Pro Sound News - May 2021

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MAY

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NEWS

VOLUME

+ SOUND RECORDING Meek Mill's Quarantine Pack EP Studio Showcase: No Fun Club

+ POST/BROADCAST Mixing the Wildest Grammy Awards Ever

+ REAL-WORLD REVIEW SPL Marc One Controller JZ BB29 Microphone PreSonus Revelator Mic Audient Recording Bundle

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CONTENTS

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Ghost-Engineering Meek Mill Platinumselling rapper Meek Mill thrives recording in an in-person setting, but the pandemic made that impossible. His longtime engineer Anthony Cruz shares how they overcame the challenge, kept the energy up remotely and tracked the recent Quarantine Pack EP.

14

HOWs Plug into Digital Networking Houses

of worship have become some of the most forward-thinking adopters of new technologies. Several recent HOW installations nationwide underline that fact as they take on the latest products and technologies in wired and wireless audio networking and distribution.

PUNCH-IN Engineer Gena Johnson Makes ACM History • Abbey Road Expands Institute, Nets Audiomovers • Live Nation, Veeps Team for Livestreams • Mark Brunner Scholarship Announced • Immersion Networks Raises the Curtain

RECORDING

17

Pandemic Folk-Prog Goes Platinum The pandemic didn’t stop

the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal from recording an album of songs by 1970s French-Canadian folk-prog band Harmonium. Now the unlikely album has gone Platinum.

18

Studio Showcase: No Fun Club Built over the course of five

years, Winnipeg’s No Fun Club studios brings

together new and vintage technologies in an opulent facility built out of 300-year-old reclaimed barn wood.

POST

REINFORCEMENT

6

On the Road Again … Finally As

the U.S. increasingly gets vaccinated, concert sound is starting to wake back up.

What’s it like to mix for an indoor crowd of 4,000 in the middle of a pandemic?

28

Mario Leccese Passes at 60

Veteran live sound pro Mario Leccese, director of operations for Solotech US, died April 10 after a short illness.

SOUND BITES

Brown went from opening a record store/ studio at the start of 2020 to producing an all-star 24-hour livestream honoring David Bowie at the end.

Mike Dias shares how to network in three dimensions.

view from the top

39

CEO Allen Sides considers Ocean Way Audio’s past and future.

Innovations Greg Taieb of Deluxe provides insight into the company’s new One Dub remote audio cloud recording service.

26

Celebrating Bowie with a Landmark Livestream Kerry

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31

24

Grammy Awards telecast was very different due to the pandemic. For the veteran audio team behind the annual television event, that meant throwing away the old playbook and starting virtually from scratch.

sounding board

GEAR

32

Capturing a Grammy Awards Show Like No Other The 63rd

COLUMNS

Real-World Reviews It’s a mix of high-end and entry-level gear reviewed this month, all with solid results, as we put JZ Microphones’ BB29 Condenser Mic, SPL’s Marc One Monitoring and Recording Controller, PreSonus’ Revelator USB Mic and Audient’s EVO Start Recording Bundle to the test.

music, etc.

42

Kieran McGee returns with Broken Blossoms.

Tracks 22 Studio Products 36 SR Products 37 Sound People 40 60-Second Interview 41

Pro Sound News (ISSN# 0164-6338) is published monthly by Future US, Inc., 11 West 42nd Street - 15th Fl, New York, NY 10036. Pro Sound News is available without charge in the USA to qualified professionals engaged in sound recording, broadcast, video recording, audio-visual, sound reinforcement and associated business. The publisher reserves the right to refuse applications and restrict free copies sent to a company or organization. For subscription information or to email customer service, please visit our online Subscribe Center at www.MyPSNmag.com. Reprints available upon request, call our Reprint Coordinator at Wright’s Reprints: 877-652-5295. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Pro Sound News, P.O. Box 234, Lowell, MA 01853. Please allow 6-8 weeks for address changes to take effect. © Copyright 2021 by Future US, Inc. PRINTED IN U.S.A.

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prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

NEWS

FROM THE EDITOR

On The Road Again … Finally

P

ro Sound News is known for wanted to hear more about, and a day many things, but one of its later, I was on the phone with Ralph fortes has always been live and Jeff Oliver, Moore’s FOH engisound coverage, from the national neer/production manager. level all the way down to local audio The show was one of a handful of providers. Since the pandemic swept 2020 make-up dates for the two artists, in last year, I’ve talked with a lot of but what made it special—and what pros, both on and (more often) off made 4,000 people in one room posthe record, about how COVID-19 has sible—was that a regional healthcare slammed the industry and many peonetwork bought the show and made ple’s livelihoods. There’s folks who it free to frontline workers, filling the clive.young@futurenet.com place to a required half-capacity. Since joke and act cavalier, while others say up front that they’re struggling the crowd had been vaccinated, the to hold it together. Inevitably, every conversation masks were few and far between. has ended with us sharing what we’ve heard about Given that the make-up shows were a string of things getting back on track and how it'll get better one-offs, regional production was used, so for Sioux soon—but that has always felt very far away.

Falls, Ichabod Productions of North Mankato, MN, fielded a P.A. of JBL VerTec 4888s and VTX 28 subs with VRX932s for front fills. Special Event Services supplied Avid S6L-32D consoles for Moore’s FOH and monitors, while Lawrence had a DiGiCo SD12 in the crowd and an SD8 at stage-side, both provided

by Digital Console Rentals in Nashville.

Talking gear is always fun, but what was it like to get back behind a mixing desk? “It’s amazing how your fingers know where to go, even with a year off,” said Oliver. “I’ve been mixing Justin for 4,000 frontline workers came together in the Sioux Falls 10 years now. As soon as I get my hands back on Arena on April 10 to hear a long-awaited Justin Moore the desk and the lights go down, it’s just muscle and Tracy Lawrence show. memory—you fall back into it.”

Now, finally, the conversations are starting There was a reduced crew due to the economto change—and for the better. Events are getting ics of a one-off, but Mastrangelo predicted, “That’s planned, tour pros are getting tentative emails askgonna be the shape of things to come for a while. ing about their availability, and major festivals are Floodgates aren’t going to open and everybody’s right staking claims in September and October. It’s early back to work. Tours that might normally take out six days yet, but it’s slowly happening. lighting guys are going to deal with four, et cetera.”

Still, the moment that drove it home for me that Another new norm will be crowds going crazy. we’re finally turning the corner happened on April 10 “I think every person in that arena was excited to be in a supermarket parking lot. Out of the blue, I got a there,” said Oliver. “Just to step away from life for a text from audio pro Ralph Mastrangelo, sharing that few hours and have something that moves the soul? he was at the Sioux Falls Arena mixing Tracy LawMusic has that power, and to be able to bring that rence on a co-headlining show with Justin Moore, to people who have worked for the past 14 months playing to 4,000 people. I’ve been happy for everyone to keep our population alive and healthy, putting who’s found work during the pandemic, so that was in countless hours—to be able to give that back to good news, but 4,000 people?! This was something I them was a great feeling.”

Clive Young

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prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

LAURA E. PARTAIN

PUNCH-IN

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WATCH THE VIDEO FOR CHRIS STAPLETON’S NO. 1 COUNTRY SONG “STARTING OVER” WITH SHOTS OF GENA AT WORK (AND DAVE COBB AND VANCE POWELL) https://youtu.be/A3svABDnmio

Gena Johnson is the first woman ever to receive an ACM Award nomination in the Audio Engineer of the Year category.

ENGINEER GENA JOHNSON MAKES ACM HISTORY

BY STEVE HARVEY nashville, tn—In

2013, a year after graduating from Minnesota State University in Mankato, Gena Johnson moved to Nashville to pursue a career as a recording engineer. This year, on Feb. 26, she awoke to the news that she had just become the first woman ever to receive an Academy of Country Music Award nomination in the category of Audio Engineer of the Year.

“I feel very honored and so grateful,” says Johnson,

8

who is nominated alongside Jeff Balding, Jason Hall, Vance Powell and F. Reid Shippen. The winner will be announced during the ACM Honors ceremony in August at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.

Her first Nashville gig was an internship at Welcome to 1979. “I fixed tape machines and consoles— I learned tons there,” says Johnson, who had previously worked on two-stroke engines in mechanics class in high school.

Since then, Johnson has built a credits list that includes John Prine, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell,

Kacey Musgraves, Brandi Carlile and numerous others. “The first number-one I worked on was ‘I Don’t Dance’ by Lee Brice in 2014,” she says.

Johnson assisted producer Michael Wagener for a time, then freelanced around town at Blackbird, Sound Emporium, House of Blues and elsewhere before landing at RCA. “That studio holds such a place in my heart, working with Ben Folds, who’s incredible, then with Dave Cobb and the massive records he has made there that I’ve gotten to be a part of.”

She recalls working with engineer Ray Ken-

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

news

nedy at RCA Studio A on a project with Malcolm Holcombe: “Everybody was out on the floor. The same with Dave Cobb, on Colter Wall and Chris Stapleton sessions.”

Johnson got to meet one of her heroes when Dolly Parton was rehearsing at RCA Studio A with The Highwomen. “She took my hand and said, ‘Did you know, in this very room, I recorded ‘I Will Always Love You’ and ‘Jolene’ in the same three-hour session?’ I remember that moment like it was yesterday.”

Johnson engineered Prine’s very last vocal session, for “I Remember Everything,” which recently won him two posthumous Grammys. In 2018, she says, Prine was the first person to record at her new home studio. “We did sessions with him and Kelsey Waldon. That was a great way to christen the studio. I originally put it together for mixing and overdubs, then COVID happened and it turned into a space that could be made safer and sanitized, more of a controlled environment.”

Johnson has encountered a number of other women engineers during her career, she says, readily listing a string of inspiring pros: Sorrel Brigman, Leslie Richter, Lauren Adams, Diana Walsh, Rachael Moore, Raelynn Janicke, Melissa Mattey, Kazuri Arai, Catherine Vericolli, Piper Payne, Shani Ghandi, Kim Rosen, Maria Rice, Jessica Thompson, Eva Reistead, Jessica Tomasin and Jordan Brooke Hamlin. “Our community has only grown stronger and better,” she says.

She is currently mentoring a young female audio student attending Belmont University, and has signed up to provide mentoring with We Are Moving the Needle, mastering engineer Emily Lazar’s equity and inclusion initiative. “I feel like I get to pay back what was offered to me,” she says.

Johnson has also started working with I Know a Woman, she says, which focuses on creating community and opportunities for women in music and creative sectors while raising funds for global women’s charities. The initiative is also working toward a multi-genre collaborative album written, produced, engineered and mastered by women for International Women’s Day, March 22, 2022.

Women are still a relative rarity in engineering positions—but the talent and drive of the assistant engineer sitting quietly in the corner yet anticipating every need will eventually be seen, she says. “You start being recognized by people because you’ve become an asset, and they want you as part of their team.”

A perfect example is how Johnson became involved in Ashley Monroe’s new album, Rose Gold,

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

which debuts at the end of April. Monroe recorded most of the tracks with a songwriter/producer and others, but reached out to Johnson partway through the production. “She called me and said, ‘I’ve been writing songs that have been so inspiring to me and I can’t stop thinking about you. I’d love to send you the demos and see if you want to mix the record.'”

As Monroe kept writing and adding new material, Johnson co-produced some songs with the artist and mixed the entire album. “It became this beauti-

ful record,” says Johnson. “She’s become one of my favorite people to collaborate with.”

Gaining the industry visibility that leads to opportunities is inherently valuable. In her case, she says, important individuals such as Jason Isbell and his wife, Amanda Shires, as well as the Stapletons— Chris and wife and collaborator Morgane—have lifted her up alongside them. “It takes people like that who are humble and real to stand up and lead by example.”

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news

ABBEY ROAD EXPANDS INSTITUTE, NETS AUDIOMOVERS an eye toward expanding its education division, Abbey Road Studios is relocating the Abbey Road Institute to London’s Angel Studios, which closed its doors last year after 40 years of operation.

Angel Studios—the birthplace of records by The Cure, Sam Smith, Adele, Siouxsie and the Banshees, One Direction and Robbie Williams, as well as numerous scores including The Lion King, Downton Abbey and Moulin Rouge—will reopen this summer as the new home for an expanded Abbey Road Institute. Angel Studios will be the flagship location for the specialist music school, which boasts seven separate schools across the globe.

According to Abbey Road Institute, increasing demand for its offerings means that it has outgrown its current home at the studios’ St. John’s Wood location. Students will continue to use the school’s dedicated studio at Abbey Road alongside the new headquarters in London’s Islington neighborhood. The Abbey Road Institute team is reportedly

working to restore Angel Studios’ Grade II-listed building and return the existing studios to operation. The complex will also be home to a working recording studio for hire, managed by the booking team at Abbey Road.

Abbey Road Institute reports that 95 percent of its graduates go on to work in the industry. Recent alumni have worked with artists including Little Mix, Madonna, J Hus, Calvin Harris, Pink and James Bay, and for employers such as Abbey Road, Metropolis Studios, Netflix, Universal Music, Ninja Tune, Anjunabeats and others.

Meanwhile, Abbey Road has also acquired audio software house Audiomovers, aiming to make use of its namesake remote production product, which allows music professionals to stream, listen to and record high-resolution multichannel remote audio in real time, with multiple collaborators. The startup will continue under the Audiomovers name, with product and technology led by the founders.

