‘Sound of Metal’ ★ Bob Moses Live in Topanga ★ Classic Tracks: X and ‘The New World’ ★ Cory Henry In Studio January 2021 \\ mixonline.com \\ $6.99
MUSIC PRODUCTION • LIVE SOUND • SOUND FOR PICTURE
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis Duo Set to Debut First Artist Album After 40 Years of Hitmaking
>REVIEWED PRESONUS ERIS 7 STUDIO MONITORS RUPERT NEVE DESIGNS MASTER BUSS CONVERTER
01.21 Contents
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Volume 45, Number 1
TECHNOLOGY
MUSIC
18 Bob Moses Atop a
36 New Products: Studio
10 Cory
Topanga Tower: Live Album and Video
and Live Sound
BY THE MIX EDITORS
BY LILY MOAYERI
Henry Has ‘Something to Say’ BY BARBARA SCHULTZ
21 Live Sound News &
12 Bruce
Designs Master Buss Converter
Swedien Remembered
BY BARRY RUDOLPH
BY ERIK ZOBLER AND MATT FORGER
40 Review:
PreSonus Eris E7 XT Active Studio Monitors BY STEVE LA CERRA
16 Classic Tracks: X and “The New World”
BY BARBARA SCHULTZ
42 Back Page
Blog: Cleaning Up for 2021; A Live Gig— My First Indoors BY MIKE LEVINE AND STEVE LA CERRA
On the Cover: Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, hitmakers for some of the biggest names in R&B and hip hop over the past 40 years, will release their first artist album in 2021, featuring a few old friends and a few new ones. Photo: D-Nice. Mix, Volume 45, Number 1 (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. All other international is $50. Printed in the USA. Canadian Post Publications Mail agreement No. 40612608. Canada return address: BleuChip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.
24 On the Cover: Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis— First Artist Album After Four Decades of Hits BY SARAH JONES
30 Sound of Metal: Music and Vibration, With Silence and Deprivation BY JENNIFER WALDEN
34 Mid South Audio: WorldClass, HaverstickDesigned Studio for Integration Showroom BY TOM KENNY
DEPARTMENTS 8 From the Editor:
Hello 2021, We’ve Been Waiting for You
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PHOTO: D-Nice
38 Review: Rupert Neve
PHOTO: Mr. Bonzai
Notes: Mouse on Mars With Spacemap Go; The American Drive-In Tour; King & Country’s “Drummer Boy” DriveIn; Shakespeare Goes With d&b
FEATURES PHOTO: Raymond Alva
LIVE SOUND
Vol. 45 No. 1
January 2021
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CONTENT VP/Content Creation Anthony Savona Content Director Tom Kenny, thomas.kenny@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 Sound Reinforcement Editor Steve La Cerra Contributors: Strother Bullins, Eddie Ciletti, Michael Cooper, Gary Eskow, Matt Hurwitz, Steve Jennings (photography), Sarah Jones, Barry Rudolph Production Manager Nicole Schilling Managing Design Director Nicole Cobban Design Director 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 SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE To subscribe, change your address, or check on your current account status, go to mixonline.com and click on About Us, email futureplc@computerfulfillment.com, call 888-266-5828, or write P.O. Box 8518, Lowell, MA 01853. LICENSING/REPRINTS/PERMISSIONS Mix is available for licensing. Contact the Licensing team to discuss partnership opportunities. Head of Print Licensing: Rachel Shaw, licensing@futurenet.com MANAGEMENT Senior Vice President, B2B Rick Stamberger Chief Revenue Officer Mike Peralta Vice President, Sales & Publishing, B2B Aaron Kern Vice President, B2B Tech Group Carmel King Vice President, Sales, B2B Tech Group Adam Goldstein Head of Production US & UK Mark Constance Head of Design Rodney Dive FUTURE US, INC. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10036
All contents ©2021 Future US, Inc. or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/or have the necessary rights/permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions. Please Recycle. We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. The manufacturing paper mill and printer hold full FSC and PEFC certification and accreditation.
Current From the Editor
Welcome 2021, We’ve Been Waiting for You The other day I bought two holiday cards, one to send to each daughter. The first is silver and white and a bit sparkly, with Peace Joy Love written across the front. Very traditional; it’s going to Molly and her family in Toronto. The other says Peace Out 2020. A bit odd, I admit, for an end-ofyear holiday greeting; it’s going to Jesse and her boyfriend here in Oakland. It wasn’t until I sat down to write them each a note that I began thinking about the two messages on the front. Typically, this time of year is full of celebration and anticipation. Presents under the tree! Food and drink and family! A new year is coming! Resolutions! A fresh start! But for the past few months, I’ve found myself more often just wishing that 2020 would end. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s indicative of my mind set. It’s been a long, long year. Same number of seconds, minutes and hours, yes, but I think we can all agree that it sure felt a lot longer than most trips around the sun. Still, my routine has not been as disrupted as most, and I’m not the type of personality to dwell on the negative. While I do think certain aspects of daily life will be forever changed by the introduction of Covid-19, and now its variants, I also think we will be returning to some sense of normalcy this year, at least to the point where every trip to the grocery store is not filled with anxiety. With that spirit in mind, here are a few things I’m looking forward to in 2021. • I’m looking forward to seeing some live music. In person! The last time I saw musicians on a stage, I believe, was NAMM 2020 in Anaheim. While my nights out aren’t as frequent as they once were, I’m still jonesing for some loud guitar and a funky rhythm section, something to get the body moving besides a 30-minute walk in the neighborhood. The impact of the pandemic and resultant shutdowns has absolutely devastated the concert and live event industries, more so than any segment of the entertainment universe. And the impact extends to the venues, vendors, crews, manufacturers and parking attendants. A crushing blow. We need live music. We need our friends to get their jobs back. • I look forward to going to see a movie again. In a theater! Thank goodness for the streaming services and their partnerships with the film and television production studios in getting content out to screens, even if they’ve been smaller screens. But I still miss a big movie in a big theater. One of the great experiences of my adult life was taking my children to
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opening day of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring at the Grand Lake Theater in downtown Oakland. Watching them, ages 10 and 11, gripping their armrests and bouncing around in their seats, wanting to whisper to me but knowing they shouldn’t. Frodo and Sam, Gandalf and orcs. A full house. That is magic. And we need to get some of it back. • I look forward to having a six-hour dinner with Dan Zimbelman at his Oxford Inn in Maryland or a restaurant of his choosing in Las Vegas at next fall’s AES Show. I would love to sit down in New York City with Troy Germano, sharing a beer in his control room. I can’t wait to fly into Nashville and stop by Blackbird Studios for a visit with John McBride, then head to Ocean Way to pick up Pat McMakin for a night on his back patio, just sipping a fine bourbon, swapping a few stories about the past year and listening to some good music. • I can’t wait to visit Rose Mann Cherney in Los Angeles. I miss her. • Six months ago I wouldn’t have said this, but I’m actually looking forward to attending a trade show. In person! During the first few months of the shutdowns, it was almost a relief that I didn’t have to travel. The break was nice. Well, that’s over. • I look forward to seeing my parents, Jim and Mary. They’re 87 and 84 and doing well, but I miss them. I’m used to spending two to three months a year in Indiana. I come from a large family, and we enjoy gathering. Our day will come. • I look forward to fewer Zoom and Google Meet sessions. I love technology, and I applaud the rapid acceptance, but just a tad fewer… • And finally, I look forward to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, this month’s cover boys, winning Best New Artist at the 2022 Grammy Awards. After 40 years of making hits for others, these two legends (and two of the nicest and most engaging gentlemen you will find anywhere) will be putting out their first album as artists in 2021. I love that at this point in their career, they’re still as excited as a couple of teenage boys back in Minneapolis. My best wishes to you and yours as we open up to 2021. May it be a much better year for us all.
Tom Kenny Editor
Music PHOTO: Raymond Alva
Something to Say Cory Henry With the Funk Apostles, and All Alone By Barbara Schultz
I
t’s been a couple of years since soulful keyboardist, songwriter and vocalist Cory Henry left the band Snarky Puppy and made his move from New York to California. He’s released two studio albums during that time: Art of Love and his latest, Something to Say, a powerful and varied collection of funk, soul and R&B originals that document a year in the life of the artist. Something to Say is a perfect showcase for Henry’s singular talents. Three tracks feature Henry’s band the Funk Apostles (guitarist Isaiah
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Sharkey, drummer/percussionist TaRon Lockett, keyboardist Nicholas Semrad, bass player Sharay Reed, backing vocalists Tiffany Stevenson and Matia Washington); those songs were recorded pre-Covid. Along with Henry, the band plays some of the most exciting funk music being made. Henry plays every part on the remaining songs, which came together, strangely enough, after it was safe to bring musicians into his studio. On those “solo” tracks, Henry’s creativity and versatility are totally unleashed. Though he may still be known primarily as a keyboardist from
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his Snarky Puppy days, Henry is a spectacular singer, and he says he learned a lot more guitar during the pandemic. His sounds are inventive, textured, yet somehow relaxed. Thematically, the songs seem to encompass 2020’s many moods. Some tracks come off as clever and pretty light, some focus on love and
PHOTO: Rick Curiel
Mix engineer Danny Garibay
couple of tracks on Ledisi’s latest album, Wild Card. “It always has a few of my keyboards set up, plus drums, bass, guitar—just the essentials. The reason I love this room is I feel like it gives me the ’70s vibe. It’s like walking into 1974. Sonically, it’s built well with a lot of wood all around. It’s my favorite place to be right now. Production is the name of the game for me, especially since the pandemic.” Again working in Logic, Henry put together rough mixes of his new tracks before sending them to mix engineer Danny Garibay (Simon Curtis, Kossisko, Alice and the Glass Lake). Artist and engineer are both based in the Los Angeles area, but the two collaborated virtually. “Leading up to Something to Say, Cory and I had already established a workflow on mixing his last two albums, Art of Love and Art of Love (Live in LA),” Garibay says. “The goal for me on Cory’s records is to continue to push the envelope in mixing funk, gospel, blues, jazz in a sonic modern representation of Cory’s ‘future soul’ sound. “One way I do this is by applying modern mixing techniques used in other pop genres,” he continues. “I start with drums; drums are everything. As much as drums can define eras and genres, they can also blur them, which is why I’m very meticulous for drum feel and sound. Then I move my way up to the rest of the groove section, wrapping the instrumentation around Cory’s keys and vocals. ‘Happy Days’ and ‘Switch’ are good examples of this on the album, as they lean into applying mix processing techniques of past traditions with a modern approach.” Garibay works in his two-room Hollywood recording/mixing studio, operating under the production company name loom n s. “I do all my mixing in the box in Ableton,” he explains. “Personally, I find Ableton seamlessly offers more than just one way of working and allows e e
loss, and still others address issues of social justice. On the lighter side, “Gawtdamn” is a funk track that grew from sort of a catch phrase. “When I first moved to California, before I got my place, I remember being in an Airbnb, and as I was going out to get coffee and breakfast I remember walking down the street and saying, ‘Goddamn!’ I forget what made me say it, but when I said it I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a song.’ So I picked up my phone, put down a voice memo. Each song has its own story to it.” However, Henry says he became concerned that repeating “Goddamn” would be “counter to his upbringing,” and that caused him to play with the spelling. It’s not difficult to find more emotional significance in songs such as “Happy Days,” “Anything 4 U,” “No Guns,” “Black Man” and “Say Their Names.” Henry worked away in his studio as the Earth kept turning, not only playing every part on many of the songs, but also engineering the lot on his own. The personal studio Henry developed into a couple of years ago is the first one he’s had that is not in his own home. “I’ve had some kind of studio for about ten years. I also have a room in my house that I can use if I’m home and it’s late. But before I had an outside studio, I wasn’t as productive as I am now,” he says. Henry’s workflow is built around a few wellchosen items that he’s become comfortable using. His platform for recording and rough-mixing is Apple Logic Pro, outfitted with a selection of plug-ins from UAD, Waves and others. “In Logic, I like that all of my key commands and shortcuts are in one place,” Henry says. “And I like my editing features. When I’m editing vocals, I can work really fast, and I like the way I can comp vocals. Sometimes you don’t mind taking the long way around, but being able to just record over the track and use a dropdown and cut the track up—it took me awhile to get there, but it’s a good workflow, and I get a good sound out of Logic.” Henry listens on JBL monitors and records via a few favorite microphones, including a Shure SM7b for vocals, a stereo pair of Neumann KM184 overheads, as well as a Shure drum mic kit and a few others. The keyboards Henry is best known for playing—including Hammond organ, Fender Rhodes, Clavinet, etc.—are all electronic and all taken direct. “The room itself is a very small, very intimate space,” says Henry, who has also been busy producing other artists’ projects, including a
me to achieve a desired result or experiment in ways other DAWs don’t.” Garibay’s go-to plug-ins include products from FabFilter, Waves and Valhalla, as well as Ableton’s stock plugs. His control room is outfitted with Yamaha NS-10Ms monitors powered by Bryston 3B ST amps. “I also use a KRK 12 sHO subwoofer that I switch on and off with my NS-10s using my studio controller, and KRK V8 monitors for a shift in perspective. At the end of the mixing process, the vibe of the mix really has to move me. Otherwise, I can’t expect it to move anyone else.” Something to Say was released on October 30, and Henry came together with the Funk Apostles on Halloween for a virtual release party that was broadcast from Apogee Studio (Santa Monica) and mixed by Bob Clearmountain. It was the first time the musicians had played together in seven months. “It was a lot of fun after we hadn’t played for so many months,” Henry says. “It felt especially good to play the new stuff, some of which we were playing together for the first time live. There was a lot of good energy.” Henry notes that his release concert seems like it happened years ago even though, at the time of our interview, it had been only a month. This observation is yet another insightful comment on the nature of a musician’s life during Covid, and during the horrific events and subsequent protests that rocked the U.S. during the summer of 2020. “Mixing Something to Say, was emotional and surreal, as the pandemic, protests and riots were happening simultaneously,” Garibay says. “On some days, there were protesters marching at the doorstep of my recording studio as I was mixing songs like ‘No Guns,’ ‘Black Man’ and ‘Say Their Names.’ I’m very grateful and honored to be a part of Something to Say. Cory Henry is one of the greatest musicians of our time, and the album couldn’t be more timely.” n
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Music // news & notes
A Conversation Between Erik Zobler and Matt Forger By Erik Zobler and Matt Forger
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n the days following legendary engineer Bruce Swedien’s passing in late November, personal remembrances and tributes poured across social media. Erik Zobler, a longtime engineer and friend of the Mix family, called to say that he and another friend, Matt Forger, both of whom had worked as Bruce’s assistant, were just reminiscing. We asked if we could listen in on their conversation.
