MIX 548 - August 2022

Welcome to the AUGUST 2022 issue of

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Tracking Wilco’s Cruel Country ★ Top Studio Headphones ★ Classic Tracks: ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ August 2022 \\ mixonline.com \\ $6.99

THE NEW HOME OF > Dead & Company: Keeping It Live > RiseNY Thrills In Times Square > The Killers Rampage Across the U.K. > DAS Lara Debuts MUSIC PRODUCTION • LIVE SOUND • SOUND FOR PICTURE

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X I M , E R O C S , E T I R W IS F L L A IN W M A J N BE

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AT Y B L O H’S D

YP A L P S MO

EN

REVIEWED

Focal Alpha Twin Evo Monitor PSP Impressor/Saturator Plug-ins PreSonus DM-7 Drum Mic Set GIK Acoustics Sound Blocks

FEATURES

28 Composer Benjamin Wallfisch’s Dolby Atmos Playpen

BY LILY MOAYERI

32 Wilco Live in the Loft for Cruel Country

BY BARBARA SCHULTZ

PHOTO: Jay Blakesberg

36 Tech Spotlight: Top Studio Headphones

08.22 Contents

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BY MIX STAFF

Volume 46, Number 8

TECHNOLOGY

MUSIC

LIVE SOUND

38 New Products: Studio

12 Mixer Jesse Ray

20 Tour Profile: Dead & Company: Keeping It Live

and Live Sound

40 Review: Focal Alpha Twin Evo Monitor

BY MIKE LEVINE

42 Review: PreSonus

DM-7 Drum Mic Set

BY ROB TAVAGLIONE

44 Review: PSPaudioware Impressor/Saturator Plug-ins

BY MICHAEL COOPER

Ernster Builds Atmos Studio With NS10s

BY SARAH JONES

16 News & Notes:

… Trail of Dead in Quad; The Village Studio F Now Atmos

18 Classic Tracks: “Hungry

Like the Wolf,” Duran Duran’s Breakthrough Hit

PRESENTED BY

BY CLIVE YOUNG

24 Ticket To Rise: Sound Design Drives NYC Thrill Ride

BY CLIVE YOUNG

26 News & Notes: The Killers Tour the U.K.; DAS Lara Makes Live Debut; Prince Mural Block Party

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BY ROBYN FLANS

48 Review: GIK Acoustics Sound Blocks

DEPARTMENTS

BY BARRY RUDOLPH

8 From the Editor: Why

On the Cover: Composer Benjamin Wallfisch has built The Mix Lab, a flexible Dolby Atmos-certified studio within the larger The Scoring Lab complex, Santa Monica, Calif. A dual-operator Avid S6 console provides control, with the fullrange 9.1.6 monitoring system by ATC. Photo: Taiyo Watanabe.

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We Call It ‘Immersive’

10 Current: T Bone

and Bob Dylan; Bil VornDick Passes

50 Open Channel: Warning, Stability Ahead

BY CRAIG ANDERTON

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Mix, Volume 46, Number 8 (ISSN 0164-9957) is published monthly by Future US, Inc., 130 West 42nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10036. Periodical Postage Paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mix, PO Box 8518, Lowell, MA 01853. One-year (12 issues) subscription is $35. Canada is $40.

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MIX SMARTBRIEF

Vol. 46 Number 8

August 2022

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FOLLOW US twitter.com/Mix_Magazine facebook/MixMagazine CONTENT VP/Content Creation Anthony Savona Content Directors Tom Kenny, thomas.kenny@futurenet.com Clive Young, clive.young@futurenet.com Senior Content Producer Steve Harvey, sharvey.prosound@gmail.com Content Manager Anthony Savona, anthony.savona@futurenet.com Technology Editor, Studio Mike Levine, techeditormike@gmail.com Technology Editor, Live Steve La Cerra, stevelacerra@verizon.net Contributors: Craig Anderton, Barry Rudolph, Robyn Flans, Rob Tavaglione, Michael Cooper, Sarah Jones, Barbara Schultz, Lily Moayeri Production Manager Nicole Schilling Managing Design Director Nicole Cobban Design Directors Will Shum and Lisa McIntosh ADVERTISING SALES VP/Market Expert, AV/Consumer Electronics & Pro Audio Adam Goldstein, adam.goldstein@futurenet.com, 212-378-0465 Janis Crowley, janis.crowley@futurenet.com Debbie Rosenthal, debbie.rosenthal@futurenet.com Zahra Majma, zahra.majma@futurenet.com SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE To subscribe, change your address, or check on your current account status, go to mixonline.com and click on About Us, email futureplc@computerfulfillment.com, call 888-266-5828, or write P.O. Box 8518, Lowell, MA 01853.

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Current From the Editor

Why We Call It “Immersive” Words matter. That seems like such a cliche way to lead off an editor’s note that I’m just a half-beat away from hitting Delete myself before Clive does it for me. But it’s true. And it has been particularly meaningful to me throughout my life, especially this summer.

I first learned that words matter somewhere between the ages of 4 and 5, when I was finally granted a seat at the pop-up card table to play a Scrabble foursome with one of my many brothers and my paternal grandparents, James Valentine and Ann Filz Kenny, the two funniest people alive. I quickly learned that good letters and good words would lead to a good amount of points, while big and clever words—especially those that used a 4-point H both ways on a Triple Letter Score—would lead to even more points. By using the right words, I could beat my older brother. Words meant victory! Words mattered!

Then I went to journalism school and learned that words really, really, really matter. One wrong word in the newspaper could lead to a libel suit. When reporting on a criminal trial, be sure to overuse the word “alleged,” just to be safe—meanwhile, stick to the facts. If reviewing a record, film or book, be honest, and don’t use bombastic words just for the sake of being bombastic. In Peter Jacobi’s class on Magazine Feature Writing, it was an automatic F if you misspelled a source’s name. No questions asked. Words have consequences, I learned, and thereby words matter. Names matter, too.

Then I joined Mix, well-established in the trade press and part of an “industry,” where I found that words can sometimes lead to sales! To profits! I learned that marketing-speak and branding were sometimes more effective than transparency and clear definition. The business world uses different words, I found, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s as it should be. On the flip side, I also found out in the first few months at the magazine that if a new and still-industry-unaware copy editor changed “lossy compression” to “lousy compression,” not even understanding his mistake, Mix would still get an angry phone call. Words do matter.

All of which brings me to the word “immersive.” It’s one of those terms that after a brief burst of acceptance and engagement falls just as quickly into disfavor, like the word “community” in the first wave of what was then called the World Wide Web and later became the Internet—a good word gone bad.

I happen to like the word immersive. It has three syllables, it sort of glides and rolls across the tongue, and it means exactly what you think it means when applied to audio. I’ve liked it since hearing it first whispered back around 2012, initially out of Europe with “this guy Wilfried” talking about his new company Auro, emerging from his recording studio in Holland. Then came DTS and Dolby, nearly simultaneously if I remember right. And I soon after learned from John Lancken at Fairlight that NHK

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Japan was experimenting with broadcasts in 22.1.

Immersive was the buzzword. When Mix Presents Sound for Film debuted in 2014 on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, the tagline was: Immersive Audio Post-Production. At the time, only the William Holden Theater (of the roughly 15 re-recording studios) featured immersive playback.

Our first three Tier 1 Sponsors were Dolby, DTS and Auro-3D. The post industry certainly went through its trials, and Dolby emerged dominant in North America, as it has before in other mediums, but today Sony only has three non-immersive stages and nearly everything that comes out of Hollywood features an immersive mix, and consumers don’t have to go searching to find it. It’s just there, whether streaming through Netflix or at a local Dolby Cinema. The customer doesn’t have to think about it. It’s not that way in the music industry. Not even close.

Immersive music is different from immersive film and television. No question. And I’ve been privy to every argument along the way, from the use of the center channel, to the struggle with “binaural” (a word you rarely hear in the post industry), to the small-room configuration, and ultimately to the Holy Grail of consumer headphone playback. I get it. That’s why I was so excited at the NAMM Show in June. Immersive was everywhere, with George Massenburg and Michael Romanowski talking about Alicia in the Sony booth, while Chuck Ainlay was talking about Lyle Lovett in the Dolby booth, and Bob Clearmountain detailed his immersive mix on the Joe Bonamassa album Time Clocks in the Apogee booth. It’s happening. We are living through the beginning stages of the most significant advance in audio playback since stereo. It’s frickin’ exciting!

Then I came back home, and during a call with a potential sponsor of our upcoming August 6 immersive music event at Power Station Studios/ Berklee NYC, one of the first questions was: “Will the monitor system be configured for Atmos or Sony 360 playback? Or both?” I let out a sigh as I thought, “Oh, crap. We’ve had 10 years to prepare for this in music, and we still have a long way to go.”

Then I paused and actually said, with an insider’s lament and a knowing wink, “Well….it will be immersive.” Because words matter.

Tom Kenny Co-Editor

Current // news & notes Bob Dylan ‘Ionic Original’ Recording Sells for Nearly $1.8M

By Clive Young.

London, U.K.—A one-off recording of Bob Dylan performing his iconic “Blowin’ in the Wind” on the experimental Ionic Original acetate format sold at auction in early July at Christie’s in London for $1,769,508.

The recording is on a specially modified acetate disc, dubbed an Ionic Original; the format was created by startup NeoFidelity, which is led by mega-producer T Bone Burnett. The disc is the first release by the new company and was sold by Christie’s with the express guarantee in its auction listing, “This is the only copy of Bob Dylan’s 2021 recording of ‘Blowin in the Wind’ that will ever be manufactured. No other versions of this recording will be released or sold.”

In May, Burnett spoke exclusively with Mix about the disc format, explaining that while traditional acetate discs degrade quickly over time, Ionic Original discs are acetates that are treated with a durable, imperceptible coating that has a composition similar to quartz and emerald, reportedly aiding the discs’ durability and longevity.

The 2021 recording is reportedly the first time Dylan has recorded the song in the studio since 1962. The 3:50 track was produced by Burnett and features a band comprising Greg Leisz on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on

The NeoFidelity Ionic Original acetate of Bob Dylan performing “Blowin’ In The Wind,” seen here in Studio A at BerkleeNYC at Power Station in New York City.

violin, Dennis Crouch on bass, Don Was on bass, and Burnett on electric guitar. Recorded by Michael Piersante and Rachael Moore, and mixed by Piersante, the final mix was mastered by Gavin Lurssen, and the acetate was later cut by Jeff Powell of Take Out Vinyl in Memphis, Tenn.

In preparation of the auction sale, Christie’s held a listening session for the press and potential buyers to hear the disc and performance at Power Station Studios at BerkleeNYC in New York City in mid-June. As a personal aside, this writer found the performance to be stellar, with the voice of Dylan 60 years on from the original recording providing additional weight and veritas to the now-familiar verses.

In a statement following the auction, Burnett noted, “Marshall McLuhan said that a medium surrounds a previous medium and turns the previous medium into an art form, as film did with novels, as television did with film, as the Internet has done with television, and as digital has done with analog. With Bob Dylan’s new version of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ our first Ionic Original archival analog disc, we have entered and aim to help develop a music space in the fine arts market. I trust and hope it will mean as much to whomever acquired it today at Christie’s Exceptional Sale as it does to all of us who made it, and that they will consider it and care for it as a painting or any other singular work of art.” n

Nashville Producer/Engineer Bil VornDick Passes at Age 72 Nashville producer and engineer Bil VornDick, whose clients included Alison Krauss, Doc Watson and Charlie McCoy, among countless others, died on July 5 at age 72, less than a week after being diagnosed with cancer.

Renowned for his recording studio skills, particularly in folk, bluegrass, Americana and acoustic music circles, VornDick worked on albums that

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earned more than 40 Grammy nominations and nine wins.

Raised in northern Virginia, VornDick sold some songs to Cedarwood Publishing on Nashville’s Music Row while still a student and playing guitar in rock bands. Chet Atkins urged him to move to Nashville and helped him enroll in Belmont University. In the early 1970s, prior to relocating, he worked at the Washington Star newspaper in Washington, D.C., where he met his wife, Patricia.

Country superstar Marty Robbins heard VornDick working on demos for Loretta Lynn’s publishing company and hired him as his studio’s chief engineer. He subsequently became the chief engineer at Stargem Studio, the founder of The Music Shop, and the owner of Music Row Audio and Mountainside Music Group Productions.

In Nashville, VornDick campaigned to save RCA Studio A from demolition, promoted popularity charts for roots music, championed health insurance for music people and advocated for intellectual property rights for audio engineers. He served two terms as chairman of the Nashville chapter of the AES and worked with numerous other pro audio organizations. n —Robert K. Oermann/Music Row, with additions by Robert Clyne

PHOTO: Michael James Flugelbinder

Music Mixer Jesse Ray Ernster at the sweet spot in his new Yamaha NS10-based, Apogee-controlled, console-less, Dolby Atmos studio.

Mixing It Up With Jesse Ray Ernster Grammy-Winning Engineer Builds Atmos Studio Around Beloved NS10s

By Sarah Jones

M

usic and recording are imprinted in Jesse Ray Ernster’s DNA. Born in Winnipeg and raised in the Twin Cities, he inherited his deep love of music and production from his father, a recording engineer, and his mother, a singer-songwriter.

Ernster was all-in at an early age, bouncing tracks on his cassette deck and building toy stages outfitted with flashlights and tiny P.A.s built from Logitech computer speakers. He spent his high school years in his dad’s studio, recording his rock bands and honing his production chops.

He went on to teach engineering and mixing courses at the Minneapolis Media Institute, located

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in the old Flyte Tyme Studios, recording bands in his spare time in a rented lakefront cabin that he transformed into a multiroom studio.

Ernster made the leap to Los Angeles in 2017.

Those first few years were a hustle, teaching music lessons, performing in wedding bands, offering editing and Auto-Tuning services, and composing for film and TV (including work on Ripley’s Believe It or Not!).

His trajectory took a turn when a chance encounter with Kanye West led to a gig engineering West’s Jesus Is King and Donda, which earned Ernster his first Grammy Awards.

Since then, he’s become a first-call mixer of

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A-list artists, winning a Grammy for his work on Burna Boy’s Twice as Tall and gaining accolades for his contributions to Doja Cat’s smash hit “Woman” and other tracks from her Grammywinning album Planet Her. Between sessions, he launched a plug-in company and built a one-ofa-kind Dolby Atmos rig.

I’m just going to jump right in to the legendary donut story. You had just landed in L.A., and you were searching for a gig...

