AudioTechnology Issue 86

RECORDING ALBUM OF THE YEAR | SAVING DYNAMIC RANGE | SURVIVE A FESTIVAL MIX

THE ARIA’s

Recording Album of the Year

+ Producer & Engineer of the Year Franc Tetaz Adele’s Grammy-Winning Producer

PAUL EPWORTH

GETS SOULFUL ON FLORENCE + THE MACHINE’S CEREMONIALS LIVE & LOCAL

Laneway Festival SUBSCRIBE & WIN A PEARL CC22 MICROPHONE

How The Decca Tree Grew Monster KRK Rokit 3-Ways UA 4-710d Mixes In The Tube Retro Powerstrip Combines Pultec EQ & EMI Compression Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 ISSUE 86 AU $7.95(inc gst) NZ $10.95 (inc gst) File Under ‘Music’

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CONTENTS86 ARIA SPECIAL Album of the Year:

Boy & Bear’s Moonfire - 44 With Producer Joe Chiccarelli & Guitarist Killian Gavin + Producer/Engineer of the Year, Franc Tetaz

LIVE & LOCAL Laneway Festival: Squeezing The Sound + Festival Mix Survival Tips from The Best

34

TUTORIALS Thinking In & Out Of The Box: Part 1 with Jonathan Burnside + Clip Gain in ProTools 10

REVIEWS 80 82 86 90 92 94 94

Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2 KRK Rokit RP10-3G2 Universal Audio 4-710d Retro Powerstrip 4Front Truepianos Le Masque: Delay ValhallaRoom

& MORE

SUBSCRIBE & WIN!

A PEARL CC22 MICROPHONE SEE PAGE 93

How The Decca Tree Grew: An Historical Account Home Grown: Secret Location is Psych Rock Haven Last Word: Elliot Scheiner on Phil Ramone & More AT 3

June, 1958 Sofiensaal, Vienna Robert Stolz in Vienna — Recording waltzes for RCA. This was the original Neumann M50 Tree designed by Roy Wallace in 1954 and used in Vienna between 1955 and the Autumn of 1958, when an ‘open’ Neumann KM56 Tree was introduced.

In 1984, Mike Gray helped assemble a discography of Decca’s classical releases, giving him access to their engineers and recording logs, and a valuable insight into how their records were made. He reveals the truth about the famous Decca tree and the creation of the label’s unique sound.

By: Mike Gray Interview: Tom Flint

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December 2-3 & 7-9, 1958 Walthamstow Assembly Hall, UK Peter Grimes — Recorded when both mono and stereo tapes were being taken; the KM56 Tree is visible immediately above the head of Conductor Benjamin Britten; outriggers (M50s) are deployed, and are the five mics visible in front of the Stereo Sound Stage (directed

by Christopher Raeburn, visible on the far left of the Sound Stage).

It’s not well known, but there were at least seven or eight different tree formations with a variety of microphone types and there were two philosophies of using a tree. One was the Roy Wallace philosophy, the tree by itself, which produced a wonderful three-dimensional image; the second came from Kenneth Wilkinson who decided that the tree needed help from outriggers. Eventually their techniques blended – Wallace was using outriggers, as were other technicians.

The original trees back in ’54 and ’55 used Neumann M50s with a variety of baffles. The microphones were positioned close together so the baffles were to isolate the mics, thereby avoiding spillage. Also the M50 was omnidirectional so the fear was losing that precise centre image. They later discovered that it wasn’t necessary to baffle or have the microphones close together.

February 10-12, 1960 Kingsway Hall, UK Beatrice Lillie recording ‘Peter and the Wolf’ — Using the M50 ‘Head’, first introduced recording Mozart in Walthamstow Assembly Hall. This design, and several that followed, were intended to retain the characteristics of the omni directional M50 while at the same time, avoiding what was then thought to be undesirable ‘bleed’ from the back side of the mics into the patterns of their neighbours.

In the early ‘60s they had shoot outs. They would take an open Neumann KM56 tree and a baffled M50 tree and record portions of sessions with each. All the engineers would listen together and a consensus developed. Wilkinson was involved in lots of experiments in London using different KM56 trees, trying out several trees in a session.

In the 1960s they still sometimes used a tree with three baffled M50s closely spaced, but by about ‘64 they finally settled on the standard tree that has mics about two feet apart, left to right, and another about one-and-a-half feet out in front, plus outriggers. Later on, many spot microphones, echo returns and a lot of other techniques were used to create the Decca sound.

When recording, the producer was focussed on the artist, so the engineer, or his tape op, was responsible for the tree and outriggers. There was a rule of thumb but they adjusted things by ear to get that sound on tape. They made diagrams on the ‘Electrical Record of Session’ so if they ran over they could replicate the setup in terms of mic height and placement.

Sometimes it was as simple as a tree and outriggers, but it depended on the music and the hall. Kingsway Hall was rather AT 5

FEATURE

AudioTechnology moseyed around behind the scenes of Melbourne’s St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival to see how a festival is shoehorned into city streetscapes and how the engineers find it.

Story: Mark Davie

The 2012 Laneway Festival was a bit of a love-in for production companies around Australia. Rather than touring one rig around the country, budgets and turnarounds meant that each city is hosted by its own local reinforcement companies. So while JPJ Audio in Melbourne was running d&b J-Line on the main Dean Turner Stage, and Vertec on the rest, JPJ Sydney opted for L-Acoustics Kudo on the main stage, and Martin on the others, Norwest provided EAW KF750s for the Brisbane leg, Novatech went with L-Acoustics Kudo, and some fresh-off-the-boat Kara in Adelaide, and AAA Productions rigged up d&b Q Series in WA, with Clifton’s supplying some PA too.

Laneway Melbourne, held on the grounds and surrounding streets of the Footscray Community Arts Centre, presents challenges unique to the festival, namely, the mainstage points down an average size street with buildings on either side, and the second stage points straight up a hill. To complement the main stage’s d&b J-Line hangs, JPJ Audio used cardioid subs to try and reduce the throw of the bottom end out the back, and be able to control it into the sideline area.

“We’re going pretty tight down that laneway,” said ‘Bass’ (as in, the fish), JPJ system designer. “We’ve got a fair few boxes for the height and running it really straight and flat so it pushes straight down the street, supplemented by a couple of delays.

“We’ve got a couple of different things happening on the other stages. For the amphitheatre I’m running a combination of flown and groundstacked Vertec, which has worked pretty well.

“We’re restricted with weight loadings, that’s why we’ve got to split the PA. Vertec’s designed to be flown, but we’ve got the smaller boxes stacked on the subs and as you go up the hill you get really good coverage without having to drive it too hard. It’s one of the best designs we’ve had down there over the last three years.”

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The console combination is the old one-two of Avid Profiles at FOH, and Yamaha PM5Ds at monitors. “It’s pretty much the standard festival setup these days,” said Bass. “I know when Profiles started becoming a lot more prolific in usage, the Digico SDs had a few teething problems. It’s also price and availability.”

