Resolution V6.6 Sep 2007 by Resolution

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

SEPTEMBER 2007 V6.6

Steve Orchard on engineering differences Pop Svengali Eliot Kennedy on writing, producing and studio ownership Meet your maker: RMG International — analogue tape manufacturer Prince’s covermount and the retail revolution The coming of age of digital radio mics Vega residential studio in Provence REVIEWS: Tascam X-48 • Audient Black Series • Microtech Gefell UM930 SSL Alpha Channel • RMG SM 900 • UA DCS Remote Pre • Benchmark PRE420

Designed to Adapt Nature has come up with clever ways to let some animals adapt quickly to their environments. At Genelec our new 8200 / 7200 DSP Series also have the ability to adapt to their environment, by design. AutoCal™, Genelec’s optimisation software takes into account level, distance and 8-band equalization to adapt each monitor loudspeaker to its immediate environment. What’s more it does it as a system with network control of up to 30 adaptable loudspeakers, including subwoofers.

For Mac and PC

On screen, GLM software uses its Interactive Response Editor to give visual indication, loudspeaker-by-loudspeaker, of exactly what the response of each loudspeaker is.

In 1978 Genelec brought active monitoring to the professional audio world. An essential part of our active design is the room response controls. They are included in every Genelec analogue model to help integrate them to the listening environment. To further this, Genelec Product Specialists travel the world providing system calibration services to ensure optimum monitoring performance for our large system customers. The Genelec DSP Series now brings this commitment, along with our acoustical knowledge and experience, directly to every customer. AutoCal™, cleverly designed to give you the room to adapt.

www.g enelec.com

September 2007 V6.6 ISSN 1477-4216 AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

News & Analysis 4

Leader

Products

News

Headroom

Sweet Spot

Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.

New introductions and announcements. Still green and baring it.

Craft 14

Vega Studio

Revisiting earlier work and the NS10 and introducing Resolution’s bench-testing of monitors.

Great and rare desk, stacks of exotic outboard, and a great live area. Plus it’s in Provence and it’s a residential. It’s a hard life.

Steve Orchard

Eliot Kennedy

Meet your maker RMG International — professional analogue tape manufacture to Emtec specifications and formulations in The Netherlands.

Man of experience and many talents discusses the skillset and unorthodox kick drum miking techniques.

The APRS at 60 The UK’s Association of Professional Recording Services celebrates 60 and a rebirth as a proactive Trade Association.

Pop Svengali writer, producer, and studio owner on gear and songs for Bryan Adams.

Business 58

Prince and the retail revolution

Your business Daley says the word ‘quality’ has been making a comeback and encourages you to take advantage.

The purple one has stuck one on the establishment and upset the otherwise everyday world of ordinary record company folk.

Technology 66

Digital wireless comes of age Digital radio mics have been connected intrinsically to the battle for spectrum yet the technology offers practical benefits to users.

Slaying Dragons

Watkinson’s take on the in-the-box versus outside-the-box issue.

Reviews 22

Tascam X-48

RMG Studio Master 900

Audient Black Series

Waves API Collection

Microtech Gefell UM930

UA DCS Remote Pre

SCS Sound Forge 9 Professional

Benchmark PRE420

Solid State Logic Alpha Channel

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

(l-r) Curtis, Hochstrasser, and Staddon. THE SOUNDCRAFT Studer Group has made two senior sales management appointments and where previously Soundcraft sales and Studer sales were separated into two distinct management teams, sales for both brands will now be headed by Bruno Hochstrasser who will also continue as president of Studer in Regensdorf. Adrian Curtis is now VP sales, Soundcraft and Ian Staddon is VP sales, Studer.

Stove and Koza. POUL KOZA has been appointed sales and marketing director at DPA Microphones while DPA founder Morten Stove has a new role as director of business development. Koza previously worked at Panasonic, Pioneer and Jamo.

Leader

The way people approach a task says more about them than they might wish to reveal. There are those who absolutely need pressure in order to perform while others do their best work when allowed to saunter up slowly and take their time. I never thought I’d hear myself saying this but the psychological state of the person attempting a task is frequently more significant than the tools available to them to do it with. Thus the voice-over artist who can’t perform if he’s had a night on the sherbet may well deliver exceptional results the morning after his wife has left him. It’s about focus and defaulting to being a professional. Because there is more psychology involved in the job than people appreciate or want to acknowledge, technology is frequently employed as some sort of emotional crutch; something to hide behind; something to make you feel better because you believe you have all the tools to hand to deal with every eventuality. In fact, it’s a can-do attitude that will get you through the session. It is always the confident types that rise to the challenge, and they’re not just confident in a personal sense but confident and comfortable with their technical abilities. Let’s face it, unless you’re fired up and enthusiastic about the job in hand, your performance is likely to be unexceptional. Beyond that, you have to be able to put yourself ‘in the zone’ and stay there for the duration of the session because that’s what your customers are paying for. All great work is created in such an environment. All great audio operators give exceptional value for money. The true greats are always open to learning more, rehearsing more, listening more, thinking more and possibly saying less. Their confidence inspires others who draw strength from it. They are also frequently very good at reading people, fitting in and understanding the dynamics of a situation. When an attack of the screaming fits breaks out there’s got to be at least one grown-up in the room to talk them down. Put it this way, think how you’d feel if on the morning of your operation your surgeon turned up to see you with dirty fingernails, gin-breath and cuts from shaving. It matters. Zenon Schoepe

Merging opens UK office

Y K Cheung EAD and Digico’s James Bradley. DIGICO HAS appointed Eastern Acoustic Development in Hong Kong as its distributor in China where it has offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. LOUD TECHNOLOGIES has promoted Christopher Mael to business director of its Mackie and Tapco brand group. He previously held business management and account management positions at Loud.

©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

Merging Technologies incredibly fast over the has opened a dedicated last four years, to a level sales and support office where we felt it important in the UK. Total Audio to be able to support Solutions, which had our customers directly,’ been the exclusive said Merging’s head of distributor for Merging in sales and marketing, the UK, will continue as K e n B a r n s l e y. ‘ T h e a principal dealer. Some introduction of the new Pyramix and VCube Ramses console control support personnel from system for Pyramix and Total Audio Solutions VCube, with our new have moved across to network streaming Merging UK to ensure technology for sound and continuity of support picture, now enables us for customers, and to offer a total workflow sales will be headed solution for film and as before by Paul television postproduction Mortimer. Merging UK is applications, and this in a partnership between turn requires a dedicated Merging, Paul Mortimer Mortimer and Bowen. team exclusively and Richard Bowen, a UK businessman concentrating on Merging products.’ with a background in the IT and telecoms Merging also has dedicated company industry. offices in the Benelux countries and in ‘The UK market for Merging has grown Asia.

S2 Publications Ltd or the editor can be held responsible for its contents. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the Publishers. Printed by The Grange Press, Butts Rd, Southwick, West Sussex, BN42 4EJ.

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

resolution

Masterclass AES NY high point

AES New York Master Class committee chair, Alan Silverman, has developed a series of compelling events for the 123rd AES Convention that will be held at Javits Centre, New York City on 5–8 October. These include The art and science of making and playing great recordings with Keith Johnson of Reference Recordings, Pacifica, CA; Hard earned design secrets with Bruno Putzeys of Hypex Electronics, Switzerland; From rough mix to ‘yogi’ with mixer Michael Brauer; Vintage microphone mystique with Klaus Heyne of German Masterworks and Oliver Archut of TABFunkenwerk; Audio interconnections — dispelling the myths with Henry Ott of Henry Ott Consultants; and Advanced ideas and techniques in high-definition surround music postproduction for film and TV with Ken Hahn of Sync Sound.

New owners for Miller & Kreisel New ownership and management are in place to take control of the Miller & Kreisel brand and all associated intellectual property. ‘The transition will be smooth and completely transparent to M&K distributors, dealers and owners worldwide,’ said new co-owner Per Becher. ‘Three decades as a thriving, innovative enterprise under the guidance of the original founder is a remarkable achievement and, naturally, we are taking an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach in our efforts to re-vitalize the popular and acclaimed Miller & Kreisel product line.’ ‘The brand has a truly unique heritage and a strong market presence that transcends the traditional boundaries between professional and consumer audio,’ said co-owner Asger Bak, a key figure in the expansion of Miller & Kreisel outside the US since 2000. ‘Our plan is to build on that solid foundation and ensure the continued growth of Miller & Kreisel.’

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September 2007

news Broadcast Live/ VideoForum combine

Appointments

Broadcast Live and VideoForum will become a combined event in 2008, taking place from 30 January to 1 February at Earls Court 2, London. The new bigger event will focus on production, post, new media and IP delivery and is expected to offer a broader range of exhibitors and more seminars.

(l-r) Nikolay Penkov of NAT, Sarah Yule of TL Audio, and Gareth Tasker. TL AUDIO has appointed NAT as its exclusive distributor for Bulgaria.

CRL concludes purchase of Orban Circuit Research Labs has entered into and closed a Purchase Agreement with Harman Pro North America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harman International Industries. CRLI purchased for $1.5 million dollars cash all its promissory notes and shares of its common shares owned by Harman Pro North America. The notes had been issued by CRLI and its president Jayson Brentlinger to Harman in connection with transactions between the parties several years ago. ‘We have enjoyed a great working relationship with Harman over the past seven years, and now with this final settlement we have successfully concluded our purchase of Orban, Inc. from Harman,’ said Brentlinger.

Belden acquires Lumberg AC Belden has completed the purchase of the assets of Lumberg Automation Components from the German-based Lumberg Group. Lumberg Automation is a supplier of industrial connectors, high performance cord-sets and field bus communication components for factory automation machinery. The company’s 2006 revenues were approximately US$75 million. ‘Lumberg Automation will complement the industrial connectivity portfolio of Belden’s recently acquired Hirschmann Automation and Control, as well as Belden’s expertise in signal transmission,’ said John Stroup, president and CEO of Belden. ‘With Belden’s expanding global reach and this strong portfolio, we expect to accelerate our revenue growth in the industrial market.’ Lumberg Automation is headquartered in Schalksmuhle, Germany, employs approximately 300 and has production facilities in Germany and the USA.

Arbor name change Arbor AudioCommunications has changed its name to Arbor Media to reflect the fact that it is now providing video solutions for the broadcast, conference and archiving market in addition to its activities in audio.

LONDON BASED retailer and distributor KMR Audio has been appointed exclusive sub-distributor of the Brauner range of microphones. The restoration of Frank Zappa’s vintage mic collection, begun in 2005, is now complete. The project began with a visit and evaluation by Telefunken|USA CEO Toni Fishman and was completed by Charlie Bolois, the company’s West Coast service specialist. Dweezil Zappa also took possession of a Telefunken|USA U47. Pictured in Zappa’s Utility Muffin Research Kitchen are (l-r) Dweezil Zappa, Fishman and Bolois.

MBO for Digico completed The management buyout that as a modern company of Digico was completed we’re able to reward the on 7 July and has put the people who work with us long-term future of the and put in the extra time,’ company in the hands of the continued Gordon. ‘We people who have brought have a lot of staff that work it to where it is today. The 24/7 for the benefit of this new management team company and they will now comprises chief executive be able to share in the Bob Doyle, MD James success with us fully.’ Gordon, marketing director ‘Lots of companies evolve David Webster, technical as we did,’ added Doyle. ‘It director John Stadius and was necessary to introduce company secretary Helen Digico management (l-r): David shareholders into the mix to Culleton. Webster, Helen Culleton, John make the initial purchase of Having taken over the Stadius, James Gordon. the company back in 2002. mantle of MD from Doyle in January, But now, those whose hard work this was Gordon’s first significant over the last five years has enabled project in the role. ‘We’ve always the company to reach a position been a reactive and proactive to where a buyout was a reality company that understands the need to be rewarded with equity market place we’re in,’ said Gordon. ownership so that we can take ‘However, when you have external things to the next stage in company investors, there is a need to explain development and growth.’ the ins and outs of decision making ‘The potential of what we can processes and that can slow things Doyle. achieve with the technology we down. The management buyout removes have within the company, both current that requirement and means we can focus and future, is amazing and I thank John more of our time on doing what we do best, Stadius for that every day,’ said Gordon. making us an even more agile and focussed ‘The enthusiasm and drive for success that company.’ has got us this far is back to where it was Digico will be putting a share incentive when we started in 2002 and will carry us scheme in place for its employees. ‘It’s nice forwards.’

Sennheiser UK general manager Philip Massey and Powersoft president Carlo Lastrucci. SENNHEISER UK has been appointed UK distributor for Italian high-end amplifier manufacturer Powersoft. ALFRED REINPRECHT has taken on the role of AKG VP for marketing and product management. He has previously held the positions of product manager and product marketing at Sony Austria and Telekom Austria respectively. HOLOPHONE HAS appointed Robert Dufek as its first sales rep in the Czech Republic. PMC USA has appointed Scott Esterson as Western s a l e s m a n a g e r, professional and consumer division. He has previously worked at DTS, Tascam and Lexicon. SYNTHAX AUDIO UK has been appointed UK distributor for FabFilter Software Instruments’ range of effect and synthesiser plug-ins.

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September 2007

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news Appointments

Midas Consoles Benelux MD Axel Nagtegaal. ALMOST FOUR years after Midas Consoles Holland started up in Holland, the company has now also taken on Midas and Klark Teknik distribution for Belgium and Luxembourg. The new operation, known as Midas Consoles Benelux, operates from divisions based in Apeldoorn in Holland and Zaventem in Belgium.

ADAMSON SYSTEMS Engineering has restructured. Adam MacGillivray is sales and support and European liaison and is the main contact for worldwide factory direct sales and handles support related matters with European support addition Jochen Sommer. Benoit Cabot is now in product development as a product specialist with responsibilities for design and R&D under the guidance of head designer Brock Adamson. Thom Wright has been promoted to exhibit coordinator.

WINDSHIELD MANUFACTURER Rycote has moved to new larger premises in Stroud, Gloucestershire. ‘Up until now, the warehouse was separate to the rest of the operation,’ said sales and marketing manager Gabby Davies. ‘Now we have office space, workshop areas and warehousing all under one roof, it enables design, production, stock control and sales to flow much more smoothly together.’ BLUE MICROPHONES has appointed Scott Schumer as VP of global sales. Schumer has previously worked at Sennheiser USA, Harman Professional Group, In2Out Audio and Loud Technologies.

Milan’s Sugar builds room

Sugar record company near Milan recently opened its own recording studio with a Digidesign Icon D-Control 48-fader with Surround Panner, a Pro Tools|HD 3 system and an additional HD Accel card as engine, four 192 I/O interfaces and a 192 Digital I/O, plus a DigiDelivery|GT server. Sugar’s headquarters in the centre of Milan is equipped with another DigiDelivery server. ‘The studio has to produce from demos all the way up to complete albums, therefore the solution the management looked for had to be able to respond quickly, to be flexible and to provide a high level of interoperability with other professional facilities,’ said studio engineer Emiliano Alborghetti. ‘This studio has been built to offer, in the near future, photographic and recording video capabilities too, and at this time we are developing collaborations with other studios and professionals not on site. All of this lead to the acquisition a Pro Tools|HD Accel system, which is an industry standard and it guarantees expandability, and the console Icon D-Control became the natural choice for the fully integrated tool to work with.’ The Sugar record company represents former singer Caterina Caselli’s artistic and business interests and has a roster that includes Andrea Bocelli, Elisa, Avion Travel, Negramaro and many others.

Sphere studio refits

In the first of two console purchases at London’s Sphere studios, an SSL 4072G+ was sourced from Soundtrack Studios in New York and installed into Sphere’s Studio Two. The room’s monitoring was also brought into line with Studio One and upgraded to a custom Munro M4 5.1 system with control via Audient ASP510. Studio Three also benefited from the dollar exchange rate as an SSL 4056G+ was purchased from The Hit Factory in New York. The control room’s front wall was also

rebuilt to incorporate soffit-mounted half Munro M4s. New additions to the microphone stock includes two Telefunken Elam 251s and two long-body Telefunken U47s with Ashley Styles’ ‘missing link’ VF14s valves. The digital domain has not been neglected with three Pro Tools HD rigs in operation; a 48i/48o HD3 Accel with two extra process cards, a 24i/48o HD3 Accel with two extra process cards and a 24i/48o HD3 Accel system.

resolution

Henry Edwards 1952-2007 It is with great sadness that we report on the death in July of Henry Edwards. H e n r y devoted his entire career to an industry he loved, amassing an extraordinary wealth of knowledge. Joining RG Jones as a technical engineer at 20, he cut his teeth working on location jobs with the BBC and independent television companies before moving on to Trident Studios in 1977 as technical manager of the recording studio, mix room, mastering and disc cutting facilities. There he met a young Steve Angel, now HHB’s sales director, who had just arrived for his first day at work. ‘I went for an interview and they started me making tea right there and then,’ recalls Steve. ‘Henry was kind enough to show me where the kettle was and when he returned the next day, he was surprised to find that I’d been there all night! I had to prepare for a Brand X session later that day and I’d never seen a multitrack tape recorder before, let alone lined one up. If Henry hadn’t have been patient enough to show me how, my career in the recording industry probably wouldn’t have lasted more than 24 hours.’ In 1981, Henry joined CTS and Lansdowne Studios where, as technical manager of the recording complex, he witnessed the transition from analogue to digital recording from a unique vantage point, taking responsibility for the technical implementation of the world’s first all-digital multitrack recording facility. In 1992, Henry took up a position as technical manager at Masterpiece Mastering (formerly Copymasters) with responsibility for all technical aspects of the nine-room facility. Henry joined HHB in 1998 as new products manager and soon set about bringing his vast experience and considerable talents to bear on the development of a series of HHB products including the Portadrive location recorder and FlashMic. Affectionately referred to by some at HHB as ‘The Old Speckled Henry’, Henry’s love of a decent pint was well known. Indeed, as a popular member of HHB’s travelling trade show team, Henry seemed to effortlessly combine the roles of last man standing in the bar at night, with first man on duty the next morning. ‘More than a great ambassador for HHB, Henry was a great ambassador for the professional audio industry,’ said HHB’s MD Ian Jones. Henry was a devoted family man, married to Carol with whom he had a son, Niall, and a daughter Tamzyn. It was with great pride that he announced the birth last year of a grandson, Finn. He will be missed by all who knew him.

September 2007

news Appointments S W I T C H C R A F T H A S appointed Utrecht-based Romal.com to stock and supply its connectors, audio and video patchbays and cable assemblies to the broadcast and professional audio markets in the Netherlands.

Editworks to a 5.1 future

GEFEN HAS relocated its offices and warehouse/shipping operations from Woodland Hills to Chatsworth, Califor nia. The move ensures the company has more space to accommodate growth in the professional AV and home theatre markets. 20600 Nordhoff Street, Chatsworth, California 91311, USA. Tel: +1 818 772 9100

A L L E N & Heath has appointed Sanecore Limited as its distributor in China including Hong Kong and Macau. The company has offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Xi’an.

(l-r)Xavier Pion, Innovason; Jose Maria Mendez, Doscientos Veinte Sonido; Philippe Pelmelle, Innovason. I N N O VA S O N H A S a p p o i n t e d Doscientos Veinte Sonido SL (Doviente) as its distributor in Spain. EMMA HURT has j o i n e d t h e P h a ro s Communications sales team as a key accounts manager for the company’s range of desktop media management and control systems including Mediator, Playtime and Pilot. She most recently worked for Pilat Media in system consultancy, implementation and customer training. C O M M U N I T Y PROFESSIONAL has appointed Chris Barrow as product m a n a g e r. H e w a s formerly manager of new product development at the company.

London post house Editworks has installed an SSL C300 to accommodate a sharp increase in 5.1-channel work as high-definition television proliferates, according to dubbing mixer Adrian Smith. ‘Selling high-definition television includes supplying an enhanced audio experience, so the future growth in television audio postproduction will be a steady increase in 5.1 material,’ he said. ‘As operators, we need consoles that make that requirement easy. ‘As dubbing mixers we have to master all of the equipment we work with so that our time can be spent being creative. Choosing the right equipment helps you achieve that,’ he said. • Yahoo! Music, the most trafficked music destination worldwide, has installed an AWS 900+ and a C200 in its expanded and upgraded facility in Santa Monica, California. ‘We produce feature performances in-studio, live performances in venues, lifestyle pieces and much more,’ said Ian Dittbrenner, director of studio and content operations for Yahoo! ‘In our landscape, Yahoo! does the best-quality production and is the No. 1 music video-streaming website on the planet. The decision to purchase an AWS 900+ and C224 was a no-brainer.’

Clara hosts Irish pro audio ‘happening’

Cutting Edge doubles up down under

Australia’s largest operator of HD capable OB vans is expanding and is on the road with two new Calrec consoles. With facilities in Brisbane, Sydney, Darwin and London, Cutting Edge has installed a 48fader Omega with Bluefin console as part of an overhaul of its existing OB 5 unit. Meanwhile a 56-fader Sigma will be installed into OB4, Cutting Edge’s new unit due to hit the road in August. OB4 is the company’s fifth remote unit and is a quad expansion vehicle with more than 60sqm of internal floor space. It will support up to 48 cameras and will be the flagship of Cutting Edge’s fleet. ‘Calrec’s Bluefin generation of desks have more I-O and processing in a limited space…with these consoles we are able to triple our previous capacity, which is necessary to accommodate the needs for growing 5.1 surround sound demands,’ said Cutting Edge business development manager Peter Laird. ‘Setup recalls from location to location is a very useful feature, and the on-board AFV (Audio Follow Vision) feature, which uses the desk’s extensive GPIO facilities, enables the vision mixer to automatically fade up and down specific channels, which is a real benefit to us, rather than using third party boxes to achieve the desired results.’

Funky Junk moves

The Irish pro audio community descended on Clara in the centre of Ireland at the end of July and The Loft studios of Joe Egan for the first of distributor Audio Warehouse’s get-togethers and product demonstration ‘happenings’. Billed as the Audio Warehouse Christmas Party it was supported by representatives from the distributor’s brands including SSL, Digidesign, SE, Brauner, Vovox, Audient, Manley and Ireland’s only pro audio manufacturer Enhanced Audio, who all set up demonstrations around the studio’s rooms and booths. Visitors got one-on-one demonstrations in a studio environment and the opportunity to network and to browse around the facility.

‘Clara is in the centre of the country and is a couple of hours from anywhere,’ said Audio Warehouse’s Paul Brewer (pictured). ‘This started off as a get together and an excuse to have a drink with our customers but it grew from that into something with a bit more shape and form. I’ve been delighted with the response and we have seen some very serious people who have gone to the trouble of coming here.’ The event was indeed well attended and well run and the manufacturers seemed pleased with the relaxed but business-like atmosphere. Brewer says he intends to run a similar event next year at around the same time.

resolution

Recording equipment supplier Funky Junk has moved to new premises at 407/409 Hornsey Road, London N19 4DX. The new premises house a purpose-built control room for demonstrating gear. The 36sqm room was designed and built by Stephen Pickford of Thumbprint and provides a facility to compare monitors, outboard and microphones in a soundproofed, acoustically accurate room. The premises also have a large console showroom, a used outboard and mics demonstration area, legendary ‘Boffin Island’ service department and an in-house Dalek. www.proaudioeurope.com

September 2007

news Biz Bites THE UK Copyright Tribunal has returned it’s decision concerning rates paid to songwriters when their music is used online, writes Nigel Jopson. Composers/ publishers will receive 8% of gross from on-demand services including downloads and subscription streaming, 6.5% for interactive webcasting and 5.75% for non-interactive (radio). The concept of minimum royalties for all online use was confirmed (a key part of the MCPS-PRS Alliance’s case). So the BPI’s ‘reluctant’ decision to go to the tribunal meant the music industry ended up looking a disunited laughing stock as recorded music arms of large entertainment organisations took their own publishers to court, only to have the original MCPS-PRS negotiated rates endorsed by the tribunal. A typical example of label-guy hubris directed at publishers. It would all be a storm in a teacup, if it hadn’t cost both sides so bloody much — about £15m combined.

When big babies throw toys from the pram, there’s always some poor toddler who gets biffed on the head, in this case it’s the very excellent Pandora.com, as featured in Resolution V6.2. ‘We’re very sad about it, but we’re not going to be able to launch Pandora in the UK on the basis of that publishing decision,’ said international MD Paul Brown, pointing out that 0.085p every time a user streams a track is not going to work for their ad-supported model. Martin Stiksel, co-founder of Last.fm, echoed these sentiments, while delivering some sort of veiled threat that many users might turn to P2P instead. Pandora needs to find a digital music vending service to partner its amazing tasteguidance database with — it’s a bit harder to feel sympathy for the Last.fm lads, who have trousered £140m after selling out to CBS, and who made their quick fortunes streaming our music from servers in Shoreditch — rules and regs or not! The Belgian Court of First Instance issued a decision in a copyright infringement case brought by the Belgian music collecting society SABAM against ISP Tiscali/Scarlet. The court ordered Scarlet to implement

Kahne Dangerous on McCartney

David Kahne acted as producer and recorded and mixed much of Paul McCartney’s album Memory Almost Full. Adam Noble and Geoff Emerick also worked with him during the recording phases on some of the material. Using his Dangerous Music system, where he recently added a fourth Dangerous 2-Bus for 64-channels of analogue summing, Kahne also used a Dangerous Monitor and Dangerous MQ in his system for speaker control, input selection and metering. ‘The Dangerous 2-Bus summing amp has a lot of headroom and is also extremely transparent,’ said Kahne. ‘To me, my mixes sound better on the 2-Bus than just mixed in the box: that was what made me choose the Dangerous summing amps. Before I was using the Dangerous, when the audio came to the last summing stage in the computer it sounded crunchy, and crushed and phasey. With the Dangerous, the final product sounds like when I’m mixing on a great large-format console.’

