AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION
V6.1 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007
Peter Schmidt — Tonelux in his own room, Teldex next door Skyline Tonfabrik restarts in mastering and post Why the music label business model has come unstuck Giving a room the Ghost treatment Meet your maker: Amir Vinci — Waves Ten desert island mics REVIEWS: Drawmer S3 • Dangerous Monitor ST-SR • Dolby Media Producer GAP ribbons • Eventide H7600 • AKG Perceptions • Contech keyboards
January/February 2007 V6.1 ISSN 1477-4216 AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION
News & Analysis 4
Leader
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News
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Products
Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.
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Headroom
Skyline Tonfabrik
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Sweet Spot
New introductions and announcements.
Craft 14
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Postproduction, music programming and mastering — we visit a facility that was brave enough to start again.
Peter Schmidt
Top German mixer with a ‘room of the future’ talks Tonelux, training and his Teldex Studio Berlin connection.
Steve Sidwell
The modern orchestrator has added some engineering and production talent and a small studio.
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We give a small room the Ghost treatment and report back on the quality of experience.
Meet your maker
Amir Vinci — The senior product manager at Waves talks native, latency, bottlenecks and bloat.
Katz’s column
Bob uses the example of a recent compilation project to explain the different approaches he applied.
Ten
Desert island mics
Business 50
Flawed but not floored
It’s official: label bosses have admitted their business models are coming unstuck. We prescribe further disassembly.
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Your business
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Slaying Dragons
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Eventide H7600 Edirol R-4 Pro AKG Perceptions Contech Logic keyboards
Production Magic proves it’s not really magic at all; it’s mostly about survival and getting paid.
Technology 52
DVD HD and BD
Still not embedded in the entertainment chain — it could be the format battle, it could be delays to market, it could be attitudes have changed.
Digital depends heavily on error correction, a topic that is generally taken for granted. John finds it too interesting for that.
Reviews 22 24 26 28
Dangerous Music Monitor ST-SR Drawmer S3 Dolby Media Producer Golden Age Project ribbon mics
EDITORIAL Editorial Director: Zenon Schoepe Tel: +44 1444 410675 Email: zen@resolutionmag.com Editorial office: PO Box 531, Haywards Heath RH16 4WD, UK Contributors: Rob James, George Shilling, Jon Thornton, Keith Spencer-Allen, Neil Hillman, Nigel Jopson, Andy Day, Philip Newell, Bob Katz, Dan Daley, John Watkinson
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 467579 Email: dean@resolutionmag.com
news Appointments HARMAN PRO Group has created a new strategic marketing position focused on integrated systems and coordinated m u l t i b r a n d communications and Michael MacDonald has rejoined the company to assume the newly created position of executive vice president, marketing. MacDonald has been in professional audio for more than 25 years and has worked for Yamaha, TimeLine and JBL Professional. He joins Harman after four years with Pilot Business Strategies. JBL PROFESSIONAL has appointed Buzz Goodwin as executive v i c e p re s i d e n t o f sales. He joins from Harman Music Group where he served as executive vice president of sales. JBL Professional has appointed Adinaldo (Adi) Neves as director of sales, intercontinental with re s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. He previously worked with Digidesign, Loud Technologies and most recently L-Acoustics. SCOTT ROBBINS has been promoted to the position of senior vice president of worldwide sales for Crown International. He previously held the position of vice president of worldwide sales for Crown. David Budge has joined Crown International as sales director for Europe/ UK, the Middle East and Africa. Budge most recently spent five-years as sales manager for Harman Pro UK. He has also worked at Realscape, Celestion, Canon Audio and Echosphere. HARRISON CONSOLES has appointed Control Devices in Sydney as its sales representative for Australia and New Zealand.
©2007 S2 Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication, but neither
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Leader
One of the pleasures of this industry is the high proportion of creative types that you’re likely to encounter on your travels. My real favourites are creative people who are also switched on from a business standpoint. There’s something special about entrepreneurial spirit combined with creative gas and plain old business savvy. I’d argue that this particular combo was far rarer once than it is now. There was a time when every new facility owner would sit back in his chair, leaning deliberately on the cause of his financing arrangement and tell me, almost casually, that he was in it for the music and that nobody ever got rich in this business anyway. Well, they rarely did with that sort of attitude and if they did then it wasn’t for long. Of course, I didn’t always believe them and over the years I’ve developed a knack for being able to spot the chancers with some consistency although there was a time in the early 90s when it really wasn’t that difficult. I feel now that the industry’s would-be businessmen have turned a corner. How you judge that corner is crucial to this exercise — if you judge by growth along 1970s emporia standards than the scene is dead. But if you judge by people who carve a respectable living out of doing audio in some form then there are many success stories. They’re not all high profile and they’re not all glamorous but what they are is switched on and getting involved. It’s their attitude to technology that most readily identifies these types because, almost without exception, they are selling themselves and not the bag of bits that comes with them. Until not very long ago, what you used defined you as an employable entity; it was an extension of you that put you in a league. We were an industry full of snobs resisting change. I think it is so much healthier now. I’ve seen nicely prepared rooms with a little svelte furniture and nothing more than two screens, a pair of monitors, QWERTY keyboard and a mouse that achieve superb hourly rates and know hit-makers who carry their world in a laptop bag. You can imagine how the balance sheet stacks up in these examples even against today’s more competitive rates. There are also layers above these minimalist scenarios that fulfil a client requirement and profit. So many of the industry’s problems have been blamed on outside forces that we cannot change. Meanwhile, many are finding their niche and just getting on with it. Zenon Schoepe
Oribi Investments secures interest in AMS Neve Oribi Investments Ltd has secured a major interest in AMS Neve Ltd as the culmination of negotiations between Oribi Investments Ltd and the company’s original shareholders SAE Educational Trust Ltd and AMS Neve director Mark Crabtree. In the new structure, SAE will remove itself from the day-to-day operations of AMS Neve Ltd but will continue to supply industry information to support the company’s development of market driven products. Crabtree will continue to lead the company. ‘SAE have provided AMS Neve Ltd substantial financial and other support over the past 18 months but recognise that with the continuing need for large investment in R&D and the projected release of new products, the time had come to attract a third shareholder which would bring with them a series of additional funding and other benefits,’ said SAE group founder
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.
and president Tom Misner. ‘Our markets are always hungry to embrace advances in the art and science of professional audio technology, and AMS Neve is widely recognised for leading the way in these exciting areas,’ said Crabtree. ‘We continually strive to provide our customers with the all-important competitive “edge” that our advanced and innovative products can bring to their operations. The recent restructure will pave the way to take the business to the next level.’ Oribi director Manoj Purayil said: ‘We have been very interested in investing in high end European electronics development and manufacturing for some time and recognise the quality, appeal and potential of the AMS Neve range in its respective markets.’ The investment is said to be part of Oribi’s plans to develop an investment portfolio in the film, broadcast and audio technology manufacturing sectors.
S2 Publications Ltd. Registered in England and Wales. Company number: 4375084. Registered office: Equity House, 128-136 High Street, Edgware, Middlesex HA8 7TT.
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Sounds Expo 2007 The Sounds Expo 2007 exhibition returns to Olympia 2 1-3 March. With a programme of seminars planned alongside the exhibition, the event is being pitched at anyone involved or interested in recording, remixing or producing. Tickets for are priced at £7.50 in advance (£10 on the door) and are available from the Box Office on 0870 163 1780. www.sounds-expo.co.uk
UMG is active with PMC
Boxer Systems has installed a PMC MB2XBD active system at Universal Music Group’s recording facility in Kensington, London. The recently commissioned Pro Tools|HDequipped control room designed by Studio People houses the monitors in the preferred ‘stacked’ free-standing format and adds to the number of PMC systems already in use at UMG. The system is powered by PMC/Bryston amplifiers and crossovers and was aligned and commissioned on site by PMC’s technical manager Andy Wilson. Two video editing rooms at UMG have also undergone refits and include stereo PMC TB2S-A active monitoring reinforced with TLE1S active subwoofers. At a ceremony i n L o n d o n ’s Barbican centre i n N o v e m b e r, Ted Fletcher was invested as an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Arts at Thames Valley University, London. The citation was in recognition of Ted’s achievements in the audio business with Alice, Motorola, Joemeek and Tfpro, and the new work in Airsound; stereo from a single point. Ted gave an address at the graduation ceremonies extolling the virtues of original thinking; how learning is just the beginning, and how developments come by joining together ideas from different disciplines.
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January/February 2007
news D&M Holdings acquires PSS
Big Blues for Black Eyed Peas
D&M Holdings Inc has signed an agreement for D&M Holdings to acquire Philips Sound Solutions (PSS) of Royal Philips Electronics. PSS, based in Dendermonde Belgium, has strong market positions in high-quality, hi-fi audio products for the B2B automotive and consumer electronics markets. Key automotive customers include BMW, VW, Toyota (Europe), Seat and Jaguar while key consumer customers include Philips, Dell and Nokia. D&M Holdings will rename the company D&M Premium Sound Solutions. D&M Holdings, based in Kawasaki, Japan, owns the Denon, Marantz, McIntosh Laboratory, Boston Acoustics, Snell Acoustics, D&M Professional, Denon DJ, ReplayTV and Escient brands. The acquisition also provides D&M Holdings with patented technologies and expertise that will provide opportunities to introduce differentiated products with new technology. ‘The acquisition of Philips Sound Solutions fits well with our strategic vision and priorities of expanding into new businesses where we can leverage the value of strong audio know-how and world-leading brands,’ said Eric Evans, chairman and co-chief executive officer of D&M Holdings. ‘This acquisition allows us to achieve critical mass in revenue, infrastructure and relationships in the automotive OEM business and substantially enhances our ability to develop innovative and groundbreaking premium products.’
Indian film sound postproduction facility Anand Recording Private, home to Navketan Films, recently took delivery of a Euphonix System 5-P as part of an extensive refurbishment that includes a dubbing theatre (for voiceover work) and a Foley theatre. The desk has a film style monitoring panel with pec-direct switching and joysticks.
Pajon and Prada. Studio manager Charles Prada and The Black Eyed Peas guitarist George Pajon, Jr have installed Blue Sky’s Big Blue SAT 12 and Bass Management Controller MK II at their Burbank compound, El Cubano Studios. The studio was built in 2001 as a refuge from commercial studios around LA and as a place for friends and colleagues to work. ‘I wanted to get a clarity, which I wasn’t getting from just reference nearfield monitors,’ said Pajon. ‘I also wanted really nice sounding mains that weren’t going to overpower the room when I needed to turn it up. For me, it’s a personal thing. I have to feel it. Once the music is in a form where I’m going to start recording solos, I have to turn it up ‘cause I’m a live player. I play live on stage and it’s loud on stage. The top end is really nice; the low end is really tight -— which is really big for mains. ‘Now everything is running through the Blue Sky BMC system,’ he said. ‘There is nothing out there like this, unless you hand-wire and build it yourself! To now be able to turn down the sub or turn if off and use the SAT 12s full-range input, is great.’
Appointments DPA MICROPHONES has launched a new company, Audio2, to market, distribute and service its products in France. The company is a joint venture between DPA, Didier Rupin, who has been involved with DPA microphones in France since 1992, and Scène de Nuit, an existing pro audio dealer who will provide the company infrastructure, such as shipping, service, telephone reception and sales staff. Rupin (pictured) is MD of Audio2. AKG IN the US has appointed Dino Virella as national sales manager. He was previously owner and principal of VirellaPro Sales and Marketing, and has also worked for Focusrite, Universal Audio and Digidesign.
T O TA L A U D I O Solutions has been appointed UK and Irish dealers for Dangerous Music’s range of products. Total Audio is now also UK and Irish distributor for the German Ambient range of broadcast products. M A R K U S SCHMITTINGER has taken over the position at EVI Audio of sales manager, Electro-Voice Microphones for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Klein + Hummel studio monitors and PA loudspeakers are now being produced at the Sennheiser factory in Ireland. The factory set-up was done in cooperation with the Klein + Hummel engineering from Wedemark and now claims to be among the most modern loudspeaker factories in the world. The aftersales service relocation to Sennheiser Vertrieb und Service in Germany is the next step in creating a service concept with full-line service centres around the world.
E N H A N C E D A U D I O , manufacturer of the M600 universal mic mount, has appointed Big Bear Sound as its distributor in Ireland. Big Bear Sound joins distributors Stirling Trading in the UK, Audio Addict France, Flyline Music Switzerland, 2nd Staff Corp Japan, Awave Australia, Big Knob Audio Indonesia, Sonotechnique Canada and Las Vegas Pro Audio US.
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January/February 2007
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news Appointments MICHAEL STEVENS & Partners in the UK has been appointed worldwide professional products distributor for Chord amplifiers. ABLETON INC. has assumed distribution of Ableton products to the US dealer channel. To support the US sales and marketing effort, Ableton has established an office in New York managed by Dave Hill Jr. ‘Since 2001, when we began selling Live, we have experienced tremendous growth in the US dealer channel,’ said Ableton’s commercial director Rutger De Groot. ‘We are confident that our increased investments in the US market, combined with a dedicated end-user focus, will result in even more growth for our sales partners and our company as a whole.’ HARMAN PRO UK customer services specialist Matt Coleman has been appointed as MI telesales operative. V I O L E T DESIGN Limited has named Full Discount Wholesale as the US distributor for its microphones.
Maserati moves to 10 iDPs
When mixer Tony Maserati shows up for work he’s comforted by a few certainties — the software on his hard drive, the analogue outboard in his flightcase and his Tannoy monitors. ‘We’re always trying to hedge our bets against technology and manufacturing cycles,’ said Maserati of engineers. ‘I can do my preliminary mixing pretty much anywhere,’ he said, ‘and, even if you go to a studio that’s ill-equipped, you can bring your rig in and do a lot of good work, even getting close to final mixes. Key to this scenario, however, is having speakers you know you can trust.’ He’s been using Tannoy DMT-12s for several years, relying on them for their low frequency representation and the phase coherence of their Dual Concentric drivers. ‘My relationship with Tannoy speakers is all about that low-end, that’s been a very big deal for me,’ said Maserati. ‘The DMT-12s became a tool that I had to carry with me to feel confident that the work I was doing would be satisfactory. Because I jump around to so many different studios, I was bringing the 12s with me wherever I went — even if I went to a studio in Sweden, I would have the 12s sent over, because I needed the familiar representation in the low end. I even keep a pair of them in a case at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.’ He recently discovered Tannoy’s Ellipse 10 iDPs. ‘The Ellipses give me that low-end representation I need, plus they have an extended top end, and because they’re powered, they’re even more consistent. ‘Because they’re slightly more hi-fi than the DMT-12s and other reference monitors, these Ellipses are great for detailing, which helps when I’m doing my riding, particularly with guitars — they have an extended top end that you can control really nicely. An internal microprocessor helps you control your balances really well.’
CC-1s to France and Germany ALLEN & HEATH has appointed Konsbud-Audio to manage sales, distribution and service of its products in Poland. SSL IN the US has h i re d F a d i H a y e k as national sales manager, workstation partner products. He joins from Yamaha where he served as national sales manager for Steinberg products. S o u n d Te c h n o l o g y h a s b e e n appointed UK distributor of SSL’s XLogic range of outboard. PHILIPPOS NAKAS in Greece and Tamor in Saudi Arabia are handling distribution for Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup for the South-East Mediterranean and the Middle East.
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Paris-based production/ postproduction facility EAV has become the first Fairlight CC-1p o w e re d c u s t o m e r in France with the purchase of an HD Dream Factory. For med in March 2006 by parent company Melodia, EAV was established to develop Mediatour, a television channel designed to promote tourism in France. EAV handles production and postproduction responsibilities for the programming on Mediatour. ‘We were looking for an open platform with a fast and intuitive response,’ said Thierry Possémé of EAV. ‘I like to work on a system in confidence. With the HD Dream Factory we will have the best of both worlds: open architecture and the stability for which Fairlight products are known.’ In Berlin, film and video production
company Concept AV has also purchased an HD Dream Factory. Concept AV has been a Fairlight customer for eight years, and attributes much of its client satisfaction to the speed and stability of its existing Fairlight system. ‘We have used Fairlight products for our television sound design services and have had an extremely positive experience with them,’ said Stefan Engelkamp of Concept AV. ‘Because of the features offered by the HD Dream Factory, there was no choice but to once again turn to Fairlight. ‘We have integrated the HD Dream Factory system into our Avid video networking environment because we found the workflow of the Fairlight system to be much more efficient than any other,’ Engelkamp added.
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Gerry Humphreys OBE
Gerry Humphreys, Twickenham Studios’ larger than life head of sound has died, aged 75, after a long illness. Born in Llandidrod Wells Wales in 1931, he was the fifth of six brothers. During the war the family moved around a great deal eventually settling in Cobham, Surrey. One of Gerry’s schoolmates saw a sign from the bus saying, ‘Office Boy Wanted’ at Nettlefold Studios in Walton and told him. Gerry took the job and soon became a sound camera operator, moving swiftly onto the floor on boom for many episodes of the Richard Greene Robin Hood TV series. In 1960 Nettlefold built a dubbing theatre and Gerry became the assistant. A year later the studio went bust and he moved to ABPC at Elstree as an assistant in one theatre while the late Bill Rowe was assisting in the other. After another move to Starsound in Hampstead, Gerry was approached to become an assistant at Twickenham in 1964. His big break came on Roman Polanski’s Repulsion where Gerry’s youthful enthusiasm and innovation launched his mixing career. His list of credits is astonishing: Alfie, The Beatles Films, Tom Jones and films for directors such as John Schlesinger, Richard Attenborough, Ken Loach, Nick Roeg, Sam Peckinpah, Sydney Lumet, John Frankenheimer, Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Zefferelli and many, many others. During his mixing career Gerry received two BAFTAs and two Acadamy Nominations. He was a man with a legendary temper but episodes of spontaneous combustion just as quickly gave way to quite irresistible charm. In 1970 he became a director of Twickenham Studios. Always an innovator, Gerry saw to it that Twickenham had the first high-speed rock-and-roll dubbing theatre in the country and in 1988 completed the £3m Sound Centre. Gerry had a presence and charisma unmatched in the film sound business. His willingness to take risks, artistically and technically, has had a lasting effect. Always open to new ideas and supportive of new talent he was still working until a few weeks before he died. We will miss him. Rob James
Al-Jazeera CEDAR worldwide Arabic television news channel Al-Jazeera has bought four CEDAR DNS1000s and one DNS2000. The units are now based at all Al-Jazeera’s international studios — Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC — and are being employed on Al-Jazeera English.
January/February 2007
news Appointments SYMETRIX HAS appointed Paul R o b e r t s , d i re c t o r of domestic and international sales. He spent eight years at Symetrix until 2003 and returns from Loud Technologies. Ray Tantzen has been appointed to the newly-created position of product and training specialist/ field engineer. He previously worked for Loud Technologies. SIA ACOUSTICS has added two members of staff. Elizabeth Howard will direct office operations, and will assist in handling marketing and project management. Ben Jones has joined the consulting team at SIA Acoustics and has many years of system design and drafting experience. BBE SOUND has expanded its Licensing Division with three new staff. VP of technology, Yoshi Asahi, will intensify development of the company’s licensing technologies. James Lucas has been named VP of marketing with re s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r global audio licensing sales and marketing. Communications director is Chris Locke with responsibility for PR and audio licensing co-marketing programmes.
Talking House employs Lakes
Talking House Productions in San Francisco has installed three Dolby Lake Processors to control the Genelec 5.1 and stereo main monitor systems in the facility’s three control rooms. The processors provide equalisation, group delay, and bass management, and were recommended by the Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG), which was responsible for the design and build-out of the newly opened multimedia production facility. ‘One of the most important elements of a good control room is the accuracy of the monitoring,’ stated Pete Krawiec, chief engineer and producer, Talking House Productions. ‘With the Dolby Lake Processor and software, we are able to set monitor delays and an EQ curve with complete accuracy. We don’t need separate units to provide both functions or worry about any phase artefacts being introduced by the corrective room EQ that we are applying. The functionality of the Dolby Lake system is incredible, but we were also influenced by the quality reputation of Dolby when choosing this critical component of our rooms.’ ‘When done correctly, we find that minimal phase-coherent parametric equalisation works well when it’s introduced at certain low frequencies.’ explained John Storyk, of WSDG. ‘Additionally, even in a powered system, the minute you start introducing 5.1 surround you need more control, such as group delay and bass management. The Dolby Lake Processor addresses both issues elegantly.’ Talking House Productions’ complex incorporates recording facilities, offices, an art gallery, and garden space. The three control rooms house an SSL console and two Digidesign Icons. Monitoring throughout is 5.1-channel Genelec 8050As augmented by soffit-mounted 1035B main monitors in the SSL room.
Guido Noselli
Guido Noselli, founder and chairman of Italian pro audio manufacturer Outline, died in December from an illness that allowed him just a year’s life from its diagnosis. Considered as one of the world’s top experts in his field, his patents and unconventional ideas received widespread recognition yet he happily shared his experience and knowledge. Among his employees and collaborators he was regarded as a father figure and he himself spoke of ‘one big family’. He was described as ‘the ideal combination of intelligence, humanity and generosity. He was naturally magnanimous and generous with everybody, without expecting anything particular in return.’ Known for being strict with himself and for possessing great tenacity and spirit of sacrifice, he endured his illness with dignity and discretion. He will be missed.
BBC takes MG for BHP
SIS reinforces links with B400
HHB’S SPECIALIST post division Scrub has appointed Dan Bourne to the newly created position of chief engineer. He previously worked at Triangle Television. Assisting Bourne is recently appointed support engineer John Johnson, who continues to handle general customer support and install activity at Scrub. WESLEY DE VORE has joined PreSonus as customer support m a n a g e r. H e w a s most recently with EastWest Technical Support.
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H a r m a n P ro U K h a s supplied a Soundcraft B400 broadcast console to Satellite Information Services (SIS), which is installing the desk in the first of its new production complexes at its building in Milton Keynes. SIS supplies television programming and sports data to licensed betting offices and already has broadcast facilities at its premises in Corsham Street, London. Earlier this year, SIS installed a new Master Control Room and Text Centre at its Milton Keynes premises. The new production facilities mark the next phase in the development of the Milton Keynes site and will give the company room for expansion, thus allowing it to offer customers more television channels in the future. Peter Fuller, project supervisor who was responsible for broadcast design and specification, said: ‘The new Production complex comprises a gallery, sound and voiceover booth. Once it is completed, we will produce our new SIS+ channel from
Milton Keynes, using a microwave link to deliver programming back to Corsham Street for encoding and uplinking.’ SIS has already installed nine BB100 desks in various edit suites. Harman Pro UK dealer Studiocare has sold six Soundcraft RM1d digital on-air consoles in the last three months to a variety of local broadcasters. ‘We bought our first RM1d for Radio Cavell and have since acquired three more -– another for Radio Cavell and two for our community radio station, which will be operating 24-hours a day from January,’ said David McGealy, broadcast manager for the Royal Oldham Hospital’s radio station, Radio Cavell, and MD of Oldham Community Radio Station. ‘We expect our equipment to last between five and 10 years –- and we expect the companies we buy from to be around for the duration so that they can support their products with spares.’
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The BBC has ordered a significant quantity of Microtech Gefell condenser microphones for its West One project, with a total of 30 microphones so far delivered. Gefell M930s were selected for presenter and speech applications in Radio 2 and Radio 4, 6 Music and BBC 7 while the M950 subcardioid type was chosen for music production in Flagship studio 80A, which is in daily use for Radio 3’s Drivetime programme In Tune. Factors in the choice included sonic quality and the small physical size of the microphones — a critical factor with the increasing use of monitor screens and equipment specific furniture in broadcast studios. The redevelopment of Broadcasting House in the centre of London is the BBC’s single largest capital project ever, taking over ten years from inception to final delivery. When complete in 2010, the 80,000sqm structure will provide state-ofthe-art production and broadcast facilities for staff in Radio and Music, News and the World Service, and be the hub of the BBC’s national and international live output.
