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In Memory
For Orr A Shabtech Life
By: Andy Stewart

Editor
Mark Davie
mark@audiotechnology.com.au
Publisher
Philip Spencer
philip@alchemedia.com.au
Editorial Director
Christopher Holder
chris@audiotechnology.com.au
Art Director
Dominic Carey
dominic@alchemedia.com.au
Graphic Designer
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daniel@alchemedia.com.au
Advertising
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philip@alchemedia.com.au
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Subscriptions
Miriam Mulcahy
mim@alchemedia.com.au
Proofreading
Andrew Bencina

17 February 1968 21 August 2015

Yesterday I went to the memorial of one of my

oldest and best friends, Calum Orr, who last week
passed away peacefully after a 15-year battle with cancer.
Im still in shock and feel sick right now at the prospect of
reducing my friend to a bunch of hopelessly inadequate
words on a page.
Sitting in the studio we built together The Mill I
cant help now but reflect on how strange it is that the
inanimate objects we build outlast us so easily.
Cal and I spent many long hours over several years
slogging our guts out on this place, as long-time readers
of AT may recall. Cals energy and enthusiasm for the
studios construction back then was infectious. Now the
walls stand as permanent reminders of his craftsmanship
and selfless, unwavering work ethic.
The man himself is no more, though as Andrew
Bencina pointed out during his eulogy yesterday, while
Cals life may have ended after a long fade-out, the
albums he wrote, recorded, mixed, mastered or in other
ways inspired play on through the speakers and memory
banks of countless acts who worked with him over the
last 25 years.
Today this control room sits in silent reflection, a giant
hole torn in its side.
Cal built so many things. Apart from his own
recording spaces, which sprang up like blackberries
wherever he happened to reside, Cal was also the builder
of a vast and disparate array of things: confidence in
others, vast plug-in libraries, cutting-edge computers
(for himself and his friends) and a reputation for
inventiveness on a shoestring.
Cal was an engineer of the recording, mixing and
mastering varieties, a multi-instrumentalist, band
manager, confidante and producer. He was a roadie,
a tour manager, a tech, an accidental psychotherapist
and a teacher. He was a surfer, a philosopher, a father, a
husband and a moral compass for others.
He gave advice freely when it was sought even if he
knew it would put him out of a job, and facilitated and
AT 6

inspired countless bands to help themselves in this world

of zero-budget productions. He would build them a
recording computer if necessary, or loan them equipment
for free if thats what it took to get the project over the
line. When Angie Hart of Frent made an album recently
with essentially no budget, it was Cal who loaned her the
gear without question, and picked it all up again when
she was done for nicks.
And in the face of illness Cal was courageous like noone Ive seen before or will ever see again.
Cal always thought and spoke outside the box,
always looking for new ways, more efficient and
cutting-edge methods of doing things. He abhorred
lazy conventions and railed against establishment in
whatever form that took.
He was also one of the most elastic and engaging
conversationalists Ive ever known; equally at home
talking to a fellow surfer as my mother. He was truly
gifted at inspiring others, passionate about virtually
anything that engaged his voracious mind, and an
enigma of sorts. No sooner had you figured Cal out than
he would confound you.
His strong will for life and unwavering commitment
to everything from music recording to social justice
continued right to the end. Always looking forward, Cal
inspired us all with his wit, his charm, his lack of charm,
his inappropriate comments and his anarchic tendencies.
One thing he always strove for which is perhaps
most relevant here as a parting thought about Cal
was a passionate performance each and every time he
pressed record: a good strong funky groove, a powerful
vocal, a screaming guitar line. He was fascinated with,
and wholly committed to, getting the best performance
he could out of everyone he worked with, filling
musicians with positive vibes about themselves
making them feel like a star.
He was himself a star unique, loyal, affable and brave.
He will never be forgotten by anyone who knew him.
Rest in peace my friend.

Regular Contributors
Martin Walker
Paul Tingen
Guy Harrison
Greg Walker
Greg Simmons
Blair Joscelyne
Mark Woods
Chris Braun
Robert Clark
Andrew Bencina
Brent Heber
Anthony Garvin
Ewan McDonald
Distribution by:
Network Distribution Company.
AudioTechnology magazine
(ISSN 1440-2432) is published by Alchemedia
Publishing Pty Ltd
(ABN 34 074 431 628).
Contact (Advertising, Subscriptions)
T: +61 2 9986 1188
PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest
NSW 2086, Australia.
Contact (Editorial)
T: +61 3 5331 4949
PO Box 295, Ballarat
VIC 3353, Australia.
E: info@alchemedia.com.au
W: www.audiotechnology.com.au

All material in this magazine is copyright

2015 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. Apart
from any fair dealing permitted under the
Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by
any process with out written permission. The
publishers believe all information supplied
in this magazine to be correct at the time
of publication. They are not in a position to
make a guarantee to this effect and accept
no liability in the event of any information
proving inaccurate. After investigation and
to the best of our knowledge and belief,
prices, addresses and phone numbers were
up to date at the time of publication. It is not
possible for the publishers to ensure that
advertisements appearing in this publication
comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974.
The responsibility is on the person, company
or advertising agency submitting or
directing the advertisement for publication.
The publishers cannot be held responsible
for any errors or omissions, although
every endeavour has been made to ensure
complete accuracy. 7/9/2015.

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CONTENTS111
42

Summing Up:
Rich Costey Dumps His SSL
for Of Monsters & Men

FEATURES

Kurt Vile Hits Sonic Byways

to Avoid the Ticking Clock

54

36 Neil Young & the Ultimate DIY largeformat console

48 Decoding Enos Discreet Music on its
40th Anniversary
60 Reggae Meets Rhumba: Cuban & Jamaican
Legends Together for the First Time
68 Wham, Bam, Thank You Schram!
ex-Triple J Alum Mixes Voltaire Twins

REGULARS

Chandler Recreates The

Beatles REDD.47 Mic Preamp

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SEE PAGE 97

86

12 Whats On
13 Studio Focus: Studio 52
14 Studio Focus: Merloc Studios
24 Quick Mix: Tim Millikan
34: Watchout!: Audio Networking
66 Quick Mix: Michael Pollard
74 PC Audio
76 Apple Notes
98 Last Word: David Dearden

REVIEWS
22 Audio-Technica System 10 Camera-top
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78 Yamaha TF1 Digital Live Console
82 Bose F1 PA System
90 Shure PG Alta Microphones
94 Arturia Beatstep Pro Controller

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Pro Tools|HD rig the cornerstone
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Green Day, Muse, and Tina Turner to name only a few. For over two decades Chris depended on 48-track tape to interfacewith his
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REGULARS

Whats On

All the latest from around

the studio traps.

NEWMARKET STUDIOS

Dave McLuney was in for a week with Jenny

Thomas tracking her new album with some
amazing string players from the Melbourne
Chamber Orchestra.
Perth band Methyl Ethel were in for a live-filmed
studio session thanks to Remote Control Records.
The crowd enjoyed a beer while watching the
band do their thing in the jungle-themed studio
transformation. Simon Cotter was behind the
desk capturing the recording.
Callum Barter has been out on tour with #1
Dads doing FOH, but in between shows he mixed
a new album from Brisbane band Columbia Buffet.
The Harrison console is in the process of getting
re-capped channel by channel. The Newmarket
engineers are hearing bottom end for days after
some solid soldering sessions from the guys at Dex
40 channels is quite the effort.
Callum also mixed some of a project Andrew
McSweeny has been working on with a remote
community up in Hope Vale, north Queensland.
Andrew took up a bunch of location recording gear
to record and film some great songwriters in the
local indigenous community up there.
BLACK PEARL STUDIOS

A large variety of musicians have frequented the

studio to begin and continue their projects, with
jazz, rock and country appearing to be the favourite
flavours of the month. One of the larger projects
currently being recorded is The Music Matters
International Original Artists Charity Album; an
initiative of the School Broadcasting Network Inc
(SBN). The SBN is an Australian youth charity
which is intended to become an annual platform to
promote young emerging artists who have positive
messages to share through their music. The Music
Matters Charity Album will be launched in Sydney
in November at The Banksia Awards and then
in December at Federation Square as part of the
Fair@Square Festival. The US launch for the Music
Matters Album will be in New York in early 2016.

WHATS HAPPENING?
Got any news about the happenings in your
studio or venue? Be sure to let us know at
whatson@audiotechnology.com.au

AT 12

DELUXE MASTERING

Jack the Bear has mastered projects for Dave

Mudie, 5 Way Addiction, The Dead Leaves, and
The Feelers (including for vinyl).
Adam Dempsey has been hunkered down
mastering for The Bon Scotts, Cabbages & Kings,
Gene Veldhuisen, Lilly Tunley, Lucola Bang,
Pockets, Taxidermy Hall, That Gold Street Sound
(including for seven-inch vinyl), Fabien Toonen,
Tom Lee-Richards, Zulya & The Children of the
Underground (mixed by Myles Mumford), and Jane
McArthurs ongoing 12 Months 12 Songs series.

in the studio, and the single Foolish mastered

byLeon Zervos. Leon also mastered Kooky
Eyes, the second single fromThe Jungle Giants
forthcoming albumSpeakerzoid, and The Silver
Lake Chorusdebut album. When It All Bleeds
Outby Mt Warning wasmixed byJordan Power
and mastered byBen Feggans. And Steve Smart
has mastered the first single from the debut album
byCity Calm Down, Rabbit Run, as well as I For
An Eye by Brisbane indie-rockersWAAX. Simon
Todkill was on the boards mixing international star
Charli XCXsSpotify Live Session.

STUDIOS 301

APHEK STUDIO

Studios 301 in Sydney is rubbing shoulders with

some elite peers as part of the Converse Rubber
Tracks campaign. The gist is that a bunch of
aspiring musicians will be given the chance to
record at one of 12 global landmark studios. So
301 is listed in company with Abbey Road, Sunset
Sound and Tuff Gong in Kingston, Jamaica. More
news on which artist it will be, coming soon.
In regular 301 news, YuckbyAlpinewas mixed

Greg Dixons been recording a single for Charlie

Crook, with Anton Hagop producing. Anton
particularly enjoyed playing Gregs new custom
shop Martin acoustics, which he put to good use
on the A-side. They recorded material for a 70s
concept band and continued work on ongoing
projects for both R.B. Brown and Ric Thomas. The
studios new Reddi valve DI has been a popular
addition enjoyed by visiting bassists.

STU

O FOCUS

Studio 52 has undergone some updates recently,

with major improvements to Studio C. The studio
has been extended with a new drum room,
vocal isolation booth and amp isolation room.
Previously, Studio C was mainly for soloists and
electronic production, but now the studio can
handle whole bands just like Studio A and B. The
new drum booth has a very modern, bright sound,
complementing the palette of unique sounds
offered by each drum booth in Studio 52. Studio
52 uses a combination of SE, Audio-Technica and
Sennheiser microphones along with TLA valve mic
preamps for drum recordings.
Anna Mannering recorded her song Son Of
Korah at Studio 52 late last year and recorded a
music video with Brendan OShea. She has just
been announced as a finalist in the US-based
Unsigned Only 2015 song competition.
This is the 19th year of the Kool Skools Project
for Studio 52 and Music Feeds in Sydney has
again been hired to deliver the NSW recordings
with around 40 albums between them. Over 700
albums have been recorded as part of the project
since 1997. Some of the artists who have come
through the project include Missy Higgins, Cat
Empire, Delta Goodrem, Jordie Lane, Kelebek, Axle
Whitehead, Dean Geyer, Marc Collis and Natasha
Duart to name just a few.
New to the mic locker at Studio 52 are a pair
of 4400As and aT2 from sE and theyre loving
them. The 4400s are being used as drum overheads
in the new Studio C drum room and the T2 is on
bass instruments and guitar cabs, even lead vocals.
www.studio52.com.au

AT 13

As of September, Canberra will have a new

studio on the scene. ACT-based producer
Sam King will be opening his new recording
space Merloc Studios. King is no stranger to
the local music scene in Canberra, over the
last 12 years hes toured and performed with
The Ellis Collective, Mr Fibby and Burrows.
Recording has always been a passion too,
starting off as a wet-behind-the-ears 14-year
old with a four-track cassette recorder. Up
until now, King had been honing his craft in
his home studio, producing records for artists
such as Owen Campbell, Julia & The Deep
Sea Sirens and Cracked Actor. With enough
jobs under his belt to warrant an expansion,
King set about constructing Merloc Studios,
which has taken two years to finish. But
worth it. One of my main objectives in the
design of the Merloc Studios was for it to be
the kind of space that inspired you to want to
play music, said King. I wanted it to have all
the industry standard functionality and also
be an aesthetically pleasing space. And the
nations capital will be the better for it.

IO OCUS

www.merlocstudios.com

THE WICK

Mondo Rock returned to Wick Studios big

rehearsal room in July, with Jon Lemon (Beck,
Pink Floyd, Nine Inch Nails) taking FOH
responsibilities. Jon was very impressed with
the unique facility: Having regularly worked in
rehearsal studios in London, LA, NYC over the
past 35 years, I was extremely impressed with
Wick Studios facilities; from the smallest rooms
to the biggest, the quality of audio gear and the
great care and consideration of the acoustics in all
rooms is exceptional.
Studio A is an excellent space to work in for
preparing for shows or tours, having the separate
control room with enough space in it to set up a
front of house control rig is brilliant, not to mention
being able to use the PSI monitoring system which
certainly made it easy for me to transfer my mix
into the live arena post-rehearsal.
I was also aware it would have been easy to
setup a small PA in the main live room along with
the band if you wanted to, as there is so much
space there. Wick has done a world class job from
my perspective.
Mondo Rock are touring the country on their
Besto Mondo Tour with special guests Mi-Sex.
SAE

SAE audio and film students and staff joined forces

with Brisbane indie-rock band Royales at this
years SAE Open Day to record and shoot a new
AT 14

track. Aspiring audio engineers, producers and

filmmakers got a first-hand glimpse into whats
involved in pulling together a video recording
and to see a live edit broadcasted through the
tricaster. Brisbane lecturers Conor Roberts, Simon
Temple and Scott Hamilton were the brains trust
behind the collaboration.
SAE Brisbane students have been working
closely with live mystery game craze, Escape Hunt
Brisbane, to create a soundtrack for a new game
based on one of the most notorious prisons in
Australian history, Boggo Road Jail. SAE lecturer
Rose Parker designed the student project and says
staff at Escape Hunt Brisbane are pretty impressed
with the first production draft.
On a more classical note, SAE audio students
are wrapping up production on their second
album for jazz virtuoso Bart Stenhouse, from the
NSW Northern Rivers. Students took a lead role
in planning and executing the production. Bart
will be performing on Saturday 10 Octoberat
SAE Institute.
SAE Melbourne lecturer and synth enthusiast,
Nick Wilson gathered an auspicious collection
of vintage, pre-MIDI equipment at Synthposium
in August. The event was also an opportunity
for students, staff and visitors to get up close and
personal with some of the countrys leading synth
experts including keys player with The Models,
Andrew Duffield, dance pioneer Dave Carbone,
Melbourne musician Shags Chamberlain and

tonmeister Les Craythorn, who recently renovated

the rare Synthi100 modular synth.
CRYSTAL MASTERING

Records tweaked at Crystal Mastering include

those for HorrorShow,
Undertow, Clint Hogardt (mixed by Geko),
Basement Spaceman, Rattlincane, Kevin Cassey,
Riot Kingdom and Creatures from the Bog.
Indigenous hip hop was also mastered by engineer
Joe Carra for the acts Red Dust and The Indigenous
Hip Hop Project.

GENERAL NEWS
SMPTE 2015: HANDS ON WITH AVID S6L
Report: Mark Davie
Even though Avid has pencilled a tentative release
date for the S6L around the North American
winter, its still got a long way to go around the
software development merry-go-round. At
SMPTE 2015 in Sydney when Gil Gowing, Avids
Manager of Pro Audio Solutions Design, gave
AudioTechnology a rundown of the live systems
current state, he described it as being in a preAlpha stage at least two more Greek letters
before anyone outside of Avid gets their hands
on it. Theres still plenty of scope for firmware
refinements as many things arent locked down; a
few times I asked what a button does, and Gowing
would respond, not sure yet, were still deciding.
The hardware is pretty much ready to go though.
And the first thing you notice is how compact
the surface is. Some of the feedback we got from
customers was they wanted a compact surface, but
with a lot of control, said Gowing. We wanted to
make the experience very rich in visual feedback,
but the navigation had to be fast and intuitive
for people to walk up and use it. The tri-angled
layout of the S6L surface kicks up the monitors to
almost vertical, putting them and the knobs within
easy reach. The ergonomics feel spot on, making
movements on a flat-topped Profile seem stretched
by comparison.
The master section touchscreen allows you to
navigate and route the console with ease, and a
universal bar at the bottom of the screen displays
whats on the console surface. Gowing also says
youll be able to create fader layouts made up of any
input, output, bus or matrix, and put them in any
order something that seems a given, but not all
manufacturers allow.
TOUCH & YOULL TURN

The S6L is similar to Avids S6 studio control

surface mini LCDs connected to knobs, and
global colours tweaked for live sound and
without the gloss finish. The four channel encoders
initially display a set of most used parameters per
channel, things like input gain and compressor
threshold. There are a few different ways to spill
channel parameters across all the encoders, either
via the touchscreen, paging through, or using the
channel select buttons in tandem with function
buttons that display parameter modules.
There are three options, two 24-fader variants
one with touchscreens over all three fader
buckets, and a cheaper version with only a master
touchscreen and a 32-fader version with all its
touchscreens. Gowing reckons once people get a
feel for how the touchscreen integrates with the
workflow, theyll see the value in the touchscreens
above each channel bank. Its undoubtedly faster
to work on the console with them there, though
its more touch and turn no touch and dragging
EQ parameters, for instance. While its possible for
screens to be added later, Gowing was unsure at
this stage whether Avid will offer that option.
One option Gowing said you can hang your
hat on, is a promised Thunderbolt recording
AT 16

expansion card. Out of the box, you can record 64

channels directly to you Macbook Pros ethernet
port over AVB double the Firewire option card
for the Profile. Shortly after the S6L starts shipping,
Gowing promises a Thunderbolt card will ship that
will quadruple that channel count to 256 all at
96k without having to buy an extra Pro Tools rig.
96K ALL THE WAY

Which brings us to one of the biggest leaps over

past Venue systems: the S6L system runs at 96k,
without sacrificing any flexibility. The system
comprises three parts; an S6L control surface, an
E6 engine and Stage64 I/O boxes. Initially, there
will be two different engines, running at 32-bit
float. The E6 144 Engine will handle 144 input
channels, 64 buses, LCR output and 16x16 matrix
with full processing.
The E6 192 Engine will handle 192 input
channels, 96 buses, LCR output and 24x24 matrix
with full processing. For the first time, instead of
running everything on the engine via proprietary
DSP cards, Avid has split the processing into a
hybrid system. Theres a core that has dedicated
processing to run the entire console all the
input channels, busing, outputs, matrixes, and all
its processing, said Gowing. Leaving all the AAX
DSP on the cards just for plug-ins. Previously, you
would have to choose how you wanted to configure
the system. If you wanted a certain amount of I/O,
it would leave less chips on the DSP for plug-ins,
and vice versa. Same with buses and graphic EQs, it
was always a tradeoff.
Again, you get the same number of channels, etc
whether youre running at 48k or 96k; no halving
the channel count with a higher sample rate. The
option for a system-wide 48k sample rate is there
for a few reasons; compatibility with older Venue
systems, if youre broadcasting in 48k, or if youre
recording and want to cut down on hard drive
space. Theres no down-sampling into Pro Tools, so
you have to choose one sample rate or the other.
NETWORK EFFECT

The S6L system is connected via AVB ethernet.

As to why Avid chose AVB over something like
Dante? Gowing: Its an open standard. And it has
high ease of use no need to assign IP addresses,
MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

itll just work. Dante and Optocore are proprietary.

Theyre good options, but were keeping them as
just options. Were working with Audinate on a
Dante card for this, that will come out after its
shipped. The S6L will still operate via AVB, but
youll be able to pick off streams and put them onto
a Dante network via an optional card.
Theres no word on latency yet, but like MOTU,
Gowing estimates theyll be under AVB standards
fixed 2ms latency within their system. You can
either chain devices together or use an AVBcompliant switch to implement a star configuration.
While Avid will make recommendations, it doesnt
plan on getting into the IT peripheral business
itself.
I/O EVERYWHERE

The Stage64 box has 64x32 I/O, with new IC mic

preamps from THAT Corp and updated conversion
in keeping with the Euphonix/Avid philosophy
of making it as high quality as possible, without
having a sound, said Gowing. We try to be super
clean, and you can add the colour with plug-ins.
It also features built-in MADI outputs so you can
simultaneously pick off a MADI stream at the box.
At 48k, you can tap two mirrored MADI streams,
allowing you to split off to two different locations
without any extra gear. A new headphone amp
onboard lets you monitor a pair of input or outputs
at a time and troubleshoot the I/O at the rack,
without interrupting the mix workflow. When it
ships, the E6 144 Engine will handle three Stage64s,
and the E6 192 will probably do four, said Gowing.
Eventually well broaden that number. Obviously,
youll only be able to use the number of input and
outputs the engine can handle, but youll be able to
spread I/O across your network and choose where
youre going to get your I/O from. When we ship,
you will be able to use enough I/O to max out your
engines, its just a matter of having the software
bulletproof before we expand that number.
A VENUE IS A VENUE

Gowing was quick to remind me that while the

S6L is a completely new live system, it still runs
on Venue software. Gowing: Its still Venue, but
re-skinned and resized for a 1920x1080 monitor.
Older shows will load up just fine on the S6L.

AVIOM ADDS DANTE

www.aviom.com
Avioms new D400 and D400-Dante A-Net
Distributors are designed to distribute power and
digital audio data to an Aviom personal mixing
system and provide users with an easy, affordable
way to get into Aviom personal mixing for live
performance or recording applications. The
standard D400 has an A-Net input ideal for
those using an analogue input module or a digital
console card as the front end of their system,
while the D400-Dante has Dante I/O instead of
the A-Net input. The D400-Dante allows up to 32

Dante channels to be routed to the personal mixing

system, which makes connecting to a Danteenabled digital console or audio network as simple
as plugging in a Cat-5 cable. Up to eight personal
mixers can be connected to each D400 or D400Dantes A-Net outputs, and an unlimited number
of distributors can be used when creating larger
systems with more than eight performers.
PAVT:
(03) 9264 8000 or sales@productionaudio.com.au

RODE EXCITED, BUY APHEX

Founder and Managing Director of Rode, Peter
Freedman, announced the purchase of the USbased audio technology manufacturer, Aphex.
Founded in the mid-1970s, Aphex has become
one of the big names in the music and broadcast
industries, with products and technologies used
in a wide range of applications for music, film,
video, theatre, gaming and communications.
Growing up in professional audio as I did, I
have always had incredible respect for Aphex.
commented Mr Freedman. Theyve always been
the best in the business at enhancing the recorded
audio experience. David Wiener, Chairman and

CEO of DWV Entertainment, previous owner of

Aphex, added: Aphex is in the best shape ever in
the companys history. I look forward to seeing
Peters exceptional passion and energy focused on
growing Aphex with new products and programs.
Rode is an incredible success story of the modern
audio movement, and now with Aphex in its stable
I am excited to see what will come next. We are
too. Hopefully we can all get excited about some
Big Bottom coming our way. For now, Aphex will
continue to trade as usual.
Rode:
(02) 9648 5855 or info@rode.com

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

AT 17

AKGS MINIATURE MICS

www.akg.com/pro

TASCAM 64-TRACK RECORDER

$3499 | www.tascam.com

According to AKG, and card-carrying theatre professionals,

smaller is better when it comes to wearable microphones.
The MicroLite series is AKGs new line of miniature reference
microphones. Ideal for broadcast, theatre and conference
applications, the series includes lavalier, ear-hook and
headworn options that provide comfort and flexibility, as well
as moisture resistance and EMC protection. The LC81 MD is a
cardioid lavalier microphone designed to be as inconspicuous
as possible with a diameter of 4.8mm, length of 10mm and
a weight of just 2g. The LC82 MD has an omnidirectional
capsule, making it ideal for musicals, theatre, churches, and
large-format presentations. The EC81/EC82 and HC81/
HC82 are ear-hook microphones engineered for accurate,
specific placement, and are available with both cardioid and
omnidirectional capsules. A variety of accessories are available
with the MicroLite series, including wire-mesh protection caps,
foam windscreens, lavalier clips, and perspiration and makeup
protectors.

Tascam has introduced the DA-6400, its new 64-track recorder ideal for
applications such as live recording, event capture, multichannel playback,
or even as a backup to critical DAW sessions. The DA-6400 records up to 64
tracks at 24-bit/48k to an internal, swappable SSD drive. 96kHz recording
is also possible with a limit of 32 simultaneous tracks of recording. On the
rear panel youll find SMPTE timecode, word clock, RS-422, parallel and
Ethernet connections. MADI, Dante and AES/EBU multichannel I/O cards are
supported, and two audio interface slots provide input and output flexibility.
Housed in a 1U rack unit and available with a single or dual/redundant
power supply, the DA-6400 is a flexible and capable solid state recorder for
professional remote tracking.
CMI Music & Audio:
(03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au

Hills SVL:
(03) 9890 7477 or www.hillssvl.com.au

RODE REPORT: IXLR

~$150 (tbc) | www.rode.com/ixlr

JBL 7 SERIES MASTER REFERENCE MONITORS

www.jblpro.com/7series

Having released a mic for just about every conceivable video

recording situation, Rode has been turning its hand to the bits
inbetween to bring up the quality of capture along the way. The
new iXLR takes a few of the conversion lessons from the iXY
iOS mic series, and opens up the process to any mic. The iXLR
is a little box that connects to the end of any XLR microphone,
like Rodes Reporter mic, and converts its output to digital
specifically to funnel into a Lightning connector-equipped iOS
device. Its a simple gadget, not much wider than an XLR that
has two controls; a switch to boost the level of dynamic mics by
20dB, and a thumb-adjustable headphone volume control that
doubles as a record pushbutton. That, of course, means theres
a headphone output for getting that mouth to mic distance
consistent. In conjunction with iXLRs release later in the year,
Rode has also flagged a new recording app to go with it.

The new 7 Series Master Reference Monitors from JBL Professional are
in production and now shipping. For the 708i 8-inch two-way, and 705i
5-inch two-way installed monitors, JBL has engineered two entirely new
high-excursion 5-inch and 8-inch woofers that give the 708i and 705i robust
low-frequency output into the 30Hz range and peak system output of 113dB
and 107dB respectively. JBLs patent-pending Image Control Waveguide and
crossover work in concert to produce a smooth transition, detailed, spatial
imaging and neutral response. Front-ported birch plywood install-ready
enclosures include bottom and rear-panel mounting points. The speakers are
powered by Crown DCi 8|300N eight and four-channel installation power
amplifiers, and the entire system can be externally controlled using Harmans
HiQnet Audio Architect software, a hardware controller or wireless tablet.

Rode:
(02) 9648 5855 or info@rode.com

AT 18

Jands:
(02) 9582 0909 or www.jands.com.au

AT
T 19

D&B DEMOS ARRAY OF NEW GEAR

National Audio Systems hosted an all-day partner
meeting for its d&b audiotechnik clients on
Tuesday August 25th at Melbournes Festival Hall,
where it showcased new products from d&b and
conducted training on line array processing all
with plenty of listening examples.
The Y-Series point source and array systems
were fired up, letting participants get an ear full
of these Q-Series replacements. The point source
speaker/sub combo was a classic example of it
sounds way bigger than it looks. d&b has made

the most of affordable 3D printing to iterate

impressive looking new waveguides, resulting in
some exquisitely parallel dispersion plots. The 10D
and 30D installation amplifiers were introduced,
both with d&b DSP onboard as well as GPIOs and
system status monitoring capabilities. The 10D is
designed for use with the smaller systems while
the 30D will drive any d&b system you pair it with.
The xC column speakers were looking anorexic
next to the Y-Series and J-Series flown line
arrays, but an acoustic track played through them

proved they were no sonic weaklings. The new

Max2 wedge was also on display, set up with a
SM58 and mixer to give the soundies a chance to
count to two to their hearts content and evaluate
the speakers sound dispersion and response to
feedback. The session was seen out with a groundshaking demo of the J-Series array and J-Subs,
leaving many to question whether theyd ever
heard Festival Hall sound so good.
National Audio Systems:
(03) 8756 2600 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au

INTEGRATE: dLIVE, Si, F1, REDLINE & MORE

With over 100 new products released at Integrate this year, there was a lot
to explore and discover over the course of the three-day-long exhibition.
Primarily an AV integration show, with big players in the audiovisual industry
like Panasonic, LG, Sony, Extron and Samsung making their presence known
on the floor, there was also a good representation of audio companies bringing
some exciting new products to Australia for the first time.
Among the noteworthy releases was the new flagship console from Allen &
Heath, the dLive . Having made a favourable impression in the digital mixer
market with its iLive lineup, A&H extends its reach with dLive by doubling
(hence the d) several of the features from the iLive series 128 inputs, 64
outputs, two 12-inch screens and 96k sample rate.
While there wasnt a huge amount of pro audio gear on show at the Jands
booth, the Soundcraft Si Impact made enough of a splash to carry the load.
Now available in Australia, this 40-input mixer is an affordable digital desk
candidate that boasts some well thought-out features separate knobs for
AT 20

every EQ band, Lexicon effects onboard, dynamics processing by dbx, and

Soundcrafts FaderGlow for enhanced visual indication of groups.
Big news at the Bose booth was the F1 Model 812 Flexible Array system.
Feeding off the design of the L1 series, the F1 features an active 8 x 2.25-inch
loudspeaker and accompanying subwoofer the standout feature being you
can shape the vertical dispersion pattern of the loudspeaker by angling the
driver units to suit the venue. See Mark Woods review in this issue for more.
PAVT had the new Redline series of active loudspeakers by EAW on display.
The RL12 and RL15 are separate two-way 1,250W 12-inch and 15-inch
speakers with trapezoidal enclosures, and joining them was the RL18S 18inch subwoofer with EAWs DynO DSP. Australis had a complete wall of
Turbosound speakers on display, sitting each model in a giant version of an
IKEA bookshelf so you could check out the amplifier/DSP panels on the rear.
Videos from Integrate of the A&H dLive, Soundcraft Si Impact and Bose F1
can be seen at the AudioTechnology website or YouTube channel.

