Resolution V4.8 Nov/Dec 2005 by Resolution

NOV/DEC 2005 V4.8

THE NEXT GENERATION AUDIO PRODUCTION MAGAZINE

Darcy Proper Master craft

Sergio Galoyan’s tips on production and mixing The new face of regional commercial broadcasting at ITV Meridian SpaceCouplers for big sound from a small room Charting progress down the road with download Meet your maker: David Dearden — Audient Ten inspirations for better performance

REVIEWS • Universal Audio 4110

• Millennia TD-1

• Apple Soundtrack Pro • MindPrint • Brauner Phantom AE

DTC DI-Mod

• Sony Oxford Limiter

• Benchmark ADC1

• Waves APA44-M

• Bias Peak Pro XT 5

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November/December 2005 V4.8

ISSN 1477-4216 THE NEXT GENERATION AUDIO PRODUCTION MAGAZINE

News & Analysis 4 4

Craft 14

Leader News

Sales, contracts, appointments and the bigger picture

ITV Meridian

Broadcasting is changing globally and locally. We report on the new face of regional commercial broadcasting in the UK.

Products

Headroom

Darcy Proper

She left the US to set up shop in Europe and is one of the very few women to have cut it at the leading edge of mastering.

Sergio Galoyan

He’s young, dynamic and Armenian and has a very clear idea of where he’s going. He talks production and mixing.

Sweet Spot

You can get a big sound from a small room by employing SpaceCoupler panels to achieve loosely coupled spaces. We show you how.

New introductions and announcements plus Digidesign and Steinberg platform news. Marketing hype, pesky peaks and more audio lookilikies.

Meet your maker

David Dearden — Audient’s technology man on why analogue is getting even better.

In the picture

Progress in picture and sound gear leads ultimately to integration.

Steinberg Top Tips

Nuendo 3.2 adds a high level of Control Room functionality to the package.

Katz’s column

Becky and Fred are back from the honeyroom and Bob encourages them to get off the bus.

Ten

Your business

Inspirations for better performance.

Business 48

Down the road with download

Three years after our ﬁrst agendasetting look at early legal online music services we return to see how the garden has grown.

Stuff happens and certain sorts of stuff is happening a lot more regularly. Daley says you really ought to get insured.

Technology 54

Radio and its multichannel challenge

Slaying Dragons Watkinson considers ‘classic’ equipment and is moved to discuss the relative merits of the Jaguar XJ-S and Nissan Micra along the way.

5.1 is accepted in ﬁlm, TV, music and games — so what is radio doing about it?

Reviews 24 26 28 30 31

Waves APA44-M Millennia TD-1 Universal Audio 4110 Apple Soundtrack Pro MindPrint DTC DI-Mod

EDITORIAL Editorial Director: Zenon Schoepe Tel: +44 1444 410675 Email: zen@resolutionmag.com Editorial ofﬁce: PO Box 531, Haywards Heath RH16 4WD, UK Contributors: Rob James, George Shilling, Keith Spencer-Allen, Terry Nelson, Jon Thornton, Neil Hillman, Nigel Jopson, Andy Day, Jim Evans, Kevin Hilton, Dan Daley, John Watkinson

Bias Peak Pro XT 5

Sony Oxford Limiter

Benchmark ADC1

Brauner Phantom Anniversary Edition

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

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

news APPOINTMENTS PA U L W H I T I N G has been appointed to the Board of Sennheiser Nordic, a newly formed company that will largely replace the independent business partners who have represented Sennheiser in Scandinavia in the past. From January 2006, this Copenhagen-based organisation will represent all Sennheiser activities in Denmark, Finland and Norway. Sweden will continue to be handled by Sennheiser AB, Stockholm until further notice. Whiting also remains MD of Sennheiser UK.

Soundata’s Mikko Palomäki and Juha Tamminen. DPA MICROPHONES has appointed Soundata and Media Business Solutions as its distributors in Finland and Poland respectively.

Bluesound’s Thomas Csernus, Peter Csillag and Andrew Kerekes. DPA has also appointed G-Tec Professional and Bluesound as its distributors for Slovakia and Hungary respectively. EUPHONIX HAS appointed John Mozzi as director eastern US region sales. His previous experience includes time at Akai Professional USA, TEAC America and Waveframe. AFFINITY AUDIO has taken on distribution of Mutec products in the UK.

©2005 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

LeaderPanelette Head

There is something about an East Coast AES that Berliner Synchron orderedyour a second reinvigorates and has challenges DFC console installation in to its opinions aboutfor the business. For Atelier 10. facility starters youThe getBerlin-based swept along will b y use t h ethe e nDFC t h u sto i amix s m feature o f i t sfilms, particularly for German market, as participants andthe then you wonder well as dubbing a variety if they’re really seeing it of theprojects same and original way youversions. are. ‘Having second will make life One of athe mostDFC significant, easier forcompletely scheduling predictable, projects and mix although engineers andofwe can years also exchange developments recent that automation between theand rooms,’ has accompanied the rise rise said Berliner Synchron’s Michael of the DAW has been the increaseHans. ‘Positive experiences with flexibility in the popularity of what is now for handling set-ups and desk configurations described collectively as boutique make the DFC ideal for whatabout we are doing here.’ hardware. What is amazing AMSboutique Neve, UK: +44 1282 457011 the market ‘pie’ is that it is not fixed in size. Most other volume market types are largely self-limiting and rely on renewal cycles to keep them churning. The boutique market is different in that the cost of entry is high, the market is not huge but the pie unusually can grow in size to absorb new manufacturers. Thus we get the very peculiar situation where just because you’ve bought boutique compressor A it doesn’t mean you won’t then also go on to buy compressors B and C from two other manufacturers at some stage. Also, when the manufacturer of compressor A brings out another variation on the gain reduction theme you’ll probably have that as well. It’s a state of affairs that is witnessed by the slow but steady growth in the number of boutique brands, some of which are now long-lived and comparatively large operations. To me, this is actually the modern manifestation of traditional pro audio family values. While on the face of it our industry is united by the ownership of products from a top 30 of big brands, it’s all the other individual stuff that gets bolted on and around those products that makes us what we are. Manufacturers who apply inappropriate mass consumer-style marketing, selling and volume principles to our industry are only ever going to address people who are after low-cost, lowend products (with no loyalty) or those who are teetering at the edges of the business and are as likely to spend the next wage on a computer game or a phone as on a couple of channels of dynamic range control. Meaningful growth of pro audio buyers is achieved by instilling a pride and price of ownership in equipment that holds value and performs a unique function that the user is educated enough to appreciate. He ends up using more and buys more, all as an adjunct to the core technology that he is obliged to employ. It’s the boutique market in a nutshell. Long may it prosper and continue to define professionalism. Zenon Schoepe

ISE and PLASA co-op Integrated Systems Europe and PLASA have forged a partnership at Europe’s largest AV Systems Integration tradeshow. By combining the best elements of one of the largest trade communities in Professional Lighting and Sound with Europe’s biggest trade show in Audio Visual Systems Integration, the two organisations will augment their knowledge of AV Systems, Lighting and Sound to turn ISE 2006 into ‘the most stunning visual trade event ever held in Europe’. PLASA will be organising the Lighting and Staging Pavilion at ISE 2006.

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.

‘The Autumn PLASA event in London is traditionally centred on entertainment and installation technology and draws an impressive global attendance,’ said Matthew Grifﬁths, MD of PLASA. ‘ISE is stronger on the other end of the spectrum, getting more AV Systems Integration-related exhibitors and a stronger pan-European attendance. With this proﬁle, PLASA really complements ISE. It marks a new day in the relationship between one of the leading trade communities and Europe’s biggest AV Systems trade show, particularly in the Events and Rental business for AV companies.’

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

resolution

AES NY jump in attendees and exhibits

AES executive director Roger Furness reported that with 452 exhibitors and 20,260 attendees the New York AES Convention in October had raised the bar for future Conventions on virtually every level. ‘Led by Convention chair Jim Anderson and vice chair Zoe Thrall our Committee developed an outstanding series of Papers, Workshops, Tutorials, Live Sound, Broadcast Educational, Special and Historical Events, Technical Tours and Platinum Panels,’ he said. ‘It is impossible to adequately praise this entirely volunteer team for the long hours and unlimited energy they devoted to ensuring the success of this year’s event.’

AA Roadwatch on-air with Audionics

AA Roadwatch, the number one traffic and travel service provider in Ireland, which broadcasts more than 50 live travel bulletins daily to four national radio stations and Dublin’s Newstalk 106, has moved to new purpose-built studios in Dublin. Audionics was commissioned to provide a combined mixer/router system to enable four studios to be routed to remote stations via 12 WorldNet Tokyo codecs, their APT technology providing 15kHz bandwidth with no latency. Audionics 6-channel assignable ADX consoles are routed to the codecs via a four-layer audio and control router, which provides send and return audio with autodial and frame lock control signals.

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November/December 2005

news Pro-Bel acquires Vistek Pro-Bel, the manufacturer and supplier of routing switchers, signal processing, master control, automation and workflow technologies, has acquired Vistek Electronics. Vistek is a privately owned company and a global supplier of interface products to the broadcast industry. ‘We believe the integration of Vistek’s complementary product line into the well established Pro-Bel range will beneﬁt our customers,’ said Graham Pitman, CEO, Pro-Bel Group. ‘Not only are both companies at the forefront of the HD transition, but jointly we have technology that provides improved digital media workflow for the Broadcast/IT crossover and addresses our customers need to reduce costs.’

Kayne Hinges on Genelec sub

Canford Audio MD Chas Kennedy and Sonifex MD Marcus Brooke.

Harris acquires Leitch Leitch has entered into an agreement with Harris whereby Harris will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Leitch. With non-competing product lines, the combined companies say they can offer products and systems to serve every segment of the supply chain that brings digital audio, video and data content to consumers. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and acceptance by Leitch shareholders.

Discovery takes 87 LM100s Dolby has delivered 87 LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meters to Discovery Communications in the largest single sale of the LM100 to date. The devices will assist in maintaining consistency in Discovery’s postproduction and quality control suites throughout its facilities in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Miami, as well as provide off-air loudness monitoring. ‘At Discovery, we want to present our viewers with the highest-quality viewing experience, which is why we’ve chosen to install numerous Dolby LM100 units,’ said Tony Cole, VP, Engineering, Discovery Communications. ‘This will enable us to deliver consistent audio loudness levels on all of our programmes and to provide an improved real-world entertainment experience for our viewers.’ The LM100 is now used in more than 100 broadcast, postproduction, satellite uplink, and cable head-end facilities worldwide.

APPOINTMENTS

Craig Bauer, owner of Chicago studio Hinge, mixed several tracks on Kanye West’s Late Registration album after installing a Genelec 7073A active subwoofer. ‘It has made a huge difference here,’ said Bauer. ‘Hip-hop is all about feeling the low end, and that’s something the 7073 sub really lets you do.’ A pair of Genelec 1034B main monitors are the primary monitoring system in the control room at Hinge and other Genelec models in use include 1034A, 1031A and 1032As. ‘Kanye is very meticulous about his work,’ said Bauer. ‘I would get a call at 1am from him asking me to turn up kick number two by 2dB. The Genelec 7073 responds to that by giving Kanye and other clients the ability to get incredibly deep and accurate bass sounds, a key to hip-hop recordings. Kanye raises the bar for record-making, and Genelec speakers raise the bar for how records can sound.’

Shure’s new Performance Listening Center was designed by the Russ Berger Design Group and brings recording and product testing capabilities to the manufacturer’s 65,000sq-ft, two-story Technology Annex in the US, which opened last year.

Comcon MD Rakesh Aggarwal and Brooke. SONIFEX’S DISTRIBUTOR of the year awards were a repeat of last year with Canford Audio being awarded the best UK distributor award and Comcon Industries of New Delhi, India receiving the export award.

AUDIENT AND LA AUDIO distributors from all over the world soared above the Thames in Audient’s own private capsule on the London Eye during the PLASA show this year. LA Audio has appointed Impact Diffusion as its new distributor for France.

Russ Berger with Auralex’s Eric Smith AURALEX ACOUSTICS’ new pArtScience product line of modular acoustic surface treatments has been developed in collaboration with studio designer Russ Berger.

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November/December 2005

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news APPOINTMENTS RICK PLUSHNER has been appointed general manager GC Pro, the professional audio division of Guitar Center in the US. Plushner most recently served as president of SSL, North America but has also worked for Euphonix, AMS Neve and Sony.

(L-R) Dr Abdula Al Karam, CEO Knowledge Village; Dr Amina Al Rustamani, executive director Dubai Studio City; Marco Bettelli, regional director SAE Asia Paciﬁc and Middle East. SAE INSTITUTE, which has 46 colleges in 20 countries, has opened the doors to the ﬁrst of its Middle Eastern campuses within the Dubai Knowledge Village. SAE Dubai is now enrolling for Audio Engineering, Digital Animation and Film Making. TC ELECTRONIC has taken over worldwide distribution of all its TDM plug-ins. Distribution of Master X3 has switched from Digidesign to TC and TC Tools will be discontinued. SUMMIT AUDIO has been appointed US distributor for Bricasti Design products,

De Lane Tools upgrade

De Lane Lea Studios in London’s Soho has bought three Pro Tools HD2 systems, an HD3 system and a quantity of 192 I-Os from HHB. ‘We invested in the new equipment to augment our already significant Pro Tools inventory,’ explained COO Ian Davidson (pictured). ‘These days we might use up to five or six rigs on a single film just to map the number of tracks that are required. Pro Tools is the industry standard system that our clients demand, so we didn’t even consider anything else. ‘This is a significant investment for us and a necessary purchase. At present our Pro Tools systems mainly interface with AMS Neve DFC and Logic 2 consoles. We haven’t yet had call to use Digidesign’s control surfaces but that may well come in the future,’ he added.

On location in Atlantic

Location sound mixer Scot Charles employed four Lectrosonics UCR205 diversity wireless mic systems with MM400A transmitters, alongside his Sound Devices mixer for his sound contribution to a series of live half-hour TV shows ﬁlmed in the mid Atlantic Ocean for the Life at the Extremes science programme. ‘The Lectrosonics systems are designed to be rugged and easy to use,’ he said. ‘It shows in the way they construct the belt clips and the easy-change battery compartment. The way Lectrosonics designs their stuff may not seem like a big deal when you’re sitting in your shop or sitting on a sound stage, but when you’re trying to wrangle three or four microphones in a hurry before broadcast time, the ship is pitching and rolling, and there’s salt mist ﬂoating in, that stuff becomes much more important.’

Mixopolis mixes with Constellation-XT

China’s ﬁrst HDTV van is Max Air

including the all-new Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor. SSL HAS appointed Jim Motley as partnership manager for the XLogic range of products. He previously worked as European sales manager for SE Electronics and as national sales manager for TC Electronic. Filip Saelan has been appointed software product manager. He joins from his previous role as product manager for TC Electronic. Jon Jannaway joins as marketing manager. He was previously director of marketing at Line 6 Europe. M AT T I A S N I L S S O N has won the Milab Microphones 2005 Golden Microphone Award for his work on drum recording.

Jiangsu TV, a division of the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, with eleven TV channels spanning the People’s Republic of China and a member of the TV transmission team responsible for relaying coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, recently took delivery of a Euphonix Max Air console for its new OB van — the first HDTV OB van in China. The 40-fader console has 106 processing channels, 24 mic/line inputs, 56 digital I-Os, and 26 analogue outputs with surround capability. The vehicle was built for the 10th National Games of China in October, which were widely regarded as a rehearsal for the Beijing Olympics. ‘We compared several well-know brands,

and found the Max Air offers the greatest flexibility, delivers stunning audio quality, and its operation is quite intuitive,’ said Zhou Kesheng, Jiangsu TV’s chief audio engineer. ‘But without question, it was the console’s reputation for high reliability that really sealed the deal. We consulted with other TV stations that own either a Euphonix Max Air or System 5, and encountered a lot of positive feedback.’ • Leading Hollywood audio post house RH Factor has signed up for a Euphonix dualoperator System 5-MC console controlling multiple Nuendo DAWs. The desk has 24 faders and an MC controller per operator and is controlling three Nuendo Systems, one on each side for playback, and a third to act as a dubber.

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Mixopolis in New York’s Midtown ad agency corridor has installed a Fairlight Dream Constellation-XT. The facility consists of two mixing suites and a custom sound design/music suite. The three-bay Fairlight Constellation-XT provides the foundation for Mixopolis’ audio post projects and will be networked via Fairlight’s MediaLink to an existing StationPlus DAW. ‘As we recently completed a successful first year of operation at Mixopolis, we decided that upgrading to Fairlight Constellation-XT would perpetuate that success,’ said Mitch Raboy (pictured), partner and mixer at Mixopolis. ‘I am a long time Fairlight user and have always valued the speed, reliability and sound quality of their products. With the Constellation-XT, we look forward to the latest in surround mix automation, powerful on-board monitoring, plug-ins and networking.’

November/December 2005

news

news APPOINTMENTS

Marroquin mixes Keys

BLUE SKY International has established a European Distribution Centre in Albstadt, South Germany that will also serve the Far East. The new centre features a full demo facility and expanded service and support operations. TT Audio GmbH has taken on distribution of Blue Sky monitoring systems in Germany. SONIC SOLUTIONS has announced that Bob Doris, founder, chairman and CEO, will become non-executive chairman of the board of directors. Dave Habiger, currently president and COO, will become president and CEO. In related moves, Mary Sauer, co-founder of Sonic, currently senior vice president of business development, will also remain a non-executive member of the board of directors. Clay Leighton, senior vice president and CFO, has been promoted to executive vice president and CFO, and Mark Ely, senior vice president of strategy, has been promoted to executive vice president of strategy.

David Cooper, sales and marketing director, Midas/KT with Miele. MIDAS AND KLARK Teknik has appointed Andreas Miele at EVI Audio in Straubing, as managing sales engineer, Midas/Klark Teknik Germany.

DAYANG INTERNATIONAL has opened Dayang Europe in Bedford, UK. The new division has approximately 1,500sqft of office space with a 300sqft technical support and demonstration room. This follows the appointment earlier this year of Maurice de Jonghe as director of sales and marketing, Europe and Steven Farmer as European technical operations director.

Grammy Award winning engineer Manny Marroquin mixed the latest Alicia Keys project on a SSL AWS 900 at Keys’ Oven Studios facility. ‘The original recording for Alicia’s MTV UnPlugged session was made at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater with 14 performers that was essentially a live-to-tape session,’ said Marroquin. ‘I mixed the Unplugged session for about three weeks at The Oven on the AWS 900, and the console performed wonderfully. This is the ﬁrst time I had used the AWS 900 and I quickly realised that it gave me all the depth of sound of the XL 9000 K Series Console. ‘The AWS 900 interfaces with the Pro Tools system and provides the control I need to mix the session,’ he said. ‘The AWS 900 has 24 faders that conveniently control both console and Pro Tools, so I developed a mix strategy using both the capabilities on Pro Tools and the SSL.’ • Recent C100 broadcast network installations in the US include a C140 for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart located at NEP’s Studio 52 in New York City (pictured); a C140 for ABC TV’s The View for Studio TV24 in New York City; a C140 for CBS TV’s The Late Show with Craig Ferguson shot at CBS Television City’s Studio 58 in LA; and two C132s for Boston’s New England Sports Network.

Gencom Technology has recently installed Soundcraft RM1ds on-air desks at two BBC News and World bureaus in Manhattan — one at the broadcaster’s new midtown studios and the other at the headquarters of the UN. The two desks went in as part of an upgrade and followed Gencom’s ﬁrst installation project for the broadcaster at its new facility in Washington, DC.

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news

news THE BIG PICTURE • SAMSUNG INTENDS to double sales and achieve market leadership in a variety of sectors by 2010 and to be one of the world’s three biggest consumer electronics companies within five years. Samsung has achieved 20% sales growth in each of the last five years. Samsung is a leading producer of flatscreen TVs and displays, the world’s largest memory chip maker and second largest semiconductor manufacturer. It is also third behind Nokia and Motorola in mobile handsets. Samsung’s SPH-V7900 is a 3Gb harddrive embedded phone and is the company’s second model equipped with a hard drive. It supports MPEG-4/H.264 and MPEG-4 AAC/AAC+. Dual speakers are mounted on the exterior folder. • PAMA (PROFESSIONAL Audio Manufacturers Alliance), which represents the leading manufacturing brands in pro audio, is launching the State-of-the-Industry Worldwide Pro Audio Sales Statistical Survey. The association already produces an annually reviewed factory shipment sales research programme for pro mics and is expanding its research efforts as part of its development of membership benefit programmes. According to PAMA’s 2004 Microphone Sales Survey, unit sales of mics from 2003 to 2004 increased 3.3% for the global markets, which includes the US, Canada, Latin America, UK, France, Ger many and Japan. W ired mic shipments were up 1.7% while wireless systems sales where up nearly 7.8%.

Biz bites

The next instalment of Apple’s content strategy was revealed on 12 October as the long-anticipated video iPod launched, writes Nigel Jopson. The slimmer ViPod features a 2.5-inch, 320x240 pixel colour screen, 30Gb or 60Gb storage, and costs from UK£219/ US$299. Apple adverts carry the strap line: 15,000 songs, 25,000 photos, 150 hours of video, for PC + Mac. Steve Jobs proved he had read the market correctly (again) as iTMS customers purchased one million videos in 20 days. Top downloads of $1.99/£1.89 music videos include Thriller from Michael Jackson and recent videos from Gorillaz, Coldplay, Fatboy Slim and Kanye West. In the US a selection of TV shows, including Desperate Housewives, is available, Europe only has movie trailers and content from Pixar. The prominence of Jeff Buckley videos proves you don’t have to be a touring act/celebrity to receive label support, indeed, you do not even have to be alive as long as the music is good. T h e v i d e o i P o d p re s s h o o p l a overlooked one issue: nearly all the music videos were paid for by artists, not to sell individually, but in the hope of persuading people to buy records. Hollywood’s unions are already on the case for their members as regards movies, with WGA president Patric Verrone stating his and other guilds won’t tolerate the DVD residuals formula, which takes most of the money off the table before sharing a set percentage of gross. WGAW believes the proper formula is the existing one covering pay TV, where writers get 1.2% of producers’ gross. The case against giving video content away for free has never looked stronger, as MTVU launched a 24-hour channel distributed entirely over broadband, and Comscore Media Metrix released the ﬁrst publicly available analysis of consumer usage of streaming video: over 94m people in the US (56% of the Internet population) viewed a streaming video in June 2005. The average streamer watches 73 minutes of content per month. Research ﬁrm Strategy Analytics predicts: ‘Telcos, cable operators and other broadband service providers will encourage adoption of subscription-based services, which produce steadier revenue streams and are more likely to deter customer churn.’ The US Senate Commerce Committee has revised its legislation after reading my unfavourable comparison of its HDTV plans to the UK’s in the last issue of Resolution. April 7, 2009 has been set as the date for analogue switch off, with a $990m programme of subsidies for purchase of conversion boxes.

• PRINCETON DIGITAL and Microsoft have entered into a joint development and licensing agreement to develop professional quality audio processing software for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Microsoft will include a custom version of the Princeton’s Reverb2016/360 with the Xbox Software Development Kit, adding a powerful reverb to the game developer’s audio toolkit. • ACCORDING TO Nike lead global producer David Reti, the company is increasingly doing digital-only marketing, such as mobile and podcasting: ‘We haven’t figured out if everything will be pumped out this way, but it’s now part of the media choice rather than being an afterthought.’ Nike is among the first to launch a video podcast campaign, enabling consumers to view its Ronaldinho video on video iPods or via iTunes on computer.

Efﬁgy Studios in Madison, WI opened its doors this summer with JBL LSR6300 monitoring systems. Both studios are equipped with JBL — Studio A for 5.1 and stereo using a LSR6300 setup and Studio B for just stereo on LSR6328Ps plus a LSR6312SP subwoofer. ‘It was important for us to become a JBL 5.1 facility,’ said Efﬁgy’s chief engineer and designer Jack LeTourneau (seated). ‘Our aim is to be known as the premiere 5.1 suite in the upper Midwest.’

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‘Big’ Mick ﬁnds work for AE2500

Audio-Technica’s AE2500 dual-element mic has won a best in class reputation for kick drum and bass cab applications for which it was speciﬁcally designed. However, ‘best in class’ FOH engineer for Metallica (and many others) ‘Big’ Mick Hughes has extended its duties as his mic of choice for guitar cabs. ‘The AE2500 is absolutely stunning on guitar cabinets,’ he said. ‘The mic lends itself wonderfully to giving you a great inphase guitar sound that encompasses all of the bandwidth of the guitar. It cuts out all of the alignment problems of using two mics on a cab, and them being, even slightly, out of phase much of the time. ‘It just gives you this huge picture,’ continued Mick. ‘The combined sound of the condenser and the dynamic capsules is absolutely crushing.’

Radio Danubius networks with Vadis

Klotz Digital has delivered a Vadis networked audio system to Hungary’s leading commercial radio station, Radio Danubius, as part of a comprehensive upgrade of the broadcast facility in Budapest from where it broadcasts nationwide. The Vadis system consists of two OnAir mixing consoles, two small 4-fader consoles, special remote control equipment in the tech-ofﬁce and a central audio router, located in the central technical area of the radio station. Three Vadis 880 and one Vadis 210 audio engines, each equipped with redundant PSUs are used as console audio frames as well as central DSP and audio routers. All areas are interconnected via multi-channel ﬁbre optic cables. Two OnAir studios were equipped with almost identical Vadis DCII consoles, each with 12 faders.

November/December 2005

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Many musicians and recording professionals already consider the DPA 4006 to be the world’s most precise, natural-sounding microphone. Now the new 4006-TL builds on that legendary platform, adding an ultra-low distortion transformerless preamplifier for increased sensitivity and tighter bass response. The result is an even more remarkable microphone. The DPA 4006-TL. One step closer to perfection.

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Upgrade your 4006 to 4006-TL specification 4006 microphones can be upgraded to 4006-TL specification. Undertaken at the DPA factory, the upgrade consists of a new preamplifier, a Close-miking grid, a calibration chart and a new mic case. Visit the DPA website for full details.

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www.dpamicrophones.com

news THE BIG PICTURE • THE CHIEF executive of a company planning to sell mobile phone downloads has said that the piracy problem caused by mobile phones could be worse than that caused by the Internet. Martin Higginson, the chief executive of Monstermob, told Music Week magazine: ‘If piracy on the Internet was a tidal wave, this is going to be a tsunami.’ The fears are based around the planned arrival of phones able to store thousands of songs, which can then be shared via Bluetooth. Meanwhile, according to research by Macrovision ‘casual piracy’ is becoming an increasing threat to the entertainment industry, and solutions are hampered by a lack of a standard content protection system. Some 73% of businesses surveyed in Europe agreed that combating copyright theft is more than a battle against organised commercial piracy. ‘In tackling the complexity of casual piracy, the desire to change public perception must be supported by best practice strategies,’ said Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso. ‘There is significant momentum in the entertainment industry to get this formula right and define a new era of content protection.’ The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia and Asia-Pacific Markets have released estimates of the cost of Pay-TV Piracy in the Asia Pacific region for 2005. According to the study, the cost of Pay-TV piracy in the region is projected to grow by 11% from US$952m in 2004 to US$1.06b in 2005. This reflects a continuing trend, highlighting the fact that the problem is not under control and illegal activity is rising. This third annual study includes Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Pay-TV piracy losses for China are not included in the report, since China is considered, by some industry definitions, to have a negligible, genuine Pay-TV market. India still leads the region in terms of net revenues lost. • BILL GATES, speaking at Engage 2005 — the Inter net Advertising Bureau’s online marketing conference, has predicted the demise of CDs and DVDs as the last physical form for music and films, saying that in the future the content would be kept on a hard drive and sent over the Internet. He outlined a vision of a high definition generation where a single handheld device will meet all entertainment and lifestyle needs. Gates said mobile technology had only just begun to scratch the surface of what was possible and that new technology would be very empowering for the consumer.

