Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 120 i AudioTechnology

I’ve never seen more pairs of leather pants, hair extensions and billowy shirts open at the waist than at NAMM. Every thoroughfare seemed clogged with ’80s hair rockers amped up to finger tap their way around the latest boutique seven-string. Stop by a pro audio-related booth however, and they’re nowhere to be seen, though maybe I was just blinded by Jack Joseph Puig’s purple velour flairs. It’s part of the tribalism at NAMM, where punters flock to the brands they feel an allegiance with. If you ever got caught near the Universal Audio booth during a program interchange, you know what I’m talking about. A flood of punters would stream out onto the NAMM floor hurriedly searching out a quick bite or where they can hit the head in two…

CONSOLES PROJECT VULCAN ERUPTS www.digico.biz The Digico SD12 launch was no small affair. Starting in Melbourne, there were events all around the globe with MD James Gordon beaming in to each with his ‘Minority Report’-style presentation of the big idea behind Project Vulcan. There’s plenty of familiar Digico trademarks. Two 15-inch touchscreens, 72 fully-processed input channels, 36 freely assignable busses, a 12 x 8 output matrix, LR/LCR buss with full processing, 12 stereo effects units, 16 graphic EQs, 119 dynamic EQs, 119 multiband compressors, 119 Digi-Tubes, 12 Control Groups (VCA), and SD Series Stealth Core 2 software, for compatibility with all other SD Series sessions. They’ve also done something different under the bonnet with a range of optional cards that will accommodate any I/O eventuality. Metering feedback has been improved…

Matthew Neighbour thrives off half-formed musical ideas. The Melbourne-based freelance producer has developed an addiction for fleshing out half-baked tracks by mashing and mangling sounds from his eclectic collection of instruments and effects. In fact, Matt actively hunts for bands whose music has lots of wiggle room arrangement-wise so he can unleash his creative streak. Prior to freelancing, Matt worked as an engineer at Melbourne’s Sing Sing Studios. “There were a lot of instruments and gear lying around at Sing Sing, and I really developed a love for experimenting with that equipment to create new sounds,” recalled Matt. “I didn’t want to lose that aspect when working on freelance projects, even if the budget wasn’t huge.” The latest band to team up with Matt was chill indie group Cousin Tony’s…

GET TO THE CORE You may be wondering how on earth ‘metalcore’ and ‘chilled’ can occupy the same page. For Hutch it was a fair deviation from mixing indie and ska, that’s for sure. To state the obvious, metalcore is metal and hardcore combined. It’s open for interpretation, but metalcore tunes typically combine both singing and screamo vocals, heavy breakdowns and slower tempos with passages of clean guitars and vocals. The ‘chilled’ stuff isn’t exactly bedtime music, but as a whole metalcore is often a little slicker than the unadulterated rage that marks metal proper. Hutch at work Hutch’s weapon of choice is a Digico SD series console, usually the SD5. Although, it wasn’t long ago that you’d find him behind an Avid Profile. Hutch: “Desk-wise this is a fairly…

Logic Pro X has come a very long way since the initial release on the Atari ST platform back in 1993. Then a product of Emagic, ‘Logic’ never gained the traction of Steinberg’s Cubase on the Atari. However, the Atari was nearing extinction, and the platform was abandoned that same year. By ’94, Logic had started its evolution from a MIDI sequencer, to a hybrid application incorporating both MIDI sequencing and audio recording/editing — what we now refer to as a digital audio workstation, or DAW. Logic went from strength to strength on both Mac and Windows platforms. In 2002 Logic Pro was acquired by Apple, with Windows compatibility dropped from version six onward. This caused quite a stir at the time, with PC/Windows-based Logic users migrating to DAWs like…