JPJ also use a quick patch system, so as each band is setting up, they plug into plates that are snapped into lines at points around the stage. So when one band is finished, the main cables are

pulled back, the new plates snapped in and within a few minutes, they’re ready to line check.

And with a lot of the speaker processing now housed in proprietary amps, like the D12 for the d&b J-Line, and JBL amplifiers for the Vertec systems, JPJ has had to repurpose a lot of its excess stock. So, now the Lake processors cover zoning, and the Lab-Gruppen inventory of amplifiers run mono elements like side fills.

KEEPING THINGS TOGETHER

While there are different system engineers and designers on every leg of the tour, the one guy keeping it all together is Laneway’s production manager, Haydn Johnston. After a solid run, he took a break from Big Day Out this year to manage Laneway, and is also one of the production managers for Splendour In The Grass.

Given the hoo-ha over Kanye West and Big Day Out this year, and having dealt with Kanye before at Splendour, Haydn made an interesting observation about ego, and whether or not it was different for a festival like Laneway, stacked with more mid-level touring acts.

Haydn Johnston: In Kanye there’s no ego, really.

There’s a certain amount of vanity in Kanye, and there’s a certain amount of vanity that happens away from the production world. His production team was changed for the Big Day Out. And what he wants to achieve is a logistically difficult show.

But that’s just the art in how he wants to deliver.

“That’s the same if Coldplay wants to hang a massive amount of lights or have more risers.

It’s the same if somebody wants to put a banner up. It’s just a different scale. So in our world there really shouldn’t be any ego. There are some people who in the production management world pull, “Well the artist won’t go on.” And that’s fine. They put you under a moral pressure.

You know full well it’s just a tantrum, and sometimes it’s thrown out flippantly.

“I know tour and production managers who are far more senior than me who actually called their bluffs and said, ‘Well just because you haven’t got 16 atomic strobes, you’re not going on, then okay.

I’ll call the promoter and issue a press release. So as long as you’re ready with your press release at three o’clock!’ And they call their bluff.”

Mark Davie: How does that level of production compare with the challenges that come with more mid-level acts you see at Laneway?

HJ: “I don’t find egos. I find with this style of music there’s a lot less crew and that becomes an issue.

“A lot of them don’t come with guitar techs, monitor guys and lighting people. they might come with a tour manager who does foh and then it’s really difficult because there’s no-one driving the band onstage and we all know how vague musicians can be. especially young indie

rock musicians. So that’s one of the issues we have

at this level and this type of act. But on the main stage we have the bigger bands with the bigger crew, which creates a different kind of pressure.

“Laneway actually uses local production in each region. The turnaround times are too tight for touring but it comes down to the size of the show and the budget. We can’t have ten trucks going down the highway, that festival is for a very specific genre of people. “there are a lot of egos in production land, a

lot of yellers. the four-letter word is a lot of

people’s best friends. the good thing about this festival is, there’s none of those

— it’s like a

big team ‘can-do’ effort. The old school I think is very much becoming that, old school. We have kids from the School of Audio Engineering here at each show. We embrace that to try and teach them, because the last thing I want is people like me doing it in another 10 years. This industry needs to become more of an industry and regenerate itself, and teach and broaden those horizons, because the old-school guys just want to keep it to themselves and they have an amazing knowledge and they’re really great but they just keep doing their job.”

MD: You’re no slouch when it comes to audio either, of all the systems, do you have one you prefer?

HJ: I think the d&b J series is the duck’s nuts of outdoor P.A.s. It’s got the grunt. You can get it to throw a good distance without having to crank

it up. It’s really clear for an outdoor box. I think there’s a lot of warmth in a Nexo Alpha rig but I prefer them inside and smaller. It suits that environment, in a ground stack. The J-Series is a setup that works a lot better with digital consoles, because it’s been made and designed around the time digital consoles were made and designed. To me there’s something romantic about Nexo for an analogue desk.

Also, the J-series boxes are not that heavy. You can put eight boxes a side and not go over a tonne. And that’s important on stages where you have a one tonne rating on either side of the point of the roof. It means you have plenty of boxes for a really good throw but you don’t have to go and put in a tower of any description.

MD: Do you have an opinion on those horrific stage collapses last year?

HJ: I think the one in Europe [Pukkelpopp] was a freak, I’ve worked on that stage and it must have been a real freak of nature because it’s a pretty robust permanent installation. I think the ones in the U.S. were just poorly put together, it’s that level of county fair in the U.S. When you have a ground support system like that it only takes one truss to lose integrity and the whole thing’s gone.

MD: What have you found is the hardest aspects of putting on this particular festival with the slim streetscapes and stages?

HJ: Space is a big issue. It all comes down to space and time. When you’re in the street, you don’t get two days in advance to build. We were here pretty late last night. The main stage started at 2pm yesterday. The good thing about that truck stage is it’s got a 14.7m playing deck, 6.1m clearance off the deck at the lowest point, and it takes four hours to build. You’re on a postage stamp sometimes. If you want two monitor boards you can’t fit another because the wing space is not capable, and changeover space is quite often an issue.

MD: And the best thing about Laneway?

HJ: The bands hang out together – they’re way too friendly and they all admire what each other do. That’s the difference between indie kids, they’re not bitter in any matter. But they just don’t need that many floor toms up in front of the band! there must be half-empty drum kits strewn all over billy hyde’s, because we’ve got all the and

18-inch floor toms. But it’s amazing to see

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what they’re doing nowadays instrumentationwise — a harp, V-drums, MIDI and computers, the sensational way that M83 is setup with its computer brain.

It’s quite amazing what these young kids do, because they really do embrace technology.

They’re not just your two guitars and a bass.

Some make themselves a real production nightmare but they really have an in-depth knowledge of the electronic side of it.

Top tips from top live sound engineers around the globe on how to survive your next live festival mix.

With most acts I have my own control gear (console) and all our own stage mic/DI/ patch package, so that ensures ‘plug and play’ consistency. But I know that isn’t a realistic situation for most bands so when having to deal with just walking up and dealing with locally provided audio gear: Getting Routed – First, make sure the local audio stage and FOH system guys have your correct input list and stage plot. Don’t rely on someone in festival production to have passed on that info.

Show up to the gig with those documents in your hand, find the main stage patch and FOH system guys and physically check they have the correct input list.

Find those guys early in the day – when it’s quiet and they have time to talk – not when they are ass-deep in changeovers after it kicks off.

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ANTHONY THEAKER FOH Engineer, The Horrors

Anthony Theaker typically spends his time in UK studios mixing albums for Geffen and other labels. Recently, he’s been producing a new band called Toy, who have signed with Heavenly in the UK. To date, Theaker has mixed over 100 shows for The Horrors, and brings a different perspective to the live mix.

Mark Davie: Being more of a studio engineer, how have you found the whole live sound versus studio transition?

Anthony Theaker: Culturally it’s quite different.

