Resolution V7.1 Jan/Feb 2008 by Resolution

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

v7.1 JaNUarY/FEBrUarY 2008

The thoughts of Andy Gill Swedish TV’s Dockside rebuild yields efﬁciency premiums Nick Davis on remixing the entire Genesis catalogue in 5.1 How the phone may bridge the digital sales gap Meet your maker: Ivor Drawmer — Drawmer Ten things you really should do rEviEWS: Fairlight Xynergi • RND 5088 • Audio Ease Speakerphone Telefunken ELA M 250 F • BPR Smartlips • UA UAD Plugs • Event ASP8

AUDIO FOR POST, BROADCAST, RECORDING AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

v7.1 JaNUarY/FEBrUarY 2008

iSSN 1477-4216

News & Analysis 4

leader

Products

News

Headroom

Swedish tv

Sweet Spot

Sales, contracts, appointments and biz bites.

New introductions and announcements. Monitoring success.

Craft 14

The Dockside rebuild of this broadcaster’s facilities has paid efficiency premiums in all departments.

andy Gill

Producer, writer, engineer — the thoughts of this member of Gang Of Four.

Nick davis

On melodic rock, musical MOTs and remixing the entire Genesis catalogue in 5.1 on an E series.

E-Trap — Newell puts a portable and tuneable electro-acoustic absorption system through its paces.

meet your maker

Ivor Drawmer — the man behind the outboard brand gives his thoughts on technology.

ten

Your business

Things you really should do.

Business 49

Bridging the gap on the phone How Nokia Comes With Music may help bridge the digital sales gap.

The blogosphere may to be a useful way of getting your name out there.

Technology 54

Stealth digital Processing

The technology behind Digico’s next generation platform explained.

Slaying dragons

31 32 34 35 36

SSl Xlogic alpha vHd Pre Universal audio Uad Plug-ins Jazzmutant dexter marian trace 8, alpha & Pro Event aSP8

Microphones aren’t like ears and the differences need to be understood.

Reviews 22 24 26 28 30

Fairlight Xynergi rupert Neve designs 5088 audio Ease Speakerphone telefunken Ela m 250 F BPr Smartlips

Editorial Editorial director: Zenon Schoepe tel: +44 1444 410675 Email: zen@resolutionmag.com Editorial office: Po Box 531, Haywards Heath rH16 4Wd, UK Contributors: rob James, George Shilling, Jon thornton, Keith Holland, 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, magazine Production tel: +44 1273 467579 Email: dean@resolutionmag.com

news news appointments

L to R: Caroline Cook, Tony Musgrove, Steve Fisher, Howard Jones and Chris Hawkins, all of Source.

UK DISTRIBUTOR Source has announced an expansion programme that coincides with its appointment as UK distributor for Genelec professional monitoring systems. The distributor has taken up residence in new, 3000sqft premises in North West London that combine offices, warehousing, technical support and product demonstration areas. Steve Fisher has joined the company as its dedicated Genelec product specialist with responsibilities for providing technical support to resellers and end users. With a background in architecture and sound recording, Fisher has worked extensively with Genelec for seven years. ALAN MARCH has joined Sennheiser UK as business development specialist after 21 years in various roles at HW International and Shure Distribution UK.

SBES changes for 2008

leader

anyone who has ever tried to resolve a dispute with a bank or tried to change a phone/internet provider will know what it feels like to be small, anonymous and helpless in the face of modern customer service. You alone understand what the problem is so you spend an inordinate amount of time explaining it to people who probably don’t care and certainly won’t be able to help you but who are very concerned with ascertaining your precise identity. they in turn will pass you on to many others who also can’t help you but will tell you how much they empathise with your frustration and how sorry they are. Some say the problem is that they have replaced too many humans with machines; i would argue that often it is the humans that are the problem because they are less empowered than the machines they work beside. Why offer a voice at the end of the line when its owner doesn’t understand the range of product his employers provide as well as the customer, cannot deal with a complaint in a logical manner that displays a commitment to finding a solution, and ultimately cannot make any decision or instigate any remedial action without checking with a grown up first? What is the point? Customer service has changed to save money. the products and services are being sold harder now than they used to be and they’re also possibly better thought out and more reliable and so will potentially attract fewer returns and issues. You can get away with less customer support particularly if you can get interactive machinery to deal with the mundane everyday stuff like giving bank balances over the phone. QEd. Except that the customers don’t remember ever having asked for this type of service. i think it would be safe to say that you will recognise the sentiments in my introductory paragraph above because the services you use too have, over time, mutated gradually into the monstrosity we have today. We all have bank accounts and many of us can remember having a home branch where they kept all your records and where you could go in and talk to someone who knew as much about your money as you did and had the paperwork, books and knowledge to sort something out or give you an answer. i don’t ever remember saying ‘You know this is all a bit too good and confidence inspiring, i’d much prefer to waste hours on the phone talking to people who probably don’t care and certainly won’t …’ You get my drift. and so much else in modern life displays this mutation — we haven’t so much bought into it as simply accepted its changing. the inference is that we have no choice — this is the way it’s going, you have to go along with it. actually, in some cases, choice is about all we do have left. Strangely, the same goes for technology; what we did ask for was delivered some time ago and in some cases we’ve been in the mutating phase ever since. Zenon Schoepe

Funky Junk focuses on Harman in February

(l-r) Weber, Ledergerber and Kern.

AXEL KERN has joined the Studer company HQ at Regensdorf as product manager for the OnAir Series of consoles. He will be working closely with Peter Weber, now the product manager for the Vista Series of consoles, and with Stefan Ledergerber, recently appointed VP of R&D for the Soundcraft Studer Group.

©2008 S2 Publications ltd. all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication, but neither

Funky Junk, the North London retailer of new and used audio gear, has teamed up with Harman Pro UK, British distributor for the Harman Group of pro audio equipment manufacturers, to create a month-long installation focusing on some of Harman’s key recording brands. Throughout February, the recently refurbished Funky Junk premises on Hornsey Road, near Finsbury Park, will house a variety of classic recording gear from key Harman brands including JBL, dbx, Lexicon and AKG, and feature a selection of vintage AKG mics from Funky Junk’s own collection. Additionally, on Wednesday 13 and 20 of February there

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.

will be product focus days on the Lexicon PCM96 high-end FireWire stereo reverb and AKG history respectively, which will be held in Funky’s new demonstration studio. On both days, the product presentations will take place in two sessions, from 2pm to 4pm and from 5pm to 7pm. The Harman product installation, including the PCM96, can be viewed at Funky Junk throughout February. Attendance at the two product focus days, at which food and drink will be provided, is free, but space at each of the two sessions on each day is limited to 20 persons. If you’d like to come to one of the two focus days, register at www.harmanprouk.com

S2 Publications ltd. registered in England and Wales. Company number: 4375084. registered office: Equity House, 128-136 High Street, Edgware, middlesex Ha8 7tt.

resolution

The organisers of SBES, Point Promotions, have announced changes for this year’s event. SBES2008 will be held at the NEC, Birmingham on Friday 7 and Saturday 8 November. ‘We always survey the visitors to SBES and it became apparent that a mid-week event was not always the best for our visitors,’ said David McVittie, organiser of SBES. ‘We have had problems in the past because of the dates clashing with Children in Need. One large commercial group banned all its employees from attending SBES for fear they might want to spend money, and a great many of the new radio station licence applicants are already in full time employment and find it difficult to take time from their “day job” to visit. A Friday and a Saturday seems to us to be the best of both worlds.’ There will also to be a change in emphasis and SBES will no longer be purely a sound show and will embrace other related technology. www.sbes2008.com

PlaSa08 interest high More than two thirds of exhibitors have already rebooked their stand space for PLASA08, according to the organisers. The show management team has identified a range of new initiatives to develop and strengthen visitor attendance and is also focusing on a number of key areas for further development. ‘One of the key messages that came across very powerfully from our research was how important the new products and developing technologies are to the success of the live business environment at PLASA,’ said show director Nicola Rowland, ‘as well as the tremendous value our visitors place on the networking opportunities. We’re investing in these areas and studying ways to develop the networking experience. We’re also working on extending the show’s special features to ensure that we deliver a strong educational programme.’ PLASA08 runs 7-10 September at Earls Court, London.

French combined trade event In 2008, SATIS, SIEL and Le RADIO are uniting to create what is billed as the largest event for the French audiovisual, live entertainment, events, and radio broadcasting sectors. The SATIS-SIELRADIO show will run 20-23 October at Paris Expo-Porte de Versailles over 30,000sqm.

SUBSCriBE www.resolutionmag.com annual Subscriptions: UK £37.00, Europe £46.00, rest of the World £53.00

January/February 2008

news dolby to acquire Coding technologies Dolby has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Coding Technologies — privately held provider of audio compression technologies for the mobile, digital broadcast, and Internet markets, for a purchase price of approximately US$250 million net of cash. The acquisition will broaden Dolby’s technology portfolio and expertise for emerging low-bandwidth media applications, according to the company. ‘Dolby is committed to and focused on delivering innovative entertainment technology solutions to our customers and licensees,’ said Bill Jasper, president and CEO, Dolby Laboratories. ‘By adding Coding Technologies’ expertise and high-efficiency audio compression to our portfolio of technologies and services, we will be better positioned to support our customers as they continue to move into more bandwidthconstrained delivery methods such as mobile networks and the Internet.’

UK Screen partners JamES

Tony Andrews (JAMES) and Gaynor Davenport (chief executive of UK Screen).

oslo academy goes Genelec

(l-r) Adrian Richmond (sales engineer CCS UK), Nico Lewis (director sales CCS EMEA), Stephen Rodway (sales engineer CCS) and Geoff Rogers (RTS Systems Engineer CCS EMEA).

oslo’s Norwegian academy of music has installed multichannel Genelec monitoring systems in three new rooms at its new premises in the capital. Started some 25 years ago, the academy originally ran two SSl 4000 consoles — one in a traditional recording studio the other as an electrophonic music room. While the desks have long gone the spaces have remained and have been supplemented by the move at the beginning of last year and the new control rooms, which are used by the academy’s musicians for their work. ‘Getting the monitoring environments right was an essential and they employ Genelec 8050s in 5.1 in two rooms and in 7.1 in the third. ‘i’ve used Genelec since 1983 and we had Genelecs in our old studios,’ said mats Claesson, associate professor in modern music production. ‘We conducted our own tests and we tried every small speaker model that had a Norwegian distributor and we still preferred the Genelecs.’

Audio Warehouse has been awarded a contract by Irish radio station Today FM for the installation of ten radio studios and a CTA in Dublin.

TELEX/RTS HAS strengthened its commitment to the Eastern European and Russian markets with the appointment of Stephen Rodway who has assumed responsibility for the region. TRANSAUDIO GROUP in Las Vegas has been appointed exclusive worldwide distributor for True Systems mic preamp products.

Second System 5 for Besson Patrick Salloch, general manager Klotz Digital Asia Pacific and Rodney Houston, Amber Technology.

At its annual Conch Sound Awards, UK Screen (formerly UK Post) announced a partnership with JAMES (Joint Audio Media Educational Service) which will help to take forward its initiatives for audio sector training. JAMES was created by the education arm of the Association of Professional Recording Services and the Music Producers Guild, who have jointly evaluated audio courses for over a decade. Now with the added support of UK Screen, the programme will expand to include courses in audio postproduction.

(l-r) John Byrne, Audio Warehouse and Anto McGing, Audiohead.

appointments

KLOTZ DIGITAL has appointed Amber Technology as distributor for its broadcast product range in New Zealand. Amber Technology has already received an order for two Aeon consoles with Vadis 212 routers from Radioworks On-Air studios in Auckland.

French filmmaker, Luc Besson, has purchased a second Euphonix System 5 for his Digital Factory postproduction complex in Normandy, France. The 48-fader film system was installed in Audi 1. At the same time, Besson also upgraded his first System 5, a 620-channel, 144 fader console, to a EuCon Hybrid system to allow the console to control Pro Tools DAWs from the System 5 channel strips. ‘We are really happy with the first console we installed three years ago,’ said Digital

Factory technical manager, Frederic Warnotte. ‘Technically, the system is very stable and easy to maintain. Engineers find the console powerful, well designed and efficient. ‘Because of its modularity, the system is able to evolve with our business. For example, it has been really easy to retro-fit the EuCon Hybrid option on our existing console.’ Euphonix celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and will introduce its first products for the personal studio market at the NAMM Show in January.

DIGICO HAS appointed Marketing Concepts, founded 20 years ago by Bruce Marlin, as a new US representative, covering Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. EX-SONY MUSIC S t u d i o ’s m a n a g e r Glenn Swan has joined Times Square, Manhattan facility Quad Studios in New York as the facility’s new studio manager.

Subscribe now online at www.resolutionmag.com UK £37 • Europe £46 • Rest of the World £53

January/February 2008

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news appointments

SOUNDCRAFT TECHNICAL director and co-founder Graham Blyth has been presented with an AES Fellowship Award in recognition of his distinguished career in mixing console design and service to the Society. BELDEN HAS introduced a new program for distribution partners in the EMEA region. The new Channel Program, called Belden DNA, sets out to build the ultimate connection between Belden and its distributors, through selection and allocation of resources. Belden DNA will be an exclusive community of the best distribution partners, dedicated to promoting Belden’s range of cable and associated products to their respective markets and territories.

French market takes to icon

French film music composer, armand amar, recently installed a digidesign 32-fader d-Control with Pro tools Hd6 accel into his own Studio Babel in montreuil, France. ‘icon is an ideal solution in addition to Pro tools,’ said amar. ‘the ability to tightly integrate with Pro tools and its ease to use really streamlines the mixing process on large film music mixing sessions. it has increased our ability to turn around projects faster.’ With numerous film soundtracks to his name, amar is also co-owner of record label long distance. Established with co-creator alain Weber and with help from Peter Gabriel, the label offers some 60 albums. Saya postproduction facility in Paris has taken delivery of a 32-fader digidesign icon d-Control with a Pro tools Hd3 accel system. the company works on an array of tv projects and is run by chief sound engineer Julien loron, composer Jibril lahbabi, and producer and journalist ivan Cerieix. the loft-style building accommodates audio and video editing stations as well as three sound studios. the d-Control in Studio 1 adds to the 24-fader d-Command in Studio 2.

CW SALES is now sales and marketing manager for Groove Tubes pro audio products in North America and Europe. BLAKE AUGSBURGER, president and CEO of the Harman Pro Group, is expanding his responsibilities to assume the newly created position of Country Manager — Harman USA. In his new assignment he will report directly to Harman International CEO Dinesh Paliwal.

‘Big’ mick gives led Zep Earthworks treatment Industry veteran and FOH engineer ‘Big’ Mick Hughes engineered the recent Led Zeppelin reunion at the London 02 arena, which was a tribute concert in memory of Atlantic Record boss Ahmet Ertegun. ‘I’ve recently had the Earthworks mics on evaluation from UK distributor Unity Audio for another project and was seriously impressed with the results, their extended high frequency response gives a fantastic openness and clarity, which was perfect for Led Zeppelin’s dynamic open drum sound,’ said Mick. ‘Essentially, I used several of the DK25/L drum mic sets, each coming with three SR25 cardioids, and a KickPad, which is an XLR in-line filter optimised for kickdrums, along with two, top of the line SR30 cardioids. ‘I had a main X/Y pair pointing down above Jason’s [Bonham] head, to get an overall top kit sound, and another pair of SR25s on the extreme outer edges of the kit, pointing down and slightly away from the centre of the kit to handle the cymbals on either side,’ he continued. ‘For snare, I used an SR25 underneath, and a SM57 on top. For kick, I used a combination of SR25 just outside the sound hole, and a Beta 52 just inside, both had the Earthworks KickPad in-line filters. The SR30 was used on the top side of the hi-hat, with another SR30 for the timpani, the new Earthworks, goose necked Periscope series P30 was used underneath the main ride cymbal, which I could position to capture a nice balance between the bell of the cymbal and the stick.’ ‘I’m using the new Midas digital XL8 console, and that allowed me in the sound check to record impulse responses from all the drum mics from a single snare hit, then analyse all the mic waveforms and enter precise delay information on the Midas to compensate for phase issues, resulting in a really solid sounding kit. I’m now really looking forward to using the Earthworks for the next Metallica tour,’ he said.

also in Paris, tv production company marathon has replaced its Pro Control with a 32-fader d-Control, Pro tools Hd5 accel system and avid mojo video interface. • UK Singer-songwriter imogen Heap has bought an icon d-Control for work on her forthcoming third album. the 32-fader d-Control will be the focus of a studio in london, which is currently under construction.

Roland UK, Edirol Europe and Music Sales partner

Miles Roberts, director of PMC with Andy Preistman, president of Precor.

PMC HAS appointed Precor Consumer Electronics as its distributor in Canada.

Roland UK, Edirol Europe and Music Sales are collaborating in an initiative that establishes the group as one of the largest providers of integrated music technology solutions for schools and colleges. Roland’s portfolio includes musical instruments, alongside Boss pedals and the new RSS Digital Snake

and V-Mixing systems. Edirol Europe offers computer-based music and audio recording products, video editing solutions and Cakewalk music software. Europe’s largest printed music publisher, Music Sales, offers teachers and students a complete range of sheet music, books, DVDs and instrumental tutors.

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Acoustic and technical design company White Mark has created a five-studio complex in London’s Soho Square for audio post specialists The Voice And Music Company. Established 15 years ago by the composition team of Kim Goody and Alan Coates, The Voice And Music Company handles composition, sound design and audio postproduction for ﬁlm and TV. They now have two 5.1 dubbing theatres, two stereo suites and a music composition studio.

January/February 2008

My Personal Euphonix I

ntroducing the Artist Series. Bring the powerful mixing and control capabilities of Euphonix audio consoles into your personal studio. T h e s t a n d - a l o n e M C M i x 8 - f a d e r u n it includes touch-s e n s i t i v e rotary encoders for plug-in control, and OLED displays for track info and metering. Connect to any EuCon, HUI or Mackie Control application on your Mac(s) via highspeed EuCon protocol over Ethernet.

MC Control £ 999*

MC Mix £ 699*

Up to three 8-Fader MC Mix units may be clipped together, and the MC Control unit can be added for serious editorial work.

euphonix.com ©2008 Euphonix Inc. All Rights Reserved. MC Control, MC Mix, & EuCon are trademarks of Euphonix Inc. Mac and Mac logo are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc., Registered in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. *Estimated street price including VAT. Mac computer, monitor & keyboard not included.

news appointments DUBBING MIXER Paul Harris has joined the St Anne’s audio t e a m i n L o n d o n ’s Soho. He has worked for more than 20 years in audio post and as a senior dubbing mixer since 1994. He was previously at The Sanctuary, Oasis Television and Videosonics. ALLEN ROWAND, a sound engineer, sound designer and consultant with ten years of technical experience in the Broadway theatre sound industry, has joined Metric Halo. Rowand will be working to provide users with a programme of training classes and online tutorials. H A R R I S CORPORATION has n a m e d b ro a d c a s t industry expert Richard Scott vice president, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) operations for Harris Broadcast Communications. He was previously senior vice president, systems and technology services, EMEA, at Ascent Media. PA N O R A M A D T V, THE video products division of Wohler Technologies, has appointed Darren Fordham as director of business development. He joins with more than 25 years of industry experience.

vista 5 football broadcast

Switzerland’s ringier tv is employing a Studer vista 5 console to create the paytv channel content for the UEFa Champions’ league, the Swiss national football league and Switzerland’s National ice Hockey league a. at its production studio in Zurich, ringier embellishes the broadcast video received from the sports stadia via SrG Swiss Broadcasting’s control centre, the CNCt. Working simultaneously on numerous games from the Champions league, ringier engineers add before/after show trails, captions, scores and other statistics; mid-match, there is the expert discussion, which will be mixed along with the rest of the audio track including the live commentator from each stadium, and a studio commentary. ringier tv uses the vista 5 to automate the audio-follows-video process, and add the audio extras to the package. System planner daniel Berthoud (pictured) explained that, ‘originally our idea was to use six or eight small mixers to do this, but they could never give us the ﬂexibility that we needed. ‘on most consoles, you have only one or two master outputs, but with the vista 5, you can specify as many as you want — 16 or more — depending on your dSP provision. in theory, you can expand indefinitely,’ he said.

Maddocks ﬁrst with MH2EQ

QSC AUDIO Products has named Dale Sandberg as its senior product manager to lead development of installed sound products. He joins from dbx Professional Products. PHAROS HAS appointed Alan Hoggarth as director of sales. He was previously at Link Electronics, Grass Valley Group, Abekas Video Systems, Scitex Digital Video and Sony Broadcast & Professional Europe. HOSA TECHNOLOGY has promoted Ben Sweeney to the position of operations manager where he will be charged with overseeing Hosa’s internal systems and processes.

Engineer Bruce Maddocks has bought the first A-Designs HM2EQ for his Santa Monica Cups ’N Strings facility. The HM2EQ is a dual-mono, 3-band valve equaliser with a filtering system that allows the even harmonics to flow through its 12AT7 tubes. Maddocks had been looking for ‘something different in a tube equaliser’ for use in his mastering work. ‘I wanted to fit my analogue mastering rig with a tube piece that had a greater transparency than some of the legacy pieces that I was using,’ he said. ‘I was intrigued by the design concept of the tube warming the signal while passing no unwanted noise.’

resolution

dPa 4023 for bass US-based jazz musician Jon Burr has purchased a D PA 4 0 2 3 compact cardioid microphone for use on his bass after being introduced to DPA mics by his studio engineer, who persuaded him to try a 4023 for live work. ‘I found it to be incredibly accurate and ideal for live miking onstage,’ said Burr. ‘It allowed me to get a very clear image of the bass, with very good sound pressure levels through a monitor close by, with no trace of ringing or feedback.’ Burr uses one of DPA’s numerous mounting accessories to attach the mic across the strings at an angle below the bridge. ‘This positioning captured not only the top of the instrument, but the “legs” of the bridge, on the G side,’ he said. ‘This was the result of some experimentation, and it was found that the legs of the bridge offered detail in the high end that was desirable.’

duality duo for College

The McNally Smith College of Music in Saint Paul, US has bought two 48-channel SSL Duality consoles as the centrepiece of two renovated studios. ‘When our chair of Recording Technology, Bryan Forrester, decided to upgrade studios One and Two, the clear choice became the SSL Duality console,’ explained André Fischer (pictured), dean of Music Industries at the college and producer of artists such as Natalie Cole, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Tony Bennett, Gladys Knight and Frank Sinatra. ‘We needed both practical and functional equipment for the students, many of whom have extensive experience with digital audio software at school and on their home computers. The Duality consoles flawlessly bridge the gap between the allcomputer experience of the students and the real-world professional environment in which they will work to create new music.’ Nineteen XLogic Delta-Link systems have been installed in Todd-AO facilities in California. The Delta-Links are being used for the transfer of audio via MADI between MADI-enabled devices and Pro Tools HD systems. ‘Purchasing an SSL MADI interface alleviates us from having to purchase an AES I-O for both the console and the Pro Tools system and that saves us on both installation and overall costs,’ said Bill Johnston, senior VP of engineering, Todd-AO.

January/February 2008

news Biz Bites Tony Wadsworth is to step down as CEO of EMI Music, writes Nigel Jopson, ahead of a restructure likely to end careers of other long-serving executives. Roger Ames, head of EMI US, will take responsibility for A&R in the UK, while Mike Clasper (a former BAA chief executive who sits on new owner Terra Firma’s board), will assume Wadsworth’s corporate responsibilities. Ames began his career with EMI in 1975. In 1979, he joined PolyGram and in 1993 became chairman and CEO of PolyGram UK. Rumoured to have an uneasy relationship with Polygram chairman (later EMI CEO) Alain Levy, he left to join Time-Warner in 1999 as chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group. He was forced to leave WMG in 2004 after it was bought by Edgar Bronfman, and is one of few top execs to have inside knowledge of both EMI and Warner. He rejoined EMI in 2005, as Levy’s rule waned. The restructuring is expected to separate operational executives, who will oversee distribution, marketing and manufacturing, and those like Ames involved with managing artists. The 2008 cull is bound to add to the executive payoff tally ... something of a tradition at EMI: ‘Lucky’ Jim Fifield £12m (1999), Colin Southgate £812,000 (2000), Ken and Nancy Berry £7m (2001), Alain Levy £4.6m and David Munns £1.5m (2006), Eric Nicoli £3.3m and Martin Stewart £1m (2007). Let’s not forget Mariah Carey and her £19.6m contract-breaking payoff (2002). Every Mistake Imaginable. Until January, Sony-BMG had been the last major to insist its music downloads must be DRM copy-protected. During 2007, labels gradually made downloads available as MP3s — playable on any digital device — ending consumer confusion concerning formats. When EMI last year announced it would license DRM-free downloads, it was lambasted by critics (including Sony-BMG and Warner) for opening the floodgates to piracy. With 2007 sales figures released from 7digital, we see some results: 17 of the top-selling albums were from EMI, and 18 top-selling single track downloads were EMIs. According to the BPI, nearly 3m tracks were bought in a Christmas download-surge week, a 1m increase over 2006. Even subscriptionevangelist Napster has indicated its entire à-la-carte download catalogue will soon be offered DRM-free, part of a larger industry move away from content protection for single track purchases. Three musicians many thought would never share a stage again, The Police, are commanding Croesuslike touring receipts, with estimates topping $243m.

C&t give students warmth

the New England School of Communications has been training audio professionals for 30 years and the audio department boasts six-control rooms. Students have access to more than 150 microphones, everything from ‘the sublime to the ridiculous,’ in the words of executive director of audio david maclaughlin (pictured). on the sublime side, two Crowley and tripp ribbon microphones were recently added. ‘one of the downsides of our current digital technology is that it tends to be very bright,’ explained maclaughlin. ‘there’s something to be said about the warmth and deep tone of a ribbon mic that you just can’t get with anything else. in many ways, they translate to digital formats more favourably than condensers, whose bright, crisp sound tends to enhance digital edginess. ‘What students learn with the Crowley and tripp is how to get that really warm textured sound that they hear on classic recordings,’ he continued. ‘When the students first hear it, they say, “oh, that’s how it’s done!” it’s interesting to see that realisation after they’ve dogmatically put up the same microphone they always put up for vocals.’