January/February 2007
Beyond intuitive
Digital Mixing For Broadcast And Live Sound The revolutionary Vistonics™ interface builds rotary encoders and switches right onto the touch screen, combining the visual information and operational controls in a single area. So whether you’re mixing audio for broadcast or live sound, you’re unencumbered by the burden of complex mental mapping and free to concentrate on the mix. It’s digital mixing that goes beyond intuitive, and it comes to you from Soundcraft and Studer.
www.soundcraft.com www.studer.ch
Visit us at AES San Francisco 6th-8th Oct Booth 801
news Biz Bites AS THE NEW year arrived, two influential and inspirational f i g u r e s — from both artistic and business sides of the music industry — bought their tickets to the great gig in the sky, writes Nigel Jopson. James Brown died from heart failure in Atlanta on Christmas day. The Godfather of Soul leaves a huge, genre-spanning array of influences traversing R&B, funk and hip hop. As a taskmaster with musicians and engineers, he was a precursor to the modern producer, relentlessly pursuing his vision of a recorded sound and style independent of, but complementary to, his live performances. Little Richard said of Brown: ‘He was an innovator, an emancipator, an originator. Rap music, all that stuff, came from James Brown. A great treasure is gone.’ A h m e t E r t e g u n , t h e Tu r k i s h Ambassador’s son whose love of black music made his Atlantic Records L a b e l , founded in 1947, into probably the most famous label of modern music history, died on December 14 after a fall at a Rolling Stones concert. He was 83. Ahmet borrowed US$10,000 from the family dentist to start Atlantic, and put together an extraordinary hit-making production team including engineer Tom Dowd and producer Jerry Wexler. Atlantic became the home of R&B music in the 1950s with Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner, the Drifters and the Coasters, then Ertegun moved confidently into the rock era, signing Cream, Led Zeppelin and CSN&Y among many others.
The venerable CBS Records label has been resurrected. The ‘new’ CBS will cultivate artists in-house, and leverage the promotional strength offered by TV. In return, CBS will gain a considerable amount of control and equity in its artists. ‘An emphasis of the new label will be to build awareness for CBS Records artists and songs by integrating music into CBS television series,’ a spokesperson said, neatly illustrating
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Sugar finds JBL sweet
DPA’s custom job
Pic: Christian Björn
Recording and mix engineer Bruce Sugar recently installed a JBL LSR4300 5.1 surround sound system, which he has used to mix the televised concert and DVD of Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band. ‘Live shows are always challenging, this one in particular since there are no inear monitors being used,’ Sugar noted. ‘It’s a pretty big band and there are a lot of stage monitors to deal with. ‘When purchasing studio monitors, I want something that’s pleasant to listen to all day long, that won’t fatigue my ears,’ Sugar said. ‘Beyond that, the networking features of the LSR4300 are great for 5.1 mixing. Since I mix right through Pro Tools, I don’t need a separate 5.1 matrix to monitor the system, so the LSR4300 Control Center Software has saved me quite a bit of money.’ Sugar has used the Room Mode Correction with good results. ‘I was a little wary about the RMC technology,’ he said. ‘But when I first got the monitors I mixed a few songs, had it mastered at Bernie Grundman’s 5.1 room and found that it translated extremely well. I’m very happy with the mixes.’
Maidstone’s Vista 8 for flagship Studio 5
DPA Swedish distributor Arva Trading has supplied more than 200 custom-made compact cardioid mics to the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag). Representatives from the Riksdag contacted Arva Trading to discuss testing new mics for the Chamber at the heart of the Riksdag, where the 349 members of parliament debate. Riksdag technicians tested a DPA 4023 on an active pole with short gooseneck against a range of competing brands. There were certain provisions regarding the mic’s specifications — it had to be a fixed-capsule model on a gooseneck with a visible LED indicator ring in a casing of matt chrome with a matching mounting ring. There was also a requirement for a table shockmount. ‘We contacted DPA to see if they were able to manufacture a microphone with these exact criteria, and fortunately we immediately received a positive answer,’ said Arva Trading’s district sales manager Peter Beckman. ‘A couple of weeks later, DPA sent us a prototype without the capsule and it was exactly what we were looking for. The LED indicator and the coating in particular were superb.’ A total of 205 of the custom DPA 4025 TMs (table mics) with LED indicators were ordered plus a further ten without indicators for the speaker podium and chairperson’s desks.
S2 in hospital
Leading UK studio production facility, The Maidstone Studios, has installed a Studer Vista 8 in its flagship Studio 5. Based in Kent, the purpose-built studios have been operational for more than 20 years and since being bought by a private consortium in 2002, the company has been investing in new technology, resources and staff, including the construction of Studio 5. The purpose-built 12,000sqft studio holds an audience of 1000. The 52-fader Vista 8 in the HD-ready studio is the first in the UK with Studer’s new SCore Live DSP platform. SCore Live occupies 6U and provides a doubling of
the DSP power in one third the space of its predecessor. Also included are three d21m I-O frames for 120 mic/line amps and ADCs plus 64 additional studio returns. Studer has received an order from BBC Resources for a second wraparound Vista 8 to be installed in Studio Four/TC4 at Television Centre in West London. The desk will be configured identically to the 72-fader Vista 8 supplied to Studio One/TC1 in 2005. ‘This is one of those occasions where I’m delighted to see a BBC repeat!’ said Studer sales manager Andrew Hills of the 21st large-frame Studer digital to be delivered in the UK.
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Opened in 1991 but with a history going back to 1973, Radio BGM at the Prince Philip Hospital Llanelli, Wales recently upgraded its main on-air studio with an S2 desk from Sonifex. ‘Operational demands are high on a hospital radio mixing desk, it requires robustness, functionality and ease of use in an affordable package. The Sonifex S2 certainly delivered on all these,’ said Radio BGM’s David Hurford. ‘We have attracted many new volunteers recently who have little or no previous technical operations experience but who now feel comfortable using the desk in a very short space of time. Everything is clearly identified and its configuration can be determined at a glance.’
January/February 2007
news Biz Bites the thrust of my business column this month (see p50).
Clear Channel Communications, which owns and operates more than 1,500 radio stations, has agreed to be bought by private equity firms Bain and TH Lee Partners for $18.7bn (UK£9.9bn). Owner Lowry Mays once provoked criticism by describing radio as there merely ‘to assemble ears for advertisers’. Clear Channel has been blamed by critics for creating a blander and more uniform US radio scene. Meanwhile Ofcom revealed three out of every four UK homes use digital terrestrial TV (DTT) as their main set. Households watching DTT have grown by around 800,000 over the quarter to September. Ofcom estimates
9.3m UK households have at least one set, up from 6.8m in Q3, making the UK Europe’s most enthusiastic adopter.
2006 was the year major label execs owned up to problems at the heart of their business models. Yet, as December rolled in, just two entertainment behemoths, Sony-BMG and Universal, had over 80% of album sales in the UK. Indie associations Aim and Impala continue in their attempts to unstitch Sony-BMG’s merger. The irony is that the new digital era has opened access to music sales at the very lowest level, but threatens to make competing at the highest sales echelons harder than ever before. Not good. 30,000 plays on a MySpace page and 10 friends at a gig. Nice try guys…
SHOWTIME Integrated Systems Europe, Amsterdam .................. 23-25 January SIEL, Paris .................. 11-14 February Sounds Expo, London ........ 1-3 March CabSat, Dubai ................... 6-8 March Musikmesse/Pro Light & Sound, Frankfurt ........................ 28-31 March NAB, Las Vegas ................14-19 April AES Europe, Vienna ...............5-8 May China International Music Market, Beijing ................................17-20 May Musikmesse/Pro Light & Sound Russia, St Petersburg ........14-17 June BroadcastAsia, Singapore ..19-22 June BIRTV, Beijing ............... 22-25 August IBC, Amsterdam ...... 7-11 September PLASA, London ........ 9-12 September AES US, New York ..........5-8 October SATIS, Paris .................23-25 October
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Johnson adds System 5-MC
Guitarist Eric Johnson has bought a Euphonix System 5-MC DAW controller for his updated studio’s control room. Paired predominantly with Steinberg’s Nuendo DAW application, Johnson’s System 5-MC is an 8-fader setup and was selected for its ability to interface with a variety of music production tools used by himself and his long-time engineer and co-producer Richard Mullen. ‘Originally,’ said Mullen, ‘I was looking at just the MC, but with Eric’s interest in having some sort of console in the studio, it made sense to expand the workstation into a System 5-MC, as this gives us the flexibility of the control surface, but with the feel of a more traditional console. ‘We had the opportunity to work with Steinberg’s Nuendo and were very impressed,’ continued Mullen. ‘We were using the Euphonix AM713 24-bit analogue/MADI convertors and, together, this made a really great sounding recording system. When I discovered the capabilities of the MC and the fact there was a EuCon-aware version of Nuendo that integrates closely with the control surface via Euphonix’ high-speed protocol, I was convinced this was the way to go. Together, the Euphonix-Steinberg setup creates a seamless system. We can still use Pro Tools if we choose, and there are other EuCon-aware applications such as Logic that appeal to us. With the System 5-MC, we aren’t tied to any one format.’
Asian Games go live with Riedel
R i e d e l Communications furnished more than 24 tons of communications systems to the 15th Asian Games in Doha/Qatar. Riedel shipped 77 pallets of gear to the event that ranks as the biggest multisport event other than the summer Olympics and the largest sporting event ever held in the Middle East. A team of 65 Riedel engineers were onsite to install and operate the equipment that networked all the venues and covered sports and organisational communications as well as the local locations. Riedel dispatched more than 6,000 digital Tetra radios from Motorola to Doha that were used by DAGOC, the organisation committee for the Asian Games in Quatar, for radio communications at all venues. Riedel also supplied intercoms for all venues. Based on its formula at many international projects including the Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Riedel configured an
infrastructure consisting of digital intercom matrix systems, digital partyline systems and professional mobile radios. R i e d e l ’s A r t i s t digital intercom matrix functioned as the heart of the installation with 45 Artist 64 mainframes serving as the venue’s intercoms. Doha Asian Games Broadcast Services AG (DAGBS), the host broadcast service for the Games, also used Riedel’s digital intercom matrix Artist for its own communications. * When LA-based Sweetwater Digital Productions’ new 53-foot HDTV doubleexpando production truck hits the road it will have a Riedel Artist intercom system. The unit, currently under construction and designed to accommodate largescale concerts, awards ceremonies and high-profile sports and entertainment applications, will install Riedel’s Artist 128. Sweetwater provides turnkey production system rentals.
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Recording with Reflexion
Touring, writing and recording with Jamiroquai since 2000, guitarist Rob Harris has stocked up on mics including an SE Z5600a and Reflexion Filter. ‘The Reflexion Filter is so useful if you’re working in a less than perfect sounding room, keeping down any unwanted room colouration,’ said Rob. ‘It’s great in that it’s portable and can be used in different situations for different instruments too.’ Martin Brammer, one of the songwriters behind James M o r r i s o n ’s d e b u t album Undiscovered and tracks for The Lighthouse Family a n d T i n a Tu r n e r, has his own studio in which he writes and records using SE mics. ‘I’ve got the Gemini which is what I use most of the time and also the Reflexion Filter,’ he said. ‘I have a vocal booth at my studio but was thinking about recording vocals in the control room as friends have done it and there’s been a lot easier communication and a vibe when you’re all sitting in the same room. So I bought the Reflexion Filter and it’s been great. It’s technically effective and now my vocal booth has loads of boxes in it as I never use it!’
ITN Telex/RTS upgrade
Paul Flook and Adrian Richmond, Telex UK. ITN has installed a 176 square Telex/RTS ADAM matrix system in the master control room at its Gray’s Inn Road headquarters in London, which it runs to six studios and 16 edit suites. ‘We were looking for a new intercom system that would fulfil not only our present but also our future needs and compared to the competition the Telex/RTS system proved more flexible both in its design and implementation,’ said Paul Flook, head of broadcast engineering ITN.
January/February 2007
Photography by: Louis Austin-Tacious
facility
Skyline Tonfabrik It’s a postproduction suite with a music programming room and a mastering facility with one of the world’s five SPL MMC1 multichannel mastering consoles. ZENON SCHOEPE reports on a facility that was brave enough to start again.
T
HE SKYLINE STORY is the sort that will warm the heart of anyone who has ever had to look long and hard at what they do and then came to the conclusion that they really have to rethink everything if they are going to continue at all. Faced with the well-documented decline in commercial music studios in general, and music studios in Germany in particular, hard decisions had to be made. The two partners in Skyline Tonfabrik in Düsseldorf — Peter Krick and Kai Blankenberg — realised they had to start again. Peter had his first studio in Düsseldorf in 1980 and worked with Propaganda, Kraftwerk and Die Toten Hosen among others but as the years passed so the rate of studio attrition grew higher. ‘One of the problems here in Germany is that we always offered the whole studio with all the equipment at one price,’ explains Peter. ‘That price was already lower than in the UK but everything was included. You couldn’t add anything on.’ He had a large recording studio with mastering and postproduction sides to the operation and it 14
needed sorting. ‘I sat down one day and really looked honestly at the figures for the last five years and realised that the recording studio hadn’t earned one Euro,’ says Peter. ‘All the income had come from the mastering and postproduction. So I thought why do we work our arses off in the big studio when it only just covers its costs? That was bad for the business because if we didn’t have the other stuff then we would be bankrupt. We did a completely new setup with Kai and me as partners and then looked for a space to put it all in.’ ‘Kai was too good to let him go!’ he adds. ‘We did our research and in mastering we had done well –- Kai has a very good reputation in mastering. Postproduction and advertising did well too but the music recording did badly. We changed our approach and since we moved to this new place it has gone really well.’ Skyline moved into its new premises some 18 months ago taking some of the choice gear they already had and selling off the rest for reinvestment. resolution
Building was gradual, adding a room at a time in what had previously been apartment space. They now have a large mastering room, a postproduction suite with voice over room and a music programming room on the top floor. There’s even potential for expansion in an adjoining building and it’s likely for an additional mastering room. ‘At the moment we’re working seven days a week in mastering and still there is work to do,’ he says. ‘In 2006 we had at least 20 top ten projects.’ Kai started as a tea boy in Peter’s previous studio and progressed to mastering although he worked in a standard control room rather than a mastering optimised environment. ‘We hadn’t planned to become one of THE mastering studios in Germany but Kai has good hands for it and is good at dealing with the clients, which is a big part of the job because they have to feel confident and understand was is happening,’ says Peter. It’s the split of the business now and how it pays that makes interesting reading. The mastering room is busiest but at Euro 95/hour it works out about equal to the postproduction side, which while it is not as busy, pays three times the rate. Düsseldorf is something of a German media centre and Skyline provides voiceovers for commercials in TV and radio, film music and sound design. Central to the mastering room is an SPL MMC1 surround mastering console – one of only five in the world – and this alone sends a clear message of the type of company Skyline wants to keep. ‘We were mastering for some ten years before January/February 2007
facility
we had an MMC1. When we got to thinking about this place we wanted to be the number one German mastering facility and we’re close to that — we’re in the top four — and give us two years and we’ll be there,’ states Peter. ‘We looked around, saw what other mastering engineers were using and the MMC1 was obvious. We started mastering here without it and when it arrived we set up the stuff, connected it up, everything worked — which is surprising in this day and age! Every desk I’ve ever bought hasn’t completely worked when I got it. The next day after we installed it, we came in fresh and able to make a comparison and listened to it, tried it and it was a big difference. Everything sounded more powerful, stronger, more open, clearer; we wouldn’t work without it again.’ Kai augments this in the analogue domain with Massenburg 8200, Manley Massive Passive, FairMan TMEQ, FairMan TMC and the stunning new Elysia Alpha compressor. On the digital side he has Apogee PSX-100, AD-8000, Jünger d01, TC System 6000
plus Sony Oxford and Waves plug-ins on Pro Tools, which is also used in the post room. Monitoring is via Hothouse ARM 265 active 2-ways, an American brand they discovered. ‘What I like about the Hothouse monitors is that you can immediately tell the difference between a good production and mix and a not so good one,’ adds Kai. Discussions about the loudness issue and the mastering engineer’s responsibility in taming it are dear to Kai’s heart although he understands the client’s position. ‘I will advise them against it,’ he says. ‘I’ll do lower level and higher level versions of the same song and when they’re here they say they like the lower level version better. Then they go home, play it to their girlfriend and then they go for the louder one. Many of these clients are not only musicians; they distribute their own music and they want it to be as loud as everyone else’s. They’re not thinking about the artistic content at that stage, they’re thinking about selling their product.’ The demand for mastering is driven mostly by
Browser-based collaboration
Kai (seated) and Peter.
January/February 2007
Skyline has just added a web-based real-time collaboration system into its technical services portfolio. Connex ONE, developed by Medialivetech, offers a web-based conference room together with real-time streaming of two media, enabling a client to be virtually present at any mastering, recording, synchronising or editing session in the production process. ‘Any customer with broadband Internet access can now log on to a password secured website, and join his session,’ explains Peter. ‘He will listen to his source and the processed audio signal and be able to compare and evaluate real-time action in his own acoustic environment. He watches the engineer at work and submits his approval via a chat box as well as his change requirements or his ideas, allowing for quick adaptation and implementing of his wishes. ‘Working with the Connex ONE eliminates mailing around of mp3s and reduces unwanted delays in the production or approval process dramatically,’ he says. ‘Shorter production times mean lower cost, too, and give you a competitive edge. We always wanted to offer our customers full transparency over their production processes in our studios at any time and from anywhere they wished –- now we can give them a lot of added value.’
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producers, according to Kai. ‘They’ve taken it as far as they can and they want it better. The question is how far they can get at Euro 95 per hour. We can make a big improvement particularly with a medium quality production. What takes them days to do I can do in two or three hours. It’ll sound better and be in better shape.’ Kai suspects that supplying constituent stems for mastering will become more commonplace. It’s an expensive way to master although the MMC1 is able to take four stereo stems and process them differently and then recombine them accordingly. Peter says that there are up sides to the approach as the stem separation means that issues may become apparent within the mastering monitoring environment and can be handled more effectively. It’s why expansion with another mastering room with similar equipment, but perhaps a smaller SPL DMC, might make a lot of sense. ‘We are growing healthily, we’re not on credit, there’s no loan and no financing,’ states Peter. ‘Everything is paid for because it’s our philosophy in the new setup to play it cool and not take out a Euro 300,000 loan and be trapped if it doesn’t work. We buy anything we can afford from the work we do.’ In what can be a high risk business they’re making themselves as low risk as possible. ‘I know from my years in business how quickly things can go wrong,’ adds Peter. ‘One client who owes you a lot of money going bankrupt can kill you.’ Adhering to the old adage ‘to follow the money’ is what they’ve done. They’re happier and probably sleep better as a result. ■
Contact SKYLINE TONFABRIK, GERMANY: Website: www.Skyline-Tonfabrik.de
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gear
Products Equipment introductions and announcements.
Mackie Control Pro
The Mackie Control Pro control surface series includes the Universal Pro, Extender Pro and C4 Pro, which are designed to provide hands-on control of mix and plug-in parameters. Universal Pro can connect directly to a Mac or PC via USB and has connections for three additional pieces of external MIDI gear. It has nine motorised, touch-sensitive P&G faders, eight V-Pots and more than 50 master buttons. Extender Pro shares the new appearance of the Universal Pro and allows for expansion of the master module. Users can add eight P&G faders and V-Pot channels at a time up to 24 faders and V-Pot channels total. The C4 Pro plug-in and virtual instrument controller offers hands-on control of up to 32 simultaneous parameters as well as extensive visual feedback via four backlit LCD scribble strips. Like the Extender Pro, the C4 Pro has been designed to connect to the Universal Pro, but can also operate standalone. The unique communication protocol employed by the C4 Pro allows for plug and play setup, and enables users to view parameter names and values in real time. The VLZ3 line of compact mixers feature new studiograde XDR2 E x t e n d e d Dynamic Range mic preamps, which claim a wider frequency range than their predecessors. The mixers claim a wider dynamic range and improved EQ. The VLZ3 line includes the 16-channel 1604-VLZ3 mixer with 16 XDR2 mic preamps, the 16-channel 1642-VLZ3 with 10 XDR2 preamps, the 1402-VLZ3 14-channel mixer with 6 XDR2 mic preamps, and the 12-channel 1202-VLZ3, which has 4 XDR2 mic pres.
Tracktion 3 digital audio and MIDI production software introduces more than 150 new features and improvements. Enhancements include the addition of time stretching and pitch shifting and a new loop browser. Tracktion 3 is available in Ultimate Bundle and Project Bundle versions with the former offering a complete production suite including more powerful plug-ins. www.mackie.com
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Platform news: Digidesign Pro Tools 7.3 software adds features and speed enhancements for Pro To o l s | H D , P r o To o l s L E , a n d P ro To o l s M Powered systems. With new music composition tools, customisable user enhancements, and improved postproduction workflows, 7.3 is said to be an essential upgrade for users composing music or mixing audio for postproduction. Dynamic Transport mode allows playback to operate independently of the current selection, and the Loop Trim tool allows users to turn audio or MIDI regions into loops. New key signature features, loop preview options, and click track features streamline music composition. The release also bridges Pro Tools to Sibelius notation software with a Send to Sibelius menu command, enabling composers and educators to export entire Pro Tools MIDI compositions or individual tracks to Sibelius to print arrangements or instrumental parts. A Window Configurations feature allows users to store and recall 99 window layouts, while memory locations, Zoom Toggle preferences, and track heights are all user-customisable. Users can make many changes to their mixing configurations without manually stopping and restarting playback, and new drag-and-drop plug-in settings functionality allows for instant plug-in opening or settings recall. For post, the DV Toolkit 2 option adds QuickTime video editing and export features, as well as integrated multichannel field audio matching. Pro Tools 7.3 software is available now on the DigiStore. The Mbox 2 Mini is an ultra-compact, USB-powered Pro Tools LE system and is the most affordable Pro Tools LE system ever. It features two simultaneous analogue inputs, including one XLR mic input with phantom power and two ¼-inch line/instrument inputs. Like existing Mbox products, it offers 24-bit/48kHz operation and zero-latency monitoring. The Mini also has two ¼-inch analogue monitor outputs with front-panel volume control and a monitor mute switch plus a headphones output. Mbox 2 Mini is available for UK£195 (+ VAT). www.digidesign.com
Stagetec compact
Stagetec has shown a prototype compact digital mixer for the radio and TV sectors. Currently unnamed it looks a lot like a little brother to Aurus with its dual encoders and arc indicators. It is expected to be available during the second half of the year. The console has a modular design, offering 8 to 24 faders but has a fixed layout comprising 32 input channels, 8 groups, 8 sums, 8 aux paths, and 8 mix-minus sums. Other functions optimised for clarity and speed of access include easy routing to the mix-minus buses directly from the channel strip. Miniature TFT displays are integrated into the master section and are dedicated to specific functions — the equaliser or a dynamic function on the chosen channel strip, the selected layer, the routing, or the aux settings. Snapshot automation is included. Like all Stagetec consoles the compact mixer uses Nexus as an I-O and routing unit. It also has external remotecontrollability and the integration of peripherals plus the ability to mix to surround formats. www.stagetec.com
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Flexible Oxford Bundles
Sony Oxford is offering flexible plug-in bundles with up to 40% discounts — the more plugs-ins selected, the greater the savings. ‘We found customers tired of being told what plug-ins they had to buy in a bundle, and thought we’d give them the opportunity to create their own custom bundles suited to their requirements,’ said Sony Oxford’s sales and marketing manager, Nathan Eames. ‘Many users of Pro Tools or Powercore already have one or two of our plug-ins, and now want to upgrade and purchase the other plugs in our Oxford 6 Pack bundle.’ Sony Oxford Plug-in bundles are currently only available from authorised dealers. Sony Oxford has released Universal Binary versions of its Pro Tools plug-ins for use with Intel-based Macs. Upgrades will be free of charge for a three-month period from original registration. www.sonyplugins.com/bundles
January/February 2007
gear Fairlight plug-in partners Fairlight has initiated a Dream II (Manufacturer) Partner Program to streamline the integration of third-party software applications into the architecture of its CC-1-powered Dream II family of products. Partners are divided into two categories. Gold Partners are able to connect their products to Dream II via VST or ReWire interfaces while Platinum Partners can integrate their software more directly with Dream II products. Plug-in manufacturers who have joined the Fairlight’s Dream II Partner Program include Synchro Arts (Platinum), Waves (Gold), IK Multimedia (Gold) and Serato Audio Research (Platinum). www.fairlightau.com
SE USB The USB2200a from SE Electronics is a USB2 microphone based on the studio sE2200a capsule. It records via USB (record path 16-bit/48kHz, output path 24bit/48kHz) directly to DAW. The mic includes low latency headphone monitoring (less than 1ms) with mix control to allow the user to set playback versus record path levels to monitor live takes, 10dB pad, bass cut and an ‘analogue switch’ that enables the user to use the mic via an XLR connector with 48V phantom power. The USB2200a employs proprietary chips, one of which transforms the 5V power supplied via the USB cable to power the capsule after first removing noise and spikes from the current. The second chip includes the appropriate software drivers for plug and play use with any DAW. www.seelectronics.com
Smart update
Another Focusrite Saffire
V1.5.2 software for the Smart Console implements a new ‘Fast-Switching’ feature allowing multiple engines to be simultaneously c o n t ro l l e d and users to immediately switch between control of different mix engines. Professional series consoles can control two engines simultaneously and Elite series consoles up to four engines simultaneously. This new software is available for download now and is free to all Smart Console users. www.smartav.net
Featuring the same preamps and convertors as its larger sibling, Focusrite’s Saffire PRO 10 i/o has the same integrated I-O and monitoring control software, SaffireControl Pro, and can allow for larger recording solutions via the option to aggregate multiple units, all controlled via the same control platform. Saffire Pro 10 i/o combines eight channels of preamp with eight balanced line outputs and stereo SPDIF I-O. As with all Saffire units, it can be bus-powered or powered via an external PSU. There’s also MIDI I-O, high pass filters on each channel, and two channels with DI and assignable insert points. The front panel has two independent headphones outputs with volume controls, customisable within SaffireControl Pro. It comes bundled with Compression, Reverb, Amp Modeling and EQ VST/AU plug-ins. www.focusrite.com
When enthusiasm leads to passion ...
