MIX 549 - September 2022

Welcome to the September 2022 issue of

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Scoring Engineer Jason LaRocca ★ David Paich Solo ★ New Studio Monitors ★ In-Studio: Foals September 2022 \\ mixonline.com \\ $6.99

THE NEW HOME OF > Return of Rage Against the Machine > On the Road With Pearl Jam > MSG Sphere Takes the Beacon Immersive MUSIC PRODUCTION • LIVE SOUND • SOUND FOR PICTURE

LAYING DOWN

THE LOUD INGS ‘THE STADIUM TOUR’ BRMILLION FANS THE ROCK TO 1.1

REVIEWED L-Acoustics L-ISA Studio, Part 2 • Trident A-Range Mic Pre/EQ • ASI Audio 3DME In-Ear Monitor • Neold U17 Compressor Plug-in

PHOTO: Ray Kachatorian

FEATURES 26 Metal for the Masses The Stadium Tour With Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett

BY CLIVE YOUNG

30 Mixing It Up With Scoring Engineer Jason LaRocca

BY JENNIFER WALDEN

34 David Paich’s ‘Forgotten Toys’

09.22 Contents

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Volume 46, Number 9

TECHNOLOGY

MUSIC

LIVE SOUND

36 Tech Spotlight:

12 Foals

20 No Restraint: Rage Against the Machine Returns

Studio Monitors

BY MIX STAFF

38 New Products: Studio and Live Sound

40 Review: L-Acoustics

L-ISA Studio 2.4, Part 2

BY STEVE LA CERRA

Find New Voice(s) on ‘Life Is Yours’

BY LILY MOAYERI

PRESENTED BY

BY STEVE HARVEY

20 MSG Sphere Immersive Sound Debuts in NYC

BY CLIVE YOUNG

26 News & Notes: Nothing More Adds dLive; Nick Mason’s ‘Saucerful of Secrets’; Pearl Jam Rolls with Rat Sound

16 News & Notes: Richie

Dual-Discrete Mic Pre/EQ

Furay Tilts Toward Country; Andres Mayo Sets Up for Immersive

BY BARRY RUDOLPH

BY MIX STAFF

42 Review: Trident A-Range

PHOTO: Courtesy of David Paich

BY ROBYN FLANS

3DME BT G2 In-Ear Monitor System

DEPARTMENTS

BY STEVE LA CERRA

8 From the Editor:

48 Review: Neold U17

Compressor Plug-in

BY MIKE LEVINE

Great Day, Great Studio, Great Town

10 Current: Industry News and Notes

On the Cover: Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx peers into the crowd on The Stadium Tour at Truist Park in Atlanta, Georgia.

Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation.

50 Open Channel: Can

Artificial Stupidity Save Us From Artificial Intelligence?

BY CRAIG ANDERTON

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20 Mix, Volume 46, Number 9 (ISSN 0164-9957) is published monthly by Future US, Inc., 130 West 42nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10036. Periodical Postage Paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mix, PO Box 8518, Lowell, MA 01853. One-year (12 issues) subscription is $35. Canada is $40.

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PHOTO: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

44 Review: ASI Audio

Vol. 46 Number 9

September 2022

MIX SMARTBRIEF

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Current From the Editor

Great Day, Great Studio, Great City It was hot in New York City the first weekend in August. Hot and humid.

The kind of days where you bring an extra shirt in your backpack because the 12-block walk along 10th Avenue at 8 a.m. is going to be a workout, and a costume change will be necessary by noon if you’re running around and getting ready for an all-day event.

On the return trip at 1 a.m., with road construction crews tearing up 10th and repaving it minutes later, it was still near 90 degrees and the dampness still hovered. People, lots of people, were still out and about, from small groups of teens to lone dog-walkers in their 80s. Broadway had let out hours ago, but Midtown West was still serving dinner and drinks, and business seemed to be booming. Air conditioning brought relief in every market and corner pub, but it’s New York, where each day begins and ends on the streets.

And the streets were bopping—morning, noon and night.

Hot, sticky, loud and crowded…it was great to be back in Manhattan.

We were in town to launch Mix’s first-ever event focused on immersive music production, with our host partner Power Station at BerkleeNYC. For those new to the business, Power Station is one of those true Temples of Sound that was spared the wrecking ball in the decades-long winnowing of the large commercial recording complexes throughout the country.

Power Station, built in 1977 by Tony Bongiovi and team and later sold and renamed Avatar, is one of the few left standing, and that’s thanks to Berklee College of Music swooping down from Boston in 2017 and saving the legendary rooms, expanding its own profile beyond straight music education and production/engineering in the process.

Under the direction of Stephen Webber, an audio Renaissance man who wrote one of the first books on scratching and DJ production while being equally conversant in the miking of an orchestra or a Broadway cast, Power Station at BerkleeNYC has quietly become a hybrid operation that on one hand is a working commercial facility, and on the other hand teaches everything from aligning a tape machine to producing 360-degree, head-tracking sound fields for playback alongside 360-degree, 8K video presentations of big bands in action, all viewed through Oculus headsets.

The future, you get the feeling, is well on its way to being the present.

All of that takes place in the third-floor tech labs and downstairs in the Black Box Theater, a new, versatile video and audio production playhouse that was added during the two-year infrastructure renovation leading up to the January 2022 re-opening of the facilities. But the famed original studios?

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Audio engineers can rest easy. The wood and the walls weren’t touched. It’s the same Power Station it’s always been, and it still attracts top talent.

We had a lot of that top talent on hand in Studios A, B and C, all with some type of New York connection. In A, where Focusrite set up a control system and Kali Audio erected a speaker cage for 7.1.4 playback, we had George Massenburg flying in from Montreal, Michael Romanowski from the Bay Area, and the incomparable New York producer/engineer Ann Mincieli flying in from D.C. in the middle of Alicia Keys’ tour to discuss the three-year process of remixing Alicia’s catalog for immersive distribution. [Eric Schilling was unable to attend.]

In Studio B, where SSL was demoing its System T console by remixing Green Day tracks live in the studio for playback through a JBL 7.1.4 Series 7 monitoring system, we talked with Troy Germano and Jason Stanilius of Germano Studios, where they tracked Joe Bonamassa’s Time Clocks album, joined by producer Kevin Shirley (Zooming in from Denver) and the legendary mix engineer Bob Clearmountain, who flew in from L.A. to the place he once called home, where he mixed a string of hits for the likes of David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Chic and Roxy Music. I found out that he also strapped on a tool belt and physically helped build the world-renowned Studio A back in 1976.

In Studio C, where IK Multimedia set up its new iLoud 11-speaker immersive bundle on mic stands in the control room, we hosted mix engineer Ronald Prent, mastering engineer Darcy Proper, Donna Kloepfer of Sony/Battery Studios and Strange Weather’s Daniel Schlett talking about the back end of Mastering and Distributing immersive music. A lively, relevant discussion. Even the veterans learned something new.

We also had presentations by Neumann/Sennheiser in Studio G showcasing headphones and plug-ins for Dear Reality/Dear VR and AMBEO. We had Apogee (and Clearmountain) in Studio E, and Sound Particles and Wholegrain Systems in the exhibit hall. And while all this was going on, my colleague Clive Young had to duck into an upstairs office to conduct an interview with Ted Bible, monitor engineer for Def Leppard, about the Klang immersive in-ear monitor mixes for the rockin’ stadium tour pictured on this month’s cover. It’s all coming together.

I am forever humbled, amazed and grateful at how willing this industry is to come together and share knowledge, even on a hot, humid, bustling weekend in August. But hey, it’s New York City! And it’s damn good to be back in the studio, talking about audio.

— Tom Kenny, Co-Editor

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Current // news & notes Pro AV Revenues Expected to Hit All-Time High in 2022

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IMAGE: AVIXA

E

conomic news continues to be a mixed bag—fears of a recession continue to spread and inflation is skyrocketing, but unemployment rates are rock-bottom, gas prices are dropping, and now in the pro AV sector, AVIXA says industry revenues will hit an all-time record $263 billion globally this year.

According to AVIXA’s 2022 Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA), growth will moderate in the coming years to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.9% from 2022 to 2027. While this is due in part to the slowdown in economic expansion across the globe, pro AV is still set to grow faster than most countries’ GDPs during the same period.

“As COVID-19 restrictions decline and people regain comfort with gathering in person, the economy is transforming and pro AV feels a surge in demand,” said Sean Wargo, senior director of Market Intelligence, AVIXA. “Up to this point, the strongest solution areas were those offering adaptation to new behavior, such as conferencing and learning. This has shifted to events and performance as we return to inperson.”

After being upended during the pandemic, the venues and events market is demonstrating its resiliency through a high ranking among market opportunities. The market is forecast to grow from $30.7 billion in 2022 to $47.2 billion (9% CAGR) in 2027 globally.

As consumers shift their spending back out of the home and inflationary pressures take their toll, residential spending on pro AV is set to decline. This enables transportation to shift upwards, consistent with a shift in spending

Despite a possible recession, revenues in the pro AV sector are expected to hit a record $263 billion globally this year—and keep climbing.

towards travel again. The transportation market is forecast to grow from $11.8 billion to $18.3 billion (6.8% CAGR) globally from 2022 to 2027.

The fastest growing markets for pro AV include many that are recession resistant. While pandemic recovery drives high growth in venues, media and hospitality, others are benefitting from more stable investment. This includes government, energy and transportation.

Despite some lingering challenges associated with the pandemic, APAC is resuming the economic expansion that began in prior periods, driven by rising corporate activity and a growing middle class looking to spend. The region remains a mainstay for digital signage as retail growth pushes it to the top solution spot.

Digital signage in APAC is forecast to grow from $14.3 billion to $20.1 billion (7% CAGR) from 2022 to 2027.

While growth in collaboration solutions slows in the Americas, the experiential solution areas like venues and events are rebounding and driving growth. Revenue for venues in Americas is forecast to reach $10.7 billion in 2022, rising to $16.1 billion by 2027, CAGR of 8.5%. In addition, the Americas is the one region

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where services capture the most revenues ($2.1 billion in 2022). Control systems are where the growth is, as content must be managed and distributed in a venue.

EMEA faces the greatest headwinds due to the wide-reaching impacts of the conflict in Ukraine, though growth is still relatively strong. While in-person brings a welcome surge to the venues market, energy, with 7.8% growth over the next five years, is also a key contributor thanks to sustainability efforts.

While the pro AV industry is experiencing strong growth, there are still difficulties in the current environment. Supply chain challenges are reaching a peak, now that demand is at alltime highs making it difficult for suppliers to keep up, particularly after having been battered by shortages and logistics issues over the past two years. Rising interest rates as governments seek to mitigate inflation are spurring fears of a recession as spending retreats in response. Hiring has also become increasingly challenging in a competitive employment landscape, resulting in labor shortages. Despite it all, the data from IOTA shows tailwinds prevailing and pro AV continuing to grow, even if growth is somewhat muted below what might be possible. ■

Sustainability Scientists Set Sound Vs. Seaweed the films dampened sounds that ranged from a bass hum to a shrill whine.

To create a uniform environment for the tests, the researchers opted to build a sound tube where a speaker was placed at one end, and the test film was fitted over the other end.

Meanwhile, in the middle were a number of microphones, used to measure both the speaker’s sound and the sound reflected off the film.

Ultimately, the researchers discovered

By Clive Young

IMAGE: Courtesy of ACS.

India—While acoustical treatments can always be found in modern recording studios and concert venues, as any installation pro will tell you, sound absorption is a crucial factor in virtually every part of modern life. However, it often comes at the cost of the environment, as many acoustical treatments are made with nonsustainable materials.

Now researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India have begun experimenting with biodegradale sound absorbers derived from seaweed, as detailed in “Agar-Based Composite Films as Effective Biodegradable Sound Absorbers,” published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Recognizing that many acoustic panels are made from petroleum products in turn derived from crude oil or shale gas, researchers have increasingly started to explore more renewably sourced and biodegradable sound-absorbing alternatives. The drawback is, however, that panels made from plant-derived materials can be difficult to produce and aren’t that effective within the necessary frequency ranges.

With that in mind, Chindam Chandraprakash and colleagues focused in on creating thin films of agar, a jelly-like material developed from seaweed, along with other plant-derived additives and varied both the thickness and porosity of the films. To test the agar-based materials, the researchers measured how well

A thin layer of agar, developed from seaweed, was tested for its sound-dampening properties.

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that porous films made with the highest concentrations of agar had the greatest soundabsorbing qualities and, to the team’s definitions, performed similarly to traditional acoustic foams. With that initial pass completed, the researchers are now looking at ways to modify the agar films to give them other desirable properties, such as flame resistance, and plan to explore other biologically derived film materials as well. ■

PHOTO: Edward Cooke

Music Foals Find New Voice(s) on ‘Life Is Yours’ 4 Producers, 2 Mixers and a ‘More Cohesive’ 7th Album

By Lily Moayeri

W

hether you’re a believer in cosmic coincidences, astrological occurrences, mythological symbolism, spiritual significance…or not, the number 7 holds a special place in the order of the universe.

This proved to be the case with Foals’ seventh studio album, Life Is Yours, the follow-up to the career-defining double album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (2019), the group’s first Number One in its native UK. It also snagged them their third Mercury Prize nomination. Despite these critical and commercial accomplishments, Life Is Yours shrugs off all the elements that came before.

“We kind of have an allergic reaction to ourselves,” says Foals frontperson Yannis

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Philippakis, Zooming in between European tour dates. “We did a double album with me as producer with an engineer in one place, and it was arduous. It took almost two years. Instead, we’ve worked with four producers, two mixers, in a much shorter space of time, and came up with a record that is much more concise.”

The writing for Life Is Yours began during the first pandemic lockdown in early 2020, with the newly pared down members in different locations.

Bass player Walter Gervers and keyboard player Edwin Congreave parted with the band soon after Everything Not Saved...; the remaining three— Philippakis, drummer Jack Bevan and guitarist Jimmy Smith—worked on material separately until

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they were able to be in the same room.

“We keep it pretty crude in the early stages,” says Philippakis. “I don’t think it’s good to get too attached. There are sounds from early Logic demos that are on the final record, some of the original stuff I did on ‘2am.’ I’m very, very bad at recording myself on the computer, but some of those elements made it all the way to the end.”

While recording these “phone demos,” they were also sending the files to key producers, including Dan Carey (Hot Chip, Wet Leg), Miles James (Tom Odell, Little Simz), A.K. Paul (Sam Smith, Jessie Ware) and two-time Grammy Award Producer of the Year nominee John Hill (Rihanna, Imagine Dragons). The latter served

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PHOTO: Courtesy of Foals

Foals’ setup at Real World Studios in Bath, England.

just so it could “go through ‘A.K.’s world,’” according to Philippakis.

Sonic layers were added and Philippakis’ vocals were recorded at Real World, with Hill’s hitmaking touch. Says Hills of Philippakis’ process, “There are multiple takes with multiple different characters in them. There would be softs, falsettos, more shouty vocals. We worked in the Big Room at Real World which is really live and roomy. You can really hear that in some of the vocal performances. We had multiple mics and room mics, and tried different setups.”

After Real World, Hill further worked on the songs on his own, and again with Philippakis, before sending the tracks to mixers, Mark “Spike” Stent and Manny Marroquin.

“We spent a lot of time getting it close to where the band wanted it, trying to figure out how to take the stuff from the roughs as a jumping off point and then elevate them from there,” says Hill. “Spike and Manny are relatively close to me, so I was able to go and sit with them.”

