Sommaire pour Issue 127 de AudioTechnology

I recently had the opportunity to host a panel at the Studios 301 Open Day. The topic was How Can Big Studios Adapt to Making Music in the Modern Market? At first, I thought it was a setup; an easy way for 301 to spruik its relevance in front of a captive audience. To his credit, studio GM, Ron Haryanto, assembled a diverse panel: owner Tom Misner; producer and decade-long Studios 301 stalwart, Simon Cohen; Australian Music Week director and artist manager, Geoff Trio; and independent artist, Milan Ring. While Trio comes from the artist management side, Milan was the real outlier of the bunch. Impressively, she does it all. Not simply writing, recording, mixing and mastering her own music, but doing the same for other artists, and mastering the…

Courtney Barnett is a paradox; fame and entrepreneurialism dressed down in a flannel and beanie. She’s an American TV late show star and indie music entrepreneur with her own record label whose lyrics chronicle life with a tenor of self doubt and anxiety. The lead track off her new album is called Hopefulessness, a slow build jam that tails off into the vexatious sound of Barnett’s own kettle whistling away on the gas stove. It’s the sound of her anxiety captured on an iPhone. “When I’m at the other end of the house and hear it going but can’t get there, it really stresses me out.” If you could visually reconstruct the melancholy haze of Barnett’s lyrics on songs like Depreston, you’d end up with the strip of shops her…

Salogni: “Different frequencies sound different at different volumes. This is also the reason why I mix at medium volume. I’ll then occasionally turn it up for a few minutes, to check the mix, and I do the same with a lower volume. I want to make sure that the mix sounds good both quiet and loud. The songs are coming from a very different aesthetic than the one of a common radio mix. The challenge was to make the songs as powerful as a modern mix but still to retain maximum dynamics. EQ, multi-band compression, and automation helped a lot to achieve this. My goal was to create a sense of complete immersion in the song for the listeners, to create sonic shapes that create a unique sound world for…

Salogni: “I actually split the vocals over three tracks, for the intro, verse and chorus, to be able to treat each differently. Each of these tracks also had different sends to my aux tracks. One aux was a delay aux with the Waves HDelay on my usual setting; a ping pong with lo-fi, but no analogue noise. I also had a Reverb aux, which had the Valhalla Vintage reverb, which is my favourite; all I do is change the pre-delay, the decay, the low-cut so I don’t mud-up stuff, and the hi-cut depending on how hissy I want it to be. There’s an Aux with the Valhalla Shimmer, but I use that just for one moment, because it’s become so recognisable now. I put a Pro-Q2 after the Shimmer, because…

It’s the sound guy equivalent of winning Powerball. Like hitching your wagon to a bullet train. No one could predict it and nothing could prepare you for it. One minute you’re chugging along on the daily grind, the next minute you’re on a white-knuckle 300kph ride, using all your strength just to hold on. “I came on board for a two-week run. I was then asked to continue to do some one-off promotional shows. We had some early success over here in Australia which we followed with a couple of shows. Things then started to tick along in the US, so we flew to America. And before you know it we were doing a show at Madison Square Garden! We’ve been touring pretty much constantly ever since.” That’s FOH engineer,…

PRICE $4499/pair CONTACT PMC Australia: (03) 9426 3660 or pro@pmcspeakers.com.au PROS Superlative bottom-end Great imaging and deep soundscape Simple no-frills operation More affordable CONS Possibly a little large for some SUMMARY Transmission line speakers have largely been exclusive to the top-tier. PMC designed a new one from scratch to bring its ATL-style of speaker to the masses. The result.6 still has all the trappings of a PMC speaker — accurate, efficient low end; a wide sweet spot; and faithful reproduction — just without the DSP trappings.…

PRICE Expect to pay Prologue 8: $1999 Prologue 16: $2899 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au PROS 16-voice polyphony! Goodbye voice-stealing Incredible sound Superb build quality & look Open API for user-controlled oscillators & FX CONS No modulation matrix Limited modulation possibilities Only two-parameter settings for FX No aftertouch SUMMARY Not satisfied with putting a whopping 16 voices in an analogue poly synth, Korg added a fully-programmable digital Multi-Engine oscillator inside Prologue… emphasis on programming. It might lack a modulation matrix, but this synth will go from dreamy to snarly on the stage or in the studio, all without stealing a single voice from your polyphony.…

