REPORT REVIEWS REVEALED

/Such Sweet Thunder: AoIP links analogue /DPA 4560 binaural headset: immersive /Warren Huart: Produce Like a Pro
/Military Wives: recording the choir /Avid Pro Tools: new features /Dave Pemberton: A Day in the Life
/Microphone special /Arturia Creative Suite /The sound of multi-Oscar winner Parasite

V19.2 | March/April 2020 | £5.50

The

Interview

Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx
Jean-Michel JarreXxx
 INTRODUCING...

PROGRAMMABLE ANALOG PROCESSING

The McDSP Analog Processing Box (APB) combines the flexibility of software with the fidelity of premium analog processing. Each channel
can be controlled by an APB plug-in giving true digital workflow with genuine analog performance. Processing options include the
C673-A Compressor, which brings the McDSP variation of the Fairchild 670 back into the analog domain. The C673-A offers advanced
signal tracking to accommodate modern production styles, while still imparting a ‘warmth’ into the audio output.  The use of high end
analog components allows the C673-A response to be even faster than any previous Fairchild emulation by McDSP.

lea more about the C673-A along with all the other plug-ins that come with the APB-16, and to find an
Head to mcdsp.com/apb to learn
APB dealer near you.

P R O F E S S I O N A L A U D I O H A R D W A R E A N D S O F T W A R E
 / Contents

24
V19.2 | March/April 2020

News & Analysis

5 Leader
6 News
News, studios, appointments
12 New Products
48 A Day In The Life
Dave Pemberton, The Prodigy recording engineer

Columns
14 Business
Remote production, and DIY artist gain in 2019 Jean-Michel Jarre
15 Broadcast Aside
‘Made for TV’ sound could become a production
differentiator
16 Crosstalk
Creating interactive audio for virtual assistants
50 Playlist
Electronic music choices from the team

Craft
24 Jean-Michel Jarre
Four decades in, the Oxygène composer brings a
breath of fresh air to electronic music composition

28 32
with EōN
28 Warren Huart
The inspirational engineer/producer behind TEC
Award-winning Produce Like a Pro on where the
music industry is at, his journey from musician to
producer, and returning to a studio with a multi-
platinum artist…to find the locks changed! 36
32 Military Wives
Production soundman Paul Paragon on the challenges
and rewards of using on-set audio for the choir movie
36 Ralph Tae-Young Choi
Creating the sound for Oscar winner movie Parasite
38 Such Sweet Thunder
Atmos mixing room— Merging AoIP digital with
vintage analogue 50

REVIEWS
18 Avid Pro Tools (latest)
20 DPA 4560 CORE Binaural Headset
22 RØDE VideoMic NTG
23 Arturia Creative Suite

38
43 MICROPHONE SPECIAL

March/April 2020 / 3
 / Welcome

Leader
EDITORIAL Nigel Jopson
Editor Nigel Jopson
nigel@resolutionmag.com

From a distance
CONTRIBUTORS
George Shilling, Jon Thornton,
Dan Daley, Dennis Baxter,
Danny Turner, Russell Cottier,
John Broomhall, Simon Clark,
Mike Aiton, Bob Katz, Bill Lacey,
Piper Payne, Tim Oliver,
Erica Basnicki, Catherine Vericolli,
David Kennedy, Phil Ward and
Rob Speight

ADVERTISEMENT SALES
EUROPE
Chris Cope
+44 (0)20 3289 8015
chris@resolutionmag.com
Sean Leslie
+44 (0)20 7993 4704
sean@resolutionmag.com
US & INTERNATIONAL
Jeff Turner
+1 415 455 8301
jturner@resolutionmag.com

PRODUCTION AND LAYOUT

Dean Cook,

A
The Magazine Production Company
+44 (0)1273 467579
dean@resolutionmag.com s I write, the world is in the grip of a has amply demonstrated. And they will be in
global health emergency. It started charge.
PRINTING with news of trade show To those with an interest in economics and
Gemini Print Southern Ltd, Unit A1
postponements, and rapidly history, it was also more than clear that certain
Dolphin Road, Shoreham-by-Sea,
snowballed with live events and media corporations, airlines, tech companies and
West Sussex. BN43 6NZ
concerts cancelled, as politicians struggle to other businesses were hopelessly over-valued,
implement solutions to protect populations. with investors just waiting for an excuse to
MANAGEMENT
Our colleagues in live sound have clearly born correct their exposure. Those of us with inside
Publisher Dave Robinson
the brunt of many cancellations, but spare a knowledge of large media projects are aware
dave@resolutionmag.com
thought for those at work in production sound that some teeter on the brink of financial
Published by S2 Publications Ltd
for movies and episodic TV. As Hollywood stars viability, with IP owners secretly longing for a
+44 (0)1543 57872
scarpered from location shoots, news has come justification (other than their own incompetence)
info@resolutionmag.com
192 Longford Road, Cannock
of audio pros having to find their own routes to bail-out.
Staffordshire. WS11 1QN
home to self-isolate (or head to hospital), in Life will change, and perhaps dramatically.
many cases forced to leave personal equipment There is going to be huge demand for remote
©2020 S2 Publications Ltd. All rights — a lifetime of investment — behind. working, and remote media production.
reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in
A refrain I’ve recently heard from some Educational institutions will increasingly need to
any form or by any means without the production pros is self-reassuring talk of “when hold classes remotely. Those who develop
prior written consent of the publisher. things get back to normal”. From the point of innovative ways of presenting events without the
Great care is taken to ensure accuracy in
the preparation of this publication, but view of an industry veteran, it seems to me that risks and ecological impact of thousands of
neither S2 Publications Ltd or the editor most media people under the age of 35 have people being in the same location are going to
can be held responsible for its contents.
The views expressed are those of the always lived in a time when global travel, instant find themselves in great demand. Holograms,
contributors and not necessarily those human connection, free trade and peace existed. immersive sound, interactive social commentary
of the publisher. S2 Publications Ltd.
Registered in England and Wales. I’m sad to say this is not “normal” for our world. — we are the media people — and we know how
In future, a generation now too young to reach to do it. The changes that will come won’t always
REGISTERED OFFICE
Gowran House, 56 Broad Street, the faders is going to have quite different be benign or within our control. But we can keep
Chipping Sodbury, Bristol, BS37 6AG life-imperatives — driven by environmental busy with good solutions for the social
Company number: 4375084
concerns — as a certain Swedish teenage activist consequences.

Nigel
/resolutionmagazine

@resolutionmagazine
Editor

March/April 2020 / 5
 News

$2m for Australian

schools hit by virus

Australian manufacturer RØDE

Microphones announced it will donate $2
million worth of podcasting equipment to
help New South Wales schools impacted
by health concerns. As teachers face the
difficult task of overcoming disruptions to
classes in the coming months, RØDE
founder and chairman Peter Freedman
established a programme that will give
schools access to audio equipment they
can use to deliver classes remotely via
podcast platforms. As of March 13th, any
NSW public schools who wish to participate
have been able to access an online portal
on the RØDE website where they can order
a complete podcasting kit, which includes a
RØDECaster Pro Podcast Production
Studio (review, Resolution V18.2),
microphones and accessories.
COVID-19 Relief Fund
Korean Audioguy goes immersive
In the heart of Seoul a unique recording space has taken a different approach. Focusing
on acoustic music, including classical, jazz, and the Gukak style of Korean music — the
recording room has a longer reverberation time of 2.7s — more like a concert hall, explains
Jung-Hoon Choi, founder of Audioguy Studios. The facility chose a Genelec 7.1.4
monitoring system based around ‘The Ones’ coaxial three-ways. “I would be very confused
when making mix decisions without the standardised in-situ corrections of frequency
response, level and delay offered by Genelec’s GLM software,” reflects Choi. “Using this
system, the 11 individual monitors (three 8351As as LCR, eight 8331A monitors as surrounds
and overheads plus a 7370A subwoofer) sound exactly as they should. We can mix in the
most precise and accurate way, GLM makes it very convenient and easy to switch between
3D, binaural and stereo formats and analyse the differences.”

The Recording Academy and its affiliated

charitable foundation MusiCares have
established the COVID-19 Relief Fund to
help people in the music industry affected
by the coronavirus disease outbreak and
subsequent cancellation of multiple music
events. Administered through MusiCares,
the COVID-19 Fund will be used to directly
support those in the music community with

MPG Awards 2020 gong-grabbers

the greatest need. To establish the fund,
both the Recording Academy and
MusiCares have contributed an initial
donation of $1m each, totalling $2m.
Additionally, all Recording Academy
Chapters have committed to fundraising in
their local communities. “The situation,
requires an unprecedented response,”
said Harvey Mason jr., chair and interim CEO
of the Recording Academy. “We are asking
the entire industry to stand with us to
support the musicians, artists and
professionals who are the bedrock and the
future of our music community.”
London’s Grosvenor House hosted the 2020 Music Producers Guild Awards on 27th
February — an annual event that recognises the creativity, skill and talents of all music
recording professionals. Recording Engineer Of The Year was won by Daniel Moyler
(pictured with Elizabeth Wilkinson of sponsors AMS Neve). Moyler has worked with Marina
and the Diamonds, Shura, Dermot Kennedy, Frank Carter, Dua Lipa, Birdy and
more. Producer Of The Year was won by Dan Carey for his work on the Black Midi album
Ducter, Kate Tempest’s Firesmoke and Fontaines D.C. Boys in the Better Land. Marta
Salogni won Breakthrough Producer Of The Year for her work with The Orielles, Georgia
Ruth, Hero Fisher, Two Monkeys and Yak. Studio of the Year went to The Church (Resolution
V13.8). The MPG Award For Outstanding Contribution To UK Music, sponsored by PPL, was
awarded to producer Stephen Street (Resolution V8.5).

6 / March/April 2020
 APPOINTMENTS

Ralf Oehl has been

appointed as CEO of
Georg Neumann GmbH.
In his new position, Oehl
will continue to build the
business and brand,
further developing the
overall strategic direction of Georg
Neumann GmbH, a Sennheiser Group
company. He will report to Peter
Claussen, COO of the Sennheiser. Oehl
joins after founding his own company,
Concinno, which focused on strategic
and M&A advisory services to high-end
manufactures. He has expertise in areas
API revives Capricorn Studios such as disruptive industrial technologies,
innovative new business models and
innovation-driving organizations.
The Macon, Georgia, facility where the Allman Brothers recorded was dormant for
decades until reopening in December 2019. A new API 2448 Recording Console with the
largest 2448 frame built to date takes centre stage: with 40 mic pres and 40 API equalisers,
each channel features two inputs, both with faders. Rounding out the system is API’s ‘Final
Touch’ motorised fader automation.
Steve Ivey, a Mercer graduate and Grammy-award winning producer based out of
Nashville was a key figure in the planning and revitalisation of the studio. “For 50 years API
consoles and Capricorn Studios together have made a worldwide, profound impact in
music and recording,” said Ivey. “As a Mercer University music graduate who learned to
record on an API console, under the direction of Capricorn producer Paul Hornsby, I’m Stage Tec Berlin has a new management
thrilled to be part of the team taking Capricorn Studios and API into the next era of team: René Harder (R), who has been a
recording great music.” VP for many years, and Sascha Khelifa
(L) have been appointed managing
directors. From 2008 to 2018 Khelifa was
MD of Meyer Sound GmbH. Khelifa will be
Resolution and coronavirus responsible for sales and commercial
management. “Stage Tec is a globally
active, well regarded company with an
In these strange and difficult times, I’m writing to attractive portfolio. I am really looking
inform you of a few ‘mods’ we’re making to the forward to working with a dedicated
Resolution machine, if you will. The impact of the team in Berlin,” explains Sascha Khelifa.
pandemic has meant aircraft space for transporting of Harder began working at Stage Tec as a
freight is scarce and increasingly expensive, if available software developer in 2003 and has
at all. Surcharges and the quarantining of goods are gained extensive know-how in various
changing every few days. In some territories, even if we areas as assistant to the management
could get a print copy of Resolution into the region, it and vice president since 2013.
might be stuck in a depot for some time before it
Decca announced the
reaches your doormat.
promotion of Tom Lewis
We have therefore taken the decision to limit the and Laura Monks to
number of print copies produced for the time being. In a co-managing directors of
small number of countries — as I type, Spain, France, Italy and the USA (but maybe Decca Records Group.
others) — you won’t receive a print copy of Resolution; instead you will be sent an email Lewis moves up after a year
containing instructions on how to download (as a PDF) and view (via issuu.com) a digital in his current role as VP of
copy of the magazine. You will receive this before the print version is distributed. Decca, A&R and Artist
We know many of you prefer a hard copy, but right now it is just not viable for certain Strategy. He joined the
regions. There will be an opportunity for you to obtain a print edition when we have company 17 years ago as
label manager for the jazz
some sense of global normality. Let’s hope that’s soon.
division before moving into
In the meantime, we have racked up another couple of years’ worth of free archive
A&R. Monks is promoted to co-MD after
issues for your reading pleasure. Every edition of Resolution produced before January eight years at Decca, starting as senior
2010 — that’s from V1.1 to V8.8 — is available at no charge to you, via our website or digital campaign manager and moving
www.issuu.com/resolutionmag. through digital, commercial and
The Resolution team will continue to create your favourite pro-audio read to the best marketing positions to the position of GM
of our ability during this trying period. I hope you enjoy this current copy… and I leave in 2018. She has worked on successful
you with this photo of myself and the impossibly ageless Monsieur Jarre, taken in Dublin campaigns for artists such as Gregory
at a time when the only ‘Virus’ of note was a synth module by Access. Porter, Andrea Bocelli, Ludovico Einaudi
Dave Robinson, publisher, info@resolutionmag.com and Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

March/April 2020 / 7
/ News

APPOINTMENTS

Calrec announced
Graham Murray as
business development
manager. Murray now
represents Calrec in the
Middle East. His goal is
to further develop
Calrec’s business in this
territory and maintain its already strong
presence. Murray has over 30 years of
sales experience across the broadcast,
studio and post-production industries in
the UK and globally. “Graham’s wealth of
technical experience, starting as an
engineer at AMS in the ‘80s, coupled with
extensive experience in the broadcast
industry, make him the ideal fit for this job.
…sing and cry, Valhalla I am coming
His knowledge of the region makes him an
incredible asset,” commented Dave Located in the centre of Upstate New stands out with remarkable acoustics and
Letson, VP of sales at Calrec. York, between Syracuse and Niagara Falls the latest technology, including PMC’s QB1
  (known as the Finger Lakes region) monitors (driven with 27,000 watts of
Avid promoted Valhalla Studios is an ambitious 20,000 power, apparently) and a unique
Kathy-Anne “KAM”
sq ft multi-studio facility. Owner Joey 64-channel immersive audio-ready
McManus to the
newly-created role of
DeMaio commented: “We are honoured to analogue console with the ability to
chief customer have Ronald Prent and Darcy Proper with seamlessly pan from bottom to top. The
experience officer. us; they are both megastars in their fields first of its kind in the world — specially
McManus re-engineered — Ronald in audio engineering, recording designed by FIX Audio Designs (Paul Wolff)
Avid’s solutions, services and mixing and Darcy as a multi Grammy — and co-developed with Ronald Prent,
and customer care operations after joining award-winning mastering engineer” who was Grammy-nominated in 2018 for
as SVP, global customer solutions & (Resolution interviews V4.8, V15.5). Best Immersive Audio Album. Valhalla  is
services, boosting the company’s ability to Studio 1 is a former church-turned- certified for Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality
provide exceptional support to its
studio. This 2,500 sq ft recording space Audio and Auro-3D.
customer base, better supporting its
fast-growing subscriber base, and the
ramp-up of Avid’s cloud and SaaS
solutions.
Prior to re-joining Avid in January 2019,
she served as the company’s VP of
worldwide professional services and
director of services for Asia Pacific.
McManus has also held senior leadership
roles at several media technology
providers including Adobe, Amdocs and
Ericsson.

Focusrite has
appointed Greg Westall
director of product for
Focusrite, as well as
Focusrite Pro, Novation
and Ampify. Previously
he has worked with
pro-audio and MI
brands including
Universal Audio and Line 6. “Working
with such an amazing team of product
managers and developers at Focusrite is
a once in a career opportunity,” says
Westall. Tim Carroll, CEO of the Focusrite
Group, adds, “I’m very pleased to have
someone with Greg’s experience and
track record joining us. Greg’s deep
industry knowledge, leadership ability
and personal style is a great fit for
Focusrite, and we’re all very excited to
have him on board.”
Westall will relocate to the UK.
Blackhall studio “creates
3,000 jobs in UK”
Blackhall, which runs a film production
facility in Atlanta, Georgia, is planning to
enter the UK market with a major
development in Reading. The company said
it was proposing “the largest purpose-built
film studio and digital creative hub complex
in the UK” and that it would incorporate
“extensive purpose-built digital production
facilities” at the Thames Valley Science Park
site. Blackhall claims it could create up to
3,000 jobs in the local boroughs, including
1,500 onsite, by early 2022. Ryan Millsap,
Blackhall chairman, said plans were made
after US-based clients Disney, Universal and
Sony were “all asking us to expand into the
UK to meet UK demand.”
White Mark revamps
Middlesex Uni’s studio
The University, based in Hendon, already
has two stereo production suites Dante-
linked to a booth, a 5.1 Avid mixing suite
and a 24-track recording studio (Studio
B). Studio A had sound spill issues to
resolve and the university decided to build
a new acoustic space from the ground up,
ready for the launch of a new BA Degree
course in Music Production. Studio design
consultancy White Mark Ltd transformed
Studio A into an acoustically accurate
control room, live room, and booth. It can
now handle stereo and surround sound
projects, thanks to the inclusion of a
monitoring system giving students the
opportunity to mix in 5.1 and 7.1 formats.

8 / March/April 2020
Getting the Thrill Across.
World Cups and countless other games.
Global album launches streamed live over the web,
major rock festivals brought to millions,
classical performances in any venue.

Lawo is where the thrill is. By appointment to the

ROCK IN RIO, most talented people on the planet.
Brazil All over IP, in cutting-edge quality.
HYPERX ESPORTS ARENA,
BASTILLE DAY,
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France

GEARHOUSE COLUMBUS,
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GRANGER COMMUNITY CHURCH,

USA

www.lawo.com
/ News

Pro7ect 2020 Pip Studios will launch in June

at Rockfield Studios Audio post-production facility Pip Studios announced it will open its doors in June
This year’s Pro7ect, (subject to the coronavirus situation). The company will provide audio localisation
the creative retreat services for feature films, television, gaming and streaming services. To facilitate this, six
that brings top Dolby Atmos stages have been built on the Pip Studios site in Winnersh, Berkshire.
songwriters and Pip has been co-founded by Ally Curran, Mark Sheffield and Nigel Bennett. Curran
producers together previously worked at Deluxe for six years, where she held the position of studio manager.
to write and record, Mark Sheffield comes to the company with 30 years of experience in post. He has held
has announced the several high-profile roles in the industry, including dubbing mixer at Pinewood Group, before
line-up for becoming re-recording mixer and later director of audio operations at Deluxe — a post he
September. held until last year. His international credits include Avatar, Prometheus, Transformers and
Producer/engineer Jurassic World. Nigel Bennett will operate as co-founder and chairman of Pip Studios, a
Greg Haver position he will hold alongside his current duties as managing director at Molinare.
(Resolution V13.5, Manic Street Preachers,
John Cale, Catatonia and Super Furry
Animals); Stew Jackson, writer and
producer for Massive Attack and Nick Cave
and a founding member of Phantom Limb,
and Gethin Pearson, who recently produced
and mixed Badly Drawn Boy’s new single ‘Is
This A Dream?’ and has also produced
tracks for artists such as To Kill A King,
KELE and JAWS.
Pro7ect will run two residential sessions
across eight days at Rockfield, Monmouth,
— the first from September 7th-11th and the
second from September 11-15th 2020. The
sessions will be separated by a one-day
Masterclass on the 11th, which is open to
people who want to find out more about
the Pro7ect experience before committing
to a full three-day retreat.