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of what the musicians were trying to accomplish. Erik: Did Bruce use any sound widening techniques or was it always a natural stereo space? Matt: Bruce had a way of creating a sonic landscape by integrating different aspects of miking technique, along with how the microphone was used in an acoustic space. One of his favorite things to do was when he was recording backing vocals, he would record the first track and then a double of that track. And depending on how the harmony was structured, if there was going to be another track or layer, he would have the singer take several steps back from the microphone, and then for the next track, another several steps away from the microphone. He was using the element of early reflection to help reinforce the feeling of space. There was one recording in particular where his miking technique is, I think, outstanding. It’s PHOTO: Courtesy of Erik Zobler.
Erik: You worked with Bruce for years. How did you land that gig? Matt: Well, that’s actually a pretty good story. You and I were both employed at Westlake Studios. There was another engineer who worked there at the same time. He turned out to be quite a famous guy who, unfortunately, is no longer with us. Ed Cherney. There was a point when Ed was about to go independent. He came to me a nd said, “You know, Bruce and Quincy have a bunch of projects coming up and I think you’re the guy that would be best suited to step in to work with them.” I started with the Lena Horne Broadway show album, followed by Ernie Watt’s Chariots of Fire album, the Donna Summer album for Geffen Records. And then there was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Erik: A Little record called Thriller. Matt: Yeah, it was it was a minor hit. [laughs] Erik: Bruce is considered a recording God. You
must have learned a ton from him. Matt: The thing about Bruce’s sound was that he always did everything in the simplest fashion possible. He used an absolute minimum of outboard gear to record. The only thing he would regularly use was an 1176 on the vocal. And he used the 12:1 compression ratio. So it was actually a little bit more like a limiter than actual compression because Bruce did not like compression. Or at least not, shall we say, compression from electronic gear. He loved, and he was a master of using tape compression as part of his sound. But if Bruce could have used a straight wire to go from the microphone to the 24-track, he would have. He used the dynamics from the performance of the musicians. When you have the top studio guys playing, they already know how to execute a performance. Bruce would get the blend of the instruments so that the musicians could hear themselves clearly. You know, in the studio, Bruce Swedien, left, with everybody’s separated, engineer Erik Zobler baffled and wearing at Bernie Grundman headphones. It’s very Mastering. different from a live performance. So Bruce would make that thing that was happening in their ears be very live, and very representative
PHOTO: Mr. Bonzai
Bruce Swedien Remembered
Erik: It’s one of my favorite Michael Jackson songs, especially for its sonics. Are there any Quincy Jones, left, with Bruce Swedien at right and assistant other stories like that? engineer Matt Forger in the middle. Matt: Sure. Bruce loved sounds that were generated acoustically. I remember the day that Michael came into the studio carrying a microphone because Bruce understood that mailing tube with him. It was about 4 inches in adding a second microphone down by his feet diameter and 3 feet long with drawings on it. would create some kind of phasing issue. So that Michael said, “Oh, I sing a line through this,” and wouldn’t fly. Bruce was always so aware of phase Bruce got excited. He asked me to put up a Shure relationships. 57, and that was how we recorded the little voice in Erik: You know, when you’re first starting out, “Billie Jean,” where there’s the “don’t think twice, do you think getting a great recording is all about the think twice” answer. So anytime anything could be gear. And it is important, but more important is done in an acoustic manner, Bruce referred to it as the environment you set for the musicians to be acoustic reinforcement. We would do other tricks able to do what they do, unimpeded, and express like we would record percussion in the bathroom themselves creatively. because it was a tiled room, and it had that really, Matt: There was this thing that used to happen really bright reflective sound. Studio A at Westlake if you came into a session and it was a Bruce and had a mirrored room with marble floor and we Quincy date. First of all, you would be entering into would record something in there for that extra an environment where here are a few guys enjoying kind of kind of sparkle. He loved to put drums on a themselves, having a great time. They’re great wood platform. Bruce wanted the sound reflecting friends, it’s like you were you were coming into off of natural wood. It gave that early reflection a little personal party that they were having with reinforcement, and made the sound have fullness. some great music. And I can’t tell you the number When Michael would sing vocals, especially for the of times that people would come in—musicians Bad album, he would sing on the drum platform, to do an overdub—and there’d be this thing that and he would very often do dance moves. All of would happen in the environment, there would the sound from him moving, his shoes or snapping be a conditioning aspect to the people coming his fingers, those were all things that Michael was in. Part of it was Bruce and part of it was Quincy. doing as part of the performance. That’s what They were prepping them so that when they went Bruce was capturing. Bruce wanted to capture the out to give a performance, they were in a state of mind that was so conducive to artistic freedom entire performance for the sake of realism. and creativity. Quite a few times the performer Erik: Did he add any other microphones, like lower would come in and Bruce would jokingly say, to his feet, or was it just whatever made its way into “Okay, let’s see if that recorded.” He’d hit Play and the sound that would fill the room was amazing. the vocal microphone? Matt: No, it would make its way into the vocal Bruce liked to listen loud, and he loved monitoring
loud on the big speakers. The sound that he got out of those monitors, the low end was enveloping, and the way the energy was distributed through the frequency range was just so pleasing. It was a visceral experience because it was all-encompassing. And the performer would stand there and say, “Wow, I did that? I sound that good?” Bruce understood the value of wowing everybody in the control room. Erik: There were some things that Bruce said that I took to heart and I still say to this day. He would say, “Fill the meter, fill the speaker.” Matt: Yes, because that’s where part of his sound comes from. He didn’t use a lot of compressors, but he did use the compression of the analog recording. If you’ve ever seen him do a mix and watch the meters on the 2-track, you know that he knew how much headroom was available electronically in the machine. And he knew how hard to hit the tape to get the sound that he wanted. Erik: What about mixing? How did Bruce monitor? Matt: When Bruce would mix, he would mix big and he would mix loud, and then he would mix on his favorite old set of JBL 4310s. But the other thing is, he would spend an enormous amount of time on the Auratones, really, really low. And he leaned in really close. And he would just focus on the details. And Quincy would always want to hear it there, too. Sometimes when we listened to the playback, Quincy would say, “Put it on the radio, Svensk,” Svensk being his nickname for Bruce. And then Quincy would lean, too. They knew the value to have something that related to the real world. Erik: What was the best, if you can pick one, session you did with Bruce. Matt: Well, it was on April 14, 1981, the tracking date for “The Girl Is Mine.” I knew we were doing an important tracking date. I did all my standard prep of mics and cables and stands and got all the gear ready. I was standing in the control room and I looked around. On the far side of the control room are the musicians from Toto along with Lewis Johnson. And at the producers desk is Quincy, and Bruce is at the console. Standing behind Quincy talking to the musicians is Paul McCartney. And next to him is George Martin. Geoff Emerick is behind Bruce. Michael Jackson is on the front side of the console. In the back there’s a few dignitaries from the music world. That was the “aha” moment of my life. I thought, “If I can’t learn anything about making great records, standing in the company of these people, then I’m never going to.” n PHOTO: Courtesy of Matt Forger
a great example of the Blumlein technique. Erik: Yeah, it’s basically x-y with the figureeight. Matt: Correct. The best example of that is on his recording of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.” The Andre Crouch choir is standing in a circle, and in the center of that are a couple of 414s in a Blumlein configuration. I remember the day when Bruce played me a rough mix of “Man in the Mirror” in Westlake Studio D, and he cranked it up, loud. To this day. I’ve never had a moment like that in a studio where the hair just stands up on your arms and the back of your neck and you, you experience something like you have never heard before, right?
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Classic Tracks X in 1983: Guitarist Billy Zoom, drummer DJ Bonebreak, vocalist/bass player John Doe, vocalist Exene Cervenka
Photo by Paul Natkin via Getty Images
X and “The New World” Observations From Early ‘80s Sound Eerily Relevant Today By Barbara Schultz This month’s Classic Tracks story started with an election-week earworm. “The New World”—a single from L.A. punk band X’s 1983 album More Fun in the New World—paints a picture of the America that the band’s principal songwriters, John Doe and Exene Cervenka, observed as X toured the U.S. behind their record Under the Big Black Sun in 1982. “We were in a different city every night for six weeks, and we saw all of the United States,” reflects drummer D.J. Bonebrake. “We could see the disillusionment of people who were losing jobs. We were in Baltimore and in Michigan. These places were depressed because industries were disappearing. During the Reagan era, the stock market was booming but blue-collar jobs were disappearing. We’d see homeless people. We’d see people begging.” “Honest to goodness, the bars weren’t open this
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morning They must have been voting for the President or something Do you have a quarter? I said yes because I did Honest to goodness, the tears have been falling all over the country’s face.” NIGHTS AT THE OFFICE In preparation to record what would be their fourth full-length album, the members of X— Doe, Cervenka, Bonebrake and guitarist Billy Zoom—began working up arrangements for a new collection of songs in their rehearsal space on Hollywood Boulevard. “When we signed with Slash, they helped us get that rehearsal space in downtown Hollywood,” recalls Bonebrake. “It wasn’t ideal because it was in an office space, so you couldn’t
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play until 6 o’clock. Also, there was a meditation group down the hall and they would knock on the door and say, ‘We’re going to meditate for a half hour. Can you take a break?’” Band arrangements usually started with Doe’s bass parts; as one of the songwriters, he would play and sing for the group, and Bonebrake and Zoom would develop their parts from there. “It’s never just one person, though, and sometimes Exene doesn’t get credit where it’s due,” Bonebrake says. “She’s really good at making suggestions. But in this case, I think Billy came up with the lead guitar part.” Zoom’s riffs and solos often echo bits of Americana, whether it’s early rock ‘n’ roll or—as is the case in “The New World”—a little like cowboy music. Bonebrake points out that his drum part evokes classic American music, too. “There’s kind of a martial-sounding part,
when they sing, ‘It was better before before they voted for what’s-his-name,’” he says. “It could almost be a John Philip Sousa march. There’s a hint of that.” Bonebrake also recalls that his drum part on the song posed some challenges. “I’m pretty sure the song was always in 12/8 time,” he says. “But the thing about rehearsing with X is, we rehearse relatively quietly—not a whisper, but, because we were in an office space and we didn’t even have a great sound system in there, we played lighter. “The beat I do on that song is all eighth-notes and it’s fast on the hi-hat, but when we started to really play it, I realized that may have been a mistake because it’s really hard to play that way and play loud. But I decided it doesn’t sound right any other way, so that’s the way I’ll always play it.” REMEMBERING RAY Partway through rehearsals for the album sessions, the band was joined in their rehearsal space by their producer, Ray Manzarek. The former Doors keyboardist produced the first three X albums, and More Fun in the New World would be his fourth and last time in the studio with them. “We met Ray in 1979 at the Whisky a Go Go,” Bonebrake says. “We were opening a show and Ray was there with his wife, Dorothy, to see the headliner. At that time we were playing a really fast version of ‘Soul Kitchen’ by the Doors. When we started playing ‘Soul Kitchen,’ Dorothy recognized it and she looked over at Ray, like, ‘Hey, do you hear that?’ Apparently he had a blank look; he didn’t recognize it at first. But they came backstage and he said, ‘I really like your stuff—the poetry and the music, and your sound. I’d love to produce you if I could.’” On Los Angeles, the band’s debut, Manzarek played keyboards on a few songs, but on subsequent albums he served solely as producer. “He was well aware of what it was like to be a musician, and he knew what it was like to be the oddball,” Bonebrake says. “We were part of the punk scene, but we weren’t exactly punk. The Doors were like that, too. They came out of the ‘60s, but they would do a Kurt Weill song, or some poetry. Even though they had hits like ‘Light My Fire,’ I remember listening to their records as a kid and going, ‘Wow, this is dark and wonderful.’ So there was that commonality.”