Vista is a wrap at BBC

The world’s ﬁrst wraparound Studer Vista 8 has been installed in Studio One at BBC Television Centre in West London for live TV use. The 72-fader worksurface handles 194 mic inputs, and a total of 580 analogue and digital inputs. It works alongside a 12-fader OnAir 3000 which has been installed in the ‘gram-op’ position. Also in the UK, Soundesign’s new 12.5-ton mobile complete with a Vista 8 and two Pyramix HDs has gone operational. Designed and built by Conrad Fletcher, the truck has a moveable wall that allows the rear to be used as a studio, edit suite, Internet TX area or DVD copying suite. ‘We set ourselves the task of building a true multi-use vehicle with a serious listening environment, but we needed a desk that would be user-friendly to guest engineers and excel in any role, be it a radio talk show, a simultaneous stereo and 5.1 broadcast of a music festival or an on-site dub of a TV show,’ said Fletcher.

Opera ups DPA count

Long-time DPA user the Gothenburg Opera House in Sweden has purchased a further eight DPA 4011 mics, taking its total inventory of this product to 30. The 4011s are mainly being used for orchestras, and according to the venue’s technical supervisor Lars Olsen, are proving to be equally suitable for woodwind, brass and timpani. ‘We are somewhat different to most traditional opera houses as we produce not only operas but also ballets, operettas and full-scale musicals,’ he said. ‘The versatility of the mics means that our technicians can work with one kind of equipment regardless of the type of music, and this makes their job easier.’ Apart from the 4011s, the opera house owns a large quantity of 4061s, 4006s and DPA’s MSS6000 microphone summation system.

Pyramix on Campus

University of Victoria tutor David Clenman.

Audient’s ASP510 played a pivotal role in the Live8 DVD at London’s Metropolis Studios, where each of the worldwide Live8 concert recordings were mixed in 5.1 and stereo. ‘I was using the Audient surround monitor controller and bass management unit because I was mixing on an SSL J-Series, and that doesn’t have a surround monitoring panel as standard,’ said engineer Adrian Hall (pictured). ‘The Audient ASP510 sounded great and was easy to set up and use.’

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Canada’s University of British Columbia School of Music has purchased a Pyramix system with Music Pack and plans to upgrade to DSD. The facility has also installed a Pyramix Native system with Media Bundle to create a new secondary editing suite. UBC’s Director of Recording and Audio, David Simpson, was introduced to Pyramix by Graemme Brown of Vancouver’s Zen Mastering during the recording of a Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb surround SACD project. ‘The editing capabilities alone almost brought tears to my eyes -- tears because I had just ﬁnished several difﬁcult editing projects and it was obvious that Pyramix would have allowed even the most arduous edits to be made much more quickly and precisely than I had imagined was possible. I couldn’t get my hands on a Pyramix quickly enough,’ he said. Canada’s University of Victoria School of Music has installed a Pyramix system (Pyramix Native + Media Bundle with Lynx card) to serve its postproduction and editing needs.

November/December 2005

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ITV Meridian Broadcasting is changing globally but it’s also undergoing considerable rethinking even at relatively local levels. ROB JAMES reports on the new face of regional commercial broadcasting in the UK.

EGIONAL COMMERCIAL TELEVISION in the UK is undergoing enormous change. Meridian took over the South & South-East ITV franchise in 1993 from TVS and was a new form of ITV franchise holder, a ‘publisher/broadcaster’. The need for production capacity was considerably reduced, since it wasn’t obliged to make programmes other than to provide news, current affairs and local programmes within the region. It was soon apparent that the old studio centre in Southampton was too big and not really suited to modern broadcasting. When ITV was formed there was a great deal of rationalisation and centralisation of resources. Transmission control was moved to London and Meridian was primarily required to provide a daily news service, which in this region means three sub-regions, South, East and West. The brand new ITV Meridian digital news operation has now been running for a year, and occupies just one floor of a modern office block in a business park at Whiteley, near Fareham. The building is rectangular, with a large atrium in the middle. One side is given over to administration, management, and advertising sales. It also accommodates the journalists in an open-plan newsroom. The opposite side houses the technical areas, and three studios, one for each regional service. All three have identical studio and control room layouts, fitted with identical Calrec Zeta consoles and Ross vision switchers. Equally, the programme formats are more or less identical. Martin Clarke, a sound supervisor who has worked within the region since Southern Television days and who now looks after Audio Support, showed me around. I asked him how the changes had come about. ‘Meridian had already taken the decision to relocate from its city-centre site when ITV was created out of Granada and Carlton, so Meridian became the first of several of the ITV regions to convert to an all digital operation — the guinea pig,’ he says. The capturing format is DV-CAM tape (from Sony PD-570s), but from the moment it gets into the building it is ingested onto Avid Unity servers. From there either the journalists cut their own material, on Avid NewsCutters or, if it’s a larger feature item, there is a craft editor and Avid Adrenaline-based editing suite for each sub-region. Sub-regional offices in Newbury and Maidstone each have an edit suite and a dozen journalists with their own NewsCutters. The offices at Strawberry Hill (Newbury) and Vinter’s Park (Kent) are connected to Whiteley in both directions, so material can be passed back and forth, either as vision and sound feeds or by file transfer. Edited local items are kept on the Unity servers for seven days, after which the space is re-cycled unless flagged for retention. The technical area impresses by its small size. For example, the sound equipment for three studios and the talkback system for the entire region fits into just three of the total of 28 full-height 19-inch 14

racks in CAR, one wall of which is covered with Krone frames and Systimax Visipatch data patchbays. Rack upon rack of hard disks provides a total of nearly 14 Terabytes of on-line storage for the three Avid Unity servers. The noise and volume of air conditioning give testament to the heat dissipated. A giant UPS gives around 30 minutes to shut everything down gracefully if there is a power cut. This area is also protected by an exotic and scary Inergen gas fire extinguisher system intended to put a fire out without destruction. Everything in this building is run by computer, one way or another, and the requirement to connect everything together with Cat 5 produces a concept known as ‘flood wiring’. Every bay, every rack, and every piece of equipment has a small Cat 5 termination panel adjacent to it. Several hundred of these are distributed around the building, which all go to a central termination panel. So, if you want to route any signal to any other point in the system, you do it over Cat 5. It is used, for example, to connect all the presenter talkback boxes in the newsrooms and the studios to the main talkback matrix. Meridian’s connectivity, even to its own transmitters, is via London. Lines go to the Southern Transmission Centre at South Bank, from where they can be passed-on to the BT Tower and the rest of the world. Within ITV itself the Megastream Ethernet infrastructure is slowly growing. Programme items can now be file-transferred directly with other regions as they convert to an all-digital service, as Meridian recently did with its first ‘mouse-click’ transfer from Tyne-Tees when it came on-stream. The choice of audio console originally rested with Martin and Paul Stevenson, who is ITV Controller of News Projects & Systems, in charge of the move to new technology. However, as the implications of what Meridian was about to do became more obvious, namely that if this project worked it was likely to be replicated many times over across ITV, then the decisions became more onerous — the first of which was whether to do the sound in the analogue or digital domain. resolution

‘However,’ says Martin, ‘given that we were moving into an alldigital environment, the choice was fairly obvious. More difficult was deciding which digital mixer. The primary requirement was for a studio that could be self-operated for most of the day by the director/ vision mixer, when there would be no sound engineer or operator in the sound control room. The original concept was to have a separate submixer to do the audiofollows-video operation. Every manufacturer I spoke to scratched their heads when we said, “Look, we need a digital mixer and a digital sub-mixer, and we need to be able to switch between the two.” ‘When you’ve found the solution, it seems so obvious,’ he continues. ‘You buy a slightly larger mixer than you need, take eight faders off the end of it, and then extend those on a long ribbon cable into the production control room next door. Once you’ve made that conceptual jump, it is fairly easy to contrive one preset snapshot that has the main 24-fader mixer routed to output, and then to call up a second memory that causes those faders to shut down while the other eight open up next door. Directing the GPIs to the remote fader panel gave us our audio-follows-vision facility, so we have our sub-mixer, except it isn’t — it’s just a different physical part of the one main mixer in each gallery. “We looked at four manufacturers, three UK based, and one from the States. We quickly dismissed two. Of these, the SSL C200 was a delightful piece of kit, but required a trained operator and was well outside our budget. Another was just too big, both in terms of the control surface fitting into the sound cubicle, and the entire rack-bay of equipment per console that went with it. Ultimately the decision was made to go with Calrec’s Zeta. It fitted the space and could readily provide the sub-mixer. The Calrec’s robustness was also impressive. Everybody asks: “What happens if the power goes off, and how long does it take to boot up?” Some were reluctant to demonstrate, but Calrec just turned around and switched it off, then back on again. It restored itself within 15 seconds, exactly the way you’d left it. Nor did it get too upset when I hot-swapped a random board, other than muting a few channels from which I’d unknowingly removed the processing! What finally did it for me was the fact that the PC in the rack plays no operational part in the running of the mixer, but merely stores the presets and configs, and provides the user with a graphic interface.’ The system is necessarily complex because there are three different regions to feed, three roving satellite trucks, dial-ups to the London studios and around the rest of the network, and three remote newsrooms, all of which are in use on a daily basis. However, there are no specialised sound staff involved in the studio operation. The ubiquitous ‘Technical Operators’ do the sound mixing, direct bulletins, control vision, and operate cameras in the studio, as well as working in the technical area, doing playouts and recordings. Multitasking, to say the least, but not necessarily all at once! November/December 2005

facility ‘You need mix-minuses to feed every location to enable them to interact,’ continues Martin. ‘Asking a non-technical person to set that up each time would be too much, therefore it has to be built into the system. The physical wiring is based on the assumption that each studio will produce six dedicated mix-minus feeds, one associated with each assignable source. The Calrec Zeta is configured to produce these, and route them, without any user intervention. The Technical Operators just mix the programme, knowing that the system is following what they are doing. A year down the line, we haven’t had one notable failure. Given that it’s all programmed into the console, my job is to work in the background to ensure that it all keeps running smoothly. I’m also responsible for the talkback system, and any modifications needed as its requirements change. Control for the entire region’s Trilogy Pathfinder talkback system is centralised, so a talkback panel in, say, Newbury is actually configured from Whiteley. ‘One slight problem is the volatile mixer memories. Occasionally, operators overwrite them, so I keep another set duplicated in the mixer, another on the configuration PC, and if that should fail I have a USB stick containing them as well! Of course, the real answer is to have protected read-only memories built into the console. We’ve had a couple of visits from Calrec R&D people to see what we do with their mixers, and I mentioned this along with a few other minor points -– perhaps one day they will materialise as an upgrade.’ Te c h n i c i a n ’ s and journalist’s job descriptions, have changed dramatically. For example, journalists are now expected to edit their own material on Avid Newscutters, and do their own desk-top voice-overs, using a Coles’ lip mic and a BCD Audio Level Taker. They also insert their own basic graphics, using templates designed by the in-house graphics department. For jingles, stings and music beds, Meridian use Spot On, a PC-based playout, touchscreen device. Material is loaded and edited with Adobe Audition.

Cues can be fired by GPIs from the Ross vision switcher, or manually triggered. Meridian also produces 30-second rundowns of the days programming for local radio stations to use, in versions specific to their regions. These are transferred onto a MiniDisc that is put into loop and fed out via an APTX ISDN machine. The local radio stations then just dial in to the dedicated number, wait for their specific, idented, version to come round, pick it off, and hang up. In the brave new digital world, sync and delays in general are big issues. Martin Clarke sees it this way: ‘Analogue was effectively instantaneous, even when carried by fibre. Pictures went from here to the other end of the country with no perceptible delay so you could, for instance, take an off-air cue at an OB. Now all the processing takes a finite time. The odd frame, here or there, might not seem significant, but they all add up. Our Kent studio is a classic example. With analogue lines we could do a two-way interview with no problem. Now there is an overall delay of nearly three seconds there and back, so it becomes even more important that all the feeds to and from the various parts of the operation are mix-minuses. ‘These problems occur with digital vision mixers as well,’ he says. ‘You either end up with a load of audio delays all over the place that you switch between, because it’s usually the vision processes that take longer than the audio, or you try to think up some sort

of variable delay, but that would introduce problems of its own, so perhaps best not to go there!’ The old wall of monitors in the control room has been replaced by two large plasma screens, each with several tiles — the previews, the cameras, the servers, and so on, all with tallies and idents. Inserting all this takes time too, and the plasmas themselves have an inherent delay. By the time anything appears on a screen in the gallery it is very difficult to tell if you’ve got lip sync, even when it’s a live source from the studio. ‘You just have to assume it’s in sync,’ says Martin, ‘because you haven’t done anything to it, other than watch it. One problem we are currently facing is trying to establish the critical point in the system that we can consider to be ‘in sync’, against which we can reference everything else. We’re currently awaiting the arrival of a LipStick delay measurement system, to see if that can help us to at least quantify the problem.’ For the present, however, sync problems remain an egregious fly in the ointment, affecting the entire digital broadcast chain. This is one issue that really must be addressed, not just by Meridian but by the entire industry. ‘Hearing all this,’ says Martin, ‘you might think, on the face of it, that the value given to sound has declined. However, with the hindsight of 35 years in TV, all I can say is that the value of sound only becomes apparent when it’s not there. Then it suddenly becomes absolutely paramount, and they all shout, and look at you, and wave and point. That hasn’t changed at all!’ The quiet, friendly and efficient atmosphere pleasantly surprised me. This is a logical extension of the digital desktop production integration promise across an entire ITV region. The Whiteley operation has become the template for the entire ITV regional news network. So far as regional variations will allow, the formula has already been repeated by Tyne Tees at Gateshead, and is currently under way at Anglia. Several other regions remain to be converted as the basic premise of server-based transmission with desktop editing is being rolled out across ITV. Once these production methods become embedded, we will probably look back in wonder at the way we once used to make news and current affairs programmes. ■

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Products Equipment introductions and announcements plus news on Digidesign and Steinberg.

NEW TOFT DESK

The Toft Audio ‘Trident Series ATB’ 16-channel mixer is said to be based on the heritage of the original console designs by Trident Audio Developments Ltd and Malcolm Toft’s circuits from the 1970s. Available in 16/24/32 input conﬁgurations it has level indicators on all channels, direct outs, input/monitor reverse switch, EQ available to the in-line monitor, 16 mic inputs, 8 stereo effect returns, Trident 80B EQ designed by Toft, faders on all 8 buses, input phase reverse on mic and line inputs and is said to be ‘extremely competitively priced’. Additional features include 8 subgroup bargraph meters, all connections on the rear panel, talkback facilities, six discrete aux sends, stereo Solo in place can be switched to mono PFL, 8 monitor returns, 4-band swept EQ, dual control room outputs and an optional digital card. www.toftaudio.com

WAVES TUNE AND DEBREATH Waves’ Tune is a pitch-correction plug-in and DeBreath is a plug-in that can separate and remove unwanted breathing sounds from vocal tracks. Both are included in Waves’ new Vocal Bundle. Tune performs pitch correction of vocals and other instruments and allows users to change individual notes or e n t i re m e l o d i e s a s easily as manipulating MIDI notes. It features a piano-roll interface that displays the original pitch, the corrected pitch and individual notes, offering intuitive and ﬂexible operation. Tune gives users automatic pitch correction and graphic control without being bound to a limited playback section, allowing users to audition changes with music at any time. Tune is powered by ReWire, a technology of Propellerhead S o f t w a re , s o u s e r s a l w a y s h a v e d i re c t control and sync with the host system. D e B r e a t h automatically removes or reduces breathing sounds from a vocal track. It is not simply

Platform news: Digidesign Pro Tools 7 software provides ‘a new creative environment’ and introduces a set of new and enhanced features that deliver expanded audio and MIDI recording and editing capabilities, greater mixing power and flexibility, enhanced efficiency, and improved ease of use. Support for importing REX and Acid audio files, the introduction of Instrument Tracks, and significant enhancements to looping and track grouping capabilities provide more compositional building blocks. Improvements to almost every MIDI operation window make it easier to create, capture, and fine-tune ideas. Enhanced support for multiprocessor computers allows operators to use more select RTAS plug-ins and virtual instruments on their sessions while added software optimisations provide a faster, more responsive interface. Pro Tools HD 7, Pro Tools LE 7, and Pro Tools M-Powered 7 software share nearly all the same new features. The Neyrinck SoundCode for Dolby Digital plug-in suite provides masteringquality workflow tools that enable the encoding and decoding of Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio directly within Pro Tools without the need for Dolby hardware. SoundCode provides features for mixing in surround, delivering surround audio for DVD video, decoding audio from a DVD video within Pro Tools, creating a DVD reference disc, or producing a surround-compatible audio CD. www.digidesign.com

Platform news: Steinberg Steinberg has published new information on its website detailing the advanced optimisations for multiprocessor technology in its Cubase SX3 a n d N u e n d o 3 p ro d u c t s . Steinberg’s support for the latest generation of multiprocessor a n d m u l t i c o re s y s t e m s i s paving the way for new levels of performance in native audio systems, according to Claus Menke, Steinberg’s director of product management. ‘For audio pros working with our current Cubase and Nuendo systems this means a dramatic increase in performance for plug-ins, virtual instruments and more audio tracks,’ he said. ‘As the performance of these new processors scales up, we will instantly put these added CPU resources at the fingertips of our users.’ Company founder Karl Steinberg, commenting on the new generations of multicore chips, pointed to the dramatic effects the new multicore technologies will have. ‘Together with our colleagues in the chip industry we can provide solutions that can effectively multiply CPU resources available,’ he said. ‘We are pleased to have collaborated with Steinberg on these new AMD64-based systems,’ said Charlie Boswell, director of Digital Media and Entertainment for AMD. ‘Steinberg’s benchmarking results show that the Dual Core AMD Opteron processor has the performance lead for multithreaded Cubase and Nuendo applications. Artists staking their name and reputation on their creative output can do so with confidence with Cubase/Nuendo on top of AMD64 processors because it allows them to stay in the creative moment without fear of their technology not being able to keep up.’ Cubase SX3 and Nuendo 3 both feature Steinberg’s Advanced Dynamic Multiprocessing technology that allocates processing tasks dynamically to ensure the most efficient use of available CPU resources. Yamaha and Steinberg have extended their 01x/Cubase SX3 package promotion. Since February 2005 customers buying a Yamaha 01x digital mixing studio have been able to purchase Cubase SX3 at a reduced price and this has now been extended until 31 December 2005. www.steinberg.net

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November/December 2005

gear a noise gate but actually detects breath segments and separates them out using a template-matching algorithm. This allows their level to be altered without affecting the rest of the signal. Room tone can also be added to compensate for its loss where breaths are removed or reduced. DeBreath can be used to separate a vocal track into two elements, one containing only the voice and the other only the breaths, and each can be processed differently, allowing the effects of breathing to be enhanced with additional processing if desired. www.waves.com

NEW HIGH-END REVERB

At the heart of Anthem is the combination of mixing console and multitrack recorder, and each channel provides six bands of parametric EQ, a two stage dynamics processor with gate, expander and limiter and up to 12 auxiliary sends. Channels can be configured in any format from mono to 7.1. The Split Mode provides a traditional split-desk configuration with 48 fully-featured inputs and 96 fully-featured monitor returns each with an associated recording and playback track, for a total of 144 channels. In-Line Mode is configurable in two settings: Classic In-Line with 96 long faders and 96 short faders (192 channels in total), where a fully featured channel’s resources are shared between the input and the monitor path; and In-Line Plus, which offers 72 long faders and 72 short faders (144 channels)

delivering a setup with full 6-band equaliser and full dynamic section allocated to input and return paths. Channels may be sent to any of four Main mix buses each of which may be conﬁgured for mono up to 7.1 formats. The third mode, Constellation, offers the postproduction technologies synonymous with the Dream family. The console can quickly move back and forth between modes. www.fairlightau.com

Bricasti Design’s Model 7 stereo reverb processor has been designed by ex-Lexicon and Kurzweil personnel. The box offers a modern, high-resolution digital platform for the ‘longoverdue next step in reverb processing algorithms and ease of use’. With a separate, fully differential analogue section and support for a standard single wire 192kHz AES digital channel, the Model 7 has a stainless steel chassis, a tooled-aluminium front panel and a classic high-visibility display. www.bricasti.com

TASCAM PORTABLE WITH TIMECODE

Tascam’s HDP2 portable stereo audio recorder records at up to 192kHz/24-bit to Compact Flash and its audio files are instantly available to DAWs through a built-in FireWire connection. The HD-P2 incorporates SMPTE timecode input for sync while in record or playback. The user interface has a large, angled LCD. A Retake button allows the user to delete the last recording and set up to rerecord with a single button press. As audio is recorded, the file headers are continually re-saved to protect the recording against accidental loss. Files can be named from the front panel interface or using a PS/2 keyboard, which can also be used to control transport and setup features. It supports pull-up and pull-down sample rates, even at high-resolution settings, and the video clock input accepts trilevel sync for high-definition TV production. The unit has a pair of XLR mic inputs with phantom power and analogue peak limiting. It also has phono I-Os and SPDIF I-O. Monitoring is through headphones or a built-in speaker. A built-in mic is also provided. www.tascam.co.uk

FAIRLIGHT THREE-IN-ONE DESK The latest addition to Fairlight’s Dream family boasts the power of three consoles in one. The Constellation-Anthem is a multiconﬁgurable digital console with conﬁgurations that ‘meticulously resemble’ traditional split recording consoles, classic in-line mixing consoles, and the most advanced audio postproduction consoles.

November/December 2005

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gear ONYX FIREWIRE BOX Mackie’s Onyx 1200F 30 x 34 channel, 24-bit/192kHzcapable FireWire audio/MIDI interface is designed to provide functionality that has previously required several different pieces of equipment to facilitate. It features 12 Mackie Onyx preamps, on-board DSP matrix mixing, an advanced monitoring/headphone control section with four user-assignable headphone outputs, two stereo control room outputs, built-in talkback mic input, and remote switching capability. The 1200F provides an on-board mixing interface that allows the user to route to any desired monitoring path and phones outputs directly from the hardware inputs at near zero latency.

Front panel controls include control room output level with A/B monitor select, four discrete headphone outputs with dedicated level controls, two instrument inputs, and 4segment metering for the mic/line inputs. The rear panel has 12 combo mic/line inputs, balanced TRS sends and returns for the ﬁrst two mic inputs, eight balanced line outputs, dual stereo control room outputs, Word clock I-O, 2 x 2 MIDI I-O, dual ADAT I-O, SPDIF I-O, AES-EBU I-O, and two FireWire ports. Footswitch sockets are provided for monitor switching and talkback activation. www.mackie.com

SCHOEPS SHOTGUN

The Schoeps shotgun CMIT 5 U claims unusually low colouration of off-axis sound as the pickup angles at low and high frequencies are kept reasonably similar to one another. At medium frequencies the directivity of the CMIT 5 U is higher than would be expected from a microphone of its length, while at high frequencies the pickup pattern is not as narrow as with long shotgun microphones. The mic is said to be suitable for music recording as well as dialogue and the directional pattern and sound quality are consistent in the horizontal and vertical planes, unlike some other shotgun microphones. Other features include even greater immunity to wind noise than a Schoeps supercardioid, a very lightweight, robust all-metal housing, three pushbutton-activated filters, high-frequency emphasis (+5dB at 10kHz) to enhance speech intelligibility and to compensate for high-frequency loss due to windscreens, a steep low-cut filter (18dB/oct below 80Hz) to suppress wind and boom noise, and a gentle low-frequency roll-off (6dB/ oct below 300Hz) to compensate for proximity effect. The capsule and amplifier of the CMIT 5 U are built as a single unit. www.schoeps.de

DPA INSTRUMENT MICS

DPA has launched two instrument mics. The 4090 and 4091 mics feature omnidirectional condenser capsules in a lightweight aluminium housing with a 3-pin XLR connector. The mics are housed in a 19mm anodised black aluminium barrel casing that tapers down to the 5.4mm capsule. The mics, which are a length of 12cm, fit neatly into the included mic clip. DPA claims a low noise floor of 23dB(A) (re. 20µPa) and a sensitivity of 20mV/Pa for the 4090 which can handle SPLs of up to 134dB peak. The 4091 is acoustically identical to the 4090 but the sensitivity is adjusted to 6mV/Pa. The noise floor is 26dB(A) (re. 20µPa) and it can handle SPLs up to 144dB peak. Applicable to recording acoustic instruments and electric guitar amps their linear frequency response in the 20Hz to 20kHz range also makes them suitable for sound system alignment. www.dpamicrophones.com

MUTEC CLOCKS ENHANCED Mutec is offering an additional synchronisation feature for the operating system of its iCLOCK and iCLOCKdp Redundant Multiple Clock Synthesiser and Video Reference Generator. Both can now lock to the MSF 60kHz atomicbased clock reference that UK broadcast stations and television stations are using for synchronisation. www.mutec-net.de

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November/December 2005

gear NEW FATS

TL Audio has added to its Fatman range. The Fat Funker is a valve front-end for the guitar market and is based on the Ivory 5051. It features balanced I-Os, optional digital output, a smooth, fat sounding compressor, gate sidechain, variable impedance input, VU meter, and an enhanced EQ section for guitar and bass applications.

V1 FOR 5-MC AND MC CONTROLLERS Euphonix’s MC and System 5-MC controllers are now shipping with V1.0 software. Steinberg’s Nuendo 3.1 and Merging’s Pyramix 5, with the Oasis option, fully support the EuCon protocol to enable tight control by the MC and System 5-MC over high-speed Ethernet. V1.0 software also includes HUI control for applications such as Pro Tools. Other applications, such as Final Cut Pro HD, Logic Pro, Soundtrack Pro and Digital Performer can be controlled via the Mackie Control protocol. What sets the MC and System 5-MC apart from any other controllers, according to Euphonix, is the ability of the control surfaces to switch between different applications, and multiple workstations, and instantly reconﬁgure all switches and channels to match

that application. At the push of a button the operator can switch from working in Nuendo, to Pyramix, to Pro Tools, or to a video editing application such as Final Cut Pro. www.euphonix.com

The 2 Fat is a mono valve front-end with mic and instrument preamp and a compressor with 15 factory settings as well as manual controls. A remake of the Fat 2, the unit is rackmountable and has a preamp, digital output option and a Fat EQ switch. www.tlaudio.co.uk

OXFORD 6 PACK

Sony Oxford is shipping a new ‘super-value’ bundle aimed primarily at customers purchasing new Pro Tools systems. The Sony Oxford 6 Pack is available for HD and LE systems, and is a combination of Oxford EQ, Oxford Dynamics, Oxford Inﬂator, Oxford Transient Modulator, Oxford Reverb and Oxford Limiter. www.sonyplugins.com

ULTRASONE HEADSET U l t r a s o n e ’s H F I - 7 0 0 H S D broadcaster’s headset combines the company’s patented S-Logic technology with a DPA 4088 cardioid or 4066 omni mic. The mic is joined to the headphone with an articulating mount and a 6-ft cable terminates to a fan out with a 1/4-inch stereo plug for monitoring and a 3-pin female XLR for the mic. Phantom power is required. www.ultrasone.com

A-T STUDIO PACK A u d i o - Te c h n i c a h a s expanded its 20 Series line of microphones with the addition of the AT2041SP Studio Pack. This combines the AT2020 side-address condenser with the AT2021 small-diaphragm cardioid condenser. The AT2020 is aimed at vocals and instruments while the AT2021 is intended for instrument recording. www.audio-technica.com

November/December 2005

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gear ANTELOPE CLOCKS

The Isochrone DA is a clock distribution unit that reclocks the distributed signal. More than simple amplification, reclocking uses Antelope’s Jitter Management Module and as a result the redistributed signal is claimed to be superior to the source. The DA can be used to add outputs and improve the sound of a studio’s existing clock generator. The Isochrone OCX claims 4-10x lower jitter and up to 100x higher stability than its closet competitors. The oscillator is ‘oven controlled’ to provide the clock with a temperature stable environment.