“I did not attend any of the mixes in-person, but I was pretty involved in terms of the amount of comments,” says Philippakis. “I feel like we were fairly exhausting to work with on the mixes. We were probably driving them a bit crazy, but it has to be right for us. We’d worked so long. The problem with remote working is that language is sometimes a poor medium to explain musical things.”

Life Is Yours was mixed half-and-half by Marroquin and Stent, without either of them hearing the other’s work. This was not to keep them competitive, but to stop them from coloring each other’s approaches.

Says Philippakis, “The thing I find remarkable about the record is that it sounds very cohesive.

It’s actually one of the more unified records we’ve made.” n

Foals will hit the road for a 26-date U.S. tour starting in October.

PHOTO: Alex Knowles

as Life Is Yours’ overarching producer.

“We didn’t want mono culture on the record,” says Philippakis. “We didn’t want to be in one studio with one producer and have all the songs approached in the same manner. We wanted to have a kaleidoscopic array of ideas and inputs that can’t come from one person. We felt that the material deserved it.”

Instead of recording the album within a set block of a few weeks, Foals did short sessions of two or three days. “One of the massively beneficial things with this way of working was that we could assess the results,” says Philippakis. “If there was something that we didn’t think was correct as a band privately, we wouldn’t continue down that path.”

The group experienced very different ways of working with each producer.

Conversely, Carey, with his hefty discography, has different approaches depending on the artist, and for Foals, he employed his modular wall.

“We would very casually start playing a groove,” remembers Philippakis. “[Carey] starts moving around all these amps. The studio is in his house, so he knows everything in it. You don’t even take your own amps to Dan Carey’s; you just literally walk up with a guitar, maybe a bass. Before you know it, your guitar is going through his entire huge modular wall. It’s being sidechained live and coming back into the room and being recorded with another mic, and it’s being sidechained live by Jack’s drums. All of a sudden, you’re meeting a version of the song he’s reflecting back at you and recapturing that secondary version and then re-sampling that later on that day. You start to play to a sampled version of yourself and it’s amazing.”

In the spirit of not staying in one place, Foals decamped to The Kinks’ Konk Studios in London with James—their first formal recording session for Life Is Yours. The idea was to have a three-day session—but accomplish a lot.

“We’d heard about Miles before we’d worked with him, and people said he gets deep,” recounts Philippakis. “The extent of the drum and groove perfectionism is definitely worth noting. I’m not exaggerating when I say after a day and a half, we were still searching for the perfect drum sound.

The level of detail and experience and ear and feel that Miles goes into is absolutely mindboggling. It was like an M.C. Escher painting. We

went further and further into the labyrinth, and that was amazing. I think you can hear how good the drums sound in the end.”

When it came to Paul, it was a psychological exercise in managing musicians’ attachment to their material. “I will overburden every song just out of excitement,” says Philippakis. “I like music, so I like to put a lot of music in the songs and lots of ideas. I can overload the song if I’m left to my desires and if they indulge me.

“The way A.K. dealt with me was he allowed every idea space, but he would only give it a bar,” he continues, “If you listen to ‘2001,’ there are probably eight to 10 little sonic or melodic ideas that are given a tiny little snapshot. There’s a little detail that will pop out. That, for me, is something that I play for bars and bars. He’ll let you do it, but give you such a tight parameter within the song, which I thought was super cool.

It’s like a photo flash going off.”

By the time Foals went to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, England, with Hill in the summer of 2021 for five weeks, Life Is Yours was “70 percent done.” James was present for most of the Real World sessions, and Carey also came by.

Anything that was completed was sent to Paul,

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Music // news & notes Richie Furay Tilts Toward Country Produced by Val Garay, Tracked at Blackbird

By Steve Harvey

A

s a founding member of Buffalo Springfield and Poco, Richie Furay has long worked where rock ‘n’ roll and country music meet. But on Furay’s latest release, his first studio album in seven years, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer goes just a little bit more country, covering classics by George Strait, John Denver, Garth Brooks and others.

When Grammy-winning producer and engineer Val Garay approached Furay about the project, titled In the Country, they began by comparing notes on which songs to include.

“The first song on both our lists was John Berry’s ‘Your Love Amazes Me.’ We knew we were on the same page at that point,” Garay recalls.

Furay, Garay, orchestra and choir arranger Nic. tenBroek, the album’s co-producer, and Michael Miller, Garay’s 96K Productions partner, subsequently whittled down a list of 300 songs to 14. Garay then assembled a core cast of players— drummer Victor Indrizzo, bassist Glenn Worf, keyboardist Steve Nathan, pedal steel player Dan Dugmore, and guitarists Tom Bukovac Engineer Val Garay, left, and Richie Furay at the Neve in Blackbird Studio A, Nashville.

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and Chris Leuzinger—and booked time at John McBride’s Blackbird Studio in Nashville.

“I wanted to do the record as live as Richie Furay taking possible, with everybody in the room at a short break from tracking outside of the same time,” Garay says, including Blackbird Studio, live vocals off the floor. “Richie’s Nashville. singing is unbelievable. He sounds like he’s 30 years old.”

Furay and the musicians tracked the basics for recording with API compressors and other gear. the 14 songs in four days in Blackbird’s A room. After Bukovac and Leuzinger remarked on the Garay flipped the script on the typical setup in A, sound quality of their acoustics, which form putting the piano in the large room and everyone the bedrock of the album, other engineers kept else in the smaller tracking space and iso booths, coming by to take photos of his setup, Garay enabling better visual communication through laughs.

“I’ve always used Telefunken 251s on drums; I the control room glass. “It’s a little dead [in the smaller room] so I put plywood on the floor and used them on all three toms and the overheads,” the walls to liven it up; it came out fantastic,” he continues. “I brought my own [electric] guitar mics, a Shure SM53 that most people don’t have. he reports.

Marc Cohn’s iconic “Walking in Memphis” And I brought a pair of speakers, my custom is written around acoustic piano and features NS10s, which we’re going to start manufacturing rhythmic pushes throughout. “We wanted to next year.”

The album was tracked in October 2019, square it up and do it with acoustic guitars, so I spent two weeks making a demo of it here but one Covid delay after another meant that in my studio in L.A., trying to come up with a the mix, which Garay did at his Barn Studio concept that would work and still sound like the in Topanga [L.A. area] didn’t take place until song; I think we did a spectacular job on that,” October 2020. “It was supposed to be released in July 2021,” he adds, “but we couldn’t get the vinyl Garay says.

He rarely wavers from his go-to list of mics, done, so it came out in July 2022. But we got a he says, many of which were in McBride’s record deal with BMG in the middle of Covid, enviable microphone locker at Blackbird. “On which I thought was pretty spectacular.”

There was one final challenge, he says: “The acoustic guitars, I use an AKG C12A, which is the forerunner of the 414, but a tube version,” hardest part was getting the mastered versions to he says, “with an ECM-50 [Sony lav] clipped in sound like the 192k mixes. Eric Boulanger at The the hole, which I always bring because nobody Bakery in L.A. did a masterful job. We didn’t really add any EQ when we mastered it; the biggest part ever has those.”

Those mics were passed through his BAE of the process was dithering it down to 44.1. And lunchboxes, outfitted for acoustic guitar the vinyl sounds fantastic.” n

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Music // news & notes Andres Mayo Set Up for All Things Immersive “I thought that virtual reality was going to be very big,” says Andres Mayo, past-president of the AES and co-chair of the society’s first Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality (AVAR) conference in Los Angeles in 2016. Six years on, VR hasn’t lived up to those expectations. “But 360 audio is still growing,” says Mayo, who recently upgraded a room at his facility in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for immersive mastering and mixing.

Mayo founded Andres Mayo Mastering in 1992 and in 2017 set up Andres Mayo Immersive Audio.

In the five years since, he and colleague Martin Muscatello have worked on Grammy-nominated music albums, product presentations, commercial ads, games and podcasts for a slew of major clients.

“I wasn’t thinking of building an Atmos room yet, so we were working in binaural for a long time,” Mayo reports. At the same time, he and Muscatello were also beta-testing Sennheiser AMBEO, Dear VR/Dear Reality, Facebook 360 and Dolby Atmos products. “It was a natural thing to move into Atmos.”

The upgraded room incorporates Mayo’s big in-wall stereo ATC speakers, which he has been using for many years, with a new 7.1.4 set of Neumann KH Series monitors. “Since I didn’t know how much work I was going to have in Atmos, I wanted to keep the stereo monitor system for mastering. I’m able to switch from one system to the other on the fly,” he says.

Mayo had been using a surround setup of smaller ATC speakers, but after Sennheiser made him a product ambassador at the start of 2021, it was an easy decision to switch to the company’s Neumann monitors for immersive work. “They’re

so warm and so natural, with great mids,” he says.

“I’m so happy with the way they sound.”

Mayo recently finished a centenary tribute project that he recorded at the Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires of music by Argentinian nuevo tango composer Astor Piazzolla.

“I’m very happy with it,” Mayo says. “Not just because of our work, but because of what they played and how they played. The recording venue was incredible, so the quality of the recordings is amazing.” n —Steve Harvey

Andres Mayo, left, and Martin Muscatello in their new dual-purpose stereo mastering and 7.1.4 immersive mixing studio.

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Rage Against The Machine, seen at New York's Madison Square Garden, is touring with d&b audiotechnik speakers on and above the stage, provided by Eighth Day Sound.

No Restraint in the Return of Rage Against the Machine

By Steve Harvey

A

fter two and a half years of Covid-19 disruptions and with political grievances building across the U.S., Rage Against the Machine’s return to the stage after more than a decade seemed almost inevitable. Indeed, to borrow from their own lyrics: “What better place than here? What better time than now?”

The “here” and the “now,” as it turned out, was Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis., on July 9, the first date of the band’s Public Service Announcement Tour. Such was the pent-

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up demand—the tour was delayed two years by Covid—that 30,000 reportedly turned out for the first show, eager to hear songs like “Tire Me,” “War Within a Breath” and “Without a Face” that haven’t been played live since 2008. One song, a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” has not previously been performed on stage by the band.

The tour is using d&b audiotechnik’s GSL/ KSL rig, supplied by Cleveland, Ohio-based Eighth Day Sound (part of the Clair Global family), to deliver Rage Against the Machine’s

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ferocious 90-minute set night after night. “The GSL/KSL system has made mixing in large spaces like arenas and stadiums fun for me,” says front-of-house engineer Sean “Sully” Sullivan, a 30-year veteran of tours by the likes of Beck, Rihanna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The manufacturer’s GSL and KSL line array modules, introduced over the last several years, variously provide 80- or 120-degree horizontal dispersion control down to 45 Hz. “Having the low-mids and lows pattern-controlled like the mids and highs really cleans up the mix,”

PHOTO: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Live

PRESENTED BY

PHOTO: Charles Southward/Eighth Day Sound

Sullivan says. “When the band stop on a dime, the P.A. and room do as well!”

“I think the performance has been exceptional in some of the large arenas we have played so far,” chimes in system engineer Wayne Hall, who has also worked with Drake and Lady Gaga, among others. “I have heard detail up in the 300 [seating] level that I have never heard before, making our job significantly easier in many ways. The low-end pattern control has helped massively with this to the point where, when walking the room every day, I can’t tell if I’m in the side hang or main hang coverage—which is the best outcome, in my view.”

Seats for every show on the tour are sold to 270 degrees, says Hall, who uses d&b’s Array Calc and R1 software to configure, optimize and control coverage. He employs Lake Controllers to manage the inputs to the amplifiers, he adds: “We use Lake to transport via Dante from FOH then convert to AES at the amplifier end using Lake LM44s.”

A typical setup at each arena, stadium and occasional shed along the road includes, per side, a main hang of 20 GSL boxes and 10 flown J-Subs with a side hang of 18 KSL modules, plus 16 V Series line arrays for 270-degree coverage. A total of 16 ground-stacked SL-Subs support the low end with as many as eight Y10P point source and eight AL60 line array boxes providing outfill.

The only real bump in the road, Hall recalls: “The first show was a challenge due to rigging and weight restrictions in Alpine Valley with it being a shed versus an arena, but we have the best tools available to us.”

At FOH, Sullivan is using an Avid S6L-32D console. “It’s the best platform for ease of use, plug-in integration, Pro Tools bi-directional communication and its event capabilities, and it has excellent-sounding preamps,” he says.

Sullivan uses both onboard and serverbased plug-ins, along with a choice selection of outboard hardware when he mixes. Onboard processing includes channel strip dynamics and gates, as well as third-party plug-ins from developers such as Oeksound, McDSP, Crane Song, Sonnox, Empirical Labs and Flux. A pair of Extreme-C SoundGrid servers provide an ultralow-latency platform for Waves Audio plug-ins, Sullivan also reports. As for analog outboard gear, he’s using a Rupert Neve Designs Satellite 5059 for analog summing, Neve 33609 and Empirical Labs Distressor devices for parallel drum compression, an Eventide H3500 to fatten the vocals and Eclipse for drum effects

Powering the Machine every night are (l-r) FOH engineer Sean “Sully” Sullivan; system engineer Wayne Hall; and monitor engineer Jim Corbin.

At stageside, monitor engineer Jim Corbin, whose credits include extensive stints with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, sits behind an old favorite, a DiGiCo desk. “I’ve been using the DiGiCo line for a very long time, so comfort played a huge role in that decision,” Corbin says. “I chose the SD7 Quantum for ease of use, quality and the built-in processing. And the snapshot function is amazing.”

Onstage, things are decidedly old-school, with the musicians all using wired Shure SM58s for vocals. Corbin is generating 12 monitor mixes, primarily to speakers. “We’re using 15 M2

Mixing in arenas has its downsides when it comes to panning things around for space, so I use a few tried-and-true methods for making mono things seem stereo, which gives me some space in the center for the vocal.

—Sean “Sully” Sullivan wedges and two B6-Subs for drums, along with two J8 [line array modules] and one J-Sub per side, all powered by d&b D80 amps,” he reports.

Corbin’s most useful tool on this tour?

“I’m using a DMI-Klang [immersive IEM mix expander] in a DiGiCo Orange Box for backline IEMs,” he says.

Rage Against the Machine may only be a four-piece, but Sullivan needs some tricks up his sleeve to keep his sources nicely separated and clean. A recently introduced plug-in enables him to keep Zack de la Rocha’s vocals loud and clear above the guitar, bass and drums of, respectively, Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk.

“Soothe Live was recently made available on the S6L and it’s a game-changer for me,” he enthuses. “Its ability to control harshness or proximity effect is so crucial for loud, clear, smooth-sounding vocals.”

Sullivan also uses Oeksound’s Soothe Live plug-in to manage the bite on the cymbals and guitars. “The Andrew Scheps Omni channel for kick and snare buses and Scheps Parallel Particles for vocals, and the Sonnox Oxford Inflator for the band bus, are also standouts,” he says.

“Mixing in arenas has its downsides when it comes to panning things around for space,” he also comments, “so I use a few tried-and-true methods for making mono things seem stereo, which gives me some space in the center for the vocal.” For instance, he employs the timehonored Haas effect to widen the guitar and open space in the center for the vocals. Pan the guitar signal to one extreme and a fractionally delayed version to the other, and—voilà.