Spain’s first Dolby Atmos

Home certified studio
Abbey Road Institute opens first US school
Abbey Road Institute has announced the to be working with the established British
next step in their international educational institution. With the new school
educational offering with the launch of opening at his existing studio complex,
their first specialist music production Reyes Copello will act as a mentor to the
school in the US, confirmed to be opening select group of students joining the
in Miami, Florida in 2020. The school will program. His team at Miami Art House will
be opened in partnership with multiple also play key roles on a day-to-day basis
Grammy and Latin Grammy winner Julio bringing the reality of studio life directly to
Part of Mediapro’s image and sound Reyes Copello at his studio, Miami Art the student experience with the school
post-production company, Telson.Tres60 House. occupying a space within the building
opened its new facility in May 2019, and Reyes Copello, who has worked with alongside the commercial studios. The
has decided to upgrade its monitoring some of the biggest names in music, school will be enrolling its first intake of
capabilities to better serve clients. “The including Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, students onto the Diploma in Music
system upgrades were driven by client Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith, Alejandro Sanz, Production and Sound Engineering in
demands - for example Movistar asks for Camila Cabello and Alessia Cara, is excited autumn 2020.
everything in Dolby Atmos,” explains sound
production co-ordinator, Ana Belén Martín.
The Telson.Tres60 team, alongside
Unitecnic — Mediapro’s engineering
THE SHOW MUST GO ON (YES IT MUST!)
company which handled the installation — Infocomm, Las Vegas 17-19 June AES, New York 21-24 October 
turned to local Genelec partner Audio- Summer NAMM, Nashville 9-11 July BPM, Solihull 3-4 October
Technica Iberia for the 7.1.4 monitoring AES audio edu, TN 23-25 July Afial, Madrid 6-8 October
solution. In both rooms S360A monitors AES VR conf, WA  17-19 August SoundPro’20, London  17 October
were installed in the LCR positions, with BIRTV, Beijing 18-22 August LDI 2019, Las Vegas 19-25 October
four 1032C monitors as surrounds and the PLASA, London 6-8 September BroadcastIndia, Mumbai 19-31 October
same number of 8340As covering the IBC Amsterdam 11-15 September SMPTE 2019, Los Angeles 9-12 November
overhead channels. Low frequency content NAMM/PLS Russia 17-19 September Interbee, Tokyo 18-20 November
is handled by a 7382A subwoofer.

10 / March/April 2020
 New Gear

New products
The essential briefing on the latest equipage

Calrec Lectrosonics
Type R for TV IFBR1B Miniature Receiver 
Type R for TV fulfills The next-generation receiver unit is
the rising demand nearly half the size and weight of the
for automated audio industry-standard IFBR1A receiver that
consoles in smaller it is replacing and uses a slim 3.7V
news operations. “More often we’re seeing the LB-50 rechargeable lithium ion battery
console surface not used at all, which is driving the instead of the archaic 9V type. The new
demand for broadcast-level virtual consoles,” says IFBR1B is fully compatible with the
Calrec’s Director of Product Management, Henry existing line of IFBT4 transmitters. With
Goodman. Type R for TV is compatible with popular a backlit LCD and membrane buttons,
station automation systems including Ross Overdrive, Sony ELC and the new receiver is easy to set up and use,
Grass Valley Ignite. It provides fully automated programming with offering 10 presets which are easily
real-time adjustment of ‘unpredictable external factors’ via a standard programmable from the front panel.
web browser. Five tuning ranges are available for the new IFBR1B receiver: the VHF
Type R’s small, adaptable and highly portable hardware elements can version (red knob) covers 174-216 MHz, the A1 (470-537 MHz), B1 (537-614
be easily added if desired. Powered by standard POE switches, Type R has MHz) and C1 (614-692 MHz) versions (blue knob) cover the UHF TV
three different panel options. If broadcasters prefer a physical surface then frequencies for most countries, and the 941 Band version (black knob)
banks of 6x faders can be added, or adaptable soft panels like Calrec’s covers the North American license-only 941-960 MHz range. Future
Large Soft Panel (LSP) and Small Soft Panel (SSP). Calrec’s Assist web UI firmware updates can be installed in the IFBR1B in the field via the USB
makes it easy to access the virtual desk on almost any device, wherever in jack on the bottom of the unit. The system’s new companion dock
the world a user is. Assist works over TCP/IP and has minimal control lag, charging system, the CHSIFBR1B, is capable of charging up to four
which makes minor adjustments easy and quick to do. receivers or four batteries in any combination.

www.calrec.com www.lectrosonics.com

London Acoustics Waves IK Multimedia

ENNA & TELGA
Making use of the Acustica convolution engine
(Resolution V17.5), ENNA is “an emulation of
three Mid/High frequency enhancers
combined… featuring the sampled-units’
characteristics, such as EQ curves and
saturation”.
We’ve been experimenting with ENNA at
Resolution studios, and for those seeking an
‘AIR BAND’-style tonal modifier with an
analogue flavour, this plug-in is an excellent
solution. The MID FOCUS control acts
somewhat like a high-Q tonal boost for the
effect. TELGE ITB tube revitaliser is a sampled
“special analogue-tube custom gear rig”,
intended to be used in send/return
configuration only (set in parallel with the
source tracks). ENNA & TELGA bundle are
available in VST2/3, AU, AAX 64-bit for €70.
Multimod
MultiMod Rack
has three
plug-in slots,
each of which
can host
Waves’ newest
distortion and
saturation
plug-ins: the
vintage analogue-modelled Abbey Road
Saturator, the modern waveshaper-
based Berzerk, and the MDMX Screamer,
Overdrive and Fuzz modules. MultiMod’s slots
divide your signal into three frequency bands
— lows, mids and highs — with adjustable
crossover controls. Assign the different plug-ins
to different frequency bands, and separately
control the flavour of distortion in each. Five
LFO, sequencer and amplitude modulation
options are available, with independent level,
pan and harmonics controls per slot/band, plus
a modulatable 4-band paragraphic EQ, a
reverb, delay, and chorus. $99 with intro offer of
$49.99, with a bundle of MultiMod plus Rack/
Berzerk/MDMX currently available for $89.99.
Sunset Sound
Studio Reverb
IK recreated the sound of the rooms, chambers
and reverbs of this legendary L.A. studio using
its unique Volumetric Response Modeling
(VRM), a hybrid convolution technique. A
simple user interface gives access to modelled
live rooms and iso booths from Studio 1, Studio
2 or Studio 3 and three live echo chambers
from each studio. Users can also select the
various Sunset vintage reverbs, including an
Echoplate, EMT 140, and an AKG BX-20E
spring. Preliminary Resolution tests reveal room
sounds redolent of a particular musical era, very
easy to tune and adjust. The €/$149.99 Sunset
Reverb can be used as an individual plug-in, or
inside the T-RackS 5 shell.

www.londonacoustics.com www.waves.com www.t-racks.com/sunsetstudio

12 / March/April 2020
Solid State Logic Steinberg
System T Version 2.3 UR24C
The latest V2.3
System T broadcast
production platform
release adds
significant benefits
to the entire range of
System T consoles;
S500, S500m, S300 The UR24C is
and TCR. This latest the latest of a
release adds line-up of UR-C
enhancements USB 3.0
including; DAW interfaces that
control, Immersive are designed
audio, Dynamic Automation, Patch Manager CSV files, Access Control, for musicians, producers and performers. The UR24C provides USB
Event Manager, Scene Automation and a fully featured on-board FX rack.  Type-C (USB 3.1 Gen 1 SuperSpeed) connectivity to ensure universal
A Network I/O V4.0 update includes ST 2110, ST 2059-2 and ST 2022-7 compatibility with PCs and Macs, as well as iOS devices. It features
support for all devices, providing standards based AoIP and Dante 32-bit/192kHz audio and delivers DSP power for using effects when
technology simultaneously on the same chipsets. This allows installations monitoring audio without latency.
to leverage IP networks for both infrastructure and consoles-based audio The UR24C features two balanced Neutrik combo inputs, high-grade
routing workflows, without proprietary hardware TDM routers, and adds D-PRE microphone preamps, two TRS main outputs, four RCA line
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brings Dante Domain Manager (DDM) login capability directly into the output 1 or output 2 is chosen as the headphone source while allowing
console software. System T is a routing controller with direct on-console the user to adjust the balance from the DAW and from the UR24C’s
routing control for any Dante enabled device, providing inputs.
complete AoIP resource sharing. DDM integration allows system DJ mode is used for performances with DJ software and backing
designers to add a software-based security layer with; user tracks where the signal is split, so the mono master sound is output to the
authentication, defined guest, operator or admin roles, with complete right of headphones and the mono cue sound to the left, letting the user
audit logging. adjust the balance of both signals. RRP is €249 inc.

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The £99 Sontronics Podcast
Pro, developed and hand-
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is a dynamic microphone
that’s been designed
specifically with podcast, Lawo announced a new software license
broadcast, radio, gaming package for its versatile Power Core AoIP
and voiceover mixing engine and I/O node: Power Core MAX.
applications in mind. ‘MAX’ — short for Multiple Access — makes it
Available in red or black, possible for a single Power Core device to be
the Podcast Pro has a the mixing engine for multiple on-air mixing Infinity 4.5 now offers the ability to rip and
tightly focused consoles. “Power Core MAX lets you unlock all export video and MIDI files, import and paint
supercardioid pickup those resources to power two, three or even your own samples into rips via the Instrument
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integrated fine-mesh pop filter provide superb Novak. editor that unlike other editors, doesn’t work on
control of extraneous noise or rumble and also Power Core is an AoIP workhorse. Dual- samples and waveforms, but instead breaks
help control unwanted sibilance or plosives. redundant front-panel AES67 ports can down the audio into the individual components
Easy to set up and position, and compatible accommodate up to 128 streams with a total of of frequency, amplitude and harmonics. This
with any desktop or floor-standing mic stand, 256 audio channels. Four front-panel MADI enables you to change most characteristics
the Podcast Pro is supplied with an angled yoke ports can handle 64 MADI channels each, for a without any kind of limit, hence the name
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March/April 2020 / 13
 Columns
Pivot to remote working
Business deals which affect production pros
Remote production
The coronavirus epidemic has increased the
imperative for remote-working and remote
production software. Ben Foakes, founder of
Base Media, a cloud-based media asset
management service, says: “The highest number
of enquiries is from larger broadcasters, post-
production and production companies we work
with who are now looking for full remote working
or virtual facility systems, anticipating the
potential need for locking down business
premises and having staff work remotely.”
“The TV and post-production sector is
behind the curve compared to other industries
in using remote working technology but I can
see it kicking in, not least because of pressures
from the cost of operating in central London,”
says Séamus MacCormaic, CFO of post-
production service provider The Farm Group.
“I think we need to have the flexibility going
forward to offer clients the choice of on site or
remote working.”
London’s Soho-based post house Molinare
offers a full range of remote review tools for
editorial sign-off, to high quality remote grading
or editing sessions. “We utilise Streambox for
remote picture and surround sound sessions,
and offer Source-Connect for remote mix
sessions and audio recording, giving access to
thousands of studios and talent worldwide,”
says Richard Wilding, CTO.
The coronavirus outbreak is likely to provoke
an industry-wide pivot to remote working — one
that was already underway due to the cost
effectiveness of distributed workflows in post
production and remote production for live
events. Investments made now in remote
working will permanently shift the industry from
face-to-face to the virtual.
14 / March/April 2020
Business
Nigel Jopson
Amazon data for artists
Amazon Music has launched an analytics
platform for music producers and musicians
called Amazon Music for Artists. Spotify and
Apple, have similar tools, but Amazon’s app is
the includes Alexa voice data. Not only does the
app display an artist’s total number of voice
requests, it shows details about the various
ways people request songs, such as by artist,
album, song, or lyrics. Last year at Nashville’s
Music Biz conference, Amazon Music’s director
said during a panel that “Alexa, play…” is the
second most popular command for the device
after “Alexa, set a timer”.
The data is close to real-time with the iOS
app interface driven from five tabs: Overview,
Songs, Fans, Voice, and Programming. Music
producers can choose to see their data for the
last 24 hours, the last seven days, the last 28
days — or using a custom date filter for any
period since 1st January 2018. The Fans tab
includes overall listeners, and breaks down
how many of those are ‘fans’ and ‘superfans’.
Amazon has its own calculations to decide
whether a listener is a fan or superfan based
on metrics including how often they listen to
an artist; how long they listen for; and whether
they follow their profile in the Amazon Music
app or Alexa.
CD Baby has partnered with Amazon Music
for the app’s launch, so artists who are
distributed through CD Baby will be fast
tracked if they apply. Amazon Music says more
distributors will be added soon.
Amazon Music recently surpassed 55m
customers globally across all its streaming
offerings, while subscriptions to its premium
Amazon Music Unlimited service grew by more
than 50% in 2019.
DIY artists growing fast
The global recorded music industry continued
its resurgence in 2019 with a fifth successive
year of growth. Global revenues grew by 11.4%
in 2019 to reach $21.5bn, an increase of $2.2bn
on 2018. That growth was bigger than 2018 in
both absolute and relative terms. According to
analysis from Midia Research, $11.9bn of the
total (56%) came from streaming platforms like
Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and
YouTube.
Major record labels still dominated the overall
market in 2019, accounting for 67.5% of the total,
edging down from 68.0% in 2018. The remaining
32.5% – accounted for by independent labels
and artists combined — was up 0.5% from 2017
and 4.6% from 2015. ‘Artists direct’, or artists
without record labels, was the fastest-growing
segment of the market, growing by 32.1% in 2019
to reach $873m, representing 4.1% of the total
market — up from a mere 1.7% in 2015. “The
continued boom in recorded music revenues is
accompanied by a growing complexity to the
underlying business, with increased
diversification of business models and artist/
label relationships,” said Midia’s Mark Mulligan.
“Over the next few years continued revenue
growth will be both accompanied and driven by
business model innovation and disruption.”
Meanwhile IFPI, the organisation that
represents the music industry worldwide, found
the highest rate of growth for streaming
engagement is the 35–64 year-old age group,
with 54% of that group accessing a streaming
service in the last month (+8% on 2018). The IFPI
recently named Taylor Swift the world’s best-
selling recording artist of 2019. This is the
second time for a Swiftie sales bonanza — the
first time being 2014.

Optimise sound for home entertainment
A
fter ten years of writing Broadcast
Aside for Resolution, I think that the
last decade has realised a
convergence of the technologies.
This convergence makes advance
multi-channel audio production, delivery and
consumption a reality for all media. Streaming
media has taken the place of the broadcasting
dinosaurs who are dying along with their
rigidly scheduled programming and terrestrial
antennas. UHD pictures and immersive sound
are here to stay along with 360 Music. Most
importantly, the pace of adopting the next
generation of immersive and interactive sound
is on schedule.
What does advance multi-channel audio
mean for all electronic media, including
gaming, music, movies and what we know as
television? I will tell you. Quite simply, big
sound makes more opportunities for all of us.
Those who have survived this business
learned a long time ago that it is all about the
consumer. Does the consumer want 85-inch
UHD TVs and immersive sound? It seems so.
TV’s are cheap and you can mount them on
the wall. Immersive sound? I am optimistic…
but I still hear the push-back.
Out of professional curiosity, I travelled to
the world’s largest consumer electronics show,
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las
Vegas, to do some ad hoc research. Amid the
autonomous cars, refrigerators and heated
toilets, there was a good offering of home
entertainment sound products — TVs and
soundbars.
Soundbars, with all their warts, are going to
be the first choice for home reproduction. The
good news is that soundbars are evolving for
the better. But we, as audio practitioners, need
to evolve and learn how to optimise our sound
for soundbars. Drama, movies and other
post-produced audio programming are leading
the way in immersive sound adoption followed
by live sports. But let’s look at this migration.
The perception of bigger and better
I expect 1st Generation Immersive Sound to be
more general spatialisation of the sound which
does not require perfection. It’s actually more
of the perception of bigger and better.
How do we get there? During 2019, I looked
into various immersive sound applications,
practices and technologies. As a result, I am
Broadcast aside
Dennis Baxter
Big sound
convinced that entry level immersive sound is
not hard to create and produce with minimum
resources.
First: to create immersive sound, a mixer
needs to be able to hear the dimensional
soundfield. Second: the mixer must be able to
adequately position the sound elements in the
soundfield. Finally, the mixer must be able to
make and maintain an artistic balance of the
elements through distribution.
I visited several OB Vans with less than
perfect speaker placement, but the monitoring
seemed to be adequate for immersive sound
monitoring. In these transitional periods, it
would be advisable to have a high-end
monitoring room to QC immersive sound
production and provide real time feedback to
the sound mixer.
Ambisonic microphones can create
impressive immersive sound, but are not
necessary. I spent 2019 recording side-by-side
a 1st, 3rd and 4th Order Ambisonics
microphone along with 10 spot microphones
and have come to the conclusion that
ambisonic microphones sound great — but are
not essential to creating immersive sound.
With any sporting event, minimum
immersive sound production can be as simple
as injecting additional ambiance and
atmosphere into the height speakers. Some
sound above the viewer/listener will usually
create a sense of aural space for the 2D
picture. But sound designers are wrestling with
the concept of what sounds should be heard
above the viewer when there is no obvious
reason for it to be heard.
It’s above you!
To me, football is the definitive example of the
use of overhead atmospheric enhancements
for spatialisation. Additionally, overhead
atmospheric enhancements do not require any
localisation and can be accomplished on most
5.1 mixing desk. NOTE — 3D panning is helpful
for precise localisation, but, bottom line —
convincing immersive sound for most sport
does not require precise localisation.
Additionally, there is no doubt that these
field sports have no ‘sport-relevant’ sound in
the vertical axis (above the listener), only
ambience and atmosphere. Artificial
embellishments are probably not appropriate.
So consider that perhaps enhanced ambience
is enough of an embellishment for football fans
and that immersive sound does not need to be
over-the-top to be effective.
Bottom line? Immersive sound production
will develop and evolve with creative sound
design and imagination. The picture is still two-
dimensional and sound could become a
production differentiator where ‘Made for TV’
sound will become a viewer attraction.
Advance audio designs are imminent, but will
need to be built on proven successes.
Audio practitioners must be versed in a
variety of potential channel configurations for
immersive sound. We do not know what that
will be; 5.1.2, 5.1.4 or 22.2… And how does any
one of those sound formats translate into
immersive sound reproduction over various
soundbar configurations?
To be truly adopted by the broadcasters,
the migration to immersive sound must be
planned, methodical and most importantly
successful. To be adopted by the consumer,
immersive sound must be marketed as a
simple solution for great entertainment value.
Think about it this way: it used to all about
Big Screens. Now it’s all about Big Sound.
March/April 2020 / 15
 Crosstalk
Rob Speight

“Open the pod bay doors, HAL!”