DIGICO S21 GETS GROUP WELCOME

Group Technologies unofficial Integrate sideshow
was a welcome chance for past and prospective
clients to clap their eyes on the all-new Digico
S21 console and revel in Groups hospitality. At
headquarters, Group had set up highlights from its
high-end PSI Audio range of monitors with a single
armchair front and centre for anyone that wanted
to get personal with these gobsmackingly good
monitors. Also in the listening room lineup were
Quests latest IP67-rated line of speakers . The
MX series is due to go into production towards the
end of the year and shows a level of sound quality
you dont typically expect from outdoor speakers.
That was just the warmup for some serious
shootouts at Wick Studios just around the corner.
Group converted the main tracking space into a
mock mini-festival with a small stage at one
end and concert touring rigs flown at the other.
First cab off the rank was the RCF NX series L24A
active columns speaker array. With an onboard
1400W amp and DSP that offers phase alignment,
equalisation and more, there was a lot in a slim
package. Even smaller though was the tiny Coda

Audio compact line array. The two-way TiRay line

array boxes are the size of a lunchbox but dont
sound it. Both the TiRay and TiLow 12-inch bass
extension speakers have integrated rigging systems,
and Codas Ease Focus II simulation software will
get them throwing into all the right places.
Groups technical sales guru Drew Menard then
walked everyone through a handful of monitor
speaker options, with Quests QM series again
impressive for the price. RCF NX co-axial monitors
were set up onstage to reflect a bands live mix and
had plenty of mid-range power, and Nexos 45n12
curvilinear floor monitors really showed off their
controlled dispersion.
Turning to the other end, Nexos new Geo
M6 compact line array uses some of Nexos STM
smarts. A single NXAMP can power up to 12
boxes, which also happens to be the maximum
hang per side. The M620 full-range box can be
flown alongside the M6B sub box with only a
slight difference in the boxs rim giving it away. The
polyurethane cabinets mean these boxes are light
weight but incredibly rigid with no resonances

even at battlespeed. Speaking of battlespeed, the

last demonstration was a variety of Nexo STM
configurations, including a hang of the newer
Omni module. The highlight being no noticeable
tonal difference between light program and a
full-blown pin-you-ears-back playback of Killing
in the Name Of, thanks to the processors built-in
compensation.
After the speaker demonstrations, we were treated
to a guided walkthrough of the Digico S21 . Its
a whole new GUI that looks a lot less busy than
the SD series, wihtout sacrificing much in the
way of functionality. The work surface is similarly
sparse, with new multi-touch features keeping
a lot of control onscreen. The software, which is
built in Unix instead of Embedded XP, is still in
beta but already felt pretty stable in use and looked
graphically smoother than its bigger siblings.
Check out our video online at audiotechnology.
com.au for Drews walkthrough, including the
impending connectivity options.
Group Technologies:
(03) 9354 9133 or sales@grouptechnologies.com.au
AT 21

REVIEW

AUDIO-TECHNICA SYSTEM 10

Portable Camera-Mount Wireless System

Its a hot market for hot-shoe mounted
microphones and Audio-Technica has
miniaturised its System 10 wireless
series to fit the mould.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Preshan John

Ah, the DSLR, our least favourite of audio-capable contraption. So

good at video, so lousy at audio. Thankfully, theres loads and loads
of audio manufacturers willing to help out. Case in point, AudioTechnica, which has released a hot-shoe connecting ENG-style wireless
system that wont break the bank. Of course, itll fit more sophisticated
cameras too, but we all want that nice bokeh on the cheap.
Audio-Technica has placed the same 2.4GHz technology as its
desktop System 10 receiver into a portable camera-mount body.
Notably, the bodypack and handheld transmitters are the same. The
system on review comprised a bodypack transmitter, camera-top
receiver and lapel microphone.

screwdriver. The sound quality itself is pretty good and held its own up
against a pricier counterpart by Shure, albeit with less finesse in the highs.
It certainly does the trick for spoken word applications or wherever else
youd use a lapel mic; recording a live speaker or presenter, for example.
Recorded voice was reproduced with clarity and a pleasant midrange
when we recently took it out for a spin on a tradeshow floor.
On the odd occasion youre channeling your inner La Blogotheque and
using it on anything other than vocals, a test recording with an acoustic
guitar and vocal revealed better-than-expected results. Securing the
microphone in a useful spot without some kind of rigging contraption is
the hard part.

PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT

WELCOME RECEPTION

Lifting the units out of the box, the lightweight transmitter and receiver
didnt quite feel like theyre built for a strenuous lifetime of performing
field-recording duties. Nonetheless the plastic construction is neat,
compact and ergonomic. The light weight of the receiver actually works
in its favour. The last thing you want sitting on top of a heavy DSLR is
another heavy chunk of metal especially if youre shooting hand-held.
Although light, there is a certain chunkiness to the system. The
transmitter is about double the size of the top of the line Shure
miniatures. The lapel microphone is similarly large. No amount of sewing
it into clothes will disguise this loud and proud lapel.
The initial set-up of the mic/receiver was simple. The receiver charged
up in a couple of hours via micro-USB cable and the transmitter was
ready to go with two new AA batteries. The internal rechargeable battery
is a neat touch, but if youve forgotten to charge it theres no recourse to
switch to a standard alkaline. Simultaneously powering on both units
saw them connect immediately and autonomously but there is a Pairing
button on the receiver as well.
The System 10 provides a very healthy output level, and there is a level
control on the bodypack that can be adjusted with an included mini

In operation, the System 10 is very stable. The dual antenna diversity

transmission/reception keeps the audio stream clear and uncorrupted.
I didnt experience any dropouts or loss of connection, even with two
rooms and three walls between the receiver and mic. The receiver features
Peak and Pair indicator lights, and theres an LCD with readouts of the RF
signal level, receiver and transmitter battery level, and System ID. Theres
also a 3.5mm monitor output with level control very useful when you
need to check that the mic is hearing what its supposed to.
There are two stages of attenuation available on the receiver (-10dB ,
-20dB), and a switch for either a balanced or unbalanced (dual mono)
output. Unfortunately there is no high-pass filter option and this really
limits its outdoor applications, as the mic is quite prone to wind noise,
plosives, and any kind of rumble in general.
At $599, the System 10 is on the cheaper end of the scale for wireless
video microphones, but you do get pretty good bang for your buck.
If your interest in video recording has grown to where you crave an
improvement over your cameras internal microphone quality, the AudioTechnica System 10 is certainly worth considering.

PRICE
$599
CONTACT
Technical Audio Group:
(02) 9519 0900 or
info@tag.com.au

AT 22

PROS
Easy to set up
Good sound quality
Lightweight

CONS
No high-pass lter
A little chunky

SUMMARY
While there are higher quality alternatives, the System 10s price point and ease of
use make it a good choice as a wireless recording option for video, whether it be
your rst wireless mic product, or as a backup to your current system.

Authorised Apogee Pro dealers

NSW
Guitar Factory 02 9635 5552
Mall Music 02 9905 6966
Sound Devices 02 9283 2077
Sounds Easy 02 8213 0202
Turramurra Music 02 9449 8487
Strore DJ 02 9993 0758

QLD
Bris Sound 07 3257 1040
Guitar World 07 5596 2258
Totally Technical 07 3270 1111
Strore DJ 07 3099 6916
ACT
Better Music 02 6282 3199

distributed by

VIC
Awave 03 9813 1833
Factory Sound 03 9690 8344
Mannys 03 9486 8555
Soundcorp 03 9694 2600
Strore DJ 03 9912 2858

WA
Concept Music 08 9381 2277
Music Park 08 9470 1020
Kosmic Sound 08 9204 7577
Strore DJ 08 6454 6199
SA
Deringers Music 08 8371 1884

www.sounddistribution.com.au

AT 23

LIVE NEWS

HILLSONG TUNES TO SHURE

MOTUS CROSSOVER BOX

$3495 | www.motu.com

The recent sell-off of bandwidth by the Australian Federal

Government meant a lot of work for some; checking for
compliance and replacing equipment that is now unreliable or
illegal to operate. For Hillsong Church, it was also an opportunity
to evaluate the current market offerings in radio microphones
and in-ear monitors before they replaced inventory across their
several locations in three states. Hillsong services are verbally and
musically dynamic, with worship leaders, singers and musicians all
relying on their radio devices to get their message heard, and with
clarity and reliability. Across Hillsongs locations, the technical
team decided on a combination of Shure UHF-R, ULX-D, and
QLX-D radio microphones, along with PSM 300, PSM 900, and
PSM 1000 in-ear monitors. Weve gone to ULX-D in all campuses
except Baulkham Hills, where weve stayed with UHF-R,
Facilities Project Manager, Steve Le Roux, elaborated. Most main
campuses run around 14 channels of IEM, six MC mics, and six
vocal mics. Our 12 satellites usually run about six channels total.
Jands provided extensive support to Hillsong during the rollout,
including RF engineering to ensure correct frequency allocation
per site and region.

MOTU is releasing a product that blurs the line between whats

a studio or stage-specific device. The new Stage-B16 is a flexible
stage box, stand-alone mixer and audio interface. Housed in a 2U
rack enclosure, it features onboard DSP with modelled vintage
compression and effects, USB2.0/3.0 compatibility and conversion
up to 192kHz. On the front youll find 16 mic inputs with digitally
controlled preamps and phantom power, eight XLR analogue
outputs, four channels of AES/EBU connectivity and a headphone
connection. MOTUs web app software runs on your favourite
browser on a laptop, and provides complete control over the
Stage-B16 in whichever application you choose to use it. Or you
can hook it up to a wi-fi router using the Ethernet port and control
it wirelessly with a smartphone or tablet. A second Stage-B16 can
be connected via Ethernet cable and more I/O can be added with
the MOTU AVB switch (sold separately).
Network Audio Solutions:
(02) 9525 2088 or www.networkaudio.com.au

Jands:
(02) 9582 0909 or www.jands.com.au

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

The

QUICK
MIX

with

Tim Millikan
Interview: Neil Gray

Who have you been touring with lately?

Gurrumul, and Ive been busy with Rockwiz.
Who have you worked with in the past?
Midnight Oil, INXS, The Cruel Sea, Paul Kelly, Crowded House, Neil
Finn, The Divinyls.
How long have you been doing live sound?
I got started mixing my brothers bands 35 years ago.
You favourite console?
It would be the Midas XL4 for sheer sonic quality.
Favourite piece of kit?
The Lexicon 480L is the best reverb in the world. It sounds great
on everything.
Most memorable gig?
Ive been lucky to see and mix so many amazing artists over the
years, but had the perfect show with Midnight Oil one night at Irvine
Meadows in California. Everything fell into place straight out of the
AT 24

ZED NOW WITH POWER

$2299 | www.allen-heath.com

D&B MAKES POINT OF V SERIES

www.dbaudio.com

Allen & Heath has extended its well-known ZED series with the
launch of ZED Power 1000, a compact 2 x 500W powered mixer
with onboard FX, nine-band graphic EQ and USB recording/
playback. The amplifier addition is a two-channel, Class D type
coupled to a linear power supply designed with robustness,
high peak headroom and smooth bottom end in mind. The
two amplified outputs can be used as a stereo PA or mono plus
monitor/sub setup. The ZED Power 1000 has eight mic/line inputs,
each with three band EQ, plus two stereo inputs. Two of the jack
inputs can be switched to accept a low level input from a guitar,
allowing you to go without a DI. The USB connection allows
playback to/from a computer for capturing stereo recordings of
shows or playing tracks from a laptop. The mixer is also equipped
with XLR main stereo outputs, 60mm faders, a flexible monitoring
section and 16 high quality digital FX. ZED Power 1000 weighs
in at a modest 10.3kg and has a robust carry handle built into the
chassis for easy transport.

d&b has injected some tech into the humble point-source speaker.
Building on the three-way passive design of the just below
J V-Series line array modules, d&b Audiotechniks V7P and
V10P point source boxes house two 10-inch drivers in a dipolar
arrangement with a rear mounted 8-inch MF driver attached to a
dual chamber horn. The exits from this horn design create another
dipole around the centrally mounted 1.4-inch compression driver.
In typical d&b fashion, the V series dispersion plots are super
straight, holding the 75-degree wide dispersion of the V7P, and
110-degrees of the V10P, constant down to around 350Hz. Both
have 40 degree vertical dispersions. The V series LF venting
arrangement also extends frequency response down 59Hz,
meaning it can stand on its own. But for true extension down low
in ground-stacked applications, the new passive cardioid V-GSUB
is an ideal companion. It shares the same specs as the VSUB and
only requires one amp channel to drive it.
National Audio Systems:
(03) 8756 2600 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au

Technical Audio Group:

(02) 9519 0900 or info@tag.com.au

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

blocks; huge crowd, band absolutely red was just one of those
special nights.
How has your mixing setup changed in the last 15 years?
Probably having the freedom to nesse things a little more with the
introduction of digital consoles. Im not sure if Ive actually changed
the way I do things, its more the layout of my console thats changed.
When digital came in and people discovered plug-ins, everyone
wanted to use everything; your entire night was spent chasing your
tail trying to keep everything under control. I use very few plug-ins
these days, but being able to run a chain of plug-ins is extremely
handy when required. For example, I like using a Waves C4
Multiband compressor along with a VEQ4 and then into a Fairchild
on my main vocal, I just seem to get the clarity and warmth Im after
with that combination.
Whats been game-changing over the last 15 years?
Im not sure if there has been any one feature or piece of gear thats
made a discernible dierence for me. Maybe having versatility

within speaker manufacturers lines. For instance, L-Acoustics and

d&b both have small-, medium- and large-size cabinets. Being able
to use say d&b Q series in theatres and still have the same voicing
as the J-line means my mixes are more consistent from theatres to
arenas and festivals.
How have your working methods changed?
They havent it must be the highest quality audio I can produce
from the rst bar of the rst song. We have the tools to do this now;
audio should not be hit or miss.
Any tips or words of wisdom for someone starting out?
Its all about the vocal, thats where the information of a song is; the
vocal must be pristine. Its no good having the greatest kick drum
sound if the vocal is buried.
Volume does not equal talent. Use your ears, not the screen. If it
sounds wrong, it is wrong. Trust your ears, its the one thing we all
have in common, whether youre an engineer or not, people all hear
through the same interface.
AT 25

SOFTWARE NEWS

ACCUSONUS ERA-D
US$299 | www.accusonus.com

WAVES NEW GEM

US$99 | www.waves.com

Ever had to part with a perfect recording of a musicians moment

of true inspiration, all because it was contaminated by some
unwelcome noise and reverb? Accusonus has released ERA-D,
a plug-in with a simple and straightforward user interface that
manages noise and reverb problems quickly and effectively.
The patented technology in the software analyses information
from multiple microphones when available, and explores the
multichannel information to better suppress reverb and/or noise.
A number of tools on the market require that you deal with noise
and reverberation issues separately, lengthening and complicating
workflow. ERA-D differs in that it simultaneously removes both
noise and reverberation in the one plug-in. Set to be a good tool
for studio mixers and post-production engineers alike.

Saphira is the first plug-in from Waves new Cobalt series. Its
tagline being Analog that only Digital can achieve. And where
better to start than that analogue buzzword, harmonics. Saphira is
an advanced harmonics shaping tool to give your tracks analogue
musicality, depth and glue. It allows you to separately adjust both
even and odd harmonics with the Edge and Warmth controls. It
also features a four-band EQ, seven different harmonics modes
with graphical representations of each, and five tape speeds for
adding wow and flutter. Waves reckons we use glue wrongly,
talking about compression, when its more often the compressors
added harmonics. The proof is in the pudding, it seems. Cobalt
Saphira lets you directly control your harmonics without
compression, helping to glue your tracks and turn them into a
more cohesive mix with more depth. Demo it at home and see if
Waves is on the money.
Sound & Music:
(03) 9555 8081 or sales@sound-music.com

IKS LIMITER MAY SURPRISE YOU

124.99 | www.ikmultimedia.com

KLANGHELM FREEBIE
Free | www.klanghelm.com

The T-Racks Stealth Limiter by IK Multimedia is an ultratransparent mastering inter-sample peak limiter, pitched as a
versatile sonic ninja of a mixing and mastering tool. Its new
smart level-tracking algorithm works to reduce levels below
the volume ceiling moment-by-moment instead of applying
traditional look-ahead, envelope-based fast attack compression;
resulting in increased transparency and perceived dynamic range.
The plug-in has the straightforward controls youd expect from a
limiter, with four modes that can be used for different mastering
purposes: Tight, Balanced and Harmonics 1 & 2. It also features an
infrasonic filter that, when engaged, cuts out unwanted sub-bass
frequencies from your mix that could overwork the limiter
thats some really low cut.

Audio plug-in developer Klanghelm has put out a vibey little

compressor called the MJUC jr the little brother of the colourful
MJUC. Modelled with a variable-mu design, its designed to
handle both smooth levelling and heavy-handed pumping. It has
two gain stages and interstage transformer simulation, offering
a deep and lively soundstage. The three-position timing switch
not only controls the attack and release times of the unit, but also
the slew rate of the transformers and the timing of other parts
of the circuitry that directly influence the generated harmonics.
Derived from Mk 1 and Mk 2 of its big brother MJUC, the
MJUC jr. is supposed to combine the natural, dense compression
characteristics with the more forward-sounding and harmonically
driven signature of the vari-mu compressors of the early 1960s.

Sound & Music:

(03) 9555 8081 or sales@sound-music.com

AT 26

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

SHAPE
YOUR
SOUND

Bose F1 Model 812 Flexible Array Loudspeaker

1 speaker. 4 coverage patterns.

STRAIGHT

REVERSE J

Introducing the first portable loudspeaker that lets you easily control the
vertical coverage so wherever you play, more music reaches more people
directly. The Bose F1 Model 812 Flexible Array Loudspeakers revolutionary
flexible array lets you manually select from four coverage patterns, allowing
you to adapt your PA to the room. Plus, the loudspeaker and subwoofer
provide a combined 2,000 watts of power, giving you the output and impact
for almost any application. Your audience wont believe their ears.

F1.Bose.com.au | 1800 659 433

2015 Bose Corporation.

GUITARISTS BIAS FOR DESKTOP

US$99 | www.positivegrid.com

REAPING NEW BENEFITS

From US$60 | www.reaper.fm

Positive Grid, creator of the BIAS amp guitar amp modeller, has
announced the release of BIAS FX desktop. BIAS FX Desktops
dual amp mode replicates the tone of two real amps set up
together, and its dual signal chains provide two fully independent
effect paths running in parallel. Effects are plentiful with both
modern and classic items such as digital, spring, and stereo delays,
tube screamers, fuzz, tremolo and more. And when integrated
with BIAS Amp (available separately), users can select a different
preamp, power amp, cab, mic and EQ for each. Users can also
download any Amp Match models from BIAS Amp, capture any
real amp tone, and run them in dual amp configurations to create
a flexible amp tone creation tool. ToneCloud allows musicians to
share and download thousands of user and artist rigs right from
the cloud. Worth checking out if youre a recording or performing
guitarist, or if you just enjoy a fun jam session.

The popular and affordable DAW Reaper has just released its latest
version for Windows and OS X. Reaper 5 features some valuable
additions on top of the usual recording, editing, processing,
mixing and mastering toolset. Among the most notable of these
changes are VST3 plug-in support, allowance for up to 512
channels of I/O with ASIO, improved performance and lower
CPU usage, and big improvements to video support. Version 5
also has much improved automation functionality in the areas of
MIDI/OSC learn support and FX parameter automation. Reaper
contains hundreds of studio-quality effects for processing audio
and MIDI, and built-in tools for creating new effects. If youve
never used Reaper before, you can try before you buy with a 60day free trial. From then on, you can purchase the DAW from as
little as $60USD, with the price including free software updates up
to version 6.99.

My EMA In Ears sound awesome and have

never let me down over the last 10 years
- Shannon Noll

Custom Moulded and

Generic Fit In-Ear Monitors

Ear Monitors Australia

38 Hall Road,
South Warrandyte
VIC 3134
T: 03 9844 2524
www.earmonitorsaustralia.com

EMA Supporting Australian Touring Artists AUSTRALIA WIDE & INTL SERVICE

AT 28

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

DSD FREE-4-ALL
Free | www.tascam.com

UAD SPRINGS AKG REVERB

US$199 | www.uadio.com

Tascam has released Hi-Res Editor, a free application that supports

up to 11.2MHz DSD files or 384k WAV. The software allows
playback and export of DSD files without intermediate conversion
to PCM audio, and is available as a download for Windows
from the Tascam website. DSD Audio can be played natively
through supporting USB devices such as the TEAC UD-501 and
HA-P90SD. In cases where a PCM interface is used, or even the
computers built-in audio, the software automatically plays DSD
back through the interface at any available sample rate. A section of
the DSD file can be exported as a new file, either in DSD or WAV
format, to separate a long recording into individual tracks. Two
DSD files can also be combined into a new file, for example when a
file over 2GB is divided. DSD audio can be converted to PCM, and
vice-versa, for burning to CD or online distribution. In addition,
Hi-Res Editor can edit the gain level for WAV format audio.

Universal Audio has released a plug-in version of the AKG BX20

spring reverb unit. The original, released in the late 1960s, was
known for its thick and dense sonic character featuring the quick
onset of a classic plate reverb and also the natural-sounding
density and diffusion of a chamber with minimal flutter thats
typical of other spring reverbs. The AKG BX20 plug-in by UAD
provides the sound and features of the original hardware, plus
other features for added flexibility. You can now stereoize tank A
or tank B, giving you more balanced stereo imaging. The Direct
function allows you to mute the tanks direct signal, giving you
more control and minimising conflict with the original source
audio. According to UAD, the BX20 envelops your sources in
gorgeously dark, dense ambience that only spring reverb can
provide. The plug-in has been exclusively endorsed by AKG and is
for use with UAD-2 hardware and Apollo interfaces.

CMI Music & Audio:

(03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au

CMI Music & Audio:

(03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au

SLATE DIGITAL CUSTOM SERIES BUNDLE

US$149 | www.slatedigital.com

CARBON ELECTRAS DEBUT

63.09 | www.pluginboutique.com

Slate Digitals Custom Series bundle features two plug-ins; EQ and

LIFT. EQ was the result of studying over a dozen classic analogue
EQs and identifying their stand-out attributes. The plan was to
then implement the best of them all in a single plug-in. The boost
and cut for the four EQ bands (high, high-mid, low-mid and
low) each have an analogue hardware inspiration behind them,
yet according to Slate, despite the EQs hybrid nature, youll find
it to be extremely cohesive, intuitive, and really really natural
sounding. LIFT is a two-knob EQ plug-in designed to be simple
to use but extremely musical. Each knob has two settings that
alter its characteristics and how it affects either the high or low
frequencies. Slate Digital claims its a true workhorse processor
that will come in handy more than youll ever imagine.

Carbon Electra is a powerful and intuitive sound-mangling

machine created for Plugin Boutique by Aussie synth nuts Davide
Carbone and Josh Abrahams of S:amplify. Its a four-oscillator
subtractive synth with each oscillator featuring an adjustable pulse
width, frequency modulation and multiple wave types, including
pitch-able noise. It has been developed as an advanced learning
tool, that will be getting a workout at Carbones School of Synthesis,
with an emphasis on programming ease. The displays act as a
comprehensive information tool as well as an accurate guide to
each parameter change. Based on vintage analogue routing, it also
features flexible modulation options including an editable stepper
and note performer. There are six filter types, with drive and
saturation settings for the vocal filter. You also get a pedal chainlike FX section and over 600 presets, including artist presets from
Mike Huckaby, Kosheen, DJ Pierre, Rob Lee and more.

Awave:
(03) 9813 1833 or sales@awave.com.au

AT 30

MORE NEWS AT www.audiotechnology.com.au

LEFT TO RIGHT: PETE COSTELLO, DAVE KELLY, BEN RUUT, NIK BUCHANAN.

WEVE MADE A
SOUND ADDITION
TO OUR COMPANY.
With over 40 years experience in the Music
Industry, Australis Music Group is proud to
expand into the Pro Audio / Install markets.
Led by our newly assembled team of highly
experienced specialists, our aim is to be your
Provider of Choice.
We have the People, the Product and
the Passion.
Contact our team to talk audio!

Unit 10, 163-173 McEvoy St, Alexandria NSW 2015 P (02) 9698 4444
E proaudio@australismusic.com.au W australismusic.com.au

NIS REAKTOR BUILDING BLOCKS

$279 | www.nativeinstruments.com

WAVES GOES ALL EMO

$149 | www.waves.com

Native Instruments has released Reaktor 6 the latest version of

the modular DSP environment thats been at the core of the Native
Instruments brand since its release as Generator in 1996. Reaktor
6 delivers major innovations for instrument builders as well as
being the most approachable version of the software for anyone
interested in deep sound experimentation with the addition of the
new Blocks workflow. Blocks provides the speed and flexibility
of modular synth patching combined with the benefits of working
in the digital domain. Reaktor 6 comes bundled with 30 Blocks
in several categories, each with a specific purpose (see NI site for
more). The world of Blocks is expected to grow as the vibrant
Reaktor community builds and shares new Blocks and Blocks
patches all available for free online at NIs Reaktor User Library.

Plug-in developer Waves has introduced eMo D5, a 5-in-1

dynamics tool thats a gate, compressor, de-esser, leveller and
limiter, all rolled into the one GUI. Made to be a Swiss army
knife dynamics tool for both live and studio engineers, the eMo
D5 boasts zero latency, low CPU consumption and pure sound
quality. The plug-in is the first to utilise Waves new Parallel
Detection technology that allows each of the five processors to
respond to the original signal and to each of the other processed
signals simultaneously the idea being users can have more
control over the dynamics changes introduced by the processors,
ensuring that the final sound achieves better clarity without overcompression. The eMo D5 plug-in also provides a combined gain
reduction metre for the leveller, compressor and limiter for easier
monitoring and level control.

CMI Music and Audio:

(03) 9315 2244 or www.cmi.com.au

Sound & Music:

(03) 9555 8081 or www.sound-music.com

SOLAR-POWERED RECORDING IN MALAWI

www.audient.com
Mobile recording studio, Wired For Sound revisited Malawi this summer
to record young musical talent in the region. On the gear list was
Audients iD22 USB interface and ASP880 8-channel mic pre and ADC.
Three weeks into the third phase of the project, and beset with power cuts
and connectivity issues, they still managed to record 40 local musicians.
Sound engineer Simon Attwell explains how they overcame the
problems with the electricity: We have done all the recordings using our
solar setup built into the vehicle, powering a MacBook Pro, the iD22 and
headphone amp. In fact, we are going solar all the way, using a Studer
200w pure SW inverter. It gives us excellent clean power, free from clicks
or interference.
The iD22s compact design and portability make it ideal for location
AT 32

recording, but this showed its reliability too even when powered
by the sun. Weve also installed two solar powered recording studios
(mirroring our set up two channel interface and laptop powered by
solar panel) in Monkey Bay and in Mchinji.
Out of Wired For Sounds list of recording locations, a jail is possibly
among the most unique: We used the ASP880 in Kachere Youth Prison
in Lilongwe to record the prison band. It was an amazing experience. We
were a bit concerned about getting it all up and running, but it linked
perfectly and we were recording eight tracks within minutes.
Innovative Music:
(03) 9540 0658 or info@innovativemusic.com.au

1300 30 66 70 salesdesk@networkaudio.com.au www.networkaudio.com.au

REGULARS

Watchout!

Following protocol to track the

latest in audio networks.
Column: Paul Doornbusch

Dr Paul Doornbusch is the Associate Dean, Audio

Production Program Leader, at Australian College
of the Arts. Paul loves computers so much, he
reconstructed and documented the music played
by Australias rst computer (CSIRAC) while he was
a composer-in-residence at the Computer Science
department of the University of Melbourne.

audio, we need reliable data delivery or else we get

highly undesirable clicks.
There are a number of systems for running
digital audio over a computer network. CobraNet
and EtherSound are older solutions; Q-Lan, Dante
and Livewire are more recent developments; while
AVB and AES67 are the latest. Lets look at three of
the main players.
DANTE

Im waiting for the day some Elon Musk-type

figures out how to make wireless recording
commonplace. The best weve got so far is Mikme
a product of the little Indiegogo campaign that
could and bandwidth is still a limiting factor
that hasnt been solved. For the immediate future,
audio will be distributed over computer network
cables and equipment.
Its a natural development. The data is already
in digital form and networks and computers are
rapidly increasing in performance. Bandwidth
isnt a problem for ethernet like it is wireless. With
gigabit ports on every new computer, transporting
400+ channels of 24-bit/48k audio over a single
network cable is not unreasonable!
Computer networks work by breaking data into
packets and then using an intricate set of protocols
to get the data packets where they need to go. There
are protocols for many purposes (see sidebar), from
getting and sending email, to requesting webpages,
to streaming video. A little delay here and there
doesnt bother data like emails or webpages. But for
So in the future we may well
see audio networks like this:

The world did not wait around for manufacturers

to build an interoperable system, Audinates
proprietary Dante audio networking solution
basically took over the live sound market because
it works well and is available now. Several
manufacturers announced support for Dante in
their live sound consoles from 2012.
The benefit of Dante is that it works over current
networking equipment, particularly network
switches, because Dante works at Layer 3 of the
protocol stack (see the accompanying sidebar).
Dante offers 512 channels in and 512 channels out
of a device, all at 24-bit/48k, over standard network
cable (CAT5e). The maximum sample rate is 192k
and this reduces the channel count to 128 channels,
still not too shabby!
However, as Dante operates over standard
network equipment it does not guarantee delivery
of packets. Latency is 5ms and can be aligned
across devices for accurate synchronisation, but
this requires careful network management. With
multiple connections, Dante offers click-free

failover to another cable in the event of a fault.

