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Yash Raj Films sets the standards for Bollywood to follow Pedro Ferreira on Darkness, guitars and rockers Why Apple is about to transform the TV and film industry Technical firsts at the World Cup Katz’s tips on dirtying it up Ten mixing consoles of note REVIEWS: awo mc lash ic er is a e exion il er

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Products

News

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Headroom

Sales, contracts, appointments, bi bites and the bigger picture.

New introductions and announcements.

Origins of dubbing and glitch plus Audio Lookilikies.

Craft 14

Yash Raj Films

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Pedro Ferreira

A new and bright star on the Mumbai film audio production scene sets the standards for others to follow.

Producer of the multi-platinum selling Darkness album talks about guitar sounds, inspiring young rockers, and starting his own record label.

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Sweet Spot

The room that George built. Eviction from his bedroom’ studio causes our man to rethink his work and build a room.

Katz’s column

ou’ve got the sound chain sounding sweet and right, now Bob Kat shows you how to get a little down and dirty.

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Ten

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Your business

Mixing consoles of note.

Business 48

The transformation of Apple

It makes our production tools, controls the digital future of the music industry, and is also about to transform the TV and film industry.

Large-scale analogue desks have often outlived their original owners and facilities and gone on to find new lives and purpose elsewhere.

Technology 52

Putting the World Cup in the net

The sporting triumph overshadowed the technical achievement with HD and multichannel firsts and the employment of the world’s largest audio routing system.

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Slaying Dragons

High Definition picture. Watkinson demonstrates his usual reluctance to express an opinion or rock the boat.

Reviews 22

Studer Vista 5

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Røde NTG-2

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Lawo mc 90

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SE Reflexion Filter

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HHB FlashMic DRM85

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Rupert Neve Designs 5042

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Serato Pitch ‘n Time Pro and LE

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D L ditorial Director enon el 1 1 mail en resolutionma ditorial o ce P o aywards eath 1

Schoepe com 31 D

Contributors ob ames eor e Shillin eith Spencer llen erry elson on hornton eil illman i el opson ndy Day Dan Daley ohn at inson

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DV S M S L S uropean Sales Clare Stur a er el 13 1 mail clare resolutionma com

P D C DL Dean Coo Dean Coo Productions el 1 3 mail dean resolutionma com

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orensen orch ove.

DP M C P S has announced a ma or staff restructure following a year-on-year growth of 20 to May 2006. Ren Morch, formerly with DK Technologies, has oined DPA as new development manager with a brief to oversee all technical pro ects. Ole Brosted Sorensen has become director of innovation, steering the company’s technological developments, and JensJorn Stokholm — one of the developers of DPA’s miniature mic — is director of development.

Morten Stove has become sales and marketing director following the departure of Craig Parrish.

I started off in this industry in sales and marketing, and it’s a great time to reconnect with our client base as we bring more new, innovative products to market,’ said Stove.

M has resigned as president of Harman Pro Group for health reasons but will continue to serve as advisor to the Group. Blake Augsburger, formerly president of Crown Audio, has been promoted to president of Harman Pro Group. Mark Graham has become president of Crown Audio and Rob Urry has been promoted to Harman Pro Group chief technology officer while retaining his position as president of the Harman Music Group.

Leader

ou don t have to scratch around or very lon be ore you ind someone who will tell you that the audio business is not what it was here ll always be some ray o sunshine that will connect a collection o studio closures with some pro audio rma eddon and e plain how it s been on the cards or years you re particularly un ortunate then you mi ht even detect a certain morbid pleasure in your tormentor s tone particularly i he is o a certain a e uietly deli htin in the mis ortune o those who didn t live in the olden days course he s partly ri ht but he s terribly wron in his conclusion ne o the typical mani estations o bein out o touch is seein thin s on a very personal and local level and re erencin that to your own e perience which is out o date and now totally irrelevant nyone who travels re uently to other audio communities around the world and don t count trade shows as valid intelli ence atherin will appreciate that mar ets in di erent parts o the world all ollow a similar type o rowth curve but they are at di erent sta es o that curve loo at a developed mar et li e the London music recordin studio scene will tell you one story while the lm and music recordin mar ets in ombay will tell you a completely di erent one he ey to understandin lies in the point at which a community s widescale adoption o technolo y too place hus the London studios that all invested heavily in analo ue when there was ample demand were less resilient to mar et chan es and the e ects o democratisin technolo y when that came alon they had urther to all n ombay the audio community rew with the new technolo y and too advanta e o the mar et chan es and it s still rowin to eep up with demand hat you ll never hear those doom merchants comment on is the rowth in acilities in their own bac yard that are ta in advanta e o the technolo y and the mar et chan es hat s because they don t understand them and they see them as the reason or the demise o the olden days they han er or ut the audio business is simply not what it was it s now somethin completely di erent enon Schoep

Blue Sky is choice for Envy

M C L S has appointed Fraser Jones to head its expanded and restructured operation in the U S A . M e rg i n g ’s original Chicago office gives way to new sales and support offices in LA and Portland. A new dealer structure has also been implemented. Fraser will continue with his Independent Audio distribution company. Kaspar Hugentobler will continue to run Merging’s LA office under the direction of the Portland head uarters.

S Publications Ltd ll ri hts reserved o part o this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any orm or by any means without the prior written consent o the Publishers reat care is ta en to ensure accuracy in the preparation o this publication but neither

This year’s US AES Convention at the Moscone Center in San Francisco will have a three-day exhibition — 6-8 October — rather than the usual four days.

The Conference Program at the Convention will maintain its traditional four-day schedule from Thursday 5 October until Sunday 8 October,’ said AES executive director Roger Furness. Our goal has always been to tailor conventions to provide the information attendees need to work smarter, more efficiently and more creatively. We take exhibitor and attendee comments seriously, and try to incorporate their suggestions whenever possible.’

Furness said the increased effort to attract end users’ at last year’s US Convention in New ork was another example of this philosophy. By establishing Official Retail Sponsorships with leading pro audio dealerships we significantly increased attendance for last year’s event, a win/win situation for everyone,’ he added. Our decision to keep the exhibition hall open for three instead of four days will enable exhibitors who are generally focused on their booth activity to take greater advantage of the educational and technical sessions at the core of AES events.’

For the Pro Audio Expo Convention that was held in Paris in May, the AES is claiming more than 6,400 attendees compared to 6,200 in Barcelona 2005.

The 122nd AES Pro Audio Expo Convention in 2007 will be held 5-8 May at the Austria Centre in Vienna.

Røde buys Event (l-r) Chris Fichera, VP Blue Sky, and Hargest.

Central London’s Envy postproduction facility has e uipped both of its tracklaying rooms with Blue Sky Media desk 5.1 speaker systems. The tracking rooms aren’t the si e of the on-line post rooms,’ explained sound designer Ian Hargest. We needed a 5.1 monitor system that would

S Publications Ltd or the editor can be held responsible or its contents he views e pressed are those o the contributors and not necessarily those o the Publishers

represent the same feel and sound of our custom Exigy speakers, but in a compact si e, and the Blue Skys are perfect for it.’

Envy runs Avid and Digidesign systems and its large rooms are e uipped with widescreen pro ection, Exigy 5.1 monitors and Icon desks.

S Publications Ltd e istered in n land and Company number 3 e istered o ce uity ouse 1 13 d ware Middlese

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Australian microphone manufacturer R de has bought US studio monitor manufacturer Event Electronics. Mark Ludmer, who has headed Rode’s distribution and service centre in the US, has been appointed CEO of Event.

Rode president Peter Freedman said Event had a long established and well respected brand with strong sales programmes and that he could see a great deal of synergy between the two brands.

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ew Sony updates SACD with new master format Sony has announced a new cutting master format that will simplify and speed up the production of SACDs and decrease costs associated with the mastering process. Sony and Philips engineers have developed the Unified Cutting Master Format (UCMF) as a file-based cutting master format, similar to DDP for CD. Until now, SACD production has been a tape-based process, but UCMF is not media dependent, so cutting masters can be created, stored and transported as digital files over a network and archived to optical disc.

Sony reports that its disc replication factories in Anif, Austria and Shi uoka Japan, and its SACD production studio in Nogi aka, Tokyo have completed the transition to UCMF. Sony’s replication plant in Terra Haute, USA, as well as production studios in New ork and in Hong Kong will become UCMF-ready within the next three months.

PLASA helps members reduce bad debt risks The Professional Lighting and Sound Association (PLASA) has launched the first in a new suite of financial services designed to help member companies protect themselves against the risk of bad debts and to assist them in trading competitively in the global market.

The three new services — free credit checks, credit insurance facilities and a debt collection service — have been launched to minimise the risks involved in trading with particular customers and enable members to make more informed decisions.

PLASA members can now re uest free credit checks on all UK companies, provided by CreditSafe. PLASA has also teamed up with CMR Insurance Services, specialists in credit insurance, to offer a credit insurance and credit management service. The new service will work in partnership with members’ own credit control systems to minimise credit risks and, if the unexpected happens, it can pay up to 90 of commercial losses and 95 of political losses.

All businesses should make sure that they are protected, and this is particularly true for smaller companies that could be wiped out by one large bad debt,’ said PLASA’s Finance Director Shane McGreevy.

These new initiatives mean that our members now have straightforward protection against bad debts.’

Superman mi ed on lein

ummel

ppointments M L has oined Shure Distribution UK’s C o m m e rc i a l Division in the role of applications and product planning m a n a g e r. H e previously worked for Genelec.

Casey Stone mixed the original soundtrack for Superman Returns, composed by John Ottman, in 5.1 on the Klein Hummel monitoring system he has been using for more than two years.

I’m using the O 300Ds for LCR and an O 800 subwoofer,’ explained Stone. I’m using some two-way O 110 nearfields for the surrounds.’ ’They are accurate. Not in the sense that there’s any gold standard for what a speaker should sound like, I ust mean that you can hear the details of your mix. The speaker doesn’t obscure things,’ he said. The clarity of the K H monitors helps me oom in on any little thing that is bothering me in the mix. When I pop the mix up to some other speakers, the problems are further away and harder to diagnose. Plus, the 0330s really put out a good amount of bass for a cabinet that si e.’

Bosch to acquire Telex Communications Telex Communications Holdings has signed a definitive merger agreement with a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH, in which Bosch will ac uire Telex for an aggregate purchase price of US$420 million, including the assumption of Telex indebtedness.

Telex is home to Electro-Voice, Dynacord, Midas, Klark Teknik, Telex, and RTS and in 2005 generated sales of $308 million with nearly 2,000 employees at 14 locations in nine countries. If the deal goes through — the transaction is sub ect to regulatory approvals — Telex will come under the Bosch Security Systems division. In 2005, Bosch Security Systems generated sales of approximately one billion Euros from intrusion and fire alarm systems, video surveillance, access control, and communications systems. With some 7,800 associates, the division is represented at more than 40 locations worldwide.

With the ac uisition of Telex, Bosch Security Systems can significantly expand its communications systems product offerings and penetrate the professional audio e uipment market,’ said Bosch Board of Management member Peter J Marks. The strength of the Telex distribution network

will enhance our worldwide market position as a provider of comprehensive security and communications systems. At the same time, we expect to obtain a leading position in the American market.’

Telex is a company with a strong tradition of high uality and customer satisfaction.’ said Raymond V Malpocher, CEO of Telex Communications (pictured). We believe the ac uisition of Telex by Bosch, a forwardlooking company, will give our employees and business associates an opportunity to develop further in a growth oriented environment.’

S, SSL has hired Donovan Stark as partnership manager based in the LA office. He oins after three years as accounts manager with GC Pro where he was the top AWS 900 salesman.

Also based in LA, Quinton Nixon has oined as product specialist from TC Electronic.

L D C L S has appointed Jeffrey Cox to VP for the EAW brand group.

As the founder and CEO of Cox Audio Engineering he was responsible for the introduction and manufacturing of the V-DOSC Line Array, a product that caused a paradigm shift in loudspeaker formatting.

xhi o s ra iano omaschini an oar o avelli.

ML S D Exhibo SpA has been appointed EAW distributor for Italy.

S C P D is distributing the HA-8089 Helical Antenna from Orlando-based Professional Wireless Systems (PWS). As an In Ear Monitor transmitter antenna or wireless microphone receiver antenna, the Helix minimises RF dropouts and considerably increases the range over an omnidirectional antenna.

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Prent opts or surround PMC

e oria an r ce ow e.

D L , founder and former president of Apogee Sound Incorporated, has oined Community Professional Loudspeakers as product manager. DeLoria brings more than 26 years’ of experience in pro audio product design, business development, and marketing initiatives.

L C S appointed Wa v e H o u s e a s its distributor in Denmark. ave o se s enne h remer.

PMC has installed an IB2 active surround monitoring system in Ronald Prent’s API Vision room at Galaxy Studios, Mol, Belgium.

The system is based on the IB2 three-way design that is also installed at Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang Studio, Teldex Berlin and JVC Japan.

I had heard and used PMC systems in Europe and the US and fell in love with them,’ explained Prent. My ob has become even more en oyable and I have found I can work faster as they resolve so much information at all levels. I arrive at a great mix with virtually no work to be done at the mastering stage. I haven’t worked with anything that comes close to their resolution.’

The monitor driver complement consists of PMC’s 10-inch flat carbon fibre piston and 75mm soft dome mid range, topped with a 27mm silk dome tweeter with a 27 element 24dB per octave crossover network. The amplification for all channels is supplied by the Bryston Powerpac 300. Rear channels are a custom-built low- profile edition with identical driver line-up and response.

Greg Wells praises his Porticos l-r

age re eric s an avi son.

D V DS has oined Technical Earth, the London-based specialists in e uipment servicing and technical design/installation, to work alongside MD John Fredericks and Dan Page.

oin e is ri or in o a i arco occhi a ro

Producer, engineer, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist Greg Wells has discovered the Rupert Neve Designs Portico range and bought six, with plans for more.

I ust randomly came across the Portico 5042 tape emulation box on-line,’ explained Wells, whose US facility features a classic Neve 5114 desk and lots of vintage gear.

His first opportunity to use it was on a session with engineer Joe ook for a rock band. We both checked the 5042 out and were prepared to put it right back in the box and send it back. But we were completely gobsmacked we were blown away. Now

Joe owns one and I own one.

Joe was so into the 5042 that he started to use it as a line amp for bass and, I think, guitars, and maybe even vocals. Then, when we were doing rough mixes we put it across the stereo bus. It’s really a very musical box.’

Greg now also has five 5043 compressor/ limiters. It’s become my 2-bus compressor,’ he said. It has that magic, gushy, Neve sound that one hopes for. And in feedback mode, when it emulates the vintage units, it’s ridiculous. It’s basically the best sounding 33609 I’ve heard.’

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Hank Neuberger, Grammy-winning producer from Chicago’s Third Wave Productions, recorded Van Morrison at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville for video producers Three on the Tree and director Danny Clinch using the Holophone H2-Pro microphone.

Our challenge was to get great audience feedback,’ said Neuberger. We had no seat kills available to us and very limited options as to how to hang microphones.

So we simply put the Holophone on a standard microphone tripod stand and put it right near the front of house console, which is in the balcony.

We were interested in capturing the impact, clarity, punch and persuasiveness of the audience,’ Neuberger continued, and the H2-Pro was very impressive. Veteran audio mixers who work in the Ryman also said they were genuinely impressed with the uality of that audience capture -— they had never heard the Ryman audience sound that good. In fact, they called in other local engineers specifically to hear the audience through the Holophone.

The best word I would use to describe the H2-Pro is persuasive,’ he said.

I’ve struggled with spaced pairs in postproduction, to make them work in a convincing manner. Holophone has solved that problem for us. It is always persuasive it always puts you right there.’

Atmos first in F1 GP 5.1

V S S expanded into the US with the opening of an office at the Soundcheck rehearsal facility in Nashville. Kevin Madden has been appointed national sales manager. He has worked for JBL, AKG and most recently Astatic.

nnovason has a iosales as i s aly. l-r ierl igi l erini e ano o el i.

Van the man caught on H2-Pro

The first 5.1 surround sound satellite live broadcast of a Formula One Grand Prix took place at Nurburgring, Germany in May and signal processing company SPL supplied Atmos 5.1 surround mic systems chosen by European broadcaster RTL to mic the event.

Ten separate systems were placed at various key points around the circuit including important bends and the pits.

The sound stages were in 4.1 with the centre ambience placed in phantom centre leaving the centre channel for mono commentary. This configuration meant TV stations receiving the satellite broadcast could add commentary in their own language to the centre channel. The 5.1 was so well received that SPL’s Atmos systems will be miking the 5.1 satellite broadcast of the F1 Grand Prix at Hockenheim in July.

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T in the Park will broadcast from Scotland during July and feature artists such as Goldfrapp and Paul Weller. Connecting the artists on the Pet Sounds Arena Stage to the BBC mixing truck will be 64 channels of Digital Snake by RSS supplied by Total Audio Solutions. Roland system group has appointed Total Audio Solutions as a main supplier and servicing centre for its Digital Snake products.

Using two 32 x 8 stage units and two front of house units the whole system will supply 96kH /24-bit to be mixed and broadcast to listeners of BBC Radio 1 and viewers of BBC2, BBC3 and BBC Scotland TV.

P F SS L V installation company Sound Solution Co Ltd has been appointed distributor in Korea for LA Audio.

D C C has been appointed UK distributor for the US True Systems range of microphone preamps.

The range comprises the P2 2-channel mic preamp, the Precision 8i 8-channel preamp, and the single channel P-Solo desktop preamp.

Audio-Technica in the US has named To d d C a m p b e l l as audio solutions specialist. He has been with AudioTe c h n i c a s i n c e 1995, previously serving as wireless technician and cinema sound technician.

M C MM C L Audio has appointed Richard McLean to a newly created office based sales support role where he will serve as the central point of contact for all CA dealers.

He first started working for amaha Kemble in 2004.

C P LL has been appointed BSS vice president of Worldwide Sales.

He previously spent seven years with Shure.

C D C S appointed Sebastian Song to distribute its systems in Singapore and Malaysia.

S C D , head uartered in Tokyo with a branch in Osaka, is now distributor of Dolby Laboratories’ digital loudspeaker products in Japan. d DC S has promoted Gareth Evans to engineering manager. He oined dB in 2001 as a pro ect manager.

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Digital Snakes have T in the Park

Audio monitoring for Cup

RTE Radio, the Irish public broadcaster, is refurbishing its radio studios and installing ten Studer OnAir 3000 consoles with the promise of more to come by 2007.

It is important for broadcasters to standardise their e uipment both from a support and operation point of view,’ said Michael O’Rourke, head of technology at RTE’s Radio Division. We examined the market for a suitable digital console to help us create a template that we could replicate in all our radio studios, and, two years ago, we decided in favour of the OnAir 3000. Studer has obviously listened to what users have been re uesting and has designed a superb desk. The practical design, scalability, flexibility, build uality, simplicity of operation and price of this desk made it an easy choice for all our different applications.’

The programme of digital upgrades has so far encompassed the four Dublin-based studios of RTE 1 and RTE 2, as well as studios used for the classical music station.

Three OnAir 3000 desks are installed in RTE’s regional stations, including the Gaelic service run from Galway. Plans are underway for a new remote studio, located Sveriges Television (SVT), Sweden’s national in a shopping centre, which will broadcaster, has completed the installation of also use RTE’s template design three Studer Vista 8s at facilities in Stockholm including the OnAir 3000. and Gothenburg.

Chapel raves on SE and Waves Steve Williams, who runs The Chapel Studios in Wimbledon London, is a big fan of SE mics and Waves software.

The point about the SE3 is that, because it’s not hugely expensive, I can dedicate it to one ob,’ he explained. I find it really works on cymbals, not because it has a boosted high end but it takes the high end and gives it some real clarity especially on my ride cymbal.

I’m really impressed with the Waves stuff,’ he continued. It is ama ing and

has become the essential tool for my studio and it is very easy to use as well. I’ve bought a Platinum bundle and am going to buy the Diamond bundle.

We’ve only been going two years,’ he said. Here we’ve had mostly new acts who really look set to do things. We’ve done a lot of video games too, lots of voiceovers.

We did X3 Reunion and today a voiceover for Whirlwind Of Vietnam. We’re not AIR or Abbey Road but The Chapel Studios is a great studio — we’re getting lots of people through the door.’

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Audionics supplied Gearhouse Broadcast with custom-designed monitoring systems as part of its technical facilities for the World Cup. They formed part of the BBC’s technical facilities at the IBC in Munich and the BBC studio in Berlin.

The systems are based around the Audionics MCX2 audio router and customdesigned loudspeaker monitor units. The 24x8 analogue router has been modified to enable simple wiring to eight loudspeakers via Cat5 cable. The self-powered loudspeakers have an alphanumeric display to enable the operator to select one of the 24 audio sources. Source names can be updated by the user, via a simple Windowsbased application.

Vitalizer integrated in multimedia chip Austriamicrosystems, a supplier of high performance analogue ICs, and SPL Electronics have concluded a collaboration to integrate SPL’s Vitali er studio sound processing into the AS3525 multimedia chip of Austriamicrosystems.

We are very pleased with SPL’s decision to make AS3525 the platform of choice for their expansion from a professional studio e uipment supplier to serving the music player market,’ said Alexander Harrer, senior VP and general manager of the Communications business unit at Austriamicrosystems.

