Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 122 i AudioTechnology

One of my favourite Facebook groups is Live Sound Engineers of Australia. Love it. Helpful tips from local seasoned pros, gear recommendations, info on venue riders, and enough sound guys to change a lighting guy’s lightbulb. There’s also gripes galore, that vacillate between cantankerous and hilarious. Sit back and break out the popcorn. Last night, I was browsing through the feed and came across a particularly worrying post from Brisbane-based live engineer Sam Lowe. He was about to head off on a European tour when he got an email from one of the Montreux Jazz Festival organisers that read: “This year you may encounter a setup that may be unusual for you and at first sight may frighten you. The mixing console is not placed in the usual ‘golden seat’…

FEELING KOMPLETE WITH NI Adam McKenzie from Electric Circus Studios in Ascot Vale recently won one of our magazine subscription prizes; the entire NI Komplete Ultimate pack of synth, VIs, samples and effects. “I received the Komplete package and have started to use it… amazing!” said McKenzie. “Can’t wait to do some production and editing with it. I will use this on some studio recordings I have done in the past to add some new elements and use it on future studio recordings at Electric Circus Studios where I freelance along with main studio engineer and owner Joel Foulds. Thanks again to AudioTechnology magazine.” Thanks also to CMI Music & Audio who generously donated this amazing prize and for inspiring musicians and engineers everywhere. AUDIO-TECHNICA OPENS UP STUDENT MIXES Josh…

Parker: “You can see how we recorded an entire half-hour session and then decided the last take was the best, and overdubbed to that. The nuts and bolts of all the tracks are live. The Pro Tools session gets bigger during the mix, because I add aux tracks. The tracks are colour coded, with drums in dark red, percussion in blue, bass in a darker blue, vocals are bright blue, acoustic guitars are brown, electric guitars green, and so on.” “The groove is so important with Shine on Me, so I would have started looking at the drums during the mix. With an acoustic song like Wildest Dreams it’s all about the vocal, so I would have started there. All the drum tracks have a Metric Halo Channel Strip inserted.…

“Keeping the listener engaged throughout a three-and-a-half/four-minute song takes tricks. He’s a master at that” Spoon are used to being apart. Frontman Britt Daniel splits his time between his place in LA and his condo in Austin, drummer Jim Eno is based near his Austin studio Public Hi-Fi, and keyboard/guitarist Alex Fischel is based in LA. So when they regrouped with bass player Rob Pope in upstate New York at Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Studios, it seemed the perfect opportunity to get off the grid and immerse themselves in their ninth album, Hot Thoughts. Then the cold seeped in. “When you’re there in the winter it’s really miserable,” said Eno. “There’s really nothing to do; you’re just sleeping there, it’s pretty hard.” After the first two-week stint, they made a rule:…

In the ’70s there was a boy-band called The Osmonds. Imagine Justin Bieber in a suit with porno pool-guy hair and then clone him by five. They sang and dance-stepped schmaltzy pap, and mothers the world over thought Donny Osmond was the nicest boy alive. They should have stuck to their guns, but The Osmonds got fazed by people like me labelling them as a bunch of wet dishrags. One day they indignantly announced we were wrong, they really ‘totally rocked’ and would prove it with a song called Crazy Horses. There was a problem though; the Osmonds didn’t rock, they wocked, like bunny wabbits. They missed the point. Rock wasn’t simply going to pop out of an amp cranked to 11. It required content, and The Osmonds were floating…

PRICE US$199 CONTACT Output: www.output.com PROS Incredibly broad range of sounds Generous amount of effects CONS None SUMMARY Output has taken a benign sonic building block and turned it into a monstrous tone-warping machine, presented in a user-friendly interface. Analog Strings is a strings experience like no other. Everyone’s got strings samples, but I bet you don’t have anything like Output Analog Strings. It’s about the furthest deviation from natural orchestral strings sounds you can get while still managing to sound like strings. Analog Strings is weird to describe. It’s a sample-based instrument for Native Instruments Kontakt, and a large one at that — around 39GB (compressed into a 20GB download). The samples consist of actual stringed instrument recordings along with synthesised strings. Each patch mashes both sound sources and…

“We started work on digital back in 1995 with the Icon and DR install mixers. They were successful platforms that gave us the chance to learn digital.” Glenn Rogers is the Managing Director of Allen & Heath, based in Cornwall, UK. Pictured is Allen & Heath‘s seminal System 8 studio console of the ’80s. I started at Allen & Heath back in June 1983 as an R&D design engineer. We were an analogue mixer manufacturer. I remember at the time I insisted on getting a PC for my desk, and that was about the extent of our digital capabilities. The company started life back in 1969. Allen & Heath had a great reputation for innovation. In the early ’70s Pink Floyd was touring with our custom-made quad mixer, complete with…