“I do a lot of small-band-limited doublers to fatten and widen the vocals up while remaining mono,” Sullivan continues. “A CLA76 [Waves compressor limiter plug-in] with about 10 dB of gain reduction when hit the hardest is the best for setting the vocal at a good level just above everything else while keeping the loudest bits in check. Of course, Zack’s power and cupping the mic make this a piece of cake with a loud P.A. in the same room. If it weren’t for his power, I could not get away with this!” ■

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Live // profile // presented by MSG Sphere’s Immersive Sound Technology Debuts in New York New York, N.Y.—When Las Vegas’ $1.8 billion MSG Sphere is completed, one of the venue’s calling cards will be its cutting-edge concert audio system, dubbed Sphere Immersive Sound.

While the venue won’t open until the second half of 2023, concertgoers can already experience the emerging audio technology, thanks to a new permanent installation inside New York City’s 2,894-capacity Beacon Theatre. The new system made its debut in mid-August, with a pair of acoustic concerts by Trey Anastasio.

Sphere Immersive Sound, created in partnership with German audio company Holoplot, uses audio beamforming technology to create planar waves that provide uniform audio across a venue. The Beacon’s installation is based around five arrays, arranged to direct sound throughout four sections—orchestra, loge, lower balcony and upper balcony. While Anastasio’s August performances marked the first time that audiences heard the new beamforming technology in use, future events at The Beacon will be able to utilize the Sphere Immersive Sound system as well.

The New York installation is only the beginning, however, as the technology is being further customized and scaled for MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. With approximately 17,500 seats— including 10,000 “immersive seats”—and a scalable capacity up to around 20,000 guests, MSG Sphere at The Venetian will employ a multi-layered audio system equipped with more than 160,000 speakers that will utilize the beamforming technology in an effort to place each spectator at the center of the proverbial “sweet spot.” The venue will also feature a variety of multi-sensory technologies such as immersive seating, scents and changing temperatures.

The new installation at the Beacon Theatre is just the latest turn of events for the storied venue, however. Built in 1929, the theater has

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The immersive audio tech slated for the $1.8B MSG Sphere in Las Vegas has been installed in New York City’s Beacon Theatre.

PHOTO: MSG

By Clive Young

housed everything from live vaudeville to movies and even a nightclub over the decades. Madison Square Garden Entertainment took over the venue in 2006 and soon had it hosting upward of 150 shows a year until the venue was renovated two years later, culminating in an extensive 2011 house system installation that was specifically designed to encourage visiting tours to keep their own P.A.s in their trucks.

While that system was cutting edge 11 years ago, the mid-August debut of Sphere Immersive Sound upped the ante considerably. Those inaugural shows weren’t the first time Phishleader Anastasio became part of the venue’s history, however. An Upper West Side resident, he played the Beacon’s first full-audience show since the start of Covid in June 2021, and was more than enthused to put the new audio system through its paces, stating, “I was lucky enough to experience a demo of Sphere Immersive Sound, and it’s truly unbelievable. I am thrilled to be able to debut this cutting-edge technology at the Beacon Theatre, one of my favorite venues in the world.” ■

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Prior to the new Sphere system’s installation, the Beacon Theatre had a QSC-powered JBL VerTec system in place.

Live // news & notes // presented by Nothing More’s Engineers Dive Into dLive San Antonio, Texas—Grammynominated rockers Nothing More have been touring this year and have a busy fall lined up, playing mid-sized venues and festivals like Rocklahoma. That comes on the heels of a hectic spring, which saw veteran audio engineers Ross Landis and Andrew Crow hit the road with the band, using two Allen & Heath dLive S5000 surfaces to mix FOH and monitors.

Both Landis and Crow have been using SoftKeys on the large-format 28-fader dLive surface. “I was able to use those for mute groups, stopping and starting my recordings, FX controls, and even selecting certain channels that aren’t always visible on my fader banks” noted Landis. “To be able to mix how I want to mix without having to navigate through layers? That was huge.”

Their system incorporated a DM64 MixRack, which features 64 mic preamps and 32 line outputs, and a compact DM0. Landis’ front of house console also housed a 128-channel, 96 kHz Waves module, which he used for multitrack recording. “I originally planned on using the card for running outboard plug-ins,” recounted Landis, “until I realized there was no point. With 64 instances of DYN8 (Dynamic EQ/Multiband Compressor) and plenty of great reverbs built-in to the dLive, I had it all in the box already.”

At monitors, Andrew Crow also made use of dLive’s suite of DEEP plug-ins for shaping and coloring sound, especially the 16T compressor models. “I was very happy with the sound of those compressors,” noted Crow. “I used to have racks of those back in the day, so it was familiar to me.” ■ Andrew Crow has been mixing monitors for Nothing More this year on an Allen & Heath dLive S5000 surface.

The Secret Sauce of Saucerful of Secrets Knoxville, Tenn.—Pink Floyd founding member Nick Mason has been on the road this year with his 2022 “Saucerful of Secrets” tour.

Along for the ride is FOH engineer Steven Carr, putting an Avid S6L 24D console and a phalanx of Waves plug-ins to use at each stop.

“I’m using the Avid S6L-24D console with one Stage 64 Rack,” said Carr, who has also mixed the likes of Roger Taylor, Goldfrapp, Agnes Obel, Chris Rea and Katherine Jenkins, among many others. “The S6L has a built-in WSG-HD Waves SoundGrid card, which interfaces directly with two Waves Extreme SoundGrid Servers. I send a stereo mix via AES to a Lake LM44 to drive the P.A. that deals with system EQ, delay and levels.

That’s it—very simple, no outboard. Because of the way I like to work—a compact, streamlined FOH system with an Avid console—having Waves plugins available and integrated is absolutely essential.”

As Carr explains it, having the plug-ins readily accessible “enables me to work as I would in a studio. It helps me take my live mix to a higher level of creative artistry, without needing racks upon racks of outboard. With the low latency of

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the Waves live system, and numerous instances of whichever plug-in I need, it often feels there is no limit to what I can do to achieve certain sounds and effects.”

While plug-ins may be a modern mixing tool, Carr puts them to use to re-create familiar sounds that were arduously created in the studio decades ago. Sometimes that means creating effects, but other times, it means giving every input that clear, precise studio sound: “The mix is very dynamic with punch and energy, yet it needs to be subtle when required. In songs like Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes,’ which Nick and his band are playing on this tour, this entire dynamic range is required within one song. Moreover, the stage has an old-school feel with loud vintage amps, and without any isolation between the musicians. So, my first big challenge was to reduce unwanted bleed into the vocal mics. Here, the expander option in the Waves SSL G-Channel is invaluable. This plug-in is a great model of a classic, and I use it on every drum channel for EQ, dynamics and tone.

“Another issue is the variety of guitars used in this show. The guitar players switch guitars

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FOH engineer Steven Carr mixes Nick Mason at his Avid desk, using Waves plug-ins.

frequently, so tone and levels vary from song to song. Rather than interfere with the guitarists’ tone, I generally leave the EQs flat, with just some gentle high passing; instead, I use compression to control the feel of each instrument. Here, I use the H-Comp Hybrid Compressor on the guitar channels, to maintain a constant level from instrument to instrument.” ■

Live // news & notes // presented by On the Road With Pearl Jam Los Angeles—In July, Pearl Jam wrapped up the long-awaited European leg of its current tour—one that like so many other major arena tours was scuttled by the pandemic in 2020. The band has been back on the road since May, first with a U.S. leg supported by longtime audio provider Rat Sound Systems, and then spending much of June and July on the move in Europe for 15 dates with the help of Britannia Row. The overseas leg took the tour’s RAT-supplied DiGiCo Quantum338 FOH and dual-SD5 monitor control packages over the water, and for both tour legs, a L-Acoustics K1 loudspeaker system was used, provided by the respective sound companies.

“L-Acoustics has long been my favorite PA,” said Greg Nelson, who has been manning Pearl Jam’s front-of-house mix since 2004. “There is something about how smooth the low-mids are and the basic warmth of the P.A. I can get Ed’s voice to sound a very specific way with K1 that I just can’t ever seem to achieve with other P.A. systems.”

The typical loudspeaker deployment for most shows on the Gigaton Tour features left and right main arrays of 16 K1 over six K2 downfills, with outfill hangs of 12 K1 over six K2 per side. Arrays of 14 K2 each extend reinforcement for 270-degree coverage, with an additional 18 Kara used either as delay or rear-fill, depending on the venue geometry.

For low-end, left and right hangs of eight KS28 subs are flown in cardioid configuration, bolstered by four more groundstacked KS28 per side below. Front-fill is achieved by a combination of four Kara spread across the stage lip, and four horizontally arrayed A15 per side on the deck under each K1/K2 array, with monitor sidefills comprising left/right hangs of four K2. A pair of L-Acoustics P1 Milan-AVB processors located at Nelson’s FOH house mix position drive the system, which is powered by

Pearl Jam’s stage crew (left to right): band/crew monitor engineer Tommy Caraisco, monitor engineer Karrie Keyes, monitor tech Brett Heet, and stage tech Sara Holt pictured with the tour’s two DiGiCo SD5 monitor consoles.

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Pearl Jam FOH engineer Greg Nelson (left) and system engineer Andrew Gilchrest with the Gigaton Tour’s L-Acoustics K Series P.A. flown in the background.

74 LA12X amplified controllers.

Andrew Gilchrest, the band’s system engineer since 2014, noted, “I have drawings of most of the venues we’ve been playing, so it’s nice to have a good idea before arriving onsite each day,” he says. “My typical process includes verifying a few measurements to confirm the accuracy of my drawing, then placing the stage correctly in the room file. I have our full system saved as a speaker file that I import into the drawing. From there, I rely heavily on Soundvision’s Autosplay and Autofilter functions to find the most even venue coverage for each array. On this run, I’ve been employing the LF Autofilter on all arrays, which has given us a very noticeable improvement.

“Before arrays are taken to trim, we use load-checker to verify that each zone has the correct number of boxes. For tuning, I’ve learned to spend more time verifying that things are plugged in correctly than actual tuning. For the venues we’ve been playing, the system is extremely predictable and needs very minor tweaks on a day-to-day basis.”

Gilchrest adds that the P1 processors have come in handy for several situations with in-house delays. “I’m able to have the entire system in Network Manager, turning on and off zones and setting delays and EQ, which is way easier than having a separate drive system,” he describes. “In fact, we ran into a situation where I ended up with 10 minutes to set the delay times and levels for three zones of house delay, and I finished with time to spare thanks to having the zones in Network Manager.”

Starting in early September, Pearl Jam will make its second North American sweep, with 11 more shows spanning the eastern half of the continent. ■

on the cover

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ötley Crüe and Def Leppard are not known for their subtlety, so it’s only fitting that the rock titans’ co-headlining jaunt this summer is called simply The Stadium Tour. While it was first announced in 2019—with the Mötley clan tearing up its famous Cessation of Touring contract, no less— COVID put the kibosh on the metal mission until this year, which may be just as well. After a two-year drought of live music, audiences are starved for a good time, and the solid bill, which also features veteran rockers Poison, the iconic Joan Jett & the Blackhearts and fresh-faced Classless Act, serves up a satisfying seven hours of the hard stuff.

Careening across the U.S. through midSeptember, the production has sold an astounding 1.1 million tickets, making it one of the biggest tours of the year. Ensuring every note is heard in every seat at every stadium is audio provider Clair Global and a seasoned team of pros that have the production down to a science—by necessity.

“There were five back-to-backs early on and

a M e h t r o f l a t e M ging the rock to in br e ar os pr o di au of Global and an army r ai Cl s, st ti ar n ra te Ve with that size stage and setup, it can be a little hectic,” said Scott Flaws, monitor engineer for Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil. “Luckily, the audio team Clair put together has been killing it with us. Everyone understands the idea of teamwork and we have gotten to the point where production days are no longer needed. We’re getting in and out in one day: Do the show, load out, go take a day off in the hotel, get on site at 6 A.M., fly P.A., start dumping backline. Linecheck, linecheck, linecheck, linecheck, okay, first band go!”

The various audio teams share more than a ‘can-do’ mindset, however, as crew chief/ RF coordinator Kenneth “Cubby” McDowell will attest. For one thing, they’ve been sharing frequencies for the headliners’ in-ear monitor

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systems. “I have a spreadsheet to keep track of who has what,” said McDowell. “For instance, [Mötley Crüe guitarist] Mick Mars and Joe [Elliott, singer] from Def Leppard are on the same frequencies, so one has to turn off so the other can turn on. That’s the only way we can do the tour outside with the RF environment the way it is now; in some places, there’s really one open TV station—we’re putting frequencies in between other TV stations just to make it work. The tour has 70 active channels, and that’s no spares.”

McDowell keeps it all in check with a 17-space Clair rack with pocket screen, a Shure AXT600 Axient Spectrum Manager, Intermodulation Analysis System (IAS) software by Professional Wireless Systems to coordinate, and Shure’s

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1.1 million

Wireless Workbench for control. All the coheadliners’ wireless mics and IEM packs are Shure Axient Digital and PSM 1000 IEM systems.

Providing RF and internet to the various camps, McDowell sets up at stage left near the amp racks.

“That way, I can keep an eye on everything and I’m accessible to my crew,” he said. “We put our P.A. up, and then work the rest of the day with all these bands. I wouldn’t ask my crew to do that and then go sit in an air-conditioned office.”

Getting that massive P.A. in the air is no small task either, as the tour requires four semis’ worth of L-Acoustics loudspeakers to cover 270 degrees across the MBL and NFL stadiums it visits. The typical speaker arrangement finds the stage adorned with left and right main hangs of 20 K1s

es Kevin Mazur/Getty Imag

asses fans. By Clive Young

over four K2s, each supplemented by eight K1-SBs; the same arrangement is used for outfills as well.

Further afield, delay hangs are comprised of 16 K2s each, and low end for the whole system is fortified by 48 KS28s across the front of the stage; powering everything is a phalanx of LA12x amplifiers.

While Classless Act kicks off the proceedings with a 20-minute set, and Joan Jett and Poison follow with an hour of solid rock each, the headliners alternate in the last two spots, each laying down the loud for 90 minutes.

MIXING MÖTLEY “With Mötley Crüe, there’s no stopping; the only time there’s a break is when Tommy [Lee, drummer] comes downstage and talks to the audience for a minute before he sits down to play piano on ‘Home

Vince Neil of Nikki Sixx (left) and es through elv ms the r Mötley Crüe hea on Shure ars in-e JH Audio Sharona packs.

PSM 1000 wireless

Sweet Home,’” said the band’s FOH engineer, Brent Carpenter. “Everything else segues or Vince or Nikki [Sixx, bassist] announces the next song. We run right up to 89, 90 minutes every night—right on the number.”

Mixing the band on an Avid S6L-32D surface controlling a E6L-192 engine, Carpenter tends to lean on the onboard effects, noting, “If I can keep it in-the-box, I do; I want less stuff to go bad on the outside.” That said, a trio of outboard Eventide 3500 Ultra-Harmonizers are on-hand to help represent all eras of the band. “You have to be aware of their legacy sound as well as their modern sounds, and represent them both,” he explained.

“On the early records, there’s a lot of processing on the vocal as an effect, and the same happened in the more recent albums—The Dirt era—whereas in the middle section of their career, there didn’t

seem to be as much processing, maybe just like a little chorus and a delay and that was it. So I have the Eventides to find that classic and recent Vince Neil vocal sound, just to do the spread, because nothing sounds like an Eventide.”

