ineering + swi s s made + Our goal: The perfect transmission of sound signals www.vovox.com
62
resolution
November/December 2008
slaying dragons real musical instruments do not. The note of a real instrument builds up and decays in a manner unique to that instrument. In a synthesiser a further module, known as a VCA (voltage controlled amplifier) is needed. The waveform of the control voltage determines the envelope, or time history of the note’s amplitude. Research had shown that practically all instruments could be defined by four time constants, attack, decay, sustain and release (ADSR). Thus triggering a note would not only trigger the VCO to produce the fundamental and harmonic structure, but would also trigger the sequence of envelope generation. For a guitar-like sound, a sharp attack and decay would simulate the plucking of a string, whereas a violin-like sound would require a slow attack. The final module needed for a basic synthesiser is a VCF (voltage controlled filter). If set to a low-pass mode, it would remove higher harmonics and give a mellow sound. However, the filter could not be fixed as the effect would change with the note. Instead the turnover frequency of the filter was made to move with an applied voltage. By arranging the gain, the VCF and the VCO could be fed by the same control voltage, so the filter would always have the same relationship to the note. However, the VCF could also be controlled from another source, such as the ADSR generator. So the filter setting would change during the note. This is how the synthesiser produces speech-like sounds, because it mimics the changing resonant frequency of the mouth as words are articulated. The VCF can also be set up as a band-pass filter of variable Q. Using high Q settings, the filter itself can
become a short-term VCO. Instead of feeding the filter from the VCO, it is driven from the note trigger, and the high Q filter then rings. This is how effects such as bells and triangles can be obtained. While early synthesisers needed some acoustic and musical skill to set up, the mass market required something easier. As a result the parameters needed to simulate typical instruments were stored as presets that the player simply selected. While it made playing easy, it did take some of the fun out of it. I have an ancient Roland Juno 6 from the early 805 and it is primitive, but you can learn a lot about synthesisers by using it because all of the parameters are directly adjusted on faders. I have no plans to part with it. Analogue synthesisers lacked stability and were temperature sensitive. The solution was to replace the unstable parts with digital circuitry. Note generation based on a crystal clock will be perfectly stable. Anything that can be done to an analogue waveform can be simulated by manipulating a series of samples. A sampled sine wave can be created by solving an equation for a series of different phase angles. The pitch is changed by altering the angle between the samples. Low cost storage allows the use of digital wave tables, where a series of samples of a harmonically rich waveform reside in memory. The rate at which the samples are accessed determines the pitch. The major advantage of digital synthesisers is the freedom with which set-ups can be stored and recalled. This would be essential for live performance where different voices could be selected instantly. The technology does not differ from that used in mixing consoles. In fact the analogy goes further. Automated mixing consoles allow at least the position
of the faders to be recorded with respect to time. So why not automate a synthesiser so that all controls, including the musician operating the keyboard, are recorded? Effectively that is what MIDI is for. MIDI is a standardised interface that controls the playing of electrical/electronic musical instruments. It grew out of the signalling techniques used to connect pipe organ consoles to the works. Connect the MIDI signal from a synthesiser to a suitable recorder, and when played back, the MIDI signal will cause the synthesiser to re-create exactly the same music. A MIDI recorder that allows editing becomes a composition tool. In the same way that an analogue process can be simulated by suitable digital hardware, then digital hardware can be simulated by a CPU with suitable software. As a result a PC with a sound card can become not just a synthesiser, but in principle it can become any synthesiser, provided the code is available. Synthesisers are not just about performance, but can also be extremely useful for learning to play a real instrument as the synth can play the piece properly so you have an idea what you are trying to emulate. I have a software package called Power Tab that can convert from tablature notation for guitars to traditional sheet music and can then play the result on an integral synthesiser. I’m using it to learn to play a square-neck Dobro, and while Jerry Douglas need have no fears, I’m picking it up a lot faster than I thought I would with the help of Power Tab. And so the circle is completed. Synthesisers began as an alternative to conventional musical instruments and now I’m using one to help play a conventional instrument better. As well as having fun. n
showcase
November/December 2008
resolution
63
your business
Ahead of the game There has always been a connection between music/audio and the entertainment console. DAN DALEY says that we’re not playing games here — or are we? Perhaps we should be…
T
he prolific growth of video g a m e s is drawing what some might regard as inevitable comparisons to the evolution of cinema, a putative convergence certainly reinforced by ventures that just last year had action helmsman Jerry Bruckheimer joining forces with MTV’s games division, and director John Woo collaborating with game-developer Midway to bring the Hard Boiled series from the screen to the console; a few years earlier techno-classic TRON became TRON 2.0, the game, and even Steven Spielberg has an office in Electronic Arts’ campus.