Had a hard time taking stick PAs seriously? Maybe you’ve thought, ‘What’s this anorexic pole going to do that a couple of 12 ’n’ horns can’t?’ I get it, it’s easy to throw stones at the skinny kid, especially when the concept was dreamt up by Bose right around the time of the great 802 decommissioning. Sure, installers were still busy populating airports and exhibition centres with 502s, and plenty of customers were walking out of Hi-Fi stores with a set of satellite surrounds. However, in the pro audio market Bose’s name was making a slow fade out. Extremely slow given how many 802s there were/are out there. Then the L1 system dropped out of the clear blue sky in 2003. And boy was it hard to wrap your head…

GINGER STUDIOS It’s been an incredibly busy start to the year at Ginger Studios. Chingy camped out for a week to record leads for five new tracks to appear on an upcoming album release while on tour with Ja Rule and Ashanti. 1 Jimi Lloyd-Wyatt has completed the tracking stage of a co-produced album with Danna Yun (Pekoe). It comprised a 20-piece string section, 10-piece wind and brass section, harp, and a rhythm section with Tony Floyd (Black Sorrows, Gurrumul) on drums, Peter Farnan (Boom, Crash, Opera!) on guitar, and Shannon Birchall (John Butler Trio) on bass. Tiri Pestrivas recorded the first tune for his acoustic guitar record that’ll be polished up in March. New gear additions include a new Moog Model D synth, an Ampeg PF 50T tube amp…

The xx have always looked and sounded as if you’ll scare them off if you get a little too close. They like their space, it seems, and it’s reflected in their mostly spare and intimate music. Keeping with this close-to-the-chest mode, the band’s first two albums were in-house jobs. Recorded, produced and mixed by the band’s reserved beatmaker Jamie Smith (aka Jamie xx) and XL Recordings’ in-house engineer Rodaidh McDonald. Early on, the introverted collective apparently disliked the treatment of their sound at the hands of other producers, preferring to rely on Jamie’s now-undeniable production sensibilities. It was a good move. The band captured attention in large part due to their unique whisper-y aesthetic. Then a change occurred. Jamie xx released his solo album, In Colours [see Issue 110 for…

Riback’s Ableton Live session for Call On Me has a relatively straightforward 40 tracks subdivided in groups: kick drum, vocals, piano, organ, percussion, bass, effects, and a master track. Riback later used those groups to print stems to send to the mastering engineer. After starting in Fruity Loops, and trying Reason and Logic, Riback explains why he settled on Ableton: “It took me a while to get my head around Ableton’s automation, but since version nine the flexibility of the automation has been amazing. You can craft ideas very quickly in Ableton. I found that doing the same things in Logic took a lot longer. I now have all my presets and templates in Ableton, which also speeds up my workflow. Plus I really like Ableton’s native plug-ins. The only…

Let’s face it — in today’s world, $150 won’t buy you much. You could fritter that away on the callout fee for a plumber to unclog your kitchen pipes, or by staying three minutes over time in a CBD parking spot. With a street price of $150, Arturia’s MiniLab Mk II is among the most wallet-friendly impulse purchases I’d actually recommend. Mostly because it’ll give you a whole lot more than $150-worth of enjoyment. In my opinion, a decent set of black and white keys is satisfactory for that kind of asking price, so anything over and above that is a welcome bonus. Arturia has a knack for creating delicious-looking products. Who else is gonna bookend a utilitarian MIDI controller with wood panels? Sure, it’s fake wood, but who cares.…

The Westlake name originated from the town I was living in at the time, Westlake Village, on the Californian coast. I started the company in 1969 in my garage. Westlake was selling package electronics. We were building entire systems. We had MCI and 3M tape machines, MCI and API consoles, and all manner of studio equipment, but we also built the studios to house those systems. By the time the company set up shop on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, I was designing the studios, our sales department was selling and packaging the gear, and our carpenters were building the rooms. “From design to downbeat” was the Westlake motto of the day. In 1975 I sold Westlake Audio. I had an argument with the other stockholders about expansion. We had…