Mick Mars’ distinctive sound comes solely from his three-cabinet guitar rig, with stereo effected cabinets each miked with an AKG C214 and a Shure KSM353 ribbon mic, while a “dry” cabinet between them is captured with a Shure SM57. “He’s also got what we call the Blues Cabinet, which has a Beta 56 on it, and I take a direct—a low end that he calls the Sub Guitar that’s just a Palmer PDI-09 direct box,” said Carpenter.

Meanwhile, Sixx’s bass comes directly off his wireless into a pair of Ampeg tube DIs; one stays clean while the other is effected with a McDSP Futzbox plug-in at FOH. “That’s been my staple for bass guitar since I worked with Rush,” said Carpenter. “It’s literally a noise plug-in, a heavy grind sound, so [between the two channels], you still get the nice warm, low end, round sound of the clean bass, but you get more of a top end and something to cut through the guitars.”

Neil’s vocals are captured with a Shure SM58 capsule on an Axient Digital transmitter, while all backing vocals are nabbed with Telefunken M81s. Behind the drum kit, Lee’s headset mic has changed a few times throughout the tour, as the first headset was deemed too bulky and another sounded great but “couldn’t take the rigors of Tommy’s playing,” said Carpenter. “Now we’re on a Shure TwinPlex and that’s working very well.”

The rest of the drum area is captured with both a Telefunken M82 and a Shure Beta 91A in the kick drum, Audio-Technica AE3000s on toms as well as the snare bottom, and an SM57 on the snare top.

For cymbals, an Audio-Technica ATM450 gets the hi-hat, while a Neumann KM 184 grabs the ride, and the overheads are Audio-Technica AT4060s.

Over at stageside, a pair of DiGiCo SD7 consoles are used to mix Mötley Crüe’s monitors, with Scott Flaws handling Neil’s mix on one, and Scott Megrath tackling the rest of the band’s mixes on the other. All of the bandmembers use JH Audio Sharona in-ear monitors, but each in his own way. While Sixx sticks to his IEMs, Mars and Lee like a little more feel; Mars gets that from his guitar cabinets, but Lee has plenty of firepower, too, with three Clair Cohesion CP-218 subs plus a number of Cohesion CM-22 wedges for good measure. “It’s pretty incredible—and it sounds great,” said Megrath.

Neil, on the other hand, wears a single

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Kevin Mazur/G etty Images

McHugh, who first came into the band’s orbit subbing for another recording engineer in 1998 and then never left. “I don’t want to sound like I’m taking it for granted, but it feels like it gets easier the bigger it gets. I always say to [young audio pros] that clubs are the hardest shows you’ve ever do. As you come up through it all, it gets better.

Obviously, some of these stadiums are horrendous because acoustics are bad, but you’ve got all the gear you need to work around it.”

Def Leppard For McHugh, some of that gear includes the benefits from a DiGiCo Quantum 5 console he’s overseeing with quiet stage, as guitars, bass a Waves SuperRack nearby. The only outboard and most of the drum units are a passel of Empirical Labs Distressors, kit are direct . used to corral the group’s trademark backing vocals. “The more I do this, the less stuff I’m using, because I think that’s the secret of it,” he said. “If it doesn’t sound good, you need to change the source; no amount of stuff is gonna fix something that’s bad. Once you get the source well and good sounding, you shouldn’t have to do a whole lot to it.”

With that in mind, most of the inputs off the stage are direct, with only a handful of live mics up on the deck. Guitars and bass Ted Bible, m on come direct from Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III Scott Flaws, itor engineer fo monitor r Def Leppar engineer fo d. effects processors, while much of drummer r Mötley Crüe’s Vince Scott Megra Neil.

Rick Allen’s kit is digital, so Audio-Technica th, monitor engineer fo r Mötley Crüe AT4050s capture ride cymbals, AKG C414s . are used for overheads, and the rest comes Sharona in his left ear, leaving the right open to down a MADI line to a DiGiCo Orange Box take in sound from the house, a number of Clair the guys that are setting me up for success,” he SRM wedges, and sidefills comprised of CP-218s said. “Suddenly you’re on the one of the largest that puts it into the fiber loop. A half-dozen with Cohesion CO-10s on top. “They’re not set stadium tours ever, you’re in the hot seat, and to Shure Beta 58As are used for backing vocals in to Stun, but their presence up there is felt,” Flaws come in with no rehearsals, it’s ‘Okay, guys, what different positions, and Joe Elliott’s lead vocals am I jumping into?’ Scotty Megrath, Cubby and are heard via a Beta 58 capsule on an Axient confirmed.

Tightening up the band’s IEMs is the Pearl, the guys in my Stage Left world said, ‘Okay, we’re Digital wireless. “With Joe, we’ve tried different an upcoming personal DSP processor from JH going to do this’ and laid out such a plan—and stuff, and we just keep coming back to that Audio. “Basically, it’s a little DSP active processor it’s been very successful at this point. We did a capsule; he’ll tell you, ‘If it’s good enough for Paul that sits on the PSM 1000 belt pack, and we’re couple of really good shows, it’s not broke, now McCartney, it’s good enough for me.’”

While McHugh is increasingly using the able to go in and time-align each earpiece,” said let’s not fix it!”

Quantum 5’s onboard tools to shape his sound Megrath. “Say we’re making boosts at 3 or 4k; (“The Mustard stuff is great”), the Waves SuperRack we’re able to make sure each driver is in time, DEFINING DEF LEPPARD phase aligned, all that kind of stuff. The band While Mötley Crüe last hit the road in 2015, Def plug-ins still get put through the paces nightly.

Leppard has been a fine-tuned touring machine “For Joe’s vocal chain, I use a PSE [Primary Source uses that and they love it.”

The band’s monitor mixes are essentially for years, able to fill your local shed every Expander] on that, and then go into an 1176 and variations on the house-mix-with-me-louder summer with big crowds ready to hear the band’s then a C6, which does what a 901 would have done paradigm, but when it came to getting Neil’s seemingly endless string of melodic metal hits. back in the day—a little bit of de-essing and you’ve monitor mix right, Flaws had the added challenge Bringing those reverb-drenched choruses and got to take a bit of 900 out of his voice. Then after of having joined the tour four shows in. While he ringing power chords to a stadium setting seems that, I have an R-Vox; I use that to clean up and had a history with the singer, having mixed Neil’s all the more fitting for the band’s music, and for keep the noise floor down at the end.”

If Def Leppard is playing larger venues this monitors on solo tours before the pandemic, the group and its longtime crew, it was an easy year, it helps that the band has a sound to match; coming into the production late in the game move to make.

“It’s a couple more speakers,” joked Ronan McHugh’s task, then, is to find the middle piled on the pressure. “The techs on stage are

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ground between the original albums and the live environment: “For me, I’m trying to recreate the feel of the record, but it’s more the vibe of albums rather than being identical. Their kind of music is really suited to a big show; it works really well in the stadiums.”

Over in Monitorworld is another longtime audio team member, Ted Bible, who’s worked with the group for 22 years, 13 of them behind the monitor desk. This year, that desk is another Quantum 5, and he’s taking advantage of it to provide Klang immersive in-ear mixes to the JH Audio Sharonas that all but one bandmember wear. “Klang is a native software on DiGiCo now,” said Bible, “and that makes it really simple to do because all you need is a computer, and a DMI card gives you 64 x 32, which is more than enough for my guys.”

Def Leppard tours often enough that it usually only needs three days for rehearsals, but between the pandemic pause and the band’s decision to add five brand-new songs to its set, the group spent three weeks prepping for the stadium run—which provided the perfect opportunity to introduce Klang into the mix.

“I had the time and resources to sit there and dial in it,” said Bible. “You could even literally have the bandmember walk over, grab the touchscreen and move things around while he’s playing—’that sounds really good’ or ‘no, that doesn’t work.’ It works well with the Sharonas; there’s so much room that you can move things around, turn things down and have fewer competing frequencies. Say you’re used to digging out a space in your kick drum for your bass or vice versa; you don’t have to do that as much when you’ve got separation in the ears. You put the bass on one side, kick drum on another and there’s a lot less competition on those frequencies.”

ONE HOT TOUR Between the tools on hand and the camaraderie among the audio teams, there’s been few drawbacks on the Stadium Tour—except for the summer sun.

The rampaging heat waves that have plagued the U.S. this season have been brutal, and the high temperatures have been a challenge.

“In St. Louis, we were on the field at frontof-house and I’m not exaggerating—it was 113

degrees,” said Carpenter. “Neither people nor consoles like 113 degrees. Console manufacturers do not recommend running them that hot either, and they all have diagnostics that tell you how hot they’re running. Luckily, production has provided us with industrial air conditioners, which for our sake isn’t really an air conditioner as much as a cold air blower.”

It’s been much the same up onstage, Flaws reported: “There’s typically three or four air conditioners on stage left between Ted, Scott and Scott. We’ve been trying to keep the walls up on certain days when it’s absolutely just too hot. You’ve got to get basic when it’s like that— Gatorade and water are your friends.”

Despite the occasionally overpowering weather, however, the crews have hung in there— and the audiences have, too. “They’ve been holding these tickets for years,” said Carpenter, “and while there’s plenty of gray hair, there’s also plenty of young men in Poison and Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard t-shirts, singing the songs just as loud. They stay through the heat and the rain and everything we’ve been dealing with out here; they have been amazing.” ■

T

Mixing It Up With Punk Roots on Stage, With an Ear for Film, Games and Pop

By Jennifer Walden

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PHOTO: Ray Kachatorian

Jason LaRocca

here can’t be enough said about the fine art of ringing out a room. It’s a vital skill for any sound mixer because the key to it is frequency identification—correctly identifying the problematic frequencies that need attenuating. If ever in doubt of its value, consider that it earned scoring mixer/producer and ex-punk guitarist Jason LaRocca the dream job of any rocker—mixing a show at punk haven CBGB in NYC. “Sometimes on tour, we’d get a really bad front of house engineer and I’d help them EQ the monitors,” he explains. “One time, I helped The Adolescents out, EQing their monitors for a soundcheck, and they asked if I wanted to do sound for them at CBGB. It was one of the most exciting moments of my sound career, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I was just partying with my friends and mixing the show. The energy was super-great. It was exactly what you’d envision a CBGB punk show to be.”

The LaRocca brothers—Jason and Joey— started a punk band called The Briggs in 2001 with bassist Matthew Stolarz and drummer Chris Arredondo. The cash-strapped musicians found inventive ways to record their early tracks outside the studio, like drilling a hole in the wall between the LaRocca’s childhood bedrooms so they could run an 8-channel XLR snake from Jason’s room, where the drum kit was set up, to the Fostex E-16 tape recorder in Joey’s room.

“We had mics taped to mic stands or just taped to anything we could put a mic on— just like you’d see in photos of the early Dead Kennedys recordings,” LaRocca says. “It was all ad hoc, but that was what we had. We fell into a routine of recording all of our early demos in there that way, and that’s what got us signed, basically.”

Once The Briggs signed to SideOneDummy Records, they had access to real recording studios, such as “The Boat” (owned by the Dust Brothers) in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, and Sage and Sound Recording Studios in Hollywood, yet “we did a lot of overdubs in our home studios or at our friends’ studios,” LaRocca explains. “We did it ourselves.

I engineered everything, even in the big studios.

I fell in love with that and wanted to keep pursuing it, but we toured a lot so I didn’t have time to get into engineering.”

The Briggs toured with punk icons like Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys, Anti-Flag and Flogging Molly over the next few years, while

LaRocca simultaneously pursued a studio career.

As a self-taught engineer, however, landing a studio job proved challenging. “I was calling Sunset Sound and all the local studios in L.A., but without schooling or official training, no one would take me,” he says. Eventually he got a call from a friend who worked in film composer Mark Isham’s Wet Dog Studios.

FROM ONE STAGE TO ANOTHER “My friend was leaving the job, so they were looking for someone to take his place,” LaRocca recalls. “When I went in for the interview, I was at the bottom of the list, and I was really nervous because I had just figured out that Mark Isham composed scores for all my favorite films.”

Working with Isham required skills that LaRocca lacked, namely programming analog synthesizers and working with MIDI SysEx. Feeling that the interview didn’t go so well, he asked his friend if he could just show up and help out around the studio.

“I was filing tapes and doing random things around the studio for two-and-a-half weeks, and Mark was interviewing people the whole time,” LaRocca says. “Then one day he said, ‘All right, you should stay. I like you.’ So I interned for nearly two months and learned everything from how to make a good latte for the director, to how to organize all the JVC ¾-inch tape machines, to how to load the S-760 Roland samplers with all the Zip drives. I was ready—more or less—to take over as assistant.

“Mark was scoring Blade, so that was the first film I worked on. We took off from there, and I was just trying to hold on for dear life,” he continues. “I was in the band, doing that as my passion, and now here I am, an assistant in way over his head working for a film composer at the highest level—just being thrown completely into the fire and trying to make a band lift off.”

Isham was working with scoring mixer/ engineer Stephen Krause at that time, and LaRocca had assisted Krause with the mix on roughly 10 film scores before getting a chance to mix on his own.

“We were working on Moonlight Mile [2002], and all the tracks were recorded,” he says.

“We had spent a couple of days setting up the console and all of Stephen’s great outboard gear. But then he got sick. We didn’t know what to do, but he felt like he could walk me through some of the paths and routing over the phone.

So I mixed the film score. I was 21 years old and

had only been assisting for three years. We were using the Euphonix CS3000 out to two DA-88s, so we only had 16 tracks to mix to, which was a handful of 5.1 stems. But you couldn’t recall things like you can today in Pro Tools. Once we were done with the mixes and printed for the day, there was no going back. I definitely felt the pressure. It was intense and exciting, and I got the bug for sure.”

In 2004, LaRocca left the studio to tour fulltime with The Briggs, but Isham stayed in touch, asking him to mix a couple of film scores when he wasn’t on the road. “My first freelance solo mixing gig was for Mark on Fame (2009), and then we did The Crazies together in 2010. I was touring and then mixing while on break. It was really stressful, and I realized it wasn’t good for me to do both. So I decided to stay home,” he says.

THE STUDIO CALLING It was a decision that ultimately brought LaRocca great success. In the studio, he worked on music for huge Hollywood films like Morbius, Aquaman, Godzilla: King of Monsters, Bad Boys for Life, The Accountant and The Harder They Fall, and music for AAA game titles and hit television series including The Offer, The Nevers, The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Additionally, he’s worked with recording artists such as Jay-Z, Kid Cudi and CeeLo Green.

One of LaRocca’s favorite film score experiences was for Paddington (composed by Nick Urata), which he recorded and mixed at AIR Studios in London. “I felt very nervous,” he says. “For me, if you’ve been an engineer on a session at AIR, then you’ve made it. I was there a few days early visiting Lyndhurst Hall, and recording/mix engineer Geoff Foster walks into the room to grab some mics and says, ‘Hi.’ The next day I saw Simon Rhodes, who had just recorded and mixed Alexandre Desplat’s score for The Grand Budapest Hotel at AIR. These guys are the heaviest hitters, and here I am. Nobody knows me, and yet I’m doing this. I was really feeling the pressure, like don’t screw this up. [laughs]. But this place just makes things sound great. As long as you put up some mics that work, the room is going to do all the work for you. It sounded incredible.”

Another career highlight came during the pandemic in the form of Hans Zimmer and his score on Dune. LaRocca, who was tasked with recording the choir for Zimmer’s cover of Pink

LaRocca learned synth programming under fire while an assistant at composer Mark Isham’s studio.