For instance, i put the guitar microphones a certain way [pointing almost perpendicular to

the speaker cone], and literally every show i’ll come back and someone will have moved them.

Or even worse, put them inbetween the speakers where the baffle is. Crazy! Sometimes it happens two or three times. So that’s difficult. But things like parallel side chain compression, you don’t see many people doing it.

Part of the sound of the drums is down to loads of boosting EQ bands rather than the more common approach to live mixing where you’re usually cutting everything. I do tend to thin things out a bit if there’s resonance or something’s a bit too harsh in the mid-range.

MD: Give me an example of where you might boost.

AT: The snare is at 2.5kHz and 100Hz, with a cut like on a Pultec when you boost and attenuate simultaneously, you create a little dip in the turnover frequency.

MD: I noticed that you also gate the snare substantially.

AT: Incredibly hard! I’ve found that it’s less about spill and more about phase. When you’ve got a kick drum opening a snare gate, there’s so much spill coming through, the sound of the kick drum is going out of phase. You can never quite tune it enough like you would in the studio. I gate it mainly because of that, plus I also like the colour of it — it has its own sound.

MD: It has less of the snare in it, and more of a hard-hitting tom tone.

AT: Because The Horrors don’t really have any transients apart from the drums, and the bass is quite dubby, I’m always putting loads of mid-range on. I have a Sansamp in line with the DI, and a really overdriven Sansamp on the side chain.

There are loads of side chains on the drums; the kick and snare have parallel side chain SSL-type compression faded in underneath. However there’s no compression on the drums themselves apart from a really fast limiter on the snare for when Joe does big rolls.

MD: Do you trigger any samples?

AT: No, it’s literally just microphones, bog-standard stuff that everyone uses. The Shure Beta 91 inside, the Beta 52 on the outside of the kick, just standard AT 8

SM57 on top and Sennheiser e604 underneath, and 604s on toms. I also have Neumann KM184s for overheads and 185 for hi-hat.

MD: Are you getting much through the overheads or is it mostly cymbals?

AT: Basically they’re spot mics, but without going to the extent of putting them underneath, because you just get loads of really weird harmonics. You need to be a certain distance away but it’s not necessarily going to be perfectly setup each time, so I try to not get as much snare and everything else in the overheads as when you record in the studio.

MD: Do you take personal responsibility for setting up the mics?

AT: I literally position the mic’s millimetreperfect every time, otherwise it’s going to be wrong. Same with the guitar microphones.

Joshua’s tone is really bright, so I place the mics where they match the end of the speaker cone almost looking straight past it. It tones down some of the brightness, but still keeps it sounding how it should.

MD: What are the main limitations you find when mixing a festival?

AT: Usually we have 16 separate stereo lines for the keyboards and samplers. Some of them are stereo, the MPC has a stereo pair and three mono outputs, plus the Moog pedals. Usually all 16 individual channels are EQ’d differently, and I ride them for different sections. When I persuaded them to rack instead of submix the outputs, it made a huge difference. Even without EQ’ing it, just having it a bit wider makes a difference.

Sometimes parts need to go up 15dB, and when you can’t do that you try and punch in an EQ

band to bring in a certain part, but it’s never as good as having the faders.

Today we’ve had to revert to the sub-mix, which Tom does while on stage. So I just get a stereo pair plus one of the delay effects as an extra, coming out of a little Soundcraft mixer that gets overdriven a lot of the time.

MD: Lucky you.

AT: Yeah exactly, normally it’s 37 channels for our show. Trying to get that at a festival is not going to happen. It’s 24 today.

MD: You’ve got your moves down pretty well.

AT: I’ve done just over a hundred shows with them now; and automation is the key. For instance, every long word that Faris sings get routed into a delay just to sustain it into the next word, otherwise it would be a bit too staccato.

And I really punch up the first beat of chorus entries, or transitions, about 6dB for the first beat then bring it back down.

MD: There’s quite a lot of noise going on, in a good way, how do you keep things from getting out of control?

AT: It’s pretty well sorted. I try to make sure and head off any problems just by hitting EQ and things like that. But you have to know where to ride parts, otherwise something will tear your face off.

Having those keyboards split makes a big difference because it means more space for the vocals and guitars, and makes the guitar sound meaner. It can be difficult doing it at the volumes they need. I keep turning it down and trying to save that extra volume for certain sections. When I first started working with them they’d start off really loud in some ‘quiet’ sections, and then the dynamics wouldn’t be there, so you’d end up having to fight against it. So I got them to look at how they play.

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FEATURE

ARIA

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Boy & Bear: Moonfire Recorded at Blackbird Studios, Nashville, USA Mixed on API Legacy Plus console Aussie band Boy & Bear makes good and comes out with the big gong at the ARIAs. AT delves into the record with producer Joe Chiccarelli and guitarist Killian Gavin.

Story: Mark Davie

When you walk into an awards show joking that you should have brought bagels along as a symbolic gesture, you’re probably not too worried about the outcome. So when Boy & Bear walked away with five wins from seven nominations for their debut album Moonfire, it was a welcome surprise, for the band, Australia, and even a producer tucked up in bed all the way over in LA. Not only did the band take out, bear with me here, Album of the Year (the big one), Best Group, Breakthrough Artist — Album, Best Adult Alternative Album, and Breakthrough Artist — Single (for Feeding Line), but producer, Joe Chiccarelli was also nominated for a Best Producer gong. Both the Best Engineer and Best Producer awards stayed on shore with Franc Tetaz for his work with Gotye. Which is probably for the best anyway, reckons Chiccarelli, “I was so flattered when that all came down. I didn’t expect any of that. Though not being an Australian citizen I don’t know how that works!

Really, if you’re not a citizen and not part of the community, it’s kind of awkward to give it to a foreigner.”

FRONT MAN SYNDROME

For the boys in the band, it was a nice “cherry on top” of what has been a boom period for a band that started out with more front men than a boy band. Guitarist, and singer, Killian Gavin explains the Boy & Bear genesis, which also goes a long way to explaining their herculean grasp of vocal harmonies. “Dave [Hosking, actual lead man] was a solo artist. Tim [Hart] and I were both the singers of our own bands. Tim and his brother John [Hart] were in a band together, and Jake [Tarasenko] was also in another band. So there were four separate projects happening.

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We all knew each other and had gigged with each other a fair few times. Eventually we just started helping Dave out because he was playing by himself.”

With only enough room for one leading man, Killian assumed the role of guitarist, and Tim took up an entirely new post as the drummer.

“Tim said he’d only been playing drums for a year when they started recording, and was really hard on himself. But he was a really good drummer,” said Chiccarelli. “I would ask him to try a certain beat and he would look at me like I was a martian because it was beyond his musical vocabulary, as a drummer that is. Yet he really tried and he’d always come up with great parts. He really rose to the occasion in the studio. Based on the demos I was afraid that he might be light and not intense enough, but he really poured a lot of passion into the drums.”