China prepares with Studer

Guangdong TV, Beijing TV and the Shanghai Media Group are installing largeformat Vista 8 audio consoles into new OB vehicles that are being prepared for live broadcast and production duties at next year’s Olympics in China. The vehicles for Beijing TV and Guangdong TV are both High-Definition vans, following closely in the footsteps of CCTV in Central China, the country’s biggest broadcaster, which chose Vista 8 for its latest flagship HDTV vehicle. Jinan TV, Heilongjiang TV in Jarbin (pictured), Inner Mongolia TV and Dalian TV are all launching new HD vehicles for live broadcast and production. ‘It is rather remarkable to see five HDformat OB trucks under construction which are all specifying Studer Vista digital

audio consoles,’ said Rico Fung of ACE International, Studer’s import agent for China. ‘In every case, it is Studer’s reliability that proves the decisive factor in the tender, together with the ease of operation and the exceptional audio quality of the consoles.’ On-Air 1000 and 2000 desks have been delivered to Sichuan Radio, FoShan Radio, Shunde Radio and BaoAn Radio. Four of these installations are new-build studios for daily live broadcast. The WuXi Media Group has chosen two On-Air 2000 Modulo consoles for its newly refurbished studios.

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news Biz Bites filtering within six months to remove copyrighted music from its network, a court-appointed expert identified several technologies including Audible Magic’s acoustic fingerprinting that could be used. If the decision stands, it raises many issues around article 15 of the EU e-commerce directive (common carrier status, aka we just provide the wires.) Vinyl is making a comeback — more so than when featured in Resolution V3.1 as the plastic that would not die! The 7-inch is the hippest music receptacle this year, with BPI figures showing sales of 1.1m vinyl singles in the year to September 2006, an increase of 6%. Pressing plants and specialist stores estimate the real number was 3-4 times more, as many short-run vinyl producers are not monitored by the BPI. The newest limited-edition delivery format is USB stick with the White Stripes $99 Jack ’n’ Meg sticks being cute, if vastly overpriced, examples.

Rough Trade will open an ambitious new independent record superstore in London’s Brick Lane this month, after closing its tiny Covent Garden branch. The 5,000sqft space will incorporate a coffee shop, lounge and performance space. Director Stephen Godfroy says the aim is to ‘rediscover the joy of browsing’, connecting retail with the overall music experience. ‘The role of the independent is to break new acts. This is what is so important about this store, you’ll discover the artists that even labels are yet to find out about.’ The LA-based Amoeba stores in the US have proved that in-store performances, huge inventories and in-house record labels are a winning combination. ‘The popularity of music is stronger than ever,’ says Godfroy. ‘It’s retail that’s failed.’

Surround solution for Mahler

Over 25,000 channels in use.

HV-3R Eight Channel Remote-Control Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3D 8 Eight Channel Microphone Preamplifier

DPA’s new D3/S5 surround mount was used for the first time to broadcast Gustav Mahler’s eighth symphony, performed by the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, soloists, and choirs from the National Basketball Arena, Dublin. The performance was broadcast live on Irish national radio station RTE Lyric FM. ‘Nicknamed Symphony of a Thousand because of the sheer size of the cast: eight soloists — including one angel singing from “heaven” — a full orchestra and choirs, this would give any soundman a difficult task in an auditorium,’ explained RTE’s senior producer engineer Anton Timoney. ‘Added to that, it was being performed in a basketball arena! ‘I figured we’d need around 50 mics, depending on the final layout of the venue. My colleagues and I in RTE radio sound have been using DPA mics for all our classical recordings and broadcasts over the last decade, not just because of the sonic quality of the mics but also the compact size which makes them very easy to sling over stages. The days of putting a large mic stand with mics balanced on top in the middle of an aisle are well and truly gone, thanks to modern health and safety requirements.’ The DPA mount arrived in time for rehearsals. ‘I was using three 4052 compact omnis in a Decca tree configuration, so we mounted them on the S5 with two 4022 compact cardioids on the rear for the surround. It worked very well; the mics faced the right way and once we’d tweaked it because of the choir numbers decreasing it stayed in position,’ he said. Seven DPA 4023 compact cardioids — six on flamingo stands — were used for the soloists, with one 4052 for the angel in heaven (the commentary gantry above the basketball court). Orchestra spot mics included eight 4006 omnis, three 4036 compact omnis, four 4028 compact wide cardioids, two 4052s, four 4023s, while the choir was miked with two 4028s, four 4022s, six 4052 and eight 4036s.

HV-3D 4 Four Channel Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3C Stereo Microphone Preamplifier

M-2B Transformerless Class A Vacuum Tube Stereo Microphone Preamplifier

NSEQ-2 Twin Toplogy Stereo Parametric Equalizer

PostFade HD world is now CC-1

ORIGIN STT-1 Twin Topology Recording Channel

TLC-2 TWIN COM Twin Topology Stereo Compressor / Limiter

Showtime IBC, Amsterdam .....7-11 September PLASA, London.......9-12 September AES US, New York ........ 5-8 October SATIS, Paris ............... 23-25 October Sounddesign, VDT Symposium, Ludwigsburg ..31 October-2 November Broadcast India, Mumbai .................... 1-3 November SBES, Birmingham 14-15 November Interbee, Tokyo ..... 20-22 November

UK-based PostFade Sound recently installed a Fairlight Dream II Constellation-XT system at its Pinewood Studios location. With the majority of PostFade’s work being done in HD, owner David Taylor needed a system with HD multiformat mixing and monitoring. ‘We needed a powerful 5.1 capable desk, since a lot of our clients are now working in 5.1 but they

need stems in both 5.1 and stereo,’ he said. ‘We first purchased a Constellation-XT to have a comprehensive desk that would enable me to produce those stems very easily. Now, with the CC-1 technology, I have even more power at my fingertips with the benefits of Fairlight’s ergonomic interface and the Windows functionality of the fantastic new software.’

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TD-1 Twin Topology Por table Recording Channel

Call 020 8418 1470 for a 7-day free trial*

Exclusively distributed in the UK by SCV London. Tel: 020 8418 1470 www.scvlondon.co.uk * Terms & Conditions apply. See online for details.

facility

Vega Studio Rare great desk, great outboard, great live room and a great setting. ZENON SCHOEPE travels to Provence to a residential studio that ticks all the boxes.

HE ARGUMENT FOR the residential studio grew strongest towards the end of the golden era of music recording. They became, in some instances, yet another manifestation of inappropriate and untimely decadence — the creative lock-away and lockout for the band on a mission. Most of the great recording stories and yarns can be told by the owners of residential studios because the facilities sprung up around the globe in exotic and glamorous locations offering sun and relaxation for those with a record to make. Of course, nothing is forever and just as recording emporia receded in the cities as the excess of music waned, so the residentials fell away often to transform into some other, more practical and lucrative holiday destination. It is therefore strange that in these altogether tighter financial times there is a stronger

argument now for a residential studio than there has been before. With qualification, of course, because the facility must be geared towards current pricing expectations and it needs to offer something truly different that you won’t find anywhere else. Give a studio a superb mix of equipment, the setting and the support structure to keep it working and you’ve got the perfect destination to take a band that really wants to concentrate on a project. That’s a better solution than rehearsal room blues followed by intensive tracking and a couple of days in a proper studio for the mix because it elevates the experience to that of a creative event, which is what it ought to be all along. Manfred Kovacic and his wife Michele have just the place for you near Carpentras in France’s Provence region, 25-minutes from the TGV station at Avignon

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and an hour’s drive from the airport in Marseille. That’s the setting box ticked. It’s equipped with an EMI TGMKQ desk and has outboard racks heaving with retro exotica — you won’t find that at home — and it has a splendidly versatile large live area, and accommodation is included in the price and you can even have your catering taken care of too. The couple ‘escaped’ from Paris with their two children in 1991 to return to Michele’s family land to build a studio for an altogether better life. Manfred spent 12 years in Paris as a musician, session musician and producer and had become something of a collector of vintage gear. He acquired the desk in 1983. ‘I was producing a single and used to do my metal cutting at the EMI factory, which I loved, and I saw it lying on the floor in the factory,’ he says. ‘I knew it was desk but I didn’t know it was an EMI TGMKQ — the last version — and they told me it was going to be destroyed so if I wanted to buy it I had to be quick. It was the time of SSLs and automation and I got it for a very, very good price. We lived in a loft above an escargot factory in Paris and I kept the desk there. I didn’t know if it worked and all my friends laughed at me! ‘At the time I didn’t have the budget to get it working or for a tape machine to run it with but I spent a lot of time with the desk and got to understand how it worked,’ says Manfred. ‘When we moved here to build the studio I got [EMI TG desk specialist] Elton Henry to come down to get it working — I got his name through Mike Hedges who also has an EMI and was very helpful. Elton reassembled the desk and the connections and took two days to resolve all the problems — the output on the right wasn’t working and there were a few little channel issues but that was it. The reliability of the desk is amazing. We switched the power on and there have been no real problems with the desk since. It’s all gold contacts and relays; it’s amazing. And it sounds great too.’ The desk has 32 mic inputs and 62 inputs available for mixdown to stereo although the Q in the title tells you that this was built as a quadrophonic desk and dates from around 1972. Improvements in the MKQ compared to previous models included the operating level of +4dB instead of 0dB, inserts on all the mic channels and groups, and balancing throughout. Manfred’s desk, like most EMI desks, has a history and came from Pathé Studio A in Paris where The Rolling Stones recorded a big part of the Worried About You album and the whole recording and mixing of Shattered in the 1970s. At the beginning of the 1980s the EMI desks in Studio A and B were replaced by Neves. Most of the TG consoles had 16 or 24 mic channels

September 2007

facility and Manfred’s is one of the biggest. To his knowledge, only one is bigger and that’s the one from Abbey Road that now belongs to Mike Hedges. Vega Studio was built in what had been a large dry stone shed on the family farm land. They built a 35sqm control room and added a 70sqm live area, and that’s how the studio worked until 2003 when they invested in more equipment and added accommodation, which had become essential. ‘Bands would come to us just for the desk and they were staying in hotels or renting a house, so we needed to add accommodation on site,’ says Manfred. There are now two houses alongside the studio offering a total of two living rooms, six bedrooms and three bathrooms. At the same time he made the studio bigger by more than doubling the size of the live area. It now takes in various booths and presents amazingly flexible acoustics in the old-fashioned way of taking a great space and then adding adjustable panelling and covers. And, because you are in the middle of the country, you can even work with a window open. A machine room was also added at the back of the control room to house the Pro Tools and analogue machines, which include a very nice Studer A80 MkIV. Main monitoring is Genelec 1038s and there is a truly fantastic range of outboard. You’ll find EMT 140 plates (one is valve), Focusrite ISA110s, GML preamps, UA 2-610, Ampex 351 tube preamp, Ampex 601 tube preamp, Urei 1176, SSL G384 compressor, EMI TG12413 comp/limiters, Distressors, EMT 156 comp/limiter, EMI TG12414 Curve Benders, among more modern offerings. Manfred bought a lot of the gear at the end of the 80s when there wasn’t that much interest in it. ‘The gear is here not because I’m lucky but because I looked hard for it at a time when the prices were low,’ he explains. ‘I love equipment; I love the differences between a Massenburg preamp, the EMI preamp and

a Focusrite. The differences are subtle but being able to choose and decide for yourself is important. I’m fascinated by sound.’ The studio can provide an engineer if required although Manfred says that most bookings bring their own. They get a lot of work from British engineers working with French bands. ‘All the people who come

here are passionate about sound and are interested in getting something special,’ says Manfred. It’s Euro 850 per day without an assistant and Euro 1000 with and that includes accommodation. Catering can be provided if required — the studio has a superb chef — or you can bring your own or even self-cater. It all amounts to incredibly high value and standards. It’s one of the nicest places I’ve been to in a very long time. Vega Studio is genuinely unique because there’s nowhere else that has a desk and outboard like this, with a live area like this, with accommodation and in beautiful countryside with guaranteed superb weather. ‘I would say that it’s also one of the very few studios in the world where you can work in the control room with the door open to the outside for 8 to 9 months of the year,’ laughs Manfred. He’s right. ■

Contact Q212dn Resolution 216x 65 ad

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VEGA STUDIO, FRANCE: Tel: +33 4 90 60 61 54 Website: www.vega-studio.com

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Trevor Horn and Hans Zimmer have trusted Questeds since 1985.

Isn’t it time you listened too? Make a sound judgement with the Q212dn monitor from Quested

September 2007

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gear

Platform news: Digidesign

Products Equipment introductions and announcements.

Fat Track Tube Production Suite

The Fat Track Tube Production Suite is a complete solution for tracking, summing and monitoring. Designed to be the centrepiece of the studio, it combines some of the bestloved features of TL Audio products into one compact unit. You can record through valve preamps and 3-band swept EQ or use them for mixdown and summing with up to four stereo and two mono returns. The master and monitor section has alternative loudspeaker modes, two headphone outputs with level control, effects return, balanced insert on stereo bus and channels, tape out, and I-O switchable between +4/-10. All connectors are placed at the rear top of the unit and it can also be fitted with the TL Audio DO-8 ADAT interface. Due for release in late October 2007. www.tlaudio.co.uk

Stereo Dynax

The Dynax2 is a stereo version of Al.So’s original Dynax compressor. Designed as a ‘dynamic sound shaper’, it is conceived around very low distortion circuits. The Dynax2 offers three different compression curves: limiter (10:1); brickwall; and AntiDyna — a new mode designed to ‘overlimit’ the sound. www.alternatesoundings.com

Digidesign is shipping its Structure professional sampler workstation. Available for £300/€440/$499, the RTAS virtual instrument plug-in was developed by the Advanced Instrument Research group. It comes with a 128-level multitimbral universal sound engine, an integrated multi-effects processing engine including convolution reverb, and support for an unlimited number of nestable patches and up to 8-channel interleaved samples. Structure features 20Gb of factory sound libraries from EastWest and AIR, including Quantum Leap Orchestral Elements. Also included is a 30-day trial of Goliath — Structure Edition, EastWest’s 40Gb professional sound library. Structure provides support for importing SampleCell, EXS24, and Kontakt 1 and 2 sample libraries and directly integrates with the Pro Tools audio engine. For a limited time, Digidesign is offering owners of Soft SampleCell an opportunity to purchase Structure at an upgrade price of £120//€175/$199. www.digidesign.com

Sommer Syspanel and catalogue

Syspanel made by Sommer Cable is a 19-inch 1u drawer unit that holds 4 x 4 XLR or Ethernet connectors. Available with or without cover, identification strips and guides are provided along with 28 metal tabs for the cable binders. The new Sommer Cable main catalogue has more products on more pages with more structure and order. The 352 pages cover cables, plug connectors, distribution systems, active components, and accessories. www.sommercable.com

TFPRO P110

UA and Neve launch UAD Nevana X2 Universal Audio and AMSNeve have announced the UAD-Nevana X2 for Mac OS X and Windows X64/XP/Vista. It includes Dual PCIe DSP cards and all seven of the UA/Neve classic console plug-ins including the 1073/1073SE EQ, 1081/1081SE EQ, 33609/33609SE bus compressor and 88RS channel strip in AU, VST and RTAS formats. The UAD-Nevana X2 also includes the standard 14 UA Mix-Essentials plug-ins plus a UAD$200 voucher that can be used against any UAD plug-ins at the my.uaudio.com store. www.uaudio.com

Described as a specialist single-channel preamplifier, phase shifter, compressor and equaliser with advanced analogue features, TFPro’s P110 it is said to be a perfect tool for voice recording and tracking. It employs transformer-coupled Class-A ‘current mode’ multiple amplifiers, a 180-degree variable phase control, a compressor/limiter of advanced optical design with ratios from a gentle 1.2:1 up to full extreme limit, and with switchable ‘models’ to provide a taste of other historic compressors. The equaliser has four frequency bands, while a VU meter follows audio input or gain reduction. www.unityaudio.co.uk

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RME updates

RME’s Firmware 2.0 update for Micstasy gives direct compatibility with Yamaha’s M7C and PM5D mixing consoles, responding to their Sysex commands. Input gain is adjustable in steps of 1dB (gain range of –9dB to 63dB) with phantom power selectable on each channel. A main feature of the update is its digital return functionality. Until now the Micstasy M acted as a oneway A-D convertor, with its MADI input functioning as a pass-through when several units are chained together in series. Selecting the new Digital Output menu option, a group of eight MADI input signals can now be made available at the ADAT and AES outputs. This allows audio to be sent to and from the Micstasy via MADI, using the MADI connection as a return path. Micstasy’s Word clock output followed the current sample rate up to 192kHz. However, by selecting the Always Single Speed option, the sample rate is adjusted so it is always in the region of 32-48kHz. In the case of 96 and 192kHz sample rates, a uniform 48kHz is output. This ensures accurate sample synchronicity between multiple devices using SMUX-based interfaces, like ADAT and MADI. Version 1.4 of the free MIDI Remote Control software is now available. This includes practically all the new features found in the firmware 2.0 update, plus an improved view of the Micstasy with larger gain display. If several devices are in use simultaneously, an optional Slim View allows all the different control surface windows to remain visible on the monitor. www.rme-audio.de

September 2007

gear Focusrite ISA 828

Focusrite’s ISA 828 is an 8-channel device with eight original ISA transformer-based preamps — exactly the same vintage mic design as the original ISA110 module from the Forté console, including the Lundahl L1538 transformer and bespoke zobel network. The preamps are complemented by eight line inputs, four instrument inputs and an optional 8-channel 192kHz A-DC. Using 25-pin D-Type connectors, the ISA828 integrates quickly with Pro Tools HD and other hard disk recorders and mixing desks. The mic input stage has a variable impedance circuit with the ISA 110 setting supplemented by three additional impedance settings. The four front panel instrument inputs have high and low impedance options and insert switches are featured on every channel together with high-pass filters. Each channel has a six-LED input meter with a meter trim. www.focusrite.com

Re-engineered A-Ts A u d i o - Te c h n i c a h a s c o m p l e t e l y re - e n g i n e e re d its premier Engineered Sound integrator microphone line, introducing more than 30 new models featuring the company’s UniGuard RFI protection technology. The series comprises a comprehensive assortment of 21 gooseneck, six hanging, two boundary, a lavalier and a handheld microphone, and uses audio and mechanical design improvements. Other new features include superior off-axis rejection for improved gain before feedback and an 80Hz UniSteep filter. Four new interchangeable elements lend additional flexibility, with cardioid, hypercardioid and omnidirectional elements offered, as well as the MicroLine 90º pickup pattern. www.audio-technica.co.uk

SoundField has launched several new products. Joining the DSF-2 digital broadcast microphone system is the DSF1 digital studio system and the DSF-3 digital broadcast surround processor. Like the DSF-2, the DSF-1 can produce simultaneous, phase-coherent stereo and surround sound from a single microphone, and is suited to a range of recording applications including orchestral recordings and classical concerts. The DSF-3 is a real-time surround processor for live HD broadcast use and provides complete control from within an OB vehicle of the surround image captured by a SoundField microphone. The SPS200 A-Format microphone is a portable, lightweight product designed for laptop-based location recording. Like all other SoundField microphones, the SPS200 can output audio in a variety of formats simultaneously including stereo and surround, but it is the first SoundField microphone not to ship with an accompanying hardware control unit. Instead, stereo and surround decoding and manipulation are achieved by the new Conversion Lounge software supplied with the mic, saving on weight and cost. The supplied software runs on Mac and Windows PC, and is compatible with Pro Tools and all DAWs that support the VST multichannel standard, such as Nuendo and Soundscape. www.soundfield.com

HHB catalogue HHB’s Catalogue 2007/08 is now available free of charge to audio professionals and broadcasters. The 168-page catalogue contains pictures, overviews, outline specifications and pricing details for more than 1200 products, organised in 16 chapters with a full index at the back. The Catalogue is also available in a searchable format on the HHB website, which has recently been enhanced to facilitate more efficient navigation. www.hhb.co.uk

September 2007

www.manu-katche.com, photo: © Marc Rouvé

More surround from SoundField

A classy combination

SCHOEPS Mikrofone Karlsruhe, Germany +49 721 943 200 www.schoeps.de

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gear AKG wireless C5 and D5

AKG has released wireless versions of its C5 and D5 microphones through collaboration with its WMS 4000 wireless system. The C5 and D5 wireless mics offer two interchangeable microphone heads for the HT 4000 handheld unit, as part of the WMS 4000 wireless system: the C5 WL1 condenser vocal Projekt1 and18/02/07 12:55 1 microphone D5 WL1 dynamic vocalSide microphone. www.akg.com

sound engineering

URS Classic Console Strip The URS Classic Console Strip Pro allows creation of hundreds of custom consoles from a palette of input stages, compressor/limiter and EQ choices. Digitally recreated input stages include Class A American input transformers, Class A British input transformer, Class A German input transformer, Class A tube input stages, tape electronics/head bumps, 15 console and tape machine combos, and five console input/summing bus stages. Presently, 14 classic console compressor/limiters models and 46 outboard compressor/limiter models are included together with digital recreations of four analogue recording console EQ sections and one vintage programme EQ. www.ursplugins.com

RM8 TUBE MODULES

Omnia One for DAB

A new design, Omnia One uses Sensus technology (developed in collaboration with Telos) to monitor content and dynamically optimise processing for the target encoder, resulting in fewer coding artefacts. Benefits include a wideband gain rider plus a 4-band AGC allows fine adjustments to create ‘signature sound’; look-ahead final limiting, optimised for digital radio, with feedback limiters for the lower two bands and feed-forward for the upper two bands; time-aligned, dynamically flat, ‘perfect-reconstruction’ crossovers; and selectable phase rotation. The I-O section includes analogue and AES-EBU connections, plus a Livewire interface for direct integration with Axia IP-Audio networks. www.omniaaudio.com

Melodyne updates

RACK 'EM UP! - introducing 3 blue building blocks... Meet us at Frankfurt ProLight+Sound - Hall 5.1, B88

LYDKRAFT 18

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Celemony is shipping new versions of Melodyne — the multitrack Melodyne cre8 and Studio in Version 3.2 and the single-track Melodyne Essential and Uno in Version 1.8. The latest versions offer new playback algorithms, numerous improvements and bug fixes as well as a new way of activating the program that users will find easier. The updates are free of charge and available for immediate download. Melodyne cre8, Uno and Essential have been equipped with the new Percussive2 algorithm for working with drum loops, percussion tracks and percussive material. Among the other new features are the combined scroll/zoom bars already offered by the Melodyne plug-in, a grey colour scheme for the user interface, and various improvements to the way percussive material is displayed and handled. www.celemony.com

Røde’s M3

Røde’s M3 is said to offer the brand’s premium characteristics at a more affordable price. A cardioid condenser that can be powered by 48V phantom power or by an internal 9V battery, it has a switchable 80Hz low cut filter and a 0dB, 10dB or 20dB pad. www.sourcedistribution.co.uk

September 2007

gear JĂźnger releases

JĂźnger Audioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Level Magic products employ a sophisticated adaptive level control algorithm capable of adjusting the audio level from any source at any time offering Automated Gain Control, Transient Processing and Peak Limiting for continuous unattended control. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a new range of SDI interfaces with audio DSP for the C8000 modular system. The DSP can run with a 4-channel or 8-channel Level Magic algorithm. The SDI interface is available as dual-mode HD/SD-SDI or as standard 270Mbit SDI. Four new Level Magic/SDI single unit combos will therefore be available. The benefit of using the new cards is more channel density in the frame as well as very easy system design for the processing of asynchronous SDI streams. Another new product feature is available for the C8000 frame controller card. Web interface release 1.0 offers a new graphical user interface, improved communication and SNMP monitoring. www.junger-audio.com

Sonic Studio SoundBlade 1.2 Sonic Studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1.2 release of SoundBlade incorporates hundreds of optimisations and stability enhancements as well as two dozen feature additions, including an 8channel option for surround work. Combining Sonic Studioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premastering functionality with signal processing, restoration and editing, SoundBlade costs US$1495. It runs natively on Mac OS X and relies on Core Audio for default I-O. www.sonicstudio.com

Klotz Digital launches Decennium

NX Series

Precision monitoring for recording studios and edit suites Klotz Digitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Decennium radio console is networkable and comes with the Decennium audio engine. The standard console is supplied preconfigured for easy installation and console set up. Decennium is modular and expandable due to its networkability and its configuration software and can be customised according to need. It has fully parametric 6band equalisers and sophisticated dynamics with a limiter/ compressor/expander that can be inserted and stored in each channel. A â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;multi purpose control elementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is integrated in each channel strip. This consists of an endless rotary encoder with integrated pushbutton and a 16-character display and is used for source selection and channel-related parameter settings allowing a better overview and enabling quicker access to them. The MPCE allows each fader module to act as single mini console without the need for a monitor and control module. Therefore it offers space- and cost-saving applications far beyond standard on-air and split console designs, making it suitable for journalists or reporters. Each fader module is assigned to its own DSP section of the Vadis audio engine offering individual features and autonomous buses. In addition, each single four-fader module can be split as well as assigned to different buses allowing shared operation. www.klotzdigital.com

September 2007

Full of the latest in speaker technology and designed from the ground up for critical listening in recording facilities where a precise, transparent, professional sound is essential, the NX Series set new standards in sonic accuracy and packaging. Precision monitoring and audio performance of this calibre has never been so affordable. Main Features F Dedicated 60W (LF) + 40W (HF) bi-amplifiers F Hard dome tweeters with magnesium diaphragms to ensure a sound free from harsh metallic characteristics F LF drivers with HR (Hyper Radial) diaphragm ensuring a smooth, natural sound with excellent mid/low frequency reproduction F Time-aligned front baffle design and internal HP Sound reflectors