LaRocca, right, at the console with composer Mark Isham, who gave him his start in film mixing

PHOTO: Courtesy of Jason LaRocca

Floyd’s “Eclipse,” came onto the project in July 2020 just after Los Angeles entered its first round of shutdowns. “We were able to go into the studio, following all the strict protocols. We were only allowed to record four vocalists at a time and yet we had all these intricate parts for them to sing. Layers and layers of ‘oohs and aahs,’ plus there were lead vocalist parts,” he says.

They recorded in Studio B at Zimmer’s Remote Control facilities in Santa Monica. LaRocca recorded separate groups of four vocalists—each singer had his or her own mic and they were physically separated by gobo walls.

In the control room, LaRocca mixed down the first four vocalists and panned them mostly to the left. Then on the second pass, he panned the vocalists a little more to the right and tweaked the balances between the mics from the previous pass. He continued this process for two full days, and as the parts were stacked up and built, they

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PHOTO: Courtesy of Jason LaRocca

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From humble roots as Mark Isham’s assistant engineer to standing in front of orchestral sessions at AIR Lyndhurst.

PHOTO: Paul Leonard-Morgan

started to interlock. Soon after, it sounded like a full chorus.

“At the end, with all the bounced-down live stereo mixes, we were at the maximum number of voices in Pro Tools that we could run,” he explains. “No one had recorded in person yet after the pandemic hit—let alone recorded a choir—so it was a new challenge for everyone.

We didn’t have a choice. I’ve never recorded four vocalists at a time with the hope that it sounds like a hundred, but it worked!”

LaRocca opened his own studio, La-Rocc-AFella Center, in October 2017. The 7.1 surround recording and mixing facility is located in North Hollywood in a multi-studio complex known as Fab Factory Studios. His rooms are outfitted with mirrored Pro Tools systems, so a session created in one can be opened in the other with no compatibility issues. Studio A features an Avid S3 console and Dock control, with Meyer Sound Acheron mains, JBL Cinema surrounds and a Meyer X-400 sub.

Studio B has a 24-channel setup using Avid S1 controllers and an iPad screen, with Dynaudio BM15 near-fields, JBL surrounds and a JBL 18-inch sub. He also has a collection of mics including (but not limited to) Neumann U67s, a Neumann U47 FET, Neumann TLM-170s, Neumann KM184s (matched set), a Sennheiser 421, an AKG 414, a Royer 121 ribbon, a FLEA 47 (with EF12 tube), and many more.

His studio also boasts a fine collection of modular synths—a variety of Eurorack modules

by Mutable Instruments, Make Noise, WMD, 4ms, TiTop, Q-Bit, Hexinverter, Roland, Rossum Electronics, Vermona, 2hp, and Steady State Fate, as well as analog outboard gear like a Manley Vari-MU tube compressor (custommade Mastering Edition), an Empirical Labs EL8-X Distressor (with Brit Mode Mod), a BAE 1073 Dual mic pre, a Grace M108 8-Channel mic pre, and three Chandler Limited REDD.47 Abbey Road Tube mic pre units.

LaRocca mixed the music on the upcoming game God of War: Ragnarök for composer Bear McCreary.

But one man can’t man two studios, so assistant score mixer Michael W. (Mick) Roby, has proven indispensable. “He’s incredible,” LaRocca says emphatically. “He has a really great aesthetic for what is good and what is hip.

He went to Berklee and has a degree in music.

Honestly, he’s much smarter than me. I really can’t live without him.”

MOVIES, GAMES, MUSIC The first project to pass through the new studio was the score for Epic Games’ Fortnite, which LaRocca mixed for composers Marco Beltrami and Pinar Toprak. That wasn’t his first video game title, however. He had mixed the OST for composer Daniel Licht’s score on Silent Hill: Downpour in 2011. That was followed by Sunset Overdrive in 2014 (LaRocca’s first game score mix for in-game music), and then came Fortnite.

In 2020, LaRocca mixed three game scores:

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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Cyberpunk 2077. And he’s mixed scores for two more games in 2022: Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons for composer Maclaine Diemer, and the highly anticipated God of War: Ragnarök for composer Bear McCreary.

“Of everybody that I’ve worked with, Bear really pushes to get the absolute best out of me.

I thank him for that,” LaRocca says.

It’s been quite the year for LaRocca, in fact.

He’s also recently finished mixing McCreary’s score for Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (launching this month) and he’s mixed Lorne Balfe’s score for Paramount’s theatrical release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (slated for March 2023).

So what’s next? “I’d really like to record and mix the score on a David Fincher film; I’m a huge fan of David Fincher,” he says. “I also really like composer Michael Giacchino, and would love to be able to work with him. I love working on film music, but I also love working on pop music, too. Chris Lord-Alge is my hero, and my original dream was to be this great mix engineer like him.

I mixed a song for Jay-Z and Kid Cudi and also a song for CeeLo for a film. That was fun. I’d like to work on more records and actually get back into some of that, too.” ■

LaRocca still rocks, and he’s passing it on to the next generation.

PHOTO: Gary Copeland

First, LaRocca was a guitarist with The Briggs, which included his brother Joey, pictured here with brother Jason giving a punk rock salute.

W David Paich’s

‘Forgotten Toys’ Friends and Family Back Toto Keyboardist’s First Solo Project

From left, in front of David Paich’s garage studio: co-producer Joseph Williams, Paich, and guitarist extraordinaire Steve Lukather.

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PHOTO: Courtesy of David Paich

By Robyn Flans

W

hen composer/keyboardist David Paich was 17 years old, he was approached by Seals & Crofts producer Louie Shelton to record a solo album.

Paich's father, the illustrious arranger Marty Paich, put the kibosh on it.

“He told me I was not ready, and he would let me know when I was,” Paich explains. “My father was a great musician, so it had a lot of weight to it.”

Thirty-seven years later, on August 19, 2022, Paich released his first solo work, Forgotten Toys (plus a focus track, “Willibelongtoyou”), on the Mascot Label Group Paich says he never felt the need to do such a project because being in Toto, which formed in 1977, “satisfied the itch. I was getting to sing, write and produce.” [Note: Paich is currently doing scattered dates with the band, as he has from the beginning.]

Not only did Toto scratch the itch, hits like “Hold the Line,” “Rosanna,” “Africa,” “I’ll Be Over You” and “I Won’t Hold You Back,” as well as the Grammy-sweeping Toto IV, gave Paich confidence for the day he would finally have some time to work on his own project.

Still, he did enlist a few Toto guys, like Steve Lukather and Lenny Castro, to play on a couple tracks. Joseph Williams, who was lead vocalist of the band in the late ’80s as well as currently, did some co-producing, co-writing, singing and engineering, basically helping to steer the ship.

Williams says it was extremely gratifying to help Paich bring Forgotten Toys to fruition.

“It’s funny; we spend a lot of time with each other,” Williams says. “Despite the fact that we’re stuck on a bus together, Luke, Dave and I are still very close. It’s an honor to work with Paich.

It was an honor to come into that band. I was a huge fan of that band.”

AT HOME WITH JOSEPH Most of the songs on Forgotten Toys came from pieces of material Paich had been working on at various points in his career.

“The original name of the album was going to be Broken Toys because they were like broken apart pieces, like, ‘I’m dusting off a few old treasures,’” Paich explains. “None of the songs were finished until I started working seriously on them when the COVID pandemic started and I actually began piecing them together and

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finishing them up with Joseph.”

While many of the musicians recorded parts at their own studios, Paich worked out of his own ATS facility, which stands for Across The Street, essentially a 250-square-foot studio space carved out of two of the bays in his home’s fivecar garage.

Williams says they would get a song written as completely as possible, then start recording a mock-up. “I would start recording drums, or at least prepare a mock-up with as many finishedsounding keyboards and things as possible and jump right into vocals,” he explains. “It was sort of the COVID method, when nobody could go into the studio together and record. You would produce up a song as far as you could get it on computer, and then add real instruments after the fact.”

In his own home studio, Williams has a small writing and music production rig where he uses Apple Logic and a lot of Hans Zimmer’s samples.

He typically would use drums from two or three different sample libraries; for keyboards, he likes to work with the Grandeur and Spectrasonics libraries.

“I use a lot of Universal Audio plug-ins for mixing, for ’verbs and stuff like that; Altiverb also,” Williams says. “I love all the Fabfilter stuff for compression. I have a Slate microphone that models all kinds of old tube microphones.

There’s a plug-in that goes with it that you can get pretty close to the sound of a 47, a 67 or a 251. And I have a little mic, sort of podcast-style, over my rig so I can work out vocal parts right in front of the computer.”

TRACKING WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY Williams got into engineering when he left Toto back in 1990. He got married a couple of years later and began to work as a TV composer on small-budget films for about 16 years.

“In the process of doing that, I put together a decent studio with the equipment of the time, which is very different from what we have now,” Williams says. “I didn’t really have an assistant, so I did all the engineering, second engineering and troubleshooting myself, and I learned my specific equipment so I could produce a score every week. That’s how that started. As time went on and computers became faster and smarter, and the sequencing software became more powerful, I just stuck with it and produced my own yacht-rock stuff and TV scores.”

Williams says Paich has several high-end mics at his studio: Neumann U67s, a U47 and a Telefunken 251 that he likes for his vocals.

Williams will often use the 251 for his own vocals, but sometimes the 47, “because it dampens a little bit of the whinier high end from my voice,” PHOTO: Courtesy of David Paich

Dueling keyboardists Greg Phillinganes and David Paich at Paich’s homebased ATS studio.

At mix engineer Bob Clearmountain’s MixThis! studio, from left: Clearmountain, assistant engineer Brandon Duncan, David Paich, Robin Dimaggio, and, kneeling in front, Paich’s assistant engineer Pat Knox, PHOTO: Courtesy of David Paich

he explains.

For Forgotten Toys, the background vocals were done in pieces. Williams did his at his studio and Paich sang his at ATS. On the touching song “First Time,” about Paich’s daughter Elizabeth, she actually snuck into ATS one day and got her father’s assistant, Pat Knox (grandson of Tom Knox, who worked with Toto years earlier), to record a background vocal of her echoing her father singing “she’s in love” on the track.

Paich had written the structure and chorus several years back, and Williams helped him complete the song. They had kept the intro of the demo to retain the vibe, and when Elizabeth heard the song, she immediately could hear a background vocal in her head.

“I’m really happy she did,” Paich says. “It gives me goosebumps when I hear her voice come in.”

Including “All the Tears That Shine” on the record was bittersweet for Paich. The song was originally released on the 2015 album Toto XIV, written by Paich and musician Michael Sherwood, who passed away in 2019. The Toto version has Paich’s vocals, while Paich’s new version has Sherwood’s vocals. Paich apparently had started writing the song the day after Toto’s Falling in Between was completed in 2005, and he didn’t finish it until a couple of years later, with Sherwood's help. He and Williams stripped the entire song down for Forgotten Toys.

“I wanted to honor him by putting it out with his vocal because it’s such a compelling, soulful vocal, and I felt it needed to be heard,” Paich explains. “So I stripped down the track of the demo and we put standup bass on it. Then we got Davey Johnstone from the Elton John band to play acoustic guitar,

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and Michael’s brother, Billy Sherwood, is singing some ad libs on the end.”

“Lucy,” the last cut on the album, is a jazz instrumental.

“That was the earliest one that was written

by Mike Lang and me years back when we were trying to do an instrumental record together,” Paich recalls. “The first thing we cut was ‘Lucy,’ and we tried to do other things, but we were both busy and it never came to fruition. When I heard the other songs I had for this album, I wanted something totally different, and this was not like any of the other songs. It showed a different side of me that people hadn’t seen or heard, and I am really happy with the way it came out.”

MIXING WITH BOB Bob Clearmountain, who mixed the lion’s share of the album, laughs as he sums up the experience: “There’s a lot to it. David is a little over the top sometimes with his production.”

That means there are a lot of instruments, and Clearmountain is working on his “old analog console,” a SSL 4000G+. “There’s a lot to weed through,” Clearmountain explains. ”But once you figure out what everything does, his arrangement sense is amazing; it all just works once you get everything doing the right things.

It’s always fun to mix with him because there’s so much going on, and the arrangements are lush and beautiful.”

Clearmountain mixes at his private studio, Mix This!, and after his assistant, Brandon Duncan, first goes through a song and figures out how to get all the channels up on the desk, a rough mix is assembled.

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“Then I’ll kind of go through each channel and figure out what all the instruments are doing,” Clearmountain explains. “I think of them almost like characters. I want to hear what the contribution is of each instrument and why it’s there.”

Once he had a good-sounding mix in his automation, he would invite Paich over to sit beside him. They went through all the tracks together so Paich could offer his suggestions, like, “Maybe the guitar should be a little bit louder.”

Do all artists do this? I ask. “No. A lot of them do,” Clearmountain replies. “Springsteen used to do that like crazy. He would put like 50 mixes on tape—back when we had tape—and then he’d go through them later and pick out the one he liked. He doesn’t do that anymore. David is great. He’ll sit there and we’ll try a bunch of different things, and we’ll get a mix in a day. And David’s comments are good. When he makes a comment, it’s, ‘Yeah, let’s check that out, yeah, that might be better. He’s really sharp.”

A lot of the echoes and delays on the record are from Clearmountain’s own plug-ins. “There’s another company called Altiverb that makes wonderful-sounding Impulse Responses—actual reverbs taken from churches and stadiums. I use that quite a bit.”

He also has a prized Neve 33609 compressor that he uses on bass, an Avalon AD 2055 also for bass, a UREI 1178 compressor (a stereo version of the 1176) which he likes on snare drum and tom toms and sometimes vocals, UREI LA-3As for vocals, Pultec EQP-1A3s for guitars and pianos, a SSL compressor for piano, a Lexicon PCM 70 vintage digital reverb that he uses on piano quite a bit, and Distressors on acoustic guitar.

“So much of it is in-the-box now,” he says.

“Apogee plug-ins are the best. They try to keep all their products top secret, but anybody reading this, Apogee plug-ins are the best. I use iZotope plug-ins a lot, too,” While it is also available in stereo, Clearmountain says that he hopes people will have a chance to hear Forgotten Toys in Dolby Atmos, too.

Paich is extremely pleased with the finished product, and everyone’s already asking him about the next one, but he says he’s going to let this “marinate” for a little bit.

“It’s been a long time coming for this one, but I do hope to keep doing it,” he says, conceding that if his dad were still here, he would approve of the solo album and probably say, “You did okay, kid.” ■

Studio Monito Hot products for stereo and immersive playback Auratone Active 5C

Focal ST6 Line

It has been 50 years since Auratone founder Jack Wilson released the 5C Super Sound Cube and, in celebration of its golden anniversary, Auratone and its U.S. distributor, TransAudio Group, released the Active 5C. The mono amplifier is designed and built in Europe in collaboration with Bettermaker. A careful R&D process has been implemented to maintain the original characteristics of the 5C, using the same amplifier design from the A2-30 amplifier.

Like the other 5C variants, the Auratone Active 5C is made in the USA. It delivers 50W into its internal 8-ohm load via a balanced combo XLR/ TRS input. Like the passive version, it reproduces between 80 and 15,000 Hz via a 4.5-inch driver with a signal-to-noise ratio in excess of 100 dB. In addition to an input, the rear of the box provides an on/off switch and power LED. The active 5C has Integrated overcurrent, overheating, and short protection in the rare event of electrical trouble.