There is also no support for video data in Dante.
Dante, being the oldest of these three, has the
greatest support among manufacturers. The long
list of names includes Yamaha, Midas, Allen
& Heath, Bose, Soundcraft, Lake, Shure, EAW,
Avid, AKG, Audio-Technica, Behringer, DiGiCo,
Focusrite, Extron, QSC, Presonus, SSL, Studer and
more. This makes Dante something of a de facto
standard in audio networking, but there are some
exciting developments on the horizon. Read on.
AUDIO VIDEO BRIDGING

Audio Video Bridging, or AVB, is an open standard

not owned by any single manufacturer. It offers a
more plug-and-play solution and overcomes some
of the limitations of Dante. AVB operates at Layer 2
of the network stack which has several advantages.
On the downside, it needs special hardware an
AVB-capable switch.
AVB allows for 400 bi-directional channels per
device of 24-bit/48k audio data. Significantly, AVB
offers guaranteed delivery of AVB packets with
only 2ms latency. This is achieved with hardware
control reserving up to 75% of the available
network data bandwidth exclusively for AVB
packets. The downside of this is that you cannot
send AVB packets over the internet or between
networks because that sort of data is all controlled
at Layer 3.
However, as utopian as AVB sounds, equipment
has been slow to appear and Dante has increased its

Historical & AES67 Networks:

Q-Lan
Livewire
Ravenna, etc

AES67
Dante Equipment:
Yamaha
Midas
Shure, etc
AT 34

Dante

Stanndard Managed
Network Switches

AES67

AVB Network
Switches

AVB Equipment:
MOTU
Avid
Meyer, etc

STACK O PROTOCOLS

The way computers send information over networks is that each computer
has an address, and packets of information are sent from one address to
another.
Its a bit like sending a cake to someone in separate slices, one slice at a time.
But instead of being able to whack the whole address on the envelope, you
can only put one detail on each. You have to start with their name, then slot
that envelope inside another with the street name and number, then into
another envelope with the city written on it, and lastly, stu it all into a nal
envelope labelled with the state.

little gets lost, or maybe you need all of the cake to arrive in order and none to
get lost, but you dont care if that takes longer. Some network protocols are
faster and less reliable (like UDP, often used for streaming media) and some
are very reliable (like TCP/IP, used for email and web page transmission) and
will resend a packet that gets lost, so that nothing corrupts the message.
The OSI Network Protocol Stack below shows the various logical layers that
are needed to push data around a network. Each of these layers typically
adds header information (the envelope example). Header information is
added as data moves down the stack. At Layer 3 the data is broken into packets, and so on until the data is transmitted over the cable as bits in Layer 1.

Like this:
<envelope state: NSW
<envelope city: Sydney
<envelope street name & number: 49 Flinders St.
<envelope apartment number: 4
<envelope name: Sarah

Host Layers

>
>
>
>
Once the piece of cake gets to NSW, the post oce takes o that envelope
and sends it to Sydney, where that envelope is removed and so on until its
delivered to Sarah. As you can imagine, this adds considerable overhead to
the process and it can get complicated if the pieces of the cake should arrive
out of order.
In computer networks, each application or piece of network equipment adds
an envelope to the packet of data, which is later removed when it has arrived
at the next destination. The Open Systems Interconnection model is a concept that standardises and characterises the communication functions for
computer communication. You can imagine each of the seven layers adding
an envelope with items such as the addresses of the sender and receiver, session for the date, the packet number, the time to live, and for digital audio
data when it should be played.
Network protocols have evolved dierent characteristics. You might want
the cake to get to the destination as quickly as possible and you dont care if a

user base in the meantime. Significantly, Audinate

has said that Dante will support AVB when it is
established. While manufacturer implementations
may be slow in appearing, both Presonus and
MOTU have recently released AVB equipment,
plus Avid and Meyer have had it for a while. Other
manufacturers supporting AVB include Apple,
Crown, Beyerdynamic, DBX, Soundweb London,
Netgear, Cisco, AudioScience and so on.
AES67

The Audio Engineering Society has developed

the AES67 standard for audio-over-IP
interoperability. AES67 is a Layer 3 protocol that
offers interoperability between various competing
audio networking systems, such as Dante, Q-Lan,
Livewire, RAVENNA and so on. It also identifies
common elements with AVB and documents how
it interoperates with AVB.
With AES67 there is an open standard for audio
data over IP. Open standards are good for a number
of reasons, and should result in cheaper equipment
overall. AES67 allows these competing systems
to interoperate, and to get audio data between

Media Layers

Layer Name

Data type Which Layer?

7. Application
From the network process
to the application

Data

6. Presentation
Data representation and
encryption

Data

5. Session
Inter host communication

Data

4. Transport
End-to-end
communication and
reliability

Segments

3. Network
Path determination and IP
(logical addressing)

Packets

Dante
AES67
Q-LAN by QSC
RAVENNA

2. Data link
MAC and LLC (physical
addressing)

Frames

AVB
AES51
CobraNet
EtherSound
SoundGrid
REAC by Roland

1. Physical
Media, signal and binary
transmission over the
cable.

Bits

AES50
A-Net by Aviom
vRockNet by Riedel

networks. So if a connection is made between an

AVB network or product to an AES67 network or
product, then AES67 will allow the audio to be sent
to a Dante network or product!
So in the future we may well see audio networks
like this:
NET EFFECTS

Of course, users drive adoption, and for most

Dante already provides a suitable solution. Dante
is not perfect and users have reported issues such
as clicks and PC firewall issues. Its a new game of
diagnostics with this technology. However, most of
the time it works as intended and it is here now. As
needs change in the future AVB offers some real
advantages and should be easier to manage, use
and debug. AES67 allows the interoperability of
these systems so there is a way forward regardless
of the system you chose (or more likely inherit
somehow). The real world may well see several
of these systems working together because of a
historical mix of equipment.

AT 35

FEATURE

GEARING UP
TO TAKE ON
MONSANTO
To record Neil Young at the famous Teatro, Jon Hanlon linked
up the UA Green and Brown Boards with a Neve BCM10 and
PSM12 into the ultimate DIY large format console.
Feature: Paul Tingen

Artist: Neil Young & Promise of the Real

Album: The Monsanto Years

AT 36

Neil Young an old fogey? With the legendary

musician approaching 70, the description has
been whispered a few times, even if theres too
much respect for the man for most critics to say it
out loud. Theres a peculiar video on YouTube (Neil
Young Shows Haskell Wexler His LincVolt) that
initially seems to confirm the old-fogey angle.
Young baseball cap, T-shirt and scruffy jacket,
sunglasses, heavy sideburns and long hair shows
off his shiny, 1959 Lincoln Continental convertible.
His look has old hippy pasted across it in neon,
and the car itself screams nostalgia, suggesting an
owner firmly rooted in the past.
The devil is under the bonnet though, because
while its easy to miss when Young calls the car an
electric cruiser right at the beginning, a moment
later he explains that its powered in part by a
generator that runs on cellulosic ethanol, a future
fuel made from waste. The more cynical may still
categorise it as an old-hippy pursuit Youngs
an environmentalist, you know. But as the video
progresses and Young shows the gleaming, hyperadvanced technology just underneath the surface of
the Lincvolt, the realisation dawns that the car is, in
fact, totally and utterly futuristic.
The Lincvolt project is initiated and presumably
funded by Young, and its mission statement is
to to inspire a generation by creating a clean
automobile propulsion technology that serves the
needs of the 21st Century and delivers performance
that is a reflection of the drivers spirit. With the
world heating up increasingly fast and mankind
desperately needing to cut its CO2 emissions, it
does not get more forward-looking and relevant
to our times than that. Neil Young undoubtedly is
an old hippy, but he also is far more with the times
than many people a quarter his age. 1-0 to Young in
his tussle with the 21st Century.
YOUNG STAR BUCKS

The same reflections, and conclusion, come to

mind when considering Neil Youngs latest musical
project, his 36th studio album The Monsanto Years.
Youngs 51-minute rant against the Monsanto
multinational company (think Roundup),
Starbucks, and big companies in general hijacking
our democracies and endangering our environment
and our lives, has come in for quite bit of criticism,
ostensibly because the lyrics are too didactic.
These reviews also often have a hint of who does
he think he is to lecture us about anything? And
yet, at a time when news of fast-approaching
Armageddon is dominating newsfeeds everywhere,
the question is far more pertinent why the vast
majority of todays artists take the ostrich-approach
to the Big Issues Of Our Time. Thats Young 2, 21st
Century 0.
Theres more. The Monsanto Years sees Young
team up with a band of youngsters (scuse the
pun), called Promise of the Real, featuring Willie
Nelsons sons Lukas and Micah. Presumably, the
idea is for Young to tap into their youthful energy
and help him connect with a younger generation.
The album was recorded at the Teatro theatre in
Oxnard, a coastal town half an hour north of LA,
where Daniel Lanois set up shop in the late 90s and

recorded and produced classic albums by Willie

Nelson, Bob Dylan, and others.
The Monsanto Years was recorded in typical
Neil Young fashion; quickly, nearly live, full of
rough edges, and to analogue tape using vintage
analogue gear. Yet it turns out that a Pro Tools rig
running at 192k was also involved. So just like the
LincVolt, a combination of vintage and advanced
21st Century technology was used, and the result
sounds downright spectacular; big, panoramic,
energetic, gutsy and very alive. All this surely
helped in prompting sympathetic reviewers to state
that the album sees Young, at his usually defiant,
belligerent and downright hostile best, and on
angry, brilliant form. 3-0 to Neil Young?
SHIP STIRRER

John Hanlon manned the ship during The Monsanto

Years sessions, not only engineering, mixing and
co-producing (with Young) the album, but also
as the projects general organiser, studio designer,
and trouble-shooter. Perhaps its Hanlons old Navy
and/or electronics background, but hes extremely
precise in his recollections, remembering that he
got the first call from Young for The Monsanto
Years project on December 17, 2014, saying that
he wanted to record a new album with Promise
of the Real as backing band at Teatro. Hanlon
was immediately aware that Youngs simple
pronouncement posed some significant challenges.
Its really important for Neil to find a space
where he can set up and be comfortable, explains
Hanlon. That usually means big spaces. Teatro
is a big, empty theatre, with a high ceiling, and
all the seats have been taken out, so the acoustics
are cavernous. We could have worked in tons of
places with better acoustics but Neil had his heart
set on Teatro so it was my job to make the live area
work and build a studio there for him. He wanted
to record there because of the vibe and because of
what the place represents. Particularly the great
records that have been done there, even though it
was with a different producer and 18 years ago.
Also, the band consists of really accomplished
musicians, with whom hed worked at a benefit
earlier in the year, and he wanted to work with
them because theyre fearless and not afraid to go
for things, yet take his lead. This meant that I had
to record six musicians including Neil, which posed
its own problems as we were working all-analogue
with a limited amount of inputs and buses. I had
a ton of work to do in terms of organising the
acoustics, the band set-up and the studio. What
I thought of Teatro did not matter. What was
important was to make it work technically, and
create an atmosphere where Neil can relax, and
just be in the moment inventing and performing
music. If I could achieve that, and Neils happy,
I had a chance of recording great and heartfelt
music. Because thats what its all about, capturing
the moment.
THEATRE TREATMENT

Hanlon elaborated on the considerable amount of

preparation that capturing the moment at Teatro
required. Given that Neils call came just a week

before Christmas, all I could do for the rest of the

month was get on the phone and start lining up
vendors, the acoustic team and so on. I started
readying the recording space the first business
day of the new year, January 5th. I laid down mats
and carpets and put up gobos in the area where
the musicians played to dampen reflections, and
installed large panels against the back wall to
break up the flutter echo. Of course, when the area
filled up with gear it helped as well. The acoustic
crew I had hired came in to work on the control
room, which I had decided to build in the former
projector room upstairs. Its as bad an acoustic
environment as you can have, with a big concave
ceiling that was like the upside down hull of a boat,
so we put clouds and traps up there, in the back
and front, in the corners, and also left and right
of the theatrical space, to turn everything into
listening areas I could trust.

Theyre the sounds I

remember from when I
was growing up in the 90s.
Thats the truest kind of
nostalgia I can find

The acoustic treatments were done in the first

week, while I was installing the gear with Jeff Pinn.
Most of the gear came from Neils studio at his
Broken Arrow ranch. I first worked there on his
album Ragged Glory with producer David Briggs in
1990, using the Record Plant mobile truck. It was
the first time I encountered the 12-input Universal
Audio Green Board. Its an all-valve console, built
in 1965, based around UA 610 mic pre units with
EQ at 100Hz and 10kHz. It sounds great, and was at
one point owned by Brian Wilson. In all I had four
consoles set up in the impromptu control room at
Teatro. From left to right from where I was sitting
they were a suitcase-model Neve PSM12, the Green
Board, another 16-input UA board which we call
the Brass Board, and a Neve BCM10 sidecar. THE
BRASS BOARD IS A SOLID STATE VERSION OF THE GREEN
BOARD, WITHOUT MIC PRES OR EQ, ALL HAND-WIRED WITH
POINT-TO-POINT SOLDERING ONTO A BIG PIECE OF BRASS,
AND ONLY LCR PANNING. I BELIEVE IT WAS HANDMADE FOR
NEIL AROUND 1969.

I also brought in a Pro Tools rig, tons of

outboard, and Neils Studer A827 24-track tape
machine, with a 16-track head block. I had used the
same machine for the recordings of Americana and
Psychedelic Pill (both 2012) but with an 8-track head
AT 37

I had four consoles set up

in the impromptu control
room at Teatro a
suitcase-model Neve
PSM12, the Green Board,
another 16-input UA
board which we call the
Brass Board, and a Neve
BCM10 sidecar.

block. Those albums were done with a four-piece,

but I needed more tracks to be able to record six
musicians. I set up 28-30 microphones at Teatro,
which is not a lot to record a band, but you dont
use stacks of microphones when youre confronted
with the small amount of inputs that I had! I also
set up a PA, mainly so they could hear themselves
singing, and to amplify the percussion. My studio
monitors were PMC IB2s as main monitors and
PMC twotwo.6s as nearfields. I dont EQ bottom
end on small bookshelf speakers, and Neil wants
playback to be as loud as possible when he comes
into the control room with the band. So the IB2s
served a dual function. The ability to check the low
end is crucial for me, because the mid-range and the
top are very affected by the low frequencies.
CAPTURING IMPERFECTION

Setting up the Teatro recording space and studio

took Hanlon and his crew two weeks. Once all the
equipment and acoustic treatments were in place, he
began the second phase of conducting the sessions.
Neil had recorded demos of him singing with an
acoustic guitar at Capitol Studios in LA, with Niko
Bolas and Al Schmitt engineering. I brought a CD
of that in on Monday January 19, for Lucas and the
band to be able to hear the changes and melodies
and lyrics when they came in for the first time. They
also brought a few of their own tunes it was part
of the deal that Id record them playing some of
their own stuff as well. They ran through each of the
eight songs on Neils demos, and a few of their own,
over the course of a week, making sure they didnt
learn Neils songs into the ground, so to speak. Neil
hates it when everybody learns things to the point
that the life goes out of it. A lot of music today has
AT 38

been perfected way too much, which is not human

nature. Neil is into the human condition and into
capturing imperfections.
Having Promise of the Real run through the
songs for a week also allowed Hanlon to perfect
his setup and get the best sounds possible. THE
PRODUCER HAD ONE MORE VARIABLE TO NEGOTIATE,
WHICH IS THAT YOUNG PREFERS TO RECORD AROUND THE
TIME OF THE FULL MOON. With the next new moon

on February 3rd he wasnt expecting Young to

arrive until the end of January, but in fact the main
man turned up on the 26th. Neil came in with
one additional new song, and the band learnt that
very quickly. We went straight for takes after that.
We usually recorded three takes of each song at
the most. Sometimes we got it on the first take. If
we didnt have it in three takes, we took a break
and moved on, then came back to the first song a
few days later. The main thing is for everyone and
everything to stay fresh.
The recording and mixing setup that Hanlon
had built at Teatro sounds straightforward
enough, but the lack of inputs and buses meant a
rather complicated web of signal chains. Using a
16-channel mixing desk without EQ or continuous
panning, plus quirky mix preferences on the part of
Young, required meticulous forethought. Hanlon
went into detail on what was involved, starting
with the microphones right at the beginning of the
signal chains.
Hanlon: The fact that I didnt have many mic
inputs was handy from one perspective, because
the fewer microphones you use, the less phase
errors you are going to introduce into your
recording. I COME FROM A LOVE OF ENGLISH ROCK N
ROLL RECORDS, AND ALL MY MICROPHONE TECHNIQUES

JOHN HANLON BIO

John Hanlon rst worked with Young on Ragged Glory (1990), as an engineer and mixer, and
has since worked on a multitude of other Neil
Young projects, including Weld (1991), Arc Weld
(1991), Unplugged (1993), Sleeps With Angels
(1994), Youngs Dead Man soundtrack for the Jim
Jarmusch lm (1996), Are You Passionate? (2003),
Americana and Psychedelic Pill (both 2012). Having
been trained in electronics in the Navy and worked
in the computer business, Hanlon was hired by a
small lm sound post-production facility in San
Francisco in 1973. He fell in love with tape machines
and studio technology in general, played guitar,
and later moved to LA, where he was a roadie for
several well-known acts, worked as a studio tech
at Record Plant Studios and A&M Studios, and
eventually landed himself a job at the Beach Boys
studio in Santa Monica. He went independent in
the early 1980s, and did a lot of work with producer
David Briggs, known for his pioneering work with
Neil Young. The rest, as Hanlon says, is history,
with much of Hanlons current time being taken up
working at Youngs Broken Arrow ranch, just south
of San Francisco, on the musicians archives. In addition to his work with Young, Hanlon has over the
years also worked with the likes of The Beach Boys,
Cat Stevens, Dennis Wilson, Stephen Stills, R.E.M.,
Jackson Browne, and many others.
ARE BASED ON THOSE BY CHRIS HUSTON, ANDY JOHNS,
EDDIE KRAMER THE GUYS WHO CUT LED ZEPPELIN 2
WHO ALSO USED A LIMITED AMOUNT OF MICS. My whole

concept at Teatro was to try to balance people in

the room as best as possible, even before I put up
any microphones or switched on the PA. I placed
the guitar and bass amps in a semi-circle, with the
drums behind them so the drummer is not getting
the full force of the amps and hearing himself. As
long as you maintain dynamics in the playing area,
you get much better performances.
I recorded the drums with only three mics, using
the Glyn Johns method, with a pair of Neumann
U67s above, at a 90-degree angle from each other
and in front of the kick a Neumann tube 47 with a
large piece of foam to protect the capsule from air
pressure, and a Neumann 47 FET as backup. I had
leakage from the guitars, but leakage is your friend.
Youre hearing everything at the same time, and
thats your record. I augmented that drum setup
with a Shure SM57 on the snare and a Neumann
KM84 on the hi-hat, but I only used them
occasionally. I bused the kick drum to Track 1, and
the 67s, SM57 and KM84 to Tracks 2 and 3.
I had another Neumann 47 FET on the bass
cabinet, and while I also had a direct, I usually used
the 47, which went to Track 4 on the tape. I LIKE TO
USE TWO MICS ON THE GUITAR CABS, A SHURE SM56 AND
57 ANDY JOHNS STYLE WITH ONE MIC CLOSE AND
STRAIGHT ON, AND THE OTHER ANGLED. THE STRAIGHT-ON
MIC GETS YOU THE MIDS AND TOP END, AND THE ANGLED
MIC THE LOW END. As a result you dont need EQ.

I used this technique on Neils Fender Deluxe

and Magnatone amps, and on Micah Nelsons
Princeton, but Lucas played both my 1964 Fender
Vibroverb and another old Princeton. Because I

didnt have enough inputs, I had just a single 57

on each, angled at around 30 degrees off-axis, so
I covered both the top and the bottom end. Neil
played an acoustic guitar on the track Wolf Moon,
a pre-war Martin D28 formerly owned by Hank
Williams, and I recorded it with an AKG C12A and
direct from the pick-up. The guitars went to Tracks
5 and 6, and Neils on Track 7.
I had a Neumann KMS140 on Neils vocal,
which is cardioid, because he tends to move
around a lot, and this was recorded to Track 8. To
pick up less from the room, I used hyper-cardioid
Neumann KMS150s on the three band members
who sang; Lukas, Micah and [bassist] Corey
[McCormick]. These went to Tracks 11, 12, and
13. We also overdubbed backing vocals on some
songs using a Telefunken 251 and a 47 FET for the
double. I recorded those overdubbed vocals directly
to Pro Tools, and they came up on Channels 15-16
on the Brass Board for the mix.
Track 9 had percussion, which I recorded
with a pair of fixed cardioid Neumann TLM103s.
THE ROOM MICS WERE ON TRACK 10. I PUT UP FIVE OF
THEM, CONSISTING OF A PAIR OF KLAUS HEYNE-MODIFIED
NEUMANN U87S IN FRONT OF THE BAND, TWO COLES 4038
RIBBON MICS BEHIND THE DRUMS, AND A TUBE NEUMANN
47 LOW IN FRONT OF THE STAGE FOR MORE BOTTOM END.

I didnt use the Royer ribbon mic I put up on the

balcony, because it had too much delay, which
made it useless. It would have gone to Track 15.
And finally, on Track 14 I had the subkick. I sent
the kick mic out to a big subwoofer in the back of
the room and recorded that back in, so I could get
more bottom end on the kick. It excites the room
and also gives the drummer a better sense of his
kick drum. In the end it was a 14-track recording. I
also had a pair of AKG C12As on Neils Gold Rush
upright piano, which is named like that because
it was used on After The Gold Rush, and a pair of
matched AKG 451s on a pump organ. I never used
any of them. But if there are instruments in the
studio that Neil can play, I better be ready to record
them, otherwise I risk being in a world of hurt!
INS & OUTS

So far, so straightforward, though Hanlons

approach in reducing 28-odd mics to 14 tape tracks
was not quite as clear-cut. Hanlon elaborated both
on his bussing and some of the outboard he put
into action. The outboard was a lot of tube and old
solid-state stuff, and it was all used during tracking.
They included a pair of Pultec EQP-1As on the bass
and kick, and a Neve 2254 compressor on the bass
microphone and DI. On the guitars I had Neve
32264 compressors and Lang PEQ2s I like what
the Lang does to the low-mids and upper bottom
end on guitars. It sounds great. The mic pres on all
the vocalists were Neve 1073s, and Neils vocal went
through my Quad Eight compressor. I used three
UREI 1176 compressors on the other vocalists.
All my inputs came down to 12 on the Green
Board, 10 on the BCM10, and external 1066 mic
pres for the bass and DI, and 1073s for the vocals.
The Green Boards 610 mic pres were great for
guitar amps and room mics, and I used one line
input for Neils vocal from the Quad Eight.
I DIDNT APPLY ANY EQ ON THE MICS ON THE GREEN BOARD,
BECAUSE THE CONSOLE SOUNDS SO OPEN AND BALLSY,
AT 40

YOU DONT REALLY NEED TO DO ANYTHING. The drums

and percussion and other room mics came in on
the BCM10. The Neve PSM12 was there because
I needed extra buses. It was used to combine the
room mics that came in on the Green Board and on
the BCM10. The Green Board only has four buses,
but none can be multiple assigned. I needed to
combine the room mics that came in on the Green
Board and the BCM10, so I used their echo and
foldback outputs to go to the PSM12, where they
were blended into a single output going to Track 10
on the tape recorder. I didnt need the room mics in
stereo as I already had enough width from all the
other microphones, particularly the drum mics on
Tracks 2 and 3.
THE STUDER WAS RUNNING AT 30IPS, WITH 5000FT
REELS, WHICH GAVE ME JUST OVER HALF AN HOUR OF
RUNNING TIME. I HAD TO DO SOME HOT REEL CHANGES,
WHICH WAS TRICKY! After recording things on
the Studer, I transferred them to Pro Tools at
24-bit/192k. The reason was that if you start
running tape a lot, you begin to lose high end. It
may not be discernible to most people, but the
sound does change. I love tape and love rolling it
back and forth, but we treated these 2-inch tapes as
masters. The way we worked gives you the option
of doing all your mix preparation in Pro Tools,
and then later using time code to connect the tape
recorder again to mix from the actual tape. We
didnt do that in this situation. The 14-track Pro
Tools recording of each session came up on the
Brass Board and I mixed on that.

If there are instruments in

the studio that Neil can
play, I better be ready to
record them, otherwise I
risk being in a world of hurt!

Its a similar situation with the mix. Everything

you do with Neil is a fight against time, because he
doesnt like waiting. The moment we had finished
the transfer to Pro Tools and they came in to listen
back, I was mixing the session live on the Brass
Board and that was our starting point. That first
playback with me running the faders or rotary
pots in this case doing a mix better be going
somewhere, because Neil is really into the vibe of
whats going down in the moment. Hes not afraid
to decide thats the final mix. While hes also not
afraid to bin a mix, when necessary, often he gets
wedded to the first thing he hears. David Briggs
told me a long time ago: IF YOU DO A MIX FOR NEIL YOU
BETTER MAKE IT GREAT, OR MAKE IT UNUSABLE BY RUNNING
A 1KHZ TONE THROUGH IT, BECAUSE ANYTHING IN-BETWEEN
HE WILL USE!

Given that Young and Hanlon are self-declared,

diehard analogue fans, the use of Pro Tools is
a little puzzling, though the answer, at least on
Youngs part, appears to mirror his championing
of the hi-res Pono music player. The reason to go
to digital is practical, replied Hanlon. But when
we use digital, Neil wants to go to the highest
resolution available. We have done listening tests,
and 192k sounds great, though it does depend on
having a good clock. We have used the Apogee Big
Ben, which I think is very musical, and I checked
out the Antelope, Rosendahl Nanosync, Aardvark
Aardsync and the new Pro Tools clock, and theyre
all really good. WE DID A SHOOT-OUT AND WENT WITH

I consider my initial mixes roughs, but Neil

doesnt like me to mess too much with them.
He doesnt like it when things get too perfected.
Sometimes I was able to do another mix because
you always try to improve on what you have done.
Neil has good ears, so if he liked the new mix
better, thats what we went with. Either way, all
the mixes were done on the Brass Board, which
meant almost exclusively adjusting levels. If EQ or
compression was necessary, I had to use a plug-in
in Pro Tools, which I did in a couple of songs, using
the UAD 33609.
The stereo mix went to my monitors, back
to Pro Tools, and to an Ampex ATR 102, with
quarter-inch tape running at 15ips. I like quarterinch tape, and I decided to make a change. I MIXED

THE GRIMM AUDIO CC1, BECAUSE IT SOUNDED THE BEST

TO ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL AT THE SAME TIME, AND LATER

WITH 24-BIT/192K AND THE NEW AVID HD I/O CONVERTERS.

WE COMPARED THEM. SOME SONGS SOUNDED BETTER

I love the sound of tape, and these days its more

of an effect. I used to like the lower output tapes,
because you can get more tape compression, but
with the high output tapes now you really have
to work to compress it, and sometimes the tape
machine electronics start to distort before the
tape saturates! With rock n roll theres so much
harmonic distortion on everything, I like what
happens when you put the whole band on tape,
but if I was recording jazz or classical, I might go
strictly digital, at high resolution. But up to a point
it does not matter what I like. Neil likes tape, and
then wants it recorded to hi-res digital as soon as
possible. Once again, just like with the place where
we recorded, it doesnt matter whether hes right
or wrong, if thats what he wants and I can make
it happen, I have a happy performer and will get
better takes.

RIGHT OFF THE QUARTER-INCH TAPE, FOR OTHER SONGS

ON THE CLOCK

THE DIGITAL MIX SOUNDED BETTER. I also transferred

the tape mix prints back to Pro Tools. We did

some editing on a couple of songs at Fantasy and
Shangri-La studios, then I took the digital mix files
to Bob Ludwig who mastered the album. I like to
be there for the mastering, particularly with an
album like this that I co-produced, engineered and
mixed. Its all my fault!
Hanlon laughed. Whether he made mistakes or
not was probably not the issue most prominent on
his agenda, in the context of working with an artist
who sees capturing the moment and imperfections
as an essential aspect of recording great and
heartfelt music. Judging by the aural evidence,
Young and Hanlon succeeded in their aims. Thats
3-0 to Young, with a little bit of help from his
friends, amongst them, notably, John Hanlon.

FEATURE

After shootouts from the US to Iceland,

Rich Costey decided the Shadow Hills
Equinox summing mixer eclipsed his SSL
console. But his downsizing hasnt reduced
the sound of cinematic Icelandic folksters,
Of Monsters and Men, one bit.
Story: Paul Tingen

Artist: Of Monsters and Men

Album: Beneath the Skin
AT 42

Last year, Rich Costey had one of the biggest

Eureka! moments of his career. It resulted in
him radically changing his mix method, and
replacing it with a brand new approach, which is, in
essence erm, more or less the same as before.
Confused? Read on.
For Costey, long one of the worlds most
prominent and dedicated out-of-the-box mixers, it
was a watershed event. The more or less the same
bit consisted of Costey finding an alternative way of
laying out his mix in a similar way as he had done
on his beloved SSL K series at El Dorado in LA,
with the same audio-, effects- and VCA-channel
layout, and maintaining his previous outboard
signal chains and general workflow.
From El Dorado, he explained how and why he
squared this particular circle that put his beloved
console largely out of action: Ive always mixed on
analogue consoles, and have used and even owned
nearly every kind imaginable, having occasional
romances with vintage Neves, modern Neves, SSL
J, SSL G, SSL E, you name it. Each desk offered
something special but also brought a certain set of
sonic issues that I eventually found myself battling
with. I have heard plenty of in-the-box mixes that
I like, but whenever I had a go, I was inevitably
disappointed by the shallow depth of field,
narrowing of the stereo space, and a kind of hollow
bottom end.
Last year I was looking for a summing mixer
for my B room and auditioned quite a few. OUR
PROCESS FOR AUDITIONING SUMMING MIXERS AND
EVEN CONSOLES IS TO PULL UP A SESSION THAT IS LEVEL
BALANCED IN THE BOX BUT IS ROUTED OUT OF SEPARATE
OUTPUTS. IVE BEEN USING A WEEZER TRACK THAT I MIXED
CALLED TROUBLEMAKER TO DO THIS FOR A NUMBER OF
YEARS. Its not a large session so its easy to route

the entire multi-out of 30 outputs. We align the

D/A converter, put all the faders at zero, adjust the
panning and hit play, making a straight bounce into
my stereo A/D. Frustratingly, none of the summing
mixers we auditioned had the punch of a real
console except for one, the Shadow Hills Equinox,
which sounded amazingly good. It sounded very
similar to a Neve 8058. I had problems believing
it, so I did more and more tests and started doing
stem recalls and radio mixes through it. They all
sounded great.
My next project was the Death Cab For Cutie
record, Kintsugi (2015), which I produced and
mixed. I started mixing that on the K, but for
whatever reason, I felt the mixes could hit a bit
harder, and tried to mix them via the Equinox. I
ended up mixing most of the songs twice, and in
every case we ended up using the Equinox mixes.
I have developed a fairly complex routing system
in my studio for the SSL, and because I have been
mixing on analogue consoles all my life, I have
become accustomed to grouping things to certain
outputs, and having a certain layout for the session.
This way no matter what song I mixed, the layout
of my SSL was more or less the same. When I
started mixing via the Equinox, I still wanted to
have all those elements in place.
For example, when people use four mics on the
bass drum, they often put them on separate tracks

rather than combining them, which means you

end up EQing each track separately. Thats fine
but I also like to have a more holistic approach,
combining the bass drum mics into a single place
where I can adjust the overall sound. I do that with
everything. I have an aux track for the kick, for the
snare, for the toms, and so on, which allows for
a slightly more macro approach to treating each
of these elements and also for running parallel
compression on them.
To copy this approach over to the Equinox
we developed a Pro Tools session layout with the
recorded tracks at the bottom of the session and
built a parallel of my SSL at the top of the session.
This parallel consists of about 60 tracks, with
audio aux tracks at the top, followed by outboard
aux effects tracks, and below them VCA tracks,
which mimic the VCA tracks in the middle of
the desk. They are then routed to the 30 inputs of
the Equinox with a healthy chunk of effects and
outboard still going to the SSL K.
NORTHERN LIGHTS

Costeys next project after Death Cab For Cutie

was producing (with the band), engineering, and
mixing, the second album of the Icelandic indie
pop/folk band Of Monsters and Men. The album
mix allowed him to refine his new mix approach,
while his mix of the albums lead single, Crystals,
provides a perfect illustration of exactly how he
goes about it.
Of Monsters and Men was one of the worlds
biggest breakout acts of 2011. Their impressive
debut album My Head Is An Animal went platinum
and to No. 1 in Australia, while lead single Little
Talks was five times platinum. What is it with
all these Icelandic artists hitting it big globally?
Add together Bjrk, Sigur Rs, sgeir, Emilana
Torrini, GusGus and Slstafir, and on a pro rata
population basis that would equal an improbable
500 Australian acts with global reach.
Of Monsters and Mens first album came
into being very organically and without any
expectations, but the pressure was on with the
follow-up. OMAM sought the services of Costey as
a sympathetic big name producer, who could help
them build on their previous success and expand
their sound into a slightly more earthy, rock-like
direction. The band surely had a good look at, and
listen to, Costeys impressive credits, which include
Fiona Apple, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, New
Order, Bruce Springsteen, Pink, Chvrches (see AT
Issue 109), and Muse.
Costey: I think they were trying to find a
collaborator who could help them on their path,
rather than tell them what their path was supposed
to be. Most Icelandic people Ive worked with tend
to be fairly hard-headed and are very secure in
their intuition [perhaps explains their worldwide
success? Ed]. There were some areas I could help
them and other areas where they knew exactly
what they wanted to do. The final result is in part
to do with my style and the way I like to hear
things. I like things that are cinematic and have a
more direct, natural humanity in the sound. There
was, of course, talk of how the band likes things to

sound which in general is big and lush and

also that they wanted to make a more honestsounding album. They had grown as players, and
given their first album had been made quickly,
this was a chance to showcase what they sound
like as a band. I think its easier to pick them out as
individual players on their second album than on
their first.