NX-6A

20mm tweeter, 160mm woofer, 100 watt bi-amp

NX-5A

20mm tweeter, 130mm woofer, 100 watt bi-amp

XXX GPTUFY KQ Fostex Company, 3-2-35 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, Japan 196-0021 Tel: +81 (0)42-546-4974 Fax: +81 (0)42-546-9222 Email: info_sales@fostex.jp

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gear Lightwave Pole

A-Designs power supply

APT IP audio solutions

Lightwave Audio Systems’ G5 news boom pole is precision engineered using state-of-the-art plastic technology, and is designed to be robust and lightweight. Instead of metal threads, the G5 uses a patented triple-cam locking system allowing for a minimal fifteen degrees of twist to lock/ unlock, facilitating cleaning and reducing the likelihood of jamming. The pole can be supplied with an internal coiled cable as an option using Neutrik NC3 (XLR style) connectors with gold-finished pins. www.lightwavesystems.com

APT’s WorldCast Eclipse IP audio codec is being billed as ‘the ultimate solution for robust, reliable and high quality audio transfer over synchronous and IP links.’ It offers IP, X.21/V.35 and ISDN interfaces and a selection of popular coding algorithms, including Enhanced apt-X, MPEG I/II Layer 2/3, MPEG 4 AAC, G.711 and G.722 on a single, robust, DSP-based codec platform. This ensures interoperability with codecs from other manufacturers, such as Telos, Mayah, Prodys and Musicam. www.aptx.com

A-Designs Audio’s 500HR is a single-rack-space, dual-slot power supply designed to accommodate two processing modules conforming to the API 500 Series format, including A-Designs’s own P-1 and EM-Series mic preamps and EMPEQ EQ. A rocker-style power switch and 48V phantom power LED are found on the right side of the front panel while the rear has two sets of XLR I-Os. www.adesignsaudio.com

Stagetec Auratus

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Stagetec’s Auratus is a compact console designed for TV and broadcast use and OB trucks but is also suitable for sound reinforcement and production applications. Features include audio-follows-video functions, extensive optical signalling, eight separately configurable mixminus buses, and two timers capable of counting down as well as up. The user interface is designed for easy and quick operation and all the key audio channel parameters can be set using dual encoders, like on the Aurus, on the channel strip or from the master section. On the Auratus, the precision meterbridge, which is also a familiar feature of its bigger brother, is enhanced by small TFT displays in the master section. Each of these is dedicated to a specific function, for example, equaliser or dynamics settings. OLED displays located above the faders on the channel strip show the names of the channel’s source and the backgroundlayer channel. Auratus has a maximum of 32 input channels, eight groups, one stereo and one 5.1 sum, eight aux paths, and eight mix-minus sums. The DSP engine is accommodated on a typical Nexus plug-in board consuming just 8W since fewer audio signals require less processing than on the company’s bigger desks. Auratus is fully integrated into the Nexus audio-routing system just like any other Stagetec console although the single-board solution avoids the cost of a Nexus Star. Aurus 2.65 software release includes an off-line editor that enables the console to be set up with a Windows PC remotely. An off-line mode allows configuration of Nexus components and there’s also an extension to the userinterface (virtual UI) that allows the Aurus to be controlled from remote PCs via a cable network or a wireless LAN. Graphics-enabled OLED displays showing channel and layer configurations on the channel strip will soon replace the current matrix displays. www.stagetec.com

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September 2007

gear MXL universal USB interface

The MicMate universal USB microphone interface enables any dynamic or condenser mic to be connected to a computer. As a plug-and-play device for Windows and Mac, it requires no special drivers and is described as ‘sonically transparent’. The analogue section features a 20Hz20kHz frequency response, and a 3-position, switchable attenuation pad with settings for Hi (0dB), Medium (-5dB), and Lo (-10dB). The digital section has a 16-bit A-DC with sampling rates of 44.1kHz and 48kHz. For use with condenser microphones, the MicMate #21373 supplies 48V phantom power. With electronics based on the MXL 990, the MXL 990 USB stereo condenser microphone features two gold diaphragm capsules in an X/Y configuration. It has a three-position switchable attenuation pad with settings for 0dB, -5dB, and -10dB. www.mxlmics.com

Carvins add USB

Yamaha ‘studios’ Ya m a h a ’s M W S e r i e s II USB 2.0 Mixing Studios have added effects and expanded routing capabilities and are now bundled with Cubase AI4. The 12-channel n12 provides independent headphone mixes, talkback capability, and monitor speaker selection and control up to 5.1. The n8 is a smaller, 8-channel version of the n12. - UAD Ad Resolution 15/2/07 www.yamaha.com

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Carvin’s Concert Series mixers have added USB and SPDIF capability on select models. Available in all configurations, with the exception of the C1644P powered mixer and the C3244 32-channel version of the mixer, the new capability enables interfacing with computers and external recorders. Key features of the desks include multiple channel configurations, four subgroups, six bus sends, four balanced monitor sends, dual 24-bit signal processors (each with 256 effects, including reverbs, choruses, flanging, and echo), and dual 9-band graphic EQs. www.carvinworld.com

Panel improvements

Designed for panel distribution and transport of audio signals, R i e d e l ’s PMX-Series provides users with a cost-effective solution that minimises setup time when used to remote four (PMX-2004) or eight (PMX2008) intercom panels from the Artist or Performer 32 digital intercom matrix using a fibre link. The PMX-Series permits the operation of a group of intercom panels over a distance of 500m or 2km depending on the SFP module. It provides four BNCs to connect to matrix ports or panels plus a duplex LC fibre connector. The PMX-2008 holds two such modules, thus 8 intercom panels can be remoted from the matrix via two fibre links. Master stations CR-4 (4-channel) and CR-2 (2-channel) can set-up a standalone digital partyline system. Depending on the setup, the integrated power supply of the 1u device can power up to 32 Performer devices, such as beltpacks, split-boxes or desktop speaker stations per line. The CD-2 desktop speaker/headset station provides the same feature set as the CR-2 master station with the exception of the internal power-supply. The CW-2 wall-mount speaker/ headset station comes with a standard 4-gang outlet box and provides a 2-channel digital intercom panel. The large rotary level controls combine volume control and a talk button with momentary/ latching operation. The u n i t c a n be operated using a headset or an integrated loudspeaker with a microphone. www.riedel.net

September 2007

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review

Tascam X-48 Despite the irresistible rise of the workstation there is still a place for the ‘hardware’ multitrack recorder. DAWs might be cleverer but nothing beats a hardware solution for speed, convenience and comfort factor, says ROB JAMES

Screen, keyboard and mouse optional.

ASCAM’S DA-88 IS proof that a product doesn’t have to be perfect to succeed. It just needs to be in the right place at the right time. DA-88s were expensive by today’s standards, but very cheap when compared to the available alternatives at the time. Loaded with sockets and option slots they could be integrated into existing workflows without too much drama although they were not especially reliable unless regularly maintained at high cost. In some ways they were quirky with lots of early issues about machine control and sync and even the audio interface. Despite all this the DA-88 quickly became ubiquitous in applications ranging from film and TV post, through live recording all the way down to the back bedroom. After the all-conquering success of the DA-88, its siblings and progeny, Tascam and many others had tried and thus far failed to repeat the trick with hard disk 8-track, 24-track and now 48-track machines. Tascam considered the MX-2424 a success in sales terms but it was still a pale shadow of the DA-88. The latest attempt is the X-48. Despite the word ‘workstation’ in its title this is a digital multitrack in the great DA-88 tradition. Mixing and DSP effects are there because they can be, but nobody is going to make you use them. Workflows have changed to the point where I seriously doubt any hardware recorder will ever emulate the DA-88’s success but the X-48 seems set to do better than most. Tascam is no stranger to the relatively recent idea of co-development with an outside consultancy and this is how the X-48 came about. SaneWave, founded by Bob Tudor, the guy behind the Mackie digital 22

console, is the partner. Previous collaborations led to the Tascam IF-FW/DM FireWire interface and US-2400 universal DAW controller. The X-48 hardware is pure Tascam with many familiar parts from the bin including the transport controls (sadly the cheaper feeling version) and internally illuminated buttons, etc. I couldn’t resist taking the lid off for a look under the hood. Build quality is quite excellent. Attention to detail is everywhere evident and there is an air of obvious robustness that suggests the X-48 should be well up to life on the road. I’m not advocating dropping it, the hard drive wouldn’t like it, but I see no reason why the X-48 should not be more mechanically reliable than any tape recorder. At its heart the X-48 is a PC running embedded Windows on a 2.8GHz Intel Celeron processor with 1Gb of RAM. The single fixed hard drive is a SATA device. For a 48-track the front panel of the 4u box is remarkably sparse. Two rows of 24 track meters with associated arm buttons and indicator LEDs fill most of the space. The DVD-recorder is bottom left with the transport controls and their indicator LEDs to the right. The rest of the panel has indicators for Status, Sample Rate, Timecode Rate, Systems indicators and the power switch at top right. There’s a backlit LCD display below and 18 buttons for control, navigation and system functions below that. The UK£3599 (inc. VAT) X-48 offers 24-bit recording at up to 96kHz across all 48 tracks. There are two record modes, conventional non-destructive and destructive. Both have their place and some film mixers have long favoured the destructive mode. Recording can be One-Touch (you only have to press the Record button) or conventional Rec plus Play. Punch-in can be manual or automatic between two markers and there is a dedicated Rehearse transport button. Input monitoring has three modes. Normal, where any track armed for recording switches to Input regardless of transport mode, ADR Mode, where tracks are only switched to Input when the resolution

transport is in record, and All Input, which, as the name implies, switches all tracks to Input regardless of transport state. The punch-in crossfade time can be set from 0 to 90ms in 10ms increments. Tracks can be named for reference and to provide the seed names for auto-naming recorded files. Native format is BWAV and AAF export is supported to give greater compatibility with workstations. Apart from the 80Gb internal hard drive and DVD writer, external FireWire and USB-2 hard drives plus Gigabit Ethernet cater for extra storage and transfers between systems. As standard you get 48 channels of TDIF I-O and two 24channel option slots for analogue or digital I-O cards. Physical Inputs can be routed to tracks individually or in blocks of 8 and an input can feed several tracks if you wish. The maximum number of active inputs is 48 regardless of the number of physical inputs installed. Sony P2 9-pin serial control, timecode generate and chase and MTC/MMC are all present along with Word clock and video sync (including HD tri-level). All the common pull-up and pull-down rates are supported as is varispeed. The majority of recording and playback functions can be accessed from the front panel but adding a screen, keyboard and mouse is obviously essential for editing and/or mixing. When used in partnership with an MX 2424 recorder and/or a DM-3200 or DM-4800 digital mixer the X-48 can be used as the host computer running MX-View and/or TMC (Tascam Mixer Companion) software which is pre-installed (That’s pretty smart. Ed). The track view is clear and uncluttered. You can zoom in time and track height and an overview pane can be toggled on or off. The track display can scroll with fixed cursor or you can select None, which locks the current view, or Page Flip with moving cursor and the next chunk of timeline appearing when you hit the edge of screen. Editing is simple and quick using mouse tools chosen from icons at the top of the screen. Clips can be crossfaded by dragging them over each other while holding down Ctrl. Time stretch/Pitch shift is available as a process. The mixer provides 4-band parametric EQ, compression and six pre/post-fader aux sends. There are 12 groups, six aux returns and a stereo master. Automation is limited to volume ‘rubber-band’. Although you can mix down to stereo outputs, including the SPDIF, you cannot reroute the mixer outputs back to record inputs internally. Processing is 32-bit float. The machine defaults to mixer bypass thus minimising latency and CPU load for recording. The only plug-ins currently qualified for the X-48 are Waves 5 and Antares Auto Tune 4 with installers. Other VST plug-ins can be installed if they have installers (or without when you know how) at your own risk. The X-48 designers have missed a few rather obvious tricks. First, it’s very noisy (cooling fans). In a room full of PCs it drowned out all the rest including a noisy old office machine. Admittedly the racket will be reduced in a rack but, since the X-48 is obviously intended to be in close proximity to the operator in some applications, these days there really is no excuse for not engineering the noise out. There is currently no option to replace the internal September 2007

review IDE DVD writer with a removable hard drive caddy. This is less important than it used to be but would have been nice. More to the point, the X-48 seems to be a natural for an E-SATA (External SATA) connection for external drives. You do get two FireWire ports and USB-2 ports and a disk benchmarking utility that gives an indication of how many tracks can be supported reliably, but E-SATA would be a much better option. Gigabit networking renders some of these comments almost irrelevant, always providing that it fits into your workflow. While on the subject of interfaces, there is no MADI option. The editor/mixer begs for a hardware controller to take full advantage of what is on offer yet the only hardware controller currently supported is the Tascam US-2400. The GUI is less elegant than many workstations. It uses the suddenly trendy ‘Tabs’ model as well as pull-down menus. A pretty screen is really irrelevant but it is annoying that only 42 of the 48 tracks will fit on a standard 1280 x 1024 LCD screen. It should be easy enough for SaneWave to adjust the graphics to fit the full 48 at minimum track height, if only as an option. On the plus side, a wide range of screen resolutions is supported so, if you have a monitor capable of displaying higher resolutions, this won’t be a problem. The Time bar only offers the choice of SMPTE or samples. Film feet would have been nice but are perhaps increasingly irrelevant today. As with the MX-2424 there is a ‘housekeeping’ pause after you hit Stop at the end of a recording. After a long recording, especially with several punchins this pause can last a considerable time although the X-48 is noticeably better in this respect. One annoyance that really makes the GUI feel dated is the complete absence of right-click functions and context menus. I’m guessing this may have been done in the interests of supposed Mac compatibility but System X supports at least two buttons and my new Mac Pro even arrived with a multibutton mouse (Rob James has bought a Mac; the sky is falling! Ed). Another irritation is transport controls placed at the top of the screen that cannot be moved to the more logical location of bottom right. In fact all window and pane positions and sizes are fixed depending on what is displayed at any given moment. While this is sensible for consistency, it would have been nice to be able to change some of them even if this was a set-up function.

The X-48 could be the one to bring Tascam back to the top of the heap. Despite the niggles this is a tour de force. 48 tracks of recorder with a plethora of interface options at a sensible price. For applications suited to them, the mixer/editor functions are more than adequate and the learning curve is refreshingly shallow. An extensive list of activities would benefit from this device. Some of the more obvious applications are location recording, studio tracking, video post, film dubbing and a whole range of tasks in the house of worship business. With any device as complex and wide ranging as this one the only real way to discover if it is for you is to try it in your particular situation. I found it to be relatively easy to use and, although I have a few reservations about the logic of the front panel set-up buttons, I’m sure these would become obvious with experience. Tascam has a good track record for the sound quality of its devices and, although I did not have any analogue convertors for this test, I have no doubt they are well up to the standard of the others. For those who are asking, ‘Why bother, my DAW does all this and a great deal more.’ I would suggest they try setting up their workstation to make simple, reliable 48-track recordings with proper punch-ins across all 48 tracks and see how long it takes, assuming it is possible, and then compare the prices of the complete systems including flightcases, etc. In live recording, there is more than a whiff of security blanket about having a single box as a recorder (or two with one for back-up if you’re paranoid). It is still much easier to trust a single recorder than an overt PC or Mac. Much the same applies in some film dubbing workflows. There is an undeniable attraction in a single purpose box. Once set up it takes around a minute and a quarter from cold boot to ready to record. Try doing that with a DAW. ■

PROS

48 solid tracks of 24/96 at an attractive price; shallow learning curve; convenience.

CONS

Very noisy; record media options could be more comprehensive; GUI feels dated.

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

Socket city

Ranged across the top of the rear panel are two option slots for analogue, ADAT or AES-EBU digital I-O cards. When analogue cards are fitted the operating level can be set in software to -9, 14, -16, -18 or -20dBFS. Below come six D-Sub 25-pin sockets for the built-in TDIF I-O, MIDI In and Out sockets, balanced jacks for timecode I-O, a footswitch jack and the Sony 9-pin RS-422 serial socket. Below, Video sync In and Thru, Word clock In, Out and Thru are all on BNCs and SPDIF I-O on phonos. Next come the PC sockets. Mini Dins for keyboard and mouse, the 15-pin compact D-sub VGA socket, an Option 9-pin Dsub that doesn’t do anything and apparently never will, four USB2 sockets, two RJ-45 Ethernet ports and two FireWire sockets. When fully populated, serious thought will need to be given to cable support to avoid straining the connections. IF-AN24X (24-channel balanced analogue I-O) £949 (inc. VAT); IF-AE24X (24-channel AES-EBU I-O) £865 (inc. VAT); IFAD24X (24-channel ADAT optical I-O) £499 (inc. VAT). Shows optional IF-AN24X x 2 analogue I-O.

September 2007

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HiFi

review

Audient Black Series Take one of the most proactive analogue brands and fill a modular rack with its produce. Whereas the silver range represents Audient’s sparkly and shiney take on audio, the Black Series is, well, altogether darker and more characterful.

UDIENT’S NEW RANGE of outboard kit is a new take on an old concept — namely that of taking a modular approach to signal processing that allows a user to build a rack to their own specifications and requirements within a standardised frame. Nothing new here — API and others have done similar things for quite some time — but Audient have clearly seen an opportunity and demand among those looking for front and back ends for their DAWs. As the name suggests, the overwhelming cosmetic impression of the Black Series is its colour. The main chassis is a 4u rackmount into which up to 10 Black Series modules can be installed. On the rear of the chassis are ten sets of three XLR connectors (two inputs and one output), which provide audio interfacing to the installed modules. The function of these change somewhat depending on what modules are installed. For example, with a compressor module one of the inputs acts as an external side-chain input while the other is the signal input. Usefully, the various permutations for different module types are silk-screened onto the rear panel for reference purposes. The audio outputs and one set of inputs for the first eight slots are also duplicated on 25-pin DSub connectors for convenience. The chassis provides power and, where appropriate, Word clock distribution to each module, with the power supplied to the chassis from a separate 2u PSU. DC power connects to the chassis from a truly impressively sized cable terminating in a Neutrik PowerCon connector. Seriously, it’s heftier than the power cable for a 36-channel Audient console, so there should be no worries about the health of the power rails. Five different modules are currently available in the Black Series: a preamp; a compressor; an EQ; an analogue to digital convertor and a master Word clock generator. The review model shipped ready populated with two each of the preamp, EQ and compressor, and a single A-DC. Modules mate to the back-plane of the chassis with DIN 41612 connectors, 24

and installation and removal is straightforward and painless. The front panels of the modules are distinctively Audient-ish, using the same small tapered knobs as its other outboard offerings (but in black rather than silver), and making sensible use of illuminated pushbuttons where appropriate. Space is obviously at a premium though, and the combination of black knobs on a black background with a fairly dense layout had me constantly double-checking what I was doing initially. That said, let’s deal with each of the modules in turn. The Black Pre is perhaps the most straightforward of the three analogue modules. In common with the EQ and Compressor modules, it features discrete Class A circuitry, and transformer balancing for both microphone and line inputs. The output is electronically balanced, and the front panel also sports an unbalanced, high impedance input for use as a DI. Separate mic and line inputs are available on the rear panel selected by a front panel switch. Each has its own coarse gain control, stepped in 5dB steps from –10dB to +15dB for line level signals, and 10dB steps from +10dB to +60dB for mic level. A separate control gives you 10dB of fine trim for whichever stage is selected, which is nice as in my experience other Audient mic preamps tend to have quite poor control resolution at the upper extremes of the gain range. Plugging an instrument into the DI will override the currently selected input, and either the mic or line input gain stages can be used for this depending on which is selected. Metering is good, with a 12segment LED bargraph referenced to 0dBFS, and 0dBu marked as corresponding to –18dBFS. A variable high pass filter (30–225Hz, 12dB/octave) and the usual phantom power and polarity reverse switches are also available. All very bread and butter stuff so far until you factor in the inclusion a variable harmonic drive control, which Audient has termed HMX. Without the HMX function switched in, I expected the Black Pre to sound very similar to other Audient resolution

JON THORNTON

preamps — in other words pretty open, reasonably quiet and not much in the way of colouration to the sound. It doesn’t though, there’s a slightly softer sound to it, particularly at the low end, almost certainly attributable to the use of transformers on the input stage. It’s also a little susceptible to freaking out when signal levels get too hot — ‘Over’ on the meter means just that, even when working strictly in the analogue domain. Feeding in the HMX control brings out a lot more in the way of colour to the sound, particularly noticeable in the presence bump on a vocalist. It’s not overblown, even at maximum setting, and adds an extra degree of versatility. Turning to the EQ section you start to see a common theme with the design intentions for the range. At one level it’s a straightforward 4-band equaliser, but look closer and you see some extra features and implementations that make it stand out from the crowd. The mid bands are the most straightforward; low mids are continuously swept from 125Hz to 2kHz, and the high mids (actually labelled ‘Presence’) can switch their centre frequency between 1.5 and 3kHz. Both bands have an unusual switchable response. They can be either straightforward constant Q peaking filters, or have a response with a wide bandwidth boost coupled to a narrow bandwidth, almost notch filter-like cut. It sounds a little bizarre, but in practice emulates what you might instinctively do anyway with a fully parametric EQ band. The HF band is a shelving filter, and switches between 8kHz and ‘Air’ — sounds like 15k or thereabouts to me (Pardon? Ed). The low shelf switches between 50Hz and 100Hz, and also has two additional controls that will be familiar to anyone who has used any low frequency enhancement trickery. A switch marked ‘Overtone’ adds some synthesised harmonics to the band, while another labelled ‘Glo’ boosts then compresses the low band. Finally, a ‘Tilt’ switch allows the overall frequency response to be tilted to favour high frequencies and reduce low frequencies or vice versa, centred around 1kHz with a September 2007

review +/-2dB cut or boost at the extremities. All of which makes the EQ module feel just that little bit alien when you first dive into it. I found myself having to actively search for the correct control far more than I’m used to (You could use your bat-like hearing to locate them. Ed). Give it time though, and it’s actually very liberating. The bands, centre frequencies and slopes all interact with each other very musically, and although it can be tricky to get those LF enhancement features to work smoothly, the whole thing really forces you to think a lot more carefully about what you actually need to achieve. The final analogue module, at least for the time being, is the compressor. Primarily an optical design, this features a fixed threshold level of –20dB. Adjusting the input level relative to this gives you an effective threshold variation, and an output level control enables gain make-up. Metering is via a mechanical VU meter, which can be switched to show gain reduction or output level. Attack and release each have six stepped values, with an auto release setting as the last step, and ratio is similarly stepped from 1.2:1 to a maximum of 8:1. In keeping with the other modules there are then a couple of additional tweaks. The first is an ‘OverComp’ button that switches in a fairly radical FET-based compressor to pre-treat the signal before it hits the main compressor. The second is a ‘Smooth’ button, and this enables a dual slope mode, with a gentle RMS detecting stage coupled to a peak detecting stage to deal with any unruly peaks. In practice, this ‘Smooth’ mode is the more useable of the two tweaks, and the Black Comp’s strength is in dealing out gentle, unobtrusive compression over complex mixes. In other applications it does a reasonable job, although I found it a little slow in response for some applications where you really need to grab hold of those transients quickly, and even with the OverComp function it seemed much better suited to gentle transparency than heavy handed dynamic manipulation. One useful feature is the link function, which links the side-chains of any compressors in the rack that have it selected regardless of their position in the chassis. While this does mean that you have to exercise some care in setting parameters, as these aren’t linked, it enables you to build stereo or multichannel dynamics functionality in a very flexible manner. In comparison to the slightly quirky nature of the analogue modules, the A-DC is utterly straightforward. Sample rates of 44.1 to 192kHz are available and selected on the front panel. The A-DC can use its own internal clock or an external clock source fed to an input on the rear panel of the chassis. Analogue inputs are on the rear of the card, and digital outputs are available on the front panel (SPDIF, AES-EBU 26

resolution

and optical Toslink) with an additional AES-EBU output on the rear panel. A 12-segment LED stereo bargraph shows input level and signal over. The unit ships with 0dBFS equating to +18dBu, although setting internal jumpers on the module can move this to +20, 22 or 24dBu if required. Although not fitted to the review unit, Audient also plans to release a master clock module, the Time Machine. When installed, this distributes its clock to all A-DCs in the rack, and converts the Word clock input on the rear of the chassis into a Word clock output for distribution to other devices. Taken as a whole, the Black Series is an interesting proposition. I have to admit to being less enamoured of the compressor than I was with the EQ and Pre, but that’s down to personal preference and there’s no doubt that all of the analogue modules have a unique character of their own. I do find the formfactor slightly confusing though, as it lacks the ‘luggability’ of something like the API lunchbox, and with the PSU it takes up 6u of space that could conceivably be equally well used by a mix and match of any preamps, compressors and EQs. This is even more relevant when you remember that, although the chassis performs some useful functions like clock and sidechain distribution, analogue signal connections are still simply XLR inputs and outputs to each module, with no signal busing within the chassis itself. What this really boils down to is the fact that you don’t get much in terms of additional convenience or space saving from the architecture — so it stands or falls by the quality of the modules. So it’s a good thing that, personal preference over the compressor aside, the modules really are very good and, more importantly, characterful. You’ll really need to try them out to make sure that both ergonomically and sonically they are what you are after, because if they are then a fully loaded rack would pack some serious punch. ■

PROS

Good quality signal processing fare with some useful additional features; multiple linking feature on compressor modules very useful; musical and useful EQ; very smooth sounding compressor for unobtrusive levelling.

CONS

Doesn’t save a great deal of rack real estate when compared with separate rack units; pre seems a little lacking in headroom.

Contact AUDIENT, UK: Website: www.audient.co.uk

September 2007

Pro Audio

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review

Microtech Gefell UM930 Still representing one of the best kept secrets in the microphone world, Microtech Gefell does tend to hide its light under its bushel despite the quality and pedigree of its products. JON THORNTON uncovers a true new classic.

