audiomedia_201202

1AUDIOMEDIAAUDIO-FOR-VIDEO • BROADCAST • INTERNET AUDIO • LIVE SOUND • MULTIMEDIA • POST PRODUCTION • RECORDING

THE WORLD’S LEADING PROFESSIONAL AUDIO TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE

Final Cut

DriveHigh Performance

Audio

Show TechHeadliners From Winter NAMM

Broadcast ConsolesA Product Sampler

Broadcast Loudness

Special Feature

BVE Broadcast Special!

Adam A77X • Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5024 • Ultrasone Signature Pro • Allen & Heath GS-R24 • PreSonus 16.0.2 • Cockos Reaper • The Mousetrap: 60th Anniversary • NAMM Show Round-up • GeoFocus: The Netherlands • Classic Cut: The Haunting • Special Report: BVE Preview • Cut Scene: Playstation Vita – Gamechanger? • Video Guide: Television Technology • Recording News • Post News • Broadcast News • AMSR News • And More…!

WORLDWIDE EDITIONISSUE 255 • FEBRUARY 2012 • UK £3.80

9 770960 747024

0 2

A NEWBAY MEDIA PUBLICATION

2I S S U E 2 5 5 • F E B R U A R Y • 2 0 1 2

COVER STORIES

FINAL CUT: DRIVE 32An unconventional approach can sometimes

equals greater power, says JERRY IBBOTSON.

LOUDNESS 34An AUDIO MEDIA special update on the

loudness issues of the moment.

N E W S

RECORDING 6Audio-Technica celebrates fifty years of passion

in a birthday fit of new releases, while Dangerous

goes direct to the Source with its new monitor

controller.

BROADCAST 8Clear-Com takes over the Vatican, while Lawo hits

the Red Carpet, while K-Array upgrades Bow Tie.

POST 10This year's Academy Awards are announced, and

The Farm expands.

SR 12Riedel 's RockNet provides a rock-solid

performance for Bocelli, and DiGiCo continues its

Mamma Mia! success in China.

NAMM SHOW WRAPUP 20AUDIO MEDIA provides the highlights and low-

down on this year's NAMM.

2

R E V I E W S

PRESONUS 16.0.2 40If prizes got handed out for versatility, PreSonus’

compact console would be holding aloft a gold

medal, says LIZ MAY.

ALLEN & HEATH GSR24 42The GS-R has been hyped up so much,

can it possibly deliver to the technical spec

suggested? ANDREW GRAEME thinks it can – and

even better it.

COCKOS REAPER 44ALISTAIR McGHEE's heard plenty of talk about the

slim-line DAW making waves… What's the fuss?

A U D I O M E D I A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2

c o n t e n t s

R E G U L A R S

SPECIAL REPOR T: B VE 14AUDIO MEDIA uncovers what makes BVE a show

worth including on your calendar.

CUT SCENE: PS V ITA 16JOHN BROOMHALL talks to Jason Page,

Playstation's audio guru, about what makes

up-coming PS Vita such a game-changer.

GEOFOCUS: NE THERLANDS 18ISE came back to Amsterdam for a repeat

performance of its annual show – JIM EVANS talks

to Mike Blackman, MD, about what makes the

event such a success.

PRODUC T SAMPLER: BROADCAST CONSOLES 46AUDIO MEDIA gives you a selection of the

consoles you should really check out for your

every broadcast need.

VIDEO GUIDE 54KEVIN HILTON continues his guide of everything

TV-techie with a look at compression.

CLASSIC CUT: THE HAUNTING 58Going beyond the screams and hooting owls

of standard scare-fare, KEVIN HILTON uncovers

how this horror delivered a spooky atmosphere

without falling back on convention.

AUDIOMEDIAAUDIO-FOR-VIDEO • BROADCAST • INTERNET AUDIO • LIVE SOUND • MULTIMEDIA • POST PRODUCTION • RECORDING

THE WORLD’S LEADING PROFESSIONAL AUDIO TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE

Final Cut

DriveHigh Performance

Audio

Show Tech

Headliners From

Winter NAMM

Broadcast Consoles

A Product Sampler

Broadcast Loudness

Special Feature

BVE Broadcast Special!

Adam A77X • Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5024 • Ultrasone Signature Pro • Allen & Heath GS-R24 • PreSonus 16.0.2 • Cockos Reaper • The Mousetrap: 60th Anniversary • NAMM Show Round-up • GeoFocus: The Netherlands •

Classic Cut: The Haunting • Special Report: BVE Preview • Cut Scene: Playstation Vita – Gamechanger? • Video Guide: Television Technology • Recording News • Post News • Broadcast News • AMSR News • And More…!

WORLDWIDE EDITION

ISSUE 255 • FEBRUARY 2012 • UK £3.80 9 770960 747024

0 2A NEWBAY MEDIA PUBLICATION

F E AT U R E S

FINAL CUT: DRIVE 32JERRY IBBOTSON finds out how being a little bit

unconventional in your approach to sound can

make it all the more powerful.

LOUDNESS 34Heading up a special section on the Loudness

issues of the moment, THOMAS LUND charts the

rise of international broadcast standards.

LOUDNESS INTERNATIONAL 36

KEVIN HILTON looks at how the international

community is adapting to the latest loudness

standards.

THE MOUSE TRAP 50JO FLETCHER-CROSS finds out how to go about

updating a classic without losing any of the

original magic.

R U S H E S

NE W AT NAMM 20PAUL WATSON previews some of NAMM's hottest

releases – keep a watch on these high-risers…

ADAM A77X 26Adam's active monitor might prove a bit of a

pleasant surprise to those who don't usually like

ribbon tweeters, says STEPHEN BENNETT.

RND POR TICO 5024 28Being daubed with the Portico branding simply

raises the bar in terms of expectation – will

the live up to the family name? SIMON

TILLBROOK finds out.

ULTRASONE S IGNATURE PRO 31The Signature Pros are the sticky buns of the

headphone world that prove truly fulfilling, says

ALISTAIR McGHEE.

4l e a d e r

R E V I E W PreSonus 16.0.2 40

R E V I E W Allen & Heath GS-R24 42

R U S H E S RND Portico 5024 28

AUDIO MEDIA (Europe), Suite L16, South Fens Business Centre, Fenton Way, Chatteris, Cambs, PE16 6TT

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The contents of this publication are subject to worldwide copyright protection and reproduction in whole or in part, whether mechanical or electronic, is

expressly forbidden without the prior written consent of the Publishers. Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in the preparation of this publication but

neither IMAS Publishing (UK) Limited nor the Editor can be held responsible for its contents. The views expressed are those of the contributors and not

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© 2012 IMAS Publishing (UK) Limited. All rights reserved.*Within Broadcast & Production

Managing Director/CirculationAngela [email protected]

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Editor In ChiefPaul [email protected]

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The TV broadcast loudness issue is on its way to being resolved.

I say that now, because it was never even close before.

Now broadcasters and governments are falling over themselves

to sort out the terrible menace of the quite-loud-advert and I have to say, it

has been noticeable. As a viewer, I don't think I was ever actually outraged

at the inconsistency of it all, but the bother of moving the cat to get to the

coffee table is a sigh-provoking moment; and if the rest of the day has been

bad as well, that sigh might be slightly longer than normal.

So now TV is on its way to being conquered; that is, as long as broadcasters

don't simply resort to the detect and compress sausage machine and

maintain a creative handle on the process. Thus we must turn our attention

to the rest of the media: CD, iPod, PS3 (playing games), PS3 (watching DVD),

turntable, Wii, and so, and on… If I turn the TV up enough to watch a DVD and

forget to turn it down again, I can get my ear drums to meet in the middle

the next time I play Uncharted.

For a start, I'm guessing it wouldn't be beyond the technical prowess of

the Japanese consumer giants to let me choose a volume offset for each

input. At least then we'd be in the right ballpark. Though that doesn't solve

the problem of disparate volumes in multi-function devices. That is simply

down to the manufacturer, and a bit of quality control on the media. I know

that sort of thing is under discussion, but often it does roll around to the same

old same-old that is 'my sound is bigger than yours' – the art of competitive

volumising.

But really, I hear them ask, just how important is this? Well, if we start with

"More important than the stickiness left after you've removed the sticky

tape, but less important than food" and then move inwards from there, you'll

eventually discover that the idea has some merit. The score zooms skywards

if you divide its importance by 'simplicity of implementation'. This isn't

difficult stuff. It requires motivation and some small effort. The motivation

might come from riding the wave of the broadcast loudness achievements

and technological advances, or it might come from extending the kind of

guidelines and legislation that is being put into place for broadcasters.

Either way, my cat votes 'yes'.

Paul Mac, Editor

A D V E R T I S E R S I N D E X

Aspen Media 8

Calrec 35

DiGiCo 13

DK Technologies 19

eMerging 14

Focal (SCV) 11

Focusrite 31

Genelec 10

JoeCo 34

Junger Audio 36

Lawo 47

Midas 60

MPG 51

Neumann 23

Nugen Audio 45

Olympus 15

PMC 17

Prism Sound 25

Prolight + Sound 53

Radial 59

Richmond 55

Riedel 39, 41, 43

Rode 24

Rycote 28

Shure 9

SM Audio 26

Sonic Distribution 3, 5, 27, 29

Studer 49

TC Electronic 37

Trinnov Audio 38

Ultrasone 21


R U S H E S Adam A77X 26

R E V I E W

Allen & Heath GS-R24 42

PreSonus 16.0.2 40

6r e c o r d i n g n e w s streaming news @ www.audiomedia.com

PRODUCT INSTALLToronto’s Liberty Studios has

recently upgraded its 6,000 square foot facility, installing an Aviom

Pro16 personal mixing system as an integral part of its transition to HD

and 7.1 surround sound produc-tion. The studio

has six new Aviom A-16II

Personal Mixers located in its live room for

artists to create their own per-

sonal mixes. Liberty’s

unique presents include a separate instrument on each of the chan-

nels, which allows the musicians to pick and choose what they would like to hear most. From there, the

studio also uses the system to run audio back to the control room,

where they mix on one of five Digidesign consoles.

www.aviom.com

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PRODUCT UPGRADEMOTU has unveiled the MicroBook II, an updated version of the com-pact, studio-grade audio interface that turns a Mac or PC into a per-sonal 4 x 6 recording studio with

professional I/O and monitor mix-ing. The MicroBook II will replace

the original model at the same price. It comes in a compact, rug-

ged cast metal case suitable for on-the-go recording, personal studio

tracking, and laptop-based DJ-ing. The bus-powered MicroBook II has

the same features as the original model, plus hands-on volume

control, USB 2.0 connectivity, more simultaneous outputs, an XLR

mic input, and support for 96kHz recording and playback.

www.motu.com

Straight To The Dangerous SourceDangerous Music has announced its latest monitor controller, the Dangerous Source; a portable and desktop unit designed for the engineer on the go, or to fit a limited space on the desktop. It fits beneath a 13-inch laptop computer, but can also sit unobtrusively on the desktop within arms reach to provide control of volume, input selection, speaker switching, and headphone control, and has an input for USB audio.

“With the explosion of professional recording and mixing being done on today’s powerful laptop computers, we wanted to bring out standard of audio path quality and functionality to portable monitor control,” said Bob Muller, President of Dangerous Music. The Dangerous Source monitor controller has many of the key features of the company’s Dangerous D-Box, such as speaker switching for two sets of speakers, speaker volume, AES/SPDIF digital IN, two stereo analogue IN, dual headphone out with a separate level control, and, in addition, the ability to connect directly to a computer for monitoring of digital audio over USB.www.dangerousmusic.com


SUBSCRIBER PRIZE DRAWCongratulations to David Johnston, from Glasgow, who is this month’s lucky winner of the AM subscrib-ers’ draw. Each month throughout 2012, one randomly selected sub-scriber will win an sE 4400a mic. To be entered into the draw, you must have a current digital or print subscription. To get one, go online to the address below. Good luck!www.audiomedia.com/subscribe.html. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEW PRODUCT

Eventide is now shipping its 2016 Stereo Room and Omnnipressor plug-ins. The plug-in range, avail-able for VST, AU, and Pro Tools AAX native formats, are software recrea-tions of their classic hardware. The Eventide SP2016 is long discon-tinued, but was long used as an essential reverb for mixing hit records.www.eventide.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

NEW PRODUCTDiGiCo has launched UB MADI, which allows any computer to instantly connect to MADI via USB 2.0. The pocket-sized connector uses the latest Stealth Digital Processing FGPA technol-ogy as used in DiGiCo’s SD range of consoles, and delivers 48 simulta-neous inputs and outputs, totalling 96 channels of audio I/O over USB 2.0. Once the low latency driver is installed, UB MADI is a simple plug-and-play device.www.digico.org. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEW PRODUCTMusic software company XILS-lab has released its first effects plug-in, in collaboration with Le Lotus Bleu. Available in 64- and 32-bit versions, Le Masque: Delay is a Mac and PC compatible polymor-phic, timeline-driven delay effects plug-in; it can behave like a regular digital delay, and features XILS-lab’s filtering and audio effects technology. www.xils-lab.com

Audio-Technica Reveals Birthday PresentsAudio-Technica is celebrating ‘50 Years Of Passionate Listening’, beginning with some limited edition products and new product launches. The company showed off its limited edition products at NAMM, which all features a distinct Audio-Technica 50th Anniversary design and colour scheme. The products include ATH-M50s/LE Professional Studio Monitor Headphones; ATM25/LE Hyper-cardioid Dynamic Instrument Microphone; AE4100/LE Cardioid Dynamic Handheld Microphone; AE5400/LE Cardioid Condenser Handheld Microphone; AE6100/LE Hyper-cardioid Dynamic Handheld Microphone; AT4050/LE Multi-pattern Condenser Microphone and AT4050URUSHI Multi-pattern Condenser Microphone. The LE/Anniversary limited editions feature A-T’s classic silver-coloured metallic finish with blue accents, and the the AT4050RUSHI has a traditional urushi lacquer finish with hand-painted Japanese maple leaves.

The AE4100/LE, AE5400/LE. AE6100/LE, AT4050/LE, AT4050URUSHI, and ATM25/LE all feature a unique anniversary serial number etched on the surface of each model. The AE5400/LE, AT4050/LE, and AT4050RUSHI come with a specially designed, hand-crafted wooden carrying case.

Of particular note is the ATM25/LE, a re-issue of the classic ATM25 Hyper-cardioid Dynamic Instrument Microphone. Audio-Technica decided to bring back a special edition of the microphone for its 50th anniversary based on direct input from users and dealers.www.audio-technica.com

7r e c o r d i n g n e w s streaming news @ www.audiomedia.com

7A U D I O M E D I A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2

NEW PRODUCTApogee

Electronics has

announced that its eight-

channel mic pre-amp module for Symphony I/O

is now shipping. Users now have the option to add eight mic

pre-amps, four instrument inputs, and eight digitally assignable

inserts. The module features soft-ware control, 85dB of gain, adjust-

able soft limit, selectable high pass filter, and a low noise level due to

the direct connection with the analogue I/O module.

www.apogeedigital.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

NEW PRODUCTBlue Microphones

has introduced Spark Digital, the first studio-grade iPad microphone;

and the Mikey Digital iPhone

microphone and interface.

Spark Digital connects directly to the iPad

and also offers USB connectivity; and features studio capabilities

including zero-latency headphone monitoring, fully adjustable gain

control and mute. Mikey Digital is a plug-and-play external microphone

for capturing audio on iPod touch, iPhone 4s, and iPad with any

iOS audio app.www.bluemic.com

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NEW PRODUCTLauten

Audio has announced

a new microphone

at NAMM, the FC-387

‘Atlantis’ model, a

solid-state, multi-functional, large-diaphragm condenser.

Atlantis features multiple switches for three different polar patterns, gain, and unique timbre settings.

The voicing switch allows engi-neers to choose between three

very different timbres, with options of Gentle, Neutral, and Forward.

www.lautenaudio.com

PRODUCT UPGRADE

CEDAR Audio has announced the the full suite of CEDAR for SADiE processes is now available on all versions of SADiE 6. SADiE 6 is available to run natively as well as on SADiE’s dedicated DSP boards, and can be licensed to a particular PC, to a dongle, or using the new licence server option that allows users to check processes in and out of a central repository. A number of technical hurdles had to be cleared before new versions of CEDAR for SADiE could run on all of these options. “This is a big step forward, offering much more flexibility for users,” remarked Gordon Reid, CEDAR Audio’s Managing Director.www.sadie.com

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NEW PRODUCTNative Instruments has launched a comprehensive rework of its Abbey Road Drums instruments: The Abbey Road Drummer Series. The new instru-ments allow musicians and producers to create authentic acoustic drum tracks, combin-ing sampled drums recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London, with a com-prehensive Groove Library and a detailed Mixer Section with class-A studio effects. Each of the four Abbey Road Drummer instruments includes a Groove Library with over 1,000 grooves, variations, and fills. The mixer section of the Abbey Road Drummer Series gives full control over mic levels on each drum, plus overheads, stereo room mics, snare bleed, and any other specialist microphones used during the recording process. www.native-instruments.com

New Offering From MojaveMojave Audio has announced the introduction of the MA-301fet Condenser Microphone. Based upon the MA-201fet designed by David Royer, the new MA-301fet adds features requested by industry professionals, including a three-position pickup pattern selector, a 15dB pad, and a switchable bass roll-off. Mojave suggests that the new microphone is ideal for numerous applications, including vocals, voice over and broadcast, electric guitar, piano, acoustic instruments, both drum overheads and room mics, and high SPL sources such as kick drums and bass guitar amps. The microphone features military grade FET circuitry, a Jensen transformer, and custom designed low-noise resisters. The solid-state, large-diaphragm condenser microphone also has a hand-selected, three-micron thick, one-inch gold sputtered capsule.

It offers multi-pattern capabilities – cardioid, omni-directional, and figure-eight, adding greater flexibility for recording a multitude of instruments, voices and other sound sources. The switchable 15dB pad and switchable bass roll-off allows engineers to attenuate loud sources for optimum pickup level and compensate for low frequency ‘boom’ if necessary.www.mojaveaudio.com

Firing Up For FirefaceRME has begun shipping the Fireface UCX, a highly integrated 26-channel

USB and FireWire interface in an ultra-compact format, for studio and live

recordings. The half-rack size unit includes technologies introduced with

the flagship UFX, plus a wide range of newly developed features.

It is equipped with a new 2011 A/D and D/A high-performance converter

design, and all I/Os operate at up to 192kHz. The AD/DA conversion has

a 114dBA dynamic range on both recording and playback. All analogue

I/Os use a low latency converter design that reduces the overall latency

of timing critical applications in live situations and in computer-based

recording studios. The converter latency is so low that it can be ignored,

meaning that analogue digital monitoring can be treated as real

analogue-style monitoring.

The optional Class Compliant mode allows the Fireface UCX to work

with Apple’s iPad and iPad2, offering up eight-channel stereo recording,

high-resolution stereo playback at up to 96kHz, microphone pre-amps

with EQ, dynamics, balanced line outputs, a high-power headphone

output, and a Sysex-capable double MID I/O port.www.rme-audio.de

8b r o a d c a s t n e w s streaming news @ www.audiomedia.com

New Products From SonifexSonifex will be exhibiting several new products at CABSAT 2012. These include the Redbox RB-VHDDD8, which is a Dolby E and Dolby Digital Decoder and De-Embedder. It de-embeds 16 channels of audio within any audio group of an SDI video signal and a further two that are sent to the Dolby Decoder. Up to 10 channels from the decoder or any of the 16 channels from the de-embedder can then be re-embedded onto either of the two SDI outputs.

The new Redbox RB-VHEDD8 encodes eight channels of audio into two channels of an AES/EBU digital audio stream, which is then embedded onto any of the available groups within each of the two video output paths.