One of the handy things

about being a mixer and a
producer is that the
producing process spills
over into the mixing. You
can completely re-arrange
everything at the last
moment if you choose to

We started September 2014, doing about

three weeks of pre-production at their rehearsal
studio and recording fairly concise demos into
their Pro Tools rig. Some of the songs were fairly
well-formed, and some changed quite a bit during
that process. Crystals was one of the songs that
changed considerably. It was a much slower song
initially, with only the chorus being up-tempo. I
felt that it might be exciting for the song to take
off right from the beginning, so we took that
path. The driving toms during the verses are key
to the songs propulsion and were worked out in
rehearsal. Arnar [Rsenkranz Hilmarssonis] a
fantastic drummer with a very creative approach,
and hes also seriously loud. We approached the
arrangements from different angles and gradually
the best ones stood out. That way when we got
to the actual recording sessions which took
place at Sundlaugin Studios in Reykjavik during
October, November and December there werent
too many surprises and it was just a matter of
trying to get the best performances. In general,
when working with a band, you want them to feel
comfortable during recording, and not to sit there
thinking and trying to get their parts right.
We had a pretty complete collection of demo
recordings with rough mixes by the time we
entered Sundlaugin. Before we began tracking a
song we would typically reference these demos
for tempo and feel, then go ahead and cut the
song. Sometimes with a click but most often
AT 43

CRYSTALS
MIX
The Crystals Pro Tools session is a whopping 197
tracks; a combination of Costeys new SSL-equivalent
mix setup at the top of the session and the recorded
tracks beneath. The 39 aux tracks relate to the audio
tracks in the lower part of the session, and are equivalent to the audio channels on the SSL. Below that are
14 VCA tracks; consisting of drums, toms, percussion, bass, guitar, lead vocal, Pro Tools eects, loops,
synths (x3), brass, intro, and All VCAs. Eight outboard
aux tracks sit below those, acting as an equivalent to
eect returns on the desk, connected to a Bricasti
reverb, AMS DMX eects unit, GML 8900 EQ, Hughes
SRS sound retrieval system, Neve 33609/Millenia
chain, Prism EQ/RCA BA6A compressor chain, and a
Standard Audio Stretch compressor.
13 mix prints sit in the middle of the session, and
tracks 77-197 are the actual recording session. Beginning with the impressive amount of drum tracks
44 in total followed by bass, Moog bass, guitars
(24 tracks), vocals (12 tracks), keyboards and nally
brass and French horns. Its a big session, even by
todays standards, but there are few plug-ins apart
from on the drums and vocals aux tracks in the top
third of the session.
Costey lifted the lid on whats going on: The reason
for the lack of plug-ins is that I simply like to get the
sound I want on the way in. If necessary, Ill treat things
quite heavily while recording. The idea of waiting to
make things sound good in post-production doesnt
get me too excited, unless the goal is to transform
and challenge the existing material. Also, I use a native
Pro Tools system instead of HDX, which means that
latency can be an issue when youre using tons of plugins while tracking. The band were onboard with the
notion of treating sounds on the way in. To be honest,
even during the mix the band was more interested in
trying out dierent arrangement ideas until the very
last second, rather than getting involved in the sonics.
Of course they care about reverb treatments and
delays and whatnot, but most of the mixing process
was about getting them to sound big and great, and
then tweak some arrangements here and there.
Having said all that, I used quite a lot of outboard during mixing. Of the outboard aux tracks I used the AMS
DMX for some delay and chorusing eects, and the
GML 8900 compressor was used on the drums. I use
the Hughes SRS daily for widening the stereo image,
and in this session it was largely deployed for ambient
keyboard sounds and in some cases backing vocals
and guitars. The 33609 compressor to Millenia EQ
was a parallel on the lead and backing vocals, and the
Prism EQ to RCA BA6A was a parallel on the kick and
snare. The RCA BA6A parks just about anything, and is
great on the kick and snare.
At the top of the session are kick and snare trigger
aux tracks. Native Instruments Battery and Addictive
Drums are in my mix template by default, just in case
I need them. In this session I added some Battery
snare samples, and some claps, stomps and synthetic
drums in the choruses. My Battery sample library has
thousands of sounds Ive collected over the years. The
3-4 sends on several of the drums aux tracks go to the
GML8900, and the 27 send goes to the Prism to RCA
AT 44

chain. Bus 59 is a UAD AMS RMX18 plug-in for drum

reverb. The toms have a Decapitator plug-in, which
gets turned on in the choruses. The toms and acoustic
guitar really propel this song, and it was important
they worked well together.
The bass aux has an Oxford plug-in EQ rolling o the
subs, and the Brainworx bx-digital V2 to reduce some
of the typical resonant notes one deals with on a bass
guitar recording with passive pick-ups. The track is
also volume automated to further even out any resonances. The acoustic guitar aux also has the Oxford
EQ, again to take out some of the bottom end that I
didnt need. It also went to the Hughes SRS to widen
them up a bit and a UAD EMT 140 reverb.
I tried mixing Nanna [Brynds Hilmarsdttir]s and
Raggis [rhallsson] vocals a couple of dierent ways.
The actual lead vocal aux has a Renaissance De-

esser on it, going into a UAD 1073 plug-in, which is fantastic, a UAD dbx160 compressor and the Decapitator
to add some edge. 28 goes to the Standard Audio
Stretch, which adds a bit of top end to the vocals. The
Stretch mimics the breathy, steamy high end that you
could get from old modied Dolby units, of which I
have many. Nanna and Raggis lead vocals blend really
well together naturally, so I treated them very similarly. You want to put them in a similar space.
The session was at 24-bit/96k. For the nal mix
print I went via Esoteric Audio Research 660s to
GML EQ mix chain and printed back into the session
using a separate Pro Tools rig with a JCF Latte stereo
A/D converter. I sent 96k les to Bob Ludwig for
mastering. I also print to a Soundblade rig, running at
16-bit/44.1k for references.

Ive always mixed on

analogue consoles,
and have used and
even owned nearly
every kind imaginable

without as they tended to sound better that way.

After comping takes, we began the process of
overdubbing and often completely replacing
elements of the basic tracking. Part of their process
includes doing a lot of drum overdubs, with toms
and snares, percussion and stomps and handclaps,
and all kinds of madness.
As far as studio gear is concerned, I brought
over a lot of gear from El Dorado, because even
though Sundlaugin is pretty loaded, particularly in
the microphone department, I wanted to remain
familiar with the signal paths. The most essential
piece of kit I brought were my Neve BCM10, which
has 10 vintage 1073s, along with some vintage
Universal Audio 1108s. The rest was the usual stuff
in my rack, like UREI 1176s, Neve 33609, Roger
Mayer RM58, Esoteric Audio 660s, Distressors,
Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor, The Equinox,
plus a bunch of my modular synths. I also brought
my Burl Mothership converters, as they are the
only multitrack A/D that I can really get behind.

AT 45

SHADOWING THE SSL

Mid-January 2015, a month after the recordings at

Sundlaugin were completed, OMAM and Costey
reconvened at El Dorado for, more overdubs,
mostly vocals, a bit of programming, and
working with David Campbell on horn and string
arrangements. We did split things out over my SSL
K for this, because its easier to have lots of inputs
coming into the console at the same time, ready
to go. After that we began the mixing process. ID
BEEN LISTENING TO THE EQUINOX ALL THE TIME WHEN WE
WERE IN ICELAND, AND HAD BECOME ACCUSTOMED TO THE
SOUND, BUT I STILL DID A MIX OF CRYSTALS ON THE SSL,
AND ANOTHER USING THE EQUINOX, AND AGAIN I DECIDED
TO GO WITH THE LATTER. To be perfectly honest

though, I dont think the band cared either way.

We had already created the template, with the
60 tracks at the top mimicking my SSL layout,
and the typical mix process was for my assistant
Mario to load our recording session into the
mix template session and set it up. I would then
reference the latest rough mix for balance and
get the tracks knocked into shape from that
perspective. Once that sounded good I would
have a look through the individual audio tracks,
combining different groups of instruments to
check relationships. The drum/acoustic guitar
relationship was very important; the acoustics
really were an extension of the drums and
percussion. The toms in particular had a lot of
overtones in the low mids, and I had to tame these
to maintain some amount of clarity. To be honest,
that was a bit of a challenge. The solution was
mostly reductive EQ and careful monitoring of
room mics.
The main room at Sundlaugin, which used to
be a swimming pool, sounded so good that the
temptation was to crank it up on everything, but
you obviously cant do that. I tended to have the
room sound on the kit. Then I backed off with
overdubs and used artificial reverb if necessary.
I mixed Crystals a number of times, and each
time we were looking to refine the arrangements
of the guitar melodies. One of the handy things
about being a mixer and a producer is that the
producing process spills over into the mixing. You
can completely re-arrange everything at the last
moment if you choose to.
Im very proud of this album and I know the
band is as well. Crystals did quite well on the radio
but I dont expect this album will duplicate the
sales figures of the first album; no one expected
that. The band were pushing back a bit against the
sound that defined them on their debut and we
were all working to establish something that feels
perhaps more lasting and emotional. You dont
want to live or die by your radio hits. The album
reached No. 3 in the US which is the highest US
chart position for any Icelandic album, No. 4 in
Australia, and the response to the album is still
growing. I think the band are in it for the long
road. They are massively gifted people.

AT 46

I ended up mixing most of

the songs twice, and in
every case we ended up
using the Equinox mixes

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FEATURE

DISCREETLY
DECODING ENOS
MUSIC
On its 40th anniversary, Discreet Music was
decoded and reconstructed using Enos Oblique
Strategies for a one-off performance to cardcarrying members of the Brian Eno fan club.
Story: Mark Davie

AT 48

Trying to be Brian Eno isnt easy. Just ask

Brian Eno. In 1995, when he was attempting
to recreate Discreet Music using his Koan
generative music system, the maestro himself
found it impossible. In his diary A Year with
Swollen Appendices, Eno wrote: I am trying to
replicate Discreet Music as accurately as possible.
This is actually very hard trying to duplicate the
complicated analogue conditions of the original: a
synth that never stayedproperlyin tune, variable
waveform mixes and pulse-widths, variable filter
frequency and Q, plus probably something like 30
audiblegenerations of long-delay repeat, with all
the interesting sonicdegradationthat introduced.
My attempts to replicate Discreet Music result
in interesting failure after interesting failure.
Comforting words, Im sure, for Matthew
Brown when he got the call up to do exactly what
Eno couldnt, recreate Discreet Music live onstage
in front of thousands. It wasnt just him up there,
but he had to figure out the bit with the out-oftune endlessly matrix-able vintage synth and reels
of tape degradation.
I recently headed along to the State Theatre
at Melbournes Art Centre to witness the event,
titled Discreet + Oblique. The conceit was to take
the themes from Enos Discreet Music, on its 40th
anniversary, and apply his Oblique Strategies cards
to it in a live setting.
Onstage with Brown were Australian
experimental trio, The Necks Chris Abrahams
(piano), Tony Buck (drums), and Lloyd Swanton
(bass) on one side. Flanking the other
side of the stage were Golden Fur members
Samuel Dunscombe (clarinet), Judith Hamann
(violoncello), and James Rushford (viola).
Behind Brown on two risers were the two
Eno acolytes who co-produced the show, Leo
Abrahams on electric guitar, and David Coulter
on vibes and saw.
The whole performance wasnt just a
celebration of Discreet Musics 40th anniversary,
it was a mashup tribute to Eno as well. Towards
the back of the stage sat a four-poster hospital
bed; a joke reference to the conception of the
whole ambient music genre. The story goes that
when Enos friend put on a record in his hospital
room they left the volume so low Eno couldnt
hear it properly. Too sick to get out of bed and
turn it up, he lay there noticing how the sounds
were subsumed into the environment, beautifying
it, rather than being a focal point. Whoosh, the
dawn of ambient music.
Likewise, Enos video art Mistaken Memories
of Mediaeval Manhattan projected from a TV
on its side onto the big screen between Oblique
Strategy cards came after Discreet Music and
isnt technically supposed to be projected at
all. Bringing that TV into the hospital room
doesnt make much conceptual sense really,
said Abrahams. But its a celebration and an
anniversary so its a bit of a mashup.
I guess performing music through a giant
Meyer Sound system that was founded upon the
sensation of not being able to properly hear it is,
technically-speaking, not strictly ambient either.

CARDS OUT FOR ALL TO SEE

During the performance, Abrahams would

randomly flip Oblique Strategies cards from a
deck, and slide them under a document projector.
If youre not familiar with the concept, the cards
are intended to trigger a fresh thought process that
might get you out of the creative doldrums. They
read things like, Repetition is a form of change,
What is the reality of the situation? (Organic)
machinery and Remember those quiet evenings.
Some were obvious influencers. When Fill every
beat with something came up, it was as if someone
had called Tony Bucks number at the butchers.
Others like Intentions, credibility of, nobility of
felt a bit like trying to read 10 minds at once.

Brian is someone who

hates looking back and
talking about the past.
I really respect that
because hes honestly
one of the most
forward-looking and
unencumbered people

making, reminded Abrahams. Or the musicians

relationship. For an audience of thousands who
may have never used the cards, the show was a
chance for them to get in on the act. To experience
first hand the effect the cards can have.
The cards serve a function, but essentially I
see it as a theatrical device, said Abrahams. The
whole event is supposed to be a celebration of the
anniversary of this piece and also a celebration of
Brians work. The cards their language, humour,
gentleness as well as their depth is a really big
part of what hes like as an artist, but also what hes
like as a person. Although hes frequently seen as a
very serious theorist, which he is in some ways, hes
also extremely good fun!
The show was comprised of about two hour-long
pieces with a break inbetween. Essentially riffing on
sides A and B of Discreet Music. But Abrahams said
they never made it to an hour in rehearsal. Hed
worked with all the musicians before but I didnt
really know what kind of contribution they were
going to make because their repertoire is so diverse
in terms of what atmospheres they create, he said.
Strangely, after the first couple of run-throughs, I
felt I could predict the energy of it. But I certainly
couldnt predict how amazingly they would have
dealt with the Discreet Music motifs. I think we
were all holding something back at the rehearsals.
We never got to the end of Discreet Music in
rehearsal; we would come in at 20 minutes, which
is way too short. We needed the tension of an
audience to actually do the piece properly.
FLIP ON FRIPPERTRONICS

Abrahams was coy about the ratio of

improvisation to structured arrangements.
He didnt want to give the whole game away;
concerned that punters experiencing the show
at the Barbican in London in a couple of months
would be cheated of the guessing game if the
veneer was stripped away. Part of the interesting
thing about it is that its not certain how much is
planned and how much isnt, he offered. Theres a
framework in which improvisation happens, but its
quite a tight framework in terms of what happens
at what time. Theres still scope for the pieces to
be longer or shorter, and have different textures or
energy, but its still going to be roughly the same
pieces. After all, thats the whole conceit Discreet
plus Oblique. Its still got to be Discreet Music,
recognisable, said Abrahams. Without it being a
boring retread of the existing music.
Whether or not the pieces are fully improvised
or entirely structured is somewhat beside the
point. Everyone that turns up to a Brian Eno
tribute concert is probably somewhat familiar
with his first major ambient work, whether its
clogged in every-greyer grey matter or freshly
imprinted. The point is that using the Oblique
Strategies cards is supposed to fun, not didactic.
You dont have to follow them to the letter. The
purpose of the Oblique Strategies is to reframe
the producers relationship to the music theyre

Discreet Music begins with the slow entrance of

the main motif, a confluence of EMS Synthi lines
looped on a Frippertronics system. As Enos diary
alludes, theres a bit more to it than that. In the
album liner notes, theres a basic diagram of the
Frippertronics system that plots the basic points:
synthesiser to graphic EQ to echo unit, then into
the tape delay system comprising looping back
from the playback head of one onto the record
of another. For Brown, that was like looking
at a tourist snap of a building; he needed the
schematics, which no one had.
He started by decoding the loops. Brown: The
two repeated phrases have such slow attacks, its
really hard to work out the loop size. I could hear
there were two delays happening; a short one made
on the Echoplex, and the longer one, which I think
went for 66 seconds. I CHOPPED ALL THE LONG LOOPS
UP, MEASURED THE SAMPLE SIZES AND AVERAGED THEM TO
GET THE MOST ACCURATE IDEA OF THEIR LENGTH. I looked

at the spectrograph of the sound and saw it wasnt

going above 3kHz. I realised it must be slowed
down. I suspect Brian Eno made it, then slowed it
down on the tape machine to 3.75ips from 7.5ips.
It was quite hard to reproduce, because I think he
did one take, and mixed it down onto one track,
then did a second take with a second melody and
mixed that down onto the other half of the 1/4-inch
tape, which the diagram on the back of the record
doesnt mention.
For the Frippertronics system, Brown used a
pair of Revox B77 MkII two-track tape machines,
AT 49

MUSICAL MIX

Byron Scullin is active in essentially every part of

the audio industry; from producing, engineering and
mastering to composition and sound design. Its his
musical sensibilities as well as his experience with the
avant garde that make him a top choice to mix FOH for
left-of-eld performances like Discreet + Oblique.
AT: What aect did the cards have over how you
mixed the show?
Byron Scullin: Not much, because theyre so ambiguous and open-ended. I just noted them to be aware
that certain things might be taking place, or they
might be transferring to other instruments.
AT: How do you set yourself up to be able to handle
the diversity of sound coming at you?
BS: I was mixing the show on the Digico SD8. In
rehearsals I accounted for all the instrumentation
and organised the session to enable a response to
what was happening. Coming up with control groups
where I could have the entire bands 28 inputs across
12 faders, with enough specicity to bring people in
and out or mute as needed.
The electronic eects processing was split across
separate groups as well; as their own instruments on
faders for riding those shapes. For an artist like Brian
Eno, eects arent really eects, theyre other instruments; reverbs not used to give spatial context to a
certain sound, like its playing in a hall or a bathroom.
AT 50

The eects units are used to extremes where they

often become textural devices.
I was using some eects in the traditional way. For
example, a bit of long-tailed reverb to help what was
a relatively small string and clarinet ensemble have a
slightly larger sound. Then also bringing in heavilyprocessed eects in Ableton Live at various points
based on what cards may or may not show up and
what the musicians are doing.
AT: What eects were you using in Ableton Live?
BS: I built a set of very long delays using Max for Live,
inserting the stock Ableton reverb to add a little bit of
softness to the delay chain by smearing the attack and
release of the envelopes. They become more textural
and less punctuated as they begin to feedback.
There was one playback element at the start of Discreet Music, and a context reverb using Exponential
Audios R2 plug-in. Rhythmic-based reverbs are my
avour of the month; its a counterpoint to impulse
response reverbs whose tails can sometimes drop
away a little quickly or be a little bit peculiar.
AT: The Hamer Hall Meyer Sound PA is quite epic.
Was it easy to mix on?
BS: I left the system design to Norwest, and it was
really well tuned. On a well-tuned system with a lot of
overhead, if you get your gain structures right at the
console youre just using EQ to solve problems not to
build much tone.
The most stressful part was there was no sound
check. We had rehearsals in the room then an hour-

and-a-half turnaround before the gig. I was only able

to bring up all the instruments and make sure the tone
was sitting okay, check my gain structure and feel the
faders out. Then we launched in and did the show.
I production managed the new music sound art
festival, Liquid Architecture, for 12 years, so Ive
done a lot of avant-garde and experimental work.
Often you dont really know what the performers
are going to play.
It requires you to come from an extremely sympathetic place musically, sometimes to the detriment
of good sound, because the artists want to make
terrible sound, crazy sound, a weird sound, or sometimes no sound at all.
AT: The Necks drummer (Tony Buck) never really
seemed to be using the kit in a traditional way, did
that require a particular miking regime?
BS: Its about keeping most of it to overhead microphones, with standard kick, snare and hats. They
gave me an AKG D112 for the kick, but theres no hole
in the jazz kick drum so that microphone wasnt so
great for that context. I had to use quite severe EQ
to tone down the bottom end, because it has a bump
and a sealed kick drum with no damping inside has
such a massive low end resonance anyway.
The way Tony plays drums, the toms act more like
resonant membranes for the things hes got on top
of them. Its like he has a trestle table in front of him
with a bunch of instruments, the trestle table just
happens to be made of toms! Sometimes hell pull

straddling the ends of a long trestle, with a length

of tape running over the top of his EMS Synthi.
Brown: You have the tape running past the heads
from the left hand one, then past the heads onto
the takeup reel on the right hand one. The sound
gets recorded on the left hand one, and goes past
the playback head of the right hand machine,
which is plugged into the record head of the left
hand one. It makes a copy of a copy of a copy. So
the sound breaks down and you get that wonderful
tape delay sound.
The delay time is relative to the speed the tape
is moving and the distance between them. I divided
the length by four, because the original length was
about 6.4m, which was too big for the stage. WE
TALKED ABOUT HAVING A ZIG ZAG ARRAY INBETWEEN THE
TWO MACHINES, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN A NIGHTMARE
BITS OF COAT HANGERS FAILING MISERABLY.

I suspect Brian Eno had it shorter and slowed

the tape down to get the final result. If you do the
maths, you can probably guess the size of his living
room from the maximum length of time he could
get out of them. A bit of acoustic archaeology.
The initial Synthi patch had Brown a bit
bemused: The more I looked into it, the less it
sounded like the EMS synthesizer and more like
the high notes of an oboe, or clarinet. When he
was in Roxy Music, Andy McKay who was also
very experimental and avant garde played those
instruments. I started suspecting it could possibly
be a loop of McKay playing, and feeding into the
system rather than the synthesizer. Maybe Ive been
staring at it too long.
The wonderful thing about the EMS Synthi

is it uses a matrix. You can do all these illegal

things like tell the sound thats coming out of
the synthesiser to modulate the tuning knob, so
youre doing FM synthesis. The audio and control
information is one.
In the second piece, one of the highlights was the
merging of Browns Synthi solo into an energetic
clarinet part, highlighting how alike the two could
sound. For my solo, I took a few cues from when
Brian played in Roxy Music, said Brown. The
solos he did were a bit like that; crazy bombastic
things that wobbled all over the place. With the
patch, I had the LFO controlling the wet/dry mix
rate of the spring reverb. And the ring modulation
was coming in and out. There was a lot of stuff that
sounded like ring modulation but was actually
frequency modulation.
The other module on Brian Enos diagram
was the graphic equaliser, which Brown set to
shift so it goes through the EQ. There are certain
frequency patterns the magnetic tape picks up;
it will feed back and get sweet spots. But if you
change the EQ all the time, it will allow different
parts of the sound to get through and feedback
more so than others.
DIAL IN THE RADIO

While Discreet Music was just a synthesiser and

delays, and the other side of the record primarily
a string orchestra, Abrahams did some decoding
too and noticed some cumulative effects he could
emulate on guitar. Abrahams: There seem to
be some keyboard overdubs, and once the tape
delays get really thick in the first piece, it gives the

them o and start playing drums normally, so you

have to be prepared for that. He also has a lot instruments he agitates with his feet, so I have a ground
mic down on the oor next to the hi-hat.

Neumann KM184s over the vibraphone.

AT: With so many dierent timbres coming out of

each instrument, do you EQ much at all?

BS: I preset a bunch of compression settings,

mostly just to deal with loud attacks. On drums
theyre all really fast attacks, as fast as it will go.
Ill set higher ratios, like 3:1, but have them dialled
out and switched on. I can dial them in if I need to
bring them down. I used a little on the vibraphone
because it was jumping out a bit, and a little touch
on the kick drum at points.
I used a multiband compressor across the piano
group, adjusting the settings so its taking care of
the critical bands, between about 6kHz at the top
and 500Hz at the bottom. Its very wide in the middle,
with a really slow attack time because I want to let
all the attacks of the piano through. I just want the
compressor to ease in and hold the mid-range down
when it gets very hectic. Not muing it too much to
destroy the sound of the piano but enough to contain
it a little bit. Fairly long release times there as well,
so its very easy on/easy o compression with a low
ratio of 2:1 or maybe less.
Then lots of riding. My philosophy is that no one
particular instrument should dominate over anything
else. In an ambient music context, all the sounds
should sit evenly together. If you listen to a lot of
Enos ambient music records that really bears true.
Nothing ever gets particularly loud, it all just sits and

BS: I keep it super straight and very practical, lots

of ltering just to deal with the fact the monitoring
is sitting on deck with the band, so addressing low
end feedback. Then I just EQ to taste. On consoles
like the Digico or Avid you can do specic things like
insert a graphic on an overhead to deal with a bit of
feedback or tone.
AT: The mic selection must play a big part in getting
great tones then?
BS: I treat it like a studio and go for fairly neutral
characters. I had AKG 414s as overheads. Theyre not
particularly glamorous, but are a real Swiss Army
knife. I also had 414s inside the piano set to a gure
eight to use the side-pattern rejection for the PA on
stage. It was a huge Steinway concert grand so the
possibility of feedback is strong. Chris can turn the
piano almost into a spectral synthesiser where he
rapidly plays shimmering chords, then it resolves
back to becoming a piano again.
I had a DPA mic on the double bass, as well as a DI
signal and a Beyer M88 on his cabinet. I also put
DPAs all over Golden Fur. DPAs are such a godsend
for getting great sounds out of acoustic instruments.
I had Sennheiser, e609, I think on the guitar cabinets.

AT: Are you setting up compressors to help handle

the shows dynamics, or are you just riding the faders
all night?

Its like he has a

trestle table in front
of him with a bunch
of instruments, the
trestle table just
happens to be made
of toms!

illusion of there being other instruments. I used the

guitar to try and fill in the gaps beyond what the
other musicians were doing.
In the first half I was trying to blend with the
vibes and the tapes, because the frequency range of
the guitar isnt dissimilar to the range of the EMS.
In the second half I drowned out the space with an
organ-ish sound.
From there, it was a case of being very selective
about when the sounds have attack. For most of
the show the sounds were a combination of a slow
attack delay, a quiet context, and high-pass filter
reverb with a long pre-delay. Normally when I
perform, Ill have hundreds of sounds in a show.
But this time I only wanted to have one or two so

hangs together as a whole; a single texture.

I was trying to allow as much interplay as I could
the shimmering sound of the vibraphone leading
into the piano and strings so it becomes very
hard to tell where one instrument begins and
another one lets o.
The musicians are doing that, its not a happy accident. Its where the action is. Im trying to maintain
that balance, then if the energy goes higher, Im riding
it with them, increasing and decreasing.
I mix on the faders all the time. I DONT KNOW WHAT
ENGINEERS ARE DOING WHEN I GO TO GIGS AND SEE THEM
KICKING BACK AND NOT ON THE FADERS.

In some music contexts I guess that works, but we

have enough over-compressed, limited music in pop
music production music now that when you go to see
a live show you really want to get that dynamism.
When Im mixing live, Ive got to work with the band
and perform alongside them to make sure their performance comes across to the audience. The energy
rises and falls in the room as the band rises and falls
in the room as well.
Thats something I learnt when I was starting out and
working on musicals. Theres so much fader-riding
in big budget musicals. Hearing that and understanding what a dierence it made. Being musically
sympathetic is a driving force with me, rather than
technique and equipment. I meet a lot of people that
are into the tools, but Im a bit ambivalent about
tools at the best of times.

AT 51

Matthew Browns EMS Synthi dopesheet for his solo: With

the patch, I had the LFO controlling the wet/dry mix rate
of the spring reverb. And the ring modulation was coming
in and out. There was a lot of stuff that sounded like ring
modulation but was actually frequency modulation.

The purpose of the

Oblique Strategies is to
reframe the producers
relationship to the music
theyre making
itd feel like a chamber ensemble.
One of the more recognisable sounds was a
broken up radio effect that Abrahams summoned
from his pedal chain of an Eventide Pitch Factor, a
Strymon Timeline and a Strymon Big Sky. Theres
a really nice lo-fi module in the Timeline pedal,
said Abrahams. THE RADIO SOUND WAS THAT GOING
INTO THE BIG SKY. ITS NOT ENOUGH TO JUST DIAL UP THE
RADIO SOUND, YOU HAVE TO PLAY IN A VERY BROKEN WAY
TO MAKE IT CONVINCING.