ALLEN & HEATH IN ITS PRIME www.allen-heath.com Allen & Heath unveiled the new Prime Input and Output modules for its dLive mixing system that are designed to make the most of dLive’s 96kHz XCVI FPGA core. Two modules will be available; an Input Mic Pre module (with eight mic preamps) and a Line Output module. As the modules are designed to fit into the dLive DX32 expander rack, Prime can be used easily in conjunction with existing I/O, with the ability to tailor or scale the system to your unique requirements, from select channels up to multiple fully-loaded racks. Allen & Heath’s Managing Director, Rob Clark explains: “As our XCVI core is a defacto 96kHz platform, we realised we were able to exploit I/O converter technologies that are optimised for…

Some blokes have luxury cars, some blokes have real estate, some blokes have studios, some blokes have the lot. That’s Tom Misner; SAE founder, Studios 301 owner, and resident of the millionaire state, Monte Carlo. “I have all the luxury items in the world you can think of, but I still like building studios,” mused Misner. “It’s weird.” It’s only weird because it’s a hobby the average income earner can’t afford. It’s his version of a model train set; impeccably sculpted to his specifications, with analogue consoles and vintage mics replacing period-correct station facades and heritage-variety plastic shrubbery. Misner bills the new incarnation of Sydney’s Studios 301 as a philanthropic gesture. “I started making money in Australia, and when I sold SAE I made even more money,” he said. “This…

Despite progress made in combatting sexism, the numbers still don’t favour women in the music industry. An Instagram account called ‘Lineupswithoutmales’ appeared just prior to International Women’s Day and documented the imbalance by editing festival posters to leave only female-represented acts on the bill… some were left plain empty. DJ Mag’s 2017 readers’ poll collated a similar imbalance when its list of 100 most popular DJs featured exactly three female DJ acts. In recording studios, the ratio is similarly lopsided; female engineers, mixers and producers are estimated to fill only three percent of control room Herman Miller Aerons. Other awards haven’t fared much better. The recent #metoo movement famously fell on deaf ears during the 2018 Grammy Awards ceremony, as the results simply confirmed the skewed reality. Only one female…

Salogni: “My master chain usually begins with an EQ, but if I feel it doesn’t need that, I’ll start with a compressor. In this case it was the Waves SSL G-Master Bus, which adds very subtle compression with a ratio of four. Then there’s the PSP Q2, gently notching out a few frequencies — 202, 345, 495, 624Hz and 2.32kHz — and then I have the Linear Phase Multiband. After that I’ll have the Waves L3LL Multimaximizer, for some rough simulated mastering, to be able to hear the things at a louder volume. I take the L3 off when I send the tracks to a mastering engineer, but when I finalise the mix I need to make it louder to be able to understand what it will feel like once…

1 Avalon 737SP: The compression looks after Ed’s main vocal. It’s a very subtle, very transparent compression but it really does the job. I also use the EQ for some broadbrush adjustment — anything more intricate is done on the SD7. 2 API 2500: It isn’t in line. It’s in case of emergency. 3 Waves MaxxBCL: I used to run the subs on an aux but it always felt like it separated things into a sub bass and a full range system — I never really managed to make the whole thing feel like it was one. Now we run the system off of left and right bus but the MaxxBCL gives me the ability to grab some of the sub bass frequencies when Ed is rhythmically punching the guitar…

CONTACT Avid: 1300 734 454 or steve.chavez@avid.com PROS Impeccable PCM & DSD conversion Neutral high-gain preamps Loads of digital I/O & option cards Monitoring options up the wazoo CONS Outdated DADMan GUI SUMMARY Avid’s MTRX is the link between every type of connection, Pro Tools, and Avid’s line of mixing surfaces. If you’ve ever felt limited by what you can get in and out of ’Tools, then MTRX is the answer — MADI, AES, Dante, and all controllable over Ethernet. The Digital Audio Denmark conversion just ensures all your I/O is the best it can be.…

BEHRINGER CLONES 808 www.musictri.be/brand/behringer/home Probably the most coveted drum machine of all time is the Roland TR-808 — you’ll still pay into the thousands for an original unit. The rumours of Behringer releasing a clone of the classic have proven true with the introduction of the RD-808 Rhythm Designer. Importantly, the RD-808 doesn’t generate digital emulations of those classic drum sounds — it’s a completely analogue machine. Aesthetically Behringer’s clone sports the familiar gradation of red and orange keys alongside orange and white knobs. However, it’s not a straight clone in every respect. Behringer has thrown in a few useful features not found in the original, including an analogue, resonant two-pole filter and a transient designer/bus compressor which you can feed with multiple assignments. The synth has 11 individual direct…