The remote software supports lossless multi-

ABBEY ROAD INSTITUTE

london, uk—With

The Abbey Road Institute is relocating to London’s Angel Studios, seen here.

channel audio, up to 7.1 surround, and allows users to adjust both latency and bit rate. Designed with the goal of aiding collaboration and adoption into existing workflows, the solution is said to be scalable from one-on-one distance-based recording to a large-scale scoring post-production facility streaming multichannel audio to multiple teams and listeners at the same time.

Abbey Road Studios • www.abbeyroad.com

Live Nation, Veeps Team for Livestreams

BRUNNER SCHOLARSHIP ANNOUNCED

beverly hills, ca—Live

new york, ny—The

Nation Entertainment and Veeps, a livestream platform run by co-founders Joel and Benji Madden of the band Good Charlotte, have started equipping more than 60 concert venues across the United States to offer turnkey livestreaming.

According to the companies, the technology will enable artists to offer fans virtual admission to sold-out shows, and features like backstage and front-row viewing angles. The equipment rollout is also being touted as creating jobs for the associated production personnel.

Some of the first venues on the list reportedly include The Fillmore in San Francisco and Philadelphia, House of Blues in Chicago and New Orleans, The Wiltern in Los Angeles, and a number of The lineup for the inaugural From the Wiltern amphitheaters. livestreams

10

Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure have created the Mark Mark Brunner Brunner Professional Audio Scholarship, which will be offered annually to students worldwide who are pursuing an education in professional audio.

Every year, the $2,000 scholarship will aid a recipient who is studying audio in an accredited audio program. PAMA and Shure will specifically be looking for applicants who plan to share their knowledge with others in a manner consistent with Brunner’s legacy.

A former president of PAMA from 2011 to 2013, Brunner was also a key member of PAMA’s marketing and retreat planning committees. He joined Shure in 1989 and during his tenure held several key positions. Most recently, Brunner was vice president of global corporate and government relations, where he worked on numerous industry issues. Brunner died in October 2020.

PAMA • www.pamalliance.org Shure • www.shure.com

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

news

IMMERSION NETWORKS RAISES THE CURTAIN

BY STEVE HARVEY redmond, wa—Immersion

Networks, founded six years ago by former researchers from Apple and Bell Labs, has previewed its first commercially available product: a cloud-based spatialization process that won’t require specialized hardware or codecs.

“We’ve created a platform for the capture, creation, transport and playback of an entirely different audio experience,” says COO Jim Rondinelli.

“It renders a three-dimensional audio experience through a standard stereo file that can ship on the 30-year-old codecs in market today and remain intact.” Rondinelli’s background includes producing and mixing releases by Matthew Sweet, Wilco and Weezer, as well as a decade in music licensing.

The process (product name to be announced) is intended to be accessible to any content creator and will be available via a freemium-based subscription model. The platform will reportedly be able to spatialize any audio source—mono, stereo, multitrack or stems—into any selected immersive environment. Alternately, users will be able to use a web browser interface to manually mix, pan and position source elements in three-dimensional space.

“Rather than asking you to buy a $40,000-plus Mac Pro system to be able to render everything, we simply do all of the heavy lifting in the cloud,” says Rondinelli. “Moving the processing to the cloud also allows us to make the tools available to people on a much less expensive basis.”

The team behind the technology has quite a track record. Chief scientist James “JJ” Johnston, an authority on human perception and signal processing, worked for years at Bell Labs and helped

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WATCH “USA” (3D AUDIO FOR HEADPHONES) BY INTI Y VICENTE

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=wUv0JgIJszE&list=OL AK5uy_lzrA2YN9lEaVJZRgWVxuFrHuQrQcyO_0I

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develop the MP3 and AAC codecs. Immersion Networks founder Paul Hubert worked at Apple throughout the 1980s and later co-founded Neural Audio, where Johnston also worked, and which was acquired by DTS in 2009.

“It’s a super simple interface—a two-dimensional overview with a slider that can change the elevation of any of the sources,” says Hubert. “You can build your soundstage and map things however you want, stationary or moving. It will work on any system—Mac, PC, Linux, iPad, iPhone—in a web browser. We’ve focused on universal access.”

That kind of widespread access is expected to lend itself to a broad range of potential uses—and users. “This is designed to be a tool that anybody can create with, whether you’re creating a TikTok video, an ASMR video, a piece of music, or attaching music to a video asset,” says Rondinelli. Playback won’t require a special codec or hardware, either. “It’s intended to be available to everyone,” he says, including in markets where 3G is still standard.

Examples of music processed through the platform are already available for streaming, including a track, “USA,” by Inti y Vicente mixed by 12-time Latin Grammy Award-winner Sebastian Krys.

“One of the interesting things when we talked to Sebastian, who is working with us on the development and deployment of the platform, is how simply and quickly things come together in a final

mix—typically 40 minutes to two hours per title,” says Rondinelli. “That’s because it’s easier and more intuitive than any of the other approaches to mixing out there.”

A future release will introduce batch processing, allowing an entire library to be spatialized into a specific environment, for example. “One of the most impressive demos that we’ve done involves a simple mono recording from the 1950s. We had a pretty good idea of the room it was recorded in, created that environment in three dimensions, and placed the mono recording in it,” says Rondinelli. It has had people familiar with the recording “shaking from the experience,” he reports.

Given the R&D team’s pedigree, it’s no surprise to learn that codecs are also coming. “We have something on the shelf that makes things sound way better than current services are capable of, in a file that’s a fraction of the size of what the services are using today,” Rondinelli claims. One example, he says, is “a music codec that, operating at less than 200 Kbps, is indistinguishable from high definition to a trained user.”

And there is yet more to come, he says. “What you are seeing in the initial launch is the tip of the iceberg of years of research on every step in the chain, from loudspeaker and crossover filter design to reinventing the microphone and capture system.”

Immersion Networks • https://immersion.net

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

HOWs Digital Plug into

Networking

BY STEVE HARVEY Houses of worship have always been a big part of the installation market, but they aren’t always the first projects that come to mind when the phrase “cutting-edge” comes up. That’s changing, however, as this market is increasingly becoming one of the most forward-thinking adopters of new technologies. Several recent installations in houses of worship nationwide highlight the latest products and technologies in wired and wireless audio networking and distribution.

14

Take, for example, a recent major renovation at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN, which leveraged a campus-wide fiber optic system to interconnect four DiGiCo mixing consoles and nine SD-Racks handling FOH, monitors and broadcast. According to Mark Coble, audio/ acoustics design and commissioning lead for integrator Paragon 360, a BroaMan Optocore AutoRouter installed in the machine room is critical to uninterrupted connectivity.

A standard Optocore transport system operates as a loop that will run in the opposite direction if

a connection is disrupted. But because the audio setup in the church’s Fellowship Hall is designed for frequent reconfiguration, says Coble, it was essential to guard against interruptions, not least because the broadcast console needs to ‘see’ every network input at all times.

“Our fear was that on Sunday morning, you’ve got 7,000 people in the Worship Center and someone goes into the Fellowship Hall to start prepping for an event. If they unplug a console or a stage rack, they could bring down the entire network,” he says.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

Left: Bellevue Baptist Church’s 6,800-seat main sanctuary is now home to three DiGiCo Quantum7 mixing consoles and an extensive d&b audiotechnik line array system.

Above: Summit Integrated Systems project manager Andrew Starke (right, black shirt and glasses) walks the Seven Rivers Church worship and tech teams through using KLANG:app on their iPads.

But the AutoRouter is self-healing: “As soon as something is disconnected, it heals the loop instantaneously.” At Bellevue, there are two Optocore loops, he adds, since the total number of inputs exceeds the capacity of a single loop.

The Optocore AutoRouter, which is intended for audio systems, also offers Yamaha and Avid network card options. BroaMan’s version, Route66, also supports video routing and software-based fiber stream routing for broadcast and AV applications.

In addition to enabling houses of worship to

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

make any audio source available anywhere across a facility, networking can provide connectivity with satellite campuses. Watermark Community Church in Dallas, TX, shares services from its 4,000-seat auditorium with four other campuses, where the teachings are integrated into the respective live worship services at the remote facilities and are also streamed online.

“Rather than using mic splitters and a patchbay, we installed 112 SSL mic pre’s so that it could all be soft-patched via Dante,” says Travis Brockway, founder of integrator Nexos, which also installed three FOH, monitor and broadcast SSL Live consoles at the church.

“When this system came online, we also implemented a new Dante network across the Dallas campus. It was a big switch—we replaced all the previous DSP and its Dante functionality throughout the whole facility. Everywhere there’s an audio console, it plugs in via Dante, so the children’s ministry’s consoles and everywhere there’s a sound system is all Dante-capable,” he says.

“The main service also gets distributed around to what they call the Town Center—the coffee shop and gathering space in the middle—and a couple of overflow rooms” from the FOH console, Brockway adds. “There’s also the chapel and the loft, and all the children’s spaces; they’re all capable of getting an input from the main auditorium, and vice versa.”

Office towers next door to the main Dallas worship center host Watermark’s mid-week and children’s and student services.

It’s not unusual for facilities to integrate both a Dante network and another audio network—for

instance, one associated with a specific mixing console brand—and bridge them via one device or another. According to research from RH Consulting, there are now just over 3,000 Dante-enabled devices available from 361 different manufacturers.

At Bellevue Baptist, says Coble, the Shure Axient wireless microphone system feeds the Optocore-networked consoles over Dante via a DiGiCo Orange Box. “There’s a very large Dante backbone to this system that runs over a traditional network,” he reports, adding, “We don’t allow that to jump onto other networks at the church.”

On stage, 12 channels of playback from a Mac are fed over a Cat 5 cable to a convenient floor pocket. In an analog setup, he notes, that would have required 12 DI boxes and a bunch of cables.

“Let’s say the keyboardist driving these channels moves to the other side of the stage next week. No big deal. It’s one patch away to the nearest floor pocket,” he says.

“It’s a game-changer for thinking about how to transport audio. Network-based audio allows creativity and flexibility that would normally be really cumbersome in the old-fashioned analog infrastructure. It’s the anything, anytime, anywhere approach.”

Indeed, the flexibility inherent in audio networking is high on the list of priorities for Coble’s clients, he reports. “They’ll say, ‘One of our priorities is cable management. We want flexibility.

We want to be able to change our stage around without having to call guys in for two days to rewire everything.’ Networked audio becomes the solution for that.”

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HOWs PLUG INTO DIGITAL NETWORKING That kind of flexibility is on display at Calvary Church in Santa Ana, CA, where technical director Ryan Roehl installed five Allen & Heath DX164-W wall-mount DX expanders in ACE Backstage stage pockets. The church has an A&H dLive control surface at FOH with a DM32 MixRack in an equipment room below the stage. DX units connect via a single Cat 5e cable to a dLive surface.

“We were already familiar with what Allen & Heath calls their ‘Everything I/O’ collection of audio expanders, as we had a roving DX168 on stage for drum inputs and another rack-mounted at the booth for last minute I/O needs that pop up from time to time,” says Roehl. “Each pocket on stage fits the DX164-W, six power outlets and eight positions for Neutrik D Series connectors, of which we have one for the DX loop out, two for Dante connections and two for 3-pin and 5-pin DMX [digital multiplex].”

Cathi Strader, president, ACE Backstage, comments, “Our 174SLBK stage pocket system pairs up nicely with the DX164-W and a duo of 3-gang plates for on-stage access to both digital I/O and additional customized connectivity,” combining DMX, Dante, power and AoIP in a tidy stage floor package.

With an audio network, it’s a simple enough matter to throw down a length of Cat 5 and add an I/O device in order to extend the reach of a system to, for example, hold an event in an outdoor area

at a church. Networking also enables the expansion of the audio console setup to include options such as personal monitor mixing stations for the musicians.

Aviom, Hear Technologies, myMix and other Dantenetworked personal mix systems have been around for a number of years, but more recently DiGiCo’s KLANG:technologies brand products have also been finding traction with houses of worship. The KLANG At Calvary Church in Santa Ana, CA, technical director Ryan Roehl installed system offers musicians individual five Allen & Heath DX164-W wall-mount DX expanders in ACE Backstage control of their monitor mixes via an stage pockets. iPad. Users can control not just levels but also immersive panning, allowing them to the same device into other area churches, including replicate the relative positions on the stage of their Orlando’s Whole Life Church. bandmates in their IEMs. The KLANG rig at Seven Rivers Church, also Florida’s 1,500-capacity Mosaic Church, in in Florida, is a little more complex, processing Winter Garden, recently expanded its KLANG sys64 inputs fed via an Orange Box to 16 immersive tem with a second KLANG:fabrik unit to provide mixes. The analog stage outputs are routed to the the 12 musicians and vocalists individual mixes rack of the A&H dLive console rack and then over a from over two dozen inputs. The church’s SSL Live Dante network, via a DiGiCo DMI-DANTE 64@96 FOH console feeds the personal monitor system card in the Orange Box, to the console. Signals are over Dante, which is native to the KLANG units. sent from the console’s direct outs to the Orange “That kind of digital integration with the conBox, which is also fitted with a DMI-KLANG intersole is great from both an installation and operaface, then back to the console and into the musitional point of view,” says Gil Parente, CEO of inte- cians’ in-ear monitors. grator AVnew. Parente says he has also integrated Add a local area network to the installation and the capabilities of an audio system can expand far beyond the scope of this article. One relevant product, though, is the SSL TaCo (Tablet Control) mix app, which provides wireless tablet control of SSL Live consoles from iPad and Android devices.

Musicians can download the app and control their individual mixes out of the Live series monitor console on their personal devices over the LAN. Alternatively, the mix engineer can use TaCo to control the entire console from a single remote device.