However, music is taking a somewhat different course in its interaction with video games. A rather substantial infrastructure has already been built up in which music and other audio elements are created for games. To stay with the cinema analogy for a moment, their function is analogous to that of conventional film scoring and SFX and Foley work. But two other tangents from this nexus of video and sound seem ready to position music in a much different manner than simply the supporting role it has mostly played so far. First, a few visionaries have been exploring ways to take music developed for games out of that context and prove that it can stand alone as a viable artistic and commercial entity. The most aggressive of these evangelists is Tommy Tallarico, a one-time LA record producer who some years ago saw the nascent niche of music for video games and migrated his skills towards that. Since then, Tommy Tallarico Studios has been the producer, sound designer and composer behind hit game titles including Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Spiderman and Jaws Unleashed. In 2006, he organized Video Games Live, a touring orchestral rendition of the themes from Mario Brothers, Halo, Tomb Raider and other classic video games. Part rock concert, part game show, part religious experience, this 135-minute-long amalgamation of the scores and songs from popular video games is about to
enter its fourth season, selling not only tickets and t-shirts but records too. At a time when live concerts are becoming the main revenue stream for many artists, Tallarico’s convergence of music, games and live performance is, if not a stroke of genius, at the very least a prescient bet on the fact that prerecorded music without some kind of a backstory is going to be a harder sell than ever. But well-credentialed record producers have also found video games alluring. Most notable perhaps is Nile Rodgers, founder of funk-pop group Chic and producer of hits including Madonna’s Like A Virgin and David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. In 2003, he took on the executive production mantle for Outlaw Volleyball: Spike or Die. Rodgers is a true video games fan, and he combined that genuine enthusiasm with his sharp eye for a business proposition. ‘I am a strong believer that game music is becoming as integral to the game experience as soundtracks are to movies,’ he says. ‘This is the hottest new area for “earballs”, so producing the soundtrack to Outlaw Volleyball gives me an opportunity to connect with this audience and expose them to incredible new talent.’ Some of that talent is from Rodgers’ own stable of writers and producers, which gives him access to a key revenue stream from the underlying copyrights to the music. The attraction of Rodgers’ own credentials — two Grammy Awards and four nominations, as well as productions for artists including Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Britney Spears and Seal, allows him to cut better deals than most music producers visiting the fast-growing and lucrative game universe. But then there’s another expanding connection between music and games, one that’s become as controversial as it has successful. The hit games Rock Band and Guitar Hero have created a seismic cultural phenomenon, one that’s creating as much
M A NGER P r e c i s i o n
i n
s o u n d
it’s simply a question of time
STUDIO M ONITO R MSM c 1
w w w.mang er-audio.c o.uk U K tel : 0 1 6 1 -304- 0099
64 Manger QP 1008.indd 1
www.ma n g e r- p ro . d e Tel: +49 - 9776- 9816
resolution 19/9/08 11:30:38
November/December 2008
your business controversy as money — and plenty of both. The Guitar Hero franchise — it’s up to three iterations plus the forthcoming Guitar Hero World Tour — alone has sold over 21 million units thus far, earning an estimated US$1 billion-plus. Small wonder then that some of the bigger brands in music artists have pursued — or been pursued by — the nexus of classic rock and games. Guitar Hero World Tour will feature a number of real-life musicians (though not necessarily live ones), including Jimi Hendrix, Billy Corgan, Ozzy Osborne and Sting. Aerosmith is the focus of 2008’s Guitar Hero IV release, with a little over half the songs coming from the band’s vaults and the rest from solo efforts by guitarist Joe Perry and duets with artists like Run D.M.C. There’s damned good financial incentive to do this. Record labels and retailers both have reported sales increases in the order of as much as 200 to 300% when they are included in a popular video game. A survey done at Brown University in the US discovered that 76% of Guitar Hero players bought the music they heard in the game, regardless of whether it was classic rock or new indie artists. The band Dragon Force, whose song Through The Fire and Flames is featured as the final song in Guitar Hero II: Legends of Rock, saw a 126% increase in CD sales in the week after the release of the game, the New York Times reported, and downloads of the song, previously selling fewer than 2,000 weekly, rose to more than 10,000 after Guitar Hero III’s release and approached 40,000 the week of its release, said USA Today. And according to ActiVision, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith has made more money for that band than any sales of their previous albums. I find that a little hard to believe but, given the juggernaut for music that video games have become, I’ll suspend disbelief.
