MIX 538 - October 2021

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A Tribute to Woody Guthrie ★ How TMQ Invented the Bootleg ★ Top Speakers for Immersive Music Mixing October 2021 \\ mixonline.com \\ $6.99

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10.21 Contents Volume 45, Number 10

26 Hella Mega Tour: Return of the Summer Roadshow

BY CLIVE YOUNG

30 Return of The Darkness: 20 Years Later, Recording in a Barn

BY STEVE HARVEY

34 Birth of the Bootleg: Tech, Turmoil and Illegal LPs

BY CLIVE YOUNG

38 Jamie Baksht and Estudio Astro LX: OscarWinning Sound in Mexico City

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BY JENNIFER WALDEN

TECHNOLOGY

MUSIC

41 New Products:

14 ‘Home in This World’:

Studio and Live Sound

BY MIX EDITORS

42 Tech Spotlight:

Top Speaker Systems for Immersive Music Mixing

BY MIX EDITORS

44 Review: RME Babyface Pro FS Audio Interface

BY STEVE LA CERRA

46 Review: Baby Audio

Smooth Operator Plug-in

BY ROB TAVAGLIONE

48 Mini-Reviews:

LIVE SOUND

PRESENTED BY

8 From the Editor:

Let’s Not Screw It Up This Time

Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads, Revisited

12 Current:

BY BARBARA SCHULTZ

17 News & Notes: Axis

NAMM Moves to June 2022

Audio Adds Immersive Music Mixing; Electric Kingdom Studio Opens

12 View

BY MIX EDITORS

18 Opium Moon’s ‘Night

20

+ Day’: Start With a Jam Session, Be Sure to Hit ‘Record’

BY ROBYN FLANS

KRK Systems KNS 8402 Headphones; OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual-Drive Hardware RAID Storage ; Audio Design Desk 1.7

20 Sound and Lighthouse: Unique Audio for a Seafaring Festival

BY CLIVE YOUNG

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From the Top: Dave Morrison, Founder of IsoAcoustics

BY TAMARA STARR

50 Open Channel: Who’s Right? Who’s Wrong?

Who Cares?

BY CRAIG ANDERTON

24 News & Notes: iHeart Radio Awards Goes Live; Outdoor Opera in Cincinnati

BY MIX EDITORS

Mix, Volume 45, Number 10 (ISSN 0164-9957) is published monthly by Future US, Inc., 11 West 42nd Street, 15th 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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DEPARTMENTS

25 Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall

of Sound’ Up for Sale

BY CLIVE YOUNG

On the Cover: Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day, along with Weezer and Fall Out Boy, announced the worldwide Hella Mega Tour back in 2019, and after postponements, cancellations and more, finally hit the road with the summer of 2021’s biggest tour.

Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images.

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Vol. 45 Number 10

October 2021

mixonline.com 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 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 Senior Content Producer Steve Harvey, sharvey.prosound@gmail.com Contributors: Craig Anderson, Robyn Flans, Barry Rudolph, Barbara Schultz, Tamara Starr, Rob Tavaglione, Jennifer Walden Production Manager Nicole Schilling Managing Design Director Nicole Cobban Design Directors Lisa McIntosh and Will Shum 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

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Current From the Editor

Let’s Not Screw It Up This Time Immersive music has been getting a lot of attention lately, much of it following Apple’s recent announcement of Spatial Audio delivery for songs streamed and downloaded from the company’s service. That followed news from two years ago regarding UMG and Warner Music signing deals with TIDAL and Amazon for streaming in the Dolby Atmos format. A Spotify announcement must be coming soon. It would make sense.

Depending on who you talk to, this might be considered great news or a bunch of the same-old-same-old.

To some, the emergence of immersive music is filled with technical challenges and creative possibilities, energizing the left and right brains. Sure, they say, artists and producers might not see a financial return right now to counter a rather hefty (though getting less costly) investment in speakers and cabling and control systems, not to mention education. But it’s the future, so let’s get this immersive show on the road! Embrace the binaural!

To others, it’s all a bunch of hype. We’ve been here before, they argue. The labels just want another reason to sell the catalog. Nobody wanted 5.1. Nobody sits in front of speakers anymore. There’s not enough content for consumers to buy-in, so what’s their incentive to put a couple speakers on the ceiling? Why should I go in and change my perfectly fine studio if nobody’s going to hear my Atmos mix? Music is stereo, and stereo is just fine.

These are gross oversimplifications, of course, but each side can be forgiven for their opinion. The music and recording industries do not have a good track record in adopting new distribution formats.

Consider this, though I’ve written it more than once before: The CD was introduced in 1982 and remained the dominant music carrier for roughly the next 30 years. A whopping 780 MB of storage on a piece of plastic. By the end of its reign, you could fit gigabytes of media on a thumb drive, with terabytes just a few years later. Meanwhile, the music industry became mired in disputes over DVD-Audio vs. SACD, with the 5GB-capacity Bluray stepping in later, primarily, it seemed at the time, to showcase live performances with associated picture.

Downloads did become available just before the turn of the century, bringing a concurrent dip to MP3 quality, to be followed by an even larger dip with the advent of early streaming and YouTube playback. Hi-res audio, at 24-bit/96k became available if you went looking for it, albeit with limited titles. Hi-res delivery to the average consumer is still being worked on, as it has been since before Napster entered the vernacular 20 years ago.

The CD remained dominant for one reason: Money. There were huge profit margins in selling plastic at $16.99 a disc. When quality streaming

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became viable and mobile opened up the world, the music industry had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. At least it feels like that, looking back.

This doesn’t happen in other segments of the entertainment industry.

In those same 30 years of CD dominance, the video industry went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to streaming services, which are now expected to deliver 4K. On the display side, monitors evolved from a typical CRT to Hi-Def (plasma and LED) to 4K (projection or direct-view) to now 8K and Dolby Vision. The foray into 3D seems like a long-past bump in the road.

Videogames went from 8-bit sound on CD-ROM to DVD to Blu-ray (with 5.1 sound) to streaming multiplayer games in hi-res video and audio formats. From early Atari cartridges to Nintendo 64 to motion-control Wii to PlayStation 5—all within the lifespan of the CD. The music industry is not remotely like the film and television industry, or the videogame industry, I understand that. I’m talking about the industry effort as a whole to improve quality in distribution. Immersive audio gained instant traction in the film industry after the first batch of titles came out, and theaters (and home theaters) added speakers. When Netflix included a Dolby Atmos mix in its delivery requirements, the other streaming services followed within the year. Broadcast, no doubt, is next.

Immersive Music, Dolby Atmos Music, Spatial Music, Binaural Music— whatever you want to call it—represents an enormous opportunity for the music and recording industries. Companies like PMC, Capitol Studios, Dolby and UMG deserve a lot of credit for pushing the format these past few years, and the results are starting to show. High-end mix rooms are being built, and engineers are experimenting with entirely new ways to experience music. More and more content is becoming available.

But it will take a true industry-wide effort to reach a post-stereo music industry. Artists, labels, producers, engineers, the Recording Academy, manufacturers and streaming services all need to be involved.

Immersive audio has the potential to enhance and fulfill the music experience like nothing we’ve seen before. The time for change is now.

Tom Kenny Editor

Current

View From the Top Dave Morrison, IsoAcoustics Delivering Sound in Its Purest Form

by Tamara Starr

The NAMM Show Moves to June 2022 The National Association of Music Merchants announced in early September that The NAMM Show, the annual gathering of the global music, sound and entertainment technology industry, will reconvene in Anaheim, Calif., at the Anaheim Convention Center on June 3–5, 2022.

It was previously scheduled for January 20–23.

Joe Lamond, NAMM president and CEO, said: “The industry has not stopped evolving and innovating during the pandemic, and The NAMM Show is evolving as well. As the health and safety of our members remains top of mind, and after carefully listening to companies here in the U.S. and around the world, the new dates will help members maximize their opportunities and accelerate what has arguably been a transformative time both in new products and in how they come to market.”

The announcement was met with support and enthusiasm from business leaders across the industry.

“The NAMM Show is the best opportunity of the year for Yamaha to reach our dealers, end-user customers and the music industry as a whole,” said Tom Sumner, president of Yamaha Corporation of America. The largest NAMM Show in the history of the organization took place in January 2020, attended by 115,888 industry professionals and featuring more than 7,000 brands.

With the move of The 2022 NAMM Show to June, the organization has decided not to hold Summer NAMM in Nashville, Tennessee, for the 2022 year, effectively combining the two shows. n

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A

fter working 20 years on the design a different look and feel, as they provide and construction of radio and remarkable acoustic benefits for small and television studios for the Canadian large loudspeakers, turntables, amplifiers and Broadcasting Corporation, Dave Morrison was other audio equipment,” he reports.

Morrison spends most of his time looking after ready for a new challenge. “With a background in the broadcasting industry, pro audio was the finance, planning and new product development, logical place to start,” he says today. The journey but both his sons are key players in IsoAcoustics’ ahead ultimately led him to found IsoAcoustics success as well. “Sean leads our creative and in 2012 in order to market and distribute an marketing group to develop our brand and assets, and they recently launched our adjustable isolation stand for new IsoAcoustics website and studio monitors that he had Product Selection Wizard tool,” developed and patented. he says. “Paul looks after sales, “To refer to our products as distribution and production isolators is an overly simplistic scheduling, and deals with our view of what they deliver,” he distributors in over 70 countries; says. “I’ve always been fascinated we also have small teams for by the interaction of a speaker accounting and customer with its supporting structure, service.” and its enormous influence on The company’s largest sound clarity and the phantom markets are in the U.S., U.K., image. After leaving the CBC, Former CBC engineer Canada, Korea and Germany, I worked on countless designs Dave Morrison founded IsoAcoustics in 2012. all of which are served through and concepts that ultimately warehouses in the U.S., Europe led me back to testing with the scientists at the National Research Council and Asia. That kind of space is necessary, as the in Ottawa. I quickly found great support and company has a current list of nearly 80 SKUs, feedback from audio professionals as I developed and, as might be expected during pandemic solutions for new challenges and applications; times, it has seen an increase in demand for it’s been very rewarding to work with so many products applicable to home and project studios.

As IsoAcoustics nears its tenth anniversary, talented professionals who bring together so many artistic and technical elements.” While it continues to diversify, finding not only new two studio monitor companies were interested applications for its technologies and products, in licensing the design, he ultimately decided to but also approaches to the marketplace. enter the market himself, starting the company “IsoAcoustics is a small and passionate and introducing its first stand, the ISO-L8R155, company that continues to develop new products. We are very excited to be working at NAMM 2012.

Today, IsoAcoustics is a family-owned on new OEM initiatives with a growing list business located in Markham, Ontario that of manufacturers in both the pro audio and has grown within the pro audio market while home audio segments who are integrating also opening a separate channel dedicated our technology into their new and future to products designed specifically for the products. Apart from that, there are always home audio market. “Those products have new developments on the horizon.” n

Music “Home in This World”

A Tribute to Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads

By Barbara Schultz

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PHOTO: Abraham Rowe

T

he songs compiled on Woody Guthrie’s original Dust Bowl Ballads collection (1940) decry the tragedy of a “climate crisis” that predates the term. Guthrie’s songs are populated by “refugees” of the North American prairies, fleeing a fruitless land spoiled by drought, wind and agricultural devastation.

“Thinking about Woody Guthrie and his musical legacy, I went back to the Dust Bowl Ballads and felt its resonance and its relevance to what’s happening in the world now,” says Randall Poster, who produced Home In This World, a new track-by-track remake of Guthrie’s classic.

“I thought it would be compelling to have a collection of some of my favorite artists and my favorite voices take it on, and see if we could somewhat joyfully elevate the conversation and draw people’s attention to the fact that, through our efforts, we can actually turn back some of the ill effects of global warming.”

Poster—a renowned music supervisor for film as well as a Grammy-winning music producer, whose credits range from Wes Anderson’s films to Netflix series Tiger King and The Queen’s Gambit—partnered with the Kiss the Ground foundation, a group that teaches ways to care for the planet through regenerative agriculture.

The superb group of artists that Poster tapped to sing Guthrie’s iconic songs includes Americana stars such as Shovels & Rope singing “Dust Bowl Blues,” Lost Dog Street Band doing “I Ain’t Got a Home in This World Anymore,” the Secret Sisters harmonizing on “This Dust Cain’t Kill Me” and Lee Ann Womack singing “Dusty Old Dust.” Other highlights include Waxahatchee

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Engineer/musician Ben Tanner at Portside Sound, Sheffield, Ala.

with an intimate take on “Talking Dust Bowl Blues,” blues singer Swamp Dogg on “Dust Bowl Refugee,” and former Queens of the Stone Age frontman Mark Lanegan with “Dust Pneumonia Blues.”

Swamp Dogg and Lanegan were both coproduced by Poster’s friend George Drakoulias and Brendan O’Brien, who also played most of the instrumental parts in his personal studio.

“Brendan’s room is perfect for mixing, songwriting and overdubbing,” says Kyle Stevens, who engineered all of O’Brien’s parts and mixed the two songs. “We’ve got an SSL Origin console, as well as our Pro Tools rig running on a Mac with [Apogee] Symphony. There is a control room and a vocal booth.

“But this all happened last summer,” Stevens

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Recording artist Swamp Dogg sings “Dust Bowl Refugee.”

Lydia and Laura Rogers, aka the Secret Sisters, in Sundrop Sound.

White, singing and playing acoustic guitar in the live room; drummer Todd Roper, who also plays with Cake; and bass player Shonna Tucker.

Tanner captured everything to Pro Tools via White’s favorite vocal mic—an SM7—and a Microtech Gefell UM71 on White’s guitar.

“I’ve got two API clones from Seventh Circle Audio that we had a tech tweak to make them closer to actual API 512s,” Tanner says. “I put his guitar and vocal through those, as well as a Daking FET compressor. On John live, I always use very light compression—probably five- or ten-to-one with slow attack and release.”

Roper and Tucker also appear on the Secret Sisters’ song, which was added to sessions already in progress for a four-song EP they were making with Tanner.

“Todd and Shonna are both local,” says Tanner. “The only out-of-towner on the Sisters’ session was Cheyenne Medders. He primarily plays guitar. He is just a great guy to have around because he can jump on anything as needed and switch around between acoustic and electric.

“With everything we worked on, whether it

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PHOTO: David McMurray

PHOTO: Taylor Hill

Album producer Randall Poster.

PHOTO: Cheyenne Medders

continues. “It was early in the pandemic, when everything was shutting down and there were no vaccines yet. We needed to be really cautious, and we definitely didn’t feel comfortable having a group of people come in to that small space; that’s why most of that stuff was just Brendan and I working in there with masks on.”