S FAR AS design goes, and I’m talking about form rather than content here, most new microphones these days tend to fall into one of three camps. Camp number one is to rather selfconsciously ape the ‘vintage’ look of days gone by. The second is to throw caution to the winds and go for something completely wacky. And the third is to keep things conservative — mostly by companies

who’ve been around long enough to know that they don’t have to try too hard. This makes the UM930 from Microtech Gefell a little hard to classify. Microtech Gefell’s historical connection to Neumann is not as well known as it should be and how Neumann moved its operations to Gefell from Berlin during the Second World War. The end of hostilities, and the subsequent geopolitical changes that followed, meant that the two headquarters found themselves on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless, Neumann continued to operate from the two bases, maintaining communication both legally and illegally as far as the East German authorities were concerned. The construction of the Berlin Wall made this communication more difficult, and eventually Neumann in Gefell was transformed into a state controlled outfit, but still manufacturing microphones, including the legendary M7 capsule, in the tried and tested Neumann way. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the company was returned to private ownership, but now trading under the new name of Microtech Gefell. Given this history and provenance, you’d forgive MG for adopting the conservative strategy, but both externally and under the skin, the UM930 doesn’t quite fit the mould. First impressions are of a beautifully engineered microphone, which manages to look modern and classic at the same time. The review model shipped with an integral swivel mount that has a touch of the ‘Thunderbirds’ about it, but isn’t trying too hard to make a statement. Functionally, the UM930 is a variable pattern large diaphragm capacitor microphone. The dual capsules are completely independent of each other (i.e. no shared backplate), and feature sophisticated internal shockmounting to minimise mechanical vibration. A series of rubber ‘O’ rings adorn the main body of the microphone, but these aren’t simply decoration, as they allow a firm grip to be had when selecting the polar pattern, which is achieved by twisting the entire centre section of the microphone. This flicks smoothly and precisely from position to position with rifle-bolt like accuracy, and offers a choice of omni, wide cardioid, cardioid, hypercardioid and fig-8 polar patterns. Electrical switching is actually performed by reed-relays, which mute the output giving pop-free pattern selection even when the mic is powered and gained up. A small green LED just inside the forward side of the head grille lights up when phantom power is applied, and switches on and off as the patterns are changed to reflect this muting. Output is transformerless, and the quoted self-noise is extremely low at 7dBA. According to MG, one of the ways this has been achieved is by decoupling the phantom power from the microphone’s electronics using an opto-isolator circuit, allegedly removing any noise component that may be present in the power source. Plugging the microphone in suggests no reason to doubt the published noise figure — this is a very resolution

quiet microphone. Initial tests using (relatively thin) male vocals with the wide cardioid pattern showed a very controlled, useable sound straight out of the box. Proximity effect is smooth and progressive, and even very close up there is no hint of boominess to the response. What is very nice though, is the way in which the mic works around the 1-3kHz region of both male and female vocals. There is a detectable presence lift, but spread very evenly across a wide range, which means that with almost any voice it does the trick of getting a nice intimate sound while never sounding too peaky. A more noticeable bump around 10k gives a little bit of air to the sound, but without exaggerating sibilance too much. Overall, on vocals the UM930 was a winner. Its overall tonality is not quite as ‘in your face’ as a Brauner Phantom, not quite as brutally honest as a 414, and not quite as soft around the edges as a U87. But while these three microphones can sound absolutely gorgeous with one voice, and completely unsuitable on another, the UM930 seemed consistently good with every voice I tried it on. Moving to a slightly different application, I tried it on a cello while recording some pedal notes to thicken up a synth pad. Some experimentation with the various pick-up patterns proved that the on-axis response does change quite significantly across the three cardioid settings, with progressively more HF lift as the pattern narrows. Far from being a problem, though, this proved to be a very effective way of ‘tuning’ the mic to pull some of the string detail out of the instrument. More impressive was the way in which the UM930 remained very consistent and predictable at different distances, helped by the fact that the off-axis response of the cardioid patterns is noticeably less coloured than something like a 414. On the minus side, despite the internal shockmount arrangements, the fixed clip on the review model didn’t offer quite the degree of mechanical isolation I’d have liked and ,while this might seem minor, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to change this for the optional suspension mount as it is physically part of the body. In other words, you have to know which mount you need when you order the microphone. Other than that, MG has produced a jewel of a microphone that succeeds in looking and sounding like a modern classic. Highly recommended. ■

PROS

Very flexible in application; nice tonal balance; quiet; elegantly packaged.

CONS

Changing fixed clip for suspension mount not straightforward or easy; not much else.

EXTRAS

Microtech Gefell’s M 990 vacuum tube-condenser uses a large diameter gold sputtered plastic membrane and has a valve preamp equipped with a pentode working as a triode. The complete system includes the M 990 in a wooden case, N 920.1 power supply, C 92.1 microphone cable and an elastic suspension.

Contact MICROTECH GEFELL, GERMANY: Website: www.microtechgefell.com

September 2007

DIGIDESIGN ICON

“With ICON’s automation and complete recall, I have the flexibility to work on one mix then switch to another, picking it up exactly where I left off— something I couldn’t do in any other sy stem. And it’s not just ease of use that does it for me—the plug-ins or its subsidiaries or divisions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

INTEGRATED INTEGRATED CONSOLE CONSOLE

are fantastic and the sound quality is superb—there is absolutely nothing missing in it!” Visit www.digidesign.com/icon to learn more about the ICON integrated console.

Mike Shipley Mix Engineer (Nickelback, Maroon 5, Green Day , Tom Petty , Aerosmith)

For ICON enquiries, email ICONuk@digidesign.com.

Tchad Blake | Mix Engineer

Metropolis

Ray Hedges | Producer

Sheryl Crow, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello

London, United Kingdom

Towers of London, Bryan Adams, Take That

Fully modular, state-of-the-art console control • Pro Tools|HD Accel DSP and I/O resources • 192 kHz sample rate support Industry’s finest plug-in options • Automatic Delay Compensation • Integrated video and delivery • Total session recall

review

SCS Sound Forge 9 Professional It’s one of the longest lived software products and has spanned back through changes of company ownership, yet Sony Creative Software’s Version 9 package of the venerable Sound Forge includes CD Architect 5, Noise Reduction 2 plug-ins, and a Mastering Effects Bundle. ROB JAMES recaptures his youth.

Y THE STANDARDS applied to digital audio software go and as the V9 suffix indicates, Sound Forge has been around for a long time. For more than ten years it has been an essential toolbox for PC audio professionals. When I last auditioned Sound Forge its creators, Sonic Foundry, were still in charge. Since the Sony Creative Software (formerly Sony Media Software) takeover a number of rough edges have disappeared and the program feels a lot more polished. For UK£204 (+ VAT) you get not only SF 9 but also CD Architect 5.2, Noise Reduction 2 plug-ins and the Mastering Effects Bundle powered by iZotope. Wavelab and Sound Forge are often seen as direct rivals. I’m not so sure this is the case. Sound Forge is a great toolkit for operating on individual files with up to 8 channels while Wavelab is arguably better for more creative activities, especially thanks to the ‘Montage’ feature. If truth be told I would be very sorry to part with either of them as I use them for different purposes. For example, extracting the audio from an AVI is easy enough in most DAWs but the ability to put it back again is less common and often fiddly. Sound Forge can do this with comparative ease. I don’t propose to list every item in Sound Forge’s extensive features locker since most of it will already be familiar. V9 is a substantial upgrade and brings more than enough new features for a single article. The first thing to endear me to this version was the familiar (at least in video circles) JKL keyboard scrub control. This follows the usual conventions in that a single press on J and L play forwards and backwards respectively (hurrah!), K stops and multiple presses on J or L increase the play speed to 2X, 4X or 8X nominal. If you’ve never had this facility you won’t believe just how easy it makes editing and navigation. Process and Effects dialogs have been given a makeover and seem more logical than I remember from earlier versions. A new Hardware Meters window makes adjusting preview monitoring levels much simpler. 30

Phase Scope and mono compatibility meter options have been added to the main meters window. There are a couple of interesting display options for the Phase Scope. In addition to the ‘Lisajous Rotated’ and ‘Lisajous X-Y Plot’ you usually get on a goniometer, this one has ‘Polar - Linear Plot’ and ‘Polar - Circular Plot’. The latter proved to be very useful and a lot more intuitive than the more common display. At long last Sound Forge supports multichannel files with up to 8 channels for 7.1 surround. These files can be edited just as you would mono or stereo. Of course, with suitable hardware you can also make multichannel recordings. Sony correctly makes the point that Sound Forge is not intended as a full-blown multichannel editor in the same vein as Vegas or Acid so, while you can alter levels of the individual channels, there are no conveniences such as surround panners or divergence controls. A channel convertor is provided to enable simple channel reassignment, downmixing, etc. but so far as I could discover there is no way of combining a group of individual channel source files into a single multichannel file except by copying and pasting the elements into an empty multichannel file. Files can be AC3-encoded with fixed parameters only, but then the full version would cost a lot more than Sound Forge 9. The Noise Reduction 2 plug-ins that used to be offered as an additional cost extra are now included as standard. If you take CEDAR as the ‘Gold Standard’ in noise reduction then there is a pecking order among the others. Sound Forge Noise reduction is up there with the best of the rest but still surpassed by CEDAR, however, like the full AC3 encoder, a single CEDAR process would probably cost more than the whole Sound Forge package... The iZotope Mastering Effects plug-ins proved to be a bit of a puzzle at first. In the absence of any written instructions I simply installed them but no screen appeared asking for the serial number. Turns out it only asks for the serial number when you attempt to use one of the plug-ins. The four Mastering Effects — EQ, Limiter, Reverb and Multiband Compressor — are interesting and I liked the reverb. But, adjusting certain parameters causes gaps in real-time preview playback. To prove the point I also tried a couple of other reverb plug-ins with Sound Forge. These could be adjusted with no gaps at all. resolution

Gracenote MusicID technology has been added to CD extraction. If the PC is connected to the net, automatic labelling for extracted CD tracks is just a click away. These are just the headlines. Numerous detailed improvements add to the offer. Any application that has survived as long as Sound Forge will have balanced on a delicate tightrope between keeping up with the opposition and retaining its original appeal. For example, producing a ‘quick and dirty’ CD in no time at all has always been a major strength of Wavelab. Now Sound Forge is almost as quick and even that small discrepancy may be due simply to lack of familiarity. However, CD Architect did not like my Plextor SATA DVD/CD burner. Attempting to burn a CD resulted in CD Architect crashing with a lock-up at the ‘Scanning for Drives’ stage. Simply disabling the Plextor cured the problem and burning using my other Pioneer (PATA) drive was uneventful. One problem with fast and powerful tools that mess around with the dangerous stuff, like file headers, is that it is more difficult to legislate for the idiocy of the users. Sound Forge can be crashed. If you do something illogical, for example trying to use a synth as a processing plug-in, it will bite you. More than ten years on, Sound Forge remains a must have. Batch processing, scripting and other productivity features keep it at the top of its game. Throw into the mix FM synthesis, Noise Reduction 2 together with the estimable Acoustic Mirror convolving reverb and the iZotope Mastering plug-ins and Sound Forge has something for everyone. ■

PROS

Essential toolkit; desirable plug-ins; real improvement over earlier versions.

CONS

Not crashproof; issues with certain burners; more of a toolbox than a cuddly creative environment.

Contact SONY CREATIVE SOFTWARE: Website: www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/ UK, SCV London: + 44 208 4181470

September 2007

AT4050:

created by one, used by everyone. Before a product becomes so legendary that it is used by everyone, someone has to create it. When Akino-san, an employee of Audio-Technica for many years, spent hundreds of hours on the creation of the AT4050, he was working to obtain the AT4050’s superb quality of sound reproduction. Not only did he succeed in his ambition, but today, the AT4050 is used all over the world in a wide variety of applications, from recording studios to live sound to broadcast. And when he’s not creating legends, Akino-san loves the serenity of fishing. Audio-Technica’s range of studio microphones start from just £100*. To find out more, email info@audio-technica.co.uk or telephone +44 (0) 113 292 0461. *AT2020 suggested retail price

www.audio-technica.com

review

SSL Alpha Channel Going to places and hitting markets that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never thought youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d see the brand in, SSL now seems an increasingly go-ahead and dynamic company. GEORGE SHILLING looks at a box you might have been forgiven for thinking theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never make.

HE AWS900 MOVED SSL on from being the lumbering giant of stratospherically-priced giant consoles, and since then the firm has been innovating while maximising its heritage and reputation, with the Duality console headlining the range. The Alpha Channel is one of the brightest examples of this new thinking, and, priced at less than half the cost of its E Signature and XLogic channel strips, it is clear that it is targeting the project market. Despite the relative low-cost, this unit is British made, very sleekly designed and built, and really very well featured â&#x20AC;&#x201C;- youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d easily be fooled into thinking it was German or Far Eastern. The box even comes in a full-colour sleeve that makes the package look highly desirable. Taking the form of a conventional recording channel, the Alpha features a preamp that includes SSLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s VHD (Variable Harmonic Distortion) circuitry, and a simple 3-band EQ, which is broadly similar to that found on G Series desksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; stereo channels. Dynamics are handled with a oneknob â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Lite Limiterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Connectivity includes analogue inserts and SPDIF (up to 96kHz clocked externally). The knobs are typically SSL â&#x20AC;&#x201D; small, usefully colour-coded, and with a good amount of resistance to adjustment, making them sexy to tweak and hard to knock accidentally. The pushbuttons are something of a departure from conventional SSL components, but these illuminating buttons continue the great tradition of SSL visual clarity, showing their status clearly, and two of them even change colour with level to show peaks and limiting. The only slight criticisms are some unnecessarily tiny legending, and a lack of frequency calibration around the EQ knobs. The front panel is elegantly finished with a slight curvature, and includes a power button that glows dimly in standby. The power supply is onboard and, despite the budget nature of the Alpha, it will work at all voltages with no switching required; there is even

a separate earth grounding connection. Input is via a Neutrik Combo jack on the front panel, and with a Hi-Z switch, phantom power, and a Pad, all sources are catered for. Output on the rear is via a balanced stereo jack; an XLR would have been preferable, but this is one of the very few signs of cost-saving. There is no input metering, but one of the illuminating buttons helps here, with the Pad button turning red on overload peaks. Next to the Gain pot is the VHD knob. With this turned down, you get all the qualities of a SuperAnalogue mic preamp â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it is as clean as a whistle, natural and open sounding, with possibly just a touch of perceived HF enhancement â&#x20AC;&#x201D; otherwise it was almost indistinguishable from the clean Prism Maselec preamp I had at the time. And there is plenty of gain, with an indicated 75dB, plus another +/-20dB on the Output Gain. With enough input gain, any overloads can theoretically be given a touch of 2nd, or increasingly 3rd order harmonics as the VHD knob is increased. But having heard the Duality version of this at a demo, I was somewhat disappointed with this implementation. On vocals it seems to sound little different than just overdriving the mic preamp, and this only seems to work just below the level at which nasty overloading occurs. The knob just seems to add a little subtle extra drive, and nothing much happens until the input gain is set precisely at the threshold of overloading with the Pad light turning red. Full-on drive sounds rich on some instruments, but it is hard to set the Gain precisely for this to work, and this doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the warmth and crunch that I think I remember hearing on the Duality, which seemed more variable and sounded great on a drum loop. Next comes the Insert switching section. On the rear are useful separate jacks for insert send and return, and this can be set pre- or post-EQ, and by pressing Sum you can even combine the insert send and return signals, perhaps for mixing compressed and

uncompressed signal, or adding an effect. The HighPass Filter can be switched to three different (all useful) corner frequencies; these cover most situations apart from special effects, when you can use the Low band on the EQ instead. Although not properly explained in the manual, SSL has made intelligent use of the extra channel of SPDIF and making different processing arrangements on each channel possible by different setting of the Insert buttons. For example, you can set one of the outputs pre- insert, EQ and limiter, and the other one to post. You can therefore record both, and if, say, the EQ was great for monitoring while recording but turns out to be excessive, you already have a backup plan. The 3-band EQ is simple, classic SSL and gives you just about all you need for recording tasks. The High and Low bands cover a wide range of frequencies, and the Low has a Bell button for zoning in fairly tightly on certain frequencies, like black-knob ESeries. The mid-band is fully parametric but only goes down to 0.3kHz, often not really low enough for taking out the boom while using the Low band to give some oomph. The High band is powerful without being harsh, perfect for general brightening. The Output Gain knob is accompanied by the Lite Limit button that enables a peak-catching limiter to avoid overloading the digital output. This is effective, sounding fairly invisible when used sensibly, but still lets through the odd slight overload. Attack is fast, release not quite so, and this easily sounds more funky on a drum loop than VHD on the Alpha Channel! The green-lit button turns red at the threshold. At the far right of the panel a LED output meter and A-DC Lock indicator give further visual clues. Previous SSL outboard came at a premium price and it seemed you were paying extra for the name badge. Despite a few limitations, the Alpha Channel represents very good value even if the attentiongrabbing VHD section seems a bit of a let-down. For overdubbing individual instruments or vocals into a DAW, this is without doubt an excellent choice for the money. If you need more than one channel, multiple units make sense as the limiters can be linked, and for simpler mic channels on a budget, there is the newer VHD four-channel mic preamp. â&#x2013;

PROS

Good value; great sound; SPDIF; excellent build quality.

CONS

Jack-only output; VHD disappointing; limited EQ flexibility; poor EQ frequency legending.

Contact SOLID STATE LOGIC, UK: Website: www.solid-state-logic.com

AT THE OF AUDIO 192kHz Professional Range

AKMâ&#x201E;˘ is the brand name of Asahi EMD Corporationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ICâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

AK4396 AK4397 AK4620B AK4125 AK4113 AK5385B AK5394A

Low power 120dB DAC 32 Bit Premium Sound DAC New Space saving 114dB CODEC Master clock free SRC AES/EBU DIR inc. 6 ch.selector Pro Standard 114dB ADC Industry leading 123dB ADC

AKM COM PRO From advanced mixing consoles, music on the go, cinema, live performance you name it - AKM mixed signal technology is there. From mastering grade ADC to our space saving CODECS, AKM has the professional solution. AKMâ&#x201E;˘ is the brand name of Asahi Kasei EMD Corporation ICs 32

resolution

September 2007

Fascinated scientists since 19 05:

Fascinates sound engineers today:

No compromises

When perfection is the goal, there is only one convincing

answer: the mc 90 from Lawo. Because the mc 90 guarantees the best possible result in the most challenging 2

production situations. And because this new, top-of-the-range, console sets new standards – thanks to its maximum flexibility, double redundancy, up to 200 physical faders, and its intuitive user control interface.

Welcome to the next generation of audio technology. Welcome to Lawo.

IBC Amsterdam, 7 th - 11 th September, Hall 8, Booth 8. 371

Lawo AG · Rastatt/Germany · +49 7222 1002-0 · w w w.lawo. d e

review

RMG Studio Master 900 If you’re looking for analogue tape to lace through that machine in the corner then your choices are limited but still better than they were a while back. JON THORNTON looks at some 2-inch while ZENON SCHOEPE heats up some ¼-inch.

EGGARS CAN’T BE choosers they say, and as world-wide stocks of Quantegy GP9 dry up, analogue die-hards aren’t exactly spoilt for choice when it comes to procuring 2-inch tape. So it was with a sense of both relief and curiosity that I opened a carton containing two 10.5-inch reels of RMG’s SM 900 2-inch tape. As it is line-up compatible with GP9 in terms of fluxivity and bias setting, it should prove to be a seamless transition for ex-Quantegy customers.

Of course, the tape itself should be exactly the same as the old Emtec SM 900 formulation, but given that GP9 was my last reel of choice, it made more sense for me to compare the two. The technical specs show that the two brands are very close — both have a nominal operating level of 320nWb/m and both suggest an overbias of 1.5dB for a machine with a 0.25 mil head gap. Tests were conducted on our venerable Otari MTR90-II running at 30ips with no noise reduction.

Starting with a line-up of 0 = 320nWb/m, a variety of instruments were recorded to a pristine reel of SM 900 and a not quite so pristine (used once) reel of GP9. In the interests of fairness, as well as direct recordings from the desk of drums, bass, guitar and vocal, a ‘control’ recording from Pro Tools was also bounced to each reel. Initial impressions were that the SM 900 performed well, if not a little better than the GP9. There was a slightly lower noise floor and slightly better HF extension with the SM 900 compared to the GP9, although you have to take into account that the GP9 was not fresh out of the box. With the 320 lineup, pushing the desk’s bus levels started to move into gentle tape compression and the beginnings of saturation on cymbals, bass guitar, kick and snare — but the desk’s buses were starting to sound a little strained as a result. I have to say that because of this I generally run GP9 a little hotter in terms of line-up anyway — anywhere between 4 and 6dB over 250nWb/m (roughly between 400 and 500nWb/m as a nominal operating level), depending on application. Having reset the machine line-up to 450nWb/m nominal, the same recording tests were run, with the result that I could more fully explore the way in which the tapes dealt with the onset of saturation. Here the GP9 came out on top, as it seemed to take that little more level and have a more progressive compression effect before the saturation (particularly on cymbals) stopped sounding warm and just sounded horrible and fuzzy. Certainly I’d exercise a little more restraint with operating levels when using the SM 900. Apart from this, any Quantegy users should find the transition pretty painless (technically at least, if not on the pocket!) ■

PROS

A consistent and quality product; sounds great.

CONS

You don’t have a choice.

Contact RMG INTERNATIONAL, THE NETHERLANDS: Website: www.rmgi.nl

Quarter-inch SM 900

I’ve been a long-time Emtec/BASF Studio Master 900 ¼-inch user and had the opportunity to contrast and compare the new RMG SM 900 directly to my stocks of BASF SM 900 ‘good stuff’. I believe you can tell a lot about ¼-inch by how it sounds — not off the repro head, you understand, but through the transport. I don’t know how significant this is but the RMG seemed to wrap far more smoothly than my original SM 900. I’d expect that characteristic to be carried through to the 2-inch. I put it on my Tascam ATR-60 without adjustment and ran it through at a variety of levels at 15ips and at 7.5ips just for curiosity. For entertainment value I spliced together lengths of BASF with the RMG onto the same reel. On general normal levels I couldn’t hear the joins although this may be testament to the integrity of my splicing (ahem!). Hammering the tape harder and some differentiation emerged; the BASF seemed to tilt towards the HF whereas the RMG remained more balanced. I’d be hard pushed to state a preference on this as I could see benefits to both but what sobered me up was that I took another unopened reel of BASF SM 900 and spliced some of that in, and that sounded different again. I’m conscious of not comparing like with like here. The big difference was the unmistakable ‘analogue smell’ that permeated through the room from the RMG whereas the BASF, despite the fact that it had never been played or out of its plastic bag, was less dramatic. That really is the crux of it; the RMG SM 900 was made in the last month and I could buy boxes more of it tomorrow. My BASF SM 900 is old and, now I think about it, I really ought to use the stuff up. Let’s face it, my friends, it’s not like we’re talking about fine French wine here. The RMG 900 is good, there’s no doubt about it, and I’d like to try some of the 911 to see how I get on with that. If you were an Emtec/BASF SM 900 user then

moving over to the RMG product will be a breeze, and if you were a Quantegy user, well, it’s all there is so get over it. You’ll hear talk of ‘consistency issues’ in the chat rooms but to my mind that just legitimises RMG SM 900 because that’s one of those ‘in the know’ phrases that analogue tape users have been throwing into conversations for decades. Get your machine out, line it up and try some for yourself. It sounds and smells great.

resolution

September 2007

Audio

perfection

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

review

Waves API Collection It was only a matter of time but an officially sanctioned set of API plugs has been on the cards for a while and that they should come from Waves is encouraging. GEORGE SHILLING plugs into some of his favourite outboard.