to begin tracking in Studio 1. The live recording sessions—with Bonebrake and Zoom in the big room, and Doe and Cervenka in iso booths—were engineered by the band’s live mixer, Clay Rose, who was assisted by Cherokee staffer Brian Scheuble. Mix was unable to track down Rose for this story, but Scheuble offers a unique perspective on the sessions, as this was literally the first studio session he ever worked on. “Before that, I had been a runner for four to six months,” Scheuble says. “I was thrown into that session and I really was pretty green, but they were the coolest, nicest people and everybody was supportive. I don’t think they ever knew that this was my first session.” The band played live with Doe and Cervenka singing guide vocals. Bonebrake’s drums were set up in the middle of the room. Though Zoom played his Gretsch Silver Jet guitar in the live room as well, his amp—a 1960 Fender Concert—was isolated. Scheuble recalls that Rose’s experience as a live engineer informed the microphone choices. “There were a lot of 57s,” Scheuble says. “They were on the drum kit, the guitar amps, the snare, the tom-toms. But there was also a pair of Neumann U87s being used as room mics, and John and Exene sang into U67s.” Songs were captured to one of the studio’s MCI JH24 tape machines via the mic pre’s in one of Cherokee’s four Trident A-Range consoles. “It was a well-equipped studio, and we also used 1176s and LA2As and Fairchilds—pretty much all the great old gear that everybody drools over today. I also remember Clay using an old Eventide delay for guitars and vocals, which was pretty standard back in those days.” “We would do about two songs a day,” Bonebrake recalls. “I think the basic tracking took five or six days, after the first day, which was just getting sounds. We would get there every
THE SESSIONS AT CHEROKEE After the band fine-tuned their arrangements with Manzarek, they all headed to Cherokee Studios
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day and work on a song, and if we didn’t get it we would have dinner and then we’d probably get it on the first take after dinner. Then we’d work on the second song, and if we didn’t get it, we would come in fresh in the morning and get that on the first or second take. “That’s one of the consistent things about X: If we’re not getting the groove on a song, we don’t beat it to death. We take a break. We’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll make suggestions, but we don’t get microscopic. We let it happen organically until it starts to work.” When the basics were complete, the project moved to Studio 3 to overdub any replacement parts, solos and final vocals. “John and Exene would sing together on separate mics with a gobo between them,” Scheuble recalls. “There was never too much analyzing or overthinking on this album. The vibe was pretty light and fun. “From there, we went right into mixing,” the engineer continues. “Everything was mixed to an Ampex ATR 102 quarter-inch machine. We had no automation; everything was by hand, which was awesome for me because they had me doing moves and I was able to learn how to use the A-Range console very quickly. Everybody had their little part of the board. Ray was down on the far left, Clay was in the middle, John had a couple of faders, and I was on the far right doing some on-and-off for the backgrounds and some percussion. I also remember we used Cherokee’s EMT 140 plates on vocals. It was an amazing trial-by-fire experience, and the first of many sessions I worked on as an assistant and as an engineer for the next six years.” Ten years after working on More Fun in the New World, Scheuble coincidentally ended up serving as one of the engineers on X’s 1993 album Hey Zeus. Today he is an independent engineer and mixer. X stopped working with Ray Manzarek after New World, and sadly the great Doors keyboardist and producer passed away in 2013. DJ Bonebrake and his bandmates have gone through different incarnations and side projects over the years, including a five-year hiatus, but X survives. The band have been touring in their original lineup on and off since 1998, and 2020 saw the release of Alphabetland, their first studio album in 27 years. More Fun in the New World went to Number 86 on Billboard’s album chart and remained on the chart for 23 weeks—a notable feat for a punk band at that time. Track one, “The New World,” might as well have been written in 2020. n
Live Bob Moses Falling Into Focus Punk-Roots Duo Perform Live, on Video and on Record By Lily Moayeri
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he absence of touring and the now-available time on the musicians’ hands has resulted in an outburst of creativity, bringing forth a wealth of content that would have not been attempted otherwise. Case in point, Bob Moses. Like most working artists, the duo had a full slate of dates that were wiped off the calendar. What Jimmy Vallance and Tom Howie did in response was roll the three iterations of their live show—the club set, the band set and the acoustic set, something they had never done before—into one unforgettable performance. Climbing to the top of an abandoned radio tower in the Topanga Canyon area of their adopted town of Los Angeles, Bob Moses recorded an hourlong set in August 2020 that was streamed on Twitch in October as a performance film and released as Falling Into Focus— Live 2020, a live
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album and on-demand video the following month. “It’s an old, abandoned, Cold War–era radio tower,” says Vallance, Bob Moses’ tech wizard. “There is a fallout shelter that’s supposed to withstand a nuclear attack. From this tower the West Coast could communicate to the rest of the United States. To us, during Covid, it felt like calling into the void. ‘If we do this thing, is anyone going to listen?’ It felt fitting.” The shoot tipped the 24-hour mark, with setup beginning as early as 7 a.m. Most of the time was spent hoisting the gear up (and later down) by a rope-and-pulley system with attached milk crate. One to two pieces at a time—including camera gear—were loaded into the crate. Larger items such as the kick drum were transported by tying the rope directly around them.
“We didn’t quite know what we were getting into,” says Bob Moses’ live sound engineer, Allan Bates, who is set up with his DiGiCo SD12 and SD Rack I/O, which is what he uses when he tours with the band. Bates is stationed at the bottom of the tower with 100-foot runs of cable connecting him to the somewhat-crammed band up top. “Everyone in our band comes from either metal or punk rock backgrounds, setting up on tiny stages, throw and go,” says Vallance. “It was not the smallest thing we’ve ever played on. The good part is, it wasn’t a metal box where everything is reverbing. We had crystal-clear sound in our in-ears. We got to really lock in and make eye contact. It was a really great way to play.” They began at the top-most level of the tower with the club set. Vallance mans Ableton Push in clip mode, an Akai APC40i, a Roland Boutique TB-03 and a Korg Minilogue; Howie is on his early ‘90s Fender Telecaster, singing into a Sennheiser MD 441 microphone. This is the same setup for the band version, for which they climbed down a rusted vertical ladder to join bass player Julio Tavarez and drummer Joe Zizzo. “Everything that could be DI was done like that,” says Bates. “Even for the full band set, we didn’t have amplifiers. We didn’t want to deal with getting a guitar amp up there. [Howie’s] guitar tone is mostly through his pedals anyway, and for the bass we used the Palmer Pocket Amp. Plus, the power in the building was a weird half-wired box, so we were trying to be as slim as possible.” For the final stripped-down acoustic setup they come to ground level, with Vallance on an upright piano and Howie on an guitar (this time amped with a Fender Twin Reverb) and singing into an Electro-Voice RE20 microphone. “When we were doing the piano, the wind
Jimmy Vallance, left and Tom Howie, otherwise known as Bob Moses.
PHOTO: Courtesy of Bob Moses
“When we were doing the piano, the wind was so insane. My initial miking setup for that just didn’t work. All I could hear was the wind. I tried to go really deep using a pair of AKG C460s, then I supplemented that with the Beyer MCE 91 on the back for body." —Allan Bates was so insane,” Bates recalls. “My initial miking setup for that just didn’t work. All I could hear was the wind. I tried to go really deep using a pair of AKG C460s, then I supplemented that with the Beyer MCE 91 on the back for body. This was at 4 in the morning and I couldn’t tell if it was working really awesome, or if it was going to be unusable. [Vallance] likes the pianos with murky, weird tones anyway, and it ended up working out perfectly.” The entire set was run through twice, beginning in the afternoon in order to catch the sunset and carrying on through the night into sunrise. Filmed with two cameras on tracks and four drones, the final product is visually unmatched and sonically flawless. During the daytime footage, the tower looks desolate, impossible to get to, with nothing around it for miles. At night, the city lights of Los Angeles are hazy in the distance while the lighting team strategically illuminates the tower so it looks like a majestic space station glowing from within, the band members otherworldly. There were between 30 and 60 channels of audio over the three sets. The second performance was the one Vallance used, mixing
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PHOTO: Courtesy of Bob Moses
Jimmy Vallance, foreground, and Tom Howie atop the radio tower in Topanga Canyon.
the captured recordings wholly in Ableton. His goal was to bring out the live aspects as much as possible, turning up the drums, the bass and the vocals louder than normal, to differentiate Falling Into Focus from Bob Moses’ Days Gone By and Battle Lines albums. “Our drummer has a Roland TM-6,” says Vallance. “On his snare drum he has a live snare, but also a trigger which then triggers the sample. I’m able to get a real snare recording and a triggered sample at the same time. Everything on his drums are triggers. A lot of people will leave the kick drum and clap drums stems in because with dance music being as tight as it is, it’s important. We let him dictate the pacing and the flow, and left his kick drums how they are, leaving that organic element in. “There’s a lot of wind bleed, especially in the tom mikes and the overheads,” he continues. “EQing out some of the lows, cleaning it up a bit, then making sure his performance really shines and you can hear the imperfections. Dance music is always so perfect, so for us, the imperfections and the humanity coming through really makes a difference.” Mixing the final product is a not what Vallance generally does with Bob Moses. Using the studio versions of the songs as a blueprint, and wanting to keep a non-electronic vibe to the overall sound, his approach toward Falling Into
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“There’s a sloppiness to it that’s kind of punk rock. Trying not to overproduce was the hardest part. There’s a lot of automation and volume-riding. When I’m making a studio record, I would not usually adjust the bass to go louder by 4 dB and then back down 4 dB. It’s just a completely different way to make a record.” —Jimmy Vallance Focus was entirely different than it would be for a studio album. “For someone who has made studio records their whole life, your brain has to work differently,” says Vallance. “You’re more forgiving because you’re looking for cohesiveness in the performance. Having one guitar the whole song so it lives in one channel, you can’t go back and take anything out. There’s a sloppiness to it that’s kind of punk rock. Trying not to overproduce was the hardest part. There’s a lot of automation and volume-riding. When I’m making a studio record, I would not usually adjust the bass to go louder by 4 dB and then back down 4 dB. It’s just a completely different way to make a record.” Pink Floyd’s 1972 classic Live at Pompeii concert film was Bob Moses’ reference for Falling Into Focus, visually and sonically. The setting has an impact without needing to add anything to it,
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while the musicians’ setup with wires and cables everywhere exists within that space, showing the rawness of performance. Vallance and Howie left the video editing to Jeb Hardwick to match director Owen Brown of CTRL5’s vision. Hardwick and Brown, in turn, shared their dailies via frame.io for approval. “They were thinking about footage and we were thinking about music,” says Vallance. “For any point in the audio, you have five or six video choices from the different cameras. They would sometimes do things with footage that wouldn’t work with music, like show a sunset scene, and we’d say, ‘There’s a fill happening here so it would be great to focus on the drummer, otherwise you miss that.’ A lot of that we got from Pink Floyd—who in the ‘70s beat anything anyone has tried to do during Covid. Leave it raw, just get video of people playing music.” n
Live // news & notes Mouse on Mars Get Creative with Meyer Sound’s Spacemap Go
Bewake Sudios, Berlin, with 14 UP-4slim compact loudspeakers bolstered by two USW-210P compact subwoofers. PHOTO: Courtesy of Meyer Sound
Electronic Duo Explores Spatial Sound at Bewake Studios in Berlin Bewake Studios in Berlin has become the first recording facility to install a multichannel monitoring system fully outfitted with Spacemap Go, Meyer Sound’s tool for spatial sound design and mixing. By offering this unique capability, Bewake looks to become a magnet for electronic musicians and sound artists seeking a laboratory for developing spatial sound designs that can be quickly scaled up for live performances in clubs, galleries and festival venues. The installation of Spacemap Go was prompted by German electronic music icons Jan Werner and Andi Toma, who have redefined artistic conventions since 1994 with both their Mouse on Mars duo, as well as individual projects. They have been in residence at Bewake Studios since late 2018, and have occupied an exclusive sub-rented space and operated under the moniker Paraverse
Studio. Their facility has a separate connection to the 50-square-meter main recording room—where Spacemap Go is available—which is shared with Bewake’s other clients. “Andi and Jan first experienced an earlier version of Spacemap Go at Moogfest two years ago, which started an ongoing relationship with Meyer Sound,” notes Adam Kesselhaut, the studio’s co-founder and managing director, as well as a producer and songwriter. “That eventually led to the installation of Spacemap Go here. Because of the virus restrictions, they have mostly been using it for their own projects, but they have been developing content so we expect they will use that in small events, inviting a few select people. I know they are really itching to get going with Spacemap Go, to make some cool, crazy stuff and get other artists in here to experience it.”