Drakoulias joined the sessions via FaceTime as Stevens captured O’Brien’s parts to Pro Tools, using their go-to recording chain for backing vocals and guitars: a Neumann U67 mic into a Tube-Tech MP1a mic preamp to a TubeTech PE1b EQ and then some Tube-Tech CL1a compression.

“We’d get a basic arrangement idea and send each song to Mark and Swamp Dogg. Then each of them recorded their vocal wherever they were and sent it to us, and we would build the song out around that. Some of the drum kit sounds we used were kits from Logic, but we’d stack them or manipulate them to make them sound more unique. Other percussion lines are from a collection of tracks that we’ve recorded over the years.”

For example, there’s a crunchy stomping sound on Lanegan’s version of “Dust Pneumonia Blues” that elevates the whole track.

“Brendan has a big road case—a Pelican percussion case that is full of cymbal stands, tambourines, shakers, you name it,” Stevens explains. “That sound is literally him picking up the box and dropping it on the floor. We had an [AKG] C414 on the floor, through a [Universal Audio] 1176 and a Neve [mic pre], which is our setup whenever we’re recording some kind of percussion.”

Two other songs on the album—John Paul White’s cover of “Pretty Boy Floyd” and the Secret Sisters’ “Dust Cain’t Kill Me”—were recorded and mixed in Sundrop Sound studio (Florence, Ala.) by studio co-owner/engineer Ben Tanner, also known as the keyboardist for Alabama Shakes.

“Our studio is in a house that was built in the early 1900s,” Tanner says. “It has high ceilings and big rooms, and we’ve left it pretty much like a house. What was the living room is now the live room, where we often set up drums. To the right of that is the dining room, which is separated by a partition. The master bedroom is my control room, and what was the master bathroom is a tape room. Different rooms can be opened or closed to give us separation, but it’s also possible to get everybody together in the live room.”

For “Pretty Boy Floyd,” the players were

was for the EP or this tribute record, we started with Laura and Lydia [Rogers] singing together with the band, and for the most part, we used live vocals. Laura was on an Upton 251 clone and Lydia was on a [Neumann] U67. We did several full-band passes, so we’d have plenty to pull from. That song is 90 percent live vocals with just a couple of little punches.

“I’ve known them for quite a while because we’re from the same area,” Tanner continues. “This was my first time working on a proper Secret Sisters project, but I’d worked with them as background singers. The first time I heard them together on a microphone, it was mind-blowing. The sibling harmony thing is definitely magical.”

Tanner also added his own kind of magic to both of the tracks he worked on: His Wurlitzer organ parts elevate both songs in different ways.

“That was a Wurly 145,” he says. “It has a tube gain stage in it, and the direct out sounds way better than most keyboard direct outs, so I took that and hit it with light compression on the way in.”

As on Stevens’ and O’Brien’s sessions, Covid was a factor for Tanner and the musicians in Sundrop, but through a combination of testing, caution and communication, they managed to record live without incident.

“That was the unique challenge that we all had,” Poster reflects. “Some people had to record at home. With the ebb and flow of the virus, a couple of artists found ways to use a bigger schematic while practicing safety protocols. It was a sensitive and challenging time, but one thing we had in our favor is that, for the most part, the tracks are pretty stripped-down. They all have a simple human touch to them, and that elemental quality is part of the strength of Woody Guthrie’s message.” n

Music // news & notes Axis Audio Debuts Immersive Music Studio Mike Monseur, a mastering engineer who has worked on Grammy-nominated projects, and mix engineer Webster Tileston have launched Axis Audio in Nashville. The new room is outfitted with 14 Neumann KH Series speakers in an immersive 7.1.4 monitor layout.

The spacious new mixing and mastering room features three Neumann KH 420 threeway powered monitors, each Axis Audio’s new 7.1.4 immersive music mixing studio, based around Neumann monitoring. Inset: Axis atop a KH 870 subwoofer, Audio owners Mike Monseur, left, and Webster Tileston that handle the LCR and LFE in front of one of the Neumann KH 310 LCR speakers. channels. Four KH 310 threeway powered speakers on Monseur has been using KH 420s stands provide the surround information, while four KH 120 bi-amped monitors deliver the since 2015. “I was looking for new mastering overhead zones. All the KH series speakers are monitors and got to demo the 420s,” he says, “I located in an eight-foot radius from the listening didn’t send them back.” The dome midrange was position, except for the overheads, which are probably the biggest factor in wanting to own a pair of Neumann speakers, he says. “They have slightly delayed.

punch and a great transient response, but they’re still engaging and warm. They have a distinct voice that’s pleasant to listen to, and those 420s have been on every single day since 2015 without a problem.”

Axis Audio has already created Dolby Atmos Music mixes for a couple of the major record labels since opening. Monseur and Tileston also offer stereo mixing and mastering, mastering for vinyl, tape transfers, and audio editing and restoration services.

Monseur says, “I see Dolby Atmos as an additional format, not a format to replace anything. Stereo is not going anywhere; Dolby Atmos is not going to put you out of business or change the way you’re making music, bBut once you hear it, especially on speakers in a room, you get it.” n

Electric Kingdom Opens in Westchester, N.Y. Multi-platinum producer/engineer and recording artist Gordon Bahary had a Billboard R&B Top 10 hit with the single “Electric Kingdom” in the early 1980s, and now he’s opened a new “modern analog” studio by the same name, just north of Manhattan in Westchester, N.Y. The centerpiece of the facility is a new Rupert Neve 5088 32-channel console, apparently one of less than a dozen in the configuration, which includes a 32-channel SwiftMix motorized fader system. “The incredible 5052 EQ/mic preamps are my favorite ever, with the classic Neve sound we all love and more,” says Bahary. “You can dial-in the harmonics and textures of the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s. The 5051 EQ/compressors are more of the same. The console runs on 96 volts, which is high voltage, allowing for incredible dynamics and low distortion. It’s all about tone and beauty.”

The Electric Kingdom facility offers two spacious live rooms, a balanced Yamaha C7 Conservatory grand piano said to be in impeccable condition, ATC 45A studio reference monitors, numerous FET and tube microphones, a rebuilt MCI/Mara 24-track 2-inch analog tape machine, and even a new Moog One analog synthesizer.

“Analog recording sounds warm,” Bahary says. “I think it reminds us of the great classic recordings, as it adds more harmonics and emotion to the music. The challenge with the classic home studio consisting of a laptop and a converter is it usually has little character; it’s often flat. I take those

The Rupert Neve 5088 32-channel console sits at the center of the “modern analog” Electric Kingdom studio.

multitracks from artists and mix them through this magnificent facility, and it sounds like they recorded it here from the start.”

Bahary sold 7 million copies of his hit, “Electric Kingdom,” which was voted as the Number 8 song of all-time in its genre by Rolling Stone. He’s produced and engineered numerous recordings by a wide range of artists, including collaborating closely with Herbie Hancock and Ramsey Lewis.

He was asked by Stevie Wonder to be his staff producer for Wondirection/ Motown Records, and worked on two albums with the artist; today, Bahary is currently scoring music for film and TV. n

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PHOTO: Courtesy of Sixth Records

Music // news & notes

Opium Moon’s “Night + Day” Start With a Jam Session, Be Sure to Hit “Record”

By Robyn Flans

A

s the “Night” portion of Opium Moon’s new release, Night + Day kicks off the album, it will awaken every sultry, seductive, sexy, sensual, spiritual and steamy molecule of your being, all from the hypnotic, rhythmic confluence of musical synergy between the four group members—Lili Haydn (violin), Itai Disraeli (bass), MB Gordy (percussion) and Hamid Saeidi (santoor, a Persian hammered dulcimer).

Then, as Night turns into “Day,” just like life itself, tempos increase to the daily pulse, with each cinematic section opening on a tune called “Opium Moon.” [Note: In June 1982, Joe Jackson released a very successful album called Night and Day based on a similar concept.]

Opium Moon was born in the summer of 2017 when Saeidi, along with Haydn and Disraeli (a couple for 15 years), began jamming with Gordy on a 10 a.m., “too early morning for me” session, Gordy recalls, at his home facility, RiotDrum Studio.

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“There are only four people in this world who can create this particular sound,” Disraeli asserts. “Other people can create other sounds and we in other groups can create other sounds, but this particular thing is the creation of the four of us. I wouldn’t quite call it a jam session because we had some ideas, but on the first record, we came together, pressed Record and played. No overdubs and mostly no editing. The editing was, ‘This song is 13 minutes and the good parts are 11 minutes.’”

They have all had success as individuals.

Haydn recently released her sixth solo album, scored the music for two documentaries (Strip Down, Rise Up for Netflix and Ruth: Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words for Starz), as well as composing the music for the Netflix hit Ginny and Georgia.

Disraeli recently produced and recorded a new album with his jazz group Maetar, to be released next year, and contributed music to

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Haydn’s scoring projects.

Saeidi created and produced a new TV talent show for the Persian diaspora (Contestee), and completed an album with his Hamid Saeidi Ensemble, scheduled for release this Fall.

Gordy has worked on numerous film and recording sessions in his studio for artists ranging from Adele and Michael Buble to Justin Bieber.

Still, when engineer Lucas Fehring sat at the board that day in July 2017, even though everyone felt the magnetism, they never expected those recordings to be released. The first song they played together, “When I See You Naked I Smell the Earth,” was included on their debut, selftitled album, which won a Grammy for Best New Age Album in 2019.

THE SECOND TIME AROUND Admittedly, that meeting/recording had been an experiment, says Fehring. Gordy’s studio has no isolation booths, and there was a lot of bleed

PHOTO: Courtesy of Sixth Records

between instruments. The setup was intended the midrange presence of the 87 helps to pull a first pass, space was carved out for each, but on playback, Haydn says, they knew they had lost to capture a good performance where the four things out of the room.”

Recording the dumbek always presents a bit the magic. “It was kind of like the operation was players could see one another.

When Fehring engineered the second album’s of a challenge, as it is like a kick drum and snare successful, but the patient died,” she says.

It seems the effects of the bleed had become Night section at RiotDrum Studio, he tried to drum on the same instrument. “Getting the isolate the players as much as possible in the one right balance of the low tone to the high tone part of their sound. In the meantime, Haydn large room, with baffles in front of the bass and is always a challenge, and everybody’s technique upgraded from her Avid interface to Universal drums, and surrounding the santoor and violin. is different,” Fraser says. “The low tone either Audio and got an abundance of plug-ins, which He used the most directional microphones sustains or is choked off depending on where she says was a game changer for her.

“I use the U-he Zebra2 for my own sound he had on hand—Neumann KM140s on the you are in the room. You have to walk around design, and Universal Audio Lexicon 224, and I santoor, an AKG 414 EB on Gordy’s percussion, and find the best place for that instrument.”

Disraeli says that despite the separation in play with a preset called Atmosphere by Kevin and a Neumann U87 on Haydn’s violin—and Killen for the Brian Eno glue,” recorded the bass direct.

Haydn explains.

“The challenge was to keep Violinist Lili Haydn, who in her other life is a composer Because of the more upbeat the microphones as insulated for film and television. material in the Day section, as possible, while all of their the group added a little more heads still had clear sightlines production, mostly overdubbing to one another,” he explains. percussion. Disraeli says they “That required placing the limit themselves to three takes microphones a little differently per track, which he believes and using a robust system of adds a little “urgency” to their heavy packing blankets,” The performance.

Millennia and Grace preamps Haydn sees “Feast of Sevens” provided him with plenty of on the Day portion as an example options, he adds. of one of the group’s spontaneous On the more exuberant Day transmissions. It was generated offerings, the band opted for from a series of previous jams even more separation, moving that Disraeli mined through and to engineer Scott Fraser’s chose as something to explore.

Architecture LA Studio, with “You couldn’t arrange it like this three tracking rooms on the on purpose,” the violinist says. lower floor of his hillside house.

“It has this retro cool feel to it.”

The sessions were recorded to Opium Moon is the ultimate Pro Tools. world music project, as it is not Each instrument had its own just about the music, but also room, with the bass in the control about the message. Disraeli is room going direct. from Israel, Saeidi is from Iran, Fraser miked the dumbeks and Haydn is Canadian and Gordy djembe with a Neumann TLM is from the U.S. The message is 49 (dumbeks) and a Sennheiser Bass player Percussionist Santoor player one of unity and love, the group MD 421 (djembe) into a Focusrite Itai Disraeli MB Gordy Hamid Saeidi proclaims; music is the transport ISA 428 preamp, then patched into a stereo 1176. The violin took a Neumann Fraser’s studio, they still ended up with some to peace and unification.

In February 2020, Opium Moon presented U87 in cardioid into a Focusrite Red 7, with a bleed: “Somehow—and I think it has to do with pair of Neumann M149s in omni on the santoor, the natural reverb in the room—on the aural those ideas at a TED talk in Mumbai. through a Millennia HV 3. The bass was plugged level, it has some kind of warmth or connection “Our music as a blueprint for peace in the world,” Disraeli asserts. straight into the direct input on a Focusrite ISA to the sound, which we like.”

Even though the music is instrumental and 428 preamp in the control room.. there are no lyrics to send the overt message Fraser says it was a challenge getting the right MIXING AND PERFORMANCE direct-to-room balance on the violin because Haydn and Jeff Gartenbaum mixed both albums, of love and peace, Disraeli hopes that their Haydn played standing up. “She tends to move and they realized on the first day that they had collective inner beliefs and spirit will be felt around and really dance with the music, so at to embrace the bleed. Haydn recalls that the subliminally through the music.

“Listen to Opium Moon and make some times she’s more into the room and at times she’s foundation of the bass and frame drum were more into the mic,” he explains. “Fortunately, clashing, being in a similar frequency range. On peace in the world,” Disraeli concludes. n

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PHOTO: Clive Young

Live

PRESENTED BY

Meyer Sound MICAs and 700-HP subwoofers served up the mixes created at the mix position, seen under a white canopy behind the lighthouse. Three stories above, bands played on the lighthouse roof.

Sound and Lighthouse: Unique Audio for a Seafaring Festival

By Clive Young

B

oats and music have always gone together, and what’s better than hearing great tunes when you’re out on the water? Well, what if those tunes were played live? That’s what happened September 4 at the Huntington Lighthouse Music Festival, when seven bands rocked on the roof of a small historic lighthouse an hour outside of New York City. Despite the odd location, they weren’t alone—an estimated 1,650 vessels surrounded the 40×40-foot island to hear reggae, rock and boatloads of Buffett.

On paper, the all-day festival sounds like a crazy idea. The lighthouse doesn’t have reliable

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power for a P.A. the mix position is three stories below the bands on the opposite side of the building, and everything from consoles to speakers to musicians has to be brought in by boat—and then taken up docks, gangplanks, steps and a spiral staircase to the roof. Despite all those hurdles, 2021 marked the 12th edition of the fundraising event, presented by the Huntington Lighthouse Preservation Society.