Networkable CD player PROS Denon Professional’s 1U DN-C640 can play back MP3 and WMA files from CD data discs and is also capable of decoding MP2 and PCM (WAV) files from the same discs. In addition, it has the ability to read any of the above from any data DVD. This expands the 20-hour playback time to almost six days (continuous) and also allows play back of 44.1kHz PCM recordings without being limited to the 80-minute CD-R. It also offers the ability to stream any of those files from a server or computer, as long as it is accessible via the network. Anyone in an environment that records and stores on a network hard disk or computer can navigate to that folder location from the front panel of the unit or by using the on-board web browser, select a specific file, and play it into their system. The DN-C640 comes with a host of control options including 25-pin GPIO port, 9-pin RS-232C, IR Control, and internal Web GUI. www.d-mpro.eu.com
January/February 2007
Pro, Con, Extras Text
CONS EXTRAS
SCHOEPS Mikrofone Spitalstr. 20 76227 Karlsruhe - Germany +49 721 943 200
Diana Mayer-Blaimschein and Martin Mayer are:
Contact
www.schoeps.de
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COMPANYwww.mistermaster.at NAME, PLACE: Website: www.XXXXXXXX.co.uk Tel: +44 XXXXX XXXXXXX
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gear RME PCI-Express
Vadis 888 revamp
The HDSPe PCI C a rd a n d t h e HDSPe MADI c a rd a re P C I Express versions of their PCI equivalents. Based on RME’s Hammerfall DSP series the new PCI-Express core ensures compatibility with the high-speed serial bus technology in newer motherboards and computers. RME´s FPGA core ensures update capability via RME’s Secure They´ll Grow 05|05|2006 15:04 Side 3 Flash technology. www.rme-audio.com
Klotz Digital’s Vadis router family has undergone a complete redesign. Vadis 888 has improved aesthetics, an enhanced front panel display to provide more information in a clearly arranged manner and a fanless power supply unit for silent operation. An optional hot-swappable redundant PSU is available and Klotz Digital’s hot swap technology applies to all essential components of the frame, such as Vadis cards and the synchronisation module. As with the previous model, the PSUs are installed at the front for easy serviceability. The new Vadis frame is also available in a Vadis 884 version, which is additionally equipped with a video sync module for audio for video applications. www.klotzdigital.com
sound engineering
MIPRO wireless MIPRO has introduced the A C T- 8 1 / 8 2 w i r e l e s s microphone systems featuring proprietary 128-bit encryption and a sub-band ADPCM algorithm to eliminate background noise. Housed in a rugged metal receiver with a full-colour vacuum fluorescent display, system set-up is via a single rotary switch and Autoscan and ACT (automatic channel targeting) channel set-up. PC-controllable software allows simultaneous monitoring and control of multiple, large-scale systems. The ACT-81/82 wireless microphone systems claim premium sound and rock-solid reliability with advanced features including 24-bit audio and digital RF transmission, while DigitnamicPlus technology eliminates compander noise. Handheld (ACT-8H) and bodypack (ACT-8T) transmitters include a multifunction LCD indicator for channel, battery status, input levels and error code. www.mipro.com.tw
Aviom Output and System Bridge
Aviom’s updated AN-16/o Output Module is now shipping with improved mic and line output levels, DB25 multipins for audio connections, and heavy duty locking Neutrik EtherCons for network connections. The new AN-16/o provides 16 balanced mic or line-level analogue outputs with switchable output levels per channel pair.
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apt-X Live
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The AN-16SBR System Bridge is now also shipping. All Pro16 Series products are compatible with the AN-16SBR, which is designed to be used with Pro16 Series products when digital snake and audio distribution systems larger than 32 channels are required. One AN-16SBR is used at each end of every 48- or 64-channel run. The AN-16SBR supports the configurations of 64 x 0, 48 x 16, 32 x 32 or smaller. Features include two identical 1U modules, each with four Neutrik EtherCon connectors (16 channels each) and one Neutrik EtherCon connector for Bridge output (up to 64 channels). Multiple AN-16SBR units can be used to create complex systems and, at each end of a main run, one AN-16SBR is used to combine or separate up to four 16-channel A-Net streams onto a single Cat5 cable. The combined Bridge output carries up to 64 channels. All network connections feature heavy-duty locking Neutrik EtherCon connectors. www.aviom.com
www.tube-tech.com resolution
APT has launched apt-X Live audio coding technology designed specifically for live performance situations, which claims to set a new benchmark of audio quality, low latency and error resilience all at low data rates. This technology is expected to have a significant impact in the field of digital wireless audio. Many microphone and headset manufacturers have been hampered in their attempts to move to digital wireless due to the lack of suitable technology. With a delay, claimed to be unequalled in the industry, of under 2ms apt-X Live enables the streaming of digital audio in real-time over a wireless link and removes issues associated with video lip sync or on-stage timing. www.aptx.com
January/February 2007
gear Trantec S6000E Series Tr a n t e c ’s S 6 0 0 0 E Series of radio microphones represent a step change and advancement on the original S6000 range. PC monitoring and editing facilities on all receiver variants, PC control via USB or Ethernet, enhanced audio dynamics processing, improved battery monitoring, RF tracking filters, integrated tone, RSSI and noise squelch system are included. Adding to the original design’s features that include 72MHz operation (almost 3,000 channels), the S6000E Series also boasts a range of rugged transmitter designs, all with single AA powering. The miniature beltpack transmitter has a ruggedised battery compartment, improved audio dynamics and a choice of popular connector variants. The handheld has also been enhanced with a new quick action interchangeable head facility. The S4.16 UHF wireless mic system builds on the platform of the S4.4 by increasing the number of selectable frequencies to 16 and offering rear-mount detachable antennae. These 16 frequencies incorporate the four licence-free channels already used in the S4.4, all working intermodulation free. Remote antennae can be connected through Trantec antenna distribution units. It is offered in two transmitter variants — beltpack and handheld. The handheld mic features a cardioid dynamic capsule while the beltpack transmitter is supplied with a lapel-style clip-on mic. www.trantec.co.uk
Self-powered speaker cables
Free UnWrap HD for 6000
L i n k ’s C V S LKSPKAL 12/3 U2A2 is a new line of self-powered speaker cable. It includes a 12/3 double shielded power cable, two AES individually jacketed and shielded pairs and two colour-coded UTP Ethernet lines, featuring Link’s cross-spacer (Cat6-style) construction. The cables are designed for self-powered loudspeaker systems that incorporate Cat5 control and/or signal connectivity. www.linkitaly.com
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Melodyne plug-in Melodyne plug-in offers Melodyne’s functions for the editing of pitch and timing as a plug-in directly integrated into VST, AU and RTAS. The algorithm for single-voice material is included as well as a new algorithm for percussive material. Melodyne3 contains many new functions and improvements. It offers a new algorithm that allows any type of audio to profit from Melodyne’s editing functions. With Version 3, Melodyne is no longer limited to melodies but offers an algorithm that can perform time stretching on full chords and complex audio signals; so now harmonic material (such as rhythm guitar or piano parts) — whether homophonic or polyphonic — can be transposed (without altering the tempo), slowed down or sped up (without altering the pitch) and even quantised. Melodyne3 also offers fully automatic analysis of the audio material, powerful macros for the correction of intonation and timing errors, and numerous improvements in the user interface. www.celemony.com
January/February 2007
The UnWrap HD software upgrade offers existing TC System 6000 UnWrap users new possibilities when it comes to extracting dialogue or enveloping sources from a stereo or LtRt mix, enabling better discrimination between foreground and background elements of a track. The software version is backwards compatible with original UnWrap presets and is available for free download by UnWrap license holders from the site. www.tcelectronic.com
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Contact
www.fairlightau.com
COMPANY NAME, PLACE: Website: www.XXXXXXXX.co.uk Tel: +44 XXXXX XXXXXXX
&AIRLIGHT 2ESOLUTION MAG AD INDD
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gear Belden cables and assembly service In addition to its range of cables, Belden now also offers a cable assembly service. Handled as a complete turnkey project, with minimum customer involvement, cables are assembled according to agreed specification, tested to ensure fail-safe perfor mance and delivered wherever they are needed. Belden has introduced the Brilliance range of low-cap OxygenFree, High Conductivity speaker cables for indoor/ outdoor/buried use.
Belden’s FieldBus Type A multipair and foil/braid cables are designed for the FieldBus all-digital, serial and two-way communications protocol aimed at standardising the interconnection of field devices at a communications rate of 31.25kb/s. FieldBus uses Ethernet for HSE control backbone 100Mb/s transmissions. To help users select Cat5e or Cat6 cables, Belden has published the DataTuff Industrial Ethernet Cable Selection Guide. A new Technical Bulletin about FieldBus cables is also on the site. www.belden.com
ARX gate
The updated Sixgate 6-channel optical noise gate from ARX employs ARX’s new ultra low noise high-speed optocoupler circuitry with programme-dependent attack time. Front panel controls for each gate consist of release, depth and threshold, plus red and green LEDs to indicate gate status and a bypass switch. New to the AudiBox s e r i e s of audio problem solvers is the Iso Optimizer, which allows you to attenuate the level from one piece of equipment to the next. Transformer ground isolation provides lownoise operation. I-Os are balanced jack and unbalanced phonos and input attenuation is user variable from 0dB to off. www.arx.com.au
Duende V1.5 V1.5 software f o r S S L ’s Duende is available to PC and Intel processor Mac users. Based on the DSP technology of its C-Series consoles, Duende integrates SSL Channel EQ and dynamics processing with a DAW. On-board DSP, connected to the DAW via FireWire, runs the SSL processing tool kit. Duende allows for 32 channels of processing at up to 96kHz. The software can be downloaded from the company’s site. www.solid-state-logic.com
Klotz cables KLOTZ ais has released the Giant 27 flex 50 Ohm antenna cable for gigahertz frequencies for transmission of antenna signals f ro m w i re l e s s microphone systems. T h e c a b l e ’s stranded copper inner conductor has an overall diameter of 2.7mm and dielectric of 7.2mm-diameter physically foamed polyethylene. Screening comprises copper foil enclosed by copper braiding. The cable has an outer jacket of black PVC that is 10.2mm in diameter. The MSD-16 modular signal distribution 16-channel System is based on an easy-to-adjust mechanical configuration combined with a 2 x 8-channel audio bus structure. The flexibility of the MSD system enables the set-up of conventional input/return stage boxes as well as universal solutions without determined return paths. The MiniLink premade cable series has been overhauled and relaunched. www.klotz-ais.com
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gear Aeromax
RND plugs
Linear Acoustic’s Aeromax series of multichannel audio television processors provide multilevel dynamic processing for 2-channel and multichannel audio programmes. Plugin accessories include metadata support and stereo-tosurround upmixing. www.linearacoustic.com
Production audio monitor panel
Roger Nichols Digital’s Uniquel-izer LE is described as a relatively simple and basic EQ that works across all major platforms. With Uniquel-izer LE you can save your session settings in Pro Tools and then open it in Digital Performer
The TELEX/RTS model PAM-16 keypanel is rackmountable and has 16 pushbutton keys for monitoring audio inputs. It also has four-character alphanumeric displays with an adjustable brightness control. The output of the PAM-16 can be connected to a monitor speaker or can be used to create a mix (n-1 audio) that can be sent back to the matrix as an input for IFBs. www.telex.com
and load those same settings you created. Detailer is the first RND plug-in to be developed specifically by Roger Nichols. It is a stereo mastering tool or a final mix plug-in for a DAW’s master fader. Detailer claims to offer a new way of increasing the ‘detail’ or clarity in a final mix while still allowing increased loudness. The process involves a combination of a 3-band limiter and dynamic widening using psycho-acoustic processing. www.rndigital.com
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Innovason plug-ins Innovason will b e o ff e r i n g Wa v e s a n d VB-Audio plug-in effects on its desks. The first level of processing using effects from VB-Audio will take the form of a standard I-O module that is compatible with the range of Innovason racks, and will be delivered as standard with every new console. Additional effects modules using effects from Waves will be available as an option in a separate 1U rack connected to the DioES interface of the console by a Cat5 cable. The DioES interface offers 64 EtherSound channels over a Cat5 cable, thus by connecting the effects to DioES, these effects may then be shared by any other console on the network, a feature that is claimed to be unique to Innovason. All effects will be managed and controlled via Sensoft software and Sensoft 11 features a new graphical interface with the ability to manage four Dio Core devices. Combined with the Stage Box that comes as standard with an Sy80, Sensoft 11 enables a total of five remote audio racks to be connected to and controlled by a single console. www.innovason.com
MOTU 8pre
MOTU is shipping the 8pre 1U FireWire audio interface that turns a laptop or desktop into a 24-bit, 96kHz recording studio with eight mic inputs, 8-channel ADAT optical digital I-O and MIDI I-O. When not connected to a computer, the 8pre can function as an 8-channel analogue-to-digital convertor. www.motu.com
January/February 2007
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review
Dangerous Music Monitor ST-SR Monitor controllers are now part of DAW furniture but not all are created equal and not all hit all the buttons for all the people. It’s a about feel and it’s about features, says button-pushing ROB JAMES.
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NE CONSEQUENCE OF production techniques shifting to the workstation has been the rise in popularity of certain peripherals. The most obvious example is the plethora of mic amps and input channels. However, one device really has come out of the high-end closet into the mainstream — the monitor controller. Once the message penetrated that monitor controllers were not just a good idea but an absolute essential in the DAW environment, manufacturers were quick to offer a variety of hardware. The category divides broadly into stereo and surround units and then subdivides by application, music, film and broadcast. The simplest devices are passive with few bells and whistles. The most complex offer input summing, cue, talkback and signal routing. For surround, 5.1 capability is the norm with only one or two examples going all the way to 10.1 and beyond. Dangerous Music is a new name to me but the company principals, Bob Muller and Chris Muth, have an enviable combination of hands-on recording experience and analogue design expertise. Chris was building high-end mastering controllers in the early 1990s and the first rackmount ‘Dangerous Monitor’ appeared in 2002. With a product already out there Dangerous was able to look at what works and what doesn’t, then improve and innovate when developing a modular controller system. At UK£1276 (+ VAT), the ST unit with remote is a stereo controller offering cue and talkback facilities including, unusually, a 40W headphone amp. Adding the UK£900 (+ VAT) SR unit transforms the system into a full-blown 5.1 surround monitor controller. The Dangerous remote wins the golden paperweight award for being quite the prettiest I’ve seen to date. It is nicely weighted too, with thick rubber feet, so it won’t go skittering off the desk. Unusually for this day and age the volume control is an absolute position knob: it is not a continuous rotary encoder, neither is it a pot. In reality it is the positive operational control for the Dangerous ‘Computer Controlled Gain System’ switching 31 1.5dB steps of pure attenuation. No VCAs or DCAs here, a laser trimmed resistor ladder offering inter-channel tracking with a claimed tolerance of 0.02dB does the business. Also unusual is the absence of an overall Mute button. The function is in fact present; you simply press the currently selected speaker set button to de22
select it. With familiarity this is perfectly satisfactory. While on the learning curve, just try to avoid the DAW outputting full-level digital shash... Buttons are colour-coded and have two modes of operation, Press and Hold. Press equals less than half a second, hold is anything longer — also known as ‘momentoggle’. For example, the Talkback button will latch with a quick press but is momentary when held for longer then released. Blue buttons are for programming gain offsets and system configurations, Green signifies Input sources, speaker selection and subwoofer/filter assignments, Mono, Aux, Talkback and Dim are Orange as are the four Additional
Switching buttons for future expansion. Red is used for speaker Mute and Solo functions. One Blue button is enigmatically labelled ‘PPI’, standing for Producer Pacifier Indicator. In operational mode this actually does nothing at all except light up the pretty blue LED. It is intended for those annoying occasions when the producer/director doesn’t know what they want. You ask them if they prefer version A or version B, pressing the PPI button between two playbacks of the same take. They will usually say they think one or the other is great. Works like a charm. With Setup mode engaged, each input can be set
In, out and about
Both SR and ST system units are 1U rackmounts with external in-line brick power supplies. Unfortunately the DC connection from these to the units is a standard 5-pin DIN plug. I would have preferred to see an XLR 5 or other more substantial locking connector used for this purpose. The ST has half a dozen knobs on the front and a microphone for talkback, plus jacks for an external mic and headphones. This output allows the engineer to hear the cue signal being sent to the studio. The associated level control only affects this socket. The Remote Mic jack expects to see a high impedance input and the level pot affects internal or remote mics. Main to Cue level sends the selected source to the Cue amplifier. Two pots control Aux input level To Cue
and To Main. A switch on the remote adds the Aux signal to the Main for control room monitoring. Last pot on the right attenuates Input 4. This enables a high-level guide track, e.g. a ‘compressed to whatsit’ CD, to be compared realistically with the main mix. The SR front panel simply has four holes to access level trim pots that enable the Left and Right Rear, Centre and LFE channels to be balanced with Left and Right Front, handled by the SR. It’s a shame they aren’t multiturn. Curiously neither unit has a power indicator LED. Around the back of the ST, two 25-way D-sub connectors wired in Tascam format handle the main audio inputs and outputs. XLRs cater for Aux 1 and 2 input, Cue amp out, Talkback remote (switch) and Slate, which outputs the talkback mic signal only when Talkback is invoked. Remote is an RJ-45 using standard Cat 5-e networking cable for distances up to 30m. In a system that includes the SR, the input and output D-subs are connected via ribbon cables to the To Monitor ST and From Monitor ST D-subs respectively. A short Cat-5-e also goes between the units to link the remote functions and in surround configuration the remote connects to the SR unit. A further eight 25-way D-subs deal with up to four 5.1 inputs, two sets of 5.1 speakers plus a stereo output with a subwoofer switching feature. In stereo mode the sub feeds take the front channel signals, in surround the three sub outputs (Left, Right and Mono combined) take the LFE channel signal. Last, but by no means least, is a separate meter feed that outputs the selected input at +4dBu nominal. Maximum input level is +25dBu.
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review as stereo or 5.1. The Gain button caters for -10dB consumer levels. Input levels can be further adjusted by up to 4.5dB to match others using the Up and Down buttons. This level change is achieved by offsetting the main volume control by up to three steps upwards. Four LEDs indicate where you are, with the original setting showing green and any change red. Ideally, levels should be matched at source but this feature is a convenient and quick real-world fix. Similarly, each Speaker set can be attenuated by up to 9dB in 3dB steps with the sub default at -3dB. With everything at unity gain the units present an insertion loss of 6dB, very sensible. Each speaker set can have the sub engaged with or without the 57Hz LPF provided to limit sub output to the bottom octave. Other thoughtful setup options include Talkback to Dim and/or Aux-to-Main linking. Six individual Speaker Mute/Solo buttons lie adjacent to the volume knob. Solo logically inverts the mute function so if, say, the left channel is muted by a quick press on its button, subsequently pressing Solo mutes all the other channels and solos Left. The converse also applies, if a channel is solo latched it will be muted when solo mode is cancelled. This is different to many other controllers where solo and mute are independent, but with familiarity it makes a lot of sense when diagnosing in surround. Dim lowers the selected speaker set’s gain by a fixed 18dB. I would have liked to have seen a button for a fixed (calibrated) monitor level. Since even sound engineers are subject to oversights, I always check what happens when monitor controllers are powered up or down with the speaker amps on. In this case there is a thump, but this is mitigated considerably since it wakes up with Dim engaged. Buttons and relays click positively. There are two schools Resolution Half Page
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of thought on this — it does provide additional user feedback but may be annoying in some situations. Ironically, although the ST or SR come from a company with a reputation for summing units, neither can sum inputs, so if you want film-style monitoring of multiple 5.1 stems the only way to get it is to sum externally. Four Additional Switching buttons will control functions on future Dangerous Music products. One such forthcoming item will be another 1U box with 2-card slots. There will be a choice of optional cards including digital input with stereo and 6-channel D-A conversion, multiformat video switching, 5.1 to stereo fold-down, and bass management for surround applications. There can be up to four units allowing 16 additional function paths. Dangerous Music’s monitor controllers exhibit strong evidence of a careful and recursive design process. The result is devices that not only have impeccable audio fidelity credentials but also some extremely well thought out features, especially
for music. The omissions noted earlier are mainly applicable to film and broadcast. Perhaps just as importantly, since this will become one of the most heavily used devices in the purchaser’s studio, it looks and feels the part. The remote is elegant and unobtrusive and quickly becomes completely intuitive in operation. I’ve looked at a lot of monitor controllers over the last eight years. There is a lot to like about this one. For music it should be guaranteed a place on any shortlist. ■
PROS
Great remote; high-end, audiophile design; future expansion.
CONS
No input summing; no direct mute; fixed dim level.
Contact DANGEROUS MUSIC, US: Website: www.dangerousmusic.com
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Sound gives pictures an emotional dimension that movement alone can’t convey. The increasing use of surround sound adds even greater impact to the viewing experience. But it calls for much greater console capacity.
THANKS TO US, PULSES RACE TOO
At Calrec we’ve been meeting the changing needs of broadcasters for over thirty years. And as you’d expect from a company dedicated exclusively to live production and on-air broadcast audio mixing, we’ve developed an innovative surround sound solution that’s as economical as it is practical. New Bluefin technology provides twice the signal processing capacity in a fraction of the space of conventional systems and with 100% redundancy. Sounds exciting? Find out more at calrec.com
calrec.com
January/February 2007
Putting Sound in the Picture
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Drawmer S3 Nothing captures the imagination quite so well as a ‘statement’ piece of gain reduction analogue hardware particularly against a backdrop of plug-in ‘vintage’ reissues. When a mainstream manufacturer gets involved then it’s even more interesting and this is the case with Drawmer’s first Signature Series box. JON THORNTON is smitten, really smitten.