Creating interactive audio for virtual assistants

W
hen I was around the age of
seven I vividly remember
being in my local library in
West London looking at a
book about the future.
According to that book the future is now. How
fascinated I was that we would have a computer
on our wrist — got that one. How amazed I was
that we would have a computer in our pocket
— got one of those too!
As I grew older I dreamed of a machine I
could interact with by talking to it. How I
marveled the first time I saw the elegance of
HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then
in the most formative part of my childhood, the
early eighties, we were offered a glimpse into
the exciting new world of talking, self driving
cars with the creation of KITT in Knight Rider.
All of this has come to pass (kind of) and
more recently we have been thrilled (kind of) by
the introduction of speaking cylinders whose
only function is to constantly and intently listen
to our every word, waiting with anticipation for
us to utter an innocuous keyword, triggering
these inanimate objects to life (kind of).
These devices, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s
HomePod and Google’s Assistant, are here to
serve. They can learn skills, extra bits of code
which enable them to do new and exciting
things!
The future is now: interactive audio
However, the potential for new and exciting
forms of interactive audio is there. Not sure
what that could sound like? Think
documentaries that allow the user to delve
deeper into parts of the subject they want to
know more about, think entertainment shows
that allow the user to only listen to the parts
they are interested in or — going back to the

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 / Column

requirements are of course different for each specifications the powerful batch file
device and this mostly comes down to processing functions in iZotope’s RX were
loudness, true peak levels and file type. Both utilised — of course there are many other similar
devices support MP3, AAC and WAV/PCM products that will achieve the same result.
ranging from 32-256kbps bitrate and 44.1kHz or Working with loudness levels like this you can
48kHz sample rates. say goodbye to dynamics and “hello Mr
In terms of loudness specifications (prepare Compressor-Limiter”.
to have your audio rejected by the tech giants if The project I worked on was an experiment,
you don’t comply) Alexa requires -14dB LUFS and with more time, ingenuity, playful coding
with a true peak of -2dBFS, whereas Google and fancy editing the possibilities for some
wants -16dB LUFS for stereo and -19dB LUFS really interesting audio content are pretty much
for mono material with peak speech levels endless. Now… where did I put my copy of Lost
reaching “approximately -20 to -10dBFS”. on The Amazon?
’80s — think Choose Your Own Adventure. To deal with the various deliverable Useful links: http://bit.ly/creating-interactive-audio
Recently I was involved in a project to create
an interactive documentary for the Alexa and
Google devices. Thankfully, there was a coder
to deal with all the intricacies of programming,
but as the producer and recording engineer
there were many areas of the process that,
while not necessarily new from an audio
perspective, provided unexpected challenges
to the workflow process and the production as
a whole.
The first hurdle was to deal with the
maximum length of audio file that can be
played (not streamed) from a device. For Alexa
this is 90 seconds and for Google 120 seconds.
Due to cross-platform development the shorter
had to be used and this had a trickle down
effect onto how the voice script and interviews
were broken down into chunks. As a side note,
it is possible to play longer audio files but doing
so precludes some of the functionality needed
to keep the documentary flowing.
You may well ask: “Well why not stream or
why not use some of the other methods of
playback that do allow for longer audio”? To
which I may well say: although audio may be
streamed, it is dealt with and exits out of the
built in streaming SSML API (Speech Synthesis
Markup Language Application Program
Interface), it will drop out of your show back to
the equivalent of a C:>_ prompt. In other words,
not a very useful behavior in this context.
OK, so I am boring myself here, but the point
is these devices are currently not designed to
play a Choose Your Own Adventure, they are
designed to interact back and forth in short
bursts. They want to be spoken to constantly,
or else they get bored, lonely and depressed …
depressed…think Marvin from Hitch-HIker’s
Guide!

Producing an interactive documentary

What this meant to the production was that it
had to be approached differently early on in the
script writing stage, breaking down content to
ensure it fitted nicely into the shorter ninety
second bursts supported by Alexa. With this in
mind a simple but effective naming strategy
and script layout template is a must, in order to
keep the large number of audio assets
manageable. In all fairness we ended up using a
process that anyone who has ever provided
audio for a computer game would be familiar
with. Very logical, very tidy and easy to follow.
After the recording stage, post-production

March/April 2020 / 17
 Reviews
Avid Pro Tools
Avid have regularly introduced features over the last couple
of years. GEORGE SHILLING casts his eye over the
improvements for music professionals
W
ith the advent of a new “year.
month” version numbering
system at the start of 2018 came
the rolling out of a number of
new features which have been steadily
implemented over the last two years.
2018.1 added support for iLok Cloud licenses
— aimed towards travelling engineers worried
about losing their dongle. Full marks to Avid
for being first off the mark with this.
Unfortunately, even two years later not all
third-party plug-in developers support it, and
a significant number of plug-in licences on my
iLok lack the icon which signifies that they can
be used from the cloud.
At long last a Track Presets feature was
implemented. This makes for some useful time-
saving when you want to repeat settings
across different tracks and sessions. It borrows
Session Import features, and you can even
include audio and MIDI clips as well as all the
track settings and plug-ins in a track preset, so
it’s not just for chains of plug-ins, although
that’s what most users wanted. When you
create a preset, you can choose what elements
are saved in a dialogue very similar to Session
Import.
Pro Tools optionally adds a whole bunch of
metatags which include channel width, plug-in
names, manufacturers and categories. But of
course you can create your own. You can
organise things into folders (‘Category’). Saved
18 / March/April 2020
track settings can be accessed from the New
Tracks dialogue, or (of course) you can dial up
chains of plug-ins from the plug-in inserts. As
with the earlier Freeze, Commit and Bounce
features, Avid kept everyone waiting for
something that was much requested, but
similarly to the offline processing features, it
was worth waiting for: Track Presets is
elegantly and comprehensively implemented.
Playlist comping got an update with the
useful provision of Target playlists, saving the
need to stay in Playlist view when comping and
editing, clogging up the screen with huge
numbers of unwieldy waveform displays,
especially when working with Groups, e.g.
multi-mic’d drum takes. Essentially, this means
that the top (visible) playlist no longer needs to
be the target track to comp to. There are a
bunch of useful new shortcuts, and provision
for auditioning/previewing edit sections from
different playlists by nudging through them
while in Waveform view, before copying or
moving the selection to the target playlist. The
Playlist button helpfully changes colour to
reflect whether you have the target playlist
visible.
Recall that riff
MIDI features were improved in 2018.1 with
Retrospective Record capturing record-
enabled tracks during playback. If you try out
ideas while running through, they can be
revealed and kept using this function. Also
included with this release were new MIDI
editing arrow shortcuts, later in 2019 tweaked
to be active only in Notes or Velocity views.
These make it easier to trim starts and ends of
MIDI notes, and quickly nudge velocity up and
down or transpose; you can even constrain
notes to the current key. Related to that, there
is also a handy new chord analysis tool. Most
useful for orchestral composers was the
doubling of available MIDI tracks to 1,024, in
2019.5, allowing for plenty of articulation
options in your template.
2018.7 changed the way that copy and
paste worked in Relative Grid mode so that Pro
Tools remembers the grid offset when pasting
clips or MIDI notes. For example, with a 1 bar
grid value, if you Copy a clip that’s at 1.4.356
then click the cursor at 5.0.000 and Paste, it
will actually paste it at 4.4.356. It’s a small
thing, but really rather helpful.
There’s a groovy new little EQ Curve display
in the mix window supported by a number of
EQ plug-ins — sadly not the UADs which I

mostly use!
Plug-in drop-down menus were given a
make-over with a useful new Search function
— handy if you’ve got hundreds of plug-ins.
There’s a similar feature in the Send menu for
finding a bus by its name. View menus and the
Edit window Toolbar were given checkboxes
instead of the old ticks system, making it easier
to set view options in one hit rather than
having to keep re-opening the list.
Avid are ever keen to promote cloud
collaboration and have added further features
to encourage this, but I’m still preferring the
old-fashioned way, with most of my mixes
coming as WAVs exported from Logic. The HD
version of the software was renamed Ultimate
in 2018.4, which cleared up confusion between
HD hardware and software. Avid also
introduced the Complete Plug-ins Bundle,
included with Ultimate and available as a
bundle to Pro Tools First and standard
versions. It comprises over 75 plug-ins but is
not completely complete, as you don’t get
HEAT or the Aphex enhancers. You do get the
AIR instruments and processors, the Pro series
processors, Revibe II, the enormous bundle of
guitar pedal emulations, and all the old
favourites like Impact, JOEMEEK,
Moogerfoogers, Reel Tape and X-Form. The
latter is still one of the best algorithms for
stretching certain material, and the Reel Tape
Flanger is my favourite for authentic Itchycoo
Park-style phasing. HEAT later became
available to standard users, and also included
free with subscriptions.
Continuous Playback
In 2018.10 there were improvements for live
sound users and Dolby Atmos which signalled
the theme for 2019. Many of the new features
introduced last year were targeted towards
post users, and the first 2019 release didn’t
appear until May. However, there were still
quite a few useful new things for music
producers. One reason for the delay was
implementing the Continuous Playback
feature. Pro Tools no longer stops when
inserting plug-ins, creating tracks, changing
tempo, and a huge number of related tasks.
Some plug-ins still make a small audible splat
which I suspect is related to Delay
Compensation adjustment, but overall things
are mightily improved. This is excellent not only
for one’s concentration and focus, but also
reduces the embarrassment of a clunking great
silence when blasting playback on the big
speakers with the band in the room (or worse
still, their manager or label!) Unfortunately you
still can’t add an effects send while recording
when your talent is gasping for reverb! And
you still can’t toggle the FMP button on Sends,
nor can you de-select channel link in multi-
mono plug-ins without stopping playback. But
you can seamlessly change loops while in
Dynamic Transport mode.
Also in 2019.5 came the handy ability to
name tracks from the create tracks dialogue,
saving a few clicks when setting up to record.
Sensibly, a default name reflecting the track
type is still provided if you don’t type
something in. For native users, there was a
significant increase in available voices/audio
tracks from 256 to 384, with optional 128
voice-packs to rent or buy to get you up to a
maximum of 768 (matching an HDX3 system).
HDX users were left stuck at 256 voices per
HDX card. Most music users won’t get
anywhere near these limits of course, and I
have rarely felt short of tracks since the
restrictions of Pro Tools LE many years ago. I
am however still frustrated that with 3rd party
interfaces you are needlessly limited to 32 I/O.
One small but occasionally useful addition for
2019.5 was a new shortcut for nudging clips to
butt up to previous and next clips.
2019.10 brought lots of value for post users,
with video engine improvements, Dolby Audio
Bridge improvements, and multi-stem bounce
in a single file, and at the end of 2019 the final
Pro Tools 2019.12 release brought Catalina
support for eager Mac users. The
disadvantage was loss of support in Catalina
for the likes of MOV, MP4 and AAC file
imports, so as long as you didn’t mind finding
a workaround for those as necessary, you
could happily upgrade the macOS or get
working with a new computer.
Bonus!
There are some welcome bonuses for Pro
Tools users that have been added for those on
a current Upgrade or Subscription plan which
add considerable value. Most notably for
musicians are the excellent UVI Falcon Avid
Edition 2 and the fun Tracktion Biotek 2
software synths. You also get Convology
reverb and ERA Voice Leveler plug-ins, a Pro
Sound Effects library, pureMix and Groove3
tutorials. UVI Falcon was first added in
November 2018 and updated to version 2 in
2019. You get Plugsound Avid Edition and
Falcon Factory Sounds libraries — hundreds of
great, categorised sounds. With Biotek there
are also oodles of presets, a highlight being 40
sounds from film composer Christian Halten
(Catwoman, The Ring, Double Take) which
include big atmospheric pads, sequences and
effects.
Pro Tools 2020: Folder Tracks
Coming in Pro Tools 2020 is the much vaunted
Folder Tracks feature. As usual with Avid, if it
seems that they are late to the party, they at
least make sure they turn up with plenty of
beer. You can nest up to nine folder levels, and
added effects are propagated to tracks inside.
This will certainly be a popular update to those
of us trying to keep a handle on sessions
recorded in perhaps a slightly indulgent
manner compared to days of yore (i.e. 24
tracks on tape)!
One perhaps undervalued advantage for
long-term Pro Tools users is that added
features rarely seem to get in the way of
long-established working methods and
ingrained muscle memories. Shortcuts and
menus have stayed largely unchanged since
the big menu rationalisation of version 8. Until
writing this review, I’d been loyally updating
but almost unaware of some improvements
detailed above! I still rarely venture into the
Clip Effects processing window which has
hidden at the top of the Edit window since
version 12.6. Pro Tools is still arguably the best
platform for backwards-compatibility, with the
ability to save in old version formats as well as
importing from older sessions. Of course,
many enhancements are focused on post-
production users, whose needs are completely
different from mine, and some argue that the
software should be split into two separate
versions for the different communities. But it’s
great to know that so many functions and
possibilities exist without hindering the
elegance of operation which Pro Tools still
excels at.
VERDICT
PROS Continuous customer-led improvements
for both music and post professionals.
CONS Still a few functions unavailable during
playback, only 32 I/O with 3rd-party
interfaces.
EXTRAS The new Avid S1 controller is an
affordable expandable control surface
that moves on from the MC series with
support for optional iPad, Android and
Fire touch-pads for display, Eucon
protocol via ethernet, and even support
for Cubase and Logic Pro.
www.avid.com
March/April 2020 / 19
/ Review
DPA Binaural
“It’s above you!” NIGEL JOPSON immerses his ears
W
ith the DPA 4560 CORE
Binaural Headset
Microphones you are, in
effect, miking-up the
outside ‘earhole’ surrounded by your
pinnae (‘outer ears’). The system is an
ingenious combination of a pair of
4060 CORE miniature omnidirectional
microphones, mounted on two
earhooks ‘borrowed’ from DPA’s 4266
Flex headset. The matched 4060s are
handpicked on sensitivity within ±1.5dB.
Two foam windscreens options (large/
small) are supplied to offer a
comfortable fit and some damping of
wind noise. In blustery conditions
outdoors, you will require something
extra: either strap foam slabs to your
ears(!) or use some sort of polar-fleece
headband to cover the mics.
If any type of personal movement is
anticipated, it’s essential to run the cable
directly up your backbone (inside a
jacket) so the Flex headset is snugly
located in the nape of the neck. In this
position, the well thought-out earhooks
will not ride up and the 4060s are firmly
presented to the external auditory
meatus. There is some leeway for ‘mic
positioning’: basically pointing the
4060s a little more forwards or inwards.
This can make a big difference to the
capture. Perhaps because I have
relatively small ears, I found the
recordings best reflected what was ‘in
front of me’ with the capsules angled
forwards a little rather than into my ear.
It’s all in your head
We express the physical influence of the
head by the Head-Related Transfer
Function or HRTF (see Genelec Aural ID
review, Resolution V19.1). This function
mirrors how the head, the ears (and the
20 / March/April 2020
/ Mobile recording rig, including MM-A
interface, showing DPA MM-A app on iPhone
torso) affects the transmission of an
acoustical signal from a sound source to
the eardrums. The size and the shape of
the head, the size of the ears and the
distance between the ears all filter the
signal before it reaches the eardrums.
There’s no doubt the sense of realism is
most keenly felt by the person who’s
own head recorded the sound, or whose
head was used as a model for a dummy
— Arjen van der Schoot of Audio Ease
(Altiverb) has a dummy of his own head
— for making binaural IR samples.
I think if I were recording very quiet
sounds, or making wildlife recordings, I
would experiment with placing the DPA
rig on dummy heads. It’s impossible not
to make some sort of self-noise or
movement when recording binaurally!
Conversely, the DPA rig gives an
incredibly realistic impression of
footsteps, ambience, and movement
from the point of view of a human being.
Foley recordists are going to love it!
Unlike some other binaural solutions,
there’s a substantial amount of low
frequency sound captured (traffic, air
conditioner, machinery) which renders the locations with extra
realism. Although I often found myself filtering at the low end,
there’s no doubt the broad and linear frequency response
enhances the sense of ‘being there’.
Dynamic to the CORE
The 4560s were CORE-equipped — a recent DPA technology
which increases the dynamic range of their miniature
microphones up to 14dB (benchmarked by Simon Clark in
September 2018 — search our website for CORE 6061). As an
interface, I used DPA’s MM-A Digital Audio Interface (reviewed
in Resolution V16.5, available online) — an interface chosen by
NASA to capture audio on their Mars Rover! Measuring a mere
56mm in diameter and weighing 50g, the MM-A connects
securely to the 4560s via MicroDot connectors. With a quoted
noise floor of -114 dBFS, THD of 0.001% (1kHz -10dBFs), the
recording quality of this DPA rig exceeds any other portable
setup I’ve used. With a simple DPA app (gain, high pass filter) I
recorded to an iPhone running Apogee MetaRecorder.
I used the €860 DPA binaural system extensively outdoors,
recording the obvious binaural tests of car drive-pasts, trains,
head rotations and so on. I would characterise the recordings
as substantially more immersive than normal artificial head or
Jecklin disk audio. Recorded drive-pasts, for example, seemed
to realistically convey the ‘around the head’ traverse. A true
binaural moving capture should not pass ‘through’ the head,
but past it, either in front or behind; the DPA rig excelled at
imbuing this sense of natural movement to the sound, rather
than the often-heard “arriving on the left-zap-now it’s gone to
the right”.
I’m fortunate to live near woodland on the North Downs
Way in the UK, and one of my tests was to record a bird
murmuration at dusk. Despite the orthodoxy that
binaural recordings are optimised for headphones, my big
surprise was how good these recordings sounded from stereo
loudspeakers. There was something about the channel
coherence and exceptionally detailed reverberant soundfield
which managed to deliver a very natural sound movement.
The role of the DPA MMA-A USB audio interface was
important: the superb low-noise capture contributes
immensely to the binaural 24-bit recordings, and with <100mA
current consumption, hours of portable audio.
For years, binaural was a bit of a niche recording technique.
But with the rise of virtual reality hardware like the Oculus Rift,
Sony’s Morpheus, and Samsung’s Gear — systems dependent
on realistic 3D audio to immerse their users — binaural should
soon go mainstream. Consider the development of Motion
Capture: what was once a novelty for animators has now
become an essential movie-making technique. I predict POV
sound capture will develop along similar lines, with immersive
environmental sound an essential part of media projects, and
the DPA Binaural Headset is perfect to capture this audio with
fidelity.
VERDICT
PROS Superb, low-noise, realistic binaural capture which will
surely become a benchmark. For recordists who already
own 4560s, purchasing the extra rig elements is a
no-brainer.
CONS Secure mounting on-head takes a little practice!
EXTRAS The DPA MMA-A interface is a perfect companion for low
noise, distortion free 24-bit recording.
www.dpamicrophones.com
Give your music the world class treatment it deserves. Preamps, filters, reverbs, delays, and
compressors that changed music as we know it, now in your DAW.