Involved since the festival’s inception in the mid-2000s, this year saw HDH Davidson Entertainment handle sound, lights, livestreaming and booking. “It was a jazz fest the first year,” recalled HDH’s technical director,

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Donald Davidson. “A friend of mine who was on the lighthouse committee said, ‘Who’s bringing the P.A.?’ and someone said, ‘The band brings that, right?’ She called me up, talked me into it and brought me out the next day. There was no phone signal back then, and I couldn’t imagine how we were going to get power. I brought out everything I had, even stuff I had retired. I had amp racks overheating, crossovers on fire…it was bad. Second year, I borrowed everything I could from people I knew; that was no good.

Third year, we started renting Meyer Sound UPA-1s and discovered they could handle the bad power, and that was the key; whether it

PHOTO: Clive Young

King Wellington shared the sounds of the Caribbean with Long Island.

The Ed Travers Band brought boatloads of Jimmy Buffett for the crowd.

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PHOTO: Clive Young

an audio feed of FOH engineer Ryan Damico’s mono house mix, created on a Behringer x32 console. Most bands required fewer than 20 inputs, said Damico, which was fine with him as he had his hands full, mixing far behind the P.A. while the stage was three stories up on the other side of the lighthouse. “It makes for some interesting slapback,” he chuckled.

The unusual mixing position was a necessity since there was barely room for the bands themselves on the roof. Nonetheless, tucked into the corner of the roof stage area, Heather Bey mixed monitors on another x32 console, providing and maintains everything else, and according to mixes to five Meyer Sound Melodie array boxes vice president Deanna Glassman, the lengthy toused as monitors due to their small footprints. do list includes the installation of new windows, Miking was handled with a bevy of Sennheiser and a new dock and 350 tons of new rip-rap—the Audix mics on drums, DIs on guitar amps and keys, boulders that surround lighthouses, keeping the waters at bay. and Shure SM58s used to capture vocals.

Blessed with perfect weather, the 2021 festival Between acts, organizers from the Preservation Society encouraged boaters to surrender was a hit with boaters and bands alike. “We the contents of their wallets to volunteer have a lot of repeat groups, but the same thing “pirates” that went boat-to-boat in zodiac happens with every act the first time they play rafts—though in a nod to the modern age, the here,” said Donald Davidson. “The concept organization also took Venmo. The festival is doesn’t really sink in until the day of the show. the Preservation Society’s main fundraiser, and They bring their stuff to the dock and Okay, the money is crucial for maintaining the aging going on a boat’s kind of cool. Then they pull up lighthouse, which has guided boaters along to the lighthouse and they start to get it. By the Long Island’s Gold Coast since 1912. Resembling time they get out on the roof and see all those a small castle thanks to its Beaux Art-style boats, they step up to the mic and go, ‘This is the architecture, the solitary building has become coolest gig!’” ■ iconic in the region, easily seen from the sprawling Gatsby-like L-R: Donald and Harley Davidson of mansions that dot the shoreline HDH Davidson Entertainment. and the roiling waters beyond.

When the Coast Guard announced plans in 1985 to replace the thencrumbling castle with a generic metal tower, the Huntington Lighthouse Preservation Society was hastily formed to save the historic lighthouse—and won.

Today, while the Coast Guard still operates the automated beacon, the volunteer organization owns PHOTO: Clive Young

was low, high or fluctuating, they kept going.”

Over the nine Huntington Lighthouse Music Fests since then, the evolution has continued. A few years in, the audio team realized vibrations from the growing ground-stacked P.A. and subs were probably hurting the historic lighthouse, particularly the crumbling foundation that they were raising funds for. “The whole building was shaking when we had the festival,” laughed Davidson. “First, we tried platforms of tires and plywood under the P.A.; that worked a little bit.

It took 10 years to raise the $1 million to fix the foundation and once they started, there were construction barges here. We realized—‘We need a barge for the P.A.!’”

That P.A. has changed over time, too. This year, Designatronix (Ronkonkoma, NY) provided gear for a system design largely spec’d by secondgeneration audio pro Harley Davidson. The main P.A. comprised two barge-stacked arrays of five Meyer Sound MICA array elements, each supplemented by a 700-HP subwoofer, all placed at a 90-degree angle to each other. “They cover 180 degrees with a big dead node in the center— which is fine because there’s rocks, so nobody’s there,” said Harley Davidson. “We need a buffer zone around the island so the Coast Guard can get in and out if needed; with the MICAs doing 112 dB five feet away from the moorings, it helps keep the kayakers back a bit. We used to get people driving past in the channel saying ‘I can’t hear it’—well of course, since the speakers were on the other side of the lighthouse—so now we’ve started adding auxiliary stacks of four Melodies in places.” The entire system drew power from a fleet of generators, overseen by master electrician Zach Parker making the spotty power a thing of the past.

The Livestream/FOH mix position was located under a canopy at the base of the Huntington Lighthouse. There, Andrew Schild wore two hats as he coordinated festival volunteers and oversaw a Facebook livestream based around HDMI output from two GoPro cameras hung above the bands. That footage was teamed with

Live // news & notes // presented by With the opportunity to return to an indoor live setting, the iHeartRadio Music Awards were held this summer inside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where acts like The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Dan + Shay, Silk Sonic, Brandi Carlile, Demi Lovato, H.E.R., Doja Cat and Usher performed for 1,500 fans. ATK Audiotek provided audio for the event.

With the smaller crowd on-hand, only the venue’s main floor and first of three balconies were open, so ATK Audiotek deployed a JBL Professional line array system consisting of 16 JBL VTX A12 loudspeakers, in clusters of eight on each side, and S28 subwoofers in clusters of two per side.

“Our shows go from quiet dialogue on a podium mic to a loud rock band at 115 dB, so we need the whole dynamic range to be pristine and clear,” said Jeff Peterson, front of house engineer, ATK Audiotek. “That’s something that the JBL products have done well for us.”

The 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards was ATK Audiotek’s first in-person show in an indoor venue since the pandemic began. “I think that was actually the first real indoor audience, elbow to elbow,” said Kirk Powell, P.A. designer and system tech, ATK Audiotek.

“There was a lot of energy in the room because the performers were really

PHOTO: Harman/Getty

iHeartRadio Awards Returns to Live Event

enjoying being in front of a crowd, and the fans were really enjoying being in front of the performers. At times, Jeff had to goose it a little bit to get over the crowd, which is normal, but it’s been so long since we’ve had to do that.” ■

Taking Opera Outdoors In Cincinnati In addition, 16 KS28 subs were arrayed in poles at the rear of the seating area and, using With indoor concerts still a tough sell to the public and performers alike, the Cincinnati Opera opted a center arc on the ground, while nine Kiva II L-ISA Room Engine functionality, created the to head outdoors with the Cincinnati Symphony enclosures were deployed as front-fills along rear-surround array.

The use of L-ISA was intended to create Orchestra and Cincinnati Opera Chorus this the leading edge of the stage, placed atop the summer to present Carmen, Tosca and The Barber subs. Finally, a half-dozen Syva medium-throw an operatic experience outdoors, said Burke: colinear source speakers were mounted on light “We looked at how to add surround speakers of Seville outdoors in Summit Park. in an inconspicuous way so that Jonathan Burke, who directs the the illusion of reverb was built into sound design program in the School the sound system from the start…. of Theater, Film and Television at [Vocalists] said they really felt as UCLA, designed the audio system, though they were in an enclosed which was based around L-Acoustics’ space, with reflections off of walls,” L-ISA immersive technology. Provided he added. “There was no vocal

by Firehouse Productions, a full 60 monitoring, no foldback—they Kara II enclosures were configured really felt supported by the ‘room.’ as five arrays of a dozen enclosures On shows like this, I’ll usually have each, all flown from towers and the reverb on a fader I can bring up stage canopy, as the Scene system. The as needed, but on these shows, we arrays made use of L-Acoustics Panflex needed none of that. The Room horizontal steering to create coverage over the entire seating area extending Sound designer and FOH engineer Jonathan Burke at the production’s DiGiCo Engine created all the ambience we needed and wanted.” ■ 450 feet from the stage.

SD10 mixing console and L-ISA Controller display (upper left).

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Live // news & notes // presented by Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound’ P.A. to Be Auctioned

By Clive Young The Grateful Dead may have sung “what a long, strange trip it’s been,” but for some parts of its legendary Wall of Sound P.A., the final stop on that trip might be, well, your place. This fall, Sotheby’s will present From the Vault: Property from the Grateful Dead and Friends, an online auction running October 7-14 that will include gear from the Wall of Sound, as well as items that belonged to its inventor, LSD chemist and sound engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley.

Sotheby’s notes that the auction will include “a range of surviving equipment from the Wall of Sound experience, including McIntosh

The Wall of Sound was a collaboration between an audio team that wanted to create a massive, distortionfree sound system, and a band that was wellheeled and laissez faire enough to fund the 75-ton experiment. amplifiers, hand-built stage cabinets, original tie-dyed speaker covers, and a dozen Wall of Sound stage cabinets, including ones used by guitarists Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia and drummer Mickey Hart (estimates from $2,000).” Further details about the offerings will be released in the weeks leading up to the auction.

The short-lived Wall of Sound stands out as a unique chapter in The Grateful Dead’s mythology—it was the end result of a collaboration between an audio team that wanted to create a massive, distortion-free sound system, and a band that was well-heeled

and laissez faire enough to fund the 75-ton experiment.

The original Wall of Sound, as envisioned in 1972 by audio engineer Stanley and created with Dan Healy, Mark Rizene, Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner and John Curl, was a true physical wall of speakers, comprised of six separate P.A.s placed on scaffolding behind the Grateful Dead, acting as a simultaneous monitor and house system. Each instrument and vocal had its own dedicated speakers within the wall, which resulted in low intermodulation distortion and inadvertently provided onstage localization of sound to a performer.

A total of 11 channels fed the system: vocals, guitar, lead guitar, piano, three drum channels, and four bass channels—one for each string, which were separated by a quadrophonic encoder. The system, which required four semi-trucks for transport and 21 people to load-in, was powered by 92 amplifiers for a total of 26,400 watts.

That sheer number of boxes was ultimately why the Wall came down for good. The band performed through a preliminary version in February, 1973, and every tweeter blew during the first song. Undeterred, the Dead began touring with the Wall of Sound in March 1974, only to retire it seven months later after Wallrelated production costs had started spiraling out of control. The massive P.A.’s last hurrah was preserved for eternity, however, when the band filmed five shows at San Francisco’s Winterland in October 1974—the concerts at the heart of The Grateful Dead Movie.

A McIntosh 2300 amplifier from the Wall of Sound and its original road case will be part of the Sotheby’s auction.

For those who are more attracted to Owsley Stanley’s chemical exploits rather than his audio ones, the auction will also include the engineer/ LSD cook’s personal chemistry set, which surely saw a lot of use as he is said to have whipped up millions of doses throughout the late Sixties—an industrious proclivity that put him on the wrong side of the law. According to Sotheby’s, while out on bail and awaiting sentencing in 1970, Stanley passed the chemistry set on to the group’s first roadie, Larry “Ramrod” Shurtliff; it now carries an auction estimate of $10/15,000. ■

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on the cover

Hella

t

his summer’s Hella Mega Tour came after a Hella Mega Long Wait. Bringing together a three-pronged rock attack of Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer, the massive world stadium tour was first announced back in September, 2019, with all three bands releasing singles, that teased new albums, that primed the tour…that didn’t happen. After months of rehearsals, rig building and the rest, Hella Mega found itself all dressed up with nowhere to go after COVID-19 brought the concert industry to a standstill in March, 2020, only a week before the first tour leg though Asia was due to begin. As the months wore on, leg after leg got postponed, and an Oceania run was simply cancelled, but with vaccinations on the rise and COVID briefly on the ropes as Summer 2021 began, it was time to get the show on the road.

Hella Mega finally kicked off July 24 at Globe Life Field in Arlington,

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Mega

VA and never looked back, spending the next six weeks careening around the U.S. before wrapping up in Seattle in early September.

Across 29 shows, the tour played 35,00040,000 seat stadiums that were usually sold out with crowds ready to let off a little—OK, a lot of steam after 18 months of COVID-induced uncertainty. The tour was up to the challenge, however, with the bands rolling through hitheavy setlists while the audio team ensured Kevin Winter/Getty Images that audiences left every show thoroughly rocked.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said crew chief and system engineer Clark Thomas, speaking under the FOH tent on a broiling August afternoon at HersheyPark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “We had to re-prep all this gear that’s been sitting around forever and blow the dust off it, so to speak.” The tour carried a d&b audiotechnik GSL line array system provided by Eighth Day Sound (which also provided gear for Green Day, while Clair Global handled Fall Out Boy).

As it turned out, pro audio gear isn’t designed to spend two years offline, but getting it back in fighting shape wasn’t that difficult either. “The routine pretty much stays the same,” said Thomas. “You go through, check all your cabling, drivers, cabinets and make sure everything’s happy and talking the way it should. Maybe you find some cabling that mysteriously went bad getting oxidation. Here and there, the little audio Gremlins came in and definitely had their way, but it’s gone well since we’ve been out here.”

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Yeah

A typical day’s hang sported Kevin Winter/Getty Images 24 GSL line array modules per side on the main hangs, while the side hangs were comprised of from Wimberley, Texas, where 20 J-Series boxes per side; all of Rupert Neve Designs is based, that was supported by 30 SL-SUB

By Clive Young so I’ve been going down there subwoofers across the front of the for years, trying to see if we can stage. “We like the intelligibility,” said Thomas. “You don’t really need flown subs with GSL, because there’s figure out some way to make an affordable, compact, analog console. Still a lot of low end coming off the main arrays as-is. We stayed away from kind of tweaking on it and there’s some stuff in the works, but as far as flying subs because everything we need is there; there’s no sense in adding right now, this is the best new analog console to bring out [on the road]. multiple sources just for the sake of doing it. Coverage left to right is It’s all transformer-based, so there’s transformers on the in and outs. They amazing, and it has great processing to get up into the backs of venues. went in and zip-tied all the transformers to the chassis, put little blocks in You can definitely tell the difference from your conventional line arrays with silicone to make sure nothing rattles around or has the ability to pop with two box circuits—there’s a lot of control there. And, of course, d&b off a circuit board, so it has been modded by the guys there a little bit in anticipation of rough roads.” has always been easy to use, as per usual.”