The Meyer Sound loudspeaker complement comprises 14 UP-4slim compact self-powered loudspeakers bolstered by two USW-210P compact subwoofers for potent low end. Spatial mixing is effected by two Galileo GALAXY 816 Network Platforms under the control of the free Spacemap Go app for iPad. The system was installed and commissioned under the supervision of Ianina Canalis, Berlin. “For us it really makes sense to have access to a spatial sound setup in the studio,” explains Werner, speaking on behalf of the Mouse on Mars duo. “You don’t want to go into a venue with what was a stereo mix and then have to take it all apart and adjust it after you get there. You want to start mixing spatially in the studio, so you are listening that way from the beginning, in the eventual environment for the music.” ■
The American Drive-In Tour Rolled On With Brown Note Productions Outdoor Concert Events Featured the Voices of Staind and Godsmack Along with retro-tech like vinyl turntables and instant film cameras, which have enjoyed a popularity resurgence in recent years, the drive-in movie theaters of old are also experiencing a revival in 2020. But that boom hasn’t always been sparked by patrons flocking to catch the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Case in point, Sully Erna and Aaron Lewis, frontmen for the hard rock bands Godsmack and Staind, very recently wrapped up “The American Drive-In Tour,” a 13-date, coast-to-coast run of “unplugged” concerts, many of which were staged in classic ’50s-era outdoor cinemas. To best reinforce every acoustic musical nuance and every word of intimate banter between these “old friends” of 25 years, Denver-based concert sound company Brown Note Productions chose to carry an L-Acoustics K2 system for the tour. Produced by Danny Wimmer Presents, the promoter behind popular festivals like
Sacramento’s Aftershock, Daytona Beach’s Rockville, and Louisville’s “Trifesta” (Bourbon & Beyond, Hometown Rising, and Louder Than Life), The American Drive-In Tour ran from early October through early November. Marking the first time that these two musicians have shared a stage, each stop of the nationwide trek featured an impromptu setlist of each artists’ hits, choice covers, and many private stories and laughs. According to Brown Note Productions President Ryan Knutson, the choice of P.A. was simple yet elegantly effective: arrays of eight L-Acoustics K2 were flown on each side of the stage, while eight KS28 subs were horizontally spread out in linear arrangement on the ground below. Two ARCS Wide, one each at the far left and right corners of the stage, delivered coverage to two small VIP areas, and the entire system was driven via LA-RAK II touring racks loaded with LA12X amplified controllers.
“I made the decision to use K2 for its flexibility in pattern control, provided by Panflex, as well as its versatility to be deployed as either a singlepoint-hang or ground-stacked system based on what was needed each night,” Knutson shares. “With only three guys on stage—Aaron and Sully, plus a third guitarist —the stages were relatively small, so K2’s light weight, compact profile, and high output were also key reasons that we carried the system.” ■
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Live // news & notes King & Country Celebrate With “A Drummer Boy Drive-In” Blackhawk Audio Supplies DiGiCo Package for Outdoor Christmas Tour Australian-born, Nashville-based sibling duo King & Country are currently out on the road with “A Drummer Boy Drive-In: The Christmas Tour” in King & Country monitor engineer Zach Escobar at tbe DiGiCo SD12 support of their first holiday album, A Drummer Boy Christmas. Performing 20 concerts between November 12 and December 20, Joel and Luke Smallbone’s show was backed by six King & Country FOH engineer Ralph additional multi-instrumentalists on stage and Rivera at the DiGiCo SD12. the sound reinforcement gear and expertise of Blackhawk Audio, which is deploying a pair of DiGiCo SD12 96 consoles for FOH and monitors each night. Maintaining the same socially distanced drivein show format that has become “the norm” for 2020, the current, largely outdoor tour is stopping at a variety of locations across the southern U.S., including arenas, fairgrounds, and drive-in movie theaters, as well as iconic sites like Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House, and Pensacola’s Five Flags Speedway FOH engineer Ralph Rivera and monitor engineer Zach Escobar joined the band on this tour. Connected via fiber, both the FOH and monitor consoles are paired with SD-Racks, each loaded with seven 32-bit “Ultimate Stadius” Mic Preamp modules, five 32-bit DAC modules, and two AES output cards. A DiGiGrid MGB interface at the house console allows Rivera to connect to his laptop for live multitrack recording of all the shows for virtual soundchecks using the Waves Tracks Live platform. Similarly, the SD12 96 monitor console is equipped with a DMI-WAVES on stage. There’s also a trombone, a second drum kit, marching drums, SoundGrid expansion card for multitrack recording when desired. Although there are eight musicians on stage, the input count is and tube bells.” Escobar is generating a dozen stereo monitor mixes—eight for the higher than might be expected because nearly every band member is a multi-instrumentalist. “Everyone in the band pretty much plays every performers, plus four more for backline, playback tech, spare/guest mix, instrument, and four of them are also background vocalists,” says Escobar, and himself—all of which are being heard on JH Audio JH13V2 PROs. who has been with the group since January 2020. “Our guitar player will “Every mix for every member is different for every song, so the quicker I can jump to the bass riser and play there for a few songs, then jump down to get to a fader, the better,” he adds. “Because we’re a one-truck tour where the synth station. Our drummer plays keytar for a song, and our bass player ‘space is everything,’ the SD12 puts a decent fader count into a small form plays cello, mellophone, and marimba, so there’s a lot of moving around factor that is good for me and great for our truck pack.” ■
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Shakespeare Theatre Renamed for Tom Patterson Stratford, Ontario, Venue Updates With d&b A Series Rig In 1952, with a $125 grant from the City Council, the late Tom Patterson set out to establish a six-week Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario. Now, 66 years later, the Stratford Festival operates yearround and has welcomed 28 million theatergoers, generating billions of dollars’ worth of economic activity for the city. In 2020, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Stratford Festival dedicated a new theater to Patterson. “The old version of the Tom Patterson Theatre which this replaces, was built into what used to be, at various times, a casino, concert venue, curling club, and badminton club; and so because of the odd shape of the building, it evolved into a long runway-style thrust stage,” says Peter McBoyle, longtime Festival Sound Designer and audio design consultant for the project. “The shape of that stage, although not conventional for theater, was loved by actors, directors, and audiences, and the goal of
The d&b audiotechnik A-Series rig at the Tom Paterson Theatre.
the new 600-seat Tom Patterson Theatre was to keep the shape and feel of the old stage as much as possible but put it in a modern context.” Knowing the room, he chose a d&b A-Series augmented array. “The tight vertical coverage pattern of the A-Series (30 degrees) and the control you get arraying them with small splay angles allowed us to really address these challenges,” notes McBoyle. “We were able to get the coverage where needed and have it drop off dramatically where not required. We originally started the design of the system around the d&b T10 which is what we have at our Festival Theatre, but the Tom Patterson Theatre just doesn’t have the height to deploy line arrays. So, the A-Series was the perfect tool for the applications being somewhere between line array and point source.” The system was installed by Horizon of London, Ontario, in conjunction with the Stratford Festival
IATSE crew. McBoyle was the system designer and also verified and tuned the system. Michael Duncan is the head of sound for the Tom Patterson Theatre and he worked with McBoyle on the design and oversaw the installation and commissioning throughout the project. The main system consists of 5 flown arrays of A-Series each with two AL90s in a vertical array. Three of the arrays sit downstage center to cover the downstage end of the curved audience seating. The other two arrays hang further upstage to pick up the coverage from the downstage arrays to provide even coverage of the entire audience seating area. In addition, there are two 21S subwoofers flown above the center of the stage to provide even LF to the entire venue. 26 x 8S loudspeakers were installed as FX speakers (16 as surround speakers focused over the audience and 10 in a new overhead position. All d&b cabinets are powered by 30D and 10D amplifiers. Control and configuration were made simple with the d&b R1Remote control software. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the theatre has not yet been used as the entire 2020 season was canceled. ■
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The Mix Interview
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis After four decades of hooks and hits, music’s most influential production duo is ready for its next act By Sarah Jones Photos by D-Nice
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J
immy Jam and Terry Lewis have spent just about their entire lives making hits. The duo met as high school students in Minneapolis; in 1980 they formed funk/R&B outfit Flyte Tyme, which evolved into The Time and led to their association with Morris Day and Prince. But by the early ’80s, their performance careers took a back seat as they became sought after as writers and producers. In the ensuing decades, Jam and Lewis produced chart-toppers with Boyz II Men, Usher, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Human League, Lionel Richie, Luther Vandross, Karyn White, George Michael, Elton John, and, most famously, Janet Jackson, in a partnership that began with 1986’s blockbuster breakthrough Control and continues today. Ever explorers in the studio, they defined the sound of New Jack Swing, always creating at the cutting edge of technology, squeezing every ounce of soul out of machines like Roland 808s, Linn Drums and Oberheim synths as they shaped that sleek, sophisticated, signature sound that feels as fresh today as it did four decades ago. Along the way, they’ve earned five Grammys, 16 Billboard Hot 100 Number Ones and more than 100 Platinum certifications; they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and won the Legend Award at the 2019 Soul Train Awards. But their imprint goes far beyond songwriting and producing. They’re businessmen, philanthropists and artist advocates, in their own work and in Jam’s role as Chairman Emeritus of the Recording Academy. This spring, the duo will release Jam & Lewis Volume One, a compilation of original music that’s been 35 years coming. The record showcases legendary R&B artists at the peak of their craft, including Usher, Mary J. Blige, Boyz II Men and Toni Braxton; the first single, “He Don’t Know Nothin’ Bout It,” featuring Babyface in fine slow-jam form, was released in November. The album is a celebration of the iconic musicians who shaped modern R&B, it’s an ode to the craft of songwriting, and it’s scorching hot. Mix sat down with Jam and Lewis to learn how their relationship has evolved with technology, how they guide creative collaborators to their full potential, and why they’re finally ready to step into the spotlight as artists. How have you been working this past year? Jam: We’ve been using everything from Zoom to a whole bunch of different things. Brant Biles,
the engineer will set up at our studio when we’re doing mixes. We’ll be listening to the audio that he’s playing; we’ll be on headphones or on speakers and we can make little tweaks and little suggestions. We’ve been finishing the record like that for the most part—which has been cool, actually. It allows you to concentrate on it in a different way, which is kind of interesting. We have been doing some projects where we actually will go to the studio and all work together, socially distanced and masked. Mostly, we’ve just been utilizing the technology. Lewis: It’s the age of traveling without moving. The main tool we use right now that’s the simplest is probably Audiomovers Listento, which is just a plug-in–based app that you plug in on a fader, and then broadcast. There’s another really good one called Sessionwire that works really well, it’s just harder to set up. This new record has been percolating for a while. Did the recording sessions take place pre-pandemic? Jam: Yeah, a lot of these songs started pre-Covid. The seeds of the idea actually started 35 years ago. We were getting ready to start working with Janet on what turned out to be the Control album; we thought we would do a Jam and Lewis album of some sort, and we’d started working on tracks for it. When we thought we were done, John McClain, who was the A&R person at A&M Records at that time, came to Minneapolis, we played him “Control” and “Nasty” and “What I Think of You.” We’re playing him all these records that we think are hit records, we think are good records. And, like all A&R people, he says, “I just need one more.” We said, “Let us play you some stuff from our album that we’re working on.” About the third track in, he goes, “Wait, that’s the one I need for Janet.” We said, “No, that’s for our album.” He said, “No, I need that for Janet. Play it for her, and if she likes it, give it to her.” So the next day we went to the studio, we just put the track on, we didn’t say anything to her. She’s listening and we’re watching her listen. When the song goes off, she goes, “Who’s that for?” We said, “Well, you, if you want it.” She said, “Oh, I want it.” That song ended up becoming “What Have You Done for Me Lately.” So, that basically launched her career and basically ended ours. Well, it didn’t end ours, it postponed ours. Our album, anyway. That was in 1985. In the interim, we would
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get with certain artists who we thought would be great to work with and we’d say, “Hey, let’s do a song together.” Then we’d do the song and the artist would go, “Oh no, we’ve got to keep this. It’s too good, I need this for my album.” We finally got selfish about three years ago, when we got inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. We called a bunch of the same people we had been trying to call, and said, “We need to do this for us now.” Finally, it’s coming to fruition. The music feels like such a celebration of artists of an era, but it also feels modern and it sounds like an album. How do you preserve an artist’s essence while keeping things cohesive when you’re working with such a breadth of talent and styles? Lewis: The easiest way to state it would be, understanding what the key ingredient is in a record, which would be the artist. We tap into the artist, and we write based on that, and we produce based on that, and then we finish based on where we are in time. The technology kind of dictates where we are in time, the sounds, and all of the different things that you can do. One thing great about Jimmy Jam, he is the texture guy. He can do infinite layers of things. Sometimes I call it the kitchen sink approach. You can’t really recognize what it is, but it feels right. I think that’s always the effect that you shoot for. It’s not necessarily what sounds good, but what feels right. And then we try to write songs that reflect where the artists are in their lives. To me, style wins over everything. That style is so important because you know, when a record comes on, you can recognize who the artist is right away by how they approach that song. That’s what makes a star a star, or a superstar a superstar. Jam: There’s an elegance to the album, I think. We’re treating the music with the highest reverence we possibly can, and that can be in the form of the traditions of songwriting. It’s not like you know in the first four bars what the song’s going to be. The song kind of lays out luxuriously. It takes you on a journey. I think songs should do that. Did you always envision making guest artists front and center? Jam: What we do is, we write and produce. We do play the instruments, and we shape the songs, produce the songs, write the songs, arrange the songs, and so on. That part of it was really what
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To me, style wins over everything. That style is so important because you know, when a record comes on, you can recognize who the artist is right away by how they approach that song. That’s what makes a star a star, or a superstar a superstar. we felt was our strength. The idea was, find artists that we loved working with in the past, or artists who we had never worked with that we wanted to work with. Then, the intent was to give songs that, first of all, we loved, but also would make you remember why you fell in love with that artist for the first time. What was that song that made that happen? Let’s do something that gives you that feeling. It doesn’t have to sound like a song that they did before, but it just gives you that feeling. You’ve clearly found so much inspiration in music technology. How has technology informed the way you work together? Lewis: It’s kind of a twofold thing. It brings an ease to working together, but it also brings an uneasiness because it gives you so many different ideas for what you could do, so the possibilities increase, and then you’re having to sort. In the past, being confined made you make
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decisions based on the moment. You didn’t leave it to chance. We would mix down the background to make sure that the stems all sounded like we liked it, the day that we did it, instead of going back and having the engineer change the balance. Now, with more possibilities, you can do more with less and you don’t always need to be in a pronounced space or the studio. That part of it is really fantastic, but I think technology complicates things sometimes when it doesn’t need to. We’ve been doing it long enough where we know how to let the technology only do what we need it to do, instead of taking it to the next step. With that in mind, the record that we are making now, I don’t know if 20 or 30 years ago we could’ve made. Jam: We didn’t know enough. Lewis: Still, it’s about the people. The one thing that we’ve always said is, buildings don’t make hits, tape machines don’t make hits, people make
hits. So how you interact with people is always the catalyst that we start to build from. As technology gets more complex, it can sometimes be challenging to find that balance where your tools are serving you, not the other way around—especially when the lines blur between production and performance. Jam: With that in mind, even with drum machines, we always tried to keep a human element to it in some way. We would never really sequence whole tracks; we would sequence maybe a beat of some sort, but then there would be fills that would happen that we’d play live. The whole idea of a loop-based song simply being a two-bar loop or a four-bar loop playing throughout the whole song, that really never was the idea. Even if we were going to do that, we’d always add what we call “pings and zings.” We’d always put in live percussion, cymbals and things to keep it human. For us, it was always finding the balance between those two things and thinking of the parts as performances. To me, there’s a magic in that, that we love.