RØDE VideoMic NTG
NIGEL JOPSON tests a versatile shotgun for cameras,
computers, and mobile devices
O
ur production sound professional
Simon Clark had barely completed
his enthusiastic reception of RØDE’s
new NTG interference tube
(shotgun) last month, when I received the
‘sawn-off’ videographer version for review. The
NTG VideoMic is just 171mm in comparison to
the (already diminutive) 203mm of the NTG
tested by Simon, and utilises a similar design
principle of “little perforations” on the tube.
I was a sound engineer long before I got
into video — my Canon 5D MkIII is capable of
incredible cinematic quality with a range of
sophisticated lenses — yet the built-in mic may
as well be from a Christmas cracker! Thankfully
RØDE have developed a range of compact
add-on solutions — many of which we’ve
tested in these pages — which preserve the
lightweight ethos of run-and-gun videography.
In true RØDE-style, this pressure gradient
electret condenser comes with foam
windshield fitted, charged and ready-mounted
on it’s Rycote Lyre suspension. You can literally
take it out of the box and mount on a hot-
shoe! Charged via 5V/USB, the mic auto-
powers on when connected to a camera and
powers off when disconnected — for manual
switching hold the power button for three
seconds. A short press on the same button
engages the -20dB pad, another press
engages the ‘safety channel’: rather than a
mono signal to the stereo out, the RH channel
is reduced by -20dB (left LED off, middle LED
illuminated). A third press engages both
functions (left and middle LEDs illuminate).
The far right LED is the peak warning, turning
red when the mic’s internal preamp clips.
22 / March/April 2020
Warm sound, subtle filters
The other momentary button engages the
75Hz or 150Hz filters, in conjunction with or
independent of the HF boost. Surprisingly for a
‘shotgun’ the NTG is capable of very generous
low frequency capture. The HPF are gentle
slopes and the HF boost is subtle, so I often
found myself with both HF boost and 150Hz
roll-off engaged. If (like me) you use a
viewfinder rather than a screen, the gain
control placed on the rear of the mic is perfect
for subtle ‘feel’ adjustments while filming.
I used the VideoMic in a variety of different
acoustic environments, and was impressed (as
Clark was in his Resolution V19.1 review of the
NTG) with the low self-noise and lack of tonal
colouration off-axis. Audio neophytes
expecting some sort of sound-zoom will be
disappointed — nothing this short is going to
be as directional as a 550mm NTG8 — but the
off-axis attenuation compared to other ‘top
mics’ is significant. I had a long day in a 70m
long hall with a 5m ceiling, during which I had
the opportunity to swap top mic brands for
comparison. Another make of shotgun was
significantly harder to blend with on-talent
lavaliers in post. Switching to a built-in video
camera mic, the dramatic rise in confusing
ambience was immediately obvious. During
filming it started raining hard, and I found it
quite easy to reduce the roof-drumming by
subtly tilting the angle of the VideoMic.
Recording speech, it’s possible to back the
camera off considerably and forgo a lavalier.
When audience members talk off-axis there’s
sufficient rejection to keep focus on a main
speaker, and a natural room tone.
Triple-purpose mic
This microphone is far more than a ‘camera
top’: the USB C input on the side is not only for
charging, but to connect to a computer. The
VideoMic acts as a USB interface for the
computer: the gain control on the rear of the
mic now controls monitor level (from
computer/DAW) and the gain of the mic into
the DAW is controlled via the computer’s
system gain. Somewhat confusingly, the
output from the mic capsule is summed with
the computer/DAW signal to the 3.5mm
output/headphone jack on the side of the
VideoMic.
Without full input/repro control from a DAW,
use of the VideoMic NTG as a USB interface
becomes less valuable for music recording, but
I can see it potentially being useful for VO
artists, or reporters on Source-Connect. It
certainly makes a better Skype microphone
than anything built-in to a journalist’s laptop!
Even more usefully, the VideoMic connects
to a smartphone — unfortunately (as RØDE
make clear) — not via the USB cable. The
cunning 4-pole TRRS 3.5mm ‘auto sensing’
cable connects to the phone headset jack.
Having a mic such as the NTG to use is a huge
improvement over most ‘reporter kit’
microphones available for ENG use. However,
the analogue headset socket no longer exists
on newer iPhones, and there’s a brutal HPF
and poor preamp to negotiate anyway. I had a
cheeky attempt to connect via an Apple
Lightning/USB camera adapter, but as
expected iPhones report insufficient power.
I’d willingly accept a larger battery than the
current 350mAh power-source, lengthening
the VideoMic by a few mm, in return for digital
connectivity to smartphones. Having such a
directional and clean mic to use for
newsgathering and location recording via
smartphone would be real game-changer.
RØDE have enthusiastically improved their
product-line so I hope this may be a possibility
in future.
A USB firmware updater gives plenty of
opportunity to tweak aspects of the design, in
fact whilst I was testing the mic, it received an
update to better interface with Panasonic
cameras. The innovative design delivers an
unusually warm and full tone for this category
of microphone, with a sufficiently directional
pickup to make the VideoMic NTG a quality
addition to the videographer’s kit bag.
VERDICT
PROS Natural off-axis sound, warm tone,
versatile connection options, value-for-
money (£239).
CONS If digital connection to smartphones
could be implemented, the wish tick-list
would be complete.
www.rode.com

Arturia Creative Suite
RUSSELL COTTIER explores new French models
T
he Creative Suite is a set of audio plug-ins and virtual
instruments that Arturia believes will give the user the
key tools needed for modern audio production,
particularly if they are using Arturia hardware. Keen
readers may have noticed that in my recent review of the
Arturia AudioFuse 8 Pre (Resolution V18.7) I mentioned that
the Creative Suite comes bundled with the unit, but the
individual products are also available separately.
The Creative Suite is cited by Arturia as ever-growing with
the 140 reverb being added to the package recently, so it
appears that more plug-ins might be added way as time goes
by. However, right now the collection includes three preamp
(and EQ) modelling plug-ins, an FET-76 compression plugin,
Filter MINI and Delay Tape-201. Furthermore the Analog Lab
4 Virtual instrument plug-in offers extensive synth models.
The Pre 1973 preamplifier plug has that oh-so-familiar look
of a Neve 1073 and was modelled from serial number 3392,
for those Neve aficionados. There are even controls for
transformer type to switch between the original Carnhill and
the Marinair. EQ offers High Shelf, a Mid Parametric control
and a Low Parametric band (shelf). Of course the obligatory
high-pass filter is in there too allowing a tight low end boost
for Kick drums, bass and synths etc. Usefully the controls are
continuous, unlike the original, which makes complete sense
in the context of software. Input gain allows signals to be
driven harder into distortion and an auto-gain feature allows
driving the input without changing level. All of the Pre
/ FET-76 showing additional sidechain rack
plug-ins offer MS/LR mode selection
when in stereo instances.
Preamps galore
The Pre TridA is modelled, as you might
guess, from the Trident A Range and
offers a 4 band, twin channel EQ with
those classic Trident-type faders for
gain on each band. Low and High Pass
filters are on buttons and you can even
‘push’ in multiple buttons for a more
pronounced effect. The input gain
saturation is quite appealing and
certainly has some of the charm of the
original unit.
Pre V76 is based on the REDD
console that we all know and love.
Judging the plug-in purely on its own
merits, it seems to do a nice job, in the
sweet spot it is somewhat more subtle
than the other pres perhaps but very
useable. The EQ is based on a modified
Telefunken V612 and you only get 2
bands, but sometimes that’s all you
need. The preamp clipping is nice and
valve-like in this model.
We often ask, does the world need
yet another 1176 plug-in? Of course it
does! These units are one reason that
classic records sound the way they do
and you can never have enough of
them in my opinion. Comp FET-76
offers all the usual features and the All
Buttons In mode is quite nice, it seems
to add a little more saturation than
some other 1176-style plug-ins, and
maybe a little more than some
hardware units too. Parameters
respond exactly as I would expect, but
this plug-in really stands out from the
competition because there is an extra
‘rack’ in the GUI that lets the user
fine-tune the sidechain. I found myself
reaching for this plug-in often, even
with the hardware versions to hand
[Sacrilege! — Ed]. Arturia have also
/ Pre 1973, TridA and Pre V76
/ Review
added Time Warp, a feature that lets
you further manipulate the
compression envelope for some nice
effects.
Regen with Russell
Delay TAPE-201 is a welcome inclusion
that might just have bumped my
favourite tape delay plug-in off the top
spot. It has a classic EchoSonic vibe and
the input Equaliser is particularly useful
for shaping less intrusive delays. The
Modulation section really lets you dial in
some interesting feature effects. This is
more than just a simple tape delay.
Filter MINI: this filter is essentially
based on the Moog ladder filter and can
be used to great effect in a mixing
context. The filter sounds great, but it is
perhaps the modulation controls that
really start to add this to the lists of
must-haves for my mixes lately. The
LFO, step sequencer and envelope
follower are all very powerful tools for
inspiration in both production and
writing sessions also.
Rev PLATE-140 has recently been
added to the collection and offers a
plate reverb based on the EMT 140.
With three plate models to select from,
there are lots of useable sounds in this
plug-in, one of the nicest features is the
modelled valve preamp stage that
really keeps inputs under control when
pushed.
The Creative Suite also includes
Analog Lab Lite (from Arturia’s V
collection, reviewed in Resolution
V18.3); this software instrument
contains 18 synths, six pianos, three
organs and a whopping 6500 presets.
Individual plug-ins in this collection
retail at €99 each, and €199 for the full
version of Analog Lab. All Arturia’s
studio plug-ins are available bundled in
the FX Collection for €399, so the
Creative Suite which comes free with
selected Arturia hardware is a real gem.
Production pros would do well to
audition this offering from the French
company well-known for its keyboards
and realistically modelled synths.
VERDICT
PROS Great sounding preamp plugins.
The sidechain controls on Comp
FET-76 are innovative and useful.
Analog Lab is vast in both range
and precision.
CONS Individual plug-ins are a little
pricey at €99 if not in the
Creative suite or FX collection
bundle.
www.arturia.com
March/April 2020 / 23
 The

Interview

Artists are like sponges — we

are stealing and inspired by
everything around us…

Jean-Michel
Jarre
Photos: Anthony Ghnassia

Four decades in, Jean-Michel Jarre still feels compelled to

rewrite electronic music history. DANNY TURNER discusses
his latest ground-breaking algorithmic app, EōN

/ How’s this for a ‘keyboard cave’? Clavia Nord Lead, Mellotron, MemoryMoog, Roland System 500, Grp A4, Waldorf kb37, Kurzweil K2000, Eminent 310, ARP 2600…
S
ince 1976, the name Jean-Michel Jarre
has been synonymous with electronic
music. His album, Oxygène, sold over 18
million copies and led the synthesizer
revolution of the ’70s. From the first modular
synths to the rise of digital recording, Jarre’s
fascination with technology has kept him one
step ahead of his peers, bridging the avant-
garde and mainstream through his albums and
jaw-dropping live performances.
Balancing the abstract and familiar; the
organic and artificial, Jarre has redefined our
expectations of what electronic music should
sound like — it’s therefore no surprise that his
latest venture should lead electronic music into
unchartered territory once more. Titled EōN,
Jarre’s generative music app is designed to
produce infinite combinations of tempo, tone
and rhythm, creating a unique music experience
for every user, every time.
I just wanted to touch on the Electronica
albums you released in 2015/16. Looking back,
what do you think you gained from working
with so many artists that you clearly admired?
Electronic music is really quite solitary work;
like a writer or painter you’re stuck in your own
studio. I was going through a rather dark
moment in my life and wanted to open the
door and try to create a true link with people I
admire — not just by sending files to artists
you never meet or talk to, but sharing our DNA
in the same place physically. It’s been really
cool to learn other people’s approach to ideas
and technologies and it’s an experience that I
want to develop as a parallel project to my
studio albums and other activities with
Electronica 3.
I’m more and more convinced that technology
is dictating styles and not the reverse…
Was the project all the more meaningful
considering Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese
passed away in 2015?
When I met Edgar in Germany I had no idea he
was ill. He seemed to be in quite good shape
— maybe a little tired, but the track we did
together was the last he would do as Edgar
Froese and Tangerine Dream. Of course, that
added another emotional layer to this
collaboration.
Artists are like sponges — we are stealing
and inspired by everything around us, so that
experience taught me a lot and I hope it
brought a little to the other collaborators.
What these artists all have in common is an
instantly recognisable sound. You take 30
seconds of Moby, Air or Massive Attack and
you know it’s them and nobody else. I
remember working with Moby in LA and he
just played a D Minor on the keyboard — a
chord that a 5-year-old child could play, but it
was instantly Moby and that’s what’s
fascinating about working with such great
musicians.
Many people had hoped for collaboration
with Daft Punk, but it never materialised?
When I started the project they were already
in the middle of the promotion and marketing
of their last album, which was very pop and
disco-oriented. The Electronica project was
based on a purely electronic approach, so it
didn’t match their ideals.
You’ve just released a new album ‘EōN’ — a
generative music app. Was this an idea that’s
been hibernating for a while?
When I was a student at the Music Research
Centre with Pierre Schaeffer — the father of
musique concrète and generative music, I
always thought it would be really cool to make
an infinite album. In the history of recorded
music you have a start and ending note, but I
always wanted to conceive a piece of music
that was in constant development and a
unique experience for every listener. Each time
you play the app, it’s totally different, and it’s
not just an ambient experience, because that’s
already been done by lots of people.
How does EōN differentiate itself from those
generative-based ambient albums?
With an ambient-style project it’s easier to give
a feeling of constant evolution, but not in
terms of texture, beats, loops and
atmospheres. With the EōN project, we
wanted to deal with different BPMs, textures
and styles while keeping my personal touch.
With the emergence of artificial intelligence,
there are two ways to approach collaboration
with technology through algorithms. When I
collaborate with Moby or Massive Attack I’m
expecting them to give me content that, by
definition, is not mine and bring fresh ideas.
That’s one way of working with algorithms —
to expect them to feed new ideas and
melodies, and that’s something I’m working on
even if the results are not convincing, yet.
The other way is to compose a huge
toolbox of music, so the content is entirely
human, and then the algorithm is remixing and
rearranging the different patterns and
sequences. For EōN, it took me one year to
compose hours of music where every pattern
and sequence is able to work with everything
else in terms of tonality and BPM.
March/April 2020 / 25
/ Back in the day: EMS synths featured heavily in the Oxygène era

So you didn’t write songs per se, but sections

of music that had the potential to interact?
It was quite similar to symphony orchestration
where you’re writing the strings, brass section
and percussion and trying to match them. The
sequences were 10 seconds to 3 minutes in
length and I defined different rules to go from
one tonality or chord to another and create
sound effects made of common notes. For
instance, you can go from C Minor to F Major
because the C is common in both chords. All
these tricks and processes allowed me to give
a variety of styles, tempos, melodies and
textures.

Presumably, you had to test that everything

would converge harmonically?
Like anything, you define your own grammar or
vocabulary. At the beginning I was quite
concerned that it could become too repetitive
or abstract, but step by step I built my own
principles until it started to work quite well. For
example, every piece should be a definition of
the same category of BPM and if you have a
dissonant texture it shouldn’t work with
something that’s not dissonant.
Many of your albums are conceptually driven.
Was that something you could apply to the
music for EōN?
When you’re writing an album you always have
pre-conceived ideas but it’s a constant fight
between those and the direction you take.
Those ideas pull you backwards and forwards
but also show where you to go. For EōN, while
listening to the music I was quite surprised that
it sounded like it was coming from me and not
leaning towards an abstract algorithm. What’s
fascinating is that when I listen to EōN as a
generative app, I still recognise every piece of it
— and that’s fun for me and hopefully the
listener.
/ Close up of Jarre’s MemoryMoog, with the presets listed for a performance of Oxygène
I suppose that goes back to what you were
saying about Moby. As soon as Jean-Michel
Jarre plays a note, his personality is indelibly
forged into the music?
Yes, it’s true, but it’s also a trap. I had this
discussion with Robert Del Naja from Massive
Attack. I told him that I would dream to make
an album that sounded like Massive Attack but
it’s impossible. Whatever you do as an artist is
a variation of yourself. I don’t know if it’s good
or bad, but you can’t escape your own style.
When I was starting as a musician I met a
great Italian director, Federico Fellini, who told
me something very interesting. “Jean-Michel”, he
said, “I always thought every movie was totally
different, but looking back I realised it was all a
variation of the same idea”. That’s very true. If
you think about Tarantino, The Beatles, Coldplay
or Picasso, their careers are just variations of the
same thing and we give it a style.
You worked on the app with a French music
tech company called BLEASS. What was
their involvement?
Together, we set up a series of rules for
rearranging these different sequences. Inside
the app you have some mini-plugins that are
able to transform the textures in terms of
delay, filter and tempo, so you cannot hear a
repeat of what you first heard. You can always
record it, but the principle is to experience a
moment in life.
So the intention is that EōN is a living
experience, unlike pre-recorded music?
Yes, the moment we are spending together
now is never going to be repeated in the same
way, which is the reverse approach to today’s
technology. With Instagram we are becoming
archivists. In life, a memory or recollection is
like a download — a moment to keep in your

26 / March/April 2020

Whatever you
do as an artist
is a variation
of yourself
/ JMJ with his custom Waldorf kb37/Eurorack
own hard drive, but you’re not able to live that
moment twice, and that’s what makes EōN so
exciting to me.
And you couldn’t realise the vision until the
technology was ready?
Of course, and I’m more and more convinced
that technology is dictating styles and not the
reverse. It’s because the violin was invented
that Vivaldi existed, because Les Paul or
Fender created the electric guitar that we had
Chuck Berry, Jimmy Hendrix or Slash, and
because we had synthesizers that I am talking
to you today. Like everything in life, suddenly
you find the right people to collaborate with
and that was the case with BLEASS, and
because it’s an app for smartphone or tablet,
the visual side is also quite important.
Indeed, you worked with Sony Computer
Science Labs on that element?
I was in Tokyo last year and met with Sony
CSL. They’re involved in developments for AI
— not just for music but ecology, environment,
smart cities and space. I’m actually developing
a flow machine project with them based on AI
algorithmic software for generating music and
melodies, but also found they had a graphics
department so I talked with the team about
my EōN project. We applied the same
philosophy, trying to establish a relationship
between variations of light and texture in a
subtle way rather than just every bar and beat,
to generate a constantly new visual that would
never be the same.
That sounds perfect for live visuals too, but
it’s more difficult to envisage how EōN
would work in that context musically?
At the moment, that’s still a work in progress.
We’re planning to develop a live version of EōN
at the end of 2020 that establishes a dialogue
between me and the app on stage. What I like
about putting EōN on stage is that, at a time
when most live shows are time coded and the
same every night, in this case every night will
be totally different.
Is the objective to play along to the app-
generated algorithms, similar to any on-
stage relationship between musicians?
Absolutely, improvising like in jazz where the
musician is beside you working on predefined
patterns in terms of tonalities, textures and
beats, then responding to establish a live
dialogue in the truest sense of the word. It’s
the reverse of a DJ arriving with an SD card
and playing a totally pre-programmed show.
/ Interview
Could you foresee the app being retrofitted
to previous works of yours?
Yes, everything is possible, but I’m not really
interested in that. It’s much more interesting to
adapt new material to this idea. For me, this
EōN live project is something special that I
would like to share with an audience, but in
parallel I’m going to tour my existing
catalogue. These days, I’m really interested in
doing two or three different stage productions.
I’m preparing a big outdoor concert in the
Arabian desert in March — a bit like Coachella
on steroids, an arena tour for existing songs
and the EōN project, which is intended to be a
theatre project for concert halls.
I understand the app is only available for
iPhone currently?
For technical reasons we decided to develop
the app for iOS first, with the Android
hopefully coming in March.
Also, there will be improvements. I’m going
to add some more music and try to improve
the listening experience. So it’s a living
creature — not just EōN, but how I would like to
see the concept evolve.
Jean-Michel Jarre’s ‘infinite musical creation’,
EōN, is available now via the App Store:
http://bit.ly/EōN.
March/April 2020 / 27
 Craft

Warren Huart
NIGEL JOPSON meets a storm of boundless
enthusiasm for music, audio and learning

A
prototype for the modern production demos and the label put out one of my demos me like the most boring copy of my demos.
professional, Huart began his career as as the first single. Jeremy Lascelles (who ran There was a different mentality in England at
a musician, moving to Los Angeles Chrysalis) said “Yeah, this sounds great. Let’s that time based on creativity — in L.A. there
from the UK in the late ‘90s after his put it out.” And it was a modest hit. was creativity but there was also just a lot of
band Star 69 struck a record deal. He switched to I came to America, I developed an artist (this ‘business’… Nowadays the whole world is the
‘the other side of the glass’ to continue his career is late ’90s), took it to a label. They absolutely same — whether you’re in America or
as an engineer and producer for acts The Fray, loved it — fired me immediately and hired one somewhere else developing an artist — it’s 90%
Daniel Powter, Marc Broussard, Korn, Disturbed, of their friends to make a record. It sounded to that you’re going to be able to release it
James Blunt, Rick Springfield, Ace Frehley,
Aerosmith (with Jack Douglas producing) and
Better Than Ezra. Huart wrote the score to the
2004 documentary following Joe Strummer,
Let’s Rock Again!, his work has since featured in
TV and movies including Inglourious Basterds,
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Hills,
Lost, Scrubs, and Grey’s Anatomy.
Huart works from his own Spitfire Studio in
Los Angeles, and has carved a parallel career
for himself as an educator, with the YouTube
Pictures courtesy of Kasia Huart

Channel Produce Like A Pro, which boasts over

372,000 subscribers and over 34m video views.
This idea morphed into the Produce Like A Pro
Academy (currently $169/year to join), and in
2019 Huart’s concept was validated when the
Academy won the NAMM TEC Audio Education
Technology Award.