AT 52

I like sounds which are simple but give a lot

back, so you feel like youre collaborating with the
sounds in a way. It gets really expressive with very
little movement on your part. There was one part
where the bass of the EMS needed a bit of a backup,
so I had a four-octave down pitch shift on the
Eventide going into a high-pass filtered reverb it
made a 63Hz throb.
THE GHOST OF ENO PAST

Leo Abrahams has been working on and off with

Brian Eno for 14 years now. In that time he can
only ever remember the Oblique Strategies cards
coming once; relatively recently actually, on the
High Life record.
As far as Abrahams is concerned, the cards are
just a manifestation of Enos way of working that
the man himself doesnt actually require the use
of them. The feeling the cards give you that
lateral thinking about music is very familiar
to me having worked with him, said Abrahams.
Its like the cards are a manifestation of one of
his philosophies of work. I dont think hes had to
resort to using them because he does things like

that just by being who he is.

It was the first time Abrahams had performed
a tribute to one of Enos works without him being
there and he was a bit worried about it. In a
way it feels a bit creepy! He said. I thought if
youre going to do a tribute then you ought to not
know them. Also, Brian is someone who hates
looking back and talking about the past. I really
respect that because hes honestly one of the most
forward-looking and unencumbered people, and
I didnt want to stalk him to look at it. But as it
turned out he was really generous and supportive
with the project.
I didnt talk to him much about the nuts and
bolts of it but he wrote the very generous program
notes and let me come over and scan the original
cards he made by hand in 1973, which appeared in
the second half. I did say to him, Im sorry if this
is awkward for you because I know you dont like
looking back. His reply was, This is so long ago it
almost seems like someone elses life!

FEATURE

Kurt Vile hops between

studios up the West Coast to
avoid the ticking clock and
winds up recording the next
Loser with Rob Schnapf.
Story: Mark Davie

Artist: Kurt Vile

Album: Blieve Im Goin Down
AT 54

It wasnt trying to be like the Foo Fighters

record. Kurt Viles bandmate Rob Laakso
assured me no cable TV money and syndication
rights prompted their 12-stop nomadic recording
trek for his latest album Blieve Im Goin Down; just
a journeyman trying to reassess his creative process.
Its not uncommon for Kurt to drop in at
multiple studios over the course of making an
album. The record before last, Smoke Ring for
My Halo, started out in a couple, he said, and
blossomed from there. But this time there was a
bit more purpose behind his choices. Halo was
more of an East Coast record; this time, he wanted
to stick mostly to the West Coast so he could play
with Stella Mozgawa, the drummer for Warpaint,
and Farmer Dave, slide guitar player and roaster
of hot nuts. You can tap into other worlds and
atmospheres as opposed to flying everyone to you,
explained Vile. Which feels more contrived.
Those feelings surrounding the process are
important for Vile, whose music is largely
introspective. There was another hed carried for a
while, but peculiarly for a songwriter, never been
able to fully articulate. During the making of the
five records before Blieve Im Goin Down there
were occasions he felt the process had robbed
him of the time to do particular songs justice. He
wanted to see if he could correct that imbalance.
One example I have is my song Peeping Tomboy,
offered Vile. I was really feeling it when I wrote
that. My wife was away and I knew I was just about
to be fired from my job, like psychic or something.
I had just signed to Matador, so it didnt matter, but
life was so uncertain; my wife was so uncertain.
I would play the song live and really get into
it. My idea was to try to sound like Id just written
the song all alone in my house in the middle of the
night. Just wait to capture that certain vibe. But
when it was finally time to lay it down, I dont think
my performance was that good but its the best
one there was at the time. I think part of it was just
being in this big studio and I was nervous with all
these nice mics around and it really moved fast.
His last two records, Wakin on a Pretty Daze and
Smoke Ring for My Halo, were recorded with John
Agnello, who Vile says was totally on the team,
but you still had to talk about schedules and pick
the studio far in advance. This time, Vile wanted to
follow that hunch, that maybe he could evade the
symptoms of being pressed for time. I just wanted
to not worry that Im sitting around in the studio
jamming until 5am, not necessarily knowing what
Im doing, said Vile, feeling like hes frustrated
people in that way before. I knew Id grown as a
musician so maybe I could tap into it easier. THAT
WAS MY THEORY. I JUST WANTED TO STAY COMPLETELY BY
MYSELF, UNGUARDED, FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.

VIOLATORS UNITED

Without someone like Agnello pulling the pieces

together, Vile needed someone to step into that
role. Luckily, hed been surrounding himself
with talented engineers and producers for years.
Rob Laakso had been working as an engineer
and producer until after a couple of cameos
throughout the years he joined The Violators

(Viles band) full-time in 2011. In fact, recalled

Laakso, Vile was the first person to ever pay him to
record. Back in 2001 he recorded some tracks for
Vile on his 8-track reel-to-reel that serendipitously
ended up soundtracking the video intro for lead
single Pretty Pimpin. Rob is a really good multiinstrumentalist but hes also a gear and synth
nerd, described Vile. He can sit there and f**k
with tones for a long time, whereas Im way too
ADD for that. Laakso was installed as the de facto
co-producer/head engineer for the record. I wasnt
the sole producer, like Phil Spector or something,
he made clear.
We just happen to work well together, hes a
good engineer and hes in my band, reasoned
Vile. I had these songs I didnt necessarily want
somebody else to play on right away but hed be
there, so Id be comfortable. There wasnt any
outside person looking at the clock.
Kyle Spence, the Violators drummer, also has
a home studio called Ronnie Jones Sound where
Spence recorded some of the early sessions. Vile
also thought it was time he got in on the act, roping
in FOH engineer Tommy Joy between tours to help
convert his practise space into a recording studio.
We bought Pro Tools and all these things, but I
had to say f**k Pro Tools for myself. You just have
all this I/O popping up and next thing you know
you have all these virtual tracks and I dont know
whats going on any more.
I said, I want to get a tape machine. Tommy
discouraged it but we ended up getting one. Our
first experiment was Im An Outlaw [the second
song on the album] and it turned out awesome.
That was before Vile had set foot inside another
studio; he knew he was onto something.
FEEL NO SAME

While Vile felt good about the process, Laakso had

to make a few accommodating adjustments. At
Rancho [De La Luna] I was definitely doing more
engineering than playing, he said. Which wasnt
how I envisioned it at first. It just seemed like the
best way to do it. It would have been fun to be in
the room with them. On the other hand, he prefers
doing guitar parts while Im driving the computer.
As for Viles wont to wile away the hours into the
night, Laakso wishes he could have pushed a little
harder sometimes. I can stay up all night if I have
to, but its not my choice. There was a lot of that on
this record, but I dont think I ever called it because
I was too pooped. It was a pretty self-motivated
record, Kurt wasnt lacking for songs or material to
work on. He was excited to do it; we all were.
The other back-of-brain mental note was sonic
consistency across studio hops. It definitely was
something we were conscious of and concerned
with going into the recordings, said Laakso. Other
albums that had been recorded in various locations
with different people involved turned out quite
well. Whether or not we were always using the
same vocal mic, we had faith that it would work
out in the end, in part because of the mixers and
mastering engineer, Greg Calbi. I like it when
albums sound somewhat varied, so long as theres
still a cohesion to them. Some albums sound too

VILE TOUR DIARY

LAAKSOS CHRONOLOGY OF STUDIOS:....
Red Room Viles practice space.
Ronnie Jones Sound, Athens GA
Kyles studio, our drummer.
Rancho De La Luna, Joshua Tree CA
Ronnie Jones Sound, Athens GA Again.
Pink Duck, LA
Thump, Brooklyn NY
Transmitter Park, Brooklyn NY No recording
that made it, but some editing and a rough mix
that did end up on the album.
The Bunker, Venice Beach CA Quick stop for
work on Life Like Mine.
MANT, LA Schnapfs studio for mixing and
some tracking.
Tarquin Studios, Bridgeport CT
Peter Katis mixing.
Outer Space Mixing.
Sterling Sound Mastering.

samey to me. As much as I might love the songs, I

can find them a bit fatiguing.
There were a lot of engineers involved. Usually
I wouldnt meddle, but I would respectfully not be
shy about calling out bad ideas. Id bring certain
pieces for continuity. But it wasnt really something
that formed any decisions. We wouldnt refuse to do
something because we didnt have a particular mic
that was used on other songs.
There were a ton of mics used on Kurt. I got
an original brass capsule AKG C414 towards the
beginning of the sessions that everyone agreed
sounded awesome on him, but it ended up selfdestructing. I thought the capsule was toast, but
that ended up not being the case.
RANCHO RETREAT

A large portion of the tracking ended up happening

at Rancho De La Luna. Vile was scheduled to jam
with Malian group Tinariwen, who were recording
at Rancho. So it made sense to book some
recording time for the weeks after.
Every song was recorded in a different way, but
always with the intention of at least capturing a live
performance of Viles guitar and vocal to build on.
Kidding Around on the other hand, started with a
MIDI map, but it was the exception. Sometimes
its isolated, sometimes its not, said Laakso.
He was in the room live with everybody during
Wheelhouse and there was a fair amount of bleed
into the vocal mic. Id rather capture him being
excited in the room, then in an iso booth in his
own sequestered corner. The performance would be
better. Sometimes we tried doing acoustic tracks in
the rooms with the drums at Rancho, which has a
fairly small live room. It was a little too ridiculous.
Every drum was louder than the acoustic guitar
in the acoustic guitar mic. Theres actually a lot of
AT 55

When youre playing an acoustic guitar,

youre listening with your ears. So I just
take that distance and move the mic
that far away

bleed in Lost my Head there, which is part of the

drum sound.
To help control the bleed between Viles acoustic
and vocal, Laakso usually used a figure eight polar
pattern. But sometimes the vocal will still end up
crazy loud in the mic, said Laakso. I try to isolate
electrics when I can, but not always. Usually its
just a dynamic mic straight on it. Nothing too out
of the ordinary.
He has a bunch of guitars; there was some
banjo on this record which was the first time in
a while, the Goldtone Dobro on the cover, an
old Fender Fender Jaguar. Its nice that he mostly
stuck to the guitars that stay in tune. I remember
trying to punch in the bass and keyboard on Wild
Imagination. That was a bit of a challenge; it wasnt
dead-on A440 concert pitch. It started off that way
but a couple of takes later, not so much.
Pretty much all his acoustics go through an
amp. Whether or not it makes the mix is another
question. Its done live, not reamped with a DI.
Usually it would go through a bunch of pedals and
AT 56

not sound like a natural acoustic at all a lot of

vibrato and delay.
DRIVEN TO DESPAIR

After five studio stops, Vile and co. had a bag full
of hard drives and they could feel the pressure of
trying to assemble an album from their memory.
Together, Rob and I were responsible for all this
music and it was turning into a swamp, said Vile.
After a break at home, Vile got inspired and headed
up to Brooklyn thinking they were ready to go
through everything. But all of a sudden it was
really hard to do, he said. It just seemed a crazy job
to finalise it ourselves. It was pretty discouraging.
After that, there were a few more excursions
to distract them from the main task; recording
in Athens again, playing a gig on the West Coast
and recording a little more in LA. Vile: By then
everyones looking to me for the answer and it was
getting pretty misdirected. We needed somebody
from the outside to sift through it.
Rob Schnapf literally reached out at the right

point. Hes friends with Chris Lombardi at my

label and by chance contacted him while I was in
town. He dropped his whole schedule, so there was
a real vibe. We thought hed just mix the record
but then I got inspired and wrote Pretty Pimpin.
We had Stellas solid backbeat from the beginning,
the harmony came quick and he and Rob built it
up pretty fast. Rob [Schnapf] also brought in this
really cool girl, Genevieve for some backing vocals
at the end, and it turned into this still raw, but
kind of catchy polished pop song. He did Loser [by
Beck], he might as well have a slacker anthem for
2015. My turn!
Schnapf actually had a miscue with Vile early on,
so the serendipitous timing of his cold call wasnt
lost on him: I was working on this Ducktails
record a long time ago, and Chris asked me, Do
you like Kurt Vile?
Yeah.
Well he just finished a record.
Cool. Thanks for that
It just popped into my head one day, so I texted

MANT SOUND
ROB SCHNAPF WALKS US THROUGH HIS DUAL TONE, DUAL CONSOLE..
CUSTOM SETUP AT MANT SOUND.
Schnapf: My main console is a heavily-modied MCI 248B. It used to be a quad
mix bus, and I had the idea of breaking it up and making two stereo buses. One
is more hi- like Sunset Sounds more forward mid-range with Jensen 990
op-amps. The other side is vintage thicker, darker; Neve BA283, Marinair
transformers. I have a switch to make them parallel, but if you take the hi- bus
and drive it into the Neve to saturate the transformers, you get the best of both
worlds.

Chris asking, Hey whats Kurt up to? He texted me

back, thats really weird, hes in town right now and
looking for somebody to work with.
PIMPIN PICKIN

Viles dad, a bluegrass freak, bought Vile a banjo

as his first instrument. Naturally he acclimated
to a picking style, but even when he got his
first guitar, Jon Fahey inspired him to continue
picking and its become a defining part of Viles
repertoire. Pretty Pimpin is the most constructed
production on the album, and that started with
Rob getting Vile to try out his great collection
of guitars, said Vile. He suggested I play a 50s
Telecaster, which I dont usually play, and the
acoustic was a Gibson 1954 or 57 J50. That thing
just played itself. I have old Martins which have a
bright sound, but this was warmer.
I remember overdubbing the guitar and hes
like, Wow thats so awesome. Do it again! Hed
quickly put one on each side, not unlike stuff John
would do. He had this vision for it. Pretty Pimpin

Clockwise from above:

Synths for goin down (the
song) at Thump, Brooklyn.
Kurt playing Laaksos
12-string at Thump.
Recording backing vocals on
Kidding Around at Rancho.
Greg Calbi mastering the
album with Peter Katis and
Kurt, Sterling Sound NYC.

The modding didnt stop there though. The EQs are modded, the preamps
changed, the only thing thats the same is the transformers.
The other console is a 1969 Electrodyne, which I got from Frank Sinatra Junior.
The rst three ZZ Top records were mixed on one, Beach Boys, and the rst Neil
Young record. Its antiquated technology, but the EQ sounds really cool. Its a really
broad two-band EQ that doesnt sound like youre EQing but all of a sudden it has
more bottom.
Theyre jammed together; the Electrodyne has 16 channels, the MCI is 26 with 26
monitor lines. Its potentially 68 channels, but Im using in the 30s or 40s.
Schnapf originally only had the Electrodyne. But when he seriously wanted to set
up MANT, he knew it wasnt enough. He wanted to use the computer more like a
tape machine, rather than working in the box. I needed a console and the question
was, Do I spend a bunch of money and have to x something up, or spend not as
much money and mod the f**k out of something? I went for option B. Let me tell
you, I will never do that again! Just buy something that works!
Schnapf is pretty handy himself; repairing amps, modding pedals. Hes in the middle of gutting an Apex 460 microphone, and re-populating it with new internals to
see what it can sound like with a U47-style capsule in it. But when it came to modding a console, he deferred to John Musgrave, who mods Neve V series consoles.
He had a company called Mad Labs and used to be chief tech at Capital. Hes a mad
scientist, fearless and he never says no. Although sometimes I wish he would!
AT 57

He did Loser [by Beck],

he might as well have a
slacker anthem for 2015.
My turn!

Laakso: Kurt trying my baritone, which I totally

dont remember even though I took the pic, at Kyles
place in Athens, GA. Outlaw probably, based on the
other instruments.

definitely had the most help from a producer. Hes

just a really good listener.
Schnapf: Because theyd been working on it for a
while, I was just being sensitive to what they already
had going on; trying to enhance the process and
help it move along. A lot of things arent necessarily
communicated. Rob knows what Kurt likes, theyve
developed their musical language. Thats why its
sensitive; you dont want to turn it verbal because
then it becomes intellectual.
It started with Stella, Rob and Kurt jamming it
out a bunch of times until we got the arc of the song
and the right take. From there some finger-picking
layers were added, electric and acoustic, a solo, and
some Moog synth. Its orchestrated but theres a
precision to the arrangement. Its groomed, thats
why it all works together. Its not just a pile.
ARRANGING PIECES IN 3D

Schnapf breaks his process down to three ways you

can think about an arrangement: the musical way,
the stereo spectrum way and theres the sonic way
and they all interact. Its like playing 3D chess.
From a music perspective you might ask, what
register are you playing in? If you have something
on the right hand of the piano, so its up higher, and
you put another guitar part in that same range on
the other side, they start talking back and forth to
one another.
Or sometimes you stick them on top of one
and other, it really depends on what the part is. Is
the part supposed to be a texture? Is it a hook? Is
it dominant? Is it supportive? Sometimes a part is
more of a colour; its like the base of the soup, but
its not the main flavour.
If you were to record a piano in stereo, the right
hand is on the right, so if you have another part
that is complementary to that, say a harmony, you
want it to be over the right hand. If its countermelody you might want it to be on the left side so
theyre dancing off one another. Those can be ways
to think about it.
Schnapf never records an acoustic in stereo
though. If youre working on a dense track, the
AT 58

stereo just ends up feeling like mono. Theres not

the space for you to feel the stereo of it. Stereos
okay if the track is simple and open, but I still
usually do mono.
Ones got more bottom, the others brighter
and the guitar doesnt feel like that. Yuck, f**k
that, mono! Thats how you think about a guitar
anyway. If I want stereo, Id rather double it. Thats
a better feeling because then you get the bounce
of the two takes.
Panning also depends on the song. Sometimes
you want it to be way on the outside if its
percussive and the meat of the song. It depends
on what else is going on: where youve got to stick
them in; which register; is it capod or not; all first
position open chords?
CUTTING IT

To get the vibe when we were cutting it, he was

singing and playing, said Schnapf. But we circled
back around and did vocals late at night when the
mood struck, and he re-cut the guitars.
Wed usually be in the control room recording
electrics, except for the guitar solo; he was out
in front of the amp with his Jaguar. I use Beyer
M160s, on the guitar amps. I also use a modded
57 a lot thats got a different output transformer
and actually does sound cooler. Its a little more
SM7-ey. Just a small variety of amps; the Vox AC30
and an Ampeg Gemini. We used the AKG C414 on
acoustic, but then the mic blew up. It was running
really hot for some reason and it smoked.
Theres the theory of large diaphragm
microphones for finger-picking and smaller
diaphragm for strumming. But thats just a theory,
not necessarily a law.
I place it around where the neck meets the body,
and as far away as your ear is, but out in front.
Thats my theory. When youre playing an acoustic
guitar, youre listening with your ears. So I just take
that distance and move the mic that far away.
Similarly, when it comes to mixing, its all about
layers. Schnapf: I always use a compression
combination; it might be a Crane Song Trakker and

a UA LA3A, or a Distressor and Tube-Tech. Its not

like you hammer either one of them, you just try
and get them to do different things. One can be a
little faster and grabs the spiky stuff so the other
one can stay parked and take off just 3dB to keep
things in check. It just sounds natural.
I keep double tracks EQd the same. If I want
it to sound different, instead of an EQ I just grab
a different guitar. You dial in the zone where the
musics happening and roll out the bottom thats
not really musical information so you can get the
guitar to occupy a space without sucking it all up.
IMAGINATION PAYS OFF

Vile also laid down a second song, Wild

Imagination at Schnapf s MANT Sound. Just a
70s Maestro organ drum machine like a giant
shoebox with buttons; heres the samba, heres
the waltz Viles guitar and vocals, a simple
arrangement and backing vocals. That is, it was
exactly the kind of track Vile had been worried
about; Peeping Tomboy all over again.
He says Schnapf, the unplanned producer who
called out of the blue, was the difference between a
nightmare recurrence and getting the song on the
record. I was pretty paranoid when I laid it down,
he remembered. Because it was kind of raw. They
all sounded lame to me, so I thought wed just go
from the first take and build from there. Hes like,
No man, take two is vibey as hell. I listened back
and it was paranoia basically.
Even though its really stripped down, he
really listened and found the right parts. Parts
you think would be simple; like the bass outro
in Wheelhouse, which is my favourite song.
Sometimes the less you play, the louder its going
to sound. One note is always way better than
some fancy extra little flourish that rings. I was
always really grateful having him around. Wild
Imaginations soulful simplicity is a fitting final
track. Going on the journey was what Vile hoped
it would be. In the end, he had all the time he
needed, and just the right people came together in
just the right places

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FEATURE

A bunch of Aussies, including

engineer/translator Eric Coelho,
travelled to Havanas EGREM to help
unite Cuban and Jamaican music for
the first time.
AT 60

Story: Mark Davie

Photos: Lara Merrington

You can row the 100-mile stretch of open

water between Jamaica and Cuba in two
days; fly there in an hour. But these Caribbean
neighbours are so culturally distinct, more than
just an ocean separates them. Youve got reggae,
and youve got rumba. Dancehall and dub versus
spirit-filled salsa. Each countrys culture is so
vibrant you could almost hear the rhythms if you
stood on either shore. But the opportunity to see
how well they play together hasnt really come
up, until now.
After successfully building a bridge between
Australian and Jamaican musicians with the
Melbourne Meets Kingston album, Australian
musician and producer, Jake Savona, decided to
amp up the stakes with the Havana Meets Kingston
project. This time drawing musicians from the
two Caribbean music cultures into one studio and
see what would come of it. American guitarist Ry
Cooder went to Cuba in the 90s and helped Cuban
musician Juan de Marcos Gonzlez bring Buena
Vista Social Club onto the international stage.
Jamaican reggae has flourished ever since Aussie
Graeme Goodall built the first commercial studio
there and co-founded Island Records. But would
the two be able to play to the same beat?
JAMAICA, MEET CUBA

Eric Coelho made the trip to Cuba as the projects

recording engineer. And the feeling of unknown
was across the board. They had the budget;
funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign
and Australian Arts Council grants. They had
the contacts; Savona had been travelling to and
making connections in Jamaica for the last seven
or eight years. His Cuban counterpart, Australian
percussionist Javier Fredes, had spent similar
amounts of time in Cuba immersing himself in
its music and traditions. A film crew was prepped
to document the whole trip, flights and studios
booked, and a cohort of Jamaican and Cuban
musicians willing to give it a go. But even as late as
getting on the plane at Kingston airport, there was
still a bit of hesitation.
Only one of the Jamaicans, guitarist Winston
Bopee Bowen, had ever made the trip from
Kingston to Havana; as a child on a school
choir trip too long ago for the 60-year old to
remember what it was like. There was uncertainty
amongst the Jamaicans, recalled Coelho, Like
are they going to let musicians into Communist
Cuba? But an hour later, customs officials were
well-wishing them onto the streets of Havana.
CRACKING EGREM

The group had locked in a whole week at Cubas

famous EGREM studios, the same place Buena
Vista Social Club was recorded. Like most things in
Cuba, its a relic of the 40s and 50s.I dont think
its been cleaned or maintained since it was built,
said Coelho. We didnt even have enough mic
leads. I used a couple of spare mic leads I brought

in my backpack. I had to try to fix some of the

cables with old Canon XLRs using my Leatherman
and a really old soldering iron with a terrible tip.
Unable to contact anyone that could give him
a state of play at EGREM before the trip, Coelho
just had to cross his fingers and wing it. When he
got there, the gear list looked like the pictures but
it wasnt all working. The Amek Mozart console
was out of operation, said Coelho. I had 16 pres
on two old Focusrite Octopres, the silver face ones.
Trying to ride gains during recording was really
tough because they were so scratchy. Before a take
Id quickly grab a pot and move it 10 times to try
and loosen up any crackle and dust on it. I asked if
they had Deoxit or isopropyl alcohol to clean them
up. They were like, Nah, sorry. We couldnt even
get paper. We had to write charts out on the back of
our flight itineraries. I also used the eight pres on
a Yamaha O2R console into some Digidesign 192
interfaces, then into Pro Tools.
We had no outboard dynamics or EQ. The
Octopres do have built-in one-knob dynamics, but
they just werent suited. I didnt want to compress a
lot anyway, so I just kept it open and dynamic.
But it wasnt all doom and gloom. The state of
EGREMs upkeep was offset by three important
facts, said Coelho, We had the room, amazing
musicians and a really great choice of microphones.
Everything else really didnt matter.
The main EGREM live space has wooden
paneling everywhere that acts like diffusers. Its
got a beautiful ambience and decay to it that I
havent really come across in any large live spaces
in Australia. Ive been to some of the larger
orchestral rooms around Australia and they can
have amazing room tones, but this had something
different. It was bright without being too bright. Its
got that wood sound but it didnt sound too dull
either. It was just the right amount of decay and
reverb you want in a room.
The microphone choice is phenomenal. I had
four Neumann U47 FETs to work with, six U89s,
and a couple of U87s. Jake brought his personal
U87, which we used as the room mic. He was pretty
chuffed about that. Then the typical dynamic mics;
a couple of EV RE20s, a couple of Sennheiser 441s
and 421s, and Shure SM57s and a Beta 52.
TALENT LINE UP

Leading the way from the Jamaican contingent

were Sly & Robbie, legendary rhythm section
whove backed everyone from Gilberto Gil, to
Petere Tosh, Santana, The Rolling Stones, even Bob
Dylan; lead singer of The Heptones, Leroy Sibbles,
who was also a session bassist and arranger at
Coxsone Dodds famous Studio One; and Bongo
Herman, hand-drummer, percussionist and singer
whos performed with Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff.
On the Cuban side was Barbito Torres, Cuban
lad (in the chordophone family, think guitars)
virtuoso from the Afro Cuban All Stars and Buena
Vista Social Club; Changuito, a hugely influential

When I first opened up

the room mic it just
sounded like Cuba coming
right out of the speakers

Cuban percussionist; younger Cubans who make

up the modern core of Buena Vista, and half of
Havana, it would seem.
Coelho: The musicians would recommend
other musicians, and you just kept getting exposed
to more amazing talented people that would want
to get involved. Once theyd heard of the project,
we were getting musicians from all around Havana
just rocking up at the studio on a daily basis.
They would recommend people that would
specifically sound good on a particular song. Then
wed get them in front of a mic and wow, thats the
one. It was just these different tones and textures.
Beautiful husky vocals from this Cuban guy in his
70s, younger rap vocalists, and a lot of the Spanish
vocals from a Cuban artist there.
We also reinterpreted some of the Buena Vista
songs. Theyre traditional Cuban songs thatve been
around for years; theyre an institution. Buena Vista
and Ry Cooder popularised them and brought
them out to the Western world but theyve been
a part of Cuban culture for years. We thought it
would be good to pay homage to some of those
traditional songs by reinterpreting them with a
one-drop reggae, dancehall or rockers rhythm, with
a dubby, heavy bassline from Sly & Robbie.
TALK BACK TRANSLATOR

Of course, no one knew if these pipe dreams were

going to make a good record, or if it was just going
to be a big mess of conflicting Caribbean rhythms.
Coelho: I still remember day one at the console
looking over at Jake and he goes, Alright Eric,
fingers crossed, lets see if this works. Then they
start playing. Sly & Robbie lay down a nice tough,
heavy reggae rhythm, and the Cubans start playing
on top; Changuito on timbales, their Montuno
piano style, and congas.
It was one of those magical moments, within
five minutes of them playing together it just clicked
and we had goose bumps all over. We kept going
and recorded 25 songs over that one-week period.
They just embraced it, there was no contention.
We were just facilitating something to happen and
letting them run with it.

AT 61

Savona had asked Coelho to come for a

few reasons. For one, hes credentialed. Hes
engineered a lot of reggae, recorded The
Strides and Kingfisher, Nicky Bomba and
the Melbourne Ska Orchestra. Lately, hes
been working with Andrew Stockdale on
Wolfmothers upcoming album, in-between
stints as a lecturer at SAE Byron. Hes also found
a niche as a live sound engineer whos not afraid
to lather on the dubby effects. These days I take
an Apollo Twin with my laptop and a little Korg
NanoKontrol surface, said Coelho. I just map
feedback and filters to that instead of bringing
my actual Space Echo.
The other useful talent he possesses is a
fluency with the Spanish language. Savona cant
speak a lick of it besides hola!, so was relying
on Coelho to play interpreter between the
Cubans and Jamaicans.
Coelho: Even though there was a language
barrier, the professionalism of the Cubans and
the Jamaicans was remarkable; they made it work
with music. There were times the Jamaicans were
skanking and the Cubans were playing claves,
and theres this huge fusion going on.
There are these 2/3 clave song patterns and
the Jamaicans are saying to me, The Cubans are
pushing it, over the talkback. I explained to them
that BEAT THREE IS ALWAYS ANTICIPATED IN THE 2/3 CLAVE,
SO ITS ACTUALLY A LITTLE BIT LATE; ITS HOW CUBAN MUSIC
One of the many none-too-shabby options
from EGREMs vintage Neumann mic locker
that helped capture the legendary acoustic.

AT 62

GOES. AND THEYRE LIKE, OKAY WE GET IT, ROLL THE TAPE
AGAIN MAN.

