Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 111 i AudioTechnology

Yesterday I went to the memorial of one of my oldest and best friends, Calum Orr, who last week passed away peacefully after a 15-year battle with cancer. I’m still in shock and feel sick right now at the prospect of reducing my friend to a bunch of hopelessly inadequate words on a page. Sitting in the studio we built together – The Mill – I can’t help now but reflect on how strange it is that the inanimate objects we build outlast us so easily. Cal and I spent many long hours over several years slogging our guts out on this place, as long-time readers of AT may recall. Cal’s energy and enthusiasm for the studio’s construction back then was infectious. Now the walls stand as permanent reminders of…

HILLSONG TUNES TO SHURE The recent sell-off of bandwidth by the Australian Federal Government meant a lot of work for some; checking for compliance and replacing equipment that is now unreliable or illegal to operate. For Hillsong Church, it was also an opportunity to evaluate the current market offerings in radio microphones and in-ear monitors before they replaced inventory across their several locations in three states. Hillsong services are verbally and musically dynamic, with worship leaders, singers and musicians all relying on their radio devices to get their message heard, and with clarity and reliability. Across Hillsong’s locations, the technical team decided on a combination of Shure UHF-R, ULX-D, and QLX-D radio microphones, along with PSM 300, PSM 900, and PSM 1000 in-ear monitors. “We’ve gone to ULX-D in all…

The way computers send information over networks is that each computer has an address, and ‘packets’ of information are sent from one address to another. It’s a bit like sending a cake to someone in separate slices, one slice at a time. But instead of being able to whack the whole address on the envelope, you can only put one detail on each. You have to start with their name, then slot that envelope inside another with the street name and number, then into another envelope with the city written on it, and lastly, stuff it all into a final envelope labelled with the state. Like this: Once the piece of cake gets to NSW, the post office takes off that envelope and sends it to Sydney, where that envelope…

Last year, Rich Costey had one of the biggest ‘Eureka!’ moments of his career. It resulted in him radically changing his mix method, and replacing it with a brand new approach, which is, in essence… erm, more or less the same as before. Confused? Read on. For Costey, long one of the world’s most prominent and dedicated out-of-the-box mixers, it was a watershed event. The ‘more or less the same’ bit consisted of Costey finding an alternative way of laying out his mix in a similar way as he had done on his beloved SSL K series at El Dorado in LA, with the same audio-, effects- and VCA-channel layout, and maintaining his previous outboard signal chains and general workflow. From El Dorado, he explained how and why he squared…

You can row the 100-mile stretch of open water between Jamaica and Cuba in two days; fly there in an hour. But these Caribbean neighbours are so culturally distinct, more than just an ocean separates them. You’ve got reggae, and you’ve got rumba. Dancehall and dub versus spirit-filled salsa. Each country’s culture is so vibrant you could almost hear the rhythms if you stood on either shore. But the opportunity to see how well they play together hasn’t really come up, until now. After successfully building a bridge between Australian and Jamaican musicians with the Melbourne Meets Kingston album, Australian musician and producer, Jake Savona, decided to amp up the stakes with the Havana Meets Kingston project. This time drawing musicians from the two Caribbean music cultures into one studio…

When I talked to Schram, he was right in the middle of migrating his system from an eight-core Mac Pro tower to a Macbook Pro, before heading out to produce a band in a house down the Victorian coast. He used one of the band member’s mobile setups to record San Cisco’s album and saw the future in a laptop, UAD Apollo, some mics and a talented band. It’s a kick his on at the moment. “I’d like to jump on Airbnb and find giant, weird houses and setup in there. The band comes in and all their accommodation’s taken care of. It’s fun. You go through phases; big studios, then houses, then back to studios again. You start using the same tricks, and have to shake it up again”…

NEED TO KNOW PRICE PGADRUMKIT7: $925 PGA58: $99 PGA181: $175 PGA27: $349 CONTACT Jands: (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au PROS Quick release drum mic tensioners Great value PGA181 condenser option at dynamic price CONS Handling noise Drum mounts not one-size-fits-all SUMMARY Shure’s PG Alta series of microphones are good value, and sound close to their more established counterparts. If you’re in the market for a drum mic kit, but thought you only had the budget for a couple of mics, think again. “PGA 181 — A really good candidate if you’ve been looking for a bit of a different flavour to a dynamic, but at a similar price point to one” What is it with these budget mics and their ingenious mic clip tension clamps? It’s a revolution in anti-revolvers.…