F
ROM THE MOMENT you get it out of the box, even before you plug it in, you somehow know that Drawmer’s new unit is very special, even if it’s hard to put your finger on exactly why. Maybe it’s the solid looking, high gloss finish of the face plate and the way it is attached to the chassis with six substantial bolts. Or the nicely damped, positive front panel knobs that look purposeful rather than self-consciously retro. Or the way in which the top of the unit slopes away so as to aid cooling for the ten (count ‘em) valves clearly visible inside. It’s certainly got a lot to do with the signature on the front panel, as this box is the first in the Ivor Drawmer ‘Signature Series’ of outboard processors. The company’s stated aim was to use its very latest designs, and to build them with no technical compromise. The S3 is a three-band stereo compressor featuring discrete valve-based electronics coupled with an optoelectronic gain reduction element, and is reassuringly analogue in every respect. While the rear panel is an exercise in minimalism (XLR input and output for each channel, both transformer balanced), the same can’t be said for the front, which positively bristles with knobs and switches. Actually, it doesn’t look anywhere near as busy as it might do, thanks to a well-considered layout and an impressively monochrome colour scheme. Working from left to right across the front the first thing you come to are the controls for the frequency band splitting — two variable points set the two crossover frequencies that determine the three audio bands. Filters in the crossover section work at 6dB/ octave, with the crossover frequencies ranging from 60Hz to 1.4kHz for the low split, and 1.4kHz to 14kHz for the high split. What’s nice here is the fact that the ranges allow the unit to work quite happily as a 2-band compressor if desired and also that the resolution and scaling of the crossover controls makes it easy to really dig around in critical areas like vocals and bass. Once split up, the audio passes through three near identical compressor stages. A threshold control is available for each, which effectively sets the amount of compression as there is no separate ratio control. Instead, the unit uses a very wide soft knee in its compression curve with effective ratio 24
increasing with the level of input over threshold. Overall gain reduction is indicated for each band by an LED bargraph. Attack and release settings are provided on stepped rotary switches. Six attack times ranging from 0.2mS to 50mS are available, and three fixed release times of 0.08, 0.3 and 1 second. In addition, there are three programme-dependent adaptive release settings for fast, medium and slow programme material — and these work very transparently indeed on a variety of material. A gain make-up control, bypass and mute switch for each band complete the line-up, with the last of these proving very useful in helping to set up the band split points. The low and high bands each have an additional switch, labelled ‘Big’ and ‘Air’ respectively, and these pretty much do exactly what they say on the tin in terms of low and high frequency enhancement. The three individual bands are summed back together to provide a stereo output, which has its own master gain make-up/reduction control, together with a stereo output balance control. Metering of both stereo input and output level is achieved with two extremely large VU meters — and when I say large I mean the size of meter you’d expect to find on a large-format analogue console — you really can read them comfortably from the other side of a big control room. Size aside, metering is something that Drawmer has clearly thought hard about. The meters can be switched to show signal input or output, with the output level being post both the individual bands’ gain make-up and the master stereo gain. Meter response is also switchable between average and peak VU, which works a little like a PPM meter with a faster fall time. Not content with that, and clearly aware that 0VU = +4dBu is a little too conservative for some people in this era of increasingly hot digital levels, a meter pad of 10 or 20dB is also on offer, which should save a few needles being bent. All of which would come to nothing if the unit wasn’t capable of driving those levels and I can testify that it most certainly can. All of that thermionic capability is clearly being put to good use on the output stage, as the S3 possesses quite astonishing amounts of headroom, and will quite happily put resolution
out peaks approaching +30dBu all day long without sounding the least bit flustered. There are other nice little quality touches — the relay switched bypass controls, the soft start sequence, and the front-panel LED that informs you that the valves are warmed up sufficiently. Build quality and component choice seems impeccable externally and internally (and the cooling required by all of those valves means that you can get a good view of the internals without having to lift the lid) and all of this adds up to a pretty hefty price tag (UK£3075 + VAT). And in this day and age, when anybody with a DAW and a half decent set of plug-ins can insert any number of multibands in their session without blinking, that’s got to be hard to justify, right? Wrong. Dead wrong — and here’s why. First, there’s the sheer tactility of it — it’s just so easy to feel like you’re really grabbing hold of and moulding the sound, with huge leaps in terms of intuitive and speedy operation as a result. Second, there’s the sound. Multiband dynamics processing is undoubtedly an incredibly powerful tool, but like many powerful tools, it’s also more than capable of screwing up your audio in no time flat. And frankly, anyone can strap a multiband across a mix and make it sound loud by pumping up the bass and treble. But the S3, while just as capable in this respect, seems so much more forgiving, and also capable of subtly bringing out detail in each of the bands that’s more about mix transparency than simply loudness. Whether it’s on complete mixes or individual tracks, it’s worth its considerable weight in gold, and gives a lie to anybody who thinks that there’s no room in the market anymore for gear like this. ■
PROS
Built like a tank; ease of use; terrific sound and astonishing headroom.
CONS
Not much although keeping it cool in a rack installation might be challenging.
Contact DRAWMER, UK: Website: www.drawmer.com Tel: +44 1924 378669
January/February 2007
review
Dolby Media Producer Software Dolby Digital encoding is nothing new, there are several third party encoders out there already, like the excellent Minnetonka Surrcode, for example. However, this is the first offering from Dolby. It adds the advantage of supporting all the new encoding technologies for HD DVD formats, plus some useful tools for editing and QCing encoded files.
T
HE DOLBY MEDIA Producer package consists of four software elements that allow you to do just about any kind of Dolby encoding/decoding conceivable. Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and MLP encoding are all supported, as well as decoding of Pro Logic, Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital surround EX and even Dolby Headphone. It only runs on OSX and requires a G5 multiprocessor or Intel-based Mac. DOLBY MEDIA ENCODER — The first two elements are actually both encoders, one is a client application that is used to make up settings and job lists that are then presented to the server encoder, which actually encodes the files. This is a great way of working as the server encoder can be on one central machine and various client workstations can prepare encoding jobs and queue them on the server. For large facilities doing multi-language DVD (or HD DVD) titles this is a very effective workflow. As with all software encoders, I still think there is a need for real-time encoding and decoding to optimise metadata settings before batch encoding, but once this is done this type of encoding is perfect for high volume projects. There are three clients provided with the package, which allows enough encoding throughput for even the busiest facilities. More ‘clients’ can be purchased to increase the throughput even more if required. When jobs are queued the priority can be set, allowing flexible project management. Timecode at all rates (including HD) can be embedded in the encoded 26
ANDY DAY
file from any starting value. Punch in and outs can also be performed on encoded files if changes occur in the source files after encoding. As a side note, Dolby Digital Plus is the latest generation of Dolby Digital and standard for HD DVD (optional for Blu-Ray). It’s a high data rate ‘lossy’ encoder, with full backwards compatibility with Dolby Digital decoders (up to 7.1). True HD on the other hand is a lossless compression system that requires a True HD decoder in the player to decode the audio. DOLBY MEDIA DECODER — The decoder part of the package is a full blown Dolby digital decoder, supporting all consumer Dolby formats. It’s basically a DP564 in software and when used with a multichannel audio card all six outputs can be fed to a monitoring system for real-time decoding. AC-3 files can be decoded in Dolby Digital EX or downmixed in mono, stereo, Pro logic, Pro logic II, which makes this identical to its hardware equivalent, but considerably cheaper (US$1900). A unique feature is that an AC3 file can be synchronised to a QuickTime movie or even 9-pin control a deck. This is excellent for QCing AC-3 files against picture and a truly original feature for any Dolby decoder. DOLBY MEDIA TOOLS — Media Tools allow you change metadata settings in an existing encoded file without the need to completely re-encode. This is the ‘killer app’ that can save amazing amounts of time and money because, although no-one would probably admit it, there is an amazing amount of re-encoding going on in this business! Apart from changing resolution
metadata, Media Tools can also restripe timecode or trim the length of files, and the best part is, it’s much faster than real-time. So how does it all work together? I installed the software package onto a 2GHz Macbook with 1.5Gb of RAM. Installation couldn’t be easier, just a case of opening the zip files and following the instructions. The installation only takes up 22Mb, which is amazing considering it costs a staggering US$11000. That’s about $500 a Mb! I used an Emagic 2:6 (2-in 6-out) USB audio interface to output six channels from the decoder. The decoder represents great value at $1900, especially if used with a digital multichannel interface, as it has all the features of its hardware equivalent, plus more. Unfortunately I didn’t have the necessary USB to serial convertor to try it with a Digibeta deck (at this price I would expect a free one!) but I successfully synchronised a QuickTime movie with an AC-3 file. This is a very useful feature for preauthoring QCing. The Media Tools package is also very useful, although disappointingly not all metadata parameters are available. In fact the two most useful to edit — dialogue normalisation and compression mode — are not available. All the downmix levels are though, plus the ability to add or edit embedded timecode. I would like to see more tools added, such as the ability to level trim an AC-3 file (useful for DVD menu audio) and the inclusion of dialogue norm and compression editing. However, as a first release this is still quite a useful tool. Despite the encoder being the most expensive element ($8000), there are some slightly confusing issues with the user interface. Channel modes seem to have been dropped completely, which means that terms like 3/2, 2/0, which we’ve all got used to over the years, are replaced with just a number of channel box and channel names. This might not seem like a big deal, but the channel modes were a clever way to see immediately what format you’re encoding. I managed to encode some whacky 3/1 configurations from 5.1 audio without realising it. My main issue is with the price. I cannot believe that the $8000 price is justified for essentially an 8Mb file and an iLok. At least third party developers have the excuse of a license fee, but Dolby owns this technology. I also suspect they’ll not be rushing to license DD Plus and True HD encoding to third parties either, meaning this is the only option to encode audio for HD DVD. However, interestingly, this time around Dolby is not the only option for HD DVD formats, so it’ll be interesting to see how DTS prices its encoding tools. All round though, this is a great package and if you have large volumes of encoding to do this is easily the best option. Generally a well thought out and long overdue set of tools. ■
PROS
Great batch encoding; very fast encoding; useful metadata and timecode editing; video sync built into the decoder.
CONS
Encoder GUI needs polishing up; lack of dialogue norm and compression metadata editing; no way to decode an AC-3 to files (WAV, AIFF, etc); the encoder price.
Contact DOLBY, US: Website: www.dolby.com
January/February 2007
Studio Legends. Refined over 35 years. AKG® C 414 B-XLII | C 414 B-XLS | Since 1971, the C 414 has been recognised as one of the premier studio condenser microphones. That’s why you’ll hear it on literally hundreds of classic recordings. These latest incarnations represent the pinnacle of this classic design. The stunning clarity and beautifully detailed sound are joined by enhanced features including a choice of five polar patterns and 3 switchable bass filters. The B-XLS delivers superb quality recordings across a wide range of acoustic sources, while for solo vocals and instruments the B-XLII has been specifically designed to capture every detail of the performance. When it’s time for a new microphone, choose a legend.
www.akg.com
Distributed in the UK and Eire by: Harman Pro UK T: 01707 668181 E: info@harmanprouk.com W: www.harmanprouk.com
review
Golden Age Project ribbons The ribbon is not a microphone technology that all will have had experience of due partly to rarity, perceived fragility and a traditional association with certain types of recording. They tend also to not be cheap. There’s been a recent rush to redress this balance; JON THORNTON investigates a clutch of affordable ribbons.
T
HERE WAS A TIME when, if you were in the market for a ribbon microphone, your choices were somewhat limited. The venerable Coles 4038 remained for many years one of the few choices around, and while its sonic characteristics made it a favourite in classical recording applications especially, the inherent fragility of the ribbon design and relatively high cost seemed to place it — and most other ribbon microphones — on the edges of the mainstream. Then along came Royer with their fantastic new take on ribbon designs, including the option of active circuitry to better buffer the output stage, and now, much like buses, a whole fleet of affordable ribbon microphones are appearing all at once. Golden Age Music is a Swedish pro-audio reseller that is providing its own range of microphones under the Golden Age Project badge. The microphones on offer here are all of Chinese origin, and the range comprises FET-based capacitors, tube-based capacitors, dynamic and ribbon microphones, all with a distinctly retro approach to their physical appearance. The ribbon mics are the R1 (UK£109 + VAT), R1 Active (£169 + VAT), R1 Tube Active (£254 + VAT) and R2 (£75 + VAT). Internally, the R1 family all feature the same 50mm long, 2 micron thick, corrugated aluminium ribbon, and the same external housing — albeit finished in different muted colour schemes. The differences between them are entirely to do with the associated electronics. The R1 (now in its Mk II version) is the simplest, being entirely passive with a transformer output stage. The R1 Active features a FET-based amplifier, powered by phantom power, in an attempt to make interfacing with the input stage of your mic preamplifier somewhat more predictable. As well as meaning that the source impedance of the active version is somewhat lower (200ohms rather than 600ohms for the passive version), this also offers a 10dB increase in sensitivity. Finally, the R1 Tube Active does the 28
same thing, but uses a 12AX7 valve rather than a FET-based design. The Tube Active comes with its own power supply — a very basic affair with a 7-pin XLR connector running to and from the mic and a standard XLR giving microphone level output. All three mics feature an integral mounting assembly, reminiscent of old RCA 77 microphones, whereby the microphone swivels in a yoke that screws on to your mic stand. This certainly contributes to the ‘retro’ design statement, but the XLR entry point on the microphone does rather limit the extent to which it can be swivelled to point in an upwards direction. Given the common ribbon element, you would expect these microphones to sound pretty similar but in practice there are some marked differences between them. The passive R1 certainly sounded the darkest of the trio on male vocals, with the active version tightening up the mid range considerably and giving a greater sense of transient detail. The Tube Active builds on this by adding quite a significant but gentle presence boost between 2 and 4kHz, and a little more ‘air’ around the 10kHz area. This worked nicely on male vocals but to my ears sounded too gritty on female vocals. On the other hand, the darkness of the passive R1 did a much better job when used to mic up a guitar cab than either of the active versions, which both came across as a little harsh sounding. All of the R1 variants have a nice smooth and extended low-end response that contributes greatly to that slightly rounded off, mellow sound. However, with no onboard high-pass they did prove incredibly susceptible to air-con movement in the studio — you will need a good HPF on your preamplifier or console with these mics. Placement is somewhat critical too due to the very tight HF pick-up on the vertical axis, coupled with a pretty wide front and rear pick-up in the horizontal axis. This leads to some interesting artefacts when recording vocals without any form of absorption behind the microphone. From the same manufacturer, but with a slightly resolution
different internal design and radically different external design, is the R2. This adopts the ‘lollipop’ form factor, and incorporates a slightly smaller and thicker ribbon element (42mm long and 2.5 microns thick). Like the simplest R1, the R2 is passive, yet sounds quite different from its larger sibling — much darker overall with a lot less HF definition, but a very smooth extension in the low-mids. Overall it’s much more obviously voiced. Comparisons with other capacitor or conventional moving-coil dynamics would be slightly unfair — luckily I had a pair of Royer R122s to hand, probably closest in design philosophy to the R1 Actives. I’d like to say that the GA Project mics compared favourably, but in truth there was really no contest. Admittedly, the Royer is pitched somewhat higher than the Golden Age range in terms of price, but in terms of the smoothness of response, detail and warmth — particularly in the critical 2–4kHz range — the GA mics sounded quite ‘closed in’ by comparison. Which isn’t to say that they don’t have useful sonic characteristics — indeed the R2 worked as the best of the bunch (Royers included) as a room mic for a kit recording. Despite needing a whole heap of gain it added something quite distinctively chunky to the sound. If I had to pick one of them to keep, my money would be on the R1 Active, as it seems to have the most balanced and flexible sound. If you fancy a ribbon microphone with a very distinctive voicing for relatively little outlay, you might want to investigate these microphones further. ■
PROS
Very affordably priced; retro styling a definite talking point; distinctive sound.
CONS
Cable entry placement on R1 range is annoying; range seems to lack some detail and warmth in the mid range and HF in comparison to other ribbon designs.
EXTRAS
The GAP range includes a variety of condenser and dynamic mics. Notables
are the FC 1 FET large diaphragm condenser; FC 4 MC small diaphragm condenser with pad, high-pass and three interchangeable heads; TC 3 valve small diaphragm condenser with pad, highpass, and three interchangeable heads; and the TC 1 valve large diaphragm condenser with nine patterns.
Contact GOLDEN AGE, SWEDEN: Website: www.goldenagemusic.se Tel: +46 322 66 5050
January/February 2007
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review
Eventide H7600 Not quite top of Eventide’s range but this latest processor is powerful enough and clever enough to set some standards for the competition. GEORGE SHILLING believes he has found the natural successor to the glorious H3000.
T
HIS NEW HARMONIZER is not quite Eventide’s top-of-the-range model as that honour goes to the H8000FW — an 8-channel unit featuring 5.1 presets — but the H7600 is now the top stereo unit in the range, replacing the DSP7000 series. Apart from a different finish on the front, there are few visible differences between the old and the new. The main improvements are more processing power, an even larger selection of presets and algorithms, and, thankfully, a good search facility so you can find them. Back in the 1980s, before the DAW changed everything, the H3000 caught the attention of many as a terrific source of unusual effects processes. It sounded different and modern, with great spangly and sparkly stereo effects, and an interface that, although it followed the 80’s ‘DX7’ trend of data entry rather than knob-per-function, was remarkably easy to get to grips with. However, although the succeeding models from the DSP4000 onwards added further functions and features, they lacked the elegance of operation of the original H3000 range. Here are the essentials: analogue inputs and outputs are of course provided on XLR, but usefully the inputs are on combi sockets allowing jack input too. The DSP models were popular with professional guitarists (there are presets created by Steve Vai and Joe Satriani), so perhaps that’s why the jack inputs are remarkably clean and tolerant of even low-level signals from instrument outputs. Digital connections come as AES-EBU, SPDIF, along with Word clock I-O. MIDI In, Out and Thru together with two assignable pedal control jack inputs, plus a Relay jack. There is a traditional Serial connector for computer connection, plus a socket for the connection of an Eve/Net remote control — originally devised for the Orville model. If you are of a mind to fiddle (We are George, we are! Ed), Vsigfile is a free PC editor (download from eventide.com; there is a Mac version in Beta available at wholecheese.com) for configuring Algorithms from the 230+ Modules. This is surely for serious boffins/ sound designers only — with more than 1,000 presets onboard and each one a unique algorithm there is plenty to be going on with. The case is typical Eventide untreated steel, with a few expansion blanking plates. The manual is a hefty ring-bound affair that implies you’ll be taking a college course to learn how to use the thing. Thankfully, it’s not so difficult. The controls are mostly familiar to users of previous models –- the four softkeys, cursor keys, the keypad and Knob are all just the same, 30
the display is as clear as ever (brightness/contrast is adjustable), and there is a useful Tap tempo button at the top. The PCMCIA memory card slot allows you to take your favourite programs with you. Booting takes about 30 seconds. The OS has been subtly rejigged to be more helpful than previous models. The main list view shows program number (starting with bank number), a descriptive name, number of I-O channels, a ‘96’ if the program can be loaded when running at 88.1 or 96kHz (many can), and a coded indication of the type of effects blocks used. For example, R, D, E means that Reverb, Delay and EQ (or Filter) blocks were used in the program. You can therefore filter the list to show all programs that include a particular module. You can also list programs by source type, i.e. the intended program material to be processed, such as Guitar, Vocals, Drums, etc. Programs are already sequenced into 85 categorised banks — the Presets section of the manual is useful for browsing. And every program includes a useful Info parameter where there is a text description and/or operational hints. There are, generously, 1,099 programs to wade through. As well as all the crazy, gimmicky effects you expect, there are plenty of subtler and more useable programs. The pitch shifting is excellent of course; Ultra-Shifter convincingly preserves formants, and works diatonically. There is also a 174-second sampler onboard. All manner of vibrant delay and modulation presets are provided as expected, but effects such as compression and EQ are also comprehensively covered. There’s even mild distortion and tube emulation implemented. The more unusual presets are created by combining different modules in clever ways. There is plenty of stuff you’d never have imagined, such as a program to make a voice crack like a teenager, and Traffic Report that filters the voice and adds helicopter sound effects. All sorts of ambiences, distortions and degradations are provided for production. For musical applications it is easy to find what you are looking for, thanks to the List by Effect or Source criteria, whether you need an insert process or a send/return effect. Reverb programs are exceptionally rich and smooth resolution
sounding, and with 455 programs including a reverb module there are plenty to choose from. Some H3000 favourites are included, and TC, Lexicon and AMS programs are emulated. There is immense processing power within the unit, and with a rock-solid operating system and the possibility of comprehensive MIDI and pedal control, the H7600 makes a flexible and reliable device for stage and live use. In a DAW you can have any number of plug-ins and the possibility of employing many multiples of each type, yet one H7600 (UK£2995 + VAT) probably costs more than your DAW’s host computer and looks 80s enough to be fashionable again. The H7600 is still relevant. It simply sounds stunning, refined, glowing and always useful. Through some very clever and tasteful programming of the presets, and some high quality digital building blocks, there is an air of quality that is hard to achieve from plug-ins alone. Eventide has been in digital processing for longer than most competitors, and its no-nonsense approach is to be applauded. Eventide offers free software updates, has a friendly customer service policy, and a charmingly amateurish website. I am pleased the H designation has returned — operation seems more elegant and friendly than the DSP models. At last, here is the true successor to the H3000. ■
PROS
Best (stereo) Harmonizer yet; more than 1,000 presets; easier to find relevant presets; sounds classy, stunning, rich, vibrant… and useful!
CONS
Expensive
EXTRAS
The Anthology II plug-in bundle for TDM offers 15 plug-ins with six new plug-ins. The E-Channel channel strip includes a gate, compressor/limiter with sidechain, and five bands of 48-bit double precision parametric equalisation. UltraChannel offers a more comprehensive channel strip and has a gate, de-esser, Omnipressor compressor/limiter with sidechain, five bands of parametric EQ, stereo delays, and the Harmonizer micropitch shifter. The EQ65 Filter Set recreates the sound and function of a vintage analogue filter set while equalising capabilities are expanded with the EQ45 parametric, which includes high and low cut 12dB/ octave filters and four bands. Mic phase alignment is made easier with the new Precision Time Align plug-in while Quadravox features four voices of diatonic Harmonizer pitch shifting. The other plug-ins in the bundle are H910, H949, Instant Phaser, Instant Flanger, Omnipressor, Eventide Reverb, Octavox, H3000 Band Delays and H3000 Factory.
Contact EVENTIDE, US: Website: www.eventide.com UK, SOURCE: +44 208 962 5080
January/February 2007
www.aes.o
r g
PO X E O I D TION U A O PR EN V N O & C
May 5-8 2007
Austria Center Vienna
review
Edirol R-4 Pro Four-channel location recorders are not the most common of devices, especially if you cannot justify top-end expenditure, but Edirol changed all that with the R-4. Despite its attractive price the R-4 had several shortcomings and with the new R-4 Pro Edirol has addressed the issues and produced a much more attractive proposition.
T
HE ALL-PLASTIC cased R-4 Pro is around the same size as a Dan Brown hardback and a lot lighter without the eight AA cells installed, as is the earlier R-4. Look a little closer and the differences start to become apparent. The UK£1275 (+ VAT) R4 Pro includes 2-channel AES-EBU I-O and SMPTE timecode. The analogue input electronics have also benefited considerably from a makeover. The mains power supply is an in-line block with a conventional coaxial output lead. However, the R-4 Pro sports a four-pin XLR power input. This uses the industry-standard pin arrangement found on camera battery packs from manufacturers such as Anton-Bauer. A coaxial socket to XLR convertor cable is supplied to plug in to the recorder. The Power switch carries dire warnings about not turning off during recording, playback or data transfer. Since the switch has to be pressed for five seconds before acting this is safe enough operationally. In any case it won’t allow you to switch off when recording. However, I cannot help wondering why, since the machine obviously knows what mode it is in, does it allow the operator to do something as stupid as turning the power off when the machine is in any other condition likely to lead to data loss? Recording is 16- or 24-bit on one to four channels
ROB JAMES
at sampling rates up to 96kHz or stereo at 192kHz, onto the internal 80Gb 2.5-inch hard disk. File format is BWF/WAV. Each recording is termed a Project and can contain mono x 1, 2, 3 or 4 or stereo x 1 or 2 files or one 4-channel file. The familiar 2Gb limit applies. If a recording continues beyond this, it is split into two ‘projects’. This occurs transparently to the user. Markers can be inserted during recording. Unlike the R-4 there is no Compact Flash card slot. In compensation there are now two USB sockets (1.1 or 2.0). One is for communication and file transfers to a computer and the other can be used with an external USB hard drive for direct back-ups with no computer involved. Phantom power is switched in channel pairs. A Hold switch locks all controls in their current state apart from the knobs and mechanical switches. System gets you into the main menus. Navigation is easy using the four Cursor/Monitor select keys with the scrub wheel and Enter/Finder and Exit keys. Four dedicated keys deal with Markers and two more enter Wave Edit and Effects modes. The four analogue input channels are XLR. This is a downgrade from the R-4, which employs the more useful jack/XLR combi sockets with separate Mic/Line switches for each channel pair. This change has been made in a good cause because, on the sloping front
panel the R-4 Pro has stepped analogue input sensitivity controls for each input at -56, -50, -44, -38, -32, -26, -20, -14, -8, -2, +4dBu and concentric continuously variable input level control. However, there is no way of determining accurately what value this variable input level is set to. The manual states that the centre position is 0dB (i.e. flat) but there is no detent and no on-screen indication of position. When the stepped controls are altered, the display changes momentarily to show their current value. The limiter has been improved in so far as channels 1 and 2 and/or 3 and 4 can now be linked for stereo or all four channels when appropriate, preventing unwanted image shifts. The time-constants have been altered and limiter action improved. There is some confusion about the variable input control and limiter signal flow. The website says they are analogue, before the convertor, but the diagram in the manual says they are post convertor with the variable level post limiter, which would be about as much use as a chocolate teapot. A bit of playing with a signal generator reveals they are almost certainly analogue and the limiter is after the pot. The practical upshot is that the analogue inputs are vastly improved over the R-4. Noise levels are subjectively reduced to the point where they are no longer an issue although I would still appreciate another 10dB of gain on the mic inputs. My AT 825 mic needed both coarse and fine gain flat out at normal speech levels. Another improvement is the provision of four channels of analogue line out on phonos instead of the R-4’s two. A further change sees a pair of XLRs for stereo AES-EBU I-O replacing the previous SPDIF I-O. All or any of the four channels can be mixed down to the stereo headphone output. Like its predecessor the R4 Pro has two internal mics for note taking, for example, and two internal speakers for monitoring. Transport keys are clear and internally illuminated. Editing remains basic, with Trim, Divide, Combine and Merge functions. Adequate for managing recordings, but too cumbersome for clever stuff. Scrub and shuttle are not great. Editing operations result in new audio files (projects) being written to disk and, even with the larger 80Gb internal drive, space may be at a premium. The built-in digital effects are unchanged i.e. they only work at 44.1kHz and 48kHz. Recording with effects is generally a bad idea and most users will transfer recordings for postproduction in any case. The headline new feature is timecode support. R-4 Pro can record and play back standard LTC at all the usual frame rates. A generator is built in and External, Internal and Rec-Run modes are possible, as is jam sync to external source. Last but not least, the R-4 Pro can Chase external code. The only limitation here is that the project playing back must have the same timecode as the external input, meaning it is not possible to set an offset. The R-4 Pro is a major advance over the R-4 whether you need the timecode or not. If you do, it is the only game in town at anything approaching this price point. It is now a thoroughly useable recorder for audio for video and anyone who needs to record more than two controlled channels on location. ■
PROS
A lot better than R-4; easy to use; versatile.