DEMO-IT-IS

Boy & Bear went through multiple demo stages before heading into Blackbird Studios in Nashville. Both Killian and Tim have small ProTools rigs for recording in bedrooms and living rooms to see how the songs are taking shape. Killian’s rig has been downsized somewhat to make way for new guitar gear. But the crux of it is a 002, monitors and a Macbook Pro, with a few mics between he and Tim, including a Neumann and Audio-Technica.

To step away from the engineering side of things and get a better idea of how the songs are sounding as a band, the five of them decamped to a small Sydney studio to lay down live tracks and all the layers.

In the end, parts of those demos ended up directly influencing the finished product. “In fact, the harmonies of Part Time Believer are

FEEDING LINE FEEDBACK Killian Gavin, lead guitarist for Boy & Bear, brings a textural depth to the record along with inspired playing. While the sounds on the record aren’t outrageous, the careful arrangements and chord voicings are showcased by simple, elegant recording technique.

“I really like single coils. So on the recording I played a Telecaster… I think. See this is where it’s funny. I had about 10 guitars in a rack that were owned by the studio. Every song I would just change guitar until I found the right sound so I’ve ended up forgetting what I’ve actually used to record most of the songs.

But I remember in Feeding Line we recorded the chugging guitar part in the verses with this ‘60s Tele.

And we recorded the two interlude lead hooks with a Rickenbacker 12-string into a Vox AC30 with nothing besides the guitar and amp. Whereas with the rhythm part through the verses we had a small overdrive on them and recorded using a Fender Deluxe Reverb.

Then on the interlude, John doubled the part with a synth sound we ran through a couple of overdrive pedals into an amplifier. It’s a bit cheesy at times but I like the sound.

When I’m playing a clean guitar tone I’ll often try and record it with the slightest amount of compression just because it helps keep the sound rounded, together and not lose its spot in the mix. It keeps that sparkle intact. But if I’m playing an overdriven sound I definitely won’t have any compression because whether I’m using the amp turned up pretty loud or using a pedal in front of it they just compress naturally.

Chiccarelli: “Most of the electric guitars were recorded with a blend of the Shure SM57 on the centre of the cone and the Royer 121 off the centre.

Depending upon the sound, I balance them accordingly.

Sometimes I blend in just a touch of the Neumann U67, which is a foot or two away from the amp in the centre of the speaker. The preamps were either Chandler TG or Neve 1073.”

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really straight off their demo,” said Chiccarelli.

“Most of the other demos were sort of stark, but that was one of the last ones they recorded and it was relatively fully formed. The A&R guy Mike Taylor was very much in love with the demo and actually a couple of times, he had me tweak the final master version to get closer to the demo.”

“

we put the microphone in the bathroom and then Jake, John, Tim and I stood just around the corner in the hallway and yelled at the top of our voices

”

MIKING SPACE ‘Cinematic’ was the operative word for Moonfire.

Naturally that implies music that will go through stages, from sparse arrangements to full-fledged dramatic tension. While it’s probably impractical to take a pop album to the sparser end of cinema, it certainly helps to have space. For Chiccarelli, creating space is not as simple as sticking a convolution reverb over a few buses and selecting ‘Mojave Desert’ or ‘Notre Dame’; like the while album production, it’s a process that’s more beginning than end.

Chiccarelli: “Gaining space in a record starts in the song arrangements. It’s important that parts leave room for each other and don’t compete. So it’s a matter of playing the parts in registers that are exciting but leave room for you to hear the other instruments.

“Then in recording it applies to the choice of instruments, choice of mics and acoustic space, all the way down the line to how you pan instruments in the mix. I try hard to separate sounds as much as possible so frequencies don’t compete. It’s very important to not go too Continued page 48 AT 12

Killian: “When we recorded the chorus harmonies over in Nashville it just didn’t sound the same.

We couldn’t figure out what we were doing wrong that we couldn’t recreate what we had on the demo. We ended up contacting the studio back in Sydney to get them to send us the ProTools session file and importing each of the harmonies into the recording on the album, placing them over what we’d already recorded in Nashville.

— to try new things. So while jumping in a Tarago with the same gear they’d been using since the EP may have actually been cheaper, it didn’t fit the vision for the album, which Chiccarelli describes as “more cinematic.”

SEEING THE CINEMATIC VISION

“We definitely wanted the album to sound rockier than the EP,” said Killian. “More electric guitar driven and bigger drum beats — a bit more upbeat. Joe’s ear is pretty spectacular and he could hear the gaps in the songs and what kind of instruments would sit correctly in that part of the field of sound. He also had a lot to do with helping us tune the drums and selecting what kind of kit, guitar and amp to use while discussing how it makes sense in the song.”

“We realised we weren’t doing the same harmonies and the timbre of the voices wasn’t being recorded the same. So we asked the guys back in Sydney what microphones we’d used, and re-recorded them all in Nashville with a Shure SM7 through a really average preamp because it sounded a bit more muffled.”

What Chiccarelli envisioned was more of a layered sound, fleshing out the songs and pushing the boundaries of their arrangements in a way the demos hadn’t. “we used a lot of subtle parts

THE PRICE YOU PAY

orchestrate it in ways where one part is playing the top line and one part is filling out the middle and the other part isn’t competing too much in the middle then you can make things pretty big,” explains Chiccarelli. “And you can do the same thing in terms of notching out frequencies in guitars that compete with other guitars, or trying different guitars and different amps. I always look towards the final mix while I’m recording. I choose all the compression, EQ and effects while I’m cutting the basic track. So my rough mixes are very close to my final mixes.”

Through a set of entirely fiscal events, it ended up cheaper to fly the band over to Nashville and record at Blackbird. Chiccarelli pitched a number of local studios he was comfortable working in.

The Grove Studio on the central coast of NSW, and Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios in Auckland were on the list, but Blackbird came out trumps.

Now, before you go decrying the death of the studio in Australia, and yanks invading our turf, Chiccarelli and Killian gave us the reasons why Blackbird was the final choice [To restore your faith in the Aussie studio scene, check out another American, Jonathan Burnside’s article in this issue based entirely at The Grove. It goes both ways — Ed].

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Killian. “It was this weird coincidence where it was cheaper for us to go overseas than to record an hour north of Sydney.

The dollar at the time was doing really well and also Joe could get really good rates on the studio because he’s really good friends of the owner.

Chiccarelli explains the main thrust a little more: “The one thing about Blackbird is they have a great complement of musical instruments, believe it or not they have about 20 drum kits, about 150 guitars, and about 50 guitar amps. If we had done the record, even in Los Angeles, Auckland or anywhere else for that matter, hiring instruments would have bumped the budget up substantially.”

Killian again: “It was so much more intensive than any other studio we’d looked at. And on a musician’s wage we’ve got our guitar that we’ve had since we were 15 years old — it was nice to go to a studio where they have over 100 guitars and however many pianos and amplifiers. It meant we could have a go at trying to achieve all the sounds that we’ve dreamt of trying to pull off.”