We never were scared of technology because Terry was great. I remember, back in the day, before DAWs were really happening big time, you had... What was the one you had? Lewis: Soundscape. Jam: This thing was the slowest, most glitchy, crazy... It was horrible and I kept going, “Terry, Terry, what are you doing, man? You’re wasting your time.” Terry was like, “No, no, I’m going to figure this out.” I remember when we got a Synclavier—at that point, it was the digital tape machines, it was the Sony machines, the Mitsubishi machines—and our engineer Steve Hodge said, “Don’t get a digital tape machine. In five years, it’s all going to be hard disk. There won’t be a tape at all.” I remember Sonic Solutions, we had that. Then, of course, Pro Tools. All of a sudden, rather than going to The Mastering Lab with big, half-inch tapes, we went with a little DAT. At one point, we just went with a little hard drive. The fact that we were watching that evolution happen and being a part of it, has been so cool for us. We couldn’t have come up at a better time.
At the end of the day, I don’t care how good of a plug-in you have, you just get a good guitar player, with a good amp, and mike it, and that’s exactly what you want. The ability to be able to do all of those things is what Terry’s alluding to when he says 35 years ago we couldn’t have made this record. Because we just didn’t know enough. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Lewis: It’s about understanding all of those things. You have to have a reference to start with. When we started, there were no drum machines, so we know what drums sound like in the raw. We know what they sound like miked. We know what synthesizers sound like, we know the different timbres that they give. That can hamper you, too; by knowing, you don’t venture out into the other space. We’re fearless because we know it’s okay to go outside that space; we don’t really try to stay in the box. At least we know what the box is. Are you as hands-on with tracking as you are with programming? Jam: Yeah, because, once again, it’s about
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experimentation. That’s the reason we built our own studio. The advice we were given was, “No, don’t build your own studio.” But for us, it was like, “Why not have a place we can go to anytime we feel creative and just work?” There was an engineer who basically walked out on us at one point, so we had to learn. We would blow up headphones and blow out speakers. It was trial by error. But it was important that we were selfsufficient, that we felt like we’re not going to ever be dependent on someone. A quick story about Control. We engineered that album ourselves, but it was because we didn’t have an engineer. The tape machines back in the day, whenever we would record with Prince, we’d always notice that Prince recorded everything in the red on the VU meters. So, of course, when we started recording our own stuff, we said, “We got to do it like Prince, we’re going to put everything in the red.” At the time, everybody was using Studer machines and either SSL or Neve boards. So, you know, we’re hard-headed; we get an Otari machine, we get a Harrison board. We get all of our equipment together, we’re recording everything in the red. We call [longtime engineer] Steve Hodge and say, “Come up to Minneapolis and mix this record.” He puts on the first song on the 24-track, and we’re all proud of ourselves. He goes, “Who recorded this?” We were like, “We did.” He said, “Everything’s all in the red.” We said, “Yeah, Prince taught us that; he records everything in the red.” He said, “Yeah, but what kind of machine was Prince using?” I said, “I think it’s an MCI.” He said, “Well, here’s the thing. That machine is set up for zero is zero. So if you see zero on the VU meter, it’s zero. Your machines are set for plus six. So that means that zero on the VU meter is really plus six, so the fact that you’re pinning the needles, you’re way out of whack here.” We were like, “Can it be saved?” He said, “Oh yeah, it’ll be fine. I’m going to teach you guys how to record.” It was a mistake that we made that Steve Hodge saved. The next album we did, that he came up and showed us how to record, was the Human League album [Crash]. It was so much of a learning experience, but we were very hands-on. We would loop vocals and things, we had the Publison machine... I used to DJ, so I was like, “Can’t we just run the vocals over to a half-inch tape and then I could just wild sync it like a DJ? We don’t even need SMPTE code, and we can put it back in.” We
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were doing all that kind of stuff; it was like a bunch of happy accidents. Jimmy, in your keynote at a recent DDEX conference, you spoke about the importance of album credits. Credits were a big part of your own music education. Industry efforts to standardize metadata aside, how can we educate music lovers to be curious about the people behind the scenes? Jam: Yeah, that was our education, that’s how we knew who Steve Hodge was, we knew what Larrabee was, all of those things that shaped our decision-making process of where to record, and where to mix all of those projects. That all came from looking at liner notes on albums. I do think people want to know who made a record. We’re living in the information age; that should be readily available. Lewis: Especially in a world where music sells everything but itself. Music sells everything, so I
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don’t understand why it wouldn’t be appropriate to at least acknowledge those who make, create, engineer, whatever, the music. Who should bear the cost of that? There’s got to be a couple pennies somewhere to put the credits somewhere. Jam: The other thing we’re missing, though, is what I call the ceremony of music. It used to be that effort went into getting music. You used to have to go to the record store, look through the records, pick the one you want. There was ceremony in getting that record home, taking it out. It had a feel to it, it had a smell to it. You looked at the label going around on the turntable. All of that was distinctive; all of that was going into your mind as you were listening to the song. Then, you picked the album up, and as you’re listening, you’re looking at the liner notes. You’re seeing all these great names of all these musicians, and all these engineers, and all these writers, and all these producers. It makes the experience important. The way we get music now is, we hit a button, and boom, it’s in our phone and it’s in our earbuds. So there’s not even a thought that it might’ve taken 12 people to make this record. You’re not really giving it the reverence that it deserves. How do you know when you’ve finished a song? The way we know when a record’s done is always when we can’t wait to play it for the artist. If it’s not feeling like that, it’s not done yet. We’re just enjoying the process of doing it. Terry always says, “I don’t want to reach the destination, I just enjoy the journey.” So we’re just on a journey, and we’re having fun. We joke that we want to be the oldest best New Artists. n
THE RESONATING BODY IN SOUND OF METAL Music and Vibration, With Silence and Deprivation
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irector Darius Marder’s award-winning debut dramatic film Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios) explores the struggles of heavy metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed), whose life changes course abruptly after he loses his hearing. Much of Marder’s experience in the film industry has involved documentary work. Most notably, he lensed, directed and edited the 2009 documentary film Loot (which won the Los Angeles Film Festival Best Documentary Feature award) about two WWII soldiers trying to recover stolen valuables that they had hidden during the war. That documentary background is evident in Sound of Metal’s cinema vérité style. The opening scene is of Ruben and his girlfriend/lead singer Lou (Olivia Cooke) mid-performance at a nightclub. Ruben is sweating, teeth bared as he attacks his drum kit with controlled precision. But he’s not miming his way through the part. He’s actually playing, as is Lou. And a multi-mic setup is capturing the tracks for use in the final mix.
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“What you hear is what you see,” affirms supervising sound editor/sound designer/ composer Nicolas Becker, who has worked on films including Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina and American Honey. “We knew this would be very important for the audience to never question the diegetic aspect of it. When you put the audience in that position, afterwards they let go and don’t question other things. They just totally get into the story.” No matter the project, Becker’s approach to sound is to start with what’s real, to “immerse myself in the real environment,” he says. “I put my body in the same kind of condition to keep the emotion of the sensation, and I think that was the link with Darius [Marder] as a documentary filmmaker—that first he worked with reality and then moved to a more fictional world. He has this idea to first immerse himself in the real environment, and that comes with real sensations.” Becker’s post sound work begins with visits to the set so he can “feel the real mood of what’s happening on the shoot,” he says. While there, he
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By Jennifer Walden
captures field recordings “to nourish myself and the film with reality.” He uses those recordings to quickly construct sound for the realistic [nonsubjective] moments in a film. “I never start with effects or the weird sequences but always with the real world then I can understand how to weave the real with the fiction. I think Darius and I have that in common, that way of working.” SOUND DEPRIVATION FOUNDATION Becker and Marder first met up for Sound of Metal in Paris at IRCAM (a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound), where they could be sealed inside the dead-quiet space of an anechoic chamber. “We were in there for 20 minutes, with the lights switched off. We weren’t able to see or hear anything,” Becker recalls. “You are able to listen to your body movement. You start to hear your tendons and heartbeat and the pressure of your blood and the hiss in your ears—the level of your audition. This was our first experience together of silence.” This physical experience provided valuable
PHOTO: Courtesy of Heikki Kossi PHOTO: Amazon Studios
direction for how Becker could express Ruben’s hearing impairment through sound in the film. Becker also relied on first-hand descriptions of how cochlear implants compare to natural hearing from people who have undergone the procedure. Instead of processing sounds with EQ and compression, Becker chose to use nontraditional recording techniques and tools to gather real sounds for Ruben’s experience of hearing loss in its varying degrees. “I have a lot of weird sensor mics, like the Brüel & Kjær three-axis accelerometer, which captures vibrations, geophones and contact mics,” Becker says. “With those, I’m able to capture surface vibration. I worked a lot with hydrophones because the body is something like 70 percent water, so I think the hydrophone used to record sounds underwater made sense.” Becker worked closely with Foley artist Heikki Kossi and his team (Foley mixer Kari Vähäkuopus and Foley editor Pietu Korhonen) at H5 Film Sound in Kokkola, Finland. Together they built a “stethoscope microphone” using a basic stethoscope with added mic capsules in
Foley artist Heikki Kossi, left, and sound designer Nicholas Becker, in Finland, 2019.
Ruben sits for his first hearing test in Sound of Metal.
both ear-tips to capture body resonance. Kossi says: “I tried a contact mic and it was okay, but the stethoscope mic had an organic feeling that was totally different. I moved my body and tried to find resonating parts, with or without a heartbeat. I also used this same miking technique for recording the resonation of different objects, looking for possible resonation that Ruben could feel.” Becker points out that instead of artificial filtering, “the processing was the flesh on Heikki’s bones.” The stethoscope mic also came in handy when capturing Ahmed’s own body movements onset. “There was a sound booth in the scene when Ruben has a hearing exam with the audiologist,” Becker explains. “That was very quiet, and we did a recording session in there with Riz [Ahmed]. I created a whole library of movement sounds with him during the shoot.” Because body resonation sounds were key to expressing Ruben’s experience inside his head, Becker and Kossi often discussed ways to capture resonance and sonic textures. For instance,
when they wanted the audience to just feel the resonation of Ruben’s footsteps, Kossi used Schertler DYN UNI P48 mics inside his boots. “We tried to focus on performance and organic elements of the sound more than heavy processing and many layers,” Kossi explains. “My favorite memory on this project is Nicolas saying to ‘imagine that you’re drawing a portrait and if you draw one line and do it right it looks like someone’s face.’ One line! That is a huge demand for performance.” That level of simplicity requires detailed execution. Kossi credits help from his team at H5. “With this kind of film, where we really need to be aware of the different worlds and perspectives, the planning is the key thing. Pietu [Korhonen] kept note when spotting the cues, and Kari [Vähäkuopus] did a great job of recording different perspectives. It’s teamwork for sure,” says Kossi. MUSIC AS VIBRATON In the film, Ruben is welcomed into a deaf community where they encourage him to accept
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PHOTO: Amazon Studios
Actor Riz Ahmed at the residential home for deaf students, teaching his peers drumming through vibration. PHOTO: Courtesy of Heikki Kossi
his condition. He slowly begins to find his place among the residents, and in one scene he is sitting at the bottom of a metal slide and a child is sitting at the top. They make a game of tapping out rhythms for each other to repeat. For that sound, Kossi used an eight-foot long metal tube. But instead of miking the tube, Kossi used the stethoscope mic to record its metallic resonance as it traveled through his body. “It was interesting to hear how the huge vibration of the tube turned into body resonation,” says Kossi. “The resonation is the language; it’s how Ruben and the small kid communicate together and feel the connection.” Being a composer on the film as well, Becker chose to enhance the Foley slide sound with a unique instrument called a Baschet Sound Sculpture—a large metallic instrument created by French brothers François and Bernard Baschet in the 1950s. “It’s like a really weird, big metal flower and you activate the metal
Foley artist Heikki Kossi, with stethoscope, performing some of the interior sounds for Sound of Metal.