I applied at every studio in town, sent resumes out, called multiple times. Nothing was working, nobody was hiring. I thought, “I have to hone in

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PHOTO: Michael James Flugelbinder

Two key pieces of gear in Ernster’s studio, one hardware and one software: The Apogee Symphony MkII + Atmos remote, at left, and the Mixland Rubber Band Compressor V2, which he co-developed.

on what I do, and I feel like I’m a bold, hyperactive guy. I’ve got to do something quirky.”

I printed out these full-color resumes in comic sans font and taped them to the tops of boxes of donuts. I filled up my Jeep, floor to ceiling, with boxes, and brought them to every single studio in the valley. Finally, at the end of the day, it worked, at NRG. Jillian, the manager there, said, “That’s incredibly cool. When can you start?”

Fast-forward to a session at Nightbird. You were working with Tgya.

I got a random call to go in and sub engineer a session for Tyga. Then Kanye came in. He was carrying his MacBook, and he was like, “I want to play you guys some of the new album.”

He played us a bit of the unreleased material, and I thought, “Man, these are great records.

I love it.” It was one of those “L.A. moments,” the once-in-a-lifetime encounters that happen in this city that I had always heard about. I kept thinking, “I have to say something. I have to work with this guy.” He hung out there for a few hours while I worked up the courage to do the unthinkable: leave my chair, overstep my role, and approach the icon known as Kanye West. My mind was racing with the insane dilemma: “Do I say something? I shouldn’t say anything. I could get blacklisted.”

Finally, I thought, “What the hell? I have to go for it.” But he had already grabbed his laptop and was leaving the studio. I impulsively jumped up and followed him out of the room. I kind of cornered him at the end of the hall and said, “Hey, man, I loved what I heard in there. I really respect what you do. I’d love to come work with you.”

He froze, he turned his head and looked at me ... I thought, “Man, I’m about to be decked, or he’s going to call me out, and they’re going to get me out of here.” Then he said, “Okay, cool. Give me

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your number.”

They flew me to Chicago the next day. We went to Uganda, we recorded on the Nile River.

We recorded in a tent; you could see hippos and alligators down below our recording area. We went on a safari with Kanye and his family. It was an unbelievable experience.

Would you say that set your career on a new arc?

It was absolutely the first domino to fall, but it wasn’t instantaneous. I had to work really hard to leverage the Kanye opportunity into gaining recognition and other work. I was under NDA, and the album hadn’t yet come out, so I was quite limited in the promotional reach I had to acquire other clients and projects.

Ultimately, I met with the Bad Habit management label and they placed me with UMI and Burna Boy as clients right away. I mixed Burna Boy’s Grammy-nominated African Giant LP, as well as a bunch of UMI songs that have gone on to rack up hundreds of millions of streams.

Let’s talk about your studio. It’s in your home.

Do you work mostly in the box?

I am all in the box now. And to my ear, that is not a compromise in quality whatsoever. There are no limitations to the sonic capabilities of plug-in technology these days. In fact, there’s much more flexibility than ever before, and it’s all recallable.

I understand that you designed the acoustic treatment?

Yes. These are large 27-inch tube traps inspired by the ASC isothermal tube traps. The design features an absorptive front side, diffusive back side, and an isothermal layer of loose batting insulation on the inside. When the tubes are assembled into an attack wall configuration, it separates the listener from the subspace of

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the room and creates an entirely new level of monitoring accuracy. They neutralize and control problematic sound waves all the way down into the sub frequencies, while keeping the room feeling natural and lively.

Tell me about your Atmos system. You’re a big fan of Yamaha NS10s; you have something like 10 pairs in there.

I absolutely love NS10s. It’s the speaker I learned on, so I’m quite familiar with the sonic stories they tell. The microdynamics are just superb, and their ability to reveal imbalances and resonances across the spectrum is just astonishing to me. For Atmos, the NS10s’ biggest strength is in their speaker-tospeaker imaging; they really present a convincing image when panning objects around. Plus, I’ve been experimenting with modifying the crossovers to help tame a bit of the resonances and distortion around 1.6 kHz. The mod sounds amazing.

The entire system is being run with the Apogee Symphony MkII + Atmos remote, allowing me to customize speaker layouts, switch between different monitoring and input sources, and dial in the overall calculated delay from speaker to speaker so everything stays locked in and sounding great. It’s an absolute dream rig.

I’ve heard you talk about your “no-desk movement.” How does this work?

Essentially, I have ditched the desk! Those massive, clunky desk surfaces create incredibly problematic reflections, cancellations and comb-filtering effects that ultimately provide the user with an inaccurate representation of the sound source. I’ve spent some time in a few hi-fi listening rooms where there’s nothing between the listener and the speakers, and it’s an unbelievably pure experience. I wanted to recreate that. I wanted to minimize the guesswork

and translation issues I was encountering, so I ditched the desk and adopted the “lapdesk,” which is basically a keyboard and mouse that sit in my lap. The translation is a night-and-day difference, meaning that the choices I make in the studio sound the same when I check in the car or on AirPods.

Let’s switch to the right brain. How do you balance serving the artist’s creative vision and your ideas?

I definitely have an aesthetic that I go for, because I am a fan of big, clean, classic recordings: Dire Straits, James Taylor, The Wallflowers, Pink Floyd. At the same time, I’m also quite obsessed with harmonic texture, growling saturation, and crunchy vibe when applied tastefully. It’s the marriage of these two worlds—clean and distorted—that creates a captivating aesthetic experience for me as a listener and creator.

With that in mind, it’s not always my role to make big decisions in the mixing stage; a lot of the time, those sonic choices have already been decided. It’s about what the artist wants, and I’m ultimately happy to serve them in any creative capacity.

informing some of the CGI treatment in the music video.

Let’s talk about the Rubber Band Compressor.

How did you get into the plug-in business?

I’ve teamed up with Eddie Lucciola, the creator of Kiive Audio. He codes the Mixland plugins, and I handle the conceptualizing, content marketing, and the business side of it. We’ve built six plug-ins together now, and have a bunch more coming out, including the Rubber Band Compressor V2, which just launched at NAMM. We completely rebuilt it from the ground up

Tell me about Doja Cat. Did the team approach you?

I got a DM from Yeti Beats, her executive producer. He said, “I’ve got this record for Doja Cat that we need mixed. It’s kind of an Afrobeat thing. We heard what you did on African Giant, and we’re all about it. Would you like to try it out on spec?” I said, “Yes! Let’s go!” I got the files from him, we spoke about the direction and the vision, and I went for it.

And yes, I absolutely took some liberties on that one! [laughs] I completely swapped out the kick drum and really brightened up the vocals quite a bit. I also added some production to the intro to provide more of a dynamic crescendo transition into the first hook—which ended up

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for unbelievable fidelity and resolution. It’s an exceptionally bouncy and snappy-sounding compressor/EQ/saturator/channel strip.

You’re really open when it comes to sharing information.

Totally. I am a proponent of building up the next generation of music-makers into a large-scale support community with a strong mentality of sharing knowledge. My colleagues, my peers, they’re my friends. I don’t believe in competitors; only friends and collaborators. There is enough work to go around. n

Music // news & notes Mastering the new album in quad at Bernie Grundman Mastering are (l-r) mastering engineer Scott Sedillo; Trail of Dead members AJ Vincent, Ben Redman, Alec Padron John Dowey, Conrad Keely and Jason Reece; and technologist KamranV.

Quad Made Easy …Trail of Dead Mixes, Masters With Free QUARK Plug-in

PHOTO: David Goggin

By Steve Harvey

B

ack in the ’70s, rock bands from Aerosmith to Frank Zappa would regularly release a quadraphonic version alongside their original stereo album. The trend was relatively short-lived, however, with the pioneering immersive format fading away due to competing codecs and the playback challenges faced by consumers.

Fast-forward 40 years, and Austin, Texasbased …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead released XI: Bleed Here Now, a two-disc quad vinyl album, on July 15. Unlike those early 4.0 releases, which were often a marketing afterthought, the band’s new album, its 11th, was conceived in quad from the get-go.

“You don’t necessarily record in quad; you mix in quad,” the band’s front man, singer, guitarist and occasional drummer Conrad Keely comments. However, the quad mix was always in mind. “We thought, when we get the strings in, we could have four mics on them,” he offers as an example. Guest vocals by Amanda Palmer and Spoon’s Britt Daniel could also be separated in the quad mix.

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“We didn’t know what it was going to sound like until the day we threw the mix up and separated it out with the four speakers,” Keely continues. “I almost had a panic attack; it really changed the possibilities of what we could do.”

Keeley, who co-produced XI: Bleed Here Now with fellow band co-founder Jason Reece and engineer and mixer Charles Godfrey, began the production process by analyzing Trail of Dead’s previous releases. “What bothered me was our propensity to try and do so many layers and get this ‘wall of mud’ sound, as I called it,” he says.

“Our challenge was, how are we going to fit all this into a stereo spectrum? Quad addressed that problem,” Keely says, noting that there are two drummers in the six-piece outfit.

It was KamranV, a Los Angeles-based engineer and arts technologist, who had recommended quad when he called Keely on his birthday last year. “I’ve known the band for over 20 years,” he says, having first met them while working at Interscope Records. “I told him about the creative opportunities of quadraphonic; he immediately got it.” Godfrey was more reticent, having been put off by the demands of Dolby Atmos—more monitors, extended speaker control, a rendering computer, and so on, he says.

KamranV had an ace up his sleeve, however. In 2018, he helped revive quad vinyl with a release on his own imprint by electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, which was packaged with a hardware QS quad decoder. He subsequently received funding from the National Endowment

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for the Arts via dublab to develop, with coder Brett Buddin, a free quad codec plug-in. QUARK has been downloaded nearly 2,000 times from his CyKiK.com website. “I want to make quad easy for anyone to do for next to no money,” he says.

Keely, too, did his research, listening to as many classic quad releases as he could. He cites Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, the Doors and Miles Davis for particular praise: “They really put some thought into the mixes and how to separate everything.”

Quad, an audio-only format with no center channel, frees the listener from having to face forward, Keely observes. “I like listening to it in the middle, facing one of the sides, with the front speakers on my right or left and the rear speakers on the opposite side,” he says.

For Trail of Dead’s new release, Keely says, “I thought, why don’t we give it an all-around immersive experience? You can go to any speaker and get a different mix. So that’s what we pushed for.”

KamranV has also created a Dolby Atmos version of XI: Bleed Here Now. “I put objects in the four corners, and that’s where the four channels go,” he says.

Mastered by Scott Sedillo and KamranV at Bernie Grundman Mastering, the new record and quadraphonic digital streams are encoded for both stereo and Regular Matrix quadraphonic sound, and are QS, QUARK, Involve and Dolby Pro Logic II–compatible. n

Music // news & notes The Village Taps Kali Audio for Atmos Upgrade

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impressive,” he says of the new monitor setup.

For the one-day tracking session, Kurlander positioned seven Neumann mics to mimic the 7.0 monitor setup and recorded a musician playing various tuned and percussion instruments. “He was playing a little flute, like an ocarina. I said,

Studio F at The Village, with Avid S6 console and Kali Audio 7.1.4 monitoring system.

PHOTO: Nate Baglyos

he Village has upgraded Studio F for Dolby Atmos work in response to the growing demand for the immersive format. The control room now sports a new Kali Audio 7.1.4 speaker system, Dolby Atmos renderer and enhancements to the previously installed Avid S6 mixing console.

Studio manager Tina Morris and the in-house engineering team added an Avid MTRX and DADman configuration and control software, plus a Mac Pro render rig, during the upgrade.

The Kali Audio setup includes seven IN-8 8-inch three-way coaxial speakers for the front, side and rear channels, four IN-5 monitors for the heights, plus three WS-12 subs, one under the S6 and two at the back of the room.

A team from Kali Audio assisted with configuration and tuning. For added flexibility, the Kali rig has been integrated into the room using Triad-Omni mounting hardware that enables the speaker system to be scaled up from stereo to immersive monitoring.

Over the years, clients such as Lucinda Williams, Nelly, Usher, Odesza, Lady Gaga and Sir Anthony Hopkins have worked in Studio F on a variety of projects, from music production to audio books. Among the first to use the new Dolby Atmos setup was multi-award-winning film and game scoring mixer John Kurlander, formerly of Abbey Road Studios. “It’s very

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‘Walk around inside the circle of 87s, and, as you get closer, lean in like you’re whispering.’

That take, in that control room, was the most impressive,” Kurlander says. “You could feel him moving and the proximity effect.”

—Steve Harvey

Classic Tracks

“Hungry Like the Wolf” Duran Duran’s Remixed Track ‘Explodes’ in the States

By Robyn Flans

F

or Duran Duran, a different pair of ears and hands provided the turning point for its career. The body parts in question belonged to producer David Kershenbaum, whose remix of “Hungry Like the Wolf”— and indeed the entire Side One of the group’s sophomore album, Rio—ignited the British band’s ascent up the American charts in 1983.

The success came after a year of the band’s music not getting radio play in the States, even as the group was scaling new heights of success at home. Much like the band’s 1981 self-titled debut, producer Colin Thurston had helmed Rio; released in May 1982, the album rose to Number 5 on the U.K. charts, but sank without a trace in the U.S. Capitol Records executives couldn’t understand the disconnect between audiences.

Duran Duran founder and keyboardist Nick Rhodes says that he actually did understand, as there was a real disparity in musical tastes at the time, which he explains in a chat from his home in London via Zoom.

“The first time I came to America, in 1981,

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we’d made our first album, and the single ‘Planet Earth’ was out and later ‘Girls on Film,’ both of which did okay on a college and cult level in America, but neither of them became big hits,” he recalls. “But when I listened to radio in America, I realized this big FM sound was very different than the sound in the U.K. because our main national station, Radio One, was still broadcasting in mono! [Laughs] “It seems ridiculous to think about it now, but we mixed our first and second album—which had the song ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’—for British radio,” he continues. “They were mixed on an Auratone speaker, which was a small square, a very simple speaker. Of course, we had stereo speakers and the big monitors in the studio, but in the center of the desk, right in the middle, was one little Auratone speaker, and we always used to check our mixes on that because we knew it would be right for Radio One. It wasn’t just us; I think a lot of the artists and engineers and producers used to use this little speaker.

“So when I came to America, I was amazed

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at the sound of radio. When the option came up to remix some tracks from the Rio album— and specifically ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’—our reaction was, ‘I understand, because your radio is so different from ours.’ Our original version, which still gets played all around the world, sounds great on radio, but it didn’t have that big FM sound.”

ADDING THE PUNCH Kershenbaum had just returned to Los Angeles after wrapping up Joe Jackson’s Night and Day for A&M in New York, when he received a call from Capitol Records VP of A&R Rupert Perry asking him to come down to the Capitol Records Tower so he could play him something.