And that was the main point Chiccarelli stressed to the boys when he came on board as producer

that build the dynamics and flesh out the chords a bit

— coming up with chord voicings that

are just thick enough but not too thick. If you

DRIVING THE LOW GEARS

“In mixing Feeding Line, the most that I’ve done is some parallel drum compression,” said Chiccarelli. “Sometimes I use a couple of different compressors — usually a Chandler Zener compressor as well as a Neve 33609 limiter. I never use very much stereo bus compression — not more than a dB or two. From there it is just making the bottom end as big as possible because when you have a song that’s really just built around that four-on-the-floor driving beat, you’ve got to make sure that it is driving and keeps your body moving for four and a half minutes.”

The low end is driven by the kick, which Chiccarelli says, didn’t use any samples, “But we did take some time finding the right vintage Gretsch bass drum and tuning and miking it properly.” The other half of that equation was the bass, which for three-quarters of the album ended up being jake’s epiphone jack cassidy bass.

“it has a particularly interesting honk to the

mid-range,” said chicarelli. “that kind of cuts

through the track, and the flat-wound strings

are a bit more rubbery, which really helps with the bottom end.

“We used a Telefunken v78 as a direct box on the bass, and the Ampeg B15 seemed to be warm and rich, perfect for filling out the kick sound. I often use an Ampeg SVT or sometimes a Divided

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AT 13

FEATURE

TABLETS DIFFICULT PILL TO SWALLOW? AudioTechnology looks at what’s been happening in tablet music-making apps.

Getting tips from every direction to help you build your on-the-go touch arsenal.

Story: Harry Irvine

Mentioning ‘tablets’ to Grandma used to mean it was time to crack open the old pill box. But computing tablets, with their touchscreens – combined with a relatively small screen size, and less power – have required levels of innovation to distil the essence of any given application so even a granny can operate and get into it.

Garageband & SPL Meter, just two of many handy audio tools for your iPocket.

The spinoff for musicians, of this broad-level adoption, is a burgeoning range of audio applications for recording, sequencing and playing music. As I write this, the Apple iPad is still dominant so far as manufacturing numbers go.

Google’s Android operating system installed on third party tablet devices by the likes of Samsung, Asus etc will eventually offer similar applications and operability, but currently (in order to support different tablets from all of Apple’s competitors) the audio latency is too large, resulting in the inability to play in real time. Needless to say, this ongoing AT wrap up will cover applications on non-Apple tablets in future issues as and when other tablet developers get their act together. But for now, here’s a look at some of the best recorders/sequencers, as well as what’s been piqueing interest in instruments/ synths, sound utilities and controllers.

Omni TR

Follow composer Jason Fernandez’s timeline down the iPad music-making rabbit hole.

Then Spectrasonics released the Omni TR. For Omnisphere users, having touch control of Omni is great.

Particularly great is the ‘Orb’ — a performance control area for adding life to your parts. Extra useful features are the ‘Dice’ and ‘Inertia’ settings. Dice creates a set of control parameters for the Orb — you never know what the Orb will come up with to play your sound. Inertia adds a sort of faux gravity to the orb allowing you to bounce the control point around the orb like you would a ball.

TouchOSC Not long after I got my iPad, Apple released a Logic template for TouchOSC — a modular environment where you can build MIDI controller surfaces (faders, buttons, X-Y pads, etc). The Logic template is a multi page control surface, with faders, instrument controls, EQ controls, a channel strip page, and transport. I was hooked.

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SimpleMidiPad SimpleMidiPad is a set of four X-Y controllers, assignable to any MIDI CC you like — simple, elegant and extremely useful..

Garageband $5.99 After three months of testing numerous apps, Garageband is still one of my top five apps for getting ideas down.

There are nine instrument sub groups to choose, each of which has variants within them. For instance, the Drums instrument varies from a Classic Studio Kit to a Hip Hop Drum Machine.

While each of the Kits have a different sound, each of them also has a different look. For instance the Vintage Kit has white (worn) batter skins, while the Live kit has clear skins. For the three drum machines the 12 pad graphical layout doesn’t change, only the sounds do.

The drum machines also have four controls: Resolution, Lo Fi, Low and Hi Cut. Hit the Record button and start tapping out the beat. Garageband creates a region with MIDI notes, which you can then cut, copy and paste to your heart’s content.

The only caveat here is that you can’t edit the MIDI notes to ‘fix’ a performance, forcing you to play the part again if you bungle it. While I found this initially frustrating because I am used to polishing a... um... performance, it does force you to become a better tapper. And, dare I say it, the performances maintain a human feel resplendent with idiosyncrasies and timing errors, etc. Though there are basic quantize functions of straight, triplet and swing, with multiple note divisions.

Of course, this kind of shortcoming will have the electro and dance fraternities up in arms, but in Apple’s defence, Garageband is really only trying to be a high quality sketchpad, leaving desktop/ laptop systems to final production duties.

There is no ability to insert plug-ins on the individual tracks or the master bus and — even though they are nice sounding — there is only reverb and echo effects available via sends to the

master effects buss. Furthermore, a project or ‘song’ can only have a total of eight tracks and there is no bounce function, however, you could export a mix in various low-res formats ranging from 64kbps through to 16-bit, 44.1k in iTunes and import it into a new song project. Other export options include sending a mix in .m4a via Apple Mail or you can export the project file into Garageband on other Mac devices such as your iPhone, iPod or computer. I’ve been exporting my projects this way and opening them in Logic Pro 9 without any problems. Nice!

Under the Keyboard section there are 48 variants to choose from. And all presets have a velocity slider and a pitch control except for the Pianos and Organs which only have velocity control. The sounds selected by Apple’s engineers get you in the ballpark quickly. You can’t always keep everyone happy when catering to a multitude of styles but for the most part they’ve chosen well.

Probably the cream of the Garageband crop are the Guitar Amps. Users can choose from the presets sub-section of Clean, Crunchy, Distorted and Processed. And on saving a preset, another Custom category is created. All the usual suspects are there — Fender, Marshall, Vox, Mesa Boogie, even Orange — looking and sounding similar to their hardware counterparts aside from the Garageband branding. The variety of tones on offer is very welcome. Apple has also included a collection of 10 stomp boxes from the Pedalboard section in Logic Pro. The FX on offer include overdrive, fuzz, compression, delay reverb, flanger, chorus and auto funk. My beloved Monster Fuzz from Logic Pro’s Pedalboard is not in the bunch, however. The guitar section also sports a tuner that tunes to concert pitch only, an input section for configuring, well, the input levels and a welcome

Lemur

noise gate for those hi-gain shredding settings.

The Sampler section of Garageband is suprisingly full-featured, with ADSR, Tune, Trim, Sample Reverse and Loop functions as well as Garageband’s standard controls of Pitch, Modulation, Velocity and Sustain. dare i say it, this is the easiest and fastest sampler i have used. Just stick the iPad in front of a sound, set the gain and hit the big red button. Drag the handles to trim and you’re done!