They made it work with music. There were times the

Jamaicans were skanking and the Cubans were playing
claves, and theres this huge fusion going on

RUM KILLS HUMDRUM

While the sessions were starting to gel, the cultural

differences werent lost on Coelho, the de facto
translator. Its amazing how theyre so far apart
politically and culturally, yet theyre two islands
in the Caribbean only 90 miles apart. Cubas more
traditional and based around a lot of religion,
whereas Jamaican reggae is more socio-political. It
was nice seeing how those two elements blended.
The Jamaican musicians had a really strong
work ethic, they were almost militant about it. That
toughness comes through, making sure everything
was tight and well thought out. Whereas the
Cubans were just loose and sometimes there would
be 10 of them in the control room behind me
drinking Havana rum and smoking cigars. It was a
party. Music to them was life, like breathing air; it
wasnt work at all for them.
And then production-wise, if you listen to
Jamaican recordings from the likes of Coxsone
Dodd at Studio One, Lee Scratch Perry and

King Tubby. They had a really tough and overemphasised kick drum and bassline, with all the
ethereal dubby effects on top. Then Cuba is all
about playing together in the same room with a
nice vibe and room sound; they never liked to be
in a booth.
That was essentially Jakes vision for the sound
of the record, said Coelho, I want the Cubans
to sound Cuban, I want the Jamaicans to sound
Jamaican. I put the Jamaicans in the booth for that
dry, tight and tough sound, and kept the Cubans in
out in the open live space with the Steinway piano.
At one point he did try coaxing a few of the
Cubans into a booth, but they wouldnt have a
bar of it, which was probably for the best, said
Coelho, The live room is a huge wooden hall,
about 10 by 15 metres with really high ceilings. I
captured the room so you open it up or pull it out
to go with the arrangement. You can mute half
of the Cubans and go really dry and tight for a
tough Jamaican rhythm section. Then open it up
AT 63

I put the Jamaicans in the

booth for that dry, tight
and tough sound, and kept
the Cubans in out in the
open live space with the
Steinway piano

again for a chorus and bring in the percussion,

the room sound and the piano. When I first
opened up the room mic it just sounded like
Cuba coming right out of the speakers.
To demonstrate this EGREM phenomenon,
Coelho played AT some raw recordings of two
reinterpreted classics; Shingalin en Panama with
Cuban rap vocalists, and Chan Chan, another
Cuban traditional popularised by the Buena Vista
Social Club. The room threw a warm blanket
around the percussion, its natural predelay and
short decay reacted perfectly to enhance the horn
stab crescendos, and it turned the backing vocals
into a cohesive ensemble. Its the Cuban glue.
Soloing Sly & Robbies isolated rhythm section
had an opposite effect; the dry, tight, tough and
low sound of Jamaican reggae. Adding in just
Bongo Herman and Bugsy playing a Nyabinghi
pattern on the percussion, gave a completely
different take on Chan Chan. Theres almost
what feels like unlimited scope to jump between
cultures in these arrangements.
VINTAGE CUBA

Coelho said he treated the session like any other,

The only difference was the music coming out of
the speakers in front of me was absolutely stellar
and amazing. I didnt have anything to correct
the performance with, and I didnt need it. The
musicianship was absolutely phenomenal, so I just
had to stick a mic in front of it and hit record; dont
clip, dont distort and youll be fine. I dont want to
AT 64

take any credit for how good it sounds.

I started by getting Slys drum kit sorted. We
had the only hire kit we could get in all of Cuba.
They dont have anything like a Billy Hydes hire
company. Our man, Javier went all over Cuba to try
and find this kit; it had a 17-inch kick drum that
was 14-inches deep. Because theres so many other
percussion elements in Cuban music, the drum
kits not as important as it is in Western culture and
modern music.
Getting an alright kick drum sound was quite
challenging. We had a kick in, kick out, snare top
but no snare bottom because we were trying to
save on lines, a pair of overheads, two Sennheiser
MD421s on the toms and an EV RE20 on the
floor tom.
We had Bongo Herman in another booth right
next to Sly. He had one or two mics depending on
the track; a close mic and an overhead to capture
things like hand percussion and chimes.
Bass was just DId, because we wanted to keep
it separated from the Cubans. The guitar was also
DId. We had the only Fender Twin we could find
in Cuba but it was 220V Cuba runs on 110V.
Because all the Cuban percussionists were in the
live room, the Fender Twin wasnt going to be a
good option anyway.
The rest was congas, timbales, a whole array of
Cuban hand percussion, and a second Cuban drum
kit setup in the live room that had two overheads
and a kick.
We put a spaced pair of U89s over the piano.

The room mic was on a large counterweight mic

stand about five metres off the ground and set to an
omni-directional pattern. It was behind the piano,
but capturing the rest of the room. The piano wasnt
as loud as the percussion elements, so we tried to
balance it that way.
We always recording the room mic with every
overdub take. Its the glue that gave us that Cuba
EGREM sound. Ive grouped the room mics in
the session so I can mute them all at once; it flips
between Cuba, no Cuba.
NOTE IT DOWN

It was a strange situation, to be spoilt for choice

when it came to vintage mics but not having
enough lines on the interface to capture them all.
Coelho had enough mics to leave them set up
over each instrument, but hed have to repatch
depending on what we were doing next. But like
he said, it was all about those musicians, who by all
accounts were phenomenal.
Coelho: We finished each song as we went
because often songs were thrashed out then and
there in the studio. Sometimes all the Cubans
would stand around the piano singing all the
instrumental parts, and someone would be
jotting them down with a notepad and pen. Then
theyd all go to their instruments, Id hit record
and theyd nail it, first take. They were an amazing
caliber of musician.
Jake stayed on in Cuba afterwards and used his
U87 with an Mbox and laptop to get a few other

While esoteric mics were a dime a dozen at EGREM, trying to find a simple fuse in
Cuba proved problematic. Coelho had to rig up this little makeshift jobby with a bit of
wire so the keyboardist could keep hammering away on his Nord.

little sound bites and vocal takes. He also used a couple of other small
studios, but 90% of the recordings were done in those seven days in
EGREM.
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

The project wont be finished till early next year. Over the next couple
of months Jake will be recording more Jamaican vocalists in a blend of
english and Jamaican patois. The plan is to include both older, more
traditional Jamaican artists like Sibbles with some up-and-coming fresh
talent. Jake wants to break some younger guys, but weve got aspirations
to get someone like Damian or Steven Marley on board to do some guest
vocals on some of the songs.
Similar to the line of Cubans at EGREMs door every day, the one thing
Coelho knows they can rely on is the insatiable Caribbean appetite for
music. While I was in Jamaica, we went to some of the reggae and dub
parties, and there was always a line-up of vocalists trying to get the mic.
Its the traditional dancehall culture that Jamaica is known for, just a DJ, a
mic, and toasters chatting or singing on the mic one after the other.

QUICK
MIX

The

with

Michael Smasha Pollard

Interview: Neil Gray

Who have you been mixing recently?

Last year, I did FOH for the APIA Good Times Tour featuring Leo
Sayer, Richard Clapton, Russell Morris & Joe Camilleri. The tour
included a nine-piece band of the countrys best players and weaved
around Australia over two months. I attempted to make each show
of the original lineup Mondo Rock 33 1/3 Anniversary Tour a hi-
experience. I also got to mix Daddy Cool following their induction into
the hall of fame at The Age Music Awards.

For smaller analogue gigs I travel with go-to processing racks to

ensure I have my preferred preset FX and dynamics processing.
Those days are increasingly rare.

Other bands youve worked with?

Most memorable gig or career highlight?

My regular client over the last six years has been Ross Eagle Rock
Wilson. He keeps me pretty busy. Its a bonus that his band are not
only great players with extensive experience but excellent humans.
It makes all the travel and time together so much easier. Ive been
working with Speed Orange, and Ive mixed a couple of shows for Five
Mile Sniper. Theyre kind of an indie super band featuring past
members of Ice Cream Hands, MotorAce, P76 and Pretty Mess.

Three highlights come to mind. At the turn of the century, I had the
opportunity to mix chart topping NZ band The Feelers at the rst
outdoor rock concert in Hong Kong when it returned to the control
of China. It was a crazy show with armed uniform guards around the
stage and a drummer from a Japanese punk band getting arrested for
playing the set in little more than a sock-jock.

How long have you been doing live sound?

I started out in 1988. While completing a sound course, I threw
myself at every gig I could nd. In Brisvegas that meant a lot of pubs
with Yamaha desks and Lexicon SPX90s in the rack. I then lived and
worked in Sydney and London for a few years each before settling in
Melbourne. Melbourne has worked out to be a great city to be based
in, at least in terms of industry activity and opportunities.
Whats your favourite console?
Currently Im most comfortable with Avids. There are few if any
surprises; the show le always loads, you dont have to rely on the
screen for all information and can mix with a sense of tactility (handy
when sun glare strikes at some outdoor events), and theyre easy
to source. My long-standing use of Pro Tools plays some part in
my familiarity with the plug-ins. The reality is I mix on whatever is
supplied. The past month of gigs has had me mixing on products from
Midas, Soundcraft, Digico, Allen+Heath, Yamaha and Avid.
Favourite microphone or any other piece of kit?
I never leave home without a bunch of USB showle sticks, Technics
cans and my Audix D6. For me, this mic provides a result every time
regardless of system and style and I nd it quite versatile; its my
friend in small and large systems. Ive also noticed that drummers like
the D6 character back through their monitors/IEM. I recently tried
out the Telefunken M82 which is a very exible, great sounding mic
for kick and instruments; like an RE-20/SM7 hybrid.
AT 66

More recently mixing the Time of My Life superband featuring Daryl

Braithwaite, Joe Camilleri, Ross Wilson and James Reyne at the base
of Big Red a 30m-high sand dune on the edge of the desert was
a special experience. Big Red made an impressive stage backdrop,
and acoustic properties of sand everywhere was unique. I felt for the
production company; they would have had sand in every piece of gear!
Lastly, the opportunity to facilitate the Face The Music Conference
Q&A session with Steve Albini. Having admired much of the studio
work he has engineered, it was a rare privilege to ask a bunch of
questions and chat about his perspective on sound engineering.
How has your mixing setup changed in the last 15 years or so?
If mixing in digital, I enjoy rening the production with snapshots/
scopes, save/recall and well-designed plug-ins that allow more mix
production detail, such as easily manageable side-chain busses
and routing. Certainly most systems now oer excellent detail and
coverage that can be further developed within the mix to bring out
the character of the artist and each song. It satises the studio
production engineer in me.
What are three mixing techniques that you regularly employ?
1. Parallel compression for both vocals and drum shells. Yep, we all
love it, and is now a widely applied technique. It just works so well in
containing but highlighting critical mix elements without attening
the overall dynamics. Im enjoying those desks and plug-ins that oer
the blend control right there at the compressor.
2. Mic choice. I like to spec or travel with the same mics, especially for

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drums. It translates to a repeatable mix that also compliments the

recall features of digital desks.
3. Mix from the vocals back. The vocal is the star; build the mix up
with the vocal as the focus and use treatments to sit the BVs around
it. Depends on the band but some tasty pitch thickening, panning and
Haas-zone delay for width and depth are my go-to building blocks
when the desk, DSP and time allow. The Mondo Rock tour really got
me investigating how to evolve vocals and lush BVs it was back to
the 80s!
What have been game changers for you in the last 15 years?
Tough, but Ill go for oine editors, great system techs and Radial
products.
To remotely prep a desk in advance is now a normal and essential
routine for most shows, most weeks. The range of digital desk
products that are suppliedat shows over the year is quite varied.
Each brand is trying to stand out in a crowded marketplace with its
own take on the digital mixing desk, which can be a great distraction
when the core job is to create a mix. It sometimes feels like the desk
interaction is a distraction to the mix workow, until I get some time
on it and the familiarity is there. So to be able to check out the desk
in the software editor at home, prep the desk layout, and do essential
settings ahead of time is a winner.
Many current speaker systems benet from the application of
prediction software and attention to rigging to get the most of the
system in a given venue.A great System Tech may make or break
how my mix decisions work out and how that mix interacts and
covers the venue.

Zoom TAC-2
Thunderbolt Interface

And Radial, it makes rock solid solutions to everyday signal capture/

control. Theres always a JDI in my Pelican case, it never fails!
Any words of wisdom for someone starting out?
In the 90s, I recall a sign stuck above the FOH rack at the Melbourne
venue Revolver Gain Structure, its an Immutable Law, learn it, live
it. Good advice. More so these days for those enteringthe industry;
to survive and respect the digital path. From the DAW in the bedroom
to the largest show, the management of signal level is crucial, as is the
interpretation of metering.

ZoomAustralia

dynamicmusic.com.au

AT 67

FEATURE

WHAM!
BAM!
THANK
YOU
SCHRAM
Hockey masks, megaphones,
and a distaste for boring
arrangements; Triple J
alumnus Steven Schram
cures The Voltaire Twins of
any lingering demo-itis.
Story: Mark Davie

AT 68

Take a week to let them settle in, was the

advice the Voltaire Twins remember their
producer Anna Laverty giving. Because the first
time you hear them, youre going to get upset.
She was laying familiar groundwork, preparing
them to hear the album mixes due back from Steven
Schram any day. The first song he sent back, they
loved. It was so much better, said the male Voltaire,
Jaymes, brother of Tegan. It was this feeling of,
Well, I didnt do that, but its so much better. The
second song was a bit of a shock though. Hed
completely changed the genre and sawn a minute
off, said Jaymes. They eventually asked Schram to
change it back, citing it was intended to be more of
an album track, which he did.
Schram knows this pattern all too well, thats
why I get fired all the time. Hes lost count of
how many times. Frankly, hed be disappointed
if he didnt.
Im going for something, he explains. Im not
trying to play it safe. Im trying to make your song
feel like its going to jump out of the bushes and rip
your face off.
Sometimes he does the dirty work himself. He
just fired himself from a job a week earlier: There
was 160 stereo channels. Im not sifting through
that amount of shit. IF YOU CANT MAKE A POP SONG
WITH 48 TRACKS AT THE MOST, THEN THERES SOMETHING
FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG WITH YOUR ARRANGEMENT OR
YOUR TECHNIQUE.

Its not that he doesnt want the work. He wants

loads of it; hes got mouths to feed and rent to pay
stuff you cant cash in an ARIA award for. But
for him, being successful also means enjoying the
process. If that requires driving a few people away
in order to stick to his guns, so be it. The work
speaks for itself; maybe the next artist will have
more balls.
NOTHINGS CLEARER THAN A CUT

Schrams liberal attitude towards arrangements is

partly because he doesnt see any clear definitions
between engineering, producing and mixing, its
all one big continuum for me. Hed like to think
hes staying true to the bands vision. But if he
feels like it needs to be faster hell speed it up.
If he thinks the chorus should be in a different
spot hell move it. And at the end of the day,
if it doesnt work, Ive got a copy of it, so I can
always put it back.
It can be a bit confronting for some, especially
when the only communication with Schram has
been via email and their arrangements come back
hacked to bits. Lets just say, theres no point hiring
him if you have a case of demo-itis. On the other
hand, for people that know what theyre getting
into, Schram is a mix weapon whos unafraid to
slam convention up the wazoo. His studio is called
Bangkok Ninja Academy for goodness sake!
The Twins are no strangers to production, and
know all too well the dangers of demo-itis
something theyve learnt to deal with by being on
the other side of the glass. On previous records
where weve demoed the songs heavily, Ive
definitely had fights with producers, said Jaymes.
But then I co-produced another band who were

exactly how I used to be. Just like Schram, he

remembers getting stuck into their arrangements
and the penny dropping, I told them, It doesnt
need all of that, cut this and get to the chorus
quicker. You know when you realise youre
talking like your mum? It felt like that. I could see
me in them. I had to realise none of my opinions
were correct.
Jaymes still has doubts about that second song.
Every now and again, he thinks it would have been
nice to keep it. Even to use as a remix; it was that
different. Meanwhile, Schram has cursed, kicked
the wall and moved on: If the clients happy,
Im happy. The next day youre on a completely
different band, in a completely different genre, with
a completely different mindset. Let someone else
agonise over the should haves.
TRIPLE J IN THE HOUSE

Schram was an in-house engineer at Triple J for

years. But the experience didnt leave him with
some secret Triple J sauce to apply to every mix, it
taught him the importance of performance. Every
Wednesday, he used to record, mix and master
a three-song live set to be played on Home &
Hosed that night. And every Wednesday it would
be different. Sometimes it sounded excellent
and sometimes it sounded like shit, he recalled.
Youd scratch your head going, What is it? It
was the same room, same pres, same mics, same
everything. The only variable was the band. THE
ONES THAT HAD A GOOD TIME, PLAYED REAL WELL, AND
HAD GOOD SONGS, THEY SOUNDED GREAT. IT WAS A REAL
STRUGGLE FOR THE ONES THAT DIDNT. As soon as I

started getting everyone to play their little hearts

out, the records sounded better.
Soundpark Studios in Northcote, where he often
records, has a megaphone and glow-in-the-dark
Friday the 13th mask on hand. Schram reckons
when youre screaming at someone through the
glass with a hockey mask on, people tend to do
what theyre asked. And as much as I can get
down live in one take, the better things work out,
he reckons. If theres not a lot of magic to work
with, I dont think you can overdub your way out
of trouble.
The importance of performance is one of the
things he passed onto Laverty before he fired her
too. Laverty started her sound career in London
in 2003. She was 19 and had just graduated from a
sound course at WAPA. She didnt know anything,
other than that it was a perfect time to get work
experience. She applied for a two-week internship
with the Miloco group; cleaning toilets, washing
tea towels and making tea classic assistant grunt
work. On her last day, as reward for brewing a
decent cuppa, she was asked to help Ben Hillier
pack up his studio; he was off to America to record
Depeche Mode. After two days of labelling gear
and doing an inventory, he asked her to look after
his studio while he was away and assist anyone that
needed it. Since then, shes worked with Hillier,
producer Paul Epworth and his engineer Mark
Rankin, and Nick Launay. The best studio asset she
learnt from them all was patience, theyre such
humble servants to the music.

Im not trying to play it

safe. Im trying to make
your song feel like its
going to jump out of
the bushes and rip
your face off

When she moved to Melbourne, she started

assisting Schram. Then he fired her. Laverty:
He eventually said to me, Im not booking
you anymore. You need to go get your own gigs
because youre way too good to be assisting!
He really kicked me up the butt, because my
confidence wasnt great. Now I track a lot of stuff
and he mixes it, or we work together, and I mix out
at his place too.
OUT WEST TO SING SING SOUTH

The Twins initially approached Schram to produce

their debut disco-influenced album Milky Waves,
but he didnt think he had, the precision they were
requiring. So he took the mix and passed on the
producing job to Laverty, because she does.
Anna has a different style of production to
Schram, the Twins describe it as crafty and chilled.
No hockey masks, just a lot of effort into preparing
for a take so the artist is ready. You always get
the feeling shes got one hand on the wheel, said
Tegan. Youre halfway through a conversation and
you realise shes been marking the desk and your
guitars already on.
Before the Twins ever made it into Sing Sing
South to record with Anna, they had a long way
to travel. The band started out seven years ago,
and have since transplanted across the Nullarbor
from Perth to Melbourne, and traded up from
a couple of Microkorgs to a battery of vintage
synthesisers, including a home-made Moog-style
modular synth.
They had released three EPs in Perth, but made
the move after a San Cisco tour support almost
bankrupted them figuring they needed to be
on the East Coast, where flights were cheaper
and they didnt have to work full-time just to pay
rent. The trickle down effect of too much mining
money in Perth was severely eating into their
songwriting time.
Back before the EPs, when Jaymes was in a punk
band and Tegan a goth, the kickstarter for their
electronic music bug was an $800 Korg Microkorg,
which anyone who knew about electronic music
wouldnt have bought. said Jaymes. The guy at
the shop told me it could literally do any sound. I
was naming all these songs, and hed say, Youll get
that out of it. I said, Sweet, would you take $795? I
ended up swapping it for a pushbike.
AT 69

MODULAR
Jaymes and Tegans
boyfriend, Jack Stirling,
put together the modular
synth mostly with modules
from Synthesiser.com, with
an Odyssey of Sound one,
and a Sea Devils filter,
which is like an EMS Synthi
filter. The walnut cabinet is
classic old man, without the
woodworking finesse.

JUNO 106
James: I wanted to
learn a lot more about
how synthesisers work,
something like a Juno
teaches you everything.
Thats why I got the
modular as well, you feel
like you graduate.
Tegan: Hes wide and
woolly, because of the
chorus. Apparently all the
synths are masculine, and
the guitars are feminino,
because they have the
swan-like neck of a
ballerina and curvaceous
body of a goddess,
according to Jaymes.

ROLAND SH-5
Jaymes: SH-5 leads are
pretty special. Every time
you plug it in, you think,
why do I keep this around?
But when you start
messing with it, having
the filter section, and
then the additional band
pass over the top a dual
band-pass mode has a
really interesting vowelly
sound to it.

KORG POLYSIX
Jaymes: The Polysix is the
most amazing, but also
the most limited. It does
sparkly sounds better than
anything, for really loose,
sharp Italo lead sounds.
The ensemble chorus in
the Polysix sounds so
good, its like a three-chip
chorus chorus on chorus
on chorus. It sounds so
big, wide and detuned, but
mannered.
AT 70

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

reach out and punch keys on Batch Commander, and it

does 10 keystrokes in a row for you. That, a trackball, a
pair of speakers, and Bobs your live-in lover!
He listens to Yamaha NS10s for the most part,
because they sound great. I dont care what anyone
says, with the right amp they sound magnicent.
He used to have Dynaudio BM15As as a second pair,
but has put up a friends three-way Genelecs for
something dierent. Theyre from the early 90s and
have ribbon tweeters. Theyre actually the monitors
I learnt on. It feels a bit weird but comfortable, like
going back to your home town.

Schram mixes 99% in-the-box. The last one percent

is guitar pedals and a Korg Kaoss Pad. he doesnt
think hell ever mix on a large format console again,
except for a hoot. If the record company rings up and
says the marketing department wants more guitars,
you need to be able to change stu as quick as you
can, he says. And everyones doing it you know? Who
am I to y in the face of convention?
Hes been through a number of controllers over the
years. He used to use Avids MC controllers, then
gave the Slate Raven a go. He sold that and bought
an o-the-shelf Acer touchscreen, whacked on some
drivers from Touchbase in the UK, and hooked it up
to his DAW with Slates Batch Commander. Its like a
giant iPad, you get all the gestures on the screen, described Schram. You can two-nger swipe from your
drums all the way down to your mix bus. You can just

After that, it was a Moog Little Phatty, a Juno

106, then a Korg Polysix and a Roland SH-5. The
Frostwave MS-20 filter clone pedals came a little
later, and Jaymes and Tegans boyfriend, Jack, built
the modular synth when they arrived in Melbourne.
Tegan: We inherited a couple of synths on
an extended loan from a guy who wasnt using
them. We took in one that wasnt working, and
the tech said, I love these, theyre so underrated.
They can make the most beautiful water drop
sound. Were like, okay, we were hoping to make
music with them.
The Twins have their own studio setup in
Richmond; a room in a room that houses all their
synths in shelving, their live setup on a riser for
rehearsal, and a couple of Yamaha NS10s in a
treated corner of the room, with a laptop running
Ableton Live.
The pair use Ableton mostly as a tracking DAW
with a few plug-ins, no internal synths. Theyre
conscious of not using the same Arturia softsynths
everyone else. Theyre even reconsidering their
plug-ins choices, because theyre becoming a bit too
popular. We only really use the Soundtoys plug-ins
and Valhalla Shimmer other than whats outside of
the box, said Jaymes. Echoboy and Decapitator
ended up on just about every channel.
THREE SYNTH RULE

When the pair want to write, they only pull a

maximum of three synths down from the rack and
put a few constraints on their use. Today, that one
is the monosynth, this one is the polysynth, and

the modular is a wildcard, and not touch anything

else, explained Jaymes. If you want a sound,
youre going to have to find out how to make it. We
work so much faster, and playing it in live gives you
more of those moments.
Those moments are captured in that session
and that session only; no photos of knobs or
noting down patches, because you can never
remember which photo was which anyway, said
Jaymes. All it means is that at the end of the
song, well have to redo the bass, because if thats
different, then it matters.
The synths are all plumbed into the left side of
an eight-channel line mixer, so theyre all ready
to be captured at any time through the Apogee
Duet. Well use the FMR Audio RNC to compress
the dynamics of some of the wilder synths, said
Jaymes. And sometimes well use the Frostwave,
Moogerfooger or an old Boss Chorus pedal, which
IVE BEEN USING MORE AS THE JUNO CHORUS GETS SICKER.
IT GETS NOISY AND CAN SOUND LIKE THE OCEAN, WHICH WE
HAVE USED BEFORE. ITD WORK WELL WITH THE WATER DROP
SOUND TO CREATE OUR AMBIENT MASSAGE SOUND.

DRUM DIAL

The recording process at Sing Sing South was

mostly about capturing and adding the live
elements to the arrangements Anna and the Twins
had fleshed out in their rehearsal space. Anna likes
to give Schram a lot to play with. So for the drums,
she used a Beyer M88 on the kick in, and Neumann
U47 FET out. The two kick mics have to be
completely different otherwise theres no point. The

M88 gets the sound of the beater hitting the skin

and sounds pretty shitty on its own. Then the 47
FET captures the bottom end and also sounds pretty
shitty on its own. But when you blend them and put
them both through an 1176, it sounds killer.
Her go-to snare combo is a Shure SM7 on the
snare top and SM57 on the bottom. Ive always
liked the SM7 for snare top because its very
directional, much more than an SM57. I dont
really like hi-hats and Ive always had a problem
with them bleeding into my snare mic. YOU CAN
ANGLE THE SM7 RIGHT TOWARDS THE TONE OF THE SNARE
THAT YOU WANT, THEN USE YOUR OVERHEADS TO GET THE
SOUND OF THE ACTUAL DRUM.

On toms were standard Sennheiser 421s, Coles

4038 ribbons in a spaced pair configuration as
overheads, and a Neumann KM84 on the hats.
Which she normally wouldnt use, but despite
her dislike, the hats were pretty important on
this record.
I put up a few additional dirt and vibe mics as
well. I placed a Sennheiser 441 halfway between the
kick and snare under, and then slammed it through
a Neve 3315 preamp and Distressor. Then put a
pair of Neumann U89s in a big slate room behind
the drum kit, about a foot off the floor facing the
corners. You just get all this awesome slapback.
ONE MIC NINJA SLASH

Of course, when this all arrives at Bangkok Ninja

Academy, theres high chance itll all end up on
the cutting room floor, including most of those
exquisitely recorded drum multi-tracks. I use
AT 71

If theres not a lot of

magic to work with,
I dont think you can
overdub your way
out of trouble

the least amount of stuff I can get away with, said

Schram. I might just use a kick mic and a snare
bottom insanely smashed with 100Hz cranked by
16dB just to get a weird, big, fat, bright snare thing.
YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET THE WHOLE DRUM SOUND JUST
FROM THE RACK TOM MIC WITH A BIT OF NASTY EQ AND
COMPRESSION. OR ILL USE OVERHEADS ON ONE SIDE AND
ROOMS ON THE OTHER. I GOT NO IDEA WHAT IM DOING!

On some songs hes just used one mic and

samples. Often hell use mono drums for a verse
and widen to stereo in the chorus. There are no
rules for a mix ninja. But one things for sure, hes
going to distort and compress the shit out of them!
Idle hands. Dont leave me alone in a room with
your song and some compressors because its just
gonna get worse!
Schram doesnt listen to much music anymore,
other than whats in front of him 10 hours a day. He
loads up 15-20 second snippets into his project to
help reset his brain and stop him from mixing too
harsh or dull, but doesnt have any solid references
that he keeps coming back to. In some ways, that
sort of familiarity defeats the purpose of resetting
your brain anyway. He usually starts with the best
sounding one or two drum mics, then applies
some Fatso, Devil-Loc, and over-the-top EQ. He
doesnt know where hell end up. He could mess
with two mics for six hours, then start again, or hit
shuffle on Spotify and hear an Isaac Hayes track
that will inspire him. Mixes are a whole bunch
of tiny coincidences and tiny decisions you make
based on taste, he said. How you react to those
coincidences dictates the outcome. Hopefully you
go from one good thing to another and chase it
down the rabbit hole.
It never turns out like the picture you paint
in your mind before you start. Thats just setting
yourself up for disappointment. If you go in with
really open ears and mind, and react to the little
AT 72

flickers of inspiration, then youll get to somewhere

really exciting and youll generally be more pleased
with the outcome.
I dont know how other people approach it,
but I do know that a lot of stuff sounds really safe.
Maybe thats a result of chasing something so
hard that you neglect all the cool shit that could
potentially happen and run with that?
Its the madness behind the method. Hes trying
to create mistakes. By moving a chunk of backing
vocals randomly along the timeline, or dumping
percussion into another part of the song, you cant
plan what might happen.
Theres no set thing, you just react to whats
going on. OBVIOUSLY I DONT PUT 15 SNARE DRUMS
THROUGH 2000 MARSHALL AMPS ON A PAUL KELLY RECORD.
ID TRY IT BUT HE WOULDNT LIKE IT, I dont think thats
appropriate Stephen.
His secret to getting those crunched, one-mic
drum sounds right is adding good bottom end. Ill
often fire off a sub, something really, really low. It
sounds like the drum sound you get in a nice shop.
Aka, a bought one.
I dont use reverb on drums, he continues. The
Voltaires might have had some tom-tom overdubs
with reverb on them. But on the rare occasion I
use an effect, it will be a delay. When you compress
overheads really hard, that becomes your room
sound. Anna doesnt do that dumb thing a lot of
people do where they filter all the bottom out of the
overheads. You definitely wont need your tom mics
if youve got full range, well-balanced overheads.

TUNE UP: COMPRESSION & OIL

Schrams four favourite compressors at the moment

are the Eventide Omnipressor, Soundtoys DevilLoc, and ELI Fatso and Decapitator. I try to be
disciplined, said Schram in a moment of reflection.
Monitor quietly, and try to not compress and

distort everything. Hell often parallel compress

a lot of elements as a failsafe to make sure theres
still life and punch in the mix. He also uses a lot of
EQ to compensate for the effects of compression.
WHEN YOU COMPRESS SUPER HARD YOU EITHER GET A
LOT OF TREBLE HAPPENING OR ACCENTUATE A FLUFFY NOTE
THAT YOU MIGHT NEED TO SCOOP OUT, he explains. I
have band-pass filters everywhere, theyre like little
focus knobs; to get stuff up, or out of the way of
something else, or as an effect.
On the effects side, Schram loves modulation. I
like things underwater and wobbly. I love oil can
echoes Ive got the rotating sound synthesiser,
oil-can jobby from Morley here so one of my
favourite plug-ins is the Tel-Ray plug-in.
I love Echoboy, of course, I use it on everything.
I also have some Lexicon impulse responses that
got corrupted in the download. I didnt realise at
the time. It sounds like a giant serpent coming out
from the depths to attack you. Thats my favourite
effect, and its all mine thanks to my dodgy internet
connection.

AGE OLD PRACTICE

Its obvious that Schram loves mixing. Eventually

hed like to give up the recording game and just
mix, where its obvious he can have just as much
influence as any recording engineer or producer on
the process.
You get too old and cranky to chase kids
around studios with a megaphone and a stick, said
Schram. Ive got four year-old twin girls at home.
Theyre sane compared to most of the bands. A
lot of the time making a record is like running a
crche. I would love to finish up just mixing at the
end of my years. Everyone who seems to be at the
top of their game with mixing is in their mid-50s.
I really think it takes that long to get that good at it.
Im 38, so Ive got a few years of practicing to go.