NEWMARKET STUDIOS Psych legends King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard mixed their third album for the year at Newmarket. “It’s amazing how much quality material they can pump out!” said Callum Barter. Band all-rounder Stu McKenzie was behind the desk in charge of the final balance. He pulled off a nice blend using the Fairchilds for some parallel compression, and the tasty EMT Plate, all nicely saturated with the Otari ¼-inch two-track before heading off to mastering. Sydney band Little May were in the studio to record a couple of killer songs. Brisbane engineer Magoo came down to capture some big drum sounds with minimal mics and Robert Munios was in the producer’s seat. Muinos was back in with Natalie Long to record a single, this time captured by engineer…

SSL HAS CONSOLE DOWN TO A ‘T’ www.solidstatelogic.co.uk SSL launched the new L200 live console at Prolight + Sound 2017. The mid-scale desk’s inverted T chassis is designed with ergonomics in mind. The spring arm-mounted external screen is kept closer to the centre of the console and all essential controls are a short reach away. Arms can be mounted on either side of the console and can be specified as screen mounts or laptop/utility trays. 38 faders sit across the surface as three sets of 12-channel fader tiles, with a pair of master faders. A central multi-touch 17-inch screen gives you access to all of the console’s functions and links up with the central fader tile and focus fader section for hands-on hardware control. Onboard effects are the same ones…

Who are you currently mixing? I’m on the road mixing Daryl Braithwaite and Taxiride on the Red Hot Summer Tour, which also features John Farnham, Icehouse, and James Reyne. My main gig for the past ten years has been Daryl Braithwaite, whom I first worked in 1998. We average two to three shows a week doing everything from festivals and corporate shows to pubs and clubs; Daryl is pretty much a full time job. Name some other bands you’ve worked with? Russell Morris, Mike Brady, as well as filling in on shows with Diesel, Ross Wilson and many others. Last year I looked after FOH for the APIA Good Times Tour for the second time, featuring Daryl Braithwaite, Jon Stevens, Kate Cebrano and John Paul Young. I had the pleasure…

Never In My Wildest Dreams is Parker’s favourite song on the album. It’s acoustic and has has far fewer tracks, but the takes they used start at 817 bars in. Zooming in on Auerbach’s main parts, Parker notes, “Dan’s vocal has the Metric Halo Channel Strip, UAD 1176, Waves Renaissance Deesser, and a UAD Fairchild 660 on it. There’s a reverb on his vocal which comes from the UAD EMT 140 Plate.” Parker pointed out the mix print in the 24-bit/48k session “has two plug-ins on it; the UAD Curve Bender and FabFilter Pro-L Limiter. We use the Pro-L only for reference when I’m exporting an MP3 for playback in cars and so on. I don’t print with it. We print the final mix through an Al Smart C2 compressor,…

Device Manager has been an extremely useful troubleshooting utility across all OS versions, from Windows 10 way back to Windows 95. It lets you view and stay in control of the various hardware devices attached to your PC, not only stuff that you plug into its various slots and sockets, such as drives, graphic cards, keyboards and mice, but also the host of electronic devices built into your motherboard itself, including system timers, real time clock, USB controllers and so on. It lets you check that these devices have been correctly recognised by Windows and are working properly, to update their drivers, enable or disable them, or even ignore them if they are malfunctioning. You can launch Device Manager (among various methods) via the Windows Control Panel, and it’s normally…

“Just as impressive are the two low-end driver compartments — in essence, they’re two completely separate cabinet. ADAM has reassuringly gone to town and back with the engineering” NEED TO KNOW PRICE S3H: $9999/pair S3V: $8299/pair S2V: $5999/pair S5V: $22,999/pair S5H: $26,999/pair CONTACT Federal Audio: 0404 921 781 or cris@federalaudio.com.au PROS Detailed & un-fatiguing top end Solid & articulate bass Stunning stereo image Malleable DSP Forthcoming control software AES67 smarts down the line CONS Paying them off Keeping a room large enough SUMMARY ADAM has enhanced its winning ribbon technology, and developed proprietary low and mid range drivers to match. It’s all about sending good vibrations where they’re supposed to go, including isolating drivers within the cabinet and damping internal cabling. You get what you pay for, including an incredibly…

“Its look and the sheer number of controls on its front panel makes my prized Moog Voyager look a touch vanilla, by comparison” NEED TO KNOW PRICE Expect to pay $2999 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or info@cmi.com.au PROS Versatile modulation matrix Assignable paraphonic VCO High build quality Extremely flexible internal routing Loads of I/O CONS Needs computer to setup global MIDI controls Effects can get a bit grainy SUMMARY Arturia’s MiniBrute has become a favourite for growling basses and searing leads. MatrixBrute unleashes more of everything — two more LFOs, a third envelope, paraphonic VCO assignment, and a modulation matrix to boot. The result is an incredibly versatile synth that elevates the Brutish character of its predecessor to another level. I’ve enjoyed an extended love affair…