Lemoine faced cramming 44 inputs into the 32-channel desk (“I’ve got Sending audio down the line to all those speakers was an XTA MX36 console switching system, allowing the production to quickly change a couple of stereo channels to make up for that lack of real estate”), but between the four desks on hand—Fall Out Boy was mixed on a DiGiCo otherwise the console was as straightforward as possible. “No VCAs—just SD5; Weezer had a DiGiCo SD12; openers The Interrupters were mixed on groups, faders, preamp and EQ; it’s just all really good, essential stuff,” he the emergency backup desk, an Avid S6L-24C; and Green Day? Well, that said. Protected from the elements under a custom cover made out of a was something else entirely: a Rupert Neve Designs 5088 analog mixing boat sail, the desk was perched at FOH atop racks that included the desk’s own portable air conditioner. “It’s been good outdoors—95, 100 degrees, desk.

“There’s never been one on the road before,” beamed Kevin Lemoine, it seems totally fine, but after that, you want to get a little cooler air going the band’s house engineer for the last 21 years. “I live 45 minutes into it,” chuckled Lemoine.

After a nearly two-year wait, Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer brought the rock with the summer’s biggest tour.

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The calm before the storm at HersheyPark Stadium. The tour’s d&b audiotechnik GSL P.A. covered the sold-out crowd of 40,000 with ease.

Fall Out Boy FOH engineer Chad Olech retired his old DiGiCo show file before Hella Mega, opting to build a fresh new one from scratch.

Surprisingly not in the racks, given the desk on top, were effect units and the like. “I didn’t want to use any outboard gear; I was tired of it all breaking down, honestly, and I wanted to have a lot more flexibility,” said Lemoine. “I have UAD plug-ins, but it’s not very plug-in heavy; I only have a preamp here, so I need to have an EQ after this and some kind of balancing capability. For certain vocals, I do have a multiband compression on lead vocal, and gates on the drums obviously, but everything else is just preamp and EQ.” The mics capturing the band were a mix of typical and unusual choices, with the drums captured with a Shure 91A and a DPA on the kick, a Neumann 184 on the hi-hat, DPAs on the toms, Schoeps for overheads, and a Telefunken

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M80 for snare top with a Josephson e22s for bottom. All guitars were grabbed by gold-front Sennheiser MD 409Ns and more Josephson e22s mics, and Rupert Neve DIs could be found around the stage. Vocals were a mix of DPAs, with singer Billie Joe Armstrong belting into a d:facto II. For all the tech brought to bear on the house mix, for Lemoine, the end result was the key. “The biggest thing for this band has always been the interaction between the audience and the performance, and this console makes a big sonic difference,” he said. “You can tell the crowd reacts differently as soon as it comes on. That’s not me saying, ‘Oh, it sounds so much better than any digital console.’ It’s a matter of watching the people and seeing how it affects them, because you see it—there’s tears and there’s goosebumps and there’s not being able to breathe. It’s…It’s really cool.”

Up at stageside, Beau Alexander was once again bringing monitor mixes to Green Day, this time using an Avid S6L-32 console. The group was completely on in-ear monitors, much to the engineers’ relief. “There’s a Thumper on the drum seat, but that’s the only thing that moves any air on stage,” said Alexander. “The guitars are in iso-cabs, so the stage isn’t loud, and then you add in what the d&b GSL does with its rear rejection and it’s quiet. That’s what Kevin and I’ve worked for, for a long time. That quiet makes it a lot easier for him, and nice and calm for the in-ears as well.” The in-ears in question were Ultimate Ears UE Lives, used across the band, he added: “These days, it’s splitting hairs—no one makes bad IEMs anymore.

Everyone has a preference, whether it’s JH Audio, Ultimate Ears, 64 Audio or whoever. They all make great products and UE serves us well out here.”

All the tour’s audio pros were glad to be working again, but for Fall Out Boy’s longtime FOH engineer, Chad Olech, it took some getting used to: “I’ll tell you what—when I went to prep everything, I felt like a complete idiot when I stepped up to the console. It’d been 17 months since I went near one, and I spent an hour just trying to remember where buttons were!”

Adding to the urgency, Olech had opted to use the pandemic as a line in the sand, wiping his DiGiCo show file in order start fresh. “I probably did 300 shows on the old show file, and I felt like I was starting to pile stuff on for no reason other than I was bored—I’d put something on to help and then tweak it so much that it needed more help. Now I’m using a lot less stuff than before and it sounds better. I use both Waves and Universal Audio, depending on what the function is.” Also new at the F.O.B. FOH position were a few pieces of analog outboard gear—“I use Warm Audio’s stereo buss compressor on my stereo buss, as well as my drum crush buss.

I had the time, figured it was an easy enough thing to try and I’ve really liked the results.”

Olech’s mix was built out of 46 inputs (“It’s four dudes and a couple of playback tracks”), and as Shure endorsees, the band was captured on stage by the brand’s best. Drums were grabbed with Beta 98 AMP/Cs on toms, KSM137s on hi-hat, ride and overhead, Beta 56s on both snares and both a 91 and 52 in the kick. Lead vocals were handled with wireless KSM9s and

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backing vocals on wired KSM8s, while all guitars were on DIs with singer Kevin Lemoine used a 32-channel Rupert Neve Designs Patrick Stump additionally using an iso cabinet containing a KSM313 5088 console to mix Green Day nightly, marking the first ribbon mic. time the studio desk has ever been taken on the road.

Over in Weezer’s corner of the FOH tent, Craig Overbay, the band’s engineer since 2000, was also mixing on DiGiCo— in his case, an SD12: “I got a new console two months before the tour because I wanted a smaller footprint, and the SD12 has 96 channels, so that’s Equipped by more than I could ever need—for doing Weezer, at least.” Still, the split was full at 56 channels, giving Overbay plenty to work with. “I would describe it as, ‘I’m not the producer; I’m the re-producer,’” he joked.

The goal for moving to a new desk was to keep The Premier Supplier of Pro Audio, Video, things simple, he explained: “I have no plug-ins; I’m using just what’s in the desk—it has a compressor, Lighting & Musical Equipment gate, multiband compressor on every input and output. I mean, I can dig myself in a hole easy enough without having to look at plug-ins or worrying about the server crashing! I also have some analog outboard gear with us that I like— there’s an API 5500 mastering EQ on the left or right, a Drawmer tube compressor, and then some digital delays and reverbs that I just like. They’re older, they’re grainier, but I don’t think the audience knows or cares as long as they can hear everything and it sounds alright.”

With Hella Mega now completed, the tour has been vindicated as a safe success in a precarious time, providing fans with a much-needed night out—and concert professionals with much-needed work. “I was a little curious how it was gonna go, coming right out of sitting at home for a year and a half,” said Thomas, “but we’ve got a pretty welldialed machine going on. Our crew has been stellar, and that’s been the fortunate thing about being one of the first large-scale tours out post-pandemic: We got a lot of really good guys, and they’ve been doing a killer job.”

“Top musicians don’t want to wait. I know Full Compass will have what I Alexander agreed, adding, “We’ve got an need so I can avoid downtime and keep the takes rolling. ” outstanding audio crew with us; they kick ass every day. Everybody’s loving being out here, all -Landon Arkens, the audiences have been amazing, we’re having fun Award-winning Recording Engineer at Blast House Studios mixing and the bands are playing great. It’s hard to ask for much better, really.” ■ Free Shipping | Free 2-Year Service | Low Price Guarantee | Flexible Financing | Certified Experts mi x o n l i n e . c o m | O C T O B E R 2 0 2 1 | M I X

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The Darkness, from left: Rufus Tiger Taylor, drums; Justin Hawkins, lead vocals, guitar and keyboards; Dan Hawkins, lead guitar and vocals; Frankie Poullain, bass and vocals.

PHOTO: Simon Emmett

Return of The Darkness Locked Down in a Horse Barn, and Motorheart Emerges

By Steve Harvey

T

he business of making records has certainly changed since U.K. glam rock band The Darkness sprang onto the scene just over two decades ago in the English beach resort and fishing port of Lowestoft.

Around the turn of the millennium, it was no big deal to spend nearly a year and an untold fortune recording an album at multiple studios with legendary producer Roy Thomas Baker. Today, with artists crafting mega-hits on laptops in their bedrooms, The Darkness found themselves riding out the pandemic lockdown

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in a horse stable in the English countryside recording their latest album release, Motorheart.

This is not a former stable, by the way—it’s still occupied. “You can hear the horses through the wall. You can smell the horse shit,” laughs lead guitarist and producer Dan Hawkins, on whose property, a 32-acre slice of Sussex countryside south of London, the stable sits.

Hawkins is an avowed audio gearhead. By the time he and brother Justin, lead singer and a multi-instrumentalist, formed the band, Dan already had years of recording experience behind

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him. As the money rolled in from the band’s early commercial success—a multi-platinum debut album, Permission to Land, and hit single, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”—he invested it in Leeders Farm. Originally intended as his home and a private rehearsal studio for the band, it soon grew into a residential studio for hire, stocked with top vintage analog equipment.

Then, 10 years ago, he sold the farm.

THE QUEEN-RTB CONNECTION History repeats itself, as Hawkins’ temporary

Producer and lead guitarist Dan Hawkins at the Pro Tools-BAE-EMI line amp control center in the makeshift control room, with brother Justin seated at left and bassist Frankie Poullain to the right.

my interest in that. He taught me how to EQ. He showed me how he did it, for each instrument.

“Roy is very focused; when he’s working, he doesn’t like to be distracted,” he continues. “It’s a case of not asking questions but just watching like a hawk all the time. I would see him doing things and wonder why he was doing it. Years later, now that my engineering skills have gotten better, I know why he did it.”

LOCKED DOWN IN THE BARN For the band’s latest album, Hawkins set up his gear—some of it retained after he sold Leeders Courtesy of Dan Hawkins

studio-in-a-stable is now mushrooming. He’s about to build a large live room, turning the horse barn into a control room. A 56-input SSL 4000E console that was installed in 1985 at The Farm, the private studio owned by Genesis, sits ready for recommissioning.

“It was never meant to be a studio; it was one of those things that got out of hand,” Hawkins says. “There are millions of people like me who have been obsessed with pro audio since birth.

You just can’t help yourself.”

Things do tend to get out of hand around The Darkness. Case in point: Sophomore album One Way Ticket to Hell ...and Back. “We’ve only just recouped from our first two albums,” Hawkins reports. “No wonder; six months at Rockfield, three months at Whitfield Street. We spent a month mixing at the Village—while staying in the Beverly Hills Hotel!”

The music of Queen is an obvious touchstone for The Darkness so it’s no surprise they enlisted Baker, who worked on five Queen albums, to produce One Way Ticket. For Hawkins, it was an opportunity to learn from a master.

“We were very close, Roy and I, during the making of that album, because it took so long and we were left to it; he and I were in Rockfield for months,” Hawkins says. During writing and pre-production, Baker even stayed at Hawkins’ house and helped him with plans for the Leeders Farm studio.

“Although my production career started a bit earlier—uncredited I might add; I co-produced the first album with Pedro Ferreira—I would never have called myself an engineer at that point,” Hawkins says. “It was Roy that sparked

Courtesy of Dan Hawkins

Producer Dan Hawkins locked in during the tracking sessions at the horse barn.

Farm—in about half of the 500-square-foot stable. “I kept a load of the microphones—the usual suspects, and a few bits of outboard, like 1176s,” he says, adding ruefully, “I’ll never forgive myself for selling the Neve Melbourne.”

Although his signal chain tends to change over time, he says, “For years, I’ve been using a Chandler Mini Rack with an extender, 32 channels of EMI line amps for my summing, running Pro Tools into that. On my mix bus, I have a Smart C2 [compressor] and a Retro 2A3 [dual program EQ] for a bit of top and bottom.”

On his front end, he says, “I’m a big fan of BAE. I bought a load of the original BAE 312s, their first attempt at re-creating those amazing API pre’s I have four or five of the original metalknob versions and I haven’t heard anything better for drums. For the last six or seven years, every bass I’ve recorded on every album I’ve produced has been plugged straight into one of those original BAE 312s.”

Writing began during the tightest of U.K. lockdowns, with the band’s drummer, Rufus Taylor, accessing the drum booth through a separate door while Hawkins stayed in the control room.

“It was fortunate because this is the way we make records anyway,” Hawkins explains. “I tend to have a load of riffs; I bring Rufus in and he plays drums. I have his drum kit miked up from the start, I play the guitar and we communicate over headphones. We don’t really do rehearsals.

I’m doing all the pre-production then and there because it’s all in my head; I’m engineering and producing at the same time—so nothing really changed.”

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Producer/guitarist/vocalist Dan Hawkins at the mic.

We can’t tell whether he’s reading lyrics, checking levels or FaceTiming with his brother in Switzerland.

REMOTE TRACKS, APPROVALS Hawkins would then edit the tracks, add some guide guitars and send them to his brother, who lives in Switzerland. “He would live with the track for a while and send back his vocal ideas to see whether we liked them,” brother Dan says. With the band scattered—Taylor lives in London and bassist Frankie Poullain is in

Courtesy of Dan Hawkins

southwest England—everyone would approve the lyrics using WhatsApp. There were typically few comments: He hit the nail on the head every time.

“Then I’d continue to work with Justin.

I’m really particular about finding the perfect key for the song. We used this plug-in called Audiomovers; I’ve got his mix bus and he’s got

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mine, and I’m recording as he auditions takes.

Sometimes I would forget he wasn’t actually in the vocal booth.”

Once Justin sent over his master take, Dan would track the guitars. “I would get Ian Norfolk, who is my guitar tech and also a great engineer, to record me,” he says. “I get the sound moving the mics, changing EQs and switching pre’s until I’ve got it where I want it, but when it comes to stopping and starting and pressing the spacebar, he records me.”

Hawkins also plays guide bass on the early versions, he says. “So right at the end of the session, I would call Frankie to do the bass. And then I mixed it.”

Hawkins is notorious for making changes up to the last minute, it seems, and he’s okay with that: “I always thought that was a failing as producer, then I read an interview with Mutt Lange and was relieved to see that he’s the same.

I’m infamous—the guys will approve a mix then hear the master and go, ‘Is that a mandolin?!’ But there’s always room for experimentation.”

Motorheart will be released via Cooking Vinyl on November 19. n

Birth of the Bootlegs New Book Reveals Tech and Turmoil Behind Trade Mark of Quality, the First Bootleg Label

By Clive Young

T

Photo: Genius Books

of er a patchwork an threw togeth d released it Carl and Pigm an , ies dit od d kes an , Bob Dylan outta t White Wonder eg album, Grea . ty ali as the first bootl Qu of rk y for Trade Ma paving the wa

hese days, you can hear almost every note an artist ever played. Go to a concert and there’s a forest of arms holding iPhones aloft, streaming the show to YouTube. Hop online and acts are sharing an endless river of covers, rehearsal footage and casual jams on their social media. Pick up a box set and there’s multiple discs featuring every nascent 3 A.M. demo that the songwriters could unearth in their basements. oks Photo: Genius Bo But there was a time when none of that was available, and artists and their record labels wanted albums and singles result of six years of research, the true-crime to stand on their own as complete and solitary tome recounts unexpected twists, close calls works. Who wanted to hear that other stuff and at least one Mission: Impossible-like attempt anyway? As it turned out, there were armies of to secure recordings worth their weight in gold.