As Kershenbaum recalls, he arrived and Perry said, “Look, I’ve got this group; they’re doing very, very well in the U.K., but we’re just not getting any traction here. Can you listen to it and see if you hear some things you can do to it?”

Perry put on “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the producer soon spotted aspects that could be

PHOTO: Andy Earl

Duran Duran, circa 1982 (l-r): John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor.

enhanced for the American market, like placing some different effects on Simon Le Bon’s vocal, as well as adding guitars and keyboards, and making the track punchier overall. Soon, he and the band found themselves in the Mix Room at Cherokee Studios, Los Angeles, working with in-house engineer George Tutko on the facility’s Neve console.

The producer remembers the band as young kids at the time, and recently, during the making of a documentary, he and Rhodes reminisced fondly about that period (including getting their food at Greenblatt’s Deli, according to Rhodes).

Kershenbaum recalls the keyboardist stating that the band members were in awe watching what he was doing during the remix, relating, “We had no idea what it was; we were just watching it.’”

Rhodes acknowledges that he was absolutely fascinated and sat beside Kershenbaum like a student. He remembers guitarist Andy Taylor was there for much of the time as well, while Le Bon was “in and out,” as were the other two members. He also found that Kershenbaum was extremely respectful of the work the band had already put into the project.

“It’s not that he changed it hugely; he just brought everything into focus for radio in America,” Rhodes says, adding that he does not believe they recorded new guitar and keyboard parts on “Hungry Like The Wolf,” but they did add some vocals on the last verse of the titletrack “Rio,” and possibly guitar on a different track. “I don’t think we really messed with ‘Hungry’ much; it was mostly David pumping it up.

“The thing that struck me in America immediately was compression,” he continues.

“Everybody uses so much more compression, which, as we know, is highly effective, but our versions were a little more airy. Suddenly, when you locked them down, that’s what gave it a lot more punch, the drums particularly. He put more sizzle on the vocal, so the vocal cut through a little more. It was really fascinating, and I’m really happy that we ended up with David, because his intention was to keep the authenticity of what we had done, but just tweak it enough to give it that necessary sparkle.”

RE-EQ, RE-COMPRESS, RE-MIX “There weren’t a lot of effects back then, but I rode the knobs to get different kinds of effects and things throughout the song to give it more dimension,” Kershenbaum adds. “It all had to be

Duran Duran co-founder Nick Rhodes, right, and producer David Kershenbaum in Los Angeles, March 2022.

hand-mixed in those days, and I just remember that board at Cherokee was extremely close to some very tall monitors. I don’t remember what the monitors were, but it was loud and it was good! [Laughs] Loud doesn’t necessarily mean good, but this was loud and good.”

He added compression and EQ to the bass and drums to give them more attack, he remembers, chuckling now at what was available back in the day compared to the present.

“There were no samples back then, of course, so it was a matter of re-EQing, re-compressing,” Kershenbaum states. “There were some delay effects and some reverb effects, but we were very limited, so we had to get it all out of compression.

“The first job was to equalize the drums and the bass, and make that really hit hard and work,” he continues. “Then you start to add the elements, because if you listen to the record, there was a lot of sequenced Roland all the way

through it, so if it didn’t have the foundation, it wasn’t going to kick the way it should. We had to build the foundation first, then re-EQ the sequenced parts and put them back in. It was really a matter of tearing it down and putting some of the beef back into the parts, building it back up.”

While the bandmembers had no idea whether this new treatment of the song was going to do the trick, they were happy to go along for the ride. “We were always open-minded as musicians and wanted to try out new things,” Rhodes says, adding that they also always had a good time doing it.

“They were fantastic people,” Kershenbaum says. “As a side note, I have never, ever seen so many pretty girls hanging around a band. When you went into that studio, you had to go through about 30 or 40 of them. They had style.”

The remix gambit worked. “They started to get a lot of club play off of ‘Wolf,’ which they hadn’t gotten before,” Kershenbaum says. “They were able to use that club play to really propel that song and finally get it on radio.”

The team ultimately remixed all five songs on Rio’s first side, with three of those reworked tracks—“Hungry Like The Wolf,” “My Own Way” and “Hold Back The Rain”—landing on a four-song EP, Carnival, released in September 1982, before the remixed Rio album and “Wolf” single bowed three months later in December.

All the components worked in their favor, but mostly, Rhodes notes, the release of the remix and ensuing exposure on MTV caused the single to “explode,” fueling its rise to Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 by the end of March 1983.

Now, nearly 40 years later, Duran Duran will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on November 5, 2022. “It’s not something we ever really thought about or expected; like most artists, you just carry on doing things and then suddenly you realize, ‘Oh, that was four decades ago and they’re sticking us in a museum,’” Rhodes says with a laugh. “They started giving us Lifetime Achievement awards about 20 years ago. I sensed they were trying to get rid of us then, but it didn’t work!”

Hardly. The original band (sans Andy Taylor) released a new studio album, Future Past, in the fall of 2021, once again hitting the top of the British charts and entering the Top 30 on the Billboard 200 album chart as well—a fitting showing for a band still hungry for success. n

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PHOTO: Jay Blakesberg

Live

PRESENTED BY

FOH engineer, tour manager and CEO of UltraSound Derek Featherstone mans a custom 1992 Gamble EX66 console nightly on Dead & Company tours, as seen here at the Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View, Calif.

Dead & Company: Keeping It Live

By Clive Young

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t just isn’t summer unless Dead & Company is coming to town. Founded in 2015, the supergroup—featuring Grateful Dead mainstays Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart; singer/guitarist John Mayer; former Allman Brothers Band bassist Oteil Burbridge; and RatDog keyboardist Jeff Chimenti—has played every year since (yes, even 2020, thanks to some early winter shows), grossing more than $300 million in the process. Live sound provider UltraSound has worked with the Grateful Dead and its spinoffs since 1978, so this year’s tour, which wrapped up in mid-July, found the Petaluma, Calif., company’s CEO, Derek Featherstone, once again mixing the band (and

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working as tour director), much as he has on Dead live projects for decades.

The group’s music has always been based around improvisation, so Featherstone in turn has an ad-libbed approach to mixing its shows.

“You do a line check in the daytime, getting your rough levels and tones on instruments, and you can get 80 percent there without the band,” he said. “The first 10 seconds of the first song is where you get the other 20 percent in place— and then you follow them. You’re definitely reacting to what they’re doing, because they’re going out on a limb to do something, so you’re running there with them or maybe holding them back a little bit because they went too far!

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You have to take a very reactive approach to mixing their improvisation—your brain gets 30 milliseconds to say, ‘Is this good or bad? Okay, make that louder, it’s good.’”

If the musicians are forever exploring new terrain, they have a familiar foundation of audio gear and personnel to support their efforts.

Featherstone mixes nightly behind a custom Gamble EX66 console—a mainstay on Dead shows since 1992, except for a few years in the late 2000s, when a digital desk was used for spinoff Furthur. “I don’t know how many bands out there these days are touring without any sort of additional support, meaning electronics or pitch correction and so on,” he said. “The fact

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as Featherstone finds it helps glue hi-hat spill and a transparent snare sound together in a more musical way.

Elsewhere, John Mayer’s guitar was captured with both a Sennheiser MD 421 and the discontinued MD 409. “The 421 couples nicely with his speakers and helps create a signature Grateful Dead tone,” Featherstone explained.

One of the more unlikely mics onstage, however, was a Schoeps MK 41, borrowed from UltraSound’s symphony miking package and applied to the Hammond Leslie cabinet. “We don’t usually cross-pollinate the symphony microphones with the rock’n’roll stuff,” he said with a laugh, “but there was this idea to put that very directional, high-end microphone on there. We control its bleed with a gating system that turns those mics off automatically, so when the instrument comes on, it’s a big, very helpful, full-frequency reproduction of it.”

While there were some monitor speakers onstage—10 Meyer Sound MJF-210 and two MJF-212A stage monitors along with two JM-1P loudspeakers for side fill and two 1100-LFC elements as drum subs—the band mostly listens to itself via in-ear monitors.

Monitor engineer Lonnie Quinn tackled mixes at stageside on an Avid S6L 32D console, with fellow monitor man Ian Dubois mixing for Hart on an Avid Profile. Most bandmembers wear two IEMs, while Mayer has been sporting Audio-Technica headphones in recent times to hear the house mix with his guitar on top.

Meanwhile, Chimenti and Weir each opt to wear a single ear monitor. “It’s a real quiet stage volume; Bob Weir has been an advocate of that forever,” said Featherstone.

With this year’s Dead & Company jaunt now over, Featherstone has relinquished his tour director and FOH engineer roles for a while, returning to “only” running an audio company with a slew of major tours out. Still, it won’t be long before he’s back in the mix position, supporting the band’s improvisational flights of fancy, no matter where they lead. “It just goes and you follow it,” he said. “It’s the same mentality that the fans have: They’re going to the show not knowing what’s going to come out of it—and we’re doing the same thing with audio!” ■ PHOTO: Jay Blakesberg

that I’m leaning on an analog console for so much of it has forced us to play fair, too; you can’t cheat.”

That said, a digital Avid S6L-24D console also lives at the house mix position, holding inputs 67-117 for the Gamble, but it is additionally set up to replicate the entire Gamble desk if necessary, complete with appropriate plug-ins emulating the mostly analog outboard gear onhand. The outboard units in question?

“I’m leaning heavily on products from the 1980s,” says Featherstone. “It goes from tc electronic M5000s to dbx 160 compressors, some Summit Audio DCL200s and TLA-100s, a couple of original UREI LA-3As, Empirical Labs Distressors, Aphex Expressors and more. One of the things I’ve just added on this tour is the SSL G Bus+ Compressor, which I’m using on the kick drum of all things; it’s an incredible compressor that I’m quite This summer’s Dead & Company tour was the first U.S. production to carry Meyer Sound’s happy with.” new flagship Panther line array system.

It’s not the only new addition, however, as this year’s journey was the first U.S. tour to carry Meyer Sound’s new direction; it’s always gotten better and better.”

As a result, Featherstone found himself flagship Panther P.A. system. The manufacturer is another entity with Grateful Dead connections discovering Panther’s abilities as the reaching back to before the company began in tour progressed: “It’s got some different 1979, as co-founder John Meyer was involved in characteristics. It’s a very reactive P.A., so you’re the development of the band’s legendary Wall of mixing a little more accurately; you don’t want to push something as hard as you might have in Sound P.A. system in 1974.

With this year’s tour playing a mix of sports the past, because it’ll jump out at you. I’ve also stadiums and larger sheds, UltraSound carried a noticed it allows you to get more precise with fair amount of Panther inventory to tackle the compression; on vocals, for instance, I have a variety of venues. For stadiums, four identical bunch of tube compressors I use, and I can hear arrays graced the stage, with two main front the characteristics of those compressors better and two side hangs, all sporting 14 Panther on this system. You do a tiny move with this loudspeakers, with four Panther-W wide system EQ and you see it respond real quick— coverage versions flown under 14 Panther-L you make a move, you hear it, you move on. Its long-throw versions. They were supported by 18 high frequency is very full at decent distances, it flown 1100-LFC low-frequency control elements doesn’t trail off on the high end…it’s a full-range, plus a dozen 700-HP subwoofers on the ground. smooth cabinet.”

Below that P.A. were a bevy of mics capturing Also employed were 10 VLFC very low-frequency control elements and 12 Leopard compact line every musical twist and turn on stage, including array loudspeakers used as front fill, all under the Featherstone’s go-to favorite for vocals—the control of eight Galaxy Network Platforms used Sennheiser e 935. “That allows a singer to lean on or off the mic without their tone changing,” for system drive and optimization.

How new was the P.A.? “I was so busy putting he noted. “If you’ve got someone like Bob Weir this tour together,” said Featherstone, “that I who sings very heavy on the mic, but then never had a chance to even listen to it until I drifts off seven inches, you don’t get this tiny, turned it on at Dodger Stadium! Take that as a little voice coming out; you get the same big testament to our faith in Meyer. They’ve never voice but quieter.” Another Sennheiser put to made a brand-new product that went the wrong use was an MKH 8020 condenser on the snare,

Live // news & notes // presented by Ticket to Rise: Sound Design Drives NYC Thrill Ride

By Clive Young

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ew York City’s Times Square is a thrilling place to be, but RiseNY aims to take it higher—30 feet higher, to be exact. The new thrill ride, which opened this spring in the nerve center of Manhattan, dangles 46 visitors at the center of a threestory immersive flight-simulation theater.

Surrounded by a 180-degree, 40-foot projection dome featuring 8K aerial footage of the Big Apple, audiences are whisked through the city to experience the metropolis in a whole new way as their full-motion seats turn, dip and more. All that visual overstimulation is supported by an equally sense-tingling 7.1 sound design created

by Geoff Strasser, senior sound mixer at post audio company Mr. Bronx Audio.

Audio for RiseNY is the latest in a string of projects that Strasser and composer Sami Jano have worked on for theme park media studio Super 78, but while previous efforts like a 2017 dinosaur ride took Strasser to China, this one found him merely heading uptown to 45th Street. The mixer’s typical work days find him tackling audio for commercials or HBO comedy specials, so mixing a thrill ride is both similar and entirely different from his usual efforts.

“With commercials and film, you respect the fourth wall, but with something like this, you break that fourth wall as much as possible,” said Strasser. “There’s a lot of panning that has to happen; that makes it so much more immersive, supporting a natural effect of motion. There’s this one shot that’s my favorite—two little birds flying at you, through you and behind you. Every time I did it, I felt like I could just reach out and touch them, just because of the way that they move across the screen and how, I guess, I mixed it. That was just unreal.”

Creating that realistic sense of unreality was no simple task. Super 78 spent weeks in 2019 filming New York City from helicopters and drones. Once visuals were locked, Strasser began sound design work, continuing until all the creative stakeholders converged on the ride’s construction site for mix installation.

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RiseNY is a new flight-simulation thrill ride based in New York City’s Times Square.

Geoff Strasser, senior sound mixer at Mr. Bronx Audio, discovered while mixing RiseNY that thrill ride audio should break the fourth wall as much as possible.

“Mixing it was chaos,” Strasser said with a laugh. “During the day, there were six different construction teams in there, putting down carpet, building walls and the rest of it, so we had to work through the night. When I first got there, I said, ‘Can I go up on the ride to see how the mix sounds?’

And they’re all ‘Sure, but you’ll be the first person,’ and I’m ‘Hell no!’ They still had do tests where they load the chairs up with sandbags and fly it around to make sure none of them fall out.”

In the meantime, Strasser found a secondfloor vantage point of the screen and got to work.