With its ‘W’ cones and Beryllium tweeters, the ST6 speaker line inherits Focal’s best technologies. The ST6 monitors— including the Twin6, Solo6 and Sub12 — offer multiple features, including Focus mode, variable high-pass crossover, parametric crossover, dis-engageable automatic standby and more.

The Twin6 is a 2.5-way monitor offering transparency, definition level, dynamics and soundstage precision. Its Focus Mode uses a two-way configuration intended to preserve the sweet spot when mixing, saving space on the console and simplifying cabling and monitor changes. The Twin6 boasts an inverted dome Beryllium tweeter with an ‘M’-shaped protective grille and a woofer with a ‘W’-shaped cone, as well as a frequency range of up to 10 kHz, specially designed for the Focus Mode. All this on top of Focal’s patented Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) technology, which reportedly reduces distortion in the 1 kHz–3 kHz frequency range by 50 percent.

The Solo6 is a 2-way monitor that also boasts an inverted dome Beryllium tweeter with an ‘M’-shaped protective grille, and a woofer with a ‘W’-shaped cone, as well as a frequency range of up to 10 kHz, specially designed for the Focus Mode. The Solo6 includes inserts for attaching it to the wall and ceiling.

The Sub12 features a 13-inch speaker driver with ‘W’-shaped cone and very high excursion, as well as a BASH amplifier with 600W RMS and 1000W peakto-peak power. In addition, there are optimized braces and a front vent inspired

by Focal’s Trio11 monitors, as well as internal and external vents to reduce noise and distortion.

IK Multimedia iLoud MTM Immersive Bundle 11 iLoud MTM studio monitors are now available in the latest Dolby Audio Room Design Tool (DARDT) for Atmos systems, so users can precisely install a multimonitor setup that adheres to Dolby’s standards anywhere. iLoud MTM’s built-in ARC self-calibration means it adjusts in seconds to any placement, including ceiling-mounting, correcting output to ensure precise, balanced sound from every position. iLoud MTM is intended for multichannel installations being linear phase and having a point-source acoustic performance to be accurate at any distance. This reportedly minimizes the inaccuracies conventional speakers introduce in the imaging, which is critical for multichannel and immersive setups.

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By The Mix Staff

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JBL 104-BT Compact Reference Monitors JBL 104-BT compact reference monitors with Bluetooth, the latest models in the 1 Series line, are designed for recording musicians, producers, podcasters and vloggers, as well as professional audio engineers seeking an accurate, portable reference with Bluetooth streaming.

JBL 104-BT Reference Monitors combine a coaxial 4.5-inch (118 mm) low-frequency driver and .75-inch (19 mm) soft-dome tweeter, integrated 60-watt amplification and an acoustic design to reproduce sound. Bluetooth streaming lets users check mixes over Bluetooth to make sure they sound great in every listening scenario.

Both the black 104-BT and white 104-BTW versions have compact form factors, conserving valuable workspace.

tors

Kali Audio Project Lone Pine - 2nd Wave Kali’s LP-6 and LP-8 studio monitors have received improvements in the noise floor, output level, frequency response and distortion. With the LP-6 and LP-8, users can mix with more confidence, and they can also be assured that a mix will translate as best as possible to whatever systems the audience is using.

The 2nd Wave goes even further, utilizing a more robust DSP for an even flatter frequency response on the top end. The LPs have been praised for their accuracy, and the company states that the 2nd Wave versions realize slight but noticeable improvements in that regard, particularly on the top end.

Genelec Offers Immersive Monitoring Systems Configuration

KRK V8 Series 4 Powered Reference Monitors The KRK V8 is a two-way, full-range studio reference monitor with professional performance and accuracy for recording, mixing and mastering. It features a 1-inch, KRK-designed Kevlar tweeter and 8-inch lightweight KRK designed woven Kevlar woofer. Using Kevlar for both the woofer and tweeter gives users smooth midrange definition without colorization and clean high-end with tight, controlled low-end, as well as a wide sweet spot and beautiful imaging, according to the company.

The 230W KRK designed, bi-amped Class-D amplifier delivers solid transient speed and up to 118 dB of SPL. KRK´s optimized front-ported bass reflex enclosure design avoids boundary coupling to allow flexibility in room positioning. Forty-nine different DSP-driven EQ presets deliver control for room/desk correction as well as personal taste. The solid aluminum front-baffle and EVA foam pad is like having a built in stabilizer that improves transient response and imaging.

PMC PMC6, PMC6-2 and PMC802 Five years of development has culminated in the PMC6, PMC6-2 and PMC8-2, along with their associated subwoofers the PMC8 SUB and PMC8-2 SUB. The low-frequency extension of the new designs belies the cabinet dimension due to advancements in both woofer and ATL bass loading technology. These are scalable systems that can grow to suit the end user’s requirements. The active subs can be combined with the monitors to create one of PMC’s unique twin-cabinet XBD systems that deliver extended bass and dynamics. Alternatively, they can be used as standalone LF monitors for sub channels. Future-proofing has also been engineered into every model with advancements such as an expansion card slot for planned future signal interfacing options.

When it comes to configuration, PMC has paid close attention to making this as straightforward as possible via simple menu-driven controls on the rear panel, or through the company’s SOUNDALIGN network interface. Accessed through wired connections to any standard network via any web-browser on a PC, Mac or tablet, SOUNDALIGN’s digital connectivity allows users to individually control each monitor or set them up in defined groups ideal for large-scale immersive systems.

Genelec has made configuring and managing its Smart Active Monitoring systems even more user-friendly with the introduction of its GLM 4.2 loudspeaker manager software, and the new 9301B multi-channel AES/EBU interface. These two additions to the range allow the cost-effective and seamless creation of scalable immersive monitoring systems up to 16 channels, using one or more bass-managed subwoofers, or 32 channels if using a second 9301B. The GLM 4.2 update is powered by the fast and precise AutoCal 2 automatic room calibration algorithm, and introduces a host of new features, including the GRADE Room Acoustic Report, remote control of key parameters, and improved symmetric calibration of groups of monitors and subwoofers.

By using the information gathered during the AutoCal calibration process, the GRADE report makes GLM the first calibration software in the world to give the user a complete analysis of their room and monitoring system performance, in line with the best practices—including ITU-R BS.1116 recommendations. The report, which as an introductory offer is available free of charge throughout 2022, provides specific observations and advice on any acoustical issues, helping users and studio designers alike to fine tune the room’s acoustic treatment, adjust monitor and listener positions, and optimize bass management.

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Tech JBL VTX A6 Line Array and B15 Subwoofer JBL Professional has unveiled its flagship line array—the VTX A6 subcompact dual 6.5-inch passive line array element—and the B15 compact, arrayable 15-inch subwoofer, intended for midsized touring and fixed installations. The A6 6.5-inch passive two-way line array element is engineered as a standalone system or as a supplement to larger VTX systems, housing two custom 6.5-inch woofers and a 3-inch annular-diaphragm compression driver. It also sports proprietary features such as JBL’s patented Radiation Boundary Integrator and Differential Drive dual-voicecoil, dual-magnet woofer. The result is a low-profile loudspeaker with a reported low-frequency extension to 67 Hz and 134 dB max SPL. Meanwhile, the VTX B15 15-inch subwoofer features SlipStream doubleflared exponential ports and a Differential Drive dual-voice coil design, and is based on JBL’s new 2285H 15-inch woofer. There are two B15 versions available—the arrayable B15 and the B15G, which is designed without rigging hardware for groundstacked applications.

Solid State Logic X-Limit Plug-In X-Limit is the fifth plug-in added to the SSL Complete subscription program, though it is

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also available as a standalone purchase. Designed to help increase the loudness of tracks, buses and masters, reportedly without clipping, X-Limit provides the user with visual feedback and numerous sonic options. Steering and ducking meters indicate how the limiting process might influence the stereo image of a signal and provides visual feedback on minimizing stereo degradation while using the channel link control. Meanwhile, the all-in-one waveform and threshold display lets users set the threshold and ceiling against the incoming signal level. A True Peak mode is used to limit inter-sample peaks, providing momentary and max True Peak value readouts. Users can pick from four limiter characteristics, including Transparent, Glue, Punch and Auto, providing options as needed.

A Gain Lock is offered, and Mix Control helps users dial back the effect as needed.

Palmer River Series Palmer has launched its River Series of professional DI boxes, re-amping boxes, line isolators, splitters and summers. As might befit a German brand, the various models are named after German rivers. Kicking off the line is the Palmer ilm, a passive speaker simulation DI box, and the Palmer enz, an unbalanced, passive 2-channel line isolation box. There’s also the wiper, a passive DI box; the vils, a passive mono merge line isolation box; and the trave, a passive re-amplification box. Rounding out the series is the Palmer tauber, a passive microphone merge box. Based around a uniform design language, all of the Palmer River Series products are made of solid aluminum and feature a steel front panel intended to endure everyday stage and studio use. All come with the standard Palmer five-year warranty, which the brand offers on all of its products.

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new products

Yorkville Sound YSM5-2 Studio Monitors Yorkville Sound’s YSM Series II Studio Monitor line has started with the YSM5-2, a 50-watt, 5-inch powered loudspeaker for use in project and professional recording spaces. YSM Series II monitors feature a tapered front baffle and an updated DSP system. The tweeters blend into a specially designed low-diffraction waveguide which is integrated into the front baffle. The edges of the waveguide couple the tweeter with the woofer, reportedly reducing sonic anomalies normally associated with driver/tweeter proximity. Built with fiber-reinforced drivers, the monitors are intended to deliver low-end and a clean mid-range, featuring a 5-inch low frequency driver and 1-inch black silk dome tweeter; balanced XLR and 1/4-inch TRS inputs; unbalanced RCA input; high and low frequency adjust controls; built-in HF and LF limiters; and a physical Volume Control. The tweeter and woofer are time aligned to ensure that there are no phase irregularities.

DiGiCo S-Series V3 Software Update DiGiCo’s Version 3.0 software update for its smallfootprint S-Series consoles offers an optional

Dolby Atmos Album Assembler Mastering Tool

Intended primarily for vocalists, the MA-D was designed

by Technical Grammy award winner David Royer to be useful for a variety of live and studio miking situations as well. The intention behind the MA-D was to provide an optimized, full-frequency response and rich musicality; as a result, the microphone is said to provide the goods when placed on guitar and bass amps, drums and brass, whether in live sound, recording or broadcast applications. An integrated pneumatic shock-mount and a builtin internal windscreen help reduce handling noise and prevent audible plosives. The MA-D includes a flexible mic clip and a zippered bag.

Dolby Atmos Album Assembler is a new tool to aid users in sequencing multiple Atmos tracks for delivery as a completed album. Engineers who are sequencing and mastering albums in Atmos can face multiple challenges due to the complexity of applying processing to an entire mix, much less maintaining proper metadata settings for each song. In response, Dolby has launched the Dolby Atmos Album Assembler, which works as an add-on to the Dolby Atmos Renderer application. The new add-on can be purchased

Focusrite FAST Limiter Plug-in and Bundle

software expansion that increases the channel count from 48 to 60 flexi channels and 24 flexi buses, essentially turning S-Series consoles into an S21+ or an S31+. There are two new Master bus configurations: LCR (Left Center Right) or LRM (Left Right Mono), providing additional control on the channels over the LCR blend or the LRM Mono Gain. LCR or LRM can be used for running an expanded speaker setup or sending out a mono mix alongside a stereo mix. Version 3.0 extends the OSC control capabilities to channel processing controls, providing control of many aspects of channel and bus processing, including EQ and dynamics. The new update also adds compatibility for MADI Sample Rate Conversion on the DMI-MADI-B and DMI-MADI-C.

separately via the Dolby Atmos Production Suite or Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite, and provides a straightforward way to sequence album tracks and apply final mastering touches to a complete record. Specifically, users can align songs on the timeline to sequence tracks, edit song durations, apply fade ins/outs, apply final EQ and dynamics, and measure loudness before exporting mastered Dolby Atmos ADM BWF files.

Mojave Audio MA-D Cardioid Dynamic Microphone Mojave Audio has launched the MA-D, the company’s first hand-held dynamic microphone.

The Collective from Focusrite has introduced a new plug-in, FAST Limiter; the new release in turn completes the full FAST Bundle. FAST Limiter is a mastering tool based around AI and deep controls, intended to help musicians finish music and give their tracks a final release-ready polish by using AI to find settings best suited to the sound’s characteristics. Musicians can also use Reference Mastering to take key sonic characteristics of their favorite songs and apply them to their own tracks. There is a choice of three unique Flavors— Modern, Neutral or Aggressive—to instantly change how FAST Limiter influences the track’s sound. Once AI gets users in the ballpark of where they want their track to be, they can further adjust Gain, Saturation, Bass, Transients and Resonance to their own taste.

Shure MV7 Limited Edition Microphone Shure’s MV7 microphone has been given the limited-edition treatment, with a new version only available on Amazon.com. Aimed at broadcasters, announcers, podcasters, streamers and the like, the MV7 “White Noir” features a

new color design that is surely ready for its closeup on video. The mic otherwise matches the technical specs of the original MV7; equipped with Shure’s Voice Isolation Technology, the MV7 features a hybrid USB and XLR output for flexibility and is compatible with the ShurePlus MOTIV Desktop app, which helps users dial-

in desired settings with Auto Level Mode and Manual Mode. Both modes contain built-in headphone monitoring and monitor mix, as well as control over the aesthetic of a touch panel with LED Live Metering. By selecting Night Mode on the MOTIV Desktop app, users can darken their touch panel to better match the atmosphere of their space.

Lindell Audio LiN76 Limiting Amplifier Lindell Audio’s Vintage Limiting Amplifier is designed to re-create the timbres and nuances of ’76-style FET compressors to provide vintagevibe dynamics processing. The unit aims to recall the old-school sounds of 1970s dynamic processors, down to the “all-button mode” made famous by British recording engineers, which effectively changes the ratio to roughly 20:1, and also changes the bias of the circuit as well as the way that the knobs interact with each other.

As a result, the LiN76 becomes much more aggressive, with its reaction knee becoming more like a plateau than a gentle curve with a more aggressive dirty tone, while the attack becomes “punchier.” Under regular settings, Attack is continuously variable, 20 μs to 800 μs; Release runs 50 ms to 1200 ms; and Ratio offers 4:1, 8:1, 12:1 and 20:1. n

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Tech // reviews L-Acoustics L-ISA Studio 2.4, Part 2 Finessing the Soundscape—Headphones to Speakers

By Steve La Cerra

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n part 1 of this review, we looked at the workings of L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Studio v2.4 software for immersive mixing. This time, we’ll see what happens when binaural mixes created with L-ISA Studio are transferred to an immersive playback system that employs L-Acoustics’ L-ISA Processor II. But first, a brief recap….

A “Source,” or audio object, in L-ISA Studio can be a microphone, an effect, a DAW track or any audio element in a mix. Source audio is routed through the L-ISA Processor, and manipulated using L-ISA Controller. Ideally, a Source is created for every audio element in a mix.

Regarding output channel count: If the intended playback system has 12 outputs or fewer (i.e., 12 speakers), a project can remain in L-ISA Studio and you can use any audio interface that fulfills your The Soundscape view in L-ISA Studio shows the position of each speaker relative to the channel requirements. In this case, the L-ISA Audio reference listening position.