Throughout the first half of the 1970s, TMQ insatiable fans who wanted it all and more—and in the summer of 1969, two men started the first released dozens of illicit albums filled with unreleased music from some of the biggest bootleg label to give them what they wanted.

The label was Trade Mark of Quality and names in rock. When the records inspired others the two men were…well, they’ve gone by a to take up bootlegging, TMQ continued to stand number of names over the years, but they’re out from the crowd by emphasizing the “Q” with referred to as Carl and Pigman in a new book, its product. Rolling Stone magazine was so taken A Pig’s Tale, by Ralph Sutherland and Harold by TMQ’s second release, Live’r Than You’ll Ever Sherrick, with researcher Steve Talia. Taking Be, capturing a sizzling Rolling Stones show its name from TMQ’s logo—a cartoon pig—the at the Oakland Coliseum, that it reviewed the book sifts through the illegal label’s deliberately record in February 1970, calling it nothing less murky history, scraping away rock ‘n’ roll than “the ultimate Rolling Stones album.”

As the Seventies wore on, however, bootlegs’ mythology to reveal how two guys operated in the shadows of the music industry, built novelty started to wear off, artists began their own studio, secretly pressed albums, and strategizing against them (the Stones responded ultimately changed copyright law forever. The to Live’r by releasing the concert album Get

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Music for TMQ’s boo tlegs came from a variety of sources, and was often prepped for release in the lab el’s own studio.

Your Ya-Ya’s Out soon after), fans grew tired of getting ripped off by terrible-sounding records, and most importantly, bootleggers began to get busted. While labels like TMQ initially existed in a legal gray area where bootlegging was “only” a civil offense, major labels responded by lobbying for changes that became part of the Copyright Act of 1976.

Giving copyright protection to “all misappropriated recordings, both counterfeit and pirate,” the act made producing bootlegs a federal crime; not so coincidentally, TMQ closed up shop the same year.

It was a quiet, necessary end to a lark that got out of control. Sutherland describes Carl and Pigman as “just a couple of crazy L.A. music freaks who thought it would be cool to put together their own album of unreleased Dylan tracks. They had no idea what chaos would be unleashed in the music business when they did this.”

That album of Dylan tracks was Great White Wonder, a two-LP hodgepodge of Bob Dylan casually playing in a hotel room, some studio outtakes and a TV performance. As avowed fans, the two had obtained the tracks on reelto-reel tapes through collector circles, but the songs were spread across different tapes. While a few collectors might daydream about somehow compiling them onto a convenient vinyl record, Carl and Pigman were in a position to actually do that—so they did.

“They worked at a record distributor in

Photo: G enius Boo ks

L.A. and knew people who helped them,” says Sutherland. “One of the producers put together the master tapes himself, then it was turned over to other trusted associates to produce and manufacture the finished product. There were those in the business who could get things done for a price and keep their mouths shut. Only a few hundred pressings of Great White Wonder were made in the beginning.”

A few hundred records was still a lot to get into stores; they needed help—and that’s where co-author Harold Sherrick came in. “I was a high school kid when I met Pigman,” says Sherrick. “I started helping them, not with the manufacturing itself, but going to the pressing plants, picking up the orders, boxing them, sticking them in the van, driving them back and then taking them into a few record stores that were selling stuff for us.” Working in one of those stores at the time was none other than Ralph Sutherland, and a lasting casual acquaintance began.

Housed in a generic white cover with its name rubber-stamped on the front, Great White Wonder appeared around L.A. in the summer of 1969 and quickly made a splash. That put some money in Carl and Pigman’s pockets, but it was the Rolling Stones’ fall tour that year that turned the experiment into an ongoing, covert business.

Asked by a friend if they could make a record that would capture the Stones live, the pair recorded six West Coast concerts in November that year,

paid Much of TMQ’s studio was ’r for with profits from Live cert Than You’ll Ever Be, a con “The ed call ics crit that tleg boo album.” ultimate Rolling Stones

with little to no subterfuge required.

“At the time, no one thought about TMQ ev olved fr om rele anyone professionally recording a live in anon asing b ymous ootlegs rubbersleeves concert from the audience—and they stampe to carefu d generi lly pres vinyl re c sed colo leases w didn’t care,” says Sutherland. “The red ith custo designe m cove d by illu rs strator concerts were recorded from the William Stout. producer’s seat using a long, handheld Sennheiser MKH 805 shotgun microphone and a portable Uher Report 4000 reel-to-reel tape recorder using national press, something unexpected was 5-inch 3M/Scotch reels at 7.5 IPS in mono. From happening: The bootleggers were getting 1969 to the mid-Seventies, this was the same bootlegged, and grainy copies of their Dylan equipment used to record most of the live-in- and Stones records were appearing in record concert TMQ albums that were not recorded by shops. Despite that, ill-gained dollars continued others or from outside source tapes. There was to fill their pockets, so there was no question also a short-lived use of the miniature Nagra they’d make more records now—but if they were SN tape recorder, which used cassette tape in a going to continue, the shady enterprise needed reel-to-reel format; that was used for recording a name to distinguish itself from competitors: live performances and was more easily concealed Trade Mark of Quality was chosen with tongue only partially in cheek. Since they were flush than the larger Uher tape deck.”

By the time the Oakland show was released with cash, just like a legitimate startup might as Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be and started getting do, they decided to pour the profits back into the business and build their own studio.

“The goal was to produce the finest quality bootleg records possible at the time,” says

Photo: Genius Books

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Books Photo: Genius

Sutherland. “The master tapes were made on professional studio Ampex machines, utilizing Dolby and, later, dbx noise reduction. Most of the tapes were made and edited on professional Ampex 10-inch reels at 15 IPS. There was one 1/4-inch twotrack and one 1/2-inch four-track machine with an optional 1/2-inch 3-track playback head, a four-channel Tascam mixing board, equalizers, echo/reverb units, four JBL 4310 three-way studio monitors and two Yamaha stereo amps. This also made it possible to produce Quad/four-channel masters. There were also two additional Revox A77 tape decks and a transcription turntable which could accommodate any size or speed vinyl up to 16-inch transcription acetates, with various types of cartridges and stylus. The TMQ studio was state-of-the-art for its time and no expense was spared.”

The industrial turntable was indicative of TMQ’s growing range of bootleg sources, as radio transcription discs with in-studio performances were perfect for plundering. TV programs, too, served up ample bootleg fodder, so TMQ’s studio was outfitted with a broadcast-quality Ampex color video tape recorder with stereo audio.

“I was with them when they recorded a few things,” says Sherrick, “like when they recorded the Jefferson Airplane Up Against The Wall bootleg, which was from two KCTV Channel 28 broadcasts; the audio was taken off them, which made for a great-sounding record.”

Initially a number of indie pressing plants around Los Angeles were used to manufacture the records, but the quality varied, since not everyone on the take was invested in superior

albums d so many TMQ presse , en here on se t , en ve w ee sl As time neric cover ge n ings ow rd its co ub re that it had atles fan cl lation of Be pi m . co as a tm on Chris bers every sent to mem

sound. “Later in 1970, a pressing plant not far from L.A. International Airport was discovered,” says Sutherland. “Most of the TMQ albums into the mid-Seventies were pressed there; the pressing quality improved and was much more consistent.”

TMQ’s bootlegs became an underground hit so quickly that by the spring of 1970, The Who appropriated their rubber-stamp aesthetic for the packaging of its classic—and official—Live At Leeds album. Even then, however, TMQ was starting to leave that look behind, releasing records with colored vinyl and better packaging.

In 1973, commercial illustrator William Stout, who would go on to create covers for Rhino and other legitimate labels in the decades that followed, was brought on to create witty covers

that became synonymous with TMQ, starting with another Stones bootleg, All Meat Music. By that point, the bootleggers had been using offset-printed inserts wrapped around generic sleeves for years. “I was there when Led Zeppelin Live On Blueberry Hill came back from the plant,” Sherrick recalls. “We had the cover and we inserted that in there; that was really a lot of fun.”

As time went on, Carl and Pigman’s ambitions grew, but so did their chances of getting caught, so they tried to find new ways to covertly record shows. Today considered by rock historians to be a crucial document of Led Zeppelin in its prime, Live On Blueberry Hill was a perfect example, says Sherrick: “I’ll tell you a story that’s not in the book; it slipped our minds and we kind of regret that now. I saw a British documentary from 1971 on bootleg

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records, and they interviewed Peter Grant, Zeppelin’s manager—and he mentioned our bootleg and that it was done at The Forum in Los Angeles. The guy asked him how it was recorded and he said, ‘Well, I think they used radio transmitters for that one.’ And we laughed because Pigman’s idea actually was to record that with transmitters! They were going to bribe the stagehands so they could bug the stage, tap the sound equipment and record the show. The plan was in effect until they realized The Forum was directly in the flight path going in and out of L.A. International Airport.

The radio equipment would interfere with the control towers—the FAA would be coming down, trying to trace that back—so they just did it the usual way with the shotgun mic, sitting in the first couple of rows.”

TMQ kept rolling out releases throughout the first half of the 1970s, but as an all-cash, illegal business, there were no invoices, no records of how many albums were pressed and no real gameplan. While that helped keep The Man off Pigman’s tail at the time, 50 years later, it made life difficult for the A Pig’s Tale team when they assembled their book’s key feature, an illustrated, definitive discography that separates fact from fiction and faux represses from the real records. “The two most difficult titles to research also happened to be the two worstselling albums from the original TMQ days,” says researcher Talia. “They were Donovan The Reedy River and the Blood, Sweat And Tears BS&T 5 album. By a miracle, there were two members on the Steve Hoffman online forum who saved me when it came to digging up information on the both of them.”

Carl and Pigman went their separate ways in 1971 and each continued to use the TMQ name; in the meantime, competitors started springing up…and getting caught. “There was Rubber Dubber and Wizardo, and Rubber Dubber didn’t last long at all; he got nailed really fast,” says Sherrick. “He did an interview with somebody, revealed too much and the Feds went right to his house and raided his place.

Pigman just got out when it was the right time, because when you’re getting eyeballed by the Feds, you get tired of that. He was aware of it, and he was real smart about things, you know?

You have to be when you’re at the top, doing something like that; you have to use common sense and you can’t let your ego run away with you. Pigman kept his cool and left when he did,

and said it was a nice run while it lasted.”

Today, the viral spread of unofficial music over the internet is a key artist career tool, and a soccer mom posting phone clips from a Bon Jovi concert doesn’t have to fear a visit from the Feds; perhaps that’s just as well. Time has consigned TMQ to the realm of memory, and now to the history books as well—all of which can’t help but make Sherrick a little wistful: “For me as a high school kid, it was so much fun, one of the greatest times of my life. It was another time and another place—because, boy, it is nothing like that now.” n

A Pig’s Tale is available from Genius Books and tmqapigstale.com.

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Jaime Baksht and Estudio Astro LX From Pan’s Labyrinth to the Oscar-winning Sound of Metal, film mixer draws international attention to Mexico City

By Jennifer Walden

S

ound of Metal’s 2021 Oscar win for Best Sound may have introduced many to the name of re-recording mixer Jaime Baksht, but to the film industry in Mexico, he was already a big deal.

The Ariel Awards—the most prestigious in the Mexican film industry—have honored Baksht with 14 nominations and nine wins.

In 2007, he swept the category, winning an Ariel Award for Best Sound on In the Pit and earning nominations for the other two films in contention that year, one of which was director Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Basically, Baksht couldn’t lose. And there were several years (2014, 2016, 2017 and 2020) where Baksht had both a win and a nomination. Sound of

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Metal just solidified his international acclaim, capturing BAFTA, C.A.S. and AMPS award wins on top of the Oscar.

Baksht’s secret to success? “We always do our best,” he says. “These films are like our babies.

The budget doesn’t matter; it’s the film that matters. We are very lucky to work on the best films in Mexico, and it’s important to treat all of them as special.”

Whether it’s handling ADR on massive Hollywood films like Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, or mixing Sundance Film Festival indies like John and the Hole (nominated for a 2021 Grand Jury Prize with sound designed by Nicolas Becker, with whom Baksht worked on Sound of Metal), Baksht makes

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John and the Hole debuted at the Sundance Film Festival 2021.

Courtesy of Estudio AstroXL

The re-recording team for the Oscar-winning Sound of Metal at Estudio AstroLX’s SSL C3048 console. In, back, owner Jaime Baksht; seated, his re-recording partner Michelle Couttolenc.

no distinction in terms of quality of work.

“When the budget is small, you need to do big things with sound,” he says. “We learn a lot from the small-budget films, and then when we do the big films, it’s more relaxing. Well, not exactly relaxing; it seems easier in a way.”

THE STUDIO LIFE Built for feature films, Baksht’s Astro Estudio LX in Mexico City was designed by architectural and acoustical firm Studio 440 (Hollywood) and features two Dolby-certified dub stages that support 5.1 and 7.1 mixing.

The main room, Mix Stage 1, is equipped with a 512-channel SSL C3048 console customized for a two-person mix team. It runs five separate Pro Tools systems, and the output is recorded to two 192-channel Fairlight systems. Baksht says, “Using Fairlight as a recorder is amazing.

It’s like a wire—whatever you put in is exactly what is going to come out. You have 300 dB of dynamic range, so it isn’t going to distort, and the response is amazing. Everything is digitally connected with MADI fiber-optic cables. This combination of the SSL and Fairlight is a really nice match.”

Baksht’s monitoring setup uses three TAD TSC-3415 three-way speakers up front with 18 Martin Audio Effect 5 two-way passive surround systems for the sides and rear, to go with eight TAD TSC-1118SW 18-inch subwoofers. He says, “We didn’t go with the typical JBLs. The TAD speakers we have are flat, so when we get the mix sounding great in our room, I know that it’s going to translate well on other systems.”

For Mix Stage 2, Baksht chose a Euphonix System 5 Fusion console running two Pro Tools systems and recording to a third. Playback is monitored through a Meyer Sound system.

“We wanted to build the biggest post sound studio in Mexico, and that’s Astro Estudio LX,” he says quite simply.

Before building his own facility, Baksht worked at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, a wellknown center with sound stages for filming and dub stages for mixing. “It’s like the Warner Bros.