“I set up my Mac Trash Can [Apple MacPro] running Pro Tools, a Euphonix controller, mouse, keyboard, then I ran Ethernet, HDMI

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and USB extenders down to their control room.

Their Brainsalt Media Server manages all eight projectors, the 8K footage, the lighting and audio. The mixing took four nights, and two were just me doing my thing—getting the lay of the land, ringing out the room, getting the mix in place. Once the ride was approved to go on, I got strapped in and had an iPad Pro with the Avid Control Mixer app. When I was out there, I’d make mental notes, but if there was something that I could do easily, like a couple of pan moves or some volume rides, I’d do it there.

“A couple of nights later, Brent Young, the creative director of Super 78, and Sami came in, got on the ride and rode it a few times. They’d yell notes back to me and I’d take care of them.

That’s a super helpful process to have, because I can depend on their ears a little bit more. They hear things differently than I do, because they’re really the storytellers.”

With the attraction now complete, RiseNY has been getting raves since it opened this Spring, and that’s turned out to be the most gratifying part for Strasser. “When you go online, people don’t post ‘this is amazing’ about a car commercial,” he laughed, “but when you read people saying, ‘I had the best time,’ you think, ‘Wow, I actually had an impact on making somebody’s trip fun in New York.’ That’s really cool.” ■

Live // news & notes // presented by The Killers Tear Through U.K. With Capital Sound

PHOTO: Med Rann

United Kingdom—Veteran alt-rockers The Killers spent May and June slaying fans in the U.K. and Ireland on the Imploding The Mirage stadium tour. Along for the spree were FOH engineer Kenny Kaiser, monitor engineer Marty Beath and audio vendor Capital Sound (now part of Solotech UK Group).

Capital fielded a sizable d&b audiotechnik GSL P.A. system for the production, opting for a design with main hangs of 16 GSL8 and 4 GSL12 cabinets left and right, plus 10 flown SL-SUBs per side and 14 GSL8 and 2 GSL12 left and right for side arrays. On the ground were SL-GSUBs, stacked six-wide and two-high, their arrangement of 21-inch speakers extending the system’s cardioid pattern control down to 30 Hz. “Low end is always an issue in stadiums,” said Kaiser, “but the control here with the flown subs and the G-SUBs, it’s just great.”

For delays, smaller KSL8s were deployed in hangs of 16 cabinets per side. All arrays were flown in compression mode, but smaller KSL8 arrays can be rigged from roof structures where

Capital Audio recently provided sound for The Killers’ Imploding The Mirage stadium tour in the U.K. and Ireland.

needed, in tension mode to save weight.

The system’s performance aided the sound team, as the GSL employs a combination of cardioid techniques that result in the rejection of energy to the rear, providing a quieter environment onstage and lower off-site sound emissions. Kaiser commented, “The back end is quiet and it’s really clean on stage, which makes life easier for everyone. Marty can get his mix out without fighting, so everyone’s

happy—and when everyone else is happy, I’m happy. We’ve had comments from guests and promoters on the tour, saying it’s some of the best sound they’ve ever heard at their venue… and the Solotech guys have been absolutely amazing—great to work with.”

The Killers tour will continue with GSL through the European festival season, and then for its North American and Australasian shows later in the year. ■

DAS Lara Makes Live Debut Cologne, Germany—After a year of low-key, real-world testing at shows throughout Europe, DAS Audio spent this past spring launching Lara, its new self-powered cardioid line array, at trade shows like NAMM. Now officially out in the touring world, Lara systems have been turning up at venues like Lanxess Arena in Cologne (Germany), the Forum Barcelona and the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia (Spain).

More than 17,000 people heard the system’s European debut at a Brings concert at Lanxess Arena. TSL Production and Fluge were in charge of installing the system, with the support of Michael Häck, technical director of the Lanxess Arena.

To cover the 84,000-square-meter venue, TSL used 18 Laras per side for main hangs, bolstered by hangs of 16 Lara-Subs each side, hung at 45 degrees in relation to the Laras. In addition, 15 additional Lara-Sub units were used below the front of the stage, forming an arc of about 35 degrees.

The configuration was completed with 28 Aero-40A as Outfill 1 and 12 Aero-20A as Outfill 2 in L/R, which covered the upper side stands, using

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Alma software for the control and monitoring of the systems.

Frank Schmitz, TSL Production’s CEO, remarked afterward, “Lara perfectly meets the needs of a venue like the Lanxess Arena, with distances of up to 80 meters that can be covered without a delay line and a long reverberation time usual for this size. The cardioid concept paid off threefold: reflections and noise were greatly reduced, and the sound was very clear and direct.” ■ DAS Audio’s Lara self-powered cardioid line array made its world debut at the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Germany.

Live // news & notes // presented by Slamhammer Glam Slams at Prince Mural Reveal Minneapolis, MN—Prince was Regional audio provider Slamhammer Audio always a giant among musicians, tackled audio for the recent street party unveiling a 100-foot-tall mural of Prince in Minneapolis. but a new 100-foot-high mural in his hometown of Minneapolis makes that a literal statement. The enormous artwork—a $500,000 project known as “Crown Our Prince”—was under development for seven years, and was created by Florida street painter Hiero Veiga.

For the mural’s unveiling, a fullon block party was held, complete with live music heard through a Martin Audio system provided by Scocchera was on monitors, and Matt Fradley regional sound company Slamhammer Audio.

The reveal party was a free event, which mixed FOH for the rest of the show, which was brought several thousand people flocking to heard through a combination of eight Martin downtown Minneapolis’ Ramp A. Both of Prince’s Audio W8LC Compacts, eight WS218X subs sisters made appearances, and the crowd was and a pair of W8LM Mini for front fills. For entertained with performances from Prince cover delays—set at the FOH position and shooting band Dr. Mambo’s Combo as well as DJ Mickey back toward the rear of the crowd—they turned Breeze. While Dr. Mambo’s Combo brought in to a pair of Martin Audio CDD-LIVE and CSXits own sound engineer, Slamhammer’s Brian LIVE118B subs.

According to Slamhammer sales manager Cam Dickison, from a production perspective, the main challenge was the small footprint of the bandstand location, and the timing that they had to work within—since the street could not be closed during the day.

“With the stage itself needing to be constructed in a very small area, we opted to build sound wing platforms and mounted the P.A. on those instead of rigging from the stage,” he said. “We love working with the Prince Organization and honoring his legacy while showing the world that Minneapolis is more than just a fly-over city. We have done multiple events with the Organization and the Minneapolis Downtown Council over the years, including the ‘Prince Live on the Big Screen’ events. These are the two main forces that turned this Prince mural and block party dream into a reality.” ■

Volume Streaming Service Centers Around Mixer Nashville, TN—Streaming live music has become the norm since the pandemic began, but the technologies employed to make that happen have been evolving at a blistering rate since March 2020. Every streaming service has developed its own approaches, and for Nashville-based Volume, that technological approach has come to center around an Allen & Heath SQ-6 mixer.

Volume emerged early in the pandemic as a way for musicians to continue performing and earning a living when live venues were shut down. “One of the owners saw his musician friends struggling and wondered how we could help,” recalled business development manager Chris Austin. “We realized streaming wasn’t going away, so we dug in further and started developing the platform.”

The current production setup makes use of the SQ-6 because, said Austin, who also works as the production director for Volume, “The SQ does everything we need. We use the onboard effects, grouping, and customization…even the default show file already sounds great.” SQ Series consoles feature 48 channels of 96 kHz digital audio processing, along with 36 buses and 8 stereo FX engines.

When multitrack recording is needed, Austin makes use of the SQ’s

The Volume streaming studio in Nashville.

built-in 32-channel 96kHz USB interface. “I hook up a laptop running Pro Tools and I can do full multitracking for the artists that want it,” added Austin. “Everything is super easy to set up, and the artists gain deliverables that they can distribute to fans.”

As Volume grows, Austin hopes to expand into more areas of entertainment.

“We’ve got boxing matches, comedy, and we’re looking to feature record producers giving lessons on mixing to an online audience.” ■

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on the cover

The Mix Lab is controlled by a 64-channel, dual-operator Avid S6 console and includes a full-range 9.1.6 ATC monitoring system.

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Benjamin Wallfisch’s Dolby Atmos Playpen The flexibility of mixing music, re-recording to picture, and mastering it all

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PHOTO: Taiyo Watanabe

By Lily Moayeri

he very name “Santa Monica” conjures up images of the beach, palm trees and an iconic pier, but the Coastal California town is also home to a significant number of sound studios, more than a handful of post-production houses and, of course, the distinguished Remote Control, Hans Zimmer’s home base and composer gestation tank.

Santa Monica is now able to brag about another state-of-the-art facility: composer Benjamin Wallfisch’s The Scoring Lab. The UK-born-andbred, L.A.-based Wallfisch has a solid amount of composing credits to his name: Shazam!, Mortal Kombat, It and It Chapter 2, The Invisible Man, as well as the upcoming Flash (2023) and the Ron Howard-directed film, Thirteen Lives. So he was well-established in the scoring space when Zimmer brought him to Remote Control, working together on Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk and Hidden Figures. Building a custom, high-level and progressive studio like The Scoring Lab, however, had been a dream of Wallfisch’s going back to his teenage years.

“I grew up with musician parents, and they would often invite me to recording sessions,” says Wallfisch, sitting in The Mix Lab studio of The Scoring Lab’s practical and aesthetically pleasing layout. “They’re classical musicians, so it was always with an orchestra. Sometimes they’d be in churches, sometimes in dedicated studios. I was fascinated with the process.

“When I was 15, a production music library gave me a chance to write some news idents,” he continues. “My grandma smuggled me out of high school and dropped me off at CTS Studios in Wembley. This is the ’90s, so they

had huge tape machines and a very complex, beautiful desk. For me, it was like walking into Disneyland. That experience cemented my love for the process of creating recorded music.”

Wallfisch is an accomplished pianist with an impressive traditional music education that includes degrees from London’s Guildhall School, the Royal Northern College of Music (“I went in a pianist and came out a composer”), and a master’s from the Royal Academy of Music. Prior to composing film scores, he was conducting world-renowned orchestras. This translated smoothly to scoring, which, in turn, led to the conception of The Scoring Lab. “The idea to build my own space came out of the practical need for a bigger room,” says Wallfisch. “For seven years, I was in a very small room at Remote Control, trying to do playback meetings with eight, nine clients. It got to the point where you couldn’t fit the people in the room. It’s very rare for bigger rooms to come up at Remote Control, so I started looking for a space.”

IN THE RIGHT SPACE Wallfisch found a former art gallery in one of Santa Monica’s pristine bow-truss warehouse complexes. He snatched it up and enlisted Peter Grueneisen of nonzero\architecture to design the studio. Grueneisen has his fingerprints all over Remote Control, as well as DreamWorks Animation dub stages and Fox scoring stages, to name just a few spots.

The initial impetus for The Scoring Lab was as a writing space for Wallfisch, but once the composer heard the Dolby Atmos mix of his

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PHOTO: Taiyo Watanabe

Blade Runner 2049 score (for which sound mixer Ron Bartlett was nominated for an Academy Award), Wallfisch was determined to build a Dolby Atmos-certified mix room from scratch, while allowing for mixing in 7.1, 5.1 and stereo, as well.

The vision for building his room proved a lot easier than actually getting it completed.

The Mix Lab is centered around a 64-channel, dual-operator Avid S6 console with two M40 Master Touch modules, surrounded by an array of speakers: 12 ATC SCM45A Pro monitors for height and surrounds, three ATC SCM150ASL Pro for left, right and center, and three JL Fathom f113v2 subwoofers for the lowfrequency effects.

Getting the City of Santa Monica to sign off on this setup, and getting Dolby to sign off on the studio’s Atmos certification, was another story. “The city was saying we couldn’t get a planning permit because we put too much downward force on the framing and it was too dangerous,” says Wallfisch, who spent 18 months building the studio with Grueneisen. “Dolby were incredibly tough and stringent about how the room had to hit their standards, which was great. It meant we were pushed really hard to not cut any corners at all.

“Dolby required ATC SCM45 speakers because of the full-range nature and the size of the room,” he continues. “At that time, ATC didn’t make speakers that can be flown on the ceiling.

SCM45s are normally active speakers, so they

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have very heavy amplifiers. I was adamant about getting ATC speakers, so I talked to them about making us customized speakers, and they did.

The ones they created for the studio are passive SCM45s, which takes off most of the weight.”

The Mix Lab, which is floated on 14 inches of sand to reduce transmission, is designed to be adaptable to the user’s needs. As a studio for hire since October 2020, it has seen clients such as the Netflix documentary Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, scored

by Leopold Ross (brother to composer Atticus).

Mixed by Christopher Jenkins and Sal Ojeda, it was the first project to be completed at The Mix Lab. The two also mixed Billie Eilish’s musicdriven Happier Than Ever Disney+ film in The Mixing Lab. Some of the other projects mixed there include episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Orville by Shawn Murphy and Erik Swanson, who also mixed Yo-Yo Ma there. Niko Bolas has mixed Neil Young, Rod Stewart and Lindsey Buckingham in the room, while Alecks Von Korff mixed Muse, Cam Trewin did Rüfüs du Sol and Ari Morris mixed Moneybagg Yo. Mix engineers Steve Genewick, Nick Rivas, Ryan Gilligan, Jon Taylor, Scott Smith and Ken Caillat have also spent time in The Mix Lab. FLEXIBILITY BY DESIGN More than a mix studio, The Mix Lab also serves as a Dolby Atmos mastering space, a dub stage and re-recording studio with an ADR/

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PHOTO: Taiyo Watanabe

A light, modern, airy style runs through the common areas of The Scoring Lab facilities.

A small sampling of The Mix Lab’s quality outboard offerings, from top-down: Manley Massive Passive EQ, Shadow Hills compressor and Bricasti Design M7M reverb.

overdub booth with top-of-the-line condenser microphones and Grace Design M108 preamps.

Additionally, The Mix Lab has an extensive collection of outboard gear, including a Bricasti Design M7M reverb, Maag Audio EQ4M and Manley Massive Passive equalizers, Shadow Hills compressor and Focusrite 16R, A16R, HD32R and D64R converters. In his technology selections, Wallfisch’s intention was to encourage experimentation by anyone who uses the space.

“Because this technology is still in its infancy, everyone uses it slightly differently,” he says.

“What really excited me and motivated me to make this place was the idea that it could become a real hub for people to come through and try things with this collective mentality, where everyone’s still figuring out what it means. We want it to feel like a private living room where you can lock yourself away and do crazy things musically. There are no limits. It’s all about that laboratory kind of philosophy.”