(l-r) James Purnell, Ed Balls and Peter Thompson, president of the Vision Charity.

Supporters of The Vision Charity were at the UK House of Commons to launch the National Schools Radio Network — a programme to help the estimated 1.2 million dyslexic, visually impaired and blind children in the UK. The inaugural event was attended by five MPs and cabinet ministers Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and James Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The Network is a web-based opportunity for schools and colleges to showcase their abilities on a level playing field, making radio programmes as a group activity in a classroom setting with the aim of developing vital skills and interacting with other schools. Led by their teacher, students will make and use radio programmes and taking advantage of new community Internet platforms, the teacher will upload the completed programme onto the web, and log details of the programme onto the Schools Radio website (www.schoolsradio.com).

resolution

news Biz Bites ‘The tour shows no signs of slowing down,’ Live Nation declared in a statement. ‘The Police have scheduled dates for 2008 in Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.’ Meanwhile Led Zeppelin, who played a celebrated reunion show on 10 December, are said to be discussing possible tour plans. John Paul Jones confirmed: ‘There is a band meeting in January. It could be fun to do more stuff.’ DeepRockDrive, the creator of a platform for streaming interactive live concerts, has raised $3m in seed capital. Led by founders Danny Socolof and Jeff Henshaw, with ex-Yahoo man David Goldberg and ex-The Who manager Bill Curbishley, the company plans to sell tickets to virtual live concerts performed at its Vegas studio, while offering tools to promote these concerts via blogs and social networking sites. Proceeds will be split between the band and DeepRockDrive. The audience numbers for YouTube and other video sharing social websites have risen sharply in the last year, with almost half of online adults logging onto such sites, reports a study from Pew Internet & American Life Project. In a national phone survey of 2,054 adults, 48% said they have visited a video sharing site, up from last year’s 33%. Paramount is rumoured to announce full support for Sony’s Blu-ray disk format. A switch by Paramount (owned by media giant Viacom) would make a string of blockbuster movies due for release in the coming year available on Blu-ray, including the return of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. It would leave just one major Hollywood studio, Universal, exclusively promoting Toshiba’s rival HDVD technology.

open reel releases

Over 25,000 channels in use.

HV-3R Eight Channel Remote-Control Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3D 8 Eight Channel Microphone Preamplifier

HV-3D 4 Four Channel Microphone Preamplifier

Paul Stubblebine Mastering and valve electronics experts Bottlehead Corp. have introduced The Tape Project, a new music-delivery format and ‘record label.’ The Tape Project is presenting a series of analogue releases on reel-to-reel tape to offer audiophiles ‘an analogue listening experience that comes as close as possible to that of hearing the original master tape’. Slated for ten releases per year and sold primarily on a subscription basis, the 15ips half-track stereo, open reel recordings encompass a wide range of musical styles. The company is recommending tape machines and specifications for playback, as well as offering its own specially modified tape decks with custom valve components from Bottlehead. ‘The only two requirements for the music that we release are that the master must exist on analogue tape and that the music be great,’ said Paul Stubblebine. The first title to start shipping is The Number White by jazz singer Jacqui Naylor.

HV-3C Stereo Microphone Preamplifier

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

NSEQ-2 Twin Toplogy Stereo Parametric Equalizer

ORIGIN STT-1 Twin Topology Recording Channel

Showtime ISE, Amsterdam ........ 29-31 January Broadcast Live/VideoForum, London ........30 January-1 February Sounds Expo, London .......... 28 February-1 March CabSat, Dubai .................4-6 March Pro Light + Sound, Frankfurt .......................12-15 March NAB, Las Vegas .............12-17 April AES Europe, Amsterdam ..17-20 May BroadcastAsia, Singapore ......................17-20 June Plasa, London ........7-10 September IBC, Amsterdam ...12-16 September AES US, San Francisco.... 3-5 October Broadcast India, Mumbai .................... 17-19 October SBES, Birmingham .... 7-8 November

TLC-2 TWIN COM Twin Topology Stereo Compressor / Limiter

Spirit Studios in London’s West End has taken delivery of stereo and 5.1 PMC monitoring systems. Studio 1 has been equipped with a pair of 3-way IB1S-A monitors while Studio 2 has IB1S-As in an LCR conﬁguration with TB2S-A 2-way actives at the rears. The .1 channel is handled by a SB100 subwoofer.

The newly refurbished BBC Radio theatre in London has taken delivery of a PMC MB2S-A active stereo system. BBC Studios, part of BBC Resources, at BBC Television Centre use two DB1SA 5.1 systems while BBC Post Production, also part of BBC Resources, uses four.

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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

Snaps by Maurice Costin.

Swedish TV SVT’s Gothenburg operation is now based in a building that looks a bit like a ship. ZENON SCHOEPE reports on how the dockside rebuild of this broadcaster’s facilities has paid efﬁciency premiums in all departments.

wedish national broadcaster SVT moved its Gothenburg headquarters last year in the sort of massive undertaking that anyone would fear if they understood the full implications. Good planning and careful joined up thinking has left predominantly positive feelings about the move and shown what can be done to increase efficiency and productivity when you have to think in these terms in these competitive times. Perhaps the biggest achievement has been how the move has been perceived by the paying public

— on the one hand SVT Gothenburg now lives in a prestigious and glamourous quay-side building, on the other it has been at pains to demonstrate that the changes have been performed with the utmost attention to financial frugality. There was a time when a national broadcaster’s developments were seen simply as a source of pride for the nation; today everything seems to need to be justified and qualified. SVT Gothenburg is headquartered in a stunning building that was built for local camera manufacturer Hasselblad in 2002 to serve as its new factory. The

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firm only stayed a year before corporate problems caused it to leave and scale down to nearby premises. The building resembles a ship with its pointed bow and sculpted sweeping sides and it sits on the dockside like some glass-fashioned ocean liner. Internally it has been reworked quite extensively by the broadcaster with added floors and sections and the length of the building has also been extended in line with the architect’s original plans; apparently Hasselblad had it cut back. Some supplementary buildings have been added to the ship’s starboard side and better communication within the building was facilitated by the construction of an additional big staircase in the middle. The building is home to the Radio and TV operations and is inhabited by around 400 staff. The move was completed in August and represents one of the most modern stations in Europe, according to Anders Janocha, head of technology, technical development and service, Swedish TV. ‘When I say modern it has to do with logistics and how we work — everything is file-based, it’s HD, all the sound production is built for 5.1 and the edit suites,’ he says. ‘In terms of logistics, we try not to work with real-time systems where you connect two systems and do transfers; we use files and finished files are programmes that go off for broadcast.’ Gothenburg is Sweden’s second city and the station produces about 45 programme titles a year from entertainment to drama and current affairs. It had previously been located on the other side of town in a building around twice the size of the new one. ‘We have less space now but more effective use of what we have and the same number of people — but smaller desks!’ explains Anders. ‘Every individual has a smaller space and then we’ve put effort into creating meeting rooms, meeting points and the production facilities.’ SVT had to move as the previous building was old and would have required a lot of cash to refresh it. Tapeless production was in progress and a new building did afford the possibility to ramp up the new operation in the background in preparation for a straightforward switch over from old to new on an allocated day. They also gained space over their old bulky gear through new ‘slim-line’ technology. January/February 2008

facility

The dockside location has allowed the creation of a nearby community of support facilities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; something that could not happen at the older plot which was in the middle of a residential area. The rethink has changed the way they work and what they expect from the technology they have. Previously they had three TV studios and now they have two although they continue to rent a big drama studio nearby for an on-going series soap. The new building has a small news studio and a bigger general purpose studio that boasts much improved flexibility and efficiency through the use of a new lighting system that uses programmable fluorescent tubes in RGB and white that can allow very fast turnarounds. The news studio control room is highly automated and computer-driven with operators involved in a predominantly supervisory capacity â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Anders compares the function to what pilots now do once a flight has been prepared and programmed in advance. The bigger TV studio works with a more traditional but small sound control room and a Studer Vista 8 that can also be used for standalone postproduction duties. There are four Icon-equipped postproduction rooms and like the Vista room they all use Genelec 5.1 monitoring. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I think you will find that almost every speaker we use here is Genelec,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; says Anders who adds that it represents the monitoring standard

for SVT in Gothenburg. There are indeed Genelec monitors wherever you look from small models at editing stations, through to larger models in editing suites, right up to 8050s in the Icon rooms and the 1038s at the front and 1037s rears in the Vista room. The postproduction rooms are very small for 5.1 but Anders says they sound great because they are built in a part of the building that has very high ceilings. The majority of the stationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s output contributes to the national network and half of all Swedish drama is produced or controlled in Gothenburg along with a third of the entertainment programming. Much of this has to do with the fact that historically Gothenburg is home to many writers and key programme developers. The post suites are extremely heavily worked with day and evening shifts maximising the use of the rooms. Efficiency is paramount and the stationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s filebased system is an Avid Unity Isis, which integrates the audio well, according to Anders. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The new bits that are coming along for Pro Tools that let you handle video are very interesting for us because it is so integrated with the Unity environment,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;For us, all this is good because we can make use of it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to treat video differently. You only have to feed it in once and it can come from tape or P2 cards or disks â&#x20AC;&#x201D; when you bring it in it is only one copy. We have about 30 edit seats in the house

and everybody, including the audio people, can access it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to copy or transcode it, you can work straight off the system. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a big gain because you can decrease the time in the production chain from start to finish,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What we often do is the ordinary editing first, and then we take it out in two different paths for audio postproduction and then colour grading, which is often done simultaneously. We couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do that before.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The soap opera series is entirely tapeless and produces three 30-minute episodes every week. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Avid MediaComposer is the core product and for the news I would say that 80% of the reporters edit themselves on the Avid systems,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We started that nearly four years ago and that was a very steep learning curve for them. It was very tough. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;We have two flavours of room â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a small one where you work on your own for a short time or we have bigger rooms that you can work in for longer periods of time and with more people. But always the same core software,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; he says. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interesting about our operation is that we have the same tools no matter what kind of programming you do.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; â&#x2013;

Contact SWEdiSH tv, SWEdEN: Website: www.svt.se

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 January/February 2008

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gear

Products Equipment introductions and announcements.

SE rupert Neve Signature series mics SE Electronics will be producing a range of Rupert Neve signature series mics. The first of several mics will be an active Ribbon with ‘revolutionary performance’, provided by discrete circuits and purposedesigned transformers by Rupert. The capsule and manufacturing are being controlled by SE, while the electronics and the transformer are being taken care of by Rupert at Rupert Neve Designs. Following on will be a large diaphragm valve mic and a solid state condenser. The first three mics will all share a common look that nods to ‘retro’ while maintaining SE’s modernistic ‘industrial chic’. www.seelectronics.com

Sonnox oxford SuprEsser The Oxford SuprEsser joins the range of audio processing plug-ins in the Sonnox line-up. It is a professional DeEsser and a Dynamic EQ at the same time with a basic mode for quick fixes and an advanced mode for increased functionality and fine-tuning. The combination of an FFT display and three listen modes enables the user to easily see and hear exactly where the problem frequencies are, allowing the rapid reduction or removal of the offending audio. Rather than simply allowing a frequency to trigger full-band compression, only the offending frequencies are carved out leaving the rest of the mix untouched. Since the SuprEsser can operate at all frequencies, ‘plosives’ and other annoyances can also be removed making it more than a simple De-Esser. Additional features include Automatic Level Tracking, Linear Phase Filtering and a Wet/Dry blend control for final balancing. www.sonnoxplugins.com

dmC-842 multichannel digital mic controller

The RME DMC-842 is now shipping as the first multichannel digital microphone AES42 controller. The unit’s price makes the use of digital microphones affordable, as it’s within the same price range as conventional microphone preamp/ convertor combinations. Mode 1 and Mode 2, as specified in AES42, are currently supported by Neumann, Sennheiser and Schoeps. Mode 1 permits asynchronous operation. Working with several Mode 1 microphones requires the use of SRCs, which are already built into in the DMC-842. Mode 2 allows microphones to be synchronised. In both modes control data for adjusting gain, polar patterns, high-pass filter and compression settings can be sent to the microphones. www.rme-audio.com

Platform news: digidesign 7.4 Software for mac oS X and Windows offers new music and postproduction features and workﬂow enhancements for Pro tools Hd, Pro tools lE, and Pro tools m-Powered. topping the list is Elastic time but the software also provides improved networking compatibility with avid Unity isis shared storage systems and support for Hd video workﬂows. Elastic time allows users to change the tempo and timing of loops, music, dialogue, and other sound files in realtime without cutting up audio tracks. Users can now audition or import loops and audio files that instantly sync with a session’s tempo. Users can also use the Elastic time feature to quantise audio to the session grid or extracted grooves, and fine-tune regions with control over each individual beat. the Eleven guitar amp emulation plug-in for Pro tools, avid, and digidesign venue systems is now available. it offers emulations of modern amplifiers and speaker cabinets based on amps and cabinets from vox, Fender, marshall, mesa/Boogie, and Soldano, as well as several custom digidesign creations inspired by revered amplifier designs. the convolution-based speaker cabinets and mics, combined with modelling techniques, not only capture the cabinet resonance that’s unique to each amp and speaker combination, but it also claims to have managed to model the speaker load and coupling with the power amp, and the natural cabinet resonance that happens when driving a speaker at different volumes. Eleven comes preloaded with a selection of amp model configurations and allows independent selection and bypass of the amp and miked cabinet models. www.digidesign.com

Focusrite iSa one and liquid4Pre Focusrite’s ISA One o ff e r s a n I S A 1 1 0 transformer-based preamp in a rugged and portable chassis. The preamp is complemented by a line input (XLR and TRS jack) and an independent DI complete with gain control, active or passive impedance switch, a TRS output for routing to an amp, and an independent XLR output on the rear. A variable impedance circuit has been added, allowing the user to switch between four input impedance settings. ISA One also features an insert point, Phantom power, phase reverse and a 75Hz, 18dB/octave high-pass filter. Independent input metering for both channels is provided on VUs alongside two six-LED peak meters. A headphone output has volume control. An optional A-DC is also available.

Focusrite’s Liquid4Pre four-channel microphone preamp uses the Liquid Channel’s Liquid technology to deliver the sounds of 40 vintage and classic microphone preamps. Ninety-nine Unit Setup Memories provide recall of all parameters across all channels and these memories are managed via the hardware or via Liquid4Control control software. This application places preamp control inside the DAW and communication between the unit and the DAW is

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via Ethernet together with control of multiple units. A similar Pro Tools TDM/RTAS plug-in is also offered. An adjustable harmonic distortion circuit accounts for variance in the vintage originals, but can also be used creatively to vary the sound of each preamp. Session saver is an automatic gain control that reduces input level to avoid overs. Each channel also has a high-pass filter, phantom power and phase reverse. AES and ADAT optical digital I-Os are standard and there’s an optional EtherSound 8-channel card. www.focusrite.com

marek design KS3 tube mic Marek Design has introduced the KS3 — a hand-built true pressure transducer mic with an all valve amplifier. The thin, pure aluminium diaphragm of the newly designed capsule is 1-inch in diameter while the polar pattern is omni with a slightly directive effect. It has an even increase in treble over 2kHz. It is well suited to recording acoustic instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar or violin and as a single overhead on drum kits. Self noise is 14dBA and the claimed dynamic range is 132dB (extended dynamic range is 159dB SPL). The output is line level and microphone level and with the gain adjustment in the external control unit it is possible to drive recording equipment or A-DCs directly. The KS3 has an integrated shockmount. www.md-mics.com

January/February 2008

gear JZ Black Hole The multipattern Black Hole studio microphone from JZ Microphones has two independent opposing large capsules in a compact head. It also has an original stand holder system (damper) and patented variable sputtering of the diaphragm, using a specially mixed alloy for coating. The switchable polar patterns are omni, cardioid and Fig-8. www.jzmic.com

Euphonix and apogee partner on EuCon Euphonix and Apogee Electronics are to integrate A p o g e e ’s c o n v e r t o r s w i t h E u p h o n i x c o n t r o l surfaces through the EuCon control protocol. EuCon enables software applications, such as Apogee’s Maestro, to be controlled directly from Euphonix

controllers. This will include controlling the Maestro mixer from the Euphonix channel strips, which is used for low latency monitoring and will make monitor mixing simpler. Maestro is a software interface that functions between OS X applications and Apogee hardware. www.euphonix.com

langley preamp upgrade for amek/taC Audio Maintenance Limited has released a series of ‘Langley Design Enhanced’ microphone amplifier upgrade kits for Amek and Total Audio Concepts (TAC) mixing consoles. These provide a significant sonic improvement over the now obsolete SSM integrated circuits originally fitted. The amplifiers are designed by Graham Langley, cofounder and designer for Amek, TAC and Langley analogue consoles. The microphone amplifier is reminiscent of that used on the critically acclaimed Amek Angela and Rembrandt consoles. Audio Maintenance Limited manufactures the products in the UK and provides spares, support and maintenance for Amek and TAC consoles. Upgrade kits for Amek Einstein, BC11, G2520 and APC and TAC Scorpion, Scorpion II, Matchless, SR9000 and Magnum are currently available from the Audio Maintenance on-line store. Upgrade kits for the Amek Hendrix and Mozart MZ11 will be released soon. www.audiomaintenance.com

CEdar dNS300 and dNS1500 The DNS3000 is the latest generation of CEDAR’s Dialogue Noise Suppression technology, combining the tactile control of the original DNS1000 with the Pro Tools (Mac- and PC-based) integration of the DNS2000. Additional features include onboard scenes with a recall system, automation to timecode, motorised faders and sample rates up to 96kHz. As before, the hardware provides the processing power and audio I - O , a n d n e a r- z e ro l a t e n c y continues to ensure that there is no loss of lip-sync. The DNS3000 will be available in Q1, 2008. The DNS1500 updates the style, design and performance of its predecessor the DNS1000 with an improved chassis and updated processors. It couples the ergonomics of the DNS1000 with improved 2-channel performance and up to 100kHz capabilities. The price remains unaffected, at UK£3,500 (+ VAT). www.cedaraudio.com

PSP Xenon limiter PSP Xenon is a full-band, dualstage limiter plug-in (AudioUnit, VST and RTAS) with an integrated Leveller, advanced K-System metering and psycho-acoustically optimised wordlength reduction. It offers 64-bit processing throughout and can operate at up to 192kHz. The plug-in was designed for controlling peaks and crest factors of the recording while preserving its spectral balance and clarity of the transients. www.pspaudioware.com

January/February 2008

Karlsruhe · Germany +49 721 943 200 www.schoeps.de

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gear K+H o 410 Designed as a midfield monitor for use in music, broadcast, and postproduction studios the O 410 is a tri-amplified three-way loudspeaker with magnetically shielded drivers: 10inch bass, 3-inch soft dome midrange and 1-inch tweeter. The drivers are powered respectively by 340, 160, and 180-Watt hybrid class A-B amplifiers. The vented enclosure extends bass response down to 34Hz and a waveguide reduces loudspeaker–room interaction effects. The design allows rotation of the waveguide for use in vertical or horizontal formats. Acoustical controls adapt the monitor’s response to Projekt1 18/02/07 12:55 and Side 1 controls suit its environment: bass, low-mid treble and a parametric equaliser for additional low frequency

sound engineering

corrections. The electronics may be located remotely when the cabinet is flush-mounted. An electronically-balanced input is standard while a transformer-balanced input and a 192kHz, 24-bit digital input are available as options. Klein + Hummel has made enhancements to its miniature active control monitors. An update to the M 51 — the M 52 — is a small, lightweight control monitor with a 3-inch driver and upgraded, built-in amplification capable of producing more than 100dB. The M 52 has control of volume and power on the front and can be DC powered. It features a transformer-balanced, +6dBu XLR analogue input and can be mounted in a variety of ways. Identical to the M 52 in every other way, the M 52 D adds SPDIF and AES-EBU digital inputs. www.klein-hummel.com

RM8 TUBE MODULES

Studer vista 5 Sr

Studer’s Vista 5 SR is a road-ready version of its established Vista 5 model. The top of the console has a new aluminium profile that is fitted with integrated illumination. The angle of the Vistonics screen has been improved for daylight use; there is also provision for an additional screen. Ventilation in the console has been increased as has ventilation for the equipment rack, which has been made more robust. It has road-proof armrests and side cheeks. The Vista 5 SR comes with preset configurations for FOH and monitor use and an expandable I-O system allows the whole range of D21m Series I-O cards (including Cobranet and Aviom A-Net) to be added to the system. The MADI standard is used as optical snake link from stagebox to FOH rack. www.studer.ch

New capsules for Neumann Km d Neumann has doubled the number of modular capsule head options for its KM D miniature digital series of microphones with the introduction of the KK 131 (free field-equalised omni), KK 143 (wide cardioid) and KK 145 (cardioid with low frequency rolloff), which are all derived from the analogue KM 100 and KM 180 series. The three new capsule heads join three existing options for the KM D microphone series, which locates Neumann A-D convertor technology in the microphone immediately next to the capsule. The KM 100 series AK capsule heads are not interchangeable with KM D series capsule heads. All KM D series capsule heads are offered in classic nickel or nextel black and ship in a protective wooden box. www.neumann.com

Belden’s Hdtv cable

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

LYDKRAFT 18

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Belden has introduced Brilliance 7804Ex cable to meet the performance requirements of HDTV camera systems. These hybrid fibre optical cables are designed to surmount over-heating problems experienced in outside HDTV broadcasting. The heatresistant Brilliance 7804X uses insulation with a higher thermal stability. A composite cable, it includes a high voltage power line for HDTV camera, two control lines and two optical fibres for video and audio transmission. The cable is available in halogen-free and PVC versions for studios and permanent installations and a PUR version for mobile applications. www.belden.com

January/February 2008

gear aphex HeadPod and anaconda The Model 454 HeadPod from Aphex is a four output headphone distributor with four independent stereo power amplifiers. Housed in a sturdy all-metal chassis with a 12V AC supply, applications include monitoring in studios, broadcast facilities, and live performances. Features include individual volume controls, high headroom, metal jacks, low distortion and wide frequency response, master volume to match source level, and low crosstalk. The Model 828 Anaconda is a point-to-point 64-channel bidirectional snake designed to connect the Aphex 1788A remote controlled preamplifier system to industry standard consoles, DAWs and recorders. Aphex has set up a tiered pricing programme for the Anaconda, allowing purchasers of the 1788A to add the Anaconda starting at US$3995 for both ends and going as low as $1995 per pair depending on the number of 1788As purchased. The Anaconda has identical units on either end of a highspeed fibre run. There are eight ADAT optical I-Os on each unit and each has an internal Word clock; selectable external Word clock is fed through one BNC; Word clock distribution through eight BNCs; and one RJ-45 for control and metering/status feedback of Aphex 1788As. Each unit has two fibre transceivers with automatic failure switching for redundancy. www.aphex.com

amS Neve Genesys

audiohive daW

A M S N e v e ’s G e n e s y s i s an expandable analogue recording console with digital workstation control and a base configuration starting at under US$50,000. The base configuration offers 16 channels of mic/line preamps, 16-channel DAW monitoring, 16-channel analogue summing at mixdown, DAW control, eight auxiliary buses, eight group buses, two main outputs, four effects returns, comprehensive metering, 5.1 monitoring, two cue mixes, talkback and an internal power supply. Genesys can be expanded to more than 60 channels with options including motor fader automation, recall, A-D and D-A convertors, digitally controlled EQ and dynamics, and remote mic amp control. www.ams-neve.com

Audiohive is described as an integrated recording, editing and mixing system enabling parallel workflows in multistudio environments. Through a ‘tree structuring’ o f p ro d u c t i o n s i t manages the complexity of large projects and enables the partitioning and rejoining of parts of the production. Audiohive is a multiformat system in which many of the format translation issues are hidden from the operator. Other features include high definition audio at 64-bit and sample rates to 384kHz. www.openstudionetworks.com

link dGlink multiprotocol snake Link’s DGlink digital audio distribution system (48kHz/24-bit) is described as the first hybrid multiprotocol-enabled modular digital snake system. It can replace or integrate with traditional audio distribution systems (analogue and digital) using one or multiple digital transport protocol standards over CAT 5 or 6 cables. Supporting 64 mic/line level inputs and 64 line level outputs (foldback and drive sends), DGlink offers remote control of all stage box functions including control of phantom power, polarity, and gain settings, while maintaining a modular system that supports multiple configurations of I-Os and digital/analogue 19-inch panels. www.linkitaly.com

New PD Series Location Recorders

trantec’s S5 updated The Trantec S5 UHF wireless microphone system has had some updates. Available in two formats, the entry level version is the S5.3, which operates up to 12 simultaneous channels in nine banks within an 11MHz window (854-865MHz). Computer monitoring software comes as standard for real-time system status. The S5.5 system caters for larger projects and can simultaneously operate up to 24 channels in ten banks within its 35MHz window (830-865MHz). Fully interactive PC monitoring via a USB port controls all aspects of performance including a frequency download function, RF and AF monitoring, and transmitter battery status. Based on Trantec’s S6000 series used in theatre and broadcast, the S5 benefits from true-diversity operation using credit card-sized beltpacks, frequency autoscan, in-built Infra-red data link, single AA battery life of over 10 hours, LCD displays, and metal enclosures for transmitter and receiver. www.trantec.co.uk

January/February 2008

Audio acquisition that’s as versatile as you are. Designed from the ground up to excel in ‘real-world’ applications, wherever you happen

www.fostex.jp

to be in the world. The new PD606 (8-track) and PD204 (2-track) location recorders

Fostex Company, 3-2-35 Musashino, Akishima, Tokyo, Japan 196-0021 Email: info_sales@fostex.jp

both offer spectacular audio quality, flexible recording to 12cm DVD-RAM, hard disc or a combination of both, rock solid timecode implementation, extended battery life, loads of ‘instant access’ knobs, buttons and switches plus a whole battery of interface options. But impressive features are only part of the script. Fostex’s unrivalled pedigree in designing and manufacturing world class location recorders for over 16 years and our unique understanding of the broadcast, film, tv and audio acquisition environments means that these new recorders aren’t just the best PD recorders ever, they’re simply the best professional location recorders available today.