Perhaps more prosaically, Listen Technologies offers a product for assistive listening applications— beneficial to any church with an aging congregation or worshippers suffering hearing loss—that also leverages a facility’s LAN. The product, Listen Everywhere, enables congregants to listen to whatever audio the church chooses to broadcast, using a free app on their iOS and Android devices.

While the service is an obvious choice for the audio source, one church in Utah reportedly used Listen Everywhere to enable members to participate in socially distanced bingo in the parking lot during the coronavirus pandemic.

Paragon 360’s Mark Coble at the DiGiCo Quantum7 in Bellevue Baptist’s broadcast control room.

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prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

want

more?

CHARLES-ÉMILE BEAUDIN ON THE CREATION OF HISTOIRES SANS PAROLES – HARMONIUM SYMPHONIQUE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=befvHjlpAGs

SIMON GOULET/STUDIO ZABLIT

Despite the pandemic, the 68-piece Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and choir recorded the now-Platinum Histoires sans paroles – Harmonium Symphonique album at Montreal’s 1,900-seat Symphony House.

Pandemic Folk-Prog Goes Platinum

BY STEVE HARVEY montreal, canada—With

the pandemic restricting travel late last year, a group of engineers collaborated remotely to record orchestral reinterpretations of songs by 1970s FrenchCanadian folk-prog band Harmonium. Histoires sans paroles – Harmonium Symphonique draws from the band’s three studio albums to present more than two hours of music performed by the 68-piece Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and choir.

Rick Winquest, based in California, had been scheduled to spend up to four weeks in Montreal as the recording engineer and sound consultant.

When COVID-19 stymied that plan, it fell to

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

Charles-Émile Beaudin, working in the Piccolo Mobile recording truck at Montreal’s 1,900-seat Maison Symphonique (Symphony House), to track the project. Winquest monitored the sessions from his office in Santa Clarita.

Beaudin brought in microphones by Neumann, Sennheiser, Schoeps, Sanken, Royer, Microtech Gefell, Coles, Brauner and AKG from Studios Piccolo and his own collection. Apart from closemiking solo guitar, harp and celeste, says Winquest, “the main concept was distance-miking techniques: Decca tree and wide room and section placements. Symphony House has such astounding acoustics that of course we needed to work with the natural ambience of the room to make the instruments sound bigger than life.”

Beaudin subsequently mixed the tracks at Studios Piccolo in Montreal, again working remotely with Winquest. Throughout the project, the pair communicated in real time through Google Docs and Zoom, including with orchestra contractor François Pilon, while Winquest monitored via Audiomovers streaming software.

To monitor during the sessions, Winquest employed a Focusrite D-to-A feeding his Bryston amps and PMC IB1S speakers.

Released in December 2020 by GSI Musique, the album was already certified Platinum—solely from physical and digital download sales—in February.

Harmonium Symphonique • www.harmoniumsymphonic.com

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studio showcase

Winnipeg’s No Fun Club Studios was built over the course of five years and now houses an amalgamation of current and vintage gear, including a rare 1979 32-channel Sphere Eclipse C desk. Inset: Putting the Studio A couch to good use are (l-r) studio owner Rob Hill, engineer/studio manager Riley Hill, and social media/communications director Dominique “Domo” Lemoine.

WINNIPEG’S NO FUN CLUB GETS DOWN TO WORK

BY STEVE HARVEY winnipeg, mb—What’s

old is new again at No Fun Club, where vintage audio equipment from the golden age of analog sits amid centuries-old reclaimed wood. The two-room facility, constructed from barn wood and junkyard finds, features two rare mixing desks and stacks of classic outboard gear.

Owner Rob Hill had only a minimal mobile production setup when he purchased adjoining build-

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ings in downtown Winnipeg five years ago. He immediately began constructing a studio, he says. “I was looking for a new challenge. I had taken some time off from audio engineering and decided to go back at it, full force.”

Hill stripped the building down to the slab and some exterior walls, rebuilding to create two large live rooms, a dead room and an iso booth adjoining Studio A. Studio B offers a big live room, a big dead room and an iso booth. No Fun Club’s amenities are rounded out by kitchen facilities, office space

want

more?

VISIT NO FUN CLUB’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL

https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCdY5D9TfCo_xFv6Zoe_es4Q

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

studio showcase

The iso booth off Studio A highlights the reclaimed barn wood that is No Fun Studio’s trademark.

and on-site living accommodation for five or more people. “All the common areas have mic tielines, so you can record anywhere,” he says.

The interior walls and finish are a combination of old barn wood and salvaged I-beams, with a liberal sprinkling of chandeliers for illumination. Hill and his wife were in California and had stopped to pet some horses when he learned that the property’s owner planned to burn down a 300-year-old barn.

“It was beautiful wood, so I asked if I could have it and what his price was. He said, ‘If you get it off here, it’s yours,’ so I sent a couple of semi-trailers down,” Hill says. “We ripped apart some barns locally for some of the more aesthetic pieces.”

Ultimately, the build took about three years, says Hill. No Fun Club opened a year ago, but has since been subject to Manitoba’s three COVID-19 lockdowns.

Plenty of work has been coming in since the end of the last lockdown, and not just for recording projects. According to musician Dominique “Domo” Lemoine, who manages the studio’s social media and communications, “We have a YouTube channel and are doing livestreaming sessions with a videography team in town. We’re utilizing the look of the space as well as the audio to do high-quality video content for artists. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”

Hill, who was mentored by Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording in Indiana and also worked at

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

Tiny Telephone Recording in San Francisco, purchased the 32-channel Sphere Eclipse C desk that anchors Studio A first. Ordered in 1979 for the Best Audio remote truck in Los Angeles and one of reportedly only 15 built, it was at UK producer and engineer Ben “Steamy” Williams’ Ilkatron Studios.

“I flew to London, checked it out and got it shipped over,” Hill says.

Hill and brother Riley, who is an audio engineer, musician and No Fun Club’s studio manager, drew up a gear wish list, acquiring much of the equipment through Vintage King, Montreal’s Studio Economik, and the internet. “We tried to curate it so that it’s a good mix of weird, esoteric, bigticket pieces that people are generally drawn to, and some good utility pieces, so there are no limitations in terms of trying to arrive at a certain sound.”

In pride of place in Studio B is a 40-channel Neve 5300 broadcast console that passed through France and Hong Kong before landing at a private San Francisco Bay Area studio. “It’s in pretty immaculate condition,” he says.

Outboard gear includes RCA BA-6, Altec 322c, Pultec, Spectrasonics, Gates and Teletronix units.

“The Fairchild 670 is really great. I use it on everything,” says Riley Hill. “There was no studio in Winnipeg that had the Compex stuff; those are also really great.”

Hardest to source were the Studer, ATR, Teac and Akai tape machines, says Rob Hill. “You obviously want the best examples. They came from all over: one from Korea, a couple from California, one from Toronto, one from Nashville.”

A recording studio is not the greatest business model, admits Hill, but that’s why he rents out one of his two buildings. “No one does this for the money.

You need a space to rent out to subsidize the studio.

It’s a bit of a safety net and gives us some security.”

No Fun Club • www.nofunclub.com

Studio B’s control room is centered around a 40-channel Neve 5300 broadcast console that was previously used in France, Hong Kong and San Francisco.

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GHOST-ENGINEERING MEEK MILL

BY KEITH NELSON JR. new york—When COVID-19 shut down the world last spring, multi-Platinum rapper Meek Mill and Anthony Cruz, his engineer since 2013, were in the Bahamas realizing that the way they recorded together wouldn’t be the same going forward. Once the pair returned to a closed-up United States, it didn’t take long before the artist couldn’t deal with how the pandemic-induced lockdown was preventing him from emptying his thoughts into songs. Cruz recalls, “It got to a point where he was like, ‘I understand things are real, but I really need to get going.’ My back was to the wall and I had to find a solution.”

Once Cruz found it, they never looked back— Meek and Cruz were able to record, mix and release the four-track Quarantine Pack EP in late November 2020, closing out an eventful year. Cruz recapped it for Pro Sound News in this interview, lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: After getting back from the Bahamas as the pandemic was ramping up, how did you and Meek adjust to the lockdown?

We’d been in-person vibing for seven years by that

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time, so it was a very dramatic change of workflow.

It was just too dangerous at the time to jump out and do the regular in-person workflow, so when I was digging into potential solutions and testing different options, I was like, “How are we going to be able to work?” I ended up finding an amazing solution for the time.

Q:That involved a home studio?

Before the pandemic, we were able to store equipment at Meek’s house. He had never really used the space because he likes to leave the house to go to work, so we typically would lock-in the studios. We’d already built out a proper home studio for him—we have Genelec 1234A speakers with 18-inch subs on either side, a UAD Apollo, and his mic chain is a BAE 1073 mic preamp that goes into a Tube-Tech CL 1B. He uses a Slate VMS

BRIAN NGO

Anthony Cruz in pre-pandemic times.

microphone, which is basically a mic that mimics all the classic mics—it’s like a tool belt where, depending on who you’re recording or what the vibe of the song is, you can change the texture to match some of the vintage classic mics that we’re used to that cost tens of thousands of dollars. It does a really good job of matching the tone, and it just became our go-to over time.

Q:How were you able to record Meek remotely?

People are using Zoom to control the computer and then they use one of these audio streaming companies that basically allow you to get a clean signal on your side as the engineer and you control the workflow of who you’re recording.

It’s interesting because it allowed me to really see what the opportunities were in this space, because it was never a necessity before to have to be ready for remote recording. You have to use Zoom and you have to use a plug-in and stream it, too—it’s not efficient—and it’s basically like he had a ghost engineer. Meek would be like, “Oh my god! Cruz isn’t even in the room and he’s recording me.”

Q:Did you observe a difference in the creative process between you and Meek working remotely as opposed to when you two have been together?

What you notice when you’re working remotely compared to in-person is that it’s all about trying to maintain the energy as if you’re still in the room. I had to find multiple ways of making the process efficient enough where it didn’t interrupt his workflow. We kept the same level of speed, but there were so many things I had to do on my end—I had to have an account that had all the beats that I was gathering from producers, copy a link, send it over to his computer while I’m streaming the audio.

Then, after the session, I had to find a program that could back up all the files so I could send them to

“It got to a point where he was like, ‘I understand things are real, but I really need to get going.’ My back was to the wall and I had to find a solution.”

ANTHONY CRUZ prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

BRIAN NGO

Cruz (center) recorded a feature by Meek Mill (right) on the Ed Sheeran (left) track “1000 Nights” in 2018.

myself without it taking up too much time because maybe the internet wasn’t strong enough.

We would be on a FaceTime call during the session, so we could still have that interaction and I could hear what the energy was in the room.

That was a big thing. We had a separate iPad [for FaceTime] that was the communication between me and him live on the spot. Besides the streaming link, I was hearing him on the mic, but when he jumped off the mic, I had to mute the signal so we didn’t get feedback, any blasts of music or whatever.

I needed a source of communication, so that was FaceTime.

It’s actually amazing the things we were able to get done. The Quarantine Pack EP he put out in late November is exactly what it’s titled—we did it all remotely. I would hit [producer] Nick Papz and bounce ideas. We got nothing but time on our hands, so it’s like your mind’s going crazy—“we’ll make this a bigger record!” Being in tune with the mixer live, you guys are both able to collaborate on

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

a mix. They can be like, “Yo, let me try something different here,” and they’re able to control your computer and do their thing, and then you’re like, “Oh, hold on—let me try something.” So it’s this live collaboration. It still feels like we could potentially be in the same room. We were able to do some incredible things and still impact with the music.

Q:I saw you guys got back to the studio in November. How was it being back in person?

It was interesting. It was still nerve-wracking for me, because my biggest thing was, I’m in the house with my baby girl and I got wifey, and I just felt like it was something I’ve never had to deal with before.

It was a genuine fear of not about me, but how I would affect somebody else if something were to happen on this trip. It got to a point where we took all the precautions we needed in terms of constant testing and making sure everybody was safe and masked and everything. The first time, Meek actually ended up in New York and we were able

to link up in person. That’s in my backyard, so that was a no-brainer. We had a couple of sessions there, and then the next sessions in person were actually back in the Bahamas again. Once the vaccine came out, I felt a little more confident once I was in that groove.

Q:Do you feel that you’ve gotten better as an engineer over the last year?

I think it’s really helped me creatively. I’ve really tapped in on another level on a creative side. Before, I would put somewhat of a limit on myself. Now I’m trying more things and putting myself out there more creatively. I think that’s the biggest thing— that it’s helped me a lot that way. Once I actually got our workflow together, it actually inspired fellow industry people to come up with really cool innovative technologies of their own, and I’m working with [Jay-Z’s engineer Young] Guru on solutions as well. We’re coming up with how we can innovate this space and make it more efficient.