Salogni’s treatment of Bjork’s lead vocal in The Gate illustrates her tendency to use many EQs in series on the inserts. The insert chain consists of two EQ3 7-bands, a CLA-76, a Pro-Q2, a C4 multiband, and a Waves RDeEsser, cutting 5500Hz. “All the EQs are subtractive, with the first having a hi-pass at 78Hz, and cutting at 98Hz, 175Hz, 290Hz, and 740Hz, and the second one cutting at 2.75kHz, the latter because the vocal got harsh in a few places. The CLA76 doesn’t do too much, because I didn’t want to mess with the dynamics and my intense volume automation. The Q2 does more notching.”…

Although Salogni repeatedly stressed the importance of volume automation in her mix, she used a respectable amount of plug-ins. What is striking, is that she seems to use many different instances of a select few plug-ins, mostly the Avid EQ3 7-band, FabFilter Pro-Q2 EQ, Valhalla Vintage Verb, and a few Waves plug-ins: the C4 multi-band compressor, CLA-76 compressor, DBX160 compressor, HDelay, Linear Phase Multi-band, and DeEsser. The master bus has a couple of different plug-ins, namely the Waves G-Master Bus compressor and the PSP Master Q2 EQ, plus the aforementioned Linear Phase Multi-band. In other sessions she uses a few additional plug-ins, like the SoundToys MicroShift, Little AlterBoy, and Panman, and some of the Air plug-ins, like the Phaser. But that is it, more or less. With most mixers swimming…

I talked to Kaj Dahlstrom from Melbourne’s renowned Sing Sing Studios, and asked him which outboard EQ units have been most popular with his customers, and he pointed to the following units: • George Massenberg Labs GML 8200 five-band parametric EQ is extremely popular amongst seasoned veterans who want to do serious tone shaping. Kaj notes that users like the sound it makes when air frequencies are boosted. • Kaj says most like to track using the Neve 1073 (or 33115) which offers a high and low shelf, and a switch-select sweepable mid with fixed Q cut-and-boost. The design is all discrete transistor, and old units with the original Marinair input and output transformers are highly prized. • Focusrite ISA115 is also popular, and has a mic pre which people…

“The violin sounded so sweet through the Neumann U47 and custom-built Giles Audio valve preamp… However, we all chose the Sony” The sleeping giant has woken. Sony has finally released new studio microphones, its first new studio-specific designs in over two decades. So why now? Is it just having a corporate mid-life crisis, reminiscing over the golden days of mics like the C37? Or was Sony’s revered C800G thermo-electrically cooled tube microphone (released 25 years ago) just too hard of an act to follow? To understand the reasoning behind Sony’s new microphones, we perhaps need to dig deeper into the guiding principles of Sony’s entire audio vision. Unlike other manufacturers racing to the bottom. Sony Music doesn’t just support Hi-Res audio, it’s built an entire eco-system around it. It makes…

It’s not often a set of PMC monitors make their way onto my monitor bridge. I believe the last PMC monitors I auditioned were Digidesign RM-1s — a collaborative effort between the two companies from way back when. Regardless, each time I do sit in front of a pair of PMCs, I need to re-calibrate my perception of lower frequency reproduction. Why is that? Well PMC does things a little differently to your usual monitor manufacturer. All PMC’s designs utilise what’s known as a transmission line as part of the monitor cabinet design. The upshot of incorporating a transmission line within the cabinet is the taming of reverberation caused by the low-end driver interacting with the rear of the cabinet — as you’d find with typical bass reflex designs, ported…

PRICE Expect to pay $999 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au PROS Powerful analogue oscillator-shaping Patch matrix adds tone & integrations Deep sequencing flexibility on the 2S CONS None SUMMARY MiniBrute 2 ticks all the boxes for a monophonic analogue synth — thick tone, loads of modulation options, enhanced by a patch matrix, and an extremely flexible sequencer on the 2S. MiniBrute 2 will be friendly to the uninitiated and a pleasure for synth fans looking to expand modular setups.…