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gear The VXT Series includes proprietary woofers and tweeters, a newly designed curved face plate for improved imaging, a new cabinet design, improved structural integrity and extended low-end and slotted ports. The Series f e a t u re s t a m p e r- p ro o f switch covers, integrated Omni Mount support for wall or corner mounting, ground lift, defeatable limiter and auto mute controls, and high and low frequency adjust switches on the VXT6 and VXT8. www.krksys.com

KrK Flagship Exposé KRK’s E8B Exposé features a tweeter made of AlBeMet, a composite material of beryllium and aluminium. The woofer consists of two layers of Kevlar with a layer of Rohacell between that provides additional stiffness for the woofer and also functions as a dampener. The E8B copper pole cap and the aluminium shorting ring reduce motor induced distortions. It employs two discrete, Class A/AB power amplifiers, 120W for the tweeter and 140W for the woofer.

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The Samson PowerStrip PS10, PowerBrite PB10, and PowerBrite PB10 Pro are designed to be mounted in the top 1U of a 19-inch rack. The PowerBrite PB10 has the same power distribution capabilities as the PowerStrip but adds a pair of powerful LED downlights for the front of the rack, plus an LED gooselight for the rear. The front panel lights have a dimmer control. The PowerBrite PB10 Pro is identical but adds front panel ammeter and voltmeters.

PowerStrip PS10 has eight switched, rear panel, AC outlets and an unswitched front panel convenience outlet. Rear panel switched outlets are mounted vertically and horizontally to accommodate 3-pin plugs and external transformer AC power adapters. Three-point surge protection, spike clamping protection and RF filtering is included. www.soundtech.co.uk

a&H ZEd mixers Allen & Heath has a new range of small format, USB-equipped mixers. The first to appear is the ZED-14 stereo model, which provides 13 independent sources to the mix; 10 independent outputs; two prefade and two postfade aux sends; a USB send and return for PC or Mac recording, playback and effects; a dual stereo input capability; and monitoring facilities. The ZED-14 has six mono channels with 3-band, sweptmid EQ, and four stereo channels with a 2-band EQ, in 100mm faders. In addition to twin TRS jack inputs, flexible dual input options include stereo return on phono, and 2-track on phono.

The new ZED-24 stereo mixer provides 23 independent sources to the mix, 10 independent outputs, four aux sends (two pre and two postfade), a USB send and return (for PC or Mac recording, playback and effects), a dual stereo input capability, and monitoring facilities. In addition to 16 mono channels there are four stereo channels, each with a main stereo input on jack sockets, and with the ability to take additional stereo inputs from phono sockets or from the USB audio input. Three new models to the A&H range are the ZED-420 (16 mono + 2 dual stereo channels), ZED-428 (24 mono + 2 stereo) and ZED-436 (32 channel + 2 stereo) mixers. The ZED 4 bus series has 4-band, two swept mid EQ with bypass, six aux sends (two pre, two post, two pre/post), four sub groups, direct outputs on each mono channel, separate L, R & M main buses, 100mm faders, two matrix outputs, and talkback to auxes. www.allen-heath.com

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13/09/07 10:16:38

January/February 2008

gear tC upgrades broadcast

TC Electronic has announced version 1.80 of its P2, DB4 and DB8 broadcast processors. A new multiformat Loudness Control upgrade is complimentary to current users. The units now comply with the ITU-R BS.1770 standard with regard to Loudness Control and True-Peak Limiting in mono, stereo and 5.1. Dynaudio Acoustics’ AIR 12 is a 2-way powered monitor. The AIR 12 Slave is an active monitor with TC Link input, the AIR 12 Master Active monitor has 2-channel analogue and 2-channel AES inputs, while the AIR 12 Master includes a 6-channel digital AES-EBU input card. The 1.1-inch soft dome tweeter has a 4mm diecast aluminium voice coil and works with an 8-inch woofer. AIR monitor control offers central remote control, preset storage and recall, calibrated levels, and integrated bass management. Other features include internal EQs and delay lines. www.tcelectronic.com

12 – 15. 3. 2008 creating emotions

New mini cards Ya m a h a h a s expanded its line of mini-YGDAI format cards with the introduction of MY16-ES64 EtherSound Interface card and MY16EX expansion card. A single card can add 16 channels of bidirectional EtherSound connectivity to Yamaha devices that accept mini-YGDAI expansion cards. The MY16-MD64 MADI interface card can add 16 channels of MADI I-O and also provides failsafe redundancy with automatic switching from optical to coaxial input and outputs in case of accidental disconnection. Yamaha has extended its line of power amps with the flagship TXn series, which consists of the TX4n, TX5n and TX6n for 2,200W, 2,500W, and 3,000W per channel into 2ohms respectively. The ACD1 Amplifier Control Device provides a convenient, reliable means to connect a computer running Yamaha’s NetworkAmp Manager II amplifier control and monitoring software to Yamaha Tn, PC1N, XP, XM and XH series amplifiers. Up to 32 daisy-chained Tn and/or PC1N series amplifiers can be connected to the ACD1 data port connector via Ethernet cables, while as many as eight XP, XM, and/or XH series amplifiers can be connected to individual monitor/remote connectors via appropriate D-sub cables. www.yamahacommercialaudio.com

Funky Fin dynamic Drawing on the developments designed into the PR20 dynamic microphone, the Fin from Heil Sound meets the performance requirements of high-level sound reinforcement while adding a unique, visual element. Like the PR20, the Fin uses a proprietary magnate structure with a large 1 1/8-inch aluminium low mass voice coil assembly. The cardioid pattern with uniform front to back discrimination has a claimed frequency response of 60Hz to 18kHz. www.heilsound.com

Earthworks Pianomic System The Earthworks PianoMic System fits inside the piano, can be used with the piano lid up or down, and is invisible from outside the piano. It claims tremendous gain before feedback with virtually no leakage of sounds of other instruments from outside the piano. This system uses two Random Incidence High Definition Microphones that are specially designed to work inside a piano and claims ‘a dramatic increase in sound quality compared to conventional methods of miking pianos.’ www.earthworksaudio.com

January/February 2008

Show and technology are vital aspects of any event, no matter how large or small. Maximum success can only be achieved with optimal coordination of these two disciplines. Technological innovations increasingly enable the use of new design possibilities in the audio sector. And it’s precisely these creative applications – e.g. from the digital technology, multichannel audio or fibre-optic transmission sectors – that often lead to a decisive competitive advantage. Prolight + Sound, the leading international trade fair for event and communications technology, AV production and entertainment, showcases all the most important industry trends and product innovations and gives valuable inspirations for your business. Tel. (0) 17 53 86 70 30 info@uk.messefrankfurt.com www.prolight-sound.com Supported by VPLT – The Professional Lighting & Sound Association of Germany, and EVVC – European Association of Event Centers

review

Fairlight Xynergi The Xynergi and its remarkably clever keyboard was one of the most exciting developments of last year as it built on Fairlight’s exciting CC-1 technology of the year before. Exciting times and exciting technology — NEIL HILLMAN has trouble ﬁnding a downside.

or some years now, there has been a steady but progressive downturn in revenue for those audio-only post facilities in the UK outside of the London, Soho stronghold. This has been mainly attributed to the fashion for regional commercials and TV production clients to be steered away from specialist audio companies — those that have traditionally worked in harmony with picture-editing facilities to deliver an excellent product — towards video set-ups that offer their clients ‘audio mixing’ at the same time as the on-line picture edit takes place, and by the same person; viz: the picture editor. This is almost always conducted in less than ideal monitoring surroundings, on equipment designed primarily for pictures, and therefore relies on little more than pro-sumer sound capabilities with which to craft the soundtrack; and frankly, Avid’s video marriage with Pro Tools audio has done precious little to alleviate the situation for all concerned. Happily, however, this disturbing trend — and its knock-on effect of noticeably lowering the audio quality of the finished programme — might have an end in sight following the introduction of the Fairlight Xynergi Media Production Centre. Yes, its promise is that good; and it’s about time, too, that we in audio-post had a weapon in our armoury to fight back with. So good is it in fact, that not even Fairlight itself has really got to grips yet on informing a waiting public of its capabilities now, and what further exciting possibilities exist as this product evolves. But it will, I have no doubt, impact on the postproduction industry as a whole. By some, the Xynergi has been heralded as some kind of incredible QWERTY keyboard — well that’s some keyboard for $20,000 you might say; and yes it is, with its on-demand, self-labelling key switches that understand what application you’re running, and present only those functions relevant to the active mode, resulting in less operator keystrokes. Keys that are in fact 40 pixels-square computer monitor screens, into which bitmaps, animated GIFs or video may be 22

placed at any time, as well as text and icons. But that, impressive as it is, is only one of several, equally impressive, facets of the Xynergi. The technological heart of the Xynergi lies with Fairlight’s revolutionary Crystal Core CC-1 FPGA card. This patented media engine, three years in the making and developed with funding support from the Australian government, delivers an unprecedented level of processing power with, to all intents and purposes at 0.5mS, zero latency. Forgive the need to resort to quoting numbers, but they make amazing reading: each CC-1 card supports 230 high-resolution audio channels, with eight bands of EQ on each channel, three stages of dynamics on each channel, 12 aux sends per channel and 72 user-definable mix buses; it readily bridges with VST and Rewire and offers 220 physical I-Os per card, and a comprehensive monitoring and talkback system. And by the way, it can edit video, too; through its integrated Pyxis video player/recorder, it supports multiple video file formats as well as capturing video directly to a project’s timeline. Now there’s a thing… Conveniently, all of the CC-1 card’s capability can be hosted within a standard Windows PC; a PC that transforms itself into the platform for a 192-track DAW, with on-board HD and SD video. This card is simply so much more powerful than any of the other processing engines currently available, being able to record at sampling frequencies of up to 384kHz and working at 72-bit floating point. But as we need to start somewhere, we might as well start with the keyboard, the most talked about Xynergi feature. It’s actually a controller for all computers and applications within the integrated environment of a studio, allowing the operator to switch focus from one activity to another without having to move from the monitoring sweet spot or even twisting in their seat. To achieve this level of control, the Xynergi participates in a TCP/IP network of computers, allowing their applications to connect to it using a remote Application Programming Interface resolution

(API) working via standard communication sockets. The net result is that it effectively reduces the crowding of valuable studio space on surrounding control surfaces, which can easily become cluttered by multiple keyboards. Fairlight’s stated objective with the Xynergi design was to create a neat and relaxed work layout and thus achieve a clearer mind for the operator. It works: Ommmmmmm… The on-demand nature of the keyboard means that the keys display only the symbols and commands appropriate for the application currently in use: so if, for instance, a cue list arrives as a Microsoft Word document, or in an Excel spreadsheet, the operator just needs one key push to activate the necessary programme. Xynergi’s keyboard then switches to a conventional QWERTY keyboard — meaning that an extra ‘utility’ PC is now no longer needed in the studio — and when work is finished within the Office programme, a push on the Edit key returns the device to Xynergi’s DAW software, and the keys change back to those of the ‘home screen’ edit functions. From this base-state, the keys change colour to indicate the active functions — when working on a specific track for instance, pushing a button mapped to that track results in the key changing from blue to red, indicating that the track is active and ready for mixing or editing. Engineers used to the Fairlight MFX-3 and Dream products will quickly be familiar with the trademark jog wheel of the Xynergi. Fairlight has gone to great lengths to maintain the intuitive nature of the earlier models, which operators fed back to them as being important to retain. It requires just a small amount of time to become familiar with the new layout, and to be relieved that the considerable speed achieved through muscle-memory, built up over the months and years of manipulating the earlier Fairlight devices, soon make the new actions feel surprisingly familiar on what otherwise appears to be a very fresh take indeed on an old, favourite theme. Fairlight refers to the area that includes the centrally mounted, colour edit screen, and the surrounding buttons, knobs and jog wheel as the ‘parameter pad’. Here the screen displays all the expected information about the audio tracks, giving users a comprehensive visual representation of a file’s components: such as track name, EQ and dynamics. Bargraph level meters indicate the distribution of the tracks across the Left, Centre, Right, Left surround, Right surround and Sub channels, and a timecode display sits noticeably, but not intrusively, in the top right hand corner of the screen. This screen area can be filled automatically by the operator ‘grabbing’ an area of the current application’s screen, or by specifically programming content for it. Apart from the two Monitoring section knobs, the Xynergi control surface provides eight programmable, endless, rotary knobs. These are touch-sensitive, allowing them to act as switches and as continuous controllers. The knobs are positioned close to the edge of the Screen Area, and show what parameter is being controlled, what value it currently has, and what switch function is currently enabled. Much thought has gone into reducing the eye and head movement of the operator through the ergonomics of the panel layout, and Fairlight has been successful –- the Xynergi is comfortable to fly. Along with the CC-1 card, each standard Xynergi is supplied with an ‘SX-20 Sync and I-O toolbox’. The SX-20 is a 1U rackmountable device that includes two microphone or instrument preamps, plus two additional balanced analogue inputs, 12 balanced analogue outputs, four digital inputs and eight digital outputs. Additionally, the SX-20 provides multimachine 9January/February 2008

review pin control and includes synchronisation at any rate including HD Trilevel sync, videosync, Word clock, AES and LTC; the unit can also generate LTC at any standard rate. The Xynergi can also be supplied with an optional ‘Modular High Density remote I-O’, the ‘SX-48 Signal Exchange’. Up to four SX-48 units can be connected to a single CC-1 card via MADI, providing up to 192 channels of discrete I-O per engine. The SX-48 is designed to accommodate all standard sampling frequencies from 44.1kHz to 96kHz and can be installed in 8-channel modular blocks, allowing numerous combinations of up to six cards of analogue and/or digital I-O to be mixed together in each SX-48 unit, or added to at a later date. The SX-48 is designed to lock to external sync at any frame rate and accepts HD Trilevel sync, video sync, Word clock or AES as a reference. For those of us who still like to move real faders, albeit under computer recall, each Xynergi system can be supplied with up to two, optional, 12-fader sidecars. Each sidecar has touch-sensitive motorised faders, encoders and switches, fader bank switches, channel status LEDs, OLED displays and a joystick surround panner that proudly shows its lineage back to the Prodigy desks of the late 1990s. The Xynergi is a fully-loaded digital audio workstation that has simply redefined the breed. Not withstanding its editor’s self-labelling, multifunction keyboard and control surface, its on-demand QWERTY keyboard, colour parameter pad, high resolution jogwheel and smart transport, integrated talkback and monitoring system, multiple speaker-set selection, digital patchbay, the industry’s most comprehensive file exchange system and Tri-level sync support, what else does it have to offer? How about an ondemand, interactive Help function, a comprehensive

January/February 2008

mix automation system, touch-sensitive rotary encoders, a built-in multitrack recorder, an integrated ADR package, sophisticated editing modes, advanced channel and track management and third-party plug-in support; and don’t forget that all important integrated video player/recorder. Why do I keep going-on about this basic video capability? Because it points the way forward to the exciting prospect of an audio facility offering — in the near future — in the same room, and on the same equipment, one day track-laying, the next day mixing, the next day grading pictures and the next day compiling and authoring the DVD. Laughable? No; I don’t think so, let’s wait and see — providing Fairlight is sensible and attentive to further supporting this picture possibility with sensible third-party software alliances, it is entirely conceivable that Broadcasters also could derive a huge improvement in efficiency from such an arrangement of rooms, aiding the present headache of having to schedule certain tasks only to certain suites. The Fairlight CC-1 card of the Xynergi is a quantum leap in technology; it uses just 12 Watts of power — reduced from a more-typical 600 Watts for comparable audio systems — which in turn means a 98% reduction in heat emissions. Carbon emissions are reduced therefore too, from 800g per hour down to a greener 16g per hour. And with less than 1% of the components to go wrong compared to other systems, the Xynergi has also redefined reliability — such is the level of redundancy on the CC-1 chip at present, that only one half is used by your Xynergi: the other half has a second, mirrored Xynergi in the unlikely case of a system failure; enabling a visiting service engineer to simply re-assign the card addresses in situ. This is fantastically re-assuring for those studios that strive to install the best equipment

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that they can, but worry about the possible cost of a system’s on-going, out-of-warranty reliability. All of this adds up to an unprecedented level of integration and capability within a DAW, at the keenly priced entry-point of £11,500. What this really amounts to is that a whole new generation of multimedia users are now able to benefit from a professional grade audio finishing system to create whole projects with: single room audio post studios, freelance sound editors and sound mixers, music project studios, live sound, mobiles and trucks, corporate in-house AV media creators, aspiring home studios; as well as Fairlight’s wellestablished customers in multiroom commercial audio post facilities, film studios offering recording, sound editing, ADR and mixing and television and radio broadcast postproduction departments. But ultimately, it means that it will no longer be appropriate for audio suites to compete against a video facility’s ‘We‘ll throw the sound in for you as we do the on-line’. Plus ca change; et merci. ■

ProS

the Xynergi’s great price point, along with its basic picture capabilities, spans a market much wider than traditional pro-audio customers; meaning a client’s expectation for quality, from the most modest of budgets, could now be met by enterprising audio facilities, not just video houses.

CoNS

Er, i’m not saying there aren’t any but i’m struggling to find them.

Contact FairliGHt, aUStralia: Website: www.fairlight.com.au UK, tekcare: +44 1707 620090

review

Rupert Neve Designs 5088 It’s the console that many thought they would never see Rupert Neve build yet the clues to its development have been there for some time in the Portico range. GEORGE SHILLING gets to grips with a real new analogue desk.

t 80, Rupert Neve can look back proudly on a career of console design, his CV including many models that pushed the boundaries of audio quality and ergonomics. He founded the first Neve company in the early 1960s and has subsequently designed consoles under several different brand names. Many of his designs are held in high esteem and are still in use decades after their introduction. His newest company, Rupert Neve Designs, with headquarters in his adopted home of Texas has, over the last years, steadily introduced a range of high quality Portico outboard designed by him, many with unusual, unique and useful features. The provision of slightly mysterious Bus connectors on these units led to wide anticipation of this new console, which does indeed make use of the Portico series’ Bus system. The 5088 continues the theme of the Portico units’ compact size, high audio quality and slightly unconventional feature sets and concepts. In fact it goes further than the Porticos, in that it is fully discrete. Resolution’s spiritual forebear Studio Sound honoured Neve as ‘Man Of The Century’ in 1999, and he is the recipient of a Technical Grammy. Honours continue to be bestowed on Neve with a 2006 TEC Award for the Portico 5042. While others chase vintage reissue designs and suchlike, 15 years after official retirement age, Rupert Neve aims to improve on old analogue designs and bring something new and better in the shape of the RND Porticos and 5088 console. I recently had a preview of the 5088 console (will retail around UK£20,000-25,000 depending on configuration) with Serial No. 0001 at Sonic Distribution’s West London demo studio. At that time, 14 consoles had been ordered and were being built 24

and delivered. When encountering the fully modular 5088, its sheer quality of build is immediately evident, with refined finishes, custom knobs designed by Neve himself, and a sense that things have been overengineered to withstand daily use for many years. Lovely wooden end cheeks add a touch of class, and the leathery area below the faders is slightly padded for comfort. The off-white finish looks clean and elegant, although I’m not sure it would take long for finger grease and dust to cheapen the appearance with daily use. The machined aluminium knobs are beautiful, they feel expensively precision-engineered, with a slightly tapered shape and perfect damping. In typical Neve fashion these are finished in three colours to help visually identify their function. The 5088 is a 16:8:2 console, 16 channels, 8 groups and a main stereo bus, but the channel count can be increased using 16 channel expansion units. Input channels are just that — there is just one audio path per channel, with no microphone preamp or EQ, the idea being that these are added as necessary in the shape of appropriate Portico units. Metalwork is available to mount a 25-space Penthouse for locating Porticos (sideways) immediately above the 5088, at a pleasantly raked angle. Above that, you can optionally mount an ‘Upper Penthouse’ for a further row of up to 25 Porticos. (More on Portico integration later). Above either of these you can mount a smart VU bridge housing illuminated meters for all input and group channels of the console, with LED meters optionally available, although all orders so far have been for VUs. These can be switched globally to show level pre or post fader, or indicate the level at the direct output of the channel. Main stereo bus meters are included in the 5088 master section. resolution

But, as well as expanding upwards, you can of course expand the 5088 and all the options just described in a sideways direction using one or more Expansion Chassis, which each add a further 16 slots of console channels (with the master section linked via ribbon cable), penthouse or meter bridge. This modular approach to console building has the benefit of customisation for particular scenarios, and also the possibility of future upgrades, with further channel Expansion units or Portico-packed (or empty!) Penthouses. Even with two Penthouses above the console, everything is within easy reach — in contrast to Neve’s previous design, the vast Amek 9098i. The 5088 itself is just 26-inches deep. From an audio point of view, things to note from the off are the provision of custom transformers on every input and output (including inserts), with completely discrete Class A circuitry throughout. Notably, this is Rupert’s first all-discrete console in 30 years! The power rails run at +/-45V, and thanks to that the 5088 has extraordinary headroom, and 10dB more dynamic range than any previous Nevedesigned console. Despite the high voltages, the console seems to remain remarkably cool. The Power Supply is a rackmounted 4U. Each channel includes a small internal torroidal transformer to regulate power. Custom, high voltage and discrete op-amp cards have been designed specially for the 5088 that RND claims eliminate crossover distortion entirely. Functionally, the console appears very simple to operate, although this is partly due to the lack of any internal provision for EQ or microphone preamp in the main channels cluttering the appearance! However, the layout is very clear and logical, and the legending and markings are excellent. January/February 2008

review Let’s work down from the top of the channel… there are three selectable Line sources at the top, labelled Tape, Line and Bus. Generally this would be set up with DAW outputs feeding the Tape inputs, external microphone preamps feeding the Line inputs, and Portico units connected to the Bus inputs via their proprietary connections — these are at different impedances from standard line connections. A knob allows +/-10dB trim, and there is a useful Phase Reverse button alongside. The eight Groups are accessed with individual routing buttons just below the input section, accompanied by a Stereo routing button for the main bus. Down at the bottom of the strip is a switchable Pan knob that varies left/right and odd/even in conventional style. The configuration and operation of the eight Aux Sends are not as straightforward as they might have been, but instead aim to offer flexible options for different scenarios. They are configured with the numbers starting at the bottom near the pan, with each pair including a Mute button. Auxes 1/2 and 3/4 offer similar features. These are set up as individual level controls, switchable to level/pan combos. There is also a useful and unusual Send Follows Pan (SFP) button for each pair, which obviously enables the main channel’s pan pot to govern the stereo positioning –useful for quick can balances. And of course, each pair includes a Pre (-fader) button. Auxes 5/6 lack the Pre and SFP buttons but instead include an Aux To Group button, which sends the signal post fader to the selected groups, enabling a further potential eight sends in a mixing scenario. Auxes 7/8 at the furthest from the operator are a simple dual mono pair with one Pre button. Channels’ direct outputs are optionally Pre or Post fader depending on circumstance or personal preference, but this option is selected with an internal jumper, so it is not an instant flip. Main Channel, Aux and Group Master Solo and Mute buttons are tastefully legended, large-ish Perspex-type latching buttons that illuminate — the numbered channel buttons illuminate when muted. Travel is shallow, but these are pleasant to use and have an elegant look and feel. On the right of the 16 main channels are four dual Group modules. These each include a stereo Effects Input with a set of routing buttons, a +/-10dB Gain Trim, Mute and Solo buttons. Apart from their obvious use as returns from outboard processors, there is always the possibility of using these inputs for summing further signals from any stereo source, perhaps from a DAW. Below this section is a pair of Aux Send Masters with individual Level, Solo and Mute. Below these are the Group Master controls, with Insert buttons, direct separate routing to the Left and Right buses, Pan controls with enable buttons, and Solo and Mute buttons. Below those are separate faders corresponding to each Group. Group outputs are transformer coupled. By using the Insert return inputs and the Effects Inputs the 16 channel console can be stretched to accommodate an impressive 32 line inputs. January/February 2008

The Master section is as clean and elegantly laidout as the rest of the console, dominated by the most enormous machined aluminium knob you are likely to see! This is, of course, for control room master level. At the top is a pair of full sized VUs for Stereo Bus level. A phantom-powered Talkback microphone input XLR is mounted on the front, with Level and Routing to Auxes and/or Stereo Bus, while the actual Talkback button is situated nearer the operator in an easy to find spot. An Oscillator with selectable frequencies and a level control feeds a rear panel XLR and/or the Meters, but oddly (perhaps sensibly) it is not routable directly to the Groups. Monitoring Source is selected with six small relayinterconnected buttons where choices are Stereo Bus, Solo Bus (stereo), Aux 1/2 or any of three transformercoupled External XLR input pairs from the rear. There are three Speaker select buttons labelled simply A, B and C — again these outputs are transformercoupled. And adjacent to the Talkback button are a useful Stereo Bus Insert button, which accesses XLR insert sockets on the rear, plus Monitor Mute and Dim buttons. On the recently shipped and unpacked demo console the Talkback button didn’t illuminate or Dim the monitors, but my host demonstrator believed that normally that would be the case! There are some nice touches, such as the Solo buttons’ ability to flash red to indicate an overload. But other common functions are missing, such as SoloSafe, non-destructive Solo or Fader Grouping — this is a fairly streamlined console, with the emphasis on audio quality. There is therefore no logic switching or recall but two automation systems are offered as options: Martinsound Flying Faders II (a new version of the system previously featured on AMS-Neve consoles) or Tonelux ShadowMix, which uses DAW automation. The faders are excellent Penny & Giles components, and audio goes through the fader track; there are no VCAs. Group Faders are similar to Channel Faders, and there is a single stereo Master Fader with the zero point indicated at the top of its travel. When Portico units arrived with Bus Outputs on their reve rse, RND was cagey about their intended use. I plugged them in on one unit I had and they seemed enormously loud, due to their impedance. However, the Penthouse frame accommodates them easily, and the 5088 features dedicated connections for these. To incorporate existing Portico modules into the Penthouse frame you must acquire and fit a different coloured and vertically oriented faceplate, and knobs are replaced with similar machined aluminium ones to the console’s. A multiple output PSU is available (with cable management) for supplying the required 12V DC supply to multiple Portico units. The rear of the console features XLRs for all analogue I-O connections; the meter bridge is connected with a ribbon cable. RND doesn’t build patchbays, so sourcing and installing this will need to be factored in for most resolution

situations, especially when a Penthouse is involved: all those Portico Bus connections will of course need accommodating. The 5088 is really quite an extraordinary beast, and even at 80, Rupert Neve proves himself to be a maverick and expert console designer. The sonic architecture boasts specifications that outclass just about any other console design, while the Expansion units and Portico module mix and match approach provides exceptional flexibility of setup, especially when using the clever busing arrangements. A large configuration with such bells and whistles will be expensive. However, with this console, costs can be saved by only ordering as many microphone preamps, EQs, etc. as are required — if any, rather than paying for features that may be redundant. Indeed, other microphone preamps integrate happily with the 5088, and with custom metalwork you could probably even incorporate these into a Penthouse. Alternatively, the 5088 could be thought of as a very expensive summing mixer, but with such devices you often then wish for aux sends and the centre section features that the 5088 provides. Certainly it seems that this is another nail in the coffin of the large, allencompassing analogue console. But, whatever way you look at it, this is desirable, high quality kit. ■

ProS

Emphasis on audio path quality, the best performing Neve design ever; expandable and configurable beyond basic 16:8:2 mixer; penthouse racks allow Porticos to slot in above the console; the ultimate summing mixer.