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top tracks

tracks: A LOOK AT THE RECORDING SCENE

ARTIST: LARA HOPE & THE ARK-TONES ALBUM: HERE TO TELL THE TALE LABEL: SOWER RECORDS / CRAZY LOVE RECORDS PERSONNEL Produced by: Lara Hope & The Ark-Tones Engineered by: Scott Petito Studio: NRS Recording (Catskill, NY) Mastered by: Scott Petito at NRS Recording EQUIPMENT NOTES: API 1632 console, Avid Pro Tools HDX, Focal SM9 studio monitors

ARTIST: MAIA SHARP ALBUM: MERCY RISING LABEL: CROOKED CROWN PERSONNEL Produced by: Maia Sharp Engineered by: Joshua Grange (tracking), Maia Sharp (overdubs and vocals) Mix Engineer: Ryan Hewitt at East Iris Studios, assisted by Sean Williamson Studios: Resistor Studio, Crooked Crown Studio (Nashville, TN) Mastered by: Jim DeMain at Yes Master Studios (Nashville, TN), assisted by Amy Marie EQUIPMENT NOTES: Quad Eight Coronado console, Avid Pro Tools, Reaper, KRK V8 studio monitors

ARTIST: NICK STARGU, SR ALBUM: SHADOW IN TIME LABEL: STARCINA MUSIC GROUP PERSONNEL Produced by: Nick Stargu Sr Engineered by: Nick Stargu Sr Studio: Starcina (Manchester, CT) Mastered by: Steve Sossin EQUIPMENT NOTES: Tascam Tandem DM4800 console, Alesis HD-24 recorder

ARTIST: BRIGITTE DEMEYER ALBUM: SEEKER LABEL: BDM MUSIC PERSONNEL Produced by: Jano Rix Engineered by: Brook Sutton Mix Engineer: Trina Shoemaker Studio: The Studio Nashville (Nashville, TN) Mastered by: Jim DeMain at Yes Master Studios (Nashville, TN) EQUIPMENT NOTES: Soundcraft 500 console, Tape Machine, Avid Pro Tools, Dynaudio BM15-A studio monitors

ARTIST: CHA WA ALBUM: MY PEOPLE LABEL: SINGLE LOCK RECORDS PERSONNEL Produced by: Andrew Block, Ari Teitel Engineered by: Andrew Block Mix Engineer: Bassy Bob Brockmann Studios: Neutral Sound Studio, Handa Wanda’s (New Orleans) Mastered by: Dan Millice at Engine Room Audio (New York) EQUIPMENT NOTES: Tree Audio tube console; Skibbe Electronics 736-5, Avedis MA5, Chandler TG2 and REDD preamps; Apple Logic Pro; Dutch & Dutch 8cs studio monitors

notes WSDG founding partner John Storyk, Grammy–winning engineer Renato Cipriano and REDI Acoustics on its speaker designs.

dios to share audio and video resources or operate separately.

Audio Restored Digitizes BerkleeNYC Networks with for Good Time TSL , —UK restocambridge uk

new york, ny—Global

Florida Studio Adds Symphonic Monitors

miami, fl—Miami Beach Recording Studios co-owner Pablo Reynoso has installed custom Symphonic Acoustics (www.symphonicacoustics.com) 2X8V monitors and 12-inch subs. The manufacturer collaborated with acoustician George Augspurger,

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technology solutions provider Diversified’s custom IP network for the newly revamped Power Station at BerkleeNYC facility combined TSL’s (www.tslproducts.com) GTP-V1 virtual control processor and Virtual Panels into a solution that TSL has dubbed IPCross Connect. It enables all four recording stu-

ration specialist Audio Restored acquired three Prism Sound (www. prismsound.com) Titan converters with MDIO Dante cards and a Focusrite RedNet Dante PCIe card to digitize 233 analog master tapes for Good Time Records (GTR), an international catalog owner and label with offices in the UK and Nashville, TN.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano (seated) is recorded via a Shure MX150 lavalier mic into a Zoom H6 recorder.

SAMMY THE BULL’S CINEMATIC SOUND

BY JIM BEAUGEZ phoenix, az—Emmy Award-winning sound designer

and FX editor Angelo Palazzo has worked on blockbusters such as Disney’s Frozen, Stranger Things and Bridgerton, but he hit the curveball of a lifetime last year when COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill. Palazzo was working with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez on another project when the pandemic halted production one Friday afternoon in early 2020; by the following Monday, he was on board with Our Thing with Sammy the Bull, a Mafia podcast that puts his cinematic skills to use in a new format.

“I’m steeped in feature films and the TV world,” said Palazzo, “[and] it’s a real fine line when you’re

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

putting sound to narration. The music is what is emotionally leading you through the story, but the sound design and sound effects root you in the reality of it. If it’s too literal, it can backfire, so when there was a major plot point, I wanted to ease you into it and set you up for the big moment, then slowly fade that reality out and bring you back in with just the narration with the music. If you’re nuanced about it, you’re out of it before they know it and there was no distraction.”

The protagonist of Our Thing with Sammy the Bull is Salvatore Gravano, the notorious mobster whose hit list runs 19 murders deep and who served as underboss of the Gambino crime family under John Gotti.

Palazzo works with Richard Miller, general manager of the Sammy the Bull organization, to produce each episode. Miller, whose background is in seminar production, began recording narration with Gravano on a Shure SM93 lavalier microphone into a Zoom H6 recorder, though they’ve since moved on to a Shure MX150 lavalier. The podcast is released in audio and video formats.

After a few rounds of editing in Adobe Audition, the narration tracks and archival sound clips go to Palazzo for placement and mixing with the score, which he composes and records himself using Native Instruments and vintage synths. That includes the signature opening and closing music for each episode: “They wanted a big orchestral thing, a sort of swelling finale. If someone gives me a reference, I’ll check out the reference and I’ll listen, and as soon as I get into the vibe of it, I’m almost immediately off onto my own tangent. And then it becomes its own thing, which is what happened with that.”

Our Thing with Sammy the Bull • https://bit.ly/3e0skyc (YouTube)

23

KEVIN WINTER/GETTY/RECORDING ACADEMY

KEVIN WINTER/GETTY/RECORDING ACADEMY

Typically held in Los Angeles’ Staples Center arena, this year’s Grammy Awards show was largely pre-taped on sets next door at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Miranda Lambert’s appearance was part of a three-song show opening all shot in one pass.

CAPTURING A GRAMMY AWARDS SHOW LIKE NO OTHER

BY STEVE HARVEY

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KEVIN WINTER/GETTY/RECORDING ACADEMY

los angeles, ca—With pandemic protocols still in place and a new producer at the helm, the 63rd Grammy Awards telecast was very different from previous years. For the veteran audio team behind the annual television event, that meant throwing away the old playbook and starting virtually from scratch.

With no possibility of getting 20,000 people together in the Staples Center, the event’s longtime home, because of COVID-19 precautions, producers moved this year’s awards show next door to the Los Angeles Convention Center, and only the award presentations were live on the night.

COVID-19 protocols put a stamp on the entire proceedings, says Michael Abbott, who has been the show’s audio coordinator for more than three decades. For one thing, he says, “I was in an office by myself,” in the middle of the outdoor “truck farm” alongside NEP’s Denali broadcast remote trucks, M3 music mixing trucks and other temporary offices.

“Two Gelcos were provided for the Pro Tools operators, JP Velasco and Aaron Walk,” says Abbott. “Adjacent to that was our file transfer room with Glenn Lorbecki, who managed the artist approvals. We also had a mixer, Paul Wittman, who was monitoring and QCing audio for the participants on Zoom.”

Inside, one of the convention center’s massive halls housed the set, which consisted of an entranceway in the shape of a giant gramophone horn, five stages facing each other, and adjoining isolated artist

holding areas. Adjacent to the set was an audio area crewed by socially distanced P.A. mixer Jim Ebdon at a DiGiCo SD12, Michael Parker and Andres Arango at monitors on a pair of SD5s, and Ian Guitierrez, at an SD21, monitoring the RF microphone signals. On the night, production mixer Mikael Stewart managed the outdoor live award presentations and other elements on a DiGiCo SD10.

“For the most part we maintained the same workflow as usual,” says Abbott, except that artists’ teams were not allowed into the M3 trucks to advise on the mixes due to protocols. Instead, engineers and producers sat at listening stations in the hall with headphones and a video screen to monitor their artist’s performance. A hands-free intercom footswitch enabled real-time interaction with M3 music mixers John Harris or Eric Schilling.

The 22 artists and groups visited the set in the days leading up to the Sunday broadcast to capture their performances individually, with some excep-

Production mixer Mikael Stewart managed the outdoor live award presentations and other elements on a DiGiCo SD10.

tions. “The cold open walk into the hall and the three back-to-back performances was a pre-tape that we did in one pass,” says Abbott. “And Mickey Guyton, Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris were all done in one pass. The In Memoriam segment was done on multiple days and pieced together. It requires a lot of attention to detail to make sure you’re not painting yourself into a corner for the edit, or else the sequencing and segues won’t match.”

The South Korean boy band BTS, unable to travel due to coronavirus restrictions, filmed their performance on a duplicate set in Seoul, South Korea.

With no audience for the performances, there was no need for a P.A.—well, almost. To ensure that there would be some energy in the room for performers to feed off of, production provider ATK deployed some of its C6 speaker boxes, placed on the ground because of weight constraints of the convention center’s grid, and positioned a pair of JBL subs at the corners of the five stages. “We took a music stem and a vocal stem from the M3 trucks.

Jim Ebdon did a P.A. mix with those stems, audio and video playbacks, host mics and a variety of other elements,” says Abbott.

The novel production setup added significantly to the workload, he says. “I had said for a couple of months that if we’re going to pre-tape, we’re going to end up remixing. I tallied them up, because I was so exhausted the day after the broadcast—we did 75 remixes, sent and approved, on the Friday before the show.”

Recording Academy • www.grammy.com

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

BRIEFS Paul Pouthier Captures The Americans

buffalo, ny—Sound mixer Paul Pouthier, CAS, recorded nearly all of the dialogue for FX’s spy drama The Americans with Lectrosonics (www.lectrosonics.com) wireless gear, including four SMDWB and two HMa plug-on transmitters and a mix of original SM, SMa and SMV packs. Receivers comprised four UCR411a plus two Dual SR units, the predecessor of today’s SRc. Set comms were handled by IFB-T4 and UM400a transmitters paired with R1a receivers.

ÉléphantMat Livestreams Immersive Performance paris, france—French

electronic music producer ÉléphantMat, alter ego of artist, producer and engineer Mathieu Rossier, recently streamed a live two-hour spatialized performance piece from the Grand Palais in Paris using Flux Immersive’s (www.flux.

audio) Spat Revolution plug-in. The team from Rossier’s studio, Des Sons Animés, recorded multitrack audio from an 18-speaker system in object-based format, remixing the soundtrack and encoding to binaural using Flux.

Equipped by

Astro LX Employs SSL 2+ on Sound of Metal

mexico city, mexico—Rerecording mixer Jaime Baksht, a two-time BAFTA Award nominee, added an SSL 2+ (www. solidstatelogic.com) two-channel audio interface at Astro LX studios in Mexico before working on Sound of Metal, for which he is Oscar-nominated for Best Sound. Re-recording mixer, dialogue editor and fellow Best Sound nominee Michelle Couttolenc used the device to monitor and QC film dialogue during editing and plans to also use it for ADR.

MPSE Honors George Miller

studio city, ca—In April, the Motion Picture Sound Editors (www.mpse. org) presented George Miller with its annual Filmmaker Award, the organization’s highest honor. The Australian director was recognized for a body of work that includes Happy Feet (an Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature), Babe: Pig in the City and Lorenzo’s Oil, as well as Mad Max and its three sequels. The most recent film in the series, Mad Max: Fury Road, released in 2016, won Academy Awards for Best Sound Editing (shared by supervising sound editor Mark A. Mangini and sound designer David White) and Best Sound Mixing (shared by re-recording mixers Chris Jenkins and Gregg Rudloff, and production mixer Ben Osmo), among its six Oscars overall.

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BY STEVE HARVEY At the end of last year, barely six months after launching Rolling Live Studios, Kerry Brown found himself producing one of the most ambitious livestreamed events of the past year. Organized by pianist Mike Garson, A Bowie Celebration: Just for One Day! aired for 24 hours on Jan. 9 and featured live performances by dozens of Bowie band alumni and guests.

A music producer and musician with a credit list that includes the likes of Billy Corgan, Miley Cyrus and Jessica Simpson, Brown opened a studio and record store in Studio City at the beginning of 2020, shortly before COVID-19 arrived.

“Having a record store was my childhood dream, and I built it just in time for the world to shut down,” he laughs.

Brown, a livestreaming pioneer, launched Rolling Live Studios in June to provide a concert platform for musicians sidelined by the pandemic.

When Garson, an old friend and Bowie’s longestserving collaborator, asked Brown to help produce January’s three-hour event, he jumped at the chance to kick things up a notch.

Partnering with Logitech’s livestreaming app developer Streamlabs, Brown built out his service for the event to include a live chat stream and additional ticketing capabilities. Patterned after Bowie’s 50th birthday bash at Madison Square Garden in 1997, the celebration featured an all-star cast covering over 40 careerspanning songs.

With participants scattered

Grammy-winning vocalist Catherine Russell (left), performing “Conversation Piece” on the A Bowie Celebration livestream.

around the globe, it was never going to be a live performance, but the concept, says Brown, was for everyone to record their parts and film them live so that he and his team could seamlessly stitch them together.

Duran Duran contributed “Five Years,” with Garson guesting on piano. “The core band went into a studio in London and shot separately, but on the same day, in front of a greenscreen. They composited it and sent it to me. I had [bassist] John Taylor, who was in L.A., come to my place and I shot him on greenscreen. Then I had Mike come in and play,” says Brown, whose production facility features a vintage API desk and Otari tape machine.

Collaborating with some of his Hollywood connections, Brown says, he ensured that all the camera perspectives matched. A virtual artist used Google Tilt Brush to create the video’s unique look.

John Crawford, creative director for Nine Inch Nails, shot and edited video of Trent Reznor, his wife Mariqueen Maandig and Atticus Ross performing “Fashion.” “We have some old TVs lying around in this space,” says Brown, “so I talked to my AV guy and got some converters, stacked them and played the video through them.