Garageband has four ‘Smart’ instruments designed for novices, yet engineers and musicians will find these invaluable too. Coming in piano, guitar, bass and drums flavours, all will play predetermined phrases or you can play them without fear of hitting a ‘bum note’ as only chords relative to each other and single notes in the given key are on offer.

Before I sign off, I should discuss the arrange page a little bit. On the left of the screen are the tracks in your project. Grab the tab and drag it to the right and you expose the volume slider and mute and solo buttons. Above this is an icon that looks like a jigsaw piece. This is where you can duplicate, add and delete sections in your project on a macro level (delete is the same as other iOS apps whereby you swipe to the right and hit delete) On a micro level, double tapping a region will give you the usual commands of cut, copy, delete, loop and split. You can also single click a region and resize it using the handles. If it is a midi region, the front of the region can only be resized to the left just as in Logic Pro or Garageband on the Mac. To get around this and remove the front of a region, place the cursor at the point where you want to remove the front portion and hit the split key.

Scissors will appear on the region but to actually slice it you have to swipe downwards where the scissors are. Then simply double tap the unneeded region and hit delete.

TNR-I

I’ve recently graduated to the iOS version of the legendary and discontinued Lemur control surface.

Lemur was used by a who’s who of great musicians and, looking back, was really the precursor to the explosion of touch control surfaces we see today. Having one on an iPad is just amazing. Like TouchOSC it’s an environment for building custom controller surfaces — with great extras like a physics engine.

The TNR-I is the iOS version of the Tenori-On by Yamaha.

Another favourite of electro musicians, it is a 16x16 grid where each grid space activates a sound. The iOS version has recently also added the ability to sample yourself into the grid spaces adding another whole layer to the experience.

Reactable The original Reactable is a €10k-ish controller made famous by Bjork. Sound is manipulated by placing objects onto the ‘table’. Each object has a purpose (like a filter, or effects processor). Where you place them on the table controls the routing — a bit like a modular synth. The iPad version works in a similar way except you move around graphics instead of physical objects.

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StudioTrack $12.99

Sampletank $7.99

If sequencing isn’t your thing and you just want to record your own audio parts, Sonoma Wireworks’ StudioTrack might be for you. It has a really nice interface and the ability to record up to eight tracks, bounce a mix and import it into a new project, or bounce it into the same project, which destructively wipes the individual tracks.

Another must-have purchase for your musical iPad is Sampletank from Audio Software veterans IK Multimedia. It’s a simpler sequencer than Garageband, with the only way to edit your performance being to play it again. The interface is clean and a bit utilitarian with its tri-tone livery.

It comes with basic sounds to get you going but I highly recommend you purchase the ‘All’ sound pack as an in-app purchase.

There is no arrange page, and no ability to name tracks but you can export the whole project via browser integration and continue working on it in a DAW of your choice. Each track has controls for Gain, Pan, Mute, Solo and a reverb send. Also Sanoma has provided a simple insert effect section with a compressor, threeband EQ, one-band EQ and a delay. It’s hard not to like this app with its good looks and ease of use. Simply arm a track and slide the Record button to the right and you’re away. When you have finished tracking your song you can choose to put master effects on the output bus before a bounce. Sonoma provides the Supertanker Reverb, Freakenzy EQ and the Slammer limiter. All of these sound pretty good and add a nice finishing touch to your mix.

There are three main tabs labelled as Sounds, Keys and Pads. The Sounds tab is where you select an instrument to play and there are many on offer ranging from the standard fare of drums, bass, guitars and pianos through to brass, synths and woodwinds. IK Multimedia has provided many patterns to get you going but, personally, I prefer to make my own as I struggled to find any for the style of music I like to make. Once you have selected the sound in the four available ‘parts’ you then select either the Keys or Pads to play the selected sound. Hit Record when you are ready and when you are satisfied you have ‘nailed’ it, you move onto the next part. Unfortunately, there are only four parts (tracks) available and no way to bounce or import a mix. Furthermore, the export dialogue only let’s you export a mix of the song in .m4a format and there is no way to record audio of your own, so you can’t overlay vocals or introduce samples of your own into the project. I think these issues need to be addressed in a future update or Sampletank may end up annoying some users. To end on a good note, however, IK Mutimedia has included a nice sounding reverb and filter from the computer-based version of Sampletank and there is the ability to transpose a part into other keys.

Phaedra Phaedra is a heap of fun. It is a four channel, 32-step, analogue style step sequencer that has velocity, gate and 2 CCs for every step!

Animoog, iMS-20 & an old favourite…Rebirth Synths on the iPad are getting better by the week it seems. Favourites would be the Animoog (a real Moog on iPad), the iMS-20 (a recreation of the Korg MS-20, by Korg), and of course the old favourite, Rebirth by Propellerhead (two TB-303s an 808 and a 909 faithfully remade in software — was an old favourite a while back on my Mac, discontinued, but given new life on the iPad). New synths are popping up daily, some ultra new ones include Alchemy Mobile (based on Camel Audio’s incredible Alchemy synth) and the TC-11 (a synth that has no traditional controls — incredibly fun and creative!)

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FEATURE

Is Paul Epworth a music industry saviour?

His old plus new, acoustic plus electronic approach on Florence + the Machine’s Ceremonials sure has plenty of soul.

Story & Image: Paul Tingen

AT 18

With the economic and climate crises it’s hard, sometimes, not to feel a twang of concern about that 2012 Mayan end-of-the-world stuff. Or, more seriously, those end-of-the-musicindustry prophecies. The word is that we’ve returned to a singles market and that the album, for 40 years the main source of music industry income, is going the way of the dodo. The music industry appears bent on turning all dire predictions into self-fulfilling prophecies by degrading the quality of its product in every conceivable way. For the, er, record, methods used include the use of low-quality consumer formats (MP3/AAC/M4A), the loudness wars, and churning out endless perfectly timed and tuned, soulless, robotic-sounding tracks, sung by manufactured stars whose songs are created by committee, with several professional song writers and producers involved in the making of each track, regularly adding up to several dozen writer and producer credits per album.

With challenges as serious as these, people are naturally looking for solutions and saviours, and this is where the music industry appears to have an advantage. Whereas there’s no politician on the horizon that appears to have a clue how to save the world, in the music world two names are often dropped. The first is Adele. With 17 million sales and counting, her second album 21 is being credited with single-handedly reviving the fortunes of the music industry in 2011. Aptly, it’s received six Grammy nominations, including for Album of the Year, while the album’s 10-millionselling lead single, Rolling in the Deep, has been nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. The second, Paul Epworth, is not a household name, but it’s on the lips of those in the know. He produced and co-wrote Rolling In The Deep as well as a second track on the album (I’ll Be Waiting) and co-wrote a third (He Won’t Go). Epworth also co-wrote most songs on and produced the whole of Florence + the Machine’s 2nd album, Ceremonials. Released towards the end of 2012, it was a UK, Oz, and NZ number one, has already sold over a million copies worldwide, and appears on its way to matching the 3.5-million sales of its predecessor, Lungs (2009)¸ in which Epworth also had a hand. In short, the man is presumed to have the Midas touch.