CoNS

No pan controls on Effects return inputs; no recall; expensive if you want a large configuration with Portico processing on every channel; patchbay must be sourced elsewhere.

Contact rUPErt NEvE dESiGNS, US: Website: www.rupertneve.com UK, Sonic distribution: +44 845 500 2500

review

Audio Ease Speakerphone The clever Dutchmen who brought us Altiverb have been beavering away at Speakerphone proclaiming it to be the ultimate speaker simulator plug-in. GEORGE SHILLING listens in some pretty strange places…

upporting VST, RTAS, MAS and AU formats, Speakerphone comes with a CD-ROM installer, plus the DVD of integrated Sample Packs and 5Gb of background environment samples. The Speakerphone plug-in comprises 12 different processor modules plus a ‘Sample Bay’; each module can be individually bypassed. The central process is the Speaker convolution module. This contains settings obtained from dozens of speaker devices, from tiny children’s toys to enormous PA systems, with plenty of gramophone horns, valve radios, TVs, laptops, mobile phones, guitar amplifiers, and megaphones along the way. These are detailed and pictured in colour in the excellent user guide. Opening the plug-in reveals a large window that takes up almost a third of my screen, but even so it could do with being larger, as there are so many tiny controls and small things to read. Context Help is available, and near the top is an indication of CPU use — turning every module on sent the indicator over 50% on my late-model G4 Mac, but EQ and Compression together used just 4%. The graphics are rather stylised and somewhat reminiscent of early Ableton Live, with a green and grey colour scheme and oddly represented rotary controls. Presets use a proprietary system and are handled at the top of the window, but using the host system in Pro Tools for saving user presets seemed to work OK, and many controls can be automated as normal. However, Speaker types cannot be selected using automation, so you must swap multiple instances for automatic changes to the basic settings, although Audio Ease suggests it might add a Snapshot function. There are more than 500 presets provided, but these 26

are sensibly categorised and quick to find. Input Gain has its own knob but defaults to Auto for a level that tracks the input to optimise the effect without overloading or under-driving. On the Output there is a simple Limiter available, and a function to optionally Mute When Stopped. A large Wet/Dry slider is provided across the top, and this can even be ‘kicked’ from anywhere to either side for instant smooth morphing, with a transition speed variable between 0.1 to 30 seconds, although the slider can be automated conventionally. Speaker simulations are divided into six categories, each with their own icon: Record Players and Horns, Small Speakers, Guitar Amplifiers, Radios, Megaphones and Walkie-Talkies, and Telephones. Clicking on any of these brings up a drop-down list where you can choose a particular model, and that model’s photo appears as the mouse is hovered. The More Info button opens a separate window with a larger photo and information. Speaker simulation can be placed Pre or Post the other effects. Having selected a dodgy old speaker, the first thing you notice is that while a certain tone is added, the sound is often remarkably clean. This is deliberate as below are eleven effects modules to futz the sound up further. Each individual module even includes a number of presets and a system for saving your own settings. The Distortion module provides 10 different types, with a Pre-EQ one-band parametric with variable resonance and frequency low-pass filter, and the Curve graph allows further tweaking. Crunch-o-rama! After this there is a Room module that features plenty of reverb convolutions from Altiverb, along with some new spaces, such as resonant wooden, resolution

metal and plastic boxes — all settings accompanied by a photo. The only controls here are Mix and Decay, but the presets are excellent, including small Post spaces, outdoors ambience, 480L and EMT 140 reverbs. The EQ module is remarkably comprehensive: Low and High shelving, two Parametric bands, plus Low and High variable resonance and frequency filters. Below the last three modules are two rows of four modules. Crush lets you reduce sample rate and wordlength using a crosshair graph. The Gate has variable Threshold and Release and provides complete gating or 20dB ducking. A well-featured Compressor provides all usual controls, and Phono simulates gramophone degradation in the shape of Wow and Ticks. The next row features Mod which includes Phasing, Flanging, Chorus, etc., this will either modulate using a variable LFO, or Sync to the host tempo whereby the knob changes into a pop-up note value selector. Codec simulates GSM and similar degradations, and you can even control one setting via MIDI for vocoder-style robot voices and suchlike, although the pitch doesn’t follow a conventional scale. The stereo Delay module features separate Left and Right settings and a sync to host function, High or Low Filter, etc. Finally the Tuning module emulates the effect of tuning in a radio station with a large selection of different band types and variable inter-modulation side bands. The large section at the bottom is the Sample Bay. The five different columns represent five MIDI octaves for control using a keyboard or host sequencer, each column selectable Pre or Post Speaker and effects. Clicking on the heading brings up the list of categories and sample packs, and there are all sorts of background noises, SFX, speaker-related noises and ambiences to choose from here, and even some royalty-free music. Clicking a name sets the loop playing; dragging its right edge adjusts the level. And you can even drag files from host tracks straight into the list, and vice versa — dragging sounds from the library out onto Pro Tools tracks or as audio files into the Finder. Furthermore, it is possible to place in the Bay any samples or folders on your system, or any installed iLife Sound Effects. So what’s not to love? Well, some might moan that there is only one pair of stereo outputs, and there are no plans for a 5.1 version. But for television and film postproduction this is an excellent tool for achieving quick results. Classical or rock band recordists might not think there is much for them in this plug-in, but anyone in the field of experimental music, remixing or sound design will find many useable settings here. Even in rock and pop production there are effects here that will occasionally bring something new and fun to the proceedings — who doesn’t love the occasional robot voice or gramophone effect? Speakerphone (Euro 395 + VAT) is unusual, flexible, fun, and will inspire myriad applications for audio people in many different fields. I love it! ■

ProS

Unique and comprehensive collection of effects, intelligently implemented; a marvellous tool for tv and film postproduction.

CoNS

Stereo output only; no Snapshot/ Speaker-select automation (yet); can’t drag split stereo files to Sample Bay.

Contact aUdio EaSE, NEtHErlaNdS: Website: www.audioease.com UK, Unity audio: +44 1440 785843

January/February 2008

review

Telefunken ELA M 250 F It’s a name that many people will have heard from a certain Frank Zappa song and it has connotations in pro audio that are lasting and valued. The microphone name is reborn in the USA. JON THORNTON says he ain’t gonna squash it and you don’t need to wash it.

bsession, don’t you just love it? It’s the thing that separates ‘good enough’ from ‘perfect’, and somehow sits a little uncomfortably with modern views of design, mass production and distribution. It can also take a small, left-field project, and without anybody realising, turn it into something exponentially larger. It pretty much sums up Telefunken USA. You see, it all started with a switch… Toni Fishman, founder and CEO of Telefunken USA, had noticed while working with certain vintage microphones that there was a slight problem. In particular, original Ela M 251s and 250s suffered from the pattern select switch breaking, which rendered these highly desirable microphones at best limited in functionality, and at worst unuseable. He set about trying to source original blueprints and manufacturing data to manufacture replacement switches as close to the original spec as possible. But before long the nascent company’s focus had shifted to not just replicating the switch, but to replicating the entire microphone. Fast forward to the present day, and Telefunken USA now offers a range of microphones, in the main hand-built and assembled in the USA, but granted the license to use the original Telefunken name and the design rights to the original microphones. The common denominator is that they are all obsessive recreations of the original microphones, the fruits of untold man hours of sourcing original blueprints and manufacturing data, and extensive networking with individuals involved in the original design and manufacture. The range now includes most of the classic designs originally exported by Telefunken to the USA, and based on their AKG/ Neumann European counterparts. In no particular order these include the Ela M 250, Ela M 251, the rather rare Ela M 270 stereo microphone, Ela M 12 and U47. Quite an impressive line-up — but even across these models there are various ranges, the differentiation for which is principally just how ‘authentic’ they really are. Top of the tree in terms of authenticity and pricing are the Vintage series. The M 251 and M 12 in this range feature original Austrian manufactured CK12 capsules from a stock of 50 bought from a private collector. The 251 is also available with either a GE JAN 6072a tube, or a NOS Telefunken AC701 tube, reflecting the original export and non-export versions respectively. All of the vintage series microphones also come complete with a re-manufactured, but historically accurate power supply based on the original designs and components. The slightly more affordable Platinum range features the same historically accurate PSUs, but with newly manufactured CK12 capsules — again based on the original blueprints, right down to the screw and tap sizes used in the diaphragm assembly. Finally, the Professional Series, indicated by the ‘F’ suffix, mark the most affordable range. The key difference here is that the capsule is Telefunken USA’s own TK12 design, a sonically accurate replica of the CK12, but with a nod to cost savings by using more standardised components such as the screws used in the diaphragm assembly rather than costly, built to order components. The PSU is also a more modern design, using standardised and 28

readily available components rather than customwound transformers, etc. The microphone on review is the Ela M 250 F — in other words the most affordable of the range (UK£3519 + VAT). Based on the original Ela M250, it is basically a 251 with only two, rather than three polar patterns on offer. So you get omni and cardioid patterns, a modern PSU, and a cardboard sleeve to hold the wooden mic box, PSU, clip and cable (the other ranges give you a nice leather bound flightcase modelled on the original, of course!) Internally the 250 F features the aforementioned TK12 capsule with a dual 1-inch diaphragm. Internal electronics are fully discrete with hand-wired pointto-point connections, and are based around a (new stock) GE JAN6072a tube with a custom-wound Haufe output transformer. Externally the 250F is as authentic looking as possible, and other than the prominent ‘F’ designation underneath the pattern select switch, there’s nothing really to distinguish it from either the original, or from its more expensive stablemates. Finished in the classic ‘mint-green’ enamel, the authenticity extends to the integrated cable and swivelmount assembly, which screws into the base of the microphone in a reassuringly ‘built from girders’ fashion. This assembly terminates in a 7-pin XLR connector, which plugs into the PSU. And if there’s anything to quibble about with the look, feel and build quality of the whole package, then it’s said PSU. Not that it doesn’t work admirably — it just looks a little thrown together when compared with the meticulousness of everything else.

With so much build-up, not to mention the expectations raised by wearing the Telefunken badge, it would be easy to be vaguely disappointed when you actually stick a vocalist in front of it. Let’s start off with the bad — it’s not the quietest microphone in the world, but certainly not the noisiest either. Specs quote equivalent noise at 16dBA although it somehow sounds a little noisier than that in reality. On the negative side of the ledger that’s about it, so how does it sound? I couldn’t tell you how close it is to an original as I’ve never used one, but you can understand why the 250 / 251 is one of the most sought after vintage microphones around as soon as you audition it. There’s a fine line with vocals between detail in the high end and harshness — some microphones sound very warm but lacking in detail, others give you plenty of detail but can sound very hard, very quickly. The 250 F nails it absolutely. Coupled with a real warmth to the low mids without a hint of boxiness or exaggerated nasality, and vocals are pretty much mix-ready out of the box. On the cardioid pattern, there’s a big proximity lift that takes a little getting used to — some caution needs to be exercised on male vocals working close in. Having said that, the 250 F is equally at home with male and female vocals — again, not something that can be said for many microphones. In comparison to a C-414 (B-ULS), the 250 F sounds a little darker and much softer, and there’s a little less edge to the beginning of consonants but 9 times out of 10 that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for vocals. While I suspect that vocal recording would be the mainstay of its duties to most purchasers, I also gave it a brief whirl on acoustic guitar and piano. With both of these sources, although there isn’t quite the snap to the strings or hammer sound when compared to a Neumann M149 or 414, there’s a very solid rounded out sound that is pleasantly lacking in the brittleness around the 3kHz mark that many modern large diaphragm condensers seem to exaggerate. So, what’s not to like? Well, even though this is the ‘affordable’ end of the Telefunken USA line, it’s still going to make a sizeable hole in your budget. And it’s not without competitors. Even though Soundelux has stopped manufacturing its own vintage recreations, these microphones live on through designer David Bock’s new company, Bock Audio Designs. But, though I was hugely impressed by the Soundelux ELAM 251, from memory the 250 F sounds just that little bit bigger in every respect. Even given its fairly hefty price tag, the 250 F is still a fraction of the price of an original — if you could find one. And if the pattern select switch breaks, you know that you’ll be able to find a spare… ■

Contact tElEFUNKEN USa Website: www.telefunkenusa.com UK, Unity audio: +44 1440 785843

ProS

very rich and smooth sounding vocal microphone; build quality and attention to detail; great at taming brittleness in nearly every sound source; affordable in comparison to original model; lives up to the badge it wears.

CoNS

PSU looks slightly at odds with microphone in terms of build and finish.

EXtraS

the range now includes most of the classic designs originally exported by telefunken to the USa, and based on their aKG/Neumann European counterparts. in no particular order these include the Ela m 250, Ela m 251, Ela m 260 the rather rare Ela m 270 stereo microphone (pictured), Ela m 12 and U47.

resolution

January/February 2008

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review

Broadcast Project Research Smartlips With all the technology involved in modern delivery it’s perhaps not surprising that lipsync -– that most rudimentary of qualiﬁcations for watching enjoyment –- remains as rubbish as it is. ROB JAMES says that it is hardly progress but you can at least measure it.

icture synchronisation with sound has been a problem since the ‘talkies’ were invented. Analogue television experiences the same sources of error with the addition of possible transmission errors when sound and vision are sent via different routes. Digital TV, especially HD, has brought several new and exciting ways of losing sync to the party. The accepted standard for film has long been: ‘up to 1 frame early and up to 2 frames late’, reflecting the fact that sound is never heard before the visible event in nature. First, it is important to remember that ‘real-world’ sound is often out of sync to the observer. Light moves obscenely quickly while sound is positively sluggish in comparison, and if you watch a roofer hammering from 100 meters away the sound is disconnected from the image. So, at both ends of the process, shooting and projection, there is scope for static sync ‘errors’ due to distance. Film the roofer in close up with a long lens and record the sound from the camera position and the result is obviously unacceptable although technically in sync. Similarly, in a big cinema someone sitting at the back of the auditorium will hear the sound from the front speakers a frame or three later than the front row. Film is shot with separate sound so there are two main problems, static and dynamic. In editing, the picture may be incorrectly positioned in relation to the sound or the sound may be running at a different speed resulting in a dynamic error. Judicious use of a clapper-board and meticulous logging, rubber numbering, etc. dealt with static errors in traditional film workflows while dynamic errors required calculation and time-stretching. Digital video is a different matter. The camera is 30

often the sound recorder so you might think that the sound and picture would be in perfect sync. In practice, because of signal processing delays it is unsafe to assume that this is the case. That’s only the beginning of the story. Each stage in the digital production chain can and frequently does introduce sync errors thanks to frame stores, video synchronisers, digital video effects, format convertors and the vision switcher itself, not to mention the transmission systems. Even more annoying is the fact that many of these delays are variable, especially in the case of vision switchers/mixers. Then there are the displays. All LCD and plasma screens introduce video delay, HD ones more so and video projectors are similarly afflicted. I visited one regional production centre where, in the early days of all digital SD production, the only reliable method of checking sync on broadcast transmissions was an off-air monitor. For months, programmes were frequently miles out of sync on transmission until they finally found solutions. As an axiom for sync, ‘When in doubt make the audio late’ has a lot to commend it. HD makes it even easier for the viewer to perceive sync errors. The EBU and SMPTE have tightened up their recommended ‘in-production’ tolerances to 5mS early and up to 15mS late for each stage in the chain. A number of clever and complex solutions have been proposed and developed over the years, many involving embedded metadata. However, these can cause more problems if marks are incorrectly applied or correction is made without altering the metadata. In truth, the simplest devices are likely to produce the best results. The clapper-board is still with us as is the flash frame and blip on VT Clocks. These help deal with detecting production sync deviation but something else is needed to check displays. John Emmett of Broadcast Project Research has produced a compact and ingenious device called ‘Smartlips’ to do the job. As a bonus it also has a sound-level meter covering 60 to 130dBA and dBC (slow) and a photometer reading from 0-1999 Candelas per m2 (nits) for display luminance set-up. Smartlips is a neat and compact pocketable unit powered by a couple of AA batteries. There is only one button on the membrane front panel, six indicator LEDs and a three-digit LCD numeric display. One press switches the unit on in photometer mode, the next switches to the C-weighted sound level meter. A third press gives you A-weighting and a fourth resolution

takes you to the A/V sync check mode, one more turns Smartlips off. (There is also auto-power off if you leave it on) I had the complete UK£722 (+ VAT) Smartlips kit including the Smartlips Sync Generator and the excellent TSG (Test Signal Generator) DVD. Produced in association with the ITFC, this includes a raft of 625-line video test material, including a zone plate, with multichannel audio tests in Dolby Digital and DTS formats. Smartlips Sync Generator is another compact hand-held unit with just an on/off switch. It produces a regular Peak Luminance flash of over 1k Cd per sqm on the integral screen and a synchronous 80dB SPL 2kHz audio blip. The extra cost SC version adds a 1kHz -10dB tone output on a 3.5mm stereo jack socket. Inserting a plug mutes the acoustic bleeper, and it comes with a phantom-power safe XLR microphone adapter. Used on location it can serve as a Rosetta Stone to establish sync from that point onwards. Among the plethora of audio and video test signals on the TSG DVD there is one called ‘AV Sync Check’. This is simply tone blips and full screen white flashes. I tried it out using a Toshiba domestic LCD TV and Panasonic LCD projector. With Smartlips set to AV Sync, one of two LEDs light to indicate whether the audio is early or late with a numeric display of the milliseconds. The results were revealing. Via a SCART the sound was 30ms early and via component, 50ms. On the projector the advance was 60ms, one and a half frames in PAL land. Obviously, for any screen with pretensions to professional credentials, this is unacceptable and an audio delay must be inserted. Smartlips does exactly what it sets out to do. It provides the tools required to set-up a screen and 5.1 monitoring system in the field, in one tiny unit. Used with the Sync Generator it is possible to analyse entire programme chains and each individual stage. There are plenty of other audio level meters, photometers and even one or two sync analysers on the market but Smartlips gives you all three in one highly convenient package. ■

ProS

3-in-1; quick and ridiculously simple; compact.

CoNS

Photometer has 10 degree acceptance angle so not a substitute for a 2 degree spotmeter; needs quiet to work at its best.

Contact BroadCaSt ProJECt rESEarCH, UK: Website: www.bpr.org.uk

January/February 2008

review

SSL XLogic Alpha VHD Pre SSL’s Alpha range debuted with the release of the Alpha Channel, and brought the brand ﬁrmly within reach of a whole new range of customers. The VHD Pre is the second offering in the range and packages four channels of mic pre into a very straightforward looking 1U box.

ppearances can be deceptive. Although the Alpha VHD Pre (UK£895+VAT) looks like an incredibly straightforward piece of kit, the internals are based around the VHD (Variable Harmonic Drive) designs used to great effect in the Duality console -– giving what SSL refers to as ‘a time machine of overdrive characteristics’. Very HG Wells, and I’ll be reporting back from the Jurassic period a little later on (Bring back some outboard so we can Ebay it. Ed). In the meantime, a quick peek at the rear panel underlines the basic simplicity of the unit -– four lots of XLR inputs and outputs together with a 5-pin DIN connector for the external PSU. The front panel maintains the same styling cues as the Alpha Channel itself, which is to say that it is still obviously an SSL, but not quite as austere as the XLogic Super Analogue units, which look as if they’ve been lifted straight off a console surface. Illuminated lozenge shaped pushbuttons dominate the front panel, together with well-spaced, clearly labelled pots. Being only a four-channel device, there isn’t the sense of overcrowding you get on some eight-channel boxes, so even fairly chunky fingers won’t have a problem engaging the flux-capacitor (sorry, VHD control). Each of the four channels has a gain control giving between +20 and +75dB of gain. A -20dB pad reduces this to unity at its lowest setting, enabling line level signals to take advantage of the VHD circuitry if required. This is helped by the inclusion of a high impedance select switch, which raises the input impedance of the balanced rear connectors to around 10kOhm rather than the default 1kOhm. A front panel unbalanced jack on each channel also allows DI inputs –- plugging into these high (1MOhm) inputs overrides the rear XLR inputs. Phantom power is individually selectable for each of the four channels, and an output trim control (+/20dB) enables you to hit your DAW of choice at a level that suits. There are some curious omissions though, especially given the space available on the front panel, and a phase reverse and HPF of some description would probably be on most peoples’ wish list. The USP of this box, though, lies in the final parameter on each channel — the VHD control. This allows the characteristic of any distortion caused by overdriving a signal to be varied between January/February 2008

JON THORNTON

predominantly 2nd harmonic distortion to almost entirely 3rd harmonic distortion or any mix between the two. It should be noted that the VHD control in itself doesn’t set the amount of added distortion as this is entirely a function of how hard the unit is driven. Gain structure is the key thing here, something that’s a little tricky as there’s only a rudimentary level metering system in place. This works by changing the colour of the illuminated pad button from its default green, through to orange and then red. These colours indicate the onset of and presence of some degree of clipping, but also the points at which the VHD circuitry begins to make its presence felt. With the gain set below this point, the VHD Pre sounds competent, if a little undistinguished. It’s quiet and relatively transparent sounding, giving clean uncluttered results on most sources. In comparison to a Millennia HV3 it couldn’t quite match the clarity in the high frequency transients, and sounded a little cloudier in the low mid range but having said that, getting close to the Millennia isn’t too shabby a performance. Crank the gain up a little and the VHD circuit becomes noticeable even before the pad light flicks to orange particularly when the VHD control is ranged towards the 3rd harmonic end. Unsurprisingly, more gain gives rise to more of the effect, although the shift from ‘useful’ to ‘unpleasant’ can come a little abruptly. I have to admit to being less than impressed by the whole VHD concept at first, as I was initially trialling it on vocals, and here it really was a case of the ‘unpleasant’ kicking in pretty much straight

away to my ears. Move towards other applications, though, and the picture is somewhat different. Close mics on both guitar and bass cabs benefited from slight overdrive, which nicely thickened up the mid range of a sound, and with the bass mic particularly (Neumann TLM 49) added just the right amount of grunge to an otherwise very clean sound. Tracking drums with the VHD Pre was also something of a revelatory experience. Close mics on snares and toms and room mics in particular benefit from slight (and in some cases not so slight) amounts of overdrive. Toms sound just a little more ‘gelled’ together, almost slightly compressed, and seem to fit into a mix straight away. Driving a bottom snare mic a little hard and moving the 2nd to 3rd harmonic balance around is akin to using an exciter for the same job, but with a little bit more grit and energy. In general, I found myself tending towards mostly 3rd harmonic distortion for small amounts of overdrive, and mostly 2nd harmonic when really hitting the VHD pre hard but I guess this comes down to taste. In summary, as a tool to really colour your recordings, the VHD Pre works well — if a little heavy-handedly until you get used to it. At lower operating levels it’s a nice, open clean preamp but if this is where you see most of its application, the lack of some minor but useful features might make other contenders a little more attractive. ■

Contact SSl, UK: Website: www.solid-state-logic.com

ProS

SSl name at (reasonably) affordable price; solid, clean and open mic pres; vHd circuitry allows a great degree of variation to tone colour if desired; clutter-free, easy to use layout.

CoNS

lack of HPF and phase-reverse per channel; metering a little primitive; vHd effect takes some getting used to in terms of setting appropriate operating levels.

EXtraS

the Xlogic alpha Channel combines a mic preamp, filter, EQ and dynamics. the mic preamp has line level and Hi Z instrument inputs, vHd, High Pass Filter with selectable cut-off frequency, built in a-dC and auto sample rate sensing.