The innovative development team at SPL gains a technological edge through its access to our multimedia chips, which are particularly powerful and extremely power-saving at the same time. We, on the other hand, can offer to the music player industry integrated circuits and reference designs with studio sound clarity and unprecedented audio precision in a compact and portable device.’

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ew he i Picture S The global entertainment industry has entered a growth phase, writes Nigel Jopson, and will increase at a 6.6 compound annual growth rate to $1.8 trillion in 2010, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. We expect that Asia Pacific will remain the fastest-growing region for the industry ... led by double-digit increases in Internet, TV distribution, casino and other regulated gaming and video games,’ said Marcel Fene , Asia Pacific leader of PWC’s Media Practice.

The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Administrator has added Macrovision’s Analogue Copy Protection (ACP) as a re uirement for the AACS DRM scheme for Blu-ray and HD DVD optical discs. This adds analogue hole plugging’ to the comprehensive AACS specification. ACP is a piece of DSP malarky that selectively distorts a digital video signal sent to an analogue output, the image uality for viewers is not affected’ but a digitally recorded copy is visibly degraded. The movie industry is having great success in getting its wish list for content protection, but there are uestions of device cost and complexity unresolved. Each uestion translates into uncertainty about the longterm futures of these formats before they’re even accepted in the market.

Meanwhile, in a remarkable oint effort, supported and funded by hitherto arch-rivals Sirius and XM satellite radio, Interoperable Technologies will bring a dual-subscription satellite radio to market later this year. For US$26/month US radio freaks can en oy 300 channels of mainly commercial-free radio. Bring to Europe, please E amming. com has ust the tool for bedroom musicians who want outside inspiration without leaving the comfort of their own duvets. It’s a collaborative MIDI application with pre-installed virtual instruments that works over a high-speed Internet connection, with

ecordin live with FX UK pro audio e uipment hire business FX Rentals has been responding to an increase in demand to record live performances. FX can provide an experienced recording engineer plus recording packages tailored to individual re uirements, to record live gigs, whatever the venue or budget.

I think record companies are pushing for many of the live recordings, which they see as a cost effective way of providing alternative products to market, and a source of material that can be released outside of the artists’ main album releases,’ said FX’s technical manager Adam Pope (pictured).

Recent recording work for FX includes the Arctic Monkeys, The Darkness, The Subways, Ian Brown and Nitin Sawnhey.

We generally use active mic splits — BSS or XTA — through discrete mic preamps,’ said Pope. These can be Focusrite, Millennia, ATI or Audient. We record direct to hard disk which includes up to 96-channel Radar, Pyramix or Pro Tools systems, and we always provide a back-up system, which can be another hard disk system or Tascam DA98HRs. We also provide four or more DPA and Sennheiser audience mics. The recording setup is always supported by a UPS, if video is involved we use a high uality sync pulse generator for video reference and video referenced timecode distribution, and we usually provide clients with a rough stereo mix on CD.’ An unusual recent pro ect was for DJ Heavensent, who re uired a 5.1, 96kH /24 recording of his three and a half hour set at the Compagneit club in Stockholm for a planned 5.1 HD-DVD release. FX’s senior tech Graeme Rogerson travelled to Sweden to record him accompanied by an i Radar V, Focusrite Octopre mic preamps, DPA 4011 mics, and Alesis Masterlink.

Astérix on DPA The Ast rix Parc near Paris, owned by European leisure group Gr vin Cie, placed an initial order for 44 DPA 4088 miniature cardioid headband mics for its live shows plus six 4061 miniature omnis that are being concealed inside performers’ costumes. Technical staff from the Parc will also undergo training at DPA’s premises in Copenhagen later in the year.

We needed microphones which would guarantee the highest audio uality and provide clear speech reproduction,’ said the Parc’s head sound engineer Christophe Girres. The DPA 4088s have excellent cardioid re ection which allows us to get more gain before feedback. The discreteness and comfort of the headsets were also important factors, as was the option of choosing different si ed headbands.’

Polish orchestra’s Penderecki Festival

TAS opens HD truck systems build UK OB specialists Arena has turned to Total Audio Solutions to e uip its next HDcapable OB truck, Unit 8. To achieve this, and to deal with forthcoming HD systems build pro ects, TAS has opened a dedicated Systems Warehouse at its head uarters in Bromsgrove and has started work on the Unit 8 chassis there.

The new warehouse, which is more than 8000 s uare feet in si e, features state-of-theart systems build technology including wirestripping e uipment, welding and cutting gear, and a fully e uipped spray shop.

With the opening of the new Systems Warehouse, we can cope with putting together almost any kind of system for HD broadcasters, whether it’s videoonly, audio-only, or, like the Arena trucks, pro ects with both elements,’ said TAS MD Peter Knowles. It’s been interesting to read

in the broadcast press recently how many production companies feel they’ve ust about got the hang of HD video, but admit that they’ve got very little idea of what to do about the audio side. As our name suggests, we have a great track record in supplying audio systems as well as video, and now we have extensive HD systems build experience too. We’re well placed to help companies e uip themselves to handle all aspects of high-definition broadcasting.’

The National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra recently employed an Allen Heath ML3000 console to manage live recording and broadcast during the Penderecki Festival, an annual three-day event held this year in Germany, that honours the Polish composer Kr ys tof Penderecki.

The ML3000 handled a stereo master and an 8-track feed from the 32 mic inputs with the help of the console’s mode switching facility.

The performance was mixed live by the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra producer Beata Jankowska and broadcast live to the various networks. The same mics were also routed via a mic splitter into a 32-channel Pro Tools system to provide an independent 32-track recording which will be edited for the CD release of the performance.

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#19930 - AWS900PLUS AD Reso

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Gone Platinum New AWS 900+ Analogue Workstation System

Everything you need to record, edit and mix

The original AWS 900 established a new category in modern console design.

Every inch a ‘real SSL’, it scooped the 2005 TEC Award in the Large Format Console category – despite measuring just 56" across!

Installed in more than 150 of the most prestigious project studios in the world, this unique combination of a compact, world-class analogue mixing console and a comprehensive DAW controller has notched up an impressive catalog of credits from the Rolling Stones’ ‘A Bigger Bang’ to Alicia Keys’ ‘Unplugged’ and Barbra Streisand’s ‘Guilty Pleasures’.

Now the new AWS 900+ builds on the successful formula by adding even tighter integration with all popular DAW platforms, enhancements to the

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full-duplex talkback link. It’s a real-time application — with preset tweaks for latency — surely the main stumbling block, as there’s no real-time solution to TCP/IP latency. I only counted 75 e ammer members, so please report back to Resolution if you oin. It struck me as a potentially very useful tool for remote overdubs, the VoIP talkback and Internet MIDI connections have no ready-made pro e uivalent.

42 years after the Rolling Stones kicked off the inaugural transmission in 1964, the final BBC Top Of The Pops show will air on 30 July. Top of The Pops as such is being axed but its place is being taken by at least 20 channels banging away, 24 hours a day, on satellite TV,’ observed cigar-chomping DJ Jimmy Savile, TOTP’s first presenter. Audiences have plummeted since its 70s heyday, when it boasted 19 million viewers.

Times change in pro-audio as well.

Searching for a Neve 33135 circuit diagram, I was disappointed to be informed by a Neve employee that such resources are no longer available to owners. When the vintage maintenance men have all hung up their soldering irons, will the analogue classics be oining yesteryear’s digital doorstops, for want of documentation

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Composer and producer Leo Cottakis has installed an SSL AWS 900 and two SSL X-Rack Dynamics packages to run with his Pro Tools HD 2 system at his new Riverlight Studios in London.

Leo chose the AWS 900 as a replacement for his old desk because it integrates with Pro Tools. It was the obvious choice for the studio and has excellent sonic credentials, automation and Total Recall,’ he said. Also, the fact that so much control is available in such a small footprint means that suddenly my control room is much more spacious The inclusion of switchable E and G-Series EQ per channel is really cool,’ he added, and the X-Rack idea is a fantastic one it’s modular, uses TR which is accessible from the desk, and the Dynamics module sounds great — solidly built and very sensibly priced.’

Riverlight Studios is located in a converted mews house in Chelsea. Designed by Recording Architecture and installed by Bill Ward of NFK, Riverlight is arranged over three levels and incorporates a piano room with a 6ft Steinway Grand, a programming room, a live area, a machine room and a control room with 5.1 monitoring.

Studios Piccolo in Montreal says it has en oyed a surge in session activity since the installation of an AWS 900 in Studio C. It’s a big step up for that control room,’ said Studios Piccolo co-owner Denis Savage, who also serves as the sound designer and FOH engineer for Celine Dion’s long-running show, A New Day, in Las Vegas. To me, it was a simple decision either I get a DAW controller for roughly the same price, or I get an extra 24 channels of SSL analogue processing. The AWS 900 is like having a mini SSL console plus a DAW control surface, all in one.’

System 5 for Dovidis Dovidis studio for film and TV audio post in Paris recently selected a Euphonix System 5 for its mixing stage.

The 48-fader, 130channel system will be installed in a complex that houses two soundstages and eight editing rooms.

We were very impressed with the System 5’s EuCon Hybrid option, which enables any existing System 5 music or post console to connect to external DAWs for integrated control of tracks on the System 5 channel strips,’ explained Dovidis facility director, Catherine Poubeau (pictured). Further, we were very impressed by the ease of expanding the console, as this will enable our System 5 to grow as our operations re uire.’ The new console’s wiring is being prepared to support upward of four DSP cores and 272 channels.

Dovidis has won two Cesar Awards for best soundtracks, the last being for the March of the Penguins film with sound design by Laurent Quaglio and mixing by G rard Lamps.

Euphonix has sold a Max Air console to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) station KTVR, in the US. The 96-channel, 32-fader, plus an 8-fader centre section will be installed in KTVR’s new studio production facility in Portland as part of a renovation that includes HD cameras, an HD production switcher, and new character generators/monitor wall.

WSDG in nine-room Puerto Rico deal

HHB celebrates 30 years

M

NAMM, Austin, Texas ......... 14-16 July PALA, Bangkok .................................. 20-22 July BIRTV, Bei ing ............................... 23-26 August IBC, Amsterdam .......................8-12 September PLASA, London ......................10-13 September AES, San Francisco ........................ 6-8 October SATIS ......................................Paris 7-9 October Broadcast India, Mumbai............ 26-28 October SBES, Birmingham .................. 15-16 November Interbee, Tokyo....................... 15-17 November Tonmeistertagung, Leip ig ..... 16-19 November CES, Las Vegas ..................... 8-11 January 2007 NAMM, Anaheim......................... 18-21 January Integrated Systems Europe, Amsterdam ................................. 23-25 January CabSat, Dubai ....................................6-8 March

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HHB Communications celebrated 30 years in business with a party in London attended by staff, customers, suppliers and friends.

Thirty years is a significant milestone,’ said HHB’s founder and MD Ian Jones, who passed the even more significant milestone of 50 years this year. We’re proud of the role the company has played

in pioneering digital audio technology, and of our continued innovation with groundbreaking products like our own HHB FlashMic — the world’s first digital recording microphone.

We’ve always tried to run a uality business and be a source of advice and support to our customers,’ he said.

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Saldania and Molho Sergio Molho, head of the Walters-Storyk Design Group Argentine office, has coordinated the design and construction of the Luny Tunes nine-studio recording/mastering complex to be built in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s Carolina district. Currently in the design stage spearheaded by WSDG principal architect/ acoustician John Storyk, the 12,000s ft ground-up building was commissioned by Grammy and Billboard Latin Award-winning producer Francisco Luny Tunes’ Saldania for his Mas Flow Inc. label.

With multiple Gold and Platinum discs and international distribution via Universal Music Latino, Mas Flow has established a strong presence across Latin America and the USA.

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ash a Films brand new round up studio comple has raised the bar in the ndian lm audio production scene and set the standards or others to ollow Li e so many other ollywood hope uls be ore him

SC

M so many audio centres around the world are dropping facilities or trying to reinvent themselves as leaner and meaner operations to better fit in with the realities of their client base, someone is always building something in Mumbai. Home to India’s Bollywood film industry, you can’t spend long in the town before hearing about this proposed build, that completing build or that new facility’s first session. It has a curious dynamic as a media centre because while the core of the trade is concerned with the enormous throughput of Indian films it’s also expanding in different directions to accommodate and take advantage of new outlets and activities. It’s also a market that is mature, organised, open and growing and it’s not for nothing that many observers regarding India as a territory that is likely to achieve its fuller potential long before China ever will.

From an audio standpoint, the new builds are concentrated on studios for the booming music for record and film markets for well-heeled composers, regular expansions in film audio facilities and the occasional massive ground-up build. The opening of the fabulously impressive Yash Raj Films (YRF) studio 1

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complex is a fine example of the last of these.

India’s most successful film maker, Yash Chopra, started his own Yash Chopra Studios in 1970 as a film making company and grew it through the success of producing some of the highest grossing films in the country. Today the activities of the group are wide ranging with interests in film production and film distribution, home entertainment (DVDs), a music label plus music shows, music videos, advertising, Internet, E-commerce and content to mobile. In 2004 it was rated as the number one film distribution house in India and the 27th biggest in the world.

The opening of the studio complex in October is another step towards the dream of consolidating YRF as the most complete entertainment conglomerate in India.

The complex is not just about audio facilities, which occupy their own wing on the massive plot, but also includes offices for the Group’s other activities. There are rehearsal areas, make up and dressing rooms and three sound stages that claim to be the only completely soundproofed and air-conditioned studios in India and the biggest for indoor shooting. Avids are resolution

housed in the admin part of the site and are dedicated to in-house film making purposes.

The audio wing includes six studios all designed by Martin Pilchner with big Genelec monitoring in 5.1 throughout. Recording Studio 1 can accommodate an 80-piece orchestra, has four iso booths and is equipped with a 48-channel AMS Neve 88R. Monitoring in the positively huge (990sqft) control room is via Genelec 1036s and 7073 sub. Recording Theatre 2 can accommodate 24 musicians and has a control room with an AMS Neve Libra and monitoring through 1039As and 7073 sub.

There’s also a 40-fader, 160-channel DFC-II in a 116-seater Dolby Digital and DTS-approved film mix theatre running to DLP Projector and 35mm. Libras and AudioFiles are installed in a dubbing suite and a Foley suite, the former with stereo 1039As, the latter with 1039As and 7073. Finally a Digidesign Icon resides in a tracking suite with a 5.1 system made up from 1039Cs, 8040s, and a 7073. The AMS digital desks and AudioFiles are networked.

What’s impressive about the place is the individuality of the rooms and spaces, and how well equipped they are. I’ve now been to enough Indian studios to know that some are finished to a higher standard than others. YRF is finished to an exemplary standard and includes the first use of locally-sourced large-scale laminated glass in the sort of lengths and quantities that have not been employed in the region before.

There are also the incredible ceiling heights as Daman Sood, senior technical consultant engineer, explains. ‘We sacrificed one floor above for the height. It’s 24 feet to the concrete ceiling. And the NC level in every room is 15 or 18 — figures like that.

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We have special silencers on the air conditioning.’

Clearly money no object, then, as demonstrated by the frighteningly well-stocked outboard racks that are crammed full of exotica and the massive mic collections — all with covers to protect them from Mumbai’s rampant humidity.

Daman (pictured on the front cover) is a recording engineer by profession, had his own studio and worked for a variety of film makers including Chopra.

Chopra had been using outside facilities and started to think about building his own and Daman was hired to manage the technical side of the installation. He researched film making complexes worldwide and recommended Pilchner to design the place as he believed that the studios had to be built to international standards if they were to attract international clients.

‘In the Indian market the Genelecs are regarded as extremely rugged and people do try to blow them up,’ he explains. ‘So they are strong monitors and that had a bearing on the decision and they are also well proven in India, which is important.

‘In India people like to listen loud, that’s the main thing. If you’re doing a 5.1 mix of a multitracked orchestra you want a big sound and the idea behind it is that at no point in that listening experienced should

the speakers enter into distortion — you have a lot of headroom! The control rooms have high ceilings and you need big monitors to get a lot of LF energy working in that space.’

There are two more floors available above the audio rooms for expansion — again with 24-foot ceilings — and enough space for three studios at least and a number of smaller suites should they be required. There may also be a requirement to build other types of room to support the organisation’s diversification.

YRF really is the most ambitious and all encompassing build in Mumbai in recent times and it genuinely does raise the bar. Daman says that the lack of distinction among many Indian studios relates back to how the decision processes are made.

‘Unfortunately, in India the technicians are not here to act as consultants,’ he says. ‘Normally in India, the man who has the money is the man who makes the studio. Now, I know how to cook but I’m not a chef and if I wanted to open a restaurant I would have to hire a chef who would tell me what he needed in his kitchen. In most of the studios in India it is the owner who decides on the equipment and they are often not technicians.

‘The most important ingredient in a studio is the environment — the acoustic, the alignment.

You shouldn’t correct acoustics with equalisers.

Acoustics is a science and it needs to be dealt with correctly particularly because of digital technology — if you’re 24-bit and have a 144dB dynamic range then you need to have a quiet studio,’ he adds. ‘I am a film mixer and I understood what kind of facility our country needs to compete on the international stage and I was able to help Mr Chopra invest his money.’

Daman says that the signature of a high quality Indian film is the use of live musicians for the score, which is why the large orchestral room was built.

‘The producer gets a benefit from using a room like that,’ he says. ‘If you have 40 strings playing at once you record to 16-track, you listen to it once and you do the job in three hours. If you multitrack with a smaller number of strings you have to tune each time, you’re always getting flanging, and instead of three hours it takes you 12. Better to work with the bigger orchestra, you can hear it as it is and change it immediately if you have to.’

A strong advocate of it being the people and not the equipment that makes a successful studio, Daman says that the new studio complex has an to bjective that he believes can be achieved. ‘With a studio like this, how many films a year can we do?

Maybe 12 or 14 as a share of 170 films a year.

That’s a 10% share and half of those are our own productions and half are from good film producers from outside. We want to get the cream of Bollywood films, that’s our target.’ ■

Contact FS D S M M D ebsite www.yfrstudios.com

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Plat orm news Di idesi n

Products uipment introductions and announcements

ew eumann di itals Neumann has added to its Solution-D family with new digital models KM 183 D, KM 184 D and KM 185 D — three different directional characteristics are being offered initially four others will follow in 2007. The modular construction of the new microphones permits the passive omni, cardioid and supercardioid capsules to be combined with the KM D output stage.

In the microphone, the Neumann A-D convertor from the D-01 is located immediately next to the capsule and claims a dynamic range exceeding that of the capsule. If re uired, the DSP functions integrated into the microphone can be configured and controlled remotely via the DMI-2 digital microphone interface and RCS remote control software.

These functions include gain setting, a compressor/limiter with de-esser, and a peak limiter. Updates to the DMI-2 include support for 192kH , AES 11 synchronisation and improved itter performance. A key feature continues to be data exchange via the AES 42 standard.

Neumann is offering Connection Kits for connection of individual microphones to SPDIF and AES-EBU interfaces with an update to the functionality of the DMI-2 possible.

A plug-in power supply is included as standard and a Battery Pack is an option. Two Neumann starter sets offer a KM 184 D mic and a Connection Kit. The microphones are available in Classic nickel and black Nextel finish and support sampling fre uencies from 44.1kH to 192kH . www.ne mann.com

Pro Tools LE 7.1.1 and Pro Tools M-Powered 7.1.1 software is shipping offering compatibility with Apple’s new Intelbased iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini computers.

Digidesign is committed to supporting the Mac platform, and this new software release gives our customers even more options when building a Pro Tools system for studio or mobile use,’ said Digidesign general manager Dave Lebolt.

Digidesign has also released Intel Mac compatible versions of all Digidesign and Digidesign-distributed RTAS and AudioSuite plug-ins, plus all software options — including the new Music Production Toolkit for Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools M-Powered systems, as well as the DigiTranslator 2.0 and DV Toolkit 2 options for Pro Tools LE. Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools M-Powered 7.1.1 are separate software downloads, available free to all current registered users of Pro Tools LE 7 software (version 7.0 or higher) and any version of Pro Tools M-Powered software.

Digidesign will continue to support Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools M-Powered software on the PowerPC platform.

Pro Tools Custom Keyboards are designed for Windows and Mac-based systems and permit users to work more uickly by providing direct access to primary Pro Tools transport and editing functions.

The Keyboards use the same symbols and colour coding system as the keyboard on the Icon D-Control while retaining the conventional alphanumeric labels that appear on standard computer keyboards.

Both versions provide plug-and-play USB and the Windows keyboard also supports PS-2.

The Pro Tools Method One instructional DVD, now updated for Pro Tools 7 software, is available from resellers and the on-line DigiStore but is also part of the Pro Tools Ignition Pack included with every Pro Tools HD and Pro Tools LE system.

Digidesign has redesigned its corporate website. www di idesi n com

SSL Duende

ew Focals Focal’s SM6 range of analogue, active nearfield monitors now includes the Solo6 Be, Twin6 Be and Sub6.