ITH THE PROLIFERATION of SSL and Neve emulations that have appeared over the last couple of years, it is perhaps inevitable that there would be an officially licensed set of plug-ins based on these well-loved API (Automated Processes Inc.) analogue processors. URS had an unofficial attempt at modelling some of the API hardware, but this from Waves is an officially sanctioned release. Waves now provides emulations of the three most respected players in the analogue console world, with the official SSL 4000 Collection and the unofficial Neve-based V-Series. API developed its 2520 op-amp in the late 1960s, and several original module designs are still available. This collection comprises three vintage EQ channels and the more recent 2500 bus compressor. Oddly, the simpler 525 compressor is absent. Waves’ tedious installation and authorisation process is more complex than most manufacturers’ and I have yet to have this complete smoothly for any demos, and this was no exception. There is also the matter of WUP (Waves Update Plan) for purchasers, meaning that an already expensive purchase gradually becomes more so. Furthermore, the reselling procedure seems rather complex. The plugs support TDM, RTAS, AudioSuite, MAS, VST, DirectX and AU formats, and in Pro Tools show up in all the expected places. Opening any of them, I was initially surprised by the enormity of the window size — this seems to be current policy with Waves as other recent releases boast similarly large graphics. This seems rather incongruous with the rather diminutive hardware API equivalents but it is welcome, things are easier to see and manipulate, and it makes sense as LCD screens get ever larger and cheaper. Dialling up the EQ plug-ins you are confronted with a huge screen full of lovely authentic graphic recreations, with a few helpful modifications. The dual-concentric knobs are beautifully modelled, with clever implementation of controls using up/down and left/right mouse control for the different knobs, with helpful little arrow indicators appearing as you hover over them. All controls have a pop-up value display when adjusted. The three EQ plug-ins include vintage-style metering at the top, these have a range of 30dB up to 0dBFS, but have been designed to look like VUs, with a Clip ‘LED’. There is an extra panel with +/-18dB gain on a knob, Peak level readout, Polarity switching, and an Analog On/Off switch, which theoretically defeats emulation of (one assumes) analogue distortion, and a small amount of hiss in the case of the EQs. With EQ applied, selecting Analog On can sometimes add a certain extra low-mid poke, but this is all rather subtle and no difference was detected with the EQ set flat. The 550A three-band EQ is based on a 1960s design, the hardware version of which was reissued in 2004. I loved using originals on the c.1977 API console at RAK studios. The character of these is smooth, simple and musical — it’s the kind of EQ that is difficult to get wrong with gentle peaks and shelves with ‘proportional Q’ at useful fixed frequencies. It is less ‘butch’ than vintage Neve and the Waves version 36

seems very similar. The shelving and filter buttons are augmented with extra indicators. The 550B is a similar unit that features an extra band and more frequency settings that overlap across the bands, although it lacks the A’s band pass Filter. But half the fun of these is the limited operation — boost and cut are in 2dB steps (offering +/-12dB) and the A offers just 5 frequencies on each of its three bands, whose bandwidths are non-adjustable. The B offers seven on each of its four bands. Both 550 plug-ins sound as crisp and airy as the real thing, extreme boosts never sound nasty, although the plugins seem to introduce less noise than an analogue patching arrangement might! The 560 is a graphictype EQ, again a vintage design, and this also uses a ‘Proportional Q’, i.e. small boosts cover a wider range, and more extreme boosts (and cuts) narrow the bandwidth. This makes it just about the smoothest and most forgiving graphic EQ that you are likely to encounter, and this is surely one of the most ‘analogue’ sounding plug-ins in existence. The only slight daftness is the unnecessary vertical orientation — the URS version sensibly orientates this sideways. The 2500 is modelled on the hardware rackmount stereo mix bus compressor that was launched in 2000. resolution

This excellent unit boasts some unique features. The original’s 1u front panel layout has been shunted into three rows with logical sections and the output gain and Analog switch on a panel similar to the EQ plugs, although here you also have the option of auto-gain makeup. To be honest, I was initially disappointed with this plug-in, it seemed to somehow lack the ‘wow’ factor of the hardware unit, and I thought this emulation was less successful than the EQs, particularly in Feed Back mode. However, I initially judged this by transplanting it across an existing mix. When I started using it on subgroups and individual instruments, I started to fall in love with it almost as much as I had the hardware. The Thrust circuit works beautifully, filtering the sidechain and allowing great squashing of programme without big bass drum beats messing it all up. With the hardware I almost always prefer the Feed Back compression type, but somehow here the Feed Forward seems to sound even better in many instances. There is a knob to select variable percentages of stereo linking, plus three different filtering options for the link — perhaps these are of more interest to mastering engineers, but they are nevertheless useful in situations where stereo image is important. As with all Waves plug-ins, their excellent proprietary filing system is included, and some useful starting points are provided with the extensive presets. They are fairly economical with resources, so it is perfectly possible to have a large quantity of these on multitrack channels, although the 560 was fussier, refusing to open without free Accel (rather than Process) chips. The API Collection (TDM US$2000; native $1000)is obviously not quite the same as having the hardware, and the best API tool is surely the mic preamp, so that obviously fails to make an appearance here. But these are fine tools, bringing some character and life to the safe world of digital mixing. You don’t need them, but you will want them! ■

PROS

Thoroughly designed plug-ins with great attention to detail; it’s fun to have a large number of API EQs on your ITB mix; excellent graphics.

CONS

Expensive; WUP; you still need some API 512C mic preamps for the full effect! Emulations still lack some of the character of the hardware originals; No 525.

Contact WAVES, ISRAEL: Website: www.waves.com

September 2007

better stronger faster

Final Cut Pro

Pro Tools

Logic Pro

Nuendo

Pyramix

Digital Performer

250 x faster than MIDI EuCon is a high-speed, high-resolution, Ethernet protocol that allows Euphonix control surfaces to directly communicate with any software application. Bring your Mac & PC workstations to life and work faster, more efficiently and more creatively.

System 5-MC

S5 Fusion

System 5

review

Universal Audio DCS Remote Pre You would expect Universal Audio to be good at analogue and it has proved it can also do digital with confidence, yet the move to digitally controlled analogue may puzzle some. ROB JAMES gets in the box and interprets the thinking.

S A LOGICAL extension to its activity in analogue and digital technologies, Universal Audio has launched a series of DAW ‘expansion and enhancement’ products under the name of Desktop Console System (DCS). Designed in partnership with Euphonix founders Scott and Rob Silfvast, DCS aims to combine the UA pedigree with the utility of a DCA (Digitally Controlled Analogue) console in a convenient ‘micro-console’ desktop format. The first product is the Remote Preamp and it will be followed by a monitor controller, the Monitor

Master. Both follow the model of a base unit with a desktop remote controller connected by DCS-Link. The UK£699 (+ VAT) DCS Remote Preamp brings together two mic pres with low cut filters and DI capability, monitoring including EQ and reverb, metering and talkback. All the audio connections are on the Base Unit including headphones. The mic preamps use a completely different technology to other UA products. In this case the inputs are a transformerless so-called ‘transimpedance’ design. According to Scott and Rob Silfvast, ‘Fundamentally,

Bricking it

The Base Unit is about the size and weight of a large brick and, unusually, the power supply is a fixed voltage type. Eleven ¼-inch jacks deal with stereo cue in and out (headphones), secondary unbalanced preamp outputs for splits or amplifier feeds, and balanced pre outputs and secondary Speaker outputs, Instrument/ Line inputs, cue inputs and continuous or switched talkback mic out. Two XLRs provide the mic inputs and an RJ45 is the DCS-Link to the remote. The surface is neatly divided into logical sections. Each input channel is identical with DI, phantom, phase reverse, dB/Lock, two Lo Cut buttons and two Peak LEDs. When the dB button is lit, input gain is permanently displayed except when another control is moved. Holding the dB button for a couple of seconds lights the Lock LED and locks the input Channel controls. Between the input channels lie six buttons. The top two increment/decrement parameter values and the LEDs flash to indicate that they are available. The other four buttons are for invoking output gain trim, routing the cue mix to the meters and for engaging stereo and A+B modes or M/S decoding when both are pressed. Two knobs below the Input sections determine the level of each sent to the cue mix and the centre knob switches the reverb on and controls the amount sent to the cue mix. The button below allows one of the nine reverb presets to be chosen and, when held, switches the reverb between A, B and A+B. At the bottom, the Talk button is on the left. Pressing the decrement button while pressing Talk locks the talkback on. Cue Input level to cue mix pot, Lo (85Hz) and Hi (14kHz) EQ buttons, Cue mix Volume, Cue Input Mute (also Cue Input level Trim when held) and Speaker Mute buttons complete the control count. A small talkback mic is mounted in the panel. Monitor Lo and Hi EQ can be set at flat or +/-3, 6, 9 or 12dB.

resolution

a “transimpedance” circuit is one that converts current to voltage. The term applies to the DCS Remote Preamp design because a transimpedance gain stage lies at the heart of the current-feedback instrumentation amplifier employed in our design.’ Whatever the technology, these mic pres are no slouch as they’re quiet and unobtrusive. Low cut filters at 30Hz, 70Hz or 100Hz and -18dB/octave work in conjunction with the preamps rather than after them and are thus able to provide a valuable 5dB extra LF headroom. DI input uses a special highimpedance and high-voltage amplifier stage capable of accepting +/-18V swings. The remote controller connects to the mainframe via a single Cat-5 Ethernet cable. This can be up to 90m long. The meter section can be parallel with the rest of the controller surface or tilted up for easier viewing by removing four Allen screws and replacing them in different holes. Positioning of the RJ45 socket on the underside of the meter unit means that when the meters are in the flat position the cable is permanently under strain. On powering up the unit, the meters are backlit and the three character alpha display immediately below shows a single horizontal bar at the top of the middle digit. Moving any control brings its value to the alpha, this is very slick and completely intuitive. This display uses bright and clear orange LEDs, considerably preferable to the red variety. Operational button logic is well suited to people with the ‘quick prod’ approach because in normal operation the switch action occurs when the button is released not, as is more usual, when it is pressed. Reverb is 48kHz 20-bit with 9 presets. This is primarily intended to sweeten the raw mic signal(s) for cue purposes but can equally well be recorded if desired. It’s a doddle to set up a couple of mics for recording and to provide a decent monitor mix. It all feels very natural and drama free. The DCS Remote Preamp should have a lot going for it as a recording front-end. However, the gain controls move in 1dB increments so zipper noise is a possibility and I was sorry not to have the option of limiters to tame the more unruly transients. I’m more than a little surprised that the designers didn’t see fit to include A-D conversion to complete the picture. This means that it cannot be a one-stop solution and brings all the potential problems of level matching with someone else’s convertor. At the very least I hope UA finishes the job with a matching convertor unit. Despite these omissions this is a very likeable unit. The Remote Preamp feels like a proper piece of kit and its design antecedents are evident in both audio quality and ingenious control. ■

PROS

Clean and anonymous sound; clever control system; versatility thanks to remote control.

CONS

No A-D conversion; no headphone output on the Remote; no limiter.

Contact UNIVERSAL AUDIO, USA: Website: www.uaudio.com UK, Source: +44 208 962 5080

September 2007

Character of sound. Clarity of purpose. Black Series redefines the art of creating a classic signal path. The exceptional transparency of David Dearden's audio path design has been married to unique transformer coupled, discrete Class A technology, to provide the ultimate tool for creating and controlling classic character and complexity.

Black Series < The Dark Art > Distributed in the UK by Stirling.Tel. 020 8963 4790 Email info@stirlingtrading.com

www.stirlingtrading.com www.audient.co.uk

Totally Flexible. Sonically Superior. Modular Audio Processing System Five wart hogs gossips, and tickets incinerated two partly schizophrenic Macintoshes. Afghanistan comfortably tickled aardvarks, even though umpteen dwarves ran away. One quite irascible ticket very drunkenly bought the pawnbrokers. Umpteen speedy tickets comfortably tastes two obese subways, however five pawnbrokers annoyingly telephoned the almost speedy elephant. Two mats quite drunkenly auctioned off the sheep.

review

Benchmark PRE420 Continuing the mission for sonic perfection that it has applied to its convertors, Benchmark is now addressing the business of mic preamplification. JON THORNTON says the results are remarkable.

YRACUSE-BASED BENCHMARK MEDIA are clearly a company who take audio seriously. I’m not implying here that other manufacturers don’t, of course, but everything about Benchmark, from mission statement to documentation to the products themselves is imbued with a dogmatic approach to nothing less than technical perfection. A small example, while most manufacturers would be content to simply publish the tech specs for their offerings as a summary of figures, a full 14 pages of the user manual, including eight pages of actual measurement plots from an AP test set, are devoted to this. Some might feel this is a little excessive for a 4channel mic preamplifier, but it does set the scene well for what is a truly impressive piece of 1u hardware (UK£1,899 + VAT). As well as offering said four channels of preamp, the PRE420 also includes an internal stereo mixer, and some simple but useful monitoring functions, making it suited to location recording in addition to studio-bound duties. As you’ve probably guessed, the intention here was not to build a mic pre with bags of individuality and character, but instead to aim for the least possible colouration and signal degradation between input and output. As such, all inputs and outputs are electronically balanced without a transformer in sight, and there are no pretensions towards thermionic warmth. Instead, a quick peek under the hood reveals a most beautifully designed PCB, with plenty of surface-mount ICs and high spec components. In fact, the PCB itself is important, as it’s a multilayer design that creates a threedimensional shield around all signal traces. Coupled with proprietary RF input filters, this helps to create a device with impressive RFI immunity. Popping the lid back on, a brief inspection of the rear panel shows mic level inputs on XLRs, with each channel having a direct output also on XLR. The unit’s internal mixer delivers a stereo mix output and also a stereo control room feed. The front panel controls are mounted on a reassuringly weighty front plate, and the metal knobs feel equally solid and weighty. Each of the four channels has a gain control, with 41 indented steps allowing precise channel-tochannel matching. By default, the gain range is 22dB to 60dB although comprehensive instructions are included to recalibrate the unit internally to achieve maximum gain anywhere between 50 and 70dB. Three pushbuttons per channel offer a 20dB pad, a 40

40Hz high pass filter, and phantom power selection. Metering is rudimentary but effective; you get a signal present LED that changes its intensity with increasing signal level, and a red Over indicator that lights up well before either the individual channel or the mix amp have run out of headroom. All four channels are permanently assigned to the internal mix bus via a pan control on each channel, and a main fader knob at the extreme right of the unit provides overall level control, with its own associated two-LED metering. A separate monitor output is derived from the main stereo bus with its own level control, which feeds the control room outputs at the rear of the unit and a headphone output on the front panel. A small pushbutton on the rear panel can be set so that plugging in a pair of headphones will mute the control room monitor output if required. Adjacent to the control output volume control are five pushbuttons that give some very effective soloing capability to the unit. Each channel has its own (latching) Solo button, and a further button switches between a mono and stereo solo bus. With either a single or multiple channels soloed, this allows the sources to be heard either pre or post the pan control. Despite the relative sparseness of features — or perhaps because of it — in use the unit is delightfully quick, easy and intuitive to set up, the metering in particular is one of the best examples of a two-LED system I’ve come across. Sonically, you are left with two overwhelming impressions. The first is that the unit is extremely quiet on individual channels and the mix bus. Benchmark recommends that unused microphone inputs have the pad engaged to maximise noise performance, but even without you have to struggle to hear any noise-floor with quite healthy amounts of gain on each channel. The second, and this should come as no surprise, is that this isn’t a unit to add any type of sonic signature to the sound. It is extremely transparent sounding on any source, and manages to deal with high harmonics and transients extremely faithfully, but without sounding brittle or harsh. You will want to be careful in choosing what to plug into it, as it is merciless in exposing the inadequacies of some budget capacitor microphones, and some more expensive ones at that. Weaknesses are few and far between. Some might bemoan the lack of a digital output option, but with a unit of this quality it’s likely that a dedicated unit resolution

would be preferable anyway (and Benchmark makes its own if you wanted to keep it in the family). The only thing on my wish list would be some method of linking more than one unit together while keeping a unified stereo and monitor bus, as four channels wouldn’t be enough for many applications. But these are really minor quibbles. Like I said, Benchmark takes audio seriously. While my initial reaction was slight amusement to the perfectionism so much in evidence here, using the PRE420 on a single location recording was enough to wipe the smile off my face. A serious company, and one seriously good piece of kit. ■

PROS

Impressive piece of engineering; astonishingly quiet and accurate; very useful mixer and monitor section.

CONS

Four channels may be too few for some with no cascade facility; might be that little bit too revealing and accurate for some tastes.

EXTRAS

Benchmark’s DAC1 USB is a 192kHz, 24-bit, D-AC with ‘Advanced USB Audio’, which provides high-resolution, bit-transparent playback seconds after plugging into a computer’s USB port for the first time. There is no software to install, and there are no system settings that need to be changed. It is compatible with Vista/XP/2000 and Mac OSX.

The DAC1 USB includes high-current output drivers that can be configured to mute upon headphone insertion. The original DAC1 does not include the USB option or special high-current drivers and both options are available in silver, black, and black rackmountable chassis.

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

September 2007

www.solid-state-logic.com

From A to D via SSL

• Alpha-Link AX (top): ADAT <> Analogue • Alpha-Link MADI AX (centre): MADI <> ADAT <> Analogue • Alpha-Link MADI SX (botttom): MADI <> AES/EBU <> Analogue

In critical studio, live and broadcast applications, quality shouldn’t be compromised at any point in the signal chain. Designed to avoid complicated workarounds and deliver pristine audio, the new Alpha-Link range is a collection of multi-channel audio converters, each featuring 24-channels of analogue I/O with SSL’s premium A-D/D-A converters. The three models offer a choice of digital audio format options, for fast connectivity to MADI-, AES/EBU- and ADAT Lightpipe-equipped hardware. Find out which Alpha-Link is right for you at www.solid-state-logic.com/xlogic

XLogic Alpha-Link. This

is SSL.

Oxford +44 (0)1865 842300 New York +1 (1)212 315 1111 Los Angeles +1 (1)323 549 9090 Paris +33 (0)1 48 67 84 85 Milan +39 039 2328 094 Tokyo +81 (0)3 5474 1144

Steve Orchard A man of many talents and with enough experience and flexibility to cover all eventualities, Steve Orchard typifies the modern studio practitioner. He talks to GEORGE SHILLING about the skillset and using a bottle from an office water cooler for kick drums.

teve Orchard got the recording bug as early as seven or eight years old, when his father Lloyd Orchard dragged him along to big London recording sessions. Orchard Senior was a renowned orchestrator and arranger whose collaborations included George Martin, Paul McCartney and Frank Sinatra, along with a number of film scores. So when (at 17) he took a holiday job at PRT Studios (formerly Pye) he stayed on after the holidays, getting a good grounding assisting on 80s pop hits, along with the likes of Chas & Dave and Motorhead. After a couple of years he moved to AIR, assisting at Oxford Circus, and has remained employed by the organisation until recently, when staff engineers were shifted sideways to AIR Management. In recent years he has been increasingly credited as co-producer, notably on three albums with Travis. But his CV includes a wide variety of projects, from the recent Paul McCartney album to a catalogue of film work with David Arnold and others, many string recordings with artists such as Goldfrapp, George Michael and Dido, and 5.1 mixing for 42

DVD with, for example, Simply Red. An album he recorded tracks for with John Williams and Bela Fleck netted a Grammy, and he was responsible for a lot of the work on the George Martin-produced Glory of Gershwin that featured artists such as Elton John, Elvis Costello, Kate Bush and Robert Palmer, along with challenging ensemble recordings with a film crew present. When Resolution spoke to him at AIR Lyndhurst he was about to embark on a second album with The Zombies (Rod Argent is a distant relative), a project with Israeli megastar Aviv Geffen, mixing The Deciphers and another project that was in discussion, not to mention his own as-yet unnamed personal project. Photos www.recordproduction.com

How did AIR differ from PRT? It was a lot more professional, at PRT there used to be a lot of dance remix sessions going on all night, that didn’t tend to happen so much at AIR, there would be more long-term album projects. The standard of producers and engineers were worldclass, it was great to learn from all these people. resolution

Who did you learn the most from? I worked with Bill Schnee quite a bit, with Dire Straits, he was amazing. When the band started tracking it sounded like a record, he had a great ear for balance. And I think that’s key to a lot of things — the perspective of where things sit, what mics you use… But I think it starts with a great song, a great performance — there’s an order, you get things as good as possible at each stage. How did you learn orchestral recording techniques? At PRT there used to be a lot of brass band stuff and there’d be orchestral things as well, because the room wasn’t as big, you’d get a 30-piece orchestra in there with a squeeze, but then at Oxford Street we used to do a lot of strings sessions, mainly pop overdubs. I got a basic orchestral grounding with that, but it mainly happened when we came to Lyndhurst, working with people like Shawn Murphy, seeing how they do it. How did you learn to work in 5.1? Shawn Murphy was good to watch, it used to be more critical in the early days of surround, with the old Dolby encoders, with phase, you were limited, whereas now with Dolby Digital, the shackles are off. You don’t have to be quite so discrete with everything. It’s much more manageable, in the early days, desks’ centre sections weren’t equipped to deal with 5.1 properly, so you’d be patching directly into amps, using Pro Tools as your volume pot, it was a bit of a headache. September 2007

craft How much experimentation do you do? It depends, if there’s scope for messing around then I’ll do that. I don’t have a standard set of things I always do, I don’t work like that. There must be a few things you generally reach for? Yeah, if you’re recording an orchestra then you absolutely use tried and tested, knowing what it’s going to sound like. I’ve got to the point you can press record on the first take and it’s going to be pretty much there, because you know how loud something is going to be, you’ve got the mic in the right position, and it’s going to work. But if you’re going for a special drum sound then I’m quite often digging up some mic I haven’t used before, and trying different things. How stressful does it get with orchestral sessions? It can be quite tense, but generally it’s often down to the amount of material they’ve got to record, and how much the conductor changes things. Do you try and steer situations? Sometimes, you’re always time-aware, so if someone’s messing around you try and speed it up a bit. You’re now with AIR Management, what’s different? Nothing much has changed. I often work outside anyway, I’ve been working at Strongroom a bit more since Richard Boote got involved. I like it there a lot, it’s quite vibey and the rooms are good. How do you persuade singers to give their best performance? The key is getting a really good headphone balance for them. It’s so important. I listen to what they’re hearing, but with the headphone mixers you can look at someone’s box and the drums are really loud and the vocal’s panned to the right or something, so you re-adjust that and suddenly they get comfortable. So you use personal headphone mixers? Yeah, they’re often used when tracking a band, but with a vocal session I just give them a mix, keep it simple. Just give them a drink, make sure they’re happy, and try and be relaxed about things. I always think it’s best to do vocals in complete takes and get a performance, rather than focusing on words and getting too specific. How do you choose a vocal mic? I’ve got a few favourites, I’ve got a really nice old valve 47, it’s my brother-in-law’s, a fantastic one. I’ll often compare and have two or three mics, do one take, pick a mic and get rid of the other two. Do you match the compression? I’ll often do it without compression and get the levels the same, then once I’m happy, put a compressor on to record. You often don’t have three Ureis, so that gives them a fair shot each. Sometimes a 57 works, it’s not always the 47, it can be too lush and warm, it depends what the song is. How do you mix? If I get the opportunity I always mix on a desk, you get so much more depth. But having said that, I’ve mixed in-the-box a few times, the recallability is fantastic, I love that but it just takes so much longer September 2007

to do anything. I can do a mix on a proper desk in three or four hours, mixing in Pro Tools is 12 hours, two days.

expectations and hopes, and it’s not really that easy. It’s bottlenecking the industry a bit.

Is it easier now for people to become recording engineers? I think it has been opened up, before it was very much a closed-shop, there is quite a lot of publicity with all these schools and colleges around, they’re advertising in GQ or whatever — come and be a recording engineer, making it sound really glamorous.

What do you do differently from other engineers? I mic up drums differently from the way most people do. For overheads, I don’t have them in the regular position, I put them behind the drummer’s ears, you get a great sound there, a really natural balance of the toms, and a good snare sound, depending on what mic you use. TLM170s are particularly good on hypercardioid with pads in. Providing your click track’s not too loud and you’ve got sealed cans, you’re alright! You’ve got to be careful with phase obviously. Also often overdriving a couple of channels as well on drums, I have a couple of crunchy channels where you overdrive the mic preamp ridiculously. If you mic the kit up so it’s quite dry, in a dry room, but because of the amount of gain on the crunchy mic, it turns into a room mic. You don’t have to have a lot of it in, just edge it in and it gives the whole kit a lot of depth and dustiness.

Whereas I’d assume there are less jobs like yours than when you started? Yeah, they’re setting a lot of people up, I don’t think it’s that responsible. They’re making a buck out of it, and people want to do it, because it’s a fun job. It can be hard work, of course. These people are given a certificate that’s Industry Recognised, and they haven’t got a clue. I’ve met a few people who’ve come out of these schools who think they know what’s what, and they really don’t know. I feel sorry for them, because they’ve got all these

And where would those be positioned? I put a U87 with a pad, cardioid, right above the bass drum, pointing at the shell at an angle, with 80dB of gain, near the top, not in front of the skin but just on top of the rim. And I’ve been using a D112 recently — I used to use a Sennheiser 441 — and have that pointing between the side of the snare drum and the rear edge of the bass drum, and drive the gain on that. Depending on how crazy the cymbals are, that’s the only factor. But you just back the gain off a bit, or take a bit of 4kHz out and it’s alright.

Why is that? It’s the mouse-work, fading with the mouse, your hand getting all cramped, then editing it, drawing it again. You end up with so much data management, sorting it out. With a desk it’s so much more instant, I’m happy with SSL or Neve, it depends what the project is, that dictates. For a pop thing I’d go on an SSL, but for an open acoustic sounding band I’d go for a Neve. They both sound great but have slightly different characters.

resolution

craft What about the bass drum? For bass drum I use a FET 47 and generally stay out of the bass drum, near the middle, slightly off-axis, usually skin-off, put a pillow in and a stage weight. If there’s a double skin, I’ll mic up around the hole, pretty standard stuff. I prefer the FET 47 to a D112, which is good sometimes for a deader, more thuddier kick, they’re just slightly muted. You know the NS-10 driver in front of the bass drum trick? Well I use a water bottle from an office cooler, dangle a condenser mic in there and sit it right in front of the bass drum, and just roll off everything above 150Hz, and it’s like an 808, it puts an extra octave on the bass drum. Depending on the track — if you’ve got a quick track, it all gets a bit ﬂatulent! Toms? I tend to use condensers on toms, not 421s, they can sound a bit dense for my taste. The downside of that is you get more spill, but you just edit out where the toms aren’t played, you get the tone and quality with 414s or KM84s. But you work with what you’ve got, 57s are still alright. What has been your most personally satisfying project? The last Travis album we did on the west coast of Scotland was really good fun. It was just a farmhouse and I was thinking, this is going to sound terrible, it’s going to be a nightmare. We’d brought a Pro Tools rig, mic preamps, hired some mics, we had a monitor desk and wedges. It was going to be like a rehearsal thing, record it, see what happens, and the result I got was surprisingly good. The good thing about them is that they don’t use a click, and they’ve got this Travis tempo that they lock into. It’s amazing really, because Resolution Half Page 7/12/06 17:13 Page we’ve replaced the drums on a couple of tracks, and

it was no problem. The first couple of times we did it, I thought, no chance! He was spot-on. And we’ve replaced main lead rhythm acoustic guitars when the track starts with rhythm guitar, and they all just seem to be able to do it.