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review

Universal Audio UAD Plug-ins Universal Audio is widely respected not only for impressive hardware reissues and original designs, but also for the quality of the ever increasing plug-in range available for its UAD cards. GEORGE SHILLING tries a Bus Compressor, Transient Designer and Helios Type 69.

he UAD PCI card system has been expanded with two new alternatives to the original UAD-1 card: the UAD-1e PCIe version for compatibility with newer computers, and the UAD-Expander which uses the ExpressCard format for laptops. The latest update to the UAD software (for AU, VST and RTAS) is 4.9, and as usual, there are a few bug fixes, plus two new plug-ins on a 14-day trial. These comprise the Precision Buss Compressor and the SPL Transient Designer. The former is a UA original, designed to emulate VCA-type ‘master section console compressors’, with the aim of ‘gluing’ mix elements, so I think we can all guess what the model for this was… As if that weren’t enough of a clue, there is an auto-fade function also built in with a knob to set time from 1 to 60s. This one seems rather rapid at the start, and slows down too much at the end of the fade, compared to my memory

of the SSL. The final giveaway is that Ratio can be set to 2:1, 4:1 or 10:1. Other controls feature more variation: Attack and Release are continuously variable, although the latter includes a familiar Auto setting. However, there are two really brilliant features that others never thought to include. These comprise a Mix control for blending uncompressed signal, and a switchable sidechain Filter variable from 20Hz to 5kHz. These are both terrific features that would always be on my wish list for a dream compressor, and they are implemented perfectly here. Knob settings and metering are displayed very clearly in the plug-in window, and this sounds absolutely as you might expect, although without the two ‘new’ features activated the Duende Stereo Bus Compressor seems to have slightly more ‘glue’ in a brief A/B test. The SPL Transient Designer is one of the few

pieces of hardware outboard I use regularly in preference to the convenience of software plug-ins. None of its imitators has the simplicity of operation of the SPL — just two knobs, Attack and Sustain. The SPL is invaluable for rescuing poorly tuned and/or recorded bass and snare drums; turning up the Sustain often adds a richness and ambience that turns a pingy snare drum into something with a nice rich crunch. So a plug-in emulation is something for which I have waited a long time (although a version was available for the Creamware Pulsar/SCOPE platform). The UAD version opens in a surprisingly large window that shows two panels. The design is based on the new RackPack hardware version of the Transient Designer rather than the original 1U versions. The left panel hosts knobs for Attack and Sustain, plus there is the useful Output Gain knob (new on the RackPack version) for trimming the signal following processing. The right panel seems somewhat superfluous, as it features just a Power button, which has the effect

Sumo

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Ten21 Studio (UK). Control room featuring Audient ASP8024 Console

High Resolution Summing Amplifier

review

of bypassing the effect in exactly the same way as the On button on the other panel! The Transient Designer cleverly senses the transients by measuring levels relative to the average signal level — the effect is therefore not dependent on the overall level. Increasing Attack sharpens the initial transients of drums, acoustic guitars, etc., while decreasing it softens the initial snap. Increasing the Sustain knob brings up the decay of any sound in a rather pleasing fashion, while reducing it often has the effect of removing ambience. UA claims the Transient Designer can be thought of as a ‘philosophical relative of the LA-2A’ and I’d broadly go along with that. With simple controls, the effects of both these devices are generally pleasing, and very quick to set up. As usual, the UAD emulation is excellent, with the sound comparing favourably alongside the hardware. The only difference detected was at extremes of setting, with a few transient attacks sneaking through when Attack was set to minimum on the plug-in, where the hardware wasn’t so easily fooled. But this generally has all the function and sound of the hardware, and I anticipate this will get a lot of use here. The Helios Type 69 EQ was released a few versions back, but is one of the more interesting vintage

emulations available for the UAD. In contrast to the SPL, the plug-in window for this seems perversely small. This is characterful, musical and satisfying to use, with some rather quirky controls. The unit modelled is the first Type 69 which was originally at Island’s Basing Street Studios, which (handily for UA) is now in California. This sumptuous three-band EQ is the kind of circuit that is happy being pushed to extremes — ‘full boost at all frequencies’ can sound great! The High band is a 10kHz shelf with a stepped range of -6dB, -3dB, then 2dB steps from zero up to an indicated +16dB. The Mid band has eight useful switched frequencies, and 15dB continuous boost or cut. The Q starts off wide at low gain, then narrows with increased gain for a nicely pokey sound. The Bass section is rather unconventional, with either a peak boost of up to 15dB at four selectable frequencies, or a shelving cut at a fixed 50Hz in 3dB steps down to -15dB. However, a boost is applied when one of the frequencies is selected, even with the gain at zero — one of the peculiarities of the original that UA has faithfully modelled! Even with EQ bypassed, some subtle signal enhancement is apparent — just a slight enrichment is detected. This is a fantastic EQ, especially when used on

drums and acoustic instruments, with a real 1970’s spirit. The penalty for this wonderful sonic quality is a rather heavy DSP requirement. With one UAD card installed just six mono or four stereo instances of this plug-in are available at 44.1kHz, so unless a multicard setup is used, or you ‘print to tape’, this will be a rare treat. UA’s plug-ins are superb, but the original card is quite long in the tooth, and increasing DSP requirements of plug-ins like the Helios and Neve emulations can only strengthen the case for something new. But even though their rather large latency preclude use in a recording situation, I would hate not to have these effects for the final mix. ■

ProS

arguably the best plug-ins and emulations around.

CoNS

latency too great for recording/ monitoring situations; uses some host CPU processing; dSP requirements of some plug-ins unreasonable for current cards!

Contact UNivErSal aUdio, US: Website: www.uaudio.com

Centro Monitor and Foldback Controller

ASP008 8 Channel Variable Impedance Mic Pre

- think clarity

www.audient.com

Distributed in the UK by SCV London. Tel: 020 8418 1470 www.scvlondon.co.uk

review

Jazzmutant Dexter Take a touchscreen and make it the controller for your DAW — well, that’s the theory. ROB JAMES gets all touchy-feely with this interesting solution.

ouchscreens are a touchy subject and I’m not talking touchy-feely here in ‘nineties and noughties’ management-speak. Emotions run high and arguments are common. Mention touchscreens in professional audio company and the room divides like the Red Sea. The history is long with the estimable DAR SoundStation as the first workstation to make touchscreens familiar. I’ve always sat on the fence maintaining that they are useful in some applications and disastrous in others. I’ve never been convinced that they are suitable for fine control applications such as mixing and editing but equally convinced that they are absolutely ideal for others. The first touchscreen system I conceived and specified controlled an audio router and a sound effects database driving a CD-Jukebox. This was a notable success in a high-pressured production environment, but it was partnered with a full-on digital console, an AMS-Neve Logic 2 to be precise. I have always believed that this touchscreen was successful precisely because it was not controlling real-time mix parameters. Like a hole-in-the-wall cash machine it was an interface for dummies that obviated the need for complex and expensive custom control surfaces by presenting a restricted set of logical options. The operators had quite enough to keep in their heads staying on top of the rest of the kit and dealing with the production teams without over complicating these peripheral functions. In the past, one reason for dismissing touchscreens in the context of mixing and editing was that they were all single input devices like mice and tracker balls. In other words, you could only alter one parameter at a time. Now we are entering the age of the multi-touchscreen and the UK£1599 (+ VAT) JazzMutant Dexter is an early example of this technology aimed at the audio workstation market. The other reason for eschewing touchscreens for mixing and editing remains valid. With the best will in the world, if you have your hand over the screen in order to touch and change parameters then you are likely to be obscuring potentially vital information. However, re-thinking the standard ‘copy of a physical 34

mixer’ paradigm could circumvent the problem. JazzMutant markets two variations on the theme of touchscreen controller — the Lemur and the Dexter. The hardware is identical. A sleek, glossy black, low profile aluminium case houses a 12-inch, 800 x 600 pixel TFT touchscreen, four internally illuminated buttons and, at the rear, an RJ45 100 base-T Ethernet port and the usual concentric low voltage power inlet with an on/off switch. The power supply is an in-line block, not the usual wall-wart. Installation is straightforward. The networking is comprehensive and you can connect peer to peer with a crossover cable (Not necessary on many modern PCs) or via a LAN switch. The IP address can be set manually or, if there is a DHCP server on the network, completely automatically. In my case, automatic worked perfectly. Dexter requires neither a light touch nor a heavy one. My first instinct to caress it failed miserably. Perhaps surprisingly, fingernails work best and at medium pressure. This is absolutely fine for buttons but I’m not so convinced when it comes to precision control of faders and knobs. It is important to understand that the Dexter screen does not show the DAW GUI screens. It has its own purpose-designed screens with faders, buttons, knobs and surround controller that remain much the same regardless of the host DAW. Some of the interface elements are really rather beguiling and give a tantalising glimpse of where this technology might take us. I’ve always liked the idea of dragging points on a graph to control EQ, for example, and Dexter provides this option. The surround panner has a couple of novel features. You can control a number of sources simultaneously and, by using two fingers, move them all closer to or further away from the centre. However, there are some issues. For example, there’s no way to control LFE send and divergence in the surround panner and although there are meters in the strips these are resolutely single bargraph. Not much help with stereo or multichannel sources. The elegant Dexter also suffers from the familiar problem that afflicts many DAW hardware controllers i.e. it requires a specific driver to operate with each third party DAW. At present the list is restricted to resolution

Steinberg’s Cubase and Nuendo, Apple Logic Pro and Cakewalk Sonar. (In their latest versions. I used the PC version of Nuendo.) This approach confers the benefit of a tailor-made synergy with the target DAW that requires little effort on the part of the user to set up. Conversely, you are stuck with JazzMutant’s ideas of how a mixing surface should look and operate. For the more adventurous there is a JazzMutant alternative, the Lemur (£1435 + VAT). Dexter and Lemur can co-exist in the same unit. Once the ‘Dual-Mode’ firmware is installed you can re-boot into either. The good news is that this ‘dual-mode’ software is now available, free for Dexter owners, Euros 399 for Lemur owners. Thanks to JazzMutant’s Jazzdaemon driver the Lemur is an altogether more versatile device. It can control any application that speaks MIDI and/or the OpenSoundControl (OSC) protocol, or indeed up to eight applications on multiple computers thanks to the network connectivity. OSC is a network-based controller protocol with a number of claimed advantages over MIDI: low latency, higher data capacity, 32-bit numerical precision and easy configurability. Lemur gives you a kit of resizable parts or ‘widgets’ together with logical and mathematical operators to build your own interface or interfaces in the JazzEditor, a cross-platform (Mac/Windows) application. Mappings can be made manually or via a ‘learn’ function. The resultant interfaces can be uploaded and be stored in non-volatile memory on-board the Lemur. A project can include a number of interfaces all available at the same time. The buttons above the display are used to page through these. There is a built-in browser to manage projects from the screen. The widget library comes with a goodly number of customisable standard user interface objects (pads, switches, vertical and horizontal faders, knobs, LEDs and digital displays, scopes, etc.) together with some new and powerful objects such as the MultiSlider, the Multiball and the RingArea, which have no direct analogy in a hardware control surface. Although the emphasis is on music, performance and VJ applications there are obvious possibilities here for wider use. Dexter provides an interesting glimpse of what might be possible with a touchscreen for editing and mixing control but I remain to be convinced. This may in part be due to lack of support for my favourite applications but, even allowing for this, I still find the touchscreen interface less positive for simultaneous multiple fader-type control than multiple physical faders. The touchscreen Mackie DigitalXBus console also had a row of ‘real’ faders and knobs and, despite only having single-touchscreens, was a lot more useable as a result. Would I buy a Dexter/Lemur? Probably not for my own use unless I was a lot richer, but I would definitely specify one for a number of applications. Most notably this would be for theatre and exhibition/theme park play-out systems, router control and possibly sound effects selection. ■

ProS

robust; good looking; interesting control possibilities especially with the lemur option.

CoNS

the dexter on-screen interface is fixed architecture; touch control of variable parameters is a lot less positive than physical controls; GUi needs further development.

Contact JaZZmUtaNt, FraNCE: Website: www.jazzmutant.com

January/February 2008

review

Marian Trace 8, Trace Alpha & Trace Pro It’s a tough market out there for PCI soundcards. ROB JAMES turns a critical eye on a German trio to see if they have what it takes to survive...

ust a few years ago, the market was full of PC soundcards. Many have fallen by the wayside and the survivors now fit into three loose categories. At one extreme is the ‘domestic’ variety that scarcely offer more than the facilities built into the majority of motherboards. On-board sound has seen vast improvements with multichannel analogue outputs for surround sound and digital coaxial and / or Toslink optical both for SPDIF stereo and multichannel streaming outputs to feed external Dolby and DTS decoders. At the high end lie cards with impressive audio specifications and professional interfacing. In the middle ground, only the fittest survive. Headline prices and profit margins have fallen and it is to the credit of the manufacturers that the quality of cards in this segment is so high and continuously improving. German manufacturer Marian has been active in this market for ten years or so but the name is not particularly well known, at least in the UK. I received three of its most recent cards for this review. All three cards are in Marian’s Trace series and all offer sampling at up to 24-bit, 192kHz, with DSP mixing and routing. Like the Marian MARC cards, one of the main virtues of the Trace range is modularity. You can add as many cards as you have PCI slots for and synchronise them using Marian’s Syncbus or Syncbus TDM (Time Division Multiplex) connector. Apart from sync signals, Syncbus TDM also carries up to eight channels of audio. The entry-level card in the range is the Trace Alpha (UK£101.28 + VAT). Like the other Trace cards, this is a bus-mastering half-length PCI card. It features two channels of balanced analogue I-O via 1/4-inch TRS jacks mounted on the card bracket, plus digital stereo coaxial SPDIF. There is also an alternative internal connection for a CD drive, three channels of MIDI output plus one MIDI input connector via a 15-pin SubD compact, and a supplied breakout cable terminating in the traditional five-pin MIDI sockets. Analogue inputs can accept a maximum of +18dBu and maximum output is +18dBu. 0dBFS input levels are switchable between +18dBu, +15dBu, +8dBu and -6dBV and output levels between +18dBu, +8dBu and -6dBV. All of these are selected via on-board DIP switches. The Alpha can be clock master or synchronise to another January/February 2008

Marian card via the TDM Syncbus. The Trace Pro (UK£245.96 + VAT) offers the same number of channels, but in professional formats and without the MIDI connectivity. This time the audio I-O is on D-Sub connectors with XLR breakout cables supplied. The AES-EBU digital connector is a 9-pin plug, the analogue a 15-pin, and samplerate conversion is available on the AES-EBU input. Analogue inputs can accept a maximum of +18dBu and maximum output is +18dBu. 0dBFS input levels are software switchable between +18dBu, +15dBu, +8dBu and -6dBV and output levels between +18dBu, +8dBu and -6dBV. Word clock/Superclock input is courtesy of a BNC on the card bracket. At first glance the Pro may seem expensive compared to the others, but this is a competitive price for a card equipped with a decent sample-rate convertor. For multichannel analogue I-O there is the Trace 8 (UK£237.45 + VAT). The eight channels of analogue I-O are connected to the card via a 44-pin Sub-D compact. As with the Trace Alpha, the three MIDI outputs plus one MIDI input connect via a 15pin Sub-D compact and breakout cable. The audio breakout cable connections terminate in 1/4-inch TRS jacks, with five-pin plugs for the MIDI connections. Inputs can accept a maximum of +15dBu (balanced) or +21dBu (unbalanced), and maximum output is +15dBu (balanced) or +9dBu (unbalanced); switching is automatic depending on whether the connection is balanced or unbalanced. While these figures are likely to prove adequate for most purposes, it is worth noting that they are a little low and that some equipment operates at up to +24dBu. Word clock/ Superclock input is an optional extra, connecting via two ‘jumper pins’ on the board. Marian’s documentation is of a high standard with plenty of hand-holding for those who need it and advanced information for the more experienced. Installation is, as it should be, a doddle. Windows XP drivers support MME, ASIO 2.0, GSIF 2.0, WDM-Audio and DirectSound, but as yet there are no Windows Vista drivers. The driver also installs a Mixer, Output Controller, and a so-called ‘States’ window showing the status of the Word clock, Syncbus and digital input connections, along with a Settings dialogue box. With two or more Marian cards resolution

in a system, you need to define which is the clock master and which are slaves on the General page of the settings dialogue. Here you will also find a 75Ω termination option for the last card in the chain. On analogue inputs the gain ‘knob’ adjusts analogue gain before the A-D convertors. Aux sends are a feature of the mixer; the number available varies depending on mode and card. Thus at 44.1kHz/48kHz you get a maximum of six, at 96kHz there are two, and at 192kHz none! The mixer also functions as a router, patchbay and splitter for internal and external sources and destinations. Up to four stereo signals can be routed between cards connected to the TDM Syncbus so you can use one card as dedicated I-O to an external effect or effects, and make this available to all other applications and cards. Both the Alpha and 8 come bundled with Samplitude SE. Samplitude has always been my favourite native processing multitrack DAW and it works well with the Marian cards. In all, Trace is an appealing series of cards. The TDM Syncbus means upgrading doesn’t render existing cards obsolete, although the 8-channel intercard maximum may be limiting for some applications. The figures are good and sound plausible subjectively, while latency is very low and can be tuned to suit the system. Analogue input level control is most welcome on products in this price range. All of the Trace series represents good value with the Alpha in particular something of a steal, and the five-year warranty inspires a high level of confidence in the products. I look forward to seeing and hearing more of them in the future. ■

ProS

low prices; pre-convertor analogue level control; versatile range of options; low latency.

CoNS

tdm bus limited to eight channels; no vista drivers yet; maximum analogue levels on trace 8 somewhat low.

Contact mariaN, GErmaNY: Website: www.marian.de UK, Et Cetera distribution: +44 1706 285650

monitor benchtest

Event ASP8 KEITH HOLLAND

he Event Electronics Studio Precision ASP8 is a two-way active loudspeaker consisting of an 8-inch (200mm) mid-bass driver with a mineral-filled polypropylene cone, and a 1-inch (25mm) soft-dome tweeter that radiates through a shallow, elliptical horn-type waveguide. Both drivers have neodymium magnets and are magnetically-shielded. The drivers are mounted in a vertical orientation on the front baffle of a

cabinet with external dimensions of 410mm high by 320mm wide by 300mm deep, which has two ports in the front. The rear of the cabinet contains the controls for the built-in electronics. Event specifies amplifier power outputs of 200W (programme) for the woofer and 80W (programme) for the tweeter with a forth-order asymmetrical crossover at 2.6kHz. The rear panel has continuously-variable controls for input sensitivity, high-frequency trim (+/-3dB above 2.6kHz) and low-frequency trim (+/-3dB at 100Hz) along with 1/4-inch jack and XLR-type input connectors, both of which can be connected for balanced or unbalanced operation, and an IEC standard mains connector and power switch. Also included is a button for switching in a 80Hz second-order high-pass filter designed for use in some surround sound applications. This review was conducted with the low- and high-frequency trims set to 0dB and with the high-pass filter switched out. Figure 1 shows the on-axis frequency response and harmonic distortion for the ASP8. The response is seen to lie between +/-5dB from 40Hz to 20kHz and exhibits some irregularity in the mid-frequency range. However, the raised response at around 600Hz to 1kHz may be considered a desirable feature in some circumstances, for example, when the loudspeakers are mounted on the meterbridge of a mixing console. The low-frequency roll-off is seen to be very steep having a sixth-order slope with -10dB at about 35Hz. A sixthorder slope is characteristic of the use of an electronic high-pass filter and a ported cabinet to gain maximum output at low frequencies with the minimum driver displacement. Partly as a consequence of this design philosophy, the harmonic distortion is commendably good at very low frequencies lying below -35dB

Fig. 1. on-axis Frequency response and Harmonic distortion.

(1.8%) at all frequencies (measured with an output level of 90dB SPL at 1m distance). The horizontal off-axis response is shown in Figure 2. There is some narrowing of the directivity at the upper end of the woofer frequency range between 500Hz and 3kHz that broadens out again between 3kHz and 8kHz where the tweeter takes over, although this is only really a problem at angles beyond 30 degrees. The vertical off-axis response (Figure 3) shows the characteristic notch around the crossover frequency due to the physical spacing of the two drivers; this occurring about equally in the up- and down-directions. The time-related response of the ASP8 is shown in Figures 4 to 7 which show plots of the step response, power cepstrum, acoustic source position and the waterfall. The step response shows the high-frequency rise arriving around 0.5ms before the lower frequencies which is typical of many two-way systems. The power cepstrum shows some evidence of an echo after about 0.5ms, which may be due to

monitor benchtest

Fig. 2. Horizontal off-axis response.

Fig. 4. Step response.

Fig. 6. acoustic Source Position.

Fig. 3. vertical off-axis response.

Fig. 5. Power Cepstrum.

Fig. 7. Waterfall Plot.

diffraction from the side edges of the front baffle of the cabinet. This may explain some of the frequency response irregularities noted above, as a closer look at the horizontal off-axis response curves reveals a smoother response off-axis than that on the axis (due to diffracted wave path length differences). The acoustic source position and water fall plots demonstrate some of the compromises involved in the adoption of the rapid low-frequency roll-off described above. The acoustic source position is seen to be over 3m behind the loudspeaker at low frequencies and the waterfall plot shows a much more gradual decay of

low frequencies than the mid- and high-frequencies. However, although this decay is slow compared to many systems with more gentle roll-off slopes, such a those with non-ported cabinets, it is more rapid than many comparable systems, indicating that the inevitable compromise between low-frequency distortion and transient response has been managed with care. The waterfall plot also shows up some resonance behaviour at 400Hz and 900Hz that corresponds to dips in the on-axis frequency response. Overall the Studio Precision ASP8 (UK£510 + VAT) is a good performer. The adoption of a ported

cabinet with an electronic high-pass protection filter has resulted in commendably low distortion figures without too much compromise in the low-frequency transient behaviour. The frequency response is uneven, but current thinking indicates that the non-flat ‘inverted V’ shape of the response may be desirable for some applications. ■

Contact EvENt ElECtroNiCS, aUStralia: Website: www.event1.com UK, Source: +44 208 962 5080

craft

he Gang Of Four released their first EP, Damaged Goods, in 1978. Their music blew the doors off the post-punk era bunker, and showed that the energy of punk, the spark of rock and the politics of noise could be taken to a higher level. ‘Gang Of Four are probably the best politically motivated dance band in rock and roll,’ enthused Rolling Stone magazine in 1980. Unlike certain more successful bands of that era, whose defining moments now resemble petrified milestones on the rock ’n’ roll road, Gang Of Four’s music had a potent and influential reach. Acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fugazi, Korn and Rage Against The Machine all display a clear Gang Of Four influence, and anyone who considers Franz Ferdinand’s sound fresh and exciting had better look on youtube.com for the clip of Go4 performing Damaged Goods live in 1979. Guitarist Andy Gill produced most of the Gang’s recordings, and subsequently albums for other artists including The Stranglers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Michael Hutchence, The Futureheads and Killing Joke. In true dialectical style, Gill has worked with a diverse selection of artists, from Leeds rockers Infrasound through Latvian band Detlef Zoo, to crazed Japanese noise-merchants Polysics. Lately Andy has made something of a speciality of producing young UK buzz-bands, including The Mentalists, The Rumblestrips, Maple State and The Young Knives — their Voices Of Animals And Men was Mercury-nominated. Gill owns an unusually well-equipped (even for a prolific record producer) studio, built into the basement of an elegant Art Deco building in central London. When Resolution visited, he was pushing up the faders on his 72input Neve 51 series, preparing to mix a track from Basque band Standard.

Is this Neve a particular model you were chasing for a long time? I wanted a Neve, I wanted a lot of inputs, and this one came up. There’s a big price to pay for owning one of these. Beyond a certain point all the capacitors go, it’s a bit like fixing the Forth road bridge –- it’s never finished –- all you can say is that maybe this week the desk is in better condition than last week! I think if you decide you need to have your own facility, there has to be a certain level of equipment to make it worth doing. Anybody who’s got a garage, a laptop and some microphones can make records. But to get interesting things happening, you need a variety of equipment. If you’re just going to use what came with the laptop, it’s all going to be rather similar and homogenised. My feeling is very much that equipment from the past, such as the desk, can be combined with digital and computer-oriented tools, the two work really well together. I think you make productions a bit one dimensional if you only use computers.

Andy Gill

From the sonic aspect, or from a creative point of view? Very much both.

Producer, writer, engineer and

Do you use your audio workstation like a tape recorder? I use Logic like a tape recorder, but I do get into some very in-depth editing. The ability to have lots of vocal takes, to find the one with the best nuances, is brilliant. Taking the first half of one word and the second half of another to get the exact feel that you were looking for is something which really appeals to me.

Gang Of Four guitar player Andy Gill talks to NIGEL JOPSON about Neves, Latvians and Young Knives ... and about being an incendiary post-punk icon.

resolution

January/February 2008

craft Do you think producers nowadays have perhaps fallen into the bad habit of just recording many vocal tracks and then comping them, rather than producing a vocal performance? You have to have a dialogue with a singer to help them get the best out of what they can do. If you work with a naturally gifted vocalist you can investigate really fine nuances. It’s also enjoyable working with less experienced vocalists. You can tell them that they’re good, you can tell them that there’s nothing to worry about — but the only way that they will understand is when they can actually hear themselves sounding really good. Then you can see them growing in confidence. The voice is always quite prominent on your productions — Jesus Lizard featured particularly intelligible vocals for a grunge band. David Yow was quite surprised to hear his own vocal! With all the Steve Albini stuff that Jesus Lizard had done, the vocals were sort of dashed off in five minutes at the end. They got great instrumental tracks, but nobody had talked to him about the lyrics or what he was going for. He’d never really had a dialogue with anyone before about what he was trying to do with words and so forth. I think bands often think: ‘That’s the singer’s thing, let him get on with it.’ To me, although it might seem old fashioned in a way, the voice and lyrics are very important ... it’s what ordinary listeners are focusing on.

sounding very close to the way I think I’ll have them in the mix, I’m not going to try to do it all later. Obviously you don’t want to set up anything extreme which you can’t undo, like compressing drums too much. It’s just down to experience.