CONS
More gain needed on analogue inputs; no internal timecode offset possible when chasing; internal battery compartment feels fragile.
Contact EDIROL, JAPAN: Website: www.edirol.com
32
resolution
January/February 2007
review
AKG Perception microphones Not new to the game of designing and manufacturing mics for the lower cost market, AKG has established a new line for its lower end studio condensers. JON THORNTON agrees that a lot of it is a matter of perception.
A
LONG TIME before being able to buy a large diaphragm capacitor microphone for under £100 became commonplace, AKG had understood the need to use its expertise in microphone design and construction to provide products that were accessible to those on limited budgets. Some of these early forays into the budget world are still around today, and highly rated — the C1000S springs to mind, for example. The Perception range is the company’s latest excursion into this territory, and comprises three models — the 100, 200 and 400 (UK£102, £136 and £195 + VAT respectively). The fixed pattern 100 and 200 have been available for some time, but the 400 is a recent addition to the range, featuring switchable polar patterns. Externally, the three microphones look very similar, and feature the same external form factor, with a chunky, solid-looking head grille, and a smoothly tapering body finished in satin nickel in varying shades of light blue and silver depending on the model. It all looks extremely well screwed together, and capable of withstanding the rigours of studio and live work, but the body shape does mean that you’re stuck with the supplied clips or shockmounts (a solid clip is supplied with the 100, and a shockmount with the 200 and 400), which screw into the base of the microphone. Both the 100 and 200 feature a fixed cardioid pattern, and employ the same 1-inch externally polarised diaphragm assembly. The difference between 34
the two is in the provision of a 10dB pad and highpass filter on the 200 (300Hz, 12dB/octave). As you might expect, sonically the two microphones are quite similar, and sound reasonably neutral with just a slight tendency towards brittleness on some voices in the high-mids. Although billed as cardioid condensers, in practice their response seemed to verge on hypercardioid, with quite significant HF attenuation as the mic is turned slightly off-axis to source. This has the advantage of offering a way in which to tame that slightly brittle tendency, but does mean that placement is quite critical. Neither of the microphones seemed to have a noticeably prominent low frequency extension, and when compared with a new 414 XLS this proved to be the case –- they don’t get quite the same authority to those bottom octaves. And coupled with the fact that proximity effect is noticeable, but not overly so, I queried the choice of HPF on the 200 model, with 300Hz seeming to be quite a high roll-off point. Actually, it works well when switched in, particularly when close miking an acoustic guitar, sounding more like an omnidirectional microphone in this application. This is helped by the fact that the off axis response is reasonably smooth and progressive, with little in the way of unpleasant honkiness — although the rear of the mic does have quite a noticeable HF lift. Transient response is good with both microphones, although again they suffer in comparison to the 414, which extracts noticeably more detail from the likes of percussion and cymbals. resolution
The 400 is the latest addition to the range, and features a dual diaphragm that allows the selection of cardioid, omnidirectional or fig-8 polar patterns, in addition to the HPF and pad found on the 200. A straight comparison between the 400 set to cardioid pattern and the 200 reveals slightly more edginess to the sound using the 400 — not unpleasant, but it does bring out the rasp and sibilance in voices a little more, and adds a jangliness to acoustic guitar that sounds slightly aggressive, which is great in some applications but not so good in others. Switching to the omni pattern seems to negate this characteristic when used close on a source, but at any distance from source the omni pattern seems to suffer in terms of transient response and sounds less than convincing in terms of tonal balance. Despite this, though, the 400 is a quiet unit with respectable SPL handling making it suitable for a wide range of applications. In all, the Perception range seems to be flexible, cheap and refreshingly unpretentious. There’s an honesty about the microphones’ origin that is unusual, with ‘Made in China’ stamped prominently on the rear of the casing. AKG’s own literature suggests that the target market is project studios and live sound applications, and this would seem to be spot on in terms of what I heard. Yes, they struggle when compared to a 414, but against similar budget models they more than hold their own, and in many ways sound a little more natural. For me, the pick of the bunch would be the 200, which in terms of price and performance would serve nicely in the studio as an alternative to something like the C535. The 400 would suit somebody with a limited budget looking for a multipattern large diaphragm capacitor, but spending a little more would probably open up more and better possibilities, both within the AKG line-up and from elsewhere. ■
PROS
Well built and well priced; compare very well sonically with similarly priced alternatives.
CONS
Form factor means dedicated mic clips are your only option; omni pattern on 400 is a little disappointing.
EXTRAS
AKG’s new ‘third-generation’ WMS 40 Pro range includes three families of all-new, application-focused systems. WMS 40 Pro Flexx diversity systems have three user-selectable frequencies for each channel; WMS 40 Pro Single systems have fixed frequencies; and WMS 40 Pro Dual systems have two transmitters and two independent channels in a single half-rack receiver.
The system achieves more than 30 hours’ of use from a single AA battery and is compatible with previous WMS 40 systems.
Contact AKG, AUSTRIA: Website: www.akg.com UK, Harman Pro UK: +44 1707 668181
January/February 2007
review
Contech Logic keyboards Originally arranged to slow you down the QWERTY keyboard now fronts most computer interfaces and is the short-cutters weapon of choice. ROB JAMES looks at further ways to speed you and your workflow up.
N
O MATTER WHAT the sphere of endeavour, be it audio, video, graphics or 3D design, there is no escaping the personal computer. Leaving aside the craft skills these disciplines require and regardless of medium, they all have one thing in common. To do anything useful users must communicate their intentions to the machine. At the high end, the computer(s) are often hidden behind a completely customised user interface designed specifically for the purpose, such as an audio mixing or lighting console, a vision switcher, an intercom or monitor controller. Notwithstanding, a lot of very serious software uses the QWERTY keyboard as the primary interface. The majority of humans have ten fingers arranged in two groups with a useful degree of separation and articulation (and opposable thumbs). With patience and diligence fingers can be trained to perform an astonishing variety of complex tasks with high precision and speed (Like shuffling cards and getting the wrapping off a DAT. Ed). In some cases, these feats of dexterity are dictated by technology’s inadequacies. The humble QWERTY keyboard is a good example of this phenomenon. This arrangement of keys was deliberately designed to slow down an accomplished typist to compensate for the latency of the early mechanical typewriter. Despite the fact that the original problem has long been overcome (Digital latency anyone? Ed), the QWERTY layout has proved to be remarkably durable and difficult to dislodge. Before Windows and the Mac WIMP interfaces were developed, keyboard shortcuts were de-rigueur. You couldn’t get very far without learning a bewildering array of combinations, most of which were specific to the particular software package. Some shortcuts became standardised — Ctrl + C and Crtl + V are now used in virtually all software. But, when it comes to the more esoteric functions, the user is obliged either to use the often pitifully slow WIMP interface or to learn complex shortcuts for repetitive tasks. It is perfectly feasible to design and build application specific control panels, but this approach can be prohibitively expensive. A much more cost-effective 36
solution is to modify what we already have, which is where the Logic keyboards fit in. For around UK£65 plus VAT (a little more for Mac versions) Contech supply decent quality QWERTY keyboards with custom coloured and engraved keycaps for a wide variety of video, audio and design applications. Functions are grouped by colour and the keycaps are engraved with their normal functions and their application specific ones. Each keyboard is dedicated to a single software package. Declaring an interest, I bought one for Adobe Premiere several years ago and found that it made the learning curve a great deal shallower. It was also a great help when returning to the application after a long break. If time is money, this is a real no-brainer. This time I had a Sony Vegas version to try out. Again, the colours and ideograms proved very helpful in getting to grips with the new application. However, this approach is still a compromise. It relies on the default set of keyboard shortcuts applicable to the software. If you are already expert in one application then switching to a new one with different shortcuts for familiar functions can be really hard work. Also, many users find themselves employing more than one application on a regular basis. Remembering which shortcut to use in which application is a real headache. For live and nearlive work dedicated keys for certain controls, such as transport, are highly desirable. Contech has an answer to these problems — customisable and programmable keypads. I had an 8 x 8-matrix version to evaluate. For UK£198 (+ VAT) you get a very smart, low profile keypad in metallic charcoal with 64 high quality Cherry switches. These are in a different league to the usual PC or Mac keyboard in terms of positive and satisfyingly tactile action. You also get a bag of 72 engraved and coloured keycaps and if that isn’t enough, another bag of 72 clear keycaps. A small application, ChangeMe, is included for programming along with LabelMe to produce custom printed inserts for the transparent keycaps. LabelMe allows text and bitmap images to be used and individual keys to be coloured appropriately. resolution
(You can most likely ‘borrow’ bitmaps from within the target application, if you know where to look.) An inkjet or laser can be used to print and careful slicing will produce perfect labels. Getting to grips with ChangeMe takes a little while but it is logical enough and the Help file deals with the less obvious aspects. Key mappings are stored in the module itself and can be tested and verified. Once programmed no additional software need be installed on the operational PC. One word of warning, if you want to use one of these with a KVM switch, make sure it works with your specific switch. There are four possible ‘layers’. Used with programmed modifier keys these could be used to extend the number of functions or with locked modifiers to provide different mappings for alternative applications. LEDs indicate the current layer. Thus layer 1 could be Vegas, layer 2 Edius, layer 3 Nuendo and so on with the same keys performing the same actions where these are common between applications. A small plastic tool is provided for removing complete keys. It is much easier to disassemble keycaps from keys when they are removed from the keyboard. Other matrix sizes, horizontal and vertical double, and quad keycaps are all available. These along with custom engraved keycaps can be specified at very reasonable extra cost. For users who spend most of their time using one application the Logic keyboards are a very costeffective way of improving productivity. Especially for live work, the programmable keypads offer a more satisfactory answer without going to the expense of dedicated hardware. It’s also good fun; big boys’ Lego! In summary, it enables you to programme those pesky three-fingered salutes to single, dedicated keys with meaningful labels/graphics. If you’ve ever cursed the QWERTY and its ‘shortcuts’ this is exactly what you need. ■
PROS
Two affordable levels of improved control; programmable keypads are much cheaper than proprietary controllers; keypads flexible and future proof.
CONS
Logic keyboards could be heavier; keypads don’t work with all KVM switches; not a lot else.
EXTRAS
Logic keyboards are available for a wide variety of applications including:
Adobe After Effects; Adobe Photoshop 7.0; Adobe Premiere Pro; Adobe Premiere 6.5; Apple Final Cut Pro/HD; Apple Final Cut Pro G5; Autocad; Avid Xpress DV/PRO/HD; Canopus Edius/ NX/SP-DV; DPS Velocity; Emagic Logic Audio Pro; Media 100I / HD; Pinnacle Liquid Edition; Sony Vegas; Steinberg Cubase/Nuendo.
Contact CONTECH, UK: Website: www.contech.co.uk Tel: +44 1438 315757
January/February 2007
Photography by: Louis of Teddington
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Peter Schmidt He’s one of Germany’s leading mixers and he’s built a room that many regard as perfectly balanced for the economic realities of modern music production. Peter Schmidt talks to ZENON SCHOEPE about quality, training, getting involved and why all MP3s aren’t the same.
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ETER SCHMIDT WAS, by his own admission, something of a late starter having only abandoned his drummer musician aspirations at the age of 23 when he satisfied his fascination for the recording process with a job as an assistant at EMI studios in Cologne in 1984. His year’s in-house training was followed by a move to Berlin to assist Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Erasure) in what was four and half years of assisting at the famous Hansa Ton studios. He left for Hamburg just before the Wall came down in 1989 because he hadn’t worked out how he was ever going to break out of assisting to become a ‘self-made man’. He lasted half a year in a Hamburg studio before finally realising he needed to become a freelance engineer. He got work in England through Gareth Jones and worked the studios there on the back of the Rave scene, returning to Hamburg two years later to begin his real career in earnest. He started working with European acts around Europe and had considerable success with bands in Germany (Zelig, 38
Echt, Reamonn, Rosenstolz). A pattern emerged as he increasingly became employed as a mixer — ‘artists recording at home, ending up with 200 tracks — Peter will do it!’ He now has his own Ballsaal Studio with two assistants, at the back of Berlin’s magnificent Teldex studio, where he runs the biggest Tonelux console in the world to date along with a stack of outboard. He still likes to record but only gets to do about one full production a year. For eight years now, 90% of his work has been mixing. ‘What I like about mixing is being able to finish the music and the job. I love the procedure. People come to me and ask me to finish it for them. Sometimes, of course, you get clients who know exactly what they want; others just tell me to go ahead. I like both approaches. It’s always more interesting if you get to do some stuff but I don’t feel obliged to — just like in very good mastering, sometimes it’s good to not do that much. You have to respect what the people bring you and finish it maybe with your fingerprint soundwise.’ resolution
Was having your own studio essential to your business? I never wanted to be a studio owner. Never. Three years ago I mixed an album in surround in the main control room at Teldex and I met the three owners and after a week they asked me: ‘Peter, what can we do to get you to move to Berlin?’ I was living in Hamburg and I didn’t want come to Berlin because everyone else was — but my girlfriend persuaded me. I thought about maybe renting a room to use as a work space and they showed me around the building. Now we live here. Next door to my studio is my living room. The quality of life increased so much — I see my girlfriend all the time. I spent so many years not having the social life that everyone else who comes home at 6pm has — and the weekends. Now I have both –- my studio and my home. I have two assistants employed to help me and if I want to work into the evening I can; I am my own man. How did you arrive at your equipment decisions? In choosing the technology I wanted to keep up with the way the record business is going. Music sales in Germany and the world are going down and I want to be able to deliver high-class quality for a lower amount of money –- that has to be possible. You can’t charge Euro 2000 a day including yourself for mixing a song like you could ten years ago. I think perhaps this is the way studios will be in the future — a very good summing situation and including analogue gear. I don’t make a dogma out January/February 2007
craft of whether I like digital or analogue because both make sense and both have their advantages and disadvantages. I’ve been collecting stuff for years because I had racks that I travelled with and they’re now here, still ready to go. Now I have a lot of analogue gear plus Paul Wolff’s Tonelux desk, which is just fantastic. I have a 48-channel, 5.1 version and it’s expandable and there’s an automated fader option, which I don’t have yet. I have 32 faders with 48 inputs because the music is mainly put down to 32 faders and that’s generally enough. The Tonelux sounds amazing. If you send something through it gets more defined by doing nothing! I like the EQs, they have a very nice top end and they’re very warm. I work on Pro Tools HD3 and I have four Apogee DA16Xs for feeding the outboard.
What are your opinions on the summing issue? Do you think it’s hype? It’s definitely not hype. I always get mixes from the bands I work with and they’re always done in the box. When my assistant is putting up the song and you compare it to the rough mix it’s like a different world. It opens up immediately and the three-dimensional thing starts to happen. I work with 48 channels and I love it. I believe that when you’re getting 90 tracks you should be able to get them down to 48.
not wasting time doing any of this boring bullshit. With my assistants it’s great because they are so into it and they know how I work, the communication is very good and they prepare it all.
How does your client mix approval process work, particularly if the clients aren’t at the mix? It’s definitely more difficult now than it used to be when the clients were with you. I try to get them to come around and be near, we can offer them accommodation upstairs, but it’s not always possible. In the end I can only deliver what I think is right. I always ask for rough mixes and ask them what they wish to be different –- what they like and don’t like about the rough mix. It certainly takes longer if no one is here. But this is more and more how people
work. The big acts are always here for the mix. I’m proud of having bands here that are 20 years old because I want young bands; I don’t want to just mix stuff that I grew up with. It’s why I like this room and why I think it gives a hint for how things might be in the future because things like your studio don’t matter to the young bands if they trust you. I send my assistants out to do drums for clients. I don’t want to be just a hired mixer, I want to be involved in the production process as early as possible. I want to give my clients a hand because I know what situation they’re in. I love to train people, I always have two assistants and I was trained by good people and it’s the only way to grow. If an assistant can help a client with drum recording and editing then that will help me at the mix stage too and it raises the quality of the product.
There are many summing solutions and approaches though… This one’s not the cheapest, that’s a fact. The first thing I thought about was an old Neumann desk because I got a very good offer for one but my planning took so long that it was sold. For three months I didn’t know what I would do. I heard Paul Wolff was doing his own thing; he had drawings and a prototype of an EQ channel and I listened to that and it was perfect for me. It’s nice to have something that isn’t common and the quality is right up there. I do 90% of my work on the Tonelux, even bigger jobs that I didn’t want to do here, like Peter Maffay. I thought they were big jobs and I didn’t want to mix them in my little room but once I was in and had sorted out how I was going to work it just happened. I have to say that I’m not a computer guy because I started off with tape machines and it took me a while to adapt. I get along with it and it is stupid to avoid it but I have two young guys as assistants here and they are brilliant with computers. How do the assistants work for you? I behave like a little diva! I go into the room when the song is hooked up and I leave it when the band is happy. Every other thing — like recalling, taking care of the files from people, laying out the mixes, putting things on the server, communicating — is all done by those guys. I don’t want to be involved with that anymore and we get more work done that way and everyone is healthier and more relaxed as a result.
PROS
Pro, Con, Extras Text
CONS EXTRAS
Isn’t being a mixer all about picking up bits and pieces from other people who think the project is more complete than it actually is? I always get in touch with the musicians and producer beforehand and I send an assistant to them a week beforehand to prepare everything. Everything will be bounced or merged and then we bring the files into our Pro Tools. So everything is saved for you in the way you want to deal with it so you know it is all there. You can’t schedule one and a half days for mixing a single and start it off by organising the files. It’s about January/February 2007
Contact COMPANY NAME, PLACE: Website: www.XXXXXXXX.co.uk Tel: +44 XXXXX XXXXXXX
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craft [Lehmann, Teldex chief engineer] –- he was recording it and I was mixing it. There must have been studios that could work like that in the old days and the mixture of those worlds was more modern than the way people work these days. I’ve done surround mixes in Control 1, I’ve recorded a drummer in the big room. Because I live here I know that the studio doesn’t work between 8 at night until 8 in the morning and some weekends. I’ve got a deal with Teldex that I can use the room for my stuff in that time. The Teldex facility is amazing. I have 24 mic lines and a video line down to the room. It’s exciting. For me it is a second Spring. And the young musicians love it too because it opens up so many possibilities.
What will you be doing in ten years and what will the industry be doing? People will still be listening to music but how they will be listening will be different to now. You still have to do your work. I will be concentrating more and more on the generation that aren’t buying CDs anymore; getting their stuff from the Internet. I need to learn more about this process because you can’t rely on the CD anymore. Let’s find a way to stay involved. Not all ‘MP3s’ are the same in the same way that not all digital is the same, and there are certain platforms that sound better, why? What I’m interested in is why, if you have something encoded by one encoder at the same bit rate as another encoder, does one sounds ten times better than the other? I feel I have to do something to make sure my stuff ends up being encoded by the better system. I need to understand where the encoding and the decisions are made and if I can influence that in any way. I want to be looking at the best solution so my music can stand out. We will always have a role but it will be a matter of finding it.
You’ve arrived at a top-quality middle-type of facility somewhere between the largeformat console producer’s personal facility and a laptop. Paul Wolff told me he thought I had the room of the future. It’s foolish to not try to find your way in the market as it is now; and that’s without losing your credibility and your desire to do good work. The perfect thing about having Teldex next door is we can move work between. I sometimes have mixes where I handed an orchestral session to Tobias
Why do clients come to you? It’s the sound. I get contacted by people who I’ve never met who want me as their first choice because they’ve listened my records and they like the sound. I know for a fact that in the last two years the desire for quality has risen; definitely. I’m working with an R’n’B project at the moment and, as it sometimes happens, three or four of us had to do test mixes. I got the job as a result but told them that it’s lovely that I’m working with them but I haven’t got the attitude that they have; I can make it sound good but I’m not an R’n’B hip hopper. They said, don’t worry, it sounds fantastic, we bring the attitude. We’re on the finals now and it works great. Even the Garage bands want a good Garage band sound now! â–
Teldex
Peter Schmidt’s Ballsaal Studio is located at the back of the Teldex studio complex, the home for many decades of recording teams from Telefunken and later Teldec Classics. In 2001, the restructuring of Warner Music, part of the AOL-Time Warner group, closed the Teldec Classics label, Hamburg and Berlin, and Erato Disques, Paris. Three former Teldec-members — Friedemann Engelbrecht, Tobias Lehmann, and Martin Sauer (Teldec’s last MD) — founded Teldex Studio Berlin and started operating from the same complex while establishing close cooperation with the French label Harmonia Mundi. The three have kept the studio open and thriving and retained essential ties with existing clients. To broaden its appeal to film and popular music the facility was refurbished resulting in Control 1 being transformed with PMC surround monitoring and an SSL 9072J. Aside from the enormous and superb main recording area and one of the best and rarest collections of microphones in the world, the facility boasts a second studio plus two editing suites and the sort of inter-space flexibility and interconnection that only places of its calibre ever realise. It also has two complete remote recording rigs with Studer 961 desks working to Pyramix that capture performances in concert halls around Europe that are then returned to base for completion. The success of Teldex is testament to how handson day-to-day owners can turn a profit where a large corporate could not. Diversification is the key along with a progressive attitude towards business generation and a responsiveness to the changing face of orchestral recording. The complex ticks all the boxes for orchestralgrade work: lots of parking space, great access, lots of toilets, a fantastic sounding hall, great technology and top flight people to work with. ‘And we’re in Berlin,’ says chief engineer Tobias. ‘This studio wouldn’t work somewhere like Munich or Hamburg because Berlin has a whole cultural and music scene. We work internationally — it’s record companies from all over the world recording here, it’s American film composers coming here to record with Berlin musicians who used to go to Prague, for example.’ ‘That’s a big change — working in Berlin with a pick-up orchestra,’ adds Friedemann. ‘In Berlin before, every orchestra was doing it’s own project with a record company. Now few have contracts with record companies so we bring the projects in from, say, Japan and we look for the orchestra.’ Their role has changed; not just a facility now but
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January/February 2007
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a facilitator too. They put people in contact and make it happen. ‘So much of the business has changed,’ explains Tobias. ‘A lot of the big artists produce the stuff on their own and once they have the master tape they go out and try and sell it; and they will sell it. It’s not like 10 or 15 years ago when the record company would decide to do a project, pay the money for it and then get the results. Now it’s producers and artists that somehow get the money, pay us and then take it to the record companies.’ Pricing remains a constant pressure in orchestral recording causing some to seek lower rates in the former Eastern Bloc countries. Teldex predictably has a response. ‘As I understand it, in comparison to London the German orchestras cost around 50-60% and an orchestra in Prague costs 60% of what it costs here,’ states Friedemann. ‘We use a Polish orchestra for low budget projects that costs the same as one in Prague. It’s in Wroclaw, about 400km from here, and there’s a wonderful radio hall there and a great orchestra.’ ‘Teldex can’t compete with Prague on price but you can work as professionally here with the all the technology, facilities, and the people just like you can at Abbey Road or AIR, for example — but for substantially less,’ says Tobias.