Isochrone Clocking line is combined with video support to create the OCX-V, which is based on a discrete ovencontrolled crystal oscillator and can lock to an atomic clock. The OCX-V locks to PAL, NTSC, and 20 HDTV standards. International pull ups and pull downs are also supported. Format conversion is simpliﬁed with a built-in video sync generator and a video Gearboxing Mode.

The DCA Twin digital mic preamp offers an M/S matrix, Pseudo Stereo mode, and Antelope’s clocking and A-D conversion. It also introduces the novel feature of an interchannel phase alignment control. www.antelopeaudio.com

UA SOLOS

Universal Audio’s single-channel Solo/610 valve mic pre and DI and the Solo/110 precision Class A mic pre and DI are 610 and 110 mic preamps respectively but are described as ‘wallet friendly’ and ‘functionally lean — sonically mean’. The portable units have Gain, Level, and impedance, Mic or Line level output plus Thru on the DI, and are handassembled in the US. The UAD-1 Flexi Pak, DSP Card and Powered Plug-Ins system includes the UAD-1 PCI DSP card and on registration automatically activates a US$500 voucher redeemable against the customer’s choice of UAD-1 plug-ins at the my.uaudio.com online store. www.uaudio.com

TC-HELICON VOICEDOUBLER

TC-Helicon’s VoiceDoubler is a rackmount that can create up to four ‘humanised’ overdubs in real time. It can recreate ‘natural overdubs and pristine emulations’ of classic detune, microshift and chorus effects. Based on VoicePro technology, live creation of ‘tight and intimate’ or ‘loose and lively’ multitracked overdubbed sounds is possible with VoiceDoubler’s advanced Inﬂection and FlexTime blocks. It comes with 50 factory and 99 user presets. For System 6000 users, the MDX5.1 multichannel dynamics processor is capable of lifting low level details without boosting everything and hammering the transients. It is available free of charge to all System 6000 users with an MD5.1 license. Extensive multichannel linking features are included and the detail lift may be added differently to different channels. www.tcelectronic.com

4-CHANNEL D-AC FROM A&D Audio & Design has produced a 4-channel version of its DA conversion module for its Eurorack. Called the Euro Dual DAC, the new module features two digital AES inputs giving four analogue outputs in stereo pairs. Sample rates are up to 96kHz at 24-bit. www.proaudio.uk.com

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gear RUPERT 5032 MIC PRE/EQ

The Rupert Neve Designs single-channel Portico 5032 Mic Pre/EQ shares the same half-rack space and features of the Portico 5012 Mic Pre Duo but adds a 3-band equaliser. The EQ has high and low shelving controls that feature the designer’s traditional curves and EQ frequency selection, with the low shelf offering +/-15dB at 160Hz and the high shelf switchable between 8kHz and 16kHz. A fully parametric mid offers +/-15dB and variable Q over a range of 80Hz to 8kHz when the x10 switch is engaged. A fully swept high-pass ﬁlter is also included, with a range of 20Hz to 250Hz at 12dB/octave. The 5032 can be used standalone or as a component of a larger array of modules. A ‘To Bus’ switch allows the 5032 to access busing in a custom-conﬁgured, multimodule setup or to assign a signal to a solo or cue bus in other Portico modules. www.rupertneve.com

EAW DIGITAL DESK LOUD Technologies’ EAW UMX.96 is a 24-bit, 96kHz digital live console with expandable on-board 56 x 44 analogue I-O, 3 x 12 integrated loudspeaker processing, the first full integration of SmaartLive, a 15-inch touchscreen, and a unique tactile rotary encoder. Price will be under US$50,000. control of all 48 input channels simultaneously or can be The ‘tactically dynamic’ rotary encoder is able to change assigned in master groups of 8 to specific sections. its ‘feel’ depending on the specific parameter selected via SmaartLive’s measurement capabilities allow system the touchscreen allowing it to be notched when selecting calibration and the UMX.96 incorporates EQ, crossovers, frequencies, limited and detented when operating as a pan, limiters that are based on EAW-designed filters and permit and continuous when functioning as a gain, for example. loudspeaker alignment, audio distribution and zoning to be The channel section includes 48 P&G touch-sensitive faders performed directly from the mixer. arranged in stacked rows of 24. These provide dedicated www.eaw.com Res_Smart AV_07.05 29/6/05 10:40 am Page 1

”The most exciting new product in years.”

SUMMIT FEQ-50

Summit’s FeQ-50 is a single-channel, 4-band, parametric EQ with ‘iron-based’ circuitry. Each of the four bands has six switch-selectable frequencies, as well as sweepable gain of +/-14dB. The low and high bands have peaking or shelving select, the middle two bands with wide and narrow switches. The fully passive high-pass ﬁlter has a knee at 80Hz with a 6dB/octave roll off, while the signal path is transformerless. XLR balanced and 1/4-inch unbalanced inputs are accommodated on a Neutrik combo jack and for outputs the FeQ-50 has balanced +4dB XLR and balanced –10dB TRS for the solid-state and tube signal paths, all of which are individually buffered and can be used simultaneously. www.summitaudio.com

In an industry where new product launches come thicker and faster each year, reactions like the one above are extremely hard to come by, yet this is the most frequent comment we’ve heard from seasoned professionals and hardened critics alike on first seeing the revolutionary new Smart AV Console. Designed for use with today's most popular DAWs including Apple Logic, Digidesign Pro Tools and Merging Technologies Pyramix, the Smart Console represents a quantum leap forward in ergonomics and is radically different from any other console on the market today. Operation via patented ARC technology is so intuitive that the learning curve is measured in minutes rather than days, and project completion times are slashed. A bold claim, but when you find out more about the design, it’s easy to see why: THE ARC

NEW FLAGSHIP EVENTIDE

EQ FAN DISPLAY

The Console’s patented touch-sensitive ARC allows instant one-touch selection of any channel or group of channels from those currently in use on the DAW - custom sets of channels can be called up onto the faders in a second or two. What’s more, the ARC also allows instant muting, soloing (or any other custom function) of any channel, even if it’s not currently active on the console.

DISPLAYS

Eventide’s H8000FW Ultra-Harmonizer multichannel effects processor offers nearly 1,600 classic Eventide presets with FireWire and expanded analogue and digital I-O. The H8000FW is Eventide’s new ﬂagship processor and is also available as an upgrade for current H8000, H8000A, and Orville owners. It features eight channels of digital audio I-O via AES-EBU, ADAT, and FireWire — all 24-bit up to 96kHz. In addition, the H8000FW incorporates the expanded analogue I-O of the H8000A. With Eventide’s Building Block Architecture users can create their own preset-algorithms from a library of 230 effects blocks. The H8000FW also includes PC and OSX graphic preset development tools. www.eventide.com

November/December 2005

CHANNEL DISPLAY

In addition to the stunning metering on the ARC itself, channels marked on the ARC in your own handwriting appear in the super high-visibility electro-fluorescent display above each fader bank - this can also optionally display your DAW track names, or both. Meanwhile in the EQ department, dualconcentric touch-sensitive EQ pots show the current gain and frequency information on hi-res LED fan displays, whilst detailed plug-in control is available on the central LCD touchscreen with its own dual-concentric touch-sensitive pots.

The touch-sensitive aux send knobs are also motorized, as are the pan knobs with their handy LED surround pan displays and a central motorized touch-sensitive surround panner is available to all channels.

MODULARITY The entire Console is highly modular, and in additon to the components already described, also comes as standard with support for 3rd party surround monitoring controllers and remote mic pre-amps, a 48, 72 or 96 channel ARC, one or two optional ‘floating’ subsidiary ARCs, and an optional Edit Panel with high quality jog wheel, 40 custom function buttons and built-in 12" hi-definition LCD screen.

SOUND INVESTMENT

MOTORIZATION

Most of all though, the Smart Console makes good commercial sense - other than the undeniable client ‘wow’ factor, tests have shown that productivity is massively increased versus any other existing console design, and operator stress levels significantly reduced - how much could this be worth to your business?

The Console can be specified with either industry standard ALPS touch-sensitive motorized faders, or optionally deluxe ultra-fast Penny & Giles models when only the best will do.

Call today to find out more about the Console and flexible finance arrangements, or to book your personal demonstration.

+44 (0) 20 7692 6611 www.smartav.net smartav@mediatools.co.uk

EDIT PANEL

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gear SSL X-RACK DYNAMICS AND E SIGNATURE

SSL’s X-Rack Dynamics Package delivers the same sound and functionality as its XL 9000 K Series console and incorporates Total Recall for standalone operation or use with the AWS 900. The Package offers up to eight mono dynamics processor modules in a 4U rackmount with variable

Ratio, Threshold and Release, RMS/Peak operation and fast/slow attack switches, plus variable Range, Threshold, Release and Hold Gate/Expander adjustments with fast/ slow attack. The XLogic E Signature Channel delivers the classic sound of the original early 1980s E Series console with the choice

of selectable transformer driven or Variable Harmonic Drive (VHD) mic amps and the ‘Listen Mic’ Compressor. The dynamics section is identical to the circuit of the Class A VCA chip used in the early consoles. The compressor contains additional switching options to defeat the overeasy curve in favour of a linear release. The result is a compressor with three distinct voicings.

The EQ section defaults to the original ‘Brown Knob’ circuit that was standard on all early production E Series. The two parametric mid-band sections feature the logarithmically symmetric design that ensures that the 3dB down points retain the same musical interval from the centre frequency regardless of settings. The two shelving sections are traditional 6dB/octave designs with an option for a fixed Q parametric response. The high and low pass filter sections feature 12dB/octave slopes. The CT Out switch defeats the inherent non-interactive nature of the design and introduces subtle control interactions similar to those found on earlier parametric units. It also offers a different gain law with increased resolution in the critical initial boost or cut area, which can be selected individually for each band. In 1983 a new version of E Series EQ was developed in conjunction with George Martin for the first SSL to be installed at AIR Studios. The Black Knob EQ, as it became known, features enhanced cut and boost ranges together with a different control law as well as a steeper 18dB/octave high pass filter for tighter control of low frequencies. The XLogic E Signature Channel also faithfully reproduces this classic EQ. A free plug-in version of the ‘Listen Mic Compressor’ i s a v a i l a b l e f ro m t h e company’s website. The LMC-1 is available for Mac only, in AU and VST formats. www.solid-state-logic.com

AKG HEADSETS AKG’s K 171 headphone is the basis for new professional headsets for broadcast, recording, monitoring, intercom, and other applications. The microphone arm does not only swivel horizontally but also rotates v e r t i c a l l y t h ro u g h 2 7 0 degrees allowing the user to place the microphone on the left or right. An intelligent switching function automatically mutes the microphone as the microphone arm is moved up and the headphones are muted automatically when the headset is taken off (HSC 271 and HSD 271 only). All new AKG headsets use the same single plug-in cable with a mini XLR connection, while the HSC 171 and HSC 271 models have switchable bass roll-off ﬁlters. www.akg.com

ENERGY PRO MONITORS Energy Pro has launched a variety of monitors. Passive models include the E5.5 ultra compact, E5.5c ultra compact centre channel, and E6.5 compact monitors. Active models include the E7A and E9A, which boast 24bit, 192kHz operation, Cirrus Logic D-A convertors, a frontmounted volume control, a bass management mode, and subwoofer attenuation. They also offer remote c o n t ro l a n d S u b s o n i c Tracking, which detects and advises when subsonic content is recorded yet inaudible. Active sub bass systems are represented by the Es8, Es10 and Es12 models.

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November/December 2005

gear SONIC STUDIO PREMASTERING FOR HOME S o n i c S t u d i o L L C ’s new premastering application, PreMaster CD, is a simplified version of its professional S o n i c S t u d i o • D D P. PreMaster CD combines ease of use with low cost (US$795) and runs on Mac OS. The application combines Sonic Studio’s editing capabilities with the NGC interface and SSE real-time audio engine. PreMaster CD is designed to make short work of most editing and sequencing tasks and opens WAV, AIFF, BWF and SD2 files while easy to use editing tools, including Sonic Studio’s smart Fade Tool, make quick work of compilations and revisions. For final replication, PreMaster CD creates DDP version 2 file sets, along with CD refs. These CD-DA– formatted recordable CDs are created in the background. In addition, output to Roxio’s Jam image file format provides another common method for project interchange. www.sonicstudio.com

SPL MIXDREAM XP

Following on from the MixDream analogue summing and insert box, SPL’s MixDream XP is a straight 16:2 summing box. Without the inserts and processing stages of the MixDream, price and space requirements are reduced while the MixDream’s active summing stages are retained. Entirely discrete signal paths run on 60V rails in Class A mode. With a maximum output level of +27dBu and a noise level of -97dB the dynamic range is claimed as 124dB. Controls include a mono switch for each of the eight channel pairs. The output level can be set to unity, alternatively an output level control allows for individual adjustments. On the rear, two SubD25 connectors provide 16 input channels while master and monitor stereo outputs plus the expansion output are on XLRs. www.soundperformancelab.com

DOLBY MEDIA PRODUCER Dolby’s Media Producer suite of content creation tools for DVD and next-generation highdefinition (HD) media include Dolby Media Encoder, Dolby Media Decoder, and Dolby Media Tools. This family of products supports content developed using Dolby technologies, including Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and MLP Lossless formats. These tools support upcoming disc-based media formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, as well as DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, and broadcast formats.

The Dolby Media Encoder, initially on Mac OSX, provides metadata for all Dolby formats. Features include projectlevel management, template storage, activity logging, and confidence playback. The Dolby Media Decoder is a software version of Dolby’s DP564 reference hardware decoder and allows the user to listen to an encoded file in the same way that a consumer might. Dolby Media Tools enable users to repair or update previously encoded files without having to re-encode. Its features include metadata editing, file trimming, timecode striping, and file concatenation. www.dolby.com

THREE-VERSION FREEPORT Sennheiser’s freePORT range of wireless systems is available in three versions: Vocal, Instrument and Presentation. All three systems allow four switchable frequencies to be operated simultaneously for high transmission reliability and ﬂexibility. All three have a Diversity receiver installed in a metal housing, while other features include

a dynamics processor, XLR and jack outputs, and adjustable squelch. Low battery drain means a 9V battery will operate continuously for more than ten hours. The Vocal system includes a hand-held transmitter with a dynamic capsule and a receiver. The Instrument system consists of a bodypack transmitter with a jack plug cable and a receiver. The Presentation set includes a bodypack transmitter, a receiver and a clip-on mic with an omni pattern. www.sennheiser.co.uk

BLUE OMNI Blue Microphones’ OmniMouse mic is based on the design of the Mouse Microphone and is a pressure-gradient condenser featuring a rotating omni capsule enclosed within a spherical grille. This is the same B4 capsule used in Blue’s Bottle microphone system. Designed for desktop recording applications, the Snowball mic has universal driver and plug & play USB compatibility. It has a dual-capsule design, with one tailored for vocals and the other for instruments. The three-position switch on the back of the mic controls changing between the capsules. Red Microphones, sister company to Blue Microphones, is shipping the new Type B. An affordable Class A discrete solid state mic designed to serve as a foundation for interchangeable capsules, included with the Type B mic body is the Red Lollipop Capsule. Its bayonet top can accommodate a variety of new and vintage lollipop-style capsules, including Blue and classic Neumann-Gefell capsules. www.bluemic.com

review

Waves APA44-M It’s one of the most exciting product releases of recent times and it aims to change the way we look at the computer/plug-ins issue forever. ROB JAMES gets his audio processing accelerated.

T’S SO OBVIOUS it makes you wonder why it has taken so long. Question: Do you own a comprehensive collection of Waves plug-ins that you really like? Are you sick to death of the constant juggling to keep everything working within the conﬁnes of native processing capacity or even, in the case of Pro Tools, TDM DSP processing capacity? If the answer is ‘yes’ then one or more dedicated Waves hardware Audio Processing Accelerators, or APAs, might just be the prescription you need. It’s an accelerator, but not a DSP accelerator as we know them. The APAs are computers speciﬁcally set up for the sole function of accelerating Waves plug-ins. They connect to the host PC or Mac via gigabit Ethernet. You want even more power? Easy, connect more APAs. Up to eight can be connected to a single host computer with a gigabit switch. The prescription comes in two strengths, the 1U rackmounting APA32, which is deemed most suitable for mounting in a machine room due to noise, and the UK£1531 (+VAT) APA44-M I had for review. The latter can be used standalone or rackmounted, singly or in pairs. Ironically the smaller unit is also the more powerful with around 30% more grunt than the APA32. A quick physical examination reveals an Intel based motherboard with several expansion connectors, 512Mb of RAM on a standard DDR 333 DIM module with a spare DIM slot. Unless I’m very much mistaken, what we have here is a PC running an embedded operating system (probably Linux) set up for one dedicated purpose. This is a very sensible approach to the problem. DSP chip horsepower has not increased at anything like the same rate as general-purpose processors. No doubt the Waves Native plug-in code is relatively easy, and therefore cheap, to port to a remotely connected PC platform. Why reinvent the wheel when it is already the optimum shape and does an excellent job? 24

In the box you will ﬁnd the APA44-M, an in-line power supply with US and UK power cords, a Cat 6 crossover cable and a very thin manual. As an introductory offer Waves is giving away licences for the excellent IR-L and Q-Clone plug-ins. IR-L is especially desirable since, although the L stands for light, the reverb quality is identical to its senior sibling and it can use the same incomparable library of impulse samples. Only the degree of manual tweakability is reduced which, in any case, can be a blessing when you are in a hurry. Unless you can obtain a CD-ROM from your dealer, these freebies and NetShell-enabled versions of the plug-in packs you already have licences for will need to be downloaded from the Waves website. The set-up program uninstalls the existing package

and requires a restart before installing the new version. It would be wise to leave some time for the whole install operation. It is not something to be attempted just before a session. This is especially relevant since the APA44-M is a very portable device and invites moving from computer to computer. Waves makes the point that, although these accelerators may well work through an existing 1000Mbps gigabit switch, it is highly desirable to use a dedicated connection for a single unit -- 1000Mbps gigabit for an APA44-M and 100Mbps minimum for an APA32. For connecting multiple APAs to a single computer a gigabit switch is required and connecting multiple workstations to one or more APAs will require a managed gigabit switch capable of supporting V-LAN. I wish I could report that installation was completely drama free. However, in my case it really wasn’t. For a start, the requirement for a dedicated gigabit Ethernet connection meant dashing off to the local emporium to pick up a card. This because, on the PC platform, the APA currently only works with either Cubase SX 3.0.1, Nuendo 3.0.1 or Pro Tools 6.9, and the machine running Nuendo 3 didn’t have a gigabit card. The Belkin card was easy to install and worked first time. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the APA. Waves uses an application called NetShell to communicate between the host DAW and the APA. This is installed along with the necessary updated plug-ins (V5.2) while the APA is connected but powered off. In theory NetShell should configure the gigabit connection, etc. to suit. In practice, one of the essential Windows services didn’t install on the first attempt and another decided it wasn’t going to start automatically. It took Waves’ excellent support some while on the phone to sort it out. Since the fix, it has performed quite happily. In use, the unit is quiet, thanks to a single cooling fan, but not that quiet. In fact it was significantly noisier than the PC it was sitting on top of and the other two running at the same time. The recommended sequences for starting up an APA-equipped system is to boot the PC or Mac, launch the NetShell, power up the APA, which takes a minute or so to boot, and lastly launch the DAW application. Lo and behold, there in the effects list will be Waves plug-ins with Net after the name. If these are instantiated, they will use the APA. Only V5.X plug-ins that have been ‘net-enabled’

Currently, the following plug-ins are net enabled: IR-1 Parametric Convolution Reverb V2; IR-L; IR-360 Surround Parametric Convolution Reverb (Mac); Renaissance Reverb; Renaissance Channel (with external sidechain disabled); L3 Multimaximizer; L3 Ultramaximizer; C4 Multiband Parametric Processor; Linear Phase Equalizer; Linear Phase Multiband; SoundShifter; Morphoder; TransX (Multi); and Q-Clone. Currently supported PC applications: Pro Tools 6.9; Cubase SX 3.0.1; Nuendo 3.0.1 Currently supported Mac applications: Pro Tools 6.7 and 6.9; Cubase SX 3.0.2; Nuendo 3.0.2; Logic Pro 7.1; Digital Performer 4.52 and 4.6

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November/December 2005

review can take advantage of the APA’s extra horsepower. This could be an issue for users of V4.X and earlier processors since there is a not inconsiderable cost associated with upgrading to V5.X, especially if you have TDM. Many people seem to get very exercised about the exact number of instantiations you can expect from a given hardware/software combination. Here, playing the numbers game is not especially meaningful since all the plug-ins use at least some host CPU power as well as the APA and some processors, notably Q-Clone, use a significant amount of host CPU power in addition to the APA. So, depending on the plugins you use, the host system will have an effect on the number possible and a considerable effect on the quantity of specific plug-in types. In general, I could see no reason to dispute Waves’ own conservative figures and these are quite impressive enough in their own right. For example, 20 instantiations of the C4 or 13 of the Renaissance Reverb. Six IR-1s or 22 TransX (Multi)s (Yup, that’s going some alright. Ed). For real-world use with a mixed bag of effects the NetShell has a small application, NetShell Monitor, that gives a good indication of how close to the limits you really are. Three horizontal bars show the percentage of CPU, Memory and Network capacity in use at any given moment. Display updates are not instantaneous, but more than adequate for the purpose. An LED indicates audio drop-outs. Sending audio to the APA, processing it and sending it back takes a finite amount of time. NetShell latency is also affected by the size of the Host Hardware Buffer. NetShell latency must be manually set in the Monitor window to be at least twice the maximum buffer size set in the host application or sound card software. Thus a latency of 1024 samples equates to a maximum buffer size of 512 samples. Putting all this into context, the APA system confers a number of direct and indirect benefits. Apart from the obvious load reduction on the CPU or Digidesign hardware, the ability to share multiple remote sited units between workstations without replugging is highly attractive. Neither the APA units nor NetShell need authorisation. All that is required is that every workstation must have authorised copies of the plug-ins you wish to use. No PCI slots or FireWire connections are used (assuming you already have a spare gigabit Ethernet port) saving these for the plethora of other devices we all seem to need in this age of sound/picture convergence. There is also the promise of exciting new processors to come that would have previously been impossible to implement due to processing power constraints. There are several known issues with the current APA implementation. These are clearly signposted in the documentation and on the Waves website – for example, there is no automation of VST plugins. Workstation support is currently rather limited, especially on the PC platform, but will quickly widen, as will the number of net-enabled plug-ins. The APA promise, even in this first iteration, is a lot of bang for your bucks. All of a sudden, more power for native workstation users of Waves doesn’t mean rushing out to buy the latest computer with all the upheaval that involves. For other Waves users more power no longer means adding another Digidesign DSP card at considerable cost. The native host with added power proposition is beginning to look highly attractive from a financial standpoint. Not only that, this power is available to a variety of applications. Highly desirable if, like me, you use November/December 2005

one workstation package for some tasks and another for others. Notwithstanding the teething troubles I experienced and the list of ‘known issues’, early adopters will be in on the ground floor of something rather special. Here is the first glimpse of a Utopian dream many of us have been discussing for years. Namely processing, control, storage and I-O all connected via gigabit (or faster) Ethernet with TC/IP. Some of the rest of this vision is still a considerable way off, format and protocol agnostic devices for a start. OK, so we’re not quite there yet, but Waves is certainly striking the matches to light the approach flares on Audient the runway.Sumo ■ 195x142.qxd 22/9/05 1:30 pm

PROS

Scaleable processing power; cost effective if you already have V5 plug-ins; dawn of a new era?

CONS

Few applications supported and restricted range of enabled plug-ins at present; several outstanding issues.

Contact WAVES, ISRAEL: Website: www.waves.com UK, Sonic Page 1 Distribution: +44 1582 470260

think clarity

HIGH RESOLUTION SUMMING AMPLIFIER

Introducing the SUMO – Analogue mixing with all the power of your DAW Retain your software’s automation and plug-ins, while adding the sound of the best

16 balanced inputs Bus compressor and peak limiter Monitor output (rear)

Stereo insert point (rear)

For UK enquiries contact: Stirling Trading (UK) Ltd. www.stirlingsyco.com info@stirlingsyco.com Tel: 020 8963 4790

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Digital Mix output (rear)

Analogue mix output

large format console technology. Summing in the analogue domain ensures no reduction in resolution making your mixes fuller, clearer and more coherent.

For International enquiries contact: www.audient.co.uk info@audient.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1256 381944

review

Millennia TD-1 It’s a box that combines a variety of preamps and input possibilities with EQ and a variety of output possibilities. GEORGE SHILLING is confronted with the multitool of the recording channel genre.

CCORDING TO THE DISTRIBUTOR, this is an updated design of Millennia’s already sophisticated TD-1 Twin Direct DI box. The headlines are the inclusion of advanced ReAmp technology for sending recorded DI guitars to amplifiers, and the inclusion of the previously optional HV-3 hybrid solid state microphone preamplifier as standard — as I understand it, few TD-1s were sold without this option. Millennia has long specialised in Twin Topology designs, and the TD-1 (UK£945 +VAT) is no exception, with a magic TT button that flips the input stages from a high voltage vacuum tube circuit to a discrete transistor J-FET amplifier. Other notable features are speaker soak and two bands of NSEQ-2 parametric EQ. The box itself is about the size of a breeze block, and seems to weigh the equivalent amount if not more. It is extremely well built, sturdy, and seemingly over-engineered with a very thick front panel and industrial machined knobs. The front panel is half 2U, and there is a rackmount option for a pair of these. Alternatively you can bolt the supplied handle onto the top, and screw enormous rubber feet onto the base, for a ‘portable’ solution (Truss notwithstanding. Ed). On the front are two recessed inputs, a jack for instrument or connection of an amplifier’s speaker output, and an XLR for line level. On the rear is an XLR mic input, along with no less than nine jack and XLR outputs, which will all work simultaneously. These comprise jack and XLRs for balanced and unbalanced output, a transformer balanced XLR for a fully ‘galvanically isolated’ mic level out, direct output jack (paralleled with DI input, a jumper can select active buffering), a headphone output TRS 26

wired for mono, with accompanying trim pot (even optimised for a particular Sennheiser model!) and two ReAmp outputs. Type I emulates single coil Stratocaster-type pickup matching, while Type II offers a Les Paul humbucker-style output. There are even further variations in development for different types of bass guitar. Input gain is controlled by a small knob. The HV3 microphone preamp sounds stunning with more clarity and detail than anything I compared it to and a sweetly charming character. Esses sound more pleasant and less raspy when recording vocals, the midrange sounds accurate, and there is plenty of top and bottom juiciness. As a DI there are three different impedances to choose from to enable differing tones. With a Les Paul type guitar with plenty of output, there was little to choose between the TD-1 and the compared Neve-style box, although they both sounded much nicer than a simple passive DI box, even with that plugged back into the HV-3 mic preamp input. However, with a single-coil pickup instrument the TD-1 was able to deliver a little more sparkle and life than the competition. It is really only with such an instrument that the differing impedance selections are noticeable, although these are subtle changes of tone compared to even fairly small EQ tweaks. Similarly, the TT mode is very subtle and almost redundant when recording from humbucking pickups. Even with a Strat, the circuits are both extremely well engineered; they both sound rich, clear, bright and detailed, and it is never the case that the valve path is dramatically better sounding than the FET, or vice versa. resolution

ReAmping my Les Paul and Strat was successful — there was a subtle variation of tone using the two different ReAmp outputs and, indeed, a more authentic signal was obtained by using the appropriate of the two different Type outputs. Using the input in Speaker Soak mode enables direct recording of a speaker output from an ampliﬁer. This can yield interesting results, and here there were plenty of high-end harmonics not heard through a speaker -- this can be especially good when blended with a miked cab. Flipping between the tube and transistor circuits yields remarkably similar results, given that they use entirely different circuitry. Perhaps surprisingly, I found the transistor circuit sounded the very slightly ‘warmer’ of the two paths. Some users have criticised the cleanliness of Millennia’s tube circuits, expecting some crunch, and in response the company has exhaustively tested a wide variety of different tubes of different vintage to come up with a list of more ‘colourful’ alternatives to the modern Chinese and Russian 12AU7s mainly used by Millennia. There are a variety of earth lift and ground isolate buttons with further options available using internal jumpers, so just about any grounding issues should be easily solvable. The parametric EQ features two bands that cover the entire audio spectrum, with plenty of clean gain and surgical precision. Each band features a pleasingly large, gently stepped 21-position gain knob with continuous Q and Frequency knobs -- the Frequency knobs feature x10 pushbuttons to double their range. This is excellent for shaping the signal on the way in, sounding crisp and extended with deep warm bass. Millennia’s publicity states that the engineer no longer has to choose between valve and solid state, but it seems to me that, on the contrary, with one of these units you might always be ﬂipping between the two and comparing! I was bowled over by the HV-3 mic preamp, and the ReAmp feature is excellent. All kinds of options and connections are available, and a lot of thought and research has obviously gone into the design of this excellent product. ■

PROS

Incredible mic preamp — one of the very best; useful ReAmp features; bold surgical EQ.