This looks like a simple enough proposition: a new outlet for new and old music that creates a fantastic synergy with the new medium of games. But as usual, it’s not really that simple. Increasingly, the games go far beyond simply including the ‘final’ version of songs in uncut fashion; instead, artists are being asked to supply stemmed versions of the songs: guitars, vocals, drums, keyboards and other elements grouped separately, to allow game players to remix the songs as they go along, as well as letting them add their own parts. This has caused a few major artists, including Led Zeppelin, to say no to releasing their masters. (Others might have been locked out due to lost, unavailable or unusable master tapes, but that hasn’t stopped the Sex Pistols from rerecording their old tracks expressly for this purpose. Bollocks, indeed.) In fact, the synergy with video games may be leading some in the music industry to regard traditional CD distribution of their music as secondary to the game channel. That is what’s behind the imbroglio of Metallica’s Death Magnetic, which arrived at retail as both a conventional CD and as the latest Guitar Hero chapter in September. The band’s fanbase and the professional audio community quickly concluded that the CD’s sound was vastly inferior to that of the stems delivered for the game. The CD was subject to brick-wall limiting, commonly used to boost the relative loudness of a recording but at the sake of its dynamic range. The game’s audio, however, which consisted of the instruments grouped in stems directly off the board, was neither mixed nor mastered, and retained dynamic range with none of the distortion heard on the CD. If partnering with a video game can draw you closer to your fan base, doing it at the expense of your traditional sales base can prove disastrous:
within days of the CD release, over 11,000 fans had signed an online petition asking for a remix and remastered version of the CD, with dozens of homemade Pro Tools waveform analyses on YouTube to support their case. Even Ted Jensen, the Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer who mastered Death Magnetic, voiced his displeasure in an email posted on a Metallica fansite. ‘Believe me,’ he wrote, ‘I’m not proud to be associated with this one...’ All that mishigas, however, didn’t stop Death Magnetic from coming out of the box at number one on Billboard’s charts. The relationship between music producers and game producers goes back, at least etymologically, to Trip Hawkins, who founded Electronics Arts in 1982 and had his friend Jerry Moss send over some staff record producers from A&M Records to help train his nascent cadre of game producers in sound. But the trends of the last few years signal that there are huge opportunities in games for record producers, particularly ones with brands worth leveraging and/or access to catalogue masters. Even lacking that kind of artillery, the fact that video games are quickly becoming a valid distribution channel for music means that record producers should become at least familiar with the mechanics of game development (the music generally gets addressed quite early in a typical game title’s twoyear development cycle). Furthermore, there is a pretty well-developed indie game world out there (there’s an ‘indie’ version of everything, you know) that can act as a parallel proposition to the indie music market. It all looks rather good. Perhaps the one thing you have to worry about is turning into a game yourself. Oh, wait — it’s already happened: Voyetra’s Record Producer Deluxe! n
VALVET X PURE CARDIOID
FOR PURELY INTIMATE MOMENTS
theartofmicrophones.com
November/December 2008
resolution
65
headroom More evolution of an Icon T h e r e c e n t correspondence on the RCA and BBC ribbon mics has been very interesting (V7.7). In his excellent book, BBC Engineering 19221972, Edward Pawley tells the story that the BBC were impressed by the RCA mic but it was expensive at £130.00 including the head amplifier. In co-operation with Marconi’s the BBC version was produced at a cost of £9.00 in 1935. Pawley states that the RCA operated as a velocity mic up to 9kHz whereas the BBC type A behaved as a pressure type above 4,500Hz. This was mainly due to the design of the pole pieces which were thicker in the BBC type to increase sensitivity. A thorough analysis of the two types can be found in the journal Electronic Engineering for May 1946, by Amos and Brooker (both BBC). A ribbon mic was designed by Gerlach of Siemens in 1927 mostly for use in their Klangfilm system: it was more or less unidirectional and obviously diffraction effects were not considered very important! Sean Davies, Aylesbury, UK
Farewell Gateway It was with great sadness that I read in Resolution (V7.7) about the closure of the Gateway School of Recording. In 1985 and 86, I attended some courses there, by people like Dave Ward, Steve Howell and Mike Parr. At the time, the school was still based in Wandsworth, at Gateway Studios, so that was way before their move to Kingston University. I still remember with a smile that at the time they were recording an album there on a (now collector’s item) Fairlight CMI, just using sampled animal sounds to emulate traditional musical instruments. Being a foreign student in the UK in those times was not easy. At Gateway, I felt at home and welcome.