The drums on your productions invariably have a very clear and close sound, naturally ambient without being too ’80s-style splattery. I always think I mix the drums too loud, I’m a drum fan. I want you to feel like you’re in a club, standing right in front of the drummer. When I was a kid listening to records, rhythm and drum sounds were the first things I latched on to. I remember hearing — bizarrely –- Elton John, recorded by Gus Dudgeon, and thinking the drum sound was really good. I also remember David Bowie’s Low album, recorded in Berlin, where Tony Visconti first got his hands on an

Eventide Harmonizer and put the drums through it, the sound is just amazing.

There’s a very consistent instrument balance to your productions — vocal prominent, drums up front — is that a conscious attempt to maintain a particular standard or is that just how you hear it? I suppose it’s just how I hear it. Whichever genre of music it is, you want to try and capture the particular thing that’s exciting about the songs, I’m always trying to do that. You’ve got to figure out the exciting sound which really draws you into the song. That’s what you’ve got to try and keep hold of. When you’re working on roughs or something ... it’s the way you have the desk set up –- the drums sound good, it really sounds exciting — then sometimes when you come to mix it, you can feel like you’ve lost that.

Do you have a particular vocal mic you prefer? I’ve tried other mics but my Neumann U67 always sounds very detailed, other mics can sound as if they are missing a dimension. I quite like the Shure SM7, and I’ve just recently got these microphones made in America by William Curtis. I was actually looking for drum microphones, they’re amazing, there’s something going on in the upper mids that really do the trick. You have some quite exotic outboard, such as the Pye compressor. Is that a favourite? It is something I use ... the only problem with the Pye is it doesn’t have any gain make-up, so you have to find other ways to do that, but the sound is great. In the early ’90s I was working at the Powerplant, they had tons of old outboard gear there, that’s when I first came across Pye compressors. I got this one through Tony Larking. When Bill Wyman decided to sell the equipment from the Rolling Stones mobile, he sold the whole lot to Tony, I also bought the U67 from there. You have an ‘engineered and mixed by’ credit on most of your productions. Is that something you’ve always done? Were you the musician leaning over the engineer’s shoulder when Gang Of Four ﬁrst recorded? I probably was, I didn’t really know what I was doing back then, but I do now. The only way you can really learn is by doing it yourself, you either have to own the gear and use it on a daily basis, or come up through working in the studio system. Do you work on the sound yourself even when you’re recording a full band? Sam Morton has been with me for a couple of years, we work on it together. We’ll probably look at the last project we did, discuss what was good or bad sound-wise about that, what is different about the new project, what we need to change, which mics we should use. Then between us we will see what’s going on, try some outboard. I like to get the drums January/February 2008

resolution

craft our guitars, I wrote lots of the words — because some of the vocals were in sort of nonsense-English — just for the sake of having something to sing. In the end we had a full body of work that we had written together, and lots of the songs were sung in Latvian as well as English. It’s doing really well, the first single has been number one in Latvia for six weeks now ... brilliant!

Have there been productions where you also found yourself playing guitar? Occasionally bits and pieces, if it’s quicker just to do it than explain it all. But there’s really no need for me to do that, if musicians have their individual styles you want to encourage that. The Young Knives for instance, they have a fantastic style of their own ...

Maybe you’ve gated things too much, or you’ve EQed it the wrong way because you thought you’d add a bit of 2k to make it more prominent, but you’ve changed the essence of the sound. It’s a bit of a balancing act.

You’ve worked with a huge cross-section of acts recently. Punksters Asyl from La Rochelle, Detlef Zoo from Latvia, how do they come to you, do you receive huge stacks of demos in the post?

I do get a lot of stuff that just turns up ... I still don’t quite know how Detlef Zoo got in touch with me. Uldis, the singer, has a really affecting voice. When we started working on their stuff, a lot of their songs sounded very unfinished. I would say: That sounds all right, are we going to have anything else? ‘Yes ... Yes’ Like a chorus or something? ‘We thought ... maybe you can help, Andy?’ So it turned into a sort of co-writing thing, we sat around with

resolution

There are so many references in their music, perhaps they’ve gone back a generation, to look at music that was happening before their parents’ record collections. I think that’s part of what is completely brilliant about them, they couldn’t give a stuff about what is fashionable or apparently cool. Sometimes it does sound like there’s something from the ’20s or ’30s popping up ... some sort of crooner has wandered in ... that’s what makes it so rich and starkly funny. I understand you played the role of A&R man with them as well. The demo turned up and, unusually, I just kept going back to it and playing it. I’d be making dinner and think ‘I must put that CD on again’ just because I was enjoying it so much. So I talked to their manager, we did a couple of tracks, and immediately Transgressive were very interested.

January/February 2008

craft What do you think of the new so-called 360 degree deals, where young bands are being asked to sign away income from their tours and merchandising? I don’t know what the logic is. Labels have become less and less use to anybody, and yet they’re asking for more and more from the artist. There was a point, say ten years ago, when a record deal was something worth having. If you signed to EMI, they might take all the profit from an album, but you would get a reasonable chunk of money up front, they’d pay for the recordings and promo. Now a label is not much use to you anyway, they’ll take most of the recorded music profits — vastly reduced now -– and they want the merchandising. Where’s the sense in that? Record labels have never been particularly efficient, they’ve never really done the job properly. It’s different for a band that’s been around for a long time, they can sell albums directly to fans who want them.

When you record yourself, are you aware that your own vibe has been revamped so many times by artists you have inﬂuenced, that it won’t sound so fresh to listeners. Does that affect you when you are writing? Are you tempted to choose an alternative path that will catch people off guard? My thought processes have followed that exact sequence, but I think you’ve really got to write what is exciting to you, without wilfully trying to be different.

started writing songs and performing, I just couldn’t imagine one without the other. ■

Can it please be a bit more funky — like To Hell With Poverty? There was nobody else doing that when Gang Of Four started. When I was growing up I loved ‘noise’ music, like Velvet Underground and so on. But I also liked reggae and James Brown, rhythmic and funky. Back then those two worlds did not meet at all ... when I

Or legacy acts can do a deal with Starbucks ... Dave Allen from Gang Of Four talks about this stuff all the time — it drives me crazy! But you do have to be clued-in with all this; you’ve got to figure out the old model doesn’t really work –- so what are the new models? The Internet seems to have a surfeit of blogs proclaiming: ‘The Future Of The Music Industry is ...’ I know, it’s getting a little bit tedious. The main issue is there’s been so much unpaid downloading, otherwise called theft, and record companies have been completely pathetic over the last ten years in the face of this. The problem is they haven’t bothered educating the public. The number of times you open a newspaper and find a debate raging about the morality of file sharing. If you steal something from a shop, there’s no debate about it! Musicians have worked long and hard on their music, shouldn’t they be paid a few pence for it? Somehow music has become something people don’t expect to pay for. There are whole generations whom nobody has really told they need to pay for this stuff. The Internet companies, the Googles and so on, are really mealy-mouthed about it. They pretend they are doing the world a service, sharing knowledge: ‘We’re making the whole world of knowledge available to each individual on their computer’. Well, people wrote or composed those resources, they should be paid for it. The Googles will try and say they are liberating knowledge by making it freely available ... which also just happens to make them one of the highest valued and most powerful media companies in the world. When Gang Of Four made their ﬁrst record in 1978, the levers of power (as far as recording an album) were ﬁrmly in the hands of record companies. Do you see it as liberating that anyone with a half-decent computer can now make a record, whatever their musical abilities? I think it is liberating, and I think there have been lots of examples of people making good records just with a laptop and a mic. It’s a bit like the proliferation of TV channels. Many years ago we just had four choices [in the UK], now there are 700 or whatever. But production values are so low, everyone’s trying to make something really cheaply and quickly, without thinking about it very much. What are the future plans for Gang Of Four? We’re starting a new album, I’m working on it tomorrow, in fact. January/February 2008

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Nick Davis With a career focused on melodic rock, Nick Davis has recently completed the magnum opus of remixing the entire Genesis catalogue in 5.1. He talks to NIGEL JOPSON about mixing surround on an E series, getting along with XTC, recording with Sonoma and musical MOTs.

ick Davis started his career as a tape op at Polygram in 1983, recording early demos for Tears For Fears. He then moved to Air Studios and later Westside, where he became chief engineer. Nick engineered albums for Aha, Aztec Camera, Ian Gillan, Heaven 17 and The Housemartins, among others. While at Westside he worked on several productions with ex-Gong guitarist turned producer Steve Hillage, including an album with reluctant-popsters It Bites. Mike Rutherford heard a track from this record called Kiss Like Judas, admired the sound, and as a result asked Nick to engineer his milestone album The Living Years. This led to Nick producing Tony Banks’ album Still, which in turn led to Nick being asked to co-produce the 1991 Genesis album We Can’t Dance. Since then, Nick and 42

the men from Genesis seem to have been in lockstep: he has engineered and produced nine albums for Genesis, three for Mike & The Mechanics, two for Tony Banks and two DVDs for Phil Collins. Davis has also produced or mixed four albums for Marillion, four for XTC, plus two each for New Model Army and Deep Purple. It’s hard not to admire a production pro who manages to keep his discography so well focused — in Nick’s case — on the once-scorned-but-nowfashionable genre of melodic or ‘prog’ rock. Nick also has an alter-ego career as a pop producer in Europe, working with artists such as Florent Pagny, Herbert Gronemeyer, Johnny Hallyday and Zazie. When Resolution caught up with him at Genesis’ private studio, Nick had recently completed the resolution

mammoth three-year task of remixing the entire Genesis catalogue in surround sound. He already has several projects lined up for 2008, including the release of Genesis’ Live Over Europe CD (recorded direct from their Digidesign Venue FOH mixer) and a live DVD recorded by Nick in Rome.

If there was a band that 5.1 was invented for it must be Genesis. I thought you were quite bold with some of the surround panning. Surround is fantastic, especially for Genesis. I think their catalogue just hasn’t sounded any better than in 5.1. I think the first thing we mixed was The Lamb, and the surround was a bit careful. Then Peter [Gabriel] heard it, having just mixed his album Up, and said he thought it was a bit tame. So we went and had another look and decided we could be braver. We certainly used the 5.1, but hopefully it’s not too gimmicky. A lot of surround mixers are very cautious — especially about the centre channel — I noticed you use it for the vocal ... I always spread the vocal across the front three, unless I’m using an effect. I put it there with reverb as well, I really don’t like the vocal in a surround channel without reverb, I think it sounds damn horrible. It’s January/February 2008

craft something you have to think about when you are doing the effects return panning. I don’t mind the odd lead instrument in the centre and I like using it for effects. I don’t generally like instruments isolated in the front, but I do like the fact that the front speaker gives a focus to the sound.

How did you handle 5.1 panning on an old SSL? I used the SSL E series quad panning for the main LR and rear, and had group 21 for the centre channel, driven from the small channel fader. If you want you can float a channel off completely to the centre. I used group 24 fed from the small fader with a filter for the sub, and everything I sent to the sub was also in another channel as well. That worked well because I generally didn’t need to assign any of the instruments to both front and sub. I started with the 5.1 mix and then made the stereo afterwards, because I was more excited about the surround. The only hitch with working like that is it tends to make the vocal slightly loud in the stereo, because you have the vocal in the centre channel and are used to hearing it with that focus, so perhaps the vocal does end up a little loud. Tony Banks listened to everything, and he was quite keen on getting the vocals louder [compared to previous releases].

Genesis were one of the ﬁrst bands to have a really deep bass sound live, with multiple Taurus pedals, Mellotrons and so forth. But the bottom end was always a bit of a disappointment when I bought their early records. I was the same, as a schoolboy when I heard The Lamb on vinyl it sounded very weedy. Musically it was much better than it sounds, although I did like Selling England By The Pound. I tried to address some of that, I did try and make the bass more prominent and ... bassy! You were making a product for many different surround formats, what were you mixing down to? I was mixing down to the Sony Sonoma DSD recorder, I think it sounds fantastic. When I play back a mix, I just smile. I didn’t use any of the Sony processing, I couldn’t even get my head around their editor, it’s

such a nightmare, we did all the editing and mastering later at Metropolis. Sonoma is a great recorder but a dreadful editor.

So, did the mastering involve PCM conversion or an analogue round trip? It’s a bit of a compromise really, because you are mastering for regular CD, SACD, DVD ... I said to Tony Cousins we had to do it all in one run, to keep the budget on track. I wanted the CD to be able to hold its head up against modern CDs, but I didn’t want it to be so loud the music was destroyed. Tony made a call to do a little bit of limiting with the TC Electronic 6000. He did analogue EQ and whatever he wanted to do, then there was a bit of digital limiting. It was played out analogue and back into Sonoma, I think. I just leave mastering to the mastering engineer because it’s their job.

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With Genesis’ early multitracks, are there some instrumental overdubs available that were perhaps a bit lost in the original mixes? I tried not to put any extra parts into the 5.1 which weren’t on the original vinyl. You may be able to hear the part better: for example, I think people have commented that the Dodo/Lurker percussion is quite loud, I had it panned to the rear and I thought it sounded really good. I did reference the original stereo mixes all the time, I had them running in sync, because sometimes there were several vocal tracks and I didn’t want to use the wrong one. On Selling England I had to go through with the lyric sheet marking each line because the vocals had not been comped. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything out ... although I believe I did overlook a guitar line on Misunderstanding ... which I have been criticised for!

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With a band like Genesis there must be many fans with very detailed, obsessive even, recollections of individual sounds from various albums, perhaps without the technical knowledge to understand the dynamic way in which a vocal or instrument timbre and ambience is created. Were you aware of that? I knew after the Platinum Collection (the remixes we started to do for the videos), they were the start of the whole back catalogue process. I think with Undertow I had a rather loud BV — hopefully I corrected that for the boxed set — and I didn’t have the correct echo for something else. In a way it’s great, because it gave me the chance to get it right. I knew I was on a bit of a hiding to nothing in one way, but I’d say that 90% of the responses I’ve had have been favourable. For the 10% who think I’m the son of the devil, I’m really sorry, I really tried to make it as good as I could!

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Was it a bit like a dream come true for you to work with an act whom you’d listened to and admired as a youngster? Yes, it’s fantastic to be able to work on stuff that you really like, I think that’s such an honour. Mixing Selling England By The Pound — I do think it sounds fantastic now, and it’s great because it’s some of my favourite music -- it’s like being a kid in a sweetshop! January/February 2008

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craft Which of your productions, apart from Genesis, have attracted most interest from potential clients? The band that has always got me the most critical acclaim has been my work with XTC. I mixed Nonsuch, and then produced Apple Venus and Wasp Star. I originally got the job because they had fallen out with Gus Dudgeon. I had a call from Virgin saying: ‘We’ve got a band, they’re very hard to work with, you may not survive, would you like to have a go at mixing this album?’ I turned up at Rockfield Studios in Wales with much trepidation, I mixed a track called My Bird Performs — it sounded fantastic and they really were so excited — so I got to mix the whole album. Those mixes turned out to be probably the best I’ve ever done, it was really painless. Virgin couldn’t believe it, because I think Andy [Partridge] had fallen out with pretty much everyone they had ever worked with, but we got on really well. Some years later, XTC had started a double album project with Hayden Bendall, I think after about nine months he had become exhausted by the project, they were only half way through. So Andy rang me again and I finished off Apple Venus Volume 1 and mixed it, I think that’s a lovely album. Then I did Wasp Star from scratch.

Do you think SACD has a future? Probably not, although the format is fantastic. DVDV DTS sounds pretty good, unfortunately SACD is too much of a niche market. I think sometime in the future there will be a single high definition format, it will probably be part of Blu-Ray or HDVD or their successors, something will finally become a standard.

At least we now have all this [Genesis] catalogue in high definition. Format wars are so pathetic, the manufacturers are idiots really, you’d think they would learn. They would sell far more if, rather than confusing the public, they would collaborate. Personally I think Blu-ray is the most promising of the current formats, if only because it has a bit more data storage.

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Didn’t you play keyboards on Wasp Star ... were you a musician before you became a producer? Yes, I trained as a classical musician at school, flute and piano. Then I was a drummer in a band when I was studying physics at university, we went to record in a studio and I thought ‘this is where I want to work!’ I think having a musical understanding really helps me do my job, I wouldn’t like to be a technical engineer who quotes frequencies

January/February 2008

craft and figures. I just like to listen and see if I like it musically. With the people I work with, I think if you couldn’t talk music to them it would be useless. I hate technical engineers, I wouldn’t have a clue where I am boosting a particular frequency. I actually think all outboard gear should have no dials or writing on it at all and operators should use their ears. If you turn around and see a red light or indicator flashing, the reaction is to instantly turn it down, whereas it could be sounding great. So I think there should be no meters and we should all use our ears. If the equipment is not telling you anything, you just have to trust your ability to make it sound good.

In the Pro Tools era, there has been a tendency for music making to develop a ‘hunched around the screen’ syndrome. You can see a waveform and go: ‘Look it’s not lined up’ or ‘look it’s under the tuning line’ ... but it could sound great, and you have to have a lot more musical confidence to say, ‘It might look wrong, but it sounds great.’ You know you can just pull it in tune or on time with software, but you might have destroyed the soul of what was good about it. I don’t use plug-ins when I’m mixing, I like trying to keep it as analogue as I can so I use Pro Tools as a tape machine. Obviously it’s handy to be able to mute noise, and to have multiple undo when recording, and it’s fantastic to be able to drop instruments in with precision. But I don’t like sound by numbers. I wouldn’t sit there and make a drum track visually perfect. If you pay good money to get a session drummer in, let him do his job, otherwise you may as well use a drum machine. In France, I have spent about a day making someone who can’t sing sound good with Pro Tools time shifting and tuning, but I find it soul destroying. I don’t think the end result makes for a great record, although it does make a very listenable, radio-friendly record. I think what is more important is a performer who can deliver musically, but that really isn’t a quantifiable thing you can place on a grid or put into some form of Autotune. However, there are bands you have to do that with because they are just not good enough to deliver musically, that’s the current state of the music business, I’m afraid.

Where is music going in the future, have you got a view on that? I’m pretty depressed about where music is going, I don’t like X-factor type programmes, where anybody thinks they can just step up and make a record. In a way they can make a record, but they can’t make a record which touches anyone’s soul. Because of our computer jiggery-pokery we can record albums which sound OK, but they don’t have the passion and magic which make the music last. Because we have sort of sold the idea that anyone can do it — anyone does do it — and it doesn’t make for great records. I think when you buy a computer program [like Pro Tools] you should have to pass a license test where you record a track that’s not in 4/4, which has a time change and a key change in it, and that’s not quantised. When you can do all that, you are allowed to use a computer program that makes music.

There are two decades of recording artists who will probably argue the opposite and say laptop recording software is liberating ... There should really be a music MOT, you shouldn’t be allowed to release an album until you’ve shown you can do something musically ... that’s my theory! ■

There’s quite a ‘French connection’ to your discography, isn’t there? I have done a lot of work there, but I’m more a Pop-man in France. That all started when I got a track from a French singer called Zazie, I mixed a song called Larsen. When I first got it I thought the sound was fairly bland, but I believed the song had some potentially good sections. So I went in with a programmer, Matt Vaughan, and we just turned it around and made it into a really good song. She had been unknown until that point, but we had a huge hit with it. She recorded another song, which did OK, then I became involved again with a third track she wanted to release. When I first heard it, there was a great tribal vocal bit right at the end of the song, on the fade. I thought it was the hook — so we basically carved the song up — and it became another hit. She became a big star ... once you have that track record, then you get called for a lot of similar stuff. For a while I did several of the big French artists. I did Johnny Hallyday, for example. I actually mixed his whole album and never met him, when it was finished he phoned me up and said (in a deep voice): ‘Hi Nick, this is Johnny, sounds great, Bye!’ January/February 2008

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The E-Trap in use A portable and tuneable electro-acoustic absorption system sounds almost too good to be true but that is what the E-Trap promises –- a quick and easy way to eliminate room resonances. PHILIP NEWELL puts it through its paces.

he Bag End E-Trap is an electronically controlled, electro-acoustic absorption system that is tuneable over the frequency range from 20-65Hz; although the one supplied for these tests had been modified by the manufacturer to operate from 30-90Hz. This had been done at special request because most of the proposed tests were intended to be done in small rooms. The unit has two, selectable microphones built into it, a signal processor, a power amplifier and a loudspeaker. It has two independent filters that can each be tuned to any frequency in the overall range of operation as long as those frequencies are well separated. When working as a damping device the energy from the modes is absorbed, and ends up as heat in the voice coil of the loudspeaker. Although this is only a brief outline of the E-Trap, more can be found in Resolution V4.7 and on the Bag End website. In fact, it was in that issue of Resolution that I first came across the E-Trap, in an article written by Jim Wischmeyer, who had spent many years developing the device. I was intrigued by the concept, and was subsequently sent an example to see what I could do with it. In the July/August edition of Resolution (V6.5) I wrote an article on vocal rooms, in which there was a picture of a room and a plot of its very fast decay time (Figures 5 and 6 in that article). The plot shown was a ‘real use’ situation, with the microphone only about 70cm from the source, because the room is normally only used with an actor behind the lectern and a cardioid microphone in front of it. It was mentioned in the article that the resonances below about 70Hz were of little consequence because there was nothing in a human voice to excite them. Nevertheless, should someone want to record music in the room, with microphones and instruments more widely spaced, it could then be necessary to suppress those low frequency resonances. It therefore seemed to be an interesting proposition to take the E-Trap into the room to see if it could help to control the resonant response peaks.

Fig 1. decay characteristic of the room at Sodinor. 46

Figure 1 shows the decay characteristic of the room at Sodinor, in Vigo, Spain, with the microphone this time spaced about 3m from the source. The trap was placed at one end of the room, and the measuring microphone was placed close by. The E-Trap needs to be placed in a high pressure region of the modes to be acted upon (such as a room boundary) or its damping effect cannot function. A small resonant peak around 70Hz was the one we chose to try to control first, though the room was quite well damped even at low frequencies. Figure 2 shows the before and after responses, but little audible effect was noticed by any of the three people in the room when the slamming of the door was used as an excitation source. The trap had been tuned as per the manufacturer’s instructions, using a loudspeaker and a pink noise source, and monitoring the effect via a very narrow band spectrum analyser, but the adjustments had not been as intuitive as expected. However, the modes in the room were not of a very high Q, due to the considerable amount of acoustic damping. Certainly the peak around 70Hz had been reduced a little, and the response up to around 90Hz had been flattened. In fact the dip around 63Hz had also been reduced, but the sound of the room had not changed by any noticeable degree. I called Jim Wischmeyer at Bag End for advice and he explained that if the room already had an amount of damping that was greater than that which the E-Trap could supply, then there was not much left for the E-Trap to damp. Putting a little extra damping around a narrow frequency band in a broad mode would be unlikely to yield any very audible results, although he did add that there can be time response benefits. In the 1980s, I was looking into the concept of active absorption at Southampton University, but came to the conclusion when I wrote the book Studio Monitoring Design (published in 1995) that the better a room was, acoustically, the less the active control systems had to offer, even to the extent that in some cases the artefacts of the processing could be more

noticeable than the problems that they were supposed to be curing. So, once again, a highly acoustically controlled room had proved itself to be robust, and was resisting intervention. To be fair, in Bag End’s literature, it does say that the tuning of the E-Trap goes from narrow to very, very narrow, whereas we had been testing it in a room with rather broad modes. I had been hoping to get a little electro-acoustic help in controlling the bottom end in a room that had walls of a porous wood/cement composite material over 6cm of polyurethane foam. Conversely, the correction shown in the Bag End literature was in a room with concrete walls, and the review article that appeared on their website, written by David Kotch and edited by John Storyk, dealt with the treatment of a small 5.1 mixing room that was described as having relatively ‘stiff’ boundaries. The room needed high isolation but was too small for any significant acoustic low frequency control, so the E-Trap had been shown to be useful, here. So, the next step was to go to a room with clearly isolated, high Q, ringing modes. This would be consistent with what Jim Wischmeyer had written in his Resolution article: ‘The electronic bass trap, while not likely to replace all passive bass trap implementations, offers a precise tool to attack the very worst problems (in a fraction of the space of a passive absorber).’ We took the E-Trap to the acoustics laboratories of Vigo University, and set it up in a concrete-walled corridor that had an absorbent suspended ceiling. Pink noise was played through a loudspeaker at one end of the short corridor, with the E-Trap and the measuring microphone at the other end. An ‘almost real-time’ FFT analyser was used to measure the response, and a peak was noticed at 39Hz. Several attempts were made to tune the E-Trap but the results were disappointing, and certainly by ear little was changing. It was a repeat of the Sodinor situation. In one, last-ditch attempt to get something useful, we tried using a sine wave, and swept the frequency until we got a peak on the measuring system,

Fig 2. Blue line E-trap off; pink line E-trap on. resolution

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Fig 3. Before and after responses.

showing that we had energised a high-Q mode. On the anti-nodes, the places of highest pressure, the sensation was a most unpleasant ‘bloom’ in the ears. Tuning the ‘coarse’ frequency control on the E-Trap this time had a clearly audible effect, and it was hardly necessary to refer to the analyser. Further reiterative

January/February 2008

tuning of the ‘contour’, ‘feedback’ and ‘fine frequency’ controls brought the level of the resonance down by an enormous 15dB. We then listened at the central anti-node position, and when we switched the E-Trap on and off the effect was dramatic. Subjectively, the mode was annihilated with the E-Trap switched on.