CONS

Power button on the back of a rackmountable unit; signal mutes brieﬂy on most button pushes.

EXTRAS

The Millennia HV-3D is a four or eight channel, fully matched mic preamp with circuitry identical to its HV-3C series high voltage preamp. With +23dBu native input headroom the HV-3D requires no input pads or switch points and generates +32dBu of output headroom.

Contact MILLENNIA MEDIA, US: Website: www.mil-media.com Europe, HHB: +44 208 962 5000

November/December 2005

review

Universal Audio 4110 Unlike some of its other recent offerings, UA’s 4110 isn’t a reproduction of an old classic, but a brand new design. That said it throws more than a passing nod to some of the design philosophies that underpinned Bill Putnam Senior’s companies — namely producing tools that are dependable, ﬂexible and have a distinct character. JON THORNTON switches to drool mode.

HE UA 4110 is a 4-channel microphone preamp. Unlike some of the current crop of multichannel preamps that are crammed into a space saving 1U box, it sports a refreshingly old school approach to outboard real estate in occupying a whole 3U. This allows plenty of room on the front panel for each of the input channel’s controls, which are arranged in vertical blocks. A bigger box also allows the rear panel to consist simply of 24 XLR sockets, giving 8 channels of mic level input, 8 of line level input and 8 balanced outputs — no fiddly D-subs here. Despite its size, the 4110 (UK£1999 + VAT) is a fairly lightweight unit, and a quick peek at the innards reveals why. Inside, a compact power supply at the rear, four transformers to handle microphone and line level inputs, and a single PCB for each of the four channels makes for a very sparse internal layout, and probably accounts for the fact that the unit runs slightly warm rather than hot. The basic preamplifier design uses DC-coupled matched FET, all discrete Class-A circuitry. No capacitors are used in the audio signal path to minimise phase distortion and to ensure that the audio path does not degrade over time. By itself, this isn’t exactly an uncommon approach in higher end preamp design, but it does have a twist that is revealed by returning to the front panel. And for those who value form as much as content, what a front panel it is. A high gloss black for the most part, with matt black areas defining each of the channels, silver legending and a surplus of blue illuminated push-buttons — this is truly the Darth Vader of mic preamps. Each channel has a gain control and an output level control, which enables the input stage to be driven harder if necessary while still delivering the appropriate output level. This can have quite marked effects on the tonality of the signal, particularly when used in conjunction with a three-position toggle switch labelled Shape. In its Off position, the channel works in the most transparent fashion — something Universal Audio refers to as a ‘modern’ sound. In 28

position 1, referred to as the Vintage setting, the input transformers are more heavily loaded, which enables them to add a more significant degree of harmonic colouration to the sound. Position 2, termed Saturate, loads the input transformer in the same fashion but also alters the loading on the first section of the input stage to achieve a degree of soft-limiting. A final rotary control selects the input source — choices here are mic, line or a high impedance input (these are located on the front panel on four 1/4-inch unbalanced jacks). Microphone and high impedance inputs each have a choice of two impedance settings -– 57kohms or 2.2Mohms for the high impedance inputs and 500ohms or 2kohms for the microphone level input. Illuminated latching pushbuttons on each channel allow the selection of phantom power, a 20dB pad, a high pass filter (100Hz, 6dB/octave) and a polarity reverse. While having all these switches illuminate with blue LEDs undoubtedly helps the overall aesthetic, I can’t help wondering why the designers didn’t opt for something less uniform — a red LED on phantom power for example might have provided a little more visual feedback from a distance. In use, the 4110 is delightfully straightforward, and the feel of the front panel controls suggests that they aren’t going to break any time in the next couple of decades. Because of the dual gain stage employed, there are two points at which levels can be monitored. A single tri-colour LED gives an indication of initial gain, while a 4-segment LED ladder shows final output level post the level control. If this sounds a little clumsy in description, it’s not in practice thanks largely to the sensible choices in trigger levels for that tri-colour LED. These are based around effective THD levels generated, with green signifying a nominal signal level, rather than simply signal present, with a THD figure of 0.07%. Orange and red indicate increases above nominal level, with correspondingly higher THD figures. This is important, particularly when considering the use of the Shape setting described earlier. The effect of the Vintage and Saturate settings becomes resolution

progressively more pronounced at higher levels of gain, and in fact changes subtly across the gain range. Starting with shape in the Off position with initial gain never indicating anything above nominal level and the 4110 turns in a respectable, if slightly underwhelming performance at first. There’s a slight ‘busy-ness’ to the high mids and highs that will be familiar to Focusrite users — a kind of slightly hyped clarity that sometimes gets in the way of a truly open sound. Cranking the gain up higher counters this to some degree as it introduces a grittiness to the lower registers, but still never sounds quite as honest and open as an API, for example. Flicking the shape switch into the Vintage setting, though, changes things considerably. Yes, you can hear the voicing effect immediately but it’s best described as a very gentle mid presence that works well on vocals without ever sounding harsh or brittle. Its effect changes considerably in character as gain is increased — I found it most workable with the gain set at about 2/3 of its range on vocals. The Saturate setting moves things up another notch and on nearly all things percussive delivers a wonderfully fat, rounded sound — admittedly at the expense of HF definition and extension. Again, the effect is altered considerably with different gain settings, but you do keep finding yourself really hitting the extremes of the gain control when you hear the effect. Coupled with the variable input impedances, what UA has achieved here is almost unique among multichannel pres. If you want to, you can have four identically sounding channels but the scope is there to sculpt the sound so much that you can just as easily have four channels that sound like completely different devices. Downsides? Well there’s no digital output option but frankly, if you’re in the market for a box like this you’re probably going to have your own convertors of choice anyway. And the unadulterated, un-shaped, Modern setting might not be to your particular taste. But as a wonderful sounding, flexible device with a huge sonic palette to aid tracking, it really is a very classy box indeed. ■

PROS

Build quality; good old-fashioned XLRs on the back; very ﬂexible sonic palette; clean and quiet at ‘normal’ levels.

CONS

No digital option; you can have too much of a Blue LED fetish.

EXTRAS

The 8110 provides eight channels of premium Class A, all discrete ampliﬁcation. Each channel has custom input stage transformers, dedicated Gain and Level controls, input and output metering, dual input impedance selection, and the same 3-way Shape to select between Modern, Vintage and Saturate modes.

Contact UNIVERSAL AUDIO, US: Website: www.uaudio.com UK, SCV London: +44 208 418 1470

November/December 2005

��

review

Apple Soundtrack Pro Much in the same way that Final Cut Pro has crept up on the video editing market so Apple’s sound editing package is doing the same to DAWs. ANDY DAY says Soundtrack Pro has the additional beneﬁt of real integration with the rest of the caboodle.

PPLE HAS GONE from strength to strength since introducing Final Cut Pro almost 10 years ago, with the BBC recently announcing it will use FCP exclusively (eventually phasing out Avid). It’s never been a better time to take the plunge into FCP. Bundled with the FCP HD studio package, Soundtrack Pro is Apple’s ﬁrst serious attempt to address audio postproduction within the video editing environment. Before getting into Soundtrack Pro it’s worth mentioning the FCP HD studio package. For UK£900 you get FCP HD version 5, which supports advanced video editing at all professional resolutions from DV to HD (depending on your installed video card). For motion graphics Apple includes its Motion 2 software, basically an After Effects ‘killer’. With a similar interface to FCP, getting to grips with creating professional looking title sequences is relatively easy even for novice graphic designers. DVD studio Pro 4 is also included and this allows HD DVD authoring and support for DTS audio. All the applications have a common look to the user interface, which makes moving between the programs easy. For example, a motion DVD menu can be edited in Motion and all the changes automatically update in DVD studio Pro. It’s this kind of tight integration that is the real strength of the package, allowing anyone to try their hand at video editing, graphic design, DVD authoring or even audio postproduction using Soundtrack Pro. It’s also worth mentioning that Soundtrack Pro is available separately for £200, which is ridiculously cheap considering the number of plug-ins and effects included, but more of that later. Soundtrack Pro is essentially a DAW package that is a cocktail of GarageBand and Logic with a twist of Quicktime movie support. Don’t let the GarageBand reference or the low price put you off though, this is deﬁnitely a professional audio package with only a few shortcomings, and I’m sure future releases will turn this into a powerful audio post tool. SP has two basic modes: Multitrack Mode, where tracks are shown graphically on the time line; and Audio Mode where waveform editing can be performed on individual audio clips. Waveform editing is very straightforward using the keyboard shortcuts with some nice features such as auto trim selection to zero crossings in the waveform, which helps to eliminate clicks between edits. A powerful feature 30

of Audio Mode is the ability to analyse the clip (or selection) for various common audio problems. These include clicks and pops, hum, DC offset, clipping, phase and silence. Once the analysis is complete you can choose to fix the problems or step through the list and fix selected ones. I tried the clipping analysis on some over-recorded DV clips with some reasonable results. My conclusion is that for basic fixes the analysis tool is very useful and, as far as I’m aware, unique. Another useful feature of Audio Mode is the action list. Similar to audio suite in Pro Tools, you can apply various AU effects and process to the clip, these can be auditioned in real-time and then applied. The clever bit is that the actions list allows you to easily remove or more importantly reorder effects by simply dragging up or down the list. This is superb for sound design as everything is instantly editable, even though it is filebased processing. When you’re happy with the results you can flatten the effects and create a new file. There is an amazing range of effects — everything from reverbs to location noise reduction and a useful ambience sampler, which can be used to fill in gaps in dialogue edits. Audio Mode is very powerful and great for creating new sound effects from old ones or fixing up problem audio clips. When using Audio Mode within the FCP HD studio package, any audio clip can be selected in FCP and sent directly to SP. When fixed in Audio Mode it automatically updates in the FCP project, making this a great tool for video editors to clean up rushes or customise basic sound effects. Multitrack Mode is a more familiar way to work, with a timeline containing all the audio clips in the project, plus a video track. When using SP standalone, dragging any Quicktime movie into the movie window automatically extracts the audio to a new track. This allows you to edit the sync sound, add any SFX or music, and mix using the mix window (very similar to Logic), adding any of the supplied AU plug-ins. An unexpected feature of SP is the ability to create your own music using a mixture of Apple Loops and overdubs. You get several Apple loops with SP, including drums, bass, guitars, and strings and with several companies producing libraries in all music styles, this could be a good tool for creating temp music tracks. You even get an application to allow you to resolution

make your own loops. This opens up many creative possibilities for composing to picture using loops, recorded instruments and sound effects. The only downside is that there is no support for software instruments or MIDI within SP, but I’m sure this will be added in a future version. Tempo matching music to picture can be tricky even with advanced sequencer packages, but with SP it’s simple — each project has a master tempo envelope, which can be adjusted to make music cues hit certain points of the video. Tracks can then be mixed down into a stereo file and re-imported into your FCP project. Soundtrack Pro has many other cool features and for the money represents excellent value, however, there are a few downsides, such lack of support for OMF or AAF importing or exporting. This makes it more difficult to use SP as a standalone DAW, but is not a problem when using it with FCP. Another major disadvantage is the lack of support for multitrack audio recording. Only mono or stereo files can be recorded, again this is something I’m sure will be fixed in future versions. Despite these negative points, SP is a very useful tool to have, and while it’s not going to replace Pro Tools overnight it does give you some very powerful features at a fantastic price. ■

PROS

Great Price; excellent selection of plugins; some nice innovative features, such as action list and ambience sampler; tight integration with other FCP HD apps; good video support.

CONS

No virtual instrument or MIDI support; no OMFI or AAF importing or exporting; no multitrack recording or surround mixing.

Contact APPLE, US: Website: www.apple.com

November/December 2005

review

MindPrint DTC DI-Mod It’s not a new box but this two channel recording channel now offers a variety of digital I-Os to complete its case. GEORGE SHILLING likes its style.

INDPRINT DTC’S is now offered at a lower price (UK£1319 +VAT) than it was when it was ﬁrst launched. The 3U dual recording channel has a rather striking appearance, but plenty of thought has also apparently gone into the circuitry. The unique purple-blue illuminated window reveals dimly glowing tubes, with LED meters embedded in the surround. The thick front panel is separated into logical sections of input, EQ, compression/limiting and output. The mic input uses a custom transformer, lending the unit a bright, upfront yet rich sound that has great character and detail, ranking favourably alongside competing high-end units. The comprehensive EQ is a joy to use, as long as you grab the correct knob — they are fairly closely spaced (and I found one to be a bit ‘scrapey’). The circuitry is intelligently Document1 10:18 AM Page 1 designed, with 12/8/04 some unusual features. The four

bands work in parallel, with the shelving top and bottom including a Q control for a dip or peak at the corner frequency. The two mid bands feature narrower cut Q than boost, and a huge range of frequencies is covered by these. If any two bands interact to boost the same frequency, things never get out of hand, as the circuitry won’t allow more than a 20dB boost. Rather, the ﬁlter curve changes shape. It operates with incisive precision but with a sweetening musical tone that is very inviting. Although not quite in the LA-2A league, the clever two-knob compressor-limiter on each channel is better than you might expect for such a simple interface. The compressor gradually turns into a limiter across an extended soft knee, with the valve circuitry tweaked to emphasise the uneven harmonics. Tweaking the release time, it is easy to achieve a pleasant sound with just about any signal, and the limiting ensures no digital ‘overs’. MindPrint’s dedicated DI-Mod digital conversion boards are now available in three ﬂavours. The cheapest is a useful USB connector with a bonus SPDIF output, the next in line is a fully featured

SPDIF board, while at the top of the range is the one ﬁtted to the review unit and which additionally offers AESEBU (UK£280 +VAT). All are 24-bit, 96kHz capable. Usefully, the D-A and A-D can be separately clocked for completely independent operation. In Auto mode, the convertor will clock to any valid source, and if none is present the board assumes the role of master, with settings for 44.1, 48 and 96kHz (but not 88.2). All of this means that it is possible, for example, to monitor the DAW digital output while feeding it a recording source, all using just the DTC. And the DTC can even be used to master and sweeten 96kHz source material and convert it to 44.1kHz. ■

PROS

Excellent audio performance; detailed and characterful sounding mic amp; sweet sounding EQ; simple to use limiter-compressor; digital board options.

CONS

EQ knobs a little crowded; mic amp too ‘upfront’ for some tastes; no hardwire bypass when using Line In; DI-Mod digital boards cost extra and are dealerﬁt only; no Word clock.

Contact MINDPRINT, GERMANY: Website: www.mindprint.de UK, SCV London: +44 208 418 1470

PROfessionals need PROline MU Metal shielding November/December 2005

resolution

www.ultrasone.com 31

review

Bias Peak Pro XT 5 Peak has long been a favourite stereo editing program on the Mac, and version 5 sees a steady progression of improvements and enhancements. GEORGE SHILLING dongles up and pedals his way through a very complete package.

EAK IS A NICHE product that duplicates many DAW functions but puts the focus on processing a stereo signal, destructively or non-destructively, as opposed to multitrack. A Playlist window incorporates comprehensive CD mastering and comprehensive stereo editing is the priority with useful tools and clear displays; multiple documents can be tiled or maximised. All common file formats are supported, along with the less common, including MP4, QuickTime and JAM Image. The maximum sample rate is an incredible 10MHz and Batch Processing makes converting different sample rates and formats less of a chore. There are differently priced versions with feature sets to suit differing needs and pockets; the XT 5 version is the all-singing, all-dancing edition. This includes better DSP algorithms, and bundled packages with audio restoration and effects, although DDP file format support is still an additional paidfor option on top of the price of XT (UK£702 + VAT). Authorisation is now achieved with a USB dongle, but even so be prepared to type in multiple serial numbers. Furthermore, Internet authorisation is required -– this didn’t work properly for some of the bundled components, and involved emailing files back and forth to Bias. Once the authorisations are on the dongle, that should be the end of the matter, but finding a free USB slot can also be a nuisance. Audio recording and playback is easily configured for specific connections on any Core Audio device, or OSX Audio HAL or FireWire DV. The main display includes a Toolbar at the top of the screen with a customisable selection of buttons, by default including opening and saving files, Undo and Redo (which are unlimited with edit history available), import from and burn to CD, zoom, loop, basic transport, and a selection of DSP functions. Along the bottom of the screen this bar is mirrored by a dedicated transport bar with LCD-style counter, transport buttons, very clear horizontal LED-style meters, and a slider for output level. This leaves the majority of the screen available for other windows — most importantly the graphic representation of the audio files being edited or mastered. This comprises a detailed and zoomable main display, 32

with an overview directly above for instantly clicking and jumping to different points. I found it a little disconcerting and distracting that there is no background as such; if a file display is not maximised or tiled with other windows, the desktop is visible behind. The display itself is customisable, with different colours and shadings available to suit personal taste. Working with files for editing is intuitive, with a selection of familiar tools available at the top of the file display, or via shortcuts, and parts of files definable as Regions. Scrubbing and Jogging is available with different time windows, plus an analogue tape mode, although using this, I came to expect my Mac to ‘unexpectedly’ quit Peak. Now included is a redesigned Playlist window for compilation and mastering of CDs, with full Red Book support, including dedicated features such as ISRC codes and CD Text. Audio can be viewed on a single line or on an alternating dual display, and making crossfades and editing PQ codes is straightforward and comprehensive, although the program wouldn’t seem to see my FireWire NEC burner. Options for varying the quality of sample rate conversion and other DSP functions seem somewhat superfluous when using a modern, fast Mac, as only when processing really large files does the offline processing time become a factor -– I generally set all such options to the best possible setting and rarely found myself drumming fingers. This is where the info display at the bottom can help, as any kind of processing function shows not only a wide progress bar, but also as a countdown timer — so you know whether to start engaging the client in conversation while waiting. There are five dedicated plug-in slots available for real-time processing, these can subsequently be bounced. However, the integrated Vbox 2.0 routing matrix feature allows for complex routing of many more effects if required. Full support for VST and Audio Unit plug-ins enormously increases the range of processing available -– Bias includes the excellent Master Perfection Suite that includes SuperFreq paragraphic EQs with different numbers of bands, Repli-Q EQ-matching, Sqweez compressors with multiband options, and ImpulseVerb convolution reverb. Also bundled are the superb audio restoration tools SoundSoap and resolution

SoundSoap Pro, these include processes for the removal of hum, rumble, clicks, crackles, and broadband noise. Offline processing comes under the DSP menu where there is an enormous list of available functions including regulars such as Normalize (peak or RMS), Gain Envelope, Fades, Reverse and so on, along with more unusual and radical effects such as Phase Vocoder and Rappify (I think Rappification is better. Ed). Also here are utilities such as sample rate conversion, and means to change duration and/or pitch with new improved algorithms. However, just a 3% duration change made a very obvious degradation to sound quality. Although hardware samplers are something of a dying breed, direct support is available for interfacing with E-Mu, Ensoniq, Kurzweil, Yamaha and SMDI compatible units, although oddly it seems there is no evidence of Akai or Roland sample formats. When editing files there are a number of functions for creating and tweaking loops. Loop Surfer and Loop Tuner functions are useful, although the whole process seems rather fiddly compared to using, say, Logic/Apple Loops or Ableton Live. Peak continues to find friends in many areas from mastering engineers to editors and sound designers. Dedicated snap-to PS2 and XBox loop boundaries makes this a useful choice for game work. Its editing and playlisting features are unbeatable for those working in stereo on the Mac. ■

PROS

Excellent stereo editing and mastering package; great restoration tools; AU and VST support; comprehensive CD mastering; Pow-R dithering.

CONS

Macintosh only; no surround or multichannel support; DDP costs extra; authorisation was particularly timeconsuming!

EXTRAS

The Bias Master Perfection Suite is a collection of six plug-ins for mastering and sound design. Part of Peak Pro XT 5 it is being offered as a separate product with universal plug-in host compatibility on Mac OS X and Windows XP. The Suite includes Repli-Q (spectral/EQ matching), PitchCraft (pitch correction/ manipulation), Reveal (seven-tool analysis suite), Sqweez-3 & -5 (linear phase multiband compressor/limiter/ expander), SuperFreq (new edition of the 4, 6, 8 and 10-band parametric equaliser suite), and GateEx (gate/ downward expander).

Contact BIAS, US Website: www.bias-inc.com UK, SCV London: +44 208 418 1470

November/December 2005

review

Sony Oxford Limiter The latest in a line of plug-ins from the Oxford camp and addressing the now all-important role of the limiter in a digital chain, it’s available as TDM and RTAS for Pro Tools Mix and HD and RTAS only for Pro Tools LE. JON THORNTON reckons it’ll certainly make your mixes louder and probably also better.

S CURRENT PRODUCTION TRENDS, rightly or wrongly, give rise to ever hotter mixes, the limiter has become an increasingly ubiquitous tool at all stages in the production process — on individual sources in a mix and strapped across the mix bus at the mastering stage. One of the side effects of this, with conventional limiters and digital devices that employ ‘look ahead’ techniques, is in the removal of fine level detail or transient peaks — effectively trading transient resolution for overall programme loudness. And as more and more individual samples approach maximum value, the additional spectre of reconstruction or intersample errors raises its head. This can happen when frequencies that are related to the sample frequency are reconstructed by the D-AC to represent signal levels in excess of the sample values themselves. As long as the samples remain at the same value between the A-DC and D-AC process, this is not usually a problem. But processing the samples, particularly in a way that increases their value, can cause the D-AC to reconstruct signal levels that are above the theoretical full scale maximum, with the attendant objectionable artefacts. And, as most DAW metering looks at sample values only, these errors are sometimes overlooked. You’ll have to forgive this somewhat lengthy introduction, but it’s necessary as these are two areas that Sony Oxford has sought to address in its implementation of a digital limiter plug-in (from around UK£195 +VAT). Pulling it up reveals a familiar looking no-nonsense Sony Oxford GUI, together with some familiar looking, and not so familiar looking parameters. At a basic level, the plug-in breaks into two sections -– what Sony Oxford terms ‘preprocessing’, which is programme levelling as you and I know it, followed by an ‘enhancement’ section, which provides sample value limiting and overall programme loudness enhancement by modifying dynamics and harmonic content. Starting with the pre-processing section, the first thing that strikes you is the absence of a threshold control. This is because the threshold is fixed at a nominal value, and an input level control allows signals to be pushed over this threshold as necessary. Sliders give control over attack and release timing for this section together with a variable knee control that governs the onset and slope of gain reduction. The inclusion of an attack time constant, and to some extent the knee variation is somewhat unusual in the context of a limiter, as conventionally as fast an attack as possible would be used, with a relatively hard knee. To understand this, you have to view this section as simply conditioning the signal prior to sample value limiting, which is dialled in using the enhancement slider. This ranges from 0 to 125% in normal operation, with 100% achieving full sample value limiting, and the range above increasing the way in which the harmonic content is affected further, 34

giving greater perceived loudness but at the expense of additional artefacts. Because the pre-processing section has its own internal headroom, transients that a longer attack time may let through are not internally clipped, but are passed through to the enhancement section, which ensures that they do not give rise to a clip condition on the output. This sounds strange, but in practice enables the plug-in to preserve a goodly amount of fine transient detail while still increasing programme loudness. And to combat any potential problems with overall volume changes in the programme material, an additional Auto-Gain switch adds a further level of long-term gain control, scaling the levelling function to match the long-term level, and freeing up the time constants to fine tune the dynamics. This approach does mean that using more musically sympathetic longer attack times requires the enhancement section to be working at 100% or greater to ensure that the output isn’t clipped. As this would also mean that the harmonic enhancement is also dialled in to its full amount, which might not be suitable for all programme material, the plug-in is also provided with a Safe mode that can be toggled on and off. When on, this mode ensures that no clip condition can ever exist at the output -– in other words it sets sample value limiting to always operate at 100%. But it does this without the harmonic enhancement processing operating, unless the user chooses to dial this in with the slider. The output level can be adjusted to suit the intended destination, and by default has a meter that shows level based on sample value. This can be switched, however, into reconstruction mode, which then indicates the level that a D-AC would reconstruct for the samples. This allows the output level to be reduced if such an error results in an overload condition, but an auto compensation function is also provided, which automatically dips the output level just enough to compensate for any such error as and when it occurs, enabling maximum loudness to be maintained. Finally, and in recognition of the fact that the plugin may well be the last process in a mastering chain, some very flexible dithering options are provided, resolution

including the ability to alter the depth of one of four noise-shaping curves applied to a standard triangular probability density function. Like any similar process, when used to excess and without care and thought, the Sony Oxford Limiter is capable of completely trashing your audio as well as the next plugin -– either for artistic effect or just through ignorance. But with a little thought and some careful thinking through of what is going on, I found that I could generate signiﬁcantly louder mixes with less of the harshness and loss of transient detail I’d normally associate with such a process. The enhancement section, too, was more impressive in use than I imagined it would be — although somewhat counterintuitively (to me at least) seemed to work better on programme material that had a very broad spectrum and little in the way of space, rather than on sparser mixes or individual sounds with fairly narrow bands of frequencies. All this is probably best summed by a single fact. I invariably wince whenever I hear the effect of another well known limiter plug -– particularly when used to stake a claim in the loudness race. But with this plug, there was a lot less wincing going on, and equally loud, if not louder mixes… ■

PROS

Allows high degrees of limiting while preserving detail; simple uncluttered GUI; reconstruction metering a useful bonus; good range of presets that help in learning how the plug-in works.

CONS

Relatively DSP hungry unless you are running an Accel system; not much else except it can send you blind, you know…

EXTRAS

The Oxford Restoration bundle includes DeClick, DeBuzz and DeNoise plug-ins.

DeClick combines DeClick and DeCrackle and is able to remove large pops and clicks, right through to tiny crackles within one plug-in. DeBuzz has two modes (strong and weak) to minimise signal damage and is able to track any slow drift in the fundamental buzz frequency automatically. DeNoise can automatically track noise in auto mode and can provide traditional Noise Fingerprint capture.