Intended for monitoring the front channels, the Twin6 Be combines two 6.5-inch woofers, a pure Beryllium inverted dome tweeter and a claimed 115dB

S Di L X L SADiE’s LRX2 location audio workstation is a significantly enhanced version of its LRX laptop-based location recorder with additional DSP power and control surface enhancements to offer recording of 48 discrete inputs at 48kH /24-bit (or 32 at 96kH /24bit) from a variety of dedicated input slither’ cards. These cards are the same as those employed in SADiE’s PCM-H64/H128 multitrack editing workstations. In addition to the standard 16-channel A-DC/D-AC and AES-EBU I-O cards a new high uality 16-channel mic/line card is available with 48V and selectable gain steps. A dedicated MADI interface card is also under development.

The original LRX hardware control surface has had a makeover with improved and extended front panel graphics to indicate the fader modes, plus provision of a separate headphone level control and a separate side-mounted mic input for slate/talkback.

In addition to the V5 operating software, the LRX2 is supplied with the SADiE MTR on-screen graphical user interface with sessions created in MTR mode being fully compatible with V5 for more sophisticated post. www.sa ie.com

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SSL’s Duende is a DSP platform designed to serve up SSL console-grade audio processing within audio workstations. Based on the DSP algorithms from the C-Series consoles, Duende is not a modelled recreation of the SSL sound. Duende offers integration into workstation environments with one FireWire cable connection. The processing blocks appear as VST/AU plug-ins (RTAS support via FXPansion wrapper) and include an authentic SSL channel strip with filters, E and G series EQ and dynamics processing, as well as the SSL Stereo Bus Compressor. www.soli -s a e-logic.com

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SPL max. Solo6 Be features a pure Beryllium inverted dome tweeter and a single 6.5-inch woofer. The woofer uses a dedicated 150W BASH amp.

Sub6 has an 11-inch subwoofer fed by 350W RMS integrated amp using BASH technology. Conceived for 2.1 or 5.1, the Sub6 has ad ustments for integration and coupling with the Solo6 Be and Twin6 Be. These include ad ustable phase of 0 to 180 , switchable polarity and the ability to activate the subwoofer using a footswitch. The monitors’ cut-off fre uency integrated on Sub6 also allows 2.1 or 2.2 use. www. ocal- r.com www. ni ya io.co.

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Universal Audio’s UAD-1e Express PAK and UAD-1e Expert PAK, PCI Express DSP cards and powered plugins will ship with UA’s core 15 free Mix/Gtr FX plug-in suite plus a UAD US$100 (Express) and UAD $750 (Expert) voucher that customers can use to pick and purchase UA plug-in authorisations on-line. The PAKs offer DAW users with new PCIe-based Mac/PC computers access to UA’s DSPpowered mixing and mastering plug-ins.

V4.3 software for the UAD-1 DSP card and powered plug-ins system includes a 14-day fully functional demo of the Neve 1073 and 1073SE. Full authorisations of the

volution Sennheiser’s e 602 II cardioid dynamic mic is the successor to the e 602 and is designed for use with kick drums, bass guitar cabs, tubas and other low-fre uency instruments. More than 40 lighter than its predecessor, it features a more robust, lightweight aluminium housing that allows for greater stability when positioning the microphone on a long boom arm. The shockmounted capsule offers a fast attack coupled with an extended low-fre uency response.

The A5000-CP passive helical antenna provides high gain, virtually no multipath problems, and superb’ RF performance over the entire UHF broadcast band from

450 to 960MH . The circularly polarised A5000-CP can be used as both a transmit and receive device, making it suitable for radio mic and in-ear monitoring.

It features an opening angle of /-40 degrees and considerably improves the performance of Non-Diversity systems. The sturdy radome is in black acrylic, while the base plate is made of anodised aluminium. The antenna can be stand or wallmounted, and using an additionally available Matthews pin, can also be mounted on a lighting grid. www.sennheiser.co.

Neve 103/SE plug-ins will be available to registered UAD1 customers for US$249 from my.uaudio.com. The 1073 claims absolute sonic accuracy’ to the original and the 1073SE is a DSP-optimised version for higher instance counts. UA will also release plug-in versions of the 33609 bus compressor and 1081 EQ. www. a io.com

DP stereo it The SMK4061 combines t w o D PA 4 0 6 1 o m n i miniature mics with a variety of mounting accessories. These include the BLM6000 Boundary Layer Mount, which can be used in con unction with a 4061 (or any of DPA’s miniature mics) to place the mic on a reflective boundary.

Another accessory included in the kit is the DMM0007 soft rubber holder. This allows miking of all kinds of instruments using special non-marking adhesive discs.

Also included in the SMK4061 kit are two DAD6001BC adapters with belt clips, for powering DPA’s miniature microphones via standard P48 two DMM0011-B magnet mounts for one or two miniatures and five DUA050 foam windscreens.

The BLM4060 boundary layer mic is a prepolarised omni with a 5.4mm diaphragm. The microphone body consists of a centre rubber disc that holds the microphone element mounted in a stainless steel base. A range of connection adapters and power supplies is available.

The WX 4000 is an X Stereo Holder for use with the DPA Windpac windshield system and allows two DPA 4023 compact cardioids to be mounted in X . www. amicro hones.com

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review gear Mayah options M a y a h ’s Centauri II, Merk II and Ganymed 1102 audio codecs have added further IP protocol implementations, additional interfaces and power redundancy.

AES Transparent option allows transmission of up to 4 x AES-EBU signal streams each with 3.072Mbit/s. This is particularly suitable for the transmission of a Dolby-E or DTS signal.

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) provides the codecs with flexibility and future expansion possibilities for the operation in IP networks. Together with the other protocols it allows you to establish, control, terminate and modify point-to-

point and multipoint connections.

Support of MPEG Tr a n s p o r t S t re a m s with Forward Error Correction (FEC) provides reliable connections for the Mobile TV environment (DVB-H and DMB). ASI interface, which is also available for the Centauri II Audio Gateway Codecs, is designed for transmission of MPEG Transport Streams over coaxial cable, with a variable payload data rate of 0-214Mbit/s within the 270Mbit/s physical ASI link data rate.

A Dual Ethernet option permits Centauri II to distribute the audio-over-IP and remote control data streams over two separate logical networks. The second Ethernet card can be also used for fully redundant audio streaming. www.mayah.com

Streamlined VCube

Following the VCube and VCube HD-2K computer-based video player/recorders, Merging has announced VCube SE — a streamlined and cost-effective addition that targets postproduction for around half the cost of a full VCube system.

Designed to be as simple to operate as a VTR it will be available in SD- and HD-capable versions, although the SE will only be capable of handling compressed HD. As with the full VCube, many video codecs and file formats are supported, including 24, 25, 29.97 frames per second PAL or NTSC, and content may be stored locally or streamed from a networked server. It has the choice of two main configurations with SD or SD-HD digital and analogue video I-O, plus digital, analogue and up to six channels of SDI-embedded audio. RS422 and MIDI Machine Control are also included as standard (LTC is an add-on option). www.merging.com

DFC PS/1 PowerStation The DFC PS/1 delivers 384 signal paths in a slim-line format for premixing or dubbing.

A single operator, compact version of the DFC Gemini, PowerStation is a complete system — integrated surround monitoring, simultaneous mixing in multiple formats, multimachine control and simultaneous control over multiple workstations are standard.

High resolution TFT meters provide visual feedback with WavTrak audio waveforms, stem metering and EQ and routing displays. I-O options include direct MADI. Reconform from change lists and EDLs is said to deliver efficient workflow based on Encore Plus. www.ams-neve.com

MXL M3 Silicon Valve MXL Microphones’ M3 Silicon Valve solid-state mic is a large diaphragm, pressure-gradient condenser that is optimised for vocal and dialogue work. Two M3 versions are available -— the M3-P, which is voiced for female vocals, and the standard M3.

The design of the M3’s balanced, transformer coupled, solid-state FET amplifier output stage is said to bear a striking resemblance to the designs found in the front-end of early British consoles. The result is said to be a sound that mimics the performance characteristics of tubes with uncanny accuracy.

The M3 employs a 1-inch capsule with a gold sputtered, 6-micron diaphragm and is finished in a iridescent blue (pink for the M3-P) with a silver plated grill.

M3 MSRP US$349.95, $369.95 for M3-P. www.mxlmics.com

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review gear M

ull and hal rac mounts

Pearl omni

ori on tube mic

Pearl Microphones has introduced a small omnidirectional condenser microphone. The OM 16 is said to be physically very stable and resistant to moisture.

Finished in black ED-lac uer and 93mm long and 19mm wide the preamp is transformerless and the fre uency response is said to be flat. www. earl.se

L a u t e n A u d i o ’s f i r s t p ro d u c t is the Hori on cardioid tube mic, which includes a NOS military-grade valve and a high-performance transformer.

It sports an internally shockmounted large-diaphragm capsule and a two-step -10dB and -20dB pad. It ships with a 20-ft Gotham Audio cable with Neutrik gold pin connectors, a case, a hard mount, and a power supply. www.la ena io.com

RME’s ADI-6432 is a 64-channel bidirectional MADI AES convertor that supports 64 channels at 48kH , 32 channels at 96kH , and 16 at 192kH , all at 24-bit. All channels are transferred via a single cable, either MADI coaxial (BNC) or MADI optical (network cable). A typical application would be to use two units as a digital multicore. Connected to the RME HDSP MADI card, the ADI-6432 turns into an external AES-EBU interface with up to 32 stereo AES-EBU inputs and outputs.

The front panel has a display with 97 LEDs for sync/lock and audio states of all I-Os, and a number of buttons with LED display for configuring the device’s settings. Units can be cascaded and synchronised with sample accuracy.

The little brother of the Fireface 800, Fireface 400 is described as the only device in its category to offer active itter suppression, standalone MIDI functionality, direct device operation, professional uality I-Os, and a 648channel matrix router with everything operational up to 192kH .

Using DSP-based TotalMix mixers, 18 input and playback channels can be routed and mixed to any of the 18 physical outputs making Fireface 400 a tool for monitoring, with nine completely independent stereo submixes possible.

Micstasy is an 8-channel analogue preamp (mic to line out) and a digital preamp/convertor (mic to digital out) with both signal paths operating simultaneously. It uses AutoSet to control the gain digitally. In an orchestral session, the user sets all gains to 60dB and when the orchestra plays fortissimo AutoSet automatically ad usts the levels by reducing the gain whenever overloads were detected.

Micstasy’s most important features can be controlled via MIDI or MADI. ADI-8 QS is an 8-channel A-D/D-A convertor with analogue and digital limiters, four hardware reference levels up to 24dBu, AES-EBU and ADAT I-O up to 192kH , optional MADI I-O, remote control via MIDI, remote digital input trimming for full input calibration, and remote volume control for all 8 analogue outputs, separately, globally, or ganged. www.rme-a io. e

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review gear C Commander M D Controller

SPL Passe passive The Passe e ualiser from SPL has 72 passive filters (36 boost, 36 cut per channel). Each channel is divided into three cut and three boost bands, each of which offers 12 switchable fre uencies. Cut and boost fre uencies are not identical the crossovers are said to mesh’ and with the high number of fre uencies the manufacturer claims it can achieve the most elaborate set of response curves to date.

Each inductive filter has a dedicated coil/condenser/ resistor combination, and each inductor is separately adapted for its respective fre uency. The coils for critical vocal fre uencies are manufactured specifically for the Passe . Next to the peak filters (mid boost and cut, HF boost) the Passe also provides hi cut, low cut, and low boost as shelving-filters. The HF band offers variable Q ad ustments.

For the output gain amplifiers Passe offers SPL’s SupraOPs, which operate on 120V rails and claim a S/N ratio of 116dB and 34dB of headroom.

Following on the heels of the MTC 2381 and SMC 2489 monitoring controllers, SPL has introduced two analogue volume controllers. The Volume2 model is intended for stereo applications while the Volume8 can control up to 8 channels. Both devices are designed with active switching. www.so n er ormancela .com

Big Blue

True full-range stereo monitoring that stays true, even when you pump up the volume.

Riedel has developed a trio of connectivity solutions.

Connect IP is a specialised audio-over-IP interface between intercoms and IP-based networks. The unit provides for matrix to matrix connections, from matrix to control keypanel(s) and distribution of audio over IP. The interface converts one AES3-stream and can be configured to individual bandwidth needs.

Connect Solo is intended for hassle-free connection of intercom systems to the public telephone network via analogue a/b telephone connections. Combining two analogue telephone hybrids in a half-rack, it integrates into Riedel’s Artist matrix. It can be operated directly from the Artist control keypanels or via the integrated keypad and the large graphic display.

Connect Duo provides an intelligent intercom interface via ISDN and public telephone networks. The unit combines an ISDN S0 interface allowing two simultaneous connections using two ISDN B-channels, and an analogue telephone hybrid in 1u. It integrates into Riedel’s Artist matrix and can be configured directly from Riedel’s Director Software or optional Windows configuration software. www.rie el.ne

Big Blue changes all that.

And all that at a price that's far from inflated.

So if you want to be moved by your music, make the move to Big Blue.

" This three-way, triamplified, mid-field design packs crisp highs, thundering lows and superb transient response in a system that's not for the faint of heart. " George Petersen, Mix

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Postmap le search Studio Network Solutions’ Postmap for Mac OSX and Windows can find, manage and catalogue files located on a SAN, file server and removable storage, such as FireWire drives and DVDs. It is said to fill the void in post between simple OS-native search tools and highly complex Digital Asset Management applications.

It also allows users to create and attach enhanced’ metadata to describe and classify specific files and folders.

This custom tagged information can be used to reduce search times, share production notes, and organise files to create a more efficient workflow process. www.s ione wor sol ions.com

iedel connectivity trio

Some of us like it loud. But monitoring at high volume usually means distortion, poor imaging and an unbalanced sound.

By including the subwoofer as an integral part of the design – not as an afterthought – Blue Sky's latest and most powerful powered monitoring system delivers a thrilling, full-range performance that remains accurate, especially in the lower octave, even when you pump up the volume.

Mackie’s C4 Commander virtual MIDI and hardware control software is now available as a free download at www.mackie.com. More than 180 MIDI hardware devices come preloaded into C4 Commander while custom layouts are constructed using a drag-and-drop visual interface.

C4 Commander software and Mackie Control C4 provide users with control of MIDI hardware and plug ins. www.mac ie.com

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ycote Smoothies Rycote Smoothies comprise a two-part foam cavity constructed from an open cell acoustic foam base covered by a thin foam outer skin, reducing wind noise by up to 22dB. They can be personalised with a printed colour logo. Colours are blackberry, strawberry, lime, banana and blueberry.

Si es are available to fit most shotgun and condensers as well as on-board camera mics.

For increased wind protection a removable fur cover (Smoothie Wind ammer) is available as an optional extra in Rycote grey. www.ryco e.com

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review gear lot Di ital Xenon K l o t D i g i t a l ’s X e n o n standalone digital radio console has integrated mic preamps, DSP EQ and voice processing, signal routing and freely configurable GPIs. It offers audio inputs and outputs in analogue and digital, routing capabilities and free assignment to faders.

Xenon is available with 6 or 12 faders with each 6-fader module in its own housing. Each channel strip has a 104mm fader, large On/Off buttons, a Cue button for PFL, alternate source selection and individual bus assignment to the three main buses.

The Monitor-DSP-Master Control Module has two console snapshots and free access to 7 DSP presets including EQ and dynamics, which are available on any channel. There’s also a 40-LED stereo level meter (VU or PPM) and control room and studio monitoring including a check of all buses and predefined external monitoring sources. It is also e uipped with a reporter input for portable audio devices, headphone sockets, talkback, and four macro buttons. www. lo igi al.com

tape is on its way ATR Magnetics, ATR Services’ sister company dedicated to the continued production of analogue recording tape, is in the final rounds of in-house beta testing before product release.

It’s first formulation of ATR Master Tape is a very high output 1.5 mil tape with operating levels up to 10dB over 185nWb/m, which will be supplied in 2, 1, 1/2 and 1/4-inch widths on 10.5-inch reels. www.a r a e.com

di ital

Dual V meters Crookwood has developed a dual VU Meter unit with input attenuator so you can get the visual feedback of a uality VU meter, no matter how hot your input level is. The rotary attenuator knob allows you to make the VU work with any common 0dBFs level, simply by ad usting the calibrated control to the desired setting.

The meter is available as a uarterwidth 4u or as a 19-inch 2u. www.croo woo .com

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li ir

The Elixir is designed to fit into the API 500 Series rack format and features a transformerless mic input using proprietary True Class A Amplifier technology coupled with a high specification Lundahl output transformer.

It features up to 70dB of mic gain, 34dBu of output level before clipping, a -132.5dB EIN noise level and a fre uency response to 300kH . Controls include an output mute switch, high and low input impedance selection plus phase change, input pad and phantom power switching. A front panel 1/4inch ack allows for instrument connection.

Future True Class A 500 Series products from Bu Audio include a light dependant compressor and parametric e ualiser. www. a io.com

T h e A re n a d i g i t a l console from AEQ for radio and TV is based on the previous model the BC 2000 D, with presets, page swapping, easy maintenance, a flexible monitoring selection system, programmable keys per channel and other important improvements.

The DA-26 is an audio distributor for one input to 12 outputs or two inputs to six outputs in one rack unit. Each output has its own level control and galvanic isolation.

Listener 8 is a multiple AM/FM radio receiver for recording and monitoring. It offers 8 radio receivers in a 2u, each receiver has an independent output that can be controlled from the front monitor and includes an alarm. www.ae roa cas .com

console The Soundcraft GB2 is available in 16 to 32-channel frame si es, each with two fullf u n c t i o n s t e re o channels. Four group buses are configured as two stereo subgroups for easy control together with 6 aux sends. The desk inherits the GB30 mic preamplifier and GB30 EQ designs from the GB4 and GB8. The console has an output matrix with six feeds to two outputs. www.so n cra .com

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Studer Vista ein heralded as the Vista or lower bud ets and smaller rooms the new Vista completes an interestin product ran e

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that is amiliar and reassurin S C V M that the Vistonics technology that was introduced with the original Vista 7 around four years ago already boasts some 200 sales of the various models. All this from a technology that some were unconvinced by when it was first shown. Personally I’ve always thought that variety is what makes things interesting because it moves user expectations along and Vistonics also flies in the face of that surprisingly strong streak of conservatism that plagues our industry. You’ve got to applaud anything that challenges established work methods and dares to suggest a different way.

I was intrigued following my first encounter with the Vistonics control panels on the original Vista 7 but have subsequently become very comfortable with the idea. It’s not nearly as radical to me now as it was when it was first introduced — particularly as it came from Studer a company steeped in tradition. It marked a modernisation of the firm and its repositioning as a manufacturer and designer of mixing consoles.

And they are imposing desks; there is something

dignified and brooding about a Vista 8, but that’s not something I’d say about encountering a Vista 5 for the first time as it has less presence yet is substantially more modern looking instead. It is to do with the relative size of the Vistonics panels on the worksurface and how they take up a higher proportion of the real estate compared to other Vistas.

But then the 5 is the ‘cost-effective’ Vista. All the other Vistas weigh in at roughly the same sort of price but are differentiated by their target applications. To recap, the Vista 6 is a pure live broadcast console with no dynamic automation, simple and straight forward.

You’d use a Vista 6 on a news show. Vista 7 is the production console focussing on dynamic automation and machine control. The Vista 8 is the chameleon in the pack — space saving layout, has some live theatre features, dynamic and static automation but is primarily focussed on live work with its output section and Contribution features and sits well in OB vans.

The Vista 5 is best looked at as a smaller brother of the Vista 8 but without dynamic automation. It’s a pure

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live desk for live broadcasters with some application to fixed installs, like theatres. It has the output section and the Contribution viewing of the Vista 8.

And it’s light — I know because two us moved it — and it’s table-top mounted and can be flightcased. It’s not a road desk — the Soundcraft Vistonics-equipped Vi6 is the Harman Group’s contender for that task — but it has been designed to be moved and replugged if required.

I am not about to go back to the operating principles of Vistonics and Vistas as a breed as this has been covered before but I am going to look at what is different about the Vista 5 and contrast it to the Vista 8 with which it is most closely aligned.

The first important detail is that Vista 5 is fixed in worksurface size; if you want one then it will look like this. DSP and I-O are, of course, a separate issue but there is only one worksurface. Prices start around US$120,000 and go up to around $250,000. Blow for blow that’s roughly half the price of a Vista 8. A comparably sized Vista 8 worksurface will be bigger, heavier, run hotter and use more juice. The Vista 5 is truly portable. Vista 5 also employs an S-Core Live as opposed to the Vista 8’s Performa Core; a different iteration of the same sort of processing. The S-Core is much more compact — 6u includes a whole I-O rack, whereas the Vista 8 uses 9u just for the DSP. So it is substantially cheaper, but Studer has kept the functionality in terms of software so Vista users will find all the bits and pieces they would expect.

The desk is 96kHz capable. Redundancy involves

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review optional power supplies and as standard it has two RAID hard drives inside it. You can also order redundant cards.

The 32-fader desk has 20 channel strips (two blocks of ten) and 12 additional strips for operating output and input channels (the section on the right that I’ll refer to as the Output section). By a combination of channel and Vistonics control you can grab 52 outputs immediately and arrange 240 channels on the surface through layering. There are cards for mic/line, ADAT, TDIF, AES-EBU, SDI and MADI and the I-O capacity may exceed 1700 inputs and outputs.