You started as a guitar player, was that a

blessing for your versatile future career?
I think I was blessed to start off in England…
let’s be honest! My band got signed from my / Huart hosting his Masterclass at Sunset Sound Studio 3 with Artist Christian Vegh

28 / March/April 2020

We came back from lunch and found the
studio locks had been changed
somehow. But it wasn’t that way when budgets
were so big. Lack of budget is actually helping
the creativity! When we were kids making
music, there were two types of music career
outcomes — feast or famine — and there was
nothing in between. If you’re an independent
artist now, it’s a really, really good time.
leverage, the owner of the building changed the
locks while we were out, to make sure they got
paid. God bless the music industry!
Did you stamp your foot?
What do you do? You want your artists to feel
really comfortable and you can’t bring a bunch
of drama in. You can’t bring the band into the
argument because if they’re comfortable, and
they want the experience of recording in a
room that did Songs In The Key Of Life, a room
that did Sly and the Family Stone’s Fresh, they
want that experience. If you start telling them
“Oh, there’s all this drama”, all they hear is that
you’re being dramatic. It’s a key production
thing to realise that drama is only in the head.
So if I’m going ‘OMG the bad channels in the
console, and now the lock has changed…’ We
just made light of it. Obviously I was annoyed
and those responsible were dealt with later, but
for the band, you have to be a professional. You

As an engineer/producer, was there a key

moment for you?
The Fray were two very big records for me. The
first one, I came in and did like lots of fixing and
re-tracking and I tracked ‘How To Save a Life’
drums. They’d recorded the drums originally
with Hot Rod drumsticks. We didn’t want John
Bonham, but we just wanted something that The definitive studio workhorse
was a little bit more hard hitting, so it could get
on the radio. Ben [Wysocki] flew in and arrived
at my studio at 11:00am in the morning. Half of
my gear was out on rental, so I had a Rogers
24” kick, my Ludwig Supraphonic snare, no
toms, the crappiest high hats I own and one
cymbal — and we re-cut the drums for ‘How To
Save a Life’.
I think we did two or three takes, a super
quick comp, and then we took the hard drive
and drove over to Scream Studios [Ventura
Boulevard]. Mark Endert was waiting there —
it’s about 3:00pm — he pulls up the mix, drops
in the new drums and the rest is history [joint
seventh longest charting single on
the Billboard Hot 100, 3x Platinum, 5m
downloads]. I love those kinds of things. Flying
by the seat of your pants is how the records we
grew up listening to were quite often made.
You hear the stories of the Beach Boys or the
Beatles finishing a recording and then driving
to the radio station and playing a copy of it. I
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in Sausalito at the Record Plant. We’d been there Aurora(n) provides transparency, imaging and detail, without compromise.
a week and decided to go out for lunch one day
— we’d been ordering-in before. Let’s go for
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Ninety minutes later we come back with the You can now build your own custom Aurora(n) by visiting
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March/April 2020 / 29
/ Behind the scenes at NAMM, interviewing Stefan Lindlahr from Celemony
have to pretend ‘it’s no big deal, and that was
just quite funny’.
We did end up doing some good recordings
there, but we moved the second two thirds of
the record-making back to Denver. The Fray
had a studio building, we bought the
appropriate gear and rented some stuff. They
had a wonderful time and made my favourite
album I’ve ever recorded.
Where do you see music production going in
the future?
It’s really strange because I feel like everybody’s
talking about the album being dead. That’s all I
hear. Every person, every talking head says
“don’t bother doing an album, only do an EP”
— and probably you should just do three singles
and put them out — one every couple of
months. That’s a mantra you’ll hear if we just
open YouTube now and flick around.
The history of the music industry, as you and
I know — having been through a few decades of
it — is that there’s really no predictability. And
even when you can see the future, it doesn’t
mean that anybody’s actually going to take
notice of it. We all knew when Napster was
around and MP3s first started becoming a thing
that record companies were going to have to
figure out how to do more. And they didn’t. Talk
about Napster — they took a big ‘nap’ on it.
They just thought they were too big to fail.
Now Spotify has come along and everybody
likes to complains about it. Let’s be honest,
Spotify has saved the music industry, because if
we didn’t have streaming, then everybody
would just be sending the music for free. So to
complain about streaming is really, really naive.
The reality is that the people who are
complaining about streaming are people who
predominantly have old-school contracts, with
13% royalty rates, and they don’t like 13% of a
stream.
But young artists… I have lots of young
artists, they make about $2,500 a month off
modest amounts of Spotify plays — they don’t
have to go and work in a bar now — they can
go out, play gigs, promote themselves. They’re
30 / March/April 2020
/ Recording drums in the live room of Sunset Sound Studio 3
/ Huart at Spitfire Studio producing Mikey Pauker
not making millions of dollars a year. But if you
could tell somebody they can make $60,000 or
£60,000 a year being an artist, how many
musicians do you think would take it? Of course
they’d take it.
There are plenty of vociferous streaming
royalty-rate complainers…
Put your contract up — then we can read how
you only have 11% of the royalty rate from your
label — if that. I have a song with an artist that
had tens of millions of plays. He has one song
that was in the highest tens of plays, and we
worked out the income coming into the label on
that one song was $157,000. The song has
never been on the radio. So like — who’s
complaining — you know what I mean? And
yes, I only get three points of that, but still
somebody is making a living. A modern artist is
making a living and it’s paying the bills.
Did the business Produce Like A Pro start
organically?
Sort of! I didn’t build the Academy until three
years later. I had 18 months of zero
monetisation. Nothing. I didn’t even put ads on
YouTube. So for the first 18 months is was like
150 to 200 videos. We were doing three a week,
so probably with the first 50 to 200 there was
not even an ad or banner on them, because I
just wanted to get people involved. The process
was quite interesting — obviously I had to film
the video at nine in the morning before starting
sessions every other day, so it was quite
exhausting! But in the meantime, after we saw
how much interest there was, we decided: this
feels like it could be an online environment,
where people can interact and share
multitracks. But that was a year and a half later.
How would you explain your core concept of
getting production pros to interact?
John Krivit asked me to do a day of panels at
NAMM for the AES. My idea is to connect two
groups of people. Production professionals who
have made albums that are undisputedly the
greatest albums of all time. Not necessarily
biggest selling — not ‘sold 5m copies in 1997 off
one single’. But the people who made the
albums that we listen to for pleasure, people like
Shelly Yakus — who made Tom Petty’s Damn
the Torpedoes, and recorded Blue Öyster Cult’s
‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ — connect those guys
with younger people. Producers and engineers
in their twenties or early thirties don’t really give
a crap about seeing another guy who made a
record in 1997 that has ten songs that sound
exactly the same. They don’t! But they do want
to meet a guy like Shelly Yakus who can tell
them what it’s like to get a great vocal
performance out of John Lennon. They want to
hang with people who are artists themselves,
creatives who understand the dynamic.
What is it that Produce Like A Pro offers
which other online concepts don’t?
Total community and collaboration. There’s
3,249 people in our Produce Like A Pro
Academy. I know the exact number because I
need to know who our audience is and what
their concerns are. We have people from
different backgrounds and walks of life, and
20% of our membership are women. But we
don’t do that thing where we say: “Today, we’re
going to focus on women in rock”. That’s so
patronising, although it’s currently really
fashionable. If you’re just good at your job,
that’s all that really matters. Anything other
 / Craft

than that doesn’t matter — this human being (of
whatever shape, size, ethnicity, gender, or
whatever) is really good at their job. That’s why
we’re talking to them.
How do you see Produce Like A Pro evolving
in future?
I think it’s all about community, bringing in
more people, making it less centred around
me. Making it more about members. It’s
Produce Like A Pro, it’s not ‘Warren’s thing’.
My name’s not on it and it was never supposed
to be about me, none of the sites have my
name on. Is it centred around me interviewing
people? Yes. Would I be happy if we brought in
other personalities to do stuff like that?
Absolutely. There should be something for
everybody because it’s not centred around
any particular genre.
Did you sit one down one day and think to
yourself — I’ve got to build myself a career as
an educator?
A great question — and that’s another big
message. In the digital world in which we all live
— whether we want to admit it or not — you
have to pivot! You hear that word all the time
with the techie guys… You do something. It
doesn’t work. You have to be willing to say: “I’m
going to try something different”. I like kicking / Interviewing Shelley Yakus
down barriers and getting rid of the
stereotypes that foster any sort of negativity in guitar player, turning into producer and
our industry. To me it’s all about bringing engineer and mixer… songwriter, mirrors what
people together. I feel like my journey as a everybody has to do these days.

How large is the team working with you on

Produce Like A Pro?
The team has grown as we have several facets Sumptuous Sound
to our business. Myself and Eric Gonzalez are at
the core, John McLucas is new to the team and Intuitive Interface
works in Los Angeles with Eric. There’s a
marketing group of three people (in Canada), Powerful Performance
then I have contributors in England and
Germany. DIGITAL WIRELESS

Is there any synergy between making records

and your career as an educator — I mean, do
new clients come to you now thinking —
‘that’s the guy who does Produce Like A Pro’?
Possibly… I don’t think I’ve personally found a
whole load of new clients in that way. But the
part I really enjoy is — I get to hang out with and
talk to people like you! How else would I get to
interact with people in the industry that are part
of the wider world of music production? When
you’re working in isolation in the studio making
a record, that’s great. But you know, the fact
that I can go and hang out with EveAnna
Manley and talk about the great equipment
Manley Labs make is special. That’s been a
massive upside, spending time with some of the
incredible characters in our business.
When you need a wireless
Meeting up with other producers, engineers
and mixers — who I was friends with already microphone system that touches
— because I’m able to showcase them and build
even better relationships, because I can bring the very soul, be sure to audition
them more to the front. And getting to know
audio pros I had never met before. I didn’t know
the D-Squared.
Bob Clearmountain, for instance, a year or two
ago. Now I’ve interviewed him. It’s Bob fricking
Clearmountain!! You know there’s mixers in the A single listen and you’ll know
world, and then there’s Bob Clearmountain…
the difference. One walk test
What motivates you to keep up such a hectic
and there will be no turning back.
work schedule?
I like people that make music, but I also like
people who make the tools for music as well. I
like the fact that I can review something new Treat your ears and your soul.
that’s either ground-breaking technically — or
better — technically great plus financially more
Email sales@lectrosonics.com
accessible. Accessible equipment is getting to schedule a demo today. ®
more people to make music so they can
potentially become professionals.
D2 Vivid - Resolution- Junior.indd 1 1/24/2020 4:59:17 PM
March/April 2020 / 31
 Craft
Military Wives
Production soundman PAUL PARAGON on the challenges
and rewards of using on-set audio
A
t the heart of the film lies a powerful
tale of women, who in the face of
psychological adversity, unite as a
choir. With music at its core, Military
Wives had some unique film-making challenges.
It was my job, as production sound mixer, to
make the right creative decisions
in order to fulfil director Peter
Cattaneo’s vision. Half of our
filming schedule would be days
with full cast and singing. This is
an account of the recording of
those elements.
Choral recording has played a
major part in my career, so I was
delighted when I was asked to
combine this experience with
movie production sound mixing.
At the outset, Peter told me “this
film is not a musical, it should
sound like a real choir singing in
real spaces”. He would not be
casting actors with a
background in singing or
musical theatre, and wanted an
authentic natural sound with the spontaneity of
live performances, warts and all!
The techniques for recording a choir in a
music studio or concert hall are fairly
straightforward and well established, but to
achieve this on a film set whilst dovetailing with
32 / March/April 2020
all the other departments would be a challenge.
The choices made at the recording stage would
affect the whole sound of the film.
Keeping the audience ‘in the moment’
Audiences are psychologically astute at
noticing tiny mismatches
between what the eyes see, and
what the ears hear. If something
doesn’t feel right (even
subconsciously), it can take an
audience out of the moment and
naturalness is lost. The desire for
a natural sound gave us two
aims: one, all the singing to be
recorded live on set during the
filming with no replacement in
post; and two, that each take in
the edit would use its actual
sync sound.
This meant that for a given
choral performance, in order to
make seamless edits, the sound
from each shot/take would have
to be sonically consistent in mic
type, placement and stereo image. Once we’d
set a mic position relative to the choir, that
would be it for the whole scene!
There would be no use of booms for the
tight shots, and radio mics for wide shots.
Movie production crew have rarely encountered
/ Assistants sound / microphone operators: Loveday
Harding, Thayna McLaughlin, Jen Annor, Nina Rice,
Gwen Sena, Lee Thompson
stereo main mics because of their inherent
problems when shooting — such as image
shifting whilst placed in different positions out
of shot — or unnatural sounding room
reflections picked up by hypercardioid or
interference tube (shotgun) mics. I explained
how we would have to work for singing scenes
to our director of photography, Hubert
Taczanowski and assistant director, Barry Keil,
both of whom were incredibly understanding
and worked with us to achieve our goals. Many
of the needs of choral recording are quite
unusual on a film set and we relied on good
communication with the other departments
and the cast.
A sensitive team
As well as being excellent in technical ability,
the sound team had to be extremely sensitive
to the demands put on the cast during their
days of standing and singing. If unused to it, a
microphone can be daunting when asked to
sing. It was vital that we had the confidence and
trust of the actors, that the saw that we were
taking them very seriously, and that we cared
deeply about their performance. Our job would
be very difficult without them on our side!
Loveday Harding is one of UK’s most
experienced first assistants for sound. Her
no-nonsense approach and joyful personality
helped communication and cooperation with
both cast and crew, invaluable when working
with a 35-woman choir! Loveday would discuss
beforehand where any tracks and cameras
would be so that we could find a position for
microphone stands. Once we had good sound
takes, we could remove our mics and stands so
that the cameras could shoot their wide shots.
Second assistant sound, Thayna
McGlaughlin worked with Loveday on the
microphones. Lee Thompson assisted with
foldback/monitoring IEMs and stand mics;
third assistant Mark Harris with PA, induction
loops and Assistant Directors ‘Voice of God’
PA set up; and Ben Gandy, Pro Tools playback.
Ben prepared each playback guide track in
liaison with orchestrator, Shane Rutherford-
Jones after the choir had rehearsed a song
and a decision made as to what vocal parts
and song sections would be performed.
/ Paul Paragon (L) with Pro Tools operator Ben Gandy
Every line of what you hear the women’s
choir sing are genuine live takes
Sometimes Peter, or choir mistress, Jenny
O’Grady, would want to try something
different and changes would be made to the
playback track. Completing our sound team
were 2nd unit mixers, Tom Williams and
Giancarlo Dellapina and 1st AS, Gwendoline
Sena.
Choir mic techniques
Peter wanted the choir to begin the film
sounding like an untrained group singing
together for the first time. As the film
progresses they improve, become more
confident until they are good enough to sing at
the Royal Albert Hall. The singing scenes were
shot in roughly chronological story order, which
allowed the actors to rehearse and become
more accomplished as time went by. The choir
would only have two days of rehearsal before
we started, to help get used to the singing, the
recording process, the covert earpieces, and
the stereo mic hanging overhead. They were
not told what they were to sing in the first
scene — so that it really would be an authentic
unprepared moment!
Different techniques were used to
compliment the sound of choirs singing
development. A mix favouring multiple spot
mics works well for keeping individual voices
distinct, therefore early in the story weight was
given to close-up spots and the cast’s lavalier
microphones. I used Schoeps CCM 41s which
sound great on female voices. They are also my
favoured interior dialogue mic, which allowed
us to boom between talking and singing
without changing mic.
The singers all wore a DPA4061, which with
good positioning and mixed with a room
stereo pair sound superb. The trick to having
/ Schoeps CCM22 mics on an ORTF rig 
the sound being clean enough to be used in
the mix is to have as much free air around
them and as far away from any clothing rustle
as possible. Costume designer Jill Taylor’s
team were key to the success of these
recordings. Assistants began each day with
miking the 11 cast singers, plus the support
artist singers. The costume dressers helpfully
allowed re-positioning to the outside of
clothing when the actors were obscured, for
example those standing in the back row. To
complete the set-up a stereo pair would be
placed in a relatively diffuse position to provide
a natural-sounding bed for the close mics.
The transition song from going from ‘bad’
choir to ‘good’ choir was Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time
after Time’. From this point on, the sound had
to be more beautifully blended and polished.
Our task was aided by our sets. The actors now
stood in formation on risers and our locations
such as the ‘drill hall’ all had good natural
acoustics. This helped the performance too: it is
more satisfying singing with nice reverb than to
do it in an acoustically dry space.
The art of blending voices
The recording technique now had to blend the
singing, making the sound of a group as a
whole, greater than the sum of the individual
parts. The art of blending voices is aided by
stereo techniques that are non-coincident. For
the main pair, I chose Schoeps CCM 22 ‘near
cardioids’, in an ORTF arrangement (21cm apart
and an angle of 110°). These microphones are
absolutely outstanding in respect of a neutral
frequency response, low harmonic distortion
and low noise floor and a natural off-axis sound.
They sound similar to the renowned Schoeps
MK2 omnis, but have the benefit of a front : rear
/ Phonak covert earpiece
signal ratio of over 5:1 which is great when you
have a whole camera crew to their rear. They
can be placed a little bit further back than an
omnis which also helps with blending.
Main stereo pairs on choral recordings in a
studio are usually mounted on a stand behind
the conductor. In a concert hall they are slung
out of the audience’s eye line in conjunction
with spot mics on low profile stands. We
needed to be very nimble to work around
camera, track, and light changes. The solution
was to mount the main pair on the end of a 5m
boom which could rotate on a wind-up stand
on wheels, allowing the stand to move but the
mics to keep the same relative position to the
choir. The solo/spot mics would be boomed by
Loveday, Thayna, Nina and Jen.
Our director Peter wanted the option to
break convention in order to tell the story. He
might need to raise the audio level for an
individual character to get into their thoughts or
draw attention to them. In order to do this on
close-up shots, one of our booms followed the
camera, or we could use lavaliers. Peter used
this in the final mix to great effect, sometimes
very subtly, sometimes dramatic.
In ear monitoring and foldback
Guide and click tracks were given to the singers
via inductive covert earpieces, which fit invisibly
in the ear. These work in a similar way to
March/April 2020 / 33
hearing aid loops in public places — we rigged
induction loops around each set.
Comedian/writer Sharon Horgan’s character
— Lisa — played a keyboard in many of the
singing scenes, both solo and with the choir.
Sharon, never having played before, remarkably
learnt some basic tunes and chords for the
filming. The keyboard’s speakers were muted,
its output went to my desk and back to her
hidden earpiece. She could play and sing, but
we’d have both sources independent. I could
route it to our PA (for rehearsing a shot) or
through the choir’s earpieces (during the
performance). If the choir didn’t want to have
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the keyboard, Sharon had her own bespoke
earpiece channel, via a body worn loop under
her costume, linked by a Sennheiser G3 radio
channel.
A production sound mix was provided for
director, script supervisor, operators, focuses
and grips, and mix without keyboard plus main
pair for the sound assistants (so they could
concentrate on spot mics).
An off-screen keyboard was routed into the
actors’ earpieces to provide live cues. Keyboard
player Shane could give notes for pitch, or
enhance the guide track. Sometimes after a few
takes, the choir would start to become too
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/ Off screen keyboard player and orchestrator
Shane Rutherford-Jones
good! The director’s secret weapon was to have
a crunching off-key chord played through their
earpieces in order to throw them out of tune!
Recording equipment
The choir scenes were filmed in a variety of
locations spread across English counties Herts,
Bucks, Berks and Yorks: a welfare centre, a drill
hall, an exterior market square, a church, a
disused railway tunnel, the ‘Albert Hall’ (set at
Pinewood Studios) and a pub. Fortunately for
us, the locations for the scenes with the choir
singing well had great acoustics with
complimentary reverberation, and the sets for
the earlier scenes had drier acoustics which
meant that no treatment of the rooms was
necessary. However, all of this was to be filmed
in three weeks, so we’d need a highly mobile
recording set-up.
I used a cart-based Aaton X3 Cantar with
Cantaress controller. This gave me 24 tracks
and 22 linear mix faders to accommodate the
booms, choir mics, radio lavaliers and keyboard.
The main stereo pair and solo/spot mics would
go through RME Octamic preamps. The RME
has incredibly low noise and harmonic
distortion, perfect for a ‘natural’ sounding
recording. The Pro Tools rig, on a second cart,
was connected by Dante (plus analogue
backup). The playback audio channels could
then be routed to the various foldback
transmitters, either in the Cantar or in Pro Tools.
Ben Gandy (pro Tools) also had access to my
channels should audio require editing for
playback. Having two small, lightweight carts
meant our technical set-up times were
incredibly quick, allowing more time to plan the
microphone structure for a scene.
It wasn’t always ‘classical’ choral recording
technique: in one scene the choir sing pub
Karaoke. This requirement was still for a real live
performance with a natural feel, so we kept the
same regime of guide track through earpieces.
Following authentic Karaoke style, we swapped
our Schoeps mics for a couple of Sennheiser
handheld radio mics and some Shure SM58s.
A challenge of balance
Some of the early numbers were sung in unison,
but as the story progressed, the pieces became
more demanding, with up to 5-part harmony
(sopranos, mezzos, altos, contraltos, solo
melody). A professional choir and conductor
will ‘self- balance’, making the job of the sound
 / Craft