Universal Music Publishing Group furnished

PHOTO: Taiyo Watanabe PHOTO: Taiyo Watanabe

Wallfisch with the masters of songs from some of their top artists to serve as in-house demos.

These included The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” These sound huge and crystal clear when Wallfisch plays them back through the ATCs. His reference for an immersive “upmix” is Elton John’s “Rocket Man”

by Greg Penny, which he likes, in part, for its simplicity.

“It is a powerful, emotional experience when you hear non-film music mixed in Atmos,” Wallfisch says. “The clarity of the vocal performance because it’s completely isolated on one speaker, the exact nuances of how the percussionist might be performing—these make you feel like you are in the room with them.

Hearing upmixes of The Beatles, you realize just how pioneering the mixing was, how bold it was. They were using the limitations of putting everything left and center as a feature. Now, when you’re able to do the exact opposite, it’s almost like you’re checking yourself not to go overboard, and to still start from that place where the music is what is making the decisions, not the technology.”

MIXING UP THE PROCESS When writing and recording, Wallfisch keeps his focus on the music and the performance, and not on how it might be mixed immersively. His conducting experience comes into play when arranging the musicians, never approaching the orchestra as a fixed entity with the traditional placement of the instruments.

Says Wallfisch, “Depending on the project, sometimes I have the violins opposite each other and the bass in the middle, because it’s a score where there’s a lot of melody in the strings and

The Scoring Lab’s writing room, set up for 5.1 and 7.1 playback.

It was important to Wallfisch that he receive Dolby Atmos certification, and he proudly displays the fact.

I don’t want it all to be coming from the left.

Sometimes I’ll record the brass separately and have the horns in the middle. I may pan a little bit to the left in the final just so the moments when the horns are absolutely in the forefront of the melody; you want them on the screen.

“Even though the combination of orchestral instruments has been around for years,” he continues, ”we’ve only gotten started with what we can do with an orchestra. There’s still so much uncharted territory, and that includes how it’s recorded, for sure—but you don’t want to get too tricks-y. You don’t want to distract.

It’s about using Atmos in a way where you’re giving that performance of the orchestra its best possible airing.”

To that end, Wallfisch works collaboratively with engineers in the studio to determine the best microphone placement. For Thirteen Lives, which he recorded at Air Studios with Peter Cobbin, they had an additional pair of microphones exactly matched with the wide microphones hung seven feet above. These would go to the speakers on the outer part of the Atmos bed. Another four microphones were placed in a square around where the surround microphone would be. An additional four microphones were hung directly above the orchestra, which would pick up certain parts more so than others.

“Making an Atmos mix is not necessarily about absolute realism,” Wallfisch says. “It’s about a perceived immersion. That can be something you create after the fact with processing and panning and reverbs. In that mix, we used the quad of surround microphones with a lot of creative panning with reverbs and using slight delays on the other microphones, sending them

into the Atmos configuration like that.”

In contrast, for Blade Runner 2049, which was scored entirely with electronics, the masters were in 5.1 and the re-recording mixer, Ron Bartlett, created the entire Atmos experience and it worked perfectly. Wallfisch feels it’s best to have a detailed version and one that is less “channel-intensive” or “object-intensive.”

“I’ve always tried to not get in the way of the re-recording mixer when it comes to Atmos decision-making,” Wallfisch says. “What I’m finding now, especially with the spatial audio requirements of music releases, I’ll do an Atmos mix and a 7.1 mix at the same time so there are options. Then we do an album mix in full Atmos, where we have time to really dial it in for the listening experience. That’s probably going to become more and more how we work. Maybe eventually we’ll get away from the 7.1 part of that process. It’s a transition right now.”

Wallfisch points out that composers have the luxury of having their music presented to audiences in a movie theater in Atmos, which pushes him to embrace the musical storytelling part of the experience, as well as the physical three-dimensional experience of the music.

“The flip side of that is, it can be very tempting to go overboard,” he acknowledges. “You’ve got joysticks on the mixing board. You’ve got an arpeggiated synth. The temptation is to fly that all around the theater—but is that going to serve that moment dramatically? Is it going to just be distracting? It’s all about the context. It’s easy to underestimate the raw power of an orchestra, especially in film music. Capturing the power of that live experience in as much detail as possible, is what I’m trying to do when it comes to Atmos.” ■

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PHOTO: Anna Belmehran

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Wilco live in the loft Return to the Stage Inspires Cruel Country Album

By Barbara Schultz

Wilco is, from left: Pat Sansone, Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt, Mikael Jorgensen (seated on the ground) and Nels Cline.

fter many months of solitary music making, the members of Wilco resumed their Sky Blue Sky music festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico, last January. The band performed three headlining sets with support from more than a dozen bands, including Spoon, Kurt Vile & The Violators, Tank and the Bangas, special guest Mavis Staples, and others. Wilco’s return to the stage was extra sweet, as they reunited with fans and musical friends, including the band’s engineer/producer, Tom Schick.

“I wasn’t working with them in Mexico, but they were nice enough to invite me and my family,” Schick says. “That was my first time traveling in a couple of years, and to have everybody together again was so much fun— really a cathartic feeling. When we came back home, everybody decided to get together in the studio. They wanted to keep playing live, so I set everything up in The Loft for a live record, not really knowing what to expect. It was the first time in two years that the guys were in the room together.

“Jeff showed a song to everyone, and everybody learned it and they did a few takes,” Schick continues. “When we listened back, it was so exciting—the emotion in the room with everybody playing together and recording together was amazing. So, we just kept going.”

That first song that the band tracked became “I Am My Mother,” the first track on the album Cruel Country (May 2022, dBpm Records). Like

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At their stations in The Loft are (L-R): Jeff Tweedy, Nels Cline, Pat Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen. At the far left, engineer Tom Schick’s silhouette can be seen in the “control room.”

and no worrying about mistakes.”

Whether Wilco are recording live or piece by piece, Schick sets up stations for all the musicians in the studio, each ready to go at any time. When Mix spoke with him in June, he was actually in The Loft, so he walked the studio from station to station describing the setup: “I’ll start with Jeff,” Schick says. “He was in a corner with a Neumann 563 on his acoustic guitar and an SM7 on his vocal. Those both went through a Neve BCM10 with 1073 mic pre’s. We had an 1176 on his vocal and a

Jeff Tweedy

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PHOTO: Jamie Kelter Davis

so many post-pandemic releases, the album feels like celebration and sadness in equal measure, but the sound is vintage Wilco: country twang meets moody tones meets Byrds-like vocal harmonies and soulful rhythms.

“It was a live take, even a live vocal,” Schick says. “The backing vocals were the only things we overdubbed, and that song became the template. After two years of everybody working in their own rooms and passing around tracks, we were just capturing the chemistry that these guys have together—no worrying about bleed

PHOTO: Jamie Kelter Davis

A small sampling of guitars at-the-ready in The Loft.

Chandler TG1 on the acoustic.

“Next to him was Nels [Cline’s] station. He mainly had a Milkman amp with a 57. There was also a LOMO 19a19 microphone that I would use on Nels whenever he played an acoustic instrument like a dobro, and I used that same mic later when we did background vocals.

“Nels’ amp also went through a Neve BCM10 and into a Manley ELOP compressor, and the LOMO was going through the Neve and an 1176.

“And then right next to Nels was John [Stirratt’s] bass station; that was a B15 amp with an [Electro-Voice] RE20 on it and a Somewhere Sound Detroit Gearbox DI—that’s designed to sound like Motown, and it sounded great.

“Right behind John is Glenn [Kotche] in our drum booth, which is made of sliding scaffolds on wheels, so the drums were somewhat isolated, but not totally closed off. I used an AKG D112 on kick, 57 on the snare, and a pair of Coles ribbon mics for overheads, and a Neumann 563; the

PHOTO: Mark Greenberg

Glenn Kotche’s drum-miking setup seen from above.

The drum “booth” is created from sliding scaffolds on wheels, so the kit can be more or less isolated.

one on acoustic guitar belongs to me, and this one belongs to Jeff. It just just sits right in front of the drum kit, and I use it to add a little bit of brightness. Also, one 421 and one 441 would float around for either a hi-hat or toms. I didn’t mike each tom individually—just if something needed it, I’d throw up one of those dynamic floater mics.

“The drums are all going through API mic pre’s. The Loft has a 500 Series rack, including 512c and 550b EQs, so it’s almost like having another API console in addition to our Neve Broadcast board. I love the sound of the guitars going through the Neve and drums going through the API. Kick and snare go through a dbx 160 compressor, and overheads go through the 2264s on the main console. The 563 kit mic goes through a Distressor.

“Next to Glenn, we had Pat [Sansone’s] station, with an amp line [miked via a Shure SM57] and a DI line that he would mix and match. He had a Wurly and a Mellotron, and most of the time, I would just switch the cable to whichever he was playing, but I also had a second DI because there were a couple of tracks where he was doing two

things at once. He can be like an octopus!

“Next to Pat, there are three pianos: a baby grand that’s miked up with a pair of 414s, an upright with a 57 just on the back of it, and a tack piano next to the upright, so we could just move the 57 behind the tack piano. Pat’s gear went through API pre’s, and his amp has another Distressor. The baby grand piano also had a Manley stereo Vari-mu compressor, and the tack piano and the upright piano went through the Chandler TG1.

PHOTO: Jamie Kelter Davis

Guitarist Nels Cline

PHOTO: Jamie Kelter Davis

Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansome.

“There’s something else we did that Mike [Jorgensen] came up with: In the upright, he put felt on the strings so that the hammers would hit the felt, and it made a really cool sound that is like a cross between a Wurly and a piano. On the song ‘All Across the World,’ that sound is pretty prominent.

“Speaking of Mike, his station was next to Pat. He basically had his laptop, a couple of organs and amplifiers, and a little mixer. I give him two lines coming out of the mixer with a stereo DI, and we have a couple of 57s that would move around to whatever he needed: a pair of amps if he was doing a stereo thing to the amps, or to the Leslie cabinet.”

The band tracked in a couple of two-week sessions in January and February, with Schick capturing everything to Pro Tools and roughing out mixes as they went. The album was complete and mastered by Bob Ludwig by the end of March.

“We often record to tape, but in this case, tape would have slowed us down,” Schick says.

“We didn’t even do too many edits. It was a very seamless process, just capturing the moment.” ■

AKG K371-BT Headphones The K371-BT serves double-duty as a wired studio headphone (like the AKG K371), while adding Bluetooth (5.0) connectivity for engineers on the go. The over-the-ear, closed-back model was designed for maximum sound isolation and superior bass response. AKG equipped the headphones with hefty 50mm drivers, for an extended frequency range of 5 Hz to 40 kHz. The ear cups are made of memory foam–like material that contours to an individual’s ears for maximum comfort over long periods. Both ear cups swivel by 90 degrees, making the K371-BTs also suitable for DJ use. Three different connector cables are included: 9.8-foot and 3.9-foot straight, and a 9.8-foot coiled.

Audeze MM-500 Manny Marroquin Series Manny Marroquin has added another job on top of being a Grammy-winning engineer/producer, restaurant owner and owner of Larrabee Studios in Los Angeles. At NAMM in June, Audeze announced that Marroquin would serve as the company’s new Head of Professional Products, introducing him on the show floor alongside the new MM-500 headphones that bear his signature. The MM-500’s 90mm planar magnetic driver features a frequency range of 5 Hz - 50 kHz, with a max SPL of >130 dB and THD+N of <0.1% @ 100 dB SPL, 1 kHz, providing lightningfast transients, accurate frequency response and trusted mix translation.

With premium leather earpads, an adjustable spring steel headband and a machined aluminum structure, the MM-500s weigh a fraction over 1 pound.

NEW STUDIOHEA Neumann NDH 30

KRK Systems KNS 8402 KRK Systems recently updated its KNS line of studio headphone to the 6402 and 8402, Both models are closed-back, circumaural (over and around the ear) designs with the KNS 8402 updated for and aimed at pro studio use. The KNS series phones use 40mm dynamic drivers with neodymium magnets for a rated impedance of 36 ohms. They are rated at 0.1% total harmonic distortion while handling 500mW per driver. Sensitivity on the KNS 8402 is 97 dBSPL @ 1mW, with maximum SPL of 124 dB. Frequency response is specified as 5 Hz – 23 kHz. All the KNS headphones come in matte black only and are made using an impact-resistant plastic material that makes them super lightweight. The premium leatherette, memory-foam ear cups are easily field-replaceable.

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In May, Neumann introduced the new NDH 30 open-back headphone as a reference-class studio headphone for mixing and mastering applications in both stereo and immersive formats. While the headphone retains the metal construction of the closed-back NDH 20, it features a new acoustic system design, including optimized and positioned dynamic drivers intended to recall planar magnetic transducers. It is said to have a low harmonic distortion and uses frequency-selective absorbers to shape an even response across the audio spectrum. Long-term comfort was a consideration addressed with large, soft earpads, and aiding transportation, the headphone is foldable. The company also touts the headphone’s spatial resolution, attributing it to the fact that the drivers are made “to extremely low tolerances” and because it comes with an “internally balanced cable, which improves channel separation.”

Røde NTH-100 Australian microphone manufacturer Røde has released an increasing number of products aimed at podcasters and content creators. Earlier this year, the company introduced its first-ever headphone: the NTH-100 professional over-ear model. Built in Sydney and featuring a modular design, the phones sport custom-matched 40mm dynamic drivers based around a custom voice coil with a four-layer aluminum alloy as its core, a stiff triple-layer Mylar diaphragm, and a rare-earth neodymium magnet, aiming to provide low levels of distortion and an accurate response across a broad frequency range.

The ergonomic ear cups and headband cushions are outfitted with Alcantra-covered memory-foam for noise isolation; their interiors contain a CoolTech gel which absorbs and dissipates heat in an effort to lessen listening fatigue. In a nice touch, both ear cups feature an input for the included dual-ended TRRS cable.

Austrian Audio Hi-X65 Austrian Audio’s Hi-X65 headphones incorporate the still-relatively-new (but onfire) company’s Hi-X Drive Technology that begins with a 44mm (1.73 inches) diameter driver, a ring magnet system and a copperplated aluminum voice coil. The Hi-X65 is said to provide excellent stereo imaging and low total harmonic distortion (measured at <0.1% at 1 kHz, with up to a “three-times better” measurement in the bass). Frequency range is stated as 5 Hz – 28 kHz, with 110 dB SPL/V impedance.