Visually there are differences, the absence of a meter bridge being the most obvious. Other Vistas effectively have three planes to their worksurfaces: the flat fader plane; the incline with the Vistonics panels below and the switching functions above; and the third near-upright plane housing the metering. Vista 5 has a deeper fader plane with switching functions and the Vistonics panel plane above it.

The keys located above the Vistonics panel on a Vista 8 have been redistributed on the 5 and accessed in some cases though screens. Channel input gain pots have been retained and moved down the worksurface but the Generator button, for example, has been removed from the panel and is now activated within software.

There are ways of getting around this, most notably by bringing selected functions onto the surface to the two programmable User Keys and I am assured by Studer that pretty much every switch and key-related function you can perform on a Vista 8 you can achieve

on the Vista 5 in one way or another. The compromise is therefore not on the features set, it is on the mode of access. We have to pay for the comfort of extended access, as indeed we should. Those who have a problem with this end up mixing on a workstation using just a mouse.

So, you’re sacrificing a little speed of operation — particularly on the extended functions — on the 5 over the 8. There are also a few reductions in capability that are the result of Studer rethinking the packaging of the board to hit the lower price point. This includes such things as the Vista 5 only going to 5.1, while the Vista 8 can handle 7.1, and the implementation of the

monitoring I-O on the back of the desk.

The technical realisation of the monitoring is a good demonstration of how Studer has managed to get the price down. On the Vista 5 the monitoring is done digitally and it’s fixed whereas on the 8, and indeed on the 6 and 7, it involves the use of a separate rack in analogue. Studer has simplified the setup and connection process with the Vista 5. When you take it out of the box you need to connect two Cat5 cables between the desk and the core — one for the Gigabit link to the core for data and the other is a MADI link. The monitoring on the back offers 32 outputs and 16 inputs, which you could regard as a type of breakout box. There’s a lot of connectivity on the back of what is a dumb worksurface. The loudspeakers outputs are available in analogue and digital, you have control room 5.1, direct outs in digital for your third party multichannel metering, Studio A and B, talkback input, producer talkback input, PFL speakers also doubling as nearfields, digital inserts for the control room monitoring in 5.1, two other outputs and six more inputs plus Word clock.

Vista 5 doesn’t have machine control built in to the surface. Input and output metering is down by the channel fader together with displays of gain reduction and gate and N-1 status. You also get two main stereo meters in the Master section but if you want to do multichannel confidently you need to add a third-party meter.

One of the byproducts of this rationalisation process is that it has opened up other means of control. When you take an established operational method and

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review rethink it you can often offer different ways of doing things that can in some applications be regarded as more convenient. From this standpoint the Vista 5 is no operational slouch; it’s a very, very capable desk.

Predictably you can move projects between all Vista desks, subject to configuration constraints.

The setup procedure still involves the labelling of sources, which are retained in the signal path configurations. The channels have direct access to EQ, dynamics and pan using the usual Vistonics access method and you can view the rest of the channel on the panel for auxes, inputs, etc, bus assignment and a condensed channel view.

Isolate keys remove a channel or a section of processing from the Snapshot automation allowing you to take manual control or to make a tweak before de-isolating it. You can also Trim to create an offset that is retained for the course of a show, for example, but doesn’t change the values in the snapshot list permanently. A Recall and Update key fixes the offset into the snapshot list permanently. You’ll find this on a Vista 8 too and it amounts to a sophisticated static automation system that slaves to MIDI. The channel blocks have six layers that are accessed on dedicated buttons but the desk doesn’t scroll left and right like a Vista 8 because that doesn’t make a lot of sense on such a compact surface.

The Vista 5’s Output section can also contain reduced access channels in a manner that has fewer constraints than the Vista 8. You’d expect this section of the worksurface to be less able than the Vista 8 whereas in fact it is very smart. In terms of Output control, it’s very close to what the 8 offers. You have the very useful Contribution function that allows you to interrogate backwards from a selected output to find which channels contribute to it while being able to adjust their levels, for example, from the pots on the Output section’s Vistonics panel.

Global switches allow viewing of things like auxes, groups, masters, direct out and bus outputs and a Follow key flips the bay’s function to that of a channel block. There is no denying that for the potential channel count and I-O capability the worksurface is very compact but it has to be said that Studer has done a good job of keeping the operator’s options open and flexible with only 32 faders and three screens to play with. You can arrange things in a lot of different ways.

The Master section features are more than adequate and the Talkback and setup of conference groups is the same as on the Vista 8 and, as such, comprehensive.

Typical broadcast facilities are included, such as N-1 outputs, off-air conferencing, and GPIO. The desk’s internal matrix can be controlled by third-party controllers and video routers.

The screen, which is required for the setup and configuration routines, is attached on a bracket to the back of the surface and works in conjunction with a very neat little keyboard that pulls out of the armrest.

Configuration Editor Software is used to specify the number of channels, buses, processing within the channels and the signal flow within the console.

You also get Studer’s rather good VSP (Virtual Surround Panning) included which you instigate by sacrificing a little DSP in the configuration procedure.

VSP offers amplitude and time delay and frequency response panning together with artificially-generated early reflections for sound source placement.

The whole promise of Vista 5 is to bring Vistonics to lower budget and smaller facilities and as such I think it delivers. It’s a real contender for smaller studios than you’d traditionally expect to see a Vista in and it will fit into any OB van.

Another thing that it achieves by reflection is to

the Vista range. From where I’m sitting it’s a triumph of down-marketing a technology because it’s been achieved without it feeling the slightest bit cheap. You should try one. ■

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Vistonics on a lower bud et and or smaller rooms operationally clear and power ul compact and portable uite a unctionality bit o Vista

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Compact wor sur ace controllin a whole lot o des by de nition convenience and some speed is sacri ced it only comes in the one si e

Contact S

D S L D ebsite www.studer.ch

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show just how fabulous a desk the Vista 8 is through its extended control. There is a hand on benefit to this. Existing Vista 8 drivers are likely to get on fairly quickly with the 5 and either find it adequate or limiting. They’d almost certainly look at it favourably for smaller installations within their organisation, particularly as there is mix data compatibility across the range. Vista 5 drivers will also become well trained to drive any other Vista board.

Whether the operational improvements and convenience offered by the Vista 8 over the Vista 5 are worth twice the price is a decision that can only be made by someone who has the cash to make the choice!

However, the Vista 5 is a very capable desk and will do a lot to popularise the Vistonics cause among a new profile of user. It is also a perfectly logical addition to

5

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review

Lawo mc ith many console manu acturers concentratin on addin value and eatures urther down their ran es it s nice to encounter a a ship product once in a while

SC

P loo s at a des that proves that they still can build them the way they used to

M so much energy is being put into creating models that fit further down manufacturers’ ranges, it is refreshing if not unusual to encounter a product that redefines a brand’s top end; a flagship. That’s where Lawo’s mc290 sits. It’s an interesting time to announce a desk like this and there was clear significance attached to its launch at the AES in Paris. Part of me thinks Lawo is positioning itself strategically with a new high end board but I also think it’s part of the product range recreation that started with the mc266.

The m266 was a significant product for Lawo most simply for how it looked — a light year away from the staid and proper demeanour of the mc280 and mc282. There was also the matter of how it operated and again this was a departure from the 80 and 82; almost mainstream by comparison and extremely approachable.

It was something of a triumph from a marketing standpoint and it will be remembered that the world became aware of Lawo as a brand through the mc266 because it enjoyed a much higher profile internationally than models like the mc280 and mc282. Lawo has always been very strong in the German broadcast market but it has only relatively recently begun breaking out into new territories with the establishment of sales and distribution offices.

This happened because it had the ‘international’ mc266; many territories just wouldn’t get the mc280 and mc282.

The mc266 was created to sit beneath the mc282 in terms of price and size. It was not modular, which was a big change for Lawo, and only small changes

to the worksurface were accommodated, but its fixed presentation made it look like a ‘proper’ mixing console that people could identify with. A problem I have with the mc280 and mc282 desks is that they are so configurable and customisable that different permutations often don’t even look like they are the same species. The main option on the mc266 was whether it had 48 or 60 faders.

The big modular mixing console tradition harks back to analogue and was continued on in the mc280 and mc282 –- the 82 is one with the long fader strips and five Free Controls and the 80 has small fader strips and three Free Controls. The 82 is aimed into production and the 80 into broadcast but they share the same functionality; it’s how it is presented that is different.

Many customers still want modular designs and Lawo argues that if you don’t produce a modular design then you need to create a different desk for application. With the mc290 the objective was to produce a type of modular design that suits production and broadcast use but to avoid small modules like those on the mc282 and to create a surface layout that is immediately recognisable and approachable like the mc266.

If I cut to the chase immediately, that is effectively what has been achieved (so let’s all go to the beach!).

The modularity is restrained because rather than sub-strip component modularity the blocks are bigger and faders, touchscreen, bus assignment, automation and machine control, and Free Controls all have the same panel size and can be arranged pretty much resolution

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6

wherever you want with the exception of the meter bridge.

Most will have the faders at the arm rest but you can prioritise operation to the block immediately above and rearrange the Centre section according to whether you do a lot of surround panning on joystick, have to route and configure regularly, or want the automation or intercom panels closer.

Genetically the mc290 is very closely related to the mc266; in fact they run the same cores. The difference is one of accessibility — the mc290 has much more extended control. Automation data is fully interchangeable.

The smallest mc290 has 8 faders on the left and the right of the centre section, the biggest has 96 faders and channels top out at around 384 with full processing and around 80 ‘tiny’ channels (level, mute, panning, aux sends) — same as the mc266.

The surface is about 35% more expensive than an equivalent mc266 and amounts to around Euro 350,000 for a typical configuration. So the mc290 is top of the range and it looks it. This is a big desk with a lot of depth and I couldn’t reach the top of the strips without standing up. I’d have to stand for part of the set-up but with planning I could sit for the mixing without issues.

I will compare and contrast the mc290 with the mc266 throughout the course of this article and concentrate on the differences in the new board, which will ship with all its bells and whistles in November.

The fundamental operational concept involves centralised control in the centre section (analogous to July/August 2006

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Resolution July Aug 06 v5.5.indd

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3/7/06 7:35: 7 pm

review

an Assignable Facilities Unit, Fat Channel, call it what you will) and decentralised control on the channel strips by way of Free Controls (assignable knobs with switches).

You have six Banks of channels and two layers in each Bank and you can see Layer 1 and Layer 2 channels contributions on a strip — same functionality as the mc266 but it doesn’t have controls for the second layer. The modularity means that you can put fader blocks for the second layer directly above the fader blocks at the armrest for a stacked up almost super in-line arrangement.

With two operators on a desk becoming increasingly common for large productions, Lawo has addressed the issue of how you share in-depth control on a console that majors on a Centralised control section.

The mc290 offers the second operator local centralised control by using an 8-wide block of Free Controls.

You activate this on a button and it allows you to view and tweak the fat channel components using dedicated keys for the different sections that conform to the colour-coding in the Centralised section. It really is rather clever and gives control of absolutely every single parameter on a selected channel in a logical and consistent manner. The Core has two PFL and two AFL buses so the second operator will also be able to monitor his progress on headphones.

This is a best of both worlds type of approach that’s

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not restricted to two-man operation because you could use it for convenience when you’re working away from the Centralised section. I like operation methods that give me a variety of different ways to achieve the same result; I don’t like operating systems that force me to do something in the one correct way.

You can isolate a bay quickly, display the relevant group of parameters, tweak them, switch back and continue as before. It is the sort of ‘higher’ distributed control that digital should be offering us and by now we really should all be ready for it.

The desk is very rich in knobs and switches and nicely legended up but to give stronger operational clues particular sections are demarcated stylistically and through colour coding. So you always know what EQ looks like and the same goes for pan and image controls, for example. It means that on the mc290 you end up grabbing controls because of what they look like rather than what their legending and displays say they are. It might sound a little simplistic but it does lodge in your brain and after extended use it becomes ingrained as part of the ergonomics.

EQ is always blue, auxes are always green and it’s carried through consistently across the board and in the displays.

With a nod towards the useful coloured-coded fader caps on analogue desks — something that can’t be achieved with the silver or black of touch-sensing faders — channel fader strips have illuminated sections at their base that can be coloured to reflect their status be it channel, group, or VCA master, for example. That’s invaluable on a busy big desk with stacks of layers and you can even customise the colours yourself.

General Purpose Channels offer all the worksurface controls without the DSP so you can control a workstation via MIDI with elaborate mapping of parameter to control. These are treated in the same way as audio channels within the snapshot and dynamic automation. You could also use them to control camera mic pres remotely, which is handy if you return to a venue regularly.

Faders can be programmed for response in that you can create a soft ‘notch’ at a specified point in their travel making it easier for you to find your reference level by feel alone. You can also program the faders resistance to movement so they are more resistive when moving away from the null and less resistive when moving towards it in elastic band fashion. It’s brilliant and you can do the same for the joystick.

You can also audition EQ, dynamics or stereo image control (called Listen Sensing) locally without committing it to the output — it’s an mc282 feature.

It means that while the original signal is passing to the output you can solo the EQ, for example, get it right and then activate it to the output. For fast turnaround music shows with little or no soundcheck and rehearsal time you won’t be restricted to subtle changes on-air for fear of being heard, you’ll be able to do the job properly despite the circumstances.

Automation is the same as on the mc266 but the Centralised section gains status displays for automation in each module. You have Read and Write buttons for faders and Mutes and all the modules and you can program the Free Control switches to do the same if you want. The Free Control displays are OLEDs and as such look great while the ‘meter bridge’ screens are also worthy of mention with near 180-degree visibility.

Configuration employs Lawo’s I-O identifier process which carries though the desk and the routing — it will handle stereo but not 5.1 channels.

There’s a funky trackball and the coolest of keyboards that is built into the armrest — you revolve the armrest

8

to reveal it and then roll it back when done.

Monitoring selection functions have been placed on a touchscreen — the desk works to all surround formats — and there’s the expected flexible selection of mix minus and talk-to functions.

A main advancement is that of redundancy. Lawo has redundancy in the signal path from the mic preamp to the programme output using a star network topology with mirroring of all components. It’s now added a redundant control system in the worksurface using a similar star architecture. In the mc266 a PC controls the whole surface and if that fails so does the worksurface. On the mc266 worksurface all modules are connected to the control system via USB but for the mc290 Lawo has changed the control system to module interconnect to Ethernet. Each module has a small PC (these run no operating system and boot their software from the controlling system) with two Ethernet plugs and both of these go to a switch and then to a control system. Both control systems therefore always have a connection to each module and they themselves are synchronised through another Ethernet connection. In case of failure, one takes over from the other.

On a desk of this sophistication a balance has to be struck between what the console can display and what you need to see. I believe there is a limit to the amount of information an operator can handle and anything above this becomes a distraction. There’s also what I call the TV effect — a desk that uses a screen as an important part of the information delivery method can quickly negate any ergonomic considerations on the worksurface as the operator cannot help but become screen-dependant. And desk operation is about using your ears not your eyes.

I like the fact that the mc290 can give you the metering and leave you free to concentrate on the worksurface as your primary feedback method because that’s where the operational value lies — not in some cheap screen.

I also think it is wonderful that a manufacturer can still build a desk like this and that there are customers who will buy it. If I’ve learnt anything from my short time with the mc290 it is that digital desk worksurfaces are moving on from an operational standpoint despite the fact that many new iterations of popular desks tend to play a little on the safe side.

In this respect the mc290 is different and what I would describe as an advanced operational surface.

I’m interested to understand why this is and I believe it is because if you trace Lawo’s worksurface development back to mc280 and mc282, they really didn’t come at the task from the same direction as most other manufacturers did. Those two boards were complex for their time and still stand out as being a little peculiar now. The mc290 draws on that originality but moves it on via the mc266 to make control far more accessible and more 'traditional' in digital desk terms. This combination adds up to something that is still refreshingly different but also incredibly powerful. The question is, are you up to it? I’m sure plenty will be. ■

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Modularity redundancy er onomic layout and lo ical presentation decentralised centralised operation even more accessible than the mc

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t s bi can t handle say it s bi

1 channels did

Contact L

M ebsite www.lawo.de

July/August 2006

3/7/06 7:35:56 pm

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3/7/06 7:35:5 pm

review

FlashMic D M Sound ac uisition or a eneration on the move and wor puts special demands on the desi n o the medium

ows that want it ast and easy M S nds a solution that s

smart slic and small enou h to slip into his handba M much the purists may hate it, pro audio has to embrace the ‘grab and go culture’. Nowhere is this more evident than in radio journalism and, thanks to the rise and rise of podcasting, there is healthy growth in the genre.

The question is, how to ensure that inexperienced journos come back from an assignment with something at least technically acceptable for broadcast. HHB’s answer is to marry a decent Sennheiser omni mic capsule with a near idiot-proof solid state recorder for the princely sum of UK£699 (+ VAT). If I sat down and specified the ideal tool for this job, indeed for anyone with the imperative to acquire audio in pressured situations with minimum grief, I would probably come up with something very similar to the DRM85. Easy for me to say now that HHB has already done it and this is the key. FlashMic is one of those products that fundamentally change perceptions. It has that quintessential air of obviousness that only comes from having a great idea followed by a great deal of patient development work. HHB considers the FlashMic to be one of the most important products the company has ever developed and I agree.

Size is well judged. Big enough to impose some gravitas, but small enough to slip into a decent sized handbag (What message are you giving out here? Ed). Power is two AA cells. You should get 3-5 hours from alkalines or high capacity NiMHs. A software switch enables the battery meter to accommodate the characteristics of either. There is a switchable 100Hz 12dB/octave filter, manual level control or AGC and a real-time clock that time-stamps every recording.

Flash memory is fixed at 1Gb. A good thing, one less connector to go wrong with enough capacity for 3 hours of uncompressed 48kHz 16-bit or over 18 hours of 32kHz compressed.

Controls are ridiculously simple and a lot of thought has gone into making them as intuitive as possible (at least to the generation brought up on iPods and digital cameras). Three decent sized buttons cover Record, Play and Stop. The latter is labelled ‘M’, logically enough since this is the way into the menus when in stop. A short press

on the Record button while recording embeds a marker in the file which can be read by CoolEdit, Audition and SoundForge, etc. A longer press locks the controls, useful when door-stepping in a crowd.

Menu text, battery and level meters are displayed on an LCD screen, backlit by a green LED. On the bottom of the DRM85 a 3.5mm jack connects headphones and there is a miniature USB socket for audio transfers and uploading presets and software updates. Also on the bottom is the ‘jogswitch’. A short press turns the DRM85 on, a long one turns it off. Movements up or down alter headphone volume and, in combination with presses, navigate the menu structure and change parameters.

For simple transfers, the DRM85 appears as a USB Mass Storage Device.

HHB also includes the FlashMic Manager application for Windows and Mac. Up to 9 presets can be stored in the FlashMic’s configuration file and these presets are defined and uploaded from FlashMic Manager.

A number of features mark this out as a product suitable for organisations as well as the lone operator. The mic records Broadcast WAV/MPEG files and the six characters of the mic name become the first six characters of the recorded file names. Each preset can have a different file name so recordings made by different operators can be easily identified.

The PreRecord buffer can be set in one-second increments from 010 seconds. The backlight can be permanently on or off or set to ‘energy save’ mode in which it comes on for a few seconds whenever a button is pressed. The real-time clock can be manual or synchronised via the software to a computer’s internal clock.

Manual adjustment of level is possible while recording but personally I wouldn’t attempt it. Only those with the lightest of touch should apply.

Realistically, AGC is going to be the default option with bass cut enabled.

The good news is that this mic actually sounds rather good. The AGC is unobtrusive in most circumstances and although there is a hump in the response around 6kHz this will only serve to enhance intelligibility.

Although handling noise is well controlled, fiddling around with the jogswitch while recording is asking for resolution

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trouble. FlashMic Manager allows many parameters to be locked out from alteration on the mic itself.

Correctly programmed, the operator is left to point it in the right direction and to keep half an eye on the batteries and remaining record time.

HHB includes the word ‘rugged’ in its claims for the DRM85. I wasn’t quite so sure. While the main barrel is a hefty chunk of metal, the bottom section casing is plastic. Admittedly, the buttons are rubber encased but the vulnerable USB socket on the base isn’t protected from the ingress of dust or moisture and the tiny multifunction jogswitch control didn’t fill me with confidence. In practice the jogswitch is tougher than it looks and the USB socket is after all pointing down so with reasonable care, it should be fine.

This is a genuinely innovative, dare I say exciting, product. The only problem with being first is that people immediately spot loads of possible improvements.

Often these just over-egg the pudding and spoil the elegant simplicity of the original concept. That said, I still cannot resist adding my two pence worth. Good though the AGC is, I would have really liked a limit option for the manual record level mode. I would also have liked a screen indication of manual or AGC recording when in Expert mode (this caught me out more than once.)

If HHB plays its cards right, there is plenty of mileage in this model and future developments.

I’d like a stereo version for starters. FlashMic will be bought by the vanload. It replaces a bag full of kit, can be set to be as near idiot-proof as any recording device I can think of and crucially, it fits effortlessly into a variety of broadcast, podcast and other workflows. ■

P

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rue innovation sound more than ade uate or the ob pro essional wor ow eatures intuitive

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o ecord mode indication o switch eels a bit ra ile no protection or S soc et

Contact ebsite www.hhb.co.uk

July/August 2006

3/7/06 7:36:13 pm

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eup es s5eu y m Resolution July Aug 06y06.indd v5.5.indd 1 31

5/3/06 7:36:16 :0 :35 pm 3/7/06

review

Serato Pitch n ime Pro and L ew ealand based Serato has revamped its Pitch n ime udioSuite plu in renamin the a ship Pro ools only version as Pro and introducin an L version with slimmed down Pro ools eatures plus compatibility with pple Lo ic

S LL

slips

and slides

S V S S of Pitch ‘n Time are iLok authorised, and owners of the previous version can crossgrade or add LE at a discount.