NEWMARKET STUDIOS Dave McLuney was in for a week with Jenny Thomas tracking her new album with some amazing string players from the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. 1 Perth band Methyl Ethel were in for a live-filmed studio session thanks to Remote Control Records. The crowd enjoyed a beer while watching the band do their thing in the jungle-themed studio transformation. 2 Simon Cotter was behind the desk capturing the recording. Callum Barter has been out on tour with #1 Dads doing FOH, but in between shows he mixed a new album from Brisbane band Columbia Buffet. The Harrison console is in the process of getting re-capped channel by channel. The Newmarket engineers are hearing bottom end for days after some solid soldering sessions from the guys at Dex — 40…

SMPTE 2015: HANDS ON WITH AVID S6L Report: Mark Davie Even though Avid has pencilled a tentative release date for the S6L around the North American winter, it’s still got a long way to go around the software development merry-go-round. At SMPTE 2015 in Sydney when Gil Gowing, Avid’s Manager of Pro Audio Solutions Design, gave AudioTechnology a rundown of the live system’s current state, he described it as being in a pre-Alpha stage — at least two more Greek letters before anyone outside of Avid gets their hands on it. There’s still plenty of scope for firmware refinements as many things aren’t locked down; a few times I asked what a button does, and Gowing would respond, ‘not sure yet, we’re still deciding.’ The hardware is pretty much ready…

Who have you been mixing recently? Last year, I did FOH for the APIA Good Times Tour featuring Leo Sayer, Richard Clapton, Russell Morris & Joe Camilleri. The tour included a nine-piece band of the country’s best players and weaved around Australia over two months. I attempted to make each show of the original lineup Mondo Rock 33 1/3 Anniversary Tour a hi-fi experience. I also got to mix Daddy Cool following their induction into the hall of fame at The Age Music Awards. Other bands you’ve worked with? My regular client over the last six years has been Ross ‘Eagle Rock’ Wilson. He keeps me pretty busy. It’s a bonus that his band are not only great players with extensive experience but excellent humans. It makes all the travel…

Well it’s here, it’s (for most of us) free of charge, and if your PC is currently running Windows 7 or 8, you’ve probably also had a little window icon pop up on your Taskbar to remind you about it. It is of course Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, which I first discussed back in AT105. The reason for the jump from Windows 8 to 10 is still a bit of a mystery, but the Start button is back (hooray), and the emphasis is on a single operating system that runs on everything from your Windows mobile phone to your air-conditioned control room full of audio servers. The Windows 10 scrolling Start menu now incorporates an extra pane of Windows 8-style tiles housing live apps, although you can switch these…

NEED TO KNOW PRICE $1699/piece CONTACT Bose: 1800 173 371 or f1.bose.com.au PROS Line array clarity Flexible vertical throw Portable design Built-in stand CONS Too smooth for hard rock SUMMARY Bose has taken a typical point-source-looking cabinet and filled it with a mini-line array. With a horizontal spread of 100-degrees, variable array angles, 1000W on tap, and a companion sub; this portable package will fill rooms you never could with a plastic box. “The wide, even coverage and long throw high-mids mean good intelligibility over a large area while the lack of harshness makes for a relatively easy listening experience” Bose does things differently. There’s lateral thinking behind many of the products in its large range of consumer and industrial products. Audio systems for live sound is only a part…

NEED TO KNOW PRICE Expect to pay $399 CONTACT CMI Music & Audio: (03) 9315 2244 or sales@cmi.com.au PROS Three sequencers onboard Tap tempo Simultaneously sync and trigger anything CONS None SUMMARY Arturia has taken its hybrid CV/Gate/MIDI Beatstep sequencer concept and beefed up the control side considerably on the Beatstep Pro. Its added two more sequencers with simultaneous outputs from each to let you control pretty much any style of electronic instrument. Arturia has moved from strength to strength over the years. Kicking off as a software instrument manufacturer with its sturdy recreations of not-so-sturdy vintage analogue synthesisers, the company soon moved into the realm of hardware with the Origin keyboard. Since that time there’s been a procession of hardware controllers and synths, all of which borrow heavily from…

Studio 52 has undergone some updates recently, with major improvements to Studio C. The studio has been extended with a new drum room, vocal isolation booth and amp isolation room. Previously, Studio C was mainly for soloists and electronic production, but now the studio can handle whole bands just like Studio A and B. The new drum booth has a very modern, bright sound, complementing the palette of unique sounds offered by each drum booth in Studio 52. Studio 52 uses a combination of SE, Audio-Technica and Sennheiser microphones along with TLA valve mic preamps for drum recordings. Anna Mannering recorded her song Son Of Korah at Studio 52 late last year and recorded a music video with Brendan O’Shea. She has just been announced as a finalist in the…