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AT 73

REGULARS

PC Audio

Microsoft Windows 10 is it
safe to take the plunge?
Column: Martin Walker

Well its here, its (for most of us) free of

charge, and if your PC is currently running
Windows 7 or 8, youve probably also had a little
window icon pop up on your Taskbar to remind
you about it. It is of course Microsofts Windows 10
operating system, which I first discussed back in
AT105. The reason for the jump from Windows 8
to 10 is still a bit of a mystery, but the Start button
is back (hooray), and the emphasis is on a single
operating system that runs on everything from
your Windows mobile phone to your airconditioned control room full of audio servers.
The Windows 10 scrolling Start menu now
incorporates an extra pane of Windows 8-style tiles
housing live apps, although you can switch these
off if not desired. A new Cortana digital assistant
(first seen on Windows Phone 8.1) helps you track
down info both inside your PC and online, and
her interactive AI personality will no doubt cause
HAL-loving aficionados to swoon, although so
far Im proving immune. The new Edge browser
largely supersedes Internet Explorer, while the Task
View simultaneously displays all your currently
open windows until you pick one to be in the
foreground, and virtual desktops let you set up
pre-designed app groupings. The Action Center
pops up incoming notifications as they arrive and
archives them all, while the new Mail, Calendar
and Photos apps also seem very popular.
These new features are all great fun, but as a
musician my main interest is of course audio
and MIDI recording/playback. Audio PCs work
at their best when they concentrate on this one
activity, without being interrupted by talking digital
assistants and a host of incoming notifications
from the Internet. Moreover, most musicians rely
on low latency audio and MIDI streaming, so any
slight timing changes at a low level can clobber our
ultimate performance quite easily. Industry pundits
are saying that under the hood Windows 10 is
very similar to Windows 7 and 8, so if you have an
office or other mainstream application that runs
under either of these operating systems its almost
guaranteed to run on Windows 10 as well. With
DAWs its another matter entirely.
UNDER THE HOOD

With Windows 10, Microsoft announced

significant improvements to their Audio Core
AT 74

coding, resulting in lower latency for both

WDM and WASAPI. These formats are beloved
by Cakewalk Sonar users, but the vast majority
of PC musicians using other DAWs still rely
on Steinbergs ASIO drivers to run their audio
interface hardware with very low latency. First
introduced by Steinberg in the late 1990s, ASIO
minimises the potential delays by talking directly to
the soundcard at a lower level than normally used
by the operating system, using specially written
driver software. Windows 10 MIDI also introduces
a new MIDI API that provides lower, jitter-free
MIDI latency as well as multi-client operation
(so several apps can access your MIDI interface
simultaneously).
We now have a situation where a lot of lowlevel audio and MIDI code in Windows 10 has
been altered, which in turn provides plenty of
opportunities for existing apps to fall prey to a
variety of performance and timing issues. Here
are a few examples. As I write this, Steinberg
recommend that you dont upgrade to Windows
10 if running any of its Cubase/Nuendo range
of products, while its range of hardware audio
interfaces are also affected by Issues with sample
rate changes. Rolands range of audio interface
hardware and drivers are largely compatible with
Windows 10, although some (mostly MIDI-based)
products are not compatible and apparently
never will be. Avid (the makers of Pro Tools)
have announced that, Avid has not completed
qualification of Windows 10 and strongly
recommends customers DO NOT upgrade to this
OS version until qualification is complete. There
are also known issues with the current shipping
versions of some of our products that will need
to be addressed prior to qualification. Currently
Native Instruments does not recommend updating
to Windows 10 until all systematic tests are
completed and full compatibility is confirmed for
our products, which is a polite way of saying youre
on your own if anything goes wrong.
TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Admittedly, problems like these are nothing new to

musicians the first time I wrote a magazine article
explaining how to optimise PC MIDI and Audio
timing was way back in 1998. I went on to explore
in depth the real-world MIDI jitter problems that

resulted in sloppy drum machine timing, and

nearly 10 years later in 2007 I was still having to
explain in print the arcane mysteries of PC system
timestamp to resolve MIDI timing problems! So,
whats happening with Windows 10 is no surprise
to me, or to other PC audio specialists. Having
said that, Cakewalks WDM-friendly Sonar has
tested 100%-compatible with Windows 10, and
managed to run at lower latency than under
Windows 7 and 8. A raft of musicians have already
taken the plunge with other DAWs and their
anecdotal evidence suggests no problem areas at
all (although Id hazard a guess that their MIDI
timing may be a little awry!). A few musicians who
took the Windows 10 plunge early on and ran into
DAW problems have seemingly resolved them by
resorting to the Windows 10 Compatibility Mode
options, which essentially trick apps into thinking
that they are running on some previous version of
Windows. However, this is a long way from actually
running them on the previous operating system,
and is highly unlikely to resolve timing issues.
Overall, Windows 10 is obviously a worthwhile
upgrade for mainstream folk, and of course it
makes perfect sense if youre buying a new PC.
However, if youre thinking of running the free
upgrade on an existing PC I suggest you first visit
your audio interface manufacturer to check for its
Windows 10 compatibility. A few interfaces already
have official statements along the lines of, We are
sorry but we have no plan to make it compatible
with Windows 10. Once you know your interface
is okay (or if not, that youre prepared to replace
it), check with your particular DAW developer
to see if 100% compatibility with Windows 10
has been specifically and officially announced.
If not, and youre running a commercial studio
with paying customers, Id hold off for the time
being, at least until your DAW developer releases
an update that combats any current problems. By
all means upgrade other studio PCs that are not
mission-critical, so you can enjoy the new bells and
whistles, but the last thing you want to be doing
is explaining to clients that the reason their drum
machine tracks sound sloppy is due to Windows
10. What fun!

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REGULARS

Apple Notes
Clean up your mac and backup
your backups with these
favourite Mac tools
Column: Anthony Garvin

A couple of issues ago, I took a closer look at

how to harness some of Mac OS Xs built-in
tools to improve performance and workflow on
your DAW-equipped Mac. Now Im going to
introduce you to a few of my favourite third party
tools that will help keep your Mac humming.

Onyx
www.titanium.free.fr/onyx
Free

Onyx is a very useful free utility that serves as a

one-stop shop for both general system clean-ups
and tweaks to Mac OS X. The Automation feature
is the simplest way to use Onyx, as it combines
both of the utilitys Maintenance and Cleaning
steps into one simple operation. With these userselectable Automation options, Onyx will execute a
thorough list of processes that verify the structure
of your startup volume, repair disk permissions,
run maintenance scripts, clean caches, delete temp
files and other operations that help with a general
system tidy-up.
For most users, the default options in the
Automation window will be fine. In more recent
versions of Onyx it doesnt clean System Caches by
default. Unless you are deliberately using a third
party utility called Trim Enabler, I recommend
checking this, as it will remove potential gremlins
born from crashes, corruptions or other hiccups
during day-to-day operation.
Onyx also allows you to dig deeper with the
settings and customisation of OS X. If you are
interested in digging deeper with Finder options
tweaking the way the Dock behaves, changing
the background picture of your login screen, and
plenty more this is where you can do it.

OmniDiskSweeper
www.omnigroup.com/more
Free

AT 76

OmniDiskSweeper is a simple utility that

analyses any given drive and displays which folders
are taking up the most space on it (and with the
cost of SSD drives still being quite high, wasted
space can be an expensive problem). Ordering the
folders from largest to smallest, it allows you to
drill down into each folder, where it continues to
display everything in order of largest to smallest
file size, so you can decide what you might want
to delete or move elsewhere. A word of warning;
OmniDiskSweeper will display all the files and
folders on your disk, hidden by the system or
otherwise. If you arent sure what something is,
dont delete or move it!

Carbon Copy Cloner

bombich.com
$53.99

Carbon Copy Cloner, simply put, is the most

useful third-party back-up and drive cloning tool.
Its hard to look past Time Machine for day-to-day
backups, but compared with what CCC can do,
its Apples to apple pie. At its most basic, CCC can
take an exact image of a drive partition and make
a bootable duplicate of it on another partition, or
copy the data into a disk image file for restoration
via CCC at a later date. This becomes invaluable
when upgrading your boot drive (simply clone
the old drive to the new one and then swap them
over), or if youre tempted to try a new OS or major
DAW update, you can make a clone of your system
drive prior, and if it all goes wrong, you can simply
restore an exact image of your system drive, like it
was before the updates.
Exploring this feature laterally, it becomes
extremely useful for a studio operator who has
any number of clients coming into operate their
studio DAW on a day-to-day basis. We all know
everyone has their favourite plug-ins, preferences,
tweaks and quirks. More often than not, it can be a
frustrating task operating a system after someone
else has had their way with it.

I am a firm believer that the less software you

have installed on a computer, the less that can go
wrong, and hence the more reliable it will be. So if
a client wants to install their plug-ins and change
your DAW preference, let them. Just restore your
master CCC image once they are done to return to
your preferred and reliable setup.
If you work in a large facility or computer lab,
ask your IT people about DeployStudio. It takes
this concept further by allowing images to be
restored quickly over a network, and to multiple
machines if required.
Beyond straightforward clones, recent versions
of CCC have added Scheduling and SafetyNet
features that allow it to become a very useful
backup tool. If, for example, you want to do a
daily backup of your audio drive to another drive
separate to Time Machine, then CCC can be
setup to do this; all at a pre-determined time that
wont risk the performance of your Mac during
sessions. Plus, if you use the SafetyNet feature
it wont delete old versions of files. Each backup
process will move these files into a dated SafetyNet
folder on the backup drive. If you want to keep
a bootable backup of you system drive, you can
use the scheduling feature to backup your boot
drive periodically. Should the worst happen and
your boot drive fail, you can simply re-boot off the
backup and keep working.

{ Godzilla - 1954 }

What will you create?

Introducing the new F8 MultiTrack Field Recorder.
With 8 mic-pres, 10 tracks, and rock-solid Time Code.
The next iconic sound is closer than you think.

The new Zoom F8

Hollywood sound. Within reach.

WIN AN F8

Were Zoom. And Were For Creators.

zoomaus.com.au

REVIEW

YAMAHA TF1

Digital Live Mixer

TouchFlow digital mixers are an analogue
die-hards best friend.

ANGLING FOR ATTENTION The console

is an attractive workplace with its modern,
angular looks and spacious layout. The front
section with the faders is nearly at, the middle section with the occasional buttons and
signal meters angles up. The top section with
the screen and often-used controls angles up
more steeply again, but its slightly recessed
to keep the controls within easy reach.

Review: Mark Woods

CREENING IT Everything is well lit, dierent

sections are separately
dimmable and the screen
is good outdoors.

NEED TO KNOW

SHOWS ITS STRIPES I liked the way the

even number channels are painted a dierent
shade of grey, its distinctive and helps identify
the channels at a glance.

PRICE
TF1: $3999
TF3: $4999
TF5: $5999

AT 78

CONTACT
Yamaha Music Australia:
(03) 9693 5111 or
au.yamaha.com

PROS
Intuitive layout
Fluid operation
Multi-touch screen
Manufacturer endorsed
presets

CONS
Flashing tap button

SUMMARY
The TF makes getting around a digital console easy. You
dont have to deal with layers if you dont want to, and a
combination of touchscreen and Touch & Turn operation makes
operation easy. 1-knob EQ and Comp, and ocial microphone
manufacturer presets, only further the simplicity.

Its the friendliest digital

mixer Ive tried so far and
cleverly designed for the
mix of pro and casual
users who will get their
fingers on the faders

They must live for excitement at Yamaha. You

cant help but like a company that makes
mixing consoles and motorbikes. Ive long thought
that sense of adventure goes some way to explaining
why its serious products combine highperformance, bold design and bullet-proof
packaging. Motorbike or a mixing console, you
want it to work when it counts and you dont want it
to crash. Its about the thrill of movement, and the
TF series of digital mixers have been purposefully
designed for fluid operation. Under the banner of
TouchFlow Operation are several concepts that start
by making it easy to get going, and finish with a
console that is fun to drive at showtime.
Made specifically for live sound, the TF Series
is Yamahas entry-level digital mixer and its aimed
squarely at the highly competitive 16-32 channel
professional mixer market. It will be used in venues
and churches, and by production suppliers and DIY
bands. Its the friendliest digital mixer Ive tried so
far and cleverly designed for the mix of pro and
casual users who will get their fingers on the faders.
MAKING GOOD GAINS

The TF1 boots up like an analogue desk with 16

combi XLR inputs on the back panel, two big
FX returns and 1:1 routing. You can do all sorts
of patching with the Auxes, DCAs and Custom
channels but not with the input channels. Makes
sense to me, you may lose a little flexibility but it
makes for straight-forward setups and reduces the
chance of confusion in situations where there are
multiple users.
There are several ways to set up channels.
Its easy to start from flat and build up your
own settings the old-fashioned way. There are,
however, interesting alternatives. GainFinder is
a cute program that sets the input gain of any
given channel; make the sound, get the light in
the middle and it will be good to go. Like a guitar
tuner you dont have to understand what youre

doing, just watch the display. Its fast, safe and could
be genuinely helpful in some applications. Best of
all, its optional. Input levels can also be set by the
Touch & Turn knob or by dragging on the screen.
The more interesting alternative is to use the
QuickPro Presets, available on both inputs and
outputs. When setting up input channels a handy
library lists instrument-specific settings as well
as settings for particular microphone models.
Yamaha has drummed this feature up in cahoots
with a handful of well-known mic manufacturers
that so far includes Shure, Sennheiser and AudioTechnica. Choose the mic, choose the instrument
and you get specific factory-approved Gain, EQ
and Comp settings, including phantom power
and instrument name on the channel strip in
your choice of colour. If youre familiar with the
particular mics its interesting to see what the
makers have recommended. If youre not, its a safe
option. Its also a fast way of working as it puts a lot
of common processing choices into action at once
and I found the settings to be close to what I might
do anyway.
Output channels get their own library of generic
presets designed for different physical locations,
including settings for running IEMs from the stereo
aux sends. In a similar manner to the inputs you
get EQ and compressor settings that have been
well chosen to get you going quickly without doing
anything crazy to the sound. The output presets
extend to specific settings for Yamaha DXR speakers
in different environments, but third-party speaker
manufacturers will no doubt be added over time.
TF FOR TOUCHFLOW

In use the TF mixers live up to the TouchFlow

promise; the layout gives you instant access to the
things you really need, use all the time or you want
to access quickly. Focus on the multi-touch screen
means less thinking about which button to press,
or knob to turn, and more listening. The console

can be operated very simply but its rewarding to

explore the depth of control that is available and its
hard to get confused or lost.
Most users will be familiar with the Overview/
Selected Channel layout common to most digital
mixers. Here eight channels are displayed on the
Overview screen at one time, but rather than
buttons to scroll to the rest, you swipe. Touch
a parameter on a channel and the channel is
selected, touch again and the parameter details
are displayed. After that you may only need to
touch and use pinch/drag gestures on the screen
to get the sound where you want it. The on-screen
parameter controls have got nice big buttons that
you touch to activate and drag to adjust. Pinch
gestures change the EQ width and everything
you do is accompanied by clear visual feedback.
Apart from being pleasing to use in the modern
mobile phone manner, it means you dont need
the common hardware knobs used to adjust the
selected parameters.
Knobs have their uses and after the multi-touch
screen the next feature aimed at making life easier
is the Touch & Turn knob. Well-placed for easy
reach, the Touch & Turn knob is a multi-function
device thats assigned by touching parameters
onscreen. Touch Input on the Overview screen
and it provides instant access to the input gain
of any displayed channel. Its the same routine
for grabbing control of selected EQ parameters,
HPF, gate/comp thresholds or FX levels. Touch
the parameter again and you get to the detailed
controls where it adjusts the selected parameter as
an alternative to dragging on the screen.
1-KNOB TO TWEAK THEM

You may not need to use the detailed parameter

controls at all if you use Yamahas new 1-knob
EQ and 1-knob Comp functions, both controlled
by the Touch & Turn knob. These are activated
by the user when youre setting up a channel, or
AT 79

DOUBLE HANDLE Angled cut-outs on the sides

double as visual enhancements and handles.

FAMILY LINE

The TF series is available in three sizes. The

baby TF1 has 16 XLR mic inputs, 17 motorised
faders and can be rack-mounted. The TF3 and
TF5 have 24 and 32 input channels/faders
respectively. All models also have two stereo
inputs, 16 XLR omni outputs and two stereo
returns, 20 aux buses (eight mono, six stereo),
eight DCA groups, eight FX plus 10 GEQs, and
34 tracks of both recording and playback.
Internal audio processing is 48k and the mics
plug into Yamahas recallable D-Pre preamps.

automatically as part of the QuickPro Presets.

Designed again for either speedy operation or users
who dont fully understand the meaning of the
parameter values, these effectively give you more
when turned up. More what? More everything.
On input channels the 1-knob EQ has two
modes, Vocal and Intensity. If you have selected a
particular microphone model from the QuickPro
Presets, then Vocal mode will probably give
you a HPF, some low-mid cut and some highmid boost. Winding up the Touch & Turn knob
simultaneously delivers more HPF, more low-mid
cut and more presence boost. Or less if you turn
it down. You can also draw your own curve and
have it exaggerated or understated. Its clever stuff
and very easy to use. Intensity mode is similar
but aimed more at instruments. 1-knob EQ also
works on the Main and Aux outputs with the
Vocal mode being replaced by a Loudness mode
that progressively boosts low and high frequencies
while cutting some low-mids.
The 1-knob Comp does the same for channel
dynamics. The basic settings are established by the
preset; turn it up with the Touch & Turn knob and
you get more threshold, more ratio and more makeup gain. The potential for over-processed channels
is the risk when a single knob controls several
parameters at once but the settings are all valid and
there are sensible limits on the amount of boost
on hand. Any setting can be changed or removed
with a touch on the screen if its not to your liking. I
didnt get any nasty surprises when operating.
AT 80

EFFECTS WITHIN REACH

On-board effects are based on Yamahas SPX range

and while there are eight FX processors available,
the input channels can only directly access two
of them at a time. These get dedicated returns on
the surface, the rest are accessed via the stereo aux
groups. At first this seems a curious setup in the
digital age. Its reminiscent of old analogue desks
where you would set up a reverb and a delay from
the two available sends, and if you wanted more FX
you inserted them across channels or groups.
There are six stereo aux sends in the TF
mixers, each with a processor attached. These
sends would often be used as part of a monitor
setup, particularly for IEMs with, for instance, a
multiband compressor across the send. The stereo
aux sends can also be used as subgroups and sent to
the Master Out, with your choice of effects, or they
can be used as purely stereo FX send/returns.
The two main FX returns are kept within hands
reach, which keeps the focus on the console
surface. A big FX Mute button just above the
returns is great for muting your FX between songs.
If you know what youre doing, theres plenty of
opportunity to tweak just below the surface, but its
certainly convenient to be able to control the most
commonly used effects without changing layers. A
Tap button in the bottom corner of the console is
in a handy place but I would have liked to be able
to stop it flashing the whole time, Id prefer if it
stopped after a few flashes and then started again
when you tapped it the next time you needed it.

What impressed me
was the way I could
confidently move
around the console,
listening and adjusting
without wearing the
brain out by having to
think about it too much

MONITOR PERFORMANCE

The TF1 is an excellent monitor board, the larger

models equally so if you need more input channels.
The eight mono aux sends have a compressor
plus parametric and graphic EQs in place. I half
expected the graphic EQs 31 bands to be thrown
across the faders but they come up on the screen
where you drag the virtual faders to adjust the tone.
Its much simpler to follow and the virtual faders
readily return to zero.
The mono aux sends would normally be used to
drive stage speakers and they dont have access to
any FX. Good. The six stereo aux sends, complete
with FX, should be enough for the IEM or other
stereo send requirements of most bands.
The first time I used the TF1 live was doing
monitors for Tim Rogers & The Bamboos at the
Theatre Royal in Castlemaine and I had a ball.
Great band which always helps the sound
plus Tims style and energy made for a pumpedup show. We had seven sends working; the band
knew what they wanted, and I found I was able to
respond to their requests as fast as they could fire
them at me. The Sends On Faders buttons are right
at hand, the colour-coded, illuminated channel
strip helps you find particular channels quickly,
and individual EQ/Comps are always at the ready.
For bands willing to forgo the personal touch of a
helpful monitor engineer, the TF Monitor mix iOS
app allows them to wirelessly control their own
levels from a iPhone or iPad.
FRONT OF BRAIN

As a front-of-house console, the TF mixers offer an

engaging and rewarding experience. I thought the
sound quality was great; the recallable D-Pres are

transparent, the processing does what you expect

and the FX are customary Yamaha quality. What
impressed me was the way I could confidently
move around the console, listening and adjusting
without wearing my brain out by having to
think about it too much. The EQ and dynamics
processors are so easy to use from wherever
you are on the console that they allow you to
make tweaks instinctively and quickly. The Touch
& Turn knob was usually already assigned to the
right parameter. I found it made for very active
operation. There are several fader banks, as well as
all the aux sends on faders, but not once did I get
confused about which layer I was on.
With the FX returns on the topmost layer,
most FOH mixing will be done without any layer
changing. Both the 1-knob EQ and 1-knob Comp
multi-functionality grew on me, particularly on
vocals where the 1-knob control of HPF, low-mid
EQ and a touch of presence gave good control of
the proximity effect, body and bite in one action.
The TF mixers are live boards and their record/
playback capabilities are designed with live
recording in mind. A USB socket allows for stereo
playback (.wav and .mp3) or direct stereo recording
from any output bus. Another USB port connects
to a computer, and with the included Cubase AI
software installed its possible to record/playback
up to 16 channels of 24-bit/48k audio. Up to 34
channels can be accessed via most other DAWs.
Recorded shows or rehearsals can be played back
in a different location and channels can be freely
switched between live and playback for virtual
sound checks. The TF StageMix iPad app allows
for wireless control of the mixer enabling remote
mixing or monitor setup.

MORE LAYERS TO COME

The TF series is brand new and some pieces are

still falling into place. At the time of writing the
second fader layer is not being fully utilised.
With some soon-to-be-released add-ons and
revised firmware it will be possible to use the
NY64-D expansion card in conjunction with the
Tio1608-D Dante-equipped 16-in/8-out stage rack.
Connection is via a convenient Cat5e LAN cable.
The preamps in the Tio 1608-D can be remotely
controlled from the TF mixer and up to three of
these can be connected at the same time to create a
48-in/24-out system. Software updates will include
more settings from microphone manufacturers.
Speakers can especially benefit from specific
settings for different uses/placements and this is
another area that will grow.
Yamaha continues to chase quality and push
design boundaries with enthusiasm. Designed to
provide a rewarding experience to a wide range
of users, the TF Series sets a high standard for
an entry-level pro mixer with technology thats
right up to date. TouchFlow operation facilitates
engaged, active mixing with a sense of playing,
or driving, the console. The multi-touch screen is
command central and the first in this price range
to use one. I grew up on early Yamaha analogue
consoles and have several of them in my shed. I
bet they still work too. Its an open question as to
whether the current breed of digital consoles will
still be working in 35 years but if any will, theyll
be the Yamahas. Where the development of digital
audio technology will lead over that time is less
certain a USB socket in the back of the head
perhaps, so we can simply think the sound. But for
right now the TF series will do nicely.
AT 81

REVIEW

Bose F1 Flexible Array

It looks like a point-source box, but Boses
F1 portable system has an array of unique
features
features.

NEED TO
O KNOW

Review: Mark Woods

PRICE
$1699/piece
CONTACT
Bose:
1800 173 371 or
f1.bose.com.au

AT 82

PROS
Line array clarity
Flexible vertical throw
P
Portable
bl d
design
i
Built-in stand

CONS
Too smooth for hard rock

SUMMARY
Bose has taken a typical point-source-looking cabinet and lled it with a mini-line
array. With a horizontal spread of 100-degrees, variable array angles, 1000W on
tap, and
will
d a companion
i sub;
b this
hi portable
bl package
k
ill ll rooms you never could
ld
with a plastic box.

Bose does things differently. Theres lateral

thinking behind many of the products in its
large range of consumer and industrial products.
Audio systems for live sound is only a part of what
it does and Bose doesnt release new offerings very
often. When it does, Bose always seems to have a
different way of finding new solutions to old
problems. The well-liked 800 series from the late
70s had a processor and 8 x 4-inch speakers. Light
and easy to move around, they still sound okay
today. The L1 Series uses line array principles in a
portable system. Its been around for over 10 years
and still finds favour with performers who enjoy its
ability to cover both the stage and audience with
clear, even sound. Not surprisingly the new Bose F1
system is different again. A hybrid approach, it uses
elements of conventional powered speakers
combined with line array techniques to create a
specialist FOH system with a wide throw and
enough power to fill a small- to medium-sized
venue. The surprise and delight feature is its ability
to control its vertical coverage angle.
CLICKING INTO GEAR

Much of Boses innovation is housed in the F1

systems Model 812 full-range speaker. Its a
similar size and weight (20kg) to other powered
speakers but the design is very clean with excellent
recessed handles on the top and rear. Made from
some tough composite plastic in regulation
charcoal-grey the finish is subtly textured and
patterned, but its the front of the speaker that
makes you look twice.
Looking past the perforated steel grille, instead
of the usual horn/woofer configuration theres a
vertical array of 8 x 2.25-inch mid/high drivers in
there. Closer inspection reveals a 12-inch woofer
mounted further back in the box. The array inside
the laddered centre section and prominent centred
Bose logo ensures a distinctive corporate look.
Inside the cabinet theres processing, protection and
1000W of power. Connections on the rear are all
familiar with two inputs; one is a mic/line XLR, the
other a choice of stereo 6.5mm or RCA sockets.
The 812 works on its own as a full-range
speaker; its pole-mountable and provides good
low frequency response (-3dB @ 52Hz) thats more
than adequate for speech and medium level music
applications. But for live music or DJs this system
benefits more than most from being combined with
its matching subwoofer. The F1 Subwoofer houses
two 10-inch drivers and a 1000W amp in a cabinet
designed to fit in a car. Like the 812, transport is
made easier by good handles on the top and rear.
Construction is from wood with a composite
plastic base and lid. It weighs in a little heavier than
the 812 at 25kg but its still manageable for one
person. The low-end frequency response is strong
from around 40Hz, this allows the 12-inch woofer
in the 812 to be crossed over at 100Hz so it can
concentrate on the low-mids instead of trying to
reach down too low.
A great feature is the built-in stand extension
bracket in Bose-speak. Instead of the usual polemount on top of the sub, Bose has made a plastic
frame that clips onto the rear of the sub cabinet for

transport. At the show it slots into the top of the

sub to support the 812 mid/high speaker and before
you know it youve got a time-aligned speaker stack
standing two metres tall. Not only is it a unique
look but its quite stable, the solid base is not as
wide as tripod legs but its squarer and harder to
trip over. You may never have to deal with speaker
stands again and I bet you wont miss them.
F1 HAMMERS THE BENDS

Line arrays produce a wedge of sound that is

wide horizontally but narrow vertically. The
size of the array determines its effectiveness at
lower frequencies, so to be practical, portable
line array systems only deliver the array benefits
at mid/high frequencies. The subs are usually
conventional designs and omni-directional. The
F1 stack has a forward-pointing single 12-inch
woofer above the sub so its a fairly normal,
almost point source system up to the 600Hz
crossover point where the mid/high array starts to
do its thing. Dispersion is quoted as 100 degrees
horizontal and 40 degrees vertical. Listening
to the 812 up close, they sound good right on
axis with a smooth quality that refuses to bite
or feedback. The mid/high frequencies roll-off
strongly above or below the central axis compared
to point source designs, although the woofer has a
more normal conical dispersion.

The wide, even coverage

and long throw high-mids
mean good intelligibility
over a large area while the
lack of harshness makes
for a relatively easy
listening experience

AT 83

The surprise and delight

feature is its ability to
control its vertical
coverage angle

Arrays are weird up close anyway as the sound

needs some distance to develop. That combined
with the super-narrow vertical angle rules these
speakers out for stage monitor duties. Bose has
thoughtfully not provided a monitor angle in the
design, and the cabinet looks better for it. Using
powered FOH speakers as floor monitors is always
a compromise, but a common one, so theres some
lack of flexibility here compared to regular powered
box designs.
These speakers do their best work as FOH
speakers in small-to-medium rooms with low-tomedium volume acts. Arrays focus the sound and
reduce reverberation by not throwing sound all
over the room. The most noticeable benefit of this
is mid-range clarity, right where the vocals are.
GOT YOU COVERED

Suttons House of Music in Ballarat is a textbook

case of a room that could benefit from a line array
system and a good test for the F1. The 19th century
building was a perfect piano sales floor; long
room, high ceilings and naturally live. Its a goodsounding venue but reverberant, and crucially, the
bands play across the width of the room, requiring
the speakers to cover a wide area.
People eat and talk, others listen or dance
to the solos/duos/combos and other non-rock
acts that play there. The sound needs to be clear
but not loud or piercing, with intelligible vocals
throughout the room and enough low end power
to get people moving.
We set it up for a night featuring regular act
B3 Breakout; a three-piece ensemble featuring a
Hammond B3, drums, and guitar and vocals. The
F1 system was very quick to set up and sounded
ready to go straight out of the box. The room had
a boom that required some low frequency EQ but
the mids and highs sat close to flat. The noticeable
impression from the sound check was the F1s
ability to fill the room. The subs were strong and
could have filled a much bigger space, but the mids
is where you could hear the difference compared to
horn-loaded boxes. The vocals surround you rather
than come at you directly from the speaker. Theyre
not loud up close, but step back a little and its all
there. The high frequency response is adequate for
live sound, although somewhat lacking in transient
AT 84

detail. They dont want to feed back, they seem to

find their own level and theyre very even around
the room.
The F1 systems horizontal coverage of 100
degrees was just wide enough. The high/mid
clarity falls off sharply at the edges, but it is a
wide room that normally takes four speakers to
get adequate coverage. I found them easy to mix
on and throughout the night, there was plenty of
unprompted confirmation from customers and
staff that the F1 was a superior solution.
Narrow vertical angle usually helps live sound
but sometimes the audience is positioned above
or below the speakers. Horn-loaded boxes often
throw high or low enough (or offer different angles
for the pole mount) but to get similar benefits
from an array it needs to be focused. The F1
812 addresses this by allowing the edges of the
top and bottom sections of the front grille to be
pushed in and out. This angles three of the eight
little speakers up, or down in the case of the lower
section. They snap into position with magnets and
the internal processor makes some compensatory
changes to the EQ. Between the top and bottom
angled sections you can create four distinct vertical
patterns that can be used in situations where the

speakers are above and/or below the audience. Its

a neat approach and necessary too as they sound
pretty dull if youre not in line.
WIDE APPEAL

Another place arrays work well is outdoors and the

F1 system is powerful enough to cover mediumsized events. The wide, even coverage and long
throw high-mids mean good intelligibility over a
large area while the lack of harshness makes for a
relatively easy listening experience. This is usually
a good thing but its also the limiting factor with
portable line arrays. If the going gets loud it can
expose the relative lack of bite and body on offer.
Point source, horn-loaded speakers are beamy and
squawky but they will cut through a loud band.
The Bose F1 System will appeal to venues, bands,
DJs and groovy bars but it would also be ideal for
corporate presentations or speeches. Its fairly easy
to transport if someone in the band has a wagon
and could provide sound for over 500 people in
the right situation. The price is pretty on par with
similarly powered portable systems, but its got
some unique features and the high/mid array will
allow it to out-perform point source systems in
many audio environments.