Balfe, and an outstanding post mix by Mathias

I came up with a novel solution: we would have
a selection of mute choir members…
Albert Hall performance. With the exception of
only a couple of very small replacements, every
line of what you hear the choir sing are the live
takes recorded during the filming on set. This is
an accomplishment rarely matched in film
making. With expert editing, put together with
a masterful and sympathetic score by Lorne
Schwab, Military Wives has achieved the
honesty and naturalness of sound that Peter
Cattaneo envisioned. Sitting in the theatre
watching, it was easy to forget the huge
amount of high-quality technical work my
dedicated sound team contributed to fulfil the
aim of capturing an authentic natural
performance on set.
After the lights went on in my local cinema, I
heard a lady in the row behind me say to her
friends, “that’s exactly how it was.” I turned
around and asked her if she was a ‘military wife’.
“Yes, she said, and it was just like that!”

/ A green-screen shot will become the Albert Halll

engineer in that respect relatively simple, but

our choir would not have had that training.
A solution for adjusting the balance is to use
extra spot mics over the different sections to
enhance the parts that need more emphasis.
Unfortunately, this wouldn’t work in our case for
three reasons: they would get in shot; they may
work against a blended sound required for
some songs; they would restrict positioning of
the actors to certain set groups within the choir.
The only way we could create an even balance
would be to add extra voices in post. This
would then cause a further problem that the
sound would no longer match the picture as the
choir would sound larger than it looked! I’d
need to find a way of recording a natural
performance without spots over each part, but
allowing re-balancing later.
I came up with a novel solution. We would
have a selection of ‘mute’ choir members,
mouthing the words, visually making up the
choir to reconcile the number of the
rebalancing voices that we would add in later.
Altogether we would have a choir of up to 22
singing (11 cast, 5 trained support singers, 6
untrained support artists) plus up to 13 mute
support artists.
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Once a rough picture edit had been cut, I
teamed up with music editor Rodney Berling. From the largest dubbing stage to the studio you’ve built at home, whether you’re
Over the course of a few weeks, I assisted him mixing for music or post-production, the new line-up of Avid S Series consoles
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(especially on close ups). We made a small list
of overdubs that we would need to need to add
in order to re-balance the choir. Our director Learn more at hhb.co.uk
had a very clear vision of how he wanted each
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Our choir were absolutely brilliant. Their
confidence grew with the filming schedule, in
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March/April 2020 / 35
 Craft

Hw long were you working on the film?

Twelve weeks in total, with eight weeks on sound
editing and sound recording. I spent two weeks
doing a pre-dub mix for Dolby Atmos and two
weeks on the final mix with Bong Joon-ho.

Where was the work carried out?

Live Tone Studios has two film mixing facilities,
both of which are equipped with AMS Neve DFC
3D consoles, so the main mix was carried out in
one of those rooms. We also have an ADR
Recording Studio with a Neve Genesys console,
which we use in conjunction with a 1073DPA
stereo preamp and a Neve 33609 stereo
compressor to record the actors’ voices. This
room was used for all the ADR work on Parasite.

Did the DFC 3D console make the job easier?

Oh yes! Parasite was not as complex to mix as a
Hollywood Marvel movie, for example, but the
sounds were so detailed and emotional that
they needed the console automation to operate

Ralph Tae-Young Choi

very efficiently and simply, so this was where
the DFC 3D really came into its own. I mix all of
my movie sound with an AMS Neve DFC 3D
console because it has a much more powerful
audio engine and better audio quality than
other consoles or DAWs. For a mixer to be
BERT GEDLING on the audio post-production for intuitive and efficient, you need the console to
multi-Oscar winning movie Parasite be reliable and the DFC 3D excels at that.

P
Are there any features on the desk that you
arasite, the South Korean satire directed Since 1997, Tae-Young has tackled more than especially like?
by Bong Joon-ho, made Academy 400 audio post-productions for many projects I like most of its functions but I especially love
Awards history in February by including Korean movies, computer games, its Filter, EQ, and Compressor. I love its control
becoming the first foreign language film broadcasts and OTT content sound. Here he interface and Encore automation features,
to win an Oscar for Best Picture. It also picked speaks about Parasite and the equipment and which make automation easy and fast. Stem
up three other Oscars for workflows he uses every assign automation is also very useful and
Best Director, Best Original day at Live Tone Studios. convenient for pre-dub mixing and stem
Screenplay and Best mixing, plus the enhanced WavTrak display and
International Film. Being responsible for the added RMX and DeEsser features in the new
These accolades are not sound in the first foreign version of AMS Neve DFC 3D are very useful.
the only ones Parasite has language film to win a Best
garnered in recent months Picture Oscar must have With regard to mixing Parasite in native
— in January it was felt incredible. How did Dolby Atmos, did the Neve DFC 3D console
honoured by the Motion you feel when it won? assist with that requirement?
Picture Sound Editors who I didn’t attend the Oscars Yes, because in order to fine tune the sound
named it 2020 Golden Reel because I was working, but and creatively express what the director
Winner in the Outstanding the success of the movie wanted, I needed the console to operate quickly
Achievement in Sound was wonderful. I was very and accurately. The DFC 3D allowed me to be
Editing — Foreign happy and excited. After instinctive and inspired. The intuitive and easy
Language Feature the directors and actors operation of the console unbound my body and
category. That Award was returned to Korea, we all allowed my imagination and emotions the
presented to Supervising celebrated our success. freedom they needed to create good sound.
Sound Editor, Ralph
Tae-Young Choi and Sound How did you get involved What monitors are you using for your main
Designer Kang Hye Young. with Parasite — have you Dolby Atmos system?
The audio work for worked with the director I use a Dolby SLS speaker system, with
Parasite was carried out at before? SYS300A speakers for the main screen channel
Live Tone Studios in Yes, I’ve been sound (LCR) and SLS CS1290S for the side-wall and
Baengma-ro, South Korea. Ralph Tae-Young supervisor for all Bong Joon-ho’s film projects ceiling surround speakers. For the subwoofer
Choi is CEO, sound supervisor and re-recording and previously mixed the sound for notable speakers on the screen channels I use two SLS
mixer at Live Tone Studios, a facility he helped films such as Snowpiercer, The Host and CS218XL speakers and for the side wall
establish in 1997. Prior to that, Ralph worked as Memories of Murder. Naturally I got involved subwoofers I use SLS CS118XL. Our speakers
a MIDI sequence programmer in the South with Parasite, which he wanted mixed in Dolby are powered with custom Pascal audio amplifier
Korean music industry before moving to Los Atmos. In fact he told me to start preparing for modules with SMPS and our monitoring
Angeles where he honed his skills as a it during the audio post-production of Okia, a equipment for mixing 5.1 or 7.1 uses DATASAT
recording engineer. production he did for Netflix. AP25 as a cinema processor.

36 / March/April 2020
/ Live Tone Studio’s mix room with the biggest Dolby Atmos and IOSONO system in Korea
/ The Kim family tries to scrape together some cash by
folding boxes for a local pizza restaurant
How long have you been mixing in this
format, and do you now find it is a
requirement for most film projects?
I have been mixing Dolby Atmos movie sound
for cinema since 2013 and did my first Netflix
home Dolby Atmos sound mix in 2017 for
Bong Joon-ho’s movie Okja. I was also involved
in the Home Dolby Atmos mix of Kingdom
Season 2 for Netflix, which opens in March
2020. The format is now very popular but I am
selective about how I use it. I usually mix in
Dolby Atmos when a movie is a blockbuster or
can draw the audience’s attention. In those
situations Dolby Amos can help express and
strengthen the sound.
Can you describe your workflow for Parasite?
I mixed the movie using three Pro Tools DAWs
with the Neve DFC 3D console. Each DAW had
two HD MADI 64-channel digital audio
interfaces, giving us 128 channels of MADI I/O.
The first DAW had Dialogue Sound on
32-channel output, music on 24 channels, Foley
Sound on 32 channels and BG FX on 64
channels. The second DAW had SFX on 96
channels, plus 32 channels of AUX effect
plug-ins (Reverb, Delay, etc.). The last DAW
(Dubber) had the 128-channel Dolby Atmos’
print master sound for recording.
I pre-mixed every stem sound source using
the automation on the DFC console, and during
the final mix I modified the console automation
to suit what the director wanted. I never use
DAW automation for pre-mix or final mix, I just
use the DAW for sound editing and playback of
sound sources. Aux output uses a 24-channel
mono output, with 24 different Aux outboards.
The Dolby Atmos print master uses three 9.1
channel bed channels (DX, MX, EFX) and 98
object channels.
Was the initial mixing done in Pro Tools and
fed into the main mix as stems?
No, it wasn’t. My initial mix — or pre-mix — was
all worked directly from the AMS Neve DFC 3D
using the console’s automation. All individual
sound sources could be sent to the stem of my
choice using the stem routing automation
within the console. Also, for Dolby Atmos
mixing, the Bed and Object channels were
freely available and separated using Stem
Rounder Automation. When it comes to Dolby
Atmos mixing, this is a very convenient feature
offered by AMS Neve.
Do you use outboard equipment? And are
there any units you use regularly?
I always use outboard equipment and DAW
plug-ins together. Two Lexicon 300L are used
as room reverb for Dialogue and Foley sound,
and for Music and EFX I use AMS RMX16/
DMX16, Lexicon PCM90, 81, 80, T.C. Electronic
M5000, TC2290 Delay, two System 600s,
SPL-Vitalizer and Eventide H3000SE.
I use outboard equipment because I have
some really good custom presets that I created
before I started using plug-ins. I tend to use
outboard for pre-mixing and final mixing, and
sometimes for sound design, but these days
there are so many good plug-ins that I’m using
a lot of them for sound design.
/ Supervising sound editor, Ralph Tae-Young Choi
You mentioned that ADR was also recorded
at Live Tone Studios — was there a lot to do?
Bong Joon-ho feels that ADR recordings can
sound very unnatural so he kept this to a
minimum and only re-recorded about 40% of
the dialogue. These sessions took place over a
two-week period according to the actors’
schedules.
Since 2009, our ADR studio has been
equipped with a 48-channel Neve Genesys
console, which we use for recording and
monitoring. The desk doesn’t have a moving
fader option for automation but it does have a
warm analogue sound and an intuitive control
interface that can quickly and accurately
process ADR recording.
Does having Neve consoles in all of the rooms
at Live Tone Studios make it easy transfer
work between them?
The AMS Neve DFC 3D in one of the two mixing
rooms had 32 faders and a single USP engine,
which used to make it difficult to transfer
console data. But last summer I upgraded it to
48 faders and a Dual USP engine, so now it is
much easier to transfer data from both
consoles. This has made our sound mixing
environment more active and flexible.
What are you currently working on?
I’m working on the sound for three Korean
movies that will be released this summer. All
three are expected to be Korean blockbusters
and include a zombie movie, an action movie
about a man looking for his kidnapped
daughter, and a space science fiction action
movie. My sound work schedule is hectic and
I’m going to be very busy with movie projects
right through to December 2021.
March/April 2020 / 37
 Facility

Such Sweet Thunder

fabulous projects, including new re-mixing
projects for the Beatles, and I was also drawn
to film scoring. This was how I met Kirsty who
was then a freelance film engineer, and
everything just clicked with how we liked to
work. Our overlapping skills complimented
SUSIE ELLIOT meets the dynamic duo mixing it up over each other and I quickly realised she was one
AoIP in a Dolby Atmos studio of the most talented engineers I had ever
worked with — we both shared a passion for

A
recording and mixing.
ward-winning music mixers Pete I was offered a job at Abbey Road Studios and Kirsty Whalley (KW): I was obsessed with
Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley were came to the UK in 1995 thinking I’d be here for a music as a kid and played in orchestras and
based at Abbey Road Studios in couple of years, but London soon became bands. When someone lent me a 4-track
London for more than 20 years before home. Tascam Portastudio, I realised that recording
they took the plunge and set up their own I was offered the opportunity to work on was what I wanted to do so I enrolled for the
Dolby Atmos mixing room, Such Sweet
Thunder. Four years on, Resolution caught up
with them to find out how life has been since
the move — and to discover more about their
new AoIP workflows which allow analogue and
digital technology to be combined in entirely
new ways. “So musical a discord, such sweet
thunder”!