Also showing will be the new S0 Radio Broadcast Mixer, a high quality yet simple to operate radio broadcast console; the Phone In 6, a call control centre for radio talkshows that allows hosts to manage up to six callers; and the new range of Pro Audio Streamers.www.sonifex.co.uk

EMMY FOR ITUThe International

Telecommunication Union (ITU) has received

a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for its stand-

ardisation of loudness metering in broadcast audio. The ITU recom-

mendation specifies a method of measuring loudness

and aims at aligning loudness levels across programmes of various genres

as well as commercials and promos. The National Academy of Television

honoured the Awards with an award show at the Venetian Resort Hotel

and Casino in Las Vegas, where ITU received the Emmy for its BS. 1770-2

broadcast recommendation.

www.itu.int. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

WAVES SHIPS LOUDLYWaves Audio is now shipping the

Waves Loudness Meter (WLM) plug-in. The WLM provides precision loudness measurement and meter-

ing for broadcast, movie trailers, games, packaged media, and more.

Fully compliant with all current ITU, EBU,

and ATSC specifications, the WLM offers comprehensive

Momentary Short Term, Long Term, and True Peak

readouts, plus a unique warning and logging system that keeps tracks

of users’ levels and lets them know when they have exceeded them – or

fallen short. The plug-in features mono, stereo, and 5.1 components.

www.waves.com

Clear-Com Gets Papal VoteVatican Television Centre (CTV), the official broadcaster of Vatican City, has selected Clear-Com Eclipse-Median digital matrix and Tempest 2400 digital wireless intercoms to help cover the official activities of Pope Benedict XVI as well as the ongoing religious events and services held at the Vatican. CTV covers about 200 events each year from inside the Vatican as well as during the Pope’s travels in Italy and abroad. CTV has no production studios, as the majority of the broadcaster’s work is ENG. The new OB van, which has full HD capability, has become the central hub for critical operations at the network. “Our system has certainly proven to function flawlessly during critical situations,” said Karlie Miles, Director of EMEA Sales at Clear-Com. “The signal transmitted from the Tempest 2400 wireless intercom system easily penetrates the thick walls of the church and can travel far distances to the van.”

www.clearcom.com

LAWO ON THE RED CARPET

MTV Networks’ new remote truck Nereus was hard at work during the Red Carpet Special broadcast by CMT (a unit of Viacom) before the 45th Annual Country Music Awards. The truck has a brand new Lawo mc266 MKII production con-sole. Engineer Mark Repp said: “The mc266 MKII’s ability to quickly and easily recall snapshots and switch between the various microphone groups was a huge factor in the suc-cess of this project.”

www.lawo.de. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .WISE BUDDAH GETS KEY

Wise Buddah has delivered new jingles, station imaging, and power intros for the Manchester, UK radio station Key 103. The custom package comprises of six main cuts along with an agreement for ongoing updates on a regular basis. Wise Buddah Jingles and Music Imaging Director Paul Plant said: “We encourage our writers to pro-duce imaging that sounds like the music being played on the station. This fitted perfectly with what Key 103 were after.”

www.wisebuddah.com

Measuring Loudness Managing Loudness

01296 681313www.aspen-media.com Stand D50

BVE

8 A U D I O M E D I A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2

9 ON STAGE.IN THE STUDIO.ON LOCATION.

www.shure.co.uk

2012DIGITAL

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Shure are synonymous with quality, durability and reliability. Shure offer a number of different microphones for various speech applications including handheld, headset or installed microphones with very high speech intelligibility. Plus premium wireless transmitters and receivers that guarantee reliability and unsurpassed sound quality.

VP89Premium Modular Shotgun Microphones

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276 Audio Media_ Broadcast_Shure.indd 1 31/01/2012 21:58

10p o s t n e w s streaming news @ www.audiomedia.com

10

Down on The Farm

Following a merge with an exist-ing hollywood video editing firm, London-based The Farm Group has expanded its new US facility by adding an audio post-production area. The two new large TV mix rooms and other amenities and improvements have doubled the studio’s size to 6000 square feet. The facility was used immediately after completion for post-pro-duction work on Simon Cowell’s X-Factor USa. The facility was designed by nonzero\architecture and studio bau:ton.www.farmgroup.tv. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A U D I O M E D I A f E b r U A r y 2 0 1 2

academy award nominations announcedIt’s that time of year again – the 2012 academy award nominations have been announced. In the running for a Sound editing oscar are: Lon Bender and Victor ray ennis for Drive, ren Klyce for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Philip Stockton and eugene Gearty for hugo, ethan Van der ryn and erik aadahl for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and richard hymns and Gary rydstrom for War Horse.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo earned a Sound mixing nomination for David Parker, michael Semanick, ren Klyce, and Bo Persson; hugo’s Tom Fleischman and John midgley have been nominated, as have Greg P. russell, Gary Summers, Jeffery J. haboush, and Peter J. Devlin for Transformers: Dark of the Moon; and Gary rydtrom andy nelson, Tom Johnson ,and Stuart wilson received a nomination for War Horse. Deb adair, ron Bochar, David Giammarco, and ed novick also picked up a nomination for their work on Moneyball.

Lon Bender and Victor ray ennis – nominated for a Sound editing academy award for Drive – are Supervising Sound editors at Soundelux. “on behalf of everyone at CSS Studios, I would like to congratulate Lon, Victor, and their team at Soundelux on this oscar nomination,” said robert C. rosenthal, President of CSS Studios, Soundelux’s parent company, of the nomination. “Drive is a unique movie and one that makes truly innovative use of sound. It represents creativity in motion picture sound at its peak.”www.oscar.com

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“To us, Genelec means totalround-the-clock reliability”

Scott Holmgren, Molinare

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“All of our rooms have Genelecs– it gives us 100% consistency”

Daniel Sassen, Envy Post

Throughout the production chain, broadcasters relyon the purity and transparency of Genelec audiomonitoring. Find out why Genelec is the broadcaster’smonitor of choice at www.genelec.com

Find out moreScan with a QR reader on yoursmartphone for full details ofGenelec monitors

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11Focal Professional SM6 LineFocal 6 Series (pictured) from £1,500+vat per pair. Focal CMS Series from £510+vat per pair.

Unmistakably Focal

Distributed by SCV London: Call 020 8418 1470 for your nearest dealer

www.scvlondon.co.ukDistributed by SCV London: Call 020 8418 1470 for your nearest dealer

www.scvlondon.co.uk

Focal SM6 Line Audiomedia 3-2-12.indd 1 3/2/12 12:39:29

12a m s r n e w s

streaming news @ www.audiomedia.com


NEW PRODUCTMeyer Sound’s line of self-powered, low-voltage audio solutions has been expanded, with the addition of three new 48-volt, DC-powered loudspeakers that offer the same performance as their AC-powered counterparts. The UPM-1XP 48V DC ultra-compact wide-coverage loudspeaker is the low-voltage version of the UPM-1P ultra-compact three-way loudspeaker. The UPM-1XP is capable of 123dB peak SPL over an operating frequency range of 75 Hz to 20 kHz. The UP Junior-XP 48V DV ultra-compact VariO loudspeaker combines the advantages of a low-voltage, self-powered unit with the versatility of the VariO constant directivity horn. The UMS-1XP 48V DC ultra-compact subwoofer extends low-voltage system response to an operating frequency range of 25 Hz to 160 Hz and a peak SPL of 127 dB at one metre.www.meyersound.com

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

NEW PRODUCT Avid has announced the Venue SC48 Remote System, a compact digital live sound system that delivers the sound quality, Pro Tools integration, and direct plug-in support of the Venue SC48, now with remote I/O functionality for increased flexibility. Consisting of the SC48 console and new Venue Stage 48 remote box, Ethernet Snake Card, and Venue 3 software, the SC48 Remote System is an alternative to the all-in-one SC48, enabling engineers to place the I/O away from the console and closer to sources for optimal sound. The system includes fully redundant Ethernet AVB snake connectivity, which Avid claims is the first in the live sound industry. www.avid.com

Mandarin Mamma Mia!Hit musical Mamma Mia! recently became the first western musical to be performed in China in Mandarin with a Chinese cast. After runs in Shanghai and Beijing, the show is currently playing in Guangzhou, with a DiGiCo SD8 helping things run smoothly. Technically, the approach for the audio was the same as it has been for all recent productions of Mamma Mia!, including the DiGiCo SD8 mixing console. DiGiCo consoles have been involved in the show since the first production transferred to the Prince of Wales theatre in London in 2004, where a DiGiCo D5T was originally specified. “Two years ago, a decision was taken to make the show more accessible to smaller territories and producers,” said Associate Sound Designer Richard Brooker. “To achieve this it was redesigned from all angles, including sound, so that it now fits onto an SD8 perfectly.” The production uses a total of 83 inputs and 54 outputs, with 117 snapshots/scenes during the performance as well as heavy use of the SD8’s internal effects.

www.digico.org

NEW PRODUCTCrown

Audio has introduced

its new flagship

I-Tech HD Series 4x3500HD DriveCore Series

Four-channel power amplifier. The I-Tech 4x3500HD incorporates

Crown’s sixth-generation Class I engine with DriveCore technology

to deliver 3500 per channel burst into four or two Ω, and offers a wide

range of advanced features including a 4.3-inch TFT LCD with capacitive

touchscreen, exclusive Harman HiQnet System Architect 2.0 control

functionality and Version 5 DSP preset support for JBL Professional’s newly-launched VTX Series V24 plus

VerTec Series line array loudspeakers.www.crownaudio.com

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEW PRODUCT

DPA Microphones has announced the introduction of new dual-ear

mounts and short booms for its

d:fine product series at NAMM

2012. Users now have the choice

of two mounts: the simple and secure single-ear piece, or the dual-

ear mount for more rigorous and energetic performance applications. The microphone boom also comes

in a short version, meaning that for a discreet and double secure solution,

the short boom can be combined with the dual earpiece.

www.dpamicrophones.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PRODUCT UPGRADESoundcraft’s small-format digital

console Si Compact has received a major upgrade with the V2

software release. The new free upgrade provides more than 23

major new features, updates and enhancements;

the first addition being

eight additional DSP channels

expanding the Si Compact 16

and Si Compact 24 to 32 and 40 inputs to mix,

respectively. There are also new user configurable fader layers allowing

input channels to be reassigned anywhere on either input layer and any bus master reassigned to either

master layer. Also introduced in V2 is D.O.G.S (Direct Output

Gain Stabilisation).www.soundcraft.com

Bocelli Distributed By RiedelWorld famous tenor Andrea Bocelli has recently undertaken two live open air concerts, one in New York, the other in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The organisers of the concerts used a RockNet installation from Riedel Communications for the distribution of on-site audio. Audio distribution was a big obstacle in each location. The concert in New York’s Central Park has a location size of nearly 600 x 1000 feet, while the location in Belo Horizonte was even larger, including an over 1300 feet long avenue next to the stage. Audio Engineer Andrea Taglia used six RockNet 100 devices at the events.

A tight time frame made the New York installation particularly tricky. “We were only able to install the cables just the day before the show, because we were not allowed to work on-site any earlier,” explained Taglia. “Therefore I was looking for a redundant and foolproof system and obviously Riedel RockNet came as the solution – we did not run into a single problem and I nearly forget it existed during the event.” The Brazilian event was even trickier. “This time we faced a 410m long audience standing on a road that had been closed to the traffic just on the morning of the show day itself,” said Taglia. “Riedel RockNet is a very transparent, reliable, full redundant system that allows a quick set-up offering all the confidence that a full broadcast engineered product can provide.”www.riedel.net

13Whatever your requirement

has the solution

Unit 10, Silverglade Business Park, Leatherhead Road, Chessington, Surrey, KT9 2QLt: +44 (0) 1372 845600 w: www.digico.biz

SD11B SD10B SD7B

See us @ BVE 2012, London14th-17th February Stand No: C2

SD11B

14Show Preview

The Broadcast Video Expo (BVE) takes place from February 14-16 at Earls Court in London. It bills itself as the essential exhibition for broadcast, video, and audio professionals, and with a comprehensive mix of products and services for broadcast technology and creative content, there should be something for everyone. It is the only UK event to showcase products and services from animation and asset management to AV, cloud computing, DVD duplication, finance, IPTV, meta data, mobile TV, monitors, recordable media, and a lot more. So most of the movers and shakers involved in broadcast content creation and delivery in the UK (and beyond) will be there.

Emma Crossley, Sales Manager for BVE, addresses the suggestion that the tough economic climate will put people off. “An economic downturn is the ideal time for people to visit BVE! We offer over 300 high quality seminars and workshops, giving visitors the invaluable opportunity to learn for free whilst also being able to source new products and services, network with peers, and hear about new job opportunities and projects.” She also highlights one of the key advantages to UK-based broadcast

professionals: “All this can be done for the price of a train ticket – no over inflated hotel costs or flights to worry about.”

BVE brings together the leading manufacturers and suppliers in the broadcast industry, and gives visitors a chance to get hands on with all sorts of kit. There are a lot of companies bringing a lot of kit this year, according to Crossley. “2012 is a record year in terms of exhibitors, with over 300 stands representing thousands of products.” And it’s not just the same old faces either, she points out. “New companies this year include DiGiCo, POLARaudio, Unity Audio, Shure Distribution, Synthax, Rycote, CLD Distribution, 4Hm, Raycom, Audio Engineering – alongside show regulars such as SSL, Sennheiser, HHB, Calrec, Dolby, Riedel, Preco, Audio Technical, Cedar, Sonifex, Studer, Telex, Emerging, Canford, Westcountry Broadcast, plus many more.”

Of enormous interest to those in the business is the comprehensive Audio Room seminar programme. First introduced in 2012, the programme has gone from strength to strength; the seminars, workshops, and masterclasses are renowned for their breadth, quality,

and relevance to today’s market. They help industry professionals establish what’s really going on in the industry, what trends are emerging for the future, and how to make the most of the new opportunities in media. Crossley pointed out some highlights from the programme. “Tuesday will see the return of the

Radio Day, featuring seven sessions

dedicated to all things radio.

Wednesday and Thursday are

thrown open to the wider world

of audio, with highlights including

Phil Coates discussing the difficulties

of recording sound in extreme

locations, and an exciting panel

discussion on sound for 3D with

representatives from Dolby, BBC,

BskyB, and Soundfield. We will also

be tackling the ever-contentious

issues of loudness and the future

of spectrum.” There are thirteen

theatres, each with a different focus:

3D Revolution, Broadcast Meets I.T.,

the Post Production Theatre, Content

Delivery Theatre, Demystifying The

Cloud, Religious Broadcasting, the

ARRI Production Skills Centre, Brands

Become Broadcasters, The Audio

Room, FCP X: Professional Solutions,

IOV Theatre, the Avid Hands On

Training Theatre, and the Adobe

Theatre. All sessions are free of

charge but some require tickets for

entry. Tickets are available from the

Seminar Registration desk located

inside the hall from 9.30am on each

day for sessions before 1pm, and

after 12.30pm for sessions in the

afternoon. There is a maximum of

two morning and two afternoon

tickets per person per day.

BVE will be an excellent

opportunity to network, share

ideas and keep up to date with the

industry, and learn what 2012 has in

store for broadcasting.

www.bveexpo.com


Here’s a handy round-up of some of the products launching at BVE .

Trinnov will be demonstrating an expanded integrated monitoring solution that not only includes the Optimiser and Smart Meter options, but now a set top box silmulation (DRC), and comprehensive downmix engine. Smart Meter V includes True Peak reading, True peak meters, PPM, QPPM, Timeline monitoring, correlation meters, Surround Analyzer and Vectorscope.

The UK launch of the AETA MinX location mixer and mult i -channel recorder is taking place on the Aspen Media stand. AETA is also launching i t s a u d i o c o d e c Scoopy+ HD.

NTP Technology’s Penta IP audio router is making its UK exhibition debut. The Penta IP allows a high quality audio routing network to be operated using low-cost Gigabit IP based Ethernet lines.

The HHB stand will feature new Portable Recorders from Olympus and Roland. The new Studer OnAir console will also be shown as well as the new Yamaha Vi.

Sonifex is showing several new products, including the Redbox R B - V H D D D , a Dolby E and Dolby Digital Decoder and De -Embedder; the Redbox RB-VHEDD, a Dolby E Encoder and Embedder; and the new range of Pro Audio Streamers.

channel recorder is taking place on the Aspen Media stand. AETA is also launching i t s a u d i o c o d e c

BVE 2012The Broadcast Video Expo is about to take place in London. AUDIO MEDIA takes a look at what makes it a show worth visiting.

24 Mic / Line AD/DAMADI, AES, ASIORavenna Networked AudioRemote Control Mic PreLow power consumption

Distibuted in the UK by

www.emerginguk.com

Come and see us at BVE Stand D44

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JOHN BROOMHALL asks PlayStation Technical Audio Guru, Jason Page (Senior Audio Manager – Sony Computer Entertainment

Europe R&D) for the full SP.Audio Media: How did Sony go about deciding

VITA’s capabilities for audio? Jason Page: The audio working group designed

a synthesizer based on their collective experiences from PS. There were a wide range of requirements from our Worldwide Studio teams t o e n s u r e t h e d e s i g n c o u l d m e e t the audio needs o f m a n y e x i s t i n g PS games – such as the Uncharted series, MotoStorm, and Gran Turismo.

We also considered the needs of third party developers. From the developer support side, we had a lot of information regarding how developers handled audio – things like the minimum number of expected audio channels, which DSP effects are a priority (and now considered the ‘norm’ for current gen games), codec requirements, average audio asset memory footprints, etc.

Once we had collectively decided upon audio features, my team went ahead with development – initially on PC, until we had access to early PS Vita hardware. We decided to call the synth ‘NGS’. At this stage, we also contacted a number of middleware partners to gauge their initial feedback to NGS’s features and API.

AM: So what’s under the hood?

JP: There are two sides to audio processing on PS Vita – the ARM processing and the Codec Engine processing. The ARM side is also where the main game is processed, so it’s been very important to keep CPU use to a minimum here. The Codec Engine is where the serious audio processing happens (mixing, resampling, DSP fx…). I can’t go into detail regarding the hardware, but suffice to say, it’s powerful!

Developers aren’t allowed direct access to the Codec Engine (as with the PSP’s ‘Media

Engine’). We had to ensure that the design of NGS took this into

consideration allowing the synth to be configurable

(synth DSP module routing and buss

r o u t i n g , f o r example), and we made sure to include the

high-priority DSP effects as standard,

as i t wouldn’t be possible for developers to

write their own on the Codec Engine. AM: How about memory and storage for audio?JP: There’s no actual audio memor y

(similar to both PS and PSP), and we’ve got a number of codecs that allow for compression ratios comparative with that of current gen memory footprints.

From speaking to many developers, we concluded that a budget of around MB for current gen audio assets is quite normal (RAM being reserved for in-game sound effects, streaming audio buffers, and such). We needed to ensure, where possible, developers could

dedicate the same RAM budget on Vita and achieve similar results.

AM: So will it deliver PS quality audio? JP: It depends which PS games you compare

with – but the goal was to allow our own Worldwide Studios PS titles to work on PS Vita with minimum changes…

Games process hundreds of audio channels, as well as high quality reverbs, etc. We consider a ‘game voice’ would have re-sampling, volume changing, filter, and some kind of codec-decoding all active. So when I say ‘hundreds of audio channels’, I mean real ‘game voice’ audio channels.

The main audio difference is obviously that it’s a portable unit with stereo output, rather than full-fat .. But in terms of fidelity, it’s up with PS, and in terms of scope, I think that the synth design is actually more flexible.

Of course, PS is a home console. It plugs into the mains and has a fan to keep it from overheating! PS Vita is a battery-powered unit so you have to be sensible when making comparisons. Sure, if you used the whole PS to do something amazing with audio only then yes, PS delivers more. But if you consider what resources are normally available for game audio on a home console (memory, CPU use, DSPs) then without a doubt, PS Vita can deliver to that level.

AM: Is PS Vita redefining handheld game audio? If so, what do you think the long term effect will be on other devices?

JP: With regards to the knock-on effect, portable audio can no longer be seen as the ‘simpler option’ or ‘poor relation’. In future, budgets for portable game audio may rise to meet that of home consoles, although re-using assets across the two will also be a viable option and, as such, could make portable console development easier overall.

Does PS Vita redefine handheld game audio? I think so, yes. If I look at current pre-PS Vita portable devices, their audio capabilities are around years behind that of home consoles. So, comparing the audio capabilities of PS Vita to other portables on the market (whether game devices or mobile phones), PS Vita audio is a staggering achievement. ∫

PS Vita – Game-Changer for Game AudioPS Vita is Sony’s brand new handheld games console. Successor to the PSP, Vita boasts serious computing power to deliver a Playstation3-like gaming experience via an exquisite visual display with pro quality audio.