Contact TELDEX STUDIO BERLIN, GERMANY: Website: www.teldexstudio.de
January/February 2007
Friedemann, Peter, Tobias.
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craft Do you record acoustic instruments in your production room? I may want to work closely with an instrumentalist in developing a project or idea. I can record them here in my room and transfer it onto a larger system later. Or I may work on a demo with a singer and take the demo voice and use that against the track I’m recording. For the number of times I have to do vocal recording it’s an acceptable sound, but I do have three of the best recording studios within several feet of where I’m located! How did you compose the Honda Choir, did you block it out with singers first or was it a blue-sky concept you wrote with samples? I was given the sounds of the car, Honda recorded the car doing various things, then I analysed all the sounds and tried to break them down into musical form. All the recording was done at Angel with a group of singers. The initial process was to record as many of these sounds related to the car as possible. I then took each sound, altered pitches and positioned them to try to create a piece of music. I transferred the audio into Logic to work on that.
Steve Sidwell Rimsky-Korsakov taught his pupils that orchestration was composition. The modern orchestrator needs to add some engineering and production talent and maybe a studio of their own as well.
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TEVE SIDWELL IS one of a new generation of top composers and orchestrators who’ve decided a supply of manuscript paper and several sharpened pencils, or a bedroom stuffed with synths, no longer constitutes sufficient equipment for the job. Sidwell recently moved into a small but well-equipped production suite at Angel Recording Studios in Islington, London. Having studied trumpet and composition at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall, his orchestrations have been heard on albums from Sarah Brightman, Paul Young, The Pet Shop Boys, Seal and — notably — on Robbie Williams’ best selling Swing When You’re Winning. He regularly works as a TV MD and arranger on projects such as the Olympic Torch Concert, Live 8, the VE Day and Royal Variety Concerts. Sidwell has performed as a musician with artists including Robbie, George Michael, Tom Jones, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder. His theatrical credits include orchestrating the musicals Daddy Cool, We Will Rock You and Madness’ musical Our House. Steve 42
NIGEL JOPSON has also contributed arrangements to films including Moulin Rouge, Romeo & Juliet, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Finding Nemo. His original compositions feature in high profile TV advertising campaigns for the likes of M&S, Boots, Walkers and McDonalds. Steve composed and was the featured conductor in the award-nominated ‘Honda Choir’ commercial, in which a choir is pictured emulating dramatic vehicle sounds intercut with footage of a drive in the new Honda Civic. He recently orchestrated the Disneyland Paris Parade Music for 2007-2010, recorded with the RPO.
Was proximity to a large recording studio part of the reason for locating your production room here at Angel Studios? Very much so. It used to take me four or five hours to bring all my gear from home to the Angel. The equipment in my writing room is used on most of my recording projects anyway. For example, there are synth parts to lay down, plus audio resources I create before taking a project into a larger studio to add musicians. resolution
Do you produce finished work from your room, for TV ads for example? I’ve done a lot of productions just in my room for smaller budget work, or if it’s a piece which only uses synths. What I think is very relevant now is that most clients want demos, even if it’s an orchestral score. Everyone says: ‘Can I hear it before we record it?’ For the Disney project I’ve just completed, 22 minutes of music, they wanted to hear absolutely everything before recording. The timing has to be frame-accurate for the Disney parade, and every part of the instrumentation had to be approved. So the ‘demo’ needed to be of a reasonable standard. I’m not Hans Zimmer, but I’ve now developed a good technique for getting ideas across. This is the first time Disney has really gone the whole hog with the backing track to the parade, the music was mostly synth-based in the past, this time they wanted to put it on a par with film scores. We discussed recording in several different locations, but I’m very pleased they chose London. Was there a time in your career when you said to yourself: ‘I’ve got to learn how to make recordings, I’ve got to get this digital workstation thing cracked’? Absolutely, I’ve spent a lot of time learning studio techniques. It’s been a learning curve because when I went to college music technology was not a part of the curriculum. It was a gradual process, I like to think I know Logic very well now, but I’m not so expert with Pro Tools. Technology moves on, I’m still learning all the time, production techniques and recording are really an essential part of musical education nowadays. Do you find there is a clash between being a creative musician and the technical aspects of operating a DAW at the same time? There could be. I’ve tried to develop a method of working that’s artistically and time effective. Of course you can get involved and start fiddling around with things you don’t really need but, on the other hand, it gives an extra dimension to your work as a composer if you use a production facility properly. I don’t think that having to produce demos of arrangements is particularly time effective, but it has become necessary, and I think I’ve developed a reasonably quick technique. January/February 2007
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Does this involve a battery of virtual instruments in Logic? Within Logic I tend to work mainly with the EXS24, I have several templates: full symphony orchestra, small orchestra, string orchestra, big band, small band, rock band ... I probably have seven or eight templates I use regularly. Are these blank Logic Pro songs with the EXS software sampler already inserted on different tracks? Exactly, and as I use an 02R digital mixer, I have similar presets for the desk. I know which channel these instruments will come up on, it’s all pre-labelled. Each time I start a project I don’t have to spend a couple of hours thinking ‘We need a flute here — let’s find one.’ I also try and make sure I get a QuickTime movie if I’m going to be working to picture so I can import it into Logic. Knowing your equipment is the best way — the thing with recording gear is that it’s bound to go wrong — I don’t think a week goes by without something causing me some kind of problem. You can waste hours on being inefficient, I’ve very much enjoyed simplifying my set-up going into the room at Angel. I had a young computer whizz come round to my home to help me work out what I could get rid of. I’m a hoarder of equipment, but he was ruthless! It definitely helped, it was spread across seven racks at home, I’ve got two at Angel. I’m not a computer expert, but now I have a system that works for me. How much of a typical project would be recorded by yourself? Could you give an example of the production process for one of the pieces you’ve written? The Marks & Spencer advert, with Shirley Bassey, was a case of originally being given a list of a dozen songs and a story January/February 2007
board by the agency. I agreed to record about four songs, which is quite a lot of demos, and I tried to make them good and imagine what the final piece would look like — in this case they needed very accurate demos to film to [Dame Shirley appears in the advert]. I wrote the arrangements and recorded the demos in my room. I used a singer, Ria Jones, a well known West End musical actress. She happens to be from Cardiff Bay and does quite an astonishing impression of Bassey! I recorded all the backing tracks, I tracked up the trumpets myself — just having some real instruments on the demos always makes a difference. I then took it to the agency and tweaked the songs, the whole point was that when Dame Shirley came to sing, the sound of the backing would be comparable to an album production. I moved my rig into Studio 1 at Angel, we loaded my tracks onto their Pro Tools system and she sang to my tracks. I then recorded a 50piece orchestra in the large studio, and there was a certain amount of trimming and time-shifting to fit the recordings perfectly to the finished film edit.
What’s next for you? I’ve been commissioned to write a piece for the Academy Awards ceremony as a result of the producers seeing the Honda advert and liking it. I’ve got more than half the piece written, I’m finishing it now and recording two singers in my room this morning. Then I’m going to mix it this afternoon, Matt Bartram — one of Angel’s Pro Tools guys — is coming in to help me because I think it’s always good to have a second opinion on these things. This piece is all audio and Matt is very good with that. This evening I will be dubbing it to film at an editing suite at Resolution in Soho. Then I’m off to LA tomorrow to present my ideas, and discuss how we move forward. ■ resolution
No matter what size they are, all events have one thing in common – success is ultimately dependent on creating the ideal combination of show and technology. The technical requirements of the audio technology sector are, however, becoming increasingly complex. For instance, new digital and fibre-optic technology products are coming ever more quickly onto the market thanks to the innovative capabilities of manufacturers. Maintaining an overview of the latest developments is a significant competitive advantage for anyone in the industry. Prolight + Sound, the leading international trade fair for event and communications technology, AV production and entertainment, shows you all the most important industry trends and makes sure you keep your perspective and remain successful. CONT@CT Frankfurt Exhibitions Ltd. Tel. (020) 7688 6655 info@uk.messefrankfurt.com GeoLogistics Ltd. Tel. (01) 8 66 74 00 info@ireland.messefrankfurt.com Supported by VPLT – The Professional Lighting & Sound Association of Germany, and EVVC – European Association of Event Centers
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sweet spot
Ghost acoustic treatment Retrofitted acoustic treatment is the economic reality for a good many small rooms. ROB JAMES applies the Ghost treatment to a small working space and assesses the experience.
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F WE LIVED in a perfect world then acoustics would be an integral part of audio workspace design long before the foundations were poured. Even when no compromise, money-no-object, Nirvana is occasionally achieved, the results often fail to live up to expectations. Whatever the design philosophy, there is more of a consensus when a room really does sound good. For most of us, and this includes not a few broadcasters and facility houses, compromise is a given before you start. Offices, garages and the now legendary ‘back bedroom’ are all pressed into use for recording, mixing and monitoring, often on a temporary, per project basis (Temporary as in a decade. Ed). Domestic living rooms with thick fitted carpets, curtains and furnishings all contributing to sound absorption can often be very good. They’re even better when uneven, reflective surfaces, such as well stocked bookshelves, add some diffusion. A minimalist, functional room is much more likely to exhibit problems. Some of these will be amenable to cost-effective treatment by one means or another; others, such as the basic room dimensions are impractical, impossible, or prohibitively expensive to cure. Experienced sound folk can generally tell if they are in with a chance within a few minutes of being in a room just by listening to a normal conversation and the odd handclap. If there are obvious problems, identifying the cause and possible ameliorative measures is sometimes easy but often infernally difficult. Even with proper measurement tools, small rooms in the real world are hard to analyse objectively. If you can’t afford Phil Newell or others with decades of experience and expertise then empiricism is going to play a large part in any attempts at a fix. A new division of the Chinese microphone manufacturer SE Electronics is behind the Ghost range.
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At launch there are five products, a 600mm square Block absorber (UK£118), 1200mm X 600mm Big Block (£220), 600mm square Wedge Trap (£135), Corner Trap (£135) and a Gobo Stand (£67). Distributor Sonic Distribution emphasises that each situation will require a different mix of units and offers a design service to help clients get it right. However, they do offer a basic Studio Kit of four Blocks, one Big Block, two Wedges, two Traps and a Stand as a starting point and this attracts a 10% discount. Non structural, stick or screw it on the wall acoustic treatment can be divided into three basic categories, absorbers, diffusers and traps. Despite the manufacturer’s titles I would describe all the current Ghost units as absorbers due to their construction and the way they work. Built around an aluminium and steel inner frame they consist of layers of highly compressed glass fibre (100kg per cubic metre) with layers of aluminium foil claimed to help ‘break up’ low frequencies. The face sides are covered with fully fire retardant thick polyester acoustic felt fabric in light grey or charcoal and the edges are finished with a brushed and punched aluminium frame somewhat reminiscent of aircraft wing ribs. Each unit comes with a lightweight metal EasyMount mounting frame designed to be screwed to the wall. The units simply key slot on to the frames with T-bolts. This opens up the possibility of multi-tasking the basic blocks. The so-called Gobo stand accepts threaded aluminium rods with up to three sections. The basic Blocks have tubes through them in addition to the key slots, so screens up to three Blocks high can be constructed by simply dropping Blocks over the rods. The edges of the heavy steel stand base are chamfered so that an angled wall can be arranged using multiple bases and Blocks. To evaluate the Studio Kit I enlisted the help of singer/songwriter Jedd Owen-Elliss Clark. Jedd’s studio
is built into a converted garage and since he often has paying clients in the room with him, it really has to look the part as well as sound good. The pile of boxes fitted neatly into the back of my truck, demonstrating one of the advantages with this type of treatment. Unlike foam, it is easy to move it to a new studio and can be demounted and used on location if required. Twenty minutes later we made ourselves comfortable in Jedd’s studio with a pot of coffee to do some ‘before’ listening. I also took a few measurements with a TerraSonde analyser. We selected a range of material that Jedd is very familiar with with features likely to show up changes in the acoustic. There is already some structural acoustic treatment in the shape of double-skinned 12.5mm plaster board with acoustic grade Rockwool insulation in the walls and low-density fibreboard panelling on the ceiling, angled over the mixer, again with acoustic grade Rockwool behind. A booth is constructed similarly but is otherwise currently untreated and a (big) problem for another day. The immediate requirements were to improve monitoring at the mixer and to provide variable control of the degree of liveness in the area in front of the booth, used for vocal and acoustic instrumental recording and singing tuition. Measurements made with a spectrum analyser and pink noise were, not for the first time, pretty inconclusive. Small space, too many variables, the monitor amp and speakers for a start. However, the analyser did pinpoint the frequencies of the most obvious feature at the mixing position, a bass hump at 160Hz with a dip at 220Hz. The hump neatly matches the width of the room, so no surprises there, and any standard absorber would be highly unlikely to improve it. The dip coincides with the height. From long and bitter experience this would be extremely difficult to ameliorate in such a small room, let alone cure. Anything likely to work would probably take up half the available space, which obviously isn’t practical. There’s no point in getting paranoid about something you can’t fix and the pragmatic answer is ‘learn to live with it’, making allowances when monitoring. The other obvious problem, flutter reflections, is much more evident from just listening to speech and music or a handclap than the measurements. Jedd is well aware of this phenomenon and has been experimenting with some budget foam panels and
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sweet spot traps but with little noticeable improvement. Sonic’s recommended disposition of units is thoroughly conventional and I saw no good reason to depart from it except where circumstances didn’t allow it to be followed. The window and furniture precluded fitting the Big Block in the obvious position behind and between the speakers but it took no time at all to temporarily fit the Corner Traps and Wedges. After considerable listening we decided to add two further Blocks either side of the listening position. The results were convincing if not spectacular. Focus and clarity showed a tangible improvement and imaging was considerably more solid. This is thoroughly worthwhile and should not be taken to mean that the Ghost is not doing its stuff. Rather it is a reflection of the fact that the monitoring position sound was pretty good in the first place. In short, the Ghost absorbers controlled the flutter reflections nicely without adversely affecting the frequency response or making the area feel oppressive, audibly or visually. Moving on to the other suitable case for treatment, erecting the Ghost Stand was the work of a moment and the resultant acoustic screen proved to be highly effective at controlling liveness when recording an acoustic guitar. With just two Blocks fitted the allimportant eye contact between artist and engineer can be maintained and the third Block can be added in seconds to record a standing vocal. All in all, this was an encouraging (and long) day’s work. Ghost acquitted itself well on the acoustics front and almost as importantly we both liked the appearance of the panels. The fabric has a nicely judged texture, easy on the eye and a lot better looking than foam. We both concluded that, with the right complement of panels, the whole room could be considerably improved and that it would be well worthwhile experimenting with them in the booth as well and this could be achieved economically if extra mounting frames are available. On the downside, the mounting frames seem a little too flexible, but would no doubt stiffen up once attached to the wall. Neither of us could fathom out how the Corner Trap bracket would work on a 90degree outside corner. It would be good to see the range further extended with true non-absorbent diffuser panels and maybe tuneable bass traps using different technology to extend lower down the spectrum. The existing ones
are claimed to be 30% effective at 100Hz but that is nowhere near enough to help in this situation. We concluded that Ghost is a modern, handsome, effective and sensibly priced answer to the most common maladies found in mixing and recording environments, unless there are big anomalies at the bottom end, which are always going to pose a problem. The other main conclusion was that when the room is being used for mixing, a heavy acoustic curtain across the booth and lobby at the back would be a great help. Ghost Blocks would usually do the job but, due to the studio layout, are just not practical in this case. I’ve experimented with acoustic foam in the past in my own space and worked in a sound for picture room that had thick foam on every wall surface and the entire ceiling. I’ve eventually concluded that it has just too many disadvantages. Most foams smell, at least for the first few months after installation and the colour fades and it eventually crumbles. It also attracts and harbours dust and is very difficult to keep clean. Installation is a ‘once only’ affair. It is
nigh on impossible not to damage the panels when removing them. Despite some manufacturers’ claims of a diffusion effect at HF, foam is pretty much an absorber and only really does anything useful above 400Hz. Perhaps most damning of all, few foam products are fire rated for use in public buildings such as schools, colleges and churches. In contrast the Ghost units are about as fire retardant as you can get, can be readily moved about as necessary even during a session, and their useful effect extends down to at least 250Hz as can be seen clearly from the absorption co-efficient graph. This results in a much smoother response. The Ghost range is off to a good start. It is a clear improvement over foam products in many areas. It isn’t cheap but neither is it expensive when you consider what you are getting for the money. These are serious, properly engineered devices with the considerable bonus of the possibility of having Blocks do double duty as recording screens. Installation is simple and well within the capabilities of anyone who can put up a straight and level bookshelf. Obviously, the units should be mounted temporarily until the optimum positions have been determined. Leaving aside their undoubted acoustic virtues, Ghost units are good looking and the fire retardant performance will make these acoustic control elements a natural for many projects. ■
Contact GHOST, CHINA: Website: www.ghostacoustics.com Sonic Distribution: +44 1582 470260
PROS
Pro, Con, Extras Text
CONS EXTRAS
Contact COMPANY NAME, PLACE: Website: www.XXXXXXXX.co.uk Tel: +44 XXXXX XXXXXXX
January/February 2007
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meet your maker I can tell you that the Waves team is enthusiastic and passionate about each and every component in our product line. Nothing is a shot in the dark. Everything is the result of hard work, driven by internal motivation and commitment to serve the needs of our customers. If we weren’t creating these processors, most of us would probably be users of Waves. You may have noticed that Waves does not put individual personnel credits in the software documentation, on our boxes, or anywhere else. That said, most of us feel very fortunate to be working in this industry, and none of us take it for granted. The way we look at it, a big dream has been realised, and smaller dreams become real with each passing year. Our satisfaction lies in the enthusiasm we have for what we do, and we get a lot of fulfilment from the results of our work. Sure, sometimes we overwork, but when we ‘zoom out,’ we see that we have so much to be very proud of. When things get a little tough, our team spirit pulls us out of any pit we may fall into. And while some of our software and math professionals have less of a specific interest in music and sound production, I think the enthusiasm catches on. Occasionally, someone from the outside peeks in and looks at us as if we are some sort of a cult, but we just really believe in what we’re doing.
What’s tougher — developing a ‘new’ plug-in or developing an emulation? Each has its own set of challenges, so in general, they’re about the same. In developing a new plug-in, there’s a lot of creative work in defining and designing features and functions. In an emulation job, there is a different creative process involved, finding ways to research and implement the more subtle and perceptual aspects of the audio transformation. Also, when we do an emulation of a well known piece of equipment, there is an utmost respect to the original. In making a new original, we have our own high standards to live up to. In both cases, it’s fascinating and many times, we are surprised by things we discover as we go along.
Amir Vinci The senior product manager at Waves talks native, latency, bottlenecks and bloat. ZENON SCHOEPE
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MIR VINCI HAS been working at Waves since 1996 and was originally a beta tester of the first sound processing software from company. A guitarist, studio engineer and music technology specialist who had been freelancing in sound design, sound coordination and consulting as well as music production and composition for the multimedia market, Amir started as the only product manager at Waves — there are now six. He describes his position as the person sitting in the middle of the product development chain between the users and engineers. Most of the non graphic design of a product is done by the product manager who identifies the needs and defines what technology will best serve it. 46
What’s special about Waves products? After almost 15 years in business, Waves has long standing and proven credentials in the digital audio processing industry. Waves offers the largest number of product choices and the widest range of supported platforms, all at the highest possible quality. Our continuing experience, research, and investment in every aspect of digital audio processing as well as our future product development keep us ahead of the curve. If any, our only real problem is that there’s so much we want to do that we can’t handle everything at once, so we have to prioritise and accept that we can only do what we can, and do our best. Having such an intimate relationship with our products, I can’t possibly detail each and every special thing in each of our different products. But resolution
How good can an emulation be? What emulation? You mean that wasn’t the real thing? Wow… It takes a lot of work and quite a lot of horsepower, but if you have what it takes an emulation can be as good and sometimes even better in some aspects than the real thing. I think some types of digital audio process emulation, simulation, modelling etc. are currently reaching their prime. There’s a unique combination of amazingly strong computer technologies and a lot of acquired experience that result in some of the most astounding and faithful analogue processing in the digital domain. Other than mental blocks (not a good thing) and also romantic and nostalgic preferences (usually a good thing, but in this case may lead to mental blockage), there is no real advantage to overpriced outboard processing gear. However, the front ends and back ends, i.e. mics, mic pres, amplifiers and speakers, are of critical importance. Where are the bottlenecks in plug-in performance on the different platforms? The technical bottlenecks are roughly the same with CPU at the top and then memory in its different forms next. Usually, advances in computer technology are fairly well-aligned when it comes to CPU speeds and amounts as well as cache sizes bus and memory January/February 2007
meet your maker
speeds. Sometimes, graphic engines are a challenge, but of course we give priority to the audio process functions. For Waves, a lot of the bottlenecks are not caused by hardware specifications such as CPU and memory, rather by the standardisation of integration. What could be more convenient than plugging in a plug? In the software world, instead of having a standard PL jack that you can go out and buy, you have what’s called an SDK — Software Developer’s Kit. These are not created equal, nor are they maintained and supported equally. Thus, getting stuff to work in the same way with the same efficiency and reliability under multiple environments is quite a challenge.
How different are the processing demands of plug-ins from different manufacturers — what differentiates the way Waves creates a plug-in compared to anyone else? To be honest, I can’t be sure what different manufacturers do to make their process functions as efficient as possible. It’s amazing how the word ‘optimization’ can become a bottomless pit. We specialise in two main coding types. Native code in which we stay updated and do our best to implement acceleration options such as parallel vector processing and others using specific options provided by the CPU manufacturer. In DSP assembly code, we have some of the best engineers writing for Motorola 56k DSP assembly, and we pioneered the whole DSP sharing paradigm on Digidesign’s DAE architecture back in the days of Sound Designer/Sound Tools (in the pre-Pro Tools era). Does the audio industry suffer from software bloat in the same way that the consumer industry does? Not in the same way. I make a distinction between audio and pro audio, so I’ll stick with the pro audio industry. January/February 2007
When Waves started out, there was little competition; now there’s a lot. Yes, there are definitely a lot of useful freebies out there; however, I think a busy working professional doesn’t have the time to sift through a million freebies looking for one that he might find useful. On the contrary, they need and will pay for reliability and responsibility, which is why we’re especially proud of our technical support and customer services. I think our tech support team is one of the best of any company in our industry if not THE best, period. They help our customers overcome and avoid technical down time with total dedication and with a true interest in helping the users. This is not what you are going to get with many other products out there — another thing that makes Waves products special.
What does native and DSP mean to you and where are they heading? Native means using the computer’s native CPU horsepower for doing the actual audio processing functions which is a Digital Signal Process = DSP. When saying DSP as opposed to Native, this means using dedicated DSP hardware rather then relying on the computer’s CPU for calculating the audio process functions. This paradigm is used in systems such as Digidesign’s TDM architecture. When digital audio was younger, the need for dedicated DSP hardware was obvious. The track counts and real time processing possible with a computer were just not up to professional requirements. However, over the last decade, this balance has changed drastically and the leap in computer CPU performance is unequalled in the dedicated DSP components market, which is mostly driven by the higher volume, lower demands of the consumer market i.e. cell phones etc. Nowadays, with the latest generation of the Intel Core 2 Duo, a laptop computer’s power out-performs most basic multi DSP hardware, though not in a vacuum. Native processing still has some soft spots such as buffer size-related latency and CPU consumption. The rule is, the lower the latency, the higher the CPU, and vice versa. This mostly maintains the DSP advantage when playing live and processing live input. For mixing pre-recorded material, the advantages are almost non-existent. I think the thing that suffers most are the ‘Hybrid’ architectures which try to sell the user dedicated hardware to lighten CPU load. In these scenarios, the amazing power of CPUs benefits the native processing users but leaves the others with the same capacity. Basically, some users are going to realise that the biggest advantage of the dedicated hardware they purchased is copy protection for the manufacturer as opposed to actual increase in processing power. So, is hardware going to die? Eventually, digital hardware will be less and less resolution
effective, but will maintain some ground in live audio applications. Analogue hardware will mostly be relevant in the front and back ends: microphones, mic preamplifiers, line preamps, and A-D convertors will be crucial for making quality recordings and DACs, power amplifiers, and speakers will be crucial for cooking quality mixes. The rest, I think, will have mostly personal perceptual value.