The pair of you have worked together for a

long time — what are your respective
backgrounds and how did your professional
relationship come about?
Pete Cobbin (PC): I started my career in Sydney
with an EMI traineeship — old school record
production, learning how to be a studio
engineer. The record company and studio were
in one building, so it was a great introduction to
all aspects of the business. By a circuitous route / Kirsty Whalley and Pete Cobbin (at a more traditional ‘desk’ than the thunderDesk)

38 / March/April 2020
 We wanted a mix
room that could
tackle anything
and a set-up that
would allow us to
react quickly and
be efficient

Tonmeister course at Surrey University. During

my work placement year I tried to get a job in a
studio, but didn’t have any luck. I was though
offered a job with a film composer, which I
wasn’t initially sure about, as though I liked film
music I hadn’t considered working in that field.
But I had such a good year and did so many
different things and spent time in many
different studios and it opened my eyes to the
possibilities.
After graduating I went freelance and set
myself up at CTS Studios in London where I
worked for various people, including composer
Gabriel Yared who got me involved in some
wonderful film projects. It was during this time
that I met Pete. I thought he was such an
/ thunderDesk = SSL moving faders, MIDI controller, keyboard instrument plus built-in speakers
incredible engineer and musician, I knew I
wanted to work with him as much as possible.
Eventually 21 years later I think I finally wore him
down and we built Sweet Thunder — I haven’t
looked back since!
Why did you decide to leave Abbey Road
Studios and strike out on your own? Was it a
hard decision to make?
PC: In the course of working together we had
worked all over the world, and set up
temporary mix rooms for various different
projects. This had given us many ideas for
building our ideal room. We knew it would be
hard to achieve this ambition from within the
confines of a corporate structure so decided to
go it alone. It was a bit scary because Abbey
Road was our safety net. The name sells itself
and that was a big thing to let go. But it was
also about us having a quiet ambition to do

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March/April 2020 / 39

/ A cornucopia of analogue outboard — unusual for movie mixing
something great because for years we’d had
very specific ideas about transforming our mix
room and changing how we worked with our
clients. The only way to pull all that together
and do something positive was to step outside
our comfort zone.
KW: We also wanted to be more artistically
involved in the projects we were handling and
that was another incentive. We’d had the
/ Vintage and modern: Merging Technologies Anubis manages a large number of IP streams
40 / March/April 2020
chance to get involved with some productions
at a planning stage, and while doing that we
realised how much we enjoyed the experience.
Having our own production space would also
allow us more flexibility about how we could
manage our projects and business.
How did you find your current premises?
PC: Islington has a rich tradition of independent
We can link up all
our vintage
equipment and
use it on an AoIP
network
studios and is also near the new creative hub of
King’s Cross. Rollo Armstrong (Faithless) and
Dido once owned the studio in years past so we
jumped on checking this out when it became
available. We loved the space and instinctively
knew it was originally built to a high
specification.
KW: We refurbished the whole place and made
extensive changes in order to suit our workflow.
Within a month we knew we’d made the right
choice because like us, our clients love it here
and enjoy the central location.
What was your criteria when first setting up
Such Sweet Thunder?
PC: We set out to address the needs of
servicing today’s fast turnaround film industry.
We wanted a mix room that could tackle
anything and a set-up that would allow us to
react quickly and be efficient. Additionally we
had the aspiration of combining analogue
technology into our digital work flow.
KW: For quite a few years we had been storing
up ideas about everything: the monitoring, the
type of gear we liked, the converters, the
clocking, etc. We brought that entire wish list
into the design of this room. Everything was
about detail and quality, even down to the
studio couch that was specially built for us. We
spurred each other on to push the boundaries,
which was very exciting.
The centerpiece of this room is a very unusual
console — the thunderDesk. Can you explain
how that came about?
PC: It is custom-built and was designed by us
to solve the limitations and frustrations we had
experienced when mixing on traditional desks.
I started my career facing forwards, but with
the introduction of DAWs I found myself
spending more and more time either cramped
or sitting sideways on to the monitoring. Then
one day Kirsty, who was facing towards the
monitors, asked if I wanted to get rid of a
specific noise on the mix. I was sitting sideways
on, buried in a waveform monitor, and I said
‘what noise — I can’t see it’. It was only when I
turned around that I could hear it. It was a
eureka moment. I had just spent 10 years of my
career facing the wrong way! What were we
doing? I needed to listen, not look. This was
just the start; a desk that allowed us to do this
and more.
KW: We identified that the necessity for a large
format console was primarily for recording, and

/ Six Horus A-D/D-A Audio Interfaces integrate
hardware outboard with Pro Tools
that for mixing our requirements were quite
different. That was the starting point for the
thunderDesk. It’s a moving fader production
console with high quality SSL faders and also a
MIDI controller and handmade keyboard
instrument that allows us to play piano through
the desk’s built-in speakers.
The work surface is very flexible so that we
can be fully involved in the creative process as
artists as well as engineers. The desk has its own
integrated 9.1 speaker system and two built-in
touch screens that allow us to stream music or
the radio from the internet or digitally from a
laptop. At the back of the desk are retractable,
high-resolution displays with video switching for
our multiple Pro Tools rigs. These screens are
electronically height adjustable and can be
completely lowered when we want to focus on
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“Working with the Antelope
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JASON O’BRYAN
PRODUCER/MIXER/EDUCATOR
(MOBY, KORN, LIMP BIZKIT, DUB PISTOLS, BUSTA RHYMES)
listening and watching films. The desk also has
two custom levelling valve amplifiers, a large
main monitor pot, an integrated ’60s vintage
mixer for music playback, a Grace monitoring
controller and controls for the studio lighting,
temperature and listening modes. We are really
proud of the craftsmanship that went into
making it and the way it enables us to work
comfortably and efficiently.
Such Sweet Thunder has racks of outboard
equipment, including some very rare vintage
pieces. How are you incorporating these into
a digital workflow?
KW: Mixing a film score in today’s world means
delivering a lot of stems for every mix. Even
something basically orchestral can be broken
down into 12 or more stems of music, which
brings its own mixing challenge. Much of that is
down to routing within the computer, but we
also like using hardware units that are not part
of the ‘in the box’ systems most film score
mixers use.
To build the right Pro Tools system for our
needs we had to look at I/O and think carefully
about how we wanted to work. We like to run a
7.1/Dolby Atmos surround mix and a separate
mix for our stereo, so it’s a completely different
path within the machine. The stereo mix goes
out analogue and through some of the choice
pieces of equipment we have built up over
many years. This meant we needed the best
/ Facility
converters possible for the stereo because we
wanted our analogue path and gear to sound as
good possible.
PC: Paul Mortimer (head of Emerging Ltd,
Merging’s UK distributor) recommended Horus
converters because they are very high quality
and allow us to incorporate our hardware
outboard units into our Pro Tools systems. We
bought our first Horus and used it for analogue
summing with a stereo chain, in conjunction
with some of our old valve equipment.
KW: We were blown away by the way it
sounded so we started using it with more
analogue gear and using it as inserts within Pro
Tools. We knew it could be great but because
our workflow is quite complicated it took us a
while to work out how best to use it. We finally
figured that out when we took our Pro Tools rig
to Glasgow to record a violin concerto for
composer Danny Elfman.
The venue was equipped with Merging
Technologies’ Hapis and Horus units, which
meant we could simply plug into the network
and experience the power of Audio-over-IP. It
was amazing. We were just pulling stuff in here
and there and using our own mic amps to boost
up their system. The penny dropped — we
could do this in our own mix room and instead
of having microphones everywhere, we could
have all our lovely analogue equipment
networked together and pull in what we wanted
whenever we wanted it.
antelopeaudio.com
March/April 2020 / 41
/ Facility
/ …a midsummer night’s dream of a mix room
AoIP is now a key part of Such Sweet Thunder’s
workflow. Can you explain your set up?
KW: Once we realised what was possible, we
bought another Horus and some more
analogue equipment and started incorporating
it into our multitrack workflow in a way that we
hadn’t seen anyone else do before. We now
have six Horus A-D/D-A Audio Interfaces and
two Anubis desktop interface units, which are
fabulous because they can manage a large
number of IP streams. Our main computer has
three Horus attached to it so every HDX path in
and out of Pro Tools can be on the network.
42 / March/April 2020
There is a lot of flexibility in the system because
we like having the ability to move our analogue
resources around so that we can use them to
best effect. We also have one floating unit that
can be used remotely in case we want to listen
upstairs or run some nice analogue equipment
to do a bit of editing or mastering.
PC: For years we faced the frustration of trying
to integrate analogue hardware into a digital
workflow but now we can do it easily. Once
Kirsty demonstrated that there were no timing
issues or latency, we were off. Suddenly we
could link up all our vintage equipment and use
it on a network, which was amazing. Now there
is no stopping us and there is nothing holding
back the imagination we can apply to our
mixes.
Your mixing credits are extensive — can
you name a few projects you have worked
on recently and what you are currently
working on?
KW: Recent projects include Little Women,
The Two Popes, Spider-man: Far From Home,
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Knives Out and Jojo
Rabbit. This year we’ve been doing preliminary
work on the next Batman movie, which is
scheduled for release in 2021, and a TV series
about Catherine the Great. We are also
working on the score for a new Marvel project
— we’ve previously worked on numerous films
for the Marvel franchise including Avengers:
Endgame.
PC: We have long term relationships with many
top directors and composers, but we also like
to work with colleagues who don’t have
enormous budgets so that we can give a bit
back to the industry as well. We love working
on Hollywood blockbusters, and they certainly
keep us on our toes, but the joy of having our
own room is that we can also deliver a good
service to smaller independent projects — film
and music — where we can be really creative
and experimental.
www.suchsweetthunder.co.uk.

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instruments in close proximity. It is available in three variants: a wired XLR
with handle, and two wireless mic ‘head’ configurations that are
compatible with most wireless microphone systems. This includes the SL1
adapter, compatible with Shure, Sony and Lectrosonics; and the SE2
adapter, compatible with Sennheiser. DPA’s design brief with the 2028
was to “deliver the full, natural sound of the artist’s voice and not what the
microphone thinks the artist sounds like”.
Polar pattern: supercardioid
Type: condenser
Price: €500/£450 ex-VAT
www.dpamicrophones.com/2028
Schoeps
CMC 1
The CMC 1 is the renowned German manufacturer’s new,
small Colette microphone amplifier — about one-third the
size and 40% lighter than the well-known CMC 6. It is
compatible with all components of the Colette system and
can be used in place of the CMC 6 for all applications in
which the size and weight of the microphone play a role. At
Schoeps, “uncompromising miniaturisation” means that the
electrical characteristics of the CMC 1 are equal to — even
better than — those of the CMC 6.
“Schoeps haven’t just produced a physically smaller unit,
CMC1 draws a miserly 2mA from the Phantom supply, half as much as
CMC6,” said BAFTA-winner Simon Clark in his Resolution V18.7 review of
the unit. “If you are providing current from battery powered mobile
equipment (and especially radio mic transmitters), this is very useful. The
new circuitry even provides for an extra 4dB maximum SPL handling over
CMC6.”
“Constructed to Schoeps’ usual high standard and compatible with all
the existing modules in the Collette range, CMC1 isn’t a revolution — but a
very welcome evolution,” Clark concluded, “smaller and easier to conceal,
superb build quality!” Customers who register their purchase with
Schoeps can obtain a warranty extension to 10 years.
Function: Mic amp
Type: Collette condenser
Price: £549 ex-VAT
www.schoeps.de
Microphone supplement
AEA
KU5A
The supercardioid KU5A breaks new
ground in ribbon technology, with an acutely
focused directionality that rejects bleed
from other instruments, room reflections,
and loud ambience in the studio and on stage. The KU5A is the
latest in AEA’s line of active, live-ready ribbon mics that includes the
near-field N22 and far-field N8.
AEA have possibly taken inspiration from the form factor of the
venerable RCA BK-5: this end-address vintage microphone was originally
released in the mid-1950s, and RCA famously touted it as possessing
“gun blast resistance”! The AEA KU5A features a supercardioid pattern,
chosen for its great off-axis response, and AEA emphasise that this
pattern, paired with the microphone’s body style, will minimise room tone
and bleed — whether in a studio or live setting.
The KU5A “delivers the low-end heft and pronounced midrange one
expects of AEA ribbons with moderate, manageable proximity effect”.
There’s an integrated high-pass filter to roll off low end in close range
recording applications. Interior components are the most protected of
any in the AEA line-up, and the KU5A is equipped with active electronics,
making it a good fit for any preamp.
Polar pattern: figure-8
Type: ribbon
Price: £958 inc VAT
www.aearibbonmics.com
Neumann
TLM 107
The TLM 107 is a reference class microphone for
vocals and instruments. Five polar patterns plus
variable pad and low cut settings make the TLM 107
exceptionally flexible. And with a dynamic range of
131dB the TLM 107 should be able to capture anything
from a slight whisper to massive drums without
unwanted noise or distortion. Neumann developed this
microphone for project and home studio users who
“prefer to capture an uncoloured sound image, true to
the original source”. As a member of the TLM series,
the 107 operates with a transformerless circuit ensuring
an open, transparent sound and a full, unrestricted bass
transmission, even at high sound pressure levels.
The mic’s large-diaphragm capsule was developed specifically for this
model. It has been described as inspired by the capsule in the D 01 digital
microphone. Both capsules are — unusually for Neumann — edge-
terminated designs. The capsule’s rear diaphragm remains in-circuit for all
patterns, even cardioid. This means the TLM 107’s cardioid mode has the
same sensitivity (11mV/Pa) as its other polar patterns. The TLM 107 is
available in Neumann’s traditional nickel or black finishes, with either a
ring mount (the SG 2 swivel) or an elastic shockmount (EA 4).
Polar pattern: variable
Type: condenser
Price: £814 ex-VAT
www.neumann.com
March/April 2020 / 43
Antelope Audio
Edge Duo
Edge Duo features a premier dual-membrane design
with low-resonance body and a 6-micron gold-
sputtered capsule. It records utilising two separate XLR
output channels through the included Y-cable. In this
manner, the on and off-axis response of each modelled
microphone may be emulated via the bundled software
with detail and accuracy. The Edge Duo boasts a library
of 18 mic emulations with fully adjustable polar patterns.
The dual-membrane, large-diaphragm modelling
condenser microphone is capable of operation with any
preamp via native plugins (VST, AU, AAX). Polar
patterns may be switched between cardioid, figure-8,
omni (and everything in between). The electronics
designed by Antelope engineers are housed in a
low-resonant body. 18 “legendary” microphone
emulations, from ‘Berlin 47’, through ‘Tokyo 800T’ to
‘Sacramento 121R’ are included.
Antelope Audio’s Edge and Verge modelling
microphones feature a proprietary modelling engine
simulating studio classics with flexibility. Antelope say
each modelled microphone is studied in “one of Europe’s finest facilities”,
then transformed into a digital replica with full control over polar pattern
and proximity effect. Several Antelope Audio converters, including the
Discrete MP, Discrete 4 and Goliath (review Resolution V16.8) are bundled
with the Edge.
Polar pattern: continuously variable
Type: condenser
Price: £835/€899 inc VAT
www.antelopeaudio.com
Audio-Technica
BP40
Audio-Technica’s BP40 large diaphragm
dynamic microphone is designed to
deliver natural sound reproduction in a
variety of applications including radio
broadcast, recording and post-
production. The microphone’s 37mm capsule features a patented “floating
edge” design to optimise the surface of the membrane and maximise
performance, while the humbucking coil prevents electromagnetic
interference (EMI) generated by the video monitors, power supplies and so
on found in modern broadcast and recording environments.
Enhancing its suitability for such applications, the BP40’s
hypercardioid pickup pattern allows for great isolation of the sound
source and excellent off-axis rejection. As such it’s a great choice for busy
radio studios with multiple presenters; in terms of tone, the positioning of
the BP40’s capsule has been designed to promote vocal clarity and
presence, with an ability to cope with plosives thanks to a multi-layered
windscreen.
Voiced with a peak at 4kHz makes for excellent presence, even at a
some distance. It has a 100Hz high-pass filter for rumble attenuation, and
Audio-Technica specify a frequency response of 50Hz-16kHz. The BP40
has a sensitivity of 3.9mV/Pa (around 6dB more than a Shure SM58). The
rugged, all-metal BP40 ships with an AT8483 mic clip, with the AT8484
suspension mount available as an option.
Polar pattern: hypercardioid
Type: dynamic
Price: £255 ex-VAT
www.audio-technica.com
44 / March/April 2020
Sennheiser
MK Series
Both MK 4 and MK 8 microphones are designed to
be versatile. The MK microphones feature a low
inherent self-noise and a maximum sound pressure
level of 140dB. Despite their detailed sound, the
MK mics are rugged tools. Their compact
electronics, superior materials and zinc die-cast
casing ensure that they are a good partner for
tough recording environments.
The MK 4 is easy to handle and excellent value
for money, making it an ideal choice for project
studios and home recordists. It features a one-inch
true condenser capsule based on the acoustics of
the e 965 high-end vocal mic. The MK 4 is made in
Germany, its transducer being manufactured in the
same clean room as all high-end Sennheiser
condenser capsules.
The MK 8 features five selectable polar patterns
(omni-directional, wide cardioid, cardioid, super-
cardioid, figure-8) and is fitted with low cut/roll-off
filters, as well as a three-position pad switch. MK 8
offers a defined bass, rounded-out mids and open treble. Professional
users will appreciate its versatility — it can cater to any recording
situation. The microphone has dual one-inch diaphragms precisely
spattered with 24-carat gold. The shock-mounted capsule is
accommodated within a sturdy metal housing.
Polar pattern: variable
Type: condenser
Price: MK 4 £277; MK 8 £629 inc VAT
www.sennheiser.com
RØDE
NTG5
The NTG5 saw
RØDE reimagine
the shotgun microphone in a number of ways.
The body design was completely overhauled, with
circular acoustic ports replacing the linear slots
found in other shotgun mics. The revolutionary
design delivers greater transparency, and a natural,
uncoloured sound suitable for a wide variety of
broadcast applications. It is also incredibly light at
just 76g and relatively short, which is a huge plus for boom
operators and sound recordists. Add to this a very flat frequency
response, a tight polar pattern with excellent off-axis rejection,
RF-bias circuitry, and a high-quality pistol grip and shock mount
included in the kit, and you have a new standard in location recording
microphones.
“Happily, the supplied suspension seemed to be able to cope with my
simulation of a rookie boom-swinger shaking it like a pair of maracas,”
joked Simon Clark in his Resolution V19.1 review. “Drawing a miserly 2mA
from phantom power makes this microphone an ideal choice for
powering from a radio transmitter which, with the advent of digital
systems, is becoming the norm on-set now. RØDE have designed a really
impressive, great sounding product in NTG5, especially considering the
price point.”
Polar pattern: supercardioid shotgun
Type: RF-bias condenser
Price: £449 inc VAT
www.rode.com
 / Microphone supplement