16

How did Sony go about deciding VITA’s capabilities for audio?

Jason Page: The audio working group designed a synthesizer based on their collective experiences from PS. There were a wide range of requirements from our Worldwide Studio teams t o e n s u r e t h e d e s i g n c o u l d m e e t the audio needs o f m a n y e x i s t i n g PS games – such as the Uncharted series, MotoStorm, and Gran Turismo.

We also considered the needs of third party developers. From the developer support side, we had a lot of information regarding how developers handled audio – things like the minimum number of expected audio channels,

to keep CPU use to a minimum here. The Codec Engine is where the serious audio processing happens (mixing, resampling, DSP fx…). I can’t go into detail regarding the hardware, but suffice to say, it’s powerful!

Developers aren’t allowed direct access to the Codec Engine (as with the PSP’s ‘Media

Engine’). We had to ensure that the design of NGS took this into

consideration allowing the synth to be configurable

(synth DSP module routing and buss

r o u t i n g , f o r example), and we made sure to include the

high-priority DSP effects as standard,

as i t wouldn’t be possible for developers to

write their own on the Codec Engine.

Jason Page.

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17ATL™ bass loading technology offers the following advantages over ported monitors:

• Exceptional LF extension with no colouration• Identical tonal balance at all levels• Higher SPL’s without compression or listener fatigue• 100% dependable If you’re as serious about music making as we are about building the world’s best monitors, call us.

™ bass loading technology offers the following advantages over ported monitors:

Exceptional LF extension with no colourationIdentical tonal balance at all levelsHigher SPL’s without compression or listener fatigue100% dependable

If you’re as serious about music making as we are about building the world’s best monitors, call us.

ULTIMATE MONITORING

T +44 (0) 870 [email protected]

The IB2 XBDS-A active monitors are serious speakers for serious applications. 4000 watts of Class-D amplifi cation, DSP control and PMC’s ATL™ technology deliver the full-scale dynamics and no compromise performance.

But if your space can’t quite accommodate the 58” tall IB2 XBDS-A system, the DB1S-AII and TB2S-AII deliver many of the performance benefi ts, such as the low distortion, wide dispersion and incredible dynamics in a more compact form.

TM

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THIS IS

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IB2 XBDS-A also available in black

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18geo focus Netherlands

The first Integrated Systems Europe trade show was held in Geneva, Switzerland, in February 2004. The event was launched to fulfil the need for a pan-European forum for the emerging

markets of professional AV and electronic systems inte-gration, and quickly grew to become the undisputed annual marketplace for these industries – a focus not just for doing business but also for networking, educa-tion, and technological innovation.

Always owned by not-for-profit trade associations, since 2007 ISE has been a joint venture between InfoComm International and the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA). As well as ensuring that all proceeds from ISE are re-invested into the industry, these associations also act as the corner-stone of the event’s extensive education programme, which continues to grow year on year.

ISE 2012 was held, like the previous eight shows, at the RAI convention centre, Amsterdam. Occupying an expanded footprint with the addition of Hall 7, the event broke all of last years records, with exhibitor numbers up 15 percent, floor sapce increased by 18 percent, and pre-registrations up by 21 percent. Early estimates put actual attendance at over 40,000, compared to last year’s record figure of 34,870.

How do you account for the show’s phenomenal success?MB: I must admit with the very first event I was nerv-ous. One of the problems we had was people register-ing very late. When you do a first show, you have no pattern to work from. People may have registered but will anyone turn up? We had a good start in Geneva in terms of identifying what we should be doing and where we should be going. We had a moderate success, enough for the industry to get behind us and believe in what we were trying to achieve. They indicated a will-ingness to work with us, to develop and grow the idea. And that’s what’s happened. Having everyone behind

us and working with us is what gave us the confidence that we would have success. We’ve got to the stage we’re at now a lot quicker than I anticipated. But there is still room for further growth.

At the time we launched the event, the AV industry was looking for a suitable show vehicle in Europe. Up until then, they had been participating in events that weren’t totally dedicated to AV – like CeBIT, Pro Light & Sound, and Photokina. Basically, we came up with a formula the industry wanted. We also had the industry associations behind it. It wasn’t a case of a commercial organisation saying let’s see if we can make some money out of this. We made serious investment in the first three years which has paid off. The show has grown and the emphasis has been on growth not profit.

Have you expanded the market sectors the show covers?MB: Yes. For example, in the first year I think we had only about two display companies, now we have all the display companies participating. We had hardly any pro audio companies and now all the major names in that sector are participating.

We review every show with the team, go through what was good, what was bad, what didn’t work. We also consider in which directions we should move, what changes need to be implemented. We look at each sector and consider what we need to do to convince those sectors that ISE is the right platform for them. It’s always a bit of a chicken and egg situation. The attendees in a particular sector don’t come unless they see the relevant exhibitors are there and the exhibitors don’t come unless they see the attendees are there. Generally we tend to invest in the attendees first. Get them on board, then go back to the exhibitors

There have been major changes in our audience too. The first year it was primarily integrators, distribu-tors, and manufacturers and very much at senior level. That side’s grown, but what’s happening now is that

their customers are coming with them. Specifiers are coming to ISE to see what they need to discuss with their integrators. They want to gather the information to be able to appreciate and understand what the inte-grators tell them. That’s where much of where our focus is at present. And the manufacturers want to see them and influence these people as well.

Julius Caesar used to say to his soldiers: If you want to walk in the shade, you have to plant trees. We do a lot of tree planting, sowing the seeds, and once they start growing we get our shade.

Which sectors have been strongly represented this year?MB: It really is across the board. We decided back in 2005 that the digital signage market was of serious interest to us and part of our market, and we needed to embrace certain sectors of it. We worked on it and now we have the largest digital signage representation of any exhibition in Europe.

We also now have a dedicated hall for multi-media conferencing. In the pro audio sector we’ve been work-ing with the parties involved, asking the key players what they need and how the exhibition can work for them. We know we have the attendance, but what else do we have to do? We talk regularly. We have an advisory board – about 28 strong – that’s made up of representatives from the various sectors of the industry: pro audio, display, control, conferencing, etc, and also from a cross section of countries. We like to involve smaller companies as well as the big players. We have representatives from just about all areas of the AV industry. We ask these guys to come along, take off their company hats and put on industry hats to discuss what we need to focus on in the future. When we’ve got the feedback, we come back to them with ideas.

And will the show be staying in Amsterdam?MB: Our contract with the RAI runs until 2016,

which provides a clear business path for our exhibitors, allows us to facilitate our forward planning as organis-ers, and enables the RAI itself to plan for the future growth of ISE... What happens after 2016 I don’t know. If we do outgrow Amsterdam that will be a luxury problem we’re facing. Amsterdam works as a location. More than 600 million people live and work within a direct three-hour flight of Schiphol airport, and these areas represent some of the most developed and sophis-ticated economies in the world...

Beyond the hard numbers, the city of Amsterdam is a welcoming, relaxed, and culturally diverse city in which it is easy for people of almost any background to come and do business.

ISE Breaks More RecordsJIM EVANS spoke with Mike Blackman, Managing Director of Integrated Systems Events.


19geo focus Netherlands

Originally started as the ‘in-house’ recording studios of the Philips

Electronics company in , Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum grew to

become one of the best recording facilities in Europe. Many noted artists

recorded tracks here including ELO, Elton John, The Police, Scorpions,

The Rolling Stones, and Michael Jackson, to name just a few. However, in the

studio started having financial problems which finally resulted in a bankruptcy

in .

The good news is that, as previously reported

in these pages, Wisseloord Studios is re-opening

under the new management team consisting of

Ronald Prent, Darcy Proper, and Paul Reynolds.

The new mastering service is already

in operation, while on the recording/mix-

ing front, an API Vision console has been

installed in the facility’s main recording studio.

The Vision’s forward-thinking topology will allow

Wisseloord clients to mix in stereo and surround

simultaneously using a transparent bus architec-

ture and a streamlined workflow. The all-discrete

API Vision will be joined

by an impressive col-

lection of analogue

and digital gear from

industry-leading manu-

facturers.

“There is huge excite-

ment and support for this project,” says Prent, who is responsible for the

concept of the new complex, its technical design and all equipment choices.

“This whole idea is born out of our frustrations, as a group of friends, by the

apparent inability of parts of the music industry to reinvent itself to suit the

changes we have seen in recent last years. This led us to take action and form

a new business based around our team, our beliefs, our values, and a new

business concept that we think will enable us to service the market well.

“We needed to fundamentally rebuild the mastering and control rooms

to bring them up to surround and future format standards,” Prent adds.

“There will be some enrichment of the recording spaces but we will preserve

their essential character, the loved acoustic and vibe because, for us they are

very special.”

Since its launch, the compact DiGiCo SD9 has made a significant impact on audio rental and sound reinforcement companies who need a digital console for medium-sized productions. An example is Soundlink, a Dutch audio company whose SD9 has been in constant use since it was purchased a year and a half ago.

Owned by Bas Jansen, Floris Roelfzema, and Hugo van Meijeren, Soundlink is based near the town of Roden, just west of Groningen. After five years of providing sound reinforcement as a hobby, in 2008 they turned Soundlink into a full-time business and have not looked back since.

“In the summer of 2010 we were in the market for buying a new analogue console and multi-core,” says van Meijeren. “We contacted TM Audio in Utrecht and they suggested that we look at digital consoles because of the advantages in size, weight, the convenience of a fibre optic multi-core, and the many other possibilities that digital consoles offer.

“Although we are a relatively small company, we’ve always had high standards. After looking at all the available options, we agreed to do a side-by-side comparison between the DiGiCo SD9 and one other digital console. Once we had done the comparison, we all felt the SD9 was the best option. It is very user-friendly – it’s really easy to understand if you’re used to an analogue console – and the audio quality is excellent. Within a few days of the test we contacted Martijn Verkerk at TM Audio to order an SD9.”

Eighteen months later, with the SD9 having been used on every show where more than 20 inputs are required, Soundlink is still very happy with its purchase.

“We use the SD9 on a lot of our smaller shows, where an analogue console would be impractical because of its size and the requirement for outboard gear,” says van Meijeren.

Recent examples have included one of the many stages throughout Groningen at Gro-ningens Ontzet, a celebration of the Dutch victory at the city’s siege in 1672; Rodermarkt, a festival in Roden which begins with an open air concert, and the two-day Christmas in Harmony, a festive show with orchestra, choir and rock band.

Soundlink Goes DiGi-tal

A U D I O M E D I A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2 19

Wisseloord Studios Re-OpensOne of Europe’s best known recording facilities gears up for re-opening.

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20Show Report

AKG introduced its DMS 70 – a true uncompressed digital wireless system operating with 24-bit 48kHz transmission in the 2.4GHz ISM band, a worldwide license-free fre-quency range. The range includes quad or dual receivers, pocket tr ansmitter, and handheld transmitter with two choices of capsule – all available in three different packages. 128-bit encryption ensures secure two-way wireless communica-tion.www.akg.com

As well as the new GLD console (fea-tured in last month’s Audio Media), Allen & Heath launched the ZED-16FX and ZED-18 multi-purpose live sound and recording mixers. Both units have a connection for USB send and return for recording, playback, and effects. Additionally, the ZED-16FX has a built-in FX processor with TAP tempo delay settings.

www.allen-heath.comAlto Professional launched its new MasterLink Live 16 and MasterLink Live 24 consoles. They combine

analogue console tech with Alesis DSP and support for iPad and the Alto Live Drive app. The consoles offer mono

and stereo channels, channel dynamics, four

auxes, and four busses. Live Drive adds RTA, 12 band parametric EQ, compres-sor/limiter, two-channel recording, and a program-mable SPL meter.

www.altoprofessional.com

Apogee launched two new products at NAMM. One was the Symphony 64 | Thunderbolt for connecting Symphony I/O and any X-Symphony-equipped interface to Mac via Thunderbolt. The other launch was the 16x16 analogue I/O module for Symphony I/O offering 16-in and

16-out on four D-Sub connectors.www.apogeedigital.com

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Audio-Technica had a lot to shout about at NAMM. It unveiled a series of limited versions of its products, as well as the new ATM510 cardioid and ATM610a Hypercardioid dynamic handheld microphones, and the new AT2005USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone with both USB and XLR connections. For more detail, see Recording News (page 6).www.audio-technica.com

Auralex showed its new SonoFlat Grid acoustic panels – a new take on its SonoFlat product. Each unit is composed of nine bevelled squares and is made from the company’s melamine-free Studiofoam.www.auralex.com

Crown Audio announced the intro-duction of its new flagship I-Tech HD Series 4x3500HD DriveCore four-channel power

amplifier. The unit incor-

porates Crown’s sixth-generation Class I engine with DriveCore technology and offers features including a 4.3-inch TFT LCD with capacitive touchscreen, exclusive Harman HiQnet System Architect 2.0 control functionality, and Version 5 DSP preset support for JBL Professional’s new VTX line array. The 2U I-Tech 4x3500HD deliv-ers 1,900 watts per channel into 8Ω, 2,000 watts per channel into 4Ω, and

4,000 watts into 4Ω bridged. Crown HiQnet Band Manager 2 is an iteration of

Harman’s HiQnet

NAMM Wrap-UpThis year's winter NAMM show was as up-beat and bubbly as ever. We present... The best bits.


a worldwide license-free fre-quency range. The range includes quad or dual

handheld transmitter with two choices of capsule – all available in three different packages. 128-bit encryption ensures

analogue console tech with

Drive adds RTA, 12 band



auxes, and four busses. Live

a worldwide license-free fre-quency range. The range includes quad or dual

handheld transmitter with two choices of capsule – all available in three different



auxes, and four busses. Live

channel power

amplifier.

versions of its products, as porates

www.apogeedigital.com

shout about at NAMM. It unveiled a series of limited versions of its products, as

duction of its new flagship I-Tech HD Series 4x3500HD DriveCore four-

shout about at NAMM. It unveiled a series of limited versions of its products, as

channel power

amplifier.

porates

amplifier. The unit

on its SonoFlat product. Each unit is composed of nine bevelled squares and is made from the company’s melamine-free Studiofoam.

2,000 watts per channel into 4Ω, and 4,000 watts into 4Ω bridged.

Crown HiQnet Band Manager 2 is an iteration of

Harman’s HiQnet

composed of nine bevelled squares and is made from the company’s

4,000 watts into 4Ω bridged. Crown HiQnet Band Manager 2 is an iteration of

Harman’s HiQnet

Universal Audio revealed Apollo, its new high-resolution x Firewire/Thunderbolt-ready -bit/ kHz audio interface for Mac and PC, which

combines an analogue design with UAD powered plug-ins. The manufacturer claims that in using Apollo, producers and performers alike will benefit from being able to track through the UAD plug-ins in real time. Company founder Bill Putnam Jr. says a culmination of 10 years of analogue and digital audio development has led to the release of Apollo. “In many ways, it’s brought the analogue and digital sides of our company together,” he suggests. “With Apollo, we’re delivering the sound, feel, and flow of analogue

record-ing with all the conve-niences

o f mod-ern digital equip-

ment, including next-genera-

tion Thunderbolt technology.”The product boasts premium mic pre-amps and convert-ers, which UA says delivers the lowest THD and highest dynamic range in its class. Its core audio and ASIO drivers also make it compatible with all of the major DAWs such as Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Cubase, and Ableton Live. The Apollo’s console application and companion con-sole recall plug-in delivers control and recall of all of the interface and UAD plug-in settings within individual DAW sessions, even months and years later; but what makes it different from other interfaces, UA insists, is its on-board UAD-2 DSP Acceleration processing.Providing sub-2ms latency, producers will be able to monitor, audition, and ‘print’ audio using a range of ana-logue emulation plug-ins from manufacturers including Ampex, Lexicon, Manley, Neve, SSL, Studer, and Roland, which UA believes makes Apollo’s sonic and tonal options ‘virtually limitless’. The UAD-2 processors are also practical for mixing and mastering, by offloading processing from the host computer.

W www.uaudio.com

Interface and DSP in one box,

combined with UA’s Powered

Plug-ins and analogue know-

how... What’s not to like?

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including next-genera-ment,

including next-genera-

record-ing with all the conve-niences

o f mod-ern digital equip-

21system configuration and control protocol.www.crownaudio.com

Dangerous Music announced

its newest monitor controller, the Dangerous Source portable and desktop unit. The unit includes many D-Box features, such as speaker switching and volume, AES/SPDIF digital in, two stereo analogue ins, dual headphone outs with a separate level control, and it can connect directly to a computer for monitoring of digital audio over USB.www.dangerousmusic.com

DPA Microphones showed its new 2000 Series MMC2006 Omni and MMC2011 Cardioid microphone capsules. Designed to bring the performance of the 4000 Series to a wider audience, the new 2000 Series incorporates the same capsule technology found in the company’s miniature microphones, but pairs it with the 4000 Series microphone bodies. The company also launched an enhanced, dual-ear headset for its

popular d:fine directional and omni-directional headset microphones The dual-ear headset is available in three sizes.www.dpamicrophones.com

Electro-Voice launched the ZXA1-Sub – the matching subwoofer for its ZXA1 compact self-powered loud-speaker. The ZXA1-Sub is designed to provide portability, performance, and power in a lightweight, stylish, small-format package. It features a 12-inch woofer, a 700-W amplifier, a 15mm wood enclosure, and a maximum SPL rating of 126dB.www.electrovoice.com

Furman showed its new CN-3600 SE contractor series SmartSequenncer. The unit allows complex AV systems to be safely powered on and off with the press of a button (or turn of a key). Features include RS232 and Ethernet adapter web-based control and monitoring, multi-stage transient protection, extreme voltage shutdown, linear filtering, and more.www.furmancontractor.com

JBL’s big news was the introduction of the new VTX Line Array Series, fea-turing the new D2 dual-diaphragm dual-voice-coil compression driver, claimed to overcome the limitations of conventional compression drivers.


Avid used NAMM to launch its new Venue SC48 Remote Digital Live Sound System, Stage 48 Remote I/O Box, and Venue 3 Software.

The SC48 Remote System is a compact digital live sound system with remote I/O (as opposed to the all-in-one SC48) via fully redundant Ethernet AVB snake. The Stage 48 Remote Stage Box will also be available as an add-on option (along with its companion Ethernet Snake Card) to existing SC48 users, enabling them to get more flexibility from their system.

The new Venue 3 software offers new features for all Venue users, though SC48 users especially, as they get more busses, more input processing channels, more plug-in slots, and more Pro Tools channels.