Contact SONY OXFORD, UK Website: www.sonyplugins.com

November/December 2005

review

Benchmark ADC1 Deﬁned as the front end that sets the tone of any recording exercise, A-DCs are frequently overlooked and stuck on as an afterthought to channel outboard. ROB JAMES enjoys a stereo analogue to digital convertor from a ‘most wanted’ manufacturer.

HE WHOLE SUBJECT of analogue to digital and indeed digital to analogue conversion is a minefield. If there is one area of professional audio where the mumbo-jumbo and witchcraft that afflicts the world of hi-fi has established a toehold, then this is it. Why? Simply because there is no engineering solution guaranteed to produce the ‘best’ sound. Audio Precision tests might tell some of the story but really, do we care? As a manufacturer’s tool an AP is absolutely invaluable but, when it comes to selecting a convertor for a real application, even reliable statistics just don’t tell the whole story. Certainly, there are a considerable number of dos and don’ts but, ultimately it all comes down to listening tests and opinions of the golden (and even the not so golden) eared. When I reviewed Benchmark’s DA-1 stereo digital to analogue convertor last year I had never heard of the company and wasn’t expecting anything special. In the event, the DA-1’s transparency and veracity pleasantly surprised me. It remains high on my ‘wanted’ list. This gives the ADC-1 a lot to live up to. It has been some time coming. Benchmark says it would rather be late than release a product it is not entirely happy with. Software manufacturers take note! The ADC1 is a 2-channel, 24-bit, 192-kHz capable analogue-to-digital audio convertor. As with its companion DAC1, the UK£1299 (+VAT) ADC1 seeks to challenge at the highest level, yet maintain an affordable price point. Like its sibling, physically the unit is an imposing, black, 1U, half-width box with built in multi-voltage power supply and rack ears. A joiner enables two units to be mounted side-by-side in a 1U rack space. Benchmark also offers the Rackpack, which mounts three half-width modules in a flight case, one above the other.

Analogue inputs are XLR balanced. Digital outputs are comprehensive and well thought out with BNCs for main AES-EBU, SPDIF and auxiliary AES-EBU, XLR with main AES-EBU and a Toslink optical socket for main ADAT/SPDIF. Word clock reference I-Os are BNCs. Mains is multi-voltage but requires a switch change on the fuse carrier between 220V and 110V. Each of the outputs can be operated in a number of modes. The main XLR and BNC outputs are 24-bit at any of the supported sample rates. Aux can be 16 or 24 bits. The optical output can operate in AES-EBU at up to 24-bit, 96kHz or in ADAT mode. ADAT mode supports ADAT 44.1 and 48kHz and also SMUX2 and SMUX4 giving 88.2 and 96kHz and 176.4 and 192kHz respectively. The ADC1 and DAC1 use high-bandwidth optical transmitters and receivers to enable AES operation at 96 and 192kHz. It is worth noting that a lot of other Toslink equipped kit cannot cope and that the highbandwidth transducers are not required for ADAT SMUX 2 or 4. The low-res 16-bit Aux output is for making 16-bit backups or demos to CD recorders or DAT. If this is not required it can be set to mirror the 24-bit main outputs. On the front panel the Mode switch is a centrebiased momentary toggle switch with two modes, press and press and hold, which produce different results. Pressing up repeatedly cycles through the clock source and sample rate options for the main outputs. Pressing down repeatedly does the same for the Aux Output. Holding Down for three seconds or more toggles between AES-EBU and ADAT mode for the optical output. Holding Up for around three seconds resets to the factory settings. A block of 9 LEDs indicates the current mode for Main and Aux outputs. If the unit is set for external

sync and no valid source is available the bottom left LED flashes. The two 9-segment bargraph meters have an associated toggle switch to select between 6dB/step and 1dB/step and 1dB/step with peak hold. Gain for each channel is set independently in two stages -- switches select between unity, 10dB and 20dB gain and further switches select between calibrated and the detented gain control knobs. Ten-turn presets set the calibrated level and the trimmers and the knobs cover a range of –1.3dB to +22dB. As is so often the case, this is all a lot more obvious with the unit in front of you and quickly becomes second nature. The knobs and switches all feel reassuringly positive. The same proprietary Ultralock technology is used to isolate external sync inputs from the convertors with the object of reducing jitter to negligible proportions. As you might expect, the performance figures and graphs are exemplary but, as previously remarked, these never tell the whole story. Benchmark thoughtfully provided a DAC1 to complete the set so I was able to experiment and compare the ADC1 using both the DAC1 and my own everyday convertors. In the relatively short time available my earlier conclusions about the virtues of the DAC1 were confirmed. The ADC1 comfortably outperformed my console convertors, exhibiting similar clarity and surgical precision to the D-A. Interestingly, at least some of this goodness was audible even using the inferior console D-ACs. I used the same combination of Marantz monoblocks and Leema Zen speakers as previously employed to test the DAC1, since this is the most analytical combination I have. The astonishingly solid imaging I know the DAC1 to be capable of was maintained along with the impressive transparency and transient response. Again, I heard things I’ve not heard before. In the absence of any other exotic convertors for proper A/B comparison it is impossible to draw firm conclusions but, my suspicion is that the ADC1 would come out of such a test punching well above its weight. At the price, the ADC1 is a ‘must audition’ for anyone looking for a stereo A to D offering more than the standard fare. ■

PROS

Big league conversion at a sensible price; intuitive; good selection of outputs.

CONS

Runs rather warm; not a lot else.

EXTRAS

A new front-panel option is available for the Benchmark DAC1 without rackmount ears and with a bright aluminium

ﬁnish. The option positions the unit for the home theatre and desktop recording markets.

Contact BENCHMARK, US Website: wwwbenchmarkmedia.com UK, SCV London: +44 208 418 1470

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November/December 2005

review

Brauner Phantom Anniversary Edition Ten years in and Brauner has released a limited edition for its anniversary. JON THORNTON is predictably impressed with the performance and with the lower price.

HEN DIRK BRAUNER started a microphone design and manufacturing company in an old barn in Germany 10 years ago, I suspect even he couldn’t have anticipated the success and critical acclaim his microphones would achieve in such a relatively short period of time. And given that my first encounter with a Brauner microphone was a little over three years ago, I couldn’t have anticipated just how expensive that encounter would turn out. That first encounter was with the original Phantom, and I ended up buying the microphone from distributors The Home Service rather than having to return it after the review — the beginning of a rather slippery slope. The Phantom AE (Anniversary Edition) is a limited edition of 1000 microphones, intended to celebrate the company’s first decade. Based on the Phantom C, which is a fixed cardioid version of the original Phantom, it sports a special satin black finish rather than the usual silver. Also included is a Vovox microphone cable and a compact hard shell case. But the most surprising thing is that Brauner isn’t expecting you to pay more for the privilege of owning this limited edition, but less. The standard Phantom C retails for £999 (+VAT), but the Anniversary Edition can be yours for just £759 (+VAT) — never has Brauner ownership been more affordable. I was curious, therefore, to see what corners had been cut (if any) to reduce the price, and to see how the AE stacked up against a standard Phantom C. Certainly there’s no difference in build quality -— the AE has the same sense of solidity and weight as the original, and that wonderfully tightly machined shockmount that the microphone clicks into is still there. I’ve written about the Phantom before, so I’m not going to repeat myself, but comparing the AE and a Phantom C reveals no discernible difference in audio performance. There is still that terrifically uncoloured and smooth bass extension, still that great transient response, and still the sense that the microphone delivers ‘more of everything’ — particularly on vocals. Having spent far more time with both the original Phantom and the Phantom C since my first review, one of its more appealing traits is the way in which you can work proximity effect. The way November/December 2005

the bass response lifts is one of the most progressive and smooth of any microphone I’ve come across, and it makes tuning its sound very easy. Again, the AE performs in this respect every bit as well as the Phantom C does. In summary, if Brauner has changed anything in the AE — either to cut costs or simply for the sake of tweaking, it hasn’t been to the detriment of the sound. I suspect that simply committing to a production run of 1000 pieces has had its effect on lowering costs, and Dirk has simply passed these savings on as a way of saying ‘thanks’ to his customers. Yes, there are the same little shortcomings that the original Phantom C has — no pad switch as on the Phantom V, for example — but these are easy to forgive, particularly at the reduced price. Do yourself a favour and buy one before they sell out. Better still, buy a pair — they make terriﬁc drum overheads. ■

PROS

Build quality; transient response; bass extension; workability of proximity effect; price.

CONS

No pad; buying a pair suddenly seems like a good idea.

acoustic measurement software

ACCURACY THROUGH PRECISION } Tannoy Dual Concentric™ point source drive unit } WideBand™ SuperTweeter™ extends frequency response to over 50kHz } Digital amplification with analogue and digital inputs } Automated Activ-Assist™ software driven digital calibration

ACTIVE STUDIO MONITORS

Contact

Tannoy United Kingdom

T: +44 (0) 1236 420199

F: +44 (0) 1236 428230

E: enquiries@tannoy.com

Tannoy North America

T: (519) 745 1158

F: (519) 745 2364

E: inquiries@tannoyna.com

Tannoy Deutschland

T: 0180 1111 88 1

F: 0180 1111 88 2

E: info@tannoy.com

BRAUNER, GERMANY: Website: www.brauner-microphones.com UK, Home Service: +44 208 943 4949

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review

Darcy Proper

located right in the middle of Europe. I’ve never had the opportunity in my life to travel around Europe, so it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss!

She has left the US to set up shop in Europe and has largely left classical work in favour of other genres in stereo and multichannel formats. NIGEL JOPSON talks to one of the very few women to have cut it at the leading edge of mastering.

RAMMY AWARD-WINNING mastering engineer Darcy Proper recently left Sony Mastering in New York to take up residence at Galaxy Studio’s cutting edge mastering suite in Mol, Belgium. Darcy spent six years as a senior mastering engineer at Sony, where she worked on an impressive gamut of music spanning re-issues of early recordings, such as Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-1944 (for which she won a Grammy in 2002), through productions from Missy Elliot (So Addictive), REM (Around The Sun, Automatic For The People, Green) and Phish (Live In Brooklyn). She has become known as a go-to mastering guru for surround work, including high-proﬁle releases from the likes of Steely Dan (Everything Must Go 5.1 DVDA and stereo) and Bob Dylan (Blood On The Tracks 5.1 for SACD). 38

What prompted your move from NY to Mol ... is the mastering business not booming in the USA? It’s true that business for mastering studios in the US is not quite what it used to be, a lot of that has to do with the larger labels doing less. The independents are doing more, but the people co-ordinating smaller projects for independents aren’t necessarily aware of the need for mastering, or aren’t aware of what can be done with professional mastering. When they do actually try mastering with a professional, almost all of them are amazed by what can be achieved with higher-end equipment and an experienced mastering engineer. The trick is to get them in there in the ﬁrst place! I liked the sound of my room very much in NY at Sony, and I loved my colleagues there, but then this opportunity arose to work in a world-class studio resolution

Your new mastering suite is extremely wellequipped ... Galaxy has an amazing room, they have really done it well, the room is well tuned, and it looks nice too. I like the way the speakers work in there, the console is great — there weren’t a whole lot of things I needed to request in order to work here — just a few CEDAR plug-ins for the workstation, that’s all. Is that something you really depend on? For all of the reissue work I’ve done, (Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and various compilations) I could not live without the CEDAR DeClick plug-ins for my Pyramix. I worked recently on a Charlie Poole three-CD set for Legacy, You Ain’t Talkin’ To Me: The Roots of Country Music, which included recordings from the very early 1900s (circa 1904 in some cases). It’s a real trick in that type of work to remove the distracting noises and yet not ‘throw out the baby with the bath water’, so to speak. For that collection, it was quite a tedious process, but I think it worked out well. The material is still quite noisy by modern listening standards, but once your ear adapts to the sound, there are no longer any big November/December 2005

craft pops or clicks to distract from the programme. In my opinion, the sound itself lends a certain charm of the era to the music, so I don’t feel the noise that remains is a problem. CEDAR also works well on new releases for removing the occasional distracting lip smack or static tick. It’s very effective and time efﬁcient for that type of thing.

Do you always work in Pyramix, or do you sometimes take digital productions back to analogue for processing? Galaxy certainly has a good range of analogue outboard — you’ve got six of the SPL PQ parametric mastering EQs in the rack. It’s an embarrassment of riches! It depends on the project, once I’m working with analogue I don’t feel that a session goes any slower, other than the actual winding time if there is tape. I really like the sound of analogue EQs, when I was in NY I had a Sontec, and for surround I had the Sontec on the front and a Maselec on the rear, because they are very compatible and Sontecs are so difficult to get. I loved the Sontec and I also love the SPL EQs. If I’m going for broader adjustments I prefer analogue EQ, I think analogue sounds a bit smoother, particularly at the top end. Analogue EQs can be a little less precise, if there’s something I’m really trying to enhance or notch or filter then I would use digital. Digital equalisers don’t seem to affect quite so much of what’s going on around the frequency range that I’m working on. Which equipment typically comprises your analogue processing chain? The gain stage of the console — the incredible SPL MMC1 — then the PQ parametrics, followed by three Millennia TCL-2s — it wasn’t a compressor I was familiar with until I got here but I like it very much. It has an FET mode and a tube mode, I find that it works very well in both. Then there’s a Maselec MPL-2 Limiter/De-esser, any combination of those might be in depending on what’s needed. I might hit digital then and use either the Weiss or Z-Systems EQs. A DualDisk 5.1 and stereo album I just did here for Dutch rock band Kane needed a bit of band limited compression to get control of the low end, so after going through the analogue gear I put the Weiss DS1-Mk2 compressor in and used that to just work on the bottom end from 180Hz only. It was a project that came in as digital, but I thought the sound would benefit from the analogue tools. How does your workflow proceed if you take a digital project analogue, do you assemble the album first in your workstation for playout or do you first process each track on load-in? If I’m working from analogue tapes, it remains analogue through the entire mastering process until it goes into Pyramix, which is the platform I’m using these days, and which I like very much. If the project is a Pro Tools session or something like that, the process is pretty much the same, for each tune I master into the Pyramix, so I have the finished sound going into my workstation. Typically I’ll do some EQing first, then I’ll insert my compressor post-EQ. Of course the compressor can affect the sound but you can always go back and adjust the EQ a little to compensate. Then I assemble the album and in the process of assembly if I find the first tune didn’t have quite the same feel as the others, then I’ll go back and revisit it if November/December 2005

necessary. I’m usually A-Bing all the time — when I’ve worked on one tune and loaded it into Pyramix I compare that to the next tune I’m working on so I can make sure that when we are done the album will sound like an album rather than just a collection of singles. I think that’s one of the most important functions of mastering.

You are well known for your 5.1 work, which surround format do you ﬁnd yourself mastering for recently? I haven’t done that much work in SACD for the last 2 years, it is still popular for classical releases, but I’m not doing classical any longer. Most of the projects I have done recently have either been for DVD-A or DVD video release. SACD is a fantastic sounding format, but it seems almost as if it has ceased to be a consumer product, although DSD technology is still being used in the recording process. Sony is doing DualDiscs right now where everything ends up as DVD-Vs. Most of the work I have done in the last year is for DVD video, which is a shame because by the time you have AC3 encoded a project 48k is as high as it goes. While it is serviceable, it is certainly not the same as having a high resolution discrete format, or even having a 48k discrete. I’ve been working a lot for Elliot Scheiner, he does a lot of productions for Warners, and they are supporting the DVD-A format. Elliot is on record as saying you are the very best for surround mastering. I have to say it’s a pleasure working on his stuff, as a mastering engineer it’s always nicer to polish something that’s really good to begin with rather than to do a complete reworking, Elliot’s work is always so good. Surround is a format that’s really fun to work with. The Kane 5.1 DualDisk that I mastered here at Galaxy was a Ronald Prent surround mix, and he does amazing work as well. When I was at Sony, Elliot sent me some 2-inch 8-track surround mixes resolution

— it sounded absolutely fantastic! It’s the equivalent of 1/2-inch for surround mixes. He sent me a project at 15ips with Dolby SR and it was marvellous. My ATR 100 analogue machine has a great sound of its own that works well for a lot of the material I work on. After auditioning several tape machines, it was the model that was chosen unanimously for the Steely Dan album Everything Must Go in 2003, and it won again when we began work on Donald Fagen’s upcoming solo album.

How do you feel about projects that have been recorded and mixed ‘In The Box’ completely within Pro Tools? I have a bit of a problem with Pro Tools in that I think what you hear when you are recording in is not necessarily what you hear when you are playing back. I think Pro Tools is a great workstation — if you have a project that needs 147 tracks there’s nothing that can compete with it. Sometimes I have had to record my material into Pro Tools, perhaps because the project will be going to an audio post engineer for a live concert DVD or something along those lines. I’m often very frustrated when I play the music back, and no matter which convertor I use, it just doesn’t end up sounding the same. So I wonder sometimes ... I suppose no client ever comes in nowadays and says: please make this quiet and really dynamic ... I do kind of miss that about classical, because level is not really a part of that world, the programme material is so dynamic, and of course they want to preserve it. Coming from that background, I am deﬁnitely not the mastering engineer who will, by choice, aim for making the very loudest record. I personally prefer to preserve some of the transients and dynamic range and all of that. However, I’m a service provider so of course I will do whatever the client demands — but I would voice my opinion if I thought sound quality was being sacriﬁced for just level. 39

craft

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If you receive a digital project and see the waveform proﬁle resembling a block of cheese because of aggressive 2-bus processing, do you feel you’ve been backed into a corner? It’s exactly that, it doesn’t really leave you many options. In the same way that in the reissue ﬁeld we would love to be able to develop the anti-reverb tool to get rid of some of the poor or very dated-sounding reverbs on otherwise beautiful sounding albums — there were recordings made in stairwells and all sorts of strange places — and on 3-track recordings, of course, they ended up printing them with the vocal track ... it’s kind of the same thing now with these over-squashed mixes. Sometimes I will try to build some dynamics back into the song itself, maybe by dropping the level

So how do you make up the level? A combination of compressors, limiters and gain stages. Multiband helps in situations where just one band is out of control, I sometimes use the Weiss DS1 for that. I think the biggest tool that mastering engineers have is that we all remain in our rooms: unlike mix engineers and recording engineers, our environment doesn’t really change, so when we are working, we can make these little half dB adjustments in EQ, or adjust compressors very meticulously. I’d like to reassure the mix engineers of the world that mastering engineers are not out to critique anyone’s work — the same way the mix engineer doesn’t hold it against the singer when he hears the vocal soloed with no reverb — that’s kind of the same way I’m thinking when I’m mastering. I think a relationship develops between mix engineers and mastering engineers because the mix engineer feels that they can trust the mastering engineer not to mess up their mixes and not to hold anything in its raw state against them. You’ve changed reference monitors as well as continents, so the biggest tool in the box is different for you now. I previously had Dunlavy SC-IVs with Krell 300C amplifiers, which was a combination I liked very much in my room in NY. It certainly did not look as elegant as what I have here, but it was a good sounding room. The Eggleston Savoys and Perreaux amplifiers at Galaxy balance very much the same way, I was expecting it to be much more difficult to adjust. When I listened to some albums I had done in NY, I felt very comfortable, it struck my ears as a similar balance. The bass is very extended, but it doesn’t get in the way. That’s something that actually made me choose the Dunlavy SC-IVs in the first place, every other speaker I tried in NY sort of took over the room at the bottom end. It was present, but nicely in control with the SC-IVs. I think the Egglestons have a little more extension, but you only have to listen to a couple of tunes you’ve worked on and are familiar with to recognise what the differences are. It hasn’t been a difficult transition — I think ... I haven’t had any complaints yet! ■

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D_Command_Resolution.indd 1

of the verses to give the chorus a little boost, or I’ll make the beginning of the song a little quieter and we’ll build to a louder ending. But once it’s been squashed, it’s squashed — even if we build in some faux-dynamics. Usually the tunes that come in that are squashed were digital projects from the beginning, so very often just passing through analogue equipment helps the sound overall, even if it does not necessarily bring back all of the dynamics. If it’s something that has been done on a workstation and it’s just a matter of re-rendering the bounce to disk, very often if I explain why I would like the mix engineer to back off their master bus plug-in, and that I can ﬁnd better ways to make up that level — and it’s usually the level that they are looking for, not the compression — then a lot of times they are happy to do that.

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31/10/05 3:40:52 pm

November/December 2005

review

Sergio Galoyan

What was it recorded on? Well we didn’t have an SSL desk! It was a little Mackie, NS-10s, a PC with Cubase on it.

He’s young and dynamic and has a very clear idea of where he’s going. GEORGE

It’s amazing for you to have acquired such knowledge so quickly… It’s not about knowledge, it’s about passion, and about doing something new in the music industry.

SHILLING talks to Sergio Galoyan about production, vocals, preproduction and doing something really different.

ERGIO GALOYAN was born on Christmas Day 1981 in Moscow and at 17 years of age wrote his first song, which became an enormous worldwide hit in the shape of Tatu’s All The Things She Said. Trevor Horn mixed the version that was a hit, but used many of Sergio’s original files. Tatu reunited with Sergio (now aged 23) for their recently released second album, which features six new Galoyan productions (for which he is officially now credited) and five co-writes. An ambitious, energetic and likeable man, Sergio is keen to stress that he is Armenian rather than Russian (‘like Cher and System Of A Down’). Now based in London he has hooked up with a major producer manager and has done additional production and remix for Marilyn Manson (This Is The New Shit) and a remix for J-Lo (I’m Glad) in his inimitable style, with exciting, brash, shiny productions. He produced an as-yet unreleased solo album with Keith Flint from The Prodigy and has recently set up a label Bi-Angel with his wife Sasha, which aims to bring Russian bands to the UK — to that end, they have already worked with two bands and Sergio is also working with Anti Icons, another female duo, this time featuring Swedish and German models. (photos www.recordproduction.com) 42

How did you get into the music business? Well, it was by accident. I was 16 years old, I was studying electric guitar with the best teacher in Russia, Dmitri Maloletov who was teaching this new style of playing, two-hand tapping on the neck, like playing piano. I spent a couple of years learning, and when I was 17, I started writing songs. The ﬁrst song I wrote was All The Things She Said. I was sending the recording to all the studios, and I had a response from one of them. They wanted me to write more songs for this project with two girls, and a crazy guy, Ivan Shapovalov. I met him, he gave me the Russian lyrics for All The Things She Said, which ﬁtted my melody. We did a little bit of production, went to the studio and recorded it. It was released six months later and was massive in Russia, it was like The Beatles, everyone was just crazy about this project. A couple of years later it was released here [UK], and you know what happened…! So what was playing the melody on your original? It was basically a different arrangement, different sounds, because it was before the studio. I just sang the lyrics in Russian. Everybody loved it. resolution

When you were introduced to Tatu, were they good singers? Actually no. They were singers in a band, then Ivan took them from the band and they recorded a song that wasn’t good. When I started to work with them as music producer, everything turned a different way, and the girls started having the idea to be lesbians. How did you record vocals with them? We recorded them separately. On the last album there was a song called Show Me Love. We had 35 backing vocals of each singer in each chorus. And at that time, the equipment wasn’t so fast, so the Cubase session was always crashing, because of the huge amount. For the lead vocals, did you record many takes? Basically, we’d record a verse ten times, and choose the best words. And did you use Autotune? We didn’t use Autotune because Autotune wasn’t released at that time, so we did it manually. They’re not great singers, and everybody knows that. But they’re just fun, they come into the studio and smash everything, tell everybody ‘This is my music…!’ The vocals this time in Los Angeles were not good because Julia just had a baby, like a year ago, and November/December 2005

craft some acid from her stomach burned her throat. And she couldn’t even speak. I actually managed to get her to the studio to sing these songs. We hired the best doctor who was ﬁlling her with Chinese medicine and antibiotics.

How did you start doing studio work? I was in Moscow and I had a 486 computer and a program called FastTracker 2 [an MS-DOS tracking program], I did all the preproduction stuff in this program, then we’d get to the studio and re-record everything, but the main ideas were done on this computer. Then when I got a bit of money I bought a good PC, some Korg synthesisers, then when I got more money I bought Logic and Pro Tools. But it doesn’t really matter what kind of equipment you’ve got, because for ideas you can use this computer and FastTracker. It doesn’t record anything, but you can take samples and do loops. Where did you record the second Tatu album? In Los Angeles. After the ﬁrst album I was split from the band because of misunderstandings, I didn’t really understand what they did with Ivan, going on stage with the guns and everything. I was like, I do music, you do whatever you want. And it had all gone well, then suddenly they called me: ‘Sergio, we have split with Ivan, please write us a new hit!’ That was last summer. I said, let’s meet and see what we’ve got. So we met, and there was the girls’ manager Sasha. I fell in love with her and we got married. Two days

November/December 2005

after the marriage we went to Los Angeles for three months to record this album. We spent a really good time at this amazing studio called The Village, a famous studio. I was preparing the tracks, and we stayed in the best hotel, the Santa Monica Fairmont while we did the job.

What equipment was used for the new album recording? It was recorded into Pro Tools HD, eighty-something channels. We were using the Avalon preamp for the microphone. On the production I was using the Moog synthesiser with the blue lights on it [Voyager], also [Novation] Supernova, Nord Modular 2, and I was using a Gibson Collection guitar that cost 15,000 dollars, and another electric Gibson. Do you use an ampliﬁer? Oh, of course. On this album we used a Fender, I’m bad with names, I think it was a vintage one. We covered it with pillows and put a microphone in front, which went through the Avalon. Then we recorded the same part through a different ampliﬁer, which was a Marshall I think. So did you play everything or were there other musicians? Well me, no, but I know the producers on the other tracks brought Sting and other good people. And who engineered? Yeah a very interesting guy, Mats Björk. Here’s

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something you won’t know; he’s the grand-grandgrandchild of famous composer Edvard Grieg. He’s mega-professional, I just love him.

How do attitudes differ in Russian studios? There are not many Russian projects around at the moment, there are a lot of problems. Western people are trying to get all the new ideas and all the new equipment. Russians are quite cold, they’re doing normal pop music which is quite different from Western stuff. I don’t really like working in Russia. Where did you do the Marilyn Manson remix? Here in London, in my home, I have Pro Tools in my bedroom like Moby. I have small Genelecs, a little Mackie desk, Pro Tools, a bunch of synthesisers, plug-ins, Cubase as well, and a G5 Mac. And a Neumann microphone. I have a 002 Rack for Pro Tools, I cannot hear a difference between this and the HD system, although you can only use 32 tracks, but you always use less when doing a home production. Then you go into a studio a record guitars and vocals on an HD system. How did you learn to produce, did you work it out yourself? Yeah! Basically, no-one can teach you to do that, because what you have to do is listen to other guys’ productions, Trevor Horn, Youth or whatever — big producers. Try to understand what they did wrong, and what they did right, and do it better than these people. That was my point. When I was a teenager

craft I would listen to music and be angry with people because they did good ideas, but bad realisation, bad production. And I thought I could do it better — let me do it! That’s how I became a producer.

How do you coax a great vocal out of somebody who is not a great singer? Well it’s the hardest thing in the studio because it’s a real timing thing. Singers come in for a couple of hours, or four hours at the most, and you need to get them in the mood. And ﬁrst, to get them to sing well, you need to free them from bad behaviour, and you need to be like a teacher. You need to basically tell them how to sing the song, so they are just like an LRX_advert_resol.qxd 23/08/2005 10:56 AM Page 1 instrument in your hands. You take them to the vocal booth and tell them how to do each line. It’s really,

really hard. With these girls I have worked with them for ﬁve years now, they just understand you from the work. They say: ‘Oh Sergio, we’ve known him for ﬁve years, so we’ll only listen to him!’ I was the only Russian-speaking guy in the studio.