Josephson Mojave Earthworks

C725 MA-1000 SR314
The Josephson C725 Drawing inspiration from some Earthworks precision engineered
uses a hybrid of tube of yesterday’s most revered their SR314 handheld condenser
and solid state microphones, Technical microphone to offer a fresh
technology, with the Grammy award-winning approach to miking vocals. The
dual-diaphragm capsule microphone designer David SR314’s tight cardioid polar pattern
used in the C700 and Royer created a thoroughly provides consistent frequency
C716 microphones. A ‘modern’ tube microphone that response to 90º off axis, with extreme
separate high voltage features an original, NOS (new attenuation of off-axis sound sources
regulated power supply old-stock) 5840 tube, 251-style beyond 90º and maximum rejection
has five switchable capsule, and custom designed at 180º. It captures open, rich-
directional patterns and transformer built by Coast sounding vocals with minimal
a ‘Sun/Moon’ mode Magnetics. The microphone is proximity effect and delivers articulate
selector to provide a supplied in a substantial low end close-up that doesn’t thin out
choice of either full, or Peli-type case with foam cut with distance. This allows singers to
reduced, tube character. outs. Also included is a super- work the mic without dramatic changes in
In the C725 the voltage sized version of the patented sound. The SR314’s 145dB SPL handling and an
gain section uses a Sling Shock suspension mount, extended 20Hz–30kHz frequency response
low-noise FET, while the which uses a system of damped further enhance the versatility of this incredible
remainder of the cascode circuit uses an springs and (non-elasticated) mic, making it as useful for high-fidelity capture
EF86-family vacuum tube. This provides the nylon cables instead of the usual rubberised of instruments as it is for vocals.
low noise of the FET along with the dynamic parts and elastic cords. Protected within its steel exoskeleton is a
characteristics of the tube. The output is Reviewed in Resolution V15.5, Jon Thornton studio-grade, small-diaphragm, cardioid
provided through a custom nickel-core said: “It has its own sound, albeit a sound that condenser capsule coupled with a Class A
transformer, which also has a second output draws on some of the best characteristics of amplifier circuit that leverages Earthworks’
winding for negative feedback control used by the ELAM 251 and other classic designs. You patented, proprietary technologies to deliver
the Sun/Moon control circuit. could easily A-B it against contemporary and one of the fastest mics on the planet. The
“In all my testing, not once was I thinking vintage microphones costing many times more SR314’s extended, flat frequency response and
about how the C725 sounded in comparison and expect it to come out at least equal, and excellent coherence time with fast impulse
with something vintage,” said Jon Thornton. “I the icing on the cake is that tune-ability with the response sets the Earthworks SR314 apart from
was simply thinking about how it sounds, variable pattern. It can do all these things other handheld vocal mics in its class. The
period. Which is very, very impressive indeed! because it’s completely honest about what it SR314 doesn’t just deliver studio quality on
That divide between tradition and innovation is does and why — great design, attention to stage. It is a vocal microphones that aims to
very firmly bridged — this could be a modern detail, careful choice of components and a seamlessly transition between those two worlds
classic.” desire to learn from and be influenced by the without compromising anything in terms of
Polar pattern: omni, sub-cardioid, cardioid, classics, not simply to copy them.” performance.
hyper-cardioid and figure-8 Polar pattern: cardioid and omni Polar pattern: cardioid
Type: condenser Type: condenser Type: condenser
Price: £8,874 inc VAT Price: £2,195 inc VAT Price: $699 USD / £699 inc VAT

www.josephson.com www.mojaveaudio.com www.earthworksaudio.com

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March/April 2020 / 45
TELEFUNKEN
Alchemy series
Designed, hand-built,
and tested to strict
quality standards in
Connecticut, the
Alchemy Microphone
Series is
TELEFUNKEN
Elektroakustik’s next
generation of large
diaphragm tube condensers. These microphone
models feature unique sonic profiles developed
from the ground up, utilising a combination of
vintage microphone elements and modern
reliability. The bold voicings of the Alchemy
Microphone Series are the TF29 Copperhead,
TF39 Copperhead Deluxe, TF47, and TF51.
The Alchemy Microphone Series is an
evolution and refinement to past TELEFUNKEN
models, benefitting from over a decade of
in-house microphone design and production.
Features include a custom designed headgrille
for transparency and openness, hand-plugged
circuit boards, and premium selected tubes and
transformers. All systems ship in a compact,
protective case for easy transport and storage.
Included are two modern mount options,
microphone dust cover, high-flex 7-meter cable,
and an American-assembled power supply.
Each microphone is individually tested and
listened to. All critical components are quality
controlled in-house before assembly, including
capsule frequency sweeps, vacuum tube
burn-in and noise grading. These high
standards lead to extremely tight tolerances
from microphone to microphone.
Polar pattern: cardioid
Type: condenser
Price: (TF29); £1,275 inc VAT
www.telefunken-elektroakustik.com
46 / March/April 2020
Sontronics
Podcast Pro
British mic brand Sontronics
celebrated its 15th birthday
by announcing a new product
to widen their range yet
further: the £99 Podcast Pro,
developed and hand-built in
Sontronics’ UK HQ. Available
in red or black, the
Sontronics Podcast Pro is
a dynamic microphone
that’s been designed
specifically with podcast,
broadcast, radio, gaming and
voiceover applications in mind.
The Podcast Pro has a
tightly focused supercardioid
pickup pattern, giving
excellent clarity and depth
with superb side rejection. Its
three layers of internal
protection and integrated
fine-mesh pop filter provide
superb control of
extraneous noise or
rumble and also help
control unwanted
sibilance or plosives. Easy to
set up and position, and compatible with any
desktop or floor-standing mic stand, the
Podcast Pro’s XLR connection allows you to
plug straight into your interface, soundcard,
mixer, laptop or Xbox. The Sontronics Podcast
Pro is supplied with its angled yoke mount and
the microphone is covered by Sontronics’
unique Lifetime Warranty.
Polar pattern: supercardioid
Type: dynamic
Price: £99/$149 inc VAT
www.sontronics.com
Aston
Stealth
Winner of ‘Best Microphone’ at
the NAMM TEC Awards, Aston
Stealth is the only British
manufactured microphone ever
to achieve this. Stealth has 4
switchable voices and is
equipped with an auto-detect
function which senses 48V
phantom power, and
automatically switches the mic
to active mode. A built-in, high
quality, Class A Mic Preamp
dispenses with the need for an
external gain lifting device in
active mode. Stealth also features a sorbothane
internal shock mount system.
Stealth was developed in partnership with
more than 90 engineers, producers and artists
on the Aston 33 development panel, who
participated in a series of blind listening tests
designed to create the best possible sound.
The resulting four voice settings, Vocal 1, Vocal
2, Guitar and Dark, offer a variety of sounds.
“The ‘G’ setting is a real eye opener. If you’re
after a tight, punchy, almost slightly
compressed guitar sound from a miked cab,
this is pretty much plug and play,” said
reviewer Jon Thornton (Resolution V18.2).
“Switching to sung female vocals, the V2
setting sounds balanced rather than hard, with
a sense of space that wouldn’t disgrace a
decent LDC… It certainly isn’t the first time a
manufacturer has claimed their offering is four
microphones in one — but Stealth is probably
the closest I’ve heard to fulfilling such a claim.”
Polar pattern: cardioid
Type: dynamic
Price: £229 inc VAT
www.astonmics.com
 / Microphone supplement

DPA Royer
4097 R10
Available in both Royer Labs is well known for TRUST
TAKES
wireless or wired making world-class ribbon
configurations, microphones, with pricing to
DPA’s 4097 CORE match. The R-10 is Royer’s first

Supercardioid
Choir Microphone
provides the same
sonic qualities as
the brand’s CORE
4099 Instrument
Microphone, just with a higher sensitivity. It
features DPA’s flat off-axis supercardioid
pattern and very high-gain-before-feedback,
with the intention of delivering the most natural
sound possible from all angles. This makes it
simple for sound engineers to use multiple mics
on a choir — spot mics may be blended without
having to fight the artefacts created from
uneven mic pattern pick-up.
The 4097 also features CORE by DPA
YEARS TO
lower-priced ribbon microphone,
but Royer says no corners were
cut with the R-10. The R-10 is
recommended for electric guitars,
brass, drums and all acoustic
instruments.
 Like all Royer mics, the R-10 is
BUILD
hand-built in Royer’s Burbank, California facility.
STAR WARS • LORD OF THE RINGS • AIR STUDIOS •
It features the same patented direct-corrugated STERLING SOUND • SONY MUSIC STUDIO • DISNEY
ribbon element found in Royer’s R-121, and has • STING • ABBEY ROAD • DAVID BOWIE • BBC • LOU
a David Royer custom-designed transformer REED • WISSELORD • PRECISION MASTERING •
that gives great headroom. The R-10 has an SONY MUSIC STUDIO • CBS • NBC • LUCASFILM-
internally shock-mounted ribbon transducer to SKYWALKER RANCH • THE JIM HENSON CO •
help protect against vibrations and shocks to METROPOLIS STUDIOS • METALLICA • HANS
the ribbon. It has a 3-layer wind screen system ZIMMER • WARNER BROTHERS • ABC • MANDY
that greatly reduces potential for stretched PARNELL • DAVE GROHL • VAN MORRISON •

LY
XR
amplifier technology, which enables it to deliver ribbons from wind. The wind screen system LAURYN HILL • THIRD EYE BLIND • SOUND ON

R
SOUND STUDIOS • FOUR TET • ROBBIE WILLIAMS

A
a clear sound with lower distortion and an also cuts down on bass build-up when close-

-8
A
expanded dynamic range. Furthermore, the miking electric guitars and other instruments. • EMINEM • AIRSHOW MASTERING • HARRY
30

D
4097 includes three shock mounts to ensure Royer say the design allows the microphone POTTER • TALVIN SINGH • STEVIE WONDER •

A
rumble caused by movement onstage is YEARS
to handle SPLs of 160dB at 1kHz, and maintain ROGER WATERS • KATARA STUDIOS • DEADMAU5
damped effectively. Configured with a MicroDot full sonic integrity at extreme levels. The offset • PETE TONG • UNIVERSAL
OF AUDIO
• BRITISH LIBRARY •
connector and a DPA adapter for wired or ribbon also makes the back-side pickup of the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS • JAMES BOND • RADIO
EXCELLENCE
wireless operation — allowing for great microphone slightly brighter, which is useful for NEW ZEALAND • STAR WARS • LORD OF THE
flexibility on stage when there are multiple uses vocals and acoustic instruments. The R-10 ships RINGS • AIR STUDIOS • STERLING SOUND • SONY

N
in an aluminium carrying case and includes an MUSIC STUDIO • DISNEY • STING • ABBEY ROAD

TA
of the same space. The microphone is sleek,
• DAVID BOWIE • BBC • LOU REED • WISSELORD
discreet and elegant, so that it doesn’t draw adjustable swivel mount and a protective

TI
AT
• PRECISION MASTERING • SONY MUSIC STUDIO
attention away from the performers even when windshield. The R-10 is also available in matched

L
• CBS • NBC • LUCASFILM-SKYWALKER RANCH

A
it is at its longest stand extension (253 cm). stereo pairs.
• THE JIM HENSON CO • METROPOLIS STUDIOS

S
Polar pattern: Supercardioid Polar pattern: figure-8 • METALLICA • HANS ZIMMER • WARNER
Type: condenser Type: ribbon BROTHERS • ABC • MANDY PARNELL • DAVE
Price: €900/£790 ex-VAT Price: £470 inc VAT GROHL • VAN MORRISON • LAURYN HILL • THIRD
EYE BLIND • SOUND ON SOUND STUDIOS • FOUR
www.dpamicrophones.com/4097 www.royerlabs.com TET • ROBBIE WILLIAMS • EMINEM • AIRSHOW
MASTERING • HARRY POTTER • TALVIN SINGH •
STEVIE WONDER • ROGER WATERS • KATARA
Shure Contact Us NOW
STUDIOS • DEADMAU5 • PETE TONG • UNIVERSAL

TwinPlex
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to Arrange Your
JAMES BOND • RADIO NEW ZEALAND STAR WARS
• LORD OF THE RINGS • AIR STUDIOS • STERLING
Shure’s new line of premium subminiature omnidirectional lavalier and
headset microphones are designed to stand up to the toughest conditions. Interface Demo!
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Developed with input from leading audio professionals, TwinPlex supports REED • WISSELORD • PRECISION MASTERING •
the diverse needs of theatre, broadcast, film and television. The TwinPlex is E: sales@prismsound.com
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and low self-noise, creating lifelike vocal clarity and warmth. Just as much thought has gone into • EMINEM • AIRSHOW MASTERING • HARRY
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Polar pattern: omni
Type: Dual-Diaphragm, Pre-polarised Condenser
Price SHURE TL46: £350 ex-VAT
INNOVATION, PROGRESS & TRUST
www.shure.com/en-GB/performance-production/twinplex

March/April 2020 / 47
 A Day in the Life
Dave Pemberton
Resolution follows the former Strongroom Studios engineer,
known for his work with The Prodigy (Invaders Must Die,
Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned) plus a long list of
other great artists from Ash to Supergrass, through his day
Please note: this piece was commissioned and written before the coronavirus lockdown
A
t 9.30am I arrive at the studio, first
job, have a little clear up, and get the
coffee on…
10am: I’m recording a new song
with the band Y.O.U.N.G today. A 5-piece band
from Manchester. The song we’re working on is
very sample-based, with a huge drum loop as
the main rhythm track. I want to get the live
drums locked in with this first. I have a demo
from the band that we recorded a few weeks
ago, so I’m starting with the drum loop, guide
guitars, and vocals…
Graeme the drummer will be arriving at
about 11, so time to get the kit set up in the live
room. We have a stage in the studio, with PA
and monitors, set up for live production
rehearsals. But I prefer the sound of the drums
in the middle of the live room, under the
highest point in the ceiling. The kit we are using
today is a Pearl Masters series, owned by the
band. One rack tom and two floor toms.
I double mic the kick, inside and out, with an
old AGK D12 on the outside near the hole, and
an AKG D112, bullet inside — an inch or so back
from the middle of the skin. I’m padding the
kick with a pillow inside. I have three mics on
the snare: SM57s top and bottom — and I’ve
48 / March/April 2020
been using an old AKG D125 as a second snare
mic — nice and crunchy!
I have my sE 4400a as overheads, and an
Aston Spirit behind the drummer. On the toms I
have clip-on Sennheiser E904s. I also use a
stereo M/S pair in front of the kit, and a pair of
room mics as far away as possible…
11am: Graeme the drummer has arrived and
/ Drummer Graeme Smith of Y.O.U.N.G.
he’s getting the kit set how he likes it and
having a warm up. While he does this, I adjust
the mics, and start to work on the drum sound
in the control room. I record using a
combination of Golden Age PRE-73 on the
snare, with a Focusrite ISA 131 compressor. I also
have a Seventh Circle 8-channel mic pre, and a
Digidesign C24 desk with 16 Focusrite mic amps
built-in. Urei 1176 compressors across the
overheads, and then into Pro Tools.
12pm: We start going for drum takes; a few of
the boys from the band have arrived, Jamie the
guitarist, Chez and Tom — vocals and bass. It’s
quite tricky getting a drummer to play to a
sampled loop, so we have quite a few takes…
1pm Still recording drums. Getting there
now, dropping in sections, and fixing up the
best take.
1.30pm: Lunch break. Grab a quick sandwich,
then straight into editing the drums. I’ve
extracted a groove template from the drum
loop, and I’m using Beat Detective to quantise
the live drums to the loop — which takes a
couple of hours.
3.30pm: Drums done, sounding really tight!
Time for some bass guitar! I’m DI-ing the bass
today, as I plan to process it later, using a Sans
Amp plug-in for some vibe…
4pm: Bass is down pretty quickly, but I need to
quantise it, as the loop and drums are so tight.
Bass doesn’t need too much work, just a few
edits. I like to keep things tight as I go, it saves
time in the long run.
4.30pm: We move on to guitars now. I have a
selection of amps to choose from, all set up in a
separate booth. Jamie is in the control room
with me, playing in front of the monitors. We’re
trying out a Roland GT-1000 Effects Processor
today. Sounds great!
I’m taking a clean DI, the output of the
Roland, and also running through a Vox AC30,
and recording three channels for each guitar
take. I double-track pretty much all the guitar
parts, changing sounds and getting into the
GT1000. Guitars all done by about 6 o’clock,
and time for dinner before we get stuck into
vocals.
7pm: Chez is in the vocal booth getting
warmed up. I’m using a modified AKG Tube for
Chez’s vocal, I love the warmth it brings to his
voice. The mic is going into my Golden Age
PRE-73 and Focusrite ISA 131, then into Pro
Tools. Chez likes to work in loop record, so
we’re cycling around the chorus while he fine everything in place ready to record backing 11.30pm: Finally all down! I think… Well, that’s
tunes his vocal melodies… We usually both vocals. Tom and Chez do the BV’s, we stack a enough for one day anyway. Tomorrow I’ll be
agree when he has hit a few good takes, which I few harmonies, and the song is taking shape. back in, editing and pre-mixing. Sort out all the
extract to new tracks for comping later. 10pm: The last thing to get down tonight is vocals, and get everything sounding really
We work through the song like this until he’s Ben’s rap. He’s pretty well rehearsed on this tight!
done all the sections. Then I give him a break song. We record four or five good takes for Dave Pemberton is based at MCC Studios, Manchester.
while I comp the lead vocals. I usually comp-up each verse, then I comp it, recording his double www.mccstudio.uk,
some double tracks at the same time, and put tracks and stabs. www.davepemberton.uk

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March/April 2020 / 49
 Playlist
Resolution electronica
When Jean-Michel Jarre is on the cover…
Dave Robinson
Artist Jean Michel Jarre
Song Arpegiator (The
Concerts in China,
1981)
Why? A trippy, grandiose paradigm of
multi-layered monophonic
sequencer lines and drum machine
rhythms, bouncing around in a cave
of reverb and delay, and composed
especially for his ground-breaking
trip to the Far East.
Philip Newell
Artist Vangelis  Artist Chicory Tip
Song Conquest of
Paradise
Why? Electronic music can
often be very mechanical, but this is
a superb blend of electronics and
emotion. The soundtrack
from Ridley Scott’s 1992 film 1492 respite within an album which can
Conquest of Paradise and covered
by many artists, including Blake
and Klaus Schulze.
Ed Lister
Artist
f.o.o.l (Rasmus
Hermansen)
Song Highway (2018)
Why? This is THE
COOLEST ‘80s electonic synth
track you will hear today full stop…
whether your going to the gym,
need motivating for a shoot/in the
midst of an edit… this will get you in
an epic productive mood!!! One of
the BEST tunes going!!! NEON !!!!!!
Be sure to check the video too!
EPIC!
John Musgrave
Artist Orbital
Song Belfast (from
Orbital 1 1991)
Why? Given the massive
body of awesome work that’s
followed since, it may seem odd to
choose this early Orbital track. But
30 years later it still captures that
post-party vibe as well as any track
and reminds us how beautiful
electronic music can be created
from a few choice instruments.
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50 / March/April 2020
Simon Clark
Artist Ron Grainer & Delia
Derbyshire
Song Dr Who (1963)
Why? Truly electronic.
Truly ground-breaking. Truly catchy.
Truly scary. Derbyshire created
each note individually by cutting,
splicing, speeding up and slowing
down segments of analogue
tape-recordings of a single plucked
string, white noise, and the pure
harmonic waveforms of test-tone
oscillators.
Nigel Jopson
Artist Boards of Canada
Song Over The Horizon
Radar (Geogaddi
2002)
Why? A beautiful vignette providing
be disturbing for non compos
mentis listeners. The Sandison
brothers (BOC) called the album “a
record for some sort of trial by fire,
a claustrophobic, twisting journey
that takes you into some pretty
dark experiences before you reach
the open air again”.
Phil Ward
Artist Yazoo
Song Situation (1982)
Why? Every synth loves a
bit of delay, and in
the hands of Vince Clarke it
becomes a slithering, erect joy. Plus
Alison’s lovely giggle.
Donato Masci
Artist Don Karate
Song Ice Age (Don Karate
2020)
Why? Don Karate is a
talented Italian jazz quartet. Great
musicians playing great
contemporary jazz, I just want to
share with my non-Italian friends.
Just to be contemporary — the
song has an atmosphere with a
tension that could describe what
we are breathing these days in Italy
for the lockdown.
Rob Speight
Artist The Art Of Noise
Album Daft (1986)
Why? This album was so
formative in my
fascination of electronic music and
sampling. The rawness of the short
samples, the heavy handedness of
‘In the Army Now’ and the haunting
beauty of ‘How to Kill’ make the
entire album one I still listen to and
smile.
George Shilling
Song Son Of My Father
(1972)
Why? The first UK number
one to prominently feature a
synthesizer (it was a Giorgio
Moroder cover; Chris Thomas
programmed the Moog). My mum
bought this (I was six years old)
because we couldn’t understand
the words on Top Of The Pops.
Turns out, neither could Chicory Tip,
because they got them wrong and
re-recorded it with the right ones in
2000!
Gijs Friesen
Artist Fatboy Slim
Song Gangster Trippin’
(1998)
Why? I love how Fatboy
Slim manages to cram so many
styles of music into one song. It’s
like a music history lesson, but one
where a very energetic and positive
teacher tells you everything at
once. With the help of some brilliant
music videos!
David Kennedy
Artist The Orb
Song Blue Room (U.F.Orb
1992)
Why? The short version
(17½ mins) of this all time top juke
box value for money track is a
giggly, joyous voyage round inner
space. The long version? 39’57” and
still technically a single.
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V18.D | April 2019  | £5.50 V18.7 | November/December 2019  | £5.50 V19.1 | January/February 2020  | £5.50

The The The

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