The resonation-slide setup for recording the metal slide communication scene in the Foley room at H5 Studios, Finland.
PHOTO: Amazon Studios
Lead singer and girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) helps Ruben through his ordeal with hearing loss.
through a crystal bar,” says Becker. He also used it in combination with Ruben’s metal band performance to create “internal music for Ruben” during a bout of severe tinnitus at the start of his hearing loss. Metallic sources were important sonic elements for Sound of Metal. Ruben played in a metal band, yes, but there’s also this idea of resonance and resonating—physically and emotionally. Metallic sounds (like life) can be pleasing, overwhelming, and sometimes harsh. Near the end of the film, Ruben sits alone on a park bench in Paris. His cochlear implants magnify the sound of church bells ringing nearby. It’s an intense, painfully irritating jangle
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that Becker created by splitting the sound of bells into three different sonic layers (transients, harmonics, and noise) using a standalone application from ircamLAB. Becker says: “Each part of the software has a slightly different filter to recognize or separate different layers of sound. When we reconstructed the sound, we had cut everything into pieces before putting it back together, kind of like Frankenstein. It was very difficult to re-create what the cochlear implant would send to the nerves. The fact that we were using specific tools to separate the sound into layers, as opposed to using EQ or other tools that worked with spectrum and dynamics, made a
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huge difference.” Immersion into a real physical experience and discovering the sensations and emotions that come from being in a specific reality are such an innate part of Becker’s process that it even influenced his choice of editing and mixing environments for Sound of Metal. He decided to do the majority of his sound editing in Los Angeles at the studio of his good friend Mario Caldato, Jr. (former producer of The Beastie Boys). “For me, it was important to be in that kind of noisy environment, in a music studio listening to people playing all the time,” he says. In contrast, the final mix was finished in a quiet desert environment devoid of sound, just outside Tepoztlan, Mexico, at the post production studios of renowned director Carlos Reygadas. “It’s an incredible and beautifully wild place—an artistic bubble,” says Becker. “I feel it’s important to create an experience of work that is linked to the film. I think about where we should do the film, where we should edit it and mix it, in which environment with what people around. I think this has a very big impact on the way you work.” n
The live room at Mid South Audio. Note the half-cylinder Flex 48s on the wall and the custom clouds overhead.
PHOTO: Scott C. Nathan
Leading Production Company/Integrator Has an Ear for Analog Sound By Tom Kenny
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he recording studio has long proven a gateway into the entertainment and technology industries at large. How many kids in the late 1970s picked up a guitar, recorded a song, pieced together an 8-track analog studio in their hometown and went on to be a live sound mixer? How many students enter recording schools each year with visions of working at Abbey Road and wind up heading business development at a game company? In the early 1980s, Delaware native and bass player Kevin Short had a 16-track analog studio that he soon grew into an event production house, staging company and ultimately a leading mid-Atlantic audio-video-lighting integration company with reach across the country. On September 28, 2020, on the actual date of the company’s 31-year anniversary, Short opened a new 20,000-square-foot retail and showroom space for his company, Mid South Audio. True to his roots, he also built a brand new, worldclass, Gavin Haverstick–designed recording studio. And he did it during a very tough year, a year
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in which the event and production industry collapsed and while it has sometimes been tough to make ends meet, he has kept all of his employees employed, even shifting some of his production crew during the day to help with construction and wiring and building acoustic clouds. “This is how it all started 30 years ago,” Short says, speaking from the new control room in early December. “The first thing in this whole history was a studio with 16 tracks. The rest is new for us—we've never done retail or a real showroom. We have done integration, of course, but we are doing so much more, and we wanted to kind of be revitalized. So, we built this new place. And we built this studio and brought in Frank Marchand to make it work. He is so respected in the area, and he has contacts with bands up and down the coast, and around the world.” “Kevin was definitely thinking ahead when he decided on the studio, to have a place that sounds good, that's big enough to handle eight or nine players at the same time,” says Marchand, who has had a many and varied audio life, most recently on the road mixing the great Irish band
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PHOTO: Scott C. Nathan
World-Class Recording at Mid South Audio
Front and rear-wall views of the spacious Mid South Audio control room.
“We Banjo 3”. “We blew the doors off with our first session. I had nine A-List players on the floor, all in Nashville style, and we were tracking live. To be able to do that and then add the video content, it's really turned out to be a blessing in disguise.” HAVERSTICK DESIGNS Today the 3500-square-foot recording complex sits at one end of the 20,000-square foot warehouse space and consists of the large live room with a piano booth and additional iso, a 20x15-foot control room and a second, smaller mix-production studio that also has access to the live room. The original plans were only slightly less ambitious when studio designer Gavin Haverstick of Haverstick Designs, Carmel, Ind., was brought on board in mid-2019. The relationship between Short and Haverstick goes back nearly ten years when they met at a conference, and Haverstick had done some minimal work on the previous Mid South Audio studio, as well as collaborating on a number of house of worship and event-space integration projects over the ensuing years. Haverstick,
PHOTO: Scott C. Nathan
pleased to see a 20-foot structural ceiling height, suggested removing a few of the rectangular spaces and opening up the live room just a bit more. “It was an empty shell, which is nice,” Haverstick recalls. “The back wall of the live room is about 16 feet tall, sloping down to about 13 feet at the front of the control room. There's a soffit trap that goes around the perimeter between the wall and the ceiling that is stuffed with insulation and has a pegboard facing. This allows us to control the low end without over-absorbing the higher frequencies. There are also barrel diffusers on the upper walls —they’re great at trapping low frequency energy and still scattering the mids/ highs, keeping some liveliness there. Down below, those are the Flex-48s, which is a product that I designed [and patented] which gives you the ability to convert it from an absorber to a diffuser on command. Depending on the application, you can make the room more lively or more dead just by taking the Flex Shield in and out. They have those in the live room, the piano room and also the control room.” The Flex-48, built by Acoustical Fulfillment and first installed in Jake Peavy’s Dauphin Street Sound Studios in Mobile, Ala., is a key component in Haverstick’s desire
PHOTO: Dave Chambers
Studio engineer/manager Frank Marchand, left, with MSA founder and owner Kevin Short at the Audient console.
to provide clients with what he calls adaptive acoustics. “The Flex-48 was born from me constantly going into rooms where people were saying, ‘Yeah, in this iso room I'm going to record drums, vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin’—15 different things. And I'm like, ‘Well, the room should sound different for each of those, right?’ The Flex-48 was really a tool that I developed to handle these situations. The concept of adaptive treatment or variable acoustics has been around forever, but there wasn't really something that was available from a manufacturer as an off-theshelf option that was easy to implement.” ANALOG-DIGITAL CONTROL ROOM Another prominent acoustic feature is the series of custom clouds hanging throughout, fabricated by the in-house team at Mid South Audio throughout the spring, after the partial shutdown. “The primary function of the clouds is to offer bass trapping and diffusion,” Haverstick explains. “The wood slats help to bring some reflection back down to the performer. They’re about 9 inches thick and suspended down from the ceiling approximately Studio B 12 inches. There's a production/ mix room prominent cloud in the at Mid control room. The front South half of it is absorptive to Audio. catch the first reflection points off the speakers. Wood slats on the rear
of the cloud help to scatter sound for those in the rear of the room. “The room actually slopes up to the back wall, sort of the reverse of the way it slopes down in the live room,” Haverstick continues. “There is a deep bass trap that's right above that diffuser array on the back wall; I think at this point it's probably four feet deep or so of insulation. Then we have the Flex-48s in there as a way to get diffusion on the rear wall, while also absorbing the low end, which is always helpful in these spaces. The Flex-48 has a peak absorption coefficient of 0.99 at 100 Hz, with good absorption between 80-250 Hz, a range that causes problems for many small rooms.” The console choice was an Audient ASP824, chosen for its analog path and its ease in controlling DAWs. For monitors, Barefoot Micro27s, chosen for their mid-field performance, as they made an early decision to avoid soffit-mounted speakers and rely on the compact power of the Barefoots. A second, adjacent studio handles additional mixing, voice-over and production demands. Both studios are based around separate Pro Tools systems and controllers. Opening night in September was a huge and rousing success, with all safety protocols in place, a live band on stage, the retail showroom wide open and a live tracking session throughout the evening featuring A-list talent, many of them flown in for the evening. “It’s got a really large feel,” founder and owner Short says. “I mean, the room just feels good to record in and track live. On opening day, we had eight positions out on the floor all doing their thing and playing live, recording all at once. The record came out sounding really, really good.” Yes, it’s been a tough year, and Short and team certainly didn’t need to go to such lengths. The integration and installation side of his business had been booming, even during the first ten months of the pandemic. And, let’s face it, recording studios aren’t on the list of Top 10 Moneymakers in 2020. Still, Short is a smart man. And he has passion for sound and music. He knows that, while adjacent to the major metropolitan centers of the East Coast, his is more a destination facility, two minutes from the ocean and in a quiet, rural area, with all the conveniences of home. It’s ideal, he says, for a band looking for an isolated, private recording experience, or for local talent looking to access world-class space with high-end gear and talent. n
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Tech Bose L1 Pro Portable Line Array Family
5 New Products Offer, Wireless Mixer Control and RaceTrack Design Bose Professional has introduced the L1 Pro portable line array systems, the next-level advancement of the original L1, introduced 17 years ago. The three new systems—the L1 Pro8, the L1 Pro16, and L1 Pro32, with its choice of two subwoofers—offer 180-degree horizontal coverage with unmatched clarity and tonal balance. A unique RaceTrack woofer design integrated into the L1 Pro8, L1 Pro16 and the Bose Sub1 and Sub2 modular subwoofers, provides extended low-end response. Built-in multi-channel mixers offer EQ, reverb and phantom power, while Bluetooth streaming capabilities and access to the complete library of ToneMatch custom EQ presets, allows performers to play with recording-studio tonal quality. The Bose L1 Pro portable systems are complemented by the L1 Mix app, placing complete wireless control in the hands of users for on-the-fly tweaks, with the mixer and app are always in sync, in real-time. The L1 Pro8 is a C-shaped line array featuring eight articulated 2-inch neodymium drivers; 180-degree horizontal coverage with wide vertical dispersion. The L1 Pro16 is a J-shaped line array with 16 articulated 2-inch neodymium drivers; 180-degree horizontal coverage, tight vertical control on top, and wide dispersion on the bottom. An Integrated 10×18-inch subwoofer features a high-excursion neodymium RaceTrack driver. The peak of portable P.A., the L1 Pro32, is the most advanced L1 portable line array ever, weighing just 28.8 pounds. The Sub1 and Sub2 modular subwoofers weigh 35.5 pounds and 51.7 pounds, respectively. The straight line array, features 32 articulated 20-inch neodymium drivers; 180-degree horizontal coverage with the most focused vertical coverage pattern and highest SPL over distance in an L1. It combines with the Bose Sub1 or Sub2 powered bass module via a single-cable and SubMatch connectivity is included for both power and audio.
Earthworks Audio USB Streaming Microphone 2 New Products for Podcasters, Gamers and Remote Workers Earthworks Audio has entered the growing USB mic and podcasting market with the release of ICON, a studio-quality USB microphone and ICON PRO, a broadcast-quality XLR streaming microphone. Both products enhance the quality and experience of remote working, podcasting, gaming, and home recording. As part of the look, Earthworks partnered with Triad-Orbit to design and build a custom desktop microphone stand that ships as part of the full ICON experience. The stand is sleek yet robust enough to hold and balance the stainless-steel microphone. For maximum flexibility, the integrated M-2R swivel ball joint can be disconnected and re-mounted on any studio mic
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new products
stand or boom arm. ICON PRO looks and feels similar to the ICON USB microphone but it is hand tuned with an extended frequency response and the capsule has a faster Rise Time Speed of just 11.67 microseconds. Because it is an XLR broadcast microphone requiring 48 volts of phantom power, it offers extended headroom and dynamics. ICON PRO ships with an integrated Triad-Orbit M-2R adaptor as well. ICON retails for $349 and ICON PRO sells for $499.