Sheldon Radford, Avid Senior Product Manager, commented: “With the SC48 Remote System, they get the sound, performance, and reliability VENUE systems are known for, plus the flexibility to split up the I/O and place each distribution where needed for optimal sound...”

www.avid.com

SC48 Remote System, they get the sound, performance, and reliability VENUE systems are known for, plus the flexibility to split up the I/O and place each distribution where needed for optimal sound...”

www.avid.com

THE headphone company

Signataureof Sound

Signataureof Sound

Signataure

Come and trust your ears... Visit us in Frankfurt at Musikmesse21.3. - 24.3.2012 / Hall 5.1 Stand B36www.ultrasone-fanpage.com / www.ultrasone.com

Don

Dex

ter A

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y ©

22The first VTX product is the VTX V25 three-way line array element. For more informa-tion of VTX, see page 22. The company also launched its PRX400 series of passive portable loudspeakers.www.jblpro.com

JoeCo previewed a brand new BlackBox App for remotely control-ling and monitoring its range of BlackBox Recorders and Players. Designed for use on the iPad, the BlackBox App will provide full high resolu-tion metering on all channels and a range of transport controls for remote operation. It will also enable the BlackBox menu and set-up options to be remotely controlled.www.joeco.co.uk

KRK showed its recently introduced 12sHO and 12s subwoofer units. The 12sHO fea-tures a 12-inch driver cone and front-firing quad-concentric port yielding a response from 29Hz to 160Hz at SPL of up to 113dB music and 123dB peak. The 12s offers a 32Hz to 170Hz response (110dB music and 119.5dB peak SPLs). Both units can be directly connected via dedicated subwoof-er outputs from the source or by using the built-in high pass filter.www.krksys.comLauten Audio announced a new micro-

phone, the FC-387 Atlantis model, a large-diaphragm condenser with three polar patterns, both -10 and +10dB cut/gain switching, and a voicing switch that give three different timbres – gentle, neutral, and forward.www.lautenaudio.com

Mackie created much debate with its new DL1608 console, which strips the controls from a digital mixer and replaces them with an iPad connection and WiFi capability. It has 16 Onyx mic pre-amps, 24-bit AD/DA, onboard plug-ins, and wire-less support for up to 10 iPad devices. For more details, see page 22. In other news, Mackie has secured a partnership with New Japan Radio Corporation to develop a new op-amp exclusively for Mackie mixers. The new M-80 op-amp is currently being implemented in the exist-ing Onyx, VLZ3, and ProFX series mixers.www.mackie.com MOTU launched Digital Performer version

8, a major upgrade to its flagship audio workstation software. Digital Performer 8 will now be available for both Mac OS X and Windows 7. The company also showed


In the Loud camp, Mackie announced the release of its new 16-channel DL1608, a small-footprint digital live sound mixer that features iPad control. The company claims it has the ability to re-define live mixing, maximising the hands-on approach, and at a competitive price point.What makes it stand out from the crowd, Mackie says, is its seamless wired to wireless iPad control, which allows mixing to take place anywhere within a venue, combined with its full set of features which include 24-bit Cirrus Logic A/D-D/A convertors and 16 high quality Onyx mic pre-amps.The remote control allows the user to not only control the mix, but also a host of powerful plug-ins such as EQs, effects, and dynamics. Other iPad features include preset and snapshot recall, ‘Grow and Glow’ visual feedback, and an intuitive master fader app. Users also have the ability to record the mix to the iPad for instant sharing as well as integrate music from any app into the mix. Eight channels can be shown on the iPad at any one time, and the master fader remains visible at all times. “The mixing is going on in the hardware of the console, but the main user interface is the touch screen of the iPad, which slots into the centre,” says Ben Olswang, Product Manager at Mackie. “When you slide the iPad out, it instantly switches to wireless mode; and because the console can support 10 iPads, different members of the band can control their own monitor mixes, and engineers can mix or tune the from anywhere they like in the room.”

The DL1608 has eight outputs – a master L/R for the main output, plus six aux sends for monitor mixes. Its built-in processing includes a gate, compressor, and high-pass filter on each input; a four-band EQ; and a 31-band GEQ, compressor and limiter on the outputs. There is also a Global reverb and delay control.

www.mackie.com

the mix, but also a host of powerful plug-ins such as EQs, effects, and dynamics. Other iPad features include preset and snapshot recall, ‘Grow and Glow’ visual feedback, and an intuitive master fader app. Users also have the ability to record the mix to the iPad for instant sharing as well as integrate music from any app into the mix. Eight channels can be shown on the iPad at any one time, and the master

“The mixing is going on in the hardware of the console, but the main user interface is the touch screen of the

Product Manager at Mackie. “When you slide the iPad out, it instantly switches to wireless mode; and because the console can support 10 iPads, different members of the band can control their own monitor mixes, and engineers can mix or tune the from anywhere they like in the room.”

Waves had a very busy NAMM show this year. Significantly, the company launched its V9 plug-ins, which includes 64-bit operat-ing system support, faster scanning, and faster loading and process-ing times. In addition, Waves has introduced a new authorisation system, eliminating iLok and offering activation to computer or any USB flash drive.

The company also launched a series of new plug-ins. First was inPhase, a phase correction tool that features dual waveform dis-plays with up-to-sample resolution zoom, manual or side-chain alignment, a phase shift curve window, and a correlation meter.

There’s also the NLS Non-Linear Summing plug-in. The plug-in models three consoles: Spike Stent’s SSL 400G, Mike Hedges’ EMI TG12345 Mk4, and Yoad Nevo’s custom-made Neve 5116. Waves modelled over 100 individual channels.

Lastly, Jack Joseph Puig has again joined forces with Waves, this time to introduce the PuigChild Hardware Compressor, modelled on a rare, pristine-condition Fairchild 670 from Puig’s personal collection. It features dual mono, linked and lateral vertical ste-reo modes.

www.waves.com

previewed a brand new BlackBox

monitoring its range of

Recorders

Players. Designed for use on the iPad, the

Mackienew DL1608 console, which strips the controls from a digital mixer and replaces them with an iPad connection and WiFi capability. It has 16 Onyx mic pre-amps, 24-bit AD/DA, onboard plug-ins, and wire-less support for up to 10 iPad devices. For more details, see page 22. In other news, Mackie has secured a partnership

Are you ready to ditch your

knobs and buttons? Mackie

thinks so. Its new digital mixer

is an iPad supercharger...

MACKIE DL1608

2323

Line 6 is a company continuing to make waves in the pro-audio sector, and its new StageScape and StageSource products are designed to make live mixing an easier and more pleasurable experience for all users. The StageScape M20d creates a visual mixing environment through its seven-inch, full colour, intuitive touchscreen user interface so that users can dial in a sound quickly and stay in their creative zone. It displays icons that represent each performer or input, rather than generic rows of knobs and faders, and all the elements in the mix are there in front of the user: pressing on an icon opens up all parameters relating to that channel. Its sizeable DSP delivers professional audio processing on each of its channels as well as multi-band feedback suppression, and its multi-channel recording function allows rehearsals or shows to be recorded without the need for an external PC. Whether it’s a solo performance or a full band show, gig set-up is designed to be fast and easy. StageScape M20d activates each microphone or input as soon as the cable is plugged in and configures a channel strip setting that encompasses EQ, gain, effects, and routing. The monitor and main outputs also work in the same way. Also new, and designed to work with the M20d, is StageSource L3t: a 1,400W, three-way, tri-amped speaker system which, according to Line 6, is the world’s most versatile loudspeaker system for musicians. The Lt3’s six DSP-based Smart Speaker modes optimise it for a number of performance scenarios including FOH PA, floor monitor, and instrumental backline; and its onboard accelerometer and pole mount sensors auto-matically detect the speaker’s orientation and set the Smart Speaker mode accordingly. The manufacturer says its multi-function design means it can be the perfect loud-speaker in a wide variety of applications including floor- or stage-stacked, pole-mounted, horizontal as a floor monitor, Virtual Tilt-back for instrument backline, or flown using its integrated M10 suspension points for installation.“Our thought process for these products was ‘what other needs haven’t been met in the live sector?’; and after thorough research, we found there were a litany of things like getting rid of feedback, not hearing clear enough in monitors, not knowing where cables should go, and so on,” says Simon Jones, Vice President of new market develop-ment at Line 6. “We feel we’ve managed to

provide something that has enough musicality for an inti-mate environment, from a one-speaker system if required, all the way up to a 10k rig. Also, these are standalone products – we didn’t want people to think there was an inter-dependency with the two; there’s no emotion in buying a loudspeaker, after all.”

www.line6.com

For easy live set-up and control, Line 6 thinks it’s new Stage products are the bees’ knees.

LINE 6 STAGESCAPE & STAGESOURCE

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its new MicroBook II, an updated version of the compact audio interface. This bus-powered unit comes in a cast metal case and sports four inputs, six channels of computer output on eight physi-cal outputs, and internal CueMix mixing and rout-ing features including on-board effects.www.motu.com

Nomad Factory has announced a new effects plug-in suite. MAGMA is an advanced plug-in suite that features 50 unique single-rack audio processors that can be mounted into a user-cus-tomisable rack interface. For added flexibility, the Chainer Module allows the creation of FX chains within chains. Future updates of MAGMA will sup-port third party VST and AU plug-inswww.nomadfactory.com

PreSonus announced several new and updated products and technologies that further develop its product integration strategy, with several free updates to the StudioLive system. QMix is a new system that lets up to ten musicians control their own monitor mixes (aux mixes) using an iPhone or iPod Touch with the QMix app. Presonus has also begun to process of incorporating Rational Acoustics’ Smaart Measurement Technology for sound system analysis and optimisation. The first version of VSL to incor-porate Smaart technology will be part of PreSonus Universal Control 1.6. Lastly, Universal Control 1.5.3 and StudioLive Remote 1.2 updates add QMix and an assort-ment of VSL features.www.presonus.comRME announced the shipping of the new

Fireface UCX, a 36-chan-nel USB and FireWire pro audio solution in an ultra-compact format, for studio and live recordings. A Class Compliant mode allows the unit to work with Apple’s iPad and iPad 2, offering up to eight-channel recording, high-resolution stereo playback, microphone pre-amps with EQ, dynam-ics, balanced outputs, a hi-power headphone out-put, and a Sysex-capable double MID I/O port. www.rme-audio.com

Sennheiser launched its new XS Wireless Series. Designed for users who want to easily go wire-less, this entry-level series offers complete sets with sturdy units, simple operation, and high quality sound. The transmitters have a battery life of up to 10 hours, while a switching bandwidth of up to 24 MHz allows for flexibility in the choice

of frequencies. The series is comprised of two vocal sets, an instrument system and presentation sets with clip-on microphone or a headmic.

www.sennheiser.com

Universal Audio announced Apollo, a high-resolution audio interface and UAD Powered Plug-Ins DSP acceleration with sub-2ms latency, Thunderbolt connectivity, and high-end analogue I/O. See page 23 for more detail.www.uaudio.com

Vienna Symphonic Library was showing its new Vienna Ensemble PRO 5 with one-click integration of the new Vienna MIR PRO mixing and reverbera-tion solution. Vienna MIR PRO uses Vienna’s Multi Impulse Response (MIR) convolution technology, combing specific directional frequency profiles with reflectional information from every instru-ment to provide, according to Vienna, “An accu-rate and satisfying recreation of musicians playing their instruments in place and in space.” The soft-ware comes with 11,000 impulse responses from the Vienna Konzerthaus, and optional Vienna MIR RomPacks offer additional acoustic spaceswww.vsl.co.at

Fireface UCX, a 36-chan-

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25A U D I O M E D I A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2 25

Harman’s JBL revealed its new flagship VTX 25 line array, which has evolved from the manufacturer’s popular VerTec system. One of its key features, according to JBL’s Director of tour sound product and applica-tion engineering, Paul Bauman, is its D2 dual compression driver, which features two annular polymer diaphragms capable of reaching 30kHz with virtually no distortion.

Another stand-out feature, he claims, is its Differential Drive technol-ogy, which has “eliminated the mids from cross-firing”. The VTX 25’s two 15-inch woofers have two voice coils and two magnets with a 2000W power handling, each of which is housed in a lightweight alu-minium baffle.

“The D2 compression driver is very clean and hi-fi, with a power han-dling of 200 watts continuous – there are three of them in the enclo-sure,” Bauman explains. “The V25 also has a very sophisticated Radiation Boundary Integrator (RBI) waveguide, and on the back side there are four eight-inch Differential Drive mid-range transducers along with the D2s.

“The V25 has a track-tuned resonant absorbent chamber, which can create a standing wave in the throw section, and the volume of that is tuned to that reso-nant frequency; the absorbent material helps eliminate that cancellation.”

The height of the VTX V25 enclosure has been lowered in comparison to other JBL models by three-inches, and coupling from zero to 10 degrees provides a 90-degree horizontal control (+/- 15-degree) with a very tight dispersion pattern.

There is also an improved suspension system which features anti-rattle treatment

at the front, and a hinge bar mechanism at the back that enables users to pre-select the angle on the enclosure by sliding the bar up. This eliminates the need for bumping motors up and down, and makes the process safer, faster, and more secure, Bauman says.

“It’s a full-size line array complete turnkey package with a lot of interesting technology,” he concludes. “The aluminium baffle is a very strong system, and there is nothing like this 15-inch in the industry; you really have to hear this system to appreciate it.”

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Prism_ronsonSOSjuniorpage_ad_july11:Layout 1 01/07/2011 13:51 Page 1

26In a world of convergence it’s hard to stand out from

the crowd, and in the mature industry of professional monitor design, making yourself heard over the noise is

especially difficult. The default design for a monitor speaker is a box populated with tweeters, mid-range bass units and ports; and no amount of fluted fascias, unusual finishes, or specialised amplification can disguise the fact that they all attempt to do the same thing, more or less – reproduce a full range of frequencies without excessive colouration. Some manufacturers resort to unusual box designs,

s o m e u s e expensive and uncompromising components that take them out of the realm of most people’s budgets – but ADAM’s maguffin is that it has championed the 'AcceleratING R i b b o n T e c h n o l o g y ' (now 'Extended' to X-ART) tweeters – so much so that every full range speaker they build features one. In simple terms it's a pleated ribbon that, rather than moving in and out like a conventional diaphragm, compresses and stretches those

pleats laterally – something like an accordian – drawing air in and squeesing it between it's folds. Adam states that this "Overcomes the piston-like motion of all conventional drivers and their inevitable problems." It says that X-ART offers a greater effective surface area (improving dynamic range), fast cooling, and improved HF response.

The AX is part of the company’s AX series and, of course, features the characteristic and distinctive X-ART tweeter that sets the ADAM range of speakers apart from other contemporary designs and which gives the range

a distinctive ‘family’ tonality. These are hefty active near-f i e l d s p e a k e r s conf iguraqble for both horizontal and vertical mounting. The individual drive units are powered by their own amplifier, a W A/B amp for the X-ART tweeter and a W PWM amp for each of the bass/

mid-range units – of which there are two per speaker. These enable the AX to get very, very loud without audible distortion or noticeable compression that made them comfortable to listen to for long periods of time.

Adam’s A77X will give the world

something to tweet about, says

STEPHEN BENNETT – and might

come as something of a surprise

to those who don’t usually like

ribbon tweeters.

ADAM A77XActive Near-Field Monitor

T H E R E V I E W E R

STEPHEN BENNETT has been involved in music production for over 25 years. Now based in Norwich he splits his time between writing books and articles on music technology, running his own Chaos studios and working in the Electroacoustic Studios in the School of Music at the University of East Anglia. He’s also a filmmaker with several music videos and short films to his credit. www.stephenjamesbennett.co.uk

27A U D I O M E D I A f E b r U A r y 2 0 1 2 27

The two seven-inch drivers, while ostensibly identical, perform different tasks in the A77X. Both are responsible for the sub-bass frequencies, but only one covers the mid-range – ADAM says that this prevents interferences between the two drivers. The X in the X-ART ribbon tweeter indicates that the frequency range has been extended up to 50kHz, and ADAM also claims higher efficiency at greater Sound Pressure Levels (SPL) for the driver. The A77X is port loaded with two large bass ports dominating the lower centre of the speaker. Using a ported design like this is always something of a compromise – it enables the speaker to reproduce lower frequencies than their relativity diminutive size would allow if they were a sealed unit design but it also adds its own colouration, and the different way in which manufacturers tackle this compromise is what makes monitor design such an interesting challenge. However, the A77X does not suffer from the ‘one note’ and bass overhang characteristic of poorly designed ported speakers, and the bass seems to be pretty smoothly integrated with the other drivers.

The front panel of the A77X features an on/off switch and a level control that usefully remembers its setting on power down. The cabinets are gently sloped at each corner and are finished in a matt/gloss black that can easily take the daily knocks of a busy studio – something I found out when I accidentally dropped a power amp on one! The rear panel has an IEC mains connector, XLR signal input, and screwdriver-adjustable mini potentiometers that allow for some adjustment of the tonal characteristics of the speakers. You can vary the high shelf and low shelf over by +/-6dB, while you can adjust the tweeter level over a range of +/-4dB – but in my reasonably well treated studio, these controls were not needed, the A77X being tonally well-balanced between its various drivers.

Listen I nFor listening comparisons, I set up the A77X against my usual PMC TB2 passive transmission line speakers and a pair of sealed box ATC SCM20 active monitors. As predicted all three monitors sounded completely different, the A77X proving slightly brasher and with an obviously more extended low end than the other two. In fact, the bass response of the A77X is more in line with my Dynaudio M2s – which are also ported but about twice the size! If your prejudice is that ribbon tweeters usually sound harsh and seemingly dissociated from the other drivers in the cabinet, the A77X might come as somewhat of a surprise. Compared to ADAM’s smaller A7X, the A77X are smoother and more detailed in the mid-range, making mixing decisions much easier. Somehow the ribbon tweeter sounds more ‘integrated’ into the whole monitor. I’d have no problems if these were the only speakers that I had to use for making critical mixing decisions.

ADAM has taken its popular A7X designs and improved on it tremendously. The company should be applauded for continuing to provide an alternative to the plethora of soft and hard domed tweeter based speakers out there. It still has something of the ‘family’ sound, but if you liked the A7X you’ll like the A77X even more, and if the company’s smaller near-fields weren’t your cup of tea, the A77X are definitely worth another listen. They are not much bigger than a two-driver cabinet design, so should slip into any installation where a near-field speaker will fit, but the extra low/mid frequency drivers mean that the bass is more naturally extended and the mid-range clearer and more detailed.

I like the A77X a lot and they make a refreshing change from the usual mid-priced near-field speakers. ∫

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I N F O R M A T I O N

£GB£1,949.00 (inc. VAT)

AAdam Audio GmbH

Ederstr.16, D-12059 Berlin, Germany

T+49 30 / 86 30 097 0

Wwww.adam-audio.com

[email protected]

“ADAM has taken its popular A7X designs and improved on it

tremendously. The company should be applauded for continuing to provide an alternative to the plethora of soft and hard domed tweeter based speakers

out there.”

28I have had the pleasure of testing a number of Portico

units over the years and have always enjoyed these great designs, which produce fabulous quality and, sometimes,

unusual sonic qualities.The vast majority of these have been packaged in half-

rack boxes with external power supplies, but we have seen a few full rack units incorporating new features and a combination of existing features from other devices in the range.

Joining the range of full rack units is the Portico quad microphone pre-amplifier.

The microphone pre-amplifier is based on the Portico Class A transformer design that we are familiar with, but this is not simply two units put together.

O ver viewEach of the four channels of the Portico has a single balanced XLR input and XLR output on the rear. No other

connections keep the rear panel clean.Looking at the first two channels on the front of the

Portico , they are each fitted with a transformer isolated Hi-Z DI input and paralleled thru output. These are accessed via the front TRS sockets, and plugging into them automatically replaces the microphone input.

Channels three and four of the Portico incorporate M-S decoding.

The microphone input XLR connectors on the rear can

accept a line input signal as well, but it is when recording that this function is likely to be used.

You can engage the decode matrix using the M/S button that sits between these two channels of the Portico and then record the decoded stereo signal from the channels outputs, or simply disengage the button to record your cardioid and figure-of-eight signals for later decoding.

The remaining functions apply to all four channels of the Portico .

The problem with coming from

such a highly regarded family

as the RND Portico set, is that it

gives you such a high standard

to live up to. SIMON TILLBROOK

finds whether the 5024 will

reach the mark.

RND PORTICO 5024Quad Mic Pre-amp


SIMON TILLBROOK is a UK-based recording engineer and mixer with an extensive freelance history both in the UK and in the US - much of that from the Nashville recording scene.

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29 Input level can be adjusted by a combination of two rotary controls labelled ‘Gain’ and ‘Trim’. Gain is a course level control moving in dB steps from to dB, and Trim is a constantly variable control giving +/-dB of fine adjustment.

The level is indicated through an eight-segment peak LED metering display that illustrates a level from - to .

We have a series of backlit buttons for other channel functions on the Portico . Phantom power, phase reverse of -degrees, and mute sit in a line along with a button called ‘Silk’. This is a function seen on other Portico units that many have come to enjoy.

Engaging Silk introduces a vintage feel to your sound, introducing depth and warmth to the signal.

Finally, each channel of the Portico has a HPF that attenuates by dB/octave with a selectable turnover frequency of either Hz or Hz.

UseI spent a few days with the Portico using a variety of microphones and sound sources, and can report that these pre-amps are every bit as good as I thought they would be. Those familiar with the will understand the sonic attributes of the Portico pre-amplifiers. They are crisp with a real presence that you really appreciate when using with vocal applications. The Portico pre-amps exhibit real depth with a smooth, full bottom end reproduction that is faithful, rather than exaggerated or coloured.