What is good sound? It needs to be something really new, something that takes the best from each style of music, and mix in one song. It doesn’t necessarily need to sound like something before, like The Beatles, Oasis, or the Sex Pistols, it needs to be something you created yourself without any inﬂuence. Take ten styles of music, take the best you can from each style; for instance, take a good synthesiser part from trance, drums from punk, guitars from garage, and vocals from rock, and do your own thing.

....introducing the

SADiE LRX Flexible Location Recorder The remarkable new SADiE LRX has been designed to fulfil the needs of an ever more complex recording environment. It is as effective in capturing original soundtracks for film and television production as it is for producing location audio recordings for release on distributed media such as CD or DVD.

The flexibility of the LRX hinges on its ability to utilise a standard laptop running Windows XP® via USB2 as the host computer together with combinations of the same high quality i/o cards as the SADiE H64 multitrack workstation. A tactile hardware control surface is employed, incorporating a small assignable mixer and full editorial interface, plus dedicated transport keys.

Who would you like to work with? Metallica, if I work with them once before they are deaf, I will be happy. Would you change their sound? Of course, I would take them to the best studio, tell them not to drink while recording, to have a good attitude, and probably make the album sound like the Black Album, their best album. But maybe they were drunk when they did it!? Well that’s why it doesn’t sound so good…! With these guys you could make a masterpiece, they are kings of music. Also, Michael Jackson would be nice, and I was dreaming to get Madonna to sing one of my songs, but she didn’t respond. I sent her a CD through Spike, but she didn’t respond. Why Madonna? I think she is the main singer in the world, and I think we have the same kind of energy; she is always changing her style, she always wants to be a bit arrogant and shock people, something new — that’s what I do. Once she found the French guy who did the Music album, it was amazing, the best production I ever heard, and he stepped up a little bit. I was thinking that I could be the next guy, and I think if she would respond to my music, she would have the best time of her life. Because I think for me it would be really interesting to work with her in the studio, sharing ideas and listening to what she wants, bringing my style to her music. What is it about you that is unique? It is simple: I am young, I am passionate, I can bring a lot of new ideas to everybody, even Madonna or Metallica. I can really bring something to people. Other producers go to the studio and do the same thing every time. I am trying to do something really different, really new, and to do the best. ■

This powerful combination is supplied with a tailored multichannel version of the SADiE on-screen graphical user interface. Timecode and professional genlock facilities are incorporated and a video stream may be simultaneously captured for playback or on-set ADR. The system supports a wide range of industry file interchange formats, plus a second external drive may be simply attached via USB2 or Firewire to mirror recordings and provide simultaneous safety copies. Contact your nearest SADiE dealer or main office and visit our website for further details and a brochure.

www.sadie.com United Kingdom: SADiE UK The Old School, Stretham Ely, Cambs. CB6 3LD. UK Tel: +44 (0)1353 648 888 Fax: +44 (0)1353 648 867 USA: SADiE Inc 475 Craighead Street, Nashville TN 37204 USA Tel: +1 615 327 1140 Fax: +1 615 327 1699 Europe: SADiE GmbH Villa Leinen, Kollwitz Strasse 16, 73728 Esslingen. Germany Tel: +49 (0)711 3969 380 Fax: +49 (0)711 3969 385

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November/December 2005

sweet spot

Getting a big sound from a small room You can get a big sound from a small room by employing SpaceCoupler panels to achieve loosely coupled spaces, according to Auralex Acoustics chief acoustical engineer JEFF D SZYMANSKI. He takes us through the principles and applications of this interesting new product.

DESIRE OF MANY STUDIO folks is to have a great sounding ‘live’ room for instrument and vocal recordings. Unfortunately, inherent space limitations prevent many project studio owners from achieving anything close to a ‘live’ room in the true sense of a well-controlled space with a useful reverberant tail. That is about to change. The next generation of acoustical treatment from Auralex is the pArtScience line of products and the focus of this article is to look at one of these new products, the SpaceCoupler (Figure 1). The many acoustical uses of the SpaceCoupler and its high-quality construction and appearance combine to provide many options to the user. Stripped down to the basic science, the SpaceCoupler is nothing new but nothing like it has ever been offered to the pro audio market. Loosely coupling spaces is a design technique that was developed by Russ Berger, the designer of the SpaceCoupler, to sculpt high quality live recording spaces out of rooms with otherwise small — some would say almost unusable — footprints. Berger has been using the technique for nearly 20 years to create unique acoustical environments in his studio designs. The loosely coupled space approach starts, for example, with a small room, often just cosy enough to fit a drummer and a kit. For the example shown in Figure 2, the room is, say, 14ft long by 12ft wide with a 15ft high ceiling. All the surfaces of the room are hard including the floor. The lower portions of the walls — say up to about 8ft high — are treated with a good broadband absorber. The absorber coverage is typically as close to 100% as can be achieved. Above the absorbers the walls are left alone, but can optionally be treated with diffusors as shown in Figure 2. The ceiling above is treated with absorbers to remove any flutter echo effects between the hard floor and hard ceiling. To get the full effect of a space like this — for example, to get that ‘fat’ drum sound — the boundary between the dead portion of the room and the live portion needs a well-controlled aperture. Enter the SpaceCoupler. SpaceCouplers placed horizontally at just above the 8ft high mark separate the two areas with a controlled aperture. The actual aperture size is smaller than the overall footprint of the room, which is usually around 70-80% of the floor area. The exact aperture size will vary depending on the application. The SpaceCouplers in the aperture redirect sound energy into the upper portion of the room where it is diffused. Sound then returns — again redirected by the SpaceCouplers — to provide a ‘big room’ reverberation tail that sounds exceptional. Scientifically, the SpaceCouplers maximise the initial time gap (ITG — Figure 3). Psychoacoustically, this ‘pushes’ the reverberation tail out in time by several milliseconds without altering its length. The quality of the resulting tail is smooth, without any acoustical artefacts or anomalies that would be difficult to work with in the postprocessing and mixing phases. The subjective assessment of loosely coupled spaces is that ‘big room’ recordings are a reality. Even in small November/December 2005

Absorbers on ceiling above SpaceCouplers to control ﬂutter Optional diffusers on walls above SpaceCouplers

Absorbers on walls below SpaceCouplers

Figure 1

Figure 2

spaces where the reverberation time of the loosely coupled space is less than 1.0 second, processing the sound with conventional postprocessing leads to very musical sounding reverb effects. The net result is a recording that is more aurally convincing than applying digital reverb to an otherwise dry signal. There are alternatives to the setup shown in Figure 2. First, the SpaceCouplers can be angled such

that they are not parallel to the ceiling. This would eliminate the need for absorbers on the ceiling and would increase the length of the reverberant tail. If the ﬂoor is carpeted — not advisable, but a reality in some rooms nonetheless — absorbers on the ceiling would probably not be needed. If a high ceiling is not a reality, but there is some extra length to the room, this entire application can be turned on its side i.e. the

ETC showing loosely coupled space effect

Figure 3 resolution

sweet spot reverberant space can be 6ft to 8ft of a 20-something foot long room. The SpaceCouplers would then be a false ‘wall’ between a dry area and a reverberant area. The possibilities for miking instruments and voices in a loosely coupled space are endless. Close miking an instrument or voice would provide a high level of direct sound with just a hint of reverberant tail. Placing overheads above a drum kit, for example, but below the SpaceCouplers would provide a great blend of direct and reverberant energy (The aforementioned ‘fat’ drum sound!) Miking above the SpaceCouplers in the reverberant area would provide a great reverberant ﬁll recording that combines with the close-miked signal or signals. Different miking techniques would apply to different recordings. A combination of all

three of the above might work for a drum kit. A combination of a close mic and an overhead below the SpaceCouplers might be more appropriate for a voice or an acoustic guitar. A combination of a close mic and an overhead above the SpaceCouplers could yield that long-sought-after ‘live’ guitar amp sound. The loosely coupled space application is just the beginning. A byproduct of the acoustically optimised grid of a SpaceCoupler is that it can be used over flat absorbers to increase their efficiency and provide a decorative finish to what some might consider a ‘ho-hum’ flat acoustical panel. Simply placed over any flat absorber, low frequency absorption can be increased by more than 40% below 250Hz (Figure 4). Above that, the absolute absorption of the panel does not change, but the exact nature of the absorption

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that is occurring does change. This has to do with the angle-dependence of absorption and is a more typical scenario for small room applications than the random incidence absorption normally quantified by laboratory tests. A flat absorber (as opposed to a sculpted absorber) absorbs the most sound when the angle of incidence is perpendicular to the panel. This is described as normal incidence. As the angle of the sound source is increased, the absorption decreases and reflection off the face of the panel increases. We have researched this quite a bit and have found that as the angle of incidence is increased, the reflected sound level increases as well. Figure 5 illustrates some scenarios. To improve the otherwise poor off-axis performance of flat absorbers, a SpaceCoupler can be placed over the flat panel. Sound arriving at non-normal angles of incidence is redirected into the absorber. Each time redirection occurs more energy is lost until the reflected sound emerges from the treatment reduced significantly in level. There is actually a threefold benefit to this application of the SpaceCouplers: the efficiency of the absorber is increased; the overall depth of the absorber is increased, extending the low frequency effectiveness; and it provides off-axis scattering. This last benefit is highly desirable as it Increase in Absorbtion using SpaceCoupler over Flat Absorber Panel 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

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Figure 5 November/December 2005

500Hz

sweet spot can greatly improve the sound quality at listening locations behind the main mix area. Producers’ areas and comfy couches are notorious for not having the same sonic quality as the sweet spot. Using SpaceCouplers over the side wall absorbers can make the sound more consistent and actually widen the sweet spot to encompass the other areas where producers and players might be sitting when evaluating mixes. Two of my favourite applications of the SpaceCoupler are over absorbers above the mix position and over deep absorbers on the rear wall of a control room. The former is a very efficient, space-conserving method of eliminating the floor-ceiling first and second order axial modes that plague basement and bedroom studios. A relatively small area of SpaceCouplers over a few inches of absorption on the ceiling can greatly increase the low frequency punch in the room and allow for better mixing decisions for low frequency content. The second application — SpaceCouplers over deep absorbers on the control room rear wall — is a very aesthetically pleasing way of finishing out what might otherwise be a very dull, fabric-covered rear wall. This use of deep absorption is most often found in ‘neutral’ room designs. Mixing the SpaceCouplers with some

1000Hz

2000Hz

November/December 2005

diffusors can provide high frequency scattering, yet still allow the low frequency sound into the deep absorbers to control modal build-up and cancellation in the room. Angling the SpaceCouplers over the deep absorbers can also help facilitate the ‘waveguide’ approach of the Hidley/Newell ‘non-environment’ approach to control room rear wall design. Even used without an absorber underneath (bottom right of Figure 5), early (high frequency) reﬂections can be reduced by 10dB or more. Used at varying angles and depths, performance can be increased even more. The SpaceCoupler is handmade from solid wood. The craftsmanship is high and the musical qualities of the Paulownia wood (used in musical instrument construction in Asia) give a very natural feel to the

room. What Berger and others (including myself) have found is that using a high quality, natural wood diffuser — as opposed to diffusors made of more ‘manmade’ materials — can give a room a natural sound quality that isn’t really quantifiable. The possible applications for the SpaceCoupler are increasing daily; coupled spaces, increased absorber efficiency, well-scattered (diffused) sound, and so on. The high-end appearance makes the SpaceCoupler the newest alternative to flat absorbers and diffusors in studios around the world. ■

Contact AURALEX, US: Website: www.auralex.com

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business

Down the road with download Three years ago Resolution blazed the trail for the future of music sales by testing ﬁve ﬂedgling legal online music services. NIGEL JOPSON revisits the subject to check the current state of digital play.

HEN I FIRST WROTE about digital music stores in Resolution V1.5, paid-for services were seen as a novelty. My enthusiasm for legal downloads, and my general optimism for music sales based on these greenhorn operations, was viewed with a deal of scepticism by just about everyone, as the music industry suffered its worst sales dip for 30 years. Three years later, the P2P (Peer to Peer) illegal file sharing operators have never looked weaker. This summer, a judgement against Grokster gave US courts the power to sue and demand damages from creators or owners of P2P clients. It was like handing a loaded weapon to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), which has relentlessly pursued a policy of litigation: seven US-based P2P owners were served notice, and three of the most prominent — WinMX, Limewire and eDonkey — either announced their closure or intentions to legitimise their businesses. Kazaa was hit by an Australian court judgement, and Grokster is in discussions to sell. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité always translated badly to the great unwashed, and clumsy attempts to monetise ‘free’ music sharing have backfired badly. The market leader today is Apple’s iTunes Music Store, a service not even announced when Resolution originally examined paid-for digital music. Since Apple turned the iPod into a must-have fashion accessory and launched iTMS in April 2003, online music has become respectable and turned into a multibillion dollar industry. Apple has just reported the highest quarterly revenue and earnings in the company’s history: US$3.68b with a profit of $430m, compared to $2.35b and $106m a year ago. Some 6,451,000 iPods were shipped that quarter, a yearon-year growth rate of 220%. Having seen Apple’s share of the nascent personal computer market slide from 20% to less than 3% over 20 years, Steve Jobs seems likely to pour plenty of resources into retaining Apple’s 80% share of the new digital music market. Bold decisions, such as axing the popular coloured iPod Mini in favour of the new ultra-thin Nano player, show a determination to retain an aura of cool and must-have with Apple’s music products. Other indicators show the consumer boom in music playing machines is far from spent. ‘Despite concern about the overall economy, consumers intend to purchase, as well as hope to receive, a plethora of consumer electronics gifts this holiday season,’ said Consumer Electronics Association director of industry analysis Sean Wargo. Consumer interest in buying a portable MP3 player has increased from 20% in 2004 to 28% this year, and revenues from sales of MP3 players are up 105% so far this year. ITUNES MUSIC STORE — One look at iTMS and it’s clear how success has been achieved: the store is very simple to navigate because it uses all the metaphors of a bricks-and-mortar music shop. Special promotions, new releases, exclusives, pre-releases, just-added and staff favourites, all cleverly arranged on the home page. Graphics are all representations of album art. Customer input in the form of reviews and also48

purchased are only present at the album level, where personal taste has already filtered input. I like the fact that it’s possible to navigate the store without making a conscious decision about hierarchical genres. Genre-based browsing makes sense to computer programmers. ITMS automatically opens Genre/Artist/Album buttons at the top of the screen as you browse, so it’s easy to skip back a layer, and there’s rarely too much music or information on screen. An outstanding feature is the dedicated New Releases, Just Added and Favourites within each of the 20 genre home pages ... which is actually an improvement on most high-street stores. Albums are UK£7.99 or US$9.99, individual tracks are £0.79 or $0.99. You can download on up to 5 computers and burn to CD up to 7 times, and music can be streamed around a LAN. NAPSTER — The forerunner to legal-Napster was originally reviewed in these pages as the VivendiUniversal owned Pressplay ... which was sold for $12.5m and 3.9m shares to a small software company called Roxio, run by Chris Gorog, a former VP of Group Operations for Universal Studios Recreation Group. Roxio then purchased the Napster brand name for $5m from Bertellsmann (who, in a spirit of wild optimism from ex-CEO Thomas Middlehoff for online music, had sunk a reputed $60m into Napster). Roxio has now sold its software interests to focus on music. Napster 2.0 launched in Europe in May 2004, covered in Resolution V3.5. Unlike Apple, Roxio has promoted the subscription model: for £9.95 or $9.95 monthly you can listen to and download all the music you want, or for £/$14.95 the service offers full music synchronisation with players equipped for Microsoft’s Janus DRM system. The Creative Zen/Zen Micro, Toshiba Gigabeat and SanDisk players work outof-the-box, there are another 8 models from Dell, Gateway, iRiver and Rio that work with Firmware updates. If users let their subscriptions lapse, or do not go online for a month, then the DRM will lock out the songs. I’m not sure why this issue has provoked so much misunderstanding and bile among consumers, resolution

many of whom habitually pay subscription fees for cable or satellite TV and mobile phones, but it has. This demonstrates how simplicity of hardware operation (as in Apple iPods) can be the key to a successful media service. Napster also allows permanent downloads in WMA format for £0.79 per track and £7.99 per album. Napster’s recent ﬁnancial results show it has 412,000 subscribers and $46.7m revenue. BLEEP.COM — Not quite 2 years old, this service is owned by the respected left-ﬁeld UK indie label Warp Records. Now 85 other indies have made their

repertoire available on Bleep.com as well, covering an A-list of hip imprints such as Domino, Ninja, Rough Trade, Sanctuary, Wall of Sound and distributor Vital. All songs are available for £0.99 ($ & Euro 1.35), or £6.99 ($ & Euro 9.99) per album. The MP3 format tracks are totally unprotected by any form of DRM, and VBR encoded with the top open-source LAME codec. The site is a joy to use: once you’ve selected your imprint, miniature album artwork is displayed for each artist, selected releases for each label get their own section, and you can browse alphabetically when necessary for the larger labels. Every track can be auditioned from start to ﬁnish — but there’s a fade out every 30s — you just have to click a little waveform display to get it playing again. The success and ease of use of this site brings into question the need for DRM at all. The very audience for releases from Warp or Ninja is also the most likely demographic to be technically au-fait as regards computers and exchanging ﬁles electronically, but the runaway success of this site would suggest that if music-lovers are treated as customers rather than criminals, they will behave as such when presented with a really good product. One of the most impressive aspects of this site is that all selections are accomplished from the main web page. REAL NETWORKS RHAPSODY — This former Listen.com service scored high in our survey 3 years ago, and spokesman Matt Graves (who — incredibly — still works for Rhapsody) gave us our title when he said of his subscription service: ‘Music doesn’t have to be free, but it should feel free ... ten dollars is the cost of a beer and a burger.’ The basic Rhapsody service with clear-sounding 160kbps streams is still just $9.99 per month ... in fact anyone can now listen to 25 songs a month for free. Real says it has 1 million November/December 2005

business decided to launch its digital service the same month as rival HMV, also powered by MusicNet! The interface, while clean, seemed a little unresponsive and jerky, with an unfortunate splash screen displayed every time the application is opened. Record labels soon found that demand-based pricing (something they had been pushing for) cuts both ways — as HMV brieﬂy slashed single track downloads to £0.39 in an online price-war with rival Virgin.

subscribers for its music products, which include a $14.99 Rhapsody To Go service that synchronises with Microsoft Janus DRM players. In July 2004 Rhapsody put the cat among the pigeons by reverseengineering Apple’s Fairplay DRM system to offer iPod compatible songs with an ingenious software plug-in named Harmony. Apple responded with its V4.7 iTunes update to block tracks from Rhapsody. Real has also been involved in a very long-standing anti-competition complaint with Microsoft — it was partly because of Real that European regulators levied a record $613m ﬁne against the Redmond software giant. This October, Microsoft drew a line under the matter by paying $460m in cash to RealNetworks, and an additional $301m to support Real’s music and game programmes. Microsoft will earn credits towards the $301m by actively signing up customers for Rhapsody via MSN. It seems like a victory for Real CEO Rob Glaser, but the unanswered question is whether both companies will now turn their full attention to competing with Apple. HMV & VIRGIN DIGITAL — HMV’s original service, reviewed in Resolution V1.5, was a rather clunky, toe-in-thewater affair with an OD2powered back end. In September HMV launched a brand new service powered by MusicNet, with tracks priced at 79p, albums at £7.99, and a monthly subscription service called HMV unlimited. Using the Microsoft DRM protected WMA format, the interface borrows (heavily) from market leader iTunes in conceptual layout. Learning from 80 plus years of music retailing, HMV plans to charge slightly less for new artists and a little more for premium tracks. In a clever move, an HMV Live section will include exclusive tracks from live sets recorded during artist appearances in stores. Virgin

November/December 2005

V2.6 we previewed the UK’s Official Charts Company plan for a digital download chart — now the download chart is counted down on radio just like the physical chart. Digital releases have become a regular part of label promotion schedules and a key part of release strategies. Production pros are now accustomed to seeing downloads on their royalty statements — speaking for my own (very modest) paperwork I’d say that downloads amount to around 1-2% of total at present — looking at song titles, I’d guess YAHOO MUSIC UNLIMITED — Yahoo burst on the that some tunes on unwanted complete albums or scene in May this year, offering a monthly unlimited overlooked on compilations are being rediscovered download by consumers. subscription So far, royalties and charts have only been based service for a on paid-for single track downloads. In September stunning $6.99 Nielsen Entertainment’s Broadcast Data Systems per month — announced it will commence measuring tethered falling to $4.99 (subscription service) music downloads and streams per month if from leading providers including MusicNet (supplying billed annually. tethered engines for companies like AOL, Yahoo, With the Yahoo Virgin Digital, HMV), Napster and RealNetworks’ Music Engine Rhapsody. This development makes the outlook and Yahoo very positive for musicians and producers, although Instant Messenger running, you can invite other users the profitability implications for the all-you-canto share playlists or add a person who has a musical eat services are less clear. My personal view is taste you admire to be an ‘Influencer.’ Permanent that subscription services of the Napster model downloads are $0.79, files are 192kbps WMA format may gravitate to embedded software in appliances and can be transferred to a limited selection of Janus (like mobile phones) or to computers masquerading portable players. Unlike other services, there’s no as appliances (such as living-room versions of facility to re-download songs accidentally erased, but Microsoft XP Media Centre). The outlook is very the service will undoubtedly be refined in future and positive. The only people who stand to lose out Yahoo has considerable resources to deploy. from all this promising progress are the unsung, unroyaltied session players, engineers and assistants Looking forward it’s easy to predict music has a digital ... the all important name-check has been vaporised res_apple041105.qxd 3:59 become PM Page 1 future, but harder to look at the functions of services online 04/11/2005 ... and when releases digital-only, the now and predict who the future key players will be. sleeve credit will have ceased to exist. ■ Apple’s Steve Jobs, in a September interview, said major labels are demanding iTMS raises prices. ‘The labels make more money from selling tracks on iTunes than The Dream ADA-8XR: when they sell a CD. There are • Prism Sound has become no marketing costs for them,’ he synonymous with audio claimed, ‘if they want to raise the excellence prices it just means they’re getting a little greedy.’ There is no doubt • The XR has direct connection Apple is using music to leverage to Pro ToolsIHD or Mix, AES, sales of its own hardware, and DSD, Firewire and SPDIF some of the other main players are • The XR works at sample taking big financial hits to get their rates from 32k - 192k own services into contention. The money will only really start to roll • The XR has enhanced for online stores when fixed costs clocking stability are dwarfed by sales volumes. So it’s instructive to look at how large the free cash reserves of the main players are: Napster $139m, RealNetworks $370m, Apple $6.5b, Yahoo $7b, Microsoft $40b ... it’s easy to see how Microsoft can afford to drop a few hundred million to settle some lawsuits. iTMS has sold more than 600m songs worldwide and is on course to pass 750m by year end. The IFPI says digital music sales have PRISM MEDIA PRODUCTS LIMITED PRISM MEDIA PRODUCTS INC. tripled in the first half of 2005, UK USA Tel : +44 1223 424 988 Tel : (973) 983 9577 and now represent 6% of total Fax : + 44 1223 425 023 Fax : (973) 983 9588 record industry sales. In the UK, http://www.prismsound.com Email: sales@prismsound.com single track downloads increased NOTE: Digidesign, Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH and Apple Computer Inc do not endorse or support the Prism Sound ADA-8XR unit. Not all Pro-Tools, Nuendo, Cubase or Logic controls or configurations are supported by the Prism Sound ADA-8XR. Prism Sound reserve the right to amend their own product specifications without tenfold to 10 million units in the notice. Digidesign, Pro Tools I HD are trademarks of Digidesign a division of Avid Technology Inc. Nuendo and Cubase are trademarks of Steinberg Media technologies GmbH a division of Yamaha Corporation, Logic is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc first half of 2005. In Resolution

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meet your maker high quality, cost effective solutions. The product line includes recording and live sound mixing consoles (ASP8024 and Aztec), 8-channel microphone ampliﬁers (ASP008), an analogue summing unit (Sumo), and 5.1 monitoring solutions (ASP510). They are all characterised by excellent performance, ergonomic simplicity, a shallow learning curve and rugged, real-world interfaces.

Many manufacturers have dropped out of the analogue recording desk sector claiming uneconomic manufacture for a market that has disappeared, what do you say to that? The market has not disappeared, but it has changed dramatically. The days of many large studios with vast SSL and Neve consoles may be over, but for any live sound an analogue front end is still required, as is EQ and compression. Even if the resulting processed signal is then recorded digitally, some form of monitoring of the recorded tracks is usually required, not to mention all those boring bits like foldback and talkback. While all these can be provided by individual bits of gear, it is still more convenient in most cases, and if space permits, to have a console. Automation is not that much of an issue anymore, as it can be performed in the workstation, and in general, the feature set and complexity of the console can be reduced. This usually has the beneﬁcial effect of simplifying the signal path and improving audio quality. In the foreseeable future, there will continue to be a requirement for the analogue interfaces to wrap around a digital core.

David Dearden The man behind the varied designs carrying the Audient brand has had a varied career in studios and manufacturing. He talks to ZENON SCHOEPE about one trick ponies, digital obsolescence, the summing bus issue and how modern manufacturing methods are making analogue desks even better.

ECHNICAL DIRECTOR OF MIXING console manufacturer Audient, David Dearden was born in South Africa and in 1968 took a job in a large studio in Johannesburg belonging to David Manley (the original founder of Manley Laboratories) where he experienced music, commercial, drama and film recording as well as disc cutting. It was during this time that he had his first involvement with mixing consoles by assisting in the construction of a valve console using mainly Telefunken V72 modules. In 1970, aged 20, he arrived in the UK to further his work experience in the recording industry and within two weeks was working at Advision Studios as junior maintenance engineer. Despite not wanting to stay too long in England, five years later he was still there and had worked with Eddie Offord and Gus Dudgeon. He was also involved with studio designer Eddie Veale in building a custom console and private studio for John Lennon for his Imagine sessions, and subsequently studios for George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Gus Dudgeon, and Chris Squire of Yes. Following three years with MCI and two years at Soundcraft, David and Gareth Davies (also ex Soundcraft) founded DDA (Dearden Davies Associates) in 1980 and over the next 15 years David was responsible for the design of the majority of DDA products starting with the DD1000 and DD500 electronic crossovers. The first mixer was a custom 10:2 portable design for Tony Faulkner, which was later expanded and became the basis for the 4 bus M Series and S Series, and the 8 bus D Series mixers. 50

The real break came with the introduction in 1985 of the AMR24 24-bus split desk, which broke new ground and set a new price/performance marker. More desks followed including the automated and centrally assignable in-line DCM232 and the allinput Proﬁle and DMR12 plus a variety of live sound mixers. When DDA became part of the Klark Teknik Group he also designed the Midas XL200 and did the initial concept and design of the Midas H1000. In the 1997 Dearden and Davies decided to get back to doing what they enjoyed most: market research and detailed designing of mixing consoles, and formed Audient.