It must make your life easier? Yeah it’s great. And they speed up and slow down, but they do it together. And working with Paul 2 McCartney was an eye-opener. That was done at

his studio in Rye, he’s got so much enthusiasm, he’s like a nuclear power station of musicality. He can play everything; he’ll put down a piano track, or an acoustic guitar to get the rough arrangement, then he’ll go out behind the drums, do good drum parts, then he’s on the bass, and within four hours you’ve got a track that’s in good shape. And he’s got original Mellotrons from the Abbey Road sessions with the Strawberry Fields tapes; he’ll pick up a guitar and say, I used this one on Taxman! ■

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

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calrec.com

Putting Sound in the Picture

resolution

September 2007

craft Bob Clearmountain told me Bryan’s new songs sound great, I gather you had something to do with that? I’ve written nine songs on his new album and I’m the bass player. I think it’s his best album since Reckless. It’s fresh, it has a contemporary sound, we’ve been two years writing this album, Bryan and myself, Mutt Lange and a couple of other writers. I ended up being the bass player accidentally, we tried out a new guitarist, and an ‘old’ drummer — Pat Steward — who last played with Bryan on Summer of ’69. We just got some guys in a room to do demos of the songs we’d written in his studio in Vancouver, to see what would happen. They just rocked, and everyone who heard them said to Bryan: ‘You’ve got to keep this band, because it’s so fresh for you.’ A couple of the songs have Keith or Mickey from his working band, but generally speaking the players are a new bunch of musicians, and it sounds like that as well. His voice sounds amazing, so it’s an exciting time, it’s going to be a good time for Bryan. I had you down as a paid-up member of the UK pop ‘A’ team, is this a bit of a departure for you? I’ve always been a closet rocker, so any opportunity to drop the synth and pick up a guitar is good for me. Bryan and I write with two acoustic guitars and no technology, so it’s really ‘meat and potatoes’ song writing. That is how I like to write, I never write to a loop, I write in my head until I’ve got a chorus. Then I record it into my phone, or whatever, and wait until I have the whole idea sketched out before I think about recording anything. I believe I’m competent as a musician, but I’m not as good as my imagination is, so I try to leave the playing to the last moment. By the time I touch an instrument, I’ve got a really good angle on how it’s going to sound. I usually start with the chorus in my head — it’s the same with Bryan — we just jam things out from the starting point either of us has had, without sitting and saying: ‘let’s write something like this or that.’ As a result we might write a lot of songs to pick the right ones, but that’s fine by me because quite often we get other stuff for movies or whatever.

eliot Kennedy Pop Svengali eliot Kennedy spins a Sheffield whirlwind around NIgeL JOPSON, who discovers the record producer, tv and radio show developer, book author and studio owner is also responsible for writing songs on Bryan adams’ new album.

LIOt KeNNedY had his first Top 20 with Lulu’s 1992 single Independence, and scored his first number one hit with the song Everything Changes, co-written and co-produced with Gary Barlow for Take That in 1994. He wrote two more number ones for Take That and his position as a pop songwriter was confirmed when he achieved global success with the Spice Girls’ single Say You’ll Be There. He’s written over 30 UK top ten hits for acts like Billie Piper, Boyzone, Blue, Celine Dion, Five, Girl Thing, Kavan, Mel C, S-Club 7 and 911. He built a studio called Steelworks in his native Sheffield ten years ago, selling out to his partners five years later to concentrate on producing Blue and song writing with Barlow. Their True North Music company developed Delta Goodrem, Atomic Kitten and Lauren Fabien, and worked on 46

projects with the likes of Russell Watson and Donny Osmond. As Gary Barlow turned his attention to the re-formed Take That, Eliot picked up an opportunity to reacquire his old studio and give it a facelift that has included the UK’s first rack of Audient Black Series gear, which he is a big fan of. He recently started a new production company with former CEO of Endemol Herman van der Zwan, they already have five artists on their roster and a project cooking with a Disney TV channel. In between European musical projects ranging from vocal harmony groups to an album with Fatima Moreira (the pinup captain of the Dutch women’s champion hockey team), Eliot has somehow found time to develop a writing partnership with Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, co-writing songs for movies such as Bridge To Terabithia, The Guardian and Bobby. resolution

You were nominated for a Golden Globe this year, for the title song you co-wrote with Bryan for the ﬁlm Bobby. It was sung by Aretha Franklin and Mary J Blige. It was an incredible highlight: that’s one of my all time achievements, to have a song cut by Aretha. The Globe awards were out of this world, we did nothing but mess about all the way up the red carpet... You must have given your ‘handler’ a nightmare! The handler from The Weinstein Company was just classic LA, saying things to me like: ‘We’re walking, we’re walking ...’ which I thought was hilarious. The first interview Bryan and I did was with CNN, the interviewer said to me: ‘So Eliot! It’s the very first time you’ve been here — what does it meeeean to you?’ So I said: ‘I’m from Sheffield, golden globes are what brass monkeys lose in the winter where I’m from ...’ the CNN guy was just dumbfounded and Bryan went — ‘We’ve got to do this all the way!’ It ended up being a fantastic crack. On your pop hits I can hear several instruments that seem to be your favourites, are there also some special pieces of recording equipment you wouldn’t be without? I’ve built my studio so many times, in different places, and kind of rationalised it down to the set-up I’ve September 2007

craft got now, which has taken me ten years to get to. It’s the best sound I’ve ever had from equipment. My vocal chain is a Blue Bottle mic with the Telefunkensounding capsule; I have a rack of Neve 1081s, I use the Bottle through one of those into a Distressor. I think the Distressor gives it that modern vocal sound, it gives what I would call an American sound on a lead vocal.

Do you use the same chain for background vocals? If I’m doing BVs I go for less of a coloured sound from the outset. In my writing room I use my Focusrite ISA 430 Producer Pack. It’s one of those transparent setups which will capture a vocal honestly. I think the lead has to sound different from the backgrounds and I don’t like artists singing their own backing vocals, I really like the difference in tone, I believe it keeps vocals more interesting. If it’s a male vocal, I might do them myself. My usual routine is to get a nice tight arrangement, chopped to get rid of any unnecessary breaths and noises, then I will put a stereo compressor on them, just to make everything sound like a record straight away. I look for a really expensive, wide and interesting BV sound. My vocal reverb is the trusty Lexicon PCM70, I don’t use anything else for vocals. For drums I’ve got a Neve 33609 limiter, which is just unbelievably dynamic. Then everything coming out of my system goes through a Manley 16-2 valve mixer. Is that summing your workstation D-A convertors? Yes, I work in Logic, I mix inside Logic to 16 outputs: 1+2 is my drum mix, 3+4 background vocals, 5+6 acoustics, 7+8 other music (often synths), 9+10 Piano, 11 bass, 12 vocal, 13+14 electric guitars, and 15+16 orchestra. That’s how my mixes are always set up,

September 2007

resolution

craft We’re maxed-up with all the synths and that kind of stuff, but I do as much as I can live. Bass I will always play myself, and if I don’t play the guitars I get my chief engineer here at Steelworks, a guy called Dave Nesbitt who just happens to be a great guitarist, to do them. Because of the nature of technology today, I can send a file over to New York or Toronto and have a musician there play on the track if I need to. I’ve got a phenomenal rock drummer called Bobby Arechiga who lives locally, he originally came to the UK in the 80s with a US band called Strongheart. We will chop the audio around if we need to, so I’ve got the ability to put together live tracks really quickly.

everything is sent out on those stems. From the mixer it goes into a Manley Massive Passive and a Manley Variable Mu, then an Apogee Rosetta 200 convertor. After all this time, I’ve managed to find the right combination between computers and old technology, it’s like a really contemporary, punchy sound. I’m listening on Miller & Kreisel monitors, which I think I would just die without — they are awesome.

It sounds like you have a pretty extensive template for writing set up in Logic Audio. I’ve got a fantastic sound library, and I love arranging. I’ve got a real brass section here in Sheffield, I’ve worked with them for the last 15 years, they still come down at the drop of a hat. Horns I always do live ... with strings, of course it’s a little more complicated, it requires budgeting and arrangers. I’ve invested quite a lot in all those big string sample libraries like Vienna, but I’ve kind of got a talent for that as well, for making those samples sound quite convincing.

You‘ve found it ...

Speaking as a long-time Logic user myself, I’d say that chopping audio around is not actually one of Logic’s strong points ... I tend to just use Logic as a capture instrument. I’ve got an assistant called Ryan who is a Pro Tools boy, any audio editing or manipulation is done in Tools. Pro Tools is brilliant, of course, but I find it a bit frustrating as it is more engineer-driven, I don’t particularly find it very musical, so I stick to Logic. Is that criticism of Pro Tools from the point of view of musical sound quality, or the user interface? I would say the interface is my biggest problem with it. Logic feels very musical, the way you can call up instruments, it’s driven to being a really quick way of capturing performances. If there’s any jiggery-pokery to be done I give it to Ryan, who takes it into his room and then gives it me back. I’ve got a project about to start, a duo called Lovers Electric, which I’m in love with at the moment, they’ve just been supporting OMD on their European tour. I said to Ryan I wanted to get some sound design stuff together, and he just loves things like that. Taking bits of audio and twisting it, like we used to do with analogue synths by twiddling knobs, but using binary and all that kind of stuff — a world which is beyond me altogether and I’m quite happy for it to be! Do you take creative inspiration from that type of sound design? Totally, I just say to Ryan sometimes: I’ve got this song, this is how the record is going, I want it to sound a little bit more ‘out there’. He brings me things like a recording of marbles rolling over a table, which he’s chopped up into a funky little pattern. I find it inspiring from a production point of view, although it doesn’t necessarily move me in terms of song writing because I’m a bit old fashioned in that way.

THE ART OF MICROPHONES www. brauner-microphones. com Global Distribution: S.E.A. Distribution & Consulting, Germany · www.sea-distribution.com

Tell me about the equipment set-up at Steelworks. The main studio, the commercial room, has a Neve Capricorn, I think it was the biggest one they resolution

made in Europe. Dave has great templates set up for it, if we have a drum kit coming in he has a great drum sound on a template, I find it fantastic how you can swap and change so quickly. The reason why we originally bought the Capricorn was because we were chopping and changing between projects so quickly. I would have written a song for Billie Piper one day, then the phone would ring and Simon Cowell would say: ‘I need a different mix for the Five single.’ So we’d need to recall the Five mix half way through the Billie Piper mix, and then go back to it. We tried a lot of desks, and this was the only one which could do that at the time except for the Sony Oxford, which was beyond our budget back then.

What about the outboard in Control Room 1? When I first took over again, I wanted another 1081 rack like the one I have in my writing room, but we couldn’t justify what it was going to cost to put a vintage rack together nowadays, and we also needed compression and some other processors. So we recently bought an Audient Black series modular rack, we went for a configuration of four EQs, four compressors and two pres. We got it in primarily because we know we do a lot of live recording here. The EQ and compression is very transparent — unlike something like the Distressor, which I think I can actually spot on a record! The Audient Black series EQ is really smooth and has a nice bit of air on the top, but it’s not too coloured. It does all the right jobs, but it doesn’t say: ‘here I am, I’m an Audient.’ How many production rooms are there at Steelworks? We’ve just built a new little video editing facility here. There’s my own writing room, which is a standalone recording and preproduction facility — we’ve got a great vocal booth in there — and Studio 3 which is a programming room where Ryan works. I’ve just purchased an old Fairlight which is going in there, along with the Jupiter 8 and a bunch of other analogue synths. We can cover all kinds of projects, the studio is incredibly busy, and in an industry which is going downhill, Steelworks ticks over and more than pays for itself. Is that because you’re running it in a similar fashion to the way Motown ran its studios? I do bring a lot of work here by virtue of what I am doing in developing artists, but there are also quite a lot of local bands and weekend warriors who come through here. Sheffield has a great music scene at the moment, thanks to the Arctic Monkeys and others. We’ve had acts like Milburn and Little Man Tate in the studio. It’s one of the best studios in the North of England in terms of what we can provide. It all helps pay for the lights. What is next for you? I’m developing my book format [Our Song, about song writing and the power of music and lyrics] into a radio show, which I have a meeting about this afternoon. I also have a TV series commissioned by Endemol, which is my big exciting thing for next year. For me, it’s all about infrastructure: if I’ve got ideas for things, I don’t ever want to feel like I can’t do something just because I don’t know how to do it. I want to find people who can help me do it, and add momentum and energy, give it my creativity and let it go and push it out there. There’s more film songs to write with Bryan, there are always new artists to have a look at ... and I had this idea when I was in Nashville last week to do this kind of electronic country thing ... ■ September 2007

sweet spot

the NS10 revisited PhILIP NeWeLL revisits the earlier work that gave an explanation to the enduring popularity of the NS10. Resolution will start bench-testing monitors from the next issue.

Figure 1. Nine anechoic frequency response plots.

t WaS INtereStINg to read Phil Ward’s account of the design of the Acoustic Energy AE22 loudspeaker in Resolution V6.2. Much of the design had been based around the performance of the Yamaha NS10M, as published in a paper presented to the Reproduced Sound 17 conference of the Institute of Acoustics, held in Stratford-upon-Avon in November 2001, which I co-wrote with Keith Holland and Julius Newell. In December 2001 all was to be revealed to a much wider audience via publication in Studio Sound magazine, but the December issue turned out to be the last one before the magazine closed, and that final issue was not seen by many. What a tragedy that was, because the article was the culmination of the analysis of 36 loudspeakers by Keith Holland at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) in Southampton, England. All the loudspeakers had been measured in the same place in the large anechoic chamber at the ISVR, using identical measuring equipment and techniques over a period of about four years. In September 2001 I ﬂew to England and we began grouping the measurements together and taping them to the walls, to try to get an overview. There were hundreds of plots to look at, but some interesting patterns began to emerge. Figure 1 shows nine of the 36 anechoic frequency response plots, which are a reasonable representation of the spread of all 36. Note how the Auratone and NS10 are so similar in their overall shape (apart from the HF peaks on the Auratone) and yet how they are so dissimilar from the other loudspeakers. Figure 2 shows the waterfall plots of the same nine loudspeakers. Note how the overall decay patterns of the Auratone and NS10 are so uniform with frequency, and quite unlike those of any of the other loudspeakers. The fact that it was the Auratone, during the 1970s and early 80s, which had been the widely used reference for the rock/pop/electronic music industry, and that the NS10 succeeded it through the 1980s, 90s and beyond, suggested that these two loudspeakers had different responses to the rest for some very good reasons. The Auratone and NS10 were too similar to each other and too different from the other loudspeakers for their success to be coincidental. The NS10 had been designed as a domestic ‘bookshelf’ loudspeaker, which had been frequencybalanced to have a ﬂat response when placed on a shelf against a wall. Figure 3 shows Keith Holland’s

Figure 3. Simulation of the frequency response of an NS10-style loudspeaker. the solid line shows the free-field response and the broken line shows the expected response when placed with its back against a wall.

Figure 4. response of an NS10 flown from a crane, outdoors.

Figure 2. Nine waterfall plots measured in an anechoic chamber. 50

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Figure 5. response of an NS10 on top of the meter bridge of a large mixing console, flown from a crane 4m from the floor.

simulation of how its response would change when mounted as intended. The response tends to flatten — Yamaha had done its job well. Figure 4 shows the response of an NS10 when Julius Newell had flown it from a crane. There are some reflections from nearby surfaces, but the overall shape is similar to the inverted ‘V’ seen in Figure 1. For Figure 5 he mounted the NS10 on top of the meter bridge of a mixing console then flew them both from a crane. It can be seen how an augmentation of the low frequencies had taken place due to the proximity of the console.

Figure 6 shows the response when they were lowered to the ground and taken into a ‘typical’ budget mixing room. The irregularities are due to desk-top and room surface reflections, but the overall response is not dissimilar to the prediction shown in Figure 3. Again, this was all too logical to be coincidence — the NS10 exhibited a substantially flat response under its typical conditions of use. The measurements also implied that the Auratone behaved similarly. In 2002 we returned to Stratford with another paper, entitled The Perception of the Reception of a Deception in which we looked at the acoustic source plots of some large and small loudspeakers. Figure 7 shows the plots of three loudspeakers with a) being a large studio monitor, b) the NS10, and c) a typical, small reflex enclosure. The acoustic source plots show the apparent distance from which each frequency emanates.

The plot of the NS10 closely matches that of the large loudspeaker, but note how the low frequencies from the small reﬂex enclosure are later in arrival, apparently emanating from a source about 3 metres behind the mid-range frequencies. These plots show the delay to the attack of the notes, whereas the waterfall plots of Figure 2 show the delay in the decay. The NS10 is clearly a very fast loudspeaker in terms of its transient response; an important fact because music is more transient than steady state. The evidence was becoming incontrovertible that the fast attack, fast decay and the ﬂat response in typical conditions of use were what had led to the use of the Auratones and NS10, but just why should this be the case? In conjunction with Peter Mapp and Sergio Castro, Keith Holland began to look at the modulation transfer functions (MTFs) of various types of

The S3 possesses quite astonishing amounts of headroom, and will quite happily put out peaks approaching +30dBu all day long without sounding the least bit flustered. Jon Thornton, Resolution Magazine

I used the S3 on a drum subgroup and it allowed me to shape the drum space with an amazing amount of control in a way that I never would have been able to do with EQ or full bandwidth compression.

Figure 6. response of an NS10 on the meter bridge of a large mixing console in a typical ‘budget’ mixing room. a)

Thom Monahan (Engineer), Tape Op Magazine

The new Signature Series S3 from

Figure 7. acoustic source plots. a) a large monitor loudspeaker. b) an NS10. c) a typical small reflex (ported) loudspeaker. September 2007

D r a w m e r L t d . • t : + 4 4 ( 0 ) 1 9 2 4 3 7 8 6 6 9 • w w w. d r a w m e r. c o m

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Figure 8. Low frequency decay plots, a) anechoic measurement of a small, sealed-box loudspeaker. b) anechoic measurement of a ported enclosure with a fourth order electrical protection filter, showing a clear resonance around 50hz.

loudspeaker, and at varying distances in rooms of different acoustic natures. Loudspeakers such as the NS10s and Auratones had significantly minimumphase responses at close distances. Minimum-phase responses are those that when equalised in the amplitude response will also show corrections in the phase, and hence the time responses. An accurate transient (time) response can only be achieved if the amplitude and phase are both correct. During the work on the MTF papers, Keith tried to equalise to perfect ﬂatness (down to 40Hz) the responses of a group of ten different loudspeakers. Figure 8 shows four plots, one each for a sealed box and an electronically protected reﬂex enclosure as measured in the anechoic chamber at the ISVR, and one for each loudspeaker after a ‘perfect’ digital equalisation. What is obvious is that the waterfall plots of both the unequalised and equalised sealed box exhibit a rapid decay, but the ported box with protection filter still exhibits a long decay at low frequencies even after equalisation, indicating that the correction in the frequency domain is not leading to corrections of the time domain, i.e. the transient response. Mastering engineers have often complained that they receive many mixes where the bass drum to bass guitar balance is wrong, and that they frequently cannot correct the situation. Mixes done on NS10s have often been free of such problems. The problems seem to exist in the mixing of low frequency instruments with differing steady-state versus transient natures, which cannot be separated by equalisation. So what is it that leads people into making such errors of judgement; and why are some loudspeakers 52

c) digitally flattened response of loudspeaker shown in a). d) digitally flattened response of loudspeaker shown in b). Note the gross extension of the time response at low frequencies.

less likely than others to give rise to these deceptions? The answer seems to be in the plots of Figure 8 c) and d). The excess phase part of the response of Figure 8 d) represents that part of the response that is not minimum-phase, i.e. that part which when corrected in the frequency domain will not also be corrected in the time domain. It can be seen that resonances that are employed by ported (reﬂex) enclosures give rise to time domain errors that cannot be corrected by equalisation. The resonances are used to ﬂatten and extend the low frequency response, but they do this at the expense of the transient accuracy of the loudspeakers, and this lack of accuracy, as has already been explained, cannot be equalised. Keith Holland subsequently made a devastatingly obvious statement, though perhaps it was more devastating than obvious — ‘If a mix is being judged on loudspeakers whose responses cannot be corrected in both the time and frequency domains

by equalisation, then how can one expect the mixes, themselves, to be correctable by equalisation?’ And this harks back to the title of the 2002 paper The Perception of the Reception of a Deception. In other words, what do we perceive when what we receive is deceptive? Not the truth, that is for sure. The NS10s had a response that could be substantially corrected in the time domain as it was corrected in the frequency domain, so there is little wonder that they could be used to make mixes which, even if they were excessive or deficient in bass, could be easily equalised at the mastering stage. (It is also interesting to note how few mastering engineers use small reﬂex enclosures.) It is also little wonder that Yamaha’s ‘replacement’ for the NS10 has not received any great acclaim, because it did not preserve the characteristics of the NS10 which had made it such a useful reference in recording studio use. ■

Bibliography

‘Why the NS10?’ Philip Newell, Keith holland, Julius Newell, Studio Sound, december 2001. ‘the Yamaha NS10M; twenty Years a reference Monitor. Why?’ Philip Newell, Keith holland, Julius Newell. Proceedings of the Institute of acoustics, vol. 23, part 8, November 2001. ‘Loudspeakers — for Music recording and reproduction’. Philip Newell and Keith holland. Focal Press, 2006. ‘recording Studio design’. Philip Newell, Focal Press, 2003 ‘excess Phase effects and Modulation transfer Function degradation in relation to Loudspeakers and rooms Intended for the Quality control Monitoring of Music’. Keith holland, Philip Newell, Sergio castro, Bruno Fazenda. Proceedings of the Institute of acoustics, vol. 27, part 8, 2005. ‘Steady State and transient Loudspeaker Frequency responses’. Keith holland, Philip Newell, Peter Mapp. Proceedings of the Institute of acoustics, vol. 25, part 8, 2003.

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meet your maker

rMg International Professional analogue audio tape is being manufactured in quantity to emtec specifications and formulations in the Netherlands. ZeNON SchOePe pays a visit to the analogue tape people.

distrust. Intermittent supply, inconsistency in quality, panic buying and a surprising amount of poor quality stock emerging in places like Ebay did not do much to bolster the spirits of tape aficionados who had their faith well and truly tested. Against such a background you might be tempted to regard Dutch company RMG International as nights on white chargers. I am here to report that we do now have a committed and capable manufacturer of high-end analogue tape that produces a variety of widths and types in the sort of quantities and with the sort of consistency that analogue tape users have not enjoyed for some time. RMG’s history is an interesting one because of its ups and downs but it is all about tape. This is a small but efficient and technologically led company of about 35 people that is scaled for tape production for the worldwide market in this millennium rather than for the heady days of the 1970s. The plant in Oosterhout, The Netherlands originated in 1968 as a Philips operation and was part of Philips’ policy to establish factories outside its base in Eindhoven. Work started here on winding spools and the manufacture of audio tape. What is now the RMG building was built in the 1970s as Philips was busy developing video tape and a tie up with Dupont in the US enabled it to achieve this. In 1981 a joint venture — PDM — was established between

he LaSt cOUPLe of years have not been best if you’re an analogue tape user. While the format is, and has been, undeniably in decline for years now, it has still remained an option for those who like its discipline, ceremony or sound. While hard core multitrack work is really not that common now, stereo mastering to tape has caught imaginations. The problem has been the supply of the stuff. As many will be aware, Quantegy announced its withdrawal from audio tape manufacture earlier this year and that was after a previous resurrection of the firm after its closure in 2005. Quantegy was seen as the last tape manufacturer remaining after all the other brands, including Emtec/BASF, had fallen away. In fact, during this recent period of turbulent history there was a point when there was no obvious supplier of high end analogue tape left. That may not have stirred the majority of the industry in the slightest, but for those who still factored tape into their creative equation it was a disaster. One of the problems with the stop/start, will they/ won’t they supply of tape in these last couple of years has been that it has created some bad blood and 54

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meet your maker Philips and Dupont: Dupont had the knowledge and technology, Philips had the manufacturing capability. The plant went on to make VHS tape and at the end of the 1980s got into data tape for IBM. Then in 1988, because prices were going down quite rapidly, Dupont got out of the joint venture and Philips took over. VHS tape was manufactured in Oosterhout and was then transported to a Philips plant in Vienna where it was loaded into cassettes. The ‘RMG’ building was expanded and in 1993, when the new factory had run for just 18 months, Philips decided to stop production. The management and a German investor bought the Oosterhout plant and its old machinery (Magnetic Productions Oosterhout). In 1996 the new organisation invested in a new modern coating line for video and also had some separate activity in CD-R. In 2002 it became clear that Emtec Magnetics would pull out of magnetic media so the Oosterhout operation bought equipment that could be used outside of the enormous Emtec environment and this included machinery for professional audio tape manufacture. They also bought the patents for the products and the formulations and in 2004 were renamed as Recordable Media Group International (RMG). The middle of last year saw the first RMG pro audio tapes being shipped and RMG now produces what were the Emtec/BASF tapes of Studio Master 900 (Quantegy 499/GP9 equivalent), Studio Master 911 (Quantegy 456 equivalent), and LPR 35 (Quantegy 457 equivalent) among many others. These aren’t just approximations, as chief technology officer Rien van Houwelingen explains to the question of how close RMG SM 900 is to Emtec SM 900. ‘I would say it is identical and that was our goal,’ he says. ‘Of course, our manufacturing equipment in details is different but we use the same slitters, the same formulation so the ingredients are exactly the same. We know that users like to listen but our test results show they are identical.’ RMG also manufactures audio duplication tape and while it doesn’t manufacture video tape anymore it buys this in from Asia and loads cassettes with it. It’s a modern looking factory despite the fact that most of the equipment is circa 1997. It’s clean, clearly well organised and meticulously maintained and watched. You don’t get the impression that they’re banging out the last few reels before the format dies; they’re creating quality product in a controlled and monitored environment with the sort of care and attention it requires. RMG is doing the job properly and clearly takes its responsibility to the market very seriously. Van Houwelingen’s enthusiasm is infectious on the factory tour and he’s particularly proud of their solvent recovery system. To make tape you start with magnetic paint and that involves the use of solvents. Apart from being damaging to the environment should they escape, solvents are also expensive so their efficient recovery for reuse saves money too. He’ll tell you why the head is the heart of the coating process and why their coating lines were better than those of Emtec. He’ll also explain that avoiding cross-contamination between formulation types at all costs is the key to consistent product quality. Tape manufacture is an industrial process –- there is science involved and a little art but the physical handling of the bulk product involves a lot of machinery. RMG has production capacity to spare and as its worldwide distributors ramp up with demand as the word gets out it will be able to cope comfortably. The business of getting the message across that analogue tape is back on the menu should you want it is a primary objective. September 2007