TIP OF THE TONGUE

The reason why Epworth and Adele’s names are quoted so much is not only because of the stratospheric sales they have enjoyed, but also because both, as well as Florence + the Machine, break the mould in several ways. The hope is, of course, that their uncommon approaches point the way towards a rosier future for the music industry as a whole. Regarding Adele, Epworth has gone on record as saying that Adele is so popular because she “sings from the heart,” and opined, “The age of the manufactured artist is over.” He could have said the same about Florence Welch. The ways in which Epworth himself pushes the boundaries are more diverse, but they centre on similar themes of honesty, integrity, and making “real music” that

transcends genres and generations. The fact that he was the sole producer on Ceremonials — for decades the norm, but a rarity today — confirms his status as someone who is extraordinary adept at successfully blending the vintage with the en vogue.

CEREMONIOUS BEGINNING

AudioTechnology looked up Epworth to find out what drives him, how he does things — specifically writing, recording and producing Ceremonials — and whether anything can be garnered from his approach that can, perhaps — and why not? — help save the music industry.

Epworth works these days out of what used to be Beethoven Street Studios in north-west London, which he’s renamed Wolf Tone Studios. In front of the huge but barely used SSL 4048 E-series, an extremely youthful-looking Epworth (he’s going to hit 39 this year, but could easily pass for 25), was happy to elaborate. He has a relaxed and unassuming manner that must stand him in good stead as a producer, a profession that relies to an important degree on people skills, and appears still taken aback by the enormous success that 2011 has brought him.

“It has been phenomenal!” He exclaims. “The big irony is that Rolling In The Deep was pretty much a demo. But even within that we did things that we thought would make the track fun and exciting, like Adele stomping on some steps. We

were trying to make a heavy record, with real gravity to it. I do love a good beat! 2011 has been an amazing experience. I underestimated how much people listen to success, instead of to the record. I’ve had big names knocking on my door for a few years, but now it’s all the time. But I’m very picky about what I do. I don’t do things just for the money; I want to do things that I enjoy creatively. But my ambition really always has been to make music without genre. I love music that is informed by many different influences and becomes its own entity. My influences range from Lee Perry to Steve Reich to John McEntire of Tortoise to Lil Wayne. Somebody told me the other day that the records I do appeal to urban audiences as well, and I love that.”

Honesty, good sense, being able to see beyond stardom and big money are qualities that immediately shine through in these few sentences, as is Epworth’s ability to connect his love of spontaneity and old-school methods with modern electronic and urban music. Much of his work indeed has strong crossover appeal, most strikingly in the case of Adele. Epworth’s discography is without question very impressive and high on street cred, with names like The Futureheads, Bloc Party, Maxïmo Park, Plan B, Kate Nash, Friendly Fires, Foster the People, and Cee Lo Green. He puts the fact that the vast majority of the artists he’s worked with so far are British, down to the UK being “much AT 19

more relaxed about genre,” and claims that one easy way to create something totally new can come from using a production technique from one genre and applying that in another style of music. Obviously, to be able to do this, one must have worked in various genres and with different production techniques and Epworth has a pretty solid grounding in both old and new studio engineering approaches, as well as live sound techniques. This provided him with a solid foundation for the jump to his real ambition, which was, “to become an artist producer. I never wanted to be an engineer-producer, I always wanted to be someone who plays and writes as well.” Although Epworth says he did not have any ambitions to be a front man, he was lead vocalist and guitarist in a band called Lomax during 2002-4, and in 2006 also released some solo material under the name Epic Man. His technical and musical backgrounds also combined during 2004-8 as a remixer working on a laptop. But all these explorations turned out to be just stepping stones for his deeper ambition, which went in the fast lane after he got his “first proper break as a producer,” in 2004, with The Futureheads’ self-titled debut album. In the same year he also produced Babyshambles’ song Killamangiro, which reached #8 in the UK charts.

The following year he produced Bloc Party’s very successful debut album Silent Alarm, and a stellar production career was underway.

‘The Chief” binaural head gave his prespective from the drum front, and (right) just one of Epworth’s circuit-bent devices – a modded Boss pitch shifter that created noisescapes and messed with Florence’s vocals.

SINGULAR PRESSURE

When Epworth first worked with Florence + the Machine, in the beginning of 2009, there was already a degree of expectation and pressure on both of them. Epworth had enjoyed a UK number one with Kate Nash’s album Made Of Bricks in 2007 and a major international hit with Bloc Party’s Intimacy (2008), while F+tM had just won the 2009 BRIT Critics Choice Award, on the basis of two moderately successful hit singles (one produced by James Ford, the other

by Steve Mackey) without having released an album. Epworth recalls, “she came to me saying, ‘the record company wants singles!’ We began the tracks I worked on for the first album at the small programming room I had at the time in the same building as Eastcote Studios [in West London].

That was pretty much just my engineer Mark Rankin, Florence, and myself. We wrote and mapped out these tracks in Logic, and then went over to The Pool studios to record them. There was hardly any guitar on the first album, it was all drums, piano, and ‘circuit bent’ Casio keyboard, MIDI strings and a lot of the sound came from Florence singing through an AKG D19 mic through this here…”

At this point Epworth got up, rummaged around in his studio, and came up with a Boss pitch shifter delay pedal screwed to a small box with a handle. He enthused, “I found a guy in The States who makes these as a custom item, and it’s phenomenal. He pulled the insides of the pedal out and connected them to these switches and it’s AT 20

a fantastically creative tool that created many of the soundscapes on the tracks we did on her first album. We manipulated the sound of her singing with it. The buttons allow you to make loops, change the pitch of the loop or the delay time, make glitchy sounds, it has ring modulators, touch pitch bend, and so on. These buttons are like detonators! The best thing is that it has a guitar strap, so you can use it live. During the making of the first album Florence and I vibed on noise records by bands like Crystal Castles and Fuck Buttons and so on, horrible wall of sound stuff, and we used this unit and the circuit-bent Casio to generate noise. The Casio is a little 8-bit sampler modified by the same guy who modified the Boss pedal. It has all sorts of options, and Florence would play it.”

Epworth rummaged around some more in his studio and got a hold of the ‘circuit-bent Casio,’ which is a modified Casio SK-5 sampling mini keyboard, introduced in 1987, and later sold by Radio Shack under the name Realistic Concertmate-650. A little frustratingly, Epworth wouldn’t give the name of the man who modified these units. Epworth ended up producing and cowriting four songs on Lungs, one of which, Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) became the biggest selfpenned hit from the album (the band’s cover of You’ve Got The Love was recorded and produced later by another team and became a bigger hit).