What is special about Audient products? The ethos behind Audient products is to provide

What are the limitations of modern digital desk designs? Not so much a limitation as an irritation is ease of use. With an analogue console everything is clearly laid out and has one button per function and gives a ‘graphic’ view of the status of all the functions on the inputs, outputs and returns. The superior ergonomics and shallow learning curve are apparent to everyone who requires ‘real-time’ operation and it cannot be compared with the multifunction knob and/or layered control surface. The in-line recording/mixing console has had many years to evolve and become optimised to the job in hand, although this may not be optimum for other purposes. For instance, broadcast, postproduction and theatre sound consoles all have their own requirements, which are not optimally catered for in the conventional in-line architecture. However, I think the greatest limitation of a digital console is the built in obsolescence factor. It’s a bit like buying a computer. No sooner have you got it up and running and it has been superceded by a new model. Digital consoles and computer-based systems are still evolving, and inherently have a high redundancy and obsolescence factor. In 10 years time what would you be willing to pay for a current digital console or DAW and would you still be able to use it? Where are the compromises in designing and building an economically priced and well featured analogue desk in the 21st Century? If we compare consoles currently in production with those built in the 1970s and 80s, the biggest change is probably in the mechanical construction, and in the method of wiring. The replacement of transformers with electronic balancing allowed the use of simpler module mechanics, which did not need to be totally enclosed for screening. The massive reduction in module weight allowed the use of much simpler frame designs. The introduction of ﬂat ribbon cables

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November/December 2005

meet your maker replacing large bundles of screened cables reduced frame wiring times from weeks or months down to days. The combined result of all these factors were products that could offer more and more features for the same or even less money. Today there are even more techniques that can be used in the design. Higher density ribbon cables and connectors are now economically available, and surface mount components allow a substantial reduction in the depth (if not the length) of the printed circuit boards. However, the use of surface mount components can be a double-edged sword: faster assembly times, but sometimes more expensive components. In addition, the quality of the components needs to be carefully evaluated to maintain noise and distortion performance. The reduction of required PCB area has also allowed the re-evaluation of the module structure. Instead of having separate vertically mounted boards on individual modules, the board can be placed parallel to a single front panel, and shared by a number of channels. This can lead to a substantial reduction in cost, but the perceived downside is the difficulty of maintenance. This really is a hangover from less reliable times. In reality, modern components and surface mount assembly methods are now so reliable that it really is a non issue. This is the construction method used in the Audient ASP8024 console and in the interests of efficiency, board sizes were designed to take full advantage of the maximum assembly sizes possible on auto placement, auto insertion and flow solder machines. This allowed 12 channels of an in-line configuration console to be placed on just three PCBs with a channel to channel pitch of just 37mm! The first PCB contains 12 sets of channel input and output circuitry, including the mic pres, the second contains 12 sets of auxiliary sends (14 buses) and group assignments (24 buses), and the third contains the 12 sets of equalisers and channel/monitor paths. These methods should certainly not be considered as compromises, I don’t think that the hundreds of users of ASP8024 across the world would think so. Evolution is a better way of putting it.

What are the processing strongholds of analogue? The obvious answer to this has to be the sonic ‘flavour’ introduced by different consoles, compressors and EQs. Plug-ins rarely, if ever, manage to reproduce the nuances of character that a vintage analogue compressor can achieve. However, most users of plugin emulations have never actually used the real thing so they don’t miss what they have never experienced. Of course, they also don’t miss the noise, crackles, and general unreliability and high maintenance overhead of vintage units. Dynamics processing in the digital domain is notoriously difficult to emulate, although there are excellent digital limiters that are able to control levels inaudibly. However, these are protection devices, and analogue compressors are used as much as effects devices as level controllers, as was the use of tape compression by overdriving. It is no coincidence that there is now (in the digital age) such an abundance of external analogue processing gear available to try to reintroduce some of the character that seems to have been lost. Having said all that, I have never really subscribed to the view that a console should impart a flavour, such as old Neves and Tridents are reputed to do. In my view, this is rather a ‘one trick pony’. What happens when you don’t want that particular sound? It is probably impossible to remove it. I prefer to November/December 2005

design a console to be as transparent as possible. In this way, any required ﬂavour can be added at will.

would prefer one knob per function, but that many encoders/motor driven pots is not really viable. No one selling analogue consoles can afford to ignore modern work practises — many users work with both analogue and digital tools. We’ve recently launched the ACS8024 — a new variant of our established recording console. This provides a section in the centre of the console that can house a DAW controller and LCD screen, so that all the core physical controls are immediately to hand in one neat ergonomic package.

Have analogue desk designs changed in an ergonomic sense because of user familiarity with digital? Probably quite the opposite. To many music recording and live sound engineers, it has reinforced their view that ergonomically, an analogue desk is far superior to the multi-function and menu orientated structure of a digital desk. As an analogy, who would want to drive a car with a single assignable foot pedal? Yes it is possible, but not preferable. It is economics not How real is the summing bus issue in DAWs? ergonomics that has dictated the typical digital desk It is certainly real enough for a large number of people layout. Given the choiceAdI think that most people 9:58 to be SCV Serato Junior 3-11-05 11/3/05 AM concerned Page 1 about it, and to be able to hear a

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meet your maker worked for an entire session. Then SSL appeared with a beautifully thought out and ergonomic worksurface, which almost anyone could operate, and with automation which actually worked. Pity about the sound of course, but they learnt how to do that too a few years later!

difference in what should be two identical mixes. Different does not necessarily equate to better, but the general consensus seems to be that analogue mixes are more spacious and detailed. However, not all DAWs are created equal, and as far as sound quality is concerned some are certainly better than others at the moment. There are many factors at work here, such as ﬁxed versus ﬂoating point processing, summing algorithms and D-A conversion topologies, clocking accuracy, to name but a few. In theory though, all digital summing should sound the same if the same algorithms and convertors are used. Of course, the same does not apply to analogue circuitry, and each analogue summing product will have its own character, as does every mixing console. The characteristic sound of different analogue units is probably due more to systems design, internal grounding, and power distribution than to the choice

of which IC has been used. The Audient Sumo unit has been designed to be as neutral as possible, using high headroom, balanced summing buses to eliminate any ground related artefacts. An integral mix bus compressor can be switched in to introduce character if required, and fully balanced insert points allow the use of any external processor.

Which console designs have you admired as being pivotal in the evolution of the mixer? The SSL E series must be the deﬁning recording product of the 1970s. Prior to this, although there were a few standard recording consoles from companies such as MCI and Harrison, the majority were still one-off custom builds designed speciﬁcally for the needs of each studio. Every one was different and had its own set of operating idiosyncrasies. Automation, if it existed at all, was extremely primitive, and rarely

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How far can we go with analogue — at what stage will it become redundant? The last few years have actually seen a resurgence of interest in analogue recording consoles. It’s interesting to look at what has driven the apparent reversal in what had, only a few years ago, seemed to be an inexorable march towards the all-digital recording path. Pound for pound there is still no comparison between the sound quality of an analogue console like the ASP8024 and a comparatively priced digital console. Anything other than the very expensive digital consoles suffer from subjectively poor sound quality compared to their analogue counterparts. If you are using the internal convertors on a lower price digital console, this problem will be compounded. If you consider that 24 channels of high quality A-D, DA convertor could cost in excess of £15,000 it is easy to see where some of the problem occurs. Perversely perhaps, developments in digital audio and the move to higher sampling rates have highlighted the beneﬁts of analogue recordings. Digital consoles able to process DSD data are still rare. Material that has been recorded digitally using low sample rate PCM techniques cannot beneﬁt from the increased resolution of more modern formats. The analogue path provides the ideal solution and indeed many 5.1 SACD re-releases have been remixed on analogue consoles, quite often from tape-based sources. We also need to remember that digital audio techniques are still at a relatively early stage of development. The pace at which they are advancing is rapid and this means that obsolescence is a real issue — in just the same way as it does in computing. Analogue on the other hand has reached a stage of development that renders it future-proof. That is not to say that analogue has reached the end of the development road. Audient, along with many others in the industry, works continuously on new topologies and implementations that will keep analogue moving forward in terms of performance and usability. ■

November/December 2005

technology

Radio and its multichannel challenge 5.1 has become an accepted mode of delivery for audio in the ﬁlm, TV and music industries and this increase in audio channels has been driven largely by consumer demand with many households now owning DVD players and 5.1 speaker systems. Add to this HDTV audiences, cinema-goers and gamers and it quickly becomes clear that there is now a level of consumer expectation that has to be met by content providers. And then there’s radio, says APT commercial director JON McCLINTOCK.

HIS IS AN OPPORTUNE time to highlight the fact that surround, in its various guises, is actually a relatively old technology. The first attempt to get it off the ground for broadcasters was a quadraphonic arrangement in the early 1970s. For the radio industry this died on the vine for a number of different reasons including the difficulty radio audiences faced in decoding content, consumer confusion, multiple formats and debates about standards (Matrix versus Discrete, which is a recurring theme). Most importantly, its failure was down to a lack of content (either live or recorded) that was created primarily for radio. The failure could also have been due to the fact that stereo was still in its infancy and the movement to multiple channel was just too much of a fundamental leap for the radio broadcast industry to deal with at that time. The film industry took up the matrix version of quadraphonic, with Dolby Labs leading from the front. The Dolby multichannel approach for cinema, in the analogue domain, used Left, Centre, Right and Surround and became the standard approach, particularly after the success of Star Wars in the late 1970s. The Left, Centre and Right speakers were all placed in front of the cinema audience and the Surround channel was reproduced by multiple speakers distributed around the rear and sides of the theatre. After that came the digital approach, which was 5.1 (Left, Centre, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround and the Low Frequency Effects channel). Several other organisations in competition with Dolby Labs (for example DTS and Sony) offered different approaches and following the success of surround for cinema came the migration to and subsequent take up by the home theatre. Now that the film industry has refined the concept,

it is a simple fact that the radio broadcast industry needs to provide 5.1 content. Radio broadcasters are in a highly pressurised market competing against information and entertainment mediums such as TV, Internet, DVD, MP3 players and iPods. An old twochannel programme is simply not going to meet the demands of the target audience. Digital Radio has made the incremental step of improving quality by increasing audio bandwidth (‘crystal clear CD quality’) and adding ancillary services (scrolling text), but this is primarily still focussed on delivering 2-channel content. To make a signiﬁcant step, the next generation of digital radio services needs to offer the surround sound experience. Several 5.1-for-radio pilot projects have been completed and the war of standards is raging for a suitable transmission protocol. Although several

parties are involved, the primary participants are Dolby, DTS and SRS who between them have many millions of decoders in the market. However, the actual methodology of the transmission is an interesting topic in that it offers up the options of Discrete, Matrix and now a third alternative known as Watermarking. Discrete is self-explanatory in that a broadcaster transmits ﬁve separate channels plus the LFE — an approach that is well received among audio purists. The Matrix solution has two parties — Fraunhofer and Coding Technologies — pushing this agenda. This approach advocates the use of a parametric steering channel as a side channel to an existing stereo platform and uses a perceptual coding technique to achieve the bit rate reduction. Multichannel decoders can reconstruct a surround mix from the Left/Right and Steering channel signal. This process assumes

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technology NPR Broadcast using apt-X

that content should be kept in discrete format up to the point of transmission. The third alternative of watermarking generates a parametric steering channel upstream during the broadcast production phase. This signal is encoded as a watermark and is perceptually hidden in an uncompressed digital stereo audio signal. Neural Audio and Harris Broadcast are offering this solution to broadcasters whereby the watermark remains imperceptible after broadcast processing and in turn can be correctly decoded by a surround system. The manufacturers of digital receivers will probably take the well-trodden route of spinning-in a variety of solutions to decode surround. Listeners

will be able to get 5.1 content into their homes through Set Top Boxes and, hopefully, the various alternatives for transmission will be largely irrelevant to the listening audience as the Set Top Boxes will be sophisticated enough to decode content regardless of the transmission algorithms/protocols. However, the home listener is only a minority of the target audience and the segment that really gets the juices ﬂowing for broadcasters and technology providers is the in-car audience. One of the bigger challenges is how the broadcaster moves live content from remote locations (music and sporting venues) through to its studios and then out to its transmitter sites. One solution is to process all ﬁve

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audio channels and the LFE in linear PCM. For the record, a 24-bit, 48kHz sampled programme requires a data rate of almost 6Mbit/s for 5.1 channels. For most broadcasters, such an option is completely cost prohibitive and will kill any contribution and distribution projects at birth. This brings us to our old friend digital audio data compression and the balancing act between low bit rate algorithms using perceptual coders and slightly higher bit rates that use ADPCM principles. Perceptual coders will certainly reduce the network costs but add substantial latency and run the risk of destroying the phase relationship between the individual channels. Given the loss of stereo

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separation caused by perceptual coders in stereo signals, this is almost a certainty. It is also worth noting that the final transmission algorithm, whether DTS, Dolby or SRS, will be highly bit rate reduced and all efforts toward conserving content should be made prior to the final transmission. Many lessons should have been learnt following DAB and HD Radio, not least that the artefacts in the content were directly due to the number of perceptual coding passes in the broadcast chain. An ADPCM-based algorithm will offer a much lower coding delay and will retain the phase between the channels. Enhanced apt-XTM from APT is generally considered by the broadcast and post industries (and cinema audiences listening to DTS — apt-X is licensed to DTS) to be relatively non-destructive in nature. In addition, Enhanced apt-X offers an endto-end system latency of fewer than five milliseconds making it a suitable solution for 5.1 contribution and distribution. Another option is Dolby E, which has been touted as a solution given its success in DTV. Dolby E was specifically designed to ease the transition for DTV broadcasters from two channel to multichannel audio for distribution applications using existing AES3 infrastructures. However, radio broadcast does not suffer from the same constraints as DTV i.e. video frame rates. As such, Dolby E has a few fundamental issues that would have to be overcome by radio broadcasters. These include a latency of over 60 milliseconds, bit polling between channels, an inability to process individual channels, a word resolution limited to approximately 22 bits and a set sampling frequency of 48kHz. Also, Dolby E is based on perceptual coding techniques. There have been a few pioneering broadcasters who have put to air 5.1 pilot projects using live source material. In most cases the live material has been Classical or Jazz content. Interestingly, these projects are happening in parallel on both sides of the Atlantic — ORF in Austria and NPR in the USA, being two examples. Unsurprisingly, the Europeans and the Americans have explored two fundamentally different techniques, but key to both was the use of Enhanced apt-X. ORF, under the guidance of Karl Petermichl (and closely observed by his fellow EBU members) chose Enhanced apt-X wrapped up in the WorldNet SkyLink. This unit is a codec with eight discrete channels (5.1 and a Stereo pair) and it uses an Ethernet port to present the compressed data to the

outside world. The WorldNet SkyLink units were used for projects that included Night of the Long Radio and ORF’s New Year’s Eve broadcast. The discrete channel approach enabled ORF to process individual channels and keep to a minimum the amount of hardware used in the broadcast chain. Data capacity was provided by Austria Telecom, which supplied a 2Mbit/s ADSL circuit. It is worth outlining that both WDR and BR in Germany are also using Enhanced apt-X for 5.1 but are using an E1 interface (for these projects the broadcasters used the APT WorldNet Oslo). The actual transport medium, Synchronous or IP, would appear to be a decision based on what service the local Telco provides. In the USA, NPR, directed by Mike Papas, has put to air a number of broadcasts including a Diane Reeves concert and the Toast of the Nation New Year’s Eve event in December 2004. Papas used the fundamentally different approach of Watermarking for moving surround sound content. In this case, at the concert site Mike and his production team downmixed the 5.1 channels to 2 channels using the Neural Audio 5225 system. He then transported the two channels using ISDN codecs. The ISDN codec was the APT WorldNet Tokyo, which bonds together 4 x ISDN lines to create a 512kBit/s data pipe and uses Enhanced apt-X at 24-bit, 48kHz. As Enhanced apt-X is a non-destructive compression algorithm, this removed the incidence of artefacts affecting the downmix (something that an MPEG algorithm could not achieve in an ISDN codec). At the receiving end, NPR reconstituted the two channels back up to a 5.1 signal. The results of pilot projects undertaken by these pioneering broadcasters are likely to shape and inﬂuence the decisions taken when largescale deployment of 5.1 multichannel broadcasting begins in earnest. While ORF and NPR adopted two fundamentally alternative approaches using different equipment and transport mediums (and APT does not claim that one approach is superior to another), the constant in both scenarios was the choice of coding algorithm to provide the right balance of network efﬁciency, latency and audio quality. Regardless of the coding or production techniques used, the radio industry can now put to air live 5.1 material, which should offer a compelling reason for listeners to stay with radio as an entertainment and information medium. ■

PASSIONATE ABOUT TUBES

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in the picture

Integration There are reasons why workﬂows ﬂow the way they do — some are historical and sensible, some are just historical. Changes to the picture and sound gear being employed across projects heralds a new age of integration, according to ROB JAMES.

ILM PRODUCTION IS, or used to be, a very linear process. Shoot the material, edit the pictures, design and tracklay the sound and do the optical effects, complete the final mix and make adjustments based on the answer prints, then produce the show prints. This is obviously far too simplistic and many films involve parallel processes for speed, and recursion as things change but, essentially, this is the way it has been for a very long time and for very good reasons. Filmmaking is an extremely expensive undertaking. The most cash intensive part of the process is shooting. Assuming the money to finance this is borrowed, every day between getting the movie ‘in the can’ and distribution incurs interest charges, and we’re not talking peanuts. From the dawn of the cinema this has lead to a regimented, industrial process mandated by technical and financial constraints where speed is as important as the art. There have always been notable exceptions, made by auteurs investing their own (and anyone else’s they can persuade) money, and by ‘boxable’ stars, indulged by their studios, but in the main the film production process, especially the postproduction process, is depressingly formulaic. Postproduction and in particular the picture and sound editing processes have only recently progressed beyond the cinematic equivalent of non-linear text editing using cut ups/paste ups. There is also the suspicion that the most popular of the new tools have achieved that popularity not so much for their excellence as because they fit naturally into the conventional model and are almost as profligate with time as their predecessors. Therefore they pose little or no threat to conservative film craftspeople or facilities. In contrast, when creating material for printed or online consumption, we have become accustomed to clicking on an object, a graphic, a chart or an image November/December 2005

to edit it while writing. We now expect a full range of appropriate tools to be available exactly when and where they are needed. This is a much more intuitive and instinctive way of working and a glimmer of hope is visible in some of the contemporary video tools. I’ve just had the valuable opportunity of observing how a novice approached the postproduction process when presented with real-time tools and left to get on with it. First the images get thrown into some sort of order, then some sound is selected and added. From here on the user switched back and forth between picture editing, sound editing and mixing and visual effects, as they felt appropriate. Watching this was a salutary experience. The result was far more cohesive and better timed and executed than you could reasonably expect any novice to produce if following a conventional, linear route. I’ve also recently spent some time watching TV journalists working the same way, editing picture, sound and graphics in any order appropriate to the item. In these cases, all the processes were online. Since nonlinear picture editing for ﬁlm is usually an ofﬂine process and there are many more technical constraints, it is not yet possible

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to directly extrapolate this methodology to film. However, it is interesting when viewed alongside some recent pronouncements in an Apple Final Cut Pro/Soundtrack Pro ‘Customer Story’ video by one of the best-respected renaissance figures in film, Walter Murch. I quote: ‘We’re beginning to glimpse this ultimate integration of visual effects and sound effects and picture editing all being connected like a spider web to the centre focus, which is the film. Anything that makes the border between picture and sound transparent so that the border between the two is not this “crisis point” which it’s been up until now is going to fantastically change the nature of what we do, because we’ll have the ability to do it.’ Walter Murch’s ‘crisis point’ is the nub of the problem. Since the dawn of audio and video workstations, file and project interchange has been a huge issue. As a result we seem to have somehow accepted the giant step between picture editing and sound editing. Not only that, we continue to put up with the fact that moving material backwards and forwards between the heavy-duty tools for picture editing, effects and sound editing is still tortuous, fraught with difficulties and time-consuming, despite what many of the manufacturers would have you believe. In fact this is such a mountain that it has obscured our view of the peak we should be aiming for i.e. real, transparent integration. Is it so unreasonable to expect at least the same level of format agnosticism and transparency we enjoy between contemporary high-end word processing and DTP software and the specialised image and graphics editing and manipulation packages? For want of a better word -– integration. Even where more than one person is involved, with different individuals specialising in picture editing, sound and visual effects, the inherent advantages seamless integration would bring, with near instant switching between processes, should be glaringly obvious. As a really simple example; I suspect any picture or sound editor or dubbing (re-recording) mixer reading this will have met the incredibly frustrating situations where a tiny adjustment to the picture edit would have made all the difference to making an edit work with the sound. From conversations with picture editors, I know they often feel the same way when they hear the final mix. One obvious barrier to progress is protectionist fear from people working in the industry. This is often dressed up in the guise of concern about non-specialists meddling with things they are not trained for and do not understand. My riposte to this is, take a look at the work of people like Walter Murch and Robert Rodriguez and listen to what they have to say. Given the appropriate tools we just might be entering a golden age where real film making talent can rise to the surface unimpeded by antediluvian restrictive working practices. If Murch is correct, in a few years time we may look back at current postproduction routes with the same nostalgia and amusement with which we now view the typewriter, hot metal typesetting and hand engraved illustrations. ■ 57

steinberg top tips

The Control Room Nuendo 3.2 is out and the update has put a lot on energy into adding an exemplary level of Control Room functionality to the package. Steinberg’s ANGUS BAIGENT explains the features and the application.

UENDO 3.2 IS THE LATEST version of the Media Production System, and was announced at the AES in New York. The big addition in the latest version is the new Control Room functionality. What the new Control Room features offer is a dedicated architecture that covers just about any of those monitoring and busing aspects of mixing that were previously only handled by mixers or dedicated hardware. These include separate studio and headphone mixes, talkback functions, busing of Click signals, immediate switching between different monitoring setups including foldown, direct playback of external sources like CD, DAT and DVD players to different studios, and more. The main function of the Control Room mixer is to enable the engineer to switch listening between various sources without affecting his main mix. The

Screen inputs and outputs 1 Studio   



Control Room feature set also provides four separate Studio mixes. These Studio mixes will normally be used for sending a headphone mix to performers with a unique mix to each one. The Control Room signal is the one that is actually heard on your monitoring system(s), but is not necessarily the same one as your ‘Main’ mix, i.e. the one you get when you go to mixdown. We’ll come back to some of the advantages of this later. The heart of the new Control Room is a new dedicated panel entitled, surprisingly enough, the Control Room Mixer. Exactly which of your audio card inputs and outputs are set up for which devices, studios and monitoring systems is conﬁgured in the VST  Connections   window,

Screen 2 Control Room Mixer

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November/December 2005

steinberg top tips which is located in the main Devices menu. There you can see a new Studio tab [Screen 1] where you can configure all the outputs for the studio headphones, the monitor setups and the performers in the studios, and the inputs for external audio sources and Talkback. To get a quick overview of the new functionality, let’s go through the new Control Room window from left to right [Screen 2]. The first channel on the far left is a new channel for External Audio sources. Up to six different sources can be routed to this channel and are available to the four separate studios as well as the control room and headphone mixes. We’ll be looking at these areas in more detail later on. This is a very convenient way of instantly sending a signal from an external player to a performer or to quickly compare a performance to one from, say, a CD. But these predefined external returns are also available as an input source for any channel in the main mixer. Next are the four dedicated and separate Studio channels that can be sent to performers working in up to four recording booths. The Studio might be a group of musicians playing together or an actor recording ADR dialogue. In Nuendo 3.2, each Studio has its own mix complete with panning, levels and FX set up exactly as required. You can set up a basic mix for a Studio very quickly by telling Nuendo 3.2 to use the same Send levels and Pan settings for every channel on your Studio mix as the levels you have set for the ‘Main’ mix, and then adjust settings for each Studio mix from there according to the different needs of the person behind the glass. The Studio mixes are set up with a new Studio Send for each channel in the main Nuendo VST Mixer, with one available for each Studio. Each studio channel can receive any of the six External return sources, the special Studio mix you’ve set up for that performer or the main mix. Next to each Studio channel fader you can also see a Click button. This activates the Nuendo master click for each Studio channel separately; below that are control elements for the click level and panning, which can also be set separately for each Studio. Beneath the Click button is another labelled TE, which stands for Talkback Enabled. The Talkback system in Nuendo 3.2 offers functions that until now were only available by using a hardware mixer or other dedicated external hardware. In Nuendo 3.2, each Studio with the Talkback function on will be selected when you use Talkback. The Talkback channel for each studio also has six pre-fader inserts — very useful for adding effects like compression to the talkback signal to ensure clarity when talking to performers. In Nuendo, Talkback mode has the added feature that the playback of the control room mix is automatically dimmed by any amount; -30dB is the default value. The Talkback can be momentary or latching. The fifth channel from the left is a dedicated headphone mix channel. This is set up only to play back on a specific output that you route to your headphones. You can, just like with the monitoring mix which we’ll come to shortly, instantly send the main mix, the Click signal, External Sources and any of the individual Studio mixes to this output. Now comes the sixth channel, which is, if you like, the main channel that goes out to your monitoring systems. This is where you control the mix heard on your control room monitors. You’ll notice that next to this main monitoring channel on the far right there is another channel strip. Most engineers have several monitoring setups and need to toggle between A/B monitor setups. Those mixing for surround often need a way of, say, quickly putting all the signals on the November/December 2005

centre speaker, instantly isolating only the LS and RS channels, and so on. This is exactly where the main control room channel comes in. Let’s take a look at the channel strip on the far right. At the top you can see a large VU Meter (although you can use this panel to show inserts instead). This shows the actual levels going to the monitoring system you select. Below the VU Meter is a pictogram representing a surround speaker set up. Clicking on a speaker will solo it. The six buttons directly below it allow you to solo the rear surround channels, put the whole mix onto the front three speakers or the front left and right pair. Below this is a window where you can select a foldown configuration that allows you to go from, say, a 5.1 mix to stereo, stereo to mono, or any other available configuration. Typical foldown configurations are provided as presets but can also be edited. At the bottom right corner you can select the actual monitoring system you use. Up to four different setups can be defined in the VST connections window ranging from mono up to 10.2, and can be toggled easily in the Control Room window. These monitoring systems even provide the option to insert various plug-ins allowing for speaker delays or equalisation. You can switch this control room channel to play any of the four studio mixes, the External audio signal bus or the Main mix. To help you keep track of the complex routing possibilities a Control Room

Screen 3 Control Room Overview

Overview window [Screen 3], which is an extra viewing panel found in the Devices menu, visualises all current routing for the Control Room mixer, and displays the settings as they’re altered. As with all other areas of Nuendo functionality, you can set key commands for any Control Room function. Another aspect is that the application handles routing monitoring for all audio sources, be they real or virtual. ‘Ordinary’ audio channels, groups and FX return channels are just as easily integrated into the separate Studio mixes as ReWire applications, VSTis or audio coming in from External MIDI hardware that is triggered by MIDI tracks from within the same application. At its release, the WK Audio ID Controller featured a Control Room section with rotary knobs, buttons and switches for functionality that at the time was not yet supported by Nuendo. Because the development of the two products has been dovetailed, Nuendo 3.2 now delivers the software-side functions for the Control Room that were already implemented on the hardware side in the ID on its release. Almost all of the software functions described above are hard-wired into the ID Controller with complete compatibility. Best of all, this level of functionality is available as a free download update to current registered Nuendo 3 owners. ■ resolution

katz’s column

Get off the bus Bob Spade (AKA BOB KATZ) private ear here. I was sitting in my mastering room vacuuming the tweeters, when the phone rang. Fred, back from his honeymoon, was already deeply into his music. ‘Bob, can we come over? You’ve got to hear this new rock ‘n’ roll mix we’re doing. It really rocks.’ ‘All right!’ I replied, ‘and this listening’s on the house ‘cause I still owe you and Becky a wedding present.’