Maximum comfort is provided through a flexible headband and padded ear cups that swivel 180 degrees. The Hi-X65 comes with both 3-meter and 1.2-meter detachable cables, with 3.5-mm connectors at both ends.

beyerdynamic DT 700 PRO X , DT 900 PRO X Late last year, beyerdynamic introduced its new PRO X line, featuring DT 700 PRO X and DT 900 PRO X headphones. The closed-back DT 700 PRO X can be used for studio or mobile production, while the circumaural, open-back DT 900 PRO X is aimed at professional monitoring, mixing and mastering. Each model makes use of the new STELLAR.45 driver, based around a strong neodymium magnet and a lightweight voice coil made of copper-plated, high-tech wire. Used in conjunction with a newly developed three-layer speaker cone with integrated attenuating layer, the new PRO X headphones have an efficient driver system that has an impedance of 48 ohms. Smooth, gray velour ear pads are complemented by soft memory foam in the spring-steel bracket construction headband.

ADPHONES

Pro Audio’s Hottest Product Category, Two Years Running

By The Mix Staff

Shure SRH840A

Sennheiser HD 400 PRO

Shure has a long and rich legacy of providing quality headphones for the studio and stage. The new SRH840As follow that tradition in updating the SRH840 with a new look, minor sonic improvements and a couple of accessory changes.The SRH840A features a circumaural (over-ear), closed-back design, making them appropriate for tracking. Shure bills them as “monitoring headphones.” Shure says the SRH840A features some “nuanced” improvements to the sound, resulting in lower harmonic distortion and more precise left-right driver matching. The frequency response of the 40mm driver is reported as 10 Hz – 22 kHz; impedance is 38 ohms. The SRH840A weighs in at 0.6 pounds, with plush ear cushions, adjustable headband, and both ear cups able to swivel. It comes with a 9.8-foot straight cable.

Sennheiser makes a range of headphones—from reference-quality to workhorse, affordable studio models—that few manufacturers can match. The company’s new HD 400 PRO studio reference headphones fit right in for use in mixing, editing and mastering applications. Built around a lightweight, open-back design fitted with soft velour ear pads, they are the first open studio headphones in Sennheiser’s PRO line, and offer a wide frequency response of 6 Hz – 38 kHz. The Sennheiser-developed 120ohm transducers include a diaphragm made from a proprietary polymer blend that, when working with the headphones’ driver magnets, is said to provide deeper bass. Distortion is below 0.05% (measured at 1 kHz, 90 dBSPL). The transducers sit at a slight angle, emulating the triangular listening position common to a studio sweet spot.

Focal Clear Mg Professional Focal’s new Clear Mg Professional (Clear Magnesium Professional) Headphones differ from their namesake with the addition of a magnesium cone for greater dynamics and tonal balance across the full audio spectrum. The circumaural, open-back design incorporates 1-5/8-inch (40mm) full-range speaker drivers with Magnesium M-shaped inverted domes, combined with the frameless 1-inch (25mm) diameter and ¼-inch (5.5mm) high copper voice coil.

The open grille inside the ear cup extends the high frequencies and follows the ‘M’ profile of the cone more closely to further reduce adverse effects. With a 24 kHz breakup, the high frequencies are extremely linear and the transient signals are respected.

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Tech Dangerous Music 2-BUS-XT Analog Summing Mixer Fully re-engineered from its predecessor, the new single-rackspace 2-BUS-XT leverages the six-layer board summing circuitry of the 2-BUS+, designed by company co-founder Chris Muth, to produce super-wide stereo imaging and ultra-high-resolution depth of field, with tons of headroom. The 2-BUS-XT allows users to dial in as little or as much complexity to their tracks as they wish via two custom color circuits. A variable Coherence control creates dimensional asymmetry, by progressively elevating the harmonic content by bringing up the detail as the levels are reduced, then blending the result with the source mix, in a similar manner to parallel compression. The associated switches offer a true hard-wire bypass of the color circuitry. Multiple 16-channel 2-BUS-XT units may be stacked to accommodate higher channel counts through the external input.

The unit may additionally be paired with the Dangerous 2-BUS+ to give users a total of five different analog color circuit options or with the D-BOX+ to add monitor control and 24 channels of summing.

offering new features based on user requests, along with extended battery life. Among the new features aimed at touring musicians, the Monitor In signal can now bypass the limiting and EQ stages to enable monitor engineers to maintain full, unimpeded control over the mix they deliver. Other new options address listener comfort. The internal limiter’s lowest Limiter Threshold setting is now down from 84 dB-SPL to 76 dB-SPL, along with subtle improvements in the attack characteristic of the limiter and the linearity of extremely high frequencies. The 3DME Gen2 system consists of Active Ambient earphones with embedded binaural MEMS ambient microphones, a bodypack mixer/ controller/DSP processor/headphone amplifier, and the Bluetooth-enabled ASI Audio App, which allows untethered adjustment of the system’s 7-band stereo EQ and limiter threshold.

Empirical Labs Arousor LT Plug-in This lower-cost version of the Arousor plugin, which provides an emulation of the famed Distressor hardware unit, looks just like the top portion of Arousor. The gain reduction meter and the four main knobs—IN (input), ATT (attack speed), REL (release speed) and OUT (output level)—are all the same. One big difference is

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Lewitt Modular Mic System The MTP W950 modular mic system from Lewitt features a 1-inch true condenser capsule with extreme rear rejection, making it appropriate for getting live vocals to cut through a mix. With rear rejection of greater than 90 percent throughout its entire frequency range, the capsule maintains its full potential while being safe from feedback and reducing bleed. The microphone capsule can be detached from the XLR-equipped handle and is compatible with industry-standard wireless systems of different brands. Two switchable polar patterns are underneath the head basket (cardioid and supercardioid), with a 120 Hz lowcut filter and a 12 dB attenuation to deal with loud singers or adapt the capsule to the rest of the signal chain. Its dual-layer design makes the MTP W950 immune to wind and pop noise and protects the capsule from condensation with a protective drip guard layer. The cupping-safe design helps to avoid tonal coloration when gripping the head basket. The MTP W950 system will be available in Q4 2022.

Solid State Logic X-Gate Plug-in

ASI Audio 3DME Gen 2 IEM System ASI Audio x Sensaphonics has introduced the 3DME Gen2 Active Ambient Monitoring System,

new products

that Arousor LT gives you considerably fewer ratio choices. Where Arousor offers 12, Arousor LT gives you four: 1:1, 3:1, 8:1 and 20:1. Arousor LT also lacks the Attack Modification (AtMod) knob, the Saturation knob, the Detector HP filter knob, the Detector Sidechain EQ and the Blend control (for dialing in parallel effects). Instead, Empirical Labs set each of these parameters to static values. According to the company, Arousor LT uses the “identical processing” as Arousor.

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SSL has introduced the new X-Gate plug-in, making it the fourth new plug-in to be added to the company’s Complete Bundle in recent months. Featuring a rolling waveform graph, mid/side processing options, and tweakable hysteresis using independent open and closed thresholds, X-Gate builds upon the company’s

knowledge of hardware gates and advanced workflow interfaces. In addition to M1 processor compatibility, X-Gate introduces variable lookahead times and zero additional plug-in latency at the lowest setting, making it a tool for tracking situations where mic bleed can distract from the primary source material. EXP and Duck modes allow either transparent gating or ducking options. The new X-Gate plug-in is available in VST2, VST3, AAX and AU formats.

Cerwin-Vega VEGA Series Studio Monitors Cerwin-Vega has introduced its new VEGA Series of studio monitors—VEGA4S, VEGA6S, VEGA8S and VEGA10S—featuring a new custom bi-amplifier on the first three models, while the VEGA10S incorporates a custom tripleamplifier, all based around Class D topology, reportedly offering large headroom and low noise amplification. The cabinets are all wood,

cut via CNC machines to ensure smooth, round edges. An optional decorative grille makes use of the company’s magnetic mounting system. The DSP-controlled monitors come with embedded Bluetooth 5.1 and SKAA Pro wireless technology, in addition to traditional wired inputs. The VEGA Series nearfield monitors are sold as a pair-pack, consisting of a Hub and Satellite monitor. An additional two VEGA satellite monitors can be connected via SKAA wireless technology without performance hindrance.

The VEGA Series speakers are expected to ship in early Q4 2022.

Steinberg SpectraLayers Pro 9, Elements 9 The updates to Steinberg’s spectral audio processing software include an overall new look that simplifies identifying features and functions, but the big news is the addition of “real-time audition” so that users can hear the effects of spectral editing as changes are made, aiming to increase the speed and efficiency of

Ex Machina Ganymede 3-Way Monitor

the workflow. Also, dialog boxes are now nonmodal, allowing users to work freely anywhere in the interface, even while a process dialog is open. For example, the playhead can be moved, selections changed, layers switched and adjustments made, with all changes monitored in real time. Speed of workflow is also at the heart of the new Process and Tool presets. The new Unmix Level process was a much-requested feature that lets users divide one layer into two, based on a user-selected amplitude split point. Finally, an expanded, AI-assisted De-Bleed process now shows the new Cursor Crosshair view option for a more precise visual reference.

Allen & Heath Avantis Firmware V1.2 Allen & Heath has created a major update of its Avantis firmware with the release of V1.2, adding a next-generation RTA engine, Sennheiser wireless integration and new additions to the dPack bundle of DEEP processors. The new RTA engine is built around a 61-band bar or line display, which can be viewed behind the PEQ curve for straightforward EQ decisions.

Additionally, a sonogram view helps to identify

room resonances or mix imbalances. All RTA views are also visible on iPad and Director.

The dPack bundle includes three new DEEP processors from the flagship dLive system: Bus is modeled on a well-known hardware compressor respected for its ability to glue mixes together; Source Expander offers control of threshold and depth for set-and-forget operation; and Dual Threshold Expander is intended for challenging environments. Finally, Avantis’ wireless integration has been extended to include Sennheiser’s 300/500, 2000 and 2050 wireless microphones, which can be monitored from both the mixer and Director.

The new coaxial, three-way Ganymede monitor, which incorporates the same DSP and converters as the company’s larger Pulsar and Quasar speakers—includes a 7-inch LF driver, 5.5-inch midrange and 1-inch tweeter, all using the same Metamodal TX material as their larger siblings, just,in a more compact footprint. The secondgeneration DSP boards feature discrete AKM AK5572EN and AK4493EQ AD/DA chips and commensurately optimized clocking and analog circuitry to improve the S/N ratio to 123 dBA. 5th generation SHARC+ AD21565 DSPs provide up to four times the available computing power. The company says Ganymede can maintain phase linearity within ±15° down to 30 Hz, and within ±5° from 80 Hz to 30 kHz. Ganymede is expected to ship

by Q4 2022.

LEA Connect Series 1504 Amplifier The new Connect Series 1504 four-channel amplifier from LEA Professional, designed for use in large installations, drives up to 1,500 watts per channel (into 2, 4 and 8 ohms, as well as 70 Vrms and 100 Vrms) and is available in Network Connect (1504) and Dante Connect (1504D) versions. Both feature advanced DSP that includes linear-phase FIR filters and up to 4 seconds of delay. The Smart Power Bridge feature allows for two Smart Power Bridge channels that can turn the amp into a 2 x 3000–watt amplifier. Users can connect using the amplifier’s built-in Wi-Fi Access Point, by joining an existing Wi-Fi network, or using a Local Area Network Ethernet connection.

The new Connect Series models also leverage a built-in Amazon Web Services IoT Core that provides systems integrators with secure remote monitoring and control capabilities across LEA’s entire lineup of IoT-enabled amplifiers through the LEA Cloud. n

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Tech // reviews Focal Alpha Twin Evo Breaking the Price Barrier for Quality Monitoring

By Mike Levine

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hen I see or hear the name Focal, my first thought is high-end monitors from France with prices to match, but the manufacturer’s Alpha Evo range is surprisingly affordable relative to its other professional monitors. Recently, the company released a new flagship for the line: the Alpha Twin Evo. Design-wise, it’s a departure from its siblings. Rather than a biamplified configuration, the Alpha Twin Evo is triamplified. The three drivers include two 6.5-inch woofers and a 1-inch tweeter that sits above and between them. Focal equipped each monitor with 50 W amplifiers for each woofer and a 30 W amp for the tweeter.

The solidly built MDF cabinets were designed to be horizontally oriented only. You’ll need enough room in your studio for the 22-inch width. Each monitor features two ports at the bottom— one under each woofer. Focal manufactured the woofers with its rigid composite Slatefiber material, designed for neutral frequency response without distortion.

The 1-inch tweeter is Focal’s proprietary aluminum-inverted dome type. According to the company, it exhibits lower directivity than other tweeter types, making the sweet spot of the monitor wider. In the box with each Alpha Twin Evo are protective metal grilles for the woofers and the tweeter that snap in easily around the drivers and have notches on the bottom and top, making them easy to remove. To my ears, the grilles reduce the monitor’s high-end response and output level ever so slightly.

If you want to significantly adjust the frequency response to fit your room, you can do so with the built-in low- and high-shelving EQs. The High knob offers ±3 dB between 4.5 kHz and 35 kHz. The Low knob provides a whopping ±6 dB between 0 Hz and 250 Hz. These broad EQs allow you to change the balance of the tweeter and the woofers to compensate for acoustic anomalies in your studio.

THREE-WAY ACTION Focal included three connectivity options on each Alpha Twin Evo: XLR, balanced 1/4-inch, and unbalanced RCA. Not only does this arrangement give you options to fit almost any system, but you can connect up to three sources

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simultaneously.

The power switch resides on the rear panel, as does another switch to turn on and off the Automatic Standby Mode. When it’s engaged, the monitors go into Standby after 15 minutes of receiving no signal, and the front panel LED turns from green to red. When you next send a signal to the monitors, it takes a few seconds for them to ramp back up, but it’s a small price to pay for the energy savings it provides.

One of the other user-selectable options on the back is a Sensitivity switch that toggles the operating level between 0 dB and +6 dB, allowing you to adjust the monitors to fit your system.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? A unique aspect of the Alpha Twin Evo is its twin-woofer design.

One of the woofers carries mainly bass frequencies (250 Hz and below), the other handles the midrange, and you can control which one does which. Because of the woofer’s horizontal orientation, you can choose to have the midrange woofers toward the inside or outside of your listening position.

To flip them, you only need to flick the Speaker switch on each monitor to Left or Right. Focal recommends setting the left The Alpha Twin Evo is designed to be deployed horizontally.

monitor to Right and the right monitor to Left, which puts the midrange woofers toward the center and the bass on the outside.

If you don’t read the manual, you might assume the switches are for designating the left and right speaker rather than the position of the bass and midrange woofers. To avoid confusion, Focal should have given the control a more descriptive name, like “Woofer Position.”