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Leaving everything set as it was, we reverted to the pink noise, and Figure 3 shows the on/off comparison, with a clear 12dB reduction close to 39Hz, just to the left of the vertical cursor position. Obviously the E-Trap was working. Armed with this new technique we then went back to the vocal room where we had done the earlier tests. This time, using only a sine-wave generator and a simple sound level meter, we did a frequency sweep from 25Hz to 70Hz, using a low frequency loudspeaker at one end of the room, and noticed that there were peaks around 31Hz and 62Hz. With the E-Trap at the opposite end of the room, and by means of ear and sound level meter, we tuned one channel to the 31Hz peak and the other to the 62Hz peak. Initially, the best achievable responses were those as shown in Figures 4 and 5, which showed something more akin to modal splitting and shifting (which can be beneficial in some circumstances) rather than any useful absorption. However, when the E-Trap was moved close to the centre of the wall, and away from the corner (only a position change of about 1m), the response change was huge, as indicated by Figure 6. Once again, the graph suggests modal splitting rather than absorption, because with the E-Trap ‘on’ there is more energy above 34Hz and below 29Hz, but if it had been the 31Hz peak that had been causing problems then the E-Trap could probably have made a useful contribution. On the other hand, when we tried banging on the window and closing the door, the perceived level of ‘boom’ with the E-Trap on and off was not noticeably different when acting on these medium-Q modes. In the E-Trap literature, it does state that it is a narrow-band device which can solve serious problems. Clearly, in our first test we were using wide-band excitation in a room with rather broad

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Fig 4. E-trap on ﬂoor at right of wall using mic a +mic B.

Fig 5. 62Hz mode, two different microphones.

Fig 6. last test: E-trap at centre of wall, on ﬂoor.

modes. However, in a poorly treated rehearsal room, for example, or a temporary situation in a theatre dressing room, which had an awful honk each time the bass guitarist hit a certain note, the E-Trap could be a useful tool. It is easily portable, and weighs only about 15kg. I would not like to think that too many people were mixing in rooms with isolated modes that needed the E-Trap treatment, but many performance spaces, rehearsal rooms, and even domestic listening rooms may exhibit isolated modes which, for practical or aesthetic reasons, do not lend themselves to acoustic solutions. In reality, also, people do mix in poor rooms. Initially, we had found the E-Trap tricky to set up by the recommended pink noise method, and high speed

FFT analysers can also sometimes be hard to find at short notice. In fact, calling in a specialist with the appropriate gear to set an E-Trap up could be almost as expensive as the purchase price (US$900/€600). However, the system we used, employing sine waves, seems to be cheap and effective and is also quite intuitive, Even a musical keyboard instrument could be used as a tuning source and the tuning can even be done by ear. I am going to hang on to the device for a while longer because it intrigues me. Basically, my job is to design rooms where the E-Trap will not be needed, but it could be a useful device to have around for specific situations. The unit is designed for continuous use, and may

be left on 24 hours a day. It consumes only 24 watts when idling and around 62 watts maximum when damping a mode at 110dB SPL, which is the limit of its correction range. It is designed to be set and left, and comes in two versions; black, textured paint or wood veneer. The latter could be useful domestically, or in listening rooms where, heaven forbid, aesthetics override acoustics. My intuitive feeling is that, one day, it is going to be just what I need to solve some otherwise intractable problem somewhere. ■

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Thanks to Sergio Castro and Eliana Valdigêm for the help with the tests in Sodinor, and to Marisol Torres and Antonio Pena at Vigo University.

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Does music come with these minutes? Managing an income stream switch to slowly increasing digital revenues is the name of the game. NIGEL JOPSON wonders if Total Music can conquer the beast, and explains how Nokia Comes With Music may help bridge the digital sales gap.

he most pressing problem facing the music industry is how to bridge the hollow chasm between declining CD sales and slowly increasing digital revenues. As I reported in Resolution V6.1, Sony BMG CEO Ged Doherty was the first senior label executive to honestly spell out the gravity of the situation. ‘We predict digital growth of 25% per year, but not enough to replace the loss from CD sales,’ he admitted in October 2006. ‘By 2010 we will be 30% behind in terms of revenues.’ In 2007 US album sales, including digital, totalled 500m units, a 14.9% decline from the 542.4m sold in 2006. This worked out as an 18.8% decline for physical CDs, which scanned 449.2m versus the 553.4m units in 2006. Digital albums topped 50m. Single digital track downloads sold 844.1m, a 45% increase over the 2006 US total of 582m. In the UK, the total number of downloads for 2007 was 77.6m — just as Doherty projected, a quarter higher than the 52.5m total for the year before — but still not enough to bridge the gap. ‘It’s the beast,’ says music-biz lawyer Michael Sukin: ‘It’s the question everyone in the industry is trying to answer.’ Articulate artists and technology pundits like myself have been throwing answers around for the January/February 2008

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last decade. But just when mainstream commentators have caught on, publicised the problem and raked over our old tirades against major labels, the landscape has changed dramatically. I’d argue that ‘major labels’ (plural) don’t really exist as a cartel anymore. When Sony and BMG were preparing to merge in 2004, Osman Eralp wrote in The Guardian newspaper: ‘With this move, Sony is attempting to dictate who controls the legal music download market, the future of music delivery and the front line of the battle for the next generation of electronic platforms.’ Four years on, the merger looks less like Sony’s attempt at world media domination, more like a Japanese corporate loathe to divest an expensively-acquired asset, trying to spread the cost of ownership with a family-run publisher happy to see the back of spendthrift music execs. ‘When an industry declines faster than expected, everybody looks like they’re idiots,’ mourned Eralp this December. 2008 sees a much diminished slice of the pie for some former giants of the record industry, with one of the former ‘majors’ reduced to a mini-major. EMI’s market share sank to 9.37% in 2007, less than the 13.48% of a combined indie sector. The legendary English music company was bought in 49

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August by private equity group Terra Firma for £2.4bn, after a catalogue of bad news and losses. Although Warner Music gained a couple of clicks to 20.28%, the company started the year a shadow of its former self owing to savage staff cuts. Despite Lyor Cohen and his expensive crew coming to WMG from Island/DefJam, there’s been not one hip-hop hit at Warner. Edgar Bronfman’s solution has been to slash staff. Fox News columnist Roger Friedman took a hard line: ‘WMG’s lack of CD sales is not because of downloading or sudden public apathy about pop music. It’s because in order to gut out remaining revenue, WMG ceased being a music company and simply committed suicide. It’s that simple.’ Sony BMG dipped more than 2.5% to a 24.97% share, leaving Universal as the most powerful music group in the world, with a 31.9% share. So when Doug Morris, the 68 year-old head of UMG, talks ... others listen. In November 2006, Morris played on Microsoft’s desperate desire for a successful iPod-alternative to extract a $1 ransom to Universal for every Microsoft Zune music player sold — on top of the licensing fees Microsoft pays to have UMG’s tunes in its Zune Marketplace online store. Now the world’s most powerful music executive aims to launch an industry-owned subscription service called Total Music, which would provide unlimited access to songs, paid for through a $90 fee added to the cost of portable players. Portable media player vendors would pay a $5 monthly subscription fee per unit to carry the service, customers would then be given ‘free’ access to the music. The $90 is derived from an assumption that consumers upgrade every 18 months.

The all-you-can-eat subscription model is perfect for a large segment of the potential music buying public, but so far has conspicuously failed to take off with computer users. Subscription services like Napster and Rhapsody have something like 3-4 million aggregate paid subscribers world-wide. This is a healthy number, but revenue pales in comparison to iTunes and other download stores. Consumers who organise their music collections on a computer are likely to be more technically sophisticated than the huge bulk of global music listeners, as evidenced by the continuing popularity of the PC ‘search for and download’ sales model. A consumer who has catalogued and encoded his own music collection on a computer is always going to be more picky than the average listener, just like the music fan who could tell you their stylus was a Shure VN35HE in the days of vinyl. The base of consumers who would rather graze various types of music than own it outright is the primary target for subscription services, and it’s a hugely underserved market. Such users currently have to pay subscription fees (typically £5-15 per month), but they don’t get the convenience of billing integrated with ISP or phones, and they’ve so far had to contend with various technical glitches. Total Music would side-step or eliminate these issues. More importantly, the power of major CE makers to market to music fans is much greater than fledgling music subscription services. Consumers choose a portable music player on the basis of the device — the look, facilities or marketing — rather than choosing a music subscription and subsequently the hardware to fit. It

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makes a lot more sense to wrap the music licensing with the hardware. Still, I was wary of blowing the Total Music trumpet too enthusiastically when Doug Morris made his announcement back in October. In July, after breaking off its renewal negotiations with Apple, Universal switched to offering its roster to iTunes on a monthby-month basis. In August Morris, who had initially backed Apple’s iTunes, announced a five-month test with Wal-Mart, Google, and Best Buy to sell DRM-free music that could be played on any device. Amazon launched its MP3 store in September with content from UMG and Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO of Universal’s parent company Vivendi, told reporters: ‘Our contracts give too good a share to Apple.’ I wondered if Total Music was more a threat than a practical concept, despite some enthusiastic reports from tech-company reps who attended presentations. There were reports in Business Week of talks with Sony BMG, but Morris is an old school mover and shaker defending his patch ... perhaps it was all vapourware to find common cause with CE vendors, to reduce Apple’s 70% share of the digital music market. But as the Christmas season started, Universal and the world’s top mobile phone manufacturer Nokia announced they would offer free unlimited 12-month access to UMG’s entire catalogue for buyers of Nokia music phones, starting from the second half of 2008. ‘I believe the announcement will act as a catalyst for a whole number of business partners to step forward. It’s definitely going to stimulate the business next year,’ said Rob Wells, senior vice president for digital operations at Universal. The Nokia ‘Comes With Music’ cellphones would differ from any other package on the market, as users can keep all the music they have downloaded for free during the 12 months. The DRMprotected tracks are tethered to the mobile device, but do not expire if the device is not regularly synced, as is currently the case with subscription services. ‘We set out to create the music experience that people are telling us they are looking for — all the music they want in the form of unlimited downloads to their mobile device and PC,’ said Anssi Vanjoki, executive VP and general manager, Multimedia at Nokia. Instead of side-loading songs from PC to cellphone, downloading songs to a cellphone will also authorise one registered computer to download the same tracks, using the CWM unique PIN number. In launching the free service, Nokia risks killing off, or cannibalising, its own online Nokia Music Store that opened in November in the UK, and will be rolled out globally in 2008. Tracks are priced at 80p each, or £8 for an album. ‘I would have nothing against Nokia Comes With Music knocking out the Nokia Music Store,’ revealed Tommi Mustanen, director of Nokia N-Series Multimedia. Tracks are to be encoded at 192kbps, with older content at 128kbps. I am assured that accessing songs will not necessarily consume precious talk-time minutes, if the Nokia phone has WiFi capability users will apparently be able to use an Internet connection to download tracks. Nokia CWM appeared so similar to the Total Music concept, many commentators assumed it was the first example of the Universal initiative. But Nokia has subsequently been at pains to point out that the branding and concept are its own: ‘Universal was simply the first of these [record labels] to publicly sign on’, a Nokia spokesman said. ‘The fact that there are some similarities shows how the industry is thinking about the future of digital music — but it’s not a sign of any direct linkage between the offerings.’ Whatever ... the key point is that, thanks to Morris’ sponsorship of the idea, labels are open to licensing music in this manner. January/February 2008

business Front loading the license and making it part of the device cost, rather than an optional subscription, is the inspired idea. When Vodafone, in partnership with Omnifone, launched a flat-rate mobile music subscription service in August, I sighed when I saw it was priced as an option at £1.99 a week, or 12 Euros a month. The lesson that needs to be learnt from the PC-based online music experience is that subscription services, however reasonably priced, have failed to gain mass-market traction. It’s fortunate that musicindustry recognition of this fact has coincided with Nokia flexing its corporate muscles. Until recently, the mobile phone networks considered themselves to be gatekeepers for any content-to-mobile. In September, Nokia purchased mobile advertising firm Enpocket, and Reuters recently handed a UK sales contract to Nokia’s newly formed advertisement sales house Ad Business. Nokia has developed a pro-active Internet strategy, and its sponsorship of user-generated content sites (such as Mosh) has added the suggestion of a large stick to negotiations with content companies. Nokia has driven down its costs faster than its average sale price has fallen, increasing margins and generating piles of cash for the firm. The Finnish firm still has $4bn cash in the bank after its $8.1bn acquisition of US mapping company Navteq, which left Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Garmin (who all use Navteq data) wondering where they stood. ‘The single biggest issue that’s facing the music industry is there are huge waves of devices being sold and shipped to consumers on a daily basis. Very few of these devices are then subsequently used to subscribe legitimate downloads,’ points out Rob Wells of Univeral. Although it will not appeal to makers of budget priced media players, wrapping a subscription with a cell phone is a virtuous circle

January/February 2008

for all the vendors involved: it even has a point for cellphone network providers, as subscribers are bound to use some non-bundled airtime to download songs. Wells would not comment on the financial side of the Nokia deal, but said, ‘Unless there was enough money for the world’s biggest record company we would have not agreed to the deal.’ Managers and lawyers must now make sure that such blanket licensing deals by labels are covered in the contracts of their talent. The entertainment industry is beginning to realise it must get serious about supporting multiple business models in order to survive. We have to go on a charm offensive with commentators, and get consumers comfortable with the idea that different sets of rights can have different values. By failing to advocate this idea over the past several years, the content industry has unwittingly endorsed the simplistic and untenable gospel of the shoot-fromthe-hip media scribe: that consumers should be able to pay one (low) price for every conceivable content

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right, and that content owners’ refusal to support this is avaricious or somehow illegal. I was depressed to read on the CE website Engadget their opinion that CWM was ‘slathered in DRM.’ You can keep all the music you download on one computer and a cellphone for free, for ever ... what did they expect? Permission to cross-load it to every future appliance for all eternity? Nokia and Universal have taken the first bold steps forward, if the rest of the industry can follow their lead, device-bundled subscription services could develop enough pulling power to bridge the music sales gap. ‘This is how the consumers will consume music going forward,’ Rob Wells speculates. ‘This is a step towards where this business we believe will be moving to in two to three years time.’ When you can distribute something digitally, for free, it will spread if people enjoy it. If it spreads, you can use it as a vehicle to aggregate an audience who will morally and physically ‘sign up’, to give you permission to interact and keep them in the loop. ■

meet your maker

Ivor Drawmer The man who puts his name to the Drawmer brand talks valves, digital and improving on classics.

ZENON SCHOEPE What is special about Drawmer products? Passion. We’ve always had a desire to create something special, whether it is a simple tool like a gate or compressor, or something more complicated like mastering software. It might be an extra control to add a new feature, or a bit of circuit (or software) which either sounds good or solves a problem, or even a new sonic tool if we happen to think of one. Reliability and customer backup are also important. In fact one of our distributors remarked that they had not even opened their spares kit.

orn and raised on the Channel island of Guernsey, the young Ivor Drawmer had a deep curiosity and unique aptitude for electronics engineering and honed his skills at a test equipment company on Sark. He also played keyboards in a number of bands and saw a future as a rock star and moved to England in the 1960s. Many years later he designed the world’s first frequency-conscious noise gate as a result of sitting in on a recording session and witnessing the shortcomings of existing gate designs. That design ultimately became the Drawmer DS201, which still sells today. He met up with musician and sound engineer Ken Giles who had moved into pro audio distribution and consequently dedicated himself to promoting and distributing Drawmer’s innovative designs. While he has collected a small research and development team around him, every Drawmer product is ultimately designed by Ivor himself and even the software is coded by him. ‘I try to come up with a different angle on things,’ says Ivor. ‘For example, when I heard people complaining that any time they compressed a track with a lot of low end, the high end ducked out. It took some doing, but I engineered a solution. The DL251 was every bit as musical and functional as an ordinary compressor, but by treating different frequency bands separately, it worked elegantly around that problem.’ In the early 1980s, studios were rediscovering the sounds of old Pultec and Fairchild outboard equipment and Drawmer saw the value in that sound and realised that more stable designs were possible. The result was the 1960 pre/compressor. To mark the company’s 25th anniversary Drawmer launched the Signature Series with the first product being the S3 3-band Tube Compressor. ‘The strength of Drawmer has always been and will always be the innovations,’ says Ken Giles. ‘Those innovations have had a significant impact on recording and live sound; many have influenced the production techniques which have evolved and the way the industry makes music. The whole suite of gating tricks that every engineer worth his or her salt knows goes back to Drawmer. The “direct in” style of minimal chain length recording goes back to Drawmer. And so many of Drawmer’s innovations have shown up in the products of other manufacturers, although I would add with inferior implementation! So Drawmer designs have influenced and shaped the competition and in doing so, the world of pro audio.’ 52

You have designed a number of units that have classic status; could they be improved on and would users accept them? Some people believe that products must go through an automatic upgrade every couple of years and that anything older than two years is obsolete, but I disagree with that unless there is a clear case for improvement. If you feel you have got it right, why fix it if it isn’t broke? The only changes to the DS201 Gate in 27 years, was the addition of balanced outputs 24 years ago. Apart from that the basic design has remained the same. It’s a similar story for the DL241 and the 1960. I also believe that customers feel a certain confidence buying a unit which has served so many people so well over the years. So it might be possible to make some technical improvements, but there are always people who will say ‘I preferred the old one’. The DS501 could be called an improved gate, because it has tuneable peak punch, but for mainstream use, the DS201 gets you there quickly — job done. Customers also suspect (often wrongly) that a new version is basically the old one, made cheaper and therefore not as good. How do you balance your design approach across analogue, valves and digital? I started out as an analogue designer and was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital domain in the mid 80s. But having got to grips with digital hardware and software, I find it helpful in analogue design, to the point that I sometimes write software to test the principles of an analogue design before I even switch on the soldering iron. Conversely, I use analogue knowledge in certain aspects of digital design. My software work is based on analogue thinking rather than maths, so the building blocks of a design remain the same. Starting with a block diagram, it doesn’t matter whether the implementation of each block is solid state analogue, valve or digital. Of course, there are different design considerations in each case. How do you feel about the copying and mimickry in look, presentation and circuitry of now obsolete gear in modern releases? If it is presented as the real thing when it really isn’t, then I would call that dishonest. The same applies where designs have been blatantly ripped off (saving R&D costs) and sold in competition with the original. This is like stealing someone’s hit single. But I see nothing wrong with the phoenix philosophy, resurrecting a product from the past, as long as certain protocols are observed. Let’s resolution

say I wanted to bring back an old product from another manufacturer and I had the right to do so, I believe it would be OK, as long as I explain in the literature that it is a modern day equivalent of the obsolete product. Otherwise, I would have to use the exact same components as the original, which would be very difficult, especially where valves and transformers are concerned.

Are modern valve designs done properly, in your opinion, or only done for effect? In most cases, the circuit design is probably fine. The question is whether the physical presence of a valve in the circuit constitutes a valve product and in my opinion it does. The valve will impart something to the sound in the form of low order distortion and transient handling. We have the 1968 which uses one valve in each channel, the 1960 which uses two valves per channel and the S3 which uses five valves per channel. Yes, the S3 is more valvey but it’s bigger, heavier and more costly. Your digital outboard — while technically superb — surely can’t be as much fun to create as your analogue stuff? Actually, I enjoy writing and testing software just as much as analogue design. What I am working for is a good sounding result and I’m chuffed to bits when I get it. I’ve written software versions of quite a few of our analogue products, in some cases just for the hell of it. You don’t burn your fingers and you don’t get 200 volts up your arm writing software. But I have to say that when I’ve done an analogue product, I feel as though I’ve designed something real, where the sound is actually passing through the circuit. This is especially true with valves. There’s something about that glass and the red glow from the heaters. It’s the vintage car syndrome I suppose. What has changed from a technological standpoint in your 25 years in how you are able to design, the components you can use and the way the equipment can be built? Sold state analogue design hasn’t changed a lot, because the principles are the same. There are better choices of transistors, ICs and most modern passive components. On the digital side, a great deal. Much better convertors, DSPs, displays, just about everything. With valves it’s the opposite. They are no longer widely used in mainstream electronics, so there is less of a choice of both valves and associated components. I would only use common types, like the ECC82 and ECC83, simply because of supply, price and quality issues. Surface mounted components enable a lot of circuit to be packed into a small space. It’s less traditional and more of a problem to service, mainly because you need better eyes and a very steady hand. How has your end-user changed in that time? Our product range is more diverse now and our customer base reflects that. Computer-based systems are now widely used for convenience, but due to customer demand, they now allow the insertion of outboard effects, like tube EQs and compressors. Studios want to be individual, like the artist and the producer are. They don’t want to be the same as everybody else, so a few classy bits of analogue gear can make all the difference to the perception of the studio. For that reason, our end user is still there, but he buys different stuff. New customers are often studios who are upgrading. They started with cheap, disposable gear and as one customer put it, ‘I’m now ready for some proper stuff’. January/February 2008

meet your maker

How does a premier manufacturer of physical outboard with some plug-in products feel about outboard’s role in an increasingly plug-in world? Sometimes in the rush for progress, we forget what we’ve left behind. That is why the trend in audio has shifted from valves (because that’s all there was), to transistors, to ICs, digital, then back to valves again. We are analogue creatures, our ears are analogue, so are microphones and speakers. We prefer twiddling knobs even though we can use a mouse. There are also significant numbers of people who prefer real gear, just as there are people who like older cars. For that reason, I think quality outboard gear still has a future. January/February 2008

Do you believe that sonic quality has been sacriﬁced in the search for features? Some material requires the ultimate fidelity, where features are not required at all, just good mics, good mic technique, minimal signal path, passive EQ, maybe no EQ at all. On the other hand, features can make a huge difference, especially when the source material is less than ideal and needs a little something to bring it to life. Too many features can be a problem though, because there is more to get wrong or overuse. It’s all about striking a balance between making a product with enough variability to be creative, without being over complicated, thereby giving the engineer a headache getting to grips with it. ■ resolution

technology

Stealth Digital Processing Digico’s next generation processing platform represents a leap forward in the company’s products and also gives a strong indicator of where desk technology will be heading in the future. ZENON SCHOEPE gets a rare glimpse under the bonnet of Stealth Digital Processing.

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he attentive reader will have noticed something of a pattern emerging concerning the technology that drives the latest generation of console and, indeed, other related peripherals. Whereas once the SHARC was the weapon of choice, the term ‘FPGA’ for Field Programmable Gate Array has been cropping up with increasing regularity. It is at the core of the latest generation of processing technology from Digico — a company not backward in coming forward to try new technologies. FPGA is at the heart of Digico’s Stealth Digital Processing which launches with the release of the manufacturer’s new flagship SD7 desk, which starts shipping at the beginning of this year. To appreciate Stealth Processing for the leap forward in power that Digico says it is, it is worth comparing it to the processing that Digico is using in its current products. These work on an audio engine that is based around an industrial PC with graphics cards for the touchscreens, a non-volatile RAM store card that saves the current settings of the console every quarter frame, and a timecode card that also handles all the communication between the worksurface, the PC and the engine. There’s also a network card for remote options. On the processing side of the chassis, like many other products of this type, Digico employs SHARC processors and Soundtracs was the first console manufacturer to use SHARCs when it launched its original digital desk the Virtua in the early 1990s. A master SHARC board with six SHARCs handles all the routing and busing and all the ins and outs. A maximum of five slave cards can be added to the engine and each one of these also has six SHARCs. Each one of these cards can process 32 channels of audio with everything on them into 48 buses and the five cards times 32 channels yields the 160channel maximum that current Digico/Soundtracs desks can produce. However, the last two boards can be switched over to doing different things, such as

January/February 2008

technology on-board effects processing or for outboard processing such as delays, EQ and compressors that you can insert on your output buses while still having 96 channels. That represents a typical configuration of a big Digico desk. All these cards sit on the bus board that takes care of how the boards communicate and there is a SHARC here as well. There’s also a video board, for syncing to video, and MADI boards — you can have a daughter board if you’re running fibre optics or if you’re running standard MADI then you have four connections giving 224 into the engine and 224 out of the engine. To achieve all this it totals up to ten PCBs and 39 SHARCs, which is actually quite efficient if you compare it to some other implementations. Digico attributes this performance to writing in a low-level code and the experience of Digico technical director John Stadius and his team who have been involved with SHARCs since the beginning; they were involved with the prototyping of SHARCs with Analog Devices. What has been described briefly above is the processing engine that is available, with slight variances and options, across the entire current Digico/Soundtracs range. The whole lot is replaced by one board in Stealth Digital Processing. Stealth Digital Processing is the result of Stadius and his team, some four years ago, saying they had found a component they believed was as important as SHARCs had been. Digico is the first to use this component in pro audio (they won’t say who the manufacturer is) but it’s a super FPGA that is 40mm square and has 1517 pins on its underside.