For the livestream, Mike played piano live with Trent on the video wall, but after the show, we spent some time to post the video, adding additional TVs and putting more alumni members in, and released that.”

Backing tracks for most of the songs were provided by two core Bowie bands. “In L.A., we had guitar-

“He said, ‘If you send me the track right now, I can do it on my iPhone before I go in [to surgery].’ And he crushed it.” KERRY BROWN

ist Charlie Sexton, who came in from Austin, Alan Childs on drums, Carmine Rojas on bass and Mike Garson on piano. They came into my studio and had a COVID test every day.”

Guitarist Gerry Leonard recorded himself and bassist Mark Plati, drummer Sterling Campbell and guitarist Earl Slick at his New York studio, along with various local vocalists. “We shot them in the studio as they were recording, so it was as live as it could be,” says Brown.

Other vocalists added their parts to the backing tracks at their own studios or local facilities. Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, covering “Ziggy Stardust,” literally phoned his vocals in. “He needed some work on his knee and said, ‘If you send me the track right now, I can do it on my iPhone before I go in [to surgery].’ And he crushed it.”

U.K.-based Yungblud covered “Life on Mars” from London. Brown had been invited by a friend to a Zoom event with the JPL and NASA engineers behind the Mars Perseverance rover; he pitched them on the idea of playing the song during the then-upcoming historic Mars landing. “It closed the NASA stream,” he says.

Yungblud’s label, Interscope, released the cover as a single in March. “It proves the Kerry Brown went from opening a power of this space,” says Brown. record store/studio at the start of 2020 Rolling Live Studios • to producing an all-star livestream honoring David Bowie at the end. www.rollinglivestudios.com

KRIS

TIN

BUR

NS

studio city, ca—

ALYSSA LOPEZ

CELEBRATING BOWIE WITH A LANDMARK LIVESTREAM

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prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

REINFORCEMENT

The new Fifth Third Center Stage’s L-Acoustics loudspeaker system in use during a socially-distanced salsa night at Fountain Square.

CINCINNATI’S FOUNTAIN SQUARE OPENS NEW STAGE cincinnati, oh—A

permanent $2M performance stage has been built in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, a downtown entertainment hub. The two-acre space surrounds the 150-year-old Tyler Davidson Fountain, and its new stage required local integrator ClearSound Design to design and install the site’s staging, lighting, video interconnect and audio facilities, including a new L-Acoustics A Series system.

ClearSound Design project manager and systems integrator Brock Fowler notes one of the project’s primary challenges was mitigating noise spill into other parts of the city, particularly the square’s surrounding businesses. “With L-Acoustics Soundvi-

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

sion software, we were able to visually show the client during the design process where the sound would be louder in specific areas with different elements and configurations and, just as importantly, where the sound wouldn’t be,” he says. “We ultimately recommended an A15 system, which provided the right SPL and fidelity, as well as allowed us to focus the sound only on the intended areas.”

The new loudspeaker system for the Third Center Stage comprises left and right arrays of three L-Acoustics A15 Focus enclosures over one A15 Wide, with eight KS21 subs spread out horizontally on the ground across the face of the stage.

Four LA4X amplified controllers housed in a room

below the stage drive the mains and sub elements.

Although cold Midwestern temperatures and COVID-19 protocols have impacted the venue’s number of performances, the new system has already been used for several smaller events, local band performances, talk/game shows, and playback for the ice rink that occupies Fountain Square over the winter months. “The A15 system definitely gave the rink experience an added boost compared to the single-horn announce system we’ve had in years past,” says 3CDC senior events production manager Andi Schultes. “Even without the subs in use, the word ‘bouncy’ was mentioned more than once when the right tune came on.”

The 3CDC plan is to start hosting local band performances weekly as warmer weather arrives.

“I’m really excited for everyone to hear this new system. The biggest improvement for both patrons and performers is the clarity and control we now have. No more onstage spill for the band, and no more loss of clarity when you’re too close or too far for the audience—just clean, crisp, warm coverage everywhere it needs to be.”

L-Acoustics • www.l-acoustics.com Fountain Square • www.myfountainsquare.com

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ANDERS SUNE BERG

A Danish museum exhibition on the career of Nick Cave delivers immersive audio through Meyer Sound loudspeakers.

NICK CAVE EXHIBITION GETS IMMERSIVE copenhagen, denmark—His

work has long been the subject of intense scrutiny and academic study, so it’s both appropriate and unsurprising that Australian rocker Nick Cave and his music are now the subjects of Stranger Than Kindness, an immersive exhibition at the Black Diamond, a museum extension of the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen.

Cave and longtime bandmate and collaborator

Warren Ellis were involved with the exhibition, working with Danish AV integration firm Stouenborg and designer Christina Back, who led the exhibition team on behalf of the Black Diamond museum. The two musicians together conceived and recorded the soundscapes for the exhibition, heard throughout via a variety of Meyer Sound selfpowered loudspeakers.

“We wanted an immersive experience,” explained Back. “We wanted people to be free in the space, without headphones…. The sound system definitely turned out as I had hoped, and from my experience working with sound, it is a powerful tool in an exhibition setting.”

The exhibit occupies eight rooms in the basement of the Black Diamond, seven of them with sound installations, each with a primary speaker system playing the main musical atmosphere. Additional localized speakers are placed around each room for more atmosphere or to tie into visual elements within the space.

“Very early in the process I specified Meyer Sound loudspeakers,” said Kaspar Stouenborg, project manager for the AV installations and CEO of the company bearing his name. “I knew that sound was going to be a very important part of the exhibition, so I wanted to be sure Nick Cave and Warren Ellis had the full freedom to make it sound exactly as they wanted it. I knew I could accomplish that with Meyer Sound loudspeakers.”

A total of 29 full-range Meyer Sound selfpowered loudspeakers are used, with two compact MM-10 subwoofers adding bass impact where needed. Five different full-range models are employed, including the ULTRA-X40, UPM-1XP, UP-4XP, UP‑4slim and MM-4XP. The exhibit as a whole uses 32 discrete channels of audio playing from a MacBook Pro and controlled by QLab 4 software. Many audio programs play in extended loops so that the exhibition’s sound design changes depending on the time of day.

Meyer Sound • www.meyersound.com

Mario Leccese, Live Sound Veteran, Passes at 60

BY CLIVE YOUNG las vegas, nv—Veteran live sound pro Mario Leccese, director of operations for Solotech US, died on April 10 after a short illness. With a career spanning decades, Leccese was an integral part of the event and touring world, working for the better part of three decades at audio provider Audio Analysts from the 1980s through 2011, and then for the last decade at Solotech US. A touring mainstay during rock’s heyday, Leccese unassumingly took on duties as needed, whether mixing, system engineering or other

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roles, working on now-legendary 1980s tours

by Van Halen, Monsters of Rock and others.

Over the decades, Leccese, along with his late brother Albert, who died in 2010, helped build Audio Analysts into one of North America’s largest sound companies, and ultimately rose to the role of vice president of operations. During that time, the company—and, by extension, Leccese—provided audio for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Linkin Park,

Norah Jones, Blue Man Group, The Offspring, Cher, Pink and Ringo Starr, among many others. Additionally, the company became involved in large-scale installations, tackling projects like Lakewood Church in Houston, TX, and others.

Solotech acquired Colorado Springs-based Audio Analysts in May 2011. The company’s assets and audio team, including Leccese, relocated to Las Vegas, where he lived until his death.

Leccese is survived by his wife Jodi, son Evan and grandchildren Illiana, Juliano and Giana.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

HARRY POTTER ’S SPELLBINDING SOUND new york, ny—In

the Harry Potter books, when wizards need to get loud, they simply use an amplifying charm, bellowing “sonorus” with the wave of a wand to amplify a targeted sound. In the muggle (i.e., real) world, however, multiaward-winning sound designer Gareth Fry has been using audio systems to make wizards audible in live stage productions of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. Post-pandemic, the play’s productions in London, New York, Melbourne and San Francisco will resume, and future productions have been announced in Toronto and Tokyo. All of them feature, or will feature, d&b audiotechnik loudspeaker system designs by Fry. “There’s a big responsibility when you’re working with such iconic characters and stories. The audience has a strong emotional attachment to what’s happening on stage,” said Fry. “With such an invested audience, we’re under pressure to produce the best show we can. There are big, epic scenes with lots of characters, and then there are also very quiet scenes where it’s just two people talking—we need to make sure every seat in the house hears everything perfectly.”

Likewise, the audio supports the action on stage.

Fry added, “There are a lot of illusions in the show, and magic often requires support from sound and lighting and costume and props—it’s a very multidisciplinary thing to make these illusions seem magical.

All of the magic is done live in front of the audience, and good sound is absolutely key to making sure the illusion works for every audience in every venue.”

ArrayCalc software from d&b was a key component Fry used in his sound system design for the shows. “ArrayCalc … allowed us to predict in advance what a theater will sound like,” said Fry. “The soft-

ware has also been very useful in terms of working with other production departments and negotiating speaker positions and other logistic concerns.”

A d&b Y-Series sound system served the London, New York, Melbourne and San Francisco productions, with a mix of line array and point source elements, supplemented with E-Series cabinets for fill speakers. d&b V-Series was also used in venues

where a longer throw was required.

“I’ve been using d&b for years, so I have a lot of confidence in their systems.” said Fry. “They always sound great, and have a compact footprint that makes them easy to place, so the whole system sounds better because the speakers can be in better positions to deliver the quality and power we need.” d&b audiotechnik • www.dbaudio.com

Equipped by

The Premier Supplier of Pro Audio, Video & Lighting Equipment

The heroes of our industry are the techs and engineers who are ready to get back to work. There’s a renewed appreciation for live events, and as they do come back, we’ll be here to support.

Sound designer Gareth Fry has been using d&b audiotechnik systems on live stage productions of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child.

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800-356-5844 • fullcompass.com prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

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BRIEFS HOW Reliant on Pliant framingham,

ma—During the pandemic, New Life Church in Framingham, MA, moved to livestreaming services, so tech director Barney Borovoski began using a Pliant (www.plianttechnologies.com) MicroCom XR digital wireless intercom system and 10 Pliant SmartBoom PRO headsets purchased from Full Compass. The church deploys five units on one channel for the camera and video crew and another five units on the second channel for audio and lighting.

Logic Systems Nabs PK System

st. louis, mo—

Event production company Logic Systems has taken ownership of the first allblack PK Sound (www.pksound.ca) Trinity line array system. After purchasing it last summer, Logic Systems soon put it to work on a variety of events. The PK Sound system debuted with a full deployment for shows by Brad Paisley and Nelly in the parking lot of St. Louis’ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre for Live Nation’s Live from the Drive-In concert series.

DiTech Updates Church with DAS

pearland, tx—

First Baptist Church’s sound reinforcement system recently received an extensive upgrade to ensure clear audio reaches all worshippers in the 1,200-seat sanctuary. DiTech AV of El Campo, TX, came in to design and install the system, which is based around DAS Audio (www. dasaudio.com) Vantec-20A line array enclosures, Aero-12A powered line array elements and Event-218A powered subwoofers.

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FOH engineer Daniel Ellis at the DiGiCo SD12 96 desk on Kim Walker-Smith’s tour.

KIM WALKER-SMITH RETURNS TO THE ROAD wichita falls, tx—Artist Kim Walker-Smith has been hitting the road to promote her latest live release, Wild Heart, with a series of “Worship Nights” mini-tours of large churches and Christian universities, all of which have been sold out to half-capacity per COVID-19 protocols.

Providing audio for the productions is Wichita Falls-based Front Porch Productions.

Front Porch supplied a pair of DiGiCo SD12 96 FOH and monitor consoles sharing an SD-Rack equipped with 32-bit “Ultimate Stadius” mic pre’s on an Optocore fiber optic loop, according to Front Porch co-owner Aaron Talley, who also serves as monitor engineer on each of the four-show runs.

The front-of-house mix is tackled by Daniel Ellis, who notes he’s been using DiGiCo fairly exclusively for a while now: “The SD12 is perfect for what we do with the number of inputs and buses it has, and its compact size helps us easily fit our touring package into one bus trailer. I’ve had a Waves server at front of house for Kim’s latest tours, but I’ve kept most of the processing on the console, which has sounded great.

And Aaron and I have both been using DiGiGrid MGB MADI interfaces to get signals into Reaper for recording her shows.”

“Macros on the SD12 are also amazing,” he adds. “I don’t have any special ones that haven’t already been talked about a hundred times, but

they’ve been raved about because they are so helpful to have in your workflow. One of my favorites is the one that bypasses all Waves plug-ins. I’ll do that every now and then during soundcheck just to make sure I’m not going down a plug-in rabbit hole and making the mix worse!” he laughs. “Also, I really love using MIDI to trigger things. It’s such a simple pleasure to fire a snapshot that can play a specific song on my laptop and turn up a fader without my touching it.”

At the other end of the fiber loop, Talley, who is manning the monitor SD12 96 console, reports that the tours’ relatively sparse input count of only 36 channels is complemented by an equally modest count of six stereo IEM mixes on stage: two for vocalists, plus keys, electric guitar, bass, and drums. “This has been the lowest number of mixes I think we’ve ever had, and the console can obviously handle much more being thrown at it, but I’ve been really happy with how it’s performed. I’ve only used the desk’s onboard processing on my end—EQ, compression, and reverb— and the sound quality has been top-tier. Daniel and I have also really enjoyed the Con Send and Receive function on our consoles. We use it all the time and it’s an absolute necessity for us.”