NEXO Expands P+ Series of Point-Source Loudspeakers P15 Coaxial Model and L18 Companion Sub Bass NEXO has expanded its P+ Series of point-source loudspeakers with the new P15, a 15-inch coaxial loudspeaker that arrives 25 years after the launch of the NEXO PS15. The powerful two-way passive/ active speaker delivers 139 dB (Passive) to 141 dB (Active) SPL from its purpose-built 15-inch neodymium magnet coaxial driver with a 3.5-inch voice coil. The new speaker’s frequency response is 57 Hz-20 kHz. The P15 weighs 2.2 pounds and measures 24 x 19 x 14 inches. Horn flanges can be interchanged from the 60° x 60° provided as standard to a 90° x 40° or an asymmetrical 50°- 100° x 40°. The P15 includes large comfortable handles on each side with a 35mm pole-mount fitting with a Speakon connector and threaded inserts to connect mounting accessories. The P15 speaker can be used independently or with its companion subwoofer, the new L18, a compact horn-loaded sub-bass model with a highexcursion 18-inch woofer. It matches the efficiencies of the P15, offering an extremely high output level (140dB Peak) and an impressive power-to-weight ratio. The P15 can be used either on a pole-mount with the L18 cabinet, wallmounted, or flown in landscape mode beneath an L18 enclosure, using a specially designed yoke bracket. Like the P15, the L18 precisely matches the NEXO NXAMP4x2mk2 controller amplifier’s output power. New processing algorithms optimize the match between the L18’s maximum excursion with the NXAMP4x2mk2’s output voltage capacity, producing highly dynamic sound without triggering the driver’s thermal limit.
Focusrite RedNet A16R MkII and RedNet D16R MkII Updates Provide Channel Level Control for All Inputs/Outputs Focusrite has announced the release of two new products in the RedNet range of Dante-enabled Audio-over-IP interfaces: RedNet A16R MkII and RedNet D16R MkII. Both models share the same feature set as their
predecessors, but now feature level controls for individual input and output channels. RedNet A16R MkII is a 16x16 line-level analog interface, perfect for getting 16 channels of analog audio on or off a Dante Audio-over-IP network. RedNet D16R MkII is a 16x16 AES3 interface—ideal for interfacing between digital audio equipment (such as consoles and power amplifiers) and a Dante network. The new functionality allows precise calibration of all inputs and outputs, making the process of accurate alignment of connected equipment more straightforward. Changes to input and output levels—in 1dB increments—are made using the included RedNet Control software. New device profiles for RedNet A16R MkII and RedNet D16R MkII in RedNet Control will feature a trim fader for adjusting input and output levels in 1dB increments. Additional software controls for dim and mute provide greater flexibility over independent I/O channels.
Meyer Sound Launches Spacemap Go Breakthrough Tool for Spatial Sound Design Meyer Sound has officially released Spacemap Go, an industry game changer in spatial sound design and mixing. Available as a free app for Apple iPad, Spacemap Go works with multiple GALAXY processors, controlled by a single iPad or with multiple iPads. Spacemap Go offers seamless compatibility with popular sound design and show control programs such as QLab. Using Spacemap Go’s templates a user can customize for a particular setup, while panning trajectories can be created with the touch of a finger and, if desired, captured for playback during performance. In addition to QLab, Spacemap Go can be automated by popular DAWs such as Ableton Live, Apple Logic Pro X, AVID Pro Tools, MOTU Digital Performer, and Reaper, taking advantage of the iPad’s multi-touch interface for effortless spatial automation. Systems are quickly and easily configured by Spacemap Go using any combination of GALAXY 408 or GALAXY 816 using Milan AVB, AES3 or analog as inputs and outputs. Spacemap Systems can be configured for up to 32 inputs and as many outputs as are provided by the processors.
Steinberg Unveils Cubase 11 More Customizable, More Inspirational, More Productive Steinberg has released Cubase 11, comprising Pro, Artist and Elements editions, each with the same core technologies but with dedicated tools tailored to the scope and scale of individual music production requirements. Cubase Pro 11 focuses on making printing stems a much easier task. Exporting processes can be queued and exported in one operation, with the export selection easily aligned with the selection made in the project, and controlling the full signal path, including channel insert effects group sends and master bus effects, is now a reality within Cubase. The Frequency EQ plugin has received an update, now delivering dynamic response options: dynamic mode for each of its eight bands makes the filter nodes follow the input signal, and the newly introduced multiple side-chaining allows each band in Frequency to be set to an
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individual side-chain.vOther new additions in Cubase Pro 11 are Eucon integration for supporting the latest Avid consoles, the remote recording plugin VST Connect SE 5 with a resizable and HiDPIready user interface, and 5.1 surround sound support for the MultiTap Delay signal processor. Cubase 11 also comes with fresh-new content: six sound and loop sets have been created by hip-hop producer Beat Butcha, Hollywood sound designer Robert Dudzic and Black Octopus Sound, covering a wide range of music styles that will help to quickly jump-start any music production project.
Tech // reviews Rupert Neve Designs MBC Stereo Processor With Precise Control Over Master Bus Conversion By Barry Rudolph
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he Master Buss Converter is a stereo analog signal processor and modern digital-to-analog converter that allows an engineer/producer to customize the crucial A/D conversion finishing process to suit the style and sound of their audio production. Using dual-path topology, the MBC’s pristine design maintains the highest possible quality audio before A/D conversion. Furthermore, the front panel controls and superprecision metering allow for instantaneous adjustments that encourage maximizing and/or experimenting with the process.
FRONT PANEL The 1U MBC has two TLA (Transformer-Like Amplifiers), linelevel, XLR analog input channels called A and B, each with its own separate cluster of controls and metering facilities. Each channel has a 22-segment LED meter that shows the analog input level going into the AKM AK5397EQ A/D converter chip. The meters measure from -60 dBFS to 0 dBFS, and I found their wide dynamic range valuable to alert me to low-level stereo bus noise and hum that I may not actually hear at normal monitoring levels. Just underneath the main meters are individual eight-LED gain reduction meters with a range of 14 to 0.5 dB when the limiter is activated. The rear panel has a pair of small switches for setting the meter’s hold time (1 or 3 seconds), and a recessed trim pot on the front panel adjusts overall brightness of the meters. All front panel control pots are 31-detent models made by either Alps or Noble, and I liked the feel of these—perfect for easily matching settings by feeling and/or counting the detents. Each channel has a single, continuous-frequency control knob for the limiter’s side-chain highpass filter—a 20 Hz to 250 Hz, 12dB/ octave Bessel filter. At the straight-up 12-noon position, it is -3 dB at 125Hz. This proved to be a very effective filter for full mixes and a big part of the sound of the MBC. When a HPF is inserted in the limiter’s side-chain, low-frequency peaks are less likely to trigger
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unwanted gain reductions, which is more important than ever with today’s low frequency–heavy Pop music. An HPF on/off pushbutton lights up to indicate when the HPF is inserted. All push-buttons on the MBC have LED-lit centers when activated, and all switches toggle sealed Panasonic miniature relays inside the unit. No audio signals are going directly through switch contacts, which can become dirty and intermittent over time. The Gain control ranges from 0 dB to +20 dB in 0.75dB steps. You can use Gain to increase the input signal (if needed) until it reaches the selected setting of the limiter’s Threshold control. It also sets the level going into the transformer/Silk circuitry (if activated) that feeds the A/D converter. Gain can be thought of as makeup gain and is only in play when the limiter is active. If the Gain knob is increased and/or the input signal itself exceeds the Threshold setting, limiting will start at a fixed 10:1 ratio. The Threshold control covers from -14 dBFS (full CCW), straight up at 12-noon is -6 dBFS, and the 3 o’clock position is 0 dBFs. Full clockwise is called OVER, a clever way to keep Gain control and the limiter in circuit but without any limiting. I always start with Threshold at full CW. The Limiter uses a pair of THAT Corp 2181A VCA chips and finishes with the Release time control that is adjustable from 50 ms to 1 second. Attack time is fixed at 0.5 ms, and both the limiter’s Gain and Threshold settings are dependent on the ADC Calibration selected in what I will call the Center Section of the MBC. THE CENTER SECTION The middle-third of the MBC’s front panel is split into two parts. On the left side is a stack of LEDs to indicate the selected sample rate, be it 44.1, 48, 88.2 96, 176.4 or 192 kHz. The MBC builds on the converter design within the Rupert Neve Designs RMP-D8 8-Channel Dante Mic Pre. The MBC can act as master word clock or will synchronize to
incoming clock signals with a pair of Word Clock In/Out BNC coaxial connectors on the rear panel. Once sync is obtained with an incoming word clock signal, a green LED lights up and a buffered clock signal is sent back out the word clock output BNC. Next on the panel is a push-button to toggle through the MBC’s choices of various analogto-digital converter digital reference calibration standards, or ADC Calibration. They are: -14 dBFS, -16 dBFS, -18 dBFS, and -20 dBFS and are referenced to +4dBu analog level, or 1.228 volts (RMS). All four of my Pro Tools HD system’s interfaces are set and calibrated to -18 dBFS, where a 1kHz tone coming in at +4 dBU would read -18 dB on the DAW’s meters. The stereo bus of a professional mixing console or summing system would have no problem making these operating levels. Being able to change the ADC Cal “at will” is an interesting feature; if you’re using the MBC to master a recorded stereo mix file that is recorded too low, you may try re-calibrating downward from -18 dBFS or upward to -20 dBFS to deal with hotter, more dynamic mix files. Also in the Center section is the Limiter In/ Out, L/R link buttons, and the transformer in/out button and Silk transformer saturation mode toggle switch. Here you have three choices of the sound of the two Rupert Neve Designs own custom inter-stage transformers. Red Silk saturates in the high mid-range and high frequencies, Blue Silk warms up the low frequencies or choose the Off position for the transformers only. Texture is a rotary control that sets the amount of Silk when activated—the Silk effect is added to both Channels A and B together and is highly dependent on hot, incoming analog levels. MBC AS A MASTER CLOCK/ADC Using the MBC as a master word clock, I connected its Word Out BNC to the Word Clock In BNC on the first Avid I/O in my rack, which acts as Loop Sync Master in my Pro Tools HDX system. Multiple I/O boxes can be clocked in a “star configuration” if you use a word clock distributor. Because I didn’t have one, I went
with Loop Sync. I routed the SSL Sigma’s stereo analog summing mix bus output to the L/R analog inputs of the MBC and set the ADC Calibration to -18 dBFS like all the other analog I/O boxes. The MBC’s AES/EBU XLR digital audio output connects to the I/O’s XLR input Enclosure connector. The MBC also outputs coaxial and optical S/PDIF digital audio simultaneously. I record all mixes in Pro Tools onto a new stereo audio track and monitor the mix audio with that track locked to input. Audio playback comes out of the companion Enclosure AES/ EBU output XLR connector to the DAC input in my Avocet II monitor controller. I periodically check all I/O boxes with a 1kHz, -18dBFS tone (from Pro Tools) through the Sigma’s 16 stereo stems to verify calibration, plus the Sigma’s stereo bus output to the MBC, and then digitally through the AES/EBU XLR Enclosure connectors. It was -18 dBFS everywhere—within the resolution of the meters. It is such a pleasure to work with precision audio gear! With the limiter switched out, I started to mix a dance pop mix with wide dynamics, lots of bass and loud vocals, all stemmed out to 16 stereo stems on the Sigma. I used the MBC’s variable highpass filters for this bass-heavy song, and I counted clicks to match both left (channels A and B) controls—no problem, but (especially for recalls) I could use pointers on all the knobs and finer graduated marks on the front panel for Gain, Threshold, and Release parameters. The highpass filters worked great, and you can see their effect instantly on the kick and bass synths peaking on the main meters and watching the GR meters dip less. I had the HPFs set past straight-up, and I liked that the big bass synth and kick drum hits were no longer punching holes (level dips) in the overall mix. There is a lot of gain available for quieter mixes, but with full mix levels coming in from the Sigma, the Gain control ended up being above 0 dB while Threshold was at the center position of -6 dBFS. Each click equals 0.75 dBFS. The Release time knob was midway in
The back panel connections include, from left: Word Clock In and Out BNCs; three digital outputs: AES/EBU XLR, optical Lightpipe, and coaxial; metering peak hold time DIP switches; and the balanced left and right channel line-input XLRs.