January/February 2008

In terms of processing this one component is sixtimes more powerful that the ten PCBs and 39 SHARCs in the existing engine. The board also has three Tiger SHARC chips — one is the controller for the engine while the other two are used purely for on-board effects. The effects SHARCs are 1.8 times as powerful as the ten PCBs and 39 SHARCs in the previous engine. Effects will draw from Digico’s existing effects types but will also include emulations allowing you to work with a desk load of your favourite EQ, for example. In terms of I-O there are still four MADI connections but with 100% redundancy on the cabling with an auto switch. There’s also a high-speed connection that runs off to an optical board that permits the running of two optical loops simultaneously — each loop has 224 in and 224 out. This allows the connection of 12 Digico racks to the engine. Local I-O connection is supplemented by a video connection because it can mix video as well. What this adds up to is that the new board can run 256 processing paths with everything on everything at 96kHz (same at 48kHz) and switch to 192kHz and halve it. It has 128 buses, 32 32-band graphic EQs, and you can run some 64 stereo on-board effects. Channels have 4-band parametric plus filtering and each band of the EQ can be switched over to dynamic EQ. There are four dynamics units per channel, it mixes to all formats up to 7.1, has a 32 x 32 output matrix with output delay on each send, and a 48 x 8 monitor matrix. Currently all this processing can only be harnessed by the SD7 console and the company stresses that

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below this new flagship product all its existing products will continue unaffected. Common sense suggests that development, evolution and trickle down is to be expected at some stage in the future but an important aspect is that the new Stealth Digital Processing and the existing products work together completely — so you can hang them on the same system and they can share racks. The SD7 I saw was running with a DPC-II rack. An FPGA is a collection of uncommitted logic gates and it is not new technology as it has been around and used on small scales for many years by a number of manufacturers. However, what’s changed is the sheer size of the things now and in a product like Stealth we are talking about some 25 million logic gates. Designers create all the building blocks for a digital mixer within it — the multipliers, accumulators and delays — and rather than writing the engine in software code it is created as one big schematic diagram, in a process more akin to designing circuits, that is then applied onto the chip. The chip itself is blank at the point of switching on and the code exists in Flash and is downloaded on to the FPGA on power up and configures it. Consequently you could configure it to be whatever you like every time you switch it on — or on the fly. The procedure is also not device-dependent — if the existing device becomes obsolete you can lift off your design and load it onto the next iteration. Benefit here is that the work needs only to be done the once and it also avoids the problems associated with getting ten boards and 39 SHARCs talking to each other reliably.

technology Stadius was given the task of designing a new worksurface that also used different technology and for this he looked at industries other than our own. A concept that has been incorporated into the SD7 is Hidden unTil Lit (HTL) — when you touch a panel words or indicators appear underneath. All the panels of the new SD7 are made from highgrade polycarbonate mounted onto an aluminium frame and all the silk screening is done on the back along with etched text which is enhanced by back illumination. They’ve also gone for bigger touchscreens — 15-inch touchscreens allow 12 faders to be displayed. Also, because the new engine is so much smaller, the worksurface can accommodate two full systems inside it for 100% redundancy if you want it. Engines cards slot into the back of the desk together with two power supplies and the local I-O in the middle –- 12 mic in, 12 line out, 12 AES plus GPIs, GPOs, MIDI, timecode, 9-pin and room for more plus the video I-O which comes up on a screen in the meterbridge. Digico argues that seeing what is going on in a live production of any type is now as important as hearing what is going on. Video can be distributed from a variety of cameras through the optic links and is available together with talkback between points. Camera sources can be switched with snapshot changes. You can even text message between points from the desk on the optics with no extra cabling. While the worksurface undoubtedly looks different

to any of the other Digico or Soundtracs designs, closer inspection reveals lots of comfortable operational clues — sometimes slightly differently layed out, sometimes bolder or lighter but the familiarity is unmistakable. A great job has been done in using colour to differentiate functions and operational blocks. It’s a worksurface that is deep in detailing — it’s like Digico has evolved its operational method. You feel it’s refined. I like the polycarbonate surface. An operational review will have to wait to another time but the SD7 is a fast desk — fast naming of

channels, fast isolation of processing sections from the automation, fast preset selection of instrument-type processing; fast layering access and the arrangement of custom cluster layers. I particularly like the displays of dynamics activity in the metering. There are programmable detents on the motor faders and Snapshots allow a different crossfade time on every function on every channel across the whole desk including matrix inputs and outputs, graphics, auxes, groups; everything. Dynamic automated snapshots are coming. There are clues across the worksurface that support Digico’s assertion that Stealth Digital Processing is as applicable to Soundtracs’ post market as it is to broadcast and other live production applications. There are joysticks, transport keys, elaborate control room monitoring permutations and undoubted dynamic automation capability waiting to be unlocked. Price is said to be about 20% more than an ‘equivalent’ D5, which for broadcast applications is pretty impressive in terms of what you would pay for full redundancy. Stealth Digital Processing is actually the fourth iteration of John Stadius’ original concept so they have taken their time to market with this technology. That, Digico says, is because it feels its current technology more than holds its own with that of its competitors. They felt no pressure to jump to Stealth Digital Processing and the SD7 — they’ve done it simply because they can. ■

m201PRESENTING THE m201 HIGH FIDELITY MIC PREAMPLIFIER WITH A/D CONVERTER MODULE Our new m201 delivers unmatched sonic performance; with massive headroom, ultra-wide bandwidth and a distinctly musical character which captures the essence of the music being recorded. Each channel has an input mode switch which selects between standard 48V input, ribbon mic mode, front panel HI-Z inputs or optional DPA™ high voltage (130V or 190V) inputs. Also Included is our newly designed M+S matrix circuitry with a front panel width control.

Our new 24/192 A/D converter module (optional) can be sourced from the mic preamplifier, the M+S matrix or separate balanced inputs, which provides for a flexible insert point between the mic preamplifier and A/D section. This also makes the m201 a perfect choice as a transparent gain make up stage for use with passive summing networks for out of the box mixing. Whatever your application, the exceptional sonic performance and powerful functionality of the new m201 will help you make the finest recordings of your career. For complete information, please visit www.gracedesign.com.

Power • Detail • Grace

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Things you really should do New Year resolutions rarely work — if indeed they are even remembered by Twelfth Night — and it is better to act on good ideas immediately, rather than waiting for the turn of the calendar. GEORGE SHILLING starts with ideas to aid your productivity and processes that will make life easier, rid you of technological baggage, and perhaps even save you time and stress. PLUG-IN BUILD-UP — Your DAW will run faster and more reliably with fewer plug-ins installed. The more you have, the more chance there is for bugs and incompatibilities to cause problems. Carrying excess baggage simply encourages RAM and CPU issues that can trip you up when you least expect it. Those free ones are a temptation, but when did you last actually Ring Modulate anything? Analyse what you regularly use, and put the rest in an ‘Unused’ folder. Try mixing using just one favourite EQ and compressor plug-in type, and surprise yourself with how much better your mix turns out. You’ll make quicker decisions and actually improve the mix. DO/DON’T UPDATE — If your system is stable and working, resist the temptation to update at every opportunity. Draw a line, and spend less time on the Internet, where temptation lies. On the other hand, if you can’t resist updating your DAW for all those groovy new features, wait for a couple of weeks after the initial release, then check the online forum and see how others are faring. Make sure you check plug-ins for compatibility and update those too — it’s tedious, but don’t assume everything will work smoothly with the new OS/DAW update.

BACKUP TASKS — OK, you’ve got two copies of every session you’ve ever done. But how well catalogued are your backup drives and discs? When you pop out for dinner, set a cataloguing program like DiskTracker to run through some of those FireWire drives and you’ll have a handy way of locating a single file in seconds. Your clients will be impressed when you can, er, pluck out a ukulele overdub from a two-year old session, and you will save time and reduce stress. And don’t forget to backup your system using a disc cloning program — a good one is Carbon Copy Cloner, which is ‘donationware’. January/February 2008

DISCS EVERYWHERE — Instigate a system for methodical storage of all those studio-related data and music CDs and DVDs you’ve received in the post or generated from blanks. Why not invest in some large disc wallets and chuck all those dusty scratched jewel cases? You’ll save space, and know where to look for things –- separate wallets for demos received, multitrack data discs, software, listening copies, etc. PASSWORD PROBLEMS — Modern life is rubbish, and you are unreasonably expected to remember dozens of passwords just to be able to buy coffee or socks online. OK, so you’ve only got the one password for your email, online banking, mobile phone account, plug-in and DAW suppliers and tie shop, but seriously, it really makes sense to change the important ones to something a bit more complicated (try goodpasswords. com) and write them in a little notebook you keep hidden near your computer, or in a (password protected) file. And use a different, unique one for each of the really important ones — like your online bank account. DESKTOP CLUTTER — This is obvious, but try to file away all those icons spread all over the computer’s desktop regularly. You know it’s time to do this when you can’t see the background. This philosophy goes for your real, physical desktop too. And when the latter is clear, run the vacuum cleaner round your gear with the brush attachment, and buy some nice new yellow dusters too. Then clean the windows. You’ll feel more motivated to work and refreshed when the room is refreshed.

SYSTEM TOOLS — Regularly (at least once a month) run your antivirus, spyware and adware scanners, defragment your hard drive, and backup your other files (apart from clients’ sessions) which would give you heart stopping moments in the event resolution

of their disappearance. And here, I’m talking about the computer you use for email and web activities, not just your DAW. Do you even know where your email program actually stores those email folders? Copy them onto a re-writable disc, then you can erase it and do it again next month. CABLE CHAOS — Are your cables really in all the places they should be? Have a sort out and put them on the right hooks or in the right boxes, and label the boxes. Or even better, get someone on ‘work experience’ to do it for you, and they’ll even learn the difference between male and female. And then they could clean the patch cables. But could anyone else come in and understand your patchbay labelling? Get that sorted too.

DE-CLUTTER — You will probably never in your lifetime get around to turning on that ancient Atari ST, Portastudio or Akai sampler that’s under the piano. It may be a ‘conversation piece’, but if you or your clients are tripping over junk it is probably time to auction it, create space and feel purged. Of course, taking the photos and writing the description is time consuming, and you’ll be distracted checking the price all week. So if it’s virtually worthless, why not offer it on FreeCycle.org or donate it to the inferior rival facility down the road and let them wonder what to do with it. If you can’t bear to part with it, pack it away, label the box, and put it in the attic. The same goes for all the stuff in your rack you never use. And your old DAT and PCM-F1 tapes. GET FIT! — If you sit in a studio staring at a screen for long hours and you can’t remember the names of your children, you might not think you have time for hobbies — who needs other stuff to do? But try to knock off earlier, as your concentration drops and everything takes longer to achieve. You’ll get it done more quickly the following morning. And no-one needs more than seven hours sleep, so get up earlier and go for a jog, or at least do 20 minutes of yoga stretching before breakfast. Your brain will work more productively for it, and you’ll stay young and live longer! ■ rUlE 1: don’t try and do all these in one afternoon. rUlE 2: do one of these things right now. rUlE 3: do all of these things at least once every three months.

slaying dragons

Mics and hearing Microphones aren’t like ears. JOHN WATKINSON argues that if the differences are understood, then many of the microphone techniques we use become more obvious.

he human auditory system (HAS) is a complex machine that begins with a pair of identifiable transducers and ends in a number of unidentifiable places, one of which is what we call consciousness. Consciousness is a survival tool. By having an awareness of our surroundings, we can move away from danger or towards food. What we call reality (defined as an illusion brought on by a shortage of alcohol) is a model depicting us in our surroundings. That is probably what consciousness is. Because I am included in the model, I can, for example, move my fingers over a keyboard to write this, or pick up a glass of something from the Maipo valley. All of the senses contribute to the model, and the degree to which each sense can contribute depends on how useful the information is. For example, in the dark, information from vision is less useful and we use sound and touch to a greater extent. Good audio makes the picture seem better in movies. The HAS extracts all kinds of information from sound. Initially, the survival instinct wants to know where the sound is coming from and how big it is, and before we become conscious of the sound, it will have used all possible clues to locate the source and estimate its dimensions. These may include time constants, inter-aural differences of phase, time or spectral content weighted according to their usefulness. Further clues may come from vision or experience. For example the accuracy of height estimation by the HAS is unremarkable, but we determine that birds are 58

singing in a tree either because we can see them or because we expect birds to be in trees. Only after the source has been located do we get to hear anything consciously. The sound may be a combination of ambience, speech, music, machine noise, etc, spread over practically a sphere. In general, after considering the whole thing we may choose to listen to one sound in preference to another. The mechanism employed is known as attentional selectivity, also known as the cocktail party effect, in which the HAS may insert a delay in the sound from one ear to make it time align with the sound from the same direction arriving at the other ear so that it adds coherently and is therefore more audible than other sounds. Thus the HAS has some of the attributes of phased-array and synthetic aperture systems. We are so used to employing this mechanism that most people are not aware of it and have no idea how effective it is. Consciousness appears to be a kind of manager for all kinds of processes that go on at another level, possibly because the amount that consciousness can deal with is limited. Psychologists don’t like the term sub-conscious any more because it implies that the processes are somehow inferior to conscious ones when they may not be. The HAS appears to operate by constantly being aware of all sounds from all places, but only alerting the conscious to those that may be significant. As an horologist, I’m not constantly aware of the clocks ticking in the house. It’s not a threat, so it’s not brought to my attention. In fact this happens with all the senses. The extent to which this happens depends on the circumstances and the individual. People seem to differ in the accuracy or detail they need in the conscious model. A lot of the time people see and hear what they expect and not what is actually there. There’s a kind of perceptual apathy that provides a working environment for camouflage, magic tricks, pickpockets and unreliable witnesses alike. It explains why police cars with blues and twos can follow a car that won’t move over because the driver appears blissfully unaware of his surroundings. If I could develop that kind of perceptual apathy I might be able to listen to MP3. Pheasants appear to judge threats by relative movement. An object that isn’t moving across their field of view isn’t a threat. That includes a car approaching head on. Before being too contemptuous of pheasants, bear in mind this may also be the mechanism that tailgaters use to avoid believing they are endangering themselves and others. Of course it’s only a minority that drive like pheasants. Most people drive like lemmings. In comparison to the HAS, the microphone is wearing a baseball cap. It is going to need a hand in all but the simplest jobs. Microphones have no attentional selectivity or even consciousness. They have no idea what they are supposed to hear and as a result they hear everything. It’s no surprise that spaces intended for recording need a controlled acoustic to help the microphone. If we are using a microphone, we have to learn to listen properly to all of the sounds that are present in the sure knowledge that that is what the microphone is going to pick up. It’s going to pick up the air conditioning and the reflections from a nearby wall just as well as the sounds we want. The resolution

concept of realism is difficult to use in this context. Realistic might be defined as a plausible recording in which the listener is relieved of the extraneous noises that he would automatically have excluded in the original environment. The use of automatic dialogue replacement (ADR) in film sound tracks is a solution to the fact that film sets can be noisy places. Perhaps one day microphones will be equipped with processors that can simulate attentional selectivity. The complexity of the processing might be considerable and an immediate problem is how to make the unit judge what it is and is not listening to. Until then we have to make do with a slightly less sophisticated approach. Microphones have various directivity patterns that can be used to approach the selectivity of human hearing. The figure-of-eight and the cardioid both have nulls in their response patterns. In many cases the best results will be obtained not by pointing a directional microphone at the desired sound, but by pointing a null at the unwanted sound. When handling a microphone, visualise the polar diagram surrounding it. Microphones are like property values: the biggest single factor is location. The people who seem to criticise microphones the most, and who always seem to want better ones, are often those who have no idea how to position them. The microphone is superior to the human ear in one respect, and that is linearity. The ear contains an impedance matching device between the eardrum and the cochlea that is purely mechanical, using tiny bones as levers. At conversational level, this works well enough, but at high SPL, the amplitude of bone motion is such that there is appreciable non-linearity. Also at high SPL our critical bands get wider. This is why experienced audio engineers often carry out critical listening at ear-splitting levels on monitors the size of a house. Out of kindness, let us overlook the fact that there is no psycho-acoustic basis for what they are doing and fail to mention that the real reason may be self-indulgence or hearing damage. In stereo, things are slightly different. If a precise stereophonic image can be reproduced, then attentional selectivity still works when the HAS listens to the reproduced sound. It fact it is as good a definition as any of a high quality stereo system. A precise stereo image is only obtained when a dummy head microphone is heard on headphones or when coincident microphones are heard on adequate speakers. The two systems are fundamentally incompatible, so dummy head recordings don’t work on speakers and coincident recordings don’t work through headphones. Spaced microphones may be used to record stereo, but there is no theory to explain how a virtual image can be produced, and the result is more of an effect than a reproduction. It can be demonstrated that attentional selectivity doesn’t work on spaced microphone recordings. Unfortunately there are a number of flaws with the concept of using stereo to allow the HAS to function at the listening location. An accurate reproduction of a lousy acoustic environment may not be totally enjoyable, so we may be restricted to recordings made in concert halls or other controlled acoustics. Monophonic compatibility may be a problem. Add the channels together and the image disappears, to be replaced by a jumble of sounds one on top of the other that the listener can’t separate. The same thing happens on cheap loudspeakers, when the image gets smeared. And if we pass our accurate, co-incident stereo material into an MP-3 coder, something similar happens. An MP-3 coder decides what we are going to listen to on our behalf and bins the rest of the image, ambience and reverb included. Audio for lemmings. ■ January/February 2008

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www.resolutionmag.com January/February 2008

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your business

Blogging rights Only a handful of producers and mixers have turned to the blogosphere so far, but DAN DALEY says it might turn out to be a useful additional way of getting your name out there.

he term ‘blog’ tends to elicit groans from grown-ups. To many minds, they are the digital epitome of narcissism and clutter up the Web with prattle of little use or interest other than to the blogger his or herself (Correct. So let’s move on. Ed). On the other hand, never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth, especially when that word has the potential to reach millions of eyeballs. For instance, according to a recent article in Billboard, unknown and unsigned singer-songwriter Eric Hutchinson’s self-released album was languishing amid thousands of similar self-produced recordings, lost in the clutter of the DIY music universe. Then, as Hutchinson told www.billboard.com, ‘Perez Hilton changed everything.’ Hilton is a celebrity-gossip blogger whose site gets an estimated 3 million hits a day. Hilton posted positively on Hutchinson, and within days the singer’s album had moved into iTunes’ top ten, selling 4,500 units in a week and reaching several of Billboard’s own charts. Major labels besieged Hutchinson with offers, according to his manager. The sheer number of people who have entered the ranks of the ‘music industry’ — whatever the hell that means this week — has made standing out from the clutter supremely more difficult. This

applies as much to those who consider themselves producers and mixers, if not more so, since the assertion that one produces records has a much lower threshold of evidence quality than, say, a guitarist, who must at least display the ability to play a couple of chords. Ken Lewis, who works out of his studio in New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, is an accomplished producer and mixer (with a subspecialty in sample restoration), with credits that include John Legend, Kanye West, CeCe Wynans and Lenny Kravitz. He has posted to the blog attached to his website (www.protoolsmixing.com — a URL that Digidesign is quite casual about, apparently) for about three years. Topics range from technology and technique tips to the state of the music industry and then some occasional personal insights on a wide range of matters. Ironically, it’s that last aspect of the blog that Lewis thinks might have the most impact in terms of his business. ‘The real business component of the blog is that it humanises you in the eyes of people who’ve never met you,’ he explains. ‘People want to have some idea of what kind of person it is they might be working with. This is a way to do that. It makes you seem approachable, and if people feel that they can be comfortable around you, they’re more apt to hire you.’ So for every Pro Tools trick you toss into the ether, also including a piece of your heart might not be a bad idea. Consider this August entry from Lewis’ blog, after he attended a local Family Values Tour performance (complete with very bloggish lack of capitalisation and apostrophes): ‘One of my favorite songs on the Flyleaf album is called ‘Cassie. The chorus goes “Do you believe in

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your business god, Written on a bullet, say yes and pull the trigger.”’ ‘I never knew what it meant but figured it had to have a story behind it so i asked [Flyleaf guitarist] Samir. I didnt expect the answer. Samir went on to tell me that Cassie Bernall was a student at Columbine High School. She was also a Christian and when Dylan Klebold starting shooting up the library she was in, she was under a table praying. Klebold walked over and asked her if she believed in God. When she said ‘Yes’, Dylan pulled the trigger and ended her life.’ ‘Needless to say i will never listen to that song in the same way again, actually it will be pretty hard to listen to that song again as i vividly remember exactly where i was when the images of Columbine began streaming across the TV.’ This definitely gets you a little more comfortable with someone that you might entrust a critical mix to than simply an insight into Beat Detective. ‘I usually try to keep the personal stuff out, though it creeps in sometimes,’ says Lewis. ‘But it does let people know I have a soul.’ Blogs also let people know you have a perspective and opinions, and shared philosophies are another bonding point with potential clients. Belgian ex-pat Jozef Nuyens is a producer (BR-549, the Neville Brothers, Jason & The Scorchers); Nashville studio owner (The Castle) and principal in music distribution company PassAlong Networks. He’s also a blogger. Here’s how his blog communicates both a production philosophy and a plug for his studio: ‘In a real sense, the Castle was a refuge from a decaying music industry. It was — and still is — a place artists can go to experiment. But the studio isn’t a mansion on the hill; it isn’t the ultimate destination for an artist. At least, it shouldn’t be. Resolution Half Page

7/12/06

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The way we did it with BR549 offered a much more holistic and healthier approach to building a career: the studio to record, the club to experiment with songs and sounds and get instant feedback from the audience. Those two environments created a synergy for the band that ultimately made their records better and their live performances more exciting. The Castle was a fortress that sheltered artists and gave them the chance to become confident in their art and strong enough to withstand the forces that rip that artistry apart in the feral wilderness of commercial music.’ Blogs are not for everyone (Damn right. Ed). When I asked George Massenburg about it, he replied tersely (but not without humour), ‘I hate blogs!’ But there is also a middle ground, in the form of online forums, the most notable of which, I think, is gearslutz.com, whose rubrics range as widely as blogs do — there’s even a psychology self-help thread up there, where you can have a virtual pint in a virtual pub with some kin dred blokes and let it all out. In fact, Ken Lewis says that both blogging and posting on gearslutz can be therapeutic, a surrogate for the lost agora of the multiroom studio facility, where producers, mixers, engineers and artists used to casually bump into each other, creatively crosspollinating each other in the process. Jules Standen, the creator of gearslutz, says the site has added a blog link feature recently. There have been few takers as yet, and most of the ‘blogs’ are just extended riffing on a tech theme from the forums. ‘A blog is a one-person uninterrupted online diary; to be interesting enough, a blog needs to be busy or to report constant new news,’ says Standen. Producers, by nature, tend not to be newsy (although they can also be newsworthy, like Phil

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Spector). And there is the implication that if you have enough time to keep a blog current you must not be busy enough at your chosen profession. Personally, I don’t buy into that — there are plenty of Jonathan Millers in music, from Skunk Baxter to Kinky Friedman; if you’re already doing music, movies and/or books, a blog’s a piece of cake. And there are some practical benefits: hard rock producer/ mixer Michael Wagener (Mötley Crüe, Dokken, Great White) moderates a high-end gear thread on gearslutz and reports that the unpaid position has brought him clients and guests for his workshops. The publishing model is a good business analogy: people write books so that they are perceived as experts on a topic, then get called upon to be a talking head on television on that topic, which in turn sells more books and gets them more air time. To paraphrase Rod Stewart, a blog is as good as a book to an Internet-literate horse. Personally, I lean towards an aversion to blogs, in part because they are so ubiquitous and I don’t have time to read most of what I’m supposed to read, much less a slew of blogs, and as well perhaps out of professional pique — how dare you think you can out-write a professional journalist? (The truth is there are a lot of people I’ve run into in this business who are inherently very adept at words, and I don’t just mean lyricists.) But I also know that putting yourself out there means using a wide range of Internet concepts. And the right combination of news, practical advice and insight — here’s what I’m doing, here’s how I got this gig, and here’s why recording this artist in Buenos Aires instead of London is going to make a huge difference — would make for a perfect producer blog. It would take the right person, of course. Alan Parsons, are you listening? ■

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January/February 2008

Putting Sound in the Picture

resolution

headroom BEttEr tHaN Cd QUalitY

correspondence (from me to the ASA), there is a ruling that Creative cannot say that their MP3 enhancing gadget makes audio sound even better than CD quality. (http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/ TF_ADJ_42431.htm) I thought you may want to report a summary of the ASA ruling. Richard Vivian, Big Sky Audio and Acoustic Engineering, Ipswich, UK

moNitor tEStiNG Creative Labs ran a promotion last November (2007) in which they claimed that their Xmod product (a consumer effects box you plug into any MP3 player) would make MP3s sound ‘better than CD quality’. See the attached graph in which they claim that an X-Fi modiﬁed CD or MP3 gives you an ‘experience’ much better than studio quality. I don’t normally write Mr Angry letters but on this occasion I wrote to both Creative and the ASA. I feel that audio professionals should be ensuring that the general public are not mislead by incorrect information relating to audio technology as this is potentially very destructive to our industry. After five months, and some detailed technical

Nice to see Resolution is running speaker reviews again. They really are the best appraisals of a loudspeaker available and I prefer the format to that of other magazines which seem a little too hiﬁ. I am puzzled why you stopped doing speaker reviews. Arnold Knight, Los Angeles, USA Resolution started running monitor benchtests for the ﬁrst time in V6.7 — you may be thinking of the monitor tests that were run in the now defunct Studio Sound while I was at the magazine a long while ago that were also conducted by Keith Holland and had an identical format. I am of the opinion that the only way to appraise a monitor is to be as objective as possible and I also believe that no one in their right mind buys a monitor

Credit: Pdphoto.org

Fruit-flavoured bands

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ex h i b i t s l e d u c at i o n a l eve n t s t e ch n i c a l p a p e r s l d e m o r o o m s wo r k s h o p s l a p p l i c at i o n s e m i n a r s b r o a d c a s t eve n t s l a r ch i v i n g fo r u m t e ch n i c a l t o u r s l l i ve s o u n d eve n t s

resolution

without listening to it first. I did that once and it took me a decade to find someone I could gift those bloody things to. The purpose of our monitor reviews is to standardise the testing procedure so that any anomalies can be revealed in the same environment and to enable some form of comparison to be made between models should the reader wish. Surprisingly, not all manufacturers like our approach and many would prefer us to do listening reviews and some of these, when cornered, will ask why we don’t measure other transducers, like microphones, in a similar fashion. I don’t know about the rest of you but I don’t use monitors creatively I just listen to them whereas I do use microphones creatively. My other main objection to listening reviews, and I speak as someone who has written a few, is that I find them of extremely limited use. Aside from an explanation of how the box and drivers are put together and where the crossover points are, I couldn’t care less about someone else’s bleatings on the warmth of the mid-range, the stridency of the treble and the rich full roundness of the bottom end. It’s meaningless to me — it’s not my room, it’s not my sound chain, it’s not my material and it’s not me listening. A listening test that might be of value would be to judge a monitor’s ability to resolve, perhaps, data compression artefacts within programme but that would not be a complete analysis of all the monitor’s attributes. Besides, who is to say you’d be able to hear them even if the reviewer could? No, it’s a minefield and I’m sticking with our existing approach. The readers say they like it too. ZS

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January/February 2008

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