Regarding the manual, I have good and bad news. The former is that Focal includes a paper manual and also posts a PDF version on its site. The bad news The back panel offers three simultaneous input options and includes shelving filters, Auto Standby and more. is that the manual is in multiple I also tried setting up the monitors in a 2.1 languages, making it particularly hard to navigate loud levels, the most impressive aspect of the online. I understand the need to include the Alpha Twin Evos was their clarity and detail. system with my KRK S10.4 subwoofer. The result various languages in the printed manual that goes Sources like acoustic guitars, hi-hats and hand was a big, full-range sound. I assume that with a in the box. But for online, where printing costs percussion were vivid in the soundstage. I even matching Focal Sub, the results would be even aren’t an issue, creating single-language manuals noticed some subtle high-end issues on one mix better. You might consider adding a sub if you’re producing hip-hop or EDM. that I hadn’t heard on my regular monitors. would be much more convenient.

For the kind of music I produce—acoustic I found the built-in shelving EQs well-voiced The manual not only combines languages but products, too. It covers the entire Alpha Evo and quite handy in my studio. I don’t usually instrumentals, rootsy rock and alt-country—I line. This can lead to confusion over features need to adjust the high end on monitors, but the didn’t feel the need for a sub. I was extremely (for example, the manual makes it sound like Alpha Twin Evos were so crisp and bright that I satisfied with the low-end response of the Alpha the Alpha Twin Evos have mounting points, ended up turning the HF Shelving down by 2 dB Twin Evos on their own. The bass sounded impressively tight. I found it easier than with although they don’t). I’d like to see Focal create to take the edge off a little.

My studio tends to absorb bass, so I boosted my regular (8-inch) monitors to judge bass levels product-specific manuals, particularly for the the LF Shelving knobs by 2 dB. The result was and balance the kick drum versus the bass guitar. online PDFs. I credit the Alpha Twin Evos with inspiring bass frequencies that sounded fuller but never me to finish some mixes for an instrumental boomy or indistinct.

HEARING IS BELIEVING project of mine that had vexed me for a while. I I set up the Alpha Twin Evos on monitor stands was never satisfied with the results when mixing in my studio with heavy-duty monitor isolation PRODUCT SUMMARY on my regular monitors, but the detail I heard pads underneath them. I used them as my COMPANY: Focal when using the Focals helped me produce mixes primary monitors for several weeks, doing PRODUCT: Alpha Twin Evo that significantly surpassed my previous efforts. several mixes and listening to various types of WEBSITE: www.focal.com Overall, I was extremely pleased with the recorded music.

PRICE: $659 (each) Alpha Twin Evos. Their clarity across the With a max SPL rating of 108 dB (peak at 1m), PROS: Extremely detailed in all frequency frequency spectrum is exceptional, and they the Alpha Twin Evos offer plenty of clean power. I ranges. Excellent value. Low- and high-shelving have plenty of power. The additional features typically monitor at about 75 dB but occasionally filters helpful in compensating for room that Focal included, like the variety of input turn the volume up loud for comparison. When I acoustics. Three types of input formats. Up formats, shelving EQ and Auto Standby Mode, did, the Focals stayed crisp and clean. to three simultaneous sources. Auto-Standby are straightforward and useful.

In addition to monitoring from my normal feature saves energy. Metal speaker grilles If you’re looking for professional-quality near-field listening position, I tried moving back included. monitors for tracking and mixing music or a couple of feet and turning up the volume, and CONS: Supports horizontal positioning only. for post-production, and you’re okay with the sound quality remained excellent. With their “Speaker” switches are confusingly named. horizontally oriented monitors, the Alpha Twin power and size, you could probably use these Multi-language, multi-product manual Evos are an excellent choice at a surprisingly monitors in a midfield configuration. inconvenient. low cost. n Whether listening at soft, moderate or

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Tech // reviews PreSonus DM-7 Drum Mic Set Remarkably Solid Sound for a Remarkably Low Price

By Rob Tavaglione

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any manufacturers offer drum mic sets these days, with many of them sounding good and quite affordable, too.

When I heard that Alan Parsons was an endorser of PreSonus’ DM-7 (specifically as an end-user endorser, not a paid endorser), I knew I had to hear this kit for myself.

A light-duty aluminum carrying case houses the entire DM-7 kit—one BD-1 dynamic kick drum mic, four ST-4 dynamics for snare and tom-toms, two OH-2 pencil condenser mics for overheads, two clips and windscreens for the OH-2s (the BD-1 and ST-4s have mic stand adaptors built in)—which is only cables, a short stand and a couple of overhead booms shy of a complete drum-kit recording package. The four ST-4s come with drum-rim clips that use the “European to American,” small-to-large thread adaptors.

THE KIT ON THE KIT For some proper testing, I knew I needed a drummer with serious chops, a wide range of styles, a good ear and a nice kit, too. I was fortunate that Noel White was able to stop by. Noel has put in many years and countless gigs drum-tech’ing and in-ear mixing for A-list performers like Herbie Hancock, Sting, Josh Freese and Vinnie Colaiuta. Noel has refined ears and skills for days from running a studio business, as well.

We started out with my house kit, a five-piece mixed set of oversized Ludwigs, Mapex and Premieres for a big-drum rock sound. We set up in my A-room, a 16 x 12 x 9-foot room with plenty of diffusion, absorption and corner bass trapping for a well-

balanced, small-room sound. Preamps were my typical Cranborne Camden 500s (kick/snare, but without the use of any harmonic enhancement), True Precision 8 (toms), and AMS Neve 4081 (overheads, with no EQ and just a little FET compression). I also recorded with a few more mics—outside kick, snare bottom, hi-hat, room ribbon—to see whether the DM-7 set could play well with others and complete my usual drum sound.

Mounting the DM-7 set was quick, with no difficulties from faulty accessories. The cardioid BD-1 screwed firmly onto my kick stand and wasn’t too large or heavy, so getting through the kick’s resonant head hole was easy and we got on-axis with beater placement with little effort. The cardioid ST-4 mounted on snare without much placement flexibility allowed by the clip/mount, but in a spot that worked fine. Aimed more to my liking on tom-toms, the ST-4’s clips don’t allow much range, but got the job done. The OH-2’s clips weren’t as snug as I’d like (a little gaffer’s tape might be wise for bouncy stages/risers), but they did hold firm through the entire session.

All the mics had nice snug XLR connections, but the ST-4’s proved to be a problem with my right-angle, tight-spot XLR mic cables that I use for toms. It seems the ST-4’s connectors are mounted upside-down, meaning that right-angle cables point toward the drum center, not away from it like they should. Straightconnector XLR cables are therefore recommended for the ST-4s and will likely not be a problem, except for really tight drum kit setups (i.e., jazz) with low-mounted cymbals.

BRING IN THE DRUMMER Noel started laying down some beats, and it was clear from the start that this mic kit has plenty of punch and an overall full/warm presentation. Playback without any EQ or processing showed a largely neutral drum sound; tight kick bottom with a nice little snap up-top (reminiscent of a Shure Beta 52, but flatter); a “definitely not a 57” snare tone that was a little compressed, scooping some mid-mids out but without a 57’s high-mid boost (reminiscent of an sE V7); mid-focused toms with just enough top-end definition but without cymbal bleed

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PHOTO: Rob Tavaglione PHOTO: Rob Tavaglione

Drummer Noel White at Crystal Recording, near Charlotte, N.C.

problems (reminiscent of Sennheiser 604s); and crisp and lean overheads that had some mids artfully carved out and plenty way up-top, not quite the “too much sizzle” as is often found with budget small-diaphragm condensers.

There was quite a level difference between the two OH-2s, right around 5 dB, which was a cause for concern “matching-wise” but isn’t a realworld problem. After all, that’s what input gain pots are for. The OH-2s were plenty sensitive, requiring only 20 dB of gain on overheads, and sounded matched both frequency- and dynamics-wise, so this isn’t much of a practical issue.

I then applied all the usual techniques that you would use on a rock drum sound (compression, EQ, reverb, bus compression, saturation, and so on) and found the kit sounding fabulous. I added in the extra non-PreSonus mics, including the room ribbon, snare bottom, kick out, and found a totally finished sound that I could easily sell a client on. I turned to Noel for his opinion, and he was right there with me—satisfied with the sound of the raw mics and more than pleasantly surprised with the processed, “finished sound.”

We also tried out Noel’s Gretsch kit, which produced similar results to my kit; the DM-7 sounds were natural, versatile and more than adequate. Noel offered this about the overheads:

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: PreSonus PRODUCT: DM-7 drum mic set WEBSITE: www.presonus.com PRICE: $299 PROS: Very good sonic performance, straightforward designs, low price CONS: OH-2s not level-matched, ST-4 connectors are backward for right-angle mic cables

The light-duty aluminum, foam-lined case arrived, ready for review. Inset: A close-up of the OH-2 pencil condenser mic, with included clip.

“Not remotely harsh and a very nice soft presence above 4k. They sounded so nice I played cymbals more than I normally do, feeling very inspired how well the bells and softer, nuanced stuff just sat so nicely with the rest of the kit mics.”

THE FINAL MIX It was difficult, but I managed to do almost this whole review without learning the cost of the DM-7 set—that is, until I finished recording with Noel and curiosity got the best of us. At $299, the DM-7 set is definitely a steal, as I fully expected it to cost double that and still be a really good deal.

Aside from two factors (the OH-2s not matching in output level and the upside-down ST-4 connectors), this is a completely satisfying kit in-use that could capture a competent rock, pop, country, hip-hop or jazz drum tone, live or studio. Contained all in one small, portable case, the DM-7 kit is a great solution for touring bands on a budget, or home recordists with few funds and big dreams. As Noel said, “If they hold up on the road as well as they sounded at Catalyst, I would recommend them for any studio or touring band on a budget.”

It deserves mention that this mic kit offers versatility beyond drums, as I would expect good results with percussion, pianos, electric guitars, basses and acoustic instruments, too. Throw in a large-diaphragm condenser and a ribbon

mic and you’d have all the bases covered for recording just about anything. For that matter…

Considering how well the DM-7 set performed with the help of a few extra mics, I have to recommend that PreSonus make a deluxe DM10 kit, with two more OH-2s (room, ride, hat, snare bottom, etc.) and another BD-1 (double kicks, extra floor toms, snare bottom, bass guitar, etc.). That would be a whole lot of drum miking flexibility, sonic quality, affordability and portability all in one package. I’ll bet Alan Parsons would be pleased; I sure would be. n

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Tech // reviews PSP Saturator and PSP Impressor Monster Distortion Generator, Ultra-Smooth Dynamics Processor

By Michael Cooper

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t the dawn of the Plug-in Age—if you’ll forgive my coining an epoch just for we engineers—PSPaudioware was one of the first developers to produce a convincing emulation of the sonics produced by vacuum tubes. Two decades later, the company’s new PSP Saturator plug-in lets you drive virtual tubes and diodes, a digital clipper and—best of all—simulations of magnetic tape and tape recorder responses that are so realistic you’ll be wondering where they hid the metal reels.

But it gets even better. Place the Saturator in series with the new super-smooth PSP Impressor dynamics plug-in, and you have a killer combo for making individual tracks and full mixes sound huge without blowing them up.

Walking both plug-ins up to the bleeding edge, I tested the Apple Silicon-compatible AU versions in my M1 Max-loaded Mac Studio running macOS Monterey 12.4 and the M1/Monterey-ready Digital Performer 11.1.

PSP SATURATOR PSP Saturator emulates our fave analog circuits by using three independently operating (and separately bypassable) algorithms. As you finesse three rotary controls in the left-center of the plug-in, low-frequency processing adds bass harmonics and the iconic LF “head bump” produced by analog tape recorders. Jockeying three controls in the GUI’s right-center section processes high frequencies to emulate—with high input-signal levels applied—analog tape’s characteristic compression and related high-frequency loss, but without increasing the level of distortion and aliasing.

Distortion is the domain of the main saturation algorithm, which provides eight choices of nonlinearity curves to apply using two controls—Saturation and Shape—at the GUI’s dead-center to gently sweeten or crush your tracks.

Here’s how to work with Saturator: You activate controls for LF processing by clicking the Low button to light it. Then adjust the Freq control between 20 and 400 Hz to set the frequency below which the algorithm applies processing. Turn up the Warmth control to increase the head-bump effect (increasing some unspecified low frequencies while attenuating others); the virtual LED below the control illuminates yellow to orange to red as processing depth increases, determined by your Level control’s setting. “0.0,” the noon o’clock position, is the recommended starting point for Level adjustments.

Most of the controls for high-frequency processing are analogous

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to those for the LF processing. Illuminate the High switch to activate the algorithm, then adjust the Freq control to set the cutoff (adjustable from 1 to 20 kHz) above which processing takes place at the depth determined by your Level setting. A separate virtual LED lights, as in the LF-processing control section, to guide your hand. The Softness control is unique; crank it clockwise to increase soft-knee compression of high frequencies, just like analog tape would impart.

At the center of the GUI, you can rotate the Shape control to switch among eight different saturation curves (or “None,” which bypasses the main saturator): Soft, Medium and Hard Valves (emulated tube circuits); Warm (vintage) and Modern Tape; Soft Clip (clipping like a driven diode would impart); Hard Clip (as overloaded AD converters sound); and a “Ram” saturation curve in the shape of a ram’s horn. (Yeah, I had to Google “ram image” to fully conjure that one.)

Crank the Saturation control clockwise to drive your selected saturation algorithm harder. There’s a separate virtual LED to inform you if you’re ramming the saturation algorithm too hard (pun, unfortunately, intended).

A phase-compensated Mix control lets you adjust the balance of dry and processed signals before the inconspicuously important Output control. Cranking the latter, you can drive a downstream soft-knee limiter or soft-clip saturator—each with a ceiling level fixed at 0 dBFS, and together bypassable—that can make a huge difference in the plug-in’s sound.

Opening a hidden control panel reveals a sidechain highpass filter (HPF) that affects what frequencies are dealt overall saturation.

Also accessed there are pre- and/or post-processing HPFs in the audio path, “FAT” 4x-oversampling, and a smoothing effect for the saturator (reducing aliasing).

PSP IMPRESSOR A glance at PSP Impressor’s GUI only gives you a hint of the plugin’s power as a compressor, its raison d’être. (A separate saturator and brick-wall limiter, both with fixed threshold and 0dbFS ceiling, are also included.) By rotating the bypassable compressor’s Shape control clockwise, you can select among six progressively harder compression curves: Soft, Wide, Medium, Short, Sharp or Hard.