The mid presence is nicely balanced and the high frequencies detailed and musical with no harsh attributes.

They are clean, but with a good dollop of character to lift them.

The incorporation of the M/S decoding into the Portico is something that I found, and would generally find, to be very useful. It simply comes down to whether you need this feature and, if you do, you will find this works perfectly well A/B checking with the M/S button.

ConclusionThe Portico is a real delight. It is a high quality versatile pre-amplifier, and with the DI and M/S facilities, it is that little bit more attractive. Sonically, it is every bit as good as we have seen with previous Portico units. Having four in a standard U rack mounted frame is going to appeal to many who want top end versatile pre-amplifiers. ∫

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


£ GB,. (exc.VAT)

A Rupert Neve Designs

PO Box , Wimberley, TX , USA

T +

W www.rupertneve.com

A UK Distributor: Sonic Distribution,

Hunting Gate, Hitchin, Herts, SG TJ

T + ()

W www.sonic-distribution.com/uk


Input level can be adjusted by a combination

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31 I blame Starbucks really for headphones like the Ultrasone Signature Pro. Who would have thought people would be willing to pay so

much more for a cup of coffee? It turned out the secret was a decent cup of coffee in the right setting, choice, and free wifi. Coffee had me wrong-footed – headphones too it turns out. While the hifi market has always had high-ticket price headphones from Stax, in the pro world can buy you a pretty decent pair of cans.

Not Just A Casual PurchaseSo, although the Signature Pro is not anywhere near the most expensive headphone that

Ultrasone makes (that would be the Edition range) but it’s not a casual purchase and qualifies in my book as ‘grande’. The Signature Pro is all about packaging the Edition tech in a pro-friendly beverage. To look at the Pro is subdued and business like. Sturdy, solid, and closed back – the Ultrasones look like a tool for people who have a job to do.

There’s a new headband, drivers from the Edition series, S-Logic PLUS, and a noteworthy contribution from Ethiopian sheep. I kid you not. And joy of joys, a detachable cable with a B-Lock connector at the headphone end that seems to have a twist lock action, and you get two cables – a long one and a short one. Genius. Actually, at the risk of spoiling someone’s party, when might a magnetic connector (a la Macbook’s power cable) become an option for headphones?

O ver And AboveSo back to the Signature Pros, they’re expensive but not flashy, but what do they sound like? Brilliant. Every time I put them on I end up listening, if you know what I mean. These are philosophical headphones. They answer ‘why’ questions. ‘Ah, so that’s why they put the hand claps in.’ Guitars have more of the essence of guitar in them – you hear the ur-guitar if you like. Toms have more discernible tuning. Annoying buzzes on live recordings become even more annoying – ‘Touch and Go’, what were you thinking Clive?

The bottom end is as secure as money in the bank. Actually a lot more secure than money in the bank – more like gold sovereigns sewn into your trousers, heavy and reassuring. The mid and top provide a wealth of detail and that elusive monitoring experience of revealing things that you can hear on lesser systems, but don’t notice until something like the Signature Pros shine a light in the dark places of a mix.

The Ultrasones do not smooth the top end away. When I first put them on I wondered if the top end would intrude with extensive listening, but it didn’t.

They fit snuggly and are comfortable for long periods, and solid enough to take on the road.

Value for money? I don’t know... some people don’t like coffee. Mine’s a double espresso. And a sticky bun. ∫

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


£ GB. (inc.VAT)

A Ultrasone AG, Bernrieder Str.b, D- Tutzing, Germany/Bavaria

T + ()

W www.ultrasone.com

A UK Distributor: Synthax Audio (UK) Ltd

T + ()

W www.synthax.co.uk

ALISTAIR McGHEE wants to have his cake and eat it, when it comes to

headphones. Or his sticky bun. But in the Signature Pro series, he gets it.

ULTRASONE

SIGNATURE PROProfessional Headphones


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Our Focus, Your Mix.For more information visit www.krksys.com

32 For Supervising Sound Editor Victor Ray Ennis, there’s one sequence in Drive that sums up how much thought was put into the use of sound throughout the entire

film. It’s where the central character Driver (played by Ryan Gosling) pulls up at a pawn shop, which is about to be robbed by his accomplices.

“He turns on the car radio. There’s live commentary of a basketball game, the LA Lakers are playing. You’re thinking: this guy’s a getaway driver on a heist and he’s listening to the radio? Then the pawn shop is raided and you hear the game playing in and out, so you hear time progressing. It’s intercut with the sound of the police radio that Driver has in this car, with the cops describing the pursuit. At the end of the chase Driver is pulling into the arena where the game’s being played. It’s now the end of the game and the crowds are flooding out. He was actually using the commentary as a guide to help him lose himself in the huge crowds.”

This one sequence, where sound is so key to the storytelling, was written into the script by writer Hossein Amini and brought to the screen by Danish born Director Nicholas Winding Refn, whose previous credits include the British movie Bronson.

“They’re both adventurous and original,” Victor said. He’s full of praise not just for the script but for the approach that Winding Refn took to the whole

film-making process. “It was a very collaborative experience, with lots of experimentation to find out what sounds worked well.”

Brash. . . But Also St yl ishDrive tells the tale of a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a Los Angeles getaway driver. After a job goes wrong, he discovers there’s a contract out on him. It’s been hailed by critics for its brashness but also the stylish, often surreal way in which it tells the story.

Sound plays a key part in Drive, helping to place the audience in Driver’s head so that they hear things as he feels them. This marries with the visual style, where there’s rarely anything ‘off-screen’. You see what he sees.

“This is not a traditional movie,” said Victor, part of the wider Soundelux audio team responsible for Drive. “Our job was about using sound to define how you feel. The sound in Drive puts you in his [Driver’s] head but not just as a spectator.”

Lon Bender echoed this. “The Director never places things beyond the screen, like lots of American movies do. Most of my 33 years in movies have been on Hollywood, by which I mean mainstream, films. This (Drive) is different. This doesn’t go beyond the screen. We home in on what the central character sees.”

Str ipping Away ConventionAnd they did this by throwing out a few conventions, particularly over the way they worked with the Director.

“He’s not really ‘from’ Hollywood so he had fewer expectations,” said Victor Ray Ennis. “He gave us free range over the sonic landscape. We really couldn’t have been more blessed. We would sit together and go through material to find what fitted.”

We stripped away the atmospheric layers so you just hear what he might hear. Like breaths or a jostling door handle. Or maybe footsteps on crunched glass. It’s all about focus. You normally build up those layers, starting with atmosphere. With this movie we only had what we wanted to show the thoughts and feelings of Driver.

For example, Driver’s leather gloves define his frustration at times. There’s a creaking sound that they make as he pulls them on and flexes his fingers. It’s an iconic sound for that character.”

Being a film about a getaway driver, there are a number of car chase sequences. But these are far from conventional. In a typical Hollywood blockbuster, a car chase would involve lots of external shots of the protagonists, often in wide angle as they slip, slide, and squeal their way through the streets. Drive is different in that it uses a lot of shots inside Driver’s car. You see little more than he does through the windscreen. You also hear what he hears through the police radio under the dashboard; eavesdropping on the cops as they try to catch him.

Power I n Si lenceIn the first robbery, he’s escaping. You’d expect to hear squeals of tyres and roaring engines but you don’t.

JERRY IBBOTSON talks to the sound team behind Oscar-

nominated Drive about how unconventional methods

have led to greater power and impact in use of sound.

>

DRIVE


33>

We virtually got rid of the engine sounds. He’s trying to be a fish among the sharks. To slip away unseen. You just hear the clunk of a tyre on a manhole cover.

On the bridge a few minutes later there’s a scene with the police chopper. It explodes into sound. You feel what it’s like to be caught – like being a kid who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But it’s still not about realism; more feeling. You hear Driver shifting through the gears, even though you see both his hands on the wheel. But that doesn’t matter. It’s about the energy of the sound.”

For Lon Bender, it’s about the age old technique of storytelling. “Sound design is a big term but it means you’re taking things outside of the physical world. You’re coming up with subjective sounds to tell the story, coming up with sounds that suggest to the audience what is happening. This is key to Drive because of the way the main character sees the world. The way the audience hears the world conveys what’s going on in his head. Plus you’re always in the moment with him. You never see ahead of him. Whatever happens, happens as he hears and sees it.”

The key to achieving this was the close level of co-operation and collaboration between different disciplines. Leading the way was the Director. “We spent a lot of time in the studio with him,” said Lon Bender. “He sat there while we went through sounds, trying things out. Directors usually spend that kind of time with film editors, colourists, or fx teams. Less so with sound. But we’d already run 80% of the sound past him before we went into the mix.”

“Also, the Film Editor Mat Newman had a great sense of sonic structure for the film. This encouraged us to take further risks.”

Victor Ray Ennis said the integration of the sound with music was also done in a less conventional way that other films he’s worked on. “The music came in from Cliff Martinez at a later stage than normal. That meant he was able to work with what we’d already done and cohabit the space. We were bouncing ideas off each other – making sounds to fit around his music and the other way round. The music and sound were constructed around each other.

This is a bit unusual as the sound and music guys often only meet up at the final mix stage. With Drive we were already in a ‘mix’ stage from the very start.”

For a film where cars (Driver’s in particular) play a key part, the audio team didn’t record many actual vehicles for the project. They stuck to library sounds and weren’t particularly focused on realism.

“Nick (Winding Refn) has never held a car licence and doesn’t drive,” explained Lon Bender, “So he wasn’t bogged down by what type of car engine sounds we used – from a mechanical point of view. He just said to make sure the sounds had real character. He said, 'Just make them exciting', so we did.”

Speak ing O f FocusOne of the benefits of an audio mix where a lot of extraneous sounds are dropped in favour of key, focused elements is that the all-important dialogue is allowed to shine. “You really do key in on the voices,” said Victor Ray Ennis. “It draws you in, to lean forward

and really focus on what the characters are saying.” He’s a big fan of one of the lesser-known elements of sound design: no sound at all.

“People aren’t used to silence in movies. When sound is stripped away it heightens tension. When sound comes back in, it’s much more powerful.”

He also feels that a less mainstream approach to film-making creates great sound opportunities. “This was throwing down the audio gauntlet: telling the story much more through sound. The visuals were often minimal but we had to keep the suspense at its peak through the audio.”

Drive has rightly been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Sound category. This is the first time Victor

Ray Ennis has been nominated but the third for Lon Bender – he won an Oscar for the sound on Braveheart and was nominated for Blood Diamond.

For him, it means so much because the initial nomination is done by members of the movie audio world. “The different classes are recognised (at the Oscars) by members of their branch of the film industry. You really are being judged by your peers. It’s an honour.”

He also believes it gives a film like Drive a chance to shine in the spotlight and have its other qualities recognised. “The overall qualities of the film are what make it so special. I was more engaged than ever in the aesthetic of the film but it would not have been so well received, or even nominated for sound, if it was just a cool sound job.” ∫

“You really do key in on the voices…

It draws you in, to lean forward and really focus

on what the characters are

saying.”

>


Lon Bender, and Victor Ray Ennis.

33

34>


For ages, sound was a natural phenomenon, only existing in the exact moment it was being played, but technology allowing for recording and reproduction has changed that once and for all. Now,

beautiful audible moments may be captured and reproduced to enjoy at any time.

However, recorded audio can be extremely diverse, for instance resulting in two seemingly similar pieces of audio to be perceived very differently, especially when it comes to defining listening level. Even a playlist of rock songs of different ages creates systematic and annoying jumps in level. It is all music, and it may even be of the same musical genre, but many will probably have found themselves turning the volume up and down quite fre-quently due to loudness differences. Now, if we take a look at an even more diverse palette, including all types of music as well as audio for television such as drama,

film, promos and commercials, the difference in loud-ness becomes even more evident. Therefore, one of the most fundamental audio issues today is control of loud-ness.

With the transition to digital broadcast, unacceptable inter-program level jumps have become more frequent, for instance between programming and commercials or promos. Every day, millions of people adjust their vol-ume controls over and over, so it is little wonder that it is usually the volume buttons on remote controls that get worn out first.

The actual way of controlling level in pro audio is responsible for these systematic jumps as well as for music CDs getting increasingly distorted. Level control procedures that focus solely on peak level or speech level have proven inadequate and led to the infamous Loudness Wars we’re in. What it all comes down to

Loudness SpecialAudio Media presents a special section on the loudness issues of the moment. The rise of the broadcast

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35the rise of international broadcast standards

>is that fundamentally, audio is precious and deserves to be reproduced respectfully; but luckily there is a solution at hand.

T h e M o t h e r o f B r o a d c a s t S t a n d a r d sSince the above-mentioned problems are par-ticularly evident in broad-cast, it is no wonder that it is primarily within this field new loudness tech-nology has been devel-oped and is becoming increasingly standardised. Today, there are quite a few regional broadcast standards, but the funda-mental one was defined by The International Te l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n Union, also known as ITU BS.1770. Its latest incar-nation is BS.1770-2, from 2011. This standard aims at measuring perceived loudness rather than focusing on peak level. But how can a sub-jective phenomenon, human perception of loud-ness, actually be measured? Studies based on substantial listening tests performed by inde-pendent organisations such as Communications Research Centre (CRC), McGill University in Montreal, and IRT in Munich have helped develop a simple method to measure audio level based on perceived loudness. Without get-ting into the technical details, the standard is based on an Leq measurement and so-called

‘K’-weighting. Because of channel power sum-ming, mono stereo and 5.1 signals may be mea-sured using one and the same meter.

While users should concentrate on getting loudness right, they can’t ignore overloads should they happen. BS.1770-2 is therefore complemented by a new and better way of detecting peak level, known as true-peak mea-surement. With a true-peak meter, music tracks that distort a downstream signal-path can also no longer fly under radar.

In combination, the loudness part and the true-peak part of BS.1770-2 is efficient at normalising broadcast programs, music tracks, films, and commercials, and also prevents distortion from building up in DA convertors or in lossy data reduction systems.

T h e O f f s p r i n g sApart from ITU’s BS.1770-2 standard, there are a number of additional broadcast standards that typically apply to individual countries or regions. However, most of them now have BS.1770 in common. In this introduction to loudness and broadcast standards, we will limit the field to two offsprings: EBU R128 (Europe) and ATSC A/85 (US).

In short, The European Broadcast Union’s standard, R128, was originally based on BS.1770, but in order to make it even more efficient to work with, and to align programmes across genres, EBU employed a gating scheme that focuses the measurement on moderately loud parts of a program. Suddenly, movies and clas-sical music could be transparently aligned with e.g. pop music and commercials. The gating scheme works so well that it was implemented in the BS.1770-2 revision last year. R128 also

includes a suite of BS.1770-2 compliant tools, Momentary Loudness, Short-term Loudness, and Loudness Range, thereby forming a transparent loop from production to multi-plat-form distribution.

New recommended practices in the US, ATSC A/85, also builds on parts of the ITU standard, but not to the same extent as R128. While A/85 incorpo-rates the K-weighted Leq approach as well as true-peak metering, the basic concept differs in that it assumes that the speech of a programme defines the average level, and therefore, it is the ‘anchor point ’ . Across newly mixed movies, speech indeed is considered an

anchor. However, the way speech is mixed in

movies is very different from how it’s used in broadcast. Presented with the CALM Act, ATSC therefore had to retreat from speech measure-ment in promos and commercials. New annexes J and K from July 2011 reflects this change. The latest version of A/85 still references BS.1770-1 as a loudness model, but this will hopefully be remedied shortly. Otherwise, A/85 users will not be able to take advantage of the cross-genre advantages and transparency of BS.1770-2.

Nonetheless, no matter what ATSC decides, it is a positive development that loudness mea-suring is beginning to become standardised, and with the new standards at hand, produc-tion, post, and broadcast professionals now have a valuable and efficient set of tools to end the Loudness Wars. Cross-genre programme material can finally begin to co-exist transpar-ently, and volume knobs and buttons can expect longer lives, while audiences will be able to get a more pleasant listening experience. In other words, everybody wins. ∫

“…it is a positive development that loudness measuring is

beginning to become standardised, and with the new standards at

hand, production, post, and broadcast professionals now have a valuable and efficient set of tools to

end the Loudness Wars.”


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It s t o o e a s y a g e s , sound was a natural phenomenon, only existing in the exact moment it was being played, but technology allowing for recording and reproduction has changed that once and for all.

Now, beautiful audible moments may be captured and reproduced to enjoy at any time.

It’s too easy to think that nobody has the same problems as you do. National, regional, and local broadcasters in each country have their specific challenges and difficulties, but broadcasting is an international

business that relies on a high proportion of programme exchange and general co-operation between companies, whether public or commercial, so one broadcaster’s problem can easily become another’s.

Loudness is an issue that has dogged broadcasters for almost as long as the medium of television has exist-ed. When the BBC’s former research and development facility at Kingswood Warren was opened in the 1950s, on the list of areas to be looked into was how to deal with discrepancies in sound levels between different types of programme material.

The perceived difference in sound levels, particularly between programmes and commercials or trailers, has been a long-term irritant for TV viewers round the world for many years. The problem – and the irritation – has grown even more in the last 20 or so years due to the adoption of digital transmission and the availability of multiple TV channels.

Broadcasters, regulators, independent developers, and manufacturers alike have made several attempts to deal with loudness, but these either did not have any long-term effect or were purely a local solution. At the root of the problem is the fact that two separate programmes can register exactly the same level on a PPM (peak programme meter) or a VU (volume unit) meter, but one can still sound substantially louder than the other.

This is usually due to a combination of one piece of material having a greater amount of compression – as has been common with TV commercials – and the pro-gramme it is immediately following containing a wide dynamic range, with a quiet section leading up to the advertising break.

During the late 1990s a new type of meter was intro-duced that could quantify comparative sound levels, rather than merely peaks. Among the first generation of loudness was a unit from Chromatec, which featured an algorithm designed by Dr John Emmett, formerly with Thames Television’s R&D department and now Chief Executive of Broadcast Project Research (BPR). This was released around the same time as a similar product from Dorrough; both were then followed by offerings from Dolby, TSL, RTW, and DK-Technologies.

Despite such units being used by broadcasters and companies that specialise in delivering commercials and other broadcast inserts, TV companies and regulators continued to receive complaints from view-ers tired of having to pick up the remote and change the volume when what they perceived as an overly loud programme or commercial came on.

C A L M D o w n D e a rShowing that everyday concerns are still important to the most powerful man in the world, when he signed the CALM (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) Bill into law during December 2010, President Barack Obama said he didn’t want to “keep on picking up the clicker” while he was watching the game. The CALM Act shows that the US has taken loudness seriously in recent years. It also illustrates the different approaches and degrees of regulation that individu-al countries have chosen; while America has resorted to the law, with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) having the power to impose fines on any

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38the level playing field

> organisation breaking the rules from December 13 this year. Other countries, including the UK, have less wide-ranging guidelines.

The technical basis of the CALM Act is the A/85 specification drawn up by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). A/85 itself is based on ITU-R BS 1770, the first formal algorithm, spec, and guidelines to address loudness, which were published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2006-7. BS 1770 covers algorithms to measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level, while its accompanying document, ITU-R BS 1771, deals with require-ments for loudness and true-peak meters.

Publication of these guidelines was soon followed by new loudness meters from manufacturers, and the first formalised regula-tions to deal with the problem.

E u r o - e a r sAmong the first countries to put such guidelines in place was Italy, where in 2006 the Authority for Communications (AGCOM) brought in rules based on 1770 that cover all broadcast material, including commercials, promos, idents, and the main programmes, with a maximum difference between them of 0.6dB.

BS 1770 was similarly at the heart of guidelines introduced in the UK during 2008 by the Broadcast Committee on Advertising

Practice (BCAP) of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). These were drawn up to apply only to commercials, with the stipulation that

“Measurement and balancing of subjective loud-ness levels should preferably be carried out using a loudness-level meter, ideally conform-ing to ITU recommendations.” However, BCAP did write some flexibility into the document, allowing operators to continue using peak-read-ing meters if they adhered to a maximum level for commercials that was “at least 6dB less than the maximum level of the programmes”.

