Indice dei contenuti per AudioTechnology Issue 114 in AudioTechnology

With the value of recorded music slipping, who actually gets to decide the worth of music these days? There’s the sliding scale between new release retail price and 2-for-1 discount bins, an RIAA algorithm, and Pharma Bro’s expense account. But does anybody really have control over it anymore? I’ve got a theory that there’s some secret underground moves being made to wrestle control back, and put some real monetary value back into music. Hear me out. Recently, the RIAA, which doles out Gold and Platinum status to American artists, decided to add streams to its count. Its math has slowly been encapsulating digital sales: 10 iTunes downloads equates to one physical album sale, and one million physical sales makes you Platinum. Though because hardly anyone actually buys albums anymore, the…

FREE PLUG-INS 1 Bernie Torelli, Nomad Factory founder, has sadly passed away after a three-year long battle with cancer. For all the Nomad users who made donations three years ago to help pay his hospital bills, Torelli left behind a ‘thank you’ in the form of a new plug-in, Bus Driver. It’s an optical compressor that provides a wide range of compression effects, inspired by models from the ’60s. The plug-in also features a Tube-Driver saturation feature to impart some vintage tube-like character to your tracks or mix bus. It also features an Output Stage Soft-Clipping design for smoother distortion characteristics. You can acquire your free copy from store.dontcrack.com using the voucher code: freebusdriver. 2 iZotope is 15 years old! And to celebrate its birthday, the company has decided to…

Descending through ocean layers in a cage, The Deep diving simulation comes complete with a terrifying shark encounter. Joanna Orland, Senior Sound Designer talked about the audio vision and its implementation: “Before doing any hands-on sound design on a new project I investigate the audio identity I’d like to give it. It’s important not to create assets in isolation; every sound must fit into the audio world you’re building. “For The Deep I listened to how films have portrayed underwater sound and found they tend to give space a similar treatment too. The Abyss, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Gravity and Battlestar Galactica all recreate the feeling of being underwater or in space, not the reality. “Sounds were somewhat muted and everything was quite soft. Object sounds were often vibration…

BACKSTAGE MADNESS Michael Waters: “It’s a pretty big operation back stage. In fact, that’s far more complicated than FOH to be honest with you. There are two Avid Profiles back there, one for Hugh and the cast’s IEMs and one for the orchestra mixes. Bob Daniels and Harrison Maher provided the orchestra with 'More Me' mixes via Aviom personal monitoring controllers, which lets them balance the mix with their own signal. There are also 12 audience mics which help keep Hugh in touch with the audience while he’s on IEMs” BOLD AS BRASS Michael Waters: “I love that old-school, classic brass sound you get with the Sennheiser 441s and 421s” INVOLVED MIXING Michael Waters: “There’s quite a bit of soloist mixing involved. In terms of general mixing, there are some…

Well I’ll be darned. Apple has cottoned onto the fact musicians are using iPhones to quickly record song ideas on the go. And why wouldn’t you! The phone is constantly by your side; either in your pocket, or within earshot. Or, it’s directly in front of your face while you’re checking on everything happening on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Flickr, Google+, LinkedIn, SoundCloud, Reverbnation, Yelp, and the list goes on, and on, and on. Blardy blardy bloody blar. In reality (remember that?), you’re without doubt better off jotting down a few melody or lyric ideas than wasting your sanity on any social media platform. I’d best digress. The point is, we’ve all got an excellent recording device on hand every waking hour. Part of the attraction with a simple recording…

1 NEWMARKET STUDIOS Resident engineer Callum Barter was thrilled to have Courtney Barnett back in the studio, this time collaborating with American Kurt Vile on a cover. Jim White and Mick Turner from The Dirty Three dropped by in to take care of drums and guitar textures, and Kurt’s band mate/producer Rob Laasko played bass on his Fender 6. Callum said hearing their distinctive voices side by side was impressive, along with the combination of each player’s unique sound and style. Courtney, Kurt, Rob and Jim all set up live across the four tracking rooms, with the rest overdubbed. Northern Irishman Foy Vance also managed to find a gap in the Ed Sheeran tour to drop by the studio to track a song for his forthcoming album. Engineer Lilith Lane…

Is mastering an art or a science? Bob Katz’s book suggests it’s a balance of the two, and if you’re going to take anyone’s word for it, it should be the man himself. Pro mastering engineers always seem to be one part creator, one part mathematician — with the ability to be artistic and experimental, while judiciously keeping within certain boundaries. To quote Katz, “mastering is the art of compromise.” Computers rock at the scientific, mathematical stuff. They’ll do what you tell them to do; accurately and lightning fast. But software is not creative — it can’t make something out of nothing. It can’t feel emotion or react to it. People are still better at the touchy-feely stuff, which is why great music is made by people. So what’s the…