NSTANT DIGITAL FAST forward to yesterday, with Fred and Becky playing their mix of a new rock group with real instruments for a change — guitar-based, reminiscent of the Stones but with a 2005 grunge edge. The drummer was trying to kick ass, but the snare sounded strangely muted, the bass drum just wasn’t punching on my super monitors, and I noticed the guitar strums seemed a bit blasé. The rest of the mix was a bit mushy; keyboards and effects were not defined and it was hard to place them in the panning field. ‘Are you sure you tracked this in your A Room, guys?’ I asked. ‘I’m sorry to bust your chops, but this mix is not as clear as your usual mixes. What have you changed?’ ‘Huh?’ said Fred, defensively. ‘I don’t get it. I patch the 2-bus compressor in for the first time — everything just sounds punchier to me, and you don’t like it!’ ‘Well, I did notice that the mix is louder and has a bit more power, but I don’t think it’s a win-win situation, Fred,’ I said, tactfully. ‘Let’s take a trip to your room.’ At the B&F studio I noticed that their 2-bus compressor was kicking in all the time, with about 3dB of gain reduction. The attack and release times were set rather short. Another thing I noticed is that Fred’s mix faders were mostly lined up at the same level on the board. I tweaked the guitar fader up about 5dB but it only seemed to come up about 1. Well, that’s one way to get an automatic mix! Res_horizontal_07.05 27/6/05 ‘Fred, I truly believe that a mix engineer5:39 shouldpm be sweating bullets,’ I said. ‘If you don’t have to tweak

those faders then you’re probably using too much compression, either on individual tracks or on the 2-bus. I think the best-sounding rock and pop mixes that I get from the most skilled mix engineers do not have 2-bus compression on them. That’s not to say that a great mix can’t happen with an overall compressor, but it honestly takes more skill to mix without one and the results can be more open, danceable, and more natural. Plus, they’ll translate better to the radio, especially with a traditional rock band like this one.’ ‘But the mix definitely sounds better to me with this thing. I swear,’ Fred decried. Becky was strangely silent. ‘What do you think, Beck?’ I asked. ‘Well, I think this mix is very tiring, everything’s loud all the time,’ she cried. ‘Spoken like a sensitive woman,’ I replied. ‘Research has shown that women’s ears are far more sensitive to distortion then men’s. You may be picking up on the distortion, or just the lack of bounce. The first thing you guys have to do is install those new nearfield monitors I recommended, because your old monitors are compressing by themselves, and if your loudspeakers are compressing, how can you expect to evaluate your board’s compressors?’ After we switched speakers to the higher resolution models, Fred’s jaw dropped. ‘Hey, I can hear the bus compression,’ he said. ‘The drumsticks are modulating the instruments up and down.’ ‘That’s right, accurate monitoring helps keep you out of trouble! And let’s try something else.’ I kept my body in front of the compressor to hide it, fiddled with a couple of knobs, and switched between two settings, asking them to tell me which sound is better, A or B. ‘Why A, of course,’ they both said simultaneously and influencing each other as well, a very unscientific technique. ‘All right, one at a time. Fred?’ ‘A is definitely better,’ he exclaimed. ‘Let’s try something different,’ I said. ‘Now B is definitely better,’ he said. I repeated the Page test, 1and Becky agreed with Fred. ‘You’ve both just succumbed to the oldest trick in

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the book, called “louder is better”. The first time, you preferred the bus-compressed version, because its output level is about 2dB louder than the uncompressed version. Instant “loud” trumps sound quality a lot of the time. The second time, I carefully set the gain makeup so there was no loudness difference between the two, and you clearly preferred the uncompressed version. Matching loudness is required to make any sonic evaluation, at least until your ears become more educated to the sound of compressors, especially 2bus compressors, which modulate the entire mix by the action of the compressor. And even when you have matched loudness, you have to listen and train your ears for the known artefacts of compressors, which can seem subtle at first. Compression can cause: loss of depth and space and clarity of panning position; loss of transient impact; loss of danceability and “vibe”, and undefined bass drum and bass. ‘Balance those out against the potential positives,’ I continued. ‘Compressors can: make the sound desirably “fatter” and “warmer”; help “glue” a mix together — you hear the inner details, albeit perhaps unnaturally; and reduce annoying jumps in level.’ ‘Hell, yeah,’ said Fred, ‘that’s why I plugged this thing in, the sound was jumping all over the place, very unpleasantly.’ ‘Rightfully so,’ I replied, ‘but somewhere around the 1dB mark and counting, you probably began to introduce the negative artefacts. Plus, your attack and release times, and in my opinion, your very choice of compressor have contributed to the negatives. I recommend that you try to use individual channel compressors, just enough to fix some of the “jumping” problems, and do most of your corrections on the faders, sweating bullets, as I said, if you want to get a great mix. Then, and only then, should you consider a bus compressor. Some mix engineers aggressively use bus compressors to help create their mix and make their “sound”; if that’s the way you really want to mix, go ahead, but I still recommend you first study the best mixes and releases of yesteryear, learn their virtues, because most of them were obtained with very few compressors and especially without compressors on the 2-bus. Make an educated choice after studying the music you like.’ ‘So, if compressors are so bad, how come you use compressors in the mastering, Bob?’ asked Becky. ‘Touché! Beck. Very good question. I’ll tell you all about it next time when you come back with a better mix on this excellent project.’ ■

Information Resolution recommends Bob Katz’s book Mastering Audio — The Art and the Science as an essential source of information for every pro audio enthusiast who cares about sound. You can buy it on line at www.digido.com

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November/December 2005

ten

Inspirations for better performance Studios interrupt the loop — Musicians perform and an audience responds, and the performers react to the audience. It is a natural state of affairs. Place a studio in the process and the performer/audience feedback disappears. For the inexperienced it is difﬁcult to reproduce the feeling that drives live performance. For the veteran, a change in studio tactics can produce unexpected results. KEITH SPENCER-ALLEN suggests ten things to try. LIGHTS — One of several elements of the live stage experience that can be brought into the studio. While it’s too much to expect a studio to install a lighting rig, the ability to control lighting beyond ‘full-on’ or localised dimming is a useful creative tool. If a band has a small lighting system, have them bring it in. Just dimming the lights isn’t really that effective as it slowly induces tiredness. Consider spotlights for the overdubs, particularly for the vocals.

SET-UP — So many times a performance is made more difﬁcult by introducing artiﬁcial barriers into the recording process — iso booths, distant placing, etc. Frequently it is better to have musicians place themselves (with a little guidance) where they feel most comfortable in a studio. This may vary from setting up as they might on stage, physically close together, or in the darkest corners of the room. This may present challenges to the engineer but that’s why you are there. Compromise comes later, after your recording know-how has been exhausted. MORE OF THE STAGE — Sometimes bringing in extra elements of a live situation works. Creating a simple stage or raised area does much to break away from the stereotypical recording situation. Even adding just a drum riser adds a different dimension (literally) while for larger sessions placing a brass section or choir on an elevated, even tiered, area can make recording easier and more akin to the performers’ regular experience. November/December 2005

NOT ALONE — If you go the stage route, it seems natural to add an audience. Bringing back that instant feedback to the performance can help on basic tracks. It doesn’t take a large number of people, probably no more than you might find hanging around anyway. This provides a more controlled alternative to capturing the basic tracks at a live gig and bringing the recordings into the studio for improving and overdubbing, which can work. And oddly, even on overdubs, an audience, even a small one, that can hear the foldback may inspire the performer. R E D U N D A N T PLAYERS — When overdubbing basic parts it can be difficult to inject the right performance, and if it takes a long time, attention can wander. Having another musician play at the same time, even if not being recorded, can bring focus to the overdubber and highlight how certain sections need to be played due to what will be added later. It can also stop an inexperienced player feeling persecuted by the ‘tyranny of the talkback’ from the control room! BREATHING AND SMELLING — It’s unfortunate that when a lot of audio electronics is gathered together and switched on, there’s a very distinctive smell — hot electrical components and warm plastic. While, by association, it acts as a stimulant to the studio junky, it is a total depressant to higher levels of creativity. Because there’s normally a shortage of fresh air, we have to look to other means — not spray cans. Natural oils and scents can work but are very personal in taste. However, try adding some ionisers as a compliment to air-conditioning. Provided they have a rating sufficient for the space they can ‘clean’ the air, add a freshness, and remove many of the impurities present. THE SITTING ROOM — After successfully recording some demo tracks in a musician’s home sitting room, it isn’t always possible to match the sound with the same instruments in the studio. Consider setting up a typical sitting room in the studio with twin sofas, carpets, drapes and coffee table because it works on two levels. Acoustically it provides the right amount of reflection and absorbency in the right places and most musicians began their playing careers practising and rehearsing where they felt most comfortable. resolution

ADDED FANTASY — Although more of a producer’s input, creating a theme for an album’s sessions can differentiate this production from the last, and generate a specific vibe. The Beachboy’s Brian Wilson had his piano placed in a large sand pit so he could feel inspired by the sand between his toes! At a simple level it could be rugs and drapes, to large potted plants, mannequins, fountains, art installations — all have been experienced. Whether it works is dependent on the personalities involved. OUTSIDE — Recording outside is a completely new experience for many. Acoustically it is like taking off the studio roof and the sound is more open yet deader although other reflective surfaces become more obvious. The creative stimulus can vary depending on the situation and for practical reasons really only works for overdubs. Singers seem to benefit most and enjoy the contradiction between the drier sound of outdoors while hearing a more reverberant signal in their cans. And of course there is the famous trick of bouncing the sound of large guitar amps off the sides of a remote valley, as Cornwall’s Sawmills studio knows with its instant stadium effect. The biggest but least anticipated problem will be birdsong, which cuts through anything! E X T R E M E ACOUSTICS — Moving drums and guitars into stairwells, recording vocals in the bathroom are all well known techniques but consider going the University of Salford opposite direction — no reverberation. A sonically dry environment is oppressive on a large scale but when very localised can be a useful recording device. Recording an acoustic guitar or voice in near anechoic conditions is very effective. Completely surround the playing position (almost) with absorbent blankets, cushions and drapes — with a guitar these can be very close. The musician will have to wear headphones, probably with some ambience added to be able to perform but the resulting signal is supremely flexibly. Large amounts of compression can be added without the perceived distance of the instrument changing. Vocals can sound like they are whispering in your ear. The challenge is rewarding. 61

slaying dragons

Classic equipment Inspired by the leader in the last issue, JOHN WATKINSON is intrigued by the notion of ‘classic’ and considers the entry qualiﬁcations and why digital remains so poorly represented in the league table of great and famous gear.

john watkinson ‘Today we get melted cheese styling. Before I learned this, I thought ﬁnding modern cars ugly was a sign of getting old.’

E SAY THAT THINGS come in threes not because they do, but because when the third one comes along we are reminded that from an early age we were taught that things come in threes and so we ﬁnd it falsely signiﬁcant. In my case the most recent of these experiences was restoring a couple of Quad ELS-63 electrostatic loudspeakers. I would argue quite strongly that these 62

are classics. Although we don’t expect to agree on a full deﬁnition of classic, there must be some basic criteria and if most of them are met then classic it is. In the case of the Quads we start with the fact that they were way ahead of their time. Ultra low harmonic distortion leads to an absence of listening fatigue that even today is unusual. However, some of the features that we now know resolution

are important in loudspeakers are also there. Take phase linearity, for example. The Quad is a minimumphase speaker and correctly reproduces the time information in transients that 99% of today’s speakers destroy. Take directivity. The Quad emits sound that has substantially the same quality in all the directions in which it is radiated. Again most of today’s speakers simply do not achieve that. The build quality is also there, and these things can go on forever and indeed many of their owners want them to. So it emerges that one of the definitions of classic is that some aspect of the device reached a pinnacle of performance that subsequent devices fell short of, probably for economic reasons. Experience two was giving a well-respected friend a ride in my 1978 Jaguar XJ-S. Wafting along in comfort and silence the question came: ‘How old is this thing?’. Following my answer there was a pause before the reply came: ‘What has the motor industry been doing for the last 25 years?’ I suspect Zen will indulge me on this because he used to have an XJ-S. The answer to my friend’s question is that the motor industry exists to make money first and cars second. Today’s cars are cheaper to make and they all suffer from it. Technical quality has been replaced by hype. A good example is the way Jaguar bangs on about the lightweight aluminium construction of its latest models. Unfortunately the new XJ saloon with its alloy engine and body weighs about the same as the XJ-6 of 1968 with its steel body and iron engine. An engineer knows that aircraft went from wood to alloy and then to steel, so why are cars going back from steel to alloy? Simply because it is cheaper to make complicated assemblies by casting in one piece instead of assembling pressings by spot welding. But cast aluminium isn’t as strong so it has to be thicker. No one told the marketing people. The Luddites didn’t like the XJ-S because it did not resemble any previous Jaguar, but in my view it’s a classic. Certainly from a vibration and noise suppression standpoint it holds its own today. From a crosswind stability standpoint it also takes some beating. After all, it was designed by an aerodynamicist at a time when most of the motor industry couldn’t even spell the word. I suppose using 12 cylinders in an engine was an early form of oversampling. But then the engine had to be smooth because there isn’t room in the engine bay for it to vibrate! I think the XJ-S falls into Zen’s definition of classic: ‘ …..they have to be built well or be so beautiful that they encourage humans to preserve them.’ Jaguars of that era were not built well. The politics of the work force made Trotsky look conservative. They could rust for England and there was a competition to see if the rainwater leaks could outnumber the oil leaks. But we do preserve them. Last year I had the pleasure of waking up to find half the population of an Italian village staring at the XJ-S. Most of them were Lamborghini drivers, tractors, that is. Car styling has suffered two-fold in recent years. First, when all the good shapes have been done, the relentless search for novelty has to embrace the bad. Secondly computer aided design screens do not show the designer what the car looks like in the street. What you see is not what you get. In the old days, a full-sized clay model was made that could be wheeled outside to see how daylight played on it. Today we get melted cheese styling. Before I learned this, I thought finding modern cars ugly was a sign of getting old. It used to be all fields round here, you know. I think it is well understood that there has been November/December 2005

slaying dragons classic audio equipment. Certain valve-type condenser microphones represented a leap in quality because they offered lower distortion than moving coil types and more choice of directivity than ribbons. More recently I regard the Soundfield microphone as a classic. But it seems to me that most if not all of these classic audio devices are analogue. Despite my obvious association with digital audio, I have a lot of time for analogue technology, especially when it is done well. The biggest restrictions in analogue audio are in recording, transmission and random access. Analogue recording media cannot be made perfect, nor can analogue transmission channels and random access is almost unknown in analogue audio, unless you include the Mellotron. Those areas aside, analogue can do very well. Microphones, loudspeakers, amplifiers and other realtime devices can excel. The signal path of a mixing console can be very finely implemented in analogue, but the problem comes when people want features such as recall. I have mentioned elsewhere that since the invention of PCM by Reeve in the 1930s the convergence of audio and computers has been inevitable. Once audio is digitised it becomes data and only differs from generic data in that a certain timebase is implicit in its reproduction. The situation then is simply that professional analogue audio equipment is built

in small numbers whereas general purpose digital processors are built in staggering volume. With such economy of scale there is no contest. Let’s suppose we are designing a new tape recorder and we decide to simulate it using a computer. The design is rapidly perfected but before we go into production someone realises that the computer doing the simulation is cheaper than the proposed price of the tape recorder. Thus we simply sell the simulator. The economy of scale in digital hardware is not the only factor. The other one is known as Moore’s Law, due to Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel. Back in 1965 he observed that the number of transistors on a chip had doubled every year since the chip was invented. Nowadays it has settled at a doubling every 18 months, so this is an empirical law rather than pure physics, but it does explain a lot. The more transistors that can be squeezed on a chip, the more powerful it becomes. As a result mathematical techniques that once were too complex to contemplate become economic on a chip. The microprocessor is one example, however to keep the relevance to our industry, the CD became possible when Reed Solomon error correction could be done on a chip. Subsequently DVD became possible when the Discrete Cosine Transform could be done on a chip. Although not covered by Moore’s Law, the economics of digital storage devices follow a similar trend, with the cost of a gigabyte falling as fast as a

streamlined anvil. These factors together mean that digital equipment tends to be commoditised to death and transitory. These factors are essentially polarised against the concept of a classic product. And no one in their right mind would suggest Windows as a classic, except of mediocrity. I considered a few digital devices and rejected them. The DAT format had unprecedented recording density, but it couldn’t shake off its consumer background and guiding the tape pack with liner sheets was a no-no for a professional device. The digital multitrack formats were considered, but these were only digital as far as the signal path went. In all other respects they were carbon copies of analogue multitracks, right down to supporting razor blade editing, and thus were unhealthy hybrids. So is there a digital classic? I think the great exception to all I have said has got to be the Compact Disc. It buried alive its vinyl predecessor in bandwidth, crosstalk, linearity, SNR, playing time, size and ease of access and handling. And being a classic it has endured and subsequent formats have largely been inferior. Take MiniDisc, whose compression algorithm was not perfected using Quad electrostatics. Take DAB, whose advertising hyperbole rivals that of Jaguar Cars. And take MP3, the audio industry’s answer to the Nissan Micra, recently described by a motoring correspondent that I could hug as looking like one of the Mr Men on wheels. ■

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November/December 2005

resolution

your business

Insuring your future Stuff happens and certain sorts of stuff is happening a lot more regularly and a lot more intensely than before. Is it about time that you thought about some type of cover to protect your livelihood and business or do you believe that it never happens to someone like you?

DAN DALEY

dan daley

HEN TWO NASTY hurricanes blew their ill winds and water into the Gulf of Mexico and the shores of the American Southland, it was a wake-up call for a lot of people. While there’s no reason to put recording studios and audio professionals above the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and the other people and professions devastated by those storms, it is an opportunity to look at how disasters have impacted the music recording business over the years. It’s also a chance to discuss the fact that, at least until relatively recently, this has been a business with a poor awareness level of insuring itself against loss. If you don’t count the manmade calamities that have terminated a few great recording studios, such as the real estate boom-fueled demolition of the classic RCA Studios on Sixth Avenue, or the classic Columbia ‘church’ studio on East 30th Street, both in Manhattan in the 1980s, the most spectacular instance of a studio in distress was perhaps Air Studios Montserrat, a Caribbean paradise that unfortunately happened to ﬁnd itself in the path of a molten lava parade from an erupting volcano in 1995.

‘Whatever it is that happens shuts you down, denies you access to the studio, keeps your business from making money, and that keeps you from making loan or rent payments. That could endanger your business more than the disaster itself.’

Other studios, such as Caribou Ranch in Colorado, famous as the recording redoubt for the SoCal mafia of the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, endured fires. Others had floods — I remember being in New Orleans in the 1990s at a studio (which was eventually done in by a combination of hurricanes and economics) and the owner proudly showing me the watermark left by a previous storm-induced flood. Riffing on the notion of ‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger’, there is a human tendency to regard having gotten through a disaster with life and limb intact as an indication of a special benediction having been bestowed that somehow inoculates one from further catastrophe. Which is, of course, a crock. If you are the nervous type you might want to skip this next paragraph. As I write this I’m glancing at the telly watching the progress of Hurricane Wilma, Category 4 and which looks like it’s headed right for my condo on the outskirts of Miami. I could take some comfort from the fact that I’m sitting in Nashville at the moment, but then I remember that Music City is a scant 200 miles away from Memphis, home to House of Blues Studios and Ardent Studios. Unfortunately, it’s also home to the New Madrid Fault, the geological equivalent of a passive-aggressive personality: it’s not a particularly assertive fault line, but when it finally does let go, watch out — the last time it unwound, in the 1820s, it changed the course of the Mississippi River. Just some Native Americans and the odd trapper or trader were hanging about then. It will be a little different next time. Then there’s the more famous San Andreas Fault that runs down the spine of California, which also has a few recording studios. The last time that one ripped it combined with the O.J. Simpson verdict to send much of LA’s over-40 rock contingent fleeing to Nashville. (Wait’ll they read about the New Madrid.) Even New York City, which likes to boast of its thick schist bedrock, will have the occasional trembler or two, one of which I experienced about 15 years ago. Then there are the odder sources of economic demise. BOP Studios, in Bophuthatswana, in South Africa, was at one time in the early 1990s the world’s largest recording facility until it fell victim to regime change in the country and encountered the approach to business of the African National Congress.

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November/December 2005

your business More recently, we can add another, more sinister cause of disaster: terrorism. Several New York City recording studios were closed for extended periods of time in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. None were damaged directly, but the closure of much of lower Manhattan for several months during cleanup and investigation took their toll on revenues. (More about that in a moment.) There’s not a lot can be done about most of this stuff. Like John Lennon said, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. The threat of annihilation has never stopped a sufficiently motivated entrepreneur. But there are ways to minimise the risk, spread it around, like those blokes in Lloyd’s pub in London 400 years ago who created the modern insurance industry. I’ve known Joe Montarello for over 15 years now, from not long after he dreamed up what remains the only insurance package tailored specifically for recording studios. Insurance agents and music industry types might not usually be found hanging out together very often, but Joe still plays the bass he played in high school bands in Albany, in upstate New York, and he actually knows what Pro Tools is. And he can play a mean actuarial table. Montarello insures studios as he would any other business, for all the usual disasters, such as fires and water damage. (Flood insurance is a tricky one in the States, as people in Louisiana and Florida have unhappily learned after recent devastating storms. Most residential and commercial policies cover water damage from burst pipes and direct precipitation like rain and hail, but the storm surges — the most common source of flooding during hurricanes — are almost universally excluded. The large print giveth and the fine print taketh away...) But the one aspect of coverage Montarello emphasises most, and the one that most studio owners seem to know the least about, is business interruption insurance. ‘You might find that some kind of event or disaster strikes and you get Res_MTvertical_06-04 20/4/04 pm lucky and your equipment isn’t damaged 1:37 or stolen,’ he was saying at his booth at AES in New York City

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November/December 2005

last month. ‘But whatever it is that happens shuts you down for an extended period of time, denies you or your clients access to the studio, keeps your business from making money, and that keeps you from making loan or rent payments. That could endanger your business more than the disaster itself.’ In fact, that is exactly what happened when the World Trade Centre towers were attacked in 2001. Of over a half-dozen recording studios in downtown Manhattan, none were significantly damaged but all were cut off for some period of time, from weeks to months. Montarello’s clients had business interruption coverage, which paid them a fixed amount of money per day of lost business, after an exclusionary period (the equivalent of a deductible) had passed, usually ranging from a week to a month. (The longer the exclusion, the lower the premium payment, and vice versa.) It’s harder for individuals to get this sort of coverage, but engineers and producers (all freelancers of any stripe, really) can get disability insurance. That and basic medical coverage are often provided by social legislation in most European countries but not in the US, and Americans working overseas will have limited access to such medical care, so having a personal policy is absolutely necessary. (Ironically, it’s even more necessary when Americans are working in America, since only the poorest citizens are off the hook for their medical bills, even those incurred in emergency rooms. If 50 Cent gets shot again, he better figure on paying for it this time.) Individuals can and should also take pains to insure their equipment. To some extent, gear up to a certain amount can fall under homeowners’ or renters’ residential insurance policies; for equipment worth more than £5,000, it’s advisable to get a professional equipment rider that lists each piece and its value. When establishing a rider, bills of sale or a valuation estimate from a certifiable source, such as a pro audio dealer, on letterhead, is generally enough to certify Page 1 the value for insurance coverage. However, keep in mind that the value of equipment changes over time — a few pieces of choice analogue gear, such as a vintage microphone, may continue to appreciate over time, but the vast majority of stuff, especially digital stuff, will be worth less and less every year. Get the items on your rider reappraised every two years, lest you find the insurance adjuster doing it for you in the event of a loss. And one other word of advice to the feloniously minded. More than one studio or Les Paul has disappeared in a puff of smoke over the years when its owner found himself in need of quick cash. I have it on very good authority (from a friend and member of the ‘authorities’) that individual losses like that are vetted especially carefully by insurance and law enforcement folks. (I’m not suggesting that any of our readers would even harbour such thoughts, but drugs, alcohol, protracted divorce proceedings or angry bookmakers have been known to cloud judgment on occasion.) I didn’t mean for this to read like some medieval Armageddon tapestry or Hieronymus Bosch vision of all the bad things that can happen to you or your business (I didn’t even mention plague or locusts). But given how difficult the economics of the technical side of the music business have become, why not cover yourself to the extent nature and Lloyd’s will let you? Now, I’ve got some real estate for sale in Florida, and don’t let those fools on Sky News scare you about there now being more hurricanes every season… ■ resolution

headroom MARKETING HYPE

PESKY PEAK AND OTHERS

I must admit that I am feeling rather stupid at the

I started receiving the magazine with the October

moment. At the Barcelona AES conference I met a

issue and I wish to let you know that I am very satisﬁed

guy who I thought was you. However, after receiving

and glad that my ﬁrst impression was conﬁrmed — that

Resolution V4.7, I can see from the Audio Lookilikies

is, the impression that Resolution is the publication I

that I was being duped.

have been looking for. This bears on various aspects

The guy who I was telling my life story to was really

and qualities — just to mention one, I was glowing

Swiss Toni a notorious used car salesman. It really isn’t

when reading the article That pesky peak meter by Mr

often that I get taken in like that.

Katz. I am tempted to send the article to the sound

I am also rarely taken in by marketing hype, because

engineers at the studios that recently gave such bad

as John Watkinson said in the same issue ‘marketing

treatment (and then had to correct it after publication!)

people, who frequently don’t have a grounding

to two masters of mine. I am not a technical expert,

in audio, can come out with statements that are,

but I know when music sounds right.

intellectually speaking, a form of noise.’ As I am well

Let me take this opportunity to pose a question to

grounded in audio, I can quite easily reject that noise.

you. Is it possible for people like me, involved in the

Bearing this in mind, I began reading Jim Wischmeyer’s

production of ethnic music, to receive technical and

article on the E-trap with well-balanced eyes, ready to

product counselling for which I’d be ready to pay a

reject the marketing hype about this instant ﬁx-all for

fee? Right now I am in the process of renewing and

acoustic low-end problems.

updating my equipment for (quality) ﬁeld recording,

By the end of the article I was stunned by the lack

which happens to take place in the difﬁcult (sound-

of noise. What a well-balanced article it was, with no

wise) area of the Javanese gamelan (extreme dynamics,

intellectual noise whatsoever. The lack of any trace of

metallic sounds and partials instead of harmonics).

marketing blurb left me of the opinion that the E-trap

If you can help with my problem of identifying

will probably do exactly what it says on the box. So

the most appropriate equipment from the, for me,

impressed was I by the good sense and constraint of

confusing number of products on offer, I’d be doubly

the article that I shall now go and buy an E-trap to

grateful. In any case, I’ll maintain my appreciation for

see what I can do with it. It may prove useful in rooms

the philosophy and practice of your magazine, which

where I can’t install my customary 50 cubic metres, or

I’m sure will provide me with much useful knowledge

more, of absorption systems.

in the future.

Philip Newell, Moana, Spain

Giovanni Sciarrino, Torino, Italy

I know you are very suspicious of marketing in general

Thank you for the kind words Giovanni. I have absolutely

but I’d argue that one of the rudimentary functions of

no knowledge of recording the gamelan but I would

it is to communicate information to its target audience.

imagine that it would put fairly high demands on your

The variables at this point amount to what it is that you’re

mics and that would be further complicated by just how

trying to communicate and how you choose to do it —

‘ﬁeld’ the ﬁeld recording is. There is currently a good

the less signiﬁcant the message is the dafter it can sound

selection of portable recorders but the choice would

the more brashly it is delivered. That said, we all rely on it

come down to the sort of medium you’re happy to work

in its many forms and I’m sure Jim will be delighted that

to and the integrity of the built-in mic preamps -– failing

he has passed the Newell approval process. But then you

that you’re into external pres. I suppose what I’m trying

see Phil, as Swiss Toni would say, doing marketing well is

to say is I don’t really know! Over to the readers, any

very much like making love to a beautiful woman…

suggestions?

AUDIOlookilikies

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Louis Austin, pro audio polymath

Danny La Rue, Entertainer

Rob James, Resolution contributor

Dave Gilmour, Pink Floyd

resolution

resolutionmag.com

November/December 2005

Award Winning Clean Dialogue Air conditioning

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