Then there’s cracked software, how can you protect against what is a cultural phenomenon? The best protection that has unfortunately yet to be implemented fully is making people understand that they may not be able to get away with it. Right now, cracked software usage is so widespread because people feel they can get something for nothing and won’t ever get caught. The fact is that to date, businesses have felt that they are not a target and that the actual hackers who violate the license agreements are the ones who should be caught and punished. Ultimately, the ugliest example is people who sell cracked software for money; the next is using cracked software in a business. I don’t believe in foolproof copy protection, and I think there are times copy protection may be a problem in and of itself. The industry shouldn’t go after the students and private abusers, but rather businesses and pirates who profit from the distribution of cracked software should definitely feel they have something to lose as a result of their bad behaviour, as well as something to gain from lawful use. What is a ‘personal’ studio likely to consist of in ten years time? What it always has — motivation, skill, talent, inspiration, taste… Budget will never again be the big make-or-break element in the production of a music or sound title as it has been in the past. It will still play a crucial role in the promotion and commercial success of music, but not in the making of it. ■ 47
katz’s column
The route to everywhere It’s a hard life. BOB KATZ uses the example of a recent compilation project he was involved with to explain the different approaches required and to set the scene for the routing possibilities that can make it happen.
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ASTERING AUDIO IS an art and a science. Nothing brings that point home more than this story of a 3-CD Latin-Jazz ‘compilation’ album that came from many different sources originally recorded over a 30-year span. The object is not to equalise the different-sounding programmes to death, certainly not to homogenise the sound, but to produce an enjoyable experience for the listener (That’s something we need to be reminded of regularly. Ed). Sometimes simply adjusting the levels between the songs does the trick; we don’t try to turn a song that came from a bass-heavy session into the bright and flashy one that follows it. We try to use just enough EQ or spacing or level adjustment to keep the ear from feeling jumped on. Or even more processing if it is clear that the mastering would enhance the musical values or the danceability of the original mix and the presentation of the album as a whole, and that requires careful and wise judgment. I had three general types of source to work from. As I had already worked with this record company, the best sources were transfers I had previously made from original 1/4-inch master tapes mixed between
the 1960s and the 90s. I pulled the 96kHz/24-bit processed masters from our digital archives and also the 96kHz/24-bit unmastered transfers, in case I would have to remaster for the context of the new compilation. The next best sources the record company supplied were professional-quality 44.1kHz/16-bit CDA transfers of 1950s through 70s analogue material made in the 80s, prior to widespread availability of good 96/24 convertors and DAWs. The most problematic sources were from squashed, overcompressed and peak-limited recently-mastered CDs made by other mastering engineers for this record company, and regrettably, due to time constraints, I was not able to get their unmastered archives. I complained that I was being asked to turn hamburger back into filet mignon, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Fortunately, not all those mastered CDs were banged to death, and only about 5 of the 40 tunes were in ‘smashed’ condition. Since the final product is at 44.1kHz/16-bit, the most transparent route would be to clone all the 44/16 sources without adding any processing. But although the 80s transfers sounded good to excellent, they were at many different levels and tonalities and often needed a little EQ or subtle processing, and to please the record company they all needed to be brought up to a reasonably ‘current’ RMS level. The already-mastered songs were the greatest challenge, as adding any additional processing can take clipped, distorted, fragile, product down the tubes. The other issue is that it’s really important to master in context; sometimes I’d go back two or three tunes in the sequence to fine-tune levels as I took the listener from an acoustic charanga into a hot-electric Latin fusion number. So I needed to have all the tracks in a single 96kHz EDL (one per CD master). My first step was to upsample all the 44.1kHz material to 96kHz/24-bit. I used R8Brain Pro to SRC the files, using the checkbox ‘prevent clipping’ as I feared the peak-limited material could overload the SRC. R8Brain prevents clipping with a benign gain adjustment on the entire file. Then I placed the clips in SADiE EDLs, labelling them with their origin to help me decide on a processing approach. In the figure, though these are stereo clips, SADiE permits displaying one channel to conserve screen space. The first track, in green, is one of my already processed and peak limited masters. I’m not proud to show you that the loud section appears squared off, except if you zoomed in you would still see some daylight between the peaks. This master is dynamic and clear, hopefully I removed only the inaudible
peaks while entering the loudness race. The second track, in red, is the professional transfer of a song. The third track, in blue, sounded as bad as it looks. It’s the audio equivalent of ground beef; it’s quite fatiguing to listen to, not even impacting as the compression applied by the previous mastering engineer was spongy-sounding. So, basically, I needed three styles of treatment. 1. For the first track, hopefully I could preserve my original master, not process it except to SRC it to 44.1 and dither to 16-bit, as on the original release. If it seemed a little loud in the new context, I could safely drop the level a hair, with a benign level drop at 96kHz in front of the SRC. I use the term ‘benign’ because a proper, dithered level calculation at 96kHz/24-bit is a minor DSP operation with probably no audible loss of transparency. If I had to raise the level of this peak-limited material, it would mean that my quality standards were eroding, and fortunately that issue never came up as the record company was very happy with my masters. But if I really had to raise the level for political reasons, then I would have gone back to the original transfer and remastered it, to avoid adding additional dynamics processing on peak-limited material. I have recently begun to make archives of my masters at 96/24 prelimiter, to allow compilation engineers to put their own limiter on the material and easily raise levels without having to go back to the unmastered source. These non-limited archives can serve as the basis for uncompromised high-resolution DVDs. By the way, I’m not implying that peak limiting per se is necessarily a bad thing, as we may use peak limiting to soften transients for aesthetic reasons; just that when you begin to use peak limiting for competitive level, you’re going down that slippery slope -— a mountain I’ve been skiing much too frequently. 2. For the second track, it was a pleasure to work with an excellent transfer of a great Latin-Jazz mix, and I would apply EQ, compression, expansion or other processing if needed. 3. For the overcompressed track mastered by another engineer, I would take the approach of doing the minimum so as not to cause further damage. I endeavoured to leave the track alone, but many of the tracks were so loud in comparison with my more dynamic masters I usually had to drop the level. In some cases I added minor EQ if the song sounded badly out of place in the sequence, or if the sound was harsh or distorted I would use some high frequency compression to soften the distortion. But dynamics processing on heavily processed material adds its own distortion, so this was always a compromise. I think I was able to leave only one of these mastered tracks alone. But remember that it had already made a trip through upsampling, to be followed by downsampling, and then redithering. Frankly, the original sound was already so distorted that there was no transparency per se to be lost. If this had been a pristine source I would have cloned it to the 16/44 master. Next issue I’ll look at the equipment and connections that allow seamless mastering of these differentsounding sources. ■
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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Desert island mics OK, here’s the scenario — your yacht has been holed and is taking in water fast. You’ve just time to grab one waterproof case of mics for use as a buoyancy aid before you’re in the sea and paddling for land. Regaining consciousness on a beach, you raise your head to recognise that the flightcase containing your solar-powered laptop and preamps has also been washed up. Glancing down at the case you’re still gripping, what ten mics would you hope were within it? KEITH SPENCER-ALLEN waits to be rescued.
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ITH JUST TEN MICS we’re not talking anything too esoteric — they need to include multipurpose, reliable workhorses. Reliability is only known through experience. My files list at least 75 active mic makers and countless models many of which I haven’t experienced. So there may be many equally valid selections — this one’s personal. A LARGE DIAPHRAGM CONDENSER — An essential tool in anyone’s collection. Instinctively I’d go for the Neumann U87 but here I’ve paused — with only ten mics there might be a better choice — and then gone for the TLM170. Still a large diaphragm condenser but the sound is more neutral than the U87’s ‘enhanced Neumann-ness’, has a significantly higher SPL handling, and while the omni, cardioid and fig-8 polar patterns are present in both models, the 170 adds two extra cardioid variants — and if you’re lucky enough to have the remote box, the patterns can be selected at a distance (So convenient on an island. Ed). In practical terms the mic is usefully smaller and being mounted on a bracket is easier to position than the U87. THE BOMB-PROOF DYNAMIC — In the US it is common to see classic mics from Shure’s live range used in any studio. In Europe there is widespread rejection of the idea and consequently we miss out on some superb tools. The SM57 is a bomb-proof cardioid dynamic maintaining a high level of LF rejection from the rear while a mid-range presence boost creates a pickup perfectly tailored to percussion, drums, guitar amps and even some acoustic stringed instruments. You can get it in really close and if the drummer hits it it doesn’t die. You can use it for voice but here its sister mic, the SM58, is preferable. If you’ve got a singer who loses a lot without a handheld mic, this is another route. Consider them as mics that pre-EQ your signal for you. THE ANALYTICAL CONDENSER (CARDIOID) — There are times when you want to use a mic that is as near technically perfect as possible; one that that has a transparency and adds no overt characteristics of its own. This means that you must look to a fixed pattern design for minimal compromise. My choice would be a Sanken CU-41 or the transformerless CU-44. It uses a large and small January/February 2007
diaphragm which may cause concern but the polar pattern is virtually textbook cardioid, it has high SPL handling and is very quiet. The extended LF response may mean the use of a shockmount making this a large object to place. THE ANALYTICAL CONDENSER (OMNI) — For exactly the same reasons mentioned above there are times when you want the ‘invisible’ omni. The DPA 4000 series mics are among the best for this. Their small size and shape means that the mic’s body casts a minimum shadow over rear pickup meaning that this mic is close to being true omnidirectional at all frequencies. The 4006, being 48V phantom powered is more practical than the 130V power supply 4003 version. THE BEST OF THE BOUNDARIES — A boundary mic is a wonderful tool where you want to capture sound incident over a wide angle with minimal change in level or frequency response. Its hemispherical polar pattern is uniquely useful for this, and the fact that it can be placed out of the way, on the floor or wall adds to the possibilities. The original PZM-types from Crown are fine but sound bass-light when compared to boundary models such as those from Beyer, Sennheiser, Schoeps BLM3 and Neumann. I’d opt for the Neumann GFM132, which has a triangular base plate and off-set capsule that Neumann claims reduces the audible effect of edge diffraction that is more noticeable from regular shaped pates. I don’t know about that — despite having used boundary mics for more than 25 years their pick-up is never 100% predictable. SERIOUS DYNAMIC 1 — When first given an Electro-Voice RE20 I naturally assumed it was a condenser. It’s big and performed like one. This is probably the most versatile of mics being equally at home 12-inches from a bass drum head or recording a serious vocal performance — there’s no proximity effect. Its size does count against it — you need to have a sturdy boom but should it come crashing down from a couple of metres up, it is one of the few studio mics I’d bet on still working to spec, even if the casing was bent. resolution
SERIOUS DYNAMIC 2 — Another mic I originally assumed was a condenser (I had the naive certainty that high performance meant condenser) was the Sennheiser MD441, a distinctive and long mic that required its own specially shaped mic clip on account of its rectangular profile. It neatly handles the dynamic duties that the RE20 doesn’t suit making it good for stringed instruments where its super cardioid pattern works well. THE GENERAL PURPOSE CONDENSER — The small pencil condenser that you can use anywhere is an essential. There are plenty to choose from and if allowed more mics I’d probably turn to a selection from AKG, Sennheiser, Beyer and the Schoeps Colette series, but with just ten it’s back to Neumann for the KM184 cardioid or the older KM84. THE RELIABLE RIBBON — Ribbon mics have a very specific quality that suits some sources. With such a delicate mechanism it is odd that they work really well in front of guitar amps although in practical terms they sit halfway between a dynamic and condenser with characteristics of both. Beyer make several ribbon mics that are practical and don’t require as much care as larger designs. I’d opt for the M160 with its twin ribbons, a mic that also has the ability to add smoothness.
SOMETHING STEREO — Perhaps this is cheating but with only one of everything you need a stereo mic to record stereo. A mic I’ve had the most fun with is the Soundfield 422. A remarkably natural sounding system combines the Soundfield mic’s four capsules with a processor that varies that capsule mix to provide virtually any mic pattern desired plus multiple stereo patterns in LR and M/S stereo. The processor creates a phase coherent stereo output that results in one of the most precise stereo images you’ll hear. (The problem is that if all your cables are at the bottom of the ocean this has all been a waste of time!) 49
business
Flawed but not floored 2006 marked the first time label bosses admitted their business models were coming unstuck. NIGEL JOPSON prescribes further disassembly to ensure the future of the music industry.
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EARLY FOUR YEARS ago, in the pages of Resolution (V2.2), I wrote a fairly graphic description of some fundamental flaws at the heart of the music industry’s business model. Behind all our talk of downloads and major label break-even rates, pundits like myself were saying that major publicly quoted entertainment corporations had totally lost the plot. Throwing buckets of shareholder capital at 20 pop groups when only one would be successful was not a sustainable strategy: the guitar heroes left standing were forced to generate ever-increasing revenues — to support the failures — an impossible task when there has never been greater competition for consumer entertainment spending. Throwing sh1t at the wall until it sticks was not a crap strategy when most of the effluent stayed there — now it mostly slides off and we will just end up covered in it. While pundits pontificated, there was silence from active executive officers of major labels ... until 2006, that is. At the October In The City convention, Sony BMG’s new chairman and CEO Ged Doherty told the assembled music-biznerati: ‘The truth is, we are running our businesses like it was 1982, we are running a business model that is so out of date it’s not true.’ Doherty is one of the most frank and informative top insiders to openly discuss the issues, but he was not the first. In August, Warner CEO Lyor Cohen said: ‘The whole industry is still bloated. Everyone needs to get in better shape ... Our industry wastes money on hundreds of acts because executives are afraid to cut an artist who might be successful somewhere else. We’ve got to change that mindset ... You don’t have to snare all the successful bands. Just focus on making the ones you have snared successful.’ As a board member, EMI CEO Alain Levy has to be more circumspect, but in October he told the London
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School of Business he anticipated a radically different future for the music industry: ‘That is why we are living in a world of beta tested products and services waiting for consumer traffic. For us [EMI] this means it is increasingly difficult to forecast our mix of digital revenue. So we must be increasingly flexible, collaborative and open to the outside world — this has fundamentally changed our way of operating. In this day and age closed media companies will quite simply die.’ When interviewed by Richard Griffiths, Ged Doherty was remarkably forthright in discussing internal Sony BMG UK corporate sales projections. ‘We figure the value of CD sales will be 50% less in three years than it is now,’ he said, ‘we predict digital growth of 25% per year, but not enough to replace the loss from CD sales. By 2010 we will be 30% behind in term of revenues. We have to reinvent.’ Doherty admitted the past year had not been good for the newly-restructured UK arm of the music behemoth, with only two or three artists broken, instead of six. When pushed to define ‘broken’, Doherty said the general definition would be platinum sales, but in 2007 it would be double platinum because British artists aren’t routinely selling well in other territories and — shockingly, even for a sceptic such as myself — that platinum artists aren’t generally profitable for Sony BMG because they spend too much money promoting them! If digital sales will not replace majors’ lost revenue, what will? Some within the industry, such as former Pink Floyd and Clash manager Peter Jenner, have recommended an Internet and mobile-phone levy to replace royalties. Jenner, now secretary general of the International Music Manager’s forum, recommended a tax of €4 (UK£2.68) a month. I might not go as far
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as TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, who called this ‘a monumentally stupid, dangerous, and bad idea.’ But I do believe such a music levy would extinguish any incentive to innovate, and nobody has successfully explained how such a tax would be divided up. Of course, major labels will be paid ... but, in the absence of free-market sales accounting, who will decide how to divvy up the money for artists? It only requires a big man with a big weapon to pick up on a simple idea to make it dangerous. Universal Music Group’s Chairman and CEO Doug Morris said of iPods and similar players: ‘These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it. So it’s time to get paid for it.’ On November 9 Microsoft and Universal announced they had reached a licensing deal: Microsoft agreed not only to share revenue from songs downloaded from its Zune music service, but also to share the proceeds from sales of the device itself, via a flat fee. The fee will not be $1 per Zune sold, contrary to what The New York Times initially reported, with possible implications it may actually be higher. Early versions of the Zune Marketplace contained far less music than Apple’s iTunes. This was because UMG had not yet signed on to Microsoft’s service, despite being so close to launch. Music industry lawyer, and former Director of Business Affairs at Sony TV and Video, Steve Gordon doesn’t think musicians will ever see a dime from the flat fee: ‘... this pattern of not paying artists for digital music sales is dreadful, the chances of artists seeing anything from the royalty placed on Zune is even worse,’ he believes. ‘There is nothing in the standard recording agreement that says the labels must share income derived from licensing digital devices. Labels are only responsible for paying for exploitation of music, not licensing electronic devices. So why would the labels share anything with the artists when they already disregard clauses in the recording agreements that would benefit the artists?’ I’d like to think creative executives have something a bit more artist-friendly in mind than a musical version of the UK’s television license fee. The very fact that Doherty was appointed CEO at Sony BMG suggests one direction that forward thinkers have in mind. Until Ged joined Sony’s international marketing arm in 1992 he was a successful manager, steering
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business the careers of artists like Paul Young and Alison Moyet. In this column in Resolution (V5.7) I described how Canadian management company Nettwerk were setting up custom labels for their artists, including Sarah McLachlen and Bare Naked Ladies. ‘The artistrun model is the future,’ asserts Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride, who creams 20% off the total and aims to be quick-reacting and ensure his bands enjoy higher royalty rates than majors. ‘If we can break bands using this model, the industry will be forever changed.’ Majors would like a slice of this pie too, in 2002 EMI cut a massive deal with Robbie Williams that included sharing revenue from touring, publishing and merchandise. In 2005 EMI paid Korn a reported $15 million for a percentage of touring, merchandise, publishing and licensing. Perhaps smarter was Warner’s deal with the then-unknown My Chemical Romance, which included a cut of their merchandising. In July, Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of Beverly Hills management company The Firm, announced an ‘artist-friendly music company’ to release albums by clients such as actress-singer Mandy Moore and Army of Anyone. This followed The Firm’s success with a financial gamble on rapper Ice Cube’s Laugh Now, Cry Later album, which debuted at 4 in the charts and went on to sell 500,000. EMI is financing the venture and will distribute the records. The Firm will handle A&R, marketing, and promotion, and split profits evenly with artists. To get a good perspective on the challenges facing the industry, perhaps we need to look back in time to the early 1920s, when the phonograph was hot technology, and a record label like Victor could rack up annual disc sales of over 54 million units. The ‘Talking Machine’ businesses initially perceived radio as a competing technology that might replace the phonograph in homes. To avoid paying the record industry for copyrighted music, radio stations started their own in-house orchestras. ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) charged that radio was contributing to plummeting sales of records and sheet music. By 1925, before radio advertising had fully developed, stations were being asked to pay between $250 and $2,500 a week for music rights. It was war. In the Depression era, phonograph sales collapsed but radio prospered because the music was ... free!
The late 1930s marked a period of intense struggle between the competing technologies of radio and records. The labels recovered with the invention of the juke box (club owners could play music without hiring live bands) but it wasn’t until the 1950s when TV channels started poaching radio’s variety show audiences and advertising, that the music industry ‘saved’ radio and the two businesses entered the long symbiotic relationship we today take completely for granted. The key point is that labels only survived by being the closest to musicians, by acting as their conduit to market. In their heyday, large corporations like RCA dominated music, owning every part of the process from recording, disc manufacturing, radio networks, through to replay devices and the valves and electronic components used to build them. In business terms this is known as ‘vertical integration’ and is typical of early industrial development. When corporations became too large or dominant as monopolies, antitrust legislation was used to separate the parts — as in the case of Standard Oil, American Tobacco and Bell. In our modern global economy vertically integrated conglomerates — for example, the Rank organisation or Hanson Group — have proved illfitted for international markets where most industries are, or rapidly become, mature. Sticking to ‘core competencies’ has proved more profitable. The record industry is merely facing business challenges that have been successfully tackled in other industries. If you asked most label executives what the core competency of their business is, they’d likely answer ‘music.’ But how many employees of a major are actually artist-facing music experts, and why is it necessary for an EMI employee to deal with all the distribution, licensing and other back-office tasks for an EMI artist? A large distributor such as Amato provides all the manufacturing, logistics and sometimes PR and marketing for hot independent labels. Guidant was successfully spun out from Elli Lilly in 1994, and Agilent was spun out from HP in 1999 because medical devices and test equipment were not considered central parts of those respective corporations. Most labels have already sold off their equipment manufacturing, CD plants and recording studios —
why not separate A&R and distribution/back-office? Just because employees sit in the same building, not a distant factory, doesn’t mean they belong in the same business. PricewaterhouseCoopers spun out its 30,000 strong in-house consulting arm in 2002 — sold to IBM for $3.5 billion. There are tried and tested methods for separating businesses. Internal cross-charging is implemented, where each division pays the market value (from its budget) for services received from other units of the company (would the break-even rate improve then?) Management lines are taken out, ‘Chinese walls’ put up, and divisionof-service agreements put in place. Doherty told us that all his staff hated the brand ‘Sony BMG Music Division’, hence the resurrection of Columbia and RCA imprints: well, here’s the chance to really give each their own corporate personality. Imprints could retain artist contracts and copyrights, distribution would have fixed-term license agreements to start business life as separate entities. David Munns, vice chairman of EMI, observes that: ‘In the physical world, which is still the majority of our business, we have seven or eight accounts in most countries that account for 80% of our business. These are physical accounts — Wal-Mart, Tesco — in 50 countries. Let’s call it 400 accounts. We already have 400 accounts in the digital space. Three years, four years from now we might have 3,000 or 4,000, when everybody who’s connected to a computer can in theory be a retailer of music.’ I don’t think the legal, technical and logistical aspects of managing such an array of accounts has anything to do with music. Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic, perhaps the most successful rock label ever, once said: ‘The making of a hit record depends more than anything on the material of the song. And that’s the toughest thing to find. The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops. That includes the Irving Berlins and the Hoagy Carmichaels, the Harold Arlens, Cole Porter. They write clinkers most of the time. Once in a while they can write a hit. And whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write — no matter how bad they are — get recorded.’ That’s all that record labels should focus on — finding good songs — then promoting them. The consumer is spoilt for choice and labels will have to become more inventive in this area. They don’t need to manage 4,000 logistics accounts. Labels need to become venture capitalist rights licensormanager-promoters, in partnership with musicians, their managers or indie labels, all benefiting from a variety of different income streams. ■
‘Hey Mr Record man the joke’s on you Running your label like it was 1992 Hey Mr Record man your system can’t compete It’s the new artist model — file transfer complete’ MC Lars – Download This Song www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTPDVkVFOs January/February 2007
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technology
Blockbuster or damp squib? The production industry has been gearing up for it and consumers have been told they are gagging for it yet DVD HD and BD (Blu-ray Disc) are still not embedded in the entertainment chain. It could be the format battle, it could be delays in technology to market, but attitudes have also moved on and changed. ROB JAMES plays devil’s advocate.
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T IS WELL OVER a year since I wrote about the brave new world of high-definition discs. A format war to rival VHS v Betamax was already looming between Blu-ray (Sony, now known as BD or Blu-ray Disc) and HD DVD (Toshiba). Product was about to ship, or so we thought. It has since become all too clear that not only is the war likely to be bloody but that, while the protagonists were sorting out technical and supply problems, the world has moved on. As of today we are still at the ‘early adopter’ stage with very few players available and a small selection of titles. Even the Sony PS3 console, which seemed likely to kick-start the move to hi-def disc, has been beset with problems. Supply cannot keep up with demand due to difficulties with blue-violet laser production and the European launch has yet to happen. The VHS v Betamax analogy may well be the wrong one. Consider instead the SACD/DVDA debacle and forget all the nonsense about improved quality. The real goal with these formats was to replace CDs with something that the music industry and the equipment manufacturers could control. Both formats have totally failed to make any serious impression on the mass market for two reasons. First, no one was brave enough to release must have material exclusively in these formats. If they had, then with decent marketing, a critical mass of consumers might have bitten the bullet and invested. Second, the mass market has already left music discs behind. Consumers may still buy CDs in significant numbers (although one report claims sales are down over 40% in the past few months) but they are using them differently, ripping them to MP3 players, iPods and media servers. Higher quality is just not a consideration in most purchasing decisions (although if you ask the question, consumers will always insist that it is.) All this is not really so different to the world that went before with tinny transistor radios and ‘music-centres’. Sure, people will still play the CD when they have time to listen seriously, but the primary uses have changed. Hobbyists and hi-fi junkies will continue to seek out the highest possible fidelity (and in the process spend more time listening to the equipment than the music). In my experience even many classical musicians are quite happy with recordings and replay equipment that would horrify the average audiophile, provided that the performance is of a sufficiently high standard. Much is being made of the fact that sales of ‘HD Ready’ screens are romping away and that all those eager purchasers are just itching to get their hands on high definition content to fully exercise their new toys. The truth is a lot more prosaic. Flat screens are ‘domestically friendly’ and they are also the latest ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ fashion accessory. The sales figures achieved by some of the more dismal examples give ample testimony to the absence of discrimination on the part of the purchasers. Although satellite HD had a bit of a bonanza on the back of the World Cup it remains to be seen what the long-term take-up rate will be. Unlike DVD, which offered obvious tangible benefits to the consumer, 52
BD and HD DVD are going to be perceived as an incremental upgrade just like SACD/DVDA. Even assuming the marketing hype is able to make Bluray and DVD HD the next desirable toy there are a number of hazards lying in wait for manufacturers and consumers alike. The mass market will buy into an HD format if the discs and players are comparable in price to DVDs. Only early adopters and style mavens are going to pay more for HD unless the titles they want are only available in HD and it will take a brave distributor to make that decision. No doubt the majors will try all the usual tricks of releasing HD versions at a premium before SD. But, ultimately HD will settle down at the same price levels we currently see for DVD i.e. new release blockbusters at around the UK£10-14 mark and back catalogue at roughly half that. It is one of the great mysteries of our time that music CDs are sold at more or less the same price as films on DVD with their vastly greater production costs, extras, etc. Name brand player manufacturers face the prospect of whichever protagonist feels they are loosing the battle licensing the technology to no-name producers.