Studios of Mexico,” says Baksht. “As a matter of fact, that studio was built by RKO, which was owned by Howard Hughes. It’s a huge studio in Mexico.”

During his 12 years at Churubusco, Baksht and Rosalinda Jimenez helped to create the first THX rooms in Mexico. Then he moved to a smaller studio called New Art, which catered to the advertising community.

“Many of my friends from Churubusco told me that I was going to do advertising work there,” he recalls. “But I told them, ‘No, I’m going to do films at New Art.’ No one believed me—but the third film we did there was Pan’s Labyrinth!”

After finishing that film, director Guillermo del Toro invited Baksht to mix his next project, Hellboy II. Baksht knew they’d need a larger dub stage to do larger films, but the owners of New Art were hesitant to expand. Baksht found investors who were interested in funding a film sound studio—Juan Garcia and Simon Bross— and a deal was negotiated in 10 minutes. That became Astro Estudio LX. SIGNAL PATH The love of sound started with music. Bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin—with their innovative approaches inside the studio— inspired Baksht to study music production in England. “I thought music was the natural thing for me to do,” he says.

But when he returned to Mexico, he lacked access to the big-name bands there. “I had some friends at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, like Guillermo Granillo (Ariel Award-winning cinematographer on Volverás, Aro Tolbukhin - En la mente del asesino and Profundo carmesí). He asked if I could help with his film. It was then I realized that in film, you have music, but you also have effects, dialogue and a story. The sound and image of the story work so well when they work together. It’s different from music only. It’s amazing. I realized that I was wrong to go for music only. I needed to do sound for film.”

His love of cinema started with John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969). “It made me cry and laugh,” he recalls. “When the film finished, I walked out of the theater like a mummy. I didn’t say a word. It got into my head that much and that impressed me. It wasn’t a big action movie, but the story was amazing.”

Likewise, he retains equal admiration for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), which his father took him to see in 70mm in Mexico City. “At that time, I wasn’t really thinking about working in movies, but it had quite an impact. I couldn’t sleep for a month.”

Since 1989, Baksht has been an agent of change in the Mexican film industry, determined to improve the quality of film sound. “We had this Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the ’50s and those films sounded quite good—but in the,

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70s and ,80s, the sound was absolutely awful,” he says. “It wasn’t because of the ideas or the creativity, but because of the old technology. Technology for Mexico was so far away from being good.”

Gradually technology improved and Baksht welcomed the arrival in Mexico of Dolby Digital and digital The soundtrack to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth cinema. “Better computers and better brought international attention technology made it easier to get a to Baksht’s work. better end result,” he says, “but that’s on the technical side. It didn’t affect the storytelling—what we are trying to say with because they are going to throw me out of the the sound. That was a completely different film industry,” he laughs. “I was sweating—but at the same time, I was determined to make it problem.”

As a re-recording mixer, Baksht’s creative happen. We ended in an interesting place. I’m impact comes from his mix choices. “In real life, not sure if I like the sound of the film for my part. we can focus on sounds that are important,” he If I was able to do that film now, I would do it in explains. “That’s something we do to survive. On a completely different way, and I think it would the dub stage, we’re telling the audience what have resulted in a completely different sound.”

Lessons learned in the fire of Pan’s Labyrinth they should be listening to. Mixing is the art of have helped Baksht to grow as a mixer, as did focusing things.” his work on Sound of Metal, which came with its own unique challenges.

FROM PAN TO METAL “Nicholas Becker’s approach was quite The challenges Baksht faced on del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth—creating more than 600 sounds for different from what I had been doing before,” he some scenes while working on a Pro Tools system explains. “At the beginning, we tried to follow with only 48 outputs—taught him the importance our instincts and our way of doing things. Then of getting creative to solve technical issues. “I we realized that this wasn’t the way to do it. wondered, ‘How are we going to do this?’ We I think we realized just in the right moment; developed a method of using pre-rendered stems, we changed the way we were doing things, and but it was scary. Guillermo [del Toro] was asking for then we started to enjoy working on the film too many things at the same time, and to be able to very much.”

After Sound of Metal, Baksht faced the change between all the things he was asking for us challenges of Covid-19 lockdown and remote to do was very complicated.

“At one point, I thought, ‘This is probably mixing. Because Mix Stage 1 is a large room, going to be the last film that I do in my life.’ Not he felt it was safe to continue mixing there if because I didn’t want to do another one, but they took proper precautions: wearing masks,

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THE PATH AHEAD Since the 2021 Academy Awards, Baksht and his sound team have been busy mixing three films: director Lorenzo Vigas’s The Box (La Caja) in competition at the 2021 Venice Film Festival; director Joaquin Del Paso’s El Hoyo En La Cerca for Venice, too, showing in the noncompetition Horizons category; and A Cop Movie (Una Película de Policías) by director Alonso Ruizpalacios, coming to Netflix later this year.

“After the Oscars, we haven’t had time to pursue any big L.A. films,” he says. “We’d like to do bigger films! And that’s something that’s going to happen, I think.”

They’re now wrapping up those mixes and wondering what’s next. With the Oscar in hand and the new decentralized approach to filmmaking being enthusiastically adopted, Baksht sees a world of opportunity for their next gig. If he had his pick, Baksht would love to work with director del Toro again. Also on his wishlist are actress/director Natalie Portman for her directorial debut work on A Tale of Love and Darkness.

“Natalie has great taste in film, and her first film as a director touches the heart of everyone,” he says. Directors Amy Poehler, Greta Gerwig, Clint Eastwood, Werner Herzog and Leos Carax make Baksht’s wishlist, as well. “I’d also like to work with Pete Docter because of the animation films he has made, particularly Soul and Toy Story. Those were part of my daughter’s life as a child.” ■ Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Baksht at the two-position, 512-channel SSL C3048 in Estudio AstroLX

quarantining at home for 10 days prior to a session, and testing for the virus regularly.

Session attendance was also limited to Baksht, a second mixer and maybe the director.

“We were mixing a film when Covid hit, and one day the director says, ‘I have to go back to Israel and I won’t be able to come back because Mexico is closed and Israel is closed. How are we going to do this?’” says Baksht. “Randy Thom at Skywalker Sound gave the advice of making the mix, sending it via the internet to another stage for playback, and then the director could send notes back to the mixer. We could send the mix at night for the director to play back in the morning. He’d send back his notes, which would be there for us in the morning. The eight-hour time difference worked out well.”

Tech Focusrite Clarett+ Interface Range

Aiming to do more than merely refresh its long-running Clarett line of USB interfaces, Focusrite has announced an entirely new range— Clarett+ interfaces— with the debut of three new models: the Clarett+ 2Pre, 4Pre and 8Pre. The Clarett+ range sports improved A-D and D-A converters and mic preamps, and its all-analog Air with impedance switching and relay control is intended to emulate the ISA 110 mic preamp found in the classic Focusrite studio console. Improved headphone outputs are also onboard. The interfaces come with driver software for PC and Mac, as well as a collection of software that includes mixing plug-ins and virtual instruments.

The Clarett+ 2Pre is a 10-in/4-out bus-powered USB-C interface aimed primarily at musicians. Built with a pair of Clarett+ mic preamps featuring all-analog Air, there’s also JFET instrument inputs, which allow the user to plug straight in, and independent A-D and D-A converters. The Clarett+ 2Pre is expandable using ADAT optical input.

As a step up, the Clarett+ 4Pre is an 18-in/8-out interface presented as more of a “studio-grade” unit. The interface adds two more preamps with Air for a total of four, two analog headphone outputs and a pair of JFET instrument inputs. Lastly, and squarely aimed at pros, the Clarett+ 8Pre is an 18-in/20-out interface sporting a total of eight Clarett+ preamps with Air, two analog headphone outputs and both ADAT optical input and output.

new products

and the Open-Acoustics-technology, noise from handling, bumps and stage rumble are reportedly minimized.

Both microphones utilize Austrian Audio’s Open Acoustics Technology, which allows sound to enter the capsule almost entirely unimpeded from all sides. Contact points between the mounted capsule and the enclosure are reduced to a minimum, allowing for an open and natural sound.

Yorkville Sound Battery-Powered EXM Speaker, Sub Yorkville Sound has introduced the EXM Mobile8, a lightweight 3-way battery powered speaker, and the EXM Mobile Sub, said to be the first battery powered portable subwoofer.

The EXM Mobile8 contains an 8-inch woofer and a coaxial mid-high driver. The company’s aim in providing a 3-way speaker is to make the most of the dedicated mid-range of the coaxial driver, allowing the 8-inch woofer to work at its fullest capacity. The model also offers Bluetooth connectivity with numerous options; the onboard Bluetooth function pairs a sound source to the EXM Mobile8, groups two EXM Moblie8 units together for true stereo streaming, and can further wirelessly group the EXM Mobile8 to the EXM Mobile Sub. Meanwhile, the EXM Mobile Sub, a portable lithium ion, batterypowered subwoofer, is equipped with two 8-inch woofers and weighs 30 lbs. Like the EXM Mobile8, it is Bluetooth enabled, allowing users to stereo stream with a second Mobile Sub and use EXM Mobile8 as a full range speaker wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Austrian Audio OC707, OD505 Live Mics

Allen & Heath dLive CTi1500 Console

Austrian Audio has introduced its first microphones intended for live use with the U.S. release of its OC707 in December and OD505 this month.

The OC707 vocal microphone features a diecast body and a smalldiaphragm condenser capsule with a frequency response optimized for the human voice. Handmade in Austrian Audio’s facilities in Vienna, the capsule has low self-noise (19 dB SPL) and high sound pressure level (150 dB SPL).

Meanwhile, the OD505 is an Active Dynamic microphone that combines the advantages of a dynamic stage mic with the sonic abilities of a condenser microphone. It reportedly achieves nearly the same sensitivity as a condenser mic due to its capsule design where the bottom capsule is phaseinverted and passively switched. Combined with a switchable 2nd order high-pass filter

Allen & Heath has unveiled the dLive CTi1500, an update of its compact dLive C1500 control surface. In development for more than a year, the new edition eschews as much weight as possible, weighing in at 25.4 lbs. Side trims have been replaced by Titanium panels; rear and base panels have been re-engineered to cut weight; and internally the desk sports new alloy metalwork.

Not everything is different—the front panel remains largely the same as a C1500, only redesigned to replace the armrest with steel curves. The console still sports 12 faders (with 6 layers), built-in audio I/O, an audio networking port, a 12” capacitive touchscreen and the onboard Harmony UI. ■

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Tech // spotlight Top Speaker Systems for Immersive Music Mixing

By The Mix Editors While editing and mixing for immersive formats began nearly a decade ago in sound for film and television, it’s relatively new in the music industry. About four or five years ago, PMC, in conjunction with Dolby and Capitol Studios/ UMG, started promoting the possibilities at trade shows and exhibitions, culminating in the release of some 3,000 tracks by the end of 2019.

Since then, the momentum behind immersive music production has been slowly building, both among consumers and in the professional

community, with Sony RA 360 and Apple Spatial entering the conversation and top engineers re-building their facilities to accommodate 7.1.4 and 9.1.6 playback. All involved seem to agree that music has different needs from post-production, and the tools and techniques can be different, including the choice of speakers.

Here, in no particular order, we present our choices for the top speaker systems for immersive music mixing.

as stand-alone LF monitors for sub channels.

Configuration is straightforward via simple menu-driven controls on the rear panel or the company’s SOUNDALIGN network interface, the latter allowing users to individually control each monitor or set them up in defined groups for large-scale immersive systems.

Ocean Way Audio HR4/3.5, PRO2A, With S12A/S10A Subs

PMC Debuts All-New Monitor Line For the past five years, while championing immersive music mixing through its association with Capitol Studios and Dolby, PMC has quietly been developing a whole new line of flexible, innovative near- and mid-field monitors. On September 15, a month after a private industry unveiling in Los Angeles, the company introduced the PMC6, PMC6-2 and PMC8-2, along with their associated subwoofers, the PMC8 SUB and PMC8-2 SUB. The new monitors, which replace the company’s twotwo Series, feature the same sound signature as PMC’s main monitor products typically used for LCR, including the QB1, BB6, MB3 and IB2.

Among the innovations, PMC has incorporated all-new drivers, cutting-edge DSP and Class-D amplifiers, as well as significant improvements to the company’s ATL bass-loading and Laminair air flow technologies. The active subs can be seamlessly combined with the monitors or used

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Allen Sides built his first speaker at age 13 in his parents’ home on Ocean Way in Los Angeles. He went on to become one of the recording industry’s most successful producer/ engineers, studio owners and entrepreneurs. He still makes speakers, stunning speakers, many of

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them for private citizens and custom, high-end installations, including a system for The Riviera Theater in Santa Barbara with 48 surround channels, each with its own matching sub.

For a music-focused installation, he says: “We have a number of different configurations for Atmos mixing in all price ranges. The system we’re currently installing for Chris Lord Alge consists of three HR4s for the LCR Front, four S10A subs for the point one, and two S12A MKIII subs for surround bass management.

There are 10 of our PRO2As for the surround channels. All channels in this system are capable of going down flat to 25 Hz and producing 110 dB at 1 meter continuously. We have a smaller version of Chris’ system that’s half the price but still delivers impressive performance.

It incorporates three HR5s for LCR, twin S12A MKIII Subs for point one and surround management, and 10 PRO3 speakers for surround. The next level up above Chris’s system utilizes three HR3.5s as LCR and twin S212A subs, eight HR4s as side surrounds and six PRO2As for ceiling surrounds. There is also a pair of our S18A subs for surround bass. This system is well-suited to a large control room where a number of people need to hear the same quality of sound and has the capacity to deliver serious level if needed.”

Genelec 8351/8341, With 7830 Subs and 8341 Surrounds Will Eggleston of Genelec was an early adherent to the very concept of immersive playback, setting up a cage at NAB back in 2014 and playing back any content he could find on Bluray. Since then, the company has been refining its Smart Active Monitor lines while simplifying and optimizing new standards in system setup and configuration. Early inroads were made in post and broadcast; the music industry has now taken notice. While he cautions that due to different room sizes, listening distances and target SPL, there is no “one size fits all,” he does say, “For a more traditional approach, you might want 8351/8341s for main LCR with a couple of

7380/7370 subs for LFE and bass management.

In smaller rooms, you might put 8341s around the sides and 8331s for overheads. Those service music mixing needs quite well. For a slightly higher-tiered system, you could have W371 LCR paired with 8351s and continued with 7351s for sides and rears with 8341s overheads. Then add a complement of subs for LFE and bass management. Then again, we have customers that use 8340/8330 and small 8320s quite successfully for immersive playback.”