A major difference between the two versions is that the LE version will only pitch up or down 12 semitones and timestretch from 50% to 200% in Pro Tools, whereas Pro (UK£518.30 + VAT) will go up and down 36 semitones with time stretching from 12.5% to 800%. However, the cheaper LE version will provide the full Pro range of manipulation from within Logic. Rather than using the Serato plugin window, Logic simply adds the Pitch ‘n Time algorithm to the list in the (rather long-in-the-tooth) Time And Pitch Machine window. You will need Logic 7.2 for this. The ever-expanding list of algorithms in Logic now includes one named Complex, and this is probably the closest to the Pitch ‘n Time algorithm. In fact, on much programme material there is only a relatively small difference between the two — some of the Logic algorithms are really rather good — so although Pitch ‘n Time is certainly better, the difference is sometimes small, so it would be worth the Logic user demoing Pitch ‘n Time for a listening comparison.

Back in Pro Tools, the two versions both inexplicably nestle in the AudioSuite ‘Other’ folder rather than the ‘Pitch’ folder. They look quite different from each

other — LE appears with a white panel with light blue fields, while Pro has the more serious looking dark blue-grey appearance. Both feature horizontal sliding faders for the two main functions. At the top of the LE window is an input BPM calculator.

Opening the window the setting defaults to 120BPM (the session Conductor setting would be more useful), and shows the duration of selected audio as bars and beats and as time — Pro Tools can do that for you, of course. However, target tempo can then be entered numerically or set using the slider, there is also a percentage field available.

The Pitch is set using the other slider, or a numeric semitone and cents value, or again as a percentage.

For musical users, note names can be used to set a shift up or down. And there is also a target output length setting for the time stretch. A button links Pitch and Time parameters for varispeed-type settings. A knob lets you lower the level if your Preview causes the clip light to come on. And that’s it, it really is that simple, and it sounds, well, rather good! Previewing the audio you can move sliders or change settings on the fly, and the plug-in is extremely tolerant of this, responding quickly to changes, even on a fairly humble G4-processor Mac. As well as expanded range, the Pro version includes many more tools and functions, resulting in a more complex collection of graphics and parameters, even though the layout has been redesigned. Away from the plug-in window, the Time Trimmer tool can make use of the algorithm when manipulating audio regions. It is also now 192kHz compatible.

In the plug-in, the extra range is made manageable by offering three useful ranges of 2x, 4x and 8x.

Another big advantage with Pro is the provision of resolution

Resolution July Aug 06 v5.5.indd 3

graphic editing screens for both pitch and tempo. By clicking Mode nudge buttons, three different pages are available in the Pitch and Tempo sections. The horizontal sliders feature on the default page, but by nudging the modes you can see and manipulate waveform displays of selected audio. An extra Update Waveform button appears with the usual AudioSuite functions at the bottom of the window. Clicking this captures the selection.

The first Tempo graph page enables any number of linear changes to be made by inserting and dragging handles around the display. Horizontal and Vertical Zoom sliders allow zoning in for precise adjustments.

A diagonal line results in a gradual speed increase or decrease, and seeing the waveform superimposed enables exact placement of handles and lines relative to the audio. A second graph mode page shows separate Guide and Source waveforms, where any number of sections of audio can be identified and markers dragged left or right for elongating or shortening parts of the audio. Called the Morphing Time-stretch panel, this page enables inserting different constant-speed sections within the selected audio, rather than gradual time shifts. This can be used to make words, syllables or notes last particular lengths. In all Tempo modes a Length Panel shows relevant numerical values and includes a Capture button for matching lengths. This memorises the current selection length and matches a subsequent selection to that length.

The Pitch section has a graph similar to the first Tempo one with a line manipulated for gradual increases or decreases in pitch, and the third Pitch mode simply engages Varispeed where pitch is controlled by tempo settings. In addition to the Logarithmic scales, Linear mode can be switched in which makes graphs look perhaps more sensible, but sliders initially seem weirdly warped. Another helpful feature is the provision of separate Bypass buttons for Pitch and Tempo — these also operate during Preview –- and a tone generator is included for matching pitch by ear.

Pro offers two algorithms, one for tonal sounds and one for percussive material. This seems a touch frugal as both Apple Logic and Waves SoundShifter offer several more. Furthermore, on many sources there seems only a fairly subtle difference between the two, but these algorithms are possibly the best available for manipulating all types of audio with minimal artefacts. The most serious competition to Pitch ‘n Time Pro comes from Waves SoundShifter; both have their fans, so demoing is undoubtedly worthwhile. ■

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L nte rates with Lo ic and Pro ools onwards e cellent soundin stretchin and shi tin stereo and multichannel phase coherence

C

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Lo ic s own al orithms are remar ably close in uality

Contact S

L D ebsite www.serato.com

July/August 2006

3/7/06 7:36: 3 pm

AP pr

Listen to your music, not to your speakers

Solo6 Be Active 2 way, professional nearfield speaker (2 built-in amplifiers –150 + 100W RMS), comprised of a Focal 6.5” “W” cone sandwich composite driver and a Focal inverted dome pure Beryllium tweeter. Thanks to its exceptional impulse response the tweeter is capable of going flat to 40kHz with an SPL figure of 113dB @ 1M. The Solo6 integrates the best of Focals 30 year technical design and manufacturer experience. £1148.00 inc VAT a pair

Twin6 Be Active 3 way professional nearfield/midfield speaker (3 built-in amplifiers – 2*150 + 100 Watts RMS) comprised of two Focal 6.5” “W” cone sandwich composite drivers and a Focal inverted dome pure Beryllium tweeter going flat to 40kHz and capable of 115dB SPL @ 1M. Both 6.5” drivers handle low frequencies but only one (selectable) is passing lo-mid frequencies. Like every Focal Professional product the Twin 6 Be has been designed from the ground up to be a professional tool that reproduces the reality of sound without enhancements or degradation; just for you to ”listen to your music not to your speakers”. £1642.66 inc VAT a pair

Focal® is a trademark of Focal-JMlab® - www.focal-fr.com UK Distribution by Unity Audio Limited - Tel: UK+ 1440 785843 - Fax: UK+ 1440 785845 www.unityaudio.co.uk

AP pro.indd July 1 Aug 06 v5.5.indd 33 Resolution

28/06/06 9:37:12 3/7/06 7:36: pm

review

D Shot un users can be a pic y bunch and when they nd a mic they li e they tend to stic with it

L

LLM

ar ues that it has to

sound ood but it helps i it s a ordable

D MC P S a good example of steady progress, quietly and relatively quickly establishing a strong foothold in the market. Recently coming up-top from down-under, the Røde NT2A is very highly regarded with three other valve-models The Classic II, the K2 and the NTK in support. The company’s range now includes an addition to its out-of-doors, on-board DVcam-microphone the VideoMic in the shotgun NTG-2 — a dual-powered, battery/phantom, directional condenser.

Sturdily built with the same aluminium interference tube and polar response as the slightly shorter NTG1, the latter’s 60mm-less diminutive size is achieved through the absence of the NTG-2’s threaded-barrel battery compartment; the NTG-1 being phantom P48V-powered only (NTG-1 UK£137; NTG-2 £151 both + VAT). With a length of 278mm overall, there is a striking resemblance to what was the doyen of location shotguns: Sennheiser’s 416; itself now

under some performance pressure by the introduction of Schoeps’ new shotgun, the CMIT. But while we may perhaps generously consider the performance comparable between the Schoeps, the Sennheiser and the Røde; the two European mics’ prices are a hemisphere apart from the Røde. The NTG-2 is quite simply amazing value-for-money.

Primarily designed for the professional sound recordist working in film or video on location, the NTG-2 offers a balanced low-impedance output stage, powered by either a single AA battery or via P48 powering from a mixer. Yet at 160g it is light enough to be camcorder-mounted if necessary and unlikely to be overly fatiguing for operation at the end of a boompole. The NTG-2 comes with a range of bespoke accessories to enable the mic to be used sensibly on location: a dedicated suspension mount is available, as is a fluffy ‘dead-cat’ windshield and a boom-pole.

The NTG-2 sounds like a Røde though, funnily enough; and that’s not all bad: it has less side

rejection than a 416, for instance, and less offaxis colouration is a boom-swinger’s saviour in fast dialogue situations. But there are other subtle differences in this budget microphone when placed head to head with the ubiquitous 416: the Røde’s bass response is lighter; the presence is less crisp yet it’s still not as warm, suffering just a little harshness in the middle frequencies; the output level is lower and it has less distant ‘suck’. But none of these traits amount to so much that you would dismiss this microphone out-of-hand.

Perhaps there really is no such thing as a free lunch; if something appears too good to be true, it almost certainly is; and audio engineering is certainly no exception. But the Røde NTG-2 makes a compelling case for feasting on the bargain buffet.

With careful application and judicious use, its humble purchase price hugely belies its capabilities. A Schoeps CMIT it’s certainly not; but at something like a 10:1 purchase-price ratio and with the confidence of Røde’s ten-year warranty, the decision over what to array around the new Foley pit starts to become a little clearer. And do you know what? That’s cheered me right up, that has. ■

P

S

nbeatable de value or money bac ed up by the peace o mind o its recently introduced manu acturer s 1 year warranty

C

S

hile the de doesn t sound or eel bud et it s not leadin ed e and not unreasonably it alls short o the hu e improvement made to shot un microphones by Schoeps and its CM

Contact D S L ebsite www.rodemicrophones.com +44 208 962 5000

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M1 Re

review

S

e e ion Filter

Solvin a studio problem without resortin to so t urnishin s and D discovers a device that puts a vocal booth on the end o a mic stand

F M S satisfying things I find about recording is the need to apply hefty doses of ingenuity and creativity on an almost daily basis. And I’m not just talking about being able to whip up esoteric interconnects at a moment’s notice, or finding new and unusual places to stick a microphone — but rather that well-known branch of civil engineering that affirms that you can build anything from carpet, duvets, mic stands and gaffer tape.

OK, maybe not anything, but we’ve all built a tunnel around a kick drum, or improvised an impromptu vocal booth in search for that ‘in your face’ close vocal sound. The Reflexion Filter (UK£229) from SE is a product designed to save you from all that hassle, at least as far as vocals are concerned.

Presented as a portable vocal booth, it’s essentially an almost semi-circular absorbent panel that sits behind a microphone with the aim of reducing the amount of room ambience that hits the microphone.

The first thing that strikes you when you unpack it from its box is that it’s a lot smaller than you expect it to be. The second thing that strikes you is the lack of any instruction manual, followed by — well how hard can it be to screw together assorted bits of ironmongery? Mistake. Twenty minutes, several assembly permutations and no end of ‘how many sound engineers does it take…’ jokes later, it all finally makes sense. I do strongly recommend downloading James Young’s very good instruction leaflet from the website.

Most of the confusion surrounds the mechanical arrangement by which the Reflexion filter attaches to a microphone stand. This arrangement in turn provides you with a standard thread mount for a microphone clip or shockmount, which allows you to adjust the placement of the microphone forwards and backwards in the ‘throat’ of the filter, and allows the filter itself to be raised or lowered in height. It actually works quite well once assembled correctly, although the combined weight of filter, mic and mounting assembly requires care to be taken with counter-weighting a boom stand properly (SE now makes a very suitable stand as well. Ed).

The science bit is that the main filter is comprised of six layers. A punched aluminium sheet is followed by a layer of wool, a sheet of aluminium foil, an air gap held open by struts passing through the device, then another layer of wool followed by another punched aluminium sheet. This construction aims to achieve maximum diffusion and absorption across as wide a range of frequencies as possible in a relatively lightweight and compact design. Attached to the inner surface of the filter are four panels of lightweight absorptive material to further aid the process, and, one assumes, counter reflections that would otherwise be caused by the aluminium skin.

SE defines a number of possible applications that largely involve recording sound sources in less than ideally-treated environments. In practice it works

reasonably well, although its first test was in a room that was reasonably dry to start with. Nevertheless, with close miking and positioning the microphone’s capsule about an inch into the throat of the filter, there was a noticeable change in the sound, resulting in that very dry, close radio announcer timbre.

This was, unsurprisingly, far more evident when using an omnidirectional pattern as opposed to a cardioid pattern, and the Reflexion filter managed to attenuate a lot of the room ambience even at quite high acoustic levels. Moving into a slightly less controlled environment also worked reasonably well — although a solution like this is never going to result in a totally dry sound, it was certainly able to tame the influence of the room acoustic in quite a natural sounding manner.

There’s some mileage in experimenting with the placement of the microphone with respect to the filter — although there’s some very obvious, and not particularly pleasant colouration to the sound when it is placed too far in. With omnidirectional microphones particularly, two or three inches in is really the maximum distance.

Whether you see yourself in the market for the Filter rather depends on your particular situation. If you are recording the occasional vocal in a control room, or working in less than ideal room acoustics on a regular basis and need a quick and easy fix, then it’s worth investigating. In a more controlled studio environment, though, it’s neither one thing nor another — it’s not dead enough for that ‘ultradry’ sound, and it doesn’t offer the levels of isolation you might need in an ‘as-live’ tracking situation. But it’s certainly a lot less hassle than the duvet… ■

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S

eat li htwei ht and portable does a ood ob o tamin unwanted room ambience cheap when compared to some alternatives

C

S

Can never totally remove the in uence o the room isolation characteristics not as ood as other but more e pensive alternatives

Contact S

C ebsite www.seelectronics.com Sonic Distribution +44 1582 470260

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sti l

review

upert

eve Desi ns

t s a bo that does duties as a line amp but also has the constituent electronics apart rom the tape to simulate a tape recorder

doesn t miss havin to do

the line up

S of the additions to the very useful Portico range of audio building blocks.

These half-width units can be mounted in a variety of ways — two abreast in a 19-inch rack or vertically in a custom chassis that accepts up to eight units in a 6u frame. The range currently includes a two-channel mic pre, a single channel mic pre with EQ, and a two-channel compressor/limiter. Emphatically analogue in design and construction, all units in the current range employ transformer balanced and isolated I-Os and a reassuringly rugged build.

Entering this audio pick ’n’ mix, the 5042 (US$1795) is a somewhat unusual addition. Billed as a line amplifier and Tape FX, it may not be something that immediately springs to mind as an overwhelming need, but the description belies a fair degree of flexibility in application.

At its simplest, the unit is a two-channel line amplifier. Inputs and outputs are transformer balanced and appear on XLR connectors on the rear, and a front panel trim control for each channel allows 12dB of boost or attenuation to the signal.

In common with all the other Portico units, each channel can also be independently routed to an unbalanced bus output that appears on the rear panel on a pair of paralleled 1/4-inch jacks. These are designed to let multiple units share a common pair of buses, allowing you to define a channel strip or busing architecture as required.

A combination of all that iron on the I-O stages and the discrete componentry employed within means that even in this mode there is a slight, not unpleasant, colouration to the sound. This is largely evident in the lows and low mids, which sound a little more contained and rounded. The 5042 is very quiet in this application, and with a maximum output level of +25dBu, there’s plenty of headroom. Which is all very worthy, but not hugely exciting.

And that’s where the 5042 pulls out its party piece, in the form of a tape simulation mode. Internally this is achieved by actually building a real record and replay head assembly into the unit with the associated drive circuitry for the record head and equalisation 8

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on the playback head. This allows for many of the inherently non-linear aspects of frequency response and distortion components associated with analogue tape recording to be applied to the incoming signal.

Clearly, there is a crucial bit of the signal chain missing here, in that the record head’s output is picked up directly by the replay head, rather than being printed to magnetic tape in the interim, but it’s an interesting approach (Yet another take on the ‘tapeless’ term. Ed).

A single button engages this process, which brings into play a single control labelled Saturation. This effectively sets the record level going to ‘tape’, while simultaneously keeping the overall signal level constant by adjusting the ‘tape’ playback level to compensate. This obviously has some relationship to the signal level coming in to start with, which is adjusted via the trim control as usual.

To help with keeping track of gain structure, each channel has an eight-segment LED bargraph meter that can be switched to show input level (post trim control, so effectively output level as well), or the level that is presented to the record head, which will increase as the Saturation control is turned up. The meter starts indicating at 0dBu, and then runs up to a peak indication at +22dBu. One slight niggle here is that the peak indicator LED has quite a long hold time, which I found a little distracting at times. The folks at Rupert Neve Designs suggested that for best results I set nominal signal level coming in to be about +4dBu, and then adjust the saturation control to taste — so thus gained up, it was time for battle.

You might be expecting at this point to be on the receiving end of the usual adjectives so often rolled out when harking back to analogue tape, but you’re going to be disappointed. In fact, the best adjective to describe the 5042 is ‘subtle’. Engaging tape simulation and increasing the Saturation level — even to its maximum level — isn’t about mauling the sound, but rather about introducing subtle artefacts that vary considerably depending on the source material. In addition to the saturation level, a switch selects the characteristics of either 15ips or 7.5ips tape speed. resolution

This effectively starts to roll off high frequencies a little earlier at the lower speed setting, but also seems to have an effect on low frequency harmonics, making them appear a little more ‘lumpy’ at the lower speed setting. This is, to my ears, the most dominant artefact introduced by the process, resulting in a gentle rounding or tightening of sources like kick drums or bass guitars. At extreme levels of saturation, this morphs into that slightly ‘squelchy’ sound caused by tape overload, which with careful adjustment can actually yield some useful sounding results.

Higher up the registers, the process has the effect of just taking the edge off mid and high frequency harshness, although again high levels of saturation tend to move this towards being a slight ‘smearing’ of the sound. I liked this effect a lot when applied to electric guitar, and some instances of acoustic guitar. I was a little less convinced when it was applied to whole mixes or drum stems, and I can’t help thinking that this is because of the missing link mentioned earlier (No tape hiss either then. Ed). Because, although the 5042 no doubt accurately introduces those harmonic distortion and equalisation artefacts, without the actual printing to tape, it’s not going to properly emulate that tape compression effect found when working close to the MOL of a reel. And for pushing drum stems out of a DAW, given the choice I’d pick the real thing over the 5042 for just that reason.

All of which doesn’t make this box any less impressive — in fact it was its subtlety that impressed me most. It’s not a tool for radically altering a sound, but rather one for gently polishing it. Think of it as a well specified line amplifier with a touch of seasoning thrown in for free, and you won’t be disappointed. ■

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S

uiet clean line ampli cation in a compact pac a e solidly built tape e ect subtle but e ective at reducin perceived harshness

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S

Maybe not as dramatic a process as some mi ht li e pea L D hold time a little annoyin

X

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upert eve Desi ns Portico 3 Limiter Compressor Duo delivers two channels o dynamics and a bric wall limiter in a hal rac t eatures ully controllable dual mono or stereo operation plus eed orward/ eedbac detection switchin

ach channel has individually controllable threshold ma eup ain rom d to d ratio and VC detection mode eed orward/ eedbac he channels may be used independently or connected in se uence to provide two separate control slopes on a sin le source he DC control circuits may be lin ed via a ront panel pushbutton so the level o each channel may be held in a constant relationship or stereo operation ith the compressor inactive the 3 may be used as a trans ormer coupled hi h per ormance line ampli er

Contact P V D S S S ebsite www.rupertneve.com

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Pedro Ferreira Producer o the multi platinum sellin Dar ness album Pedro Ferreira tal s to

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about uitar sounds what inspires youn

roc ers and startin his own record label

P

D S D SC with a mobile rig, recording rock bands in his native Portugal.

Moving to London in 1992, he enrolled on a sound engineering course with the aim of improving his English and acquiring a few skills at the same time. He soon secured work as a freelance recording engineer, turning the knobs for bands like the Stereophonics (A Thousand Trees) and Joe Strummer (Global A-Go-Go). He then established himself at the studio of publishing company Rondor Music, where he worked for four years as house engineer, gaining valuable experience producing songs for Rondor’s tunesmiths.

One of these sessions (for a commercial) was with Justin Hawkins, signed to Rondor as a writer.

At the time, Justin and Dan Hawkins were in a prog-rock outfit called Empire. When they found themselves without a singer, Pedro was instrumental in persuading the at-first-reluctant Justin to tackle the role with his own unique style. When the two

Hawkins brothers formed The Darkness, Pedro was soon engineering and producing their first album on a shoestring budget. Signed to Atlantic Records, the entertaining and tongue-firmly-in-cheek return to unabashed pomp rock Permission To Land became a multi-platinum success story, selling over 4 million copies.

Ferreira went on to produce albums for Alan McGee’s Poptones protégées Thompson, and Barflyfavourites Blondelle (Too Too Much). Since then he has carved a name for himself as a rock producer, including taking the reins with Tokyo Dragons for their album Give Me The Fear, which the NME called ‘A slice of grizzled barbarian beef rock’! More recently, Ferreira has completed an album with influential Irish rock-veterans Therapy?, and as Resolution talked to him, he was soon to launch an independent label with a debut EP from shaggy young riff-merchants Metro Riots. (Photos at Strongroom, London by www. recordproduction.com) resolution

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Tell us about the recording of Permission To Land, how tight was the budget?