I cringed a little clicking ‘Download’ on Spitfire Audio’s Symphony Orchestra installer. 255GB of high-res samples sitting on servers somewhere in the UK, charging through the internet, landing on my hard drive. I secretly hoped the chaps in the office wouldn’t suffer the travails of laggy internet as a result. More importantly, I hoped the enormous amount of consumed bandwidth would be worth it. 20-something hours later I fired up Kontakt 5 and loaded the libraries. That first press of a note on my MIDI keyboard was sweet satisfaction. If you’re at all acquainted with the world of virtual instruments, the name Spitfire Audio will more than ring a bell. With most of its products being orchestral and acoustic instruments, the small UK-based company has purveyed an impressive collection of…

1 BUDNICK HILL Location Info: Hilltop lookout positioned above station Equipment: B&K 4198 omnidirectional microphone Purpose: To record the effects of the blizzard upon the natural environment. 2 SCIENCE BUILDING Location Info: Marine, remediation and atmospheric science labs. Equipment: Two DPA 4060 miniature omni mics Purpose: To capture ambient recordings of the interior laboratory spaces. 3 RED SHED Location Info: Living and sleeping quarters of Casey Station residents. Equipment: Two pairs of DPA 4006 omni mics Purpose: To record the effects of turbulence and stress upon various interior spaces, as well as the direct sound of the blizzard from cold porches. Philip Samartzis: “The first microphones I bought were 4006s. I did a number of residencies in the late ’90s, and one of them was at the Danish Institute 4…

I have a confession to make. My main studio PC is now four years old, but I’ve yet to feel any need to upgrade to a faster one. I’ve noticed a lot of other people finding themselves in a similar position — running out of computing power still seems to be a worrying occurrence for some, but over the last few years many computer-based musicians have simply come to the conclusion that they already have quite enough power under their bonnets for the foreseeable future. The main reason for this is that whereas our machines were previously capable of running dozens of ‘real-time’ plug-ins, many recent ones are now quite capable of running hundreds of them without breaking into a sweat, while simultaneously playing back dozens of simultaneous audio tracks.…

In 2015 I had the awkward pleasure of reviewing Zoom’s F8 field recorder. I say ‘awkward’ because I expected to dismiss it as a toy due to its unbelievably low price and equally unbelievably high feature set — the audio gear equation didn’t add up. And yet, there was so much to like about it and so little to dislike. The audio gear equation has three parts: features, price and sound quality. You can have any two at the expense of the third… usually. Products that break the formula are potential game changers. The F8 proved to be one of those products. Compared to its competition it was ridiculously cheap, well featured, and I could not be critical of the sound quality. I made the ‘game changer’ call, and it…

Last year we posed the question: is the Minilogue the best analogue synth under $1000?’ This year we ask: ‘is the Monologue the best synth under $500?’ Just to clarify, I wouldn’t confine the question to being hardware-only or analogue-only: ‘Is the Monologue the best synth under $500… hardware or software?’ You might have your favourite, go-to softsynth — incidentally, for mine, the Rack Extension version of the Korg Monopoly is hard to beat — but what about in 10 years time? Before you answer, let me disabuse you of something: you won’t have that softsynth in 10 years time. I can almost guarantee you that it’ll have vaporised into the ether, with an OS change or a DAW platform shift or because you’ve taken up fishing and put your…

Price: $1159 Syntec: 1300 467 968 or sales@syntec.com.au After listening to Beyerdynamic’s DT1990 Pros I’ve realised I haven’t found the point where you’re paying too much for a pair of headphones. At $1159, these feel like a bargain. These open backed cans are seriously revealing, like peering through the looking glass with a pair of binoculars. I’ve got a variety of headphones lying around, but I knew I’d stumbled behind the veil into a secret garden of detail as soon as I put the Beyer cans on. Like most open-back, circumaural headphones, you get a wider sense of space than with closed backs. The Beyers are no different in that regard, but it’s how things separate out across that space that seemed relevant, most of which came down to high…