D

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AT
T 85

REVIEW
LAB-COAT CHIC The Redd.47s
build quality is excellent. Its light grey
faceplate gives the unit a subtle 60s
lab-coat vibe, further accentuated by
black chicken-head knobs and semirecessed silver toggle switches. Theres
something about the look of these
chicken-head knobs that doesnt quite
do it for me unfortunately. Despite being
supremely functional and doing a good
ergonomic job, their matte nish feels a
little cheap bakelite would have really
nailed the look.

VALVE DI The 1/4-inch DI circuit utilises all the goodness of the units EF86
and E88CC valve topology. The custom
wound transformer-balanced I/O means
there are some good creative options
available here too.

RUMBLE IN THE The special sauce

feature on the Redd.47 is the inductorbased rumble lter control which has
stepped low frequency roll-o curves
at 30, 60, 70, 90, 110, 130 and 180Hz. The
curves are smooth to the point where
tracking sources with maximum ltration
engaged can be a valid creative option.

STEP UP Getting the job done is a

fairly straight forward aair; two large
stepped knobs take care of coarse and
ne gain control (at 6dB and 1dB resolutions respectively), while a smaller
continuously variable knob controls
output level.

CHANDLER LIMITED REDD.47

Valve Preamplier
Chandler has retraced the Beatles steps back
even further in time to the Abbey Road/EMI
designs of the 60s.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Greg Walker

PRICE
$3709
CONTACT
Mixmasters:
(08) 8278 8506 or
sales@mixmasters.com.au

AT 86

PROS
Great tonal balance & character
Sweet distortion is highly useful
Rumble lter more exible than
most high pass circuits
DI sounds really good

CONS
Expensive
Low output hampers recording
of quiet sources

SUMMARY
A great sounding valve design that ticks all the boxes for vintage vibe,
sonic quality and versatility that you would hope for with a unit of
this kind of pedigree. Clean and dirty tones are equally great and the
rumble lter is a nice additional creative option.

Its one of the sweetest

sounding preamp
saturations to ever land on
my studio bench top

PRE-LIGHT CHECKS The red backlit

light indicates power status while
phantom power, 20dB pad and polarity
are dispersed across smaller toggle
switches. These features are engaged
in the downward position and bypassed
when up which sounds straight-forward
but felt confusing in use for some
reason. Until I got really familiar with
the unit I had to triple check the settings
before plugging in my ribbon mics.

With the stamp of approval from Abbey

Road studios/EMI, Wade Goeke and his
team at Chandler Limited have been riding the
wave of audio nostalgia as well as anyone over
the last decade. Up until now, Chandlers focus
has been the solid state and earlier germanium
circuits that provide the tone and rich harmonic
characteristics so many of us are looking for
from the 70s. Now that Chandler has expanded
its range to include earlier Abbey Road/EMI
1960s valve designs, its a wonder why the
company hadnt delved into that particular
treasure trove earlier.
The Redd.47 preamp conjures up the ghosts
of the famous and famously rare Redd consoles
used on the Beatles albums of the mid to late
sixties. The price of admission here is steep and
puts this Chandler model under a harsher than
normal spotlight when it comes to a review.
Personally, Im not parting with over $3k on a
mono preamp unless it will take me into a pretty
spectacular earth orbit and let me explore some
new audio landscapes along the way. With that

thought in mind, lets hop in the Chandler wayback machine.

QUIET ACHIEVER

My first experiences with the Redd.47 were in the

middle of a hectic week of screen composition
work for a TV show. I was almost exclusively
using ribbon mics to get a warm old worlde
sound. Switching from an API 512B to the
Redd.47 was a bit of an eye-opener, especially
in terms of output levels. The Chandler is one of
the quieter microphone preamps Ive used in a
while with its maximum +57dB of input gain. I
was initially worried about high noise floors using
passive ribbon mics, but my fears were misplaced.
When quieter sources like soft violins were gained
up in Pro Tools, the signals were nicely intact and
the noise floor no worse than the API.
The acoustic instruments I recorded (strings,
clarinets, double bass, percussion and piano)
had a nice velvety quality to them and sat well
together in the mix. When I switched to a Zigma
Lol-47 condenser for further piano recording

I began to see another side of the Chandler. It

delivered great clarity and depth on my studios
character piano and there was a subtle harmonic
enhancement that I couldnt quite put my finger
on but really liked.
A few days later this same setup got a real
workout on a Tim Guy album overdub where the
song needed some strong rhythm piano work (a
la a certain fab four). No surprise then that these
recordings came out spectacularly well. The part
nestled straight into the heart of an already wellestablished mix without requiring any EQ and I
was starting to see how recordings made with the
Redd.47 could become very addictive indeed.
REDD ROVER

Next up the Redd.47 got a full workout tracking

an entire song from scratch and the pleasant
surprises kept coming. Acoustic guitar came
out sweet and smooth with a really great tonal
balance I hadnt quite heard out of my battered
old Tama before. Even better on electrics where
the bite of a Fender amp was more than matched

AT 87

by the Redd.47, delivering a sense of focused

aggression using condensers and dynamics. With
the right guitar and amp setup I can see Beatles
tragics banging out Revolver-esque biting lead
breaks through this thing ad infinitum. Once you
get a hotter input signal going into the Redd.47
there is plenty of harmonic saturation on tap, and
by riding the gain structure you can tune things
up for just a little or a lot. On drum overheads and
room mics this became a real asset of the Redd.47. I
was able to get a beautiful vibey breakup happening
on heavy crashes and other louder passages while
still retaining plenty of detail and quality in softer
sections. Redd.47 owners will definitely keep
coming back for more; its one of the sweetest
sounding preamp saturations to ever land on my
studio bench top.
If you want outright fuzz, there is the option of
gaining up a DId guitar or other source through
a preamp and feeding it into the Redd.47s mic
input for your fill of the famous Revolution sound.
The technique, pioneered by Geoff Emerick
(against Abbey Road regulations), involved daisychaining multiple Redd console channels together
to push signals into overdrive. The Redd.47
works a treat in this role as a tracking and mix
distortion generator. On vocals the Chandler was
both smooth and bold and carried my voice in a
musically satisfying way. Going straight into the
DI delivered a nice balance of body and bite on
various bass and electric sources.

RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Having gotten used to working with the Redd.47

at my place, I took it on a three-day location
recording job in deepest darkest Brunswick. Sophie
Koh had a full-size grand piano on loan in her
lounge room and we were starting work on her new
album which centres around her beautiful piano
playing. The Yamaha C7 is a pro-studio workhorse
and while Ive never rated them as highly as some
do, this one did sound great in the room with
Sophie driving it.
Miking it up with a range of close and distant
stereo mic combinations we found tons of tone
but it was hard to get a really sharp focus on the
upper mid-range attack of the instrument in the
sea of overtones and harmonics. Having tried and
abandoned a few extra close miking ideas I settled
on a Charter Oak valve condenser about four feet
away from the opened top facing the inward curve
of the instrument. Plugging this into the Redd.47
and ramping the rumble filter right up to 180Hz I
was able to extract a little extra mono focus on the
percussive attack of the notes. It put the sonic icing
on the cake for what turned out to be a great day of
piano tracking.
Late that night we decided to do some rough
guide vocals so I plugged a Beyer M88 into the
Chandler and we bashed our way through the
songs. It was only the next morning I realised Id
left the filter on the whole time and the resulting
vocal sounds were actually pretty great. Sophies

voice did lack a bit of body but the airy tone suited
her voice surprisingly well and was a great effect.
The filter is very natural sounding even at high
settings which makes it far more useable than the
more extreme daisy cutter ones Im used to hearing
on preamps. The next two days were taken up with
cello and viola overdubs and I used the Redd.47 on
both these instruments via the Charter Oak and a
Sennheiser MD441 with great results.
REDDY TO ROCK

Despite using it in a wide variety of applications

with a wide range of mics I couldnt find a chink in
the armour of the Redd.47 apart from the minor
issue of its comparatively low output levels. All in
all I found the Chandler to be extremely musical,
versatile and sonically pleasing as well as having a
few great creative tricks up its sleeve. For those who
can afford the asking price, the Redd.47 is going
to be a sweet investment in tone and vibe that will
keep you smiling for many years to come.

Outstanding
Opportunity to
purchase recording
studio in trendy
Newstead

83 Doggett Street, Newstead

Located within walking distance to the thriving Gasworks entertainment precinct, Teneriffe
CityCat Terminal, Emporium, James Street Precinct and Commercial Road precinct
3 Studios, each with adjoining mixing rooms
The 368m2 building is currently occupied by Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
Creative Industries Faculty, as a recording studio for teaching and learning purposes
Potential vacant possession in early 2016 or purchase now with leaseback to QUT

AT 88

tive only.

Outline Indica

For Sale
Closing Date for Offers
4pm, Wednesday 16 September 2015

Gregory Woods
0409 305 224
07 3002 8825
gwoods@savills.com.au

AT 89

REVIEW

SHURE PG ALTA
Microphones

Shures budget mics are all chips off the ol SM and Beta blocks.
But how close to the originals do they come?

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Mark Davie

PRICE
PGADRUMKIT7: $925
PGA58: $99
PGA181: $175
PGA27: $349

AT 90

CONTACT
Jands:
(02) 9582 0909 or
info@jands.com.au

PROS
Quick release drum mic
tensioners
Great value
PGA181 condenser option
at dynamic price

CONS
Handling noise
Drum mounts not onesize-ts-all

SUMMARY
Shures PG Alta series of microphones are good
value, and sound close to their more established
counterparts. If youre in the market for a drum mic
kit, but thought you only had the budget for a couple
of mics, think again.

What is it with these budget mics and their

ingenious mic clip tension clamps? Its a
revolution in anti-revolvers. Recently, I was
impressed by Rodes cylinder-clamping NT1
shockmount that tightened with the slightest grip
of my thumb/pinkie combination. When I opened
the case to peruse Shures budget PG Alta drum
mic kit, the first thing I noticed about the tom mics
was their bicycle quick release-style mechanism on
the pivot joint. Surely thats not new. But if it is, lets
roll them out to every articulating joint on the
market. They worked a treat; find position, lock in
place too easy. Compared to the slightly slippy
traditional tensioner on Shures PGA27 condenser
mic shockmount, the quick release versions were
far superior.
Immediately I was getting a little excited about
the build of these PG Alta mics; the second
coming of the PG series which are priced at the
bottom of Shures range under the SM series. The
PG Alta range takes a few well-known Shure model
numbers and adds another competitive option to
the mix. So in the seven-piece drum mic kit, theres
the PGA52 kick mic and three PGA56 tom mics,
derived from the Beta series; a PGA57 snare mic,
drawn from you guessed it the SM57; and
two SM-inspired PGA81 cardioid condensers for
stereo overheads.
Rounding out the gaggle of mics I had on loan
were the PGA27 large diaphragm condenser I
mentioned earlier; the small diaphragm PGA 181
side address condenser a tubbier version of
the nifty Beta 181; and the PGA58 no prizes
there. Its a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to
how inspired these cut-down versions actually
are. There has to be a little bit of money saved
somewhere to warrant the budget figures. So where
are the cuts?

PGA58 SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT

Probably the best case to investigate would be a

comparison of 58s. The PGA58 sounds suspiciously
like the SM version. Remarkably similar, in fact,
with just a little less presence like a good
understudy. The switch on the PG Alta isnt silent,
but its not deafening either. Id prefer it to have a
more secure snap to it though. The main difference
here is what makes the SM58 so special; its lack
of handling noise. The PGA58s motor assembly
sits in a rubber-mounted cup, a similar design to a
lot of other handheld dynamics. But arguably the
best aspect of the SM58 is the elegant pneumatic
shockmount Shure engineer Ernie Seeler devised
for the Unidyne capsule. It basically drops handling
noise altogether. The PGA was a pretty close
approximation of the SM58s sound, without the
mechanical design bells and whistles.

PGA 181 A really good

candidate if youve been
looking for a bit of a
different flavour to a
dynamic, but at a similar
price point to one

PGA181 UP IN YOUR GRILLE

I havent tried the Beta 181 yet, but the PGA181

makes me keen to. Using it on guitar amps its
natural home it didnt have that false, make my
amp sound like a solid state-sound I find some
condensers give me. Its designed to be pressed
right up at the grille, and it excels there. In that
position, it can sound better than a mic worth 10
times as much thats not designed for that purpose.
I suspect it has something to do with basket
resonances. I typically use dynamics and ribbons in
recording, and purely dynamics live, but I could see
this changing a few of my preconceptions.
The PGA181 can handle 138dB SPL, requires
about 18dB less gain than an SM57, to give you
an idea. And because youve got it pressed right
up against the grille, you dont get nearly as much
stage bleed as other condensers. Its less bitey than

an SM57 a smoother, rounded finish, and makes

for a really good candidate if youve been looking
for a bit of a different flavour to a dynamic, but at a
similar price point to one.
PGA27 SNUGLY IN ITS PLACE

The PGA27 large diaphragm condenser mic sits

snugly in its little nest like a boiled egg in its plastic
cup. Still, the low pass filter and -15dB pad on the
back side of the mic are easy to get at. Its a lovely
looking mount that worked decently, though
tapping the mic stand still made its way through.
Recording speech from a hands width away,
the PGA27 didnt have as much low end as other
mics I put it up against. In fact, there was little
difference between the normal and hi-passed takes
at this distance. Its a clear mic with a nice, slightly

AT 91

exaggerated, high end presence that would make it

suitable for vocal work. One letdown was that the
frequency response changed more dramatically as I
moved around the mic than other large diaphragm
condensers. If your singer gets a bit off mic you
might find some dynamic EQ coming in handy.
CLAMPING DOWN ON QUALITY

The build quality seems quite good across the

board. The drum mics are robust; the grilles are
tough, and unlike the free-floating PGA58 version,
the diaphragm assemblies are all secured in place.
On the inside theyre mostly plastic, but precisionmachined plastic you could see lasting a long time.
The kit also comes with a zip up carry case, and
enough clips and mic leads.
The rim-mounting system is simple to use, but
a little limiting in a way that seems common for
these systems. I have a custom Ayotte kit here with
an isolation system that stretches most of the way
around each tom. It only leaves one third of the
rim exposed closest to the drummer; the most
in-the-way position for a mic. The one-piece plastic
part is designed to snugly hook over a standard
rim, which didnt quite work for my situation
something to keep in mind if you dont want to use
stands. The clamp angles away from the edge of the
tom. So as you move the mics position away from

AT 92

the drum head, it also moves closer to the rim

again, a little inflexible compared to other mounts,
but a handy attachment for the right kit.
FULL KIT SOUND

I lined up the Shure PG kit against an Audix DP7

drum mic kit I use live. You get the same number
of mics in both packs, but the Audix is about two
and a half times the price. So keep that in mind.
The Audix D6 is a really simple-to-use kick
drum mic, especially live. Its scooped sound doesnt
require a lot of tailoring. It has a more satisfying
thud than the PGA52, but the 52 didnt need a lot
of help in the click department, which was good.
The PGA81 overheads were pretty well-balanced,
had the tightness of focus you want from small
diaphragm mics, and were a much lower output
than the Audix small diaphragm condensers,
which is perfect for overheads. They didnt pick up
a whole lot of low end, which was actually quite
handy in live situations, where Id usually engage a
hi-pass anyway. The PGA56s arent overly detailed
mics, but serviced the toms really well.
Compared to an SM57, the PGA57 snare mic
was missing a little bit of the high-end snap, and
consequently also a bit of the snare ribbon sound
coming through from the underside. Nothing like
the boosted 1-2kHz midrange of the Audix i5,

which gives it a pre-fabricated sound. It was really

a case of getting brighter as you went from the
PGA57, to the SM57, to the i5. So depending on
where you sit with your appreciation of the SM57
as a snare mic, you could go either way with these
two. I still preferred the 57 most of the time, but
going through these mics again made me think the
i5 was more useful than Id been giving it credit.
It gave some nice snap, that brought out the snare
ribbon sound in a very even manner, and brings
the whole drum forward. They all had a similar
level of bleed, but again the high end of the SM57
rendered any hi-hat bleed more useful, if you can
call it that. Its an industry standard for a reason.
While not as versatile as pulling together your
favourite esoteric pieces from the cabinet, the PG
Alta drum mic kit provided a really tight, one-stop
drum sound. If my budget for a drum mic kit only
extended this far, Id rather have an entire mic kit
that gave me the full picture than just a couple of
mics to play with.

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REVIEW

ARTURIA BEATSTEP PRO

Sequencer & Controller
The Beatstep Pro adds everything you may
have missed from the smaller Beatstep,
including tap tempo.

NEED TO KNOW

Review: Brad Watts

Arturia has moved from strength to

strength over the years. Kicking off as a
software instrument manufacturer with its
sturdy recreations of not-so-sturdy vintage
analogue synthesisers, the company soon moved
into the realm of hardware with the Origin
keyboard. Since that time theres been a
procession of hardware controllers and synths,
all of which borrow heavily from the analogue
ethos; lots of tactile control.
Last year, Arturia released the Beatstep
portable controller and step sequencer. Come
2015 and the ante has moved well and truly
upward with the Beatstep Pro. The new design
offers a stunning array of connectivity enough
to make the unit a serious contender for the

keystone of a live performance rig. But more on

this shortly.

PRICE
Expect to pay $399

CONS
None

CONTACT
CMI Music & Audio:
(03) 9315 2244 or
sales@cmi.com.au

AT 94

PROS
Three sequencers onboard
Tap tempo
Simultaneously sync and
trigger anything

GATES OPEN

Like all Arturia hardware, the Beatstep Pro

is solidly constructed. It sits firmly on your
desktop ready to withstand years of percussive
bashing. The unit incorporates an assignable
MIDI controller, two analogue-style sequencers,
and a drum programmer/sequencer. The same
16 velocity sensitive and backlit trigger pads and
16 MIDI controller pots found on the original
Beatstep are present. However, the Pro adds 16
step programming buttons, offers an additional
section on the left of the unit for access to
sequencer functions, tap tempo button and

tempo value LED (a feature sorely missing from

the first Beatstep), transport controls, along with
pots for control over swing and randomisation
of sequences and other parameters. Theres also
a ribbon controller which will re-trigger the
pad your hitting at 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32 bar
timings. In sequence mode the ribbon controller
will loop the sequences according to the time
division selected.
Perhaps most invigorating is the units
capability to simultaneously sync and trigger
via USB, MIDI and CV/Gate. This opens a
universe of possibilities. You could control
external analogue devices via the two CV/
Gate sections, even controlling those devices
via your DAW, control external MIDI devices

SUMMARY
Arturia has taken its hybrid CV/Gate/MIDI Beatstep sequencer concept and
beefed up the control side considerably on the Beatstep Pro. Its added two more
sequencers with simultaneous outputs from each to let you control pretty much
any style of electronic instrument.

and clock older external hardware with DIN sync

standard 24ppqn or 48ppqn, or even a single
pulse per step. V- and S-trigger gate options
are supported, as are 1V/octave and Hertz per
Volt control voltages. Start/stop control is also
supported. Connection for these sync, pitch and
trigger sources is via 3.5mm jacks, and Arturia
provide the relevant breakout cables.
The eight drum gate outputs correlate with the
first eight trigger pads, with the first eight control
pots providing adjustment over gating length. And
you can record patterns directly into the sequencer.
As mentioned, this sets the scene for the Beatstep
Pro to act as the main conductor and sequencer
for a formidable live performance system. Should
you opt to use the Beatstep Pro standalone, without
the aid of a computer, power can be supplied via a
normal USB phone charger.
STEPPING UP

When it comes to step sequencing, there are 16

Project memory positions, within which can
be stored 16 sequences for each of the two step

sequencers and the drum programmer. Thats

plenty of slots for either compiling entire tracks, or
for a comprehensive array of motifs for mixing and
matching. When run in conjunction with a DAW
you can also trigger clips within the DAW.
When stepping in those events to either
sequencer section, you can work to pitch
templates such as chromatic, major, minor, dorian,
mixolydian, harmonic minor, blues, leave the scaling
completely open or an additional user template.
Each sequencer can contain up to 64 steps.
Arturia supplies editing software for the
Beatstep Pro whereby you can edit the controller
attributes of each control pot, each pad, and even
the step buttons. These controls can all be edited
to control the entire gamut of MIDI information,
with the exception of the pots affecting MIDI note
information and the step buttons not sending
velocity information. There are scads of options
in controller mode. The software doesnt stop at
controller mapping, however. You can also program
the two sequencer sections and the drum section
via a typical matrix-style editing window. This

MIDI Control Center application also controls

Arturias other control surfaces such as the Spark
and Spark LE units, the previous Beatstep and the
Keylab range. So, if youre racking up an assortment
of Arturia devices you can flip between them using
the same app. Very tidy indeed.
JUST ADD DEVICES

For such a tiny controller, the Beatstep Pro offers

an incredible range of functionality. With such an
array of options, from the multiple sync sources
through to the comprehensive control voltage
and gating, through to drum triggering and
more contemporary MIDI and DAW control,
the Beatstep Pro really is only limited by your
imagination and whatever machinery you can get
your hands on to integrate with it.

Now with over

$1,000 Extra Value

Pro Tools | Duet

Pro Tools | Qu
Mac & PC

distributed by

Available at the following resellers

NSW
Guitar Factory 02 9635 5552
Mall Music 02 9905 6966
Sounds Easy 02 8213 0202
Store DJ 02 9993 0758
Turramurra Music 02 9449 8487

QLD
Gallins 1800 425 5467
Store DJ 07 3099 6916
Bris Sound 07 3257 1040
ACT
Better Music 02 6282 3199

VIC
Allans Billy Hyde 1300 255 267
Factory Sound 03 9690 8344
Mannys 03 9486 8555
Soundcorp 03 9694 2600
Store DJ 03 9912 2858

WA
Concept Music 08 9381 2277
Store DJ 08 6454 6199
SA
Derringers Music 08 8371 1884

www.sounddistribution.com.au

AT 95

Market-leading features and

performance in each price segment
ZLX

Polypropylene enclosure
Max SPL 126 dB
Power rating 1000 W
Basic DSP w/ LCD interface
Portable applications

ELX

Lightweight and durable

Portable applications

ProSoundWeb Readers Choice 2013

Starting from $999 RRP

SST Technology
Cardioid Subwoofer
Portable and xed applications

Best of Show NAMM 2015

Starting from $2049 RRP

Powered

18mm wood enclosure w/ EVCoat

Max SPL 135 dB
Power rating 2000 W
Expert DSP w/ LCD interface
FIR lters w/ TEMP & PAL limiters
Highest grade components
On board delay

Bosch Communications Systems

1300 026 724 | sales.communications@au.bosch.com | www.boschcommunications.com.au

Best of Show NAMM 2013

Electronic Musician Editors Choice 2014
ProSoundWeb Readers Choice 2014

Starting from $699 RRP

Passive & Powered

15 mm wood enclosure w/ EVCoat

Max SPL 134 dB
Power rating 1500 W
Advanced DSP w/ LCD interface
Flyable full range models

ETX

Passive & Powered

15 mm wood enclosure
Max SPL 132 dB
Power rating 1000 W
Basic DSP w/ switches

KX

Starting from $599 RRP

Passive & Powered

SST Technology
Cardioid Subwoofer
Portable and xed applications

Best of Show NAMM 2014

ProSoundWeb Readers Choice 2015
WFX New Product Technology 2014

SUBSCRIBE & WIN

A COMPLETE BOSE F1 PA
WORTH $6796
The F1 Model 812 Flexible Array Loudspeaker looks like a
standard point-source box but actually has an eight-driver midhigh line array in front of a 12-inch low frequency driver, giving it
a wide 100-degree horizontal coverage. Not content to simply
reconfigure the markets perception of a speaker on a stick,
with the click of a magnet the F1s vertical dispersion can be
transformed from its straight pattern into a J-line, Reverse-J,
or C-curve. The companion F1 Sub features two 10-inch high
excursion drivers powered by a 1000W amplifier, an integrated
stand for the top boxes and a built-in selectable crossover.
Check out Mark Woods review this issue for more.
Thanks to Bose Australia, we have a pair of F1 812s and Subs to
give away to one lucky subscriber.
What is the vertical dispersion pattern of the F1 loudspeaker?
[A] J-curve

[C] C-curve

[B] Reverse-J

[D] All of the above

Pay by credit card online: www.audiotechnology.com.au; by phone, call Miriam on (02) 9986 1188, or mail in the form below with a cheque or money order. Easy!

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is 11/12/15, with entries judged by the AudioTechnology staff. Winners will be notified by phone or email and announced in the
following issue of AudioTechnology magazine. The judges decision will be final and no further correspondence entered into.

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AT 97

REGULARS

LAST WORD
with

David Dearden

David is a founder of
Audient and before that
DDA. He learnt his craft in
a time when a studio had
to build its own mixing
console. Hes taken that
can do attitude with him
throughout his career.
Pictured above is David
with a DDA Forum Stage
Monitor board in the
early 90s.

AT 98

My father had a wunderlust. I must have attended more

than 10 schools in five different countries across Africa
and even Australia for a while, before dropping out as a teenager
and moving to Zambia.
By that point I knew I wanted to be involved in recording.
My father had purchased a lot of old equipment from the South
African Broadcasting Corporation. We had a good collection of
old ribbon mics RCAs, BBC Marconi Type AXBTs and an
old disc cutter that was in pieces. At the age of 15 I put that back
together and made it work. That stimulated my interest in all
things recording.
Zambia didnt have a recording industry, so I considered my
options, made my way to Johannesburg and knocked on the door
of the largest studio in town and asked for a job. They said okay.
The studio was owned by David Manley [Founder of
Manley Labs] and was huge, it occupied six floors of a city
building with a different discipline on every level. As part of my
apprenticeship I went through each floor.
As was common back in the late 60s, the studio was
building its own recording console prior to the era of
standardised equipment. This console was based entirely on
V72 valves. I could handle a soldering iron, so I was roped into
building the console.
I went to London in 1970. London was the centre of the
recording industry and it was my plan to work there. Thats
as far as my plan went. I flew out of a Rhodesia in the throes
of its (white) Unilateral Declaration of independence, when
its currency wasnt valid and you couldnt take money out of
South Africa either. So I landed at Heathrow with five pounds
in my pocket.
I knocked on the door of a studio called Advision in London
and asked for a job. They said yes. Actually they offered me
the choice of being a tape op or a junior tech. I asked which
paid more tape op got 12 pounds a week and the tech job
attracted 15 pounds a week so I took the tech job. Turns out
the senior tech Eddie Veal had recently resigned. I was thrown
in the deep end.
Fortunately, Eddie returned on a contract basis when he was
engaged to upgrade the recording console. The console was
designed by Dag Fellner and was one of the first transistorised
multitrack recording consoles of the time. It had 20 inputs and
eight group outputs and Eddie was upgrading the monitoring
section to work with our new 16-track Scully tape machine.
As the studio tech, it was my job to assist, which was a great
experience.
Eddie went on to do a lot of studio design. One of the first
he did was Jon Lennons private studio in 1971 to record the
Imagine album and he asked me to assist.
It was probably one of the very first private studios in the
world its not like there were many commercial studios in
London at the time and a big departure from the Abbey
Road atmosphere where even then men in lab coats stalked
the building ensuring you didnt over-modulate this or use the

wrong mic on that.

During the recording of the album I would go to Jon Lennons
house and stay overnight just in case there were any technical
problems that might arise. I sometimes wish Id picked up
the odd scrap of paper with lyrics scribbled on them for my
retirement.
From 1975 I worked full time with Eddie Veal building
consoles and studios, including a studio for George Harrison
at his home and another for Ringo who moved into Jons house
when he and Yoko moved to New York.
In the late 70s I spent time with MCI and then Soundcraft.
Soundcraft was going through a rough patch financially, so
myself and Gareth Davis would contemplate what our next
move might be if Soundcraft went belly up. We decided to start
our own company, DDA.
By 1982 wed gone full-time producing a small mixing
console first speced for high-profile classical recording engineer
Tony Faulkner.
DDA became quite successful in a short time. Within four
years we had introduced a big split-design recording console
called the AMR24 which hit the right part of the market at the
right time.
The first time we exhibited that console in 1985 I recall the
people from Soundcraft dropping by to comment that the
world doesnt need another multitrack recording console. Youll
never sell any of these. We couldnt make them fast enough.
With the success of the AMR24, I got a call from Phil Clarke
wondering if wed be prepared to sell DDA. Klark Teknik had
just gone public, the Clarke brothers had a war chest of money
and were determined to grow quickly. I told Phil we didnt want
to sell. We didnt think anyone would be willing to pay what we
thought DDA was worth, given where we were taking it. Turns
out they were willing to pay what we thought it would be worth
and we became part of the Klark Teknik empire. That was then
absorbed by Mark IV Audio Group. Wed never intended to be
part of a big corporate machine but we were. Thats where we
stayed until 1997 when we escaped and started Audient.
The late 90s wasnt the right time to be launching an analogue
console but we didnt know how to do a digital one. People
thought we were crazy, but we had enough feedback from studio
people to suggest there was a market and the ASP 8024 was
born. The console was designed for cost-effective manufacture
largely by the use of parallel mounted, multi channel printed
circuit boards and ribbon cabling, rather than traditional
modules and hand wiring. Its proven to be a good design, in
fact, its still a strong seller today.
Audient is best known in the UK. When Im in the US I still
have people talking about their DDA console, and Ill encourage
them to retire it youve had your moneys worth out of it!
Ive never considered myself to be an audio design guru,
just a cluey tech, so to be still deeply involved in designing is as
satisfying as it is surprising. Maybe its that Antipodean thing we
share an attitude of just getting on with it.

THE ULTIMATE DRUM MIC PACK,

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DP7
Photo of Anthony Jones, Pink Martini

Production Audio Video Technology Pty Ltd

4/621 Whitehorse Road, Mitcham 3132, Victoria
PH: 03 9264 8000
sales@productionaudio.com.au
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Audix and the Audix Logo are trademarks of
Audix Corporation.

Over 30 Years in Distribution

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