“I edit the vocals as I go, and groove them in real time. I like things to sound as good as possible when Justin walks out of the vocal booth” If there’s one thing America does right, it’s the comedy roast. Sure, it’s a completely see-through public relations stunt, but if you’re attempting to endear yourself to the public by inviting celebrities to dig at the base of a fellow tall poppy, at least everyone gets to laugh about it. In the saga that is ‘Justin Bieber Growing Up’, Comedy Central’s roast was a hit. Beliebers should be old enough to handle a bit of satire by now but for any residual die-hards, armed with ‘I will kill you for Lulz’ on their Tweet speed dial, the roast was staged…

Tuning vocals can be one of the most tedious parts of the record-making process but it can also be one of the most rewarding. Engineer’s have enormously powerful tools at their disposal that can make an incredible difference between how a vocal performance sounds when it was recorded to how it sounds on a release. However, like all processes involved in improving the sound of a record, the devil is in the detail. RIGHT TOOL FOR THE RIGHT JOB The three different plug-ins I use when tuning vocals are Antares Autotune 5, Autotune Evo and Celemony Melodyne. Each of them are used to achieve a specific result and each of them do something better than the other. Auto-Tune 5 is my weapon of choice when going for obviously tuned vocals…

Back in 1997, I was a high school student with a newly developed passion for electronic music, and as a result, samplers. I saved my pennies up for the entire year just so I could buy an Akai MPC2000. Since then I’ve owned a significant chunk of the MPC range. So in 2013 when Ableton debuted its Push controller in collaboration with Akai, I was like a kid again, witnessing the perfect union of where I was, and where I’d come from. The melding of Ableton’s powerful software with Akai’s MPC-style hardware. But the original Push never quite lived up to the fantasy for me. While it did inspire an army of Ableton users with new ways of interacting with their favourite DAW, I never quite gelled with it. I…

Welcome to Telstra Theatre, nestled in its Customer Insight Centre (CIC) in downtown Sydney — the best-equipped theatre you’ve never heard of. The 300-seat Telstra Theatre isn’t a secret, yet its existence isn’t exactly common knowledge either. It’s had a few high-profile bookings (the 2015 ARIAs finalists announcement, for one) but it spends most of its time as a showcase of Telstra AV integration, packing the best of everything to blow away potential corporate clients. As you can see from the photo, it’s a stunning installation but what the photo doesn’t reveal is the most sophisticated audio rig you’ll find in any theatre venue in Australia; based on the Meyer Sound Constellation variable acoustic system. Constellation addresses a problem most performance venues suffer from: the need for multi-functionality. The issue…

“VR coming along is really audio’s day in the sun — Dave Raynard, London Studio Director” Until recently, Virtual Reality has been most comfortable in the science-fiction realm. Much like anyone wearing a ye olde ‘futuristic’ VR headset, early attempts at actually creating fully immersive 3D worlds stumbled along, cut off at the knees by primitive graphics, horrific frame rates and appalling motion lag. Slowly but surely, VR technology caught up to the future, though sky high costs rendered a consumer offering improbable — until now. Consumers are buzzing at the prospect of in-home VR; at CES punters were lining up around the block to don some snow goggle-sized headsets for a virtual tour of VR’s capabilities. Global corporations — unperturbed by 3D’s lack of wide scale take up —…

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) has proven really useful for the PC musician, but there are now so many different inter-gear connections that it can also get confusing. USB devices essentially start out as one of two types. Those with rectangular-shaped USB Type-A ports are host devices, including PCs and some Macs. They’re also found on USB hubs, and in many cases are also able to supply USB 'bus' power to devices plugged into them. Meanwhile, the humbler USB peripherals including many audio and MIDI interfaces, USB-equipped keyboards/synths, and boring devices like printers and scanners sport squarish USB Type-B ports with two slightly bevelled top corners. As electronic devices shrunk, Type-B ports were too bulky to fit, so a miniaturised USB Mini-B connector started to appear on many portable audio…

“The Prodigal is indeed its own creature, which I consider a big plus” Over the years AudioTechnology has shone the spotlight on a range of Australian audio pioneers, many of whom have contributed to the audio industry on a local and global scale with game changing designs, clever innovations and considerable business savvy. Having said that, it's an unfortunate fact that most of the outboard in our studio racks is designed and built overseas and we pay a premium for importing this gear in the never-ending quest for great tone. With the honourable exceptions of people like Al Smart, Rob Squire at Proharmonic, Joe Malone at JLM, David Peach, and Sebastian from Sebatron, there hasn't been a lot of locally built outboard making it to market in the last 10…

I never thought of music as a career. Instead, I was on the road to go to law school. After I graduated from college, some friends in a band asked if I knew how to drive their truck when they were on the road. I did, so I started moving their gear. About a month in, the sound engineer didn’t show up — he got fired or he was drunk — and the band said, “You’re mixing tonight.” It probably wasn’t great but the band had a lot of vocal harmonies and I just had an ear for balancing vocals. I started doing it more, until I was mixing every night. Towards the end of the summer, the band went into the studio to record an album. I walked into…