Meyer Sound Amie, UP-4slim, With Amie-Sub Over the past four-plus decades, Meyer Sound has developed an impeccable reputation across the high end of live sound, Broadway and, most recently, cinema sound (including its revolutionary UltraReflex system in combination with direct view displays). For immersive and

customers, including producer/engineer Dave Way, featured on the August cover of Mix, have upgraded their systems to accommodate immersive mixing. The ideal KRK setup for a Dolby Atmos monitoring system, the company suggests, would be a combination of the V8 (8-inch) LCR across the front with the V6 (6-inch) studio monitors on the walls and in the ceiling—or all V8s or all V6s, depending on room dimensions and SPL needs. Any combination would be paired with one or two S10.4 or S12.4 Studio Subwoofers for a dynamic and detailed listening experience, whether for a 7.1.4 or 9.1.6 Atmos configuration. spatial music mixing applications, the company recommends a 7.1.4 system comprising seven Amie precision studio monitors (LCR, side and rear surrounds), four UP-4slim ultracompact installation loudspeakers (ceiling) and one AmieSub compact cinema subwoofer. The full-range, self-powered Amie incorporates a 6.5-inch lowmid driver and a 1-inch dome HF driver on an 80° x 50° waveguide, producing linear peak SPL of 120.5 dB from 42 Hz – 22 kHz. The companion Amie-Sub employs a 15-inch long-excursion driver coupled to a 1,100 W peak class D amplifier for peak output of 124.5 dB across an operating frequency range of 22 Hz to 160 Hz. An optional 7.1 input module handles bass management for integration with up to seven Amie monitors in the front and surround systems. UP-4slim offers high output in a compact and lightweight self-powered system. Dispersion pattern is a uniform 100° x 100° conical, ideal for overhead applications. The entire 7.1.4 system can be driven directly using the AV processor/recording system in conjunction with the Amie-Sub bass management module. No external DSP unit is required.

KRK V Series, With S Series Subs The relaunch of the V Series a few years ago reinvigorated the KRK brand, no question about it, and since then, loyal

ATC SCM150A, SCM45A, SCM 0.15ASL Subs ATC was early into the immersive game, selling systems to Dolby to outfit their labs in the company’s new HQ back in 2014. Since then, ATC has put in high-end systems for Blackbird Studio, Dweezil Zappa and Ben Walfisch. For a small- to mid-size music system, Brad Lunde of ATC distributor Transamerica Audio Group recommends the SCM150A for LCR, the SCM 45As for side surrounds and SCM 45Ai for overheads, plus multiple SCM 0.15ASL subs (Zappa used four). The important features about the product mix is unified mids and tweeters across all the speakers, and the 45Ai’s have steel reinforced cabinets for mounting safely. ■

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Tech // reviews RME Babyface Pro FS Audio Interface Premium Preamps and Conversion, Lots of Routing Options

By Steve La Cerra

R

ME Audio introduced its popular Babyface series of audio interfaces back in 2010, then updated it in 2015 with the Babyface Pro. The latest version—Babyface Pro FS—boasts several significant changes, among which are the use of RME’s proprietary SteadyClock FS circuitry originally developed for the company’s high-end ADI-2 Pro FS interface. SteadyClock FS has extremely high resolution that reportedly reduces jitter to levels so low that they are measured in FemtoSeconds (a FemtoSecond is one-quadrillionth of a second!).

Additional improvements include an increase in the signal-tonoise ratio of the microphone preamps and instrument/line inputs (from 112.2 to 113.7 dB, and 114 to 116.3 dB, respectively) and an 8 dB reduction in THD. Babyface Pro FS headphone outputs employ the same amplification circuitry used in the ADI-2-Pro, increasing maximum power from 70 mW to 90 mW, while reducing impedance of the 3.5mm output from 2 to 0.1 Ohm. A switch recessed into the bottom panel toggles output level between +19 and +4dBu, acting as sort of an output pad for maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio when the unit is connected to active monitors with high input sensitivity.

INS AND OUTS Babyface Pro FS is a 12x12 interface. Analog I/O includes two balanced XLR, digitally controlled microphone preamps with phantom power, two ¼-inch TS analog instrument/line level inputs, and balanced line-level XLR outs. Outputs 3 and 4 feed two headphone jacks and can route a mix independent from the control room mix. The ¼-inch headphone output is optimized for highimpedance phones, while the 3.5mm output is optimized for low-impedance cans.

Digital I/O is via optical connection and can handle eight channels of ADAT I/O at 44.1 or 48 kHz/24-bit, or four channels at 96 kHz/24-bit (S/MUX II). These ports can also be used to route S/PDIF, with the optical input automatically detecting presence of ADAT or S/PDIF. The Babyface Pro FS operates at sample rates ranging from 44.1 to 192 kHz; clock may be sourced

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internally or via the digital input.

The remaining ports on the Babyface Pro FS include a power supply jack for an optional 12VDC power supply, USB 2.0 connection, and a mini DIN connector for use with a MIDI I/O breakout cable (included). The unit can be bus-powered, in which case RME recommends against the use of USB extension cables or hubs.

NAVIGATION CONTROL The control panel of Babyface Pro FS is sleek and elegant, providing an array of six pushbuttons, a rotary encoder and a multifunction LED display.

Four LED bands indicate preamp gain settings, phantom power status, input and output levels, clipping, or which channel has been selected for adjustment. The In and Select keys are used to access inputs. Pressing In toggles between inputs A1/2, A3/4 and optical 1/2. Pressing Select shifts control from the first to the second input of the pair or to both for adjustment of a stereo input (very clever). Similarly, pressing the Out button toggles through Main XLR, Phones or the first two channels of the optical outputs, and the encoder sets output level. When an input channel has been selected, the rotary encoder is used to adjust gain.

As you’d expect, the Dim button reduces output level for the

main audio outputs, but it can be reprogrammed for switching to a second set of speakers or for engaging talkback. Two hotkeys labeled A (Set) and B (Mix) can also be programmed to execute a variety of functions, including talkback, speaker B select, volume recall and more. The default for A is recall of a user-defined listening level, and the default for B is control of the direct monitoring system whereby an input is routed directly to an output for zero-latency monitoring.

The Babyface Pro FS can be operated in three different modes: driver-based USB2, class-compliant mode (mainly for use with an iPad), and as a standalone mixer. Using the interface in either of the latter two modes requires use of an external power supply.

A DSP-based mixer called Totalmix allows fully independent routing and mixing of input and playback channels to all physical outputs. Totalmix allows you to create up to six independent, zero-latency stereo submixes with reverb and delay, and provides a control room section with advanced functions such as mono summing, talkback, dim and FX mute.

The unit also ships with a plug-in bundle that includes Brainworx bx_Opto, Brainworx bx_Masterdesk, Scuffham Amps’ S-Gear, and trial versions of Gig Performer, Pianoteq 6 by Modartt, and Blue 3 Organ by GG Audio.

OUT OF THE BOX… The first thing I noticed when unpacking Babyface Pro FS is its heft—it’s heavy for its size and beautifully constructed. The controls have a solid feel, particularly the encoder, which responds smoothly and without play.

The packaging includes a cloth bag for the interface, a MIDI breakout cable, USB Type A and C cables, a printed manual and a hard plastic storage case to hold everything. …INTO THE STUDIO I used Babyface Pro FS with a variety of DAW software, including Pro Tools, Digital Performer and Reason, and it played well with all of them.

The front panel UI looks great, but the sparse number of controls also means a fair amount of button pushing to navigate.

I found it far easier to control the device through Totalmix, where the Channel view displays settings for fader level, meter, pan,

mute, solo and effect send. Clicking on the tool icon expands the Channel view to show stereo or mono mode, 48V phantom power status, pad, gain, stereo width (for stereo pairs), FX send level, Mid-Side processing and phase. Given the fact that Babyface Pro FS has only four analog inputs, I generally opted to leave the expanded view open.

Totalmix operates in two different modes: Full Mode (the mixer is active and all routing options are available), and Digital Audio Workstation Mode (which provides straight playback routing; you use your DAW to mix inputs).

Using Full Mode, it was easy to create latencyfree monitoring for tracking and overdubbing. I found that once I had Totalmix set up and saved, I generally used the software to manage most of the settings with the exception of control room volume—which was easily controlled using the rotary encoder on the unit itself.

The mic preamps in Babyface Pro FS are serious, and they hold their own against expensive outboard preamps. I liked the fact that the phantom power produces true 48VDC, a trait that a lot of desktop interfaces lack.

Recording vocals with a Neumann U87 into the Babyface Pro FS yielded very low noise, detail and transparency, sounding as good as you’d expect a U87 to sound.

I also used Babyface Pro FS in conjunction with my Metric Halo Labs LIO8 to multitrack a drum kit. Kick and snare mics were connected to the unit’s preamps, and the remainder of the preamps were patched to the LIO8. The

LIO8 ADAT output was connected to the optical input on the Babyface Pro FS, allowing me to expand the interface’s input capabilities.

The snare sound was crisp and smooth with excellent impact, while the bottom end of the kick was extended and tight.

Babyface Pro FS had no problems locking to clock via the ADAT signal, and it’s great to know that there exists a painless possibility for expansion in the event that you need more inputs. Babyface FS Pro ADAT outputs can be used to route multiple headphone mixes if you’re willing to add external hardware to convert ADAT to analog. It’s probably more than most users will ever need, but it’s there if you need it.

Inputs 3 and 4 can be independently switched (in Totalmix) between +4 dBu or -10 dBV, which enabled me to use them as line inputs or DIs for recording electric guitar, bass and synths. Bass through the DI was extended but controlled, and—using the included Scuffham Amps’ S-Gear amp simulator—I was able to create some seriously good electric guitar tones.

SERIOUS GEAR There are a lot of audio interfaces in desktop packages with similar I/O capabilities as Babyface Pro FS, but any similarities end there.

This is a premium interface with preamps and converters of the highest quality, easily capable of competing with interfaces at higher price points—and most of the competition lacks the routing capabilities of Babyface Pro FS. If your recording needs don’t require a high analog channel count but demand excellent audio quality, listen to the Babyface Pro FS. You will not be disappointed. ■

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: RME Audio PRODUCT: Babyface Pro FS Interface WEBSITE: www.rme-usa.com PRICE: $1,099 MSRP PROS: Sounds great; elegant construction; ability to record audio files with EQ; excellent headphone amps.

CONS: Minimal controls on front panel; some functions may be accessed only through Totalmix software.

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Tech // reviews

Baby Audio Smooth Operator Resonance Control Through Spectral Compression, Dynamic EQ

By Rob Tavaglione

W

hile it’s easy enough to identify problems such as clipping, polarity reversals and broad EQ imbalances, resonances in a recording can be harder to identify, ferret out and ultimately tame.

Resonance, a prominence of energy in a narrow frequency band, is a big part of the signature of a sound source, but a similar resonance can also be found in a speaker cabinet reproducing the sound, with yet another in the modal frequencies of a room’s acoustical response, all while microphonic resonance can manifest in a mic/stand/cable.

The worst resonances are continuous and droning and easy to identify (i.e. feedback), while others show up briefly yet profoundly, bouncing about with the changing pitches of the sound sources, never completely stealing the listener’s attention, but subconsciously lowering the perception of fidelity.

The conventional wisdom has been to place a narrow-Q, bellcurve EQ boost and sweep it around the trouble area until the most offending frequency is identified. That frequency can then be notched with attenuation and bandwidth appropriate to reduce the resonance moderately without creating any gap in the tone.

Sometimes this takes about 30 seconds, sometimes this opens up the time-sucking rabbit-hole from hell, sweeping and notching ad infinitum.

Noteworthy newcomer Baby Audio, makers of Parallel Aggressor (reviewed in Pro Sound News, February 2021), has a penchant for unusual, post-modern plug-ins. That continues with Smooth Operator, an intelligent resonance- and harshness-reducing processor.

Available for VST, VST3, AU, AAX and Big Sur, Smooth Operator combines two processes—spectral compression and dynamic EQ— with an intelligent algorithm that finds resonances and executes many quick attenuations, allowing only minimal control parameters,

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essentially broad control strokes over a myriad of small adjustments.

CONTROL FACTORS Non-traditional processes often have non-traditional controls. The Smooth Operator GUI shows a frequency graph that contains two spectral displays: a large one on the bottom that shows amplitude by frequency, and a small upside-down graph at the top that indicates attenuation by frequency.

Within the large graph is the “line of control,” which contains five nodes: the main dark node in the middle can be lowered to lower all the nodes and increase the overall amount of the entire effect, while the outer two nodes are fixed high- and low-frequency nodes, with the two middle nodes (parametric) having bandwidth control via your mousewheel/trackpad. Lowering any node makes the Smooth Operator process more prevalent there, allowing tasks like de-essing, removing harshness, reducing mud and boom, reducing nasal-ness, reducing narrow resonances and wide tonal sculpting.

The Focus control varies how independently each spike in frequency gets processed, allowing more surgical processing at high values, or broader, wide-stroke response at lower values.

Solo allows monitoring any frequency node independently by hovering above it.

Engaging Sidechain allows a second incoming signal to act as the plug-in’s control signal, enabling a frequency-selective ducking of the main audio.

The Classic mode offers a softer and gentler smoothing process, while the Modern mode sounds more exacting and crisp.

Smooth Operator matches its post-modern processes with a techno look to the GUI in three pastel colors (pink, green and blue), with a resizable window and 64 presets from a roster of hot young names.

IN SESSION As per my usual, I find the application that looks the easiest to achieve and then try it in my actual workflow, encouraging clients to pitch-in with commentary. This time, that meant a female lead vocal delivered in near whisper tones, with the usual jumps in transients, sibilance and overall level that come with such a performance. Deessing helped, along with dual-stage compression and EQ, but the vocal remained inconsistent and harsh in spots.

Grabbing the far-left low-frequency node and the far-right high-frequency node, then dragging both below the line of control, allowed for more processing there than the mid-frequencies, affecting tonal balance as well as dynamics and saturation in those frequency extremes.

I also grabbed the two midrange nodes and balanced them in comparison to the high and low bands, adjusting the bandwith/Q with some help from the Solo mode. The process is indeed complicated at first and encourages experimentation. It’s all about minimal controls over radically varying tones.

The Focus control became crucial once I was in the ballpark. Excessive Focus sounded a bit sterile, over-pronounced and unnatural; conversely, too little Focus executed very broad and indistinct control, with wide tonal changes. I found that there is typically a sweet spot of Focus that proved ideal and pretty easy to find. An Output level control and a peak-hold (or RMS) window helped achieve the right gain structure.

I still used more signal processing on this tricky whisper vocal (compression, EQ and widening), but I did the heavy lifting first in Smooth Operator, lowering the control line excessively to identify the process. When set extremely low, you can get a nasty, hollow Clarifying and deessing a vocal (red), sweetening up a snare top (green), smoothing out stereo overheads (blue) in Baby Audio Smooth Operator.

and brittle sound that will surely be heard on countless vocal breakdowns in the near future.