In practical terms, these run the gamut from extremely gentle, mastering-style knees and ratios to soft- and hard-knee limiters; toggling RMS and peak-detection modes (limiters by definition use

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: PSPaudioware PRODUCT: PSP Saturator and PSP Impressor WEBSITE: PSPaudioware.com PRICE: PSP Saturator, $99; PSP Impressor, $99 PROS: PSP Saturator’s tube- and (especially) tape-emulation algorithms sound dynamite.

PSP Impressor sounds ultra-smooth on full mixes and individual tracks, and is feature-rich, including an outstanding limiter. Low-cost.

CONS: PSP Impressor isn’t an effective deesser or fast enough to produce FET-style compression on drums. Both plug-ins are a little buggy.

PSP Saturator and PSP Impressor both take I/O VU metering to a sophisticated level. Not only can you adjust the 0VU reference level in dbFS (arguably de rigueur), each meter can also show up to three levels at once—VU input, VU output and peak—by means of as many color-coded and shaded needles. VU and peak levels are shown at once in peak-hold numerical readouts that turn red—along with associated virtual LEDs—to alert you if you’re risking crashand-burn output.

I encountered a few bugs common to both plug-ins. The most serious, because it wasn’t always obvious, was that they didn’t save their “FAT” oversampling activations after a session was closed. The plug-ins would also sometimes open inside a much larger blank window with all controls temporarily rendered inoperable. And the names for my custom presets would often revert (in the GUI’s main display, not the Finder) to those for other presets I used as a starting point in fashioning my own.

The controls for PSP Saturator’s two tape-emulation algorithms flank the Saturation and Shape controls used by the main saturation algorithm. The latter offers eight styles of harmonics generation.

the latter) further refines those behaviors.

Select a feedback, feed-forward or combination design for the level detector to metamorphose the compressor’s sound from warm (like an opto-electronic compressor) to transparent (like a VCA-based one), or a mix of both. Attack and release parameters have both wide-ranging manual controls—including time multipliers— and different auto settings. Adjust the Hold control to maintain compression for up to 1 second in the absence of new peaks above threshold, and engage Look(-ahead) mode to nip any peaks in the bud.

Internal sidechain filters include highpass,

bell and equal-power types (with separately adjustable frequency and Q controls for the bell, and adjustable corner frequency for the HPF).

The filters can also be applied to an external sidechain input, and you can mix internal and external sidechain signals in any ratio.

A sidechain-listen function allows you to hear the signal that’s conditioning the detector as you work. Use manual or auto-makeup gain to optimize the output level as you wish, and the continuously variable Mix control for parallel-compression effects. A hidden panel includes controls for implementing “FAT” 16x-oversampling and other helpful goodies.

SERIAL KILLERS I loved using both plug-ins in series, usually with Impressor first in line. That way, I could brake the levels of both dry signal and generated harmonics at once.

Impressor was extremely effective at taming a Nashville player’s overly bright electric guitar track, playing arpeggios like stabbing knives.

Setting the plug-in for the fastest auto-attack setting, peak-level detection and a Wide (fairly gentle) knee, and—most important—using the equal-power internal sidechain filter, the brittle transients were smoothed beautifully without

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Tech // reviews ruining the underlying dynamics.

Following Impressor with Saturator made the track sound better still: Adding lowfrequency (“head-bump”) processing below 278 Hz gave the track much-needed body, and the Modern Tape algorithm, along with highfrequency processing (compression) above 2.1 kHz, smoothed the digital track like it had been recorded to tape. Fantastic!

The same plug-in combination totally transformed an electric bass guitar track.

This time, I bypassed Impressor’s compressor section and cranked its Input control to drive the activated limiter stage slightly to distortion. I then set up Saturator’s lowfrequency processor to deliver a hefty dose of simulated head bump below 70 Hz, and used its high-frequency processor to soften frequencies above 2.2 kHz. ’Scuse me, did someone print this track to 2-inch tape while I wasn’t looking?

Slathering a kick drum track with Saturator’s low-frequency processing below 52 Hz yielded similarly amazing and analog-like results. I’d be very hard-pressed to find another plug-in that sounds so flattering on kick drum.

Impressor did an excellent job smoothing PSP Impressor offers nearly every type of compressor feature under the sun, including vocal levels. Meanwhile, used in moderation, feedback and feed-forward topologies, peak and RMS detection, six selectable knees, sidechain especially with 4x-oversampling engaged, filters, and a limiter and saturator at its output.

Saturator’s Soft Valve algorithm sounded exquisitely beautiful on digitally recorded male and female vocals Even choosing the hardest knee, and look-ahead and peak-level alike, imparting a subtle, analog-like fullness, warmth and richness detection modes, the internal sidechain filter wasn’t powerful enough and the fastest attack time (0.10 ms) quick enough to deto their sound.

Both plug-ins—employing a light touch—sounded absolutely ess sibilants without also compressing loud vowel sounds. Using a terrific on full mixes, this time with Saturator placed before radically equalized external sidechain input didn’t work, either. In Impressor. Adding a little of Saturator’s head bump and Soft Valve my experience, a compressor must have a minimum attack time of processing made the mix sound bigger and sweeter, respectively. around 60 microseconds to transparently de-ess vocals.

But it’s also my experience that the best de-essers are plug-ins Impressor’s Soft knee and RMS settings compressed the mix transparently, and setting the sidechain’s HPF to around 100 Hz dedicated to that application. The main reason to buy Impressor is for its deft ability to transparently compress full mixes and a wide kept the bottom couple octaves sounding punchy and full.

Impressor and Saturator, again used in series, gave good results variety of non-percussive tracks—applications in which it excels— pumping up drum room mics’ ambience and punch, although and not so much to pump up the attack or ambience on drums like not the best I’ve heard for this particular application. Impressor, you would with, for example, a UA 1176 FET compressor.

If you have only enough coin to buy one of the two plugusing the fastest attack times, enhanced the snare drum’s stick hits slightly, and setting the internal sidechain’s HPF to 277 Hz lent ins reviewed here, Saturator is the clear standout because it is beefier kick drum and tom-tom sounds. Slamming Saturator’s Hard so unique and will potentially have the greatest impact—even Clip algorithm with high input gain, I then dialed back the Mix transformational—on your mixes. Its ability to fatten the low end, and Output gain. The result made the sound a bit more aggressive. in particular, with analog beauty is par excellence and worth the Impressor was not an effective, or shall I say selective, de-esser. price of admission alone. n

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Tech // reviews GIK Acoustics Sound Blocks Modular Absorption/Diffusion System Instantly Improves a Room

By Barry Rudo lph

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PHOTO: Barry Rudolph

ceiling causes a first floor-to-ceiling room IK Acoustics’ Sound Blocks are the mode node at about 68 Hz. While I have company’s latest aftermarket acoustic an assortment of absorption and diffusion treatment product, designed to offer panels around the room and ceiling to lessen powerful acoustic absorption in modular those reflections, they were not enough. “blocks,” with a range of (selectable) sourceIn the left and right corners of my front facing diffusion plates mounted on the front. wall, behind the monitors and starting The four Sound Blocks sent to me for about an inch from the ceiling, I installed evaluation came in two versions: Two were basictwo 4-inch-thick Alpha 4A panels stacked looking, fabric-covered modules and two had on top of each other, then placed a single front plates that matched my existing GIK Alpha The final GIK Acoustics Sound Block Sound Block below them. All the panels 4A panels already mounted in the corners of my setup, stacked below the GIK Alpha 4A straddled the corners, and I attached them mix room. The 4-inch-thick Alpha panels have panels in each corner. to the front wall and L/R walls to keep 1D, binary-style diffusor plates with vertical slats them secure. The corner placement also allowed room for a PSI on the front that spread sound reflections out in a horizontal plane.

A Sound Block is essentially a wood frame filled with Knauf Audio AVAA active bass trap positioned on the floor, directly ECOSE, an environmentally friendly, fabric-wrapped, sound underneath the stack.

If you’re starting fresh, you can choose from 15 different front absorption insulation material. Because a Sound Block is nearly 11 inches thick, it has a broadband absorptive effect on frequencies plates, as well as various 1D and 2D diffusive front surfaces and flat down to 60 Hz. Although these are velocity absorbers that mostly (no patterns) plates. You can choose between 24 different fabric absorb middle and high frequencies, you may order them with coverings/colors to match or contrast your studio style GIK Acoustics recommends Sound Blocks be mounted flush to GIK’s Range Limiter that “tilts” the absorption toward the bass, front, back or side walls, just like conventional absorption panels. with less absorption in the treble range.

Each Sound Block measures 23 x 23 x 10.5 inches (WxHxD), weighs about 22 pounds, and can be stacked and used anywhere LISTENING TO MY ROOM Before I started, I measured the room using REW as a starting point. within a room.

I removed all pressure traps that were misplaced and ineffective and added the Sound Blocks. Two weeks later, after I was done, INSTALLING SOUND BLOCKS My entire mix room measures 19.29 x 9.44 x 8.2 feet (LxWxH), I measured again. The improvements were measurable. I found a while my Kali IN-8 three-way (front-ported) monitors sit on lower decay time in the 100Hz area, and the floor-to-ceiling room Sound Anchor stands positioned on either side and in front of my node at 68 Hz was reduced.

Between the Sound Blocks and the AVAA Active traps (the only low42-inch-wide desktop and about 36 inches away from the front frequency absorbers in the room) bass is flat wall. The focus of all acoustic treatment from about 60 Hz down to 30 Hz. I do not panels is the listening position in front of PRODUCT SUMMARY use a subwoofer because (so far) I haven’t my desktop.

COMPANY: GIK Acoustics been able to get one to work correctly (I’ll I prefer the liveliness of the hardwood PRODUCT: GIK Sound Blocks try again soon!) The bass is tighter, and that floor under my chair, but I cannot tolerate WEB: www.gikacoustics.com is hearable immediately. I like the stereo the typical reflections present in rooms PRICE: $139 MSRP starting price for a single imaging better, as I get a good feeling of the this size. Short decay and flutter echoes wall-mounted model. coming from the ceiling, left and right PROS: Easy to stack and use to suit your needs stereo width and pan positioning. It was a lot of work but worth it. I’m also in love with side walls, or the rear wall have to be CONS: Must allow room for them the new look! n controlled. The slightly over eight-foot

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Open Channel Warning: Stability Ahead

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et’s talk about operational amplifiers. I know, I know…you’re thinking, “Let’s not.” Still, that little analog integrated circuit can teach us something.

An operational amplifier is all about producing huge amounts of gain. Left to its own devices, even the tiniest input will saturate the output. Worst case, it will oscillate uncontrollably and produce chaos instead of gain.

By Craig Engineers figured out that applying negative feedback Anderton could tame the gain, but at some frequencies, phase shifts would occur, create positive feedback, and the op amp would do the equivalent of sticking a mic in front of the P.A. at a concert—and we were back to chaos.

One solution was external compensation to reduce the gain at the frequency where positive feedback occurred. Another solution was putting internal compensation within the chip itself. Although that made designing with op amps easier, it complicated tweaking the compensation for optimum performance. In closed systems, everything has tradeoffs.

What matters here is that humans behave similarly. Social media— and the music industry—are good examples, especially as they become increasingly intertwined.

Social media is capable of huge amounts of gain. Even a tiny input signal can blow up, go viral and saturate the medium. In forums, one person can make one comment that initiates a flood of crazed responses that destabilize the discussion. As op amps show us, not all feedback is “good” feedback.

So, social media mimics how op amps introduce stability. Algorithms that flag objectionable posts are like internal compensation. External compensation comes from the people who act like hall monitors, and make judgment calls about appropriateness. These efforts try to prevent the system from regenerating into an echo chamber of feedback hell, because when feedback spirals out of control, chaos re-enters.

BUT WHAT ABOUT MUSIC? Now consider the music industry’s feedback process. In the days of big studios, there was a balance between musicians wanting to push the envelope, and professional engineers and producers whose feedback kept artists from running off the rails. The cost of studio time was external compensation that kept sessions finite (usually). The labels and retailers also provided feedback, so multiple mechanisms promoted stability within the industry. Then Napster happened, ramped up the gain—and chaos ensued.

These days, the balance between uncontrolled, chaotic feedback and keeping the system stable has tilted toward stability. Even seemingly major changes, like TikTok becoming more important to musicians than YouTube, retains stability from the consumer’s standpoint—it’s just a different URL. Meanwhile, many musicians and engineers apply internal compensation that prioritizes following “best practices,” like quantizing, comping and

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pitch correction. The system rewards music that fits into stable algorithms: Be similar enough to what gets traction, and you’ll be rewarded for your good behavior.

Music has gone from “no rules” to “follow the rules,” and the compensation applied to making “perfect” recordings works against making ground-breaking ones. Is the internal compensation of algorithms that limit the listener’s ability to discover music outside of defined genres doing us any favors?

Op amps teach us that a system with unlimited chaos is a problem—but controlled chaos can serve us well. Today, the feedback applied to the music industry has kept it stable. After the upheaval of the last several decades, it’s understandable that stability is a relief. Streaming is the new distribution medium. Stream numbers determine payments. Piracy of physical media no longer exists, because physical media is becoming extinct. A handful of companies control most music distribution. All is well in the kingdom…

In theory. But is that really what we want? Do we truly want our mixes to sound like other mixes because an algorithm says we should? Do listeners get excited about music, or do they just enjoy it?

AND WHAT ABOUT IMMERSIVE? Music and popular culture thrive on change—our jobs depend on it. While I doubt anyone wants something resembling Napster-fueled, all-out chaos, surround (oh, sorry, I mean “immersive audio”) could be the element that adds a tantalizing element of instability to music and recording.

Cirque du Soleil showed what surround can do with its The Beatles: Love show. The Optima6 audio-video guide electronics brought surround to immersive art exhibits. Installations from artists like Robert Henke (cocreator of Ableton Live) and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork turn surround into art. And for movie surround, it’s hard to beat Gravity.

What about music? Surround is caught between the chaos of multiple formats, and the stability labels seem to crave that comes from reissuing older material in surround—hey, that model worked before, right?

Well, it’s not going to work again, because the industry has it backwards.

It’s the formats that need to become stable, and the art that needs to get chaotic. I don’t want to be told I gotta hear Springsteen in surround. I want to be told about musicians, engineers and producers who are creating a sonic experience unlike anything I’ve experienced. I’m waiting for someone to do the surround equivalent of taking a mic, putting it up against the P.A.’s speaker, and unleashing uncontrollable feedback—just to see what happens.

Surround beckons. After the failures of QS/SQ/CD-4 in the ’70s and DVD-A SACD in the early 2000s, is the music industry going to blow the promise of surround for a third time?

It sure looks like it.

Please, prove me wrong. ■

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