Ah, the DSLR, our least favourite of audio-capable contraption. So good at video, so lousy at audio. Thankfully, there’s loads and loads of audio manufacturers willing to help out. Case in point, Audio-Technica, which has released a hot-shoe connecting ENG-style wireless system that won’t break the bank. Of course, it’ll fit more sophisticated cameras too, but we all want that nice bokeh on the cheap. Audio-Technica has placed the same 2.4GHz technology as its desktop System 10 receiver into a portable camera-mount body. Notably, the bodypack and handheld transmitters are the same. The system on review comprised a bodypack transmitter, camera-top receiver and lapel microphone. PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT Lifting the units out of the box, the lightweight transmitter and receiver didn’t quite feel like they’re built for a strenuous…

Dr Paul Doornbusch is the Associate Dean, Audio Production Program Leader, at Australian College of the Arts. Paul loves computers so much, he reconstructed and documented the music played by Australia’s first computer (CSIRAC) while he was a composer-in-residence at the Computer Science department of the University of Melbourne. I’m waiting for the day some Elon Musk-type figures out how to make wireless recording commonplace. The best we’ve got so far is Mikme — a product of the little Indiegogo campaign that could — and bandwidth is still a limiting factor that hasn’t been solved. For the immediate future, audio will be distributed over computer network cables and equipment. It’s a natural development. The data is already in digital form and networks and computers are rapidly increasing in performance. Bandwidth…

John Hanlon first worked with Young on Ragged Glory (1990), as an engineer and mixer, and has since worked on a multitude of other Neil Young projects, including Weld (1991), Arc Weld (1991), Unplugged (1993), Sleeps With Angels (1994), Young’s Dead Man soundtrack for the Jim Jarmusch film (1996), Are You Passionate? (2003), Americana and Psychedelic Pill (both 2012). Having been trained in electronics in the Navy and worked in the computer business, Hanlon was hired by a small film sound post-production facility in San Francisco in 1973. He fell in love with tape machines and studio technology in general, played guitar, and later moved to LA, where he was a roadie for several well-known acts, worked as a studio tech at Record Plant Studios and A&M Studios, and eventually…

Schnapf: “My main console is a heavily-modified MCI 248B. It used to be a quad mix bus, and I had the idea of breaking it up and making two stereo buses. One is more hi-fi like Sunset Sounds — more forward mid-range — with Jensen 990 op-amps. The other side is vintage — thicker, darker; Neve BA283, Marinair transformers. I have a switch to make them parallel, but if you take the hi-fi bus and drive it into the Neve to saturate the transformers, you get the best of both worlds” The modding didn’t stop there though. The EQs are modded, the preamps changed, “the only thing that’s the same is the transformers. “The other console is a 1969 Electrodyne, which I got from Frank Sinatra Junior. The first three…

A couple of issues ago, I took a closer look at how to harness some of Mac OS X’s built-in tools to improve performance and workflow on your DAW-equipped Mac. Now I’m going to introduce you to a few of my favourite third party tools that will help keep your Mac humming. Onyx www.titanium.free.fr/onyx Free Onyx is a very useful free utility that serves as a one-stop shop for both general system clean-ups and tweaks to Mac OS X. The Automation feature is the simplest way to use Onyx, as it combines both of the utility’s Maintenance and Cleaning steps into one simple operation. With these user-selectable Automation options, Onyx will execute a thorough list of processes that verify the structure of your startup volume, repair disk permissions, run maintenance…

LAB-COAT CHIC — The Redd.47’s build quality is excellent. Its light grey faceplate gives the unit a subtle ’60s lab-coat vibe, further accentuated by black chicken-head knobs and semi-recessed silver toggle switches. There’s something about the look of these chicken-head knobs that doesn’t quite do it for me unfortunately. Despite being supremely functional and doing a good ergonomic job, their matte finish feels a little cheap — bakelite would have really nailed the look. VALVE DI — The 1/4-inch DI circuit utilises all the goodness of the unit’s EF86 and E88CC valve topology. The custom wound transformer-balanced I/O means there are some good creative options available here too. RUMBLE IN THE — The special sauce feature on the Redd.47 is the inductor-based ‘rumble filter’ control which has stepped low frequency…

David is a founder of Audient and before that DDA. He learnt his craft in a time when a studio had to build its own mixing console. He’s taken that ‘can do’ attitude with him throughout his career. Pictured above is David with a DDA Forum Stage Monitor board in the early ‘90s. My father had a wunderlust. I must have attended more than 10 schools in five different countries across Africa and even Australia for a while, before dropping out as a teenager and moving to Zambia. By that point I knew I wanted to be involved in recording. My father had purchased a lot of old equipment from the South African Broadcasting Corporation. We had a good collection of old ribbon mics — RCAs, BBC Marconi Type AXBTs…