There was no budget for a while, then the whole album was done for £15,000, mastering and everything. It was recorded at the Chapel where they have loads of very nice mic preamps, I used as many of them as I could to record straight to tape rather than going through the Amek mixer.

I’ve heard you are a bit of an analogue tape enthusiast ...

I always go to tape and then transfer to Pro Tools.

Every time I can afford it, I like to record to tape first, that’s how most of the albums I’ve produced were done. I like to record everything except vocals to analogue first. I love the sound of drums with a bit of the old 3rd harmonic distortion, rock guitars really benefit from it as well. I like to combine the best of the analogue era with digital. I think it’s brilliant that we can record to 2-inch for the sound, and then put July/August 2006

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ra it into Pro Tools to avoid spending ages splicing tape.

I do all the takes I have to do, when I’ve finished a song I copy it to Pro Tools. A couple of reels is quite enough tape nowadays, it goes to Pro Tools the same day and then gets erased. I use 499, I find GP9 a bit too clean.

Because analogue tape machines are used so seldom these days, do you have to budget at least an extra hour of kneeling time with a trimmer aligning the multitrack? Do you find you have to line-up the machine yourself?

I can do it if necessary. Tape machines in general these days are really, really badly maintained. I’ve got my own demagnetiser for the heads. I had to put the Therapy? album back almost a whole day because the multitrack machine was in such bad condition.

The compact drum sound you get, with The Darkness and other bands, seems to hark back to the era of bands like Free or Thin Lizzy, rather than Def Leppard or Metallica.

I think Bob Rock was very clever when he did the Black album for Metallica, he tried to use that ‘trash’ sound and put a bit more rock on it, and he did it very well. I think every band that you record and every session you do, a recording engineer has to imagine something and try to achieve that. That’s how I heard the Darkness back then. I think that’s probably what took longest to do with them, to find the right drum sound. The Chapel has a beautiful live room, if anything it’s too live. They have some massive drapes, so I put them on top of the drum screen to dampen the sound.

It’s a theme that comes through in all the bands you’ve produced: the drum sound

When Justin Hawkins sings ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’ he probably sings higher than most women could. Did that present any problems, how did you handle the big dynamics a falsetto voice presents to the microphone?

With compressors in series, a lot of people use that, I’m sure. It’s something I’ve done for quite a long time, I set the first compressor to be quite gentle and the second as a 20:1 limiter. They are Urei 1176s, that’s my favourite, so far they are the only compressor

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doesn’t get in the way of the huge guitars ...

That’s because I’m a big fan of guitars! In my mixes I try not to sacrifice the drums, but I do try to get the guitars as loud as possible. I find that, most of the time, just a combination of three microphones is enough to give me a good sound, usually I don’t have to do much EQ, I just filter some bass off. If I do use EQ it’s normally to separate the sound of different guitar overdubs. I have an SM57, a Neumann valve U67 and a Royer ribbon. The combination of those three on separate guitar speakers gives me all the qualities I expect, I’m so careful about the phasing, sometimes the musicians will find me in front of their cabs with my headphones on trying to line up the microphones, it makes an incredible difference. Then it’s just a question of mixing them together, which I do later -- that’s one of the beauties of having Pro Tools you don’t have to worry too much about the number of tracks being used. I get bands to play to a click from Pro Tools, then I can grab the best verse, chorus, bridge or fill. For rock drummers the click needs to be really, really loud in the headphones: I discovered if I give the drummer ear plugs, then I can crank the click high enough so he never has problems!

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I can’t hear intruding musically. I don’t like to hear compression, I just like to feel it, rather than hear it.

Apart from a very high singing voice, Justin is very dynamic. Obviously in the mix you can do some rides, but the two compressors is the best way to record him. I only use a little bit of compression on guitars, usually I go for the Neves for that.

If The Darkness were challenging to make the vocal cut through, then Therapy? must be even more so ... on the song Sprung the guitars are like buzz saws ... you’ve got some sort of flanging effect on the vocals which helps keep them to the fore.

I didn’t use any special kind of trickery like that, I just double tracked the vocal and used two 1176 compressors and a Roland Space Echo for the effect you mention.

The style of the band you worked with before the Therapy? sessions, Tokyo Dragons, is a bit different. The vocals are very dry and ‘in your face’.

I think it is very important for a producer to understand what a band is trying to transmit to their audience. I like to spend quite a bit of time with the bands in the rehearsal room working on the arrangements and so on. With all the bands, even with Therapy? who were recording their 11th album, I did the same. I’d never worked with a band that had done so many albums, it was quite nerve wracking at the beginning, thinking: ‘well, what can I bring to the table?’ Part of the preproduction process is me trying to understand what they are aiming for and then giving my input. I like to hear the band and try to adapt, I’m not a strong believer that a producer should have a ‘sound’, I really like to understand what the band is aiming to do and

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ra get my imagination going from there. With Therapy? the first night I spent with them was great because we had a few beers, played some records, and straight away I had a picture of their record being created in my head. I really find that important, I don’t believe in trying to impose my way too much -- obviously there’s guidance and opinions -- but in general I don’t like to impose a sound. Every engineer has some sort of ‘sound’ and if you listen to the records I’ve done you might mention the guitars and so on, I guess you could say that’s my ‘sound’, but I’m really just trying to capture what the band has to offer.

They are signed! Together with some business partners I’ve started a small indie label called 1178 Records and we’ll be releasing the first Metro Riots single in July.

A younger rock band you worked with recently, Metro Riots -- they have the beards, they have the credibility ... they look like their Dad’s guitar heroes -- why haven’t they got a record deal?

Is that a musician who influenced you? Did your parents have a 78 record collection?

I was just thinking about a name, and Robert Johnson is just a musician I always reference.

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... a label named after the Urei stereo compressor ... but why not after your favourite, the 1176, the model with the big Class A output stage?

No, not the compressor. The name is a reference to the great blues guitar player Robert Johnson, he released 11 78rpm records before his death in 1938.

Do you find that very young bands are influenced by old blues guys like Robert Johnson, or are they looking at interpreters like Led Zeppelin or Thin Lizzy who took their influences from the delta bluesmen?

If you mean Metro Riots, then they are in fact going back a long way in musical history and listening to the very old recordings, it’s quite interesting that they go back that far to get their inspiration. Tokyo Dragons are all really young guys as well, they also have a tremendous knowledge of music -- they will talk to you about bands and music you’ve sometimes never heard of -- all rock. They are looking back to the 70s and 80s, to bands like Motorhead.

Is this the future of rock? The tougher sort of live rock, and if so, why don’t majors recognise it -- was that what spurred you on to form the record label?

It is, yes, and there was a lot of interest from record labels ... Atlantic, Mercury, they all came to have a

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ra listen to Metro Riots. They all thought it was great but, for their own reasons didn’t sign them, perhaps they don’t consider the band is what is happening at the moment -- they don’t sound like the Arctic Monkeys -- but I think they are a great band, and a lot of kids think they are too.

So was it out of frustration that you started your own label, or was it perhaps that you knew someone at a major who was prepared to sponsor you to take the chance?

I don’t think it was out of frustration, but it seemed like a normal step to me -- we recorded a few tracks but we didn’t think it should stop here! What can we do to keep the momentum going?

Another Resolution interviewee with his own label, Rafa Sardina, told me he felt majors have a lot of ‘baby projects’ at the moment — you may produce several tracks for them, but they are never released, the label is just pitching the market ... he found it very frustrating putting work into artist development, recording demos for free.

Absolutely, the amount of time that has happened to me! Sometimes for hardly any financial reward.

Atlantic approached me almost a year ago and introduced me to the Metro Riots as if they were going to work with them, so I started a relationship with the band. Then suddenly it was: ‘Well we are not really that sure at the moment, why don’t you do something and show us when you are finished’ ... which I thought was a bit cheeky, asking me to do the whole development. I’m very lucky, I have a little studio where I can record projects, otherwise it would be a question of splitting the funding of such a project with the band. I’ve got a small analogue set-up, I have the Universal Audio 2-610 mic amps and a very old Gates STA-Level valve compressor,

to do that! There are a lot of very exciting bands out there ... the Arctic Monkeys are one of them ... but the point is there are many others just waiting for the right push.

Let’s not knock the majors too much. Just to get a CD on the front rack of a national chain-store you have to pay 6 figures ...

There’s always the downloads! Especially the singles market, which has been dominated by downloads for the last couple of months. It’s definitely the way the market is going, especially for single tracks.

With Metro Riots we are pressing just 1,500 copies on CD and 1,000 copies on vinyl to begin with, we are relying on downloads quite a bit. I think this is the model for the future, unfortunately the way the majors are acting at the moment is not bringing any new exciting music to the table, so someone else has

How are you handling the talent-scouting, and what are your future plans?

People send me demos or I get CDs through my new management, Strongroom. I go through them all myself. It gives me a good perspective on what is going on, I love to go and see young bands at gigs.

My priority is to make a success of my new record label, to get the Metro Riots release going. It seems that some larger labels don’t want to be involved with development at all, they just want the final product.

I think there are a lot of producers thinking along the same lines as myself, there are quite a lot of indie labels ... good luck to us all! ■

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that’s my analogue path to the computer. We have distribution for the new label through a company called Gene Pool, who are sort of an offshoot from Universal.

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wee solution was to ask the builders to make the dividing wall at a slight angle — the direction of the slant and exact positioning was arbitrarily planned just before its erection with the bricklayer, as were the exact positions of the external windows. I envisaged having the mixing position alongside the window to the recording room, so we placed one external window in front of that, and the other near the piano’s planned location — for keyboard inspiration.

Once the footings were planned, the concrete was poured in, and I had the builders place wooden channels to be sunk into this for cabling. The control room floor was to be a few inches lower than the other room. Therefore, connecting these channels between the rooms was less straightforward. The solution was some soon-to-be-redundant drainpipe sawn into a couple of lengths for these linking channels to go underfloor between the rooms’ wiring channels.

The cavity wall (with Rockwool in the gap) was deemed soundproof enough in our rural location, but the roof was more of a challenge. The larger room was to feature a very shallow pitched roof, with the smaller room using a lean-to with a similarly shallow slant. The shallowness of the pitch meant that roof joists were spaced only 14 inches apart. Sound Service (Oxford) Ltd supplied bales of acoustic mineral wool slabs for a solution that involved laying plywood on top of the roof joists, with a layer of acoustic slab on top of that, then another layer of plywood, with felt and roof battens on top of that, with the slate roof tiles mounted on top. Underneath the bottom plywood, more acoustic slab was stuffed between the joists. Eventually this was finished with smart looking tongue-and-groove underneath in both rooms.

eor e builds a room hen his rowin

amily reclaimed his studio as a bedroom last year

S LL

set about creatin a purpose built acility in his lar e but somewhat derelict ara e Seven months later and with the help o riends in the business he ot his new studio up and runnin V D LL C MM D more and more gear into a bedroom studio, the space was gradually becoming unworkable, despite having mixed a couple of albums in there — and even recording drums by trailing leads into the adjacent bedroom. The crunch came when my wife and I embarked upon the process which would lead us down the road to adopting children, and the ‘studio’ was inevitably earmarked for alternative usage.

With a rather derelict concrete panel garage situated in front and slightly to the side of the main house, and our neighbours at some distance, this was the obvious location for a purpose-built extension to the house. I took a pencil to the surveyor drawings of the house, and with the assistance of our extremely helpful surveyor, plans were submitted in Spring 2005.

A local award-winning building firm, Johnson & Johnson, was hired. They convinced me that a normal cavity wall build was the sensible way forward — I had had ideas of a single skin of bricks with supporting piers at intervals along the walls, but the longest wall would be 43 feet.

At this stage, inspired by the Allaire Studios’ Neve Room, a single space was planned. However, I gradually realised that a separate recording room would be more useful. Dividing the space at the juncture of the L-shape would result in two perfectly rectangular rooms, which even with my very basic knowledge of acoustics I realised was not ideal. The

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Once the basic structure was up I enlisted the help of friend and mobile recordist Will Shapland, who has plenty of experience of building studios in small spaces — usually within vehicles. We found a friendly local airconditioning company that was happy to supply a

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wee heating/cooling DC Inverter unit for the control room, let Will and I install it, and then finish off the trickier final commissioning of the gas piping and electrical wiring. The unit was to be placed in the roof space of the drum room, with ducting running across the top of the dividing wall into the control room.

The narrow spacing of roof joists posed a problem.

However, the day these were being installed it just so happened that Will was working with me in the old bedroom studio on a project. He realised that we might struggle to squeeze the unit into the roof space as planned, so we took a break and asked the carpenters to make a few of the joists removable, which proved essential when the unit later came to be positioned. The builders had left a large hole in the wall between the rooms above normal ceiling height in order to feed the aircon ducting through. Gaps around the ducts were stuffed with leftover acoustic slab material.

The control room walls were left as bare unplastered and unpainted breeze blocks and my wife modified some ready-made suedette curtains to hang around the room on horizontal poles just in front of them.

Some large curtains were acquired to hang inside the large double garage doors, and carpet was glued to each end wall, with Mrs Shilling patiently measuring and cutting around obstacles such as lighting transformers, light switches and suchlike, gluing directly to the wall.

The recording room was an entirely different story, as I decided to have the builders plaster the walls for a bangy and reflective drum sound. The ceiling ended

burglar alarm company for cabling to the PIR and away from each other and spaced a few inches apart. smoke detector. My intention was to run Ethernet and Silica gel was poured in between the bottom of these at telephone cables, but this has yet to be installed — the the time of installation to avoid any condensation.

DECT phone is adequate, and there are no computers Initially I intended to mount electrical sockets in actually in the room. Control room lighting comprised the floor’s wiring channels. However, a better solution two 12 volt suspended trapezes running the whole proved to be wall mounted trunking for mains, length of the control room, supplemented by a 2A circuit running around the walls of both rooms, keeping for six floor standing lights on a variable transformer the underfloor channels dedicated to audio use, and dimmer bolted in a plastic box on the wall. keeping a good physical separation between the To control all new circuits a new consumer unit two. I decided to install two separate mains circuits, with trip switches was installed in the recording colour-coding the sockets, with a general circuit for room. However, the airconditioning unit was wired freezers, studio fridge, kettle, vacuum cleaner etc., into the house’s main unit, in order to keep any and a clean circuit purely for audio use. This used interference from that to a minimum. This wasn’t thicker than standard gauge wire for audio purity. entirely successful initially, as I soon traced a whining The Mita trunking included a large central channel for noise when recording electric guitars to the aircon. the mains wiring, plus additional separate channels cricketad_RES.qxd 14/6/06 12:52 PM PageHowever, 1 with the advice of studio maintenance above and below. and installations expert Chris Goddard (formerly of Part of the top channel has been used by the

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up rather unusually shaped, as the lower roof joists were left open and exposed at the far end, while the airconditioning unit was boxed in near the control room end, with a pair of tongue-and-groove flaps secreted into the ceiling for aircon servicing. The plaster walls were simply painted white. I have so far recorded five different drummers and kits in the room, and the unusual shape results in a fantastic, exciting room sound, usually using a ribbon mic placed away from the kit near the control room, and a PZM stuck up on the high part of the ceiling. For a relatively small room, the drum sound can be pretty big, and there are no perceptible colourations or boomy frequencies.

A window was installed alongside the door between the two rooms, using two separate pieces of glass angled

This powerful combination is supplied with a tailored multichannel version of the SADiE on-screen graphical user interface in addition to the full SADiE V5 software system. Timecode and professional genlock facilities are incorporated and a video stream may be simultaneously captured for playback or on-set ADR. The system supports a wide range of industry file interchange formats, plus a second external drive may be simply attached via USB2 or Firewire to mirror recordings and provide simultaneous safety copies.

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The flexibility of the LRX hinges on its ability to utilise a standard laptop running Windows XP® via USB2 as the host computer together with combinations of the same high quality i/o cards as the SADiE H64 multitrack workstation. A tactile hardware control surface is employed, incorporating a small assignable mixer and full editorial interface,plus dedicated transport keys.

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wee SSL), this was eliminated with two new earth spikes (one for the house, plus a separate one for the new consumer unit in the studio), as originally the studio earthing had gone via the house.

After the builders had finished, secondary glazing was ordered for the two double-glazed external windows to reduce any sound transfer. The weak point then became the wooden garage doors which were rather basic and not particularly close-fitting.

They were also letting heat out, not helping the piano tuning stability problem.

Some months later, joiner Andy Mackinnon-Little was engaged to entirely panel up one half of this area with a plywood layer (I placed a futon mattress in the space between to avoid any resonance) and another set of internal doors behind the remaining opening garage door. Most sound transfer was due to gaps, so particular attention was paid to draft-excluder

around all doors. A second internal fire door was added between control room and recording room, as this was far weaker than the feared problems over the top where the aircon fed through. Another fire door was added between the recording room and the house’s hallway, while a removable MDF panel was installed over a small window into the house which had formerly fed light onto the staircase.

Studiospares’ wedge shaped mic panel boxes were ideally sized for resting directly in the floor channels, while Chris Goddard recommended Kelsey Acoustics for sockets and cables. Neutrik jacks were used for the balanced patchbay. The Studiospares panels were sized for 16 XLRs, so I decided that each panel should have 12 balanced mic lines and four stereo headphone lines. Chris laid wires before laminate floor was placed over the channels, and I also took the opportunity to run two pairs of speaker leads between

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the rooms (these have proved ideal for separating Marshall stacks) plus the cable for my treasured Leslie 145 speaker from its preamp pedal.

Chris wired connections to Neutrik stereo jacks for a simple adaptable patchbay using Neutrik and Behringer panels. Soon after the first few sessions I upgraded to Pro Tools HD Accel, so Chris wired up the necessary D-type connector leads, and he had also laid MIDI leads around the control room channels for which he made custom boxes with MIDI sockets.

The Yamaha grand piano was moved from the house’s dining room into the control room. I feared for the sturdiness of the laminate floor as the enormous weight passed across the wiring channels on a trolley, but we lived to tell the tale. The small adjoining section of wall between control room and house was drilled in order to place the PowerMac outside the control room to keep fan noise down.

The laminate floor in the control room has been covered with rugs along each side, partly for protection, and partly for acoustic reasons. Just before the first session, leftover acoustic slabs were attached to leftover MDF boards and wrapped and stapled with leftover builders’ dustsheets for experimental moveable acoustic treatment in the control room. One was placed in the front corner alongside the right monitor where the walls meet. Two others were placed against the rear wall behind the mixing position, propped at varying angles, but gradually as more equipment was moved downstairs from the old studio these were simply placed flat behind the curtains.

I had envisaged mounting Rockwool absorbing panels on walls, but I am unconvinced that they are necessary; monitoring is far superior to the previous upstairs studio. Perhaps in time the acoustics will be further investigated, but presently I am happy, and there are already plenty of satisfied customers.

Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement, and I might yet construct sand-filled speaker stands as suggested by Dennis Blackham of Skye Mastering.

Since undertaking my first commercial project in the new room in September 2005, clients have generally commented that the atmosphere is very comfortable, and I put this down partly to the 1970s brown/beige colour scheme, but also to the natural and comfortable acoustics. Indeed, the first project that I mixed in the new studio garnered a Guardian newspaper Single of the Week!

Meanwhile upstairs in the house our adopted daughter has settled happily into her bedroom (the old studio), now decorated a fetching shade of Barbie pink… ■

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a

ow to optimise levels in an analo ue processin chain part ou ve ot the sound chain soundin sweet and ri ht but what i you now want to et a little down and dirty continues his tips on analo ue processin in a di ital world

Fi

Fi

F

S CC SSF L L processing it’s very important to know where the unity gain settings are on all your processors; last issue we learned how to calibrate a D-A-D processing chain for unity gain. However, sometimes we want to break the rules, and that’s what we’re going to do this issue -- push the envelope, stretch the system to its limits to see if we can obtain some interesting sounds. Some analogue processors have a ‘sweet spot’ that is not at unity gain. Especially, some tube units can produce interesting sounds when run closer to distortion. And some solid state units can add a useful ‘edge’ when driven close to clipping.

With tube units, the key is to learn the settings that may sound fatter or creamier but without getting fuzzy.

Since there’s often a fine line between creamy and fuzzy (Yes, it’s called cruzzy. Ed), your monitor system must be up to the task of making a good judgment, especially if you are mixing and then sending your work of art to be mastered. With solid state units, the key is to push them just enough, but not so far that the sound becomes harsh or fatiguing (unless that’s the sound you’re looking for, but I suggest for a special effect, not the whole album!). When in doubt, make two mixes to send to mastering, one clean and one dirty. It only takes a second to do it right the first time, but forever to fix your mistake later.

If you’ve never objectively studied a circuit, it’s time to go back to the bench and construct a test

system as in Figure 1, starting with a solid state DUT (device under test) and then progressing to a tube unit. The object of Figure 1 is to find the clipping point of the DUT and learn how it behaves as it approaches the clipping point. Remember to protect your ears, especially if you are wearing headphones.

Do not leave the headphones on while setting up and leave them off until you have a stable system with no intermittents and know how to turn down the level in the phones. If you don’t have an oscilloscope, you’re missing the opportunity to learn how to identify what square waves and altered sine waves look like.