Bridge will route audio from your DAW through the no need for me to manually enter speaker data into my sessions.

L-ISA Processor to the audio interface.

If the playback system has more than 12 channels, the L-ISA Importing speaker data into an existing L-ISA session does not blow session ultimately must move to a L-ISA hardware system employing out any of your session work—it only changes the speaker layout either the L-ISA Processor or L-ISA Processor II. The Processor has and metadata. This is an important feature because it means you MADI I/O, while Processor II has MADI and AVB I/O—so your can start work in L-ISA Studio before you have the speaker data. It DAW interface or mixing console must meet their respective also facilitates adapting the session between playback systems with connectivity requirements. Regardless, L-ISA Studio (including the different speaker configurations.

Adjustments to my Pro Tools sessions were similar to the binaural version) supports sessions with more than 12 outputs, but you won’t have the ability to route them until you move the session adjustments required any time a PT session is transferred to another studio: I changed the playback engine to HDX and set the to L-ISA Processor. audio outputs for each track to MADI. This part of the process took a few minutes, but the MADI outputs correlate 1:1 with SEE AND HEAR With help from the folks at L-Acoustics and See Factor Industry the L-ISA Audio Bridge output assignments, so the process was (Woodside, N.Y.), I was able to transition my mixes to a L-ISA straightforward. I also checked the MTC routing from Pro Tools to immersive audio system. “Preproduction” consisted of finding out L-ISA to ensure that the automation would work. It did.

Listening to the mixes on the immersive system was a fantastic, the configuration of the L-ISA immersive system installed in the L-ISA studio at See Factor, then importing that data to my L-ISA ear-opening experience, but there are significant differences between Studio sessions using “Import Speaker Data” under the main menu mixing in stereo and mixing in immersive. The panning in my binaurally created mixes didn’t always work well when heard over of L-ISA Controller.

The system consists of a 13-speaker frontal array augmented by the immersive system, most notably in regards to percussive sounds.

One of the tracks I remixed was the title track from my project five surround and five elevation speakers. Fortunately, there already existed a L-ISA “base” session for this configuration, so there was Flight (shameless plug), which has a percussion loop that I panned

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hard to one side. On the immersive system, the loop played mostly through a speaker that was at the listener’s 3 o’clock. This sounded cool on cans, but on the immersive system, it stuck out like a sore thumb because (1) it was too loud, and (2) it sounded slightly out of time with instruments that were placed at the front of the mix (drums in particular).

One of the considerations when mixing on an immersive system is “time of flight”—meaning the arrival time of sounds at the listener’s ears coming from different speakers. If the speakers are varying distances from the listener and you place a percussive element hard to one side or in the rear, a listener may perceive it as being out of time with instruments that are panned to a different location.

Slower sounds like synth pads or reverbs can be effectively panned hard to the sides or to the rear channels, opening up space in the front while expanding the Soundscape. One particular mix I worked on had 40 or 50 backing vocal tracks, panned around the sides and rear. These poked out of the mix a bit, but once the levels were tweaked, they sat deep in the sound field and provided the illusion that you were seated in the middle of a choir.

L-ISA IS DEEP L-Acoustics suggests starting a mix with all Sources at a distance of approximately 12%, as opposed to 0%. From that position, you can move Sources upstage (away from the listener) to create depth, or forward to create intimacy.

Reverbs can be panned behind the listener to enhance the sense of space, and increasing the reverb time or size simulates a large space even when you’re listening in a small room.

L-ISA’s room engine doesn’t allow reverb presets to be saved and recalled using a library,

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: L-Acoustics PRODUCT: L-ISA Studio 2.4 WEBSITE: www.l-acoustics.com PRICE: free download (binaural version); $29 per month (12-output version) PROS: Allows creation of immersive mixes without need for a hardware processor.

Binaural audio engine allows immersive mixing using headphones. Binaural version is free of charge.

CONS: Vertical and rear simulation is not great (binaural version). Documentation leaves something to be desired. Software has a few minor quirks.

L-ISA reverbs can be modified, locked and recalled for specific snapshots.

but you can modify and lock a reverb that’s associated with a snapshot so that when the snapshot is recalled, the reverb is recalled with your settings. The audio quality of this reverb is so good that L-Acoustics really should sell it as a separate hardware box or plug-in.

A huge benefit of an immersive system is “spatial unmasking,” meaning that sounds can be unmasked simply by spreading them across the Soundscape—something that’s not really possible in stereo. Spatial unmasking makes it possible for sounds to be significantly lower in level while still retaining presence and definition. As a result, audio processing requirements change drastically.

The L-ISA tutorials offered by L-Acoustics stress this point, suggesting that you place objects in the sound field before you reach for EQ or compression, and I found this to be true.

NOT YOUR UNCLE’S STEREO Another thing that you can do in an immersive system that can’t be accomplished in stereo is using the Width parameter to spread a Source across several speakers. When applied to a Source with a lot of low-frequency content, the power of that Source can be distributed across multiple speakers, increasing headroom while also reducing or eliminating the “power alley” that often plagues conventional playback systems. This is a huge plus, particularly in large-scale systems.

The Pan Range parameter also helps manage Sources with a lot of bottom end. This is a global parameter that limits how far an object may be panned relative to the reference listening position. Pan Range can be set to 360 degrees, to a user-defined range from -180 degrees to +180 degrees, or auto-set based on the playback configuration. As you move a bass-heavy Source

around the Soundscape, you may find that because a subwoofer is located at the front of the Soundscape, you hear the low end in front and the upper frequencies of that Source in different speakers, which is unnatural. Limiting the pan range prevents this from happening.

Using L-ISA Studio’s binaural engine presents a few challenges: Pan is not as easily distinguished in headphones as it is over speakers, and there’s a limited ability to distinguish front from rear placement. Mixes are “smaller” and objects are closer together when monitored via headphones.

However, the binaural engine provides an excellent means for a user to become familiar with the workflow of L-ISA. L-Acoustics has a library of online tutorial videos for L-ISA Studio that are very helpful in getting started, and I highly recommend them.

There are also webinars for L-ISA that are equally valuable for the Studio version, even though they may not be specifically labeled for Studio. And if you really want to drill down, L-Acoustics offers excellent in-person training.

The important thing that L-Acoustics has achieved with L-ISA Studio is that L-ISA Controller works the same regardless of whether the processor is virtual or hardware. Sessions move seamlessly from L-ISA Studio to L-ISA Processor, enabling a user to begin work on an immersive mix on the desktop and to be prepared to move the project to the immersive realm. It’s a powerful tool that opens the door to a myriad of possibilities.

And I have to admit: Mixing in stereo is now a bit of a disappointment.

The author wishes to thank Mark Freidman (See Factor, Woodside, N.Y.), and Jordan Tani and Sully Sullivan of L-Acoustics for their assistance in preparing this review. n

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Tech // reviews Trident A-Range Dual-Discrete Mic Pre/EQ 2U Rackmount Channel Strip With a Legendary Legacy

By Barry Rudolph

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he heritage, history and mystique of the new Trident A-Range Dual Channel Strip goes back to the 1960s and ’70s, when Trident Studios in London was hosting legendary recording sessions for bands like The Beatles, Queen, Supertramp, David Bowie, Elton John, T-Rex and many others.

Consistently at the leading edge of recording technology, Trident was the first studio in England to employ an Ampex 8-track tape recorder, which was soon updated to a 2-inch, 16-track machine, predating their use at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios.

It was obvious that a new recording console was required to manage the burgeoning world of large multitrack music production, but there were none available, so under the direction of Barry Porter and Trident’s technical staff, the A-Range console was developed around the proven A-Series equalizer.

The four-band A-Series EQ has inductor-based (LC) circuits in the lower and upper mid-band sections. Those channel strips were fully discrete circuits designed and hand-built to the specific needs of the studios.

Rather than following strict and “proper” electronic design criteria, the console was designed based on the preferences of venerable engineer/producers like Roy Thomas Baker, Ken Scott and Tony Visconti, all of whom contributed practical suggestions in its development. One of the company’s earliest advertising slogans was: “designed by recording engineers for recording engineers.”

The Trident A-Range was a multi-bus console with capable monitoring facilities to handle large track counts and multiple monitoring and headphone mixes.

For a variety of reasons, there were only 13 A-Range consoles built back in the 1970s—most of these classics are now rebuilt and still in service today. Despite being more than 40 years old, two rack-mounted A-Range modules with an external power supply sell today for upward of $10,000!

SOLID INSIDE AND OUT The 2U Trident A-Range Dual Discrete Mic Pre/EQ is as close as possible to a pair of original 1972 Trident console input channel strips. Made in Gardena, Calif., it features the same circuits and

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component types/values as its predecessor, with (more reliable) Polyshine pots, custom-made rotary switches and E-Switch/Taiwan Alpha pushbuttons.

The A-Range unit is presented in a thick, machined-aluminum front panel with two identical channels positioned one above the other. I liked that the general layout of the console’s verticaloriented channel strips is identical except that it’s been rotated 90 degrees to fit in two rackspaces. I also love that Trident retained the regal and stately aubergine, or “eggplant,” color just like the consoles back in the day—a color scheme suggested by RTB. The rear panel has a slightly protruding shielded box to hold

the power transformer and the regulated linear power supply, which provides +48 volts and +24 volts DC. There are rear panel XLR connectors for both Line and Mic inputs, and these XLRs are duplicated (paralleled) with ¼-inch TRS jacks. Conveniently, there are also sets of TRS jacks in parallel with the Line output XLRs. There are additional pairs of ¼-inch unbalanced Send/Return jacks for inserting audio processors either pre or post the equalizer section. Front-panel switches to select Pre or Post are provided.

Under the hood, I found a metal sub-assembly bracket that holds six transformers—all in mu-metal cans. There are the original (spec) Sowter 3575 line Input and 1460F 600-ohm output isolation transformers (originally, the channel strips had unbalanced outputs). In addition, there are two large custom-wound Cinemag CMMI-5C mic input transformers.

The CMMI-5C is a 1:5 step-up mic transformer based on Ed Reichenbach’s design of the Jensen JT-13K, which originally replaced the out-of-print Zutto Bellclaire models. The Zuttos have a huge peak at 30 kHz, and that was a big part of the original channel’s “je ne sais quoi.” Those Trident A-Range modules have frequency response all the way out to 40 kHz. My own experience from tracking sessions in the ’70s-’80s at Cherokee Studios, L.A.— drums, bass, guitars, keyboards and vocals, using 20 to 30 channels

in their Trident A-Range consoles—was that they sounded magnificent!

MADE TO ROCK! The Trident A-Range’s two Class-A channels are built on separate circuit boards stacked one above the other. The 4-band equalizer uses proportionate-Q peaking circuits for the inductor-based Hi-Mid and Low-Mid bands.

They have a broad Q of 1—about 1.3 to 1.4 octaves. The Hi and Low frequency bands are shelving types with 6dB/octave slopes.

One distinctive visual feature of the A-Range console is the four (70mm long) Bournes faders for the 4-band EQ’s boost/cut controls.

During a tracking or mixing session, it is easy to scan across an entire A-Range console and check at a glance whatever EQ settings you had going on.

On the new Trident A-Range channel, adjacent to each fader are the custom-made Taiwan Alpha rotary switches to select frequencies, plus large aluminum knobs for the rotary Input gain and the Output level control—again, reminiscent of the A-Range console modules.

Equalizer frequencies are: • Band 1 at 50, 80, 100 and 150 Hz • Band 2 at 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz and 2 kHz • Band 3 continues with 3 kHz, 5k, 7k and 9k • The top band is switchable between 8 kHz, 10k, 12k and 15k Both the Low Pass and High Pass filters are second-order, with 12 dB/octave curves.

The Low Pass filter has 9 kHz, 12k and 15k frequencies, while the High Pass filter has 25, 50 and 100Hz points. Each has associated pushbuttons. I always liked the fader’s center detents, which made it easy to “zero out” and reset the EQ. IN THE STUDIO My first use was as a line-level processor for individual mono and stereo tracks. I “toned up”— applying a 0 dB VU from the signal generator in Pro Tools on an insert of the master bus. I set the rotary Line Level input rotary switch to 0 dB—it switches line level in 5 dB steps from +10 dB to -10 dB. Interesting to me is that this rotary switch has 16 positions and rotates continuously through five line-level positions and then 11 microphone gain positions from -15 dB to -65 dB, also in 5 dB steps. There is a Line input switch that changes the strip from the mic XLR input to the line XLR input.

The back panel of the Trident A-Range channel strip includes XLR connectors for both Line and Mic inputs, with duplicate ¼-inch TRS jacks. Sets of TRS jacks also run in parallel with the Line output XLRs. Additional pairs of ¼-inch unbalanced Send/Return jacks allow audio processors to be inserted pre or post the equalizer.

The unit’s Output Line Level is a regular linear pot, and it was right on the 0 dB mark—I usually never change this calibrated position, even when recording. But I liked this variability to exactly match channel outputs. This also means my Pro Tools (-18 dBu) I/O’s calibration is good, and I can start inserting the A-Range on any track(s) in a mix or record directly to the analog inputs of my Crane Song Interstellar ADC/Master Clock.

I immediately tried an old trick: boosting at 50 Hz and at the same time using the 25Hz highpass filter. On kicks and especially bass guitars, it sounds just like the bottom end on those British Rock records I grew up on!

I tried it out on an already-recorded backing vocal stack, and I just love the sound of boosting +6 dB at 15 kHz while also lifting 80 Hz about +3 dB. This is a smooth, broad-sounding musical EQ that was capable of any change I wanted.

Even using exactly the same settings, I was not able to reproduce this sound with a plug-in equalizer—they all sounded too clinical and boring for this rock song.

I also tried the unbalanced inserts. I patched an old MXR Distortion+ pedal into the ¼-inch jacks, and I liked how easy it was to switch the inserted processor Pre or Post EQ from the front panel. I had the Trident A-Range on an electric piano track with an Eventide Tricerachorus pedal creating a swirling sound.

A typical chore for a pair of A-Range modules would be on kick and snare. Right away, I found the Input peak LED to blink with nearly every hit—it is set to +16 dBu (+12VU) measured just before the EQ section, so it reads peaks from either microphones or line-level signals coming into the unit.

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: Trident Audio Developments PRODUCT: Trident A-Range Dual Discrete Mic Pre/EQ WEBSITE: www.tridentaudiodevelopments.com PRICE: $4,750 MSRP PROS: Awesome channel that rocks!

CONS: I wish the peak LEDs were adjustable

The Output LED is set at +10 dBu (6VU)— but the channel will output up to +26 dBu (+22VU) before clip. I wish that these LEDs were adjustable and conveyed a little more information—maybe a bi-colored LED with both pre-clip and hard-clip level indication.

Because I could adjust the input and output levels freely, I ran a stereo drum loop into the unit and tried frequency-sensitive saturation on the channels and compared them to cleaner settings.

I set the Line input level to the least sensitive at +15 dB for the clean setup, and then made up level (just like a compressor) on the Output pot that was set to around +7 dB. I compared that with the same loop, but this time the Input was set at -10 dB and the Output controls were at -10. All peak LEDs were lighting up with every hit, whereas on the clean setup, only the Output LEDs would flash.

I got the same sort of results with a drop-tuned bass guitar; profoundly overloaded and devoid of any attack (pick)—you can do it, but there are lots of boxes or plug-ins that do this well.