66
Throughout the years and still in the present day, the knowledge that I acquired at the School proved to be a strong and reliable foundation for the career that ever since then I have pursued in the recording industry. Independently of the reasons that led to its closure, I would like to publicly endorse my deepest and sincere thank you to the Gateway School. Farewell. Paulo Mendes, Bicesse, Portugal
Abbey Rd Brilliance Pack I just read George Shilling’s article on the [Abbey Road Plug-ins] Brilliance Pack (V7.7) and I think a rectification is needed. He says that it’s just an EQ curve, no noise, no distortion or other funny business going on.... This is wrong, I can assure you that it’s not just that. If this was the case I could have easily copied these ‘curves’ with Q-clone. But there is a massive difference, especially on stereo material. This is in my opinion what makes it so special, these EQs bring life into the mix. Just putting the EQ on a sound without actually changing the level will give you an audible difference! That’s why I bought them! I use them in mastering. If you can’t hear it, try placing a song on two channels and on one of them put one of the EQs; now phase reverse one of the channels (make sure delay compensation is on or compensate manually). You’ll be amazed at how much difference there actually is. I think a rectification in your magazine would be in place. Mark den Hartog, Leiderdorp, Netherlands Thanks Mark. It’s not that George couldn’t hear it, he wasn’t listening for it as he’d specifically asked about this ‘straight through’ aspect and was told by the manufacturer that ‘the plug-ins don’t model any harmonic distortion or degradation, just the EQ curves from the original boxes.’ However, subsequent to your letter George has gone and listened and, yes, you are correct and he can hear it too. We ran this by the manufacturer and got a rather protracted response but the upshot of it is ‘yes, there are things going on even if the plug-in is set to 0dB. Not much, but a little.’ ZS
resolution
Advertiser Index Al.So Dynax........................................ Classified 63 Audient.......................................................... 36-37 Audio Professionals / Spl...................................50 Audio-Technica . .................................................49 Brauner................................................................65 Calrec..................................................................48 Cedar Audio........................................................68 Charteroak..........................................................59 Digico..................................................................03 Dolby...................................................................09 Dpa.....................................................................25 Fairlight...............................................................52 Fostex..................................................................20 Genelec...............................................................02 Grace...................................................................44 Hhb.....................................................................55 Ibc.......................................................................33 Ibs x 2........................................................62 & 64 Kmr Audio......................................... Classified 63 Lydcraft...............................................................18 Manger Audio.....................................................64 Mcdsp.................................................................07 Merging Technology...........................................40 Microtech Gefell.................................................47 Millennia . ...........................................................13 Mytek..................................................................15 Prism....................................................................57 Radial............................................................. 30-31 Rme............................................................... 10-11 Rnd.....................................................................34 Schoeps...............................................................17 Scv London........................................................53 Sea Distribution ................................................62 Sennheiser...........................................................29 Sonic Apogee......................................................23 Sonic Rnd...........................................................39 Sonic Se..............................................................41 Sonic Waves........................................................43 Sonifex................................................................66 Sonnox................................................................19 Source Ua...........................................................21 Ssl.......................................................................27 Studer..................................................................51 Studio Spares......................................................35 TL Audio..............................................................63 TL Commerce..................................... Classified 63 Trinnov.................................................................56 Vertigo................................................ Classified 63 Vintage King........................................................54
November/December 2008
9 ' 01 +6* +4 9 9 10 ' 26+ (+4 1
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
/ ( 6WDG6TCEMGT
6'.'2*10' '/#+. +0(1"6.#7&+1 %1 7-
&GUKIPGF CPF OCPWHCEVWTGF KP 'PINCPF