Front Porch Productions • www.frontporchpro.com DiGiCo • www.digico.biz

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

INNOVATIONS

A Game-Changer for Remote Recording DELUXE ONE DUB REMOTE AUDIO CLOUD RECORDING

R

emote dubbing has risen to management) for optimum the top of the production security. innovation conversation A NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE in the media services industry,

BY GREG TAIEB Two-time Emmy Awardembraced by sound mixers, sound Greg Taieb leads product nominated supervising sound supervisors and producers as development and editor Mandell Winter recently an effective and efficient postinnovation at Deluxe. embraced One Dub for remote production solution when a stanrecording on a new feature film dard studio setting is not a safe or project. Winter was among the viable option. The rapid adoption many sound pros looking for a tool that would of remote recording tools has precipitated an even enable efficient remote recording in the early days speedier arrival of next-generation applications. of lockdowns and quarantines. He found that One New enhancements mean that now remote recordDub delivered on several fronts, but the most ing solutions have extended their utility beyond important was quality, with 24-bit/48 kHz sound. the pandemic.

He appreciated the top-flight security features Let’s look at the how and why. and noted that its interface was comfortable for QUALITY, SECURITY AND ­EFFICIENCY actors—an absolute must in a creative setting. “It By now, we all know that the best cloud-based stands out from what other applications offered,” remote recording solutions can offer efficiency and said Winter. “Additionally, its security features security previously unknown in the media services were appealing because it made the studios industry—something critical at a time when media comfortable knowing their product was in consumption is at an all-time high—while sound good hands.” mixers, supervisors and producers are struggling to keep pace with demand and tighter post deliveries.

Recording time can easily grind to a halt and push costs northward if actors are delayed with complicated, inefficient at-home setups. Deluxe’s One Dub enables teams to remotely work with ultrasecure streaming video playback, scripts that are editable on screen, and intuitive record/edit functions.

Video files accessible via One Dub are not downloadable through the app and feature user-specific visual and forensic watermarking, One Dub’s interface along with DRM (digital rights

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

MULTI-ACTOR INTERFACE FOR REMOTE ADR AND LOOP GROUPS Until now, the most secure remote solutions could accommodate only a single actor, and even then, they didn’t offer professional-quality recordings. With One Dub’s new ADR and multiactor interface improvements, up to 12 voice actors can be in session with a mixer, engineer, sound supervisor and director, with everyone working from the comfort of home or anywhere in the world.

Real advantages come into play when considering remote recording on set. With the lightningfast advances to remote recording technology, the option to insert ADR into a shooting schedule rather than leaving it until post could radically change how shows and actors address looping.

Actors would no longer have to schedule separate time after the shoot to re-record dialogue, often weeks or even months after performing the lines.

Inventive sound supervisors, line producers and post supervisors could record willing actors from dressing rooms or trailers, before their production wraps, drastically minimizing ADR and Loop Group scheduling headaches and shortening post schedules.

Cloud-based solutions have at last found their footing as essential to safe post-production workflows.

As innovations continue to push remote recording further into the future, we can expect new and exciting changes to content creation processes long thought immutable.

Deluxe • www.bydeluxe. com

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JZ MICROPHONES BB29 CONDENSER MIC

I

’ve been a fan of JZ mics for some time now, having reviewed their Amethyst, Black Hole, Vintage series (V47, 67, 11, 12) and smalldiaphragm BT201s—all with more than satisfactory results, all with plenty of color (except for the neutral Black Hole), and all with plenty of design style.

The new BB29 from the JZ Signature Series looks to combine the overall structure of the Black Hole with the personality of the Vintage series, but with an output transformer—a first for JZ.

OUT OF THE BOX The BB29 is a single-diaphragm pressure-gradient condenser microphone that features JZ’s patented Golden Drop diaphragm coating technology on a 1-inch membrane, with a Class-A discrete handbuilt circuit. The mic is shaped like a rectangular cartridge, with a flat/squarish head basket—very much like the Black Hole except the hole area is solid. An elastic suspension shockmount ($99) grabs The BB29 is a single-diaphragm pressure-gradient condenser microphone.

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the BB29 via four grommets, holding the mic firmly and allowing close placement to objects like speaker cabinet grilles.

The provided frequency response graph shows 20–20k response, with a little 500 Hz bump and a gradual presence rise punctuated by a high-end boost of 5 dB that’s not rolling off until 15k. Output impedance is 150 ohms (1000 ohm ideal load), with a max SPL handling of 140 dB and A-rated self-noise of only 9 dB. There are no pads or switches on the cardioid-only mic, which carries a five-year warranty, for $1,299 direct.

BY ROB TAVAGLIONE Rob Tavaglione owns and operates Charlotte’s Catalyst Recording and is a longtime studio contributor. www.twitter.com/ robtavaglione

real-world

reviews

IN SESSION Being familiar with JZ mics, I threw the BB29 right in there as a third drum kit overhead, a “lower-head” about 2 feet off the floor and 6 feet out, via Manley’s TNT preamp. I hoped to get a fairly balanced middle-of-the-kit image with plenty of cymbal, and that’s exactly what I got. I could hear the room “air,” and got largely uncompressed dynamics and a nice (mono) hi-fi picture.

The next day, I put the BB29 up there with two other mics in order to pick two favorites for a super-powerful alto female vocalist tracking a fulllength. With amplification from an Avalon VT737 channel, my singer didn’t prefer the BB29 (I think the high-end emphasis bothered her), so I rolled off some top and thinned out the very bottom, and we used it for most of the backing vocals.

Next, I had a drum session with a fairly lighthanded drummer where my close mics and room ribbon needed some help in both punch and excitement. I placed the BB29 much like I did the first time but amped it up with an SSL VHD preamp and dialed in moderate levels of 2nd and 3rd order harmonics, followed by compression via ART VLA modified with low end-enhancing Carnhill transformers. The result was a much bigger-than-life sound with gutsy punch, a fancy sheen and more raw power than my overheads or room ribbon.

I often use a JZ V12 on electric guitar, where its C12-like qualities deliver nicely articulated guitar

sound, so I just had to compare the BB29 directly with a pair of AMS Neve 4081 quad mic preamps, which are consistent and rather neutral. I jumped around various tones, but long story short, the BB29 seemed to have a little more up top, flatter mids than the sculpted V12, and a little more bottom. It was definitely a bright sound overall, but really nice and no trouble at all with SPL, even though the BB29 doesn’t have a pad.

Acoustic guitar—amped up with a Cranborne Audio Camden 500, which I chose for its lack of color and consistent linearity—found the BB29 putting out a well-balanced picture, if going a little heavy on very high end, but in a way that most of you might just prefer (depends on the situation, really). My Yamaha upright piano didn’t play well with the BB29, though, as the hammers hitting the strings created clicks that just weren’t musical, lid open or closed. My personal vocal tests were revealing, too; the off-axis response was forgiving enough to allow a little roll to the side to ease off that veryhigh-end definition bump (I’d like to try that with the alto vocalist now) and the proximity effect was audible at 5 inches, substantial at 3 to 4 inches out and a bit overbearing any closer than that.

THE FINAL MIX All in all, the BB29 is another high-quality, colorful and high-fidelity mic from JZ. It looks like the company’s Black Hole and sounds more like the Vintage series, but with the extra emphasis both down low and up high from a transformer (with a touch of low-end saturation, too). Oddly enough, my most universal comparison would be a bright vintage U67 in cardioid (they all sound a little different, it seems), with ample midrange (that little 500 Hz bump?) and sculpted euphony at each end of the spectrum. As with most colorful offerings, the BB29 won’t be a perfect fit for everything, and its simplicity limits the range of applications, but when it does fit, you’ll find it exceptional.

JZ Microphones • www.jzmic.com

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

SPL MARC ONE MONITORING AND RECORDING CONTROLLER

real-world

T

he SPL Marc One Monitoring and Recording Controller is a beast, providing highend quality whether you’re listening back or putting down tracks. It offers three monitoring modes, a 32-bit AD/DA converter and a smart, user-friendly design.

For this review, we connected it to our Kali IN-8s and Neumann KH 120s studio monitors via USB to the DAW, but it was impressing us before we even turned it on. First of all, its heavy-duty metal frame body and actual weight give you a hint of the quality you’re about to hear. All knobs and toggle switches are weighted, supporting the impression of a high-end product.

The first toggle switch on the left side of the device controls the two sets of studio monitors and has an off position in the middle. Position A on the toggle includes the subwoofer if you have one, while the off position is silent. There’s no bleed into your monitors in any switch position.

Next is the volume knob. It takes up a lot of real estate but it’s ultimately the reason I love this controller. It provides lots of ways to tweak your outputs that we will get into later. You’ll use this knob the most, and the even volume response sounds amazing.

The second toggle switch gives you the option to listen in mono, stereo or channel swap, which reverses the stereo image so you can hear everything that’s going on with your mix. There are light indicators for left and right monitor distortion to help protect your monitors.

BY FELA DAVIS Fela Davis is a 2019 Hall of Fame inductee at Full Sail University. She owns 23dB Productions and One of One Productions Studio, which specializes in podcasting, video, and music production. Clients include the Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams podcast, SiriusXM, Atlantic Records, iHeartRadio and numerous Grammy Award-winning musicians. www.oneofoneproductions.com.

When the monitor knob is centered, all input signals are equally loud; turn to the left and the analog stereo inputs get louder while the USB input signal gets quieter. Turning from the center to the right does the opposite, all helping to tweak your system to deliver the perfect volume for mixing.

There’s also a headphone volume knob and a crossfeed knob so you can blind-hear the studio monitors and headphones together for more listening options. The amount of depth from the headphone amp to our studio headphones, Sennheiser HD 800s, opened my ears to new things in our mixes.

Now to the back of the unit. First is a heavyduty on/off switch that looks like it can stand up to years of use. Next to it are two dip switches: 1 provides a 10 dB pad on your studio monitor sources, while 2 is a Rec 1+2, which mixes together both line inputs and allows you to record them together The SPL Marc One Monitoring and Recording Controller is thoughtfully laid out and labeled on both the front and back for quick, intuitive use.

reviews

via USB in mono.

Both dip switches are easy to flip without requiring a tool or a long fingernail to use.

All of the TS and TRS inputs and outputs on the back of the unit stick out for better grounding. The USB connection is class-compliant, which means that all Mac computers and iOS devices like iPads and iPhones can use the full performance bandwidth of the 32-bit AD/DA converter without driver installation. (iOS devices will need the camera adapter to connect, however.) For Windows, you’ll only have to install a driver (downloadable on the SPL site) if you need higher sample rates.

The USB connection will connect to your DAW for superb studio monitor playback at very high resolutions—for example, DSD4 and DSD256 (11.2 MHz) are supported.

Over the course of our review period, we found the amazing resolution and high-quality build combined perfectly in use as we toggled seamlessly between studio monitors and headphones to listen to mixes. Used as a monitor controller, SPL got the layout perfect for muscle-memory mixing, with the monitor toggle switch and volume knob ideally located for quick adjustments while listening. When you consider that it’s also an interface for recording, able to record high-resolution audio from 10 Hz to 200 kHz, the $799 price tag is worth it. The SPL Marc One is now a staple in our studio and workflow.

SPL Audio • www.spl.audio

want

more?

FELA HAD MORE TO SAY ABOUT THE SPL MARC ONE ON A RECENT EPISODE OF HER PODCAST, THE ART OF MUSIC TECH.

Listen at www.apple.co/3wV5vF1.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

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PreSonus’ Revelator USB microphone is aimed at content creators of all kinds.

PRESONUS REVELATOR USB MICROPHONE

BY FELA DAVIS

T

real-world

reviews

he Revelator, PreSonus’ latest USB microphone, touts three different microphone polar patterns—omni, cardioid and figure eight—as well as onboard DSP, software, accessories and more. We recently used it on an episode of The Art of Music Tech Podcast, during which I tried each polar pattern and even used

34

it to record my co-host Denis performing a song on an acoustic guitar. At $249, it’s meant for podcasting, solo musical performances and livestreaming, and it handles those duties well.

The microphone comes with an optional tabletop weighted base with a great, sleek appearance, but it can also be mounted to a traditional mic stand using the included adapter. We used that adapter on

the podcast so it was easier to record Denis and me on the couch in our studio.

The Revelator comes with access to PreSonus’ Universal Control software, which controls Revelator’s audio preferences such as sample rate (44.1–96 kHz), clock source, input and output format, and Device Mode. (Universal Control is able to control other PreSonus products as well, including the StudioLive console and StudioLive RM32 audio interface.)

One of Device Mode’s key features is the Multi option, which lets you send audio simultaneously to three different platforms—YouTube, a DAW and Skype, for instance. A pop-up software control panel lets users control every aspect of the mic, providing four preset modes that can be tweaked and room for another eight user-definable presets.

On the mic itself, those four main preset modes can be changed via a preset button, while both gain and headphone levels can be adjusted via the monitor button and volume knob. If you’re familiar with PreSonus’ StudioLive consoles, this is where you can dig into what they call the Fat Channel settings that control the gain, EQ, limiter, highpass filter, compression, gate and effects.

Revelator’s software mixer simplifies sending dedicated mixes to certain destinations by providing two dedicated channels just for loopback audio on both macOS and Windows. This means users can mix and record the audio from two different applications on a computer along with a voice, all at the same time. Everything that’s tweaked in the Universal Controller can be recorded or heard through the platform being used, whether it’s a DAW, Zoom, Twitch, Skype or something else. This feature is useful for musical performers who want to use a preset reverb or delay effect for a livestream.

