Sound On Sound UK August 2021

“The most important factor in the development of a good audio engineer is time spent engineering.” Writers like Malcolm Gladwell argue that talent is a myth. What separates the successful from the also-rans, they say, is practice. The ability you are born with is far less significant than the effort you put in. If you spend enough time doing something, eventually — perhaps after the oft-quoted figure of 10,000 hours — you’ll get to be good at it. This can’t be true in all spheres of life, but I’m pretty certain that it’s true for audio engineering and music production. The most important factor in the development of a good audio engineer is time spent engineering. One reason for this is that some studio skills fall into the category of ‘tacit knowledge’:…

Sennheiser’s MD 435 is a dynamic, cardioid-pattern microphone, tailored for live performance. It essentially takes the company’s MD 9235 cardioid pattern capsule — a popular choice for wireless systems at the pro end of the live sound and broadcast markets — and builds it into a conventional wired microphone, featuring a distinctive Sennheiser outline and a satin-black finish. With the aim of delivering better transparency and clarity than typical stage vocal mics, Sennheiser build their MD 9235 capsule using a lightweight aluminium-copper voice coil to reduce the inertia of the diaphragm assembly, and thus extend its high-frequency response. A spring capsule-mounting system is used to minimise handling noise, and there’s also a hum compensation coil to help cancel out any electromagnetic interference. The capsule’s forgiving cardioid pickup pattern allows users to…

When they’re not busy developing plug-ins for other manufacturers, Danish DSP wizards Relab find time to extend their own highly regarded range of reverbs. The first of these, and the one that perhaps did most to make their name, was a faithful emulation of the classic Lexicon 480L digital reverb. LX480 Complete has recently been updated to version 3.0, with improved preset management, and it’s now joined by a more affordable, streamlined version called LX480 Essentials. Relab have recognised that many users don’t have the time or the inclination to delve into multiple pages of editing parameters when choosing reverbs — they just want ‘that sound’ with a minimum of fuss, and that’s what you get from LX480 Essentials. It offers four of the classic Lexicon algorithms in a semi-preset format,…

Toontrack have kept the EZbass add-on content coming at a breath-taking pace over the last 12 months with both sound expansions and MIDI groove packs. The latest release is Fretless EBX, which offers the very distinctive sound of the electric fretless bass to the EZbass user. An Ibanez Gary Willis signature five-string fretless bass — this model is priced in the £4000 range — ensured a top-quality sound source, while the included MIDI groove content was performed by Laurence Cottle, whose impressive bass playing credits are both extensive and diverse. Don’t Fret As with the previous expansion, alongside a crystal-clean DI version, Fretless EBX offers a good range of amp-based presets and a few, well-chosen, effects. These cover plenty of sonic ground so, whether your mix needs a thunderous low end (the…

At first glance, Baby Audio’s Smooth Operator looks like a rival to dynamic resonance suppression plug-ins such as Oeksound’s Soothe. But although dynamic resonance suppression is certainly one of the things Smooth Operator does, the emphasis here is less on fixing bad-sounding audio, and more on creative sound-shaping. Focus Group Smooth Operator’s user interface displays an EQ-like curve overlaid on an animated spectral representation of your source. A single Focus slider does something roughly akin to Soothe’s Sharpness control: at high Focus values, any attenuation that’s applied is concentrated on narrow resonant peaks, but turn it down to zero, and those same peaks will trigger broadband gain reduction. The rest of the control set is condensed to five nodes on the ‘EQ’ curve. You interact with the two white nodes in the…

No, no don’t turn the page! Seriously, you need this hootery of odd plug-ins in your studio arsenal. Well, unless you’ve never used hand claps, boot stomps or finger clicks in any music you’ve recorded and never plan to. Then you’re probably good. For me, recording hand claps on my own has always been a bind because you have to stack a silly number of tracks for each part of the song if you don’t want obviously repetitive, cut-and-pasted results. I was ready for a better option and so were my sore mitts. I bought Boz’ El Clapo as a solo product before the other two plug-ins were released. The first time I tested it, I ended up giggling like a tiny child. It was both fun and sounded wonderful. Whether…