its range—not too fast so as to distort the low frequencies! I got around 4 to 7 dB of peak gain reductions and a good bump in clean loudness! There is no overall bypass button on the MBC, but you can switch the limiter and the transformer/Silk feature in/out to compare. I didn’t use the transformer and Silk feature for this modern New Disco song, as the producer likes the mix to stay clean yet loud as possible. MBC AS OUTBOARD PROCESSOR I connected a stereo line-level output feed from my Pro Tools analog I/O #3 to the MBC’s XLR Line inputs. In the Hardware page, I set the output to analog to feed the MBC but changed the paired input to AES/EBU using the Enclosure connector—analog out and digital back in. This same setup is also useful for recording live audio, except your mic preamp’s line outputs would connect to the MBC’s XLR line inputs. Next, I connected a BNC clock output cable from the same #3 Avid I/O box to the MBC’s Word Clock In, and I was in business! The MBC’s Sync LED lit up immediately, showing the 48kHz sample rate; I kept the same -18dBFS ADC calibration. At 48 kHz, the round-trip latency was 63 samples—no problem at all for Pro Tools’ delay compensation. I tried the MBC as a stereo limiter and gave those interstage transformers and the two Silk modes a good workout. As Gain is only active when the limiter is engaged, I used the ADC Calibration to boost the input level easily. If I change (from -18dBFS) to -14dBFS on the MBC, I’ve got 4 dB more for free! This “stupid pet trick” also works when using the limiter. I like using the Red Silk mode to brighten up individual tracking elements—backing vocals, (real) grand pianos, synth pads, dull acoustics all sounded great. I tended to leave the transformer always in circuit and maybe switch in Red or Blue after hearing (whatever the MBC was on) with the rest of the track. I ran the transformer/ Silk Texture control on or near “Max.” GO OD ONE! If you have put off adding a proper 2-bus processing chain and high-quality modern ADC, I can highly recommend the Rupert Neve Designs Master Buss Converter. It delivers the crucial, final step in delivering a finished, highquality master recording all in a single unit. It is well-designed and well-engineered, and it is a solid piece of professional kit you can rely on for years to come for great sound. ■
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Tech // reviews PreSonus Eris E7 XT Active Studio Monitor With Wide Sweet Spot, Tight Low End By Steve La Cerra
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hen PreSonus introduced the Eris XT Series of studio monitors last year, the company rolled out two models, the Eris E5 XT and the Eris E8 XT, which feature 5.25and 8-inch woofers, respectively. Eris XT speakers depart from the original Eris models in the use of larger enclosures for enhanced bass response, and an Elliptical Boundary Modeled waveguide for the HF driver that produces a wider sweet spot with more controlled vertical dispersion (100 degrees horizontal by 60 degrees vertical). PreSonus expanded the Eris XT Series earlier this year with the addition of the E7 XT, which employs a 6.5-inch woofer and is the su bject of this review. The Eris E7 XT is intended for use in mid-to-large studio spaces. The 6.5-inch woofer is housed in a ported enclosure yielding a response rated down to 42 Hz, while the 1.25-inch, silk-dome, highfrequency driver is mounted on the EBM waveguide. The E7 XT is Class AB bi-amplified, with a 70-watt amplifier for the LF driver and a 60-watt amp for the HF driver. Maximum SPL is said to be 104 dB, and though I didn’t challenge the E7 XT with such SPLs on a daily basis, they played more than loud enough for my purposes (mid-to-high 80s while tracking). When powered, the PreSonus logo on the lower-right front panel illuminates; other than that, there are no front-panel controls. Rearpanel features include an IEC power receptacle with mains fuse, XLR, TRS and RCA input jacks (thank you), a power switch, and a series of controls for modifying the frequency response of the monitor. Though its range is not indicated, the Gain control trims the volume from -∞ to about +4 dB, with a click stop at Unity. The High Frequency control applies a shelf EQ of ±6 dB at 10 kHz, while the Mid Frequency control is a peak EQ centered at 1 kHz with a range of ±6 dB. A Low Cutoff switch provides three choices: Off, 80 Hz or 100 Hz, the
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latter two at a slope of 12 dB/octave and therefore suitable for integrating E7 XTs with a subwoofer. The remaining control on the E7 XT is a three-position switch called Acoustic Space, and it’s designed to help tune monitor response based on room placement. PreSonus recommends that the Acoustic Space is set to 0 when the monitor is placed mid-room, -2 for placement near one wall, and -4 if the monitor is placed in a corner. FIRE ‘EM UP! I connected the E7 XTs to my Grace M905 monitor controller and set the speakers atop a pair of stands in the usual location in my control room, spaced approximately 4.5 feet apart, 18 inches from the front and side walls, and about 4 feet from the listening position. I started with the Gain set to Unity, High and Mid Frequency controls at 0 dB, and the Acoustic Space switches set to 0 dB. Due to the coverage angle of the EBM waveguide, the E7 XT is intended to be deployed vertically (which is how I used them) and not horizontally. I normally use a subwoofer in my control room, but in the interest of evaluating the E7 XTs’ ability to handle low frequencies, the sub was defeated and I set the Low Cutoff switches to Flat. Prior to making any adjustments to the E7 XT controls I listened to inprogress projects and finished mixes. I also made new mixes to get a feel for how those mixes made on the E7 XTs translate to the outside world. These speakers produce a lot of detail without sounding “etched,” and they deliver a full low end that isn’t hyped. They’re capable of resolving different layers of dynamics, such as a quietly picked acoustic guitar, while at the same time producing a louder vocal upfront of the mix. I never felt like the E7 XTs were compressing my mixes, even at loud volumes. Some
of the mixes I had already completed sounded a bit bright on the E7 XTs, and that characteristic was confirmed with the first batch of new mixes I did using them: when played on other systems, they sounded a bit dull, indicating that the E7 XTs lean toward the bright side in my control room. I decided to tame the tweeter a bit, reducing the HF level control by an amount I believe to be around -3 dB (the adjustment pot was halfway between the 0 and -6 dB markings). I would prefer that the High and Mid Frequency controls had click stops, or at least one click stop in each direction halfway between 0 and ± 6 dB, which would (a) ensure that the settings on each monitor could be more precisely matched, and (b) would allow repeatability of settings. My gripe notwithstanding, I found that this small tweak dialed in the high-frequency response nicely, and the subsequent mixes I made were pretty much spot-on. There were no surprises when I listened to the mixes on other playback systems. Levels and EQ were what I expected, as were more subtle elements such as the amount of compression on a lead vocal or the results of fader moves made in automation. The E7 XTs can produce a lot of depth, and in most cases I heard that characteristic when I played my mixes on alternate systems. In one or two cases, ambient effects such as reverb and delay were a bit attenuated on the other playback systems as compared to the E7 XTs, resulting in mixes that sounded a bit drier than I expected. I’m okay with this because I’d prefer that my studio monitors reveal as much detail as possible, as opposed to covering it. TRACKING In tracking sessions, the E7 XTs performed well, revealing a creaky chair when recording an acoustic guitar, or providing plenty of low-end mojo for playback of a slamming drum track. One notable attribute of the E7 XTs is that the low end is tight—I never felt like there was sloppy hangover from a kick drum hit or a slapped bass. Running a sine wave through the E7 XTs confirmed that they not only deliver usable bass response down to 40 Hz, but can actually reach down to 36 Hz. Also, the E7 XTs didn’t deflate the low end of a mix when the volume was turned down, which is a problem for some speakers— their bottom end becomes anemic at low volumes. Low-mids were for the most part very natural-sounding, though there was one acoustic guitar session where the E7 XTs emphasized the resonance of the guitar body when the strings were plucked. PreSonus’ claim that the Elliptical Boundary Modeled waveguide produces a wide sweet spot is well-founded. When seated almost directly in front of one E7 XT, I could still hear a stable stereo imag,e and I never had to move my head around in an effort to hear the high frequencies. I didn’t make extensive use of the contour controls but did
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Rear-panel features include XLR, TRS and RCA input jacks, a Gain control, High Frequency control, Mid Frequency control, Low Cutoff switch and a threeposition switch called Acoustic Space.
PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: PreSonus PRODUCT: Eris E7 XT WEBSITE: www.presonus.com PRICE: $324 each, MSRP PROS: Good bang for the buck. Surprising LF extension. Easy learning curve. XLR, TRS and RCA input jacks. CONS: Rear-panel trim settings for midrange and tweeter do not have detents. Response may be somewhat bright in certain rooms. confirm that they work as intended. The effect of the Acoustic Space control is significantly different from that of the Low Cutoff switch. Measuring the effects of these switches using a Phonic PAA6 analyzer set to RTA revealed that the Low Cutoff introduces a traditional low-frequency rolloff, whereas the Acoustic Space switch produces a shelf in the response running from about 800 Hz down to the low limit of the monitor’s response. I briefly used the Eris E7 XTs in a setting where they were placed closer to the front wall, and the Acoustic Space setting did a good job of correcting the bass bump resulting from that placement. PreSonus has really done a great job on the Eris E7 XT. I found that getting mixes to sound good on them was easy in terms of both instrumental balances and EQ, and more importantly, those mixes translated well to other listening environments. They may not blow your skirt up in a 500-square foot control room, but E7 XTs certainly play loud enough for a mid-sized control room. Perhaps more importantly, they still sound good when you turn down the volume. The contour controls are effective, yet prevent a novice from completely screwing up the sound of the speakers, and the setup instructions found in the manual will be as useful to those who are setting up their first control room as they will be to more experienced users. All that and they’re very reasonably priced. Definitely recommended. ■
Classifieds ACOUSTIC PRODUCTS
Tech // back page blog Cleaning Up for 2021; A Live Gig—My First Indoors Mike Levine: Mix Technology Editor, Studio
Steve La Cerra: Mix Technology Editor, Live
Mix Blog Studio: A Place for Everything I like working in a neat and nicely organized studio, I really do. However, I just don’t have the right personality to make that a daily reality. You could categorize me as a messy creative type rather than a tidy, highly disciplined one. When I’m busy with a project, though, all thoughts of organizing fall by the wayside, and my focus goes strictly to the creative side. If that means that by the end of the session, my room looks like the morning after some crazy music party, with guitars and other instruments, mics and stands, and lots of cables strewn around—well, so be it. “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Yes, an old and annoying cliché, but it’s super helpful if you have a studio. The corollary is: “Putting something back where it goes after you use it is directly proportional to time spent finding it the next time you need it.” The concept is pretty straightforward, but it becomes tricky to follow with the little things you have in a studio. Cable adapters, capos, guitar picks, clipon tuners, boxes of rack screws and wire cutters are the types of items I’m referring to. If you don’t have a specific place for them, you end up putting them in the nearest bin or drawer or tucking them behind something. Unless you hire a professional to wire your studio with custom-length cables, you’re likely going to end up with a lot of excess cabling (aka “spaghetti” or “a rat’s nest”), particularly behind racks. Trying to figure out where the other end of a cable is connected can sometimes be a search through the jungle. Cable storage is another problematic area. Trust me, avoid drawers; it’s better to hang them up if you have wall space. It might seem counterintuitive to take organizational advice from someone like me, whose studio tends to the messy side. But think of it this way: I do have a lot of first-hand experience in how studios get cluttered.
My First Indoor/Outdoor Gig: In early December, I did my first indoor show during the Covid era. The event—a private fund-raiser—was under a heated tent, which proved a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the heat and side walls of the tent kept the ambient temperature tolerable over the course of the day, which was a good thing considering that it was around 38 degrees outside at show time. On the other hand, it meant that ventilation was not what I’d want it to be under current circumstances. The day felt sort of like two different gigs happening at the same time, in the same place. Due at least in part to my fastidious assertion that we have zero tolerance for any lack of Covid precautions, the backstage adjacent area was very well run. There was one woman tending to the area who sanitized the rooms for us and ensured that no one wandered into our world. She wore gloves and a mask, brought our meals in sealed, individually portioned containers, and made sure that we were comfortable. This protocol was also followed in the back of house, as well as by the folks from the sound and lighting company. And then there was the front of house. When we soundchecked, there weren’t a lot of people around, but most of those who were present wore masks, and in many cases gloves as well. The person organizing the event went about the course of his day unmasked, seemingly unbothered by thoughts of Covid-19. When I went out to front of house for the start of the show, I was unpleasantly surprised and more than a little horrified to see that many of the attendees were not observing social distancing protocol or wearing masks. Fortunately, no one came near front of house (i.e., me), and we had prearranged a barrier at the front of the stage to prevent guests from getting closer than 10 feet from the musicians. At the end of the evening, a server stopped at front of house and offered me a brownie. She was not wearing a mask or gloves. Needless to say, I passed while muttering, “Are you out of your #%&*ing mind?” under my mask.
Product of the Month: Waves Abbey Road RS124 Compressor Waves has released another plug-in re-creation of a classic processor from Abbey Road Studios, the Abbey Road RS124 compressor. The original units were rare tube compressors that were used only in-house and were considered the epitome of a “character compressor”—smooth and warm or heavy and aggressive. The RS124s were heavily modified versions of 1959-era Altec 436B, vari-mu compressors. The engineers at Abbey Road converted them into significantly different units, and they didn’t build many of them, and each one sounded slightly different. Waves was able to get hold of one of these rare units and model it for the plug-in, saying that the RS124 plug-in “offers the gain reduction curve, attack or release, and dynamic frequency response of the original hardware.”
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Product of the Month: Sennheiser 445 and 435 Vocal Microphones Sennheiser has debuted two handheld dynamic vocal microphones, the MD 445 and MD 435. The MD 435’s large-diaphragm, cardioid capsule features a newly developed aluminum-copper voice coil that yields high resolution and transparency, while providing superior rejection of feedback. Frequency range of the MD 435 is stated as 40 Hz to 20,000 Hz. It has a dynamic range of 146 dBA, and can handle a maximum sound pressure level of 163 dB at 1 kHz. The MD 435 weighs in at 350 grams, or 0.77 pounds. The MD 445 utilizes a highrejection, supercardioid pickup pattern intended to block out unwanted stage noise.
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