I recorded our podcast using the Revelator to Logic via my MacBook Pro and the results were great. For podcasting purposes, this microphone will suit any situation you could possibly run into, whether you’re home and recording a podcast via Zoom, or face-to-face with a guest but with only the one microphone. As an audio professional, I’d stick with having multiple mics, but I would suggest this setup to a beginner who needs a budget-friendly setup. At times, I felt there was a slight delay in omnidirectional mode, but I just needed Denis to get closer to the microphone for the best sound.

Overall, I’m impressed by the Revelator’s flexibility and the possibilities it opens up for so many content creators.

PreSonus • www.presonus.com

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

AUDIENT EVO START RECORDING BUNDLE

A

mainstay of the UK pro audio scene since the late 1990s, Audient is well-known and respected for its high-end recoding gear, but in recent times it’s also drawn attention for its EVO series of audio interfaces—a more affordable line aimed squarely at home recording enthusiasts, content creators, the work-from-home crowd and so on.

The EVO Start Recording Bundle brings together an EVO 4 interface, EVO SR2000 headphones, an EVO SR1 condenser mic, a shockmount, a USB-C to USB-A cable and an 8-foot XLR cable, all for an MSRP of $249. Working alongside this on the computer side are two programs: EVO Control, which is essentially an on-screen version of the EVO 4’s hardware controls, and EVO Loop-Back Mixer, which allows users to combine audio sources and route them between software programs. Both apps are available in Windows and macOS formats, and are readily downloaded along with appropriate drivers from the EVO website. The bundle can also be used with iOS devices if you have the proper (though not included) cabling. The whole kit is intended to be as plug-and-play as possible, and while it means things are kept simple, that’s fine— the first-timer can proceed with confidence and the seasoned pro can just set it up fast and move on to the next chore.

At the center of the bundle is the EVO 4, a sleek piece of hardware about the size of a soda can on its side, making it very portable. The front features a 1/4-inch DI input and 1/4-inch headphone output, while the back sports a pair of XLR/TRS combi input jacks, two TRS output jacks for monitor speakers and a USB-C port that connects the interface to your computer and also provides power to the unit.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

real-world

reviews While Audient is typically a high-end pro audio manufacturer, its EVO Start Recording Bundle is aimed at new recordists.

On top are a rotary knob and six buttons, all of which do only one thing each. On the left is a 48V phantom power button that lights up when you’re sending power to a mic, along with Input 1 & 2 buttons—the rotary knob can set the gain on either input source. Alternately, you can use the EVO’s Smartgain feature, which automatically sets the gain for a given input. Elsewhere, there’s a Monitor Mix button for dialing in your own personal sweet spot between computer output and zero-latency audio from an input. Lastly, there’s the Volume Control button, which is simply volume on your headphones or monitor speakers. Inside the interface are Audient’s EVO mic preamps, which provide 58 dB of gain range, and converters sporting 113 dB of dynamic range.

The included headphones and microphone are first-time products from Audient and are only available with the bundle. That said, they’re solid as far as entry-level gear goes and should not be dismissed as “mere value-adds” to get you to purchase an EVO 4. The around-ear headphones are lightweight and comfortable enough for extended use, though the pads’ spaces for your ears are a little smaller than I’d personally like.

Sound-wise, they give content creators what they need

to work with, do a fair job of dampening outside sounds and offer a frequency response of 15 Hz to 22 kHz. Meanwhile, the microphone is a fixed cardioid pattern large-diaphragm condenser that offers a 20 Hz–18 kHz frequency response. With some appropriate mic technique and a pop filter (not included), it captures usable sound, particularly for spokenword work. For the price range, it offers respectable quality and is an obvious step up from the sub-$125 USB mics typically aimed at this market segment. The shockmount, by the way, is pleasingly rock solid.

With a name like “EVO Start Recording Bundle,” this package isn’t aimed at Audient’s typical high-end customers, but it is perfect for beginners as well as pros who need some less expensive but still dependable gear that they can throw together quickly. For people recording for the first time, the bundle includes everything they need, but far more importantly, it helps them get good-sounding results (something that can be frustratingly difficult to

BY CLIVE accomplish when you’re startYOUNG ing out and learning on your Clive Young is own). The Audient EVO Start the content Recording Bundle easily lives director of Pro up to its name.

Sound News.

Audient EVO • https://evo.audio

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studio products

1

1 SSL Ultraviolet, SiX Channel 500 Series Modules

Solid State Logic has added two modular processors to the 500 Series module range: the stereo Ultraviolet Stereo Equaliser (UV-EQ) and SiX Channel (SiX CH). Ultraviolet takes the minimum phase-shift Violet stereo EQ section from SSL’s Fusion analog processor and puts it into the 500 series format. Building on Fusion’s Violet EQ, Ultraviolet adds two dedicated mid-bands, with precision Focus mode for added EQ control. SiX Channel is a single-width 500 Series channel strip using the SuperAnalogue processing features from SSL’s SiX console, including Mic-pre, low and high frequency EQ, as well as the single knob compressor.

2

Empirical Labs Arousor Rev 3 Plug-In

3

Focal Alpha Evo Monitors

2

The latest version (Rev 3) of the Arousor compressor plug-in introduces more tones based on its Distressor hardware counterpart. Arousor is the only native Distressor plug-in produced by Empirical Labs itself. The new edition adds two Opto (A and B) compression modes, based on the time constants of a classic and a modern LA-2A compressor. Other additions to Rev 3 include a Soft Clipping Expert panel, which allows for introducing more second harmonic distortion and an ability to place the compressor input before or after the soft-clipping circuit; and a Listen mode, to hear what frequencies are affecting the Detector Sidechain EQ’s compression detector.

Focal has updated its Alpha range with two new Alpha Evo monitors, the Alpha 50 Evo and Alpha 65 Evo, intended for use in mixing, mastering, DJ work and broadcast. The Alpha 50 Evo and Alpha 65 Evo each use an aluminum inverted dome tweeter to provide sound dispersion, as well as a recycled carbon Slatefiber cone, whose large laminar port helps limit distortion noise. The Alpha 50 Evo and Alpha 65 Evo replace the existing Focal Alpha 50 and 65 models. Alpha 80 models are still available.

3

4

System 4 TC6000Electronic Native Plug-Ins

TC Electronic has launched a line of System 6000 Native plugins for mixing and mastering, aiming to bring the sound of the company’s long-running hardware processor as a series of native DAW plug-ins. The line includes MD3 Native, an EQ, 3-band compressor/expander and true-peak limiter; MD4 HD Native, a true-stereo high-definition space reverb; Nonlin2 Native, an envelope reverb; VSS3 Native, a virtual space simulation reverb; VSS4 HD Native, an EQ, 5-band compressor and true-peak limiter. System 6000 Native plugins are compatible with all major DAWs and deliver full support for standard DAW automation and project recall.

The plugs are available individually or as a bundle.

5

5 PreSonus Studio One v5.2 DAW

PreSonus Studio One 5 Professional has been updated to v5.2 with more than 30 new features and improvements. Among them, extensive support for articulations in orchestral libraries has arrived in Studio One via Sound Variations, with a powerful mapping editor that provides tools for managing complex articulation maps. Studio One’s Score View has been updated with the addition of drum notation and tablature.

For performers, the relatively new Show Page has gained a new feature, the Arranger Track, letting users experiment on the fly with new arrangements.

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prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

live products

1 Peavey Electronics Aureus Mixer

1

Now shipping, Peavey’s Aureus digital mixer offers a 10-inch multi-touch display and 59 dedicated controls that provide direct access to most critical functions with a single touch. Aureus offers a selection of presets for channels, EQ, gate, compressor, scenes and shows, and additionally allows users to save and store presets, scenes or an entire mix onto a USB drive. The onboard dock allows a tablet to be placed as a second screen, so users can monitor the mix while adjusting a specific channel or separate group on the mixer.

2 Celestion 32-Ohm AN2075 Compact Array Driver

Celestion has unveiled a 32-ohm version of the AN2075, a low-profile 2-inch compact array driver intended for use for large-scale mini-array applications that require multiple drivers connected together. As with the rest of the Celestion AN range of neodymium loudspeakers, the 32-ohm AN2075 driver uses an efficient neodymium magnet assembly and features a stiff, light aluminum cone that remains rigid to higher frequencies, aiming to deliver a smoother response. The driver’s square mounting frame facilitates close coupling of multiple units, and its half-roll elastomer surround provides damping for unwanted resonances and sustained centering control at extremes of excursion. The driver is weather resistant for outdoor applications.

3

2

Studio Technologies 5422A Dante Audio Engine

Positioned as a solution for creating partyline (PL) intercom circuits when used with Dante-compatible products, the new Model 5422A Dante Intercom Audio Engine offers an Auto Mix function for enhanced partyline and audio mixing applications. The unit also includes expanded network connectivity, with three gigabit Ethernet ports, aiming to meet the needs of larger, multi-network installations. In addition to creating “virtual” PL intercom circuits, the unit can provide other Dante-based on-air, talent cueing (IFB), audio mixing, and specialized interfacing resources. The Model 5422A is available in two versions: one with 32 input and output channels, and the other with 64.

3

4

4 Renkus-Heinz CA/CX121M Stage Monitor

The company’s new C Series compact stage monitor is available in passive (CX121M) and powered (CA121M) models. The single 12-inch stage monitor/multipurpose loudspeaker is constructed to offer identical horizontal and vertical off-axis performance to allow greater freedom of movement for artists without changes in frequency response. The CA/CX121M can be used as a pole-mounted side fill (using the optional pole adapter) or sound reinforcement system without having to rotate or reconfigure the drive unit. The UBRKT/CT121M mounting yoke is available to facilitate permanent installation configurations. The CA/CX121M utilizes a 12-inch coaxial transducer mounted in a compact, black or white durable plywood cabinet.

5

PK Sound Trinity Install Line Array Element

5

Trinity Install line array elements are an installation-focused version of PK Sound’s flagship Trinity large-format line array. Intended for performance installations and live event spaces, they are available in all-black enclosures. Trinity Install’s SPL and clarity can be controlled with variable coverage in both the vertical and horizontal planes.

Intelligibility is improved by directing the system’s energy away from reflective surfaces as coverage is adjusted to meet the architectural design of the venue. The vertical angles are set during installation using a fixed rigging system, while horizontal angles are locked into one of 22 symmetric or asymmetric configurations throughout a line source.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

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PEOPLE SOUNDING BOARD

NETWORKING IN THREE DIMENSIONS

F

or networking to be effective, you need a simple way to document, store, and access contact information, your notes, and records of past correspondence. You need an organized Customer Relationship Management system, or CRM for short.

A CRM system is more than a contact list in a spreadsheet. It’s more than an address book. It’s more than LinkedIn or your Instagram account. It’s a dynamic system that has structure and logic.

A good CRM system is able to make complex connections. It can help you map who knows who, who works where, where you met some-

while your closest friends and family are at the top, level five. The goal is to slowly move strangers up the ladder to higher levels.

For example, people you read about in trade publications and who you want to meet one day rank at zero. People you casually meet once or exchange business cards with are a one. People who know your name and who know a little bit about you are a two; twos are casual. To bump up to a three, you have to have a lot of interactions, but they don’t all need to be positive; they just have to be familiar. That guy you don’t actually like at the office, he might just be your three! Fours are people

When you systematically organize your contact database, you become a super connector. When an associate asks you if you know a great drum tech from Philly who’s a good hang, a vegan and available, you’ve got that. one, and how all the various companies you know are interrelated.

A great CRM system is flexible enough to grow with you over space and time while giving you the ability to think three-dimensionally.

A great CRM design allows you to sort contacts based on the degree of the relationship, to pivot on mutual overlapping shared interests and to filter based on occupation.

Since the whole point of effective networking is turning contacts into relationships, you need to incorporate a sliding scale that helps you track the degree of the relational bonds. Think of this like a game. Complete strangers start off at level zero,

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whose company you genuinely enjoy. And fives are your inner circle. Build this scale into your CRM system and you have a foundation for what networking success looks like.

As your system evolves over time, it becomes more intelligent and robust. You’re moving contacts along two axes. You are measuring quantitatively how well you know someone and then qualitatively how you know them. As you move strangers from zeros to fours and fives, you’re also learning about what makes them tick and you’re filling out their interest profile. The sheer act of doing this allows you to deepen the relationship simply by sharing things that are meaningful and useful.

BY MIKE DIAS Mike Dias writes and speaks about What Entertainers Can Teach Executives and Why Nobody Likes Networking. He is the executive director for the In-Ear Monitor International Trade Organization and the vice president of sales for Earthworks Audio.

He loves to trade stories, talk shop, and hear about your networking successes and failures! mike@inearmonitor.org.

The third axis that you need to track is occupation—as it relates to your professional world. Your position requires you to interact with many similar yet different job titles. List them all and add them to your database system. If you’re a front of house sound engineer, your database will be full of tour managers, monitor engineers, lighting directors, production managers, and many other FOH engineers. Be very specific with occupations that relate to your world and be broader the further you get from your center.

When you start to organize by profession, you see just how small and limited your world really is. We group together, so if you really want to get good at this, master your world first and then become an explorer. Jump universes and go to different pockets. Hang out with people outside of work completely. That’s why whenever anyone asks me for career advice, the first and only thing I say is to double down on your hobbies and extracurricular activities. Those will always be your biggest assets over the course of your lifetime.

Putting all this together, when you systematically organize your contact database on these three dimensions, you can contextualize anything and you become a super connector. When an associate asks you if you know a great drum tech from Philly who’s a good hang, a vegan and available, you’ve got that. When someone asks you for a guy who knows IEMs and who loves barbecue chicken and cacti and will talk your ear off about Why Nobody Likes Networking and What Entertainers Can Teach Executives, you know right where to look!