After plenty of twiddling, I managed to please my client with pretty good sibilance control, excellent taming of harsh transients and fricatives, and bringing out some controlled and consistent bottom-end.

With typical full-voice vocal tracks recorded on good microphones, Smooth Operator easily hones in on any resonances and makes broad (or narrow) tonal changes very quickly with only a little practice; don’t be surprised if Smooth Operator lives on every one of your lead vocal tracks from now on.

SMOOTH OPERATIN’ Applications run the gamut, as the process can be quite gentle and not noticeable, or be very heavy-handed and artfully obvious. I tried the invisible method when mixing a jazz project with Smooth Operator inserted on both doghouse bass and electric guitar.

Guitar was easy to smooth out; just dial in an overall sensitivity where normal balance was not quite triggering any processing, but if any given frequency jumped out, it would be patted down (whack-a-freq, if you will). The slapping of that upright bass required considerable care, but aggressive high-end processing, combined with some low-end taming and moderate Smooth Operator overall tamed the beast. The players loved the tone and mixes, unaware that significant intelligent processing made things sound much more organic and natural.

I found that any troubled source could benefit: jumpy bass guitars, irritating strings (violin, banjos, mandolins, etc.), synths and pads that are too resonant, room mics overly accentuating bad rooms, vocals recorded too close to mics with resonant bodies, and live recordings.

I found mixes require markedly different techniques.

Digging in deep can destroy a good mix (just like with multiband compression), but a gentle touch and careful

tuning can create magnificent results, on the mix bus or in mastering. Achieving good mix results was quite quick and easy, while experimenting enough to get truly great results took damn near forever (and I hadn’t even tackled automating parameters at that point, which was helpful with individual tracks).

I did try sidechaining with Smooth Operator and found it to be much easier than fine-tuning a mix. I tried the two most common sidechain apps, having a kick drum duck a bass guitar and having a vocal duck down an underlying instrument (I tried pads, keys and guitars). Just pull down the line of control until you get some attenuation on the fundamental frequency and pull some of the other nodes further down if you’d like more of a broadband ducking. Really fast, really easy, sounds better than setting up such a signal chain yourself.

THE FINAL MIX Smooth Operator’s spectral compression, dynamic EQ and intelligent application of these processes makes dramatic tonal variations easily possible with musicality and, yes, smoothness. With only a handful of controls, making precise settings with Smooth Operator can be a handful, but if only for the sheer number of potential tonal combinations those clever controls disguise.

Despite what might appear to be specialized uses, Smooth Operator is potentially useful on just about any source audio, as long as the human operator has enough sense to not overuse or misuse the process. Smooth Operator is another winner from Baby Audio at $69—that’s onethird the price of the nearest competitor and one more reason that these babies are worth keeping a monitor on. ■

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: Baby Audio PRODUCT: Smooth Operator plug-in WEBSITE: www.babyaudio.com PRICE: $69 PROS: Intelligent suppression of resonances, harshness and frequency imbalance. Flexible controls allow very effective and musical control of dynamics and frequency with a small set of controls. Nice GUI, thoughtful layout and competitive price.

CONS: Expert use requires practice and skill.

Misuse can easily destroy source audio.

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Tech // review shorts KRK Systems KNS 8402 Headphones KRK Systems has updated its KNS line of studio headphones with the KNS 6402 and KNS 8402, both Comfy Fit, with enhanced sound Neutral Sound quality, isolation and durability. Both models are closed-back circumaural (over and around the ear) designs with the KNS 8402 ($149 MSRP) updated for pro studio use and the KNS 6402 ($99 MSRP) more suited for home studio production and stereo music enjoyment.

All the KNS headphones come in matte black only and are made using an impactresistant plastic material that makes them super lightweight. The cables, head and premium

MOST IMPRESSIVE FEATURE

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leatherette ear cushions are easily fieldreplaceable, including the in-line volume control that uses a ‘long life’ fader, which connects between the headphones and the supplied cable using 3.5-mm stereo plugs. You can easily remove the in-line volume control altogether.

I tried out the KNS 8402 headphones and immediately liked the self-aligning, sprung stainless steel yoke system in the headband that easily adapted to my head and retained that adjustment when I took them off.

The memory foam ear cups rotate up to 90 degrees and I found it more comfortable to not allow the center of the headband to touch the top of my head. There is a gap in the center of the headband, making them feel nearly weightless.

They still hugged my head comfortably to block out sounds with up to 30dBA of isolation.

The KNS series phones use 40mm dynamic drivers with neodymium magnets; the 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 124dB. Frequency response is specified as 5 Hz to 23 kHz. For all my sonic testing, I used my musicians’ cue system that uses a Simon Systems CB-4 Cue Box powered by a 100-watts/channel Hafler stereo power amp. I also tried my secondary cue system that uses a small Aphex Systems HeadPod 4 4-channel amplifier with good results. In addition to the KNS 8402s, I kept three other sets of phones plugged into the CB-4 with volumes matched, and I played different kinds of music, as well as individual tracks (drums, bass, guitars, etc.) out of Pro Tools.

The KNS 8402s were definitely the lightest.

Overall the KNS 8402s are neutral-sounding: not overly bright or bottom-heavy as compared to my more expensive audiophile models. They are smooth in the mid-range and not as abrasive as

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some other dynamic sets.

I am looking for a tight seal, which becomes extra important when five or six backing vocalists are singing around a hot mic. A studio might buy a dozen of these headphones for just that purpose. Once the KNS 8402s were properly fitted on a singer’s head, the ear cushions did a good job of sealing against leakage.

I was initially a little suspect of an in-line volume control on studio headphones. It could be “another point of failure,” but that little fader stays wherever it is set and the teardrop shape doesn’t catch on clothing.

If all headphones are fed from the same line, the in-line volume control becomes a necessity.

Some backing singers like it louder than others in the same group. When the mini-fader is full up, it is the same volume as with the control removed—there is no difference in sound quality with or without the in-line module in play.

I liked the KNS 8402’s wide frequency response, dynamic range, stereo imaging and consistent voicing. These would be a smart buy for a new studio looking to stock their headphone collection with well-made, sturdy and good-sounding units.

—Barry Rudolph

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual-Drive RAID I’m always looking to reduce the number of things that clutter up my studio, yet at the same time Many Options, increase my capabilities Simple Operation and efficiencies. Other World Computing fills this order with the Mercury Elite Pro Dual-Drive Hardware RAID Storage Solution with a built-in 3-Port Powered USB Hub. Two universal drive bays within one enclosure will handle two drives—SSDs or spinning hard drives, or any combination, for up to 36 TB of total storage. You can decide to run the twin drives either in a Redundant Array of

MOST IMPRESSIVE FEATURE

Independent Disks or as completely separate drives. A RAID offers a higher level of security by making two copies of everything across the two drives or SSDs. This is useful for highly precious data—song audio files, financial tax records, family archives—things that you cannot lose!

The OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual works with any USB-equipped Mac, PC, mobile or tablet device, gaming console—any device that supports external storage. The front panel has activity LEDs, while the rear panel has two 10Gb/sec USB 3.2 Type C and two 10Gb/sec USB 3.2 Type A connectors; all act as a hub. Besides gaining more storage, I was able to get rid of an extra USB hub.

Meant to stay online all the time, the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual comes in a nice-looking, heat-dissipating aluminum case (matching my Mac Pro) with a quiet and high-efficiency cooling fan. It is powered from an included 12VDC power supply.

You may select three different RAID modes when first formatting the system. You can choose: Raid 0, RAID 1, JBOD (Just A Bunch Of Drives) or Span. Mine came with two 1TB hard drives, so I have it formatted as 1TB RAID 1, which uses disk mirroring and is fault-tolerant.

I connected it to my Mac Pro Tower to archive a copy of all my interim Pro Tools session files and audio—it powers up whenever I turn on the studio for a session and I love it for its simple operation.

Important to know: It comes with a threeyear OWC limited warranty, including a oneyear Level 1 data recovery and lifetime expert support. A system with a pair of 2TB 7200 RPM drives, 64MB cache and transfer speeds of up to 576 MB/sec costs $249. The 1TB SSD model with speeds of up to 1026 MB/sec sells for $349 MSRP. Awesome!

—Barry Rudolph

Audio Design Desk 1.7 I first encountered Audio Design Desk in April, 2020, when the Mac-only audiofor-picture application was Spot Mode, in its early stages. Already it MTC Sync offered unique and potent functionality for adding sound effects and music to video productions; now it is even more powerful.

The program’s interface has a DAW-like feel, with a timeline bordered by various editor or browser windows to go with a video display. After opening a video, you find sounds you want from ADD’s searchable library. When you find what you’re looking for, simply insert into the timeline or use one of ADD’s many Trigger options to place and replace sounds using keystrokes.

Depending on your subscription tier (ADD is subscription-only), the number of included sound effects, Foley sounds and production

MOST IMPRESSIVE FEATURE

music varies. Tier 1 subscriptions ($14.99/month) get 20,000 sounds. Tier 2 ($29.99/month) and above get 30,000; they’re available in both M4a and WAV formats.

A major, albeit non-technical change is that the developer is now called SoundOn and the product is Audio Design Desk. Previously, they were both named the latter.

More importantly, though, the software has added plenty of new capabilities, with several related to how you integrate ADD with your DAW or NLE video software. In the early versions, you could export audio or audio and video for import into another program. ADD has now augmented that with several options.

You can export using AAX and XML (Tier 2 and 3 subscriptions only). All levels get the new Spot Mode, which lets you drag and drop audio from ADD’s browser window into the timeline of your DAW or NLE. You can also sync ADD to another application using MIDI Time Code and configure it so that ADD follows the other app’s transport or controls it.

Many of ADD’s libraries (which can be supplemented with your own sounds) now include full mixes and stems of music tracks.

Using key commands or the new Trigger Pad, you can easily combine sections to make custom, loop-based music. You can mix directly from ADD or export the loops to your DAW. Another key new feature is the ability to record audio directly into ADD. For voiceovers, in particular, this will save a lot of time.

In addition to its expanded functionality, it looks better, is better organized and feels like a more mature application. I was impressed by it before, and I’m even more so now. My one complaint is that the manual is not up to date.

For example, I couldn’t find anything about the Trigger Pads or MTC control; for an application of this depth and power, a comprehensive manual is a must.

That aside, if you’re doing anything involving sound for picture, whether it’s your own YouTube videos or professional post-production, once you start using ADD, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

—Mike Levine

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Open Channel Who’s Right? Who’s Wrong? Who Cares?

Y

ears ago in a Chicago studio, I witnessed a heated argument between two musicians debating whether cables made a difference in sound

quality.

Musician #1 claimed that wire is wire, so musician #2 was a sucker for buying different cables to try them all out, and that any difference he heard was just a combination

By Craig Anderton of the placebo effect with bias confirmation. Musician #2 shot back that musician #1 had clearly played too many gigs without hearing protection if he couldn’t hear the difference. They went back and forth, and finally, I had to say something.

I went up to them and asked, “Musician #1, you play keyboards, right?

And musician #2, you play guitar, right?”

They were dumbfounded. How could I have possibly known that?

Easy. Cables don’t really make much of an audible difference with keyboards, but they certainly can with passive pickups and high-impedance tube amps.

Or another favorite, from a comment made during a seminar: “I can prove DAWs sound different because I imported rendered WAV files into two different DAWs, set the mixer fader levels and panpots exactly the same on both of them, and they definitely sounded different.

So I did a null test, and that proved they were different.”

I asked whether the two DAWs defaulted to the same pan law.

“The same what?”

THE RIGHT TO BE RIGHT Many people are heavily invested in being “right” when it comes to their opinions about gear. But, as the cable and DAW incidents underscore, “right” is often situational. Look up any discussion on the web about any piece of gear, and you’ll see all kinds of different opinions. So who’s right? After all, the gear itself isn’t shapeshifting to act differently for different people.

There are massive discussions—okay, arguments—on the web about which is the best DAW, with members of DAW Tribe #1 locked in a struggle to feel superior over the members of DAW Tribe #2. If there truly were a best DAW, then it would be the only DAW that existed—because no one would buy the inferior DAWs. All those other companies would go out of business.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who cares? What matters is how gear affects the art.

I recently read a forum thread about which amp sim’s virtual cabs were the best match for the amp sim’s virtual mics, and people had strong opinions—but, very few of them mentioned the artistic reasons for their opinion. Maybe using a particular combination worked well for their heavy metal recordings…or maybe they wanted the guitar to recede into the background to support a vocalist. Context, and emotional perspective, are

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the deciding factors.

Sometimes, emotional responses are even more valid than intellectual ones. Some people will pay massive amounts of money for an original, authentic, German tube mic and look down with pity on the plebians who can afford only modern-day reproductions—without realizing the reproduction may technically be better because its diaphragm hadn’t deteriorated over the decades from improper storage.

Then again, maybe the deteriorated diaphragm actually does sound better. Or maybe it doesn’t, but the owner’s intellectual response assumes the more expensive mic must be better—even if the emotional response says otherwise.

INSIDE THE BRAIN There’s precedent for this. In a 2007 experiment (co-authored by Hilke Plassmann, Baab Shiv, Antonio Rangel and John O’Doherty), subjects did a wine-tasting while sitting in an fMRI scanner. This kind of scanner measures blood flow in the brain and detects which part of the brain responds to stimuli. Some bottles contained the same wine but were priced differently, and perhaps not surprisingly, the test subjects preferred the “costlier” wines.

But the “aha” moment came when looking at the brain’s pre-frontal cortex (it focuses attention, plans, predicts consequences and manages emotions), which is what responded to price. The implication is that what we think about something can take precedence over what we feel. This can happen with anything involving a subjective response.

In our industry, it would be interesting to test a group of people evaluating a compressor plug-in. One would have a beautiful, skeuomorphic rendering of a classic vintage compressor. The other would use the same software, but have ugly sliders and an interface that looked somewhat like a microwave oven. Anyone want to bet on which one would be perceived as “better”?

RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED Let’s loop back to the beginning. The musicians arguing about cables were basing their opinions on what they felt, not something like the cables’ packaging or price. As a result, each came to the correct conclusion for their particular application. This is also why experienced engineers advise against “mixing with your eyes”—the intellect is not as good a judge of sound as your emotions.

All of this implies a specific way of looking at whose opinion is “right” or “wrong.” The most valuable opinion about gear is one that’s formed by combining emotions and intellect, while keeping the eye on the prize—the art that’s created with the gear.

Ultimately, people care a lot less about your opinions than about the art those opinions produce. ■

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