Although 1770 and the first regulations were seen as a move in the right direction, there was still the view among broadcasters and man-ufacturers that these did not go far enough. In 2008 the EBU instigated its own research into loudness, led by the PLOUD working group, comprising representatives from European broadcasters, manufacturers, regulators, and research bodies. After two years of testing and discussion, PLOUD released the R128 specification for loudness normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals during IBC 2010. This is supported by four EBU tech documents, two of which were pub-lished at the same time: 3341 defining Loudness Metering, with specific details for loudness meters, known as EBU Mode, while 3342 cov-ers Loudness Range, describing loudness nor-malisation as in R128. Two longer volumes were

published in 2011: Tech Doc 3343 is a practical guide for Production and Implementation, with 3344 outlining Distribution of Programmes.

Manufacturers updated their units to offer R128 as well as 1770 but there was some concern that there were now several loudness specifications appearing – ARIB TR-B32 in Japan, the US’s A/85 and OP-59 in Australia, as well as the EBU offering – which, although all similar and based on the ITU algorithm, were all slightly different.

During 2011 the ITU introduced an updated, version two of BS 1770, which went some way in unifying the different approaches. BS 1770-2 comes into line with R128, not only in terms of measurement targets but also by adopting the gating mechanism that PLOUD introduced and which was seen as an omission from the origi-nal ITU spec.

PLOUD was chaired by Florian Camerer, Senior Sound Engineer at Austrian public broad-caster ORF. He describes R128 as a “robust open standard” that can be used for a variety of programme genres. R128 sets the loudness target at -23 LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale), which is now being used as the benchmark set for and by broadcasters across Europe. The US A/85 regulations go with -24, which Tim Carroll, President of specialist manu-facturer Linear Acoustic, said was “close enough for jazz” in relation to R128.

38 A U D I O M E D I A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2

>

Rian Camerer. Jeffrey Riedmiller.

39the level playing field

> The publication of R128 has led to more structured regulation of loudness control in Europe. In the Netherlands national broadcaster NPO began adhering to standards from September 1, 2011, while France intro-duced a single loudness alignment system on December 19. The French regulations, which comply with R128 and work to the target of -23 LUFS, were agreed by all national broadcasters, including public service France Télévisions, advertisers, and the CSA (Audiovisual Superior Council).

L o u d I n Fr a n c eThis consensus was reached after viewer complaints and several previous laws over the last 20 years. The first law was passed in 1986, followed by a second in 1992. France adopted 1770 in 2008 and added Dolby Dialogue Intelligence to the ITU metering/monitoring process. A listening reference level was also set but by the end of that year broad-casters reportedly felt the standard was limited, with approximately 20 percent of programmes sounding outside the set range.

The French broadcast sec-tor later joined PLOUD and new loudness tools based on R128 were developed during 2010. Seminars were held to promote the standard, leading to broad-casters and advertisers agreeing to the single recommendation.

Under the new law all broad-cast material – including com-mercials, domestic programmes, and bought-in English-language material – has to adhere to strict guidelines: programmes under two minutes cannot exceed -23 LUFS (integrated) and -20 LUFS in the short term; programmes longer than two minutes must have an integrated loudness of -23 LUFS +/-1 and a loudness range between 5 and 20 LU; dialogue has to be set between -30 and -16 LUFS in the short term.

W i d e n i n g Re a c hThese regulations apply to distribution companies as well as broadcasters; anyone breaking them face penalties of up to two percent of revenue. Florian Camerer calls the French approach “a great role model” for broadcasters and regulators in other countries. Germany and Austria have also been prepar-ing new regulations based on R128 but did not hit the original target for implementation of January 1 this year. The plan now is for full compliance and regulation to begin from either August 31 or September 1. Camerer stresses, however, that “this does not mean nothing will happen” in the meantime.

Since January 1 German regional broadcast-er WDR has been working to -23 LUFS. ORF is to follow an incremental programme, provi-sionally beginning with commercials, promos, and self-produced material at -21 LUFS dur-ing early April and moving all programmes to -21 on July 1, with the final switch to -23 on September 1. Camerer says this was “not all fixed on paper yet but very likely”. Switzerland

is switching completely to -23 on February 29, coinciding with the country’s move to HDTV from standard definition.

R128 is now part of the new technical and metadata standards for file-based delivery of TV programmes in the UK, established by the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), which comprises the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. Kevin Burrows, Technical Standards Chair of the DPP and Chief Technical Officer for broadcast and distribution at C4, says R128 is becoming standard. “There’s a fair bit of equipment out there now complying with R128 so it seemed sensible to stick with that,” he says.

Wa r R a g e s O n ?With various regulations already in place in Italy, Israel, Japan, and Australia, and Canada set to implement formal loudness controls in September, the impression is that a once almost insurmountable problem is now under control. The reality is that, however, the so-called Loudness War is not over yet.

Despite regulations being put in place and standards set, there is still some uncertainty surrounding loudness. Camerer thinks there are three areas that continue to cause confusion: target level; loudness range param-eters, which he points out are not the same as dynamic range; and loudness pressure in the master control room and at output.

The main misconception appears to be that operators think a pro-gramme has to be at -23 through-

out. Camerer dismisses this, saying the result would be a “loudness sausage” because the resultant audio waveform would resemble a think tube. “We encourage dynamic mixing,” he says, explaining that the -23 target should be an average. “There can be momentary loud-ness but you have to think what is right for the target audience.” Camerer comments that people should look at the subject on a macro, not a micro, basis and take a “bird’s eye view” of a whole programme, not concentrate on segments.

Even with this approach there are still some pitfalls that can catch anyone out. Richard Kelley, Sales and Marketing Director of DK-Technologies, points out that archive material, because it was recorded on older equipment using different techniques in the past, is more than likely going to sound very different to modern material.

O v e r - B a k e d S a u s a g eJeffrey Riedmiller, Director of Dolby’s Sound Platform Group, says there is a genuine risk of having ‘1975 sound’ on modern TV audio systems if local broadcasters or cable head-end operators revert to a play-it safe approach along the lines of the loudness sausage. In reality, he says, because the tools are now on the market to do the job properly, the main thing is not to ‘over-bake’ the whole situation because loudness can be extremely simple. Which is reassuring but there are many people waiting to be convinced on that one. ∫


“We encourage dynamic mixing…

There can be momentary loudness but you have to think what is right for the

target audience.”

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40compact digital

console

>

StudioLive 16.0.2No prizes for guessing that

versatility is the aim with StudioLive. Just how versatile

can a mixer be? LIZ MAY finds out...

T he StudioLive 16.0.2 is an affordable, small-format digital console that stays true to the quality audio performance and fully integrated software of its bigger brothers, the StudioLive .. and ...

Taking up less than two square feet, the .. offers a compact, user-friendly mixing solution for audio engineers on the go or smaller music venues needing both sophisticated sound reinforcement and music capture/production capabilities. It’s also great for contractors due to its remote-control features.

FeaturesThe .. provides channels – eight mono, four stereo; of them (-, , , and ) equipped with Class A XMAX pre-amps. The channel inputs are as follows: mono channels -, and (the left side of the stereo pairs / and /) have both XLR and quarter-inch balanced inputs; channels and have quarter-inch balanced inputs only; channels and (the left side of stereo pairs / and /) have XLR, quarter-inch balanced and RCA unbalanced inputs, while channels and have balanced 1/-inch and unbalanced RCA line inputs.

Feature-wise, PreSonus’ Fat Channel is the golden ticket of the ..; each individual channel, aux, FX bus, and the main stereo bus, when selected, has one of its own, complete with a downward expander (more versatile than a gate), compressor, three-band semi-parametric EQ, limiter, and high-pass filter. Phase reverse and phantom power are available on the channel inputs; stereo channels access the Fat Channel as stereo pairs. The Fat Channel is engaged by pressing the Select button on the desired channel, prominently located at the top of each fader (except for FX A and B, where there are no faders). The workflow and logic of Fat Channel gives engineers the ease and quickness needed to troubleshoot and execute a command, where some digital consoles leave you buried in layers and pages to find your way back out (often too late in live applications).

The .. has four aux buses with pre/post-fader sends

and quarter-inch balanced input jacks for every channel, which gives the console the near-immediate familiarity of an analogue board. It also provides two internal FX buses for delay and reverb effects. In all, there are over options for signal processing. The two -bit floating-point stereo DSP effects channels are loaded up with reverbs and delays, including useful controls such as a tap tempo control and parameter adjustments. FX assign, digital out, pan, and copy/load/save buttons; talkback, solo bus, and headphone sections; and a -band graphic equaliser for the main outputs complete the work surface controls.

Ergonomically, the .. has a lot of buttons for a small mixer, yet the plethora is really what makes it so user-friendly, especially for users with only a few hours experience on a digital board. At first glance it can be somewhat overwhelming until the operator gets in the StudioLive groove. Once familiar with it, the minimal layering of pages is what makes this board a great choice for so many jobs.

The .. can simultaneously handle multi-track recording as well as live mixing. Equipped with a x FireWire interface, PreSonus includes the cables and software needed to record straight to a laptop. This PreSonus software – Capture (multi-tracking application) and Studio One Artist (DAW) – provides the tools for multi-track recording and playback through the ..; it will also work with any DAW that supports ASIO or Core Audio, including Pro Tools and later. Once the software is installed (which literally takes only minutes), this simple system is ready to record.

Also included with the software is Virtual StudioLive ( VSL) console control/editor/librarian software. It runs on a Mac or PC over FireWire , which can, in turn, host a network so you can run SL Remote on an iPad. SL Remote is a free download from the Apple App Store, and PreSonus has also just started shipping QMix for iPhone/iPod touch providing wireless control of the auxes from up to ten iOS devices, so each band member can control just their own aux mix.


BIO: LIZ MAY is a producer/engineer, scoring artist and owner of SoundLizzard Productions, LLC. soundlizzard.com


PreSonus


presonus i studiolive 16.0.2

MIDI features abound in the .., unique to this smaller StudioLive desk (the larger models do not offer MIDI). Users may MIDI control main level output, scene change, effects assign, effects pre-set change, and effects level via the hardware MIDI I/O. This I/O also acts as a regular computer MIDI interface, so a MIDI control surface, synth, keyboard controller, and so on, can be attached. The .. also can send/receive MIDI over FireWire, which means you can automate these parameters from a DAW.

The .. can recall stored information in scenes; save individual channel settings; and copy information between channels. If using VSL, users may choose which settings to save and restore, in any combination..

In UseI installed the PreSonus StudioLive .. at the Underground Theatre in Winston-Salem, NC., at the Community Arts Café, an intimate performing arts venue where artists of all kinds can present a showcase, hold an album release event, screen film shorts or movies, hold poetry slams, and so on. A variety of organisations regularly present shows here, including the Piedmont Jazz Alliance, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Fiddle & Bow Society, Cinema Pub, Comedy Pot Luck, Press , the East Coast Songwriters Conference, as well as my own production company, SoundLizzard. The venue’s requirements are numerous and expect much from a small digital mixer.

Upon first installing the board, there was some hesitation from the resident groups to use it over the older analogue board that had been there. However, it didn’t take long for curiosity to get the better of them, and they began testing the waters to find the StudioLive functional for their purposes. The ..‘s mic inputs initially seemed a bit limiting for some at the Underground, the number of inputs proved to be more than sufficient in practice.

For install, the Underground’s existing -channel snake was ready to use; balanced mains left and right as well as monitor outputs were provided, the latter of which is used to feed a half-stack of main mix-augmenting speakers in an area of the room where the main mix doesn’t quite reach. The .. also allowed additional control over independent channel mutes, phantom power selection, and outputs (previously restricted by the normal house mixer).

StudioLive’s software bundle that ships with the .. was fairly easy to install, and the board connects simply via FireWire cable to a computer to record enabled independent channels. When recording live shows, I typically run Pro Tools via MacBook Pro and a Digi Rack, so I was a little unsure of how stable this system would be for its first gig: an ‘active’ live mix while multi-tracking an entire three-hour show at the Underground.

I was up and running in no time. It was great to be able to record all separate tracks with minimal recording gear. Newer MacBook Pros only have one FireWire port but an external drive could be used as the mixer itself has two FireWire ports. However, I recorded to my laptop’s internal drive, with no problems.

On December , I ran sound for acts ARGUS with Small Town Gossip at the Underground Theatre and recorded eight tracks to my laptop. At the end of the day, the recording went as smooth as one could have hoped for and the minimal set-up time, to me, was incredible. Most importantly, I was pleased with my recorded results. Another artist that SoundLizzard works with – Joe Next Door – used the .. to record their show too. “It was very easy to record from it,” offered Zoo of Joe Next Door. “Minutes of set-up are all it took to be rolling.”

SummaryI recently met an engineer working in Los Angeles and, in our conversation, and he brought up a new piece of gear he was stoked about. At first, he didn’t tell me what it was, but mentioned how it fed his need for a live mixing board he could also transport easily for mobile remote recording. Once he said it was the .., we immediately began to trade our thoughts on its great functionality and price.

The PreSonus’s low learning curve makes it a great tool for a venue that has many different individuals in the engineering hot seat, especially for those that may not be familiar with digital consoles. Jim Tedder, the owner of the Community Arts Café and Underground Theatre, was so pleased with the board he does not want to be without it; we are now looking into making it a permanent resident of the venue, as it perfectly facilitates the goal of offering live recordings as a package to its visiting artists. ∫

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


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42studio

recording mixer

>

GS-R24There’s been a lot of talk about

the R16 and its new bigger brother, the GS-R24. So much so,

that the mixer itself could fail to live up to the hype. ANDREW

GRAEME finds out if it will.

O n paper it looked almost too good to be true, but I was to find out that the new GS-R really does live up to its promise – and more!

I had already heard some of the excited buzz about the R, a budget desk from Allen & Heath with built-in AD-DA converters and -channel Firewire output. The GS-R is hailed as the logical development of R – into a full-blown hybrid desk.

First ImpressionsEach channel strip is fully featured, i.e., mono strips means mic pres and EQs. The rear of the desk has analogue ins and outs, as well as inserts, for just about everything, including groups and the extensive monitoring section on regular 1/-inch jacks and XLRs. The physical build is good, in fact good enough for the desk to be taken on the road. Although the front of the desk is one sheet of steel, each channel is on its own circuit board and the fader is a separate component.

The power supply is reassuringly heavy, has a toroidal transformer, and is conventionally built. It probably provides about double the current the desk actually needs, which is how things should be. For some strange reason, many retailers list the power supply as an optional extra.

Access for servicing and changing the jumpers is done by taking off the back panel. All channel strips are clamped from the rear with a metal bar held in place with screws and again, access and removal is fairly easy, given the right tools and sufficient care. In these straightened times, speed of service and repair is important. Allen & Heath has obviously built the desk so that it is both physically robust and easy to service, and is another sign of the thought and care that has gone into the design of the GS-R.

The attention to detail does not stop at the channel strip. Just about every other desk, large or small, uses op-amps to sum the various buses, but not so the GS-R. Designer Matt Griffin claims that, by using low noise transistors instead, he can get between and dB less noise across the whole desk, than would otherwise be possible

The mic pres are clean and showed plenty of current reserve for tracking meaty drums and other sudden transients. Although the last few decibels of gain had the

usual thermal noise, this was never a problem when it came to tracking quieter sounds with a low-output ribbon mic. The pre has masses of headroom and even when very heavily overloaded, showed only marginal increases in distortion.

The inserts are the usual tip-send, ring-return, and the user will probably want to add semi-normalled patchbay strips to give ‘feed-off’ and ‘break-in’ points for every one of the channel inserts, line-inputs and direct-outs, to give the ultimate in flexibility of ins and outs and match the extreme flexibility of the rest of the desk.

As a bonus, you get two tube channels, which without EQ or auxes, are useful either as an effect, or as an alternative pre-amp. Driven hard, the two valve channels provide excellent ‘bite’ to a vocal, or can be used on mix-down to crush a heavy drum kit in a very satisfying way.

The EqualiserFor me, the EQ is the star turn of this desk. Two fully

parametric controls can boost or cut by ±dB with bandwidth controls between two octaves and a quarter of an octave. The upper controls range from kHz down to Hz, and the lower section goes from kHz down to Hz. Yes, you read that correctly – Hz! Two fixed frequency shelving controls also provide ±dB at kHz and Hz. The EQ can be switched in and out, and an LED lights up when on. There is also a very useful Hz HP filter in the pre-amp section that is not within the EQ.

The phase compensation for the EQ can only be described as immaculate! There just is no phase drift whatsoever, no matter what you try to do to it. Also, frequency selectivity is perfect. I fed the pre-amp a sine wave with a little glitch at the crest of the curve and observed the results on an oscilloscope. On altering the relevant frequency on the EQ, the glitch expanded and contracted without the main wave form changing shape or otherwise moving. Similarly, by changing the selected frequency on the EQ, the body of the sine wave could be altered, without the glitch changing shape. That speaks of perfectly calculated circuitry and the sort of quality you could reasonably expect from a studio desk at a completely different price level.


A N D R E W G R A E M E i s Studio Manager at the Byre Recording Studio, in the UK(www.the-byre.com).


studio recording mixer

GS-R24Allen & Heath


allen & heath i gs-r24

Ins And Outs

The quality of the converters matches the quality of the rest of the desk. The sound is clean and free of any distortion or perceived harshness in any way. The Firewire streams can be brought down to a latency of under ms one way and the ADAT streams should be less than ms, though any additional processing by the DAW has to be added to that figure. If the user already has enough converters, but still wants to integrate the desk into a DAW environment, there is an analogue IO card, but unfortunately the inputs and outputs are via two -pin D-Subs and are not balanced. There is just no room on the rather-narrow backplate for the eight -pin D-Subs we know and love, so the user will have to fork out for a set of bespoke breakout cables, or get the soldering iron out. There are plans for a MADI card to be introduced.

The GS-R can be linked to either another GS-R, or to an R to give channels of AD/DA. A moving fader version of the R, however, is not available.

Opening DAWsFour rather innocent looking buttons, labelled

‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ give the user eight different ways to insert the DAW into each channel strip. For example, no buttons pressed and the DAW is fed directly from behind the pre-amp, ideal for recording live sessions without effecting the main mix. With button A depressed, the DAW is post insert and EQ. Button B down, and the DAW is between the pre-amp and the rest of the channel strip – and so on! In this way, just about any one part of the channel can be bypassed or used by the DAW.

Most importantly, the excellent EQ, as well as any outboard that has been patched into the channel insert path, can be placed into the DAW between output and input. This may sound confusing, but in practice, I found this button arrangement easy and simple to use and means that ‘mixing-in-the-box’ can also include analogue effects and real EQ.

DAW control/integration is comprehensive, and includes the option of moving faders with the GS-RM version that can also be used to write automation data to the DAW.

The GS-R has three different MIDI controller modes which can be set on power up. There is emulation of a controller plugin in Logic, Cubase can be mapped manually, and SONAR, Reaper, and Pro Tools utilise the MIDI Translator pre-set maps to run with Bome’s MIDI Translator. This latter system is flexible and allows customisation, but the end user needs to download and purchase the Bome software. A&H is currently working on including HUI emulation for the GS-R firmware.

There are twelve assignable rotary MIDI controls and eight illuminated switches that can be mapped to pans, plug-ins, or other functions within a DAW. There are also the usual five transport buttons for stop, play, and record, and a jog-shuttle wheel.

Monitoring And GroupsOf the six aux-sends, two are pre fader, two are switchable, and two are post; and settings

can also be altered with an internal jumper. Two stereo sub-groups, a stereo bus and, rather interestingly, a mono bus can be fed to a separate mono-bus fader.

Without listing every feature, the monitoring is extensive and the user can chose the main stereo mix bus, mono bus, interface module, or stereo inputs, and switch between two sets of stereo speakers and add a centre speaker and sub-bass for surround monitoring. Monitoring is overridden by the AFL/PFL buses and there is a useful solo-clear button.

Unusually for a studio desk, it has a built-in talkback mic that can be routed to the studio monitors or the aux-sends, and there are direct headphone outs front and back.