VOCAL RECORDING I recorded vocals using my Bock U195 condenser (cardioid only) set to Normal and followed the Trident with a Retro Instruments 176 compressor set to 4:1, slow attack and fast release. I used the -35 dB mic gain setting and boosted +3 at 15 kHz, with the Output knob at 0 dB. I made up recording level using the 176’s Output knob.

I thought this combo with the singer(s) within inches of the mic and pop screen worked great!

The Trident is an honest conveyor of what is presented in front of the mic. I saw no clip LEDs on either the Input or Output. Maximum compression, when I looked at the 176’s meter, was about 6 dB. I also tried a new Cloud 44 ribbon (passive) mic, and there was plenty of gain for my loud singer available, so no need for the 25 dB of gain from the company’s CL-1 Cloudlifter preamp.

Overall, I found the Trident A-Range Dual Discrete Mic Pre/EQ to be an excellent-sounding dual-channel system in a class of its own, just like the original Trident A-Range console. n

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Tech // reviews ASI Audio 3DME BT G2 Active Ambient In-Ear Monitoring System

By Steve La Cerra

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ny musician or tech who has used in-ear monitors has experienced the feeling of isolation created by rejection of ambient sound when wearing IEMs. In fact, the entire principle of effective IEM use hinges upon the fact that well-fit IEMs seal the ear against ambient noise.

It then becomes a monitor engineer’s job to “fix” this issue by sending a mix of instruments and ambient sound into the performer’s earpieces. On-stage ambient microphones and audience mics can alleviate the isolation, but they can distort or even reverse the L/R stereo image (when a performer faces upstage, for example).

Last year, ASI Audio introduced 3DME, the first generic-fit IEM system with Active Ambient audio (patented by Sensaphonics) at a price that won’t give you a heart attack. 3DME addresses the issue of ambient monitoring by embedding miniature binaural microphones in the earpieces, allowing room sound to be controlled via a smartphone app. BT G2 is the latest version of 3DME. Each 3DME system ships in a zippered case with a rechargeable bodypack, generic-fit, in-ear monitors with built-in binaural microphones, a USB charging cable, 1/8-inch TRS cable, shirt clip, cleaning tool and three pairs of Comply ear tips (small, medium and large). To manage 3DME settings, you’ll need to download the ASI Audio BT G2 app, available free from the App Store and Google Play.

Controls on the 3DME beltpack are minimal. The top panel has a rocker-switch volume control for the ambient microphones and an LED battery gauge. One side panel has a 1/8-inch TRS line input, and the other side panel has dual TRS jacks for the 3DME earpieces.

The bottom panel hosts the power switch, charging status LEDs, USB Type C charging port and 1/8-inch TRS output jack, which carries the same signal that’s heard through the 3DME earpieces (useful for binaural recording).

Incorporating 3DME into your IEM rig is a little different than using standard IEMs because two separate sources are mixed via

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the bodypack. One is the IEM mix created in the monitor console, fed to an IEM transmitter of your choice. Normally, you’d connect the earpieces to the audio output of the IEM receiver, but in this case, output from the receiver is patched into the 3DME bodypack using the supplied 1/8-inch jumper cable.

The other signal is the room sound captured by the binaural microphones.

The IEM mix passes through the 3DME pack at unity gain, and the volume control on the pack applies only to the binaural microphones. Volume of the IEM mix must be controlled from the wireless IEM receiver.

3DME earpieces employ a dual-driver design that delivered welldefined, balanced sound at all dynamics—including at levels louder than I’d want to monitor. The fit of the earpieces has a profound effect on bass response, as well as in sealing the ear against ambient noise, so it’s worth the time and effort to experiment with different

The updated bodypack includes a jumper cable to connect to wireless IEM receivers, and the Bluetoothenabled ASI Audio App for control.

ear tips until you find the ones that fit best. The system ships with Comply tips, but other types such as Christmas tree tips or flanged tips can also be used (I’m a fan of the Christmas tree type).

The manual warns that a brief feedback squeal may occur if the earpieces are not fully sealed, and the Gen 2 app provides a start-up squeal suppressor—but I heard the squeal only once or twice. The app also features an easy-to-use “seal test” to ensure that you’ve achieved a proper fit.

LET’S JAM My first use of the 3DME was at a jam session where dozens of musicians were swapping in and out, playing electric guitar, bass, drums, vocals and keys. Due to the nature of the event, monitoring was via traditional wedges, and the stage was really loud. Normally I’d have used ear plugs in such a situation, but the 3DME system was perfect for several reasons.

If you are a musician stepping into such a situation, you don’t know what you’ll get in regards to monitors, so using the 3DME—even without an IEM mix—provides control over the stage volume. As a tech, I loved the fact that I could leave the earpieces in place, use the beltpack volume control between songs to communicate with other techs and musicians, and then turn the volume down when the next group of musicians started playing. I can see that the 3DME system would have similar applications in band rehearsals.

Using the 3DME while playing drums on several recording sessions allowed me to mix in the ambient mics so I could hear my drums, while not endlessly torturing the engineer to work on my cue mix.

PRODUCT SUMMARY COMPANY: ASI Audio PRODUCT: 3DME BT G2 Ear Monitor System WEBSITE: www.asiaudio.com PRICE: $799.00. Upgrade to custom sleeves $175.00 PROS: Excellent sound quality. Allows a user to “turn down the room” when properly fitted. EQ and limiter can be applied to binaural mics only or to mics and line input.

CONS: No indication on bodypack for current volume setting of built in microphones.

Bodypack volume can be easily changed accidentally. App does not reflect changes in volume made directly on the bodypack.

unilateral hearing loss), Start-up Squeal Suppressor, Monitor Processing Bypass, and Earpiece Type (to accommodate Custom Pro earpieces with dual or quad drivers). If Monitor Processing Bypass is turned on, then the EQ and limiter affect the binaural mics but not the line input, enabling you to EQ the line input separately at the mixing console. I generally left the Bypass on.

The app also includes the ability to save and load presets, which hold all of the settings mentioned above; when the bodypack is powered off, the most INSIDE THE APP New features in the ASI Audio 3DME recent settings are retained.

The ASI Audio app was Gen2 are controlled along with EQ, limiting and other functions by way The app is easy to use, and very useful for managing of a Bluetooth link with the newly I loved the fact that I could an assortment of settings. updated ASI Audio App for Android create and save presets for It communicates with your and iOS. different situations. As can be smart device via Bluetooth and is organized into three main screens: Mic the case with any Bluetooth-equipped device, my Level and Limiter (Main screen), Equalizer and iPhone occasionally lost communication with the bodypack, but this was remedied by tapping the Options.

The Main screen provides controls for Bluetooth icon at the top left of the app screen. ambient mic level and limiter threshold. The Equalizer screen features a 7-band graphic EQ MIXING LIVE with a Flat switch that bypasses the EQ while As expected, it took some time to trust the holding the EQ settings. EQ points are very system: I’d mix with the 3DME, then remove the musical, and (unless you’re carving a turkey earpieces to check my mix, then replace them out of the EQ settings) you’d be hard-pressed in my ears. For the most part, my mixes didn’t to make it sound bad. EQ, limiter and mic level sound much different through the 3DME system controls can be stereo-paired or separated, a than they did with the earpieces removed— great feature for people who have variations except that I was hearing the P.A. system at a in hearing between ears. My wish list would lower volume. It’s a weird sensation to start with include the ability to adjust the frequency points the volume level of the binaural mics all the way off, then slowly raise it, causing the earpieces to of at least one or two EQ bands.

The Options screen provides the ability to “disappear.”

ASI Audio’s 3DME system is an incredibly customize system settings. Bodypack volume can be set to “Step Mode” (the +/- buttons change the useful tool that solves the issue of IEM microphone level one step/2 dB at a time) or “Set isolation, while providing high-quality sound Mode” (pressing the +/- button toggles between reproduction at a price point that’s affordable for two user-set volume levels). I preferred using Set most working musicians—especially when you Mode because it was easier to switch between consider the fact that you could easily spend the a performing volume and a communicating same amount of money on a set of traditional volume. If I used Step Mode, it felt like every time IEMs without Active Ambient audio.

3DME also provides an excellent means of I moved or removed the bodypack, I accidentally hearing conservation for musicians, techs and changed the volume.

The Options page is also where you’ll find mix engineers, and the app makes the whole CROS Connection (helpful for users with package extremely user-friendly. n The binaural mics sound very natural and had no trouble keeping up with the SPL of a close-miked drum kit. I think I actually preferred listening to the drums through the binaural mics, as opposed to hearing them through the studio cue mix, because (1) there was no latency via the 3DME, and (2) I could easily hear all components of the kit at all dynamic levels. An added bonus was the fact that I didn’t have to rip out the earpieces every time I wanted to communicate with another musician.

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Tech // reviews

Plugin Alliance Neold U17 Rare 1954 Broadcast ‘Secret Compressor’ Now in Software

By Mike Levine

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eold modeled the U17 plug-in (distributed by Plugin or set either or both to Auto mode.

The Frequency and Shape knobs adjust the sidechain frequency Alliance) from a 1954 broadcast compressor built by Allgemeine Telefon-Fabrik in Hamburg, Germany, which content. The former controls a tilt-style filter, and the latter lets manufactured less than 40 of the units. Neold refers to it as “the you crossfade it from low-pass to flat to high-pass. You can solo the Secret Compressor” and says it was “one of the rarest compressors sidechain by pressing the Monitor button.

Interestingly, one of the factory presets, Lo-Fi Bass, keeps the ever built.” It featured a diode-bridge compressor section and a Monitor solo engaged, outputting only sidechain signal. The Mix tube-and-transformer-based amplifier.

One of the advantages of digital emulations of hardware is that the knob provides for parallel compression and saturation.

I tried the U17 on vocals, electric guitar and bass, acoustic guitar, developer can add features that weren’t on the original, providing extra functionality. Neold did just that with the U17. The most significant resonator guitar, multitrack drums, drum loops, and on the master bus. I was able to improve all those sources addition is the Density stage, which comes with it. before the compression circuit. You can use The most significant The emulated diode-bridge compression it to add saturation and to reduce heavy addition is the Density circuit has its own sound and character transients before compression. that’s not as edgy as a FET compressor The higher you set the Density knob, stage, which comes has a warm and thick tone. I wouldn’t the more saturation it creates. The before the compression and call it transparent, but I got great results Emphasis knob sets the frequency area for circuit. You can use it to on organic sources like acoustic guitar, the saturation, allowing you to accentuate and vocals and electronic ones like drum a particular frequency range, add saturation and to machine and synth bass.

The U17’s Input knob drives the reduce heavy transients Between its diode bridge sound compression circuit but is after the Density and its Density circuit, the U17 would stage in the signal chain. The Torque knob before compression. make a versatile addition to any plug-in functions like a combination of threshold The higher you set the compressor collection. and knee control. Low settings produce Like all of Plugin Alliance’s products, clean-sounding transients, whereas high Density knob, the more you can buy it individually or access it as ones squash them down more. You can saturation it creates. part of a subscription bundle. n adjust the Attack and Release manually,

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Open Channel Can Artificial Stupidity Save Us From AI?

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here’s a herd of elephants in the room these days, fashions and, of course, do product placements. Many of them are gorgeous but let’s talk about the one that many people virtual women with dewy eyes, perfect skin and come-hither expressions. won’t even admit exists. The one that makes Companies love these influencers because you can create them in a day or people say, “Oh, that could never happen.” The one that, two, then do commercials in a few days that don’t require makeup, hair so far, has been sitting quietly in a corner as it grows from styling, lunch, lighting, or any of those other messy things humans need.

The virtual humans are perfect—they don’t talk back or ask for residuals. being a baby elephant into an adult.

They release perfect singles, sung perfectly. And they not only “want to be Yes, the elephant that can put an end to our industry

By Craig forever young”…they are forever young. as we know it.

The one that will make you look nervously Anderton For a generation raised online, whose window to the world is a over your shoulder as you revise your resume. The one that smiles and says it’s here to serve us, and believes that it is. The one smartphone display, it makes perfect sense. When that window to the world becomes a high-res VR headset, it will we’ve named artificial intelligence. make even more sense.

Oh, but we don’t have to worry about We aimed for “perfect” As to what this means for our industry, that…we’re creative types! We base what we recordings that prioritized let’s be honest: We sowed the seeds of our do on experiences that no machine could own destruction. We aimed for “perfect” have. Machines don’t laugh, cry, fall in love, timing and focus group recordings that prioritized timing and focus take mind-expanding drugs, or fall into the reactions over lightning in a group reactions over lightning in a bottle. depths of despair—then turn their lives bottle. We acclimated people We acclimated people to thinking that around, rise like phoenixes and go on Oprah composite, phoned-in parts by groups that to talk about it. to thinking that composite, never existed are music.

But thinking that machines can’t replace phoned-in parts by groups One-hundred-percent synthesized music us ignores the fact that they already are. soundtracks support CGI-based movies Need a narrator? Advanced speech synthesis that never existed is music. (sometimes with re-animated dead actors). sounds are not only indistinguishable from a human voice, but a perfect human voice. With perfect pacing, pronunciation, We’ve accepted software that analyzes mixes and makes edits based on a timing, the ability to recognize context, and pitch variations that add database of hit music. We have mastering services that master via algorithm, expressiveness. And the perfect narrator never mouth clicks, inhales, uses and singers who chase unattainable standards of beauty through botox and body shaping. We sent the message that perfection is the goal. And now, poor mic technique, p-pops, has a sore throat, burps or wants to unionize.

But surely, this AI narrator couldn’t do James Earl Jones? Of course it machines can deliver that perfection. So, revise your resume, because you’ll never be as perfect as what AI can produce. can. Just not quite yet.

Except…we have one big advantage over AI because of something it You might think that, thankfully, you still need a human to write the words the narrator will say…right? But now algorithms can write draft ad can’t do: Fail.

Yes, fail. Failure can spur pushing the envelope, innovating and questioning copy. Feed in key words and word count, and out comes generic copy— the status quo. Starting with perfection eliminates the crucial process of which isn’t that different from human-generated generic copy.

And even though we have samplers with incredibly accurate emulations, pursuing perfection. That process includes failures, which lead to learning. someone still has to write the music, yes? For now. Maybe. But not in a few Strings of failures can put in motion successes that would never have years, when you tell the machine “action movie chase, 1:32 long, peak at happened otherwise. Failures of old models give birth to new models.

Sure, AI can refine conclusions it makes that aren’t perfect and “learn” 1:06:45, end with big sound, symphony orchestra.” If you’ve ever played with Sony Creative Software’s Cinescore program (which mysteriously from them. But it can’t fail in the way humans can, or understand the disappeared shortly after its introduction), you know that algorithmically ramifications of the resulting unpredictable consequences.

So, the only way to beat artificial intelligence is with artificial stupidity. generated scores, albeit primitive, are already possible.

Then again, there’s always the final comforting thought: Okay, AI can Do dumb human things just to see what happens. Make mistakes, embrace generate stuff with the look and feel of real words or music. But humans your flaws and fall down. So what if you fail? Only then does the interesting part happen: You climb your way back up. know when something’s fake, and, ultimately, they’ll prefer reality.

Over time, the sum total of those mistakes, flaws, overreaching attempts Dream on.

In Korea, virtual influencers are taking over. These AI-created “people” that became epic fails, and ultimate redemption, will coalesce into post on Instagram, interact with followers, travel to exotic locales, model something uniquely fascinating…and human. ■

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