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

view from the top

SMOOTH SAILING FOR OCEAN WAY AUDIO

Allen Sides, CEO, Ocean Way Audio

ALLEN SIDES, CEO, OCEAN WAY AUDIO

BY TAMARA STARR

A

llen Sides may be most closely associated with the various Ocean Way Recording studios where artists and producers like Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Green Day, Beck, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Mary J. Blige and more recorded classic albums, but the famed audio entrepreneur started out by building loudspeakers at age 13. In fact, his first studio began as a garage (yes, located near the beach on Ocean Way) where he demoed speakers for clients.

“I built the studio not so much because I intended to record music per se, but I wanted impressive sounding material to make my speakers sound good,” he said. “I ended up recording about 50 albums in that garage, but I sold a lot of speakers as well.” Nearly 50 years later, more than a billion albums sold were recorded at one of the multiple Ocean Way studios over the years, and Sides himself now has more than 1,000 album credits to his name. While others might take it easy after all that, Sides is still in the audio business and building speakers as the CEO of Ocean Way Audio.

Ocean Way Audio has been designing monitoring systems for the last 10 years, initially with “extremely huge speakers,” but today providing speakers in a variety of sizes that evoke the same sonic picture of those larger systems. Likewise, the company’s clientele has expanded beyond the realm of recording studios. “A very big direction for us is Atmos theaters.

These are high-end systems and we do these all over

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

the world—it is a very big market for us,” Sides said.

“We also have a large audiophile clientele, and we do a lot of in-home recording setups.”

The company still does a lot of custom work for clients with very specific needs and will manufacture a speaker for a particular project. “That is something we are always doing—just creating new products,” he said. “As far as manufacturing goes, we do all of our cabinetry in our own plant, then it all comes back here to our warehouse in Burbank, where everything is assembled, balanced and adjusted before it is packed and shipped out to customers.”

When it comes to design and engineering, there are three main figures involved: Bruce Marien, director, Engineering, who has been the chief engineer at Ocean Way Recording for 36 years; Cliff Henricksen, director, New Technology, and an MIT physicist; and Ernie Woody, director, Production & Operations, who manages the production and follow-through along with the sales team.

With the economy always changing, Sides said that his company’s biggest markets today are residential home studios and theaters, though it also does a fair number of large-scale private theater installations. “We are making greater headway into the professional home and project studio environments and making even smaller high-performance speakers,” he said. “The premise of the smaller speakers was that we needed something even smaller than our HR5s that you could put next to a computer monitor. The idea is that you could wear them like headphones if you chose to. The

crossover is so symmetrical that you could be listening from 1 foot away and not hear two separate components—there is one sound and the crossover is inaudible.

“But we are also doing larger Atmos projects,” Sides continued. “We recently finished a 48-channel surround system at the Riviera Theater, which is at the center of the Santa Barbara Film Festival. The system features speakers that are 11 feet high and 7 feet wide, and the front screen channels are +/-1 dB from 19 kHz to 20 Hz each channel. I don’t think anybody has done this before, and it is a revolutionary system.”

Whether Ocean Way Audio is creating massive or miniscule speakers, the key factor uniting its products can’t be found in the hardware—it’s Sides’ insights, experience and firsthand knowledge, which inform the creation of each speaker and its particular sound. “As an engineer, producer and studio owner, I understand what something should sound like from an engineer’s standpoint,” he said. “I think I have a different perspective than someone who is strictly technical, even though I am also technical. In the end, it is all about whether the sound is giving me something that I need emotionally and whether I am satisfied. Since I am so emotionally involved with the sound of our products, they have to sound great. I have no interest in mediocrity and I want our speakers to sound insanely good. That is my thing, and I guess that’s the essence of our culture.”

Ocean Way Audio • www.oceanwayaudio.com

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sound people Meyer Sound Germany has been renamed Meyer Sound Europe. Under the leadership of managing director Wolfgang Leute, Meyer Sound Europe is responsible for sales and support activities throughout Wolfgang Leute Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Concurrently, director of international sales Scott Gledhill will now focus exclusively on the Asia-Pacific region.

With Meyer Sound since 2016, Leute brings more Scott Gledhill than three decades of experience in pro audio to his new role, including high-level sales and distribution management positions with Shure and beyerdynamic. Gledhill joined the Meyer Sound global sales team more than 32 years ago, pioneering Meyer’s early expansion into Mexico and Latin America, developing the company’s education program and playing a key role in establishing its European distributor network.

Apogee Electronics has named Rich Nevens vice president of sales and customer success. In this role, Nevens will join the executive team to lead sales, channel marketing and customer success worldwide. Nevens Rich Nevens brings with him 30 years of experience leading worldwide sales and solutions teams at Euphonix, Avid and most recently as vice president sales and marketing at Focusrite Pro. He brings years of established relationships with U.S. dealers and global distributors, as well as strong relationships with studios and enterprise customers.

Shure has promoted four executives to vice president and senior vice president roles at the company: Mike Hader has been promoted to vice president, global software, in the product development division; Pat Knoll has been

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Canadian Musician and Canadian Music Trade magazines.

Mike Hader

Pat Knoll

Meg Madison

Bruce Skof

DCR Nashville has brought on industry veteran Paul Owen as president. Owen brings with him more than 40 years of music industry and production experience. He was previously vice president of Thunder Audio and most recently Paul Owen general manager of Solotech Nashville, having built a career by working his way up on the road, mixing for the biggest names in touring.

Owen’s addition comes as the full-service event production company prepares to expand its facility.

promoted to vice president, global facilities; Meg Madison has been promoted to senior vice president of human resources; and Bruce Skof has been promoted to senior vice president of corporate finance.

Hader joined Shure in 2019 with more than 30 years of experience at such companies as Continental Automotive, Zebra Technologies, Motorola and Nokia. Knoll came to the company in 2005 and leads an international team that oversees all Shure properties worldwide. Madison, who also joined Shure in 2005, oversees total rewards, training and development, talent acquisition, HR information systems and Shure’s HR business partner team. Skof arrived at Shure in 2000 and will additionally retain his current post as CFO.

Recording industry veteran Zoe Thrall has taken on the role of director of studio operations at Las Vegas’ The Hideout Recording Studio.

Beginning her career at the Power Station Studios in New York as both an assistant Zoe Thrall engineer and in studio management, Thrall additionally worked with Little Steven Van Zandt as an engineer and as a musician in his band. Thrall went on to become president of Power Station Studios, as well as the manager at Hit Factory Studios in NYC, before arriving in Las Vegas in 2005 to oversee the opening and operations of Studio at the Palms.

PK Sound has named Andrew King to the role of global senior brand support. King will lead ongoing marketing and communications initiatives while also supporting colleagues and outside Andrew King partners as a key part of the company’s brand team.

King comes to PK Sound following a lengthy stint as editor-in-chief of numerous Canadian AVL and music industry media properties, including Professional Sound, Professional Lighting & Production,

Gibson Brands has promoted Cesar Gueikian to the newly created position of brand president. Gueikian joined Gibson in 2018 as part of the “new” leadership team, where he has focused on multiple duties, including Cesar Gueikian brand building for the various brands—studio monitor brand KRK, amplifier brand Mesa/Boogie, and the guitar brands Gibson, Epiphone, Kramer and Steinberger. In his new role, Gueikian will take on additional responsibilities and strategic brand management.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

DANNY OLESH

CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER, MACKIE Q: What is your new position, and what does it entail?

Danny Olesh: I’ve assumed the role of CTO (chief technical officer), a position that’s defined in a variety of ways across industries and organizations. This is a new role at Mackie and my charge here is to develop a technology roadmap, to help the teams interpret that roadmap with ways to drive innovative and exciting products for our customers, and in the process to work across the product development teams to assess, specify and deploy design platforms that will allow us to get to market faster and more efficiently.

Q: How has your background prepared you for your new role?

It’s the experience I have had over the past 40 years that enables me to fit into a position such as this. My experience—from using and selling audio equipment in a professional environment to designing successful products and managing teams of R&D in past roles—along with the passion I have for technology has always made the shaping of future needs feel natural. For the past 12 months (during our lockdown in Australia), I spent a significant amount of time with content creation hardware and software. The shift in consumer demands in

60

second

interview

Q: What are your short- and long-term goals?

Within Mackie, the short-term goals are to implement advanced new technologies as fast as we can in new products so users can get the most benefit from them.

From a personal point of view, and as a long-term goal, I just love to see the gear we create here in users’ hands, as they smile and comment how much they love using the products that we spent time and effort creating so they could enjoy the result. Bringing the technologies to the table to achieve these results is the short- and long-term goal.

Q: What is the greatest challenge you face?

Time to learn more is one of the main challenges I can think of. Sometimes we forget to stop and learn, and I am very motivated to enhance my knowledge constantly. Keeping up with the ever-changing ways products are used and creating workflows that both enhance and simplify are always challenges and a balance that’s not easy to achieve. It often means you need to let go and remove yourself from the normal ways you’ve been controlling or using a specific project, and try to view it from a different perspective.

I’m an

AES

member.

Keeping up with the ever-changing ways products are used and creating workflows that both enhance and simplify are always challenges and a balance that’s not easy to achieve.

Are you?

both the pro audio and prosumer markets meant technologies that very few users were previously concerned about were front and center. Understanding these and future technologies in this space was a very important part of my role.

Q: What new marketing initiatives are we likely to see from the company?

I can’t be specific here for obvious reasons, but what I can say is that you will see some great new products from Mackie later in this year and next spanning from the creator space to the professional space.

So many new technologies are becoming available in this space, while at the same time the power of processing continues to increase. The intelligence that can be added to new products is a very exciting aspect for me.

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

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Join me DORA FILIPOVIC

www.aes.org/join

Sound Editor, Sound Designer, Student AES Educational Foundation 2020 L-Acoustics Dr. Christian Heil Future of Sound Scholar

REBLOOMING IN BROOKLYN

BY STEVE HARVEY

I

n late 2019, after 10 years away from music, inspiration suddenly struck Kieran McGee and two dozen songs poured out. Following months of recording during lockdown and email collaborations, Broken Blossoms, his fifth album, was released Jan. 6.

It’s easy to feel like an underachiever when talking to McGee. Inspired by older brother Travis, he was playing drums and guitar by his early teens, soon adding other instruments. He recorded his first album, Left for Dead, at age 14.

His next, Ash Wednesday, was recorded two years later at legendary Sun Studio in Memphis.

McGee tracks most of the instruments, but guests abound on his albums, which recall the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt. The Band’s Levon Helm, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, Cat Popper (Ryan Adams), Jason Roberts (Nora Jones), PSN alum Christopher Walsh and members of the North Mississippi All-Stars and Ollabelle have all made appearances. Jeremiah Lockwood has played on all five albums.

From the beginning of 2020 to the summer was the recording, so it turned into my coronavirus album, unintentionally.

KIERAN MCGEE (Full disclosure: Kieran’s father, music journalist and author David McGee, works for Future, and Kieran’s brother Travis McGee previously worked for PSN’s publisher.)

From his home in Brooklyn, McGee talks about the road to Broken Blossoms and self-releasing an album on the day the Capitol was stormed.

ON RECORDING DURING THE PANDEMIC From the beginning of 2020 to the summer was the recording, so it turned into my coronavirus

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Kieran McGee

album, unintentionally. I have a full studio at home with a couple of Focusrite interfaces daisychained. Everything’s ready to go, so I can just plug in and focus on the song. I’ve been doing this since the 4-track cassette days in the ’90s, so I’m used to working on my own and layering. I’ve been using Logic Pro since before Apple bought it. The workflow is so much easier compared to how I used to do it.

My studio is just a bedroom, so not the best acoustics, but the acoustic songs sound good to me and the room doesn’t sound that bad. Everyone I collaborated with sent tracks back and forth to me. I would have preferred to record it live in a real studio—that was my original plan. That will be the next record, fingers crossed.

Then I was getting the money together to have it mixed. Tim Hatfield, who also worked on my fourth record, The Golden Age of Paranoia, mixed all the full-band stuff. I mixed the acoustic songs because there wasn’t much to mix.

I put him on the record wondering if anyone would notice that it was anyone different singing.

ON PREVIOUS RELEASES Once I started learning guitar and drums, I started making my own records on cassette, mailing them out. Clean Cut Records got hold of one and wanted to put it out, so we went into the studio. I was 14 when I recorded Left for Dead and 15 when it came out.

I recorded Ash Wednesday in 1997. The label folded, so it sat on the shelf. I put it out in 2000, which is when I hooked up with Chris Walsh.

We lived down the block from each other and started making demos in his apartment. He helped me get my next deal, for the Anonymous album, with Steve Rosenthal, who owned [legendary, now defunct NYC studio] The Magic Shop. Chris has been a huge champion of my music over the years. He’s on two songs on the new record.

ON HIS OLDER BROTHER

ON RELEASING AN ALBUM ON JAN. 6

We’ve been playing music since we were teenagers—and fighting the whole time about it.

But I wouldn’t have played guitar if it wasn’t for him. He got a guitar and I started playing drums, then I started stealing his guitar and learning it.

Travis sang on a couple of the songs on this record. His voice sounds exactly like mine, so

I picked the worst possible date to put Broken Blossoms out. I got up early and thought, “I’m not going to look at the internet, I’m not going to get distracted.” I put the album out on Spotify, YouTube and all that, clicked on CNN and ... oh my god! So I call it a soft release.

Kieran McGee • https://spoti.fi/2QtCsHT

prosoundnetwork.com | May 2021

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