Despite offering . monitoring, it makes no pretence to be a surround-sound desk by any means. There is, for example, no front-to-rear panning or bass controller. But given the lack of interest in music in . for anything other than film scores and live concert DVDs, combined with the fact that nearly all DAWs offer full . routing and mixing, this is almost certainly the correct way to read the market. It is not only just convenient to have one fader to control the mix, but also saves having to fork-out for a separate . controller on those occasions when surround is called for.

ConclusionIn the market of reasonably priced recording consoles, the GS-R really is a game changer. The advantages of a hybrid analogue mixing console with fully integrated DAW control are undeniable, but until now, a fully integrated adult system was only available at ten times the price!

The digital audio workstation has been a fact of life for about years and in the long run, the hybrid desk may become the natural successor to the in-line console. But so far, we have only had a handful of offerings at the top end of the market and some DAW controllers of limited use for project rooms. We have been told again and again that the pro-audio market is hopelessly overcrowded, and then along comes something like the GS-R and its baby brother, the R, to show us that there is a yawning gap for good quality hybrid desks at reasonable prices. The GS-R is also one of the few bits of kit I have come across, that, when tested, actually lives up to its own technical specifications.

The only thing I can find wrong with the GS-R is possibly the lack of a MADI card. As this is an issue that designer Mike Griffin says is being addressed, I am totally stuck for anything negative to say about this desk. ∫

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


£ GS-R: GB,. + VAT

GS-RM (motorised faders):

GB,. (exc.VAT)

A Allen & Heath

T+ ()

Wwww.allen-heath.com

A UK Distributor: Audio-Technica

T + ()

W www.eu.audio-technica.com/en/

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44>

Reaper V4Halls are alive with talk of a

young DAW that is making waves amongst establishment.

ALISTAIR McGHEE samples the low-fat alternative.

F irst I must begin with my apologies – it was back in July that Cockos supplied me with a copy of its Reaper DAW for review. As it happened this timing wasn’t great, as shortly afterwards I was winging my

way to Juba in South Sudan, the world’s newest country. Never mind – plenty of time while stuck in a UN portacabin to get down to reviewing business. Ahh. First I was too busy, then my PC laptop died, and then the trackpad failed on my MacBook Air. Not only did I miss any August or September deadline, I missed the DAW special and now the upgrade to version . Mea culpa.

So covered in sackcloth and dripping with ashes I return to Reaper to pay my debts to society. Reaper is an unusual product in the sense that who would have thought that there was room in the crowded digital audio workstation market for another player? Who indeed? And yet over the last few years in a quiet but impressive way Reaper has been winning friends and influencing people. It’s also not very expensive, which helps; but when I heard BBC outside broadcasts were trialing it in their new vans I thought there really must be something going for the big R.

Rev Those EnginesSo, to the bat cave and first the audio engine. I recently laughed out loud while reading a post on an audio forum when a user of a well-known DAW wrote ‘the ability to play files in different formats is of no interest to me.’ At the risk of rudeness – you need to get out more. In the words of the Eagles, I want to do ‘everything all the time.’ Why wouldn’t I? By contrast the Reaper audio engine is pretty slick. I loaded a -bit .wav, a .flac, and an mp. file into a project and after a moment of peak drawing, playback ran just fine – no conversions, no tricks, just playback. Which in is not too much to ask. While playing back you can arm a track and then drop into record on a whim. If you move a clip while playing – no problem, a moment of digital spooling and you’re back in the playback room.

I loaded stereo tracks, and playback was refreshingly unsluggish and the CPU meter was reading to . On a Macbook Air that’s not bad. Though maybe the Flash disk helps.

Nice obvious things. Fades are directly applicable in the playlist – a double click takes you to the object parameters where you get to play with all the toys. Fade shapes and durations are selectable here – you pick a shape from a choice of six and you can type a duration directly into a numeric dialogue. One little niggle is that I’d like to be able to click and drag to change the numerical values. Picky kind of a guy, me.

You can apply FX to the clip individually, and as you can play your clip while the dialogue is open you are able to hear what exactly your clip sounds like with the effects applied. In version there’s a comprehensive surround sound plug-in that will deliver octophonic sound or up to .. It might be nice if the blue level controls at the bottom of the dialogue don’t reset to normal when you double click them, but okay, I am a small-minded and lazy man.

Reaper comes with a variety of home brewed FX EQ, Compression, Delay, Reverb, and an FFT EQ and dynamics package among a range of others. I think it’s fair to say none of these will win any prizes for fancy visuals, but all the ones I needed did the job in a no-fuss way and sounded fine.

The question of plug-ins and add-ons raises some difficult questions for developers. Do you try and emulate what everyone else is doing and add a bell and a whistle for everything? Or do you invest your development effort into base band productivity and direct features and interface improvements? Reaper doesn’t come with an orchestra of virtual instruments or three DVDs of samples, and in my book is all the better for it... And Cockos releases updates regularly.

I must say though, I do like Sadie’s approach of bundling some iZotope kit – you get quality effects that look great and you don’t have to redevelop wheel ..


ALISTAIR McGHEE began audio life in Hi-Fi before joining the BBC as an audio engineer. After ten years in radio and TV, he moved to production. When BBC Choice started, he pioneered personal digital production in television. Alistair is now Assistant Editor, BBC Radio Wales, but is allowed out occasionally.


Cockos

digital audio workstatio n


cockos i reaper

Pushing Envelopes

B a c k t o t h e item properties d i a l o g u e . Here too you can select a variety of envelopes – level, panning, mute, and pitch. Yes – just click to draw a pitch

envelope on your track and the material will faithfully follow pitch in real time. Tidy. Nice too to have access to normalisation in this dialogue directly.

One big and slightly controversial feature of Reaper is the degree of customisation offered. You get a bunch of themes to choose between, and a variety of layouts. You get a Theme Editor so if you are an ardent follower of Heart of Midlothian football club, you can colour your DAW maroon. I checked the pages of downloadable themes at the Reaper site, but the ‘Jam Tarts’ theme doesn’t seem to be available yet. It’s only a matter of time. I ignored the Pro Tools wannabee themes and went for Apollo.

In some ways, themes are less interesting than Actions. With just about everything that you can do with a mouse or menu available as an action, Reaper makes it easy to do fancy things. In the Action chooser I define a new custom action. I select the action that picks a crossfade shape, then the one that splits the audio under the play cursor, then the one that cross fades across the time selection and voila, I give my new Frankenstein custom action a new name and I’m ready to go. Drag a time selection at the point I want a crossfade and click on ‘run’ for my new custom action and there it is, crossfade to go. Once you have run through the process to get familiar with the workflow, it’s a slice of Battenberg... and there’s probably a theme for that too.

If that sort of thing isn’t enough for you, there’s the ReaScript option allowing you to programme the thing with Python. Hang on, isn’t that what we pay Cockos for? And that’s the root of some of the controversy – one editor’s flexibility is another’s confusion. I have mixed feelings about customisation. It is a short step from there to a mess, but somehow Reaper gets away with it and the interface to it is very straightforward and the results so pleasing – I forgive them. As long as I don’t have to learn Python or any other reptile-based language.

MIDI has been considerably beefed up in V, but my guess is if you are MIDI editing king, or regularly stretch Cubase with your MIDI requirements, then Reaper is not for you. But if you just want solid sequencing to accompany your song writing genius, V will do fine.

Conclusion‘Is it for me?’, I hear you ask. Well to state the bleeding obvious, at this price of course it is. Reaper has more regular updates than Aljazeera, and these guys listen to their users. Why wouldn’t it be for you? The caveat is: what is it you want to do? The flexibility of Reaper means that with a small investment in time you can have it ‘your way’ to coin a phrase. However I came across a situation the other day where a producer used DAW P rather than DAW PT purely because of the crossfade editor in P. I sympathise – and Reaper, for me, really needs a comprehensive crossfade editor. On the other hand I know plenty of people who never use a crossfade editor and don’t know what all the fuss is about. They want virtual drum kits.

Either way I still like Reaper – it’s a blast, has less fat than other workstations, is cheaper than many plug-ins, is more flexible than a Slinky, and you can theme it to your football team. What more do you want?

Now I have to go work on the Queen of the South theme: blue and white, tinged with failure. ∫

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£ Download: US. (discounted license US.)

A Cockos Inc., th Street, San Francisco, CA

W www.reaper.fm

E [email protected]

>

46>

P R O D U C T S A M P L E R

Broadcast Consoles

AEQ’s Forum is a self-con-tained digital audio mixing console with a fl exible design that allows it to be adapted to any on-air application. The console incorporates all the features necessary for use in a broadcast environment, including automatic monitor speaker cut-off , cough muting, fader start, control signalling, interface signalling for automation of external equipment, external communications manage-ment, and intercom. The control surface can be confi gured with a minimum of four faders, and easily expanded to eight or twelve channels.www.aeqbroadcast.com

Oxygen 7 is Axel Technology’s fl agship broad-cast analogue audio console. The fully modular system was designed to be as fl exible for the operator as possible. It can be set up in a traditional manner with separate control and announcer rooms, or in a studio complex environment where more than one studio/con-trol room is being used for broadcast. In this situation, the Oxygen 7 is capable of being the main on-air console, due to the three main outputs it contains. www.axeltechnology.com

Axia Audio’s iQ Console and routing system is an all-in-one system that can be used to build cus-tom consoles of sizes from 8 to 24 faders. The basic system consists of one eight-fader iQ Main Frame and one iQ Core integrated console engine, which includes a DSP-based mixing engine, audio I/O, machine-control logic, and Ethernet switch. Faders and control capabilities can be expanded by adding one or more of the available iQ Expansion Frames.www.axiaaudio.com

DATEQ off ers the BCS25. Its fl exibility allows it to be used in a radio studio, an OB van or on location, but it can also be placed in an audio and video post production studio or the main control room of a TV station. The BCS25 is based on a modular 19-inch chassis with up to eight input modules plus a master module with integrated meter unit and communication facili-ties. The console features VCA-controlled faders, a three-band EQ, integrated telephone hybrid, and automatic mix-minus mode.www.dateq.nl

The DiGiCo SD10B pro-vides a blend of features, performance, fl exibility, and sonic clarity at a price point that brings advanced digital technology to a wider broadcast market than ever before. Facilities include 96 channels with full process-ing, 48 assignable busses that off er multiple confi gurations, plus a stereo, LCR, or 5.1 master buss, and a complete 5.1 monitoring matrix. It works with the DiGiCo SD-Rack, which delivers up to 192kHz high resolution analogue conver-sion, complemented by fully integrated Waves Sound Grid.www.digico.biz

The XB-14 Radio Broadcast Mixer from Allen & Heath is designed for a broad range of applications, from small radio or Internet broadcast studios, to larger studios with multiple rooms, hospital radio, university radio, and community radio. It has a wide range of features specifi cally for broadcasters, includ-ing telephone communication modules, mic faders start sensing for external connection and internal automatic muting of speaker outputs, stereo channel start/cue outputs, separate headphones mix and outputs for guests, and an audition bus.www.allen-heath.com

Audio Developments added the AD144 Mixer to its range to provide wider customer choice with regard to location mixing, and for use in small studios and OB vehicles. Customised extruded metalwork developed for the AD140 series gives the mixer a robust chassis. It has four outputs and four auxiliaries, M-S stereo facilities on inputs and outputs, transformer balancing throughout, and comprehensive monitoring facilities. Each input has a three band EQ, phase switch, and separate routing switches for the four main groups. www.audio.co.uk

e broadcast console world caters for a very wide range of needs, from the tiniest home Internet radio station to the big boys of television. No matter what your requirements are, don’t worry, because we have rounded up a selection for you to peruse over a nice cup of tea.

Calrec’s Apollo console utilises Bluefi n2, the next generation of Bluefi n HDSP, which provides resources of up to 1,020 channel processing paths, 128 program busses, 96 IFB/Tracl outputs, and 48 auxes. Its single and dual fader options allows the console to squeeze in more faders than, Calrec claims, any other consoles, and its inte-grated router provides total network fl exibility. Apollo’s I/O functions are performed by the Hydra2 network, which uses high capacity 81922 cross-point routers and a variety of I/O units.www.calrec.com

The 52/SX is the new powerful modular mixing console system made by DHD for radio and TV applications. It is ideal for on-air and pre-production in broadcast studios, at audio workstations, and in smaller OB vans. The console uses a simplifi ed version of the DHD Toolbox5, providing a func-tionality similar to its predecessor, the RM2200D. The 52/SX makes use of established DHD-PC software productions: DSP Control, Remote Con-trol, Snapshot Manager, and Snapshot Server. www.dhd-audio.de


Calrec’s Apollo console utilises Bluefi n2, the

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Logitek Audio’s ROC console is housed in a tabletop enclosure allowing it to be used anywhere, even in temporary studio set-ups. The monitor module includes controls for source selection, timer start/stop, two moni-tor feeds, and headphone output; it also has 12 user-assignable softkeys that may be used for a wide variety of functions such as scene selects or triggers. The console can be expanded with additional banks of six faders, a separate 12-button softkey panel, and an onboard multi-channel router control panel with LED source and destination indicators.www.logitekaudio.com

D&R’s Sirius all digital on-air console features a simple directly-accessible and modular control surface, enabling users to customise depend-ing on their require-ments. Access to more complex functions for technical users is avail-able on the optional Super Module Control Surface. The Sirius is designed and built around the latest development in DSP design from Texas Instruments. There are eight busses/auxes available for production work, and all in/outputs are electronically labelled.www.d-r.nl

Qphonics’ router-based VADIS DCII console system is a completely modular system designed for individual client needs. A selection of con-sole modules are available in diff erent sizes. The actual control surface includes a fl at screen, or touch screen version, for metering, clock/timer, and transmission path indication. The VADIS fi bre-optic audio network on the VADIS DCII control surface provides direct access to the router from any VADIS DCII console – in essence working as a decentralised master router for the entire studio.www.qphonics.com

Lawo’s zirkon is a reliable mixing console for day-to-day radio broadcasting. Its intuitive operation, simpli-fi ed user interface, and short learning curve make it a popular console with radio presenters. It has a fl exible confi guration for individualised workfl ows, high-performance networking of audio and control, sophisti-cated mix-minus/conference logic, multi-layer operation, and support for surround. The VisTool touch screen surface is an optional extra, for visualisation and enhanced user interface. The console off ers support for 5.1 and 5.1+2 broadcast formats.www.lawo.de

The T3 Broadcast Console from Glensound Electron-ics is a modular analogue mixer for radio and televi-sion audio, available from three to 32 channels, in a single console or a split frame. There are 24 module options and 11 bridge options. The fl ex-ible upgrade path means users can start small and expand as their needs evolve. It has a clear, uncluttered layout, making it easy for a ‘non-technical’ presenter to operate. Digital inputs and outputs are available as an option and can be added at any time.www.glensound.co.uk

The mc290 is Lawo’s new high end console. Its modularity allows it to convert from broadcast production to a surround studio, or a freely confi gurable desk surface with up to 200 faders, while direct access to all parameters is possible at any time. It features integrated loudness metering, complying fully with the EBU/R128 and ATSC/A85 requirements. Other features include AMBIT, a DSP module for the perfect conversion of stereo signals to surround sound, and 512 signal processing channels with 144 summing busses.www.lawo.de

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SERIX from Mandozzi is a stand alone mixer with integrated matrix and DSP, but it can also be connected to a central Mandozzi ma-trix. The SERIX mixer is composed of the console, with modules of four faders each, the central module for managing the mixer, optional ancillary modules and the touch screen; the central processor with one to three PCIMIX modules, up to four concentra-tors with the interfaces for up to 128 inputs and outputs each and 64 GPIO, and the confi gura-tion software.www.mandozzi.ch

The S2 from Sonifex has both digital and analogue input chan-nels, together with si-multaneous analogue and digital outputs. Following on from the Sovereign range of audio mixers, S2 combines all the features needed in a radio broadcast mixer in a fl ush-mounting chas-sis, a wide range of input and output channels, PFL/cue, fader-start operation of equipment, automatic monitor muting on mic-live, light controlling remote outputs, optional EQ on input modules, gram amp input options, and two main audio busses.www.sonifex.co.uk

Stagetec's Aurus is a fully digital audio mixing console system, which consists of a main console and the sepa-rate audio processor Nexus Star. The mixing console sys-tem comprises of the main console for operating and controlling the audio signal processing, an optional secondary console, optional remote control units for the console, router-integrated DSP for digital audio processing and the Nexus audio network, which handles diff erent audio formats and provides extensive signal distri-bution. Aurus systems are available in a wide variety of fl exible confi gurations.www.stagetec.com

The Studer OnAir 2500 is a totally self-contained system and builds upon the operational concepts of its predecessor, the OnAir 2000. With the OnAir 2500, the control surface, I/O breakout, DSP core, and power supply are all integrated within a single compact chassis. The fader strips include a graphical OLED screen and the large TFT colour touch screen uses Studer's patented Touch'n'Action system. The system provides the user with a large number of inputs and outputs in many standard signal formats.www.studer.ch

The Dimension One TV Audio Console from Wheatstone is designed around Wheatstone’s DSP engine. The control surface uses motorised faders, and is layered so that each fader controls two sources, each of which can be mono, stereo, or full 5.1. Dimension One features Automatic Mic Mixing, which automatically optimises the levels of several microphones during dialogue, and Audio-Follow-Video (AFV), which allows the console to automatically control input channels based on the video source currently being tak-en. The console features two 5.1 mixing buses.www.wheatstone-tv.com

Studer’s Vista 8 Digital Live Pro-duction Console follows on from the Vista 7, simi-larly incorporat-ing the Vistonics User Interface. The Vista 8 combines and extends the powerful broadcast features with the dy-namic automation of the Vista 7 to off er a fl exible multi-purpose live broadcast desk. The new Control Bay design off ers more faders in a smaller footprint, making it suitable for both fi xed install broadcast and OB van applications. www.studer.ch

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The Mousetrap is what you might call a theatrical institution. Boasting the longest run of any play in history – currently on over 24,500 performances so far – the Agatha Christie murder mystery quietly

gets on with being a West End staple, with audiences filing in eight times a week to find out whodunnit.

It opened in London at the New Ambassadors Theatre in November 1952, where it ran until Saturday, March 23, 1974. It then immediately transferred to the next door St Martin’s Theatre, opening again on the eve-ning of Monday, March 25 – not a single show missed. By tradition, at the end of each performance, audiences are asked not to reveal the identity of the killer to anyone outside the theatre, to ensure that the end of the play is not spoiled for future audiences. So if you haven’t seen it, you simply won’t know who the killer is (unless you don’t tip your London cabbie – notoriously, London black cab drivers are known for letting slip the secret if you are a bit tight).

And on that fairly simple premise, the play runs... and runs...and runs. Part of the charm of the play is its air of being a bit of a time warp; it really is like stepping back into 1952. But while that is clearly a winning for-mula, how do the producers ensure it remains a living, breathing performance, and not a museum piece?

They addressed this with a re-launch in October 2011,

with a new cast, and for the first time in many years, a new Director in Geoff Bullen. Andrew Mills, General Manager, and Denise Silvey, Production Supervisor for The Mousetrap, sought Orbital’s advice on a re-think of the show’s sound design. This resulted in Orbital’s Richard Carter taking on the role of Sound Designer and specify-ing a CSC Show Control system to replace the show’s rather recalcitrant CD player. Richard also cleaned the older effects and created others from scratch, generating over 70 refreshed cues.

“We are very proud of the show’s heritage, and are naturally cautious about making any changes to the production – we’re reluctant to alter anything purely for the sake of it, but we are also keen to keep the show fresh and ensure its continuing appeal,” explained Silvey.

“The production’s sound effects were long overdue for improvement and, due to our long-standing relationship with Orbital, it was natural to approach them for help.”

With no sound operator – until recently the Assistant Stage Manager/Christopher Wren (a principal character in the play) understudy operated sound, now the Deputy Stage Manager – the system needed to be fairly simple.

“The thing was to try and make a more flexible system, and also the kit that was in was getting old – you can re-burn CDs every so often, but the rest of the system was getting a bit sticky,” said Carter. “It was time to

TheMousetrap

Now in its 60th year, it’s

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Agatha Christie’s Endless Mystery

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tickets now on saleCafé de Paris – February 16th 2012

The MPG Awards ceremony will see the UK music industry coming togetherin one room to celebrate with the shortlisted candidates and sponsorcompanies. Starting with a welcome reception, the awards ceremony will behosted by BBC 6 Music’s Nemone Metaxes. After the awards presentationwill be the after party till 1am.