With Lungs being a resounding success, also in the US, Florence Welch had many offers to

EPWORTH’S ROOTS In the main article Epworth talks several times about combing in old and new school techniques. A brief look at his background demonstrates how the man paid his dues in both…

“I started out playing in bands from age 16/17, and quickly realised that the studio was the place to be if you wanted to be fully creative. I did a brief studio training course and then worked for two years at The Square in Harlow, Essex, which was a council run live venue and studio. After doing a bit of touring with a friend’s band, I thought: time to send out my CV, and ironically the first phone call I received was from Air Lyndhurst. This was very early 1996. I did just two years at Air, relearning everything I’d learnt, and was lucky enough to work with some greats, like Geoff Emerick and Bruce Botnick. So I gradually got into that old-school approach, with purist techniques, like keeping mic cables short, and so on. I then moved to The Strongroom studios, which is dance music orientated, because I wanted to get some more balance in my work experience. I was there during 97-99. After that I also worked for a bit at the all-valve Chiswick Reach studios, which had been set up by Vic Keary, who was Joe Meek’s tech and who founded Thermionic Culture. At Chiswick Reach I was lucky enough to work under producer John Leckie. I also did some tour managing and helped run a nightclub for a bit, where I was technical manager and set up the PA.”

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AT 21

REVIEW

INPUT STAGE Features a valve mic preamp that delivers 70dB of clean low-noise gain as well as line and Hi-Z inputs.

RETRO POWERSTRIPT Retro packs Pultec-style EQ and EMI-like compression into an electrifying channel strip.

Review: Greg Walker

I’ve had the Retro Powerstrip in my studio for about a month now and I have to say it’s one of those rare boxes that makes the recording and mixing process easier…. a whole lot easier! You want to make a vocal stand up and take centre stage? Give it some super smooth top end presence with premium quality valve EQ, then add 4 to 7dB of creamy tube compression at one of the medium time constant settings. Want to make your kick drum sound beefy and sweet at the same time? Work the bottom end contours with a combination of Pultec-style low end boost, attenuation and sub sonic filtering, tweak the top end and then give it some weight with a faster compression setting and a bit of sidechain filter tinkering. Bass? How much do you want? How much string attack? You want super smooth compression to lock it into the perfect place in the mix?

There, I’ve just dialled it in and it sounds freakin’ great! As though I’d spent an hour on it in DAW-land — mousing plug-ins and fiddling with parallel processing etc., etc. — except I only spent five minutes tweaking the black knobs on a grey box, and actually, it sounds way better than any of my plug-ins ever do.

BUILT TOUGH, SOUNDS SWEET

OK I’m getting ahead of myself here but seriously folks, the Powerstrip really is a joy to use, and being an all-valve channel strip from the Retro factory it’s no great surprise.

I’ve used Retro’s stereo EQ and 176 compressor before and

AT 22

been very impressed at how tweakable and just plain greatsounding they were, so I was pretty rapt to see a whole Retro recording channel turn up for review.

The unit has a timeless look with an old-style gain reduction meter (no backlight on this, unfortunately), and full size metal toggle switches and classy rotary knobs. The layout is clean and, like all the Retro gear, everything feels and looks like it’s built for the long haul.

WHERE’S THE STEERING WHEEL?

The most noticeable ‘how’s that?’ when you first approach the Powerstrip is the seeming absence of any preamp input control. In fact, all levels are controlled via the input and output knobs over on the right hand side of the unit in the compressor section. With the comp switched out they are simply I/O controls. With the comp switched in you are controlling preamp and compressor input levels with one knob — a bit of a compromise but in most cases this is, surprisingly, not really a big deal. Like a UREI 1176, the compressor’s threshold is simply set by how much gain you introduce into the circuit. Drive the input hard enough and you can achieve very nice break-up through the preamp and compressor signal paths, and the preamp has an extra little trick up its sleeve; if you pull the input gain control it clicks out to a ‘vintage’ setting which has a slightly darker and more grainy tonality.

VALVE COMPRESSOR Based upon the valve EMI RS 124 model and very simple in operation. There are six time constant settings ranging from slow to fast. The slowest setting provides dynamic attack and recovery characteristics and is the most transparent sounding. As you click clockwise into the faster settings the compressor becomes more coloured and vibey, though unlike many competitors’ units, the Powerstrip’s compressor maintains amazing tonal coherence and musicality even when pushed to the limit.

If pumping does become problematic there is also a sidechain filter that can be engaged at 90 or 250 Hz to allow low-end material to pass through the compressor unscathed.

2-BAND VALVE EQ Utilises the classic Pultec boost and cut topology at a number of stepped frequencies. For those who haven’t used this kind of EQ before, amongst other things you can both boost and cut the one low frequency and because the two curves are slightly offset you can create a powerful bump and notch effect — great for percussive instruments where you can tune the point of greatest tonal impact.

Subsonic filter rolls off below 40 or 90Hz. 3-step HF cut filter that complements the range of 10 HF boost frequencies.

The bandwidth or ‘Q’ control modifies the width of the high frequency boost.

OLD SMOOTHY

I initially used the Powerstrip on some TV scoring work and found the ‘vintage’ preamp setting with some subtle EQ and compression worked a treat with an Octava ribbon mic for darker string arrangements, percussion, clarinets…basically everything. More recently I’ve been going a bit more rock ‘n’ roll with it on kick, snare, overheads, bass, guitars and vocals and really there’s nothing it can’t handle. The preamp is versatile, powerful and great sounding, while the EQ has a super sweet musicality, and the compressor is beautifully smooth and gluey. Mixing and reprocessing tracks through the Powerstrip is an absolute pleasure and the results can be truly stunning. Boosting the tops at 16kHz on things like drum overheads is just gobsmackingly good. Indeed you have to work

CONTACT Mixmasters: (08) 8278 8506 sales@mixmasters.com.au

PROS • Two (subtle) flavour choices on mic preamp.

• Superb EQ. • Magic on lead vocals.

• Valves can be swapped out for different tonal characteristics.

The Powerstrip doesn’t skimp on options.

The Hi-Z Out is postprocessing, making for a formidable re-amp box or live EQ and compressor.

NO CONTEST

Kudos to Retro for putting together such a high quality package. Of course, it is very much at the pricey end of the market. Though on vocals, snare, bass and guitars the Powerstrip is a dead-set winner and I’m not sure you’d find a better channel strip out there for any price.

In a mix situation I’ve never come across a tool that is so easy to use and so effective at placing sounds exactly where you want them in the mix.

It’s a rare combination of control and forgiving smoothness that really makes the Powerstrip stand out for me.

CONS • Single input control limits options at the margins of compressor and preamp gain structures.

• You’ll wish the EQ had a midrange band too.

• Meter isn’t backlit.

SUMMARY Another top class unit from the Retro stable. Brilliantly designed valve everything makes recording and processing audio a breeze. A versatile preamp meets sweet 2-band Pultec-style EQ and super smooth EMI-based compression for an all-round tone tool of rare quality.

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NEED TO KNOW

PRICE $3527 incl GST

really hard to make this thing misbehave. Being such a tweakable unit I found myself not so much looking for a good sound as having to choose between different types of good — a nice problem to have!

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