Notice that I’ve placed a passive attenuator (potentiometer) in front of the monitor or headphone amplifier. This is not always necessary, but use it if the monitor amplifier does not have an attenuator in its first stage, or you may be distorting the monitor before you distort the DUT! Use an oscillator if you have one that can produce a clean, high level test tone, +20dBu or higher. Otherwise, use your D-AC as pictured; feed a 1kHz digital sine wave test tone at around -2dBFS into the D-AC to produce a high level analogue source signal, then raise the output gain of the DUT until you hear clipping (a very distorted sound) and the oscilloscope shows a squared waveform at the tops and bottoms of the wave.

Now turn the gain of the DUT slowly down, and you will probably notice that for several dB below clipping, it still has a distorted character if it’s solid state. Perhaps the point just where that distortion begins to be noticed is the sweet spot for that particular processor when you are trying to add an edge to the sound. As you raise the level into a tube unit, the sound will go through a long, gradual distortion curve before it finally clips (if you can apply enough gain to get a tube unit to clip, which may not even be possible without a very high level oscillator).

The sound may get a little fuzzy, then very fuzzy, even harsh, and finally clip.

As you can see, it is probably necessary to turn processors well above their unity gain points to obtain special effects. So we must modify our D-A-D processing loop at any points where we want to run processors hotter than unity gain, so as not to overload the A-DC. By inserting a passive attenuator after the compressor, as in Figure 2, we can turn up the gain of the compressor until it produces the special

effect we’re looking for, and turn down the passive attenuator to return the rest of the chain to unity gain.

If you have a calibrated passive attenuator, you can note the values where it produces the special effect, because you’ll always have to boost the compressor’s output the same amount when the attenuator is set to the same position, for the same net signal level.

Another reason to consider taking the system out of unity gain is when you are mastering and want to produce a ‘louder’ sound. I put louder into quotation marks because we must remember that every consumer has a volume control and as soon as they perceive that something is too loud, they turn it down! Far be it from me to encourage the loudness race, but I’d like to point out that raising the level above unity into an A-DC may only produce an occasional clip. An A-DC will always produce a legal signal, as opposed to digital clipping, which produces an illegal signal whose intrinsic value exceeds 0dBFS and contains bright, alias intermodulation distortion products. So if you really must clip a signal, do it in the analogue domain just prior to the A-DC. The gain block in Figure 2 could be another compressor or any processor with an adjustable gain.

Some A-DC models have soft clippers, but in general I’m not fond of them. You have to determine the nature of the circuit: is it an analogue domain compressor? A pair of diodes back to back? Or a digital domain processor, that will produce illegal signals? Some A-DC models are more tolerant of clipping than others; clipping an A-DC on one or an occasional peak may allow producing a signal whose average value (loudness) is 1 or 2dB louder without significant audible effect, as opposed to peak limiting, which involves time constants and may sound ‘clamped’ or produce a smaller sound. But raise the average level only if the client insists and after giving them the standard lecture on how the recording will sound worse on the radio (because it does). We may be pissing in the water to make it ‘better’ but I feel obligated to mention that some processing techniques produce less damage than others.

Next issue we’ll look at those balanced and unbalanced interface points in the chain and provide some general guidelines because it’s not all plug-andplay, you know. ■

n ormation Resolution recommends Bob Kat ’s book Mastering Audio — The Art and the Science as an essential source of information for every pro audio enthusiast who cares about sound. ou can buy it on line at www di ido com

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1 Listen and Measure

Customised D/ /D Processin Loop

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pple s trans ormation t ma es our production tools controls the di ital uture o the music industry sells the coolest consumer media products and has enou h cash in the ban to buy a ma or record label

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discovers that pple is also about to trans orm

Courtesy of Apple

the V and movie industry

1 C Apple Computer’s visionary chief executive Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod with video playback, and a new version of the iTunes software for Mac and PC with access to a special area of iTMS (iTunes Music Store).

TV shows and music videos were for sale online for US$1.99 each. In just 20 days, iTunes customers bought one million videos. iTunes users had committed instantly to a pay-per-view model, without any help from cable companies, set-top boxes, monthly subscriptions, the FCC or the BBC. By 2006, iTunes had sold 3 million videos. An offering that started as a handful of prime-time ABC programmes and some music videos has grown to 400 episodes from over resolution

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100 TV shows. Movie worker’s unions were placated and actor’s residuals re-negotiated. Apple’s success sent a frisson of excitement through the independent video and TV production community. A path to market had emerged that avoided negotiating passage via the traditional revenue-siphoning gatekeepers — TV and cable networks.

The mercurial Apple boss is now in personal negotiations with Hollywood studios, his initial proposal to sell feature films at a fixed $9.99 was flatly rejected. Five years ago, when Jobs negotiated with major labels he gave record execs one choice: my way or no way. The $0.99 fixed price song download was a hit with consumers, and with 80% market July/August 2006

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i e share, Apple is largely responsible for delivering an amazing annual digital music sales increase of 290% for 2005. The $1.1 billion in digital sales accounts for about 6% of record companies’ revenues, up from almost nothing two years ago. Very welcome, but something of a devil’s bargain.

With filmed entertainment revenues more than triple that of global music, film moguls are not keen to be bullied and are intent on variable pricing, with the most popular or latest content pitched at a premium. With iTunes, Apple defined a new market for individual album tracks and TV episodes, but feature films are already sold on DVD at hugely varying wholesale prices, depending on whether they are newer releases or library titles. The home video market may be mature, but still generated $23 billion in the US last year, and film studios don’t want to anger major retailers like Wal-Mart by giving Apple preferential terms. There have recently been signs of compromise, with the mini-series Battlestar Galactica making an appearance on iTMS priced at $15.99, with Battlestar Season 2 going on at $25.99.

In the 2004 hit animated movie The Incredibles, Mr Incredible had to hide his super hero powers. Not so the 50% owner of Pixar, the studio that created the feature, along with other cutting-edge animation hits such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo. Steve Jobs bought the graphics animation division of Lucasfilm 20 years ago from Star Wars creator George Lucas and renamed it Pixar. Jobs has never been shy about deploying his own ‘Reality Distortion Field.’ This phenomenon was first identified

by Mac project manager Bud Tribble back in 1981. It assumed legendary status in the computer industry, and was described by colleague Andy Hertzfeld as: ‘... a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.’

The RDF was deployed at full force this January, when Jobs engineered the sale of Pixar to Disney for $7.4b. The logic of the purchase somewhat escaped me at the time, as Disney already owned 50% of six Pixar films, all the theme park rights, and had a 12.5% distribution deal with the animation firm.

Then I remembered the Reality Distortion Field. Being an all-share transaction, no money actually changed hands, but it does make Steve Jobs the Walt Disney Company’s largest single shareholder, with 7% of the stock, and gives him a seat on the board. This is an unprecedented level of power within the top children’s media-marketing firm, the full ramifications of which have yet to be felt — or even anticipated — in the media industry.

‘The great thing about Steve is that he knows great business comes from great product,’ says Peter

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Schneider, the former chairman of Disney’s studio.

‘First you have to get the product right, whether it’s the iPod or an animated movie.’ While other studios focus on pumping out productions, Pixar has only now reached the stage where it makes one full-length feature a year. Pixar’s inspirational creative director John Lasseter (now also Chief Creative Officer for Disney) famously insists there are no B teams, and that every animation gets the full attention of the eclectic mix of animators, storytellers and techies at Pixar. This belief that a small team of top talent can beat a larger, less skilled operation was born out as The Incredibles grossed more at the box office than Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis and Treasure Planet combined.

The 2003 release Finding Nemo is the 11th highest grossing movie of all time. This ethos harks back to the early days at Apple Computer, where Jobs resolutely ignored suggestions to boost market-share by manufacturing lower-end products, or expand into adjacent markets where the firm wouldn’t have a Unique Selling Point or be market leader. ‘I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do,’ the Apple CEO has often explained. When Steve Jobs returned to run Apple after being fired 12 years earlier (and having started NeXT software and Pixar in the interim) he asked the top Apple execs what was wrong with the company. After some half-hearted replies, he apparently shouted: ‘It’s the products! ...

The products SUCK! There’s no sex in them anymore!’

Nearly a decade later, the abrasive style may have mellowed, but Jobs is busy applying his old strategy to the new digital marketplace. With absolute selfbelief and control, breakout innovation and topechelon marketing, he has created iconic products for consumers to lust after.

The knack of combining technical vision with a marketing flair that makes ordinary consumers want to be part of a cool tech-club is evident in Apple’s cultivation of professional creatives — including the industry most Resolution readers work in. During the post-Millennium lean years, Apple made a point of actively building up its portfolio of professional creative applications. CFO Fred Anderson explained: ‘During the downturn, Apple increased research and development to bring out even more innovative products. Our R&D spend climbed from $300 million per year to around $500 million per year.’

Apple’s strategy could be said to have its roots in the opportunistic purchase of Final Cut in 1998.

Randy Ubillos and his programming team originally created the Premiere application for Adobe, and were then hired by Macromedia to develop KeyGrip, built from inception as a pro-quality video editing program using Quicktime. Macromedia opted to

jettison KeyGrip — now renamed Final Cut — when executives refocused corporate objectives and became a web-only company. Apple recruited the Final Cut team to save the application, continued development, added FireWire/DV support and at the NAB show in 1999 introduced Final Cut Pro (FCP). Adobe Premiere was rather a neglected product, so Apple’s message seemed to be: ‘Bad, infrequently updated Mac software will not be tolerated. Make it right or we’ll take your market share with a kick-ass app that shows off what the Mac can do.’ Until this moment, Apple had always been very careful not to tread on the toes of independent software developers by making heavyweight applications in-house.

Today, the most impressive thing about the Mac world is that Apple puts so much effort into building a complete software environment for its customers.

‘If you were to ask me to name the best non-linear editor on the market, without hesitation I’d answer Discreet Logic’s Smoke — if it were about $120,000 cheaper — but it’s not!’ says editor Patrick Inhofer.

He continues: ‘To all those editors who get so heated up in these Avid versus FCP discussions ... the time has passed when our success as editors is defined by our access to a limited supply of very expensive black boxes. Both Avid and Final Cut are professional-level apps. More importantly, Final Cut Pro now has no real inherent limitations when compared to Avid.’

Beginning in 2001, Apple embarked on a series of acquisitions designed to bring top-grade creative products to the Mac platform. Prismo Graphics was bought for its motion graphics, in particular for its DVFonts and India special effects. Silicon Grail, started by Academy award winner Ray Feeney, sold Apple its RAYZ compositor. These products added to the lure of the Final Cut family. Nothing Real, developer of the Tremor and Shake compositing systems was also acquired. Emagic was acquired, and Logic Audio’s sequencing and virtual instrument technology redeployed downmarket in the easy-touse amateur musician’s program Garage Band, now distributed as part of the iLife package.

If the message had not been clear when Apple bought DVD authoring companies Spruce Technologies and Astarte, it was now. Apple wanted the whole 9 yards of audio-video creation. The buyouts, often involving tranches of Apple shares, offered an exit strategy for pioneers like Gerhard Lengeling and Chris Adam of Emagic, whose life’s work had been to build their niche software company. After each acquisition, development for non-Apple platforms was discontinued. The comments of those who had bought more expensive turnkey systems such as Nothing Real’s Tremor, priced from $75,000$140,000, are unprintable. Tom Wolsky, author of

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the FCP Editing Workshop book, summed up the opinion of many when he said: ‘If you want to do what these products do, you’ll have to buy an Apple computer. That’s what it’s all about.’

Apple disclosed in a regulatory corporate filing that it paid $15m for Nothing Real, $30m for Emagic and a total of $21m for three other acquisitions, including Prismo, Silicon Grail and FireWire chipmaker Zayante.

This was at a time when Microsoft’s annual R&D spending was around $4 billion. I’m sure a deal of worthy developments at the Microsoft Research Faculty benefited versions of XP, Office, Exchange and MSN — but I know which company got more ‘bang per buck’ for its investment. It wasn’t just the extra cinema screens and 17-inch Powerbook sales that Steve Jobs was thinking of ... he’s smarter than that ... it was the cool factor.

Creative audio and video professionals have become poster boys and girls on the /pro section of the apple. com website. Each month, around 8 production pros are featured in four categories of Design, Film/Video,

Photography and Music/Audio. Back in August 2005, Keane described the complicated dual-computer Logic Audio system running their stage show — now we all know how they manage to make such an impressive racket with just piano and drums onstage. In June 2006 guitarist Felicia Collins described how she has done away with an amp and just plugs straight into a Powerbook. And we all know that where the stars lead, a thousand wannabes will follow. The creative showcases are part of the brand building exercise — as are the retail stores in which they feature — a network of landmark, designer shops that Apple has built up over the last five years. Apple’s megastores pulled in $2.35 billion in 2005, a growth rate of 44% from 2004, making it one of the world’s fastest growing retailers.

Despite being founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeff Katzenberg, and despite Shrek 2 being the 7th all-time top grossing movie world-wide, Dreamworks SKG was sold last year to Viacom-owned Paramount for $774m and $840m in debt. Spielberg’s

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dream of building a studio to compete with Sony and Disney failed to make it on its own: even though films like Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator were successful, Dreamworks didn’t have the muscle to weather a few failures. Corporations like Viacom, with a market capitalisation of over $60b, are in a totally different league financially. Despite getting countless awards for its designs and glittering reviews for the usability of its computers, Apple still only has around 4% of the computer market. The product alone is not enough to bring in a massive audience. This leaves Steve Jobs looking very smart concerning the deal he cut with Disney. While Apple may have sewn up the portable music market with its hit iPod and iTMS, the race to dominate video is just getting under way. Let’s not forget that movies downloaded from iTunes can already be beamed through an Apple Airport wireless connection direct to a digital TV. Apple recently incorporated the aptly-named firm of Braeburn Capital in Nevada, a US state that has no corporate income or capital-gains tax. Its purpose?

To manage Apple’s growing cash-pile of $8.7 billion dollars ... more than enough to buy EMI or Warner Music without waving any paper. Apple is in a unique position to not only rewrite hardware and software history — which it already has — but to also define the next level of fast and friendly global media services.

In many ways, Jobs stumbled into the entertainment business. The iPod was pitched to Apple by an outsider, Tony Fadell, now SVP of the iPod division.

Even when Jobs bought Pixar from Lucasfilm in 1985, the small computer graphics unit was merely focused on selling its technology and creating special effects.

In the wake of the Disney-Pixar dream deal, the real question is how Steve Jobs can apply his unique product development skills to the media industry. ■

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e

Consoles o note s the heart o the traditional studio the mi in console embodies ar more than ust a means o tartin up a ew audio si nals and combinin them

SP

ten speci c consoles that were/are considered si ni cant or desirable L S M SC C S L Record One, LA installed a 100channel SSL SL8000 G Plus in 1993 in Studio A. Amid the intense competition in the LA studio market where 96-channel SSLs were not unknown, that extra four channels counted. The irony was that Record One had recently become part of the Ocean Way studio group, whose owner, Allen Sides, had been openly unconvinced of the signal path quality of virtually all commercially available consoles and equipment, building or rebuilding their own wherever possible — so this choice was possibly client-driven. At the time this was considered the largest analogue music desk made and, unless you know better, it probably still is.

F S SSL There’s always been a lot of discussion about which was the first SSL and what studio it graced — the level of interest always surprises — but there may be more than one answer. The late Colin Sanders built a console for his Acorn Studio in Stonesfield, Oxfordshire. This inspired further development with bits of a console being shown at a 1977 AES which resulted in orders for three (later) designated ‘4000A’ consoles. The first of these went to Dik Cadbury’s Millstream Studios, Cheltenham where the 18/16 console functioned happily for years. In 1978, under the name of SSL, the 4000B was shown gaining seven orders, the first of which went to the late Harry Thumann’s Countrylane Studios, Munich. I’ve never seen a 4000A but some have suggested that it was sold as an Acorn console, or SSLS, as in Sanders’ pipe organ control systems company at the time, making the 4000Bs the first true ‘SSL’ consoles. Me, I’m just a disinterested bystander unless you know better!

F S L SC L D L With CD about to arrive and a growing choice of digital recording formats, the decision by CTS Studios in London to order a digital console was brave but not illogical. The Neve DSP was installed in Studio One in Spring 1984 — the first large-scale digital desk in use. Much of the concept of assignability was defined on this desk, and the ability to configure channels was extreme, however, at just under 5m long (a CTS requirement) compactness wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately bugs led to it being moved off-line and into the care of Neve engineers in an adjacent room. Here it was debugged, further developed, and eventually moved back to One. In the meantime the BBC had installed a smaller DSP into a truck so now it wasn’t alone. Business pressures led to CTS being sold and the new owners removed the DSP and returned to Neve analogue but everyone was considerably wiser.

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C

LL

o ers

here will be more

M S V AIR Montserrat’s concept of providing AIR London’s technical expertise but with better weather was a huge success in the late 70s. Years of experience on Neve consoles was channelled back to Neve with Mr Rupert himself handling much of the basic design. Aside from specific technicalities, headroom and breadth of frequency response, the console is notable for having the mic amps in the playing area while retaining control on the console. Foldback was 8-way with a small mixer for each musician. For 1978 this was a large console at 52 channel — enough for two 24-tracks (Crazy.

Ed). This was perhaps one of the last co-specified consoles made with a major maker and its influence is ongoing.

CS London’s IBC Studios in Portland Place, opposite the BBC, was one of the few non-record company studios in the 1960s and this gave it slightly more flexibility.

This showed in the consoles they designed for themselves even as late as 1977, which has the most wide-ranging EQ available anywhere and an on-channel gas-discharge tube display to indicate where a channel was routed. However, it is to an earlier, unsung console that I turn — a 16-channel tube console that was responsible for the early Who and Kinks hits and more, yet it was simplicity itself.

The lesson we learn from looking at the mic pre/EQ is that in the right hands and with the right sources, you sometimes don’t need a lot.

D Inspired by the need for a console that handled the emerging 24-track format, offered better facilities than available anywhere else, and would fit in their small Trident Studios control room, recording engineer Malcolm Toft and maintenance engineer Barry Porter designed and built their ideal console. It introduced 4-band EQ and filters on main and monitor paths, ten foldback sends, free routing and much more. Fully discrete with a minimum number of transformers it was a success in their studio and they made around a dozen more, spurred on by a cheeky ad campaign (Why drive an Aston Martin when you can ride a bike?). Impressed studio clients wanted a lower cost version for their own studios (the B Range) and even lower cost (Fleximix) for a home studio market that didn’t exist yet. The following TSM console gained the plaudits but marked a move to ICs from the A Range’s handbuilt discrete circuitry, a console that changed much that followed including a name change to Trident. resolution

F C S F In the mid 1980s designer Rupert Neve formed Focusrite to manufacture audio processing modules and outboard equipment. Despite denying any interest in re-entering the console market, several studios, including MasterRock in London and Electric Lady in New York, requested just this, encouraging the development of a large studio console. While the signal path was typical of Neve’s designs, the company ran into problems over the digital control systems and the mounting delays brought the company into financial difficulties. MasterRock owner Steve Flood employed Focusrite staff to complete his console. The eventually installed consoles lacked the proposed automation and recall systems but were a sonic success. Focusrite was acquired by a new team who redesigned the control systems and rationalised other excesses, selling around a dozen Focusrite Studio Consoles before concentrating purely on outboard.

C D 1 By the mid 1980s SSLs were ubiquitous and several manufacturers developed desks that were positioned to beat them in key areas without straying too far from comparable operation.

Amek pulled out all the stops with the APC1000 aiming for greater automation, recall and resetting ability without compromising the signal path. And it attracted a number of prestigious studios including Greene Street in New York, and Sunset Sound in LA, a studio that had previously designed its own consoles and was very specific on technical matters. That sale underwrote the seriousness of this desk.

C D By the 1980s the majority of Calrec’s consoles were for the broadcast market but in 1987 it launched the UA8000 which further developed some industry trends. Physically an in-line, the design separated the input and monitor functions such that they were highly independent.

Features included 4-band EQ with ‘Automatic Relative Q’ so Q increased with amplitude; a very sophisticated dynamics section; a mic amp that employed transformer and electronic balancing according to the input level to increase headroom. The first console went to Polar Studios, which was particularly ‘hot’ as Abba’s base, but MasterMix in Nashville, Puk in Denmark and Abbey Road also joined in. Following the merger with AMS the console gradually stopped development.

P M C S L Like most large studio organisations, Phonogram made its own consoles until the end of the 1970s. Not having to compete in the open market, they could be quirky, original and innovative. The model installed in most of its studios in this time was notable for some of the first use of bargraph metering, and a pin matrix to move spare EQ and dynamics modules to almost any signal path on the desk — modest features today but influential for the time. ■ 1

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e

Puttin the he

g

orld Cup in the net

orld Cup is done and dusted and people all over the world are ettin bac to a semblance o normality

owever the sportin triumph overshadowed the technical achievement runnin beneath it all with D and multichannel rsts and the employment o the world s lar est audio routin system Lawo had an inte ral part to play in the event s in rastructure S L

loo s at the technolo y

S DC S S V C S S chose Lawo to provide a complete audio network system that linked commentator booths at the 12 World Cup stadia to the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Munich for the 2006 FIFA World Championship in Germany. HBS, as the ‘host broadcaster’, was responsible for organising the TV broadcasts for the World Cup games and the required technical infrastructure. Lawo took on responsibility as the main contractor and the technical equipment required was supplied to HBS on a rental basis and to manage this rental business Lawo founded a new company called Audio Broadcast Services (ABS). After the event, ABS took over Lawo’s used equipment and will market it for other large events to satisfy rental demand for routers and associated I-O from TV stations.