There will be a limited amount of tables available on the night to sell andindividual seats on these will be sold on a first come first served basis. AwardsOnly tickets will be available this year offering you the chance to see the awardsceremony and join in the after party.

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mpg12_AudioMedia_Dec_2011_v2 06/12/2011 12:36 Page 1

52the mousetrap

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put in something new, and computer playback is standard at the moment. It’s great because it can be programmed, pre-set, and left to do its thing night after night.” Quite a difference from the system that was in before. Though even that was pretty high-tech compared to just a few years before that.

“I was first involved with the Mousetrap in 1994,” said Silvey. “When I did it the first time, in ‘94, they were still using reel-to-reel, which was extraordinary even in 1994. Splicing tape was the order of the day if you wanted anything changed.” The reel-to-reel recordings had been made from records, direct-cut acetates. The suc-cess of an individual effect back then depended on the operator dropping the stylus onto the record at exactly the right cue point – a system not only prone to timing errors, but also mean-ing that each sound effect was heralded by a burst of surface noise.

P r o g r e s s – O f S o r t s . . .The reel-to-reel recordings were eventually migrated onto CD, with the cues running on a CD player, with the target replay levels of the various effects marked on strips of masking tape arrayed around an amplifier’s gain pot.

“It still had the tape hiss,” said Carter. “That was operated from one amplifier, and a

big switch box for the speakers. So it would be: it’s time for this effect, get the volume at the right level, and the Christopher Wren understudy

would press ‘play’ at the right time, with the DSM waving their arm going...’now’!”

Denise Silvey takes a moment to point out where, until a few months ago, there was a mir-ror hung up backstage so the DSM could do just that, with the understudy watching the reflection for cue prompts.

“There were two principal issues to address – the effects’ replay chain, and the qual-ity of the effects themselves,” explained Carter.

“We addressed the first issue by upgrading the CD-based hardware to a CSC v3 Show Control software system running on a PC, linked to a Yamaha 01V96 digital mixer and four Yamaha power amps. Migrating to CSC has enabled sounds to be layered – whereas the show was previously limited to one cue at a time.” Dual screens for the CSC were installed, one beside the system, and one at the prompt corner. The DSM has a very simple control box for the sound effects, with just ‘Go’, ‘Stop’, ‘Next’ and

‘Previous’ buttons. A bit of clever adjustment in the auditorium helped things along too.

“We found when we listened to it, when we went up higher we couldn’t hear much, because everything was down in the pit and it was a bit muffled. There was no mixer, so there was a speaker for the front of house announcements and a speaker for the music, so we liberated some and moved them around a little bit, so that there’s a bit more coverage in the auditorium.” The theatre has a beautiful wooden proscenium

arch and surrounds, which although visually stunning, make it rather difficult to attach speak-ers anywhere. The re-arrangement of the old 1970s speakers has improved the sound, but there may still be some improvements to be

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53the mousetrap

>


made. “When Geoff put the new design in he kept saying ‘louder, louder’, and I had to say, ‘Geoff, it’s distorting now. That’s as loud as it gets,’” laughed Carter. “Potentially further down the line it will get redone, but we think it’s working.”

E f f e c t i n g I m p r o v e m e n t sOnce the physical improvements to the system had been made, it was time to move onto the other important issue. “The next stage was to evaluate the effects and start to make whatever improvements we could,” Carter told me. “I received all the effects on CD, and auditioned them all in detail. There were a lot of pops and clicks that needed cleaning up, some tape hiss was apparent – peculiarly more so on the right hand channel – as well as several instances of original vinyl surface noise. I spent a long time de-noising and re-EQing to brighten up some effects, and applied a variety of de-clicking and de-popping algorithms, auditioning these until I’d achieved the best possible fit. The target was to reach the optimum compromise between minimum noise and top-end accuracy. All the effects were in mono, so they were re-processed with a touch of reverb and stereo widening algorithms to generate a larger sound field. One music cue even had a glitch right over an obvious flute solo, presumably due to a tape drop-out, but we managed to ‘micro-edit’ it at sample level, and restored the cue to its original state – but now rather cleaner-sounding. We also restored all the other music cues.”

The new music that Director Bullen had requested was incorporated into Carter’s new sound design, as well as 25 new wind cues that complement the hand-driven wind machine. The wind machine is almost as famous as the production itself, whooshing away in the background since 1952. The new wind cues give a rather eerier atmosphere than had previously been possible, run at a low level to give a convincingly spooky effect. As well as the rather wonderful and archaic wind machine, there are a few other effects which are manually operated, including a crackling fire cre-ated by someone scrunching a lighting gel in the fireplace – something which Denise Silvey is delighted to tell me is new for this production – and an early 1950s Electrolux vacuum cleaner heard offstage. Another veteran of the production, the mantlepiece clock – which is the only item left from the original set, has a new lease of life. Since 1952 it has looked on silently at the action, but in the refreshed production, it finally has a voice.

“It’s somebody in the wings with a triangle,” explained Silvey.

N e w ‘ O l d ’For a production like this, it’s not just getting things pristine again that is important. Part of the production’s enduring appeal is its period nature, something that threw up an unusual challenge for some of the effects. An old radio plays an integral part in the play. “It was a weird process with the digitisation,” said Carter, “because actually, although I cleaned it up, I had to go completely the opposite way and make it messier and dirtier, to make it sound like a 1952 valve radio. Everyone I asked had no idea how they sounded so we had to kind of guess at how this thing would sound. I went through and thought of all the things that could have possibly come out of a valve radio, and we created this effect where it warms up and then it goes on. So hopefully when they turn it on you get the sense that this thing is warming up. And we did that by adding some distortion as well, and by guessing really. Nobody has actually said it sounds wrong yet.”

When asked what the biggest challenge he faced on this production was, Carter doesn’t hesitate. “It was trying to get the realism, to make people feel like they were back in 1952. How does the phone ring in 1952? Does it go ‘ring ring’ or does it go ‘riiiing’ like an American phone? And we did a lot of research, we spoke to people who used to work for BT, and no-one actually knew.”

It might be a refreshed version of the play, but one of the original cast still makes an appearance. Actor Derek Guyler recorded the voice of the radio announcer in 1952, long before noise reduction was available for tape. Denise Silvey tells me that when the voice was cleaned up, she suddenly realised that a place name she thought he had always said – Penge – was in fact Paddington. “It’s like he’s in the room, it’s stunning.” And he’ll prob-ably be here for quite a lot longer. ∫

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[email protected]. +44 (0) 17 84 41 59 50

54video guide

A Sound Pro’s Guide To Video

Television Technology: Part 5KEVIN HILTON compresses

all there is to know about

compression in his continuing

look at all-things TV.


There was a time when compression was a technical process used for specific purposes. Early rock & roll recordings and AM radio programmes were

compressed heavily to make them both more exciting and to cut through background noise when they were played on jukeboxes in diners or through the atmospherics on unsatisfactory transmissions. It was later used on FM radio for the same reasons and in general was never considered a good thing.

Now compression is the bedrock for both industry and entertainment. In the latter category this includes music – with the MP file now becoming the norm despite widespread criticism of its quality – and digital television (DTV). Compression is at the heart of DTV and is the key to getting many channels on to a single frequency

– a process known as multiplexing. The coming of digital has made compression techniques less obtrusive and relatively easy to perform, although there are still concerns about the amount of processing used, which can affect the quality of both audio and video.

Two formats have been developed to compress images: JPEG – named af ter the Joint Photographic Experts Group established by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in – which is used for still pictures; and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group, established by the ISO in ), the umbrella term now used for a series of technologies to compress video.

The aim of compression in general is to reduce the bit rate of a file or signal so that it takes up less bandwidth on its carrying medium, which would be a computer hard disk or SD card in the case of still images and a media server, removable disk or card storage or transmission frequency for video.

Because video is fundamentally a series of still images in succession, it can be compressed using JPEG technology, which is based on a technique called spatial inter-frame compression. In a sequence of moving images, each frame does not change substantially from the one previous to it. This means the compression process can do away with the segment of subsequent images that has not changed from the first image to be scanned, and so are redundant. This means only the changes are processed, which is done using a technique called temporal DCT (discrete cosine transform) compression. DCT is the complex mathematics that forms the basis of

the process; it is a Fast Fourier Transform related to the discrete Fourier Transform, the difference being it uses only real numbers (that is, a value representing a quantity that is part of a continuum).

MPEG- encoding, the basis of standard definition (SD) video used in DTV, comprises three main components: data preparation; temporal and spatial compression; and quantitisation.

Video material is prepared to ensure that a raw-coded sample of the image frame selected for processing is arranged in a form that will suit data compression. The video is fed into the encoder as line-scanned coded samples that have luminance (Y) and chrominance (both Cr and Cb). The preparation stage rearranges the samples into x blocks that are used in the removal of redundant spatial material. The blocks are then in turn rearranged as x macro-blocks, ready for the removal of temporally redundant data. The structure of a macro-block depends on the form of the MPEG- coding being used. In :: sampling, a macro-block will be made up of four blocks of luminance and one block of each of Cr and Cb, which determine chrominance.

Sl ice And DiceOnce this stage has been completed the macro-blocks are formed into what are described by experts as slices. It is these slices that are the foundation units used in the compression process. Theoretically a slice can be anything from a single macro-block to an entire picture. In the majority of cases a slice will be either a full picture row or a section of a picture row.

The next part of the encoding process is temporal compression, also known as inter-frame compression. This is done on successive frames and works on the principle that there will be only minimal differences between two successive frames. It is at this stage that any repeated information is discarded and the differences from one frame to another passed on to the next phase of the coding process. The two constituent parts of an image being processed are called motion vector and the difference frame; together they create a description of the differences between the frame being processed and the one that went before it.

For example, in a shot of a car being driven along a road, the car will be the motion vector and the coding process will retain the basic descriptive data of both it and the background, register ing only the changes in these as the scene progresses. A motorcycle entering t h e s c e n e i s t h e d i f f e r e n c e f r a m e . This is derived through an involved process that adds the motion vector to the first frame in the

GLOSSARY

P-frameShort for predictive frame, or predicted frame, a video compression method used by the MPEG standard. In a motion sequence, individual frames of pictures are grouped together (called a group of pictures, or GOP) and played back so the viewer is able to register the video’s spatial motion. P-frames follow I-frames and contain only the data that have changed from the preceding I-frame (such as colour or content changes). Because of this, P-frames depend on the I-frames to fill in most of the data. P-frames and B-frames are also referred to as delta frames.

I-frameShort for intraframe, this is also a video compression method used by the MPEG standard. Also called a keyframe, an I-frame is a single frame of digital content that the compressor examines independently of the frames that precede and follow it and stores all of the data needed to display that frame. Typically, I-frames are interspersed with P-frames and B-frames in a compressed video. The more I-frames that are contained, the better the quality of the video. The drawback is that I-frames contain the most amount of bits and so take up more space on the storage medium.

B-frameShort for bi-directional frame, or bi-directional predictive frame. As the name suggests, B-frames rely on the frames preceding and following them. B-frames contain only the data that have changed from the preceding frame or are different from the data in the very next frame.

REFERENCES

Newnes Guide to Television and Video Technology by KF Ibrahim, Newnes 2007The New Oxford Dictionary of English

>

55video guide A Sound Pro’s Guide To Video

Television Technology: Part 5

sequence to create a predicted frame, which is then subtracted from the second frame, thus producing the difference frame. The two elements – motion vector and frame difference – are then joined together to make a P-frame (see glossary).

Temporal compress ion is performed on a group of pictures (GOP), which usually comprise non-interlaced frames. The first frame in this grouping is called the I-frame (see glossary) and is the reference point for the whole subsequent process of compressing the images. The P-frame comes after the I-frame and is produced when the second frame in the sequence is compared with the I-frame. The process continues in this way, with new P-frames being compared to the preceding P-frame, which registers the changes in the image and so moves the sequence on. This procedure carries on until the group of twelve is complete. A new I-frame is placed at the end of the group of frames to be the reference for the GOP that follows next. The process, called forward prediction, continues until processing of the selected material is completed.

Another aspect of temporal compression is block matching, which is used to derive the motion vector from the luminance element. In block matching the Y (luminance)

component in the reference frame is divided into x pixel macro-blocks. Each macro-block is then moved sequentially in a specific part of the next frame. At the same time it is examined for matching block pixel values. Despite the fact that the sample values of the macro-block may have altered only to a small degree, a correlation process is employed to find the best equivalent position from one frame to another. In MPEG- compression the distance between the matched macro-blocks is half of one pixel, while it is a quarter of a pixel for MPEG- compression.

Once a match has been made, displacement is used to find a motion compensation vector that can express the movement – that is the speed and direction – of the macro-block. Motion compensation vectors need only a small amount of information to describe them and the pixel values of the macro-block do not have to be re-transmitted. The resultant motion compensation vector can then be used for the Cr and Cb elements.

Nex t M onth…Next month’s Video Guide will continue to examine MPEG compression technology, looking at predicted and difference frames, bi-directional prediction, and spatial compression. ∫

“When the concept of DTV

was first discussed the digitisation process

was explained in simple

>

Broadcom Corporation, a leading manufacturer of MPEG- compression encoders for audio and video, as well as products for the wired and wireless communications market, announced a range of technologies, collaborations and contracts at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas during January.

Broadcom is among the many companies now targeting the potentially lucrative market for delivering multi-screen video and Internet connectivity round the home. Broadcom’s CES announcements for this year included: the integrated MoCA . range, which comprises a full choice of set-top box platform systems aimed at the next generation of full networking for the home; the Over-the-Top Media Player, which is reportedly capable of converting a conventional television set into a SmartTV with full internet connectivity; integration of Comcast’s new reference design kit for set-top box development; a joint venture involving Echostar’s Sling Media to push on multi-screen TV entertainment; LGE selecting Broadcom’s Bluetooth technology to work with TV sets and remote controllers that are designed for games playing: Broadcom and Hisense joining forces to produce Wi-Fi capable consumer electronics products to the Chinese market; Qualcomm Atheros and Broadcom adopting HomePlug AV Powerline Performance for the home networking applications market; and technologies for the mobile entertainment market.

Broadcom is also continuing to look at the growing demand for digital programmes and other material on smartphones and tablets. To this end Broadcom introduced its first range of .ac chips (designed for G Wi-Fi) that is aimed at a wide range of product areas.

Broadcom additionally introduced a GHz G baseband and reference design that is intended to produce cheaper smartphones. The company is also attempting to move mobile devices away from small screens by introducing a cross-platform Wi-Fi display system.

The in-car entertainment market has long been regarded as a major area but both manufacturers and broadcasters/content providers still have to find the way to crack this area. During CES Broadcom demonstrated its approach to the travelling conundrum. The BroadR-Reach automotive range is based on Ethernet technology and comprises large number of products. These are designed to enable multiple systems in a car, including ‘infotainment’ and automated driver assistance, with the ability to simultaneously access information over a single twisted pair cable. Broadcom says that by eliminating cumbersome cabling, auto manufacturers will be significantly able to reduce connectivity costs and cabling weight, which in turn will allow them to bring in-car entertainment and information systems to more consumers.

Commenting on Broadcom’s CES presence, the company’s President and Chief Executive, Scott McGregor, said, “The ability to seamlessly and instantaneously access content is the defining moment of a great consumer experience. At CES, Broadcom is showcasing an array of connectivity innovations that are powering many of the top products at CES and driving ever-more powerful consumer experiences.”

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58classiccutcutclassiccutclassiccutcutcutThe Haunting

The building of dread and

terror in an audience doesn't

need CGI to be effective.

KEVIN HILTON looks at how

Wise created effect in the

classic horror, The Haunting.

Horror films have always exploited sound to add to the shocks and scares, but too often this only stretches as far as eerie music, screams, owls hooting, wolves howling, and

assorted squelching noises to accompany something unspeakable. The Haunting (1963) relies on a strident score and a variety of unnerving, other worldly sounds to represent the unseen terror that lurks in a favourite movie cliche, the haunted house.

But Hill House is far more than just the scene of unexplained goings on; Dr John Markway (Richard Johnson), a dashing scientist with an interest in the paranormal, views it as a diseased place that absorbs evil and torments susceptible people. Markway assembles a research team – who are in fact guinea pigs – to test his theory and discover whether the Crain family, which built the place, has been cursed by their own acts and misfortune or the forbidding edifice that they have now abandoned.

A Horror- i f ic Star tThe Haunting was directed by Robert Wise, now better known for mainstream movies, including West Side (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). But he got his first directorial credit on The Curse of the Cat People (1944), a psychological horror film produced by Val Lewton that implied its threats through noises and high contrast black and white photography.

Wise took a similar approach with The Haunting, which he dedicated to Lewton’s memory. Although set in New England USA, the film was shot in England, UK, with a largely British cast and crew. Hill House is represented by Ettington Hall (now the Ettington Park Hotel) in Warwickshire. The opening titles run over a shot of this imposing facade – made all the more unsettling through the use of infrared film – and are accompanied by portentous music, composed by Humphrey Searle.

This sets the scenario, creating dread and tension in a manner that dates back to the earliest days of the horror genre. Scenes from Hill House’s dark past, explained matter of factly by Markway in a voice-over, leave us in no doubt about what a terrible place it is.

The scene cuts to Markway persuading Mrs Sanderson, the present owner of the House, to let him investigate in the name of science. To help him in his research Markway has drawn up a list of people who have had brushes with the paranormal, among them the neurotic Eleanor ‘Nell’ Lance (Julie Harris). Since the death of her mother, who she looked after for many years, Nell has

been a barely tolerated guest of her sister. As Nell argues with her sister and brother-in-law about borrowing a shared car to get to Hill House, tinkly music plays on the radio, creating a brittle, child-like atmosphere behind the confrontation, mirroring Nell’s psyche and personality.

Arriving at Hill House Nell meets Markway and Theodora (also known as Theo, played by Claire Bloom), who claims to have ESP. All three are jumpy and disoriented by the long, confusing corridors, odd angles and doors that shut by themselves. As they walk into the dining room Nell is spooked by a slightly sinister tinkling sound – which turns out to the be ice in a jug of martini being mixed by Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), a sceptical rich wastrel who stands to inherit the property.

By this stage Wise has set up the feeling that something is going to happen in a fairly conventional way, with a few false starts. As the characters prepare for bed he begins to up the ante with more sophisticated touches. Hearing an unnatural loud and aggressive banding sound, Nell runs into Theo’s bedroom. The two women cower on the bed as the noise becomes an insistent drumming, implying poltergeist activity. The unease increases as the sound changes and distorts. The uncredited electronic treatments were by Desmond Briscoe, at the time head of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The soundtrack was mixed in mono but Wise gives us a sense of the drumming moving by panning the camera, shooting from high angles and having Harris and Bloom follow the sounds with their eyes.

Although he did not witness it, this first manifestation leaves Markway – and the audience – in no doubt that something in the House is beginning to stir. The second night does not pass peacefully either but Wise releases the pressure slightly. Nell hears laughter and a child’s voice, which is treated to sound like a radio, as though the spirits are trying to contact our realm from somewhere else.

By the third night passions and tensions have risen, brought to boiling point by the unexpected arrival of Markway’s wife (Lois Maxwell, who had become Miss Moneypenny in Dr No the year before), arousing jealously in Nell. By this stage Nell is convinced she belongs in the House and with Markway; Harris’ voice-overs push the conversations of other characters into the background, showing how much Nell is in her own world.

Mrs Markway insists on sleeping in the old nursery, the hotspot for all paranormal activity. The drumming and banging soon returns, louder and wilder than before, accompanied by frenzied rattling of the door handles, leading to the House’s final victory.

M issing The Point?The Haunting was remade in 1999, starring Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta Jones, swamped by CGI effects from Industrial Light and Magic and a 5.1 sound design by Gary Rydstrom. Some might consider this missed the point that Robert Wise, Sound Supervisor AW Watkins, and Desmond Briscoe understood on the original film – Hill House itself is the monster and all that was needed was some imagination and a few good nudges for the audience to scare themselves. ∫


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