ROLI ADDS SEABOARD TO BLOCKS www.roli.com Roli has mashed together its two innovations to form Seaboard Block. It features the same MIDI polyphonic expressiveness of the original Seaboard but reduces it into a form factor that fits into the Blocks paradigm. That is, it will snap together with other Blocks via its magnetic DNA connection system. Sporting a two-octave keywave that resembles a miniature Seaboard Rise, it’s totally modular and expandable for ultimate flexibility. You can connect two or three Seaboard Blocks together to make one long Rise-like playable surface, or you can mix and match Seaboard Block with Lightpad Blocks to build your own instrument. Seaboard Block comes with Equator Player and Blocks Dashboard for desktop functionality and DAW integration. You even get an additional six free sound-packs in…

Antelope Audio has been value-adding real-time DSP to its interfaces for a while, thanks to its use of internal Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. The concept was furthered when Antelope collaborated with guitar software company Overloud last year, bringing amplifier and cabinet modelling to the Antelope interface experience. I recently picked up a Zen Tour. It’s a desktop interface by Antelope with a whopping 32 channels of I/O. It supports both Thunderbolt and USB 2.0 connectivity, has four onboard preamps, super high quality D-to-A conversion, a built-in talkback mic, smartphone app control, even a touchscreen. Hardware aside, one of the highlights of the Zen Tour is the onboard FPGA effects. Let’s take a closer look. FREE, FREE, FREE What I like most about Antelope’s FPGA effects is they’re all…

You’ve heard the term ‘content is king.’ BMG has a slightly adapted philosophy better described as ‘content creation is king.’ The global record label isn’t your average hit-churning machine, although it certainly churns out hits. BMG Australia recently completed the fitout of its new SoundLabs ‘writing rooms’ in its Surry Hills offices. They’re like ridiculously over-spec’d home studios, but in an office building. Apart from the enviable recording gear, SoundLabs aren’t your run-of-the-mill studio spaces. They’re all about content creation; rooms designed as songwriting ovens set to the perfect temperature to bake new music to perfection. Dubbed Black room and White room according to their aesthetics, both creative incubators feature a Slate Raven touch-screen controller, Waldorf keyboards, and a handful of mics. A Yamaha baby grand sits in the reception…

It was all the way back in 2013 when we witnessed the debut of the last Mac Pro — unaffectionately dubbed the ‘trashcan’. Apple wrongly assumed the professional market would befriend Thunderbolt connection of countless peripherals: hard drives, monitors, and indeed, audio interfaces. There’s little you can improve upon when you own the 2013 Mac Pro. You can’t replace the GPUs, and additional storage has to remain external. They’re a closed system. Consequently, disenfranchised Mac professionals devised cunning upgrades for the previous aluminium bodied Mac Pros — for machines from as far back as 2009. Unlike the 2013 trashcan model, these machines can accept faster processors, more powerful graphics cards, additional internal drives, USB 3.0 cards, and can be coerced into running Apple’s latest operating system — macOS Sierra. In…

NEED TO KNOW •AUDIOFUSE• PRICE Expect to pay $999 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 of sales@cmi.com.au PROS Loads of I/O Great preamps Bus-powered CONS Miniature power input SUMMARY Audiofuse literally has it all, even two quality mic preamps, a rarity on two-channel desktop interfaces. Hook up your entire studio to this little hub, even when you’re on the go. •APOLLO TWIN• PRICE Expect to pay Solo: $1149 Duo: $1499 Quad: $1999 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 of sales@cmi.com.au PROS Real-time DSP processing Great-sounding UAD plug-ins Unison preamp technology CONS Limited DSP count SUMMARY If you want a desktop interface with built-in DSP, look no further than the Twin Mk II. It hosts some of the best plug-ins currently available and gives you that Unison…

“One big advantage of having full control from the screen at all times is that the system is not totally dependent on a reliable Wi-Fi connection” NEED TO KNOW PRICE $2699 CONTACT Yamaha Music Australia: (03) 9693 5111 or info@au.yamaha.com PROS Fluid operation Multi-touch screen No select buttons Good bang for the buck CONS Flashing tap button I like faders SUMMARY Yamaha’s TF series makes digital mixing approachable while still giving professionals ample control. Its rack version is no different. Everything from 1-knob control and presets for beginners to 20 aux buses and Dugan automating for pros. Best of all, the touch screen and Touch&Turn knob mean you don’t have to rely on an iPad and dodgy Wi-Fi to keep your show running. The Yamaha TF Rack is the mixer…