For the first time, HBS produced the TV broadcasts of all games completely in HDTV and multichannel sound. The HDTV signals were transferred uncompressed from the stadia to the IBC via a network supplied by T-Systems Media and Broadcast.

Some 200 commentators in the press galleries of the stadia reported live during the games and every commentator was provided with two incoming and

two outgoing lines. One line was used for the live report via microphone, one line supplied the commentator with the studio feed and live sound via a headset, and one bidirectional line pair was provided between the commentators and their respective home TV or radio station.

All commentator lines were supplied via Lawo’s Dallis I-O systems and in every stadium these lines could be freely distributed using a Lawo Nova73 HD routing system with a capacity of 8,192 mono channels. These routers also handled signals that were transferred via ATM to the IBC and, from there, were distributed worldwide. OB vans at the stadia could also be supplied directly with signals on demand from the commentator booths.

In addition, Lawo furnished the IBC with two mc266 mixing consoles that were used to produce Dolby 5.1 and Dolby E surround signals from contributions supplied for the worldwide feeds; a stereo mix was also simultaneously generated. The TV broadcast audio was embedded in the video signal before transfer.

The audio installations in all the World Cup stadia were identical although those in Dortmund, Munich and Berlin differed in accommodating more commentator positions because of their use for the semi-finals and finals. The hardware consisted entirely of standard components from Lawo and in cooperation with HBS the manufacturer developed additional software for the control system. This software was linked via a special interface to HBS’ bookings and management software, which was used for the processing of client orders.

The complete Lawo installation was monitored with the help of more than 30 TFT-based workstations. Two of these were installed in each stadium with a further four at the IBC. The system was presented to the user as a single large router, which was used to control and switch the commentator’s positions and with 19,200 resolution

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x 19,200 crosspoints it could be considered as the largest audio routing system ever created.

The entire audio network was controlled at the IBC using a workstation with a simple touchscreen interface. Any switched connection was seen immediately on all the other workstations, which were operated by HBS technicians. All the commentators’ PCs were connected to a networked server system.

Each stadium had two commentary control room managers in addition to a group of technicians and trainee students for whom HBS, in partnership with German universities and technical institutes, offered practical training. This is standard HBS practice at every large event in all host countries.

The flexibility of all the systems and networks used for the 2006 Soccer World Championship played a central role for HBS and this related particularly to the high-speed lines provided by T-Systems Media and Broadcast, on which the audio installations were based. ‘Also with Lawo we found a very reasonable redundancy solution,’ says HBS CEO Francis Tellier.

‘It is important to us, for example, that we can simply replace defective audio boards during operation, without the system being affected. Luckily, all the Lawo boards are hot-swappable.’

The Lawo HD cores were also designed with complete redundancy and integrated two router modules, and all I-O units supplying the core provided a so-called additional port-redundancy connection.

Every I-O unit also had two optical fibre connections to the core to achieve maximum flexibility with only one core.

‘Of course, there were alternatives to Lawo,’ admits Tellier, ‘but at the end of the day it was Lawo’s technical concept, particularly the computerbased switching possibilities, which replace traditional manual patching, that convinced us. We are also very satisfied with Lawo’s redundancy solutions, the number of router ports and the outstanding quality of July/August 2006

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e

g

Si nal distribution

the audio signal transfer from commentator booths in the stadiums to the IBC. Altogether this is a very good technical solution which, in addition, is even cost-effective.’

HBS and Lawo co-operated in June of last year during the Confederations Cup in Germany. Then the installations were restricted to two stadia: one Lawo Nova73 HD router and one Lawo Dallis I-O system were installed in the football grounds in Cologne and in the Broadcast Centre at the Frankfurt stadium.

The ATM connection between the two venues had a redundant design. This installation provided HBS and Lawo with a kind of test setup for this year’s World Cup — they had already used part of the line infrastructure, supplied by T-Systems, in the 2005 test.

Dallis units, with AES-EBU and analogue audio interfaces, in combination with the Nova73 HD routers

Lawo

ova 3

D router

transferred audio data with automatic bidirectional switching via the redundantly designed ATM connection from Cologne to Frankfurt. The matrices were optionally controlled locally in the stadium or centrally from Frankfurt. A Lawo mc266 was tested for 5.1 surround sound. According to Tellier the tests underlined the capability and conceptual advantages of the individual Lawo products, as well as the overall solution. However, he doesn’t want to over-evaluate the use of Lawo for the ConfedCup: ‘The large audio network that we now have from Lawo is far from being comparable to that used in the ConfedCup installation. And it is also the first time that we have a complete Lawo solution in use at a Soccer World Championship,’ he says.

The technical installation at the IBC started in early March, followed by extensive cabling and the setup of all other systems. Audio cabling in the twelve World Championship stadia was carried out in May, and by the beginning of June everything was ready for action. A warm-up match in the Munich Allianz Arena was the occasion for a successful functional test, which also served as a demonstration of the technology to all the broadcasters participating in the Championship.

Since then, the games have started and finished with most of the world watching them on TV. And it has to be said that they sounded pretty good. ■ July/August 2006

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a i g rag

john watkinson D se rogressive scan. he mo ion or rayal an realism is so m ch e er. se s a ial oversam ling in cameras an is lays. se he highes rame ra e ossi le say or . oo a he whole chain o ma e s re every lin can ass he re ire ali y.

D se in erlace. s a rimi ive analog e com ression ool ha was ren ere o sole e y . a re ro ce roa cas an is lay in he same ixel array si e. s ine cien . x ec a small-sensor ros mer camcor er o give ll resol ion. hin s a ic resol ion has any hing o o wi h wha elevision loo s li e.

i h De nition picture elevision is oin di ital and i De is loomin

S

loo s at some o the

issues surroundin the choice o new ormats F D C D S which high definition television was always five years away, it is nearly with us. Even now, though, it seems that there is still a gulf between what is known and what the television industry knows, but not as big as the gulf between what is known and what politicians say. Ask a dozen people for their definition of high definition and you get as many views.

Actually, I don’t even like the term. It’s as if definition is the only thing that matters, when in today’s moving image portrayal systems there is a whole slew of shortcomings and artefacts that need to be addressed. It’s analogous to concentrating on frequency response in audio while neglecting distortion, crosstalk and noise.

In audio it is necessary to understand the human auditory system to make any progress. It’s the same in image portrayal. It has to start with what the human visual system (HVS) can and cannot see. It has to be followed by a systematic and necessarily

cynical review of the popular wisdom about how moving pictures are perceived.

Actually even that is incorrect. We presently do not have a moving picture technology. Instead we rely on resolution

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the presentation of a series of still pictures. The HVS then has to make its best guess at what is going on, and, by a process called fusion, may accept that what is being portrayed was originally moving.

Clearly the picture rate is an important choice.

What should it be? Well, if you believe the popular wisdom, anything above the critical flicker frequency of 50Hz or so will do. Connect an LED to a suitable AC supply and it flickers at 50 or 60Hz. To the HVS it appears to be continuously lit. However, put the same LED on long wires and swing it around and then you can see the individual flashes.

You can also try running the LED from an audio generator so the frequency can be varied to find the lowest frequency that doesn’t flicker. Try it in the centre of the field of view and then try it in peripheral vision. Flicker is much more visible in peripheral vision because it’s a way of alerting the senses to anything approaching.

I thought that large screen Hi-Def TVs were intended to be viewed from close by. Add in the wider aspect ratio and it’s easier to see that more of the picture is in peripheral vision where flicker sensitivity is greater. Thus as well as putting more lines in, shouldn’t we also be raising the picture rate? Well, the television standards bodies don’t seem to grasp that.

There are picture rates and picture rates. The confusion is due to the traditional use of interlace.

Interlace takes a frame and sends the odd lines in one field and the even lines in the next. The conventional wisdom is that the flicker perceived is that of the field rate. Actually it’s an early compression technique allowing the frame rate, and thus the bandwidth, to be halved. In European systems, 25 pictures per second results in 50 fields per second. Unfortunately it doesn’t work as well as the simplistic explanations suggest. With everything else the same, I can tell an interlaced picture from a progressively scanned picture on a 19-inch monitor from over 100-feet away.

Basically interlaced pictures do not only contain field rate flicker. They also contain a strong component at frame rate that is visible. That, however, is not the worst news. Interlaced pictures can only be deinterlaced on the retina or electronically if nothing moves. Thus it’s the height of irony that we use interlace for moving pictures. We measure the static definition and tell everyone it’s great. This is like measuring the performance of a car while it’s parked.

Lovely handbrake, guv’nor.

What we need is a metric that is more representative of the viewing experience. Dynamic resolution is the thing to measure. Analysis with this metric shows that interlaced high definition television is an oxymoron.

The resolution falls so rapidly with motion that the static resolution is only achieved a few percent of the time on typical material. A non-interlaced system with only 720 lines beats the crap out of an interlaced system with over a thousand lines.

During the debate about how the United States should proceed with digital television and Hi-Def, the FCC and the ATSC asked for views. Virtually every academic establishment and the military told them clearly the truth about interlace and recommended progressive scanning, as did the computer and software industries.

The standards bodies listened to this advice without hearing it, because in my view they preferred the strident voices of a few vested interests and weren’t smart enough to know who was right. The resulting standard can’t even be called a standard because it allows some 18 picture formats, half of which are interlaced.

Fortunately the EBU avoided a repeat of this fiasco by very firmly choosing progressive scanning for July/August 2006

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wa e future Hi-Def services. They are to be congratulated for doing so.

Another choice for Hi-Def is how many pixels should be in the picture. Note that the modern idiom is to quote the visible picture size, rather than the old analogue system of quoting all the lines, including blanking.

It’s important to realise that Shannon’s sampling theorem only applies to infinitesimally small point pixels and requires ideal anti-aliasing and reconstruction filters. We get fairly close to the ideal in digital audio, but it’s not as easy in sampling devices such as cameras and displays. Steep-cut filters cannot be made in the optical domain. In the electrical domain, steep cut filters can use impulse responses with negative lobes. There cannot be an optical analogy because negative light is impossible.

Similarly all practical sensors and displays use pixels that are so big they virtually touch their neighbours in order to capture or generate enough light. Thus the ideal sampling system is compromised by two zeroorder-hold, or aperture effect, processes: one at the camera and one at the display.

The consequence is that a picture having n-lines cannot have n-lines of resolution. Thus it is inefficient to have the same line count in capture, production, transmission and display as analogue was forced to do for simplicity. Instead the optimal solution is to capture with high line-count cameras and then to extract the useful resolution by down-sampling to a smaller number of lines for transmission. At the display, an upconversion stage can be used so that the display’s own aperture effect can be used to help make the raster invisible. Typically cameras and displays having about 1000 lines can be connected by a 720 line channel in this way and no-one would know the difference. It’s worth pointing out that picture resizing of this kind is easy in progressive scan and a nightmare with interlace. Thus I favour 720P for Hi-Def broadcasting as it up-converts to 1024 line displays very well. To make it better still, 720P at 75Hz is riveting.

Naturally the raw data rate of Hi-Def is pretty frightening and without effective bit rate reduction, broadcasting it isn’t feasible. Fortunately the MPEG (Moving Pictures by Educated Guesswork) standards have proved very useful in this application, especially the subset of MPEG-4 known as H.264 or AVC. This takes a step forward from MPEG-2 by refining every coding tool for higher performance and emphasising the use of prediction.

Interlace is a compression technique and it is not a good idea to concatenate compression schemes.

MPEG supports interlace because there’s a lot of it about, not because it’s a good idea. Most of the power of compression schemes comes from motion compensated prediction. In interlaced video, field differences could be due to vertical detail or motion and it’s virtually impossible to tell which.

Consequently coding performance (quality for a given bit rate) is higher in progressively scanned systems.

We now have the opportunity to deliver large, crisp pictures in the home, but I don’t think I shall be buying a Hi-Def TV set until there is a quantum leap in programme quality. Presently we have a situation where the same amount of creative talent is being spread over more and more channels so that effectively the programmes act as screen savers between commercial breaks. Many years ago Clive James said that television trivialises everything it touches. He was right then and is still right. I don’t care how many pixels there are in the picture, the dumbed-down, patronising, mind-shrivelling, inconsequential banality will still be there. ■ July/August 2006

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r

dan daley he a leshi console migh seem almos ain in he c rren echnology lan sca e he erce al val e o a large- orma console seems o have move in he o osi e irec ion rom i s ac al mone ary wor h.

i e

ld consoles don t die they ust Dismissed as overpriced and irrelevant dinosaurs by many in the bi ou compact and convenient di ital production world lar e scale analo ue des s have o ten outlived their ori inal owners and acilities and one on to nd new lives and purpose elsewhere D

D L

spreads a little history

S M M S D if, late at night, when no one’s looking or listening, recording desks get together via some kind of electronic telepathy and hang out. They would light up a smoke, pour a drink (drawing from the vast pool of alcohol that had been spilt into their fader slots over the years) and reminisce about their careers. Fact is, there are a lot of consoles out there that have had careers as long or longer than the people who have used and owned them. The first Neve music console, the 8014, debuted in 1970, the same year as Let It Be. Now, out in the deserts of the American Southwest there is a bone yard for old aeroplanes — hundreds of commercial jets sit in the arid, moistureless air awaiting a reprieve or the call for spare parts. Recording consoles, on the other hand, hardly ever seem to take such sabbaticals. In fact, the ones that have sat in storage for periods over the years have hardly languished, up until very recently actually appreciating in value, which is something their aviation counterparts cannot claim.

Even when a console has outlived its usefulness in one incarnation, its next is less that of spare part

and more like that of butterfly from cocoon: they get chopped up into packages, going on possibly for decades more in modular form (as distinct from spare parts), still highly prized yet far more portable and affordable.

Dave Malekpour, whose slicked-back hair and Van Dyke make him look like a wizened jazz producer from the 1950s, owns Professional Audio Design near Boston. He’s restored many a vintage Neve and passed it on to new owners, and would prefer to keep it that way. But the changes in the economics of the recording industry have compelled him to make modules out of consoles on occasion. ‘We usually try to sell these beautiful consoles as consoles, rather than modules, but the alternative is to break the console up and rack up the 1081s and other components,’ he says. ‘Still, there is also something cool about having a pair of racked modules out of a special console go to 10 or 15 studios and allow them all to get a bit of that sound.

That’s what we did with the Focusrite Studio 64 from Conway Recording [in Los Angeles], and it’s now configured as 32 two-channel racks in 32 different

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July/August 2006

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r studios, living on.

‘These consoles have become works of art in some cases, and in general have a personality much like a human, and if they’re well cared for, they can last for years past the curve of the original investment.

The consoles were all built to last 20 to 30 years with upgrades and maintenance, but they can go well beyond that in most cases.’

British audio desks might arguably be the last vestige of Empire. There’s certainly plenty of them over in the States, where they would have more stamps in their passports than most Americans. Studio designer Fran Manzella recalls that the Neve VRP he dug up for the Studio at The Palms –- a Las Vegas luxury hostelry that includes a recording studio along with other amenities such as a spa — originally came from Abbey Road.

Other Neves with similarly high-toned pedigrees still soldier on here (or is that solder on?). An 8088 originally purchased by Pete Townshend for The Who’s Rampart studio found its way to another classic facility, Bearsville, in upstate New York, owned by the late Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager. Malekpour upgraded it and brokered it most recently to Neil Finn of Crowded House where it now resides in his studio in New Zealand. An SSL J9064 that started out in the private studio Room With A Vu in Manhattan a decade and a half ago -– a youngster, relatively speaking — went from there to Unique Recording and ultimately back into a private studio for the band Green Day. Consoles have their own genealogical trees. The Neve 8068 that started out in the Boogie Hotel on Long Island, New York in the late 1970s travelled across the East River to Skyline Studios in 1983 before ending up at the home studio of jazz composer and television scorer Dave Grusin. Then again, some seem destined to be homebodies -– the five SSL consoles at Quad Recording in New York are still in their original locations, save one, which travelled to Nashville when the studio took over another facility down there. In fact, the consoles were anchored pretty well -– they outlasted the original ownership of the studio.

The battleship console might seem almost quaint in the current technology landscape and perhaps from a purely workflow-oriented perspective, it is. But the perceptual value of a large-format console seems to have moved in the opposite direction from its actual monetary worth. If you ask most studio owners, engineers, producers and artists, they would much rather be photographed in front of a 20-foot-long desk than a 2m x 2m box with 16 pages of digital overlay depth. Like the vinyl records that are still used in gold and platinum sales awards, and the semiotic tape reel flanges that still appear on hard disk recording system controls, the battleship console is as useful as an icon as it is a piece of technology, if not more so. Now that’s staying power.

The following is unrelated to the above (except to the extent that everything is always related to everything else) but eminently worth noting in this space. In the never-ending search for the big picture, I ran across a few studies that quantify the digital music business in a way that reflects the true scope of what’s happened. As you look at the stats, keep in mind that MP3 was barely on the radars a decade ago, and that there were eight major record labels then as opposed to four (and counting) now, and that The Hit Factory and Enterprise and a dozen other major studios were still open and thriving.

• Arbitron and Edison Research’s survey of the digital radio world, The Infinite Dial, Radio’s Digital Platforms: Online, Satellite, HD Radio and Podcasting, found that more than one in five people — 21 percent July/August 2006

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of respondents — listened to Internet radio during the previous month — an audience that adds up to some 52 million people if the statistic is applied to the general US population — and that the weekly Internet radio audience grew by more than 50% from a year earlier.

• Worldwide music sales via the Internet and mobile phones exploded around the globe in 2005: sales grew three-fold, or 300% year over year, and generated US$1.1 billion in revenues for recording companies.

That’s up from US$380 million in 2004, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s IFPI Digital Music Report 2006.

• Some 420 million single music tracks were downloaded globally in 2005, 20 times more than two years ago and more than double the 2004 total. Digital music sales grew to account for 6% of total music sales for the year — Internet downloads accounted for

roughly 60%, and mobile phone downloads for 40%, as of 2005’s half-year mark. Source: New Wave of Commerce.

• The number of songs digitised and available online from major service providers doubled to surpass the two million-track mark, while the number of legitimate online service providers grew to 335 — that’s up from 230 in 2004 and 50 as of year-end 2003 (IFPI).

As Mark Twain once said, ‘There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics.’ But these stats bear out the sea change wrought by digital in the music business in the last several years. When we see the numbers again next year, expect they’ll tell the same tale, only more so. But we can take some comfort also in the fact that a lot of that music was made on consoles that have been around a lot longer than digital anything. ■

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6 6

ea r F

L C

FD

Here is a bit of feedback on the definition and origin of the word glitch related to Keith Spencer-Allen’s (Ten Commonly Used words with interesting origins, V5.3) column.

Glitch — Technical Malfunction Problem A Spike in Power Voltage.’ While this started as a term from electronics, its meaning has spread to cover any problem’ or snag.’ The term glitch’ most likely comes from iddish glitsh’ or gletsch,’ meaning a slip or lapse, closely related to glitshik,’ meaning slippery.’ The iddish derives from the Middle High German glitsen,’ the immediate parent of the New High German gleiten,’ both words mean to slide.’ Through its Germanic roots, glitch’ is a slightly distant relative of glide,’ which comes from Anglo-Saxon.

The first recorded use of it was in 1962, in a book We Seven, by the astronaut John Glenn, who said another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was glitch.’ He defined the term as a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it...A glitch is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it.’ Time Maga ine, in 1965, populari ed the term further with an article Glitches — a spaceman’s word for irritating disturbances.’

Note that John Glenn writes adopted’ not invented.’

The term is common in electrical argon. As John Glenn suggests, a glitch is generally a spike in voltage or a random voltage output caused by a change in power input. We can understand this as a slide’ by imagining a meter waving or sliding until the power level settles to what it should be. A secondary meaning of the term in electronics argon is a temporary loss of power.

It is interesting, if not amusing, that a word originally meaning to slip or slide could come, in general useage, to mean snag,’ which we would think of as opposite to slide.’

Ref www.panikon.com/phurba/alteng/g.html Graham Langley, Langley Design Ltd, Twemlow, UK

I was most interested to read John Andrews’ letter which included some thoughts on the origin of the word dubbing’ (Headroom V5.4).

In the early days of the disc industry (1900 or thereabouts) dubbing meant the copying of the original metal shell. The process from cut master resulted in a metal negative. At that time there was no safe method of plating the shell to produce a copy positive (for the production of stampers) without fusion taking over.

The industry soon developed a dubbing’ process. This involved placing the metal shell in a dubbing pan, then pouring over a mixture of various waxes and fine plaster of Paris. When set, the metal shell was carefully removed to reveal a copy of the original wax, which was then plated to produce a negative stamper. This could be repeated as often as re uired without damaging the original master negative. There is much fascinating correspondence in the EMI Archive about the process.

As to the origin of the word, it has also been suggested that it comes from dubbin’, and its conse uent meaning to pour wax onto.

It would be good to know exactly where it came from.

Roger Beardsley, North Thoresby, UK

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