Van Houwelingen says that SM 900 is the trickiest tape they make without any doubt. At the time of the original launch of high output tapes there was always the implication from the manufacturers that the formulations could be improved on. What does van Houwelingen think in 2007? ‘We could make a better tape but we don’t have the intention to do it,’ he says. ‘You have to remember that SM 900, like the others, was not a tape that was developed last year — it was state-of the-art about ten years ago. Especially in the last three or four years, the binder types for magnetic recording can now have better adhesion to the pigment. That is incorporated in modern metal powder digital tapes.’ He’s quite categorical about the differences between the quality of tape RMG makes today compared to that made 20 years ago. ‘Twenty years ago it was not common to reuse the solvents, which is an essential

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part of the cost and you have to do it now to keep the cost under control,’ says van Houwelingen. ‘Now every tape is scanned for defects and if there’s a scratch on it then the tape is rejected. We have an in-line scanner for thickness –- that is an important parameter for audio tape. We also have an off-line quality control system for an extra check on output and frequency response for every roll.’ That makes for comforting words to an analogue tape user like me. My primary concerns are quality — which they satisfy by manufacturing formulations that I know and like already –- and consistency, which the RMG quality control processes certainly address. While I’m not a volume user I also want to know that the tape I buy today can be bought again in a couple of months’ time because it is being manufactured by a company that does analogue tape for its living and business. I need that commitment — that long-termism — because I’m just not ready to stop using it yet. and I don’t want that decision made for me. I am sure that there are many of you out there who feel the same. Importantly, RMG is enthusiastic about tape and really does care. RMG tape prices are described as ‘competitive’ despite the fact that the raw ingredients are now more expensive than they were. However, the term ‘competitive’ implies that there is competition, which of course there is not. It comes down to a matter of choice. RMG offers you the different formulations in the different widths — whether you take them up on it or whether you never power the 2-inch up ever again, you do have the choice. Not so very long ago, we didn’t even have that. ■

Oosterhout history 1968 Magnetic tape production for open reel and cassette tape started in rMg International Oosterhout plant when it was a Philips division. 1981 Joint venture Philips-dupont, Pd Magnetics Bv, on magnetic tape production, brand name PdM. ½-inch video tape for video 2000 and vhS, 3480/90 data cartridges for IBM tape storage systems. 1991 Installation of a state-of-the-art new plant. 1993 SK germany takes over the Oosterhout plant and renames it MPO Bv (Magnetic Productions Oosterhout Bv). 1998 New state-of-the-art coating line goes into operation. 2004 renamed as recordable Media group Intenational Bv. acquisition of assets and know-how for the production of audio pancakes for duplication and blank loading and for studio audio tape from the emtec Munich plant.

contact rMg INterNatIONaL, NetherLaNdS: Website: www.rmgi.nl

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business

Prince and the retail revolution rather than upsetting musical preconceptions, genre pigeonholing and artistic apple carts, the purple one has stuck one on the establishment. NIgeL JOPSON finds hMv in a spin and a clutch of music industry mavens acting their shoe size rather than their age.

heN PrINce’S LateSt album Planet Earth was released in the UK on 15 July — in advance of its 24 July US release — nearly 3 million people picked up a CD. But no bottles of Bollinger popped in A&R offices, high-street retail bosses had no sales presentations for their chairmen, there was no purple number one, and Sony-BMG has definitely not ordered any platinum presentation discs. Quite the opposite: label and retail execs are seething, angry words and legal threats have been exchanged, and more pots have been calling more kettles ‘none more black’ than I can recall for a long time. Not one record store had the album on its racks, and no DJ or journalist or MTV taste-maker had a copy in advance. In fact, Prince didn’t sell any CDs in the UK at all ... he gave them all away. In a surprise deal Prince gave tabloid UK paper The Mail On Sunday exclusive rights to distribute his new studio album as a free covermount, the MoS paid Prince about £500,000 and committed at least the same again to manufacture 2.9m CDs and promote the issue. The Planet Earth covermount pumped up The Mail’s sales number to 2,800,846 — around 600,000 more than average. It was the second highest figure in the paper’s history, eclipsed only by the Diana funeral issue. At a cover price of £1.40, the Mail is possibly a little down on the deal, spending between £1-1.25m to bring in an extra £1m. But hard-nosed calculations underestimate the significance to the Mail’s publisher of gaining ground on arch-rival The News Of The World, which has sales rumoured to be slipping from 3.27m. The UK arm of Sony-BMG withdrew from Prince’s global deal and said it would not distribute the CD to stores. A Sony spokesman said they had no idea about the MoS deal: ‘We don’t want to muck around our retail partners, so out of respect for them we’re not going to release the album over here.’ Paul Quirk, co-chairman of Britain’s Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), which represents 90% of music stores, threatened: ‘The Artist Formerly Known as 58

Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores,’ and he promised to personally de-stock Prince’s back catalogue from his own shop. Some retailers seemed a bit confused: at the beginning of July Simon Fox, Group Chief Executive of HMV (the UK’s largest music retail chain) declared, when news of Prince’s covermount emerged: ‘I think it would be absolutely nuts. I can’t believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can’t believe it would happen, it would be absolute madness.’ A mere week later, he announced: ‘We would obviously have wanted to stock the Prince album but this is not a possibility. Selling The Mail on Sunday next week is the only way to make the album available to our customers.’ Ouch! This volte-face provoked a torrent of invective from other retailers. Virgin Retail’s MD, Simon Douglas, said: ‘We’re stunned that HMV has decided to take what appears to be a complete U-turn on their stance towards covermounts and particularly in this case, as only a week ago they were so vocal about the damage it will cause.’ Nigel House of Rough Trade stores said: ‘It’s a stupid move ... HMV are shooting themselves in the foot ... it is just devaluing music even more.’ Tim Ellis of What Records asked for HMV to resign from the ERA council, citing ERA’s policy — agreed by HMV — of opposing covermounts vigourously: ‘This smacks of desperation,’ he said. The opprobrium was not over. The Entertainment Retail Association called on ABC, which audits the allimportant (to advertisers) newspaper circulation figures, to strike out sales of papers with covermounts from its calculations. The Official Charts Company refused to include Planet Earth in the charts (there is a clear rule stating that any promotion that is free to the consumer will not be included.) In 2004 Prince’s album Musicology reached number 3 in the US chart, more than helped by the fact that Prince ‘sold’ a CD to every person who bought a concert ticket. Billboard subsequently changed its chart rules. The Mail’s managing director Stephen Miron, no doubt feeling a little embattled by this point, resolution

ridiculously threatened to engage lawyers to force a challenge over ‘restraint of trade’. The music industry’s argument was that, without income generated by big name acts, how will labels support and promote lesser-known artists? ‘If we keep moving down this particular route, companies will only release records that are sure home runs,’ said Martin Talbot, editor of industry paper Musicweek. ‘That means either stuff by established artists or unknown artists doing cover versions. There is the danger that it will no longer be worth it for companies to invest in new, up-and-coming artists. And if record companies don’t invest in them, who will?’ INVEST in new artists? Did he mean: sign up ready-made artist packages for distribution that producers and indie labels have already developed? Mr Talbot (industry consultant) should really know better. An HMV manager complained to me: ‘It’s like a kick in the teeth for all of us who’ve supported artists like Prince over the years!’ Supported ... how? By keeping two dusty copies of Purple Rain under ‘P’ at the back of the store? Martin Talbot, whose opinion on several music business issues I really do respect, also wrote in a July leader that: ‘Paul Quirk, whose family have run a record shop for 50 years ... and his fellow ERA members deserve more respect.’ Er ... respect for what? Which startling musical innovations have high street retailers introduced in the last 35 years that should command my respect? When I bought my first vinyl albums, I discussed releases with knowledgeable assistants who would, on demand, produce an album from behind the counter in a plain sleeve. I could take this to one of an array of listening booths, soundproofed with the last word in perforated acoustic panelling, put on a pair of headphones more suited to use by 617 squadron of the RAF, and listen to the music on a record player before buying it. Digital audio and computer disc storage would make this rigmarole laughably easy to implement today, but apparently no retailer now recognises the unique selling point of private listening before purchase. September 2007

business

I am asked at least twice a week, by people who have bought, borrowed or stolen music, how they might copy the troublesome audio to their latest all-singing-all-dancing mobile phones. Even people with the smattering of technical knowledge necessary to steal music are ﬂummoxed by hardware thingies, file formats and undocumented phone folders. Missed opportunity or what? A selection of booths in retail stores with appropriate connectors for mobile phones, selling digital tracks and putting them in the required place at the swipe of a credit card, would go down a treat. Retailers like HMV started online digital stores, but they are me-too offerings inferior to market leaders like iTunes and Napster. Where are the genre-packs of music, hot-loaded onto USB sticks and memory cards, available to buy on the high street? Buy a 1Gb SD card and load it with Q magazine’s 1000 greatest Dad-Rock tracks, or a Memory Stick Pro-Duo loaded with Dizzee Rascal’s Grime collection, or a Transﬂash card loaded with Ministry Of Sound’s Ibiza-forever collection. Large chain entertainment retailers

September 2007

are ideally placed to put together and sell branded collections of digital music, there is absolutely no excess inventory cost ... so where are they? Where are the in-store live performances, where is the artist merchandise ... let us shed no tears for that desert of innovation: the UK record shop. Covermounts have almost as much history as pop record shops. In the 1960s magazines began placing ﬂexidiscs on covers, marking the beginning of a new promotional vehicle. The competitive print industry seized on covermounts during the 90s, and a hefty 23 million CDs were given away with UK publications during 2001, equivalent to 10% of the total CDs sold that year. Who was putting all this music on covermounts? The major record labels. I heard ‘off the record’ that Universal took £2 million from the Mirror Group, in return for giving full access to the UMG back catalogue. In most cases, artists and producers were not paid, as promotional give-aways are excluded from royalty payments. Songs that I produced, and from the albums of artist friends, appeared on covermounts. None of usEMC¨216x125_E¨Globe.psd were paid a bean.

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The key finding of a 2004 Music Tank survey was that covermounts didn’t meet the objectives of participating imprints: 60% of respondents reported sales didn’t increase following covermount campaigns and 35% reported that sales increased less than 5% following campaigns. While new artists’ album sales rose by 2% in 2004, compilation CD sales dropped 10% to 19% of the total albums market, down from 24% in 2003. Warners generally avoided covermounts, chairman Nick Phillips deeming them a ‘form of cannibalism’ on CD sales. By 2005, and following a mounting tide of criticism, Universal seemed to accept that covermounts destroy the value of one of the gold mines record labels are sitting on: classic back catalogue. In April 2005, Universal followed EMI’s move of a year earlier and

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announced it would restrict the use of cover-mounted CDs to promoting new artists only. So the majors learnt their lesson ... or did they? The UK’s MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) licensed 296 covermounts in 2006, resulting in 78.3m free CDs being affixed to newsprint with snot-glue. That’s 50.8% of the total number of CDs sold in shops (154.1m CD albums, according to OCC data). And where were the outraged and threatening comments — from retailers, industry journalists and music execs — on 22 April 2007? On that day 3 million copies of Mike Oldfield’s iconic album Tubular Bells were distributed as a freebie with ... The Mail On Sunday. EMI were reported to have received £200,000, but somehow forgot to inform the artist of their actions. The first Mike knew of it was when the paper arrived at news agents. Oldfield told digital radio channel BBC 6 Music: ‘I feel the same as if I had lent something to somebody and it had come back trashed.’ Had EMI, the first UK major to renounce covermounts, changed its tune again? ‘We haven’t changed our policy,’ an EMI representative said, ‘Tubular Bells was a complete one-off, for reasons I can’t disclose.’ The reason wasn’t very hard to find: this July, Oldfield’s contract with EMI is up, and he has signed to Mercury.

Prince paid to build his own recording studio, the famous Paisley Park. He pays his band. He pays his recording engineers, maintenance guys and mastering engineers. He licenses his music to a major label. The major label has ... which plan for this iconic, show-sellingout musician? None visible. I refer readers to Resolution V2.4, and my story concerning Mick Hucknall of Simply Red. After being dropped by East West Records (Warner), Mick and his managers invested £2m in making and promoting his album Home, and were rewarded with multi-platinum sales. Prince’s last studio album 3121, released by Universal, sold 80,000 in the UK. He would have had to sell at least 400,000 CDs of Planet Earth to trouser the same amount he was paid by the MoS. The publicity has most certainly contributed to Prince selling out 18 of his 21 concerts at the O2 Arena. The venue capacity is 20,000, so if he sells out 21 shows that will be £12.6m from ticket sales, and goodness knows how much from merchandise. Prince is going to be held up as a sales-wizard in marketing-101 classes for his clever strategies. The MoS covermount even served to promote his European tour: Le Temps, the leading French ‘serious’ newspaper in Switzerland, carried the story on the front page with the headline ‘How Prince controls all the marketing coups’ — shortly before he played Montreux. You can’t buy publicity like that. Prince is a demon in concert, but nowadays he’s got competition in the studio, from disciples like Outkast and Timbaland, who have built on his audacious experimentation and given it a more modern twist. The covermount was a master stroke from an artist with a big, iconic brand name but soft sales, and other mature acts in a similar position will have taken note. But there is a much more significant message from this, which seems to have got lost among all the outraged comments and talk of genius publicity. It’s a message that artists, major and indie labels should take

to heart. The old model of trailering every big release through radio, TV and professional taste-makers is past its sell-by date. Prince’s cleverness was in recognising that the only Ace he held was the exclusive right to hear his new studio album for the first time. When copies are worthless, only the original retains value, and that is what he was selling. You had to go to the O2 gig or buy the Mail on the same day as the show to get his new studio album, the cachet was maintained intact and the consumer (ultimately) paid to have access. Prince has not devalued anything. By carefully restricting access to his art — however brieﬂy — he made music valuable again ... if only for 15 July 2007. ‘You don’t have to be cool to rule my world Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with. I just want your extra time and your ...’ exclusive new album. ■

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September 2007

aprs at sixty

aPrS at 60 the UK’s association of Professional recording Services celebrates its 60th anniversary in September and is enjoying something of a rebirth as a proactive and progressive trade association. aPrS executive director Peter FILLeUL looks back on the history and puts the association into context today.

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IXtY YearS IS a long time. Just two years after the end of the Second World War everyone was stoically looking forward to a bright new day full of hope and opportunity. Be it in industry, business, the arts, national institutions, or local clubs and societies, the time seemed right to work together to relaunch the future. Possibly inspired by this spirit, in September 1947, Mr H Lynton Fletcher, a former BBC employee who was pursuing a great enthusiasm to record the proceedings of Parliament, became the first chairman of the UK’s Association of Professional Recording Studios. The objective of the Association was described simply as ‘to encourage and promote interest in the use of sound recording’. Simplicity proved seductive to the extent that within a year he had amassed 42 recording studio members and found a near-royal first president in the young Earl of Harewood to act as figurehead for the organisation. The new association was concerned with ‘taxation, copyright, performing rights, relations with the Musicians’ Union and the cost of recording equipment and materials’ — issues that sound uncannily familiar to this day. Indeed, within a couple of years fears were being expressed regarding the availability

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of ‘wire and tape recording equipment’ that could enable the public to make their own recordings of commercial records, probably damaging the prospects of professional studios and the owners of copyright sound recordings. The recording business had been around for a few decades already. ‘The Gramophone Company’, which was to become Electrical and Musical Industries Ltd. (eventually EMI) in the same year, had been manufacturing gramophone players and making recordings of the likes of Elgar, Toscanini and Klemperer since the 30s but, during the war, had devoted more of its energies to developing Radar. The new peace-time horizon encouraged a proliferation of record companies and so of businesses specialising in servicing the needs of entertainment industries; sound recording played a leading part. By the early 1950s the APRS had more than 80 members and was tackling pressing concerns by negotiating with MCPS to allow small numbers of royalty-free copies to be produced for internal and professional uses and with the Musicians’ Union to agree workable session fees for its members. It was the start of the age of the LP, the ubiquitous radiogram and of experiments with stereo sound imaging. September 2007

aprs at sixty Popular music culture was moving from the Tin Pan Alley and Show tunes to rock’n’roll and beat groups that wrote their own songs, while the orchestral and niche genres, such as jazz, thrived in a burgeoning consumer market. The 1960s saw the beginning of the golden days of UK recording, led by the Beatles’ 10-year reign as the kings of popular music culture and an era of innovation and musical inspiration that was destined to peter out toward the end of the following decade. By the mid 60s the APRS had accumulated over 150 members and had ventured into the field of standards with the issue of guidelines on mastering procedures and test tapes for lining-up recording machines. In 1967, the APRS issued the first standard contract for recording studio hire — the forerunner to the guide contracts available to APRS members today — and experimented with another innovation, technical meetings. The first of these featured a film, produced by Decca, on the making of the first ever recording of the entire Wagner Ring cycle. The following year the Russell Hotel became the venue for what was to become the APRS Show — an opportunity for manufacturers to exhibit their kit on table tops for 5 guineas. The exhibition developed into a fully-ﬂedged trade show for the professional audio industry leading the way for others. Some forget that the plague of piracy and bootlegging first began to rear its head in the early 70s and in 1971 it prompted the APRS to convene an important meeting with the BPI and MCPS. Collaboration that agreed administrative processes at pressing plants and technical expectations for masters and track reporting was agreed forming the basis of the mechanical licensing structure that exists today. The Association’s involvement with training began

September 2007

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aprs at sixty in 1974 with the introduction of the APRS Training Course at Surrey University. This summer vacation course became a resounding success at a time when there was only one audio or sound engineering degree course in the UK — the Tonmeister Course at Surrey University. In recent years a mass of audio and music technology courses have developed, many of suspect value, which drove the APRS to invest considerable energy and resources into a programme of degree and other course accreditation that is now being handled by JAMES, its partnership with the MPG. The APRS Training Course continued to provide core information on techniques and recording theory for hundreds of engineers, fortified for a couple of decades largely by the energies of Clive Green. In 1976 it spawned the publication of the first edition of Sound Recording Practice, a comprehensive analysis of recording techniques and principals. It appeared

in many reprinted editions expertly edited by John Borwick, a former APRS Secretary, and will soon be refreshed and reprinted by OUP. During these years the Association attracted a number of committed chairmen, chief executives and secretaries. Notable among these were Derek Faraday, Jacques Levy, Edward Masek and Philip Vaughan who ran the organisation from being a back-room operation to the day when the Association owned office premises in Reading. Lord Harewood was succeeded by Sir George Solti as president in 1972 and was himself succeeded by George Martin in 1984. George’s reputation as the world’s leading record producer had helped change the dynamic of the recording process: the acceptance of the independent role of the studio producer as a key contributor to the creative process rather than just as a representative and administrator for the record company. Partly in

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response to the increasing importance of the studio producer, the APRS, with special help from Bob Hine at BASF, introduced the British Record Producers’ Guild as a new division of membership. The BRPG went on to become Re-Pro and then, on its separation from the APRS, the Music Producers’ Guild. Such was the respect for the UK recording industry that in the 80s the APRS devised a universally adopted tape labelling scheme that helped identify masters, copies and work-in-progress. Around this time, new legislation threatened to impose a ‘withholding tax’ on artists from overseas who had made their recordings in the UK. The APRS summoned its resources and lobbying connections to persuade the government that the recording industry should be exempted from the tax that otherwise would have devastated the recording industry. The 1990s saw further expansion of membership that encouraged new ventures such as the Master Tape Book and the loose-leaf APRS Handbook, which gave members a chance to illustrate and promote their facilities and services. Three new divisions were introduced representing Pressers and Duplicators, Manufacturers and Suppliers and later the Association recognised the number of studios specialising in audio post and set up the APPS (Audio Post-Production Studios) division. This contributed to the namechange to the Association of Professional Recording Services. Funded by increasing subscriptions and revenue from the annual show the APRS was able to work in response to government and industry initiatives and developments that were beginning to reﬂect a change in the climate for the music industry and, particularly for the recording sector, a change to the very processes that formed the core of members’ activities. In the early 90s professional digital technology and the growth of acceptance of the CD consumer format indicated a turning of the tide of expansion for the recording industry. A new breed of powerful domestic computers allowed the studio businesses to offer enhanced facility but also apparently removed the need to use a recording studio in the first place. It seemed almost any semi-professional, semi-talented, under-funded, nearly-musical, would-be pop star could record their music on their own inexpensive home-based systems. As these amateur efforts acquired commercial success, so record companies, themselves reeling from the financial effects of the ease with which digital technologies allowed pirating and counterfeiting, saw less reason to fund studio-based projects. Inevitably, the expectation of, and ambition for, audio excellence began to play second fiddle to the compelling (and usually compressed) tunes of market-share and costreduction. The music and recording industries share the same food chain and the APRS has had to suffer the same constriction. Reduction in record company budgets and the movement of many first time artists to their own bedrooms to record constrained the studio owners from investing which, in turn, made manufacturers nervous. The need for a UK-based professional audio show came into question in the late 90s after the Association made a final attempt to host an exhibition at the Business Design Centre, London. Not being able to rely on the income from a trade show and with lower membership, the APRS has since 1999 repositioned itself on providing membership services and benefits, networking opportunities for members and their client groups, business and professional advice services, issue and product driven member meetings, and a whole series of web and email based communication September 2007

aprs at sixty lines that allow recording practitioners to exchange information and experience securely. The members of the recording sector are still strongly represented by the APRS in the broader industry and to government in the UK and in Europe. The APRS is currently on the Executive of the National Music Council, the Music Business Forum and the Music Exports Group run in conjunction with the DCMS. The Association is also recognised as the Approved Trade Organisation for the sector by the DTI and has administered SESA and TAPS grant schemes for many years providing essential assistance to companies new to export and market. The APRS continues to participate in many legislative consultations, standing committees and standards bodies. A presence on the BSI metadata committee keeps an eye on the international rules that govern ISRC codes. The government’s ’New Deal’ policies looking at employment rules benefited from an APRS presence along with a number of specificissue consultations such as the Electromagnetic Compatibility Directive (EMC), acknowledged at the time as the most complex and far reaching of all directives that have been introduced into the EU, and most recently, the London Crossrail Petition which threatened the future businesses of more than 40 Soho-based studios. One vital non-governmental intervention that occurred a couple of years ago followed concern over prerelease pirating of new recordings by major artists. In the face of erroneous assumptions by the record labels that the recording studio was the most likely culprit as venue for the theft, the APRS was able to show that it was the record companies’ own slack handling of promotional and administrative copies that was to blame. APRS has specific guidelines within its studio hire standard contract that provides clients with many different levels of security options. These and other lobbying and consultative activities are undertaken by APRS directors and volunteers often over long periods of time and have become key to the representational strength that members (and the industry) enjoy. Running a trade body on shoestring can be a very nerve-racking and frustrating business. Ironically, The APRS’s 60th anniversary celebrations coincide with the leanest financial situation it has ever experienced. While the long suffering Board and its administrative helpers are dedicated and tenacious, the future requires fresh approaches and new energy. Last year the APRS revised its membership categories in line with the realities of current recording practice. There are now openings for business start-up members and even home music-makers to become a part of the professional recording community. The ‘bedroom boys’ now get regular chances to rub shoulders with their peers and heroes while visiting the country’s most prestigious recording sites. The category rearrangement has also recognised that there are different levels of commercial experience and involvement coexisting in the recording business. The APRS is also forging closer connections with similar organisations, such as the MPG, AMPS, UK Screen and PLASA to encourage the sharing of ideas and opportunities This year has seen monthly member meetings and a number of extra special events are planned in the UK and in New York at the AES Convention. An Anniversary Lunch attended by Sir George Martin and Lady Martin launching a long-term member recognition programme is scheduled for September and the AES convention is hosting a special seminar to celebrate the APRS’s 60th and the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band. Unlike most Sgt Pepper events this year, the APRS September 2007

will be demonstrating some of the technical aspects of recording the Sgt Pepper songs in the context of Geoff Emerick’s recent project to rerecord the material using analogue techniques and equipment but using contemporary bands. There are signs that the changes at the APRS are bearing fruit with a steady stream of new studio and supplier membership applications and a host of new category applications. The Association is offering crisper benefits and more targeted and useful services and there is a fresh spirit keen to continue introducing new innovations. Recent member meetings have been made available to the entire membership as a ‘listen again’ service via the APRS website, which has become the most important instrument in the delivery of services and communication with members and the public. The start of the next 60 years of the Association’s life brims with promise, opportunity and excitement as does the future for the music sector. It is evident that most self-recorded artists, after they have experienced their first ﬂight of success, usually decide to focus on their musical growth seeking the support, comfort and confidence that only experienced audio professionals can bring to the mix. Engineers and producers will continue to enliven and enhance raw material allowing technology to serve the content. Recording studios continue to provide the perfect controlled environment in which to capture creative talent for music, radio, TV, Film and broadcast and all the delivery formats bandwidth will permit. It will be the job of the APRS to anticipate and respond to whatever changes might be in store on behalf of the industry and to continue, as it sought at the outset, ‘to encourage and promote interest in the use of sound recording’. ■ resolution

technology

the coming of age for the digital radio microphone the advent of digital radio microphones has been connected intrinsically to the battle to preserve spectrum from government sell-off plans yet the technology offers a number of practical benefits to users. trantec’s Steve BaKer looks at how it works and contrasts it to analogue.