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Then we will see a repeat of the DVD scenario with ultra cheap machines on supermarket shelves. The flood of ridiculously cheap DVD players arriving from China and other Asian Tiger factories horrified the major western and Japanese manufacturers. They couldn’t compete on price and the mass market wasn’t interested in quality arguments and voted with its credit cards. As a sign of the times, Sony is already whinging about the plummeting price of flat screens. Then there are the copy protection issues. One view is that peer to peer file sharing isn’t going to happen with video because of the bandwidth required even with state-of-the-art broadband. Well, think again. YouTube and the rash of other video sites are a phenomenal success and should be sounding alarm bells. A mass of material that would never otherwise have gained an audience is being downloaded and watched avidly all over the world. However, downloading real movies with current codecs at anything approaching comfortable viewing quality for display on all those ‘HD ready’ big telly screens takes forever. So discs are going to be with us for some time yet. Downloadable pay-per-view is going to require all the marketing department’s skills... this is also the area most likely to suffer at the hands of commercial pirates. DVD copy protection has been compromised almost since the format appeared. Rumour has it that within a week of launch Linux boffins were ripping Blu-ray discs to the PS-3 hard drive. Not quite the bullet-proof security Sony seemed to be aiming for. If (as seems likely from early reports) HD DVD and BD’s heavy-duty copy protection gets in the way of the consumer’s experience, these formats are going to be a hard sell whatever the price.
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technology This whole copy protection farrago really is a nonsense. The massive success of DVD is almost entirely due to relatively sensible pricing of software and players and the quantum leap in convenience compared to VHS. The grief involved in downloading illicit copies or copying DVDs is only worth the effort to a tiny minority of end users and I venture to suggest that the vast majority have never bothered to rip a DVD even though the technology to do so is freely available. Domestic DVD copying is just not the issue. Commercial piracy IS and should be pursued with all possible vigour. The major content owner/distributors and brand name manufacturers are still labouring under the deluded belief that all they need is a completely bulletproof copy-protection/Digital Rights Management system and all their problems will be solved. They have obviously learned absolutely nothing from the MP3 experience. If sound can be heard on loudspeakers, or an image can be seen on a screen with reasonable fidelity it can and will be copied and distributed by ‘illegal’ means. Even a dodgy, via analogue copy of a BD or HD DVD can be a lot better than a legally produced VHS. People are quite happy to pay a fiver or so for movies on DVD that they could easily record off-air simply because it is less hassle and they get the extras, the sleeve notes and the packaging. The same applies to music. The industry is expending so much time, money and effort in developing pointless copy prevention systems while at the same time marketing the inferior quality audio and image delivery systems, such as personal players and mobile phones, that actively reinforce the very behaviour they would like to eradicate. It would help if everyone recognised low bandwidth delivery for what it is — the modern equivalent of broadcasting. In perhaps ten years time this whole debate will be irrelevant. The business model will probably have changed to a blanket licensing system for low bandwidth music and film/video. Collectors, those who value quality, or prefer tangible evidence of their expenditure, will still be catered for by high quality disc (or card, cube, whatever) releases. Everyone else will browse MP3 sound and MP4 pictures, or their successors, as they wish for a small monthly fee. (Those who don’t pay the fee will be jumped on from a great height, as with BBC license evaders. It is much easier to police a universal license than to pursue geriatrics though the courts for allowing their grandchildren to download illicitly). So, what will be the salvation of the production industry? One way of looking at this is that content producers are now faced with massively increased authoring/mastering costs and the inherent compromises arising from re-purposing for multiple media delivery systems. Another way is to see it as a golden opportunity to extract the maximum revenue from media ‘essence’. For authoring, the usual suspects are at the fore. Sonic’s Scenarist supports both formats, as does Avid. Further down the food chain things are more confused with several vendors offering one or the other but not both and many have yet to launch product. It will be some considerable time before the authoring tools settle down as the capabilities of both formats and players are explored. For the audio for video professional, the short answer is, keep doing what you’ve always done. Add value to productions by employing hard won craft skills and expertise. The longer answer is, keep up to date with current technologies and production tools in order to be able to re-purpose material at optimum quality for multiple distribution formats. This means 4k and 2k video with low compression Dolby January/February 2007
and DTS sound at the high end, all the way down through BD, HD DVD, DVD, broadband download and streaming formats to something that looks and sounds good on a mobile phone. The range of choices the content producers have to consider is mind boggling. Capabilities of the two formats differ in the detail and so do the authoring tools. At present it is arguably easier to author BD content because the format has higher level Java tools built in, whereas HD DVD requires scripting/coding to achieve similar effects. It is still very early days. Content owners are not sure what they want to put on the discs, it is far from certain exactly what optional features will be generally implemented in the players, and the authoring tools are in their infancy and reflect this uncertainty. On the other hand, the audio side seems to
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have got its act together. Both Dolby and DTS have released suites of audio mastering software based on extensible architectures covering most if not all the bases. Neither of these are pocket money purchases but mastering facilities serious about making the jump to HD would be well advised to be gaining familiarity with them now. (Early adopters can be sure of considerable handholding from the vendors.) Both cover the full gamut from low bit-rate streaming all the way up to lossless multichannel. Meanwhile, the catalogue of high-def discs is growing daily and a large number of players, not to mention the PS3, are due for release in the near future. It remains to be seen if and when a critical mass of sales will occur and whether either format will succeed in the long (10-year) term, let alone supplant DVD. ■
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slaying dragons
The ethics of error correction Digital audio and indeed all information technology depend heavily on error correction, a topic that is generally taken for granted. JOHN WATKINSON finds it too interesting for that.
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OCCASIONALLY COME across the opinion that error correction is somehow cheating. If things were done properly it wouldn’t be needed. I also hear from time to time that it is audible. Digital audio is less tolerant of bit errors than digital video, but more tolerant than computer instructions where one incorrect bit can cause a crash, although modern software is now capable of crashing without any bit errors. The error tolerance of the information you are trying to store or transmit has to be compared with the error statistics of the channel you propose to use and if the probability of error is too high, some means to deal with errors will be needed. I have mentioned before that one of the things that can be proven with statistics is that most people don’t understand statistics. Among other things, statistics teaches us that in the presence of Gaussian noise there is no such thing as error free. All we can do is reduce the probability by spending more. In addition to noise, storage media suffer from surface defects where data will be corrupted. If we want to have a medium that is so good it won’t have errors due to surface defects, we have to make a lot and reject the failures. One bit wrong in 50 gigabytes and it has to be thrown away. When you have to throw away tapes to get one good one, you will see that there may be an adverse economic effect. Errors don’t have to be corrected; they can be concealed. In the case of audio, a plausible substitute for the missing sample is cobbled up from those nearby. As the resultant waveform is not identical to the original, then in principle concealment is audible and is only used in audio if actual correction isn’t possible. Today’s biggest users of error concealment are politicians. In non-real-time applications, the occurrence of an 54
error can be dealt with by sending the data again. However, audio comes with an implied time base and shoving an egg-timer symbol in there instead of the samples goes down badly. As a result, audio generally uses what is called forward error correction (FEC). In FEC, enough stuff is sent along with the actual data
‘Errors don’t have to be corrected; they can be concealed. Today’s biggest users of error concealment are politicians.’ that errors can be corrected dynamically without retransmission. The earliest documented use of error correction was after Galileo casually mentioned to Pope Urban VIII that the sun didn’t revolve round the earth after all. Galileo had, of course, made an error and was placed under house arrest after publishing a tome that is one of the inspirations for Slaying Dragons. This illustrates that error-free transmission of dogma is possible using excommunication theory. In binary, each bit can have only two possible states: one or zero. Consequently if it is known that a bit is wrong, the correct state must be the other one. Thus reversing the state of the bit must make it indistinguishable from the original and thereby inaudible. However, this theory only holds for normal bits that carry no other information. In contrast, hiresolution
fi bits carry more information, like the amount the owner paid for the equipment, and conventional error correction cannot replace that information if it is lost. Consequently hi-fi enthusiasts are able to hear error correction. As the reversal of a bit to perform binary correction is trivially easy, the challenge actually comes down to detecting and locating the bit error. All error correcting codes work by appending some stuff to the original information that is variously known as a checksum, parity bits, and so on. As this extra stuff is calculated from the original information, it does not add to the information and the general term for it is redundancy. The original information plus the redundancy makes an entity called a codeword. Codewords have the attribute that they have an inherent testable characteristic that is independent of the original information. The advantage is that the receiving device doesn’t need to know anything about the information in order to apply the test. If the characteristic is found, the message is assumed error free. If the characteristic is absent, there has been an error. The simplest type of coding is parity. An extra bit is added to a message such that the number of ones in the whole code word is, for example, even. Any word received that does not have even parity must be in error. Richard Hamming was the first to develop a code that could locate single bits in error, using a series of parity checks that each checked different sets of bits. Clearly an error in a bit not included in a given set would not destroy parity. The position of the bit could be worked out from the combinations of those checks that failed and those that didn’t. I remember when the first error correcting computer memories came out, there was a debate about how much to tell the customers, in case they thought there was something wrong when the memories were correcting the random bit errors that were statistically guaranteed to occur. Single bit correction worked well in MOS memories where the dominant failure mode is like that, but of course storage media make larger errors. The first burst error correcting code was due to Philip Fire. The Fire code could locate and correct a single burst of errors in a message. Unlike the pattern based Hamming code, the Fire code worked by calculating the redundancy. The redundancy came in two sections because two equations were used to calculate it. In the event of an error, the solution of simultaneous equations would result in two parameters. One was the position of the burst error, the other was the pattern of the bits that needed to be reversed. The idea of simultaneous equations was taken further by Irving Reed and Gustave Solomon. In the Reed-Solomon (R-S) codes an arbitrary number of pairs of equations can be solved to find an arbitrary number of burst errors. The Reed-Solomon codes are actually quite old. The mathematics was perfected long before it was possible to implement the circuitry needed at low cost. The Compact Disc was launched when it became economic to make R-S decoders in LSI chips. The other interesting thing about the R-S codes is that they operate at the theoretical limit of performance. In other words they are not going to be superseded. Error correction went from nowhere to the R-S codes in a couple of decades; a rate of development that makes aerospace seem pedestrian. Burst error correcting codes such as R-S go naturally with interleaving. The block of data on the storage medium does not have to be a single codeword; it may contain symbols that are all from different codewords. As a result a major defect does no more than to damage one symbol in each of many January/February 2007
slaying dragons codewords. If the size of that symbol is equal to the burst size the code can correct, then the efficiency is good. Essentially interleaving chops up real errors into pieces that are exactly the size the coding can correct. Once an error correction system is in place, it makes sense to give it something to do. More errors can be provoked in a hard drive by making the tracks narrower so that the noise level of the replay signal rises. Halving the width of the tracks only raises the error rate slightly, but it does, of course, double the storage capacity. One of the greatest misconceptions about error correction is that the space taken up by the redundancy wastes storage
capacity. Clearly the reverse is the case. In fact, if no errors are being made, storage capacity and money is being wasted. Clearly there is no cheating going on here. When errors arise due to statistical sources, such as noise, it is simply more efficient to employ error correction than to fruitlessly attempt to engineer out the noise. In digital television broadcasting, the bit rate and power of the transmitter is fixed, but the way it is divided into channels and the way the channels are divided into data and redundancy is flexible. A given transmitter will have a larger service area if the proportion of redundancy is increased, because data can correctly be decoded with a larger raw error rate
due to the increased noise. The down side is that the number of channels will have to be reduced. Error correction relies on adding redundancy. The alert reader will have realised that audio compression works by removing redundancy. Thus it follows that compressed audio data are more sensitive to error. One way of considering the situation is that if a compressor removes all the unimportant data, those remaining will be more important and their loss more noticeable. Another way of looking at it is that the decoder expands the compressed data and will also expand the errors. Storage media designed for compressed audio data need to have a lower error rate than those designed for regular PCM audio. â–
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January/February 2007
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your business
The magic of production Production Magic proves it’s not really magic at all, and producers might get another technology-driven opportunity that could finally let you produce that Hank Williams album after all.
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N 2005 I HAD just happened to stop by the music production conference held jointly by industry think group Music Tank and the University of Westminster. I’m not sure how it turned out that I ended up the master of ceremonies for the closing panel at the Apple Store on Regent Street that night. It was probably not because of the column I had written about it ahead of time (Resolution V4.5), gently (for me, anyways) lampooning the notion that producing
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DAN DALEY records can be reduced to a set of academic principles like so much algebra. The conference that year lived up to my expectations, with more tenure tracks than multitracks in view and footnotes galore. But it did suggest that the notion of the producer as something more than an anonymous inscription on the back of a CD cover exists in the larger consciousness. Fast-forward to Remembrance Day in November. This time, I hadn’t just stopped by; I was there very much on purpose to moderate three of the four panels and conduct a one-on-one ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio’type interview with Phil Ramone. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not every day you find yourself in the same geometry as Ramone, Hugh Padgham, Nile Rodgers and Jon Kelly, who were just some of the names the conference attracted this year, and whose presence attracted a full house for the event, which was staged at Magic Circle, kind of a Groucho club for master magicians, in Euston. It was the kind of turnout that suggests that the producer is anonymous no more. The panels covered a lot of ground, and not surprisingly turned often on topics that appear on this page regularly, such as the producer as a brand name, producer management and self-promotion. We talked business; this was not a techno-fest by any means,
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probably because once you’ve got your Pro Tools and your plug-ins, there’s little left to debate about. But early on I tried to steer the direction towards defining what a producer is. The hoary ‘a producer is like the director of a movie…’ is too trite for the current era. Nile Rodgers, founding member and producer of Chic, as well as for Sister Sledge, Debbie Harry and others, recalled Quincy Jones’s grittier description of a producer as ‘someone who organises mistakes’. Rodgers had plenty more to say, and turned the event’s keynote address into an extemporaneous monologue that was likely similar to one of the exhilarating guitar parts he would be known for as a session player in the 1970s. He shook off the podium on the stage and wandered off into the audience to deliver most of his 25-minute soliloquy with neither notes nor a net, acknowledging himself as an old-schooler in music production, one who fondly remembers the process of venturing into the unknown every time he entered a studio full of musicians. ‘I think there was only one time in my entire life that a song went down the way I wrote the arrangement,’ he said. ‘That’s where the magic of music production is: managing the mistakes that become the magic.’ Rodgers lamented the fact that as technology has enabled more people to record music, ‘[The production process] is not as sacred’ as it once was. But by the same token, he agreed that technology has enabled him and others to ‘organise our mistakes on the spot, and that’s another kind of inspiration,’ he said. Rodgers concluded with a recollection of what another famous record man had to say about technology: ‘Jimmy Iovine once said that the record business moves slower than the Catholic church, and he was spot on!’ which drew a round of laughter from the audience. It was a caution to suggest that
January/February 2007
your business
When Daley talks, Phil Ramone listens.
the business and legal aspects of music will likely never catch up to the pace of change wrought by the technology. (When they do, it seems to bode badly for producers, anyway. Noting how CDs started out expensive and stayed that way relative to vinyl and tape, Rodgers pointed out, ‘How come I used to make twice as much [money] on something that costs half as much? Digital has changed the perceived value of the product.’) At the same time, the importance of the producer in the economic scheme of the music industry is becoming plainer. Said Safta Jaffery, manager for producers John Leckie, Ron Saint Germain and Laurie Latham, expressed it this way: ‘The positive [is] that independent producers will become more important to record companies as [labels] continue to downsize their businesses, [and] they will come to rely more and more on small production companies discovering and nurturing talent and providing finished masters for license.’ I can’t wait until next year.
DEAD MEN DO SING TALES
I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities for music producers. You’ll have to find your own place relating to what I found this issue, but it’s potentially remarkable enough to make it worth trying. I’d always wondered if the science of sound could take sampling to the point where you could recreate an entire audio persona from a single snippet of sonic DNA. Turns out you can, and they did it in Nashville. In 2005, B-list singer Anita Cochran released a duet with country legend Conway Twitty. The fact that Twitty had died in 1993 was not considered a significant obstacle to the project. Producer Jim Ed Norman, one of the Music Row record veterans (he used to run the Warner’s label in Nashville and was producer for Glenn Frey and Kenny Rogers, among others) worked with engineer Ed Seay culling through just about every recording Twitty had made, searching his master recordings to match the words in the song ‘(I Wanna Hear) A Cheatin’ Song’ that Cochran wanted to record as a duet with Twitty. Each individual word, right down to an ‘I’ or a ‘the’, was copied and stored, then cut and pasted together to form Twitty’s half of the vocal. In some cases it was just a fragment of a word. In an interview, Cochran recalled, ‘[Twitty] sang the word “song” a bunch of times, but we couldn’t find it in the right pitch. So we took the word “wrong”, took the “wr” off it and put on “s” to build the word “song”’. This is Pro Tools at its finest. The process took the better part of a year to cobble together what is essentially a musical ransom note, twisting pitch, tempo and level to match the new vocal. We’ve seen this kind of necromancy before on January/February 2007
video; Natalie Cole sang ‘Unforgettable’ with her late father Nat ‘King’ Cole, and Hank Williams, Jr paired off with his dear departed pappy on ‘There’s A Tear In My Beer’ in 1989, 37 years after Hank Sr died in the back seat of his Cadillac on the way to a gig. (Norman, not coincidentally, also produced that track.) The living artists were digitally inserted into filmed scenes of the dead ones. However, the only songs that could be used were ones the latter actually performed. The Conway Twitty-Anita Cochran project differed in that he never actually sang this song; in fact, he died a decade before it had even been written. There is more than ghoulish fantasy at work here. Overlay this effort onto the larger framework of culture and you have an entirely new industry. If classic rock often outsells the modern stuff, why limit yourself to existing catalogue only? Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin dueting on an Elton John song are a sampling session away. As speech synthesis technology improves, it can automate the task of isolating words and fragments, store and recall them as needed, and add the necessary emotion and inflections and other nuances. (‘New from Antares: the two-weeks-in-court-ordered-rehab plugin.’) The only real hard bits will be hammering out the legalities between the estates. There is a wealth of image-and-likeness contractual precedence out there that paves the way for this sort of thing; deceased recording artists could be made to pitch deodorants and BMWs. The loss to car accident or contract dispute of a key voice-over talent in a hit show like, say, ‘The Simpsons’, might never be noticed if the voice can be easily replaced to read scripts going forward. In fact, the ability to be replaced by your own sample will change the laws surrounding sampling more dramatically than since the technology itself was invented; contracts would have to provide for the use of a voice in ways never imagined. Conversely, the dead can be made to say anything you want them to say, which could be good for anything from punch lines to rewriting history. The audio forensics experts I’ve talked to say that when someone wants to twist someone else’s words, doing so with expert cuts-and-pastes can be untraceable even today. Imagine tomorrow. Paul McCartney famously said: ‘As far as I’m concerned, there won’t be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead.’ But what if John’s voice could be revived? And George Harrison’s? The Beatles’ recent Love album, done for Cirque de Soleil, might have squeezed the last bits out of the franchise. (The fact that Apple Corps and EMI are willing now to license Beatles tracks for downloads buttresses that thought.) The possibilities are enormous, and a bit scary. But it’s worth restating that a producer is at the core of this. Those of you with either adventure or larceny in mind, take heart. ■ resolution
headroom STEREO COMPARISONS What an excellent idea to propose the Stereo Pair and Multimic Mix Comparison (Resolution V5.8). The audio examples — via the Internet — seem to tell the whole story, at least as far as classical music is concerned. In such a context, personally, I prefer the two-mic stereo over the multimic technique: the former, as expected, produces a more natural sound image, and, surprisingly, the latter does not seem to bring better detail. On the other hand, I can think of music or listening attitudes where one might prefer the displaced or non-placed sound offered by multimic. (Wonder what other opinions there might be.) It would have been ideal also to have a comparison of the stereo pair omni with a stereo cardioid pair. Thanks for providing such a practical, uncommon opportunity. Giovanni Sciarrino, Italy Glad you enjoyed it. I certainly did and have heard from a number of readers who did too. For my part, I’m rather undecided because I genuinely preferred the multimic for some passages and the pair for others, with probably the multimic doing it for me on balance. Damn fine recording either way though and what a treat. What I will tell you is that these samples were also available as MP3s and I couldn’t get on with them at all. Maybe we should have included links to both types of file so the full horror could be revealed. ZS
SCAM I would like to ask your help in raising awareness for the music community at large, with regards to the increasingly elaborate fraud attempts from abroad. The scam is the usual story: overpaying for goods or services with bank transactions that will eventually be declared invalid, but not for a few weeks, while the victim has already issued a refund (with real money) and in some cases shipped the goods. What is relatively new –- and most worrying -– is how these criminals have moved on to specifically target niche areas including the education sector, small businesses, sole traders and freelancers. Just recently, here at the London School of Sound we were approached via email by a gentleman claiming to be the MD of a new record label wanting to arrange training for his staff. This in itself is not unusual, as we often provide these kinds of services, and we are used to having clients from abroad. Likewise, the fact he was ‘too busy’ to call and discuss the training in more detail and simply wanted the quote was nothing out of the ordinary. After exchanging a few emails, we provided a quote with the relevant details to make the bank transfer, instructing the employees due to take the training to contact us directly. The following week, we received an email from the MD stating he intended to transfer a significant amount more than the sum we requested in order to cover ‘other unforeseen costs’. This immediately alerted our attention, so we informed him that we would only accept the exact amount and that, for transfers coming from abroad, we wouldn’t be able to issue refunds. Unsurprisingly, we never heard from him again. A few important considerations should be made at this point. 1. The person that got in touch with us demonstrated to have studied our website and to have sufficient understanding of our services.
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2. The request for bank details to transfer the money arrived only after a lengthy exchange of emails over a period of time, making the deal somehow more credible. 3. Someone who has gone to the trouble of researching our website and making up the record label story is very likely to be trying the same scam with other schools, recording studios and individuals. 4. Accepting a bank transfer that turns out to be fraudulent could potentially have all sorts of implications. Even if you refuse to issue the refund, it is not clear how being associated with a dodgy transaction might impact on your credit rating, and might trigger the suspicion of being involved in money laundering or who knows what else. To this day, we are unsure about how to better protect ourselves from these risks. 5. Our banker simply explained that there is no guarantee the funds are really ever cleared for transfers from certain countries. According to Barclays, the bank could declare the transfer invalid after any period or time — a month, a year, or more (hard to believe and quite shocking!) 6. And last but not least, this situation has already had the effect of forcing us to change our policy for foreign students: we now have to make it very clear that refunds will not be issued (at all) for courses paid from foreign accounts. This is very unfortunate, as it is essentially unfair to all the genuine students that apply every year for a course — not to mention the fact it makes us appear greedy and prejudiced. Having just read of a similar scam recently avoided by Music Instrument store Anderton’s, we must wonder how many others have had a similar experience, and particularly if anyone has any ideas for better dealing with this threat. We would like to see everyone in the industry helping to maintain constant awareness of the problem. The London School of Sound will do its part by informing students through lectures (as part of the sessions on Music Business), and publishing information on the School’s website; in addition to that we are open to suggestions from anyone. Federico Bersano Begey, London School of Sound, London, UK
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Eamonn Heffernan, Sonifex
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Sean Connery, Actor
January/February 2007
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