LthOUgh dIgItaL radIO microphones appear to be a fairly recent phenomenon, those who are a little older may remember the appearance of such devices about 10 years ago. In those dark days these pioneering devices — the X-Wire and the Trantec/Toa DK7, to name but two — were pretty much state of the art, employing techniques the rest of the radio mic world were yet to discover. Unfortunately they had some very undesirable drawbacks, including very wide RF bandwidths up to 1MHz and the ability to chew batteries at an alarming rate. Certainly not the epitome of a modern green product that we demand in an increasingly

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overcrowded RF environment. So, what’s wrong with analogue radio mics? On the face of it, not much at all. We have been using them for many years and most of the engineering challenges have been hard fought and won in an evolutionary manner. Having been actively involved with the design of radio mics over the last two decades with umpteen designs to my credit, for a truly international ‘Field of Brand names’, not all is how it seems. Let’s start with the audio chain. Almost all analogue radio mics (99%) use some form of companding, which is compression of the incoming signal at the microphone transmitter end and

September 2007

technology expansion back to its ‘original’ state at the receiver. It may not be immediately apparent why we go to all this bother but there is a simple explanation: to enable us to deliver relatively large dynamic range (often quoted as over 110dB) from a radio link we need a large dose of noise reduction to overcome the inherent S/N ratio that can vary between 55-75dB depending on its basic specification. (Ironically it is the earlier non-synthesised systems that often fare better). The downside of this is that almost universally the chip-set used for this processing is derived from a telephone circuit developed in the 1970s by Signetics. Of course, many improvements have been made over the years to this basic system with manufacturers adapting the circuit with their own proprietary mix of special ingredients, including ‘split band processing’. However, the basic fact remains that it is a simple ‘compressor-expansion’ device that in most instances is expected to cope with the entire AF frequency band with fixed time constants that, at best, are chosen as a compromise to accommodate a plethora of audio sources from vocal to the fast attack of stringed musical instruments. To make matters worse we now offer more features than ever before, including Tone derived squelch signals and battery monitor telemetry that compound the problem. The downside to all this is a frequently heard

complaint of a low level — or in some instances not so low — ‘breathing’ type sound underneath the audio signal. Most of these effects can be traced to the compandor circuit, which is struggling to change gain fast enough, coupled with the underlying bottom line S/N ratio of the radio link. The Compandor is not entirely bad news from a multichannel perspective. It is with the aid of this device that we manage to keep the RF bandwidth under control in most cases to around 110kHz, which is far more compact than your average digital device. The upshot of this is, in a perfect world, that we would be able to fit, let’s say to be on the safe side an RF channel spacing of 325kHz to give approximately 24 channels in an 8MHz TV band. Unfortunately this particular nirvana can not be realised because of the audible effects of intermodulation (IM), particularly the 3rd order

and to a lesser extent the 5th. Let me use the following example as a simple three-signal/3rd order illustration. Take three radio mics on the following channels: Freq 1 854.000MHz Freq 2 854.325MHz Freq 3 854.650MHz Simply add Freq 1 to Freq 3 and subtract Freq 2 (854.000 + 854.650 – 854.325) = 854.325. Voila, as if by magic a 3rd order IM product appears to be present. This would certainly render the Freq 2 radio mic unusable due to large IM effects including ‘whooshing’ and severe AF level changes. This is by no means an exhaustive list of 3rd order products, and it does not take much imagination to realise that any large channel set-up requires a great deal of frequency co-ordination, and a PC or Mac

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September 2007

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technology with an appropriate IM calculator program. Generally speaking, with careful frequency management the limit for analogue radio mics in an 8MHz bandwidth is between 8 and 14 depending on individual manufacturers’ specifications. So why digital? Digital radio mics may have been a long time coming but they offer some positive advantages over existing analogue links in terms of audio quality and, for some, better multichannel ﬂexibility coupled with nice secondary features like security encryption and easy implementation of transmitter telemetry; for example, AF gain setting, battery monitoring and digital receiver outputs in the case of the Trantec SD7000 — a US manufacturer offers a system with an IFB ‘back-channel’. The diagram shows a Trantec SD7000 digital radio mic system. As can be seen, the digital radio mic shares

some of its architecture with its analogue ancestors although almost all the processing remains in the digital domain. The transmitter audio input is first matched via the head buffer before digitisation via a 24-bit/48kHz ADC. This in turn is processed by a fast DSP-based codec using a proprietary algorithm. Carrier modulation is again a proprietary version of /4-DQPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying). For the receiver the /4-DQPSK modulated signal is processed via a standard dual-conversion type front-end to Base-band before demodulation and DSP processing, including error-detection and Diversity switching controlled by the comparison of error rate at each discrete receiver block. Outputs include AES-EBU as well as the conventional analogue AF. Additionally there is a network output to enable control from a PC/Mac using the Trantec GUI.

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The biggest hurdle to achieving the goal of a compact digital system with an RF bandwidth that is comparable to analogue systems is the modulation technique. As can be seen from the introductory paragraph, getting a digital system to work with a large RF bandwidth is relatively easy. All that’s required is to pass the filtered digital signal to an almost standard FM modulator, and you have FSK (Frequency Shift Keying) or a smarter version as used on Mobile phones GMSK (Gaussian Minimum-Shift Keying). The ﬂaw unfortunately is that both methods are not particularly spectrum-efficient and are likely to result in high bandwidth >500kHz — certainly of no use when the result is likely to yield fewer channels than conventional analogue. Enter a variation of DQPSK. Although not a new technique, it offers approximately four times the signal density when compared to FSK/GMSK and thus enables a digital radio mic to occupy less than 200kHz of bandwidth. Having established that we can now have an RF bandwidth almost comparable with analogue systems, what about its multichannel capability? It would seem certain digital systems definitely have the edge here. Although analogue systems have slightly less bandwidth — 110kHz against 200kHz — the digital signal is far more robust to interference than its analogue counterpart. The simple explanation, with reference to the Trantec SD7000, is its far superior Interference Protection Ratio, which is in the order of 100 times higher. A practical demonstration of this is to place two digital mics on the same channel close to each other. It soon becomes clear that the stronger signal wins with no additional audio artefacts. Try that with two analogue mics and I guarantee it will end in tears! Taking all this into account it is clear that although digital cannot entirely ignore intermodulation, the effects are minimal and not audible. Currently, Trantec has 20 channels working simultaneously in an 8MHz TV band — a feat unlikely to be repeated by its analogue counterparts. Latency would appear to be the Achilles heel of all digital systems including mixing consoles and everyday outboard processors, but we need to get this into perspective. Most digital radio mics appear to have a latency of anything between 2–7mS (the SD7000 weighs in at the lower end of the scale). Sound travels at approximately 0.344 metres/mS. For the Imperial minded among us this equates to about a foot per millisecond, giving a very small — and in most cases — unperceivable positional error. With respect to TV, a 60Hz frame rate is usually the max requiring a delay of 16mS before slipping a frame and film, commonly recorded at 24fps, requires a whopping 41mS before slippage occurs! I have yet to see a mic anywhere near these figures. With ever decreasing RF bandwidth available for secondary users of radio spectrum, it is of vital importance that we are seen to embrace technology that offers solutions to spectrum planning. This is not only a UK problem but a worldwide one, as regulators and governments see the golden opportunity to sell the redundant RF spectrum once occupied by analogue broadcasting. Digital systems go a long way to improving spectrum efficiency and cannot be ignored. Digital radio mics offer solutions to problems that analogue systems are unable to match with respect to audio quality and multichannel operation. A quick survey of the market reveals four current players — Lectrosonics, Zaxcom, Mi-Pro and, last but not least, Trantec. ■ September 2007

slaying dragons

ItB versus OtB do mixes in digital audio workstations sound different from mixes outside daWs? rumours and opinions abound. here, long time exponent of dither JOhN WatKINSON says yes, and no.

dON’t dOUBt FOr a minute that a lot of people believe they hear sonic differences. A percentage of those are kidding themselves; the remainder did hear something. And in some cases what is heard is repeatable and there is a chance of finding the reason for it. It must be admitted that the finished product of the audio industry contains a significant creative element and may be the result of a lot of subjective decisions during its production. That’s all very well for creating the product, but when the reason for a technical shortcoming has to be established, the necessary objective viewpoint may well not be present. As a result an effect that is possibly audible is attributed to all manner of mechanisms, often requiring the laws of physics temporarily to be suspended. Unexpected, yet repeatable, sonic differences don’t occur very often. Instances where a reason can be found and rectified are even less common. I recall only one instance, which was a leading brand digital mixing console in a prestige installation that consistently sounded different in the afternoon. In the case of digital audio workstations, I can think of plenty of reasons why a mix might sound different. That is not to say that all workstations suffer from all of these problems, but it gives some things to look for. In order to compare like with like, let us assume that if we are meaningfully to compare a DAW with some other mixing device, we must start with identical source material: a series of tracks stored on a digital multitrack tape or on a hard drive, for example. The key concept of PCM audio as used in production is that of uniform quantising. Every quantising step has the same size, such that an increase in the digital code value of one bit always results in an identical increase in the analogue voltage. The reason is simple: it means that the arithmetic value of the digital codes is directly proportional to the analogue voltage of the signal. If this is so, then we can apply gain or attenuation to a digital audio waveform by multiplying every sample by the same coefficient. The value of that coefficient would be equal to the ratio 70

of the input and feedback resistors in an operational amplifier that had the same gain. Another reason for uniform quantising is that two audio waveforms can be mixed by adding together the sample values. Thus the basis of a digital mix is extremely simple: sets of samples from each track are multiplied by a gain coefficient to set them to the desired level. Then each of these intermediate sets of products is linearly added to produce a set of mixed samples. The same arrangement can be used for different purposes. For example, if one set of samples is multiplied by a time-variant coefficient that is ramping down, the result is a fadeout. If another set is subject to coefficients that are ramping up, and the products are added, a cross-fade results. From this simple beginning, complications set in almost immediately. If the input material contains DC offsets, this has the effect of adding a constant value to all the samples. Editing between sample sets with different offsets causes thumps, so in practice workstations may incorporate high-pass filters on the inputs to remove offsets. The frequency and phase response of these filters may well vary from one product to the next: a potential source of sonic differences.

‘There are only three important steps in software development: validation, validation and validation. Unless it has been conclusively proved that the software does exactly what it is supposed to do, better assume that it doesn’t.’ Changing the level of a digital input signal by multiplication has interesting results. Try reducing level by 0.1dB. This requires every sample to be multiplied by 0.988553….. So what started out as binary whole numbers clearly must end up as nonintegers. For example, if the input had a pretty quiet but legal binary value of 1, how do we express the output of 0.988553 in binary? In practice we need to extend the binary number below the radix point, so that it has values of ½, ¼, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and so on. Consequently the internal word length of DAWs needs to be significantly in excess of the word length of the input samples. Having performed the mix at extended word length, we then find that this word length exceeds the word length of all release or delivery media and so needs to be shortened. The correct way to shorten word length is to add noise (known as digital dither) of a level equivalent to the dither level that would have been used in an ideal A-DC of the target word length, and then to round up or down the samples to that word length. Anything else is sub-optimal and will introduce distortion or programme modulated noise. In the case where no further processing will be performed, such as creating a CD master, then the dither operation can be modified using noise shaping subjectively to improve the noise level. So let’s see what could happen in the digital mix. resolution

Firstly, the control surface has finite resolution. The position of the faders may be quantised fairly coarsely, and the smoothly descending series of coefficients during a fade may be obtained by filtering. There is no guarantee that all DAWs generate the same coefficients at the same instants. When a mix is performed, sample sets from all the tracks need to be fetched simultaneously. Ideally the first output sample would be the sum of all the first input samples. However, it is conceivable that a mixer might fail to fetch all the sample sets to sample accuracy, and if one track was one sample behind or ahead of another, the output waveform would clearly be different. Assuming the mix was performed with adequate word length, it is then necessary to have faith that the designer of the subsequent word length shortening stage had heard of Stanley Lipshitz. Economics dictates that DAWs are based on IT equipment. There will be a device-specific audio interface so that standard analogue and digital audio signals can be input and output, but the rest of it is a computer, and the actual mix is performed in the processor under software control. This gives rise to two potential problems. The grounding scheme of a computer is designed to meet electrical safety regulations and to avoid corrupting the data. Both of these goals can be met with noise levels that will destroy the resolution of analogue audio and create jitter on any digital audio outputs. If the digital audio output of a workstation goes to an external D-AC, that D-AC had better have an extremely good time base correction and clock recovery stage to reject incoming jitter, otherwise the accuracy of the numerical calculations in the DAW is irrelevant. The next potential problem is that a computer based DAW is only as good as the software. And much of today’s software isn’t very good. It’s like Swiss breakfast cereal without the nutrition. The biggest euphemism in software is the term ‘upgrade’. There are only three important steps in software development: validation, validation and validation. Unless it has been conclusively proved that the software does exactly what it is supposed to do, better assume that it doesn’t. Generally the more a programmer knows about IT, the less he will know about audio. Into the code creep short cuts, round-offs and approximations that might have worked in a less demanding application, along with the occasional total misconceptions. I am also wary of compilers, which convert high level coding language into machine code. I wonder how efficiently this is done, and how much computing power is wasted running code that has more instructions than are necessary to do the job. The best performing software is invariably written by people who never wanted to be programmers, but who had to learn to create code that was useful in their own field of expertise. Another good euphemism is the reason for not making details of the code available. Usually reasons of commercial sensitivity are given, whereas the real reason may be that they don’t want to be a laughing stock. One thing a DAW is good at is adding waveforms together. I’ve used them for forensic purposes to prove or disprove if two waveforms are the same. Invert and add should result in nothing if the waveforms are identical and time-aligned. Thus if there is a genuine concern that a workstation sounds different to another device, then the same digital source material should be passed through both, with identical settings, to create two digital files, which are then compared with invert and add. Any waveform differences will be revealed. If that test doesn’t show any significant differences, then the problem is probably down to jitter. ■ September 2007

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Quality is back as a USP the word ‘quality’ has been making a comeback, and it has implications for anyone in music. daN daLeY says the grungy days of audio are drawing to a close for a while and encourages you to take advantage.

Fter NearLY tWO decades in which the mantra ‘smaller/faster/ cheaper/(supposedly) better’ has predominated, the word ‘quality’ seems to reversing a trend that took music to a very different and difficult place in that time. While digital as a concept and a reality changed everything, music was affected particularly, as the entertainment form with the smallest file footprint, thus becoming the first battle line in the digital revolution. You could track the pioneer status of music in the digital era by the wailing about piracy, which began over a decade ago for the music industry, far longer than the hue and cry raised later by the film and television folks. Perhaps, then, music might have the most to gain as we enter what might be a kind of qualitative renaissance, brought on by the maturing of digital technology and consumer expectations. For instance, less than a year ago we were enthralled by the notion of putting film clips and entire telly episodics onto an      iPod. Starting later  this year, get ready for 3D digital

films, and not long after that look out for 4K films, a cinema technology that can achieve four times the resolution of HD video; it’s like 70mm versus 35mm. The intent is to get you off your phone and into theatre. For another example, Apple now offers 256kbps downloads, with content from EMI, at least, DRM-free. As any engineer will (annoyingly) point out, music at 256k is not twice as good as music transferred at 128k, the MP3 transfer rate, the next bit being less additionally important than the last bit and so on. However, what is important is that the bit rates are increasing, and perhaps even more importantly, that this putative increase in quality, perceptual though it might be, is being used as the primary marketing ploy. ‘Buy this because it sounds better!’ is a far cry from ‘Buy this because it’s cool/small/cheap.’ This is not simply curmudgeonly old pros once again chirping about the way anything less than a virgin vinyl master sounds; it’s more pervasive than that. Peter Burrows, writing in the May 30th BusinessWeek, put it plainly for the masses, saying, ‘In the long-run, I think the question of audio quality is also going to become far more important.’ The last time you might have encountered an observation like that in a general-interest magazine is when THX was introduced 25 years ago. The trend is clear: cable and   video providers  satellite are making high-definition

television their premium service product; in addition to Apple’s doubling of its bit rate, companies like MusicGiants and AIX Media are launching websites that can stream close to the CD’s 1,411kbps rate and will offer what has been the elusive Holy Grail of music tweakers: a viable (hopefully) surround/highdef music business model; the end of this year will see a few dozen new home theatre AV processors on the market sporting 7.1 surround capability. Even the lowest-quality playback devices, such as mobile phones, are in for a qualitative renovation. In Cannes earlier this year, at Midem, JVC unveiled its K2 Technology, a group of technologies that assertedly increase the quality of digital sound, with an eye towards marketing the process to music companies, music distributors, and mobile phone companies. K2 is an entire system that covers processing prior to and after compression. Think of it as SACD on a chip. Can you get 24-bit resolution and a frequency range that extends to 100kHz out of a cell phone, as JVC asserts? Who knows? But again, the point is that a multi-billion-dollar company is betting that enough people are looking for quality in their sound to make the wager worthwhile. To be sure, this is not some abrupt epiphany; quality is not coming about as some sudden revelation; rather, it appears to be more of an incremental phenomenon. For instance, both Apple and We7, a UK-based adfunded music distribution company, offer to ‘upgrade’ customers’ initial downloads for a small additional charge. At a time when there is perhaps more uncertainty than ever about how to make the digital model work for the music business (legal downloads are growing at a slower rate, y’know), could quality become the ultimate sales tool? There is a quality base to build off of. Mark Waldrep, AIX’s president and chief producer, says his

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September 2007

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September 2007

people might actually buy them again?’ The same goes for records. Quality transcends talent. By that I mean that while someone might be able to have negative opinions

‘US automakers: “You mean if we make quality cars, people might actually buy them again?” The same goes for records.’ about what the drummer is playing, there’s less subjectivity involved in assessing the way the drums are recorded. One of the downfalls of the current

era of personal recording is the DIAY effect — Do It All Yourself: percussion-challenged individuals with drum machines, low-frequency-averse people with a sequencer and bass samples. The difference to the average track when a professional is brought in can be vast. You might be pretty good at programming drums, for a non-drummer. Saves a few quid, right? Not in the long run. Once you’ve seen a video programme in high definition, it’s hard to go back to standard def. I know about the studies that assert that people process visuals differently than they do sound, and I’m sure that’s true. But sound systems are only going to get better moving forward and people will be able to discern the difference between high and low resolution with sound, with surround as icing on the cake. The grungy days of audio are drawing to a close for a while. Quality’s back. Take the lead. ■

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specialty label has seen steady growth in the last five years, enough to warrant a new recording/mastering/ authoring facility opened in Los Angeles last year and the transition to high-speed Internet distribution. ‘The proliferation of home theatre and of high-end audio systems for enthusiasts really created a base for this,’ says Waldrep. The home theatre is becoming the portal for quality into the consumer’s hearth and home — it’s the only successful way in for any multichannel audio proposition, and the standard bearers of sound quality, such as Dolby and DTS, are taking a renewed interest in just that. And what if you could make increased resolution and multiple channels portable? Turtle Beach, a New York headphone developer, in June announced it was ready to market headphones that encompass eight channels, including a dual-sub and a 10-band EQ, and powered by the playback device via a USB connection. The headphones are initially aimed at the game market, but once again, the real take-away here is that they are being marketed on the premise of higher-quality audio. So having discovered and documented the trend, what do we do with it? For starters, this phenomenon argues for increased music budgets. Recording budgets have been in a downward spiral for years. The shift out of conventional studio facilities and into spare bedrooms accounts for much of that trend, but more critically, it’s also imposed a culture of ‘good enough’ on a lot of music recording. What if ‘good enough’ weren’t good enough anymore? It’s a compelling argument to someone who controls the purse strings on projects, and who can see that the records that labels give the greatest amount of funding to tend to do pretty well, on average — almost any of the hits from ‘American Idol,’ for starters. Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks — they were paired with talents like Raine Maida, Clif Magness, Dann Huff and Mark Bright and worked, for the most part, in major facilities. This is an extreme example, admittedly –- the ‘American Idol’ imprimatur makes the show’s alumni such a sure thing that it’s not that much of a gamble to make the larger investments in them than in artists who come up the ‘hard way.’ However, viewed in the context of a growing demand for quality (and I’m talking objectively here, not subjectively, like, maybe you don’t like a voice or a song), the equation ‘you gets what you pays for’ becomes less and less refutable. Go ahead, ask for a larger budget, putting the request into the context of the return to quality: ‘Yes, you can do this record for £30,000, but it’s going to sound a lot better if the budget is £50,000. I can get the studios, engineers and musicians I need and you’re going to have that much better a chance of recouping your investment.’ The past half century of the record business is littered with albums that cost way too much money and produced way too little return. However, the mindset of the time not only tolerated this kind of fiscal irresponsibility but actually encouraged it. A&R departments from the 1960s through to the mid1990s acted more like government ministries that fear if they don’t spend their entire budgets every year it would look as if they weren’t working hard enough. That mentality is over, for better or for worse (I mean, it was fun at the time). Now, we’re emerging from a self-inﬂicted age of MP3 into a moment in time in which quality counts. I recall when the US auto industry had fallen on hard times in the 1980s. It had been making utterly unreliable cars and completely ignoring the Japanese juggernaut. Then one day, they figured it out: ‘You mean if we make quality cars,

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headroom reSOLUte eNergY eFFIcIeNcY I don’t disagree with John Watkinson about the benefits of compact fluorescent lamps, but there is a downside — the power factor is just under 0.5! This means that power distribution losses are about twice what you might have thought from consideration of Watts rather than VA. This is of greater significance today when generators are hundreds of miles from the load, and sometimes situated in a different country. I am told that the distribution losses are around 50%, which completely negates any improvements there may have been in power station efficiency. If I look back to the time when I grew up on the outskirts of London during the blitz, I have no recollection of the lights going out other than for short periods (as they do still, today). This seems remarkable until one realises that there were then about 300 power stations in the London area. Not only did this mean that the system was very robust: it also meant that distribution losses were minimal. Even small towns like Reigate (near to where I live now) had their own power station, run at a profit by the council. Relatives of mine lived in a large block of flats called Dolphin Square which were heated by hot water from Battersea Power Station (when it only had three chimneys), just on the other side of the Thames — which was always crowded with barges carrying freight. In many ways we have gone backwards during the intervening years. The level of recycling then was far greater than is even dreamed of today, and of course there was no plastic packaging. Every street had a ‘pig bin’ to collect food waste, and in Reigate this was cooked/processed by an incinerator that burned non-recyclable waste with the ash residue being sold and used to make road-building materials, etc. The processed waste food fed the council-run pig farm, and the dairy herd. The council sorted the waste, and a large electromagnet was used to retrieve ferrous material.

The council ran at a profit, and only employed about five people who travelled by bicycle — for there were no parasites like accountants, management managers, target setters, consultants, and box tickers. They just got on with it! Today, my local council can’t even recycle cardboard, let alone plastic, and NiCd batteries go in the land-fill along with almost everything else, including mercury from fluorescent lamps! David Birt, Bletchingly, UK

KeeP ON rUNNINg I just received the July/August issue here in New Jersey, and after reading Watkinson’s column as I always do, I also noticed the letters complaining about his environmental solutions. I thought he would be interested to know that there’s at least one kindred spirit in the audio biz. First, I don’t drive an SUV, I drive a Prius. But I have an interesting application for it -- I use it for emergency power for my house. One could run a studio on a Prius if necessary. It would prevent downtime and it’s much quieter than a generator! (see www.PriUPS.com ) Next, specifically with regard to Tony Batchelor’s comments from Odense, land of great marzipan: Fusion is many years away, fission is with us today. At least here in the States, land of backyard swimming pools, we know how to deal with fission byproducts and nuclear waste. (see: www.PriUPS.com/riklblog/ may06/060508-nuclear-pool.htm). Richard Factor, Pharoah Editorial, US Hi Richard. Many thanks for the kind support received today. I have a number of other encouragements and so don’t feel depressed by the SUV letters. Using a hybrid as a UPS is a cool idea. I assume you are a Democrat. John Watkinson

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advertiser Index AES................................ 69 Quested ........................ 15 AKM .............................. 28 Radial ............................ 49 AL.So............................. 71 RME...................... 10 & 11 Audient ......................... 39 RMG .............................. 63 Audio Technica ............. 31 Calrec ............................ 44 RSS Roland ................... 25 Cedar Audio ................. 76 SBES.............................. 65 CharterOak................... 26 Schoeps ........................ 17 Dangerous Music ........ 61 SCV ............................... 12 Dean Cook Productions ..71 SEA Vertrieb Brauner... 48 Digico............................ 03 DigiDesign .................... 29 Sennheiser K+H ........... 35 DPA ............................... 21 Sommer Cable ............. 23 Drawmer ....................... 51 Sonic Dist./Apogee...... 66 Enhanced Audio........... 71 Sonic Dist./Ghost ......... 56 Euphonix....................... 37 Fostex ........................... 19

Sonic Dist./SE ............... 68

Funky Junk ................... 71 Sonic Dist./Waves ........ 64 Genelec......................... 02 Sonnox .......................... 47 Harman ......................... 27 Sonifex .......................... 74 IBC................................. 75 Source/Lynx .................. 72 Jünger ........................... 14 KMR .............................. 71 Lawo.............................. 33

Source/UA .................... 20 SSL ................................ 41

Loud/Mackie................. 09 Stirling Trading ............. 45 Lydkraft ......................... 18 Studer ........................... 60 Merging Technologies .. 07 Studio Spares ............... 53 Microtech Gefell........... 55 Tascam .......................... 73 Millennia........................ 13 TL Audio ....................... 62 Neumann ...................... 67 Neue Heimat ................ 71 TL Commerce ............... 71 Neutrik .......................... 59 Unity Audio................... 57

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